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Johanna has a box of cigarettes and she's been chain smoking them since sunrise as they stand atop one of the towers of Snow's mansion. Below, in the square, Peacekeepers stand back as the refugee children of the Capitol assemble, a gambit to show that Snow wants to negotiate, that the rebels cannot just come into the Capitol with force, with bombs, and take what they want.
Enobaria doesn't trust either side: not the rebels who have proven that they will kill innocents to get their way, or Snow who has proven that children's lives mean less than nothing to him. But she has no place in this battle but to watch from above. The explosive is still strapped to her ankle, and she has seen no news, heard no word of the plans for this 'operation' other than the one time Snow came into their room and allegedly asked Johanna to murder him.
Johanna herself, Enobaria would previously expect to be part of the rebel forces, or perhaps if stuck here to be doing something to oppose the impending confrontation, is just standing beside her waiting, her expression giving nothing away.
"What are we doing?" Johanna asks on the exhale, a cloud of smoke dissipating over the ledge.
Enobaria moves forward to stand behind her, resting her chin on Johanna's shoulder. They've only been out of the prison three months maybe, but it feels familiar. "Waiting for the rebels, I guess." It feels like hell, like the moments before being lowered into the arena, before meeting with a particularly violent client, waiting in that prison for the doors to open. She wishes there was something for them to do, but all of the decisions have already been made while they have been locked up.
Part of her feels bad for enjoying herself, for drinking wine and sleeping with Johanna when she could have been plotting an escape. But to where? And to do what? Another part of her thinks that she just ought to suffer, since others were suffering in this war. Why did she deserve any happiness? It's getting chilly now, autumn coming to an end in the Capitol. She wraps her arms around Johanna's waist pulling her close. She's selfish. The rebels didn't want her - they made that clear enough - and they left Johanna behind too. What could she be expected to owe to anyone now?
"There." Johanna points towards the horizon, to where a hovercraft is coming closer. "Aren't they going to land?"
"Shouldn't there be anti-air forces?" Enobaria watches as the hovercraft comes closer and closer, unimpeded, and sees the Capitol insignia on the side. She realizes, belatedly, what is happening. "Get down!" she says, pulling Johanna with her against the roof.
Johanna lets out a muffled yell but doesn't resist, pressed between Enobaria and the brick wall of the mansion roof. "What is happening?" she asks, her voice loud against the whirring of the engine. There's shouting below.
"They're going to bomb us," she says. "And make it look like it was the Capitol."
Johanna braces with her knees to her chest, and Enobaria does the same, her hands on Johanna's shoulders, their foreheads almost touching. They wait, and they wait, but the drone of the hovercraft fades, and the shouts from the children below are more of awe and excitement than of horror. Enobaria stands, slowly, and peers over the edge.
The children are waiting for silver parachutes, much like the ones given for gifts in the Hunger Games. Their faces light up as they reach to catch them, and then, when Enobaria doesn't expect it, the first bomb goes off. She watches as a child is thrown back in the impact, she sees blood, perhaps a limb. She tries not to see anything more. She hears more explosions, and more. She wants to push Johanna down, to tell her to not look, to stay under the ledge, but it's too late, and Johanna is wide-eyed, watching the horror taking place below.
"Oh God," she almost moans, and Enobaria follows her gaze, past the bombs, past the bodies, to a pair approaching the mansion from the streets of the Capitol. Even at this distance, even in a 'disguise', Enobaria can make them out: it's Katniss and Finnick, limping a bit, but coming ever closer. Johanna moves to the stairs, an instinct to move towards other Victors, even now, even as Enobaria's instincts scream to get underground, away from the bombs. Fuck the rebels, fuck the war, she wants to live. But she also doesn't want to lose Johanna, the only person who's stayed beside her since this hell started.
"We need to get these off," Enobaria says, gesturing to her ankle. They go downstairs, into the mansion, and find one of the guards who is generally more lenient with them. He's sweating. "Please, you have to take it off," she begs.
"Shoot me if I run, whatever, just take it off." Johanna kicks her leg up on the chair beside the guard, her heel tapping in impatience.
"I can't disobey orders," he says, stumbling over his words a bit. His gaze is switching between them and the smoke and chaos outside, and there's other guards shouting and running in the next corridor.
Enobaria sighs. "The end is here. There are children dead outside. It's ending today. I don't think the same people are going to be giving orders by sundown." It's the most traitorous speech she's ever said.
But it works. The guard hands her some sort of device to unlock the ankle bracelet. "You found this," he says, turning away. She uses it, and for the first time since she was lowered into the arena for the Quarter Quell, she is free. She wishes she could just run away, but again she comes to the same conclusion: District 2 looked like a civil war, and the other Districts probably look like hell too. There is nowhere to run to.
Once they get outside, it's pandemonium. There is smoke and silt in the air, and bodies all over the ground. The air is filled with the noise of crying, moaning, and calls of people trying to find one another. There are medics, conspicuous in their District 13 vests, trying to help the injured, and there are Capitol logos on all the parachutes that held the bombs. An excellent frame job, Enobaria realizes.
"I think they were coming around this way," Enobaria says, trying to find someone on the ground with a gun, or a knife, some kind of weapon she can take to put herself a little more at ease. There are Peacekeepers around, but none seem too interested in her or Johanna, not among the bodies of children, or the possibility of a coup.
Johanna nods and Enobaria follows her gaze. In the mass of casualties, no more than a 100 feet away, they see them, wrapped in Capitol cloaks, gaudy as can be, but unmistakable to another Victor. Enobaria jogs forward with Johanna, and just like that, they reunite with Finnick and Katniss. Finnick looks like hell, the entire left side of his face bloody, a bandage covering his left eye. Katniss looks comparatively better, but she looks manic, her gaze flitting about, like she and Johanna are obstacles or a distraction in her way.
"What are you doing here?" Katniss asks, as if Enobaria shouldn't be the one asking her this question, as if Enobaria and Johanna are there by choice. Finnick is silent, just taking in the two of them, as if he really thought Snow might have killed them that day in District 2.
Even Johanna can't bite back her anger at Katniss. "Oh, we just thought we'd stick around after the Games, you know," she says, shoving Katniss in the chest, but there isn't much to it. Enobaria can see Johanna is almost tearing up from the frustration. Finnick puts an arm on Katniss's shoulder, keeping her from shoving Johanna back, but it seems unneccessary, as Katniss is distracted, her gaze darting to the side. "Prim?" she calls. "Primrose?" She turns to Finnick. "Why is my sister here?"
Finnick shrugs. "I have no idea." He turns back to Enobaria and Johanna. "Is Snow inside?" Before they can answer, another bomb goes off, and Finnick pulls Katniss to the ground.
Enobaria and Johanna stay standing, frozen in shock. Enobaria thinks she might have gone deaf from the noise of the explosion, and for a moment, she can't assess what direction it came from. And then, with dawning horror, she realizes it's the same parachutes, the same bombs as last time, set to explode twice. There's a wave of panic as those who can run try to get away from the still-active bombs strewn across the lawn, and those who cannot try to crawl or get carried from the danger. Katniss tries desperately to move towards where she saw her sister, and Finnick holds onto her to pull her back.
"We need to get out of here, don't be stupid!" Johanna leans down and shouts, right in Katniss's ear. Katniss tries to throw a clump of dirt at Johanna for the trouble. Finally, Katniss strips herself of the cloak and manages to shake Finnick and take off, and he stands, holding the silky fabric in his hands.
He looks lost, following Katniss's disappearing form with his gaze, but he stays kneeling on the ground. Enobaria assumes he's kept Katniss alive this long, that he must be fighting some battle about her recklessness running into danger so close to the finish line, but he has a wife, he wants to go home alive himself. So it's Johanna who leans down, grabbing his hand, hoisting him to his feet. "Leave her," she says, leaving no room for him to argue. "We have to move now." Finnick nods, steeling himself to this decision, and with one last glance into the smoke to try to see if Katniss is alright, he turns back to them, towards the mansion.
Enobaria's reaction speed is good, all things considered, but she, Finnick, and Johanna are standing between three of the stupid bombs, and she has no choice but to run past them to get to safety. One goes off early, when she's still a safe distance away, and she shields Johanna with her body, the heat of the bomb burning up her back and shoulder. The right sleeve of her shirt is burned off and when she dares to look, she can see the skin of her right shoulder looks charred. She tries not to smell it. It hurts enough to make her cry out, to bring tears to her eyes, but her adrenaline is high, and she doesn't dare let herself fall to her knees.
"No, no, no!" Johanna calls, forehead furrowed, pulling Enobaria toward the already-detonated bomb as an exit path. Enobaria is slow now, half her back and shoulder burned, but she knows where she needs to go. She can feel Finnick beside her, pushing her along, and even if it's just to keep himself alive to get home to his wife, she doesn't care at this moment, she'll take the assist. Even if the Capitol is falling, the mansion is safe for now. Maybe the people will burn it later in a riot, but for right now, she just needs to get back inside.
The bomb on their left goes off just as they're almost past, and the force of this blast pushes Johanna into Enobaria's side, both of them tumbling to the ground. Enobaria impacts on her right side, the raw skin hitting the ground, and she yells out in pain, the points of her teeth punching bloody holes into her bottom lip as she tries to contain it. Johanna hisses but looks dazed, not moving from where she is pushed up against Enobaria's chest. "Hey, we have to keep moving," Enobaria says, trying to force them both up into a standing position. The right side of her body feels like it's ripping open, and Johanna nods, but doesn't budge.
That's when Enobaria sees the hole in Johanna's left side, a massive bloody wound caused by some sort of shrapnel flying into her abdomen. Her hand is weakly trying to stop the bleeding, but the blood is seeping through her fingers too quickly.
Something changes in Enobaria then, some frustration on a level she didn't know she had. Johanna did not deserve to die an ugly, bloody death caused by the very rebels she fought so hard for. Enobaria did not deserve to be alone after everything, everyone she cared for picked off one by one by one side or another.
She stands up, mustering strength she didn't know she had, and picks up Johanna. Finnick also stands, looking dazed and more than a little off-balance but not visibly bleeding or burned, and he pushes Katniss's discarded cloak against Johanna's wound, trying to staunch the bleeding. After a steadying breath, Finnick resumes his spot beside Enobaria, helping to guide her back to the mansion. She can tell she's close to her limit, her legs beginning to give out as she approaches the front steps. Her shoulder feels like it's ripping open, like it's pure sinew and bone, and she trembles, or maybe she's shivering.
At the entrance to the mansion, Finnick takes Johanna from her, and the relief on her shoulder is immediate, but she can feel herself starting to grow too calm, feel her vision closing in. "Tell me where to go, Enobaria!" Finnick says, his voice holding a desperation she can't summon any longer. But somehow she manages to remember the way, guiding him through the gilded halls of the Presidential mansion, trailing blood behind them, until she collapses in the infirmary she first found herself in when she arrived here.
Enobaria wakes much later. The moon is shining in through the upper windows of the infirmary, but otherwise the lights are off, the infirmary quiet in the night. Outside, she can hear bangs and she can't place if they're gunshots or fireworks. Panem is fighting or celebrating, and just as it's been since the Quarter Quell, she is cut off from the news, from everyone else: she has no idea where anything stands.
Johanna.
Enobaria looks around, trying to get her bearings, the skin on her neck tight and painful. She realizes that she has bandages on - wrapping her neck, her right arm, and her right shoulder, and there's an IV line in her left arm pumping in fluids and pain medication. She hadn't imagined that bomb nearly melting her skin off, which meant she also hadn't imagined that bomb tearing through Johanna's guts.
She's alone in the room, her bed tucked into the back area of the infirmary, and she tries to stand, using the IV pole as a crutch. There's no monitor that beeps and alerts anyone to her presence, and she doesn't immediately feel like she will topple over, so she hobbles out, desperate to know that Johanna is alive.
She goes out to the main room of the infirmary and sees… Katniss Everdeen.
She's on her side on a cot, curled up in pain, morphling line in her arm. Her burns look extensive as well, and Enobaria is certain she was caught near the center of the explosions looking for her sister. She wonders if the sister made it, but isn't hopeful. She leaves Katniss to sleep, for now, and continues on, to the little room she and Johanna shared for a few days right after they got out of the prison.
She hears voices and pauses just outside the doorway, sitting on the chair she knew Nik used to sit in when he pretended to give them privacy. "No, I can't," Johanna is saying, her voice hoarse, but it's definitely her voice. "Sometimes I wonder why I'm even still alive, just to watch this?"
The other person doesn't answer right away, and Enobaria almost stands, almost walks into the room to see Johanna for herself, to hold her, but then Finnick breaks the silence. "I'm sorry," he says, and it's the quietest, most broken Enobaria has ever heard Finnick sound. "I didn't realize- about the prison- and just- I'm so sorry, Jo."
"It's not your responsibility," Johanna says, like Enobaria knew she would. She bites the inside of her cheek to quell her frustrations listening.
"Then whose is it?" he asks, now a little fiercer. "Haymitch is preoccupied with Katniss. Blight is dead. Coin obviously can't be bothered with anyone who isn't Katniss. Johanna, you can't do things completely on your own."
Johanna sniffs, and Enobaria wonders if it's her realizing the depth of Finnick's feelings now, at the end, too late. "I'm not on my own," she says, calmly. "Enobaria's stayed beside me all this time."
The skin on Enobaria's shoulder howls in pain with the deep breath she takes to calm herself down. The thudding of her heartbeat in her ears causes her to miss Finnick's initial response. "But things are so different now. If you are happy with Enobaria, I'm happy for you."
"I don't know if I'll ever be happy again. But it feels right."
In the end, Enobaria waits until morning to talk to Johanna. She learns that Finnick donated blood which perhaps saved Johanna's life. She also learns that Katniss's sister is dead. Enobaria sits in a plush chair in the room with Johanna, who looks frustrated to be relegated to a bed, but is completely pale and still bleeding through her bandages on her midsection, so she has no room to argue.
At one point, Katniss is moved into the same room as them as more and more people come into the infirmary to be treated.
Enobaria pulls her chair close to Johanna, close enough that they can hold hands as Johanna dozes off, or hand things to her so she doesn't twist and open up the wound again. "How did it turn out?" Enobaria asks, once Johanna wakes, since she knows she's been talking to Finnick, who's been outside.
"It's over. Snow's here on house arrest. Coin has established a new government with the rebels in charge."
"So Snow's going to be executed?"
The curled up figure that is Katniss moans. Johanna and Enobaria give her a second to clear off the morphling haze and speak. "That's what I came here to do, but nevermind now," she says, still facing away from them, towards the wall.
"Johanna will do it," Enobaria says, raising her eyebrows at Johanna. She expects this to get a rise out of Katniss, but she only shrugs, barely.
"Whatever," she says.
This is enough to make Enobaria want to argue, because why was Katniss even here, if not to see things through? Why did the rebels put in all this work, rescuing Katniss from the arena, going through torture in the prison, guiding her through the death traps of the war, just for her to fail at the finish. It's Johanna's hand on hers that calms her, makes her settle back in her chair. "She's just a kid," Johanna whispers.
And it's true. Johanna was more or less the same when she was Katniss's age: stubborn, narrow-minded, incredibly overpowered for someone from an outer district, but in too deep and unable to see it until it was too late. Perhaps she sympathizes with Katniss even more than most.
It's the next day when Enobaria leaves the infirmary to get some fresh air. She hasn't been outside in days, and even though it allegedly has been the beginning of a new Panem, she's once again been feeling like a prisoner, so she goes outside the mansion just to prove that she can.
The bodies have been cleaned up from the lawn, but the damage remains: scorch marks and blood stains and dirt tracks signifying a massive trample of people, and she relives the moment again and again, thinking what if she and Johanna just stayed in the mansion, what if they didn't go to seek Katniss and Finnick?
She's distracted from her thoughts as a group of people approach, among them Haymitch Abernathy. "Enobaria?" He's friendly, but not overly so. If he knew she was left behind in that prison, partially by his decision making, he doesn't wear it on his face.
She pictures him plowing into the infirmary, holding vigil over a broken Katniss, sitting right beside Johanna, and decides she needs to head him off. "Hey. Want a drink?"
She doesn't expect the enthusiasm to shine through on his face in return. She learns, as they walk up to the chambers she shares with Johanna, that District 13 was dry, that he hasn't had a drink in months. She doesn't know how to start the conversation, everything she wants to ask too loaded to just come out and say or too accusatory to not push him away entirely. She was never fond of Haymitch, but she was able to ignore him. She tolerated his near-constant drunkenness with the excuses that District 12 would likely never have another Victor, so his Mentorship was a joke, and that the second Quarter Quell was allegedly an absolute horror. But she wasn't going to get close to him, and was a little stunned when he took Finnick and Johanna under his wing. At least until she found out about the rebels.
She opens the door to the chambers she shares with Johanna and they sit at the little table in the kitchenette and she uncorks a bottle of wine and passes him a bottle of liquor that neither she nor Johanna ever dared touch. He inspects it, perhaps wary of poison, and not without cause, but eventually cracks open the seal and guzzles down and inch or two of it, eyes closing in a combination of pain and pleasure. Enobaria spies Johanna's tin of morphling and pockets it, planning to return it to her in the infirmary. Haymitch opens his eyes just in time to see this, of course.
"Didn't take you for that type," he says.
Enobaria scoffs, because this man organized an entire rebel plan in the third Quarter Quell. He's not an idiot. "She's in pain. Every moment."
Haymitch breaks eye contact, tightening his grip around the bottle. To his credit, he doesn't take another sip, at least not yet. "I know you blame me," he says. "Hell, I blame myself too. But I had to decide: one person, or all of Panem?"
Enobaria can feel herself shaking, because it isn't just one person. There's the hundreds in the Nut, the dozens of children and medics just a few days ago outside the mansion. There's the other Victors who died in the Quarter Quell. The rebels are effective, probably even less cruel than Snow, but they are liars: it is not just the suffering of one person that brought this about. She was in that prison too, but apparently she doesn't count because she wasn't sleeping with Haymitch. Peeta and Annie were there for weeks before they were rescued. She respects that he has the gumption to admit to his choice rather than making excuses, but she can't agree with him in any respect.
"I would have saved one person." She might just mean herself, if she's being honest. Being in that prison was like being in the Games again. It brought out something feral in her, an animalistic insinct to survive, to stick it out at all costs.
Haymitch does take the second sip now, long and slow, and his breath after is atringent with the alcohol. Enobaria sips her wine as well, though she's sure this will only add to the headache he's giving her. "You love her," he says.
Does she love Johanna? He says it with such confidence she's thrown off-balance, her anger temporarily put aside. She might. Johanna was the first person she's ever tried to save the life of, besides herself. She shrugs. "I just don't want you coming back at the end of the war and upsetting her," she says. As soon as the words are out, she realizes how they sound: like something a protective girlfriend would say.
But Haymitch cracks a hint of a smile for the first time. "I'm glad," he says. "For both of you."
She doesn't want his blessing. She thinks of sitting in the arena, at the end of the Quarter Quell, and seeing the sillhouette of his face on the hovercraft as it turned away, leaving her and Johanna to their fate. "Fuck you." She wants to walk away, but it's been months, and she's had no one to blame, no one to be miserable to, and here he is, sitting before her. "You know they nearly killed her?" she says. "Electrical shocks, every day. They drowned her, too. And still she didn't say a word about your stupid rebel plans. And then your people came! And I thought, OK, well, they looked me off, but surely they'll take someone who gave them so much, and they left Jo behind too. Fuck you!" She doesn't mention her experience in the prison, or the Nut, doesn't think she can without crying.
"They told me she was presumed dead," he says, his hand now trembling around the bottle. "After the extraction mission. "I couldn't believe it when Finnick saw you both in District 2."
Fucking liars. She had shouted at the soldiers that Johanna was in interrogation, and they hadn't even checked, just reported back she was dead. Enobaria looks at Haymitch again, at the age lines on his face, the weight he's lost, and decides she is tired of this conversation. She will give him some grace, as long as he is considerate in return. "Katniss is in the same part of the infirmary as Jo," she says. "I'm going there now. Please… be gentle."