"For a moment, everything seems frozen in time. Then the apples spill to the ground and I'm blown backward into the air."
- The Hunger Games, pg. 221
Convergence
Chapter Two
The world detonates.
The players scramble to survive while the stagnant are swallowed up alive.
The medics ignore Peeta's protests from the gurney as they wheel him onto the waiting hovercraft. "Where's Katniss?" he demands, "I'm not leaving the arena until she's back." He puts up a show of struggling against the straps holding him in place, all bravado and puffed up defiance. The medics know this and decisively push him back into place.
"Victor Mellark, calm yourself! Don't worry about her and let us do our duty," scolds the closest one. The medic has a soothing voice that hints of antiseptic and sterile rooms, and it makes Peeta uneasy. "Do you think Victor Everdeen would appreciate your lack of cooperation? We need to get you on board the hovercraft immediately for further treatment."
He shakes his head in protest, dismissing their reassurances. Looking for her pin has taken far too long, and Peeta has no trust whatsoever in the Capitol and whatever lurks in the arena. The arena is a place fertilized by the carnage of mutilated innocence and haunted by the ghosts of forgotten children. He wants to leave it immediately, but not without her. His voice barely carries as he calls out again, "Katniss! Where are you?"
The medics tutt tutt at his impertinence and continue wheeling him onto the ship. Even with the emergency medical treatment he received from the medics, Peeta can still feel the hot pulse of blood making a hasty exit from his mangled leg. But Peeta doesn't care about himself, he can't give a damn about his leg or his life if Katniss is still unaccounted for. So he continues to call for her the best he can, even when the pain of his injuries fogs his mind and causes spots to grow like fungi across his vision.
The cameras capture the meaty mess of Peeta's leg and zoom in upon his pasty face and dilated eyes. 'Just look!' Caesar Flickermann eagerly exclaims to his captive audience. 'What devotion! Peeta Mellark is bleeding out on the gurney and may lose his leg, but all that matters is where his ladylove is! Can you imagine such a thing?'
Peeta's just slipping into unconsciousness as one of the medics who left to check on Katniss frantically returns. He gestures towards the Cornucopia and tells the others to move quickly. Peeta can't say for certain, but it sounds like the medic said they didn't have much time.
Peeta immediately thinks the worst even as the blood loss knocks him out.
Cato's name slips from Katniss's lips and Panem is left forever changed. Those watching stare at their screens with wide eyes and open mouths, unable to process that yet another tribute is still alive. The constant live stream of the Game cuts away from Cato's mangled body and switches over to an unconscious Peeta, but the damage is already done. The implication of what has transpired goes Pop! Pop! Pop! within the minds of all those who watch (and within those who have been watching and waiting for a very long time).
The Career from 2 is still alive.
The whispers break out among those who are brave enough to speak. They keep their eyes trained on the looming Peacekeepers, who seem to be at a loss of what to do. The Games may be over, but the Career boy still lives. The tributes from 12 are also both alive. That's three lives at the end of a Game built around having a sole winner. The only question that matters now is whether the Capitol will kill him or spare him.
Some citizens call for the video stream to switch back to Cornucopia and forget the hovercraft and the bread boy, but their neighbors quickly shush those that do. Even in a time of confusion, there is the instinctive urge to follow the law and not speak badly against the Capitol. It is just the correct thing to do, even though the sheep disagree against the actions of their shepherd.
President Snow orders the medics to treat the District 2 boy, much to everyone's surprise.
He does not make the decision lightly.
Snow has no real desire to save Cato. In fact, he hopes the Career takes it upon himself to snuff out, just like he should have done in the first place. It would save him a lot of trouble in the end. Snow doesn't think it was so much to ask for, especially when the boy was already inconsiderate enough to hang onto life.
The medics rush to comply with the surprising orders while the Game commentators are at a loss of how to spin this new twist. His subordinates have no idea what Snow is thinking but they know better than to disagree. To question the President was to end up like poor Seneca Crane, who was dragged sniveling from the room as soon as Katniss Everdeen opened her mouth and unleashed her pipe bomb. Snow can practically hear the tiny eruptions of hope from all over Panem, the whispers that won't stop since fear can only hold them in check for so long.
Too much hope is bad for a nation and President Snow will not stand for it. It is not his way.
Snow remains calm among the chaos. He looks at the frantic faces in the control room and knows he needs to keep order. The Hunger Games has done that for him for so many years and now all of it has gone to hell.
He wants to let the boy die, and it would be so easy to let happen. Snow would have given into the temptation if he were any lesser of a man, but there's a reason why he's been in power for as long as he has. He is well aware that emotions were already running high in the Districts. High emotions can form mobs and riots, anarchy among the underdogs and mutiny from the rich. There are already reports of it starting to fester within the Districts and a single spark would be all it would take to ignite it.
Allowing the District 2 tribute to die could become that spark.
Snow can't have that.
He must plan his next move carefully. Hope is springing up all around him and he needs to quickly strangle the emotion out of his people without upsetting the balance. To have the 'star-crossed lovers' both emerge as victors is one thing—no matter how much he doubted them, the people of Panem have fallen in love with the couple. While dangerous in its own right to the government's strict authority, it's still something he can control.
At least with the lovers, people can understand why allowances were made while not losing their fear of the Games. Snow can spin it as a fluke, an accident. He already planned on making it very clear that something like this will never happen again. He could manage two victors.
It's unfortunate he now has three.
Cato has no place in the soapy lovers' drama that was Katniss and Peeta. The Career had placed solidly in third, having been cleanly beaten by the remaining two. Years of history and tradition dictated for him to become nothing more than a footnote in the 74th Hunger Games, as so many tributes had become before him. And yet, even though the Games were declared over and the victor(s) already decided, Cato still had the audacity to cling to life when he should have remained a fallen tribute.
And there is no such thing as mercy in the Hunger Games.
Mercy can empower the powerless, causing them to speak out against the Capitol's ironclad dominance of the nation. Mercy can spark thoughts across the nation that are dangerous for Snow; deadly for Panem. Mercy can cause the fall of a government.
He's damned if he saves him and damned if he doesn't. To prevent treatment of the boy would only fuel the wildfire Everdeen has sparked and to treat him gives hope to the hopeless. There's really only one thing he can do.
The President gives the order for the cameras to switch back to streaming the distasteful drama and grants the Career his life. He'll allow his people to feast on this small meal of hope while he uses the distraction to set Panem right again.
President Snow is all about containment.
The nation may be talking and the President may be plotting, but the girl in the middle of it all has other things to deal with. Katniss stares at Cato's body, preoccupied with the telltale signs of life she can't avoid seeing. She doesn't know why it's suddenly impossible to tear her gaze away from the thump, thump, pathetic little thump of a heart that fights dehydration in a body so empty of blood.
How did he, out of all of the other tributes that were fed to the Games, be granted such a reprieve?
Katniss doesn't believe in miracles. She puts her faith in survival and in herself, as she's learned to do from a very young age. It is a lesson that the Hunger Games has reinforced, barring a few exceptions to the rule. Miracles are a laughable concept after being forced to look into the eyes of the dying and listen to the gurgling rasps of a last drawn breath extracted from a broken body that had nothing left to give. There are no miracles in a world where children are picked at random for an early death so the watching crowds can bet their slaughter.
More medics are arriving on the scene and she is shooed away from the body. Katniss looks on as they roll down the gurney, break out the tourniquets, and prepare the respirator. It's not lost on her that it's all done to save the life of a boy whose death was celebrated and laughed at moments before. Katniss doesn't care about the likes of Cato, but she thinks of Rue and Thresh, Foxface, the young boy with the cornflower blue eyes from 4 and the girl with the knobby knees from 8. She sees the faces of her fellow tributes and imagines how Panem must of have cheered each and every one of their deaths.
She clenches her pin in the palm of her grubby hand and feels the tip of the needle slide into her skin, drawing blood. Morbidly she watches as it oozes from the wound and dribbles down in rusty red drops, mixing with the dried blood of Cato's that already coats it.
"What are the chances of his survival?" she asks the medic closest to her. The medic, in the process of inserting a breathing tube down Cato's throat, answers bluntly, "Depends on how the odds are stacked. Could go one way or the other, just like with everyone else."
She gets out of the medic's way after that. Exhausted both emotionally and physically, she can't bring herself to care either way over his fate right now. There's no lost love between the two of them. If he dies—good riddance. And if he lives, she would deal with him then.
The medics rush around, stumbling over one another in attempt to get their third victor back on the hovercraft without losing him along the way. The cameras zoom in to get the best view of the chaos, hoping to thrill the captive audience with the delights of a boy struggling to keep his heart beating.
Katniss turns her back on the scene and returns to Peeta.
Cato knows he lost in the instant he slips off the bloody metal of the Cornucopia. He can't help the thoughts that arrange themselves in a straightforward sort of way as his body slams into the ground, a brisk and detached assessment of the facts he can't avoid.
The mutts will have their dinner.
The Capitol will have their show.
The two from 12 will have their victory.
That's how this story, his story will end.
So why is he still alive?
He's half suspended between waking and dreaming. There are voices that reach him from within his semi-conscious state, shrill and jabbering. His body aches with a pain so intense he can feel it throbbing at the edges of his brain, waiting to overtake him. He is an open and oozing wound of raw flesh and torn muscle, with jagged pieces of skin shredded clean away. His heart beats so slowly and weighs so heavy. He feels the constriction and compression of every feeble beat it struggles to make.
Cato wonders if he's in hell.
The voices grow stronger, murmuring around him as they prod at his body and make their notes. They poke at him, concentrating on the broken areas that make his body convulse from pain. Losing consciousness would be a blessing, but the scalding pain of the salve they slop onto his wounds keeps him from that comfort. When they reach his mangled arm, it is almost too much to take.
He hears someone screaming. The doctor inject a sedative into his haggard veins, and it's only as it lethargically makes it way through his system does he realize that the screams were his own.
"Well? Don't just stand there. Report in."
The doctor shifts uncomfortably under the President's glacial stare and wipes his sweating hands against the gore that stains his scrubs. It had not been the easiest of treatments for the doctor and his staff. Both boys were brought into the emergency room in a bad way, and the cameras streaming live footage of the entire procedure and the commentators happily discussing the extent of the damage only further complicated matters.
"We were able to stabilize both of the male Tributes, but it was touch and go for a while. There were a couple of times I thought we would lose one or both of them, sir."
Snow's expression remains neutral, but the doctor is smart enough to realize that this isn't the good news his President was hoping for.
"We did what we could, sir. It's still going to take some time for their bodies to fully heal. The wounds were deep and there was a lot of muscle loss in some areas. One of the tributes even had a tooth stuck in his flesh. See?" The doctor pulls out the lethal tooth for Snow to see. He waves it slightly in the air and accidentally cuts himself on a serrated edge.
Snow ignores the foolishness of the doctor and presses him again. "You were able to heal all of the damage, doctor?"
"We were able to stop the majority of Mellark's bleeding, but his leg is done for. Infection's setting in and there's not much we can do for it now. The one from District 2 had it even worse. The armor he was wearing did protect him to some degree, but we had to treat him for broken ribs and there were numerous lacerations all over his body from the bites. Additionally, I'm not sure how long his heart stopped for, which means we don't know for sure right now if he'll have any resulting brain damage from the lack of oxygen. There'll be some scarring on his body, of course, but the main area of trouble for him is the right arm. It took the brunt of trauma, and I doubt it'll ever function properly again."
Snow strokes his beard as he considers this. "Your recommendation for treatment, doctor?"
"The best case scenario for both of them would be amputation. Mellark needs it, otherwise the infection will take him. The boy from District 2 will likely never regain the full function of his arm. There was just too much damage. I would recommend prosthetic limbs for them both to allow for a relatively normal life. It'll be an adjustment, of course, but ideally—"
"Thank you doctor. I've heard enough. You can go ahead and amputate Peeta Mellark's leg and give him a prosthetic. That'll be all."
The doctor's mouth drops slightly in surprise. "Sir, but what about the other boy? His arm will never heal properly. He'll always have issues with it, the damage was just too extensive. There's plenty of nerve damage in addition to the muscle loss. He'll most likely be crippled for the rest of his life without a prosthetic. I doubt he'll cope well with that since he comes from a Career district. And we don't even know yet if there's brain damage."
President Snow, impatient now with the whole thing, dismisses the doctor's concerns. "Replace Mellark's leg and leave the other as he is. His arm isn't threatening his life, so he'll just have to manage with it. We'll see what the condition of his mental state is soon enough."
"We can try something else for him if you don't want us to perform the amputation. There are supplements and experimental treatments that may improve the condition of his arm somewhat. Some may think it seems cruel to leave him like this."
"Are you sure, doctor, that you wish to question me?" Snow says softly. "I wouldn't recommend it if I were you."
The doctor drops his gaze to the ground and inspects the grungy tiled floor behind his feet. "No, sir. I'm just trying to do what is best for my patients. He can always have the surgery later on, but it might be more damaging to his psyche if we wait."
President Snow stares him down. "That is why you leave the decisions to me, doctor."
"I—yes, President Snow. Of course."
If President Snow had his way, there would be no treatment at all. Snow would much rather have the two boys as corpses, but for now he has to wait and bid his time before he acts.
Two victors are already a problem, but three? No, three is a catastrophe waiting to happen. Cato should have been left for dead, just like all of the other fallen tributes before him. If the Games continued as they should have, Cato would have been nothing more than a raw piece of mutilated meat left to bake in the heat of the field until someone eventually came by to pick up the corpse. Unfortunately for Snow, he was forced to grant Cato his life—for now, anyway—but nothing comes without a price. Leaving the proud Career with a crippled arm is only the start.
Katniss Everdeen ignited a detonation across the nation the moment she announced Cato was still alive to the thirsty ears of Panem.
And unfortunately for Katniss Everdeen, President Snow digs in his heels and comes up with a way to handle this very regrettable situation.
Edited on 12/5/2015 and again on 10/30/2018 for grammar and sentence structure.