Chapter 16

Trust

When the groosling is finished roasting I add my pile of plantain roots to the meal, because I know that roasting them will make them slightly less salty, and more delicious. They roast beside the bird and Katniss says, "I shot this earlier. Not sure what it's called but it looks good enough."

"Back at home we have it, it's called groosling."

She looks at me curiously, "You guys eat it a lot?" Oh. Oh, she thinks we are far better off than 12.

"Oh no!" I say quickly, I want her to know that we're alike-in at least a few ways. "No, only when a flock of them come into the orchards. The Peacekeepers shoot them if they do, and the workers get an amazing lunch that day." I sigh, remembering those instances.

"Oh, well I'm glad you've put a name to the bird, now I know for sure that he's edible," She says, poking the roasting bird with a stick, and smiling at me.

I giggle at her a little, and I can already see how being with me is changing her demeanor. I would imagine this is how she acts around Primrose-carefree, joyful, and happy. She doesn't know that I'm just like her; I'm the one in charge of getting food into my sibling's bellies.

I can tell as we eat in silence that Prine now has competition for being groosling's biggest fan. I smile as I bite into the leg Katniss has handed me.

I've never had so much meat in my possession at one time. In fact, in all my life the amount of meat I've probably contained amounts to that on both legs of this fat bird. I feel a little sad that I can't share this with my family, Prine especially, because they deserve it as much as I do.

I pick all the meat off the bone-unwilling to waste even the smallest piece. I set the bone down beside the fire, and sigh in content.

"Oh, I've never had a whole leg to myself before." I lean back on my hands, thinking of how much I may have had in one sitting. I would imagine the Peacekeepers took the choice cuts, such as the legs, thighs, and breasts, and left the rest to us workers. I've probably only ever had scraps of one part or another.

She looks at me with an indescribable expression then says, "Take the other."

"Really?" I ask quietly, somehow I doubt she wants a girl like me eating all her food.

"Take whatever you want. Now that I've got a bow and arrows, I can get more. Plus I've got snares. I can show you how to set them," I don't doubt that she can get more food, or that she'd teach me how to use snares.

I do stop short because I have nothing to give her. Being ally's means both people give something. I don't have anything more to offer her, so that leaves me owing her. I don't like owing people, especially when I'm going to die without paying them back.

"Oh take it," She assures me, putting the other leg in my hands. "It will only keep for a few days anyway, and we've got the whole bird plus the rabbit."

I could eat more, and this may be my last meal, so I decide to take it-besides I suppose I have paid Katniss back, she just doesn't know about it.

I take a bite, and Katniss processes my reaction to the fresh meat.

"I'd have thought, in district 11, you'd have a bit more to eat than us. You know, since you grow the food." She says bluntly.

"Oh, no, we're not allowed to eat the crops." Just the thought of it brings up memories of public whippings, and me shielding Prine's eyes from the carnage.

"They arrest you or something?" She sounds skeptical, but she has no idea how serious stealing the crops is taken in district 11.

"They whip you and make everyone else watch. The mayor's very strict about it." I wish I could say that it's something that happens once in a blue moon, but it's not. It happens all too often, a starving family needs a little extra food, so someone take an apple, an orange, or even a carrot. They get caught, they get whipped-if it's the first offense. If it's a second offense they're shot on the spot, not even a pause, they're thrown to the ground and shot right in the head.

I realize that I want to know more about district 12.

"Do you get all the coal you want?" I don't think they would, but who knows, maybe things are different in 12.

"No. Just what we buy and whatever we track in on our boots." It's a statement so simple you can't doubt that it's the truth.

"They feed us a little bit extra during the harvest, so that people can keep going longer." I smile a little at the thought; at least district 11 has a redeeming quality.

"Don't you have to be in school?" She asks questioningly.

"Not during the harvest." Even the smallest children don't have school. They stay home with the six year olds, and almost seven year olds, who stay with the oldest women of the district. Anyone from the ages of seven to sixty work in the field from sun up to sundown during the harvest. "Everyone works then." I doubt she knows exactly who I mean by 'everyone'.

"We should plan ahead." I say spontaneously, trying to stop thinking of home-it's painful. "Lay out our food, and combine it so we have plenty to eat."

"That's a good idea." She reaches into her backpack and adds her crackers and beef strips to the growing pile of food. I know from my surveillance days that she had them, but the fact that she brought them out to show me demonstrates how much she trusts me.

"Here, I have this too," I say adding my group of roots, leaves, and berries. I also add the nuts I collected while she was unconscious, and the berries I collected in the first few days of the arena.

She looks on at the pile with an impressed expression. Then she reaches into the pile and picks up one of the berries-she was so dehydrated at the time she first came across them that I doubt she even remember picking one, let alone it's shape.

"You sure this is safe?" She sounds reluctant.

"Oh, yes, we have them back at home. I've been eating them for days." I pop a few into my mouth and chew, proving to her that they're edible.

She tentatively bites into one and chews it appreciatively, nodding her assent at me. I smile lightly at her as she divides our spoils into two parts, in case we are separated.

I show her the rest of my supplies, and in comparison to hers they're inconsequential. "I know it's not much, but I had to get away from the Cornucopia fast." I had to follow Katniss.

"You did just right." She assures me, making me feel slightly less embarrassed about my supplies.

She starts taking apart her gear, laying it all out for me to see, and I gasp when I see the night vision goggles we have at home. I hadn't seen her with these before-she must not know how to use them.

"How did you get those?" I breathe, like an idiot; of course they came with her pack.

"In my pack. They've been useless so far. They don't block the sun and they make it harder to see." She shrugs, confirming my guess.

"They aren't for sun, they're for darkness. Sometimes, when we harvest through the night, they'll pass out a few pairs to those of us highest in the trees. Where the torchlight doesn't reach." I've had a pair before, but they actually hinder my harvesting because I'm so worried about breaking them. They work extraordinarily though. "One time," I say recounting a memory from when I was seven and the Peacekeepers killed Martin, a young boy who had some kind of condition, for taking a pair of the night vision goggles. "This boy Martin, he tried to keep his pair. Hid it in his pants. They killed him on the spot."

I resist the urge to cry as I had that night. It wasn't like he was planning a rebellion; he only wanted to play with his new toy. He was only seven years old, his first year in the orchards. No one even asked him to give them back, they saw him leaving with the glasses, and they just pulled the trigger. It was as if he was some kind of escaped animal that posed a threat to everyone.

It wasn't right.

"They killed a boy for taking these?" She sounds appalled at the conditions in 11. I am too.

"Yes," I say accusingly, "And everyone knew he was no danger. Martin wasn't right in the head. I mean, he still acted like a three-year-old. He just wanted the glasses to play with." I hope, against logic, that they're showing the whole of Panem this conversation, so I can hold them accountable for killing that poor boy.

"So what do these do?" She asks me turning the night vision goggles over in her hands.

"They let you see in complete darkness. Try them tonight when the sun goes down."

She gives me some of her matches, though I resist, and I force her to take some more tracker jacker leaves in case she needs them.

Katniss and I put out the fire and begin to continue her path from earlier, upstream alongside the river.

When the sun begins to set I see Katniss begin scanning the trees. I don't mind that she doesn't seem to remember I'm with her. It's instinct on her part, but I watch her eyes with purpose, watching to see what tree she's decided on. When I see it I smile, it's the one I would have chosen. There's a fork up about a hundred feet that looks very steady for it's height and the tree is thick with foliage. She'd be invisible there.

"Where do you sleep? In the trees?" She says, when she's chosen her tree. I almost smile at my misconception. She hadn't forgotten me, she was simply deciding when and where to stop, probably thinking I will resist going up into the trees to sleep at night or something.

I nod, and smile a little.

"In just your jacket?"

I don't want her to know that my sweatshirt's useable sections were donated to the 'Katniss Cause' as I like to refer to it, and I'd rather not dwell on what I lost in the fire.

Instead I hold up my spare socks and say, "I have these for my hands."

"You can share my sleeping bag if you want. We'll both easily fit."

I smile at her brightly, she must really trust me, and maybe she actually likes me. That's a surprise, I thought she'd view me as a burden, you know an annoying twelve year old. I never thought she might offer to share her sleeping bag, but I'm more than willing to sleep in warmth for tonight.

"Thanks," I say shyly.

"You have a preference?" She says nodding her chin to the trees in reference to our sleeping arrangements.

"Not really," I say nonchalantly, a plan forming in my mind. "But I was thinking maybe that one…" I point at a close tree-her tree.

She smiles in approval and nods. "Excellent choice!" She chirps happily.

"It's a gift," I say joking with her, a toothy smile on both our faces.

"Oh, is it now?" She smiles at me and I giggle while I nod.

She motions for me to climb ahead of her, and I start quickly. I reach the fork in half a minute and I wait for Katniss. We prepare for the night, and wedge ourselves into the fork of the tree. I relish the warmth in the sleeping bag.

When the anthem starts to play Katniss leans down to talk into my ear.

"Rue, I only woke up today." I already knew that, but she doesn't know that I know. "How many nights did I miss?"

I follow her lead and cover my lips to whisper in her ear, "Two, the girls from 1 and 4 are dead. There's ten of us left."

"Something strange happened. At least, I think it did." Where on earth is she going with this? "It might have been the tracker jacker venom making me imagine things. You know the boy from my district? Peeta?" Oh… that. "I think he saved my life. But he was with the Careers."

Is she really that dense? Can she not see how desperately he loves her? I guess not.

I try to decide what I can tell her without revealing Peeta's and my sort-of alliance, or my careful spying on her.

"He's not with them now." I say, venturing out to offer my information on the Careers base. "I've spied on their base camp by the lake. They made it back before they collapsed from the stingers. But he's not there," This I know for sure-he's collapsed somewhere along the riverbed. "Maybe he did save you and had to run." I venture, knowing full well that this is what occurred, if you forget a nearly fatal leg wound, delivered by the wonderful Cato.

"If he did, it was probably just part of his act. You know, to make people think he's in love with me."

I'm taken aback, she thinks his love is an act. Just something to get him sponsors. I'm sorry, but you don't put your life on the line for someone you don't love with your whole heart. "Oh," I say, unable to tell her how much he loves her, it isn't my place. I know in my heart that she will find out with time. "I didn't think that was an act." No one acts that well, that selflessly. Doesn't she know he's not acting?

"Course it is, he worked it out with our mentor." Perhaps he worked out the details-what would make his love work for Katniss in the Hunger Games, but the love was there before that. As he so eloquently put it, 'I've had a crush on her ever since I can remember.'

The anthem ends and Katniss says, "Let's try out these glasses." She slips them on, and gasps a little. It must be similar to my first reaction to the night vision goggles. "I wonder who else got a pair of these," She murmurs idly, not expecting a response.

I think for a moment, imagining the Careers camp in my mind as I come up with an answer. "The Careers have two pairs. But they've got everything down by the lake, and they're so strong." I leave out the rest of my thought, that Katniss is stronger, because I assume she will be much like me when it comes to comments on bravery and compliments.

"We're strong too, just in a different way." She says more for my benefit than hers.

"You are. You can shoot. What can I do?" I grimace at my words, I sound like a bratty child.

"You can feed yourself. Can they?" She asks simply, and suddenly I have a new path to lead her down.

"They don't need to. They have all those supplies"

"Say they didn't. Say the supplies were gone. How long would they last? I mean, it's the Hunger Games right?"

"But, Katniss, they're not hungry." I use my best 'innocent clueless' voice.

"No they're not. That's the problem." Come on, you're almost there. "I think we're going to have to fix that Rue." I smile into the darkness. She got it. She's understood my silent message.

And I promptly drift off to sleep.

Hello! Hey, I know it's kind of late, but I hope you still get a chance to read this. Let me know what you think ASAP! I am writing the chapters as fast as I can, but reviews are a nice incentive to get writing... If at all possible I update daily, but I do have things to do, so please review if you really do like this story.

Well, what do you think of this chapter. Honestly, writing in Rue's POV is giving me a whole new perspective on the other characters. Especially Katniss, because in this story especially the next chapter, Rue looks up to and respects Katniss. Until I considered all the similarities between Rue and Katniss, and many other eldest siblings in their world, I didn't see how alike they really were. I think it's amazing, and sad all at once.

I know this is long, but please, please review, with any kind of feedback. It makes me a better writer, and it helps get what needs to be changed out there for me to see.

Thanks,

R&R