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At the beginning of the 72nd Games, Johanna is sick. The train ride to the Capitol is long and hot, and the idea of going back to the Capitol, back into dark rooms and hands where she doesn't want them, and sex when she doesn't want it, and no chance to refuse lest she ruin Finnick's life - it all makes her ill.
Feverish and dizzy, she sits at the Welcoming Ceremony next to Elin, who she doesn't mind the company of because she's quiet and sometimes dozes off. Either way, she hardly ever is good for a conversation. Tonight, however, it looks like the 6 escort is making sure she's on her best behavior, pepping her up with some sort of upper-laced drink so that she stays somewhat in the present. They are sitting on a plush sofa in the corner of the parlor, watching the Victors and tributes and escorts mingle, but the whole thing is sickening to Johanna, a repeat of a prior year, a precursor to a bloodbath.
"You're seeing Haymitch, huh?" Elin asks, without any preamble.
She's not wrong, exactly, Johanna did like to see him from time to time, but she didn't think anyone had noticed. Naturally, she didn't account for someone who spent all her time tucked quietly in the corner of the room, observing. "Only on occasion," Johanna replies. It's the truth. It's hard to make time for anything during the Hunger Games, and she's only in the Capitol for a month anyways.
"Careful," Elin says, leaning closer. Johanna realizes this must be her, Haymitch's ex, and as soon as she realizes it wonders how she never saw it before. "He'll be here for you now, but he'll always prioritize something else, or someone else. He's playing a long game."
"Speak of the devil," Johanna murmurs, and Elin laughs gently as Haymitch appears, drink in hand as usual. He looks at Elin, perhaps surprised that she is not her usual drugged-out self, and puts a hand on her shoulder.
"How are you?" he asks. There's a tenderness there that pulls at Johanna's heart, a desire for them to be ok. It's not the envy she feels when she thinks of Finnick and Annie, she truly wants Haymitch to be able to save Elin. Maybe she sees herself in the woman from 6, a bit, in a way she never did with Annie, and that if Haymitch is able to save Elin, then there will be a chance someone can save her.
Elin shrugs out of the contact, a hurt expression on her face. "Been better," she says, and Johanna wonders when that was - before she was ever reaped, probably. Johanna knows her fantasy isn't true. Haymitch, Finnick, no one can save her or Elin or anyone like them trapped in their type of misery. People like them can only save themselves or kill themselves - all at once, or little by little.
After her meeting with Plutarch Heavensbee, Johanna's head is spinning. What was initially relief that he didn't want to sleep with her turned to disbelief at what he was telling her: a rebellion? spies? turned to fear at what he was asking her to do. Even now, heading back into the Training Center, she isn't sure what to think.
"Haymitch recommended you," he said, as if Haymitch was a bastion of good choices. As if Haymitch was a dependable person. She is simultaneously angry that Haymitch kept this rebellion a secret from her for years, and that now that he deigned to include her, her task is to seduce the Head Gamemaker.
She wants to go to the 12 apartment and confront him, but she can't. She doesn't know what she can say openly, and knowing herself, she'll say too much and get them killed. She wants to yell at him, to be angry, and she knows she'll just ruin one of the only friendships she has. So instead she goes to the 4 apartment.
It is stupid: the way that she goes to Haymitch when she is annoyed at Finnick and vice-versa, but they both use her as well, so she supposes it's just a big triangle of everyone using each other. Finnick opens the door and without a word pulls her inside, embracing her in a hug without even a greeting.
Her head turned outward as she is tucked against his chest, she can see the 4 apartment is different this year. Mags isn't there, and Finnick has dismissed the escort and Avox as well. It's more like the 7 apartment, but even lonelier, since it's just him alone. She stands there, accepting his embrace, unsure of what has happened, realizing that since her life has changed: taking clients again to protect Finnick and Annie, and now this rebellion bullshit for Plutarch, she doesn't know what is happening with Finnick.
"I missed you," he says, speaking into the side of her neck. She hasn't heard his voice in nearly a year. It sends a shiver down her spine, and arousal deep in her core, a feeling she's forgotten is there.
"Finnick," she says. It's half a question, asking him for an explanation. They don't have to be lovers, exactly, but she doesn't want to be his mistress, or his toy when he's feeling bad.
"I…" He traces his hands down her arms, holding onto her wrists. "Annie is getting treatment back at 4. I decided not to propose, I don't want to burden her with my feelings. I want her to focus on her recovery. And well… I am a threat to her."
She pulls his hand up to her mouth, biting lightly on the side of his finger.He's telling her he's single, at least this go-around. She can't say something comforting, because there is nothing comforting, she can't even offer an 'I'm sorry' because she's Johanna Mason and that's not her style. "I see," she says, pressing her forehead against his sternum.
His expression wavers. It's so obviously not how he hoped to return to the Games, and he nods solemnly. "Just me. Just you. Just how the Capitol likes it."
He pulls her along to the bedroom, and they sleep together for the first time in a year. She knows it won't last - it never does - that Annie Cresta will get better and he will be back to being a committed boyfriend, or he'll get spooked by Snow and grow cold again. But they've waxed and waned enough times that she's realized he always comes around again. That someone like her probably will never get a boyfriend, or a husband, or a steady lover, just little moments of bliss stolen here and there where she can collect them. And when her life has been so many miseries put together, who would fault her for reaching out and taking the pleasures that come along?
After, laying naked in the sheets with Finnick, she wants to confess about the rebellion, she wants to test the waters to see if Plutarch Heavensbee has any secret missions for Finnick Odair, but in the off-chance he hasn't, she wants to keep him away from that, and even if he has, she wants to preserve the delusion they share in their apartments - that they're just two kids lost after their Games, drunk and playing at being Mentors still.
During her first meeting with Seneca Crane after he is made Head Gamemaker, she finds him more the same than he is different. His house is nicer, certainly, and there is a new air of confidence about him, but there is mostly confusion. He wants to make the best Games, but he is unsure of why. He lacks purpose. Perhaps that is why he seeks her out again, because she was the one who pointed this out to him the first time. Or perhaps it is just coincidence. Plutarch advises her not to push this issue, at least, when she recounted in excruciating detail what her first encounter with Seneca Crane was like, or at least what she could remember of it.
"Care for a drink?" Seneca asks her, opening his glitzy bar cabinet, still wearing an obnoxious royal blue suit that he must have worn to some Capitol event earlier.
"Sure, whatever you're having," she says, settling back on the couch. The drink ends up being some fizzy green concoction that is too fancy for her sensibilities, but she can't argue about the taste - it's delicious. "You should sit," she offers, since he's nervously idling across the room. She isn't polite, exactly, it's hard to be polite to the Capitol elite, to the man literally pulling the strings of the Hunger Games, but she can keep herself from being outright mean.
Seneca Crane sits, a few inches from touching her on the couch. He's shrugged off his jacket, and she can see him sweating through the armpits of his shirt. He looks older than last time she saw him. He sips nervously at the drink. "I'm glad you came, I wanted the company. I'm just… this is it - this is my first big test," he says. He sounds like he might vomit.
She wants to ask him how the kids in the arena feel, or ask him why he even accepted the job in the first place, but according to Plutarch, her job is to ply Seneca, to make him feel secure. "It's going well, I think," she says. "Blight's been mostly in the Mentor booth, but I don't think there's been any controversies. And the visuals have been good." She tries to sound detached, like she's heard Finnick talk, and not like she's discussing the televised murder of 23 children, two of which she knows, at least as acquaintances.
He seems to calm down a little at that, sipping the rest of his drink. "Yeah, but it never really ends, huh? Either I get good, and I have to keep churning them out, or I mess up, and it's really all over for me…"
She has nothing much to say to that, because she's in the same boat. She wants to punch Seneca, to shake him, to ask him how he got so deep into this Capitol bullshit career without realizing this was the only end, but she was tricked by it too, so she can't. She feels bad for him a little, even. It's funny, how it happens, how she feels a little sympathy for the man designing mazes to torture and kill children.
Maybe it's true sympathy, or just a reflection of her own pain. Maybe it's just to make it sting less when they're having sex later and she's biting her lip as she stares at the ceiling, waiting for it to be over.
She's in the booth taking a shift for Blight, surprised when the boy from 7 is one of the final 10 tributes. Elin is there too, beside her at the 6 station, surprisingly sober as the boy from 6 is still in the Games as well. Johanna's boy, Spruce, is built stocky and tough, and she thinks he can go all the way so long as he keeps his head on his shoulders and doesn't succumb to some freak attack. The arena this year is cold - there's a snow-covered mountain on one end, an icy lake in the middle, and a forest on the other sides, filled with all sorts of wintery-themed mutts.
So far Spruce has done well to stay in the cover of the trees, keeping watch for the mutts, building a fire when it's safe, and using his hatchet as a weapon, but Johanna was focused on getting him sponsors for some gloves, since she could see his dexterity was starting to go in his fingers. She knew he was hungry, she would try to get him food too, but what good was the food if he couldn't open the package?
She was annoyed by Seneca Crane, who in the interest of "fairness", promised only to pay her after the Games, lest his money go to a tribute in the arena of his creation. Yes, she thought, Why else would I come see you?
But then again, she supposed she did have other reasons to see him.
Her attention is drawn to the 6 screen, where Elin has pushed back her chair, her hand to her mouth. "No, not again," she says quietly.
The 6 tribute, Titus, has killed one of the other tributes. Johanna can't even see who it is, from the bloody gore on the ground. What she can see is Titus with his hands in the girl's chest, pulling some of her out and bringing it to his already blood red mouth. Johanna prays that the feed delay has kept this from making it out to Panem. Elin flees the room. She follows, hating that she is abandoning her Tribute, but how can she just let Elin go?
She chases her down a stairwell, into a hallway that seemed to be a staff corridor to the training center. Elin ducks into an empty room, some sort of weapons storage room, and sits against the wall, knees to her chest. Johanna doesn't know what to do. She came to help, but she isn't Finnick, naturally comforting, or Haymitch, who knew Elin when they were both young. She eases herself down the wall to sit beside Elin, trying to keep her breathing even to oppose Elin's hyperventilation. "Hey, it's alright, no one even saw it, you know they're going to cover it up before it gets out," she says.
"He saw it," Elin says, speaking into her knees. Then she lifts her head up, the back of it hitting the wall with a thud. "God, I spent so many years wishing to die, wishing I was already dead, wondering why I was still alive. And now I've finally gotten to a place where it's alright, where maybe I can just mind my own business and live my quiet life in 6, and now he's going to come find me and punish me for this."
Johanna feels it again, the need for Elin to be alright. That if Elin has found a reason to want to be alive, even alone, that she has a hope for herself as well. "I know someone, I can ask a favor," she says.
But Elin's hand reaches out, bony fingers firm on her arm. "Don't you dare put yourself in their clutches for me," she says. Her gaze softens. "You're just like me, I can see why he likes you."
Johanna finds herself back at Seneca Crane's sooner than she expects. She had planned to call him to intervene for Elin, but he had invited her back himself. Now, he's even more stressed than last time, his jacket is already off, and his usually neat mustache is askew. The Hunger Games live feed is streaming in his living room, and she sits watching, smoking from his waterpipe as he watches, enraptured.
"I shouldn't even be here," he admits. "I told them I was leaving for a change of clothes and a shower, two hours at most, I just needed a moment to myself, but I really just needed to talk to someone outside of that bubble."
She exhales smoke, unsure of what he's angling for.
"I think I'm fucked."
"What?"
"The cannibal boy. It's horrible. Capitolites don't like thinking about that, and well, it's just bad television. How could this happen during my first Games?"
She bites her cheek, thinking about her options. What would Haymitch do? What would Finnick do? What would Plutarch do? It doesn't really matter though, since she was the one assigned to be Seneca Crane's lover. "I think," she says, leaning towards him, "That the President trusted you to manage the Games, so it's your responsibility to manage any nuisances to the Capitol as well. If the boy is a problem, you are the Head Gamemaker, you just need to… manage him."
She feels disgusting saying it, like a villain, essentially instructing him to murder someone, but she murdered children more innocent with Titus with her own hands, so it isn't an impossible task. The Capitol made her this way, just like it make Seneca Crane and Titus.
Seneca takes the waterpipe from her, pulling on it, tasting her plan. "Just… take him out of play. You're right, he can't have the opportunity to become Victor."
"Oh, absolutely not," she agrees. It's a perfect solution, saving Elin, bolstering her tribute, and saving Seneca's job. And all it takes is one accident inside the arena.
She's not surprised when the avalanche comes down the next day, burying Titus. It's not unlike when the dam burst early in Annie's Games. But this time, she stays in her apartment, wanting no part in watching Titus's death, no attention from Elin or anyone. Spruce comes in second place, the final murder of the 72nd Games.
In the offseason, there are massive forest fires, and though she doesn't work as a logger or in the lumbermills or papermills, she sees the workers hanging around town more than they are at their jobs, since work becomes scarce, and it feels that all of District 7 is on edge. She wouldn't be surprised if most of the children put in for Tesserae this year. It feels frustrating - how Plutarch is planning a rebellion in "a few cycles" or when the stars align, but there are thousands of families suffering right now.
When she returns to the Capitol for the 73rd Games, the first person she has a conversation with is not Haymitch or Finnick, but surprisingly, Cashmere. She shoves Johanna into an empty training room before she knows what's happening, closing the door and putting herself between Johanna and the exit. She's taller than Johanna, intimidatingly beautiful as the face of all Victors, and from the feel of her shove as she pushes Johanna back against the lockers that line the back wall, at this point in time, she's stronger as well.
"We need to talk."
Johanna has no idea what she's done to piss off District 1 before the Games have even started, but she doesn't have to guess, because Cashmere continues, now that she's sure Johanna is listening, her ears ringing and head aching from being bashed into the lockers.
"What are you doing seducing the Head Gamemaker?"
Johanna bites her cheek. She wants to scratch her nails along Cashmere's face, to ask her how she's been in the game this long and still not understand that she doesn't get a choice in who she's forced to entertain. But a deeper part of her knows that she is trying to use Seneca Crane as much as he is using her, so she resists the urge. Besides, she's not looking for a beating the day before the Tribute Parade. "You know I am not allowed to refuse his invitations," she says diplomatically.
Cashmere scoffs, which from her perfect face, looks as vulgar as if she had spit. "Sure, but you have to admit it's suspect. You're a Mentor, after all, sleeping with the Head Gamemaker?"
Johanna shrugs. "As frustrating as I find it, he won't pay me until the Games are over. So it's useless for sponsor money, if that's what you're after." She keeps her voice calm, but her heart is racing. She thinks she knows where this conversation is going, and she doesn't like it.
Cashmere bites her lip and narrows her eyes, keeping her hands off of Johanna but looming over her by several inches. "Of course his help wouldn't be so… direct," she admits, "But I saw the dam break, and the avalanche. Things can… happen in the arena," she suggests.
Johanna matches her gaze. Those incidents helped a Tribute from 4 and a Mentor from 6. There was no direct link back to her, though she assumes Cashmere has put together the pieces of her friendship with Finnick and her affinity for Elin. "I have no idea what you're talking about." She was not here to get bullied into helping District 1, already laden with Career tributes and sponsor money.
Now Cashmere does shove her again, striking her quickly in the sternum so her head is again slammed back against the metal lockers. "Don't play dumb, Mason. I know you're whispering in his ear. And I will remember that if I need a favor. And if you don't help me out when I need it, I'll cry to Snow that maybe you're having an undue influence on these Games."
"Bitch," she manages, though the room is spinning. She hopes she's staring down the correct Cashmere.
Johanna is surprised when she opens the door of the 7 apartment to Haymitch. She has gone to his apartment, certainly, but he only came to the 7 apartment once before. She had been expecting Finnick, if she had to guess, and perhaps she let her surprise show too openly as she steps back to let Haymitch enter.
He looks at her searchingly as he steps inside, but she knows he won't find anything. Remake cleaned her up nicely of the assault she took from Cashmere, and though her head still ached and she was still nauseous, probably both from the concussion and the threat looming over her, she is reasonably certain that Haymitch can't see it.
"I'm going to pour a drink, you want one?" he offers. It's her apartment, perhaps she should be offering such things to him, but it's a bad greeting in the first place, so she doesn't comment on it.
"Sure, anything is fine," she says. She feels gentle again, tamed. She's on edge back at the Capitol, but all her fire and rage against Haymitch is tamped down with the eleven months apart. He is broken, in front of her, reaching for a drink the moment he sees her, and he's empty, she can feel it.
They both are. Finnick goes home to the embrace of Annie, of his sisters, of his parents. He eats meals with family, sees Mags, enjoys time with his friends in District 4. He has something to look forward to in the time away from the Capitol. For Johanna, and for Haymitch as well, the only relief in leaving the Games was the distance from the Capitol. There was no one for her back home. She hasn't been touched by another person in eleven months. And she's almost certain it's the same for him.
She walks over to him, where he stands before her liquor, sipping his drink, and rests her forehead in the space between his shoulder blades. He smells familiar, and she can feel the tension caught there, though she doesn't know if it's from her, from the Games, from just being back here once again. "Why are you here?" she asks, the words spoken into his spine.
"I'm worried about you," he says. He turns around, handing her the glass he poured for her, and then she turns around as well, unable to make eye contact with him. He reaches forward, his arm crossing her chest, willing her to stay close for now.
"I'm fine as ever," she says, irritation in her voice. She tries to swallow some of it down with the amber liquor, but it is bitterness on bitterness. No part of her is fine, she hasn't been fine since the reaping. She doesn't want to die, but she doesn't want to be alive like this either. She's caught in this endless purgatory, where the only solution feels like numbing herself constantly, or seeking small pleasures where she can find them.
"I'm afraid you're drawing too much attention," he says, the statement practically murmured into the top of her head. He must have heard about Cashmere then, or at least a rumor of it. Which meant there was a chance Enobaria might try the same thing, or that Snow might come to the same conclusion without Cashmere ratting her out. Seneca Crane was turning into a mess, and he feels responsible, for setting up the whole arrangement. She nods, piecing it together, though it makes her a bit dizzy.
"It's fine," she reassures him. "I'll take more diverse clients. I'll warn him to take more clients as well, to avoid implications of favoritism." She sips the drink again, though she doesn't really want it. She wants to project calmness, and to give her hands something to do.
Still, he doesn't move his left arm from it's position across her chest. "Johanna, the dam was one thing, but the avalanche-"
"I had to- you didn't see her-"
He sighs, kissing her head. Her body betrays her and she can feel herself backing up to press against him more closely. "Thank you," he says. "But before you risk your life again, I just want to make sure you know what you want."
Her heart is hammering now, both from the closeness and the way his questions, as always, cut to the meat of the matter. "I want to be left alone, I want to be guaranteed a quiet and safe life," she says. She sighs. "But I know that isn't going to happen." She's had time to do thinking in her silent house in the Victor's Village. "So, with the lot I've been given, I'd like to protect the few people I care about, and resist this Capitol status quo however I can." She reaches back and squeezes his thigh, probably tighter than he was expecting, but it's hard to say this out loud. "I'm not a martyr. I'm not trying to draw attention and get myself killed. It's just… if I see an opportunity, I'm going to take it."
She can feel him relax, perhaps satisfied that she was no longer completely aimless as she swam upstream in the Capitol politics. "Do you want to be left alone right now?" he asks.
Her hand is still clinging to his leg, and she moves her other hand, the one holding the liquor, to press against his arm on her chest. "No."
Johanna keeps her word to Haymitch, spreading out her variety of clients to avoid suspicion, and when she does see Seneca Crane, tells him to see a variety of Victors as well. Seneca himself seems more assured this year, now that they're nearly to the end of the Games with no major controversies. But she can still see the doubt shining through the cracks in his perfect Capitol veneer, from the way he will tell her his plans, looking for confirmation that he's on the right path, or that there is a right path at all. For her part, she was told by Plutarch to wait, that they need Seneca Crane through the 74th, so she coaches him that he's doing a good job, and back at the Mentor center, she watches her back for Cashmere.
She hates this, hates the waiting, hates another year of tributes dying, of starvation in 7, of strikes that will be brought down by peacekeepers violently, but the logical part of her brain knows she should do as Plutarch says. There is no way a rebellion will work right now, and all she'll succeed at is getting herself killed. The illogical side hates taking orders from a Capitolite, and wonders if perhaps it would be so bad to die at least trying to fight for something she believes in.
It's Finnick who is able to ground her, as always. "Hey," he says, opening the 4 apartment door when she arrives, the night after his last tribute dies. It's the final 3 tributes now, there should be a new Victor crowned by dawn.
"Want to hang out?" she asks. She's too hungover to drink, too exhausted from entertaining the sponsors to want to have sex, she just wants to sit on the couch with him.
He nods and lets her in. They haven't seen much of each other this year, both busy securing sponsors, working in the booth, entertaining sponsors for reasons unrelated to their Tributes. His hair is longer, she notices, and he has a new beaded necklace around his neck. A gift, most likely from Annie. She thinks to ask how she's doing but swallows the question, because she doesn't really want to know.
They sit on the couch, and Finnick has the Games on, muted. It's like a drug: they have no reason to keep watching, but they can't look away. There's a girl from 1, a boy from 2, and a boy from 10 left in the arena, which looks like a desert, a complete reversal from the year before, with sun beating down during the day, and cold unforgiving darkness at night.
Johanna pulls the waterpipe out from where she knows he keeps it, and starts packing it with the mixture she brought. He sits beside her, working knots into and out of a strand of rope. "It's a thing they gave Annie at the home she's living at right now, apparently it's good to keep you calm," he says, as a means of explanation.
She wants to ask him if he is agitated, but swallows it down. How could anyone be calm in the Capitol? "Does it work?" she asks instead.
He shrugs. "It turns my mind off, a bit."
She lights the pipe, and smokes a few hits, then passes it off to him. It feels familiar, like this could be any Games, in any year, and she lets herself forget how many times she's done this now. They're 23, which isn't old, of course, but she feels old, after so many cycles of this stupid schedule.
Eventually, the pipe is all ash, and Finnick drops his rope from exhaustion and doesn't pick it back up. They've barely talked - there's not much to say. She is leaning on his shoulder, half asleep, when the stream of the Games starts to become more excitable, and she can tell there is action. The boy from 2 is sneaking up on the girl from 1 while she sleeps, even though they had been in an alliance. He has taken a cloth - a bandana? - from his pack, and he stretches it taut around his hands. She wakes just as he approaches, but her reaction is too slow, and the cloth is at her windpipe, choking her in less than a second. She thrashes, struggling against him, but in just a few minutes, she's dead. It reminds Johanna of her final kill in the Games, though this boy's technique is better, and he had the size advantage, so it was far less clumsy.
Johanna bites the back of her hand, the same tender spot that the boy she killed ripped a chunk out of. "You alright, Jo?" Finnick asks.
She nods. She wonders if it has been too long, if commanding Seneca Crane to do her bidding was really too close to becoming just like them - the Capitolites - if she even remembers what it is like to kill someone with her bare hands.
The next morning, she goes back to her apartment, and there's a note slid under the door. "Where were you, Mason? I need to cash in. -C"
It had been Cashmere's girl who died the night before, though what Cashmere expected Johanna to do about it she wasn't sure. She burned the note with her lighter and hoped that leaving the note was a sign Cashmere still found her useful enough to not run to Snow first thing.
She arrives back at Mentor Central in time to watch the boy from 10 murdered with a brick by the 2 boy, Amycus. It's unnaturally gory, but the kind of gory the Hunger Games are known for: Victory in the arena, not cannibalism. Cashmere is there, and she stands as soon as Johanna enters, nodding her head towards the hallway. Gloss follows them with his eyes, but stays seated. They both look concerned, and it's the first time in all her years in the Capitol that Johanna has seen the siblings from 1 look truly shaken.
Cashmere leans against a wall in the hallway, her eyes downcast, a complete reversal from the beginning of the Games, just a couple weeks ago. "I need that favor," she says, "Quickly, before you go back to 7."
The Games are over, it's true, there's only a day or two more of celebrations before they are all shipped back out, unless there's a particular reason for them to stay, like Cashmere's modeling or Brutus's reality TV show. Johanna can't imagine what she needs, had thought certainly it had to do with saving her tribute, but now that the Games are over, she is at a loss. Cashmere needing a personal favor from her had been out of the question.
But isn't that what this has all been?
The dam breaking was to help Annie, but it was really a favor to Finnick. And the avalanche was to kill Titus, but that, also, was so save Elin. She was really only looking after the Mentors all along, it was all she could do. "What is it?" she asks, in the moment realizing that as much as she hates the Careers, she hates the Capitol more.
"I…" Cashmere pauses, and Johanna realizes she's struggling with the same thing. She despises Johanna, but she must hate whatever she's dealing with more, so she is forcing herself to rely on Johanna rather than whatever the alternative is. She must really be in a bind. She leans forward, her voice barely a whisper. "I need to end a pregnancy. Subtly."
A dozen questions occur to Johanna, from 'Who did this?' to 'How could this happen?' and a dozen equally bleak answers occur to her, from bad to worse. She doesn't ask a single one aloud. It doesn't have to be Seneca Crane to help her, she realizes, but it could be. The drug in question is illegal and difficult to obtain, unless, of course, you're a Capitolite, and she assumes Cashmere either doesn't want to risk a single soul knowing her situation, or one of her clients purposely sabotaged her. "Ok," is all she says. "But if I can manage it, you leave me alone after."
Cashmere nods, and this is how Johanna can tell she's really frightened. "Don't tell them it's for me," she warns, reaching for Johanna's arm. Her grip is vice-like.
"Sure, sure, I made a mistake, got it."
"I'll be down in Antioch tonight," she says, referring to the lounge the Careers preferred. "Til close, and then back at the apartment."
"Ok."
Cashmere walks away, back to her brother, presumably, and Johanna wonders why her. Sure, she owed Cashmere a favor, but with all of her influence, Cashmere had to have someone else in the Capitol she trusted to get the drug? Right? She was the it-girl of Panem, there had to be at least one person she could trust to do this for her besides Johanna Mason.
But before dawn the next morning, after a night telling Seneca Crane about how Remake messed up her injection schedule, she finds herself walking to the 1 apartment, a place she's never been and truly hoped to never visit. Cashmere opens the door and lets her in the entryway, and she sees Gloss also awake, sitting on the couch. There's an Avox, no, two, standing near the kitchen. Definitely can't speak freely, then.
"I got that tobacco, the good stuff from 7," she says. "I wanted to drop it off now because Blight and I might take the early train. Can't believe you're spending your favor on this."
"We all have our vices," Cashmere shrugs, taking the bag. She did add tobacco, albeit shitty stuff, along with the drug, to lend credence to her lie, and leaves without another word. What a mess.