A/n Inspired by Lana Del Rey's Born to Die. I was reading a beautiful Cato/Peeta fic called "Chosen" (go read it if you like this couple, it's AMAZING) and thought about Cato having a sister and then Born to Die came on the radio and it was so fitting I had to write it. Hope you like it!
I hold Peeta close to me, my arm around his neck, keeping him in place cutting off his air just a little, but not enough. No, I won't do that. I've killed to many people already. I don't want to win anymore, because then I'll be a monster for the rest of my life. Its funny how I never realized before that that is what a victor is, a monster.
I can't kill myself, that would be a blow to my district and my family. I need her to kill me. I need her to be the monster, to understand what I've become.
"Go on, shoot me. Then we both go down and you win," I cry, blood pounding through my head and pouring from my mouth.
Suddenly I feel my lungs empty and my heart stop. The moon illuminates her hair but shields her face and suddenly I realize something I never had before.
"Cato!" Melody cried as she ran into the room for our goodbyes. My twin sister stands in the doorway, tears in her eyes as she watches us.
"I'll come back Melody, I promise," I assured her, kissing her forehead.
"Don't leave me Cato," she whispered, tears streaming down her face as she looked at me with her angel blue eyes that even the capitol couldn't replicate. With a sigh I reached up and tucked a stray brown strand behind her ear before giving her a cocky smile.
"We are from District 2, and what are our words?"
"Tough as Stone," she recited, a small smile forming on her face.
"I'll come home."
"Go on," I beg. I try not to think about Melody and Lilly watching me. I can imagine Melody crying, begging me to fight, to win, to come back to them. I can't make them understand. I can't make them understand that they're safer if I'm dead.
I always knew I could kill, but I never realized I could do it so effortlessly. I volunteered because Clove was our female tribute and I was in love with her. I knew if I volunteered that I could protect her, maybe even find a way to bring us both home. I was going to do the star crossed lovers routine but the 12 tributes did it for me and in the end it was the same. They got the rule changed and for a moment I entertained the thought that I could go home with Clove, to Melody and Lilly. "I'm dead anyway."
But I can't.
"Well, I'm confident you'll win this year," my mentor said with a charming smile as she looked at Clove and I from across the dinner table. "This is exciting. If one of you wins, you'll be a mentor for when one of your siblings is reaped."
My hands tightened around my fork and my breath stopped. Clove had also frozen to my side.
"What are you talking about?" Clove asked, her fingers curling around her steak knife.
"Well, we don't tell the people usually, but siblings of victors have their names entered twenty-five more times. That's why so many siblings of past victors are reaped," she said gleefully as she turned to smile at her brother, another one of our mentors.
I knew that moment I could never go home. I want to. I want to go home but Melody isn't strong enough to be in the Hunger Games and Lilly and I are too old to protect her from it. But that's what she was always trained to be, was it? A Hunger Games Tribute. She may not care for the games now but she'll volunteer, just like I had. She'll be seventeen or eighteen and she'll be dressed in some powder blue dress that accents her perfectly styled hair and she'll raise her arm slowly and gracefully with Lilly's charm bracelet on her wrist for luck. She'll smile a wide smile for the cameras and play the perfect vulnerable girl with an air of danger before volunteering. She'll sit in Caesar's chair and laugh and smile and bow her head for a moment when they mention my name. She'll say she's going to win, for me, because I should have been a victor. Everything I'm doing, all my sacrifice, it'll be for nothing. She'll still become a tribute, still die (most likely at the hand of her fellow district tribute).
But I have to try. I can't sit back and watch it happen, I have to try and save her even if I can't.
"I always was right?"
She looks confused and I want to tell her what'll happen if she wins, what it'll mean for her little sister, but I can't. I can't because then she won't kill me. She'll kill herself so her sister (Rose?) doesn't have to have her name put in more times.
"I didn't know that till now." It never really hit me before now that I would die, that I was born to die. I had known since our last night in the Capitol that I was going to die in the arena, but not until now did it fully hit me.
"How's that? Is that what they want? Uh!" I cry, she points her arrow at me and I taunt her by pulling a little on Peeta's neck. I won't kill him, but I need to put on a show. I need to make it seem like a fight. "I can still do this." I put my hands up in a show of power, showing her I can still take away the boy she loves. "I can still do this. One more kill. It's the only thing I know how to do."
It is the only thing I know how to do anymore. It kills me that Melody is watching this, screaming for me to survive, waiting with bated breath for the end.
"Bringing pride to my district, not that it matters."
Pain comes from no where and I don't even realize that she's hit me with an arrow. It all happens so fast. I fall backward, into the pack of mutts. Their claws rip at my skin and the pain is excruciating. I don't hold back, screaming as my body is defiled and torn. I cry in anguish and fear, letting out the emotional anger as well. Then suddenly it was gone, over. I didn't feel anything anymore. I was dead.
My name is Cato, District 2's Male Tribute for the 74th Annual Hunger Games, and I was born to die.