A/N: Finnick's POV

For several days, we had a bit of a weird dynamic on the twelfth floor. There was some joke going around between the veterans that I didn't get, but Scarlett seemed to, because every time Blight or Chaff started guffawing at something the other said, she would blush as red as her hair and Haymitch would glare at them through his drunken haze until they caught his glare and instantly stopped laughing.

Whatever it was, I had a hunch that it had something to do with whatever was going on with Scarlett. Of course I never seemed to know how to figure out what exactly that was, but I figured that she'd tell me with time.

Days four through six had no deaths, but it didn't keep us from chattering about what was going on in the Games, from Charlotte trying to charm Draven to the survival odds of those who were left, to those who had already died.

"Well, Ligeia was one of my more promising tributes," Mags muttered. "Still Catriona and Luke..."

"Yeah," I sighed. "But I don't think Luke can last the week."

"He's got food, water," Scarlett said with a shrug. "He's pretty handy with that knife. It's certainly not looking too bad for him."

"He's not got anybody watching his back," I argued.

"He's got you," she said with a shrug. "All I needed to win was Blight, so if you and Mags do your job properly, he's got a chance."

"He's got no survival skills," I argued. "And he can't work long-range. There's no one to distract others, which is why ne needs someone to watch his back."

"Someone watching your back can be someone sticking a knife in it later, children," Callie teased. "Why don't you stop chattering and watch. Charlotte just tripped over her own feet into a pack of sleeping lizards."

She got away with some scratches and probably a fair amount of psychological damage, but it was a good show, and I couldn't help but notice the way it made Scarlett grin, and that had to count for something.

After that, we stayed pretty quiet and watched the Games. We knew it wouldn't be long until the Gamemakers did something to really drive them together so that the deaths would start up again, but what they would do, we weren't sure. There wasn't anything to burn, no water to flood with, no mountain to create avalanches for...

But there were always muttations. The Gamemakers loved wreaking havoc with muttations, especially when all they had was a bit of bad water and possibly some heat. I couldn't recall if I'd ever seen someone drop dead of heat on the Games, but I knew it had been known to happen. Certainly, anything was possible, and I couldn't imagine what sort of things the Gamemakers were getting ready for spectacular showmanship. It seemed to be all anybody in the Capitol cared about for the purpose of the Games, how good of a show they were getting.

I could still almost picture the lizards as they attacked the food of the Careers. It made me proud of my own decision to ally with non-Careers. If that had happened while I was there, I didn't doubt Mags's ability and desire to take care of me, but it would have made it a lot more difficult, especially with Stella sucking sponsor dollars from a lot of very wealthy people. Scarlett, at least, hadn't had a lot of competition in the money department, being as pretty as she was. Nobody else stood a chance once Blight took care of her food.

Luke, though, he would need to figure out how to get food, water... He had a bit, but if history was any indication of how long it was going to last, he wasn't going to make it through the Games on what he'd salvaged from the lizard attack. Mags and I were going to have to find a way to help him eat and drink. The sponsors loved the way he'd dealt with Finley and the food situation, but there was no way he was going to get the kind of buzz and support Draven had already built up.

There had been an awful lot of people clambering to support Draven, especially those who had supported Scarlett. They seemed to think that by letting him survive, somehow Draven would manage to charm Scarlett and they could be the first tribute pair who would date, marry, and make little titanium tribute babies who would win Hunger Games in years to come. They wanted that fairytale love story and the great shows that would be caused by the children being tributes in the future.

For some reason, I hated the idea of Draven winning much more than the idea of Luke losing.

And I knew it was because of the fascination with which Scarlett watched Draven, and maybe it was also because of the way he'd looked at her when the tributes had been around, the way he'd talked about her during his interview... Some people might have thought it was some sort of angle to get sponsors, but I knew that look well enough, seeing my parents look at each other that way. Draven really did hold a torch for Scarlett, and I didn't know if it was mutual or not, but in her current, unreadable state of mind, he might even be able to take advantage of her.

And I certainly didn't like that thought. Although I couldn't quite put my finger on why.

"Scarlett, what do you think of the way he uses that lasso?" Blight teased. "Pretty handy."

"Yeah," she said derisively as we watched Draven snag a lizard with his lasso and stab it with a knife. "If you like killing prey that doesn't move. Doesn't take any more skill than cutting a limb off a tree. Charlotte's mace takes more skill than that. At least she's got struggling prey."

There was an awkward feeling in the room after that, like we knew where she was coming from but knew it was a bit morbid and sick of us to necessarily agree with her. The lack of conviction in her voice where Draven was concerned compared with the hatred when she talked of Charlotte, was absolutely disgusting. I didn't know what her feelings about him were, and it seemed she didn't know, either.

But Scarlett was still keeping a lot of secrets from me, it seemed. Bags under her eyes, jumpy when anyone but Haymitch so much as accidentally brushed against her, and a severe lack of appetite that Haymitch seemed to be trying to talk her out of. I had grown used to seeing Scarlett eat half the table, but she was barely touching a thing, and that alone was enough to worry any one of us, but what worried me even more was the fact that I seemed to be the only one out of the loop. I didn't get the joke, I didn't know what was wrong, and I didn't know how to help her.

I felt so helpless, so useless, so small. What sort of a friend was I if I couldn't even manage to help when it counted?

"Maybe they'll do something interesting soon," Scarlett sighed as we had dinner on the sixth night. "I'm getting sick of doing interviews talking about Charlotte. Maybe they'll have her get eaten by lizards this time."

I couldn't help but laugh a little at that, and so did the others, especially a guffawing Haymitch, chuckling to himself at the end of the table as he spilled his drink all over his jacket. As much as we tried not to make those sorts of jokes, we had all come to agree with Scarlett's extreme distaste for Charlotte. She was a nasty, unethical sort of girl, which had a way of bringing out the absolute worst in a person in circumstances like the Hunger Games. Draven seemed to be her one weakness, but he was the weakness of several female tributes.

If he won, I could see him quickly becoming the weakness of a few female victors, Scarlett included.

"Somehow," Chaff muttered, putting down his drink to pick up his fork with his one arm, "I think those particular muttations aren't equipped to actually take down a human, and they don't tend to let the animals destroy the bodies."

That was true. They liked to gather up the bodies of the tributes, collect them in hovercraft and do who knows what with them. Maybe they gave them back to the families of the dead. Maybe they burned them. Maybe they buried them somewhere. Maybe they conducted some sort of tests on them. With the Capitol, the possibilities were limitless.

An Avox came in, setting a sealed note beside Scarlett's hand that she looked at as though it were about to bite her. I leaned forward a bit before I realized I'd done it, frowning.

With a slightly shaking hand, Scarlett picked up the note, broke the seal, and read it rather close to her face, eyes moving fast. She gave a small sigh and said, "I guess I've got an interview. I've got to get out of here." She stood quickly, not even sparing a second look for her barely-touched plate. "See you guys tomorrow."

I watched her leave, echoing the sentiment that filled the room that she sleep well, which was sort of an empty wish that we all gave each other. We all knew that none of us was going to sleep well on any night.

"Is she okay?" I asked. "I know there's something going on with her that nobody's telling me."

They looked at each other. They looked at me. They looked at each other again and then looked down at their plates. This was getting me nowhere all over again.

"Yeah," I sighed. "Yeah, I figured that wasn't going to work. I feel like something bad's happening and there's nothing I can do. Why won't you tell me?"

"Finnick," Callie said softly, "it's not for us to tell you. It's not our story, it's Scarlett's."

"Callie," I said, feeling the aggravation coursing through me all over again, but I was cut off.

"Listen, Finnick," Blight said softly, "whether Scarlett wants to tell you, you'll know sooner than you'd think what's going on, and I promise you that when you get to that point, you're not going to want to know so badly. You're going to wish you didn't know. We all wish we didn't know, but you're going to wish it even more. I can promise you that."

"Just a tip, though," Chaff growled, putting down his fork to pick up his spoon for the soup. "When you do know, take good advice."

They were being so cryptic, so negative, and I didn't know what to do about Scarlett. Nobody was telling me anything, and it seemed unlikely that Scarlett would be called in for an interview in the dead of night while everyone was sleeping.

I didn't know what to make of it, though, so I shook my head and decided not to try. I looked down at my plate, suddenly feeling not hungry at all. I wondered if that was the feeling Scarlett felt when she looked at food recently. It was certainly the reaction she had, not eating a bite.

Whatever her meeting was, Scarlett didn't come back that night, true to her word, and as I climbed into bed, unsure of what to expect Scarlett to be like when I saw her in the morning I tried to calm my mind, tried to think of anything except the faces of all the dead tributes I'd come across since the Hunger Games became a part of my way of life. I frowned, finding it harder than usual to block Stella's face from my mind. I didn't want to think about what was going to happen the next day.