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In March, the snow melts. Finnick spends most days working on the fishing boat, and Jude and Royce are good crewmates, teaching him everything he needs to know. The work is exhausting but not difficult, exactly, except that Finnick can't see well. Or hear well. His missing eye and missing ear mess with his depth perception and balance, so most of the time his job is tying off lines and cranking in the reel and doing other tasks that don't take too much precision.
"Must be nice to have your wife and your mistress get along so well," Royce teases him as they pass the bank near the Victor's Village, and he can see Johanna and a very pregnant Annie in the distance, out on the beach digging for clams. Finnick has explained enough times that Johanna is 'just a friend', but he was doomed when one of them asked if they had ever, in the past, been anything more and he paused for more than a second. It's fine, Royce had assured him, back then. After the war, everything's changed. Louanne at the tavern has two husbands now, and there's something wild happening with the Dennis sisters.
Now, Finnick just ignores him, watching the way Annie and Johanna walk together, Annie holding the rake, Johanna the bucket, trying to figure out if they are holding hands in the middle…
"Finnick! Line!"
His distraction comes back to bite him as the line he is supposed to be winding snaps back, coming up and swiping against his hand as he reaches out to block his face. He had been terrified, for a moment, of it hitting his face, of losing the only eyesight he had left.
"You alright?" Jude asks.
Finnick nods, hesitantly, trying to flex all his fingers. He can tell his thumb is swelling up already.
"Getting all distracted looking at women," Royce scoffs, but there's concern in his voice. They've become friends now, over the past few months, and there's few enough able-bodied men and women to run the fishing crews as it is.
Jude takes charge. "Put it in the ice bucket, and have it looked at when we get back. You'll probably need a few days off, no way you can tie a line until that swelling goes down."
"But I need-"
"-We're not going to let you or your pregnant wife starve," Jude assures him. "I'll save some of the catch for you."
By the time they get back to shore, Finnick's thumb has only about an inch of movement. He's handed his portion of that day's catch, along with Jude's coat. "Is Johanna still doing repairs?" he asks. "I really need the sleeve mended, I tore it on the gears of the winch the other day."
"I'll ask."
Jude nods. "I'll have your wages Friday, after the train comes."
When Finnick gets back to the Victor's Village, he wants to just go back to his house, to see Annie, to eat dinner, to wash and sleep. But he knocks on Mags' door and then enters, and as usual, Johanna doesn't even respond. "It's me," he calls.
He thought something might change, after they spoke in the sauna. He thought that perhaps them talking a first time might lead to a second, or a third, but she is as reclusive as ever, tucked up in the spare bedroom, sleeping or smoking cigarettes or doing whatever she does to pass the time.
He puts one of the fish in her icebox, which she or Annie have been keeping stocked with ice, much to his surprise, and then he climbs the stairs. "Hey," he says, turning into the doorway of the spare room.
He doesn't know what he expects, but it isn't several morphling syringes on the night stand, candles melted into the windowsill, and a half empty bottle of wine beside the bed. "Hey, yourself," she says. She's wearing a hemmed pair of Mags' pants and Gale's jacket.
"What is this?" he asks. He doesn't know what he's referring to, exactly - the mess of the room, the drugs, her ignoring him, all of it, really.
She smiles a little, sitting up on the bed. "What? Annoyed that it doesn't look like your perfect marriage bed?" she says.
He didn't come here to argue, but he should remember that this is Johanna, she's the most defensive person he's ever met. Hurt them before they can hurt you is her mantra, and she manages to get her stingers in more often than he likes to admit. This one, however, leaves him a little confused. "What?"
"You used to live like this, too, or don't you remember? Every night in the Capitol, cigarettes, alcohol, dirty clothes… mindless sex…"
He looks at her, at the thin strap of a tank top on her pale shoulder under the stupid jacket, can feel himself getting a little aroused. He wants to tear the jacket off of her. He shuts down the thought before it has time to take hold. "I never did morphling."
He doesn't even know why that is the response that comes to mind, but his mind isn't working right. They both know it's not true, that he would smoke it from time to time, but she lets it go. Instead she shakes her head, as if bored with him. "Nevermind. What do you want?"
"Jude asked if you could mend his coat. It's downstairs."
"Sure. Give me some money."
"What? So you can buy more morphling? Get out of here, Jo."
She rolls her eyes with enough drama that he understands it to be the dismissal that she intends it. When he gets home, he is frustrated, moreso when his injured hand prevents him from pouring his liquor.
Annie takes over, pouring him a lighter glass than he would have poured himself, and she sits with him at the table, and they eat the popcorn she's managed to make on the stove. "It'll be nice to have you home for a few days, at least," she says. She lifts her legs onto their extra chair, trying to get some of the swelling out of her feet. Her fingers tap on the edge of the bowl, the steady rhythm he's come to associate with her after all these years.
"Yeah, we haven't spent as much time together lately," he agrees. "Did you go out with Johanna today?" he asks, even though he knows she did. He pushes the glass back towards her, asking for a refill.
She nods. "We got clams for chowder tonight, they've been soaking all day. It's a shame she won't come for dinner."
"Have you seen how she's living?"
Annie refills his drink and takes a tiny sip before handing it back. She squints at the taste. "Oh, goodness, I thought I was missing out, but I can go two more months without alcohol, that is awful. Finnick Odair, how are you drinking that?"
And he honestly doesn't know if she's changing the subject on purpose, or if she really did feel left out with his drinking. But he laughs alongside her, taking a sip himself and barely flinching. Johanna was right, he knows. He did live like she is for years, so he wonders if now he is just play-acting as a regular stand-up guy. Is it she who was being more authentic, not hiding how messed up the war had made her?
He doesn't think it's a bad thing to try to move forward, to try to get a job and have a kid and do his best at making up for lost time. So why do they seem to blame each other for not suffering in the right way?
The next day, Finnick bandages his hand and walks along the beach with Annie. Her favorite activity with her mother was beachcombing, so they wanted to do so in her honor, but her mother's favorite strip of beach is closed off. 'Warning: Buried Mines' the sign says, and another warning 'Active Explosives'. They go to the next beach over, and busy themselves digging for seaglass, washed-up items from other lands, and anything interesting among the sand, all the while secretly nervous. The other beach had landmines but not this one? Were they really safe here?
"I want to have our baby in the water," Annie says.
"It'll still be cold in the spring," he warns. It's a traditional way of having a child in 4, born right into the arms of the ocean, but it was becoming less and less popular with the more modern hospital.
"Still, I want to," she says. "If you'll be there with me."
He nods. He pulls out a shining piece of blue seaglass and tosses it into the bag they were using to collect items. "Of course. Jo told me they used water on her in that prison. They didn't do anything like that to you?"
Annie pauses, fingernails scratching at something in the wake. "She told you that?"
He nods. Annie's face is difficult to read, but it's something like admiration. "It was pretty fucked up."
She nods. "It was horrible. Everything about that place was horrible." Then, as if finally remembering his question, she adds. "No, they never did anything like that to me." She adds a gold coin, nothing like they've ever used for currency in Panem, into the bag.
As they're walking back to the Victor's Village, steps light against any unmarked mines, Annie leans close. "On the last day, right before we were rescued, they brought me into Johanna's interrogation. I thought they'd put the gun to my head to make her talk."
Finnick feels himself clench, feels pain in his injured thumb as he tries to make a fist. "What did they do?" he asks. How is it that he's only hearing about this now, months and months later?
"They were harassing me, threatening to rape me," she says. Her voice is steady, as if she's talking about a menu or a painting she saw, not an assault. "They asked Johanna if I was your girlfriend, if she had done special favors for Snow for me."
He can picture Annie, arriving to District 13 in nothing but a stupid bedsheet, unable to explain how or why or where her clothes were. "What did she say?"
Annie smiles, even laughs a little. "She said she had no idea who I was. Said she wouldn't recognize Finnick's girlfriend, something like that. Even after we'd been right across from each other in those cells for a month."
"She could have gotten you killed." He's upset, not exactly at Johanna, but at someone. Snow, perhaps, but he's dead. At those nameless guards who molested Annie but will face no punishment. Who tortured Johanna for a month, turning her into a zombie who haunts Mags house. At the complacency that allowed such a system to exist in the first place.
"It was always a gamble, that's what I was saying," Annie says, dragging him up from his thoughts. "Every time I had to answer questions, it was 'will this be useful enough to save this person, or so useful he'll be killed anyways?' Johanna had to guess I'd be tossed back in my cell if I was irrelevant, better than used to torture us both more if I was useful."
"Sounds like hell."
Annie nods.
The next day, the phone rings while Annie and Johanna are out picking up the rations. Finnick answers, interrupted from his breakfast and coffee spiked with liquor. "Hello?"
"Finnick?"
"Haymitch?"
"How are you?"
It is disorienting to hear Haymitch's voice after all this time. The last time he saw him was after the execution, when he was getting ready to return to District 12. He sounds tired, but not the drunk and melancholic sort of tired he was before the war. "I'm fine," he says. "Annie's due in another couple months."
"That's great. Katniss is back here, finally, and well… I have geese."
"Geese?" Finnick carefully pours a drink with his injured hand and listens to Haymitch explain in brief how he came to be raising geese. It's amusing, and it reminds him there's life outside of District 4, that Haymitch and Peeta and Katniss and Beetee still exist and are trying to move on after the war.
"I actually called because I wanted to check on Johanna," Haymitch says, a few minutes into the call.
Finnick should have known. This was never about him, not really. Those two always had some messed up relationship without him. "She's at Mags' old house, you can call over there," he says.
"I have, a few times, she's ignoring me."
Naturally. Naturally they've already been in touch. Logically he knows he's being irrational, that he's had another lover the entire time he's known Johanna, so him being touchy about Haymitch or Gale makes no sense, especially now, but he can't help himself. "I saw her day before yesterday," he says. "Still doing morphling, still drinking too much," he reports, as if he hasn't been doing plenty of the latter.
"Finnick," Haymitch says, in a voice that implies he knows too much of Finnick's mind.
"I came here to be with my wife," he says, his voice almost defensive.
Haymitch sighs, and Finnick listens, for the clink of a bottle, the sound of a swallow, but he doesn't hear it. It's he who is the drunk, now. "Finnick, if you say the word I'll come there, tell her she's needed in 12, bring her back with me. But don't say that to her, you'll ruin her."
He can imagine it, Haymitch coming and pretending Johanna is needed to make Katniss better, or that she can help rebuilding 12. Maybe Peeta needs her, actually. And then it would just be Finnick and Annie, and his problems would be solved, wouldn't they? He should accept the offer. Except he doesn't want to. And he doesn't even know if it's selfishness or jealousy: if he wants to keep both his wife and his mistress, as miserable as it makes all of them, or if he simply doesn't want to concede to Haymitch. Fuck, he's rotten, and he knows it.
"What about me?" he asks, knowing even as he says it he sounds pathetic, like the child he was when he won the Hunger Games. "Why is it always Johanna causing problems? Why can't I be messed up?"
Haymitch pauses for a longer moment this time. "You can," he says. "No one would blame you. But the truth is, life isn't fair. Sometimes, you have to keep things inside that you ought to be able to let out."
He thinks of all those months in the Capitol, before the war: all the nights of pleasing men and women, all the times he wanted to cry, wanted to die, and all the times he took a tab of Euphoria or drank a bottle of wine and slept it off instead. And then there were the nights with Johanna, when she held him or he held her, since she understood more than anyone else, perhaps, what it was like in their particular hell.
Finnick finishes his glass, not caring if Haymitch can tell he's drinking. "Ok, I'll go over there," he says. He says nothing about Haymitch's offer to visit, but the declination is implicit.
"Call me if you need me."
The next day, someone comes to the house, a technician of sorts. He looks to be from the Capitol, but Finnick learns he's from District 3, employed by the Capitol. "I'm here to get the electricity and television running," he says. "There's a broadcast coming out tonight, and President Paylor wants everyone to see it."
By the time he leaves, an hour later, there's enough electricity to run the icebox, several lights, and a few outlets in the kitchen. They can use the television in the sitting room as well, and Annie sits on the couch with her legs propped up, flipping between the few channels. There's still no hot water, no luxuries like they had in the Capitol, but it's a marked improvement. They don't have to worry about the food spoiling when there's no ice to pack in the icebox, and they don't have to solely rely on candlelight.
It's not until that evening when he goes to see Johanna, and when he does, he's surprised by the table near Mag's sewing machine, piled with a few jackets and pants. The machine itself is powered with a foot pedal, but now Johanna has moved it under a lamp, and she's working on repairs to the clothes.
"What's all this?" he asks. He's surprised to see her downstairs, but she must have heard about the broadcast when the man came to her house as well.
She shrugs. "Jude sent me more work," she says. And he pours himself a glass of wine from the half-finished bottle on her table and watches her work, her stitches careful, her hands steady. He moves his thumb, testing it. It's looser, almost back to normal. He can probably return to the fishing crew in another two days, but he would never have the dexterity for something like this. He watches as she slowly turns the garment as it is fed through the machine, the stitching blending into the fabric.
"Where did you learn this?" he asks.
She doesn't look up. "Mags had a manual with the machine," she says. "And I had a lot of trial and error with her uglier clothes." She finishes the row of stitching, seems to reverse the machine for a moment, then cuts the excess thread, holding the pants up to the light to inspect her repairs. Then she folds them and sets them aside. "There's no new stuff coming in, and no one can afford it if it does, so I can do this, at least."
It's strange, seeing Johanna working on something. Even when they saw her in 7, just once, on Annie's Victory Tour, she was just laying around the house, waiting to go back to the Capitol. It was awful, he realizes now - how much she hated the Games and how little else she had to look forward to.
"With Annie's knitting and you sewing, people will be lining up, soon," he jokes.
She rolls her eyes, standing and cracking her back. "Hungry?" she asks, pulling out some bread and hard cheese and jam. They pick at it while they sip the wine and wait for the broadcast to start.
"Annie might come in a bit," he says. "She wasn't sure she wanted to watch."
"Neither am I." He can tell she's nervous, even though she still pretends she's not. He's never seen her without the false confidence she projects so well, but he's known her long enough that he can see through it now.
"Haymitch called me," he says. She doesn't visibly react, just finishes the sip she was already taking. "Says you're ignoring him."
Her jaw clenches, her expression all suspicion and angles, the opposite of Annie's openness. "I don't want his pity."
Finnick smiles a bit, despite himself, at the familiarity of the moment. There is something to be said about sitting and drinking with Johanna, about watching Capitol television in the middle of misery, despite what misgivings they might have about each other.
Just as the screen changes and the introduction music begins, the door opens, and Annie enters. "I changed my mind," she says. "I don't really want to watch, but I don't want to be alone either."
"Want me to go home with you?" he asks, and he doesn't miss the way Johanna watches him. Haymitch's words come back to him, sitting like lead in his gut. Don't let Johanna know you're only here to be with Annie.
But Annie shakes her head, kicking off her boots and coming to sit between them on the couch. "I want to be here," she says. And so they eat and drink and watch, some strange program that attempts to summarize the secret police, the prisons, the torture, the bombings, and what it doesn't get wrong it glosses over with the most delicate touch.
Finnick sees him, for a moment - one of his most loyal clients - a sponsor who requested him through years and years of Hunger Games. He's giving an interview about the rebuilding in the Capitol, as if he was one of the good guys, as if he didn't pay for the privilege of sex with Finnick in some darkened hotel room and whisper about the corruption of his fellow secretaries in the dark, after they finished.
"I wonder what they're doing now," Annie says, at one point. "Those guards." She leans over, resting her head on Johanna's shoulder, and to Finnick's surprise, Johanna doesn't flinch or fuss about such contact.
"They've been promoted, I'm sure," Johanna says. Finnick knows she's thinking about later, after they leave, when she can inject again. He's not sure he can blame her, exactly, now that he's seen Licinius's face. Even the toned-down version of the broadcast was hard to watch, blaming Snow for everything when the truth is a lot more complicated.
Paylor comes on at the end, promising a new beginning for Panem, an era of peace and justice. Finnick notices she doesn't promise them prosperity. Annie's asleep, by the end, on Johanna's shoulder, and he knows he needs to wake her, to walk her back home to bed, but instead he pours himself the end of the second bottle of wine and turns sideways on the couch, watching Johanna watching the mindless Capitol program that followed the memorial broadcast, his wife asleep against her. "Remember Brutus' show?" he asks, thinking of the reality television program Brutus ran for years and years between Hunger Games.
Johanna attempts a smile, probably more from nostalgia than any real affection for the District 2 Victor. "We used to watch it in Remake," she says. She doesn't turn towards him, instead saying this facing forward, perhaps afraid that speaking into Annie's hair would wake her.
He nods. "He would do those stupid challenges - the eating challenges, the strength challenges, the 'willpower' challenges," he recalls. It's nice, in a way, to remember things like this - things that were normal for them, before the war. Completely strange things that they'd never experience again. It is also torture.
"Why didn't you come visit me in the hospital, even once?"
He's shocked by the abrupt change of topic, even moreso when he catches the glint of tears in her eyes. He wants to explain that it's not her: it's him, it's his own failings that kept him from her, but how can that ease her pain? Anything he thinks of to say sounds like an excuse, but what else does he have but excuses? He should have been there. He doesn't want Haymitch to take her away, but Haymitch had been there.
"During that month you and Annie were captured, I was useless worrying," he says, his voice almost a whisper. "I couldn't 'perform' for the rebels, so they sedated me more than once. Then, finally, during the rescue, I wasn't allowed to go, but I had to talk - to keep everyone looking at the broadcast. I think you were right to run away at that dinner," he says, before she has a chance to protest, "I think everyone knowing that broke something in me, too. I wanted to change myself, or at least my image. To go from Capitol whore to loving husband and father."
He can't look at her as he says it. It's a confession of the worst kind: that Johanna Mason was linked to his past life, his bad life, the one he dared not get near once he had Annie back. He's grateful she keeps looking at the muted television. "I thought we were still friends, at least," she says, her voice hollow.
"We are," he insists. He can't explain that he's just a coward. That he avoided her when her family was killed just in case such a thing was contagious. That when she arrived in District 13, she looked so horrible that he was afraid that was the true cost of being a rebel, of having the secrets he bragged about, that he didn't want to get close to her at all. That even now, his disapproval of her behavior is less about his judgment and more fear that he might fall to much of the same if he doesn't guard himself carefully against temptation. He is weak. "At least, I want to be."
She shrugs her shoulders, waking Annie. The conversation is over, it seems. "It's over," she says gently to Annie. "Did you sleep well?"
Annie smiles a little weakly. "It didn't make for a great bedtime story," she says, "But yes, I'm happy it's just a memory now."