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Twice Chosen

Back at the ship the next morning, I didn't know if the camping experience had been as much of a success as Peeta in particular had been hoping it would be. We had spent a bit of time out around the fire after our initial talk, but it had been hard to find a good topic of conversation after we'd dealt with such difficult topics as our families and Glimmer's own guilt about her role in the bloodbath.

Frankly, it was Glimmer's revelation that had really affected me. Gale had always been eager to see the Careers as the 'villains' of the Games whenever he was talking about the system in the past, but after Glimmer's confession, I had to wonder if she was the only Career to have such issues with her methods. There were probably a few Careers out there who were as bad as Gale often thought they were, but at the same time, Glimmer proved that they could be more than just trained killers.

I'd spent a good amount of my spare time since this started trying to work out how Glimmer had qualified for the Pink coin given what Zordon had said about that coin looking for compassion, but after hearing Glimmer's speech… I was willing to believe that she had the potential for compassion that she just hadn't been able to explore before now. Like Peeta had pointed out, nobody could have mourned those deaths like Glimmer had if they didn't feel compassion on some level, and at least it seemed to have assured Thresh that he didn't have to worry about Glimmer turning on us any more. I could even see Peeta growing into his role as the one who apparently brought 'balance' to the team as he often found himself training against Thresh, the two testing their respective strengths and exploring their knowledge of unarmed combat. Liv had started receiving personal instruction in hand-to-hand fighting from Glimmer, and seemed to take to it very well from what I could see. Her movements still seemed stiff compared to Glimmer, as though she was trying to think about where everything should go when the fight started, but at least she was making progress compared to what she'd been like at the start.

The more I looked at the other Rangers fight, the more I felt that our camping experience had helped us both take a step forward and a step back. We had a better understanding of what made each of us tick, which at least assured me that we could trust each other to have our team's backs in a confrontation, but we couldn't find anything to talk about between these training sessions. It was as though we were all still trying to work out the answer to Rue's question and were trying to avoid doing anything that might force us to face up to the fact that we really were only friends because we were all Rangers together.

The thing that bothered me most was that I wasn't even sure what I wanted beyond saving the world, and even that was mainly because I wanted there to be somewhere safe for Prim to grow up. I'd spent so long just relying on Gale's friendship because I knew that we both needed each other, but when I started to think about it I found it harder than I'd expected to realise that I didn't really know anyone as anything more than… well, I guessed the best term would have been that I either had casual acquaintances or professional colleagues, if I was keeping the terms straight in my head.

I'd shared things with Gale because we had each needed to know why we went hunting so that we could trust each other, and I'd shared things with the other Rangers to help us bond, but was that a good way to form a friendship?

People are complicated…

Lost for anything more to do with myself, after a rough couple of hours sparring with Thresh and Glimmer, I left the rest of the team to keep practising as Rue watched while I set off for Zordon's chamber. If Alpha was there, I was hopeful that the little robot might be able to give me a few ideas about what I was doing wrong with my current training sessions; if he'd seen Zordon's old team, maybe he had some useful insight…

"…destroy Rita myself," I heard Zordon's voice saying as I approached the chamber, the door open to the rest of the ship and a frustrated edge to the ex-Ranger's voice. "There must be a way to free me from this wall."

"Yes, but the irony is that you need these Rangers to morph," Alpha replied, the robot at least sounding awkward at what he saying. "If they morph, you can harness that energy to regenerate your body and come back through."

I froze as I heard those words, unable to believe what Alpha had just said.

Zordon needed us to morph to… bring him back to life?

For a moment I was more focused on the idea that such a thing was possible, but then my shock shifted to rage as I realised the implications of that declaration.

"There's got to be another way!" Zordon yelled. "I can't-!"

"What, Zordon?" I called out as I walked into the chamber, glaring indignantly at the face on the wall that had just destroyed my tentative hope that I'd met an authority figure worth obeying. "You can't what? Wait for us stupid kids to morph so that you can come back to life? That's what all this has been about? You coming back?"

"This has only ever been about protecting the Crystal," Zordon countered. "Rita could be building Goldar as we speak-"

"Then do what you've been telling us to do and have faith in my team!" I protested, surprised at my own words even after I spoke them.

"You cannot stop Goldar as you are," Zordon responded (I refused to show the pain I felt at the idea that the first leader I'd let myself believe in had let me down). "She will have him dig up the Crystal and life on Earth will die."

"And you think we need you to stop that?" I spat bitterly back at him as I waved my hand at the face on the wall. "From what you've told us, you blew it last time and that's why you're here!"

"I died burying those coins… in the hope that they would find the next worthy Rangers-"

"And I'm sorry we disappointed you, but we're not trained for this; we're just doing our best!" I yelled, suddenly filled by a need to vent my anger at this being's assumptions and dismissals. "We don't need you telling us what we're doing wrong; we already know we're not perfect, but this team is doing the best we can here!"

"Katniss!" Zordon yelled as I turned to leave the chamber. "You need me out of this wall to help lead this team!"

"Your team died," I looked bitterly back at the wall. "And you're just as scared as we are."

"Uh… let's not say anything we can't take back-" Alpha began anxiously.

"You know what really hurts?" I stopped walking to look bitterly at the face on the wall, even as I shot a brief glare at Alpha to make it clear I was including him in this. "For a moment, I actually thought you'd be better than the Capitol, but you're both basically the same; the only difference is that I'm going to assume Rita's a genuine threat, so there's actually a reason for us to do this beyond helping you."

"You need me to defend the Crystal-!"

"You just want to be the one in control and you put kids at risk to do it," I cut Zordon off. "I get that being stuck like that probably isn't fun, but after you told us all that stuff about how it's a Ranger's duty to protect the Zeo Crystal, your priority's still about saving yourself first. Do you even care about the people we're trying to save here, or are you just focused on getting your body back?"

I wasn't sure where any of that was coming from, but as I stormed off back to my bedroom, it was all I could do to fight down the unexpected sting of tears.

After I'd saved those runaways from the hovercraft, I hadn't realised how much I'd been indulging the idea that we could somehow do more than just stop Rita once we had managed to morph, but it was clear that Zordon was ultimately more concerned with his own plans.

Why should he care about some primitive planet that's basically destroying itself; he's only doing this to stop Rita, not to help us…

With the end of the day drawing near, I turned away from the dining area and walked straight to my quarters, no longer feeling up to additional training after that revelation. We still had a day or two until Rita was a problem, and my hunts for food had given us more than enough additional training in other areas that it shouldn't matter if I missed one session in the Pit…