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Chapter Text

 The sound of geese quacking near her window woke her up that morning. Scowling at the ceiling, Katniss sighed and put her face in her hands.

She went through the motions of getting ready for school. With her teeth brushed, face washed, and hair braided, all that was left for her to do before going downstairs was put on her uniform. Stupid, pretentious private school.

She pulled at the collar of her tie, loosening it so it didn’t feel like a noose around her neck. Or maybe it should. The symbolism seemed to fit, anyway. Katniss grabbed her backpack and headed downstairs. As soon as her feet hit the last step, she tossed her backpack on the table and waded through the mess of a floor to the refrigerator. There was no snoring coming from the chair in the living room. Good, Katniss thought, that means he must be awake.

“Your stupid geese woke me up.” She said by way of greeting, shoveling spoonfuls of Greek yogurt in her mouth.

“Go feed them, will you?” Was his response, muffled under the blanket she’d hastily thrown around his shoulders last night that he apparently was feeling too lazy to move. Too lazy to do anything, including bathe or pay his own freaking light bills. Katniss had almost missed the final notice, a needle in an ever-growing haystack of expenses he was too useless to pay attention to. She balled her fists and responded to his plea with a sneer.

“They’re your geese; you do it. And take a bath, Uncle Haymitch. Your hair smells like something laid an egg in it.”

She got up brusquely and starting shoving things into her bag. Haymitch chuckled at her between long sips of his liquor.

“Who shit in your cereal this morning, sweetheart? Not that you aren’t a real ray of sunshine any other day. But today you seem…particularly prickly.” He laughed at his own private joke and Katniss barely resisted the urge she felt to splash cold water on his head. it was how she woke him up when she was either really desperate or really pissed off, and his comical look of surprise was almost worth dealing with his grumpy whining over it for the next week, but today she wasn’t in the mood to deal with him so she just answered:

“Gee, I don’t know. Maybe being a 16 year old girl who pays the bills and keeps us fed while her uncle drinks himself to death may have something to do with it.”

In the silence that followed, Katniss smirked smugly to herself, knowing that guilt had temporarily shut him up. Not that his guilty conscience would ever motivate him to sober up and pay his own bills. “And I hate your geese.” She slammed the door and started her walk to school.

Katniss sat through her classes in a haze.

Everything had been normal this morning, but there was a growing pit of dread sitting in her stomach that left her feeling restless. She found herself wishing she was at home as the hours at school dragged on, and she couldn’t help but feel like something bad was coming.

It vaguely reminded her of the way she felt right before the accident.

As soon as the bell rang, Katniss bolted out of school. She had knots in her stomach as she walked back to her uncle’s house, and as she rounded the last corner, she could see that her intuition had been right.

Something was going on.

Katniss had to squeeze past the big van parked in her uncle’s driveway just to get through the front door. She paused, reading the logo on the side of the van. It was Animal Control.

Just as Katniss crossed the threshold of the house she saw another black car pull up. Flanked by two grave looking bodyguards, a short old man in a blinding white suit stepped outside and stared coldly into her eyes.

She hasn’t seen him in person since the day after the accident, where she stood on stage and shook his hand during a televised press release. When her father was being honored for doing the job that cost him his life, and she was given a silver plaque on behalf of her family, who were all dead thanks to the explosion of the rig.

The President of Roxxon Co. was here again, in her uncle’s driveway, responsible for whatever trouble awaited her inside.

Coriolanus Snow was here, looking the same as he did in her nightmares, as perfect a picture of death as he was ten years ago.

**

Johanna was absolutely nursing one of the worst hangovers of her life.

She’d had a little too much to drink the night before, and she was supposed to be working. She let herself get distracted by the smirking hot brunette that she knew from experience could not be trusted. How many times had Clove robbed her blind after sleeping with her? After claiming to care about her? Johanna had still sold all of her stash, luckily bringing her back into the clear. She now had enough money to pay the big-name suppliers as part of her “penance” for allowing her to sell to the preppy partygoers from the other side of town. Those kids were small fish anyway, according to them, and all the real pill-pushers were too busy selling to their stressed out/bored parents to care about what their spoiled children did with their allowance money.

Lucky for Johanna, those idiots didn’t realize what good customers they were.

She smirked to herself, before another pounding headache had her groaning and gripping her temples, rubbing them with the pads of her fingers. She reached blindly around for her hangover pills and popped three in her mouth without thinking, and already she began to relax as the throbbing in her forehead lessened. She spread her arms out against her mattress and sighed.

A dust mote from the pew to her right blew into her eyeline, and she glared at it and swiped it away like it had personally done her wrong. Johanna sat up and wrapped her hands around her knees.

Her stash was getting low. The weather outside was beginning to turn drafty and she soon would have to brave the New Orleans winter with only the rickety church pews to keep her company.

And worst of all, she was totally out of weed.

Stupid fucking Clove convinced Johanna to split her last blunt, and then, like the crazy bitch she was, she had run off with the whole thing before Johanna could even take a hit.

She swore that the next time she saw Clove she would be stabbing something sharp in her face.

Like a mace, or maybe an axe.

Thoughts of slicing into her ex’s face with an axe made her smile as she bundled up under the hunting jacket she’d had for so long, that had her kept her warm through many cold nights, before her arms could even fit into its sleeves properly, and now was getting a little snug on her shoulders. She would have to toss it soon, but she didn’t want to.

She was never a big supporter of sentimentality (hanging onto shit you don’t need is stupid and it only slows you down), but something had always driven her to hold onto the old hunting jacket, and she had never been sure what it was. Part of her wanted to believe she was just being practical; after all, a shitty cracked pleather jacket is better than none at all, she guessed, but it always felt like more than that. It was something she couldn’t name that frustrated her to no end.

When she had reached the end of the block, Johanna’s amusement from earlier had faded and her mood was sour. Glowering, she walked up the front steps of the house and banged obtrusively on the outer door, yelling, “Get your ass out here, Hawthorne! And bring my OG!”

Locks clicked and turned and Johanna froze as a Hawthorne – but not the one she was yelling for – emerged with a hand on one hip and a baby hitched on the other. Hazelle glared down at Johanna, the screen door still separating them as the black haired woman pursed her lips and waited to see if she could talk her way out of this one.

Oh shit.

She was totally fucking screwed.

**

Katniss slammed and locked the door before she could see Snow walk up to it.

He would still be knocking less than ten seconds later, but that wasn’t something she wanted to think about right now.

President Snow wasn’t something Katniss ever wanted to think about.

She sank against the wall, trying to calm herself down before she faced her uncle in the living room, where he was currently giving the Animal Control guys a piece of his mind concerning his geese.

Apparently they’ve been repossessed by the government, and the law said that any unlawful pets must be turned over to Animal Control, who will deal with them from there.

“I don’t give a damn what the protocols say!” She heard him yell. “They’re my geese, and I want them here!”

Katniss wandered towards the commotion in the living room before Snow’s men could start banging on the door and made eye contact with her uncle.

“What’s going on?”

Haymitch calmed some when he saw Katniss, but not by much. He was still fixedly glaring at the Animal Control guys, before his eyes grew wide at the sight of the black car through the window. He took a moment to collect himself as well, balling up his fists three times and releasing them at his sides. When his eyes opened, they seemed defeated, and he turned to her with a weak smile.

“Hey sweetheart. These guys are trying to stiff us out of our geese, can you believe that? I’m trying to talk them out of it, but you know how the government bastards are. Why don’t you, uh, get started on your homework upstairs? I gotta get the door. The President awaits.”

Haymitch walked away in a huff to go answer the door. Katniss cast a furtive glance between him and the two sheepish men in front of her. They both looked embarrassed.

“Look, kid, its nothing personal against you and your dad –“

“He’s not my father,” Katniss interrupted hotly. The man speaking nodded and made a placating gesture. “But when Roxxon wants something, they get it.”

Roxxon.

Snow.

Oh no.

The horror must have shown on Katniss’ face because the men’s guilty expressions soon became sympathetic.

“President Snow has been eyeing this land for years,” the other man explains, “says its good for development.”

“We’re getting kicked out. We’re being evicted.”

“Sorry kid. I hate that they do this to people with families. It’s not right.”

Then, looking around as if he was afraid lightning might strike him down where he stood, the man straightens and stares quickly ahead as President Snow slithers closer to the dining table. Sits down in the chair that Katniss tossed her stuff in this morning.

And pulls out a deed detailing exactly how he plans to ruin Katniss’ life for the second time.

**

Getting away from Hazelle was hard, but spending the other half of her morning staked outside the high school, waiting for Gale to pop out during his lunch period like some kind of junkie bum was way worse on Johanna’s pride.

Ok.

That was a lie.

Hazelle Hawthorne may have been a poor laundromat worker with too many kids and not enough days off, but she had a way of making you feel two feet tall without even trying.

Johanna squirmed under the intensity of the woman’s gaze. After a moment, Hazelle sighed and unlocked the screen, inviting Johanna inside. She blanched at first and tried to back out, but Hazelle hit her with a stern look that told her she didn’t really have a choice, and she bowed her head and quickly stepped inside.

The house was small, and still fucked up from the hurricane, as all houses in these parts were. Believe it or not, the Hawthorne house was actually one of the lucky ones. Most of the houses on this street had been completely destroyed in Katrina, and the government couldn’t be bothered to do anything about it, not even over ten years after the storm.

Johanna fumed in silent anger as she thought of the injustices people suffered here, including herself, a fucking teenage girl living in an abandoned church (also wrecked, curtesy of Katrina) selling stolen pills to rich losers just to get by.

She walked the ten feet from the front door to the rickety kitchen table and fell into a seat, waiting for Hazelle to come join her, which she did after putting the baby in a playpen, probably handmade by Gale.

His handiwork around the house was half of the reason it hasn’t collapsed already. The other half was work his dad did before he died in the Roxxon explosion ten years ago.

It seemed like everyone Johanna knew had life go to shit at the exact same moment. Hers certainly did.

Hazelle clears her throat and Johanna thankfully returns back to the present, grateful to be distracted from the darkness of her own past. She played with a loose string on her shirt as the baby, Posy, made cooing noises from the safety of her playpen.

“So,” Hazelle started. “I know my son has been dealing marijuana, Johanna. And I know that you are one of his best customers.”

Johanna looked up. Hazelle’s face was unreadable.

“Gale told me.” Hazelle added before Johanna could open her mouth and try to deny it. She sank back into the chair, deflated. “Of course he did.”

Great. Gale being a momma’s boy was what cost her her kush.

Hooray for parenting.

“Look around this house Johanna. Look at me. Do you think me and my other kids stand a chance without Gale? Answer honestly.”

“No.”

“That’s right. We don’t. He’s only a few months away from graduating high school. He’s already eighteen. And when he graduates, he will enter the workforce, legally, and get an honest job so we can live.”

Johanna looked past Hazelle to the wall behind her, its paint chipping and the color tinted yellow from age and water damage. At the ceiling which had caved in at some point and was held up by rotting boards. At Posy looking absolutely fucking miserable in her playpen.

“Look, no offense, Mrs. Hawthorne, but this is not living. It’s barely even surviving. Wouldn’t you want Gale to make money any way he can so you guys actually have a chance?”

“Not if it ends with my son in jail! Or dead! And I thank you for your concern Johanna, however transparent it is, but we are surviving just fine. So if you don’t mind, my son is going to stop selling drugs, and you stop buying them from him. Does that sound like a plan?”

She ambushed him the second she saw his tall, lanky ass duck through the hole in the chain link fence behind the school. Grabbing Gale by the collar Johanna shoved him hard against the fence, pinning his wrists when he tried to break free. He was a strong kid, sure, but living on the streets had made her stronger.

“Johanna –“

“You fucking snitch! Not only did you tell mama about your side hustle, you sold me out too! Do you know what would happen to me if I got booked again? That asshole Conners has been trying to nail me for years, literally, and now he might finally get his wish all because little boy Hawthorne just couldn’t resist telling Mommy.”

“I didn’t tell her!” Gale yelled. “I didn’t. She – one of the younger kids found it in the house and she put the rest together. You know how scary my mom’s glares can be. I had no choice but to tell her everything.”

“You should’ve left me out of it.”

“I tried to, Jo. But she stole my phone and read the messages. You bought my product so often I had you listed as the plug in my contacts.”

Johanna sighs and releases Gale’s jacket. “Great. Guess I’ll just go home then. I’m so happy I spent the entire day dealing with your wonderful family, Hawthorne.”

Johanna turned and started to head down the block when Gale called her back. She turned around and he had a wry smile on his face. He discreetly dropped an ounce of indica in her pocket. She narrowed her eyes in response and Gale shrugged.

“My mom means well but she has no idea how much I make with this. If it was up to her I’d get some shitty job waiting tables downtown for $7 bucks an hour. Not nearly enough to keep all of us alive. But that’s your last batch for a while, Mason. I need to lay low for a while, make sure she’s off my back, and when I come back things are gonna be a lot more discreet.”

“So?” Johanna shrugged.

“So no more of this,” Gale raised an eyebrow and gestured to where they stood. “And no more going to my house Jo. I mean it, if you show up again and you’re lucky enough for me to be at the door, or one of my brothers, we’re all gonna act like we don’t know you, got it?”

Johanna rolled her eyes and scowled. “Whatever.”

She dug into her pocket and payed him twice his usual price, just to get him to shut the fuck up about his family. That should keep them all fed for a while. He pocketed the cash and nodded to her, then disappeared behind the fence without looking back. Rolling her eyes, Johanna stuffed her hands in her pockets and began walking home.

Leave it to Johanna to have a weed man that was totally fucking nuts.

**

President Snow helped himself to some coffee that was brewing in a pot.

Haymitch had tried several times to steer her upstairs, but Katniss would rather cut off her left foot than leave anyone she loved to face that monster alone. So she sat next to Haymitch, two seats down from where Snow was seated at the head of the table, and glared daggers at the old man while trying not to cry. Haymitch held her hand under the table while he addressed Snow.

“You want my house,” he said flatly. Snow’s snake eyes shifted and he lowered the coffee mug from his lips. Katniss sneered. Now she was gonna have to burn a perfectly good mug.

“Don’t act surprised in front of the girl, Mr. Abernathy. You and I both know I’ve been trying to wrestle this land from underneath your…tenuous grip for years. And what a fine job you’ve done with the upkeep.” Snow’s face twisted into a grimace as he eyed the house in disgust.

It was just as messy as it had been this morning, with only a small clearing made from the sliding back door to the front where the Animal Control guys had loaded up the geese. The air smelled faintly of a distillery, and Haymitch himself was a little musty.

 “You should consider yourself lucky that I haven’t alerted Child Protective Services of the state of a house with a child in it. But I have no desire to separate young Miss Everdeen from her family for a second time.”

Katniss sat up in her chair, alert, and addressed Snow directly. “You know who I am?”

Snow smiled, a slow, Cheshire-like thing, and Katniss fought the instinct to sink lower into her chair and instead sent him a scathing glare of her own.

“Oh yes, my dear,” Snow said, unbothered by her sudden fury, “You are quite hard to forget. Even as young as you were when we first met. Why, you couldn’t have been more than six years old. Such a precocious child, burdened by tragedies no one so young should have to suffer. And yet, you’ve endured. In spite, it seems, of the presence of those who do not share your sense of self-preservation.” He tossed a pointed glare at Haymitch, then continued to gaze through Katniss. “My, what a beautiful young woman you’ve grown into.”

Before Katniss could unpack that comment, Haymitch stood up and slammed his hand on the table.

“Don’t you talk to her anymore! Your business is with me, you deal with me. Got it?”

Two of Snow’s bodyguards hovered towards him, but Snow waved them off. “Understood, Mr. Abernathy.”

“Alright then.” After glaring warily at Snow for a moment, Haymitch slowly lowered himself back into his chair.

“Katniss, why don’t you take your homework and go out for a while?”

Katniss shook her head and stood up, brushing off Haymitch’s hand on her shoulder and ignoring the pleading look in his eyes.

“No! I can’t leave now, are you crazy?”

“Sweetheart –“

“He wants to kick us out of here! He wants to call CPS on you, get me sent to a group home!”

“I won’t let that happen –“

“He wants to ruin everything for us and you-you want me to leave? When he’s- he’s –“

“Sweetheart, sweetheart…” Haymitch pins Katniss’ arms above her head so she can’t flail them around dangerously like she wants to, and her complaining turns into withered sobs as she gives up, gives in, to the possibility that her life is about to be completely ruined, again, and there is nothing she can do about it. She sobs relentlessly into Haymitch’s shoulder. He sighs and holds both her hands in his, pinning her wrists to his chest as he brings their foreheads together.

“He wants to take our house, Uncle Haymitch.”

“I know, honey.”

“You can’t let him.”

“I’ve been fighting that bastard over this a long time, Katniss. I’m not giving up any time soon.”

“Good. Because I can’t lose you.”

Haymitch pressed a kiss on her forehead. “I can’t lose you either, sweetheart. I’m sorry I haven’t been enough for you lately. I- I’m gonna work on getting better at that, I promise.”

Katniss sniffs. “I’m sorry about your geese.” Haymitch chuckles, surprised, and Katniss holds her lips closed to suppress a giggle. She had a feeling that if she laughed just for a second, it would turn hysterical and she’d start screaming until she was hoarse.

And the last thing she needed to do was have a mental breakdown in front of Snow.

Haymitch stroked his free hand down the length of her face. “Me too, sweetheart,” he sighed. “Me too. Now go on. Don’t be gone for too long and uh, remember to take your homework, alright?”

Katniss rolled her eyes and broke out of the embrace, but obediently went down the hall to collect her things. “Of all the times for you to remember how to parent…”, she mumbled. Haymitch heard it and flashed a mocking smile. It didn’t reach his eyes.

“Stay safe,” he called. “And text me when you get in!”

“I will.” Katniss sighed. If this was how Haymitch was going to act now, maybe it was better for him to just ignore her. She didn’t know how much of his newfound parental smothering she could take. The only other time he was like this was right after the accident, and she’d been too numb from losing her parents and baby sister to be bothered by his overprotectiveness then.

She unlocked the door. As she stepped outside she heard Haymitch say in a low, dangerous tone: - “And if you so much as cough near her, I will skin the flesh off your bones, track down my fucking geese, and have them eat it breakfast, are we goddamn clear? And tell your henchmen to get their feet off my carpet!”

Katniss locked the door behind her and smiled.

Maybe overprotective Haymitch wouldn’t be all bad.

**

Getting to the docks required a bit of acrobatics on Johanna’s part. She had to climb over the fence, shuffle around the loose floorboards, and slide under the ropes separating the public side of the docks from the private side.

From her vantage point, Johanna could see the entire beach stretched on for miles. Right now the tide was low, and seagulls swooped down to scoop up loose seaweed as the waves rise and fell on shore. It was a great view, and the beach was usually deserted at night, which made it a great place for Johanna to smoke.

As she fished around her bag looking for a lighter, the fence rattled, meaning another person was nearby. And getting closer.

“For fucks sake,” Johanna whined, unlit blunt dangling from her lips. Not only was her lighter missing, but now she had an audience. She finally found her lighter but didn’t pull it out yet, still gripping it inside her bag in case a cop was looking for a reason to bring her in.

As if they ever needed one.

“Can’t a girl ever chill in peace?”

“You’re not supposed to be back here.”

Bossy words. Authoritative. Judgmental. But those words didn’t come from a cop just now. They came from a girl, either her age or younger from the sound of it, sounding as guilty as she expected Johanna to feel. She even thought the girl sounded annoyed.

What fucking nerve.

Johanna scoffed, emphasizing her thoughts, and flicked her lighter open. It took two tries to light, stupid New Orleans wind, and she inhaled for a long moment before puffing out: “You would know, wouldn’t you, Princess?”

Behind her the girl stiffened. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Johanna rolled her eyes, finally facing the girl with a droll expression. “I mean you’re not supposed to be here either, Brainless. And yet…” She let her sentence trail off with a sweeping hand motion before she sighed and leaned against her bag.

The girl, for some reason, had stepped closer, and plopped gracelessly down on the left side of the small private dock, about five feet from where Johanna’s legs were stretched out in front of her. Johanna figured this was probably a place she liked to hang out too, and after their little showdown (which Johanna had totally won, thank you very much) she figured she may as well stay here.

From this angle Johanna could clearly see the girl’s features and, prissy attitude aside, she had to admit this girl was hot. She considers walking back that assessment after glancing at her expression, nose wrinkled in distaste at the sight of her joint.

“Is that weed?” She asked, her low voice lilted high in suspicion.

“No, it’s cocaine,” Johanna said flatly. God, what is with this girl’s fucking attitude? Its like she was down to earth and pious all at fucking once. It was really getting on her nerves. “Want some?”

Johanna could tell by the girl’s scandalized face that this wasn’t the direction she expected the convo to go to, and she feels some satisfaction at being able to trip the judgy bitch up, even for a moment. An idea popped into Johanna’s head and she smirked. The girl studied her face warily.

“Actually Brainless…I think a hit is just what you need. Go on. Take one.” She had to all but thrust the joint into her hand, since the girl was still gaping at her like a fish. She took the blunt from Johanna and examined it with both hands. Johanna threw her head back and gave a groan of frustration.

“It’s not laced with anything, genius. Its just tree. You have had tree before, haven’t you?”

“Just once,” she said, voice thoughtful. “It was through a pipe, though. And the weed didn’t smell like this. It smelled…nasty.”

“Mm,” Johanna grunted in sympathy. No wonder she was so turned off by weed. “Sounds like you had a bad batch the first time. Don’t worry kiddo, this right here is the good shit. Give it a try.” At the girl’s continued stumped look Johanna added with an eyeroll, “Here, give it. I’ll show you how to inhale, since you oh-so desperately need it.”

The girl looked like she didn’t want to pass it back for a lesson and they glared at each other until Johanna snatched it back and brought it to her lips. Maybe she was already high but she swore she caught the girl staring at them before her gaze dropped and a warm blush grew on her cheeks.

“Now pay attention Brainless, ‘cause if you waste my weed I will literally kill you.”

She took a generous hit in demonstration and handed the joint back to her. Johanna narrowed her eyes at the girl as she brought the joint to her lips, making sure she knew she meant business with her threat. With an extreme lack of finesse, the girl actually managed to pull a pretty big hit. It might have been too big. She bent her head over and coughed several times and while she was hacking it out, Johanna took back her blunt and drew a finishing hit.

“Fuck,” the girl sputtered. The bit of cursing was so different from the girl’s holier than thou attitude that Johanna burst out laughing. After sputtering some more the girl joined her, and the two of them sat on the dock laughing like hyenas for a solid minute.

Fuck.

They were really high. Johanna just shared her weed with a stranger, for fucks sake. One she was positive she didn’t like until a second ago.

“God,” she choked after taking a swig of her water bottle. She tossed it to the girl, who chugged it back without a thought. “That is good shit. What’s your name, kid?”

This trips the girl up. “What?” she asks, poker face returning as she wiped her mouth with her sleeve. Johanna snatches her half empty bottle back and slams it on the ground with too much force.

Talking to this girl was worse than talking to a wall.

A very dense, attractive wall.

“Your name. You have one, don’t you?” Johanna lets her voice slip into a lazy, sarcastic drawl, and she delights at the flash of anger brewing on the girl’s face before it slips back into that stupid cool mask. “Katniss,” she mumbles.

“Cat piss? Your name is cat piss?”

“Katniss!” she yells with a scowl. Her eyes widen and she covers her mouth, as if that’ll help erase the noise she’s already made, but when no one comes bursting through the bushes to arrest them she relaxes, arms hugging her knees. “My name is Katniss,” she says again.

“Isn’t that a type of tree?”

“It’s a root,” Katniss replies, but Johanna isn’t really hearing her. “My brother was named after a tree,” she says instead.

Why did she just say that? She hasn’t let herself think about him in months.

Stupid girl. Stupid weed. Katniss glances at her sideways then stares into the distance, lost in her own thoughts.

Johanna’s high has been ruined by thinking about her brother, and she starts packing up her things. The girl eyes her lazily until she shoots up, ramrod straight, when Johanna slides her arms through her jacket.

“Where did you get that jacket?” she asks sharply. Johanna squirms, feeling uncomfortable under the sudden sharpness of Katniss’ gaze. She chooses to ignore the girl as she packs her hydraflask inside her bag.

“I asked you a question.” Katniss stands, her eyes blazing with anger as she studies Johanna’s jacket more closely. Johanna stiffens and straightens up when Katniss takes a step closer, eyes hazy from her high but still bright with fury at some unspoken offense. Johanna sticks her chin up haughtily to meet Katniss’ eyes.

“What difference does it make to you, cat piss?”

“It doesn’t belong to you.”

There she goes again. Sticking her pretty little nose places it doesn’t fucking belong. Johanna bared her teeth.

“Yeah? And just how would you know?”

She hesitates, and Johanna takes that as a victory. She opens her mouth to deliver the final comeback but before she can, Katniss gets the drop on her and decks her on the cheek. Johanna’s head snaps back, and her eyes glaze over with fury. Never mess with a teenage fucking runaway.

“You little –“

She reaches out to yank Katniss’ hair, a long black braid she’d rather pull in much different circumstances, but is thrown back instead by a blinding white force. Her body flies into the fence. When Johanna raises her head, all she can see is white until she looks down at her hands. Those are glowing black, with little puffs of smoke rising from her palms.

As the force of the fall slowly brings her to unconsciousness, Johanna thinks she can see a much younger version of her waking up on the beach on that horrible day, stealing the leather jacket from a girl who looked like a younger Katniss, her dark hair in two braids, as she slept on the sand with glowing white hands.

Chapter Text

Her mother is tense as she steers their car through the storm, her already pale skin turned ashen as her dainty hands grip the wheel. Prim whines softly in the backseat but is muffled by cheap leather as she faces away from the danger, in Katniss’ old dragonfly carseat that she was all to happy to give to her five-month-old sister. Katniss sits in the middle spot to be closer to Prim, despite her mother’s protests. Now she holds Prim’s tiny right hand inside her barely bigger left one. She whispers soft things to Prim as her mother drives down the winding curves towards the Roxxon rig, to pick up their father from a late shift.

Her dad worked late shifts all the time, never being one to turn down extra pay for the family. Something was different about today, though Katniss wasn’t sure what. Last night her father seemed upset after he took a phone call during dinner, and he talked to her mom outside about it for what felt like a really long time. Prim wasn’t finished with her baby food when her mom left the room, so Katniss fed Prim and cleaned her highchair before eating the rest of her food.

Katniss’ mother was sad when they came back in, and her father looked angry. He was never one to get angry around her and Prim, and Katniss found it strange that he was now, so she asked him, “What’s wrong Daddy?”

He tucked her chin and wiped a stray bit of food off her face with a napkin. “Its nothing serious, pumpkin. Daddy has to work another late shift tomorrow, that’s all.”

That made sense. She was used to her dad working late shifts. It never made him mad before, though.

“Ok. If that’s all it is.” She shrugged and hopped out of her seat, hoping to let Prim out of her high chair before her mom did so she could pick her up - she loved getting to pick up Prim – when her father caught her shoulders within his strong hands and held her there.

“Katniss.” Her father’s coal grey eyes were firm. “You’re gonna have to take care of Prim and your mother while I’m gone tomorrow, okay?” They did this every time he worked a late shift on the weekends. It made her feel big and important, for her father to choose her as the guardian of their family while he worked during the day. She held her head up and nodded solemnly. He smiled and pulled her head down to kiss the top of it.

“Good girl. Now go, get your jammies on. I’ll take care of your sister.”

“But…” Katniss hesitated, reluctant to leave Prim even though she knew her baby sister would be fine in the strong capable hands of her father while she got herself ready for bed.

“Go on now. I’ll be there to say goodnight in a little bit.”

Her father swatted her playfully, and Katniss giggled as she ducked away from his hand and into the small room she shared with Prim, barely large enough to hold Prim’s crib and her bed, as well as the worn dresser where they both put their clothes. She picks the first shirt and pants that she sees and runs into the bathroom to change.

She hasn’t seen her father at all since last night. Something about the way her mom’s hands grip the steering wheel tells her he should have been finished hours ago. But he doesn’t pick up when they call him. So Katniss’ mother straps them in the car and goes to see for herself what’s holding him up.

The rain begins to pick up.

Her mother’s already cautious drive descends to a crawl, as rain shatters against the windshield so hard that the wipers have to work in triple time just to keep up.

Prim’s crying gets louder.

Her mother’s hands get whiter.

Katniss takes to rubbing Prim’s forehead, no longer trying to talk soothingly but instead singing a lullaby that her dad sings them (not the forbidden one about necklaces, the one with the meadow). It works quicker than Katniss plans, quieting Prim entirely after a few minutes and slowly lolling her to sleep.

Her eyes are nearly closed when the rig goes up in flames.

They could see it clearly, could hear the sonic boom of the explosion as the blast rattles the car windows, red, orange, and yellow blurring together in the sky as the storm trudges on.

Katniss barely has time to process that horror before her mother loses her grip on the wheel, sending the car spiraling across the two-lane road and careening into the ocean.

Prim eyes are halfway open, and it’s all Katniss can do to close them, knowing as she does that Prim’s bright blue eyes will never open again. She shakes her mother and gasps when she sees her face.

Her mouth is open in a scream that never leaves her throat.

Katniss tries holding her breath and waiting, waiting for someone to show up and pull them out, but the water keeps climbing higher and Prim and her mother never wake up and smoke from the exploded rig seeps in through the windows threatening to choke her out and she wonders if this was how her Daddy felt, too, if he was trapped and alone, and then thinking hurts too much so she doesn’t, she lets out her breath and lets herself float, to the place where her mom and dad and sister wait for her to join them, with open, ready arms.

She chases the darkness and lets it take her, wanting to see the rest of her family, make sure they’re okay.

She never makes it.

Instead the darkness takes her to the beach, and she wakes up sputtering water and shaking sand off the back of her father’s jacket which she wears protectively, shrugging it back on when it falls loosely off her shoulders.

For a second Katniss lays her head down on the sand. Closing her eyes as if all of this was just a bad dream and mom and dad and Prim will be waiting for her in their little run-down house and all would be well, at least as well as it ever was. The sound of someone choking to the left of her catches her attention, and lets herself hope that she was wrong after all about her mom being gone. She sits up and tries to place the sounds; her heart falls out of her chest when she sees the body next to her, too small to be her mother and too big to be Prim.

Katniss tightens the jacket around her and crawls slowly over to the coughing thing.

The thing turns out to be a girl, with choppy brown hair and in her pajamas, coughing up enough water to fill a small swimming pool. Katniss has seen this before.

Not this this, but sometimes kids would play around the watering hole near their house when they weren’t supposed to, and their parents or a kindly neighbor would fish them out and bring them to their house. Her mother was a nurse, but she couldn’t go to work because Prim was too little, and everyone else on the block was too busy to babysit. Her mom knew that many people in their neighborhood were poor and couldn’t afford to go to the doctor, so she sometimes made medicines at home and gave them to people around town for as low a price as they would allow.

Pride was the only thing most people could afford in her neighborhood.

Shaking off her thoughts, Katniss scoots behind the girl and sits behind her protectively, mirroring what she has seen her mother do too many times. She pats the girl’s back, hard, and a stream of water comes rushing out of her mouth like vomit. Disgusted, Katniss looks at the sand while the girl wretches in her arms. She wonders when it stopped raining.

Suddenly the girl starts squirming and pushes Katniss backwards, turning on her with a fury like she’s never seen before.

“Get your bloody hands off me!” the other little girl screams.

‘I just saved your life,’ Katniss wants to reply, snidely, before picking up her jacket and curling into a small ball, waiting for someone, anyone, to come and find her.

Instead she wakes up cold.

**

Katniss wakes up alone on the pier, with sand sticking to her in places it has absolutely no right to be. As she raises her head and regards her surroundings, an unpleasant wave of déjà vu hits and she thinks she is going to be sick, right over the school clothes she didn’t bother to change out of before she left the house.

Oh. Wait.

Maybe that was just the effect of the weed she smoked with a random lunatic who was wearing her dead daddy’s jacket.

“What the fuck?”

Katniss dropped her head back into the sand, not caring about the dark strands of her hair getting buried by the stuff as she sank deeper into her confusion and despair. With the way the universe conspired against her, it would have been easier to bury her entire body underneath the sand and let the high tide sweep her away. Or, she could stay buried until the seagulls swarmed around her remains and picked at her body piece by piece, the same way Snow and mother nature did ten years ago.

Ten years ago.

There was a girl down on the beach. Ten years ago today, (yesterday, she notes in a daze as she checks the time on her phone) there was a girl. With short spiky hair and angry brown eyes, tossing a six-year-old Katniss on the sand after she saves her life.

Katniss sits up slowly, brushes sand off her skirt, gathers her backpack and phone, and starts the walk home.

When she trudges through the door twenty minutes later, the very last thing she expects to see is Haymitch waiting at the table, one hand gripped around a mug of black coffee like its his truest salvation.

“You’re home late.”

His eyes slide over her and instantly become alert, and Katniss squirms under his microscopic focus, because his eyes are clearer and more sober than they’ve been in years, and it’s weird, and she’s suddenly filled with anger at how inconvenient his newfound sobriety is at the moment. She doesn’t want to deal with a sober, observant Haymitch right now, because then she has to face the fact that today actually happened and it wasn’t a bad dream and she can’t do that right now, not while that awful déjà vu from waking up on the beach is still swirling around her mind.

The last thing she could think about right now is whether or not Haymitch cares if she gets high.

 “And you’re sober,” she says, tone scathing. At least she tries to be. She’s pretty sure that the sluggishness of her voice kinda curbs the sarcastic effect she was going for. “I guess we’re both full of surprises today, huh?”

 She storms up the stairs, ignoring him when he tries to follow her and slamming and locking the door in his face before he can say anything else.

She sinks into her bed and huge, wracking sobs shake her body. She ignores everything else, from Haymtich’s concerned call of, “Sweetheart, what happened?” from outside the door to the small piles of sand spilling from her hair, clothes, and backpack. She ignores it all.

Eventually Haymitch leaves and the last of the sand sheds from her skin, but the feeling of loneliness that hadn’t fully left her since the accident wraps around her so tightly, she almost finds it comforting as she drifts off to sleep.

**

Haymitch isn’t there when she goes downstairs the next morning.

Instead he leaves a note on the counter, scrawled in his messy handwriting in pencil, since the various pens he tried to use on the paper were evidently out of ink, as indicated by the swirly indents on the paper (and the hole where he got frustrated and drew a line too hard).

Katniss reads it.

Off to run some errands. Won’t be back til you’re at school. Try not to burn the house down while I’m gone, alright, sweetheart?  - Uncle H

“Dick,” Katniss mutters and rolls her eyes, but a small smile pokes at the corners of her mouth as she puts the note back. Katniss eats a hasty breakfast of eggs and toast, as she ate the last of her yogurt yesterday. She hopes Haymitch remembers to pick some up at the store. She shoots him a text just in case.

The air is brisk this morning, and Katniss is grateful for it. The nipping breeze is calming around her shoulders and as she starts school that morning Katniss is cautiously optimistic that this day will be better than yesterday.

She is wrong.

Like all good high school drama, it happens during lunch.

Clove Carrington and her older brother are on a warpath today, and they seem especially keen on getting a rise out of her and Madge as they eat out in the quad. Katniss is withdrawn and moody but she supposes that isn’t much different than usual, and just like usual Madge doesn’t mind and sits quietly with a book in her hand as her fork pokes around her Tupperware of homemade food. Their silence is companionable and welcome, or is until a football is sailing through the air and almost hits Madge in the head. Katniss spies it at the very last second and pushes them both down on the grass, afraid that if she wasted one second telling her friend to duck, it would have been a second too late.

Katniss looks up and spies the culprit responsible; Cato doesn’t even try to hide his smile when she glares at him in fury. Madge sees the anger in Katniss’ eyes and grabs her hand, shaking her head with wide, pleading eyes. Katniss decides to babysit the ball, daggers in her eyes as she sits cross legged on the grass and dares Cato to make his next move.

Cato’s smirk only grows as he makes his way closer, swaggering over to their shady little corner as if he knew exactly how this would play out. He delights in the way Madge shrinks away from him; Katniss instinctively positions herself in front of Madge when she flinches after he gives her a wink.

Cato crouches in a way that still positions him higher than her and looks down at her condescendingly.

“Everdeen,” he says in a slow, purposefully irritating tone, “give me my ball.”

No one dares to crowd around just yet, as that would alert the campus aids that something was happening and their fun would quickly be shut down, but other students looked up curiously and some’s eyes flicked back and forth to their phones, unsure if they needed to start recording anything.

They were all cowards and vultures and it made Katniss sick. She sneered with as much bite as she felt,

“And what the fuck will you do if I don’t?”

Behind her Madge gasped. Cato’s smile grew chilly in its brightness.

“Me? Nothing. I don’t hit girls, Everdeen, not even scrawny flat-chested ones like you. And too bad for you. I actually hit softer than my sister."

Katniss doesn’t have time to formulate a comeback before a punch knocks her on her ass and Clove is straddled on top of her, pinning her wrists to the grass. Now the cowardly students are recording.

“Katniss!”

Madge’s yell feels distorted as Clove descends on her, and the only thing Katniss can see above her is the swing of Clove’s ponytail before the stars start to cloud her vision. Madge is yelling for someone to do something. Katniss doesn’t think anyone will. And then Clove jumps off her so suddenly that she’s sure that one of the aids has finally decided to earn their paycheck and investigate, but when Katniss raises her head and slowly lifts her arms there are gasps.

Clove’s thigh is bleeding and her hand feels heavier than it did a couple seconds ago.

 “She’s got a knife!” Clove screams.

Katniss looks down at her hands in a daze, prepared to protest Clove’s lies, when she sees the bright, pencil thin dagger in her hand, sharp tip glinting red with fresh blood. Horrified, the drops the thing and it disappears, just like that.

And then she is tackled and shoved into handcuffs just as the bell rings.

**

“I’m telling you, it wasn’t my knife,” she insists for what feels like the eleventh time, crossing her arms and glaring at the mounted master’s degree just over the Vice Principal’s head. He rubs his chin before sighing and shaking his head.

“Katniss, I have at least seven students who say they saw you pull a knife out of Clove Carrington’s leg.”

“I know it sounds insane,” Katniss tries, “but you have to believe me. I’ve never had a knife before. Ever! Clove or Cato must’ve slipped it on me or something. In fact, she probably planned this whole thing and is laughing at me right now because I got dragged to your office in handcuffs while she got away scot free with a tiny little scratch on her leg from a knife that she put in my hand while she was beating the crap out of me!”

Boggs raises an eyebrow.

“Katniss, are you aware that the possession of any weapon on campus is grounds for an automatic expulsion?” Katniss purses her lips and glares harder, but he won’t continue until she answers his question, so she nods once. “It took fifteen minutes for me to convince Principal Coin not to expel you on that alone, not to mention the fighting.”

Katniss sat up in her seat, incensed. “She jumped on me! And before that, Cato threw a football that almost took Madge’s head off! I thought this was supposed to be an anti-bullying campus, or have the posters in the bathroom been lying to us too?”

Boggs takes all of her ranting in calmly. He keeps his hands clasped professionally in front of his desk and face emotionless while she puffs out angry breaths, the forming bruises on her split lip making her voice raspy and breathless. There is crusted blood from where Clove hit her on her temple, and she saw when she washed off in the bathroom that her left cheek was two times bigger than her right.

The face of a winner, for sure.

Meanwhile Clove’s only injury was a shallow line in the middle of her thigh, the only thing a knife that tiny could have done while Katniss was trapped between her legs and fists.

“All three of you are getting suspended. Since is your first and hopefully last offense,” he paused to give her a meaningful look, “Principal Coin and I were able to agree on a four day suspension for you, and three days each for Cato and Clove.”

Katniss says nothing. Boggs lets a tiny bit of amusement show when he notes her unchanged expression. “I wasn’t expecting a thank you, but that’s okay. I know you’re a good kid, Katniss. Principal Coin does too.”

Katniss snorts and rolls her eyes. “Principal Coin hates me.”

It sure felt like she did. Like she resented the little girl who grew up near a watering hole crossing over the tracks after the death of her entire family. As if Katniss was tainting their neighborhood with her humble upbringing. She thinks Coin hates her uncle for the same reason. Her feelings are confirmed when Boggs doesn’t correct her.

“She saw, as I did, that this was an out of character move for you. She also assigned you a counselor, when you return from suspension. We think that this behavior might have something to do with your home life, and that it’s something you should talk about with a school professional.”

That gets Katniss’ attention. “My home life?” She asks in a measured voice.

There’s no way in hell they could possibly know about Snow.

“Your uncle,” Boggs answers the unspoken question for her, and Katniss almost leans back with a sigh of relief before her hackles raise again.

 “Your teachers tell me they haven’t seen him at any of the parent/ teacher meetings this semester. Is everything okay?”

Ha. No.

“Yeah,” she says casually. “Everything’s fine. I always forget to tell him about the meetings and he still hasn’t figured out how to email, so he has no idea they’re even happening unless I tell him. Sorry. I’ll be more on top of it.”

Boggs studies her for a moment. He heaves a heavy sigh and sits back, apparently trusting the lie.

“Alright. Well, he’ll have to come to the office to sign some papers tomorrow. That’s extremely important so make sure you tell him. Do you have a friend who can send you your classwork?”

Katniss only had one friend, and she was pretty sure she just scared her off by pulling a glowy knife out of god’s knows where and shanking their bully. She nods.

“Then that’s that. See you next Wednesday, Miss Everdeen.”

**

Katniss spends the night thinking about what happened.

The way the dagger just appeared out of nowhere. How odd it was, so white and bright it seemed to glow in the daylight. Or maybe it was just the sun. It had to be playing tricks on her. After all, it’s pretty damn hard to see when your eye’s swollen shut.

How right it felt in her hands.

Ok, there was really no explanation for that, but Katniss was willing to chock it up to actually being able to defend herself in the heat of the moment.

How it made her feel.

Powerful, in a way that was hard to even quantify.

But what did it mean? If it meant anything at all, other than the Crazy Carringtons trying to have her expelled. But then why did she feel so –

Click. Click. Click.

Katniss sits up and blinks. “What the hell?”

Twack!

A sound that was way louder than before has Katniss springing up from her bed. Something digs into the side of her palm.

“Unbelievable.”

The knife from before is back in her hand, thick as a piece of coloring chalk now and as white and glowy as it was at the quad. The light pulsates in her hand, fading in and out that seemed to match her heartbeat.  

Another click at the window brings Katniss out of her openmouthed daze and she positions the knife defensively in one hand while the other cracks the window. She can’t see anything. She moves the glowing knife down to examine the stranger. 

It’s Haymitch. She breathes a sigh of relief before anger has her blood boiling, and the daggers are back again.

“What the hell are you doing outside?” She speaks quietly but her words still dig and cut into the silence. But Haymitch is so far gone that he doesn’t seem to hear her. He doesn't make a snarky reply or reprimand her for her tone, in an equally acerbic one of his own. No, Haymitch does something even more disturbing.

He starts crying.

Chapter Text

She can clearly hear the sirens as she races down the road.  

They’re half a mile back by now, but blue and red blur her vision in a series of dots as the pounding rain blends in with the tears streaming down her face.  

Her brother is dead. Her father is too, she realizes, and she is happier about that than any seven year old has the right to be. Instead the only thought that consumes her as she runs from the scene is this one: 

Alder is dead because of me. 

Alder is dead because of me. 

Alder is dead because of me. 

It bounces around her brain over and over, like one of those shitty nursery rhymes the teachers were always trying to make them sing at school. She dodges out of the way as a car comes speeding down the road, clawing up giant puddles of dirty rainwater on the sidewalk.  

She has no particular destination in mind, other than far away, and allows her feet to take her where they will. 

If she had just kept her mouth shut and hadn’t tried to fight back this time as he – as he did it, then Alder wouldn’t have come in and stabbed their father with a kitchen knife, over and over, while she ran behind his legs and cried. 

Alder helped her back into her pajamas and held her tightly, the knife still gripped in his hand far above her head, watching the corpse, waiting to see if it would spring back to life and knock his teeth out like he usually did when he felt like one of them was getting lippy. The sickly sour smell of the liquor he drank was overpowering, and it was that smell that made Johanna retch onto the floor, and not the blood. Stealing one last glance at the man who tormented them, abused them, the two seeds of his useless sperm, Alder placed the knife on her bed and proceeded to stroke Johanna’s hair. His embrace was steady and warm, and he was thankful Johanna was buried too deeply in his chest to notice how his face became green, too shaken up herself to notice the little tremors in his hands, too little to fully understand anything except that they were finally free, at least in this moment. 

But moments weren’t built to last.  

He squeezes Johanna tighter against his chest as scores of blue and red light flood the windows. Prepares himself for the moment where he has to let her go. He straightens up. Johanna remains glued to his side. 

“Jojo,” he said softly. “Jojo you gotta get out of here.” 

Johanna was young, but she was smart. “You didn’t say ‘we’.” 

She balled her fists into his shirt and leaned into him harder. He heard the front door blast open, whether from a battering ram or a gun. It didn’t really matter at this point anyway. 

He pried Johanna’s fingers off his shirt and grabbed her shoulders. “Johanna, look at me! You have to run, now!” 

“No!” She screamed, stubbornly planting small feet on the carpet and glaring up at him through the frightened tears in her eyes. 

“Put your weapon down!” 

Alder turned and saw five cops, weapons drawn at both him and Johanna as they took in the scene. 

The knife lay on the carpet, blood mixing with a stain of apple juice Johanna had spilled when she was a toddler. Alder took an extension cord to the face to protect Johanna from their father’s wrath. She slept in his room after that. Until she turned five. 

When it was deemed inappropriate for them to room together. Just so that bastard could…so he could… 

He felt the sensation of pain on the back of his head and realized dully that a cop had clubbed him with the butt of his gun. Johanna yelled and threw herself onto one of them - hoping to do what, he didn’t know - but he couldn’t muster any pride in his little sister’s bravery knowing it could damn well get her killed. 

The cops had no qualms all these years ignoring their cries for help about their father. Why should they show mercy now that they killed him? 

As three officers surrounded him and one held him in place with his shoe, he pleaded for her once again, shaking his head when she looked at the cops with a fiery hatred. 

“Johanna,” he whispered, eyes wide and entreating. “Johanna please. Run.” 

It was the pleading that did it. 

With tears in her eyes Johanna ran out the back door, making Alder a silent promise to come back when the cops had gone. She’d run to the station, meet him there, and get him out, somehow, and they would be together, because it was too unfair for them to shake the monster loose only to be separated in foster care until Alder was eighteen and who knew where they would be at that point. 

Probably halfway around the country. Johanna knew no one in Louisiana would wanna take her, and why the hell would she want to be taken in, anyway? 

There would just be another Daddy to run from. 

No, Alder was her only family, and she was his. And she would come back for him, as soon as – 

Boom. 

She finds herself charging towards the gunshot before her mind even registered, hoping for any explanation except for the inevitable. 

Hoping to see something else, anything else than Alder dead, faceless, and under the boots of five unmoved cops, noting his body and her fathers, still propped on her tacky pink sheets, blood mixing together with the apple juice stain. 

She doesn’t scream. She doesn’t cry. She turns and walks out of the same back door, pausing only to stare boldly into the eyes of the man who did it; the short, stocky red-headed officer who had his shoe on Alder’s back. He turns around and meets her eyes. 

She runs.  

Hate propels her forward. Shouts of ‘stop the girl!’ and ‘surround the beach!’ ring in her ears, but she doesn’t hear them. 

She is faster than them on foot and reaches the pier in record time.  

Out of the corner of  her eye, far across the water, she sees something huge go up in flames.  

Water pounds into her face and blinds her momentarily, but she can’t afford to stop now. She wheezes as the rainwater clogs her nostrils. 

In the din of the storm the voices of Adler’s killers are lost, and Johanna doesn’t have time to run away before those large, stocky hands grab her and start to pull her away. she tries to kick, bite,  and pinch her way out his grip but his hold gets tighter and tighter. 

“There you are,” the red haired man says, and Johanna feels hot with revulsion. Everything about him is repulsive to her. his face, his voice, the way he just murdered her brother for defending her. it's that hatred that propels her to start fighting back again. 

“Let me go!” she screams. “Let me go you stupid murdering bastard!” 

He grabs her chin, hard, and he doesn’t let up when water starts to flood into her open mouth and nostrils, effectively cutting off her air. 

“You’ve got quite a mouth on you, little girl. Someone oughtta teach you some respect.”

He shakes her. She blows the water out her nose and wheezes, “Screw you…asshole.” 

She kicks him as hard as she can in the crotch and he drops her, surprised. She sprints away, towards the pier. She hears him curse behind her and yell something into his walkie and more men descend upon her. they’ve blocked the entire pier. Three patrol cars are also blocking the exit through the beach. The only way to escape is through the water.  

Without thinking twice Johanna sprints towards the waves, not stopping once to see how far the cops are behind her. Redhead tries to give out orders to shoot but no one will listen. 

Huh. 

Good to know she’s not tall enough to ride that ride yet. Too bad Alder didn’t get the same mercy. Johanna is knee deep into the water when she realizes something important: she doesn’t know how to swim. She’s just about to rethink the genius of her plan when a loud screech sounds through the air, and a three thousand pound vehicle is hurtling right where she swims. 

And then… 

She disappears.  

She has no idea how it happened.  

Just that where she was floating a second ago, a car floats face up and on fire. She now is deep in the water, about thirty feet from the flaming car and it should scare her since she can’t swim and all but her body refuses to sink. A flare goes off from the car. Johanna has to shield her eyes, its so bright. And then something strange happens. 

Yes, stranger than her magically moving out of the way of a burning vehicle that was supposed to crush her body. 

She starts feeling drawn towards the flame, towards the blinding white light coming from inside the vehicle. The light gets brighter until it fades and she can see the outline of a small person. 

A larger person lays dead at the steering wheel. Directly behind her a carseat is facing backwards. She doesn’t have the heart to see if that child had the same fate as its mother. But the light isn’t coming from either of them.  

It comes from the girl. 

She knows it’s a girl now, she can see the way the light curls around her long dark hair. its pretty hair. Johanna feels the strangest compulsion to reach out and touch it…but that isn’t what she’s here for. She knows, somehow, that its her job to get this girl out safe. Even though they don’t know each other. Even though this girl’s an orphan now, like her, and they’re both about to get screwed over by the system. 

She untangles the girl from her seat belt and nudges her out of the booster she’s sitting in. She’s a small girl. She looks about four but Johanna knows somehow that she is older. She gives the girl’s arm a tug, dutifully looking away from the white light that seems to cover her entire form. The girl is so light their bodies crash together on impact. Suddenly the light takes on a different color. Its bright and intense but now it’s a swirling grey, the color of the raging storm outside.  

Is it even raining anymore, Johanna thinks, as she and the girl cling together for one long, impossible second.  

They move again.  

She can feel it whenever it happens, a sort of shift in the universe that tells her she is somewhere else. The other girl in her arms feels a lot less weightless now that they’ve returned to the beach, where gravity pulled them down hard into the sand, the still unconscious girl laying on top of her.  

Her body reminds her of Alder’s, prone and never to wake again, and she throws the child off her back and scuttles so far backward she bumps into a tree. It vibrates and sends a bucketful of rainwater straight onto her head. The thought of Alder’s dead body, of her father’s disgusting breath, of that red-haired cop’s pudgy hand wrapped around her throat have Johanna’s mouth wide open and gasping for breath, she forgets about the tree above her, the water it dripping off it, and now her lungs are filled with water.  

Panicky Johanna’s breaths go shallow, her mouth wider, swallowing more and more rainwater. She imagines everyone’s hands on her – the cop, her father, her brother, the young girl’s – no wait – that little bitch is actually touching her, holding her down, hard, while the other hands continue to choke her out. She thrashes and swings her legs and fist around wildly, connects with flesh and hears a cry out – success.  

But it doesn’t last for long. 

The bright girl is a lot stronger than she looks, and she is able to pin Johanna down and lean in close to her face. 

“Don’t move.” She says, it’s a command.  

The girl’s touch feels like a million little daggers poking into her skin, and Johanna obeys her simply to avoid getting stabbed. Her chest is pounded on, hard, and all the water that’s been choking her out comes out in long, unattractive spurts. The last of it dribbles out like drool, and Johanna’s hacking coughs eventually fizzle into nothing.  

The storm is over. The beach is clear. The cops are gone. The little girl is sleeping beside her, a huge hooded jacket swallowing her form. 

For the first time since her brother’s murder, Johanna breathes. 

** 

Johanna struggles to catch her breath.

She is not alone when she wakes up on the side of the fence, the hot head girl from her dream breathing softly a few feet away. It was the same girl, Johanna was sure of it. No one else would have been bold enough to try her like that, and the little punk had been stronger than she looks. Johanna rubs the spot where Katniss had done CPR on her all those years ago.

How the hell did a 6 year old know CPR?

Whatever. Anyway, that bitch tried to steal her jacket. Tried to steal it back, she guessed. Maybe it was rude of her to repay the little girl who saved her life by jacking something that obviously meant the world to her. Maybe she should give it back.

Johanna stands up… and promptly slides back down. She tries to repeat the process a couple more times and seems to get nowhere. With a sigh she resigns herself to sleeping in the clumpy sand.

It's much later when she opens her eyes.

She expected to be so much colder in the chilly morning air but aside from the draft coming through the leaky hole in the church ceiling, she’s just fine.

Wait.

How the fuck did she end up back here?

She sits up fully and takes a long, confused look around. Sure enough, she’s in her church, lying across her favorite pew, the black hoodie clinging to her shoulders. She tries to work out when she got up from the beach and walked back home, but her memory is pulling a blank. Just a strange dream that she can’t really remember and something about cat piss.

Must’ve been the weed.

She’s prepared to dream even weirder dreams when a familiar frame slithers closer.

“Damn, Jojo. Hung over again.”

Hearing that nickname triggers a deep sense of rage in Johanna, and that combined with the voice makes her take a candle and hurl it at the sound. Clove dives out of the way and it thumps against the wall, then rolls slowly to the side.

Stupid candle.

“I told you not to call me that. And what the hell are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be at school?”

Johanna smirks when her teasing makes the other brunette’s face harden.

“I had to get picked up early. Some bitch stabbed me.”

Johanna’s eyes flashed with concern for just a moment, but she luckily was hidden by the hoodie so Clove couldn’t see it. Besides, why the hell should she care what happens to Clove? It's not like the girl ever gave a damn about her.

“Poor baby. I’m sure you didn’t have it coming at all.”

Clove pretends to look hurt as she slides into the pew next to Johanna, who cringes and awkwardly squirms to the side. Clove pouts at her.

“You mean you don’t wanna kiss my boo-boo?”

Johanna wretches in what she hopes is an appropriate amount of disgust.

“I’m not kissing anything of yours, boo boo.”

Clove snorts, gives Johanna a sidelong look that amuses and pisses her off in equal measure.

“Oh Jo. You were never the smart one.”

Now she’s pissed off.

“Screw you, asshole. Thanks for stealing my stuff by the way.”

Clove smiles, intentionally ignoring the sarcasm. “You’re welcome, lover.”

Johanna squirms again, separating herself as far away from Clove as the thin pew allows. “Whatever we were, we were never lovers.” That’s all she feels comfortable to say. She feels oddly vulnerable right now, and experience has told her that being vulnerable around other people only leads to being abused and humiliated.

“Get out.”

“Aw. But we were having so much fun together.” Clove tries to inch closer and Johanna starts to quiver in rage. She knows that an emotional outburst is exactly what Clove wants, but keeping your emotions in check near that little snake is harder than it looks.

“I’m serious, Clove. Leave. Now.”

“Ooh,” Clove mocks her, but she’s still smart enough to get up and away from Johanna as she does it. “Somebody’s touchy. One would think you were the little schoolgirl who got shanked during lunchtime.”

Johanna rolls her eyes. She knows Clove well enough to know that if someone had been crazy enough to seriously hurt her, they would have  been carted off on a gurney at the scene. Or if Clove was feeling merciful, she’d plot out their murder in slow, calculating precision until the target went insane. So all this talk about the “shanking” had to be total bullshit.

Clove decides she’s antagonized Johanna enough for morning - or she’s simply gotten bored, who knows with that girl - and leaves.

Left alone with her thoughts Johanna immediately feels hungry.

**

She goes to a cheap diner, not wanting to give anyone on the street reason to suspect she has money. Even though Clove stole the last of her stash, selling most of it has her set for everything for at least a month. Meaning she could buy a tarp or something for that leaky roof and not have to sleep in a soggy sleeping bag. 

Oh, and she needed a new sleeping bag. She goes to the CVS on the corner and is able to find everything she needs, and a few more sets of sweats and hoodies, though she can’t see anything replacing the one she has on Still, its dingy as hell and technically belongs to someone who saved her life a long time ago...

The new one will fit just as well.

She’s been standing in line for three minutes and it hasn’t moved an inch. That’s because of the grumpy man ahead of her. He’s carrying three bags of groceries and fumbling around for his wallet. After few seconds of searching, the man gives up stomps out, huffing something about forgetting it at home. Johanna sees the young cashier roll her eyes and shrug. She has someone next to her clean up the bags and indifferently calls the next person forward - her.

As she’s getting her items scanned, Johanna glances down to look at the trashy tabloid rack and spots the man’s wallet. She contemplates keeping it but thinks better - that would just lead to someone tracking her and she wasn’t trying to be caught again. O'Reilly's goodwill was running out and she didn’t think anyone else on the force would think twice about throwing the book in her face.

No way in hell was she going to juvie hall.

She takes the wallet and gets the cashier’s attention. “Hey. That guy left his wallet.”

The girl holds out her hand without stopping the checkout process. When Johanna hesitates on her waxy, arched brows hikes up. “I’ll pay for his groceries and give it to him. Think he’s walking, I’ll be able to catch up with him.”

The girl sizes her up for a second and shrugs, again as if she doesn’t care at all, and Johanna would probably side with her on every other day. Hell, she doesn’t even know why she’s doing a good deed, that isn’t like her. Must be the leftover guilt from keeping the damn hoodie. The sooner she gives it back to the cat-whatever girl, the better.

On the way out of CVS she spots the guy on the corner, not ten feet further. He smiles up at her, eyes tired but amused.

“I left my wallet, didn’t I?”

Johanna nods. “I’m guessing this belongs to you…Haymitch Anbernathy.”

His hands freeze as he reaches out to grab the wallet and Johanna laughs. “Oh come on, was I really supposed to find a wallet in the store and not look in it. You can check, I didn’t steal anything. I also got you these.”

When Haymitch sees the groceries in her hands his posture relaxes, though he does snatch the wallet from her hand with a glare. 

“I see your parents taught you some manners, but clearly they still have work to do.” His eyes are bemused as he condescends her, looking into his wallet in mild surprise.  “Hm. You’re right, you didn’t steal anything. Thanks sweetheart.”

He takes the last bag from her and tips his hat in a mocking gesture, deftly dismissing her. It only makes Johanna more smug.

“Yeah, I’m a real pal. You know I was able to pay for every single thing in your bags: except this.” She pulls out a bottle of whiskey from the deep pockets of the jacket. The man’s annoying little smirk is gone, wiped clean off his face.

“Yeah, they really should put a lock on the alcohol,” she continues, smiling daintily. “Some punk kid could just walk right in and -” 

She pretends to drop the bottle and the look on the older man’s face is priceless. Ha. She knew he was a drunk. No one else would be eyeing a bottle of cheap ass CVS whiskey like its the Holy Grail. 

**

“So what’s your story, Mr. Abernathy. Did your wife finally file the divorce, leaving you alone with nothing but whiskey to drown in?”

They sat down at a park table, a spare bag of chips and the cheap bottle between them.

Haymitch chuckled. He looked into the small plastic cup, debating with himself. Finally, he took a sip that looked overly restrained before downing it and filling up another.

“You may have found my wallet, sweetheart, but you shouldn’t become a detective just yet. Also, shouldn’t you be in school? High school, college, something?”

She huffed and crossed her arms. Was she really that clockable as someone who needed to be in school. He rolled his eyes.

“Don’t worry kid, I won’t tell the truancy officers. I was young once too. What’s your name?” When she frowned, Haymitch clicked his tongue. “Don’t pout. You stole my wallet, probably looked at my address, and you know my middle name.”

He raised an eyebrow, expecting her answer. Poured himself another shot. Drank it. 

“It’s Johanna. And whoever she is, she wouldn’t want you showing up sloshed after a grocery run.” He starts to pour another, but Johanna’s hand lands softly over the top, stalling his hand. Her vulnerability is back, and she now realizes why she stopped in the first place. Haymitch Abernathy must have someone he loves in the world, because his hand shakes, and he puts down the bottle with a heavy sigh and scratches his chin.

Johanna’s hand slides back as if it was on fire, and she tries to shake off the wave of emotion that hit her. Haymitch, for his part, looks ashamed. 

“You’re right. She wouldn’t.” He cleans up his things and tips his hat again, this time earnestly. “It was nice meeting you, Johanna. Go to school next time.”

Johanna smiles and it doesn't meet her eyes. “I wouldn’t count on it…sweetheart.”

His harsh chuckle is the only thing she hears in response.

**

She cries that night, snuggled up in the sleeping bag and the hoodie. She thinks of her older brother again, and allows herself to mourn for her lack of a family, of the absence of a mom and dad who wouldn’t hurt her, for the first time since she was a little girl.

Chapter Text

The police department is chilly, and Katniss misses Daddy’s jacket.

The officer who found her on the beach is nice, calling her nice names like baby and honey. Katniss hasn’t moved since she got here. She hasn’t talked, hasn't walked. The officer had to carry her.

Walking and talking didn’t seem to matter anymore.

She was an orphan.

She hadn’t cried once. Everyone was expecting her to, even bracing themselves for it. Some of the other officers gossiped about how stoic she’d been, calling it unusual for a little girl. They left tissue boxes and candy and lame cutesy toys for her to play with. She didn’t touch a damn thing.

The officer told her a few hours ago to try to get some sleep, but Katniss only saw bad things when she closed her eyes now. Even blinking she put off until it was impossible, each one a brief reminder of the horrors she witnessed in such a short amount of time. 

The officer was speaking to someone on the phone. Katniss wasn’t listening, but she knew it was about her. She wanted to scream at the woman that no one was coming to get her, that she may as well dump her in a foster home now, because her entire family was dead with the capital-ist of D’s.

No one was left except her.

And what a fucking waste that was.

Katniss was in the middle of counting the number of tiled squares in each row for the 45th time when the officer tried speaking to her again.

“Someone’s on the way for you, baby. We found someone to take care of you.”

She looked way too happy to send Katniss to her new group home, but sometimes people were weird like that. There was no reason to question anything, because that meant talking, and she couldn’t do that anymore.

So she stared at the wall and counted more squares and started to wonder why the group home van was taking so long, until she saw him.

From a distance they looked too much alike. But as he got closer, it became obvious that he was someone else.

Not Daddy.

But those same coal gray eyes that all three of them share.

And the anguish in them as deep as her own. Despite it, he gave her a small, tight smile that looked like it hurt to make.

“You’re his girl, alright. Everything’s gonna be okay, sweetheart. Let’s go home.”

She got up and took his hand without a word. And as soon as they left that drafty station, she sobbed in his arms the whole way home.

She thinks he sobbed, too.

**

They sat at the table, Haymitch clutching a black coffee and Katniss an herbal tea.

“Are you drunk?”

His sheepish wince was all the response she needed.

“Right.” She scoffs and hurries from the table, chair scraping against the dirty hardwood floor. “I’m going to bed. By the way, you need to go to my school tomorrow and sign some papers. Try not to get drunk again between now and 6:30.”

“Sweetheart –” 

“Stop trying to apologize, Haymitch, I don’t wanna hear it!” She had her back to him, too disgusted to look him in the eye. “One fucking day. You promised to be sober for one day but less than 24 hours later you’re coming home at midnight, sobbing like a baby and looking twice as pathetic.”

Haymitch doesn’t respond for a while, and just as Katniss reaches the stairs she hears him ask, voice soft and dejected, “Why’d you get suspended, Katniss?”

Her knee-jerk response is to scream “Like you care!”, but after she yells the words she pauses, finally looking back. 

“How’d you know I got suspended?”

Haymitch sighs. Deep and heavy. Something sounds stuck in his throat. He takes a big swig of bitter coffee and swallows it down.

“I spoke to your friend’s dad. They say you had a knife.”

Shit. Madge does hate her now, just as she has feared. Even Haymitch didn’t speak with disbelief, only this weird sadness and…acceptance.

For as hard as she tried to be indifferent, knowing this made her tear up, and her voice cracked when she cried out, “It wasn’t mine! Please, Uncle Haymitch…it wasn’t mine.”

Haymitch sighed and looked away, eyes tired.

"Get some sleep, kiddo. I'll go to the meeting".

**

And he went. He was already back when Katniss woke up the next morning.

“I spoke with your principal. She’s a piece of work, that lady. Not like that cueball VP of hers is much better. A little nicer, though.”

Katniss plopped on a chair and started digging into her yogurt. Haymitch bit into a piece of bacon, signaling to the counter.

“Got you a breakfast taco, from that place around the corner. Nice place. Owner’s youngest goes to your school too, says he saw the fight and felt bad for you. Thinks those Carrington jackasses made up the knife thing to get off for kicking your ass. He thinks you're brave for standing up to them and put extra sauces in there for you, says he hopes you’re okay. I didn’t know you were friends.”

Neither did she.

“Who is this?”

Haymitch chuckled. “Ouch. Well, at least you’re friends in his mind. Honestly, kiddo, I think the kid’s sweet on you. Nobody gives free sauces out for nothing.”

Katniss frowned and tried to think about who this could be. Guys didn’t really pay her much attention, and even the thought of getting it filled her with a strange dread.

She’d take the free sauces from a well-wisher, though.

The breakfast burrito had all her favorite ingredients and the sauce was amazing; Haymitch was right about the high quality of the food. He told her as they ate that Madge was coming over today to give Katniss a school laptop for her to work on her assignments and help Haymitch set up an email account too, so the school could “stay in contact with their household”, per Coin and Boggs’ instructions. He rolled his eyes when he said it.

Katniss breathed a sigh of relief at those words. Madge had been her friend for years, after all. Of course she wouldn't stop speaking to her over something so silly.

He was also able to talk Boggs out of the school therapist deal, at least partially. Katniss would only have to see him every Wednesday during fifth period, instead of three times a week like Coin had wanted.

And he pushed for parenting classes for Cato and Clove’s parents. Unlikely, since they were rich donors to the athletics program, but he had fun laughing about the looks on their faces.

Sometime in the afternoon, Katniss was in the middle of a very compelling word game on her phone when the doorbell rang. She was going downstairs when she saw Haymitch open the door instead, apparently on his way out. 

“Miss Undersee”, he tipped an invisible hat to her, greeting her in the strange way he always did. Madge, ever polite, smiled and did the same thing.

“Mr. Abernathy. How are you doing, sir?”

Haymitch shrugged on a jacket and chuckled. “I’m alive, darling. Sometimes that’s all you can ask for. Thanks for helping Katniss out.”

“She’s in this mess right now because of me”, Madge said. “You should have seen it, Mr. Abernathy, she was so brave.”

He patted Madge’s shoulder and led her to the table. “She always has been. Tell your folks I said hello, okay? And feel free to take your mom some strawberries, Ieft some extra boxes for you in the fridge.”

Madge thanked him and set the supplies she was holding on the table. Before Haymitch could leave Katniss stepped in front of the door. She crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow.

“Snow-related errands,” he whispered. “You just worry about your schoolwork. And,” he said loud enough for Madge to hear, “Turns out there’s a lot of red tape involved in getting back your geese.”

“Oh,” Madge said, looking at the empty backyard. “I wondered why it was so quiet out there.”

Haymitch patted Katniss’ cheek and turned the doorknob. “Not for long. Be back later.”

Madge unboxed Katniss’ computer and set her binder on the table. “You’re uncle’s so sweet.”

Katniss scoffed and pulled the strawberries out, placing them in a bag for Madge’s mom.

“To you maybe. You’ve always been his favorite.”

“Oh Katniss, don’t be silly, he loves you. You both just show it in a funny way.”

Katniss started to argue before Madge shot her a knowing smile.

“So,” Madge starts, pulling out a spiral notebook. “Here’s a recap of what you missed.”

She flipped to a page at the end of the book and Katniss gasped. It was full of positive notes and well-wishes from dozens of different classmates, some whose names Katniss didn’t even remember.

Madge handed the page to her and smiled while Katniss stared in disbelief.

“These are all for me?” Madge nodded.

 “How’d you get all these people to do this for me, Madge?”

Madge sighed. “Oh Katniss…you really don’t know your affect on people, do you? They did this for you . Someone even started a petition to undo your suspension. Principal Coin shut it down, but there were lots of signatures by the end of the day. And you wouldn’t believe this, but Clove’s been benched by her volleyball coach, and Cato’s out the next two football games.”

Katniss laughed, still in shock. “Well, all the jocks are gonna hate me.”

Madge scoffed. “Oh, they can afford to lose a few games. Keep this paper, okay? This suspension is unfair and it sucks, but you did the right thing. And here are my notes for Trig…”

**

Haymitch is back by late afternoon, grumpy because of the paperwork he had to submit to Animal Control, who will be back on Wednesday to inspect the geese’s living conditions, and Katniss thinks that it's as good a time as any to help him clean the house.

She feels like she’s finally scrubbed the questionable smells off her by the time she’s normally ready for bed.

But something keeps her from slipping into the thick comforter and instead she’s pulling on a flannel shirt and jeans, then lacing up her boots, still caked in sand from a few nights ago.

She thinks about staying there for a few hours but strides right past the beach, past the train tracks, and into the side of town where she lived so long ago. Her old house is no longer standing; it was destroyed by the hurricane and turned into a homeless shelter a few years later.

Sae and her youngest granddaughter greet her with hugs and a bag of fresh food that she turns down, because she no longer needs it.

Instead she puts on an apron and gloves, stirs soup from a ladle, and hands it off to those who need it most.