After the buzzing had subsided, Katniss pulled her torso from her knees and her hands from her face to see if they had all gone. They were; the only thing she heard was Cato's distant voice shouting, "To the lake! Get to the lake!", but her vision was fuzzy. Most of the Careers had the sense to drop everything and bolt. Glimmer wasn't as lucky as the rest of them. Katniss could hear her shrieks from way up in the tree. With her pack on her shoulder, Katniss did her best to climb down, trying her best to see what she was clinging to.

When she hit the ground, she was seeing in twos and threes while fighting through the pain to move and think straight. She found Glimmer's unconscious, almost dead, body, and was nearly disgusted. This once beautiful girl was unrecognizable: her face was now deformed and stretched; her limbs were two or three times their normal size from so many stings. Katniss found the bow in Glimmer's hand locked in a vice grip. She tried to pull the bow away, but it was fruitless. I must have that bow, she thought. She looked around them, and although her vision tried to betray her, she found a stone. She stumbled to get it, took it to Glimmer's hand and brought it down hard to break her fingers. They broke with a crack. She pulled the bow away. Now for the arrows—the quiver itself was pinned behind Glimmer's back. She tried to roll her body on its side, but Glimmer's weak skin kept sliding and pulling apart through her fingers, revealing the slimy green venom beneath. It might have been a hallucination, it might have been real—nevertheless, it was enough to make her wretch. This reaction alone caused her entire body to tremor violently in pain; even her vision worsened, blurring from the pain. She could no longer vomit, as she hadn't eaten anything in the last twenty-four or so hours. "Do this!" she commanded herself, and she rolled Glimmer's slimy body on its side and yanked at the strap of the quiver. She unclipped the strap at the bottom and pulled the quiver off and threw it around her shoulder, clipping it in place. She looked down at Glimmer's body. "Who's better than who, Glimmer?" Katniss said with a hoarse voice.

"Katniss…!" she heard her name called. "Katniss!" Katniss looked around. She saw three of the District Four girls running at her. "Katniss run, leave!"

"Katniss!" she heard Peeta coming closer and closer. She heard the Career boys yelling in the background as Peeta and the District Four girl stop in front of her. "What are you doing?" Peeta yelled. "Get out of here! Go!"

"Come on!" said the District Four girl, dragging Katniss away as Katniss stumbled over her own feet. "Come on, let's go! We need to go!"

"Go, Katniss, go!" Peeta said pushing Katniss away.

The District Four girl pulled her away just as Cato came crashing back into the clearing with a sword drawn. Peeta drew a knife just as Katniss was pulled out of sight. Katniss looked at the tribute pulling her to safety. Even through her distorted vision, she had seen this girl before, not just when she was in the Career pack but one other time. She had come out of nowhere and appeared someplace. And she was also in the tree the previous night; she had helped Rue warn her about the nest, too. Is the entire arena crawling with Clove's spies? Katniss thought, chuckling to herself. Then, a sad idea hit her: Or was Clove spending all of her time with her instead of with Katniss? She hadn't really explained where she'd disappeared to for those three days! "Who are you?" she asked.

She looked at her. "Don't you remember?" the girl asked. "I'm Nym, of District Four. When the Gamemakers created the fire, I was there. I saw you running, you were injured and you didn't see the fireball until it was almost too late. I pushed you out of the way, and I wasn't sure if you would kill me and I ran away." Although Katniss had heard her, Nym's voice seemed to slip in and out of earshot and Time altogether as the pain consumed her and the venom began to unleash its true potency.

"That was you?" Katniss asked. Then again, there was something about her eyes. They were a very light green-brown, almost a gold; and her dark brown hair was streaked with some gold-blonde locks. She did look familiar.

"So where's your District partner?" Katniss asked.

Nym stiffened. "He…he's dead," she droned solemnly. "In a fight, two days ago." She turned away from Katniss, but she could see tears rolling down Nym's cheeks. Real tears or hallucinations? Katniss thought.

Every step she took worsened her pain; just lifting her arm was perplexing. "Ahh!" Katniss cried out, she fell to the ground. It was all too much to bear! "I can't move any further."

Nym tried desperately to pull her to her feet. "Katniss, come on please!" Nym begged we have to move on. "Please! We have to move on! Please, Katniss!"

"I can't move anymore; please, Nym, let me rest," Katniss pleaded, she tried to speak up, but it hurt too much to do so.

"Please, Katniss! If you fall asleep now, you may never wake up!" Nym implored.

"I…can't," Katniss breathed out.

Everything slid and span around her. All of the sudden, Caesar Flickerman appeared in his best white suit, his hair blue and his teeth bleached and his skinned tanned, announcing the way he always did when he spoke. "One of the horrors of the venom of a tracker jacker," he said as Katniss fought through her haze to see him. "...is that it can cause powerful hallucinations," he finished with a fishy smile. She couldn't fight it anymore and she fell unconscious…

"Please, Katniss! If you fall asleep now, you may never wake up!" Clove heard Nym implore. Clove ran to find them.

"Katniss?" Clove called. She heard Nym crying. She ran to go and find them. "Katniss! KATNISS!" She finally found them and fell to her knees, tears rushing down her face. Nym was crying over Katniss' body. Nym had her knees drawn up to her chest with her head down rocking back and forth. Katniss wasn't moving on the ground; her eyes were slit open just partially, but other than that, she didn't twitch, she didn't blink, and she breathed, but barely. The stings on her body swelled literally to the size of oranges, when, according to statistics, they should have swelled to the size of plums. She had pulled the stingers out and done the right thing, yes, but just the fact that she was injured in any way shattered Clove's heart. Clove crawled to Katniss body, almost in hysterics herself. She touched Katniss' face her hand shaking. As she sucked in a sharp breath—BOOM!—a cannon went off. But Katniss was breathing… wasn't she?

"I'm sorry, Clove," Nym choked from behind her knees. "I'm sorry…" Clove stared at Katniss' body. She was a quiet crier; it was mostly silent tears and an occasional sharp but noiseless breath. Nym, however, was more animated when it came to her emotions, feeling that holding them in was lying, almost, and that lying exacerbated problems. "It's all my fault," Nym squeaked out. "I should have pushed her to go further—"

"No," Clove assumed the blame. "No, this is my fault: I could have prevented all of this by being there for her more. This is my fault entirely." Her voice was flat. She kept all of her emotion out of her voice.

"Clove," Nym said. "You know, I love you. I protected you when Cato demanded where you were."

"I know," Clove said.

Nym lifted her head. "But-but this is all my fault, I should have made her stay awake, I—"

"Stop!" Clove reached up to Nym's face. "Look at me, look at my eyes." Clove tipped Nym's chin for her eyes to meet hers. "It's not your fault, it's mine. It always has been!"

Nym stared into Clove's green eyes, and Clove stared back into Nym's gold ones. "I'm sorry," Nym squeaked.

"Don't," Clove said.

"I'm sorry it happened," Nym said still.

"Nym…" Clove said shaking her head. Something shouldn't have happened, but it did. Before Clove could think, and against her will, Clove's lips found Nym's—