Disclaimer: The Hunger Games is owned by Suzanne Collins. Who is definitely not locked in the trunk of my car right now.
District 11
It is a poor District. Children keel over and starve regular as clockwork. Their parents are shot to death in the square for trying to steal them food. Their grandparents never got old enough to see them draw breath.
It is a harsh District. The Peacekeepers do not remove their helmets. You only ever see your own face reflected in the black mirrored surface, as they draw their gun or their whip or their baton back before it slams into you.
It is a hollow District. You only have to look outwards to know that no one is looking out for you there.
But they have their people, and their music, and their hope. And it's the only place Rue has ever called home, and she loves it all the same.
Family
Rue loves her family more than anything else in the world. She knows, she'd fight and die to protect them. If Malc had been Reaped, she could have been Katniss, bursting forward like spring shoots to protect him. But he was nine, and safe, and they got her first.
She was firstborn. Her mother had gotten a single day off work, and had cradled the tiny, dark-eyed baby to her breast like she never wanted to let go. Named her for a flower, for the clinging, living scraps of beauty that persisted in existing. Rue, my flower, my baby girl. I'll never let go, her mother murmured, soothing nonsense whispered in her tiny ears.
When Malc comes three years later, a tiny Rue strokes his cheek, and giggles when he clutches her finger. She wonders how anyone in the world could let something so precious get hurt.
When Sorrel, six and curious and simple, tries to take back an apple, hides it under his shirt for his mother, and they notice, Rue darts forward and says it was her, and takes ten lashes across her back. She still has the scars, crisscross white ridges that say little girl howling and scream I love you.
When her father dies, she smooths Calla's hair and kisses the top of her head and says it's alright, hush, murmurs the lying words when her mother is too full of grief to do it herself, and she soothes baby Rosa and calms her crying storms, even as the tears roll burning down her own skin and drip off her chin.
At twelve, she hugs them to her in the waiting room and whispers I'm coming back.
The Meadow
When she was too young to work, she used to play in the patchy field that they had in the District. There was an air of worry, of impermanence- they always thought that next week the Peacekeepers would announce that the wildflowers and scrub bushes would be torn away and the ground turned over and seeded. Malc was too young to be any fun, but there was an endless group of other children, to giggle with and chase through the grass.
The laughter would run through the grass like crystal streams, flowing golden in the simmering sunlight, as their mothers and fathers looked up for a fleeting moment, at the unlined brows and the burbling laughter so high and sweet it's almost a song, and they smile and remember what it was like to be young.
It went away when she had to work. But she came back when she could, to make sure Calla and Sorrel and Laure could have what she had, that bubbling, delighted game, chasing and hiding in the strands that went past her head.
Even the Peacekeepers couldn't find them there. She felt almost safe.
Dusk
They put her on charge of the flag-watching, because she was nimble and quick and tiny, even for 11. As the sun creeps under the horizon, a rusty coin dropping under the curve of the earth, the heat and light fading, her skin darkening under the dying light.
She clambers up to the tops of the trees as dusk spreads its light, cool fingers across the fields, the night sinking through the branches and into the musty earth like smoke. The crickets start chirping softly, and the pace drops down, as the slow creep of light dying drains the energy out of them, whispers sleep into their ears, tugs at them like an insistent lover. Even their Peacekeepers allow it, at a time like this. There's a person behind the mask, and their eyelids are heavy too.
So Rue watches and waits, young branches bending slightly under her, and the earth drinks the last sliver of dark golden light and a flag flies.
And she smiles. And she sings.
Mockingjays
The mockingjays pick her whistle up, a new, trilling tune, high and soft and childlike, dancing through the heavy silence of work. They open their mouths and whistle it back, joy flying through the air. They sing to each other, echoing over the fields. The music ripples over the golden corn, the orchards, the vineyards, every bird lilting and crying out to one another, the notes rising and falling in waves, the sweet cacophony flying over the vastness of their District. Have you heard, have you heard, have you heard! they sing.
And everyone working throws down their picks and scythes and baskets, stretches out bent backs, rolls their necks back and smile. They see the girl, the dark silhouette perched on the highest tree, far enough that she looks a bird herself, thin limbs folded underneath her. Rue, they think. The bringer of good news. Her and the mockingjays.
They cover District 11 so fully it's hard to tell them apart. But Rue knows the ones that stay by her corner of the orchard. She knows the ones that wheel overhead, squabble over the rotten bits of apple, the ones that perch near her, blinking at her with curious, dark eyes. The mother with her tiny cluster of pink fledglings. The tall one with the broken leg. The couple that would sit on her shoulder, nose at her pockets for the scraps. She knows them. She wonders how something half-Capitol could be so beautiful.
Wildflowers
"Take this," Malc presses a clumsily carved pendant into her hand. It's in the shape of a flower, ridged, pointed petals and a hole for a necklace. His bottom lip wobbles, a flood of tears held back by a paper-thin dam, threatening to collapse at any moment.
"And this. For your-" Calla sniffs, whimpers, chokes back a sob with a clenched fist.
"District token. Thank you," Rue says, truer than anything she's said before, and kisses her cheek, holding the braided grass necklace in her palm. She threads the flower through it.
"It's beautiful." She holds it out to baby Rosa, still hefted on her mother's hip.
"Wroo goin 'way?" baby Rosa asks, chubby fingers against her mother's cheek, huge dark glossy eyes on her big sister.
"Just for a while," Rue promises, taking the baby on her lap. Rosa nuzzles against her, her face somewhere between contentment and bursting into tears.
"No go 'way. Stay hewre," she insists.
The Peacekeepers usher them out, and baby Rosa cries out "no! Wroo, no go 'way! No go 'way!" the childish petulance in her voice making Rue want to weep more than ever.
The Peacekeepers usher them out, and Rue is left alone with nothing but her wooden wildflower and her tears.
Stars
Rue walks home under the stars.
They wink down at her, flickering lights, piercing the black of the night. They were there when the world was new, and they will be there when she is a thousand years dead.
As she sits on the rooftop of a building so far from home, the wind threading through her hair, she lies down and looks up at the stars.
Thresh
She's only seen him in fleeting seconds. He goes to her school, sits silent and lonely at lunch. She's thought about going to him a few times, but she was so young and he was huge, even then. Once they went to work in different areas, his huge arms cutting maize, her spry figure climbing apple trees, they never saw each other. She forgot his name.
She only saw him at the Reaping. All she felt was grateful it wasn't someone she knew, and then a tiny glimmer of hope- he was so strong, tall and dark and sullen, and they might have a Victor for the first time in decades.
But when, half-asleep and writhing in the darkness of the train, she screams and cries and rips the covers off her scalding skin, Thresh bursts through the door like her guardian angel.
He says nothing. But he puts a hand on her bare shoulder. She's so tiny then, so young, little girl in her vest and leggings, glossy eyes and hollow cheeks and fear. Her shoulder blades poke through. Her collarbone juts out.
"I hate this place," she moans, pulling the covers off and tucking her thin legs underneath her. He starts when she clutches his forearm. "I just want to go home."
It's a plead more than a prayer. But she's not pleading with him.
She woke up at midnight and an animal terror tore into her, ice-water and sleet rushing through her veins. Where am I? Everything was wrong, everything was twisted up, the covers were satin and smothering and so unlike the threadbare blankets of home, and Calla and Malc weren't there to soothe her, and the air here was wrong, was pure and cool and tasted of petrol, didn't have the smell of shiny-sweet apples or woodsmoke or sunlight. The panic rose in her throat like bile. This wasn't home, what was she doing here?
And she screamed out loud, hugging her own gaunt arms to her chest, the sobs bubbling in her throat almost hysterical. Knees drawn up, fingers splayed, her rib cage wracked with terror pleasedearGodIdontwanttodieplease .
She screams and it's like skin being ripped bare, a raw bloody wound scalded with salt and a girl who can't be more than ten being shipped off to die. The sobs burst out through her lips and she can't stem them.
But somehow, somewhere, Thresh does.
In the training centre, she watches him lift weights, surpassing even the boy from 2, drawing looks of jealousy and admiration from trainers and tributes alike who wonder for the first time if he has a shot. He's so stoic and serious that when he grabs her round the waist and hoists her up, and the laughter bubbles and she squeals in delight and she forgets how terrified she is to die for a moment.
But only a moment.
She believed it when he said he'd keep her safe. Believed it when he said he'd look out for her in there. But her head bobs around her shoulders as she runs from the golden horn, desperate, frantic, searching without finding, and the name forms on her lips without leaving them
Thresh
Climbing
As Rue finds the familiar footholds and begins to drag herself towards the sky, she says a silent thanks to whoever might be listening that the Gamemakers left them trees this year.
Katniss
It's not until she sees the pin- her pin, a golden mockingjay, wings outstretched, that she decided to trust her. She reminds her of Malc in the way she holds her feelings close, and Calla in the way she sings. Sorrel and her have the same line between their eyebrows when they concentrate, Laure and her share a giggling brightness that emerges every once in a while. She has Rosa's smile, and her mother's protectiveness, and Thresh's silent strength.
When she sees her in the trees, she points the buzzing nest out almost instinctively. It's not until after that she notices the Careers, clustered below like sleeping lions, chests rising and falling, daring you to touch.
She's hesitant about revealing herself for the second time- Katniss got an eleven, and she faced off five Careers and killed two without pausing for breath. She remembers her Reaping tape, though, the way she sprinted out to volunteer for her little sister- but still, there are some people like that in 11, who'll kiss their families goodnight and kill you if you lay a finger on them.
But then she sees the mockingjay pin, and slips out from the cover of the brush and drags the dark-haired, sleeping girl with her. It occurs to her that she could steal her pack and bow and make off with it, double her own chances…but she doesn't.
Katniss reminds her of the big sister she's never had. She reminds Katniss of her own little sister. They are each other's family in the arena, and they share everything, and Rue snuggles up to her in the dark, buries her head in Katniss's nape, and the nightmares fade like mist that night.
When a boy whose name she doesn't know hurls a spear through her gut and she collapses tangled in the fibres of a net, it's Katniss's name she screams. It's Katniss who shoots the boy through the throat and it's Katniss who grabs her hand like a lifeline and Katniss who promises to win and Katniss who she knows will mourn her.
Music
She didn't want to die here. She wanted to die at home. Where she belonged.
In District 11, music is as natural as breathing, and as much a part of life as it. They sing an endless chorus of songs, high ones and low ones, ones about life and love and death, ones brimming over with joy and ones heavy with grief. They sing the old songs, from a time when the world was whole and the Capitol unthinkable. The Peacekeepers don't try to stop them. They know they wouldn't stand a chance.
Old men sing in their voices rich and low as earth. Tiny children stumble over the words and lisp the choruses. Women sing for their babies, husbands or their wives, children for their grandparents. They sing for birth and death, at weddings and celebrations and funerals, at every high and low in life.
She didn't want to die here. Not without something to take with her.
As she lies in the grass, the mockingjays fluttering overhead and the red flowers blooming through her shirt, she clutches Katniss's hand and whispers
"Sing."
Being alive
She didn't want to die here. She didn't want to die anywhere.
She wants to watch Malc and Calla and Sorrel and Laure and Rosa grow up. She wants to see Malc get married, see Calla have children, see Sorrel learn to grow up and Laure learn to let go.
She wants Rosa to remember her big sister as something other than a faceless corpse, as the patch of land where they will bury her, without even a photograph.
She wants to go home. She wants to go home and get to grow up, and sing with the mockingjays and see a hundred summers. She wants to get married and have children. She wants to get to see her mother again, to hold baby Rosa and hug her siblings to her chest, smooth their hair and kiss their foreheads. She wants to get to smile say "See? I told you I'd come back."
Instead, she lies in the grass as the song lulls her to sleep, and gets nothing at all.
Don't give me that look. I like dividers.
Almost as much as I like reviews (nudge nudge, wink wink)