An AU story where Cato lived instead of Katniss and Peeta but still helped bring about the end of the Capitol. His mission to assassinate Snow succeeded but his vigilante murder of the President and his methods of coping with the loss of Clove landed him in a prison/mental help facility for his and others' safety. These are images, memories and present occurrences all running together in his head.
A note on how I generally write songfics: You have to read the lyrics. It's not supposed to be a song playing in the background or something. They're part of the story.
He sits in his cell
And he lays on his bed
Covers his head and closes his eyes
How frequently has this happened? Memories become so strong, images so vivid that they overpower the present and he can do nothing but bury himself between the rough fabric of his sheets and the hard surface of his cell mattress.
He sees a smoking gun
His own after he put a clip in President Coriolanus Snow's back.
And the coward he ran
The memory of that giant from 11 fleeing the Cornucopia after dealing Clove her deathblow and letting Fire Girl go unharmed.
And in his arms is the bleeding love of his life
Clove. Immobile on the ground. Clove. Gasping for breath. Her grip on his fingers delicate. Clove. That horrible dent in her skull. Her eyes unfocused but watering.
And she cried,
"Kiss it all better.
I'm not ready to go.
It's not your fault, love.
You didn't know, you didn't know."
He'd never heard her voice like that. So small and childish. He'd never heard her use that phrase. "Kiss it better." Would hardly have believed it came from her lips if he hadn't been sitting right there next to her. "Kiss it," was something young naïve children said to their parents when they received a bee sting or stubbed their toes. This, this was much more than that. He knew, and she must have too, that there would be no kissing this better. Even if kisses fixed wounds, it wouldn't be enough for her. But what could he do? Deny her?
Her hands are so cold
And he kisses her face
And says, "Everything will be alright"
He had stayed right beside her, held onto her, offered her whatever comfort she could take from his presence as the life was crushed from her. He'd forgotten where they were, forgotten that he was losing ground as the boy from 11 tore away from them, forgotten that it was totally inappropriate for a Career to sit here with tears running down his face as his district partner died.
But everything was never alright after that stone came down. Months later, through a drugged haze, somewhere his numb brain registered that the Third Quarter Quell was to take place. The twist was that the tributes would be chosen from the victors. He felt nothing at the prospect of returning to the arena. What more could they take from him? His life? Did they think he thanked them for it now? He would almost embrace going back, if such emotions still remained to him. Instead, he'd waited, stood in the crowd, watched Brutus and Enobaria go in again as tributes.
The fireworks of the destroyed arena had hurt his eyes as he watched on the screen so he had turned away. Months later, District 13 had teamed up with District 2's rebels to overthrow the Capitol presence in his city. The absurdity of there being a functioning District 13 never registered with him. Such curiosity was gone.
When District 13 came to District 2, they took both Cato and Lyme with them on their return home. Lyme had been keeping an eye on him since Enobaria left, so he had been with her when the battle before the Capitol stronghold had taken place. Many other victors were brought to District 13 with him or had already been there since the end of the Third Quell: Lyme, Annie Cresta, Johanna Mason, Finnick Odair, Haymitch Abernathy, Beetee, and Enobaria.
As at home, he had spent much of his time in the infirmary in 13. Fairly often, he was heavily sedated and even when he wasn't, he stood only to use the bathroom or pace his curtained sector, restless with energy he had no real desire to burn off.
Several weeks into his stay, a woman came to visit him. He'd paid no attention to her name, title, or appearance but he did note that she brought with her a tall, strongly built man. Probably he was there to guard her should he, Cato, lose his head. There was also a doctor on hand, subtly holding a syringe full of what was surely clonazepam or one of the other many sedatives they pumped into his veins.
The woman spoke in a quiet, careful voice to him, apparently well aware that he was liable to snap should she overload him with words. "Hello, Cato," she had greeted him. "My name is Alma Coin. Do you mind if I sit with you?" He had said nothing in answer, merely sat very still on his bed, staring at the wall directly opposite him. Apparently she took his lack of response as a lack of protest and therefore a 'Yes,' so she pulled up the straight-backed wooden chair and sat down beside him. He jumped and pulled himself away from her, but she held her hands up to show him she meant no harm. "It's alright. I only want to talk to you." He had stared wide eyed at her and she continued cautiously. "I have an offer for you. Would you like to hear it?" Like to? No. Dislike to? Also no. It made no difference to him. He gave her no sign either confirming or denying what he would or wouldn't like.
Her eyes moved to the doctor in the corner who looked at the screen taking Cato's pulse, breathing rate, blood pressure, and oxygen levels. After a brief pause, the doctor nodded.
"We have a job for you," the woman began. "You could help the rebellion." That didn't compute to him. How could a very broken young man help anyone? He couldn't help Clove when it mattered most of all and then he had been completely whole, scared to death, but whole. It didn't matter to him if this woman continued talking or not. If she had stopped right then and left the room, he could have easily forgotten her and her offer, but she continued. "If they were to see you fight again, it would give those who are afraid strength. You, who have lost so much at the hands of the Capitol, could fight with them." ... lost so much at the hands of the Capitol.
This hint at his past was enough to jog his memory, to bring him crashing back to the arena, to Clove, to the boy from 11, to the pair from 12, to Clove. She was what he lost at the hands of the Capitol and this woman wanted to turn her into a martyr for her own cause? She wanted to use Clove just like the Capitol did! Use him too, by the sound of it. At last, he came to a decision. No, he wouldn't like to hear more about this offer. "No," he said. His voice was hoarse and scratchy. "No, I don't want––" He brought his hands up to cover his ears in case she continued.
"Cato, you could help people. You could bring down the very people who took her from you."
"No!" he shouted over her. "No! I don't want to! I don't want to! Get out of here! Leave me alone!" He tucked his head down away from her and the strange man and the doctor. His hands pressed hard against his ears, trying desperately to block out what was left of his world. He'd continued to yell until the doctor had inserted the needle, unnoticed by Cato, under his skin and he fell into the darkness and immobility of sedation.
When he woke up, it was to the eyes of a lovely young woman with long brown hair and green eyes. Annie Cresta. Her name registered somewhere in his foggy brain. "Hello," she said quietly. He blinked back at her and she and Finnick Odair became clearer in his vision. "I wanted to see you." They had never spoken, never even met before this.
Annie and Finnick had stayed with him for a very long time that day. Cato had laid where he was, sometimes sleeping, sometimes watching Annie. She was so far from like Clove that it brought him no pain to see her sitting there beside him. Towards evening, she said, "I would go if I were able," and he knew exactly what she meant. If this had come from any other person, he would have gone off again, but Annie Cresta was perhaps the one person who understood what this was like. She and Finnick Odair.
"I can't," he'd said honestly to her. Then he shook his head against his pillow and repeated himself, "I can't."
"I know," she told him kindly, stroking his hair back off his forehead with one hand and holding tightly to Finnick, as always, with the other. "It's ok. No one will force you." She and Finnick had sat with him until he calmed down again, then Annie kissed his hair and Finnick put his free hand on his shoulder. They'd said goodbye, bid him goodnight, and departed.
For the first time in a very long time, Cato lay there awake, thinking. This was something he tried to avoid doing nowadays because it usually resulted in some sort of breakdown and more sedatives. But for some reason, unknown to him, he wanted to know why what Annie had said had not driven him off the deep end again. He lay there, replaying her words in his head until a possible explanation occurred to him.
Yes, she, Annie, like the woman from before, had been trying to persuade him to go fight the Capitol, but somehow he knew her motivation was different than the other woman's. If she were able, Annie Cresta would go for herself, not for that woman. She would go to destroy the Capitol for what they've done to her and so many other people. And easily, his thoughts slipped from thinking of Annie to his own situation. Let that woman think she was using him. Let the people see Clove as a martyr. Wouldn't it be his greatest honor to her memory to get them all, not only to remember her, but to fight for her? Didn't he owe it to her and anyone else who'd suffered at the Capitol's hands to do everything in his power to bring it down?
The very next day, he asked the doctor to bring the woman from before in to see him again. When she entered and had seated herself again beside him, he told her he was in. He would help her. He would do what it took to take down his enemy. Looking pleased, she told him he would be trained as a soldier and then sent to the Capitol to fight in the rebellion against the current regime.
Over the next several weeks, she had done just that. Instead of training to become a self-reliant Career, he trained to be part of a team. For the first few days, his body did not thank him for the sudden surge of intense physical exertion, but even after having lead an almost exclusively sedentary lifestyle for the past fourteen months, he was back nearly at his old standard by the time they sent him by train with ten other people into the Capitol.
He noticed the gun
And his rage grew inside
He said, "I'll avenge my lover tonight."
Once there, he realized he was not to be fighting on the front lines as he had been lead to believe, but instead would be mock-fighting on the fringes of the city. That, after everything he had gone through, was unbearable. He was running on fury, hatred, and a promise he had made to himself to personally kill the man responsible for his own torture.
When his squad was finally allowed to take a real block, he pressed on, well beyond the boundary they were ordered to meet. His mind was back where it had been in the arena. He was back to being observant, vigilant, intelligent if a little reckless, which meant he was well aware that his squad and camera crew followed him into the heart of the Capitol. As far as grief or guilt over some of their deaths, that never came. It wasn't in him to grieve any more than he already had. Not for anyone other than her. He didn't have the emotional capacity.
At long, long last, he and the remaining members of his squad broke through the Capitol's final defenses and burst into the City Circle, where he and Clove had stood on their chariot eighteen months ago. Not about to give up after all his effort, he forced his way through the ranks of Capitol people all pressing to get into the presidential mansion.
Naturally, there were guards protecting Snow, but one heartbroken Career turned soldier can do wonders against a small army. He couldn't say he dodged a bullet, but he got his man. Emptied the rest of his clip into his back as his target fled.
And she cried
"Kiss it all better
I'm not ready to go
It's not your fault, love
You didn't know, you didn't know."
All these memories flood his senses now.
Now he sits behind prison bars,
For that brief period, with the prospect of killing Snow so near to him, there had been hope of recovery, but when he realized killing Snow had been just as useless as all his other efforts, he crashed again. Sunk back into unstable despair.
25 to life and she's not in his arms.
He couldn't bring her back with a bullet to the heart
Of the back of a man and tore his world apart.
From time to time, Annie Cresta comes to see him, but he can't bring himself to speak and she has no words to offer him. What comfort can they give each other? They can't bring Clove and Finnick back. All they can do is sit and be with each other on opposite sides of a thick pane of glass until the doctors administer another dose of morphling or a sedative.
Even off sedation, much of his time is spent in a daze or a stupor. Whatever efforts he made directly after the arena not to think have long since been exhausted. He cannot rid his mind's eye of the faces of his victims or of Clove.
He holds only a memory,
All it is, is a memory.
Hey, hey.
He cries.
"Stay with me until I fall asleep," As she requested of him, lying on the ground in the Arena.
"Stay with me," as he'd countered, begging her not to leave him, holding onto her for dear life itself.
"Stay with me until I fall asleep,"
"Stay with me."
"Stay with me until I fall asleep,"
"Stay with me."
"Stay with me until I fall asleep..."
"Stay with me!"
And not another word from her.
Just like after the feast. She's gone now, but he begs her memory not to leave him.
"Kiss it all better,
I'm not ready to go.
It's not your fault love,
You didn't know, you didn't know."
No matter how frequently he hears those words of hers in his head, he cannot reduce the guilt in his chest. They were a team. All he wanted was to be allowed to return home safely with her and his mistake had cost him that. How is he supposed to let it go when the Capitol had given him every opportunity and he'd been the one to mess it up?
He tries. Whenever his mind flashes back to the feast, he reminds himself that she'd said it. She'd said he wasn't to blame. But the thought always occurs to him that he must be because if he weren't, she never would have thought to tell him he wasn't. If it wasn't his fault, then she'd never have called his name as that giant brought the rock down. She'd thought he'd be there protecting her, that was why she'd taunted that girl from 12. And he'd been there, only just barely too late.
"Kiss it all better.
"Stay with me until I fall asleep,"
"Stay with me."
"Stay with me until I fall asleep,"
"Stay with me."
"Kiss it all better.
Stay with me until I fall asleep,"
"Stay with me."
"Stay with me until I fall asleep,"
"Stay with me."
It takes another year for the high dosages of morphling and sedatives to finally make him sleep.
. . .
Disclaimer: I don't own The Hunger Games, or the song Kiss it Better.
AN:
So, if you read The Conspiracy my other Cato and Clove centered story on here, you might have read the AN where I talk about this, but I'll just put it here as well in case you don't want to read another seventy-thousand words.
First, the reason this has taken so long is that I didn't want to post some ridiculous melodramatic story. I wanted it to feel real, which it does to me because I wrote it and I wrote some of the grieving during the very beginning of my own grieving process, but I didn't know if it would to you, hence why I sent it to a couple of people, hence the delay.
Explanation: Anyway, this isn't supposed to be a six page pity party, nor is Cato supposed to seem incompetent. He's literally supposed to have gone crazy. There's a difference between madness and incompetence to me. He's supposed to be almost Finnick-ish when Annie's in the Capitol for the first half of Mockingjay. He's lost his mind from the mixture of horror he experienced in the arena, the guilt over murdering a bunch of people, the guilt of not being able to save Clove, and, most hauntingly for him, the final realization that there's nothing he can do to bring Clove back which clinches the insanity. If you've ever had that feeling where you're like "Crap, I really wish I could change [insert whatever it is here]" you know the beginning of it and how irritating it can be, but this is obviously much different.
Lastly, if you're wondering about the ridiculous vagueness, it's because this is written in limited omniscient form from Cato so he doesn't know much about he war. Basically that made it easier for me because it'd have been really complicated to re write it all without Katniss.
Also, something I realized very recently (which is funny because I wrote this) but the lines where he's thinking about kissing small wounds better...I don't know how to put it but I wanted to draw your attention to them. It's like "If this thing that doesn't work did work, it wouldn't work in this instance anyway," and I can't explain it, but it seems like a big deal to me. Sometimes I do that. I write things and I'm like, "That's significant. Why? I don't know." haha.
Sorry for the ridiculous AN.
Upcoming stories
I'm still working out the AE to The Conspiracy as well as the stories of Cato and Clove as kids that I talked about. And if we're being honest, I might re write the reaping and train chapters of The Conspiracy because in THG Katniss says Cato volunteers but he doesn't in The Conspiracy and it took me until like two weeks ago to figure out a reason why he would after Clove volunteered. If you were in my head, you'd think I'm stupid for not having thought of it before then. Again, it's one of those things that I do that I'm like, "This is a big deal" but I can't explain why.
Also, something I don't think I've mentioned yet, I've written another songfic to a German song called Frieden im Krieg from Madsen. The original is in German but I translated it as well to make it available to my English speaking/reading readers. They (the English and the German versions) should be up soon as well just as soon as I'm comfortable with the German version being correct.
Ok, that's all for now.