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There aren't many wonderful things about being stuck in the Capitol, but the showers certainly count. It takes two days for Enobaria to be allowed to use one, held up as she is with rehydration, medication infusions, fighting with the Healer, and sleeping. She must have slept more than half the time she has been out of the prison, which honestly frightens her, since they're not yet safe, not really. In fact, they might be in more danger than they had been in before, right in the heart of Snow's mansion, but she can't help it: she's so impossibly exhausted and now that her body has just a touch less adrenaline, it's all catching up to her. She can't stay awake.
She lays on the cot in the little room in the back of the infirmary in between Johanna's cot and the wall, and she sleeps, fluids and vitamins flowing into her arm. Johanna can't sleep, still, for more than a few minutes at a time, so she sits on the cot, knees to her chest, watching the door, a sentinal while Enobaria dozes. They don't talk, barely at all, at least not until it's dark, but there's a fragile truce between them now: they are allies more than they are enemies, what has been done to them by the Capitol and the rebels has put them in a strange third space where they don't belong anywhere, really.
And so, at the end of the second day, when the Healer tells Enobaria and Johanna they can take showers she pushes through the exhaustion, eager to wash the filth of the cell off of herself. She is disgusting, undoubtedly. They were there for over a month with only a small sink to wash with. Her teeth feel slimy, her hair is itchy and she's sure it looks awful. She can see physical lines of grime on her arms and chest from dirt and sweat. She doesn't dare look at her thighs.
Johanna doesn't move right away, even though the Healer detaches the almost constant morphling drip from her arm. She's more comfortable with the Healer than Enobaria is - they're both from 7, Enobaria gathers - but even so, Johanna flinches from his hand when he goes to assist her. "We should get cleaned up," Enobaria suggests, not because she wants to tell Johanna what to do, but because duty is set into her bones in the same way breathing is. The Career Academy in District 2 followed the same drills, the same protocols as the Peacekeeper Academies, with the expectation that the cadets not selected for the Games would transition there afterwards as Officer recruits. She knew what was expected of her, even after such a harrowing experience. Johanna wasn't from a Career district, she didn't have such training. It only feels right that she should offer a hand.
She's surprised that Johanna doesn't cut back with some acerbic comment, but perhaps she's just too weak to even consider it. She looks up at Enobaria, all gaunt, sunken cheeks and lifeless gray eyes, and she stands on spindly legs beside her. Her hair is shaved, an approximation of a Peacekeeper enlisted's cut, at least a man's, and it's all Enobaria sees as Johanna is short, standing just past Enobaria's shoulder. She can see the tension, stiff shoulders, fixed jaw, a tendon protruding from Johanna's neck as they walk the short distance to the showers in the next room of the infirmary, as if even this effort is taxing.
And Enobaria can't blame her. She's been sleeping. She ate the terrible meals they were offered. She drank from the sink in her cell. She can't imagine if she hadn't. Johanna sits on the bench in the lockerroom-like bathroom in the back of the main section of the infirmary as if she needs to take a break just from the short walk over. The Healer leaves to give them privacy and Enobaria is grateful - she doesn't think she could manage to undress in front of any man right now. "Can you manage?" she asks Johanna. Truthfully, she doesn't want to help her take a shower. They barely know each other. But she would, because she is dutiful, because she has been trained.
"Of course!" Johanna bites back, more harshly than necessary, probably, but it's reassuring to see signs of life.
Enobaria takes of her stupid hospital gown and tosses it in the laundry basket, and turns on the taps on one of the showers to the settings she preferred. This, at least, was familiar from her times at the Training Center. In her underwear, she gathers a couple towels and puts them on the bench near the shower. She catches Johanna looking at her, though Johanna averts her gaze once their eyes meet. Neither of them comment on it. She finishes taking her clothes off and gets in, drawing the curtain, and oh, does it feel good to finally, finally be cleaning herself off.
She uses one of the soaps, lathering it over herself, and watches with a combination of horror and satisfaction as the water runs to the drain a murky gray. She repeats the step with her hair and sees tufts of shed hair falling out, even with her hair still bound up in braids. She washes her face, she scrubs under her overgrown fingernails, and she should be satisfied, but she isn't. Because she can feel it: the filth that has sunken into her like a bruise in her flesh.
She takes the cleaning rag and adds more suds, focusing more intensely on her thighs, her chest, her private parts. And as she does, she can't help but picture the acts that she is scrubbing away: unwanted touches, penetration, gazes, fluids that weren't hers left drying on her skin. She sits, knees to her chest, letting the hot water scald everything away. An anger fills her combined with an unnameable grief. She feels a sob in her throat that she doesn't dare let out: she didn't join the rebels. She protected the Capitol's dirty secrets, she protected the status quo. She did her duties as a representative of District 2, to protect her family and all of the people of her home. And look where it got her: assaulted by the very men alleged to be her allies.
After an unknown time, she realizes Johanna is calling for her. "Are you alright?" she is asking.
And she's not, at all, alright. It may have been Johanna's rebel liaisons that got her tangled in this mess to begin with, but that's a road she dare not go down. But in this moment, she thinks she can speak without it turning into a sob. "Fine," she says.
"You should come out, you'll get dizzy," Johanna warns.
She's right, logically. Enobaria can feel it, the way the heat is getting to her, and the way the ideas circling in her mind are making her more and more emotional, a bad combination for someone usually so composed. "I'm almost finished," she reassures her.
Bony fingers draw back the curtain, just a couple inches, and turn off the tap. Johanna is a Victor, too, after all, she knows the dials on this shower as well as Enobaria. But Enobaria doesn't immediately stand to get out, and the curtain draws back a little further. There's a hesitance in Johanna's gaze, like she's overstepping, and then she looks down, at the reddened skin, and there's some spark of recognition there. Enobaria can tell in the way she bites her lip. Had she done the same, in the past, after a bad client? Had she watched Finnick try to scrub memories of a bad encounter from his body?
Johanna leans down and uncurls Enobaria's fingers, taking the cleaning rag away, hanging it back on the hook. She takes a long look at Enobaria, and it makes Enobaria feel exposed, vulnerable. But then Johanna nods, in satisfaction. "You got it all," she assesses. And then she hands Enobaria a towel, like the matter is settled. It's all so strangely District 2 in style that Enobaria obeys the unspoken request, standing and wrapping herself in the towel, and taking the second proffered one for her hair.
It's not until later, laying in the dark, that they speak again. It's easier to speak in the dark, somehow, when they are just speaking into the room and the other happens to answer: a facsimile of a conversation. Their beds are inches apart - the room was really only big enough for one cot - but after the isolation of the prison cell, Enobaria doesn't mind. She doesn't think Johanna does either, from the way she'll wake up from a startled sleep orienting herself, reaching out at nothing, only calming down when she's touched Enobaria's arm. They never mention these moments later, when Johanna is fully conscious.
"I didn't know," Johanna says. Her voice is slow, like she's fighting through the pull of morphling, but forgot the other thing: narcotics tend to make lips looser. It takes a minute for Enobaria to catch on to the thread of this conversation, so she just stares at the dark, empty ceiling of the infirmary until she deduces that Johanna must be referring to what she saw in the shower.
"How could you have?" Enobaria says. She doesn't know, specifically, what they did to Johanna in interrogation, just that it made her scream. She wouldn't expect the reverse.
But Johanna is not listening, not really. Enobaria can see her mattress shaking a bit in her peripheral vision, wonders if she's really trembling over her, over a woman she thought of as an enemy just a month ago. "They groped Annie, in front of me, once… threatened worse… I should have known…"
"Wouldn't have changed anything," Enobaria says. It's the truth. And basic training for the Peacekeepers, really. The less you know, the less they can torture out of you. It was one of Johanna's worst qualities, really. She had her fingers in everything: Haymitch's business, Finnick and Annie's, Plutarch's - she was always going to have a bullseye on her back.
She knows the argument in Johanna's head: Enobaria is loyal, Enobaria didn't sign up to risk anything with the rebels, but she was still punished. Worst place. Worst time. It runs through her head as well. But it leads nowhere. She and Johanna have been betrayed by the Capitol, and betrayed by the rebels. At least now she knows where they stand.
They leave the infirmary after a week. As a reward, they get ankle bracelets. The Peacekeeper who installs them tells Enobaria that if she walks beyond the confines of the mansion, she'll lose her leg, probably bleed out before help can arrive. He doesn't issue the warning to Johanna, as if even speaking to a rebel is beneath him. Or perhaps he is hoping she'll kill herself and save him the trouble.
They are led to a set of rooms one floor up: a bedroom with two beds, a sitting room overlooking the rose garden below, a small kitchenette, and a bathroom. It feels like a Training Center apartment in the sense that it has everything they need to live, but it feels unlike it in every other way. The furniture here is old: real metalwork and carved wood, handmade quilts on the beds, handwoven rugs. The walls are painted in dark jewel tones: ruby red and emerald and navy blue, and the shelves in the sitting room have real, actual books on them. It's the most beautiful prison Enobaria has ever seen.
An Avox comes to attend to them, but Johanna sends her away. "No way, nope. Sorry, not doing that." She bows her head deferentially and leaves. A stylist arrives next, and Enobaria accepts before Johanna can intervene. Her braids itch something fierce and she is sick of living in these wretched hospital pajamas.
This stylist is one of the only ones Enobaria has ever met who has textured hair herself, and she takes her time taking out Enobaria's frizzy old braids, brushing out her hair and rewashing it, then moisturizing it and rebraiding it, this time in perfectly parted box braids. It's time consuming, and Johanna spends her time in the sitting room fiddling with the radio which doesn't seem to have anything other than Capitol happy-go-lucky programming and music on it, but Johanna doesn't seem to want to be out of Enobaria's sight, so she sits in the plushy chair for the hours the appointment takes. The end result is not quite as good as Seeder's work, but Enobaria is biased. She looks a hundred times better than she did when she woke up that morning, and she can't help but smile. It feels like a foreign expression on her face.
"Oh. Wow." Johanna catches sight of her and she doesn't smile, but she looks almost in awe. "You look good." Enobaria can hear the loss in her voice, and understands that even though the words ring true, they are a reminder that their jailers shaved Johanna's beautiful hair, and just to hurt her. And it worked.
"I can clean up your hair, if you want," the stylist offers.
Enobaria knows Johanna will say no immediately, knows just from a week of observing her that her hairline in particular is an area she hates having touched, but to her surprise Johanna pauses, considering. "I don't think it can be helped," she says.
The stylist smiles, gently. She has chubby cheeks with freckles and an eclectic fashion sense that is both Capitol and foreign, and she considers. "I think I can help even it out, at least," she says. "And we can take care of your nails."
Enobaria watches Johanna's hand open and close around nothing, and then she nods, slowly. The sun is low now, streaming into the sitting room window in angled, golden rays, and now it's Enobaria's turn to sit and wait as the stylist's soft hands hold Johanna's, carefully trimming her overgrown nails, and then she takes scissors and trims the hair around her ears even, assesses her work, and corrects a few other areas. Johanna looks at herself in the mirror afterwards and nods. "It's better, thank you," she says.
"Tomorrow I'll bring by a better wardrobe," she says.
And then she's gone, and they're alone, much better looking, in a better set of rooms, but still, for all intents and purposes, prisoners. Enobaria goes to the kitchen area of the apartment they've been given, searching for something to eat. It's been hours since their last meal, and now the sun is fully down, and after a minute, Johanna follows her in, quiet and dour as usual, plopping herself at one of the stools at the counter.
"There's instant meals in the cabinet," Enobaria says. Johanna shrugs. She takes this as an affirmative, and turns the kettle on to boil the water to rehydrate the food. She wonders if the Avox will return to bring them better food, or if there's a dining room in the mansion somewhere, or if this is her new normal, but even these food packets are better than the prison slop so she can't complain.
Johanna nods at one of the glass cabinets on the opposite wall and Enobaria sees what she's referring to: dozens of bottles of wine and liquor. It almost makes her laugh: like this really is a Capitol apartment after all. Even as prisoners, they are given libations, apparently. And in another way, it makes her gut churn. What horrible twist is coming that they feel the need to prepare her with alcohol. Still, she takes down a bottle of red wine, uncorking it, and pours two glasses to accompany the salty but very much edible stew that came from the rehydrated packets.
They drink a second glass, then a third, until Johanna reaches for her glass and misses, knocking it over and spilling red wine across the counter top. She winces, that look Enobaria has come to understand means she's riding out some pain internally. "It almost felt like the Games again for a second," Johanna says, once her face returns to normal.
Enobaria raises an eyebrow. "You and I would never be drinking together at the Games," she ripostes.
Now Johanna cracks a half-smile. "I can play nice," she says, but it's the same teasing voice she used on the prison guards for the first few days, back before they learned the Peacekeepers down there had real teeth. She sighs, tracing a finger through the puddle of red wine. "What do you think they're going to do with us?" she asks.
Enobaria shrugs. "No point in cleaning us up just to murder us."
This seems to catch her attention. "Do you think it's an exchange? Us for Katniss?"
This, at least, makes Enobaria laugh out loud. "The rebels passed us over twice in favor of Katniss. There's no way they're turning her in now. We're terrible bait, if that's the thought." She hopes this isn't what the Capitol has in mind, because then her life will be forfeit.
But Johanna looks downcast. She picks up the wine bottle and sips straight from it. It is novel, to speak directly with Johanna, in the light, to be completely honest with each other. Enobaria realizes she doesn't hate it. "I gave them everything," Johanna says, and Enobaria has no answer, because Johanna had given the rebels everything, and they did leave her to die.
She stands, unsure of every movement her body is making, but she is older, she is more detached from the situation, she needs to do something, and she takes Johanna's free hand, the one not holding the wine bottle. She pulls her along to the bedroom, to the two tidy beds in the darkened room, sits Johanna on one.
She goes back to the kitchen for a glass of water, and when she returns and puts it on the nightstand, Johanna is laying on her side, and tugs on Enobaria's shirt to come sit on the bed beside her. They've been inches away for a week, even across the room feels distant now. She sits, barely touching, just a weight on the bed beside Johanna. "You gave them everything, and they fucked you over," she agrees. "They left you for dead inside that prison, I don't care what their excuse is."
She thinks of Haymitch, of Finnick, of every stupid person who asked Johanna Mason to work for their rebel cause and then left her to die in that dungeon. And Johanna isn't crying, she's just curled on her side, one hand clenched around a portion of Enobaria's shirt. When she finally falls asleep, when she finally releases her grip, Enobaria retreats to her own bed, but it reminds her too much of the prison, of being separated from the others, of waiting for the Peacekeepers to come take her, to 'interrogate' her. After an hour of sleepless fidgeting, she returns to Johanna's bed, more comfortable despite the cramped space.