A plate of beef stewhas been sitting in front of me for about half an hour now, but I'm not hungryand I keep playing in it with my fork. Ionel stopped freaking out andcomplaining about how cold it was going to be fifteen minutes ago, which Iconsider like a small victory. I keep wondering if I made the right choicetoday or if I only signed my own death warrant. Getting allies will either bethe best decision I ever took or the one that had me killed. Viviana is sittingin front of me, also playing with her food in silence, probably running thesame thoughts as me in her head over and over again. The only ally I do notquestion right now is her. The way she talked earlier about not wanting to comehome really convinced me. Even if she was lying and just wanted me to trust herso she can kill me easily, she's far from being a career tribute and I wouldeasily win a fight against her. You'd think that by being a mayor's child she'dhave access to all sorts of different training techniques and amazingly greattrainers, but I've never seen her or heard about her training for the games.She is an only child and her mother died years ago while giving birth to herlittle brother who also didn't survive. She is all that is left to her fatherand I know he would never have allowed her to become a career tribute andvolunteer. Of course, he remarried a few years ago, but everyone in theDistrict knows it will never be the same. He truly loved his first wife andthere is nothing that can compete with true love, except for his affection forViviana, the only thing he had to remember what his happy family once was. Itry to remember his exact words. Takecare of her before the Games. Justmake sure she can make it through the next few days. He didn't ask me to domy best to bring her home; he didn't ask me to protect her from the othertributes; he asked me to take care of her beforethe games. It's like he knew she wouldn't make it past the first day in thearena, that he would never see her again. If I'm the one who kills her, how amI going to live with that for the rest of my life? How am I going to look intoher father's eyes, knowing that these eyes saw the most horrible thing, thatthey have cried the most painful tears and that behind them hides a sad, angry,broken man; a man that I broke? I shake my head, trying to erase that thoughtof my mind. Secrets may be my best weapon against the Capitol, butunderestimating the power of love is as dangerous, if not more, and it's theCapitol's greatest weapon against us.

     "Are you okay Finnick?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. And you?"

"Yeah. What were you thinking about?"

"Our allies."

Mags is now looking at us from the couch she is sitting on, listening closely to our conversation. We haven't told her or Viviana's mentor about them yet and we were not planning to do so before later tonight, but I really need a form of approval from her. Even if she doesn't talk much, she has been really useful so far and I know that if she says something is right, then it is.

"What about them? Are you having second thoughts?"

"Sort of... It's hard to trust someone you don't know."

"Do you think they trust us?"

"I think that Anthos does, maybe Cedar too. I'm not so sure about Adenias, he seems reticent to form an alliance." I answer, looking at Mags.

I'm immediately relieved when I see her going back to what she was doing as soon as she heard the names. We took the right decision today.

"Well I thought that by the end of the training session, he looked pretty okay with it. You probably convinced him."

"I hope so, because if not, we're going to have a big problem once we're over there."

"Speaking of that, what strategy should we adopt there?" she asks with visible disgust when she says the last word.

I see that Mags started listening to us again and not knowing what to answer, I decide to ask for help.

"What did you do Mags?"

"If you're fast enough, you can run to the Cornucopia and hope that you're one of the first ones to make it. Then you run away from it and hope that no one follows you. You can skip the first step and directly run for your life as far away as possible, but you won't have any weapons or other things that might be useful. Roughly twenty five to fifty percent of the tributes die during the bloodbath and they're always the ones who arrived last. If you don't think you're going to be fast enough, don't even try to go there, just run." she says, not answering my question on purpose.

"I'm never going to be fast enough, but you could, right Finnick?"

"I'm not sure I even want to try. We should discuss this tomorrow with the others."

"What scares you the most?" she asks with a straight face.

"I don't know. Everything I guess. What about you?"

"I think I'm afraid of dying. But the worse thing is, I'm also afraid to survive. I'm also scared to lose myself. What if I become a monster?"

"Maybe we shouldn't talk about that. It's just going to make things worse, don't you think?"

"No, I don't agree with you this time. I want to talk about it because I feel like I'm going crazy! I feel like it's not normal to be scared every time I look at the careers, the other tributes, even you! You always look so sure about everything, you don't even look afraid of the Games and it scares me because being fearless makes you cruel, reckless and inhuman."

Her painful words hit me right in theface. For a moment, I can't say anything because I know she's right. I've beenhiding my real emotions since the Reaping because I was scared to appear weak.I've been acting like a career since the beginning, smiling and waving in frontof the cameras. I've been acting like a brainless, emotionless and filthyanimal. I've been acting like a true Capitol puppet.

*** I am so sorry, I forgot to post on Monday!!***