Chapter Text
Clove would sooner kill herself than she would let her grip on Cato loosen. Even as the hovercraft comes and two ladders drop down, Clove can feel her nails digging into his arm. He’s covered in blood, eyes crazed. Clove’s used to his rage; she felt it too, the high of a fight, but this is different. She doesn’t recognize him, almost, this boy ready the sacrifice himself just to go home. That isn’t her Cato. They promised the Games would change things for them, but Clove never thought it would change them.
It doesn’t matter. There’s nothing the capitol can’t fix, Clove’s always known that. It will be alright.
When they separate them in the hovercraft, Clove goes wild. She isn’t even aware of it as she claws one of the Peacekeepers holding her back, watching Cato as he’s hauled into what must be an operating room. “LET ME GO, YOU FUCKING—let me go!” Clove screams, ripping away from the Peacekeeper and pounding on the glass separating her from Cato. No one says a thing; they can’t even look at her.
She slumps down on the floor, cheek pressed against the glass, staring uncomprehendingly as they tear away Cato’s bloody clothes. Some Capitol attendant offers her a drink but she doesn’t even look at them. Eventually they give up and set the glass on the floor—icy cold, filled with what looks like orange juice, a straw with a frilly white collar. It looks so wrong in her bloody, dirty hands, and she throws it away from her as hard as she can with a scream.
It isn’t long before she’s taken back to a darker area of the hovercraft. Another doctor shines a penlight in her eyes, presses gloved fingers to different spots on her skull. When she feels pressure on the crown of her head, she lashes out on instinct from the pain. They have to rope her down as they clean the wound and give her some pale purple shot in the neck.
The fogginess in her mind smooths out, like a heartbeat going flat. She knows a hit like the one she sustained was sure to cause a bitch of a concussion, this must be some Capitol medicine.
The thought of going under without Cato there to protect her like he was before makes her jerk feebly against the restraints. It’s no use. Whatever was in that shot must have enough sedative in it to knock out a horse.
The next thing Clove knows, they’ve landed back on the roof of the Training Center. She’s distantly aware that they’re taking Cato but leaving her, as if watching it all from underwater. When she realizes that she’s unrestrained, Clove doesn’t hesitate to hurl herself against the glass and shriek for him to come back.
In the glass reflection, Clove can see a flash of bright golden hair—it’s Ambrosia, surely, District 2’s Escort coming to help—
Then the needle jabs her from behind and Clove is lost to the sedatives again. The fight leaves her unwilling body and as she slips into unconsciousness, her last thought is of Cato. She could swear it’s his arms she falls into, could swear it’s his familiar, rough voice calling her his Clover the way he knows annoys her to death. Almost as if they are children again—almost as if they were safe.
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The sharp scent of something sharp and metallic—blood beneath the stinging smell of antiseptic—is the first thing Clove registers when she awakens. The ceiling glows with soft yellow lighting that allows her to see her surroundings: no doors, no windows, just smooth, glossy white panels. She’s lying on the only piece of furniture in the room, a bed made up neatly with stiff, unused sheets, cool against her bare skin.
Clove pushes back the sheets, taking inventory of herself the way she learned to in the arena, checking for injuries. Her entire body is scrubbed clean, hairless and smelling faintly of linen and lavender. When she presses a hand to her head, she feels no pain; even her shoulder, where District 12 had shot her with the arrow, is smooth and unblemished.
Clove’s hair is tied back simply, falling in shiny waves around her shoulders. Even her hands are perfectly clean, callouses from sixteen years of training buffed out into smooth, baby pink skin.
Unsurprisingly, Clove is again restrained, this time a thick black band around her waist to keep her from leaving the bed. Surveying the room, the walls have no cracks, seemingly no way to enter or exit, but Clove knows Capitol technology is advanced enough to effortlessly hide whatever it wished. It doesn’t feel right that a Victor should be tied down like a prisoner, but Clove figures it’s simply a response to her outbursts at the Training Center and in the hovercraft.
She’s just about to attempt to wriggle out of the restraints when a panel in the wall opens, revealing an Avox girl carrying a tray with a bowl of thin soup, applesauce, and water. The sight of her, reminding Clove that something exists outside of this white box, sends a stab of fear to her heart. “Cato?” she asks, not sure if the Avox can understand her.
The girl, eyes wide and pale, looks up at Clove like a spooked deer, as if not expecting her to speak. She sets the tray on the bed and nods.
“He’s alive?” Clove needs to hear it, needs to know. She’s suddenly aware of just how risky Cato’s stunt was, thinking they could really both win with no retaliation from the Capitol. They made the Gamemakers look like fools. Fuck Cato, Clove thinks. Only he would pull such a stupid trick as this.
The Avox nods again, and when she presses a spoon into Clove’s hand, it seems to be a wordless reassurance. Probably not. Clove needs to focus; she isn’t the one who needs to be convinced that Cato’s brash actions were entirely spontaneous and unmediated.
She forces herself to choke down the food, knowing she’ll need it. Ever since District 12 blew up the Careers’ food supply, she’s been more hungry than she’d care to admit, and she knows she needs to be strong and steady for what’s to come. Public appearances, banquets, final interviews, homecoming celebrations, and eventually the Victor’s Tour. There will be every opportunity for President Snow to get the idea that their little suicide pact was an act of rebellion; every opportunity for the districts to get it into their heads that she and Cato are anything but the murderers of their children.
To sell the truth of what happened in that arena, Clove has to start with obedience. She’s never been one to listen to orders, but the threat of what might happen if the Capitol doesn’t believe them is a good enough teacher. And when she feels a cold liquid seeping into her vein from one of the tubes and her vision begins to go black, Clove doesn’t fight. This time she lets herself fall; this time she hopes that Cato isn’t the one to catch her in her dreams. Because she cannot afford to lose this boy, to let him become the thing that will be taken from her if they fuck this up. She can’t. She won’t.
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Clove has no way of tracking the passing time. When she awakes, there’s no restraints holding her down. Instead, at the foot of her bed lies a clean pair of dark brown pants, a tight green shirt, and the same thin, hooded black jacket as what she was given in the arena. This is, evidently, what Clove will wear to meet the team again. It feels strange getting dressed in these clothes; the last time she put these on, she was a different girl.
How Clove wishes she had one of her daggers from back home—all carved with a “C” on the handle, lethally sharp and fitting to her hand perfectly. She pretends like she has the confidence they’ve always given her as the panel slides open and she leaves the white box, into a wide, deserted hall lined with identical doors to her own. Surely Cato must be behind one of them. The thought of him makes her chest ache, and even now that she’s vowed to watch herself with him, all she wants is to fall into his arms one more time when it was just Cato and Clove, not the Victors of the 74th Hunger Games. Not murderers. Just themselves.
At the end of the hall is a large chamber where the team is all waiting—Enobaria and Brutus, their mentors; their stylists whose names Clove has forgotten; even the Escort, Ambrosia, lips painted into her signature heart shape with her long golden hair piled into an atrocious shape resembling a beehive.
“Good job, Clove,” says Enobaria, but Clove barely nods at her praise.
“Where’s Cato?” she asks, looking between the two mentors.
Brutus raises his brows slightly but gestures to the room attached to this one. “Eating,” he says. “He got impatient.”
Clove pushes past them and strides into the next room. Sure enough, there sits Cato, looking glorious in his dark green shirt, jacket strewn over the chair beside him carelessly. He’s wolfing down the meal of roast beef, peas, and sweet rolls, appetite evidently as voracious as ever. When he looks up, he stands instantly and holds out his arms.
Caution be damned. Clove runs to him, and she feels him grunt slightly as she wraps her arms around his evidently still wounded torso. He got pretty beat up by those muttations after all. “You idiot,” she says into his chest, and the chuckle that she can feel vibrating beneath her ear more than makes up for all her worry over his well-being.
“Good to see you, too, Clover,” Cato’s saying, but Clove cuts him off by standing on her toes to press a kiss to his lips. He’s surprised, stiffening before grabbing her hips and walking them back to the table. She wraps her legs around his waist, lets him hoist her up and kiss her so deeply she forgets to breathe.
Because no matter how Clove might try to forget it, this boy is a part of her as sure as the sun rises each morning. And if they take him out, Clove will go with him.
Neither of them notice or care if the team walks in on them, too focused on one another. When Clove feels Cato’s hands beneath her shirt, she drags him back to her room. One more night, just one more, and then they will face the Capitol as Victors.
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The final interviews and the viewing of the games take place the next evening, but the entirety of the morning and afternoon are spent preparing Clove. Her makeup is done dark and sharp, her hair braided close to her head and falling down her back in thick waves. The dress that’s chosen for her is white, draping gauzily around her body before turning to a deep maroon around the hem, as though she were dipped in the blood of the tributes. A metal headpiece is attached to the back of her head, white and glittering with diamonds before descending to rubies as it trails behind her on the floor.
For the first time, Clover really feels like a victor. As she looks at herself in the mirror, she can almost imagine President Snow placing the golden laurels on her head just like she’d dreamed of how many times back home in 2. This is hers. She won it.
It’s a blur as she’s brought beneath the stage. Already waiting for her stands Cato and his team, along with Brutus. Cato is dressed in a dark red dress shirt and a tight-fitting black vest beneath a velvet red suit. The sight of him makes Clove’s heart leap in her chest, and the cocky smirk he gives her makes it clear that he’s admiring her just much as she is him in this moment.
“Looking good, Clover,” he says lowly as she goes to stand beside her, taking her hand. He’s wearing black leather gloves, but even still, Clove likes the possessive gesture.
Enobaria steps in front of them both, a frown on her face as she looks first at Cato for a long moment, then Clove. “The two of you pulled a risk in the arena no one has ever seen before,” she says lowly, quickly. “One that can only be justified by your passion for one another, are we clear?”
This is nothing new to Clove, but it’s evident from Cato’s expression that he’s confused. “Crystal,” she says, and rises on her toes to kiss Cato. When he leans back into it, she pulls back and gives him a grin. “Madly in love with me, aren’t you?”
His expression shifts just slightly, understanding what she means just as she knew he would. “You just drive me crazy,” he replies, and Enobaria nods before going back to Brutus.
Then, the platform is rising and they can hear the screaming of the crowd, the sound of pure fervor Cato always used to promise would be theirs, when they curled up together back into 2 and rewatched the games until they were sick of them. His grip on her hand tightens and she knows he’s remembering it too; and finally Clove feels like the old Clove again, sadistic and ready to fight.
When they appear to the Capitol audience, the cheering reaches a fever pitch. They look good and they know it as they cross over to Caesar Flickerman and the loveseat set up for them beside his chair, positioned so that they can see both the crowd and the screen set up for them. Caesar rises to kiss Clove’s hand and gives Cato a hearty handshake, beaming widely.
It takes several minutes for the crowd to settle down. When they finally do, Caesar turns his grin at them both. “So, Cato, Clove. Here we are. The first tributes in Hunger Games history to both come out of the arena alive.”
“I told you I’d be back,” Clove says with her trademark grin, calling back to her statement from her first interview. This gleans an ecstatic reaction from the crowd, as Clove knew it would.
“I like it!” Caesar laughs. “Now, are you two ready to watch your Games?”
“Born ready,” Cato says, and his smirk matches Clove’s perfectly.
The pre-prepared highlights of the games begin to play on the screen before them as well as the large screen behind, for the audience’s benefit. They smile at the right times, when they get a kill, when the muttations appear. They must appear as though they’re enjoying it, but Clove can feel the way Cato stiffens as the final cornucopia scene plays out.
When the playback finally ends, the audience cheers for several more minutes before Caesar can calm them down enough to start the interview. “I must say, the two of you look absolutely deadly tonight. We have to know—was your plan always to stick together?”
Cato takes this question with his usual confidence. “We knew going into it that we’d have each other’s backs. I trust Clove with my life.”
The crowd lets out a loud “awww” as Cato turns to look at her. She tightens her grip on his hand as Caesar gives the camera a knowing look before moving onto the next question.
“And how did you meet in the first place?” He prompts.
“We were always the best back home,” Clove replies. “It wasn’t long before we were partnered together in training.”
“How interesting!” Caesar hoots. “And you simply hit it off from there, I assume. So, Cato…What were your thoughts when Clove here was attacked by Thresh, of District 11?”
Cato looks out at the audience before replying, “I wasn’t really thinking at all. All I knew was that I had to get to her, and whoever hurt her was gonna die.”
The interview went on for another hour, with Caesar’s prompting questions and the Capitol’s immediate, repetitive reactions to even the simplest answer from either of them. The entire time, Clove is only half present, half of her attention focused on the boy beside her. Did he really feel that way about her? She knew he had feelings for her, but it had always been as complicated and broad as that. Did he really love her like he seemed to tonight, or was this just a show for the Capitol? Of course, now of all times, Cato chooses to be all secretive and sneaky.
And though Clove never asks him about it, when he presses her into the mattress of his bed, already tearing off her dress, it feels like love—as close as two murderers can get to it.