TW: Self-harm and suicidal ideation
Song: Crazy by Inara George
Sylvia was dead too. Blight found her, cold and dead and lying on the floor in Eurydice's room, all alone. Holding Eurydice's blankets to her face as if she had been smelling them.
0o0o
Had they known they were going to die? Johanna wondered. Had it hurt? Where had they gone?
0o0o
Johanna was numb. First she couldn't move her toes, then her feet, then her legs. Slowly the numbness spread up her body, and then she couldn't move at all.
0o0o
Her family was buried a week after she got back to her district, next to Eurydice and Magnolia and Sylvia, who had been buried together. Blight organised the funeral; she was grateful.
0o0o
District Seven didn't feel like her home anymore. She realised, that without her loved ones, it was just a place in the world where she happened to live.
0o0o
She had believed in the afterlife for as long as she could remember, but she didn't believe in it now. They were just dead, their bodies rotting six feet under the earth and their consciousness gone. That was what dead was, anyway – she didn't think they went anywhere.
0o0o
She realised, later, that refusing to work with Snow ever again meant that she would never be allowed to get close to anyone again, otherwise they would be doomed to the same fate as her family. No friends. No pets. No close connections at all.
Johanna realised that she was going to be alone forever.
0o0o
What was there left for her to do now?
0o0o
Johanna wanted to die. She thought about killing herself obsessively, every hour of every day. She wondered what it would be like to die, and held a kitchen knife to her throat, pressing it to her skin so hard that a shallow cut opened up and a bead of blood began to trickle down her neck. The pain was good, and Johanna pressed harder.
0o0o
She didn't do it. It wouldn't be fair. Twenty-three people had died so she could survive – it would be an insult to them and their families, to kill herself. It would mean their lives had been wasted.
0o0o
She should have let Marin win. Johanna wanted to be dead, and Marin had wanted so desperately to survive, to go home to sweet little baby Minnow.
She should have let Marin kill her.
0o0o
She wanted so badly to kill herself, but she settled for carving deep, red lines into her skin instead. Sometimes the physical pain was the only thing that distracted her from the other pain – the pain in her head was a million times worse. Sometimes, when she cut herself, it didn't hurt at all and she couldn't do anything to dull the pain in her head. Alcohol helped. Sometimes.
0o0o
She spent a week searching for the cameras. She found the one in Rowan's room – it was a tiny thing, smaller than Johanna's littlest fingernail, hidden in the ceiling light. She tore the house apart, but the rest of the cameras were nowhere to be found. She destroyed a few of the bugs as well, but most of them, like the cameras, were hidden too well. She didn't mind. She spent the rest of the week screaming insults towards the Capitol, daring them to kill her. They'd only be sparing her from doing it herself.
0o0o
After a week of screaming her throat raw, the Capitol still hadn't come to execute her, so she stopped yelling.
0o0o
She wouldn't have found the letter if she hadn't gone on one of her rampages. It was the first time her blinding anger had done anything good, and so Johanna resolved to hold onto it always. It had fallen out of one of Eurydice's books when she kicked her bed-side table over. It had fluttered to the ground like a butterfly and Johanna stopped, still and silent, in her tracks. Tears dripped onto the paper as she read Eurydice's last words to her.
Jojo,
I'm writing this in case I don't make it home after tonight. I think I will – Cypress has been planning this obsessively for half a year – but just in case.
I'm sorry I didn't tell you what I was up to, I know I made you worried before you left and I'm so sorry about that, the last thing you need to be worrying about in the arena is little old me. But I couldn't not do this. It's a shitty excuse, I know. The truth is, Jo, I'm part of the rebellion. There's a few of us in every district – I don't know how many, or who they are, because we're not told a lot. It's too dangerous for us to know too much. Noni is part of it too, and Blight, and Cypress, obviously – that's why I joined. I want to fight for a world where we can be safe one day. Just you and me forever, without having to worry about the Games ever again. It's too late to save you from them now, but when you come home – and you will come home, don't fucking say you won't – I'll tell you everything and we can end this.
That's why I didn't volunteer. I'm leaving in about fifteen minutes, with Cypress and Myrtle. We're trying to incite rebellion in the lumberjacks, who are the most likely in the district to turn against the Capitol. They have easy access to weapons, and if enough of them agree, we might be able to overpower the Peacekeepers. From there – well, I don't know. I haven't been given a lot of information yet. But things are happening, Jojo, and I'm excited. I want to help change this world and if that costs me my life, so be it. It's worth it.
I love you Johanna. More than anyone else in the world. You're my soulmate, and I hope that I can help make a better world for you to live in.
When you get home (alive, goddammit!) and if you find this and if I'm dead, tell Noni and Mama that I love them but I'm not sorry. If I die, it's for a good cause.
Love always and forever,
Eurydice xx
Johanna read it again and again and again until her tears blurred the words so much she couldn't read it anymore.
0o0o
After a month, she ventured outside, and sat on the porch, drinking whiskey straight from the bottle. Blight tried to keep her company, but gave up when she threw the glass bottle at his head. He swore and dodged and walked away, and the bottle shattered on the ground. She regretted it, because now she didn't have whiskey.
0o0o
After two months, she went for a walk.
0o0o
After three months, she went to have lunch with Blight and his wife, Alyssa. She had shot down their offers countless times, but she was sick of the quiet the shrouded her house, the house where they had died. It was so quiet that it was loud, and it hurt her ears. She couldn't bear it.
"What's up, bitches," she croaked, standing at the kitchen door and peering inside. The only time she'd used her voice for months was to scream. It hurt, now, to talk – it felt like she'd drunk a bleach and glass smoothie.
"Johanna!" Blight said, shocked. He jumped from his seat and crossed the room, opening the door. He reached out, as if he were going to put his hand on Johanna's shoulder, but thought better of it and let it fall his side. "Um – how are you?"
Johanna scoffed. "Guess." She stepped inside, striding past Blight and going over to the pantry. "Got any booze? I'm all out."
Blight frowned, and shook his head. "We don't drink. Anyway, I don't think that's a good idea, Johanna. Why don't you have some orange juice instead, Lys made it yesterd-"
"You don't know what's good for me!" Johanna shouted, quick to anger. She loved the way anger felt – it reminded her of what it had been like before she went numb. She held onto her anger like it was a life raft. "You're not my dad!" It hurt to think of her Da, and so Johanna yanked on her short hair so she'd think of the pain instead.
"I'm not trying to be," Blight replied quietly. He didn't remark on the hair pulling. Maybe he'd done it himself, after he won. "I'm just worried about you."
"Well, don't be," she said, and sat on a chair, hugging her knees to her chest. "Mind your own business."
"Oh, Johanna, how nice to see you!" said Alyssa, entering the kitchen. She looked surprised, and shared a worried look with Blight – she had obviously heard the yelling. Johanna realised that she hadn't bathed for about two weeks, and that was probably why Alyssa was crinkling her nose. "We were just about to have lunch, would you like to join us?"
Johanna shrugged, but stayed seated. She would never admit it to them, but she really did want to stay. Their kitchen smelled like cinnamon and potatoes and pine, and it was an odd scent but it smelt oddly like her old house, before the Games. "What are you having?"
Alyssa and Blight glanced at each other again. "Oh, well, we were going to sauté some vegetables and fry up some bacon," said Alyssa.
"Whatever, I'll stay," Johanna said. "It's not like I've got anything better to do."
"Oh! Well, great!" Alyssa said. She looked genuinely happy about it.
"You're welcome to stay for as long as you like," Blight added, giving her a warm smile.
Johanna just shrugged.
The meal was good, the first real food she'd had in… she couldn't remember. Since she was last in the Capitol. She had been living off packaged food and alcohol, and whatever Blight left on her doorstep. The food was simple, but tasty, and it reminded her of what her parents used to cook.
It was awkward at the table, and they didn't speak. Blight and Alyssa nervously discussed menial topics such as the weather and the new work quotas for lumberjacks, glancing at Johanna now and again as she shovelled food into her mouth. They evidently didn't know how to talk around – or to – her, and she felt a little bit bad for intruding on them.
She liked being there, though. It was nice having people in the background for a change.
She wondered if they knew how lucky they were to have each other.
There's only a few more chapters left in this :0 it's a really weird thought, because I've been working on this story for so long. I honestly dk what I'm going to do after I finish it, I guess I'll go back to crying in empty bathtubs and haunting the halls of abandoned insane asylums
i am. tired
