Here's the next chapter! Enjoy! I do not own Mockingjay.

Ch. 24

It was an hour after Prim left that I finally picked myself up to go visit Johanna. I found her in a room near where mine was. It's where the long-term patients go, individual rooms that insure the most privacy. Whatever happened in training wasn't miner and I hope she is okay.

I knock before I walk in, only to hear her scream that whoever it was she didn't want to talk to. I didn't feel like just walking away so I went in anyways to find a broken, lost Johanna Mason sitting with her eyes staring straight ahead. The strength that she had to yell at me a few seconds before was all gone and the Johanna I had seen only a couple weeks back was no longer here. She was back to the girl I saw weekly, scared and broken, not sure what tomorrow will bring.

"Go. You don't need to be here." Her voice was still persistent, I was sure that Johanna could never lose her sassiness, even if you tortured her non-stop, or threw her into the Games more than once. Johanna was strong, and nobody could doubt that.

"I do. You need someone to be there, so here I am. Here. For you." I vaguely remember her telling us that she had no one she loved back in the rain forest clock. I felt bad for her, after all everyone needed someone to love.

"Peeta. Stop. I'm fine." I guess I could've obeyed her wishes and left, but it didn't seem like the right thing to do, so I stepped closer to her bed and sat down in the stiff chair beside her. I was no longer the one in the hospital bed. I was on the other end. It didn't feel good being either person.

"No Johanna. I'm going to be here for you. We don't have to talk. I just know that Finnick left and Katniss and that you probably need someone to talk to or to just be there. So here I am." It was time like these that I thought maybe I was back to my old self, but I knew I wasn't because there was still confusion and the monster nagging at me to come out. Still I feel that this is something I would've done before the hijacking and it's nice to know that he is still in there.

"They used water against me." She looks at me, her face sobered and empty. This is how I must've looked in the hospital bed, I realize now why people looked at me with such apprehension. "In the Capitol I mean. They would drown me, and then right before I was about to die, right before I was almost out of air, the water wasn't there any more. They had it timed perfectly, right to the last second. My life flashed before my eyes countless times. And it's not like I wasn't used to it because I was, but it was different. Dying while drowning is much harder than dying at the hands of a peer with a knife. I don't know what it is about the water that makes it harder. Maybe it's because I knew oxygen was in reach and they just wouldn't give it to me."

Her voice is distant, as if she isn't really here. She could be talking to anyone right now, it seems she just needed to say the words.

"Anyways, somehow they knew. I never told them, but they knew. We had to do this last thing before they said it was okay that we went to the Capitol and they used your weakness against you. I couldn't stop it, I just broke down, and I felt like I was dying all over again and I needed the morphling and I felt so weak and I hate that the Capitol has done this to me. They've made me weak and I hate it and I just want them to fail. I'm tired of them ruining everyone." She hasn't started crying yet, and I don't think she will, she has too much pride for that. She's already become vulnerable in front of me and that alone is a miracle.

"I want to fight, for you, I'll fight." It was another reason I had to go to the Capitol. I could fight in her spirit; I could fight for her and everyone else in the Districts that were incapable of fighting.

"You're going to the Capitol?" Her voice has more strength in it now, her telling me all of that must've helped in some way.

"Yes, because they don't deserve to get away with all of this. It's not fair. I'm fighting for everyone, I'm fighting for myself, I'm fighting for you. I'm fighting for a better tomorrow because we deserve it." I look at her as she stares back at me. I watch as a small smirk comes across her face.

"We do, but Coin is letting you go?" She looks at me seriously. I'd seen the extensive training they were all put through before having to head off to the Capitol. I want to be able to get there before the war is over. It would be a miracle if Coin actually let me go and I have to take into consideration what Haymitch had told me about not being stable. But I knew one thing; I had to get there.

"I don't know yet. I hope I can."

Sorry this is such a short chapter! He should be in the Capitol within the next two chapters. I'm really excited for what comes there, obviously in the book he is confused about a lot of things and I think a lot of that is triggered by being back in the Capitol and around Katniss, but I like being able to write him becoming himself again! Also, if any of you have twitter fan accounts give me your UN's I just might follow you!

Don't forget to REVIEW on the way out! Thanks! ~boywithbreadlover