CLOVE

She watched Cato from a distance with a cold curiosity. He was standing nearly naked in the garden, wearing nothing save a pair of cotton shorts, and Clove could almost hear the titters of appreciation from the Capitol. They loved when he stripped down for them, and he did his utmost to keep them happy in that respect.

"Ladies and Gentlemen of Panem," he began in that sonorous voice of his, a victor's voice if there ever was one, "My name is Cato. I am from District Two."

Cloves had noticed that the other tributes were forgetting about the cameras, no matter how dumb that was. Even the mighty Cato was foolishly practising his act for the Talent Show hours beforehand, spoiling the surprise. The deepness of his voice or even the tightness of his shorts couldn't hide the fact that he was an idiot.

"So what's your talent?" she called out loudly. Cato looked up, surprised that she had caught him in his little act. He wasn't embarrassed though. She didn't think he knew how.

"I'm working on it," he admitted. "Do you think I'd be allowed do weights?"

He was referring to the new rule that she reckoned had been implemented just to spite her. A dry, genderless voice had announced over the intercom that no-one was permitted to use anything that could be considered as a weapon as part of their talent. Her idea of throwing knives had been shot, and she too was scrambling for something to do that night.

"Can't see why not," she said neutrally, and pecked him on the cheek. It was coarse and she pulled away fast and left the garden again. He didn't bother calling after her, asking where she was going, she noticed. Too engrossed in his bloody act.

KATNISS

Clove came to them, unholy and yet clean, Rue's blood long since scrubbed out from under her nails."May I come in?" she had asked, and then made herself comfortable on the bed.

"So, Talent Show is tonight guys. Everyone's gonna be drawn together, pulled out of hiding."

"We know about the Talent Show Clove," Katniss said distractedly, looking around.

She felt trapped, even though it was Clove who was outnumbered and in their territory.

Clove kicked at the bedsheets. "Oh yeah, I forgot that you're a horrid bitch. Still, I'm going to give you this little tip out of the goodness of my heart. Tonight after our acts are finished, Cato plans on killing you."

Katniss felt like she'd been slapped. "What did you just say?"

"Are you deaf as well as dumb too?" Clove said, smiling at her own joke. "Cato's obsession has always been killing you, Katniss. The way he goes on about you- well it's enough to make a girl jealous. All he ever does is talk about how he's going to flay the skin off your back, then slice-"

"Enough," Peeta said, cutting her off.

Clove looked at him briefly like she'd forgotten he was there and then continued, her voice a notch lower.

"Cato is the first act tonight. I'm next, then you Katniss and Peeta is last. Cato will be ready when you finish your talent. You won't make it back inside the house."

"Do you expect me to believe you?"

Clove smiled again. "I know, I know. It seems unbelievable that I'd want to help you. Hear me out though. If Cato decides to turn on me, then I'm screwed. This way, if worst comes to the worst, you'll will still owe me a favour, and I won't hesitate to call it in."

"You think we'll owe you? Do you remember Rue at all? You killed her just because you could. You what, expect us to be allies after that? To trust you?"

Clove looked at her with an expression of pure boredom, like Katniss was a petulant child throwing a fit and she was just waiting for her to finish.

"Ah yes, little Rue. It was a real shame that Peeta pulled her away from me quite so fast, not going to lie. After all, that's your boyfriend's talent, not mine."

She winked at Katniss. "Did you know that Peeta spun me all sorts of stories that day? And yet you still think I'm the untrustworthy one."

Katniss honestly had no idea what Clove was blathering on about. "Get to the point, please."

"Listen Twelve, I liked Marissa and Cato killed her, so this is my feeble way of making him pay, and also giving me a backup. Take it or leave it, I won't ask twice."

"Well, what do we get out of this little arrangement?" Katniss asked.

"What do you get? You get to not die, idiot. That is of course, if you can figure out how to get out of the garden today, even with my tip."

She pushed the blankets off her and left, smirking.

Katniss was furious, but Peeta was still quiet. "You don't honestly trust a word that girl says, do you?" she asked him- perhaps too forcefully, because he looked at her coldly.

"We'd be idiots to write her off that easily Katniss," he said, the condescension perhaps unintentional.

"Does no-one give a damn about what she did to Rue?"

He stepped closer to her. "Cato's gonna kill us Katniss, and you're letting this little rivalry of yours-"

"Rivalry?" she asked incredulously. "Clove enjoys murdering people Peeta! You can't expect me to just be a ball of sunshine around her-"

"She's trying to save our lives."

There was only a couple of feet between them now and yet there was something in the way he stood, something hard and cold that was utterly unknown to her.

Katniss had been playing up this romance angle all along. She'd been pretending to love Peeta because that was how she survived, and yet she'd never considered that he might have been acting too. Katniss had just taken it as fact that Peeta loved her, and that was that.

And yet now he stared her down with dead eyes, and she knew that if there was ever a script, then this was the moment where she was meant to fall into his arms and kiss whatever was wrong better.

But she did not move.

The greatest couple the Games had ever seen, and she couldn't bring herself to touch him.

CLOVE

Clove went onstage that evening, when the sky was dark and fairy lights illuminated the scene. Cato sat in front of her, her eager audience, while Peeta and Katniss stood further away, leaning up against the house wall like the mere distance made them safe. They had warily made their way into the garden even though Clove had told them it was after the show that Cato wanted to kill them. It was almost like they didn't trust her. She smiled at the thought and began.

"Ladies and Gents, my name is Clove. To be honest my talent is actually killing people. I'd do a demonstration but I'm not actually allowed to take the knives out of the kitchen- and besides, who'd volunteer for this little act?" She let her eyes fall on Katniss before she spoke again.

"But I'm sure you all know my skills anyway. If you remember Glimmer, and the state I left her in, then you know my talent. If you remember Rue, bleeding and bloodied, that was all my work too.

If you've got a feeling in your gut that the other tributes aren't gonna make it, if you fear for their lives, then you have a healthy understanding of what I can do. Thank you." She gave a mock bow to the cameras and went to sit beside Cato.

"Is that allowed?" he hissed at her.

"Who knows? But what are they gonna do, kill me?"

He scowled and got up to do his little weights show. It was just as terrible as she'd envisioned.

Katniss was after him. There was a moment of glorious tension as she passed Cato, but Clove knew that even Cato wasn't stupid enough to try kill Katniss now. Let her and her boyfriend garner whatever points they could today. Clove and Cato would get all those points when they died anyway.

Katniss fixed her eyes past her mock audience and began to sing.

It was something about a hanging tree, and was a little bland for Clove's taste, but there was no doubt that some would love that kind of style.

Peeta went last, his hands clasped in front of him in that earnest manner of his.

"Hello. My name is Peeta -as I'd like to think you all know by now- and I'm really not a very talented guy."

Clove truly hated faux-humility. She wondered where he was going with this.

"To be honest, my mentor didn't bother preparing me for this bit 'cause he didn't think I'd last this long. And you know what? I agreed with him. Let him give that extra time to Katniss, give her any extra chance."

He paused, and his eyes were alight with something that could have been adoration, though it could just as easily be regret. That had been a truly awful strategy after all. Typical Peeta, just basically leaving Katniss to do all the work and lying down to die himself.

"I suppose you're probably wondering what my talent is," he said, smiling coyly and addressing the open air at large and Clove was reminded of the interviews. He was good at this.

"Well, I guess you could call it storytelling," he continued in a proud yet breathless voice, as if this was a tale that he believed in and he continued on in that soppy, idealistic manner, telling the story of his and Katniss' romance from his point of view.

"The truth is that these games give and they take in equal measure. They gave me Katniss, and they gave me these two weeks, and that's more than could have ever asked for. I never could have hoped for this.

But the time is coming when the Games will take too. They'll take my life without much fuss, but that's okay, I think. It was worth it to have her love me back, even if it was only for two weeks."

So thank you. My name is Peeta. When I'm dead, don't remember my body, or even how I died," and his eyes flickered down to look at Clove, which was clearly an insult, "but remember my story instead. Remember how I loved Katniss, and how she came to love me back."

Clove didn't need any scoreboard to tell her that Peeta had won the Talent Show hands down.

KATNISS

"Peeta-" she called out as he moved down from the makeshift stage.

"Cato," he warned her, touching her arm.

Cato was pushing himself up from where he sat, and Katniss steeled herself.

She pulled the lighter out of her pocket that she'd stolen from the kitchen. She'd be penalised for that.

In the beginning the points were everything to her. If she got enough she could buy Prim out of the Games every year. Katniss wondered when she had started throwing them away just to get a lighter.

She pressed down hard and the flame whooshed out. Cato smirked at her. "What Twelve, are you gonna burn me with that?"

Katniss didn't know how but he managed to make the word Twelve into an insult. It sounded degrading when he said it to her, like she was no more that the number of her district.

"No Cato, I'm not going to burn you. We left the gas on in the kitchen. Do you know what that means? It means the room is just about full with flammable gas. If I throw this in the window, there'll be a huge explosion. All the food, gone. Water too. You'd probably die too."

Cato strode toward her, and she held the little flame higher. "Are you sure you wanna do that?" she asked, but he kept coming.