He lumbers towards her, but she only smiles. Her emotions are sealed, expression unreadable. As he reaches her, she closes her eyes and laughs.
Why is she laughing? She knows that he will not hurt her. Nothing he can do will inflict pain to her body or mind. They are both demented, after years of torture and abuse. Though somehow, they are still capable of love.
She has never loved. Not her mother, twenty-five and derisive, not her father, twenty-six and always drunk. Not even her sister, who sacrificed her life so this mentally invalid girl could live, dieing an arduous death, lying on the floor and bleeding to death.
The boy, only seventeen, has not shed a single tear in thirteen, almost fourteen years. His father died at the age of nineteen, a bloodthirsty man who killed his parents, who cuts his son and daughters with knives, who killed his one-year-old daughter and abuses his wife.
But the boy, brutal and insolent, loves the girl; yet he will not admit it to himself. Oh, yes, they have desecrated one another, but they are in love. He venerates her savage manner, admires the way she smashes vases and mirrors and stabs her rivals over and over to make them suffer.
The girl loves him back. She remembers the days before she turned sixteen, when she would evade her room and meet him in the garden. All the times they fought and ended up soaked in each other's blood, sometimes their own.
He pulls the girl into his arms, stroking her lush blonde hair, and rests his head on her shoulder. Rocking her back and forth brings him comfort, easing the pain of watching so many people die right before his eyes. It is almost tranquillizing.
"Oh, Cato," she whispers in his ear. Cato cannot tell if she knows what is coming. As he continues to console her, he only contemplates those two words, her confirmation of love for him.
"Clove, dear," Cato whispers back as his hand reaches up and he stabs Clove's back. Clove does not flinch, does not wail in pain. She only squeezes his hand and looks into his deep blue eyes one last time. The adulation in her expression hollows Cato's shattered heart. His stomach churns as Clove begins to go limp in his arms and he pulls the knife out of her back with a lewd sucking noise.
Then he lays her on the ground, and as her stomach barely rises and falls, he presses his lips against hers and kisses her for the first time. But although this is their first, it is also their last. Passion floods through Cato's body. He pulls away. Clove sighs and her beautiful green eyes flutter closed.
"I love you, Clove," he murmurs as a strong wind tugs at Clove's lavish, wavy blonde hair and leaves dance around her body. For the last time, he grabs her in his arms for only a moment, then lets her fall to the ground.