Mags insists on walking off the train. Nobody in District 4 dares to disagree, even now. I wait on the platform, offer her my arm when she hobbles out. Her left foot drags across the wood; she tries her best to steer it around obstacles but ends up smacking it into a pole. I tighten my grip on her arm, steer her better. She's getting used to it, I tell myself. She's a little unsteady on her feet, that's all. I smile at Mags, and she tries to return it. "Did they give you a rejuvenation treatment, too?" I ask her, and almost poke her in the ribs the way I used to before I remember that's not the best idea right now. "Because you don't look a day over twenty-five to me."

She looks at me like I've grown fins and an extra set of teeth.

"Sorry," I mutter, scuff my toes against the platform's edge. "I-never mind. Welcome home, Mags."

She smiles, shakes her head slowly, and holds my arm tighter as we near the platform stairs. Pike greets us with a single jerk of his head, the muscle in his jaw twitching, sweat staining the stiff collar of his shirt. His wife squeezes his hand, stares straight ahead as though she's seeing through Mags, as if she's still waiting for the train.

Mags reaches out to them with her free arm, and Pike stares soundlessly at it for long seconds before he shakes her hand. "It's good that you came home," he says. "You always hated the Capitol."

She hadn't been shaking his hand firmly, but her hand goes limp, and she withdraws it, looks her son in the eyes.

"Thank you," Pike's wife says quietly, "for doing all you could with Varin."

It's high tide, but I wish the sea would rise a little higher and swallow them up, sweep them away.

Mags has been a mentor since the 13th Hunger Games. This year's were the 70th. I'm not the only victor she's brought home in that time, but we're still few and far between, and to think about how every other year she'd come back home and see the tributes' families turn away when they passed her makes my skin crawl. I remember how it felt last year. Mags has felt that fifty times.

At least her son is trying to look at her.

"Do you have any idea how hard it is to reach you? I've been calling for the past three days. Where have you been, on a boat?"

"More or less," I say, shift the phone to my other ear and grin, even if it's wasted because Drusus can't see. "You should see my hair."

"No, I shouldn't, because I'm certain if I did I'd be out of the job." He waits a moment, and then asks, "Please tell me you haven't gone ahead and cut it."

"I haven't." I cover my mouth to muffle my snorts. It doesn't work very well.

He sighs. "Let it grow out so I have something to work with when you come back in two months. Remember, there's that gala, Gaius Frey is holding it this year, and then I have you for a spread in The Victarion-"

I twist the phone's coil around my finger, pick at the knot I've formed in it. "The Victory Tour's in four months, not two."

"Yes, but as I said. Gaius's sponsorship gala. And your spread in The Victarion. The issue's supposed to go out before the tour, we'll need you and possibly Annie, depending on whether that article gets cleared after all."

What article? I almost ask, and then decide it isn't important because there won't be any article, because like hell I'm taking Annie to the Capitol to get dolled up until she disappears, shrinks and shrivels under the studio lights and cameras. "I'm not mentoring this year," I say, flatly enough that I don't open the issue up for debate. "And The Victarion can pull one of the photos of me already floating around, if they have to."

"You're not mentoring this year?"

"No. Brine agreed to." Brine's not flashy but he's solid, paunchy around the middle and thinning at the top, with the broadest shoulders and firmest grip in District 4. He'll do fine with whoever he's assigned. "You should invite him to the gala."

"Whether I invite him or not, I'm not the one that invited you. I'm just here to make sure when you show up, you're at your best. Don't negotiate your schedule with me, Finnick. I'm not the one who makes it."

"I know," I say, and have to ease up on the phone cord, because it's cutting off the circulation to my finger. "So is my presence required or requested?"

"At the gala? Requested. In The Victarion, required."

"Then I'll skip the gala and give them a phone interview for The Victarion." I sit down, stretch my feet out, crack my toes. My mother and aunts would yell at me to get my feet off the table if they were here, but they aren't, so I revel in it for a while, lean back in my chair and close my eyes, the knots in my shoulders uncoiling for the first time in a week.

"Or The Victarion could come out to you, I suppose. Especially if they do need Annie for the shoot. If you're not mentoring I'm sure she isn't but, like it or not, she won. She's got obligations before and after the Tour."

My shoulders reknot, sharp and shudden, twist in ways they haven't before and make my spine stiffen. The legs of my chair slam back onto the floor, and I jerk forward, snatch at the table's edge and try to find my balance again. "Not after," I say, speak slowly enough to convince myself, to ease whatever's clawing at my chest. "There are enough female victors from Four, she won't have to mentor."

"But she's supposed to attend the Games themselves, of course, and the President's made it clear that he wants her in the Capitol if her reputation can be salvaged."

"Drusus, she still won't talk to anyone but me or her parents. She covers her ears and goes away and I still don't always know what spooks her. She laughs at things I can't hear, looks at things I can't see. She won't sleep unless one of us is sitting by her bed, and even then she wakes up sobbing-"

Echoes of my voice ring from the corners of the room. Damn. I rest my forehead in my free hand, drag it down my face, let my shoulders slump and hope I haven't woken up Crescent or troubled any of my cousins. "Forget her reputation. I'm worried about her."

Drusus doesn't say anything for a long while, but I still hear him breathing. "You know," he finally says, "you could bring her here. There might be something in the Capitol that can-"

I cut him off. "There isn't."

He sighs. "Fine. There isn't. But you can't stop the Tour. And she has to be ready for it."

"I'll do what I can, Dru." I know better than to promise anything more than that.

"I know. And so will I." And just when I think this has resolved, he goes on, "But you're not off the hook. I can pass your cancellation on to Gaius's people, but either you're coming here or The Victarion's coming to you. And I don't know what the President is going to say if you don't come to the Capitol at all between now and the Tour."

I drum my fingers against the table: no rhythm, no pattern, just sound working its way out of me. "He can say I'm trying to cut down on unnecessary transportation costs in my District. Most victors don't come to the Capitol at all between the Games and the Tour."

"Most victors aren't Finnick Odair."

Good for them, I almost say, but can't decide how it should sound. "Let them pine after me for a while. It never killed anyone."

"Fair enough," he says. "So I should tell The Victarion to come to you?"

I sigh. "If you must. And that's all I'm doing before the Tour."

"If you must," he repeats. "I have to say, I'll miss you."

"Don't worry, Dru. You'll get sick of me before long on that train."

A couple of weeks ago, my aunts figured out that if they left all the mending with Annie in the morning, they'd have time for everything else they had to do in a day. Aunt Ruth can't get enough of it, praises Annie's tiny and sturdy stitches, waves them in my cousins' faces. Sometimes, if they aren't at school and Annie is having a calmer day, they'll sit and sew together, Annie and Helen and Lucy and Aidan, and they'll ask Annie to look them over and help tie the tiny knots.

Today, they're at school, and some of the mending is mine; I caught my pantsleg on an open grate in the town square and ripped it clean across the seam, and then it frayed on both sides when I tried to take them off. "X marks the spot," Annie said when she first saw it. By now, it looks more like an L.

"This is why I don't usually bother with them," I say.

"Pants?"

"Pants." I stretch my arms overhead, hiss as my back pops and releases. At the rate it's been acting up lately, I'm going to walk hunched over like Uncle Jonas before I'm half his age. "They're more trouble than they're worth, most of the time."

She laughs, and lifts them up to get a closer look at the stitches, or maybe to cover her face. "They hide things."

I laugh, too. "What, is there something I need to hide?"

"No," she says. "That's why they're more trouble than they're worth."

I throw one of Uncle Niall's shirts at her, and she bats it out of the way, still smiling. I like it when I know what she's smiling at. She tucks a lock of hair behind her ears, picks up her needle and traces the stitches she's already made, chews her tongue. I lean in, bat at one of the knots in the thread. "Who taught you how to do this?" I ask.

"Sew?"

"Yes."

"Uncle John and Aunt Aisling," she says. "He knows better which stitches go where, but she knew how to do them."

I nod and watch her work for a while, gathering the fabric under her fingers and almost flicking the needle through, one small stitch at a time. The thread twists back, knots in on itself, and she smooths the stitches down, braces the new seam on her finger and squints to see that nothing shows through.

"I'm better with rope than thread," I say, thumb at the hem of the pants she's mending. "I always pulled too hard on it, and it snapped." Or I'd jab the needle into my thumb, but she doesn't need to know everything.

She laughs, pauses to bite her lip and tie a knot. "It's not pulling, it's stretching," she says. "Like knives aren't throwing, they're reaching."

I groan. "Now that's a stretch."

She shakes her head and draws the thread tight, looks me in the eyes and shows me. "A stretch. You wouldn't pull your spine if you just wanted to make it a little longer."

"I'm tall enough already," I say, but follow the motion of her hands. "Show me?"

She offers me the needle, and the pants, then comes around behind me to take my hand. "Hold the fabric together, line the needle up against it pointing the way you want it to go." I let the needle slip into the groove made by the seam, let her hands reposition mine. "Then move the fabric, not the needle. Hold the needle steady. It's more like..." She trails off. Her hands shiver over mine, like something's crawled up her fingers.

"Annie?"

"-like the tide," she says. "Sorry. The tide pulls you out. The fabric pulls the needle."

"The fabric pulls the needle," I repeat, and lift the fabric up and then down just slightly, how she's showing me. The stitch is much smaller than the ones I usually make.

"Now stretch it through," she says. "Not the whole way, just until the needle's through. Good. And bring it back, loop it through the thread, and then out. One half-hitch."

I have to coax the thread into the shape I want, not force it there, I'm finding. Annie looks over my handiwork and makes a sound somewhere between a cluck and a hum. I can't tell whether or not it's approval, but it's something, and whatever it is I'll take it. I should get her to teach me to do other things, I think. Find shells, cook salmon, make traps out of fishing twine, see what she sees. It gives her something to focus on, calls her back better than anything else I've tried. This is the most she's said to me in a row in weeks, and it's nice not to have to pry answers out of her.

I make a second stitch like the first, repeat her instructions in my head, but her hands don't guide mine, only rest on the backs of my knuckles like ghosts. "Doesn't look too bad," I say, hold the stitches up to the light. "Not as good as yours, though. You should make this your talent."

"Talent?"

Did I ever explain talents to her? I don't think so. I've had enough on my plate. "It's something victors are supposed to have," I explain. "You don't have to work or go to school, so you figure out something else to do with your time. That's your talent. Some people cook, some people pick up an instrument-I know Chaff carves and Beetee designs...something, I've never asked for the specifics." I doubt I'd understand them if I did. "Sewing could be yours."

She takes the pants and the needle back, nodding. "What's yours?"

"Ropework, officially," I say. "Weaving baskets and mats, rigging things up, braiding jewelry sometimes." They've never asked me much about it on-camera, though, not for years.

"Then I could sew. They'll ask?"

"They'll ask. Enough of them know what sewing is that they might know what questions to ask you." I smile, pat her arm.

She nods again, sits back down in her chair and goes back to mending. The L's almost closed on one side, turning into an I. "I'm not sewing anything interesting."

"My pants aren't interesting?"

"They're more trouble than they're worth," she laughs. "You said so."

"I did." I lace my fingers behind my head, rest against the wall, look up at the ceiling. "A lot of things are."

She reaches the end of the thread and ties it off, the strand of hair she tucked away earlier slipping in front of her ear, and I can't do it. She's focused, she's smiling, she's laughed today, laughed at all my stupid jokes about my pants. I brought up her talent, that's enough for one day, I can work my way up to the Victory Tour tomorrow. I can let her have this, at least, even if it's only a quiet afternoon mending clothes.

"Finnick?"

I look down, and she's turned away from threading her needle, hands limp in her lap.

"Finnick, where'd you go?"

"I'm here," I say.

She stammers a little. "I know. But you weren't."

"I was thinking, that's all." I try to smile. "I guess I drifted."

"You're still there," she says, and bows her head, threads the needle and knots the end of the thread.

Now I've upset her. Damn. "Annie, it's all right, it really is-"

"You come here and you hide. What's the point?"

"I'm not-" I sigh, run my hands through my hair, resist the urge to rip it out by the roots. (Drusus would give me the tongue-lashing of my life. I'd almost look forward to it.) "I'm trying not to, Annie. I'm trying to help."

She's not even listening any more, lost in the rhythm of her stitches.

"Annie, please. Look at me."

Her hands still.

I'm going to regret this. "Do you want to know what I was thinking about?" I ask, and hope she says no.

She doesn't say yes either, but she looks up, finds my eyes.

I can't hide from hers. Here or not, she pins me where I am, fixes me in place and locks up everything: my feet, my chest, my throat. "The Victory Tour's almost here," I say, and instantly wish I could snatch those words out of the air.

"Oh," she says, and looks back down at her sewing.

"You know what that is," I say. She's seen it televised her whole life. So have I.

She sews. Her stitches might be getting even tinier.

I go on, almost taste my foot in my mouth as I do. "You'll get to see some of the other Districts. Not much of them, we only have about a night in each, but some. And some of them are beautiful-we're going to Twelve first, and the town's not much to look at but the woods beyond are so thick and dark..."

I trail off.

I should be thankful that she knots off the thread and holds the needle out of the way before she curls up, knees to her chest, and buries her face in her arms.

My stomach sinks to my knees but I cross to her side anyway, hold her shoulders, bring my face level with where hers would be if she was looking at me. "Annie?"

She shakes her head, covers her ears. The needle dangles by its thread, swings and bats against her leg.

"Annie," I say, scoop up the needle before it sticks in her skin. "Annie, I need you here for this."

"You said it was over," she whispers.

I didn't think it was possible for my stomach to plummet any lower, but it does. "The Arena is," I say. "But-"

"-the Games aren't." She tangles her hands in her hair, screws her eyes shut. I weave my fingers between hers, try to loosen them, but she yanks her head away, drags her hair in front of her face and hides behind it.

"The Tour won't last forever," I say.

"That's what you said about the Games."

She was better, damn it, better just a moment ago. She was here, she was responsive, she was listening to me and joking with me and teaching me how to sew a seam, and I've dropped her into the Games again. Great. I slouch away from her, holding my head in my hands because I can't keep it level anymore. "Annie. Please." What am I asking her? Please what? Please listen to me? Please follow me? Please believe me once more, just once, once until I ask you to do it again?

"Please," she echoes. She shakes her head, and it becomes a shiver that wracks her, all the way down the curve of her spine. "I don't have a choice."


I could sail out alone. If I came back before dawn, maybe no one would even notice. But it's the kind of night where the clouds overhead make me think there won't be dawn at all, and what few stars make it through cast haze instead of light. So I sit on the wharf, with the all the houses behind me, and the ocean swallowing up whatever glow even reaches the shore. I dangle my toes in the water; the cold shoots straight through my skin and chills me to the bone, but I grit my teeth and ease more of my feet in, inch by fraction of an inch, let the shock numb everything else. My teeth chatter hard enough that I'm afraid I'll chip them, but I don't.

Even the sea's trying to push me out today.

The shivers build, wrack my body enough that I need to cling to the edge of the wharf so I won't kick too hard and launch myself into the water. I keep my feet in, though, dig my nails into the wood until splinters threaten under them, push down and down again and wait for that to push everything else down, freeze the chorus of I screwed up, I screwed up in my head.

I know Annie's walking down the gangway towards me. I don't let go of the edge, but she lies down beside me, slips her head under my arm to rest against my thigh. "I shouldn't have said that," she murmurs.

The waves slap against my ankle, higher than I've reached before, and my foot jerks high enough out of the water that I almost crash my knee into Annie's skull. Shivering, I scoot away from the edge, get my toes clear of the ocean. "I shouldn't have sprung that on you," I say.

She shakes her head, almost as quickly as I shivered. "You didn't. I knew I have to go. I just didn't want to."

"I know." Her hair slips in front of her face and I draw it back, gather it behind her ear. "I saw how happy you were earlier, and-" I shake my head. "I didn't mean to take that away so soon."

When she turns her face away again, that same strand I tucked back slips forward, over her cheek. "You never mean it."

I sigh, tug her hair harder than I meant to and decide to let go of it if I'm going to be this careless around her. "I guess my track record's pretty bad, isn't it."

"Yes." She nods, and her chin digs into my thigh. "I just wish I knew what you did mean."

"By what?"

"By what you do. Sometimes you're not the one who does it."

I blink, try to lean back to get more than a glimpse of her face under those tangles, but I can't read her at all in this light. "I'm not the one who does it?" I repeat.

"You do things you don't want to do. You do things you aren't."

It's hard to deny that first charge, at least, even if I wanted to. Do I want to? I look out over the sea, search for some kind of shine off the waves to let me know where they are, what they look like, but the water's darker than I've seen it in months, black and deep. "Sometimes you have to do that, Annie."

"I know." She buries her face against my thigh. "But you always do. I can see it."

This isn't the time for this conversation. I prop my hand under her chin, tilt it up. "I know you've heard this before, Annie, and I know it's a lousy answer, but there are more important things than whether or not you want to, sometimes."

Her eyes had been soft, apologetic. Now they harden. "I know," she says. "That doesn't make it less sad."

"No," I agree. "Guess it doesn't."

"So I'm sorry," she says. "I don't want to go. I want-" Her throat shakes when she breathes. "-I want things that don't matter. But you do. And I know I'm being difficult. I know I am. Difficult. And I'm sorry."

"You're not being difficult," I say, "you're having difficulties." There is a difference, but not much of one in the way I say it.

She turns away, her cheek nestling into my palm, and I wish I could fling myself into Mags's arms and say tell me what to do, tell me what to say, I'm only two years older than she is, why is it my responsibility. But I can't drag Mags on the Victory Tour, and I can't drag her out on a dock in the middle of the night, and Annie needs me. I swallow, run over what I know of her itinerary in my head. If she has to do this (and she does), I can warn her about what's coming. At least she'll know.

"It's only a few weeks," I say, "and the last stop is home. I can talk to the mayor about that one, if you want. We can have the party on a boat." She brightens, but closes her eyes to keep it in. "A big one," I continue, "with little boats docked on the side. We could steal one once the party starts to die down."

"Just us?"

"Just us," I say, stroke her temple. I still don't know what to think about how she looks at me, how her face opens and searches and how her eyes draw me in. I think of diving, of how close the ocean presses around me the deeper I go, how long I could stay here without having to breathe. I wish I didn't have to, wish I'd never have to come up for air again, wish I couldn't find a bottom to the depths of her eyes.

Somewhere in the distance, a boat's horn sounds softly.

"But it won't be just us for the rest of the Tour. You know that, right?" I say, and pray she does.

"I know," she whispers. "I know you won't be there at all."

My hand falls into my lap, and I stare at the sea again, wait for the night to break.