Katniss was up high enough and in tight enough to the tree that Glimmer's arrows couldn't touch her. With all the training Glimmer must have received over the years, Katniss was surprised she wasn't a better shot. If their places had been reversed, Katniss would've had the blonde girl stuck with the first arrow she loosed. She supposed that was the difference between shooting for sport and shooting so your family didn't starve. Archery couldn't be Glimmer's skill of choice and Katniss wondered if she'd picked the bow more for aesthetic reasons; Marvel had his spear, Clove her knives, and Cato his sword. Weapon variety seemed like the sort of decision a Career's training team would make when they could afford to focus on more than just keeping their Tribute alive.
As the threat of Glimmer whistled away like the girl's last futile arrow sailing into the trees, Katniss started worrying about the rest of the Pack. She kept her face turned from them, the tree digging grittily into her cheek, but she'd spent enough time sizing them up during training that she could picture each one clearly. More importantly, she could picture the way they wielded their weapons. Clove's throwing ability was light and quick―if any of them could hit Katniss from the ground, it would be Clove―but a knife big enough to do serious damage wouldn't make it between the tree's twisting upper branches. The terrifying brunette could flick a smaller blade at Katniss, but the potential resulting injury would be (relatively) minor. From the way Clove seemed to rabidly froth over her collection, Katniss doubted she'd throw a knife she couldn't get back, unless it was sure to kill its target.
Though his stony face and constant clawed grip on his spear raised all kinds of predator warning signals in the instinctual part of Katniss's brain, Marvel scared her the least in her current position. He could throw the spear with a brutal snap and achieve accuracy at least as good as Glimmer's with the bow, but neither his weapon nor his physique were versatile. Katniss could see that the spear was all about leverage, delivering the most power when thrown out or down. Hurling the thing up would be more trouble than it was worth, and Katniss frankly didn't think Marvel could manage that maneuver. He was tall, but not broad, like Cato, and didn't look like he had it in him. If Marvel attempted to send the spear up, gravity would be not only his obstacle, but his enemy, slowing the weapon and plunging it back to the ground where the Careers were currently crowding. Failing to kill her and hitting a member of his alliance instead wouldn't lead to Marvel having a very long stint in the arena.
Cato was the problem.
He was moving up the tree like he was wrestling against it and the sound of his blade scraping the bark with a snick, snick was particularly disturbing. Katniss tugged herself up a few more branches, but the options were getting springy and thin. She preferred not to be run through with Cato's sword, but falling several storeys to her death wasn't favourable either.
Cato's heaving breaths were rising to her ears as he exerted himself. Katniss twisted to watch him, moaning in pain when the muscles of her burnt thigh clenched to preserve her hold on the trunk. He looked like he was struggling, but he had the calls of the Careers to keep him motivated. Katniss wished she hadn't been abandoned. Where was Haymitch's slippery charisma to help her now? He was supposed to be winning her sponsors, but was more likely sleeping off his latest overindulgence. And Peeta? Katniss shifted as little as possible, scanning the base of the tree for his blonde head. She groaned, in equal parts pain and annoyance. Why were they all blonde? It was like a ready-made alliance based on genetics. Clove was the obvious exception, but Katniss found it all too easy to picture her scalping one of the others after murdering them and wearing their hair as a wig.
No sign of Peeta, and Cato was closing in on her, though not as quickly as before. Katniss unclenched her fingers from the tree, her heart plummeting as she wobbled in place. Small movements. No overcorrections. She coached herself back into control, though not calmness, pulling the knee of her uninjured leg up so she could swing her leg over the branch supporting her. The toe of her boot clipped the branch as she cleared it and Katniss stifled the desire to cry out, gripping the branch with frantic hands until her fingertips burned. She leaned sideways into the trunk, breathing shakily, and tipped her head ever so slightly to track Cato's progress.
He was moving, rustling around. What was he doing? Suddenly, the late afternoon light caught Cato's blade. Was he planning to act on her sarcastic suggestion and throw it at her after all? Katniss jerked her head around, seeking an escape route that failed to present itself. She tried to think logically, reminding herself that Cato couldn't possibly hit her with his sword. This was how you lost the Games―talking yourself into defeat. Katniss had seen it in the arena broadcasts every year. She breathed out slowly and looked down. Cato had the sword held away from his body, pointed towards the ground.
"Heads up," he called down to his allies. He let the blade drop. From the height Cato had achieved, the metal practically sang as it fell to pierce the earth. Katniss pressed her back into the tree and gingerly hitched her wounded leg up and over the branch so that her knees rested on either side of it. She shuffled, leaning carefully to find Cato. Her braid swooped forward, making her neck suddenly cool and damp. She was sweating.
Without his cumbersome weapon, Cato was scaling the tree quickly, hauling himself almost gracefully towards ever-higher handholds. And towards her. Katniss longed pointlessly for Glimmer's bow, the clean click of metal on metal as she nocked her arrow back in the training centre coming instantly to mind. At least now, with the solidity of the tree against her spine, she could kick out at Cato, hopefully dislodge him so she didn't have to kill him with her bare hands. As if that were even a possibility. Katniss knew she didn't stand a chance against the most muscular Career in hand-to-hand combat.
Cato's hand closed around a branch within her reach and Katniss dropped her weight to one side, slamming the heel of her boot into his fingers.
"Shit!" He pulled his hand back and stared up at her. His blue eyes looked sharp, but not sane. Cato recovered, grinning. He was obviously more shocked than hurt. Pity.
"You know, Girl on Fire," he called, speaking loudly for his alliance's benefit, "we haven't had a chance to spend much time together. In fact, I feel like we've barely seen you at all since we got in here."
Katniss heard feminine laughter and a mocking voice winding up to her through the branches: "Why so shy, Katniss?" It was Glimmer.
"Stop playing, Cato!" Clove this time. "Kill her!" She sounded annoyed and Katniss found that ironic. All four Careers seemed to treat the Games as sport, but Katniss had pegged Clove as the true sadist among them. That knife-throwing psycho didn't just want to eliminate her fellow Tributes, she wanted to torture them.
Cato grabbed the branch again, swiftly repositioning his hand when Katniss's boot came down. He hadn't lost any ground, and now she was unstable. Cato swung his other arm up, like he was back on the climbing net in the training centre, catching Katniss's ankle in a firm grip. She jerked her leg for all she was worth, but he drew her down towards him relentlessly. Katniss tried to pull her foot up, but his hold was too tight. She scrabbled at the branch with desperate fingers, but her place in the tree was a perch, not a fortress, and she couldn't hold her position without a weapon.
Katniss heard ecstatic whooping from the rest of the Career Pack as she was dragged from her branch, banging her hip into the one below. The burn on her thigh felt like it was igniting all over again as her leg hung down, dangling like a puppet's. Katniss's arms flailed and her backpack scraped, but didn't hook on anything. She wasn't going to die by Cato's hand, she would be defeated by her own choice of a precarious stronghold. She was slipping sideways when Cato's arm came around her waist, pinning her between his limb and the tree's.
"Toss her down here, Cato! We'll finish her off for you!" The voice belonged to one of the girls, screechy with bloodlust.
"If she survives the fall." Marvel's low, unfeeling monotone.
But Cato wasn't trying to establish a hold to push her off, he was trying to keep her there, lifting himself up to Katniss even as he secured her. She tried to reach behind her, wild for the hefty knife stowed in her pack; Katniss decided she would rather take her chances with the fall than lay immobilized while Cato got himself into a comfortable murdering position.
"Really, Katniss. We should talk." Cato's eyes danced madly as he settled in on her branch, pulling her over onto her back and then helping her sit up next to him.
"What are you doing?" Katniss was disoriented when the question seemed to echo, before realizing all three of the grounded Careers had asked it nearly in sync. So, whatever Cato was up to now wasn't part of the group's plan. That didn't make it any less dangerous for her.
Katniss ripped her arm out of his grip, though it caused her to rock on the branch. She hastily grabbed at it to stabilize herself and his hand darted out to squeeze around her wrist like a shackle.
"The only sound I want to hear come out of your mouth is the one you make when I kill you." Katniss glared at him, but Cato just smirked, raising his eyebrows.
"You think I'm an idiot?" He shook his head at her. "You don't even have a weapon. If you attacked me right now, I'd like my chances."
"You know nothing about me," Katniss spat at him. Maybe if she slid off the branch suddenly…. He couldn't hold her weight up by her arm, though the drop would likely dislocate her shoulder….
Cato made a disappointed noise.
"I know you fight with a bow, and you don't seem to have one." His eyes dragged over her and Katniss felt violated, even through her arena jacket and uniform. She couldn't keep the startled look from her face―she'd been so careful to hide her dominant skill from her competitors.
"I know you're just a poor girl from 12, but you can't be so naïve as to think that those of us who can pay can't get information." He cocked his head, the motion eerily birdlike. How Katniss longed to shoot him from this tree. "I know what you did for your evaluation."
She would jump. She would do it. Katniss wrenched away from him, but Cato was quick, catching her around the waist and yanking her along until their hips banged together. Her eyes flew to his and the teasing look was gone. Was that good or bad?
"Stop struggling, Katniss. I'm on your side."
Katniss twisted so sharply that Cato finally had to work to keep her on the branch, but this time, she wasn't intentionally trying to get away. Marvel, Glimmer, and Clove were still shouting up at them, but the noise faded into a hum.
"What?" she rushed out.
"For now, at least. I wouldn't die to save you like Peeta would." Cato shrugged. "But you're the best there is, in here. You and me." His eyes bored earnestly into hers.
Katniss felt close to tears, a combination of pain and hysteria.
"Peeta? He's not with me, he's with you! He's one of you!"
Cato shook his head.
"He might not be like us, but I can understand enough to know he was never with us."
"Then where is he, Cato?" Katniss was alarmed by how awful the thought of Peeta already dead was. His body lying somewhere nearby. Dispatched by the river as the Pack chased her down.
"I told him to run." Katniss was shaking her head, the action beyond her own control. "Yes, Katniss, I told him that when the rest of us cornered you, he needed to run if he wanted to live."
Katniss's mouth dropped open to argue. It couldn't be true. She wanted it to be true so badly.
"And I have a message from him."
Cato grabbed the back of her neck and brought Katniss's mouth to his. He was rough, working his lips against hers. This she would not allow. This was not something she'd been prepared to endure.
Before she could fight him off, an ear-piercing scream from below caused Cato to pull away.
"You planned this!"
Katniss leaned, still in Cato's grip, until she could see the other Tributes. It was Glimmer going off on Clove.
"You were playing us!" Glimmer turned to Marvel. "Go find Peeta, he's their weakest."
"No!" Katniss's cry was strangled, reverberating around her, but Glimmer's head jerked up to look for her. She only spared Katniss a few seconds' glance, then nodded to Marvel, who took off running into the forest.
"Kill Peeta if you want, I don't care, but if you betray us, you'll pay for it." Clove's hands were at her sides, but Katniss was willing to bet at least one of them was closed around the handle of a knife.
"Well, I think your 'us' just got a little too crowded for Marvel and I."
"She's not with us." Clove's voice was low and firm, sounding like it came through gritted teeth.
"Liar!" Glimmer shrieked. Out of the corner of her eye, Katniss saw Cato shift as if he intended to intervene, but Glimmer's arrow was out of her quiver, nocked, and plunging into Clove's chest before Cato could say a word. Katniss's eyebrows drew together as she watched Glimmer stagger backwards and fall to her knees, even as Clove swooned in a mirrored posture. Clove stilled almost instantly, flat on her back, but Glimmer flopped over, starting to tuck her knees before death froze her. With Glimmer on her side, Katniss could just make out the handles of two knives protruding from her torso.
Katniss thought she might be sick and went to lean against the tree, before she remembered it would mean leaning into Cato. She panted, trying to quell her panic, and raised her eyes to Cato's face. His jaw was tight and his bright blue eyes narrowed, but for someone who'd just watched his allies slaughter each other, he seemed horribly composed.
"Looks like my decision's already paying off." Cato's eyes left the bodies and locked with Katniss's.
"God, you're not even human."
"I'm just playing the game, Katniss. I brought them to this spot to take out one opponent, and instead they dispatch two. Pretty successful maneuver."
"So why should I believe you don't want to make it three deaths, since we're all just numbers?"
"Because Marvel, Thresh, that sneaky redhead from 5… they're still out there!" Cato threw out his hand, pointing angrily into the forest. He sighed, lowering his arm. "And I told you, you're the best in here besides me."
Katniss was feeling unsettled by more than just her narrow seat and Cato apparently recognized unshaken disbelief in her expression.
"Yes, I could've stayed in the Pack and killed you with them, but doesn't it make sense to you that I'd rather join you and eliminate the others one by one? We came after you because you're the obvious threat. With you dead, my head's next on the chopping block."
Katniss shifted as much as Cato's grip on her arm allowed, wincing as the fabric of her pants rasped over her burn.
"What about Clove? You're together. Both District 2. She would've fought with you."
"Oh, you find her predictable?" Cato's pale eyebrows rose. "Because I sure as hell don't. I don't even know how many blades she has." He licked his lip, looking away distractedly. "She sleeps with one in her hand though. All the time. Sharing a camp with her every night has been real relaxing."
Cato's sarcastically communicated fear made Katniss almost like him for a moment, maybe because she was seeing her own coping technique reflected back at her. Maybe because the fact that he was afraid meant she would be able to kill Cato after all.
"What's our strategy then?"
Cato looked confused.
"What do we do next? Go after Marvel? Peeta?"
All the points of his face seemed trained menacingly on her as he replied.
"You would hunt down Peeta with me?"
"What else would I do? Only one of us makes it out of this arena."
Cato started laughing and Katniss gave him a cold smile.
"Damn, you're tougher than I thought. Even after I passed on his kiss?"
Katniss looked at him disparagingly.
"There's no way Peeta would've asked you to do that."
Cato grinned at her, inspiring an idea.
"Besides, if you'd hung all your hopes of persuading me into an alliance on that kiss, one of us would be dead by now."
His smile shuddered and died, the muscles around his eyes tensing.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means that even trapped in the Hunger Games with 23 people trying to kill me, I still have standards, and you didn't meet them. Don't insult Peeta by attaching his name to that kiss."
Cato reaffirmed his grasp on the back of her neck and Katniss jolted. She hoped it looked realistic.
"What are you doing?"
"You can't expect me to climb down and go after someone with that still in my head." The sharp look in his eye that always managed to come across seductive, in a threatening sort of way, flicked to Katniss's mouth. "With you still in my head."
He leaned in, kissing her fiercely, and Katniss moaned in relief―though Cato didn't know that was the emotion behind it. She'd bet everything on a hunch that he'd respond to a challenge. Now, she just had to figure out how to get her knife while she kept him busy.
Cato was an enthusiastic, energetic partner, lust completely reviving him after his ascent up the tree. Or maybe it was the sick thrill of watching people die. Katniss was done analyzing his motivations. He released her neck, sliding his hand down her back to press her waist. She hummed against his mouth, pushing herself to act for the cameras like she never had before. What a plot twist this must be for the Games team back at the Capitol.
When Katniss slanted her body against his, she knew it wasn't enough. Smoothing her palms to the shirt revealed by Cato's unzipped jacket, Katniss braced herself against his chest instead of the tree while she hurtled one leg back over the branch to face him fully. The pain to her leg was excruciating and Katniss couldn't stop herself from crying out against Cato's lips. Luckily, he was still riding the train of sexual confidence, taking her change in position for a desire to be closer to him, and had dragged his palms up to grope her breasts (layers and all) at the same moment. She was happy to pass her un-anaesthetized vocalization off as wantonness. He scrambled around in place so that his parted knees kissed hers.
Cato was into it now, the fingers of one hand continuing to manipulate her breast while the other hand went to her ass, grabbing at her and pulling her eagerly towards him. His mouth moved to her throat, a mixture of kisses and hungry bites that were driving towards the neck of her shirt, and Katniss saw her opportunity.
"Let me…" she panted, genuinely out of breath from the force of Cato's 'affections', "… let me take this off." She touched the zipper of her jacket and watched Cato's bowed head nod, staying on her chest as she opened her outer layer. Katniss shrugged her backpack from her shoulders, her heart pounding. She couldn't open it with him looking. She let the pack fall down her arms then brought it around to her front, allowing it to rest in her lap. Cato's eyes were still highly alert behind the lust. Katniss wrestled the jacket off, trying to seem impatient to keep Cato in the moment. She glanced up and spotted a close-cropped, but sturdy-looking branch a little more than an arm's length above them.
Katniss bit her lip and lowered her eyes back to Cato. He ran his palms up the outside of her thighs and she breathed in sharply when he passed inches from her wound. At least he was still interested. Katniss shuffled forward and allowed Cato to lift her into his lap. She almost choked when she felt his erection knead between her legs. Using the new position as leverage, Katniss strained upwards, hoisting her pack up to snag its strap on the branch. She tightened it with a yank. Now was not the moment to lose her gear.
Despite having Katniss's weight settled on his lap, Cato looked up inquisitively to where her fingers were fumbling open her pack's zipper. She stuffed the coat in quickly, blocking the opening, and reached for Cato's defined jaw, tracing her fingers to his chin.
"I'll just be a sec. Uh, keep yourself entertained." Katniss locked her grip and tilted his jaw as she adjusted her posture just enough to compress her breasts against his face. Cato groaned and Katniss's heart hammered, but then she felt his lips shaping into loose kisses, feeling her out with his mouth through the fabric. Her chest heaved against him with a sigh and she wriggled her fingers deeper into the backpack, past her bunched jacket, and found the handle of her knife.
Katniss sat back, silently extracting the blade. Cato, oblivious, helped her ease into his lap, thrusting his stiffened dick between her legs. Carefully, she wrapped her arms around him, one under his arm to reach around to his back, the other over his shoulder. In the latter, she held the knife.
Quickly, she sought his mouth with hers, kissing him passionately until he seemed as distracted as she figured she was supposed to be.
"Cato," she murmured against his lips when he parted hers with his tongue. "So after this… we'll find Peeta?"
"Yeah," he mumbled, "After this." She could feel him smirking.
"It's just…" Katniss paused to kiss him deeply for a few seconds. "There's something you should know about him…" Cato trailed his tongue along her jaw. "… before we get him."
He was nodding against her. Katniss touched each of her fingers to his muscular back. If he was counting, he'd realize she'd touched him one time too many. The last tap had been the point of her knife, just to feel out the spot she wanted. Katniss slid her cheek against Cato's, rubbing her lips across his ear.
"Peeta would never have sat up in a tree and watched me die." She rocked her body, throwing it away from and then towards Cato's as she drove the blade into his back with the arm still slung over his shoulder. "And I won't abandon him like you abandoned Clove."
Cato's expression was flipping between dazed and agonized. His mouth dropped open and blood slid thickly out. The inside of his mouth was coated with it. Katniss wrenched the knife from his body. Her heart squeezed to do it, but she couldn't afford to lose a weapon. He grabbed for her, uncoordinatedly, and Katniss half-shifted, half-fell backwards off his lap. Without her to hold him to the tree, Cato drooped forward. His eyes were already turning dull like the ones in the faces of the dead Tributes projected in the sky every night. Cato tilted then tipped, faster and faster, until he was tumbling from the branch. Katniss wanted to grab for him, hold him up like he'd held her, but he wasn't much more than a body now. Years of hunting had taught Katniss to always go for the shot that would kill her prey quickly. Not killing at all was impossible, but she could limit the suffering.
The cannon went off before the body hit the ground and Katniss sobbed in relief. At least she had spared him that. She pulled herself forward, though there was some blood in the place Cato had lately sat, and allowed her forehead to bang into the trunk of the tree. Katniss wailed with all her energy, granting herself those few minutes of humanity. Maybe she could do what Peeta said after all and try not to let the Games change her.
Peeta.
Katniss rubbed roughly at her face, letting the friction fight the ache inside her. There was still Marvel. There was still Thresh. There were still a lot of others, but there was also still Peeta, and she would help him.
A clean, unnatural ding lifted Katniss's head from the tree. She looked over her shoulder, sighting the incoming parachute. It dinged again. Spreading through the branches, the sunlight was warm on her face.