Life for victors is still hard.
Nobody wins the game; there are only survivors.
Johanna knows that well since her win in the 68th game and her family suffering the consequence of her not bending the knee to the Capitol.
She grew cold, distant, and s...
Paige stood in her training outfit, sleeveless, in the axe station.
Shtunk, Shtunk, Shtunk.
She threw them in quick succession at the dummies that popped up.
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These were hand axes, the one Johanna was training with was similar, the handle just the length of a normal axe and these ones weren't.
She pulled them out, whipping in half a circle and throwing it at the dummy again.
Shtunk.
She pulled that one back out.
She put one down on the weapon rack and kept two of them in hands, walking to a training chamber.
She clicked away on the holographic screen and dialed the difficulty up before stepping in.
She looked at the old hair tie around her wrist, not having taken it down since Johanna had given it to her back then, seemed to sometime be her only tie to reality.
"Simulation starts in ten seconds.
Oddly enough, the names on her arms didn't seem to be a painful reminder now that she knew they'd be fighting against the Capitol, they now became her reasons to fight.
There was a buzz and an orange figure came running at her.
She ducked the sword swing, sidestepping and swinging both axes up, hitting it in the guts and yanking, the orange person falling away into little cubes that vanished.
She ran ahead, intersecting another, switching an axe in a revers grip, yanking upwards and downwards with the correctly held one, trapping a blade between them like pincers, headbutting the fake human, fixing her hold as it stumbled back and with a half spin, slammed the axe in the side of its throat.
"Aah!" She rolled to the side to avoid an arrow, throwing the axe into the back of the fake and kicking backwards and hitting the stomach of another rushing her, rolling even more to avoid a trident strike.
She got to her knees and swung at the arm, cutting it off before using the back spike of the axe in the head and with another spin, yanked it out and brought it down on the skull of the one she kicked.
She ran to grab the second one and leapt at another enemy.
Paige didn't know for how long she did this, only stopping when sweat threw the axe out of her hand and causing the hologram to freeze moments before the spear would have impaled her.
She sighed, looking around and at her hands, they were shaking and she felt much more sweaty then she actually should be.
She really wanted to grab a bottle and drink to make these feelings go away, withdrawal sure to fully set in soon... Or might have already set in.
"Hell yeah Paper!"
Paige jerked out of her thoughts as the wolf whistle that followed, seeing Johanna had been watching her with a few other tributes, reconsigning one on of 6, 9 and maybe 11 if she remembers correctly, she didn't watch the run down of tributes this year, finding it useless.
She picked up her axes and went outside, racking them, grabbing her forehead.
"That was quite cool, you haven't lost your touch with fighting." Johanna followed with a smile before tilting her head. "Are you alright Paper?"
"I'm fine." She tried leaning on a wall but it was not there, stumbling and falling against it.
"Paper!" Johanna said worried, moments later Paige threw up on the ground.
---------------------------------------------
"I can't say I didn't expect this but it is horrible." Paige muttered, laying down on the ground of the training center, in a quite corner, arm covering her eyes.
Johanna had followed her, leaving her training behind, currently having Paige's head on her lap and playing with her hair.
"Yeah, alcohol is one heck of a beast." She gently said. "But you'll be fine, at least you are not the Morphlings." Johanna looked at the duo who looked bad off too, not having access to their heavily addicting drugs, Paige could have still kept up drinking until she was put in the arena but Johanna suspected that she wanted to somewhat get through the worst symptoms now.
"Are you sure the room is not spinning."
"I am sure." She answered, leaning back against the wall with a sigh through her nose, this was also kind of her fault for enabling her, she could have tried a bit harder in not having Paige destroy herself but all she did was limit the sort of alcohol, she even drank with her sometimes.
"You think dad suffered like this?"
"I don't remember him from when he still drank like he was Heymitch's twin but seeing you do that, I'd say it must have been but he found a reason to stop and that reason kept you alive and brought you home from the 71st."
"But now only one will go home." If Heymitch fails to find a way to free Katniss and the victor before it it too late. She took her arm away from in front of her eyes. "If push comes to shove, I want you to go home."
"Without you? You are mad."
Paige reached up, grabbing Johanna's face.
"I can't bare the idea of you dying, I'll fight to see you leave this arena alive."
"I will not let you." She grabbed Paige's hand on her face and squeezed them slightly.
