Chapter Text
All Cato Hadley had known, his whole life, was victory. He wasn’t just trained to be a contestant, a tribute, a career; he was trained to be a victor. And the only person who had ever matched his rage, his skill, his thirst for blood, was here in this arena beside him.
When the announcement is made that two tributes from the same district have the chance to win together, Cato knows he can’t let it go to waste. Clove had been not just his training partner but his best friend for years, and he was confident that their shared thirst for victory would win them those golden laurels.
When the feast is announced, Cato and Clove form their plan. Clove will go in first, acting as if alone, while Cato lingers behind the tree line lying in wait in case Thresh or the lovebirds from 12 decided to show up. If they did, it wouldn’t be hard for Cato to take one out while Clove handled the other.
“It will work,” Clove murmurs, pressed into Cato’s side with the light of the fire casting them in a faint glow. “We’ll go home winners.”
“I like the fucking sound of that,” Cato rasps, brushing back the hair in Clove’s face. He doesn’t care if the cameras are on them—in fact, he almost wants everyone from back home to see this. Clove is his. Cato is hers. That’s how it’s always been, and if this plan goes awry Cato knows neither of them will be returning to District 2 except in a wooden box.
——————————————————————————-
The plan is set into motion, and it starts without a hitch. Clove moves in to the cornucopia after the girl from 5 snags her pack, just as Everdeen sprints for the table. Cato watches from the shade of the tree line as Clove throws a knife toward 12’s right side. Better to incapacitate the girl’s dominant hand. Cato smirks at how easy this is.
Everdeen knocks away the knife with her bow, and somehow manages to send an arrow straight at Clove’s heart. Cato is two seconds away from barreling out of his cover when Clove turns, enough to avoid the fatal hit but still getting shot in her upper left arm.
Cato’s fists clench around his sword as he watches Everdeen grab her pack, Clove momentarily slowed down. Cato trusts her, though, and knows this girl like the back of his hand. She’ll come through, she always does.
Speak of the devil. Cato grins as Clove’s second blade catches Everdeen in the forehead. Blood all over, vision blurred, 12 is now an easy target. Clove slams into her, knocking her flat on her back and pinning her down just like she did to Cato back in training in 2.
And, just like back home, Clove takes the chance to gloat. Cato can’t begrudge her it since he knows he’d do the same thing if he had Everdeen in his grasp, and Clove promised to give the Capitol a good show if she got to 12 first. He watches with amusement as the girl screams, “PEETA!” like her little boyfriend could do anything to help.
Cato gets up to leave, to go hunt down Peeta and make sure that District 12 is well and truly out of the way. It puts a spring in his step—after Peeta and Katniss, there’s only the District 5 girl and the District 11 boy to deal with before he and Clove are home.
Suddenly, he stops in his tracks when he hears screaming—deep and rough, not Katniss and certainly not Peeta or District 5. Thresh.
Cato is tearing through the foliage, faster than he has ever been in his life. He’s never been slow by any means, but in this moment he’s practically flying.
“Cato! CATO!” He hears Clove’s screech as he’s breaking through the tree line.
“CLOVE!” He roars, hoping his proximity will make Thresh pause. It doesn’t. He can see that Clove’s pinned against the cornucopia, is so close that he can hear the dull sound of her skull hitting the metal behind her as Thresh slams her back into it.
Then he’s launching himself at this boy, this threat, knowing nothing but fury as he stabs him in the gut with his sword—once, twice, blood spurting all over him. It’s hot and sticky and his hands are shaking as Thresh stops moving beneath him. A cannon sounds somewhere in the distance and Cato’s greatest fear is suddenly that it was not symbolizing Thresh’s death but instead Clove’s.
Cato is distantly aware of Katniss stumbling away, looking shocked and afraid as he lurches toward Clove’s body on the ground. “Clove, Clove, stay with me, you have to stay with me, you promised—“
He fumbles with her jacket, pushing it back and pressing his horribly shaking fingers to her throat. A pulse flutters there beneath his middle and index fingers, weak but there.
A sob tears out of his throat, so fully unlike him but he cannot bring himself to be embarrassed. This is his Clover. Tenacious to a fault.
He barely remembers lifting Clove into his arms and carrying her back to their makeshift camp, setting up a dry spot with a few of the tarps they’d set aside from the cornucopia before it had been blown up. As he lies beside an unconscious Clove, his jacket wrapped around her, he knows that the rage will come in the morning. But all that he feels now is fear; fear that all those deaths by his own hands will mean nothing, that still, even after he’d saved his girl, they might never leave this arena. And if they did—God, if they did, how would the arena ever leave them?
——————————————————————————
It’s three days before the weather clears. Halfway through the first day, Clove wakes up with a headache and an empty stomach. Apparently Cato’s little display was enough to win them their own benefits of being star-crossed lovers, because Cato wakes up from a nap Clove insisted he take to a sponsor gift of good food and water. They feast on Capitol soup and meat—even butter to go along with the bread—all much more flavorful than the plain foods from District 2 that were supposed to prepare them for starvation and hunger in the games.
Cato’s quieter than usual as Clove makes them little bites of bread, layered with cheese and a slab of meat. He eats but only because he knows he needs the strength. Cato’s unused to his head being so quiet—usually it’s always brimming with rage, confidence, and strategy, but it’s as though that were all a crowded whiteboard that’s been wiped clean. Clove says nothing, because they’ve all got to be a little fucked up at this point in the games. There’s no need for her to say anything, anyway. With her in his arms, breathing and warm, Cato will do whatever it takes to bring her home.
When the weather clears, it isn’t long before the District 5 girl dies. Clove reasons that it must have been Katniss; there’s no way Peeta is well enough to be killing anybody so soon, much less moving around very far without immense pain.
They agree to wait District 12 out, let them get nervous while Cato and Clove rest and eat up and prepare for the finale. Clove is still dazed and clearly not herself, but she’s awake and there isn’t anything the capitol can’t fix once they win.
For a moment, life is good. Life is peaceful. Clove tells Cato how she’ll spend her winning money, licking the butter off of her knife.
——————————————————————————
When the muttations attack, Cato’s first fear is for Clove. She’s unsteady on her feet ever since the trauma to her head, but they both know the urgency of this. There’s only a few hours and two deaths standing in their way of going home.
Cato reaches the cornucopia first, Clove a minute later, with Katniss and Peeta not long after. Clove slumps to the metal and holds her head, face washed over with pain. Cato can barely catch his breath, forcing in gulps of air as the muttations claw at the cornucopia.
He palms one of the daggers Clove gave him and goes for Peeta first to get him out of the way. Even injured, he’s strong and got a solid training score. At this proximity, Katniss will be easy to take out since she can’t very well shoot someone from four feet away.
Peeta isn’t expecting it, having just barely clambered onto the cornucopia. Katniss, back turned to them, is focused on the mutts as Cato hauls Peeta up, throwing him hard into the metal and advancing.
Winded as he is, Cato is easy to fight. They roll around for a moment before Cato manages to lock Peeta in a headlock, muscles burning as he turns to face Katniss.
“How’s that?” he pants at her, suddenly feeling completely out of his mind. “Do you want that, huh?” As he sways, unsteady, Katniss’ bow moves up and he thinks she’s about to shoot him in the head right here and now. When she doesn’t, he laughs out a broken, ugly sound, tightening his grip on Peeta.
“Shoot me and I’ll take your boyfriend down with me,” he promises. “I swear to God I will. I’m sorry—I’ll do it. I can’t—“
He sees Katniss’ eyes almost soften before Peeta gently taps his hand. He realizes a second too late.
When she shoots his hand, a burst of pain spills out into a broken scream. He can see Clove on the other end of the cornucopia, lying there, the blood from Thresh’s rock still matting her hair. She’s dazed and confused but alive, and Cato knows that if they both were in Peeta and Katniss’ positions, they would be going home by now.
Then, Peeta’s pushing him off the cornucopia. Instantly, his instincts take over and he’s on his feet, sword in hand. The first muttation comes at him, but he can predict its movement like it’s human and drives his sword into its chest to the hilt. He knows the cameras are on him now, as blood sprays across his face and he keeps wildly swinging.
He doesn’t know how long it is before he hears movement on the cornucopia. Clove.
Cato’s only bet is to scale the cornucopia again. He’s tiring, if only a bit, and the mutts have already gotten a few good hits in. The best he can do was go out fighting.
He sprints toward the cornucopia and instantly the mutts following him, biting at his heels. As he leaps, he hits the metal hard enough to break ribs, desperately pulling himself up. A muttation snarls beside him as it slashes its claws across his back, and another bites into his calf, making him scream.
Cato doesn’t know how he manages to clamber to the top of the cornucopia, but he knows he doesn’t have a second to waste. Clove’s barely fending Peeta off, while Katniss has her bow and the last arrow in her quiver trained on Clove.
Rage fills Cato’s veins at the sight, and even covered in blood, most of it his own, he lunges at Katniss.
He’s quickly too close to her for her to shoot him again, and she knows it, the way Cato can see the whites of her eyes as he tackles her to the cornucopia and cuts her throat.
She’s dead. Cato’s hands fall to his sides, and his head is filled with a numb ringing. This girl, this stupid, brave, idiotic girl—the girl on fire—is dead.
The cannon sounds and Peeta looks around wildly. Upon seeing Katniss lying there, Cato immobilized beside her, his face contorts with grief. “Katniss?! Katniss, NO—“
He lurches forward and Cato doesn’t move an inch. He deserves it if District 12 killed him. The feeling of blood on his hands repulses him.
A spray of blood and Peeta stops moving. Falls to the ground.
Behind him stands Clove, shaky, leaning heavily against the mouth of the cornucopia, her throwing knife buried deep into the back of Peeta’s head.
They stare at one another for a moment. What else is there to do? Cato’s shellshocked, empty, and there’s none of the elated victory he thought he would be feeling if—when—he won the games with his best friend beside him.
Then, the emptiness is broken. Cato doesn’t know how long it had lasted, maybe five minutes, maybe forever.
Claudius Templesmith’s voice booms throughout the arena. “Greetings to the final contestants of the Seventy-fourth Hunger Games. The earlier revision has been revoked. Closer examination of the rule book has disclosed that only one winner may be allowed,” he says. “Good luck and may be odds be ever in your favor.”
There’s a small burst of static and then nothing more.
Cato hears an ungodly, almost feral scream and it takes a moment to register that it’s coming from him. He can see in Clove’s eyes that she’s given up, and that rage comes surging back. “They won’t get a victor then!” He roars, slams a fist against the metal of the cornucopia. “LET THEM FUCKING LOSE!”
Clove flinches back, but lurches forward to stop him the moment she sees the knife in Cato’s hand, pressed against his throat. “Clove,” he rasps. “C’mon. We can’t go home after this. We can’t have killed them all for nothing.”
She’s crying but nodding. He sees her take out her own last knife. Presses it to her throat. They take each other’s hands and his eyes say I love you and hers say it back and Cato’s just putting pressure on the blade, just feeling what all those kids he killed felt under this very knife, when trumpets begin to blare throughout the arena.
The frantic voice of Claudius Templesmith shouts above them. “Stop! Stop! Ladies and gentlemen, I am pleased to present the victors of the Seventy-fourth Hunger games, Cato Hadley and Clove Kentwell!”