Disclaimer: I don't own this.

The Darkness Is the Light

Rue hastily wakes me up. She shakes me awake, trying to get me up so that we can start the plan before it's too late.

"Okay, Rue." I'm still a bit groggy. She reaches into our shared bag and pulls out my water canteen, giving me a small splash to wake me up. If it weren't for the nearby river, I would be upset at the waste. Though I still say, "Hey, don't be wasteful."

She reminds me, "Gale, I don't think the careers are awake. This is our chance."

By that point I'm awake enough to pull out the ridged knife we've been holding on to. "You can get this to her right?"

"Yes."

"Good luck." I untie the both of us, and I let her off to move between the trees. I climb down the tree, and move myself to where I can get a closer look at the careers, near to where my trap is. I find the small clearing where Rue brought me last night, where my trap is. I move to a tree near to my booby trapped tree. I climb up and I get a good vantage point of the camp, and Katniss's tree.

When I look around the tree, I spot the hive that Rue was talking about. The branch is in fact really narrow, but right next to the main branch that connects to the tree. It's gonna be difficult to cut it down without getting the attention of the tracker jackers. However, sawing a branch off is more inconspicuous than simply trying to rip the branch off. Nearby, I spot a parachute in the tree. I wonder what was in it. Maybe food since she was trapped up there.

I notice that Katniss is reacting to something in the tree above me, must be Rue. The next thing I see, Katniss unties herself from the tree, and starts climbing around the tree, until I can't see her. There aren't any bushes on the other side I can hide behind, too risky to try and move over there. I look around the trees to see if I can find Rue. I can't spot her anywhere, and that's good, if I can't see her, neither can anyone else. That's what makes this girl an adversary to the careers. No catch no kill.

The next thing I see is Katniss reappearing, she's climbing toward the nest. I'm scared for her right now, because one slip up, and the careers will wake up. Either that or the trackers will realize what she's doing and attack and kill her.

She reaches the branch with the nest, and begins to saw the branch. She keeps checking below on the careers, smart girl. I notice that she starts flinching, the jackers outside the nest must have noticed her. Luckily, they don't seem to be swarming her, they don't realize what she's doing.

The next thing I see, the branch is wobbles, and falls. It falls down, right on top of one of the girls, the one from 4. The other careers jolt up and start screaming as the wasps start flying around swarming them. The first one up is Glimmer. She runs right in the direction of my trap, carrying the bow and the quiver. One moment she's running, the next she's on the ground, her leg pulled into the air. She starts thrashing around, screaming trying to swat away the wasps. The other careers run past her without giving any hint they wanted to help her. I look back and I spot the girl from 4 tripping over the roots of Katniss's tree with the wasps swarming her, she's not gonna make it either.

She hopelessly stands back up and attempts to run, but collapses before she can get anywhere. Her face is beginning to swell up horribly as her screaming stops.

Glimmer, still screaming for help, is reaching for her leg, trying to free herself from my trap. It's all for nought as her face begins to bloat just like that of the girl from 4, before she stops screaming and collapses back. She vainly struggles before she stops moving completely.

Suddenly I hear a thud, I look back to the camp, and find that Katniss is on her back trying to stand. She probably fell out of her tree. The wasps have left by now, chasing the other careers, it's safe to trek the ground. I jump out of mine and immediately run to Katniss. She has three large lumps on her body, one on her hand and two at the nape of her neck, around her collarbones. I immediately go to her and I try to pick her up, she resists me, probably because the venom from the stings is clouding her ability to comprehend reality. I yell to her who I am, and she seems to calm down. She still has enough of herself to recognize it's me. I pick her up and carry her to a downed log some distance from the now-abandoned camp, laying her down on her back, reassuring her I'd be right back.

I go back to find Glimmer and claim her weapon, but she doesn't have it when I get to her. I have no time to search for it, I have to go back to Katniss. I quickly turn to run back to Katniss, but before I can, someone tackles me. As I roll and recover, I get a look at him, it's Cato. Guess he didn't leave all the way to the lake as I thought he would. We both quickly get up and stand, facing one another as if we were feral apex predators. He doesn't have any visible lumps on him, must have gotten away fast enough to avoid getting swarmed by the jackers.

I remind him of what happened in training. "You already know how this is gonna end."

"Yeah. I do." He pulls out a baton from us jacket, "With your death."

"Good luck with that, you weren't even smart enough to use it when you got to me."

He glares at me with a bloodthirsty gaze before charging at me. I pull out two knives and use them to deflect his first swing, losing both of them. I reach for the hand holding the baton, trying to get him to lose the sword. I push him against the tree, and he drops the sword. But he manages to wrestle his other hand free and punches me in the face before kicking me away. He runs right into me and knocks me to the ground again. This time, he doesn't let me get up, he moves to get on top of me, trying to thrust a knife into me.

I catch the hand holding the knife, pushing with all I have against him before I reach for his face, forcing him to recoil enough for me to roll myself on top of him, and turning the knife against him, aiming for his neck. He's as strong as I am, and he keeps the knife from moving. I give up on the nice and simply punch him in the face, and he responds with one of his own.

He pulls on my hair and rolls us again, ending up with him on top again. He tries to thrust the knife again. This time he keeps my stronger right hand from reaching the blade. My weaker left one is unable to keep up on its own, and I feel the knife sink deep into my left shoulder. I take advantage of the moment, and manage to punch him off of me. I quickly take the moment to rip out the knife, but I don't feel anything at it. I quickly make a break, stumbling on the direction of the baton, though I try to make it seem like I'm trying to escape.

Cato yells, "Where do you think you're going?" My plan works, he comes right at me, and I swing the baton at him. Hitting him in the gut. He immediately keels over and vomits. He recovers enough to start going off, apparently not wanting to fight any further. I'm too tired from this to go after him. I just hope that my baton strike was enough that it would kill him, no matter how slowly. Part of me believes that we won't be so lucky.

Carrying the baton, and holding my injured shoulder, I trek back to where I left Katniss. It takes all the willpower I have to avoid falling down and closing my eyes. Katniss isn't alone when I find her, Rue's with her, as well as the bow and the arrows. Figures. Of course she went to go get them herself, I should've thought of that. Looking at Katniss, she has what look like leaves over her sting areas. I wonder why she used leaves instead of the medical stuff in my backpack I left with her.

Rue looks at me and her face melts into horror at what she sees. "What happened?!"

Through my breaths, I tell her that it was Cato.

She immediately takes the baton, and takes me by my hand, pulling me to the downed tree, and has me sit down next to Katniss. She helps me remove my jacket, and then my shirt, so that she can get a look at the wound. The look on her face tells me it's serious.

"Bad, isn't it?"

She hesitatingly nods. "I don't know what to do."

"I guess we can start with just cleaning it out."

She goes to the backpack and pulls out the medkit. It has nothing that could really treat this wound of mine, but it's the best we got. I know enough medical stuff to know that if this hit anything major, I would already be dead. So now we just gotta keep it clean.

The medkit has a small bottle of water, which she pours onto my wound, making me cry out in pain from it. She uses the last of it to clean her own hands before doing something with leaves. She chews on it before applying it to the bandage, which she applies to my shoulder. The pasty-feeling stuff makes my wound sting, I know that's a good thing. The thing didn't have anything for stitches, maybe those only come from sponsors. The bandage is hardly big enough to cover my entire wound, and it was the only one. I guess a really good medkit only comes from a sponsor, maybe not even then. With her treatment of me done, I ask her how Katniss is doing.

"She'll make it. The leaves on her are good medicine."

"How'd you learn that?"

"Back home, we basically live and work in the trees. Tracker jacker incidents and other injuries are common, and we all quickly learned how to treat them without a doctor nearby."

"You never cease to amaze me."

She simply smiles, before she brings me my canteen from the backpack. I hastily drink the water until it's empty. Now that my adrenaline surge is wearing off, I feel the pain of my wound, as well as how hungry and parched I am.

Rue takes my canteen and tells me, "I'm gonna get some more for you." She takes two, one must be Katniss's.

Suddenly I hear two cannons go off. They must be for the girls killed by the tracker jackers. All the stings they got, and they took that long to die? I guess the stings didn't kill them right away, must've been alive for the whole time. They may have been sadistic and enjoying the kill, but no one deserves to suffer that way. We just wiped out two careers simultaneously, we from 11 and 12 sent 1 and 2 running. District 4 doesn't count this year, they have no deadly abilities. In fact, the spear I avoided that I thought was from the boy from 4, I wonder if it was actually from him.

Now that I'm sitting, the urge to close my eyes and relax is suddenly returning, and it's overwhelming. Carrying Katniss this distance running, running back to Glimmer, the fight with Cato, and the blood loss from my wound have taken a toll on me. I have no reason by which to stay awake now, and I simply collapse to the side and let myself drift off to sleep. I just hope that when Rue comes back, she's alone because I'm in no condition for another fight of any kind.

When I wake up, I find Rue sitting nearby. She's started a tiny fire, using it to cook a small game animal. I'm too groggy to tell what right now. Judging by the light, it's definitely well into the evening. I sit up, the pain from my shoulder still fresh, but at least now not as intense.

I ask, "How long was I out?"

Rue says, "You didn't sleep for more than a day if that's what you're asking."

"Cute. Anything special that I should know about?"

"No more cannons went off."

"Whatcha got there?"

"I went back to some of your snares, found a few things."

She pulls out two squirrels and a rabbit. Much better than we've been in a bit since we got here. "I'll take a squirrel please."

She teasingly smiles and keeps pulling away from me. I simply play along with it and pretend to beg her for the squirrel. When she hands it to me, I cook and devour it as fast as I can. Famished can't even begin to describe how I feel right now.

"Where are Cato and the other careers?"

"Down by the lake, sleeping off the venom. Cato's awake though."

Son of a bitch is a tough nut to crack. I give him points for it, but still. I glance over to a still-unconscious Katniss. "How long will she be out for?"

"Don't know. Could be for a while."

I believe it, that venom is a hell of a concoction. In fact, it's rather lucky if you get this much poison and ever wake up. I also notice something on her leg. It looks like a healed burn wound. For myself, I know that at some point, we're gonna need stitches to fix this wound of mine. It's too much to try and move my left arm right now, I gotta wait a little before then. Suddenly I hear some kind of chime. I look around, but I can't find it. "What is that?"

Rue answers that it's a parachute. "Should land somewhere right around here."

Then I see it, floating right above us, landing right next to Rue. I move closer as she opens it. It has a small container of what looks like liquid, alongside a needle . She also pulls out a small note.

Full dose in each sting. Stay alive. H.

Must be to treat Katniss's stings. A little late for that, but I guess he has his reasons. Better late than never. I move to Katniss and remove the leaves on her stings. Rue takes out the needle and the container, and extracts liquid until the needle is full, and then injects it into the sting on her hand. She cleans the needle and repeats until all three have been treated. By then, the liquid is gone, completely empty.

I look up and say, "Thank you Haymitch." Now all we gotta do is wait.

Song credit: Disturbia by Rihanna