Chapter One

"The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love

And the continuance of their parents' rage

Which, but their children's end, nought could remove

Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage

The which if you with patient ears attend

What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend."

Clove had a secret. She had a secret that ached and burned in the forefront of her chest, and Cato was the only one who knew.

He hadn't met Clove until they were both in Level 4, the highest level a trainee could be without officially being chosen as a future tribute. Everyone who hadn't known them before had been inclined to think that they had been friends since childhood, but in reality, there had been little chance of that ever happening. Cato's parents were rich peacekeepers who stayed gone more times than not, leaving Cato with relative freedom to cause as much trouble as he wanted. Clove was poor, living in the slums of town with her strict but loving aunt and uncle. There had never been any real chance for them to interact until Level 4, when the pool of trainees became small enough for the genders to combine into one class.

Even then, Cato and Clove did not socialize. Cato had a large group of male friends, and they asserted their presence in the training room with loud jests and vulgar or violent humor. Clove, on the other hand, was an introspective loner who spent her lunches reading battle strategy books and practicing different types of knots.

They didn't officially meet until the day they both happened to be the only ones at the clinic after training hours. Cato had attained an ankle injury during stamina training, and Clove had been sitting in one of the reclining chairs with a horseshoe-shaped massager around her neck and an IV line embedded in the crook of her elbow. She had her head leaned back, sighing softly with some sort of relief, tying knots with a small length of black parachute cord. Cato had always thought that was her practicing for constructing snares, but he had begun to suspect that it was a nervous habit as he watched her chest rise and fall, face looking pallid in the fluorescent lighting. He wondered if she realized he was watching her. If she knew, she'd probably have stared back until he backed down. That seemed to be her strategy. However, her eyes simply stayed closed, and it took him a second to realize she was asleep.

He looked away from her when the nurse came in to put the electric unit on his ankle. She wasn't talkative, a fact which he appreciated, and she was gone as quickly as she came. The timer she set for the machine had 20 minutes on it, 20 minutes where he had nothing better to do than watch Clove sleep.

She was truly interesting. Her features alone gave his eyes an obstacle course to roam over. Her cheekbones were high, her skin pale, her whole body curled into itself. She was not as strong as she made herself seem during training. In fact, if he didn't know that she was over 16 as all Level 4's are required to be, he would guess her to be 14 at the oldest. She looked thin and pale, and her hands fiddled with her cord even as she slept. He was too far away to notice any details, but he'd have assumed that her hands were raw or even blistered from fiddling with the cord all the time. Not to mention her work with knives…

The girl snapped her eyes open. She looked at him for a moment, and he thought she was going to lunge at her from across the table, but instead she picked up the trash can and began retching into it, her whole body trembling.

"Oh shit, you good? Do you need me to go get the nurse?"

"You'd better fucking not." she said, voice choked by the spasming of her throat. When she had finished vomiting, she placed the trashcan next to her bed.

In a weaker, less volatile voice, she added "She's used to it. Could you get me a drink of water please?"

He nodded, reaching over to the sink from his seat and filling an empty glass to hand to her, his head racing through reasons that this girl might be a regular in the clinic.

As he handed her the water, he asked in what he hoped was a non-judgmental voice, "You knocked up?"

He immediately regretted asking it, but to his surprise, she didn't even narrow her eyes at him.

"Do I look like I'm knocked up? Not to mention, they don't let pregnant girls train for a fucking fight to the death."

"Oh." he said. He stayed silent for a few minutes, watching the time count down on the clock and occasionally glancing at Clove to see if she was still awake.

"You gonna guess again, or was your only concern whether or not I'm getting laid?"

"Uh...Bulimic?"

She giggled a little, an odd sound coming from someone like her.

"You suck at this. What do you know about bulimia, anyways?"

"That one year when Chloe Sanchez made it to the top 3 in the games and then puked herself to death, the medical analysis said she'd had bulimia since she was 14."

"That was the 67th, and it's the reason for the minimum weight that they require for a promotion to Level 4. A weight which I meet, by the way. So if I were bulimic or knocked up, there's not a doctor in this world who would know about it."

"And I'm sure you'd be fine with me telling Head Trainer Cartwright about the fact that you're a regular here."

"Sure. If you'd be fine with waking up to a knife in your throat, have at it."

He promptly stopped talking for fear of digging himself a hole he couldn't escape.

It seemed like it was both too long and too soon when the nurse came in and took the pads off of his ankle.

"Come back in two days and we'll do another treatment. Until then, do more arm training than leg."

"Can do, nurse." he said. He stood up, taking his time in collecting his bags.

"You're gonna stay the night here, right?" he asked.

"In an outpatient clinic?" Clove asked, sitting up with remarkable stability.

"Well, I don't see how you plan to walk home. Guess it's none of my business, but I quite literally can't see you making it past two blocks."

"I'm not concerned about that. I'm concerned about you keeping your mouth shut around our Trainers."

"I don't have any reason to do otherwise. You're not my competition, and even if you were, I don't get my wins by being a backstabber. That's a little too District One for my taste. I win fair or I don't fight to begin with. Be careful out there." he said. He turned from the clinic and walked out the door, weapon bag over his shoulder, ankle still numb from the medicine and the electricity.