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Haymitch vividly remembered the first night in the hospital after Effie was rescued from the Capitol and brought to Thirteen’s infirmary.
Effie was skeletally thin, covered in wounds in various stages of healing, and her hair had been shaved almost completely off. The thin layer of peach fuzz was all that was left of the curls she’d normally hidden by a wig. She looked lost, broken, and that was never something he wanted to see. It was never something he’d expected to see either, because Effie was stronger than she looked. She could play the brainless Capitol citizen, she continued to care for their kids every year even though they never won, she handled his drinking, sarcasm, and general hatred of all things Capitol with more ease than any escort had ever managed.
Which made this worse.
He didn’t know exactly what had happened to her. Jo knew most of it, but she wasn’t talking about it and pushing her wasn’t wise. He would have asked Effie herself, but the woman looked like she’d been through hell (and hadn’t even scolded him when he’d said as much), so he thought it was best to wait on that front.
What broke him were the tears in her eyes when he’d promised to never let her go.
She had already been crying, although whether it was from the pain, relief at her freedom, terror at what would happen next, or some combination of the three, he doubted even Effie knew. He promised her that she would be safe, that he wouldn’t let anything happen to her again. He’d made a mistake, trusting Plutarch with her safety, and he wasn’t going to do it again. He promised to never let her go, and that was the moment when tears became sobs while he watched helplessly.
It took a lot of coaxing, once he’d managed to calm her down (which was a feat in and of itself), before she started to believe him. They had broken her, nearly killed her, and it was his fault.
If it wasn’t for Effie begging him to stay, he would have gone searching for any liquor he could find. Instead, he held her close, murmuring for her to just close her eyes, to rest and trust him. It would be alright, he would make sure that nothing happened to her.
He’d lost her once, he wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice.
It took time, of course, before Effie’s body healed enough that they would let her out of Thirteen’s infirmary. As soon as it happened, he took her with him to see the kids. Both of them were a mess, but giving Effie a purpose seemed to help. She wore clothes that covered all of the damage, claimed that her hair had always been that short underneath her wigs and that her thinness was a result of a lack of appetite. Katniss bought it, not that he was surprised as the girl was out of it more often than not, but Peeta had always been more perceptive.
Peeta had also, he found out, been witness to the torture that Effie went through, not that he liked to think about it. He pressed the boy for information, as much as it was safe to press him, and he almost wished that he hadn’t.
Now he had stories to match with every scar, pain administered for every ‘I don’t know’ to every question that they asked. They forced her to watch Peeta being tortured, and Johanna as well, until she started causing problems, trying to protect Peeta and even Jo from them. They turned the tables and made Jo and the boy watch them torture her after that, trying to make them be obedient, pliant, for their propos.
When the victors were rescued and Effie wasn’t, they had thrown her in a cell by herself, barely remembering to feed her enough to keep her alive because it was clear that she meant nothing to the rebellion, that she honestly knew nothing. Just an escort who had gotten too close to her victors.
Now whenever she woke up screaming from nightmares, she did it in his bedroom in Twelve. She stayed with the boy while he brought Katniss home, then she was the one who had brought Peeta home, although the boy insisted that he was fine.
She planned to stay for a week. Two months later, she was still there.
He held her close when she woke up from her nightmares, telling her that no one could hurt her, that she was safe, they were all safe. Sometimes she listened, closing her eyes and letting his voice soothe her back to sleep. Sometimes whatever she’d seen in her nightmares sent her into a panic attack when she woke, and he would have to talk her down, assure her that they were safe, there was no one there but the two of them. Once he had even sang to her, an old song that he barely remembered his mother singing when he or his brother had been scared or upset.
It wasn’t perfect, but they didn’t expect perfect. They were both broken, albeit in different ways, and somehow their jagged edges fit together. All that mattered was that Effie was safe, the kids were safe, and he was going to ensure they stayed that way. They were all safe and sound, even if their subconscious was slow to accept it, and he would make sure it stayed that way.