Chapter Twenty Seven | In this storm that sets my ship astray,
"Famine is in thy cheeks,
Need an oppression starveth in thy eyes,
Contempt and beggary hangs upon thy back.
The world is not thy friend, nor the world's law."
5.1, 69-72 Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare
The first time Elara Winston meets Johanna Mason is during the 71 st Hunger Games. Her first glimpse of the soon to be Victor is not very impressive. Johanna is dressed up like a tree for the Chariot Parades, and Elara thinks it's vaguely amusing. Johanna doesn't really appreciate it.
"Think it's funny, yeah?" the tribute sneers as she catches sight of Elara's smirk. "You're from 5, right? Well at least I'm not a fucking lightbulb."
Those are fighting words, but Elara isn't in the mood to fight with a tribute from a different district. She has other tributes to give her time to. She doesn't grace Johanna Mason with a response as she walks past her on her way to the District 5 chariot, but Johanna just keeps sneering at her until she's gone.
When Johanna wins, though, Elara can't ignore her. She arrives in District 5 for her Victory Tour six months later, and she hasn't seemed to have lost her sneer since the last time Elara had seen her.
Elara is accommodating, as she always is to new Victors. It's the new ones that are the most fragile, after all. They don't have more regret or nightmares as the others do – the difference is that the older Victors have learned to get a handle on it, at least in public.
Johanna Mason doesn't seem to be at all interested on 'getting a handle on it'.
"Hello, Johanna," Elara greets after the woman has finished with her speech. She doesn't blame the girl for skewering her tributes. It's the Hunger Games and frankly, she gave them a faster death than they would have had otherwise. The rest of her district isn't as forgiving though. They aren't pleased to see the latest Victor, and they make it fairly clear in the deadpan way they receive her.
Johanna doesn't appear to care at all.
"Fuck off," she mutters, storming passed Elara on her way to the quarters that she's been given for the evening. The Justice Building of District 5 isn't much to look at, and most of the rooms inside of it are in various states of disrepair. Peeling wallpaper and rotting windowsills are just a few of the components. The beds aren't exactly comfortable either, or so Elara has heard.
Of course, District 7 isn't much better. She knows from experience.
Raising her eyebrows at the brusque and frankly rude brush off, Elara glances over at Harley, who just shrugs unhelpfully.
"New Victors…" he mutters beneath his breath, and heads out of the room without another word. Elara rolls her eyes at him and makes to follow.
During the feast later that night, she has another chance to speak with Johanna, though to be perfectly honest, she isn't all that interested in cultivating a relationship with someone so cutting. She knows that people have different facets though – different angles to their personalities that are driven forward at different moments. She makes another effort to talk to her despite better judgement. She was that way too, once. Angry at the entire world.
These days, she finds that she's much more resigned.
"How do you like District 5?" she asks her as they all dig into a meal of roasted chicken and mashed potatoes. The fare is simple, but hearty. Johanna just picks at her plate, though, apparently not hungry.
She edges a sharp look at Elara and sneers, "It's a total shithole. There's dirt and grime everywhere. Do you even know what street sweepers are?"
The major, who is near enough to overhear, stiffens a little in offense. Elara just laughs.
"Mmm. After a while you start appreciating the dust," she replies, and takes a sip of wine. She isn't being serious of course, and Johanna seems to hate her all the more for it.
"I don't even know why I have to go on this fucking tour in the first place. As if I give a damn about the other districts," Johanna says, loudly.
This time, the mayor gives her a reproachful look and sternly tells her, "You'd do well to remember how brutally you killed our tributes. Or have you forgotten already?"
They're low words. Low, because Elara knows first hand that you never forget the people you've killed in the arena. Not that she'd killed very many tributes during her Games – she was lucky that she had been able to salvage some of herself in the regard. Johanna is different though. Her innocent act had quickly given way to reveal a merciless fighter who killed anyone in her way, and it just so happened the District 5 was in her way. One doesn't just forget something like that.
The glare that Johanna sends the mayor is so intense that the man purses his lips and turns back to his meal, apparently deciding not to make a fuss in public. There are cameras around, after all, to capture this moment for the Capitol onlookers who want to watch their new Victor go through the traditions of winning the Hunger Games.
Elara clears her throat and asks, "Have you settled into your new house yet?"
The question makes Johanna turn her glare towards her, next.
"My entire family is dead. What the fuck do you think?" she demands, and throws her fork down. A moment later, she's getting up from the table with a sneered, "I'm tired. I think I'll turn in for the night."
And, before the District 7 escort can stop her (as if she actually could), Johanna storms from the room, leaving the entire table in a state of awkward silence at her parting.
Elara smiles wanly. "I remember my Victory Tour being pretty exhausting. You'll have to excuse her, Mr. Mayor. I'm sure she's having a…trying time."
The escort from 7 sends Elara a grateful glance, but Elara doesn't really notice it. She is far too busy remembering her own Victory Tour several years before, and the districts that she had visited. It really had been exhausting, saying speech after speech and appealing to people that you'll never see again.
After dinner, Elara also gets up and takes her leave. There isn't much fanfare tonight, now that the Victor who this feast is being held for is not present. Usually, there is dancing and music, but what's the use of all that when Johanna isn't there for the cameras to capture?
She's quickly learning that Johanna Mason is not someone who can easily be controlled.
The last time she sees her during the tour is when Johanna is leaving. Elara is dressed in a long grey coat, wearing a red scarf to ward off the chill of winter. She's standing beside Harley at the station. There are cameras around, documenting Johanna's departure from District 5 as if it's the most interesting thing on television. To the Capitolites, it is.
Johanna passes Elara on her way to the train, pauses, then says, "See you for the Games next year, then."
If Elara is surprised that Johanna has willingly said something to her, she doesn't show it. Instead, she just calmly replies, "Actually, I'll probably see you at the Victory Gala in the Capitol in a few weeks. All the Victors attend."
If she notices the flash of relief that douses through Johanna's gaze at the thought of not being totally alone for said Gala, Elara doesn't show that, either. Instead, she just gives her a wry smile and tells her, "Try not to bite anyone's heads off in District 4, yeah?"
Johanna Mason just snorts, "Please. That's what I do best."
And Elara, well, despite not knowing Johanna all that well, she decides that she very much believes her.
When Elara finally meanders down to the training room half an hour later, dressed in her own tribute outfit, she isn't quite prepared for the sight that meets her within the large, cavernous room. She stands at the threshold of it for several moments, taking in the almost brutally familiar sight of the stations and the trainers, the sound of blades being thrown and the clang of steel, the murmuring of tributes as they idle in groups and practice their skills together. She feels, for a split second, as if she has traveled back in time, to a moment long swept beneath the rug of other memories that had started the long-winded nightmare she has been embroiled in for eight long years.
She is not the same girl that had stood here in the past, but for a moment, it feels as if she is going into the arena for the first time, and the great encompassing fear of the unknown fills her. At once, she is eighteen again, standing on the threshold of what would become an adulthood filled with torment and manipulation. She is a shaky youth with no idea how she will survive when she has no skills to speak of, or at least none that will help her to take the lives of her enemies. She is Elara Winston, before the celebrity and fame of becoming a Victor had been thrust upon her.
And then, abruptly, she is herself again.
"Hey, Elara – let's have a wrestling match," Johanna shouts, pulling her attention back to reality. She starts, eyes drawn to the woman who has become her unlikely friend in the chaos of her life, and shakes her memories away.
Surely, she is not the only Victor here who has had a similar reenactment of their time in this room. Like Johanna's brusque ways, she decides that perhaps she ought to forcibly push those memories to the side.
"A wrestling match?" she questions, and walks forward, sending Johanna a smirk. "Are you sure you want to embarrass yourself like that?"
Johanna snorts, the corner of her mouth edging up challengingly, and eyes her friend with a knowing look. Elara isn't as lethal as Johanna, and neither of them take her words very seriously.
They head over to the mats in silence. Elara glances around the room, taking note of the way Brutus and Enobaria are hogging the sword station. She sees Beetee and Wiress sitting crosslegged on the floor several stations over, and Mags is quietly making fishhooks while Finnick, unsurprisingly, throws tridents not far away. Some of the Victors, like Chaff and Seeder and Blight, and just standing around doing nothing, joking and laughing as if they haven't a care in the world. As for Gloss and Cashmere, Elara doesn't see them anywhere, but that doesn't mean they're not here. The room is huge, and she's only in one small corner of it.
When they reach the wrestling mats, Johanna kicks her shoes off and starts oiling herself up with a suggestive wink. Elara rolls her eyes at her antics and follows suit.
"Lover boy's not here yet," Johanna tells her with a knowing smirk, lifting her arms overhead to pull her body into a stretch. She rolls her neck as she says, "Guess that means you'll have to hang out with me in the meantime."
Elara sarcastically drawls, "What a terrible thing."
Her friend just smirks. As they step onto the mats and start circling each other, Johanna murmurs, "So you wanna be allies, or what? You're pretty useless with a sword, but I'll take you on anyway."
In return, Elara snarks, "Your innocent little girl act won't work this time around, Jo. But yeah, I guess. I don't think Gloss would have a problem with – "
"Wait, hold on," Johanna says, holding a hand up as her face contorts into a frown. "You're not seriously thinking of allying with Gloss, are you? Are you stupid?"
Elara pauses in confusion and says, "…Gloss and I are kind of a package deal. We've already talked about it."
Johanna throws her head back with a bark of laughter and tells her, "I get that you and Gloss have a thing, but this is the Hunger Games, Elara. If you ally with him, you're allying with the Career pack, and you'll be Brutus's first target once the tides turn."
Elara goes silent at this, and starts circling Johanna again. Johanna sinks into a crouch and does the same, eyeing her friend shrewdly as she lunges forward in an attempt to tackle her. Johanna darts back at the last second, but Elara is ready for the move and angles her body to the side, spinning around to regain her momentum. The circle continues, puckered with brief lunges as their conversation slowly meanders forward.
"…I'm not abandoning him in the arena, Jo," Elara murmurs, twirling out of Johanna's arms as she tries to put her in a headlock.
Johanna grunts and, as she lunges again and throws her fist forward, says, "What if he abandons you? Alliances with Careers are bound to fail."
Elara catches her fist and throws her off, stumbling back a bit as she does. "It's different this time around."
She catches another punch coming toward her, but fails to account for the way Johanna's other fist hooks low and pommels into her abdomen. The impact of it sends her back a few steps. She gasps, throws Johanna a glower, and shakes herself off before another punch can be landed on her.
Meanwhile, Johanna snorts and mutters, "You're right, everything is different this time around."
There's something strange in the cadence of Johanna's words and the emotion that flickers past her face as she stares at Elara. For some explicable reason, Johanna straightens up and just stands there, studying her friend with a solemnity that looks strange on her normally reckless countenance. In response, Elara straightens out too, peering back at her in confusion.
"…Do me a favor and talk to Haymitch as soon as you can," Johanna suddenly says, changing topics so abruptly that Elara feels lost. She furrows her eyebrows at her, but Johanna only rolls her shoulders and says, "If you ally yourselves with the Careers, we won't be able to save you. Just know that."
If anything, Elara's confusion skyrockets with that last addition, but she doesn't have any time to ask what Johanna's meaning is before Johanna is suddenly barreling into her and throwing her onto her back. Elara hits the ground with a heaving grunt and glares at Johanna, who smirks down at her victoriously.
"You cheated," Elara mutters, pushing her off with a fierce shove that sends Johanna rolling to the side. The petulant words don't exactly help her cause…or her dignity.
Johanna barks in laughter and sits up, eyes still oddly serious despite the way her lips are set in that impetuous smile.
"Don't be such a baby," is all she says in reply, and stands up to put her shoes back on.
Elara just grumbles to herself, head spinning from both her reeling defeat as well as the confusing warning that she had just been given.
She's at the knife throwing section when she sees Gloss again, though at first, she's entirely distracted at the way she can't seem to grasp the correct maneuvering of this particular art. She's not a Career; she hasn't been trained with weapons. Her area of expertise is electricity, which isn't exactly something she can easily show off, nor is it as physically impressive as being able to throw a blade or a trident. So she's a little distracted at her own failures when he comes ambling over to her.
She's so distracted, in fact, that she jumps in surprise when he suddenly drawls, "You're holding it wrong."
Completely caught off guard, she twists the knife she's holding and probably would have ended up cutting herself had he not intercepted it and grabbed the hilt before it could pierce the skin of her wrist.
"Don't sneak up on me like that!" she says, turning around to glower at him. Gloss gives her an unimpressed look in response, then proceeds to crowd in behind her, pressing his hand to her lower back as he adjusts her grip on the hilt.
"Hold it like this," he murmurs, hovering above her and eyeing the target with a discerning glance. His fingers run over hers gently, barely grazing her skin. She swallows, half tempted to call him out on his unnecessarily close guidance, but enjoying his proximity a little too much to bother. His breath fans out over her ear, lips just centimeters away as he says, "It's all in the wrist. You've got to twist it just so…" he edges closer, wrapping his fingers around hers to adjust the strength of her hold, "…almost like caressing a lover, see?"
This time, Elara really can't help but snort. She peers around to give him a raised eyebrow, mirth dancing through her gaze as she chuckles, "A lover? Really?"
Gloss gives her a crooked smirk. "I have first-hand proof that it's in your realm of expertise."
She rolls her eyes at him, and he laughs. Then, apparently deciding that it would be far easier to show her himself, he takes the blade from her hand and steps up beside her, angling his body towards the target as he spins the knife around his fingers with an obvious aura of showmanship. She'll let him get away with showing off…if only because he looks so damned good in that outfit.
"Pay attention," he tells her, noticing with no shortage of amusement how she's eyeing the way his shirt splays out against the muscles of his chest. His mouth fights off a smile, but it shows clearly in the cadence of his eyes anyway.
Elara purses her lips and gestures to the target, drawling, "Go on then, since you're so obsessed with teaching me."
He gives her a look, then, that's a little more serious than it had been moments before. He doesn't comment though. Instead, he merely flips the knife in his hand so that he's loosely holding onto the blade, turns to glance at the target. He barely hesitates for more than a few seconds before he's throwing the knife forcefully into it. It hits dead center with a loud thud, the hilt shuddering from the impact. Elara stares.
Then, Gloss reaches for her shoulder and turns her to him, and with those serious eyes piercing hers, he murmurs, "If I have to teach you how to throw a knife in order to keep you alive, I will, Elara."
She breathes out, eyes moving between his as she searches the recesses of his gaze. Johanna's words come back to her for reasons she does not know, despite the assurance and protection that blazes over his expression. Johanna had a point though. Gloss won't betray her, but Brutus and Enobaria might.
She needs to talk to him about it, needs to come up with a plan – needs to talk to Cashmere, too – but now is not the time. So instead, Elara just heaves a sigh and mutters, "I'm not a fighter, Gloss. I'm barely even an electrician."
He stares at her for a long moment, then throws an arm around her shoulders and staunchly replies, "Well, we've got a week to show you the basics."
She just glowers forlornly at the knife that he had thrown so expertly and mumbles, "What fun."
He ignores her sarcastic commentary in favor of nodding to the table laden with more knives. As she sullenly obeys his silent order and goes to collect a few more, he asks her, "What are you good at? Long range or short range? If we can settle for one weapon and hone your skill at it, I'll feel a little better."
Elara shrugs, coming back to stand beside him as she fumbles with another knife. She pretends not to notice the way Gloss eyes it carefully, as if he's preparing himself to catch the blade again.
"The few tributes I killed in my Games were accidental, until the last one, and that was a weapon of my own invention," she tells him.
He hums, corrects her grip a bit, then steps back to let her practice. As she does, he says, "Yeah, I remember that little stunt you pulled with the wires and the lake. Unfortunately that isn't going to help you this time around. There might not be any lakes in this arena."
She throws the knife, but the blade doesn't even come full circle, and the hilt knocks against the target and clatters to the floor.
"…How about we just go around to all the stations and see what you like the best?" Gloss asks as he eyes it.
Elara isn't sure if she should be offended by him already giving up on her knife throwing skills, but to be honest, she doesn't really have the patience to linger here for much longer, so she agrees. Together, they head off to the other weaponry stations, but they don't get very far.
"Better learn some real skills if you wanna run with us," Brutus's voice suddenly gloats, and Elara turns to see him leaning casually against a nearby station, close enough to have heard their conversation. His eyes crease with amusement. He seems to find the thought of Elara joining the Career pack hilarious.
Gloss does not. He sends Brutus an edged look and draws a hand over Elara's lower back, leading her forward in stony silence. Elara honestly doesn't know what to do, so she just lets him take control of the situation until he pulls her to a halt the moment Brutus disappears from their line of vision.
"You've got a target on your back," Gloss mutters with a deep frown, eyeing the stations around them. He pulls his gaze to hers and stares at her for a long moment, shoulders tense, before saying, "Swords. Come on."
He gestures forward and strides off down the line of trainers and stations and Victors, intent on finding the sword station. Elara just sighs and trudges after him, half tempted to just go her own way but not wanting to annoy him when they could very well have only a week left. So she lets Gloss train her in whatever weapon he sees fit throughout the day, avoids Brutus as much as possible, and jokes around with Cashmere when they head over to lunch. She tries not to think about how, in just a few days, this crowd that laughs and smiles at each other will turn into killers, intent on stripping life away from the very people they call friends.
It's not easy to forget though.