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She didn't pay attention to the Hunger Games. Ever since her victory four years ago she had shut everything about it out, going through the motions she had to go through without thinking. It was for purely selfish reasons, driven by the need to save her own emotional state, but she couldn't deny the result of doing so also gave her a great sense of satisfaction.

7 was in no way invested in the Games like 1 2 and 4, but they were located right next to the capital and the people had enough job options with all that could be done with wood that they weren't too badly off. Having a victor from 7 was a point of pride, it allowed for an air of smugness to settle over the people whenever their reaping was shown with sober, alert, fit, and focused mentors. At least it did, until she stepped up onto that stage for the first time, the year after her games. She was sober, alert, fit, and completely unfocused. It showed in her body language each time, and she made no attempts to hide how much she despised the little dog and pony show that was the reapings. And for the past three years her offerings had been useless, the tributes being young, sickly, stupid, arrogant, terrified, panicky, there was a laundry list of traits that made her give up on each of them as soon as their names were called. That pissed people off, the fact that the only time she seemed to be paying attention to the event lasted all of two seconds where she gave a quick once over of each girl and boy who was anywhere between shaking and swaggering as they climbed up to the stage, and dismissed them all out of hand. She didn't mentor them, choosing not to get too attached to what would be fodder for the careers at the Cornucopia. Well, she did mentor them because she had to. That mentoring just didn't go beyond telling them flat out that they were going to die and encouraging them to cause it themselves by running in the opposite direction and finding some poisonous berries. Her advice was never taken.

#

The year of the 74th hunger games they had gotten particularly pitiful tributes. The boy was 13 and had yet to hit puberty, leaving him thin, short, and utterly without hope. The girl she almost had faith in, she was 16 and clearly had experience in the workforce which meant she could swing an axe. Except she had been shaking in fear and when Johanna met her eyes as they shook hands the girl had recoiled violently and almost fallen off the stairs. Her speech about the berries was more forceful than ever that year. Of course that was also the year Blight was up for mentoring. As the only female victor from 7, she mentored every year, but there were three male victors who rotated. Blight had mentored her in the 71st games and now it was his turn again. She had retreated to her room to sharpen her axe after saying all she had to say to the tributes and Blight found her there, sitting heavily on the bed next to her. Without an invitation of course.

"Hell Johanna, I was hoping you'd turn your shit around but you haven't. You can't give up on these kids because they don't seem like much. Our job is to turn them into something and you've been bailing on that for three years."
She snorted but didn't look up from her axe. "If you have some way of making that boy hit puberty so he can gain the strength to lift something heavier than a stick I'm listening. If not, fuck off."
Blight frowned, tapping his fingers on his knee. "Let me worry about the boy. What about the girl? She strong, experienced with an axe."
"Yeah and almost fell over when I looked her in the eye. She is not a predator, she is someone's prey. And she realized that when she looked at me. She'd already given up before I even told them too. Don't bother."
"You did the same thing. With the whole scared little girl act."
She lifted her head to glare at him. "The key part of that sentence is act. I was not a scared little girl, she is. Look, you can try to convince me to give them a chance all you want. The simple answer if that I won't. The honest answer is that I can't. I can't pay attention to these Games any more than I'm forced to as a victor. I can't get attached to these kids and experience the loss of more people I care about." He frowned and opened his mouth to say something but she plowed forward, needing to say her piece. "Each year I've hoped okay? Hoped we'd have a tribute that could pull through and hoped that none of them would be able to. Each year I live pretending that this fucking twisted event isn't going to roll around and pull me back in. I live my life ignoring the Games until I literally can't anymore, and when we get kids who aren't gonna make it I cross my fingers that they'll be in the blood bath. I don't want them to suffer more than a couple minutes and I don't want to have to suffer with them. They die and that's it for them, and I get to go home and go back to pretending that this isn't a thing that happened to me, that happens to everyone in Panem except the fucking Capitol. I lost myself and my family to the Games and now I'm playing them for life. And you know me Blight, I've never been a rule follower. You expect me to follow them now and do what the Capitol wants by giving them false hope that might make for a more entertaining Games?"
He sighed and dropped his head, nodding slowly. "I can't say I agree with you, I think these kids deserve a fighting chance. But I understand what you're saying. I'll still mentor them but I get why you wont. Just do me a favor? If they come to you or cross paths with you, be a little bit encouraging? It's hard for me when my other mentor is undermining all my work."
"I will be a fucking ghost. Those kids'll forget what I even look like."
Blight laughed as he got up to leave. "An impossible task Mason."
She started at the closed door behind him. What the fuck did that mean?

#

She had a bad feeling. A very bad feeling. The whole damn country was in rebellion because of the lovers from 12 and she had enough ears on the ground in the form of other victors that she knew it was serious. Serious enough for Snow to take action. And what better time would that be than during the oh-so-conveniently-timed Quarter Quell. She didn't want to watch the announcement but it was mandatory and with the way things were going and her past with Snow she couldn't risk not watching. She settled onto her couch early, some instinct telling her to bring a bottle of alcohol as well and waited for it to happen.
In the end she wasn't really surprised. Snow needed to get rid of the girl from 12 and she had to applaud his brilliance at coming up with such a creative and indirect way of doing so. Except she got caught in the fucking cross fire and now she was going back. Back to the thing that had destroyed her life in ways that were beyond what most victors experienced. She had lost herself in that arena, first to the scared little girl act that had become all too real the first couple of days. Then to a wicked and remorseless killer that had wiped out five other victors without batting an eye and had smiled smugly during the last kill so the nation could see what a monster she had become. Her family had been lost, her father dying 'mysteriously' after she refused to cooperate with Snow and her mother falling into self-medication to deal with a dead husband and murderess daughter. Her brother, uncle, and best friend had all died in freak accidents as well, each one soon after she refused to play Snow's game when he requested it. The only person who she knew he did not directly order the death of was her mother who she had watched break her neck on the stairs after spiraling so far into the bottle that she couldn't make it past 9am without the help of booze.

A knock on her door pulled her out of her reminiscing and she pulled herself up off her couch to answer it, bottle clasped firmly in her hand. Blight was standing there carrying his own alcohol and raised it as a silent salute. She let him in.

"Can't ignore them anymore Johanna." His words barely slurred and she was impressed. He had downed a little more than half the bottle in the hour they had been sitting together in silence. "The Games" He clarified, sweeping his hand and the booze through the air. "Not when you're gonna be in them."

"Blight?"
"Yeah?"
"Shut up and drink."

#

She didn't bother waiting for her name to be called. She was the only female victor, of course she was going. And since this was the second fucking time, something that tore away the only actual victory she had gotten as a victor, she wasn't going to play by their rules.

She put off going until she knew she was a second away from having peacekeepers sent to find her. Then she stormed towards the town square, dressed in clothes that hugged her curves and accented her muscles, scowl firmly in place, stride strong enough to knock over a peacekeeper should one step in her path.

None did, instead they parted for her as she approached the stage, opposite from where the three male victors were standing. Using her momentum to vault up onto it she paused long enough for their escort – whose name she had never cared enough about to learn – to exclaim that it had taken her long enough and move towards the bowl with a single slip. She turned and strode towards the center of the stage, knocking into the overly done-up woman and standing right next to the microphone so it wouldn't be easy to get back to. Ignoring the huffs of indignation coming from under two feet of hair and the menacing gestures from the peacekeepers she gazed over the crowd and for the first time in four year actually thought about the Games. She couldn't ignore them anymore, she was going back in. She had to pay attention now, there was no way in hell she wasn't going to make it out of this alive.

Damn I missed being in Johanna's head. Katniss has an annoying habit of demanding all the attention.