OK, I just had this idea while writing You Have to Come Home (read it!!) and I hope it turned out ok. Love reviews!!!
Disclaimer: I do not own THG. Belongs to Suzanne Collins. Blah, blah blah. Lets get on with it!! =D
The grass is long, the wind is blowing, the sun is almost set, and I've almost got him.
"Cato! I'm going to get you!"
The sound of my brother laughing and running away from me, only to slow down enough for me to almost catch him, then running away again, makes me laugh as well, and soon we're laughing so much we can't run any more. We fall down in the grass, and he hugs me, and I think, this is perfect...
Every day I watched my brother battle through the Games in amazement. Every day, it seemed that a bit of the amazement turns to horror as I watched him slowly lose his humanity.
He had to volunteer. He got elected. Each year, we choose the boy and girl we think most likely to succeed in the Games to volunteer. After Clove got chosen, when the adults voted for the boy tribute, almost every one of them voted for Cato.
So he volunteered, and I think that he started to change as soon as he stepped foot in the Capitol. Just before he left, though, he said to me, "Aalia, make sure you watch me. Make sure I come home." What could I do but tell him I would?
In his interview, it seemed like he was a completely different person than the one I had known for the eleven years of my life. All strong, cunning, and deadly. He's not like that. I can't remember a day when I didn't groan at him because of his incredibly stupid, but oddly funny jokes, nor one when I haven't seen him laugh. I know that the mentors choose an "angle" for the interviews, but even so. I didn't know he was that good an actor.
Right from the beginning of the Games I knew something was wrong. He killed people. And what's more, near to the end, he seemed to enjoy it. He was fading away from me, fading away from the person who I've loved for so long.
I thought he would make it! I honestly thought he would make it. He made it to the last three. He was about to kill the boy from 12, when the girl from 12 shot him in the hand. I saw it in slow motion; Cato falling down, down, down into the horrible wolves waiting eagerly below. I wanted to run out of the room, but I remember the last promise I made to him. I had to stay. I had to watch as he was mutilated. I had to watch as the mutts killed him as slowly as possible, but undoubtedly killing him. I had to watch him lying in a pool of his own blood, whimpering for mercy. And I had to watch as the girl from 12 ended his life with an arrow through his skull. As soon as the cannon fired, I fled the room. I cried myself to sleep that night. When I did get to sleep, all I could see was my brother being dismantled slowly, piece by piece, for the entertainment of the Capitol.
The next night, however, I dreamt of the last day in the field. We were playing tag, and laughing and shouting. This left me sadder and more separated than the first night, because I knew I would never hear him laugh again. I would never groan at one of his awful jokes, or feel the triumph of catching him in the meadow. My brother was gone, transformed into something I didn't recognise, even before the end came. The Games took him away from me, even before he was dead. Because the person who had killed all those children was not my brother.