A/N: If you read Bellona and Mars, this might be familiar. I read through it all, shuddered a little, and decided to rewrite it from scratch for my Reverse Gear Challenge on Caesar's Palace. Valor will follow a similar plot to it, although it's a new story all its own.
This will be updated every Sunday, and I'm thinking there will be 15 chapters in all. It's every bit as un-betaed as the first, but I'm hoping it's an improvement!
Really, she's not sure what all the fuss is about. There's nothing even the slightest bit special about the top floor of the Training Center. Same stations, same gray uniforms, same reek of sweat and desperation. Even the other trainees don't look any different than the ones she'd just left behind.
Just by sweeping her eyes across the room, she can already tell exactly who everyone else is, even if she doesn't know their names yet. That girl over there with the spear is loud and incompetent and will make a big deal about anyone else doing better than her, which will happen a lot. The boy laughing beside her is only here because his parents need the money. And the boy currently walking over to her- well, she knows who he is already.
Cato. She rolls the name over in her mind for a bit. What does she already know about him? A swordsman, for one, and apparently a very good one at that. He's got a reputation that even her previous level had heard about, and he hasn't even been chosen to volunteer yet. Still, it's probably only a matter of time. Pretty faces with the skills to back it up usually are. But what's he doing, coming over to her?
"You're new here." It isn't a question. "Who are you?"
She gives him her sweetest smile, the one that promises she wouldn't last a minute in the arena. "I'm Clove," she says, then makes a show of staring wide-eyed about the room. "Wow, everyone here is so good!"
Cato makes a very obvious effort not to roll his eyes. "Yeah, we're the best in the Center for a reason. Speaking of, why are you here?"
"Hmm?" She drags her eyes away from the scoreboards on the opposite wall. This has to be a mistake. She's seen better accuracy scores in the first level. She'll have fun here, that's for sure. "Oh, the trainers told me I should come up here, so here I am!"
Cato doesn't even try to stop himself from rolling his eyes this time. "Okay," he says very slowly. "But why did they tell you to come up here?"
She shrugs, still smiling. "Guess they thought I could handle it."
She's not dumb, really. She knows why he's here, scoping her out. Every level has their own version of initiation, some way to prove that their newest members belong or maybe that they don't. But she'd bet anything in the world that the top level's initiation test will be much more than a few questions about her skills.
Cato's growing steadily more irritated, his hands curling into fists at his side, and she shifts her weight slightly in preparation for a fight. He might be huge, but she's fast, and she can tell by the look on his face that he's not expecting anything out of her. It's almost disappointing. Honestly, if the best trainee this year can't figure out that a girl bumped up three years ahead of everyone else is a threat, what's he going to do in the arena?
Die, probably.
"We have a bit of a tradition here, you see," Cato says, his voice bored but his eyes intent. "Every time someone new comes in, they get to show everyone else what they're best at. It brings us all closer together as a group."
Clove's not quite sure she believes that at all. There are eyes on her back and muted laughter in her ears as the trainees set down their weapons and start to form a circle around them at some unknown signal, jostling each other and sending her eager looks. "So, Clove," Cato continues as the others close in. "What would you like to show us?"
Her gaze lands on the archery station. It's not a hard decision. She's good enough with a bow that she won't be embarrassing herself in front of everyone, but she's not so good that she'll become a target.
Then Cato chuckles and adds in a stage whisper, "Unless you don't actually deserve to be here."
"Knives."
Cato doesn't reel in surprise at the way she spits the word out, but he does arch an eyebrow. "What was that, Clove?"
With the same ferocity as before, she repeats, "Knives. You asked me for my specialty, didn't you?"
He looks at her a moment longer, and she stands tall beneath his gaze, feeling like it's the first time he's actually noticed her. After a bit, he says, "Let's see it."
And she does.
There is nothing but silence in the room when her last knife has landed, not even quivering where it has sailed cleanly into the center of the human-shaped target, which makes a beep of protest as it stops its unpredictable motion and powers down. She straightens out of her throwing form, brushes her hands on her shirt, and turns around to the sound of one person clapping, then another, then another until the room is filled with applause. It's like they've never seen anything like her. Well, she thinks, they haven't.
The other trainees slowly filter back to their stations now that the excitement is over, and soon the air is loud with the clanging of steel. Only Cato is left, watching her. "Is something the matter?" she calls out to him, smiling sweetly again because now he can see through it.
He tilts his head to the side, and she catches a glimpse of a grin tugging unwillingly at his lips. "You're different than I expected," he says. "I'll show you around."
She bristles immediately at the suggestion that she'd need help- seriously, she's been training for how many years now? But she quickly calms herself down when she realizes that this isn't the usual offer. People like Cato who've had one foot in the arena ever since they were born don't scout out training partners. They don't need to. The Center coordinates everything, trying to find the most compatible pair for whatever show they'll put on in the Games that year, and someone like Cato will have been training exclusively with their partner for at least a year already. The fact that he's trying to recruit her could mean that she's better than his current partner even though she's young, or it could mean that his partner has already ditched him. Still, it isn't like this is a permanent arrangement. "Thank you," she says, relaxing into her gracious miner's daughter angle. "That'd be nice."
Cato's not half bad company. It's a welcome change from some of the boys back in the lower level, who liked to make comments about other people instead of training. They'd talked about Clove right up until she got picked to fight one of them and broke every single finger in his hand as he screamed and sobbed beneath her. Afterwards, the trainer had ruffled her hair and given her a cookie. Chocolate chip.
She can't remember if the boy ever came back to training or not. Maybe they decided he wasn't good enough to heal and made him explain to his parents why he would never be able to work any more and oh, by the way, he wouldn't be getting a stipend, either. But it doesn't really matter what happened to him. He never bothered her again.
They end up finishing the tour by the swords station, and Clove can't help but think Cato planned it that way to give himself a chance to show off. Judging by the way he grins, she's right. "Want to play?" he asks, nodding over at the rack.
"Sure."
He tosses her a sword and takes one for himself, swinging it easily in a move that's just showy enough for the Capitol. There's a light in his eyes that's a little too familiar. She's seen it often enough in her own mirror.
"You waiting for something?" he taunts. He moves more lightly now with the sword in his hand, bordering on graceful as he closes the gap between them.
She raises her blade to block his and finds that he didn't try to sabotage her with one that weighs almost as much as her. That's a bit more honest than she'd expected. Well, if he's going to be a good sport, she'll have to work even harder to bring him down. Nice people are dangerous ones.
She's sweating by the time Cato starts coaching her a couple of minutes into the fight, or maybe it's hours. Her arm is shaking beneath the weight of the sword as he points out tiny flaws in her stance that no one in the Capitol will ever notice. "See, when your balance is off like that, I can do this," he explains as his blade opens up a cut on her side. They're not supposed to draw blood during training, but it's not like it'll kill her. She's had worse injuries before.
But the sudden pain still makes her gasp, and that's enough of a distraction for him to catch her across the throat so that she freezes midlunge, lowering her own sword in defeat. "That was fun," she says.
Cato lets the sword drop to his side and steps back. He's barely even breathing hard. "Not bad," he says, looking amused. There's no question about who's better, that's for sure. "Most people don't last so long."
She shrugs, grabbing a rag and dabbing curiously at the wound on her side before deciding it'll heal fine on its own. "Most people aren't me."
"I can see that." There's a gleam in his eyes, but it vanishes before she can look twice.
She glances around the Center, the pain in her side long forgotten. "Seems we've got a bit of an audience."
He dismisses the dozens of eyes watching them with a shrug. "Anyway, it's almost time for lunch. Eat with me?"
One of the girls staring at them gives an audible gasp, and Clove flicks her a brief, bored look before answering, "Sure."