[[This can be read as a stand-alone or as a companion piece to Bellona and Mars.]]
This is a fairy tale.
(will you like the ending?)
Once upon a time, there was a beautiful princess who was sweet and innocent until she reached the age of seven. Her name was Clove, and though she was smaller than all the other children, she was allowed to train. At first she hated the fighting, loathed the way the trainers would push her to become vicious, to stop chasing after sunbeams and pick up a weapon.
She didn't have any friends in the Training Center. Even though she was a princess, she was shunned by the other children for being so frail and unable- or unwilling- to use her connections. Scaling the ranks in the Training Center was done with a mixture of violent skill and strings, malice and blackmail. Some had more of each than the rest, and so they prospered. Clove didn't.
One day she met another boy who was three years older than her. They met in the alley behind the Training Center, and he shoved her and she fell. She leaped back up and grabbed a rock and started to attack him, forgetting all her ladylike ways, and a trainer separated them and told her she was being promoted.
She was seven and she was cruel.
Once upon a time, the princess slayed the dragon and they all lived happily ever after.
Many years later, she met the boy again, but this time she was fifteen and loved knives and stood atop a podium as her name was drawn from a glass bowl. She was still beautiful, still friendless, still vicious, and he saw that in her face and lunged forward to volunteer. She learned his name was Cato.
They shook hands and she gripped his wrist so hard he bled.
Once upon a time, the princess slayed the dragon and they all lived happily ever after. No, that isn't right. Once upon a time, the princess became an even bigger monster than the dragon, and they all lived happily ever after.
They were taken to a land far away and wore garments of the most luxurious fabrics, draped in furs and jewels. They beamed and waved for the cheering crowds and trained themselves to kill in silence. There were other children there too, but they weren't strong, not the way Clove and Cato were. So Cato sparred with Clove for hours and they sat with each other during meals, clinging to one another despite their hatred.
And the dragon saw them, saw the fire that overshadowed the other tributes burn in their eyes, and the dragon was afraid. The dragon liked gold and gems and power, but they didn't care for it, refused his offers.
The princess liked power, craved it, but Cato didn't trust the dragon and his silver tongue and poisonous promises. And so Cato and Clove, Clove and Cato denied the dragon his power and were instead condemned to die.
But they were condemned from the start. (there's always impossible odds in fairy tales)
Once upon a time, light triumphed over darkness.
So the princess and Cato entered the Games to see who could be the cruelest of them all. The magic mirror showed Clove as she carved out the heart of another girl, Cato as he snapped a boy's neck with his bare hands. And the dragon watched from his lair amid his piles of gold and worried.
They hated each other, Clove and Cato, but they were a team as they outsmarted, outslaughtered their competition. The princess was born to the crown, that icy emblem of power, and Cato was brutality given flesh. Together they were viciousness incarnate, and they killed their opponents with weapons of silver and gold. When they had killed all the others, they turned on one another, but found they could not kill the other.
Once upon a time, the light became so dark it swallowed the darkness whole.
The dragon watched them lay down their weapons and became enraged that they would not tear one another apart. So he called them away from the fighting and pretended to show them hospitality but instead slipped poison into their food, their words, until they hated each other and vowed to never speak to one another ever again.
Once upon a time, the princess became the monster.
Oh, but Clove remembered the brief time of not hating Cato, so she swallowed the poison and was made stronger for it. And the poison seeped into her thoughts and made her hate the monster the dragon was.
But she was clever, so instead she invited the dragon for a magnificent feast. She kept his plate full and his glass fuller until he was bloated and drunk, then she struck. The princess took the knife that had carved the meat and used it to carve through his thick scales to the flesh below, and he could do nothing to stop her.
It was an agonizing way to die, and she relished in his pain. He was just an animal to her, a monster that deserved no compassion, no sympathy. He screamed, and she smiled.
The dragon begged for mercy, promised they could divide the earth between them, and the princess agreed. But she was cruel and vindictive and wanted him to die. So she hitched the dragon to a plow and they carved a line across the land and the sea as he gasped and panted and she whipped him on with taunts and threats until finally the dragon drowned in the middle of the sea.
In exchange for the way she'd overthrown the dragon, she was given half the kingdom, and Cato the other half. So Clove peeled off the monstrous skin she'd worn and cried tears of pearls as she was reunited with Cato and they became king and queen over all the land. And she was still a monster, but he loved her in spite of it and because of it, because he was a monster too.
Once upon a time, the princess slayed the dragon and married her prince and they all lived happily ever after.
(but it isn't quite so simple, is it?)