About six months ago, I became incredibly obsessed with Catoniss. But tonight, when I was watching Catching Fire again, I was really inspired to write a Catoniss fic and threw this out in an hour or so. I'm pretty happy with it. I don't usually write thing so sad, but meh, you know...Catoniss is a tragic love story. Sorry about any mistakes. I'm not the best at proof-reading and grammar and my BETA is grounded :(
Disclaimer: I do not own THG or these characters, I only borrow them for enjoyment and happiness.
A year ago, I met a boy. His eyes were like slates of perfect sapphire that glimmered with a reflecting fire. His features were sharp and his fingers were that of a killer-to-be. When he looked at me, I didn't look away, but my eyes traveled down that gilded armor, and something ignited in me. I'd heard all about him from Haymitch who knew his kind. There was a death sentence in his eyes, and I looked away. I felt his smirk all the way across the room.
A year ago, I stayed ridged in the training area, wilting back against the shadows in an attempt to keep myself from them. Those who threw knives like it was on a perfect line to targets, those who swung swords like it only cut through the emptiness of a kill, and those who wanted nothing more than to see me die a long and painful death. He had his eyes on me always, so dark and full of depths like a raging, dangerous sea that swept all those who sailed under into an abyss to never return. His looks were torment, and I never returned them, which made his casual glances across the room even more intimidating. It was like he was a hunting dog, who could track me anywhere I wandered within the area. He would hunt me in the games, I knew.
A year ago, I felt sick as the bloodbath washed me in copper. I watched him ready himself on the platform, and never once today did his eyes glance toward me. Unidentifiable signals were exchanged between those of his allies. All of them perfectly venomous and trained to kill. Everyone is just animals, I told myself, and he the most of all. I watched him, in a moment of utter fear that made my bones turn to lead, pummel a kid who wasn't meant to be a killer, and wasn't meant to die the death he was going to. I watched him kill another with a sword through the chest, and the blood splashed out like a child had jumped in a puddle. It slicked his fingers and dotted his face, and he turned my way. He may have looked at me, but I was already gone.
A year ago, I realized he didn't know anything about the real killing. That girl suffered slowly, and his anger at his inability to make the cannon sound only made it all the more violent. It was a animalistic slashing, coarse and deep but not fatal. It was his hands that was the real danger. It looked like he crushed rocks in spare time. The girl whimpered, and he was not the one to finally kill her. But he did a damn good job of starting it. And there was Peeta, who I had thought loved me. Peeta never looked into the forest though, but the other one did- blue eyes the color of the darkened sky when he kept his head on a 360 swivel, always looking for something he could never find.
A year ago, my leg was as painful as the realization I was going to die, and Prim would never see me again. And he had to have found me, because who else would the fate choose to end the life of me? I couldn't help but be glad it was him. I could ask him, if it came so, why he watched me. It was such a silly request, that laughter bubbled inside me and spilled out like a sun that had been hidden behind the clouds. His climbing was as clumsy as his last attempted kill. His frustration poured from his ego like dark, airless muck. His eyes were seas again, churning and such. Peeta wanted to weed me out, ever logical and ever correct. I couldn't stay forever, I had to eat and drink, or one of them would learn to climb. I teased them, for now safe, and there was a bedlam in his eyes. A utterly chaotic struggle between relief and savagery that I had not seen with such definition anywhere else. My eyes became mirrors of his own.
A year ago, I dreamed of only his eyes. But when the dream panned back, it was Peeta's face with his stormy eyes and I jolted awake, unnerved and sweating. It was then I dropped the tracker jacker on the group, and made my first kill- ever unintentionally as it was- before I pried my prized arrows away from death itself. Peeta was there, that little traitor, but he was telling me to run. So I did. Then he came, crashing around like a tiger with a torn in it's foot, and his roar was still ringing in my ears when the black washed like a wave over my vision.
A year ago, I failed her. We thought we were so clever, blowing up their food. I wanted to show him, I wanted to do it for him. He crossed my mind like a tornado, tearing through reason. He was there in the shadows of my deepest thoughts, lurking like a panther. He was there, never letting a moment go by that his eyes didn't taunt me and distract me and-no! He would not leave me alone, even when I was in the utter silence of a forest before a disaster. The ringing in my ears like his roar after the explosion left me to read lips and watch the terror as he twisted the neck of the boy. It was such a smooth kill, one moment he was looking at him, the next moment the boy's face was looking at her before his body crumpled. The arrow lay tattered on the ground, and those hawk like eyes of stone knew exactly who was to blame. He looked up, and he couldn't have possibly seen me, but he smirked. The sick bastard. A moment later, I heard the scream.
A year ago, he became a human. His whole facade seeped away like rain into mud when Clove cried out. There was no monster in his expression, just a scared little boy who couldn't save his best friend either. I watched him grab her hand, and he was shaking so hard, and his eyes were wide- like he couldn't imagine Clove would ever die. "Stay with me," He cried in a wheezing breath, exactly the same words he had said when they appeared together before she went after me. The shock that rippled through his body, the anguish at her hollow and glassy eyes, and the tremors that rocked his body like a bolt of thunder to the spine replayed a thousand times in my head, still present to this day. Clove looked young, in death, like a small girl that perhaps once went to his house and at cookies at a table while his parents asked them about their day. His eyes never once looked for me, his eyes were only for her. Could he have loved her? That question made my stomach lurch. I felt no righteousness that he too should have a friend he cared about taken from him, only bitter and desolate empathy.
A year ago, it had to end. I felt it in my bones moments before. Thresh had already gone, and there was one guess who by. I think I knew that it was deeper than winning when he killed Thresh. It was revenge. It was for Clove. The wolves were so real, so terrifying and it looked like Rue. It was ghosts of those we couldn't save, and I knew what his ghost would be. Even with the snapping jaws and foaming lips, I couldn't find the strength to draw my bow against something that was Rue, even so small, because I feared the dreams that would haunt me later if I did. The scramble up the cornucopia was brutal, and there he stumbled from the woods, bloody. For once, it was only his own blood. It was like two worlds collide. There was Peeta, who was supposed to be the one who I thought about at all times, and there as him, who hadn't left my mind since the day I first saw him. My arrow was poised, to kill him because I had to, because he had Peeta. Peeta, that of good and he was evil. But he wasn't, he wasn't so far gone that the whole sky was black for him. No, not when he loved Clove. Not when he looked at me. "Go on, shoot. And we'd both go down and you'd win. Go on." He began to say. His eyes said more. Peeta could never understand, not as they drew the arrow on his hand that would assure that one of these blond boys will still be alive. It was to be the one everyone hoped to win, never the one they wished would not, except for his family who would mourn his death. And I would too. The arrow was released before I knew what I was doing, and it felt wrong. But it wasn't enough to kill him.
A year ago, I killed him. I never knew what it was that wrapped him around my mind; was it obsession? Was it lust? A confusion and result of deep stress and tribulations? I would never know, not when I drew my final arrow. He looked up at me, half lucid. "I'm glad it was you," He whispered, and none of the cameras would ever see that. It was a final gift of secrecy that would be carried in the depths of my soul until the end. The arrow could have drawn it out, could have caused him innumerable pain and then another because I had arrows to spare- but I would not. I let him see a smile, and he forced one back so the one thing no one could deny, was- for reasons they would never know- he died with a smile on his face.
A year ago, I held berries out to a boy that I had kissed under duress and only felt sicking regret to. It was naive to wish that it was the other one that stood before me, because there was nothing left. Yet there was a quiver, so small to see to the eyes of cameras, but seemed to fizzle through my whole body when the cannon sounded and I caused his death. Something had broken, and I would always wonder what it was. A line had been severed that had never meant to be severed but there was nothing I could have done to prevent it, without killing him. I had to- Peeta would not have been as merciful, if only for the reason he couldn't make a clean kill even if he wanted to. I held out the berries to him, and for a moment, I thought of death. I thought of him, in that a split second, and perhaps death would be a relief. Already, the haunting had begun. It was only Prim, that brought me back. The berries stained my hands but not my lips, and the hovercraft carried him away.
Less than a year ago, I dreamed about him. It was not the first time, not would it be the last. It was the most memorable though, as he was sitting in my house in Victor's Village, waiting for me. It was like it was real life- it was not a dream that would morph into a nightmare, nor a dream that would melt into surrealism. He was there, waiting, nibbling on a piece of bread with butter. He was dressed in a suit, like nothing I'd ever seen him in. "Ugh, I hate that I love this. Peeta's right?" He asked. I was unable to move. "Why?" I whispered, "Why are you here? Tormenting me!" I had asked him this before, but usually his face had melted away leaving bones and I woke up screaming. This one, it made me feel warm. I knew it was otherworldly, a visit. "It took me a while." He admitted, "To get here." He turned and I saw the glimmer of scars across his cheeks, that made spiderwebs down his body. There, on the left of his head, was the mark from the arrow I had killed him with. "Will you sit?" He asked me. I sat numbly. "You haunt me, how...why...It's not fair. We never even talked. And you have the audacity to make me feel like this? How? Magic?" I cried in a burst. "I don't know." He sighed, "I wondered that myself- how I could want you but want to kill you at first. And then, the killing part just vanished." He sighed, "I wish I could stay." He said, looking around. "You can always come to this house," The words spilled out before I could stop them, "In my dreams." He looked pained, "It's only a dream for you, right." He bowed his head in submission, "But I can't. But I have to do this." He said, and he pulled me to stand, "It's my one last wish before I'm really gone and have to pay for the person I always thought I'd be and was too much." The kiss that had never happened but still was there when I least expected it happened. I clutched the lapel of his suit and let the tears come hard. "I don't love him, I never could. I don't know if I love you either, but there's something inside of me that's-," I began, but he cut me off. "Whole. The string of fate is re-tied. If even in a dream I can only hope you'll remember. But fate didn't win, it never could." He said sourly, and I understood. It was only Peeta and I that could come out alive. If Peeta had died, my stormy blue-eyed boy wouldn't have come with. Or I wouldn't have. He pushed something into my hand, and said it was time to go. "Stay with me!" The same words that came from his mouth at the games left mine, and he seemed caught. "God, Katniss. I wish I could. But I'll be late." Then, my dream world evaporated and I woke up with tears on my cheeks. In my hand was a tip of an arrow stained with blood that may or may not resemble a heart, a trinket I knew with certainty that I had never owned before.
A year from the games, I stood with my fingers interlaced with a boy with blue eyes that didn't look like sapphires and blond hair that wasn't as vibrant as the sun. We were on the Victory Tour, but nothing felt like victory anymore. Not since him. My fingers rubbed across something in my pocket, which Peeta looked and squeezed my hand. He thought it was my mocking-jay pin. I hadn't been attached to that in awhile; it was just a nostalgic memory before he was there. No, now the pads of my fingers brushed the arrow tip. It took all the strength I had to look up at the District Two faces. I purposely tried not to look at his, but I couldn't help it. He looked like a killer in this picture, not the boy I perhaps didn't know. I looked at his family, at his mother who looked exactly like him and a father that held the shoulder of a little girl who couldn't have been more than eight, and had his sapphire storm eyes. There, behind the father was him- all dressed in the suit. He smiled, and kissed his mother on the cheek, then his father, and then hugged his sister. He looked at Clove's family, at her photograph and then to me. He gave me a little smile and then he faded. I chocked out a gasp and a small tear. Peeta's fingers became tighter, and his gaze followed mine.
"He's dead, Katniss. He can't hurt you anymore. You killed the biggest monster, and you are a queen. My queen." He said.
But he was wrong. Cato Hadley would always hurt me, but it wouldn't be with knives or blood- but with regret. He was dead, but he was still alive in my mind. He was not a monster, but another pawn that happened to fall into a girl that he couldn't ever have, but God- I think I saved him. I was not Peeta's Queen- I was only his for the show and nothing else- I was Cato's fire-girl and killer, but also his redeemer.
A year ago, I fell in love unknowingly. When my gray eyes met his blue ones, we were bonded in such a way that will always haunt me. Years from now, when I have kids with whoever, perhaps Peeta if the capital is still so engaged in us how the are now, and his eyes will be as blue as the sea, I will see him again, sitting at the end of my bed, and smiling like he did in those last moments. And when the boy needs a story, it will begin with 'A long time ago, I met a boy..."