A/N: WOAHHHH guess who's back writing, after an awkward exams/residential camp/back-to-school experience. I'm not exactly good at this, but oh well hahahah.
He'd never forget that laugh. A taunt full of amusement and sadism all at once, hitting you straight in the face, making you sure of your soon-to-come demise. It made him want to laugh with her.
He stumbled around the arena, eyes full of that same laugh. It was the same…until you could tell it was different. The taunting and amusement were gone; replaced by exhaustion and insanity. The same sadism she had pushed onto him remained.
He spent lots of time staring at trees. They all sort of looked the same. After a while, they started to look like her. He wasn't sure how Clove could even remotely resemble a tree. She looked much better than them.
Until he came across a dead tree. It was dead. It wasn't anything special and it certainly wasn't pretty. It had been scorched dark by fire and clearly struck by lightning and seemed to have been used as a target for creatures to claw at and kick. But although it was dead, it seemed to exert more power than what he imagined it would look like if it were alive. Because Mother-fucking-Nature (A/N: mother - fucking - nature? motherfucking nature? it was funnier in my head.) had thrown all of her will at it, yet…it was still beautiful. Beauty in a way only he (and she) would probably ever understand.
Clove exerted more power now; rather then when she had walked the earth he stood upon. She might not have been pretty, but she held her head up and squared her shoulders and stood her ground, and although she never beat the dark masses of strong muscles and height advantages, she was still beautiful.
Yet he still couldn't purge from his mind her once laughing eyes growing dark. He couldn't purge from his mind the blood bubbling from the corners of her mouth as she pulled her lips back into a smile. A final smile. He couldn't purge from his mind her laugh. How could he forget her laugh.
That was just it.
He couldn't.
The first time he had heard it he had been fourteen. She was eleven, and small at that. She was just a little girl with dark hair, high cheekbones, light skin, and eyes of steel. She was talking to a boy of her age.
"HAH! As if you'd get picked for the games," he chortled.
She glared at him, drawing herself to her full height, which (a) wasn't much taller than how she had been standing originally, and (b) wasn't very tall at all. "What did you say?"
The boy, clearly not taking her hint, continued on heedlessly. "I mean, they only take the best of the best as the volunteer. What makes you think you'll get picked?"
Cato saw her move, quick as lightning, as she snatched a knife from her shoe and pressed the sharp edge up to his throat. "Are you sure about that?"
The boy's face had quickly paled. He opened his mouth, probably to protest, and was interrupted by, "CLOVE! Where did you get that knife?"
The girl, Clove, let go of the boy and stored the knife in her shoe as fast as she had taken it out.
"Clove! Stop harassing Kaine!" The supervisor of the children, Astoria, came over and began to lead Clove away from the boy. She glanced over her shoulder as she sauntered away, seeing his panicked face. She threw her head back and let out a long laugh.
Cato would remember it forever. She reminded him of a wolf. Attack it and be attacked. She'd be howling long and deep to the moon to prove that she could.
That laugh.
The next time he had heard her laugh was really a few years later. After the first time, every time Cato had seen her, her face had been frozen into a mask of semi-pleasantry, thinly veiling a volcano.
They were sixteen and thirteen, and Clove had just been moved up a class, because she had nearly killed another person in the fifteen-year-olds' division.
The class supervisor, Birin, had spoken to him before the session began. Keep yourself under control, but challenge both yourself and her. She's a feisty little girl.
They were fighting in hand-to-hand combat. She was small and quick but he was strong and muscular.
When he got her down onto the mat, she seemed surprised. Her eyes were wide open; she seemed to not have thought she could be beaten so easily. Hah.
From one hand pinning her arms above her head, he had a clear view of her eyes. They were hard and cold. He changed his mind in that instant. They weren't eyes of steel; they'd be eyes of diamond. Beautiful but certainly not soft; to be scratched only by an equal source. He would be the equal source to her nearly unscratchable diamond.
A/N: This is just an intro! kind of. But let me know if you like it. Thankssss :D