graceless

6. Johanna - May

Johanna lays on the couch at Mags', a brief reprieve from Finnick's house, where she has been living for the past few weeks. At Finnick's she is in constant motion, cooking, cleaning, holding the baby, heating water for baths, and even when she's resting, it's always cautious, waiting for Annie to call for her or for Seamus to cry. Finnick has returned to work, every other day, so half the time it's just her and Annie passing time in that house, and the other half he's there, watching television, trying his best to help, but generally, as far as she can tell, just getting in the way.

She doesn't think that Finnick dislikes being a father, exactly. She can see the way he looks at Annie and Seamus in love and adoration. It's just that there's something else there, too, something she recognizes in herself. Doubt? Horror? Fear? Perhaps fear is closest. He's probably afraid that this can't last, that some yet unseen hand will come and take away their happiness, or that someone will come calling for him to repay some debt, or say he's not absolved of the sins of his past: his infidelity, his excesses, his manipulation, and the taint of all of the Capitolites left on him from Snow's machinations.

She's probably projecting, she realizes. Her head hurts, like it usually does when it's raining, and she lays back on the couch with an old flannel shirt draped across her eyes. She's pretending to understand Finnick, because she doesn't want to try to understand herself. She shifts, trying to keep her arm from falling asleep, and she feels the twinge down her spine, the signaling that another round of the hot, white-light flashing pain was coming through, and she braces herself for it. She's low on morphling, just a half-dose left, maybe, and she's trying to conserve it, since she doesn't know when she'll have time to re-up. She's tried the regular pain medication that they sell at the pharmacy, but it doesn't even touch this pain. This is something else, she can tell, something beyond.

She's debating calling Ryder when there's a knock at the door, and she almost jumps up, thinking perhaps he understood her need. Mentally she tries to count how much cash she has saved, subtracting out what she's spent on liquor and the baby formula she purchased so she could help with Seamus's feedings. The formula was expensive, she didn't have much cash left. She tries not to sit up too fast, and it works, but it's the light in her eyes that's the real killer. It makes her clench up in pain, reminds her of coming up from the water in that prison, and she braces for the shock.

It isn't Ryder at the door, however, it's Finnick, and he lets himself in. He looks to her, at her pile of unfinished work at the sewing machine table, and sits next to her on the couch, a little too close. It feels like a year ago. It feels like before the war.

"Is Annie alright?" she asks.

He nods. He puts his feet up on Mags' coffee table, holes in the big toes of his socks. It's odd to see Finnick without a perfect, sparkling appearance. "She told me to come here for a while, that I was 'bringing the mood down'."

"Were you?" He sounds sober, but she's heard him sound sober eight drinks in.

He shrugs. "Probably."

She pulls her knees up to her chest, waiting for the spasm of pain to pass. Once she's in this position she can usually manage it for a while. She considers him. "Finnick, what's going on?"

He shrugs. "I don't know, I just feel… off. It's this confusing mess. I want to be happy, but if I get too happy, it feels wrong. And if I let myself feel bad, I feel like I ought to be happy, since the war is over."

She rests her chin on her knee, focusing on him, and not the distracting flashes of light behind his head. She has a rogue thought that she can't pick up Seamus until she evens out. She could tell Finnick it's alright, that she understands, at least a bit, that she's sure Annie does too, except her mind, even slowed with the pain, starts to catch up to what's happening. This resembles the Hunger Games, when she and Finnick were Mentors, and would use each other and Haymitch intermittently depending on who was available and who had the most emotional bandwidth. Annie kicked him out, so he came to her. He didn't want her to advise him, he wanted something else.

"Finnick, why are you here?" she asks. He could have taken a walk, or gone to the tavern just as easily, but he came to see her.

He looks at her, that same look he might have given her in the 69th Games, or the 72nd. "I miss you, and I'm lonely," he says.

And oh, she misses him too, how she could take him to bed right then and fuck him just like old times, but wasn't that just such a Finnick ploy? To come to her when he's needy, when Annie has turned him away, get some comfort from her, and go back to his wife. To have his wife in his home and his mistress next door, how fucking convenient for him, she thinks. "Go sleep with your wife," she spits out, but it's not even cold, just hurt.

"Jo," he says, and he reaches for her, then thinks better of it.

"Do you want me to leave?" she asks, and now there is some spite in her tone. "Would that be easier for you? I'll go! Up to 7, or wherever."

He shakes his head. "No! I won't… do anything you don't want. Just.. stay."

She wants to cry in frustration. Of course she wants him. Of course she loves him. Could he not understand that? It's just that he always puts her in a position where she feels like a villain.

It takes a few days for her to break, for her pain and her weakness to result in her needing morphling badly enough to call Ryder. She tries to push through, to tell herself that the withdrawal is temporary, and once she's out the other side, she can begin to live without a dependence, but it goes on and on, until she realizes that she's not experiencing a withdrawal, simply a dull, eternal pain that runs in the background, accentuating the periods of more intense, sharp pain. And then there's the loneliness. At least she can forget about that, a bit, with the morphling slowing her thoughts.

She finishes her sewing work and sets it aside, knowing she'll have to walk into the village to return the items tomorrow, but unable to bear the bright sunlight today. Maybe she can go early, or in the evening, when it isn't so bright. It's rude, she thinks, to call on people at odd hours, but people in District 4 don't seem to care about things like that. In fact she thinks she had judged them incorrectly before. They were suspicious of her in the same way she was suspicious of them, initially. Now they know she is here to stay, here to join their community, help where she can, and she is trusted by Annie and Finnick, they don't seem to mind her around at all. She knows the names of the usual people she can find on the clam beach, and the women at rations often keep her tinned fish and gave her an extra cheese because they know Johanna prefers it that way. If she's honest, it's closer than she had been with most of the people in District 7 since the Games.

And then Ryder arrives, and she has to face the light anyways, because she won't let him in the house. She steps outside, under the shade of the porch to ward of a little of the sun glare, at least. "You got it?" she asks, eager to get this over with. He looks terrible, a discolored bruise on his jaw, and his shirt stained, like he'd spilled something on it then slept in it overnight. His beard is overgrown, which speaks to the bruise, that she can still see it, despite that.

He nods. "But it's double, now," he says.

She shakes her head. She only has enough cash for what they had agreed on previously. "No, you said twenty."

"Supply and demand," he shrugs.

She knows he's trying to stiff her, that he's probably trying to get some goon off of his back. Behind him, she catches a glimpse of Finnick through the kitchen window of his house and she sighs. Now he's seen her at a drug deal, when she thought, incorrectly obviously, that he was at work. It was a small blessing they are the only ones in this Victor's Village, really. "Nevermind," she says. "I'll find it somewhere else."

"Good fucking luck," he says, and she doesn't know if that's his threat that he'll tell others not to sell to her, or that there really is such a limited supply. She's willing to gamble. Willing, if nothing else, to bet that he'll come back to her asking for her normal price after a day or two, she'll just need to endure it.

She flips him off, and he turns to leave, then turns back. "You're such a bitch, you know that?"

Now she smiles. The arguing is an analgesic all its own. "Oh, tell me more, please," she baits him.

And he sneers, his eyes more focused than perhaps she's ever seen them. "We could have gotten along," he says. "I would have given it to you, for free, just for some company. I'm lonely, Jo."

She doesn't know if she yells, if she makes a sound at all, when he reaches for her upper arm, only that she absolutely can't stand the feeling. He draws back as if burned, but then she sees his expression change, to something like curiosity. He's never seen her frightened before. She's slipped.

His voice is softer now. "Come on, Jo, let's go inside, just for a bit. I can tell you're jonesing, look at you."

"Go away!" She crosses her arms in front of her chest, trying to stave off the panic. It's not even him, she could get him to go away in ten seconds if she could just calm down. It's just the implication that after everything, after the war, nothing at all has changed, she still has to sell herself to get what she wants, or at least, men still see her that way: as something with a price.

"Ryder, what the hell are you doing here?" Finnick asks. Johanna didn't even notice him come outside. She's grateful for the respite, but embarrassed more than anything, for him to see her like this, for him to witness this entire situation.

Ryder doesn't even turn around, just glares at Johanna to call Finnick off. She hates them both, in that moment, as reflections of how much she hates herself, but at least Finnick is trying to help. "Just go," she tells Ryder, aware of Finnick moving closer, sizing up the situation.

He does, eventually, turn away, but Finnick is there, on the steps, ready for a confrontation. "What are you doing here?" he asks again.

"She called me," Ryder says, and Finnick casts about, trying to catch her eye, trying to see if this is a lie. Technically it's true, so she looks away, annoyed at the entire situation. This isn't about her anymore, it's about Finnick's ego, and Ryder's self-preservation, or something like that. He tries to push past Finnick to leave, but Finnick doesn't like the contact, and shoves Ryder the rest of the way down the stairs. He catches himself, at the last moment, turning back to face Finnick, all serious now.

"What the hell?" Ryder asks, but he doesn't back down, and Finnick comes closer as well.

"Stay away from her!" Finnick says, coming in for another swing, which Ryder dodges, just barely.

"What? Keeping a wife and a woman on the side?" Ryder taunts, now sending his own punch. Johanna can see how he got the bruises, now. They go back and forth, until Finnick does land a good hit, and then Ryder rushes him, both of them tumbling to the muddy ground, and even then not letting up, grappling around.

Annie comes outside then, Seamus tucked in her arms. "Finnick Odair! What is this?" she calls, but he's deaf to her, fully focused on letting his rage out on Ryder. He gets another good punch in, then another, his positioning better, and Johanna can see his focus narrowing. It's like he's back in the Games. She thinks he might kill Ryder, and for nothing, really.

Johanna catches Annie's eye and descends the steps, circling the two of them for a moment. Ryder has the size advantage, but Finnick is younger and more nimble. They're grappling now, in the mud, Finnick on top. Johanna times a kick, catching Finnick in the ribs. This makes him lose his breath, and Ryder finally gets a rather weak hit in on Finnick's jaw. "That's enough!" Annie calls, and Ryder falls back, panting.

Finnick is trembling, obviously ready to continue, but he stops when he sees Annie watching him, their son in her arms. Johanna goes in the house, plans to get Ryder a bag of ice to put on his bruises for the walk home, but he's already left by the time she gets back outside. She hands it to Finnick instead, who's back on her porch. Annie's gone back inside. "Can I come in?" he asks.

She wonders what it says about her that she denied entry to the man who wanted to give her free drugs if they had sex together, but now lets in the man who was ready to murder another not five minutes ago. "You scared Annie," she says, and it's an statement, not a question, but he nods.

"I scared myself, a bit." He sits on Mags' couch, absentmindedly pressing the ice pack to his ribs where she kicked him, and she can see his hands still shaking with the adrenaline, the energy now with nowhere to go. She realizes that for all their past, Victors and all, she's never been violent towards Finnick before. She hasn't hurt anyone in a long time, honestly.

He looks at her, and it's a reflection of the emptiness she's felt since the war ended, the gap between the satisfaction she expected and the bleak reality of the broken nation they faced. "I saw someone, on that memorial program," he says. "One of my 'regular' clients. Maybe he helped the rebels, I don't know, but he still bought me. He still fucked me every year at the Games."

Johanna wants to sit beside him, but she can't calm down. Her head still hurts, worse than ever now, and she is too twitchy to sink into stillness on the couch. She knows her pacing is liable to make him even more on edge, so she grabs the last, precious bit of morphling and sits on the chair across from him, rolling it up into two cigarettes along with some tobacco. It's not going to be as potent as injecting it, but it's a peace offering. "I wonder about that, too," she says. "All the people who got away. The prison guards, the sponsors, the Gamemakers."

She messes up a little, the line of tobacco bunching on one end of the paper. She tips it out back into the bag and starts over. "But then I think, I'm not innocent, either. I sent those kids to die. I murdered kids. It's probably not as simple as good guys and bad guys." She wants it to be, so badly. She wants there to be punishment for the person who killed her family, and for those people who hurt her in that prison. She wants everyone who's suffered for years under Snow to be alright now, to have food and shelter and safety. But she's learned that nothing is ever so simple.

Even Finnick, always so quick to assure her that their hand was forced, is quiet, considering. "Jo, I don't know what to do. I just get so angry lately."

She moves to the couch, lighting the first cigarette and handing it to him. Then she lights hers, and they're silent for a bit, as they smoke. She watches him, a reversal of the time they were in the sauna. His clothes are muddy from the fight, but his face is as handsome as always, even with the patch over his eye. It's the same face from when she first met him: sun-tanned skin, his right eye the blue-green color of the sea, and his hair perfectly tousled without any effort. He remains muscular, despite the end of the Games and the end of the war, from day after day on the fishing boats, a look she's noticed is fairly common among the residents of District 4. But more than his looks, she sees the way he sits, like he always has beside her, an old friend. One of the only people on earth she can speak with and be completely honest. She thinks of the moment she thought he died, in the Battle of the Capitol, and feels grief that still won't completely leave her, like his presence here is still ephemeral.

"I love you." She says it before she thinks about it properly. She wants to take it back, but in a way, she's glad she's said it. If he knows that she still loves him and wants her to go, she'll go, but at least she was honest.

He turns to face her, finally breaking the meditation he seemed to be in while smoking. He puts the butt down in a saucer she has on the table, and leans forward, kissing her without warning. It's so familiar she wants to sob. She pulls away, placing her own cigarette down. The tiny bit of morphling has done enough to calm her, to dull the ache inside of her to something tolerable. And now instead of flashes of light, her entire vision is Finnick, her thoughts entirely brought back to a time where there was only the next high, the next couple hours. There had been years when she could only think an hour ahead at a time, because the whole night at once was too dreadful to comprehend.

She kisses him again, and he tastes the same - of course he does - his body feels practically the same on top of hers. She should stop and think about what she's doing, but all she's done for months is think, ruminating on shoulds and woulds that it is amazing to just feel, to just go along with what her body wants. She tugs on Finnick's shirt until it's off, rubbing her fingers along his back to feel the shape of him. He stands to slip off his pants, and she does the same, pulling off the shirt and pants that separate them. He kisses at her neck, pausing a moment to look at the seaglass necklace she's wearing.

He probably recognizes it, she knows - Annie's mother's work. "A gift," she says, and he nods. At this moment, for once, mentioning Annie does less to stir guilt inside of her and feels more like an acknowledgment, a recognition that there's someone else between them, it's not only the two of them. He lifts the necklace, kisses her skin, and places it back down.

And despite the gentleness, there's something else, a fervor, a tension, that still moves Finnick. She can feel it as he draws closer, as his motions become more urgent. Once she's ready, once he enters her, he buries himself against her neck, and she wants him to slow down, to stretch out the moment. It's been so long, and she feels so lonely, she wants more than the few minutes they will have now.

"Johanna." He says her full name as he finishes, not the nickname he tends to use, and then he falls boneless against her on the couch. He's heavy, but it's comforting, and she wraps her arms around his back. After a few minutes, when she thinks he might be close to dozing off, he turns his head to look up at her. "You can't leave," he says.

She hadn't been thinking of it, at that moment, but in general, it had crossed her mind. "Ok," she says, "I won't." How could she, if he asks her directly. She'd do anything for him.