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Haymitch had offered his bed to Johanna, and wasn't going to rescind the offer, but he hadn't realized how different the experience was going to be after the Quarter Quell. The one time they slept together since then - in the Capitol on the night before the assassination - she had taken morphling after they had sex, so she lay in an almost boneless sleep. Now, though, Johanna tosses and turns almost all night, her hands clamping against her head, intermittently trying positions with her knees drawn up or her legs fully extended. Occasionally, it will seem as if she's fallen into sleep only to awaken with a jerk of every muscle and a gasping breath.
"Fuck," he hears her hiss, while he pretends to sleep, the night still pitch black around them. She sits up, grappling for something, and then he hears the rattle of a pill bottle. She sets it on the nightstand and then leaves, shuffling downstairs quietly, and at last he's at peace in his own bed again. He wants to check if she's alright, but what can he do for her? And he's so, so tired. He slips back into sleep easily now that he's alone, and wakes alone hours later, the sun peeking into his window, feeling rested for the first time in the few days since she's come to stay.
He slips on his slippers and an old flannel shirt and shuffles over to her side of the bed. There are two medications he doesn't recognize: one to take daily, and one as needed. It doesn't indicate what they're for, but he assumes they're pain medications, to look at her. They're both running low. He chews on the inside of his lip, wondering how she's going to get more: there wasn't even a proper Healer in District 12, let alone a hospital.
He goes downstairs, but it's quiet down there, too. He wonders if she went out to walk, or if she gave up and left town. Without meaning to, he thinks of Peeta's accusations, that Johanna had left for 2, ignoring him for a year, because he was always looking at Katniss. But what was that, jealousy? He had a job to do, a war to win. He feels a twisting in his gut, a familiar guilt that rears its ugly head whenever he thinks about Jo too much. Because the truth is, he wouldn't change any of the decisions he made. And the truth is, he did leave her to be tortured in a prison for over a month, and that was after he asked her to be prepared to die to save Katniss's life in the arena.
He moves to the spare room, checking on the stills. The mash was ready, he could tell, the smell right and the yeast producing plenty of gas. Today, he could distill it. He goes to the kitchen to make breakfast, and just as he's buttering toast and pouring tea, Johanna comes back. She kicks off her combat boots by the door, and they've got a fresh coating of mud. "Morning," she says, coming to sit at the table.
He pours a second mug of tea and brings that over. "Morning. You're up early."
She shrugs. "I'm no good at sleeping anymore."
He bites the toast, and it's good, as always, since Peeta made it. "There's plenty more bread, if you want some. Homemade jam, too."
She shakes her head. "One of the women in town gave me a danish," she says.
It's strange to hear her talk about town, since for months there was no 'town', just shacks and tents as people worked to rebuild. But now there's a bonafide market district again, albeit shifted towards the Seam, and there's modest houses from the Seam to the borders of the bombed-out area, and a little memorial to those lost. "They hate to see someone who needs fattening up," he says. He means it lightly, but she averts her eyes.
"Well, I'll consider the pastries my payment for keeping their savior alive during the Quarter Quell."
He is so infinitely curious about her, the story of how she and Enobaria went from a death match at the end of the Quarter Quell to being roommates in District 2 after the war. He wants to know why she's on medications, and does she need help getting more. He wants to know where their relationship stands and does she still hate him. Did the work they made to repair their relationship that one night before the assassination all get undone in the year they were apart? Did they actually talk that night, or was he misremembering? Had it just been sex?
He wants to ask so many things, but she's so impenetrable, ready to deflect and quick to anger, and so he feels that the only way forward is with a circuitous route. "I was going to make moonshine today," he says. "Want to help?"
She shrugs, sipping the tea. "I've got nothing better to do."
She changes into one of Katniss's old outfits: a long-sleeved thermal shirt and canvas pants, and joins him in the back. He shows her the contraptions - the stills with the copper pipes between them, the charcoal filters, the camp stoves. He takes his time checking the pressure release valves and the gaskets, explaining how these could explode, if something goes wrong. "Why aren't you doing this outside, then?" she asks.
"I know what I'm doing, they won't explode," he says. "And it's nearly freezing out there."
"You're being dramatic."
He is, since it was not near freezing yet, but it is much more comfortable to distill in his own home, where he can run to the kitchen for a snack, or sit on the couch while he waits. "So we need to get this exactly to temp to get the alcohol to separate, then we cut the heat to hold it at temp."
"Is it worth all this work?" she asks, eyeing the room full of copper stills and pipes.
He smiles. "First of all, it's the best damn moonshine in Panem. But second of all, you said it, what else do we have to do?"
She shrugs, watching him work. She takes a seat in the little folding chair he keeps in the room, the one he likes when he has to keep an eye on the pressure or the temperature, and her eyes track him as he goes between the three set-ups, monitoring the progress. "I wish I had some kind of skill," she says.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean you can do this, Peeta can bake bread. Back in 2, Baria knew how to make wine, it was always 'Johanna try this, Johanna didn't you like it?'"
"I still can't believe you became friends with Enobaria," he says, sweating a bit from the heat of the stove as he watches for the pop of the pressure release valve. She's quiet for a bit, and he turns to her, to see what kind of expression she's making. She's unexpectedly serious, not taking his reply for the teasing barb he meant it.
"Being in that prison… it changed me," she says. "There was me before, and me after."
The last valve opens, and he doesn't need to watch the moonshine as closely anymore. He cuts the heat to hold the temperature, and sits on the floor across from her. "And Enobaria was there too," he finishes.
She nods. She pushes a hand against her temple as if forcing back some spasm of pain. After a few seconds, it seems to pass. "Baria didn't even do anything. She didn't know anything. But the things they did to her…" She clicks her tongue. "It makes the clients we had to see in the Capitol seem kind."
He hadn't known this. He hadn't been briefed on anything that happened in that prison, except for the brainwashing of Peeta. The rest he'd had to pick up on his own, and that wasn't much, just that they had electrocuted Johanna, and that Annie denied being tortured. He hadn't considered sexual assault, but now he realizes he'd be stupid not to. He hadn't wanted to think about it, it was simple as that. But the truth of it was, that they had 4 young Victors locked up with no oversight. It was practically an invitation. "Did they ever-" He asks her before he realizes he's probably overstepping.
"No," she answers, before he has to worry about phrasing. "No, I was 'rebel scum'. I think they shaved my head to make me less appealing to the ones that still thought about it, to be honest." She stands, turning around, as if this is all too embarrassing to say to his face. She rubs her hands down her upper arms. "They used to threaten to bring in Annie, to do things to her in front of me, if I wouldn't answer their questions."
"Did they ever make good?"
She shrugs. "I don't know. I know that's a bullshit ridiculous answer, but there's something about them frying your brain multiple times a day that just makes you forget things. There's things that I remember happened there that I'm not sure are real. And things Baria says happened that I just cannot remember. I don't remember Annie in my interrogations, but she must have been, at least once."
He stands, mostly without thinking, and hugs her from behind. It's the first time they've touched since she's been back, and he's struck by the familiarity of it: how even though they've changed, if he didn't think too much, he could pretend this was any Games before the war, really. In the background he can hear a few drips, the first signs of pure alcohol coming out through the end of the filters. "Jo," he says, not even sure what more he wants to say. He continues to vacillate between resentment over her anger at him, and guilt that her anger isn't misplaced, and right now, while they're at peace, he wants the moment to last. He should know better, though.
He slides his hands down, just six inches, over her hips, and feels the smallest bump in her pocket. But he knows that shape, that texture. "Did you go buy morphling?" he asks. Because that's certainly what it is, just a little wad of morphling, wrapped up in a little plastic ball.
She shakes out of his embrace, taking a step away, and there's a clang as she accidentally bumps into one of the stills, luckily one with cold water in it, and not one nearly boiling hot. He can practically see the walls going up. "Why, you gonna have me arrested, too?" she asks. Again, the hand to her temple, a stiffening of her jaw.
"Of course not," he says. "I just don't want to see you overdose and die. You already have the pain meds upstairs, I saw them."
She looks at him with such disdain, he he can't believe she had actually let him touch her just a minute ago. "You really think you understand everything, don't you? But you actually don't understand anything at all."
But this is just like Johanna. To mock him, to shame him into feeling inadequate, without actually telling him what he said that was wrong. She was a professional of aversion and non-answers, and it just makes him want to dig his heels in deeper. Perhaps they are both immature like that, good at fighting and war and survival, but terrible at actually working on a relationship once the world slows down.
And so he does, dig in deeper, carried by emotion and anger, rather than the strategic rationality he used to guide Katniss for years. "How did you pay for it?" he asks. She hadn't shown up with any clothes or possessions besides the couple medications shoved in her pants pockets, so he doubted she had much cash, especially if she had paid Enobaria back for the bail money.
She catches his drift immediately, and a sick smile appears on her face. "Oh, are you asking if I slept with someone for the drugs? Like old times?" Frustratingly, here she is able to keep complete eye contact with him. "And what if I did?"
His mouth is dry, he wants an out. But perversely, he also wants to know if what she is suggesting is true. But he realizes the trap too late. "I can't stop you," he says, voicing out loud the shambles of their relationship.
This seems to take the wind out of her sails a bit. Maybe she was expecting him to put up more of a fight. But he never knows what she expects, anymore. "I hate you," she says, finally putting an end to the conversation, and leaving him alone with the stills. He hears her putting her boots on, and then the front door opening and closing. He sits back in the chair, watching the liquor quietly drip, drip, drip, and replays the conversation again and again, trying to make it run the right way.