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THE LAST THING Cora expected to see as she closed the door to the District 7 quarters and slipped off her shoes as quietly as she could was Johanna Mason faced straight at her, sitting eerily frozen with both hands folded in her lap. A yellow lamp rests at her side, illuminating the mentors caramel skin and giving her a haunting glow that pulses around her in the late darkness.
Startled, Cora inhales sharply, nearly fumbling the edges of her shoes hanging between her fingers. When she had left, it had been around 11pm and it was close to 3 now - she had expected everyone to be asleep, hoping her absence would go unknown.
"Gosh, Johanna," mutters Cora, placing her shoes onto the rack and turning to face her mentor in bewilderment. "You scared me. What are you even doing up at this time?"
Johanna takes a moment to answer, before smoothly replying,"I could ask you the same question." Her tone is uncharacteristically soft and delicate, the usual harsh and bitter noise accompanying her words void as she speaks in a mellow lull. Her fingers drum quietly on the armrest of the chair she's currently sat on, the low sound of her nails sinking into the fabric ringing in the silence.
Cora sighs, shaking her head. She can't even begin to imagine the kind of outlandish imaginations Johanna must have conjured in her mind to figure out why Cora was sneaking back in so late. "Look, Mum, I just went to the roof because I couldn't sleep. Remember? I told you I used to back during my first Games."
"Alone or—?!"
Cora hesitates, frowning. Her eyes flit to quickly assess Johanna's expression, wondering how on Earth the girl could've known. But then again, despite the fact that her and Johanna sometimes butted heads when their fiery personalities got too heated, Cora always felt like it was Johanna who truly understood her best out of all the District 7 Victor's. Both had a short temper, for one, but where Cora was forced to extinguish her flames and match it with ice instead, pushing down her simmering anger and resentment and replacing it with cold, painless smiles, Johanna allowed the fire to rage, an inferno eating up anyone who dared get in her way. Truthfully, Cora pitied any person to find themselves in the middle of Johanna's wrath, recalling how she once thought a line she read in a book from her grandfathers study should've been "Hell hath no fury like Johanna scorned".
Despite this though, underneath the burning rage, there was just ash, and sorrow, and heart ache, and, most of all, a violently desperate need for love. She knows Johanna's demanding questions come from a good place and where Cora never really minded how Johanna could practically see right through her, she now squirms under the older girls scrutinising gaze.
