The heavy velvet drapes drawn over tall windows, shutting out the light, the muggles walking past. A thin strip of daylight, from between, striping the floor, and the dust that dances in air so thick and old it feels like you're in a museum. And on the wall, all around Sirius, the family tree--his own name, repeated, a name that goes so far back that being born was like putting on a uniform, with all the expectations of rank and purpose.
His father, his grey eyes just like Sirius'. Grey hair only at his temples, a dusting, barely anything more, and Sirius tenses when his father turns a gaze on him. Thirteen years old and he has this feeling, deep in his gut, that his father might smile or he might show nothing at all, but God, he hopes for a smile; he hope for approval. In the corner is his mother, her wand pressed to the tapestry on the wall. The air is thick and smells of burning. His mother is singeing Andromeda's name off of the tapestry, stripping her out of their lives--because it is their lives, collectively, because for better or for worse they are meant to be a unit, a family, regal pride and tradition, and that must be upheld.
Regulus is standing at the other side of the sofa. Sirius can see a thin blue vein at his temple. He was ill, when he was a baby, and his skin has never lost that papery quality. Sirius used to pinch his toes and make him cry, but it backfired. Mother would come and take Regulus from the nanny, and Sirius would sit at the bottom of the stair and watch her pacing back and forth with him, tender in a way he couldn't remember. He is hers; Sirius is Father's, and when Father crosses toward Sirius, now, he straightens up, correcting his posture, so automatic he doesn't even think about it until after it's happened. It's only second year and he is rankling at the weight of everything, at the coldness and expectation and all that whispered hatred that does not fit with what he has learnt at school. Muggle-lover, blood traitor: James Potter, the flash of his eyes behind his glasses. Say that again and I'll hex your eyebrows off, Black, and Sirius already loves him.
And yet he does not let his shoulders drop as his father passes by. He stands, eyes forward, watching his mother at work. Her earrings are sapphire. He can see the curve of her mouth as she twists her wand, and the smell of burning is stronger. She isn't smiling, she's only working. And his father drops his hand on Sirius' shoulder, just once, the heavy silver rings knocking against the bone, and he feel such a sudden prickle of pride it's nearly dizzying, until it's sickening. It's all he has, and he holds on to it, clutches it to himself, hard.
ii.
"She smells," says James, "of cantaloupe."
"Antelope," Sirius corrects, and puts his index fingers to his forehead with a high and lovelorn grunt, "an antelope in heat."
"Sick," but James laughs when he kicks Sirius under the table.
They are early for Defence, a minor miracle--early enough that no one else is around, just the two of them in the airy classroom. A collection of first year gytrash diagrams are pinned to the bulletin board beside them. Two of the diagrams sport moustaches, an artistic liberty from last Defence class: one by James, one by Sirius. Sirius touches one of them with his thumb. "Needs a beard."
"She doesn't."
"This, git." Sirius picks up his quill and starts to scratch a beard onto the gytrash. "But Eloise McGovern would still look fetching with a beard. Silky. Nicely arranged over her tits. What about Evans?"
"What about her?"
"Well?"
"She'll be in Hogsmeade, won't she." James pushes his fingers through his hair, a gesture that he tries to make look casual--and fails, as always. "And so will I."
"The stuff of romance." Sirius scratches extra hard at the beard, with a smirk. "You and McGovern and Evans. Only I need you in Hogsmeade."
"Ah. Real romance. For what?"
"Hmmmmm." Sirius turns a look on James, arch--raises his eyebrows, strokes his chin. All significant gestures, a clear telegraph of Great Plans. James laughs, and rolls his face onto his arm, flattening his nose against his bicep.
"All right," he says, agreeably, "you twit, but if this is just about trying to get Rosemerta to give you fire whisky--" and Sirius smiles coolly and goes back to drawing on the gytrash diagram, privately amazed--like he always is, still, maybe always will be in a way that he will never say--that twit feels like an endearment, that he has James Potter at all, that nothing else matters but this.
iii.
Remus' skin is the same colour as the parchment of the Marauder's Map. On the Map, the lines of the corridors and classrooms are done in black ink. Remus' scars stand out red and angry, but the older ones are pale, like ink that has faded.
And Sirius feels uncommonly like shit. Wrung out, useless. His eyes burn in the way they get after crying. He isn't crying now. He hasn't cried very recently. The feeling persists, and so does the heavy twist in his chest, all that anger and regret and disdain and fear before he careens back into anger again. Mingled together, it makes his mouth taste like he's swallowed cigarette ash. His hands fisted around the crisp sheets of the hospital wing bed, and his eyes miserably focused on Remus' hand, pale and scarred and still. Just like always, but worse.
It's hours later and the sun has come up and washed out the night. It feels more like years. The sting is real enough to justify the hyperbole. The memory of the cool night air, Snape stepping in too close, close enough to make Sirius' skin crawl--Snivellus, with that mad gleam in his eye, and Sirius is still angry, not sorry enough that he's forgotten the pinch of that feeling. In Dumbledore's office, there had been moments where Sirius wondered if he would be expelled, wondered it in so distant a way that it felt almost unreal, which meant it would probably happen. But it was a joke, a horrible vicious joke--just the way they treated Snape, and that was only because he was a horrible little tit, because he was a stain on the general world, a jumped-up cruel snot who deserved what he was given.
Remus' thumb moves, rubs rough against the bedsheets. Sirius looks at it, tracking the movement. Dirt under his fingernail. He thinks about holding Remus' hand, and he doesn't do it. Tightens his grip on the sheets, keeping that feeling deep and contained. He turns his head only so he can rub his nose against his shoulder. James had punched him, hard, in the corridor, and Sirius' nose had started to bleed and he'd shouted at James, what the hell and James hadn't apologised, only shouted back, what the hell, you fucking twat, that was Remus--
But the hospital wing is very quiet, with a stillness that feels like a mausoleum. Like always. Only there's no conversation, no chocolate frogs or James and his gobstones, no Peter laughing so hard he falls off of his chair. Not even Madam Pomfrey, glaring around the corner. They are very much alone, and Sirius feels like he might vomit. And he is still angry.
When he looks, at last, at Remus--he finds that his eyes are open. He's probably been awake a great deal longer than Sirius thought.
i. There is just one step to the pavement in front of the tall narrow house. The heel of your shoe crunches when you step down, unnecessary force. There is a hot feeling fixed high in your chest, a feeling that could rip its way out of you, inside to out. It makes it hard to swallow and hard to speak, but the street is empty and the door is shut behind you and no one is looking out after you. You do not look back but you know the house without it. Tall narrow windows, the panes dark. All the drapes pulled shut. Dark brick and dark door, and a heavy silver doorknocker, like the heavy silver of your father's rings, and the heavy silver of the fucking watch you've still got in your pocket, the one with the family crest carved on the front, the one you got for your eleventh birthday, the year before they put you on the train to school, before you knew any better--before, when it seemed like an honour to open that watch and stare down at the face of it, with your own face reflected back at you. The steady ticking of the minutes, and the clock of each hour, time marching forward as long as you kept that watch wound. The planets and the stars that spin at the edge of the face, charmed so they shimmer in the dark.
Now you are sixteen and the hatred that you feel for that watch is ridiculous and out-of-hand. It's a watch, heavy in your pocket--but still just a watch, nothing, an expensive heirloom that you want to throw it through one of the windows of that house. Your great-great-grandfather made it so that those windows would never break, protecting himself against threats, insulating himself, wrapped in a mantle of superiority that has been passed down, generation to generation, an heirloom of being better than everyone. Physically throwing anything at the house would be an exercise in futility, and you will not make a futile gesture, you will leave, right now, and you do--with your hands balled into fists at your sides, and your shoulders forward, never once turning around to look back at the house where you've lived, sixteen years, fuck it all, fuck them and everything, you do not know where you are going but the hot feeling in your chest fuels you and you stride forward. No gold, no possessions but the clothes you've got on, what you've got in the pockets of your jacket,and you might even rip that off at the next alley and set it on fire, you don't know, you don't know anything, what you're going to do next or where you're going to go except anywhere but here, a thought as desperate as it is angry. You might vomit and you might break the window of the car you're walking past. The hot feeling in your chest is starting to feel like a punch until you swallow it down.
And you say it to yourself again: fuck it all.
ii. The air smells damp, and cold, and good: a favourite smell, a smell that makes you want to take off running now, right now. This is the best night since the last night like this. The trees have been standing here for thousands of years, time before there was time, a forest grown so close together the branches knit together over your head, keep out the silver light of stars and moon.
It is not quiet, it is never quiet here--but you are so sharp in your senses that you can hear so much. Listen. In the soft dirt, you can hear the leaves rotting. Damp. In the brush, you can hear a hundred tiny heartbeats, little creatures that move in the dark--the whir of insect wings--hives of movement on your periphery, and if you turn your attention to any one you could fix on your target and kill it, easy. It's a feeling as free as the wind as it blows past you, carrying past scents from deep in the wood. You twist, following the wind, bright with smells so sharp you can nearly see them, colours painted in the air. Snap at the wind, revel in this moment for a moment, joy so unbridled you feel like you could swallow the full moon whole--but there is a duty, an obligation beating at your chest, in time with your heartbeat. Go to him, now, find them--you can smell them, too, not so far off. First things first: establish that you were here, let anyone else who comes in know that this is your forest--sniff at the base of the trees and the damp earth till you find one to mark, and then mark it. The smell is yours, sharp, acrid--and it's done, and with a huff of breath you drop your leg and take off running, tearing at the soft earth, kicking up new smells as you go. Long and lean and bright-eyed and ready for this night, the long night.
iii. When you see him punch the manticore, you nearly can't believe it. It's so mental, so fucking mad, and you laugh. The moment is bloody and desperate; the other boy is injured, his face very white under the blood. You should not laugh, but you can't help it.
It happens so fast: the punch, and then you laugh, and your action is next: kill the manticore after, a neat disposal. You haven't really killed before, not yet--little animals, here and there, mostly by accident, carelessness; you do not think of yourself as heartless, or as a murderer. It's a little surreal. This isn't even what manticores look like. You have never seen them in person but you know that.
He looks scared, even more frightened than the boy who is bleeding. You only just became friends, you and him. Jack. He won't last here but you don't know that yet. You liked him nearly instantly. But the bloke who punched the manticore--you did not like him, and you still don't, really, but you like him for punching a creature in the face like it was a sensible thing to do; he probably panicked but you like it anyways, and when you grin over at him and say well done, you actually do mean that.
Johanna's cousin Aldo is missing two fingers from his left hand, but he ties knots better than anyone else in the camp. She does not like Aldo. She is jealous when she watches him work, jealous of the bunch of muscle in his arms. He is two years older than she is, and taller, and kinder. And for two years he has been going to the Reaping, standing in the square with everyone else, his big dumb face quiet and composed. He never smiles, not even when they don't read his name. Stupid.
This is Johanna's first Reaping. Her dress has no sleeves, the ragged edges neatly capped by her mother's careful hand. Johanna sewed on the buttons that hold down the crisp pressed collar.
The sky is a hard blue this morning, without any clouds. The sunlight feels hot in the part of her hair. Aldo's shirtcuffs button neatly over his wrists, just a little too short. He keeps getting taller. Everyone keeps saying how strong he is. He smiles at her as they step out of their camp's bunkhouse. "It isn't a far walk."
When Aldo reaches for her hand, the blank gap of his two missing fingers brushes against her palm. Johanna steps on his foot, hard, and skips ahead without him. Her legs feel very long and very lean. They will not call her name today at the Reaping. In three hours, she'll be back on the truck, headed back into the forest. All ten fingers, two strong arms. She holds those thoughts tight, like a thing she can hold in her fists.
ii.
They have machines to fell the trees--industrial harvesters, that hew and delimb and buck all in a row, methodical and precise. Johanna can run the harvester by herself, when they're lucky enough to have them. The rumble and whine of engine and saw, and she goes to sleep with sawdust in her hair.
She hates it.
She likes it when they can't user the harvesters, when the weather makes it too treacherous--or they have too many teams out at once, and there aren't enough to go around.
Today, the message comes in early, a crackle on the team lead's radio. They leave the camp when the world is still blue in pre-dawn light. Coffee in canteens and blankets on the back of the truck. The drive to the site is just long enough that Johanna falls asleep for a few minutes, her head lolled back against the wood board side of the truck.
Her dad isn't nice about the way that he elbows her awake. Johanna throws off her blanket with a scowl--no, she wasn't asleep--and she jumps out of the truck before him, her axe already strapped to her back. It's cold, this late in November. Her breath hangs silver on the air. The sun is just coming up, and everyone stands around stomping their boots on the half-frozen soil while the lead calls out coordinates. Four to fell in each team, and then two delimbers and four buckers. Johanna watches the Peacekeepers, their dark visors and white uniforms. They look like fat snowmen. Their guns are dark against their hips.
She gets to delimb, which she likes. It would be more fun to work alone. Instead she's stuck with Orrin. At least he doesn't talk much, and he works at a good pace, fast enough to keep up with Johanna. The thud of falling trees doesn't make her flinch. Under her flannel, she can feel the sweat on her skin--damp at her temples, plastering the wisps of hair to her forehead.
They work steadily until lunchtime. Kit passes out the sandwiches, all wrapped in brown paper. Johanna stuffs her sandwich in her pocket and lashes her axe to her back again, before she swings herself into a nearby tree. She climbs hand over hand, the bark rough against her palms. She isn't supposed to do this. If the Peacekeepers were nearby, maybe they would stop her--but everyone else goes on eating, and Johanna leaves them all behind, lets the world drop away. The soft pine needles brush at her face as she climbs, and close behind her, knitting together better than any curtain. Soon she can't even hear the murmur of their voices--just the wind in the trees, creaking and swaying. It smells like sap, the same sap that makes her fingertips stick. And all around her, the forest stretches in every direction--going on, and on, it looks like forever--over the ridge of the horizon, which blurs into the mountains, soft grey mounds in the distance.
Johanna eats her lunch on a branch as broad as a bench in the mess tent. She peels the meat off of the bread and eats it. Then the cheese, then the crust. The soft center of the bread she balls up and throws, pitching overhand. Then she sits with her back to the tree trunk, and watches the ripple of the wind moving over the top of the forest, ripples like wind over the smooth surface of a lake.
iii
"So." Finnick raises his glass to his mouth. His reflection in the smooth pane of window glass does the same, a perfect mirror. "What'd you think, of our star-crossed lovers."
Johanna snorts, pitched. Her fringe this year is short and blunt, and hits just above her eyebrows. She likes the severity of it. When she looks at her reflection in the window, she looks mean. She likes that, too, and she grabs a glass from under the bar and pours out for herself.
"Pathetic," she confides, and caps the bottle with a neat twist of her wrist. This is the same room they always give her, all grey and beige and boring. Johanna hates the Capitol, but she has always loved color. The liquor in her glass, for instance: bright green, no color ever seen in nature. She takes a sip, and the ice rattles against the side of her glass when she lowers it. "He's cute."
"I like her better." Finnick's mouth curls. Johanna watches it happen in the glass reflection. Beyond the window, the glittering lights of the Capitol are strewn in every direction. This high up, it makes the ground look like it's glowing. Finnick told her about jellyfish that wash up with the tide. their gentle pulsing light. Johanna will never see it for herself. "Katniss Everdeen."
"Really?" Johanna turns and rests her elbows on the bartop, her mouth pinched to one side. She swirls her drink in the glass, slow and judgmental. "That's so surprising, Finnick. I guess--under those little girl dresses and big ol' eyes--she really is the manlier of the pair."
"You are so mean." Finnick grins anyways, and reaches around Johanna for another handful of ice. He drops most of it into his glass, saving just one piece to crunch between his teeth. Johanna raises her glass toward him.
"So mean, and so alive. So you'd screw her?"
"Either or," Finnick says, neutrally, and sticks his index finger in her drink. Johanna isn't quick enough to swat his hand away--he's out of her glass a second later, hooking his finger in his mouth to get the taste that he stole. "Wow, that tastes terrible. Which one?"
"Here." She grabs the bottle and lobs it over, underhanded. In the windowpane, her reflection does the same. Two years ago, Johanna had been standing here, in this spot, exactly: alone, after the Peacekeepers took the man out of her room. He was still crying and bleeding. Johanna had listened him whimpering about his ear all the way out the door. Naked, with his blood smeared on her mouth, she had looked out across the Capitol. And she had not cried.
She takes another drink. "Katniss Everdeen. I think I'd rather kill her than screw her," she decides, aloud, and Finnick laughs.
"Liar."
iv.
The dirt is thin under her feet. Wind shoves at the small of her back, and over the edge of the cliff, she can see the swaying of the treetops, and she hears the creaking of the trunks. The crisp taste of the air makes her think of District 7--but the trees are wrong. The smell is not the same. But that might be the blood smeared under her nose that makes her think that.
Johanna crouches, and wipes the flat of her axe against the dirt. The Gamemakers made this cliff rise up out of nothing. They can do anything they want. They thought they were fucking with her.
The crumbled dirt clumps in the blood that she wipes clean. She holds her axe up to the fake sunlight, studying its edge. And behind her, the Career boy is dead in the patchy grass, the wet leaves turning wetter by his blood. Johanna wipes the back of her hand over her nose, smearing the streak and rubbing it in deep. Her chest is tight, and the memory of the boy's grip at her ankle has not yet faded, a feeling so hot it feels burned into her skin.
In between the trees below, she sees movement: a girl with blonde hair. District 2. Johanna licks at her lower lip and tastes blood--but it isn't hers. She shifts to her feet, her hand tight around the handle of her axe.
But once, or twice, that month--Johanna finds herself down in the medbay, staring down the rows of jump pods. It isn't deliberate. It just happens. And every time it does, and she looks up and realizes where she is, where she's gotten to--her stomach twists in revulsion, and she turns around and gets back in the lift, and leaves.
She does not go down and find Kate's pod. She doesn't put her nose to the glass to peer in at her--floating, suspended, her long dark hair floating loose around her head like she's submerged in a pool of viscus water. She does not watch to see if her eyes open, or whisper some stupid secret to her while she's not listening. No flowers, nothing like that. Fuck anything like that.
But the third time it happens--the third time Johanna looks up and realizes where her path has led her--she stares down along the pods a little longer. The light looks cool and undersea down here--or maybe that's just her imagination. Finnick told her about the way that water looks under an upturned boat. Spiderwebs of light, reflecting on the water, reflecting on the shell of the boat. All the world close and quiet, flat echoes bounced off the surface of the water. All that water, it never used to bother Johanna. Now she crouches, suddenly, her arms around her legs, her knees pulled up to her chin. Her chest feels tight; her eyes feel hot. She stares down along the pods, every one of them the same.
And she does not look for Kate. She does not try to pick out her pod from the rest. She stares until they blur together, until it doesn't matter, until she doesn't care.
i. The sun is bright and high in the sky, and as it beams down into the square it bakes the strict part of your hair. The feeling makes the crown of your head prickle.
And everyone is staring at you. A crowd of strangers, a thousand strong, everyone in their best clothes. The careful division of the crowd is marked out by soft velvet rope--green, strung between wooden posts. You have seen this scene every year, but never from this side. Ribbons and streamers, snapping in the wind. A banner across the gate into the square, cheerful colors, bidding you welcome.
On the raised platform of the stage, you are standing alone. Everyone is smiling at you, and your name is still in the air, like a sound you could pluck out and out back in the Escort's mouth. Your feet feel pinched in your shoes, and the rub of your wool stockings is putting a blister on your left heel. The mayor's daughter put a bouquet of flowers in your hands when you climbed onto the stage. She smiled at you, too, straight white teeth, straight blonde hair. The flowers are the big white orchids that grow wild at the foot of the mountain, but these ones were grown in a greenhouse. The petals look waxy and fake--except they don't, not really; that's just because you've got hot tears in your eyes and you never cry, not even when you sliced your hand open last spring, a cut so deep you could see fat. You didn't cry when a bear got into your camp and ripped the dog apart, and you woke up first and found it, a tatty smear of blood and fur and snapped bone. You don't cry.
Everyone is smiling at you and you can't see their faces; your tears blur the colors. They will think less of you, but here's what you know: you aren't crying because you're sad. You aren't crying because you're scared. You're crying because you are so pissed, you are so angry, and the way you grip the orchids is like you're holding a weapon, white-knuckled and fierce.
You will kill them. You will kill everyone. You will be fine. You will. You will.
ii. You can smell your leg. It smells like cooked meat. You don't dare look at it, but you're trying to walk and your leg is dragging behind you a little, and a little more every step.
And the woods are on fire. All of the trees are burning, like tall tall candles. Remember how you climbed them, when you first got here? Your face all smeared with snot. You were crying so hard. You were lying. And now your face is smeared with blood instead, and so are your arms, dipped in blood right up to your elbows like you're wearing gloves, and blood is soaking your shirtfront, and you are following a boy into the woods. The darkness is made of fire and shadow and soot, and you are going to kill this boy, in the burning woods. When the mountain tore itself open and exploded--when you realized that it was a volcano--you had laughed, you had laughed so hard you had thrown up, and when you threw up you looked at the vomit and thought that it looked like slimy meat, like when wolves regurgitate for their pups, just hock up a big slab like it's nothing. Does the smell of your leg make you hungry? Did you eat all the others? You can't remember. You can't remember the last time you ate anything.
And the woods are on fire, all around you. Burning, and burning. The wind, when it blows past you, blows hot, like you're standing in front of an oven. You can't see for shit. Sweat stings in your eyes, and blood, and grit. But you are still armed. You are still ready, and you are still following that boy. When he breathes, ahead of you--you hear it, a sound that's more like a sob, damp and desperate. You already stabbed him once, a punched blow and the blade's edge bit in to his chest, deep enough that his blood looked so dark. You just have to finish him. You just have to finish this. The forest will finish burning and you'll go with it.
iii. The rush of the water is on the edge of your hearing, and has been for the last hour. Or two. Or more. You can't remember when you stepped foot in this hallway, but it's been going for a long time now, longer than it should have. And you didn't turn back because why would you, it's just a corridor, and if this ship thinks it can fuck with you, it's going to have to try a lot harder.
So you can't remember when the sound started. That quiet rush, it could be anything, just air recycling its way through the ship, just in your head. But it's not. It's water. And when you grip at your own arm like that will be enough to wake you up, like maybe you're dreaming--that grip makes you think of the grip of a gloved hand, the grip of a restraint, locking your arm to the arm of the chair. Metal, cold, and when you turn the corner, the door is there, bowed out under the weight of the water that's behind it. The metal is swollen and distended under the pressure, and water is leaking through, under the threshold, between the thin crack.
The lights go down. The hum, of electricity. Your legs turn to jelly and when you fall, you fall in the puddle, and you can taste the ozone in your mouth, lingering, they will do it again and you are so fucking helpless.
The time that Johanna has to feel real feelings for Kate is very brief, carved out between the moment of reassurance and everything else that follows.
That moment. It confuses Johanna's stupid little brain, on some deep deep level, rewrites so much of the hard data learned from experience: that you can't trust anyone, that no one will ever save you, that there are no heroes and no one does anything for anyone without expecting something--a price, a result, a reaction. So much of Johanna's life has been spent at the end of a hook. She thought that she remade herself bulletproof, eliminated all of her weaknesses or else just had them eliminated around her, one by one. But even that proved to be a fucking lie.
Kate has softened her a little already. When she remembers that, it makes her angry, every time. She has no room for soft. She has no room for anything or for anyone. She can't.
It isn't soft, when Kate pushes against her in her head. It isn't angry either, colored dark the way so many of their other mental touches has been. And the other thing it is not, is that it's not colored by lust. Even lust has had its share of anger cut into it. Johanna very much likes that kind of anger. She likes what it fuels, a depth of passion so overwhelming it's like forgetting to breathe, all that mingled pain and pleasure and hatred and love.
There is still water, falling on her face, and she can still feel the tremor of that shock up her legs, up her spine, a tremor that feels too electric, too much like a shock racking her. One of Johanna's very first memories: peeling back a chunk of bark from a tree, her little fingernails bitten down in their grip, tugging until the bark came free--and then, as she'd stumbled back, a spill of termites had vomited out, like water coming up from a clogged drain. Underneath the bark there was barely any tree left. That's what this ongoing aftermath of torture feels like. Like something ate away everything else and left a hollowed tree standing alone. And it goes on and on and on, more than an image or a feeling.
And now there's Kate. The push of Kate's mind, the reassurance of her presence. Move and keep moving. This, too, is more than a feeling, more than a suggestion. This is a possibility. And Johanna does not know what to think of that, and so she doesn't; in the moment, she uses the push of Kate's mind like she would get a leg up from someone to climb a tree, without grateful acknowledgement. Move and keep moving. She doesn't let it register. She will not have time to think about it in depth, about what that push feels like: like laying in bed with Kate, limbs draped over hers and her limbs draped on Johanna's in return. The weight of her body. The curve of her smile when her face is turned away. The line of her collarbone, smooth against her pale skin. The arch of her back, and the curl of her toes, and the shape of her ass and the taut string of her legs. And the heft of her arm when she draws her bowstring and lets an arrow fly: all of this, and more, and even more, an impression like a fingerprint that is pressed delicately into Johanna's stupid little brain, so delicately she never noticed how deep it has sunk.
This isn't love, but it's something that lasts. And she does not think of it, on purpose.
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carisma_sensei
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Date: 2015-05-29 03:59 pm (UTC)The heavy velvet drapes drawn over tall windows, shutting out the light, the muggles walking past. A thin strip of daylight, from between, striping the floor, and the dust that dances in air so thick and old it feels like you're in a museum. And on the wall, all around Sirius, the family tree--his own name, repeated, a name that goes so far back that being born was like putting on a uniform, with all the expectations of rank and purpose.
His father, his grey eyes just like Sirius'. Grey hair only at his temples, a dusting, barely anything more, and Sirius tenses when his father turns a gaze on him. Thirteen years old and he has this feeling, deep in his gut, that his father might smile or he might show nothing at all, but God, he hopes for a smile; he hope for approval. In the corner is his mother, her wand pressed to the tapestry on the wall. The air is thick and smells of burning. His mother is singeing Andromeda's name off of the tapestry, stripping her out of their lives--because it is their lives, collectively, because for better or for worse they are meant to be a unit, a family, regal pride and tradition, and that must be upheld.
Regulus is standing at the other side of the sofa. Sirius can see a thin blue vein at his temple. He was ill, when he was a baby, and his skin has never lost that papery quality. Sirius used to pinch his toes and make him cry, but it backfired. Mother would come and take Regulus from the nanny, and Sirius would sit at the bottom of the stair and watch her pacing back and forth with him, tender in a way he couldn't remember. He is hers; Sirius is Father's, and when Father crosses toward Sirius, now, he straightens up, correcting his posture, so automatic he doesn't even think about it until after it's happened. It's only second year and he is rankling at the weight of everything, at the coldness and expectation and all that whispered hatred that does not fit with what he has learnt at school. Muggle-lover, blood traitor: James Potter, the flash of his eyes behind his glasses. Say that again and I'll hex your eyebrows off, Black, and Sirius already loves him.
And yet he does not let his shoulders drop as his father passes by. He stands, eyes forward, watching his mother at work. Her earrings are sapphire. He can see the curve of her mouth as she twists her wand, and the smell of burning is stronger. She isn't smiling, she's only working. And his father drops his hand on Sirius' shoulder, just once, the heavy silver rings knocking against the bone, and he feel such a sudden prickle of pride it's nearly dizzying, until it's sickening. It's all he has, and he holds on to it, clutches it to himself, hard.
ii.
"She smells," says James, "of cantaloupe."
"Antelope," Sirius corrects, and puts his index fingers to his forehead with a high and lovelorn grunt, "an antelope in heat."
"Sick," but James laughs when he kicks Sirius under the table.
They are early for Defence, a minor miracle--early enough that no one else is around, just the two of them in the airy classroom. A collection of first year gytrash diagrams are pinned to the bulletin board beside them. Two of the diagrams sport moustaches, an artistic liberty from last Defence class: one by James, one by Sirius. Sirius touches one of them with his thumb. "Needs a beard."
"She doesn't."
"This, git." Sirius picks up his quill and starts to scratch a beard onto the gytrash. "But Eloise McGovern would still look fetching with a beard. Silky. Nicely arranged over her tits. What about Evans?"
"What about her?"
"Well?"
"She'll be in Hogsmeade, won't she." James pushes his fingers through his hair, a gesture that he tries to make look casual--and fails, as always. "And so will I."
"The stuff of romance." Sirius scratches extra hard at the beard, with a smirk. "You and McGovern and Evans. Only I need you in Hogsmeade."
"Ah. Real romance. For what?"
"Hmmmmm." Sirius turns a look on James, arch--raises his eyebrows, strokes his chin. All significant gestures, a clear telegraph of Great Plans. James laughs, and rolls his face onto his arm, flattening his nose against his bicep.
"All right," he says, agreeably, "you twit, but if this is just about trying to get Rosemerta to give you fire whisky--" and Sirius smiles coolly and goes back to drawing on the gytrash diagram, privately amazed--like he always is, still, maybe always will be in a way that he will never say--that twit feels like an endearment, that he has James Potter at all, that nothing else matters but this.
iii.
Remus' skin is the same colour as the parchment of the Marauder's Map. On the Map, the lines of the corridors and classrooms are done in black ink. Remus' scars stand out red and angry, but the older ones are pale, like ink that has faded.
And Sirius feels uncommonly like shit. Wrung out, useless. His eyes burn in the way they get after crying. He isn't crying now. He hasn't cried very recently. The feeling persists, and so does the heavy twist in his chest, all that anger and regret and disdain and fear before he careens back into anger again. Mingled together, it makes his mouth taste like he's swallowed cigarette ash. His hands fisted around the crisp sheets of the hospital wing bed, and his eyes miserably focused on Remus' hand, pale and scarred and still. Just like always, but worse.
It's hours later and the sun has come up and washed out the night. It feels more like years. The sting is real enough to justify the hyperbole. The memory of the cool night air, Snape stepping in too close, close enough to make Sirius' skin crawl--Snivellus, with that mad gleam in his eye, and Sirius is still angry, not sorry enough that he's forgotten the pinch of that feeling. In Dumbledore's office, there had been moments where Sirius wondered if he would be expelled, wondered it in so distant a way that it felt almost unreal, which meant it would probably happen. But it was a joke, a horrible vicious joke--just the way they treated Snape, and that was only because he was a horrible little tit, because he was a stain on the general world, a jumped-up cruel snot who deserved what he was given.
Remus' thumb moves, rubs rough against the bedsheets. Sirius looks at it, tracking the movement. Dirt under his fingernail. He thinks about holding Remus' hand, and he doesn't do it. Tightens his grip on the sheets, keeping that feeling deep and contained. He turns his head only so he can rub his nose against his shoulder. James had punched him, hard, in the corridor, and Sirius' nose had started to bleed and he'd shouted at James, what the hell and James hadn't apologised, only shouted back, what the hell, you fucking twat, that was Remus--
But the hospital wing is very quiet, with a stillness that feels like a mausoleum. Like always. Only there's no conversation, no chocolate frogs or James and his gobstones, no Peter laughing so hard he falls off of his chair. Not even Madam Pomfrey, glaring around the corner. They are very much alone, and Sirius feels like he might vomit. And he is still angry.
When he looks, at last, at Remus--he finds that his eyes are open. He's probably been awake a great deal longer than Sirius thought.
Neither of them say anything.
LEAKY MEMORIES
Date: 2015-06-19 04:23 pm (UTC)There is just one step to the pavement in front of the tall narrow house. The heel of your shoe crunches when you step down, unnecessary force. There is a hot feeling fixed high in your chest, a feeling that could rip its way out of you, inside to out. It makes it hard to swallow and hard to speak, but the street is empty and the door is shut behind you and no one is looking out after you. You do not look back but you know the house without it. Tall narrow windows, the panes dark. All the drapes pulled shut. Dark brick and dark door, and a heavy silver doorknocker, like the heavy silver of your father's rings, and the heavy silver of the fucking watch you've still got in your pocket, the one with the family crest carved on the front, the one you got for your eleventh birthday, the year before they put you on the train to school, before you knew any better--before, when it seemed like an honour to open that watch and stare down at the face of it, with your own face reflected back at you. The steady ticking of the minutes, and the clock of each hour, time marching forward as long as you kept that watch wound. The planets and the stars that spin at the edge of the face, charmed so they shimmer in the dark.
Now you are sixteen and the hatred that you feel for that watch is ridiculous and out-of-hand. It's a watch, heavy in your pocket--but still just a watch, nothing, an expensive heirloom that you want to throw it through one of the windows of that house. Your great-great-grandfather made it so that those windows would never break, protecting himself against threats, insulating himself, wrapped in a mantle of superiority that has been passed down, generation to generation, an heirloom of being better than everyone. Physically throwing anything at the house would be an exercise in futility, and you will not make a futile gesture, you will leave, right now, and you do--with your hands balled into fists at your sides, and your shoulders forward, never once turning around to look back at the house where you've lived, sixteen years, fuck it all, fuck them and everything, you do not know where you are going but the hot feeling in your chest fuels you and you stride forward. No gold, no possessions but the clothes you've got on, what you've got in the pockets of your jacket,and you might even rip that off at the next alley and set it on fire, you don't know, you don't know anything, what you're going to do next or where you're going to go except anywhere but here, a thought as desperate as it is angry. You might vomit and you might break the window of the car you're walking past. The hot feeling in your chest is starting to feel like a punch until you swallow it down.
And you say it to yourself again: fuck it all.
ii.
The air smells damp, and cold, and good: a favourite smell, a smell that makes you want to take off running now, right now. This is the best night since the last night like this. The trees have been standing here for thousands of years, time before there was time, a forest grown so close together the branches knit together over your head, keep out the silver light of stars and moon.
It is not quiet, it is never quiet here--but you are so sharp in your senses that you can hear so much. Listen. In the soft dirt, you can hear the leaves rotting. Damp. In the brush, you can hear a hundred tiny heartbeats, little creatures that move in the dark--the whir of insect wings--hives of movement on your periphery, and if you turn your attention to any one you could fix on your target and kill it, easy. It's a feeling as free as the wind as it blows past you, carrying past scents from deep in the wood. You twist, following the wind, bright with smells so sharp you can nearly see them, colours painted in the air. Snap at the wind, revel in this moment for a moment, joy so unbridled you feel like you could swallow the full moon whole--but there is a duty, an obligation beating at your chest, in time with your heartbeat. Go to him, now, find them--you can smell them, too, not so far off. First things first: establish that you were here, let anyone else who comes in know that this is your forest--sniff at the base of the trees and the damp earth till you find one to mark, and then mark it. The smell is yours, sharp, acrid--and it's done, and with a huff of breath you drop your leg and take off running, tearing at the soft earth, kicking up new smells as you go. Long and lean and bright-eyed and ready for this night, the long night.
iii.
When you see him punch the manticore, you nearly can't believe it. It's so mental, so fucking mad, and you laugh. The moment is bloody and desperate; the other boy is injured, his face very white under the blood. You should not laugh, but you can't help it.
It happens so fast: the punch, and then you laugh, and your action is next: kill the manticore after, a neat disposal. You haven't really killed before, not yet--little animals, here and there, mostly by accident, carelessness; you do not think of yourself as heartless, or as a murderer. It's a little surreal. This isn't even what manticores look like. You have never seen them in person but you know that.
He looks scared, even more frightened than the boy who is bleeding. You only just became friends, you and him. Jack. He won't last here but you don't know that yet. You liked him nearly instantly. But the bloke who punched the manticore--you did not like him, and you still don't, really, but you like him for punching a creature in the face like it was a sensible thing to do; he probably panicked but you like it anyways, and when you grin over at him and say well done, you actually do mean that.
JOHANNA
Date: 2015-05-29 09:29 pm (UTC)Johanna's cousin Aldo is missing two fingers from his left hand, but he ties knots better than anyone else in the camp. She does not like Aldo. She is jealous when she watches him work, jealous of the bunch of muscle in his arms. He is two years older than she is, and taller, and kinder. And for two years he has been going to the Reaping, standing in the square with everyone else, his big dumb face quiet and composed. He never smiles, not even when they don't read his name. Stupid.
This is Johanna's first Reaping. Her dress has no sleeves, the ragged edges neatly capped by her mother's careful hand. Johanna sewed on the buttons that hold down the crisp pressed collar.
The sky is a hard blue this morning, without any clouds. The sunlight feels hot in the part of her hair. Aldo's shirtcuffs button neatly over his wrists, just a little too short. He keeps getting taller. Everyone keeps saying how strong he is. He smiles at her as they step out of their camp's bunkhouse. "It isn't a far walk."
When Aldo reaches for her hand, the blank gap of his two missing fingers brushes against her palm. Johanna steps on his foot, hard, and skips ahead without him. Her legs feel very long and very lean. They will not call her name today at the Reaping. In three hours, she'll be back on the truck, headed back into the forest. All ten fingers, two strong arms. She holds those thoughts tight, like a thing she can hold in her fists.
ii.
They have machines to fell the trees--industrial harvesters, that hew and delimb and buck all in a row, methodical and precise. Johanna can run the harvester by herself, when they're lucky enough to have them. The rumble and whine of engine and saw, and she goes to sleep with sawdust in her hair.
She hates it.
She likes it when they can't user the harvesters, when the weather makes it too treacherous--or they have too many teams out at once, and there aren't enough to go around.
Today, the message comes in early, a crackle on the team lead's radio. They leave the camp when the world is still blue in pre-dawn light. Coffee in canteens and blankets on the back of the truck. The drive to the site is just long enough that Johanna falls asleep for a few minutes, her head lolled back against the wood board side of the truck.
Her dad isn't nice about the way that he elbows her awake. Johanna throws off her blanket with a scowl--no, she wasn't asleep--and she jumps out of the truck before him, her axe already strapped to her back. It's cold, this late in November. Her breath hangs silver on the air. The sun is just coming up, and everyone stands around stomping their boots on the half-frozen soil while the lead calls out coordinates. Four to fell in each team, and then two delimbers and four buckers. Johanna watches the Peacekeepers, their dark visors and white uniforms. They look like fat snowmen. Their guns are dark against their hips.
She gets to delimb, which she likes. It would be more fun to work alone. Instead she's stuck with Orrin. At least he doesn't talk much, and he works at a good pace, fast enough to keep up with Johanna. The thud of falling trees doesn't make her flinch. Under her flannel, she can feel the sweat on her skin--damp at her temples, plastering the wisps of hair to her forehead.
They work steadily until lunchtime. Kit passes out the sandwiches, all wrapped in brown paper. Johanna stuffs her sandwich in her pocket and lashes her axe to her back again, before she swings herself into a nearby tree. She climbs hand over hand, the bark rough against her palms. She isn't supposed to do this. If the Peacekeepers were nearby, maybe they would stop her--but everyone else goes on eating, and Johanna leaves them all behind, lets the world drop away. The soft pine needles brush at her face as she climbs, and close behind her, knitting together better than any curtain. Soon she can't even hear the murmur of their voices--just the wind in the trees, creaking and swaying. It smells like sap, the same sap that makes her fingertips stick. And all around her, the forest stretches in every direction--going on, and on, it looks like forever--over the ridge of the horizon, which blurs into the mountains, soft grey mounds in the distance.
Johanna eats her lunch on a branch as broad as a bench in the mess tent. She peels the meat off of the bread and eats it. Then the cheese, then the crust. The soft center of the bread she balls up and throws, pitching overhand. Then she sits with her back to the tree trunk, and watches the ripple of the wind moving over the top of the forest, ripples like wind over the smooth surface of a lake.
iii
"So." Finnick raises his glass to his mouth. His reflection in the smooth pane of window glass does the same, a perfect mirror. "What'd you think, of our star-crossed lovers."
Johanna snorts, pitched. Her fringe this year is short and blunt, and hits just above her eyebrows. She likes the severity of it. When she looks at her reflection in the window, she looks mean. She likes that, too, and she grabs a glass from under the bar and pours out for herself.
"Pathetic," she confides, and caps the bottle with a neat twist of her wrist. This is the same room they always give her, all grey and beige and boring. Johanna hates the Capitol, but she has always loved color. The liquor in her glass, for instance: bright green, no color ever seen in nature. She takes a sip, and the ice rattles against the side of her glass when she lowers it. "He's cute."
"I like her better." Finnick's mouth curls. Johanna watches it happen in the glass reflection. Beyond the window, the glittering lights of the Capitol are strewn in every direction. This high up, it makes the ground look like it's glowing. Finnick told her about jellyfish that wash up with the tide. their gentle pulsing light. Johanna will never see it for herself. "Katniss Everdeen."
"Really?" Johanna turns and rests her elbows on the bartop, her mouth pinched to one side. She swirls her drink in the glass, slow and judgmental. "That's so surprising, Finnick. I guess--under those little girl dresses and big ol' eyes--she really is the manlier of the pair."
"You are so mean." Finnick grins anyways, and reaches around Johanna for another handful of ice. He drops most of it into his glass, saving just one piece to crunch between his teeth. Johanna raises her glass toward him.
"So mean, and so alive. So you'd screw her?"
"Either or," Finnick says, neutrally, and sticks his index finger in her drink. Johanna isn't quick enough to swat his hand away--he's out of her glass a second later, hooking his finger in his mouth to get the taste that he stole. "Wow, that tastes terrible. Which one?"
"Here." She grabs the bottle and lobs it over, underhanded. In the windowpane, her reflection does the same. Two years ago, Johanna had been standing here, in this spot, exactly: alone, after the Peacekeepers took the man out of her room. He was still crying and bleeding. Johanna had listened him whimpering about his ear all the way out the door. Naked, with his blood smeared on her mouth, she had looked out across the Capitol. And she had not cried.
She takes another drink. "Katniss Everdeen. I think I'd rather kill her than screw her," she decides, aloud, and Finnick laughs.
"Liar."
iv.
The dirt is thin under her feet. Wind shoves at the small of her back, and over the edge of the cliff, she can see the swaying of the treetops, and she hears the creaking of the trunks. The crisp taste of the air makes her think of District 7--but the trees are wrong. The smell is not the same. But that might be the blood smeared under her nose that makes her think that.
Johanna crouches, and wipes the flat of her axe against the dirt. The Gamemakers made this cliff rise up out of nothing. They can do anything they want. They thought they were fucking with her.
The crumbled dirt clumps in the blood that she wipes clean. She holds her axe up to the fake sunlight, studying its edge. And behind her, the Career boy is dead in the patchy grass, the wet leaves turning wetter by his blood. Johanna wipes the back of her hand over her nose, smearing the streak and rubbing it in deep. Her chest is tight, and the memory of the boy's grip at her ankle has not yet faded, a feeling so hot it feels burned into her skin.
In between the trees below, she sees movement: a girl with blonde hair. District 2. Johanna licks at her lower lip and tastes blood--but it isn't hers. She shifts to her feet, her hand tight around the handle of her axe.
Five more.
FOR KATE
Date: 2015-06-12 03:44 am (UTC)But once, or twice, that month--Johanna finds herself down in the medbay, staring down the rows of jump pods. It isn't deliberate. It just happens. And every time it does, and she looks up and realizes where she is, where she's gotten to--her stomach twists in revulsion, and she turns around and gets back in the lift, and leaves.
She does not go down and find Kate's pod. She doesn't put her nose to the glass to peer in at her--floating, suspended, her long dark hair floating loose around her head like she's submerged in a pool of viscus water. She does not watch to see if her eyes open, or whisper some stupid secret to her while she's not listening. No flowers, nothing like that. Fuck anything like that.
But the third time it happens--the third time Johanna looks up and realizes where her path has led her--she stares down along the pods a little longer. The light looks cool and undersea down here--or maybe that's just her imagination. Finnick told her about the way that water looks under an upturned boat. Spiderwebs of light, reflecting on the water, reflecting on the shell of the boat. All the world close and quiet, flat echoes bounced off the surface of the water. All that water, it never used to bother Johanna. Now she crouches, suddenly, her arms around her legs, her knees pulled up to her chin. Her chest feels tight; her eyes feel hot. She stares down along the pods, every one of them the same.
And she does not look for Kate. She does not try to pick out her pod from the rest. She stares until they blur together, until it doesn't matter, until she doesn't care.
LEAKY MEMORIES
Date: 2015-06-19 06:37 pm (UTC)The sun is bright and high in the sky, and as it beams down into the square it bakes the strict part of your hair. The feeling makes the crown of your head prickle.
And everyone is staring at you. A crowd of strangers, a thousand strong, everyone in their best clothes. The careful division of the crowd is marked out by soft velvet rope--green, strung between wooden posts. You have seen this scene every year, but never from this side. Ribbons and streamers, snapping in the wind. A banner across the gate into the square, cheerful colors, bidding you welcome.
On the raised platform of the stage, you are standing alone. Everyone is smiling at you, and your name is still in the air, like a sound you could pluck out and out back in the Escort's mouth. Your feet feel pinched in your shoes, and the rub of your wool stockings is putting a blister on your left heel. The mayor's daughter put a bouquet of flowers in your hands when you climbed onto the stage. She smiled at you, too, straight white teeth, straight blonde hair. The flowers are the big white orchids that grow wild at the foot of the mountain, but these ones were grown in a greenhouse. The petals look waxy and fake--except they don't, not really; that's just because you've got hot tears in your eyes and you never cry, not even when you sliced your hand open last spring, a cut so deep you could see fat. You didn't cry when a bear got into your camp and ripped the dog apart, and you woke up first and found it, a tatty smear of blood and fur and snapped bone. You don't cry.
Everyone is smiling at you and you can't see their faces; your tears blur the colors. They will think less of you, but here's what you know: you aren't crying because you're sad. You aren't crying because you're scared. You're crying because you are so pissed, you are so angry, and the way you grip the orchids is like you're holding a weapon, white-knuckled and fierce.
You will kill them. You will kill everyone. You will be fine. You will. You will.
ii.
You can smell your leg. It smells like cooked meat. You don't dare look at it, but you're trying to walk and your leg is dragging behind you a little, and a little more every step.
And the woods are on fire. All of the trees are burning, like tall tall candles. Remember how you climbed them, when you first got here? Your face all smeared with snot. You were crying so hard. You were lying. And now your face is smeared with blood instead, and so are your arms, dipped in blood right up to your elbows like you're wearing gloves, and blood is soaking your shirtfront, and you are following a boy into the woods. The darkness is made of fire and shadow and soot, and you are going to kill this boy, in the burning woods. When the mountain tore itself open and exploded--when you realized that it was a volcano--you had laughed, you had laughed so hard you had thrown up, and when you threw up you looked at the vomit and thought that it looked like slimy meat, like when wolves regurgitate for their pups, just hock up a big slab like it's nothing. Does the smell of your leg make you hungry? Did you eat all the others? You can't remember. You can't remember the last time you ate anything.
And the woods are on fire, all around you. Burning, and burning. The wind, when it blows past you, blows hot, like you're standing in front of an oven. You can't see for shit. Sweat stings in your eyes, and blood, and grit. But you are still armed. You are still ready, and you are still following that boy. When he breathes, ahead of you--you hear it, a sound that's more like a sob, damp and desperate. You already stabbed him once, a punched blow and the blade's edge bit in to his chest, deep enough that his blood looked so dark. You just have to finish him. You just have to finish this. The forest will finish burning and you'll go with it.
iii.
The rush of the water is on the edge of your hearing, and has been for the last hour. Or two. Or more. You can't remember when you stepped foot in this hallway, but it's been going for a long time now, longer than it should have. And you didn't turn back because why would you, it's just a corridor, and if this ship thinks it can fuck with you, it's going to have to try a lot harder.
So you can't remember when the sound started. That quiet rush, it could be anything, just air recycling its way through the ship, just in your head. But it's not. It's water. And when you grip at your own arm like that will be enough to wake you up, like maybe you're dreaming--that grip makes you think of the grip of a gloved hand, the grip of a restraint, locking your arm to the arm of the chair. Metal, cold, and when you turn the corner, the door is there, bowed out under the weight of the water that's behind it. The metal is swollen and distended under the pressure, and water is leaking through, under the threshold, between the thin crack.
The lights go down. The hum, of electricity. Your legs turn to jelly and when you fall, you fall in the puddle, and you can taste the ozone in your mouth, lingering, they will do it again and you are so fucking helpless.
"""feelings"""" for Kate
Date: 2015-08-31 10:00 pm (UTC)That moment. It confuses Johanna's stupid little brain, on some deep deep level, rewrites so much of the hard data learned from experience: that you can't trust anyone, that no one will ever save you, that there are no heroes and no one does anything for anyone without expecting something--a price, a result, a reaction. So much of Johanna's life has been spent at the end of a hook. She thought that she remade herself bulletproof, eliminated all of her weaknesses or else just had them eliminated around her, one by one. But even that proved to be a fucking lie.
Kate has softened her a little already. When she remembers that, it makes her angry, every time. She has no room for soft. She has no room for anything or for anyone. She can't.
It isn't soft, when Kate pushes against her in her head. It isn't angry either, colored dark the way so many of their other mental touches has been. And the other thing it is not, is that it's not colored by lust. Even lust has had its share of anger cut into it. Johanna very much likes that kind of anger. She likes what it fuels, a depth of passion so overwhelming it's like forgetting to breathe, all that mingled pain and pleasure and hatred and love.
There is still water, falling on her face, and she can still feel the tremor of that shock up her legs, up her spine, a tremor that feels too electric, too much like a shock racking her. One of Johanna's very first memories: peeling back a chunk of bark from a tree, her little fingernails bitten down in their grip, tugging until the bark came free--and then, as she'd stumbled back, a spill of termites had vomited out, like water coming up from a clogged drain. Underneath the bark there was barely any tree left. That's what this ongoing aftermath of torture feels like. Like something ate away everything else and left a hollowed tree standing alone. And it goes on and on and on, more than an image or a feeling.
And now there's Kate. The push of Kate's mind, the reassurance of her presence. Move and keep moving. This, too, is more than a feeling, more than a suggestion. This is a possibility. And Johanna does not know what to think of that, and so she doesn't; in the moment, she uses the push of Kate's mind like she would get a leg up from someone to climb a tree, without grateful acknowledgement. Move and keep moving. She doesn't let it register. She will not have time to think about it in depth, about what that push feels like: like laying in bed with Kate, limbs draped over hers and her limbs draped on Johanna's in return. The weight of her body. The curve of her smile when her face is turned away. The line of her collarbone, smooth against her pale skin. The arch of her back, and the curl of her toes, and the shape of her ass and the taut string of her legs. And the heft of her arm when she draws her bowstring and lets an arrow fly: all of this, and more, and even more, an impression like a fingerprint that is pressed delicately into Johanna's stupid little brain, so delicately she never noticed how deep it has sunk.
This isn't love, but it's something that lasts. And she does not think of it, on purpose.