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"I got a job."
Enobaria stops what she's doing at Johanna's words, trying to make them make sense. Johanna had been home from the hospital for just over a week, and she had been well, but… a job? They're making dinner, Enobaria working on the curry and Johanna setting the table, but Enobaria turns the stove down to simmer and turns to face Johanna. "What are you talking about?"
"I just found out. It's only part time."
"What kind of job? Where?" Enobaria knew Johanna was bored being home all day, and she worried about her being alone, but she can't imagine her working in most of the jobs. Sweating at the market, or working on a building project? And Johanna was working on her schoolwork with the girls, but formwork could not be easy with her constant headaches.
Johanna puts the rest of the silverware down and walks back into the kitchen, close to Enobaria. "It's at the clinic. Just simple things, like cleaning rooms and handing the nurses things and calling people back from the waiting room. Even I can manage that much."
It was at the clinic. She can feel the relief almost palpably. "Yes, I think you will manage that just fine," Enobaria says.
Johanna closes the distance between them, draping her arms around Enobaria's neck, hanging down with most of her weight, forcing Enobaria to look at her. "And if my brain comes out of my face again, the doctor will be right there." Johanna could be so eloquent, when she wanted to be.
"That won't happen again," Enobaria says, with all the confidence she can muster. Because how could it? How could the war be over but they have to be reminded of it every day?
Johanna lets up, standing fully on her own feet again, and then up on her toes to kiss Enobaria. "You're right. Brain stays inside now. I've been using it."
"Oh yeah?" Enobaria asks, turning to serve them dinner as Johanna lets go. Johanna pours them each a glass of red wine, one of the bottles Enobaria brought home from work.
"Yeah. Ophelia and I are learning proportions."
The term sounds familiar, something Enobaria probably learned in school once, but promptly forgot after it was clear she wouldn't be doing much math in the arena, or in the Capitol afterwards. "Maybe you'll need them when you're a Healer," she says, half-serious.
But Johanna laughs as she sits to eat dinner, fully dismissive of the suggestion. "Can you imagine?" she asks. "I don't even know if I know the gauze from the bandages."
"I think you could," Enobaria says, fully serious. "The most important part is staying calm, and who is more calm than someone who's been in the arena twice?"
Johanna picks at her food, avoiding answering, but Enobaria knows she'll eat. She's got a better appetite now with the new medication, and it's relieving, that some things are going right, at last.
Things are going well at the vineyards, too. It's almost spring, and Enobaria has been busy. It's just her and the old man who owns the place, Janus, and his daughter-in-law, Willa, widowed after the war. Willa is small and quiet, and though she's always kind to Enobaria, she's not cut out for farm work. Instead she helps the old man by managing the budget and arranging shipments of the wine to other districts, and she does all the purchasing for him. It's just Enobaria and Janus in the fields and in the winery.
She hadn't realized when she took the job that she was filling in the gap left by his son's death. That was how the District after the war was, everyone was stepping on everyone's toes and not realizing it, even as they tried to give each other grace. But gradually, she and Janus learned more about each other, about their dead families, and she earned his trust, the coveted job of becoming his apprentice, without clouding the memory of his son.
"Your girl any better?" he asks, as they are spraying out one of the tanks.
She nods. "She is working now, a little," she says.
"Glad to hear it. Have her bring a bottle of the '73 to her boss, that will win them over."
"Thank you, I will."
And when she gets home in the evening, bottle of wine in hand, she sees a note on the counter. Went to Toni's, meet me there?
It wasn't unusual for Johanna to go see Enobaria's nieces. She got out of work around the same time they finished school, so she would do homework with them, but she usually came home to have dinner with Enobaria. Curious, Enobaria walks the short distance to her sister-in-law's house, and Meli opens the door, almost jumping with excitement. "Johanna is getting a haircut!" she says.
Oh. Well, that was one reason to go see Antonia. Enobaria pours herself a glass of juice and finds the others, Antonia sharpening her clippers and Johanna sitting in the styling chair. Ophelia is beside her sitting on a cushion and reading a book, holding Johanna's hand.
"Nervous?" Enobaria asks, looking between them.
"Oh, that's Ophelia," Antonia says. "She won't let Johanna go these days." Enobaria knows her had been concerned about Johanna's health, probably afraid after they'd lost an aunt and grandmother and father in the course of 6 months.
"Oh, let's show Enobaria," Johanna says to Ophelia, and her eyes light up. Both stand up, and Enobaria doesn't know what she's looking at, until she realizes they're standing eye to eye. Her little niece is now the same height as her girlfriend.
"You got tall!" Enobaria says, and Ophelia beams.
"Second tallest in my class," she says. "And Johanna is not tall," she laughs, in her sweet, shy voice.
"Yeah, well, we don't grow the same in the cold north," Johanna says, tickling Ophelia's sides. "We spend the whole winter huddled up, shivering!"
Antonia has finished her preparations, and Johanna sits back down. "You sure?" Antonia asks, and Johanna nods.
"I don't want it back," she says. "I'm not going to be that person ever again."
Enobaria was surprised that Johanna hadn't discussed the haircut with her, but she wonders if it was a little impulsive, something she felt like she needed to do. She doesn't mind: she finds the likes the short hair, actually, a reminder of the Johanna that became hers.
Antonia shaves the hair off quickly, the guard on the clippers keeping only a finger-width of brown hair. It looks surprisingly good, sexy even, with Johanna's angled eyebrows and sharp cheekbones. "Good?" Antonia asks, presenting the mirror.
Johanna nods. "Very good, thank you."
The girls ooh and ahh, much like Enobaria wants to, but she knows to wait until they're home. "You should get a second piercing," Antonia suggests.
"What?"
"In District 2, it's traditional to have two ear piercings. Most women wear two silver studs, or two gold hoops. I think it would look good."
Enobaria wants to interject, and she's not even sure why, whether it's to stop Johanna from anything that causes pain, however temporary, or whether to say that she doesn't have to participate in traditional District 2 fashions, but to her surprise, Johanna says, "Ok."
"Yeah?"
"You can do it now? Then sure. I mean, the girls have two piercings, you and Baria have two… I feel like I'm missing out."
Meli cheers, and shows off the little studs in her ears. Enobaria is hung up on hearing her nickname falling so easily from Johanna's lips. She wants to hear it again. She wants to run her fingers through the soft peach fuzz on Johanna's head, make her come, and hear her call her 'Baria'. The thought won't leave her as she watches Johanna's forehead crease as the needle is inserted through her ear, and she imagines her face contorted in pleasure instead.
Her wish is granted hours later when they're back home and her face is between Johanna's legs, her fingers pushing up inside her and she feels Johanna clench around her, can feel her coming, and she calls her name "Enobaria".
"Call me Baria," she says, suddenly craving it like nothing else, the name and the feeling and the vision all need to be there for the pieces to fall into place. She's aroused, pleasing Johanna always gets her close, but she wants what she wants.
"Baria, please, too much," Johanna says, pulling away from her. Enobaria slows down, her hand barely moving in and out, but she refuses to stop - Johanna would tell her to stop if she really wanted her to. She crawls up higher to lick her sternum, to scrape her teeth just barely over her nipples.
"Baria, oh…"
Johanna turns her head to the side, and Enobaria wants to make her bring it back, so she can watch every change in Johanna's expression, but Johanna lifts her knee, pressing it between Enobaria's legs, the pressure she so desperately desired. She increases her pace again now that Johanna's had a few moments to come down from her orgasm, and she thrusts against her thigh. It shouldn't be enough, just to push against Johanna like this, but it is, when she is lost in the act of loving Johanna. She can feel it - Johanna getting close again - and she swirls her tongue against Johanna's nipple, flicking her thumb against her clit with every thrust, until Johanna is coming undone for the second time, her head pressed back against the mattress in utter pleasure, the gold gleaming from her ears in the dim light.
"Baria, yes, yes!" she calls, and Enobaria is taken over the edge as well, watching her is just enough, and Johanna seems to know, her leg pressing hard against Enobaria despite the rest of her falling limp.
After, they collapse on the bed, and Johanna pulls her close, Enobaria's head resting against her chest. Johanna traces lines along her back, her fingers gentle and familiar. "I didn't know you wanted to be called that," she says, after a few minutes.
"I didn't either," Enobaria says. "I hadn't heard it in a while. And then when you said it I thought 'I want this'."
Johanna kisses the top of her head. "It's pretty."
In another few days they have dinner with Lyme, who is in the neighborhood after supervising the final stages of a building project a couple blocks away. They go to Enobaria's favorite chicken restaurant, and she's having a lovely time, until Lyme mentions Gale.
"You're the one who told me to meet with him!" Lyme says, a little exasperated as she sips her liquor.
Johanna looks amused but stays silent, and Enobaria has to explain that yes, but she meant just once, that she was concerned about Gale destroying everything so she wanted to do damage control, not make a friendship. "I didn't think you'd keep going back," she says, hating how childish she sounds.
"I think his project is important, same as you do," Lyme says. "I don't know why they gave it to a 21-year old who served less than a year in the military."
"So you're a mentor?" Enobaria asks.
Lyme looks around, then leans in close. "No, I'm working on a side project. So far, we've found at least 12 targets," she says. "Bad eggs. Rapists and murderers. Men who would be happy to go back to how things were. That's the kind of stuff I'm helping with."
Johanna leans in as well, her expression turned serious in an instant. "And what are you going to do? Kill them?"
Lyme softens. "Not in the new Panem. I'm trying to compile evidence to send to the Capitol, for a military tribunal. Enough to get them serious prison time, if not worse. And I'm trying to do it quietly enough that they don't know I'm onto them and escape."
"Thank you," she says. Enobaria wonders if Lyme knows how much this means to them both, that the people that made their lives hell aren't just being forgotten, allowed to carry on.
"Oh, Gale's got a girlfriend," Johanna chirps, once they've all started eating.
"What?" Enobaria says. "He's not hung up on Katniss?"
Johanna shrugs. "He might be, but he's definitely dating Nia at the clinic."
"How's the job, by the way?" Lyme asks.
Johanna widens her eyes. "They told me I would be sweeping up, working the sign-in sheet, things like that. Not giving people vaccines!"
"Told you you're going to be a Healer," Enobaria says. "Good thing you know math now."
After work a few weeks later, Enobaria takes the tram one extra stop to go to the store to buy patches for the window screens. Their apartment was a little older, and now that insects were coming out for spring, Enobaria wanted to patch the windows so they could keep them open without inviting in an infestation. The store near the house didn't carry hardware and household supplies, so she took the extra stop to pick it up.
She grabs the patches, and a lightbulb just in case they need a spare, and she sees him just as she's turning back towards the check-out. She's certain it's him, because she saw him every day for over a month. She saw him inches from her face. His body touched hers, and he left himself on her.
The prison guard is standing at the end of the aisle, dressed in a Peacekeepers uniform, with a standard military haircut, the only particularly special features are his mustache and his height, easily as tall as Gloss had been. He has seen her, she realizes, and she's frozen in the aisle, wondering how hard she can clench the lightbulb before it explodes in her hand, before little shards of glass embed themselves in her palm, and for once it's her in the clinic.
But she's not thinking about herself, not at first. She's thinking of this man holding a wet towel against Johanna's face for too long, and of him slamming her head against the interrogation table so hard she lost consciousness. She thinks of him attaching electrodes and holding the button down for so long Enobaria screams for him to stop, that surely no one can survive something like that.
Only after that does she think of him coming for her, seeking her body for his pleasure, or as another way to make Johanna answer questions. They stare at each other for what feels like ages in the back of the hardware store. She can't move; she can hardly breathe.
"What are you doing here?" he asks, finally, as if he can't comprehend if she's a mirage or a ghost or a real living person.
She wants to scream that she's fucking from here, that she's been District 2's Victor for two Hunger Games, but she can't speak. She has nothing to say to him. She drops the lightbulb and the screen patch into a display basket and turns and runs, as fast as she can out of the store. She runs down a back alley, and then zig-zags through the neighborhood so hopefully he cannot follow. He looks incredibly athletic, but with any luck, he's so muscular he can't change direction quickly, or maybe he's so confused by her appearance he won't even try to pursue.
When she gets to her apartment, she's too afraid to stop and wait for the elevator, so she runs up the stairs to the 6th floor, unlocking the door as fast as she can, and then bolting and chaining the door behind her. She's out of breath, so she sits with her knees to her chest against the door, listening to the silent apartment, and straining her ears to listen for the sounds of anyone in the corridor, footsteps coming towards their door in pursuit.
But there's nothing. No sounds from the hallway, and no sounds from inside either. A window is cracked, and she can hear the sounds of the trams and other hubbub from the street below, but inside their apartment, nothing. Which is odd - Johanna should be here. Her heart begins to race again, the panic that had just barely ebbed away returning, making her feel hot and prickly under her muddy, sweaty work clothes.
It's evening now, the sun almost fully set, so the apartment is in shadow. "Jo?" she calls, her voice coming out shakier, quieter than she anticipated. She pictures the guard, or maybe a different guard, already in her apartment, holding Johanna hostage, waiting for her to return. But why wait? Why not just murder Johanna? Her hands are shaking now, and she moves through the apartment, checking Johanna's room first - empty, bed made and lights off - and then her own.
Johanna is asleep on Enobaria's bed, tucked under the covers, a t-shirt draped over her eyes in the way she preferred when she had a bad headache. The relief that Enobaria feels to see Johanna at home and unharmed is immense, and she pauses inside the bedroom door, allowing herself to breathe. The tension is still there - holding her jaw tight, making her pulse beat loud enough she could hear it - but she doesn't immediately go to wake Johanna up. She wants a moment alone, even if she can't explain it.
She goes into the bathroom, starting the shower, and taking off her dirty work clothes. She steps in once the water has heated up, but ends up sitting on the floor of the bathtub, letting the water fall over her. She might still be shaking, it's hard to say. She might be crying, but she can hide it here, in the shower.
What was she going to do? How could she go out and risk seeing him again?
Now that she's alone, she can't help but remember him, and remember his body on hers, the way she was powerless to resist him when he decided he wanted to take her by force. She was a prisoner, what could she do? She feels the same thing again now, in a way, the same revelation she's had again and again all her life.
The size of the cage keeps changing, but the idea is the same: she's never free, not really. She's forced to play by the rules of someone's game, whether it's in the arena, in the Capitol, in that prison, or here, in District 2. She can't really do as she pleases, because the loyalists are still at large within the military. Snow might not be in power, but his cronies still are, scattered throughout Panem, and no one had taken care to make sure they were all brought to justice. Wouldn't it just be a matter of time before she is once again commodified for her body, or told she can't do something because she's less than those men who held the line for Snow?
Enobaria doesn't hear the door to the bathroom open, but Johanna comes and sits on the counter, and Enobaria can see her through the translucent curtain. "You've been in there a while, are you alright?" she asks.
She isn't. She isn't alright, but how can she explain it all to Johanna? She stands up, going through the motions of actually washing herself. "Are you? You don't normally sleep early unless you're feeling sick."
Johanna shrugs, and Enobaria turns away to rinse off. "Feeling a little better. Same old."
Enobaria turns the water off and exits the shower, tucking a towel around herself and putting another around her hair. Johanna is in her pajamas, a couple knuckles pressed into the side of her head that always ached, and Enobaria can't help but picture that guard slamming her head into the interrogation table, wondering if he was the one who did this, who made Johanna's life miserable even now, months after the war. "You were right," Enobaria says. She feels a little more settled now, but even so, her voice shakes when saying the words.
"About what?" Johanna seems to pick up on the tension and sounds nervous as well. There is no gloating about possibly gaining an upper hand.
Enobaria slips on lounge pants and a T-shirt and turns back to Johanna. "They are here. They didn't all die."
"What? Who?"
"The guards. From the prison."
Johanna slips off the counter, coming to stand right in front of Enobaria. "Are you alright? What happened?"
Enobaria nods, even though she isn't, because she isn't hurt, and she isn't dead. "I saw one, at the hardware store."
"Which one?"
"Mustache."
"Did he see you?"
Enobaria nods. He had certainly seen her; he had spoken to her. And although many women in District 2 shared her looks and her hairstyle, even her style of dress, none shared her teeth - it had to be her. Besides: he had looked at her every day for a month. He had fucked her. He knew what she looked like.
Johanna closes the distance between them, then seems to stop. "Is… can I hold you?"
Enobaria wonders why Johanna even asks, but Johanna is always cautious like that. With sex, with all intimacy, she never proceeds until she's certain. And Enobaria is certainly on edge, but she was so desperate to be home, to see Jo, she wishes she could communicate it properly. Instead she just nods, because it will make them be connected soonest.
Johanna holds onto her with surprising force, and whispers in her ear, "He will never touch you again." And then she pulls Enobaria to the bed, and they lay together, and Enobaria takes a long time to settle, trying to remember if she did lock the door, and if she got all the lights, and so on.
"We could just kill him," Johanna suggests, after bringing in some snacks. They don't usually eat in bed, but the whole night was unusual. It felt like the Games, when they were Mentors, the whole strange schedule of eating and sleeping at odd hours, eternally waiting for some event or client or the next shift in the booth with the headset.
"We have killed people before," Enobaria agrees.
"I'm sure they'd send us to prison for it," Johanna says. "Then it would just happen all over again."
"Lyme is doing that thing - collecting evidence and all that. We have to talk to her, try to get him on trial."
Johanna flops across her lap, looking up at her questioningly. "Are you willing to testify… about everything that happened in there?"
Enobaria considers this. "I mean… Finnick already told the whole world we were whores when we were Mentors. What is this on top of that?"
Johanna lets out half a smile, then turns over, onto her own side of the bed. "Then I guess that's it. But we really ought to lay low, I mean, I don't want to be caught out with that loser just wandering around."
Enobaria nods. "Just work and home, that's it. We'll tell the girls we need to take a break for a while."