Hasten

10/1/12

Honor

"Want to blow Lover Boy one last kiss?" I ask. A generous offer, I think, but a rhetorical question. I don't expect an answer.

District Twelve's gray eyes bore steadily into mine, cold and dark with a steely hatred I'm proud to have inspired. I start to smile, when she spits blood and saliva into my face and I flush red. "All right then. Let's get started," I say.

The knife I've chosen to carve Twelve's face is one of my daintier blades and one of my favorites. Just as its razor-sharp tip opens a cut at Twelve's lip, fresh blood staining its glinting steel, I'm yanked into the air by an impossibly strong pair of vice-like arms that slam mine to my sides, crushing my ribs.

Twelve is equally stunned, eyes wide, jaw slack. A primitive rage sparks in my core and spills out of me in a shrill slur of obscenities. I thrash against who I know to be District Eleven's Thresh. The brute flips me around as if I were a rag doll. My heart leaps to my throat and I'm thinking of my knives, neatly arranged in the folds of my jacket, when he throws me to the earth. Dirt and dust explode into the air like Capitol fireworks.

For a moment, I think it's over. That I've died. Then a sharp, electric pain I've seldom felt darts up my spine, through my limbs out to my fingertips and toes, and I know I'm still alive.

Not only is breathing difficult, it hurts. My ribcage is shattered, my lungs whistle and wheeze, and my tailbone and skull throb, but my heart's still pumping strong.

As my vision clears, my assailant comes into focus and terror seizes me. At my side, my nails dig into the earth and I think to sweep dirt into Eleven's eyes, but I'm shaking and my body's not responding.

I hate that I gawk, that Eleven's reduced me—District Two's Clove!—to cowardice.

District Eleven is livid. "What'd you do to that little girl? You kill her?"

We District Two warriors are proud. Never do we concede defeat. But I've lost my knife; I'm defenseless. I scramble backward, a petrified butterfly fleeing a starved crow. "No! No, it wasn't me!"

"You said her name. I heard you. You kill her?" Eleven's strange amber-speckled eyes are wild, crazed. "You cut her up like you were going to cut up this girl here?"

"No! No, I—" I stammer. I didn't! I didn't kill that girl!

I watch District Eleven swipe something from the earth—a stone, about the size of a small loaf of bread. Suddenly I'm screaming. I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't want to die.

"Cato!" The plea isn't my own, can't be. It's emotionally charged, guttural, so like District Eight's that night around the bonfire. "Cato!"

Crack.

I hear Cato's answer, my name, and deep inside me something—my heart?—my lungs?—swells until like a balloon it bursts, collapsing like a felled tree with my ribcage as a final low moan escapes my lips.

Because my mentors are watching, my parents are watching, Panem is watching, I don't cry. I won't give District Eleven that satisfaction. I won't embarrass District Two.

I overhear Eleven's interrogation of Twelve. Neither Eleven nor Twelve is clear to me—it's like they're speaking somewhere far away and under water—but I understand Eleven is barking questions in that awful, thunderous voice I'll forever despise and Twelve is whispering hoarse, unsatisfactory answers. I tune them out. I don't want to listen. Why should I? He didn't.

The world spins into oblivion. I see a space blindingly white. Fast approaching is a black pit like a pupil that spirals toward me at breakneck speed or maybe I'm falling into it, I don't know, but I'm certain I'll be swallowed whole. I hesitate, unsure whether to surrender or resist. Darkness envelops my world. My senses have dimmed, are leaving me. Already I'm blind.

"Clove!"

Cato drops to his knees at my side, spear in hand, mumbles my name. He abandons his weapon to pull me into his arms to cradle against his broad, firm chest; I'm immersed in his familiar warmth and scent, and I feel safe to die. But he's crying into my hair, his large callused hand supporting my head, my face pressed into his hard shoulder. "Clove," he implores, voice cracking. "Stay with me, Clove…"

Stop, Cato, I want to say. The cameras are rolling. Panem is watching. Don't show weakness… not now, not ever. Don't let them win.

"Clove," Cato whispers.

My stalling heart tells me my time in the arena is up, I'm going home. Avenge me, Cato. Kill Thresh. Restore honor to our district. Win, I'd say if I could, and remember me.

The last word I hear stops my heart. "Please."

We've lost.

Finis