Okay. Sooo...dark little oneshot about Johanna, my absolute favorite. I do not own the Hunger Games or Johanna. I do, however, own Alicia. And Johanna's knife. I own that.
Also, this was inspired by a line from Opheliac by Emilie Autumn: She speaks in the third person so that she can forget that she's me.
Don't know why I wrote this, I'm not usually this dark. Read. Enjoy. Review.
A long time ago, there was a little girl named Johanna Rosaleen Mason. From her father she inherited her pale skin and brown hair. From her mother she inherited her dark eyes and small build and slyness.
This little girl was not a killer. She was just a child from District 7 who grew up alongside bright-bladed axes and tall pine trees.
She never meant to hurt anyone.
Please believe me when I say that.
When Johanna was fifteen, she looked twelve years old and weak. Her parents are both dead. She doesn't like to talk about it.
(I won't tell you how it happened.)
When Johanna was fifteen, she was Reaped.
Chosen for the Hunger Games.
A duel to the death.
She was usually a strong girl, a capable girl. But here she started to sob, tears streaming down her face as she mounted the podium.
Over the days, Johanna cried. She cried when she got on the train. She cried when she failed in training—on purpose, no need for them to know how good her aim was, better they all think her a joke, a nothing, a pathetic coward to be ignored. She cried during her interview, she cried when she messed up her performance for the Gamemakers—again, on purpose.
Her sponsors were not impressed. She didn't give a damn.
And when they were delivered into the arena—a wild jungle where everything ate you, even the flowers—she took off running, grabbing only a knife on the way.
That knife will win her the Games.
She hid, killing things that tried to eat her, doubting herself every second, wondering if this little act wouldn't get her killed.
But she kept up the pretense, running from anything that even remotely sounded like another human being.
The first person she kills is a boy, three years older than her. Tall and strong, a Career. He has an axe, a simple hatchet, and she can see immediately from the way he holds it that he doesn't know the first thing about axes.
Her knife takes him in the throat, and he falls. She takes the axe, she sharpens it, makes a proper weapon of it.
And when a girl builds the fire, a twelve-year-old but another Career, this one with madness in her eyes, this axe takes the Career in the back of the head.
Then she waits. And waits. Hiding. Soon, there are three left.
Then two.
Then one.
When the Gamemakers force them into the same part of the arena, a meadow, deceptively pretty, she keeps up the act, bursting into tears at the sight of the boy left, a gentle-seeming nineteen-year-old from District 12.
"Don't worry, Johanna," he says, putting an arm around her shoulders. "It won't hurt. I'll make it quick."
He doesn't see the knife in her hand until she stabs it into his femoral artery. She lets him fall to the ground, and as the boy from District 12 pumps out his lifeblood onto the ground, the tears are real.
Later, this little girl is tortured with water and electricity. Later, this girl fights under the Mockingjay. Later, this girl sees an end to the Hunger Games and freedom for Panem.
Later, this girl has a new life. This girl marries a lovely girl named Alicia, and they are very happy together.
But I still wake up screaming nights, and only Alicia can help me sleep.