1. II.I
Gale pushes himself away from his desk with a tired sigh. He had a long week, having had to give two press conferences, and is ready to get out the door. Plus his dreams of a perpetually burning district filled with screams have only been getting worse as the weeks have gone by, not better.
He wishes that they would just let him sit in the office and figure out the logistics, do the problem solving that he is good at, but he knows that he only has this prominent position in the government because of his relationship to Katniss, and they need him for his face. He wonders if there will ever be a time when his relationship with Katniss, a person who doesn't want anything to do with him, will no longer be the most important thing about him. It certainly doesn't seem like it will be anytime soon.
He looks at his watch and sighs again. It is already four o'clock, he is going to be late. He grabs the folder of papers he was leafing through, stuffs them into his bag, and runs out the door with a quick nod to Beecher and Penny. Everyone knows that he leaves early on Fridays and no one says anything about it. They see how hard he works the rest of the week. Mostly they hope that he is doing something to relieve the pain that everyone can see he is insistent on holding on to.
Gale runs home, dropping off his stuff and changing out of his suit and into a white t-shirt and an old pair of military fatigues. He feels better already. He slams right back out the door grabbing a jacket on his way and half walks, half runs his way to the Children's Center. He is panting a little when he is met at the door by the kind looking woman who all the kids call Miss Izzy wiping her hands on the apron she has on over her skirt.
"Sorry I'm late," he says as he walks into the Center behind her.
"Oh you know it's no problem Gale," she smiles back at him as she pulls a couple escaping strands of her hair back into her ponytail. "We were just cleaning up from snack time, and then it is already time to start making dinner. I swear, all these children do is eat!" But she laughs good naturedly as she says it.
"Are you still getting more kids?" he asks as they walk down a hallway lined with study rooms.
"It's slowing down," Isobel responds, her normally cheerful face more serious. "We only had two new children come to us this week."
"Good," Gale nods. At least it looks like they are getting a handle on one problem. With so many throughout the new Republic, it feels good to get a handle on something.
"Oh!" Isobel continues in her usual tone. "We actually had another volunteer come in this afternoon to help build the play structure, so you will have some help. I am sure it will be finished in no time!"
There is a sinking sensation in Gale's chest that is somewhere between anticipation and dread. Another volunteer? He has a feeling he knows who it is.
They round another corner and go through the large double doors that lead to the large play area the center has outside. He sees her in the middle of the grassy field, the late afternoon sun shining on the red highlights in the hair that is just long enough to fall into her face. She is wearing the same pants and white t-shirt that he had seen her in before and is quickly sawing even lengths of two by fours.
"Johanna Mason," he says with something like resignation in his voice.
"Oh, of course you two must know each other," Miss Izzy says cheerfully. "I don't know what I was thinking. I really don't know how to thank you both enough."
Johanna looks up as she hears the two of them come closer, squinting into the sunlight and tossing her bangs out of her face.
"Of course," she mutters as she sees that Gale is the other volunteer all the Children's Center staff had been gushing about as they showed her what could still be done around the place.
"Johanna Mason," he nods to her as they get into earshot.
"Well, I will leave you two to it," Isobel says as she turns to go back inside. "The children are so excited about the play structure."
Gale had turned to nod goodbye to Miss Izzy and as he turns back around, Johanna tosses a hammer at him, probably a little harder than she needed to. He juggles it lightly to keep from dropping it.
"You might as well get started nailing this railing together," she says as he comes closer. "Then we just have to put the legs on this platform, put the railing around it, attach this other crap," she gestures with her saw at the metal and plastic prefabricated pieces of the play structure that are strewn around her, "put that little house thing on the platform, and then it should be done."
He nods and gets to work.
They work together quietly and efficiently, falling into an easy rhythm as they pass tools, nails, and screws back and forth. Even though the spring evening is still cool, Gale starts to sweat as they work to lift the platform into place, the satisfying sweat of working with his hands. When he stops to wipe his face with the bottom of his shirt, he catches Johanna looking at him, but he isn't sure how to read the look in her eyes.
They finally stop for the night when the fading light becomes too weak for either of them to see what they are working on clearly.
Johanna stands up and stretches back, unleashing a series of pops as she cricks her neck.
"Where do the tools go?" she asks him.
"That shed," he says as he starts gathering them up.
She helps him, shaking her head. He understands. He also still isn't used to having access to tools and machines without the steady gaze of a Peacekeeper watching to make sure everything is locked away under a Capitol seal.
As they head back inside, Gale realizes that he hasn't eaten since breakfast and is incredibly hungry. That stupid conference call with Plutarch about television advertisements ran so long, he ran out of time to eat. As if there weren't more important issues right now than bringing back television advertisements.
As if reading his mind, Johanna rubs a hand across her stomach, saying "Man, I need something to eat."
"I can't believe we didn't finish that thing," she continues as they walk through the hallways filled with children running up and down the stairs laughing, yelling, and crying about homework, toys, who took who's dessert.
"Well, you did take forever cutting each of those railings exactly right," he says.
"Sorry I don't want to do a half assed job like you clearly wanted to," she shoots back. "Besides, if you hadn't wasted a half hour trying to fit that thing of metal bars onto the back of the platform, we would have been much farther along."
"How was I supposed to know kids are supposed to hang off the bottom of the thing and not climb up it? We didn't have fancy toys like this where I grew up."
"Neither did we, but why else would it only have legs on one side? I thought you were supposed to be some sort of brainiac, Mr. Big Shot."
"It was a more creative way of looking-"
He is cut off by a little girl, running up to them while she yells.
"Johanna Mason? Is that really you?" The little girl is probably eleven or twelve, with pretty, dirty blond hair, and the remains of a Capitol lilt in her speech.
"Sure is," Johanna says with a smile, but Gale can tell that she is uncomfortable.
"I can't believe it!" the girl cries excitedly. "You were always my favorite. Because you beat all those bigger kids. All on your own. I was always you when we played Tribute!"
"Aw, thanks darling," Johanna says as she bends down, but Gale can see barely contained panic in her eyes. "What's your name?"
"Helena," the girl says, suddenly shy.
"That is a beautiful name," Johanna says, still smiling, as she nervously fidgets with the jacket in her hands.
"We have to go or else we are going to be late for dinner," Gale breaks in as Johanna clearly struggles to find something else to say. "It was very nice to meet you Helena. Will you tell Miss Izzy that we had to leave but that I will be back to finish the play set tomorrow?"
Helena nods, awed by the man she had seen on television actually speaking to her.
Gale takes the lead now and practically pulls Johanna out of the Children's Center. It scares him a little to see her so rattled, so he leads them to the closest bar he can think of and sits her down at a small table.
He orders them two drinks and two dinner specials before sitting down expectantly across from her.
"So?" he asks. "What was that?"
Their drinks are placed in front of them by the waitress, and Johanna downs one and then the other in quick succession before giving her head a quick shake.
"That was mine..." he says as she puts the glass down with a sharp clink, then just sighs and orders another round.
Johanna looks a little better.
"That hadn't happened in a while. And definitely not since the vote..." she says slowly, looking down at the table.
"Vote?" he asks.
"What?" She looks up at him. "Oh, nothing. I guess I had just forgotten what that was like. Capitol kids."
"It was actually a game in the Capitol, you know? Kids played "Tribute," there were trading cards, everyone had a favorite... What do you say to a kid who loves you because of everything you hate about yourself? Who doesn't even know what you would have done..."
She trails off, looking up at him with a pleading sadness in her eyes that only makes him angrier.
"It's despicable is what it is. How can they watch another child, terrified and injured, on television and not think that it was horrible?"
"I don't know," she says slowly, swirling the new drink that has been placed before her. "That's how things were to them. That's how they were raised. Who can say if you would have been any different if that was the only thing you knew? It wasn't real to them, the things on the television, and they were told it was necessary to keep everyone else safe. Plus it was such a spectacle. Everyone around them was so excited by it."
"But that girl has lost all the family she has ever known in a rebellion designed to get rid of that very thing, and she is still excited by my celebrity..." Johanna shakes her head, still looking down at the brown liquid in her glass.
Gale is starting to think that there might be more to this woman than a deadly smile and a razor sharp tongue. He isn't sure he actually knows anything about her.
"At least it will never happen again," she says with more force, sitting up straighter in her chair, shaking off what just happened. The abstracted look in her eyes is replaced by something harder and more familiar.
He sees the dark smile come back just then as she leans forward over the table, focusing her attention on him.
"So," she pauses, letting him know that they have moved on. "That's how you deal with it, huh soldier? You work as hard as you can all week, and then you work another full shift trying to help all the kids you can because of the one little girl you couldn't save. Is that it?"
No, he was right the first time, just killer smiles and razors.
He narrows his eyes as he looks at her, ready to fight her fire with fire, ready to flip the entire table over in hurt rage over her bringing up something that he won't let himself even think about until it is too dark and too late to get himself to stop. He looks at her, goading him into a fight with her mocking smile, trying to figure out where she can hurt him the most the quickest, and he realizes that he is tired of fighting. He doesn't want to try and figure out where her weaknesses are and how to exploit them. He has fought enough for one lifetime. Besides, he saw the anonymous donation come into the Children's Center the day she arrived, and he saw her work just as hard as he did today. For all her talk, she is making her own reparations in her own way for whatever sins weigh most heavily on her.
"Yeah, I guess so," he just says tiredly, rubbing his hands over his face.
She pauses.
"It's no fun if you don't fight back," she says, her voice softer now.
"That's what I was hoping." He leans away from the table as the waitress places their food down in front of them.
They eat in silence for a couple of minutes.
"What about you, anyway," he says, waving his drink in her direction. "Are you just going to keep wandering from district to district forever trying to run away from the past? You could help the new government you know."
Maybe he isn't done fighting after all.
"I have done my duty," she hisses through her teeth, violently stabbing a baby carrot on her plate. "I don't owe any more."
"No one is saying you do," he says. "But are you going to be happy trying to outrun something that is part of you?"
He knows that he isn't one to talk, hiding out in District 2 while his family in District 13 tries to make it back to 12, but he also knows that he is right. And he is doing important work here. And making the kind of money he wouldn't even have been able to dream of before. And that is more helpful to Rory and Vick and Posy than anything he could do... His mind runs quickly through the well worn grooves of the arguments that he uses with himself almost every day.
"Happy," she laughs mirthlessly. "Just like you are right?"
"I'll bet you liked school," he says. He can see the confusion in her face at this sudden topic change.
"I liked math," she says thoughtfully taking a long sip of her drink. "Hated science. Hatedhistory."
"Because they didn't make any sense, right?"
She looks up at him, surprised.
"You would ask questions about the obvious holes in what they were telling you, and they wouldn't answer you."
"Yeah..." she says looking at him suspiciously.
"I watch people," he says with a shrug. "You were good at military history and tactics. You always asked the right questions."
"No," she says, "you watched her. I just happened to be in the way."
"Maybe," he says, "but I'm right. And I think I am right that you would be good at a lot of the stuff that still needs to be done to make this government work. They have all these books, tons of them, from the Dark Days and from before that. There is so much information out there that we were never allowed to see before. You have no idea."
She makes a non committal noise as she finishes the last of her drink. She gets up, pulling her jacket on and dropping some coins on to the table. He can tell that she is watching to see if he is going to say anything, and he wants to, she is the last person he wants to owe anything. But he forces himself to stay quiet as he grabs his coat and follows her out the door. He isn't going to rise to her bait.
They walk quickly through the dark streets out of force of habit even though no one would stop them now, pausing for a moment at the turn off for his street.
"'Night, Johanna Mason," he says before he turns. He isn't sure why, he has never been one for manners or social niceties. He just didn't want to let her go without saying anything.
She spins on one foot and walks back toward him.
"Why do you do that?" she asks.
"What?"
"Always say my full name."
He pauses to think about it. He hadn't noticed, but maybe he always did.
"It is your name," he says under his breath. "I don't know why. I guess that's just how I have always heard it."
He raises his voice into a passable imitation of Claudius Templesmith. "Tribute from District 7, Johanna Mason!" His voice goes back to normal. "Victor from District 7, Johanna Mason. Mentor from District 7, Johanna Mason..."
"Well I am not any of those things anymore," she says, suddenly very close to him. "So stop it."
He looks down at her, feeling the heat from her body, holding his ground. Had she always been so small? In his mind, she always took up so much space, but standing this close to her, she looks so delicate, her skin smooth and luminous in the moonlight, and she barely comes up past his shoulder.
"Come up for a second," he says, not breaking eye contact. "I'll give you that book I was talking about on the history of the old government."
She arches an eyebrow, looking at him for a minute, before reaching quickly between his legs. His heart jumps into his throat, but he doesn't let his body betray him. He is too good of a hunter for that.
There is something deliciously dangerous about having her so close to him, so close to the most delicate part of him.
"At ease, soldier," she whispers into his ear, hand still firmly between his legs. "I don't play with children."
"That's good," he whispers back. "I haven't been a child for years. Besides, what are you? Two years older than me? I don't think it matters when you feel a hundred years old."
She laughs, her breath hot against the side of his face, and lets him go.
"'Than I.'"
"What?" He always feels off balance around her.
"It's 'two years older than I.' 'Than I am old.'"
Now it is his turn to laugh.
"I told you you liked school," he says, tilting her face up so that she is looking up at him. He cocks his head a little to the side as he looks at her, then goes and drops his mouth down on hers.
She tastes sweet and wild and a little bit alcoholic.