Before the snake attack, Finnick makes pretty good progress. Ruby trailing behind him, he determinedly resumes his diagonal path against the current, stopping occasionally to allow himself and Ruby to recover their strength before soldiering on. At some point, he happens across a couple of straight, sturdy branches to use as walking sticks. They provide a bit of stability on the uneven terrain. The flood has carried them to an area of the arena neither of them recognize, but the environment all looks the same to Finnick. More moss-draped trees poking out of tepid flood water, more branches and vines bobbing on the current, more obnoxious insects buzzing and raucous birds squawking. The sky, a monotonous shade of thick, woolly gray, blocks out a clear view of the sun, but Finnick would judge noon has come and gone.
"Maybe we're just supposed to wait for the water to go down," Ruby suggests after a time.
The Gamemakers flooded the rainforest for a reason. If night comes and goes without a single tribute's portrait projected across the sky, Finnick has no doubt they will redouble their efforts. He keeps glancing up at the trees, scanning for signs of the boy who ambushed him before the flood. "Why haven't we come across any tributes yet?" Finnick ponders, batting aside a tangle of floating vegetation. "Where are—"
That's when the snake bites him.
Moving at a speed no human could replicate, the reptile lunges out of the weeds and buries its teeth in Finnick's arm. Finnick cries out, reflexively jerking his arm back, but the snake holds fast. With practiced efficiency, the serpent coils itself around Finnick's arms, pinning them to his sides, and squeezes.
Finnick thrashes and falls sideways, water rushing into his nose and mouth, choking him. He tries to wriggle his arms free, tries kicking at the unyielding force looped around him. More vexing than being underwater is the snake's inexorable, crushing embrace, its muscles flexing against Finnick's, tough and immobile as steel. The little oxygen left in his lungs is rapidly being eaten up by panic, a near hysteria galvanized by sudden respiratory distress. The snake adjusts its grip, and Finnick somehow breaks the surface and he gasps, inhaling water and air indiscriminately. When he coughs, the snake only squeezes tighter. Finnick's sure he feels some of his ribs crack. Black dots dance in his vision. His consciousness is an unmoored dinghy bobbing on the open sea, drifting further and further away from shore.
This is it. The realization hits him, a devastating blow to his failing heart, his splintered ribcage and his deflated lungs. This is how he, a Career from District 4, is going to die.
Then there's a rushing sensation, a disorienting perception of soaring upward, which is strange because Finnick had always thought drowning involved movement in the downward direction, sinking deeper into oblivion rather than ascending to it. Cool, light air rushes kisses his cheeks, blinding sunlight sears his eyeballs. Someone is shouting at him, hauling his consciousness back to the pier. That's when Finnick remembers, oh, yes, he really would like to live, and drags in a long, ragged breath. Then everything surges back into acute focus, all the sounds too keen, all the sights too vivid, all the world too big and bright and too much. He's a newborn babe, dumb and wet and squirming, barely able to maintain the rudimentary functions necessary for preserving life.
Finnick coughs and water trickles from his lips and nose, burning and emetic. Something helps him onto his side and steadies him as he spits and expels all of the water from his respiratory tract. Finally, feeling somewhat in control of his faculties, he wipes his nose and looks around.
Ruby is cradling him her arms like a new bride, his body submerged but his head propped above water. She watches him with wide eyes.
"Are you—"
Finnick nods. "Yes," he tries to say, and coughs compulsively instead.
Ruby lets out a ragged breath. "The snake, it-it came out of nowhere," she says. "I tried to stab it, but you kept thrashing all over the place; I was afraid I'd hit you instead...When you finally stopped moving, I thought it...I thought you were..."
"Who, me?" Finnick extricates himself gently from Ruby's grasp, planting his feet as firmly as he can in the shifting mud and shifting himself into an upright position. For once, he's glad for the flood and the cushion it provides. Without it, he probably would have fallen flat on his rear. Even so, his limbs feel like jelly, and every time he takes a breath, crushed glass is ground further into his ribs.
The snake's mutilated carcass floats on the surface of the water belly up, allowing Finnick an unhindered look at it for the first time. The thing is huge, at least twice as long as Finnick is tall, its girth matching one of Finnick's thighs. A series of frantic gashes and stab wounds smatter its supple body, leaking dark red blood into the water.
Finnick snorts with a derision he does not feel in the slightest. "You actually thought I was losing to a snake? I was just putting on a good show. This is a pageant, after all."
He makes a lame attempt at flexing but has to forgo the effort when none of his muscles decide to cooperate. Ruby's expression morphs from concern to rage so fast Finnick might've thought she was faking it.
"I should've just let you drown," she mutters, flinging blood from her blade with more force than strictly necessary.
"After I saved you from that river mutt the other day? I don't think so." Finnick nudges her good-naturedly with shoulder while using his other arm to check the status of his own remaining weaponry. "Face it, honey: You'd miss me too much."
Then—Finnick will never forget this as long as he lives—Ruby turns, grasps his face with her hands, and kisses him squarely on the lips.
Finnick is so startled all he can do is stand there, frozen, until Ruby pulls away, a triumphant smirk on her lips. "Don't call me honey," she murmurs, still gripping his chin with one hand. "You're too young to be giving girls pet names."
But not too young to be kissed on the mouth? "Whatever you say, Little Miss Princess," he replies cheerfully. Internally, his mind is racing, his entire body thrumming with newfound energy. Why did Ruby kiss him? Did she intend to discombobulate him, throw him off guard so he won't see her next attack coming? Is she trying to seduce him, manipulate him into carrying out her insidious schemes? If so, Finnick has to admit it sort of worked: The taste of her lips, the feel of them pressed against his, is seared indelibly in the forefront of his mind.
"Forget Alabaster," Ruby says. Her eyes glitter with a vivacity Finnick can't help but find captivating. "Let's do this thing together. Me and you, baby. Just like it was supposed to be all along."
"What?" Finnick sputters. "He's your district partner!"
"He's an idiot," Ruby responds blithely. "And he has to go at some point. You heard him; he won't stop trying to butter me up. It's nauseating, really."
"How do I know you're not going to turn on me as quickly as you did him?" Finnick demands. His bicep is starting to hurt in earnest where the snake bit him, throbbing in time with his pulse. He probes it gently, wondering if the snake was venomous.
Ruby raises an eyebrow. "How do you know Bellona won't get to you first?" Ruby shudders, searching the vicinity as though merely speaking Bellona's name would summon her wrath upon them. "That girl is deranged. You sure you want to ally with her and her pet imbecile instead?"
Bellona might be deranged, but at least Finnick understands her flavor of delusion. She's just another product of her district, of their brainwashing and nationalistic ideals. Ruby is less straightforward, which makes her unpredictable, which makes her dangerous. Then again, Finnick doesn't like the idea of traipsing through the flooded rainforest with an injured arm and nothing more than a set of knives and his own wits to protect him.
Ruby's offer is tempting. She's a good fighter and popular in the Capitol, which means a better chances of survival if he teams up with her. Unless, of course, she stabs him in the back the second he turns it to her.
Allies don't mean trust, Mags told him time and time again. They mean living to see another day.
"Well, if we're going to be allies, I'd say we should probably get going," Finnick says. "Unless you want a go at the next snake that comes around." He gestures her forward and can't help but voice the next joke that pops into his head. "Ladies first."
By the time they manage to escape the flood, night is falling over the arena. The anthem begins playing as they crawl out of the water, too exhausted to climb to their feet, and collapse in a heap on the bank.
After everything, only one face appears in the sky: The girl from 5, for which none of the Careers can take credit.
"Ridiculous," Ruby mutters. "When did those rats learn how to swim?"
Finnick doubts the flood had been intended to kill as much as it had been utilized as a vehicle, picking its passengers up and depositing them at the Gamemakers' desired destination.
"I wonder if anyone's made it back to the Cornucopia," he ponders aloud.
"I doubt it," comes Ruby's sleepy reply. "Two are probably out looking for each other and Alabaster is probably out looking for me, the poor fool."
"That bite from those giant cat mutts can't be feeling too great right now," Finnick remarks.
"Yours can't be very fun either," Ruby replies. She leans closer and peel Finnick's sleeve away from the puncture wounds. "Does it hurt very badly?"
"Not bad," Finnick lies through his teeth. "I guess I'm just lucky the snake wasn't venomous."
"Still, it could get infected very easily," Ruby says. "And this isn't the cleanest water in the world."
Speaking of water, Finnick is starting to get thirsty. Between the mutts and the flood, Finnick lost everything not strapped securely to his person. His canteen, his little hatchet, and his spear are all gone. He still has a couple of water purifying pills in his backpack, kept dry by the little plastic bag they're stored in, and his set of knives.
"I'll be all right," he says. "It'll take more than a little infection to kill me."
"Clearly," Ruby snorts. "If the cats, the snakes, and the flood weren't enough to take you out, I don't know what will."
Finnick knows, even if he won't voice it aloud. If he makes it to the final eight, there's a good chance he'll meet his end not at the hands of something faceless and dispassionate like exposure or illness, but at the hands of one of his fellow tributes. He can only hope he'll be strong enough to fend them off.
He's just started wondering if he can muster the strength to find a better hiding place when he hears it: The telltale beep, beep, beep of a parachute falling from above.
Ruby snatches the thing from the air with a triumphant cry and rips off the lid. "The first sponsored gift of the Games!"
"That we know of," Finnick reminds her. Still, he can't help but give a sigh of relief at what she digs out: A pot of ointment for his wound. He reaches for it, but Ruby pulls it out of his reach.
"Let me," she says.
So he does. Her small, delicate hands dab the salve into his wounds, the gentlest touch Finnick has felt in days. Keenly aware that the cameras are likely zoomed in on his face, he tries to keep a stoic, expression while Ruby tends to him. This lasts about a minute before he gives up and just tries not to groan too loudly every instance her fingers brush the injury.
After what seems like an eternity, Ruby sits back on her heels and snaps the lid back on the pot. "I'm no medic, but it's better than nothing."
"I appreciate it." Finnick cautiously rolls his shoulder and finds the pain already waning, numbed by the wonderful Capitol medicine. "Now that that's done, I think we need to find a safer place to stay for the night."
They're too exhausted to make it far. Eventually, Finnick settles for a spot nestled amidst a clump of fluffy rushes, an acceptable distance from the floodwater and out of sight to the average passerby.
Ruby lies down first, placing upon Finnick the onus of figuring out an appropriate proximity for him to settle next to her. Too close and he's perverse, too far and he's rude.
"Just lie down," Ruby sighs as she rolls onto her side. "I promise I don't bite in my sleep."
Finnick is too tired to much care about manners at this point. He flops down perhaps a meter away from Ruby and watches her back move as she breathes until he drifts into a deep and dreamless slumber.
Finnick wakes the next morning to a cramping, hollow stomach and a mouth as dry as paper. He props himself up on his elbow, trying to clear the cobwebs from his consciousness, when his gaze lands on the body sleeping next to him.
If Ruby is beautiful awake, then she is absolutely angelic in slumber, features relaxed, arm tucked under her head, curtain-like lashes resting against her cheekbones. It's a testament to his training that Finnick's mind immediately goes to cold-blooded murder.
It would be so easy, so fast she wouldn't know what hit her. Finnick's anatomy and physiology classes were useful only because they told him exactly where to aim, where to focus his homicidal intent. A stab to the carotid, a slice through the trachea. It would be over in seconds. Then the cannon would boom and a hovercraft would arrive and pluck one more contestant from the competition.
As twisted and absent as the Capitol's sense of morality is, he doubts even they would support a tribute who killed his ally—someone who saved him from certain death—in her sleep. He concentrates all his attention on this thought, gratified when it prevails through a harrowing stretch of mental negotiation, and more than relieved when he elects not to go through with his original plan.
Sometimes there are more important things than killing tributes. Things like food and water, which he desperately needs. He manages to get to his feet, steady himself against a tree trunk as a bout of dizziness threatens to knock him over, and head back the way he'd come.
The water subsided at least fifty paces while they'd been sleeping, leaving a boggy, dirty mess in its wake. If the Gamemakers leave the terrain alone, the flood should drain back into the river and they'll have a perfectly fishable body of water again. The splash of something cold and wet down the back of his neck has Finnick lunging forward, a cry of surprise strangled in his throat. But it's only water—the dregs of yesterday's rainstorm.
It's gotta be clean, right? Eager to find out, Finnick meticulously sluices water from cupped leaves into the canteen from his backpack. While his backpack isn't waterproof, the bottle of water purifying tablets are, and he plops one into his canteen just to be safe. His other supplies, while soggy, are still intact. The collapsible spear is crooked thanks to the snake, but Finnick torques it back into shape with a little twisting and tugging, the metal pliable and easily manipulated. Unfortunately, his flashlight isn't so easily fixed; no amount of shaking and fiddling with the switch will force the lens to glow. Mourning the loss of his only artificial source of light, he drains the canteen of water once, twice, three times before he feels close to normal again. Then he heads back to the thatch of rushes to fetch Ruby.
"Up and at 'em, princess," he calls. "We're burning daylight!"
Ruby groans and drapes an arm theatrically over her eyes. "I was not made for this early rising business." But she stretches, allowing Finnick a long look at a strip of her midriff as her shirt rides up, and clambers to her feet. "I'm assuming you found me some breakfast?"
Finnick rolls his eyes. "I'm starting to think the only reason you wanted me as your ally is so you could have a little minion at your beck and call."
Ruby gasps and claps an incredulous hand to her chest. "I resent that remark. I'll have you know, I am a perfect ally to have in any situation."
"Then prove it." Finnick gestures at the trees. "Start looking for fruit or nuts."
By the time midmorning comes and goes, they've gathered enough to eat to make a decent breakfast. Slaking their thirst on rainwater and sating their appetites on wild fruits and nuts, Finnick feels primitive and wild, all of his thoughts and desires curiously base. He wants to sweep Ruby off her feet and hide her in a tree. He wants to disappear in the canopy with her, surviving on whatever they can harvest, until the other tributes kill each other off and the Capitol loses interest and the Gamemakers abandon the arena. Then they can live off the land, build themselves a shelter, fish from the river—never mind the fact that this arena will be converted to a tourist attraction once the Games have concluded. They could avoid the tourists, he finds himself thinking. They could escape beyond the arena, go somewhere no one in all of Panem could find them.
Now he's just being silly. He can hear Mags in his head, chuckling at his fanciful notions. He applies more salve to his wounds to mitigate these fantasies, watching Ruby fuss and clean herself up out of the corner of his eye.
"What now?" she says, hands on her hips.
Well, survival. First, he breaks down his collapsible spear and sticks back in his backpack. It's flimsier than the one he lost and won't last long in a hard fight; he needs something he can rely on. Finnick is using one of his precious knives to fashion his walking stick into a spear. He plants the butt of it in the soggy dirt and uses it to haul himself to his feet.
"What else? We go hunting." Finnick twirls his new spear experimentally.
"I want one," Ruby whines.
"Then make your own," Finnick says. "It's good for you. Builds character. You've got your own knife and stick already."
"I want to get back to the Cornucopia to restock," Ruby says. "Who knows how many of our supplies have been pilfered by Callows by now?"
Probably a good portion of them, but voicing the likelihood aloud would do nothing but dampen their spirits. "We'll head back that way, since it's also the highest spot in the arena," Finnick says. "If we happen upon anything along the way..."
Ruby's smile is sharp. "I'll let you do the honors."