"We have to," he says, tilting his head to one side as he considers her words. "You run a small crew, that means all hands on deck, including your kids, 'cause that's what it takes to make your quotas. Kids who aren't from fishing families don't know that sort of thing."

He doesn't talk about his childhood -- what there'd been of it before he'd gone to the Careers and then on to the Victors' Village -- with many people. Annie's from his fishery, most of the other victors don't ask, and he's always hated talking about home in the Capitol. Most people there don't care, they just want to revel in the glamor of the poor district boy made rich and famous by his victory, and he's been on the bitterly wrong end of that too many times to want to give them anything real to feed it.

There's a lot he could say about the strategy of the Games. It's not just about knowing how to feed yourself, though that had gone well for Katniss, and often did for the tributes from Four, too, there's knowing how to game the Games, how to make alliances and when to break them, the sort of things the Careers are taught alongside how to fight, but more than that, there's a stubbornness and determination that can never be taught, but that all of the victors have. He still doesn't want to talk about that, though, because it comes too close to open admission of what everyone knows: that he, and Annie, and Four's other younger victors, had that forbidden advantage of training.

"We're all afraid of the peacekeepers," is what he does admit. "It's just easier to poach fish than go somewhere forbidden."