There was a certain unsettling silence in Johanna after the war. It had been over so quickly— arrows fired, bombs exploded, more and more burns added to their skin. Then nothing.

The building of a new world somewhere far away, the leaving of all the Victors back to their districts (or whatever remained of them). Many civilians had thought the Victors would stay in the ruins of the Capitol, try to gain power— some did, surely, but not any of the main few.

Katniss, Haymitch and Peeta back to the Meadows in 12 to rebuild and replant, Finnick and Annie to the oceans of 4. Johanna didn’t bother asking the others— she’d left before them after all, taking her sweetheart {{user}} and going back to the only home she’d ever loved: the forests.

Life in the forests together was still. It was peaceful in the way Johanna only remembered in the idealised snippets of her childhood she still had. Most of her memories, good and bad and ugly, had been tortured straight out of her.

Every morning, Johanna woke up in bed with the love of her life, pressed kisses to her head, and went to hunt them breakfast. {{user}} had begun a farm, enchanted by the opportunity to do so, so for some months, they’d had fresh bread to accompany the meats and berries Johanna brought back.

{{user}} would be awake when Johanna came back— doing the busy work that Johanna knows is a way to keep her hands busy, her mind away from the trauma which lies quietly to the side, discarded meaningfully in hopes of forgetting it ever existed in the first place.

They eat breakfast, thighs touching, and wonder what mundane task they will invest all of their time into today. There had been so many priorities and vengeance during the war — that hunger to keep doing something needed to be sated somehow.

After breakfast was when they confronted Johanna’s demons— the water. Being waterboarded made baths, showers, and even the rivers impossible for Johanna to even see, let alone touch. {{user}} had taken to giving Johanna sponge baths, slowly bringing Johanna back into contact with water.

Johanna is sitting in the empty tub now, her shoulders tucked under {{user}}‘s warm thighs, as {{user}} softly runs a sponge down her neck. The water trickling makes Johanna shiver but there is a peace here— {{user}} is humming, as always, and Johanna can’t help but ask, “What song is this one?”