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After two weeks, the Healers have officially run out of reasons to keep Johanna in the infirmary. The latest had been 'insubordination', since she refused to take their drugs, but she had countered with the convincing argument that she shouldn't have to take any drugs if there was nothing wrong with her. Or maybe someone higher up had stepped in, she couldn't be sure. But either way, she is officially granted permission to move into a sleeping quarters, and Enobaria had pulled some sort of rank to get her into the same compartment as her.
It's more than quaint, especially compared to the spacious apartments they had lived in in the Training Center, but she had slept in a cabin with little furnishing in District 7, hell, she had slept in a prison cell fairly recently, so she can make do. And it's fine, it really is, except that it's still underground, and it's still lit by the too-bright overhead lights, and it's just small and cramped enough that she wonders if it is a little too cell-like, after all.
"You alright?" Enobaria asks. She doesn't have any possessions, so there's nothing to move into the room except herself. There's just the bed on each side with a set of drawers underneath, two small desks, and a mirror hanging on the door. There's a small bathroom they share to one side.
"You're not going anywhere?" She feels pathetic asking the question. She's asked it a hundred times in the past two weeks. She's severely disrupted Enobaria's schedule, but right now she feels like Enobaria is the only thing keeping her from losing her mind.
"I'm right here. My whole tattoo is 'Johanna' all day," she says.
Johanna falls back on the bed, which is stiffer than she anticipates, draping an arm over her eyes to block out the light.
"What is it?" Enobaria asks, coming to sit on the edge of the bed.
It's the light, but it's also the room. It's District 13, but it's also the fact that she cannot truly let herself believe that she's here. That she's actually still in the Capitol, just given some elaborate hypnosis that convinces her she's been saved, only to pull her out and show her that it was a ruse, that Snow knows her greatest wish and will never let it come to pass. "The lights in the prison were just like these," she says. It's the simplest explanation.
She wants things to be easier. She liked when she could do things instead of just thinking about them all the time. There was so much thinking in that cell, and then they would give her medications to stop her from thinking, and time seemed to not make any sense, and by the time she came back to herself, it was another round of being Snow's propaganda tool to Panem. She imagines getting up the hill in time, getting saved by the rebels in the Games, not ruining her life and Peeta's, not getting Katniss almost killed. But she had been too slow. She had failed, and she had suffered for it.
Enobaria stands, and pulls out the chair from the desk. She unfolds a spare pillowcase and clips it over the light with a few hair pins. The result isn't pretty, but the light is much dimmer in the room, and she can't see the bulb at all. "They're crazy with their room inspections here, but it'll do for now," Enobaria says. She comes back to sit on the bed, and Johanna wants to make her understand, but doesn't know where to even start.
"They used to aim a gun at me, while I was reading the lines on the show," Johanna says. "One or two Peacekeepers would stand behind the camera with their rifles." Enobaria is listening, watching intently, but she doesn't interrupt. "I would still try to get a little bit in, a word or two off script, in case anyone was still alive and listening. That's when they started bringing in children. Little things. They'd hold the guns to their heads instead while I read."
Now Enobaria lies back on the bed, so they're close. Enobaria has changed, too. All of the little changes of the past month, things that Remake would usually fix, they still remain on her skin: a scar along her clavicle, another cut, mostly healed, through her left eyebrow. She looks older, too, somehow, like the second Games and this time in 13 has aged her more than the six weeks or so that have passed. "Jo, I can't even imagine," she says.
"You can," Johanna says. "I'm sure. You lived there. You know what it's like." She doesn't feel like crying, anymore. The entire time feels hazy, thanks to the drugs, just a long, drawn out period of confusion and violence, a clash between her being dressed up for the lights and the camera, and being thrown into the underground pit. No, now she feels angry and empty. She wants to wail for something lost, but she doesn't know what it is. She wants to curse at being left behind, only to discover an even greater level of cruelty than one she'd known before. But somehow she's landed safe and warm next to Enobaria again, so she is quieted, at least for now.
The next day, she attends the afternoon meeting, with Coin and Haymitch and Plutarch and everyone who seemed to be making the decisions around here. Finnick is there, too, and he smiles at her nervously.
"We need you to make a broadcast," Coin says to Johanna.
This hadn't been what she was expecting. She hadn't been expecting to be needed at all. Among the rebels, she was redundant, her job performed more admirably by Katniss, by Finnick, by any number of others. "What?"
"Snow had someone on saying you were murdered by the rebels. We need you to film something for us. The truth. That you're here. That you're safe. That everything they made you read is lies."
"Think about what you're asking," Enobaria says, her voice quiet but her words cutting.
"It's a simple task," Coin says in response, each word enunciated slowly.
"Are you going to put a gun to her head, too?"
Haymitch stands, as if to intervene, but he stays silent, choosing to watch this play out. Coin is right, it is a simple task, and it's something she can do to repay the rebels for getting her out of that prison. But is repayment really necessary, when they were the ones who had left her behind in the first place? She has read words she didn't believe in for four years now, she can do it again. It's just like seeing clients in the Capitol: she just has to silence some essential part of herself, and then it's easy. But would recording for the rebels be lying, anymore, or was she just afraid to step back in front of a camera?
"I'll do it too. I'll go with you." This is Finnick, and he walks over, crouching down beside her. "Listen I… owe you one. Probably more than one. So if it helps, I'll also record something."
She pictures them aiming a gun at Finnick's head to get her to say what they want. Involuntarily, she squeezes her eyes shut, trying to erase the mental picture. It was the camera that was the problem. The set. The recording. She could say anything she wanted, but if it was simulating the recordings she had to make in the Capitol, she isn't sure she can do it. Still… she can see them all counting on her. "Alright."
They go to some balcony, one of the strange outcroppings of District 13 that has access to the outside. It feels so foreign after all this time to see the sky, and even now, in the evening light, she can't help but just stare at it. Everyone else seems to have a similar reaction, though maybe not as severe, just standing for a bit, breathing fresh air, feeling the wind, looking at trees. Plutarch and his assistants set up a camera, and one of the stylists pulls her aside.
"How do you want to look?" he asks.
She hadn't considered this. The Capitol always just made her up the way they wanted. Sep had a little influence, but Sep was…. She bites her lip. They killed Sep, she remembers now. The cloudiness in her brain was lifting day by day, revealing more things that she hadn't realized she'd forgotten. They'd had him down in that prison, too, and killed him in front of her. She realizes belatedly that the stylist is waiting, more patiently than anyone in the Capitol would have. "I want them to be able to recognize me," she says. "But no more."
And so they go inside again, but just, and he fixes her hair so it has the slight wave that she wore so often in the Capitol. Her roots are growing out, an inch or so of brown fading into blonde, but it's fine, it's still her face. He puts just a bit of makeup on, just enough to emphasize her eyes and lips, and when he finishes she is the same Johanna that hosted Capitol Gains but she is also a ghost, with sunken cheeks and haunted eyes and swollen veins on her left arm that probably would never lie flat.
She walks back outside as Finnick is talking, solemnly, to the camera. Only a few people are there, Haymitch and Katniss and Enobaria among them. He catches her eye for just a moment as he speaks. "Everything in the Capitol was a threat, was Snow forcing us to do things by threatening our lives, our families, our friends."
Johanna's mouth is dry, and she's only watching, behind the camera. Silently, she moves to stand beside Enobaria. Finnick seems to have thought of what to say in advance, as he continues undeterred. "We were sold to the Capitolites: to entertain them, to sleep with them, for years. That's what being a Mentor is, really, more than anything else."
He sighs. "And then my girlfriend won, and I knew I couldn't let that happen to her. I tried to stop it but…" He meets Johanna's eyes, the regret evident in his gaze. "But the agreement was that Johanna would stay in the Capitol year-round. Year round 'dates' with the Capitolites, and then a television program too." He rubs his hands over his face, taking a pause. Then he looks at the camera once again. "I don't regret rebelling against Snow and against the Capitol. I think we all know how we've been hurt by this system, we just need to understand that we can fight against it. I'm just sorry that I hurt some people trying to protect others."
The camera cuts, and Finnick seems to sag, his normal perfect posture gone. Johanna feels empty. The apology is a proper apology and it was a long time coming, and it healed something to hear it after so many years, after his 'what choice did I have attitude' of the past. But it feels somewhat hollow after what she endured in the hands of the Capitol. After the drugs, the torture, the starvation, the fact that they didn't even save Annie in the end, it just feels frustrating, like they both made such stupid mistakes that could have avoided so much suffering.
But she knows it's an exercise in futility. Every should have or would have leads nowhere, or back to disaster somehow. In the end, she probably never would have gotten back up that ridge in time. Maybe she would have even been killed earlier in the Games. She needs to let go of her resentment towards Finnick, because it's really only convenient as being more tangible than her anger towards Snow.
She sees mixed emotions on Enobaria's face,but she knows Enobaria won't speak now: this moment is about Johanna, and so Enobaria will hold whatever she has to say in until later, that's just how she is. Johanna walks up to Finnick, attempts a smile, fails badly, and isn't sure exactly what to say. Her arms are hugging each other, she doesn't want him to hug her, she doesn't want to be touched at all, unless it's Enobaria.
But she needs to address him somehow. They need to put this behind them. "You're getting married." It's a statement, not a question or congratulations.
"Yes," he says. Everyone has seen Annie's ring, has heard the women of District 13 planning a wedding celebration. "Johanna, listen-"
"I'm happy for you," she says. And she is, truly. She only ever wanted Finnick to be happy, that's why she agreed to make a deal with Snow in the first place. She just hopes that he'll understand that some things are hard for her now, and she maybe can't be close to him like she used to be.
Finnick looks towards Enobaria, waiting a few paces back, then meets her eyes again. "I'm glad for you, too," he says. He licks his lips, nervous. She makes everyone nervous now. "We're going to win this," he assures her, and she doesn't know how he knows this, because the Capitol doesn't play fair.
She doesn't realize until he says this how much she really doubts the rebels winning this war. But they left her behind in the arena, and she realized that every previous horror the Capitol inflicted on her was child's play compared to what they could do when they needed to. And there was just the fact that Snow was… inevitable. She can not imagine a Panem without Snow. She wants the rebels to win, more than anything, of course, but could they?
It's time now for her statement, her piece to assure the people of Panem that Johanna Mason is not dead or kidnapped or whatever the Capitol has said. She takes the seat from Finnick, and the camera refocuses on her. She can feel herself trembling already, just the fact that she's in front of a camera again enough to make her terrified.
They drugged her, down in that prison, enough that she was calm, pliable, just in her right mind enough to read the words off the cards, but not able to protest or question much of anything. She wants it now - a sedative, a Trank, some morphling, something to calm herself down enough to speak. Her mouth is still dry. She can see the red light on the camera, indicating that they are recording, but she feels ill.
She turns away, covering her face with her hand. It should be easy. She knows it should be. All she has to do is tell the camera that she's safe and happy with the rebels. And yet it feels impossible. She sees the Peacekeepers with the guns behind the camera, she sees Sep's dead body. She sees them coming to put the electrodes on her again. She gags, bile filling her mouth. She spits it out onto the ground, and when she opens her eyes Enobaria is there, a hand on her shoulders.
"Hey, you're alright," she says. She sounds upset, but her gaze is elsewhere, at the woman holding the camera, at the doorway through which Johanna suspects Plutarch is watching. "You don't have to do this."
Johanna nods. She wants nothing more than to leave. She wants to go back to her bed, crawl under the covers, and perhaps never leave there again. Finnick hands her a bottle of water and she sips at it, clearing the acid taste from her mouth. She breathes more slowly now, trying to decide. She doesn't owe the rebels anything, but what about her home District? What about every kid who watched her show every night? "I'm going to try, just once more."
She tries to recall the first season of her show, back when it was just broadcast to the Capitol, back before she represented anything more than just a game show host. "Good evening, Panem, this is Johanna Mason, reporting from outside the Capitol. I am with the rebels right now, by choice, after being held in the Capitol against my will since the Games ended."
She pauses, trying to calm down, just a bit. She looks past the camera, past the ghosts of the Peacekeepers and Sep, right at Enobaria. "In all the years I broadcast to Panem, it was never by choice. It started with threats to my friends, to my District, and escalated until in the final weeks, I was recording with a gun to my head, and to the heads of children, right behind the camera. I had to read lines that I didn't believe in, things that were not true."
It's easier now, to speak, once she has some momentum. Her voice is shaking a bit, but it's fine, she can push through. " I liked having my guests on the show. I liked learning about everyone's lives all over Panem. I liked that we could all come together every night. But…" She swallows down tears. "But everyone is hungry. Everyone is afraid. No one wants their children to die in the Games. There's no reason to starve when there's so much in the Capitol. I cannot in good faith continue my show, when it hides the rot inside the Capitol.
"So please, everyone, please understand that we need to fight against Snow, against the lies he tells, that he is making people tell. Your suffering is real, and it doesn't have to be that way. Signing off, this is Johanna Mason."
After, she doesn't really remember. Plutarch has some bluster, they ask her for photographs for promotional materials, and there's talk of next steps and plans, but Johanna has no energy for it. She sneaks away once they've lost interest in her, and retreats back to her sleeping quarters, the small room suddenly feeling less like a cage and more like somewhere to hide.
"What is it?" she asks Enobaria, once they are alone. Enobaria unwraps some food she's taken from the kitchen. It isn't allowed: there's no eating outside the dining hall at all, but Peeta has taken up an assignment there, so she got him to do her a special favor on Johanna's behalf.
Enobaria shakes her head, her jaw set. "Nothing."
"Tell me." She wants to know. She isn't curious about anything anymore. Not the rebel plans, nor District 13. She doesn't care to know anything about anyone except Enobaria, but with Enobaria, enough is never enough. She wants to peel back layer after layer.
"I'm just being negative," Enobaria says. She bites the sandwich, shoving the other one at Johanna, encouraging her to eat. "I just feel like Finnick is such a performer. I can't help but wonder if his recording today was just to make himself look good in front of Panem, or to ease his own conscience."
"You mean it wasn't really an apology."
Enobaria shrugs. "That was probably a nice side effect."
It is a negative way of seeing things, she's right. And Johanna thinks it's plausible. She takes a bite of the sandwich. The bread is good, probably Peeta's skill. "It's not his fault," she says.
Enobaria glances at her with a raised eyebrow.
"There's a lot of people who look up to Finnick, and a lot of people he has to take care of. And this is war. He doesn't have time to worry about me anymore. He needed to close this chapter, and so he saw an opportunity and took it."
"You're saying that like you're done being friends."
Johanna shrugs. "I probably am. With most people. It is what it is."
Enobaria bites her lip, but doesn't reply. Johanna knows she's probably thinking of Cashmere and Gloss, and of all the others they've left behind already. Johanna leans over to rest her head on Enobaria's shoulder, sighing. "I can't believe all of Panem is going to learn the Victors were whores," she says.
Enobaria laughs a little, then sighs. It's really not funny at all. "People are going to learn a lot of things," she says. "And a lot of secrets will probably stay hidden forever."