Chapter Text
Most people seemed to be under the impression that Katniss Everdeen had lost all concept of time ever since she fired her arrow into the heart of a promising dictator, but she’s justifiably certain it’s been about eleven months since she was exiled back to District Twelve when Johanna Mason quite literally breaks into her house one morning.
It’s not even an exaggeration. It always takes her a few good hours in the morning to muster the energy for the rest of the day, so the kitchen is well lit with midday sunlight by the time Katniss treads in to find Johanna at the table, chair propped back on its hind legs as she rests her feet on the tabletop, absently scratching Buttercup’s chin as she sifts through the Capitol newspapers that Effie always sends her and Katniss never reads. Of course, Katniss’ instinctive response to seeing an unexpected person in her space is to reach for the nearest knife, but the defensiveness drains from her body when Johanna’s gaze catches hers.
There’s a long, heavy moment. For a moment Katniss is entirely convinced that eleven months haven’t actually passed and she’s simply hallucinating Johanna in her kitchen, because she looks the exact same since the last time Katniss saw the older girl, amongst the other Victors at Coin’s meeting. Her shaved head hasn’t grown any further, and there are still purpling, sleepless smudges under Johanna’s flinty eyes. But the rest of her skin is flush with health, and she’s put on weight again, wiry strength easily lining her torso and shoulders.
And then:
“Of course the Mockingjay is a fucking cat person.”
Katniss doesn’t smile. “What are you doing in my house?”
“Felt like a change of scenery. Figured a bombed out mining village was my calling.” Johanna rifles through a stack of what Katniss realises to be is all the mail she hasn’t bothered opening in months. She hasn’t felt the need to read through hundreds of Mockingjay hero-worship fan letters; it doesn’t help that she feels about as functional as a corpse rotting in the snow almost constantly. Half the time, she’s just using the spare paper to get her fire started. She brandishes a letter marked with her own name and address that Katniss realises she must have disregarded. “You should check your fan mail more often, Everdeen.”
Katniss elects not to be a courteous host and lowers herself slowly into the chair opposite Johanna. “You never heard from me and yet you decided to show up anyway?”
A sardonic smile lifts the corner of Johanna’s mouth. “I did call Haymitch to check you’re still alive. I think the old man just wants you to have some company in this big gloomy old house of yours.”
“It’s more of a mausoleum than a house,” Katniss mutters, without really considering her words. She frowns. “He didn’t mention it to me.”
“Can’t say either of us were particularly sober at the time.”
“That would do it.” Needing to look elsewhere, Katniss shifts her gaze to Buttercup. Prim’s cat stares back at her, morose as ever, but he’s leaning into Johanna’s palm as she ladles attention onto him. Bastard , the thought flits across Katniss’ mind. She clears her throat, her focus now fixed on the two cardboard boxes and the lumpy, unremarkable rucksack stacked onto the wooden chair situated besides Johanna. She wonders if that’s the extent of Johanna’s possessions; not that she can judge, she would be even less. “Why did you leave Seven?”
“Told you. Wanted a change of scenery.”
Katniss levels her an icy look. Her temples are beginning to pound. She can’t remember the last time she had an interaction with somebody for this long that wasn’t Haymitch or Doctor Aurelius. “You can’t just show up at my house without a good reason.”
Johanna flaps the unopened letter at her. “I didn’t show up out of the blue. Not my fault you’ve forgotten how to read.”
“Answer the fucking question, Johanna.”
The older girl’s brows lift at Katniss’ choice of language. For a long moment they stare each other down, silently baiting each other to be the first to relent; Katniss might possess a hunter’s enduring patience, but blunt tenacity is Johanna Mason’s most famous quality. It’s one of these fleeting, painful moments that she suddenly longs for Peeta’s presence, for him to play the mediator. But Peeta’s been gone for months now — and she doesn’t let her thoughts linger on that particular fact any further, reining in her own mental ramblings quicker than a whip.
Johanna doesn’t respond. She simply continues to stare sullenly at Katniss. She’s forgotten how alike they are. If Katniss is fire, then Johanna is an unruly winter tempest, buffering and unrelenting and unpredictable. It’s like staring into a reflection of yourself, but the image isn’t quite the same as you thought it was.
Just as Katniss is weighing the merits of walking out of the kitchen and not wasting precious hours of sunlight, the older girl clears her throat, swinging her feet down from the table top and lowering her chair legs onto all fours. “You should swear more often, Everdeen. Especially on live television.”
“The last time I was featured on live television, I shot the President of District Thirteen.”
Johanna grins crookedly at this. “You’re far less insufferable when you pull shit like that.”
“If you hadn’t noticed, I’ve been exiled since then.” Katniss looks for something to occupy her hands. There’s a graphite pencil abandoned next to a checklist she scribbled down about a month ago and never found the energy to place a tick in any of the lopsided little boxes. She reaches for the pencil, spinning it absently between her hands. It’s the same timber sturdiness, the same circumference as the shaft of an arrow; her fingers recognise the familiarity immediately. It’s been weeks since she’s gone into the woods. “You think I wouldn’t notice when somebody’s avoiding my questions?”
Johanna looks irritated for a passing moment. “You’re really making me feel warm and welcome here.”
“I’m not the smiling, hospitable sort.”
“ ‘Course not. That was fucking Peeta’s job.”
It hasn’t quite gotten to the point where hearing his name spoken aloud doesn’t prompt Katniss to blaunch, for a spearhead of agony and twisting regret to settle painfully into her lungs. Haymitch and Greasy Sae know better than to bring him up too often, and she doesn’t linger around the other residents of the district long enough for his name to bubble up in conversation. Most of the townspeople make a point of avoiding her as it is; she’s not the Mockingjay to them, but rather the poor mad girl who lives alone in her big house with the curtains always drawn.
She sucks in a shaking breath. “I don’t want to talk about him.”
“Oh yeah?” Johanna glances around her kitchen, her flinty eyes taking in a silent inventory of her surroundings. Katniss knows the look all too well. “Guess you were finally in love with him after all?”
Katniss draws in another painful breath, digging her nails into her palms so that the pain will anchor her to the physical world around her and not the spirals of her mind. “We’re not talking about Peeta. We’re talking about you.”
Johanna huffs irritably. “I wanted to get out of Seven,” she relents, though her words linger irritably over every syllable, as if she’s unwilling to spit them out. “Didn’t have anyone else left there. Everywhere else reminded me of the fucking Capitol.”
“So you come to a place that got blown to bits by them?”
Johanna flaps a hand in the direction of the woods. “You lot have proper woods here. It evens out.”
Of course. Johanna’s the offspring of lumberjacks and timber mill workers. She was probably born with sawdust between her toes. Maybe the hunter and the lumberjack have something in common after all, that isn’t war or the Games or a collective hatred of President Snow. It explains why Johanna’s in Twelve and not somewhere equally contendable, like Four or Eleven. Katniss cocks her head, deliberating. It’s funny. There’s a lot she could say about the woman in front of her, yet she barely knows anything about Johanna at all.
There’s a part of her — the majority, really — that undisputedly detests the idea of sharing her space with somebody else after Prim, after Peeta. She’s only used to Greasy Sae and occasionally Haymitch encroaching upon her, and that’s only for a few hours at a time. She’s gotten used to eating at odd hours, sleeping in odd pockets of the house, standing under the showerhead until her skin is red and raw. She’s gotten used to Buttercup being the only other living being she shares a space with for hours and days and weeks at a time.
But there’s also a faint beacon of doubt, of relenting towards Johanna, that nudges amongst her thoughts. Whilst Johanna is hostile and abrasive almost ninety-nine per cent of the time, she’s still a friend. Still somebody to find companionship and in. Katniss doesn’t have a whole lot of those sort of people left in her life.
“I’ll pay rent,” Johanna grouses.
Katniss finds herself shaking her head before she can think. “I don’t need the money.”
A scoff. “I’ll throw an axe at the next Capitol newsie that tries to break down your door to ask you stupid questions.”
Somehow, she doesn’t doubt that. It’s probably secondary nature for Johanna by this point — and some of those nosy reporters could probably afford to have an axe hurled at their head. They’re certainly persistent, she’ll give them that. And unlike her, people are less likely to arrest Johanna and keep her drugged into compliance for the rest of her life.
She feels herself shrug, considering her words. One the occasion she does pick up a call from Doctor Aurelius, his favourite words seem to be establishing boundaries . “I need some time to sit on it.”
“What, d‘you expect me to sleep outside until you do?”
“Go knock on Haymitch’s door. He’s the one who invited you out here in the first place, isn’t he?”
That afternoon, Johanna comes knocking on Katniss’ back door, a wood axe propped over one shoulder. “Give me a tour of the forest, won’t you?”
Katniss lingers in the hallway, trying to come up with the words that she hasn’t gone into the woods since the last day Peeta did. Undoubtedly, Johanna would already know what happened; if she didn’t already receive that information from the gossip that blazed through the Republic of Panem like a wildfire for weeks after it happened, then surely Haymitch has passed it on. Katniss’ jaw clenches.
“If you’re looking for a tree to whack down, I don’t think you’re going to need a tour guide for that.” Without elaborating further, Katniss steps back and seals the back door shut, ignoring Johanna when the older girl begins cussing her out from the other side.
Katniss doesn’t speak to Haymitch for two weeks. When she does, Johanna is still there, clearly enjoying this interaction as a thin stream of smoke spills lazily from her lips, a joint balanced between two fingers.
She’s not angry about the situation, exactly. But she feels unbalanced. It took weeks for her to fall into a routine, fall into predictability and familiarity, after what happened with Peeta, and Johanna’s arrival has usurped that all over again. And it’s not like she shares any prerequisite memories with Johanna that are separate to the Capitol — all of their previous interactions have purely been the outcome of the Games or the war.
“There’s not many of us left,” is Haymitch’s gruff justification. Even if it wasn’t for the flask haphazardly pocketed in his trousers, Katniss can smell the white liquor on him like a perfume. He must be getting bad again. “We have to stick together, kid.”
Thing is, she doesn’t want to ‘stick together’. She doesn’t want to be dependent on anyone else, ever again.
Katniss stares stonily at him, before voicing the most diabolical thought that came to mind. “The last time we tried that, Peeta hung himself.”
She walks away before either Haymitch or Johanna can react. Her eyes are burning and she digs her nails into her palms before she starts crying. She retreats back to her own house — her own big, silly mansion in the Victor’s Village, a waste of walls for a waste of a human being. It’s not until she’s crossing her balcony to the back door that she registers the footfalls behind her, and turns back to face Johanna.
“That was a fucking low blow, Everdeen.” Johanna offers her the joint.
Katniss eyes the still-smouldering roll of paper and powder. “I’m not supposed to take recreational substances.”
“Don’t get on your high horse now.” The other girl sighs. “Every Victor’s an addict at some point, right?”
Despite herself, Katniss takes the joint between her fingers. “How do I …”
“Suck it into your mouth first, then breathe it into your lungs. Don’t breathe it immediately into your lungs or you’ll fuck them up.”
“Aren’t I going to fuck up my lungs regardless?”
A crooked grin. “Stop being such a prude, Mockingjay.”
Katniss does what she’s told and takes a drag. It’s uneventful, aside from the part where she hacks up half her lungs and Johanna cackles at her struggle. Her expression creased with distaste, Katniss quickly hands back the joint.
“I don’t think Peeta would have ever been an addict.”
Johanna’s face becomes uncharacteristically pensive and she takes a long drag. “He killed herself instead. Tends to be one or the other.”
“You’d know better than me, wouldn’t you?”
“The Capitol fucked with all of us,” Johanna flicks the end of her blunt. “You and Peeta weren’t the only ones who were used like fucking, I don’t know, chess pieces or something.”
“Like what happened to Finnick,” Katniss remembers. Suddenly she feels cold all over. “What did the Capitol do to you?”
“Same thing as Finn.” Johanna flicks her brows up, silently baiting Katniss. When she doesn’t speak, Johanna adds, “You’d be surprised how many Capitolites were willing to pay to fuck a girl whose preference is women. Gives them some sick ego boost, y’know?”
Her brash words take Katniss aback. She’d heard the whispers about Johanna Mason’s preferred company, and she’d also heard about the nature of what the Capitol had done with her after she’d won her own Games. She’d just never realised that the two factors directly correlated. “No, I didn’t.”
Johanna holds her gaze meaningfully as she sucks in another drag. “The things you learn, right?”
Naturally, Katniss has bad days, they’re not necessarily confined within the one twenty four period; rather, they tend to stretch out haphazardly, consuming Katniss like a plague that leaves her feeling as devoid and abandoned as the husk of a corpse in the middle of the desert. Sometimes, it’s simply a case of being unable to leave her house, or her own bed. Other times, she folds herself somewhere dark and safe and private, entirely away from the world, like the back of a closet or the bottom shelf of a cabinet. On one such example, Haymitch broke into her house after having not heard from her in over a week, and found her curled on the floor of Prim’s old bedroom, in a partially comatose state.
Overall, she supposes that calling them a bad ‘day’ is a slight understatement.
The aftermath of a bad day is always a little foggy, so she’s a little out of it when she stumbles into the kitchen and opens the refrigerator to find it fully stocked with fresh groceries. Katniss doesn’t think twice of it, until halfway through munching on a carrot, she realises that she hasn’t left the house in a week, and Greasy Sae hasn’t come in months. She slams shut the door of the refrigerator to find a note stuck there, wondering how she could have possibly dismissed it when she first entered the kitchen.
The handwriting on the note is a crude scrawl, with the sloppy spelling and short, to-the-point sentences of somebody who frankly doesn’t give a shit about their written word; it’s undoubtedly Johanna’s, Katniss thinks as her eyes trace over the letters.
Haymitsh didnt want you to starve while hes at the Capital. Give your old man a ring once your back.
(No you dont owe me for this fuck off)
When Katniss ventures into the woods for the first time since she found Peeta in there, Johanna comes with her, insisting she’s looking for a maple tree for syrup. It’s a lie Katniss can see right through — there’s maple trees near the railway tracks, only a ten minute walk from the Victor’s Village — but there’s a part of her that appreciates the company.
Johanna seems to have moved in with Haymitch; seemingly for the best, since he still spends the majority of his days down in a bottle. Not that Jo’s habits are much more ideal, the smell of smoke permanently lingering around her, but out of the three of them, she’s the one most likely to shriek at the Capitol reporters that show up every now and then to harass them for stories. They’re under the impression that the Mockingjay has something better to do with her life; not that Katniss has any interest in her current routine of skipping meals and sleeping in her winter closet being broadcasted to the nation.
Katniss has brought her father’s bow, a quiver of handmade arrows, and a hessian game bag. She’s braided back her hair and donned her token hunting jacket and boots. If it wasn’t for Johanna strutting by her side, a joint propped between her teeth and an axe over her shoulder, then she could entirely delude herself into thinking it’s another hunting day before the Games, before the war, before Prim and Peeta were stolen from her.
They don’t take the path Katniss used to, from the Victor’s Village. Even though the tree was cut down weeks ago, she doubts she wouldn’t immediately fly into a bout of panic if she set eyes on its stump. Instead, they go to the Meadow and then into the woods, the very same route Katniss used to take when she was fifteen or sixteen.
Katniss doesn’t speak, and neither does Johanna. They enter the woods, striding confidently between the towering pines. She has half a mind to retrace the snare line, but Katniss shuts down the idea before her thoughts wander entirely to Gale.
There’s the telltale scuffle of a small animal in the forest undergrowth; before Katniss can really think about it, her bow is in her hands, loaded for half a heartbeat when she lets her arrow fly. There’s the small, dying shriek of a rabbit, and Johanna steps forward to retrieve the kill from the scrub for her.
The older girl hands her the bunny, looking impressed. “Nice shot.”
Katniss removes the arrow from its eye and stows the rabbit in her game bag. “You could do the same thing with your axe.”
“Sure. Just not on short notice like you.”
“I’ve had a lot of practise,” Katniss shrugs.
“No shit.” Johanna gestures to the trees around her. “How old were you when you started coming out here?”
“I don’t remember, exactly,” Katniss says truthfully, glancing around the forest. She’d been six, maybe seven. Her mother had relented to allowing her past the Meadow after months of begging her father every time he returned from the mines, the Hob, the woods themselves. “Have you ever hunted?”
Johanna shakes her head, grimly. “Only when I was in the arena.”
Neither of them comment on the double meaning behind her words.
“No offence, Everdeen, but your mother’s a bit of a cunt.”
Katniss barely blanches at Johanna’s choice of language. They’re in Katniss’ living room; she is seated, knees drawn up to her chin, arms braced around her legs protectively. Johanna has sat down on the coffee table itself, legs apart like a man, elbows resting on her thighs as she reads over the letter that appeared in Katniss’ mailbox several days ago. Usually, she never checks her mail. But it had been impossible to ignore this particular letter after her uninterested gaze caught on the name of the return address.
Katniss hasn’t left this room since she opened that letter.
About an hour ago, Johanna had come knocking, announcing that Haymitch hadn’t seen any sign of life for several days and wanted to be sure she hadn’t offed herself. It had been nothing short of crude, sure, but it was also a welcome circuit breaker from the thoughts Katniss had spent days swimming in.
Katniss drags the heel of her palm over her face, not entirely surprised when her hand comes away shaking. “No offence taken. I just wouldn’t have used the same word as you.”
“Finn once bet you had both mummy and daddy issues,” Johanna continues, bluntly. “I thought he was full of it. Guess he’s rolling in his grave as we speak.”
An incredulous scoff leaves Katniss and she shakes her head. “My mother’s been through plenty, as well. She deserves to move on —“
“And that includes telling you that you’re cut out of her life, so she can better distance herself from the Mockingjay and settle down to play happy families with some man you’ll never get to meet?”
“I’m not the easiest person to be around, if you hadn’t noticed.”
“Neither am I, and I’m not moping around over it.” Johanna throws aside the letter with a sound of disgust. “Once upon a time, I would have been that asshole who says you’re lucky to still have your mother.”
Katniss stares hollowly at the grandfather clock in the corner of the sitting room. It’s funny. She’s lived completely independently of her mother since she was about twelve, but now that her mother had thrown her away for good, it’s opened a cavity of agony in her chest that she’s struggled to seal. “And what would you say now?”
“Not all women were meant to be mothers,” Johanna says simply.
“What about yours?”
A pregnant silence hangs between them. The question had escaped Katniss’ mouth without really thinking about it; but now she sits on it, she realises she doesn’t know anything about Johanna’s family. Her only knowledge is assumed from what the older girl once mentioned during the Quarter Quell, there’s nobody left I love .
Johanna clears her throat. “You’re asking about my mother?”
Katniss shrugs. “Your family, I suppose.”
Johanna meets her gaze for a long moment, her eyes narrow and hard. Then her face relaxes a little. “I was one of nine kids, did you know?”
Katniss feels her brows rise to her hairline. “I didn’t think District Seven was a place where you bred like rabbits.”
The older girl releases a harsh bark of laughter. “Nah. It’s not. My folks were the religious type — didn’t believe in birth control. Or girls wanting to kiss girls, for that matter. They threw me out for it when I was fourteen.”
Her jaw drops a little. Katniss isn’t completely stupid; she knew it was a thing that happened, of course. In Twelve, everyone was too occupied with not starving to death to really care if their neighbour was sharing a bed with somebody of the same sex. And in the Capitol — well, everyone had been all too happy to be open and liberated, to do exactly what they wished without fear of the consequences. “What happened after that?”
“Kept myself alive, didn’t I?” Johanna drops her gaze, fiddling with her knuckles. “I’d been throwing around timber axes since I could lift one, and the Peacekeepers never looked twice at your age in Seven. I couch surfed until I was sixteen, and then I moved in with my girlfriend and her family.”
“And then?”
“And then I got Reaped.” Johanna clears her throat. “I was seventeen.”
Katniss stares her down, trying to fit the pieces of the puzzle together in her head. She’s seen bits of footage from Johanna’s Games, remembers watching it herself in the district square — remembers Johanna’s feral grin as she sent her axes spinning into the soft, fleshy bodies of her competitors. “How soon after winning your Games did the Capitol force you into …”
“Into prostitution?” Johanna’s mouth twists up, grimly. “After my Victory Tour. I refused, at first.”
“They weren’t happy about that, knowing the Capitol.”
“They weren’t,” Jo affirms. “They especially weren’t happy with me when I bit a Gamemaker’s dick, and he had to get stitches.”
For the second time, Katniss’ jaw drops. “What did Snow do to you for that?”
She watches Jo’s throat bob. “Burned down my girlfriend’s house with her and her family in it. The Peacekeepers executed the siblings that I was still in contact with. I found out the day I left the Capitol.” Johanna looks away. “It certainly cemented the fact my family never wanted to see me again. I’ve been alone ever since.”
Katniss is at a loss for words; it takes her a few moments to articulate a correct response. “Did it ever get better?”
“Take a wild fucking guess, Everdeen.”
They’re sitting on Katniss’ front porch, watching the first of the summer storms roll in. It’s just the three of them, Katniss curled on the armrest of chair like a bird prepared to take flight at a moment’s notice, Haymitch drinking, and Buttercup purring in Johanna’s lap as she rolls a joint on her knee.
Today marks the date when the Reapings were annually held. Emphasis on were . The broadcasts on the television were all in memorial of the tributes who lost their lives in the Hunger Games over the course of seventy-five years: an estimated total of one thousand, six hundred and seventy-eight casualties, President Paylor announced grimly. They’d sat through the entirety of Paylor’s speech; Haymitch had switched off the television about three minutes into Plutarch’s.
“Surprised they didn’t drag any of us back to the Capitol for that,” he had harrumphed.
“You’re a drunk, Johanna would have called anyone who pissed her off a fuck-faced trust fund asswipe, and I’m still exiled,” Katniss had reasoned back. To keep the peace, she’d suggested watching the rain.
So there they had sat, for several hours now. Nobody has spoken or moved; it feels like they were mourning. What were they mourning for, Katniss wonders. Was it their own loss, or the needless loss of thousands of children? Children whose deaths had been televised and replayed and gambled on, just like their own would have been, if they were any less lucky in the arena?
Just as she’s considering getting to her feet to retrieve a hot mug of tea, Johanna clears her throat and breaks the weighted silence that’s settled between them all. “I want to ask you pair about Peeta.”
Katniss immediately feels her spine stiffen and her blood run cold, as it always does now whenever his name is brought up. She feels both Jo’s and Haymitch’s attention lock onto her. Her nails dig into her palms, biting into her skin.
She hears Haymitch exhale, and take a hearty mouthful of his spirits. “It’s up to her.”
Katniss swallows thickly. If it was anyone else, she would be already threatening them, preferably with a loaded bow in her hands. But Johanna — and Annie — had been there when Peeta was tortured and hijacked; more than most people, they deserved to know what really happened, and not just glean information from the endless rumours and speculation. “What do you want to know?”
“I want to know what happened.”
She and Haymitch share a meaningful look. He is better at explaining it, but he has to visibly brace himself before he can speak, grief colouring his expression. “As you know … after Katniss here caused that scene in the Capitol after sticking it to Coin, the Capitol doctors attempted to cure Peeta’s hijacking before they sent him back to us.” He takes a solemn swig of his drink. “When they stuck him on the train back to Twelve, they didn’t realise his recovery was only halfway there, and as soon as he was in the ruins of where he’d grown up — well, it fucked with his head.”
“There were good days with him, and there were bad days,” Katniss supplies, hollowly. “By the end, the bad days significantly outweighed the good ones; once a week, if we were lucky. On the bad days, he wasn’t entirely what he’d been in Thirteen — more a manic state in between.” Then her throat closes up entirely, and she shakes her head, unable to speak any further.
“It’s all right, Katniss,” her mentor tells her, hoarsely. “He was in one of those manic states the day before — before he hung himself. The last time I saw the boy, he was digging in the empty garden beds outside his house, singing ‘The Hanging Tree’. The next morning, she’s —“ he nods towards Katniss, and she stiffens at the memory, “— she’s banging down my front door, screaming bloody murder.”
Katniss shudders and burrows her head between her bent knees, bracketing herself into a tight ball and trying her very best to repress the memory of walking into the forest that morning, and finding Peeta had fashioned the lyrics of the song into his own likeness. She screws her eyes shut, her breathing like a captured bird inside a cage, thrashing against her ribs.
Johanna is quiet for a long moment. “You said he hung himself.”
“I saw it with my own eyes,” Katniss gets out, so quietly she’s not sure if Jo can even hear her, especially above the rain. “It’s something I’ll never be able to forget.”
She hears Johanna expel a rough breath. “Fuck.”
“It’s not like anyone really expected him to last that long in the first place,” Haymitch says. He must have drank more than Katniss gave him credit for, to be throwing around words as callous as that. She presses her lips together in fury. And then, softer, with more warmth, “He was always too good to be like the rest of us.”
Gale’s picture is on the front page of the paper. When Katniss’ hands are shaking too severely to properly light the match on her own, Johanna deftly rescues the matchbox from her hands and burns the sheet of newspaper herself. Together, they watch the waxy paper fold and curl into itself like blackening roses, at the bottom of a rusty pail.
Once the newspaper has been reduced to ashes, Johanna asks, “Did you ever love him?”
Swallowing bile, Katniss answers, “I don’t think I’ve ever loved a man in the way he wanted me to.”