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He hears her.
He hears her voice, an uncharacteristically shrill and high-pitched thing.
He hears his name, repeated over and over in shrieks that go against everything they've ever been taught.
It's the raw emotion — the raw fear — in her voice that finally kicks him into action.
"Clove!" He calls her name out, too, sprinting when he finally realises what's happening. What might happen if he doesn't get to her in time.
He hears his own name being repeated back, almost crazed with desperation. "Cato! Cato!"
Bushes snag at his feet, low hanging branches catching him off guard as tree roots threaten to trip him over. He's so far away... too far away. Despite it all, he doesn't slow down. He doesn't dare.
"Clove!"
He's closer, now. He can see the tail of the Cornucopia from his position, the glinting metal drawing closer and closer with every large step he takes.
There isn't a reply to his call this time.
The underbrush lessens as he makes it to the clearing.
He sees a body on the floor.
"Clove!" The pain in his voice is palpable, but he can't find it within himself to care. All of Panem is watching this scene unfold this very moment, but Cato doesn't care. How could he, when she's on the ground, unmoving?
From the corner of his eye, he sees 12 scampering away back into the forest. He notices the gush of blood from her forehead as she takes one last, frightened look. Her eyes soften, just a little, and he wonders if she finally views him — views the Careers — as human, for once. He sees 11, too, disappearing into the wheat fields with two bags slung over his shoulder.
11 doesn't look back.
Cato instantly knows who his next kill will be — it seems like there has been a slight change in his and Clove's plan to take out Fire Girl first.
He quickly looks away from the field, focuses his attention on the girl instead as he all but collapses next to her body.
It's bad. It's really, really bad. Cato isn't the best at first aid — after all, healing wasn't quite emphasised back in the Academy; why would a viscous, ruthless, highly skilled killer be injured in the first place, anyway? — but even he knows this is beyond saving. This injury, the dent in Clove's skull and the slow trickle of blood from her head, is fatal.
He finds himself looking up at the sky, willing a parachute to come down, but no— A mortal wound like this can't be healed through simple medication. It'll take a team of experienced surgeons at the very least, and even then he knows the chances of Clove surviving is slim.
He looks back down at the body again.
Apart from her frame, he sees the dreams they'd shared not even a night ago — one where the both of them make it out alive, bringing double the glory to Two — crumble into dust. He sees the illusion that they're untouchable, unbeatable, disappear before his very eyes. Careers from District Two, born and bred to train and kill, raised to volunteer for the Capitol's twisted Games like lambs for slaughter, all in the name of fun and entertainment.
They had grown up thinking only about how odds are ever in their favour.
What a lie it had all been.
He sees it all now.
She whimpers when his hand brushes her cheek to swipe away at a stray tear. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," the apology is foreign on his tongue. He doesn't have a habit of saying it. "Stay with me, okay? Just keep your eyes open, please." He doesn't have a habit of asking nicely, either.
Clove has always been rather small, barely larger than Fire Girl although much more muscular. Now, she looks almost tiny, curled over herself with her limbs twitching occasionally as if she has absolutely no control over them. It's odd to see her so powerless, in every sense of the word.
Her lips are moving, although barely, and he squints to make sense of what she wants.
Ca-to.
"Hey, hey, I'm here." He's swiping more tears away now, his spear clattering noiselessly onto the grass as he frees his other hand to clutch at one of hers. "It's alright, I'm here. Just stay awake, okay? Don't leave me now."
Her breathing picks up. Clove's frame jerks as she takes in sporadic, shallow inhales. She exhales in pained moans. More tears squeeze out of her eyes, too fast for him to fully wipe them away. Some roll over his thumb and down his wrist.
Ca-to.
"I'm right here, Clove. Can you see me? I'm right here, right next to you."
He watches her watch him, although her eyes appear to be unfocused. Unseeing. He distantly wonders if she can hear him, if speaking to her is a futile effort.
"Don't you want to go back home, Clove? C'mon, toughen up and we can go back home together. That's what you want, right? To be back home?"
The mention of District Two sparks the faintest light in her eyes, until it's diminished again. Her lips mouth a different word this time, Home.
Cato nods, "Yes, home. We can go home, Clove, if you just hang on for a little while more. I'll finish off 11 and 5 and both 12s, and we can go home."
She smiles, the tiniest uptick of her lips. Her eyes flutter shut.
"Hey, no, stop. Don't fall asleep — we're meant to go home together. That's what the rule change was for, isn't it? Double the glory for Two, remember?"
Her body shakes along with his arms, but she barely makes a sound.
His cheeks are wet, and his tongue darts out to catch a salty bead of liquid from his top lip. His side aches terribly, and his chest seems to have shrunk. "Stay with me, Clove. Please," he makes a last-ditch attempt at begging. Oh, how the people of the Capitol would lap this all up. A Career shedding tears for his fellow District partner.
But their alliance — the one between all the Careers — is called a pack for a reason. Under normal circumstances, Cato would begrudgingly be willing to end the pack if it means going home; under the recent rule change, Cato wants to go home with Clove.
They are pack animals, the both of them strong as individuals but stronger together. For the strength of the wolf is the pack, and the strength of the pack is the wolf.
He realises that he's always been stronger around Clove, that the pair of them have always had a sort of synergistic effect with each other. It's then that he realises that perhaps he's always cared a little more deeply about the girl.
Perhaps, he had always loved her a little, as stubborn children who were paired up together for sparring. He had always loved her, in his own twisted and emotionally stunted way, even when she'd finally mastered how to manoeuvre her way out of one of his headlocks and nicked him with her knife, just to give him a scar to show for it.
He had always loved her, even as they'd gripped each other's hands in a too-tight handshake on the stage of District Two moments after the both of them had volunteered, sadistic smiles plastered wide on their faces announcing their desire to execute the other for certain glory awaiting them back home.
He had always loved her, and he knows this now as her canon fires.
The sound echoes. It isn't nearly loud enough to drown out the roaring in his ears as he comes to the realisation several seconds, minutes — years, even — too late. But even if he had known earlier, their circumstances would not have allowed such romance to blossom. The narrative of a Career leaves no room for feelings such as love — such emotions are tampered down to make way for indifference, arrogance, ruthlessness.
Love does not make a warrior.
Love does not make a soldier.
So he will remain impassive to his realisation. He will get back up on his feet and leave her still body on the grass, until a hovercraft comes for her. If he's lucky, he'll be able to see her cold body, modestly put together in an otherwise bare wooden box, back home when he makes it out.
There is no room for even a shadow of a doubt that he will make it back to District Two.
He will. He must. The chance of double glory with two Victors has been shot down and killed — everything rests on his shoulders now. But the weight of it all barely feels like anything compared to the burden he now carries, one that drives him towards the wheat field.
No, he can't call this feeling a burden.
It's an act of revenge as much as it is an act of necessity, for Clove's murderer also has the bag of items that he needs. Killing 11 will be doing her a favour, restoring her honour in what little way he can, on her behalf. He'll finish off everybody in the Arena, go back home, and bring glory for Two -- it's something Clove would want, too. Without a doubt.
But Cato sees now, he knows now, how they've all been manipulated and raised to play the Capitol's games like puppets on a string. And for the first time, he feels something apart from anger, something different from bloodlust. His skin tingles with the knowledge, and his blood sings.
Adrenaline keeps him going, motivates him to slash onward into the tall wheat field, even as he catches sight of a sleek silver hovercraft floating soundlessly above him, confirming that Clove is dead.
She is dead. Perhaps he is, too, and he always has been. They've always been slaves to the Capitol, too caught up with false glory to notice the shackles bounded around their feet. They've always been victims of the Capitol, for he now realises that no one ever truly wins the Games, that the Capitol will always have the upper hand in everything.
His entire worldview collapses. Years of training and living — no, not living but merely surviving — in Two has amounted to nothing. Their system, Panem's system, has never benefitted him or any other District. They have all been played by the Capitol, forced to partake in their little mind games which only serve one purpose: to reinforce that no one has ever truly had control.
He's cold, and empty, and hollow. His skin tingles and his insides squirm like the snakes that the Academy used to keep in a giant glass enclosure.
His heart continues to beat, pumping liquid fire in his veins, but he's always been dead. He knows this now.
But his legacy will live on for centuries after his death.
All the glory evermore to him. All the odds ever in his favour.
For what is a little death in the face of enlightenment?