"Why did you leave?" Katniss asks again once they have surfaced on the roof. It wasn't cold but a chill passed over her and Johanna shivered, she crossed her arms across her chest, wrapping a hand around each one. She slumped against the wall of the building, one leg kicked out under her in support and the other finding hold to steady her against it, she found herself unprepared for this conversation. She fixed her eyes on Katniss, it looked like the girl was doing everything in her power not to make eye contact with her. The brown-eyed girl suppressed a sigh, "Well, princess, it seems my problem with commitment has branched out to take a toll on conversation as well. My therapist will be almost as disappointed as you are."

She could practically taste the other woman's frustration. (Johanna had conquered the art of not giving a straight answer to anyone as soon as she embarked on her Victory Tour.)

Katniss leaned against the wall beside the older girl, Johanna watched out of the corner of her eye as the girl cupped her face in her hands, exhaled and produced a certain phrase into her hands that sounded a lot like "Forget it," the latch hitched into the door jamb and she was gone.

Johanna's head was tilted to a slight angle, as if yearning to see around the corner, like her eyes could pull that door open and follow the younger woman down the stairwell, her hair fell in her face, obstructing her view from anything.

Katniss Everdeen had just pulled a Johanna Mason on Johanna Mason herself.

Johanna woke the next morning with an aching back, she'd fallen asleep in an armchair tucked in the corner of her designated bedroom. (She hated sleeping in beds. They were too empty.) Sitting up, she dug the heels of her palms into the hollows of her eyes, and let out a grunt of displeasure, Johanna wasn't a morning person. She combed her hair into a loose ponytail with her fingers. She would have to cut it before she went into the arena, it was getting to be a nuisance.

The previous night and the conversation with her new acquaintance came into her mind somewhere between changing into her Capitol-issued training clothes and brewing coffee. She considered it briefly, but decided she needed to focus on the present, but much to her distaste the conversation gnawed at her mind, persisting despite her attempts at drowning it out.

She ground her teeth together and distributed coffee into two mugs, she snatched a couple packs of sugar out of the caddy, pocketing one and dumping the other into one of the mugs. Light slanted in through the up-angled blinds sheltering the window, illuminating dust pieces that lofted in the air, she let her mind wander to the previous night.

She wouldn't think of the conversation as a confrontation by any means. No insults were thrown around, no physical harm was inflicted, it was just surprising to her. She'd gotten walked out on twice in one day and a common denominator was present in both of those.

Blight interrupted her thoughts, hooking his fingers through the handle of the sweetened mug, she watched steam plume off of the surface and remembered her own coffee, uncomfortably hot in her hands. "Good morning," he murmured groggily.

"Rough night?" she asked. The Victor just sipped his coffee in response. Johanna didn't ask any more questions.

"Alright kids let's go," Clifford's voice broke the silent tension, he accentuated the word go enthusiastically. (Someone had certainly gotten some pep in his step.) Blight discarded his coffee mug on a table, Johanna took a couple sips of her before following suit.

She pushed past her district mates and led the trio out the door to the elevator, pressing the down button before waiting impatiently for the doors to part. She shifted her weight from foot to foot. (Patience wasn't her strongest virtue.)

When the doors finally opened, behold the District 12 crew.

Honestly, at this point Johanna didn't know why she hadn't seen it coming.

Blight gave her a small shove of encouragement and she stepped through the doors, smiling acutely at Haymitch, who returned the gesture with a small nod, Peeta mimicked. The other District 12 Victor pretended not to notice her, Johanna pretended not to notice her pretending not to notice her.

(Maybe it was a pride thing. Or maybe she wished she didn't.)

The elevator descended a few floors before opening, the screen above the bottom panel read "4". Finnick entered, escorting Maggs. The old woman smiled at her, Johanna smiled back. Finnick scowled at her, then proceeded to avoid eye contact for the rest of the descent.

Great. Two people who were pissed at Johanna in one confined space.

She was really starting to hate this God damned elevator.

Johanna participated in training like she spent most of her free time, sober and angry.

She could feel Katniss' gaze on her a couple times, burning holes straight through her skin when her back was turned. She tried to talk to Finnick, figuring he had no reason to stay mad at her, but most of her attempts were to no avail, even when she bribed him with the sugar packet she had stolen earlier. He'd pretended to be invested in knot tying with faux razor focus. Johanna called bullshit, she knew he could tie those in his sleep, but she left him alone regardless.

She found herself lazily swinging a light-weighted axe around, going through motions her muscles had memorized before she knew how to tie her boots and letting her mind wander to her first Games, her first training session. She remembered sitting in a corner and crying until her tears ran dry and her throat was tender from choking back sobs, and the boy selected from 7 finding her.

His name was Rowan.

She let herself think about him for the first time in a long time, all the things she had gathered about the boy and she began to list them in her head.

One. He had a dog, a mongrel mutt named Hale. Hale wasn't Rowan's dog per say, he was a stray. (The boy's parents wouldn't let him keep the dog, they couldn't afford another mouth to feed.) The boy would sneak out with bread crusts or spoiled leftovers when his parents were working and find his dog, it was risky, because both of those things were supposed to be unheard of, you ate everything you were given, you had none to spare, but Rowan somehow found a way around that. When Johanna came back from Victory Tour, she'd tried to find Hale. (She hadn't gotten very far, she'd broken down in an alley way, sobbing until a merchant found her.)

Two. He shared the same name as Johanna's brother. It was a fairly popular name, District 7 parents jumped at any opportunity to name their kids after a tree, go figure. Rowan trees were beautiful, they blossomed pale flowers in the spring and crimson berries in autumn. They were called the "traveler's tree" and maybe that was appropriate because there were few trees in Seven that were not pine. They were said to help those venturing out on a journey away from home from getting lost, and maybe that was appropriate as well, because both boys acted as her guiding light at one point.

Three. She killed him. And it wasn't cruel or intentional but it didn't matter, she'd put him out of his misery but she'd still taken his life. He was one of her victims, according to the Capitol. It was some sort of sin in the Games to kill your District partner, not to the inhabitants of the Capitol, but to the people back home. Oh, how they hated her back home. (The Capitol hated her eventually as well.) She got the question a lot, why did she do it? Was it because she hated the boy? Had he tormented her? They had their theories, Johanna grew tired of trying to explain that it was an accident, or that he had asked her to put him out of his misery, but eventually she just let them make their wagers.

Four. She hadn't gone to his funeral. They wouldn't let her in, she wished they couldn't look her in the eye, that they had just ignored her. She didn't want their thanks for bringing honor to the District or whatever the hell the brainwashed mindset of "the people" was supposed to be, but anything would be better than the absolute malice they treated her with. Maybe it was a pride thing. Maybe it was a Johanna Mason thing. Victors were supposed to bring pride to their District, Johanna had instead brought silence and seclusion. (The Capitol tried to play the "mysterious" card for a while, but it lost its charm when she became bitter.)

Five. She sat next to his casket on the train ride home, no one could convince her to come out. She didn't eat or sleep unless it was in that car. She wished she could hold him again, that they could share their stories of home one last time, that they could have gone home together. And that she could introduce him to Roan. She wished they could have been friends before the Games. She wished she would have asked if the two had known each other, but she didn't even know Rowan's definite age.

(Johanna sure wished a lot of things for someone who didn't believe in wishing.)

Later in training her attention was dragged to a growing crowd around one of the training stations, curious, Johanna went to check it out, pushing and elbowing her way through the group with insincere apologies. She noticed one of the Victors was unaccounted for and when she finally saw what they were looking at, she knew why.

Johanna was some sort of oblivious idiot or something because she really should have been betting on this shit by now or something.

Katniss Everdeen, clad in sweat-soaked (The good kind of sweat though. The rolling off of skin sort of sweat.) standard-issued training gear stood knocking down holographic targets deftly. At least a dozen pairs of eyes on her and yet she still didn't waver under the pressure, if she even noticed them at all. Johanna was starting to really comprehend why everyone was so impressed with the District 12 Victor.

(Not that she would ever admit it.)

Johanna was sitting with her knees pulled into her chest on the benches of the waiting room. She didn't know why she had butterflies in her stomach, she had never been the nervous type. She exhaled a stream of warm air into the air, stealing a quick glance behind her at Katniss, they made eye contact briefly and pulled away in a sort of synchronization.

They called the female Morphling, she her neck whipped around in a paranoid frenzy, her eyes everywhere trying to find out who had said her name. Blight gently touched her arm and pointed to the loud speaker, then the door.

Morphlings made Johanna glad she only did hard drugs on special occasions. Blight made Johanna furious, he deserved better than to be put through the ringer again with this Capitol bullshit. She surveyed the room again, only half the tributes were left, none of which Johanna was particularly close with, but she knew they all deserved better than this.

She rested her head on Blight's shoulder, watching his knee bounce and listening to rhythm of his heel come down on the tile. She let herself think that it would all be over soon.

The called Blight's name, and then after a couple of minutes, (Johanna hadn't been counting, but it felt like a lifetime.) they called her own.

Johanna walked through the door and into the middle of the ring , offered a stiff middle finger and some choice words in the direction of the game makers, and walked right out the door without being dismissed, not even bothering to waste the time of seeing their reactions.

She found Blight waiting for her outside the exit and she falls into his arms and she promised herself she wouldn't cry after that night in the room but she found her face hot and there was an aching in her throat and a swelling sob finds its way out and then the tears come and Blight just holds her. (She thinks he's crying too but she's being a little selfish with her attention at the moment.)

She steadies her breathing after a little while (Probably a little longer than "little".) and she pulls away, alternating between clenching her jaw and biting on her lip to keep any more hiccups or gasps locked away inside of her. It was almost comical because she used to think she had perfected keeping things bottled with an air-tight cap inside of her, feelings, emotions, nothing surfaced but hate. (But then again, she used to think a lot of things.) Her district mate brought his hand up to her face and at first she flinched, but she relaxed when he swiped his thumb over her cheek to wipe away one of her tears.

"It's gonna be okay," he didn't even try to speak the words like he believed them. Johanna tried to find solace in them, but she couldn't.

He led her to the bathroom in the lobby, she splashed water on her face and then walked with him to the bar, where they were greeted by some familiar faces. It was mostly just previous Victors that hadn't been drafted for the Quarter Quell, some that she had known since her first years mentoring, some that she hadn't been well acquainted with, but she smiled regardless.

(Some things never change.)

Once she and Blight were well into their fifth or sixth drinks (Maybe it was seventh? Johanna had stopped counting after the first round.) Clifford had come to retrieve them despite Johanna's slurred resistance of, "Come on, Cliff, we're just a little buzzzzzed," Blight joined in with a few pleas of his own, but their protests were to no avail.

Clifford asked for the help of another Victor who Johanna didn't recognize, but at this point faces were a little blurry (Okay, a lot blurry.) Johanna snatched a shot glass off of the bar counter and downed it with an easy flick of her wrist just before Clifford started pulling her out of the lobby, barely giving her enough time to set the glass back on a table.

Shaking loose her hand of her mentor's grip, Johanna was sent reeling to the side and crashing into mirrored surface of the closed elevator doors, she stumbled back and surveyed her own reflection. "S-sorry, gorgeous, didn't see you there," she said with a wink, which, to her surprise, was returned by the other figure, at the same time. "Whoa," she murmured in amazement

"Johanna, that's you," muttered Clifford, his annoyance prevalent in his tone. They elevator doors opened a second later, Johanna gasped. Clifford lightly shoved her inside, and then followed, jabbing the "7" button on the panel. Johanna gasped in amazement as it lit up.

She pressed every other button in the panel until they were all glowing, Johanna stared, mesmerized and they stopped at every floor on the way up. Even intoxicated, she still found joy in the annoyed clench of Clifford's jaw and his muffled grumbling. Blight was speaking animatedly to the other mentor, who's lips were a thin, contoured line, but the gleam of amusement in his eyes betrayed that. She smiled a little bit, she didn't remember the last time she'd seen that. It cleared her head a little bit.

When they finally reached the Seventh floor, the mentor waved goodbye, Blight returned the wave enthusiastically before catching up with the brown-eyed girl an slinging an arm over her shoulder. "Can I tell you a secret?" he whispered. (It probably couldn't have been actually classified, but she knew that was his intention.) Johanna shook her head enthusiastically in response. "I'm scared," he said, and suddenly she wished she'd had a couple more drinks, she wished that she would get alcohol poisoning or something to make it stop because she was scared, too.

She fell asleep easily that night. Maybe it was because she was drunk, or maybe it was because she didn't care if she didn't wake up.

But she knew she would.

A/N - i hope you enjoyed this one. the last chapters have been pretty short so i'm trying to lengthen them. also i'm trying to update more frequently, weekly or bi-weekly, so please let me know what you think, you can send you feedback to pinebundles via tumblr or right here! thank you guys so much.