Chapter Text
ONE
you said you’d read me like a book but the pages are all torn and frayed
--
Annie is sitting next to Johanna’s bedside. Her mouth is bitten, red. Her hair is spiralling, loose and messy, around her face. "Jo, I need something from you."
Johanna has always liked Annie. "Name it, Angelfish." She is loose, with the morphling. It makes everything hurt less.
Annie is worrying at her lower lip and her fingers are twined together around each other and she looks so tired, so drawn and so thin. "I need you to stop Finnick," she whispers. "I need him to be here."
This is the most selfish thing Johanna has ever heard Annie Cresta say. "Annie--"
"He knows I won't hurt myself," Annie says, very soft, "because of the baby."
The baby hits Johanna like a truck. She should have thought-- she should have expected this. Somehow she didn't.
"He'd do anything for you, Jo."
She thinks, if only I could swim. "You want me to--" It is not out of the bounds of belief that Johanna would take a razor, a knife, an axe to her own wrists. It is not something that she has not done before, it is not something that he has not saved her from before.
The thing about Finnick: he has kind of a saviour complex.
"Please, Johanna." Annie's eyes are the same colour as Finnick's, the same colour as the sea.
"Yeah," she says. "Of course, Annie."
--
Finnick finds Johanna in a pool of her own blood, limbs splayed for maximum imitation of a broken doll. "Jo," he says, and his voice breaks, his voice shatters, his whole body crumples as he kneels beside her. "Jo."
(When they started-- whatever this is, being friends-- she said, you need to be needed and he had the good grace not to lie to her, just shrugged, so what if I do; it's not hurting anybody.
She met Annie and read the subtext: nobody will ever need me like Annie does.)
She twists her face and feels numb with blood-loss, cold like she is drowning all over again. It is not an act to choke out his name, to say, I need you, Finn.
So he stays.
Of course he stays.
They watch half of Katniss' team die on the cameras and Annie wraps her hand around Johanna’s left wrist, bandaged up as it is; murmurs, thank you.
Johanna watches Gale Hawthorne scramble to his feet, all sinew and heartbreak. Of course, Annie.
Part of her thinks: would Finnick have saved them?
But that is the tragedy of Finnick, he has never saved anyone in his life. He has only wanted to, tried, and been unsuccessful.
(Johanna would be part of this club, except that once upon a time she saved him.)
--
Finnick says, "You did this to stop me," and his fingernails are digging into the bandages on her wrists, a little pressure shy of drawing blood.
"Don't flatter yourself,"she snaps, lips drawn back into a snarl.
In the Capitol this is when he would kiss her, pull up her skirt and slide his fingers against her, set a fire deep inside her; but this is not the Capitol and Annie is only a few floors away.
"I could have saved them,"he says, instead. He sounds like he is about to fall apart.
"I could have, if I hadn't drowned." She shrugs, careless even though her heart is beating too fast. "We'll never know now, will we?" She is one bad decision from saying, you're just a collection of death wishes, Finnick Odair, but her therapist keeps telling her to restrain herself so she does.
"Johanna," he breathes, as though his words have weight, as though he was crowned anything other than a bloody murderer.
"Finnick," she says, and sets her mouth. "You’re going to have a kid. Save it."
His flinch is barely perceptible but it rockets through the bones of her arms, like an earthquake, like a tidal wave.
--
Katniss says, "Prim is dead." Her eyes are flat and she looks like she's going to be sick. Her skin is a latticework of scorched red earth.
Johanna doesn't know what to say; she was never first contact for any of the new victors because she's shit at this. She just sits there and feels like a lump. She never knew Primrose Everdeen, met her once or twice and she was the kind of innocuous pretty little girl that everyone loves, sweet like a little baby lamb. "Do you want some water?" she asks. "They say you can have ice chips."
Katniss laughs and it is the harshest, rawest sound Johanna has heard since Annie won her game. "Gale built the bombs, Johanna."
"Oh," Johanna says. She has never had a friend, not really, not like this. "Oh, Katniss."
--
Finnick blames her and that--
That is all right, as long as he does not blame Annie. That is all right, as long as he is alive.
Johanna has only ever been selfless about one person (two people, if you divide them, but FinnickandAnnie is the truest thing she has ever known), about one love story. There are so many horrible things that are her fault. This is her one good act.
Finnick says, Johanna, I—
and she says, I was never under any illusions. She does not add, I am glad that you love her best.
--
She sits alone in the canteen, drinking Haymitch's awful liquor out of a clear plastic cup. Finnick is not talking to her but that is all right because he is talking to Annie and they are a family, finally, and that is what this whole war was for.
Gale Hawthorne slides his tray down, next to her. It has what passes for food on it, a grey mess the smell of which is enough to make Johanna want to vomit. He’s beautiful, she notices idly, without heat; even tired and sad he has excellent bone structure and dark, sweeping eyelashes. "Hey," he says.
"Hi, handsome," she says, all reflex, no spark. "Drink?"
"No," he says, "no thanks, Johanna." The fork in his fingers dangles, poised and delicate, over the pile of mush on his plate.
She knows what he is going to ask but she is not a kind person, she is not going to pre-empt the question. She takes a sip and does not make a face at the taste. It is vile but she would not trade it for the light gorgeous flavours of Capitol liquor, the kind that makes you easily, breathlessly lost. She doesn't trust things you don't feel.
"I-- you went to see Katniss today."
"I did." Her fingernails are bitten down to the quick. Her clothes smell like the pine sachet Katniss made her when she was a stronger, whole person.
"How was she?" He sounds-- there is desperation hiding behind the coolness of his voice and she cannot help thinking of Finnick asking about Annie, after.
She relents. "She’s better than she was." She does not say, no thanks to you killing her sister. "She doesn't want to see you."
"No," Gale says, and it is like Finnick, like Finnick when he thought Annie was dead, like nothing in the world would ever mean anything ever again. "I know. Of course she doesn't."
"You had to do it," Johanna says, quietly. Somehow she is fond of him, beyond having always thought he was beautiful. There is something about his desperation that makes her think of her own blood running across the hospital floor, waiting for Finnick to come and find her. "You had to do it because the war needed to be over."
"I know that, too," he says, and he's breathless, exhausted. "I just-- I wish things would be better."
"Welcome to the real world, kid," she says, overly condescending, knowing it. "Just have a drink."
His fingers around her cup are clean, even under their fingernails, and pink. She thinks he has probably been washing his hands every moment he gets.
(She remembers, she got out and spent three hours under a scalding shower until her mentor had to pull her away, Johanna you can't stand up anymore.)
--
Peeta says, "I don't know what to do."
Johanna thinks, how the fuck should I know? She says, "Just love her. You can't fix her but you-- you can do that much."
(This is what they did, in the Capitol, that little mess of victors, survivors, family.)
He looks at her for a moment, eyes slate-grey in this light though she knows that the depth of them, the truth of them is bright blue. (Everything lies, Johanna Mason. Don't believe anything, anyone.) "Did anyone fix you?"
She laughs, and it's a ruined, hollow sound. "Nobody dared try, Peeta bread."
--
The new President tries to hold another Games. Finnick, Annie and Peeta vote no; Katniss and Haymitch exchange a look and vote yes. Enobaria and Johanna don't have to think and Johanna doesn't care about the disappointed look in Finnick's eyes, not at all.
Katniss shoots Coin dead in the heart and then retires to what used to be District Twelve, a broken wreck of what she once was. It is selfish but Johanna cannot bring herself to follow, like Peeta and Haymitch; she cannot bear the look on Katniss' face, the way she moves, too slow, too sad. She cannot flee to Four like Annie and Finn, cannot pour her whole life into the tiny thing that is growing larger and larger in Annie's belly (and isn't that right there the plot of some Capitol massacre, something awful and messy and violent).
She would rather, she thinks, pretend to be functional now that she can.
She moves to Two. There is a government, now; she can pretend, attempt to be useful.
In Seven their industry is logging, their primary material is wood. She understands how to build things.
Now that the girl on fire has scorched the earth, this is what they need.
--
They put her in government housing, a neat row of apartments. She lives across the hall from Gale Hawthorne, of course, of course.
It is so convenient she almost suspects Haymitch's involvement, Haymitch the stupid fuck who has only ever wanted good things for her, like she of all people deserves them.
(Haymitch, the only other victor with absolutely nothing to lose.)
Gale Hawthorne says, "I think I owe you a drink."
This is a phrase she will never respond to with no thank you. (Fucked up life lessons the Capitol taught you, #431.)
They sit in his tiny bedroom, knees touching on his clean, spare bedspread, toasting each other. He is the one who leans in, cautious, gentle, surprisingly sweet.
She almost cries. She has never known what to do with sweet. Sweet is for other girls, for Annies and Katnisses, girls who did not laugh as they ripped people apart.
He says, "Johanna?" and his voice is soft, careful, delicate.
She realizes she is trembling, realizes that the last person who touched her like this was Finnick Odair in their own fucked up version of aftercare and that's-- that's fucked. "It’s been a while," she sighs, in lieu of anything that means something, and slips her fingers through the waistband of his pants.
--
She doesn't mean it to be anything. She just likes him and he just likes her and more than that they are damaged in similar places and that's-- that's good, that's safe, that means-- that means she isn't going to fuck this up. That means he will understand.
Obviously this is not what is actually going to happen, but there is a chance, and that means she can pretend.
If she doesn't stay the night, whatever. It is not like he is tripping over his own feet to stay with her, either.
But--
She is not ruling out that eventuality, the idea of waking in his arms to the sunlight brushing through his obscenely large, wide window.
And that is-- a new turn of events.
--