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The train from the Capitol to District 4 is cold and slow and endless, and it feels like they haven't made any progress despite riding for hours now. They're in a compartment, the three of them: himself and Annie and Johanna, and Finnick has his head pressed against the window, the freezing cold of the glass keeping him awake, allowing him to watch the train alternating between barely moving and completely stopped.
Based on the muffled announcements of the conductor, it sounded as if there are obstacles blocking the tracks, debris from the war or intentional barricades meant to keep rail traffic from getting through. That, or perhaps the tracks themselves had been bombed. That's what you get for taking the first train back, a voice in his head says, while another already is mad at Paylor, already wants to know why they couldn't get a hovercraft.
He feels himself chafing against his descent back into ordinary citizen. Was it his ego? His anger? Perhaps, after so many years of playing nice, of allowing so many people to have their way with him. But he gave everything he could for the rebellion, short of his life, and he had been prepared to give that, too. He slept with horrible people to learn their secrets, hundreds of times over. He was in the Hunger Games twice, and found a way out each time. He lost his left eye and his left ear fighting to keep the Mockingjay safe. Now he just wants to go home and live quietly with his wife.
The train brakes to a stop again, snow falling outside, and Finnick feels Annie shift from where she is laying on his lap. She is napping now, curled on the narrow bench in a position he would have found uncomfortable, her head resting on his legs. She had been ill for the first hour of the ride, her morning sickness improved but not yet gone, four months along in the pregnancy, and he runs his fingers through her hair to guide her back to sleep, hoping the train won't jolt too much as it starts up again. He doesn't know where they are, exactly, somewhere in the southern portion of District 1 presumably, but it's past the time when they should have arrived in District 4, and he's exhausted and hungry and not even sure if his house still stands.
All the while, Johanna sits silently on the opposite bench of the compartment, sitting sideways with her knees drawn up and facing the corridor, not the window. She's in the coat she's taken to wearing - Gale's spare military jacket - and her fingers don't even reach the ends of the sleeves as she hugs her knees. She doesn't glance at Finnick, barely moves at all, except the occasional twitch or grimace that he always sees on her now, her constant discomfort since her capture in the Capitol. Her hair is still short, though it reaches past her ears now, but she's wearing a knit cap against the cold - the dark green one that Annie knit her. He's got his blue one packed in his bag, but it's impossible to wear with his injury still healing.
He isn't sure why Johanna decided to come with them, in the end. He thought perhaps she would go with Haymitch to 12, or even with Gale to 2. A part of him feels bad that he's only pairing her with potential lovers, that he cannot picture Johanna on her own, going to 7 or anywhere else, but he doesn't rest on the thought for long, because the truth is she is here with him, and they have been lovers. If they are still is a question that remains to be seen.
He kissed her, once, just after the execution. His face was still stinging and Annie was asleep after all the commotion, and she kissed him back before stopping. He would have gone further, he was full of shock and anger and a strange sadness at the end of his life in the Capitol. He was so used to fighting, to war and rebellion, that the idea of it just being over - blown out like a candle - was too abrupt. Johanna was the one to remind him of his wife sleeping two rooms away. And then she winced away pain that might have been physical or might have been from the denial and she smoked a morphling cigarette and that was that.
But in the end, despite their past, their bad decisions, their awkwardness since the Quarter Quell, Johanna chose to come to District 4. "Because Annie asked," she said, when he asked, as they were packing up their things. Truthfully, he didn't even know they were close, but he's come to realize that as many secrets as he's gleaned, there's infinitely more than he's not privy to. Even Johanna's. Even his wife's.
He drifts off at some point, and wakes to the squeak of the brakes. It's dark now, and he can't see anything outside the window except for the swirl of snow. The announcement comes through the carriage and this time he can make it out. "Terminal stop: West Port, District 4". Annie is awake, knitting something new, a baby blanket, he thinks, and Johanna is in the same position as before, but gradually they all stand, gathering their single bags - District 13 standard issue rucksacks - and descend onto the platform. It's chilly, but not as horribly biting cold as Finnick was expecting, perhaps just below freezing.
There's no one there waiting for them, no way for them to tell anyone they were coming back. He doesn't know who is still alive, even. He doesn't think there was major fighting in 4, but he can't be sure. The station platform looks the same as he remembers it, but it's dark and snowy, so he can't see much else. They're the only ones getting off, aside from some of the crew unloading cargo or picking things up. He wonders if the train will stay til morning, so they can bring fish and salt back to the Capitol.
The three of them walk through the village, and he turns into the ale house. It wasn't a place he frequented before, but he hopes he can get an idea of how the Victor's Village is doing, and well, there's food. He has some money with him - a bit of savings leftover from before the Games - but any money he will collect for fighting will take months to process, he's sure, and he has a feeling the Victor's pension is over now.
They're seated along one of the walls, but still enough in sight of the bar that he feels conspicuous. He is wearing an eyepatch, but he knows just about everyone knows his face. He is the most famous Victor from District 4 after Mags, after all. Johanna is jumpy, looking around at every new face entering the tavern, which only sets Finnick more on edge. He is about to say something to her, but he feels Annie's hand on his thigh under the table, anticipating his actions, telling him to remain calm.
He and Annie have the seafood chowder, and Johanna has chicken. He supposes she's never really eaten fish, though she'll probably start soon enough. She also gets a white liquor and soda, and Finnick orders one as well. Annie, of course, abstains. The liquor burns, but it feels good after so many months of abstinence in District 13. The meals were expensive, far more expensive than he remembers, but the liquor is cheap. They both get a second round.
It's then, drinking that second glass, just a little lightheaded from drink and exhaustion, that he sees one of his two brothers-in-law. Ryder is more drunk than Finnick, obviously, from the way he almost staggers to the booth they're sitting in, and his face lights up in recognition as he spots Finnick and Annie. "You're back!" he says, voice too loud, drawing attention from some of the other patrons. Finnick can see at least a couple of them whispering, trying to discern who he is.
He nods. He dislikes Ryder, always has, but he respected his sister's choice in partner. Now, however, it seems something has changed, for him to be out late and drunk, alone. He can feel his chest tighten in dread. "Where's Margot?"
Ryder spits, right on the floor of the tavern, and it's yellow, stained with chew. He licks his lips. "Where's your eye?" he shoots back.
Finnick can feel Annie tense beside him, like a dog with her hackles up. He feels the same, but he needs answers. He needs to know about his family. "Lost it in the Capitol," he says, taking another sip of the liquor. He nods to the empty seat and Ryder sits, Johanna shrinking away from him, towards the wall. "This is Johanna," he introduces, "Jo, this is my brother-in-law, Ryder."
Johanna nods at him, still standoffish, but Finnick can't blame her. Ryder turns back to him, his voice thankfully lowered now. "Margot is dead," he says. "They killed her, and your father, for asking too many questions."
"What do you mean?"
Ryder pulls out the tin of tobacco, spinning it in his fingers. "Odessa can tell you. I… don't really want to talk about it. Your mom is still there, at the house, but she's not the same since."
Annie leans forward, her voice steadier than Finnick's has been. "Do you know if…"
Ryder nods. "Your dad died of a heart attack over the summer. Your mom is missing - no one has seen her. Lots of people think she went to The Wilds, to try to get to District 13."
Annie looks surprised, but settles back into her place beside Finnick, nodding. He knew she didn't get on with her father, but still, this had to be a blow.
"Welcome back, Finnick." Ryder stumbles off to get another round, and Finnick lays his head on the table. Margot was dead. She was 5 years older, no longer able to be Reaped the year Finnick was. His other sister, Odessa, was three years older, 17 during his Hunger Games, which would made her 28? 29? now. She had an infant when he left for the Quarter Quell.
Still, Johanna is silent. In a way, he resents her, her own family long-dead now. He knows it's unfair, knows he's being cruel in thinking this, but it did give her advantage as a rebel, she'd said as much in the arena. "They can only torture you with people they know you care for." And Finnick had been burdened with those - his parents, his sisters, his nephew, Annie, Annie's parents, Jo herself, Haymitch, Mags. "We should see if the house is still standing," he says, after they've finished their drinks.
"Should we bring a weapon?" Johanna asks, her voice barely above a whisper.
"Of course not," he says, his voice certain, but he heard the 'maybe' on Annie's lips. He pauses, to let her speak.
"We don't know what the village is like, anymore," she reasons. "Of course I trust our neighbors, but who knows how many Peacekeepers are here, upset about the way things turned out? Or bandits trying to profit off the chaos?"
He meets her eyes, then looks to Johanna. "I would feel better with something," she says. Annie nods. And it's the way they are in agreement against him that makes him wonder, truly, what happened in that Capitol prison? What part of their story is he missing? Because he had been so happy to get Annie back, he was willing to accept that she wasn't ready to talk about it, but now he's terrified that the truth is something worse than he can imagine. Johanna had not come here for him. This returns to him now, as he walks towards the Victor's Village behind Annie and Jo, who are side by side, talking quietly. Johanna had come to District 4 because Annie had asked her.
Johanna and Annie pick up metal rods that look to be broken pieces of rebar on the way, and Finnick picks up a brick. They must look ridiculous, but it's nearly 10PM, so they pass few people on the dark path that leads to the Victor's village. To his left, Finnick can hear the rhythmic crashing of the ocean as it breaks against the shore, but the sound only reaches him through his right ear. It's maddening, to only have half his sight, half his hearing. His night vision is bad now, his depth perception way off. But he is alive. He knows how near the mutt was to decapitating him, how close he was to not coming home at all. He should be grateful. But mostly, he is irritated. The war is over, and everything feels more or less the same.
The Victor's Village is the same as when he left, but more downtrodden, since no one has taken care of any of the structures in over six months. The plot that Annie's house was on is still a burnt out foundation, snow falling on the half-made garden she and Mags had been working on. Mags' house is as it was, well-kept but full of clutter of a life well-lived, and Finnick's house is the opposite, a little messy from all his comings and goings, never there quite long enough to make it feel like a proper home. There are 8 more houses, but they all look abandoned. Finnick doesn't know what happened to their other Victors.
The electricity is out, though there had been at least some electricity in the main village. He doesn't know if it's as simple as flipping a switch or reconnecting a wire, or if some major part of the infrastructure has been broken. For now, he enters his house, puts the rucksack down in the front hall, and starts to clear out the area in front of the stove.
"Do you have an axe? I can chop wood," Johanna says.
"We don't use wood, we use pellets," he says. "Sawdust or corn or manure."
"Yeah, do you have any of that?"
He shrugs. "Mags might."
Johanna leaves, returning a few minutes later with a bundle of pellets for the stove. Then she turns to leave again. "Where are you going?" he asks.
"To bed. I'm tired." And she walks down the steps, across the short walkway, and back into Mags' house. Any rebuttal dies on his lips, from the invitation to stay here with them, that she was welcome, that it would conserve the pellets if they only ran one stove, that he isn't sure how he feels about her living in Mags house, because she isn't around to hear it.
Instead, he starts the fire, does the bare minimum to set up the bed, changes his clothes, and falls asleep within minutes, Annie beside him.
In the morning, he wakes alone. He hears Annie downstairs, the distinctive noise of her pulling her boots on. He leans over the rail to see her. "Are you going to the beach? I'll come, unless you want to be alone."
She smiles up at him, her face paler than usual like it has been on mornings lately, after she's thrown up, but she looks warm in one of his winter coats and two layers of pants. Her hair is long and waving down her back, and she's wearing a hat she's knit for herself out of an unraveled sweater from a Capitolite wardrobe, this one lighter green than Jo's. It matches her eyes.
They walk down to the beach crunching through the snow, and Finnick thinks of all the times he's come home from the Capitol and jumped right into the ocean. The Hunger Games ended in August, so he could count on District 4 being warm and pleasant. This was different. This was coming home to an unwelcome bitterness. He hardly recognizes the coastline, icy and barren and without anyone else walking along it. But it's nice to see District 4 during the day, and nice to have Annie beside him. She doesn't bring the metal rod, but he can see her glancing back every minute or so, as if paranoid someone would sneak up on them.
"Why did you ask Jo to come?" he asks, right when they turn back towards the Victor's Village.
Annie's expression is hard to read, a little pained, a little sad, and she walks a bit before answering. "I thought it would be good for all three of us," she says.
"I don't understand… Annie, what happened to you and Jo in that prison?"
She grabs onto his hand, and the way that just the tips of her fingers reach out from the sleeves reminds him of Johanna wearing Gale's stupid military jacket. He can't place exactly why it irritates him, so he puts it out of his mind.
"When I was down there, they mostly ignored me. I told you, I was bait for you." Annie swallows, and grips his hand tighter. "But a few times, they took me in for questioning. They would… they would put a gun to someone's head, say they would shoot if I didn't give them information they could use."
"What the hell. Who? Who did they aim the gun at?"
Annie shrugs. "Capitolites, two of them. One Avox. I didn't know them. But it didn't matter, I didn't want them to die!"
He can tell she's getting upset recounting this, knows she's delayed talking about this for exactly this reason. He pulls her into a hug right there, on the beach, and holds her close. "It's over now," he says. He doesn't ask her if they died in front of her, because he assumes she knows what he's thinking: if they didn't, they died in the next interrogation, or the next.
She sniffles, pulling away. "She helped me a lot, in there. Peeta too."
It takes Finnick a minute to realize Annie is talking about Johanna.
"She would talk to me when I thought I was losing my mind. She would cause a scene so the guards wouldn't notice me or Enobaria. They…"
"What did they do to her?"
But Annie shakes her head. "You'll have to ask her yourself," she says. They start to walk back, Annie's gaze still on the ocean as she speaks again. "They said something, on the last day, that she made a deal with Snow to help me, after my Games," she says.
Finnick's mouth feels dry. The war is over. The war is over. And yet the memory of all that has happened before lives on. "Yes," he says. "It's true."
She nods. "Then I'm doing the same," she says, now going to a place he can't quite follow. "I'm making a deal to help Johanna."
That night, they eat dinner at Odessa's. It's six of them: Finnick, Annie, Johanna, Odessa, Jude, and their son Simon. They introduce Johanna, and settle in at Finnick's sister's small but comfortable home. Simon is almost two, able to sit in his high chair and eat little bits of the adults' dinner, set out for him ahead of time, and Annie delights in making him smile and helping him eat. "When's yours due?" Odessa asks, pouring wine for them all, and a cider for Annie. Jude works on a fishing boat during the day with a small crew, and Odessa stayed home with their son, mainly, but she assisted with births of women in the village from time to time.
"May," Annie says, poking Simon's cheeks. Jude brings out the main part of the meal: salmon filets with root vegetables. Johanna looks suspicious but eventually takes a bite and Finnick can tell she enjoys it. She's still too thin, despite being out of the Capitol prison for months, and he can't say that food is abundant enough in 4 that they'll be eating well here.
"I need a job," he says, thinking that if he takes a job on a fishing boat, he can at least literally put food on the table.
Jude nods. "It's just been me and Royce on the boat since the war, we're real short. You're welcome to come out with us any morning. You even have a pirate look going," he jokes. "I'll tell you the time and place before you leave."
"That's it?" Odessa asks. "You're all three Victors and you're just cut off without any more money?"
Johanna shrugs. "I mean it sounds like it's enough that we weren't killed by a mob."
"Oh they'd never kill Finnick, the people adore him," Jude says, and Finnick doesn't miss the way Johanna averts her eyes. He knows she was never as popular as him in the Capitol, and from what he saw on Annie's Victory Tour, she wasn't very popular in her home District. He wonders for the first time if she avoided going back to 7 because she was afraid of such a thing.
"Well, either way, sounds like some things have changed around here," he says, trying to move the conversation along. He finishes his wine, pouring another.
Odessa nods. "Dad and Margot were killed during a demonstration against the Capitol over the summer, back after Annie was disappeared and no one knew where you were, and there were about 4 different bombings. The Peacekeepers came and fired into the crowd, it was horrible."
"The other thing is the exporting and importing," Jude says. "Because the train service has been so inconsistent, we can't get the fish to the Capitol, so no payment, and we can't get the imports we need. The kids have scurvy because there's so few fresh fruits and vegetables, and there's no medication at the hospitals."
Odessa brings out tea and a cake she made, that truth be told is a little bland, but given the ingredient shortages, Finnick understands why. She was making due with what she had. They eat quietly for a bit, dwelling on the deaths, but there's been so much war, and so much death, no one has much to say. Finnick feels numb.
"We were so surprised to see you cut into that Capitol broadcast over the summer," Odessa says finally.
"I don't remember that, was that a propo?" Annie asks.
Finnick nods. "It aired at the same time the soldiers were getting you out of that prison. It was a distraction."
"They held you in a prison?" Jude asks, and Annie nods. "They really do owe you some money," he says, shaking his head.
"Fin, I didn't realize everything that was happening in the Capitol," Odessa says. "I didn't realize Snow made Victors… do things like that. I'm so sorry."
Abruptly, Johanna stands, pushing her chair out so it scrapes along the floor. "You… you told all of Panem that the Victors are whores?" she asks, her face showing utter betrayal. Nevermind that it was to rescue her, nevermind that it was to further the rebel cause. Annie stands too, aware, as she always is, to everyone's feelings, to the way the tension can shift in an instant.
"Johanna, do you want to walk home together?" she offers.
But Johanna is already bolting, her feet shoved into her boots, her jacket in her arms, before any of them can get another word in.
Later, walking home with Annie, Finnick is angry. Odessa spent about ten minutes apologizing for bringing up the topic, for upsetting Johanna, and he assured her that it was fine, that she couldn't have known. And what right did Johanna have to be upset? He did that to get her out of prison, to save her from literal torture. How could such a confession be worse than the half-dead state she was in when she arrived in District 13?
Annie slips her hand into his as they walk, and it feels like the longest day, like it is impossible that it was just that morning that they were on the beach. "I didn't know you did that," Annie says. "You really told all of Panem what Snow forced you to do?"
He nods. He had come to terms with everyone knowing, had accepted that when he agreed to filming. He hadn't factored in anyone not knowing, hadn't thought about how the people the distraction was meant to help would naturally miss the broadcast. "I would have done worse if it would have gotten you out of there," he says, and he means it. He's on edge, fired up from the wine and Johanna's dismissal of him.
Annie stops, just outside their door, and kisses him. It's deep, passionate, and somehow also gentle. She pulls away and she's looking at him like she understands something new about him. "That doesn't mean it doesn't hurt," she says.
He lays awake, listening to her steady breathing beside him, indicating that she's sound asleep. She's right, of course she's right. It does hurt. It hurts that he had to fuck those people, and it hurts that he had to tell all of Panem. It hurts that he collected all those secrets just for his life to become its own set of secrets: his family and the general public couldn't find out about the whoring, the Capitolites couldn't find out about Annie, Annie couldn't find out about Johanna, no one could find out about the rebellion. At times like these, he wonders if this is better, if he ought not to have just let the cycle continue, to have kept his mouth shut and do his one month a year in the Capitol.
Logically, he knows he's better off now, but it's the comedown at the end of something major, the stop at the end of a sprint, and right now he just feels awful. He gets up to get a glass of water, or maybe a glass of liquor, and stops to look out the window.
The window across from his is lit with flickering candlelight, Mags' spare room. Johanna is there, perched on the windowseat, flicking the morphling syringe. He wants to stop her, no, he should stop her, but part of him just wants a dose for himself. Instead he just watches the lithe silhouette, drawing up the drug, injecting into an outstretched arm, and then laying back on the windowseat. It's dangerous; it's erotic. His mouth is even more dry now, and he does go to get the glass of water.
He pulls his hands down over his face. He's married to Annie, she's pregnant with his child. He spent the past two days doing nothing but being angry at Johanna, frustrated with her decisions, her reactions, everything about her. But was he really, or was he trying to convince himself that there is nothing there anymore, that he doesn't like her at all?