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It had taken her a long time to find it, but once she has it in her possession, they'll have to pry it from her cold dead hands to get her to give up the small, but functional axe she'd found on the grounds in a shed. It's probably the remnant of some old gardener, but in her hands, it could be the difference between life and death.

She wishes there were tall trees around, the kind of soaring redwoods that adorned Seven. She'd learned to wield the sharp edge of her blade on thick trees standing hundreds of times the size of her. Meek, weak, and a little mousy, Johanna had learned that everything can fall if you apply enough pressure and cut them down at the right angle. Everyone falls and everyone bleeds.

Johanna hefts up the axe and makes her way outside, careful not to appear too overtly threatening. There are strangers roaming here and she needs to maintain the facade in case she has to play them. The axe has to be hidden where she can find it and she needs to seem like the little girl who frightfully entered the Hunger Games. She makes her way to the English Gardens, settling cross-legged on the ground as she starts to dig a hole in the ground. It's nowhere near six feet deep, but it makes her think of the grave she'd basically dug for herself by joining the rebellion.

Once she gets three feet down, she gets the axe in there, covering it up quickly and dragging over several blue bell flowers to mark the spot in a circle. She wipes the sweat from her face, smearing her cheeks with dirt like a hasty camouflage.

She's going to keep protecting herself, no matter the cost.

Johanna catches movement in the corner of her eye and she softens her posture and her expression, careful not to look too aggressive. She draws her hand over the soil and keeps the shadow in her peripheral vision, always wary. "Did you come to look at the flowers?" she asks quietly, head down, eyes averted.

Meek, weak, and murderous if given the chance.

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"Yeah, I guess so. Besides, we're sort of teamed up with Finnick right now and he's technically a career. Still, no career would have ever stuck with Mags and I have to give him credit for that."

Katniss had liked Mags, the little she'd gotten to know her, and found her to be smart and kind. She hates that Snow made her go back into the Arena...she hates that she had to make the choice to volunteer for that other poor girl from 4.

"She's family to Finnick," Johanna says evenly. She doesn't have anything like that herself and while she tries not to let that affect her, it still gets at her sometimes. After all, it's not like she had mentors who coached her through this. They had looked at her thin form and had expected her to die. Part of her wants her own kind of victory against them, too. "She wouldn't have let Annie die." Not when Mags knows very well what Annie is to him.

"Annie. Annie is the girl he loves, isn't she? The one he heard when we were trapped with the jabberjays?"

Katniss had seen how he reacted, saw how it tore him in two. It had been just as bad as her own reaction to hearing Prim and Gale's family.

"She won the Games the year before mine," Johanna says, raising both brows at once to answer Katniss' question that yes, she is the girl that Finnick Odair loves with all his heart. "And, you know, went completely bonkers," she adds without much sympathy. It takes strength to get through the games and the ones who luck into the victory title usually pay for it after. "Yeah. She's the girl he loves. Fat lot of good that did for Finnick's debt to Snow."

"Debt? What debt does he owe Snow?" Katniss knows that Snow is powerful and can take out someone's family - he did as much to Haymitch after his games. Still, she doesn't know what exactly happened to Finnick, only that he doesn't seem to be as shallow as he is on the surface. There's something deep and warm there beneath the pretty boy flash and Katniss likes that a lot better than the show.

"The debt we all owe him," Johanna replies, giving Katniss a dubious look. "He won the Hunger Games. Victors aren't allowed to live in peace," she says, as bitter as she gets. "I wouldn't let him do what he did to Finnick, so I got mine in a different way." Not a new way, though, given that removing everyone she loved is a tried and true Capitol trick. "You think you're the only one Snow hates? He hates us all."

"He hates us because we flaunt the system," Katniss says, realization dawning on her. "We made good, we rose up and didn't let ourselves be pawns. We aren't little worker bees for the districts so he has to squash us down in any way he can."

Now it seems naive that she'd thought she and Peeta were the first to beat Snow at his own game. They weren't. They've just been lucky so far as consequences go.

"Now you're getting it," Johanna says, not taking her eyes off Katniss as she digs a hand into the soil, levering herself upwards. "We all hate Snow. He hates us. It's a very mutual situation in which we all want to kill each other with as much bloodshed as possible."

"Yeah, I can't help but agree there," Katniss says bitterly. She wants nothing more than to be the one who kills Snow but she thinks there has to be a strategy about it. Cutting off the head doesn't necessarily mean the end of the Capitol.

"We've got to figure out a way out of here so we can do it."

Johanna remains calm, but she tips her head to the side as she regards Katniss as if she's just honestly suggested what she has. "I have no intention of walking back into a world that wants me dead," she says slowly, as if she really has to remind Katniss about this. "There's no one waiting for me back there that I need to salvage."

"I'll just have to ask Finnick, then," Katniss says. Really, should she have expected any different? Johanna is right. She has nothing to go back to, as sad as that is, and she and Finnick have people they care about.

"At least we could get the others here. Maybe. I'm not sure how to get back to 12."

Johanna has suspicions about all of the districts, given their actions during the Games, but she's not stupid enough to say it out loud. All she knows is the pattern of violence from the past and she doesn't think that needs to be spoken about. "You should try and see if some unknowing bystander will help. You could recruit," she suggests, because that will keep her involvement minimal, which is how she likes it.

"Yeah, because some innocent bystander is going to want to help me carry out a vendetta," Katniss scoffs. Her own morals won't allow her to drag someone in without giving them the full details and she doesn't trust anyone as far as she can throw them, Johanna included. Finnick, maybe a little more, but still. Both of them can be deadly.

"It's hopeless, I guess. I just wanted...I want to see him pay. I want him to suffer for what he did to us, you know?"

"You never know, people are idiots, remember?" Johanna says sweetly, given that her opinion of people hasn't exactly gone up in recent years. If anything, she's come to realize that she's just a piece of entertainment for the masses and they'd prefer to see her bloody. "I want him to die and suffer, but I'd rather haul him here and do it in the privacy of my new room instead of go through whatever defenses he's got in that rich palace of his."