Games of the Dead

Summary: Rue was always known to be a singer.

Note: From District 11 to the Capitol. 'Nuff said.

A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.

—Maya Angelou

5. Songbird

Two children huddle together on a train, cold and alone. They have been sentenced to die.

It wasn't their choosing, really. It was Fate. The girl decides that Fate is nice enough to let her have found the boy—big, strong, like the older brother she always wanted but never had. The boy swears that Fate is the cruelest thing on this Earth and beyond; he hates Fate, despises it. (Almost more than the Capitol, but is there really a difference?)

"You and me, together I see," the girls sings, the tune unfamiliar and strange.

"You're a beautiful singer," the boy whispers in his gruff not-yet-a-man-but-not-a-boy tone. "What song is that?"

"I don't know," she admits, "I found it in one of my father's songbooks. It's a lovely piece, really, if only I remembered all of it . . ."

"It's wonderful no matter how you sing it," says the boy, trying to be a comfort, "because everything is wonderful with you."

"Thank you," she says back, and for the moment she is not thinking of the million ways she can die.

She's thinking about the boy.