Faintly I hear the boy turn on his heel and run, but I can't process it, too distracted by the fact that my body won't cooperate. I want to scream but nothing comes out and I thrash in horror but I know I'm not moving. I panic, and then hear Cato's voice in the distance. He's running now, fear ringing clear in his voice as he yells my name over and over now that I don't answer. Suddenly I really start to panic. I don't want him to see me like this. I don't want him to know. Cato's never been afraid, but I know he is now. I can't take it. I don't want to see him like this. I scream inside and fight for any ounce of control over my body to no avail.
It only takes a minute for him to reach me, and when his face drops to loom over mine I see the sheer panic in his eyes.
"Clove!" he yells, throwing his weapon aside and grabbing a handful of my shirt to shake me. His eyes are wide with terror as he tries to assess the damage through the fog in his brain, but he doesn't know, begging me to hold on. And then he sees it, the place where Thresh hit me, and everything stops.
Everything slows nearly to halt, and his eyes catch mine so he can see all the fear and pain in them and he knows. "Clove, don't leave me. Stay with me…" He begs, but no matter how much I want to answer, I've got nothing. The shock on his still face murders me and my eyes blur with tears. I want to tell him I'm sorry, I want to tell him I'm happy to have died instead of him. I want to tell him to win. For me.
And then he does something crazy, gripping both sides of my face between his hands and dropping to press his forehead against mine like he's done a million times when we're alone. The pressure against my skull hurts, but it doesn't matter, dissolved in a rush of emotion at the sentiment. I know this is the end, so I let myself absorb the feel of his hot breath on my face and heaving of his chest against my shoulder from running so fast. His grief crushes me beneath him.
"I love you," he whispers, almost imperceptibly. Before the words are even out of his mouth I know he's dead too. All the girl from 12 needs to do is take aim at him from the tree line and he's done. Anger rises up in my throat and uselessly I try to warn him, hoping the girl is too afraid of him to take the chance.
Cato mistakes the rapid rise and fall of my chest for pain and touches his lips to mine before sitting up and looking around, bewildered and aimless. All the light in his eyes is gone, empty and cold, and for the first time I watch as someone I love dies in the arena. And finally I understand.
If I could strangle every person in the Capital with my bare hands I would do it – throttle them until their dead eyes reflected the terror they've inflicted on us. It's not impersonal and it's anything but a game. Don't die here, I think desperately, Win for me. Win for this.
I start to slip, grasping for consciousness. Cato's lips begin to twitch as he battles for control; that famous temper flaring up and burning at his skin, eating him alive. His jaw clenches harder than I've ever seen it and his grip tightens immeasurably on my forearm, sending pain searing up my arm that I can't respond to. His eyes flash my direction, lips quivering with fury. His temper is too hot; it's going to consume him and kill him I know, but he'll go out in one hell of a blaze.
The entire room has gone still as the team gapes at the camera film. The girl sputters and her tracker deactivates, but no one moves to respond. I've never seen anything like it in the history of the games and I would never expect it from District 2. This is shaping up to be the most talked about Games in history.
"Fire the cannon, you idiot," I hiss, still unable to draw my eyes away from the monitor. The assistant scrambles to recover and a loud boom fills the arena.
Instantaneously the boy goes mad, his growl building into a roar as he rips the bag out of the dead girl's hands and throws it across the meadow, rising and crashing a fist into the cornucopia. I feel something for him for the first time since I've been head gamemaker and it startles me. Blind with fury, he whirls around and the film catches his face head-on before he covers it in his hands and paces up and down beside the body, dropping them only to ball his fists so tightly the knuckles turn white.
If the crowd hasn't felt something for him yet, they do now, I think with satisfaction.