Disclaimer: Suzanne Collins owns Hunger Games and I (unfortunately) make no profit from this *shrugs*


Summary: There is no Capitol, but The Hunger Games still exist. Each district allows up to one champion a year to compete in a series of broadcasted tasks. The Victor wins riches and fame, but some districts have extra incentives. {the one where Cato wins, and Clove is his prize} {the one where Katniss volunteers, just not for her sister}


Story so far: Cato Steinn's mother, Maceria, is annoyed that her son's friends (including Marvel) have delivered Cato's "prize" to her doorstep. The prize is a girl, one who has been a part of Cato's (and thus Maceria's) life for far longer than she'd like to admit. In the last chapter, we learned a bit more about Cato's biological father (Caron, the first non-East Victor), Cato's maternal grandfather (Tywin, a Victor himself descending from a long line of Victors), Dr. Bea Tray (Maceria's best friend, also from the East, she is the youngest District 2 citizen to be registered as a physician), and the divisions of District 2 (East = posh, traditionalist, wealthy; West = lower/middle working class; South = the "slums"; North = mountains that are mined). Specifically, we learn that Tywin has a chip on his shoulder regarding needing a male heir to further his family's long line of victors, and expects Maceria to deliver him the heir by seducing Caron. Maceria marries Caron, but unexpectedly begins to care for her husband (to the point where she considers disobeying her father when he instructed her to dispose of her Caron). Maceria considers running away with Caron and her next child, and abandoning Cato to Tywin so that her father does not hunt the trio down. But, tragedy strikes, and Caron (from Maceria's perspective) was not there for her when she gave birth to a stillborn daughter. In retribution, she ultimately follows through with her father's orders to dispose of Caron. Bea covers for her by doing the autopsy report. Maceria has complicated feelings towards Cato:

-guilt of robbing him of his father and handing him to her own merciless father

-blaming Cato for his father's death

- loving that Cato has all his father's feature but hating that Cato has none of his father's personality traits (honesty, kindness, etc.)

-and longing for the family she once had but destroyed.

-etc. etc.

Her mechanism of dealing is a penchant for fermented drinks and treating Cato with indifference (leaving most of Cato's upbringing to her high-expectations, little-affection father).


A Monster's Prize and a Victor's Mask


Chapter 3:

how to feed an addiction


Listen stranger:

Always be wary,

For there is danger

in a single story.


IMPORTANT:

^Blunt interpretation of above italicized pseudo-poem: please do not give up on the story after reading this chapter. The next chapter will clear up many things. No spoilers, but remember these first three chapters are from Maceria's point of view, and is thus her understanding of events.


Maceria doesn't flinch when the searing heat of the tea creeps over her tongue.

She is so extraordinarily, unfathomably, inconceivably… bored.

Yesterday, she was invited (commanded) to have dinner with her father and her ten-year-old spawn at Tywin Steinn's manor. So today she sits at a familiar mahogany table that is studded with pyrite, eagerly awaiting her departure.

Cato and her father blather on and on – a riveting conversation - regarding the technicalities of swordplay and spear throwing. There are some throwaway comments about the most vulnerable versus the messiest arteries to tear. And then there is some casual mention of the most effective locations on the neck to aim for when stabbing future tributes.

The discussion is so utterly dull that Maceria considers stabbing her own neck with a fork.

There is a lull in the table's conversation, and silence joins the trio. In the background, the staff flit about silently, seeing to their patrons' needs. One of the workers appears by her sideand pours some liquid into Maceria's porcelain cup.

Maceria recognizes the amber liquid is, again, not the one she craves. 'Tea. How useless.' Despite her mental scorn, she keeps her face pleasantly placid.

Her shoulders stiffen when she feels the heavy gaze of her father. She greets his eyes with her own gaze reflexively, and regrets it. Unfortunately, she easily discerns from the slight twinge in his brow that he wishes (demands) her to engage the brat. She would rather not converse with the urchin eating across from her, but she'd rather not incite her father's anger more.

She looks at the boy, and feels a vicious, twisted pleasure that he looks nothing like a Steinn. No auburn hair nor hazel eyes. No pale and lean physique with wiry muscle. Cato is all bronzed skin, blond strands, blue eyes, and budding bulk. 'A Dejanira through and through, we took your name but not your face.'

Maceria sees none of herself in this boy that tore out of her. No, all she sees when she gazes upon the brat is the image of the man he killed (with perhaps the faintest echo of her dead mother, who was topped with golden locks as well).

"Cato, darling, how was your day?" She enquires politely as the staff pours more fucking tea into her cup. She hides her irritation at the contents of her cup by staring coolly at her son. There are stronger, better things she could be consuming (things that make her pleasantly numb, things that make her forget), but they are currently being withheld due to the interference of her hawk of a father.

'The great Tywin Steinn. Long may he reign.'

She considers it a bone fide miracle that her thick sarcasm does not shove her treasonous thoughts through her teeth. ('and that my bitterness does not shove a fork in my father's neck. I can see his carotids pulsing, and wouldn't that be the most brilliant red there ever was? B right and verdant, his life dancing down his neck and varnishing the mahogany…')

Cato's eyes widen in response to her question, affecting shock that she would address him. Maceria mentally rolls her eyes. The child oscillates between ignoring her, hating her, and acting starved for her attention. 'How pathetic. Your father was never so fickle, never so desperate. He was strong in a way you can never be.'

The boy, however, is uncharacteristically hesitant to respond to her easy question. And Tywin notices. After all, he has trained Cato from the cradle to never show something so weak as hesitation.

The boy's apparent uncertainty is mirrored in his abnormally quiet words. "There… was a new girl in the Training Centre today. In my old bracket."

"And?" Maceria encourages, swirling the contents of her cup. She is bored out of her mind. She can't have more alcohol than her single glass of wine from earlier since her father is so near. Once the desperate little Steinn heir answers her question sufficiently enough to please her father, then she can finally retreat to her house (and her cellar and her ghost and her not-tea beverages and her empty house and her numbness and her –)

"She was… kind of… okay." Cato admits, begrudgingly while staring resolutely at his plate. His brow furrows, as if his words pained him.

She immediately pauses the churning of her cup. Now Maceria is interested.

Maceria has never heard the boy utter anything other than deluges of haughty superiority when referring to his fellow trainees and their skills. For him, 'okay' was tantamount to high praise. 'Honestly, it is the only almost-compliment by him of another human being that I have ever heard.'

"At combat training, she beat Marvel." The words seem to flow easier from him now that he can see his words earned Maceria's attention.

('Pitiful and pathetic, your father was never so obviously eager to please.')

"He called her a gutter rat and a Southside slut. Yelled at her to go back to her whorehouse and service her customers before they followed her up to the East and dirtied up our streets. She didn't yell back; she challenged him to a duel." Cato's eyes are glowing now, recalling the 'fierce battle', and it is with a slight awe that he announces: "She beat him."

Cato continues, more animated now (and clearly oblivious to Tywin's increasingly tense posture). "She wasn't even half his size! But she flipped her legs over his neck, locked them perfectly, and flipped him onto his back. He couldn't even breathe and she wasn't going to stop."

Cato seems to admire this girl's ruthlessness, and Maceria is unsurprised ('you're a horrid creature, a leech on any happiness I could have had, the death of my dreams.')

"The trainers had to come and pull her off. Then she told Marvel – loudly enough so that all of the trainees could hear - that if he ever insulted her again, she would break his neck, and no trainer would be able to save him." Cato seems to admire the homicidal intent from the Southside urchin even more, and Maceria really wishes she had something other than fucking tea to handle that.

Maceria is well-practiced in politics. After all, Tywin taught young Cato how to fight battles, but Tywin taught young Maceria how to fake interest. So, she doesn't let her eyes widen even though they itch to from her disbelief. This shock does not stem from the boy's clear veneration of the girl's homicidal intent. And it is not baited from the ease with which 10-year-old Cato slurs. Instead, her disbelief is rooted in the feat that her son has just described. Marvel had been ranked second in her son's previous bracket in Level 2. When Cato was promoted to a bracket in Level 3, Marvel had been moved up the ranking to first…

The solid, serious timber of her father interupts her thoughts. "Unlike your foolish old acquaintance, I trust that you will not let this new girl steal your rank from you?" Tywin warns. Maceria knows that the so-called acquaintance had been the closest thing young Cato had to a best friend (until her father told him winners didn't have friends - that anything other than allies and acquaintances was a distraction).

Cato reels back in his upholstered chair, affronted. "Of course not!" Then he stares into his plate once more, looking for all the world like he actually has something worthwhile to contemplate in his head ('doubtful', Maceria thinks maliciously).

"It's not like she can even challenge me…" Cato hedges, moving his gaze to the far corner of the room, petulant. "…she's still in Level 2."

Maceria is quick to hold her tea up from the table. (She may not like the insipid stuff, but until she gets back to her cellar, this cup of bitterly bland steam is literally all she has to help her endure this dinner).

She lifts the cup just in time, right before Tywin slams Cato's head into the table.

Tywin's voice is glacial, hissing towards Cato's loudly enough for Maceria to hear. "Trainees who best the first ranked in their bracket on their first day don't stay in Level 2 for long. You will not let her take your rank from you. Am I understood?"

"Yes, Grandfather." The boy is smart enough to respond without any hesitancy, his voice as even paced as Maceria imagines any soldier's might be. When Tywin removes his hand from the child's neck, the boy is even smarter still to keep his head down. His cheek stays plastered to a half-eaten plate of steak, whipped potatoes, and steamed vegetables.

A stilted pause, as no one says a word. And then-

"Lift your head," instructs Tywin.

Cato follows Tywin's words promptly, but does not dare wipe his face. He lets the thick sauce and chunks of starch slowly detach off his cheek and clunk into the remains of his dinner.

'Looks like the china survived.' Maceria observes dryly.

Her ambivalent gaze traces the delicate silver filigree, hand-painted onto the edges of the plate now freed from Cato's face.

She sees Tywin signal for his staff to clean up the mess. They scramble over each other to do so, like ants, unwilling to have her father's ire transferred onto them. When Maceria's eyes meet young, hauntingly familiar blue eyes, there is something… beseeching… in them.

(Help me. Please... You're my mom.)

This time, it is a loud silence.

"Well this has been a lovely dinner. I'll be returning to my manor, now. Have a pleasant evening, father, Cato."

She nods to them both, then takes the teacup - a macabre souvenir - to celebrate her departure.

'You may have your father's eyes, but that will not sway me. It makes me sick that a beast like you can breathe when Caron does not. I wish on you my suffering, tenfold.'


Many years later, Maceria will still have the teacup. She will look upon the memento more than once, eyes following the delicate silver swirls along its edge, and each time she gazes upon the porcelain she will contemplate.

She will remember Cato's vitality as the monstrous little boy introduced a violent little girl.

She will remember the dead look in Cato's eyes when she left the dinner table, without him.

She will also remember that dinner for the pivotal moment it was: the instant Cato stopped believing his mother cared enough to save him (when he began to suspect that maybe she didn't care at all).


Maceria soon learns the name of the violent little girl to be Clove.


Three years after the infamous dinner, Maceria is sitting on the porch of her manor's west wing. She would be perfectly content lounging about with her District 7 double-aged wine, but for one blight on her mood. Tywin is at a Council meeting, and so the terror she sired is having dinner across from her.

The meal is quiet, which Maceria is normally content with, but her curiosity outplays her desire to disengage from the boy.

"Is she pretty?" Maceria finds herself asking.

"Of course not." Cato reflexively scoffs. Unfortunately for Cato, he is betrayed by crimson flush blooming on his cheeks and the way his cobalt eyes fixate resolutely on the patio table.

Maceria almost rolls her eyes. She wonders if the foolish boy realizes how much he has just given away by not asking to confirm just who Maceria's question had been referring to.

She finds it a bit troubling that the little Southside urchin is still able to occupy the thoughts of the boy. Cato Steinn, Tywin's heir, the Steinn Legacy: a boy who had previously thought of nothing bar being the youngest Games champion in history. Her father does not complain of his progress in training though, so she supposes it doesn't matter who or what occupies Cato's thoughts. No doubt, her father just assumes that Cato will eventually grow bored of the girl, and that the girl's novelty will wear off. Perhaps Cato does a better job of hiding his little obsession from Tywin? Or perhaps Tywin assumes that when they are older, Cato can just fuck the girl out his system. Maceria doesn't doubt that her father would pay the girl handsomely if she were stubborn about Cato's advances. And if the girl refused payment (which Maceria doubts, as Southside rats care more for money than dignity), well, her father could be... creative.

'Steinns are good at being creative. Steinns are the best at getting what they want.' She thinks, and in that moment she relives the moment she poured poison into a cup.

She calls to the staff for another canter of wine.

('Poison quickly for my love, poison slowly for me. In delirium we meet.')


In an attempt to sate her boredom, Maceria often takes trips to auctions in other districts. Or, at least, that is how she describes it to her overbearing father. In truth, she buys a pretty item from an auction and then she fills the rest of crate (that transports her purchased item) with bottles of varying types of luxury alcohol. The Mayor of District 2 keeps eyes on even the sales of liquor, the tyrannical menace, and has capped her district vendor's sales to her.

This time, her travels take her to District 1's Ancient Art Auction.

District 1 is, as always, an eye sore. Too much glitter and pomp, whilst having too little alcohol content in their frilly saccharine drinks.

She wanders through the halls, pretending to seriously appraise the strokes of each canvas. In truth, she cares very little for these things, but Caron's gold sits idle, and if she cannot be with her husband then she can at least spend his gold.

She stops.

Before her is a triad. It piques her interest, which is surprising as very few things do.

The nearest auction worker notices this, sniffing the wealth emanating from her, and comes up to her side. Unprompted, the overdressed fool begins regaling her with the story of the three images in this collection.

"You've excellent taste, my lady, this is one of our most precious collections! In fact it…"

The first piece is an image of a beautiful young girl, dancing in a meadow. She has rounded eyes set on an innocent face. A wreath of flowers adorns her long locks, and it matches the blooms springing up along the greens of the meadow in the backdrop. There are detailed trees with thick branches, lined with wheat, painted along the edges of the canvas.)

"…An ancient princess, from the lost civilization known as Greece…"

The second piece is split into two halves. The left half paints the same girl biting into a plump red fruit, red liquid dribbling down her chin and dripping onto a dark stone floor. The right half shows a dark figure wearing a crown, on a backdrop of gold.

"…Hades, king of the underworld, who loved her the moment he saw her…."

The third piece shows the King dragging the princess into a dark void, right hand greedily ripping into her gown while the left kept control of a chariot carted by ink-black horses. The dark creatures pulled them towards a bed spun from gold. Maceria notes that the girl still looks pretty, even with the tears painted on her cheeks and the ruined wreath upon her head. 'How unrealistic.' Maceria thinks. 'True tears are ugly.'

"…This is only one depiction, of course. There are others who say she bit the fruit willingly, eager to escape the overbearing presence of her domineering mother; do you see the confines of the wheat and trees? There are others who say that being a princess was insufficient; that she ambitioned to be a Queen. There are others still, who claim she had loved him all along, and–"

"How stupid," she interrupts the loquacious worker. "No girl loves her cage. At best, she will fake a smile until she finds a key." (Maceria thinks of Cato, her key. The key she'd had and how she had been too sentimental to use it when doing so could have saved Caron.)

The auction worker seems unsure of how to respond, so Maceria ends the encounter. "The story was appreciated, but unnecessary. It is a lovely piece, and I will be sure to acquire it. Now, could you please direct me to the nearest winery?"

Maceria connects with her own version of this legend, a story she's heard before (lived before): a story of a momentary lapse and concession to a dark temptation. A choice that sealed a young girl's fate.

She goes back to District 2 with three crates, each painting lined with liquor.


When Cato is 16 years old, he storms into her manor, radiating rage as he screams and starts tearing apart the foyer of the east wing.

Cato, clearly livid, continues his tantrum even when she enters the area.

Smash.

Maceria momentarily mourns the loss of the now fragmented vase. It had been one of the pieces she liked best in the east wing. It was a very expensive souvenir from an auction she attended two years ago in one of District 4's nouveau riche beach towns (and had been accompanied home by a bundle of especially smooth bourbon).

Another glass vase sails, then shatters as it meets the framed art lining the wall. 'Shame,' she thinks as its jagged pieces gouge the canvas, 'I liked that painting too.'

She decides to intervene before she loses any more of her favourite items. Like the very expensive District 11 carving that the human hurricane is getting closer to with each broken relic.

"And what," she speaks, channelling her father too easily, "has brought this on?"

Cato freezes, then slowly turns to face her. His eyes are widened, and Maceria deduces that the brat had been so consumed by his own rage (and destroying her lovely collection), that he had not even registered the audience to his madness.

He looks immediately to the ground, and scowls, unforthcoming with any response.

Maceria smirks and mockingly drawls. "And what has the pretty little Clove done now, that she could inspire such rage from such a cold little boy?"

He stiffens, likely embarrassed (by her persistent and repeated mocking of a confession he hadn't meant to make three years ago) and angry (over her demeaning address of him).

He is still fixated on the marble floors, seemingly chastised and petulant and infuriated all at once. When he finally responds, he pauses first. Maceria suspects that pause means he is holding something back, and she is about to prod, but then he speaks and her mind goes blank.

"She beat me."

Maceria's jaw drops, first in shock… and then in fury. "How?" She seethes. "How could you lose to that Southside street rat? That grubby whore has probably spent more time on her back than in training, so how–"

"Shut up! Don't talk about her like that!" He screams back, now meeting her gaze angrily, bristling in unfounded indignation. He takes a breath. "It was just one round. I beat her the other two times. So I still won the spar."

It is quiet between them, and then he has an apparent minute of lucidity in his blind rage "Grandfather… he… he isn't coming here tonight, is he?" Terror infuses her son's query.

Maceria is stone. "He won't hear of this from me. This area will be cleaned quietly and quickly the minute you leave."

He raises his brow, clearly suspicious and disbelieving that she would willingly protect him in any manner.

Maceria internally rolls her eyes. "I do not wish to incur my father's wrath either." And they both know she will, that for this she most certainly will. Either directly or as spillover, she will bear part of the blame for Cato's loss should Tywin learn of it. At her elaboration, Cato seems more believing. After all, he might (rightfully) doubt her desire to protect him, but he wholly trusts Maceria's desire to protect herself.

"Do ensure that you do whatever needs to be done to prevent the girl from becoming a threat to your rank." Ranks were posted weekly, and there would be no hiding from Tywin should Cato's name not be at the top. Maceria follows her words with a meaningful stare that he doesn't seem to comprehend.

Cato stares blankly back at her, and she wonders if perhaps she has been overestimating his intelligence all these years. She turns to the shards on the floor, then looks up to one of the pieces that had just barely been spared by her intervention – the painting of Persephone being dragged into hell, gown torn, towards Hades' bed. She traces the border of the canvas as she speaks.

"There are plenty of ways to break pretty little girls, Cato. Explore your options."

She should probably feel at least a little nauseous after suggesting such a thing, but she stopped feeling things like guilt when she poisoned Caron (he always used to listen to her, even if he had nothing of substance to say. And he was kind to her, even if it was with his dopy lug-headed smile. And she had almost loved him, could have grown to if her monster of a son was left behind… if her monster of a son hadn't stolen her only chance at happiness).

She turns away before she can see his reaction, but imagines the creature her son has become will enjoy the damnable act. Perhaps once he finishes the deed, he will slice the girl's throat as payment for her services, and spare her from living a life haunted by his shadow.

('Caron are you proud? He'll destroy his heart - like mother, like son.')

She demands the nearest servant bring her a drink.


Bea comes to her, later that week, describing the gruesome rape of a 14-year old girl.

"And the moment she gains consciousness, she refuses to give the name of the assaulter, can you believe it? Well, whoever it was, sure did a number on the poor thing. Sadistic. Clearly knew how to hurt a Games trainee though – he almost crushed both her wrists!" She exclaims, before quickly adding, "I was able to mend them back to their original state, of course" (as if anything else would be an affront to her skills) "The damage was painful but not irreversible. Not permanent. Not physically permanent, at least. I imagine she'll never feel safe again after something so traumatic."

Maceria contemplates the information as she rolls the amber liquid in her crystal glass. "Are you so sure it wasn't consensual?" Maceria smirks. "Perhaps she merely started a game she wasn't ready to play?"

Bea looks at Maceria then, horrified, as if only just remembering what her best friend is capable of ('I poisoned my heart once, you know exactly what I'm capable of… dear Bea, I'm starting to suspect just what you're capable of too).

"Maceria… this was too far. He took it way too far. I erased his name from where he carved it into her stomach before anyone could see it. But gods, what if I hadn't been the one to find her? And he is lucky the girl is too prideful to let anyone think she was, and I quote, 'weak enough' to be attacked." Bea shakes her head, baffled by the girl's stubbornness. "She refuses to tell a soul! And would you believe that, once she was lucid enough after all the pain meds I had to dose her with to sew up her lacerations and realign all of her dislocations, that she threatened my life should I tell anyone?" Bea scoffs. "Ungrateful wretch. But, I guess, what else can you expect from the South?" Bea contemplates for a moment before continuing her tirade. "Maybe that's why she is so ambivalent about the whole thing. Bet she must have grown up expecting to be raped at some point." Bea rolls her eyes. "She probably expected she'd at least get some coin for it though."

Maceria shrugs, uncaring. She grows bored with discussing the antics of her son.

(she bred a monster, she isn't surprised)

She sees Caron's horrified face reflected from the bottom of her glass. It's always easier to see the details of his expression when the glass is empty.

"Would you like another drink?"


Cato starts staying at her house more often. And though she is often preoccupied with her auctions, when she takes the time to notice, she realizes Cato comes home later and later. He says he is training, and he keeps his rank at number one, so his grandfather doesn't question his hours.

Maceria sends one of her servants to spy.

('I'm bored,' she justifies to herself.)

The servant's report is… troubling.

"My lady, he was with the Southside girl, the one who they call the knife mistress. They were… engaging… in one of the Training Centre gyms."

"Define engaging." Maceria demands, suspecting exactly what type of physical altercations her son is partaking in with the gutter rat. (Clearly, the incident that Bea cleaned up hadn't been enough to sate Cato's appetite for the girl).

The servant stutters. "W-Well… it looks like he's… training her?"

Maceria frowns. Helping his competition is something that is likely to get him strangled by Tywin, and the girl flayed, so why risk it? Why would he do that?

Maceria doesn't realize that she has spoken her latter thoughts out loud until her spy responds with a reddening face. "I guess you can say, she pays him well, my lady. Or at least… she pays what he wants. "

Maceria waves her hands impatiently, motioning for him to continue. However, she has little doubt over exactly how the Southern gutter whore is repaying her son for his lessons.

"Two days ago… I think her payment was letting him choke her near to death while he… while he, umm..." the spy faces the ground, perturbed and appalled by what he witnessed and not inclined to relive it by saying the words aloud.

'And just when I thought you couldn't become beastlier.'

Maceria decides tonight is a vodka night.

'Monster for a son, monster for a father, monsters all around me.'

('Inside you too.' Whispers the cup)


It is unsurprising when Cato wins the right to compete in the Games as the District 2 representative.

Each district has different ways to select a champion when there is more than one person interested, which there always is. In District 2, interested competitors usually train at the centres. The best centre (the one known for producing the most District 2 Victors) is, of course, the one which Tywin attended and which Tywin sent Cato to). And then, each year, District 2 hosts a 'Pre-Games' where they have those who rank the highest in the brackets of the highest levels compete against each other. However, in order to do so, they need permission from the Centre they are enrolled in.

Cato is unusually young. The nearest to him in age during the Pre-Games is eight years his senior.

Cato wins the right to be a tribute by a landslide, and Maceria knows all of District 2 anticipates that he will return a Victor. Not just any Victor, but the youngest in history.

She wonders how many of them suspect what he will demand as his District prize, which will be owed to him by the District if he returns with a crown.

(Cato's hardly subtle. His eyes follow her when she's near, and look for her when she's gone.)


This year, the games are to be held in District 13.


It is not uncommon for tributes to be injured, but they don't often die.

To Maceria's dismay, the giant from District 9 is Cato's only real competition.

She hopes District 9 wins, or at the very least, does her the service of snapping Cato's neck.


.x.X.x.


Tywin sits in the Mayor's solar, greeting the newest Games Victor. He supposes he should be proud of his grandson.

"Congratulations," Tywin begins, "you bring great honor to the Steinn name, as well as our District."

Cato doesn't bother with greetings and doesn't acknowledge the compliment. Instead Tywin's heir lounges insouciantly in the chair across the Mayor's desk, and smirks. "And the District owes me a reward for it."

The boy's response is a testament to why Tywin can't bring himself to be proud – why Tywin can't bring himself to be anything more than content that the Steinn legacy has secured another championship. Moreover, one that will go down in history: the youngest Victor.

'Entitled brat.'

"And what would you request?" Tywin asks evenly, as if he doesn't already know what Cato's answer will be.

"Clove. I want complete ownership. Her body, her decisions, her life; she's entirely mine."

Tywin laments over the creature in front of him, and recalls the incident that Bea informed him of from three years ago. It was one of his smartest moves, he thought, employing and supporting the promotions of Bea when she was a child – it allowed him to monitor the actions of his daughter while his employ of Marvel allowed Tywin do the same with his heir. Tywin can't help but wonder how much of his grandson's cruelty is born from Tywin's own relentless training of the boy, versus how much is due to his daughter's callous indifference towards her son. Perhaps it was simply his breeding, Caron's Western blood sullying the Steinn name.

And Cato's cruelty truly is a cruelty that is unmatched; Tywin remembers every sickening detail of the gory report given by Bea, of what the boy was capable of at just 16 years old. Of what he did to the girl he now wants to own. He doesn't doubt that Cato had given his little band of followers leave to anything that wasn't assault or permanently disfiguring in order to restrain the girl while he was away.

Tywin does not regret.

He does not regret disposing of his impotent wife (Bea had covered his tracks well). He does not regret arranging a structure collapse during an exposition and telling Bea to get rid of Maceria's daughter (girls were useless, a pain to barter off, and Tywin needed something to force Maceria to realize how she had compromised herself. Something to reawaken her desire to be rid of her Western husband.) That being said, Tywin does think the latter could have been handled better. If it had been, he could have gotten rid of Cato's obsession at its onset when the boy was ten. Unfortunately, Maceria was sloppy and emotional when she poisoned her husband. Thank goodness Bea cleaned up most of that mess, but whispers still arose regarding what really happened to the lovable victor from the West.

'Perhaps it is time to appease the sheep in the lower areas of District 2 once more.'

"Only if you'll have her as a bride. I'll not have the populace believe I gave out one of our citizens – a favoured future Games candidate, no less - to be my grandson's bed slave." Tywin sneers, "even a gutter rat from the South."

Cato growls. "I won. She's mine. I can have her however I want. I can drag her onto the streets and fuck her on the steps of the main hall with everyone as witness. She's mine."

Tywin does not falter. "Wed her, or I keep her away from you by wedding her to another—"

Tywin does not finish – cannot finish.

Cato's hands are around his throat.

The boy is terror-inducing, with thick brute strength, raging murderous gaze, and spine-chilling icy tone. "You haven't frightened me in a long time. I'm a Victor now, your funds mean nothing to me. You mean nothing to me. Give me Clove, or I'll rip off your fucking head."


End of Chapter 3


Pretense: a false show of something; insincere or false profession.


Review pretty please :) Bea Tray = betray (hehehe, totally not subtle but fun to do). So I know that I promised this chapter would be full of Clato, but I SWEAR, the next chapter is literally Cato's POV of everything that Maceria has seen over the years. Hint: Maceria is really off base.

What do think of the writing, grammar, plot pace, dialogue, etc? Constructive criticism and feedback always welcome!


Preview of Chapter 4: how to wear a mask

We all wear masks, and the time comes when we cannot remove them without removing some of our own skin. – André Berthiaume

-FINALLY you will see Cato and Clove's POVs of growing up, and what REALLY happened

Review if more chapters are desired, they fuel my words.

BIG HUG MASSIVE THANK YOU'S to the reviewers so far!

PhoenixEmbersss - you'll find out next chapter! Thanks for your review :D

Guest (1) - Thank you for your review! Their interactions are in the next chapter! :)

Guest (2) - Thanks for your review! I know I'm stuck using passive way too much in this fic, so I'm glad to hear it's still coming off as read-able ;P