Place Where I Love You
Note: Made for my ELA class.
*write an alternate ending to The Hunger Games*
The cannon fires and a mockingjay sings. District One is dead. The boy's eyes are unmoving, the arrow in his neck resilient and strong, and his mouth is contorted in a grimace. "Rue," the District Twelve girl, Katniss Everdeen, cries. For a moment the little girl from Eleven is her sister; but no, Primrose Everdeen surely could not survive here. "Rue?"
"Katniss?" she asks, opening her eyes as if waking from a peaceful sleep. There is blood on her face, though not her own. It is Marvel of District One's, obtained when he stood far too close to the twelve-year-old; payment for his bloodlust.
There is no other cannon fire. (District Eleven cheers.)
.&.
There are two faces in the sky that night. "Goodnight," Rue says to her almost-murderer. She raises her face to the sky, and closes her eyes. I wish I knew you, she thinks. Maybe things would have been different. Then there are trumpets sounding, and Claudius Templesmith's voice rains down on the arena.
"Congratulations to the six remaining tributes of the Seventy-fourth Hunger Games! I have been notified that this year two tributes are allowed to win—provided that they are from the same district. Did you hear that, ladies and gentlemen? There can be two winners this year!"
Katniss and Rue voice their joy, and all the mockingjays stop to listen.
.&.
At dawn, everyone is on the move. District Two is feral, wild, determined to win. Katniss and Rue seek out Peeta Mellark—and, quite possibly, Thresh. "Do you think I can win, Katniss?" Rue asks absentmindedly as they trek through the woods.
"Of course." That is, after all, the plan, Katniss thinks. "You'll be home in no time."
.&.
Peeta Mellark wakes to singing. It is a song that is unfamiliar, though the voice is not. "Katniss?" he manages. "Here to finish me off, sweetheart?"
"Course not!" frowns Rue. "You're coming home with us!" His eyes flash to Katniss' face and flit away, still a schoolboy at heart. "Right, Katniss?"
The girl smiles a broken smile. "Right."
"Well?" the dying boy says. "Help me up."
.&.
Katniss sings Rue to sleep in the trees. She gets the whole sleeping bag to herself but no one minds much because it will be extra cold tonight and it is already an effort trying to keep the little girl alive. The fire crackles below her but the District Twelve tributes are already frozen to the core.
"Peeta?" the girl asks. "We're getting the little girl home, okay?" There is no room for argument. He nods, sighs, and winces. "You can rest now. I'll keep watch."
The silence is calming to Katniss Everdeen. She has always liked it. When she hunted with Gale Hawthorne, everything was silent—the winds whispered and their footsteps were practically nonexistent. In the calm, her thoughts are loud and her problems are confronted. She lets her senses heighten and her ideas expand.
The leaves rustle. Katniss notches her bow—ten arrows left. Thresh materializes in the trees. He is a boulder—big, burly, silent power. "Where's the little girl?" his voice booms, low and deep. "Wasn't she with you?" (How does he know this? the Capitol audience wonders.) In response, Katniss points upwards, to the trees. Somehow, in the glow of the artificial moon, everything feels like a dream.
Katniss thrusts the bow out to him. The loaded bow seems to scream in the night. She stares at him, unblinking, and in her silence are all the words she will never say: You and Rue, you're going to win. There's still Two. I would die for her. You can kill me now, if you want. Go home for me.
He doesn't accept the bow.
.&.
Back in the Capitol, a survey is taken to see who is favored as victors. It is a tradition and usually helps sponsors decide who they will send money to. This year, ten percent want Two to win; twenty for Twelve; twenty for Eleven; and fifty percent want Twelve and Eleven to come home together.
President Snow scowls, because this is the Hunger Games and there is only one winner.
.&.
The day is sweltering and their mouths are nothing if not parched. "The lakes must be all dried up by now," claims Peeta, the unofficial voice of reason. Katniss paces; Thresh listens; Peeta thinks; and Rue hums. The four try to focus their thoughts on their hunger, their thirst, and not their enemies.
"It wouldn't make much sense to visit them, then." Their stomachs growl. "Thresh and I can hunt; we need food." Peeta nods his assent and Katniss swoops down for a kiss. "Stay safe."
"Always."
Thresh frowns down at Peeta, who is sitting because it takes him such an effort to stand. "Protect that little girl, Twelve."
He nods. "With my life." He embraces his lover once more.
Then the pair leave, off to hunt, and Peeta finds that his eyes do not leave them until they are long gone, but even then it takes Rue's voice to break his gaze. "We could be a family, Peeta," says Rue. "You and Katniss would be mom and dad. I'd be your little girl!"
Peeta laughs and hides his wince. "What would Thresh be, Rue?"
She frowns, as if she hadn't thought that far ahead. "My big brother."
The Mellark boy thinks of Katniss, determined to die so Rue can go home; Thresh, with his unyielding protection over his district partner; himself, so madly in love with the girl on fire that he would give his life if she asked; and of Rue, who seems, unknowingly, to be the center of it all. What an odd bunch they are. So he hugs Rue, holds her close. Peeta thinks that if he ever had a daughter, he'd want one like Rue. He kisses her forehead and she falls asleep in his arms from exhaustion. The parachutes rain down.
Compassion, it seems, hits the Capitol harder than romance.
.&.
Clove scowls. "I said I wanted the girl on fire! She's mine!" She is so like a child, the district audience thinks, in the way that she wants everything her way and her way alone.
Cato, of course, relents. "Fine. But I get Lover Boy."
The two Careers had long since moved away from the Cornucopia, and were instead in the forest. The right to choose who they were going to kill seemed to express arrogance and a sort of brutal strength. "I'll execute Thresh, then," Cato says after a long pause. "You can get the little girl."
"I wonder who we'll run into first, Cato." He doesn't respond, although he wonders the same, because that shows weakness and that is something they can no longer afford.
.&.
After having eaten and rested, the four tributes decide to move away from their makeshift shelter and search for Two. Rue sings; Thresh stays silent; Katniss harmonizes; Peeta watches.
(There are whispers of who will win in the Capitol. "District Twelve," they say, "oh, and Eleven. The odds are certainly in their favor!" District Two is favored by few; it always goes back to the four. "What a pretty family they are!" claims the Capitol. "What a lovely, little group!")
Cato and Clove hide in the trees. "Shh," murmurs Cato, hands on his partner's face. If they were anywhere else, he would kiss Clove before the bloody massacre. They are in the arena, however, and one pair of star-crossed lovers is quite enough; both tributes of Two agree about that. He signals at her to get ready because this is about to start. A branch breaks, and Clove throws. (The Capitol holds its breath.)
"Rue!" Katniss screams, her voice breaking as the knife impales her stomach. Clove stays frozen in her stance. I just want to go home, she thinks.
Peeta Mellark screams for his lover to stay, please stay, but then Katniss Everdeen is dead. He rises, outraged, and takes the knife from the dead girl's hand. He hastily swipes another blade from her bag. "I love you," he whispers quickly.
"What are you going to do, Lover Boy?" says Clove, no longer in her stupor. He hides the knives from her view. "You're not going home, Twelve."
Meanwhile, Thresh takes Rue and pushes her forwards. "Get to the trees." Rue scrambles, runs, flies to the trees. She is a squirrel as she climbs; a bird in her panic. The bark digs into her hands as she goes farther up, but Rue finds she does not mind much. It almost feels like home.
Peeta lunges. Cato stabs Thresh in his side with his sword. "Come back down, little girl," he snarls. "Don't you want to play the Games?" (The Capitol laughs at his pun.) Thresh tackles Cato's side—and they both want to cry out from the pain but they don't because, well, image is everything, here in the Games.
Clove screams bloody murder. Peeta has taken the knives and is brutally stabbing her temple repeatedly. Cato does not spare a glance towards his district partner—although it might have been better, to look at her and become engulfed in adrenaline. Peeta Mellark stabs, stabs, and stabs again long after the girl below him is dead. His leg wound is bleeding again, worse than ever now. Peeta sighs and closes his eyes; he wishes his death were quicker than this, this fatal loss of blood and terrible blood poisoning.
Thresh hits his face and the blow causes Cato to stagger, to fall to the ground. Cato closes his eyes and he is home, in District Two, a place where cutthroats are favored and anything less is frowned upon. He whispers the, "Remember me," with reopened eyes that are cold and lifeless.
"Congratulations to the winners of the Seventy-fourth Hunger Games!" exclaims Claudius Templesmith, the last person in the world that Thresh wants to hear. "Ladies and gentlemen, I am pleased to present victors Rue Avis and Thresh Jogia! I give you—the tributes of District Eleven!"