Chapter 3
The last glances of District 7 she will ever see blur into green forested blobs outside the speeding window of the train departing for the Capitol.
Johanna watches from the train compartment she was led to, being instructed to use anything at her disposal. There’s such excess in this room alone its paralyzing, she doesn’t know what to do with the closet overflowing with new, pristine clothing or how to pick which fancy shower settings work best. Instead, Johanna just watches her home drift away for the last time, the images blur further with the welling tears in her eyes.
The sky begins to darken, and seeing darkness in the summer makes her truly realize she isn’t home anymore.
It shakes Johanna out of her daze enough for her to get moving. She’s barely eaten today, and her stomach is grumbling loudly. It’s almost as if her body knows she is about to be able to splurge and indulge herself on luxury foods soon that she likely never would have ever had before.
She numbly stands naked in the shower, pressing at buttons to select some setting. As the hot water splats at her skin, chipping away at the tenseness in her body, she relaxes somewhat under the stream. It’s nice, Johanna is used to having to boil rainwater for her baths, but this limitless supply of scorching water feels like it is scrubbing away at her agony of the last few hours. As she steps onto a mat, pressing her hand on the wall that blows hot air through her hair and body to dry her off, the sandalwood scent of the soap she selected permeates off of her.
Unsure of what to select, Johanna picks her clothes from the closet purely based on what will actually fit her. She pulls on a pair of black seamed pants and a blue tunic. Running the expensive fabric between her thumb and finger, Johanna stands numbly in front of the mirror for an indeterminate amount of time.
Sharp raps on the door snap her out of her reverie.
It’s Bianca’s annoyingly chirpy voice that cuts through the door, “Johanna, darling, dinner is about to be served!”
Johanna shuffles over to the door and opens it, giving the escort a tiny startle. It’s almost laughable that Johanna is able to startle anyone after she threw a fit on the stage like a toddler. Bianca leads her to the table, prattling on about nonsense that sounds like a trumpet noise in Johanna’s ears.
She feels exponentially small as she nears a massive table that is overflowing with plates, glasses, and the beginnings of a feast.
Johanna begins questioning the merits of her coward strategy actually being a strategy versus the higher likelihood that she is exactly that scared coward that sobbed her eyes out on stage a few hours ago. It doesn’t feel like Johanna is putting on the acting performance of the century in how pathetically slumped her shoulders are and how her ducked head is allowing tears to drip from her eyes and onto the carpeted floor.
But the swirling aroma of delectable dishes Johanna couldn’t even dream of wafts into the train car. It makes Johanna’s stomach gurgle in anticipation, and she hesitantly pulls out the chair and sits.
The train car is silent as Bianca rushes off to grab Birch, and Johanna is left at the table with only Ashford as company. The victor is currently passed out, presumably drunk, with his face buried into the table.
Trying hard to avoid looking directly at the person sitting parallel from her, she busies herself filling her water glass and loading her plate with the rolls which are the only food adorning the table yet. A loud snore makes Johanna look directly at the man. He is in desperate need of a bath and looks like a walking advertisement of why dying in the games may be a better alternative than surviving them.
Moments later, Bianca returns to the train car to sit at one end of the table. Johanna is a bit surprised Birch isn’t with her, that is until he quickly enters the car eager on the heels of Blight.
There is a tight look of exhaustion in Blight’s eyes and the clear root of the cause is Birch’s overeager, hounding questions. Johanna glares at the table to roll her eyes. It’s clear which victor Birch wants for his mentor, she isn’t surprised that the brute would simply pick the youngest and strongest of the three living victors.
It’s literally been almost a decade and a half since his games, it’s been that long since District 7 had a victor. Johanna doesn’t remember watching his games live, because she would’ve been a toddler but she knows plenty about him since the reruns of his games are near weekly on the TVs.
And he had a competitive, historic bloodbath. With his district partner they nearly wiped out all the career tributes. The girl tribute ended up getting killed while taking out the projected winner. But Blight ended up thinning the Career pack down to two tributes. And it allowed Blight and other tributes to get the lions den of the supplies. He then just camped out comfortably for almost the entirety of the games. He had a showdown with a girl from District 9 and it wasn’t even close.
So it makes sense that a self-centered brute like Birch, would think he is special enough to pull off something like that. All brawn.
As a team of uniformed staff comes in with a mixing aroma of more food than Johanna has ever seen in her life, the animalistic hunger in her gut brings Johanna back to life. In the hurried motions of someone who had to scarf down as much food as quickly as possible otherwise her siblings would eat it, Johanna begins hurriedly filling her plate with anything that looks good. Moving tongs and spoons in a frenzy, she has two dinner plates overflowing with food before Blight even takes his seat and begins talking.
“So, we can get started, Archer will,” Blight clears his throat awkwardly, “um, join us soon.”
Johanna silently wonders if Archer is suffering the identical fate of Ashford at this exact moment.
It’s no secret that a good portion of the victors of the games end up addicts in an attempt to make the pain livable. Johanna knows little about the personalities and addictions of the victors from District 7, really all she knows about them is the extensive history of their games she learned in school.
Living almost as far as physically possible from District 7’s Victor’s Village means Johanna has no clue how these men are outside the lens of the Hunger Games. They’re all so worn, she worries all them have fallen to apathy and exhaustion of the traumatic yearly mentorships. Are any of these men even going to try and help her?
The food in front of her is a good distraction though. It’s almost like she is in a frenzy. Stuffing her face with two doughy triangular slices smothered in tomato sauce and melted cheese, mashed potatoes in a thick beef gravy, pasta in a tasty green sauce, a seasoned pork chop, multiple rolls, and several helpings of some type of potato stew. Johanna almost feels as if she died, both from how incomprehensibly good the food is and from how immediately nauseous the rich meal makes her.
She ignores the judgmental glare of Bianca during her feast. Johanna could almost scoff at how the woman critiques how Johanna holds her knife and fork wrong when cutting her food. The escort is lucky that Johanna even knows how to use cutlery, a skill she only learned because Daisy taught her over the years for the few meals she attended at the Tobin household.
Johanna makes annoyed quips at the district escort in her head, if someone from the districts cutting a porkchop wrong is so despicable and barbaric to you, what does forcing kids to slaughter in an arena make you, Capitol bitch?
On her third cup of water, the staff begin clearing out some of the used plates. It gives Bianca some intro to begin her annoyingly chirpy speech. Johanna feels her chest splitting in pangs of anger at that ridiculous accent.
“As you all know, there are four victors from District 7,” Bianca begins her script, “one female and three males. The more successful districts sometimes base mentorship off sex. But for that to work, the district must have at least one mentor of each sex, and it’s been over two decades since the only female tribute from District 7 died,” Bianca’s eyes gleam with a milky clear ring spanning in her irises with a judgmental glare bouncing between Birch and Johanna, “And it seems unlikely there will be any new female victors from here anytime soon.”
Johanna barely has time to flinch at the barb before another voice cuts through the room.
“Oh, fuck right off, Bianca,” A crotchety gruff voice huffs as the short old man with a heavy wooden cane and a severe limp hobbles over to the table. “I’d like to see you and your ugly ass wig out in an arena. Then you can come back and taunt an innocent child with her fate.”
Johanna’s jaw drops as she hears several people’s silverware clatter onto the table. Bianca gasps in horrified offense with the most absurd accent.
It’s one of the most borderline treasonous things she’s heard someone say to a Capitol citizen.
She loves it.
“I’m seventeen,” Johanna mumbles down at her lab, feeling a bit irked this old man is treating her like a baby, even though it is feeding directly into this persona she is attempting to fake.
“Archer,” Blight chides at the older victor who rounds the table and leaves a chair between him and Johanna, she immediately appreciates the respect for her personal space. Blight turns towards Bianca, “Forgive him, Bianca. Archer isn’t what he used to be.”
“Eat glass,” Archer growls at Blight.
“I understand, I had an uncle like that,” Bianca obnoxiously responds as if she immediately understands Archer must be senile to call her wig ugly.
Blight gives Archer a quick glance, and it is very easy for Johanna to decipher the meaning of the glance he sends to the older man. Stop taunting her, I’m doing you a favor.
“Anyways,” Ashford sniffs out nastily and turns to spit some chewing tobacco into his clear wine glass. “We work on a rotation each year with mentoring.”
Bianca flinches and wrinkles her nose at the sound and sight of him spitting. Johanna finds herself agreeing with the annoying escort on this one, grimacing herself as she watches the blackened sod texture of tobacco and spit mixing into a tiny pool of viscous red wine.
Blight continues the speech for Ashford who is now glaring at Bianca. “One mentors the girl, one mentors the boy, and the third is the one on the ground charming people trying to score sponsors for you both.”
“So, the third person works for us both?” Birch asks.
“More like we are an impartial advocate for the district,” Blight explains, switching his glance directly to Johanna, clearly annoyed with Birch. “At the end of the day, you both can’t get out of that arena. If we’re lucky, one of you will, which we’d much rather have than neither of you.”
Johanna blinks at him, making sure to blink especially slow to look extra wide-eyed and innocent. She is positive that her own nausea from the volume of food she ate is helping her look queasy with terror.
Based on this system, she needs to keep up the act of pathetic scared girl until she is assigned a mentor. And she isn’t even totally sold on being honest with whoever her mentor is.
Johanna is unsure if she can trust one of these men to not somehow let her strategy slip to Birch.
Because it’s just Johanna’s luck that she gets reaped alongside the one asshole from District 7 who would actually want to join the Careers. It doesn’t take a genius to get this read on Birch.
And if Birch knows what Johanna’s capable of, then so will the Careers.
She can’t even think of a year in the games where someone from District 7 joined the Careers. And they have promising enough tributes every few years that they could join the Careers if they want to.
It goes against everything District 7 stands for. The Games are a hardship they survive, but its not something they’ll lick their oppressors boots over.
But Birch is a rich boy with an ego problem and little struggle, so he will fit in like a glove with the Capitol’s lapdogs that willingly throw themselves into this.
Blight gives Johanna a wide smile, trying to appear reassuring as he continues, “I am the one working for both of you as the impartial promoter this year.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Birch growls, “so I’m going to either get a senile old fart who hid and got lucky, or a sad drunk hopped up on any drug he can get his hands on?”
Johanna doesn’t move; she just keeps glaring at the boy out of the side of her eye.
He is such a prick, and how dare he say shit like that to people who had to go through the horror that is the Hunger Games. She wipes at her mouth with the silk napkin to hide her smirk when Ashford, drops his legs from where they’re propped on the table to the ground, using the momentum of his chair falling forward to whip his knife with precision towards Birch’s face.
It’s an incredibly impressive throw for such a drunk, but she takes some satisfaction in the bottom centimeter of Birch’s earlobe being sliced off. Birch barely even cries out in agony before Archer swiftly swipes his oak cane onto the table to slap the back of Birch’s knuckles in two quick swipes.
Both the old codgers are tougher than they look. Decades of trauma and addiction clearly haven’t taken off their edge.
“Hey, you can’t do that,” Birch whines, holding his napkin to his gushing ear and holding his other hand out gingerly.
“We are absolutely allowed to do that,” Ashford growls.
“Th-this is bullshit!” Birch exclaims. “I shouldn’t be here.”
“You have the honor of representing your district!” Bianca brightly offers.
Johanna rolls her eyes so hard they almost fall out of her head.
“No, this is so unfair. My name was only in the bowl seven times. Seven!” Birch indignantly exclaims. “I never took out tesserae, and on top of this bullshit I get shafted for mentors who abuse me and am only provided with greasy, fatty foods. Isn’t the Capitol supposed to be luxurious? I can’t stomach half that crap.”
“I’ve never even seen this much food in my life, you dick.” Johanna quietly mutters into plate. It takes everything in her not to snipe it directly at him.
“Yeah, well you’re…because you’re from the boonies.” Birch stammers, as if he struggles to refrain from calling her trash. “It at least makes sense you are here! This is a step up for you.”
“Yet you’re still here,” Johanna says simply, staring at a crumb on her plate. ““Your life means nothing more than mine because you’re loaded. Being rich didn’t make you any less district, because look at where it landed you.”
Even out of her peripheral vision, his face is broiling red, and he slams his knife down on the table. It seems like he’s having big boy feelings about realizing his family’s immense riches still couldn’t save him from The Reaping.
Something tells Johanna that Birch has never thought a day in his life that he would end up being reaped.
She hopes he cries in his bed tonight. So will she, but at least she’s honest with herself about it.
Birch grits his jaw, clearly trying to rub the two wet sticks together in his brain to try and spark some thought.
But Birch is a bully, and he’s dumb. So he just goes for the low hanging fruit.
“Well at least my dad will cry when I die in there. What’s your dad going to do? Make money off betting on your death?”
“Hey, you’re both from Seven,” Blight pipes up.
“Save your tantrum for the arena, boy,” Archer grumbles.
Johanna is shaking so hard, because she wants to dive across this table at him. But she decides to attempt to kill him with her words. “My dad is a parasite, and we’re dirt poor for it. At least I’m not loaded from my daddy dealing illegal mushrooms to the Capitol. I’m nothing like my dad, but something tells me you’re the same kinda bootlicker as your daddy,” Johanna impatiently snaps at him while clanging her silverware and fists on the table, finally looking up to glare at him.
There’s a beat of silence, and Johanna bites her tongue but can’t refrain spitting out the thought before it fully forms.
“Have fun winning the games by choking on The Career’s dicks. That’s your strategy isn’t it, big guy?”
At first Birch preens, only taking in the first half of the sentence where Johanna is alluding to him winning The Games. But as the words sink in, his face turns a deeper shade of red it’s almost purple.
“What was that, whore?” Birch barks.
“Whoa, okay that’s enough!”
“Hey, Birch you’re going way too far.”
“Sounds like she rejected you at some point with how bitter you are.”
“That is horrible manners and not very sex-positive.”
His use of her fun school nickname that is following her to the Capitol is interesting seeing everyone jumping to her defense. Archer, Blight, Ashford, and Bianca respectively all cry out their outrage in sync.
“Enough, you two!” Bianca continues. “Fighting like animals.”
“See that?” Johanna points at the priss and smirks, “All the money in the world and you’re still a district animal. To them, you’re boonies trash.”
“The girl did nothing wrong, Bianca,” Archer grumbles. “Don’t lump her in with that behavior. You,” he snaps his fingers and points threateningly at Birch. “You’re a pathetic, whiney child. Don’t think you know any better than the people who actually survived the games. If you wanted to swallow down your ego, you’d have more than decent odds, so maybe shut your mouth. Your life depends on it.”
Instead of shutting his mouth, Birch just gapes. He silently opens and closes his mouth until he’s rendered silent.
Two servants bring out a giant chocolate cake, and before they step away, Archer hold out a coin, “Can you flip a coin for us?”
“Whoever wins the coin toss chooses,” Ashford explains boredly.
Birch looks at Johanna like she is a pest and smirks to himself cockily, knowing whoever wins will select him. He probably is right in that assumption, obnoxious or not he will be the one the winner picks.
The servant grips the coin and Ashford he gestures kindly to Archer, “I respect my elders, you get to call it old man.”
Archer grumbles with no malice, “Hm, every year I regret more and more helping you survive that arena.”
Ashford blows the older man a sarcastic kiss.
Archer rolls his eyes and looks to the servant, as the coin flips in the air, he calls it at its peak.
“Heads.”
The servant shows the coin to Ashford who is the nearest person to her.
Ashford groans in defeat, “You win, old man.”
Johanna tightens her jaw and continues to stare ahead, waiting for the pang of rejection to smack her ego.
Also, it makes Katherine’s goodbye echo in her mind. The mentor her sister said is her best bet won the coin toss. And she is about to witness him not pick her.
Archer glances between Johanna and Birch, before looking at Ashford introspectively, “Actually want to do the best two of three in private? Spare these kids’ feelings a bit.”
Ashford catches his knowing gaze and quietly nods.
The pair exit the room for a brief interlude, where there is a tangible awkwardness that hangs in the air, which the tone-deaf Bianca, thankfully, breaks, “You know you kids are both going to be so gorgeous once your stylists are done with you. I can already see it! Johanna, those big brown eyes with makeup, after some generous waxing with your eyebrows. And Birch, those muscles and a good shave Ah,. everyone will want you!”
“To sponsor you,” Blight adds in a clipped, empty tone.
The Hunger Games do have a habit of being a beauty contest. She can’t even think of outright ugly victors. There’s plenty who aren’t hot, but they aren’t revolting to look at – unlike the people in the Capitol.
Blight gives a tight, uncomfortable smile. Then the table just sits in terse silence for the few moments it takes until the door opens again and both men reappear.
Johanna looks up, her full stomach swirling with dread.
Archer looks at Johanna with kind dark green eyes, and points his cane at her, “You’re with me, kid.”
“Nice,” Birch celebrates under his breath, and Johanna damn near rolls her eyes out of her head.
Ashford doesn’t have anything special about his victory that would make him a better mentor. He was a strong eighteen-year-old with a pregnant wife and fought like hell to get home. But he’s a walking tragedy now since his son was reaped eighteen years later.
Who wouldn’t become an apathetic drunk from that?
It makes him a joke of a mentor, but Birch lacks any critical thinking skills.
They don’t immediately pair off with their mentors. Instead, Bianca leads them to the lounge car to watch the recap of the reapings across Panem.
Johanna sits in the corner of a plush couch and pulls her knees up to her chest. She tries to take note of anyone who sticks out, and she is awful at remembering names.
There are the typical career tributes that all look lethal. The boy from District 1 is described as one of the favorites for winning this year, and he makes Birch look scrawny and short. There is a small thirteen-year-old girl from District 3 that sticks out to her in a sad way. It’s the same type of sad way Johanna notices herself when District 7’s reaping shows.
When District 7’s reaping is played, all anyone talks about is Birch’s physique and his promise as a contender. The only mentions about Johanna are some witty quips by Caesar Flickerman when they show the clip of Johanna stumbling up the steps and crying. And they show an unattractive still of her – snot and tears.
It’s so pathetic. And cruel as before they cut to commercial every commentator makes one joke to go along with the picture.
Johanna doesn’t even recognize the kid on the screen.
She is definitely the most cowardly tribute based on reactions.
Both tributes from District 10 look strong, but the girl especially. The commentators buzz on her potential and it’s obvious from her broad shoulders alone that she has probably been herding cattle as long as she could walk.
The boy from District 11 is incredibly stocky and strong.
And other than that, every other tribute fades in the background noise.
When they show the ranking of odds, Johanna sees herself tied at the bottom with the District 12 Tributes. The tiny girl from District 3 ranks just above them.
“Alright, now that everything is settled, you two will pair off with your mentors! Blight and I will spend that time discussing strategies for getting you two sponsors,” Bianca announces with an excited clap of her hands after flipping the TV off.
Archer nods his head in the direction of the door he wants her to follow him to. Johanna gets up and hates how much her legs shake, as she silently follows him. The door opens onto a cozy side car that has a bar cart where Archer is mixing a drink.
Johanna sits on the edge of the chase lounge that is softer than her bed at home, “So I take it you lost the coin tosses.”
Archer chuckles and sits in an armchair on the opposite side of the room, he sips his drink and shakes his head softly. “Quite the opposite, I won.”
Johanna guffaws, “Please don’t bother sparing my feelings since I will likely be dead in under a week anyways.”
“I am being honest. When Ashford and I went to the other room we didn’t do best two of three,” Archer sits up straighter and tries to get Johanna to meet his gaze, “I won the coin toss and my choice was you, but it wouldn’t have done you any favors in the arena if we hurt Birch’s ego like that.”
“And I was your choice because Birch is such an ass?” Johanna tries to clarify and diverts her eyes to stare at the ground.
It’s hard for her to act insecure like this.
Johanna is well aware she is a cocky asshole on occasion, and she has a reason to be smug about most things.
But she’s not going to give the Capitol herself. They can force her into an arena, they can even ensure she is brutally killed one minute into the game, but they’ll never own her or know her. Johanna is well aware of her size, if she wants any chance of winning she needs to be underestimated and let most of the tributes pick each other off first.
So right now, she is nothing more than an insecure coward.
“No,” Archer stares at her for several seconds too long, and Johanna feels like he’s staring into her soul. “I think you’ve got more going on upstairs than you let on. Or at least more going on than Birch.”
She snorts a small chuckle, “And you’re just basing that on what? His little tantrum?”
Archer shakes his head, “For starters, your grades are better than his. Mentors are allowed to request Tribute school records. I was reading up on both of you before dinner.”
Johanna is not surprised in the slightest that she has better grades than that meathead. She pulls good enough grades, but she doesn’t try at all. There’s no point in trying when she was destined for a life in the lumber mills.
“Grades don’t do much for someone when they’re running from a Career pack.”
Archer shrugs and shakes the ice around in his dwindling drink. It’s clear that Johanna’s insecurity right now is taxing on the jaded man. “True. But it tells me you’re smart enough to think on your feet. And it means you know the outdoors, which is imperative in the games. But it is a double-edged sword, it makes District 7 high targets. They figure everyone from our district has been swinging axes and climbing trees since they could toddle, even though that is not always the case. I like the odds better for a girl sobbing on stage than some cocky musclehead.”
She shifts in her own seat, Johanna feels so full its still uncomfortable. Yet she still finds herself eyeing the drink cart as Archer hobbles over and refills his drink. The black-market liquor she’s only ever let herself drink a few times can be fun but it feels like poison, tearing her body up from the inside out the next day. Johanna’s curious if the Capitol grade alcohol will be any better.
Maybe there’s no better time to try since she’s probably about to die.
No need to worry about how drinking the stuff could lead down a slippery slope to becoming her father.
As he spins away from the cart, Archer holds out an additional glass that he poured for Johanna. He must’ve noticed her staring at it or her puffy terrified eyes scream of someone who needs a drink. She takes the glass and stares down at the amber fluid.
“I see a sobbing girl on the stage, and I think they won’t live past a bloodbath,” Johanna grimly states. “Maybe you’re not as good at betting as you think.”
She fiddles with her sleeves and avoids his stare. Johanna still doesn’t trust him. He will be the person to help her out most, but Johanna doesn’t want him to know anything about her. At least not yet.
It’s a fatalistic outlook sure, but when it comes to the hunger games, fatalistic becomes realistic.
She knows if her strategy will work, that she needs a mentor. Johanna needs someone who can advocate for her, especially when she switches to the offensive.
But why would she trust anyone who has been intertwined with the Capitol for almost fifty years? She was literally ripped from her mother’s arms today to be dropped off in a death arena.
The only person she knows she can trust is herself from here on out.
Right?
“I’ve been mentoring longer than you’ve been alive,” he easily responds.
“And?” she scoffs.
“I try to take mentoring seriously, I’ve had decades to get good at it. I do my homework,” Archer leans back in his chair, taking a heavy sip on his drink.
“Fine, then tell me what you know based on your homework. Tell me that, and how that makes me a better pick than Birch,” she challenges, and she punctuates her point by taking her first sip of the drink. It burns down her throat but is so much smoother than the stuff back home.
Archer rolls his eyes, irritated yet dramatic. “Johanna Mason, age seventeen. Above average grades. Several school infractions for fighting – couldn’t find the details, but I’d bet it was mostly boys you were scrapping with.”
“Why’s that?” Johanna interrupts him inquisitively, because he is 100% correct.
“Because you have zero infractions for bullying,” Archer shrugs. “It means you stick up for yourself and others. You won your axe throwing tournament, impressive considering you’re underweight for your age group.”
He pauses to take a sip of his drink.
“When I was getting on the train, I saw Peacekeepers hauling off a drunk man arrested for betting, your father, I could tell since you’re a spitting image of your mother. And a Peacekeeper was asking her questions. He had a fresh slap mark on his face, and given your matching bruise, I’d bet you gave it to him.”
Johanna unintentionally sinks back into her chair, is she really this easy to read?
“I also noticed your siblings are all bigger than you. I think you’ve had to be scrappy your whole life. And I can work with scrappy.”
Her heartbeat is thrumming in the back of her throat from nerves, “Okay, so my family is trashy? That doesn’t make you some mastermind.”
“I’m not claiming to be one,” Archer fiddles with his cane. “But all that makes you a better pick than a giant meathead with an ego problem. Birch has garbage grades and rich parents. He doesn’t know hunger, he doesn’t know struggle. He excels at wrestling, but brute force only takes you so far in the games.”
She latches onto the low hanging fruit, “You just told me that information about Birch easily. How can I trust you with anything?”
“I told you that because I am your mentor. I’m not Birch’s. And don’t worry, Ashford will not go to that same effort of digging up tribute files,” Archer shrugs. “I’m giving you valuable information.”
Johanna chuckles, “I knew all that about Birch, we go to the same school.”
A silence lulls over them. He’s waiting for her to talk more.
Can she trust him?
“You know why I’m being careful, right? I got shafted in terms of District 7 partners; he will use it against me. Careers will use it against me,” Johanna huffs when Archer gives her an impatient wave of his hand.
Archer rolls her eyes as if she is the biggest drag to have ever existed, “Yes, did you magically forget that I made who won the coin toss a secret because I can see how dangerous he is? Everything stays between us, kid. I want to help you.”
How many kids has he mentored to death? How is he still upright and sharp? How does he still care?
“It’d be easier if I knew anything about you. You’re a huge mystery in my town. How are you the oldest victor here yet the most invested in your Tributes?
“If this is the hand I’m dealt, I’m going to find purpose in trying to care for every kid I mentor.”
“Must be nice, living a long life,” she quickly quips.
A flash of something that looks impressed flashes across his face, “Do you want that? To live a long life?”
“I don’t get a choice.”
“If you could have a choice, what would you want?”
It’s a cruel question to ask and Johanna’s voice cracks on her answer, “I just want to go home.”
“Then if you want to go home, you need to tell me what we’re working with here,” Archer says.
Johanna huffs a sigh, “Fine, on one condition.”
“You do realize certain tributes need to beg their mentors to put in half an ounce of effort, right?”
She smirks, “Sucks that you already showed your hand then.”
Johanna squints at the old man who now seems fully invested in the conversation, setting his drink aside in favor of fiddling with his cane and staring intently at her.
“What’s the condition?”
“I’m only asking because my sister is a gigantic nerd that knew a bunch about the games to try and feel better about it, I guess. If I live, she’d love to know: did you really chop your own leg off?”
His graying brows shoot to his receding hairline, something mixed with offense and impressed mars his features, “You’re asking me to talk about my games?”
She just stares at him and takes a sip from her drink.
He huffs, yanks the ankle of his pants up and hits his steel prosthetic with his cane. It echoes loudly through the car, “Yeah, I did. “
“Why?”
“Oh, you’re allowed to do follow-ups?” he sarcastically huffs in bemusement. “My leg was crushed and wedged inside the tail of the cornucopia. I couldn’t get it out, luckily the tornado that threw me in there made a bunch of supplies hide me. So I was able to cauterize the axe and everything.”
Interesting.
That’s a grit she can respect.
So she sighs dramatically and sets her glass down, “Fine, you’re observations are pretty spot on. To a pretty scary degree, am I that easy to read?”
Archer shakes his head, “No, I just know how to spot potential. It’s a horrible, horrible gift.”
When he gets up to go over to the drink cart again, Johanna wonders if her question is what is inducing him to go for another drink. Except when he comes back to his seat he is empty-handed.
“Do you have any strategies or skills? Questions?”
“Can I survive without sponsors if I don’t go into the bloodbath?”
“Depends on how capable you are. If it’s a forested arena similar to home, you may be able to but it would be incredibly hard. Also, once you make it to a certain point in the games, it’s almost a guarantee you get some sponsors at some point. Are you trying to avoid the bloodbath?”
She chuckles mirthlessly, “Look at me, man. Yeah, I want to avoid it.”
“Okay, well we can get into that more later. I advise tributes to take in several factors before deciding how they approach the bloodbath – arena type, what you can see, what tributes surround you.” Archer lists out easily. “Why are you so convinced you won’t have sponsors?”
“Well, there’s the obvious answer of me weeping on stage in front of the whole country.”
“You say that like you don’t have any other skills or redeeming qualities.”
“I feel like it takes a hell of a lot of redeeming qualities to bounce back from sobbing on stage, it’s an immediate target on my back.”
“Well as I’ve said, someone like Birch can have the habit of making a bigger target on themselves. Talent and ego can really drown out the noise of weaker tributes. There are usually always weaker kids who die from the elements every year, sometime they aren’t worth the bother to Careers.”
Johanna shrugs for the umpteenth time under his appraising gaze, “I agree. I want to be forgotten and obsolete, so they won’t see me as anything but a weakling.”
“You say that like it’s a farce.”
“Maybe it is. It’s smart, letting the competition take each other out.” The lightness in her head gives her an air of confidence, “Let them do the hard work for me. And then I get the choice on picking my own battles.”
“And your battles? You can win them?”
“You were right that most of the fights I got in at school were with boys. Mainly bullies or anyone who said something about my family.” She takes a casual sip of her drink, “And I never lost a fight.”
Only the faint noise of the train slicing though the air fills the air for a few moments. She lets him sit with a contemplative expression.
When Archer finally speaks, he is still sincerely invested and almost has some hope in his eyes.
“So, was the crying on stage fake?”
Well, what better time than to practice her lying?
“Yeah, I amped it up. Don’t get me wrong I was shocked, but that’s not how I usually act,” Johanna lies.
“That’s how I’ll frame it when you go on the offensive to potential sponsors,” Archer gives Johanna a once over. It almost looks bitchy from how much he is appraising her, but his voice is soft and reassuring as he says, “It’s okay if it was real.”
“I decide what’s real or not. They’re taking my future at least let me write my obituary.”
He holds up his hands placatingly, “Okay, okay. Well let’s talk skills then, but we’re thinking an underdog strategy?”
“No,” she shakes her head with finality.
She corrects him: “A coward’s strategy.”