The tub is a pearly white. Almost too white, like the snow on the mountains of District 12 when I visited it on my Victory Tour years ago. I have never been a fan of the color. It is too perfect, too easy to fade into the background and yet too easy to jump out at you. Too horrible in my memories of lights and tight sheets and beards and snow. Too much snow.
"Are you sure you want to do this?" a voice asks. I turn and look into Lydia's big blue eyes which are filled with an intense concern I don't deserve and something else I don't understand. I don't understand a lot of things about Lydia, but part of me likes that. After all, she is the girl I met at a bar years ago when I finally returned home to District 7 and tried to rebuild my life. She was a friend first, a good friend, a person who made me laugh from real happiness for the first time in years, a person I wasn't afraid to talk to. Eventually, though, it turned into a relationship that was a mixture of friendship and sex, lots and lots of sex that made me feel amazing and beautiful instead of like dirty crap, the way it used too. It was easy, it helped me deal with the pain, and Lydia didn't push. She never tried to make me do something I didn't want to. It confuses me now, though, because I don't know what she is to me anymore. A best friend? A lover? Are we friends with benefits? I try not to question it, because I know one thing—I don't want to be alone, and Lydia is all I have.
"Yeah," I nod, and sit shakily in the tub, pulling my arms around my knees.
"You don't have to do this, you know," Lydia says, fumbling with her hands, "You don't have to prove anything. We just can keep up with the meds or something—"
"No," I interrupt sharply, looking up at her. "I'm done with those fucking things. They make me incapable for hours. And besides," I turn away from her and look at the wall, "I'm sick of this. I'm going to fix myself. Now." How I wish I could fix myself. I am a wreck, no matter what Lydia tells me.
"Alright," Lydia replies, turning towards the facet. "On three?"
"Just surprise me," I murmur, pulling my knees closer to myself.
I hear the faucet turn first, and suddenly, the hard sound of water is soaking me, hitting me hard like a bunch of bricks after all these years. I close my eyes tightly and try to focus on my breathing, but it doesn't work. The water is cold, far too cold in my mind, and then I feel the shocks on my arms again, shaking me harder and harder. Over and over, shaking and shaking, pain ripping through me. Snow's eyes staring me down with all the power that he holds over me. The power that ruins me. The screams of Annie Cresta and Peeta Mellark echo over and over in my head along with another scream that I finally realize is me.
I'm conscious of the fact that there is no longer the steady fall of bricks on me, no longer the shocks in my mind, but I'm still horribly shaking and I still hear the screams—my screams. A hand is covering me with a towel, frantically rubbing every drop of water off until I'm as dry as possible, and then another towel is draped around me. The same hand is stroking my hair softly, and it's such a foreign feeling that it makes me stop screaming. I'm still shaking, though, and I just can't stop.
Finally, my trembling stops and I take a few deep breaths before opening my eyes. Lydia is looking at me without pity, as I expect, but with longing. She is still stroking my hair, and I don't ask her to stop, but I avoid her eyes.
"How long did I last?" I whisper softly.
"Two minutes. I know you wanted me to wait until three to take you out, but you were screaming so badly that I couldn't leave you in there," Lydia answers. I nod shortly.
"I'm sorry," Lydia murmurs against my hair, and I know she's not talking about taking me out of the shower.
"It's alright," I mutter, shutting my eyes and pulling the towel further around me. We sit there for a few minutes like that, her hand still in my hair. I feel a wave of exhaustion take over me, and all I want to do is fall asleep and forget everything.
"Come on," Lydia says, pulling me from my dozing. "Let's go to bed. You're tired."
"Okay," I reply, hating myself for not being independent and taking care of myself, but I can't tonight. I need Lydia tonight, and I'm too tired to even give a damn about my actions.
She hands me a pair of pants and a shirt and lets me dress myself. I do, and then I watch as she strips from her jeans and crawls into bed with nothing but her shirt and underwear on. She pulls me to my pillow and I close my eyes again, trying to focus as best as I can on where I am now, and not where I used to be. Lydia resumes the stroking of my hair, and it keeps me based on reality.
I'm almost asleep when I whisper to her, "I want to try again."
"Alright," Lydia sighs, "but not now."
"I'm not crazy," I murmur to myself as I drift off. I fall into a world of sleep, but not before I swear I hear her whisper back, "I know."
"Lydia, I know I can do it this time," I tell her. She stands across from me, leaning against the wall of the bathroom.
"I know you want too," Lydia answers, sighing, "I just don't want you to hurt yourself."
"If you don't want to help me—" I say angrily.
"No. You're fucking kidding yourself if you think I'm going to let you do this by yourself," Lydia interrupts with the same amount of rage in her voice.
"Fine," I reply, sitting down yet again in the tub.
"Fine," she shoots back, but the anger is gone. She again turns the faucet on, and I brace myself.
The effect is almost instant this time, and I can literally feel a ripple through my body as shock after shock hits me.
"You're going to give in, Mason," Snow's voice whispers in my ear, soft and careful and terrifying, "You may have fooled the country with your fearlessness, but you don't fool me. You may be a fighter on the outside, but on the inside, you are just as scared as the little girl you pretended to be. And you've seen how easily I break scared, little children. I'll break you too. Here it comes again, Johanna. Johanna, Johanna…"
"Johanna," Lydia yells, and I come back to reality with a bang. Lydia has turned off the shower and is sitting in front of me in the tub, holding my shoulders, both of us soaking wet and shaking. She has thrown a towel over my body, but I am so cold, so cold, and I try to find warmth in her dark blue eyes.
"Johanna?" She asks softly, pushing a lock of hair away from my face. The gesture is so kind, too kind for me, and with it, I dissolve to tears.
Lydia pulls me into her arms and I lay there, my head on her shoulder as I sob. I cannot remember the last time I cried and let someone comfort me. Maybe with my mother. I don't know. I can't remember. I can't remember anything right now—not my mother, not my father, nothing except Snow and his voice and the water and the shaking. The sobs are overpowering, and I cannot stop.
Lydia strokes my hair again and hushes me softly and calmly. My breathing returns somewhat to normal, but I'm still crying, and I continue to cry until I feel myself fall into exhaustion.
I wake up hours later, still in the tub but it is rubbed dry, and I am dressed in an old shirt and underwear with a blanket covering me. It takes me a minute to remember how I got here, and when I do, I'm fill with embarrassment and guilt. I cried on Lydia's shoulder from a fear of water. What the hell has happened to me? I can hardly know myself anymore. I don't know what happened to the old Johanna, or even the newer, Hunger Games Johanna. I'm neither, but I'm still here anyway. I just want to be me again. Unfortunately, I don't even know what that means anymore.
I haul myself out of the tub and waddle out of the bathroom. The blanket puddles around my feet. I stumble into the kitchen, where I find Lydia, who is making toast. She looks back at me and smiles slightly.
"Hey," she says, putting the toast on a plate, "You want a piece? I'll make you one, sit down."
I don't sit down. I don't look at her. "Why are you here, Lydia?"
"What?" She replies, giving me a look so shocked I am almost cowed. As if this is the most ridiculous question on the planet. Why wouldn't I be here? Her eyes seem to ask.
"Why are you here with me?" I ask softly. "I have nothing good to offer you. I'm a raging lunatic who can't take a shower without having a complete panic attack and hallucinating. I've killed dozens of people and ruined my own life. You don't deserve or need a person like me. So why are you here?"
Lydia looks at me with awe sketched on her face, before she laughs.
"What the hell, Lydia? I'm serious!" I exclaim, pissed. I just confessed one of my deepest insecurities, and she has the nerve to laugh at me!
"I know," Lydia says, shaking her head. "You really don't understand yourself, do you?"
I look into her eyes and shake my head, finding that I cannot lie to her.
Lydia approaches me and takes my hand. I don't pull away, even though every cell in my body tells me to.
"I've been attracted to you since I saw you in your Games," Lydia says, smiling, "You were so brave and clever and beautiful and fearless. I admired you, but I knew I was missing something about you."
"I'm not brave," I mutter, looking down at the floor, "I'm the same little girl I was in those Games."
She smiles at me, but it looks almost painful, and it is shot through with pity and loss. "That's what I was missing. You. I was missing how self-conscious and scared you were. You just needed someone, and no one helped you, so you were left on your own. And you did okay—you lived, but you weren't living. You were painted into something you're not."
"Exactly," I reply bitterly.
"But that wasn't your doing, Johanna," Lydia murmurs. "Snow and the Capitol morphed you, made you into a girl you weren't. But that girl wasn't not fearless or beautiful or brave or clever. That girl was scared and alone and damaged by another's doing. And she still is."
She's right, I realize, and before I can stop myself, my eyes are brimmed with liquid. She lifts her hand to my cheek and wipes the tears away as she continues.
"But it's okay to be scared, Johanna. It's okay—everyone is scared at some point. So when I finally met you years ago, I promised myself that I would make sure you were never alone again, that no one could damage you again. You've been through enough of that. And I knew you were brave enough to figure out how to be happy again. You just needed some help."
Her eyes are filled with honesty and that emotion that I still don't understand. I believe her though, and I nod.
"Thank you."
"No need," Lydia says, smiling. "I got an amazing, sexy girl out of it."
We both laugh, the weak, watery laugh of people who are emotionally overloaded responding to a statement that wasn't really funny. We laugh because it is so much better than crying, and I am done with crying for today. She smiles widely again at me, and I return it. She makes me happy. Happier than I've been in years.
"Hey," she says, grinning, "I have an idea."
"What?" I ask. She shakes her head and guides me back to the bathroom. Fear rises in me, and I look at her.
"Lydia, I don't think I can do this again today."
"Do you trust me?" She asks me, serious beneath the smile in her eyes. I nod without even giving it a thought.
"Okay, then." She pulls her shirt and pants off and then repeats the actions on me, as we've done so many times before. This time, though, it feels so different, so intimate and careful and soft. She guides me to the shower and turns it on quickly.
The water is falling hard again, but Lydia grips my hands. "Look at me, Johanna." I focus on her eyes, and easily, almost like clockwork, my body calms within the dark blue of her pupils, and I forget the fall of water. Her blonde hair falls so messily but beautifully onto her soft shoulders, and her lips are so red and sweet, and before it, I am kissing her deeply and passionately as I always have. This time, though, there is something else in our kiss, something much like the emotion in her eyes I've been seeing for so long, that emotion I've been feeling so unsure about. When she pulls back to look at me, I see it reflected in both of us, and I finally know what it is.
Love.