for the clatoficholla exchange on tumblr. prompt: au, temporary battles can take up half your life
x
He wins easily, feels the blonde boy's bones crushed beneath his fingers.
The younger male hadn't even put up a fight, doesn't even scream; after a pack of mutant dogs was placed into the arena, he had practically thrown himself at Cato, begging him to make his death quick and painless and easy.
Cato releases the boy's neck, and he grins, grins with all his teeth, as the boy's body falls motionless to the ground.
He raises his hands into the air, smiling at the cameras and ignoring the blood and cuts lingering on his face and hands.
He has won the 73rd annual Hunger Games. And he is going to be the greatest victor that Panem has ever seen.
x
She enters his life a year later.
By this point, Cato has entered into the business of selling off his body and his love; he doesn't really have a choice—it's something all the victors do, by will of the Capitol—but he doesn't mind too much anyway, doesn't mind touching and kissing and fucking pretty girls and hearing them scream his name.
In fact, he doesn't even mind when the girl isn't pretty, doesn't mind whether his partner is even a girl.
He likes the physical contact, likes the pushing and pulling and grasping and gasping; he likes the pain, and the pleasure, and the feeling of getting so intimate with somebody without having to really care about them.
x
But when a tiny brown-haired girl shows up on his doorstep in District 2, in a childishly unflattering black dress and with a wad of cash in her right hand, he has to turn her down.
"I think you're a little too young for me, sweetie," he says, patronizing and his smirk audible in the sound of his voice.
She smiles back, and he knows that she can't be any older than fifteen.
"But everyone says you're the best," she replies, moving closer, voice soft and smooth. "Everyone says that you make it hurt."
Cato laughs, starts to say that she's right (she is), but he's cut off by the feeling of her mouth crashing into his.
She tastes like blood, and roses, and a thousand other sweet things, and he brings her inside, age difference and any resistance forgotten.
He forgets to get her name.
She forgets to pay him.
x
He waits for her to come back. He wants her to.
It takes a whole three days, thirty-six agonizing hours, but then she's finally by his front door again, this time with no money. She won't be needing it.
This time, he doesn't waste even one second to talk or even say hello. Instead, he pulls her inside, pulls her against him and presses his mouth against hers.
She giggles and pulls away. "I thought I was too young for you," she says, light dancing behind her eyes.
He just grins and brings her back to his lips.
x
Fucking her is different, completely different, from anybody else he's ever been with before.
She's not like the others. She isn't just experimenting, doesn't just want Cato to take control.
She lets him hurt her some, of course, lets him crush her face between his hands and press bruises onto her stomach and leave purple marks on her neck, but she's not like the others, not at all.
Because she fights back; fights back, moves against him, leaves bites and scratches and cuts all over his body; uses her nails to dig into his skin and her teeth to dig into his chest and her hands to break his bones and leave innumerable purple marks on every part of his skin.
And the thing that really makes her different is that, when it's over, he wants her to stay.
x
A few days later, after they're finished with each other and they're lying in Cato's bed and he can hear her breathing next to him, panting and breathless, he finally talks to her, for real.
"You've never told me your name," he says, rolling onto his side so he can look into her eyes. He likes them; they're the darkest eyes he's ever seen, but there's something light about them, something about them that's fierce and bright and sparkling.
She smiles and moves closer to him, her index finger tracing the outline of a scar on his chest. A scar she left there.
"Clove," she mumbles softly, picking at the scar with her long nails. "And I already know your name."
Cato chuckles. Everyone knows his name.
"How old are you?" he asks, absentmindedly running his fingers through her hair.
She smiles, locking her eyes with his. "Twenty."
Cato laughs and rolls over so that he's on top of her, his hands pinning down her wrists. "Like hell you are."
She just laughs and presses her lips against his.
She tastes like blood, sweet and tangy and metallic. He likes it. He likes her.
x
She starts showing up every day, sometimes sneaking in through his window late at night, always greeting him with a kiss, her tongue tying around his and her teeth biting his lips.
Sometimes they talk, in soft whispers and quiet secrets and playful insults, smiling and laughing and grinning through bedsheets.
And sometimes they go out, but usually not, because despite what Clove says, Cato knows he's at least three years older, and even a victor can't get away with being with somebody that much younger than he is.
And nine months after they've met, Clove is lying in his arms, using one of the knives he assumes she trains with at District 2's academy to carve shapes and scratches into his stomach. She's good with knives, he knows; she's really good.
"Do you love me?" she asks him, smirking and giggling a little, but Cato can tell by her eyes that it's a serious question.
"Maybe," he says, tugging at a strand of dark hair
"What about you?" he asks. "Do you think you love me?"
She laughs, and her voice says no. Her bright eyes, however, say yes.
x
Two months later, she is reaped for the 74th annual Hunger Games. She's not twenty years old. She sure as hell is not.
But he's confident she can win. She's strong, and fierce, and fast, and deadly; she can wield a knife like nobody he's ever seen, and she can take on boys twice her size. He knows. He is twice her size.
But he wishes she didn't have to play. Because even though he's ninety nine percent positive she'll be coming home, that one percent chance that she won't remains as a whisper of a thought at the back of his head, a gnawing pain that won't go away.
x
He's chosen as her mentor. He's young, only nineteen, but he's the most skilled male victor District 2 has seen for years. He works alongside Enobaria, the vicious female victor from the Games a few years ago.
Clove's district partner is a boy not unlike Cato. He's big, and musculed, and blonde, and he volunteered, but he's too arrogant and Cato can tell he lacks common sense.
And that night, on the train to the Capitol, once he finally manages to get Clove alone, away from Enobaria and that boy, he takes her face between his hands and grins at her.
"You can win," he says, pressing his forehead against hers. "You're good. You can win." Her skin feels so soft against his hands, and he forces himself to forget that this might be the last time he ever touches her like this.
"I know, Cato," she answers, smirking. "I know."
As she leans up to kiss him, he can taste the remnant of a smile on her lips.
x
Just like Cato expected, she soars through the bloodbath, fierce and vicious and bloody and terrifying.
And he does all he can to get her sponsors, talks about how well she can throw knives and how good she is at combat and how fast she can run and how hard she can kick and how easily she can kill a man with her bare hands.
And as days go by, he becomes more and more confident that Clove, his Clove, is going to be returning to District 2.
x
The day it happens, he's completely, totally, utterly unprepared. His world flips on its axis, and he doesn't even see it coming.
He's talking to a District 1 mentor when it happens, when Enobaria taps his shoulder and motions for him to look at the tv screen on the wall. Something about her eyes worries him, but he ignores it.
Somebody onscreen is dying, some tiny girl is getting her head bashed in by the massive boy from…where was it? District 11?
He laughs. A small girl like that probably hadn't even stood a chance.
He's about to go back to his conversation when the camera zooms into the dead tribute's face. The girl has dark brown hair, and small red lips, and dark, dark eyes.
Every muscle in his body goes numb.
It's Clove.
x
He drinks a lot that night.
x
He drinks a lot the next night.
x
He drinks a lot the night after that.
He finds some hot blonde girl and fucks her, fast and hard.
He does anything and everything not to think about her.
x
He drinks more.
x
And a few days later, he's drunk as hell and stumbling home, trying so fucking hard not to think about her or her dead eyes or her ruined potential or how he's never going to hold her again or hear her voice or look into those bright eyes, and he collapses onto the pavement and runs his hands through his hair.
He's not going to forget her. He knows he's not. He's going to spend the next thirty years of his life like this, drinking and having pointless sex and trying to remove from his mind a girl who's imprinted there forever.
He laughs dryly. The greatest victor Panem has ever seen. Like hell he is.
He looks down at the ground and rubs his eyes to keep from crying.
She can't be gone.
She still owes him money, back from that first day, when she showed up, a little girl standing on his doorstep.
She still owes him money.
And, more importantly, she owes him a life together, Cato kissing her and holding her in his arms and never ever letting go.
x
an: thanks for reading! i know that the prompt is barely relevant until the end, and even then it isn't very relevant. but idk i really liked writing this and felt pretty invested in it. anyway, every review/favorite means the world, and if you take time to read my work it means the world to me, so thank you