A/N: Finally, my dear Belle! Here's some Clato for you :) Takes place in my 500YOP Universe ;) Spoilers of how the end of the 74th Games will play out and spoiler for the Victor, although if you've read Tiered you already know the Victor.
A big Victor's Village watches from home, and Brutus and Enobaria, hands locked in a rare show of fear, watch as Cato and Clove stride forward with the sunset glistening in their hair and the blood of a half dozen under their ragged nails. They shouldn't be afraid, after all. It's Cato Hadley, it's Clove Oberone, they're fine. They're the best the Academy's produced in five years, and they've gotten a Victor in the past five years. They'll survive. It's just that the ox from 11 and his little faerie girl are left, along with a broken lover boy, fresh off of the death of the Girl on Fire. The Games have been a wild, fiery blur, with a huge Bloodbath, love and passion from Peeta and Katniss as they kissed under the stars, something hidden behind corners, tucked into secret moments between Cato and Clove. When they know the cameras are somewhere else, they let their fingers touch the other's ever so lightly. When they know the cameras are somewhere else, they let their fear show in too wide eyes and too quick steps.
They know the announcement of two Victors was for the Star Crossed Lovers; the audience loved them. Of course, the audience now probably hates Clove for knifing her at the Feast, carving her face to ribbons, but it was all she could do. The Finch girl (who died the next day at Cato's hands) had run off already and the ox from Eleven threw Clove to the ground and ran with the supplies for himself and the little squirt from his District. Katniss Everdeen was the only one left to kill, and they had to put on a show. Cato held down her arms and Clove laid on her legs and tore her to pieces like a rabid dog, but it didn't feel good like it was supposed to, taking out the big target towards the endgame. None of it felt good any longer.
"What is love?" Clove asks as she uses a machete to slice through a thick section of brush in the forest. It's nearing the huge wheat field, so the undergrowth has grown wild, unruly. The ox and the faerie are hiding in the field; it's the only place they could conceivably be. They don't care about where lover boy is; he'll be dead soon enough.
"Ask lover boy," Cato grunts, not wanting to talk about the grazes and the long looks under the cover of night. They both chuckle, hollow and fake, and then, as if mocking them, a cannon fires, and it's not from the fields. They would hear if anything was happening in the sea of wheat. Lover boy has died, love has died, and Clove feels queasy and Cato starts to sweat. They both pause and drink some water and stare at the sky as dusk starts to fall.
"We have to move faster," Cato gasps between gulps from his canteen. Clove nods her head sharply, and the two put away their water and take up their sword and knives and walk just a little faster. Cato takes over clearing the undergrowth, and his blade sings through the air, slicing through the brambles like they're butter, as he keeps his eyes squinted, hiding the fear that's inside them.
They walk through the wheat as the arena begins to darken, but they can't stop. It needs to end. The climax has been building for two weeks, and both of them are sick of the crescendo; they just want to fast forward to the inevitable ending, where it's just the two of them to fight. Neither of them really want it, but they pretend that they do. They pretend, because that's all they do at this point.
When the moon is gleaming in the star spangled night sky, a full, ripe, silvery white circle dangling down from the heavens, they find them. The moonlight makes the wheat glisten like spun gold, and Clove and Cato crouch at the edge of the clearing and watch as Thresh sings an old harvest song in a low, warbling voice, and Rue hums along softly, her voice light and high pitched. Cato's hand finds Clove's in the tangle of dirt and wheat, hidden from the cameras, and he squeezes her hand tight, and then they're surging forward to the sounds of screams.
"RUN, RUE!" Thresh roars, throwing her off of his lap as he picks up his crescent sword, his silvery sickle. Rue disappears into the wheat, there one moment and gone the next, picking up one of their packs and sprinting away as Thresh slashes at Clove with his sickle. She tries to dodge; her throwing knives will do nothing to block this brutal blow. It slices into her collarbone, and Cato roars, shoving Thresh to the side and cutting into his left kneecap with his sword. Thresh smacks the pommel of his sickle into Cato's cheek, sending him stepping back a bit. Cato lifts his sword up, but Clove's already screaming bloody murder as Thresh hacks into her right leg, tearing it to shreds as gore flies. Clove throws a knife haphazardly, and it smacks into Thresh's left shoulder. He just keeps going, slicing into Clove's other leg until Cato rushes at him once he's righted himself. Cato barrels into Thresh, and with one swing of his sword the boy's blocky head flies from his shoulders, a trail of blood flying out behind it. Cato swallows the bile that fills his mouth as Thresh's headless corpse collapses and his dismembered head hits the ground wetly. He looks away and runs over to Clove's side, but she stops him with a look. It's mostly pain, but there's also another look.
"Go, Cato," Clove whispers. Suddenly he hears the barking, far off but getting closer, and he knows it's the end, it's just him and Clove and the faerie girl and Clove's practically dead at this point. She can't even stand. "Go!" she yells louder. The barks are close, too close to save her, and Cato just growls at her, trying to keep on the mask while his heart is hacked to pieces and he hates himself. He wants to slice off his own head as he turns away from Clove and jogs away.
Her cannon fires a couple of minutes later. He can still hear the barking, and he hears her wretched screams echoing through the arena. He should have just ended her then, but he didn't, and he hates himself for it. He runs faster and faster through the wheat and tries to put the screams behind him. He's won, hasn't he? All that's left is a little twelve year old girl from Eleven. He doesn't want to jinx himself, but he's won once he tracks her down.
He comes to the Cornucopia soon enough. One glance back and he can see the canine mutts with varying shades of fur, from light gold to raven black, barking and snarling, a quarter mile behind him. He stops near the mouth of the Horn; it's desolate, looted, all of its supplies gone. It's a ghost of the glory of what it once was, just like he is. Rue's nowhere in sight. The faerie's gone, magicked out of here probably somehow. He'll have to face the dogs. He doesn't want to face them, even though he harbors enough anger against them; they did kill Clove, after all. He still doesn't want to face them. He just wants to kill Rue and go home. He just wants this all to be over. This isn't what he thought it would be. Nothing's like what he thought it would be.
"Rue!" he shouts. He opens his mouth wide as he whoops, "RUE!"
He sees her then, with his mouth gaping open, on the top of the Cornucopia, her bushy dark brown mane framing her cute, young face. There's the soft twang of her slingshot as it releases the small, jagged rock, and it goes straight into his mouth and down his throat. The dogs are close; their barking is deafening. Cato starts to choke, and he drops his sword as the rough pebble blocks his throat. He can't breathe. He can't breathe. His throat works hard to spit up the rock, to get air flooding back into his lungs. Finally, he spits up the rock along with a handful of saliva, but then the dogs are jumping on him. He picks up his sword and hacks off the head of one in a single fluid motion, but there's too many of them, over a dozen, and they're tearing at his fingers and his toes and his scalp and his nose and his eyes and his tendons and his heart. He dies on that field where the initial Bloodbath claimed so many. He dies with the little faerie girl, the youngest tribute to ever win the Games in 500 years and counting, watching from the Horn.
He dies finding some solace in the fact that Clove died exactly the same way.