A/N: Written for the Diversity Writing Challenge, B82 – write a fic that explores guilt.
Rue's Grave
Oh, how Katniss longed to find Rue.
But it would be foolish to try. She remembered the little brave girl's example. Run as fast as you can. Get away from the danger. Don't be rash.
Anyone who remembered the last game would remember where Rue's body lay.
And they'd know how she longed to go back to the place where she'd failed her.
So Katniss did the smarter thing. She fled.
She couldn't afford to be weak. She couldn't afford to be sentimental. She couldn't afford to think about Rue quite then – or little Primrose she'd had to leave behind again – when the danger was there, too close.
The danger would always be there. In the arena. And out of it. It was wrong. It wasn't fair. It was entertainment for the Capitol and their way of supressing rebellion, of keeping the masses improvised – of food, health, sanity…and hope. It was…
Monstrous. Disgusting. And unavoidable.
A tragedy that had seen Rue buried with dirt and white flowers too fragile to last a single night because that had been all there was.
And it had both disgusted and frightened her how no-one had tried to spare her that.
(and it wasn't just because she was Prim's age, she told herself. It wasn't just because poor Rue hadn't had a big sister or brother that could take her place.)
Katniss could understand the uprising. An uprising she had unintentionally – and perhaps unwittingly – fuelled. Because she wasn't fool enough to think this game wasn't intentional. That they didn't plan to kill her along with the spark she'd lit.
And she couldn't say she begrudged them for it. She'd started something uncontrollable. A wild fire. And that made them fear. The voice of a mocking jay calling to war.
But she wasn't the mocking jay. That sign belong to Rue. Her calling. Her wings. Her song.
(and it wasn't just because the thought of the mocking jay pin she wore reminded her of that little girl singing in the trees, singing as a signal.)
Those white flowers would have crumbled into nothing that night…and that was assuming no-one had disturbed their place. Thresh would not have. Thresh had liked Rue. But there'd been others. The Careers. The Capitol themselves. They wouldn't have left her grave-site in peace.
But even though she fled in the opposite direction, her thoughts kept on drifting back to it. To Rue's face as she'd choked on the last bits of life. At that final, scarred peace when she'd finally set the little girl into the soil and covered her in white.
White. Innocence. Katniss wondered if that choice had been made thinking about Prim as well. About how innocent that little girl was. Not that there'd been much choice. A battleground saturated with years of blood was hardly a place where flowers bloomed – and the rest of the world, except the glamour that was the Capitol, was similarly deprived.
But then there'd been no time to think and little more to act; she'd failed and that was all she'd managed to do in the aftermath. A proper burial was what she should have done.
No, saving her was what she should have done – but then what? They'd still been in the middle of the games. And she and Peeta had barely come away from it. Using an excuse, a fabrication, that would in no way have allowed a third, or one from another district.
Then, they'd been going under the false declaration that two from the same district, if it happened, could survive.
For Katniss and Rue…there had been no hope. No possibility, so far away from those with the leashes in their hands.
It was unavoidable. She knew that, even as she flew through the trees with barely a pause and listened, all the time listened, for the signs of someone hunting her. But moreso she listened to the tune that Rue had showed her, and sung. One or both of them had had to die and fate had chosen her to be the survivor. And she could not lay down her bow, her pin, and allow herself to be struck down. She did not in the last games and she could not now.
So she sprung from tree to tree and let the vision of that makeshift grave she'd crafted flash before her eyes one more time.