[A/N]: A note on chronology: parts 4 and 5 end around the same time, when Annie and Cashmere go into exile. Parts 6 and 7 pick up around the same time, when Annie and Cashmere are arriving in their new country, which means this chapter jumps back in time to about 4 years before the end of part 6.


"He did what?!"

"Don't ask me." The man reporting to Johanna looks just as baffled as she feels. "I'm just telling you what he told us. Odair went on an undercover mission in District One and got out just in time after his cover was blown. I don't have any more details than that. I don't even know if he was telling the truth or thought he was under surveillance. He didn't...look...delirious? Although he was running a fever, so who knows."

"Oh, I believe he's capable of it," Johanna mutters menacingly. He's going to answer to her for this, for making her spend the last several months wondering where he was and promising herself to murder him the next time she saw him, if he wasn't already dead. They're in the middle of a project, and he goes and disappears again. We discussed this!

What part of "run it by me, let me make plans around you not being here" is so damn hard?

But now she's consumed with curiosity. Fine, first I find out what you've been up to, then I rip your head off.

"Finnick!" Johanna stomps into the hospital tent where he's lying. "Where are you?"

No one reacts. One of the medics asks her to lower her voice. Johanna growls. She'd have to raise her voice anyway to be heard over the groans. So she stomps around, and almost doesn't recognize Finnick when she finds him.

His head is shaved, he's thinner than she's ever seen him, and his face is covered in bruises.

She doesn't spare him.

"You want to go on an undercover mission into enemy territory, fine. I'll be the last one to stop you. You want to risk your life, well, there's a war on. But we discussed this! You can be the most useful person on the planet when you're around, doesn't matter if I never know when I can count on you."

Looming over the cot where he's lying, Johanna scrutinizes him, then nudges him with her knee. Finnick shivers under the worn blanket, despite the warm weather, and doesn't say anything.

"Good, you do look halfway into your grave. Maybe I won't have to push you the rest of the way."

Grey-faced, Finnick ignores her. He looks like he's going to throw up.

"I hope you got something useful. Do I need to drag you somewhere private so I can debrief you?" Finnick's a wonder when it comes to getting information, and avid curiosity is starting to penetrate her anger, now that she can see he's alive. What was worth going to District One?

"Take my shirt." His voice is so hoarse that Johanna hesitates before she decides she heard him right. Then she looks around at the hospital tent, and at his bed, for any clues as to why he might want a strip show here and now.

"Take...what shirt?" Maybe there's another one she's not seeing.

Finnick tugs the sweat-soaked fabric away from his chest. It's a frilly, stained, puce affair that's seen better days. "Take off my shirt."

"Take off your own shirt!" Johanna retaliates out of sheer habit, but when Finnick sighs, props himself up heavily on one elbow, and closes his eyes, wincing as he tries to get it over his shoulders, Johanna grabs at it. "Never mind, you're obviously too weak to do anything for yourself."

It's strangely stiff in places and doesn't fold naturally. Once Finnick is bare-chested, he collapses again. Johanna does him the favor of pulling the blanket up to his shoulders.

Finnick gestures weakly at the shirt in her hands, and Johanna starts poking and then tearing at it. False pockets on the inside. That makes sense, then.

"Playing your cards close to your chest?" she quips. Upon closer inspection, she finds that they're not just pockets, they're compartments sewn closed on all sides. She takes the knife from her belt, sits on the edge of the bed, and proceeds to rip the shirt open.

When the first blister pack falls into her lap, Johanna lifts it up and stares at it helplessly, overcome by deja vu. "Finnick, what am I supposed to do with this?"

"Well, I'm hoping you'll accept it," Finnick whispers. "Because I can't go back in time."

Johanna can't either, so she keeps tearing the fabric open, and pocketing pack after pack of painkillers.

"Tell me this isn't why you went to District One," she demands, on the verge of panic. The whole situation is so much worse than she imagined. "Tell me this just fell out of the sky while you were there. Like the jam."

"I did get some intelligence," Finnick says. "I'll tell you later."

"And you had your cover blown," Johanna accuses, her heart speeding up even more. He's not denying it that this is what he went for. "Did you get yourself almost killed over these pills?"

"My cover was blown," Finnick confirms, "but I made it back in time. I'll be all right. Just give me a few days."

"You showed up severely dehydrated, barely able to hold food down, with all the symptoms of poisoning, only no one's sure exactly what poison, probably more than one. What have you been eating?!"

"What happened to confidentiality?" Finnick asks, outraged.

"Confidentiality is for wusses. And I'm a better spy than you."

Finnick smiles weakly, as she'd hoped. "I'll tell you everything, just..." As his words trail off, he clutches the sheet beneath him into a fist. It's clear this much conversation has taken all his strength. "Not just now."

"Come up to HQ when you're on your feet," Johanna orders him. "No disappearing before you report to me."

Finnick nods, and then he slides back into sleep.


Johanna debriefs Finnick in the conference room when he returns. Just the two of them, her sitting at the head of the long table where they've seen each other through so many sleepless nights.

She scrutinizes him when he takes his seat. He doesn't look much better than when she saw him in the hospital tent at the border. Worse than the emaciation or the dark hollows above his now sharp cheekbones is a look in his eyes like he doesn't quite know where he is and he's running on autopilot. Johanna remembers this look from the mirror after her first Games. The second time around, she knew to avoid mirrors.

His hair's just started growing out again, still barely fuzz.

"Part of your disguise?" she wonders, nodding at it.

He laughs a little. "My disguise was growing it long. No, it's lice."

"Lice?" Johanna blurts. "You?" Sometimes her mouth runs on autopilot.

Finnick smiles wryly. "It's growing out. You should have seen me without any hair at all."

She snorts. "I did. Debrief, then." She's still hoping that he was primarily on an intelligence or assassination mission, but her hopes are quickly dashed.

"So you went to District One to filch meds?" she interrupts only a few sentences into the account. "Not, say, District Six?"

"District Six has the cheap recreational stuff. District One has the high-grade pharmaceuticals."

"Because they're loyal to the Capitol!" If it were anything else, Johanna would be cheering on his one-man infiltrations, but he took this risk to bring her medication?

Finnick grins, but a tremor along his jaw line undermines his air of confidence. "District Six is a war zone. Once you get past the border, District One is pretty calm."

"District One is pretty calm enemy territory where anyone who recognizes you will turn you over to the Capitol!" Johanna protests.

"It was safer than it sounds. I knew a little about how they operate, and they use sex as a second currency there. You can trade for favors, goods, information, money...and it's respectable. Given how much of the population put in at least a year at the academy, a lot of them had some sex training.

"So I knew I could operate at night, get information and drugs without having to register for a proper job, find a place to stay during the day, so on. They even don't have a curfew, which took a hell of a long time to get used to. I kept looking over my shoulder for patrolling Peacekeepers."

This is getting worse by the minute. "So you're telling me you lived on the streets and pretended to be a hooker?"

"Pretended, hell," Finnick scoffs. "I'm good at this. I'm the best there is."

The horrifying feeling of responsibility for something she never asked for isn't quite at the level of learning about her father's death, but there's not much else that competes with it, either.

"I don't need painkillers," she cries, "I need you here, helping me get shit done! Look, I risked my life for Katniss, I'm not saying you don't go on missions that might get you killed. I'm saying you do it when it's life-or-death, when it's win-or-lose. Painkillers are a luxury. Why do you think you found them in the luxury district, brainless?"

"They were the right kind, yes?" Finnick presses, unfazed by the taunting.

"Yes," she's forced to admit, "but that's not what matters. It wasn't worth the risk or the cost!"

"Johanna, that's what you say before someone does something for you, not after."

She can see him looking hurt but persevering, determined to be pleased with his own success whether or not anyone else appreciates it.

"Do you at least understand Katniss now?" he prods. "She was never comfortable with the sacrifices she didn't ask for either."

"She wasn't comfortable with us starting a war and expecting her to participate!" Johanna rages. "I—I've been fighting! I've been working! You don't need to bring me painkillers to get me to cooperate, or even to get me functional. I know I skip meetings, and I've missed some action—but I've been doing more than anyone! I took out the surveillance station, I captured-"

"Johanna, Johanna. I'm not saying you're not getting enough done. I'm saying the opposite. You're doing so great I'd love to have you in meetings, if the only reason you're skipping is because you're in pain and we might notice. Even if I didn't like you enough to hate knowing you're in pain, I respect you enough to want more of you in action."

Johanna's barely mollified. "I'm not trying to be ungrateful, I just don't want you doing this again," she explains. "I told you I'd stop experimenting, idiot."

Finnick shrugs. "I can't very well do it again, can I? My face was finally caught on a surveillance tape clearly enough that whoever was reviewing it got suspicious. That's when they started rounding up all the Finnick Odair-lookalikes."

"The what," she says flatly, refusing to believe she heard that right.

An impish smile fills Finnick's face and eyes, and for a moment, he looks like himself again. "Well, you see, I didn't know it until I got there, but District One is the one place where I could blend in. Because they're already trying to look like me."

Arrogant smirking bastard. Johanna narrows her eyes, determined to hang on to her disapproval no matter what the punchline is. "Because they were never the brightest district in Panem?"

"Because there's an entire corner of the prostitution market built on the idea that if you're picking someone up off the street, it's because you can't afford me. Good sound economic strategy. Admit it." Finnick looks more than pleased with himself, he's downright smug.

Johanna can't help the twitching of her cheeks. She tries to compensate by looking him up and down critically. "Well, I see how everyone in One managed to look more like you than you do, with you looking like something cat dragged in. So how did you get poisoned? What were you eating?"

He shrugs. "Food's being rationed, so my options were limited. Pigeons, mostly. Scraps. I found a pond in a park after a while."

"What were the pigeons eating?" Johanna interrupts.

Finnick shrugs. "Garbage, bugs, whatever pigeons eat. Spoiled food or rat poison, I don't know. Look, I know what I'm doing. It's less dangerous than the arena."

"Oh, so that makes it okay? If it's safer than the arena, it must be an acceptable risk," she mocks. "You have a death wish, boy?"

"I'm not a civilian," Finnick insists. "I'm military-slash-spy. I'm supposed to stay in the front lines, doing what I do best, doing everything in my power to turn the tide of the war. I'm not Katniss, or Pearleye—not one of the rebels too important to lose."

Doing what I do best. The phrase nauseates Johanna. Yes, it must be familiar, even if it's horrible.

"There's too important to lose," she argues, "and there's too important to throw away. And this is throwing yourself away. Rudder told me not to let you burn out, but he didn't give me any goddamn pointers."

"Did he say anything about not letting me do my job?"

"He didn't say anything about making sure you didn't sneak into enemy territory, play at being a street-walker, and pretend to be a Finnick Odair-lookalike, no," Johanna informs him, voice rising, "because he didn't think of it! Nobody ever imagines the stunts you're going to pull. Where are you sleeping tonight?"

Finnick looks startled at the sudden change in subject, then reflexively jokes, "Not in an alley. In the barracks, I assume."

"Not with a fever, you're not. I'm half tempted to put you in my room while I figure out what to do with you." How on earth she's going to keep an eye on him and keep him from racing after his next crackbrained idea, Johanna has no idea, but she'll figure something out.

Not until she sees how Finnick's laughing, smirking expression has fractured, and been replaced by something painful, does it dawn on Johanna how selfish and clueless she sounded. She's just about to backtrack when Finnick says the most incomprehensible thing.

"I appreciate the thought, but you don't owe me anything. I know when I do things for people, they think they owe me, but you've already—look, you were reaped twice, you sacrificed yourself to take care of Katniss, you weren't exchanged, you've worked wonders here...it's your turn."

"It's my turn? When is it your turn?!" Nothing about Finnick makes sense. "And what do you mean, I don't owe you anything? That was a threat. You don't want to sleep in my room, do you?" After everything he's been through, she should have been offering to scrounge up a private room for him, kick someone else out of theirs, and she was just about to, when he started talking nonsense.

"You're good for my insomnia," he says simply.

"Oh. Is that why you're always-"

Finnick nods.

"Well, if that's how you want it...but we need to make a rule that you run all your ideas by me before you go chasing after your latest. It's me," she says persuasively, "you know I won't wet blanket your good ones just because they're crazy."

He smiles. "I'd trust you with my ideas and my sleep, but I didn't do this so you could owe me. It's all right, really."

But Johanna's got her first clue to a solution since Rudder asked her to keep Finnick from burning out, as well as her first indication that he really is burning out, and she's hell-bent on solving this problem.

"Forget what I owe you then. We'll make a deal. You sleep in my room, and in return, you check in with me before you leave the district. I'll share you, but only if I can plan around it."

Finnick studies her face. "All right. But you'll let me know if I'm being a nuisance, and I'll keep up my end of the bargain even if you have to ask me to move out. I don't want you handcuffed to me because you've got more important priorities."

"Finnick, I'm Johanna Mason. I'll probably tell you you're a nuisance even if you're not. Now, the bed's not big enough for two, but there's a rug by the stov-oh, hell, take the bed-"

"No, you need the bed for your back. The rug's perfect. It's just until I'm back on my feet, anyway."

It feels selfish, but he has a point. She's not about to let him escape this easily, though.

"You report to me until the sky falls, you hear?"

"Report for sleeping duty?" Finnick cracks up, but there's something open in his laughter that tells Johanna that's exactly what he needs to hear.

"You're under orders to report for sleeping duty, damn straight. And if you go awol again, you'll answer to me and you won't like it." She's winging this blindly, but it seems to be working, wonder of all wonders.

"Yes, boss."

"Effective immediately." Johanna rises. When Finnick follows, she doesn't miss how slowly and stiffly he moves.

As they enter her room, Johanna remembers that she keeps the woodpile to a minimum. "You lie down, I'll be right back with some more wood, and we'll build up a big fire."

"Can we afford to?"

"Firewood is the one thing we don't have a shortage of." Johanna doesn't admit that she doesn't keep the room as warm as she'd like because she's busy trying to tough it out. If she has Finnick as an excuse, she'll keep her mouth shut.

"Thanks, Johanna, really." Finnick curls up on the braided rag rug, clenched up in an effort not to shiver. "I'll be over this soon."

"You stay put."

When she gets back, he hasn't even taken one of the two blankets from the bed. Rolling her eyes, Johanna drops one on him on her way to build up the fire. "I'll keep an eye on it until the room's good and warm, then I'll bank it before I go to bed."

When she's finished, Johanna pauses, sitting on her heels about a foot away from Finnick, and gives him a good, long look. How to put this?

"You said you don't like sleeping alone. If that's why you've been sleeping around, and you need-"

Finnick jerks his head hard, no. "I sleep worse when I'm sleeping around. I'm on alert the whole time. It's about making them happy, it's never about getting me to relax. Same with touch, it's never about what I want-"

"Then you do like being touched," Johanna blurts out, without thinking.

Finnick gives her a curious look. "I'm weird about touch. But yeah, it's the same as not sleeping alone. If it's someone I trust...Why?"

Should she say it? This is awkward. But Rudder gave her a mission. She can't let herself keep failing it just because she's squeamish. And she has no idea how else to do this.

Gripping the blister pack in her pocket, Johanna takes a deep breath and jumps off the deep end. "Annie said I should take over for her. Not the sex. This." Johanna puts her other hand on his shoulder, like a dare.

It's almost worth it just for the look on his face. "She said—what?! When, in the cave?"

Johanna nods, looking smug and feeling out of her depth. "Her exact words were 'wither and die,' as in, 'don't let him wither and die of touch starvation.' I was skeptical then, but after you disappear into District One and try to get yourself killed the moment you have no one to keep an eye on you, I'm getting less skeptical by the minute."

Finnick mouths wither and die in disbelief. "She may have been making it sound more like an emergency than it is, out of wifely concern. And no matter how much I might miss her, that doesn't mean it's up to you to make up the difference."

"Uh huh. Rudder seems prone to overreacting. And real wifely, that's him."

"I wouldn't know, I'm not the one who proposed to him." He chuckles when Johanna thumps him on the shoulder, then puts her hand back in position. "But I mean it. You never signed up to be my wife."

"That's what she said. That you'd protest at first and try everything to avoid inconveniencing anyone else, but you couldn't bring yourself to move if I insisted. And since you haven't moved since I got here-" Johanna looks down at her hand, "-I have to say, Annie's pretty sharp."

"Annie's observant as hell, but she shouldn't have brought you into this."

Johanna folds her arms. "You're a goddamn hypocrite, that's what you are. You can go to unheard of lengths to make my life a tiny bit easier, but I put my hand on your shoulder, and it's pull-out-all-the-stops time to make sure I can't return the favor?"

"It's not hypocrisy. You're trying to keep me from burning out, and I'm trying to keep you from burning out. And I told you, there's no favor you need to return."

"Burning out—from what? You sleep on my rug, and I pat your back from time to time. In private, not in public." She has her limits.

Finnick smiles thinly. "I'm a bit harder to live with than you're giving me credit for. I'd rather have two months of a place to sleep than one month with sleep and shoulder-patting."

"One month?" Johanna boggles. "Give me credit for not being a delicate fucking flower. What makes you so hard to live with, anyway? Screaming nightmares?"

"No. No, the nightmares are pretty quiet, and insomnia's always been the bigger problem. It's nothing specific. It's just that I tend to be too much, too intense...and people get tired. Everyone does, sooner or later."

"You know," Johanna reminisces menacingly, "I've heard that line before. Told everyone who said it to fuck off. You've never had a problem with me being intense."

"No, but you don't like touching, that's why Annie had to ask in the first place, and you've insisted on having a room to yourself all this time...You know, it's not worth it-"

Finnick rolls over and is in the process of climbing to his feet, when Johanna grabs his head and pushes him back down. "You have a fever. I'm going to win this one."

"I'll have you know I took out Sheer with a fever." But he lets her pin him and doesn't fight back.

"I slit a boy's throat when I was paralyzed," Johanna counters. Her hands are on his head, so she leaves them there and starts kneading her fingers experimentally through his hair. He seems to like it, so she keeps at it. "And I only need a room so no one knows how bad my back problems are. You already know, and—well, I have painkillers, so I probably won't have a night as bad as that one again. But sometimes it takes a while for them to kick in, so you can keep me company on bad nights."

"Yeah? It helps?" For the first time, something seems to sink in. "Maybe I should stay, then."

Johanna may not do touchy-feely, but she wants him back on his feet for the same reason he wants her on hers. "You follow orders and stay put. And tell me if I'm doing it wrong. I'm not good at this, and you have enough strangers pawing all over you."

"You're not a stranger, you're the best friend I've got. But how's this?" Finnick rolls over onto his back, and grins up at her with a look that leaves her undecided whether she can't wait to find out what he's got up his sleeve, or whether she should be backing away slowly. "If you want to make deals, we'll make this deal. I'll let you pat my shoulder if it makes you and Annie feel better, if you admit that the imitation Finnick Odairs in District One are hilarious. Not that they're training kids to be prostitutes in case they make it through the Hunger Games, but we're fighting a war to put an end to that. But that even if you're trained from childhood, you still can't do any better than pretend to be me...find something more hilarious than that."

Johanna glares at him. She doesn't want to encourage him, but if she puts herself in his shoes, she has to admit she'd be gloating all over the place. "No, but I'll give you something more hilarious. You were hiding out pretending not to be you by pretending to be someone pretending to be you. How does shit that never happens to other people always happen to you? Tell me your secret."

Finnick laughs with her until the tears run down their faces, and she may not have half as many fucks to give about the kids in One as she does about whether he thinks this is normal behavior, but at least if he's laughing, he's not looking like he got lost somewhere between here and that alley he called home all summer.

"You're such an idiot." Johanna punches him, unrepentant even when she remembers, belatedly, that every joint in his body is probably aching. "And how did you get those bruises on your face, anyway?"

Finnick touches his cheekbones. "Are they still there?"

"Not so much. But they were when you were in the hospital, and I wondered. If you're tired, it can wait."

"Nah, get comfortable and I'll tell you. I've got a ton of great stories."

Comfortable means bed, and Johanna hesitates before she abandons him on the floor. She doesn't know him well enough to know how much touch might be too much or not enough, doesn't even know if her weird, stilted patting counts, but they have time now, don't they? She climbs into bed. "All right, boy, bring on the crazy. Strut your stuff."

She gets the story of how he prepared for his drug deal, which had to be carried out in good enough light that he ran the risk of being recognized. Rather than settle for dark glasses like a normal person, he went to the trouble of picking a fight with a drunk beforehand and making sure his face got messed up.

"It would have been better if I could have done it to myself. I can take a punch, I knocked the socks off the rest of the class at pain training...but it turns out I have instincts against punching myself in the face that I just could not overcome. It was strange, I never saw that coming. So I had to get someone else to do it without letting on."

"Only you, Finnick."

She hears about the pond, the hospital, the prostitute who let him know when the lookalikes were being rounded up. The drug deal, the convoy of camp followers he accompanied north to the border, and how he wrangled an escape over the border and back into friendly territory.

"Oh, and-" Finnick starts laughing uncontrollably. "Maybe I shouldn't tell you this part. But it's so embarrassing. I got everything right, pulled this whole mission off, got the drugs, didn't get recognized in person—or, I don't know, maybe somebody reported me, but I doubt it—lived on the streets...but that first week, I forgot my shots had worn off before I remembered that condoms existed. It was only a few, but..."

"It only takes once!" If he fucking dies because of this, because of her...Why can't she travel back in time? She'd throttle him before she ever let him out of her sight.

"I know. But let me tell you how I picked up the local slang by eavesdropping. I'm so amazing at this."

Story after story like this she gets, each more bizarre than the last. She laughs with him at every one, but at the end, she says in a low, shamed voice, "I'm sorry I have such a low pain tolerance." None of this should have been necessary.

"Bullshit!"

"No, it's true. The pain's not that bad, usually," she explains. "I can work through it, I can function through it, I can even fight through it. Even when I can't move, it's not the kind of pain that makes you scream. You saw me at my worst. That's as bad as it gets."

"You work yourself to exhaustion through it and then you can't sleep, and you tell me you have a low pain tolerance?"

"It's how I knew I wouldn't be able to handle torture. They can do the screaming and crying pain." She's never admitted this to anyone else, but she owes Finnick even if she never asked him for anything. Will she ever stop being bombarded by the fallout of her weakness?

"Johanna, I'm glad you didn't try! And that's crazy, you're the toughest piece of leather I know. How many years did you manage without treatment?"

"That's my point. If I lasted all those years, I shouldn't be breaking down now. Now of all times in the middle of a war."

"So, it's getting worse," Finnick says impatiently.

"Pain without a cause doesn't get worse," Johanna says, surprised.

"Sure it does. Octavius didn't have four years with it, he had forty. I'll take his word."

Octavius, Octavius...the victor from Four who never fully recovered. "But he had unhealed injuries, right?"

"You both stopped going to Capitol doctors because you stopped trusting them, and you both had conditions that worsened. And don't tell me both of you have—or had—low tolerances to pain."

Johanna falls silent, thinking about that. Maybe. Maybe it's not just Finnick's lungs deteriorating. Fucking arenas. "Well, I can promise you one thing. I've got your back now."

"You've always-"

"No. I haven't. But I do now."


Having a roommate's not nearly as bad as Johanna was dreading. He's quiet, talks when she wants to talk, and shuts up and stops arguing when she pulls the boss card. Eventually, he even comes around to accepting that this is where he lives now, and he doesn't have to offer to leave every single day.

It takes weeks before a downside to surrendering her privacy dawns on her. She's dressing, chatting with Finnick, and he's not looking away, because why would he? when she realizes that the marks on her arms are visible. Hastily, she pulls on a shirt, trying to keep her face from heating up.

Finnick notices. Of course. He doesn't insult her intelligence by pretending not to. "Whatever it is," he says, "it's a battle scar."

Johanna's head flies up. "What do you mean, whatever it is?" She launches herself at him, and he reacts reflexively. "You know what it is! Don't play coy with me!"

"What do you mean, I know what it is?" Finnick demands, when he's fought her off and joined her on the bed. "You always think I know everything, and I'm flattered, but I wish I were half as good at spying as you think I am."

They stare at each other in astonishment, until Johanna finally says, "Well, what else could it be?"

"It could be anything! How many times have you been through hell? Could be marks from the time you were a POW, could be self-inflicted, could be a tattoo that says I miss my dad."

Caught by surprise, Johanna snorts at that one.

"Whatever it is, you're obviously not comfortable showing it, and that's fine, I-" Finnick stops as something occurs to him. "You're not comfortable letting me see it even if you think I know what it is."

"Knowing is one thing," Johanna defends, "seeing is another. I thought you knew and you were okay with it..." Her voice trails off while she wonders what's going to happen if he's not okay with her history after all.

"I don't know how you think I could think less of you. Have you forgotten who I'm married to?"

"I'm supposed to be tougher than that."

"You can't be braver than Annie," Finnick says definitively, "not possible."

"Well, you're not going to realize I shouldn't be in charge and District Seven should be in the hands of someone who's got their shit together?"

"Johanna, Mags is dead, Lyme and Rudder are busy, and Pearleye's not half as tough as you. You're in charge here."

"It's not a battle scar, though," she warns him.

"Even if it's self-inflicted, it is. Look, the only thing I'm going to give you a hard time about is a big heart with an arrow through it and my name."

"Finnick! You are the most conceited, egomaniacal-" Johanna pounces, playfully this time, and they tussle for fun, laughing too hard to use most of their moves.

"You wouldn't be the first, is all I'm saying," Finnick says, when he's caught his breath.

That just sets her off again, pummeling and grabbing and kneeing, until he finally pins her to the bed. Johanna sees him realize a second later how it looks, but she's looking up at him without the least fear, only a question in her eyes.

"You're in charge," Finnick answers quietly. She nods, trying to let his trust sink in.

He releases her, and they crawl back into a sitting position on the bed, side by side.

Still working her way up to trusting him, not quite ready yet, Johanna elbows Finnick in the side. "What do you mean, I wouldn't be the first?!"

"Have you been to the Capitol?"

"Yeah," she snorts, "how do you think they got me to talk? They threatened me with one of those and I told them everything."

Finnick laughs with her.

"Or," she chokes, "or, the reason I have to wear long sleeves is because I'll never be able to stop throwing up."

"Oh, that's how they all stayed so thin!" Finnick jokes back. The laughter has an edge of hysteria and goes on much too long, but it's cathartic for both of them.

When they're worn out, and Finnick is trying to hide his shortness of breath like he thinks she'll forget about it or something, he tries again to reassure her. "You're in charge." Then, "Mags had a stroke and arthritis and couldn't talk and we all still took orders from her."

"Even though you could have pinned her to the bed?" Johanna says, amused but still uncertain.

The image of him pinning Mags makes his eyes widen involuntarily.

"See, you wouldn't dare!" Johanna prods him. "She had you terrified."

"Because she raised me!" Finnick protests. "Tell me you would have pinned your grandmother."

"Not in a million years," Johanna admits. "All right." She moves her arm imperiously, an order to look, and Finnick obediently rolls up her sleeve.

He stares blankly at the old, faded marks for a minute, while Johanna holds her breath, before he recognizes the pattern. Track marks.

"What did I say about battle scars?" he says gently, rolling her sleeve back down. "You shot up because you were having such a great time these past few years? Big, non-stop party?"

"My back wouldn't leave me alone," Johanna confesses. "You've seen what I'm like when I can't even move. And half the time I can move, I just can't sleep, and I got desperate...I can't believe you went haring off to District One without knowing—you saw me! You found me, completely out of it. I thought you didn't believe me when I told you I'd stop experimenting. But now you're saying you didn't even know what I meant?"

"I believed you, but I knew you wouldn't have been experimenting in the first place if you weren't desperate. What I knew was bad enough, that you were trying painkillers without being too picky. It was worth anything I could do to help. If you've been trying—what, morphling?"

She nods. "And its cousins."

"Then you were right, that's not exactly news even if I didn't know you had the marks. I know some of those painkillers make you sleepy, slow-"

"Stupid," she interjects bitterly.

"And I know there's nothing you hate more than not being quick and alert and in-your-face. I went to District One because I knew whatever trade-off you made between pain and drugs, you didn't have any good choices."

"I never even had time to get addicted to anything," she complains. "I'd just have the chance to get physically dependent, and I'd run out, and I'd get hit with withdrawal. I'd have to lock myself in here every time I was noticeably out of it, or going cold turkey, or I'd pass out from lack of sleep...and you still think I can be trusted with responsibility?"

"More than anyone," Finnick says honestly, proudly. "You're a fighter."