The After Gate
A/N: quickie note, forgot the disclaimer last time! So without further ado...
Disclaimer: They ain't mine. They ain't yours. They all belong to Suzy C.
Part 2
Cato POV
This was the year. Clove and I would volunteer for the games when they came around. We knew it, our trainers knew it, the other kids in training knew it. We came from two very influential families; our destinies had been cut out for us neatly, from the beginning.
Today I stood in the practice station, twirling a spear and watching my co-tribute-to-be march in. She always entered the same way, sturdily and decisively, pointed chin up. Her face would set with fierce passion and determination as she fired her lethal knives like frisbees, smoothly, artfully.
I'd watched her go at it more than once, grudgingly in awe. She was devilishly good- for a girl of course. I would always be better. But she still stood out, because of her strangely sullen drive for accuracy and precision. District Two thought her rather deranged; it pleased them- it escalated the threat she already presented. Were I a less deadly person myself, I wouldn't stand a chance against her.
Clove began picking knives from their racks and flipping them into her practice vest. She looked over at me and smiled. Her smiles were rare, always taking me by surprise.
"It's my birthday," she stated.
Wow, personal info. Even more rare. "I can see that new gray hair from here," I told her, and dashed my spear into the chest of a dummy standing near her, twenty feet from me.
She responded with a flying blade that whistled between my legs and lodged itself in another dummy behind me.
"If you had aimed over my shoulder you could have hit a vital part at least," I snorted.
She raised her brows the tiniest smidgeon.
"The head," I clarified unnecessarily. She wasn't stupid; I was sarcastic.
I had been sarcastic a long time. It was how I survived my anger, my life. The anger had started a long time ago- by this time it was the most familiar of my emotions.
One of her blades plunged into the latter dummy's head, nearly stirring my hair as it passed. She must be having a good day, giving me grief instead of working.
"How old." It was a question but I made it a comment.
She plucked a handful of mini knives from the rack and fired them in rapid succession into another dummy's chest. Then she clasped her hands and looked at me. The handles of the knives protruded from said dummy's said chest, in a formation. A number one and a number five.
Fifteen.
I was used to her weirdness. I liked it.
"They're coming for us," she commented, as if our futures didn't hang in the balance, as if neither of us would ever have to consider taking the other's life. We had always treated it that way.
"Yup," was all I said. She walked a little further away, began practicing in earnest. My eyes followed her.
And I gripped my tools to begin full-fledged dummy decapitation.
Clove POV
They had come. Cato and I sat in a Capitol train, racing away from Two. The Seventy-Fourth Annual Hunger Games were about to dawn.
Cato was across from me, silent as stone, and as still, as the scenery flashed by. This was out of character- I would have expected him to fidget at the very least. I watched him; he didn't move except for a blink every so often. His gaze was fixed on his hands, clasped between his knees, and he was leaning forward a bit.
"Cato," I said finally. He looked up as if from another time, far away. I had meant to ask if he was scared but what came out of my mouth, quite of its own accord, was, "Are you hungry?"
He smirked in a puzzled way, making me feel belittled. "What, are you?"
I wasn't. I felt weirdish, like there was just a lump where my stomach should be. But I wanted to distract him. So I said, "Go with me to the dining car."
"Think you'll lose your way?" he inquired, oozing condescension from his lips. But he looked cheerful again.
For my mission I was meek, this once. "I haven't been there yet."
Cato stood and grabbed my elbow, towing me along to the sliding door. "You forget, neither have I."
"Find it," I told him.
"For you?" He feigned amazement.
"You suck up to girls all the time. Show me some of that," I told him, cold, challenging.
"I do not suck up to them. They suck up to me," he grumped.
I quirked a brow.
"Fine." He glared without malice and held the sliding door open with a flourish. "After you, sweetheart."
When I stepped through, he followed. Then his firm arms slipped around me; he scooped me up and carried me all the way to the dining car with no problem at all.
Cato POV
She asked- demanded- "Is that supposed to work? Like, you expect to win some girl's heart by literally sweeping her off her feet!"
I grinned and arrogantly told her that in all other cases save this one, the girl's heart was already won. The sweeping-off-the-feet gesture was just a little extra that made any given girl worship me forever.
Except her of course. She made certain to remind me of that.
I could have told her the truth, that I wasn't even a ladies' man, I didn't have time for pests in skirts. But if she wanted to think I was attracting girls like bees to honey... why spoil the illusion?
There was plenty of food in the dining car. Far more than we and our mentor could eat, certainly. Clove and I were used to some manner of extravaganza, but this- this was out of this world. Heaps upon heaps of fragrant edibles.
I swung the aforementioned girl to the floor. "Well, happy now?" I inquired. "I found all the yummy stuff for you, literally brought your lazy ass to it. Dig in already." I examined a plate of what appeared to be miniature chicken legs in sauce. It smelled unappetizing.
Clove hadn't answered. She stood, arms crossed, and peered around the room- it was sizable- and scrunched her eyebrows up a little. There was no reason for it that I could see, but she looked chilled and annoyed.
Oh please. She'd made me drag her here and wasn't even gonna eat? I snorted and headed for a luscious armchair. No point in standing in wait. Who knew what the crazy child planned on doing. Nap on the doughnuts, most likely.
She walked slowly to a window, watching the forest whisking by on the other side. Finally she spoke.
"I hate them." A flat observation.
"Who?" I asked, bored.
"Everyone." I could see the rage, cold yet smouldering, in her eyes.
"Be my guest."
She didn't answer. Maybe she hadn't heard my unencouraging comment. Normally I would have ignored her right back, but this was Clove: the-girl-who-never-talked, particularly-never-about-feelings. So I had to know.
"Why?" I queried, at that same instant spotting a dark glass bottle behind a stack of chocolate tarts. Ha!
"Because," she said coldly, and left the room.
Whatever.
I rummaged till I found a goblet, filled it to the brim with the bottle's rosy contents, and sat back down, settling in. Capitol wine should be awesome.
A/N: R&R for more (hypothetical) kisses. Or Capitol champagne, if you prefer...
