glances
everything is in a look
heavily implied cato/katniss. t for safety and drabblely ramblings. also posted on tumblr
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Before the Games his looks were meant to intimidate the Girl on Fire. He would send her one so she knew where she stood with him, partly this and to intimidate her. She was to be constantly aware of being below him because she was outer district scum. But she never looked weak, maybe once she blushed a little but her grey eyes and almost emotionless expression surfaced everytime.
He glanced at her just before the interviews looking just as every bit her namesake. In a red dress, she was almost glowing like a flame. Cato couldn't allow himself to stare. He was becoming weak with his constant glances and his sudden fascination with the diamond of the Capitol. Her eleven had caused him to become infruriated, sometimes he gave her the coldest looks because she had proved beyond a doubt that she was something special.
Then the Games come. The next day he sits in the hovercraft after he's had his tracker injected completely composed and eager to kill. He finds her gaze whilst they head to the arena, just fleetingly and it's that cold stormy look. She glances away, and he realises he's been staring again.
But then the Games, the countdown and the bloodbath go well. He doesn't search for her look and the next time he sees that look, she's cornered. Running scared through the arena she scrambles up a tree after he and the Career pack (including that damn loverboy) find her. He glares at her high in the tree, and she looks back equally as stormy yet there is an element of being scared there.
For once she's afraid. There's a thrill coming from their staredown and however much this happens he climbs the tree, and falls. Katniss teases, and he gets even angrier. But there she is, looking down at him as if he is nothing for once.
That night he watches her in the tree, ready to catch her gaze and to start something but she doesn't. She doesn't look at him.
This pains him.
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He doesn't even see her when she drops the tracker jacker nest. No, the venom makes him worse. His fixation becomes stronger.
Mine.
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The grand finale. He hasn't seen her in a long time and all he is now is a weakened mess of a once strong person. Being alone has molded him into someone truly sad and almost hollow of any slither of humanity he once had.
Standing on top of the Cornucopia, his face scratched by mutts the realisation comes that he won't get home. A team versus him? He would try. He would kill loverboy and watch that stony gaze of the Girl on Fire break. She would crumble. It wouldn't matter then if she won because he would always know he left that mark on her.
They get to the top of the Cornucopia, the team from 12 are engaged in a battle of sorts. He holds Katniss's neck as her head is dangled over the side of the Cornucopia so close to the mutts he can feel their breath. He can feel hers too. They are close. He then looks into her eyes, her face contorted by pain and anguish.
That looks haunts him.
The fight continues, eventually he pulls Peeta into a headlock by the edge and gives a rambling speech about how he was always dead. He was always nothing. To everyone, he was just fodder to die.
And Katniss stands there with her bow poised and ready to kill. He sees in her eyes something, but he is blinded by what he wants to see; hope. He can only see her now, his life is in his hands.
She lets go, the arrow plunging into his hand and he falls off of the side to the mutts. Cato is ravaged, eaten and hurt til the point where all he can see is blood. The smell, everything is terrible.
His gaze looks to the Cornucopia in between the gaps of the mutts eating him and to the Girl on Fire and her loverboy.
"Please..." He chokes out. He's begging, now the submissive one. He is now below her.
But then again, he considers, maybe he always was.
He can register the pain in her eyes. He thinks it's because it's him. He'd like to think it's because she's killing him, not just killing a person. An enemy even. The looks they shared and the silent competition they were in were something unusual to him. The girl on fire has left him burned.
She places her arrow in her bow and draws.
Kill me now.
Just before the arrow reaches him, he smiles a bit. A silent thank you to the girl who set his world on fire.
You never forget the face of the person who was your last hope.