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Johanna knows she's going to die in the prison. It's not if, just when and how. As soon as possible, really, and by whatever means she can figure out. She's tried a few methods so far: inhaling water as fast as she can when they try to drown her, rubbing her wrists on an exposed bolt on her cuffs as she's being interrogated to try to open an artery, fashioning her bedsheet into a noose. She's never fast enough, and now they've changed their methods, always one step ahead.
Her new cuffs are padded, impossible to cut herself on. She doesn't have a bedsheet anymore. And when they drown her, they prefer to use a soaking wet towel, enough to block her mouth and nose with water, but not enough to actually get water into her lungs. The sensation of drowning. That's all it is, but somehow it's just as bad, worse maybe, because they can prolong it.
So she has to play the long game. Starvation is the only thing she can think of, anymore. If they're not going to kill her, and she has to kill herself, she will just absolutely deprive herself of sustenance until her body shuts down. She was left behind in the arena, all three of them were. She can't tell time in the prison, but it's been weeks, at least. No one is coming for them. So she needs to die to let this end.
Her entire body aches from the electric shocks, horrible pain that flashes behind her eyes and rolls down her spine, through her legs before rebounding up and pulsing around her head. It makes it impossible for her to think - she just has to sit and endure it, motionless until it passes. And the drowning - even the anticipation makes her sick with nausea and dizziness. She feels lightheaded as they're running the hose. No, the only way out is to die, surely.
She can't count the days since she's stopped eating, but she's refused at least 20 trays, and before that she ignored them intermittently, usually only taking anything salty because somehow, she craved salt, like a creature, inhuman. She had water, from the small sink in her cell, and she drank from it straight from the tap, though as she drew weaker that required more and more effort, and sometimes she felt her mouth growing dry and she couldn't even be bothered to quench her thirst.
And there were the others: Annie, muttering and tapping and crying and crying, begging for Finnick until Johanna couldn't stand the word. As if Finnick was going to save them now. They were going to die down here, and all the work she and Finnick had put in for years to save Annie Cresta from Capitol torture was for naught, because look at her now.
There was Peeta, raving and ranting about Katniss being the worst person on the planet, an honor Johanna had long reserved for Snow, but she might have to move him down a notch to sit her interrogators on top. She tries to tell him that he's mad, that he's been brainwashed, but who is she against whatever the Capitol has poisoned him with? He's in a cell right beside hers, so they can't see each other, they can only hear each other through the wall. Sometimes he comes back to himself. It's then that she's sorry he has to die.
Occasionally she wonders if they might let Peeta out, just him, since they did all that work to turn him against Katniss. She pictures him strangling Katniss, stabbing her, or however it's done so she's dead at the end. Maybe then Panem will go back to normal, the rebellion quashed. She's frightened that she is a little relieved at that, that maybe all these interrogations really worked on her, to think that she would be alright with going back to how things were. Maybe she does resent Katniss, more than a little, she'll admit, in the privacy of her cell.
Everyone was always sacrificing everything for Katniss. The rebellion centered around Katniss. She was stuck in this fucking torture chamber, she would die in this cell because Katniss was the priority for extraction at the Quarter Quell. She hears a hiss of pain from the cell diagonal from hers, next to Annie's. Enobaria. It's relieving in a way, to hear sounds of life, even if they were sounds of pain. Enobaria wasn't dead.
She had hated Enobaria for so long, maybe she still does, it's hard to say. But in the face of much greater enemies, it doesn't matter. Enobaria didn't know anything about the rebellion, Enobaria just happened to be engaged with her - a known rebel - at the end of the Quarter Quell. Worst place. Worst time. At first Johanna thought they were interrogating Enobaria, trying to figure out if she did have any secret rebel involvement, but eventually Johanna's own torture sessions turned out to be less like interrogations and more like… sadistic experiments, and she wondered if Enobaria's were more or less the same. Perhaps she shouldn't be relieved Enobaria is still alive, and should be hoping for a quick death for her, too.
She finds herself in interrogation again the day something changes. It's the usual at first - the electrodes, the yelling, the horrible, horrible water, up to her ankles, and a soaking wet towel - but on this day she's so tired, so starving and weak that it's like background noise. She's not sure what they're saying, exactly, not sure if she's been there only minutes or hours and hours. Even the pain, so persistent and awful seems so fade into the background as a sort of euphoria takes over and she wonders if she's weak enough that a good jolt of electricity might kill her, that they might accidentally zap her too hard this time.
She had wondered, for a while, if they would force feed her, but for all their preventative measures in other ways, they had not gone as far as shoving nutrition into her. Maybe they, too, were just waiting for her to die. They shove the wad of gauze in her mouth that keeps her from biting her tongue. Her padded cuffs are chained to the table. Same as it ever was. There is a question, maybe. It doesn't matter, she never answers. She's supposed to raise a finger, or something, if she plans to answer, so they can remove the cloth and she can talk. She would do that, the first few times, to give them some sarcastic quip. Once she spit on them. She soon learned it wasn't worth the trouble. It was better to just sit and endure. Now she lets it all pass over her. The questions, the movement. She waits for the shock, the first, horrible moment of electricity, of all her muscles seizing, her heart out of rhythm, her face feeling like it was leaking from every hole, the smell of burnt hair (or whatever was left of her hair), maybe urine on the seat beneath her.
But it never comes.
Instead, there's something else. A new sensation, which is strange, in this place so bereft of novelty. Her chest hurts, her eyes feel like they're rattling in their sockets. And her ears. Her eardrums feel like they might burst, and she wants to yell out in pain, but she can't take a deep breath. Whatever this is has taken over her lungs as well.
She looks up, trying to determine what new hell they've unleashed on her, but the the two Peacekeepers who were interrogating her are cowering too, hands to their ears. One is grasping for a button on the wall, but his crawling is slow, uncoordinated, as if every muscle is affected by whatever is happening in the room. Johanna understands. Even if she had been uncuffed, she isn't sure if she could move.
There is a pounding at the door, or maybe the Peacekeeper who was crawling was pounding to be let out. The door is behind her, it's impossible to see. She hears a button pressed, a lock engaging or disengaging. But no one enters. The three of them remain. She sees blood trickle from the nose of the Peacekeeper still in her view. He stares at her. "What is this?" he asks, but she only can interpret this from his mouth shapes. The noise around them is like a great hum, like dozens of hovercrafts taking off at once, drowning out a single person's voice.
She tries to make him understand for the first time in all their interrogations. She gives him actual honestly for the first time in weeks? Months? She spits out the cloth. "I have no idea," she says, her eyes filled with horror. She feels it, her heart beginning to beat incorrectly. It feels too fast, or maybe too early. She can feel the thumps high in her chest, almost in her throat. It's making her dizzy, or maybe that's just her anxiety. But her vision is going cloudy, and she passes out, face down onto the interrogation table.
She wakes in an infirmary. It can't have been long that she was out, because her ears are still ringing and she can still taste stray threads of gauze in her mouth from where it had been shoved in preparation for the electrocution. She lifts a hand to her head mostly to make sure everything feels like it's in the right place, and notices an IV line plugged into the back of her hand. She glances up to the pole and sees a bag of hydration and a bag of morphling. Oh. So that is why she doesn't feel much of anything right now. Her ear feels crusty with dried blood, and her hair is as choppy and awful as she remembers, but everything else seems more or less the same.
The room is quiet, the lights dim. In the next room there's another cot and she sees a second person, but just the legs. Tucked under the white sheet, she can't tell who it is. She almost wants to cry at relief, or some other implacable emotion at the calm, pain-free feeling she has now. She was so, so certain she was going to die in that place. And now here she is, safe, resting, unbothered.
A man enters the room, but he doesn't frighten her, at least not immediately. He's not much taller than she is, and he's got almost no muscle. He's got sandy hair and a pale complexion, and large, round glasses. He's almost familiar. "Johanna Mason?" he asks.
"Who are you?" she asks. Her throat is parched, her mouth sticky and dry and her breath awful. She hasn't done more for her teeth than rinse her mouth out in all the time she was in that prison, and it shows.
"My name is Nikolas Driver, and I am from District 7." He gives her a small cup of water to sip from, and she takes in his appearance.
Yes, he was. Nik. She remembers him, though he looks a bit different from when she last saw him. She wonders if she was wrong, if they were back in District 7, but no… he was sent away. "I thought you…" she closes her mouth before she says something rude, unsure if it's to avoid ire from him, or just for politeness.
"Were killed?" he asks.
She shakes her head. "An Avox," she finishes. She remembers when they took him away, during the winter, in District 7. It was a big scene in the town square, and she attended with Blight and Jackson. It was flu season, and he was one of the only people in the District trained in medicine. But he had said something against Snow, or the Games, or the Peacekeeper, she wasn't sure of which, and he had been beaten there, in the square, his mother crying for him. The Peacekeeper aimed his rifle at her, then, and Nik gave up his fight, arms raised. There was really no fight to begin with, he was always skin and bones. They all were, in 7.
"I thought so, too," he says. "I thought I was going to die outright, but the Peacekeeper said I was to be sent to the Capitol. Then I was to report right to Snow's mansion. I thought surely I would be made into an Avox, then," he says.
He picks up a wand-shaped device and she flinches instinctively, but he sits, trying to project calmness. "It will heal the burns from the electrodes," he says. "Please, I want to help."
So she lets him, and slowly, one small burn at a time, he treats the wounds as he continues to talk. "Snow spoke to me directly, offered me a position on his personal medical staff. So I've been here for almost 7 years now."
She can feel her brow furrow, her mind trying to comprehend this. She thought he was dead, no, he was dead, or at least an Avox. Right? Maybe she did die in that prison. "You work for him?" she asks. She's beyond feeling hungry, but it's been so long since she's had any nutrition, her brain doesn't feel like it's working right.
He moves right along with the wand-thing, flashing light at each small burn mark. It doesn't hurt, and his hands are steady. "You did too, for years, no?" he asks. His tone isn't rude, but she gets the point. When Snow wants something from you, he gets it. He probably threatened Nik's mother, or perhaps threatened to burn or bomb all of District 7 if he didn't play along. She grunts, conceding.
Finally, when he finishes his treatment, he raises the bed, and she sits up properly. She still doesn't know where she is, but at least now they're sitting like peers rather than doctor and patient, even if that's what they are. "I'm going to get you something to eat," he says, and steps into the hall, bringing her back a tray with actual food on it, not the gray porridge and nothing mush of the prison. "The portions are small, for now, since you haven't eaten in a long time," he says.
It makes no difference to her. There's bread, a bowl of broth, fresh cut fruit, and a small portion of meat and potatoes. She wants to cry. While she eats, Nik asks her questions about District 7, and it's nice, to think about that and not the prison. "Your mom is alive, Mayellen was always making sure she was taken care of. The newest Peacekeeper, Marius, he's a real piece of work. Otherwise, it's the same as it's ever been."
He nods contentedly at that, refilling her water and bringing her the new cup. He glances into the next room, checking on the person in the other bed as he returns.
"Who is that?" she asks, her voice lowering. She doesn't know who she hopes it is, but she knows who she hopes it's not. She can't imagine what she'd do if he told her one of those interrogators was laying just feet away from her.
"Enobaria Weaver, District 2," he says.
Enobaria. Hm. They met at the end of the Quarter Quell and now they meet again here. She doesn't really think it has any significance, but it's nice to think she's not completely alone. She wonders how messed up it is that Enobaria's presence gives her any small comfort.
"What about the others? Annie? Peeta?"
Nik looks away then, obviously uncomfortable with answering this question. Dead, then, she assumes. She continues eating in silence, but then the feet kick in the next room. Nik gets up to check on Enobaria, and Johanna watches, at least towards the end of the bed she can see through the doorway, but she doesn't expect the hoarse yell, or the cry from Nik that follows. The IV pole crashes to the ground, Johanna sees, towards Nik, though he manages to dodge it. Then Enobaria is up, out of the bed, and into Johanna's room, her bare feet slapping across the tile floor, blood dripping where her IV was torn from her forearm.
She comes to stand on the far side of Johanna's bed, tense like a prey animal, like she's still in the Games. "We need to go," she says, slowly, calmly. Johanna wonders why she's even waiting for Johanna, why Enobaria doesn't just take off by herself. But something has Enobaria spooked, she can tell. Johanna has always known her to be more clever, more patient, less hasty than the other Careers, and yet here she is, looking as if she had a gun to her head.
"What is it?" Johanna asks, as Nik comes back to the doorway. He's so unintimidating, Johanna can't understand why Enobaria is afraid of him. But it's obvious she is, from the way she grabs the fork on Johanna's tray and holds it out in a gesture for him to 'stay back'.
"Don't you know who that is?" she asks, "That's Snow's personal doctor." Her hand is trembling holding the fork. "We must be in his mansion right now!"
It is true, Johanna learns, that they are in Snow's mansion. Enobaria demands they be let go, and Nik cannot allow this, and Johanna quickly comes to understand that they are still imprisoned, just in a different way. She thinks that if they were in better condition, they'd stand a chance a making it out, but she knows that her legs will barely allow her to stand, and even if Enobaria hadn't been on a hunger strike like she had been, she looks to be in terrible condition as well. With the amount of Peacekeepers they knew to guard the Presidential Mansion, there is no way they would be able to fight their way out.
Enobaria, however, seems to be reaching her limit. She won't allow Nik to help her with medication or food or water, and won't return to her bed. She seems paralyzed with anxiety, standing between Johanna's bed and the wall, barefoot and bleeding in the skimpy hospital gown, her braids now frizzy and messy, her breathing rather shaky.
Johanna thinks of the time Enobaria bit her, during the 68th Games, an attempt to keep her from losing her mind when several bankers had bought their company. "Stay with me," she had whispered in Johanna's ear. "Only look at me." It hadn't worked, Johanna was too far gone, even the pinch of pain at her neck couldn't reorient her, and she had blamed Enobaria for the whole incident for years afterward. But it wasn't Enobaria's fault, not really. It was one of many things she'd come to realize, in that prison and before, and it makes her see Enobaria as much more of an ally than anyone else around her, even Nik. She slides over on the bed, letting Enobaria sit beside her, and she does.
It's odd, being this close to Enobaria without being forced to, or without fighting. She reaches for Enobaria's wrist and digs her overgrown fingernails in, paying her back for the bite years and years late. She can hear Enobaria take a deep breath.
"I'll be back later to check on you," Nik says, obviously determining his help isn't worth the distress. The fact that there's Peacekeepers nearby is implicit. They don't dare test their limits.
"I didn't think you'd be here," Enobaria says, once they're alone. "I thought it would just be me."
Enobaria is sitting a little behind her, so she doesn't know what she means. She hands her the fruit on her tray. Johanna has sores in her mouth and the tanginess of the fruit irritates them. Enobaria puts the fork in and chews on them silently. "What do you mean? They weren't going to kill me," she says, even though she had thought they might, finally.
Enobaria is quiet for a bit longer, eating. "No, not the Peacekeepers. The rebels."
"The rebels?" The rebels had been there? She feels her heart begin to swell and shatter, just thinking about what Enobaria is implying.
Enobaria leans forward, her chin on Johanna's shoulder. It's intimate, but not unwelcome. It's been so long since she's been touched by another person with any kind of gentleness. Her voice is quiet, a hum right beside Johanna's ear. "That horrible noise? That was a rebel weapon to disable the Peacekeepers. They came in and shot a few people, took Annie and Peeta, fucking left," she says. Johanna can hear the emotion in her voice even without seeing her. "I thought… I thought they'd take you too, you're their rebel sweetheart."
Johanna scoffs. "That's Katniss," she clarifies. "Or Finnick."
Now Enobaria laughs, just a bit. But they both sit in the truth of the situation: they were left behind by the rebels at the end of the Quarter Quell, and they were left behind by the rebels again now. Enobaria, perhaps, because she wasn't a rebel, but that was no reason to leave someone in a Capitol torture hell, in Johanna's opinion. And they left Johanna behind why? Because she was too inconvenient to get to in the interrogation room? She clenches her jaw, trying to think about the circumstances of the rescue, trying to recreate what had taken place, but it was all blurry. She had been so tired, so, so tired, and honestly she still was.
"One went towards interrogation. So I thought… when he came back alone…" Enobaria trails off, her voice more serious now, quiet.
"Still alive." Johanna's eyes are again heavy with morphling. Her chest hurts even thinking about the rebels. She might cry, though it would be alright, she figures, since Enobaria is behind her. It's hard to think about any of them individually: Haymitch who asked her to die for Katniss if necessary, Finnick who chose Annie every time and asked her to do the same, Katniss who hated her without understanding it was all for her, Plutarch who hatched the whole plan that required them to go back into the fucking arena. She doesn't know what more to say to Enobaria, doesn't know what more to say to ease her own conscience. She told herself she had nothing to lose, that she would die for the rebellion, but she failed to consider that there are things worse than death.