Disclaimer: I do not own the Hunger Games.
Their proceeding encounters fail to present quite the same excitement as that first one. Clove hasn't yet decided whether or not it was worth the shattering of her invisibility to clear Cato's, clear every other respective trainee's, mind of any suspicion that she is merely a "little girl" (not that her brutish partner, much to her displeasure, has deigned to give up that particular nickname). She has to admit, though, that she can't help but appreciate the weary looks that she now earns by simply walking down the hallway, and, as much as she still loathes the entire idea of having a partner, proving that she's more than able to keep up with one of the Academy's most impressive students hasn't been a wholly terrible experience. The trainers, of course, had long been aware of her skills. It was the other students who had never bothered to examine the petite girl who kept to secluded corners with her knives.
Idiots. She's surrounded by idiots.
Inconspicuousness, she misses at times. The intimidation factor, though, really doesn't suck. Neither does the fighting.
(Her dad, when he bothers to check in on her, that is, has always told her that she had inherited his violent streak.)
That's not what today is about, though. No, they were specifically told that they had each engaged in quite enough combat with each other. Apparently, the whole "collaboration" speech hadn't been quite as escapable as either would have liked.
The atmosphere in their area is stifling in its tenseness.
"I know how to throw a fucking knife!"
Clove rolls her eyes, warring with impatience and amusement at the sight of Cato's red face, clenched muscles. "Clearly you don't know how to throw one well."
He might throw knives with the precision of a drunkard, but if it was possible to inflict a stab wound by simply staring daggers at an opponent, she might have to watch out.
It's official. She's never becoming a trainer. She hates teaching, hates sharing the knowledge that she worked so hard to acquire herself. Besides, Clove happens to be a natural with knives. That's not something that can just be explained.
"Again," she says, biting back the disgust threatening to infect her voice. Sure, he has the monstrous 'I'm going to kill you slowly and enjoy the sound of your screams' look down fine, but that's hardly going to help him actually accomplish anything.
The blade hits the board - several paces away from the target.
"Pretty good," she says with mocking laud. "If you're name is Haymitch Abernathy."
Forget daggers. His eyes, gleaming a furious gemstone blue, are ready to move onto jabbing her through with long swords.
She sighs at the sensation of a trainer's glancing appraisal. As much as she abhors the thought of actually helping him advance, Clove can't imagine that it would reflect well on her if he fails.
Ice eyes darken as if reflecting a storm cloud-ridden sky.
She never fails.
A sigh slithers its way through her tightly clenched lips but she manages to force her next words out with some calmness. "Straighten your wrist more."
Still looking at her with a loathing that competes with her own, he obliges. Or attempts to, anyway - she assumes.
She had wondered at first how anyone could possible even delude themselves into thinking that forcing her into close contact with Cato Ludwig would do anything at all to "improve her social skills." Honestly, the only epiphany she's come to since becoming further acquainted with the brute is that she's had the right idea all these years, avoiding people, if he's anything to judge by.
It's suddenly easy to detect the reasoning. Clearly, he needs her. Badly.
Clenching her lips, attempting to swallow a grimace, she slides her fingers around his wrist. It's large, far too large for her slim fingers to encircle fully. It's her control that slips next. As a grimace washes over her features, her free fist clenches in irritation. As if she needed to give him anymore reason to call her "little girl."
But he doesn't. He simply smirks at her. "Enjoying yourself?"
Her fingertips pause their adjustments as she stares at him in expressionless anticipation of his inevitable elaboration.
Gaze growing less bloodthirsty, more smarmy, more - as she's overheard some of her fellow female tributes giggle - "swoon-worthy," he lowers his pupils to their entwined hands. "It's alright. I've been told I'm irresistible." He pronounces his next two words through a smirk. "Little girl."
Yes. About as irresistible as the middle aged drunkard from Twelve.
Perhaps she shouldn't have made it quite so clear just how much she hated that pet name - any pet name at all from him, really. She's usually smarter than that, usually would have seen that her very vocal protests would have the exact opposite effect than the one she had intended. He just makes her so angry.
Clove rolls her eyes with irritation at first. When he breaks his stance, however, in an attempt to smother her with a proximity which she supposes is meant to pass as intimidating, her mood quickly shifts into aggravation.
"Yes," she says through a sweet smile. Slender or not, her fingers are perfectly capable of inflicting a certain degree of discomfort as she painfully jerks his wrist into the correct position. "You caught me." Her nails, sharp and filed into points, claw crescents into the light flesh covering his veins. "I don't know how I've possibly managed to hold off for so long. I've just been longing to get my hands on you."
Nails deepening their imprints before finally withdrawing, her kind smile contorts into a wicked grin.
Surprisingly, though, he doesn't revert back to what appears to be his trademark glare. The blonde haired boy simply returns her grin with one of equal cruelty.
(She's beginning to genuinely consider the possibility that, aside from being a conceited bastard, Cato is also somewhat bipolar.)
"Stance," she barks, meanwhile toying with the thought of the tantrum with which he'd, no doubt, respond to the suggestion that they move the target a bit closer. Just to make things easier on him, of course.
The curve of her pink lips deepens as she moves her tongue to form the words.
He's enjoying this. Clove scowls at the satisfied grin of sadism residing on Cato's face. He's enjoying this far too much.
(She's choosing to ignore the amusement that she'd felt only a day previous upon observing his own obvious inexperience with a knife).
"C'mon, Clove," he teases. "Stance."
Her eyes roll in irritation. She made that suggestion seriously. Well, more seriously than him anyway. He's just treating this like some big joke.
"My stance," the words resound with a certain grittiness as they force their way though her clenched teeth, "is fine and you know it."
Feeling his cerulean eyes drawling down to her legs, she waits for his agreement. She knows how to stand with a sword, thank you very much. Unlike some, she listens in class.
In a rare moment of sobriety, he agrees. "You're right."
It was the response that she had been anticipating, but it still takes effort for her not to stumble in surprise. And she'd thought that the day that Cato actually recognized her brilliance would the day that-
Then his blunt body begins to emanate smugness. "What you need is a lighter sword. Mine's too heavy for you, little girl." Very, very smug. "Wouldn't want you to take on more than you can handle."
And apparently she has not just encountered a warning sign of a coming apocalypse.
Clove wishes more than anything that she had her knife with her right now. She'd even take her clandestine dagger. Anything to carve that smirk off of his face.
Because, unfortunately, he's not completely incorrect. She doesn't have the same skill with the sword that she has with her more subtle, more sophisticated, blades of choice.
Not that she's about to admit that to him.
"I can hold this sword just fine," she says, sounding defiant, looking defiant, with her words hard and her face frigid.
Cato regards her with amusement, but doesn't argue. Her features grow even harder at his acquiescence. Because it's not due to submission to her will that he's putting up with her demand. He'd rather wait for her to admit that he was right, that she's too weak.
It's not happening.
Not happening.
A half an hour later, Cato is still smirking and Clove is still tense with resolve.
A prescient satisfaction already resides on his features, and, despite the unimpressive state of her dummy, compared to his own expertly slashed one, she keeps her lips cinched. Her arms will fall off before she lets him know that he was in, in fact, correct. This sword is far too heavy for her petite form to manage with much ease, much too large.
She can always come back later, though, when safe from his unwavering attention, to apply what he's told her to a more suitably sized weapon.
Mentally determined or not, however, her muscles are wearing. Her arms shake in a slight wave. No. She can do this. She can hold out. She can-
"Alright, there, Clove?" He doesn't try for mocking concern as she might have; there's no mistaking the taunt in his tone.
She opens her mouth to reply but another voice, one older, one with more authority, speaks first.
"Ludwig!" As much as she usually hates the intervention of a trainer into their battles, Clove has to admit that Calliope's entrance is not entirely unwelcome.
"What the hell are you thinking making a 5'4" girl fight with a sword that's nearly as tall as she is!" The censure in her voice is thick as she crosses her arms, stealing his brief authority. "Take this assignment seriously, Ludwig."
Cato nods stiffly as Calliope yanks the massive sword out of his partner's hand and replaces it with one of a more suitable size.
Training rhetoric composes the remainder of their conversation for that session but, throughout, Cato's exasperated glower is nearly as evident as Clove's sugar-drenched smile of victory.
I win.
Clove hates sharing. Loathes it, really, and it's not difficult to tell.
Despite the supposedly communal nature of the Academy's knives, there are only a few trainees, all in possession of extremely low brain capacities, who fail to recognize which ones it may prove fatal to take. Which ones are hers.
She hates sharing her knowledge as well (as has been made abundantly clear each and every time she and Cato practice with knives). The only sensation that she looks forward to less is that of sharing her inexperience with anyone - namely Cato. An unfortunate specification given that, aside from their trainers, he is the only one to whom she is required to show her weakness with swords.
There are other things too, of course. Her time, as demonstrated by her frequent solitude. Her lunch table. Her general space.
And she's never particularly understood the appreciation that some garner from sharing happine-she stops herself. Satisfaction with others.
This is why it surprises her so greatly when she and Cato share a smirk of exactly that. Definitely not happiness (she hasn't completely lost it), but not antipathy or amusement at the other's expense either. Satisfaction.
The snapped command of a trainer, Julius, she thinks he's called - although, since most of his duties relate to group work, she hasn't interacted enough with the gruff older man to be certain - serves as the instigator.
"Ludwig!" he shouts. "Fuhrman!"
Their chronic bickering interrupted, two sets of blue eyes dart in his direction. He gestures, with a swift flick of his wrist for them to cross over to his section of the gym.
Two other trainees are already present, a blonde girl a few inches taller, a few pounds heavier, than Clove and a muscularly built boy. The former stares at Cato with a lust that would have to be written on her forehead in bolded letters if she wanted to make it anymore apparent. Disgusting, Clove shivers the thought with no small amount of revulsion. Cato must be fucking loving this.
Except he's not.
Despite the girl's flirtatious wink, Cato's energy from beside her has suddenly tensed. Dramatically. It doesn't take Clove long to determine why, either - if the force with which his eyes have narrowed in on his male counterpart is anything to judge by, anyway.
In size, he's similar to Cato, with bulging muscles and a towering stature. His hair, however, is colored several shades darker, falls looser, if not exactly longer, around his head, and his irises, although just as striking, shine a deep brown color.
Turning to quickly assess Cato, Clove speculates that, if she were to try to bend his wrist once again into the proper knife throwing position, it would break, too tense to stand the flexing of those muscles. Any muscles, from the looks of it.
"Two on two," Julius instructs, stepping backward to give the two pairs room.
Cato's sudden outbreak of stress pushed to the back of her mind, she resists the urge to laugh. Fighting, she has no problem with. The opposite, actually. But with Cato? As in as a team?
The concept is so foreign that Medea nearly falls from her grip.
She can't help but send one more look in Cato's direction. He can't be any happier about this than she is. It's impossible. He has just as little respect for her, after all, as she holds for him. But his focus doesn't even flicker to her. He appears to have resumed practicing his still entirely pointless dagger staring technique, if not, this time, at her.
He and tall, dark, and decently handsome only have eyes for each other.
"Clove," he grits out as they begin to move closer to the nearby duo. "We have to win this."
Well, that was never a question. By the way he says it, though, you'd think that he was taking about the fucking Hunger Games, not an Academy exercise.
"Over-intense, much?" she says with light derision just to vex him. It's not as if she's keen on losing this fight, either. Really, for all the time they've spent together in the past two weeks, he should know her better.
Growling at her, he snaps, "Just stay out of my way."
No opposition from her corner. She'd rather fight solo, anyway. "Same to you."
Nodding at each other, they lunge into battle, Clove at the girl and Cato at the male.
Her own opponent isn't difficult to defeat, the platinum blonde's knife skills paling in comparison to Clove's. Her greater size extends the fight several minutes, but the ending is inevitable.
After she's tackled her own adversary to the ground and pressed the edge of her knife to her throat, thereby eliminating her from the match, she shifts her attention over to her partner.
His sword clashes with a shrieking blow against that of the figure that she now foggily recalls being named Gregoric, or something equally ridiculous.
Clove narrows her eyes. A minute, later neither has made much headway. Maybe, she wonders, this is why Cato clearly hates Gregoric so. They're too evenly matched. His advantage, even with his beloved sword, is slim.
Before she's even aware of what she's doing, she's at his side, directly disobeying not only his command (which is nothing new), but, more strangely, her own nature.
Odd. And odder still, since, as much as she loathes to admit it, Calliope might not be completely cracked after all. They are admittedly impressive together, viciously effective. They're almost synchoronized, aware of how the other will move with much better accuracy than Clove, despite her perceptiveness, had even thought possible. Really, she should probably be disturbed by how well she's come to understand him. That can't hint at anything good, aligning one's mind with someone as unsophisticated as Cato Ludwig.
Concerning or not, though, that's how Cato ends up pinning Gregoric to the floor with the tip of his sword, Clove standing to the side, allowing him to secure the final victory himself.
(If there's one thing she understands, it's the need to beat certain enemies personally.)
That's how they end up sharing a smirk of bloodthirsty satisfaction.
Author's Note: First off, thanks so much to my reviewers, Jesus the Gardener and Meagan C!
I promise that this story will get more exciting soon. I was actually planning on skipping this chapter completely so that I could move immediately onto plot-heavier chapters, but decided that would be cheating, since this background information is somewhat important. Anyway, thanks for reading! Reviews are always appreciated.