Johanna is a strategist, had been since the moment she stepped onto the platform on Reaping Day, and decided that holding back her fear was not the best method of attack. But she's no Katniss nor Finnick nor Haymitch; the multi-hued citizens in the Capitol don't spin a romantic, tragic tale about her life and her victory, don't sit and wait for her appearance on their screens to see if she will awe or fall. They revile her instead, this girl that didn't fit their image of a winning tribute, that tricked her kills, the Gamemakers, and most of all them. (And when you're betting on the Careers, planning on using that payout to upgrade to the latest trend that anyone who is anyone must have, the rise and triumph of the underdog is nothing less than a personal offense.)

Johanna played her role in the Quarter Quell too, dragging the bodies of Wiress and Beetee along the beach because they were the ones with the technical expertise, and she was the one with the strength and who happened to be handy with an ax. She knows her alliance didn't elaborate much beyond "protect and defend and attempt to leave the arena of your own volition," though she's fully aware that the last is anything but a given. (It wasn't shown on camera because it didn't fit her narrative, but she had collapsed when she heard the cannons boom for Blight and Mags and Chaff and Seeder and Woof and Cecelia too.)

If Johanna had been all about the big picture, if she had thought simply of the end and dismissed what she lost because of the means, she might have given up in the prison - she'd already done her duty, after all, if what the guards said about the Mockingjay tucked away in 13 was true - but Johanna was never saintly. She was spiteful and angry and petty and jealous and somewhat noble, and for that reason she kept her promise to fight through the water and the shocks and the voices that told her it might just be easier to imagine she was floating in District 4, to slip under the waves and simply dream. (She's half aware it's the drugs speaking, but sometimes even she forgets to breathe.)

Finnick, after all, had told her that he'd be waiting, that he'd let her build that sailboat from nothing but nails and wood that she had boasted of for days on end. (It had been a drunken bet years ago, but he had never let her forget it.) And Johanna, well, Johanna didn't think it'd be fair to her friend to have him lose her and Cresta in one go, and be stuck with uptight Everdeen instead. So while Peeta screams for Katniss, and Annie murmurs about her prince and the sea, she imagines wiping that smug grin off Finnick's face when he sees that her boat does not capsize, but glides.

When she wakes up in the medical ward, she feels heavy and numb. "Hey," she says.

"Hey." His voice is hoarse and they don't say much, not when Annie is sleeping on the other side of the gaudy curtain. (She's no Stylist, but it's obvious it's been refurbished from the obnoxiously sumptuous dress that had been ubiquitous just two seasons ago, and she wonders whether the person that they seized it from is alive or dead.)

"In case you haven't noticed, I made it out nearly intact, so you can take down that shrine you were making in the canteen or wherever. Do people say that here? 'Canteen?'"

He stays silent and that's when she notices the messy tangle of rope resting in his lap. She sighs. "Finnick, for all that talk about you being good with your hands, that's some shitty knotwork."

It's the last time she hears him laugh openly and honestly and just for her, because after that, she gives him back to Annie.

(Johanna was the before and Annie was the now and ever after, and the strategist in her had long acknowledged defeat on that front.)