AUTHOR'S NOTES: The title is a reference to an album, and so kudos to whoever knows what it is. However, it is also a very meaningful title given the events that go down in this chapter. No point in spoiling it though. Hats off to Cato, Clove and Rue for lasting this long.
Happy Reading!

CHAPTER 20: A Twist in the Myth

Rue's speed proved to be a lifesaver. She stayed ahead of both Clove and Cato, as well as the bloodthirsty mutt-pack. The creatures took a sort of semicircle formation behind and beside the three remaining tributes, as if trying to prevent them from veering to the left or the right. They were guiding them right towards a familiar clearing that even in the darkness Rue recognized immediately: the cornucopia—it all began and ended here.

She frantically scrambled up the fairly smooth, metal surface, using her bare feet to get solid holds.

Maybe it was the softness of Rue's heart—the fact that she simply wished to be a survivor rather than a cold-blooded murderer, that she did not strike Clove and Cato when they scrambled for the same refuge. Clove's lack of shoes enabled her feet to stick to the metal just enough to provide the necessary traction for her to scramble up and out of reach. Cato nearly had his leg ripped off by the mutts, but Clove managed to pull him up before it happened. In the darkness of the arena, neither one of them even noticed little Rue in the shadows, watching them.

It was a moment of cunning and calculation that Rue's mind raced through in that moment. She knew that even if one of the District 2 tributes slipped and fell to their deaths, that she stood no chance against either one in single combat. With the two of them against her, she knew she was doomed.

All four of her kills had been in incidents when she had had an edge. She had run right into that unsuspecting District 4 boy with her knife out. The District 7 boy had been focused on someone else when Rue had shot him. Glimmer had simply been the closest victim to the tracker-jacker nest that she had cut down. Similarly, Marvel had not seen her coming when she jumped down into his shoulders from that tree. The two career tributes she had killed had only been from the element of surprise.

So what then, was stopping her now? Clove and Cato were huddled together, clearly talking about her. Sure she could lunge in, stab Clove in the skull and drop her off, but Cato would react, and she was fairly certain that she couldn't just kick him off the cornucopia. If she surprise-attacked Cato, Clove's reflexes had been the fastest of any tribute this year, 2nd only to her own.

The mutts could not get enough leverage to reach the top of the cornucopia, and so for the moment, the three frenzied tributes simply rested, two of them almost completely oblivious to the presence of the third—the outlier—the enemy. Besides, by the time she shot through the air and reached them for a proper attack, they would notice her. The odds were just not in her favor.

And so, Rue Keniye ended up performing one of the boldest and most audacious acts an outlier tribute had ever done to a career short of killing them in the bloodbath.

"I guess this is it then,"

Clove jumped, and Cato spun around, seeing Rue with her hands up, her knives still on her belt.

"There's nowhere to run, 11," Clove smirked, brandishing several knives in each hand. "either I kill you slowly and feed your entrails to the dogs… or we throw you off and watch them do the work. I'm feeling generous today—so I'll let you choose."

"I'm not going to fight you." Rue stepped back, ensuring a defensive stance in case Cato or Clove tried to strike her first, "there's no point in trying to make you angrier at me than you already are. There are two of you and one of me. I have no advantage over you the way I did with Marvel and Glimmer. My dull, dirty daggers are no match for your sleek new throwing knives. My small frame is no match for your years of training."

Clove narrowed her eyes. Tributes didn't talk this way! Rue wasn't making sense, and that… that had been one of the persistent sources of her fury ever since the chariot rides.

"So you're just giving up?" Clove gawked, "not even going to try and go for the glory?"
"Clove…" Rue said her name softly, "I'm not here because I want to be. I'm here because I was chosen to be. I understand that you and Cato and District 1 are eager to volunteer for the games year after year, and I can respect that, even if I will never understand it. I'm not a killer…"
"I dunno about that," Cato butted in, crossing his arms, "you did a pretty damn good job at killing more tributes than everyone but me so far…" Cato's kill count was similarly 4.

"I did what I had to in order to survive," Rue reasoned, "I did not gloat over the kills in the bloodbath, and I am not exactly proud of how Marvel or Glimmer went—especially Glimmer. I will get nothing out of fighting you, Clove, except for a more painful and prolonged death."
"I'm giving that to you anyways," Clove insisted.

"You don't just want to go home by now?" Rue tilted her head, "after everything from fireballs to tracker-jackers to explosions to rabid wolves… you don't just want to end me quickly and finish the job? You and Cato are the victors."

Cato was mostly staying quiet because he had promised Clove that she could be the one to finally lay the killing blow on Rue. However, if she made a stupid choice or one that he strongly disagreed with, he would not hesitate to butt in and object.

Clove hated to admit it, but Rue's words were getting to her. She had trouble wrapping her mind around it the same way Rue had trouble wrapping her mind around the notion that children from the rich districts eagerly fought over what was basically a death sentence.

"I don't want to die," Rue continued, "but if I have to die… I only wish for it to be swift. I'm tired, Clove. I'm exhausted, I'm dazed, I'm hungry, my feet hurt, and my right ear's still bleeding from when I blew up your supplies. I'm in no condition to fight you—even if we did, it would be over in seconds."

"So you just want me to… kill you?" Clove tilted her head, "just… like that?"

"Swiftly and simply," Rue nodded. "Know this, Clove Kazera—I respect you. I respect Cato too. I respect the kind of dedication people like you put into your craft, even if it scares me to death."
"Who ARE you!?" Clove was still utterly bedazzled at how clever Rue was, even in her words.

"Just Rue," Rue shrugged, "not a piece in a game… but a means to an end. So will you do it, Clove? Will you grant me that one wish?"
"Shit…" Clove grunted, "All this time I'd been ready to tear your ribcage open and feast on your innards, or whatever we careers do on a slow day… I'm just… confused, Rue. You're the reason none of this makes sense, you know that?"
"It was a good run." Rue sighed, "I wish it didn't have to be this way… but I understand that we all do what we have to. You want to win, I wanted to survive… live it up, Cato; Clove."

Rue flicked her wrist as if to wave, and Clove put all her knives away but one.

"You're the most cunning little shit I've ever met, you know that, Rue?" she approached the smaller girl. "I'm gonna miss having a worthy rival to keep me sharp. Really... when I think about it, I've got no fucken' clue what I'm gonna do with myself."

And that was probably what hurt the most. What would she do with her life after the games? What would she do once she won? She had spent her whole life training for this moment-but not for anything afterwards. Without Rue keeping her on her toes... what else was there in life?

"Goodbye, Clove Kazera…" Rue sighed, approaching the career girl, and, to Clove's utmost surprise, Rue put her arms around her. If Rue had ever intended to make things clearer for Clove, she had gone about it the wrong way.

"I… what?" her arms briefly and perhaps instinctually went around Rue before she pulled back skeptically. Rue simply smiled—and it was that smile that haunted Clove for hours after the incident—when she plunged her blade through Rue's sternum.

She fell backwards immediately, her lifeless body resting on the flat-topped cornucopia surface as a cannon rang out, and the face of Rue Keniye appeared in the sky. The sounds of the barking and growling mutts had seemed to have gone quiet during that whole little episode, but all of a sudden, they were back. Clove found this odd, because here the games were over. Rue was dead. Two victors could return home if they were form the same district, and Clove even glanced from Cato's shoulder and the number 2 that graced it, to her own shoulder, where she too bore the number 2.

Why then, wasn't the game ending? Why were they not being announced the victors?
They found out a second later.

"Attention tributes…" Seneca Crane's voice could be heard, "the previous rule change has been revoked. There may only be one victor of the Hunger Games. May the odds be ever in your favor…"

Clove and Cato both suddenly fell silent as they glanced at each other. Rue's death was not the end like they had hoped—it was merely the penultimate step before the sadistic true finale.