HABITS – ONE
The twenty-four tributes raised from the ground almost as if magic. Peeta Mellark, a baker from Disrict Twelve, stares off into the woods. He is not ready. None of these children are, to be honest. Not the careers, even. No one should be forced to experience the horrors this arena holds.
Boom. The District Eight boy has tripped and fallen off of the platform and his limbs are flying. Peeta sees the boy's District partner scream. Cato watches his own district partner, Clove, laugh at the moronic boy. "Sick. It's sick." He recalls the beautiful blonde baker saying to his District partner when he believed Cato wasn't listening. The words that made him vow he'd show Peeta Mellark he was not a bad person. He would show Peeta that he had a heart. But he'd protect the boy from a distance. He couldn't afford Peeta actually learning to care for him.
A siren blows and Cato sees Peeta's been caught off guard. Cato has already flung himself at a weapon and is running for the now cornered innocent sixteen year old. He slashes through the District One girl and Clove, his partner. Peeta's now slung over the taller blondes shoulder, kicking and screaming. He's unarmed, so Cato stops back at the cornucopia to grab the boy a spear.
He barrels through the trees, dropping Peeta off safely against a tree and leaving the spear there before beginning to tread off. Marvel, the boy from One, had already left a gash in Cato's leg. It hurt like hell, but he ignored it. Or tried.
He fell to his knees. Peeta still stared at the boy in shock as he screamed out in pain. Surely it was worse than poor Cato had thought.
"W-Why did you save me?" Peeta yells, cautiously inching toward Cato after picking the spear off the ground.
Cato leaves the question unanswered as he raises to his feet, wielding his sword close to him. Peeta flinches at the sight of the metal.
"Aren't you gonna run?" Cato asks roughly through his gritted teeth. Peeta shakes his head.
"I have a feeling you don't want me hurt. And I still don't know why." Peeta says, restating the question as he fidgets with the backpack he grabbed. What he didn't notice was how silently and quickly Cato ran off. He didn't seem to want to answer the question at hand.
Cato finds himself running into Cole, and he flinches as she raises a knife to his throat. "Where's Peeta! The blonde boy? I want him out!" She yells as he is pinned against a tree.
"I don't know! He ran off when I got him out of the blood bath." Cato lies, trying to ignore the gash in his leg.
"Dammit!" She curses a rushes off, disappearing into the woods.
As Cato finds camp in a tree where Peeta's camp is in sight, he is disturbed by the cannons. Fourteen. Fourteen less tributes to deal with. Cato was sure Clove and Glimmer were dead. Also the District Eight boy. He saw the small girl from Eleven get slaughtered by Marvel.
Marvel. A major force to be reckoned with. He was ruthless and fierce, but still no match for Cato. No one in the arena was able to destroy Cato in a duel. As long as he had his trusty sword and he was aware of his surroundings, you were already claimed dead.
Unless you were Peeta Mellark, that is.
Cato had admired Peeta's wits and kindness from afar in the past five days. To anyone else he seemed just another dead tribute, but to Cato he was the boy who had haunted his dreams since he was Twelve. The boy who could teach him to be a real person, and not the Capitols puppet, born to win the games.
Peeta had started a small fire when night came. Not the smartest move, but he had set snares around his camp. So it was safe, especially considering Cato was playing his guardian angel, ready to drop from the branch and trample whoever came near his baker boy. Cato had received medicine for his leg, and the seering pain was begging to lessen.
It had always been a habit of Peeta's, making a good impression on people. He obviously had not won Cole over, but Cato was a different story. Hell, the whole of Panem was a different story. Peeta was the definition of perfect; Smart, charming, kind and caring. Not to mention handsome. Cato didn't find himself even half as good as Peeta. Cato was good-looking and strong, but in his mind he was nothing compared to the amazing District Twelve tribute, and the poster-child of his dreams and nightmares.
Cato had dreamt of the boy in this exact scenario, actually. The Seventy-Third Hunger Games, fighting to the death. Some nights they got out together. Some nights he watched the boy suffer a terrible death as Cato was restrained by other tributes. In fact, the torturer looked like Marvel...
He thought it all a coincidence. He'd never guess but soon he'd go on the worst roller coaster of emotion with this boy right at his side.
Peeta watches the sky intently while the faces flash across it. The faces he'd never see again. He hadn't known the tributes to well, but he was going through this with them; They were just as scared, just as worried, just as hopeful.
Cato makes a mental list of the fallen.
The girl from One. Glimmer
The girl from Two. Clove
The boy from Three. Kellan
Both tributes from Five.
Both Tributes from Six.
Both tributes from Eight.
Both tributes from Nine.
Both tributes from Ten.
The girl from Eleven.
Eleven tributes dead. Eleven. Both boys had known they'd die at some point, but the fact that they are now... It scares both of them. They had spoken with these kids. They had gotten to know them just to cut them in half or snap their necks.
Cato had done it to protect Peeta. Peeta already promised himself that he'd never kill an innocent soul. Cato could do it for him if he had to.
The only threats left were Marvel and Cole. The others were capable, but not as much so as the One and Twelve tributes. Marvel was understandable, but Cole was just plain insane. She killed most of those tributes at the blood bath before they knew what hit them. When Cato was trapped by her, her face was completely maroon with blood. You could see crazy in her eyes.
Then, from the side of his vision Peeta isn't on, he sees them. Cole and Marvel, together. An alliance, and a threatening one at that. Cole sways her head from side to side, scoping Peeta out Cato guesses, as she maniacally laughs at her knives. Marvel wipes his bloddy spear head off on his already drenched jacket.
A deadly duo.
Cato already knows how challenging it will be to keep his angel alive, but he's going to do everything in his power to do it.
Ladies and gentle-men, The Seventy-Third Hunger Games have begun.