Fair warning in advance, this chapter has some dialogue I would consider toward the edge in the ratings direction. More comments in the after note...
Gale carefully surveyed the tree at the center of the barren clearing. It was easily seventy feet tall and surprisingly slender, with two graceful forks in its trunk. The bark was an almost shining white, and its loose canopy of leaves was tinted gold. Its fruit looked like miniature pomegranates, colored reddish-gold on the branch and crimson where they had fallen to the ground. Knee-high roots jutted from the base of the trunk, with a modest fissure between two of them, and further traces of exposed roots could be seen all over the clearing.
Johanna looked the tree over with something approaching awe or fear. "When I was training for the Games, my mentor told me, `If you want to win, you have to fight like a tree,'" she said. "If they let this one in, it could have been defending champion at the Thirtieth Quarter Quell."
"Cray wanted this tree destroyed," Romulus said. "Evidently, he was concerned about a bit of local legendry, known to be based in fact. A hundred years before the First Rebellion, there was a local uprising against the Mayor and Head Peacekeeper. By all indications, both men were exceptionally cruel and corrupt, and formed an alliance to exploit the populace. The Mayor also evidently enjoyed doing his own dirty work, and got himself and two offduty peacekeepers killed while raiding a widow's house. Per the story, the Head Peacekeeper hanged the `assassin', the widow's only son, in full view of a great crowd. But the crowd broke out of his control and overran the platform. The Head was either hanged on his own gallows or simply tied to the post, and the structure was burned to the ground with him and the young man he had hanged still on it. Supposedly, a sprouting seedling was discovered in the ashes the day after."
There was a moment of silence, and then Haymitch burst out laughing. "That is what Katniss' song was about!" he exclaimed. "She told us her mother had a fit over her father singing it. She thought it was because the song was so morbid, and boy howdy was it, all about a guy, executed for murder, calling for his girlfriend to join him at the Hanging Tree... But all of that was just code for joining a rebellion. I'll bet her mother knew it, too."
"So you found a muttation from the time of the Ancients," Gale said, "and you were ready to destroy it because of a story that made you uncomfortable?"
Johanna shrugged and sat down on a root that formed the edge of the fissure. "Plant muttations aren't uncommon," she said. "We found them in the forest all the time, some plant all by itself that nobody ever saw before, and we knew what it meant. A seed that could have been lying dormant for thousands of years had found just the right conditions to sprout. Usually, they would just die on their own. If not, we'd take care of them ourselves." She leaned back against the trunk, and all the branches of the tree seemed to rustle. "Yeah, you heard me, we would have taken care of you real fast."
He sat down on the next root over from Johanna. "I've been thinking about your story, and there's something I don't get," Johanna said. "Long as I've known you, and Katniss says as long as she has, you've been pretty much hung up on staying close to your Mama. I know, it's because you take care of her. So why'd you go out on a two-day trip? Did you at least tell her where you were going?"
"This was when my father was still alive," Gale said. "When he was around, people didn't worry about me."
"Interesting way of putting it," Johanna said. "Sounds to me like your Dad was an interesting guy. Makes me wonder... was your wish about him?" There was dead silence. "So... what are we doing now?"
"I don't know what you're doing, and I can't say I care," Gale said. "But I'm going to stay here for a while. I just might stay the night."
"Then I just might join you," Johanna said.
"The more the merrier," Haymitch said, and sat down on the next root over from her. Victoria joined him on a fork of the same root. "How 'bout you, Peet? Need to get back home so Kat can get a good night's sleep?"
Peeta sat down heavily. "Actually, we haven't been doing that as much," he said. "She says she needs a bit of space to think."
"Yeah, I know how that goes," Johanna said. "You figure, what's the harm, nothing's happening, except something is going to happen sooner or later because you're a guy, basic bio. Then one morning it's `Oh, Peeta,' then it's `Oh, Peeta...', and then it's `Oh, Peeta!'"
"And you'd know from experience," Gale said. Johanna laughed sardonically. Then she looked up, vaguely nonplussed, as an entrenching shovel gouged into the bark between them.
"This is madness!" Romulus shouted. He drove the shovel into the ground and pulled off the sackcloth. "You have seen the tracks of hundreds lead to this very spot, and disappear! And now you wish to stay overnight!" He jabbed a finger at Gail, just as if giving an order to an insubordinate soldier. "I forbid this!" Then, as if remembering his position, he said, "I refuse!"
"Well, then, drive back to the Village," Johanna said indifferently. "Nobody's making you stay."
"No!" Thread shouted. "I was given a mission. I must do my duty!" He jabbed the shovel into a root, drawing a flow of crimson sap. The branches rustled, and the very trunk swayed and creaked. A shower of fruit dropped down, breaking open and scattering juicy kernels. "I am sworn to uphold the law! I have vowed by the Heaven of Heavens and the Lowest Hell to protect the Citizens of Panem! It does not matter if what they must be protected from is their own madness! It does not matter if they would curse me, even if they would kill me! I must do my duty! I must protect! I must not fail again!" He paced ever more frenetically, crushing kernels and whole fruit into fragrant pulp, until finally he struck himself across the head with the shovel and fell to the ground.
Moments seemed to pass, but in every moment the light of the sun grew dimmer. "Should we help him?" said Peeta.
"Eh," said Johanna. "He's groaning a bit. Not even unconscious."
"I was just thinking of something," Victoria said, leaning against Haymitch. "I have heard stories... I don't know if it is true... of canaries in coal mines..."
"I know what you mean, but it'd never've worked," Haymitch said, putting an arm around her. "It cost less to get new miners than canaries."
"All right, but just working with the analogy... Romulus has just displayed a mental breakdown. Given his history and personality, this would be, in itself, unsurprising. Nevertheless, it would be hard to discount it as coincidence that it has happened at this precise time and place. I suggest a hypothesis: If some external agency were affecting our mental functioning, like the opioid properties of the fruit that thread mentioned, the members of our group who are less stable to begin with would, like the canary, succumb first. So perhaps we are all ourselves headed for a breakdown... or experiencing it already..."
"Shut up, mole woman," Johanna said, "or I'm going to come over there and eat you." She rose, just long enough to straddle Gale's lap. "You know, I really could eat your face... They called me `Maneater' just because of one little bite that was obviously reflex, and you know something?... It didn't taste like chicken." She kissed him, chewing on his lip, until Peeta lurched over, pushed her away, and lifted Gale by the throat.
"I'm going to kill you for what you did to her, you bastard," Peeta said.
Gale returned his hateful glare with mere puzzlement. "What do you mean? I made my case, I let her make her choice, and she chose you. I never tried to stop her. Hell, I brought you back to her!"
"Exactly," Peeta hissed, tightening his grip. "You brought me back, after everything they did to me, and she has to live with me. She has to wake up to me whimpering like a scared dog, and when she asks why the one thing I can't tell her is I remember seeing her turn into a mutt and tear my brothers to pieces!" Stars flashed before Gale's eyes, until he dropped with Peeta at the clang of the shuffle.
"Do my duty," Romulus said. He bent down to wipe a gash on Peeta's forehead, ignoring the blood from a more serious wound on his own temple. "Hold on... to the shovel." He gazed up with wild eyes at the branches, as more fruit rained down. Then he looked down at the fissure, and cackled. "I can dig you out!" Great clods of earth flew up. There was a clang.
Then there was light.
This chapter is about where I was when I started posting this. Pretty much everything for the concept of the tree was originally in this chapter, and I was satisfied enough to change the title of the story and move some of my material forward to make the tree more prominent. Visually, the idea was a cross between an aspen, which I am familiar with from time living in northern AZ, and a mangrove, with an extra nod to the fictional woods of Lothlorien in LOTR. I will also mention that the story gets more Johanna-centric from here on in, I suppose because when I call the shots, crazy wins!