73 II.
Johanna sits on the floor of the viewing room on the 4th floor, idly twirling the dull training knife she commandeered from the training room between her fingers while she carefully watches the back of the tall girl standing at the window.
The Games are far from over, but Johanna doesn't have any more duties in them, so she is sitting here, silently sharing the same room as Annie and wondering if the crazy girl is ever going to speak.
The memories of Johanna's strategy are still fresh in people's minds, so her sniffling tribute was among the first targeted by the Careers, and she was gone before the first day was over. Again.
She wonders how many more deaths are going to pile up on her shoulders before she has to drink as much as Haymitch just to get through each day. Or goes crazy like the girl in front of her.
She tries to spin the knife all the way around two of her fingers and back into her hand, but only gets it halfway around one before the knife clatters loudly to the ground.
Annie turns quickly around from the window, and Johanna follows her gaze to the blade on the floor. Johanna looks at Annie warily, not sure what the other girl is going to do. She wonders if the sight of a knife could bring about a breakdown, and berates herself internally for pulling it out of her boot. But what was she supposed to do? Annie had looked right through Johanna when she walked in and hadn't said anything in the half hour that they had been in the same room together.
Annie comes over and picks up the knife, and before Johanna can say anything, spins it expertly around three fingers and twirls it fully around in her palm before slipping it down against her leg where a sheath no doubt always used to be.
She smiles sheepishly at Johanna, who is looking at her with wide eyes. Of course Annie is a victor too, and from a Career district no less, but Johanna had always assumed that she was weak. She had won by accident.
Annie's Games are almost never replayed – she is pretty sure more than one Gamesmaker lost his life over them – but now Johanna remembers the girl from the very beginning of the Games, who protected her District partner with impressive and deadly knife skills.
"I forgot you were knives," Johanna says to her as Annie hands back the knife. "When did you learn to do that?"
Annie shrugs. "There is a lot of time out on a boat. Especially when you are waiting for the fish."
Her voice is softer, more musical than it ever was on television.
"And it's because I was swimming, not knives."
Johanna looks at her in amazement for the second time in as many minutes. Was that a joke? About her own Games?
"Just how crazy are you?" Johanna asks bluntly.
"Oh, I'm crazy," Annie responds, still serene, "but we all have our roles to play, right?"
Johanna looks at her appraisingly, then looks back to the wall in front of them and hurls the knife at it from her sitting position. The dull point wedges into the wood for a second before it falls harmlessly to the ground.
"Right."
Just then two Peacekeepers are led into the room by an Avox, looking for Annie. One of them looks to the knife on the ground, looks at Johanna's challenging glare, and seems to decide to unsee the knife.
"What are the jackasses in white doing here?" Johanna asks Annie while glaring at the Peacekeepers in front of her.
They visibly stiffen but don't do anything.
"Oh, they are here to take me to the hospital," Annie says breezily. "President Snow said they were working on some sort of procedure to try and alter memories? They think they might be able to help me. Be less crazy." She smiles at Johanna at this last line.
"It is ostensibly the reason for my being here," Annie finishes, while grabbing her coat off the couch.
Johanna looks between her and the Peacekeepers and then at the walls in shock. That sounded remarkably like she didn't think that President Snow had her best interests at heart.
"I am sure it is," Johanna says, giving her a significant look. "Everyone wants to see you better." She has to pause on the last word. There is no better, she had told herself.
"Oh yes, I know," Annie says, still light, as she walks out with her guards.
Johanna stares for a minute at the empty doorway.
So that's Annie Cresta. Finnick's love. She shakes her head as she picks herself up and follows their lead out the door.
"That bitch is crazy."
Johanna is sitting on a couch in the mentor room, Finnick's feet in her lap. His eyes are closed and his arm is flung over his face.
She isn't supposed to be in the room, only mentors with tributes are allowed to be there, and it is only the boy from District 1 and the girl from District 4 who are left. But Jet is trying to catch some sleep while his tribute does, and Mags doesn't care. She is monitoring their also sleeping tribute while Finnick is supposed to be napping.
"Annie? Yeah. That's kind of what she is known for." Finnick's eyes are still closed, and his voice sounds tired.
Johanna absently starts to massage one of the feet in her lap.
"Yeah..." she says thoughtfully. "She isn't what I expected."
"We never are," Finnick just says, quietly, while poking his other foot into her hands. She drops them both as if she just realized what she was doing.
"Oh c'mon, please? Just for a minute," he says lifting his hand to show her his puppy dog eyes. Johanna harrumphs formidably, but picks up his foot again.
She has a thousand questions swirling around in her head but knows it isn't safe to ask any of them.
"They are trying to alter her memories?" she asks finally.
Finnick takes a deep breath before he says anything.
"Yeah... I don't really get it. They think maybe they can make her feel less strongly about her Games. Or try to root out these false memories she has of things she did. Her brain just starts to... spin out sometimes. Like it can't cope, and starts spitting out and stringing together all the horrible things she has seen in new ways."
Johanna doesn't say anything else. They both know what terrifying uses memory altering capabilities could be put to in the hands of the Capitol. On the other hand, there are more than a few things Johanna thinks she would like to forget forever.
"We'll have to visit the Palace later," Johanna says quietly. That nickname had stuck from Johanna's first visit to the abandoned building.
"Mmhmm."
Finnick's breathing starts to slow. Johanna sits there a little longer, rubbing his feet. The room and the arena shown on the television screens are both quiet.
She finally stealthily slips out from under his legs and walks over to drop a kiss on his forehead.
"Goodnight, Sleeping Beauty," she whispers.
She smiles to herself when she hears the thunk of a half-heartedly thrown shoe hitting the doorframe as the door to the room closes behind her.
There is a letter on the floor of her room when she gets back, and the mere sight of the heavy paper and embossed seal makes her heart jump into her throat.
The next evening she is back in the Presidential mansion, and the president is looking at her from the other side of his heavy, ornate wood desk. District 7 handiwork, she is almost positive.
She stands casually, carefully cleaning the nail beds on her right hand and not making eye contact with him.
"We have an assignment for you," he says, his voice smooth and oily.
Johanna's eyes flick up, surprised.
"You seem to forget that you kil-, that I no longer have any family," she spits back at him. "No one left to hurt me with."
"There is a..." President Snow pauses and looks to an assistant that Johanna hadn't even noticed sitting in the corner.
The assistant consults the folder in her hand.
"Hargrove comma Ethan," the woman says in her pitched Capitol accent.
Johanna looks at her in confusion.
President Snow sighs as he presses a series of buttons on a panel that Johanna can't see from her vantage point. The wall to her left flashes to reveal that it is actually one large television screen. A series of images and screens flash on the wall until it finally reveals a picture of the interior of her own doorway in District 7.
"Are you just letting me know that you are monitoring my house in Victor's Village?" Johanna asks sharply. "Because that isn't exactly news."
She is about to go back to inspecting her nails when she sees the door open, and she stumbles into the picture, attached at the lips to a tall, almost-red head. She suddenly understands.
The video is still playing on the wall, and she watches herself back up towards the camera while taking her shirt off.
"As delightful as it is to watch you get your rocks off watching me, this is a little boring. I already know what happens. Is there a point to all of this?"
The president just smiles and pauses the video, making it smaller and pushing it into the corner of the screen. He pulls up what looks like a live feed of the truck depot in Northwest 3. It is silent, but she can easily pick out Ethan laughing with a couple of other people as they gather their things to leave for the night.
Her blood runs cold, but she keeps her voice steady.
"I don't get why you are showing me this," she says. "You seem to be under the mistaken impression that I give a shit what you do to this guy, but I really don't. Kill him this second for all I care."
She keeps her face an impassive mask even though she thinks everyone in the room must be able to hear her heart beating. She should have known better than to drag anyone else into her web of death and destruction, especially so obviously. She knows everything she touches turns to shit. She is usually smarter than this.
President Snow eyes her carefully, then looks away, fussily wiping the corners of his oversized lips with an embroidered handkerchief.
Johanna breathes a little easier, allowing herself one covert glance at the feed on the wall while the president looks down between his steepled fingers. Ethan is still laughing.
The president looks back up, clearly moving on to a new tactic.
"Experimental medicine is so tricky," he says, the same slippery smile from before on his lips. "Sometimes it works miracles, but sometimes it makes the patients much worse. Especially the mind. So difficult to understand."
Johanna looks up at him horror.
"Give me the name," she says flatly after a minute, but new fire burns in her eyes.
The president smiles benignly at her. "I am glad we finally understand each other, my dear."
Johanna heads out of the mansion, lost in thought and looking at the heavy card with the man's name and address that she is twirling absently between her hands. She doesn't notice when she almost walks into a figure heading in.
"Johanna," Cashmere nods after a surprised second. The victors from Districts 1 and 2 never socialized that much with the others, but there was still a bond between all of them from being in the same rarified group.
"Cashmere," Johanna nods back. "Ha! The president really crams these appointments right together, huh?"
"Well, don't want to keep his Presidency waiting." Johanna says after the two of them stare silently at each other for a moment. She sweeps grandly aside, waving her card a little.
Cashmere looks at the younger girl, then looks grimly down the length of the hallway in front of her, her mouth set and her shoulders square.
Finnick and Johanna are in the basement of the Palace, sitting on a threadbare couch that someone managed to drag down there, waiting for Haymitch, Chaff, Beetee, and Heather.
Another fruitless discussion of how to organize things in the districts and ideas about what might cause people to band together for the greater good no doubt awaits them, Johanna thinks to herself, but it seems to make people feel better just to talk about it. Besides, the stories about how things are in the different districts are always fascinating. Heather's stories about the textile factories in District 8 almost made the saw mills sound like a paradise.
The Games are over, and the boy from District 1 now being made presentable for the adoring Capitol public.
He must have had a name once, but everyone calls him Silver (an equally stupid District 1 name in Johanna's view) because of the silvery grey streaks already coming through his otherwise white blond hair. It only made him more striking looking and was already sparking a new hair trend throughout the Capitol.
Johanna is sitting wedged into the corner of the couch, more fidgety than usual and quieter.
"Annie's gone?" She finally asks to break the silence.
"Yeah. Back to District 4 hopefully no worse for the wear. It appears she fulfilled her purpose. Making sure I always know who is in charge." He rubs the bridge of his nose tiredly.
"Yeah, what was that about?"
"He wanted me to come to the Capitol in the winter. But my sister was sick, and I didn't want to leave Annie, and I was already going to be here to mentor... The president let me know he was not pleased."
"Yeah..." she says quietly, hugging her arms around herself.
"Where the hell is Haymitch anyway?" She asks, getting a little bit more of her old spark back in her voice. "That drunk bastard finished every last bottle that was in here. He better be bringing something with him."
"You think he would leave himself in an alcohol free room for more than an hour? That would be like me wearing a shirt on consecutive days."
He gives Johanna a saucy wink, but she only smiles wanly in return. His look turns concerned.
"Hey," he says, moving closer to her, "what's going on with you? You haven't said a bitchy thing to me in days."
She looks up at him and tries to muster a sarcastic comment but ends up just sighing.
"We all have our roles to play…" she says quietly, remembering Annie.
Finnick just looks at her, waiting.
"It's nothing," she says. "I just had an... appointment. I'll be back to bitching you out soon enough." She can't complain about this, not to him.
But he looks at her, surprised and worried.
"But..." he is looking at her, mind whirling, and you don't get to be a victor without being able to quickly pick out people's weaknesses.
"No. Not... Annie?"
She just shrugs. She can't talk about it.
"Oh no... Jo..." his voice is so soft, and his eyes pools of worry.
"No," she says, sitting up now, anger in her tone. "Don't do that. Don't 'Jo' me. You don't get to do that. Not you."
He had been going to reach for her, but now he sits back.
"No, right, you're right. I'm sorry." He is looking at his hands, which are clenching and unclenching in his lap.
"It's fine. Just leave me alone for once."
"Okay." He has to hold himself back from reaching out to her. "Just. Johanna. I am so... Sorry."
"No, fuck you Finnick!" She can feel hot tears pricking at her eyes. "Fuck you..." Her vision is blurred from the tears swimming in her eyes, making hot tracks down her cheeks. "Stop..."
But she can't say anything more, just lets a few more tears fall, and the next thing she knows, he is right next to her, so close, gently wiping the tears from her face with his fingers.
She looks up at him, and she knows that she is completely unguarded, but she can't do anything about it. And his green eyes are so worried, so sad, and they look into hers and see her completely. That underneath it all, she is just a girl, barely nineteen, alone and scared.
Suddenly, she feels the warmth of his body on top of hers, and feels his mouth, hot and insistent, covering her own. She is stretched out with him on top of her, and she can feel the hard edge of the wood in the couch arm pressing through the cheap, thin upholstery covering it and into her upper back. His fingers have found the strip of skin exposed between her loose sweater and the top of her pants and are slowly tracing up her back, leaving trails of fire burning on her skin in their wake.
There is a fumbling at the door, and Johanna and Finnick spring away from each other instantly, guiltily, the muffled voice of Haymitch making fun of Chaff for struggling with the door breaking the spell that had come over the room. Johanna wipes quickly at her mouth and her eyes, hoping she doesn't look as completely unsettled as she feels, consciously avoiding looking at Finnick, who is running a hand through his hair and looking at the floor anyway.
"Break it up kids, the adults are here," Chaff's voice booms into the room as he gets the door open, the bag in his hand explaining why it took him a couple extra seconds.
Johanna springs up from the couch as the other three stream into the room, quickly pulling her sweater back down as she does.
"What the hell took you guys so long?" Johanna scowls in Chaff's general direction as she eyes the bag in his hands.
"There better be liquor in there," she says threateningly as she drags a chair from the corner closer to the table. "You two drunks finished off every last drop that was in here."
"Charming as always Miss Mason," Chaff says as he drops the bag with a clink onto the table, then sweeps her up with his good arm and plants a kiss on her mouth.
"Ugh, there isn't enough liquor in the world to make that happen," she says as she overdramatically wipes her mouth on the back of her hand.
She nods at Beetee, who has already sat down at the table and pulled out some sort of electronic contraption that he is quietly fiddling with, apparently setting it up. Finnick rises from the couch with a quick shake of his head and brings over two more chairs, pulling one out for Heather gallantly before sitting next to Beetee and looking curiously at the mess of circuit boards in front of him.
"You realize your sweater is mostly see through," Haymitch says to Johanna as he drops his own bag of bottles onto the table.
"You realize you look like something a wild animal has chewed on and spat back up," Johanna shoots back, smiling sweetly.
Chaff guffaws loudly as they all sit down and the talking begins.
Johanna walks quickly through Capitol, heading back to the Training Center alone and turning over the events of the meeting she just left.
As suspected, it was mostly a lot of talking mixed with a healthy amount of drinking, but Haymitch did have more information from Plutarch about other disgruntled Capitol citizens who were sympathetic to their cause and possible ways to contact them. Everyone had ideas for their own districts, the idea being that if the people of the districts could control their industries, the Capitol would have to succumb to their demands. Government control of the Capitol was sure to break down the second the people couldn't get everything they wanted the second they wanted it.
Johanna wonders how many people will actually be willing to die if and when it comes down to it. At least District 7 is large, and people have access to machinery and things that could be used as weapons through their work. She wonders what people are going to do in the other districts, attack Peacekeepers with sewing needles and kitchen knives?
The pile of circuit boards in front of Beetee turned out to be a new silent audio jammer that he was working on that would be able to mask their conversations from any bugs. When he started talking about perfectly canceling waves, Johanna immediately zoned out and turned to her drink. The key point was that he thought he could have versions for everyone ready in a couple of months.
Lost in thought about where the best places to stand would be to not be shot by a camera recording two people talking silently to each other, she doesn't notice the sound of someone coming up behind her until it is almost too late.
She spins quickly with a vicious knee up that is easily blocked by Finnick's crossed wrists.
"Losing your reflexes," he says with a grin.
She doesn't say anything, turning back around to continue walking. He falls into step next to her.
"Look, I..." He starts slowly, talking to the impassive side of Johanna's face.
She stops suddenly and spins toward him, instantly fully charged.
"No, you look." They are facing each other in the middle of a mostly empty street, blocks away from the Training Center.
"You can't fuck your way out of everything. That isn't what people do. That isn't what we do. I love you, I do, but not like that. You're a pretty boy disaster with your tragic love story and your Capitol secrets, and you might be even more fucked up than I am under that fake seductive voice!"
Her voice had risen steadily while she was talking, and now they both look around to make sure no one could have heard them. They hear the telltale boot tread of a Peacekeeper, so they both start walking toward the Training Center again as casually as they can.
"That isn't what this is about," she ends quietly.
They walk together silently for a block before Finnick finally turns to her.
"You're right," he says quietly. "I'm sorry."
They keep walking, Finnick mulling over Johanna's words in his head. He thinks about who he is, the things he does, the things he has done. He was so young when he won, he wonders to himself if even knows how normal people react to things. Not that Johanna is normal.
"Plus," he says, turning to her again with a smile, "if I knew you were going to tell me you loved me after just one kiss, I never would have done it. Sometimes I just don't know my own strength."
"Ugh. Plus you are insufferable. And the insistence on not wearing shirts!"
"I am currently wearing multiple shirts!" He says indignantly as he pulls the collar of a white tee shirt out from under the soft thermal he has on.
She laughs a little as they enter the training center and get on the elevator.
He hugs her before he gets off on the fourth floor.
"I love you too you know," he whispers into the top of her head.
"I know," she says quietly in his shoulder.
"Of course you do," she says more loudly, flashing him an evil grin. "How could you not?"
She smiles at him as the elevator doors close, then reaches for her side, where she can still feel the burning paths his fingers traced onto her bare skin.