AUTHOR'S NOTE: So this is where it starts to really merge with 'Called Out In The Dark' but for any readers who haven't, and don't want/aren't reading that, then essentially Cato and Katniss have a weird alliance going on in the Games- they don't kill each other when they have the chance due to their attraction… Here is where we see how that affects the creeping rebellion.
'Paint Our Love'
Chapter Three: Like A Forest On Fire
Warning: explicit language and some violence in this chapter.
"They're fucked." Johanna bit out what they were all thinking as Katniss Everdeen and the District 2 boy Cato both walked away from one another and the dead boy of District 5. Finnick looked over at her and saw she was the only one in the room who had managed to keep her face impassive. The rest of them looked how he felt: completely astounded. It didn't seem real that those 2 tributes had just changed history with their weird, tense alliance.
"This could be a good thing." Haymitch finally said, his voice slow and gravelly. He sat up slightly straighter and rubbed a hand over his face. He suddenly looked exhausted.
"Don't be stupid Haymitch. You know Snow will kill them." Johanna glared over at Haymitch, her voice like flint, and Effie coughed nervously and stood up.
Finnick couldn't help but chuckle at the look Johanna gave her, which made her sit straight back down. Haymitch sat up and looked at Johanna. "Not these two. Not if we get there first."
They all stared back at him, stunned. What the hell did he mean?
They planned quietly and carefully as the games continued and Katniss became the 'mockingjay' to the revived District 13's rebellion. When she and Cato were cooped up in the cave together after the fire damaged most of the forest, they knew their time had come to take action. Johanna was thrilled and had no hesitation in showing it. Her ferocity could finally be let out: all that fury she had had to strain into her well-renowned icy wit could instead become savage strategic mutiny. She started to let her disgust show. And she paid for it dearly.
The same day that Haymitch sent a joint gift to Katniss and Cato was the same day the Capitol held a desperate ball; Snow knew that this alliance between Katniss and Cato had to be managed carefully. The Victors and mentors were all invited and Finnick expected Johanna to behave slightly worse than usual: maybe get drunker, say something even more provocative to Caesar Flickerman than usual and maybe wear something even more dark and disturbed.
No-one expected her to turn up in a one shoulder red silk dress held together at the bust and hip with large gold mockingjay pins. And no-one expected her to announce on live TV that 'being a Victor is worse than dying in the arena. I'm not victorious, I'm a pet, I'm a puppet, and some of you want me to be your whore. Well fuck that- haven't you seen my pins? Didn't you see Katniss and Cato saving each other? There's no control here anymore; people should unite like they did.'
Finnick watched all this from his position in the centre of a crowd of gasping, painted women. He saw her green eyes burn and shine like a forest on fire and the way she stood, challenging and commanding. He wished she was drunk, hoped that they might all think she was. But her voice was so strong and certain and passionate. Finnick could see the faces of the other Victors: a mixture of admiration, pride, fear and disgust. He thought his must have shown complete terror. There was a hushed silence by the time she was finished, sipping in a deliberately delicate manner from her champagne saucer and the whole room watched, the tension practically a fog around them, as she smiled – teeth glistening brutally- and sauntered off. People moved apart in the crowd to let her through as if under some kind of spell. She was out of the room in seconds, but it felt like hours until Caesar Flickerman was laughing in such a forced manner it almost sounded uncontrollable and he gasped out, "Johanna Mason! What a tease of a Victor! Such a terrible joker and so deliberately controversial! What you didn't see at home or here people… let me tell you she was winking at me so much then that I just couldn't ruin her pretend tantrum!"
People in the crowd began to laugh with him, and someone even cheered for Johanna and Finnick felt such a relief that he laughed too, clapping along with them and wondering how long he would have to stay before he could find her. She was loved enough by the Capitol citizens, and Crane in a way- and these idiots proved that- to not be able to kill off. But what Snow might do to her… to her family, her home.
Only hours later, he was at her door. And he found out how much she paid for her real nature… within minutes Snow had District 7 suffer a severe outbreak of acid gas. The next morning the news told Panem that one of the lumber yards had used too many chemicals in a smoking chamber and that the fumes were so toxic it poisoned and melted hundreds of citizens inside out.
Just before the 'accident' at 7, Snow's personal peacekeepers had beaten Johanna so violently that Finnick found her curled in a pile of her own vomited blood, clutching a dislocated shoulder and broken shin, delirious and moaning, her face distorted with bruises, cuts and blood. When Finnick had cleaned her up, a team arrived to put her back together again and they treated her with such roughness that Finnick raged; beating them off her and almost strangling one to death.
He woke up hours later after what he knew had been a sedated sleep to find her looking brand new again; but more broken than ever. She told him, in a voice so shaken he never expected to hear from her, that Snow had sent her a personal message with his healers. Her family- her mother, father, brother, brother's wife – all her remaining family- had been 'brave enough' to try and help contain the toxic gases and died in the attempts. He showed her their remains in the video link and assured her that the Capitol's people would look after their 'victorious' after this tragedy.
Finnick couldn't say anything to her; he could think of nothing that would ease her devastation, her shame and guilt and her fury. But that night he scooped her off her couch, carried her to her bed, undressed her slowly down to her nude slip underdress, slipped off his own suit and curled his body around hers. She cried and howled and screamed into his arms and chest, biting his bare shoulders and digging her nails into his biceps. She pressed herself so close into him that he felt her entire body shudder and quake and rage. And they stayed like that all night, until she exhausted herself trying to wrestle and fight him off, screaming so hoarse her voice cracked and faded and her eyes finally had to shut under the swelling and heartbreak.
When she was finally asleep, he brought one of her clenched fists to his mouth and kissed every fingertip, every knuckle, every pounding vein on the top of her hand and her delicate wrist-bone. And then he let himself whisper, "It's not your fault," his own tears finally falling from his eyes onto her hair. He hated Snow and the Capitol and the games more than ever that night.
Johanna and Finnick didn't leave her flat for three days. She wouldn't eat and would only drink when he pressed a glass of water or juice or chocolate to her lips. He ran her a bath every morning when she woke up, drenched in sweat and tears next to him, and carried her into the bathroom. He'd sit on the floor of the bathroom whilst she climbed in and let herself continuously slip under the water and hold her breath till her body forced her to launch her head back out of the water and suck in a lungful of air. Finnick loved the sound each time, terrified he wouldn't hear it again. He'd wait silently until she would say, "I hate him," quietly and stand up, her soaked satin slip sticking to her wet skin in a way that- even in such a devastating moment- he found hard to tear his eyes from. He would stand and turn around, handing her a cotton towel robe and see from the corner of his eye Johanna peel the slip off and drop it on top of the other wet ones in the corner. She'd then reach a hand out to his shoulder and he'd turn to steady her as she stepped out of the bathtub. They would go straight back to bed, where she'd pull on another of her slips, and lie there until she would wake fully from various fitful sleeps and waking sobs and screams.
On the third morning, she woke up, rubbed her face into his upper arm and whispered, "You smell like me, like them." And she cried again, in a way she hadn't before, quietly and softly and it was that time that hurt Finnick the most to see.
After that, she got out of bed at lunchtime with him and they ate. That afternoon Haymitch sent them a message: he wanted them at District 12. Whilst they had been grieving, the rebellion had been acting- the Games had been broken and the tributes rescued. The Capitol had paid them back in favour by bombing the remains of District 13… in those three days the revolution had officially begun.
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