A/N: For my lovely Mags! Enjoy!
He hobbles across the mossy forest floor, his breath coming out in short gasps. It's been a handful of days since the Bloodbath and he's still moving. Elissa's dead, thirteen others are dead, and he shouldn't be alive. He's a cripple. He should be dead. He looks at his awkwardly twisted leg and his thoughts can't help but flash back to her. He doesn't want to be a sob story. He never talked about Mariana, or how his leg was disfigured when he was fourteen.
"Mariana," he whispers quietly one night, head titled up at the fake stars on the black sheet of the arena's fabricated sky, it's too perfect sky. She can't hear him, no one can hear him. They will never show him on their screens; he doubts he's made it on there since he had a close scrape with that 8 girl right after the Bloodbath. She died that night, and he survived. He shouldn't be alive.
"Mariana," he murmurs again, his right hand instinctively reaching down to brush against his crippled leg. Everything he's been trying to suppress comes to the surface, bubbling and lurching into the limelight as his skin becomes browner than usual and his humanity is scrubbed away bit by bit, like a tough stain slowly coming away under the force of a sponge. He's wild and instinctive, and he remembers the girl he loves, the girl that he broke his leg to save. He doesn't think back to the night when it happened; he doesn't remember it well, to be honest. All he remembers is her laughing face and the fence and then the Peacekeepers and a haze of brilliant pain and black, never ending black, the type that seems like death. Her tinkling laugh haunts him through all of his dreams as it intermingles with the report of the Peacekeeper's assault rifle, and then her screams and his soft groans of pain mix into the melody and it's a choir of pain and horror and heartbreak singing in his head and all he wants to do is bash his head against the ground and end it. They were just curious kids, free falling in love. They were just curious kids, wondering if the fence really was electrified. It was, but it wasn't strong. It tickled. And then the Peacekeepers were there with death swooping in behind him and his life changed forever. He lets a low, guttural moan creep from his lips as he curls up in a ball at the feet of the tree where he's sleeping, ducking down behind the huge roots that curl like huge talons out of the earth. He pulls his jacket close around himself and eats the last crumbs of his bread and knows it's time for him to go.
He's not naive. What he had with Mariana would never have lasted. He doesn't believe in a God or a life after death. The last time he saw her was when he went to her wake in a blur of tears, and he saw her pale, icy figure in a pastel pink blouse through a cloud of tears. His heart throbs in his chest like it wants to get out, and he tosses and turns. He can't sleep. He suddenly shoots to his feet and slams his fist into the trunk of the tree behind him. His knuckles bleed, and he knows he's alive, but it's not enough. He wants his heart out. He needs it gone. He claws at his chest and growls again, louder this time, the bass sound reverberating through the forest. Everything's black, dipped in night's ink jar, and it's that night again and he's losing it and it's not even the first week yet and he's already killing himself. He roars over and over again, and he's screaming words he can't make out until his voice runs out.
"COME GET ME! TEAR MY HEART OUT! TEAR MY HEART OUT!" He drives his shoulder into the tree and his crippled leg buckles beneath him and he slams his fists into the soggy dirt over and over again until he hears footsteps and whooping. He sees the electric white light of flashlights scissoring through the death darkness around him and he sits criss cross apple sauce style and tries to put on a smile.
Cato stops in front of the boy, Clove and Marvel just behind him.
"Tear my heart out. Please," Angus whispers, his voice hoarse and quiet.
"Gladly," Cato chuckles, and he surges forward, and Angus wishes death was as quiet as the darkness of night. He gurgles as Cato stands over him with a jagged, bloody piece of meat in his hand, grinning madly.
"Is this the heart?" Cato asks, turning to Clove, and then there's all darkness. He almost hopes he'll see Mariana.
He doesn't.