Know Your Enemy
Rule number one. The trainers drilled it into their heads. Every variation of it, every meaning of it. Identify the enemy, know the enemy, you are your enemy, your allies are your enemy. So, he, and the other potential tributes knew these things. Knew themselves, knew each other. Watched the reapings, watched the old videos of Hunger Games past to know the mentors. Knew the Capitol, knew the districts as well as they could.
Tributes came in a few flavors, they had been taught. Shaking Children, underfed twelve-year-olds. Other Careers. Fighters, kids who had a chance but no real training. A few wildcards, tricksters, geniuses, or simply Rabbits, lucky ones like Annie Cresta. But this was another part of knowing the Capitol. Careers winning because they were the best, the strongest, the smartest got boring. So Rabbits won some years. Fighters won some years. But Careers won, mostly.
And you knew careers. You had to know careers. You knew yourself, you knew your potential district partners. You knew your competition, too, for the right to volunteer. Cato knew every boy and every girl in his year. Equally his enemy, equally his ally. That Clove had won the right to volunteer for the female spot was a gift. She he knew top to bottom. Knew better than the others. Knew her obsessive, perfect precision. Her incredible agility. Her drive. Her few, fragile little weaknesses. That she was proud, but that was a both were, they all were. Clove's weaknesses were more secretive. After all, she had beaten out Lithania, twice her size, Lucretz, twice as quick, Emmia, who maybe really could have killed them all with her brain. Clove beat them because she really was a tribute, through and through. She knew herself.
Cato knew what Clove knew. That her up-close vision was not perfect, she held things, papers, books far from her face. Always with a look of disdain, as though she were greater than the words. But Cato saw the squinting. That she, against all odds, was incredibly tactile. She loved to touch things. It distracted her. These were the tiny cracks in Clove; nothing wrong with her tactics, with her fighting, with her composure. She was as perfect as any girl could be. Cato was sure that the reason he had watched Clove all these years was because she was certain to be his district partner. But he thought now how reckless this had been, that he had focused on her. There wasn't another rational reason.
Clove made sense. Glimmer made sense. Marvel made sense. But this stranger, this Peeta Mellark. Cato wasn't sure the others believed it. But he did. Mellark was not with them to stay safe or to help them track the stupid Girl on Fire (just another Fighter). Cato had not seen love many times, but he knew it well enough. Mellark was not going along with them to kill her. This much was clear. But why then? He wasn't a Rabbit. He wasn't a Fighter. He wasn't a Shaking Child. So what was he? Cato couldn't help but give him his own name. He had to categorize him. But how? A Martyr? Was it that simple, he just wanted her to live? It seemed more complicated than that. A Lover? But Cato did know love, and love was not enough to do what he was now doing. Didn't he love his mother? His father? His brother and sisters? Little Clover, as he had so often called her when they were younger? But he knew he would never die for any of them; they would never forgive him and their love would be lost.
So what the hell. This weirdo now coaxing a firey blaze out of shitty kindling. Stocky, but strong. Well fed and well muscled, but not in the way the other Careers were, with focus on core strength and muscles built up very specifically. All of his bulk seemed to be focused in the arms and shoulders making him look strangely lopsided, topheavy, to Cato. The softness in his eyes was as strange as the sureness in his speech. Cato did not know his enemy.
If you know yourself and your enemy, you can win a hundred battles without jeopardy.
That was the first hurdle then. To get it. The other tributes he could take, because he knew them. That was the mantra. They were predictable, even Clove he would out wrangle. But the not knowing. Not understanding. It made him edgy. A memory floated back to him. One of his mentors, Caesor. He had asked him, after a long, winding lesson on the meaning of knowledge.
"But how?" His teenage voice breaking against his will, he remembered trying to force it to deepen, "how can you really ever know someone?"
Caesor's laugh filled the room. The Victor of the 56th Hunger Games did not smile much, as half of his face bore a long, awful scar that kept his features still. "Ah," he exhaled, trying to get a hold of himself, "You're brighter than they give you credit for, Cato."
Cato frowned at him, found his display of amusement weak, a delay to his sincere question, "how do you do it?"
His mentor stood quietly, and looked him up and down. Though Cato was used to people evaluating him, Caesor's gaze now was uncomfortable. Cato shifted in his chair, more than ready to go home, but not before this answer. "How do you learn someone?" he persisted.
"Ah, boy," He said almost ruefully, "it's so simple." He walked to the fire and stared into it. His early-grayed hair seeming to light red. Cato recalled clenching his fists, feeling impatient. "Learn two lessons, now, boy. The first is this, patience."
Cato let a growl out of his 14-year-old throat, "I know about patience."
"Do you now?" Caesor was suddenly very serious, and rounded on him, but Cato sensed the attack and fought it off easily. "Oh you'll learn that soon enough. But this I think you'll catch onto quickly, boy." Cato looked up expectantly, and his mentor sat across from him, holding his gaze steadily.
"Cato, listen here, right now. Two ways, the ways of Two," he mused quietly, "To know someone, to really know someone you have two choices. You fight them or you fuck them."
You fight them or you fuck them. Cato had never tried the latter, though he knew what Clove had been up to the night before the arena. And he let her, because she was weirdly beautiful, because he wanted her, despite himself, and because he couldn't die a virgin. And those things he had learned about Clove when they did it- that she would die with a knife in her hand even if she was the Victor, that her taut stomach was so sensitive and that she would kill him in their fight, if he gave her half a chance. She would kill him without a second thought about it. Because she was, as he had suspected, through and through, a Tribute, a Career. She didn't care about dying in the games. She had no occupation but this. This was truly her career in every sense of the word.
Cato had enjoyed it, but he was sure, afterward, that he would rather know people by fighting them. The things he had learned about Clove he might have discerned from fighting her, had they been allowed to fight full-out in mixed practice. He also knew that if he were to become Victor he would have to fight his wife before he would fuck her, would never marry her if she couldn't hold her own, like Clove could.
Of the many things that Clove had taught him, perhaps the difference between fighting and fucking would be the last lesson she bestowed. You couldn't practice it properly; not that the others hadn't tried. But it wasn't like fighting even if you did practice. No one could watch, give feedback. No one would be honest at the end of it about whether it was good. nothing was written about it that wasn't covered in flowery language and bullshit. No, fucking was not Cato's way.
In general. Oh, he would get to fight with Mellark, that much was absolutely clear. But this was not the training center. He couldn't fight him full out, not the way he would have to in order to know him. And to really fight him and win, to kill him, he had to know him. Had to. He didn't know how to do it any other way.
So fuck him. Again, so much more difficult than it sounded. There was generally a reason to fight. Sex... well, besides that it was fun... there didn't seem to be a great reason for it. Cato didn't do hardly anything because it was fun. And you had to get someone else to agree to it. Or rape them. But that wasn't the same thing. You didn't learn a damn thing that way, Cato surmised, except that you could pin them down. And even he, ready absolutely to kill the remaining children in the arena, did not feel that was right. It seemed vulgar.
He watched Mellark staring into the fire. It wouldn't be too hard to enjoy him. He wasn't like Clove, soft and incredibly strong. Who he loved, if only in the limited way that he could allow himself to love her, having known, from the moment he met her that she could, and now must, die for him to be the Victor. Occasionally, a fleeting thought would cross his mind, what would have happened with them had either of them been a year younger or older. Could they be together if they won consecutive years? But he pushed this thought from his brain. It was stupid. He tried to look at others, but Cato didn't take much notice of girls or boys. Power was far more interesting. Right now, Mellark had that power. He was a mystery.
Cato stood abruptly, "we need more firewood," he announced to his comrades. They stared back at him with questions on their faces. Clove's expression was sharpest. She knew as well as he did they were set for the night, "come on Loverboy, we're going to find more," Something lit behind Clove's eyes. No, she wouldn't question him, not if he shared his information with her. Which he would, he supposed. The others, the girl from four and the luxury tributes did not voice their concerns if they had them. For his part, Peeta only stood and stretched, ready to follow him into the night.