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She wakes long after the sun has come up, and still, these weeks later, is grateful for it: to see actual sunlight and not the artificial light of a Hunger Games arena, or the sickly fluorescents of that underground prison.
Enobaria isn't beside her, and vaguely Johanna thinks she had a hair appointment, that she wanted to get her braids redone. Her mind is foggy from the dull sleep of morphling, which is enough to knock her out, but not enough to ever really let her rest. But the absence of pain is the real benefit there, so she takes what she can get.
She stretches out a bit and pauses, breath caught, as something in her periphery catches her eye. She had been facing the wall, but there was a distinct flash of black, maybe a blink of peachy skin as she turned her head. Instantly, the sharp ache of phantom electricity pulses through her nerves as her blood pressure drops. She should be alone.
"Good morning, Johanna."
Snow doesn't bother with her surname this time. Johanna swallows saliva that feels syrupy in her mouth, thickened thanks to the morphling, and shifts her hand under the sheet to feel at her own body. For a moment, she feels her own bare thigh and thinks that she is naked and wonders if Snow might do her the service of just killing her now, but she feels a pair of panties and a t-shirt, and collects herself just barely with that thread of modesty. Slowly, she sits up, reaching for the pair of pants that were discarded on the floor. Across from her, on Enobaria's half of the room, everything is tidy, but on her side there are clothes strewn about, the tin of morphling on the nightstand, blankets she had shed in the night.
She's sure Snow has seen the contraband, but doesn't say anything, just as he turned a blind eye to all of her vices for years when she was a Mentor. As long as she performed her role, it was fine, it seems. "Where's Enobaria?" she asks, because suddenly she wonders if Enobaria really is at an appointment, if she hasn't been taken somewhere else by Snow. Finally, her thoughts are moving at a normal pace.
"With the stylist for another hour or two, I believe," he says calmly. "Something to drink?" He must hear the rasp in her voice, and gestures to a tray with a teapot and a pitcher of water. It's sweating with condensation, and she wants it so badly, but she resists. She isn't going to risk getting poisoned this morning.
"What do you want?" Now that she's awake and aware, the pain is returning, and with it, the initial fright is fading into rage at Snow. She hates this man for everything her life has become: for having to go into the arena twice, for years of pleasing sponsors and the subsequent morphling addiction, for the death of her family, for her capture and torture after the Quarter Quell, for the misery of everyone in the outer districts. Her leg is shaking.
"I am dying," he says, as if this was another offer for something to drink, and not a universe-shifting paradigm. "In a few months, maybe less."
She cannot form a response. He is God, and God cannot die. She has never known a Panem without Snow, and cannot imagine such a thing. She hates him, but he is inevitable. Certainly he is old, maybe even a bit frail, but he was the most Capitolite Capitolite there ever was, they have something to fix everything. Inexplicably, she finds herself afraid. She hates Snow, hates him more than anything, but in her experience, things always get worse, never better. Perhaps the devil she knows is better than the devil she doesn't. If he dies, who knows who might climb upon his throne? "Why are you telling me this?" It has to be a bluff, she reasons. He has to be lying to her, and there is a reason for this. Perhaps he intends to send her to the rebels with this message. Her heart is beating wildly, too fast. How could she outlive the President?
He smiles blithely, as if he's several steps ahead of her, and they're still discussing anything other than his death. "I'm telling you, because I have the unique opportunity to plan my own end. And I think you ought to kill me."
She can't do anything but shake her head in utter uncomprehension. Without consideration for her company, she grabs the tin, pushing just a bit of morphling up into her gums, just enough to slow her down from outright panic. Her hands are shaking too, now. "What are you saying?" It's the most honest conversation they've ever had, and she wonders if she's still dreaming.
Snow licks his too-red lips before continuing. "If I die behind closed doors, there's too many questions. People will ask if I've really died, or if it's just a gambit. No, it has to be public. But I refuse to concede to the rebels who risk thousands of innocent lives to get their way." She still has not seen any television, or radio, or newspapers. She has no idea what is happening in the war except that one glimpse in District 2, but what Snow predicted did happen, and it was not flattering to the rebels.
Before she can respond, the door flies open, and Enobaria is there, out of breath, her hair freshly braided but her edges not yet laid, a halo of frizz around her face, and she glances from Snow to Johanna to the tin of morphling beside Johanna with growing concern. "I-" She seems to choke on her words as well, and Johanna has the rash thought that perhaps she could kill Snow right then, that she could end it now. Surely she and Enobaria together could overpower this old man before he could even call for the guard that was certainly just outside the room.
But something stills her, whether it's the lull of the drugs or the fact that what Snow says actually makes sense: his death needs to be public before people will buy it.
"Please, sit, Enobaria," Snow says, and since he's sitting on her bed, Enobaria sits beside Johanna. Johanna can just barely make out her own bite mark on Enobaria's neck, just peeking out from her collar, and is amazed that Enobaria did not fix such a thing with the stylist. "I'm glad you're back early," he continues. "My spy on the rebel forces has informed me that they are coming to the Capitol, and soon."
Johanna flinches, and she's not sure if it's because Snow has a spy within the rebels, or because of the idea of the rebels coming to the Capitol, or even just because of the absolute candor Snow was giving them today.
Snow seems to pick up on this. "Don't worry," he assures her. "You won't save them by alerting them to a spy, they're more than aware. They just can't seem to figure out who it is." There it is, the sharp-tongued cruelty that she remembers too well from when she was naive enough to test him. "Now, the people here won't be prepared for an assault, they're weak and spoiled…"
Johanna zones out as Snow speaks with Enobaria. It's stupid, cruel even, that the only place they're taken seriously is by this dying despot, and the rebels left them for dead. She doesn't want to murder Snow on national television, really, but if that's her chance, she ought to take it. It is more painful than anything, she realizes, to be hurt and saved by the same man, and to not even be acknowledged by the other side. She pinches her thigh through her pants, lightly at first, and then harder and harder, until the pain registers deep in her gut and in the hollow behind her sternum, an outlet for the psychic wound that the Capitol and the rebels have wrought on her.
And Enobaria grabs her wrist, pulling her hand away, when she hadn't even realized she'd been watching. "Think about it," Snow says, as he stands to leave. He does look old now, older than she's ever realized, and she imagines driving an axe into his chest, imagines tearing him into pieces, his wretched red blood spilling into the streets of the Capitol as all of Panem watched. She'd wear it on her cheeks like war paint and scream for every person he forced her to sleep with, for every child she failed as a Mentor, for everyone she killed in the arenas, and she'd weep for every time she'd been let down.
Enobaria is on her the moment Snow closes the door, sniffing the drinks, checking her pupils, pacing with a clenched jaw like she did those first days in the prison. "What did he do to you?" she asks, her voice low. "Did he drug you? Poison?"
Johanna realizes belatedly that Enobaria had gone along with Snow's military tactics strategy talks for so long because she thought that Johanna was in danger. Perhaps Johanna really had been. Enobaria likely was informed halfway through her appointment that she ought to get back to her chambers, that it looked like the President was heading there, by an Avox set up by Snow himself.
"I'm fine, I didn't drink anything."
Enobaria snatches the tin and shakes it at Johanna accusingly. "I should have never gone to that appointment alone," she murmurs. "Should have dragged you with me."
"It's the same stuff as always, I just took some because I-"
"You were asleep! You don't know what he did." And then the full affect of the statement sinks in, and Enobaria fully guffaws. "You just casually took drugs in front of Snow? Do you have a death wish?"
Johanna grabs Enobaria's hands to try to get her to stop pacing, and pulls her to a stop in front of her. She pulls further, until Enobaria is kneeling astride her. She knows Enobaria is too wired for intimacy, but she can't say what she needs to say at full volume, and she needs Enobaria to weigh her down, to remind her she's really here and not in some hallucination or nightmare. "He asked me… to murder him," she whispers, softly against Enobaria's ear. She smells of shampoo, her frizzy hair tickling Johanna's nose as she jumps a bit at this confession.
"What do you mean?"
Johanna can only shake her head, the heaviness of the morphling, of Enobaria only doing so much to settle her thoughts. "Snow says he's dying, that he wants to die in public, where everyone can see. He told me to do it. I-"
Enobaria puts her hands on Johanna's jaw, forcing her to look at her. She's surprised, as she is every time, how she doesn't mind Enobaria touching her. No pain flares up from Enobaria's hands on her face or scalp, though she can feel pulses of pain behind her eyes from the ferocity that she's grinding her teeth together. "You can do it," she says. "Think about what he's done, and it's easy."
Johanna nods, her throat aching with a sob that feels like it's come from nowhere. What is there to feel sorrow about? "Just an axe through his chest," she says, and Enobaria's mouth falls open, just a bit, just enough. The tears have started, but Enobaria is still holding her head in place, and she's still trapped under Enobaria's weight. "Just like those District 2 tributes in my first Games," she says, "Just like Cashmere."
She can feel Enobaria's fingers curl and pull back sharply along her cheeks, sharp nails digging in along her skin, and the sting feels good, because she should be punished, probably. But then Enobaria lets go too soon, and stands up, the absence of her the real punishment, Johanna realizes belatedly. Her tears are hot and heavy now, and choking off any words she tries to form. "I-" It's useless. Enobaria leaves again, to the kitchen, or back to the stylist, or anywhere away from her.
Johanna pulls the syringe out of the nightstand drawer. She hadn't used it yet, contenting herself with a lip of morphling since it was easier to function and harder to overdose when taking it like that. But now she grabs the syringe with shaking hands along with the spoon and the lighter, the pain in her head and her back complimented by the vivid memories of herself killing the Capitol's Golden Girl, just so that Katniss Everdeen would survive the Quarter Quell, just so that she and Enobaria would be left behind by Haymitch and the others. She feels like vomiting but swallows it down, drawing back the syringe in the bubbling liquid. She sets it down, waiting for it to cool, and thinks of waking up from morphling to Haymitch holding her, knowing that this time she would wake up completely alone.
She pushes the air out of the syringe, and barely needs a tourniquet for her arm. She slips on a hair elastic, and the veins she used to abuse with morphling still stand out. Her arm is too small now, all the muscle and fat starved away, and she thinks she really is a poor replacement for Cashmere, that Enobaria must be disappointed to end up with her of all people. She shoots up.
Enobaria is perched on her own bed when Johanna wakes, sipping directly from a bottle of pink wine. Johanna's arm is numb, and she realizes it's stuck under her, bloodflow cut off, and the makeshift tourniquet is still pressed around her bicep. She pulls it off with her right hand, flopping onto her back. It's dark now, and she feels rotten. She hasn't eaten or drank anything all day, she hasn't stood or walked around. She's just talked to Snow, done drugs, cried, and slept.
"I said I wouldn't mind as long as you didn't try to kill yourself," Enobaria says, her words a little loose from the alcohol, the District 2 accent more pronounced than usual.
Johanna groans. She wants to say that much would not have killed her, but she's not used morphling intravenously since she weighed a lot more, and she isn't completely sure if she was being safe or not. There's water beside her on the nightstand. She sips it greedily.
"You should shower, there's a little food left." Enobaria stands and heads back to the kitchen, and Johanna is so tired of being alone that she obeys. Once she is clean and in new clothes, she realizes that the meal is beyond Enobaria's skill level. That she has let the Avox back in while she was sleeping. And she realizes that she doesn't care. That Enobaria likely let her in to get more information. Or just for company that isn't Johanna, so who is she to impose such a rule?
She eats the meal and it's good, but she barely tastes it, because Enobaria has opened a second bottle of wine. Her hair is set, and her lips around the mouth of the wine bottle look too good. And Johanna killed her best friend and lover. For a cause that abandoned her. "I don't know what I should have done," Johanna says. She pushes forward an empty glass, and Enobaria fills it with wine. "About Cashmere, about the Quarter Quell in general. I told Fin not to die for Katniss, but I was ready, I was so in it."
Enobaria puts the bottle down, and tugs at her braid a little. "I think it's good to have beliefs," she says. "What is it to live your whole life waiting to see how things will turn out before choosing a side?" She laughs a little, and throws her hands up in a 'look where it got me' gesture. "I admired that you were so… you, even after all the shit that came with being a Victor. Though at the time it was a bit annoying."
The tears are there, without warning, after years and years of hardening herself, the walls are down. She shakes her head. "It's easy to be like me when there's no one left you care about," she says. "People like you, and Fin, it's complicated."
"Is that where Haymitch went wrong?" Enobaria asks. "He started to care about the Mockingjay?"
Johanna isn't expecting this question, and it hurts like a gut punch. Because before Katniss, she had his attention, and it was nice to be seen. "Not wrong, I guess. It just changes some decisions." Some people get left behind. "I mean, that's Fin with Annie."
Enobaria takes a swig of the wine and shakes her head. "No, Odair tries to have it both ways. He tries to play the sympathetic rebel, but he doesn't care who he screws over doing it. He was the Capitol's Golden Boy before that, and who had to deal with the fallout of that? I know what you did for Annie. He's beloved in his District for his 'gentle' victory, like 23 tributes didn't die in his Games just like in ours!" Again, Johanna thinks about her axe through the chests of children, just as she thinks of watching Enobaria bite open a man's throat as she watched it on television a few years before she was reaped. They really were set up for failure from the start.
"Enobaria, I'm sorry. I wish it turned out differently. I wish I didn't have to kill Cashmere." And Johanna realizes it's true. She never particularly liked either of the siblings, but she didn't want to kill anyone in the Quarter Quell. She grew up with them as fellow Mentors.
Enobaria nods, topping off Johanna's wine before taking another sip. Then she puts down the bottle and comes around the table, sitting on the chair on the same side. She leans forward, kissing the raw scratches she made with her nails, before laying her head on Johanna's lap. She's warm, lissome, and she surprises Johanna when she grabs onto her wrist with surprising force. "What happened happened," she says, her voice somber but not angry. "There's no use regretting it now. So please don't leave me here all alone."
For some reason, Johanna hadn't really understood waking up to Enobaria before - she thought it was frustration that Johanna had been hiding the needle, or annoyance that she wasted the day. The idea that Enobaria thought she might have overdosed and died didn't really occur to her drug-addled brain, and now, realizing, she rubs her fingers down Enobaria's back as she stays leaned across Johanna's lap. "I won't die," she says, repeating an earlier promise.
But she feels warmth on her lap, and Enobaria is crying for the first time since she's known her, at least as far as she's seen and can remember. Johanna runs her fingers down the back of her neck, across her shoulders, down her arms. "What is it?"
"I thought they killed you, in interrogation," she says, a quiet confession. She sniffles. "And then they took Peeta and Annie, and they just glanced at me, realized I was from District 2, and left, and I thought I was completely alone. I sat there for hours before anyone came - that noise going off, the guard dead in front of my cell, interrogation still locked. When someone finally did come, it was more Peacekeepers, and they were in body armor with rifles. I thought I would die then."
Johanna pulls Enobaria up and moves them to the couch, holding Enobaria against her, with her back to her chest. She laughs a little. "Would take more than that to kill me."
But Enobaria shakes her head, which is resting under Johanna's chin. "You should have seen yourself when they opened the door to interrogation. You looked like you were dead. I thought you were dead. The two guards in there with you fell unconscious and drowned in the shallow water they flooded the room with. You lived, I guess, by being chained to the table."
"Hey, it's alright now," Johanna says, as if she doesn't get horrible pain every day that only the morphling can calm.
"It's not!" Enobaria shoots back at her. She turns halfway around to make eye contact, her expression frustrated. "Look at you! You're a skeleton, you can't sleep, you can't even-"
"Sorry I'm such a downgrade," Johanna says, knowing that wasn't Enobaria's point but feeling sensitive nonetheless.
Enobaria mashes her face into her hands and sighs. "I'm sorry," she says, "That wasn't what I meant. What I'm trying to say is - you always say it'll be fine, because you are a Victor, because we happened to get out of a couple sticky situations, but I care about you, and I know that you could die very quickly. I am afraid of losing you and I am afraid of being alone."
Such a confession doesn't even sound like Enobaria, but it's the result of a truly insane several months, of the Quarter Quell and the kidnapping, of the release into the mansion, the trip to District 2, of nights spent together in the prison, in the hospital, here in this tiny set of rooms. Johanna nods, because how can she deny something asked of her by Enobaria, who never left her behind? Who didn't say so, but almost certainly was the one who ensured they retrieved her from interrogation. Who tackled her from the bomb's blast, who held her every night even though she'd wake them both, who had turned her on her side to keep her from choking if she vomited from the morphling.
"Ok," she agrees, "I'll be safe, and so will you." She presses her forehead to Enobaria's, and Enobaria pulls her forward, until their lips are touching, until she can taste the wine on Enobaria's tongue and the sharp points of her teeth.