Volition
by FanficAllergy and RoseFyre

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Chapter 3 - Cooperation

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Katniss was in a tree. She didn't plan on being in a tree. She didn't particularly want to be in a tree. It just happened to be the safest place at the moment.

Beneath her, the Careers slept, waiting for her to give up and come down. She wondered what had happened to the boy from Four. Did Peeta kill him? Was that how he got the Career pack to accept him? She didn't know. She didn't want to know.

A noise from her left got her attention. It wasn't quite a bird call, but it was close.

Katniss searched the dense foliage before she spotted two dark eyes blinking at her. Rue.

The girl whistled again, then pointed.

Katniss followed the line of her finger to a tracker jacker nest hanging from a branch about fifteen feet above her.

She could do it. She could cut the branch and send it careening onto the tributes scattered below her. But that meant she'd also drop the nest onto Peeta. Which she really didn't want to do. There had to be another choice. She needed to find a way to get the boy with the bread's attention, but not alert the Careers to what she was planning.

She nodded once at the younger girl in thanks.

Rue let out a little whistle, then started hopping through the trees like a squirrel.

Katniss stared after her in shock, stifling the urge to laugh in delight. No wonder she'd scored a seven in training!

She glanced around to see what she could use. Obviously, calling out to him wouldn't work. But maybe she could wake him up and motion for him to get away.

She didn't have much. And nothing in her pack would work. Finally, she broke off a small piece of bark. It wasn't big, but it had a little bit of weight to it. She should be able to lob it near Peeta, if not on him, and even if she missed, it was innocuous enough that the Careers wouldn't think anything of it.

Carefully, she took aim. She really only had one shot at this. Then she flicked her wrist, praying the piece of bark wouldn't hit any branches on its way down.

It didn't.

But it didn't fly true either. The piece landed a few inches to the left of Peeta's hand. Close, but not quite close enough.

She'd pried another piece of bark from the trunk when she noticed movement from out of the corner of her eye. Peeta was propped up on his elbows, staring up at her.

She pointed to the nest above her head, then motioned for him to run.

He narrowed his eyes in confusion.

She repeated the pantomime.

This time he got it.

Slowly, carefully, he got to his feet, grabbing what he could, then began tiptoeing away from the base of the tree.

Katniss winced at each footfall. The moment she got out of this tree, she was going to teach him how to walk silently.

But she didn't have time to think about the future. She needed to concentrate on the now.

She climbed the tree, the branches straining underneath her weight. Her arms shook as she sawed her way through the branch. She could make out the black and gold bodies of the tracker jackers swarming around their nest. They were still groggy from the smoke from the Gamemaker trap earlier. That was good: less chance of her being stung.

Arms aching, she sawed through the thick branch with her hunting knife. But finally, the limb gave a mighty crack and plummeted to the earth. The nest exploded like an egg dropped onto pavement, spilling insects everywhere.

The Careers let out howls of pain. The girl from One, Glimmer, screamed once, then fell to the ground, her face a mass of stings. The girl from Two, Clove, ran several steps before she, too, succumbed to the insects. The girl from Four never got the chance to do any of those. Her scream cut off with an aborted gurgle as the bees attacked her open mouth.

The boys fared better, screaming and flailing as they ran to the lake, the surviving swarm following them.

Katniss had to act quickly. The Gamemakers would arrive to collect the bodies soon. And she wanted to pilfer what supplies she could from the corpses. She especially wanted the bow and arrows lying next to the girl from One.

She scurried down the tree, ignoring her scraped hands, which were protesting the whole way. She picked up knives, a backpack, then zeroed in on the ultimate prize: the bow and arrows. As she snatched them up, she felt the unmistakable pinprick of a sting. Apparently not all of the swarm had followed the boys from One and Two.

She needed to get away before she got stung more. She staggered through the woods, her prizes clutched in her hands, before she fell in the shadow of a fallen tree and succumbed to the poison.

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Katniss opened her eyes to darkness. Complete and utter darkness. She closed her eyes and opened them again. Still dark. A pit a dread formed in her stomach. She was blind. The tracker jackers did something to her and now she was blind.

She let out a little moan. She was dead. Not officially. But there was no way she could win the Games. Not now.

"Katniss?" a girl's voice said from her left. "Are you awake?"

The voice sounded so similar to Prim's that for a moment Katniss thought she was trapped in a dream. But the accent was wrong and the timbre was just a shade higher. So not Prim.

But who then?

An image flitted through her brain. The girl from Eleven.

"Rue?"

"You are awake! We were so worried about you!"

"We?"

She heard a shuffling to her left. "Me and Peeta. He carried you here."

Katniss digested the words. "Where's here?"

"A cave by the stream," Rue answered. "I found it." There was a hint of pride in her voice. "We decided to ally, all three of us."

The shuffling continued until Rue let out a noise of satisfaction. A few seconds later, a spark of light filled the cave. A match lighting a small fire.

Relief flowed through Katniss; she wasn't blind. She was just in a cave. She located the small partially obstructed entrance and noted it was night out. That explained the pervasive darkness.

"Where's Peeta?" she asked, not seeing the boy anywhere. Her heart made a little flip. He was fine, right? Surely he didn't get her to safety only to die while she was unconscious.

Rue seemed unaware of her worry and answered lightly, "Oh! He's just outside, keeping watch. You really did a number on the Careers. They're down to just two now! The boys from One and Two. But Peeta says they're the most dangerous."

Katniss nodded. "Who's left?"

Rue screwed up her face in concentration. "The boy from One, the boy from Two, the boy from Three… huh, there's a lot of boys left. The girl from Five. The boy from Ten. Thresh, and us. So, nine of us."

So just one more to go until the final eight, Katniss thought. Cinna must be happy right now. "Do you know where the other tributes are?"

Rue nodded. "Well, some of them. I don't know where Thresh, the boy from Ten, or the girl from Five are, but the boys from One, Two, and Three are camped out by the lake near the Cornucopia. They have a huge pile of supplies! There's no way we'll be able to outlast them."

Katniss chewed her lower lip, a glimmer of an idea forming in her head.

"Rue? Katniss? You awake?" Peeta's voice filtered down from the opening.

"I am now," Katniss said, her heart lightening at hearing Peeta's voice. "Can you join us? I think I've got an idea about how to hobble the Careers."

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