A/N: Ok, so since I was writing the last few chapters from Johanna's POV, I feel it's necessary to tell you that I'm going back to Katniss for now. :3 Also, I'm rethinking the timeline and chapter progression that I was going to use, so we'll see what happens now, because I don't have it all figured out again yet. Anyway, enjoy!

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I wake, groggy and aching, aware of only a few disconnected things. I see the lights overhead, white and stark and unfeeling, so I must be back in District Thirteen. I feel the itch of a needle embedded in my arm, so I must be in the hospital after being shot. I remember that, the white hot fire of the impact just to the right of my spine, the horrible grinding sensation of a few ribs breaking and rubbing together, the whoosh of air that confused me as it left my lungs because I couldn't draw it back. After that, it's just a black blankness until I wake up here, a weight on my chest that keeps me from getting more than a brief gulp of air and then pushes it back out again. I can hear the steady beating of my heart, but there really isn't anything else I can tell about my state of health because I can't even move my head to look down. I whine and start to panic, feeling trapped and hating it, until a soft warmth spreads from where I can feel the needle piercing my vein. After that, nothing really seems to matter and everything I can see takes on an incandescent sort of glow, almost like it's being lit from within, and it's so pretty that I just coo and let my focus slide.

I think that needle must have delivered morphling or some other painkiller to me, because nothing hurts anymore and I'm almost flying. There's this floaty feeling that seems to lift me off of the hospital bed, the kind of thing that you feel in flying dreams that you don't want to wake up from, and I slip away again with a smile on my face. I don't know how time passes anymore, and I don't want it to because that would mean the feeling going away, yet every time it starts to fade and I struggle, the needle gives me another dose and I sigh in contentment. The cycle goes for fourteen times I think before anything changes.

I hear a grating sort of rolling sound, I think it means that someone is walking towards me with a cart or a drip stand or something, and right as the morphling goes I sigh again, only to be startled by the harshness of the voice that cuts the air. "Goddammit brainless, I'm supposed to be the only one that can make you that fucking happy." I open my eyes to see an angel's face frowning from above me, her warm brown eyes glaring at me with a vast disapproval. The set of her mouth is truly unhappy, but from my perspective the pout of her heart-shaped lips is a secret grin for me and I answer with a grin of my own. "Mmm, hey baby... feels good... how'bout you, y'feelin' good?" I hear the words leave my mouth though I didn't try to say them, and I am startled again to see the effect they have on her face. Worry creases her brows for a moment, then anger and some other feeling I can't put a name on and she's yelling at me. "Stop it Katniss! Just stop it! This isn't a game, this is serious, you were hurt and you worried me, and the first fucking time they fucking let me in to fucking see you, you're turning into one of those fucking morphling losers!" I can see the tears in her eyes, but I can't understand it when I feel this amazing and the confusion must show on my face because she turns and stomps away, her face red and her shoulders tight and angry. I hear the door close and then her voice is raised and yelling at someone, and all I can think is 'I pity whoever it is that she's yelling at. Good thing she doesn't have an axe.'

I go to sleep like that, confused at her anger but not able to dwell on it because the drugs are making everything okay. When I wake up again, she's sitting in a chair by my bed, a scowl set deep on her face and her drip stand next to her but unattached. I can see that she's suffering, that she's in pain, and the only thing I can think of to do is offer her my drip since I don't know what is on hers. I try to move, but I can't and all I manage to do is flop my arm out and smile encouragingly at her, only to be rewarded with a snarl of disgust that confuses and wounds me. I roll over and curl around the ache in my chest that has nothing to do with the gunshot and go back to sleep, hoping that when I wake up she's in a better mood.

Instead, I wake up to an empty chair and a fire in my side that won't go away. I struggle and mewl, waiting for the relief of the drugs, but it doesn't come and I begin to panic. I roll over to look at my machine and I can tell why it won't give me what I need: it's been unplugged from the wall. All of the monitors are still on, but my drip has been sabotaged and I roll further to try and fix it. I end up falling out of the bed because I can't figure out how to move my hands and feet to the proper places, but while on the ground I manage to crawl to the wall and hook the plug back in. I am rewarded by the soothing warmth of the morphling again.

I open my eyes to see that the room has been cleaned and my bed made, though I am still on the floor, and Johanna is once again sitting in the chair looking at me. "You gotta stop this Katniss. You gotta. What if you had hurt yourself trying to make things work again?" I think sluggishly for a minute, then my mouth makes an accusation I didn't mean to speak out loud. "It was you wasn't it? You unplugged me." Her face goes red and she swells like a balloon, and then she's shouting again. "Well of course it was me! I can't fucking stand to see you like this Kat, drugged out of your fucking mind! You don't even see what this is doing to you, you can't because all you see is the feeling and the way it hurts when that feeling stops! I thought you were fucking stronger than this." She looks at me again, like I'm nothing more than a bug, something small and disgusting that she wants to step on, and this time I can't just turn away. "Well fine... I'll stop then." I prove it by reaching behind me and unplugging the machine, and suddenly she's panicking and on the ground pushing it back in and cradling me into her chest and I'm confused.

She's babbling in my ear and I have to fight to hear her. "Of course I want you to stop brainless, but not all at once okay? We gotta wean you down first, I almost got you hurt when I tried to stop you cold. I love you, I don't want to see you turn into one of them, one of the drug addicted husks, and I want my strong Katniss back. I want my Girl on Fire." She reaches up but holds my head to her body so I can't see what she's doing, and after a moment I feel the rush of the morphling but something is off. It seems that there isn't enough of it, and the pain in my chest only recedes instead of disappearing. I humor her though and try to ignore it, keep her happy so that she doesn't see the pain, and when she kisses me for the first time in days it's worth it. As soon as she has to go back to her room though, I turn up the drip and sigh as it sends me to sleep in bliss.

I don't remember dreaming, but I know when I'm awake because I can hear her yelling at someone in the hallway. It sounds like she's abusing Gale, though I don't care about that so much as I thank my lucky stars that she's distracted and I turn the drip down so that she won't notice I'd messed with it overnight. I'm almost content to stay like that, to sit and wait for her, but then I hear what she's yelling about and it drives me to my feet and out of the bed. I unplug the machine and spend a couple minutes figuring out how to turn on the battery back-up, then hobble as quickly as I can once it beeps at me to say it's on again. "Fuck you Hawthorne, I know what you were doing! I saw you doing it! This isn't the only time either, I've been watching you ya bastard!" His voice raises defensively as he retorts, "You're drugged up Johanna, almost as much as she is! You're just seeing things that aren't there, there isn't some conspiracy to have me take her from you!" Her voice goes deadly quiet but I hear it anyway because I just managed to open the door, "That's where you're wrong fucker. I'm not drugged up at all, I cut off my own drip two days ago so I wouldn't have to deal with the fucking withdrawal. I've been watching you, I know what you want and what you think. I saw you kiss her ten fucking minutes ago while she was sleeping." That's when he gets angry. "Fine, you win. So what if I did, at least I'm not some crazy cunt who's sick in the head and making Katniss crazy too! All this lesbian bullshit, that's not who Katniss is!"

My voice cracks through the air, thunder to silence the bleating lambs. "And who am I, Gale Nathaniel Hawthorne?" They both freeze, their breathing becoming shallow and soft as they refuse to look at me. "Who am I, if you know me so well?" I wait for an answer, but after three whole minutes of silence, I know I'm not going to get one. I feel the surge of morphling, the wave that only pushes back the sawblade grinding in my torso, and I snap because I realize that I'm going to have to deal with that all day. "Hey! I asked you a fucking question, Soldier Hawthorne! Give me a motherfucking answer or so help me I will shove this thing up your ass and use you as a fucking puppet!" Two sets of eyes settle on me in disbelief, shock at the words that have left my mouth written plainly on their faces before he starts to stutter his reply. I cut him off as something else Johanna said settles in my mind. "Wait. You kissed me. Not even twenty minutes ago, while I was still asleep, you kissed me is that right?" He nods, uncertainty in his eyes. Rage and pain collide in me and drive me past my breaking point and I leap at him with a shrieking howl tearing out of my throat, my hands curled into claws as I rake at his face and tear deep lines into his cheek. I somehow miss his eyes but it doesn't matter, because now my hands are around his neck and I am bashing him into the wall repeatedly until Johanna's arms drag me off of him. He slumps to the ground dazed and bleeding, and I struggle free again and straddle him and punch him until Johanna grabs me again. This time I let her hold me, though I still spit on him in disgust.

"You don't get me, Gale. Guys like you? They don't get girls like me. Girls like me go for tall, young women with muscle and cheekbones and confidence, and we love it! Girls like me will fuck girls like Johanna from dawn until dusk and then all through the night just because girls like her are amazing and incredible and so much more... than you. Fuck you. You don't ever get me." I turn into her embrace and I begin to weep, watching as the last pieces of my childhood fall to earth and shatter.

It's been a week since they let me out of the hospital, and it's been the longest and most hellish week of my life. I wake up and I cannot breathe, my chest is on fire, my hands won't stop shaking, my throat is dry, me head is pounding, and the nurses won't give me more than two syringes of morphling for the entire day. Of course, they don't know that I found their medical supply closet, but I can't take all that I need or else they'll notice. That means that I only get an extra two syringes a day, and in the meantime I have to deal with having my ribs grind together and pull me apart from the inside. They tell me that it's all in my head, that the bones have actually fused together again and they aren't moving, but I know the truth, I know they're lying because I can feel it happening. Of course, Johanna would say that it's the morphling withdrawal, that the doctors are right and the bones are fixed, and part of me knows that it's true because it only happens when it's been hours since my last dose, but at those times when I can feel it, it seems real.

I'm on the floor of the compartment that I share with Johanna, a syringe in my hand, when I hear the doorknob rattle. She knows that I've already had my two for the day(weak little Katniss) so I scramble to get injected and hide it but I'm not fast enough. I feel the rush but the door opens as I'm tossing the empty and she sees it arc through the air into the bin, I see it in her eyes. The disappointment, the anger, the frustration... the hurt. All of it passes through her gaze in a heartbeat, and then the door is closing and she's just standing there looking at me. "How long." It isn't a question, it's a demand, and not one that I want to answer or accede to, so I stay silent and stare at the floor. "Katniss, how long." When I still don't answer, she rushes forward and jerks my head up with my chin in her fist. "Answer me Katniss! How long have you been stealing morphling? Is it just today, or has it been all week?" I can't tell her at first, I'm too terrified to, then I mumble, "All week..." She scoffs in disgust, a look of betrayal on her face and she turns away, stomping about the room for a few minutes before she finally goes silent. She stands that way for several long minutes, then holds her hand out behind her, "Give me the ring." I don't. "Goddammit Katniss, give me the fucking ring! I can't marry an addict!"

I fall to the floor clutching my hand and scream back at her "No!" She takes a moment to process the denial, then she's right in front of me and her fingers are digging into my arms and her breath is hot on my face. "Then fucking quit. Now, today. No more morphling, do you hear me? No. More." She gives me a shake on the last two words, and I can't do anything but stare at her with wide eyes and nod frantically. Her arms are around me and she's holding me, humming in my ear as I shake like a frightened rabbit.

Another week. A week of screaming nightmares, blinding agony, and several falls from the detox wagon. In seven days I've only stolen four syringes though, so I'm proud of that. I think Johanna is too, because she knows about all of them and she's still with me. She doesn't exactly approve of the theft, but she stays even after she watches me push the plunger. She holds me at night when I wake shaky and sweaty, when the agony from the withdrawal is more overpowering than the ache from my still healing ribs. When I scream from feeling the liquid fire drip along my veins. Johanna has stayed with me through so much, and that she stays through this makes it easier though it still blinds me with the horror of it all. The only relief I have when I wake is her honeyed voice in my ear and her soft caresses on my skin. She's afraid to try anything else, afraid it will prolong the withdrawal, but tonight I can't take it anymore.

When I wake sweating and mewling, she is there. This time I need something better than a few touches and sweet words, I need endorphines to flood my system and wash away the pain, and I need it now. I grab her face roughly, pushing my lips to hers and swallowing her gasp of surprise as I nibble at her lips with more fervor than she ever had from me. My hands slide to her waist as soon as my lips have established their dominance, and she moans as my nails drag up over her back, bringing her shirt with them. My lips are only gone for a moment in which her shirt goes sailing across the room and mine follows directly after, then her breasts are pressed into mine and the feeling of our nipples brushing together threatens to drive me irretrievably wild. I shimmy down the bed, her shorts fisted in my hands, and she curls to keep the kisses going even as I strip her last piece of clothing away from her. Her fingers find my bum and give a good squeeze, then she's tugging at my shorts and making these noises of need that make me feel so empowered. I don't hear them hit the floor but I know when they are gone. I flip in the bed so that my knees are pushing her shoulders down and my tongue can caress her folds, and her moan vibrates between my legs.

I get lost in the flavor of her, just as I did in the arena though this time it's immediate and not on my fingers. I lick every last drop of her dew from her join, then keep going, keep licking and flicking her bud with more confidence and assurance than I should be capable of. This is only the second time I have serviced her in this way, but it is so much better than I remember because with every lick, she moans and I can feel the buzz on my clit even as the taste of her runs down my throat and I suck and lick to get more of it. I feel the heat begin to build within, but I must be doing something right because I hear her cry our beneath me and her hips buck upward, and suddenly there is so much more of the sticky wetness in her folds for me to drink down and I cannot stop. I keep licking and drinking at her altar until every last drop is gone and she is shivering beneath me, but I don't stop. I can't, because as long as I keep going, I can still taste her, and she'll keep ministering to me as well. The tightness builds faster now, I can feel the wave coming strong, and I can hear and feel her moans as it builds quicker this time for her. I hold on as long as I can, seeking a point in her that I don't know if I will reach, and when I cannot keep the cascade back any longer I tumble over the edge and cry into her, providing the last push needed to send her over with me and we sing into each other and suckle the dampness away. When there is no more to be had, I lay still for a few breaths before I right myself in the bed. I am rewarded with two things once I am laying curled into her: A sense of peace, a warm sensation that sings along my bones, and more of her kisses, flavored with me and mingling with the taste of her on my tongue until I cannot tell which is which and I do not know where I end and she begins. I like it that way.

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A/N: Okay, so yeah. That turned out to be a rather smutty ending, but I can't really complain. I did what I wanted to do, changed it so that Katniss is the addict, and I came up with a solution that is going to be talked about some more in later chapters as well. One addiction for another, you might say. At least this one benefits them both. ;)