For Shipping Week at Caesar's Palace. Sunday: Cato/Clove
She ends up in his old room in the training center. She's not sure where her mentors are, only that they're probably looking for her. She doesn't have long until she's found.
She looks around the room, remembering the handful of days they had spent in here before the Games. She closes her eyes for a moment, trying to focus, and his eyes, full of pain and something that looks a lot like understanding, fill her vision. Even when she was murdering him, he understood her better than she ever understood herself.
"If you somehow kill me," He had told her, the night before the Games, "Give them a good show, okay? You can carve one of those pictures you're so good at,"
He was right, She was a surprisingly good artist for someone who used blood as their paint and human flesh as their canvas.
She should've… Not gone into the Games. Refused to kill him. Sacrificed herself. The possibilities fill her mind, driving her to the brink of madness. His mangled, ruined body taunts her, reminding her that she should have done something, anything but kill him like that. Images of him with a picture of Thresh's death carved into his chest invade her mind. Her eyes fly open, unable to take the sight of him, of what she did to him, anymore. And yet, when she opens her eyes he's there too, dressed in his arena clothes with her bloody picture carved into his chest. She stumbles forward.
"Cato!" She whispers, hugging him tight. "I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry,"
He doesn't answer, just smiles sadly at her and jerks his head towards the door, where the knife she threw at him all those years ago the morning of the Games is still lodged. She walks towards the door and works the blade out of the wood, inspecting it. Perfect.
She glances at Cato, who smirks and nods at her. She grins, sits down on the bed, and presses the tip of the knife to her skin.
An avox finds her the next morning, her mangled body twisted in the bloody sheets. Blood paints her skin in a grim parody of the swirling tattoos the Capitol considers fashionable. Her dark hair is a mess, hacked short in some places and matted with blood in others. The victor's crown on her head and the twisted grin on her lips completes the picture.
For the first time in Hunger Games history, the Victor is dead before they've even reached their Victory Tour.