Dressed up and dangerous, Cato bares his teeth at the audience in the City Circle. He is the largest and the strongest of the group this year and he knows it.
He shoots a glance to his side to check out Clove who is grinning maliciously at the audience. There is a bit of a deranged glint in her eyes, like she can't wait to paint bloody smiles across everyone's necks. Cato thinks they'll make good partners (until he breaks her neck- he's not letting anyone, no matter how beautiful take this crown from him), and wonders if that glint is in his eyes too.
After the chariot ride is over he checks out his reflection in the shiny chariot wheels but can find nothing- he assumes it's because he's not quite crazy- yet.
.
Cato and Clove dominate at training; smashing, shooting and slashing everything until there's nothing left to destroy.
Cato sees the others staring at him and his partner, knowing they see two insane killers, and knowing they see no weaknesses.
Perfect, he thinks. Cato and Clove, the flawless killing duo.
.
Training scores, though, piss him off.
How could that brat from 12 score better than him? She's pathetic, dirty and small. He could kill her without even breaking a sweat! He rages, punching a hole in the mirror and throwing things around the room, until Clove grabs his arm and hisses at him to stop, and does he know what he's doing? and why can't he save this for the arena? He breathes in and out, like his mother taught him back in 2 and catches a glimpse of himself in the shards of the broken mirror. He thinks he sees cracks in his facade, and through them he catches the slightest flickers of insanity.
.
The sixty seconds on the metal plate before the Games can really begin are the most agonizing and torturously long seconds of Cato's life. Finally the chime sounds and he's running full out to the golden horn that means food, water, and most importantly, weapons. Clove is on his heels and he hands her several lethal looking knives while grabbing an enormous ax. Checking its weight he turns to Clove and she nods, understanding.
Cato wonders if these pathetic ants they call tributes would be any good in hand to hand combat, but he never gets to test it out because he and Clove are back to back, moving quickly through the twenty two others and hacking, slashing, killing. Too quickly, though, the stupid ants have fled to hide in the woods so Cato bellows a challenge to the cowards to come out and see if they can beat the best while Clove is busy cutting patterns into the girl from District 3's skin with a delicate knife. Cato grins and pulls her off the dead girl. Clove screams and swings at him, the insane glint back in her eye but she calms as she sees the hovercraft pick up the girl's broken body.
"Oh well," she sighs, "I'll just have to find another canvas. Take my time next time."
This time when she shoots him a lopsided grin he returns it, and when he checks his reflection in the Cornucopia, he sees the cracks have widened, falling away from him, and the deranged light is in his eyes, too.
.
It's downhill from there. Between the tracker jackers, that stupid girl from 12 and lover boy, Cato feels his blood lust rising, and there are simply not enough tributes left to satisfy it. He kills the boy from 3 with no hesitation and even though he knows it was reckless, he doesn't think about it, couldn't care less.
.
It feels like it's only a minute later when he's watching Clove die. He shouts her name, feeling a twinge of regret as he runs to her in time to catch her last breath. How easy she fell, when the rock hit her skull. Cato heard the crack of the contact from all the way across the plain, and he thinks she looks like a fragile little doll, the kind his sister plays with back home. He's sad a little that she was so fragile, but more so he's excited, because he is not and now he knows the 12 bitch is alone.
He will relish killing her.
.
The fight with Thresh is brutal and drawn out, and Cato thinks maybe he was the most worthy opponent in the arena. It's all easy going from here with the cripple and his girlfriend left, and he can see the crown, so close and so so glorious. He reaches for it but his hands grasp at nothing but air. Cato shakes his head to clear it, and finishes putting on the body armor.
.
Mutts. The Capitol is the one thing Cato knows is stronger than him, and mutts are the Capitol's creations. He wonders, though, why the mutts are chasing him who put on such a show for the Capitol audience. It's the last thing he thinks before the mutts are on his heels and he's running running running until the trees around him blur and he's never been so glad for killing anyone before as he is that he killed Thresh. He runs so fast he barely notices the 12 runts staring after him.
.
How silly Cato had been! How unthinking, to believe he had no weaknesses. His whole body hurts, and still the mutts won't stop biting, scratching, howling. He can't remember how long he's been in the Cornucopia. Seconds feel like years here. He hears his bones breaking, fragile as the glass mirror he broke in the Capitol, and finds he does have weaknesses. All of the insane bloodlust and bravado is gone and Cato is reduced to a writhing injured boy. He's glad Clove never had to go through this. With the largest breath he can manage to take he cries "help me" to the world. Seconds, hours, years pass, and Cato waits, a broken toy super hero (villain?). Just when he thinks he's done too much wrong to be granted such a mercy as death the arrow comes, swift and silent and snuffs his flickering life out.
Never has Cato been so grateful to be fragile.