Chapter Four
The sun was just starting to dip behind the larger houses on the street as the car slowly pulled out of the driveway onto the quiet suburban road. Sure there was a few kids kicking balls around and a few parents arguing with children who were insisting on just five more minutes outside but to Johanna it was as safe as it was going to get for her.
"Gran I'm fine I promise," Finnick reassured the woman who was whispering to herself as she drove hurriedly down the roads. Johanna wondered for a moment exactly how long ago the woman had passed her test and if she could even still legally drive, then decided it was not her place to ask and so continued to look out of the windows, obtaining as much as she could from her surroundings.
"That's exactly what you said about your leg and look how well that one turned out!" she snapped back, gripping slightly tighter onto the steering wheel. Finnick sighed loudly beside her and Johanna couldn't help but wonder how the pair of them had ended up together, the panicky old lady and the laid-back teenager.
"That was one time. And it healed up fine in the end," he argued back, a pleading tone to his voice letting Johanna know he was uncomfortable or fed up with having this conversation. However it kept him from trying to ask her questions, so at the moment she held no objections to it.
"Fine? Fine? That's how you want to describe it? Those hooligans threw you onto the ground, broke your leg in three places and you think it's fine?" she practically shrieked, Johanna understood now why Finnick had wanted to avoid the conversation. Clearly his grandmother cared for him, and he didn't make that an easy task. It was obvious they would conflict over the matter.
"You broke your leg in three places?" Johanna asked feigning curiosity. If she kept the old lady in a panicked state there was no way she'd leave Finnick's side. Which meant that when darling Finnick went to get his stiches done and his old dear grandma wanted to be the one to hold his hand she could quietly make a get away.
"Yeah," Finnick mumbled at the same time his grandmother yelled, "He didn't break anything! Those idiots he calls friends broke it for him!"
"Oh come on gran you know that's not fair. You love them really. You were saying yourself just the other day how Cato's growing up to be a lovely young gentleman," Finnick protested. Johanna tried not to laugh at how ridiculous the word gentleman sounded in his accent. For some reason it just didn't seem to sit right on his tongue.
"And is Cato one of the ones responsible for your broken leg?" Johanna smirked and Finnick shot her his best death glare. It didn't scare her in the least; he looked more like a puppy getting told off for shredding the newspaper than any form of real threat. It only made her smirk grow.
"Yes wasn't he Finnick!" either way his grandmother seemed to approve of Johanna's concern. It had to be the first time anyone's relatives had approved of her company. Usually they just feared her quietly, but she had to admit that using the woman to wind up Finnick was proving a most amusing thing to do.
"Yes he was, I'm sure you'd just love Cato though," now he smirked like he knew something she didn't. Of course she couldn't smirk back; she didn't know this Cato.
"I have some friends whose company I'm sure you'd enjoy just as much as mines," Johanna quirked back, imagining him and Chaff trying to sit down for a quiet drink somewhere. The two tried to stare each other down, neither one really knowing why they felt threatened by the other.
"Where is your accent from dear, it's nothing I've heard before," the woman asked, oblivious to the challenge lingering between her grandson and the girl she assumed was his latest bit of fun. Much as she loved her grandson she did often wish he'd just choose one, the gossip in town was hard to hear sometimes and she never had the heart to question him about it.
"Ireland," Johanna lied, knowing that if it was nothing she'd heard before she wouldn't be able to correct her. Anyway a lot of people got the Scottish and Irish accents confused if they didn't know any better.
"Oh you've come a fair way," she continued, clearly digging for information Johanna wasn't willing to part with.
"I could have gone further," she pointed out, refusing to answer the unasked question the lady had implied.
"So why didn't you," Finnick muttered from the front seat.
"Because then I wouldn't have the joy of seeing you," Johanna smiled, a wicked glint evident in her eyes despite the chirpy tone in her voice. Finnick looked like he was ready to throw her out the car at the next red light, actually maybe before then if he could get away with it.
"So how do you two know each other then?" the woman asked. Crap. Johanna searched her brain for any logical reason for her and the woman's grandson to be together and yet only the worst form of thoughts entered her mind. Those thoughts and the truth and none of them seemed like a good idea.
"I met her at Starbucks and she asked if there was any hotels in town. I recommended a few and we got chatting so I offered her the spare room," Finnick replied smoothly, like he'd told the lie a hundred times before. There was a part of Johanna that didn't doubt he had.
"Oh well that was lovely of you Finnick but I do wish you'd tell me these things before I have to drive you to hospital," his grandmother didn't sound surprised by the story. Johanna found herself wondering if Finnick made a habit of inviting strange girls he met in coffee shops back to his house. What a stupid question of course he did, it was the only way his grandmother wouldn't have panicked that she was some form of serial killer.
"Finnick, you said you'd asked your grandma and that she'd OKed the whole thing!" Johanna scolded from the backseat. "I am terribly sorry Mrs.…." Johanna paused as she realized she had no clue as to the family's last name. Either way she'd be calling Chaff to check up on them later.
"Oh just call me Mags dear everyone does. And what may I ask is your name?"
"Johanna," Johanna replied without thinking, then took a moment to stop herself from whacking her head off the window. How was she so attached to these people that she didn't mind just handing over information? She wouldn't even tell Chaff her name if she thought she could have gotten away with it. Maybe because Chaff was a threat if he wanted to be and these people were about as threatening as bumblebees, sure they had a sting in them but they'd die if they tried to use it with her.
"Lovely to meet you dear," Mags answered, Johanna noted there seemed to be a note of genuine pleasure in her voice.
"You too Mags," she replied, noticing the sign that read "Baptist Hospital" drew closer.
"Alright you two run on in and I'll just park the car," Mags instructed as she pulled to a stop by the hospital entrance. Johanna made to open the door just as Mags yelled, "And don't put up with any of his cheek!"
Finnick slammed the door and turned to glare at the girl who looked like she would be ready to stab him again without a second thought. "Since when did people who stab other people give a crap if they've broken their legs in three places?" he demanded, grabbing onto her hand and storming in the direction of reception.
"Just trying to gather information about your weak points. So did they mention exactly where the bones broke? You know, just for extra target practice," Johanna snapped back. Forced pleasantries in the car was one thing, but she refused to let him even attempt to make her a lady in any other situation.
"Do I want to know what regular target practice involves? Or even why your target practice can be considered regularly?" he questioned in a way that made Johanna think he actually did want to know what regular target practice involved.
"You know, pistols mostly but knives are a little enticing. Then again I was never one to pass up the opportunity of axe hacking," she teased, shooting him a look that dared him to question her again.
"For some reason that really doesn't surprise me," he muttered.
"Really the girl who stabbed you being experienced in weapons isn't a big surprise?" she hissed and he tightened his hand around hers. It was warm and sweaty and made Johanna uncomfortable, mainly because it was tight and she knew running at this point was not going to be a possibility. Should've hit his leg, she thought pointlessly to herself.
The pair approached the desk and the young female receptionist allowed her eyes to wander over Finnick as Johanna's nearly rolled back into her skull.
"How can I be of service today?" she asked, batting her eyelashes just a little too much.
"Bring me a sick bucket," Johanna muttered. "I stabbed him, his arms bleeding a lot. He needs stiches so if you'd kindly stop ogling over him and do your job I feel this situation will be far merrier," she snapped, losing patience. She was not going to be stuck with Finnick because some stupid freshly qualified, or maybe even still in university, nurse decided she liked the look of Finnick.
"Perhaps if you hadn't stabbed him he wouldn't be here for me to ogle over," the nurse replied in that irritating chirpy way that Johanna found insufferable. She could handle people trying to kill her, hell she didn't even care if they took joy in it, just so long as they didn't play nice with her she was all good. This on the other hand was another thing.
"He implied that all nurses were just too stupid to become doctors, I said that wasn't true and he disagreed once again so I stabbed him so we could come and find out. I guess you win sweetheart," Johanna smiled up at Finnick and enjoyed the fact the nurse took that as her queue to storm off in an angered huff.
"Sweetheart?" Finnick met looked down at her with a raised eyebrow and a half smile.
"I figured if I was going to make up bullshit I might as well go all the way with it," she shrugged and turned to head in the direction of the seating area, Finnick obediently following her but not releasing her hand or even loosening the grip.
"You mean you don't think I'm a sweetheart?" he asked, mock hurt seeping into his voice and right under Johanna's skin. This was not part of the plan. There was too many people, too many faces for her to scan and history's to try and place. This wasn't right. She shouldn't be here. She should be sleeping dreaming merrily of how to get revenge on as many henchmen as possible.
"You mean the guy who held me hostage?"
"I'm sure that isn't the legal definition of hostage taking."
"You want to go check and I'll wait right here?"
"How dumb do you think I am?"
"Dumb enough to get stabbed in the arm and then drag the person that stabbed you into a place filled with scalpels and syringes and other fun sharp stuff that could damage you?"
Finnick's brow furrowed at Johanna's comment as if he was actually considering letting her go for fear she could do more damage with a syringe full of God only knows what. "Stop doing that," Finnick tried to demand, but the confusion that laced his voice made Johanna smile wickedly under the fluorescent lighting.
"Stop doing what?" she widened her eyes innocently and Finnick couldn't help but think that if he had met her in a coffee house looking for somewhere to stay how easy it would be to believe that those eyes could never harm anyone. Could never hold as many secrets as this girl seemed to.
"Stop making me doubt everything I say," he spoke more firmly this time.
"Maybe if you had more faith in the words you were saying it wouldn't be so easy for me to make you doubt them," she suggested, focusing on a man on the other side of the room who didn't appear to have anything wrong with him. She dismissed him quickly as she saw him pull a small glucose monitor out of his pocket and look at it in a panicked way.
"Maybe if you didn't scare me so much I wouldn't doubt my words so much."
"Maybe if you were braver a girl half your size wouldn't scare you."
"It's not your size that scares me."
"Well then you underestimate yourself."
"To be fair you did stab me."
"I took you off guard, your mistake was not being prepared. Which you've learned from since you're watching every move I make now. Plus I you're clearly much stronger than me and even if you weren't you're faster so it wouldn't make much difference," Johanna thought aloud, more for the boys ego than anything. When she left she didn't want a guilty conscious following her for any reason.
"But you're clever, and that's scarier than any strength or speed I can have," he replied; now actually trying to compliment the girl who had stabbed him. He figured that complimenting her obviously stunning looks wouldn't affect her much; she clearly prided herself on other things.
She only exhaled a little louder than usual. He hoped it wasn't her laugh, he imagined her with a beautiful laugh; a sound that was as much a reward as it was a challenge. "Clearly you're not the smartest in your school," she guessed, although it wasn't really a guess, she had no time for guessing.
"That obvious huh?"
"Not as obvious as you'd think, people tend to admire qualities in others that they don't possess themselves," she pointed out.
"So you admire strength and speed in others because you feel like you don't have them?"
"No I have them. Just in a more controlled way than you do."
"How do you mean?"
"As in you might be able to pin me against a wall but you don't know how to control the strength you have, whereas I know how to harness the strength I have and know the opportune moment to use it. Meaning I can escape."
"Why are you telling me this?"
"In the slight hope your grip would loosen," Johanna answered and smirked as his grip predictably tightened around her hand. She had honestly given up the hope it would happen after the second question, if he hadn't loosened it then it meant that he was focusing energy on the act and his answers had been so unspecific that she knew that energy hadn't faltered. Whatever the boy wanted he wanted badly.
"The doctor will see you now," the nurse from before appeared, not quite as happy to see the couple as she had been before. She turned sharply and her sneakers squeaked loudly on the plastic floor as she made her way back round the cluttered desk. Johanna smirked evilly and Finnick found himself wondering further about the girl next to him.
"Want to wait for your gran?" Johanna asked instead, only her tone conveying that she actually cared about the answer as her eyes continued to flick between those entering and leaving the small too crowded for her liking waiting room.
"Nah, she'll be fine. Mags is good at looking after herself," the boy replied standing and beginning to head down one of the corridors.
"You know where you're going?" Johanna asked, already trying to memorize the many corridors they were twisting down.
"Nope," he replied chirpily.
"Then where the hell are we going?" Johanna practically screeched, temporarily loosing focus as they swerved down another identical corridor.
"Getting lost," Finnick shrugged and then winced at the pain that shot into his arm. Johanna smiled a little at the motion, the boy might like to believe he was winning but she would always have the upper hand. It was how life worked.
"Good job genius, you're the one in risk of loosing feeling in your arm and you're worried about me running off," Johanna rolled her eyes as yet another group of nurses sent her evil glares. Sheesh sure Finnick was good looking but enough to hate someone he was still technically trapping against her will.
"Mr. Odair!" a doctor's voice boomed down the corridor. Johanna and Finnick spun different directions and wound up crashing into each other causing Finnick to momentarily release his grip on Johanna. She didn't miss a beat as she began her sprint back down the grey corridors, not looking back to where the shouts from Finnick were originating. She weaved between the throngs of people moving slowly towards appointments and other trivial goings on. No it had already been too long. She had to get away. She couldn't get attached, and that was all there was to it.
Author's Note: So what do you guys think of Johanna and Finnick? Also I apologize for taking so long to update this story! Christmas kind of got on top of me but I do hope you're still enjoying Johanna and her ways :)
-R