Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Chapter 51
Johanna
"…Given your…purity, these private introductions I have taken the time to line up for you could prove to be fruitful."
"No."
His furry little eyebrows rocket skyward, revealing his immediate offense. His office reeks of roses. Even with all my layers, it's cold in here.
"I beg your pardon, Miss Mason?" President Snow inquires, the undertones of his question detectable. How he manages to look taken aback after what he has just asked me to do baffles me.
He upholds his dwindling composure by dipping a crumby scone into the contents of an intricately painted teacup.
"I said, 'No'," I tell him, hardening my voice for effect. He isn't dealing with the twig who sobbed at her reaping anymore, and he needs to know that.
He is dealing with a Victor. A two day old Victor who can still smell the blood of fallen Tributes on her thoroughly scrubbed hands.
President Snow laughs mechanically, keeping his serpentine eyes trained on my unwavering frame.
"People do not say 'No' to me, Johanna. Especially Victors who have any piece of sound mind. They do not say 'No' to my clients."
'Sound mind'. The Victors. That's laughable.
Snow continues, despite the look of disdain I make next to no effort to conceal from him. "There is a large number of paying Capitol acquaintances who have taken up a special interest in you and your performance in the arena."
I cross my arms over my small chest and scoff, fighting with all I've got to make it look like what he is insinuating doesn't make my skin crawl.
I've been around the block enough times in my seventeen years to know what 'special interest' translates to.
That doesn't give anyone the consent to pawn me off.
"Tell all of my suitors to piss off, then," I tell him simply. I crane my neck and raise my chin to feel just a little taller; even though he remains planted in his custom-made chair, I cannot shake the sense that he will always tower over me. "Tell them that Johanna Mason is not open for business."
He straightens up a bit, and crumbs from the scone tumble from his beard. Charming sight, really.
"I'm going to ask you again, Miss Mason, to take me up on my offer. I am giving you a second chance to realize how generous I am being to you."
Generous? He has already taken so much from me. My dignity. My innocence. My sanity.
If I let him take my purity, what is left of me for me?
"Then ask again. Ask all you want. But my answer is still going to be no," I snap.
President Snow grins, a deprecating glint in his slitty eyes.
"Defiance is not becoming on pretty girls like you, Miss Mason."
Although I am dressed head-to-toe in luscious green velvet and ruffling tulle, and although my face feels painted on, I find sick pleasure in grinning right back at the man who has fueled my nightmares as I reply:
"I'm not a pretty little girl anymore, President Snow. I've got you to thank for that."
He shakes his head slowly, as if he were dealing a small child rather than the changed woman who is responsible for killing those small children.
"I really wish you would cooperate, Miss Mason."
I snort, making sure it's extra unladylike for his taste. "It's not like you can really do much else to me if I don't."
With that comment, there seems to be some sort of click that registers in the old man's hardwiring, causing him to ease back in his seat. He poses in deep thought for a moment before that creepy smile is plastered back on, stretching out all of his wrinkles as it forms.
The President's face remains unchanged when he dismisses me from his office chambers.
When I get home, the Peacekeepers tell me that the fire was an accident. They also tell me that my father, my mother, my older brother, and my grandmother could not be saved. They perished in the flames.
I sleep with the Peacekeeper who escorts me to my new home in Victors Village. We've barely made it past the threshold before my lips have melded with my malicious handler's.
He doesn't seem to mind that the ruthless Victor starts to bleed on the new sheets. He also doesn't seem to mind when she begins to sob under the weight of him.
"Wouldn't take you for a virgin," he observes coldly after it's over.
"Well, I'm not anymore, am I?" I retort viciously, focusing on anything but the painful throbbing in between my legs or the tears on my pillow.
Virginity is a pointless virtue when you're an indentured servant of the Coriolanus Snow. As far as I am concerned, I cannot afford to have any more 'virtues' holding me back.
He made certain that the one thing I tried to preserve in the Capitol would become the last thing I had left to give away.
The Peacekeeper uses my bathroom to wash himself off, leaving me naked and empty in the center of my king-sized bed. He shakes the walls of my bedroom and the headboard that had been banging against the wall when he slams the door behind him.
I stop crying after that night. No one else is ever really going to be worth my tears.
Because there's no one left that I love.
I wish I could say I am surprised when the rebels decide to waste virtually no time to devise a plan for Capitol invasion. Two, the final District to have been clinched in the rebellion effort, has barely been secured, and Heavensbee's already got codenames picked out.
I also wish I could say I am surprised when Everdeen's scrawny hand shoots up beside me, nearly whacking me in the face as it ascends. She essentially asks for an all-access pass to Snow's mansion when she says that she 'wants in'.
Naturally, the Lady in Gray is skeptical.
"You've been out of combat for a long time, Soldier Everdeen. The Quell was nearly a year ago, and since then, you've been filming propagandas and hiding your pregnancy. You gave birth a little over four months ago. Since then, you have been in no condition to go into battle."
Katniss looks like a steaming kettle as her fists find shelter under the glass tabletop. The Mockingjay's about to peck someone's esophagus out, unless someone starts telling her what she wants to hear instead of the excuses Coin feeds her.
"I fought in Eight. And in Two."
"And both of those incidents were unplanned for, not to mention resulted in you being hospitalized. I'm afraid you would be too far behind in training to be ready to go to the Capitol in three weeks, Soldier."
Katniss huffs, mutters something about the President being 'unreasonable', and slumps in her seat.
The girl wants more than anything to go to the Capitol. That much is clear. Objectively speaking, with a kid to raise and a rebellion to play poster child for, I can see why Coin doesn't want her going into combat any time soon. It's too big of a risk, one that the headliner of a rebellion doesn't want to have to afford taking.
It's why Katniss wants to go so badly that the Gray Lady is failing to see. Or even if she does see it—goodness knows the woman is calculative enough—she is choosing to ignore it.
The Girl on Fire wants to strike back at the man who destroyed her life, her baby daddy's life, and the lives of hundreds of kids before her. She wants to be there when President Snow burns with this rebellion.
I stare down at my fingers. The skin around the creaky joints is so loose and transparent that I can almost see my bones through it. My fingers constantly tremble, a tremor just detectable enough so that only I notice it whenever I lower my glance. They haven't stopped doing that since I put down my axe and was crowed a Victor.
So I can't say I blame Everdeen for wanting to win this debate.
"I'll train too, if that makes it easier," I say suddenly, my mind ten steps ahead of the hand that raises itself only after I've captured the attention of everyone in the room. Katniss' eyebrows arch slightly.
Coin rubs away at tired, withered eyes. "Miss Mason, your condition…"
"I know. It isn't great. But the Mockingjay and I both have something to prove to the Capitol, something that we need to prove to ourselves. Training together might be able to help us do that. At least let us try, Madame President. If we train hard enough and pass the final exam, then we get to go. If not, you can't blame us for trying and we can't blame you for letting us try," I ration, working out the kinks of my best diplomatic impression, to the President who simply stares back at me as if I've sprouted two new heads.
She dismisses us immediately after I've spoken.
The next morning, purple ink tattooed to my forearm sends me to Training Room 017.
We get three weeks to train for the final exam.
They may as well have handed us contracts for a sitcom on one of those horrible cable programs that used to air in the Capitol. Here in Training Room 017, the two of us are so out of place—and so out of shape—that it's comical.
We're planted in a class of beginners—fourteen and fifteen-year-olds, mostly. It's offensive until it's painfully obvious that these kids make the Mockingjay and I look like amateurs.
They waste no time throwing us into the fray on day one. After class lets out, we are given twenty minutes to meet above ground for the physical portion of the training session.
They make us stretch. It kills as it wakes up what little is left of my dormant muscles. As I fold and extend my limbs out and back, I can feel the fraying tendons and ligaments tearing away at my brittle bones, causing me to hiss out in pain. Beside me, Everdeen is letting out her own pained exhalations into the chilly winter air.
We then spend hours doing some strengthening exercises, which make our training center regimes from the Games seem almost cute in comparison.
The cherry on top of this icing from hell comes in the form of a five mile run. The broken-ribbed new mother and her emotionally unstable companion are lapped by the adolescents almost instantly. Even with my 'motivational' jeers at her, Katniss drops out after a mile, the pain in her ribs too excruciating.
She goes and gets some incredibly strong drugs to speed up her healing process that night. She says they hurt worse than the training did.
By dinnertime, we're both sporting bruises all over and both craving morphling, but we're both mostly regretting signing ourselves up for boot camp.
I'm up at the crack of dawn for day two. Our trainers let us skip class and the group is transported right above ground.
What starts out as delight— I hated school before I got ripped out of it to endure the education of the Games, and I still hate it now—quickly turns into terror.
Even without the sun having risen to confirm it, the sounds of sheets of rain splattering against the side of the training shack confirms my deepest fear.
Water.
After what feels like forever to get my boots laced up, my fingers shake as I try, and fail miserably, to assemble the gun that has been planted in my hands. A gust of wind slants the rain, and the sounds of the drops hitting the roof grow impossibly loud, as if Mother Nature is sending bombs down on us.
I stop tying altogether and throw myself against the far wall away from where the rain hits. Slowly, I sink to the floor. I clasp my hands over my folded legs. My knees knock together and my jaw rattles my teeth.
My training instructor barks that I get up and join the rest of the group, which is geared up and waiting for me to get the pieces of this weapon together.
"I—I'm sorry. The rain…"
"Is there a problem with the rain?"
"Yes, it—it's water," I choke out. I try to sound like the word doesn't affect me. Trying only makes it worse.
"A little water never killed anybody, Soldier Mason," the instructor, Soldier York, retorts. Some of the asshole brainiacs in the class snicker amongst themselves. I'd shoot them a scowl that would make them shit their pants if I weren't currently on the verge of hysterics.
Because a little water, I have learned, can go a long way.
"Are you going to join us, despite the rain, Soldier? Failure to participate in the regimented physical preparation disqualifies you from being able to take the final."
"No, please," I squeak. I can't miss that final. I can't miss the opportunity to watch blood stain the white collar of President Snow.
I can't tell York why the very thought of water sends me scrambling for morphling. I can't even begin to describe how a drop of water on my skin feels like acid corroding metal.
I can't tell anyone what happened in the Capitol. Not even the Troll (which he has begrudgingly learned to accept) knows what really happened on that sodden wooden board.
Because saying it aloud admits that the Capitol made me weak.
Another gust of wind howls outside, and the rain picks up. I curl deeper into myself and let out a low groan.
Well, I guess I don't have to say anything, now. Anyone with half a brain could find the correlation between my behavior and the weather.
Imagine my surprise when the most brainless one of them all breaks from the pack, kneels down, and constructs the gun for me. The ammunition locks into place with a taunting click. She gently pats my arm as she wraps my fingers over the base of the gun.
It's so motherly of Katniss Everdeen.
That afternoon, they threaten to take me out of training. I'll have a final verdict in the morning, Coin tells me.
Everdeen only catches a glimpse of the tears in my eyes as I push past her and out of Command.
It takes virtually all of my restraint to bite my tongue when she and her slobber-faced kid show up on my doorstep that night.
With fucking luggage.
"What the hell are you doing, Everdeen?" I exclaim in exasperation as she mutely shoves Arden into my limp arms and begins unpacking.
Immediately, the brat's snotty hands are all over whatever she can reach on my person. Thankfully, the baby can't do or say anything about my pungent smell. She's probably got better hygiene than I do, at this point. But she has the advantage of being able to bathe.
Until everything, from her ratty old bow to Arden's plethora of gaudy toys, is strewn out on the floor, Katniss doesn't even bother looking at me. When her work is done, she plants her hands on her slender hips and stares squarely at where I stand, still propped up against the open door of my compartment with her miniature clone pulling on what little hair I've got.
"We're your new roommates," she declares bluntly. Arden babbles her own two cents in reply before ramming some of her chubby fingers into her mouth.
This is news.
"Roommates?" I sputter. "I don't need you or a pint-sized version of you as my roommates, and I don't need you two to loan me your charity."
"Actually," Katniss replies, moseying up to me and lifting her baby from my arms, "yes, you do. After you fled from Command, Coin was going to take you off of the training squad after what happened this morning. I negotiated that you weren't going to go crazy anymore if she gave you one more chance.
"And a condition of that was getting you and your kid to relocate to my quarters?"
"Coin wanted to contact your therapist and get one of his consultants to move in with you, but I figured you'd rather be with someone who understands you a little more."
I scoff. The notion of any one of the Trolls lackies living with me is comical, but Katniss thinking she understands even a fraction of my mind is outwardly laughable.
"You think you understand me?"
"Better than some therapist would," she states with an eye roll that counters my defenses. I eye her skeptically. Other than the double-arena, angry Victor factors, she doesn't have much else going for her with that argument. "But you need someone here, okay? They're worried that you'll…"
The implications of what she's getting at weigh heavily in the room. It even shuts the ever-articulate Arden up. My meltdown this morning with the gun amplified my 'mental instability' and raised several red flags.
I have to be careful if I've only got one more chance.
"Thanks for defending my crazy, Brainless, but I'm not offing myself over some in-climate weather," I say plainly.
Katniss laughs mirthlessly as she steps forward and takes Arden into her arms.
"If I wanted to kill myself, I would have done it a while ago," I grumble, kicking at the earthen floor beneath my feet, and tucking my constantly-trembling fingers under the flap of my pant pockets.
She shoots me an amicable nod, and I don't doubt that the very same thought hasn't crossed her mind at some point in her equally trying life.
Everdeen doesn't respond to my comments on the subject after that. She respects that we've got our own list of ailments to tend to, but she recognizes that we might as well start working together on this challenge in order to be productive separately.
With the quiet steps of a hunter, she situates the baby on my lumpy couch and begins pulling an endless supply of blankets and wooden rods out of her satchel.
"Want to help me put this crib together?" she offers, jerking her head in the direction of the kid, who is whining that she can't roll over from her back to her belly in the position her mother has planted her in.
I only help because she helped me with that damn gun, and because I know that kid's going in my bed if she doesn't have a place to sleep.
Peeta Mellark starts training a week after we do.
Now that he's well enough to function as a member of this society, President Coin urged that Peeta, a former Victor who's skills could be useful, start training in order to get him in shape to be of enough use to meet the military demands in Thirteen.
A boy who was barely able to tie his shoes a month ago is now trusted around firearms? If that's proper logic, then remind me never to organize a rebellion any time soon.
The leaders in Thirteen, whose intelligence I question more and more with each ill-timed move, have enough sense not to stick him with us and the fifteen-year-olds, at least.
Blondie and his squad of seventeen-year-olds work above ground at the same time as our crew does, however, and it's enough to mark a visible change in the Mockingjay's performance.
I brave the noticeably irked national hero after the sight of Blondie tossing a massive chunk of a tree stump—Thirteen's makeshift weight—into a target almost sends an arrow through our trainer's head.
"You know, he's gotten a lot better," I say, just close enough to where she stands, red-faced and fuming, for her to hear.
"Maybe…but he's changed."
"We've all changed, Katniss. Every Victor changes the moment they go into that arena. You can't tell me you still feel like the girl who volunteered two years ago. Also, I'm also fairly certain that shoving a human being out of your lady parts, and then raising that human being, warrants a change."
Doctor Troll likes to talk to me about how much I've changed all the time. He tells me that changing means I can't go back to what is, or who is, in my past. Therefore, all I can do is keep pushing forward.
It may be the only thing he has said that hasn't amounted to complete and utter bullshit.
"Okay, then I've changed," Katniss finally relents softly, fingering her bow like it's a lifeline. "But he…he's better, but he'll never be himself again. Not really."
"I've heard that when he's with Arden, it's the closest he gets to himself."
Katniss nods slowly, a particular sadness taking up shop on top of her usual scowl.
"He loves her."
Realization dawns on me just as quickly as the haphazard arrow that whizzes past my ear from an exceptionally stupid teenager in our group.
"You think he doesn't love you anymore."
Her eyes are large, incredulous. "Have you seen the way he speaks to me? I'm the terrifying mutt. He doesn't trust me, so how could he even…?"
"Love you still? There's a distinction between trust and love, Everdeen. I'm surprised that you're too Brainless to see it here, but then again, you've got a very predicable way of misreading people."
She huffs loudly, her bow smacking against the side of her thigh. Somewhere in the distance, up on the hill behind the archery station, Blonde, Beaten, and Brainwashed makes a similar noise as he and another trainee practice wrestling.
"I think you're selling him short. Blondie's way stronger than anyone's really giving him credit for. I would know."
She turns to me. "What do you mean?" she asks. A girlish meekness about her makes it almost impossible to laugh at loud at how normal her prying for information about him would be in any other context.
My chest heaves tumultuously as I take in a sharp breath. The air that goes into my lungs spreads to every bruise and cut that has just barely begun to fade since my time in the Capitol.
As much as I don't want to open up these old wounds just yet, I know that she is finally deserving of knowing what I should have told her about Peeta long ago. It's finally evident, and painfully so, how much she cares about him. How much she needs to hold on for him the way he held so ferociously onto her in the Capitol.
"They used to beat us in cycles. Made us watch while the other got pummeled. A few times, it felt like one of us would die right there in our cell block. It was after the service announcement he made with Snow when we got separated. I guess that's when they started to fuck up his head."
Katniss has been rendered absolutely speechless, face etched in the expression of horror, disgust, and sympathy that I have been so desperate to keep anyone else from wearing…because it hurts so much to look at and know it's meant for me.
"My point isn't to scare the shit out of you. During our stay in the Capitol, Peeta became the person I tried to hold on for. Only because he was so damn hopeful himself. Even when he was near-death and could have easily sold a lot of people out for his own selfish sake, he held on. Never once lied to them with information that he didn't have. Although they re-programmed all of that trust and fear against you, I don't think that they ever really had a fighting chance at getting to his heart. I never got to tell him this, but he sort of became my personal symbol of hope. I didn't have anyone else, not like Annie did, and especially not like he did."
"W-who did he hold on for?" she asks finally.
I throw my head back and laugh, so loudly that everyone in the immediate area has now focused their attention on the manic bitch who can be sent heading for hills at the sight of a storm cloud. Our trainer tells us to get back to work.
Sloppily, I wrench my left arm back and just as carelessly let go of the string of the bow, watching with perverse enjoyment as the arrow rockets right into the dirt. I feel her beady gray eyes on my back the entire time.
"If you seriously have to ask me that question, then you ought to legally change your name to Brainless," I tell her as I scurry off to grab my arrow.
A week and a half later, I stumble deliriously through our door.
They've got us training in this high-tech simulation room called The Block, designed by Beetee to specifically simulate the types of missions we will face in the Capitol.
Exhaustion weighs heavily on my sore bones from a particularly rough day of training, followed by a draining two hour therapy session. I want nothing more than to collapse face down in my bed and sleep until this vicious cycle starts all over again tomorrow morning.
In just a few short days, I will take the final exam. I will get to go to the Capitol and fight in the real missions.
The sounds of exuberance break through my angry train of thought.
Katniss grins admiringly at the baby girl in her arms, who mirrors her smile with a dopey little grin of her own. Her sister sits cross-legged beside them, blue eyes bright with joy as she laughs. It seems as though Primrose Everdeen's niece has the same effect on her as alcohol has on Haymitch.
I clear my throat, and three Everdeen girls are at full attention. I note that Prim's still dressed in her uniform from the hospital, and that Arden's looking far too gussied up to be getting ready for bed in a soft pink dress. And only some higher being can help me with I discover the faintest touch of thought in Katniss' appearance—a thin coat of make-up and a braid that looks all-too put together for a young mother.
"Going somewhere, ladies?"
Prim inhales deeply to begin speaking, but a sharp look from Katniss cuts her off. As excited as she still looks, Prim chomps down on the inside of her cheek and turns the floor over to her older sister, who now has her energetic baby balanced on her hip.
"Um, yeah," Katniss mumbles lamely into the floor as she uses her free hand to tuck a fallen strand of hair behind her ear. "I'm taking Arden to spend the night in Haymitch's quarters."
A wide grin splits my face in two.
Arden's not spending the night with that drunk old bat.
She's spending it with her father.
Katniss senses the unusual calm before the storm and quickly begins to gather her belongings, as well as her bearings.
I give her just enough time to think that she's in the clear before I plop down on our couch and open my trademark big mouth.
"Hey, Roomie," I start cheekily, jarring her so much that she almost drops her kid's bag of supplies. "Doesn't Haymitch have a roommate,too?"
She leaves, sister and child in tow, before I get the chance to wipe the smirk that screams 'I told you so' off of my smug face.
The course that is designed to test physical strength gives me a chance to show off how far my body has come since the beginning of training. I fly through tunnels, zip under crevices, and avoid surprise obstacles like a professional.
The written portion of the exam is all about tactics. I am the first one in the class to finish, and I waste no space on the paper to give my well-thought out responses all the room they deserve.
The weapons proficiency exam is tough, but I squeak by with enough weapons properly identified, assembled, and used to progress me to the final portion of the final: the Block.
The Capitol streets are barren and dark. Wind whistles through tall, lifeless buildings as I keep one hand on the gun in my holster and another ready for attack. Sweat—half from adrenaline and the rest from nerves—clings to my skin, sticks to my armor. Every so often, the wind cools me off.
This is easy.
I take a few more tentative steps and peer over my shoulder. Nothing still.
This is too easy, I realize.
I try to remember what they taught us in class, in between fighting off sleep and doodling in my notebook, about the workings of the Block. They cater to the individual, I remember. But what about the individual?
My fingers start to tremble as I lace them around my gun while lurking around corners and peering in between skyscrapers. Nothing.
I'm so wrapped up in trying to crack the code that I almost miss the gurgling sounds beneath my boot-covered feet. In the dim light of darkness, something begins to glisten in the sewage grate that I am standing over. The glinting quickly rises toward me, and the sounds grow louder and more fervent as whatever is under there rushes upward.
Only when I've lowered myself to get a better look does a stream of something icy and cold hit me directly in the face.
Sputtering wildly, I stumble backward, blindly, into another grate. Moisture fills my boots almost instantaneously.
Water.
Suddenly, I am back on the hard, wooden surface that absorbs my pain and fear.
I hear his laugh. Low, menacing. I know President Snow is watching me.
I've been in the Capitol this whole time. They toyed with my mind, made me think I was somewhere else, somewhere safer…
Did they?
The electricity is coming soon, if I don't get away from all of the water.
There's just so much of it…
Something touches me. I feel hands on my arms, my legs. Like electric shocks.
This is it. They're going to kill me in the Capitol now. One more shock and my heart stops.
Do you want to die here, Miss Mason?
The scream that falls from my lips is hardly human.
Everything goes back, and I drown in the water that submerges and surrounds me.
When I wake up in the hospital, hooked up to funny-looking machines with a morphling drip secured to my arm, I know that I have failed.
A/N: Hey everyone! So despite a wild week, I thought I'd upload this chapter for everyone! A lot happened, especially to poor Jo, here, and I hope you all enjoyed reading it. Let me know what you think!
Thank you thank you thank you for all of your feedback and posts of support to follow me with the rest of this fic! I truly appreciate it! You all are so amazing and I don't deserve readers as spectacular as you all! Please, keep it up! I'll do my best to post a new update within the next week or so!
Love always,
-ILoVeWicked
