sixthiterationlogs | you can't win when you are the system

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you can't win when you are the system

WHO: Johanna Mason
WHERE: Behind the Hospital
WHEN: February 20th
OPEN TO: OTA
WARNINGS: Drug Use

The box had turned up a week ago, but for the better part of that time, Johanna has been carefully hiding all the other bags of morphling (or morphine, as it'd been printed on the bags) in places that no one would think to look. She'd kept to her usual routine, made sure that she wouldn't cause attention to herself, and hidden them in places with little marking. She knows, on some level, that what she's doing is wrong. She knows that it's wrong because of how she's hiding it, how people will disapprove, but she doesn't give a fuck.

Once she taps into that first bag and lets herself drift into the sweet oblivion she's been missing all this time, she's not letting the others go without a fight. Waiting until she's delivered her wood haul for the day, she slips off her normal routine back to Baze's house, heads instead to the hospital. While she'd been given the bags, they didn't exactly give her needles.

Waiting for an all clear takes at least an hour, but she pockets one, making the smallest of small talk, and then she's at the back of the hospital, hissing as she slides in the morphine through the drip, breathing out the first real relief she's felt in ages as everything starts to float away. The bad memories, the nightmares, the reminder of what the Capitol did to her...

For the first time since she resurfaced in that fucking fountain, Johanna feels like she can let go. Mindful that she can't waste the whole bag right now, she wiggles the needle out, too drugged out to mind the pain (or the blood), and too out of it to realize she hasn't hidden the bag like she should, but just shoved it in her pocket. Everything is brighter, everything sounds incredible, and she thinks the world is thumping in time with her heart, jolting up to meet her.

Stumbling towards the front of the hospital, she sees a hazy figure start coming into focus. "What's your rush?" she drawls, smirking at them as she lets herself lean, loose-limbed and relaxed, like all of her demons are melting into the ground. "There's plenty of doctoring to go around for all of us, take a number," she jokes, like it's hilarious, snorting and giggling to herself as she lets her back hit a pole, sliding into a sit so she can push her fingers into the earth, eyes wide and intent as she watches them dig into the ground.

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She grimaces when he pulls her to her feet, weaving a little given that her balance isn't exactly top of the pile right now, leaning into Baze's firm body before she topples right back to the ground like a tree ready to be felled.

"I don't need you to watch me," is her heated reply, the irritation cutting through her haze. Her cheeks are hot with it, annoyed, and she hates that she's being treated like this. "I'm fine."

"You just fell down. For what looks like the second time," Baze points out, and ducks under her arm again to heave her to her feet. This time, unless she wrenches away, he'll wrap an arm around her waist to hold her up. Obviously, he's not all that afraid of her anger-- as high as she probably is, he could see an attack coming a mile away, and anyway, he doesn't actually think she'll try to hurt him.

If she can't walk, he'll have to see about carrying her completely, but for now, he'll leave her some attempt at dignity.

Johanna doesn't really know if she's falling or if she's just tired of standing, but still, she lets him haul her to her feet, glaring at him for pointing out the obvious. "I'm not dying and I'm not hurt, so let me be disconnected from all the shit here," she insists, wanting to float off into the haze of the drugs.

"Don't I deserve a break?" she asks, her voice brittle, because she hasn't really had the chance to have anything decent, not for a very long time.

"You deserve many good things," Baze says, starting them slowly back towards the house. "Including having someone care about what happens to you. Right now, that someone is me."

"Never gotten any of them," is her dulled response. She got fame, money, acclaim, but they expected her to look and act a certain way and when she didn't, they took everything that actually mattered. Now, when she'd tried to rise up, they kept taking and taking. She can barely be around water, even now, and it leaves her jittery and relying on the pines to keep somewhat clean.

"Don't care about me," she mutters. "They'll kill you for it, that's what they do, that's all they ever do."

"I am already dead," Baze reminds her as they weave in the direction of the house, him mostly supporting her at this point probably. "There is not much worse they can do to me." They could take her away, but then, that's not what they're talking about here, is it? They're talking about her, and she might well be fine with that.

"You're here and you're breathing, aren't you? When the Capitol decides they want me to hurt again, they'll just take you away," she says, the euphoric effects of the morphling going away, starting to dissipate as terrible, awful reality comes creeping in.

The trouble is, she's not sure what'd she do, then. She can feel her heels dragging, her energy flagging. "I'd miss you," she admits, frankly, blaming it on the drugs. "A lot."

That isn't expected, and while his step doesn't falter with the surprise (and warm feeling) of it, he does heft her up a little into something almost resembling a one-armed hug, as he helps her along. In the guise of keeping her from falling over again. "Well, I am not leaving, and the people who keep us here are not your Capitol. I have not seen any signs that they kill people to upset another."

"How lucky for us," she says wryly, because she's not sure how much she likes to think about how this place is actually better to her than the Capitol had been twice, even if she still believes that they're in some kind of arena, that somehow, Panem is still responsible for this.

It's all too much their style for her to think otherwise. Groaning, she hates that she's let herself open up, but, "I'd hate if you went," she admits, the drugs making her open enough to say it out loud.

"Then it is good I am not going, isn't it," Baze says, trying not to smile. They're halfway to the house. He'll make her some actual food to mitigate the drugs, and maybe she'll sleep, and maybe he can track down where she hid the rest. Because there's sure to be more. "I thought you hated it when I nagged you, too."

"I do hate it," she grumbles, seeing as just because she might like the feeling of having some family (or family adjacent) that cares about her, she also doesn't like the idea of having to bow down to anyone else's demands and orders. "Just because I bitch about it, doesn't mean that it's not appreciated."

This is all grounding her in ways she doesn't want, not when she's this high. "No one tells me what to do," she says, chin high in the air, "not even the people I like."

"I will only make suggestions, then," Baze says. Which is a lie. He nags. It's what he does. He nagged Chirrut for decades; he'll do the same to anyone who winds up in his orbit of family. "Except for getting you home. That is not a suggestion, that is for your health."

"I don't see what being at the house is going to do," she grumbles, pointedly not calling it a home, because it's not. It's a place where she can be taken care of and that's great, that's fine, but it's not home. She doesn't do home.

"I'm feeling good, Baze," she insists, eyes sparkling even if her face is still a little slack what with the drugs relaxing her to the point that she can be. "I bet if I sleep, I won't even have a single nightmare."

Baze calls anywhere he has people he cares about, home, at this point. It isn't as if he can "go home", back to Scariff or Jedha, seeing as he's dead, and both of those places have been destroyed, anyway. The house is as good a home as any, since Johanna lives there. "If you want to sleep and enjoy that, you certainly can," he says. It would, in fact, make life easier. "How long does this drug of yours last? Usually?"

She ought to know, if she's familiar with it. He can keep an eye on the time, to check it himself, but if she knows, that'll help.

"These? This is something I've never tried, but it feels like morphling," she says. There are subtle differences, but it achieves the same euphoria and relaxation that she'd been expecting. She can relax and feel human and not like an experiment again.

"It helps me," she says, a touch aggressively, but she needs him to understand that. "It takes away the pain of the memories."

"There are healthier ways to help you," Baze points out. "Ways that do not put you or others with you at risk. It is good to see you smile and laugh, but I see you smile and laugh other times, too. I like those times better."

"It's a show," she says, hollow. "Most of the time, it's all just for show because it's easier than letting people know ..." Even now, under the influence of drugs, she refuses to give up the truth, that she hurts and she's lonely and unhappy because of what the Capitol did to her.

That she's afraid she's going to always be alone because no one will ever love the brittle, sharp edges that she puts out there. Serves her just fine, because then she doesn't have to lose anyone else.

"Not always. When I had my raincloud," Baze reminds her, not asking what she's not letting people know, since he pretty much already knows-- maybe not the details, but the shape of it. "You laughed then, and that was real. I see you smile when you think I am not looking. The feelings are in there."

He's right. She doesn't want to acknowledge it, but he's right and Johanna only puts up the front she does because she knows what it's like to care and have it all taken from you and she refuses to go through that again.

"Whatever," she grumbles. "It's not like it'll change anything. I'm too sharp for people to like having around and I don't give enough of a fuck to want to change."

"Maybe too sharp for stupid, shallow people," Baze says. "I like you." He pushes the door to their cottage open and ushers her inside. There's a chair just inside, by the stove-slash-fireplace, and he guides her into it if she doesn't protest the idea of sitting down too much.

Johanna wanders inside, fumbling a little as her steps start to sway, but she makes it there, collapsing into the chair when he eases her towards it. She can feel the high starting to ebb away, something that she'll need to do something about if she wants to continue this.

"What if I'm too scared to let anyone in more?" She's not looking at him when she says it because she can't. She can't let him see that.

"Do you want to?" Baze makes sure she isn't going to slide out of the chair, then goes to the basin that serves as a sink-- it's a pump rather than true plumbing, but it works well enough to get water inside without needing buckets from a well-- to get her a glass of water. "If you want to, then you fight the fear. Or find ways around it. If you don't care, then it doesn't matter."

She does care, but she doesn't want anyone to see it. That's the problem, when you boil down to the base of it. Making a face, she curls up into a ball in the chair, the sleepiness starting to come over her as the drugs start to wear off. "I fight everything with violence, but you can't fight fear with an axe," she complains, thinking of how terribly unfair that is.

The one thing she's good at, and it's no use to her in this fight.

Baze brings the water over to her, coming to crouch in front of whatever direction her face is turned in that curl. This isn't his best subject-- comfort, wisdom, advice. That was always Chirrut's side of things. He offers the mug of water, tries to think of what Chirrut might say, and goes with: "You fight it with your hands and your voice. By touching people and talking to them. I am not good at it, either."

She reaches out for the water, but it takes her a few tries in order to actually get her hands on it, fumbling to try and catch it. "Probably why I can stand living here," she mumbles, rubbing her cheek against the chair. "Although, I bet my poison garden is starting to grow wild and I'm not even around to get the animals that are dying after they eat it," she grumbles.

you can't win when you are the system

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