Finnick is not fortunate to remain entirely unconscious for the several hours it takes the venom to metabolize and be excreted from his system. He fades in and out of awareness, riding waves of searing misery to conscious shores, then back out into the deep waters of oblivion. At times he floats somewhere in between, in the nebulous waters between lucidity and senselessness, too somnolent to navigate his consciousness in either direction, but awake enough to know he's still in pain.

A presence he's cognizant enough to understand as Caspia comes and goes, an aquatic bird descending onto the surface of a lake, her hazy silhouette barely more than a dark shape to Finnick, who still drifts in the murky water below her. Before Finnick can swim up and figure out exactly what the shadow is, she's gone, taken flight to places Finnick is too lethargic to venture.

After what seems like an eternity of riding these tides, of washing in and out of consciousness, Finnick finally wakes up. At first, everything is still gloomy and vague, muted by a constant roar thundering in his ears. For a fleeting moment, icy terror clutches Finnick's heart and twists. The ant's venom has rendered him sightless. He will have to stumble around the arena blind, more helpless than a Callow, until someone takes pity on him and ends his suffering.

Then he spots the moon, or rather, a wedge of its silvery glow illuminating the ground beside him. So he's not going blind; it's just nighttime. Gradually, he becomes aware of other things as well: The soreness pervading his joints and muscles, the dry-sponge quality of his mouth, the sheen of sweat coating his skin. He clasps a hand to his chest, relieved to find all six of his knives still strapped there.

The white noise in the background focuses into a sound Finnick's ears finally recognize: A waterfall. Where is he? Some kind of cave or grotto, he deduces, cramped and dark and humid. His backpack is tucked in the corner, out of range of the waterfall's spray.

It takes longer than usual for him to get to his feet, but it turns out he can't stand up anyway, the cave ceiling is so low. So he grabs his backpack and crawls the rest of the way out of the space, his entire body damp with mist, and clambers to his feet behind a thundering waterfall. When he emerges from behind it, shaking water droplets from his hair, he finally spots Caspia standing at its base. His spear is clutched in her hand.

Before he can decide on a course of action, Caspia looks up and spots him standing there. She raises a single hand in greeting. Bathed in moonlight, ensconced in the waterfall's mist, she is mystic, otherworldly.

The smart thing to do would be to take off, disappear into the rainforest and leave Caspia to fend for herself. She's done all right so far, hasn't she? Finnick certainly isn't going to be the one to kill her. So what's the point of sticking around?

Instead, Finnick raises his hand as well, mirroring her gesture. On legs shakier than he'd care to admit, he makes his way down a slippery, treacherous path to ground level and meets Caspia at the edge of the river, just out of reach of the waterfall's spray.

"How'd you get me all the way up there?" he asks.

"You walked up there yourself," she replies. "You don't remember?"

No, Finnick doesn't remember. He doesn't recall anything except abject pain devouring him from the inside out. "How long was I out?"

"Eh, a few hours. You just missed the anthem."

"I don't suppose you're willing to tell me if any of the Primaries were gracious enough to go ahead and die from those excruciating ant bites?"

"Unfortunately not." Caspia regards him with that same sullen nonchalance as she did before the Games, with hooded eyes and a brazen smirk and a vaguely bored expression Finnick is sure drove academy personnel insane. "And they aren't bites, they're stings."

"Regardless, they hurt." Finnick rubs his cheek, the skin and underlying flesh still tender and hot. "Who was the Callow who ran into us?"

"Boy from Eight."

Nine Callows remain and they're what, five days in? Judging by how events have been progressing, these are going to be a short Games. Perhaps the Gamemakers are deliberately hurrying things along, trying to lessen the strain of funding an event made exorbitant by the blight afflicting the agricultural districts. As far as Finnick knows, he is the only person to have received a sponsored gift thus far. Surely, as outrageously priced as the gifts are in a normal Games, the medicine for his bite wound must have been unconscionable.

For some inexplicable reason, Caspia fails to mention the other tribute who must've showed up in the sky. Finnick feels Miles Strand's presence hanging over them like a dark cloud, profoundly and deafeningly present in the realization that comes after a moment's rumination: Maybe she isn't asking about Miles because she assumes Finnick killed him.

"Here." Caspia thrusts his spear at him. "I have my own. Gotta admit though, this one is pretty nice."

When the pack had left the Cornucopia earlier that morning, Finnick had forgone his handmade spear for something a bit more sophisticated. Unlike the wobbly, thin weapon he'd possessed before the flood, this spear's shaft is not only collapsible but thicker and wrought from carbon steel. It would certainly serve him better than a sharpened stick. But now Caspia has it. Caspia, who dragged him away from the ants and hid him away from the dangers of the arena. Caspia, who is staring at him with an arched brow and expectant expression.

"You can keep it," Finnick says. "I've got another one in my backpack."

Caspia's countenance sours. "I don't need it."

"Fine." Repressing the urge to roll his eyes, Finnick grabs the spear and twirls it, feeling guilty for taking it and frustrated for feeling guilty. "You know, accepting help doesn't make you weaker somehow. No one's going to look down on you for it."

"Easy for you to say," Caspia replies scornfully. "Always had everything you wanted, even at the academy. Everyone loved you. Everyone loves you still."

It's a good thing the waterfall is loud, because Finnick can't hold back the retort that flies to his lips. "You think I've had it easy? Living up to people's expectations, becoming the person they need me to be? At least you get to live life on your own terms, at least—"

No. Finnick clamps his mouth shut, ears burning as Caspia regards him with narrowed eyes. He's said too much already, revealed the cracks in the tenuous armor he's constructed around himself. The Capitol, the district, his people cannot see the desperation writhing beneath his skin, cannot see how much his district partner rattles him.

You write the narrative, Finnick, or the narrative writes you.

Unlike Finnick, Caspia has no qualms about rolling her eyes. "Oh, yes. It must have been so hard for you, being rich, good-looking, charming, loved by supportive parents—"

A flame of rage springs to life in Finnick's gut, quick to ignite after days of constant stress and fear. Maybe he's angry because she had the audacity to mention his parents. Maybe he's angry because he's humiliated, newly burdened by the shackles of a yet another life debt. Or maybe he's just angry because he's finally seeing her after days and days of avoidance, of something that feels like abandonment. They're district partners, and she left him to the mercy of the rest of the Career pack. They're district partners, and she left him to battle mutts and unnatural disasters on his own. In a world where he is the only familiarity, she elected to strike out on her own rather than deign to ally herself with him.

"I'm sorry I wasn't poor enough for you," Finnick snaps. "What'd you want me to do, move to the children's home with you? How would I help anyone there?"

Caspia bares her teeth. "Why does everything have to be about you and your hero complex? I could've helped my district, too, if someone would've given me a chance. But they didn't because they didn't want me. They've never done anything for me! I could've worked twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week and never had enough money to move to the coast. Inner district scum are meant to stay inner district so the coast folks can keep their money and their beaches and their kids. That's how it works in District Four. Always has, always will."

"So you resent me for it?" Finnick flings out an incredulous arm. "How does that make any sense? You made it to the academy just like the rest of us."

Scowling, Caspia twists away from him and crosses her arms. "I don't know why I'm trying to explain this to you," she mutters. "You'll never get it."

"If you hate me so much, why'd you bring me here?" Finnick points up at the cave. "Why hide me away and keep me safe?"

"We had a deal," Caspia starts, but Finnick shakes his head.

"This is more than not killing me," he says. "This is helping me. You helped me, a Beacher who's never so much as given you a second glance."

Caspia's head turns just enough for her to glare at Finnick out of the corner of her eye. "Maybe I want to give District Four the best chance of winning this year."

It's simple math: two tributes mean twice the odds of winning. Rough and tough Caspia, after all her talk about how she doesn't care about the district or anyone in it, is making a deliberate effort to send a tribute back home. She went out of her way to save his sorry skin, and here he is, driving a wedge between them for no reason. Finnick bites the inside of his cheek, shame burning his ears and cheeks.

"Why don't you go find your friends?" Caspia mutters. "They're probably wondering where you are."

"Maybe I don't want to go back to the pack," Finnick says. At this point, why bother? With Miles gone, it won't be long before One gang up on Bellona. Then what, he's stuck playing nursemaid to Ruby and Alabaster until they decide to take him out as well? At least with Caspia, he knows he won't be stabbed to death in his sleep.

"They'll come after you," Caspia warns. "We're too dangerous to be left alone for long. What if they kill both of us? What happens to Four then?"

Finnick throws back his head and laughs, relishing the rare look of astonishment on Caspia's face. "You think they can take both of us down? Caspia, none of them can climb a tree! They're terrified of the river, and they couldn't sneak up on a deaf tribute, let alone one of us." He takes a risk and slings an arm around Caspia's shoulders, half-expecting her to shove him away. To his surprise, she doesn't.

The ghost of a smile flits across her mouth. "So what? You think we have a chance?"

Finnick shrugs. "I'm the best chance you'll ever get."

There's a pause in which Finnick cannot tell if Caspia is going to laugh or hit him. Then Caspia heaves a great sigh. "I'm probably not going to live to regret this."

"Maybe not," Finnick says. "But we'll make sure they don't either, yeah?"

Caspia's answering grin would put Bellona to shame.

The next morning, Finnick and Caspia fish the river.

Despite having escaped the bloodbath with only a small backpack, Caspia has turned out to be quite resourceful in such an exotic, unfamiliar arena. She's collected yards of strong, pliable vines and woven herself a pile of nets, sharpened a series of tree boughs into spears. She lives off the river, eating fish, mussels, crabs—anything she can get her hands on. Caspia shows him her fish trap, erected perhaps three hundred meters downstream of the waterfall where the current is sluggish and the river narrows like a bottleneck. She stretches one of her tightly woven nets across the water, ties it between a tree on one side of the bank and a tree on the other, and anchors it to the bottom with a series of heavy rocks. As fish swim downstream, they are caught in the net, easy targets for Caspia's spears.

"I do this a lot back home," Caspia says. "The fish are strong and full of grit, but they keep us from starving. But it's not safe to do it in all parts of this river." She pulls up her trouser legs, revealing an impressive collection of scabs in various stages of healing. "Some of the fish have teeth on them like you won't believe."

Finnick shows Caspia some of the nuts and edible fruits she doesn't recognize from home. In turn, she shows him how she's been surviving without ingesting dirty river water: The insides of round, rock-hard hairy things Finnick had dismissed as giant nuts are filled with translucent, semi-sweet liquid. The pulp, white and slightly nutty in flavor, is also edible.

"I think I remember them from a Games a few years ago," Caspia says. "It's called a coconut fruit."

Caspia has paid better attention than he thought. Finnick certainly doesn't remember learning about the coconut fruits in training. In fact, he's positive the instructor never mentioned them during training; he would have remembered something as significant as a water-carrying fruit. Regardless, they gorge themselves on these fruits and raw, fresh fish until Finnick starts to feel sick to his stomach.

"What now?" Caspia asks, picking fishbones from her teeth. "Wait for the Primaries to find us and hope for the best?"

Finnick shakes his head. "I don't think they're stupid enough to try something like that," he replies. "Bellona might be, especially because she's got the bow, but she just lost her district partner. And she got bit—stung—by all those ants."

Caspia grins. "I heard you all screaming," she says with relish. "Can you imagine Bellona crying?"

Truthfully, Finnick had been too busy crying himself to tell if Bellona had been as well. "I know she got stung," he says. "We heard a tribute—must've been the boy from Eight—screaming and let him run right into us. Maybe now she'll be more careful about running after tributes in distress. Although last time, he ran to us."

"I wonder if he did it on purpose," Caspia ponders. "You know, to try to take some of you out with him."

In the back of his mind, Finnick has been wondering the same thing. It's a sobering notion, the idea of Callows audacious enough to try to take on Careers. A distinct pecking order reigns over the Games, fostered over years of bloodshed and mistrust, and it doesn't involve Callows getting the drop on Careers.

"Well, he's dead now," Finnick declares. He gathers the scraps from the fish carcasses and dumps them into the river, watching them disappear in the rusty water. If the Primaries are going to try to track them, Finnick might as well not make it an easy task. "Now there are eight Callows left, and One and Bellona."

"If we leave the Primaries alone, maybe they'll take Bellona out for us," Caspia says.

Finnick's thoughts exactly. "Which leaves us to take on One, two against two."

"Pretty even odds, if you ask me."

Once they've eaten their fill, they head back to the waterfall. Aside from being relatively secluded, it's also the highest point Finnick has discovered aside from the Cornucopia. With their backs protected by the cliffside, any attacker will only have one route available to get to them.

"How'd you find this?" Finnick pants. The path up is treacherous, bordering on impassable. At least on his father's ship, Finnick wore a lifeline to ensure he didn't get washed overboard or crack his head on the deck if he happened to fall from the rigging. Here, he has only his limbs and his wits. Neither provide much comfort considering the slickness of the terrain and the frailty of his own constitution, still weakened by ant venom.

"When it started flooding, I headed upstream as much as I could, looking for something I could climb to get out of the water. I ended up here." Caspia gestures down at the riverbank below. "I think the Gamemakers have some sort of reservoir further upstream. When they want to flood the arena, they just open a dam and let a huge amount of water flood over the falls and wash out the riverbanks. I waited until the current weakened, then climbed up into the grotto." Caspia shrugs and jerks her head, flinging strands of wet hair out of her eyes. "It was wet, but it was better than drowning."

Finnick settles down on the damp stone of the grotto and begins carving fishhooks out of a pile of twigs he'd gathered on the way back. Using a rock and a pointed knife, Caspia works on breaking open dozens of coconuts to store the water in the two canteens Finnick took from the Cornucopia. Try as they might, neither of them can weave baskets tightly enough to hold liquid. But they can use the baskets to hold pieces of coconut meat. Between the river and the trees, they might not go hungry again.

"Why don't we just stay here?" Caspia says suddenly. "Let everyone kill each other off. It's worked for tributes in the past, hasn't it?"

Here, with the waterfall's thunder making their dialogue imperceptible, Finnick is more willing to speak his mind. "You know we can't do that."

"Why not?" Caspia persists. She smashes the coconut with excessive violence, sending bits of coconut skin flying. "What if we just refuse to fight? What then?"

"Caspia!" She jumps, apparently startled by the sharpness of his tone, but Finnick intended every bit of it. Doesn't she know she can't say things like that? With every word she speaks, the target expands from her own back to Finnick, then to everyone in District 4. He lowers his voice to a scathing whisper. "Why did you volunteer? You're too smart to not know what you were getting into. If you're not going to play the game, why join?"

Caspia blinks once, twice. For a moment, Finnick thinks she might take her rock and bash it into the side of his head. "Rindle. Salish. Undine. Ophelia. Morgan."

"What?"

"They're the kids I lived with. At the home." Caspia won't look at him now, her entire body tense, ready to take flight at a moment's notice. "I kept thinking, 'if I don't volunteer, and one of those kids ends up in the arena, I'll have only myself to blame. So I volunteered, and now I'm here."

"And actually being here in the arena made you decide you wanted to win?" Finnick guesses. He studies her side profile, which is as much as she will let him see, but he finds no signs of deception. Finnick suspects Caspia couldn't successfully lie even if she wanted to. He's never seen her like this before, vulnerable and open, bathed in soft new light. Not that he tried particularly hard in the past.

"All this time, while I've been waiting out the flood and the other tributes and the killer ants, I keep thinking of them. Of what it would be like to actually go home to them and give them the spoils of my victory. To watch them, my whole neighborhood, eat well for the first time in years. To watch the kids at school grow up knowing they're cared for because of me and others like me."

Oh, Caspia. "Why didn't you mention any of that in your interview?" Finnick questions. "You could've gotten the Capitol to love you with a story like that." It's a lucky thing she didn't, or else Finnick's own little sob story might've not held up so well. The realization gives Finnick's stomach a nauseating twist.

"I could've gotten them to pity me," Caspia corrects. "I don't want their pity any more than I want their help. It's like catching a fish and feeling sorry for it while you cram it down your gullet. You're the reason the fish is dead, you know? There's no point in feeling bad about it now. I know it's stupid, but I can't stand the idea of...of—"

"I get it," Finnick says quietly. No need for Caspia to get in more trouble than she's already in. Caspia could be forced onto the stage, but unlike the rest of them, she wouldn't dance. Compared to Finnick, in the midst of standing on his head and doing a jig to the beat of the Capitol drum, is she really the bigger fool?

"I don't want your pity either," Caspia warns as she tosses her last piece of coconut meat into the basket.

"No pity from me," Finnick assures her. "Just respect."

Caspia flashes him a halfhearted smile. "I think I'll allow it."