Chapter Text
Despair.
That's all that life can be, when you're playing the Hunger Games. Setbacks and disasters following each other like bread and butter should, moments of solace stolen away by more challenges to struggle through. Johanna knows despair very well. She has survived a Hunger Games. She is in the middle of another. She was a Victor. She doesn't know what she is anymore.
Memory is a strange thing.
She used to love the feeling of water dripping through her hair, because it meant rain and trees and Inès. Now, it means electricity.
It hurts to remember. But then again, it hurts to breathe.
She breathes. She remembers.
It's all she can do, anyhow.
-:-
She'd known Inès half her life, before she fell in love. Hard not to: they went to the same school, worked for the same mill, lived a few doors down from each other.
They knew each other by reputation, at first. Johanna was known for her quick temper and strong right hook. She was small and wiry and would have been viciously bullied if her bite wasn't as well known as her bark. Inès was known for her quick fingers, taking home discarded chunks of wood from the mill, carving them into delicate little birds and squirrels and leaves.
Johanna thinks she fell in love with the way Inès wielded a chisel before she fell in love with her.