Losing Control:
For Michelle and Diana: my fellow friends, writers, musicians, and avid Clato shippers.
Warning: This story contains violence, light coarse language, and minor suggestive themes.
Every lesson forms a new scar.
The first time they kiss, she tries to kill him.
The blade of Cato's sword presses against her throat, though in all honesty it shouldn't be there at all. He's only beaten her by a fluke, and to him that isn't an entirely satisfying victory.
"Stupid rock," Clove spits angrily, glaring at the piece of slate that has fallen from the top of the quarry and nearly crushed the both of them. Cato's managed to tackle her out of harm's way, but has somehow ended up atop her, sword biting at her throat.
She glares at him, but Cato doesn't relent. It's a cheap shot, he knows, but when their time in the Games come, everything is fair. And they're both Careers, training for the Games, aren't they?
To Clove's credit, she doesn't beg him to let her up. She grudgingly accepts the fact that Cato's managed to best her, albeit unfairly.
And then Cato almost laughs at himself, because who is he kidding? On the rare occasions that defeat crosses paths with Clove, she never accepts it.
The stone walls of the quarry are the only spectators of their fight; they watch silently as Cato digs the blade deeper into Clove's throat. And high above it all, the full moon illuminates them, shining its light down into the deep recesses of the stone quarry. Cato and Clove shouldn't be training here, especially not in the dead hours of the night, but then again, they've never been much for playing by the rules.
Cato pushes the blade's edge even deeper into Clove's throat, though not deep enough to draw blood. And still, she begs for nothing; her eyes simply stare back at his, defiant and vengeful.
Finally, he draws a thin line of blood from her, breaking the skin ever-so-slightly, and they both know, instantly, that it form a scar. Her blood continues to leak from her veins; it is a rich, royal red, like the color of ripened merlot wine.
Something inside of Cato snaps at the sight of her blood, violently and messily. The thin, unstable line between his self-control and abandon (when it comes to her, at least) fractures. Cato doesn't know exactly why it happens, but he thinks that perhaps it's because he can count, on one hand, the number of times that Clove's blood has left her veins.
His weapon clatters to the ground, and it's the first time he's ever deliberately ignored his sword, his most prized possession. And then, Cato kisses Clove, fiercely. It's like a tidal wave crashing ashore, sweeping away everything in its path. His brain is on overdrive; the only thing he can comprehend is that her lips taste salty, with a hint of sweetness. It's what he'd imagine blood would taste like.
But if Cato expected her to kiss back, he was inordinately wrong.
"Cato!" Her voice comes out as a low snarl, and Cato's acutely aware that she's fighting him for control, but he doesn't give a damn. He likes the feeling, the struggle for dominance; but most of all, he enjoys having her under his control. Clove tries, once again, to shove him away, but Cato outweighs her by a good hundred pounds, so in the end it's futile.
Cato finally pushes away when he sees that she's grabbed her knife. He knows that Clove could easily flick her wrist and kill him, but some instinct inside of him tells him she won't. Or at the very least, he hopes she won't.
And then, the Career in him is furious, furious at the thought of rejection, of failure (what exactly has he failed at, though?). And the tiny shred of humanity within him is hurt, but that part of Cato is so diminutive and seemingly insignificant that he can easily forget it and bury it deep within his scarred and fractured psyche.
"What," Clove snarls at him. "The hell was that?" Her knife is poised to kill, held aloft and pointed at his face. To Cato's credit, he doesn't flinch, instead choosing to hold her fiery, murderous gaze with his icier, more composed one.
"What do you think it was, Clove?" he asks her, voice soft but deadly.
He doesn't get an answer. Not yet, at least.
Isn't the sweetest mockery to mock our enemies?
~Sophocles
The second time they kiss, it's less like a kiss and more like a taunt.
It's dusk, and the sun is a fiery orange disc slipping under the horizon. The training center is nearly empty because the majority of the other Career trainees have gone home for the night, yet Cato and Clove remain. They are, after all, determined to win, and how exactly are they supposed to win if they don't train, tooth and nail, to become the best of the best?
It's these extra, excruciating hours of training that have enabled the pair to claw their way to the top, to be the Careers everyone secretly envies. For Clove, her knives seem to live and breathe with a mind of their own, always sinking their teeth into the metaphorical flesh of their target. And as for Cato... His brawn and brutality are prevalent knowledge throughout the training center and most of District 2.
"Give up yet, Clove?" he sneers mockingly. His sword is dancing, trying to weave around the stubborn blade of Clove's dagger. The muscles in her neck are taut, virtually begging to be severed by Cato's gleaming blade.
Clove's only response to his taunt is to tilt her head slightly, a small, cold smile adorning her countenance, and respond with a jibe of her own.
"Why, Cato? Are you getting tired?" Her voice is level, polite, even, but Cato has known her long enough to detect the layer of mockery beneath its surface.
He barks out a laugh, but there is no real trace of amusement in it. Instead, it is full of ridicule and a cruel iciness. The corners of his mouth turn upwards in a malicious smile, his teeth glinting as dangerously as the edge of his sword.
Sweat beads on Cato's forehead and arms, the sole sign of his exertion. Clove darts away from him, fast and nimble on her feet, whereas he is a wave of brute strength, surging forwards. A knife whizzes past his head, and the slight sting of his skin lets Cato know that she's managed to cut his cheek.
Not pausing to wipe the trickle of blood snaking down his face like a bloody tear, Cato lashes out with his blade, slashing at Clove with a precision that takes years to master. (But then again, he has had a lifetime to prepare for this moment, hasn't he?)
His blade makes contact with hers, and the sheer might behind his swing knocks the dagger clear from Clove's slender yet incredibly competent fingers. Her eyes flash with surprise and fury as she backpedals furiously, reaching to the inside of her training jacket to grab the knife undoubtedly stored there.
But before Clove can seize her weapon, Cato lunges forward, his sword falling to the floor, recklessly abandoned, and grabs her wrists so fiercely that they are both startled.
"Cato," she snarls. "You're going to break my wrists."
It's true; he's clenching her so tightly that his knuckles have turned paper-white. It takes him a long, tortured moment before he's able to loosen his grip and she's able to slip free.
Cato just stands there, for once at a loss of words. He's run out of excuses, jibes, and taunts; he's run out of something to say.
Clove doesn't seem to be in a talkative mood either. Her eyes are stony, but she refrains from rubbing her wrists, because they would both view that as a weakness.
A tense silence stretches out between them until Clove breaks it.
"Control." is all she says. Cato clenches his jaw even more, his teeth grating against each other agonizingly.
Clove stands on her tiptoes, a deceivingly childlike movement that masks the ferocious beast within her. (It doesn't fool Cato, though. It never could, and never would.) She leans in towards him so that their lips are touching just slightly, and she whispers:
"So vicious. So bloody and brutal. It's such a shame you don't have much control, isn't it?" Her voice is laden with mockery, and she makes no attempt to conceal it.
"Such a shame," he growls, pressing his lips onto hers with the same crushing force as the vice he had around her wrists.
Clove lets it stay this way for only a split second before pushing away. There's a ghost of a smile on her face as she leaves, but it isn't a happy one.
It's a smug and mocking one.
Cato wants to snarl in frustration and make her stay, but he holds onto the shreds of self-control he possesses. (He's not going to let her mock him over that again.) He knows Clove is trying to use him, but he tells himself, yet again, that he will not play her game.
The thing is, he's already playing, isn't he?
Only a struggle twists sentimentality and lust together into love.
~E. M. Forster
The third time they kiss, she's playing too, even if she doesn't realize it.
They have been reaped, suffered through the hostile train ride, and ridden through the Capitol in their glorious golden costumes, only to be out staged by District 12 of all Districts. Cato is scowling, still unable to understand how the Capitol finds two children that look like as if they're burning themselves to death more appealing than him and Clove.
He can tell that Clove isn't happy either; she sullen and her hands are clenched at her side. Cato offhandedly notes that there are still faint bruises on her wrists, and a cruel, impious smile replaces the scowl on his face.
He follows Clove back into the apartment the Capitol has assigned them. An Avox holds the door open for them, but he ignores it. These creatures are beneath his notice, because soon, he's going to be the victor of the 74th Hunger Games, and this Avox will still be a wretch without a tongue.
They sit across from each another on the plush couches, but Cato finds that the extravagant seating puts him on edge instead of helping him relax. Clove's eyes are distant, but they still shine with unconcealed anger. Cato doesn't mind, though; it gives her a fierceness and cruelty that he can readily appreciate.
Cato's not surprised that it's ended up this way. Some irrational part inside of Cato keeps whispering that he and Clove were destined to be pitted against each other. This is the final stand; only one of them will come out of these Games alive, and the survivor will be the Victor, the stronger of the two. Only one of them will survive, and Cato has to accept that this is their fate.
Or in his case, it will be a victory.
Every fiber of Cato's being screams that he will win, and that he'll kill her when the time comes. The thought of Clove bleeding to her death, flesh sliced to ribbons, makes Cato shiver with pleasure. And although he'd like to believe that there's a tiny, humane part of him shuddering and screaming in agony at the notion of killing Clove, he can't feel or hear it.
(Not yet)
"So," Brutus's gruff voice greets them, and it's laced with disappointment. Both Cato and Clove spare a glance in his direction before turning back to their previous areas of visual interests.
"Outdone by District 12? Pathetic." Brutus snorts, collapsing into a chair at the dining table. He motions for them to join him, and they do, albeit reluctantly. An Avox brings over a glass of wine for Brutus and a platter of fancy cheeses and airy crackers as an appetizer.
"Where's Lyme?" The question Clove asks is seemingly casual, but the tautness of her neck belies her cool demeanor.
"Probably chatting with the stylists and the other mentors. Who knows?" Brutus pops a cracker into his mouth. "But that's beside the point. We need to talk strategy."
They spend the rest of dinnertime working out interview angles and tactical techniques for alliances. It's all blandly familiar stuff, and Cato has to resist the urge to roll his eyes several times. But in the end, he listens, because who knows? Maybe Brutus will actually slip useful fact that will keep him alive in the Games.
Finally, after what seems to take ages, it's late enough so that Brutus will finally dismiss them. Cato and Clove head down the dimly lit hallway to their private quarters, where they will wallow in luxury until the time for their Games finally arrive.
"Try not to die too soon," he tells her, plastering his trademark smirk on his face. "It would be such a shame."
Clove laughs darkly and takes a step towards him. "If I were you," she purrs. "I would watch my own back, lest I find a knife in it."
His hand clenches into a fist. "I wouldn't worry about knives- I'd worry about swords."
And then they meet in the middle, two opposing forces crashing into one another with enough might to level a city. Cato doesn't know who initiated it, but right now he doesn't give a damn. He grabs her shoulders and tries to engulf her, but even now, Clove still fights back in her own way.
Her eyes are dancing with desire, ferocity, and a hint of amusement, while Cato is sure that his own eyes shine with unadulterated passion and bloodlust.
Their kiss deepens as Clove drags him into her room. Never mind the fact that in a week, one of them will be dead, most likely at the other's hands. They are both Careers, and they can lock away their emotions as easily as Cato locks the door behind him. They can ignore the facts and throw themselves into their carnal pleasures, say that they love each other as they succumb to sleep, death's sister.
And so, for now, they abandon themselves to their carnal, lustful pleasures and delusional fantasies.
(Unfortunately, all things have an end.)
Anger and jealousy can no more bear to lose sight of their objects than love.
~George Eliot
The fourth time they kiss, it's not as physically tangible.
The Career pack is no longer a legit pack; it's been reduced to what Cato would consider to be a Career pair. Clove is busy sharpening a knife by the flickering fire, the flames' light glinting off of the metal, and he's busy honing the arrowhead of one of Marvel's old spears.
Marvel is yet another thing for Cato to add to his list of reasons why he wants to hack damn Fire Girl into bloody pieces. He bitterly recalls the fact that the goddamn District 12 tribute is responsible for half of the Careers'- his allies- deaths. There's Glimmer and the District 4 girl, killed grotesquely by the tracker jackers, and Marvel, felled by one of her arrows.
Cato's mood is not improved by the fact that Clove is only speaking to him in terse, clipped sentences that are laced with venom. It's her form of payback, he knows, for his iniquitous episode with Glimmer. Cato scowls at the ground, willing Clove to understand the fact that Glimmer was merely a pretty toy for him to play with, and the tracker jackers have long since rendered the blonde girl repulsive and broken beyond repair.
"Clove." he says for what seems like the twentieth time in the past hour. And, for the twentieth time, she doesn't respond or even glance up from her precious knife.
Cato's patience is wearing dangerously thin.
"Clove!" he roars, a spark of fury contained within his voice. She looks up seemingly lazily, and her dark, piercing eyes lock gazes with his furious, icy blue ones.
"What?" The word is curt and laced with bitterness.
"Listen..." Cato means for his words to sound cajoling, but instead they sounded irritable and snappish.
"Listen to what, Cato?" The anger in Clove's tone is swelling, building up to a climax, a breaking point.
He lowers his voice slightly, because he knows that the Capitol is watching, like it always is, and that nothing he and Clove say will remain secret.
"Look, Clove," he tries again. "If we want to win this thing together, we're going to have to collaborate."
Clove holds up her knife, scrutinizing it in the dimming light of the fire. With the abrupt flick of her wrist, she sends it flying towards the trunk of a tree, where it lands with a dull thump. Cato takes this opportunity to move closer to her, all the while not taking his grip off of the spear in his hand.
"If this is about Glimmer," he hisses, voice so soft that Clove can barely hear himself speak. "Then..."
"Then what?" she snaps, drawing yet another knife from the inside of her jacket. This one has a curved, serrated blade and looks as deadly as its owner.
Cato knows that reasoning won't sit well with his District partner at the moment, so he resorts to mockery.
"Oh? Were we... jealous?" he hisses into her ear once more.
"Why would I be jealous of a dead tribute, Cato?" Clove's tone has reverted back to its icy, detached air, signifying that her emotions are once again under lock and key.
"You tell me." Cato says loudly, standing up and backing away from her. He gets a scowl in return.
After a moment, Clove sighs in what Cato interprets as either resignation or irritation. She then leans in to whisper in Cato's ear.
"You know I don't like to share, Cato."
After a deliberate pause, he returns her taunting whisper with one of his own.
"Neither do I."
Before Cato backs away, he makes sure that his lips brush Clove's cheek, and tells himself that all of Panem hasn't seen their games of the mind, played in the dark.
The greatest loss is what dies inside us whilst we still live.
The last time they kiss, she's dying.
He's trying to track District 11, whom he and Clove have established as the major threat, second only to Fire Girl. The forest is dense, and even in the daylight he still has to fight his way through the undergrowth.
And that's when he hears it.
"Cato!" she shrieks. "Cato!" She sounds so broken, so terrified, and her voice sounds so different, so uncharacteristic, that for a moment, Cato doesn't know what to do.
And then he springs into action, primal, Career instincts kicking in.
"Clove!" he roars in desperation.
And then Cato is sprinting, faster than he's ever run in his life, towards the Cornucopia. His heartbeat hammers in his ears, and he's panting for breath, but that's not Cato's key concern.
No. The solitary word repeats itself in his head so many times that it begins to blur together into one long string of a word. Nonononono.
With everything that's happened, Cato has forgotten one crucial point, but Clove's cries quickly remind him that when all's said and done, Careers are still human, and when it comes down to it, they are just as fallible as the rest of the tributes. No one is invincible.
"Clove!" he screams, the sound of his pained voice ripping through the trees like her cries are ripping through his soul.
He bursts into the clearing in front of the Cornucopia and there she is, in all her broken glory. His brain doesn't even fully register District 11 and Fire Girl, escaping into the safety of the trees. The Career inside of Cato tells him to leave Clove, leave her now, and chase after Fire Girl or District 11.
But in the end, the sliver of humanity within him forces him to stay with Clove as she dies.
"Clove!" he cries, aware at how weak and pathetic he, monstrous Cato, sounds. "Please. Stay." His voice cracks on the last word, because they both know it's impossible. Clove, the girl who never misses, is fading.
Her eyes, once filled with malice and cunning, seem glassy and anxious. She's as weak as he is in this moment, and just as broken. Strands of her dark, beautiful hair are now coated with slick, crimson blood. Cato wants nothing more than to just put that blood back in her veins, where it belongs, but he cannot.
Cato didn't even know that he still had a heart, but it turns out that he does, and it's breaking, shattering into shards that can never be pieced back together.
"Clove." he whispers. It's all futile: the Games, winning, his existence. She's going to die, and a part of him will die with her.
"Cato." She says the word as if relishing the taste, its sweetness. On the threshold of death, her voice emanates terror, betraying her, inviting all of Panem to see the fear that is bubbling inside of her, bleeding up through the cracks in her facade. Cato can feel the life leeching from her, and despite everything, a single tear splashes onto Clove's face. He swipes at the rest of the traitorous tears forming in his eyes; he can't show weakness, not now.
(But he can't help it. His delusion of potential happiness is going up in flames, and it's all because of a rock.)
"I'm sorry." Cato chokes out. All his life, he'd never had the humility to say those words until now, and he means every syllable of it.
Don't leave. His mind screams. Make her stay! Please. Please. Please. They were supposed to win- the brutal, sadistic tributes of District 2. Now, it all seems like a hollow lie.
(Because it is a lie. It always has been, and always will be.)
"I-" The rise and fall of Clove's chest is frighteningly slow now, her breaths rattling agonizingly in the back of her throat. Clove doesn't finish her sentence, and Cato will never know what exactly it was that she was trying to say to him, because Clove will never speak again.
Cato leans forwards and kisses her on her forehead, which is already becoming cold and rigid with death. He knows that the cameras will most likely be trained on Fire Girl at this moment, but even if they aren't, he doesn't give a damn. Nothing makes sense anymore, so what does it matter? Let everyone see his moment of weakness; he's going to slaughter them all anyways, and he's going to slaughter them soon.
(Very soon, he promises himself.)
Clove looks so peaceful in death, in a way she never looked in life; she seems smaller, somehow, more fragile than he'd like her to look. He takes one of the knives from the inside of her jacket and places it in her stiff fingers.
Then the cannon booms, ringing across the arena as the warmth in Clove's body is slowly leeched up by the hard, unforgiving earth.
And Cato's sanity, already feeble and frail due to his years of training, finally dies along with Clove.
Where there is anger, there is always pain underneath.
~Eckhart Tolle
They will never kiss again.
The rain is pouring down in sheets, pounding against Cato's back. The torrent of water is so thick that he can barely see his own hands, which clutch the hilt of his sword like a lifeline. His crazed mind contemplates whether or not the Gamemakers are trying to drown him in the rain.
But even this deluge of water, the inferno of Cato's fury and vengeance cannot be extinguished. It burns within him, fueling him onwards, clouding his vision more than the rain does.
"Where are you, you bastard?" he roars. The beast inside of him thirsts for the blood of Clove's killer, and his breath comes in short, angry bursts.
"You coward!" Cato bellows, and his knuckles are a ghostly white from clenching his weapon with such brute force.
Kill him. Her voice hisses inside his mind. Make him suffer. Her voice shouldn't be there, but it is welcomed nonetheless, and Cato is all too happy to oblige with her orders; he wants nothing more than to sink his blade into District 11's flesh, to let him drown in his poisonous blood.
"You call me a coward?" District 11 steps out of the shadows. He holds both his own bag from the feast and Cato's- Cato and Clove's. The fury within Cato burns, so much so that he can't contain it all, and his hands tremble with burning, white-hot rage.
"You call me a coward, but you're the one who killed Rue- she was just a little girl! You and your allies- you murdered her!" District 11 roars, his face contorted in what Cato considers unmerited rage. After all, District 11 hasn't had everything stolen from his grasp.
"You bastard!" Cato bellows, dropping his sword and lunging at District 11. In his irrepressible fury, he has decided that he will take District 11 down with his own bare hands.
Kill him. It's her voice, yet again, snarling and hissing in the confines of Cato's crazed mind. Tear him to bits. He deserves to suffer for everything he's stolen from you.
District 11 struggles under Cato's abrupt attack, but soon he regains footing and they're both wrestling for dominance. District 11 is strong, but Cato's rage grants him inhuman strength, and so they are both evenly matched. The rain still refuses to relent, soaking everything and turning the ground beneath them muddy.
"You killed her!" Cato roars, spitting on District 11's face. "We were supposed to go home together!" He's on top of District 11 now, trying to strangle him.
"You. Killed. Her!" Cato screams. With each word, he delivers a blow to District 11's face, effectively breaking his nose. Blood streams into the mud, a dark crimson, and the sight of it sends Cato plummeting even deeper into the depths of his sadistic and demented rage.
District 11 throws him off, scrambling to his feet. His eyes are smoldering as he lunges at Cato once again.
Cato claws at District 11's face, but the larger boy procures a machete and takes a swing at him. Cato writhes away, and the blade only succeeds in cutting his cheek. More blood pours down into the mud while the rain continues to plunge downwards, almost as if it has no desire to relent and instead plans on continuing to fall for all of eternity.
All of time seems to blend together, into one large blur of color. Knives, muscle, the need for vengeance, swords, metal, pain, and blood all merge into one until Cato cannot separate them. Hours have passed, or is it minutes? All he can feel now is the tendrils of pain consuming him, that and the hatred and wrath within him that has festered for so long and has finally been unleashed. Cool rain slides down his face, mingling with the blood on his body.
This is taking too long, Cato. Clove's voice resonates in the confines of his skull. Just like you took too long to get to me. Kill him!
Those words snap something else inside Cato, and he lets out a primitive roar. He grabs his sword and in one fluid motion, drives it through District 11's abdomen.
District 11 cries out in pain and falls to the forest floor, where the ground drinks up his blood as thirstily as it laps up the rain. Cato staggers over to the brute and draws out a knife.
Give them a good show, Cato, she hisses in his mind.
And he does.
District 11's cries echo through the forest, but there's no one here to save him. Bits of flesh fall to join the blood that soaks the ground as Cato carves patterns onto District 11's skin. Clove would be proud. The fury within him is bleeding out as District 11 does, and is replaced with a feeling of gratification.
But the feeling of gratification ebbs away as District 11's life does, and Cato is left with a sense of deep loss. Clove's gone; nothing will ever bring her back.
"Are you happy?" he snarls as he stands up and runs a hand through his blond hair, which is matted with mud and dark, bitter blood. "Are you happy?"
Surprisingly, he gets an answer- one that his fractured mind supplies in the form of Clove's voice.
Yes.
The sound of the canon firing is drowned out by the roar of the rain.
Sometimes there are no words, no clever quotes to neatly sum up what's happened that day... Sometimes, the day... just... ends...
"Shoot me and he goes down with me."
Fire Girl's face is filled with anguish, and Cato takes a perverse pleasure in seeing it. Now she knows what it feels like to see someone you care about on the threshold of death, and she will suffer.
Cato hates Fire Girl, and so did Clove. They both agreed that she was so self-righteous, so pathetic, and the worst part was that the entire country bought her sappy love story. As if.
Below, the mutts growl and yelp in eager expectation of blood and flesh. In some ways, they are just like Cato himself; they do what they're designed to, and they do it well. They thirst for blood and bones, just as he does. They seek the thrill of the kill; they seek to avenge their deaths as tributes, or so he thinks.
A twisted smile makes its way across his face, because victory will be his, at last. After everything that's happened, all he wants is to fulfill his goal: winning, at all costs.
(He just never thought about how much it would truly cost him to lose Clove.)
But then, he feels Lover Boy trace an 'x' on his hand. For a second, he's confused, but then he realizes what it means.
He's too late.
The arrow pierces his flesh and he cries out instinctively, releasing Lover Boy. He perches on the edge of the Cornucopia, and in that moment, Cato knows he's going to literally fall to his doom. He curses how cliché it all is.
He plummets towards the ground and lands on his back with a bone-jarring thud, effectively knocking all the air from his lungs. The mutts converge towards him, growling and snarling, their canines glinting in the dying light. Cato scrambles up quickly, drawing out his sword as the beasts advance.
For awhile, he manages to hold his own. He cuts through their flesh and they slice through his, and the howls of man and monster echo across the arena.
But in the end, there are too many of them.
One mutts leaps at him, and it's then that Cato realizes the entirety of the situation.
The eyes that stare back at him are the same as they were in life: glinting with sadism and malice. It's her.
All of the blood drains from his face, and in the back of his mind he knows that the Capitol will be enjoying the show. Oh, how they will love it!
Reflexively, he lunges out with his sword, and blood spews forth. Clove's mutt yowls in anger and pain, and the rest take this as the signal to surge forward.
The largest mutt of all lunges at him, and Cato barely has the time to register the straw collar with the number 11 woven on it before the mutt tears into his armor.
He doesn't even have the time to scream before another mutt rips at his throat, crushing his vocal cords. They drag him back towards the Cornucopia, teeth tearing into his armor and flesh. Blood pools on the ground around him, and some of the smaller mutts begin lapping it up. The larger, more bloodthirsty ones continue to rip through his flesh and bones.
Cato moans as pain engulfs him with its fiery tendril, and all he can think is that he wants an end. He's bloody and broken, inside and out.
His blue eyes, now devoid of cruelty and only full of agony, meet her dark, furious, and bloodthirsty ones. Another low, garbled moan escapes his lips as her teeth tear away gobbets of his flesh.
Getting tired? Clove's voice still mocks him, but the only reply he has for her is another groan that emanates from the back of his mangled throat.
The icy night air bites into his skin, but it's nothing compared to the pain of mutts' teeth and seeing her again, mutated by the Gamemakers.
In her death, Clove has been twisted into a beast, just as she was twisted into one while she was still alive.
Please. Cato's lips form the word, but there is no one listening. Clove's eyes continue to stare back at him, cruel and unforgiving.
And then, over the rim of the Cornucopia, Fire Girl appears. Cato sees the arrow and knows that it will all be over soon.
He wonders if he'll ever kiss Clove again.
Please.
She doesn't answer.
Acknowledgments: Thanks to my wonderful friend and Beta Reader, Ann Bei Fong, for beta-ing this for me and pointing out the story's flaws, including those notorious grammar errors that all writers and readers detest. You're the best, and this story wouldn't be the same without you.
Victoria Ynez: Thank you so much for all of your help with brainstorming and for crying over Cinna and Clato with me.
Also, thanks to all of you who took the time to read this story; it means a lot to me. Hopefully it wasn't horrible or out of character, and if you found it so, please accept my sincerest apologies. D;
Disclaimers: This story was not meant, in any way, to be fluffy. Also, I do not own The Hunger Games, its characters, or any of the bolded quotes. It's to be noted the last quote is said by Thomas Gibson, as Aaron Hotchner, on the show Criminal Minds, and the other two quotes that were not cited can be found on the wonderful world of Tumblr.