This isn't all of day four because I still have people to kill. But I just thought that the ending was a pretty okay place to stop, considering... Yup. Just yup.

Between two lungs it was released,

The breath that passed from you to me,

That flew between us as we slept...

"Between Two Lungs" by Florence and the Machine

D3- 14- (Calypso Oswald)

Nighttime spreads over day three in the arena. Three cannons have gone off today, and when the Anthem plays, my head jerks up. District One, of course, is unharmed, as well as Two and Four. When the first face is from District Seven, I don't know what to feel that Forrest didn't die. Relief, I guess. If it's not me, and it's not Nelly, I guess I want the victor to be him. It would benefit my family, and altogether he seems like a pretty cool, nice guy.

"No Careers," Nelly mutters.

I look over at her from my dangerous spot of lying on the ground. We had no choice. There's nowhere to hide in the grassiness, except the occasional spurt of trees or shrubbery. "What did you expect?" I ask coldly. The tone I use isn't cold, but the words feel like they are. I shouldn't be able to feel such fear for my own life, out here in the open, hating anyone who is maybe talking about District Three right now and killing me, and still be able to talk so smoothly about the death of others, like it's nothing, but it is. It's totally, completely something.

She shrugs, uncaring. She's always uncaring. When she's not uncaring, she's sad or vicious and determined. "Ooh, look," she says, her eyes lighting a little bit.

"What?" I ask, leaning over from my spot to look at what she has in her hand.

"A spider," she says, fascinated. She pokes the bug lightly, and I wrinkle my nose immediately.

"Ew!" I exclaim quietly, shrinking back to where I was lying before.

Nelly smiles and rolls her eyes at me. "You're like my friend Stacy," she says, even giggling a little bit before setting the spider down. "She hates them. I love spiders. It's all about being delicate."

"You poked it," I protest, watching as it scurries away on its eight long, black legs.

"And identification," she adds, emphasizing these words. "That was a daddy longlegs spider. They're actually really, really poisonous, but their mouths are so small that they can't bite anyone." I knew this. I allow her to have her moment.

"What if, like, a daddy longlegs was weird and big?" I ask, and feel relieved when the long-legged creature disappears from my view. "Or, like, mates with a big spider?" I thought these questions might amuse her and the Capitol. A bit of conversation between allies, joking around and stuff, is sometimes entertaining to them, I think, because it's usually featured fully on our screens instead of cut short or missed entirely.

Nelly frowns. "Not possible," she says. She seems proud to sound so smart, and I let her feel pride, knowing she's not exactly right in the head at the moment. If she can enjoy anything, I want her to be able to enjoy it before she dies or goes completely insane when she leaves the arena. "And if it were…" She grins widely, wiggling her fingers in a way that is supposed to be eerie but she obviously knows it's not. "It would be the end of the world!"

I smile slightly.

"Did you know that the common house spider can be mistaken for a really, super-duper poisonous spider?" she tells me, and a prideful look returns to her silly face. She has a nice face. It looks calm and like a smile or a grin or a playful, joking smirk always belongs on it. One look at her face when she's not sad or ready and tensed to kill someone immediately lets anyone looking at her know that she's an easy person to get along with. I know she's spiraling into insanity; I can see it. And that makes me kind of sad, because she's a cool, funny girl. I would love to be friends with her if we were from the same district.

I shake my head. "I didn't." I did. Again, I'll let her have her moment.

Nelly's grin widens. "Aren't spiders just cool, though? Even if you're scared of them or something, you have to admit, they're pretty cool."

I shrug and nod. "They are particularly fascinating sometimes, like—"

She stops me. "Please don't go off on a District Three ramble about everything scientific in the world," she begs, rolling her eyes. "I'm not smart enough to keep up."

I'm not exactly offended, but I don't like that she thinks this, like all District Three citizens run on the same mind. Like we're all functioning on the same hard drive or something. "That's stereotypical, because—"

"You've already lost me."

I keep going anyway, intent on getting my point across and frustrated with her. "—I personally know a few brain-dead idiots from my district, and not all of us actually even like technology and science. Those are the people that do the other necessary jobs, like going into the field of medicine or working in shops or teaching. But, you know, if you teach, I guess—"

"Look, I think the daddy longlegs spider is coming back," she says, extending her hand to something in the grass that is shadowed by darkness.

"—I guess you have to like science and technology because you're teaching it. I don't know what I want to be when I grow up…" Now I'm the one to stop myself, trailing off slowly and looking down. Nothing, I think bitterly. I'm either going to be a guilty victor or I won't grow up. "Um." I let out a breath and extend my hand, palm up. "Can I hold it?"

Nelly smiles and nods. She deftly picks it up. It's obvious her liking of spiders isn't just a small thing; she's enjoyed them and picked them up and learned about them through studying their behaviors herself all her life, a deduction made so easily due to the way she simply looks at the spider and the way she slides it so carefully into my palm, I feel like an idiot when it tickles my hand and I drop it. But she simply shrugs, smiles slightly, and lies down, looking up at the starry sky.

I watch the daddy longlegs run away from me. Its legs are cool, and like the name suggests, its legs are long, slender things that easily carry the small body.

"Calypso?" she asks when I settle back down, using the backpack as a pillow.

I pause. I'm afraid of what she might say. I can't comfort her because I'm terrified of so many things right now myself. "Yes?" I respond, deciding to not pretend to be asleep already.

"I'm hungry," she says quietly, sounding like she's stifling the urge to break down again. I can't deal with that, not now, not like this, not where we are. Not with Kayla, Skylar, and Allegra gone. Please, please, please don't break down, I beg her silently. "We're…running out of food."

We don't have any. We finished it today. All we had was a loaf of bread and some berries we found on the trees that we were only half-certain were okay to eat. I don't want to tell her this, though. In the morning we will have no breakfast, and we're running low on water even though it poured on the night of day one. We won't have anything to fill our stomachs and we won't have much to quench our thirst. Dread fills me as I realize this myself. It's hard, knowing that you're fine now, and when you go to sleep, you'll be fine, but when you wake up you're going to be teetering over a cliff with death at the bottom.

"I know" is all I say.

"I'm…" She sighs. "Calypso?" she asks again.

"Nelly," I reply.

"Do you remember Ryan?"

The question is unexpected. "Um… You mean the boy from your district last year?" When Nelly mutters a yes, I continue: "Well, yeah."

"He was my best friend." I look over and see her face buried into her hands. I wait for her to say more, and when she doesn't, I flip over, close my eyes, and give her privacy.

D9- 16- (Aeris Lockhart)

My eyes open to the sound of birds tweeting somewhere up in the mountain that we're hiding in, Asher and I. With the Careers back, our well-plotted but terrifying chance of stealing from the Cornucopia evaporates, and so does our chance for both of us to get some peaceful sleep until they're gone. Every time we step out of the cave, fear eats at us and we find ways to hurriedly run back in, sometimes without accomplishing one thing that we both desperately know we need to accomplish.

"You up?" Asher asks. I look over at him. His stormy, clouded gray eyes seem like they hold an entirely new fog that's just rolled into them. Something is troubling him, and whatever it is will trouble me because we're allies. I decide not to ask, wanting at least a moment's worth of quietness and relief in this closed-in, dangerous, bloody hell that we've been slammed into without choice. "They're up."

"Great." I sit up slowly. No chance in getting a relaxing moment now with that sentence thrown at me before I'm even completely awake. I rub my eyes, stretch a little, and yawn. It's perfectly fine outside, but here in the dark, damp cave, it feels chilly. "I'm up. I'm tired. We got anything to eat?"

"No," Asher tells me gloomily. "But the Careers and packing up like they're not coming back. We'll probably get some tonight."

"Before the sun goes down and it's too dark to see?" I ask him, to which he rolls his eyes and nods.

"Yes, Aeris," he mutters.

I sigh and pull out my canteen. By now it's almost gone. I need to get down to the water in the valley. I take my last big gulp and hope that I will get a chance to go down there, and if not Asher will. And if even that fails, maybe, just maybe, luck will be on our side and it will rain so we can fill our canteens and water bottles with rainwater. I toss the empty container into my backpack, scoot my pack against the wall, and lean against it.

Asher yawns. "Hey…" he says, before letting out a big yawn again. When he doesn't say anything else, I frown, my eyebrows furrowing, and don't say anything either. What a pathetic way to start up conversation. I'm not thinking of the topic and if all he's going to supply is one word when I hardly even want to or care to talk, then he can just talk to himself because I'm hungry and tired and thirsty and irritable and if he got to talking to me he probably wouldn't even want to by the time I got my first word in. "So, um, do you think we should stay here? In the cave, I mean."

I look over at him. That's kind of better. "Yeah," I tell him with a curt nod. "Where else would we go?"

"The woods…" he says, uncertain of himself.

"No. No way," I say in a way that totally shuts the idea down and I hope I make it sound like it's locked up and never to be opened again. No. Not the woods. He gives me a questioning look, and I sigh like he's stupid because I think it's really obvious why we exactly can't go to the woods. But I wait a second, take a breath, and explain it to him anyway. Maybe if I don't, he'll get as frustrated with everything as I am. "We're too far away. Maybe if, you know, we had resources and sponsors like the Careers, sure—we could maybe make it. But we don't, unfortunately, and so no. We're not. And besides, look at it. Look at the way there. We'd be dead in a minute."

He rolls his eyes overdramatically, and just the tiniest hint of a smile rises to my lips. He smiles when he sees this, but I don't take the smile away. "Fine, Mother…" I glare at him playfully, though now I'm fighting a grin. He chuckles at me like he can read my every thought as though it's written in words all over my face or presented in lettering in my icy blue eyes that I sometimes catch him staring at, seeming fascinated, almost.

"Now, Son, it's time for bed," I say.

"It was actually funny when I did it," he tells me, adding a psh noise. "Not when you did it…"

"It was funny when you did it because I haven't heard a joke in weeks and anything would be funny to me," I retort, mock-glaring at him and adding his psh sound. I smile and he chuckles at me again. His smile is nice. As soon as the thought is processed in my head, I shrink away from it, trying to scrape it up and throw it away, just get it away from me. But it's there, and it doesn't go away until he looks down and his smile fades.

"What?" I ask quietly as the fog returns to his eyes.

"Nothing…"

"What?" I repeat insistently, wanting to force it out of him, wanting to know why he seems almost worried, and maybe the slightest bit apprehensive about something that is fluttering around in his head, some odd thought that he thinks maybe I don't know and he doesn't want to burden me with to think about. And every stressful thought is like a wound afflicted to our skin; it eats away at us and brings us pain. So maybe I should appreciate that his gray eyes are nervous and mine are not, but I don't. I can't let it go.

"Aeris…" He sighs heavily. "Nothing, okay?"

"Asher…" I mimic his tone. "Tell me, okay?"

He rolls his eyes. "Nothing. Just…I'm thinking about…I don't know. Your eyes."

This surprises me. I couldn't have anticipated what he was going to say, really, but I had some sort of forethought on at least along the lines of what was going through his eyes. My eyes? Nope, there was no possible way for me to see that coming. Why would my eyes be frustrating him? Why would my eyes be the cause of this anxious jerkiness and his odd stuttering and his drifting off into space from time to time?

"My…er…eyes?"

Asher nods and looks at the floor, and hits me right then and there. I'm such an idiot. He likes me. That's why he's thinking about my eyes! That's why he's started to look at me funny! He likes my eyes. And he must not know if I like him back so he's not saying anything and it's the Games so of course nothing can happen. My mind starts to go at three thousand miles her hour as I realize this and a blush comes to his cheeks.

What do I do? What do I say? What do we do? Do we stay allies? Do I like him back? Do we kiss now? Are we expected to carry out a relationship? Am I supposed to fall into his arms like a lost little damsel in distress? Will it get us food, water, anything? Will we ever really have the simple, easy friendship we had just yesterday where we could talk and not really worry? Will we get sponsors? Will I ever stop needing to know the answers to all these questions that are flitting through my head at eight miles a second?

I deserve this. I do like him. Maybe I can't have him forever, but I should take this opportunity to truly feel more than guilt and bottled-up rage. This is my time to not be the ice queen, to not be so cold and distant to all of society. This is my chance to feel and to show the Capitol that yeah, I'm me. And yeah, I'm going go take this. It's not exactly an act of defiance and I don't want it to be. I don't want to be a rebel. I just want to take this fortuity and use it while I can, because I want it, so I'll have it.

"I like your eyes too," I say quietly, and blush too. He looks up and I smile slightly.

I'm not going to love him. I might not even kiss him. But I do lean over and take his hand. I hold it, and it's the best I've felt in a while.

D4- 17- (Vixen Payne)

When everyone finally returned really late last night, I was so relieved. I wasn't worried about them; the only one I even care about is Jackson. But being alone, stuck back at the Cornucopia, which is so totally devoid of any good action, for three days is aggravatingly dull. At least I was never hungry; I pigged out every night, eating what I would usually eat in District Four for a decent meal. I made hot chocolate. Everything was at my disposal.

Unfortunately, now I've heard word of their plans, since they're back: We're making a trek to some woods that you can kind of see between some of the mountains, far off in the distance. We're too far away to make the long, tiresome journey before we collapse and die because we'll have run out of food and water. And besides, if we make it, we'll be out of food or dangerously low on it, and then we won't have enough for the way back…

Ew. Squirrel and rabbit and, like, wild bird meat…

"Daphne," Stone says, and it's obvious she's trying really hard to be reasonable with her, "we can't…"

Adelina turns on her before Daphne can even blink. "Look, bitch—"

"Ade!" her twin exclaims, turning to her with widened eyes, not believing that her sister exploded like she did. "Oh, my God, Ade, calm down!"

I bite my lip. "Um…" I say. Everyone turns to me, like they've forgotten I exist. Maybe they have, as it has been a while since they've seen me, and a lot of them are very self-absorbed snobs, so it wouldn't surprise me if they only somewhat knew that I was here, still a part of the Careers, still looking for my first kill… "We should all get to talk…" I scratch my head meekly.

"Vixen's right," Jackson says, and I wonder if all he ever does is supply a few words here and there, an agreement every once in a while.

Azaleigh nods. "I think we should go," she says. "I mean, everyone else is. Who knows what's in those woods?"

"Exactly!" Stone exclaims angrily. "I'm not starving for some half-brained idea, made with a half of a brain."

It takes a second for Daphne to register the insult, and she turns to Stone, unable to hold her calmness and contain her anger. Fury lights in her eyes, and she even dares to pull a knife on the sixteen-year-old, but she pulls one out too, and both of them glare at the other, seething, and neither saying anything, before Jackson lightly tells them that she thinks we should all talk like I said.

"Okay. I think we should," Gleam says, earning an accepting look from Adelina. Daphne looks relieved that everyone seems to be going against Stone, except me. I don't want to starve… Should I voice my opinion? It would make me safer during Stone's watch, but it could get me killed if Adelina decides to reflect on the day's happenings and remembers my speaking out against her and her sister.

"Listen, we have to go," Adelina says, and Daphne gives a nod, signaling that she agrees with everything her sister says unless she tells us otherwise. "Everyone's going to the woods. We'll get no kills, and then we'll end up just killing each other when we're sure everybody else is dead, you know? And it'll be pathetic, right? So we've got to go out there to the woods!" Daphne nods again. She totally agrees.

And I kind of do too, now that I've heard her argument. It's true that we won't be killing anyone if we stay where we are, within food's reach, here at the Cornucopia. But it's also true that we could easily starve if we attempt the long road to the woods. We're already three days behind everyone else who is going, and the utter vastness of the arena is intimidating even without the thought of taking on a journey all the way across it in your head.

"I, um… I'd go either way," I admit with a shrug.

Jackson smiles slightly, but I don't know why. "Yeah. Yeah, me too."

Dante speaks up now. I wonder if he's this quiet when they're all out together. He probably is, considering how it's hard for Azaleigh and Jackson to get their opinions in when they're actual Careers because of Stone, Gleam, Daphne, and Adelina running their mouths off and just never stopping. I find myself missing the booming voice of Beck to get us to shut the hell up and listen. We'd be a lot more orderly if someone was yelling at us, and Daphne's smart but she's not the yelling kind.

"I don't want to starve," Dante says, a crease in his brow, "but…if we devise a plan…"

"…to carry food," Daphne continues for him encouragingly, nodding. "Yes!"

"…then we won't starve," he adds to Daphne's unfinished continuance. "And we'll be able to kill too."

"Yes!" Adelina says, in a voice much like her twin's. "Yes, yes, yes! I thought of that before! I've been thinking about it while others"—Stone, Jackson, and I earn pointed glares—"have been stupid. My idea is brilliant. I'd need help, though."

Smirks rise to Dante and Daphne's faces. "What's the plan?" Daphne asks eagerly. After a second of reluctance, Gleam, Azaleigh, Stone, and I all listen in too, and Jackson has been indifferently listening the whole time, holding Azaleigh's hand, swinging her hand, kissing her hand, studying her hand. A quiet, unspoken, roaring love is between the two, and it's so sweet that I almost feel bad that they can't keep it raging on forever, together, holding each other, and knowing without having to hear that love will always be there for them.

Or maybe I'm just missing Daniel too much and they like each other, the other romance being supplied by my fantasizing mind.

Neither of them will make it home, because I have a love like that that I need to get back to. And I will. I know I will.

"See, it's kind of a really common idea, but no one else thought about it, which makes it ingenious…" And off Adelina goes in her arrogant rambling.

D12- 17- (Carlyn Hansen)

I watch Krumr's movements as he looks around for a place for us to hide and know that he's also looking for tributes to kill.

His strong arms, his tan skin, his spiky blonde hair that's dirty and messy from all the days in the arena. There are many things about the boy—no, he is most certainly, completely a man—that entice me to stay with him. If we're talking strictly in an appearance-based way, he's very, very hot, and I say that without shame. His icy, cold blue eyes are so logical and deep and angry and somewhere in there, I can see his pain, a fiery ache that pulls at him and turns into anger and sadism before it hits his heart. His arms and hands are deadly and strong and muscled. My neck could be snapped easily if his hands were placed on my head. The thrill that comes from that knowledge makes me want to infuriate him, knowing that he would never, ever kill me. If he were to hold my head, ever, it would be to keep it in place while he places a passionate kiss deeply onto my lips. The fact that he's falling in love with me, the emotionless, careless man, makes me feel powerful, especially since I will never return the favor.

And I also like that he understands me. He lets me be free. He lets me be Carlyn Hansen and not just another pretty female. He lets me be the girl behind the curves and the blonde hair and the brown eyes. He lets me be me.

"Hey, big guy, found a place to go yet?" I ask. He turns around. There are the eyes. The cold, cruel, vicious eyes.

"Shut up," he snarls, and I find electricity zipping through me, fueling me to press further. "Let me think."

I raise a mocking eyebrow. "You have a brain to think with?" I retort. I feel much better now that my side has decided slowly to stop hurting. "That's new."

The bow on his shoulder jerks slightly, like he's about to use it to take out to frustration and annoyance that is me. His hand touches his axe, and that seems to calm him. Thrillingly dangerous sensations pile up in me. Calmed by violence, calmed by the remembrance of what it's like to kill someone with his beloved weapon, this man is indestructible. This man cannot be moved, cannot be manipulated.

Watch me do my work.

"Ooh, pretty boy getting mad, is he?" I taunt, batting my eyelashes slowly. I flip a bit of my hair behind my shoulder. "That's terribly too bad. I would hate to see you in a bad mood." I advance on him, step by step, my advancement of low speed. My eyes narrow when his do, a light, playful mimicking. He glares at me slightly, making a smirk gradually come to my face.

And then he's taking me roughly by the shoulders. It's not like when the District Two boy tried to kill me, but it's still kind of scary. Adrenaline and fear shoot through a quarter of me, but the other three quarters feel excitement and joy.

"Listen here, bitch," he starts in a low, angry voice, and before he finishes, he pulls me into him and kisses me with that passion I thought he would kiss me with earlier, his forceful hand going to the back of my head, his other arm wrapping around me. I'm surprised and at the same time, this was so expected. I kiss him back. Though it's an act of care, I know Krumr is only barely capable of so little of that emotion. And I know this kiss is furious, an act of anger and that tiny bit of affection coming free.

He pulls away and shoves me lightly. I laugh. "I'm listening," I tease.

But I want it again. The fury, the excitement, the passion, the affection. The roughness.

The freedom.

I want it again. I'll get it again.