74 I.
Her tribute is good this year. Maybe not win the whole thing good, but at least good enough to get out of the Cornucopia, and at this point, Johanna would take that as a success.
The girl was good with her axes and had the kind of hard scrabble existence that was useful practice for these games. She only got a four as her training score, which had left Johanna confused, but she figured it was better to score lower and perform higher than the other way around.
So she felt like she had a job to do in the Mentor Room for perhaps the first time and pulled what charm she could muster together to do just that. As she sat at her station, watching the girl on the plate on the screen in front of her, she was filled with a sense of purpose beyond just watching children hack into each other.
She doesn't understand why she wants her tribute to win, not when she knows what waits for anyone who gets to the other side. She tells herself it is because she needs another person to mentor with her because the walls that she is building up watching her tributes die year after year is starting to scare even her. But there is something else. A deep, pulsing, need to win maybe. The same need that got her to where she is now. There is something dark about it that she can't think too deeply about.
On the screen in front of her, the girl jumps off the plate, grabbing the knife closest to her, and going for the pack a little closer to the actual horn. Johanna could see her eyeing the ax that was even closer, just a little out of reach and willed her to leave it behind, to run.
Johanna sees the boy from 8 lock eyes on her, spear in hand a second before her tribute does, but the girl sees him. She has her knife and knows how to use it. But there is a split second where the girl looks the other child in the face and hesitates, knife raised, and that is all it takes.
Johanna lets out a harsh scream of frustration as her tribute falls to the ground, takes off her shoe and buries the heel two inches into the small screen on the control panel in front of her, letting out a small shower of glass and sparking electronics, as she stands up to walk away.
She yells at Finnick, who's eyes had snapped up to her when she yelled and is still looking calmly at her standing on one heel, at Fuller, the mentor from District 8, at Haymitch who had quietly drawled you're going to have to pay for that, sweetheart, from across the room.
"Fuck you, fuck you, and fuck you!" Before kicking her other shoe across the room and stomping out of the room in bare feet.
She can just hear Cecilia's mild "What was that about?" as the door closes behind her, and she knocks over the stupid little side table that is sitting uselessly outside of the elevator bank.
They must have seen something in the girl, those ruthless Gamesmakers, something that would make them think that she was going to hesitate when it mattered most. Something that made her... human. Johanna hangs her head as her breathing slows and the adrenaline starts to work its way out of her bloodstream. The cheerful ding of the arriving elevator doesn't fit with the horror that is going on behind the closed doors behind her. The girl never would have made it.
Nobody good can survive.
Days later she is still in the Capitol, slowly going crazy alone.
She wants to leave, to go back to the cold comforts of District 7, but Haymitch had told her to stay, that he had something important to tell her. She isn't sure what he is playing at with the love story angle that his tributes are working, but she has to admit to herself that his girl looks good. She wonders what it would be like to have Haymitch actually bring a winner home to District 12. Better or worse than letting them die out there alone while the entire country watches? She isn't sure how she got to this place, sitting in a plush room and shepherding children to their deaths. All she did was survive.
She hates being in the Capitol when there isn't anything to distract her, and she hasn't been able to sleep for more than a couple of hours in a row for days. The darkest thoughts always come out at night. She already went to the training room and ran for an hour, then threw axes at the training targets until she couldn't lift her arms any more, but her mind still won't let her exhausted body sleep.
So she is still awake, quietly whittling an intricate carved snake around a walking stick no one will use, when there is a light tap at her door, even though it is so late it is basically early.
She opens it hesitantly to find Finnick leaning against the doorframe, looking down at her with half a smile on his lips.
"Didn't wake you, did I?"
She raises one eyebrow as she looks him up and down. The green-gold makeup sweeping from his eyes to his temples is smudged and running down one side of his face, failing to cover up the tired bags under his eyes. He is wearing an unbuttoned, wrinkled, checked shirt that clashes horribly with the metallic, dark green pants he is wearing, and the hand that isn't supporting his weight against the door is trembling slightly. There is something unfocused about his eyes.
"Well look what the cat dragged in," Johanna says slowly, taking him in. "You look like garbage."
Finnick barks out a laugh.
"You certainly know how to make a guy feel good about himself."
Johanna raises her eyebrow even further, still just looking at him.
"You have a bathtub in your room, right?" Finnick asks her silence. "I was wondering if I could use it. I normally use Mags', but Marina is here this year instead, and I don't want to bother her..."
"Of course not. But feel free to come barging in here at some unholy hour," Johanna says while opening the door wider to let him in.
She realizes then that he is leaning against the doorframe not casually but because it looks like he might not be able to stand without its help. She moves in quickly under his arm to help him in as he starts to walk gingerly into her room, wincing a little as he does.
"What the hell Odair?" Johanna's voice fills with concern as the slowly navigate their way across her room to the bathroom. "Are you okay? What the hell happened to you?"
"I'm fine," Finnick says curtly. "Just need a bath. Wash this stuff off of my face."
"Did you take a healant? I think I have a painkiller around here somewhere…"
She sits Finnick down on the edge of the tub and starts rifling through drawers in the bathroom.
"No, I have too much other stuff in my system right now," Finnick says, head in his hands, mostly to the floor. "I took a flush to get it all out, but I have to wait at least an hour before I take anything else." His voice speaks of experience.
Johanna looks at him carefully but just goes over to the tub control panel and pushes some buttons to make it start filling.
"Okay, well, you know how to work that thing, right?" she says as she heads back out the door. "The towels on the rack are clean. Knock yourself out."
"Jo?" His voice stops her before she can get all the way out the door. He looks at the slowly filling tub as if he is thinking about just getting in with his clothes still on.
"I can't get out of these ridiculous pants Havan laced me into."
She watches him slowly shrug his way out of his shirt, lifting his arms as little as possible. The shoulders and arms he reveals are streaked with angry red welts, and there are more down his back, mixed with vicious scratches that are oozing beads of dark red blood.
"Shit," Johanna breathes quietly, but she catches herself as Finnick flicks his eyes up to hers and her tone changes. "I just have to do everything around here, huh? 'Wake up Johanna.' 'Draw me a bath Johanna.' 'Take off my pants Johanna.'"
Her voice is high and mocking, but she carefully stands Finnick up, facing away from her, and starts undoing and loosening the thin, gold rope lacing that is running up and down the length of his pants.
"As if," he winces again as she starts working his pants down, "this isn't your idea of a dream job."
She takes in a sharp breath when she sees the bruises that are already starting to bloom out from his inner thighs and the scratches that continue beneath his pants, but she manages to hold back the what the hell are they doing to you? that almost escapes her lips. She knows what they are doing to him. Continuing to control those who managed to escape the constant threat of starvation. What they are doing to any of them.
She feels better after he carefully lowers himself into the tub, hiding his broken body from her, and closes his eyes. She wonders when this hour is going to be up so they can start fixing him back up again.
She gets up to go again, but he calls her back with the same voice he used before. He sounds younger.
"Can you stay with me?"
She hates it. She hates seeing him like this and wants to wait until the Capitol drugs have fixed him back up, until he is back to being himself, but she finds herself sitting back down on the floor of her bathroom. She leans her back against the dark stone tiles, a little rough and flecked with hidden bits of gold, that surround the bathtub.
She had marveled the first time she was in this training center at the beauty of these tiles, inside the bathrooms of the rooms they had created for people they were just going to send to their deaths. It was such a small thing to wonder at with everything else going on, but she couldn't help it. She loves things that are beautiful and well designed and these were more beautiful than anything she had ever seen in 7.
She can't handle the silence that is filling the space between them, heavy with dark, unsaid thoughts.
"You don't have a tub?" She asks after a minute.
"Nope. No tub." His eyes are still closed and he hasn't moved at all, but she thinks she sees his shoulders relax a little in the hot water. His breathing is shallow and he still seems coiled and tense.
She sits up on the edge of the tub and dips the small cloth that she grabs from the rack next to her into the soapy water. She starts to carefully wipe the makeup covering his face off, revealing the tired, grey skin underneath.
"Don't you have a team of people to do this sort of shit for you?" she says as she rinses the cloth out with cool water and places it across his eyes. She tries to sound exasperated but can't quite make it.
He just smiles a little. His forehead is still wrinkled but whether from physical pain or memories, she can't tell.
She leans over to drain some of the water out of the tub and turns the tap on so that the steady tinkling noise of the water fills the room. She perches back up, cross legged on the small ledge area at the foot of tub, presses a button for some shampoo and starts working it into Finnick's hair.
"The things I do for you," she sighs. "Don't tell anyone."
"Wouldn't dare," he says, leaning back into her touch.
"Tell me something," she says, leaning against the wall behind her.
"Something," he repeats slowly.
"Anything. Tell me about Annie."
"Annie?" He turns his face up as if to look at her, but she moves it firmly back into place. "What about her?"
"Anything," she says, massaging his scalp.
"Annie..." he says quietly and is silent for a minute. His face relaxes though, and Johanna scoops a little water up through his hair, satisfied with herself.
"Did you know her before?"
He is quiet, then slips easily out from under her hands and into the water. When he comes back up, he looks more like himself again, as if being submerged in water, even soapy water scented with lavender and pine, brings him back home.
He sinks back down so that his chin is level with the water.
"No, not really. I mean, I knew of her. She was one of the best divers in the district. Our family boats would pull into the same unloading dock every once in a while. But not really. Especially after I won. I didn't go out on the boat with my father as often any more, and... People pull away from Victors." He says the word with a capital V.
"As well they should. You know how it is. People pull away, you push them away, you become Other... Plus I had so much Capitol stink all over me."
Johanna is nodding a little to herself, and goes to drain more water and turn the tap up a little more. No need to get themselves in even more trouble.
"It is easier to let them hate you. To let them think you are disgusting. Exactly as you seem."
"What the hell is this?" she interrupts him. "The Odair sob-fest? If I had known you were going to be a whiny bitch, I would have left you out in the hall."
Finnick closes his eyes and smiles at the wall in front of him.
"You know she is the only tribute I have brought home?"
Her eyes narrow, thinking. "No, that can't be right. What about-"
"Nope, that was Kyle and Marina's year."
"Huh," Johanna sits back down on the floor, leaning back so that their heads are level with each other, but looking off in different directions. "Well I better tell Silas that we are supposed to be desperately in love. Just what I need, some shriveled old logger dick."
Finnick starts to laugh, but stops, winces, and coughs a little.
"Nah, he didn't really like you as a tribute, he certainly doesn't like you now."
"'Didn't really like me'? I don't think he could have picked me out of a lineup if everyone else was from District 11!"
She hasn't ever forgiven Silas for ignoring her during her Games, even if it was her strategy.
"Yeah, well that was kind of your game, Miss Mason. Besides, it isn't like that. It's not duty," he says thoughtfully.
"I..." he pauses, sinking down deeper into the water for a second. "You know when you see something you hate about yourself in someone else? And it makes you hate them? She is like the opposite of that. The things I hate about myself, she doesn't have, she has the opposite."
"We- I..." he struggles for the words. "What does it mean to be a victor, really? It means that when it comes down to it, you would rather murder," he hisses the word quietly, "twenty three other innocent children than die. And for me, that transition took all of the 60 seconds that I stood on that plate staring at the Cornucopia. That is why I don't correct the people in the districts who hate me, who think I am an animal. I am. They are right."
"You and I are the same Jo. We are all victors and everything that implies."
Johanna absorbs this like a physical blow, but she is nothing if not good at taking hits. And she knows he is right.
"Letting them do this to you doesn't atone for your sins, Finn," she says quietly.
"And what choice do they give us? What it means to be a victor is that we are survivors. This world, this fucked up world, doesn't give you any choice!" she is investing the words with all violence she can while keeping her voice under the sound of the running water. "Maybe Four is different, but where I come from, if you lose your will to survive for a second, they'll take you and everything you love too!"
"I know," he says wearily. "I know."
She rears back, readying a hit of her own.
"Loving her doesn't make you less crazy," she says quietly but sharply. "Loving her isn't going to make her less crazy."
He only repeats I know, quietly into the bubbles.
When he doesn't hit back, the fight drains out of her. Suddenly she is so tired, exhausted, and all she can think about is getting to her bed. This life that they are leading, made to seem like they have everything when in reality they have nothing, control over nothing, not even their own bodies, is exhausting. She knows that the man sitting behind her, broken and beaten because he can't lose another thing that he loves, is the only person who sees who she really is, ugly and twisted, and she is the only person who sees him, ugly and twisted and beautiful too.
She thinks maybe that to really love someone like she knows Finnick and Annie love each other, you can't see the other person for what they really are. You have to be a little delusional about how good and perfect the other one is. She and Finnick see each other too clearly for that, but there is value in that too.
"Is that hour up yet?" she asks quietly. A truce maybe.
He lifts his arm gingerly, testing it, then rubs his temples.
"Close enough," he says. "There is a healant in my shirt pocket."
She goes to get it, magical Capitol medicine reserved for those who won't ever, can't ever, feel any pain, can't let their bodies show weakness. She shakes one of the sparkling blue pills (even their medicine is gaudy) into her palm along with a painkiller from her stash and brings them to Finnick with a glass of water.
"Please fix yourself," she says as she hands it all over, as close as she can get to apologizing. "I can't handle seeing you like this."
"Aw Jo, if I didn't know better, I would think you care," he says as he swallows down the pills.
"Shut up," she says scrubbing a hand through her short hair. "Now I don't know what you are doing, but I have to go to bed."
He stands up shakily, suddenly looking just as exhausted as she feels, and wraps a towel around himself. She knows that these medicines take a lot of you, and she doesn't even want to know what kind of night Finnick had leading up to this. She takes his arm again and maneuvers him out of the bathroom and sits him on the edge of her bed, then grabs a pair of shorts she had taken from him ages ago and throws them at him.
"I'm not carrying you back downstairs," she says.
"Are you propositioning me?" He tries to pull out his seduction voice, but his eyelids keep drooping shut.
"Yup," she says, taking off her clothes and pulling on loose pants and an oversized t-shirt. "And this is my best outfit."
She climbs around him into the bed, curling up into the corner.
"Goodnight," she says sleepily. "Don't get any ideas."
He crawls under the covers next to her, facing away, turning out the lights as he does.
"Finn?" she says softly, right before they both fall asleep. "You're right. We are the same."
He just mumbles quietly, the words unintelligible, but turns and wraps his body around hers, protecting her, protecting himself as they fall into a deep, dreamless sleep.
The Games are playing in the room where Johanna and Finnick are eating breakfast late in the afternoon. There are only three tributes left, the Games are going to be over soon, and it looks like Haymitch has pretty good odds of bringing home at least one Victor.
"What do you think of the rule change," Finnick asks her, nodding at the TV over his toast.
"Delightful," Johanna says, working her way methodically through the food in front of her. She was never much for food, which was good because there never was very much of it when she was growing up. Even now that she has more than enough money to buy whatever delicacies she could want, she still sees food as a means to an end. Eat enough for the energy necessary until the next time you can eat, it doesn't matter what it is. Finnick watches her with amusement mixed with disgust.
"Did you just combine eggs and- never mind," he says, shaking his head at her. "I, for one, am really rooting for those two lovebirds."
"Oh yeah," Johanna says sarcastically, "maybe next year they can make a rule change to bring all of the tributes home."
"I think it is powerful how attached the Capitol audience gets to its Tributes," he says. "It would be wonderful for Haymitch to be able to bring them both back to District 12."
She looks at him for a minute, a loaded fork paused halfway between the plate and her lips. She blinks slowly as she shakes her head the tiniest bit.
He looks thoughtfully at the strawberry he has speared on the end of his fork.
"Yeah," he says slowly. He agrees with her. There is no way that rule change is going to stand. Not if President Snow has anything to say about it.
They go back to eating.
Haymitch finally has some time after the Games are over and his two (two!) Victors are being made as whole as possible again. They leave the training center, walking as far from the center of the Capitol as they can, finding quiet streets with few people on them. Haymitch looks exhausted but exhilarated in a way that Johanna has never seen before.
"Congratulations Abernathy," she says as they began walking. "Two victors... Who would have thought you would turn out to be the best mentor of us all."
"Who would have thought even your compliments would come spiked with insult?" Haymitch responds. "Scratch that, it isn't surprising at all."
Johanna makes a face but keeps silent. She is itching to know what he needs to tell her.
As they keep walking, Haymitch draws them closer together, looking around carefully for anyone who might be listening, checking the edges of the buildings for any cameras.
"Whatever happens, keep your voice down," he says gruffly before taking a deep breath. "District 13 exists. We have been in nominal contact with them."
Johanna had stopped to look at him in shock after the first bombshell but has to keep moving as Haymitch roughly pulls her along by the arm.
"I knew it," she hisses, anger lacing her voice, "I knew there was an inner circle to the inner circle!"
She makes a noise of frustration and anger. "Why didn't you tell me before? Who else knows? No wait, don't answer that. Why are you telling me now?"
"There you go," Haymitch says approvingly, opening his mouth to answer her.
"That's what Wiress and Fil were working on!" She interrupts him. "Communication to 13."
"Thirteen..." she is shaking her head and there is wonder in her voice. "And freaking Nuts is in on it and I'm not. Although I guess you can't get her to string more than two words together, so you-"
"Johanna. Focus." Haymitch interrupts her train of thought. "I don't know what is going to happen, but something is. There is an energy right now... I have never felt anything like it. And I think we are going to need you."
"Oh well sure," she says sarcastically, "anything to be of service."
"What is 13?" She continues, trying to wrap her mind around this piece of information. "Is it a full district? How does the Capitol not know about this? Wait, does the Capitol know about it? If so, why haven't they tried to destroy them? What are they doing? Why are we working with them? What is their angle?"
Haymitch had tried to interrupt during this barrage of questions, but finally just quieted to let her get them all out.
"Look," he says when she pauses for breath, "it doesn't matter, the key point is that they exist. If something happens, we feel that it is likely going to be necessary to have a place to go to, a base, if you will, of rebel operations. Everything probably isn't going to fall at once, and it certainly isn't going to be easy. We are going to have to be able to get people out. And Thirteen is the place we are going to go."
Johanna realizes that she has never heard Haymitch talk so pointedly. Something has changed, there actually seems to be a center this rebel movement is coalescing around. The talk doesn't seem as directionless and theoretical any more.
"What's changed?" she asks him.
"There is something about the girl-"
"Katniss?" Johanna interrupts.
Haymitch rolls his eyes a little. "There is something about Katniss. She might be what we were waiting for."
"Her?" Johanna's voice rises at this last word, and Haymitch quickly shushes her before looking around.
"Her?" Johanna begins again more quietly but just as intensely. "We were waiting for a 16 year old girl from District 12 with a stupid sappy love story? You have got to be kidding me. If you had told me that in the beginning, I never would have become a part of this suicide mission. What the hell is so special about her?"
"Johanna, this isn't about you. This isn't about me. You know what we want to do as well as anyone. I see you in her. I see me in her. But there is something else. She draws people to her without realizing it, makes them want to help her or love her or fight for her. Part of that is coming from the boy certainly... Between the two of them... We have something."
"You know as well as I do that nothing about you invites people in. Everything about you says you can do it yourself, no matter what. Stay away. Even when all anyone saw of you was a crying, sniveling mess, there was nothing about you that encouraged someone else's comfort, that said that anyone could help. That girl, she is strong, but that vulnerability, it's right there too."
"I have to get back soon, and I am not here to talk to you about feelings. There is something happening. Snow is angry, yes, about the two of them and the berries, angrier than when you won, angrier than when I won, but there is something else too, underneath the anger. It's almost as if he is... scared. And if something happens, we need you on our team. I need you on our team. Okay?"
She looks at him, quiet. They have turned around and are walking back towards the training center, back towards his victors.
"Okay." She says finally, sullenly. "But I am not going to pretend to like her."
"I wouldn't expect anything else," he says.
They walk quietly for a couple more minutes as Johanna thinks things over a little longer.
"Does Finn know?" she asks finally.
Haymitch just looks at her out of the side of his eye as if for the first time that day she asked a stupid question.
"Good." She nods.
Right before they get to the Training Center she stops.
"You better be right about this old man," she says, as he turns halfway towards her. "I didn't get this far to die for nothing."
He just gives her a curt nod as he heads away from her towards the building. She turns the other direction and continues walking the candy colored streets of the Capitol alone.