Cato's axe knocks the head right of the practice dummy. No one stands a chance. Not even I do. But I don't think about that. Not yet.
He laughs once and tosses the axe an inch or two into the air so that the blade flips around like a macabre windmill before the shaft lands in his hand again. "They won't know what hit 'em," he says proudly. But I can top that. I reach into my jacket and pull a throwing knife out of its pocket and poise it to face another dummy, nearly on the other side of the gym. "Try," he says arrogantly. He thinks I'll miss and he'll be able to rub it in my face. I don't think so.
"Heads up," I say to the imitation tribute and I let the knife fly, watching it slice through the air like a thick pat of butter and landing with a sickeningly sweet shiver between the molded eyes. I turn to Cato with a smirk because if that was the arena, I'd already have a man down. "How's that?" I ask and he just rolls his eyes and tilts his head back as he rocks to his heels because there's no denying I'm good.
"You're okay," he tells me reluctantly, but he's got something like a smile, too. It's more like a smirk, also, because that's Cato for you. "Little more practice and you might stand a chance."
"Shut up," is all I have to say to that, and I punch him in the shoulder. It's a bit of a stretch nowadays. "I could take anything they throw at me."
"Duck, then," he says, and the axe comes flying around at my head. I laugh and crouch down before he hacks off my ponytail. He's come close enough before and once I was sure I was going to lose a few inches off the top of my skull but I'm still intact. I don't know if he wouldn't do it, though, kill me. Not before the arena, at least. But even if it's just a game we play, with the axe or sword or spear or whatever he's got in his hands, sometimes nothing, he could kill me every day. Every minute. That's the life I've got and as far as I'm concerned it's the one I've chosen. I've seen brutal killers up on those screens sniffling to Caesar Flickerman about how their parents forced them to train since they could lift a knife and they never wanted to hurt anyone. Liars. I hate liars. I've known Cato since a little after I started working this business and he and I both know what we're after and we both know that one of us is going to get a cannon blast and the other is going to get the admiration of District Two.
"Cato! Clove!" snaps our mentor, Nero. He's getting up there in age, I guess, maybe forty-something, and he won his Games by breaking the remaining girl's neck against a tree stump. He's just like every trainer we've ever had, stiff, cold, uncompassionate, and that's what we like. We can't go getting attached to anyone. It makes killing hard and it makes dying hard, they say. And if our teammate is in better shape to take the prize, we're trained to die. Nero's brought three victors home so far, I think, and Cato and I are already arguing about which of us is going to be next.
"Get over here," Nero growls at us. Cato doesn't like listening to people and neither do I. If you tell him to jump, you'd better have some body armor. Nero isn't learning fast enough. He does everything his way and his way only. I've tried to tell Cato that his way has brought our district home before but the giant idiot won't listen to me. He sneers at our mentor with a steely sharpness to his eyes like my knives. He's going to say something just as stinging, too, but Nero clarifies. "It's time to eat."
That rings differently. Cato's not stupid. He knows just as well as I do that eating now is essential to our survival in the Games. Nero has a plan, he knows how to get us in top shape so we won't starve and won't be weighed down with excess fat like some brainless District Twelve tributes I've seen. You'd think they didn't eat a thing before they got to the Capitol. All skinny and sickly for their Reaping and pudgy and slow and easy to pick off once they're in the arena. I'm banking on that for that Katniss girl from Twelve and her lover boy.
"You get the extras?" Cato asks as he lumbers over to the table across the gym and I'm at his heels. Nero nods tersely and we sit down across from him. He's not eating, we've got his portion split between us.
"Apparently this gorilla here almost lost his pills last night," Nero snaps to no one in particular as we dig in to a potato-thing and some cow that was dead before they killed it. Cato looks up with his fork between his plate and his mouth and he glares at Nero. I pretend I don't notice and eat the spinach leaves.
"I didn't mean to drop them," Cato tells him and I can feel him tensing beside me. He's got a fork in one hand and a knife in the other and any sane person would know not to provoke him. Of course, Nero isn't sane after all these years and with all the stuff Cato's been doing since he started training I don't think he is either.
"Some Avox-girl saw," Nero snarls, ignoring Cato's tight shoulders and white knuckles. "You're lucky it was one of them. What if it was another tribute?"
"I'd kill them first," Cato tells him calmly with a rumble in his voice and I know he's angry. I'm relaxed, though. I've seen Cato violently upset before, sometimes I've incited him, and I'm not worried for myself much. I'm having trouble getting the spinach on my fork so I pull out one of my knives to spear it.
"I've pointed out a few times that it's illegal," Nero reminds him but Cato only shrugs and eats faster. "Your mother would never have done something stupid like that, dropping illegal drugs left and right."
"Didn't have that stuff when she was here," Cato says easily. "One less thing to think about."
"Yes, and your mind can hold precious little as it is." The pleasant dinner conversation stops after that and Nero watches us ingest his own food when we've finished ours. I often eat with my knife like this; it makes me feel more natural, like a wild animal, something born to survive. I've cut my tongue and the inside of my mouth multiple times but I think it only makes me tougher on the inside, too, which is what I've been working on my whole life. I do it now, too, accidentally prick the corner of my mouth as I'm distracted and I taste the blood before I feel the little sting. It's thick and heavy and tastes red. I roll a drip back my mouth, thinking about blood pumping through every opponent I'm going to have in that arena and every person in this building. Thinking about how satisfying it's going to be when the audience sees those wimps from Twelve with little rivulets of blood like this on them, dripping, dripping…. Some sort of morbid masterpiece, red painted hearts on their faces so they go out of the arena in shame, just like they'll be going in with a strategy like theirs.
"Go to bed," we are ordered and Cato leaves as reluctantly as I do, grumbling to himself about Nero.
Our rooms are accessible only by an elevator and we stand in silence as it rises, both of us glaring at the door across the tiny room and thinking about mistakes made during training, like we're supposed to. How we'll fix it next time. If I narrow my eyes just right I can imagine that red haze that pops up when I know I'm going to hit my target, I can imagine that knife protruding from the blue foam dummy's head, between eyes that would be cloudy with blood and full of fear was it a real opponent. I like hurting people. I like the power. I like to see people weaker than I am, because as much as I hate to think it, I am not indestructible. Sometimes I believe Cato is, indestructible, I mean. You could hit that guy with a ten pound weight and he wouldn't so much as twitch. Maybe punch you out, but it couldn't really hurt him. It'll be him, I know it. He's going to take me down. I'm not worried about the rest of these ragged pieces of garbage the Capitol's hauled in but being destroyed by Cato would be reprehensible.
"Scared?" he asks, and I'm surprised. I look up at him but he isn't facing me, heavy eyes on the seam between the sliding doors. At first I think I've imagined it because I realize my mind has been wandering and I've neglected everything I've learned, I've imagined myself losing before it's even an option. But even as he doesn't move his gaze from the nearly-reflective stainless steel he raises the eyebrow nearest to me and I know the question is now hanging in the air like a bag of food to trap another tribute.
"No," I lie, but I don't let him know I don't mean it. I return my eyes to face ahead and only register him through my peripheral vision, which is blurry at best. I've got to make sure I'm never distracted by something and not watching my surroundings once I get into that arena. Got to keep that in mind. "You?"
He makes a noise that sounds like a laugh, like I should have known the answer and he's right. Cato's never afraid. Cato can't be afraid because he has no reason to be. There is nothing in Panem that can hurt Cato and he knows it. But again I am surprised when he shakes his head with the same arrogant expression he always has and puts one hand up to touch his hair, something he never does. Looking good is Lover Boy's job, not Cato's.
"We are not supposed to be afraid," I remind him firmly, to clarify my answer since something about it doesn't seem right to him. "You can't possibly be scared, are you?" Throwing the ball back in his court. Hoping he'll trip on it.
Cato sighs and it scares me. "I'm going to kill so many people," he says, but he doesn't say it regretfully or even like he cares. But the sigh has startled me and I've turned my head to see that it is leaning against the back of the elevator. It isn't the thought of killing things and making them hurt that seems to discomfit him, it can't be because I know it isn't. There's something else he's concerned about. But I don't want to know what it is. I don't need to think of Cato as a human with thoughts and feelings. As far as I'm concerned, that honor belongs to me alone. Thinking otherwise could be fatal in these Games, if I stopped to think about how it must feel to be killed by someone as thorough as myself. But Cato isn't afraid of me and there's no denying that at all. I don't ask him what's wrong. Talking about feelings is a waste of precious time. I see no reason to have anything to do with other people's inner workings, unless it's to stop their hearts from beating.
"Not all of them," I decide out loud. "I want District 12."
He looks over at me and his face is amused, as if I've told some morbid joke only he could possibly understand. "Lover Boy?"
"No," I snap back at him and my eyes narrow and my teeth grind just to think of her. "His girlfriend. The one with the eleven." An eleven. A personal affront. She staggered around training doing things like snare setting, stupid things that couldn't kill a person and couldn't prepare her for what these Games are going to be. And she comes out with an eleven. A higher score than me. A higher score than Cato. She seems so simple, spinning around in dresses onstage, smiling and waving, laughing with her boyfriend over at the District 12 tables. And she made the same mistake nearly every tribute makes every year and didn't take the extra training session tonight. Their mentors must know they're all weak and "need their rest." At least Cato and I and the Ones and Fours showed up. If we're going to do this we're going to do it right.
"Well," he says with another sort of laugh I don't understand, "make it a good show."
"Oh, I will," I promise vehemently. "I will." I can imagine what a show it would be. I'd get my hands on some knives. I'd get the girl alone, yes. Somewhere Lover Boy can't touch her. Or maybe tie them both to trees so he can watch along with the rest of Panem. Knives cut skin so easily. Maybe I'll make it easy on her. Quick slits above the eyebrows so the blood runs in her eyes and she can't see. And when she's dead, before the hovercraft comes, a fire, yes, a fire would be perfect so that all they can fly out is charred bones. The Girl on Fire. So fitting. A good show, I can give them a good show. I'm small but I'm fierce and once that monster from Eleven is out of the way it's just me and Cato and I ignore the sickening dropping feeling my stomach suddenly acquires. I'm not going to think about that now, in the few hours we have left as friends.
"I'll get the big guy from Eleven," says Cato and I have no doubt he will. The elevator door opens and we're on our floor. That settled that. "Anyone else you think needs reserving?"
I don't say anything because I know one person who doesn't deserve to be killed by Cato but I don't want to speak the name aloud for him to hear. Cato's not the most… thoughtful of people. A savage and ruthless fighter, yes, but thoughtful, no. Like me. That's why we get along so well. I've known him since I was six years old, since my first day in the older kids' training room. I can still remember the first time I saw him across that blue gym. He had thrown a spear and it clattered to the ground, missing his mark. So he stomped over to it and roared in anger and snapped it in half and threw the splintered pieces down. Everyone nearby cleared out of his way except me. He noticed me standing within the scattered circle of would-be Careers and stalked up to me and grabbed me by the collar of my training shirt. Asked me what I was looking at and called me a runt. So I hit him. Hit him in the face with a little fist. If I did that now he'd probably strangle me out of instinct before realizing who I was. But we're only two years apart in age and that doesn't seem like quite so much when you're six and eight so he just laughed and said I was all right. And he showed me how to throw a spear and I told him I was tricky with a knife and we got along very well after that first punch. That seems like so long ago and the years are identical blurs that rush past, full of blue gyms and deadly battles with training dummies I can cut the plastic heart out of in minutes. Long happy years preparing us for tomorrow and it's never felt so close.
"Clove?" he says, because we've walked into the room with sofas and chairs and I still haven't answered his question. I shake my head as my response. No one for him to keep alive. Let's be realistic here. I'm a sulker, not a talker, so I sit in the armchair with my arms and legs crossed and glare at nothing, imagining myself with a knife or any weapon, really, in that slum rat from Twelve, sneaking by with a score like that. Cato's neither sulker nor talker but tonight is the last night he might have without worrying about having his throat hacked open before morning so he sits across from me and doesn't say anything, his very self-assured expression he must have been born with not moving a muscle. I remain silent even if he is there because I have nothing to say to him and I'm busy visualizing my win, getting myself into the right mindset to destroy. It's almost a sweet feeling, the anger bubbling up inside me. I'm not sure what I'm angry at, but I'm angry and I want retribution. I'm looking at Cato but not really seeing him and he knows that and I realize why I am angry and who I'm angry at. I'm angry at the Capitol for putting me here. I shouldn't be, since I've been working my entire life for tomorrow. But I'm angry at them just the same. I'm angry at Cato, too, for volunteering. I could kill the other boy they called, he was an explosives engineer's son, no Career. But as soon as I was up there Cato was too and my fate was sealed. Cato is going to kill me.
"Better take these," Cato says and he pulls the little white pills out of his pocket and hands one of the pair to me. I take it and roll it down my palm without looking at it, feeling every little ridge in the compressed powder and how it bumps over calluses developed from years of gripping a variety of weapons. What's the use of this anymore? Prolonging the inevitable so that it's Cato with a spear through my stomach? There's no way I can get any stronger by tomorrow, even with District Three's technological advances in my hand. You'd think five years of the pill in place of a sappy bedtime story would have me in top form to its best abilities and now, hours before the arena, they want me to make a valiant attempt to lose. Kill them all off for Cato and then watch as he ends me. I don't stand a chance against his superior strength. He's got at least a foot of height on me. The awful feeling in my stomach returns and this time it has a name.
But he's looking at me oddly and I know I have no choice. "Bottoms up," he says as he has for the past week or however long it's been that we've done this together and he brings his hand up to his mouth and swallows without even getting a glass of water. I glare at him and do the same to prove I'm not going down without a fight. Something as simple as not requiring a drink to swallow a pill can be just as meaningful as a stab in the stomach to Cato. And I can tell he notices because he's smirking at me and his hard eyes are laughing derisively, which is about as amused as Cato will ever look. I have not just swallowed a strength pill. I have told him that I am not giving up yet and I am not thinking about the end of these Games. I have told him that he and I are equals and that he is not going to take me down just yet. He looks me in the eyes and my body feels sick but my mind is dagger-sharp and I shut off communications with the part of me that wants to curl up in a ball and cry. Because I don't cry, I'm me. I think I cried once or twice within my memory. I am positive of a single time I cried, when my mother died, but my father told me to grow up and that I'd never make it anywhere crying all the time. So I don't. I was very small then, it was before I met Cato. But now, now that I know I'm going in to the Games, what I've been working my whole life for, and that this is probably my last night as a civilized human being before I let myself turn into the ravenous, bloodthirsty thing I am inside, I want someone to tell me I'm going to be all right. No. I've got to stop thinking like this. Why am I thinking like this? I'm going to end up dead thinking like this.
"Scared?" Cato repeats, and he looks almost like he wants to know the answer.
"No!" I say again, even more intensely because he's known me this long, he knows when I'm lying, at least, some of the time. "I'm not scared." Cato just raises his eyebrows briefly in an infuriatingly skeptical motion and I want to hit him and tell him he's wrong. But I just glare and he leans back in his chair with his legs crossed as if it's any other night and he isn't even anticipant for what's to come. I try to be him, so certain of myself I have no doubt at all about my future. It's a lot of work when that rotten bit inside me is churning and trying to break me down, screaming hysterically at this comfortable and formidable façade that I'm only a little girl, I shouldn't be doing this, I shouldn't have to do this.
For what must be the first time in his life, Cato appears lost in thought. He's not much a thinker, Cato. A doer. A killer. A winner. He's got a fist up under his nose and he's scowling at something only he can see. Why is he thinking? I'm the thinker. I come up with clever, sadistic, perhaps, but clever ways of getting our training dummies replaced. He's content with a sword jutting from temple to temple in the thing and using it again as a pincushion for spears. What's he doing, thinking? This isn't right. I can't want to cry the same time Cato is thinking. It must be some very long and detailed dream and I'll wake up and it'll be this morning and none of this will have happened. But it appears something comes from Cato's uncharacteristic thought and he speaks again.
"I don't want to kill you," he says musingly, as if it's pleasant conversation about the weather or training. That awful feeling inside builds up oddly in my esophagus and I think I'm choking. I think it must be my pill. I should have gotten water. My throat hurts. He knows, too, then, how this will end. I'm starting to accept it, which I know I can't do. If I accept it, it will be. If I don't accept it, I won't have given up before I've begun. But I guess it's my throat that knows something has to give and I'm going to have to face facts sooner or later.
"I don't want to kill you, either," I tell him and I'm very proud that I can keep my voice from touching the hysterical notes this messed-up throat of mine is trying to reach. I sound normal, even though the stupid human inside me doesn't want to die, and I remind Cato once again that we're on a level playing field here. I've been working too hard at this to give up to him now, I remind myself. Tireless years. I didn't become what I am today naturally. I wasn't born with a knife in my hand. I had to learn, and learn I did. I am the product of sleepless nights in a gym, various strengthening pills, a diet that gutter trash from Twelve can only dream of, by the looks she's given her food, and a strict physical and mental training that requires me to keep a strong grip on everything I think. And I did not do all of that to fall apart like Twelve probably is now because things get a little discouraging.
"Only one of us will come out." Why is he doing this? Why is Cato trying to discuss the very thing I can't talk about? Does he know? Is this part of his scheme to bring me down? He can't start now, it isn't fair. We aren't even in the arena yet. I haven't even cut a single one of these tributes. I shouldn't be doing this. I shouldn't be thinking like this. I'm going to end up weak. Like Lover Boy. It's all an angle they have worked out, I'm sure of it. But he seems so genuinely concerned for Twelve's wellbeing, it's laughable. That boy won't last the bloodbath at the Cornucopia. He doesn't know how to be a killer. You can paint yourself like a tree as much as you want in training but it won't get you very far in the Games if you're going to cry and hold your girlfriend when a little girl hacks your arteries open. I can't let that be me and if I start thinking like this it will be me. I'll be sitting in that arena holding my knees and rocking back and forth and mumbling for Cato if I think like this. I need to think about the crown they'll put on my head, about the respect my honor-starved family will get from my district. It's about time they stopped accusing my father. My mother was soft and she couldn't protect herself. I won't let that be me. I won't need anyone's protection, I'm my own protection. Right here, right now, I can imagine a knife in this monstrous boy's throat, in his chest, his back, if the need arises. I don't need his sympathy right now.
"What's your strategy?" he asks me and I want to kick him with the heel of my boot. Can't it wait for the arena? some rogue part of me growls and I know it must be that soft center humans have before they're callused like hands from holding weapons and knowing how to use them and wanting to use them. But of course we have a strategy, we've been discussing it since we met. We've been seriously discussing it since the Reaping. But that isn't what he's talking about. There's an awful look in his eyes, one I don't recognize and I hate it. I know Cato. I know what makes him tick and I've thought about how one would stop that tick, if necessary. I know where to go when he's so angry he can't think straight and I know when to hit him when he tilts his shield too far to the left. And this isn't the Cato I know. I've seen Cato in the same setting the entire time I've known him. I've seen him in a training uniform, running some gauntlet, massacring some foam opponents. It's only recently that I've seen him do human things that I do, things like eat and sleep and sit on chairs. I've seen him interact with people who aren't me or a coach or Nero. I've seen him onstage as his thunder is stolen by Lover Boy's meaningless announcements. And now I'm seeing Cato think and I see Cato care and I don't like it because it isn't Cato.
But I decide to tell the truth. Why shouldn't I? This stranger won't tell Cato. They can't have ever even met. "I don't know," I say and I say it flatly and I'm glad that I do.
He's still looking at me. I'm glaring my fiercest at him but he's looking in my eyes just the same and only someone as stupidly brave or well acquainted with me as Cato would ever even consider doing something like that. He's leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and a hand over one fist and his chin near that. He's not sprawled across a chair like he's entitled to it and it's disconcerting. This whole experience is disconcerting. This was a night I spent my life working for, that final countdown to my ultimate victory. So why did this person have to volunteer? And then I think I've asked him and I'm very sorry I did.
"What?" he says, like he didn't hear me and I hope I can pretend I didn't say anything. He doesn't buy it. He may be someone different, but I'll never be. "You said something."
"Why did you volunteer?" I make it sound accusatory. Like it's his fault we have to discuss that strategy. I tell myself that it is but a reminder is firmly burned into my memory that it's my choice to think like this. I've got to stop.
"Because you were going, of course," he says, as if I should have known it. This complete idiot. I want to scream at him and smash his chair back on the floor and sit on his chest and pummel his face for a half hour. I want to screech incoherent threats and throw this lamp across the room. If I was this idiot Cato, I would be doing that. But I'm not. I'm Clove. I'm younger and I'm smaller and I'm just as dangerous. But Idiot Cato isn't finished and he's still talking and he plows on even though I can feel my eyes contact sharpen to points as deadly as my daggers and I'm almost surprised he hasn't developed holes in his skull yet.
"Look at the Thresh guy," he says so calmly I want to pull out the knife I'm not supposed to have in my pocket and force him to tell me where my Cato is. But he keeps going because he's an idiot. "You've got competition there." I'm going to kill him. Right now. Before the Games even start, I'm going to kill him. If he doesn't shut his mouth I'll cut it off. "You couldn't take him hand-to-hand. It's not your style. You'd have to sneak up on him and he can hear a mockingjay a mile off." Stop. Stop now. Don't tell me this. Let me be Clove, cunning, clever, instinctive Clove who could creep through a training facility on cat paws and prick the trainer's back with her blade before he even knew she was there. Don't tell me that you know more than I do.
"Stop," I think I say, but if I do it's weakness and I'm not weak and he doesn't seem to hear me anyway, even if it was there at all.
"I didn't know who they'd have here," he says to me, still going. "And I wasn't going to stand in the gym with a sword in my hand while someone like him sticks a rock in your skull."
"Lacking in finesse," I critique. It sounds cold. Good. I should be burning with rage and I should be directing that rage at these people in floors above and below me so that I can kill them for this audience, so I can get that crown and the money, so I can go home to the Victors' Village with my father, so I can cry for Cato there where no one can hear me and know that I'm weak. But I'm not burning. And if I am, it's cold. It's a steadily rising churn of ice inside me and my throat is closing and I want to take this knife I shouldn't have out of my pocket and drive it up to the hilt in the chair's arm.
"You're just a kid," he tells me and I want the knife in his hand instead. We've had this conversation before, many times, usually over what I can and can't do. I say I can swim twenty laps in the pool in under seven minutes, he says it isn't possible because I'm just a kid. So I do it. And if I can't do it, I stay in the gym until I can and I show him the next day or whenever I get it. Two years is not much of a difference when you're twelve and thirteen and it's your first year in the Reaping and you're glad you aren't chosen so you can keep practicing so that when you really go you're certain to win. Cato must have thought this was his year, his shining moment. He must have thought that with me as an opponent, he had a clear shot to the finish because I'm just a kid.
"I don't want to see you get hurt," he tells me and I know it isn't true because he's injured me plenty of times, broken bones on occasion. "I wasn't thinking so far ahead. I was thinking that I could keep you alive."
"I can keep myself alive," I snarl, "and I will." I mean what I say. I will keep myself alive and I won't let him kill me.
"I thought I was doing you a favor," he says with his eyebrows furrowed but nothing much else happening to his blank expression. I once again think that he is a complete idiot and decide he must be tired or mentally exhausted from today and the anticipation of tomorrow's events. "I've never wanted to think about you dead. You know how you block out everything except your target when you throw a knife? That's what I do for everything." I know this. I do this for everything. This is what it means to be a Career. He knows this. What is he talking about? He should go to sleep. Before he says something particularly inciting and I murder him.
"But it's different for you," he's continuing. "I've got you being dead pushed so far out I forgot it's possible." I have to admit, that sounds real enough. I've always considered Cato indestructible. Nothing can touch him. And now if I want to get out of this stinking Capitol and back home I'm going to have to disprove years of assumptions. Very much literally. And he's in the same position. But the idiot thought he was strong enough to protect me. He wanted these Games so badly. He wanted to come home and be a hero for a year. And when I went, it seemed as good a time as any for someone as blinded by that glory as he is. Was. It makes sense in a twisted, Cato sort of way. For him, life was Games. Work for Games, eat for Games, sleep for Games, breathe for Games, live for Games. That was my life until the Reaping and it was nice enough. He would only have a couple years left to make the impression he wanted to. Volunteering happens a lot in my district. I just wish it hadn't happened the year they picked my name out of that bowl.
"I wish I'd been thinking this through when I volunteered," he says and he makes his fingers comb through his hair and I'm getting annoyed.
"So do I," I retort, and I stand up to leave. Tomorrow it starts. Tomorrow he'll either follow our strategy and team up with the other Careers with me or if he'll deviate and murder me immediately for whatever reason he contrives.
"Clove," he says, and he stands up, too, so that we're in exactly the same position, glaring at each other like we usually do, just on our feet.
"What, Cato?" I snap back because I'm trying to get to my room but he's in the way and if he doesn't move he won't be moving ever again.
"I don't want to kill you."
"And I don't want to kill you either!" I've said it before, but my inflection makes an entirely different story out of it, one that really tells him that I don't want to die in addition to being reluctant to kill him. It's not cold and unfeeling, the way it ought to be and the way it was previously. I sound concerned, like I care and I shouldn't. My hands, they're fists and they're by my sides like I'm holding onto parallel bars or something, instead of where fists ought to be, which is up in front of me. My jaw is tight but my throat feels wrong again and I don't know how I could have shouted it, because that's what I've done. Everything I've been trying to think of, all of my training and how that soft core of humanity will be my undoing, it all comes crashing down and I feel incredibly confused. My fists unfold themselves and when I've said it I feel a great weight lift from where it was compressing that awful center of me being a person. I feel the scowl sliding down off my face, dragging the muscles into an almost relaxed position I'm unfamiliar with. I feel like most of me is slipping and there's only a firm structure I've worked for years to perfect holding me up. I feel tiny and weak and insignificant and I feel hurt and I hate it. I hate it so much. I am not weak. I am one of the most dangerous people here. But I shouldn't be saying that. I shouldn't be saying that I am one of them. But I am. And I feel so small and alone and Cato looks so big and strong and steady and familiar.
So I say in a very small, very thin voice that isn't mine, a voice I hate as soon as I hear it, I say, "Cato." And that's all I need to say because he sort of sighs a little again and I hate that, too, but he shifts his weight ever so slightly and somehow because of years of him being the only person I'd think about trusting if I needed to I know that he understands. And so I cut myself a break, even though I hate that, also. I let myself be a little girl being sent in to the slaughter. I pull my lips in on each other to keep any more hateful and weak words from coming out and I breathe deeply because my throat is trying to asphyxiate me. And I don't even register stepping forward as I throw my arms around his waist and bury my face in his shirt. But even as I do this so immediately his arms wrap around my shoulders and he squishes me closer to him so that breathing, which is hard enough as it is, becomes even more difficult but I don't mind because somehow this is much more comforting than sitting cross-legged on my bed repeating to myself that I am a warrior and that I will survive. He tilts his head down over the top of mine since I only come up to his shoulder and he manages to take a deep breath and let it out, which makes the hairs too short to get tucked into my braid move. I think my shoulders are shaking and I can't breathe evenly despite every attempt and procedure I've learned in any of my training sessions and Cato smells like gyms and hand soap and it isn't helping because it smells like District Two and familiar and like Cato and I hate it for that. But even as tightly as I'm holding on to him he's got me tighter and as much as I hate it all I can't help but feel in that soft human center that I'd rather have a life of this than die by anyone's hand. And we stand like that for quite some time and my breathing becomes more erratic as my mind races through a projection of tomorrow's grim outcome and Cato's remains as steady as his heartbeat just under my face and I know he has his eyes closed because his balance is off and he tilts to the balls of his feet only just slightly and his arms are incredibly strong and I've never felt more safe, despite the circumstances. I feel like I'm anchored to something incredibly stable and for the first time in quite a while I'm glad Cato's indestructible. My nose feels funny now, too, but it doesn't matter because the only thing besides Games I've ever been sure of is keeping me safe and even if I go into that arena tomorrow and leave it the same day I won't mind so much because I somehow think that having someone care about you is a nice feeling, even if I hate myself for thinking that, too. And I hate that I think caring about someone else is a nice feeling. When I'm like this I can't picture Twelve and Lover Boy burning up in bloody flames as the hovercraft carries them away. When I'm like this I can't picture either myself or Cato lying in a pool of blood as the other stands victorious. When I'm like this a crown and a Victors' house seems a disgustingly small reward for such a deadly game. I don't want to go to my room all alone and lull myself to sleep with killing techniques. I don't want to go into the Games tomorrow and watch that tiny girl from Eleven fall under my knife. I just want to stay here forever where I'm safe and warm and feeling like a person is a nice change.
Cato is not nice and he is not kind and he is not compassionate. Nor am I. We are ruthless, brutal, and dangerous. We have not been particularly gentle with each other in any respect since I punched him that first time but now, now that our lives are on the line and we are both certain we will have to take the other's to ensure our win, now the only thing either of us has in this world is their own worst enemy and I've never wanted to be near a person more. I've never wanted to be held or pitied or cared for by anyone else but now I can't think of any other place I'd rather be than enclosed in the arms of a practiced killer who needs me dead. This is a moment of weakness. I will regret this so very much when it's over. I'll slam my head against the wall behind the bed and ask myself what in the world I was thinking. I'll be standing over Twelve or Lover Boy and thinking of this very long moment and wondering if they had one like it before the Games, even if it's all a ruse, this star-crossed lovers strategy. I can't kill like that, with thoughts of warmth and comfort banging around inside.
"Too bad there can't be two winners," Cato says quietly but his voice is loud enough in my ear. Two winners, huh? I wish. That would be me and Cato hands down. They could just line up the rest of the tributes for a firing squad of Peacekeepers and take them out efficiently, even if that would be deathly boring for the rest of Panem. But there's no way at all they could change the rules to allow two winners and we're stuck with our same boat, which has sprung a leak, I see.
"Too bad," I agree, and I don't have to let go, at least not yet, but I can feel the warmth coming back to my body and the always-simmering anger is bringing the old Clove back, the proper Clove I like and don't hate for her wimpy tendencies. I will figure something out. I am not weak. I will figure something out.
A/N This story is dedicated to Gabrielle because nobody dies in it and it shouldn't make her sad.
While writing this I Googled pictures from the movies for these characters. Cato is spot-on with my visualization but I always imagined Clove about his age, and the both of them seventeen. But when I saw the Clove pictures I said right away, "THAT is Clove!" I love the idea of a littler girl being the one to come closest to killing Katniss and all that ferocity packed into a smaller body. So I wrote this with that in mind. I also want to point out that this is in no way intended to redeem any character. Cato and Clove are cruel and enjoy hurting people. There is no excusing them for that. They are not good and I did not want to portray either of them as impenetrable rocks or people with hearts, either. I do hope you've enjoyed this story (assuming you managed to get past the homicidal psychopath angle Clove's working) and I'd love you forever if you left a review of any kind. I'm always happy to get constructive criticism and will be sure to fix any factual errors you may have recognized. Thank you for reading!