Ack, I'm sorry to everyone that's been reading that I haven't gotten the second chapter out yet. I promise it will be up soon; I'm working on typing it right now ^_^
Disclaimer: I don't own the Hunger Games or any characters included in the series.
People often say that the Careers don't fear anything.
Though the answer to that question has never been revealed, I can tell you firsthand that it's not true.
Of course, I've never been satisfied with sitting here, in my parallel world, watching the deep orange sunsets that end with a tinge of red. A pang of remembrance sears through me like an ember, and I remember that bloodlust that I commonly felt on the wasteland that the living like to call Earth, full of corrupt politicians and depressed people. Often times Cato sits down next to me as he watches me stare out into the sunset, lost in my own thoughts, and cocks his head like an innocent young dog, which is quite ironic because that's the exact opposite of what he really is. He's curious about my thoughts, which I'm usually eager to reveal to him in the best of times. The land we live in is somewhere between Heaven and Hell; the dictator of who goes where was never sure where to put our pack. We kill, yet we are innocent. To the supernatural and unearthly souls, we Careers are misguided teenagers who have been brought up with a thirst for human blood ever since birth.
Our meadow is full of soft grasses and vast plains, but no flowers or trees. This land does not feature the burdens of hunger, weight, or having us make a grunting effort to stay clean. Everyone has some sort of smell lingering about them, each of our familiars their own distinctive scent. Injury is possible here, though we've been rid of our blows and blemishes from the days that we all died. Just the other day a wide gash opened up in my thigh while I was not watching my movement. I let out no pitiful squeal of pain and no cry of defeat, though I felt the damage internally. I glanced down at my leg and gasped when I saw one of my Earthly possessions—a golden knife, engraved with an exquisite 'C', that I had smuggled in to the arena somehow. It was more of a decorative knife then; I never used it in the arena, no matter how badly I sometimes wanted to. The blade curved ever so slightly, and for quite a few hours after that, I passed my time watching the tip of the knife that I had never used bury itself in the soft earth, limping from the dull ache of my injury. That was, and still is, another one of the meadow's many "features"—injuries will heal themselves. I suppose that the creators of the meadow put that feature into place to teach us a lesson. While we had always had bandages and medicines to treat the variety of wounds that never failed to appear on my body back in District Two, here we endure that suffering. It was only after I discovered the gash in my leg that I realized how things worked back on Earth: with our technological and medicinal advancements, we were treated like babies, always having remedies for each and every ailment that came forth and exposed itself. Here in the meadow, we fend for ourselves, and occasionally for each other. I never tire when I am in Cato's presence, and we often enjoy ourselves when we talk and joke about what more we could have done and how much more skillfully we could have killed the rest of the deceased that we once laid our piercing eyes upon.
Cato and I—we can talk for hours, sometimes even days. You can sense time passing here, though it passes by very quickly and it's similar to that one-second feeling of ecstasy people experience sometimes. It's there and, just as suddenly as it comes it departs, leaving you breathless and wanting more. You find yourself reaching out for that one feeling; you yearn for it like a baby yearns for food and warmth and love. Occasionally our lips even touch, but in rapid notions. Yet I feel the gentleness radiating from us both, and that…other indescribable feeling. We kiss, but it doesn't feel 'official' like those stories you hear on television or in old books. Cato is like a sibling and a lover to me. It's the only way we can both escape those dark burdens that creep up upon us in the dark of night. Night falls, even in this meadow. Cato was never the one to come up to me then and beg to sleep next to me; I was that person who begged to be near him. And before the entire ordeal of the Games, both of us radiating large amounts of arrogance and pride, I couldn't feel his attachment to me. I was completely caught up in the Games to notice. It was only before the rock descended upon my skull as in slow motion that I felt that small spark inside me. I knew Cato would not desert me then, and when the deed was done and my assassin long gone, this monster of a boy knelt beside me and begged me to stay.
Of course, he knew that it wasn't possible. I could feel the pressure of the valley that was forcefully imprinted into my skull. He could feel it, too. He promised that he would win for me.
He didn't, and even I knew he wouldn't. And when Cato appeared in our land, the land of the in-between that housed, and still houses the supposedly proud and arrogant Career Tributes of the seventy-fourth Hunger Games, I, for the first time in my life, found someone that I could truly embrace.