AN: For Catching Fireflies in the Hunger Games Secret Santa Exchange. Hope you like this! Many thanks to my betas, Estoma and Deathmallow! I own nothing.
He's eighteen, she's twelve and a half, and he's like her shadow in the yellow light, longer and unnaturally bigger than her.
"We did it, Thresh," Rue says beside him, up at him, tremulously like she barely believes it herself, through tears and some blood that he couldn't always protect her from acquiring these past few days.
Thresh smiles down at her, holds her tiny hand.
They did. They won.
When the president places a half-crown on each of their heads, his eyes are warm and grandfatherly to Rue and lofty toward Thresh, who has to bend down, as if bowing, to receive it. When he straightens, he's at least a foot taller than anyone else on the stage.
The crown ends dig into his temples. It would have fit better if it was whole.
Caesar directs more questions toward Rue, having learned Thresh isn't much of a talker from his interview as a tribute. Hard to believe he and Rue were mere tributes, exploited human sacrifices unaware of their shared salvation, less than a month ago. Thresh reflects on this but doesn't share with the nation.
The Hunger Games host asks Rue if it was scary, getting ensnared in that Career's net. Her eyes blow up like plums and she nods gravely.
"Luckily Katniss was there to save me," she adds, which Caesar uses to segue into his next question: could she tell them about Katniss, from their adorable affinity after the tracker jackers to the rule change? Rue tears up as she tries to recall aloud her first ally, how she shared her food yet traded her off for her district partner that Thresh had found in the mud. "I don't blame her," she insists, "but it's just sad that our alliance had to end that way."
"Oh, it could have ended so much worse, darling," coos Caesar, brow furrowed in sympathy. When he reaches over to pat Rue's knee, Thresh slides her closer to himself on the sleek couch. It looks consoling to the audience, and it is, but Thresh is also protecting her; he doesn't trust any of these people.
Rue's lovely dark lips tremble. "You're right, Caesar. We didn't see her or Peeta again after that." Except up in the sky, Thresh knows she must finish inwardly. "If the four of us had stayed together, we would've had to fight each other sometime. They had their chance to win, and we had ours."
"And you won," Caesar reminds her, "and your Capitol celebrates your triumph." He gestures to the crowd with a flourish, and they stand and applaud and celebrate.
The program is a little ahead of schedule so Thresh and Rue wave for a few minutes until the closing national anthem, like stalks in the wind before harvest.
Throughout the banquet afterward, their escort often insists Thresh bends for Rue to kiss his cheek. It's a bit embarrassing in front of so many strangers but he does it only because Rue is happy to oblige.
Their sponsors pinch Rue's cheeks and Thresh's bottom. He almost punches the second perpetrator but Chaff grips his arm and shakes his head, face grim.
When he is called to the Presidential Mansion, he already knows what the conference is for. He's from Eleven, where there are too many rules and Peacekeepers are quick to arrest and then make offers the supposed criminals can't refuse in exchange for immediate dismissal afterward.
He doesn't accept any coffee from President Snow.
He doesn't accept his offer to be sold, either.
President Snow refers him to Haymitch Abernathy, whose family was killed after a seditious act in his Games, and, alarmed, Thresh is about to reconsider when President Snow tells him he expected this much foolish pride from a poor plantation boy.
"Before I give the order to execute your grandmother," he says as he props his chin under his fingers, delicate and sophisticated, "allow me to make you another offer."
Thresh scowls at him, wanting to crack his heavy chair over the man's head, but he waits, listens.
"Our Miss Bellamy has several sponsors awaiting compensation as well but she's not yet of age to repay them. I have refused these sponsors for the time being," the president assures him, boasting rectitude. "However, of these clients are several requests for both of you as a set, and some won't want you by the next Games when you're no longer reaping age." He sighs in exasperation and smiles ironically at Thresh.
Thresh doesn't sympathize.
"I'm actually asking this of you earlier than I'd like, but I'm sure I could propitiate some of these sponsors with your sole company during the Tour, before your nineteenth birthday, rather than with Miss Bellamy's as well. It would keep her untouched for several years. But I'd need to have your permission first, of course."
After a long silence, Thresh nods. Rue won't be summoned for a while, then. The thought that she will eventually, that they'll be a set, chills his bones - but for now, he's glad he came alone.
President Snow smiles. "Enjoy your homecoming. I look forward to your next extended stay in the Capitol during your Tour, and I'm sure your sponsors will as well."
Seeder embraces them again as the train nears the station. Chaff claps Thresh on back and tugs on Rue's earlobe, and Rue giggles.
Thresh nods at both of them, grateful for their help. They've made history, bringing two victors home after so many years of returning with two coffins.
"Rue! Rue!" A chorus of small, dark children engulfs her, clinging to her small yet bigger arms and waist. She tries to see all of them at once.
"Oh, Pippin! Pip, you've gotten so big! And look at you, Georgie! I've missed you, Day. Harry, your loose tooth! I missed you, too, Margo. I've missed you all so much! Oh!" She stumbles out of the horde - a victor! - into her parents' arms. "Ma! Pa!" she croaks.
Thresh smiles at her weeping joy, and turns back to his grandma. She smooths his shoulders and hugs him again. He hugs her back. Lil hangs back, grinning, having already squeezed his ribs in.
They're home.
The days after their homecoming are strange, but not necessarily miserable. Thresh doesn't like all the attention from the media, though they come like a sunburn, intense and overwhelming during the first week and then almost completely gone the next. He doesn't have to work in the fields anymore, and neither do his family or Rue and her family, so he endures it.
The thought of what awaits him at the end of the Victory Tour lingers like a blister. He doesn't prod it, doesn't consider it long enough, for fear of causing more harm.
Ezra and Susannah visit after the hype has died down. They want a real reunion, without the Capitol's prying cameras. It's late summer, and almost their curfew, and their community is an hour away from the Victors' Village, but they've always been quick.
Susannah pulls him down to kiss both his cheeks hard, and Ezra pretends he's not jealous. "Nice house," he comments.
Thresh glares at him. "Wasn't easy getting it."
Ezra shrugs. "If a month in the Capitol gets you all this, I don't know what we're thinking toiling in the fields all day for years."
Susannah elbows him before smiling at Thresh. "Don't listen to this grump. We're glad you're back." Yet while she admonishes Ezra, she doesn't say he's wrong.
When they leave, Thresh tells himself he misses them and that they're glad he came back. But looking around his new mansion of a house, with its fine wallpaper and stylish yet practical furnishings, he almost wishes they'd get caught on the way home.
Thresh and Rue return to school at the beginning of harvest. They didn't have to but Rue's younger siblings wanted to, and they figured they could spend their newfound free time on something of use for their new lives as victors.
Lil doesn't return to make up the schoolwork she's missed over the years, taking up an apprenticeship with the cobbler in Town instead. While some folks talk ill of her shedding her roots, their grandma apprises that she's growing her roots out further now that she's got the space and the nutrients.
Only the few merchants' children in the district attend during this season. Everyone else comes after harvest until it's time to plant again; if their families don't meet their individual crop quotas, they lose their homes.
As Thresh herds Rue and the younger ones to the school, some people frown at him, at his better clothes, at the direction he walks - not to the orchards to harvest but the schoolyard. He was an invaluable worker, and now he lives in luxury while the rest of the community must continue to be overworked and underfed. But their district has been awarded extra rations because he and Rue won, and Thresh doubts any of them have had to kill to live. He will not be ashamed of returning outside of a coffin.
While Thresh has attended school less often than his merchant classmates, his memory is good and he kept his textbooks with him to read during the harvest season. He doesn't raise his hand much but he's always attentive with checking his own answers with whoever does, and he's usually correct.
Rue sits in the front row by the doorway of her classroom, her skinny stockinged legs hanging idly above the floor. Whenever Thresh passes her classroom on his way to and from lunch or the bathroom, he rarely catches her attention as her eyes are often intent on the instructor, her brow furrowed in concentration. One day he passes by to see her eyes on the tabletop, answering her instructor's questions with dejected silence.
And so they spend their afternoons at each other's houses, Thresh recalling past lessons to tutor Rue in exchange for first pick at teams during games with her siblings. Rue's a quick learner under more intimate guidance, and soon she helps other classmates during lunch. Thresh always uses his first pick on Rue.
Even with her brothers and sisters' persistence in bringing back a cheerier connotation to the games children play, Rue hasn't forgotten the more sinister version. Thresh hasn't either but he knew what victory entailed when he was reaped - knew he could do it, too. If his pa taught him anything, it was how to fight back and pick battles.
Seeder starts visiting Rue's family more, and at first Thresh just assumes the mentor's getting to know her young victor better. Chaff took them both fishing a few weeks ago to a nearby pond where the merchant kids swim in the summer, showing off as well as teaching his talent to them. But Seeder doesn't invite Rue to her pottery shop.
Usually she comes as Thresh returns home to help his grandma prepare dinner. Rue's parents thank her somewhat desperately, and Seeder insists she understands.
His grandma tells him one night that Seeder helps distract Rue at night. "Nightmares," is all she says when he asks why.
A sudden pang of shock strikes him. He shouldn't feel disappointed for not being the little girl's first choice of consolation when he's not exactly warm and comforting, but he does.
Thresh thinks of his own nightmares where the Careers from District Two are stalking him in the arena as he searches for Peeta or Rue, who's lost or held hostage by Katniss. But when he wakes, he's awake. He isn't stuck in the arena anymore. Nights where his pa would come home and rough him up have made him a practical sleeper.
But Rue's pa is kind and his hands are calloused yet gentle, and her ma is strong and loves her family, and Rue didn't know what pain was before she was reaped.
He can't help but think this has made her very vulnerable.
Thresh practices his supposed talent for Rue's thirteenth birthday, and Lil has to step in to keep the house from burning down.
"They're cupcakes," he tells Rue as she receives the tray of four mounds smeared with white icing. Each has a symbol in looping gel-like frosting that Thresh prides himself in writing perfectly in the center of each cupcake: R, U, E, and a slightly lopsided smiley face.
"They're also burnt," Lil adds with a husky chuckle.
Rue pinches the U cupcake, breaks off a sample, tastes it, and then smacks her lips to judge. "And amazing!" she decides.
Thresh rubs his neck. "Well, happy birthday."
She hugs him, and her arms still cannot encircle past his hips. Even now that her family can afford food, she's small as a bird. "Thank you. Maybe I can make you a necklace for your birthday. Nothing showy, of course, since I know you don't like that kind of stuff."
Thresh realizes he'd wear something like that, anyway, for this little girl.
Lil shakes her head. "That would be a waste of your thread and beads, Rue. A birthday song would be better. Why aren't you singing for your talent?"
Rue goes still. "Just don't feel like singing," she mutters with a shrug.
"No problem," Thresh declares, retrieving a knife to divide the cupcakes so Rue's family can each have a slice, and the birthday girl gets her own. Rue chooses the U one, having already taken a chunk out of it.
He dreads her sixteenth birthday.
A month later, Rue stutters through her speech in Twelve, having been told she can't stray from what's written. Thresh knows that the words are empty to her; they are for him as well. They don't want to blithely thank Katniss and the district that provided her. Maybe neither knows what to truly say, but it's not in the speech.
Afterward, Twelve's only living victor comes up to them at the feast. Haymitch Abernathy is a friend of their mentors and on President Snow's shit list, Thresh knows, but nothing else about the man has ever struck him to particularly like him. He drinks, and Thresh does not trust drunkards. That is, not until Chaff taught him how to bait a tackle, helping him pierce the small fish with the hook, sharp and threateningly close. His breath had smelled faintly of alcohol yet he brought none with him on the trip. He grinned, proud, when Thresh caught a catfish and laughed like a pa when Thresh remarked that it was uglier than the two of them. Remembering this, Thresh considers Haymitch standing before them as a past winner and a present loser. The Twelve victor is frowning at them in a way that's accusing someone other than themselves.
"Just wanted to say good job, is all, and that if it couldn't have been my kids," he pauses, swallowing pain, "then I'm glad it was you two."
Rue thanks him earnestly, taking one of his hands in hers, and at Haymitch's expression, Thresh suspects even he wonders how this little girl could win.
But he, like the rest of Panem, saw Rue point to the tracker jacker nest as well as unleash a rock from their hiding spot at the feast and hold her breath as it planted into the male Two Career's forehead. That was before Thresh bashed the girl Career's head in with a bigger rock because he was bigger and didn't need a slingshot.
Maybe Haymitch had already stopped watching at that point, as his tributes were long since eliminated, attacked by bear mutts that Peeta couldn't outrun and Katniss couldn't outclimb.
Not knowing what to say rather than choosing to say nothing, Thresh nods at the only living victor of District Twelve and finally understands at what cost it meant for him and Rue to win, and it makes him angry.
The rest of the Victory Tour is too fleeting and different for Thresh to appreciate everything. The food is unbelievable, as always, and he likes the forests in Seven, tall and sturdy and quiet yet still imposing.
In Seven, he's on the outskirts of yet another feast in their honor, watching Rue dance with Chaff, when a low, feminine voice says behind him, "Sounds like Snow is really jumping the gun to sell you off. Don't worry, it won't be much different from any other victor in the end."
He turns around and offers Johanna Mason a dubious look.
"I'm serious," she insists, sauntering over to him, clad only in a forest green slip and heels, her brown hair in its trademark thorns all over her head. "They'll lose interest in your enigmatic silence angle once they find someone younger who does it better." She reaches for a glass of beer from the table. "I mean, I replaced Marana Shingott, and I only lasted a single date. Wouldn't you know it, the year after me a spunky bombshell from One seemed to have the Games in the bag - until the damn arena flooded!" She cackles.
Thresh doesn't.
"Don't you just want to burn it all down?" asks Johanna offhandedly, sipping the ale, her brown eyes intent on him over the foamy rim.
"Sometimes," he admits. All the time would sound drastic.
"Like now?"
Thresh furrows his brow, and she raises hers, expectant. The question is illegal, and his answer is his trademark silence.
After that, the train approaches its last destination far too slowly.
Rue loves the beaches in Four, dancing in the sand and the waves, which almost brings about a scolding from their escort until even he sees how much the cameras love it.
Thresh struggles droning through his speech in Two when the crowd practically radiates unrepressed hatred toward them. He keeps Rue close throughout the day, though he knows it doesn't matter - except it does.
The Victory Tour is a hit with two victors otherwise. There's finally more to entertain the masses with other than the usual fanfare over one person's selfish story. The large, dangerous, silent boy and the little, innocent, outspoken girl working together is a better narrative to keep up throughout the trip. It's hopeful.
His first client is a man who tells him he'd rather have had the little girl but that Thresh will do.
Hating him, Thresh lies there and wonders if Rue has fallen asleep to the sounds of the city's bizarre bustle beneath her.
On the train ride home, Thresh spends about an hour in the shower, scouring off the foreign hands and lips and such with scalding hot water. He doesn't want to cry, he's too old to cry, and he doesn't cry. But he stays in the shower until he feels clean enough to face his family again in the morning.
Switching it off, Thresh steps out and dries himself with a towel. He looks at himself in the mirror - nothing has changed on the outside. All of his scars remain, even from before the arena; they made him look tough. He's glad he doesn't look like anyone but himself. He couldn't handle being made into someone he's not by those people.
As he dresses in his room, there's a whimper in the adjacent room. Thresh hesitates, wondering whether Seeder has already joined her. By the sound of the little girl, she hasn't. The older woman is probably sound asleep at this hour, and the noise isn't loud enough to alert anyone but Thresh, whose keen hearing kept him alive even before the Games.
The whimpering has evolved into crying by the time he's in the hallway reaching for the doorknob into Rue's quarters. The door unlocked, he enters.
Rue is curled around a pillow and weeping into her shoulder. In the moonlight, the sheen of sweat across her brow looks like dew. Thresh sits at her side on the bed, and the imbalance of weight causes her to look up at him.
"Are we home yet?" Rue cries.
Thresh shakes his head. They only left earlier that evening. The little girl sniffles as he pulls her blanket up from around her ankles to her chest.
"I've been having more nightmares about my family getting hurt," she tells him, drying her eyes with her shirt sleeve. "They used to be about Katniss and the arena."
Thresh nods, understanding. Inwardly, he acknowledges how her family will get hurt if he doesn't follow Snow's demands. This little girl is his constant reminder.
Rue says, "But even though you were in those arena dreams, you're in my family dreams, too." She holds onto him as if assuring herself he's there, her tiny fingers on his massive forearm, and she smiles a little. "Usually you're protecting us."
Thresh takes her hand and enfolds it with his. "That's what I do."
The Quarter Quell is announced, and Thresh knows why the Capitol so graciously permitted two victors the previous year. It wasn't the star-crossed lovers from Twelve, or the powerhouses from Two that worked so well together, or the little girl from Eleven who needed her colossal district partner as an ally to win.
They were planning to wipe them all out, anyway, along with the nation's hope.
And the president - he was just wringing as much money out of Thresh as he could before he was potentially reaped.
Stupid boy, his pa shouts in his ear. But Thresh knows what to do.
In their district, he hugs Rue's small, trembling frame and says, "You'll live."
In the Capitol, he says, "Yes," and Johanna grins.
"Let's introduce you to some victors, then. You've met Haymitch, haven't you?"