Title: The Effect She Has
A/N: First Hunger Games fic. It was just nagging me through the whole ending of the book after I read about the three week training session.
"There she is!"
"That's her?"
"They're both strung out."
"What a shame..."
The word morphling was whispered among my fellow classmates. Implying that whoever they were talking about was weak. Incapable. Not worthy of training with my fellow District Thirteen classmates and myself. They're not soldiers, not warriors. I looked up from tying my shoes. They were right.
Johanna Mason was shaking from withdrawal, looking greener and strung out than Katniss, whose hand was gingerly hovering over her bruised ribs. From trying to call for a cease-fire in the square in front of District Two's Justice Building less than a week before. Our trainer had mentioned that they would be here, training with us. Their desperation to get back into the fight was no secret. They had been played, all of the tributes had been played. But they had tasted blood before, and they were addicted.
I stare at them for a long time. At one point, I remember them looking beautiful, dressed in ridiculous costumes and riding on chariots. I was much younger when Johanna won the Games. I think it might have been the seventieth Games. Maybe the sixty-ninth. I don't remember, but I vaguely remember that she looked like a tree then too. We weren't required to watch them, not like the rest of the districts, but most of the times I think people played them out of guilt. Because we have never had a reaping. In public areas, many of the refugees from other districts watched the streaming games, possibly to see if someone they knew was a tribute. Maybe old habits just die hard, I guess. I would tune in for a few minutes right as the tributes were released into the arena, but lost interest each year during the bloodbath at the Cornucopia. It was barbaric, plus I had a strict schedule to adhere to.
It wasn't until last year's Games, when Katniss defied the Capitol with her handful of nightlock berries, that President Coin took an interest. She said that the time has come, the moment we had all been waiting for. Maybe I hadn't been listening; I wasn't sure what moment she was talking about. She babbled about taking back what was ours and revolution. How Katniss Everdeen was now the symbol of the revolution. I at least knew what was going on in the other Districts; my parents being refugees themselves, left out no details about the conditions of the other districts. I couldn't understand why we would try to revolt. There was so few of us, especially after the pox outbreak. What could we really do?
I guess you could say our district specialized in military and intelligence tactics. It gave us a one-up even on the Capitol's Peacekeepers. We knew everything there was to know about the other districts and learned about it during our school lessons, especially the fact that District Two supplied battle-ready men and women to serve the Capitol. It was essential knowledge for every soldier.
I know Johanna has noticed me staring. It's out of pure curiosity, but I know better than to provoke her. Word has gotten around that she is the more hostile of the two. They've both been so psychologically damaged that my classmates and I were more afraid that our training hours would soon turn into an all-out battle royale, with all of us fending for our lives against the deranged Mockingjay and her wayward, conditional partner-in-crime. I can't help but notice the bags under their eyes, the strung-out hollowness of their pupils. The way that they dilate, even in the sun. The lines of their young faces are haggard. One Games was enough to ruin anyone; they had done it twice. They are in rough shape all around. Victors are supposed to be the strongest of the strong, isn't that what President Snow had said when reading the card and revealing the horrible twist of the third Quarter Quell? I cast another glance at Katniss, staring off into space and looking like she can barely hold her head up. Her face is haunted by whatever nightmares she has encountered over the last several years. From the looks of it, they're hellish nightmares for sure. My eyes shift to Johanna as she retches in the dirt, one hand steadying herself on the corner of the building beside her. What a pair. My classmates were right; this is our almighty Mockingjay? What a joke.
We begin every day by stretching. I keep my eyes on the tributes. Katniss can barely move, even to stretch. And Johanna looks like she's experiencing the worst hangover in history. But even as Soldier York leads us through stretches, there's a miniscule change on their faces. A determination that wasn't there even that morning. Their thirst for blood was unquestionable, and they would fight tooth and nail, literally, to quench it. By the time we start cardio-respiratory training and begin our daily five-mile run, they're ready to collapse. And they might do it. Katniss looks woozy and Johanna is puking up her symptoms of morphling withdrawal. Again.
At one point, Katniss looks at Johanna as she retches during strengthening exercises and starts puking herself. Maybe out of pity. Maybe from her own withdrawal symptoms. Everyone groans and Soldier York is shaking her head in annoyance. Please don't let this be the standard. You can see it on everyone's face. My classmates are now whispering about has-beens and drunks. They can hear us. It drives them crazy, like a rabid animal. The emptiness returns to their eyes and their pupils dilate. Over time, we learn this means they might snap. On Day 1, we were clueless and luckily nothing happened. Katniss dropped out of the run and escaped to the hospital for what we all assumed was a dose of their precious morphling, after nearly taking Johanna out for heckling her all day. But they come back for the afternoon session, much to every one's surprise. Even if Katniss cheats for Johanna by assembling and disassembling her rifle for her behind Soldier York's back. The fact that they came back mattered somehow.
By the end of the first week, my whole class was doing extra push-ups, more sprinting during our five-mile runs. We all would snicker each time Johanna threw a menacingly insulting "brainless" at Katniss or each time Katniss would make another stab at Johanna's coping methods. And then they'd race each other to the front of the group. They were still in the Games, Johanna just saw Katniss as an opponent, not some elevated face of the rebellion. They fight all the time. But they also had tried to kill each other for the sake of the Capitol's entertainment. It's just what they do. They fight, and they persevere. And it makes my classmates feel guilty about how they treated them the first day.
I see them in the hallways. Everything is a game. But they're less hostile now, half-way through week two, both between themselves and toward other people. They both show up to every class and sit in the front row. They quiz each other and the penalty for wrong answers is some sort of conditioning activity. But they both take part. Because they have to challenge each other, they have to beat someone. There must always be a victor because they're always playing the Games.
There was only one instance where they took out their issues on us. It was the first time we realized what that empty, rabid look meant in their eyes. It was a hunger for blood. I think two of my classmates ended up in Katniss's mother's care before we were able to subdue them. Someone had made a snide comment about the Games. Something that really set them off. I still don't know what was said, but it was like a switch was flipped. Their addictions and previous painful injuries were forgotten and they turned into pure killing machines. Watching them was magnificent and horrifying, a glimpse of the few minutes I had seen of the bloodbaths. They were animal like, fervent and volatile. Unsteady even. It was their reversion to animalistic, primal instincts that was so revolting. But something about the way they were ready to claw the eyes out of my brainless classmates was riveting, and I briefly understand the lure the citizens of the Capitol experience every year during the Games.
A man that I knew only as Mr. Abernathy and Soldiers Odair and Hawthorne appeared out of nowhere, followed closely by Commander Boggs and two more unnamed soldiers I didn't recognize. Probably rebels. It took all of them to pull Katniss and Johanna off of my classmates. They were sedated, and we were granted free time for the rest of our training time. We didn't see them the next morning, but they were there for the afternoon session, back to their normal competitive games. We danced around them after that, and my brainless classmates smartly kept their mouths shut with a new respect for their damaged classmates.
This type of outbreak happened once more, but there were no District 13 casualties this time. It was a rainy day. Not the first one since they started training, if I remember correctly. Johanna had been better about holding down her food, the worst of the withdrawal symptoms having made their way out of her system. She no longer broke into fits of profanity at night (she and Katniss would discuss it quietly, though the Games had ruined any sense of privacy for them. Their desperate fight for life had been televised for the entire country to see). They would joke about it. But as we were finishing the last mile, one of the insults Katniss threw at Johanna set that look in her eye and she exploded, tackling Katniss out of the line and down the hill. They slammed into a tree and began scuffling. It wasn't until Johanna had gone through the Block that we understood why she acted so strangely on rainy days. Why she averted any interaction with water except to drink what she needed to stay alive. And why Katniss's unwitting comment about the rain slowing Johanna down set her off. We stopped running, a few of us (myself included) ran down the slope and tried to pry them apart. This time, only Mr. Abernathy and Soldier Odair showed up. Johanna broke down, and Katniss just looked confused. She climbed back up the hill, shrugging off any helping hand from Mr. Abernathy and my classmates, resuming her run like nothing had happened.
But not before throwing a good-natured insult over her shoulder at us about being slow.
Finally, they qualify, probably just barely, to be recommended for the Block. Johanna breaks down as they flood the street, but Katniss makes it through with flying colors. Because she's the Mockingjay. We know she has been able to do it. But this time when we here about Johanna's misfortune, my classmates and I feel her pain. They've inadvertently become one of us and we respect them. We understand their thirst, and the need to quench it, just by watching them every day.
So when Katniss, the Mockingjay, sends an arrow through President Coin's heart, we're ready to defend her. Tooth and nail.