"i met a girl in los angeles, she had fire in her eyes and smoke upon her lips. and with a word, she could carry you away on the wind. and she said baby, i was only born to rise. and i can see the water flowing from your eyes. so lay down here, and i'll pray you bring the rain over me"
-charlie lubeck, "aylin"
Cato meets Clove at the academy when she is seven and he is ten.
"I'm gonna beat you" is all she says to him, voice confident and small chest puffed out.
"Everybody says you're the best, but I'm better. I know it."
Cato just laughs, laughs at her small figure and squeaky voice and tiny mouth.
"Okay," he says, smirking. "Whatever you say, kid."
x
But she's better than he expects.
For days he watches her throw knife after knife into the centers of targets.
"You're not bad," he eventually tells her, two weeks after their meeting.
"I know," she replies, her skinny, pale fingers reaching for another weapon. "I'm good."
x
And 9 months later, she's strong enough to pin him to the floor.
"Pretty good," he says from underneath her, breathless and grinning.
She just glares at him, eyes bright and fierce and unreadable as always.
"I'm gonna beat you" is all she says.
"Okay" is his response.
x
"You can't only be nine," he says, two years later, as they nibble on ham-and-cheese sandwiches.
They're sitting outside the academy, around noon, and the sun is bright and the sky is clear.
In the yellow light, Clove's ivory skin glows, and her brown hair shines, and her green eyes twinkle.
Despite how short, how skinny, how small she is, she looks old, much too old for somebody so young.
"I'm gonna beat you anyway," she says to him, spitting out a piece of crust.
x
When he's thirteen and she's ten, he really truly injures her for the first time.
They're practicing with swords, and she's small and he's big, and it's pathetically easy for him to get a good hit on her shoulder.
But she doesn't scream or cry like any other girl her age would.
She just glares at him. "I'll get better," she says, confidently and with that same childlike matter-of-factness.
And as she walks away to find a trainer to patch up her wound, her braid swinging behind her, he completely believes her.
But she's so small.
He finds himself wondering if "better" will ever be strong enough to beat tall, monstrous, muscled boys. Boys like Cato.
It probably won't, he decides. But at least she has her knives.
x
He gets his first girlfriend when he's fourteen; a big-breasted blonde creature who talks a lot and slobbers on him when they kiss.
He doesn't really like her all that much, but he likes having somebody to show off to his friends, and making out is nice.
"Her name's Satin," he tells Clove a few days later, while they eat lunch outside. "She's strong, and she's really good with arrows."
And, secretly, Cato wants Clove to care; wants her to get get upset or get jealous or show at least show some sort of emotion.
But she doesn't.
"She sounds nice" is all Clove says, taking a bite out of her apple.
x
On the day after her thirteenth birthday, Cato tries to kiss her.
They're training, doing combat, and her face is close to his and he can feel her breath on his neck and he loses all his reservations.
He takes a step forward, starts to lean closer, moves to touch her cheek.
And she punches him in the stomach.
"I don't want to kiss you, Cato," she says. He's keeled over by now and she kicks his shoulder.
"I want to beat you."
She says it so matter-of-factly, so certainly, that anyone else would have believed her.
But Cato's learned how to read Clove, and he knows that while the second part is a truth, the first part is a lie.
x
And by the time he's seventeen, and Clove is fourteen, and she's starting to look less and less like a child every day, he wants more than anything to kiss her.
But he tells himself to be patient, to wait for her to initiate it.
Even when he has her pinned down on the floor, and his knees are pressed down on her thighs, and it would be so easy to just lean down and touch her, he doesn't.
He knows she's going to want him someday.
He saw it in her eyes.
x
Another year goes by, and nothing has happened, and it's the day before the reaping.
And he's just about to give up hope, accept the fact that Clove really doesn't want him, when she crawls through the window of his dorm at 12am.
She doesn't say anything, but she doesn't have to.
Within seconds he's gotten up and grabbed her and pulled her against his body: smashed his lips against hers, wrapped his fingers in her hair and told himself never to let go.
He hurts her and bruises her and tries to eat her alive; she does the same to him, and he hates that Clove waited for this until tonight.
But Clove has always been something of a mystery, and trying to understand her is almost as hard as trying to control her.
x
She falls asleep in his arms that night, softly and sweetly and with her head pressed against his chest.
And he hates that this is both the first and the last time he's ever going to hold her.
As he strokes her hair, staring at the ceiling, she shifts beneath him.
"You know I'm going to beat you, right?" she mumbles, groggy and innocently and without the harshness her voice usually carries.
And Cato almost smiles, but not quite. "I know," he says.
She reminds him every day.
x
Morning comes far too fast.
When he wakes up, Clove is crawling out of his embrace and pinning up her hair.
"You don't have to volunteer today, Clove," he says, voice softer than it's ever been before. "You're only fifteen."
But she ignores him, puts on her shoes and walks out the door.
She doesn't say anything while she leaves but he knows what she's thinking:
"I want to beat you, Cato. I want to win."
And Cato sighs and collapses back onto his pillow. Damn her, he thinks, pulling at his hair.
Just once, for one damn time, he wishes she would just love him.
Just love him, like a normal girl loves a normal boy; put aside the violence and the competition and the Games.
Put aside this crazy desire she has to beat him, this crazy desire she's had since she was seven damn years old.
But he knows that she won't. That's not like Clove.
That's not like the Clove he's fallen in love with.
x
On the day of the Games, right before they're separated, he sees her one more time.
She's not looking at him, but he wasn't really expecting her to.
And as he walks into the room containing the lift that will carry him into the arena, he thinks back to that day, eight years ago.
"I'm gonna beat you. Everybody says you're the best, but I'm better. I know it."
That day, two years ago.
"I don't want to kiss you, Cato. I want to beat you."
And that day, just last week.
Her, leaving his bedroom, saying nothing but everything at the same time.
"I'm going to beat you, Cato."
And he's not religious, but as he rises up into the arena, he sends a prayer up to whatever powerful, all-controlling entities may exist:
Please, god, let her be right.
AN: the quote at the beginning is just from a song that i thought of while writing this. anyway, hope you like this! i really appreciate all the reviews and feedback i've gotten on my other oneshots, and every favorite/follow means the world to me