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When Katniss gets to the town square the next morning, the scene is chaotic. The workers are sitting in place resisting the soldiers' urges for them to get moving, out to the mills or the forests. Some of the soldiers are getting more violent than they were the day before, perhaps now that the weather was clear, they were more inclined to spend time out in the open, rather than under the cover of awnings. Some are kicking at the backs of the men and women, urging them to move, issuing orders and pointing their rifles in a threatening manner.
But none of the workers budge, pointedly ignoring the provocations. Katniss sees Poppy on her way to the canteen. "Oh, good morning!" Poppy greets. "Sorry, I can't talk, I need to get to my lessons!"
"Oh, is that going alright?"
Poppy nods. "I know the Healers they sent are military, but they only want to do their job. They don't have any weapons, and they're fine to get along with," she drops her voice, "Unlike these guys. Anyways, I'll see you later." She runs off, in the direction of the mills, where Katniss assumes the temporary clinic is set up.
Katniss wonders where Johanna is, but she supposes she was up late drinking with her neighbors, so she might make a late appearance today as well. She sees Peeta eating breakfast with Plutarch at one of the tables in the Canteen, and sits alongside them. Truthfully, she's ignored Plutarch since their run-in at the hotel bar, but she knows she needs to put that behind her. If everything works out today, District 7 can get their demands met, he can keep his job, and she can go back to District 12 with the promise of never being called upon again. Part of her is relieved at that, and another part of her feels unsettled. Now that her eyes have been opened to injustices that were not fixed by the war in one part of Panem, she's left wondering how many more there are, and how much responsibility she carries to fixing them.
"Where's Haymitch?" Peeta asks, as if she would know.
She shrugs. "I haven't seen him in the square. Think he hit the tavern this early?" Another possibility crosses her mind, but she doesn't voice it aloud. She knows Peeta is probably already considering it anyways. Had he finally given in and visited Johanna last night? Was he still there now?
"Well, Plutarch confirmed new books with the current codes and laws have been printed and are being sent, so that all workers and managers understand the policies and punishments for failure to comply. The president is sending them along with 4 inspectors who will do initial inspections, and then come intermittently for unannounced visits."
Katniss nods. This all sounds good. So long as these inspectors weren't carrying rifles, she feels this all might work out. "Are they sending someone to receive the lumber?"
Plutarch seems to come back to life now. "Yes, they are sending an appraiser to ensure it hasn't been damaged in the rain or in the multiple transports, and if so, he will accept it with the fifteen percent markup." Katniss looks at Plutarch, at the way this trip seems to have taken some of the life out of him in a way that months underground in District 13 never did. But perhaps that is the error — to think that the time after the war would be easier, when really it might be more difficult.
Once they pay and exit the Canteen, there seems to again be a commotion in the square. At first, Katniss looks around for a fight, thinking that once again one of the soldiers was getting into it with a protesting worker, or just someone who had had too much to drink early in the day. But it's two soldiers who are approaching, causing a scene. She sees them coming from about twenty-five meters out, once they break through the treeline, half-dragging, half-carrying Johanna into the square.
There's a curious murmuring in the crowd, and a few men stand up, hands on the handles of their axes. But the soldiers don't stop, they continue to push through, as if this is normal business, and not the apprehension of the district's strike leader. Hudson stands and rushes forward, and Katniss does as well, both blocking the path at the same time.
Johanna, for her part, looks more annoyed than distressed, but Katniss can see the vein pulsing too fast in her neck, and wonders if she's playing cool for the sake of the soldiers. Then, belatedly, she realizes it's probably for the sake of the people watching, as Katniss remembers her speech from the night before. That none of them could cause a scene, if they wanted the deal to go through. Katniss wonders if this is what this is: just a gambit by the soldiers to get a rise out of the District 7 residents, to provoke a fight, an excuse to kill.
She takes a deep breath. "What is this?" she asks one of the soldiers.
"This is an arrest, ma'am," he says. The ma'am stings, not because she wants special privileges as the Mockingjay, but because of the disdain in his tone, as if he knows exactly who she is, and knows that right now, he has all the power. Her fingers itch for a weapon, and she thinks, irrationally, that it would be nice to be in the Games, just for a moment, because there, murder is fine, acting on instinct alone is rewarded, and if she wanted to kill this man, she could, and people would cheer.
"On what grounds?" Hudson asks.
"Caught her selling morphling," the soldier says, a bit of a smirk on his face.
"You can't just arrest people!" Hudson protests, but he's met with a rifle to the face by the soldier who isn't holding onto Johanna.
"Want to bet?" he asks.
Katniss isn't sure how to diffuse this situation. Johanna looks to still be in her pajamas, just flannel pants and the same tank top as the other day, her hair pointed in a few directions. "Can you consider a house arrest?" Katniss asks. "You're right there to keep an eye on the house, and she's sick, she needs medicine."
The soldier snorts, his rifle jumping an inch or two. "Dope sick, maybe."
Johanna stands up straighter, giving herself an extra inch of height. "Don't worry about it, Katniss. The deal will still work fine. I should have known better."
The soldier holding Johanna smirks, and Katniss can't bear to look at him. She nods, trusting Johanna, because she can feel the crowd becoming tense. The rifle aimed at one of their strike leaders, and another under arrest was not doing much to ease the tension.
Katniss steps back to allow the arrest to take place, and Hudson takes a cue from her and does so as well. The soldier holding into Johanna shoves her along, but it seems she wasn't expecting it and trips, hitting the pavement with her hands bound. Immediately, the rest of the protesting workers are on their feet, axes in hand, moving closer.
It's Peeta who rushes forward to help Johanna up, heedless of the guns in the soldiers' hands. He helps her up, and Katniss turns away from the blossom of blood at her forehead, afraid that she won't be able to calm the emotion it's producing, and unsure, even as she's feeling it if it's rage or grief or some other feeling entirely. Once Katniss can see Johanna and Peeta walking away with the soldiers, she turns back to the crowd, holding her arms up. "Please, don't," she says. It feels like a betrayal. She wants to kick the soldier who is holding Johanna in the head. She wants to let these workers have their way with the rest of them. She can feel anger bubbling up in her that she hasn't felt in months that has nothing to do with District 7, but everything to do with the end of the war, and the realization that life isn't fair, and that good people, sweet, innocent people will lose.
But she has to swallow it down, because in order to make the deal, in order to earn the Capitol's favor, they have to play nice, and that means turning the other cheek, and letting some of the venom dissipate. "Please, we need to wait just a while longer. Even in the face of injustice, we need to be patient."
A few of the soldiers who were standing guard around the square stand at attention at her speech, perhaps incensed that she called their actions unjust. But they stay in their positions, and after a few moments, she can feel the tension lessen, just a bit.
It takes a while for Katniss to realize she doesn't see Haymitch anywhere around. He's not in the tavern, or at the Canteen. He hadn't been present for the arrest. She considers her earlier thought — that he had gone to Johanna's last night — and a sinking feeling hits her that perhaps he was there at the time of the arrest, or perhaps he is still there. There's a panic, momentary as it comes to her but growing rapidly, that he's dead. It's inexplicable — she has no reason for thinking it — except that he hadn't come to the square with Johanna, and he still hadn't come back. She wants to tell Peeta where she's going. She wants to tell anyone, because it feels ominous to go to the Victor's Village, where the soldiers have taken up residence and Johanna won't even be anymore, but Peeta isn't around, and she's too charged to take the time to go find him.
It only takes a few minutes to get to the Victor's Village since she runs most of the way there, and she's sweating when she arrives. The area was obscured on her approach since she took a forest path, but as she emerges from the treeline, she can see immediately that something is not right. Johanna's door is ajar, and it looks like it was rammed in. She slows down, approaching cautiously, glancing to the side towards the other houses unsure if they have any soldiers in them, watching her.
"Hello?" she calls, entering, remembering the time she came here with Haymitch, and feeling a similar sense of foreboding. "Haymitch?"
At first she hears no response, but there's a muffled groan after a moment. She pushes the door open wider, cautiously, and steps through the threshold. She wishes she had a weapon, once again, something to make herself feel safer, as she walks into the chaos of a ransacked house. There is shattered glass and porcelain on the floor, papers and tobacco scattered all around, and furniture moved about, some of it upturned. She sees blood against one of the walls. It feels unnatural here, in a home, and where she might not have flinched at that amount of blood in the arena, or in a battle in the war, it has a certain wrongness to it as it is streaked against the wall beside the narrow staircase.
"Haymitch, where are you?"
She hears him groan again, and follows the sound to the living room, where he's propped up on the couch, looking worse for wear. It appears that he took a rather bad beating from the way his face is bruised, and he lays stiffly, like he's trying to stay as still as possible. There are a couple cigarette butts in an empty glass on the table beside him. "Get me something to drink," he says, and she rushes to comply, opening the same cabinet Johanna indicated when she visited here the first time. Luckily, everything in there was intact, though there was no more white liquor, so she brings him the amber.
She pours it into a glass and brings the rest of the bottle with it. "What happened?" she asks, sitting in the chair across from him. She wants to offer ice, or a bandage, or some other aid, but she isn't her mother or sister, she was never good at this, and so she waits, unsure how to help and too shy to ask what would be best.
"Is she alright?" He asks this before responding to her question, and right before taking a swig of the liquor, about half the glass. he winces after, but seems to gather some strength, and repositions himself into a seated position.
"She's going to the jail, or whatever counts as that here," she says. "Peeta went with her."
He sighs, shaking his head, and drinks the rest of the glass. "Shit."
"What happened to you?" she repeats.
"They've been at her door for days, on and off, I guess. When I came by last night, she told me to ignore them, but they knocked and knocked, asking for cigarettes, for morphling, for sex. I told her to come with me, to the hotel, but she refused, saying they'd come in and steal her things if she left."
Katniss listens, and realizes that this is probably why Johanna hasn't come to town. That she had been guarding her home from the soldiers. She wonders if the time she saw Johanna in the square, the evening before, had been her coming out at a time she thought was safe, perhaps when most of the soldiers were away from the Victor's Village.
"They stopped sometime after midnight, but in the morning, they started up again, and eventually, they just… battered their way in." He pauses to pour another glass of the liquor, sips it, and continues. "I tried to head them off, to give her a chance to escape, or hide her things. Not to be a hero but…" he bites his lips, digging the nails of one hand into the sofa, "But because I couldn't save her during the Quarter Quell. The soldiers were full of pent-up energy, happy for someone to beat up, so you can see that me and this house took the brunt of it." He sighs, shaking his head a bit. "But it didn't work. Somehow, she's locked up again."
Katniss had realized, on some level, why Peeta had been so adamant about accompanying Johanna to the jail, but it doesn't really click until that moment. That being behind bars, held by Peacekeepers, would remind them both of the worst part of the war, of mind-altering drugs and electric shocks and drowning. She knew that about both of them — it was impossible to look at them and not remember it — but in the face of all that was happening, and among the myriads of things that made up Peeta and Johanna, she had forgotten, for a moment. "I need to check on them," she says.
Haymitch nods. She considers him, in pain and now a little dulled with the effects of the alcohol. She knows that he considers this all to have failed. That coming to District 7 was a failure, that coming to see Johanna had been a failure, that his life in general, was just a profound series of failures. "I'm glad you were here," she says. "It's better that she wasn't alone."
He looks up at her, meeting her eyes for the first time in several minutes. Then he nods.
"I'm going to take you to see the Healer," she says. "And then I'm going to check on Peeta and Johanna. And afterwards, at sundown, the train will arrive, and I'll go see Mayellen to finish the deal here." She spells the plan out carefully, because she can tell the alcohol is hitting his system, and the pain is making him lose focus. Or maybe it isn't the pain, but his doubts about himself and their plans are seeming to make him slip away from the present.
He nods, faintly, and she helps him stand. He has one hand on the bottle of liquor, and one arm around her. He seems to sag, and his steps shuffle as they move towards the door. She helps him slip into his boots, and she leans down to tie them as leans against the broken door. Just as she's about to stand up, she hears him speak, very quietly, and she stills, straining to listen. "I didn't mean to leave them behind," he says. "Peeta, and Johanna. It wasn't supposed to turn out like that."
"In the arena?" she asks. The end of the Games was such a blur, such chaos and pain and color and movement, she can hardly remember. But he doesn't reply.