Thank you to my reviewers Arianna Le Fay, justsurvivesomehow, and Ro-Lee.
Things will hurt very, very bad this chapter.
Extreme tissue warning. Have a box beside you.
Sorry.
ACT THREE: RESURRECTION
Song Suggestion: "21 Guns" by Green Day
LI:
Mags is of the opinion that, while Ember will be mildly bleeding for a week or two, the pain and cramping should be gone soon.
They're gone soon enough for Ember to join them in the fight against the Careers. Although Cato tells Ember to stay put with Wiress, whom he barely saved in time from a slit throat, she insists on burying a knife in Gloss anyway.
He can tell she regrets it, when they stumble ashore after the Cornucopia spins and they lose their advantage of knowing the clock. Ember rubs her abdomen as she sits against a tree. "Don't say 'I told you so,'" she grouses.
"Can I think it?" Cato asks cheekily, and she sticks her tongue out at him, as they carefully dance around the elephant in the arena. There will be a time to mourn, but for now, they have to keep it together.
(Although, Cato doesn't know when exactly it is the two of them are planning to mourn together. Because only one of them will be around after the Games—and if he has his way, it won't be him.)
Finnick's easy cheer seems good for Ember, so Cato leaves them to go find water while he joins the others in trying to map the arena again. Then they hear the scream.
"Ember!" Cedric Abernathy's voice shrieks.
He hears her returning cry—"Ced?"—and spins around, but he sees neither her nor Finnick. Cursing, he runs to the jungle after them, only to be rebuffed by a transparent wall.
The others join him at the invisible barrier, but none of them can breach it. Cato spots one of the jabberjays, flitting through the air, and realizes that was what imitated Cedric's scream so uncannily. He hears no more screams—he hears nothing from the other side of the wall—but judging by the expression of intense agony on Ember's face, there are most certainly more screams. Who? Her parents? Her little sister? Her cousin? Her friends? All of them, most likely. Something is causing Finnick pain, as well.
The two of them come running toward the wall, but they don't understand Cato's and the others' gestures to stop and they slam into it.
Ember curls into a ball beside Finnick, and all Cato can do is watch helplessly as jabberjays perch on nearby branches and open their damned beaks. But finally, the hour passes, and the wall vanishes. Cato crouches beside her. "Ember," he calls gently. She trembles, not looking up. When he touches her arm, she flinches, before she recognizes the touch and leans in. "They're gone now. It wasn't real."
"I thought it was Ced," she whispers. "I heard his scream, and as I was running, I thought about how I never went to his funeral, and I never saw his body, and maybe...maybe…" She shakes her head. "I feel like I've lost him all over again."
"Cato?" He looks up at Ashton. "Do you mind if I talk to Em?"
He senses that this is a long overdue conversation, and while the arena isn't the best place for it, it's the only place for it at this point. Cato lets Ashton take his place, so he and his sister can finally mourn together for their little brother.
LII:
The arrival of the bread sets Cato on edge.
"An even two dozen, then?" Beetee asks.
"Twenty-four on the nose," Finnick confirms.
Both the older Victors are casual and natural in their speech, but he can see how they glance at each other for half a second, and that half a second is enough for Cato to realize there's a deeper meaning to their exchange than just figuring out how to divide the food.
Twenty-four, he thinks. Twenty-four. He gazes at the water, at the Cornucopia in the center of the clock. Clock. Twenty-four. Military time. Twenty-fourth hour? Midnight? The lightning strike happens at midnight.
Does anything else?
LIII:
During normal Games, their group would have splintered by now, considering its sheer size—him and Ember, Ashton, Finnick and Mags, Johanna, Beetee and Wiress—versus a smattering of other tributes left in the arena, the only ones among them whom Cato knows by name being Enobaria and Chaff. And according to Ember and Ashton, Chaff is close enough to their father that they aren't worried about him attacking the two of them. So it's really their group against Enobaria and maybe one or two others, then after that...what happens? They turn on each other?
Yet Cato can't bring himself to take Ember and go. Ashton is her brother; he is one of the last people who will stab Ember in the back, figuratively and literally. Then there's Finnick, who's apparently such great friends with Ashton, not to mention the conversation Cato had with him in Two. And Mags was invaluable helping Ember through the miscarriage. If Finnick and Mags wanted them dead, they would have left Ember to suffer.
Johanna, Cato isn't as sure about. The tea was kind of her, but not enough to get him to trust her. So far, she's been about as amicable as Johanna Mason can be, but he remembers watching her Games and how she ruthlessly wielded her axes. If she tries anything, he'll make sure it'll be her own axes that kill her.
Beetee and Wiress aren't huge threats. Cato knows they're probably two of the smartest people to ever walk this Earth, but if need be, he can take them out easily. The problem is, he doesn't want to do that. The Victors from Three, while respectively borderline-invalid and halfway-insane, are friendly, and Ember is fond of them because of how Cedric admired District 3.
Midnight, Cato thinks. He sees the glances they all exchange—even Ashton—and he wonders if there's some grand plot that he and Ember are unaware of. But he knows better than to take her brother aside and ask. There are cameras everywhere.
Beetee lays out his plan to take out the remaining tributes with the lightning and his wire, and Cato thinks it a rather huge gamble that all of the other tributes, none of whom are allied with each other as far as they know, will happen to be on the beach at the right time. Is this part of the mysterious plan that may or may not exist?
He thinks back to what Ember said about District 13, to everything he's heard from her parents about the rebellion, and he wonders.
LIV:
The group splits in half. He, Ashton, and Johanna are fastest moving through the trees, so Beetee sends them down with the wire. One unwinds and sets the trap while the others keep guard.
Ember kisses him before he goes. "I'll see you at midnight," she orders him.
"As my lady commands."
They're halfway down the jungle when two things happen. First, someone cuts the wire just above them. Second, someone screams back where they left Ember, Finnick, Beetee, Mags, and Wiress.
Ashton grabs Cato. "Cut the trackers," he hisses. "Watch over Ember."
(The latter is a request that many who love Ember, including Cato, make when about to say goodbye to her.)
Cato runs, scanning the dark foliage for Enobaria or other threats. He encounters no one and reaches the lightning-tree without incident. Ember stands there, spattered in blood, but he quickly realizes it isn't hers when he spots the body—the male from Nine, he thinks—on the ground. Also on the ground is a prone Beetee, but he looks like he's still breathing. Mags and Wiress sit a ways behind Ember, as out of harm's way as they can be. Finnick is nowhere to be seen.
"What happened? What's going on?" Cato asks, trying to figure out Beetee's real plan, because it obviously isn't the one he told them all.
Ember's eyes are bright. "Cato, do you remember what I told you about Cedric's last conversation with Beetee?"
Force fields. Weak spots. Cato sees the knife in an unconscious Beetee's hand, with some of the gold wire wrapped around it. He lifts his eyes and spots the rectangular chink in the force field's armor. It clicks.
He remembers Ashton's last orders. Without hesitation, Cato takes one of the blades on his person and digs into his arm where the Capitol implanted the tracker. Ember is doing the same and coaxing Mags and Wiress as well.
On the ground is a spear that must have been dropped by the dead tribute from Nine. As Cato picks it up, a memory comes unbidden to mind, of Marvel, the boy who could have been his friend. Of one of the many conversations they'd had at the Tribute Center during training, when the boy from One had preened over his slightly superior skill with the spear, then deigned to give Cato some tips. Anyone can aim and throw a spear. The key is follow-through.
Cato tears the wire from Beetee's knife, and Ember helps him tie it to the spear. Their eyes meet. As Cato stands, he glimpses Finnick and Enobaria racing over. But he ignores them as he aims.
He throws.
He follows through.
The world explodes.
LV:
He awakens to Ember running her fingers through his hair. "I wanted to make sure I was here when you woke up, so you didn't assume the worst and do something stupid," she tells him.
Cato glances around. Lying on the floor near him is Beetee, still out like a light. Their surroundings appear to be the inside of a hovercraft. "Where exactly is here?"
She takes him to another room. The only person within whom he doesn't recognize is a Gamemaker who introduces himself as Plutarch Heavensbee. Everyone else he knows. Maysilee, with her cane and looking years older than when he last saw her. Haymitch, just as prematurely aged as his wife and holding seven-year-old Summer, the only person who looks untouched by all the events of the past year. Finnick, gaunt and haunted. Mags, contentedly fiddling with some thread. Wiress, seeming more in her right mind than she had been in the arena.
Most surprisingly of all, Rain Abernathy, with her baby daughter in her arms.
"Okay, you can tell us everything now," Ember announces to the room at large. Cato shoots her a look. She raises her eyebrows, as if to say, What, you didn't think I would wait for you?
Maysilee takes the floor. She confirms what Cato has already suspected or heard from Ember and her parents: District 13 is real, and they are at the heart of the rebellion, which they've been planning for years, waiting for the right moment to incite the Districts. But it turns out it wasn't a single moment, but a series of them, that enflamed the oppressed of Panem.
The Capitol murdered Cedric Abernathy, just to prove they could.
They changed the rules to force Ember to live, when it would have been easier for her to die.
They banned her from home and shipped her off to District 2 instead.
It all backfired on the Victory Tour, when the world realized that Ember and Cato had fallen in love, and what was supposed to be punishment (for what crime?) and suffering ended up the opposite.
Despite everything, Ember stood strong.
Because of everything, Cato changed and began to turn on the Capitol.
Their words, the ones from their hearts, not the speech cards, were the catalysts. District 13 saw all this, and they began to plan. Rain and Plutarch knew what Snow had in mind for the Quarter Quell, so their deeply underground circle of rebels agreed on one thing: Ember and Cato, who had somehow become the symbols of the revolution, must be kept alive at all costs.
They would have told the two of them, Maysilee explains, but the pregnancy complicated things. This was where she and Haymitch pulled the parent card: they wanted Ember, and Cato, to focus on her wellbeing and not be distracted by larger plots about which they would neither benefit from knowing, nor be able to do anything within the arena. And with Ashton and Finnick by their side from the get-go, they trusted that the older Victors would help them.
When Ember lost the baby on camera, the Districts' rage began to boil, and that rage exploded when the arena did.
"Now we're all on our way to Thirteen," Maysilee finishes.
Cato remembers seeing Beetee lying unconscious beside him in the other room, but no one else. "Where are Ashton and Johanna?"
Maysilee's expression crumples. Haymitch answers him grimly, "The Capitol took them."
LVI:
President Coin reminds him of his father, and that puts him on guard. They're both the distantly charismatic leader, talented at seeming interested in what you have to say, but ultimately it's their way or nothing. Unfortunately, Cato never quite mastered how to stand up to his father.
So when Coin tells him and Ember, "The miscarriage is prime subject matter for a propo," Cato doesn't know how to react. When his father told him to do something and he didn't want to do it, too bad. He ended up doing it, anyway.
Ember has a different reaction. "The actual miscarriage was caught on camera," she says coolly. "I'm sure you have plenty of material already."
"Words from the two of you about it will have power," Coin insists. "Show the country your grief. Show the country your—"
"It's bad enough that I had to suffer the miscarriage itself in public," Ember hisses. "I will not let our grief be available for public consumption either. That's the end of it."
Once she and Cato are a safe distance away, she falls to pieces. Cato feels hot tears streaming down his face as well, blinding him, as they finally allow themselves to mourn what they couldn't mourn in the arena.
LVII:
With Rain having finally shown her true colors, the relationship between her and Ember seems to be slowly mending. The bond between the two sisters appears sturdy enough that Rain and her daughter can live with Ember and the rest of their family in the same unit without much trouble.
Cato watches how Ember constantly plays with her niece, possibly the only activity that can bring a smile to her face nowadays. He watches them, and although it pains him, he imagines the cousin with whom Priscilla Crane could have been playing within a year.
"What happened to your husband?" he hears Ember ask her sister.
"I left him a note," Rain answers miserably. "I wish I could have done more, but there was no way I could have spoken with him before we escaped. I couldn't tell him much, in case someone else found the letter. All I said was that I was sorry, and that I couldn't leave Priscilla behind or Snow would use her against us." Then, in a small voice, "He probably hates me now."
"If he does, then he's a fool. Just like I was a fool to hate you all these years."
And so the Abernathys begin to take back one of the relationships that the Capitol stole from them.
LVIII:
Brace yourselves.
They hatch a plan to break the hostages out of the Capitol, because the Abernathys, as one entity, have refused to cooperate any further until Ashton is safe.
Ember will not let Cato volunteer to be on the rescue team. "Knowing you, you're going to do something stupid and get yourself killed. You're staying here with me." She can't hide the worry in her eyes from him.
He stays.
But she can't convince Katniss and Gale to do the same.
"You, your parents, your whole family, they've done so much for our families in the past," Katniss tells Ember firmly. "It's our turn to pay you back."
Cato doesn't think Ember or her cousin Madge or their friend Peeta breathes easily again until the whole team makes it back safe and sound, with Annie Cresta, Johanna, and Ashton in tow.
Ashton is in awful shape, and the Abernathys are excited when they're told he's finally waking up. All six of them, including Baby Priscilla, are waiting in the room when he stirs.
The first thing he does is try to kill his mother, who was closest to his bed.
Cato hears the commotion from the waiting room and races in. By then, everyone is frozen, because Ashton has his hands around Summer's little neck.
"Ash," his father calls softly. "You're safe here."
The eldest Abernathy child trembles. "No, no, no," he mutters like a madman, pupils dilated. "Not safe. Never safe. Not safe with Abernathys. Never safe. All killers, kill, kill, kill."
"Ash," Ember whispers, and he looks at her. "Do you remember, before we went into the arena, when you told me you would sooner die than let anything hurt me?"
Ashton's gray eyes are wide.
"It's no different for me."
His breathing is ragged, but his eyes are starting to clear.
Then someone fucks up. A soldier moves to restrain Ashton. He panics. His hands twist.
Maysilee screams.
LIX:
Cato is one of the only people, who is not a doctor or a nurse or a soldier, willing to go near Ashton. His arms and legs are bound to the bed, but the restraints are pointless, in Cato's opinion. Ashton is almost as catatonic as Ember was in the weeks after Cedric's death, barely alive himself.
But when Cato enters, Ashton's head lolls so he can look at the younger Victor. "You got Emmy out. She's safe."
"Yes. She is." But in shock and heartbroken like the rest of her family. What's left of it, at least.
Ashton's voice shakes. "You saved my sister. I couldn't. I didn't. I...I...I…" He gasps in pain. "Did I really do it, Cato? Did I really kill her? Is Summer gone because of me?"
Cato's silence is answer enough. Ashton's broken sobs follow him into the hallway.
LX:
Going to District 2 is the furthest thing from a homecoming. They force Two's surrender without much incident on the rebels' side, and he and Ember are told that Two's leader is being brought forward.
Cato knows who it is, of course.
Yet he barely recognizes the broken and half-mad man on the ground as his father, who takes one look at Cato and begins to laugh hysterically. "Of course you survived! Of course you're the only one left!"
His father's words make the hairs on the back of Cato's neck stand on end. "What do you mean, I'm the only one left?"
The next words his father speaks sound bone-chillingly sane. "You're a traitor, Cato," he says calmly. "You were a traitor the moment you destroyed the arena. The Capitol punishes traitors. The Capitol strikes where it hurts most."
Cato's heart almost stops. "Where are they?"
"Your mother. Your brother. Your sisters. They're all dead. And it's all because of you."
LXI:
He understands what Ember means now, when she says she feels numb all the time. He thinks he might even understand how she felt in those early days when she first arrived in District 2, lost and alone and grieving.
But he still has enough of his humanity to feel pity for Rain Abernathy when during Snow's next mandatory broadcast, Seneca Crane stands beside the president—and beside another woman, beautiful in the artificial Capitol way.
"Lorraine Abernathy has committed treason," Snow announces. "There is no reason to force a loyal citizen to remain chained to a traitor. Therefore, the marriage between Seneca Crane and Lorraine Abernathy is annulled, and Lorraine Abernathy and her offspring are stripped of their citizenship effective immediately."
Then, as a reward for Seneca's loyalty, Snow marries him and the other woman—someone named Drusilla, Seneca's "true love"—right then and there, on live TV. Drusilla smiles winningly, but Seneca's face is stony and expressionless.
Cato leaves Ember to soothe Rain's tears.
LXII:
It is decided that, with the exception of Maysilee, who relies on a cane to move, putting all the surviving Abernathys on what is called the "Star Squad" as the main force attacking the Capitol will help incite the rebels to fight harder.
When Ember's family hesitates, Coin offers to let them kill Snow. They accept, although Cato doesn't think they would have, had Summer's death—by Ashton's hands, but the true murderer was Snow—not been such a fresh wound on their souls.
Cato thinks how Coin and her circle seem to be planning this Star Squad with the idea of putting on a great show, whatever the cost, and he is uncomfortably reminded of the Hunger Games. But the Abernathys are hellbent on revenge, and he can't convince even Ember to rethink this.
At least Madge, Katniss, Peeta, and Gale agree with him that this is a bad idea, but not even their combined powers of persuasion are enough. They cannot stop any of the Abernathys from going, including Rain, who intends to leave Priscilla behind with Maysilee.
So Cato, Katniss, and Gale join them. They don't trust Coin's people to keep them safe.
Boggs guides the Squad through the Capitol, which turns out to be the worst arena that Cato has ever seen or experienced. They lose member after member of the so-called Star Squad to pod after pod, including Boggs himself.
As Boggs lies dying, he looks around at the surviving Star Squad and decides on Cato, whom he apparently judges as holding himself together the best. "Don't trust them. Don't go back. Do what you came to do. Do everything you can to protect them," he croaks as he transfers the holo.
His dying words reinforce what Cato has suspected all this time: Coin doesn't intend for any of the Abernathys to return alive.
LXIII:
The lizard mutts come for them, their sibilant whispers echoing in the sewers.
Ember.
Haymitch.
Ashton.
Lorraine.
Abernathy.
Abernathy.
Abernathy.
Ashton falls in the fight. His father saves him from a grisly death and propels him toward the ladder that the others are climbing. But the lizard mutts keep attacking, pulling them off the rungs and forcing others to jump off to save each other, to the end that none of them are really making it to the safety of the surface because no one wants to leave anyone behind. All the while, the mutts just keep coming and coming.
Cato sees the resolution in Haymitch's face.
"Dad?" Ember cries when her father jumps down from the ladder. "Dad, what are you doing?"
Haymitch pauses from his position at the base of the ladder, fending off the lizard mutts from yanking any more of them down. "Keep climbing!" he yells, and Cato has to bodily pull Ember up. Gale and Katniss help him with her brother and sister, who have joined Ember in a panicked chorus shouting for their father.
When he sees they're all safe, Haymitch manages a faint smile. "I love you," he mouths to his children, before the mutts swarm him.
Cato activates the holo and drops it in the sewer, where it explodes.
LXIV:
In Tigris's shop, the three remaining Abernathy children huddle together, the occasional quiet sob escaping from their corner. Cressida and Pollux, the only ones left of the film crew, sit silently side by side.
Cato sits with Katniss and Gale. "Coin wants the whole family to die," he murmurs, almost inaudibly.
"What can we do?" Katniss asks.
"Help them survive the war. Then expose Coin for who she truly is."
"Easier said than done," Gale mutters, glancing at Ember and her siblings. "I'm starting to worry that they don't mind the prospect of dying anymore."
LXV:
Seneca Crane is supervising the flood of Capitol refugees fleeing to Snow's mansion. They can all tell the moment Rain realizes this, when she gives a small gasp and freezes where she stands.
As if by some sixth sense, the Head Gamemaker's eyes scan the crowd. They see through the outdated Capitol garb Rain has on, and his expression changes from solemn to slackjawed. Cato sees his lips move: Rain?
Moments later, the rebels attack, and Seneca, standing heads above the refugees, is a prime target.
"No! Seneca!" Rain breaks free from Ember and Ashton's grasps and races for her husband—because despite what Snow declared, despite the different sides of the war they're on, Seneca Crane is hers, and she is his.
"Rain, come back!" Ember shrieks, as Cato restrains her from pursuing her sister.
Rain glances over her shoulder at them. "Tell Priscilla that her father and I love her."
Much, much later, they learn that Mr. and Mrs. Seneca Crane's bodies, riddled with gunshots, were found together, their hands reaching out for each other.
LXVI:
Snow summons Cato to the rose garden where the former president is being kept. This time, Cato has a choice whether to accept.
He does, because if nothing else, he wants to give the overthrown president a piece of his mind—and possibly a punch in the face, if he can get away with it—before Snow is executed.
"You've surprised me very much these past two years, Cato. I must congratulate you. Few people manage that."
This time, Cato will not let the old man decide where their conversation goes. "Do you regret it? Any of it? Everything you've done?"
Snow continues to de-thorn the rose in his hand. "Perhaps. Like all men, I wonder what if I had made different decisions. What if I had killed Ember, just like her brother, and made you the sole Victor? What if I had made her the sole Victor? What if I had chosen young Cedric? What if I sent her to Twelve instead of Two after the Games? I could go further and further back: what if I never made Lorraine a Gamemaker? What if I'd had their parents killed during their Games? Somewhere along the way, I made the wrong decision, and now I've lost. Such is the challenge of being a leader. Now Coin thinks to take on the Sisyphean task herself."
Cato follows the seemingly random change in subject. "I don't suppose you like Coin very much."
"She is quite like me. And none of us ever likes to gaze upon our true reflection." Snow admires his rose. "I've heard that Coin's ascension will not go unchallenged, however. I've been told that Maysilee Donner, whether she wants it or not, has quite a few supporters." Snow's cold eyes meet Cato's. "I would be careful if I were you."
LXVII:
Cato. Ember. Maysilee. Ashton. Finnick. Annie. Mags. Johanna. Beetee. Wiress. Fucking Enobaria. The only eleven Victors who survived the war. Coin surveys them all, and Cato notes how her gaze lingers on Maysilee a touch longer than anyone else.
"A 76th Hunger Games with Capitol children?" Johanna repeats. "Hell yes."
Enobaria—bitch that she is, who didn't even do anything in the war except sit on her ass in the Capitol—concurs.
Maysilee stands before anyone else can vote either way. "By suggesting that we should even consider this travesty, this massacre of even more innocent children, when we have lost so much already," she tells Coin quietly but firmly, "you are proving yourself to be no different from Snow."
Cato thinks Coin's eyes might be even colder than Snow's were.
LXVIII:
He's been so careful, with his eyes peeled for the slightest sign of treachery on Coin's behalf around Maysilee. But he doesn't see this coming, because it is too, too, too much like Snow, and surely not even Coin would resort to such methods.
But she does.
"A toast," Coin announces to the room of those who played an invaluable role in the rebellion, "to a new Panem."
Maysilee begins to choke.
There is screaming. There is crying. There is a flurry of motion. All too late. "Mom! Mom, no, please!" Ember begs. "Not you too, not you too…"
Cato grabs a stricken, temporarily paralyzed Ashton. "Coin," he hisses, as Ember and Ashton's mother's convulsions weaken.
For the first time in a long time, Ashton's eyes come to life. And they burn with a vengeance.
LXIX:
Ember can barely hold a glass of water these days without spilling it. So as the only other Abernathy left alive—besides little orphaned Priscilla, who is excluded for obvious reasons—the honor of executing Snow goes to Ashton.
Cato stands with Ember and the other Victors, flanking Ashton as he hefts his bow. He doesn't know how they found it, but it's the same bow that Cedric had in the arena. The same bow that Cato used to put the young boy out of his misery.
Hatred alights in Ashton's eyes, and Cato cannot tell if more of it is for Snow or for Coin.
He gets his answer when his arrow flies and pierces Coin's heart.
Then Ashton's second arrows spears Snow's throat, mid-laugh, and Cato realizes that Ashton's hatred for both is so immense, it cannot be measured or compared.
As her brother is wrestled away, Ember stares blankly at the carnage. Her fingers tighten around Cato's. "Is it over now?" she asks tiredly.
"It's over," he promises her, hoping this time, it won't be an empty promise.
LXX:
Someone—Plutarch, Cato thinks—pulls some strings to ensure Ashton is released from custody on the grounds of temporary insanity. Ashton says goodbye to his sister—his only remaining sister—and to his niece, who constantly cries for her mother (Priscilla doesn't remember her father), before he is shipped off to what's left of District 12 for recuperation.
By the time Cato and Ember (and Priscilla), Madge and Gale, Katniss and Peeta arrive, he's gone.
I am a broken man, his letter to Ember reads. Summer's death is on my hands, and it is her death that eventually, tortuously, torturously, led to the deaths of Mom and Dad and Rain. I tried to atone for my sins by killing Coin and Snow, but the blood will never wash from my hands. I bring only pain and heartbreak where I go, and so I go to where there shall be no one to whom I can bring pain and heartbreak.
I am sorry that I didn't see you one last time, but I knew that if I waited for you, you would be able to convince me to stay. And you, sweet little Emmy, are too full of goodness to deserve a wretched soul like me.
I am supposed to be your brother. I was supposed to protect you, and Rain, and Cedric, and Summer. I failed miserably, and by leaving you now, after the rest of our family has left us, I continue to fail. Finnick has been a better brother to you than I ever was, and he has no reason to be. You're better off without me haunting you. Priscilla and your children deserve better than to have to live with an alcoholic, kinslaying, addict of an uncle. If you insist on telling them about me—as I'm sure you will, because you love me more than I have ever deserved—I hope you will only tell them the good parts, so they do not live with the knowledge and shame of the bad.
Cato is a good man. He loves you even more than you love him, and that's saying a lot. I can rest easy, knowing that he'll watch over and take care of you for the rest of your lives...although I'm sure, you being you, that you don't really need him to take care of you. But you'll let him anyway, because the two of you are stupidly infatuated with each other.
One day, many, many, many years from now, after you have lived a long and fulfilling life, when you finally meet our family again in whatever afterlife there is, give them my love. Because I will never be able to repent enough to join you there.
They never see him again.
LXXI:
The only houses left standing in Twelve, after the Capitol's fire-bombs, are those in the Victors' Village. Including the house that Ember grew up in.
With everyone else at her back, Ember silently explores the dwelling, filled with the ghosts of many years of joy and sorrow and love. When she reaches her parents' bedroom, she bursts into tears, and Cato takes her to the meadow where she and her friends used to idle away summer afternoons, where she cries and cries until there are no more tears to shed.
There is no question of them taking up residence in that mausoleum of memories.
The six of them, and Priscilla, all set up shop in some of the never-before-lived-in houses in the Victors' Village. None of them has any desire to live in the Village at all, but it's the only inhabitable place until they are able to construct new homes.
One day, Ember asks him, "Do you want to go home to Two?"
Cato thinks of the house that they were so happy in. Thinks of the hiking trails they explored. Thinks of the illusion of paradise they'd fallen for, before it was ripped away from them because they'd committed the egregious sin of falling in love.
Twelve is where her cousin and her friends are. Twelve is where, despite the specters of her family and the souls lost in the fire-bombs, she will thrive again one day. And where she goes, so does Cato, whether that's in District 2 or 12 or some uncharted backwater of Panem.
"I am home."
LXXII:
Madge and Gale decide to get married.
So do Katniss and Peeta.
They ask Cato and Ember to join them, make their Toasting from so long ago official.
By now, Gale and Katniss's families have arrived in Twelve as well, and they are in attendance at the simple triple ceremony. Madge and Peeta lost their families in the fire-bombings, though, so Cato and Ember aren't alone in their aloneness.
Well, Ember has Priscilla, at least, who squirms in Primrose Everdeen's arms.
Cato feels no different when all the papers are signed and everything is official. Husband. Wife. It doesn't matter what they are called, only that he is hers, and she is his.
LXXIII:
It turns out Cato's nightmares are the worse between the two of them. More often than not, he's the one waking her as he thrashes at night, reliving memories of the children he murdered (the boy from Three's neck snapping under his hands, the girl from Eight screaming as he finishes her off), of the children he didn't murder (Marvel's expression of surprise as the arrow punctures his neck, Cedric shrieking as the mutts tear at him). He dreams of the deaths of Ember's family more than the deaths of his own, because he was present for all of hers, and none of his. (His father was executed for being such a high-ranking Capitol loyalist. Cato does not mourn him, because now his memories of his father are poisoned. If his father was like Coin, and Coin was like Snow…)
Often, he is jolted awake and finds his head in Ember's lap as she strokes his hair, just like when he first awoke on the hovercraft out of the Quell arena, back when they were only half-damned and not yet fully-damned. During one of these episodes, he tells her, "I love you," and he realizes this is the first time he's said so out loud, to her.
Her returning "I love you" is also her first. When Cato falls back asleep afterwards, his slumber is restful.
LXXIV:
Madge's belly grows round, and soon a new little Hawthorne arrives in the world.
Katniss and Peeta don't immediately follow suit, but that's out of choice. When they finally do decide to have kids (or rather, Katniss decides she's ready), it doesn't take long.
No such miracle comes for Cato and Ember.
Mrs. Everdeen tells them that usually a miscarriage shouldn't affect a woman's future childbearing abilities, especially not someone as young and healthy as Ember. But considering the circumstances under which the miscarriage occurred, the unknown toxins in the poisonous fog that triggered it…
Ember avoids Cato for days.
When he finally corners her, brooding in the woods, she is wracked by guilt for something that isn't her fault. He tells her so.
And he tells her, "We have Priscilla."
Ember finally looks up at him. "We have Priscilla," she agrees.
LXXV:
Priscilla comes home from school, distressed. "Daddy, someone said you're not really my daddy," she cries. "And that Mommy isn't my mommy."
Cato hefts her into his arms and exchanges a look with Ember. It's time, they agree. "Cilla, Mommy and I have a long story to tell you, about two people who loved you very much…"
LXXVI:
It's many, many, many years later, and they have lived long and fulfilling lives. They saw District 12 be rebuilt. They saw Panem change for the better. They saw Priscilla grow up alongside her "cousins," the Hawthorne kids and the Mellark kids. They saw Priscilla fall in love—with Finnick and Annie's eldest son, of all people—and get married. They saw memorials erected, some honoring those who died in the Games, some honoring those who died in the war, some honoring the Abernathys in particular.
They saw a world for which they fought and lost and bled so much, a world they once only dreamed of, come to fruition.
The two of them lie in bed at night, and even in their old age, Ember is still the most beautiful thing Cato has ever seen. "I'm afraid," Ember whispers. "I'm afraid that I'll die, and after all this time, I still won't see any of them again. I'm afraid that there's nothing left after this."
"They'll be there. They're waiting for you. And they can't wait to see you."
This, he believes, is not an empty promise.
Ember manages a tired smile. "I'll finally see Cedric again."
His weary hand clasps with hers. "Whatever happens after this," he vows, "I'll follow you. I'll be by your side."
He can feel his remaining hours ticking away from him. So does she. And they are at peace with it, because for all the sorrows and tears they have endured in their lifetime, and at such young ages, they have experienced many more joys and laughs in the many decades since.
Watch out for her, they asked him. Take care of her, they asked him. And he has. And even as their souls slip out of their bodies, even as they enter that unknown darkness, he still does. He always has, and he always will.
Fin
"Time is a game played beautifully by children." -Heraclitus
In other news, my beta thinks I'm a sadist now. If you need me, I shall keep an eye out for your approaching pitchforks and torches.
This fic started when Arianna Le Fay, the winner of my first oneshot contest for The Sweetest Mockery, gave me the prompt, What if Ember and Cato had played out the 74th HG after all? This was SUPPOSED to be a oneshot (and I guess you can pretend the story ended at the end of Part One and ignore everything that comes after, if you'd prefer a much happier ending), but as you can see, my imagination got away from me and this ended up a rather lengthy threeshot.
AGPBBC, especially Part Three, was hard to write. Contrary to what you may now believe, I don't enjoy making the characters suffer. :P Everything that happened in this fic happened for a reason, and hopefully I managed to convey that well enough to all you lovely readers, but in case I didn't, definitely feel free to leave me a review or a PM and I'll be happy to discuss it.
To my Sweetest Mockery readers: Don't fret! I'm not going the way of George R. R. Martin/Game of Thrones and planning on killing everyone you ever loved in that story. I dislike recycling storylines/plot points/plot devices, so I won't make the Sweetest Mockery-verse characters suffer the same way. That is not to say they won't suffer at all (muahaha-I mean, sorry), but rest assured I'm not going to copy what I did here in AGPBBC.
Thank you so much for reading this story. And I'd be much obliged if you would leave one last review. :)