"Shh!" Howard stops dead and looks over his shoulder again, but there's nothing here on the second floor right now. No footsteps, no breathing echoing through these rooms. The animals and fake humans in the diorama stare into space, creeping around the periphery in their stasis as if the Capitol designed them to cast the most unsettling shadows possible.

In fact, they probably did. But Howard eventually relaxes and rushes over to R, shuffling his feet so there's no slap of bare heel against the ground. He starts dragging R to the diorama of the gazelle, going "come on, out of plain sight..."

When they're finally adjusted, Howard crouches down behind a taxidermied lioness and takes a look at R. Even in the dim light, he can see the flush to R's cheeks, the green tint in his blue eyes that was previously absent. He actually reaches out and touches R's hair, and it's thinner than it was before, but soft. Shampoo-commercial soft. That, and a rich color that Howard's never seen on an old corpse before.

He glances down at the canister and the tag with a single legible letter. Howard realizes he could lie and say the package is his, but that he doesn't, in fact, want to. In a more trying Arena, it would be tempting, but R's one of his best friends and while lying to a friend is very much within Howard's bailiwick, he isn't sure about stealing from them.

"Welcome to the land of the living," Howard whispers, then giggles silently, the smile on his face carrying the laughter his voice can't.