Part 2 of my D4 crack fic, a snowball for the lovely Zero.

It Takes a (Victor's) Village, pt2

"Boat!" Annie curled each hand into a tight fist and plunged them both through the drywall. "He wants to buy a new boat!"

Two jagged holes, side by side, now lived on Librae's library wall. "Um…"

"What's wrong with the boat we have now?" Annie cocked her fist, which two seconds later gave birth to a third hole. "What's wrong with good old Neptune's Thong?"

Librae could suggest any number of things wrong with the name Neptune's Thong. "May-be…" But any replies were swallowed by a flurry of further violence, the hollow crunch crunch of drywall as it exploded to an unwarranted demise.

Annie sat panting on the floor, spent. Librae considered her once sturdy and functional wall, now reduced to an impromptu home to an entire family of fist-sized holes, conveniently in the shape of a happy face. At least it saves me the trouble of looking for another piece of wall art.

Librae, best known around the wharfs of District Four for lobotomizing small marine animals from the age of eight, was also lesser known for wandering graveyards in search of freshly interned corpses. Theories abounded, but no one quite knew what exactly she did to the carcasses that were surreptitiously dug up every Tuesday and Thursday, just as no one would ever make the mistake of calling Librae well adjusted.

But there were times when she felt almost average when confronted with the hurricane of crazy that was Annie Cresta. "Maybe he just wants a new boat, Annie," she said.

"Tell you what, Librae: one hundred Tesserae says he only wants to buy this new boat to piss me off."

"Doubtful."

"Then why would he bring it up? He knew I'd be against it. He knew I wouldn't want it."

"He's not a mind reader. How would he know something like that?"

"Because to me, that boat isn't just a hunk of floating wood. It's special. It's where I healed." The anger evaporated. Annie lifted a hand to her pallid face and nibbled on her fingernails. "It's where I learned to love the water again. It's where we fell in love." Fingers snaked into her titian hair and pulled at the roots. "He once told me that it didn't matter how abused or broken down our boat was. That we would keep it forever, splinters and all." Brown eyes quavered and her face pleaded for answers that Librae didn't have and probably wouldn't give even if she did. "Doesn't it mean anything to him anymore?"

Ten minutes of social contact was Librae's natural limit, and Annie had already been storming around her mansion for a good eleven. But she hadn't emerged from the Sixty-third Hunger Games as Victor, racking up a kill count that had yet to be surpassed, for nothing. She had brazened worse than Annie Cresta's volatile emotions, and who knew? Maybe Librae could finally convince the apple-haired tart to toss that sea god she called a boyfriend back into the dating pool. Poseidon knew her corpse replicas of Finnick were simply not cutting it.

She popped in two ear plugs, settled into her comfiest chair, and braced herself. "Tell me all about it, Annie. Start at the beginning."

"The beginning?" Finnick rubbed his chin with a look of contemplation. "I guess it all really started when I vowed to become the youngest victor in Panem history. It was an early dream of mine, prompted, I believe, by my elder brother's shocking homicide conviction. My mother was against the scheme, of course. How could she bear the loss of yet another son? But I'd already been training for a few years, and despite everyone telling me volunteering would be suicide –"

"The beginning of the argument, Finnick."

"Oh, that." His face darkened. "It started when I suggested we buy a new boat. Neptune's Thong is getting a bit worse for the wear, so I brought her a few brochures from the shipbuilder's guild. I thought she'd be happy I wanted to get something nice for us. But instead she blew her top off and said we didn't need a new boat."

"And then what did you say?"

"And then Finnick goes on and on about how our boat is falling apart and we have more money than we can ever spend, as if being rich is somehow an excuse for extravagance."

Librae gave a thumbs up.

"I know, right? So I said it didn't matter how rich we were, that there are things that go beyond the value of money. But would he listen? No. He said our boat was a piece of junk and that he was buying us a new one, end of story. And after that there was really only one thing left to say to him."

"And then she had the nerve to tell me I was doing all this to spite her! That getting a new boat would just mean more maintenance and work for her to keep up with while I was away at the Capitol."

Mags frowned. "Why would she bring that up?"

"Because he's a lazy slob, that's why! I spend half my day just picking up after him! He denied it, of course, said I was making things up."

"And then she slapped me in the face and said, 'You have three pairs of underwear on the floor right now!'"

Ron raised an eyebrow. "Did you?"

"That's not–" Finnick shook his head. "What does that have to do with anything?"

Mags' face was colored a faint shade of eggplant. "Finnick, dear," she said tightly. "It might be time to get off my lap." She blew out a breath of relief. "Good. That's much better. Now, what happened after she pointed out your abysmal housekeeping?"

"So then he goes, 'we can just hire a maid' - as if anyone would want to be our maid!"

"Actually, I think there are people who would literally commit murder to become Finnick Odair's maid." Librae smiled dreamily. "I might be one of them."

"We went back and forth, back and forth, getting angrier and angrier, until finally I told him I would just move back into my own mansion."

Librae looked alarmed. "How did he respond?"

"All he said was, 'maybe you should.'" Annie crumpled into the carpet, sobbing.

Finnick's face was a waterfall. "Then she turned her back on me and walked out, just like that. And that's when I came here."

Mags wrapped a bony arm around his trembling shoulders. "Dear Finnie. All this fighting and arguing is wearing you plumb out – you've got bags under your eyes, for Poseidon's sake! Why don't you mosey on to my bedroom and have a lie down? Let Mama Mags take care of it."

"You always do," he sniffed.

"I always do."

Once Finnick was tucked into the guest bed, mug of cocoa in hand and nose pressed into the latest copy of Knots Monthly, the room erupted.

"Annie cannot move back into her mansion!"

"'Cilda's right. I mean, where would we put all of our stuff?"

"Stuff?" Mags asked. "What stuff?"

"My stuff! Her stuff!"

"Our stuff!" Muscilda cried.

"All of our stuff, Mags," Ron explained. "All the stuff we keep in Annie's mansion."

Mags massaged her temples. "You mean to tell me you keep your belongings in Annie's mansion?"

"Loads of them."

"What's wrong with the mansions all of you were so generously provided?"

"Understand, Mags – our mansions are for our regular stuff. Annie's mansion is for our storage stuff. And don't go glaring at us, Mags – as if we don't know about the little love nest you've set up in Annie's master bedroom."

Mags cleared her throat. "I confirm nor deny nothing…"

"The bottom line is this: Annie can't move back into her mansion," Ron said. "We have to fix this."

"Definitely," Muscilda agreed. "For the storage."

"And for Annie and Finnick," said Mags. "Who are our friends."

"Yeah. Maybe that." Ron grinned. "Actually, I can't lie. I have no concern over their love life. But storing my vintage daggers in a temperature controlled facility? That I do care about."

"Some of those pieces go back to the first Hunger Games, Mags."

Mags waved a hand. "Whatever our motives, I agree we should at least start with some damage control. Both those kids have a tendency to tailspin at the littlest wobble, and we should catch them before they become a heap of rubble." Mags grabbed her coat and keys from the foyer. "I'm going over to Librae's. Annie's been left to that deranged woman's tender mercies for much too long. Who knows what ideas she's putting into the poor girl's head? Ron, you go talk to Finnick."

Ron picked at his sleeve. "Why? The kid never listens to me."

Mags pointed at his chest. "Then make him listen. That love nest took me three months to perfect and I'm not making another one."