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Charybdis – IV
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Katniss sleeps so deeply and for so long that when she wakes, she wonders why she isn't dead.
Golden light flutters through gaps in the foliage above her, dappling the deep green brush that grows to her left. The vegetation is so thick and tall that Katniss can't see much from her prone position, and she feels too weak to do more than lift her head a few inches like some half-drowned puppy. She's been carefully tucked into a shallow cavity beneath the roots of a towering elm, the soft dirt having been dug out and scattered a few feet away, and someone has removed her jacket to keep her comfortable in the warmth of the afternoon.
A line of broad maple leaves are plastered to the skin of her arms, neck, and shoulders, and Katniss peels them off one by one. It takes her a moment to realize that her vision is clearer than before; ever since the fire burnt most of her braid away, she'd been fighting to get short strands of hair out of her face. Now, she feels along her scalp to find that some sort of tie has pulled her remaining hair into a ponytail.
Impossibly, she still feels tired enough to sink back into a doze in spite of the obvious fact that she's slept through most of the day, but she can't fall back to sleep without seeing Prim first. It takes her two tries to sit up, but she finally manages it by grabbing an exposed root and dragging herself into a sitting position. From here, she peers over the verdant foxtail and brambles and can just make out two odd colors poking above the green, one belonging to a head of blonde hair and the other to deep brown curls.
Katniss rises into a crouch, glaring suspiciously at her own weak legs, but her side feels much better than it had before. With some hesitation, she peels back the burnt fabric to find that the skin beneath looks much better than she might have expected given the severity of the wound yesterday; it's a shiny, baby-skin pink instead of the previous angry red. That's not natural, Katniss thinks worriedly.
From this position, she can see a pale hand in the grass a few feet away, and the oddity is enough to distract her from her wound. She creeps forward to find Finch, who is also decked with maple leaves and folded into a small nook. The redhead also looks better: the swelling from the stings seems to have gone down, and though her skin is slick with sweat, she's not quite as dead as Katniss expected her to be at this point, so things are certainly looking up.
Too many inexplicable miracles. Katniss needs to talk to the instigators.
Slowly, she drags herself up, mostly using the roots for leverage, but when she finally gets to her feet, she feels much sturdier. It must be Prim who has cared for her, because the bow and arrow lay on the dirt just beside her; Prim knows that they may need Katniss's skill quickly if they get into a pinch, and her sister likely also realizes that Katniss feels safer with a weapon nearby.
Katniss slings the quiver across her shoulder and takes the bow in hand as she starts toward Prim and Rue, who sit together on an overturned log, their heads bent together in furtive discussion. They look up simultaneously as Katniss approaches, Rue's smile shy, Prim's earnest and grateful.
With a pang, Katniss thinks that in another life, the two of them might have been excellent friends. Here, Katniss may have to kill Rue to save her sister. If she can kill the girl at all. What happened to just you and me, Prim? she wonders miserably.
And as if Rue and Finch weren't far too many, Peeta sprawls unconscious across the ground at the girls' feet.
Katniss has an arrow nocked and ready almost before she has time to think.
"What are you doing?" Prim cries, shooting to her feet and stepping over Peeta. "Put it down!"
Katniss lowers the weapon immediately, but she doesn't slip the arrow out of position. "What's he doing here?"
"He got stung like the rest of them, but when Finch dropped out of the tree and wouldn't get back up, he pulled her out of the swarm before he passed out. He knew Finch was with us, so he didn't want her to get hurt. I don't think he's with the Careers. I don't think wants to hurt us at all."
"You don't think? We're fighting for our lives in the Hunger Games and you don't think Peeta's an issue? I'm sure a lot of tributes didn't think their allies were an issue until they suddenly were."
Prim's eyes are bright, but she glares at Katniss ferociously. "If we'd have just left him there, he'd have died!"
"That's the whole point, Prim! Tributes aren't puppies; we can't just adopt them all! My God," Katniss laughs incredulously, slipping her head back to address the leaves above her, "you must be the only person in the history of the Games to come here and try to save everyone." She settles her voice back into something more solemn. "We are not allying with Peeta Mellark. It's too dangerous."
"You think he's useless."
"He is. But even useless people can sometimes point a knife the right way and slip it between your ribs when you're distracted."
"He would never do that!"
"You have no way of knowing!"
"Guys!" The voice is Rue's. The girl stands just between them, one hand pressed to Katniss's chest and the other to Prim's, and it's only now that Katniss realizes how close she is to her sister and how loud they've both become. "We can't fight here in the open. Someone could hear."
"You're right," Katniss says at once to Rue, and then quickly to Prim, "This isn't a fight. It isn't a discussion. You fix Peeta, do whatever you can while he's passed out, and as soon as he wakes, we're gone. Do you understand? We cannot ally with Peeta. I don't trust him, I don't like him, and we don't need him."
Prim nods sharply, her face set into an expression of cool approval, and Katniss thinks that her sister is probably remembering that Katniss once said something very similar about Finch. That's different, Katniss tells herself. Finch isn't a problem. Peeta has allied with the Careers and killed one tribute already. There's no way I'm letting Prim near him for longer than she needs to be. I'd feel safer if—
She stops suddenly, eyes resting on the dagger at Prim's side. "Where did you get that?" she asks.
Prim has ground some sort of herb mixture onto a small, flat rock, and she kneels to apply some of it to the stings on Peeta's collarbone. "We searched him for weapons first thing and took away everything but his clothes," Prim replies, not looking up. "I'm not an idiot."
"We also went back to where the tracker jackers were to search for weapons and supplies," Rue adds placatingly before Katniss can interject. "The Careers grabbed most of them when they ran, and we didn't get to take anything from the two that died, the girl from District 1 and the girl from District 4. Most of the weapons and supplies were taken up when they grabbed their bodies, we think, but we still found two daggers and a canteen of water."
Katniss nods as she tries to quash her series of small heart attacks at the thought of Prim wandering the woods on her own—or even with Rue. She looks doubtfully down at Peeta. Prim has done good work; though half of Peeta's face is mostly unrecognizable, it's a far cry better than he might have been without her help. In the thick of the swarm, he should have died. "What is that?"
"Lagoris," Rue replies, sitting near Prim to pull a fistful of leaves from her bag. "We use it in our district all the time to counteract tracker jacker stings while we harvest."
"Right," Katniss replies. She slowly loosens the arrow and sets it back in place in her quiver. Now that she's been standing for a few minutes, she can feel the weakness of her own legs, a subtle tremble that warns her to take the weight off of them.
Two little healers, she thinks, lowering herself onto the grass just behind Prim and Rue so she can lean against the fallen log. Both of them set on nursing people who don't deserve it.
"Look, I mean it," she adds suddenly, mostly to Prim. "Let me know as soon as he wakes. And don't let your guard down around him."
Prim nods but doesn't turn around. Katniss knows her sister is irritated, but Katniss will do whatever it takes to keep the girl alive, even if it means dragging Prim kicking and screaming away from this place.
That would have to happen some other time, though. Katniss has already begun to feel her limbs grow heavy and weak, as though the small exertion of standing and threatening an unconscious boy with a bow and arrow is more than she can stand. Rue watches her warily as she removes the quiver, setting it and the bow within easy reach, and rests her head against the wood.
"Don't worry," Katniss tells the girl. "I don't like Peeta much, but you're a different story." For now.
"She won't hurt you," Prim adds.
Rue smiles at Katniss, the trusting sort of smile that makes Katniss's heart clench, and then she turns back to tend to Peeta.
The evening cicadas have begun their shrill screams. As Katniss considers what it may take to keep her idiot sister alive—and whether she can do it—the sound lulls her to sleep.
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She drags herself from her doze when she senses a quiet movement at her side. When she finally manages to pull her eyes open, it's evening, and the last of the daylight is beginning to fade away. Finch sits beside her, amber eyes open just a crack as she rubs gently at a sting on her good arm. The splint on her broken arm looks to have been rewrapped, as it's much neater than it had been before.
Peeta's prone body still sprawls a few feet away. Someone crouches over him, but Katniss can't make out whom. The remains of a dying fire smoke gently, lazy drifts of it wheeling into the trees overhead. At least the girls were bright enough to put it out before nightfall.
She shifts to sit up, and the girl at Peeta's side turns to face her. It's Rue. "Are you feeling any better?"
Katniss takes inventory. Her body doesn't feel quite so weak anymore, she thinks, but the light fog has not completely left her mind. "Better," she replies, squinting around to see in the darkness. "Where's Prim?"
"She went to the stream to put some water into the canteen and water bottle. We boiled some of it earlier to make sure it was clean when we were using it on you guys' wounds, but we've just been drinking the regular water otherwise."
"She went to the stream alone?"
"It's only a five minute walk," Rue soothes, holding her hands out so that Katniss settles back into place. "We've been going back and forth all day."
"It's too dark for her to be alone."
"She has the night vision glasses—it's fine. She'll see anyone else coming a mile away."
"Night vision glasses?"
Rue smiles. "She didn't recognize them either. They're given in District 11 when we have to harvest through the night."
Katniss nods as she peers through the trees, but her worry for Prim still niggles in the back of her mind. It's stupid, because if what Rue said is true, Prim is more than capable of making it to the stream and back without being seen, but she'll feel safer when her sister returns.
"Oh—you shouldn't rub it," Rue says, and Katniss turns back to find the girl bending down to look at Finch's hand. "That only makes it worse."
Finch looks up solemnly, sweat still cementing strings of red hair to her cheeks and forehead. As though it's far too heavy for her to keep it upright, she lets her head fall back onto the rough wood with a hollow thunk.
Frowning, Rue drags the backpack from the fireside and rifles through it. "I'm not sure which plants to use, though. The lagoris is mostly what we use at home, but Prim collected all of these other things…"
"Let me see," Katniss replies, and Rue obediently pushes the bag to Katniss's outstretched hand. Katniss drags it nearer—it's heavier than it had been last time she'd worn it—and inspects its contents. Six or seven types of vegetation are rolled into neat little bundles and tied with excess paracord; Katniss recognizes only some of them. Sugar maple leaves, a few strips of bark, mare's tail, a sprig of wiry roots, sagebrush, and little white flowers whose leaves their mother uses for pain relief. Katniss pulls out the last, stripping the leaves from two of the plants and holding them out to Finch in the palm of her hand.
Finch's eyes flit from the herbs to Katniss's face. Katniss should probably feel irked or offended, but she responds in amusement. "If I wanted to kill you, I'd take the bow and arrow and just do it," she says. "Much more fun that way."
Wordlessly, Finch reaches her hand out, and Katniss dumps the leaves onto the girl's palm. Finch throws them into her mouth all at once, scowling at the acidic taste.
Katniss sets the flowers carefully back into the bag, and a strange glint makes her realize why the backpack has grown so heavy. She reaches inside to pull out a small but surprisingly hefty plastic canister that still has its silver parachute attached.
"A sponsor?" Katniss says in surprise.
"That's your burn salve," Rue replies. "Prim couldn't find any plants to help heal you, so someone sent you ointment to help."
Her first gift from a sponsor. Beetee had kept his promise to talk her up, then. Somehow, Katniss is surprised that she even has a sponsor. With the exception of killing Clove in the first few seconds of the Games, she feels like she's done everything wrong since the very start: she'd failed to get the bow at the Cornucopia, she and Prim have stupidly taken on stragglers like stray pets, and she'd gotten herself so terribly burned in the fire that her leg had almost been useless.
Still, she can't complain. "Probably saved my life," she remarks aloud, still awed. Although most tributes don't bother with thanks in the heat of the game, she impulsively lifts the little pot into the air in the same way someone in the Capitol might when giving a toast. She thinks the message will be pretty clear.
Rue hums in agreement. "It probably did. Prim was going crazy. She couldn't get your fever down, and she thought you were going to get infected and maybe die."
A twinge of guilt flits into Katniss's chest. She hadn't meant for Prim to have to worry about her so badly.
The slightest movement at the edge of their vision is the only warning they receive as to Prim's arrival. She's good at that, Katniss thinks with pride, watching in the fading light as Prim bends down to lower the filled water bottles at their feet.
"You're awake," Prim remarks, her face unreadable through the dark glasses that cover her eyes.
"Yeah, I'm better, I think. Hey, Prim, let's not fight, okay?"
"We're not fighting," Prim returns in exasperation, sinking down beside her sister. "We just don't agree. But it's fine."
Katniss nods uncertainly. There is more she could say, more she wants to say, but the sudden thought of all of the millions of eyes watching them, some rooting for her and Prim to fight and some crying out for them to make up, makes her hold her tongue. She wishes it were possible to really have a private conversation.
A few feet away, Rue stomps on the last dying embers of the fire and then scatters dirt over the remains to ensure that the last of its glow has been extinguished. The forest is shadowed now. The moon has not yet risen, and Katniss can see very little.
"We should sleep now," Rue says quietly. "We can't do much without light, and I think we all need rest."
Prim murmurs in agreement. She rises to help Rue drag over a few large, leafy branches that sit near the hollows and hiding places where Katniss and Finch had slept earlier. "It's not much," Prim explains as she covers Peeta with the branches and scattered leaves, "but it might be enough if anyone's wandering the woods with glasses like these."
Rue helps Finch to lie down and then plasters leaves to her arms. Prim moves to press leaves to Katniss's skin, and then the two girls lay branches across all three of them.
"I'll take watch," Rue says. "You went first yesterday." Prim takes off the glasses and hands them to Rue, who perches at the end of the fallen log, crossing her legs and straightening her back. With the huge glasses glinting on the brim of her nose, she looks like some watchful beetle.
To Katniss's surprise, Prim slips between Katniss and the log to lie down on the dirt beside her. "You and Rue should be in the trees," she says, trying to make out her sister's features. "It's safer. Finch and I can't get up there, but it's better for you two to be off the ground."
"I'm not sleeping in a tree by myself," Prim replies, sounding offended.
"Why not?"
"I'd rather be down here."
"Prim."
"Go to sleep, Katniss," Prim orders, putting her head on Katniss's shoulders and curling up at her side.
Katniss does.
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The ground next to Katniss is still vaguely warm when she wakes the next morning, but when she feels for her sister, eyes shut tight against the morning sunlight, she comes up with only grass and dry leaves. Hushed chatter reaches her ears, and she slowly opens her eyes to find that Prim and Rue are both out of sight, murmuring somewhere in the tall grass a few feet away. Finch, her skin much clearer and her expression less pained, is still curled against the side of the log, fast asleep.
Katniss is hungry, starving even, and she wonders how long it's been since she ate anything substantial. Without her ability to hunt and Finch's to fish, she suspects Prim and Rue have eaten little as well. But as she stretches her arms overhead, she reflects that she feels much better today, certainly well enough to catch some small game. An inspection of her side shows that the wound, though still raw and slightly pink, has healed at an incredibly fast rate. Even stretching the skin doesn't cause the same painful twinge it did yesterday.
"I owe you guys one, Beetee and Wiress," Katniss mutters softly to herself. And to the cameras, but that's an afterthought.
She rises, feeling stronger and more fluid than she has in days, but the view from this higher vantage point puts a sour taste into her mouth. It's not Rue laughing with Prim. Katniss sweeps through the grass and drops into a crouch at Prim's side to glare at the intruder.
"Morning," she tells her sister, who smiles in weak amusement at Katniss's behavior.
Peeta Mellark stares back unabashedly. "Morning," he says. Like Finch, he looks much better under Prim's care. The swelling in his face has gone down, and though his neck will likely bear the scars of the tracker jackers' aggression for some time—or at least for the next several days of the rest of his life—the wound looks less violent now. He lies propped against a tree stump, obviously still too weak to do much. Although he watches Katniss warily with his dark brown eyes, he makes no move to arm or defend himself.
"We're not keeping him," Katniss says bluntly.
"He's not a pet, Katniss," Prim replies. She does not look up from where she sits grinding herbs, one small stone scraping the vegetation across the flat rock she'd used earlier. At home, they'd have used a mortar and pestle for the work, but here, she has to make do.
"He might as well be for the way you're helping him."
"She's already told me that you plan on leaving soon," Peeta interrupts. He struggles to force his weak arms to push him into a straighter position. "But I think you're making a mistake if you go without me."
Katniss raises her eyebrows at Prim, who shrugs. "I told him to take it up with you."
Satisfied, Katniss nods. "Good. Answer's still no."
"The Careers are pissed at you," he continues as though she's said nothing at all, and this, more than anything, annoys Katniss. "They've guessed that it was you who took out that girl from District 2 at the start of the Games, for one thing. And making them look like idiots with the whole tracker jacker thing—they're not gonna let that slide."
"Oh, and you can help? Apparently, you're as good as one of them. You didn't seem to have such a huge problem with them a while ago when you killed that District 8 girl in the woods."
Peeta's face freezes. "That was—…I was helping. She was bleeding out from what they did to her. It would have been more painful otherwise."
"Sure. And I guess it'll be really useful for us to ally with some baker's son. What are you going to do, paint your way out of here?"
Peeta frowns at this, tilting his head. His ridiculously golden hair gleams in the sunlight despite the dirt that clings to it. "You were watching. During training, you were watching me paint at the camouflage station."
Katniss shrugs. "Don't take it personal. I kept an eye on all of the competition. Main thing it told me about you is that you have no useful skills." This isn't entirely true, of course, because Katniss hid her talent during the joint training as well, so it's reasonable to assume other tributes did the same. Besides that, she's seen Peeta throwing around fifty pound sacks of flour like they're nothing. But she's not going to give him a reason to think he can stay. Prim shoots her a reproachful look out of the corner of her eye, but Katniss ignores it.
"I can tell you about the Careers. I spent days with them."
"And that really makes you look great, cozying up with the people who want us dead."
"An alliance keeps you alive at this stage of the game," he tells her, eyes piercing. "I knew I wouldn't get one with you, so I took the next best offer."
It's an idea she can respect. But before she has time to think over the words I knew I wouldn't get one with you, a low chirp comes from somewhere overhead. The three of them look up quickly to see a sponsor gift sinking toward them, its silvery parachute shimmering in the air.
The slight breeze is carrying the package a little ways off, and Prim hops to her feet to catch it before it goes too far. On the way back, she struggles to pull the cloth closed in the wind, and Katniss is surprised to see that the plastic container is fairly large, about two feet in diameter.
"It's not too heavy, whatever it is," she remarks, setting it down near Katniss and beginning to pry off the lid.
Once she opens it, a delicious smell wafts out, making Katniss's mouth water instantly. "Bread," she says in surprise.
And it is: thick, yellow slabs of it are piled in a small mound in the plastic container. The loaves are very square in shape and just about the width of Katniss's hand; Prim picks one loaf up, and Katniss can see that it seems to be more of a cake than anything else, its crusts golden and its insides fluffy and slightly porous. Katniss has the niggling suspicion that the gift must be from Haymitch and meant for Peeta—bread for the baker's son, bestowed with precise timing to show Katniss that Peeta shouldn't be counted out of the game just yet—when a small noise comes from behind them.
Whirling around and regretting that she'd left the bow and arrow where she'd slept, Katniss comes face to face with Finch, whose eyes are wide. "Cornbread!" the girl exclaims. "I'm starving!"
"Cornbread?" Prim echoes.
Finch nods, dropping onto the grass beside Prim and reaching for one loaf—square?—unabashedly, biting into it before she even begins. "It's a specialty in District 5," she explains, speaking around her mouthful. "It—well, I guess it sounds weird if you've never had it, but you make it out of cornmeal."
"So the gift's for you," Katniss remarks, taking a piece as well. It's oddly sweet and moist when she bites into it, which is not what she'd been expecting from a bread of its name.
"I don't know. The bread's what we eat sometimes in my district, anyway. Did you check the number?"
"The number?" Peeta echoes. He, too, has a mouthful of the bread, to Katniss's chagrin, and she has to remind herself that it's not her gift to share or not share.
"Yeah. They don't make it obvious which district the gifts are from, because if they can make the tributes fight over it, they will. But the parachute's always marked." She balances the rest of her bread on her knee and searches through the folds of the parachute. After a moment, she finds it: "Here, look—oh, it's not mine."
Stitched onto the corner of the parachute where it meets the string linking the cloth to the container is a small white patch with the number 3.
"District 3?" Katniss shakes her head. "I've never even had cornbread before. Why would a sponsor send me this?"
"Well, we're all hungry," Prim says reasonably. "Maybe they just wanted to let you try something new."
But Katniss's suspicions are wiggling into paranoia. The sponsors get to decide what is sent, but it's the mentors who coordinate the actual delivery. If a sponsor—or, more likely, a set of sponsors—had simply decided to pay to feed Katniss, Beetee and Wiress and the other mentors from District 3 would be responsible for selecting the food, if it hadn't been specified.
Bread for the baker's son. Cornbread from District 5. During training, Katniss had adamantly stated that she didn't want to form an alliance, but Beetee had never stopped encouraging her to find someone she could trust. And in past games, many mentors have been prone to working hints and warnings into gifts, whether written as a note or as some other implicit sign. Is the bread his way of giving advice? Of showing Katniss he thinks the pair of them can be trusted as allies?
Or is Katniss still dazed with slight tracker jacker venom and pain medication? That seems to be the most reasonable option.
"Save some for Rue," she says suddenly, abandoning the thoughts for later. "She'll be hungry, too. Where is she, anyway?"
"At the stream," Prim replies between bites. "But actually, I think she's been gone a while."
"How long?"
As though she can sense Katniss's worry, Prim glances behind them in the direction of the stream. "Not too long. But she could've been back by now."
She also could've been ambushed, Katniss thinks, and then she pushes down the lid of the container on the last two loaves of bread. "Those are for Rue," she says quietly, and she stalks back through the grass to sling the bow and arrow over her shoulder.
She turns back. "Prim," she begins, and then she stops. She'd been about to tell her sister not to leave Finch's side, all of her wariness directed toward Peeta at the moment. But relying on a tribute, even one as helpful as Finch, can be fatal in the Hunger Games. Katniss squashes the thought violently, willing herself not to let her universal suspicion, one of the most useful tools she has, slip away now when she needs it most.
Fortunately, Prim seems to think Katniss is instructing her to follow, because she wipes the last of the crumbs on her jacket and stands.
.
They walk through the forest in tandem for some time, both of them noiseless and alert. "I doubt anything's happened," Katniss soothes once she realizes Prim is clutching the dagger at her side. "It's just in case."
Prim nods without loosening her grip. Katniss nocks an arrow, her weapon lowered but ready.
From somewhere above, birds caw irritably at each other. The breeze stirs up the leaves and grass, silencing the sound of the Everdeens' footfalls. They reach the stream after a few minutes' walk.
No sign of Rue.
"Maybe she walked back already," Prim says doubtfully. "And if she didn't come back this way, we might not have seen her."
"It's possible," Katniss says, scrutinizing the woods for signs of life.
Prim suddenly cocks her head to the side, eyes searching out some point in the distance. Katniss turns and listens, and she can vaguely hear the sound that has caught her sister's attention.
Voices. Two of them. Muted by the babbling water.
"Get down," Katniss orders, and Prim disappears behind a bush, her dagger unsheathed and fiercely gripped. Katniss pulls the arrow back and drops into a crouch, slowly creeping downstream across the pebbled ground until she can make out who is speaking.
Blooming slips of yellow-eyed grass grow at her side and in bundles down the length of the river; the two speakers stand in it, their figures dark against the vegetation and their faces turned away. One of them, small and compact and curly-haired, is Rue. The other is the male tribute from District 11, tall and dark-skinned and built like an ox. As Katniss quietly moves in, she sees that he grasps Rue's forearm tightly even as she scrabbles against his hold, raking her fingers against his hand.
"Hey!" Katniss shouts, standing abruptly, her bow pulled taut and aimed before she has fully risen. "Leave her alone."
It's then that she notices the long, curved sword in the boy's other hand, near enough to Rue to slice her open in a heartbeat. Just as she's about to release the arrow, Rue cries, "Wait! It's alright! He's not hurting me—he's trying to help."
"Doesn't look like it," Katniss replies, not taking her eyes off him. He returns her gaze, his strange golden-brown eyes narrowed and mistrustful.
"He is," Rue says, ripping her arm from his clutches. "It's just—"
"This the girl you allied with?" the boy asks. "The one who said she was gonna kill everyone who wasn't her sister?"
"She won't hurt me," Rue retorts. "Prim said."
The boy snorts. "Like hell. Come on, Rue," he replies, grabbing her shoulder to drag her away, eyes still fixed on Katniss and her bow. "She doesn't exactly look trustworthy."
"I'm not leaving, Thresh. We have a good alliance. You should come with us."
"Let her go," Katniss spits again, stepping forward with her raised bow as the boy drags Rue back by the fabric of her sleeve.
"You put that thing down, Fire Girl," Thresh retorts, pulling Rue behind him, his sword pointed at Katniss.
"Stop it!" Rue screams, struggling in vain to free herself from his grasp. "Stop!"
There's only the slightest noise at Katniss's back to suggest Prim's arrival, and then her sister pushes the bow and arrow down. "Stop, Katniss."
"What, and just let him take her?"
"This is stupid," Prim retorts, blue eyes flashing. "You both want Rue safe, but don't kill each other over who does it."
"And—" Rue begins, struggling to pull the neck of her jacket down. Thresh lets go of it at once. "And we can stick together a while, all of us. The Careers—nobody wants them to win, and there are too many of them for us to do anything separately. Let's stay together, just for a while. So we're as strong as they are."
Thresh takes his eyes from Katniss for the first time to stare at Rue, and Katniss recognizes the familiar expression, remembers seeing it a few times during training. It's a protective sort of fondness, as though the meanness in him is tempered by her presence, because Rue is an innocent twelve-year-old girl who he can't in good conscience leave on her own. As guarded as Thresh is toward Katniss, she thinks that the same protective sentiment will likely extend to Prim as well, meaning that her sister is in the clear. And Katniss can take care of herself.
And it's true that the Careers need to be wiped out if Prim's going to make it out alive. And it's not something Katniss can do on her own.
"Alright," she says quietly, surprising even herself. Had she been watching this exchange live on television, she almost certainly would have groaned in exasperation, and she wonders what the Capitol will make of this decision. "But just until we find a way to get rid of the Careers."
She makes a point of sliding the arrow from its position and slipping it back into her quiver. After a long moment, Thresh sheathes his sword, the metal slipping soundlessly into its fur-lined container.
Wow, Katniss thinks. This is going to be really uncomfortable.
.
And then they are six.
Katniss grumbles as she sits beside Finch, unwilling to be the one to explain why this stupid decision has come to pass. Prim relays the information as Katniss pushes the remaining cornbread toward Rue, who takes a bite and closes her eyes in bliss. She shares the last loaf with Thresh, who takes it without hesitation. Katniss notes that he looks remarkably well-fed for having spent days here in the arena, so he must have resources to get food as well. Which is good, because between Katniss, Finch, and Thresh, they'll have to find a lot of food to keep all of these mouths fed.
Prim has only just finished her story when another irregular chirping noise catches Katniss's attention. Another sponsor gift is floating in on the breeze, sinking directly overhead, and this time it's Finch who rises to catch it. She stumbles a little under its weight, balancing it awkwardly between her good and bad arms, but she quickly rights herself. Peeta clears the other container from the center of their circle so she can set it down, and Finch pulls the parachute aside so they can all take a look.
It's bigger than the last gift by a few inches but still circular in shape. After a second of hesitation, Prim says, "Well, let's open it, then."
Rue pries the corner open and lifts the lid, her expression eager when she sees the contents. "They're apple rolls!" she exclaims.
There are four or five long loaves of bread inside, and they look to Katniss like the normal variety she might find in District 12, except for the nuts and bits of apple sprinkled across the light brown crusts. But when Rue picks up a slice, Katniss sees that the insides are beautiful, swirled with perfect spirals of apple chunks and spices.
They all scramble to try a piece of the sweet bread, hurried by the thought that it may be some time before they find their next meal. For some time, the only sounds are noises of contented gluttony.
Once they have each had four or five slices, they sit back, too full to even eat the last loaves. "I've never had one of these before," Finch says slowly as Rue uses the bit of fabric that lined the tin to wrap up the remaining loaves. "Are they from your district?"
"Oh, yes," Rue remarks, struggling to tie the fabric off. Katniss frowns and pulls the parachute toward her, looking for the stitched number. "But we don't get them often. Maybe once a year. They never let us eat the apples we pick in the orchards unless we have too many of them, because otherwise they'll spoil and go to waste before they even reach another district. When we get to eat them, people put them into all sorts of foods."
The number 3 again sits in the corner of the parachute. Katniss can feel the eyes of Prim and Finch and Peeta as she folds the cloth away.
"What is it?" Thresh asks suspiciously.
"Are you sure they're all marked?" Katniss asks Finch. "Maybe they all have the same number."
Prim frowns, pulling their backpack toward her to carefully rummage through the medicinal herbs and other contents. "I think Districts 5 and 12 sent medicine for Finch and Peeta earlier. We used up all of the medicine, but I thought we might be able to use the pots or parachutes for something later."
After a moment, she pulls out two tiny pots, both emptied. Katniss takes them and finds two numbers in the corners of their parachutes: 5 and 12.
Katniss shrugs as though it doesn't matter. "I guess they just forgot to send dessert," she says casually, and after a moment, she directs the topic to the location of other food sources, as the remaining loaves of bread won't even last them the rest of the day.
But it's obvious now what Beetee means. Trust a little, Katniss, the gifts say.
.
A/N: Aaaand the alliance is really happening. Poor Katniss…everyone is conspiring against her, even with the best laid plans and all that. I've always thought that it makes sense to have a temporary alliance in the Hunger Games, especially if you can count on the Career pack banding together to take everyone out. Instead of letting them pick you off one by one, why not try to show a little more resistance from the start?
On another note, please recall that there will be no romance in this story. Yes, Peeta is here, but no romantic subplots will be taking place.
Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed (or didn't), please let me know what you thought!
Till next time,
ket