1 I.
Johanna is back on a train. She is comforted now by the steady motion of it over the tracks. She feels most at home these days in the moving cars, traveling between the places other people call home.
She settles down in the small car she has been assigned, stretching her feet across the row of seats and pulling her jacket up over her torso, her small bag on the rack above her.
They had tried to get her to stay in the Capitol that day after the vote. After Katniss killed Coin and Snow killed himself and Katniss was dragged, kicking, screaming, destroyed, to her room in the Training Center.
Johanna stayed one night in her room in the Training Center, the closets filled with clothes that looked like ghosts and the walls ringing with memories, before she left, early the next morning, to catch the first train back to District 7.
They wanted her to stay in the Capitol, to work with their doctors, to go wherever they took Annie and Peeta, but they couldn't stop her when she left. They told her that she was unwell, that they could help her, and the dead eyed stare she gave them, her laughing nobody can help me probably didn't reassure anyone.
But they couldn't stop her when she left.
People can move freely now between the districts, and they are busily making plans for more trains to connect the districts directly to each other, but right now most people are busy trying to rebuild the destroyed remains of their homes and livelihoods, and the trains are mostly empty.
She stayed in District 7 first, in her old house in Victors Village. The place had been ransacked, the front door ripped off its hinges and most of the windows on the first floor broken, but Johanna stayed there anyway, not fixing anything, not caring about what was taken. The only things she had really owned, she had destroyed herself.
She had let the water run in her shower as hot as she could stand, steeling herself as steam filled the room and the minutes ticked by until she forced herself into it. But she did it, all on her own. Each time it got a little bit easier.
She walked through the district, long, ranging walks that took her through all the different villages she could reach on foot until she would have to flag down a passing car or transport truck to drive her back to her house. Sometimes she picked up an axe or a hammer or a shovel and helped with whatever rebuilding task she came across, but mostly she just walked. The people in the district gave her a wide berth; part awe, part fear.
She wasn't sure what was worse when walking around the district; seeing all the faces that she recognized, however vaguely, or noticing all the faces that weren't there, however little she had cared for them, but she kept walking anyway.
She stayed there for weeks, watching Katniss' trial on the television that still hung crookedly on her wall, the wind blowing through the empty window frames, swirling leaves and bits of detritus around her. The television was still there, no one wanted another television. She never bothered to straighten it.
She remembered what Finnick had said, about using her up. About taking the strongest, those who had the most to give, those that were needed most, and bleeding them dry. It was the only thing she could think about, seeing the haunting pictures of the skinny, scarred girl sitting alone in the room she had already imagined twice before to be the last room she ever saw while other people debated her right to live.
And she didn't have the luxury of choice, this Mockingjay. Johanna had known the terrible, irreversible choice she was making, but Katniss didn't ever make a choice, not really. It was made for her.
Johanna hadn't realized that she was waiting for anything, but when Katniss was let out of her room, out of the Capitol, and taken back to District 12, Johanna realized that she had to leave. There was nothing left in the district that made it her home, nothing but the dried husks of old memories.
She left on the first train that she could get on, not caring where it went.
Since then she has been moving from district to district, spending a couple of days or a couple of weeks in one before deciding to move on, usually impulsively, usually on the first train she can find. She stays in the hostels and boarding houses that are springing up, housing the people who are slowly starting to move around the country, or the people who have nowhere else to stay while they attempt to rebuild all the broken infrastructure as fast as they can. The new government is still paying the Victors even as everything else was still being hammered out, so at every stop Johanna took out money and spread out as much as she could. With so few victors left, it must have felt like the least they could do.
Johanna had understood quickly why there were so few people her generation in her district, given the need for anyone with construction ability throughout Panem - Pax Republic - she corrects herself. She wonders how long it is going to take to get this new country on its feet, while being amazed at how quickly some changes have already come into being.
Someone opens the door to her train compartment but quickly closes the door again with a stammering apology she can't fully understand. At least there are some advantages to being a notorious rebel leader out of the Capitol against doctor's orders.
She isn't sure exactly where this train is going. She had jumped on the first train she could find out of District 10 and is intending to ride it all the way to its last stop, wherever that is. It can't be any better or worse than any of her other stops.
She is mildly surprised when she is jolted awake hours later in District 2.
She drops her bag in the first boarding house she can find outside the train station that has a vacancy sign. She pays in advance for two nights with the last of her money, then heads out to find a bank and some food. She quickly sniffs her shirt. And probably a new shirt.
She walks through the roads toward the city center, surprised by the number of people she sees purposefully walking the streets. In every face that she passes she thinks she sees Enobaria, Brutus, Diana, Marc, Dom, the female tribute from her games, the male tribute from three years later... She starts to walk with her head down. She probably isn't going to be able to stay here too long.
She is just looking up in the direction of what she thinks must be the main bank when someone lightly bumps into her. In a flash her hand is on the person's arm, ready to twist it up and around, ready to attack, but just as quickly, the person's other hand is on hers, countering her.
She looks up.
"Johanna Mason," he says slowly, his dark eyebrows knit together.
"Gale Hawthorne," she says, releasing her grip and putting her hands on her hips. She looks him up and down with a mocking grin.
He still stands straight, with the military bearing drilled into him in District 13, but everything else about him looks worn down. The tired skin around his eyes shows her he isn't sleeping any better than the rest of them.
"I forgot you work here now," she says, still smiling. "Operation office of interior technical transport communication something or the other, right?"
"Deputy Director of Communications, Office of Interior Development," he corrects her.
"So exactly what I said. A string of nonsense words."
He doesn't seem sure what to make of her.
"What are you doing here?" he asks instead of responding.
"Visiting. Exploring. Looking for a bank."
"Right there," he says, nodding in the direction of the building she was heading towards.
"Thanks," she says with another dark smile, just to watch him squirm. "See you around, cousin."
She doesn't wait to see his reaction to that, just walks off quickly in the direction he indicated.
She takes out all the money she can and leaves half of it at the Children's Center in town. There is a loosely affiliated group of centers that are forming throughout all the districts for the many children who have been left without parents or guardians or homes after the rebellion, and she has seen most of them. They are getting plenty of funding from the government – she thinks that Gale might actually be involved in that somehow – but it makes her feel better to give them what she can in each of the districts she has visited.
She walks around the district some more looking for a place to buy a shirt. The district seems to be comprised mostly of blocky grey concrete buildings and is almost oppressively ugly, but the concrete seems to have withstood the trials of the rebellion better than most. It is the most functional district she has seen, but she is still starting to think that two nights here is going to be one night too many. It is too claustrophobic here.
Johanna walks into a bar she finds advertising food on a makeshift sign in the window. She sits down at the bar and nods at the bartender, who meets her gaze with a flash of recognition and just a little fear.
"Hey Mack," she says. She calls all bartenders Mack these days.
"Get me a glass of that," she nods at one of the bottles lining the bar behind him, "and whatever you have to eat here."
Her food is just being set down in front of her when the opening door catches her eye. She sees Gale come in, notice her sitting at the bar, and hesitate for a second as if he is going to walk right back out. She laughs to herself.
He goes to sit at one of small tables filling the room behind her with a curt nod in her direction. She can tell from the way he is awkwardly seating himself that he normally sits at the bar. That her being there has disrupted his usual pattern.
She enjoys how uncomfortable she clearly makes him.
She hands the man behind the counter a couple extra coins at the end of her surprisingly good meal.
"Whatever he's having," she says, glancing back toward Gale, "is on me."
She walks out of place and into the night without acknowledging him at all.
She is awake early the next morning and decides to walk away from town, toward the direction that looks wilder, like there might be trees. She tries to find a forest or a wood or even a copse of trees everywhere she goes, and sometimes it makes her wonder why she ever left District 7. But the second she starts to think about home – not her house in Victors Village, her real home, where she grew up – she remembers why.
It takes her a couple of hours, but she soon realizes that this whole cement town center is part of a village in a string of villages that was carved out of a large forest that is ready at any second to take back it's space. She doesn't have to go too far until she is in a wilderness that feels much more like home to her than any room in any building ever could.
She breathes in the pine scented air of the forest she has found and immediately starts to feel better about the district, about her terrible night's sleep, about how she couldn't force herself into the shower that morning. She wanders through the sun dappled space slowly, always looking out for trees with low branches that she could easily reach if something she didn't want to see came running out of forest.
She has spent at least an hour wandering when she gets a sudden feeling that something isn't right. She melts into the shadows of a small group of trees, quietly pulling her knife out of her boot, when she sees a silently moving shadow slip behind another tree.
She starts to move toward it when something grabs her from behind, and she finds a man's arm around her neck. She moves instantly, stabbing the hand shallowly while elbowing him sharply in the gut and dropping down, out from under his grasp. She spins quickly only to be laid out on the ground as his long leg sweeps her feet out from under her.
She grunts as the air is forced out of her lungs, finally looking up to see her attacker.
"Gale fucking Hawthorne," she spits out as she rolls up slowly, testing her arm and her tailbone. "If I didn't know better, I would say that you are stalking me."
"Johanna Mason," he says as he gingerly probes the side that she elbowed, getting blood from his hand onto his shirt.
"You know that I am the one who lives here, right? If anything it would be the other way around."
He sits down slowly next to her, examining his hand with a grimace.
"Oh stop whining, it is barely a scratch," she says, looking at him looking at his hand.
She picks up her knife from the forest floor and cuts a slit a couple of inches up from the hem of her shirt. She rips the strip all the way around, leaving her shirt two inches shorter than it was before, showing peeks of her skin above her pants. She rinses his hand with his water bottle, then efficiently bandages his cut. She notices him looking at her while she does it, but she can't read the look in his grey eyes.
"Move your fingers," she orders him. He does.
"See, barely a scratch."
"What are you doing here anyway?" she asks after a second where they both sat in silence, catching their breath and letting their heart rates come down to normal. "Don't you have an important job to be doing? Mr. Big Shot?"
"It's Sunday," he says. "The office isn't open on Sundays. People only work five days a week around here.
She says "oh" quietly. She had no idea what day of the week it was. For the first time in a long time she starts to wonder what she is doing, and what she is going to do.
"I like to go into the woods on my day off," he continues. "It reminds me of..." he pauses for a moment with a faraway look. "Home, I guess."
"Plus it is important for the government to get a better idea of the woods that surround the district," he says in the brisk, business like tone she has heard him use on television. "There are important resources out here and very little information..."
"Right," she says as he falters. "I get it."
She take a long sip of water from his water bottle, then rocks up on her heels to stand, pausing first to stretch her back.
He takes his water bottle back, and she watches as he carefully wipes the mouth of it on his shirt before he takes a sip.
He reaches a hand out toward her head, but she ducks away and stands up quickly.
"I thought you wanted to keep that hand," she says looking down at him with narrowed eyes.
"You have a leaf in your hair," he says, exasperated. "Calm down."
They are on a little bit of a hill, so when she leans over to brush her hands roughly through her hair, he can see that she is off balance. He isn't sure what makes him do it, but right before she straightens back up again, he gives her a small push.
She stumbles a step to the side before she goes down.
She turns to face him, still on the ground, anger sparking from her eyes.
"What the fuck," she snaps as she turns toward him. But when she looks up, she sees him grinning at her for just a second until his face falls back into its usual sober mask. She realizes that she doesn't think she has ever seen this serious young man smile. It suits him.
"It's just my back," she says, wincing a little as she puts one hand carefully on her side, still lying in the dirt. "Ever since the Capitol..."
She trails off, and he gets up in a second, offering his left hand to her with a worried look.
"Oh shit, I didn't think-"
He is cut off as she uses the slope of the hill to pull him towards her and flip him over her with her feet. She gets up easily, standing over him.
"Don't mess with a con artist," she says, as she walks off, leaving him in the dirt.
When she gets back to the boarding house, she pays for her room for the next full week.