District 2 was full of myths.
"If you volunteer for the Hunger Games, you'll be sure to win! You're the strongest, fastest children in Panem!"
"Winning the Hunger Games makes you feel so free!"
But the biggest by far was, "If you're noble enough to volunteer and by some crazy, unprecedented odds, you lose the Hunger Games, you will go to Heaven!"
Heaven, with angels playing their golden harps and flying on beautiful white wings, smiling. No pain. No sadness. No fear.
Just bliss.
Yeah, right.
.
.
.
She still remembers.
Clove wakes up on a bed of fluffy white clouds, the sun shining straight into her delicate brown eyes. She blinks, putting up hand to shield herself from the rays.
She still remembers.
This can't be Heaven, she thinks bitterly.
She still remembers.
There are no angels, no Cupid, no... anything.
She still remembers.
Clove turns her head slightly to the right (it's pounding for some reason) and there she sees her District partner, Cato, lying still, not breathing.
She still remembers.
She remembers the pain she felt as she lived through those last agonizing moments. She remembers what it was like to be so close, yet so far away. She remembers the horror of the Hunger Games.
And she realizes that Cato, too, is dead.
Heaven is not what it's cracked up to be.
.
.
.
Finally, Cato wakes up. "C-Clove?"
"Yeah," she replies. "It's me."
He wraps his arms around her, drawing her close until she can't breathe, kissing her.
"Is this Heaven?" she manages to ask.
"It doesn't feel that way, does it?"
.
.
.
There's nothing to do here except stare down at the world below them.
Nowhere to go. No other people.
And certainly no angels.
They gaze down at their bloodstained silhouettes lying on the floor of the Capitol morgue, and they wish they could cry.
But there's no pain in Heaven. No sadness. No fear.
So they can't.
Cry, that is.
.
.
.
And one day, an angel comes to Clove.
After so much time alone in her suffering, she thinks it might be a dream.
"It's been long enough," the angel says kindly, taking her hand. A glittering golden crown sits atop her head, long blonde locks cascading down to the ground. "My name is Glimmer. Do you remember me?"
"I do." And Clove lets the angel take her hand, and takes Cato's with the other, and slowly, they all begin to forget.
.
.
.
Time goes by slowly, sometimes in leaps, sometimes crawling by like a snail.
Clove's heart slowly mends as she talks with Glimmer about the things that used to be important: which Capitol celebrity just won an award, what color makeup goes best with their skin tones.
As they wish for them, tubes of lipstick appear in the air in front of them, and they reach out in wonder, retrieving the cosmetics.
They smile for the first time in so long.
.
.
.
One night, what feels like years later (but at the same time, it might only be minutes), Clove finds herself alone with Cato.
"Hi," he whispers breathlessly. His short hair gleams in the moonlight from above. "I've missed you, Clove."
"I've missed you too." She leans against Cato, the boy who she once thought she loved, wrapping her arms around him and trying to force the tears to come.
Nothing.
Cato brushes a strand of long, dark hair out of Clove's haunted eyes, and leans in, his lips barely touching hers.
They kiss for a long time.
.
.
.
After that, it gets a little easier.
The two don't go anywhere without each other, afraid they might sink into the black hole that seems to threaten them from inside.
They watch down on Earth, managing to smile as their families bond together again, even without them there.
Sometimes they even laugh.
Once, Clove tried to sing.
They both take up art.
.
.
.
It's too much to say they're happy, but not enough to say they get by. Instead, they hover somewhere in the middle. Once in a while, in anguish, they remember.
But hope is blossoming inside their hearts, hope that things will be okay again, hope that they can be together, hope that they will see their families again as they make their own way up to Heaven.
.
.
.
They manage to move on, realizing that maybe Heaven isn't all flowers and song, but they can get through with each other.
Together.
.
.
.
Down below, in Panem, there is an uprising.
But up here, where they are, Cato and Clove are angels.
And slowly, stroke by stroke, they are able to paint their own wings.
And they learn to fly.