On her way back from the Capitol, she couldn't help but retrace the steps she had made to end up in bed with Finnick Odair. She had been pretty easy, honestly, and it was embarrassing.
She pressed her forehead to the glass of the train window and sighed, her breath left a foggy mark, and it reminded her of his own breath on her skin. She shivered.
She had to stop thinking of him and now.
And so she did.
The train arrived back home in Seven around seven at night, which was fitting. She would be home before her father put dinner away. She was walking through the streets, which were eerily quiet for this time of night. They had curfew, but it wasn't until eight, so where was everyone?
She made it to her front door and found that it was locked. Setting her bags down, she fished through the pocket where she knew she had put her house key. She unlocked the door, reclaimed her bags in each hand, and kicked it open. It too, was eerily quiet. The lights were out and she suddenly got the feeling that something was wrong. Very wrong.
"Dad?" She called out. No answer. She set her bags down and continued in through the main hallway. "Dad?" Her voice was more frantic now. She knew something was wrong.
She was running. "Dad!" Dodging through the rooms, looking left and right, all to no end. There was no one. There was only one room left to check, the study where Snow had visited her only two days before. She approached it, holding her breath, and turned the door knob. It easily clicked under her touch and rolled open.
Her entire world fell to pieces.
Her father was sitting in the same chair Snow had, his wrists bound to the sides and a bullet in his brain. His neck was bent backwards, his mouth agape, blood pouring out from where the bullet had entered. There was no exit wound indicating that it had lodged itself inside of his brain.
Her brother got the worst of it. He was dangling, feet first from the ceiling. There were cuts all over his small, delicate body. Each of them clearly put there to create a slight amount of damage, but a great amount of pain. It was evident what had happened here. Peacekeepers.
They had probably tied them both up, and forced her father to watch as they slowly bled her young brother out. His last dying moment was probably the sight of his child hanging limp from a rope in their own home.
She collapsed on the ground and buried her face in her hands. Snow. He had done this. This was her punishment for not being his obedient little whore. She had killed her family, and yet she hadn't. He had.
She rolled onto her side and curled into a ball. She laid there for what seemed like a few minutes, but when someone came walking into the room, she found that it was two whole days later. It was Ina.
"My god, Johanna, what happened?"
"Snow happened." She sighed, standing up and straightening herself. She expanded her arms to the area around her, to her dead family. "I refused him, so he took all I had, figures." She was laughing. How inappropriate, and yet she couldn't stop. She was delirious. Ina was approaching her and wrapping her arms around her to steady her, but Johanna just kept maniacally laughing at something no one else seemed to see but her. The irony of it all.
"We need to get you to a doctor, we need to call the Peacekeepers to come get the bodies." Ina started.
"The Peacekeepers, did this!" She was shouting at the poor old woman. She didn't deserve it, she was just naïve. Having lived with what the Capitol did for so long she had unwittingly accepted it, and it in part made Johanna despise her. "They know perfectly well that they have two dead bodies hanging out in this house. They're just acting like they don't so the government doesn't have to take the blame."
"Let's get you to a doctor, let's go see Blight." The elder was clearly uneasy at the thought of being in the room with the decaying corpses anymore, so Johanna decided to take mercy on her and oblige.
"I'll leave, but I'm not staying in Seven. I'm going to the Capitol. I have work to do." Ina nodded, and by sundown Johanna was back on a train, her expression stoic and her manner impassive. Whenever an attendant tried to approach her, she barked "go away," and they did. She didn't sleep, she didn't eat, she just focused on one thought. Getting to Snow.
They arrived in the Capitol the next day, and she made her way for the red door she had come to loathe so much. She shoved it open and found him staring out over the whole of the Capitol through a large window. "Ah, Ms. Mason, I knew I'd be seeing you again." He turned around and winked at her. "I see you've received your punishment?"
She sprung towards him with full force, knocking over a plant and jumping over his desk to get to him. She grabbed a fork that he had left there next to his empty plate, and shoved it up against his throat. "You son of a bitch!" She screamed.
He was laughing. "Ms. Mason, you are too predictable. Put the fork down now." His laugh had turned to a harsh growl, and she found herself being compelled by those wicked eyes. "I told you you would regret your decision when the consequences came to you, did I not? You failed to heed my warning, and now look at where you are… Back to square one, back in my grasp, in my control, and a whole family less…" Now he was grinning again. She began to spring towards him once more but two guards were on her, holding her arms down and pulling her away. "I expect you to be a good girl and do as you're told now. Lord knows you have to have a cousin or something in the fold, someone you went to school with you would like to see reach adulthood? Your first client is tonight."
The Peacekeepers yanked her out of the room and back to her old hotel room. They urged her inside and locked the door once she was. She was alone. "No you're not," she heard the girl she killed from District Eight whisper. "I'm right here with you."
