After Lou Lou dies, Haymitch refuses to let the hovercraft take her body immediately. He carries her into dense willows and hides there, partly out of grief and partly to defy the Capitol, but he quickly realizes that this open display of attachment is exactly the kind of behavior Snow warned him against and could cost him his chance to sabotage the arena. The Gamemakers answer with punishment: electric-blue butterfly mutts swarm him, stinging him with painful shocks until he panics and runs.

When Haymitch crashes near a berm of gas plants, he uses his flint striker to ignite the flowers and burn off the butterflies. Realizing the mutts must return to their source, he follows them and finds a butterfly bush berm that has opened like a hatch. He theatrically attacks the mutts for the cameras, then manages to jam a burning branch into the hatch as it closes, leaving a tiny opening in the seam. Afterward, he retrieves his supplies, camps in a tree near the berm, and that night learns from the sky that Lou Lou and the District 1 boy have died, leaving twenty-six tributes alive.

The next morning, Haymitch receives his first sponsor gift: fresh rolls, cheese, and grape juice served with a goblet. The food restores him and confirms that the Capitol audience now sees him as a resourceful, entertaining survivor. While waiting for Ampert to arrive with the materials for Beetee's plan, Haymitch climbs high for a better view of the arena, spots Ampert approaching from the meadow, and heads out to intercept him while marking a path back through the woods.

Haymitch worries that meeting Ampert too directly will look suspicious, so he decides to treat the reunion as a selfish attempt to gather information. Ampert tells Haymitch that the Newcomers sent him to bring Haymitch back, and over a meal Haymitch learns what has happened on the mountain: seventeen Newcomers are dead, Wellie quickly figured out the poison, Hull carried antidote syrup, and the Careers have been devastating them. Ampert also gives Haymitch Wyatt's token and reports that Panache killed Wyatt and five others, while Maysilee was separated during the bloodbath but has not appeared in the sky and is presumed alive.

Using the pretense of giving Ampert a tour of the woods, Haymitch shows him the poisonous hazards and leads him to the butterfly berm, which Haymitch wants to use as cover for the coming operation. Exhausted, Ampert falls asleep in Haymitch's hammock, and Haymitch quietly gathers extra wood and pine needles for a nighttime attempt to bomb the water tank. As he prepares, Haymitch accepts that the mission will probably kill him, but he sees death in the explosion or flood as preferable to whatever the Capitol will do if he survives and is captured afterward.