Katniss kills the boy from District 1 with an arrow to the neck before he can attack again, but she is too late to save Rue. After cutting Rue free from the net, Katniss sees the spear wound in Rue’s stomach is fatal. Rue asks whether Katniss destroyed the Careers’ food and then tells Katniss she must win; Katniss promises to win for both of them. At Rue’s request, Katniss sings a lullaby and stays with her until Rue dies.

After Rue’s cannon sounds, Katniss takes useful supplies from Rue and the dead boy, but she cannot leave Rue’s body as it is. Rue’s death sharpens Katniss’s hatred of the Capitol and makes her finally understand Peeta’s desire to show the Capitol it does not fully own the tributes. Acting on that feeling, Katniss gathers wildflowers and carefully covers and decorates Rue’s body so the cameras will have to show the audience that Rue was a person, not just a casualty in the Games. She gives Rue the District 12 salute and walks away.

Later, Katniss receives a sponsor gift: a loaf of dark bread from District 11. She recognizes it from Peeta’s training lessons and understands that the starving people of Rue’s district must have sacrificed to send it. Katniss publicly thanks District 11, climbs high into a tree, and falls asleep holding the bread. That night, the anthem shows only two deaths, the District 1 boy and Rue, leaving six tributes alive.

The next morning, grief leaves Katniss nearly unable to move, but thoughts of Prim push her into action. She sorts the packs, reviews her dwindling food, and forces herself to hunt. After hiding the dead boy’s extra weapons so no one else can use them, Katniss finds grooslings, cooks them at Rue’s old signal fire, and deliberately lets the smoke rise, hoping to draw Cato or another Career into range. No one comes. As she waits, Katniss reflects on Rue, on Peeta, and on her new determination to make Rue’s death unforgettable by surviving and winning.

That evening, Katniss also confronts another consequence of the fight: the boy from District 1 was the first person she knowingly killed. She recognizes that killing a human being feels different from killing animals, even though the physical act was similar. Before she can rest for long, Claudius Templesmith makes a rare announcement: the rules have changed so that two tributes from the same district can both be declared victors if they are the last two alive. Realizing that this means she and Peeta could both survive, Katniss immediately cries out Peeta’s name.