My brief foray into The Hunger Games fanfiction. This character just popped up in my head today and she wouldn't go away, so I thought I'd take an hour's break from studying to tell her story. I hope you find it... interesting.
Disclaimed: Not mine.
Fighting, Fighting, Fighting
by padfoot
...
I remember the day my brother was born. I remember how fast it was, how one moment there were two of us in that stuffy little room, and then suddenly there were three. How he was screaming and screaming as if he knew. As if he knew exactly what kind of terrible world he'd been brought into. As if, already, he knew he had to fight it.
He was always so strong, even then. Forever fighting on.
Nurses hurried him off once they'd found out he was born. Gave him injections, scans, poked and prodded at him, just like they did to every other baby born in our District. I never understood why they bothered with the fuss. Anyone could see from the moment he was born that Cato was special.
After that, things moved quickly. His childhood was eaten up by conditioning, training, more and more tests. I barely remember growing up with him. He was so busy, so in demand, that he never really had time for us. Just a kiss on the cheek, a pat on the shoulder – a reminder that he was there and ours. That no matter what they taught him and what he did, he was still our baby boy.
I knew he was, too. Ours, always. I felt it, a connection to him, somewhere deep down, instinctual and primal, in that place that they've tried to breed out of people but that won't go away. And even if he came home smelling like blood, with stains on his clothes and grit under his nails, he was never really gone. Every time he came home, he was him again.
I don't know who he was when he was away. Or what he was. Or what he did.
I didn't let myself know.
Instead, I held onto the Cato I loved, took what I could during the times when he was with us. As I scrubbed at bloodstains caked into combat boots, I tried to remember those few brief minutes when he was completely ours. Mammie's and mine.
That moment when he was lying on the hospital bed, bloody and battered and bawling. When he thought that birth was the worst thing he'd ever go through. I remember that I picked him up and wiped off his face and saw his red, red lips for the first time. I remember I kept wiping and wiping at them because I thought it was blood that made them so red. He screeched, screamed and struggled – fighting, fighting, fighting. Not fighting out of anger or hate, but fighting just because he could. Because he should. Because this country only gave us one thing, and that was the will to fight. Not to fight them of course, but to fight each other. The Hunger Games aren't about anger or hatred, or even violence – they're just about the fight.
When I first picked up my brother, juggling him and a blanket, my ears pounding with his cries, the warm, sticky air filled with Mammie's sweat, I almost dropped him. He was moving so much – fighting, fighting, fighting – that I could feel him slipping, feel my hands hurting, my arms shaking.
What if I'd dropped him? Would everything have been better if my brother had never been able to live? Would he have loved me more for saving him from it all?
It sounds strange – it sounds impossible – but somehow I'm sure that he knew. He knew the moment he was born that his life would go on like that. A constant struggle, a constant battle to make it out alive. That's why he was early, that's why he was crying. He was fighting, fighting, fighting, right from the start.
That's not a bad thing. He wasn't a bad person. Really, he wasn't. He just needed to fight.
Cato didn't have big dreams. He didn't want to rule the world, overthrow the Capitol, win the Hunger Games. He wanted to do what he loved. He wanted to be with those he loved. He wanted to find love, to keep love, to fight for what he loved. He just wanted everything to be better for us. He didn't want more, only better.
When Mammie died, he tried to escape for me. He tried to tell them – the coaches, the dieticians, the trainers, the mentors – that he was done.
"She needs me," he'd said, hand on my shoulder, pulling me closer to his side.
He was massive then. I'd fit under his arm like a doll. But there was no danger in his strength. It was safe. He was protecting me.
"I'm not staying here."
"You're staying, Cato," they told him. Ordered him. "Leave her. She'll be looked after. She'll be fine."
"No!"
His voice was so loud that my ears popped. And just like the cries when he was born, he wasn't angry, he wasn't violent. He was fighting. For me. To keep me, to protect me, to look after me.
"Fine isn't good enough!"
For those he loved, he only wanted things to be better.
But things rarely got better for us.
He only stayed away for a while. The fight he'd had in him from the start didn't abate, and looking after me just caged him in more than ever. Things were too stagnant, too still. Nothing got worse, because he made sure it wouldn't, but nothing got better either. Soon we realised he'd have to go back. That going back, that fighting, fighting, fighting, was the only way to make things better.
Then his year came. His Games.
Too fast, too early.
I knew he couldn't do it. I knew my fighting, fighting, fighting brother wouldn't make it out alive.
And yet I didn't stop him. I held his hand, felt it twitch as he yelled, just like he'd been taught, "I'll do it! I volunteer!"
That twitch...
That twitch.
I remember the day my brother died. I remember how slow it was, how every torturous second was broadcasted to the nation. How his face tore, how his eyes stared, how his red, red lips were covered in blood. As if all I had to do was wipe it off, and everything would be okay.
I remember the day, the minute, the second that everything stopped. The moment when my brother stopped fighting, fighting-