Author's Note: Here's chapter eighteen, what I predict will be the second to last chapter! I know this is really short, but again I don't want to have to cut up the next chapter and ruin the pace.

I'm sorry it has been a while since I updated, I planned on uploading this last night but I wanted to add the final conversation. I have a cold and a 3-day weekend right now, which equals an obsessive amount of time feeling like doing nothing except writing. I don't want to upload the final chapter of Wrong Crowd until I finish my Glimmer one-shot, but it's possible that I could finish and upload both within the next couple of days. Of course, if I get lots of reviews, I'll want to write faster! Anyhow, enjoy!

Chapter Eighteen

Cato's POV

How is it that you can fail the two people you care about most in just one moment? I allowed my best friend to die right in front of me. I hurt Grey and drove her away. They'll never be able to forgive me now, because one is dead and the other probably hopes I'll die before she sees me again.

Ever since the beginning of the games, Spens has acted in a routine, killing somebody close to me and then vanishing. Never more and never less, he's smart enough to know the longer he stays, the more risk he's putting himself in. But very soon he will be forced to drop his strategy and fight me one on one. And I will come out victorious.

I didn't try to stop Grey escaping with Marvel after Clove's… death. Even in my state I knew that I was no longer able to look after her, maybe with Marvel she could have a chance at something.

I scream and cry in agony for a long time, blaming myself and wondering why I was such an idiot. Why I had even let them come with me to the feast. But the pain inside me won't leave, even when I hack up Spens's severed hand that had been kicked away and forgotten soon after it was lost until it is a bloody pulp.

It's my fault.

It's my fault.

All. My. Fault.

Eventually my body can't take the battering, both physically and mentally. I collapse on the ground and manage to drag myself into the protection of the cornucopia. Blood-splattered, bruised, and ruined, I fall into a daze, not sleeping and not awake, wondering where you get the energy to win when everyone you learned to care about has gone.

After what feels like an hour but in reality is probably only 20 minutes, I start to feel angry. I have no one to talk me down from my fury as previously in the arena Clove was the one to do that, so I wallow in my emotions as I begin to shake. I'm not even sure who I'm angry at, and the confusion makes me even more furious. I'm angry at the Capitol for creating this stupid game that has been my entire life, at Clove for dying and leaving me here alone, at Grey for running from me, at Spens for killing Clove and Glimmer, but mostly I'm angry at myself. The fact that I'm stuck in an arena at a time where I'm rethinking my entire life means that the world feels like it's closing in on me. I try to imagine what would make me calmer, but the only thing that comes to mind is killing someone and feeling their blood run through my fingers. It's all I've ever known, after all.

Grey's POV

"Wait, what's that over there?" Marvel points at a mound in the distance and I mumble a noncommittal reply as we walk towards it. We are far enough away now from the cornucopia to no longer hear Cato's screams but I'm emotionally exhausted from it. I keep wondering how he is feeling and what he is doing. A couple of times I feel like bursting and telling Marvel that we have to go back, even though it has only been 10 minutes or so. He hasn't mentioned it and seems quite unfazed that we've simply left an ally behind, but I imagine that he's been trained for situations like these for a long time. It's no longer a thoughtless thing to do in his mind.

We get closer and I realise that the mound Marvel noticed is actually a tribute. A squeak escapes me as I picture all the people that it could be. Cato, Spens, the Capitol playing a cruel joke by moving Clove's body into my path? Marvel approaches the body and nudges it with his foot.

BOOM

I jump in fright and Marvel leaps back shouting something not suitable for the rest of Panem to hear.

"Did I...?" He asks me, eyes wide, and I try to look convincing as I shake my head. I must look terrible because Marvel looks at me pityingly and brings me into his arms. There are no tears this time; I'm all cried out, but for a second I can pretend that it's Cato who is holding me.

"Why does everyone have to die, Marvel?" I whisper into him. I don't expect him to reply, in the Hunger Games it's probably the stupidest question someone could ask, but he does anyway.

"Because they're freeing themselves from this crappy place."

I didn't really want to, but I ended up walking to see the body with Marvel to show my respect. It felt like the right thing to do. I was shocked to see that it was the boy tribute that had taken the bread from the feast; he was still holding half of it in his hands. There was no blood around him; he didn't even looked like he had been touched.

"You don't think that it was poisoned do you?" I ask, and then lowering my voice to a whisper, "I mean, is that even allowed?" Marvel smiles half-heartedly.

"We're playing their game, and in reality they could blow us all up right now if they wanted to." He pauses for a moment, as if he's expecting to be blown up for his comment. "But yes, I'd say the bread was poisoned."

Finding the body creates a damper on our already damp moods and we walk silently from then on. Maybe if we walk far enough we can just walk off the face of the earth. I drag my feet in the dirt with each step we get away from the cornucopia. Even though we thankfully don't meet any more tributes, life in the arena goes on and we hear two cannons go off within a few minutes of each other.

BOOM

BOOM

Neither of us jump, it's like death has become insignificant to us after seeing so much of it in such a short space of time.

"How many tributes does that leave?" Marvel says in a tired voice. I try to count all the cannons I've heard over the last few days, but when I think of Rue and Clove I get tearful and have to stop.

"Too many," I say, and Marvel nods in agreement. He thinks we've dropped the subject with that comment, but a few minutes later I say, "Four."

"Huh?"

"Sorry, I was just thinking. There are only four of us left now. Spens, Cato, you and me. Funny, I'm the last girl left." I don't add, funny, I'll be the next to die.

"Oh. Wow." He slows down to a stop. "Maybe we should stop here for the night then." We're talking between the lines now, because Marvel never says, we should stop here so when we're forced into the final fight we will be rested, but we both know that it's the truth.

The two of us trudge around for a while searching for a secluded place where it could be safe to sleep. I kick myself for not grabbing a bag containing food and rope because that means we can't stay in a tree and we're most likely going to go hungry. I can't even remember the last thing I ate but I know it was a long time ago. I temporarily lose Marvel for a while and while he's gone I find a cave that is partially hidden by bushes. It seems too good to be true and it's probably something that the Gamemaker has come up with, but right now I want to sleep off my emotions and this seems like the perfect place to do it. It's a pretty serious thing to make assumptions about but I am nearly one hundred percent sure that in such a pivotal moment in the games, the Gamemaker wouldn't let something kill us in our sleep. That would be no fun to watch, would it? The Capitol wants to see us be pitted against each other. Ally against ally; friend against friend. I wait for Marvel to return, and he eventually comes back with a heaped handful of what I recognize to be blueberries.

"I looked for ages but this is all I could find. At least it's something. Oh! It looks like you've had more luck with finding shelter, this is great!" I nod numbly and follow him inside when he brushes greenery away from the entrance with his arm. I make sure to put it back in place to camouflage our hiding place.

We share out Marvel's berries between the two of us, and for a second I wonder whether he would give me poisonous berries on purpose so I didn't have to face Cato and Spens both trying to kill me tomorrow. I eat them and nothing happens, so I figure that he's not that malicious. Or kind if you think about it in the other way.

"Do you think that if things had happened differently, you would have poisoned me right now?" I blurt out, after making sure that I didn't actually die after eating the berries. Marvel stops, a berry midway to his mouth, and I realise that it's probably a strange question to be asking. I feel the need to elaborate.

"When I first saw you, I thought you would be a stereotypical career; bloody and ruthless. But it actually feels like you're looking out for me. Did you change, or were you always like this?" There's a pause while he deliberates, and when he speaks again he sounds much wiser that I gave him credit for.

"District 1 and 2 are very different to each other. Cato and Clove were taught from when they were toddlers that killing will make everyone you love proud of you. When your mother, father, teachers, all tell you something, it's hard to go against it. If Cato was to go home now, he probably wouldn't be welcomed; he's had opportunities to kill all of us, but his protectiveness over you prevented him from doing so. He hasn't become the evil victor that they expected of him." I open my mouth to reply but nothing comes out. I always pictured a victorious Cato going home to his district a hero, not a disappointment. Would my district even take me back if I won?

"In District 1, the games are portrayed differently. It's a game, not a battle to the death. I was its biggest fan; posters, videos, the lot. There isn't as much emphasis on going in and killing people because it will bring pride to your district. So when I arrived at the Capitol and everyone began trying to control me, I realised that it was a lot different to what I had been taught, so it wasn't difficult for me to pick up my own morals along the way. That I would rather work with an alliance then back stab them in order to win. It's worse for Cato, he's finding out that the only thing he has ever known, that he's put his life and soul into, might be wrong. And he's trying to remember who he was before the Capitol took over."