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Johanna Mason isn’t the sort to say I love you . Mostly because everyone she used to say it to is now six foot under.
That tends to stick in the back of your brain. Festering, more like. A constant, rotting reminder that everyone you used to love is dead, and you’re the only one who’s left. Most of the time, it feels more like a punishment rather than mercy — suffering for her sins , Jo’s mother would say to her, midwife’s fingers clenched unwaveringly around her crucifix. But Jo hasn’t spoken to her folks in so many months that she’s genuinely unsure whether they survived the war.
Knowing the Capitol and what they do to the families of Victors — even the ones that saw what you were after the arena, a fractured monster in the skin of a traumatised teenager, and ran away from you — it’s unlikely.
She said the words once upon a time, of course. Said it back to Ma and Pop. Never to her siblings — the Mason brood were always a funny lot, Jo being the oddest out of them all, but her sisters had never liked her enough to ever say it to her, and her brothers were all too emotionally constipated to ever admit it aloud. She said it to Briar, too, before she left, and then to Mercy, before the Capitol killed her. After Mercy, Jo didn’t say it anymore, except to Finn, because he was her best friend and the only person in the world who understood so perfectly what exactly the Capitol had done to her and made her do — and, well, now he’s gone too.
It’s been almost two years since she followed Katniss Everdeen out into the woods beyond District Twelve to be fucking woodland hunter-gather farmer fairies — or whatever the hell it is they do these days together — and Jo still hasn’t brought herself to say the words to her.
It doesn’t help that despite the fact they literally live together — not just that, but share the same bed, and on occasion kiss each other senseless against some tree — they still haven’t quite worked out what they mean to each other. They’ve gone as far as figuring out that they fit together , two distinctly broken shards of glass that coincidentally lock in just the right way. All of Twelve is used to them as a pair by this point. Katniss Everdeen and Johanna Mason. Johanna Mason and Katniss Everdeen. The Mockingjay and the Rebel Tribute. The Capitol Whore and the Town Mad Girl.
And sure, Jo knows she loves Katniss. Deep down, where even she can’t see or access, because vulnerability has never gotten Jo anywhere ideal. She can never describe it as poetically as Peeta fucking Mellark ever did — but nonetheless, the love is there , burning and enduring and resolute. Adores her, really, as disgusting as an admission that is for her to make. Adores how calm, how steadfast she is, how observant , steely grey eyes never missing a bloody thing. Adores her flat, sardonic humour, how fucking persistent she is. Adores how she gets on Jo’s nerves in just the right way, riles her up in such a manner that nobody else ever can. Adores what her skin looks like in the bronzed afternoon sun, the movement of her calloused, scarred hands, what her laugh sounds like in the early morning, indulgent and heavy with lingering sleep.
So maybe they are lovers. But they’re also friends, in the same way Jo was with Finn — the only difference is that there’s no looming, ever-constant presence of the Capitol over them, and that Finn never inspired Jo with the urge to make out with him in the woods for all hours of the day.
It’s a Sunday, which means waking up at sparrows to make the trek back to Twelve, Moose dancing around their ankles and occasionally diving off after some squirrel or bunny. Trading in the town square markets in the morning, weekly lunch with Haymitch, and then errands and other odds and ends in the afternoon. It’s probably the most domestic Jo can ever stomach being.
It’s the last few weeks of winter. It should be spring really, but this year the colder months have clung onto the woods longer than they should have. Most of Katniss’ usual game is either still in hibernation or having migrated elsewhere, and the forest vegetation is still dead from weeks of being buried under snow, so she doesn’t have many wares to offer without digging into their own food supplies. Instead, Johanna’s arranged to go and cut some firewood for a few families — an easy way to help keep ends meet, really.
“You should take Moose,” Katniss tells Jo when they’re about to part ways outside the District fence. “I’ll be ducking into shops and such, getting the afternoon errands over and done with. He can find a stick or something to gnaw on.”
“Since when are you the boss of me?”
Katniss throws an acorn at Jo, and it bounces off the head of her recently sharpened axe, rearing over the back of her shoulder. “Shut up and go pull your own weight, Johanna.”
“Touchy,” Jo comments, grinning to herself, before whistling for Moose and letting herself through the fence back into the district.
The place really has been cleaned up in the last two years. Johanna still recalls Twelve from her Victory Tour, over five years ago now; a sooty, miserable village, mostly poverty-stricken slums overwhelming the laughable huddle of merchants’ shopfronts, every road somehow doubling back to the coal mines. It’s different now that Twelve is for medicine rather than coal. There’s the massive hospital complex, as well as the various pharmacies and laboratories spread around it, and talk of building a university, Haymitch said at last week’s Sunday lunch. The townspeople are not divided into Seam and merchant, but rather a freshly reconstructed village with lots of trees and little kids playing in the wide streets. It’s nice, enough so that Katniss in particular doesn’t dread coming back here, unless she intends on visiting Peeta’s grave.
Johanna and Moose make their way into the village part of the district, easily navigating the leafy streets for the addresses belonging to the families that have paid her to come chop their wood. He’s on his lead now, and Johanna is sure to keep him firmly roped to the side with a nice stick as she sets to work on the firewood awaiting her. It’s easy work , Johanna thinks to herself as she takes out her axe, at least for somebody who was already felling trees at the age of eight .
Fuck, I was only eight .
She manages to drop by four of the seven families she promised work for, by the time the clock sits at quarter to noon and Johanna has to leg it across the district to Haymitch’s. Good thing running around after Katniss has kept her in good shape — only last week, Johanna had to drag a full-grown doe back to their cottage, a forty-minute trek away.
“You need more friends, old man,” she announces as she enters Haymitch’s house through the back door, Moose ducking in after her. Twelve’s former mentor blinks wearily at her as he straightens from his oven, baking dish cradled in his hands. They’re eating one of his geese today, apparently, surrounded by a halo of golden potatoes and rosemary twigs.
“That’s a little hypocritical, don’t y’think?”
Johanna jabs her chin at the baking dish. “What did this one do to offend you? You’ve got a whole yard full of ‘em.”
“Really? I never realised.” Haymitch’s voice flattens sardonically.
“Still haven’t answered my question.”
“This bastard? Temperamental old blighter. Should’a asked Katniss to put an arrow through his eye months ago.” Haymitch sets down the dish on a cooling rack situated in the middle of his dining table, bending to give Moose a greeting ruffle of his ears and slip him some roast goose. “Where is she, anyway?”
“She hit her head on a log and ran away into the woods thinking she was a fucking lady beetle.” Johanna retorts, rising to help set the table.
“Did she? Somebody should tell those wretched Capitol newsies. Maybe that’ll finally shut them up.” Haymitch arranges the cutlery, surprisingly elegant. He’s probably spent one too many years in the presence of fussy old Effie Trinket, Johanna thinks to herself. “Don’t tell me I’ve roasted a whole bird for her to not show up.”
“She’ll be here any minute, probably crawl through your buggering sitting room window or something,” Johanna shrugs, digging around in Haymitch’s extensively stocked alcohol cabinet. She’s genuinely surprised he hasn’t yet converted one of the many rooms in his big ridiculous manor house into a bar. Maybe it’s the door across from his bedroom. These days, Haymitch Abernathy isn’t exactly ‘full of surprises’.
Katniss arrives soon enough — vaulting through the open window of Haymitch’s kitchen and not the sitting room, and Johanna is quietly astounded by how she can reach a window almost six foot in the air without the assistance of a ladder. Or a nearby tree.
“Hello, hello,” Katniss breathes. Jo frowns almost as soon as she properly claps eyes on her. It doesn’t take an idiot to see that Katniss is distinctly unsettled about something — her hands are jittery and her eyes are blown wide. There’s something almost manic about her.
Not that Jo’s never seen Katniss in one of her manic states before. She was the Mockingjay, after all, and a tribute and then a victor before that. You didn’t survive all of that without being a little fucked up. She’s better than she used to, living in the woods away from everyone, but the nightmares are still her constant friend and the ghosts reside in the back of her mind as much as ever.
Johanna rises to her feet as Moose trots up to her, tail swinging apprehensively. “What happened?” she demands immediately, her words clipped and protective.
Katniss waves her off as she trudges across Haymitch’s kitchen to collapse in one of the wooden chairs. “Nothing to worry about,” she says, nervous fingers fiddling with her hair-tie and shaking out her braid until her hair spills loose around her shoulders. It’s shorter than it used to be, thanks to a mishap with a snare a few weeks ago.
Haymitch scoffs derisively. “Kid, if you think you can lie through your teeth to me —“
“It’s nothing to worry about ,” Katniss repeats, teeth gritted. “Haymitch — let’s just eat, you’ve made us such a nice meal —“
Reluctantly they all settle down around the table and Haymitch dishes out portions of the meal.
Johanna stabs at her serving of goose with her fork. “What errands did you run?”
“For goodness’ sake, Johanna,” Katniss grouses. “If you’re so insistent —“ She reaches for her hunting rucksack and digs through it, fishing out a sheath of paper. She slaps it down on the tabletop and both Jo and Haymitch lean forward to read the words printed there.
Johanna has barely read the first two lines before the word ‘motherfucker’ is hissing out between her teeth. You are cordially invited to celebrate the union of Gale Hawthorne and Lorelei Terran …
“Who does he think he is?” Haymitch scowls at the offending scrap of paper. “Bastard.”
Johanna catches his furious gaze. “Where d’you keep the matchbox around here, Haymitch?”
“Both of you can stop,” Katniss intervenes. Her fingers shake as she shoves the invitation back into her rucksack. “He sent a note, as well. He wants me to be in the bridal party and everything. Telling me that he invited my mother as well. I don’t even know if he knows she disowned me.”
“We should go,” Jo suggests mildly, “purely so I can use him for axe practise. He’ll be an easy enough target, standing up on the altar.”
“Burn it all,” Haymitch repeats. “He should know better, sending that bullshit to the Girl on Fire.”
“Are you telling me you wouldn’t enjoy watching me sticking an axe in that braindead man-baby?”
“I already told you both, it doesn’t even matter,” Katniss snaps. “I’m not going anyway. It’s too soon after — after what happened to Prim.”
The rest of the meal passes in a curt, uneasy truce. Johanna recounts lugging the downed doe through the woods for Katniss, Katniss tells Haymitch about how Buttercup accidentally chased a mouse into the half-frozen lake and they had to baby him for hours on end in front of the fireplace, and Haymitch recalls an entertaining anecdote involving a tedious phone call with Plutarch Heavensbee, his neighbour knocking on his back door for a bit of flour to spare, and his upstairs toilet overflowing, simultaneously all at once.
“You should finish chopping firewood for those families,” Katniss tells Jo as they bid Haymitch farewell and begin the trek down the winding path back to the fence. Moose is frolicking ahead, sniffing for bunnies probably. On some Sundays they’ll visit Peeta’s grave and leave fresh flowers there, but not today. Not after Gale’s letter.
“Sod off, Everdeen,” Johanna tells her. She reaches for Katniss’ hand, lacing their fingers together easily. Katniss gives her a squeeze. “You’re clearly in a funk, and I’m going to follow you around like goddamn skunk spray.”
Katniss sends her a look, an almost smile. “A skunk would smell better than you ever do.”
“I bathe more regularly than you do!”
“Falling into streams because you were running after Moose don’t count.”
They exchange easy banter right up to the fence and let themselves through into the woods. It’s early afternoon now, a warm breeze shifting through the trees to disturb the lingering chill. The snow has melted for weeks now, but the morning frosts still drench half the day in a muddy, clammy misery. At some point they lapse into comfortable silence, which is only broken up when they pass the twisting old oak tree that Johanna knows once marked the beginning of Katniss and Gale’s old snare line, back when they were kids. Before the Games. Before everything.
“Gale’s letter …” Katniss begins, then trails off apprehensively.
Johanna shoots her a careful look. “What about it?”
She swallows, visibly. “He said he still loved me.”
Jo feels a muscle in her jaw tense. “That’s a bit of a dick move, especially considering it came with a very clear indication that he’s marrying some other poor girl.”
Katniss bites the inside of her cheek. “I want to think he meant it platonically. He was my best friend after all. We literally made a pact to feed each other’s families if the other one died.” She looks away from Jo as she utters, “Not many people have ever said it to me.”
Johanna isn’t stupid enough to pretend she’s exempt from that comment.
“Well,” she starts, trying to keep her voice light. “Bear in mind this was also the guy who tried to get into your pants multiple times when you should have been on antidepressants and definitely took emotional advantage of you, once or twice. Just a penny for your thoughts.”
Katniss releases an irritated sound at the back of her throat, quickening her pace. “That wasn’t what I wanted to talk about with you, Johanna.”
“Then what was it?” Johanna demands. She knows better than to take the bait that’s dancing in front of her, but — well, damn her. She didn’t spend ten years cultivating her national reputation to fold as easily as this .
Katniss pauses, pivoting to face Johanna directly. The expression on her face is fierce, unyielding, in such a way that Johanna hasn’t really seen since she was dancing around shelled Capitol streets in her ridiculous black Mockingjay costume.
“Because how is it that Gale can tell me that he loves me, even after what he did to Prim and that I haven’t seen him in almost three years — and yet you can’t?!”
Despite having been anticipating this very response, Johanna opens and closes her mouth in shock, before she remembers her composure. “Are you shitting me right now?”
“We live together, Johanna!” Katniss throws up her hands. “In the woods! In a damned cottage! We share a bed and we have a dog together! You literally called me ‘sweetheart’ last night, but you can’t tell me that you love me?”
“You already know my fucking sob story, Katniss!” Johanna shoots back. “Every last filthy detail, and you still can’t put two and two together to figure out why?”
“I want you to tell me why to my face!”
Bloody buggering hell. She wants a cigarette right now, but Katniss has the lighter and she’s sure as shit not handing it over. “Because everyone I said it to is fucking dead , and I don’t want you to join that list of names, all right?” She clears her throat before she can get all emotional or something equally stupid and stomps off into the woods, vaguely in the direction of the cottage.
Katniss follows her, unsurprisingly. Johanna can actually hear her footfalls, which means she’s really pissed off. “You really think I’m going to kick the bucket now after everything else that I’ve been through?”
“I don’t know,” Johanna shoots back. “People thought the same bloody thing about Peeta about three years ago!”
She regrets the words as soon as they come out of her mouth. She doesn’t even have to turn around to know that Katniss has gone very still, and she can perfectly picture the look on her face. For a long moment, neither of them speak. Johanna is expecting Katniss to start yelling at her. Instead her voice is low and flat, the same tone she had when she was talking about Gale earlier in Haymitch’s kitchen. “If that’s how you really feel about the matter, then you can go sleep on Haymitch’s couch.”
“Fine,” Johanna bites back, spinning on her heel. She tries not to look at Katniss as she stalks back in the direction they’d just walked from. Now she really wants a cigarette. “So you’re calling it quits on us?”
She makes the mistake of glancing over at Katniss to see the sad look on her face. “I don’t think we ever formally defined what ‘us’ meant in the first place, Johanna.”
Johanna’s immediate instinct is to march up to the district train station and buy a ticket for the next train to District Seven. It doesn’t leave until the next morning, blast it, so she really does have to go and crash on Haymitch’s couch now. The attendant selling Johanna her ticket stares at her through the window, wide-eyed and shameless. “Aren’t you —“
“Does it matter?” Johanna half snarls at the kid.
“I thought that you and —“
“It’s none of your business. Keep the bloody change.”
She stalks out of the station and in the direction of the Victor’s Village. She still has those families to chop firewood for, Johanna remembers guiltily, and changes course towards the main town. At the very least, she can get some of her anger out by throwing her axe around.
Halfway through the waiting stack at the second family of the afternoon, Johanna realises how much she’d like to tell Finnick about all of this horseshit. And how much she misses him. He’d piss himself laughing and remind her just how much she used to hate Katniss Everdeen, the stupid Girl on Fire. Too bad he’s been dead and buried for the better half of three years. There’s a cavity within her that’s always going to be aching for Finn, but being with Katniss for all of those months … well, it didn’t exactly replace it, or fill it. But it comfortably, helpfully reduced how much that cavity hurts.
Maybe she should have bought a bloody train ticket for District Four instead. Gone and visited Annie and little Calian instead. She tries to imagine herself doing all the things Finn used to tell her about, to help settle her rioting thoughts when she was having a panic attack — sunbaking on white sand, spearing fish and crabs in the shallow water of rock pools, shucking oysters with her legs dangling over a coast-buffeted pier — and laughs so loud she almost opens her hand with her own axe, like an idiot.
But she doesn’t do that. She tries not to think about Katniss too much, sucks up her pride and trots back across the district to Haymitch’s. He opens the back door, his brows quirked judgmentally.
“Don’t give me that look,” Johanna grunts as she kicks the mud off her boots.
The bastard has the nerve to smirk at her. “Somebody’s in the doghouse.”
“Not quite. Heading back to Seven in the morning.”
His face falls. “What’d you do?”
“I dunno, apparently I’m not romantic enough.” Johanna slips past him into the house, making a beeline for his liquor cabinet. “She wasn’t happy that I’ve never told her that I love her.”
“That would do it,” Haymitch shuts the door and comes in after her.
“Like you’re in a position to advise me on my love life, old man,” Jo snaps at him. “Shouldn’t have bloody brought up Peeta fucking Mellark.”
Haymitch’s eyebrows are at his greying hairline now. “Perhaps not your best move.”
“You think? She kicked me out, Haymitch. Two years , we were living together.” Johanna shakes her head and clenches her fingers around the neck of a bottle of strong whiskey. “I never told her because I thought it would make me lose her, and it ended up like that anyway.”
District Seven hasn’t changed all that much, in the two years since Johanna packed her bags and caught the train back out to Twelve. The lumberjack families’ village has expanded a bit, the houses and streets a bit more cleaned up than what she remembered, and there’s multiple unfamiliar shop fronts in the town square, bunting strung across the expanse of lawn and footpaths. People still recognise her, but now they smile and try to make conversation rather than taking a wide berth. Johanna finds herself constantly short-tempered as a result of it. At the very least, the horizon is still fringed with trees, no matter what direction you look.
She rents two rooms above one of the new shopfronts in the town square, mostly because there’s nowhere else to go. It’s a bar that probably thinks a little too highly of itself than what it really should, but the bartenders soon get to know her and are happy to have a few pints of ale with her.
Apart from that, Jo’s on her own. None of the old victors from Seven who survived the war were particularly inclined to hang around, so now the Victor’s Village is just another extension of the merchant suburb. She hasn’t spoken to her family in years — maybe her parents are dead, maybe she’s got nieces and nephews she doesn’t know about. But Jo’s gone so long without her blood family, she’s forgotten what it’s like to have them in her life. To want them in her life.
Johanna tries to fall back into the same routine she’d established with Katniss, but of course it’s so completely different it almost feels like there’s no fucking point. She wakes up late and trots down to the new gym a few streets over, spends the afternoon chucking axes at tree trunks and bellowing shanties along with the other lumberjacks working, then heads off to the bar for a few pints before bed. People get used to her eventually, but Jo can’t get used to them. For the last two years or so of her life, she’s been in her own happy little orbit with Katniss Everdeen, and now — now that’s gone, she’s gone.
She does a very bad job at telling herself she’s not completely fucking heartbroken over the matter.
The trees make her miss Katniss, Jo realises, just as much as Seven makes her realise all over again just how alone in the world she is. She’d rather stick the business end of her axe into her noggin rather than ever live in the Capitol again, and the primary districts are still too Capitolite to swallow. Three and Five are smoggy, grey metropolises that are just too damn depressing to look at, and if she went to Four, well, she’d never really be able to ever leave behind thoughts of Finn. Six, Eight and Ten are about as charming as the bloody, stiffened rodents Buttercup used to leave on the floor of the cottage doorstep. She doesn’t have any interest in ever relocating to Eleven, Thirteen hates her as much as she does for them, and Twelve — well, Twelve is bloody off limits now.
The days meld into weeks, and before Jo has really registered it, she’s been moping around in Seven for just shy of a month when somebody comes knocking on her door.
“I’m going to Gale’s wedding,” Katniss Everdeen tells her, wearing that expression of hers that she’s not going to accept ‘no’ as an answer. “Pack something nice. You’re going to be my plus one.”
Johanna only just remembers to catch the lit cigarette when it falls from her slack jaw. She’s got an arm propped against her doorframe, and she’s still wearing her work rags. Her flannel is unbuttoned down to her navel, exposing her sports bra and sweaty planes of muscle, and feels a little vindictive when Katniss’ gaze visibly catches on her torso. “What, no hello, how are you going ? You’ve really outdone yourself, Katniss.”
Katniss meets her eyes, heat colouring her olive cheeks. She doesn’t look great, Jo notices, brow pinching with concern. Her complexion is more sallow, her features more strained, and there’s purple smudges under her eyes. She sets her jaw stubbornly. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
Johanna appraises her for a long moment. “I suppose you are.” She pushes off her doorframe with a swagger. “What for, exactly?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Katniss meets her gaze fiercely. “For you.”
“For me,” Johanna parrots, slowly. “Gee, Everdeen. Thought you hated my guts.”
“Maybe everyone else, but not you.” She twists her hands together, anxiously. “And — about what I said back in Twelve. You don’t have to say it if you’re not ready yet, but — I didn’t shoot that arrow at Coin for no reason.”
Jo folds her arms. “Yeah? And why’s that?”
“Aside from the obvious?” Katniss shrugs. “I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life living under tyranny. But it feels like that’s how you still seem to think about it.”
Johanna dwells on her words. Recalls how it always feels like she’s running away from something, whether it’s the Capitol or Thirteen or all the faces that sit at the back of her mind like a constant condemnation. Recalls how the only time it doesn’t feel like that is when she’s with Katniss.
“Is it all right if I don’t say it now? But some day?”
“ ‘Some day’ is better than nothing. We’ve got all the time in the world, don’t we?” Now Katniss reaches for her hand, lacing their fingers together tentatively. “Now, are you still going to throw your axe at Gale during the ceremony, or do you think you can hold off from that?”
“For you, Everdeen? I’ll do whatever you want.”