A/N: I got so many responses after the last chapter's cliffhanger that I just had to update early :) Although, actually, you may not be thanking me for that by the end of this one.

Chapter 24 - The Best Laid Plans

I whirl around, bow still drawn back, to find the District 3 boy standing a few feet away, regarding me calmly. The spear I had seen him leave with is lying on the ground beside him, and he raises his hands in the air to indicate he means me no harm. I don't lower my bow though, in case this is a trick. I search the plain for any sign of the others, but only spot Gale doing the same from his position near the copse, clearly debating whether I'm in any danger right now and if he should risk exposing himself. If it weren't for his encounter with the boy the night after the fire, I'm sure he already would have. The boy must've come from behind the Cornucopia for Gale not to have spotted him before he was within reach of me.

"I'm alone," the boy assures me. Up close I can see that Gale was right - he's painfully scrawny, and even though he must be at least Rory's age, he's only a couple inches taller than I am, the result of a lifetime of malnourishment. I relax slightly since it's obvious the boy is definitely not a physical threat. "I told them I'd forgotten to set something and had to come back. Luckily they're short-handed enough now to let me go without an escort. And desperate enough to keep their supplies safe to not just kill me on the spot for screwing up," he adds bemusedly.

"What are you doing here?" I ask warily.

The boy lowers his hands slowly, smirking slightly as he responds, "Same thing you are, I reckon. Only I plan to do it from a safe distance. Unless you were hoping to spend the rest of the Games deaf and with several broken ribs, in which case, by all means, go ahead." He gestures sarcastically at the pyramid.

I scowl briefly, but then realize he's right as I remember my old school lessons about the dangers of mine explosions - it's not only the blast itself that you have to worry about, but the pressure that ripples out from it. This close to the landmines, the pressure wave created by the explosion could have seriously hurt me, not to mention the shrapnel that'd be created as the supplies blow apart. The boy has actually done me a large favour. Assuming, of course, he's telling the truth about blowing it up himself.

"So you set up this whole thing just to sabotage the Careers?" I question, my tone skeptical. "If you weren't really working with them, why didn't you just kill them when they were unconscious from the tracker jacker venom?"

He shrugs, but looks pointedly at me. "Why don't you just kill me now?"

The answer to that is pretty obvious - he's just saved me from getting badly injured, and he most likely saved Gale's life the other night. I can't very well kill him now, even if Haymitch hadn't warned us to avoid being responsible for non-Career deaths.

Remembering that triggers a wave of understanding in me - he couldn't kill the Careers, because then the rest of us would have to kill each other. Something it seems none of us are inclined to do. The suspicion I had that Haymitch is working with the other mentors, at least the one's from the sympathetic districts, grows - whether to help us specifically or just the cause in general, I'm not sure. Either way, if the result is to keep us alive longer, I'm not about to complain.

And I realize that, at least for now, we can't kill the Careers either, unless they leave us with no choice. Of the four other non-Career tributes in the Arena, Rue is actively working with us, Foxface and this boy have saved our lives, and while we can't be sure what Thresh has been up to, at this point it just seems reasonable to assume he's involved somehow as well. As unpleasant as it is to think about, especially standing here looking this boy in the eye, the ugly truth is we need the Careers around until the field's been narrowed further - until they've narrowed it for us.

I remember the cameras watching us, and finally lower my bow, commenting wryly for the benefit of the audience, "Doesn't seem very sporting, does it?"

He chuckles, catching on. "Certainly doesn't." The boy looks towards the woods, then turns back to me. "I'd suggest getting out of here now. They'll be back soon, and I plan to blow it and get gone before they do."

I hesitate momentarily - I hate to leave the job undone, and I'm still not entirely convinced that this boy can be trusted to do what he claims. But I don't really have much choice, not with the injuries I'd be likely to get if I blew it myself from here. I briefly consider taking the boy's spear, just to be sure he can't stab me in the back with it as I return to the woods, but quickly discard the idea. If he wanted me dead he could have killed me when he first approached, or even just let me set off the mines. And he'll need that spear when the Careers return and see what he's done.

I nod once, and begin to back away towards the copse where Gale has been watching us tensely. The boy starts to head towards the lake, presumably to retrieve whatever he needs to blow the trap from afar. After a few steps though, my curiosity gets the better of me, and I can't resist calling out to ask, "Using the landmines," - he turns back to face me - "it's ingenious - how'd you think of it?"

He smiles enigmatically when he answers, "My mentor told me how he won his Games. And I got … inspired." He grins as he shrugs, then turns and starts to jog towards the lake. Apparently that's all the answer I'm going to get, so I do the same but in the opposite direction.

Gale melted back into the copse as soon as the boy and I split up. I re-enter the woods a bit away from there, wanting to get off the open plain as soon as possible, then circle back to the hiding place.

He's sitting there waiting for me, clearly agitated when I get back. "What happened out there?" he whispers anxiously.

I peer through the brush to see the boy from 3 by the lake, working hurriedly on the plastic box he had been holding earlier. It must be a trigger of some sort.

I turn to Gale to explain, but just then we hear someone crashing through the woods a few hundred yards to our left.

Everything then seems to happen in slow-motion.

Cato emerges into the clearing, running hard towards the boy from 3. Something about his arrival strikes me as odd, but too much is happening for me to put my finger on it.

The boy spots him and makes one last adjustment then presses something on the box.

I hiss at Gale to get down, hitting the floor myself and covering my head with my arms.

I feel the impact of Gale's body as he drops to the ground beside me, and hope that he thinks to mimic my position.

Then the air seems to press out against us as the explosion rings out and it's lucky that we're below the plane of the blast because even from this distance the force of it would be enough to blow us back if we weren't. The ground shakes for almost a full minute as one mine after another goes off.

When the blasts finally stop, I pull my arms away from my ears and look at Gale. All sound is heavily muffled, a loud ringing filling my ears. I point at my ears and Gale mouths the word 'ringing' to me. I nod, indicating I'm in the same boat.

Luckily, after a few minutes the ringing starts to fade. I can only imagine how bad the damage would have been if I was closer to the blast site.

We prop ourselves up on our elbows and peek out at the clearing. The tower of supplies is gone, reduced to smoldering rubble. The field is strewn with the wreckage of the blast. I can see Cato, knocked flat on his back in the center of the half-circle of metal plates, not too far from where I was standing when the boy from 3 stopped me. The side of his head facing us is stained red, blood seeping out of his left ear, and I shudder thinking about how close I came to being in that position.

Cato tries to stand up but almost immediately falls back to the ground. The injury to his ear would have thrown off his balance, and it's going to take some time for him to get used to it. But it's already obvious, even from a distance, that he's determined to get to his feet if for no other reason than to get retaliation on the boy from 3, who is also starting to rouse. He's crawling slowly away from the lake, evidently trying to head for the cliff and into the grass beyond. That would seem like a terrible idea given his condition, were it not for the imminent danger posed to him by Cato, who's trying again to rise. This time he makes it a few steps before falling again. But the boy is moving so slowly, Cato's still sure to catch up with him before he can get away.

"We have to help him," Gale says grimly next to my ear, just audible over the ringing.

I nod - if it wasn't for him, that would be me horribly injured and struggling to get to safety. Then the thought that's been nagging at the back of my mind since Cato first appeared finally crystallizes. "I think Rue's in trouble," I whisper urgently. "Why aren't the other two with Cato?"

Gale frowns. We can't abandon her either and if they've caught up to her, by the time we get the boy to safety it could be too late. Assuming it isn't already.

To help them both means splitting up. But they've each done too much for us to leave either of them to their demises.

I glance at the boy, then worriedly into the woods, knowing we are losing time.

"Go," Gale says unhappily, nodding towards the forest. "I'll get him out of here and catch up with you."

I kiss him hard. "Be careful," I whisper intensely. "If the others show up, don't try to fight them; just get away."

He nods. "I love you," he says, his voice rough, as he gets to his feet.

"I love you too," I whisper back, and then I take off into the woods, pushing away the terrified feeling I have that I'm never going to see him again.

I'm gone less than half an hour when I hear the cannon blast, and I very nearly turn back, but force myself to keep going. There's only one boom, and of the three people I left in the clearing, Gale was the least likely to have died. Even if Clove and Marvel showed up -

No. I won't let myself think about that. Gale's fine. He has to be.

At this point, I'm more worried that the cannon was for Rue than anything. Despite my earlier realization that we need the Careers alive a bit longer, I hope sincerely that it was for Cato.

I race through the forest, making it back to the first campfire in half the time it took us to get to the Cornucopia from there originally. I move more carefully as I approach it, but I don't really expect to find anything there. I know Rue lit the second fire, which means if they caught up with her, it was probably at some point between there and the third fire, or between the third fire and our meeting spot.

There's no sign of her at the second campfire either, so I continue on to the place where we had agreed to set up the third. I make sure to move stealthily, the late afternoon shadows helping to keep me concealed among the trees.

The fact that Gale still hasn't caught up to me makes me increasingly nervous. But there hasn't been another cannon blast so I refuse to think about what might be holding him up. He'll be here when he can.

When I reach the site that was supposed to hold the third fire, it's immediately apparent that something went amiss. All the wood is stacked neatly, ready to be lit, but it never was. There's no sign of a struggle though - something must have scared her off before she could finish the task.

I choose the path I think she would have been most likely to take to get back to our planned meeting spot and set out in that direction. By now the ringing in my ears has diminished to a low hum and I use all my senses to stay alert to any approaching danger. I haven't gone too far from the campfire site when I hear it - a single mockingjay repeating Rue's four-note song. The one that means she's okay.

I follow the sound of the bird and hear a few more join it. This fills me with relief, since it means she's been singing to them recently, otherwise they would have picked up another tune. Rue is alive.

My relief is short-lived though, for when I reach a small clearing in the trees I see Rue, alive yes, but certainly not okay, with her hands bound, a knife pressed to her throat, and Marvel's arm around her waist holding her prisoner as a human shield in front of him.

It's a trap. And I've walked right into it.

The trees here are too thin to provide me any sort of cover, so Marvel sees me at the same instant I spot him. Luckily I've had my bow loaded since I left the copse, and I aim squarely at him. I move cautiously into the open, adrenaline heightening my senses as I search for any sign of Clove, who is still unaccounted for and could be waiting to pounce on me.

Marvel smirks viciously as I approach. "So nice of you to finally join us," he purrs, his tone dripping with pure malice.

He's sitting against a large rock at the base of a pair of pine trees. Discarded on the ground next to them is a net - that must have been how he trapped her. I look for any opening to shoot at him, but in his current position Rue is nearly the same height as he is. His head is half-hidden behind hers; the only other parts of his body exposed are the arm around her waist and the hand holding the knife to her neck. If he anticipates my shot, he'll have ample opportunity to move out of the way, and I'll end up killing her instead.

Rue's eyes are wide with terror as she looks at me, and I shoot her the most reassuring expression I can muster.

"Let her go," I say insistently, my gaze flicking up to meet Marvel's. "This is between you and me. You don't need her."

"Maybe not," he shrugs, but makes no move to release her. "But I rather like having your little pet on a leash. Of course, I'd rather have you on a leash," he leers at me.

I shudder internally but refuse to react otherwise. "Big talk coming from Cato's lapdog," I spit and his eyes flare with rage. "Don't you think it's kind of pathetic, hiding behind a little girl?"

"I don't know," he muses, "but I'd love to get your boyfriend's thoughts on that. He seems to be something of an expert on the subject. Where is Loverboy anyway?"

"He's coming," I assure him steadily.

He laughs; a harsh, mocking sound. "Yes, from what I've heard you're quite good at making him do that."

My traitorous face flushes bright red with anger, but I refuse to give him the satisfaction of seeing me flinch. "Jealous?" I ask, my tone carefully even; quirking one eyebrow at him.

He presses his lips together and makes a short 'hm' sound. It's not a denial. "This could have all gone very differently between us, you know," he says grandly.

"Yes," I agree, taking a couple of steps closer. Rue watches my movements nervously, and I stop when I see Marvel tighten the grip around her waist.

"You could have had the good sense to die when I dropped that tracker jacker nest on you." His eyes narrow dangerously at the reminder of that ordeal.

"Or I could have killed you that first morning in the Games when you were all so busy arguing like a bunch of idiots over which direction to go, you never even noticed us sitting less than 50 feet away from you."

The revelation that we were there, within their grasp, and they let us slip away startles him enough that he loosens his hold on Rue's waist a bit. But what I really need him to do is move the knife from her throat.

"Or," I continue, my fingers tightening on the arrow where it meets the string, "I could have just done us all a favour during training and shot you in your ugly, toadying face when I took your ass down."

Marvel's livid now. "Listen here you little bitch," he snarls, moving the hand with the knife away from Rue's neck to jab it angrily in my direction. Rue's ready when he does and shoves his arm aside with her bound hands, before going limp, dropping to the ground, and rolling hard away from him. As soon as she moves I fire, hitting him just below his collarbone. He falls back against the rock, shouting in pain, and Rue gets to her feet, running fast towards me.

For one perfect instant I think we are actually both going to make it out of this.

But then, for a split second as Rue approaches me, she blocks my view of Marvel. And I wish immediately that she had run for the woods instead of for me, because somehow, in that split second, Marvel bolts upright again and throws the knife in his hand towards us.

I load and fire another arrow at him as soon as his head appears over her shoulder and I realize he's moved. This time I hit him in the neck, blood pouring out of him in a huge gush as the arrow severs his carotid artery. It's a fatal wound.

It's too late, though. Rue falls face-first to the ground only a few feet from me, Marvel's knife embedded deeply in her back, right through her left kidney. In the Arena, with no doctors to help her, the wound is as deadly as the one I gave him.

I drop my bow - if Clove was nearby, she'd have attacked by now - and rush to Rue, my knees slamming hard into the ground as I come to a stop beside her. I don't even feel the pain.

Rue's curled on her side, the knife protruding angrily from her back. My hands flutter uselessly, unsure whether it would hurt her more if I took it out. Instead I reach down to hurriedly untwist the rope from her hands. I won't let her die a captive.

Tears fill my eyes as she says, "I'm sorry, Katniss."

I shake my head vigorously as I undo the last knot and toss away the offending rope.

"You have nothing to be sorry for. I'm the one that's sorry. I'm so sorry Rue. This is all my fault," I choke as the words leave my mouth, a sob welling up in my throat. I wanted so badly to protect this little girl, and here she is, dying, because we provoked the Careers and Marvel was heartless enough to use someone so innocent as bait.

The cannon booms. Marvel is dead.

She reaches for my hand and I clutch hers tightly in both of mine. "It's okay," she whispers, her voice reedy already. "It had to happen."

I make some incoherent sound of denial, and she turns her head up to me, a distant look in her eyes. "It'll be better," she promises me. "After."

She doesn't say after what. But she doesn't have to. Cinna promised me that Gale and I weren't alone in this - this fight against the Capitol. I just didn't realize until now how much more we'd have to lose because of that.

I smile at her through my tears. "I'll make sure of it," I promise. "For both of us."

Rue groans, her grip tightening on my hand. "Don't go."

"Course not. Staying right here," I whisper soothingly as I pull her head onto my lap.

"You promised to sing for me," she says, so quietly I barely catch it.

Even though my throat is so tight with tears I can barely breathe, even though my entire body feels like it's contracting in on itself in grief, I cannot break that promise. I remember an old lullaby, one I would often sing to Prim when worry or hunger or sickness kept her from sleeping. It's a simple, soothing song, one that promises a happier place than the world we live in today.

I start singing softly, of a peaceful meadow and soft grass and the warm sun; a place where dreams are sweet and troubles are far away and you are loved, always loved. Rue relaxes against me almost as soon as I start. After the second verse, her eyes flutter shut and her breathing becomes shallower.

As I reach the last lines of the lullaby, a pair of sturdy arms wrap comfortingly around my shoulders. Gale's found us. My voice catches as more tears slide down my face, relief mingling with sorrow and even more guilt, but I finish the song for Rue. Even though her chest is no longer moving.

The last note has just left my lips when the cannon fires.

A/N: I know, I'm sorry, I didn't want to do it, but unfortunately it had to happen :( Also, I know a lot of you were hoping to see Thresh this chapter - sorry it wasn't him at the Cornucopia, but I promise he will show up, when the time's right ;) Next chapter will be up Friday.