Hello~!
This was actually a little idea that I mulled over for quite a long time; I'm pretty sure it started with that exchange between Johanna and Katniss in MJ, when Katniss told Johanna that she'd've been a good Mockingjay.
I thought so, too.
I always think of Johanna as having some correlation with fire; maybe it's because she's so electric and snarky (my Johanna is, anyway) and she burns.
Anyway! I hope you guys enjoy this~ and please please review? Even if you don't have anything to say? BECAUSE I LOVE REVIEWS AND REVIEWERS I THINK ALL OF YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE.
Johanna and THG and all the girls on fire~ they all belong to Miz Collins.
Johanna can feel her heart beat.
At first, she thinks it's the train, throwing her up and down on her seat, rattling her insides, but she realizes that her heart is pounding against her lungs, pressing against her bones and she's scared because it feels like she's locked up an animal inside her and she thinks it might be eating her from the inside, sucking her blood and stealing her breath, but she can't see any of it, can only feel it as it rages inside her.
And so she goes to Kane, her mentor, her big, hulking mentor with his shiny black fingernails and hair hardened into spikes, and she puts his big hand on her little chest because she can feel her heart throwing itself against her ribs.
And she watches his big yellow eyes soften and his slit-like pupils dilate, and he takes both her little hands in his big ones and he tells her, gently, that it is the price all victors must pay.
And she nods, solemnly, even though she doesn't quite understand because she knows that she must remember everything Kane tells her, like she did in the arena.
She paces her breathing against the frantic pace of her heart as they pull smoothly into Seven, to cheers and whistles, to crowds of people welcoming home Johanna Mason, little twelve year old Johanna Mason, the youngest victor in the history of the Games. They close in to shake her hands and ruffle her hair, but there are too many and they're too close, and she imagines that this is what it must feel like to be buried but Kane is there, holding her hand and she knows that he will always keep her safe, so she keeps her chin high and shakes her hair behind her shoulders, looks at nothing but ahead as she walks, one foot after the other.
She doesn't want to go home without him, but her father tells her that he's just next door, she can pop in whenever she wants, and she sees the disappointment on her brother's face but she doesn't care and she is relieved.
But at night, the dreams come and she's back, she's back and she knows exactly what is going to happen but she knows she can't change any of it, and the fire, her fire, the fire she set, it comes and swallows the forest, the tributes, her sanity, and everything is reduced to ashes and flame and smoke and she wonders why she didn't die.
(She never admits it to anyone, but secretly she thinks she might be afraid of dying.)
So she slips out of the door and runs to Kane's house, slips in through his window, and she almost calls his name but he is slumped against his kitchen table, and he's surrounded in shards of glass that reflect the moonlight, and they're dripping with something that makes the whole room smell putrid and filthy so she leaves, but something in her wishes that Kane would lock his windows at night.
So she stays in her bed, night after night, and she tries hard not to sleep but it's there, it's always there, and the flames lick at the insides of her eyelids and burrow into her brain and she feels her heart pound, feels as if she's caged the sun inside her.
And on the morning of her victory tour, Kane comes to her and tells her that when she burned down the forest, when she turned their desert into a wildfire, the two of them started something incredible, and that they must see it through because it is worth the whole world. He asks her if she understands.
She understands everything.
And so they go from district to district, and she thanks the parents for their children, the tributes, that they died nobly, and that their sacrifice will not be for the Capitol; she tells them that her fire will destroy more than just the arena, and her heat stirs a few murmurings in every crowd.
And she is glowing and triumphant on the train home; she feels her heart beat in her chest and for the first time, she feels fiercely proud because she is sure that she was meant to live. She says this to Kane, and she expects him to smile, or laugh, or anything, but he looks at her with strange eyes and tucks her into the crook of his arm, presses her against his big chest and she wonders why his heart is beating so fast.
She runs home as fast as she can, dragging Kane by the hand, but he is strangely reluctant and slows her down. She pulls and heaves until she has begun to sweat and her breath has become shallow, but she sees the gate leading to Victor's Village right along the corner so she lets go, runs at full speed.
And she thinks, for a moment, as she rounds the corner, that it is beautiful, the red and gold and black swirling and mixing as it crawls up the wooden planks of her house, and all she can hear is her heart pounding in her ears and she can feel it shaking in her chest and she doesn't realize that her brother is screaming until he has stopped.
And she comes to her senses, or she tries to, she tries to shake off her euphoria and her hesitation but Kane is there, and he's holding her arms tight against him, he won't let her go but by now she is screaming at him to stop, to help, please, please, please, and she turns desperately to look at him, but he is impassive and emotionless, and it disgusts her to see that his eyes have swallowed all the firelight.
And when the house has been reduced to little more than a pile of matchsticks, he releases his arms and backs away, lets her cry and scream and she thrusts her body into the ash, she wades through the thick piles of nothing and she breathes in the heavy smoke, shouts herself hoarse and she looks for her brother, for her father, for her only family, but some small part of her whispers that she can't find them, she can never find them, and she collapses onto the heaps of black and lets them rub onto her face, creep onto her body, extinguish the girl who, for a moment, might have set the world on fire.
And she can feel Kane watch, she can feel his stony gaze but she doesn't have the strength to feel angry as he lifts her out and away from the ashes of what used to be, of what was.
She doesn't have strength for a long time, and she thinks it might be because the fire has burned it all out, so she stays, mute, in a bed by a window every day, not eating, not sleeping, listening to the sluggish beating of her heart, and by the time it has died away she thinks it has disappeared, and she's glad, because it is a relief to feel cold.
And she eventually drags herself out of bed, makes herself eat and move and function, and Kane is glad but she feels a perverse satisfaction when she takes his knife and carves words in his body, sentences, she thinks, and when she punctuates them with bloody stabs and flowing script, she presses her ear against his chest and feels his blood burst into her ear, she lets it muffle and twist his heartbeats until they have all died away.