A Strange New World

by mockingjayy

Five years after the rebellion and Panem is beginning to heal. One year after Snow's fall Katniss, Peeta and Haymitch perform a ceremony that the citizens will always remember and mark as Freedom Day. But who is the stranger in the Capitol? And why after five years are they still reluctant to celebrate?

2. Last Night

'They can't hurt me. I'm not like the rest of you. There's no one left I love.'

(Catching Fire: Johanna Mason, pg. 418)

As dawn slowly graced her seventh floor window, Johanna Mason turned over as quickly as her churning stomach would allow. The hotel phone lay on the opposite pillow, its consistent disconnected tone too much for her pounding head to handle. She rolled out of bed with a dreary moan, one of her famous headaches swinging around to greet her like an axe to the head.

When her eyes finally focused, Johanna scanned her hotel room. Looking at the stack of empty takeaway packets and bottles behind the sofa, she smirked. Glancing towards the 'no-smoking' sign above her dresser, Johanna almost laughed aloud as she considered just how much the bedroom had become an ashtray; her discarded dark clothes clinging like ash to its once clean insides. Standing in its deep orange light, Johanna slowly began to understand why the hotel maids' hated her.

She imagined them throwing a party when she left. Although Johanna knew she'd never been a 'tidy person,' the room only demonstrated the fact she'd gotten a whole lot worse. Looking around her latest residence, she could almost pinpoint the exact moment her regard for anything had fallen apart. It was in the first hotel she'd ran to back in Three after the rebellion, the first short-term stay of many over the years. Thinking of the maids, Johanna couldn't blame them for hating her, even she felt slightly ashamed. Hell, she thought, if they had a party she'd raise a toast herself.

Within her three month stay in the Capitol, Johanna's room had not welcomed a single cleaning cart. Its door had only been opened by Johanna and, similar to its main inhabitant, fiercely maintained its 'do not disturb' sign.

But that morning in particular, the door would be closed by Johanna for the last time, its sign casually discarded in the hallway. By the time the maids' began their rounds later, Johanna would be gone and there would be nothing to stop them entering Room 707 and cleaning it throughout.

Plutarch had called. It was time to go.