"You can judge it," Finnick says, his tone dark. It's hard, here, to explain just what it's like, and most of the time he doesn't try. People here don't know how it feels, how impossible causing any sort of trouble seems when the Capitol has the Hunger Games, the Peacekeepers and their public floggings and executions, and the districts have the tributes, the production quotas, and barely enough food.

He rarely speaks openly, even here, about the Capitol. The old habits of half-honest jokes and dark sarcasm are still imprinted deep on him.

"That must have been a relief, sometimes," he says, after a few moments of quiet thought, and he can't keep a hint of wistfulness from his voice. "If people didn't recognize you. I could never escape it, everyone knew me and my life story."

He laughs, though he, too, has little of actual humor in it. "I'd have done better to get someone to write about me, too."