Flares | Johanna Mason

IX. All Of The Lights

Johanna

District Four. One of the Districts that produced the Career tributes, Panem's main source for fish, and an absolute shithole when compared to District Seven.

Johanna could smell the salt water and the fish from inside the mayoral building and it wasn't helping her drink her fourth glass of champagne since the party started about an hour ago.

An hour of just standing in a corner of the room, silently threatening anyone who even dared look her way.

If it wasn't pretty boy, then she didn't care.

Speaking of him, she had been right as usual, Ethan did need her. She knew that this would take a toll on him mentally, she didn't expect the toll to be this high however. Ethan was drained, at some points he looked like a walking corpse with the bags under his eyes and his frazzled hair.

Then came his short temper. District Twelve and Eleven weren't that bad but that was because it was their first stops on the Tour. District 10 was where Johanna noticed Ethan's lack of sleep and short fuse. The Mayor had made some offhanded comment about Ella after the upper classes of the District had subtly, and in some cases not so subtly tried to extract information from Ethan. The mayor then had a knife directly at his throat before he hastily apologised for his comments. How pretty boy snuck that knife in, Johanna would never know.

Ethan would snap at Sage, Peacekeepers, fellow victors, his prep team to the point that they had to get Johanna to give Ethan the outfit what he would be wearing that day. Although she never seemed to be in Ethan's firing line, if anything she calmed him down.

They had arrived in District Eight with Ethan once again not sleeping. Johanna watched as he became the Reaper once again. His voice carried an unapologetic tone as he addressed the families of the tributes that he killed. Johanna knew better though, she knew that Ethan regretted everything he had done, she knew that it gnawed away at him constantly. Nevertheless he was a brilliant actor, if she had only just met him, she would be convinced that he felt no remorse, that the lives he took and the pain that he had caused meant nothing to him.

Ethan came off the stage and everyone except Johanna gave the boy a wide berth, not wanting to incur the Reaper's wrath. She gave him a soft smile, knowing that the boy needed compassion. The Reaper was for the cameras and stopped when he came off of the stage. The boy in front of her was Ethan Wynters, someone she was proud to call her friend.

Then came the train ride to District Four. She spotted Ethan late in the night at the table where everyone ate together, a glass in his hand and his legs laid over one of the chairs' arms.

"Didn't know you liked whiskey."

Her voice caught the attention of the boy who smirked, "There's a lot you don't know about me Jo and I'd quite like to leave it like that."

Johanna sat across from the boy, a similar smirk forming on her lips. "You know that I'll get you to tell me eventually, you can never say no to me pretty boy."

"And what makes you so certain of that?" Johanna could sense the cockiness in his tone.

"Because you can't resist me."

Ethan's eyes widened for a second before he scoffed and drunk the rest of the whiskey in the glass. "Dream on."

Johanna stared him down while Ethan did the same, seeing which Victor would break first and which was eventually Ethan, causing a smug smile to appear on Johanna's face.

"I hate when you're smug." Ethan said, turning his head away from Johanna and to the empty glass in his hand, a frown settling onto his face. "Have you ever looked back and thought that if you did something differently or didn't do it at all then everything would be better?"