The days and nights seem to melt away into a series of moments for us, unending flashes of light and dark that press on our hearts. Everything seems all out of order, out of joint, out of life, and out of place, leaving only her and I together through it all. After the assault on District Eight, Johanna and I throw ourselves into the training harder and harder until there is nothing outside of it, nothing other than the training, the guns, the physical and mental conditioning. I push myself until I can run laps around the training grounds for hours on end without tiring, until the obstacle course has to be done forwards and back before I'm out of breath. Johanna repeats the little things over and over, never stopping or slowing down, until she can take apart her rifle, clean it, and reassemble it with her eyes closed. She stays on the range using the training markers until I finish my running, and then we go together to the close combat training. There is no one who can beat us anymore except each other, and that in itself has caused a new hobby to rise in Thirteen: betting on which siren will win that day.
We don't ever pay attention to that sort of thing, it just doesn't matter to us. What our world has become is learning to be soldiers for the war while others are watching, and learning how to be together when the lights are off and the world is no larger than our room. The night before our world is turned on its ear again is one of those nights. I lay on the bed we share with my head in her lap and a pad of paper in my hands while she reads by the light of a solar lantern on her dresser. She's playing with my hair just like she always does, but that's all the attention I'm getting because of that book. I don't mind, it means she doesn't notice when I shift my head to look at her every few minutes. She never notices it anymore, which means that she doesn't know my secret: I discovered about a week after our mission in Eight that I like to draw. I don't have the eye for color and such that Peeta did, so painting is out of the picture, but I like to draw and I'm actually not bad. I have a hidden treasure trove of the sketches I make, and they are all of her. I spend as much time on them as I can, and I have drawn her face so many times that I don't even need to be looking at her to get it right and yet I don't ever want to stop looking at her. She is the most beautiful woman in the world, and she is mine, and that is all that matters to me.
I look up again, trying to get the way the light plays on her nose and her cheek just right, but this time she's noticed and she's watching me work. My eyes lock onto hers, amber pools dancing with a teasing light as she stares at the last two hours' work on my page, and I cannot look away. I hear the faint snap of her book closing, the light clatter of it being put down, but all I can do is stare into the eyes of the woman I love so much it hurts to think of how we were almost parted. I feel her fingertips trace the line of my jaw, I shudder as they trail down my neck and over my collarbones, but still I cannot look away. I don't want to, my whole world is contained in the look she is giving me, love and teasing and joy and affection. She leans forward, and my breath catches in my throat, waiting for the kiss that must be coming to send me soaring again, only to have her whisper to me, "Caught you." She tweaks my nose, then kisses it and takes the paper right out of my hands so she can look at it closer. "Is this really how you see me?" she asks, a note of uncertainty in her voice. I can see just how vulnerable that question is making her feel, like the answer is the most dangerous thing she's ever come across, as if it might break her.
I sit up and scoot along the bed until I am pressed against her body, the soft curve of her chest molding to the pressure and warming my side. My arms slide around her waist and hold her close, my lips trail soft caresses up her neck and over her face until she is blushing from the moment. I nuzzle into her neck before finally replying, "Yes Jojo, that's really how I see you. That's how everyone sees you, because that is really how beautiful and amazing you are." She shivers and I think she is uncertain whether to cry or kiss me until I pass out, so I take the decision away from her and stand, padding over to my own dresser. I sit on the bed that never gets used and pull out the top drawer, rooting around under the clothes for the folder that I keep there. Once I have it in my hand, I return to the woman who has saved me, saved my heart and my life, and curl into her again. I let my hair fall into my face, nervous and giddy and unsure all at once, and open the folder to show the papers within.
A finished piece of Johanna, asleep in her bed with the light playing across her face and her bare shoulder. A sketch of her as she polishes and cares for her axes. Another sketch of how she looked the first day she wore the armor that Cinna made for us. A drawing of the gentle look her face gets when she looks at me when we are alone. The way she looks in my memory when she came out of the jungle in the arena. The way she looks when someone says something she hates or doesn't agree with. Johanna in all her glory as she steps from the shower, still dripping with towel in hand. There is even a drawing of the way she seems to me when she wakes me from a nightmare, an angel of mercy come to save me from the darkness. Sketch after sketch until the tears that were building run down her face, one long-fingered hand pressed over her mouth as she rifles through them all. When she looks at me again, she isn't any version of Johanna Mason that I've ever seen, she is just a beautiful woman with short hair and the most stunning golden brown eyes I've ever seen. In this moment, right now, she is just Jojo, the girl who fell in love with a silly, blunt girl from District Twelve who never deserved to be so lucky. Yet when she kisses me, the papers flying off the bed and scattering on the floor, I can believe that maybe, just maybe, I really do deserve her.
The morning comes too quickly for either one of us, and it does not come gently. We wake up to a banging on the door of our compartment at six, and this is an hour that we are never friendly at, so I roll out of bed and disregard the need to put on any clothes. Yanking the door open, I scream into the hallway beyond, "What the fuck do you want so badly?" Then I notice that the person who was so insistent outside our door is none other than Gale, still a little bruised from the beating I gave him weeks ago and staring at my naked body with his mouth flapping soundlessly.
He looks like a fish lying on the ground, an image that would usually make me quite cheerful but which only makes me angrier at this moment until I feel Johanna's hands slide over my hips and fold together over my belly. Her bare breasts press into my shoulder blades and I smile, able to be a little more chipper now that she is so blatantly supporting me. I cannot resist the urge to push my hips back and give a little shake, bringing a small pant into my ear as I grind on her. Somehow, that snaps Gale out of whatever shock he was in and he manages to choke out, "It's today. They're going after Finnick and Cashmere today." The grin is wiped off my face at that and I slam the door shut in his face. I feel Johanna's warm abandon me and I turn about to lean against the door for support.
"Today? It's... today?" Neither one of us knows what to do, what to say, how to handle this or how to even think coherent thoughts. I'm startled into action when the door shudders under his thunderous attack again and he bellows through the door, "Come on Katniss, they need you right now. Bring it- I mean bring her too, they said they want both of you. You're supposed to do an interview live or something as a distraction for their covert operation. They're gonna bring them home today, you gotta move!" I shout back through the door telling him to go away, we'll come as soon as we're ready, but I know that both of us will never really be ready for this. We will never be ready to be a distraction when we could be acting, we will never be ready to be the ones that help bring our lost friends home without lifting a finger, we will never be ready to stop hiding from the people we have lost. And yet, that is exactly what we need to do today.
We struggle to get dressed and maintain the veneer of calm that we are used to having when we are out among the citizens of the district, but the simple thought that Finnick is coming home today makes that impossible. That in a few hours, Cashmere is going to be sitting in the hospital, being checked over to make sure she's alright. Even though this is far from the home they know, it is the only home they have left for now, and we are the only family they have anymore. They need us to be there for them, to help bring them back, and we need them to come back whole, in one piece and ready to fight alongside us when we take down Snow.
We are dressed and out the door of the compartment, running for Command in the hopes that someone will tell us what we are to do, when we run into Plutarch. I see the smile on his face, but it is the words that tumble from his mouth that concern me, sticky sweet honey hiding the poison of our assignment. "Hello ladies, nice to see you. Head down to the hangar, we're flying you out to the ruins of Twelve. You're going to tell your stories and we are going to air them live in the Capitol. Beetee is pretty sure he can get them to remain uninterrupted."
Once again, I stand in the ashes of the only home I've ever known. This time it is not a mission I gave myself, a hunt to see what little could have survived and a penance to see the results of my actions, but is instead a conscious choice to show us, Johanna and I, amongst the devastation the Capitol has wrought. We are the Mockingjays, the Sirens of the Wood, the strongest and most beloved female victors of this decade, and the Capitol has taken almost everything from us. Today, we are here to tell them exactly how much their beloved entertainment has cost.
I wander through the rubble, Johanna's hand in mine, and I feel lost again. Adrift at sea in a terrible storm without end, the dust that remains of all that I ever knew blowing around my feet, my slow tread heavy as I stumble towards the rubble that used to be the Hall of Justice. What they left behind when they bombed us is nothing more than a shell, pieces of wall that stand on their own and bits of stone that used to be so intimidating to everyone in the district. I take a seat on all that is left of the carved marble that made up the entryway, the worn letters spelling out 'Justice', and look into Cressida's cameras. Johanna gives my hand a squeeze before stepping back, and I begin to speak.
"My name is Katniss Everdeen. I'm sitting on the rubble of the Hall of Justice in what is left of my home, a place that is now nothing more than the burned out husks of houses, with ash covering the bones of those who didn't make it out. This is District Twelve. It wasn't much, but this was my home. I remember what it was like growing up here, a place where the community was divided in two along barely discernable financial lines but everyone still sought to help everyone else. My father worked in the mines, my mother worked as an apothecary. She had been a merchant's daughter selling medicines, so she knew herbs and she made a new business for herself once she married dad. She was so beautiful then. I've returned here once since the Quell and I found a photo of her on her wedding day, and she glowed. I miss that, I miss knowing that she was once so... radiant, because for as long as I can remember, she hasn't been.
I was eleven when the disaster struck our family. My sister was seven years old, barely able to take care of herself as it was, but she was the heart of our family. My dad and I would gather what we could inside the fence and take it home, then we would defy the laws and we would leave the district. The fence around Twelve was so rarely electrified that it was easy to get out, to go into the woods and hunt, and he taught me to survive out there. I lived for the days when I could be with my father in the woods, walking among the trees and reveling in the freedom that came without having a fence around my life. I remember him teaching me to sing, his voice lifting through the trees and bringing a new life to the wilderness, and I remember the way that his music gave me wings. I even remember that when he sang, the birds would stop to listen. Then came the day that everything changed.
I was at school when the alarms started to ring. Panic spread through everyone, and I ran for the second grade rooms even though I knew nothing could be wrong there. I just had to see that my sister was okay. I stopped in the door and she was still in her seat waiting for me, just like she had been taught, and a weight lifted off my chest and I could breathe again. I took her hand and we fled for the square, looking for our mother. It wasn't all that hard to find her, there weren't a lot of people in the Seam with blonde hair and blue eyes. She checked us over and made sure we were okay, and then we waited. There was dust billowing up out of the mine shaft but nothing else for what seemed like hours. When all hope had almost faded, the tide of people began and families were reunited in relief. We waited still, no sign of dad anywhere with the other miners, and we waited some more. Even when everyone else had left, we waited with the hope that he had just been trying to get everyone else out, that he would emerge from that place and sweep us up in his arms, but... he never did.
My mom shut down and abandoned us when he died. I don't mean that we were home alone, that would have actually been easier to deal with. She just checked out, this lost and far away look in her eyes, and she lay in bed doing nothing. She'd get up like she had a purpose, and then lay back down looking confused. I fought tooth and nail to keep Prim and I looking like we were okay, like everything was fine at home, because if we didn't we would be taken away and put into state housing. I couldn't let that happen to Prim, those kids were broken, hopeless, and I didn't want that life for her. So I fought to keep us looking presentable, but I still almost failed. If it hadn't been..." At this thought, my voice breaks and I have to take a moment to compose myself. I almost cry remembering who saved me from starvation, but I have to rally and keep going. "If it hadn't been for Peeta Mellark, I would be gone and so would Prim. He saved us, all because he was simply too kind-hearted. That day, it was cold and raining and I was rummaging through garbage cans looking for something, anything, I could take home and cook until it fell apart so we could eat. He saw me when his mother yelled at me for going through her cans and he... He burned some bread loaves on purpose, the heavy kind with fruit and nuts inside, and he accepted the beating his mother gave him. When he was told to feed the bread to the pigs, he threw me the loaves instead, still hot from the oven. I ran all the way home with them.
I fed us on that bread for a week, making it last for as long as I could, and when we ran out, it was a sunny day and the flowers were blooming. After school, I saw him looking at me and I looked away, embarrassed and uncertain, and I saw a dandelion growing at my feet. I remembered that my dad had taught me to forage, and because Peeta gave me hope with that bread, I was able to keep going long enough to gather my courage and return to the woods I had avoided since dad died. At first I stayed close to the fence, but eventually... eventually I started going deeper and deeper and hunting for longer. I met my friend Gale in the woods, and we worked together. He taught me to make snares, and I taught him to shoot, and in the woods we were family. It turned out he had lost his father in the mines the same day I lost mine. In those days, he was the best friend I could have asked for. He kept me going." I stop talking, not wanting to go any further and not knowing what I would even say if I did, and Johanna walks forward to take my hands. I know that this is the first time she's heard my story and I mumble an apology to her for not telling it sooner, but she stills my lips with a finger and smiles at me.
We hear a soft sob, a sound that doesn't come from either of us, and look up to see Cressida with her hand covering her mouth and tears leaking from her eyes. She shakes her head and waves her other hand at us, bidding us to go on, but there is something about this moment that tells me she has a story of her own that needs telling. I need to know what that story is, and looking back at my lumberjack, she agrees. Cressida needs friends, and we want to be there for her.
"My turn," she murmurs, and then she holds me down when I make to leave and I can feel her shaking. I snuggle into her side instead and lay my head on her shoulder to listen. Her voice is strong, harsh, but the words and the way she says them tell me just how much it hurts for her to say any of this. "I am Johanna Mason, and I have lost so much and yet gained what I needed to keep on living. When I was a kid in District Seven, I was the only girl in a family of boys. I had three older brothers and a younger brother, and we fought all the time. I mean, we fought all the fucking time. I learned how to fight from them, how to be strong, but I had a reason to live that was given to me by someone else. There was... this girl. She was everything I wasn't. She was soft, she was petite, she was sweet and caring and approachable and an only child, and she was perfect. When we were younger, we didn't know what we were doing was considered wrong, we didn't know that what we were doing was even romantic. We just walked hand in hand everywhere, I would protect her from anyone that tried to hurt her, and she would kiss me on the cheek at what seemed like random times simply because she felt like it.
Her name was Lise Amell. She was everything to me, the sun, moon and stars, but it wasn't until I was Reaped that either of us even realized it. She came to say goodbye and whatever words she had died on her tongue. Instead, she stood there like a deer in the spotlight, twitching and almost hyperventilating, and then she just sprung forward and pressed her lips to mine. Neither one of us had ever been kissed, so it was a new experience for both of us, and it broke my heart. I knew, I just knew that I was going to die, and now she had just given me something I didn't even realize I wanted or didn't have. I went to the Games and I fought to stay alive until the very end, and that's when what my brothers had taught me took over. It wasn't me against the careers anymore, it was me against prey, and they didn't even know it. I think I actually lost myself a bit when that happened, but all I knew was the axe in my hand and the spray of blood on my face, and I loved it. I loved it right up until they said the Games were over and I won, right up until I realized that meant I was going home. Then I was horrified, because Lise had seen me turn into a beast on live television. What would she say?
Before I left the Capitol, the President himself came to have a chat with me. He made me an offer that I wasn't supposed to refuse, but I did. He told me to think about it, and he would ask me again soon. He told me to think about the people I loved, but I never in a million years would have guessed that he knew about Lise, or that he would do anything to her. I told him right then that I didn't have to think about it, that I would never say yes, that I would never agree to sell my honor and my dignity for him. He shook his head in what I think was disappointment, but he said he understood my kind all too well and had even expected it. He had hoped I would see reason, but that was obviously not the case. He bid me farewell, and I left the Capitol. I had won, and I was proud. I shouldn't have been so happy though.
I returned home to find my entire district on the streets, cheering my name and clapping and whistling for me. I must have received a dozen proposals of marriage, mostly joking but a little serious, and I turned them all down. I looked for Lise, hoping she would be there, and she was. Way at the back of the crowd, she stood there and smiled at me, a little wary but happy to see me. I remember diving off the platform and running to her, taking her in my arms and kissing her for the whole district to see, and when I pulled back I looked into her eyes and told her that I loved her. I was in the perfect place to see the light die when the gunshots rang out, to feel the blood spray on my chest, to catch the spurt of red she coughed up on my face. I watched the girl I loved die in my arms, and yet Snow still wasn't done with me. My family gathered around me, trying to sooth me and protect me, and the gunshots rang out again. As one, my brothers fell to the ground, bleeding on the paving stones and gasping for their last breaths. I screamed for them, my mother tried to stop the bleeding on my little brother, and I watched as red blossomed from her temple and a little hole appeared. She slumped to the ground with her eyes still open, and my dad was next. He dove in front of me, thinking to protect me, and when he was shot he fell on top of me. I lost everyone I loved that day.
For the six years after that, I was hard. I forced myself to not care about anyone so that no one else would die because of me, but that couldn't last. I didn't know it, but because of the actions of a girl who would not be controlled, I was doomed again. I watched as Katniss pulled the berries from that pouch of cloth, and I think it was in that moment that I started to crack. I thought that she was in love with the bread boy, just like everyone else, but that moment of defiance rang so truly of something I would have done if the option had presented itself that I couldn't help being a little spellbound. Then came the Quell, and everything that I never thought I could have fell right into my lap. I was terrified, because what if the President found out? He'd known about Lise, what would he do if he found out that I actually was sweet on the Girl on Fire? I did my best to ignore her, but the parade into the Training Center made that impossible. Cinna made that impossible, just like he always had. She was a goddess that night, and I couldn't stop myself. I had to be close to her. I managed to get into the elevator with her and bread boy, and when she couldn't stop looking at me I dared to hope.
She showed me that I knew nothing about her that night, both in the elevator and afterwards when she found me on the roof. I was trying to be playful, to make her uncomfortable so that I could punish her for being so damn delicious that I wanted her, but the way she reacted to me made my head spin. When she fainted in my arms, I knew I was a goner. I got her to her bed, left a note, and ran away. She dared to admit to me the next morning that she couldn't stop looking at me, that she couldn't stop reacting to me, and it drove me on until I swear that she actually ran away from me. That night, she found me on the roof again, and she rocked my world. I told her that she smelled like home, and she smiled that shy little smile that she has right now and she told me I smelled like home to her too. She even called me Jojo, and I loved it. Everything we were moved so quickly and formed into everything we are, and the arena only made it even more apparent to us that we couldn't live without each other. I had to make sure she got out, and she fought to make sure we both could, and when that forcefield came down we both thought we failed when the hover picked us up. At least, we thought we'd failed until her mentor welcomed us to freedom. I cannot tell you how that felt, being told that I'm free and that I get to be with the woman of my dreams." She finishes her speech, and I can't help myself. I lift my head up and grab her face in my hands, tell her I love her so fiercely that I know the camera picks it up, and I kiss her until the world around me dissolves to nothing and she is all that is left.
Silence has fallen over the district once again, and our little group has split up. Boggs has taken Gale and Castor back to Thirteen so that they can be ready when the rescue team returns. Johanna and I stayed here in Twelve, per Cressida's request. The reason she gave us at first was that she wanted to get a little bit more footage, but as the sun dips down into the west, her face loses its determination and she simply looks lost.
I lead her and the others outside the fallen fence, heading towards the river and the ancient oak I know is there. As we walk, I start to talk, nothing really important but still something to break the silence and get more footage done. "When I was younger, and my dad was still alive, he'd bring me out this way. Even if he wasn't teaching me how to hunt, he'd bring me out to the woods near the river. There's a tree out here, one I always thought of as his tree, and that was where he taught me to sing to the mockingjays."
A moment more and we've arrived, the forest opening up and giving us a view over the water, the last light of day painting the sky is shades of orange and pink. I sit but the water, Johanna sliding to the ground behind me, her arms wrapping around me securely. "My dad always used to sing to them, and they would sing back. I remember the last song he ever taught me, more because my mother was so angry with him for teaching it to me than anything else. Still, it has always been my last and best memory of him singing."
I look at Cressida and Pollux, wary of their reactions and how much footage they want, and ask quietly, "It's not a happy song, but would you like me to sing it anyway?" Cressida nods, looking a little enraptured by the moment and eager to get a little more of my father for the rebellion to see. I take a moment to calm my nerves, mostly because I haven't sung in a while, but also because this will be the first time Johanna has heard me sing and I don't know if she'll like it.
Are you, are you coming to the tree?
They strung up a man they say who murdered three.
Strange things did happen here, no stranger would it be
If we met at midnight, in the hanging tree.
Are you, are you coming to the tree?
Where the dead man called out for his love to flee.
Strange things did happen here, no stranger would it be
If we met at midnight, in the hanging tree.
Are you, are you coming to the tree?
Where I told you to run so we'd both be free.
Strange things did happen here, no stranger would it be
If we met at midnight, in the hanging tree.
Are you, are you coming to the tree?
Wear a necklace of rope, side by side with me.
Strange things did happen here, no stranger would it be
If we met at midnight, in the hanging tree.
For a moment after I finish singing, there is silence. Then, just as would always happen when my father sang, the mockingjays picked up the tune, their high trilling voices carrying the notes in a haunting melody. The sound of their calls causes Cressida to break down in sobs. I am bewildered, this tough-as-nails woman covering her face and struggling to breath seeming so incongruous that all I can do is scoot out of my angel's arms and pull her close, her head on my shoulder.
After several long minutes, she pulls out of my embrace and wipes the tears from her face, nodding her thanks and sitting up, gathering her thoughts. When she speaks, it starts out soft and slowly grows stronger. "I left the Capitol because they took someone from me, but not in the way most people have lost to them. Just about everyone in the Districts have lost someone to the Games, or to so-called treason, or accidents in the workforce. Not me. I lost someone to the machine of Capitol politics. About eight years ago, a girl from One won the Games. You know her, you met her in the Quell actually. Cashmere."
She looks me in the eye and the fire that I expect from her is back, along with a sad longing that I've never seen from her before, and fear. The fear confuses me for a bit, and then it clicks. She's afraid of going back, afraid that Cash won't remember her, or won't care anymore. Even in the face of that fear, she keeps talking. "Cashmere won the year after her brother. Back then, I was just a film student in the Capitol, nobody important or anything. My graduation project was to film the Victory Tour, so I was on the train the entire time, getting footage and editing it in my room at night."
"About three days into the trip, a knock comes on my door. It's late, everyone else is asleep, so I get up thinking it'll be one of the Avoxes with some coffee or something. Instead, I open the door to see the incredibly beautiful girl I'd been following on the tour, and... she's wearing nothing but a silk slip. I was not at all prepared for that situation, and I'm pretty sure it showed. The rest of that trip, she spent every night in my room. She said that having someone close was the only way she could sleep, and she didn't feel comfortable with anyone else on the train."
"The tour ended and we went our separate ways, or so I believed. Six weeks after the end of the tour, there's that knock again on the door of my apartment. I've just graduated and I'm still on a three day bender to celebrate, so when I open the door and see Cashmere standing there, I'm not at all inhibited and I tell her exactly what I think of her looks and invite her inside. That was the first time I'd ever made anyone blush. I'd had girlfriends, boyfriends, and friends with benefits, but I'd never made anyone blush."
"That night started something for us, some kind of arrangement and understanding. At least, that's what it was supposed to be. She'd come visit for a few nights when the nightmares became too much to bear alone, and somewhere in there we'd talk, flirt, and have sex. That was all it was ever supposed to be, except it evolved like those situations usually always do. One night about a year after we met, she comes to my apartment strung out and nervous as hell. I'd never seen her like that, and I had no idea what to do. When I opened to door, the first thing she did was lunge at me, and believe me when I tell you that a Victor lunging at you makes you back the hell up real fucking quick. She was quicker though, and she caught me in a searing, soul-burning kiss like nothing I'd ever had."
"The first words out of her mouth were, "Goddammit Cressida, I fucking love you how the hell did you do this to me?" I didn't know how to respond, I think my brain shut off and I was on autopilot, all I know is that the next time I remember having cognizant thoughts we were laying in my bed sweaty and bare, and she was stroking my face murmuring "I can't believe you feel the same way." I couldn't comprehend it, but she was right, I did. I do. I love that woman and for the last five years, I haven't been able to tell her that because she was stolen away by politics and.. and... FUCK! I don't fucking know if she still fucking loves me and it fucking scares me and I'm so fucking afraid of going back to Thirteen to see her and I don't know if she'll even fucking remember me and if she doesn't what am I supposed to fucking do?"
She stops talking and dissolves into tears again, shuddering sobs wracking her frame as Pollux quietly shuts off his camera. Johanna and I lift her up by the arms and slowly walk her back to the hover that is still waiting for us amidst the rubble of Twelve, and I'm hoping for her sake that Cashmere still remembers what she feels for her.
We're waiting outside of the hospital wing, all too familiar with the lighting and the smell of it all, hoping beyond all hope that we'll get to see Finnick soon. The mission went off without a hitch and they got him and Cashmere out, even managing to free his Annie along with them, but he was in bad shape and they wouldn't let us in to see our friend. Hours pass slowly out here as we hope, and yet nothing is happening and we're beginning to lose patience when the doctors finally step out of the room. The head doctor waves us over and speaks in a soft, sad voice. "He's going to make it, but that's about all the good news I have. He was tortured, horribly and almost without end, and it has left him a broken man. From what I can tell, they stopped beating him fairly early and resorted to something that is, in my opinion, much crueler to a man like him."
Johanna loses her cool and shouts at him to just hurry up and spit it out, and he flinches but continues. "They would soak him in water and then electrify the puddle he was laying in." Our gasps are soft but the horror on our faces reflects back to us in the lenses of his glasses. "What little he managed to say before he fell asleep under the morphling drip assures us that he never said anything harmful to the rebellion, but I'm afraid that that is the root of the problem. He would not give them the information they wanted, so they continued to torture him with the water and electricity. Now, he..." I hear him pause to swallow his fear and his upset, then the words he speaks knocks the floor from under me. "He's... we tried to sponge bathe him, and when a tiny trickle of water went over his skin, he screamed and had a massive panic attack. He injured three nurses and one of the other doctors. He's terrified of water."
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A/N: Ta-daa. This is what happened to poor Finnick. This is the consequence of Johanna making it to District Thirteen instead of him.
I had some issues writing the chapter because after the fluffy beginning, I didn't know what to write. I fought with myself overnight, and then this morning I finally managed to start putting words on the page, and once I was in District Twelve again it was easy. Tell me what you think!