Disclaimer: I do not own THG or any of the characters.
Warnings: Violence, rape/non-con, depression, self-harm, drug/alcohol abuse, mild sexual content, language, maybe suicidal ideation.
We're gonna gloss over the 74th games in this chapter, and focus only on the shit that really matters. Just assume that everything is pretty much the same as in the book, except for where I've changed it, obviously. The bulk of this story will take place after the 74th games. One key difference I'd like to point out is that the mid-games rule change is that one male and one female tribute can win. They don't necessarily have to be district partners.
This is eventual Catoniss. Even if you don't ship it, please read it cuz I promise I'll make it worth your while.
And finally, suggested listening for this chapter: Hurt by Nine Inch Nails (or Johnny Cash if you'd prefer)
Thanks for reading and please review.
My my, hey hey
Rock and roll is here to stay.
It's better to burn out than to fade away
My my, hey hey
Out of the blue and into the black
They give you this but you pay for that
And once you're gone you can never come back
When you're out of the blue and into the black
-My my, hey hey (out of the blue), Neil Young
There were 11,964 boys between the ages of 12 and 18 in District 2 not counting Cato Hadley. And on July 26th, 74 ADD, he volunteered to enter that year's Hunger Games so that none of them would be reaped and slaughtered.
If he died, he would bring honor to his family with his sacrifice.
But he wasn't going to die. He was going to win and bring glory to his District with his victory.
It was what he had been bred to do.
When he was five a nurse and a Peacekeeper came to his parents' house. The nurse drew a vial of his blood and took a strand of his hair. Two days later the Peacekeeper returned, but this time he was with a man from the Academy instead of a nurse. They told Cato's parents that his genes were promising and they were going to take him with them. His mother was so proud she had tears in her eyes.
Cato had spent more than 12 years preparing for this. He'd studied hours and hours of footage of past games so he knew which strategies worked and which didn't. He'd trained in hand-to-hand combat and both close and long range weapons. He was an expert in survival skills in just about any environment imaginable. He even understood the sociological profile of the Capitolites and how to tap into it to gain sponsors.
A month before his reaping he was officially selected by the Academy to represent 2 in the 74th games, but it had been apparent for the last couple of years that he was the obvious choice. The girls in 2, they all knew it. They batted their lashes and spread their legs for him, each one hoping she would be the one he would remember when he returned home a Victor.
After he had volunteered, as he and Clove watched the day's reapings, he felt nothing but contempt for the other districts. Apart from 1 and 4, they were weak and cowardly, and they shrank in fear instead of protecting their own.
And then he saw the reaping from 12 and watched in disgust as that little rat volunteered. Suddenly it was all they could talk about. Claudius and Caesar, and even Seneca when they brought him on as a guest late in the afternoon.
Cato should have respected her for her bravery and her sacrifice.
But he hated her for undermining him.
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The moment she saw him glaring at her after the Tribute Parade, Katniss Everdeen knew that Cato Hadley would play a pivotal role in her life, or, more likely, her death.
His eyes were full of ice, and when they landed on her she suddenly understood what her prey must have felt like back in the woods in 12. He had selected her and she knew it. The fear brought on by this knowledge made her shiver under her blankets at night.
In the mornings she would swallow that fear before she walked into the training room. She could not afford to let any of the tributes, and especially the brute from 2, see her sweat. She had to go home. She had to. No matter what it took. For Prim.
As she looked around the training floor, she dreaded the thought of taking anyone's life, but, for the most part, she thought she could do it. There were two exceptions. Two tributes who gave her pause. Two tributes she prayed she wouldn't have to be the one to kill.
The first was the little girl from 11. Pure and ethereal, with eyes that broke Katniss's heart.
The second was her district partner.
But Prim she reminded herself. If it comes down to it, block out their faces and remember Prim.
But even as she steeled her spine, she felt guilt creep up along either side of it. Because she owed Peeta Mellark for the beating he had taken for her when she was 11. A beating he had taken to save her life and that of her family.
It would have been easier to dismiss the guilt if Peeta had brought up the incident with the bread. If he had pointed out that she owed him for what he had done that day. But no. Peeta-sweet, sweet Peeta-not only never said a word about the bread and the beating, he continued to try to save her life. He secured sponsorship for her by declaring his love for her on national television. He tried to keep the Careers away from her. He took a stab to the thigh from Cato for her.
When Claudius made the announcement that the remaining male and female tributes would be declared co-Victors, her heart leapt and she made the mistake of letting the walls surrounding it down and allowing hope to flood in.
She did not love Peeta Mellark, or at least not the way he loved her. But it would not have taken much more on his part for that to change.
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After the tribute parade, Cato became obsessed with the idea of killing the Girl on Fire. He dreamed about it, fantasized about it, got hard at the thought of it.
There were a few times when the urge was especially unbearable. When he learned her score. When she dropped the tracker jacker nest on him. When she blew up his supply pile.
He would break each and every finger of hers, he decided, and then he would cut them off one by one. He'd snap her wrists with his bare hands and crush her ribs beneath his boots. He'd knock the teeth from her mouth and break her jaw. He would slice through her Achilles tendons with his knife. He would carve his name in her flesh with the tip of his sword.
And then he would drag her by her hair back to the camp and throw her on top of the fire. And when she was screaming and writhing and begging him for mercy and her skin was charred and black, he would pull her from the flames and squeeze every last ounce of air from her lungs.
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There was one moment during the Games that made Katniss pause and wonder if there was more to Cato than met the eye. As she fled the feast at the Cornucopia, she could hear the despair and anguish in his voice as he cried out Clove's name. And when she reached the safety of the trees, she turned to look back, just for a second, to find him on his elbows and knees beside Clove's limp body, his head in his hands.
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Weak as he was from blood loss, Peeta used every last ounce of his strength to hoist Katniss up onto the Cornucopia, but before he could join her, a mutt caught his pant leg and dragged him back down to the ground. She cried out for him, and as she scrambled desperately to turn around on her hands and knees to reach for him, she dropped her bow and it clattered against the steep metal side and onto the grass.
He was dead within sixty seconds, after the mutt that looked like Clove tore into his throat.
Cato stood at the far end of the Cornucopia, laughing like a madman as she clawed and screamed.
"Ladies and Gentlemen," Claudius Templesmith announced. "We are pleased to present the Victors of the 74th Annual Hunger Games, Cato Hadley of District 2 and Katniss Everdeen of District 12."
But neither of them accepted this arrangement.
They were both livid, seething, ready to explode.
She blamed him for Peeta's death. For inflicting the wound that had slowed him down. He did not deserve to live.
He had worked for this moment since the age of five. He had sweated and bled and ached for it. He would not share his Victory with some rat from the lowest of the districts.
They wanted each other dead more than they'd ever wanted anything in their entire lives.
She was on her feet in a second and screaming like a wild animal and they were lunging for each other, both of them out for blood. His hands went around her throat and she clawed at his face and they rolled around on the cold metal roof of the Cornucopia, the contents of her quiver scattering everywhere. As he squeezed the air from her lungs, she reached out and her fingers found one bent arrow. She snatched it up and swiped at him, the tip of it catching him in the forehead. Blood ran down his face and stung his eyes and he could taste it in his mouth. She closed her eyes and dropped the arrow, her hands going to his wrists as she struggled in vain for oxygen.
And then the gamemakers activated the tranquilizers in their trackers and they both went limp.
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Brutus was able to make his tribute understand that he had to simmer down and deal with the fact that his victory was a shared one.
Haymitch Abernathy was not as successful at subduing Katniss, and she was kept on a low dose of sedatives for the first few days following the games.
During their interview, Brutus and Haymitch were instructed to sit between them, while Peacekeepers hovered just offstage in the unlikely event that they attacked each other again like rabid dogs.
The Capitol audience loved the contrast of the two Victors, they way their personas served as perfect foils for one another. It was all very dramatic.
Caesar had been told it would be best not to ask them any questions about each other, and to discourage any interaction between the two of them at all.
Katniss stared straight ahead, refusing to acknowledge Cato's existence. And for the most part, he did the same to her.
But when Caesar asked her about Peeta, she could see, from the corner of her eye, that he turned to look at her, a nasty smirk on his face.
And the Girl on Fire burned.
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Cato returned to 2 triumphantly and moved into the mansion next door to Brutus's in Victor's Village.
He stood on his doorstep, grinning, arms outstretched, ready to receive all that victory promised him. Glory. Adoration. Riches. Leisure.
But he quickly realized that something was wrong.
Colors were dull and sounds were muted. Sometimes he had to ask people to repeat what they'd said to him multiple times before he understood their words.
He did not sweat in the heat and he did not shiver in the cold.
He ate but the food tasted like sawdust. It stuck in his throat and sat like a lead ball in his stomach.
His mouth no longer salivated at the sight of the naked female form, and the first time he went to fuck a girl after his games he couldn't get it up. He got hold of a pill to help him with that problem the very next day, and he bent some girl over her couch and slammed into her, and it felt good when he came, but the high only lasted for a few seconds and when it was over, he felt empty in more than one way. Still, he continued to pick up random girl after random girl to give himself something to do.
And the nightmares. He saw the faces of those he had killed. He saw the fear in their eyes as they realized they were about to die at his hands. He tried to stop himself and change his course of action, but his mind had no control over his body, and he sliced off their heads and speared their intestines over and over again until he drowned in the blood he had spilt. And Clove. Always Clove. Staring at him with dead, black eyes and a bloody, sunken skull. You were too slow she said.
He drank copious amounts of alcohol every night with the other boys he had trained with, and he grinned at them when they made lewd, douchebag comments and clapped him on the shoulder, but he found no humor in anything they said, and he rarely joined in the conversation. He was no longer the loud, wild drunk he had been before his games, but instead sat quietly and sipped on straight liquor as the world around him grew dimmer and fuzzier.
His hangovers were vicious and he said aloud that he would never drink again but really he welcomed them because he felt both alive and on death's doorstep at the same time. His head pounded and his insides quaked and he dry-heaved over his toilet and he forgot, for the time being, about the things he had done.
On days he did not go out drinking, he wrapped a cord around his arm and injected himself with morphling and then he sat back in his bed and stared out the window for hours on end, pleasantly numb and lost in a fog where nothing mattered.
Some days he ran out of morphling and alcohol, and, too lethargic to leave the house to go get more, he would roll over and open his nightstand drawer and pull out a lighter. He'd hold the flame to his skin until the smell of burnt flesh assaulted his nostrils and his skin blistered up. And then he would smile up at the ceiling as the pain in his body drowned out the pain in his soul.
If he even had a soul.
He wasn't so sure he did.
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She went through the motions when she returned to 12.
She moved into Victor's Village with her mother and Prim, and she went hunting with Gale on his day off from the coal mines.
Everyone adored her. They lauded her as a hero, a saint. She could do no wrong.
It made her want to scream and claw at her face.
Didn't they understand? She was no hero, she was no saint. She had murdered people. It didn't matter that they were Careers. They were still sons and daughters and brothers and sisters and friends and lovers.
She had failed Rue. Although there wasn't much she could have done differently. In the end, if she'd been forced to, she probably would have killed the little girl so she could come home to Prim.
But she could have done everything differently with Peeta, who could have come home with her if she hadn't failed him. She could have let him climb up onto the Cornucopia first. She could have held onto her bow for dear life and shot down each and every mutt that came at him. She could have jumped down there herself and distracted them so that he could climb to safety.
Didn't they understand? She would rather be dead like the other twenty-two, and resting in peace. But she couldn't kill herself because it would be a slap in the face to them.
And so she lived, and though she was even more sullen than she had been before the games, she went through the motions, day in and day out. And so no one realized anything was amiss. But at night, as she lay in her bed, she cursed whatever deity had allowed her to survive the games.
Didn't they understand? She deserved to be punished for the things that she had done and for the things that she had left undone. For the deaths of Marvel and Glimmer and Peeta and Rue. For her own survival.
But no punishment came. And so no relief came.
And then one night she realized that if they wouldn't punish her she could do it herself. She went to her closet and retrieved her hunting knife and she pressed the blade into the flesh of her upper arm.
And as the blood began to flow, she sighed with relief.