A/N: 'Tis a little one-and-a-half-sided Jo/Finn drabble. All ownership disclaimed. Written for Booky's B-day collection some months ago, now heavily edited and reposted here. Because editing is easier than writing. Sigh. Enjoy anyway. Hopefully, I'll be back with some irregularly scheduled updates soon.

The Lumber Raft

Finn is the finest fishy around, but every now and then, even he is in over his head. Drowning. Especially here in the Capitol.

I'm there for him whenever he needs a raft to hold him above the greedy, dirty water. Gladly letting him cling to me, because that means I can cling to him too, and not feel like a festering splinter for a change.

His breath is like the sea-breeze I got a sniff of during my Victory Tour, just as fresh and intoxicating when it skims my goose-bumped skin. It makes me feel somehow cleaner, whatever we do after.

I could sure get used to that, but I fight the idea for all I'm worth – 'cause what if even he were to be cut away from me, what then, what the hell?! – and he keeps doing the same, always the fish swimming through the eyes of the net, refusing to get entangled.

We Victors gotta help each other, but can't afford to get too attached in the process.

We've all been caught in a net even the sharpest axe can't cut, even the most skillful-fingered fisherman can't untangle.

Just because we'd gripped onto the bait that was our own life a bit too hard.

And we are doomed to pay for our own brainlessness forever.

This year, the poor little logs from my district have already been hacked to pieces days ago, and now there's another fishy swimming just above the gaping eyes of the net.

A fishy Finn obviously cares about a whole damn lot.

A wisp of a girl, with eyes as green as the sea, dark hair hanging limply across her face like dark sea-weed, or so he says. Finn knows her, both from before and from after, he'd told me as much; and now he's watching her like she weren't a raft, but a buoy, or a lighthouse, or whatever the hell they have floating around back in Four.

Whatever it is that leads stray sailors home.

Maybe he doesn't even realize it himself, but if she were to sink, he might as well sink too. Or keep swimming stomach up, with stinking dead-white scales flashing in the strobe-lights of the Capitol.

I couldn't help him after that, not really.

I can rock his boat alright, but I guess she can float it like those calm sunset-tinged waves he keeps going on about whenever he gets just high enough to be sentimental.

She might be what he really needs to sail on.

I move over to where he's watching her on his monitor, all heartwreck and anxiety, and put my arms around him. Pressing myself against his back, my feet rooted firmly on the ground to anchor him.

He reaches up.

Fingers coarse from having tied a zillion knots caress mine - rough from the axe-handles I've been holding onto for last bits of sanity ever since the Capitol had robbed me of my proud pre-Games calluses.

"Thanks, Jo," he mutters and holds on tight, floating, floating, his eyes drinking her in, her and only her.

She doesn't drown, but just barely.

They pull her out – the last one afloat – and my pretty drowning fishy stops gaping and finally breathes in again.

I don't pull away, not even after that, and neither does he, but that doesn't matter, he's far away from me as it is.

I don't know what the future holds for them, not in this screwed-up net where she'd just joined us.

All I know is that I'll do my damn best whenever they need a raft.

Brainless, Jo.

You live as you died, brainless all the fucking time. But I'd rather be that than hearless.

Or so I keep telling myself.