title: unbowed, unbroken, unbent
characters: Johanna Mason, President Snow, d7-oc's.
summary: Death doesn't happen to you, it happens to everyone around you.
a/n: it's more of an AU backstory of johanna's character through the years, up until cf; a bit of mj foreshadowing, though. sorry it's a bit shorter than i would like; the word count is around 6-7k. the first section before the first act is a bit after ACT III but before ACT IV.
warning: rated T for language and graphic violence.
disclaimer: i don't own anything besides the story idea; the characters and everything else belong to Suzanne Collins.
dedication: this is for callie (franceschis) for marchi, gge
prompt: johanna, 'you gave me forever within the numbered days' (the fault in our stars, john green)

(also, sorry for spag errors. rowan is a d7-oc that i just made up, and johanna's backstory wasn't given in the books at least i don't think so, so hopefully this isn't too au for her character.)

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

- e.e. cummings

Johanna sits beneath the waves of starlight—

They glisten down upon the Victor's Village; it has been four years since the revolution, and all is well.

There are the scars, but the scars will never fade, and it has been twenty years since the 69th Hunger Games, and they should have healed; all the Victors alive should have healed by now, but they will never forget the blood on their hands. The Capitol has engineered their minds to remember, This is your fault, we are not to blame, you are to blame, because the Capitol is the one who has devised the Games, but the children are the ones who are cruel enough to do simply anything to survive; it's their fault, it really is their fault.

They are the ones who have slayed the other children with bare hands, engraving their names upon victims with teeth, swallowing the bones of the dead, a satisfying crunch in the back of their mouth, blood splayed across hollow faces; the bones taste nothing worse than the bark on a tree; all the Tributes think that they have a chance at surviving.

(Some of them throw up the bones, some of them swallow, some of them grin and dive into the meal.)

"Is it okay to do something completely horrible and cruel for survival?" Rowan is a shell of the boy he used to be—Johanna would have taken the arrogant, somewhat cold-hearted boy any day over him; but he is still hers, the only person that the Capitol has no taken away (yet) and he's given her hope, no matter how false it is, and she's grateful for it. "Is it better to forget?" The man next to her is something of a Victor (survivor), a lost soul, atoms scattered throughout the starry expanse. They are all lost souls, in the end of it all.

She answers him with silence.

ACT I: INNOCENCE

Amber Mason is composed of cruel japes and compulsive lies like any mother of District Seven.

They are trained and taught to keep their children alive, not to smother their children with hugs and kisses (liesliesLIES) like women in the Capitol have a habit of doing. Her daughter is born during the heart of the long summer, young and childish like all children are meant to be, but children outgrow their childhood soon enough, never known the harshness of winter. Winter will come and it will be the end of it all.

The seventh year of Johanna's life is one of the worst—

Winter breezes into the town, whisper of destruction on its venom-filled tongues; the screams from downstairs resound, but they are not screams. They are whispers, and whispers are the worst of them all, anger barely contained for the sake of the neighbours. It's always about the neighbors, what the rest of the District will think of them (but it's more than that, it's so much more); feet move in a lethargic way down the creaking staircase in the shared apartment. The Atkinsons in the living room shut the doors closed, and Johanna peers through the window—they are a family of silver spoons and blinding smiles, blond hair and blue eyes; they are perfection.

"You can't do this anymore," the words come out tired and haunting, and the sound of a door slamming, the sound of a zipper pressing against the folds of a mahogany-coloured suitcase. "You can't leave—Johanna's only seven years old, I'm bearing your child, you can't leave now. You just can't. What am I supposed to do without the money?"

"You should have thought about that before you decided to send money to your sister."

Johanna clutches onto the banister; there is a whisper from the wind outside, and in her mind, she knows that she should return to the cold surface of the bed, because that is for the best, but nothing is for the best: everything has consequences, in the aftermath of it all. "Money to my sister—that's what this is about?"

"Hell's sake, we don't have enough money to just give it to random people, people who don't deserve our money. We should be saving our money for the future, for the future of our children." It isn't the first time that her parents were fighting; there's been days where she finds her mother's arm and leg set on fire, and takes a deep breath, runs down to the river underneath the swaying willow tree, fills up a pan of the murky liquid, and tosses it on her mother's body.

"What future?" Her mother cackles. "Jo's stupid, she'll never amount to anything." Her voice turns deadly serious, for a small fraction of time, "She's my sister, Harvey. Not any random person on the street, she's my flesh and blood."

Father heaves a sigh, "She's your sister, yes, but I have a brother too. I'm not sure where the hell he's ended up on, and he's my flesh and blood, but he's not my family anymore, he's not my priority. If he wanted to do well in life, then he should have studied harder."

"We didn't have any opportunities!"

"You're doing mighty fine, now." Father hasn't been home in a while—he's been in the Capitol, Mother's been telling her; Johanna thinks that he should go to the Capitol more often, because every time he returns, there's a sly smile imprinted upon his facial features, and he smells of jasmine and roses and happiness, and everybody deserves to be happy. Everybody.

There is the creak of the stairs underneath her feet, and a pause from the kitchen—of course, they do not want the neighbours to hear their conversation; Johanna thinks that is one of the few things that her parents still both agree upon. "Through lies and trickery and deceit."

"You're just the same as any one of us; you only get up in the world through that. Being a good person? That won't get you anywhere. Studying hard? This isn't the Capitol, darling."

"You want your daughter to learn this from you; these are your rigid moral values that you're passing through the generations?"

"You're the one who said she won't amount to anything. Goodbye, Amber." They are not heavy words, instead stated with relief. Then, the slam of a door; he doesn't bother to look up at Johanna who perches upon the staircase, eyes dark and murky and lost; the slamming of the door burns through her dark eyes like morning sunlight. There is a peal of laughs from the Atkinsons, and Johanna tries to think back to the time when the Masons were a happy family, not a rich one, but a happy one, and can't remember a single time.

This is life—what you make of it.

The Peacekeepers show Johanna her father on a summer's day—

He is enclosed under layers of asphalt and cement; they say that it was some sort of accident, the trampling of her father's bone and the small sound of crunching (like the crunching of bones beneath teeth) from a vehicle all the way from the Capitol, and from a young age, Johanna grows to abhor the Capitol because they had made her father happy in the past, but he is dead now. He's probably happier now than he used to be, though.

"There is only one God," she tells her mother, voice defiant; she isn't quite sure where all of this newfound confidence is originating from, because just last week, Johanna would have obeyed her mother and listened to her stringent commands, but now her mother walks with a certain lassitude entwined into her veins, and it's easier to take advantage of the weak. "And his name is Death, Death the only thing that we can rely upon these days."

"Don't say that," her mother's voice is harsh and pinched and crude; eyes weak, surrounded by darkened circles and premature wrinkling from the wisps of smoke that surround her atmosphere. "You're just a child, Jo."

Just a child; liesliesLIES. A child is a person between the stage of infancy and full growth—she has seen her father buried under layers of asphalt and cement, seen brutal deaths, said nasty words; she is not quite a child anymore. It's for the best, Johanna thinks. Children rarely survive in Panem.

Summer fades, winter arrives—the cycle of seasons changes once more, never-ending.

Liquor stains her sun-burned skin, freckles and scratches trailing across cheeks; Johanna Mason heads towards the lumberjack mill, the fresh scent of pine falling upon her like a blanket of comfort. She whistles a tune, a song of merriment that the rest of the children carry along; noises from inside of the mill resound, and she barges in, feeling like an outsider. Sunlight beams down upon sites of desolation—Rowan Atkinson heaves an axe over shoulders of bone and compulsive hunching, brown eyes narrowed in suspicion. "New kid, aren't you?"

"We were neighbours. Johanna Mason—you knew my father." Her actual one, not the cynical replacement who spelled of jasmine and the Capitol; but he is dead: they all die in the end. It is something of reality that Johanna briefly ponders upon.

Rowan gives her an easygoing smile; he is not composed of blonde hair and blue eyes like the rest of his family, a genetic defect or anomaly no doubt, but he is still one of them, nonetheless. "Horrible man, he was."

"Shut up." Her hands clench into fists and she inhales the polluted smoke; her mother had told her, You need to work, we can't support ourselves with a one-paycheck family. All the children of District Seven end up at the lumberjack mill at one time or another; it's just a matter of when and why. "He was a great man." Or so she's heard.

"Brought cruel and unusual punishments to a whole new level, really." Her father used to work for the Capitol—the Capitol is composed of cruel and unusual punishments, and yes, he worked for the Capitol, but he was never one of them. The level of poverty that surrounded the Masons and their threadbare clothes was enough reminder to their neighbours that nobody could truly be part of the exclusive group, something that you couldn't buy your way into; being a person in the Capitol, just to live there, it was a birthright.

"Shut. Up." The words are enunciated and clear, and her hands are shaking; Backbone, Johanna reminds herself, you are stronger than this. You are a Mason, fire and stone and wood runs through your blood, and you are not a weakling.

His grin turns towards a snarl, and it does not take much imagination on the part of Johanna to envision genetically engineered claws in place of the yellowing teeth of his mouth; they are all dangerous. Everybody is an enemy, they're all out to get you. All those years prior, when her mother was still a somewhat decent mother, she had told Johanna, Everybody who's not us is an enemy. "Well, you don't want to be disrespecting the boss, now would you?"

"Just let me start working, would you?"

"I was never stopping you. You're the only one who's stopping yourself." She brushes past his shoulder, a rough push, and her eyes light up upon the swear word that he utters beneath his breath—the Atkinsons are not perfect, nobody is perfect. Not being perfect is okay.

Love is for the weak-minded.

It is for people who need dependence on another soul; love is irrelevant for the poor—it is something belonging to the Capitol, extravagant people who have enough free time to explore other venues than survival. President Snow sits upon the chair—he smells like white roses and death, and is something composed of malevolent intentions; she smiles nonetheless and offers him biscuits and tea. "What a dutiful little girl you have, Mrs. Mason," he responds, his voice draping silk, the same as it is on the television screen in the Public Forum during Games-related announcements. "May I speak to her, alone?"

"Johanna Mason. At long last. I knew your father—he was a great man." They are all lies.

She fidgets, toes crossed underneath the Mary Jane styled shoes, all the way from the Capitol; her mother's bought them on special occasion, in case of visitors, but it's different, Johanna thinks; President Snow is always there, always watching. "I'm aware of that."

"How would you like to come to the Capitol?"

"I would very much like that." Except she really wouldn't, because this is the place where her father had gone, and like the coward she is, Johanna does not want to feel close to her father. She would rather not feel at all.

"Good. I'll ask your mother to send you up for a visit. It was nice seeing you again, Miss Mason."

He is out the door, but the smell of death and roses stays long after.

Rowan knocks on her door when she's thirteen—

Not for the first time, not for the last; he stands, leaning across the doorframe, arrogant smirk splayed out across rich features, highlighted by several days working in the lumberjack mill, the darkening underneath his eyes making him look like an adult, a child pretending to be somebody much older. Her expression twists into something of a smile—he's probably the last (well, maybe not the last, because in one of her twisted nightmares, she's envisioned her father coming home—her mother, who's been sour and rude for the past year or so, would start smiling again, and he would pick her up in his arms and they would laugh, and maybe, they could be a family again; only children dream, though, and Johanna won't let herself be a stupid child anymore) person that she would expect at her door. "Johanna?"

He sounds almost surprised to find her . . . in her room; she raises an eyebrow in response, nudging the door to open a little farther and pinching down on her fingers to stop cheeks from flushing at the creaking sound—nobody needed to knew how poor they were, especially not the Atkinsons, who lived in the same house as them, but were composed of a five-paycheck family and perfection. "Rowan."

"Johanna Mason?"

"Rowan Atkinson," she drawls out. "Now that we're on a name-to-name basis, would you mind just telling me what you're here for? I've got a lot of things to do, and talking to you isn't even close to the top."

"I think that you'd be very interested in my offer."

It sounds like something from a reality television show, or so she's heard; everybody in the mill talks about the daily gossip or hums a tune—it's the only way that they're able to get through the daily grueling work. Together, and distractions never hurt to numb the physical pain when the roof caves in, asphalt and cement falling on their heads. "Oh, really? Let me guess what it is—"

"And, like you, I don't have a lot of time. Look, there's some new shifts for working in the mill; you can get some night shifts, and I just assumed that you would like all the extra money that you can get."

"Where'd you get that assumption from? Just because my daddy isn't here anymore and just because I wear dirt clothes, it doesn't mean that I'm so desperate for money that I'd work at night shifts."

"I didn't mean it like that," Rowan hastily corrects himself.

"You know you did, Atkinson. Just stop, would you? I don't need you bothering me, too."

"Just stop by the mill tonight, if you'd like to start? It's not every day that you can get a little extra money. I'd kill for a job like that, really."

"You can take it," she clarifies, closing the door a bit more; Rowan looks a bit puzzled at her reaction, as though he's never had somebody refuse talking to him, and Johanna thinks that it's about time that the boy next door learns to grow up.

"I'm working at the bakery," he mutters, cheeks flushed.

She giggles, despite herself, hand covering her mouth to restrain herself. "The bakery? All the girls work there."

Rowan scowls, a smile underneath the layers of arrogance. "You're a girl. You don't work at the bakery."

"Well, I got better things to do in my life than learn how to frost and decorate cakes, don't you think?" She doesn't wait for a response, and slams the door; the clock strikes nine hours in the Town Square and Johanna finds herself with axe over shoulder in front of the lumberjack mill.

Winter breezes past, as leaves fall upon the floor, and spring showers dance upon District Seven; Rowan catches up to her, walking home from the mill, long footsteps that barely touch the ground—he's always energetic, and it's the slightest bit annoying how somebody can be so happy every day despite their situation, drowning in poverty. "How'd you get the night shift?"

Rowan shrugs. "Turns out that there's a girl who wanted my spot at the bakery and had a spot at the night shift—good trade, I think."

"The bakery pays well, though, doesn't it?"

"Not much more than the mill. And I'm a man, too."

She barks out a laugh. "Rowan, you're what, twelve, thirteen years old? You're not a man, you're just a boy."

"I'm the breadwinner of the family," he reminds her—the Atkinsons are composed of a mother and father who own a small shop at the center of town, Rowan, the oldest who works in the mill, and the younger triplets, six years of age, working in their parents' shop until they're old enough to get jobs of physical labour and strength. "I haven't been a boy for long."

"You guys are the Atkinsons—perfect pretty family, at least from what I've seen and heard. You guys just manage forwards; nothing horrible and drastic has happened to your family, now has it?"

"Not yet." His tone is dark and moody, different from the usual casual way Rowan speaks, and his shoulders turn rigid underneath the glare of the sunset that drags upon the day, counting down the hours until midnight. "How'd you like to come over for dinner, then? If you think that my family's so perfect, just swing by around eight past noon?"

He doesn't take 'no' for an answer and sprints off in the other direction, back to the mill; it is his home, Johanna thinks, more than anything. She hasn't seen a single boy who's looked so willing to spend time in the grueling conditions, but smiles to herself nonetheless—dinner was something carved out of fairytales and dreams, and so were the Atkinsons. She wouldn't refuse the free food, of course. Hours later; "Johanna Mason, is it?" Mr. Atkinson stares at her as she knocks on the door of the living room in the combined house, as though they haven't been living in the same house for the past thirteen and a half years. "Rowan's girl?"

"I'm not his girl." Her cheeks flush, despite her better intentions—conceal, don't feel, Johanna reminds herself; her mother drowns in pools of sorrow and grief every night, and that is what happens when attachment and likings and love begin, and she will not be a stupid, little girl who ruins her entire life because of a simple mistake. She won't be that girl.

Mr. Atkinson raises an eyebrow. "Well, that's not what I've heard. Come in, though."

(And they are a family of silver spoons and blinding smiles, and somewhere among the days, she becomes one of them.)

For three to four weeks in the middle of the long summer, the Games are held.

Everybody in the Capitol, most everybody in the richer Districts, they turn their attention towards the television screens featuring live footage of the bloody games, the interviews, the scorings, a big game for everybody to bet on; it makes a bit of money, if nothing else.

Except, District Seven cannot afford to do that.

While the Capitol celebrates and feasts, District Seven grudgingly moves forward—on most occasion, they will lose both of their tributes, but they will move forward, because there are two children dead every year, but so much more children left alive. The children left alive, are they anything less because they have not laid their lives down for their District? The second reaping is the best of them all—

The fake father is all the way from the Capitol, and a close associate of President Snow, and ensures that Johanna won't be Reaped, and it's bloody fantastic, that's what it is. Her hair is in braids, ringlets of lively brown; and then, "Johanna Mason."

Fuck you. It's her immediate reaction, and it resonates throughout her entire brain, blocking out any wavelengths of common sense, and she hopes that the fake father can hear her now.

"Where are you, sweetie? Come up here, darling!"

Rowan is her only visitor—Mother and Fake Father couldn't have been overcome by guilt, but they must have had better things to do than spend their time sending a farewell to a mistake of a child. "I'll see you again, Johanna," Rowan trails off. It is a cliche goodbye, something carved out of dreams and false hopes (liesliesLIES) but Johanna only grips onto her fingers and nods.

This time, he's the one to slam the door and walk away.

She stares at the wall; it is wiped clean of blood stains and rioting graffiti, and belongs to the Capitol with their engraved insignias in all four of the corners. Everything belongs to the Capitol now, including her.

(You are a pawn, Johanna Mason—a pawn that is ready to crumble.)

ACT II: ENLIGHTENMENT

They dress her up in little girl dresses; girls and curls and their gourmet vomit—it's sickening, it's just sickening because they're all so vapid and useless, and these are the people running the country—surround her, fawning over; Oh, what an adorable little girl you are! She wants to snarl, but nobody can know her act, you see, so instead, Johanna just smiles and nods like a dutiful younger child.

They fatten her up like a pig in the slaughterhouse, and she pretends to be weak—it is all an act, but is it really? She pretends to be strong inside, and her weakness shows on the outside, and her mentors yell at her, screaming, You can't get any sponsors this way! But they really can't care, can they; they have won the Games, so they are monsters, and monsters do not have hearts; The audience does not fawn over her.

Her words are weak and stupid and even helpful Caesar Flickerman who tries to goad her into gaining sponsors cannot save Johanna Mason, the weakling from District 7.

(The sponsors bet that she will be the second to die, after the disabled kid from 10.)

(Twenty, nineteen, eighteen—

The songs of despair and destruction collect in the shadows; the fire in her eyes grows higher and higher, a wall formed.

Seventeen, sixteen, fifteen—

Eyes, brimming with desperation and weakness, flicker around the setting; it is composed of tall grasses and fields of lumber, it is her home.

Fourteen, thirteen, twelve—

The Cornucopia, a majestic silver box—it's a box, a stupid box, and the Capitol has made them look like fools, looking at the box as though it is their savior; it's just a box, she wants to scream. Nothing more; but it's their saving grace and their downfall.

Eleven, ten, nine—

The Career tribute next to her lets out a snarl, something akin to the howl of a wolf, and the other Career tributes in the circle growl, signaling their superiority (why does a wolf howl? To signal its pack) but they do not move.

Eight, seven, six—

She crouches down into a running position, hands brushing down upon the sandy flooring.

Five, four, three—

I'm going to die. I'm going to die. I'm going to die.

Two, one—

You cannot be weak, Johanna Mason—you are a Mason, iron runs through your blood, nothing of stardust and dreams. You cannot afford to be weak, here of all places; the words of her mother ring through her memory, through the crevices of a bloodied mind.

Zero—

The bell rings (if she thinks hard enough, Johanna can hear the claps and the laughter and the anticipation of the audience in the Capitol), and she takes off towards the forests, head racing, blood pounding, and scales a tree—it is the coward's option, but Johanna does not mind being a coward if a coward is able to stay alive. Bravery is a kind word for stupidity, she thinks.

Johanna watches the tributes run by from above—

A sponsor sends her a bow and arrow, as though this is something she can use, and all the silver arrows go to waste, falling down far from their targets and only attracting unnecessary attention. If she wins, this will not be the way she wins, through brute violence and the like.

She will wait until there are few left, and then strike in the midst of the night.

(Coward, coward, that is what you are, a coward.)

She starts slashing away at their throats with her axe when there are five left—

The Careers, with bloodlust running through their veins, and destruction in their fiery eyes, have long forgotten about the girl from District Seven; she was never a threat in the first place.

So, when she sets fire to their camp at night (it is a coward's fight, but she is a survivor at all costs, and maybe the Careers weren't cowards, but Johanna's the one that's alive at the end of the day) and slashes their throats with her axe, watching their blood spill onto the fresh grass, they look at her with surprise and astonishment and curse their stupidity, and Johanna smiles.

That's when the sponsors start to notice her.

Johanna Mason, the girl that nobody expected to survive, they will call her. The mentors look at her with astonishment; people in the Capitol bet on how long it will take for her to turn insane, but she is already insane, so that matter is over; they send her balloons of foods and weapons and the mentors urge to kill more and more each day.

And, like a dutiful little girl, she obeys and kills until she is the only one left.

(You are not a pawn anymore; you are a queen, leaping from one space to the next. You are strong.)

ACT III: RESTORATION

"Where did all the little girl dresses go?" Caesar Flickerman is composed of helpful words and dyed powder-blue eyelids and she was grateful to him, but no, not anymore. There is no reason to be grateful to anybody in the Capitol; the monsters are all one and the same.

"I outgrew them," she roughly says, her voice harsh and cruel.

(They call her the monster, when the Capitol is the monster—taking children from their roots and bloodlines, forcing them to become monsters, because in real life, the monsters win, and all these children want to do is win. It's not even about winning anymore, it's about staying alive; nobody wins the Hunger Games, you survive the ordeals, you survive the bloodthirsty Careers, you survive the surprises. And if you're lucky enough to stay alive for longer than everybody else, then they'll give you a golden crown and call you Victor.)

And that's when it gets even worse—

Johanna thinks that she is a fool for ever thinking that the Games were bad; sure, there was starvation and death and famine and death and bloodshed and death, but it's nothing compared to the real world. It's a chess game, she thinks. And all the Victors are little pawns, under the possession of the Capitol, who gives them a fancy house in the Victor's Village of the District, but they own their lives now.

Not me, Johanna thinks to herself, letting a knife slip out of her hands and cut her jaw, I won't be a pawn.

The crowd does not perceive her to be the weak, little girl anymore, but she is not a favorite either, like Enobaria from District Two, the one who had engraved her names into her enemy's foreheads after crunching upon their bones for sustenance (and enjoyment, of course; because what's the point of living if you only think about when you're going to die? You must as well, first live). She is a coward, not a fighter, but a survivor, and the Capitol does not approve of the girl who swears at them with a crude mouth, but Johanna doesn't really care anymore.

She's been in the Games, her life on the line—there's nothing they can do to her anymore. She's done (safe).

The people from the Capitol continue to call her cruel, but the Games do not change who you are, they simply bring out your real personality and she has been cruel from a young age, so the change in character should have been expected—she will not put on a show any longer, the people of the Capitol do not deserve the effort it takes to pretend to be weak, because she is a lioness, and she will not cringe for them—but Johanna is alive.

The other tributes might have been kind or bloodthirsty, but they are dead, and everybody spends a lot more time on the one alive girl instead of the twenty-three dead children. It should be the other way around," she says in an interview.

(The crowd boos.)

President Snow visits her house in District 7's Victor's Village on a Tuesday—

Johanna has lost track of the days. They are all numbing minutes and hours, and she stares up at the clock, waiting for time to stop (but it will never stop, will it? It'll just keep on ticking on and on), for the pain to stop. "Johanna Mason," he says, silk voice, silk clothes, the scent of roses permeating through the polluted breaths of air.

"President Snow—what a delight." The words are numb and faked and forced, and she's not even quite sure why she's saying them; nevertheless, Johanna utters them, because they are the words that her mentor has told her, and her mentor is still alive, so obviously, she's doing something right. "Would you like some biscuits and tea?"

His eyes narrow, but voice never fluctuates to show concern and emotion. "Sit down, Miss Mason—I have some matters of importance to discuss with you." The doors close behind her. "I'll be sending some men home with you, Johanna."

She gets the implied image, and her eyes flicker with distaste—the Capitol really are the monsters. Maybe they have the Hunger Games so that they can make more monsters, so they don't feel alone in the world. Something messed-up and completely dysfunctional would only suit their cruel minds. "Fourteen. I'm fourteen. I'm not doing this."

"I won't force you into anything you're not comfortable with, Johanna." He looks at her as though she is already fading, and repeats her name another time, just to make sure she is still real; Johanna smiles wryly in the back of her mind, lopsided grin with crooked teeth, because she has to be the first tribute with open acts of defiance against the Capitol. The rest of the tributes must have just been ecstatic to make it out of the Arena alive—they call this victory, perhaps—but she is different. Being different isn't ever the safe option, nevertheless. "How about interviews? The crowds from the Capitol are extremely interested in you."

Johanna stands up, arms crossed. "If that's all, then you can leave now. I'm not going to associate with any one in the Capitol, not today, not tomorrow, not ever. You got that?"

"Are you sure about this—these men would love to escort—"

"Fuck you." It is not the first time she has said these words to a member of the Government, and it is worth the future consequences, whatever they may be, to see the slight flicker of confusion underneath the façade of the President. Scared, maybe?

President Snow smiles. "Well then. I'll be seeing you around, Johanna."

(There always comes a price to pay; the Masons always pay their debts.)

She comes home from the lumberjack mill (they tell her to be a Mentor, to watch the rest of the kids die in the next year because they will die, and she declines and pretends that life is normal, but everybody treats her like a monster) to see her fake father on the ground—his throat is slit with a fine razor, and white stains run up and down his legs—and her mother is hung from the ceiling, blood still dripping from her face, and the smell of their rotting fresh hangs in the air.

A white rose is set upon the coffee table in the foyer, and the smell of blood wafts through the air, and whoever told her it was going to be okay one day (liesliesLIES) was stupid; She falls on the floor, and for the first time in forever, breaks.

(They will pay, they will pay, they will pay.) Unbowed. Unbroken. Unbent.

Johanna smiles, and stands up tall—she does not love anymore (there is no one left), she is not weak. There is nothing they can do to her anymore.

She channels a song of anger—

She dreams of setting fire to the Capitol, watching the licking tendrils of a dragon spit its two-fanged venom upon the buildings that reach up to the sky, watch the whole world go down in fire; she will cherish their screams the way that they had cherished hers, and she will not show mercy because they never showed mercy to her.

They had made her this way. It's all their fault.

(All their fault, all their fault, it's all their fault—it's a song of desperation.)

ACT IV: REVOLUTION

Johanna dials the number on the phone—

The Avox in the corner stands numbly, the television screen is switched off—no more commentary all the way from the Capitol, with their ridiculously fake smiles and happy voices; Oh, what a wonderful show that was! Oh, how horrible this is; only three tributes were slayed today. Better pick up the pace tomorrow, Career tributes! And for a moment, there is something more important than her life—

There is the world; there are the rioting people, with mockingjays engraved on their shoulders, and it's a revolution, that's what it is. The corners of her lips curve upwards as the line stops ringing. She doesn't bother to let Heavensbee utter a word.

"I heard that there's some sort of revolution going on. I don't care how dangerous it is. Do you hear me? I want in."