Chapter Text
APRIL
Late spring is easier here than the early part. The thunderstorms have finally cooled their jets, and I can go outside again. I try to be out in the sun as much as I can be. I’ve been caged forever; the universe finally decided it was my turn to be free.
The house is a mess, but it’s mine. I don’t get visitors. The Lovers and Haymitch went back to Twelve. I heard something about the squawky woman from the Capitol going with them, as well. Annie and her spawn went back to Four, and in a surprise twist, took Mrs. Everdeen with them. Everyone spread back out with the people best at healing them.
It is difficult to be alone here, if I think about it too hard. I have to remember that my solitude is safe, it is precious, and it is the price I pay for freedom. I think about going to visit, head out to Four or Twelve, but they could visit too. They haven’t. I could call, but they could call too. They haven’t.
I know I’m playing chicken with people who have no idea the game is on. It’s not fair to them or to me, but if they remembered I exist, they would try. I do my best to make peace with that.
I have my climbing trees, my wood shop, and my house to myself. I am surrounded on all sides by mountains and evergreen trees in a free Panem. I am alone. It gets harder not to care with each changing of the seasons.
I’m napping in one of my climbing trees out back when I hear footsteps. They’re quiet. Leather-soled, probably. Frowning, I swing down like I was born to live in the trees, and start to go around the left of the house. I stop and change direction, on the off chance it is who I think it is.
I have my ax if I need it. I don’t get visitors, I only get trespassers. Most people know better than to come all the way out to the Victor’s Village, knowing that I’m the only one here.
It knocks the wind out of me as I round the corner to see a startled Katniss on my doorstep.
She came through the gate, even though there’s no fence around it. And latched it behind her. I didn’t expect that from her. It might be superstition for most people, but up here we do what we can to keep the ghosts out. We have so many ghosts.
I watch her cry over my little memorial to the best healer in Thirteen. Twelve too, probably. Prim was a good kid. She snuck me in a deck of cards, and let me teach her a couple of games. For all that happened in Thirteen, Primrose Everdeen is the reason I wanted to live through it. Besides, the boxes give me a reason to work.
I let her cry for longer than either of us would normally be comfortable with before I say anything.
“I had to honor Prim,” I say, my ax over my shoulder. It comes out more sentimental than I want it to. I want to be happy to see her, I want to be angry, I want to cry. I put those feelings away so we can talk. “You could have called, Brainless. I was on the other side of the house out back, but I know you’re still weird about your ear.” She takes my filthy, callused hand in her gloved one. It’s softer than I expect it to be. I help her up, and the insanity of this whole vignette sinks in. I give her a wide berth. She looks afraid of me. I can understand why.
“Really though, you could have called.” I gesture for her to head inside. No sense in delaying the inevitable, and I’m thirsty. She’s in front of me, I’m back in our compartment. She chose me. For those sunless months, she chose me. I always knew she’d go back to Peeta. Where he was sustenance, I was distraction. But for just a handful of moments, she chose me. It’s hard not to be bitter; Katniss was never easy to swallow.
I open the door and lean my axe against the door frame on my way inside, letting her choose to follow. She never did take directions, but she’s not stupid.
Seeing her in my kitchen feels wrong, like drawing on a photograph. I offer her a seat and try to place her. I’ve been trying to dull the memories. Putting gloves on before pulling those thoughts from the oven. She takes the seat and responds, “I didn’t know what to say.”
I pour us each a generous helping of black market moonshine. It stinks of blindness. I sit down in my chair and we each lick our wounds in silence. Wounds need to be sterilized. We are thorough in our work. Her hair is longer now, and unbraided. Her braids were always such a part of her Capitol branding, it makes sense that she would abandon them. I can’t look at her, but in sideways glances I catch dark circles and a familiar kind of deadness I’ve seen before in mirrors.
“I see you have a bag. Not much in it, from the looks of it. Did you think I’d send you back to Twelve?”
“I don’t know what I thought.” We’re circling each other, protecting our vitals, coiled to strike.
“Bread Boy finally lost his sparkle?” There has never been a time that Katniss hasn’t corrected me to use his name. Peeta isn’t a bad guy. He’s actually one of the better ones to survive our whole ordeal. I just have no interest in offering him any more kindness than necessary. She was always the one I was committed to protecting. It may have started out as part of the plan for the Rebellion, but Peeta was always Finnick’s problem to me. Finnick is gone, but Peeta is still not one of mine.
She doesn’t correct me. I notice but don’t mention it.
Fangs bared, I laugh.
“I…I don’t know. He protected me.” Her eyes are glued to the wall.
Protected.
“In all the ways no one else could, I’m sure.” I have to fight a mock-gag. I settle for rolling my eyes.
Protected.
“I heard once that places meant to protect us are often cages.”
Caged.
She sounds like she’s going to cry. What did he do to her? He’s still breathing from the sounds of it, so he wasn’t hitting her. Between her and Haymitch I’m certain he’d be in the ground if he was. My head still wanders to places more violent than I’m sure either of us would be comfortable with. I hear my head doctor’s voice say something about being “uncomfortable with intimacy,” and “afraid of being vulnerable,” and I let impulse win.
“So now that you’ve finished chewing your leg off you’re here to see me?” It comes out bitterly honest. I have to walk away because looking at her feels like defusing a bomb. I settle for grabbing the counter so I can keep myself in check. For someone so used to quiet, the silent tension is killing me.
“Do you want me to say yes?”
Yes .
“Do you want me to tell you that I missed you?”
Yes .
“Do you want me to tell you that Peeta wasn’t enough?”
Yes .
“Do you want me to tell you that I couldn’t stand the idea of spending the rest of my life pretending I was meant for motherhood?”
Oh .
“Motherhood, eh?” I reply coolly. My head feels like it’s being poached.
The Girl On Fire with little toasted cinnamon buns running around was never once something I saw for her. She could barely handle Prim’s horrible cat, and she avoided all the kids in Thirteen. She loved Prim and she loved Rue, and she loved the two of them for the same reasons. I used to joke that her least favorite thing about them was that they were children, and she would laugh and agree with me.
“Peeta always wanted to be a father.” We both shift uncomfortably. I hate this.
“I just…never wanted to bring a child into a world like this. I kept having dreams about it and waking up the same as the nightmares.” That sounds more like her.
Processing simple information is a challenge. Processing complicated information feels impossible. I start to feel guilty for how long it takes me to collect my thoughts. I remember that before Katniss was the Girl on Fire, I was the one who did most of the burning. Impulse wins again. I still can’t find the strength to look at her, but I sure can find the strength to hurt her feelings. “Peeta was too stable, so you came to me. You really could have called, you know.”
“You could have called, too.” She stares into the bottom of her empty mug. It’s probably too early in the day for either of us to be this drunk, but time is barely real anymore.
“And break up the happiest little love story in Panem? I don’t think so.” I try to ignore that she’s crying again. “Come on, Numbskull. You had to know.”
“I don’t know anything, Johanna. I don’t know anything about anything.”
I may have overplayed my hand, because she starts to get up to leave. It wouldn’t be the first time, but I only just got her back. I won’t stop her if she wants to go, but stars, I want her to stay.
“You just got here, Katniss, sit down. You’ve been on a train for half a week. You’re not getting back on it that easily.” The voice in my throat is harsh, but not cruel. My head zaps and I catch a flicker of painting blood on her throat and hissing for her to stay down . I wonder if she does, too.
Katniss seems to catch that it’s the only voice I ever use that can get her to listen. She does that nervous smile, and I have to hold the bridge of my nose to cover any evidence that my body responds. I take an opportunity to grab a blanket from the next room. I am suddenly acutely aware that it probably smells a little grungy, and that it absolutely smells like me. I put it around her shoulders and resist wishing that I could hold her myself, and take my post back at the woodstove watching the water boil. Something about watched pots. I’ll take all the time I can get to collect myself. The sunshine doesn’t quite catch her face as it moves across the window. Embarrassingly, I am disappointed.
The water eventually boils. I take Katniss’s mug and give it a quick rinse, refilling it with black tea. I stole a box from Thirteen when the Rebellion ended. Figured correctly that no one would notice. It’s the same one she used to have with our hospital breakfasts; she once called it comforting. Setting it in front of her and not pouring one for myself is the best I can let myself do to show her that she is still something.
I get myself a glass of water, pour in a splash of juice, and do not rejoin her at the table. More silence. More tension.
“You can put your bag upstairs.” Please.
“I can stay?” Please.
“I said you can put your bag upstairs. We’ll talk about the rest later.”
For a hunter, Katniss Everdeen moves like prey. Her footsteps are quiet, but not quiet enough to disguise her enthusiasm. Finally unperceived, I grin, and for once it’s not a threat.
I hate that I missed her. I hate that she let me come back here alone. I hate that she won’t look at me. I hate that I can’t look at her. I hate how badly I wanted this. I hate that it’s nice to see her again. I hate that she’s the only person who ever tried to make me feel like I was allowed to have a home, to be a home.
When she returns bagless, she asks me about the furniture, my decorating. She lets me wax poetic about the dovetail joints of the cabinets, the milling process, the satisfaction of building something up from the wreckage the Capitol left me. Once I get going, I can’t stop. Everything I know about the wood I use, anecdotes about building my little mill, how good it feels to not want to be dead so badly anymore, it all comes out in waves. She’s a rapt audience. I wonder if Peeta talked to her like this about baking or bread or being too charming. I push him from my mind.
I take her on a quick tour of the house and get her situated. She asks to use the phone so she can let Bread Boy know where she is.
While she talks with Peeta, I fight not to listen. Her business is her business and I would be livid if she listened to mine. I curl up in the pillows and quilts, pine bundle in hand as it has been most nights, and try my hardest to unspool the coils of muscle and adrenaline. I make myself small so she has space to get comfortable; after all this time, I still want to protect her. I know I will always be a shield, and I understand that it is equal parts blessing and curse.
In the dark with my thoughts, I wonder if she still loves him. That thought spiral is immediately jammed back into the cabinet it fell out of, and instead I try to focus on things I know are true. My name is Johanna Mason. I live in District Seven. I am twenty four years old. Katniss Everdeen is here. Katniss Everdeen is climbing into bed with me. For the first time in three years, I am not alone.
MAY
It’s been three weeks. She doesn’t disturb my routines, and makes quick work of settling into her own. We eat breakfasts together, despite our separate sleeping schedules. She makes bread from the coarse grain we get from the general store. I make her tea. She makes thick slices of buttered toast. I make sure her wooden bow is kept in good condition. She keeps it nice, but one of us knows wood better than the other will ever.
We spend our middays apart. She explores the trails in the woods. I don’t tell her anything about them so she can learn them for herself. I add to my daily grime, weeding and taming my boxes of primrose, pruning my trees. Summer will be rough, but the worst of the year is over. You would think that autumn, full of anniversaries, would be the hardest, but the endless rain of spring puts me on my ass for months. I try not to add stress, if I can, but Katniss makes me want to try.
Over dinners she tells me about the trails and I tell her about the new joinery for a shelf unit I’m working on. She asks lots of questions. I’m sure it’s because she’s taken an interest in the project, but stars, I wish it was because she likes the sound of my voice. I ask about her hunts and her finds and if she’s found the river, or the big boulder that looks like a face, but she always turns the conversation back to my projects and plans.
We sleep in shifts, one always at the door. Like arena watches.
At night, Katniss thrashes. We’re both prey at heart, but she is a fighter. I often forget how different we are in this way because we are so painfully similar. My fear is quiet, static, frozen. Hers is wild, frenetic. Like she’s trying to beat the terrors away. I usually let her take the first watch. I have a hard time falling asleep in the dark. She has to be sedated to sleep when the sun’s up.
The first time I remember her having an episode I had the misfortune of forgetting that she’s a pillow-knife kind of girl. I try to be reassuring, kind, un-stabbed, but she is almost as much of a problem as I am and won’t let go of the fucking knife.
She does me the service of collapsing mid sentence as I’m trying to calm her down and I vault over the bed, taking the knife and getting it out of range. I push her face into my neck and talk low so she won’t get shocked out of it. When she eventually comes to, I have her cheeks in my hands and I’m searching her face for answers. We used to do this for each other back in Thirteen when we were even less stable. Something about trusted touch helping to ground us. She wakes up crying. I don’t expect her to look back.
"Everdeen, what just happened?"
She shakes her head that she doesn’t know.
" You tried to stab me, because I tried to wake you up. You don't have to give me details, but you can't sleep in my bed if you're gonna do that. Doesn't make me feel exactly safe ."
"It was you this time. The hovercraft dream, but it wasn't Peeta. It was you. You were begging me to kill you, so they wouldn't…get you again.”
Not Peeta. Intrigued, suspicious, I squint and clarify. "Why was I in your dream?"
“Nightmare,” she corrects.
“Nightmare,” I reply.
"Probably because you're important." She looks so earnest when she comes out of these. She also often talks nonsense. Flashback nightmares will do that to you.
I am way too amped to deal with this right now. "Be careful, throwing words like that around. Or I'll have to get you back next time." I face her and walk backwards out of the room, jokingly not showing her my back. It isn’t my first Everdeen rodeo, we’ve both done plenty worse than a little stabbing between friends. She didn’t even make contact. Still, I am nothing if not a tube sock full of cortisol, so I give the door frame a slap to invite her down with me. “The least you can do is make me a drink so I can get my blood pressure back down.” She hesitantly follows - it feels like her first day again. I don’t want to scare her off. It’s like having a feral cat around. One wrong move and she’ll be gone again.
We sip the weakest tea I’ve ever had - it tastes like she just waved the bag over it - and try to pretend that this is a reasonable and normal interaction for us to be having. She offers to sleep downstairs. I bank on her obliviousness and hope she doesn’t catch how quickly I tell her no, but that the knife is staying on my side. She laughs. She’s staying.
She offers her hand across the table.
I lay mine on top, let her think my pulse is racing because of the knife. We stay like this a while, drinking in each other’s company, both trying to pretend this is not relief, afraid that if we look anywhere but the knots in the table that we’ll wake up and this will all be gone. I’ve had this dream.
We stumble up to bed. It is dark, but she is light, and I am safe. Under heavy quilts I jam my face between her shoulder blades, my arms locked around her. She stops shaking and for the first time, we don’t sleep in shifts.
May flowers herald her twenty-first birthday. The weather is perfect. The sky is that special kind of blue you only really get to see in the mountains. We chase each other like the kids we were first. Blessedly we’re both equally competitive and evenly matched. I’m faster than she is, but she’s more agile. I help get her up into my favorite climbing tree so I can flex a little and swing from its high, sturdy boughs. Her smile isn’t nervous anymore. Mine isn’t either.
Falling in a heap of giggles and dappled sunshine under the little copse of cedars that the deer have eaten into a fort, she puts her arm around me. I don’t shrug it off. Unexpectedly soft. Time stops until it doesn’t; the sun is in our eyes and I need some space to get things ready for the rest of her birthday celebrations, so I ferry her up to sleep off the afternoon.
She puts her forehead to my forehead as I smooth the quilts around her. A whispered “thank you.” She brushes my hair off my face and I push her away, pretending this isn’t the kind of intimacy I’ve only dreamed of. She drifts off, and I drift out to the market.
My goat guy charges me a fortune for a beautiful brick of smooth cheese. He tells me that it’s only harvestable this time of year, it’s got an extra hint of sweetness because the goats are eating all the grass shoots that only come up during the first few weeks of spring. I try a little and he’s right, of course. Both familiar and rare. I’m annoyed that it’s worth the cost.
I swing by the baker’s and get us each a plain-looking pastry filled with some kind of berry jam.I think about getting some fancy bakery bread, but I’ve discovered that I prefer the bread we make together. A little beeswax candle. Some brown butcher paper. Twine.
The walk back to the house feels faster than usual, not more than twenty minutes. I quietly set about constructing a meal at the table, with the apple wood bowls I’ve been working on. When she comes downstairs I get to watch her light up again. I tell her about my goat guy, and we talk about Prim’s old goat, Lady. She tells me her stories about before the Games. I don’t tell her mine, but I do listen attentively. The meal and conversation are nourishing. I set her pastry in front of her with the candle in it. She blows it out and we pour mugs of white liquor for all the friends we wish could be here. Finnick, Cinna, Boggs. We just have a regular toast to her friends that are still on the right side of the dirt. They can drink their own drinks. I wonder if they remember it’s her birthday.
We talk and laugh until our faces hurt. The way she laughs isn’t like twinkling, or sparkles, or birdsong, or anything the poets have written about but it is honest, and embarrassingly captivating.
I think Katniss forgets that she exists sometimes. I just want her to remember. That she’s allowed to remember. I can’t take my eyes off her. She looks back, and I am not perceived, I am seen.
JULY
It’s been three months. I hack off pieces of hair over the sink - I don’t use a mirror, I just cut what feels right. One of the little ways I can reclaim the body the Capitol did its best to cage. My neck itches; I should have put the cape on, or taken my shirt off. I ruffle my hair and shake as much as I can down the drain. Katniss is in her chair with a mug of tea, watching me. I tell her to take a picture, it’ll last longer, and she tells me this will last just fine.
I worry that it won’t, that she’ll realize the mistake she’s made and head back southwest. That she’s going to wake up one day and remember that I am not her husband. That he thinks I am only her friend. She doesn’t tell me when she’s going to call Twelve, but it’s always obvious to me. She walks around in a haze all day like she dreads the sound of his voice. Hard not to be smug about it.
I finish chopping off a last chunk of hair that I missed. She offers to help clean the hair off my neck and shoulders. I tell her no, I can do it myself, and get a rag and basin. I turn the warm tap on and wait for it to fill up. I am always surprised when she touches me. I jump when she puts her strong, soft hand on the small of my back. She knows I hate doing this, and I hate that I hate it. My grungy fingernails cut half-moons into my palms. The Capitol took so many things from me, but bathing? Awful. Absolutely fucking awful.
Katniss turns off the tap - there’s only a couple of inches of water in the basin - and dips the soft flannel into it. One hand on the side of my neck - she says it’s to keep her hand steady, I know for a fact she’s keeping an eye on my pulse - she gently blots the hair and grime from behind my ears. I try to remember the breathing exercises they had us do in training. She asks me to sit on the floor. Standing feels more like swaying, so I sit and lean against the cabinets. She has me take off my hair-covered shirt and sets it behind her. Her fingers are always on my neck or my wrists. I tell her I’m fine, let’s just get this over with, but I have to push the heels of my hands into my eyes to keep from crying. It’s not hot, but the water feels like it burns. My brain underscores every touch with the beeping of electrical instruments. The flannel feels like it’s almost sticking to my skin in a way that’s always scarily familiar. Her hand feels like those of my captors. I want to run, scream, anything, but I’m paralyzed.
Her voice sounds like she’s far from me. I guess at this moment, she is.
She tells me we’ll try again later. She wraps a clean scarf around my shoulders, pulls me against her. She hums the rumble of the only lullaby she knows. I feel the impulse to push her away, but I cannot pilot my body. I feel like I’m watching all this from the ceiling.
She is allowed to be cared for. I remind myself that I am, too.
Ba-bum. One.
Ba-bum. Two.
Ba-bum. Three.
Ba-bum. Four.
We’re still on the floor, but she’s maneuvered us in a way where she’s got me in her lap. Everything hurts. My head is pounding, my eyes are aching, and every muscle in my body feels like they’ve finally relaxed. Like putting down a heavy bag of groceries after a long walk. My elbows are still tucked in tight, my knees, too. She has her arms around me, holding me against her chest. Stars, I forget how muscular she is. A stupid thought after stupid feelings. I trace the numbers of the beats onto her chest with a shaky finger. I make it all the way to sixty before she speaks.
“Welcome back,” she says into the top of my head. She buries her nose in my hair.
“Mm,” I reply, “thanks, Numbskull.”
She laughs and guides me upstairs. Today is a wash. We’ll try again later.
We strip down to our underclothes and curl up under the covers. Katniss figured out a couple of weeks ago that warm skin was the quickest and easiest way to reset my freeze response. She lays back and taps the place just below her collarbone where my head fits right. I take my cue and we spend the last of the sunlight tangled up in each other.
She tells me about her dreams, that I am in them often and prominently. She tells me about rows of squash and beans and corn, little vignettes of a life together. I tell her it’s a little late in the season for this year, but we can pick up some seeds after harvest. I tell her about how to grow seedlings, how we can spend the winter months preparing, where to get the right seeds for our soil. She listens to me as hard as I listen to her. We wax poetic about our little homestead that gets homier with every addition. I wait for her to go to sleep to cry about it.
Our. She is becoming as much a part of the scenery as I am. Stars, please stay, I think. Please.
The next couple of days, we don’t talk about what happened. She’s seen me get like that lots of times, I just hate doing it in front of her. It takes a few more tries, but eventually I am clean, and we pretend that doesn’t make me a crazy person.
I spend her hunting time setting about making her trinkets. We often joke about her pillow-knife that’s lived on my bedside table for the last couple of months. She’s had more episodes, but notably has not tried to stab me about it again.
I take a scrap piece of maple from the pile and carve a dull little knife, not more than an inch and a half long. It looks like something you’d make for a child. No risk to me, but hopefully it’ll make her laugh.
It does. I present it over dinner wrapped in butcher paper and twine. She gets weepy and insists I drill a hole in it so she can wear it on a cord. I hate that it makes me blush. I’m making fun of her, and she’s crying because I’m sweet. I tell her I’m losing my edge. She touches her forehead to my forehead. We eat in amiable silence. She doesn’t set it down until we’re getting ready for bed, running her thumb over the blade like a worry stone.
The days when she makes her calls to Four and Twelve are always sour. After so long alone, the bitterness of knowing that people are out there who could have called, could have checked in, and didn’t, is a lot of weight to carry. I miss Finnick. As friends go, he was the closest I could have without Capitol interference. He was always sweet to me, passing sugar cubes and insults and his precious secrets. We used to watch the Games together after my tributes would inevitably bite it in the first couple of days. Hard not to carry the ghosts of those kids with me, but Finnick made the load lighter. His didn’t usually win either, which helps with the guilt.
We watched Katniss and Peeta win together. We should have been watching the screens together when the Capitol fell, too. I still think that if Coin hadn’t cracked me in the Block that Finnick would still be alive. It comforts me to know that she probably thought that, too, but I am blackout angry that they did everything to me so I could sway the vote on the Symbolic games. She was right to know how I’d vote. And knowing that cost me my closest friend.
I’m glad Katniss made a corpse of her.
Finnick would have been a good father. I wish I could talk to Annie about him. I can’t - it won’t help anything - because she’s so fragile and I’m a battering ram. It was one thing to pick on her and Peeta in Thirteen, when we all had people around to sedate us at the drop of a hat, but she has a kid now. I can’t just knock her feet out because I’m mad.
I turn to chopping wood to burn off the energy. By the time she’s done I usually have half a day’s wood chopped and stacked. She usually seems heavier after the calls. She can come to me if she wants to talk about it. She doesn’t. I make us dinner and pretend I’m not angry, she spends the evening mending socks and pretending she isn’t sad.
I spend the afternoon building another flower box, transplanting rue and blackberries and little white blossoms with a name I can’t recall. I’ll ask her about it when I show her. Rue wasn’t mine to mourn, but she is Katniss’s. I want her to be able to mourn at home. Home. I hope she feels at home here.
I think about the ceramic place settings that the Capitol supplied this place with. I hate waste, so my first year alone I boxed them up and made my own from a stormfallen maple. The first year after the Capitol fell I unpacked them - not for company, but for rage. Nothing wasted.
Every once in a while I still find little splinters of ceramic between the floorboards.
I think about how we’re doing that now, instead of trying to mend the Capitol cracks and pretend it’s fine. We’re not those bowls that get fixed with lacquer and gold. We are molded by our own hands with tools we found.
NOVEMBER
It’s winter now. She lays my head in her lap and runs her fingers through it. I notice that she is careful where she puts her hands. I tell her in great detail about the wardrobe I’m planning when it’s not snowing anymore. We talk about building a shed in the summertime so I can stop being so restless during the wet seasons. She makes me feel like I’m the only person in the room. I am, but even in a crowd she has this way of looking at you that makes everyone else irrelevant. She asks questions that I have to think about, problem solve. What kind of wood to use, what makes it food safe versus building safe. Porosity. Hardness. She tells me if I was a wood I’d be hickory. I ask her why and she tells me because it smells nice in the fireplace, and because it’s her favorite. I tell her that’s stupid and we both laugh.
I tell her she’d be cedar. She asks me why and I tell her because it’s easy to work with, and she’s a little dense. She scoffs because she knows I’m full of shit and we both know it.
She’s cedar because she is foundational. She is healing. She is strong and capable, she lets the sun shine through her in little dapples on my face. She is cedar because she could be anything, and chooses to be everything. But I don’t say any of that. I wonder what wood Peeta thinks she would be. I wonder what she thinks he is.
There’s only so many snowball fights and so many mugs of hot drinks that can stave off the cabin fever. I teach her to play cards, some kid’s games that are easy to pick up and don’t require a lot of thinking. She gets them quickly. We play on the floor in front of the fire and she jokes about throwing her cards in it when she loses, which is all of the time. I’m not about to let her beat me at a kid’s game. We’re both too competitive for that, and besides, she’d be insulted. No sense bruising both of our egos.
I wake her from nightmares, she makes sure I eat. I pull the burrs from her socks, she mends the holes in mine. I make sure we have wood for the fire, she makes sure we have meat to cook and herbs to season with.
One of our newer rituals is that she lets me braid her hair. I tell her it’s just because I don’t want a face full of tangles and I’m tired of waking up to mouthfuls of hair. She says it makes her feel more like herself, and that she likes my hands. I am grateful she’s facing away from me.
She calls Twelve for her usual updates. I spend that time trying to wash my hands. It goes better than anticipated. I’m trying to start smaller. I can be in the room while the water is running, now, without feeling like I’m going to peel off all my skin. I can do it for the kettle, for cooking, just not for me.
I find myself pacing in anticipation. I’m not ready to go to sleep yet. She’ll be done soon.
And done she is. She almost floats into the room, completely divorced from her usual post-call leaden steps. I’m in another world so I’m startled back into my body when she scoops me up in a hug, giddy and laughing. We fall into bed and she tells me about her conversation, how she’s made the call that she’s staying, that we don’t have to worry anymore. We strip down to our underclothes and cuddle up in our quilts.
“He told me I was only the Girl on Fire because of what Cinna made, me, can you believe that?” It’s clear the words stung her more than she lets on.
“No, you caught as soon as Prim’s name got called. I didn’t meet you until after Cinna, but from what Prim told me you’ve always been a firecracker.” We trade shock and indignation back and forth in equal measure.
I have to promise not to get on the train to Twelve to go put him in the dirt.
She promises she won’t go if I won’t.
I believe her.
JANUARY
Cabin fever has finally taken complete hold. I know this because Katniss has questions and wants answers. It would be one thing if it was our usual fare - I’m always happy to talk about a project - but she wants to know about my family.
“Who were you, before?” Her voice is tense, like she’s not sure if she’s afraid of the question or the answer.
“What?” I’m tense, too.
“Before you were angry. You can’t have had this much rage forever.”
“I don’t know. Johanna, probably,” I say. I can barely remember a time before I was angry like this. She lets the space between sentences be. I hate it. My instinct is to get up before we get into it.
“Fine. What were you like when you were…I don’t know, eight, nine?”
I wander through the inside of my head, trying to think of stories from my childhood that don’t feel acidic or tainted. They all do, but I summon an answer so she’ll stop asking. I tell her about my dad teaching me to split firewood, how he would show me all his guidebooks from the markets and the outlying settlements. We’d sit at the big kitchen table in the house I grew up in and paper it with maps. My dad was sweet, if distant. Just like me. We could connect about our shared interests, but little else. He’d spend entire afternoons diligently explaining the different parts of his maps to me. None of my siblings were as into it as I was, and it used to drive my mom crazy because the dinner table was a mess.
I open a door to a story about breaking my arm. I couldn’t have been more than six. My middle sister dared me with a “bet you can’t go higher,” and I scampered up past the safe branches, into the skinny little ones near the top. I felt a branch snap off in my hand just as I started to put weight on it, and I fell like a bag of wet cement. “My mom told me it was a shock I didn’t break anything else. She made a huge stink about having to go to the healers for a cast. I guess I come by the dramatics honestly.” I laugh, but it’s hollow.
I tell Katniss that I had two sisters and a brother. And my oldest sister’s little son. It still feels wrong to think about, being a sister, a daughter, an aunt. Being the only one topside will do that.
“Do you think it would help to talk about them? I know it’s painful, but -” Overplayed. I am already on my feet before she’s finished her sentence. In an instant I am gone and lighting the woodstove.
“Yeah, it is, Brainless. That’s why I don’t do it.” The flames spark to life and I set to putting the kettle on. I stuff a slice of grain bread in my mouth. “They live in the Vault, and I get to live my life.”
“The Vault?”
“Yeah, that’s where all the horrible shit I’ve had to deal with goes. I can think about it, or I can be a person. Those are the choices.” I’m trying not to make too much noise. I don’t want to scare her.
“Johanna, you don’t have to talk about them, we can talk about something else, but you can’t -”
“Katniss, we’re not doing this. Not today. Try again when it’s warm out.”
It’s a few minutes of listening to the rolling boil of the kettle before either of us says anything. I make her a cup of tea, set it on the end table beside her, and tell her I’m heading to bed. She asks if she’s allowed to come. I tell her it’s her bed too, she just can’t ask me anything else about this tonight. She reluctantly agrees.
Stars, I wish I was different.
MARCH
It’s been almost a year since Katniss showed up unannounced. Eleven months since we stopped sleeping in shifts. It feels good to be part of a pack again. Being prey is exhausting.
Spring is when the earth wakes up and I shut down completely. It wouldn’t be so bad if not for the endless Seven rain. Sometimes the clouds are so thick I can’t see the mountains, or the tops of the trees through the window.
She doesn’t kiss me. I don’t kiss her, either. There’s something about it that makes her touches more special, privileged, intimate, when there’s no motive for something else. I love that she is affectionate, though. A hand on the small of my back while I’m lighting the woodstove for dinner. Brushing the hair out of my eyes when it’s messy. The way she holds me tighter when she can feel a spiral starting.
One of my favorites is when I’m working and she becomes liquid, flopping over my back because I’m not paying enough attention to her.
“Baby, I’m working.”
“Is it ‘Baby’ now?”
“No, I’m calling you an infant. I’m insulting you.”
She rolls her eyes and we both snort. She knows I would never call her Baby in earnest. I finish what I’m doing on principle, put away my tools. I am so acutely aware of being watched, but she is a perfect audience. The instant my tools are rolled up I pounce and we tumble all over the house. I usually win. She doesn’t seem to mind.