Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The last time there was a Quell, Cashmere and Gloss weren’t even Academy students yet. They’d watched it with their parents, legs tucked against their knees as they sat with their backs to the shabby sofa in the apartment above the failing dress shop. Cashmere’s attention had been more focused on the Capitolites instead of the announcements, fascinated by the shimmer of their clothes. Even muted through their ancient television set, they were the brightest thing Cashmere had ever seen, brighter than the muddied jewels her father scavenges from the quarries for the Capitol, brighter than the last-season fabrics her mother stitches into dresses that collect dust on the shop floor.

Their parents had taken Cashmere and Gloss to One’s Academy the next year, the day after they’d turned five, and the now-flourishing dress shop is the only place in the district square that Cashmere always avoids.

She wonders, as Gloss fiddles with the volume button on the remote that controls their full-colour television, whether the Quell announcement makes their parents think of Cashmere and Gloss the same way it makes Cashmere think of them.

Gloss dumps the remote on the side table beside the sofa as Panem’s anthem blares from the projector, settling next to Cashmere with a wound-tight smile. She offers him her hand, and he clutches it so hard that Cashmere knows she’s going to have pins and needles later. His head settles onto Cashmere’s shoulder out of habit, as though she is the older sibling and Gloss is the younger.

The Capitol seal appears at the end of the anthem, fading out to an image of Caesar Flickerman and Claudius Templesmith, their bright chatter filling the silent living room. Through the cracked-open window, Cashmere hears the sound of hurried footsteps - probably belonging to eternally late Olivine - and then the opening creak and closing slam of Selene’s front door.

Cashmere aches to join them, to let Selene fuss about how skinny she is and send her home with goodies, to swap knives with Zeal, to let Claudette and Olivine bicker over who gets to braid her hair, but at the same time it feels right to watch the announcement alone with Gloss. It feels like fate, like a full circle, even though Cashmere never really believed in that sort of thing even before she watched the Academy beat it out of the more superstitious children.

Her hand is numb in Gloss’ grip. Cashmere fights to make it work, her fingers trembling back to life as she squeezes Gloss’ hand, watching as the cameras pan away from the presenters to President Snow, slowly prising the third Quell envelope away from the embrace of its fellows.

And he opens it. He opens it, and Gloss squeezes Cashmere’s hand so tightly that something crunches, but Cashmere doesn’t feel it. She is somewhere else, everywhere else. She is standing onstage in front of One’s cheering crowd, arm in arm with her district partner Jasper, gritting her teeth through a golden smile because she has fought with Jasper for thirteen years and it is her that he comes sobbing to whenever the teachers make him kill (he is good enough to win but he won’t; he doesn’t have the stomach for it). She is in the thick jungle maze of her arena, Anya from Two's blood drying in Cashmere’s hair, on her face, and Nettie from Four is pushing her fishing knife slowly, surely into Jasper’s chest, and Cashmere doesn’t scream because Careers don’t scream and she is hoping that if she plays dead for long enough then she can catch Nettie unawares. She is springing up and throwing her knife unerringly into Nettie’s throat, and she can’t save Jasper even if she had the supplies to try, but she can hold his hand as his breath stutters and stops and Claudius Templesmith announces her as the winner.

Distantly, Cashmere hears the front door being flung open, and she is real again as Olivine climbs onto the arm of the sofa, practically sliding into Cashmere’s lap as she throws her arms around her.

Artemis has had many conversations with Cashmere about using One’s latest victor, Olivine, as a substitute for her failed tribute Pearl, but as Cashmere tugs Olivine close, letting the younger girl’s tears wet her hair, she is for once glad that the girl in her arms isn’t Pearl, even though this is probably not what Artemis had in mind when she pictured Cashmere finally taking her advice on board.

There’s a series of small shuffling sounds as the other victors spill out of Selene’s house and into Cashmere and Gloss’ living room. Cashmere feels Artemis’ hand on her shoulder, hears Nero exchanging subdued words with Gloss. She surveys them all, and clarity makes her stomach drop into her boots. She thinks she knows, suddenly, who Snow is going to pick to represent One.

“I don’t want anyone to volunteer for me,” she says, quelling the rising buzz of nervous chatter in the room. She swallows against a dry throat.

“Don’t be stupid, Cash,” says Vulcan impatiently. “It probably won’t be you. There’s loads of us, after all.” Olivine gulps nervously, tracing the three-year-old knife scar on her shoulder, and Vulcan’s normally stern gaze softens. “We won’t let it be you, Ollie,” he adds firmly, the others humming in agreement.

“It won’t be Ollie,” Cashmere mutters. She pauses, glancing at the corners of the room where the Capitol’s cameras no doubt lurk. “Don’t you think the Gamemakers want this Quell to be especially exciting?” She nods meaningfully towards Gloss and watches the realisation make itself known in the way Selene’s expression drops before she can wrestle it back into place, the way Zeal’s brows draw together, the way Claudette anxiously winds a golden curl of hair into a knot around her finger.

Gloss’s fingers tighten around Cashmere’s hand again. She might be in serious danger of losing circulation to her fingers at this point.

“I don’t want anyone to volunteer for me, either,” he says firmly, his eyes darting to all the possible places a Capitol camera could lurk. His face splits into a painfully fake grin. “I think the Quell should be as exciting as possible, don’t you?”

.

They have this ritual, the Career victors, for the night before the Games. They gather together in someone’s room, dissecting the interviews and slipping those who are unlucky enough to be mentoring that year some liquid luck for the days to come.

Cashmere didn’t expect it to go ahead this year, not when they’re tributes instead of mentors and she’d had to bribe everyone but her and Gloss' mentors - Cashmere has Artemis again, and there’s nobody she’d want watching her six this last time - to stay behind in One.

But she opens her bedroom door, Gloss in tow - no doubt desperate to soothe himself to sleep in her bed like they’d done when they were children - and barely holds down her yelp when she spots Finnick, Enobaria and Brutus sprawled on the king-sized mattress.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” Cashmere hisses, painfully aware of the fact that Artemis, in her room just a few doors down the corridor, is probably not asleep. “It might be a little too… rebellious,” she continues, watching a cloud flash briefly across Finnick’s face. He’s always been a little more rebellious than the rest of them, forever sneaking off somewhere or another when he thinks none of them are looking, and it’s stupid, stupid, stupid that he thinks he's so sneaky. Careers always look, tucking little golden nuggets of information away for later use. Finnick is still like them in that way, no matter how much he might want to run away from it.

Brutus grins sheepishly, hauling a clinking bag from underneath the bed. “We came bearing gifts?”

Cashmere wants to kick them out and sleep, wants to treasure her last night of uninterrupted sleep like it’s a fresh quarry jewel, but she takes one look at the way Gloss’ face glows and she can’t.

“Just be quiet. Artemis will kick you all out if she hears you, tradition or not,” she says, resigned.

Hours later, Cashmere is lying diagonally across her bed, gazing at the opulent ceiling swirling above her, and Eno’s head is pressed not-quite-painfully to Cashmere’s and her blood is running down her chin again because Eno always forgets about those dagger-teeth of hers when she gets drunk and it makes Cashmere think of her Games again, of hardly daring to breathe as the smell of Anya's blood stung her nose and Jasper died.

She wonders if Eno is thinking about her Games too. They’d paraded out all the expected questions during her interview - whether she’s excited to be back in the Games, whether she’ll stick to her vegetarian diet in the arena, whether she’s going to put those artificially sharpened teeth to use - and Cashmere thinks it’s bothering her.

She doesn’t ask about it, because she and Eno don’t have that kind of friendship, but the silence is weighing on Cashmere’s chest like Anya's sword had when Cashmere had played faux-dead beside her in her Games, so she says “Do you think the others mean it? The unity?”

Enobaria tilts her head slightly so she can look Cashmere in the eyes. One of her fangs peeks out from underneath her mangled lips as she says tightly, “Don’t be an idiot, Cash. The blood will always flow.”

Eno passes her the bottle clutched in her hand and Cashmere takes another burning sip, craning her neck to look at Finnick, his back pressed flush against the bed frame as he glares at his feet, at Gloss, his legs tangled in Brutus’ as they laugh about something that Cashmere can’t quite make out.

She looks at Gloss, Gloss who still occasionally visits their parents, Gloss who sobbed himself to sleep for days when the Girl on Fire killed his boy, Marvel, in last year’s Games, and Cashmere lets herself form a plan. It probably goes against whatever half-baked thing Finnick and his rebels have cooked up, whatever misguided save-his-lover mission the Twelve boy is on, but Cashmere doesn’t care. She takes the bottle back from Eno and chugs it, pushing down the thought that the next time they’re this close, Cashmere might be killing her to protect Gloss. She'd do it, and she knows Eno would do the same to her if it meant she could go home. Such is the way of the Careers.

She doesn’t get the chance to protect Gloss, in the end. Cashmere dies in tenth place; shameful, shameful tenth place, and she wonders, as Johanna’s axe enters her chest, how long it will be before they teach the weaknesses that led her to her death to the Academy children.

She doesn’t know that, by the time the year is out, there will be no Academy left to teach it.

Chapter Text

Here is Enobaria’s problem: she thinks that Lyme is a rebel. It isn’t much of a surprise - Enobaria can still remember the barely-suppressed rage in Lyme’s face when Enobaria had woken up from her Games with serrated shark’s teeth, when Nolan had come back from a job in the Capitol riddled with bruises, when Harlow disembarked the tribute train sobbing and jumpy after her Capitol post-Victory tour party.

It’s so little of a surprise, in fact, that Enobaria wonders if the others have figured it out, but they don’t mention it if they have.

And Enobaria knows she should turn her in, but she can’t. She thinks if she could even pluck up the courage to try, the words would fail her at the last second. She can’t betray Lyme who fought tooth and nail to bring Enobaria home from the slowly crumbling mountains of her arena, who always returns from the Capitol loaded with tofu because those sorts of pricey shipments normally don’t come Two’s way.

So she stays silent, letting Lyme cook in her kitchen and tut at how messy Enobaria is like she normally does, hoping against hope that one day Lyme will trust her enough to bring her into the fold.

The afternoon of the Quell announcement, the whole rowdy lot of them all gather in the middle of the Victors’ Village for lunch, arranging blankets in a semicircle around the old statue in the middle of the square despite the March chill in the air. Enobaria normally avoids this part of the Village as much as she can, going the back way behind Brutus’ and Elias’ houses instead, because the eroding statue reminds her a little too much of the way the rocks beneath her feet would crumple suddenly in her arena. It always makes her hear Morgan from Four’s screams as the ground beneath her feet caved and she fell from the mountain to the boom of a cannon.

She pointedly turns her back to it, surveying the scene before her. Bree and Harlow are playing some kind of knife-spinning game, flat on their stomachs on one of Two’s rare patches of grass, and Carrick is lecturing them on safe knife use. Beside Enobaria, Lyme is carefully assembling a sandwich, smashing chickpeas onto a cracker and then squashing another cracker on top with more than her usual aggression. She hands it to Enobaria with one of her tight smiles before leaning against the statue, sliding her arm around Enobaria’s shoulders.

Enobaria goes stiff for a moment with shock. She knows that some mentors get affectionate with their victors - she’s seen how much Selene from One hugs her two, Olivine and Claudette - but Lyme’s never been keen on that sort of thing, barely managing an awkward hug when Enobaria had her first Games-themed nightmare and woke up with bile intermingling with the blood in her mouth.

Nolan glances at them, eyebrows raised in preparation to make a joke about how out-of-character this is, before Enobaria flashes her teeth at him and he quails, turning back to his conversation with Elias. He’s skinny, for a Two, and Enobaria will never stop using that to quell him because Nolan sometimes needs a little nudge to know when to keep his mouth shut.

“Looking forward to the Quell announcement?” Enobaria asks, her sideways glance at Lyme hinting that she means the exact opposite. She’s learned to be at least a little more subtle, thanks to Cashmere.

“Oh, absolutely,” Lyme replies, sighing. “It’ll be a busy time.”

“I didn’t think you were mentoring this year,” says Enobaria. Lyme’s not - Harlow and Elias are up for it this year, which Enobaria knows because she’s seen them poring over stacks of Academy files together, trying to pick their tributes.

Lyme’s expression twists. “Someone’s got to babysit you lot during the Games.”

“Better get in soon,” Elias calls, right on cue. “The announcement will air soon.”

The change in the air is immediate: Harlow shudders as she and Bree start to pack up their blanket, Cadmus dumps his sandwich wrappers into a waste bag with a little too much force, and Lyme’s grip is almost painfully tight when she yanks Enobaria to her feet.

They pile into Cadmus’ house since it’s the closest to the square. Bree manages to sweet-talk Harlow into touching up her undercut and Cadmus is twitchy with the effort of keeping his mouth shut as tufts of Bree’s thick black hair flutter to the floor, and Enobaria stares at the back of Lyme’s head as her mentor fiddles with the television, and she thinks talk to me, trust me, as though Lyme can hear her.

Caesar Flickerman’s voice blasts out of the television when Lyme successfully gets it to flicker on, keeping up a running commentary on the cut of Snow’s suit that Enobaria immediately tunes out until Snow plucks the third Quell card from the box. He reads it aloud to the camera in his calm, clear voice, as though what he is saying isn’t about to destroy lives.

When he reaches the word “victors”, the only reason that Enobaria knows she hasn’t imagined it is that Elias mutes the television, his normally radiant skin bleached of its colour, and Brutus says into the sudden silence, “Well, at least I’ll be able to get some action again. It’s so boring around here.”

Harlow lets out a very un-Two-like squeak and her hands slip against the razor she’s using, narrowly missing Bree’s ear, and Bree starts shouting and Cadmus has decided that now is the perfect time to start making snide comments about bratty young victors messing up his living room, and all of them are determinedly ignoring the announcement and what it means.

They drag her away after the reaping, and Enobaria is not stupid enough to fight the Peacekeepers the way Brutus does. Her only regret about that is that she doesn’t get to say goodbye to Lyme.

Enobaria can hear Harlow crying in the living room of the train that night as she lies in her bed, trying not to think about how the Capitol will expect her to use her cursed teeth in the arena, about how skilled the Capitol is at getting exactly what they want.

She hears Elias slip out of his room and into the living room to comfort Harlow, but Enobaria doesn't move. She feels Oscar from Four’s throat against her lips, so vivid it feels like she’s back in her arena with the canons of her victory sounding, and Enobaria is careful not to disturb Elias and Harlow when she staggers to the bathroom and throws up blood.

.

When the Girl on Fire shoots her arrow into the forcefield, the arena stinks of burning flesh. Enobaria is half inclined to lie down and give up and let the others do whatever they see fit. She can see the final battle coming down to her and Finnick, easy - the Gamemakers know that they’re friends and they can never resist a bit of drama - and she could end up with another Four boy’s throat between her teeth before dawn and she can’t do it.

The cannons are firing over and over again in the background; Enobaria can’t decide if they’re malfunctioning or if the others are self-destructing, but it is making her think about how Cash’s face was frozen with shock when her cannon fired and she wonders if Artemis had turned away from the screen when Johanna’s axe entered her victor’s chest. One of the cannons is definitely for Brutus; he was already dead when Enobaria reached him and she is too tired to chase down Mellark and put her teeth to good use. She sits beside his body like a child instead, picturing Blaze’s rage as a boy from Twelve of all places kills his mentor.

When the hovercraft comes for her, she thinks for a wild moment that the rest of them are dead and she’s won until they put the handcuffs on her and stuff a mouthguard between her teeth.

She can tell that the person in the neighbouring cell is Johanna Mason by the screams that drift up through the air vent in the far corner, but they don’t talk until one evening that Enobaria thinks is about a month after the Games, although it’s getting harder and harder to tell.

She’d spent the day being relentlessly questioned by some Capitol woman about whether she knows anything about plans for a rebellion (she does not) and whether she knows of any potentially rebellious victors (she thinks of Lyme and keeps her mouth firmly shut) before they start asking her directly about Lyme (she lies and she lies and the woman looks like she’d like to make Enobaria scream).

The woman dumps Enobaria's dinner in the corner of the cell and leaves. Enobaria doesn’t even touch it, because she can see the small strips of dried meat from across the room and it’s making her stomach lurch, and tries to feel grateful that being a Two has saved her from any torture.

Next door, she hears gaspy breathing, and then a cautious “Two?” drifts up from the air vent in the corner of the cell. Kicking the tray of food out of the way and resolving to attempt the porridge placed next to the dried meat later, Enobaria presses her ear to the air vent and hisses back, “Seven?”

“Did you know about Lyme?” Johanna asks, and her voice is trembling and raw from screaming, like the slightest change in pitch would ruin it completely.

“I suspected.”

“They’d probably let you out if you told them.”

“But it’s Lyme,” Enobaria says, and Johanna hums and that is the end of that.

Two months later, the rebels break Mellark and Johanna out. Enobaria hears Johanna being wrestled out of her cell by someone with a gruff Twelve accent, hears her screeching at her rescuer to go back for Enobaria and hears the boy - because he still sounds like a boy despite all of his bravado - telling her to shut up and run.

Enobaria starts screaming the next day, when they tell her that it's only a matter of time until Lyme is dead, tell her what they did to Harlow and Elias because they didn’t get out of the Capitol in time, what they did to the victors they left behind in Two. She doesn’t think she stops screaming until the war is over and they let her out and she goes back to the empty ghost town of the Victors’ Village.

Chapter Text

Finnick knows that his name is going to be called, because Plutarch had told him that it would be so, but his heart still thuds in his chest as he takes the stage, careful to keep his smirk in place as he flings his hands into the air and bows. His hair is still damp from his morning swim and he is the Finnick that all of Four - all of Panem - think him to be, until Priscilla, Four’s prissy escort, turns to the women’s bowl to reap his fellow tribute.

“Annie Cresta,” Priscilla reads out, in her bell-like accent, and Finnick feels his mask crack and slip.

When he was little, so young he hadn’t even been sent to the Academy yet, he’d been playing on the harbour wall with his friends when a boy further down the wall had fallen screaming into the water. The adults’ attempts to revive him had been unsuccessful, and Finnick has always wondered what it must feel like to drown, to battle until that human instinct to breathe kicked in and the water filled your lungs.

He doesn’t wonder any more. As he watches Annie stagger to the stage on shaky legs, no doubt plagued by her own memories of drowning, Finnick thinks that this is what it must feel like to breathe and feel the oxygen being stolen away from you even so. He reaches blindly for her hand as Annie reaches the stage, frantically mouthing I’m sorry over and over again because Plutarch had promised he wouldn’t let the reaping touch Annie and yet he has failed.

For another drowning moment, he thinks that nobody is going to volunteer for her. Dylan and Crest are muttering between themselves, looking sideways at Calypso, who steps back as if to say don’t make me do this. Isla is gnawing anxiously on her knuckles, her almost permanent anxious tell, clearly on the verge of volunteering, before Mags steps decisively forward to take Annie’s place. Isla visibly sags in relief.

“And we have a volunteer!” Priscilla calls out, and Finnick barely has time to give Annie a fierce hug goodbye before the Peacekeepers advance to drag him away.

“Fin, I’m sorry,” Calypso says, the minute he gets on the train. She’s technically Mags’ mentor, but since Mags has mentored more tributes to victory than any of them and nobody in their right mind is going to sponsor someone in her eighties, Calypso’s role is a formality at best and she knows it.

“It’s okay, Cal, really,” Finnick replies, and he thinks it comes out begrudging but he’s too tired for this, even though it’s barely midday. He doesn’t blame Cal at all - she had a harder Games than most, having lost an eye to the boy from One’s knives in her finale - he just wishes it didn’t have to come down to Annie or Mags in the arena.

Cal still shrugs, toying with her food even though it’s the one good thing about the Capitol, and Finnick huffs “Callie,” exasperatedly, because that’s the name that always got her to melt when they were kids in the Academy together. He hasn’t called her that since he got out of the arena and she slapped him silly for volunteering four years before he was supposed to. His only defence had been that they’d have been in the same Games otherwise, and he would have killed her.

“You think you could kill me, Fin?” she’d asked, both her blue eyes still in her face and narrowed playfully.

“Oh, Callie, I know I could,” Finnick had replied, still riding that victory high, still as cocky as he had been when he’d knocked Delmar out of the way so that he could volunteer instead.

Those short weeks between volunteering and facing Cal again had felt like a lifetime even then, but they feel even longer ago now that Finnick has so many personas and leads so many lives.

“I want to bring Cal in,” Finnick tells Mags later, knocking on her door in the dead of night, when Cal and Finnick’s mentor, Ronan, have gone to bed. The train is shivering under Finnick’s feet, picking up speed as it weaves unerringly through the districts on its way to the Capitol. Time is slipping through his fingers like salt water, like the sand that forms the shores of Four.

Mags sighs, idly weaving a few strands of floss into a makeshift fish hook. “She’s not shown any rebellious tendencies, Fin,” she says. Her speech is still slurred from the stroke she had a couple of years ago, but Finnick can understand her well by now, even if right now he wishes he couldn’t.

“But you’d vouch for her, right?” Finnick replies desperately. He wouldn’t have a hope of getting Coin and Plutarch to trust Cal on his own - Lyme and Selene have been begging for years to bring in Enobaria and Cashmere, respectively, to no avail.

“It’s too risky. You know that.”

“But when Snow realises that it was the rebels that break the arena, he’ll go to anyone and everyone close to the rebels to try and get information. I can’t let her be tortured or killed, Mags, she’s my -” Here Finnick stops, because as much as they have grown up together, as much as they snark and tease and bicker as siblings do, Calypso isn’t really his sister. Not that it would matter much to Coin - Finnick has seen enough to know that family ties matter little to her, and the ties of friendship matter even less.

Mags’ lips thin, and Finnick knows that he’s hit home. She mentored Cal with just as much warmth that she mentored Finnick himself with, after all, and he knows that it’s made them close.

“Well, if I say no, you’re just going to pull the ‘I won’t help unless there’s a plan to rescue them’ card again, won’t you?” Mags crosses her arms, the still-working side of her mouth twisting into a wry grin.

“Worked for Annie, didn't it?" Finnick quips, flapping his hands in the air with a seemingly careless air.

Mags shakes her head. “Go to sleep, Fin. I’ll talk to Plutarch.”

Finnick pauses at the doorway, swooping into a low bow and planting an over-loud kiss onto Mags’ hand. “You’re the best.”

She swats at him, slamming the door in his face.

.

The interviews are a shitshow, with the victors who don't know of the plan doing their best to stop the Games. As Plutarch said he would, Snow doesn't cancel the Games. Finnick thinks he should be glad that the plan can still go ahead despite the other victors' efforts, but all he feels is a frantically twisting eel where his stomach should be.

Mags had told him, just before they went on for their interviews, that Plutarch had promised to talk to Coin about putting a rescue plan in place for Cal, but they’ve heard nothing but silence and in twelve hours the two of them are going to be raised into an arena where nothing but the most simple of messages will be sent to them. Finnick doesn’t have much faith in Coin’s ability to confirm that they’ll get Cal out of the Capitol through bread rolls.

He’s on his way out anyway, to get shitfaced with One and Two, so Finnick pauses to knock on Cal’s door, painfully aware of Ronan asleep a few feet down the corridor.

“Fin, you’re a bitch. I was asleep,” Cal says, opening her door a crack.

“Can I come in?” asks Finnick, fiddling with the fancy Capitol vodka he’s taking down to One’s apartment. Cal opens her door a little wider in response, and Finnick slips through the gap like a fish, dropping down into the armchair by the door.

“I’m going to see One and Two. Want to come?” He knows what the answer will be. Cal takes mentoring very seriously, even in Mags’ case where there’s not much she can do.

“No. I want to be well-rested for tomorrow. And you should too.”

“I could be killing them in a week. I want to pretend like we’re friends for one night.” Finnick grins his camera-grin. “Don’t begrudge a dead man, Cal.”

“You’re not going to die,” she says fiercely, and Finnick agrees, if only because he knows he is important to the rebellion, and therefore Plutarch will do his best to keep him alive. Not that he needs him. All Finnick needs is a trident and then it is game over for everyone else.

“Yeah, yeah. I’m great, I’m incredible, I’m the best victor, whatever.” Finnick reaches out, the bottles in his bag screeching as they bump into one another, and grips Cal’s hand with a ferocity that obviously startles her because she tries to pull awat. “Cal, you need to listen to me for a minute. If something happens in the arena, something bad -”

“Nothing’s going to happen, Fin,” she interrupts. “Other than the usual.”

“Just in case. You get as far away from Games Central as you can, do you hear me?” Finnick presses on, uncaring of the Capitol cameras undoubtedly listening in. He’s sure he’ll get it in the neck from Plutarch when he’s out, but right now there’s only one important thing for him to be worrying about. “Get away from Games Central. Get out of the Capitol if you can. You and Ronan, but leave him if you have to. Don’t go home. Promise?”

“Sure, I guess?” Cal’s nose wrinkles the way it always does when she’s confused, and Finnick’s throat feels horribly thick like it does when he’s about to cry.

“With feeling, Callie.”

“I promise, Fin, okay? Was that enough feeling for you?”

“Perfect.” Finnick smiles at her, and he can tell from the way her eyebrows vanish into her fringe that he probably looks a little bit unhinged. “I’m going to go down to Two’s floor now. Pick up Brutus and Enobaria. Be a good host and see me out.”

Cal opens the door for him, pulling him into a bone-crushing hug before he can leave for the lift. “Don’t die. You’ve got Annie to think of. I want to be at that wedding,” she mutters into his hair.

“Oh, don’t worry, Cal. It’ll be the wedding of the year. We’ll get you the world’s frilliest dress to wear. Orange, obviously.”

“I hate that colour,” she replies without feeling. “Now get lost and don’t get too drunk. I think Mags would revive and then kill you again if you got killed in the bloodbath because you were hungover.”

“Duly noted.” Finnick pulls away, stepping into the lift and pressing the button for Two.

The Avox at the entrance gapes at him, wide-eyed, when he slips inside Two’s apartment, and Finnick smirks and puts a finger to his lips as he knocks on Brutus’ door.

They end up in Cashmere’s room, sprawled across the furniture in varying states of disarray. Finnick knows they’re not his friends - that Brutus will leap into the bloodbath without a second thought, that there’s nothing to convince Eno to do anything other than follow his lead, that Cash will bend over backwards to make sure it’s Gloss who walks out of the arena alive - but it doesn’t feel that way. Gloss is giggling over some joke Brutus has made, drunk on the shit Two spirit that Eno and Cash are currently sharing, curled up like two cats on Cash’s bed, and it’s too easy to pretend that it’s just another Games, that they’re just dissecting another set of tribute interviews before they have to relieve their own Games for a fortnight.

Finnick is staring glumly at the bottle in his hand, knowing that if he drinks much more of it he’ll end up doing what Lyme and Selene have been threatening to do for years and tell Cash and Eno everything. He’s trying to remember why that’s a bad thing, but then he hears Eno whisper, “Don’t be an idiot, Cash. The blood will always flow.” and he knows he’s just had too much to drink, that Selene is too soft, that Lyme is too attached to her most fucked up victor. He thinks there's nothing and nobody who will convince the other Careers to go against Snow.

He flings his bottle aside and announces that he’s going back to his apartment. Nobody stops him as he leaves.

Seven hours later, they raise him into the arena, and Finnick takes one look at the lapping water and all he can think about is how thankful he is that Annie is not here.

The gong sounds, and Finnick sprints to the Cornucopia and seizes the trident that Plutarch put there just for him and maybe Eno is right. The blood will always flow.