The arrow sticks straight out of Rue's stomach, her lips moving but forming no sound. Time continuing but feeling still. My arm lurches. My ax leaves my hand. Marvel falls to the ground dead, I feel no guilt. What I do feel is shock, hardly absorbing sorrow in any of its forms. Or maybe shock is a form of sorrow, I've never felt an emotion hang so heavily on my heart. I do not remove the arrow from Rue's stomach, her last moments will involve as minimal pain as I can control. 

Short, shallow breaths wrack her chest, well I can barely breathe at all. I was wrong. She won't go on to live. She'll die, right here right now. I can't help her, I'm not a medic, I have no training, this is fatal. She will die. She can't, but she will. 

"Y/n," She whimpers, voice husky and frightened. "Ca-Can you sing?" So she knows she'll die too, and that perhaps is the worst thing about all of it. She probably knew it coming into the arena too. I was a fool to think she had a chance, to think I could protect her, I'm not good enough for that and I never will be. 

"Of course, kid." The words drag themselves out of my mouth, wavering and trembling. I can't afford to pause and think of song, then it might be too late for her to hear it at all, and the first thing I think of floats off my tongue before I can question it. 

"The sky is dark and the hills are white

As the storm-king speeds from the north tonight,

And this is the song the storm-king sings,

As over the world his cloak he flings:

'Sleep, sleep, little one, sleep,'

He rustles his wings and gruffly sings:

'Sleep, little one, sleep.'

On yonder mountainside a vine

Clings at the foot of a mother pine;

The tree bends over the trembling thing,

And only the vine can hear her sing:

'Sleep, sleep, little one, sleep;

What shall you fear when I am here?

Sleep, little one, sleep.'

The king may sing in his bitter flight,

The tree may croon to the vine tonight,

But the little snowflake at my breast

Liketh the song I sing the best,

Sleep, sleep, little one, sleep;

Weary thou art, next to my heart

Sleep, little one, sleep" 

I have never prided myself on my ability to sing. I don't do it much because sometimes Katniss will sing, and even the birds would stop for her, it was the same with her father and I could never bring myself to disturb the salad of freedom. Rue's lips tremble in a final smile, and her eyes loose focus. The light her eyes cary dies, and a small breath leaves her body in a final, tearful farewell to her life. 

And so my own tears come, sliding their way down my dirt layered face. My nails shoot to my hair, and claw at my scalp in fury and disbelief. An animalistic noise tears from my throat, raw and injured. For a minute I sit, panting, and clawing, and screaming with loss and devastation. The shock wears off, I am going to do something about this. First, I close Rue's unseeing eyes, then I get down to business as a canon shot rings through the silence. 

Rue's backpack is discarded under the net, and I draw her uneaten apple out of it. I eat it quickly as I can, get to the core and draw the seeds out. Fingernails ripping at the dirt, I dig a small hole and place the apple seeds in it, reburying them in their grave of earth. 

Swiping my fingers over the spot where I buried the apple seeds, muttering how it probably won't even sprout before the games are over and myself dead, but back home when someone died Katniss and I used to go out into the woods and plant a tree as a commemoration to them, Rue is beyond deserving of her own memory. I vow to myself that by if some lucky twist of fate I get back to 12, I'm going to plant a whole grove of trees for her. 

"Attention Tributes," The unmistakable voice of Claudius Templesmith, one of the best known Capital personalities out there, rings through the arena over unseen speakers "There has been a rule change. If two people who share the same district are left standing, they will both be declared victors. That is all." 

Peeta. We can both win this, I need to find him. The idea of leaving Rue's body cold and alone makes me shiver, but I know she would want me to go on. I place a kiss on her forehead, sweeping the hairs away from her forehead. 

"Bye." I murmur. Before I leave, I press three of my fingers to my lips and raise them into the air, thumb over my pinkie. A Mockingjay salute. Another custom of District 12. I am sure the cameras can see me, I am delightfully certain the Capital is angry, and at peace in knowing my District is saying goodbye to my friend right along with me. 

Before my moral compass steers me back to standing a vigil, I speed off into the forest towards the river where Rue told me Peeta had been just the night before.  

So remember when I mentioned having some sense of direction? Apparently it's decided to run off and abandon me. I wander aimlessly for nearly two hours, brushing my fingers over trees, stopping to drink, eat and think. I guess you're probably tired of me thinking, but it's not as if I can just stop. 

No thoughts are pleasant as of late, even when I try and guide my mind back to better days. Days of hunting with Katniss and Gale, selling to Greasy Sae, and buying her soup with meat that you couldn't place and she'd never reveal where she'd gotten. Days of paying Prim what little I had for cheese from her goat Lady. Days of laying on that sacred spot on the hill of the forest of District 12, listening to Gale complain about how if we all stopped watching the Hunger Games they wouldn't ensue, and laughing because the likelihood of every Capital citizen laying down their weapons and refusing to watch their favourite event of the year seemed unlikely. Days of sitting in school and being so unbearably bored that I'd rather rub Greasy Sae's mystery meat in my eyes than listen to another minute of my teacher's lectures. And most importantly of all, days with the people I cared about. Katniss, Gale, Prim, my mother, my father dead as he may be, even Madge Undersee however scarce our interaction was. 

A sigh slipped my pursed lips, staring in to nothing and yet everything all at one time. 

You are not a fool to think big my child, you are a fool to believe those who call you that  My mother's voice rings through my head, and I clutch it like it is my very last lifeline. 

I push myself away from the ground, eyes downcast and breathing heavy and dejected. The wind blows, and the branches creak, startling me. What a way to live this is, in fear of the snap of a twig. And the really depressing thing is it's not even just in the arena. I panicked at the sound of the birds chirping if it was loud enough back in 12, worried a Capital helicopter was going to snatch me up and render me an Avox. That's the thing too, all of it ties back to the Capital and their crimes against the human race. 

As I tread along, twigs and leaves snapping and rustling underneath my boots, I hear another noise. A noise of pain and discomfort, a pathetic sound of helplessness. But here's the kicker, I know the voice, and it's not Peeta's. It's Cato's.