(Author's note: This story is a sequel to my story Zero Sum. It probably will not make much sense if you haven't read that first.)

I like books. I don't think I've managed to get my hands on more than a couple dozen over the course of my life, but I like them. There's something soothing about written words. They almost seem to cheat reality with the way compact little shapes unfold into larger meanings as they flow through my eyes and into my mind. It's a kind of magic, I think.

I used to hide behind the classroom bookshelf when the school turned us out for midday break. It was only a small space, but I was smaller, and I've always had a knack for not being noticed. Once the teacher was gone, I used to curl up under a table in the dark and silent emptiness and read. The books we used for teaching literacy were old and mangled and eclectic. I liked to think some of them, the ones that seemed to be missing almost as many pages as they retained, may have been from before the world went to Hell. It was in one of those that I first saw a picture of a fox.

The story was about the fox being hunted. The people after him were clearly rich, which didn't make sense to me on my first read, because a fox is a dog, and rich people don't eat dog. As I got further into the story, though, I realized that they weren't trying to eat him, that really they weren't even the ones hunting him. They were watching their hounds hunt him, and that did make sense, because rich people like to watch things with blood, and I think the story took place before television.

I'm pretty sure it was supposed to be a funny story, but it always made me a little bit sad. Hounds are almost the same thing as foxes. They're dogs. They have more in common with the animal they're killing than they do with the people who want to see them kill it.

I think about that as I lie in the too-clean-smelling white bed they put me in after lifting me from the arena. I think about Katniss, the girl I just watched walk into a fire, and how she told Rue that I was like a fox. She was wrong. Foxes don't win. They might live a day longer if they're successful, or a day less if they're not, but they have nothing to gain, nothing to celebrate, nothing that might be called a victory condition.

The people from the Capitol hover over me trying to put back together what they've broken. They primp me and preen me, and one of them gives me what she must think is a friendly smile as she pats me on the head. But she's not my friend, and I know all too well what I am to her.

Good dog, Wren Ardell. Well done. Have a bone.

—

I don't see Rue again until the Crowning. She looks beautiful, polished to a shine and barely recognizable as the dirty, broken girl I knew from the arena. I hate them a little for that. Our dresses are the same color: grass-green with pale red trim. That sets me thinking, briefly, about how they'll make it all work - two victors, two districts, two fashion teams, two of how many other things? - but it's not my problem. All I have to worry about is holding myself together for the next few hours.

I think I might hate Caesar Flickerman more than anyone else in the Capitol. Maybe. The pre-Game interview seems like it happened in another lifetime when I was a completely different person, but now that I see him again, I can remember it clearly. I wasn't going to play along. I didn't think I could play along. I said hello and as little as possible after that, and then—

"My, not spilling any of our plans, are we?"

My plans, at the time, were this: Run. Hide. Watch. Steal food, when possible. Those are the things I'm good at — the only things I'm good at. But when Caesar spoke to me, I felt clever. Once he found that angle, it became easy to say the right thing to his questions just by saying very little. It was encouraging. It was energizing. For a moment, it was almost — almost — fun.

When that moment was over, I had no idea what just happened. I don't think I've been quite the same since.

Another thing there are two of: thrones. Rue's and mine are too far apart for me to take her hand when Katniss first appears in the playback, at the District Twelve reaping, throwing herself at the stage like she threw herself onto the fire. After her come the shots of District Ten, then Nine, Eight, Seven, Six, Four, Three, Two, One, and...

And, the music changes. It was too upbeat to begin with, but now it sounds less like a soundtrack and more like music made for dancing to. As the screen splits to show both Rue and myself climbing two separate scaffolds in two separate towns, I realize that it's a song.

When you get up in my face you spit poison in my eyes

There's poison in your praise and there's poison in your lies

Baby, you're a slow death, and I knew that from the start

But there must be poison on your breath the way your kiss stops my heart

I look to Rue and see her looking right back at me, but she's not gauging my reaction like I'm trying to gauge hers. Her eyes are fixed on my dress, and her fingers pluck absently at the strings of round black spinel beads around her throat. They're gleaming and faceted and don't look much at all like the berries I suddenly realize they're supposed to represent.

What is anyone getting out of us sitting here dressed like poisonous plants while a song about kisses and poison plays? What do the Capitol audiences get out of watching little girls kill each other? The way Glimmer moved and spoke on the stage — for the men with money who could save her life — made me think of my mother when her Peacekeepers approached her. There was no question how she was being looked at. I didn't want to think that all of us might have been looked at that way.

Rue is amazing throughout the playback of the actual Game. I keep glancing at her, because she's here and now and with me and not the cold, bloody wilderness on the screen that still seems more real than anything in the Capitol. She sits straight and keeps a straight mouth and cries without making a sound. I want to scream, and most of it isn't even as bad for me as it is for her. There's just the one part I'm really afraid of, and it's at almost the very end. I have most of the three hours to get ready, to separate what's happening on the screen from my memories of it and my memories from where I am right now.

And here it comes. There I am, the bait, "hiding" badly in the bushes to lure Clove under the tree Rue's climbed. Once she's in place, Rue drops the rock she hauled up with her. It misses Clove's head, so Rue — thinking fast, or maybe just panicking — drops herself instead, the fifteen-foot fall broken only by Clove's body. They're both partially stunned by the impact, but Clove has a knife and lashes out with it. When I hear Rue scream, I rush in with my own knife.

It's strange; what I'm watching played back isn't really what I remember. I remember fear. Clove was terrifying: a professional killer, cruel and competent. From this angle, she doesn't look quite so much bigger than us, and at this distance, I can see clearly what we did: we set a trap to murder her. Back then, I was pleading silently the whole time for everything to go as planned, because if it didn't, I was sure I would die. Now, what I want more than anything else is to see her escape.

Of course, she doesn't. I stab her. She bleeds and screams and slashes at me. I stab her again and again and scream back at her to just die already (because I wanted it over; she was spitting blood on my face and I could smell things inside of her and I just wanted it done). Eventually, she does.

This is what my mother saw.

This is what Reed saw.

I don't know how either of them are ever going to touch me again.

I pull my knees into my chest, cover my head with my arms, and scream. I don't want to be seen anymore. I don't want to be heard, either, but I can't stop screaming, so I bite down on my own wrist — hard. The pain and the effort it takes to keep biting in spite of it pull me into myself until the world around me goes out of focus. When I close my eyes, I can almost feel as though no one were looking at me.

I don't unfold myself until the playback ends. The dents in the skin on my arm are deep and dark red-purple, and I feel a little bit calmer just looking at them.

"All right?" Caesar asks gently. I nod, and he breaks into an enormous grin. "Splendid! So, why don't you tell us all a little about your winning strategy?"

I can do this. I knew it was coming, and I've had nothing to do since I was lifted from the arena but prepare.

"It all comes down to calculating risks," I say. "The best example, of course, was what Rue and I came up with at the end. A sixty-six percent chance of survival isn't bad for this game. It was certainly better than either of our chances if we couldn't convince Katniss not to fight us, though I can't put an exact number on those."

"Very clever," says Caesar approvingly. "You are really just so clever!" I hope this is a coded way of telling me I'm saying what they want to hear, and not just his usual babbling.

"The other part," I continue, "is to always keep your eyes on the prize. I don't mean the money. That's a nice bonus, but to survive, I had to be willing to sacrifice half of it to Rue and then half of what was left to the Everdeens. In the arena, survival always comes first." They haven't yet said that two winners means half the prize for each. My hope is they'll appreciate me conceding it on my own and how that makes it look like just the way the system has to work instead of one more thing they're unfairly taking from us. I think that they'll be more likely to let me keep my promise to Katniss if I make it part of their moral: that there's only so much to go around, and cooperation will always cost us dearly.

"It's definitely a shame about that. But I'm sure you'll scrape by somehow!" He takes a moment laugh at his own joke before turning to Rue. "Well, kiddo, you said not to count you out, and look at you now! How does it feel?"

"I'm just glad it's over," says Rue, looking at me instead of him. I lean in toward her slightly, as though to say, Go on. Go on, you have to give them something. "And... I'm glad I won. Who wouldn't be?"

She smiles weakly at me, but I can't smile back. Her face falls when she realizes that was not the best question to ask. There's one answer that springs immediately to mind, and now we're all thinking it.

"Wren mentioned the prize money," says Caesar. "What's the first thing you're going to do with yours?"

"I'm going to buy a great big cake," Rue says quickly. "For my family. There are eight of us, and it will be big enough for everyone to have a piece."

"Marvelous idea!" Caesar gushes, and twists around in his chair to look at the backstage area. "Can we hook her up with the hotel caterers? Can we do that?" I don't see anyone react to him, but he nonetheless turns back to us and declares, "We can do that! I'll tell you what, Rue. We'll whip up for you the biggest, most delicious cake you have ever seen — any design you want, any flavor you want, and at a special victory celebration discount. You take that cake home with you, and you give your whole family a little taste of the luxury you've enjoyed here at the Capitol. All right?"

"Thank you so much," Rue says, and the crowd goes wild.

Caesar might have just saved us. He certainly brought it all back to what the Hunger Games are really about. Katniss is dead. Clove and Cato are dead. Thresh and Will are dead. But it's a happy, feel-good ending because the little girl who survived gets to bring home a fancy cake.