notes | okay, so i forgot about signing up for this, but this is for "SPPW's Monthly Oneshot Challenge", a fabulous hunger games forum, (: it's sort of short and choppy but i wrote it really quickly, in about twenty minutes, so hope you like it!
dedication | even though this is for the monthly challenge, this is dedicated to the flawless z ( kaleidoscopical ) because z, ily so much and you're absolutely perf and a reallyreally nice person!
born to die
clovesilvers
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"when adults say, "teenagers think they are invincible" with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, they don't know how right they are. we need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken. we think that we are invincible because we are. we cannot be born, and we cannot die. like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes and manifestations. they forget that when they get old. they get scared of losing and failing. but that part of us greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, and so it cannot fail."
— looking for alaska; john green
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The first time that they meet, he nearly kills her during a sparring session. They're five.
Of course, Cato, at the time, is two years older than her — which means two more years of training sessions at three in the morning until eleven at night, and in between scarce meals and combined co-ed showers, he's learned to always ignore the pain. Then again, there aren't going to be any special facilities in the Games. They might as well be prepared now, in order to give each and every one of them a better chance of survival.
Nevertheless, it seems as though Clove won't be making it too far into the Games; she's barely made a single friend, and for every bruise and kick she's given, twice the hardness, and sometimes much more, is given back to her, and it feels like rejection.
Clove ends up trying to build up hope, because after all being accepted into the Academy on scholarship means absolutely nothing, and every day she has to go home to a family, a mother who always knows that her daughter can be better. Once upon a time, Clove used to think that this world wasn't full of grim prospects and broken dreams, and that by just doing her best, she would be able to thrive, be able to survive ( but she doesn't want to just survive, not even back then ).
Mother takes Clove to her first live sparring session — the ones with the larger children, where people are killed, and Clove couldn't bring herself to think about why a suicide mission is so desired;
And, suddenly, amidst the splashes of blood upon the walls, and suddenly there's this larger boy beating down on the much smaller one with a brick in his hands, and this kid is basically torn to pieces, but it doesn't just stop there. The older one, whose name she soon learns to be is Brutus, doesn't stop until he's carved his name into the victim's neck with his teeth, remnants on scarred flesh, and the worst part is about how businesslike the procedure is. If somebody gets in the way of a District 2 trainee of getting their chance of winning the Hunger Games ( and the pride, the eternal glory ), they put an end to their opposers.
The next time that Clove ends up in the heat of a live sparring session, she's already turned ten years old, the minimum age, and she flinches for a moment, unable to drive down the sword into the middle of her opponent's ribcage, because the person that she's fighting? It's just another girl, another little girl with bright red hair who's just breathing heavily, but she hears her mother's voices, and everybody's voices;
Because she's Clove Silvers, and a small girl like her, five feet and two inches, will never be able to survive in the Games, and a girl like her, ugly and small, not popular like Cato, will never be able to win any sponsors, and a girl like her, a girl, always number two in the ranks of her year, never being quite good ( male ) enough for her parents, for her family, for her district. But she's going to prove them wrong.
It's been her only motivation, her only real passion for a long time, for eternal moments, almost.
The reasons why she stays up later than any of the other trainees at the Academy, and why she doesn't waste time at summers in the Hamptons full of flimsy relationships that are only going to end ( after all, all hearts are broken, all relationships end ) and Clove doesn't really care about anything but being the best, and being the strongest, and being the ruthless killer that she's known to be.
Clove's gotten better. For every bruise, every kick, every punch that's given to her, a harder one is given back to her opponent. It's going to be worth it, isn't it?
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For most children at the Academy, Friday nights are spent hanging out with their friends, or at least their allies.
Then again, in a population of around ten thousand individuals, District's two three thousand or so children between the ages of three and eighteen aren't typical District 2 stereotypes; there's typically those burnouts, the people with the bottles of scotch in their throat, insulated coffee mugs with illegal liquids, and it's not formal or posh, more of a way to blow off steam from the past few nights.
Nothing's normal in the Academy however, and one might see a boy in a tuxedo throwing his body against a brick wall, punching his hand repeatedly in the vain effort to break through, but there's silence down in the training rooms, a few concentrated kicks and screams.
The lights, of course, are off, because Clove knows about the fact that darkness and surprise are her biggest advantages, due to her lack in size and all, along with muscular strength, and she sits down for a minute, before an alarm starts bursting from the side of the door, and she springs back up again, and practices with the targets, then running, then sparring with the dummies, and then takes a five second break, and it's time to repeat.
Her life might be described as rote and all, but it's methodical, and it'll work — eventually. Maybe. Hopefully. It has to work, it just has to.
A door opens, and with the element of surprise and the darkness that expands throughout one of the larger training gymnasiums, Clove performs a swift roundhouse kick to the nearest opponent, and strikes down the knees from behind, taking one of her special knives and holding it to the throat of a boy, who turns around and runs. (But darling, didn't you know that you were a monster?)
And she's been digging herself her own grave, falling into holes, because everybody else can just be so perfect and have a personality, and be actual normal human beings, while Clove's just trying so hard to be perfect, and not associate with the wrong people; but darling, you never really were daddy's little girl.
She comes home, after around three years, to a desolate, abandoned little village twostory condominium, and switches on the lights only to see the remnants of scars and shattered glass, her younger sister lying on the floor, coldhearted; her father stands above, menacing as ever, his shadow looming and he approaches her against in the wall. In the morning, the Peacekeepers find the father's body upon the floor, brutally murdered and hacked into pieces, almost as if it couldn't be the same person that there once was; and, once again, Clove's a monster.
(Daddy's little girls aren't killers, now are they?)
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She breaks down shortly after she murders her father.
Clove's lying down in the middle of another abandoned house, and she notices the remnants of shattered glass, and pictures of a happy home, across the blue lake, a family stands, their arms around each other, something from before the games, perhaps; it would have to be. Happiness doesn't exist anymore. Curling up onto the floor, Clove takes the glass and presses it into her skin, wrapping it tightly like a blanket.
Resisting the urge to scream out in agony ( because she's going to die after all ), but suddenly, after a little while, Clove doesn't feel the pain anymore. She's numb. She's dead. Clove's been dead for a while, though. They're like the Spartan soldiers, born to die.
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They're not star crossed lovers, not really.
Clove doesn't even believe that it's possible for somebody to be in love, because everybody dies in the end, EVERYBODY DIES AND SHE CAN'T BE THINKING ABOUT SILLY HUMAN EMOTIONS; because she can't be human, because humans have weaknesses, humans have grief and emotions that overwhelm them, and right now, it's not right to be thinking about something that could make her seem weak and undesirable.
She won't win then. It's not really about winning anymore, though is it? It's about being able to make it out of the Arena alive, and trying to forget about all the people that Clove's killed, trying not to hear their voices at night and seeing their families on the tour, but that's just dreaming.
The chance of victory is slight and improbable, especially with stupid star crossed lovers of District 12, and she feels disgusted when Glimmer and Cato flirt by the fireplace, because if the sponsors think what they're seeing over there, that this is true love, then this whole world is messed up. But then again, it always has been and Clove looks up into the night sky and realizes that she's still being held under control.
Being a ruthless, vicious killer without any emotions doesn't really change anything but when she's about to die, lying on the green grass, Clove can't help but scream out his name, because she's scared. The days of her life have been numbered, for a while now, and she hasn't lived a perfect life, but it was something.
And in her last moments of being able to live, Clove doesn't want to die. But then again, she never gets what she wants, does she?
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notes | i write too much sad stuff