A/N: This should be read along with my full-length story, "One Need Not be a Chamber to be Haunted", as it reflects the AU events of that story.

The title comes from a poem by Emily Dickinson by the same name.

Johanna

I didn't always carry this much hate.

No, I lay the blame for that squarely on the decrepit shoulders of President Coriolanus Snow. That puffy-faced windbag ruined my fucking life the second my name was called at the reaping for the 71st Hunger Games. My tears were genuine that day, and they kept on being authentic until I was pushed up through that tube into the arena. I was terrified, truly.

But I had also seen how everyone's eyes passed over me all through training, and I'd taken note of how Caesar Flickerman struggled to find anything of note about me in my tribute interview. I was forgettable, so I made sure to stay that way right up until the moment it was no longer useful to be so.

When the time came, I showed them how wrong they all were.

And I won.

Some win though, right?

Snow probably lost a shit ton of cash when this mouthy little dark horse was the last gal standing in the arena – even though he's not publicly allowed to wager on the outcome of the Games. But he's a lying liar, and I'm sure he had his lackeys placing bets for him while he lurked behind the scenes.

That's one possible reason why he hated me so much from the start.

It could also be that I maimed one of his cronies when Snow sold me to him after my victory celebration. That piece of shit lost his thumbs when he wouldn't keep his hands off me, and now he'll never again be able to rub one out on his own.

Good.

I'd held on tightly to that self-satisfied spite until I pulled into the station in 7 and realized none of my family was there to meet me. I still remember the sickening icy cold feeling that crept up my spine that afternoon. The weather was warm and bright, the sunlight shining through the branches of the trees that encircled my entire childhood. But I was freezing…numb with the understanding that things would never be the same, that this wrongness was the new normal. I practically sprinted to my family's humble cabin, desperate to find someone – anyone that should have been there.

There was no one. There was only a note, from him.

I do hope that next time, things will go more smoothly, Miss Mason.

Cordially,

President Coriolanus Snow

I knew immediately that they were dead – all of them – because of me. That streak of hotheadedness that had saved me in the Games, that had spared me from being used up by greedy Capitolites; the spitfire nature that had been the cause of countless tussles with my brother and resulted in hundreds of scoldings from my mother, it had… it had….

Odds, I'd killed them all.

There was nothing of my family left; no bodies to bury, no evidence of a life lived, or detritus left behind as they stepped away to meet their deaths. My father and mother, Ash and Fern – my brother and his wife, who was always more like a sister than a friend. And their babies…. Odds, my beautiful niece Alyvia and my nephew, Birch. They were only babies, and that bastard did away with them because I couldn't just lie back and think of Panem.

I swiftly resolved to never again open my heart to anyone ever again; I couldn't bear to coat my hands with anyone else's blood.

No, I did not want that.

So, what the flying fuck am I doing here, protecting Finn and the Odds-damned rebels that have spent the last seventy-five years hiding in the shadows? What have they done for me, besides leave my skinny ass behind in the arena? I am disposable, just like the rest of my fellow inmates. And now I'm nursing this hurt and fear and desperation, left behind in this hellish forgotten cell somewhere in a basement in the Capitol, while Snow takes his sweet time tearing me apart for all my misdeeds.

But I'm not alone anymore.

I still haven't decided if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

After I became aquatinted with the tactics Snow used to control his victors, Annie Cresta was the first person who somehow managed to break through the foggy, debilitating depression that I had worked very hard to maintain with rotgut booze and morphling and rough faceless company. Without the presence of my family to soften my jagged edges, I decided that I didn't want to feel anything ever again. So, I didn't; and I sure as shit did a bang up job of it. But on my Victory Tour, Annie saw through me and all of my bullshit. She crossed the crowded ballroom of the mayor's house in District 4, parting the gathering of local dignitaries like the smooth ocean waves I'd passed on my way there. She pulled the drink I'd been manically clutching out of my hand, and gently steered me towards a side door. I knew who she was – her Games were only one before my own – so I didn't struggle against whatever whim was leading her to kidnap me. And to be honest, I truly didn't care what happened to me anymore.

Finnick Odair trailed silently behind us, all tanned skin and bronze hair and off-putting dimples. When we reached the water's edge, Annie didn't even bother to undress before she tangled her fingers with mine and stepped into the waves.

What are we doing? I'd asked her.

We're swimming, she had replied. A loose, disconnected smile gently taking over her face. It was benign, though. I knew she would be kind to me. We're feeling it all and letting go of everything he took from us, and we're living Johanna.

The mad-girl victor saved my life that night. She and I and Finnick paddled around in our formal wear in the shallows of the ocean cove, and it brought me back from the razor's edge of apathetic despair I'd been teetering on for months. At the next Games, I sought Finnick out, largely because he was the closest person to Annie I could get my greedy hands on. As time went on, I became privy to the beautiful love that was growing between the two of them, one that went hand in hand with the nightmare that was Finn's life in the Capitol. He was what I could have been if I hadn't fought back. He had been so young when he won, too young when Snow sold him off to line his own pocket with the spoils of Finnick's beauty; he didn't know it could be different. The one time Finn sought control over his situation through adolescent dispirited indifference, Snow had pushed back, downing his father's boat while he was at sea. Finn got the message loud and clear; he would never fight back again, because now he had Annie to protect.

Damn the both of them for making me care, because now Annie's here in a cage with me and Finn broke my heart by leaving me behind in the Quell.

Fucking Katniss Everdeen is taking up space in the cell beside me too, and I think I'd rather have died in the arena than cozy up with her. This kid has always rubbed me the wrong way; she's rude and awkward, and despite what all those morons in the Capitol believe, her and Blondie's love story has always been a little hard to swallow to anyone with eyes that actually work. She's not that into him, and he coddles her grumpy ass regardless of what a bitch she is to him. But everyone just loves them, and it's fucking annoying as shit.

When she and big blonde Peeta Mellark won the 74th Hunger Games, the Rebellion was set in motion. These two desperate kids from the poorest, smallest, dirtiest district were the spark that was going to transform the world? I called bullshit right then and there, but Finn was willing to sign on as a rebel, so I agreed as well. He was raring for change, and I had nothing left to lose. Before the Quell, there were whispers of dissent throughout the districts, and little Miss Mockingjay served as the rallying cry. She was a symbol of rebellion, a defender of the innocent, and a savior of the weak. To me, her act was hard to stomach, just like her ridiculous love story.

The thing that fucking kills me though?

It isn't an act. None of it is.

She sings to Annie and listens to Enobaria talk and talk and talk so she doesn't lose her mind and for me…well, she lets me be whatever I need to be. She doesn't fight with me when I'm a raging bitch and is blissfully quiet when my carcass is dragged back from my interrogation sessions. And when I just can't fight anymore…Odds, this bitch still finds it in herself to be generous to me. She sang to me when I had pleaded with her to do so, because for a few terrifying moments while I was being tortured that day, I swear I saw my brother in the room with me. His arm was extended out, reaching a pale hand towards me. He got so close to me too, and I know, I just know, that if he'd been able to touch me with his pallid fingers, I would have died strapped to that water-soaked table, and my ghost would have gone along with him to wherever he is now.

The bitch of it all? I almost let him take me. But I stayed, for the others; because whether I like it or not, I give a shit about these three women who are captives along with me. When I think about that, I get pissed off at Annie and Finn all over again for tearing down the wall I had worked so hard to build around my heart, brick by solid, self-imposed brick.

Ugggggghhhhhhhhhhh. Everyone is just the fucking worst.

I don't know how much Brainless has admitted to herself – because even though I won't abandon her to embrace my own sweet release of death, I'm not friends with the fucking girl – but Katniss Everdeen really does love the blond baker boy. Peeta Mellark snuck up on her, just like Annie snuck up on Finn, and like how she snuck up on me.

Enobaria fucking Brass.

Like I told Brainless while we sat our ragged, skinny victor behinds on that sandy beach during the last days of the Quell, love is weird.

Honestly, I was more than alright with the likelihood of killing Enobaria Brass while we were stuck in the Quell. With her dumb teeth and throaty voice and patriotic attitude, I probably would have enjoyed sinking an axe into her head just to be done with her. We'd fought each other on the beach just before Brainless went and shot up the arena, and hers was the last face I saw before I was pulled into a Capitol hovercraft. It's been months since then, and I just…. Can I really be blamed for my feelings, when my other choices for company are Brainless, Annie Cresta, or my jailers? I mean, I'm fucked up, but I'm not that fucked up.

I'd like to touch her again, before I die. I did once; one time when they took me out of my cell I stumbled, and my fingers brushed against hers through the bars of her cage. It lit up something inside me, something that I never thought I'd ever get to feel for myself. Finn always waxed poetic about the magic of being with Annie, but I thought it was a load of District 4 garbage. Turns out I was wrong, I just needed to find the right girl.

Days pass underground and time loses meaning. Pain, ugliness, sickness, darkness…it all blurs together, our reality and our future narrowing down to only these few terrible things. I will never feel the sun on my skin or breathe in the clean air of the forest again. Katniss will never tell Peeta she really does love him after all. Annie will never be sane again. I will never get to fall asleep in the embrace of the woman I think I may just love with all that's left of my broken heart.

And we'll all die down here together.

Because that's what Snow wants for us.

Brainless is taken out for another interview with Caesar and must have lived up to her name, because she's returned to us in a boneless heap. She's tossed into her cage with no care or concern, and I swear I hear one of her bones snap when she makes contact with the stone floor. There's a worrying series of wet gurgles coming from her direction, but she doesn't move.

She doesn't move at all.

Maybe this is it, the beginning of the end for us, following swiftly on the heels of the death of the Girl on Fire. Once she's gone, Snow won't have much more use for us. I look to Enobaria and a look of understanding passes between the two of us, because she knows it too. Without Katniss Everdeen, we all are expendable.

Eventually, Annie gets her shit together enough to be a little bit coherent and begins to sing one of the songs that Katniss choked out for her once upon a time, and I move to lean my emaciated frame against the bars at the front of my jail cell. I'm closest to Enobaria when I stand here, so it's become my favorite spot. She mirrors my position, and I can almost reach her when we stretch our fingers towards one another. If this is finally the end of my story, I think I'd like to go out with my eyes on this girl.

I'm about to start spilling my heart to her, just so she doesn't have any reason to doubt that someone loves her here at the end, even someone as messed up and torn apart as me. I swear everything I'm planning to say is going to be beautiful and from the heart, positively filled to the brim with really explicit details about how I'd love to show her a good time if we weren't fucking imprisoned and on the verge of probable execution, but then I hear something.

Whispering.

Bar-Bar and I look at one another but neither one of us can make out what it is. She backs away from the front of her cell quickly, because when has something different ever been good down here?

She takes my heart with her into the shadows when she does, because who knows how many times are left that I'll get to see her face?

I love Annie, but Odds-be-damned she is really damaging any trace of calm I have left to draw on with her singing. Brainless isn't waking up, and people are whispering outside our door, and I can't hear anything over her racket.

I do hear the door crack open though. I hear it like thunder in the dark.

Someone gags, as though they aren't used to how Odds-awful it fucking smells in here. I don't notice it anymore, but my body is hurtling closer to death on a daily basis and I have bigger things to worry about. So whoever it is out there can happily choke on the stank of my impending death.

"Oh, I'm sorry, does our cozy home offend you in some way?" I spit at the intruder. Honestly, suck it up asshole.

Then, I hear that fucking voice. The one I listened to for years in the Capitol, when he was drunk and jesting and sincere and somber. I am intimate with every iteration of that voice. That kindhearted, winning timber that belongs to one of only two people who I was sure that I loved for years. That asshole who left me behind in the arena. My best friend.

Finnick.

"No need to be so harsh, Jo. We're the calvary, here to save the day, yes?" I could either scratch his eyes out or climb him like a tree and hold on with everything that I am until he takes me away from this nightmare. I'm not sure yet which one I'm more inclined towards. But when he tries to touch me, I can't help but flinch away from him. I can't…not yet. Deep down, I know I'm saving my touches for her.

"Go get your girl," I tell him. Annie needs him more than I do. She always will.

With his focus safely on her, I turn back towards my own gal. Maybe…maybe this is it. Maybe we get to have each other after all.

"Bar-Bar," I call out softly. "Wake up. The good guys are here."

She crawls out of the dark and I can just make out the wetness in her eyes when she looks back at me. The boys from District 13 unlock our cells and I push past them all to get to her, my body collapsing against hers in both excruciating weakness and desperate reverence.

"Stop crying," I murmur to her, running my fingers along her cheek. "Don't be a pussy, Bar-Bar."

She chokes out a strangled laugh and rolls her eyes. "You're the worst," she whispers, gripping my arm like she never plans on letting go.

I shake my head, because even though love may be weird, and my life may have been shit up until this point, there's no one I'd rather be here with. She smiles at me with all her broken sharp teeth, and I feel that last little bit of the wall I'd built up around my ruined heart fall to pieces, because in the end, it's hers. It will always be hers.