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When Johanna wakes up back at the hospital with Katniss beside her, she almost wants to laugh. "What is wrong with us?" she asks, her voice coming out a rasp.
Katniss gives her a sip of water, and she has to swallow awkwardly, her eyes almost watering, to keep from choking. She doesn't quite remember the circumstances that led her back here, but it's coming back to her. "Why do we keep ending up in the hospital?"
Now Katniss laughs, albeit subdued. She looks older than her 18 years, and Johanna has to remind herself that it's not normal for her to have been in two Hunger Games, to be shot, to be on television all the time at that age. It isn't something to joke about.
"How do you feel?" Katniss asks. She really does look worried, and a small, petty part of Johanna relishes the look, memorizes it, wonders if that is the kind of look Annie receives from Finnick: pure, unadulterated concern.
"I- I'm fine. I'm just exhausted." It's mostly true. She's in pain, but she's always in pain. She doesn't think she'll ever not be in pain. And she's sore, as sore as the first day she and Katniss got back to combat training. But mostly she's just bone-dead tired.
She tried to pass that stupid combat exam. Tried to prove to everyone that she is fine after two rounds in the arena, after… being locked up in the Capitol. She can feel her hands shaking just thinking about it. But obviously that didn't work, so what was the point of any of it? She should just lie here and sleep. Maybe, eventually, her body wouldn't hurt as much.
"Is this any better?" Katniss asks. Johanna turns to look at her. She has one leg up on the chair where she's sitting beside the bed, her chin resting on her knee. She's watching Johanna, as if trying to figure something out. "I feel like the others won't be honest with me. Is this… is District 13 honestly any better than the Capitol?"
Oh. Johanna wasn't expecting this question. She was expecting something about what happened during her combat exam, or maybe some question about Haymitch, even, but actual advice to the Mockingjay? She takes a deep breath, thinking about the question. Certainly, 13 isn't forcing her to sleep with anyone, but a voice in the back of her head makes her wonder if it is only a matter of time, they need new citizens, after all. There is just as much espionage as just as little freedom, and far fewer vices to take the edge off. She can't breathe fresh air, or choose her own bed time. She can't pick what she ate, or when she ate, or anything at all.
But they don't starve you. They didn't electrocute you. They haven't interrogated you and then almost drowned you when you refused to answer.
"I think," she says, her eyes meeting Katniss's, "That you're the Mockingjay. They need you more than you need them. So if this place is shit, too," she shrugs, hoping Katniss will get the message.
"I can't run away," she says, but it's the voice of a girl who desperately wants to run away.
"You only need to convince them that you will. That, or… make them think you're doing as they want, and then do what you want."
"You really are good at this, huh?" she says.
"You learn all the tricks when you Mentor long enough."
Katniss looks away, and Johanna realizes she must have found out, one way or another, about the fate that would have awaited her as a Victor. "Listen… I'm sorry you aren't coming to the Capitol. I wanted you there."
"What, so I could save your butt again?"
Katniss smiles, but again it's hollow, as she certainly is remembering the cost of Johanna saving her at the Games. "Listen, Katniss. You go there, and you kill Snow. And also… please keep Finnick alive."
She nods, accepting these duties. "I've gotta report back. But I will."
"Wake up!"
Johanna wakes with a start at the gruff voice and the pounding on her door, and scrambles back towards the wall as it is wrenched open in the middle of the night.
"Shit, Johanna, I'm sorry."
Haymitch is kneeling beside her bed in a moment, and she doesn't even realize she's crying until she feels his hand on her cheek, his thumb brushing a tear away. "I wasn't thinking, shit."
Her heart is hammering too hard to think straight, but she knows something must have happened for him to be at her compartment in the middle of the night. "What's going on?" she asks, her voice smaller than she wants it to sound.
He gets up to sit on the edge of her bed, his head falling forward onto her chest, and suddenly it's her comforting him. She wraps her arms around him, still unsure of the situation, but she can feel his tension. He's dressed in day clothes, so either he hasn't slept, or he's preparing for something.
"Katniss and Finnick are injured - badly. Primrose Everdeen is dead. The Capitol has fallen."
Injured badly is alive. It's not ideal, but it's alive. She pictures the little sister, smiling with Annie at the wedding, and feels sadness, but she didn't know her. Finnick is alive. She digs her nails into Haymitch's back, relishing the warmth of a very alive, very uninjured human beside her right now.
"We're requested in the Capitol - you, me, Annie, Beetee, Enobaria."
She nods but doesn't let go, holding him against her chest. "Is that really all that's left?" she asks counting them up. "8 Victors, out of 75 games?"
"Dying breed," he confirms. "Come on, there's liquor to be pillaged in the Capitol."
Old habits die hard, she supposes, but what she wouldn't give for some morphling.
Johanna assumes she would be staying at the Training Center when they got to the Capitol. It didn't make sense - there were no Hunger Games anymore - it was just that she didn't really give it much thought.
But even if she had, she would never have guessed they would be staying at Snow's Mansion. No, nothing is as she expects it, from the way that Katniss is completely catatonic and drugged out on morphling, to the way Finnick is nearly unrecognizable, missing an eye and part of his ear, the rest of the left side of his face also torn up, from a mutt attack she is told. Snow is even there - tamed now, she is told, awaiting his execution.
The Mansion puts her on edge. She doesn't know where she was kept in the Capitol as a prisoner, though she supposes she could ask, but it feels like it was close to here. And it only takes one glimpse of Snow, through a window, even, to make her physically ill, to make her pain worsen enough that she thinks of taking some of Katniss's morphling.
"I can't stay here," she tells Haymitch.
She doesn't know how Annie is doing it, or Peeta for that matter. The entire aura of this place is horrible, and Coin is just walking through it like it's another room in District 13.
The fresh air is nice, at least, so she stands outside for a while, while Haymitch visits Katniss and sorts out where the hell they're going to sleep.
"It's nice, isn't it? To feel the sun." Annie comes outside and sits on the porch of the mansion beside Johanna, and she is silent after that, just tapping her fingers along the floorboards. Johanna had expected Annie to not leave Finnick's side - like Finnick had been when Annie was in the hospital, so she's surprised to see her. But perhaps Annie feels it too - the oppressive weight of that house.
"I don't think I've seen the sun since…"
"The arena?"
It's interesting, the way she's always primed to walk on eggshells around Annie because of Finnick. It crashes into the reality of Annie - that she's a Victor, an adult, that she has stared death in the face several times over and survived. She knows what the Capitol did to Finnick, and she was forced to listen, day in and day out, to what they did to Johanna. She laughs. "Yeah… shit."
The tapping continues, just Annie's fingertips on the wood, and 'tsch tsch' sound she makes with her voice in the gaps. Johanna doesn't mind it, it's better than the complete silence.
But then Annie does speak again. "Johanna - when this is all over, you can come with us back to 4."
Johanna isn't sure where this is coming from, but she can't turn around, can't be sure of what kind of face she's making, can't tell if Annie is offering this out of kindness or pity or some sort of obligation.
"Why?" she asks, unable to resist understanding the motive. She stares out into the middle distance of Snow's perfectly manicured lawn.
"Because I think you'd like it. 4 is wide open spaces, lots of sun, forests, beaches, you can be with people when you want, and alone when you want. Finnick and I are there to keep you company."
Oh. She is itching for a cigarette, for something to go with her hands while she stands. "I don't think I can stand the water anymore," is all she says. She almost wants to vomit, thinking about being submerged in water, after the torture in the Capitol. Still, it feels weak, to say that to someone who won her Games by swimming among the corpses of other children, but maybe she wants to push Annie away, a little.
"That's alright. Just think about it," is all Annie says, before changing the subject. "I should get back to Finnick. Would you like to talk to him?"
Would she? What does she have to say to Finnick? What have her and Finnick become, after all this time? She isn't ready, so she declines. She goes back into the cursed mansion to find Haymitch, but she runs into Enobaria instead.
Enobaria looks startled by her, and takes a step back. She knows she looks strange, still not back to her usual weight and her hair just barely long enough to tuck behind her ears, but it's not that, she's sure Enobaria and her now haunt each other. Enobaria was there the night Johanna made the mistake that got her family killed, and Johanna was there when Enobaria was trapped in the Capitol prison, caught up in a rebel plot she had no knowledge of, forced to spend weeks there before being sent away, inexplicably, to 7, while most of her family was killed in the fighting.
"Mason," she greets, recovering.
"You got a cigarette?" Johanna asks, pride gone.
Enobaria smiles a little at this, at least, and gestures for Johanna to follow. She opens a cabinet in one of the parlors, revealing a tin of the nicest pipe tobacco from 7, and a decent amount of powder morphling to boot. Johanna snatches it up, along with some rolling papers, tucking it in her pockets. She never imagined Enobaria helping her steal from Snow's private supply, but here they are. "Guess I can't say you never did anything for me," she jokes. "Come on, I'll make you the best cigarette you've ever smoked."
They sit on the porch steps and smoke, dazed out by the morphling and settled by the tobacco. It tastes like home, and for a few minutes, her pain ebbs. "This isn't how I thought it would go," Enobaria says, her first words spoken only after her cigarette is half gone. She's pretty, with her features softened with the morphling. "Everyone's dead."
She's right. She knows Enobaria wasn't a rebel, and she can't even fault her for that anymore. Everyone is dead, and what do they have to show? Snow is still sitting around in the garden, the Mockingjay is broken, and Panem feels largely the same as it was before. "I want to go kill him, right now, with my bare hands," Johanna says. She sighs, laying back on the porch. She turns her head so the ash of the cigarette doesn't burn her face.
"You don't have to say it aloud, I can feel it coming off of you," Enobaria teases. "But you can't. They need it to be a big show, like everything else." Enobaria was always wiser, calmer, more clever than she let on. Perhaps that's why before, when they were Mentors, Johanna couldn't stand her - she would have been brilliant, had she turned that energy against the Capitol. It felt like such a waste.
"What are you going to do, after all this?" Johanna asks her. Vaguely, she wonders why it's easier to talk to Enobaria than it is with Annie. Is it because Enobaria went through the same sex trafficking bullshit that she did in the Capitol? Or is it because Enobaria wasn't married to Finnick and having his baby?
Enobaria shrugs, leaning forward with her hands on her knees. "Go back to 2, I guess. I still have a sister-in-law that's alive. And nieces. Get a job, since that Victor pension is off the table, I'm sure. Find a girlfriend."
Johanna knows Enobaria will be alright, and she's glad of it, and then surprised that she's glad of it. She hated Enobaria for so long, and for what?
"You were right about one thing," Enobaria says, stepping on the butt of the cigarette as she stands.
"What?"
"That was the best cigarette of my life. I guess 7 is good at one thing," she teases, lightly kicking Johanna's shin as she goes back in the house.
Haymitch returns before sundown, with permission from Coin to stay somewhere else. "Where do you want to go? This city is in shambles."
"The Training Center is fine," she says, and he shrugs, following her down the street. They're each given a gun, District 13 standard issue, but there's absolutely no one out.
She passes a house on the way and stops, curious. "Wait, this is nicer," she says, pulling him along. She wonders if the code on the electronic lock is still the same, and then, if the electricity is still on, and is surprised when the answer to both is yes. The door opens, revealing a familiar entryway.
"Where are we?" Haymitch asks.
"The former home of Seneca Crane," she says. "Hello?" she shouts, but no one answers. It feels like it has been empty a lot longer than a couple of days. Haymitch has stepped inside further, confirming no one is there, but when she follows him in, she sees his gun is at his side, and he is taking in the splendor of the former Head Gamemaker's abode.
"This is where you would visit him?" he asks, tracing her movements as she goes to the liquor cabinet to pour them each a drink. She chooses something Seneca Crane never touched - white liquor - just in case his favorite was spiked with poison from Snow.
"Yeah, this is the place."
"This doesn't bother you like the mansion does?" he asks.
She hands him one of the drinks, shrugging. "The mansion was just… bad… I'm surprised you couldn't feel it. I can't believe Coin just moved into that place. This is… it reminds me of before. Things were bad, but I didn't know they could get so much worse. I was doing something, back then. Now I'm just… waiting around."
He nods, taking a sip of then drink. His brow clenches, as if the drink is more than just the glass of liquor. And she gets it - District 13 with their rules, with their control. People can survive like that, but it's no way to live. "I'm also just… waiting around," he agrees.
They drink too much, collapsing onto Crane's oversized spare bed when they finish all his white liquor. "Do you think it'll end up better than it started?" she asks, in the darkness, where it feels ok to be vulnerable.
"I don't know," he says. "But I want to forget for a bit."
She thinks he means to sleep, but they're in the Capitol, the place where she's been trained to get drunk and fuck, and so she leans over him, kissing him. She can feel him respond, feel the moment the kiss deepens, right before he pulls away. "Johanna, no, you don't have to-"
And tears are in her eyes, and she's glad it's dark, so he can't see them, from the shame of the accusation. She takes a breath, unwilling to let him hear any waver in her voice. "I know. I want to. If you do."
He leans back in slowly, cautiously. It's not the first time, but it feels like it. She's forgotten what his body feels like - and it's different, from the abstinence from alcohol, from 13's strict portions, from the stress. Hers is as well: bonier, textured with scars and burn marks, too sensitive now. But she can light up a morphling cigarette after. Right now, she wants to feel the closeness of another human being, to cement her place in the world, to be the cause of another person's pleasure. She wants to have a stolen moment of revelry among the ruin of the Capitol. When they finish, she does light a cigarette, smoking it while Haymitch lays half asleep on her chest, his fingers tracing patterns on her thighs. "Does it hurt?" he asks.
"What?"
"What they did. Does it still hurt?"
"Every second." She exhales, leaning her head back against the headboard. "It's my reminder, to never forget. To never let them go back to what they were."
"Johanna, please come back to 12 with me, after all of this."
She lifts her head to look at the vague outline she can see of him in the dark. The hunched figure of a man, huddled against her.
"Even if it's not for me, for Peeta and especially for Katniss. She needs someone who's been through this shit and is starting to come out the other side."
She thinks of Elin, how she used to hope and pray about Elin, because if she was ok, then Johanna might be ok. Perhaps she was becoming that person to Katniss, now. "I'll think about it," is all she can commit to, for now.
Johanna wonders what she might feel, watching Snow die. Relief? Catharsis? Peace? She stands on stage, surely being filmed, between Enobaria and Finnick, as Katniss has once again become the Mockingjay. Johanna knows she's not well, that she's still devastated over her sister, but at this point, the Mockingjay and Katniss might as well be two different people.
That is, until Katniss turns around for just one moment, catches Johanna's eye, and then shoots an arrow at Alma Coin. Immediately, all hell breaks loose, and there is noise and movement everywhere. Someone in the crowd sets off a smoke bomb. Snow is laughing, a bubbly, red, bloody laugh, and the crowd which had gathered to watch is horror-stricken, but also fighting to see what happened, but also fighting to get to Katniss.
"Get Finnick and Annie away, I'll get Katniss," Haymitch says to her, and she nods.
She doesn't know where she's going, exactly, and she's unarmed, but she does better with a task, so she grabs them each by the arm, pulling them along. There's no Coin anymore. And no Snow. There is no one in charge. This fact takes a moment to set in. She knows why Katniss caught her eye. It was her advice that gave Katniss the idea. But it was Coin who did this to herself.
She has to be careful with Finnick on the steps, his missing eye means he has no depth perception, and his ear damage has messed with his balance besides, but Annie guides him well. Though she seems to be fading as well, her left foot tapping along with the shouts that seem to follow them, her free arm moving to cover her ear. She needs to get them out of sight. An angry mob has killed Victors on a whim, before, they might just decide today is the day these Victors need to die.
She winds through the streets back to Seneca Crane's house, shepherds them inside, and then bolts the door. She checks to confirm there's still no one inside, pours any suspect liquor down the drain, and then ushers them in further. "You can rest in here," she says, pushing open the master bedroom door for Annie. "You, too," she says to Finnick. "There's no food, but I could probably get some later."
"We'll be fine," Annie says. "You can rest yourself."
It's Annie, perhaps exhausted from pregnancy, who dozes off first, while Finnick comes back out to the living room to sit with Johanna.
"Thanks," he says, sitting beside her on the couch. He's too close, too comfortable in her space for a married man, but she doesn't push him away.
She nods. "Want some morphling?" She's generous now, when she's flush with it, Enobaria having given her Snow's personal stores.
"Not straight, but if you rolled me a special 7 cigarette, I wouldn't complain," he says.
So she does, pulling a giant book from the coffee table to work off of. She's unsteady, aware of his leg against hers, and occasionally his hand will reach across to point at something she's doing, and she's never been so distracted by him before. He's less handsome than he's ever been, and yet he's here, flirting with her while his wife sleeps in the next room, and she's useless against it.
"What are you doing?" she asks, turning her head so her face is inches from his. It feels so achingly familiar that she wonders why he rushed to get married in 13.
"I just… missed you, Jo," he says. He leans forward so his forehead touches hers, and she likes it, god, she would easily tilt her head to kiss him, had she not had a modicum of self-respect, and the knowledge that he'll change his mind in the morning, like he always does, as mercurial as the sea. She knows the pull of the Capitol - they both have fallen prey to it for years, but the Capitol has fallen, Snow is dead.
"I'm moving to 12." She doesn't know why she says it, but when she does, she knows it's true. It is what she needs: to help Katniss, to have separation between herself and Finnick, to give her tentative relationship with Haymitch a shot, to try something new away from the cold emptiness of 7. Finnick looks surprised, and a little disappointed, but he nods, slowly.
"Are you sure?" he asks.
"I'm going to give it a good try, at least a year or two."
She hands him the cigarette she's finished, and he takes it in his hand, but doesn't light it yet. "I'll miss you," he says.
"You know, Snow is dead, I don't think it's illegal to leave your District anymore. You can probably come visit now."
He nods. "Same to you."
"Ok."
"Ok."
Just as she is turning back to finish her own cigarette, he reaches out, putting a hand on her cheek to turn her face back to him. He kisses her slowly, softly, more romantically than they've probably ever kissed, even though the war has taken away all of their glamour. When it's over, she knows it's the last one.
District 12 doesn't exist anymore, is what Johanna quickly learns. She took a leap of faith coming with Haymitch back to his home, but his home is gone. There is just the Victor's Village, untouched in the bombings, and a handful of buildings at the edge of town still standing. The rest was razed, or very badly damaged. But the people who come with them - about 500 or so - are determined, and within weeks the buildings that can be repaired are in the process of being fixed, and the rubble is being cleared away.
And she is useful - her knowledge of wood coming in handy when it comes to knowing which trees to fell, how to cut them into lumber, the best way to transport them into town. And she can help in other ways, too - showing them which wood can be salvaged, teaching them how to use various saws and axes. It's almost funny to think that she wasn't particularly good at this stuff at home, it's just what anyone in 7 would know. It's what she assumes they all know about coal mining.
Soon enough, they call her the Foreman, and she arrives back to Haymitch's house exhuasted at the end of the day. "I didn't bring you here to rebuild the entire town," he says, pouring her a drink.
"It's fine, it keeps me busy." Strangely, it helps, to keep moving. The pain is still there, but it is hidden, under her tasks, under the constant motion. It is better than the stillness of sitting and thinking.
He comes to stand behind her, massaging out the knots in her shoulders. She grabs his hands and pulls them down, drawing his face close to hers. She leans up to kiss him, desperate for affection after a long day of labor. He obliges and it's comforting, but still not familiar, so have someone to come home to at the end of every day. "I told her you'd stop over tonight, if you're not too tired."
"Of course I'm not." She drinks what Haymitch poured her and disentangles herself, then walks the short way to Katniss's house, to find her where she always is, in the sad, darkened living room, sitting in her chair, quieted by morphling. Katniss doesn't even look up when she enters.
She recognizes this girl - she was this girl once. Hopeless, in mourning, and so, so tired. She knows there's nothing she can say that will bring Katniss back, Katniss will have to find her own way back. But she can at least let her know she's waiting.
She sits down on the carpet, her back to the couch. This seems to capture Katniss's attention, at least, since she didn't sit on the couch itself. "Your mom didn't come back," she says.
Katniss shrugs. "Too many bad memories in 12, she said. You didn't go back to 7."
It's unfair of her to throw this back at Johanna like that is remotely the same thing. But she wasn't fair when she was hurting either. "There's no one at all left for me in 7. You're still here in 12."
Katniss shrugs again.
"That's… bullshit! How can a mother leave her daughter? How can she just say it's too much?"
"Somehow she did," is all Katniss says, because that's it, isn't it? It doesn't really matter how Katniss's mother justified it, she was gone now. Johanna gets up and sits back down next to Katniss, leaning against her legs.
"I'm sorry," she says. She was the same age when she lost her parents, and Haymitch probably about the same age as well. It's not the same, having them murdered by Snow versus having them choose to leave due to the trauma of a war, but she feels a kinship here with Katniss as she does overall. "I know you won't tell me if you need anything, so I will just keep coming over. And eventually you'll look forward to it."
"I will?" The question is so neutral, Johanna wonders if Katniss is trying to convince herself. Trying to decide how she feels about Johanna, about visits, about anything.
"You will. By next spring, you'll be thinking 'I hope it's the end of the workday so I can see Johanna soon'," she jokes.
When she gets back, Haymitch has heated up whatever stew was being served at the community kitchen that day. It's fine, though the meat is sparse, so it's mostly just root vegetables and broth. "I was thinking about raising some geese," he says. "One of the women up the hill has some, she can give me some of the goslings when they hatch to start off."
"Geese?"
He nods. "It will be nice to take care of something. Plus we'll get feathers and eggs and meat."
"Take care of something just to kill it and eat it?"
He shrugs. "My geese will have the finest life, I assure you. And a swift death. And don't say you don't want more meat."
What can she say? It's silly, but the war is over. They can do things like raise geese now. She won't have children. She's no good for it. But she can raise something like geese with Haymitch. She can raise District 12 up from the rubble. And she can make sure that Katniss lives to enjoy her adulthood. That much she can do.