Okay hey guys, I know I said I was going to tell you why I didn't change the rules back in the last chapter, BUT (and please don't kill me) I'm going to save it until I've finished this Fanfiction, because if you want me to do a sequel, then it's going to be incorporated into that, rather than just in an author's note at the end, but yes that's up to you.

Anyhow, here's chapter 7!


Chapter 7 - Victors

Cato's POV

Cheers, shrieks, and screams, echo around us, no doubt live from the capitol. I turn and laugh happily, taking a gracious bow in a random direction, showing my love to my supporters. I hear Clove's laughter behind me and I quickly turn and pull her into my arms, spinning her with much more elegance than I thought was capable from both of us, before dipping her like I've seen professional dancers do on one of the many capitol programmes, and kissing her full on the lips.

Fireworks erupt within me and I never want to let go. The thought of going home with her is almost too much to comprehend, but it's true, we've done it, we can go.

After what seems like years, we break apart and I can't help but laugh triumphantly as a hovercraft appears above us, and two ladders are thrown down. Still clutching her in my arms, I grab on to the one on the left, not wanting to let her go, and we're both frozen in place by the electric current as we're pulled up.

Only now that I'm above the arena do I really see how large it is, a great expanse of land covered in trees, wheat, water, rivers, and who knows what else. So many places we went to, so many memories in each separate area. Even from here I can see our old campsite where we were first told that two tributes could go home, together.

"Attention Tributes!" Clove and I look up confused, the voice is in fact coming from everywhere but it's so godlike that we always look to the sky.

"We would like to inform you that there has been a change to the rules." Now I'm really confused… what, we don't have to kill anymore…? Everyone must fight without weapons?

"From this moment onwards, there may now be two victors, should they both be from the same district." What…?

Clove's head snaps towards me yet I'm still trying to work out what's just happened.

"The… the rule change… two tributes from the same district… we're going home? Cato, Cato!"

"Wha-" I look to her confused, we're going… home?

"We're going home! The rule change! We're going home!"

We kissed straight after that, I couldn't believe what I was doing but I did it. I dreaded coming into the arena with her, with my best friend, terrified she'd die, and dreading the time when I might go home, and not have her there waiting for me, to congratulate me and laugh with me, and then sarcastically correct me on how I should have made a kill in a different way, and how if I'd don't something else, then I wouldn't have been injured, or anything along those lines, yet there was the rule change. They may have done it for district 12, I'm sure they did, Peeta admitted at the interviews that he was in love with a girl, and that she 'came here with him', but it doesn't matter, because even if they did do the rule change for them, it affected us too, and we're the ones who won, us, Clove, and me.

Never before have I been so comforted by the sight and smell of blood, for I am drenched in it, yet it is the blood of Thresh, our final opponent, who we both killed together. I smile down at her as we near the door, and she rests herself gently against me. I know she's covered in his blood now too, yet I don't care, it's only when I feel my chest get warmer do I start to feel confused.

I raise an eyebrow at her, and when she looks up I see that she's much paler than before. "Clove…?"

She smiles meekly at me, and I open my mouth to shout when many pairs of arms grab me from behind and wrench me from her, a similar set pulling Clove away. She blinks in shock and goes to struggle and I can barely hear anyone through the mass amounts of shouting and screaming, of which most comes from me, though I barely realise it.

After a few moments Clove looks down to her chest, and so do I. A large portion of it has been slashed from a sword, her clothes cut and fresh blood slowly spilling from her. I shout at her as the medics grab her and pull her onto a stretcher.

"Cato! Cato!" She shouts my name and I struggle even harder, the arms that grab me becoming ever stronger and more and more coming towards me, trying their best to stop me running towards her and taking her in my arms and not letting any of them touch her.

"Clove! Clove come back!"

"Marcus!" I look around wildly as a peacekeeper shouts hoarsely for a medic, and I panic as a man in white comes towards me, but as I open my mouth to let out another scream, the needle pierces my skin.


When I wake up I'm lying in a soft bed with a shining light visible behind my closed eyelids and it's as if I've gone back in time, before any of this happened, before we got onto the hovercraft that took us to the damn arena. For a moment it feels like I never left, like I haven't been to the games, that Clove will be in the other room fast asleep and later we'll go to training together and meet Marvel and Glimmer and Coral, and try to convince Thresh to join in our alliance.

Only when I open my eyes and try to push myself up and find myself restricted by some chord or band around my wrist do I remember that it's not true. Only then do I remember that Marvel, Glimmer, Coral, Katniss, Thresh, all of them, even the ones who's faces I know yet names I don't, all of them are dead. All of the tributes in that arena are dead and by now, buried back in their appropriate districts, but not us. Not Clove and not me. But where is she?

I struggle angrily at the chord and struggle even harder when I see no visible doors or windows in the room, just me and this bed. The air smells so thickly of just plain cleanliness that it sickens me, it feels so unnatural that I hate it. A few tubes are poking from my right arm, and I snarl annoyedly.

Something clicks in my mind and everything comes flooding back to me. Thresh's death, the ladder, the hovercraft, Clove's chest, and the stabbing sensation as a needle was thrust into my arm. I twitch involuntarily at the memory, I've always hated needles, and glancing down I see the point where it entered, how they managed to get me in the right spot I don't even know.

Clove… I don't understand how she was cut, she seemed fine, save for what was no doubt a broken jaw and a few bruises and cuts from previous fights, so how did she receive such a serious injury? Only two people had a sword in that last battle, Thresh, and me. Was it me? Did I hurt her like that? I couldn't have, could I?

Brutus once said that when he was in the arena, he had an urge to win, he knew that he had to, to bring honour to his district, and something clicked within him, at one point he was making attacks without even realising he was doing it, he just knew that he had to kill whoever was still breathing, whoever's cannon hadn't yet fired, until they announced that he had won.

Had that happened to me? Had I attacked her without realising, my subconscious self having forgotten the rule change and just swinging my sword and whoever was living?

Or what if it was just an accident? What if she'd gotten to close before our final moves and I'd slashed across her then, could I have done? But surely I only attacked Thresh; I didn't even see her… right?

A portion of wall opens in front of me and an avox comes in and presses a button I hadn't even realised was there, which bends and morphs the bed so that I am now in a sitting position. She places a tray on my legs and I look down at it annoyedly. I feel a great amount of hunger, yet I can't make myself eat, now until I know about Clove.

"Where is she, Where's Clove!" The avox blinks at me, and turns to go, and I shout at her loudly. "Where is she!" The tray flies off of me as I kick it off with my thigh, and a great clattering sound reaches my ears. "Tell me where she is! I have to see her!" I struggle wildly and the tubes move dangerously in my arm, almost falling out, before I feel a cold liquid force itself into my veins, and I once again fall unconscious.

Every time I wake after that, the same proceedings follow, until finally on the third occasion, I eat the meagre bowl of brother that the avox places on my lap, and can't help but feel shocked at how hard I'm finding it to eat. I've no idea how long I've been in this place but my stomach feels as though it's shrunk dramatically.

After two more unconscious and then waking up again periods, I find myself free of the aggravating chord around my wrist, and no tubes sticking out of my arm.

I push myself up and blink at the sight of my hands. My palms, which were once hard and coarse from so much sword training, and which received so many cuts and scars from my time in the arena with the bark and prickled plants, are soft and smooth. Looking at my arm, I can't even see where the tubes must have entered me, for there is not a single hole or mark anywhere.

I stand and dress quickly in the clothes laid out for me, the clothes we wore in the arena, and walk towards what I think is the door. It's not. For a few seconds I walk around going to hit different parts of the walls, before one portion of it finally slides open and I almost fall through.

Stepping out, I look left and right down a long, blank corridor, though I know that it isn't blank, that along it are similarly concealed doors leading to similarly blank rooms, and one of them will have Clove, and I have to see her.

"Look who it is, the latest victor." I spin around confusedly at the sound of Enobaria's voice, and spot her, Brutus, our escort, and my stylist, (great), in a sitting room at the end.

"Where's Clove?" In any usual circumstance, I'd treat her with respect, great her, bow my head, anything, but I couldn't care less right now, I can only think of Clove, not paying respects to this stupid mentor.

Enobaria narrows her eyes slightly, and I know she's pissed, "She's in a room similar to yours, and you're not to go looking for her." Right, sure.

"How did it happen?" My eyes fix on hers, the possibility that it was me that hurt Clove is simply too much, and I have to know whether or not it was, I don't even care that my escort is there and looking slightly offended that I haven't addressed her yet.

"Thresh cut her when he punched her, it was a double move… I find it odd that neither of you realised." Relief sweeps through me, knowing that it wasn't my fault seems to lift a great weight off of my shoulders, yet she's still hurt, and, bringing myself back to the present, I concentrate on Enobaria once more.

"Why didn't we…?"

"Clove's shirt was already so torn that it didn't look any different, even if it was a much larger gash than normal. It didn't start bleeding until both of you had even finished fighting, don't ask me how, because I don't know, perhaps the shirt fell down and covered it, and she was so full of adrenaline she didn't even notice I wouldn't be surprised, even if I am disappointed that she didn't realise it was a move that could have killed her. She's lucky you always arrived to save her…" Her tone is cold and, almost angry.

"How can you be disappointed?! We won?!" I don't hide the anger from my face, how dare she be disappointed in Clove, her mentee, how?!

"Perhaps… and you have received a lot of publicity, but if you hadn't come to her rescue with Thresh, both times, you remember if you hadn't shouted her at the cornucopia she'd have died then as well, then she wouldn't be here right now, she'd be in a box in the ground back in district two, as you well know."

"But she isn't..." I snarl at her slightly and look to my escort, knowing she'll be the weak.

"Yes Cato, she isn't, shut up Enobaria." My mentor smiles at me happily, and an angry looking Enobaria scowls up at him, I've always wondered who would win in a fight between them.

"Where's her room?"

"I can't te-"

"Where's her room?" My escort looks to me startled as I cut off Brutus and quickly direct my attention to her.

"I-I think she's about fifty metres or so back the way you came, on the left, but you're not meant to go see-"

I don't bother to listen to her finish her sentence, all I care for now is Clove, and before Brutus even has the chance to shout after me; I'm running down the hall to find her.


Okay so only a couple more chapter to go guys, Should I do a sequel...?

Also, I have an exam on Monday (divinity gcse, eek) so wish me luck :P! Thanks to you all for reading! Big thanks also to Artist quest (Laura) because she is awesome and has happily reviewed so often, so yes, thanks to her! Check out her fanfics ;)

Thanks guys! See you next Saturday!

-Tara

xxxx