Chapter Text
They watched the reaping through twice, the first time so Johanna could list their names and ages down on the top of each page in the notebook she requested and the second time so she could pause and zoom in to write notes.
The careers looked as commandeering and dangerous as they always did, they were all stocky and muscular, even the girls. The kids from three were both thin academics who had likely never run for anything outside of mandated PE at their school.
The pair from four were little merfolk from tales of ancient greece. All lithe muscle and deceptive speed. She was genuinely worried about facing them. At least she was sure she could outrun the careers.
The kids from five were either dead in the bloodbath, or shortly after. Same for the kids in six.
The girl from eight looked like a stiff breeze would knock her flat and she cried the whole time, but the boy was huge. He went down on the list with a star next to his name. So did both of the Elevens. District nine was always somehow the second worst fed district, and this year was no different. She could see the bones of both tributes through their skin. It’s almost like the district providing most of the food was the same district whose food was most closely monitored… Note the sarcasm.
District 10 was usually another one to look out for if their tributes worked as butchers or farm hands but the girl looked too well fed and her hands weren’t calloused enough for it (probably a merchant) and the boy was too young to work. Thank fuck.
Twelve was no different from usual. The colloquially known example district. Coal wasn’t in as high demand as it was at the end of the Dark Days and the Capitol had never shifted or expanded the focus of the district so they were left in squalor with little food, terrible food and coal dust lining their lungs.
Haymitch didn’t fall off the stage at least.
If that could be considered a plus.
Sleeping on the train was weird. She hadn’t actually been inside any kind of vehicle in this life. She might’ve if she was one of the choppers on the further fields, they got to ride the transport to and from the stands nearer to the other districts.
All that together meant that long story short, she couldn’t sleep.
So she didn’t.
She ran knife drills pirated from the little she remembered from fucking John Wick using tableware, she made a target out of a sofa cushion that she pinned to the wall using forks in each corner and practised throwing hard enough for it to still at least leave an indent in the wall through the padding. She did her calisthenics, a surprisingly accessible form of exercise when the main resource available is your own body, until her legs shook underneath her and she ran through all the plants she knew from her district and ones she spied in previous games, and exactly what properties they had.
She woke up the next morning to find an avox prodding her with a broom handle like a rabid animal.
She glanced blearily around the room.
Okay so maybe the disassembled sofa, the upturned table leaning on its side against the wall and the piles of general stuff were not the most confidence inspiring. The broom handle was probably a necessary precaution.
She thanked the avox under her breath and hobbled towards her room to run a steamy bath.
She was going to try the products she couldn’t be bothered with the day before.
—
Fucking hell whoever chose her wardrobe knew what the fuck they were doing.
She was wearing high waisted, slightly flared brown trousers with a matching belt with gold hardware and a white, puff-sleeve blouse that closed snug to her waist and wrists. Once again she looked less muscular than she normally did, though more serious today than last night.
She needed to speak to her fucking stylist. She would not go out there dressed like a tree. It was fine for Original Johanna™ because she wanted to look tiny and weak and unsponserable. But sponsors were life or death and she would not give up access to medicine for a strategy that her healthier diet and greater height would not even let her use to the fullest extent.
She was the second person in the dining hall.
The first was Claudette Charrowsbright.
He was clad in nothing but a velvet blue dressing gown.
She forcibly turned her mind back to the topic.
“Do you have a phone and the contact details for my stylist?”
He straightens, suddenly all business but the gleam in his eye was telling of his amusement.
“I do Indeed my dear, would you like them both?”
She nodded and set up her breakfast. She ignored the greasy food along with the too-light options and settled for two of what looked like a veggie omelet and some over sweetened tea.
A phone was slid over to her a few minutes later, a contact already open on the screen.
“Hit the green button to call, Doll. I've texted ahead so Ro knows to expect you.”
She did so immediately. She didn’t have time to hesitate, they would pull into the capital in a few hours and the team would need all the time they could get.
“Hello Johanna! This is Sparrow, your lead stylist, but call me Ro, everybody does!” The phrase was quick and rehearsed. She wondered if he had sat in front of the phone to practise.
“Hey, I have an idea but it’ll probably be you against the clock. How invested are you in fucking over every other stylist in the business.”
“...Honey you are speaking my language,” there was a noise like she had pulled the phone away from her ear and her voice could be heard as a muffled shout. “Tish! Tish get me my notepad!” the sound became clear again. “Sorry about that Honey, what was your idea?”
“You can use an old costume as a base but preferably one with a mermaid skirt or one that at least hits the floor, I need my legs and arms covered. Now would it be possible to-”
—
“This year’s colour of the year is silver?” a pause, “Well we’re not fucking doing that.”
Johanna Mason had been on the phone since before he entered the dining cart, and it had been half an hour since he arrived. She and the stylists were still talking.
“Uh huh, no that could work but do you have a longer skirt maybe with ruffles or layers, just a flouncy skirt? Yeah? Bril, cut that shit up and stitch it to the bottom, when I say train I mean I want the people in the first seats to still see it halfway through the parade.”
The voice on the other end started off as the recognisable cheery tones of district seven's stylist of almost forty-five years but had been passed around a few times so now she was talking to either a woman or a particularly young man about decorating the charot itself.
“Mmhm, okay what have you got so far? No that's evergreen, it doesn't make sense. Yeah! Perfect, so more options like that then.”
In his time as a mentor, Blight couldn’t remember that actually having been done before. It would certainly be interesting if it worked out. It would possibly set a new trend or tradition for the games. No wonder they’d been on a call so long.
They were pulling into the capitol in an hour or so but the conversation kept up like she had only just picked up the phone.
He peeked over at the napkin that she’d been doodling on for the last hour.
She had just drawn a bunch of different leaves.
That told him absolutely nothing.
Wasn’t he the one whose job it was to think up a strategy?
He squinted over at the girl on the phone.
She was sitting with a leg thrown over an armrest, twirling a lock of hair with a pencil with what looked like Claude’s sparkly purple phone pressed to her other ear with her other hand. Jessamine shone through the hard jutting of her chin and the slope of her creased brow.
She’ll probably do a better job than him.
He leaned back and prepared for the barrage of questions the boy would probably have once he finished stuffing his face with bacon.
—
The train car went dark.
There were still a few lights inside, but outside it was as if night had fallen again.
They were in the tunnel.
That meant they were nearly at the capitol.
Hanna finished up her call with promises to double check some of the details whilst her prep team were working on her to not slow any efficiency and then rose to sit by the window.
The train slowed, the tunnel started lightening and then she was almost blinded by the beam of light as they left the tunnel.
It was the land of Oz on steroids and in rainbow colours. The cameras hadn’t lied about its grandeur. If anything, they had not quite captured the magnificence of the glistening buildings in a rainbow of hues that tower into the air, the shiny cars that rolled down the wide paved clean streets, the oddly dressed people with bizarre hair and painted faces who had never missed a meal.
All the colors seemed artificial, the pinks too deep, the greens too bright, the yellows painful to the eyes. That was probably why Claudette’s outfits were so godawful, his retina’s had probably burnt away with all the visual input from the colours he had been surrounded with.
Shit, compared to some of the people she could see out of the window, his outfits were bordering on tame.
She didn’t smile and she didn’t wave, but she also didn’t frown. She sat there like a doll oohing and ahhing at the scenery, hoping they would think her reluctance to look at them would not be noted under her amazement by their daily lives.
They started slowing to a stop.
“Right, we are going to make a short walk to the remake center, we are entering in order district one through twelve so you’ll have to sit tight for a little while!” Claude held a hand up before the boy could interrupt him. “The way there is very clear, it's been sectioned off with fences. However this means that a crowd of superfans are going to be standing on either side waiting to greet you both so it’s time for game-faces people! We’ve got a popularity contest to win!” He seemed genuinely excited about it as well. Which somehow made her nervous.
“Now the remake center is going to take a bit of time, Johanna I know you’ve had a bit of a headstart with the style team but the actual prep work is going to be the killer here on the schedule.” He paused, inhaling a lungful of air before continuing. “The chariots will start a half hour after sundown which means that you will be in the center from now until you are taken to the waiting area, a bit of the time will be spent just standing on a platform and being fitted so you can use that time to think about how you want to present yourself, what story are you going to sell? How are you going to respond to your audience? This is a show darlings, it’s time to rehearse your roles.”
—
He really didn’t undersell the whole ‘superfan’ situation.
People were trying to grab her arms, yank her hair, pull on her sleeves. At one point somebody lowered their toddler over the fence and she grabbed him up and handed him back before a peacekeeper - who was guiding them - could trip over the poor thing whilst he was looking the wrong way.
In these sorts of situations - where peripheral vision is more necessary than optional - she really didn’t get the point of the visors.
The boy was safely returned to a banshee-like lady with oil spill hair, skin and makeup. She didn’t mean that as in colour chrome powders painted on in various colours, the lady actually just looked like she had been drowned in oil. The sun reflected off of her skin like it would’ve a puddle. It was super unnerving to look at. At least the poor boy had been spared, he was just dressed like King Edward VI.
Short walk her arse, it was a solid fifteen minutes of speed-walking through a bendy path lined with rabid chihuahua-people who all wanted to either eat, fuck, sell or maul her.
Why was this part cut out of the books? No wonder Katniss was in such a pissy mood the whole time, she was already one foot in the grave but then they had to pile on the shit with all the fucking capitolites.
Hanna’s prep team were clearly expecting her. All of them looked slightly worse for wear as they dragged her down a corridor, up a flight of stairs, down another corridor and into a room. There was a pile of heeled shoes in one corner. She looked down. All of them were barefoot or in trainers. Her lip twitched.
At least they all looked excited. A few of the other stylists in the crowd in the lobby just looked bored. Perfectly put together but terribly bored.
“Okay so we have all of the leaves designed and being sent to the laser cutter to get produced. The dress is being dyed and stitched as we speak, so it’s just prep, the carriage and makeup to worry about. We sorted the mechanism for the carriage and dress, Ro had to pull a favour with Beetee if you can believe it, so all we have to do is pray it works exactly as intended!”
“And you found dye that can-” Hanna was cut off instantly.
“Yup! They didn’t even have it as a reference in fashion school for some reason, though I suppose that’ll change after this year. It went out of style around year twenty eight or thereabouts and it wasn’t a big enough movement for it to be made a note of during the course I took, though my focus was on fashion development and predicting trends and not fashion history.”
She nodded along even though she had no bloody clue what the girl was yapping about, she was talking a mile a minute.
One of the lads held up a robe as the girl quickly, clinically and efficiently helped her undress. She was so grateful for it.
Shit, she might actually like this lot.
She sat on the table and was about to lay flat when the door burst open again.
Four people bustled in in a flurry of colour and noise.
“Johanna! I’m Ro, lovely to see you in person, now what do you think of these.”
He thrust a handful of sparkly gemstones into her line of sight.
She looked up at him,
“We are about to become the best of friends.”
They both grinned matching Cheshire smiles.