A/N: Ugh, writer's block and school. First piece for the Hunger Games fandom, and basically written in an hour. AU, what-if-Cato-had-won.
The girl appears on the side of his vision, a dream.
"It's your fault," she tells him softly. "If only you had saved me." That is all she ever says to him, over and over, day after day. It's your fault. If only you had saved me. He finds her sitting primly in the living room couch, walking besides him to town. His fists cannot touch her; when he lashes out and screams curses, profanities, the girl lets them go through her like the blows are nothing but the breeze. He never sees her face, but her voice resounds in his mind, familiar and bitter.
There are other people, too. Monsters with gleaming teeth and claws, tearing at his skin, fires that come rushing towards him, a girl with arrows that fly at him, one after another, one after another. They never leave marks, but he feels each scratch, each burn, each pierce, and when he looks upon his skin and it's perfect and smooth, he wants to scream and punch through walls.
But he's most afraid of the girl who just stands there, accusing.
"Do you remember when we first met?" she asks one day, voice echoing in his head like bells. "Do you remember what you said?"
"I don't know who you are!" he shouts, screams, shrieks. "Go away, go away!"
"Of course you do," she replies calmly, drifting just out of vision. "Do you remember what you used to be like?"
No, he yells inside his head. No, go away go away. What do you want from me?
The words cannot force themselves out.
"It's your fault," she whispers again. "If only you had saved me."
Monsters, fires, arrows― they pale in comparison to her.
The doctors in the cool white coats tell him none of it is real. "You're damaged," they tell him in soothing voices. "You went through a tough time, but you survived! You may be suffering some, ah, symptoms, but don't worry, we'll give you medication…"
He flushes the pills down the toilet. They make him clouded, confused, and he feels a need to remember the girl, to feel the guilt choking his soul. He is a burning beast that cannot be calmed. He needs to fight, he needs to yell. He needs to see this girl.
"You may be blocking memories from this experience," they drone in their monotone voices. "That's normal. But you need to let them flow in order to recover."
And then they ask, "What do you remember?"
He remembers blood and knives and bones cracking under his hands, he remembers his sword slashing through skin and muscle and tissue. He remembers dirt and cold and hunger.
He remembers a girl, but he can never recall her name.
"I don't remember anything," he sullenly tells the doctors, and they nod and write notes.
"Don't you remember me?" she coos like a passing breeze. She dances above him, to the side of him, and he can feel her eyes boring, sharp and glittering.
There is a girl and her hair is brown. She has arrows that shoot with frightening accuracy.
There is a girl and her hair is blonde. She finds poisons in the most innocent of plants.
There is a girl and her hair is black. She has knives that gleam in the moonlight, gleam in the fire.
"Who are you?" he asks, over and over. "Which one are you?"
Perhaps she is none of them, only a figure he has conjured to spread the guilt, spread the pain. The girl who haunts him never answers, only sighs, and melts into thin air like dreams and dust. He asks himself if he wants to remember. The blood and weapons and killing, it's enough for him to take in, and he can't even remember whose blood it was. Whose weapon was the killer's. Who the killer was. Was it him? Was it him?
He cannot escape.
It all comes back to him.
First are the cuts and scratches and scars that are supposed to be there, supposed to be decorating his skin like sick carvings. He worked so hard for them, to prove how strong he was, didn't he? He wanted the glory, the fame, the honor. But all he feels now is the knowledge he's killed them, and the blood of his victims paint the walls and the floors, and coat him in their slick redness. When he wakes up he's screaming because he's drenched in blood no one else can see, he's pinned down from the lives he has taken, and when they come reassure him, he wants to yell because he killed them, and he wants them to blame him for it.
The dead, though, the dead have no qualms, and they hover about him when he recalls everything, really everything.
I was the first one you killed, a little boy whimpers.
You left and ran without helping me, the blonde girl sniffs.
You strangled me to death, a boy shrieks. I helped you and you strangled me.
When you heard my fellow tribute died, the tall boy growls, you laughed. And so I killed yours, and you screamed.
I didn't want to do this, the blond haired lover boy sighs. But you killed me anyways.
I watched you kill him, the girl with arrows hisses. I watch you kill him and then you killed me.
He smashed a rock into my skull, the girl just out of his vision accuses. You were too late to save me. Don't you remember? It's your fault. If only you had saved me.
Finally she turns to face him, and her eyes burn into his skin like twenty suns. They are green and burning with anger, they are green and cold with sadness and regret, they are green and empty. Too, familiar, those eyes. The last time he saw those was in the arena, he thinks, one last look back before running for the packs.
"I tried to!" he pleads, screaming aloud to the ghost only he can see. "I tried to! Did you see me? Didn't you hear me? If I had known, I would have― I would have― "
She settles onto the flower pattered armchair no one has a use for, and smiles ruefully. "You don't remember."
What more do you need me to remember? I remember death and blood and killing and I remember that was me who slashed skin apart and broke bones with my bare hands. I remember the hunger to kill, hunger to win. I remember more than I wish to know.
"You made me," she hisses. "You made me go to the Hunger Games." Her voice drips resentment, hatred, disgust. "You put those ideas in my mind, and I believed you because I was young and I loved you. You didn't know that, but you thought that. You were once so cruel and cocky. Do you remember?"
He covers his ears and tries not to curl into a corner and cry; he doesn't remember that, did he ever do that? The giant house caves around him, corners melting to reveal grotesque faces of those he had killed, roof swirling together into forests of green. The green eyed, black haired sits in the middle, seemingly unaware of his pain.
"It's your fault, Cato," Clove tells him. "If only you had saved me."