Title: There Goes The Fear
Fandom: The Hunger Games
Characters: Clove, Cato, Marvel, Glimmer, Thresh, Katniss.
Pairings: Clove/Marvel, Cato/Glimmer, implied Cato/Clove.
The sun had set.
Cato and Clove sat at their campsite, staring up at the sky. Waiting for a sign. The signal.
Clove sat anxiously. Marvel. He was supposed to be back by now. Where was he?
He's not dead. He's not dead. He'll come back to me. Clove closed her eyes and focused on those thought. He'll come back to me.
It was funny. The girl who thought she could love no one, the girl who was in the games only for herself, for her own glory, fell in love.
Love. All those years she'd asked the same question. What was it good for? The only answer she could think of, nothing. But she was wrong.
Perhaps she was being silly. She barely knew the boy, never even knew he existed before the games. But then there was their pact.
Their jealousy of the attention Cato and Glimmer received for their flirtation led Clove and Marvel to devise a plan of their own.
It was a joke, that's what she told herself. She didn't realize how important he was until he left to go kill the little girl from 11.
The way he smiled at her. It felt real. Maybe he was just good at playing pretend, but it felt real. His biting kisses still lingered on her lips.
Cato nudged Clove and she opened her eyes. Up in the sky, the hologram of the little girl from 11 appeared in the sky.
What was her name again? Rue, or something. Well, Rue was gone.
Clove sighed with relief. He's fine. He's fine.
Little did she know, she was only jinxing herself.
The hologram flashed to the next picture. There he was. His face in the sky, Marvel.
It was surreal.
Clove's heart stopped beating. Cato looked down at the ground with shame in his eyes, seeing as Marvel was starting to grow on him as well.
Clove couldn't breathe. He was supposed to come back to her. She was supposed to get her happy ending.
After his picture disappeared from the sky, she let out a horrified scream. "No!" She cried, falling to the ground.
Heartbroken. Angered.
She began to run. It had to be the District 12 girl. She killed Marvel. Her Marvel. As she stepped forward, Clove felt Cato's arms wrestle her to the ground. "Clove, no! You can't!" He knew what she was thinking.
She thrashed and struggled in his arms, but he was stronger and he held her down. "Let me kill her! Let me kill her, please!" She screamed. "She's still out there!" It was getting harder and harder to breathe. The world was spinning. Everything seemed blurry in her eyes.
"She'll kill you too!" Cato struggled to hold her arms still. "Not now, you'll get your chance! Just not now!"
She got tired of fighting.
He let her go and she fell to the ground in tears.
Cold, heartless, brutal Clove. She wasn't supposed to care. She wasn't supposed to love. She should be happy. One less person to kill. She was just closer to getting home now.
But no, that wasn't right. It didn't feel right. Cato understood, he still wasn't quite himself after the sight of Glimmer's swollen body on the ground after the incident with the tracker jackers. He broke down, she and Marvel had to pry him from her lifeless body. He cried. Cato didn't cry. But he cried for her.
Clove felt Cato put his arm around her. "We'll be alright. We'll be safe soon."
Cato, the big brother she never had. The one who taught her to be strong all those years ago. The only person left who actually cared about her. Perhaps she could go home, she had him. They had each other. They'd get their happy ending.
But Clove didn't want a happy ending. At least not with him.
The story's not over yet.
The small girl crouched behind the bushes, narrowing her eyes at the objects on the table in the center of the field.
Right in front of the cornucopia was a table on which lay four bags. One for District 2, one for District 5, one for District 11, and one for District 12.
Clove hesitated. I can't let them beat me. I won't let them get me.
That very second, just as she was about to step out of her hiding spot, the girl from District 5, the one with the fiery red hair, darted out of nowhere and sprinted to the center, grabbing her bag and making a run for it.
Clove thought for a moment. I could outrun her. I could catch her. But no, not yet.
And just when she was about to give up, another girl ran to the center of the field, towards the cornucopia.
Clove's heart stopped. District 12, Katniss Everdeen. The girl who got all the attention because of a stupid dress, a stupid boy, for no go reason at all. The girl who didn't deserve to live, the one who killed her ally.
Marvel.
He was hers. She was his.
But because of Katniss, he was gone. The only person she was sure she loved, gone and never coming back. The thought angered Clove. Furious, she clenched her fist around her knife and threw it in the girl's direction, grazing the side of her forehead.
Katniss stumbled to the ground and struggled to get out an arrow. Clove ran after her and tackled Katniss to the ground. Katniss was bigger, older, but Clove was stronger. She gritted her teeth and stepped on Katniss's wrist, pinning her to the ground. Clove dug her knee into Katniss's stomach and pressed a blade to her neck.
She could just kill her now, this was her chance. But she wanted her to suffer. Suffer like she did, feel the pain of dying slowly.
"Where's your boyfriend, District 12? Still hanging on?" She sneered, pressing the blade into her skin, harder and harder by the second.
"He's probably out there… Hunting Cato…" Katniss struggled to speak. "Peeta!"
Clove pressed her knee into the girl's stomach harder and harder, causing her to struggle in pain. "Liar. He's nearly dead. Cato knows where he cut him. You've probably got him strapped to a tree somewhere while you try to keep his heart going." She smiled back sadisticly.
Pain. Suffering. Heartbreak.
"What's in the pretty little backpack? That medicine for Lover Boy? Too bad he'll never get it." She smirked back at the weaken girl and reached for a small blade from her jacket.
Cruel, curved, and sharp. "I promised Cato if her let me have you, I'd give the audience a good show."
Katniss kicked and struggled, breathing heavily and trying to push her away, only to be unsuccessful.
"Forget it, District 12. We're going to kill you. Just like we killed your pathetic little ally."
Marvel was the one who killed Rue, both knew that. But Clove was torturing Katniss in his honor, it only seemed right to acknowledge his last great deed.
"What was her name? The one who hopped around in the trees? Rue? Well, first Rue, then you, and I think we'll let nature take care of Lover Boy. How does that sound?" Clove knew it was wrong to taunt, but Katniss deserved to suffer. She took away the light in her life, the purpose she had been searching for for so long. She took and now it was her turn to give back.
"I think we'll start with your mouth. I don't think you'll have much use for your lips anymore?" She began to trace her knife through the corners of her mouth. Katniss could ferl the stinging scratches of the blade and gritted her teeth, but it was no use.
"Want to blow Lover Boy one last kiss?"
That very second, the moment Clove began to dig the blade deeper into her skin, she's yanked away.
As Katniss pushed herself up from the ground weakly, Clove dangled a foot off the ground. The small girl was being held against the walls of the cornucopia by the much stronger boy from District 11, Thresh.
"What did you do that little girl? You kill her?" He demanded to know, smacking her head against the cold walls.
She cried out. It wasn't supposed to be like this. "It wasn't me!" She pleaded, choking back tears while fighting the pain of his hand clamped around her neck.
"You said her name. I heard you. You kill her? You cut her uo like you were going to cut up this girl here?" His voice was filled with rage and Clove began to realize his true caring for that little girl. Just like she cared for Marvel.
She understood that feeling, that agony. It wasn't fair, the way the were treated in the arena. Shoved in a crowd, making alliances, becoming attached, and having to kill the ones they've grown to care for.
Thresh picked up a large stone from the ground, holding it out in one hand, ready to smash it into Clove's skull.
"C-Cato!" She screamed. "CATO!" She knew it was her time to go now. This whole time she had been wrong.
"Clove!" Cato's voice shouted from a distance. He was edging closer and closer, but he wouldn't reach her in time.
Thresh smashed the rock in Clove's skull, releasing her thin neck from his grasp, dropping her to the ground. A dent was left in her forehead and she began to gasp for air.
Thresh dropped the stone and turned to Katniss, who had been watching in horror the whole time. "Just this time, 12. For the little girl. For Rue."
Cato edged closer and Clove was on the edge of death. "Clove!"
"You better run now, Fire Girl." Thresh's last words before taking off with both his own bag and the one intended for Cato. Katniss took off in the other direction, horrified by what gruesome death she had just seen.
Cato reached Clove and drops to his knees. "Clove!" He screamed. "Clove, stay with me!" He began to beg, hold her hand as blood seeped from the gash in her head. "Don't you die on me, Clove!"
But it was futile, she couldn't be saved. Clove took one more gasp for air and then she was gone. Her hazel eyes stared blankly into the sky, so empty. So hollow. The cannon went off. Cato cried over Clove's limp body, regretting not being able to save her.
But now she was safe, she was serene. The girl with the knives drifted into a deep sleep.