why when we do our darkest deeds do we tell, they burn in our brains, become a living hell

[derogatory]

When she was eight, she pushed Bachur out of the treehouse for something she cant even remember. At the time Levi figured she needed to let off some steam, so he taught her how to throw axes. In 13, her therapist notes that could mean Johanna never learned to understand her anger, that it's part of the explanation for why she needs to hurt others for attention. On her way out of the room, she knocks over a few books and calls,

"You don't watch TV much do you?"






"You'll live in the Capitol," Blight informs her towards the last week of the Victory Tour. Like hell I will, she mutters, flicking food from her plate. Blight has enough patience to reason with her at first- your family is dead, the other people in town are scared shitless of you, and we both know Snow will want a pretty young victor on hand. Johanna's eyes snap to his angrily. For what, she wants to snarl, but he brushes her aside.

"Do whatever you want, but you'll live in the Capitol. End of discussion." She makes a point of spending the entire train ride back to 7 sitting as close to him as possible.

"You think the girl who disobeyed President Snow takes orders from you?" she smirks. He shoves her bare legs from his lap.

"That's not something you should be proud of."






It takes a couple weeks of living in 7, of taunting him, before Blight explains that he and Johanna are not as similar as she thinks. Yes, his parents and sister and cousins all died in a housefire a month after he won. But he was young, and plain, and nobody had offered the trade of his freedom for his family's lives. But a stylist had tipped him off, so he removed the bargaining chips.

Johanna stares long enough Blight reverts to the mentor he used to be, the one who couldn't imagine her as a threat, the one who spoke down to her. The fire wasn't an accident and it wasn't the Capitol. I removed the bargaining chips.

"That's sick," she says before realizing her lips were even moving. He laughs, leaning against the doorframe and gesturing Johanna out. Enough late night visits, enough hoping for a malingering connection where there wasn't one.

"Yes, and your show of defiance was so much more honorable. Did they have a name picked out for the baby yet?" Johanna bristles, heels digging into the steady wood of the floors. You never mentioned it in training, she accuses. "Would you have even tried to survive if you knew?" You could've warned me. "You wouldn't have listened." You could've stopped them. Blight just laughs, a low bark like one of the wandering wolves that dog the edge of town.

He takes her by her bicep and pulls the girl through the door, into the chilly air. Johanna blinks through the darkness to him, her Victor mansion imposing in its solitude, its arching rise above the trees.

"They were going to name him Asher," she mumbles. For a moment Johanna thinks she sees pity in Blight's eyes and wonders if that was all she needs to move past this fabricated divide- sympathy.

Instead he says, "Nobody cares about your sob story." and slams the door on her fingers. The next morning she moves to the Capitol.






There's no way she can bear walking around the city, through the hordes of freaks, the fans, the strangely wide avenues littered with horrors- so the District 7 escort, Isaac, makes up a nice cover story to explain the days and nights she stays holed in the apartment. Some illness she can't pronounce. At one point she catches herself on the gossip channel, a commentator noting Miss Mason is quite the fibber, she's probably not sick at all, just shy. After that, she starts going out more after that, strangely fixated on the coverage of her every move. What she ate, what she wore. Why doesn't Miss Mason have friends? Well, we all saw what happened to the last one. The next Games can't start soon enough.

It's around then she sees people talking about the champion from the 65th games, Finnick Odair. She remembers his Games since it was right after her father's injury and watching TV was the only respite from her nurse duties. He's grown up since then, into some kind of playboy. It hits her by the end of the Odair love forecast what that means to a Victor, what was offered to him and what he accepted. When her prep team arrives they actually believe Isaac's illness story from the shade of green Johanna turned.






No greetings, only business when Blight arrives with the Tributes in the Capitol. He informs her he can train them both, there's no reason for her to be on the training grounds at all. She gets this is part of his whole acting-out thing, trying to punish her by boring her or whatever. But they're equals now, in more ways than one.

"Yeah, cause you trained Simon great last year," she snickers. He doesn't offer her even a glance.

"Should've added more lessons about you being a slippery bitch, I guess."

Johanna scoffs, "Kinda an adult topic for a fifteen year old, but I'll give it a shot."

Blight hits her so fast the Tributes aren't entirely sure what happened- Johanna guesses they panicked and went deaf when Simon came up at all. But Isaac sees the whole thing and hauls both mentors aside. Hit that girl again and you will regret it, he hisses and Blight laughs and laughs. What girl? This is the only way to deal with animals.

"That or you butcher them for the meat," he adds. When Blight breezes back to the tributes, Isaac sticks around like Johanna needs something other than a new coat of concealer.

"The men of 7 can be such brutes," he huffs.

Johanna shrugs and winks to Marae. "I just have a punchable face."






Their girl Tribute couldn't display any talents to the gamemakers, but they give her a 9 anyway. Peeling an orange, Blight notes the irony in her drastically shortened future- All the viewers will just assume you taught her to fake weaknesses when it'll be the real thing.

Johanna remembers the hollow resignation girl's eyes before the platform rose. She remembers that longer than she remembers how her throat was slit at the Cornucopia. She never stepped off the platform. What a bunch of idiots mill girls are, Blight grumbles. Johanna wants to ask if that way is what being free is, choosing when not to play these Games from the start. Maybe if she'd said it surrounded by the other mentors, they'd have approached her about the rebellion earlier. Instead she puts money on Finnick's boy and howls with laughter when he's decapitated. It's easier this way, she thinks. The boy, the girl, no real names.






The buzz of Tracker Jackers are still in her ears when she meets Finnick for their first lunch. He looks tired in person, less like the monumental figure they've made him to be through the television. She decides that's what she likes about him, that he's got secrets. He doesn't share anything with her, but she wants to know them. She wants to see District 4, to learn to swim. She wants to spend time with him instead of being alone in the clean Capitol apartment. She wants to be away from the freak shows and Avoxes and the empty threats of President Snow. She wants to see what Finnick thought was so worth it.

"Stop it," she tells herself in the dark, in a session of sleeping the entire day away. She closes her eyes tight and thinks of the forest, of Levi's butchered face, of the dying howls of the Tributes she let die. There is nothing for you, no friends, no home, no allies. She dreams of the arena, Simon's hand around her wrist, of the last kindness anyone showed her before she gutted them.






One way or another, she makes herself sick. It must've got around that she wasn't faking, because Isaac takes time off his latest social calender events to visit her, bringing a basket of her favorite fruits.

"I don't like fruits," she groans underneath the comforter, his comfort.

"You'll like these ones," he assures her in his usual nonchalance, the flamboyant flip of his wrist. There's no one like him in 7. There's probably no one in Panem like their escort. Johanna knows she's really sick when she finds herself wondering about his parents, his love life, the gossip that surrounds him. Fuck, I must be bored, she mourns.

He sits at the edge of her bed and taps his fingers on the curve of her knee under the blankets until she rolls over to face him, gaze as putrid as she can manage. The look he gives her back is nauseatingly sweet, probably as bad as the fruits he brought. She's not used to people smiling at her- the fans from last year have steadily become distant, fearful crowds that watch her every move. She stopped going out a few weeks ago. Stopped watching the coverage on anyone on TV. Started to dream of giant spiders and sweltering jungles. She's forgotten Bachur's voice.

"Ask me how much it cost," Isaac simpers, straightening his too-tight vest.

"How much what cost?"

"Getting you a dinner with Finnick Odair." Johanna sits up as straight as a branch in winter, strong and sharp but liable to snap with a stronger wind. "You like him don't you?" Not like that, she sputters, head rush catching up to her, ducking back into the pillows in her shame. She thrusts a few across the room, suddenly offended by the surplus of them on her bed. Not like that, it's never going to be like that, not ever again.

"Doesn't matter," Isaac breezes. "You're miserable and he gets paid to make people happy. However he does it, I don't care. I just miss your beautiful little smile." When Johanna reminds him she never smiles, the Distrcit 7 escort leans across the blankets, looming over her like a lime green cloud of cotton candy and cheer, like her worst nightmare now that gore has slipped into the norm.

"You smile when you win." Isaac beams and he puts her hands on her shoulders, like he knows what that means, like he hasn't even the slightest inkling of understanding what it does to the empty organ pounding in her chest. He doesn't tell her to stand tall, at least not in the traditional way. "Stop acting like a loser, Little Miss Mason, you're giving me frown lines." Not everyone can come from District 7 after all.

Johanna barely smiles then, and she never shows for her date with Finnick Odair (the tabloids go positively wild- she stood up the most wanted man in Panem!) but she stops making herself sick with unhappiness. That's not to say she feels happy, or feels much of any emotion. There's no way to qualify how it feels to go through the gifts from next year's high end sponsors, to look through the tapes of old Victor's performances, to become slowly introduced to Capitol living beyond the misery it originally brought. Letting this system cut her down was bending like a weak sapling. She had to pay a lot to get this far, but it wasn't worth the dreams of the arena, the self-doubt and endless blaming for the people she lost to gain this comfort.

For the first time since the train ride home, she feels like she's won.






Date or not, she and Finnick do see each other more and more. She even buys a train ticket for 4 when he's away, although she changes her mind at the last minute. She visits 7 instead, but there's nothing and no one. Blight doesn't open his door, the mills are closed for a structural malfunction, and everyone stays inside due to the growing smog from faulty machinery.

"That sounds legitimately like the worst vacation ever," Finnick groans over coffee. He keeps trying to kick their feet together, playing it up for the cameras that they have some kind of secret affair.

"I liked it," she smirks and stomps down hard on one of those feet. "I like to see where I came from."

"Don't you mean where you belong?" he counters through a grimace. Johanna can't answer that. She belongs in the forest, but not the one in 7. She's not sure Finnick can understand that when he has so much to lose, the importance of the arena post-Games, post-losing everything with any other sentimental value. How the slightest increase in humidity, the spiders along the ceiling, the sight of blood makes her nostalgic.






By the time the next Games roll around, Isaac is nowhere to be seen. There's a new escort, a woman with nails like talons. Blight doesn't know, doesn't care where the man went, so Johanna pushes and prods for answers against the stylists wilting skin- she's at an age where no amount of surgery can hold back the pull of gravity.

"He's the new spokesperson for some makeup mogul," Marae breezes, sifting through shealths of skin color, trying to decide the best shade of tan for this year's boy Tribute. Worked in the mills, too pale, we'll need the sponsors.

Johanna doesn't quite buy this because she never sees Isaac on TV, he's never mentioned in any of the news briefings for makeup anythings. She takes an axe to every belonging in her apartment, she replaces all the furnishings by hand, every lightbulb. There must've been some kind of recording device. They must've seen it somehow, her little smile, that genuine affection between her and some loser Capitol homo who wanted to make her happy.

Right before the Quarter Quell, Isaac reappears, surrounded by girls with long, willowy arms, men with strong shoulers, in suits more expensive than even Victors could afford. He wishes her good luck, promises to send her sunscreen, gives her a little wink. In the training room, she imagines his simpering face in every dummy head she splits open. Nobody actually cares about anyone in the Capitol, in the Districts. Nobody cares about anything or anyone, everyone is just putting on a show. The Games are on for everyone, for every moment they're alive, Victors or civllians or Tributes long dead. The Capitol has them all play their parts and nobody ever gives a shit about anyone but themselves.

That is until the girl on fire and the boy, the star-crossed lovers, and the fake romance that wound up being real. It knocks out Johanna's whole argument, the belief system that nobody gives a fuck about anyone, least of all their competition. Katniss Everdeen ruins everything, which is why she'll be the best one to bring everything down.