Salvia

Disclaimer: I do not own the Hunger Games.

This Arena was about as far from District Eleven as you could get, which Salvia saw as a both a downside and an upside. On one hand, the snowy forest was completely strange to her and she was more homesick in it than ever. On the other hand, she wasn't going to sweat herself into a raisin like she might back home, as there was plenty of snow everywhere to melt for water.

She was good at finding both sides of a situation. She hoped her baby girl would learn to do the same when she was older, or growing up in an outer district was going to crush her like a slapped mosquito.

Trudging through the snow along the edge of the icy beach, she said, "Being in the final eight is another upside and a downside, isn't it, Herb?"

She spoke towards the sky, because that's where she'd last seen Herb's face, not last night but the one before. One of the gigantic brown bear mutts that roamed the Arena had come right up on them unexpectedly. Herb hadn't hesitated before grabbing his scythe and telling Salvia, in his jumbled-words way, to run.

"You might've not been the brightest, but you were the sweetest," she told the sky. "Wish we'd been friends back in Eleven."

She hadn't had much time for a friends back there, though. Having a damn baby at fifteen would do that. The last year had been all diapers and nighttime feedings for one little lovable monster.

No one in the Capitol, besides Seeder and Chaff probably, because they knew lots of things, knew about Addie. She hadn't been holding her during the Reaping, her papa had, and Salvia herself was the oldest of ten. Anyone who didn't know her personally saw her family on camera and assumed that baby was her sister not her daughter.

And that was the whole point. "She doesn't need attention on her," she'd told her parents in the Justice Building. "None at all."

It wasn't worth the potential Capitol interest and sponsoring. Not to Salvia.

Before the Games, before everything was likely to get aired on the TV, she had told Herb the whole story, because she knew she could trust him. How she and her former boyfriend from the next neighborhood over had been dang stupid a couple times, how she had almost fainted during the 51st Hunger Games Reaping because she was so scared to get Reaped while pregnant, how she was lucky her parents weren't like the Threshers down the street, because the Mr. and Mrs. Thresher would've thrown her out in a second if she were their daughter. But Applegates stuck together and cared for everyone. That's why they actually had friends and none of their kids kept trying to run away to the next farm sector over.

Even if she somehow won the Hunger Games, Salvia would want to keep pretending her daughter was her sister, because her sisters would be safe from the Reaping, and her child wouldn't. She wouldn't be able to, though, because the government had all the records. Lying would just make things worse. Not being a problem or of much interest would be more likely to save her baby in the long run.

So she would just be inconspicuous, whether or not she won, which wasn't too hard, as she'd told Herb.

"I'm not ugly, but I'm not pretty, either. I get along with whoever I need to. I work hard, and I only yell when it's gonna do me some kind of good, like Mama says."

She didn't cry much, either, though she had when Herb died, after she got to relative safety.

He'd been a great guy. Teaming up with him had been good.

A lot of the tributes hadn't been all that bad, besides the Careers who kept to their own little club of weapons and good looks. That Seven girl was funny as heck in her own way, Asher from Twelve had been pretty cute and charming, all three twelve-year-olds had been so sweet. Phoebe had been nice enough , too, but it was hard to say what her personality really was when she never spoke. Apparently she was still alive, unless Salvia was misremembering.

"Hope you don't grow up feeling like you can't talk, Addie," she murmured under her breath, trusting the crunching of her footsteps to cover her words from hidden microphones. "Talking's important, if it's to the right people."

The last couple words were also covered up by the groaning of her stomach. She and Herb had gotten a couple packs at the Cornucopia, but the food from those was gone now. Rationing had not been as easy as they expected beforehand.

"Cold means need more food," was how Herb explained how fast they went through it.

"Dang," Salvia had said, "If it were hot like home in summer, we'd stretch this twice as long, easy."

Sometimes it paid to be used to starving.

Now, without Herb to set good traps, because he was the one who knew how to manipulate the ropes and twine from their packs, she was living on bitter herbs. Once she'd tried some tree bark she thought was edible, but it had made her vomit.

The strangely short day kept sliding on by until her shaking legs couldn't carry her any further. Grateful for waterproof, fleece-lined leggings, she settled herself under a tight cluster of trees, where the snow wasn't as thick. She pulled out the doubled-up sleeping bags, hers and Herb's, crawling in and letting herself get rest while she could. When it got colder in the night, she'd have to keep getting up and moving, have to start a fire with her precious, dwindling store of matches.

"Hate the damn cold," she said, to no one in particular.

She thought she'd started hallucinating when the little bell started to ring. The small silver parachute and the cloth-wrapped bundle attached to it basically fell into her lap.

As she fumbled to open in with her gloved hands, she said to the air, "It's got to be food, Herb, I'm set otherwise, even got that knife you gave me…"

It was food. Bread and cheese and fruit and even thin, sliced meat.

"Thank you, Seeder and sponsors!" She barely remembered her manners before digging in, eating as much as she dared. It wasn't home-cooked Eleven food, which she missed even if it wasn't as fine, but it was dang good.

Night was falling, her stomach was just a bit too full, and she was portioning the remaining food out when she heard the growl, the deep, rumbling, scary-as-hell growl. A pair of faintly-glowing eyes, set in a looming shadow, met hers in the twilight.

"Well, damn. Look who it is." She stood up slowly, food forgotten, knife in hand. "Came back for more, you mutt bastard?"

The bear roared in response, clawing at the ground, winding up to charge. Salvia had to laugh a little. The timing could've been worse, in her mind.

She didn't bother to say her next words quietly. "Addie, I hope you get to die with a full belly, too."