Since I've been such a slacker with my other fic, here's a bit of an idea I just kind of wrote down. I started with the intentions of writing a Jeffie fic, but I guess I can't argue with my OTP feelings, so it ended up being Joniss instead. I hope you enjoy.
Disclaimer: I definitely don't own The Hunger Games or any of the characters in this story. Obviously, since if I did everything would be Joniss and nothing would hurt. They all belong to Suzanne Collins, not to me.
The war was over. He was dead. Snow was dead. Rationally, I knew all of this. Still, somehow it didn't feel finished. It felt as though I was walking through some strange dream; a dream from which I would wake at any minute only to be thrust harshly back into reality. But it wasn't a dream. It was real. After all these years, it had finally happened. The Capitol was no more. They could no longer hurt anyone the way they had hurt me. No one else had to lose everything, just so they could survive. It's a little funny, honestly, how people think that survival is only physical. It isn't. Most of my district knew what the Capitol did to attractive victors. So when my entire family turned up dead it wasn't much of a mystery to any of them. None of them ever looked at me the same way again. They all knew that I was the reason for so many deaths. If what I did in the arena hadn't ensured my status as an outcast in my own district, the slaughter of my family at what might as well have been my own hands surely did the trick. I see the looks in my dreams every night, accusing me, asking how I could live with what I had done. Saying as definitely as words that all I had to do was give in, it wouldn't have killed me, if I could survive the games, I could survive anything. How do you tell people who have no clue about anything you're going through that their opinions are wrong? You can't. You can't tell them that if you had let the Capitol use you like that then you wouldn't have survived it. Physically, perhaps, but not emotionally, not mentally, and that, that existence, is even worse than death. I'd be damned if I'd had ever admitted it, but I wasn't as strong as Finnick. Letting that happen would have destroyed me. The war was over, though. No girl would ever again be forced to do the things I had been forced to do. Despite this knowledge, I felt, empty. No, empty wasn't the right word. I felt lost. I had been living on vengeance for so long, and now, now there was nothing left. No one to destroy, nothing to plot, no one left to kill or fight. The war was over.
I wandered the hallways of the mansion, walking slowly, just trying to feel something other than the overwhelming blackness I could feel taking over my soul, slowly eating its way through me. I came to a window overlooking a courtyard, the same courtyard where Katniss' sister and all of those other kids had been blown to bits. More innocent lives, children that I couldn't save. I had hated Katniss, I had hated her so much because her damn defender-of-the-helpless act was real. She had saved the people she cared about. She had saved her sister while mine lay dead in a graveyard back in District Seven. I stepped up onto the windowsill and took a steadying breath. I closed my eyes and the faces flashed before my mind, my sister, brother, father, cousin, all the tributes I had killed in my games and the ones I hadn't been able to keep alive as a mentor, Prim, the faceless children from the courtyard. All the ones I had been too weak to save. I shifted my weight in preparation for that final step and I heard a breath behind me, "Johanna?" I spun around and nearly lost my footing. Katniss stood behind me on the balcony. When I saw her face, I couldn't stop the thoughts that raced through my head, we were alike now. In the end, she hadn't been able to save her sister. She was just as dead as my own. She had no one left either. I didn't hate her anymore. The look on her face was utterly terrifying as she spoke, she looked and sounded so small and unsure, so unlike the almost cocky Katniss I had come to know, "Please don't jump, please." I saw another emotion flicker across her face then, it was almost resignation. She was certain I would do it anyway. I stared at her for a long moment, turned back to look at the courtyard, and stepped back onto the balcony. I wouldn't be one more person she couldn't save; I wouldn't turn her into me. And maybe, just maybe, I thought as I reached for her hand, I had finally found someone I could save too.
Also, reviews make me very happy. Because I love to know your opinions on what I write and on how to get better at it.
I was intending for this to be a one shot, but if you guys think I should continue, I might.