Disclaimer: I don't own Hunger Games or any of the related titles. Nor do I own the title, which belongs to pretty much everyone if you've heard 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star'.
Author's Note: If you've read my other AU Thresh/Rue fic, Fields of Heaven, then you may notice that some things overlap. Like in my personal head canon Thresh was always assigned to Rue's trees so that he could do the heavy lifting. Or that the people of District Eleven like to party it up. So I'm sorry if this seems repetitive to you, but this was too dang fun.
(Also, I've just now noticed that I was the first person to write a story about these two! That's actually kind of cool, but kind of sad. Why does no one write for them?)
Like a Diamond in the Sky
The reaping day was always windy. No one really knew why, but in District Eleven you could always count on burst of wind to caress your face and ruffle your hair. The wind is sometimes warm, sometimes cold, sometimes fierce and sometimes gentle, but it can be trusted to be there.
That particular reaping day the wind was fierce and frigid; the people in the square could have blamed the tears in their eyes on the wind and not because two of their own were being sent into that beautiful slaughterhouse called the Capitol.
"I'm cold," a dark haired girl, who was being reaped for the first time, told her mother. Her mother squeezed the girl's hand and said nothing. One of the girl's younger sisters wraps her arms around her because she didn't want to have to give up her sister for anything in the whole wide world.
Several yards away a boy who is broad and tall stands alone and waits in anticipation as the man at the top of stage reads the history of Panem and prolongs the inevitable fact that two people are going to leave District Eleven that day and probably never come back.
Just as a woman with brightly colored hair keeps one hand on her wig so that it does not fly off Lady Luck decides to smile upon and tips the scales for them.
The stars align just right for them and neither of their names are called and they can both breathe and live another day.
May the odds be forever in their favor.
:-:
He was always assigned to her tree.
That was how Thresh came to notice Rue, the slight girl with dark hair and bright eyes who was three years younger than him. For some reason he was always one of the people at the bottom of her tree while she was at the top, singing sweetly while she picked, and picked up the morale of the others as much as she could.
From what he noticed of her he noticed that Rue always had a kind word to tell everyone, even after a long day harvesting. She would push the sweaty strands of hair away from her face and smile at whoever she was talking to as she walked home.
Thresh liked to think that the reason that he noticed these things about her was because he had no friends, which might have been a part of it. People tended not to like Thresh because he looked intimidating and didn't speak as often as others that he thought he should.
Everyone, even his teachers at school, thought that he was a bit slow, which was untrue. It was just that words, which seemed to slip from everyone else's lips no problem, got stuck in his throat and stayed there, unable to get out of the labyrinth. He always knew exactly what he wanted to say, but he never could say it.
In response people made fun of him until eventually Thresh snapped and threw them on the ground, telling them to shut their mouths. His patience could only be worn so thin before he eventually snapped. After that they would shut their mouths and crack their knuckles at Thresh threateningly, but they all knew who would win that fight. It would be Thresh, plain and simple.
So yes, Thresh could use the excuse that he was alone and that was how he noticed her, but he knew that that wasn't all true. He was drawn to Rue; everyone was. People liked her because she was sweet and pretty and her spirit never broke, no matter the things that she saw or how hungry that she got.
But she never noticed him. She walked by him and didn't spare him a glance except for the occasional half smile, but she gave everyone those and they weren't especially for him. But most people, except for his size and his so called stupidity, didn't notice him.
Thresh didn't like to call attention to himself.
:-:
He was always assigned to her tree.
That's how she noticed him. He was a hard person to miss, so she knew that eventually she would have seen him, but this was something different entirely. She wasn't entirely sure what his name was until she asked her friend Robin about him.
Robin had laughed at her in that way that only thirteen year old girls can. "Him? His name's Thresh, and he's supposed to be really stupid. He can't talk, according to my brother and my brother's friends, and they say that he's just really slow. Why do you care about him?"
She gave some vague answer about seeing him once at a bonfire and about him being so big how could you miss him, which satisfied Robin but didn't satisfy Rue. She knew all about Robin's brother, Jay, and his friends and there weren't that many good things to be said about them.
Rue saw intelligence in Thresh's green eyes when she got close enough to look and he was actually kind of handsome. She was still kind of scared to approach him, though, because no one really did other than his sister and his grandmother, but that was a given because they were family.
Rue was a far cry from family.
:-:
The first time they actually spoke was on Rue's thirteenth birthday party, which was a big deal to everyone in District Eleven. There turning thirteen was a rite of passage because that was the age that you could start working longer hours in the fields even though you still had to go to school.
Everyone in District Eleven knew Rue, and so everyone was going to her birthday party. The next day was a Sunday, which made things even better because that was all of their days off and they could stay at the party as much as they liked and the Peacekeepers wouldn't do anything about it.
They were all bringing all of the food that they could spare, which wasn't much but with everyone's pooled all together on one of the tables that some of Rue's neighbors had set out to help prepare, it seemed like a feast. Thresh's grandmother had in fact made one of her famous vegetable pies with the last of their fresh squash and corn and some of the grain that they had gotten from the reaping.
This was a very special day, and on that very special day Rue was a very special person. People from all over their district came up to Rue and gave her their well wishes and best thoughts about her. Rue practically turned permanently red from all of the blushing that she had done that night.
She smiled and graciously thanked everyone for coming and for bringing food and for the first time in a long time she felt satisfied that everyone in her family was going to go to bed with a full stomach. Rue was happy that she was turning thirteen, this way her family could get more money, but she knew that this was the first step in a long journey on her path to growing up.
Thresh was at the party, slightly removed the way that he always was. No one tried to talk to him and in response he tried to talk to no one. He had gotten himself a slice of his grandmother's pie and that was occupying his attention fully. His sister Tilly seemed to be having a good time, she had met up with one of her friends and had sped off, telling him over her shoulder as she walked away that he should mingle.
Thresh had smiled at that because Tilly, of all people, should have known better.
Everyone else seemed to be having a fabulous time, though. Thresh had always been adept at feeling other people's emotions and at hearing the double meaning of their words, and he could feel the excitement and joy in the air.
He was walking on the outskirts of the party, refusing to get in the thick of it after he had eaten, and was happy enough to be a part of something like this even if no one really wanted him around.
A few other people were there, mostly in groups, sometimes in pairs, but there were a few loners sitting here and there. Thresh refused to just sit, he wanted to keep moving. He almost knocked into one of the people sitting there before he realized who it was.
"Sorry," he managed to tell the birthday girl after he had almost stepped on her. Rue just looked up at him and smiled. He had to admit that he was surprised that she was out there. After all, this was her party so why wasn't she enjoying it? Rue had a hundred friends, or something close to that, and she had no excuse to be out here. At least, not like he did.
Everyone was probably looking for her right now, and if they weren't they would be soon.
"Hello," she had said softly, looking up at him through her eyelashes. The light of the party lit half of her face up, while his shadow darkened the other half. She had a slightly wilted wreath of flowers woven into her hair and her eyes were large in her small face.
Thresh wasn't quite sure how to respond, because almost no one told him hello. Ever. He hadn't expected to actually talk to her tonight, or ever, because Rue was a million things that he would never be and he knew it. In fact, the whole world knew it and no one expected them to even acknowledge the fact of the other's existence. He decided to say nothing.
"You're Thresh, aren't you?" Rue finally asked after a beat of silence, when it had become apparent that Thresh wasn't going to respond. Thresh nodded, and Rue's whole face had lit up, ecstatic that she had gotten a response from him when so many others had tried and failed.
Even if it was only a head nod. Well, at least she was getting somewhere.
"I know you, you're assigned to my trees, aren't you?" Again she got another nod and felt pleased with herself. "Why don't you sit down?" Rue patted the firm but moist ground beneath her.
Against his better judgment Thresh sat. He didn't want to tell her no; it was her birthday after all. For some reason he felt like sitting by her might just change his life, and he didn't want to miss that.
Him sitting next to her was almost comical. She was all dark hair and eyes with bones like china while he was almost her exact opposite, except when it came to hair because his was dark too, although his was curly.
They sat together, almost but not quite alone, and looked up at the stars. His mother, before she and his father had died in a machinery accident, had sat with him and told him the stories of the stars, how vain queens and valiant hunters how somehow wandered their way into the sky and stayed there. The stars reflected in her eyes prettily and he wondered if they were always there.
"Happy birthday." The effort that this took almost killed him because this was just too awkward. Maybe if people other than his family hadn't been scared of him when they were small then he would be able to speak eloquently. Maybe then he would be able to give speeches or tell jokes the way that other boys in his class did.
He felt frustrated with himself and immeasurably stupid, just like everyone said that he was even though he knew the truth. How many times had he imagined himself talking to her? And now here he was and he couldn't even get the words out.
When Rue smiled at him her whole face lit up. "Thank you," she told him, still smiling. "I'm glad that you came to my party." Even though she had probably said this a thousand times the words still sounded sincere coming from her.
Rue wrapped her arms around her legs and rocked back as she answered Thresh's unspoken question. "I'm happy that so many people came of course, and I'm glad that they're all having fun, but I don't like having that many people around me all the time. I'm not that big of a fan of large crowds."
Me neither, Thresh wanted to say, but all he could do was nod. This was hard, very hard. She made him even more nervous than usual and his tongue felt twice as thick around her. He just didn't want to say the wrong thing and make her hate him.
"I'll bet you don't like crowds, you don't seem like the type that would want lots of attention."
"I'm not." Thresh was astonished at himself, because for once he hadn't had to think about what he wanted to say before he said it. Instead the words had come out of his mouth of their own accord. That hardly ever happened to him, and only when he was very comfortable.
And then he realized that he actually was comfortable. Sitting here on the edge of everything with a girl who had become very important to him for some reason, he felt more at ease than he had in a long, long time.
Rue opened her mouth to say something else, she was happy that she had gotten more than a one worded response out of him, but then her friend Robin had found her, with a group of their friends standing behind her.
"Rue?" Robin asked, putting one hand on her hip and sticking her foot out. It was hard to read her expression when all of the light was behind her. "What are you doing out here? And with Thresh of all people? We were looking for you for ages."
"Ages," someone behind Robin repeated but Rue couldn't see who.
Rue looked at Thresh beside her, whose face was suddenly closed off and hard, but he shook his head. She knew that anyone else wouldn't have seen it, but it was obvious that the head shake was meant for her and her alone. He didn't want her to say anything to defend him in front of her friends, which kind of bothered her.
Why didn't he want her to say that they were friends? That was they were now, or at least that's what Rue considered him to be. Boys, she decided, were confusing.
As Rue walked away arm in arm with Robin, she gave Thresh- who hadn't bothered getting up- a last glance. There was longing in her eyes but she had just turned around because he wasn't even looking at her. Instead his eyes were fixed on the sky, which was something far enough away that it couldn't hurt him.
:-:
That's how things continued for the two of them. Thresh somehow always stumbled upon her when she was alone, which admittedly wasn't often, and she always made him stay and talk. Eventually Thresh was able to speak in sentences and then entire paragraphs to her.
Thresh, once he got used to it, actually liked to talk to Rue. She listened to everything he said with wide eyes and ready ears. He knew, eventually, that they were going to have to stop talking, because there was only so much time in a day and what little time that they had when they weren't working she probably would want to be with her real friends, not with him.
He didn't let her tell people that they were 'friends' (her word, not his, even if he wanted it to be true) because he was afraid of what that might mean for her. People would probably make fun of her, or ask her, just like her friend Robin did, why on earth was she talking to him.
He knew that the fact that they didn't talk in public hurt her, but Thresh was afraid that if Rue got asked she would start wondering herself.
:-:
The next big milestone in their relationship happened to be, incidentally, on her sixteenth birthday party. This was going to be even bigger than her thirteenth birthday party because of the implications that it suggested.
In District Eleven when a girl turned sixteen she was officially of marrying age, or she could be officially courted. Most of the time people only were courted when they were sixteen and they got married as soon as they got out of school.
Rue was going to have a lot of potential suitors buzzing around her, she had turned into quite the beauty with long dark hair and clear dark eyes and delicate bones, all sparkle and shimmer and shine even with everything that they went through just to live in District Eleven.
Thresh knew that, and he knew that it was going to hurt to have to watch her smile and laugh with all of them in a way that she never could with Thresh. He knew that it was going to hurt, because somewhere between all of the conversations and the three years that had passed he had fallen in love with her.
He knew it wasn't reciprocated, he knew that it was unrequited to the most extreme degree, and that she was so above and beyond him that he had absolutely no chance in the universe of having her notice him like that.
In fact, Thresh had noticed her spending a lot of her free time with her friend Robin's brother, Jay. Jay was one of the boys that had made fun of Thresh and called him stupid until Thresh had put him in his place and taught him otherwise. Now whenever Jay saw Thresh he glowered at the larger boy, but he didn't say anything, which was probably best for him.
Thresh didn't blame Jay for liking Rue, for wanting to be with her or for talking to her, but it bothered him that Rue didn't realize how ugly that Jay was inside. But Rue would talk to him just like she would talk to everyone else, because Rue didn't really dislike anyone.
On the night of the party once again everyone that could possibly be there from District Eleven was there. The empty field behind Rue's parent's house was full of people and fires and there was even a small cake from the bakery in town that everyone had chipped in for, including Thresh. Piles of food surrounded the cake and in the center of it all was Rue.
She looked stunning. She was wearing a worn white dress with a wreath of fresh flowers woven into her hair once again, and she had a silver chain with a flower charm around her neck. Her smile was large because she knew that she wasn't going to have to go to work tomorrow and that she was finally officially grown up.
She had been talking to Jay when Thresh had walked up to the food table. He was planning on just grabbing something and run, but as it often happened with Thresh and Rue things didn't go exactly to plan.
Rue had caught Thresh's eye midword and she had stopped talking to Jay. "Thresh!" she had exclaimed, a smile splitting her face so large that it took up half her face. "I'm so happy that you came!"
She wrapped her small arms around him and put her head on his chest. She smelled like her namesake and like the apples that they had been picking just that afternoon. She looked up at him, eyes bright, and he gently put his arms around her as well. "Couldn't miss it," he told her as he let go of her, noticing the way that Jay was looking at them. It wasn't a pleasant look.
Rue seemed oblivious to this, though, and she continued talking to Thresh as though someone wasn't looking at them with murder in their eyes.
In fact a lot of people were staring because they just couldn't understand why Rue would be talking to Thresh, one of the stupidest people in District Eleven. "Yeah, you couldn't miss it because you knew that if you did I'd kick your butt."
Thresh had to laugh at that because there was no way that Rue, of all people, would be able to hurt him. At the sound of his laugh Rue's face lit up all over again, enhancing her pretty features. And just like that he didn't care if people knew that she was his friend, or if other people told Rue things, because it was suddenly obvious that she didn't care.
"Happy birthday," he told her, and he took a small package out of his pocket. He was going to give this to her the next time that he saw her alone, but this seemed like as good a time as any. Rue unwrapped the present and wonder took over her features. He had carved her a wooden, but at the same time delicate, bracelet. It was beautiful, and she had no idea that something like this could come from his hands.
"Thank you so much!" Rue exclaimed, slipping it onto her thin wrist and saw how some of the wood seemed to blend in with the shade of her skin. "It's the best present that I've gotten all night. I love it."
She leaned in to hug him again, and this time he felt more at ease hugging her back. This time she pulled away from him more quickly and admired her bracelet one last time before she looked up at him and said, "Have you had any of the cake yet?"
"I don't think that they made that for me," Thresh answered. He didn't want to take away from Rue on this really special day, and he was watching the jealous way that a lot of the boys from their village were looking at the two of them. Rue hadn't talked to anyone as long as she was talking to Thresh, and this didn't sit well with them.
"Oh nonsense, it's my party and you can have some of the cake if I say you can. Everyone else is." Rue waved away his comment and grabbed his hand and pulled him to the table and handed him a plate, on which was a small piece of cake. She then grabbed one for herself and ate her whole piece in one bite, which wasn't exactly hard.
Rue was really on cloud nine tonight. She was sparkling and happy and flirty and loud, and seeing Thresh made things just that much better. She wasn't sure if he was going to come or not, but when she had seen him she was ecstatic; she wasn't going to let him slip through her fingers. He had been the person that she had been looking for all night.
Rue saw the way that the others were looking at them, but she honestly didn't care. When she was with Thresh, she was always happy and having him here with her on her special day made her even more happy than usual.
But then, all of a sudden, Robin was at her elbow and was looking at Thresh threw narrowed eyes, like he had done something wrong. "Rue," Robin said, "come on, you haven't even said hi to all of the people here yet!"
"Yes I have." Rue tried to shake her friend off to no avail. Robin just held on tighter.
"No, you haven't. Come on, let's go. Jay wants to talk to you."
"But I was just talking to him! I'm talking to Thresh now." Rue turned her big eyes on Thresh, who just shook his head and picked up his piece of cake and shoved it into his mouth. Well fine, she thought. If he didn't want her around right now then she would find him later, just like she had at her thirteenth.
Rue ended up seeing him again at the fringes of her party almost at the exact spot that she had talked to him last time. He was looking up at the stars again, and she noticed that when he did he always had a wistful expression. "Hey," she said, and he calmly looked at her.
Without being asked Rue went and sat beside him, which reminded her of all of the times that they had talked in the last three years. She was always the one that had to find him, not the other way around.
"Hi." He looked up at the stars again. Rue was sitting close enough to him that he could practically feel every part of her body. Her legs were bent and her arms were around them, the way that she always sat when she got the chance. He realized that she was looking at him and he turned back around to her. "Nice party."
"Yep. It's been fun too, but it just became to much for me. I guess you'd know all about that, wouldn't you?"
One corner of Thresh's mouth raised up, but he said nothing. He noticed that she hadn't taken off his bracelet, and that made a warm cloud settle in his chest, even though he had just given it to her less than four hours ago. She could have just put it in her pocket the way that he watched her put away so many other gifts. But his was the one that she chose to keep on.
Rue sighed and put her head on his shoulder. Thresh looked back up at the stars. For some reason they seemed closer to him than before, just like her.
:-:
And just like that everyone knew that they were friends. Even though sometimes all of the stares made Thresh uncomfortable Rue now talked to him in school whenever she saw him. Some of the boys that like Rue, and there were a lot of those, said things to him that you couldn't exactly call pleasant, but he put them in their place.
One person, though, didn't give up on her even though Thresh was around now and it was obvious that she preferred him. Her friend Robin's brother, Jay. Jay was almost constantly around her whenever he could be, and he was going to be around next year when Thresh graduated, which was a thought that sent a cold feeling to the bottom of Thresh's stomach.
Robin wasn't much better. She was always pushing at Rue to forget about Thresh and to go after her brother, which Rue refused to do, saying, "Thresh was my friend first."
Jay was never deliberately unkind to Thresh know, probably thinking that if he was Thresh would tell Rue which would ruin his chances with her, but Thresh wouldn't have told Rue. Sometimes he thought that Rue didn't notice the way that people treated him because she thought that she knew better.
:-:
One night when they were together Rue told Thresh, "You look at me like you look at the stars."
"What?" Thresh didn't understand what she was talking about. He didn't know how he looked at Rue, but he was sure that it wasn't how he looked at the stars, but it might have been, a little bit.
"You look at me the same way that you look at the stars," she repeated. "Like you're kind of sad that I'm here or something."
And then all of a sudden Thresh realized what she was talking about. He looked at her the same way that he looked at the stars because to him they were both the same distance away. Both sparkled and were so far out of his reach that he could never imagine getting as close to them as he would like to.
:-:
Rue kissed him first, with butterflies in her stomach when she did it. He had turned at looked at her and she couldn't help herself. When she pulled away, embearssed she said, "I care about you Thresh. A lot. And I'm sorry if you don't care that way about me. We can pretend that it never happened."
Thresh had just looked at her then with an unfathomable expression his green eyes, and then he kissed her back. She wrapped her arms around his neck and he picked her up so that he didn't have to bend over so much.
This feeling, it was bliss. Rue had kissed boys before, of course, she had even told Thresh about some of them when the only thing that they were was friends, but this felt like something completely different, something that Rue had only experienced part of.
Neither of them noticed Jay in the corner, his hands clenched into fists. They were far too busy finally being together.
:-:
Her sister was the one that told her the news. "Rue... something's happening. I think that you might want to see this." Rue couldn't read the expression on her younger sister's face.
"What is it Poppy? What's going on? Is it mom or dad?"
Poppy shook her head. "C'mon, you're going to want to see this for yourself." Poppy grasped her sister's hand and pulled her to the town square. There was a large crowd of people there, and all of a sudden dread, thick and warm, settled into her stomach. The sound of a whip cracking through out the air was loud and clear.
She wove her way easily through the crowd until she was at the front. And then what she saw there made her throat tighten and her ears start to tear up. She had seen whippings before, the Head Peacekeeper in District Eleven was particularly strict. In fact, one of her friends had gotten whipped once just for dropping the box of apples that he had been carrying.
But never before had she reacted like this. Thoughtlessly she ran into the middle of the square and tried to shield Thresh with her own body. She felt the whip bite her back and she cried out, but she didn't try to get out of the way.
"Move, girl!" the Peacekeeper snarled, moving closer to them. "You're only going to make it worse."
Trying to keep herself from sobbing she asked, "What did he do?"
"He was fighting and violence is not allowed in District Eleven."
Rue's father finally stepped up. "If this is his first offense than he has gotten the appropriate number of lashes." Rue knew that if he hadn't then she would take the rest of them for him. Her faded yellow dress was splattered with his blood and the gash on her back stung, but not as badly as looking at Thresh's bloody and torn back muscles.
The Peacekeeper said something back to her father, but Rue didn't hear what, nor did she hear what her father said. There was a roaring in her ears that could not go away. She wanted to throw up, just looking at the bloody mess.
How could anyone hurt Thresh? How? The world started spinning faster and faster, and Rue had to keep herself from blacking out. She refused to leave the world when his life could be hanging in the balance, because she had heard of people dying from infections before. She watched as people picked him up and took him to his grandmother's house. She watched as his grandmother's face turned hard as she heard what happened, and the way she let them in and set him on the table.
His sister was sent to get a healer and the only thing that Rue could do was look at him. Thresh looked so fragile and broken, just lying there on the dark table. Out of habit Rue began to play with her bracelet. Then she looked at it and started to sob, her whole body shaking.
She had no idea what he was fighting about, but she had an inkling that it was because of her. Why? Why was this her fault? She loved him more than she had ever loved anyone ever. The only thing that she could think of was how he looked at her the same way that he looked at the stars, but that just made her want to cry harder.
His grandmother placed a hand on her shoulder, startling her out of the little world of despair that she had been living in. "Rue, I'm sorry about this, I really am," his grandmother said softly, "but you're going to have to be strong for him because he's probably going to wake up soon and he's going to need you to be there for him."
The older woman's wrinkled face made Rue stop sobbing, even though she couldn't completely stop the silent rivers that made their way down her face. She grabbed his hand when the healer put the cleansing liquid on his back and she didn't let go even though Thresh fractured her hand because he squeezed it so hard.
There was no way to keep Thresh to keep from feeling the pain of healing and the only time that Rue left his side was when the healer insisted on healing Rue, who had completely forgotten about the gash on her back, and he wrapped her hand with a splint as well.
She sat with him all throughout the night for two days until Thresh completely gained consciousness. When he opened his green eyes Rue smiled at him and he winced. "I love you," he told her for the first time, which broke her heart.
"Don't say that like you're going to die," she told him.
There was a pause and then he admitted, "I feel like I am."
"Well you're not," Rue said fiercely. "Don't even think like that. You can't die."
"I'll try not to, for you."
:-:
They got married on the Friday that Rue graduated. The wedding was full of well wishes and when they jumped the broom, which was the traditional District Eleven way of doing things, everyone applauded.
Together they both lived among the stars.
Fin.
A/N: There were a lot of things that I wanted to include in here and couldn't because this monster was already so large. Like really. I may include them in a follow up to Fields of Heaven, which I've been thinking of for a while now, but I don't know. We'll see. Reviews are appreciated, please tell me if you thought it was boring or dumb or what. I'm out.
-AG