2

cato & katniss


(This is the thing that haunts her)

In the dream, she is the only one top of the Cornucopia and he is lying in the same patch of grass, soil damp with blood and other unnameable fluids. His face blurs, going in and out of focus, and she has to really concentrate to get a close look at him, like his image is protesting against her vision.

He says please with what he has of a mouth. Everything about him is unrecognizable, from head to foot. It is a wonder that she was ever afraid of him when all he was just like the others - meat, meat and nothing else, no substance to him, no assembly. Wasted away. Food for dogs.

Please, and she trembles with the effort it takes to lift her bow. When did it get so heavy? When she shot the boy from District 1, it was fast: pull and release and the sound of the arrow meeting flesh. Now her arms rebel against reaching for her quiver, grasping the last arrow carefully smuggled past fate and the silent machinations of the arena, preparing to kill.

Hunt him down. Animal, animal, just a boy made of meat, should have been easier.

She thinks his eyes still have the strength left in them to look at her, see the straight line her arrow traces through the air as it whistles toward him. They have seen and been seen by each other, and she will not forget this, the sight of his body, this-

Please.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.