My take on Johanna's character. It's not an entire narrative of her life because that's been done before often times very well (I recommend Mason: A Memoir) so I didn't want to try my own version here.
Hope you enjoy!
THG and all canon characters are owned by Suzanne Collins.
Johanna Mason was not Reaped so she could win the Games.
She was only fifteen the year of the 70th Hunger Games. She was small, tiny even. Not particularly pretty, not particularly skilled as far as anyone knew.
The Capitol wanted her dead though. You see, Johanna Mason was to serve as a warning.
Everyone knew Jackson Mason had a mouth on him. That after work when he had some time and some change he went down to the black market and drank himself into a stupor on illegal moonshine. That when he got a little liquor into him, he would start talking, ranting about the Capitol. How they should bring it down, they would be better off without it.
They found out.
They always find out.
It wasn't difficult to rig the Reaping. Only the highest officials knew, sometimes not even the Head Gamemaker, but President Snow knew. President Snow chose.
And this year he chose the only child of Jackson Mason who was old enough to be reaped. It was a message. A warning. We can kill your children. You are powerless. Keep your head down.
Only… things didn't turn out the way President Snow had planned.
Upon hearing her name called, a pale, frightened looking girl with wide set doe like eyes took the stage. As her escort presented her, she started to bawl.
Her good-byes were nothing special. She didn't stop sobbing the entire time, even as her parents gave her half-hearted reassurances and her younger brother and sister cried with her, clinging to her hands until the Peacekeepers came to take them away.
She sobbed her way through the tribute parade.
She left no mark in training. Occasionally she would burst into tears and run from the room.
She scored a two in training. People said it was a gift, she deserved a zero.
Even Caesar Flickerman couldn't get anything out of her. Around sobs she babbled about how she was so frightened and the other tributes were so strong and she wished she could just die right now rather than go into the arena.
Her mentor, Blight, looked ready to smash his head into the wall. Or maybe hers.
The night before she went in, he told her to just try not to trip over her own feet and kill herself or cry herself to death.
No one, not even President Snow, noticed the little smirk she wore when she walked off the stage for her district mate to take her place.
No one noticed that as she came up from the ground, her eyes were completely dry.
The other tributes ignored her as she ran into the Cornucopia and she was gone, unscathed with a small axe and a little black backpack.
Not even her own parents knew she had a plan. Just in case.
While the other tributes killed each other off, even the audience forgot about District 7's girl.
She didn't forget her own plan. As tempting as it might be to jump in and kill some of the idiots, she waited. She hid and watched and waited, stayed alive, and when the boy from 4 wandered by the tree she was perched in with his gifts of food and medicine, she took him down.
The audience finally noticed her.
The sponsors went crazy for her.
The odds jumped.
President Snow was perplexed.
But the other tributes never saw her coming.
And at the end of two and a half weeks, it was Johanna Mason who emerged victor after planting an axe in the skull of the girl from District 1.
Snow was furious, but he was trapped. He crowned her and looking into those smug brown eyes with that little smirk, he knew she knew she had hoodwinked them all.
She might have won the Games, but Snow always won in the end.
That evening he explained the rules to her, the rules about being a victor. She laughed in his face and told him to go screw himself. He gave her a warning. He was never unfair.
She returned to an empty home.
Empty except for one exquisite white rose lying on her kitchen table.
After all… he had warned her.
He just didn't expect anything else to come of it. He realized he miscalculation later, he hadn't killed them one at a time, waiting for her to come to her senses and follow his rules. She was just a pawn in his game, but he had treated her like a stronger piece, like a knight with its erratic movements.
But no matter. She was broken.
President Snow didn't realize he was creating the instruments of his downfall himself.
When he had another chance to get rid of her at the Quell he leapt on it. Against a field of victors she would never win. He never forgot how she had beaten him in the Games.
He did not remember her brutality. He did not stop to think that she would defy him again. That she cared for nothing, nothing but revenge.
Johanna Mason, the girl who was not supposed to win remembered though. She remembered the faces of her siblings as they said good-bye. Of their bodies, waiting for her.
She remembered revenge.
And if she could get revenge by helping the stupid fire princess from District 12, well so be it.
Revenge was what she lived for after all.
She wasn't supposed to win her Games.
But in the end Johanna Mason had the last laugh.
She had her revenge.
A/N: I'm not sure I'm 100% happy with this, but I was thinking about Johanna and it seemed like a shame to not do anything with this. If you liked it or have constructive criticism reviews are really appreciated!