She is still asleep when Blight arrives; Johanna opens the door at eight-fifteen sharp to reveal her mentor clad in a deep blue suit, decorated with thin pink and red checked stripes. His bow tie bears the same pattern, shoes some sort of engineered leather dyed blue.

"Lucius?"

"Lucius."

She steps aside to allow him to enter. "I had more faith in you, Blight."

He shrugs. "Sometimes it's easier to just let him have his way."

Blight follows her into the living room. Over her shoulder, she throws back, "Now, what do they want with me, exactly?"

He easies himself onto one of the steps of the stairs. "Nothing major. Shooting promos, getting everyone ready for the tour. Essentially, you just need to talk about how excited you are to be coming to the Capitol for Snow's party."

"I don't suppose I just blurt all of this out when they call action."

"No, no. It'll be a live broadcast with Caesar Flickerman. He'll be asking the questions."

She remembers Caesar from her tribute interviews; how she curled in on herself, wide, watering eyes on the floor, lip trembling. He was very gentle with her. She waited until the personal questions to reveal the tears in full. Right when the audience starting to feel their throats tightening - I'll never get to hug my baby brother again. I'll never get to make a new friend. I'll never get to get married and have a pretty dress and feel pretty. In the superficial minds of the Capitol, the latter was an especially timeless tragedy. She began to cry softly, and Caesar daintily dried her eyes with his powder-blue handkerchief. We'll all be rooting for you in the Games.

He had spoken solemnly. Ladies and Gentlemen, Johanna Mason of District Seven.

She wonders how he feels now, knowing that he was deceived.

Lucius has become quite the celebrity.

Leaving the Capitol was almost painful – scratch that, hideously painful, especially after he remembered what he was leaving the attention for.

District Seven, a trash can with trees.

He is not going to mess this up. He's not. All of Panem will be watching – well, the Capitol, at least; he doesn't know exactly when the Districts ever do anything but labor away – and his newfound reputation is riding on his ability to deliver. Entertain them. Show them the ferocious warrior that captivated them not just a few months ago. Not a survivor. A victor.

He's got it all planned out in his head. Marketing Johanna will be like selling an edgy dress – perhaps the buyer will be intimidated at first, but after a push in the right direction, they'll go tearing it off anyone's back, if just to have it. She's much the same. He would be afraid they'd dislike her uncouth darkness, but somehow in between the ax wounds and fiery one-liners ("Buy a patriotic coffin for your shining fucking career" has been replaying in his head since the games) they have grown to love her intensity. They'll go wild for her. Finnick Odair occupied the lovable-victor niche, and now that's where he's taken up permanent residence. The Capitol does not want a female Finnick. They want a dog that bites.

When he arrives and sees her in her everyday clothes, he sends a dirty look toward Blight (who, to his credit, has actually cooperated with the suit) because apparently fucking feed her, she looks like a refugee wasn't clear enough as Johanna still looks like a soldier right out of the Dark Days. He knew it would happen – after all, it happens to all of them. That emaciated look they get after the Games won't just fade away from eating like normal for a while. Then again, it is District Seven, so he doubts they've even heard of a nutritionist.

Just as Cornelia begins barking orders at attendants, Lucius manages to herd Johanna and everyone else upstairs, prep team and equipment and all, and he watches as they undress and preen her, taking off the hair, clipping the fingernails, plucking at her brows. Her whole body is sinewy – muscular, obviously capable of very effective killing, but frail at the same time. She's like a lightweight champion who's been underfed for six weeks. And really, didn't he tell her to brush her hair? Didn't he?

She shoots Julia a death glare when she rips the last of the hair off Johanna's leg. After they've finished with her, he motions to Casarius to bring in the outfit: an athletic creation, sleeveless shirt and skin-tight pants with padding neatly folded into the stitching, jet-black with scarlet lines running up the sides like the blades of knives. It accents her form, turning emaciated into slim yet toned, which is good, considering Capitol patrons probably would prefer to see that she isn't starving to death.

Once they've got her into the outfit and lightly dusted with makeup, they set her up outside of her house – a pile of finely cut prop logs stacked neatly in the front yard, behind a tree. They've set a stump up somewhere in the background. Lucius can't help but laugh at how Blight and Johanna get the same damn look of disdain when they see the logs, as if somehow plastic props are a personal insult to their district. It wouldn't be so funny if it weren't the same expression, but he swears they're mirror images of each other, perfectly united in their indignation. He wonders idly if they're related, and momentarily amuses himself with catty jokes regarding the districts and inbreeding.

He has one of his many set on-set attendants produce an ax - lean and black and sharp, the stripe along the edge of the handle perfectly accenting her outfit. Lucius makes sure it's nicely stuck into one of the logs before they bring her on set, position her with one hand on the axe, the other on her hip, staring at the camera.

"Fierce," he coaches, his smile growing anticipatory as the camera flickers to life to project the countdown.

She rolls her eyes. Blight stands off to the side, just a few paces in front of him, arms crossed. Knowing Blight, he's probably somewhere in between mildly disapproving and unnecessarily worried.

Finally, the camera clicks on, and the show begins.

Cornelia Lolita cannot be human.

Or so Blight thinks as he watches her grin like a hyena as the set materializes, standing with giant sky-blue heels perfectly in line, dress tiny and angular in all the wrong (right?) places. Her hair is about three feet high, magenta interwoven with silver and pink strands of lace. She's as ridiculous as Lucius, if in a more controlled fashion. Blight has been to the Capitol several times (more than he'd like to admit) so he is able to notice that she is in fact attempting to calm her appearance for the sake of the district, and appreciates it for the small amount of sentiment she most likely intended.

Her schedule has been fastidiously groomed to maximize time and minimize effort. Despite her eccentricities, Cornelia does her job, something Blight is thankful for. That's how they'll get through the tour. She'll manage their affairs, Lucius will pluck and trim their image, and Blight will take care of Johanna. If they can do that, then they'll come out of it alive, luckily unscathed, hopefully ignored.

He can't help but cringe at the scene they've created. She's finally in her natural setting, and they've managed to make it as fake and prescribed as possible. After all, they're from the Capitol. And what else does the Capitol do, besides destroy originals to produce plastic copies?

Caesar comes on the screen, still blue and white and ridiculously excited for something ridiculously overrated.

He laughs, and you can hear the Capitol audience cheering in the background. "I cannot believe it! Johanna Mason, finally gracing our screens again! Johanna, it's wonderful to see you!" As he begins to settle into the interview, the crowd quiets. "How is it, being back home?"

Johanna smirks, but he sees how it doesn't reach her eyes and knows that it's not genuine. He can feel the heat behind it, and wants to warn her what the repercussions of disobedience truly are, especially during something that makes this much money for this many of the Capitol's wealthy elite.

"Gee. Well, Caesar, it certainly beats the arena." It could have been a joke, but the tone is all off. The implications behind it are too heavy: the horrors of her games, the bitterness she harbors, perhaps even alluding to the kills she made.

Caesar understands it as well, but he's too good at his job to allow it to show. "I sure hope so." He smiles humorously. "After all, I didn't think the Gamemakers did that fantastic of a job on the arena." The Capitol citizens laugh behind him, a blur white teeth and red nails.

Johanna snaps the ax out of the wood, and the obvious plasticity of the prop shows itself in full when the force allows it to come apart like a marshmallow.

The camera instinctively follows her movement. She looks down and smiles. "Oops." She paces toward the camera, swinging the axe back and forth merrily as she walks, smirking all the while. "Well, Caesar, you know my favorite part of the arena was? That cliff, right smack in the middle of the place. Toward the back, you remember. And how it managed to rip every single one of my fingernails clean off my hands when I had to scale it to avoid being stabbed to death. That was fun. They stuck me with new ones, of course, as you can see." She holds out her hand, and the camera zooms in to focus. "I like them. They don't quite match the new pieces, but they're just barely growing in. After all, grafts are grafts."

For the first time in his glamorous existence, Caesar is caught off guard. "You certainly displayed some serious persistence." He turns to the crowd for support. "Didn't she?" The roar certainly reaffirms their pleasure with the turnout of the Games, but Blight can see it does nothing but to exacerbate her anger.

Caesar continues. "How are your family and friends, now that you have returned as a Victor?"

"How? Oh, grand. Amazing, this difference between having a dead child and a live one." She smiles honestly, suddenly returning to a picture of loyalty and hope. "Of course, I think all families in all Districts are perfectly happy to make such a large sacrifice for the country. In fact, there are even families that have given two or three children as Victors in successive years. I believe two fraternal twins were reaped from ten a few years ago. What an even larger glory." Her tone is perfectly on point, but the statement is so outlandish that it forces an argument even larger than the idea she displays.

She's truly done it; proven her talent as a skilled manipulator while sending a personal insult to the very justification on which the Games rest. She has projected her anger, she has met them in the field of social battle with her words as axes. But it will take an intelligent audience (smarter than the common Capitol citizen, if Cornelia's vacant expression is anything to go by) to truly understand the heavy undertones of her seemingly prescribed and scripted melody of deference to their government. Their government, who are even more astute to insult than rebellion; their government, who tolerate nothing, who attack without warning, who kill without discrimination.

And then he catches a piece of red light glinting off the sun glare, from an upstairs window shrouded in shadow, a sliver of color emerges – a girl, a girl with bright red hair like that of a traitor he once knew, long ago.

Passopa.

For a moment, he thinks to follow, but no; it is only his mind, playing tricks on him once more.

When the interview itself is done, Cornelia allows them to project the footage they shot before their initial departure from the Victor's Village, all of those weeks ago – Johanna greeting her new home, Johanna chopping firewood in her backyard, Johanna in her living room with a book and a glass of cider, and finally, Johanna's twin diamond-edged hatchets hanging from the wall in an ornamented glass box.

Those aren't decorations, she'd protested. No one had listened.

Blight tries to go to her afterward; tries to warn her. Listen. You can't do what you just did on the Tour. They might excuse this, talk themselves out of it, ignore it – they may not even notice it. But they watch during the Tour. They're always watching then, and everything you do could be grounds for drastic action. He doesn't specify exactly what he means by the latter statement, but thinks much later of Passopa and wishes he had. You need to bore and disinterest them. You need to repel them. You need to finish this and let it sink without a word. That's how you come home.

Her last words cut into him still. I thought I already came home, Blight.

That night, he sits in his house, alone. The next day, they will be shuffled onto the train by Cornelia Lolita and powdered and dressed by Lucius Sulla and she will be given cards to read, and he will convince her to read them. That was the agreement. And at the end, if Lucius is still correct, if the rumors are still true, then he will be notified. And so will she. And there will be nothing to be done; it will have been finished. She will have been bought and paid for.

The Tour is their last hope.

He turns to his music player, an old thing given to him by his father, and inserts a tiny disk into the slot. It whirrs and he can feel the thing hum under his hand. It has been passed down in his family from father to son for generations, one of the last relics of the old regime. Displayed upon the front in crude ink is the title, Sony, and although he knows that whatever or whoever Sony was, they no longer exist, he wonders what they were to a people long past.

The tune begins to play; the Marriage of Figaro by a man called Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, a composer from centuries and centuries ago. He was from a country called Austria, so said his father, and was considered one of the greatest composers of all time. This particular tune is the overture, and it rings of finality and hope.

He thinks again of Passopa Jay; of the bright red hair and those startling eyes, of her soft smile and eager lips and apple cheeks. He imagines her in the forests once more, chasing him through branches and hiding behind tree trunks, the way they would run off together in those cold autumn mornings of his childhood, so far into his past he feels as though it is no more real to him than a hazy fever dream. His love for her, gone too; gone in an instant, gone forever. He remembers her at eleven, with chin-length tresses, at seventeen, lithe and tall and built like an archer; at twenty-two, with bitter eyes and a bright smile, welcoming him back from the Games without a word, with open arms and a cup of hot tea and a blanket.

Oh, Blight. She would say. You'll always be the same to me.

And then Deucalion, with his save-the-world mentality and his rash convictions, as though smuggling illegally transported food across the border would actually help anyone. Why didn't she understand the need to go unnoticed? Why couldn't she remain without attention? After all, nothing would change. Nothing would ever change.

Nothing did change, nothing but her. He convinced her, he poisoned her, he had his tendrils in her so deep that not even reason could pull her away from him and his childish notions and stupid ideas. If they can seize me from my home, put me in an arena, and allow me to murder whoever I want, and be murdered by whomever feels the urge – for no crime but the existence of my name in a bowl - what is to stop them from seeking vengeance for a real crime? What is to save you from torture, from a life as an avox, from death? She would have none of it.

And on a cloudy day, she and Deucalion lost the game they were so eager to play; he wasn't there to see it; rather he was in the Capitol, begging sponsors for the lives of his tributes – long dead, hopeless from the beginning – only to return to a corpse.

The bodies were Capitol property, and he was allowed to view hers but not claim it or bury it. Not as her next-of-kin, not as her friend, not even as Blight the Victor, though he did try that route. It led nowhere.

Eventually they were burned, as the corpses of traitors are, and the ashes were disposed of. That red hair. Those bright eyes. That lithe form. That smile. Gone.

The pain was unbearable, unmistakable, frightening in its intensity. He felt forever lost, and forever gone, and that's when those memories turned to haze, when his bright eyes went dark, when the world looked as though a shadow had been cast upon it, when the society of Panem seemed no better than the thick open wilds of hundreds of thousands of years ago, in the deep dark recesses of human history, when a whip seemed no different than the jaws of a mighty predator, when he wished one would come swallow him and swallow him whole. Passopa.

She was his only friend. She was all he believed in.

And then upon that shattered conviction stood a girl with twin hatchets, and a boy with a sword, and when she cut him open the shadow lifted, and when she kicked him down that primal hopelessness lifted like clouds and he was weightless and grounded at once.

Her name is Johanna Mason, and that is who he believes in now.

But still, that ache.

Passopa.

It is even worse, then, that Deucalion's ill-fated dreams could tear a rift between them so deep that even after thirteen years, he never knew about the baby.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

For constant updates, notifications and some backstage info on what's to come, go ahead and follow goodwhiteshark on Tumblr. This week, I'll be taking questions about the story, the characters, Johanna's past, and what I've got planned in the future. Thanks so much for reading, and please remember to review!

Thank you all.

-L