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Twice Chosen

"Where were you?" Glimmer shot a pointed glare at me when the rest of the former Tributes walked into the ship, the now-former Career looking particularly bitter when she saw me waiting against the door leading to the dining area. "I thought the whole point of you having the red coin was that you were in charge of this little group we've got going on here?"

"I am," I nodded in acknowledgement, hoping that my planned 'joke' would go down well. "Which is why I decided that it was time to do something that every good authority figure should do and get you all something to eat."

"Something to eat?" Liv repeated curiously.

"Like what?" Thresh raised a pointed eyebrow. "A fancier protein bar?"

In response, I tapped my foot against the door, which opened to reveal Alpha standing at the other end of the table a smoking plate of meat in front of him with dishes and tools that were apparently some kind of cutlery arrayed along the table waiting for us to sit at them.

"I believe the term is 'ta-da'?" the robot said politely, spreading his arms to indicate the table before him.

"What is that?" Glimmer looked at the large plate of meat in surprise.

"Part of a deer I hunted down earlier," I explained, enjoying the chance to truly feel in control for a change as the other Rangers walked into the room.

"You got out?" Liv looked sharply at me.

"Turns out these coins can… teleport, right?" I looked at Alpha.

"It's part of an emergency protocol," Alpha explained. "The coins can teleport you to safety- in this case, they'd teleport you back to the ship- or we can configure it to send you out of the ship so long as you can guarantee a location where you won't be seen when you arrive."

"You're saying we can just leave this ship-?" Glimmer began.

"We can't exactly stay out there," Liv shifted her sharp glare from me to Glimmer. "Or are you forgetting that little issue where Rita's going to attack in a week or so if we aren't ready to fight her?"

"Exactly," Alpha nodded. "I recognise that you're all concerned about your families, and I apologise for my mistake in convincing the outside world that you're dead, but it's not safe for any of you to leave the ship full-time right now."

"But you let her-!"

"Because I had a good idea where to go and was prepared for the possibility that I'd be seen," I defended myself. "Like Alpha said, we can't just… nip out and visit our families when we've still got Rita to worry about; we have to focus on getting ready."

"She's right," Peeta nodded in agreement. "Trying to tell other people what's going on here just puts them at risk at best, but just going out to get food somewhere safe…"

"For what it's worth, I have to agree with One that being stuck here like this sucks, but on the other hand, Yellow makes a fair point," Thresh nodded, as he took a bite of the meat and then smiled at me in approval. "Hey, this is pretty good."

"I managed to find a few herbs and seasonings while I was out hunting," I explained, smiling as I took a bite of the meat myself. "I'm not an expert cook, but I know enough to put something good together."

"You can do that?" Rue looked curiously at me.

"I can confirm that she's very good at hunting," Peeta spoke up, giving me a brief smile. "Back home my father buys her squirrels; she always manages to hit them in the eye."

"Always?" Liv looked at me with new respect. "That can't be easy."

"I manage," I said with a cautious smile.

"And… is this everything?" Glimmer asked, even as she cautiously sat down at the other end of the table. "From what you got today, I mean?"

"No, just what I prepared for this evening with Alpha's help," I explained. "He showed me a kind of storage area in another part of the ship that we can use to keep the rest of it in good condition for the next few days; it's some kind of… high-tech fridge, I think?"

"You think?" Glimmer looked at me in surprise, pausing in the middle of cutting her steak.

"Well, it's not like I've seen what they look like back home," I countered defensively. "I live in the Seam; we don't have the means to power something like that."

"…It's that bad out there?" Glimmer asked, the normally confident-looking Career girl looking surprisingly vulnerable as she looked at me.

"You ever even bothered to ask what it's like in the outer Districts, One?" Thresh looked at Glimmer with a new edge of bitterness. "Believe me, I can buy that Red doesn't have her own fridge."

Glimmer just stared back at him in silence for a few moments, before she turned her attention back to the food. She gave me a brief smile of approval as she took her first bite, but it was soon clear that neither of us knew what to say after that particular topic, so it was easier to just say nothing.

"So… When did you start hunting?" Rue looked innocently at me after the silence became too awkward.

"…Maybe when I was around your age," I said, after looking thoughtfully around the table. Under normal circumstances I wouldn't have shared this information with a group of relative strangers, but considering that we would already be keeping our Ranger status secret from everyone else once we got out of here, adding a few more secrets couldn't hurt. "My dad died in a mining accident, and my mother… well, she didn't handle it well."

"Been there," Thresh said.

"You have?" Liv looked at him curiously.

"Just in the 'losing parents' sense," Thresh elaborated, suddenly looking awkwardly down at his plate. "My own parents… Mom died giving birth to Fray, and then Dad pretty much worked himself to death to keep her alive."

"Your sister?" Rue looked at Thresh with a sympathetic expression.

"She's still with Grandma back home," Thresh said, his awkward expression becoming grim. "Gran's great, but… y'know how it is; it's not the same."

"Right…" I nodded at him in understanding, suddenly wondering if Fray and Prim would get along and then trying not to think about the idea that they both thought their siblings were dead right now. I was already uncertain about this particular attempt to bond with the other Rangers, but I knew that I still had to give it a shot, even if I wasn't going to try and pressure them about anything they clearly didn't want to talk about. "How about the rest of you? I mean, I know about Peeta's family, but everyone else?"

"Maybe clear it up for the rest of us?" Glimmer asked as she looked at Peeta in a pointed manner.

"…Two brothers, one older, one younger, and my parents have a… strained relationship," Peeta said, looking down at his plate as he cut at his piece of meat.

"Strained?" Rue asked.

"His mother is… well, Gale and I have called her a witch," I said with a slight smile.

"Gale?" Glimmer repeated with a teasingly raised eyebrow. "Someone we should know?"

"Just a friend," I said briskly; even without Peeta as part of the current situation, bringing up Gale would invite all kinds of questions I wasn't ready to face.

"Just a-?"

"So how about you?" Peeta cut in as he looked over at Rue in a louder-than-normal voice that even I could tell was him trying to distract the rest from Glimmer's question. "What's your family like?"

"Uh… me, my parents, three sisters, and two brothers," Rue said, recognising the need to divert our current conversation. "I'm the oldest; I help out in the fields by climbing the orchard trees to get some of the harder-to-reach fruits-"

"You work?" Glimmer looked at Rue in surprise.

"We all do once we're old enough," Rue replied with a simple nonchalance. "It's the best way to keep up with the Capitol's demands."

Glimmer simply stared silently back at Rue at that statement, an expression on her face that I couldn't compare to anything I'd seen from the blonde Career before.

"So, Liv-" Peeta began, clearly trying to break the silence, only for the Blue Ranger to pick up her plate of meat and walk out of the dining area. Looking at her back, I could see a sense of tension in her shoulders that I wasn't used to seeing from the normally-friendly former resident of District Five, but she had soon vanished from the room before I could try and think of a way to talk to her.

"So eating alone's an option?" Glimmer asked, picking up the last of her own meat and walking out of the room. "That's me then."

For a moment Thresh and Rue looked uncertainly at Peeta and I, but then Thresh picked up his own plate and walked off, leaving Rue to look apologetically at me before she followed her District partner out of the dining area.

"…Do I put people off?" I looked uncertainly at Peeta, even as I recognised how fundamentally stupid it was to ask him this question.

"Huh?" Peeta looked at me in surprise.

"I mean, I asked everyone to face some really personal stuff, and all I did in turn was give them food; was that… did I push them too far?"

"I think… we're in a really weird situation right now, and you're trying to do something you're not used to doing," Peeta said, smiling at me in a tentative yet reassuring manner. "We all got into this thinking that only one of us was definitely going to come home, and adjusting to the idea that we all have a chance of living through this…"

"Even with Rita?"

"Even with Rita," Peeta nodded. "Maybe she killed… our predecessors… but that time she maybe had the advantage that she caught them by surprise; we're going into this knowing that we're up against her…"

"It's not much."

"It's the best we've got right now."

As Peeta and I sat in silence and finished our food, I briefly thought about mentioning my confrontation with the Capitol hovercraft, but decided that it would sound too much like I was trying to make some kind of point that even I didn't fully understand right now.

I appreciated that Rita had to be our priority, and I wasn't entirely sure about the implications of what that one act of defiance might mean for the future if the pilots talked about it once they got home… but if the Rangers were meant to protect life, maybe there could be a way to argue that there was more we could do in this kind of situation?

Maybe we didn't have to focus exclusively on Rita and defending the Zeo Crystal…