Disclaimer: I am fully aware that I do not own The Hunger Games.
Author's Note: I am so sorry that it's been so long since I last updated. Much longer than I ever thought I'd let it go. It took me a long time to figure out where I wanted to go after the last chapter (had a plan, started writing, realized it was an awful plan), but that's not any excuse for a several-month-long gap.
I'm especially sorry to everyone who messaged me asking when I was planning to update, since I think I (unintentionally) lied to a bunch of you. I honestly did think that I was going to update several months ago, and I apologize for not keeping that promise.
Anyway, if anyone's still interested in this story (and even remembers where I left the last chapter), here's chapter eleven! Hopefully, I'll be updating more frequently now. I officially know where I'm going to college, and am about to enter the second semester of my senior year, so I should have a lot more time for writing than I have so far this school year. In any case, my New Year's resolution will be to begin updating regularly again.
Sorry for the super long author's note! Hope that everyone is having a wonderful holiday season!
Thank you so much to everyone who reviewed the last chapter: xoxo . Amethyzt . xoxo, TwilightCharmedFaie, HungerGamesHarryPotter7887, PurpleFlyingToasters, thatiismahogany, luvxas37, GottaLoveMEgan, ImmortalPalomino, CurlyCue, sami. j. hoyer, ClatoEverthorne, brooke13243546, ImmortalPalomino, Chloe, ABC, becky199469, FadedAllure, Bewie, girlwiththeknives, Frances Odair, SafeEyesOpen, The Jade Empress, SO GOOD, themimiworld, everonica, tractor, accioyourheart, Clove-Plays-Clarinet, Alyss and the Bandersnatch, FunnyPuffins1600, mra, Ombre de la Lune, and everyone who commented anonymously.
Even if Achates Gellar didn't behave as if Cato had him bound in indentured servitude, Clove highly doubts that she would hold much respect for him. Never mind think him a suitable opponent.
Grin too toothy. Stance too lax. Disposition too friendly. His face - lips, dimples, forehead - actually creases with geniality.
Clove shudders.
And then, once he finishes the traverse across the gym to meet her, it gets worse. Out of all the opponents she could have been assigned, Julius had to give her the only trainee she'd ever met who appears to think a handshake a proper pre-cursor to a fight. As opposed to a snarl or a blade or anything that would make her feel a bit less nauseous. No matter what taunts she had flung against Cato after his fight with her father, she'd never expected to see a trainee actually use such a greeting.
Staring at the proffered limb, her eyes go blank with a skeptical hope that he's volunteering for dismemberment.
"Achates Gellar," he narrates the gesture. Apparently she's not so lucky.
Unwilling to succumb to what has to be either a trick or a disgrace, she makes no motion to entangle her fingers with his.
At her silence, his lips pull up in unfazed amusement. "And you're Clove. Clove Fuhrman, right?"
Her chin gives a slow nod.
"Not much point in fighting, is there?" he asks with a disconcerting amount of friendliness still filling the lines of his face. "If you can beat Cato, I think we can both be pretty damn sure you can beat me."
Clove eyes him warily. "I can beat most people, but I'll give you that you're the first to readily admit it." If this is his attempt at lulling her into a false security, she's unimpressed.
"I like to think of myself as a realist."
She'd like to think of him as pathetic. "You really expect me to believe that you're not even going to try to beat me?"
He blinks. "Of course I'll try." Whatever stretches his lips into a grin is much warmer than what often motivates Cato's. "Wouldn't bet on myself, though." He waits a beat before adding, "Neither would Cato."
Must Cato Ludwig infect her every conversation? Curious in spite of herself, though, she cants her head in a demand for clarification. "And why would you say that?"
He shrugs. "No reason. Except for the fact that he actually did place money on you winning."
Clove swallows a snort of amusement. She had heard that there was some sort of betting ring that some of the trainees wasted their money on, but had never contemplated her place in it. There's something thrilling in thinking that she exerts control over a person's pocket money. Especially when that person is Cato.
Apparently they're both invested in the other's fight. And she will admit that, as much as she'd usually resent the assignment of such an inferior opponent, she might appreciate the room Gellar leaves for distraction. Just this once. For about the fifth time in the last minute, her eyes mutiny over to where Cato and Gregoric have begun exchanging glares and pretended civilities.
She doesn't regret her deal with Gregoric, won't allow herself to. She's also not sure of who she wants to win. It doesn't, she supposes, particularly matter. Either way she'll have the best male trainee the Academy has to offer as her partner. Why should she care whether it's Idiot 1 or Idiot 2? As though a silly kiss matters. As though taunts should irritate her.
She voices none of this inner monologue to Cato's lap dog. "He bet on me?"
The boy's shrug is nearly as infuriating as his sly half-smile.
Had Julius's harsh voice not called them to attention, she might have warned Gellar not to throw the fight for the sake of Cato's wallet. Not that he stands a chance anyway.
Her glance rebels once again. Cato and Gregoric both look taut, impatient. She doesn't realize that her face wears the same narrowed eyes and clenched jaw.
Clove imagines that, if Julius had any idea of just how little effort she and Gellar were putting into this fight, they'd both be due for a severe whipping. Likely more lashes than she's ever earned her unmarred back (she refuses to acknowledge the finger-shaped bruises already present).
They play at violence, decorating each other's skin with blood, and allow the blades of their knives to glint in threat. They do all of this, while darting their eyes every now and then over to the corner in which Cato and Gregoric engage in their own dance of lunge-and-evade. She has to cede a morsel of admiration for the way Achates's mind works; he seems to grasp as easily as she that, if they finish too quickly, there will be enough time left in the training day to switch them to different partners. Different partners who may complicate their covert observation of Cato and Gregoric's battle. Out of politeness, they pretend not to notice each other's frequent flickered glances over to their far right.
Once again, Clove supposes that she actually got rather lucky with her assignment. She doubts that anyone other than this pet of Cato's would care so much about a fight from which they were so physically removed.
Eyes meeting after an acceptable pretense of combat has passed between them, he nods at her. She bares her teeth in a grin and suddenly they're fighting in earnest, seeking an endgame.
Ten minutes later, Clove steps right over Achates Gellar's moaning body and walks breezily away. She ignores the faint chuckle that mangles his pained gasps.
She finds a place for herself against the wall a few feet from the pair of fighting Neanderthals that have, somehow, become a part of her everyday existence. And then she watches as the puppets wail against one another, as they delude themselves into thinking that any of this revolves around them. She knows better. This fight decides just as much about her future, as it does theirs. Therefore, since her future is clearly the more important one, she's the focal point of this afternoon.
They don't see the way her smirk dehumanizes them. It's wonderful to see Cato as nothing other than a tool, to forget that his presence had been enough to send her literally running away only a few hours ago. It's wonderful to know that he's just another one of her toys.
Each time he starts fighting Gregoric, Cato feels like he's never stopped. It's easy to block out the days, weeks, months, that pass between each of their fights, and fool himself into thinking that each dose of combat just adds onto the other. That, rather than several isolated events, they compound onto one another to form the most important fight he'll have at the Academy. Capital-vision, he supposes. As though life is a movie with an exact climax that determines the rest of the plot.
He wants the climax, drawn out as it's been, to go in his favor. He wants to stand over Gregoric with a blood-coated sword, and know that his superiority will never be called into question.
But they've been fighting for at least an hour now, longer than most everyone else, and neither is any closer to victory than the other. He grins as his sword swipes against Gregoric's skin. Red has always been his favorite color, and not even Andie wears it better than Aldrin. He'd take his rival's blood over Andromeda's lacy lingerie any day.
The triumph might register as a more satisfying one if he wasn't wearing at least as much blood himself.
And that's really all that he knows at the moment - the blood on his skin, the blood on Gregoric's, the sound of their swords hitting one another as they seek contact. Gregoric's glare and his own and the snarls on both their faces and the disconcerting, if vague, knowledge that they've never seemed more like the same person. It's like looking into a mirror at a dark haired, slightly inferior version of himself. Cato hardly even realizes that he's begun to growl. If he had, he might have seen Clove snickering from the sidelines at his transformation into the beast she'd always thought him. He hasn't noticed his training partner watching from the wall, at all, though. She's not a part of this fight. For the first time in weeks, she's nothing to him.
It goes on like that for a while. Swords meeting blow for blow, slicing sporadic wounds into any reachable piece of flesh, and nothing else existing.
Clove wonders if this qualifies as voyeurism. If so, she's fairly certain that Achates - standing silent and straight-faced several feet away - is equally guilty. She's never gotten this much pleasure out of simply watching a fight, never felt her own pulse race so as a spectator. A spot in the audience has too often before been marred by a desire to be fighting herself.
Her breath catches as Cato crushes the handle of his sword into the side of Gregoric's head. Beautiful. His responding fumble lasts only a moment before the tip of Gregoric's own weapon manages to form a reply.
After fighting Cato for so long herself, it's almost strange to see him fight someone with such a similar set of strategies and skills to his own. She can see why she and Cato, with their completely dissimilar styles, were paired with eachother. Clove can't remember a time that they've ever thought the same way about how combat should go. He and Gregoric - it's like watching twins fighting for dominance and nourishment in the womb. There's certainly enough blood.
She just can't decide which one she's betting on. Not that it particularly matters. All that matters is that, either way, she gets the best (male) trainee the Academy has to offer as her training partner.
She stares at the pair, knowing that each of them believes the sun rises and sets on whether or not he wins, but that she can't lose.
And so, unable to imagine her eyes ever tiring of the show before her, she keeps watching.
Cato hasn't felt more tired since he and Clove tested each other's endurance the month prior and ended up fighting right through lunch and into the Academy's closing minutes. Swing his sword, dodge Gregoric's, and enjoy the outlier triumphs. Right on cue, Julius's voice sounds to announce that the Academy must be closing in five minutes. Swing his sword, dodge Gregoric's, and aim to kill. He won't lose. He won't let Aldrin gain that advantage, that headway over him. Tributes will be chosen too soon to allow himself such a failure.
Swing sword, dodge Gregoric's - he wasn't supposed to trip.
Clove's eyes widen when Gregoric manages to stretch a foot out to trip Cato. Fixation freezes her breath. It's the worst timed bout of clumsiness she's ever seen.
She steals a look over to Achates in that snap of a second, and sees fear flickering over his otherwise blankly friendly face. She wonders if that's the feeling crawling through her gut, and wishes it away.
It's not, after all, as if she cares.
He trips and suddenly Gregoric has a grip on the advantage that they've been playing tug-of-war with all afternoon.
No. Cato's eyes widen with rage as Aldrin looms over him. No. He can't be about to lose. But even as he tells himself it's not possible for Gregoric to have gained such dominance, their swords say otherwise.
"Congratulations," Gregoric rasps out with a shaky smirk. "You're officially even more pathetic than your joke of a brother. Think about that when I have your ranking, your partner, your spot in the Games, while you sit at home with your broth-"
An almost inhuman roar breaks through Cato's throat and cuts through any words that Gregoric might have found to finish his sentence, and suddenly he's the one looming.
Clove watches the shift in their exchange with an intense attention that she's never been able to bestow upon any televised tribute. Gregoric had nearly won the fight; she'd seen the triumph on his face, the brief panicked defeat on Cato's. Then the dark haired trainee had interrupted his own grin to form a few words that she's certain he'll later regret. She can't imagine that anything else could have buoyed Cato so quickly into action. Familiar actions. A thrill runs through her as she sees him abandon his trademark moves for ones that she's signiatured. He breaks free from Gregoric in the same way in which she's managed to evade him so many times - using cunning rather than aggression. The brute emerges again, though, predictably and quickly enough. Finally knocking his opponent's sword out of his hands, he drops his own, and tackles him to the ground. Apparently a blade just wasn't good enough. Straddling Gregoric in a way that tempts her lips into a smirk, he proceeds to batter his face until blood and broken bones have rendered it unrecognizable. No talking. No snickering soliloquies of victory. Just his rage-blinded glare and insatiable fists.
It's exhilarating to observe and she has no idea why.
Cato doesn't stand until a sharp bell, signaling the Academy's closing, draws him automatically out of his mindless fury, and his knuckles away from Gregoric's thoroughly beaten flesh.
Without a word to the bloody mess beneath him, he stands, and walks away. He doesn't notice when Achates grabs his bag from its place against the wall, nor that Clove's eyes trace his unflinching tread. All he knows is that he won, and that he'd feel a hell of a lot happier about it if he could just beat his brother out of existence.
With that aim in mind, Cato doesn't go home. He doesn't go anywhere, really. Not to the house he shares with his - as Aldrin so accurately worded it - joke of a brother, and not to town or the quarry. He just walks to the whim of his feet and wishes that his triumph tasted better. It was hard-earned and well-wished-for and it shouldn't spread this sour sensation through his stomach.
Without knowing quite how he got there, he ends up mutilating the bark of a tree with his suddenly energetic foot. Kicking a tree, an opponent unlikely to ever flinch, let alone fall. All the better.
This victory wasn't the one he needed to secure himself a spot as tribute. He realizes that. He's fully aware that he and Gregoric fought for hours, that, by the time he finally managed to steal a victory, the trainers had probably lost interest and charted it off as yet another piece of proof that the two were virtually indistinguishable.
Heels, toes, sole - they all begin to ache, but continue their assault against the tree. As if he and Aldrin have ever been anything alike.
But, then again, he'd have the Academy liken him to Gregoric Aldrin over Jason Ludwig any day.
He keeps kicking, unsure and uninterested in whether it's his frustration with the fight or his hatred for his brother motivating his feet. Cato has never seen much of a use for reason.
After all, he's never been able to reason out why the fuck his brother would turn down the chance to represent District Two in the Hunger Games. He can still remember, at fourteen years old, standing in town with the rest of his district at the Reaping. Everyone had known that Jason Ludwig had been chosen to volunteer, Cato best of all. He'd basked in the knowledge for weeks, bathing in a potion of pride and jealousy.
But Jason hadn't volunteered. He'd just stood there when Tobias Fletcher's name was called. He'd let that name stand in the spot his should have taken, kept his head down, and refused to say a word.
As far as Cato is concerned, his brother had forfeited his name that day. Jason Ludwig no longer exists to him. All that he recognizes now was the weak coward that tainted his blood.
Clove rolls her eyes when she sees Achates gathering up Cato's things before following him - several circumspect minutes later - out the door. The ever faithful lapdog. Slinging her own bag over her back, she walks over to Gregoric's prone body and cocks her head.
Anger blazes from his silent figure, as they stare at one another.
And to think that she actually considered taking him up on his offer just to avoid Cato. She'd never have forgiven herself.
Limbs languid, she kneels down beside the quivering mess. He still doesn't speak, not even when she teases a fingertip against his cheek. The corners of Clove's mouth taunt him as she drags a drop of blood across his fist-marred features.
"Pathetic."
A few drops of his blood still lingering on her pointer-finger, she lifts herself up from the ground in the very way he can't find the strength to accomplish, and walks off.
Gregoric remains on the ground, blood dripping a path from his blackening eyes to his bruised jaw.
The next day, he's standing in her kitchen, acting normal, looking normal, and Clove isn't quite sure what to make of it. She pauses at the room's threshold. "I'm getting my locks changed."
Inspecting her fridge with a flimsy sort of interest, he throws a short glance at her before giving further attention to her supply of lettuce. "Don't bother. It won't help."
She rolls her eyes. "Of course it won't." Sarcasm makes such a handy crutch. It takes more effort than she'd like to admit for her to gather her breakfast without so much as a glance at him, enough of an effort that she can taste the blood her gnawed into her lower lip by her tense teeth.
Brushing past him, she manages to quirk her lips into a mangled smile. The alarm at the expression is palpable, if subtle, on his face. She basks in the way he tightens his muscles and narrows his eyes at her. "How was your walk here this morning?"
Now she has his full attention. Cato closes her fridge and stares as if, by looking at her long enough, he'll manage to decipher insult in her innocuous question. "I didn't know you were so concerned about my welfare."
She thinks of Andromeda's green eyes, always so wide, and tries to fashion hers in the same hunted-animal style. "There's a lot of rain still on the roads from the storm last night," she says, voice as saccharine coated as ever, "I just wanted to make sure you didn't trip again."
Without giving him a chance to reply, she walks off to the front door and forces herself not to look for his reaction. Facial contortions hardly matter when she can hear his easy breath shift into seething.
She's walked down her porch steps and proceeded to skip over a puddle before he catches up with her. "I'm flattered," he says in a voice hard enough to imply he feels anything but. "I didn't think you cared enough to watch my fight yesterday."
Clove's back tightens. Trying to keep her tone blank and her stride brisk, she keeps walking. "Please. My fight just ended early, and I got bored. You and Gregoric happened to provide the nearest form of entertainment."
That's all her fascination was, after all. Entertainment. Entertainment and curiosity in who she'd be able to call her training partner the next day. That's the only reason her breath caught, her stomach sunk, with each twist and turn the fight took.
He thuds a foot right into one of the puddles that she's carefully evaded and grins. "Not that early. Fighting Achates for forty-five minutes? I'd have thought you'd beat him in ten." Clove refuses to look at him so she can't be sure if he's as close to her right then as his suddenly smothering presence would have her think. "Off your game, little girl?"
Tightening the ponytail that suddenly seems too loose, she ignores him. She's hardly about to admit that she'd purposely held back just for the sake of watching him. That just sounded… well, it sounded like something his lapdog of a friend would do. Pathetic. She pulls her ponytail even tighter. "Of course not."
He ignores her. "Or maybe you've just forgotten how to finish a fight." Malice twists his lips upward. "I'm sure you could have had Achates easy if you'd just tried the stunt you pulled at Andie's last week to beat me."
A bit tighter. Why does her hair still feel so loose? He makes it sound as though the only reason she'd gotten the upper hand was her excruciatingly humiliating lapse in judgment. She tightens her ponytail a bit more, and opens her mouth to remind me that she'd only stuck her tongue into his mouth after gaining the upper hand. It's not as if she's some whore who- Her hair band breaks. Cato chuckles.
Glaring at him, she darts a foot out in his path and relishes in the sound of his fall.