CLOVE
Clove fled from the bathroom. The air in her lungs was unruly- it slipped from her lungs like water trickling through her hands, and she kept gasping in breaths weren't satisfying.
She lurched against Twelves' door, pounding with both fists. "Let me in!" she roared, but that used up too much air and she doubled over.
Peeta opened the door a crack and Clove tried to push herself through, but Twelve kept it shut. "No," she stated resolutely.
"No?" Peeta repeated, turning to face her.
"Cato's coming to kill me, you have to let me in," Clove explained, still breathless. Her heartbeat thudded in her ears and she couldn't understand what was taking so long. He was coming, they needed to get out of her way.
"Peeta, we can't save her," Katniss argued, her hand still on the door. "Then the three of us would win the Games. We'd have to divide our points with-" she faltered, but the words 'that bitch' hung in the air, unsaid.
"We'd have to share our points with Clove," she finished lamely.
"I saved your lives!" Clove countered, slamming herself against the door, trying to force her way in. Cato would be here in seconds and she needed to get somewhere defensible. "Peeta, I saved you, you can't just leave me out here, its as good as murder."
Katniss paused again and her voice lost its harshness momentarily. "Look Clove, I need those points to buy my sister out of the Games." She turned to Peeta. "I won't choose Clove over Prim."
Clove waited for Peeta to speak up, to say that his vote mattered too, that he wanted to save her.
But the best of them said nothing. The eternally polite Peeta Mellark did not speak to save her, and his silence was just as damning as Katniss' refusal.
"Your sister mightn't get picked for the Games!" Clove hissed, desperation colouring her tone. "You're choosing that chance, that very faint possibility, over letting me in?"
"I'm choosing Prim," Katniss said simply, as if that was an excuse. "You'd better run."
Clove ran, leaving the treacherous Twelves to their own vile company, and flung herself into the kitchen. No sign of Cato yet. She paused, her eyes flitting across the room. There was something highly - ironic, pitiful?- about going to hide, she realised, even as she pinpointed all the places she could crawl into, to crouch and quake in the dark like a child.
But the house was full of ghosts, and what was the good in hiding where any of the others had? They had all been found and killed after all.
No. She would not demean herself to the level of the dead.
Even though she had ran moments before, Clove knew she was no coward. She had fled to seize an advantage, yes, and she had begged, but that was beneath her. Her breath was back and Clove composed herself again.
She would be ready when Cato came for her. She would not hide.
CATO
It was time to kill.
Who first though? He wanted to kill Katniss as always, but he didn't want to attack Twelve's bedroom while Clove was on the loose.
No, he'd better track his teammate down and kill her first, tie up that loose end. He had imagined himself and Clove as Victors together, stitched together in blood, and yet she'd torn herself out of that image. The stitches were cut and he couldn't fix it, and it seemed like he really did have to go through with it.
Cato had never planned on killing her, not liked Clove. She was bossy and capricious but he'd only considered her death in abstract terms, a vague future. He realised that he would have let her live if she'd been good.
But Clove had not been a good girl, not at all. She had blatantly proved her loyalty was on Twelve's side, and that was betrayal.
"Cato," she said when he found her.
She was in the centre of the pool, an island distanced from every side, just a thin girl threading the water in the dark.
Clove spoke in a smooth voice, assured as always.
"Peeta came to me tonight and he asked did I want to join them. He wanted me to team up with him and Twelve to kill you but I declined. I love you Cato, if someone like me is even capable of that."
She kicked softly but rapidly in the water, keeping herself afloat, but there was no hint of the exertion in her voice. "You know it's true Cato."
He walked to the side of the pool, through the droplets of water on the tiles that were like tears under his feet, then he paused for a second. His bare feet curled around the edge of the pool like he was just about to plummet in the abyss.
"Clove, why did you fight back, huh? Why didn't you tell me all this in the bathroom?"
She laughed, and it seemed to fill the air around them, a sweet sound. "Cato, in fairnesss, you didn't really give me a chance to do much talking. And you know me better than anyone. I'm violent, alright? I always fight back. Sorry."
She smiled at him again and relief washed through him. He had been wrong, paranoid as always. Clove was his, and she wouldn't dare betray him to Twelves. He jumped into the dark water and swam towards her.
"Come here," Clove urged, holding out her hands.
The water was cool, and Cato felt that there was something eerie about swimming at night-time. It felt forbidden somehow, strange, like the lifeguards and children had gone home and the waters were now somehow less safe.
He embraced her, and it was like they were weightless in the cool water, drifting. She kicked once, twice, and they spun in smooth circles.
"I'm sorry I hurt you," Cato said softly, and he truly was. So what if she'd talked to Peeta alone? He had talked to Katniss alone, that time when she was up the tree. It meant nothing.
Her hair was in the water, spread out around her like an oil-spill. He moved, to close the distance between their lips, but she spoke first.
"Cato? Would you have killed me in the bathroom if I hadn't got away?"
He considered the question. The water was cool up against his neck as he spoke and it was getting cold.
"I don't know. Yes, probably. You know that rage though, when you can't see consequences or anything, you just want to lash out somehow-"
"I know," Clove said, her voice low. He moved in to kiss her then and it felt strange, the water being in-between them, and he pressed forward even as their lips touched. He let his hands move of their own accord, down from her neck and along her back.
Then two things happened at once. Clove jerked herself away fast- and Cato felt a hard, solid object down the back of her swimsuit.
"What the-" he growled and shoved his hand down her swimsuit, but she gasped in a breath and dove under water, slipping out of his grasp. He grabbed her ankle and pulled her back and even underwater, bubbles streaming from her mouth, she smiled.
She reached a hand back and pulled out the object, and Cato let go of her foot when he saw what it was and kicked hard, pushing himself away.
Clove had a knife.
PEETA
Peeta went to leave the bedroom, and Katniss caught him by the arm.
"What are you doing?" she asked sharply.
Rue's death had cut a wound into their relationship, a wound he thought had been healing. But the way Katniss had just treated Clove, the casual disregard for human life- it was like the scab had been picked off, and no, they weren't healed at all, the wound was still raw and bleeding.
"I'm going to see what's going on," he said calmly as he could.
"You'll get yourself killed."
He wondered how she managed to get such contempt in four words. Katniss sounded more like a scolding mother than the love of his life.
He turned away. "Well you'll have more point if I do die. Won't you be happy then?"
"Peeta, please," she said, and it actually sounded like she was hurting. That was progress from the cold indifference he'd been getting lately. So the key all long to draw an emotional response from Katniss was just endanger his life. Wasn't that just great.
"No," he said, mocking her words to Clove, and he did not listen for her step following as he left. Katniss was never one who would follow.
There was self-preservation, and there was survival, and they were lovely ideals, but sometimes you just had to risk your life to save someone else's. He thought that Katniss of all people, the girl who had volunteered, would understand that.
KATNISS
What safety was in the closed bedroom door now that he was gone? She could drag the wardrobe across the door but that would only leave him stranded outside, and Katniss realised that she could not make herself do that.
The bedroom was empty now, but her and the beds of dead girls. Glimmer had murdered someone in here, and one by one the others had all died too, drowned and sliced and diced until herself and Clove were the last girls left.
Katniss shivered and followed Peeta.
CATO
He pushed himself away from the knife-wielding whore, but Clove flung herself at him and plunged it into his chest like she was just stamping a letter.
Cato did not pull out the knife. That was a surefire way to bleed out. It would do a decent job where it was to stem the bleeding. What he needed to worry about instead was organ damage: if his lungs were punctured. He was screwed if that had happened.
He didn't swim to the side to address the wound either. Cato had a feeling that Twelves were waiting in the shadows maliciously, just beyond the dark waters, and that it this had all been a trap.
No, he decided in that instant, that second after the steel slid into his chest.
Cato kicked out and propelled himself forward, grabbing Clove's arm even as she began to swim away, the bitch obviously considering her work done.
He wanted to say, not so fast you dumb whore, but he didn't have the air to waste. She probably understood damn well what he meant though from his actions.
Cato launched himself onto her, the wound bleeding more so as he did. This effort would kill him, he realised.
He lamented the fact that he had never killed Katniss, but had that really been worth it? Katniss was just Twelve, just some nobody from some shitty district. They had probably spoken twice over the course of the Games. She was not the true enemy.
It was Clove. Clove the magnificent, heinous and yet lovely Clove who was so willing to lie and murder. She was the one to kill, even if it killed him too.
CLOVE
"Peeta!" Clove screamed.
Peeta had the greatest sense of deja vu. Wasn't it just moments ago when Rue had been calling for Katniss, when they had for all intents and purposes locked her out too, when she had been drenched in blood because of Clove?
And now Clove was screaming for him and he found himself running.
The pool was red somehow, a bloody tide. He felt a sick sense of relief when he realised it was not Clove's blood but Cato's that tinted the water, but Cato was not dead yet. They both thrashed in the water and it looked like Cato was trying to drown her.
Peeta didn't hesitate this time. He dived into the red water.
Cato and Clove thrashed and Peeta could not see, he could not help, someone was going to get hurt-
He was not a strong swimmer and the water engulfed him, tasting of copper, of blood. Peeta lashed out his arms and barrelled into what could only be Cato and the impact knocked the air out of Peeta.
He was lifted out of the water by hands around his neck, and yet he could not make good use of his newfound supply of air because Cato was strangling him, and he was kicking out but there was no more air this was the end- and then the pressure fell away and Peeta collapsed back into the water against his will.
The water surged over him but he was having none of it and clawed his way back to the surface.
It took a moment before he understood what he saw; Clove was face down and Cato was face up, floating in the water encircled by his own blood. Peeta splashed his way over to Clove's limp figure, too exhausted to swim, and of course, she held a well-bloodied knife in her hand. He didn't expect any less.
Peeta cupped her lithe body under his arm and kicked hard, using his free hand to flail, trying to get them to the poolside. She weighed nothing and yet he struggled. Katniss was at the edge and she grasped Clove under the arms and lifted her out while Peeta pulled himself out.
The copper taste was in his mouth again, and only now did he realise it was Cato's blood diluted in the water that he had swallowed.
"Is she breathing?" he asked as soon as he found air to do so.
"Yes," Katniss said mechanically, like she was remarking on the weather.
Peeta coughed once, and it burned all the way down to his lungs, then he forced himself to his feet and went over to them.
Clove was breathing alright, but rapidly, bird-like. Her eyes were half-closed and yet he could see her irises wheeling wildly under the lids. Her skin was clammy and her lips were blue like they had been kissed by frost.
"We're lucky she's breathing at least, I wouldn't have known how to help then," he mumbled, and Katniss shot him a look that showed just how lucky she thought that was.
He heaved Clove up over his shoulder and brought her inside.
KATNISS
There was something tender about the way Peeta carried Clove inside that made Katniss angry in a way she couldn't explain.
It was that the way he'd held her - it was just such a romantic image. The way he'd jumped in so selflessly to save her, it was beautiful, it was sweet-
it was worth voting for.
The couples were Cato and Clove, Peeta and Katniss.
So why was Cato dead in the water, and why had Peeta carried Clove in such a gentle manner?