A/N: This is rather important, so please read!
This story will be on hiatus until further notice. I know everyone wants to see them meet, and I'm sorry to inform you that it won't be for a while.
As some of you may know, I am writing another story, Crash, and I want to finish it before I really get into this story.
I will, however, continue to work on this story when I get time- which is very rare. I just will not be posting any more chapters until Crash is completed.
Then, when it is, I will hopefully have multiple chapters of this story ready to go.
This story will be approximately 27 chapters, so I hope you can understand why I don't want to have two lengthy stories going on at once.
ANYWAY. Enjoy this chapter! It's the last one for a while.
The next chapter that will eventually be posted will the one wherein Finnick and Johanna finally meet! YAY!
After her father died, Johanna had no one left.
Her brother, her mother, her father—no one left.
With her father, went her friends. She was now an orphan and an outcast.
Her first Reaping was brutal. She was completely alone; no one was there to hold her hand. She woke up that morning from a particularly awful nightmare and called out for Spencer, her brother, only to remember he'd never come. (Sometimes she still cries out for him in her nightmares, just as I do for my long-lost loved ones.)
She half-hoped she'd be Reaped. She so desperately wanted to shake things up in the Capitol; to earn her rank in the Hall of Victors and cement her place in that hellhole of frivolous waste and merciless destruction—so she could make every single one of them pay. When her name was not called, she did not rejoice like the other lucky children. She was somewhat crushed, but quickly decided she would only improve her chances of winning if she were older. So she waited patiently for her time.
For two years, Johanna was virtually a hermit. She lived off of her family's life savings; never trying to get a job; never really leaving her house except to buy food and supplies—and never did she speak a word to anyone.
She trained daily. She could throw an axe with pristine accuracy from fifty meters away; it was quite a formidable skill—something she still possess. She signed up for tesserae, even though she didn't need it, in hopes that she'd increase her odds of being reaped. Volunteering for someone wouldn't be so suspicious if she had friends or family, but she didn't. She needed to be reaped for her story to really work.
She had no friends; no neighbors; no family. She was just Johanna Mason, the imperceptibly smart, sad little orphan girl. She was small and dainty-looking, though in time she would prove to the whole nation to be quite the opposite.
On her 13th birthday, she ventured into town to buy herself a treat—something her mother used to do and a habit her father picked up on after her death. She made her way to the bakery, intent on buying a cookie or two, but decided she couldn't. She didn't want to celebrate without them. Instead, she went to the florist and bought her mother's favorite flowers—azaleas—and tenderly placed them on each of her family members' graves. She cried for hours. Eventually she walked back to her home, tear tracks staining her face.
It was on her way back that she met him, Reiner Vogel. It was then that she met the first person to make her smile in what felt like a lifetime.
(She never told me much about him, how they got to know each other, or how their relationship grew; but she occasionally gave up little glimpses of their life together—mostly when she thought I couldn't hear her.)
He was kind and sweet, she says. While she was brooding and depressed and angry, he was light—pure, angelic light—she says. She loved him. He loved her. He almost made her want to give up her fight, and forget about the Capitol's atrocities and her abhorrence toward them. But, she thinks now, that even if she had, she would have joined the cause anyway eventually.
Her birthday is always within three days of the start of the Games.
He is six months older than she.
On his 19th birthday, he proposes to her. She accepts. (She never tells me the story, and I don't push her for details)
There is only one thing she wants more than to be Mrs. Reiner Vogel, and that is to win the Games.
This is her last year to try, and she prays that someone worth volunteering for will be called. She doesn't believe in a God and she never really did, but this Reaping almost made her.
Every year since she turned 12, she hoped with all her might she would be reaped, or someone frail or very young would be called, so she could volunteer for a complete stranger and play the part of a defenseless sacrificial lamb headed for the slaughter.
This last year—this last chance—she actually prayed because she had never wanted something more in her life; not then and not now.
She never told Reiner about her goal. She never wanted him to worry about her, and she always assumed he'd be there when she got back.
When she went to stand in the herd of the other 18-year-old girls from 7, she hated that she had to let go of his hand. She knew that this year, she would play the Games. She knew it would crush him, but she knew she'd be back. He'd only have to trust her.
To her pleasure, a small, 12-year-old girl's name was drawn at the Reaping. The very moment the crying, hysteric little thing made her way to the stage, Johanna lunged forward.
"I volunteer," she said shakily—playing her part well.
The reporters would cast a tale of a selfless orphan with no loved ones sacrificing herself for a dainty little girl. They were so wrong.
Reiner was her one and only guest, and the peacekeepers pitied her so they let him have the full hour with her.
"Why?"
He just held her and cried; she couldn't answer him, so she just cried too. For the first time in her life, she actually felt fear. Not fear of losing her life—Johanna was too cocky for her own good—but fear of losing him.
"I'll explain when I come home," she said between sobs.
She really wanted to say, "I love you," and, "No matter what I do in that arena, don't forget who I am," but she didn't.
We all know how she won her Games.
She pulled a 4 in training and was timid and scared in her interview. She played her part exceedingly well. Even Blight was fooled. No one expected her to win; let alone make it through the bloodbath. But, she did. She was fast a light on her feet; she fled far from the cornucopia.
She didn't receive a single gift from a sponsor and no one thought to bet on her until it was too late to change your bets.
The third night, she stumbled across the girl from 6 sleeping in a tree clutching an axe. Soundlessly, Johanna took the axe and beheaded the girl right then and there. It was a painless death for her, and Johanna did not hate herself for that. She killed nine more tributes in that same way—painless and so without them sensing her coming.
It was when it was down to Johanna and Giuseppe, District 2's male tribute, that she actually had to fight with someone. The hours they spent in their mortal game of cat and mouse were the only time she ever doubted her chances of winning. He was the reason she won.
Giuseppe was trailing behind her—his mass of muscles proving to hinder his speed, while Johanna's dainty but toned figure only aided her sprint— but fatigue was started to get to her; when out of the corner of her eye, she saw a sparrow—
"Johanna Vogel, it's got a nice ring to it, don't it?"
"What's Vogel mean, anyway? That's such a weird last name," she said with her chin pressed to his shoulder, admiring her new engagement ring with her arms wrapped around his shoulders.
"It's German, some old language from before Panem existed, for 'bird,'" he replied pointing at a sparrow.
Reiner nudged her chin up to look at the beautiful bird.
"You'll fit in quite well. You're so clever, and so light, I bet you could fly if you flapped your wings."
"We'll soon find out," she said against his lips. "Maybe I was always meant to be a bird in some way."
- Suddenly, she found the renewed strength to carry on. She stopped and faced Giuseppe head on. It was a bloody fight—she almost lost her left arm—but she threw her ran away from him and threw her axe.
The tip of the blade hit him square in the eye—because like I said, she and Katniss have more in common than either of them would like to admit—before she could bleed out.
When the hovercraft came to collect her, she let go of the breath she didn't know she'd been holding.
As the drugs pulled her under, she knew she just had to heal and do her interview, then she could see him again. She didn't know how to explain her actions to Panem, since she pretended to be such a frail, hopeless girl in her pre-Games interview, but she knew Blight, her mentor, would help her.
What she didn't know—or couldn't fathom—was that Snow was angrier at her than he had been at Haymitch Abernathy. We all know how he made an example of Haymitch. Johanna never saw it coming. Again, she was too cocky for her own good.
Blight instructed her to act as if her viciousness was instinct.
"Don't let them know you're smart," he told her.
She didn't understand, yet, why it mattered if she had won on purpose or if instinct and survival had taken over; but she trusted Blight, so she listened.
Her interview went off without a hitch. She was shy and fearful, just as she had been before the Games. Caesar asked her questions about what she was looking forward to when she got home.
"My fiancé of course," she replied automatically.
"I'm sure you'll make a lovely bride," he said before ending the interview.
She never before said she was engaged. Snow honestly didn't know Reiner was her fiancé, but that didn't make a difference to him.
While the public was convinced that she won because of her instinct, Snow was not. He knew she did it on purpose. She was rebellious and a loose-cannon, and he realized it quickly.
She arrived home on a Wednesday afternoon, expecting to be greeted by Reiner's open arms.
His brother was there instead, and the look of gloom on his face told her everything before his mouth opened to form the words.
The next day, she had a little sparrow tattooed over her heart to ensure that she would never forget. She was meant to become a Vogel, but she would have to settle on carrying a little bird on her skin.
It wasn't enough, but it was all she could do.
Snow had intended to subdue her; scare her into forgetting about any rebellious ideals she had—but he had no idea the scope of her hatred for him and his regime. In reality, he had done just the opposite.
There was no hiding her hatred any longer; no pushing it down and maintaining a façade of placidity. No, now she was burning bright and smoking for all to see.
It was only a matter of time until someone went up in flames with her.
Again, I apologize for the lack of updates that will ensue. Just please don't give on this!
There will be more. I promise.