Star-crossed lovers. That is what that girl and the blonde boy are, apparently. The boy...what was his name? Peter? Peeta. That's it. Peeta. He loves her, almost as much as she loves Cato. And he is honorable, she can see. And he is going to die. All the good ones do. He will protect that girl with his life, but that girl won't, because that girl does not love him, doesn't even like him, she thinks. That girl will not let love get in the way of her survival, might not kill him, because they are from the same district, but that girl would barely think twice before killing him if she had to. She feels sorry for him, because if Cato didn't win, she'd want Peeta to win, him or the little girl, Rue. But she knows Peeta would die early, because she knows everyone wants to kill that girl, and he would die for her. He is what Cato would have been, she thinks, if Cato didn't have to be a Career: sweet and loving and honest and funny. But Cato had to bury that under layers and layers of cruelty and bravado and ferocity and brutality, because he is a warrior. Why do all the good ones have to die?
She curls into a ball between her parents as the television flickers on again. Her heart is in her throat, choking the way tears choke, as she prays for Cato and Clove to survive the Cornucopia. She watches the platforms elevate to ground level, all twenty-four Tributes emerging from the ground like they're being born again, as warriors, all of their childhoods stripped away. The camera closes in on Cato's face, and she drinks the image in, taking strength from the steel in his eyes, the arrogant half-smirk. The camera pans to Clove, and she can't help but smile at Clove's feistiness, the snap and spark in her face, and she is reassured for a moment, until they show that girl's face, and it comes falling down all over again. She heard that that girl got an eleven in training, beating Cato by a point, and she hates her, hates her so much for beating Cato, for being the Girl on Fire. But fire will never burn stone. Fires burn out. Stone stands forever. This is what she tells herself.
The camera pans around the Arena, pausing on a bow and a quiver of arrows, a set of knives mounted on the wall of the Cornucopia (for Cato, she knows), a tray of daggers and knives (Clove's, undoubtedly Clove's). When the gong sounds, the Arena explodes into motion. It's mostly a blur of motion and dying things but she manages to keep up with him as he runs to the Cornucopia and grabs the swords like she knew he would. He spins around and runs a girl through without missing a beat, then tosses a dagger over to Clove, who snatches it cleanly out of the air and seamlessly throws it at another Tribute's head. He doesn't even have the time to scream. The District 1 girl (Glimmer) slits another girl's throat with a knife (apparently not as useless as previously thought) and runs to grab the bow and arrows. When that girl trips and Clove throws a knife at her, hope wells up in her like blood rising from a wound. It is cut short when that girl lifts her backpack to block the knife, and the hate is back. She wants that girlto drop dead.
When the girl lights a small fire that first night, she laughs at her stupidity. The Tribute is practically begging for someone to kill her. But when she begins to beg for life, Thyme's cruel amusement turns to sickening dread, not because of the girl's piteous wails and sobs, but because of Cato. He taunts her, tracing the edge of his knife along her neck and her face and her limbs as he laughs and asks what he should hack off first.
"Should I take your leg off first? Or your arm instead. Or maybe...I could take your head off. Let everyone back home see just how stupid you are. How's that sound, guys?" The Career pack cheers and laughs, as the girl continues sobbing for mercy.
"Please don't! Just this once, please! If you catch me again, you can kill me, just not now, please!"
Kill her, she pleads silently. Kill her and make it stop. Make the begging stop. Make the crying stop. Make her stop, Cato, please.Cato keeps laughing, cold and mirthless, and Thyme's heart breaks a little more. She catches a shadow cross Clove's face even as she laughs with the rest of them, a spark of something familiar in her eyes, and she cuts the girl's pleading short with a knife to the chest, much to Thyme's relief. She spends the rest of the night thanking Clove and praying for Cato. She is losing him faster than she thought possible.
There are eleven dead that first night, and she is grateful that none of them are Cato or Clove.
The next night is worse. There is fire, fire everywhere. She thinks it deliciously ironic, and hopes that the fire kills that girl, because how fitting would it be for the Girl on Fire to be...on fire? But the fire is everywhere, advancing on all the tributes in an unholy wall, and it doesn't just burn, it flies, in flaming orbs of death that crash down from the sky, and she watches in horror, willing herself not to scream, as Cato and Clove duck and run. Everything explodes into flame, like the sky that last night on the mountain, and she struggles to see them through the smoke. she can see their eyes, though, Cato's ice-blue and Clove's obsidian-black, wide with terror, but they don't scream. They make a mad dash through the rocks and the trees, and he grips onto her hand the entire time like a lifeline as he half-guides, half-drags her along, stumbling on rocks and roots. Thyme is grateful that he has not forgotten Clove, has not forgotten everything.
The camera cuts to that girl, and she grins with a wicked glee when that girl is grazed by a fireball, and half-curses that it did not burn all of her. When that girl screams in pain, the healer in her immediately runs through a list of herbs and treatments that would help her. Cool water, not cold. Poultice of calendula blossoms, to be replaced every half hour. Bind lightly with soft gauze to prevent abrasion. The District 2 in her laughs at that girl's pain, wants that girl to hurt more, to hurt as much outside as she hurts on the inside, wants her to burn and crack and die. She knows this is wrong, that girl is just much an innocent as Cato and Clove. That girl volunteered to save her own little sister, after all, a noble, self-sacrificing cause. If it was anyone else, she would have respected them, admired them, perhaps even applauded them. But it had to be this girl, a girl who is just as deadly as Clove, a girl who could kill Cato, so she wants her dead, dead, dead, buries her guilt under righteous, heart-broken fury, and watches on in cold amusement, a small smirk painted on her face. She doesn't see her mother watching quietly from the doorway, her heart breaking for a daughter growing up too fast in all the wrong ways.