Cause I'm a Loser, Baby // [Nell/Cedar/Leet]

It seemed prudent to endear himself to as many people as possible in the ever-dwindling span of time that separated the twenty-four of them from the Arena. He wasn't sure if he should prioritize the ones that seemed the most dangerous — that had worked out in Aranica's favor so many years before Cedar was born — or if he ought to worry more about the quiet, unassuming underdogs. Maybe the former. The Capitol hated underdog victors as much as they loved rooting for underdog tributes.

So he doesn't shy away from the District Four motormouth, and he doesn't try to hide his famous face from the wild-eyed girl from Eight. (Elite. Nell. He can tell himself these are strangers as much as he wants but it had only taken once to sear every name and face into Cedar Halt's conscience.) He's not really sure what to say. In silence, he picks the tiny bones from the tiny quail wings and tries not to think about the baby birds in the bush outside of his window back home, and tries not to think about how they'll grow up and fly off by the end of the summer, and tries not to think about how they'll return in the spring to build nests of their own.

The roast birds, smothered in a walnut-fig reduction, are every bit as tender and succulent as he remembers.

Parallel tracks of conversations about fish swim in the air around him.

"Why is that fish so flat?"

"Either of you feel like you're fish in a bowl?"

He nods. His whole life Cedar Halt has been trapped within the invisible walls of this very moment.

"But, do you know what a beta is?"

"You?" he snarks under his breath, glancing around for wherever his district partner went off to. (Harper. He knows her name.)

"Like round and round the castle, everyone waiting for you to forget something important —"

"Why is your fish so flat?"

"— like why we are here in the first place."

"Flounder," Cedar notes, answering both questions at once. "Floundering. It's like that here. They expect everyone else to forget as easily as they do." He starts stacking the tiny bird bones in a neat little pile on the side of his plate. His dinner needs funeral rites less than anyone else here, yet he builds them a sweet potato sepulchre all the same. "They'll have fully forgotten us next year. Ask about last year's tributes, they'll just say Jayne who? Finley who? Damaris who?" He glowers at his plate, then glances over at Elite's.

"It's a bottom feeder, right? Flounder?"