Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

She doesn’t know what to expect walking into the Head Trainer’s office. It feels like an ambush, but she can’t imagine why it would be. 

The Head Trainer has dark skin and a bald head. He is powerful like the carrier of the holy word. This is her first time speaking with him and the first time she's ever known a trainee to speak with him. He sits in an upholstered chair behind a desk and motions for her to sit in one of the two less expensive looking chairs in front of the desk. She does so, never taking her gray eyes off him. 

He clears his throat and readjusts himself in the seat. His posture is perfect and his movements are swift. He was a Peacekeeper once, she thinks. “Kentwell, as you know, the names of the volunteers for the seventy-third Hunger Games will be released at noon today. You will not be one of them.”

What? She is by far the best trainee in this place. He paused after informing her of this. Her features remain willfully neutral. She keeps her mouth shut, ignoring all of the questions that push to the forefront of her mind. He won’t gouge any reaction from her. He sighs when he realizes this.  

He continues, “Hadley will be one of them.”

She doesn't gape. She doesn't sputter. Her perplexity is kept hidden. He looks at her and she knows he was expecting a bigger reaction. She knows he's impressed at how well she has been trained to show no emotion, which makes her think he has seen another trainee before to give them similarly disappointing news. Or maybe the same news and they simply failed. 

“It is a testament to how good you are that we are holding you back,” he says. That fucking pisses her off. In her lap, she squeezes her nails into her palm. Hopefully, he can’t see how much she wants to rip his skin off. “District One has had back to back Victors. Well, for a long time, District Two has been looking for a pair we’re certain can get us back to back victories as well. We’ve found that in you two.”

“Then why have I continued my training with him and not the person I will actually go into the Games with?” she asks, letting curiosity get the better of her. She is not one to question her district. 

“We wanted to advance your training as much as possible,” he answers. He lets her sit with this for a moment. She simply sits stony faced and straight, as she has been since stepping into this room. “Any other questions?”

She wants to ask who will be going in her place. The place is hers and even though she is not going this year, the girl who is has to know that. "No, sir." 

“It’s for the District,” the Head Trainer reminds her. She nods in agreement. “You’re dismissed.”

In the hallway, she looks at her hands. There are four red crescent shapes in the center. She sighs. She is most definitely not going to the Dining Hall for lunch. 

The most disappointing part of it all is that she won’t get the opportunity to kill Cato. For years now, they have dueled, neither ever having won consecutive fights. There has never been a clear answer on which of uthems is better and winning the Hunger Games would have been the definitive way to decide. She’s imagined how she would kill him for the better part of 5 years. In all of her dreams of winning the Hunger Games, it is him that is always her final obstacle. 

It’s for her District, she reminds herself as she opens the door that leads out of the stairwell. The residential floor is the top floor. She veers left, to the girls’ side. 

Her dorm is in the second hallway. How Cato knows this, she doesn’t know, but she’s not as furious as she could be about it. She stops towards the entrance of the hallway, right when she spots him, debating if she should continue down it. She really, really does not want to see him right now. But he’s seen her also and knowing him, he would follow her until getting whatever it is he wants. 

“Where the fuck were you?” he calls. 

She starts walking again and they meet in the middle. She shrugs. If he’s looking for congratulations, he’s looking in the wrong place. 

He seems unsatisfied with her answer. Well, it was a non-answer, but nevertheless. It’s lunch time and he was just named this year’s male volunteer. What does he have to be unsatisfied about?

“Clove,” he says, “why am I not going into the Hunger Games with you? Why am I going with fucking Bellona Sovian?”

She shrugs again. Really, she’s trying to keep a sour look off her face. It makes sense, she is ranked second, but it infuriates her all the same. Once, Clove told her she’d never see the inside of the arena. It doesn’t make her feel better that they’re sending her in as a sacrifice. And she understands Cato is 18- or at least turning it before the Reaping- and this is his last year to volunteer, whereas she was raised a Level and can still volunteer for another 2 years. She knows this, but it does little to console her. 

“Ok, well, do you know anything at all?” he asks, growing angrier by the second. 

“I know I don’t want to be having this conversation with you,” she tells him. She walks past him, but he grabs her right wrist and turns her around. He’s predictable that way. If she went wide, he would have side stepped into her path.

“Well, you don’t always get what you want,” he sneers, “Which is another thing I guess you know now.”

She punches him right in the face. He stumbles backward a disappointingly little amount. His hands go to his nose as blood streams from it. Then, he smiles and blood goes into his mouth and covers his teeth. Before, she couldn't have done that. Anger got the best of her. Usually, it takes her at least two punches to make him bleed and way more annoying actions from him to make her show emotion. 

She turns around and continues down the hall to her dorm, only spinning around when she hears his footsteps getting closer. She hadn’t made it far before he started following after her. She was going to punch him again because he obviously didn’t get the hint the first time, but he puts his hands on both of her arms and throws her. He fucking throws her. She hits the wall with a loud thud and thankfully not a doorknob. On the cold ground, she looks up at him. He’s bleeding and pleased now. Fucker. 

Taking her knife out of its sheath, she stands up. His smile grows when he sees it. She charges at him. He steps out of her way, but she aims her arm back and the knife goes through his side. She spins around to face him and he promptly punches her in the face. She is not as big as Cato, so embarrassingly, she does stumble back. Right away, she knows her nose is broken. She wipes the blood flowing from her nose on the sleeve of her dark gray compression shirt before advancing again. She idly spins the knife in her hand and tilts her head. She bets it’d feel real good to slit his throat. 

She settles on stabbing him right in the stomach, twisting the knife. He tried to get away, but wasn’t fast enough. He’s used to being stabbed in the stomach, but his reaction is startlingly little. He grabs her wrists again and backs her up to the wall. He raises her wrists in his right hand and turns and twists it. She keeps her grip on the knife, but he turns it on her. She tries to get her hands back, but when it’s obvious he’s going to stab her, she drops the knife and kicks him. He bounces back immediately, grabbing her by the neck in familiar fashion and pushing her back against the wall before she can pick up the knife. She squinted her eyes at him like she’s looking at the sun. He smiles as he starts to squeeze. He punches her in the stomach. She groans even as she feels her throat start to close..

“You’re so stubborn,” he comments. “Maybe that’s why you weren’t chosen to volunteer. You should be grateful anyway. Look at you, how easy it was for me to get you under control. They saved you from certain death.”

Her hands finally breaking free, she pushes his face and kicks him in the stomach at the same time. He loses his balance and falls back. Her feet hit the ground and she grabs the knife. Looking down on him never gets old. It’s her turn to smile. She strolls over to him. 

“That’s enough,” comes a clear voice at the beginning of the hallway. She turns her head to see a Trainer. The residential floor is a no fight zone. “Hadley, get up. You and Kentwell will go to the medic.”

She looks at Cato. Not complaining about the lack of punishment, she starts walking. Before passing the trainer, she stops her. 

“The knife,” she instructs, holding her hand out. She looks at it and clutches the knife tighter. As Cato reaches them, he starts to laugh, but immediately clutches his stomach. The Trainer looks at him and then her eyes meet Clove’s. They’re unwavering. Technically, she stole the knife from the gymnasium. But that was over five years ago. She hands it over with a clenched jaw. 

The infirmary is bright. She sits on a padded bed as the medic gives her pain meds to take. Cato has internal bleeding he needs to get taken care of, so he’s in a back room. Anything for their precious volunteer. She takes the pills and leaves, scoffing. 

She can’t believe she’s rooting for fucking Bellona Sovian. The clock on the wall says 13:02. Everyone is back in the gymnasium, but she walks back to her dorm. She slams the door shut, making sure to lock it, and flops on the bed. She rests on her back with her hands over her stomach. Staring at her ceiling, she hates him. With every fiber of her being, she hates him. She hopes he fucking dies in the Hunger Games, she sure doesn’t want to be his future neighbor.

Cato gets out of the Infirmary six days later. She sees him at his usual spot in the Dining Hall- middle seat at the middle table. He’s boisterous, laughing and hollering with what could be considered his friends. Whereas Clove sits at a two person table in the corner of the room, back to the wall. She likes to observe and to know there’s no chance of a sneak attack. The rules of the Academy are easily forgotten by some.

Clove is a creature of habit. Eat quickly and get the fuck out of there. She places her tray on the top of the pile. With her back turned and the overall movement and noise in the cafeteria, Clove does not notice Cato approach. He doesn’t make his presence known to her either, he just waits for her to turn around. 

Clove eyes him boredly. She gives him a second of opportunity to say something, and when he doesn’t, she pushes past him to the exit. He follows after her. 

“Thanks for not stabbing me so hard that I couldn’t train on my birthday,” he comments sarcastically.

Clove does not look back. “You’re welcome. Have fun at training today.” She tries to forget the birthday part immediately. June 2nd. She opens the door just enough for her to slip through, but he gets a hold of the door and opens it wider.

“What?”

“What?” Out of the corner of her eye, she can see the look he’s giving her. He’s confused.

He states, “You’re still my training partner.”

Finally, she stops walking and actually turns around to face him. She doesn’t understand why the girls in the Upper Gym locker room whisper about him like a god. To her, he looks like every boy here. They all have muscles and a strong jaw. Most are tall, even the girls. Having blond hair is uncommon here, maybe that’s why. Even under the washed light coming from the overhead, his hair glints. She looks at him unimpressed. “I’m not going into the Games with you, so I’m no longer your training partner. I am not obligated to spend time with you, so leave me alone, Hadley.”

He doesn’t follow her after that.

Cato and Clove are both orphans. They’re both fighters. They’re both winners. Except, really, when it comes to each other. As training partners, they have regularly scheduled fights, which they accidentally take turns winning. To everyone else, they’re indomitable. 

What Clove loves most about the weights room is that it’s secluded. It’s a room off of the main gym, tucked in the back corner. There’s only two other trainees in there, but they’re on the opposite side of the room. If Clove still has another year to wait before going into the Games, she might as well spend it improving her muscles. As she lifts the weights, all she can hear is the sound of her uneven teeth gnashing. She senses someone approaching, so she carefully sets the weights down. 

The Trainer is patient, waiting for her to heave a breath of air before speaking. “Kentwell,” he says in a monotone. He wasn’t one of the ones already in the room. “It isn’t independent training time, you need to report to room six train with Hadley.”

Inhaling, she sits up. Exhaling, she stands up. When the two leave the gymnasium, Clove watches him go in the opposite direction of the room she was told to report to. He expects her to make it there without his guidance. Begrudgingly, she pads down the hall.

“You snitched on me?” she partially yells as she closes Practice Room 6’s door behind her. 

“Bullshit. They never check,” she replies. 

He takes a step closer to her. “Well, maybe they did it because I’m their volunteer.”

She narrows her eyes in suspicion, not believing him for a second. “Well, I guess I serve to be your practice dummy. So what do you want to do?” she asks since she doesn’t want to be here at all. 

“C’mon, I’ll teach you how to swing a sword,” he says. He comes to stand in front of her since she's still standing in front of the door. She doesn’t want to use a sword right now and she thought they were supposed to be focusing on him. She says that. 

He says, “Just come on.”

She moves out of the way and follows him out, wordlessly.

The sword rack holds a wide variety of sword sizes. Unfortunately for her, she's 5’1” and the smallest sword comes to her hips. She hasn’t held a sword since she was 9 and was in the lower Levels’ gymnasium. 

Back in their practice room, Cato brings the dummy to the center of the room. 

“Swing at it,” he instructs. “I want to see what I’m working with.”

“It’s the same as last time, I haven’t practiced with swords without you.”

“That was seven years ago.” 

She sighs. “Fine.” She wraps her hands around the hilt of the sword, one on top of the other, and lifts it. She attempts to decapitate the dummy to show that she doesn’t need to “learn how to use a sword,” but ends up slicing the dummy’s waist. 

She doesn’t look at Cato, doesn’t want to see the laugh on his face. She hates feeling inadequate and she can admit that when it comes to swords, she is. That's why she tries to avoid them. Why are they doing this again?

He stands behind her, so close she can feel his warmth. She's not expecting to feel his big hands on her, so she elbows him hard in the chest. 

“Relax,” he murmurs, voice closer than she expected it to be. He settles his hands on her hips again and presses down on her right one. “Move this leg out a little more. If your stance isn’t wide enough, you’ll lose your balance.”

“I know, I know,” she says, doing as he says. 

“Well, clearly you didn’t know or else you would have done it.” He backs away. “Try again.”

She swings again. The sword lodges in the dummy’s neck, but doesn’t take the head clean off. It’d be annoying to see the body spring back from the force, but she knows no one would survive that in real life. 

“You know the Academy has a weight room, right?” 

She spins around to face him. The bastard is smiling. “That’s where I was before I was forced to come spend time with you!”

“Whatever. Just get in position again.”

“Why are we doing this again?”

“Because you need to know this,” he claims. 

It isn’t remotely true. While she's in the arena, no knife will leave her hand. Still, she goes back to the original position. He steps up to her back again after he gets a new dummy, but this time, his hand goes to her right arm. He adjusts the angle she was holding the sword at. If she were him, she’d flex my muscles. But she's not annoying, so she doesn’t. 

The sword still doesn’t go through the dummy’s thick neck. She spins around in exasperation. 

Sensing her frustration, he tells her, “C’mon, Kentwell, you’re not a quitter.”

She narrows her eyes and drops her arm so the tip of the sword is touching the ground. This is the most she's disrespected a weapon, but she basically quit being his training partner today. While it’s true that she hates Cato more than most, she also thinks he’s more talented than most. She was prepared to give up Cato, who is unfortunately inarguably the best male tribute in their Level, as a training partner because of pride. 

“Fine,” she says, heaving the sword up again and widening her stance. He places a new dummy in front of her, grinning triumphantly. 

It isn’t a surprise to her that the dummy’s head doesn’t come off. In fact, it takes her over ten more dummies before she can completely decapitate one. Cato promises he will find uses for the ones not completely severed. 

“Let’s try two.” He moves two dummies near each other and then shows her what to do. Decapitate one, keep your sword high, turn around swinging at the other dummy’s neck. 

He stands behind her and puts his hands over hers on the hilt to show the motion she needs to make before letting her try it on the two dummies. She does not decapitate both dummies. In fact, she barely decapitates the first one. 

He shakes his head. “That was pathetic. Again.”

Just then, the bell rings, signaling the end of private sessions. She didn’t bring a water bottle or anything, so she just walks out of the room, taking the sword with her. 

“Aren’t you going to wish me a happy birthday?” he calls after her. 

She turns around, furrowing her brows in confusion. “Why would I do that?”

He barks out a laugh. “Don’t lie, Kentwell, I know you’ll miss me.”

“I most certainly will not, but you won’t miss me either.”

“Yeah, but that’s because I have others to keep me company. Face it, Kentwell, I’m the only person you talk to.” He’s so damn cocky. 

She takes a deep breath and flexes her left hand. “I miss the days where I didn’t have to train with a partner. I miss silence. I’ve known you for a decade, Hadley, and I can’t recall a single thing I’ve done that would give you the impression I would miss you.”

He smiles. “You’ll see.”

“Don’t be too sure.” With that, she turns around. 

As time passes, Cato grows moodier. He’s angry that Clove isn’t proficient at sword- fighting, let alone an expert at it. And when she made a joke that he obviously hadn’t been laid recently, he stomped off like a petulant child, muttering about her immaturity. In the past, it felt like all Cato talked about was how much sex he was having. Though he wouldn’t tell her about a specific girl, she knew who he was screwing that week from the locker room. Some girls even had the audacity to ask her about him. Now, he can’t handle it. He's like a bomb, waiting to go off. And she guesses that would be good, if she thought he could wait until the arena to explode. 

She used to think she could read him well. She knew his tells enough to know when he was about to duck or to punch her, but this feels different. She wonders if he's scared to go into the Games and the mere thought made her pissed. If he's scared, then they should call this whole thing off and just let her go into the Games. She's ready and not scared. She wants to ask him if he's scared, but she decides against it because then she would just be stuck with that information and there's the possibility that he could mistake it for caring.

It's the time of the day where you're supposed to be training with your partner, however, she was informed Cato is not here. She checks, anyway, to see if he's gotten back from wherever he was, but Training Room 6 is empty. She chooses to go to the main gym and train alone. To her left, she hears the rhythmic cracking sound of the whip meeting the Level 2 trainees’ backs. Cato still has the scars from his time in that room. There’s also the sound of the trainees wailing. She shakes her head. It’s June, almost July, so it has to be at least their twentieth session. By her fourth time in that room, she had more than adjusted to the sensation. One would hope that it is only a few who are screaming and they just happen to be loud.

The trials the Academy puts its trainees through can be tough, but in the end, they made her better. The trickiest one for Clove was not the weather simulation where they would lock you in a small room, sweltering with heat only to make it freezing cold after you conceded and took off all of your clothes. The overwhelming heat made her pass out and she woke up, not only shivering, but to find that her clothes had been taken. The worst trial wasn’t being starved for days or shot at with an arrow into her shoulder, her hand, her calf, and it wasn’t being whipped. Clove’s favorite trial, and the easiest one in her opinion, was when she got to kill animals. It started out with cockroaches, advancing to mice. After the mice, she killed birds that could talk, that were programmed to beg for mercy. After that, it was puppies. Lastly, it was people. Before volunteering, trainees have to successfully kill five people. No, the hardest one in her opinion was when she was told to stand with her back to a target. She was instructed not to flinch while Trainers threw daggers as close as they could to her. Of course, if she did flinch, she would be whipped. All of these trials helped make her better. Clove was grateful for them and for the Academy for putting her through them. They would come in use in her Games.

She dreamt of killing Cato. In broad sunlight, on top of a grassy hill, he is on his knees before her. He’s not begging for mercy, even in Clove’s wildest dreams, she can’t conjure that. Instead, he’s looking at her in defeat. It’s much sweeter in Clove’s opinion. After the two week fight inside of the arena, it was all coming to an end. She almost doesn’t want it to. His hair had grown longer, past his ears. She takes a step closer to him and he has to crane his neck more to look at her face. Though his neck is already plenty visible, she grabs at the hair at the back of his neck and pulls. It barely exposes more of his neck, but she doesn’t care. His chin is an inch from her abdomen. He’s always been tan, but now he’s tanner from the weeks under the artificial sun. She’s about to slit his throat when she’s awakened to a knock at her door. It’s not hesitant, but a soft one. She’s a light sleeper.

She’s annoyed at having been woken up from her dream, though this one is very similar to the majority of her other ones. The clock on her desk says it’s just after midnight. She makes sure to grab her knife from under her pillow before opening the door to whoever is waiting for her on the other side. It’s Cato. 

To Clove, they’re stuck in an awkward position where she doesn’t want to let him in, but she also doesn’t want to be caught with him this late which is what could happen if they stay in the hallway. She steps to the side so he can enter and quietly shuts the door behind him. 

Her room is void of any personal touches. Everything was issued by the Academy- the heavy, blue blanket, the desk, the wardrobe, the pillow, the narrow bed itself. Besides the rumpled blanket that Clove was just laying under, there is no evidence this space is even used. All of her belongings have been tucked into the drawers of her desk or hang in the wardrobe. This room is not hers. She will go to the Hunger Games and they will give this room to another trainee. This is all temporary. 

She didn’t notice how bad he looked. He’s grimy, for one thing. For the other, he’s all bandaged up. She examines him, scanning him from head to toe. There’s a small nick under his ear.

He doesn’t apologize for waking her up. He answers her unasked question, “You have to kill the other Academies’ volunteers to be the actual volunteer. They give you weapons. And I had to kill the other two boys. It’s kinda like the Hunger Games. Weapons piled in the middle and all that.” 

It seemed to hurt him to breathe so she can’t imagine how talking affects him. There’s a bandage on his cheek and she wonders what specifically happened to him. The other Academies’ chosen volunteers must’ve been good if they were able to wound him this much. Not good enough, she thinks. 

He puts his hand down on her desk to stop himself from swaying. She tracks his movements with hawk eyes. He seemed to have caught his breath. “Bellona’s dead,” he announces.

Oh. She assumes that means that another girl won or however it works. She doesn’t know what to say to that, so she remains silent. She won’t miss her in the slightest. She'd rather root for a girl she's never met than Bellona, though, so it does work out. Well, not for Bellona. Also, in the back of her mind, she knew too many things would have to perfectly align for Bellona to even have a chance to beat Cato, but maybe this girl has a chance. She’s obviously better than Bellona. 

He peers at her through the palpable silence. She’s too aware of the fact that somebody is in her room, made worse by the fact that the somebody is Cato. She wants him gone, she wants to know more. He volunteers in one week.

Her eyes are trained on a black and violet bruise on his neck. She nods. “I can’t believe they don’t have you under maximum security,” she jokes. “You would think they would make sure their volunteer isn’t walking around when he’s injured.”

It wasn’t funny, even in her own head. And the only time he’s found her funny is when she’s using her creative threats, which is to say, when she’s not trying to be funny. 

He shrugs. “I’m not going to training for the rest of the week, so I just wanted to let you know.”

She nods again. She’s not going to thank him, she hasn’t thanked anyone for as long as she could remember. 

A sliver of moonlight slants through the one window in the room. It’s a small window that never allows much light in, even when the sun is at its strongest. Tonight, however, there’s enough moonlight to highlight his eyelashes. They’re dark brown, not even close to any shade of hair anywhere else on his body. She’s struck with the finality of it all. If her wishes came true, he’d die in the arena, making this likely the last time she’ll ever be in front of him. She’s glad that she doesn’t want him in front of her now, knowing this could be the last time they’ll ever be face to face. She’s glad she feels nothing for him. Even her hatred is receding into an aching neutrality. Soon, it will become nothing and she will finally be rid of him for good. 

“Right,” she says when it becomes obvious to her that he’s content with staring. “Well, you should get back.”

His eyes are the color of deep waters. They sweep up and down her body, making her feel slightly self- conscious for the first time in her life. He smiles pleasantly. “Yeah.”

He turns around and she pretends not to notice the stumble in his first step. With the medicine the District buys from the Capitol, Clove knows he will be fully healed before Reaping Day. Still, she’s shocked that they didn’t do these mock- Games earlier. With his hand on the door knob, he looks over his shoulder. “Bye, Clove.”

Clove doesn’t say anything. She locks the door behind him.

The Academy puts out a rack of dresses the night before the Reaping. Of the ones left in her size, Clove thoughtlessly picks a yellow one. She wears the shoes she was given to specifically wear for the Reaping- black flats. 

Trainees walk into the main city of District Two. This is where the Reaping takes place. All of the children required to attend meet here. It’s roughly in the middle of the District. If Clove still lived with her father and her father still lived in the house she called home before being shipped off to the furthest Academy, Clove would have to wake up earlier than she does now to get there in time. 

District Two is beautiful to Clove. The trees and sky are highly saturated and the mountains tuck away the smaller towns. She was born in a small town. Her father- never happy, always drunk- drove her to the furthest Academy from him. Clove doesn't understand why, assumes the other two Academies operate the same at the one she goes to. At her Academy, if parents want to see their children, they have to check them out and pick them up. That would mean he would only see her if he sought her out. Sending her to the furthest Academy was an emotion based decision that disgusts Clove. He's a weak man. Now, she lives at the impeccable, sterile Academy and she will continue to do so until she goes into the Hunger Games.

As she walks, dust settles noticeably on her shiny shoes. Her dark hair is braided to the side, opposed to its usual down-the-back way. All around her, other children walk to the city square, where the ceremony takes place. Occasionally, a car will drive past them. Clove tries to squint at the windows to discern if they’re Victors or just some wealthy District Two residents. That’s a misconception about District Two. That it’s rich. Most of the money won from the Games goes to the Academies, not the citizens. 

She is used to the two hour walk from the Academy to the Justice Building. Unfazed, she goes to the check-in table before being motioned over to the girls’ side absentmindedly by the PeaceKeeper who drew her blood. Clove rolls her eyes and walks over, standing toward the back with the other 16 year old girls. She’s the last in the row, so she gets to stand beside the aisle that Cato will walk down as he makes his way to the podium after volunteering. 

In early July, the sun feels oppressive. It beats down on Clove’s dark head, causing beads of sweat to form and trickle down her neck. She stands in this heat, waiting for the stupid video that the Capitol insists on playing to start. The Reaping starts at noon, but there is no clock around to inform her of the time. 

The other potentially reaped around her wear cheaply made clothing, just as she does. They sway, a combination of standing in the heat and just from standing for so long. In the blue sky, the clouds are puffy and few. They drift lazily in the sky, in no hurry themselves. Some of her peers talk to each other, people standing next to their friends, presumably. Otherwise, the only sounds come from the birds above and the PeaceKeepers giving orders. 

When it finally reaches the time that the District escort, Nix, prances on stage in his ridiculous outfit to present the video she and everyone else can recite from memory, Clove just wants to go back to the Academy. Usually, she enjoys Reaping Day. She assumes what makes this one different is the fact that she knows who’s going to volunteer. Standing in place, she slightly shakes herself. Neutrality, she remembers. 

Clove loves the Capitol, really, and she understands that they have to play the video every year for the newly eligible to see, but even still, it feels like something she suffers through. That’s something Clove likes about herself. Even when she doesn’t agree with the Capitol, she follows their orders. The Capitol is the reason there is an Academy in the first place, the reason there is the Hunger Games in the first place. It’s the least she can do. 

All cameras are on Nix as he walks across the stage, over to the bowl that holds the names of eligible girls. His eyelashes are feathered pink today. In the Capitol, they change their looks every week. His face is powdered deathly pale. Clove doesn’t get why they purposely make themselves look ridiculous. Nix’s hair is gelled into swirls on his face and even cheeks. He looks back at the audience like he’s letting them all in on a secret while he dramatically pulls a slip of paper out of the glass bowl. He sashays to the microphone at the front of the stage, grinning. Clearing his throat, he opens the folded paper and announces the chosen girl. He barely gets out the first syllable before another girl volunteers in her place. Clove twists to see who this year’s volunteer is. She’s a redhead with freckled light brown skin and huge eyes. She’s in the middle of the female 18 year old crowd, but makes it to the center aisle of dirt quickly. She races to the stage, though few in the past have stolen the place of the expected volunteer. None in Clove’s time of being eligible to be reaped. She gives her name into the microphone, this tall girl that will be killed in the Games. Clove narrows her eyes. She’s muscular. For the first time in her life, she feels Cato may lose to someone other than her. 

The same process is done all over again, except this time with the boys and with Cato. He gives his name when prompted by Nix and then immediately takes a step back. On the podium, he tries to look tough but ends up looking stupid. Clove doesn’t know why he feels the need to act anyway when he has big muscles that are hard to miss. They especially bulge in the pressed shirt the Academy gave him. 

Their eyes connect and she wonders if she should visit him before he leaves in the Justice Building. His gaze becomes searing and she wants to look away but can’t for some reason. Even from far away she can see the blue of his eyes. They’re that bright, that intense. She bites her lip, trying to decide. Maybe she should see him. She can make the true extent of her disdain known. Finally, she manages to tear her eyes away to look at him as a whole. There’s a crease between his light brown eyebrows. His arms were crossed to show off his muscles, but now they’re not. His stance is wide like he’s prepared to fight someone this very second, but he’s also leaning back slightly. There’s so much she could say to him. But in the end, she feels he doesn’t need to hear any of it. Her hatred for him will stay unknown. Not showing up is a sign of indifference and that’s exactly what she's trying to be. Indifferent.

Cato is carted off to the Capitol and Clove walks back to the closest place to home she’s ever known. She would think of it as home, too, if she were sentimental. There’s no training today, most everything across the nation is shut down during Reaping Day. She decides to wait out the rest of the day in her room.

The next week, she spends her time in the weight room. Summer isn’t free time for the trainees just because school is no longer taking place, but Clove doesn’t have a partner to train with. She doesn’t need one, never has needed anything but a knife. Even the dullest of knives would do in her hands. She doesn’t stand in front of one of the televisions placed around the Academy to watch the opening ceremonies. She doesn’t care how Cato was dressed in the opening parade, how he scored in the private training sessions, or how his interview went. Never in a million years would she tune into that interview. The combined stupidity of Cato and the designated Hunger Games interviewer, Caesar Flickerman, would have been too much for her to bear. And she has a large pain threshold. It is a last minute decision, even, to watch the bloodbath. Cato does well, naturally, but so does the other District Two volunteer, Galilea. 

Clove intensely watches him as he kills. He looks so focused like this is exactly where he’s supposed to be. She’s never seen him kill someone before. Sweat glistens on his forehead and the burgundy freckles on his face are created after he stabs with his sword the last victim of the bloodbath. It felt weird for her to watch him fight from an overview. She studied his movements, though she knows everything he did was done through habit. He killed three, bashing the head of his first victim- some gangly boy that couldn’t be older than 14- against the side of the cornucopia. The cornucopia glints in the sun, a thing of beauty that stands alone in a circular plane of grass. 

He barks orders at the boy from District Four. He is the alliance’s self-appointed leader. Clove didn’t expect anything less. She rolls her eyes and turns away. There probably won’t be any more action until nighttime. 

After she showers, dresses, brushes her teeth, braids her hair, she makes her way to the nearest television. The Level 4 history class, in this case. Cato and the rest of the alliance sit around a fire, talking, even laughing. The boy from District One asks everybody what their token is.

When Cato pulls identification tags out from under his shirt, she doesn’t recognize them as hers. It is only because he says they aren’t his that she begins to question when she last saw her own. All of the arriving trainees were issued the tags upon joining the Academy, but no one wears them. Clove personally keeps hers in an otherwise empty box at the bottom of her closet. “Whose are they?” The blond girl from District One asks. 

They’re sitting next to each other. The light from the fire illuminates her face just so and makes her hair shimmer. Her voice is high pitched and Clove wishes Cato would just rip out her vocal chords already. But she guesses she’s more useful to him alive. 

He shrugs, looking back down at them. A small smile adorns his face as if he’s had good times with her chain. “Just someone I know.”

Her jaw almost drops in disbelief at his audacity. He stole her tags. She doesn’t give a shit about them, but still. When was he even in her room? Why would he even choose them, out of everything, to be his token? What’s wrong with his own damn identification tags?

He tucks them back under his shirt and then someone else answers, but she continues to look at him. The outline of the tags is semi apparent under his shirt if you look hard enough. One of his hands casually grips a water bottle, though he hasn’t taken a sip in a while. He’s stretched lazily in front of a log. 

When he laughs at an unfunny joke the blond girl sitting beside him makes, not caring that tributes not in the alliance can hear them, she spins on her heel and returns to her room. To be sure, she opens her dresser and kneels. She feels the coldness of the floor through her pants. The box where she kept her identification tags is empty.

It takes her a long time to fall asleep, but when she finally does, she is thinking about his big, calloused hands around her throat.

The big television in the dining hall has been playing all night. Every morning, Clove wakes at 6:30, gets ready, and heads downstairs for breakfast. She settles into her seat, eating the bowl of oatmeal in front of her. Her eyes are trained on the large screen. It’s been daytime in the arena for quite awhile, Clove can tell. 

The arena of the 73rd Hunger Games is a boreal forest, regular in almost every aspect. She thinks about how he feels about it. On the one hand, it’s easier in general. On the other, he’s been trained for extreme weather conditions. It would’ve been an advantage to be in an arena that is almost as deadly as him, knowing he has withstood such conditions previously. She makes a mental note to ask him his opinion before freezing. She shakes her head vigorously, ridding herself of the disgusting thought. She wants him dead. 

The day goes by and Cato and the alliance of District One, Two, and Four tributes kills only two more tributes. Clove hasn’t been keeping track of how many were left and she goes back to throwing her knives when the Games shrink to a small corner on the screen and Caesar Flickerman adds his two cents. 

It is during dinner that Clove realizes what is happening. The sun shown in the arena hasn’t moved down an inch since reaching its peak at midday. Now, it is almost 19:00. It wouldn’t be weird if this wasn’t an arena, if that was a real sun. The Capitol has an addiction to aesthetics and every night in the arena, for as long as Clove can remember, there has been a sunset. They’re going to keep the sun up.

Shortly later, in the random classroom she’s watching the Games in, she hears another person voice this theory. They’re loud, the room is small, Clove can hear everything the girl is saying. The girl, some brunette, was pointing to the screen and twisting her torso to tell her friends. Clove’s eyes drift to her. She’s young, probably Level 7, and has wide shoulders. She’s probably a good wrestler with her build. 

In the pack Cato hunts with, the first tribute to figure it out is Galilea. Clove is relieved to finally see some common sense among the group. She was getting worried they left it all back in the Capitol if these tributes she knows nothing about had any at all. 

There’s a sword strapped crossbody to Cato. He stops in his tracks and places his hands on his hips. He then squints at the sun, looking at it as if it’s another enemy he will eventually face. He turns around to address the rest of the group. “Suggestions? I mean, I don’t see how it changes anything besides the fact that it’ll be harder to fall asleep.”

Galilea rolls her eyes and Clove smiles to herself. The cameras zoom in closer to the group, Cato’s back turned to it. The entirety of Panem is watching him be diplomatic for the first time in his life. 

“He’s right,” the District Four boy says. “It changes nothing. We‘ll sleep when we’re tired, two of us will keep watch.”

And that’s what they do. The entire week passed with virtually no change, besides the killing of a single tribute. Tensions are going to get high soon. There is only one tribute left in the arena not in this alliance. Clove predicts they’ll implode before they kill the remaining tribute. 

It starts when Galilea shouts, “What?” to Cato in a hostile tone at their campsite. He had been looking over his shoulder, at the group gathered in a circle on logs. The rest look at her when she does shout, clearly on edge. She simply jogs over to Cato, ignoring them. The camera cuts in half to show the other tribute in hiding. 

His hair was noticeably longer, even after just a week. It just goes past his ears. Clove wants to touch it, to know if it’s just as soft as it’s always been. If it somehow managed to retain its feel after over a week of sleeping outside.  And he’s always been tan, but he’s certainly tanner. There was sunscreen in one of the bags from the cornucopia, but they used it all up after the fifth day. The boy from District One, the only one who hasn’t tanned, looks like a tomato. 

Galilea stands in front of her district partner and uses her hand as a visor to block the sun from her eyes. Her red, curly hair was braided tightly to her scalp, but is now coming out of the holding some. She whispers, “You know how this is going to end. You and me. Besides when you snuck off to fuck the ditzy blond, you’re not subtle about wanting to kill the rest of us. You want this over and so do I.”

Cato gazed at her, almost pensive. If Clove knew he could be that. “I’m going to kill you, you know,” he tells her, so matter-of-factly Clove becomes disappointed. 

On the other side of the screen, we see a crisp red tribute, towards the older end of the spectrum. She’s from District Six, Clove learns. Her light brown hair is frizzy from the sun and it looks like it pains her to keep her eyes open. She’s in a tree. When has she last had water? 

Galilea shrugs. “Most likely not, but it’s nice that you have confidence in yourself.”

For the first time in his lifetime, Cato lets it go. He asks, “When?”

“So you’ll do it?” 

“Obviously,” he responds. “When do you want to do it?”

She thinks for a moment. “Tomorrow, while they’re sleeping.”

Cato nods slightly, more to himself than as a response. “I’ll take Atlas and Malus?”

“No, I’ll take Atlas and Prue. You can take Malus and Arrrietty,” she says forcefully. Then, as an afterthought, “You gonna be able to kill her? You seem to enjoy her company.”

“Worry about the two from Four.” Cato shrugs. “As long as they’re gone, right?”

Galilea studies him. Clove wonders what she sees. Before turning around, she tells him quietly, “Just act naturally until then.”

“Obviously,” Cato mutters to himself.

It doesn’t happen. Instead, while Clove is eating her breakfast absently, the camera zooms in on the girl from Six. Her head falls on her shoulder as her cannon goes off. The abrupt motion causes her corpse to fall from the tree. She hits the ground with a loud thud. 

Cato and Galilea are ready the second the cannon goes off like they knew it was going to happen. The boy from Four makes the foolish decision to look to the sky, to see the projection of the newly dead girl. Galilea kills him in a second with her scythe. At the same second, Cato’s sword goes into the boy from One’s shoulder. 

The boy from One, Malus, proves unable to fight with his left hand and ends up being killed shortly, despite his district partner’s best efforts. And even when Cato was occupied with killing two, the girl is incapable of doing anything more than slightly harming him with her own sword. With no fanfare, Cato spins around and plunges his sword through her heart, through her entire body. Her cannon fires instantly. The bloody end of the sword sticks out her back as she falls to her knees and then, on her face. A moment later, another cannon is fired. It is for the red headed girl of District Four. She perhaps has the brightest red hair Clove has ever seen, the blood at her hairline almost blends in. 

Galilea turns to Cato, inhaling deeply. Both are sweaty and bleeding, but not nearly to the extent a District would hope their trained tributes were able to inflict. Cato’s back is to the camera, everyone across the nation watches Galilea’s dark brown eyes sweep up and down Cato. 

She charges first, her arm poised high. Behind them, a pleasant blue sky full of pillowy clouds. The clouds just manage to pass by the sun without covering it. Birds yell and some mutant rodent from the Capitol scampers. None of this goes noticed by them. Cato offsets her javelin with his sword, still covered in the blood of the girl from District One. 

Their fight is long. They’ve both managed to disarm each other several times. While Cato regained control of his sword, Galilea made do with the sword of the girl from District One. This is a true fight, one where both are bleeding and bruised equally, severely. Clove momentarily forgets her breakfast, as does everyone else in the Dining Hall. The smallest bud of hope blossoms in her chest. The thought that she should be the one to kill Cato comes and goes. She takes a gulp of milk. 

When Galilea finally gets Cato on the ground, Clove knows right away she will lose. While she is swift with her movements, she made the fatal error of placing her foot on his chest. She stands over him. She's very tall, the sun is mostly blocked by her head, but the light that does shine above create a halo. Clove guesses this is her first time doing this because if she had done it before, she would know how easily this could turn the tide, especially with an opponent as capable as Cato. She guesses she does this because it’s the Hunger Games and all of District Two tributes want to be seen as domineering and what’s more domineering than conquering the self-anointed leader of the alliance? However, Cato does exactly what any “career” District tribute would do and grabs her ankle to drag her down.

Clove swallows the last bite of her breakfast, Cato kills Galilea. 

Chapter Text

“Are you ready?” asks Brutus. In a minute, the doors of the train will slide open, revealing him to his District. 

It’s a stupid question, Cato thinks. Of course he is ready. He nods, keeping his eyes trained on the doors. 

The tinted windows of the train blocked out the effulgence of the sun, but even still, when the doors opened and he faced the sun with no barriers, he was immune. He took a step forward onto the platform, followed a second later by his mentor. They stand side to side as Brutus takes Cato’s hand and raises it into the air. The crowd’s cheer gets louder. Cato smirks. This is what he’s been waiting for his whole life. 

The crowd, mostly anonymous faces to him, only get louder. He scans the sea of people here to see for anyone familiar. The first group of people made apparent to him, naturally, is the other District Two Victors. They stand to the side, talking amongst themselves, not caring about him at all. Cato doesn’t mind, he continues searching. His acquaintances from the Academy are grouped together, not in the front, but close by. There’s a ton of girls, he recognizes a couple as ones he had sex with and guesses that they’re all ones he had sex with. He keeps looking for raven colored hair. He finds it so many times on the heads of people he does not know. 

The smirk stays on his face as rage floods his veins. She isn’t here. He descends down the wooden steps of the platform to greet his almost- friends. He lets girls hang off him, whisper things in his ear, as he makes small talk with the people he grew up with. He focuses on what his friends are saying, instead. 

His friends pat him on the shoulder, laughing, telling him they need to go out for a drink sometime. Cato gives a non- answer, turns around and grabs the face of one of the girls trying to tell him something unimportant. He kisses her roughly and lets her go just as fast as he grabbed her. She tries to get another kiss, but Cato shakes her off and goes over to the other Victors. None of them say anything, just file into one of the two cars. This time, they allow Cato to have the passenger seat of the car Brutus drives. 

In the car, his new neighbors’ attempts at conversing with him die out shortly. He looks out the window, forehead pressed to the glass. Once they get out of the city he sees the same wooden one story houses crowded together like teeth that he would pass on his walk to the Reaping. With fences put up to separate the thin strip of land between the houses, an owner would be lucky to be able to walk straight without touching the side of the house or the fence. 

They show him his house and then the house they will be having dinner at tonight. House isn’t really a fair word to describe it. It’s definitely a mansion. Stones coming together with brick to make a three story home. They handed him a key, but informed him it was the same as theirs and that there really was no use in locking the door. Cato walks into his new residence and straight to the closest bathroom. He had to open a few doors along the way, but eventually he found a mirror. The crown on his head feels weightless, almost as if it’s a part of him. It’s the same shade of brilliant gold as his hair. He can’t help but smile. 

The next day, he asks to be taught how to drive at the breakfast table. Brutus volunteers. Cato nods resolutely and then gets up from the table. He had finished his breakfast and requested what he needed to request. The others turned to look at him before they even heard the scraping of the chair. 

“Where are you going?” Enobaria questions. Her spoon is still midway to her mouth and she looks like she’s just asking to be polite, though Cato knows she isn’t. None of them are. 

He decides to deign them with the truth. 

“Why?” says Samson. 

“The District wants back to back Victors.” No one offers to drive him, so Cato walks out of Samson’s house, ignoring Enobaria’s “So?”

The walk isn’t too long, roughly forty-five minutes. It’s scenic. For the first mile or so, there are no other buildings. The Victors are allowed their privacy. The foliage on the sides of the road are all shades of green like Clove’s eyes. His mind wanders as he walks. What will he say to her?

The red haired lady that sits at the front desk in the Academy lobby looks up at the front door swinging open. Once, Cato flirted with her. She is the only woman who has ever been unaffected by his attempts besides Galilea. Now, he doesn’t look at her. He stomps all the way over to the elevator and pushes the button. He can do that now that he’s a Victor. 

Clove is in the first place he looks. He finds this oddly comforting. The weight room is small, so any changes such as a new person entering, are sensed almost immediately. Not by her, though. He stands in the doorway and watches her hold the weight in the open air above her. That weight could crush her if she isn’t careful. Finally, he goes over to stand behind her. 

Their eyes connect for the first time in what feels like forever to him. The anger comes back to him. He tilts his head.  “I’m not sure if you’ve heard, but I won the Hunger Games.”

Her teeth are gritted, not to hold back emotion, but in a strained way. The weight is too much for her. She doesn’t say anything and Cato wonders if it’s because she can’t. Her eyes drift away like it was a mistake to look at him in the first place.

“Do you need help with that?” he asks condescendingly.

She shakes her head to the best of her ability and bites out a cutting, “No.” Half of her effort is tied up with holding up the weight, so her voice is constrained.

Sweat pools in the hollows of her collarbones. He leans down slightly to press the pad of his finger to her skin to feel the sticky sweat. “Are you sure?” he asks. His eyes are no longer on hers, but on where he places his finger. Beneath the sweat, he can tell her skin is just as soft as it always has been. With the exception of her hands, everything about her is smooth. The contour of her face, the slope of her neck, the texture of her hair. He likes squeezing her neck so much because of how soft the skin is there. She has a thin neck, yet the pale skin there is supple.

“I will throw this at you,” she threatens. It’s not a very convincing one considering her energy is being spent on keeping the weight up. Her eyebrows are furrowed. Cato wouldn’t believe her anyway. If there’s one thing he knows about Clove, it’s that she worships Victors. 

“Go ahead,” he says lightly, swiping his finger up and off her. He doesn’t have a care in the world. 

After a painful minute of her ignoring his existence, he just takes the damn weight from her with one hand. She continues laying down, staring at the ceiling, and keeping her mouth pressed in a thin line. Though, Cato swears he saw her arms drop appreciatively. She’s low enough to the ground that the end of her braid grazes the floor. 

He says, “C’mon. Let’s get lunch and then we can spar.”

That gets her attention. Her eyes fly to his face, searching it confusedly when she finds it. She licks her constantly dry lips. “Go home, Hadley,” she settles on. 

He was already angry with her. “I’m a Victor,” he reminds her. He also just likes saying it.

She looks away from him almost like she can’t bear to face the truth of his words. “I don’t care. That’s just another title you have like asshole and the-most-annoying-person-ever.” 

He traces the side of her face against the unflattering light in the room with his eyes as he answers her. “I think you know it’s not like those other titles.” That’s probably what’s killing her,

“I’m not hungry.”

Cato grins. Still so stubborn. “FIne, we don’t have to eat. I just thought you’d want to have some protein in you before we fight.”

“How considerate,” she responds dryly.

“Well, now you can't blame your impending loss on your lack of energy.”

“There will be no loss-”

“Well, aren’t you confident? Have you always been this-”

“Because I’m not fighting with you.”

Cato closes his mouth and opens it again. “Because you know you’re going to lose?”

She draws breath from deep in her diaphragm. “Because,” she says through gritted teeth, “you’re not my training partner.”

Instinctually, he reaches down and closes his hand around her throat. He drags her into a sitting position. Clove always keeps her nails filed to points and as they dig into the hand around her throat, Cato does not feel a thing. All he feels is the need to show her how fucking stupid she is. He looks down on her, even as he raises her into the air. She stands on the tip of her toes.The sound of her struggling to breathe is like music to his ears. She’s never had any color in her face that could drain, but her eyes become unfocused. He wants to see her flushed. He settles for slamming her against the wall. As he does so, his grip loosens slightly, just enough to allow a few breaths before he tightens his hold again.

In the back of his mind, he wonders what would happen if he killed her. The trainer watches him, but doesn’t intervene. Though it’s against their rules, he doesn’t think the Academy would mind it if a trainee killed another trainee. So if a Victor does it? He can technically do whatever he wants as a Victor. However, once he actually does it, what would happen? If word got back to President Snow, which he’s sure it would, would he be angry?

He lets go of her. She slides down the wall slightly. Her feet were dangling in the air, but now she stands on his feet as he’s crowded against her. He, in his mind, graciously allows her to catch her breath. She gasps air. Her eyelids flutter, dark lashes fanning her cheek. He doesn’t remember holding her wrists down in his other hand. He doesn’t let them go.

She looks up at him, finally. He knows she hates that she has to tilt her head. It brings a small smile to his face. “Asshole,” she says, rolling her eyes and looking past him. She sounds annoyed and satisfied that her point was proven all in one.

She tries to snatch her wrists back, to regain a modicum of dignity, but she’s at his will and he does not permit it. His smile widens to reflect his own satisfaction. If she just looked at him, she’d be steaming with anger. 

Cato is tempted to do it again. He misses the feeling of having a life in his hands. And he’s mad at her. Of course he is. She didn’t show up after he was reaped. He was going to tell her something he forgot after the bloodbath. She didn’t show up when he stepped onto District Two soil for the first time since becoming a Victor. And now, here she is, in front of him at last, and unwilling to listen to him, denying the fact that he’s her training partner. Reasonable is something Cato is not.

She stays in silence, looking off to the side. Her jaw is clenched, but otherwise, she appears relaxed. Her arms are hung as loosely as they can be while he’s still holding onto them. Their chests are barely separated by space.  He stares at the top of her head, deliberating on what to say next. 

“I’m going to come back tomorrow. Don’t you remember why you didn’t go into the Games this year?” he asks, voice deep.

She looks up at him once more, chin raised slightly. “I have never needed your help to win.”

She says it with such conviction, he’s inclined to believe her. It doesn’t matter, though. “Would you prefer if I told the Games Makers to kill you? I can do that, you know.”

She tries to take back her wrists again, but he was expecting it. She seethes before turning her eyes back to his. “I’d prefer it if you left me alone.”

“Clove, listen to me,” he says in his least condescending tone. “I have actually been through the Hunger Games. And the District wants another Victor this year. They want it to be you. It is my duty to do everything in my power to help you win because I am your training partner.” Reasonable is something Clove is not, either, though she’d never admit that. “So just shut the fuck up.”

Cato can almost hear her mind churning for an answer. “You’re going to be the mentor to my opponent.”

He was not expecting her to say that. Largely because he thought it was obvious that even though the District would be happy with whoever the poor guy is to win, they want it to be her. She knows how to put on a good show. “I don’t know who your district partner will be. I know who the female volunteer for next year will be, so that’s where I will help.”

She seems to consider this before just saying quietly, “Let go of me.”

He does and he also takes a step back. “Tomorrow, Kentwell,” he reminds her, leaving no room for argument. He doesn’t look back as he leaves her there.

Instead of doing what he came here to do, Cato ends up searching for Clove’s file in the cabinet marked with the letter K. A trainer told him where the room was and unlocked it to grant him access. He pulls the file out when he finds it. When he opens it, there’s a picture of her when she’s young staring back at him. It’s the photo everyone has to take on their first day at the Academy. Her hair is pulled back in a ponytail or braid, her mouth is set in a straight line. She looks so young, so angry. He pours over the information, practically inhaling the words with his eyes. He reads about her basic information- her birthday (he raises his eyebrows when he realizes it’s during the Hunger Games), her height, her weight, her ID number. The cool metal of her ID tags stick to his skin. He wonders if she knows he took them. Then he reads how she reacted in the weather control room. It says standard. It’s what he did too, take off all of his clothes when it got too hot to stand. It says tears fell in her first four whipping sessions, though they were silent. He wishes there was a picture to go with that- seeing her cry would make it easier for him to picture it in his daydreams. She finished the mile with a 2:37:09. Whoever wrote this file called it exceptional. He reads about all of the times she’s killed someone, how she never hesitated. How she was able to throw a knife perfectly accurately after a week with no food. She has no allergies or noted fears and her mother is dead. It is noted that she cannot swim. Cato looks up from the file, racking his memory, trying to remember when they asked him if he could swim or not. He can, of course. His father taught him in a lake nearby his house when Cato was 4. When he’s finished reading it all, he contemplates stealing the file. He decides not to and just leaves.

He tells Brutus he can’t practice driving today because he has to go back to the Academy and Brutus gets mad at him for “wasting his time.” After breakfast, Cato drives to the Academy, Brutus in the passenger seat.

“You’re walking back,” Brutus shouts as he drives away. He doesn’t mind since he doesn’t know what time he’ll be leaving anyway. But Cato also doesn’t know why Brutus is in a hurry considering he has no plans for the rest of his life. 

Outwardly stoic, he revels in the stares of the trainees, how they move out of his way automatically, just as they did yesterday. He doesn’t acknowledge the attention, though he enjoys it. He makes his way to where Clove most likely is at this time of day- throwing knives. 

She spins around before he’s close to her, clutching the knife extra forcefully. He just raises his eyebrows and shifts to the side as if to say, “After you.” She huffs and stomps past him, out the door of the Upper Level Gymnasium, and into Practice Room 6. He wonders what put her in such a bad mood today.

He keeps his word and beats her. It isn’t Clove’s finest moment, but it is perhaps one of Cato’s. She stares at him, visibly upset, chest heaving, sitting against the opposite wall. He’s more than ok with her staring at him. In fact, he stares back shamelessly taking her all in. Since they became training partners, the longest time he went without seeing her for as long as he’s known her. It’s been a month. She looks exactly the same. Until this moment, he didn’t know how much he wanted her to. 

“You learn how to properly use a sword, yet?” he questions. 

Clove takes a sip of water from her water bottle. He can tell by her silence that the answer is no.

He shrugs. “We have a lot of time.” It’s not exactly true. Cato no longer believes a year is a lot of time, not since he came out of that arena. It messed with his head, the sun never setting. Even on the first day, when it did set, it felt fast and then slow. To her, however, he knows it’ll be a long year. He wishes it were true.

“I’m not coming by tomorrow, so do whatever it is you want to do that for some reason you can’t do in my presence.”

“Thanks for giving me permission,” she replies, unamused. He gets up to leave after a moment, almost making it to the door when she says his name. He turns around. Her jaw is clenched. She looks like she just made up her mind about something. “Nevermind.”

Over the next couple of weeks, Cato spends all of his time in the Victors’ Village. The other Victors are interesting, to say the least. They try to hide their overuse of alcohol, but he notices their red and squinting eyes, their jumpiness. Like the Games, this is not at all what he expected it to be. 

They make him choose a hobby and he chose metalwork. At first, it’s tedious, but as the amount of equipment in his basement grows, so does the time he spends down there. He makes nothing in particular, he just enjoys welding and melting and having something to do with his hands. He takes Clove’s ID tags off before going down to his basement every time. Otherwise, he never takes them off.

The use of the word “friends” can be applied to the group of boys he agrees to get drinks with if one uses it loosely. Cato borrows Brutus’s car to drive himself into the main city of Two. Cato doesn’t know if there’s more than one tavern in the entire District. They all meet at the one a couple streets off the city square. 

They sit in a wooden booth, he deliberately sits at the end. Predictably, they ask him about his games. He gives vague answers, enough to intrigue them but general enough so he doesn’t have to actually comb back through his memory. Drinks are free for him. He doesn’t know why he’s doing this, he realizes after an hour. It’s not like he really ever liked these people. Sure, they kept him well enough company, but he has the Victors now. Plus, he needs to focus on getting District Two another Victor. Even Ulysses, who he would say he’s closest to, falls short. He laughs loudly at their jokes, but when they talk about their jobs as PeaceKeepers, he disconnects. He doesn’t care at all. He drinks two more mugs of mead. At the end, he finds an attractive girl and drives her to his house. In the morning, he tells her to find her own way home. 

He meets the Mayor’s children, two girls and a boy, and he spends the entire dinner debating which one he should fuck tonight. He turns the decision over in his head numerous times. One‘s a year older than him, the other a year younger. He chooses the older. 

In his fist, he gathers her pin straight hair, the color of tar, and pulls it back before latching his lips onto her neck. She has one freckle on her face, unlike Clove who has a whole constellation. Her nails are painted red and can be considered long, but they do no damage to him. He pulls out and spills onto her stomach. 

One of the older Victors, Kamari, looks at him sternly, knowingly, but doesn’t say a word. 

The Capitol did a good job of polishing him up after his Games. As he showers, he thumbs his favorite scar, and is glad once again that he was conscious enough to tell them not to remove it. He smiles down at it, the scar on his hip. Clove gave it to him with her knife during their first fight in their second year as training partners. The tags rest above his heart. He turns the shower off. 

Going to her room was a last resort, but he can’t find her anywhere. In case she is in there, he asks for a key, presuming it would be locked. The fact that it’s locked gives away the fact that she’s in there. He forces himself to knock. 

“Who is it?” Her voice is muffled by the door, though Cato is sure it isn’t very thick. 

“Cato.”

“Go away,” she calls. 

“Why? Are you naked?” 

“Yes,” she answers so flatly he knows she’s lying. He unlocks the door and steps in. 

She’s laying flat on her back on her narrow bed. The boys’ beds are slightly bigger. Cato’s bed now is too big for just him. She sits up. 

She stares at him like he’s a statue come to life. At last, she sighs and says, “What?”

Her room hasn’t changed at all. Everything is in its exact place as last time. “Fight?”

She seems deep into thinking, taking a while to answer. He stands awkwardly in the middle of her room. She agrees. 

Clove’s about to win. He can tell. He got drunk last night and now his movements are slow. When she pushes him and he topples over, he expects it. He isn’t expecting to see Clove frozen over him. He follows her line of vision and sees her ID tags are now over his shirt. Sweat used to cause them to stick to his skin. 

The look on her face isn’t shock or even anger. Her voice is very even toned when she asks for her tags back. How she can tell these specific ones are hers, he doesn’t know. The imprinted numbers are far too tiny for her to be able to discern them from her distance. Cato sits up. He doesn’t know what to say. He tilts his head to look at her at a different angle. She repeats herself.

“Why do you want them?” comes out. He could not, for the life of him, find a good response.

She looks at him like he’s a speck of dirt on her new shoes. “Why do you?” she fires back.

Why does he want them? Initially, he didn’t. He wanted a token, but had no idea what it should be. He thought something of Clove’s would be funny. But now, he’d rather keep them. It’s not exactly that he’s grown attached to them, but for some inexplicable reason, they comfort him. It’s silly, he knows. That he should need comfort at all. Well, it’s not exactly comfort, more of a reminder. He swallows. Maybe he can compensate her for them. He has more than enough money. He says calmly, “I’ll buy you a set of knives.”

A moment of silence. Then: “I don’t want anything from you.” She meets his eyes. “When were you in my room anyway?”

Cato thinks back to when he stole Clove’s ID tags. He knew she always threw knives before heading to lunch, that’s when he went into her room. “I don’t know. June. When you were in the gym.”

She doesn’t react to this. Not at all. She just stands over Cato with an unidentifiable look on her face. And that frustrates Cato. That he can’t identify it. Usually, there’s a tick under her left eye when she tries to cover any sort of negative emotion and from there it’d be pretty easy to guess what the feeling is. She’s never felt anything resembling anything positive and this isn’t her neutral face. 

“Clove…?”

She just says, “Whatever,” before exiting the room. 

He sighs, resting his hand on the mattress. 

Cato saw Clove first when he was 8 and she was 7. He spoke with her first when he was 11 and she was 10. He came to understand her when he was 13 and she was 12. And he does understand her. For the most part. 

He understands who she thinks she is. She thinks she’s level headed and that she has no emotions to cloud her judgment or give her away. She walks around with an earned sense of superiority that Cato wants to wash away most of the time. She thinks she’s indomitable. That’s the only part she’s right about. 

He understands who she really is. She has tells. She scrunches her nose when she’s annoyed. She’s fueled by rage. There’s flashes of emotion on her face, a tick under her eye, before she remembers who she wants to be, who she thinks she is. She thinks she does a good job pretending. To him, at least, she does not. 

She doesn’t understand him. She thinks he has sex with a ton of pretty girls that stroke his ego, when really, he has sex with a ton of pretty girls with a molecule of talent. She thinks he’s stupid. Well, he has her figured out. She thinks he’s indomitable. That’s the only part she’s right about. He knows she thinks this because she lost to him. Clove can come to no other conclusion than to think he’s on her level without wounding her pride. 

Months pass, Clove doesn’t mention the ID tags again. Cato trains with her like he did before he won the Games. He grows closer to the other Victors. They have weekly dinners and never make Cato host. They say he’ll be exempt until there’s another Victor. They’re kinder than they look. Enobaria had her teeth filed to points after ripping out the throat of the last kill in her Hunger Games. Samson, the oldest living male Victor of Two, has a ring of red tattooed across his neck with blood drops pouring down it to remember the way he slowly killed the last tribute left in his Games. Both, of course, were forced into it by the Capitol. They’re not kind at all. 

Cato goes on a Victory Tour around the nation of Panem. He starts in District Twelve and works his way down the districts, skipping his own. That’ll be the last stop. He’s forced into nicer clothing than he usually wears and gives speeches written by someone, not him, to an upset or disconnected audience. This could be the only time he’s in another District than his own, unless he mentors a winning tribute himself, so he tries to commit each to memory. With the exception to Four, which has a view of the ocean, he thinks the other districts are dull. He’s overcome with gratitude for living in Two. He has dinners with the mayors of the other districts and their Victors. To him, they’re all stilted conversations, but his mentor, Brutus, who has accompanied him on his tour, seems to enjoy catching up with the other Victors. By the looks of it, they’re all friends. Even with the lone Victor of District Twelve. 

The Capitol is just short of overwhelming. Colorful lights flash in patterns as he exits the long, black car. He wears an egregious outfit almost as bad as the ones the Capitolites wear. He’s forced by Brutus to converse with the people at the party thrown at the President’s Mansion. The mansion itself is bigger than the entire Victors’ Village. He shoots back an unknown, light purple liquid that sort of glows before stepping up to his sponsors during his Games. 

Back home, the last stop is just another dinner with the mayor and other District Two Victors. The Capitol, Cato was told, has a force field around it to protect the Capitolites from the elements. Here in District Two, it snows heavily. The new year is coming. Cato doesn’t know where all of the time went. 

In January, he receives an invitation to the President’s Mansion. When he nonchalantly tells the others, they go still. He looks up from his plate of food. “What?”

They explain very slowly what will happen, what has happened to most of them. He looks at the Victor closest to him in age, Guinevere. Her blond hair is lighter than his and pinpoint straight. She’s the kindest of them all by a mile. She won the Seventy-First Hunger Games. She looks pained, she nods.

Cato doesn’t really know how to feel about it all. For months, he’s taken a steady rotation of women, some he knew before winning the Games and some he didn’t, to bed. Also, he is loyal to the Capitol. Why wouldn’t he do this one request? He understands it’s mandatory, but not why it needs to be. After all, of course, he’d do it. On the other hand, all of the Victors look at him like he received the worst news possible. He assumes a majority of them, if not all, have done it. What could be so bad about it?

By the end of the week, he’s having dinner with a mix of Capitolites he met at the party on his Victory Tour and a mix of strangers. He finds the Capitolites insufferable and somehow, he suffers through it. Their shrill voices cause him not a little amount of pain. He briefly finds it weird that President Snow hasn’t spoken with him since the week he won the Games, but shakes it off. He has more important things to do. 

On four more separate occasions, Cato goes to a dinner party with a small group of elite Capitolites. The next time he goes to the Capitol, it is not for a dinner party, but to have sex with one of the women who was at all of the dinner parties. Her skin is normal, which is rare in the Capitol, but her eyes are purple and her hair is a flat yellow and her makeup is outlandish. She pounces on Cato when they’re alone, begs him to bruise her. He does as she asks and tries to think of it as all of those times he’s had sex before, but fails. It wasn’t that bad, he thinks as he shuts the door behind him. 

Now when he goes back, it’s exclusively for sex. No more dinner parties for him. Sometimes it’s the same people, the recurring ones are the ones that pay him best. Sometimes he sees other Victors in the hotel where he meets his customers. He knows they’re here for the same thing. On the train ride to the Capitol, his prep team makes him look however he is desired to look by the customer. On the way back, he takes long showers. 

He hates telling Clove he can’t train with her for the week because it is what he’d choose to do with his time. The other Victors told him he can’t tell anyone. He doesn’t think he’d tell Clove anyway. She knows he has sex, has known for a very long time. Once, she complained to him about being approached in the female locker room by a girl who wanted to know his type. He smirked and teased her about what she was missing out on. He still has sex with girls from Two. 

In March, he learns the Capitolites typically prefer Victors with knives most. When he gets back to District Two, he goes to the Academy and approaches the topic of a new weapon of choice for Clove. He knows she’s perfect with a spear or an ax as well as a knife. She looks at him like he’s gone insane. His voice turns pleading. She’s stubborn, which he likes, but not now. She walks away after awhile of hearing him essentially ask the same thing and he lets her go. Maybe he should tell her. 

He knows Clove isn’t conventionally attractive. She’s short, which is unusual for the District. Her lips are thin and her curves are nonexistent. Cato finds her attractive, always has. Even though he can’t stand her, he loves freckles. He hopes desperately that no one else will notice she’s actually pretty. He knows Clove is as loyal to President Snow as he is and would do everything he asked, with a smile on her face if he asked. She’s strong enough, that's never been the question. Cato doesn't dwell on what is the question.

The mansion he resides in emphasizes his loneliness. The girls he bring to his bed do little to quell it. Even his footsteps echo. 

He wakes up late in the morning. This is a fairly new thing, until recently, he kept to the morning schedule he was on at the Academy. However, by the time he pads downstairs, the sun is almost at its peak.

In the kitchen, he once found the girl he slept with the night before drinking coffee she made herself and wearing nothing but his cotton shirt. He stopped dead in his tracks near the entryway. She grinned devilishly at him, slipping off the stool at the island to approach. Usually, he didn’t like when they stayed overnight let alone deep into the morning, but Cato could think of ways to punish her. When she was very close to him, she tried pulling him closer by grabbing at Clove’s tags still around his neck. He, in turn, grabbed her wrist. He sees her freeze and a fear enter her eyes. Her wrists are so thin, he ponders snapping one for the fun of it. He looks at her. She’s brunette with freckles. All he wants is for her to leave. He orders her to. 

It’s just before midnight and Cato decides to go for a run. He runs through the snow-covered veins of the District, pushing himself to go far. Lately, sleep has only come to him if it’s hard earned. He doesn’t know why, nothing has changed, really, but he’s becoming more and more restless. His fingers itch for something. 

He gets dummies to swing his sword at, but they don’t bring him much excitement. They haven’t since he killed his first human being at age 12. Doubtfully, he tries to imagine a scenario that will give him a feeling more enjoyable than the one he gets when the sword in his hand goes through skin, bone, and muscle. 

Thieves are common in Two, but Cato knows no one would dare attack a Victor, even if they have the most to steal from. He cuts through the night sky like a knife, chasing something inexplicable. 

He debates getting sleeping pills. Sick of always being tired and never being able to fall asleep, they could offer some relief. The sleep troubles are fairly recent, but they felt built up to, taking longer and longer to fall asleep until he couldn’t at all. There are no reasons in particular that come to him. 

His bed, which could comfortably accommodate more than two people, is the picture of wealth. He doesn’t know what anything is made of, but it’s not common. Comfort in Panem never has been. There’s no reason he shouldn’t be getting a good night sleep every night, even the nights when he sleeps with a girl whose name he doesn’t know. 

Perhaps, he thinks, mind foggy, that staying at the Academy was better. There, he managed to sleep soundly among trained killers for years. The bed was smaller and stiffer, and yet, he slept. Belatedly, he considers something’s wrong with him. 

The white powder that coats the ground begins to thin. Cato, frankly, was scared to drive in it, so it’s melting is a relief. His hands grip the steering wheel tightly as he speeds towards the Academy. Today is the day he will start teaching Clove how to work a sword again. 

He doesn’t avoid mirrors, but he’s not as vain as some would believe him to be. But he knows that some of the other Victors, or at least Kamari, take sleeping pills. Once, she used his bathroom, definitely to snoop, and found them. He knows she uses them because she recognized them immediately, storming out and confronting him and he highly doubts she’s some expert on medicine. And Kamari’s eyes are constantly rimmed red. Cato worries his are too. The deep sleep he fell under last night made it all more than worth it, but he would still like if they’re use wasn’t shown on his face. 

Samson has a kind face which directly contrasts his tattoo. His face is long and narrow, there are folds in the corner of his chocolate brown eyes and creases by his mouth. His ears stick out and even his eyelashes are white. It is because of him that Cato knows how to shave. The gap between Cato and his bathroom mirror is tiny. He folds his mouth over to flatten the plain of his face, stretching his tan skin out to create an easier surface to shear. The only light in the room comes from the strong late-March sun's fragmented rays. 

Cato has stopped taking nightly sleeping pills. If his eyes were once red, they aren't now. He sleeps just fine all on his own. He was not addicted to them, he doesn't need anything. He never has needed anything. 

The blade catches on his skin and blood wells on his cheek. He swears, though it doesn't hurt him in the slightest, and forcefully drives the razor into his marble countertop. 

Chapter Text

“Clove?”

“What?” She sets her water bottle down. 

He looks at her, all serious, and says, “You don’t know how to swim.”

It’s the way that he says it that makes her lie. He says it like it can be helped, like he’s the one who’s going to save her from this affliction. There’s no pool at the Academy and she didn’t grow up by a lake. It’s not her fault she can’t swim. It’s none of his concern, anyway. 

He scans her face, obviously not believing her, but she keeps her features neutral. Then he starts to smile. It’s annoying because she hasn’t even done anything. “You’re so stubborn.”

She frowns then, brows furrowing, nose creasing. The mat they fight on is blue and the walls are beige. There’s a clock at the top of the wall, no windows, and the door is in the corner. There’s a group of dummies in another corner. Everything is the same, but so different. 

“I’ll teach you.”

Her nose crinkles. “Why?”

He goes back to serious. “You need to know how. For your arena. You don’t know what it’s gonna be.” He says this like he’s trying to impress upon her a very important lesson when the truth is, there have been only four instances where one would need to know how to swim to win the Games. He continues, “I’ll get you out of school.”

“That’s not what I meant, but it doesn’t matter. I know how to swim.”

“You don’t.” She doesn't like how matter of fact he says it. 

“Why do you think I don’t know how to swim?” she questions, annoyed. 

“Why would you rather pretend you do know how to swim than let me teach you?” He shoots back. 

She really looks at him. He has a crazed look in his eyes. She repeats, “Why?”

“Why what?” He sighs, attempting to temp down the annoyance he also feels. 

“Would you teach me?”

And he’s back to being visibly annoyed. His jaw ticks. “Because this is life or death, Clove!”

She debates plainly asking what she wants to ask. For months, she’s wondered why he wants to help her. He is a Victor, after all. In the end, she chooses not to bite her tongue. She asks, “Why would you teach me ? What happened to planning my death?” She looks away from him before he can answer. 

“The District wants back-to-back winners. I don’t know who the male tribute will be, but I do know you will easily pass the final challenge and be this year’s female tribute. I am simply doing my part. Don’t be ungrateful.”

She snaps her eyes right back to him and downright sneers. “‘Ungrateful’? Why on earth would I be grateful for you? I’ve never needed your help.”

“Plus, I don’t want to see anyone kill you but me. I’ve earned your death.”

“You can’t kill a Victor.”

“I will settle for a lifetime of seeing you bloody and beaten.”

She scoffs. “Don’t associate with me in the Victors’ Village.”

His smile widens. 

She knows he disobeyed her the next day when a Trainer walked into her mathematics class and requested her. He escorts her to the lobby where a ginger haired woman always sits behind a desk. She’s one of the biggest constants in her life. 

Cato is sitting in one of two chairs against the wall, his legs spread wide. When he sees her enter, he gets up automatically and walks right out the door. Clove can’t believe how presumptuous he’s being, assuming she’ll follow him. She follows him.

His car is black and shiny and he left it parked in the middle of the road, which Clove doesn’t think is legal, but she doesn’t know too much about cars. He could be a terrible driver for all she knows. This is heavy machinery he’s maneuvering. She isn’t scared, she just doesn’t want to do this. She sighs and slides into the passenger seat.

The terrain in Two is rocky, full of mountains that box in whole villages, like the one Clove was born in. Despite all of the mountains, the main roads, made of dirt, are completely flat, even if it goes across a hill. It isn’t until they veer off a main road, where one could expect a car of Peacekeepers to go down, that the road follows the natural ebbs and flows of the earth. Driving on a hill, the road looks like it leads into the cloudless sky.

She stares out the window while he drives, ignoring the glances she feels him throw at her. It’s technically a good day to go swimming. It’s warm out, the air is still. They pass a school, something Clove has never seen before. She thinks about what it must be like for the children unlucky enough to have never experienced the wisdom of the Academy. It’s small, but it’s lunchtime and there’s a grouping of wooden tables beside it. There, children eat. Some beneath the tree, some don’t even eat. They run around, oblivious to the fact that a Victor is close by. Who would willingly send their child there?

Clove’s head, which had been leaning against the glass of the car window, falls as Cato abruptly rolls the window down. He laughs, so carefree. Clove tries to envision what she’ll be like as a Victor. She doesn’t think, however, that she could ever be more annoying than him. Sometimes, though, when Cato’s being annoying, Clove can’t find it in herself to be annoyed. True indifference.

She looks at his profile, the sunlight on his face. Clove knows, objectively, he is considered handsome. Strong jawline, tan skin, symmetrical freckles, shiny hair. He could be mistaken as a District One tribute. Clove smiles to herself at the thought. She’s aware there’s no reason girls have sex with him other than his looks. She looks at the road. 

There’s a clock in Cato’s car that informs Clove this drive has taken a little less than an hour. Cato pulls off the road and gets out. Clove follows suit in new territory. Cato twirls his keys as he takes off down a faint trail. It’s an indent made from a long history of footsteps over the same dirt and leaves. A squirrel stops in the path and Clove thinks about killing it just because she can, but continues walking. 

The lake, at the end of the trail, sparkles, though a canopy of trees hover over it. Clove isn’t sure what she was expecting, but it wasn’t this. It’s not any discernable shape. 

“Ok,” Cato says and Clove turns to him. He’s shirtless, showing off his ridged abdomen and arm muscles. Her eyes darted away immediately after they landed on the top of the deep v shape that points to his private part. His shirt lays on the grass. Clove wants to go back to the Academy. “We’re going to start off in the shallow end.”

She tries to picture it and can only imagine herself looking stupid. “I’m not doing this with you.”

He rolls his eyes. “Take off your shirt.”

Clove doesn’t even know how to respond to that. “Why?”

“Fine, don’t.” He walks over to her and Clove takes out her knife. “You’re going to need to put that down. If it ends up at the bottom of the lake, I’m not going to swim down to get it for you.”

“I know how to swim,” Clove tells him indignantly. She thinks back to what he asked her earlier- “Why would you rather pretend?”- and honestly can’t come up with an answer that’s remotely good. Why would she rather pretend?

In one fell swoop, he takes the knife from her and throws her over his shoulder. He drops the knife before beginning to move closer to the shoreline. He stops, right where the water lapses over the dirt, and takes off her shoes and socks, flinging them back. All the while, she protests, punching his back after he restrained both of her ankles. Once his calf is halfway submerged in the water, he throws her in. 

She hadn’t taken a breath, but gained her footing soon enough. When she surfaces, she sees him laughing. She pushes her hair, made even darker by the water, back. Her clothes are heavier from absorbing all of that water. She takes off her shirt and throws it at him. He laughs harder.

He’s about as good at teaching Clove how to swim as he is teaching her how to work a sword. Nevertheless, Cato gets back into the car with an overly apparent sense of accomplishment.

It was a truly humiliating experience. He laughed at her, sure, but her inability to do something as simple as swimming made her cheeks go bright red. Cato laughed at that too. 

There were towels in the back of his car that he hands her wordlessly. She eyed him, but wrapped it around her body all the same. 

In the car, Clove thinks back to everything Cato had said about swimming. She supposes the lesson was worthwhile even if the company left much to be desired. 

Cato commented on Clove getting his seats wet when she leaned her head back, but otherwise the ride has been near silent. Until Clove says: “This isn’t the way to the Academy.”

Occasionally, Cato will take both hands off the wheel for no reason at all. Only for seconds, but long enough to drive Clove mad. He does this now as he answers her. “I have to show you something.”

“What?” 

“It’s a surprise.”

“I-“

“I know you hate surprises, but you’re gonna like this one.” he reassures her. It doesn’t work. 

Clove turns back to look straight ahead. “I wouldn’t bet on it,” she mutters, crossing her arms. 

The afternoon sun has caused Clove to go from wet to damp. She wants to get back to the Academy, to shower, and change out of these clothes that cling too tightly to her. Not in a way that Clove would like, a way that makes it easier to move, but in a sticky way. She smells salty, but she isn’t sweating and the water was fresh. She’s deeply uncomfortable for the first time ever. 

When Clove spots the wrought iron gate that surrounds the Victors’ Village, she snaps straight. Though usually one for ramrod posture, she was slumped in her sleep before. She looks at Cato, sees the smile on his face. Damn, he was right. This is a surprise she likes. She wonders when exactly he came to know her more than anyone else. 

The gate opens automatically and Clove’s mind spins. She can’t believe it. She’s here. Not as a Victor, but that doesn’t cross her mind. The stone houses are bigger than the Mayor’s. Clove can feel her lips part in astonishment. This feels like a spoiler, a sneak peak into a life that will soon be hers. But she can’t bring herself to care. 

There’s a fountain towards the beginning of the road and Cato moves the wheel to curve around it. He stops in front of a house towards the back. He parks the car and gets out. 

Technically, she’s always thinking about winning the Hunger Games, but now, she’s only thinking about winning the Hunger Games. Not everything that could happen and that she can do, but already having won them. He taps on her window and yells, “Are you coming?” She turns her head to look at him for a split second before opening the door and getting out of his car. He watches her, she can feel the weight of his eyes. They feel like the weight of the world. He points and she follows with her eyes. He says, “That’s gonna be your house.”

The houses are pretty much exactly the same. They’re wider than they are tall, but also very tall. The one Cato points to is across from the one he parked his car in front of. 

She turns to look at him, a Victor. Her training partner is a Victor. She feels years of disgust die down into a simmering nothing. It causes her to smile. It’s little, but the most she’s done in years. 

“You want to go in it?” he asks her. 

Clove looks back at it. The house of the next District Two Victor. Her future house. “No.” She doesn’t want to sully it. And she’s not one for superstitions and she definitely doesn’t believe in fate, but the thought of claiming the house as her own, before it actually is, is wrong to her for some reason. So she turns back to Cato. 

He finishes observing her a second after she turns around. He doesn’t have any specific expression on his face. “I’ll show you mine. You can shower here.”

Clove pauses. Shower at Cato’s house? The idea is outlandish enough to make her snort. But she does want to see a Victors’ mansion. 

He waits politely in front of her, allowing her time to think it over. She sighs and he takes that as a sign to lead her in. He throws his arms wide when he opens the door and presents his home to her. It’s bare of any personal touches, excluding the pair of shoes he keeps by the door. He looks back at Clove, who keeps her head on a constant swivel to observe everything she can. 

The counter in the kitchen is marble, the chairs and cabinets are wooden, and the stainless steel refrigerator is big. The circular table in the kitchen has a stack of napkins in the middle, but the chairs are all pushed in which lets Clove know he doesn’t actually eat at that table. He offers her a glass of something to drink- beer or water, to which she declines. 

Cato leads her up and down the halls of each floor of his home. She elects not to go into his bedroom. 

There are ten bedrooms, Cato’s is the biggest. There are way more bathrooms and Clove assumes Cato’s is the biggest too. He points to one at the far end of the second floor hallway and tells her he can shower in there. Clove eyes him, but goes into the bathroom anyway. He tells her where the towels are and that he’ll bring her some of his clothes to wear while he washed hers. 

An objection rises from her throat before she can really think about it. They’re standing in the doorway, a little too close for her liking, which is ridiculous considering how often they physically fight. She had been thinking about how much she does not want him to see her underwear. 

He laughs, a boisterous one from the pit of his stomach that only comes when a person is genuinely amused. Heat streams quickly to Clove’s cheeks, making her usually pale skin a bright red. He’s made her blush twice today. 

“I promise I won’t look at your underwear,” he says, finishing his laugh. The smile, his big, symmetrical, toothy, smile stays on his face. 

Clove’s hair is more than stiff, it’s crunchy. She doesn’t like it one bit and with exception to the fact that she can’t fight and swim at the same time, it is one of the biggest reasons she hopes she’ll never have to swim again. The possibility of going back to the Academy doesn’t even cross her mind, it seems so far away. She likes the Victors’ Village more than she dislikes Cato’s company. 

She huffs and slams the door in his face. Through the thick wooden door, she can hear his laugh start up again. Never before has she been as careless as she has been today. She had clumsily shoved her feet into her shoes, not wanting to put her socks on. She slips out of her shoes easily and pads across the floor to reach around the sliding glass door and curtain to turn the shower on. She goes back under the kitchen sink to hang a towel on one of the hooks next to the shower. As soon as she stepped off the small carpet next to the shower, she felt the white tiles. Previously cool, they started to warm. 

She showers, briefly pondering why Cato has soap and shampoo in a guest bathroom. Does he get overnight guests? She assumes he still has sex, but would be shocked to hear he lets the girls he does the act with to shower here. 

Clove doesn’t get cold. Not since the weather trial the Academy put her through. However, the warmth of this bathroom surrounds her immediately when she steps out of the shower. Compared to how she feels getting out of the showers at the Academy, it’s nice. She wraps the soft white towel around her body and peers into the mirror that remains miraculously unfogged. It’s rare for her to actually observe her appearance, but she allows herself this. She takes in her splatter of freckles, her dark eyebrows, her thick eyelashes, her unremarkable eyes, and pointy chin. She sighs before turning away. When she spots new clothes in the room, anger floods her veins. Her clothes are on the floor near the toilet, where she left them. It’s a small consolation. 

After putting on Cato’s clothes, she leaves her dirty clothes in the bathroom and goes to find him. He’s sitting in the kitchen, doing nothing. The thought that he must be lonely quickly flits through her mind. “I locked the door.”

“I have a key,” he answers, moving his eyes to her. He looks her up and down in a way that makes Clove stop in her tracks. 

“You still didn’t have to come into the bathroom.”

He shrugs. “You’d rather have asked me for clothes wearing nothing more than a towel?”

“You could have told me you’d leave them in a different room,” she responds promptly, voice gaining an edge of annoyance. “Do you enjoy being an asshole?”

“You’re the biggest inconvenience I’ve ever met,” he informs her. 

“I inconvenience you?” she asks in utter disbelief. 

“You’re surprised?”

Cato’s clothes hang loosely on her. The plain white shirt he gave her grazes the top of her knees and the plain black athletic pants he gave her needed to be folded over three times at the waistband in addition to being tied to stay in place. Her knife is still in Cato’s car. She pushes her hand through her soft- again, damp hair. 

In the back of her mind, she thinks about how fast he went back to being the worst in her opinion. She breathes raggedly for no reason, hasn’t exerted herself in the slightest since swimming. 

He seems to concede by saying, “Leave the kitchen, to the left, at the end of the hall, is a small room. Go get your clothes and put them in the machine closer to the door. Then I’ll do a wash.”

She turns around to do exactly that without a word. 

Clove didn’t realize how late it was getting until she looked out the window behind Cato. “The Academy,” she says blankly. 

He glanced over at her. “What about it?”

“Don’t you think they’re wondering where I am?” she questions. 

“No.” His response doesn’t satisfy her, but instead of pushing for one that would, she sits with her dissatisfaction. He seems to realize she’s antsy by telling her, “We’re going to eat with the others.”

“‘The others’?” she repeats.

“Yup.”

Logically, she knows he’s a Victor. The boy she has known forever, fought with and loathed forever, has won the Hunger Games. He is a part of a group that when separated from, he can refer to the people also in the group as “other.” That’s how groups work. But the fact that he’s on the level of other Victors doesn’t compute with her. 

A small smile forms on his face. Abruptly, he pushes his chair back and stands up. She tracks the movement with her head. He’s looked pleased all day. It makes Clove uncomfortable. 

“Let’s go now. Being early is being on time.”

Clove nods. Finally, logic. She stands up too, but waits for him to make the first move towards the door. He laughs when he understands, but does eventually step away. 

Two doors down, Cato doesn’t knock before stepping into the house. Clove stands before the threshold, feeling something like nervousness. He looks back at her. The smile has never left his face. She inwardly takes a deep breath and enters the house. 

The house has a similar layout as Cato’s, but the kitchen is to the right, not the left. Clove stops just after closing the door behind her. She can see Cato roll his eyes. Quickly, he grabs her hand and drags her into the kitchen where voices have been drifting from. 

All eyes fall on them as soon as they come into view. Enobaria’s big smile fades. She’s taller than Clove imagined she’d be. Her eyes dart around the room, noting who is here, not all of the District Two Victors are. Only Kamari, Lyme, Enobaria, Samson, Ajax, and Guinevere are. They’re living legends and Clove is instantly starstruck. She feels paralyzed in inferiority. A concoction of new emotions brew inside of her. She comes back to herself when Cato drops her hands and introduces her. In the back of her mind, she’s annoyed he didn’t tell them that she was coming. 

Lyme is the only one behind the island, in front of the stove, currently on. Creases have begun to form around her eyes that are easy to miss. Her short, blond hair is a brighter shade of blond than Cato’s and cut severely. Her lips are thin, her skin is pale, her shoulders are broad, and she is at most four inches shorter than Cato. She speaks first, which slightly surprises Clove because in her Games, she was the quietest in the alliance. It was why the others didn’t trust her. She says, “Nice to meet you,” with no real emotion behind it. An appreciation floods Clove regardless. 

“He’s never brought the girls he fucks to dinner before, so you must be special,” Enobaria tells her. 

Clove takes a step back. She can tell a smile forms on Enobaria’s face because she thinks she’s scared of her fangs. “I was his training partner,” she corrects. 

Cato’s grinning. It frustrates Clove that he’s leaving her to fend for herself. Her hand itches for her knife. Enobaria eyes her up and down, in Cato’s clothing, and smiles. Clove frowns. He finally steps in. “She’s going to be this year’s volunteer.”

They judge her. Only Ajax and Kamari seem to approve. 

The front door opens and heavy footsteps make their way to where they all are. Clove turns around to look at whoever it is. It’s Brutus. He stops in his tracks when he sees her. 

“Hello,” he says to her. His voice is deep. He looks behind her and says, “Who is she?”

“Apparently this year’s volunteer,” Enobaria answers, very obviously unimpressed. 

Brutus’s eyes float back to her. He looks her up and down. “You’re Clove, right?”

The fact that he knows her name, without having been introduced, sends a pleasant wave down her spine. 

“You know her?” questions Enobaria, shocked. 

“No.” He steps into the room more, walking past Clove to sit beside Guinevere at the table. “She was his training partner.”

“Oh, so you’re who he spends all of his time with,” Samson says. He’s the oldest in the room and has a knowing glint in his eyes that makes Clove shift where she stands. 

“That’s a stretch,” Cato responds, sitting down as well. That leaves just Lyme and Clove standing. There aren’t any more chairs at the kitchen left for Clove even if she did want to sit. 

Brutus snorts, but doesn’t say anything else. 

“So why is she here?” Kamari asks Cato, setting her glass of something- that- isn’t- water down. 

Cato’s arm hugs the back of his chair, an easy smile still on his face. Clove has always hated that smile. “I taught her how to swim today.”

“That doesn’t answer the question,” she tells him. Cato smiles and shrugs at her, leaning forward to steal her glass to sip from it. Her brief protest is weak. 

Soon enough, Clove is sitting at the dining room table with all twelve of District Two’s living Victors. The dining room is painted a burnt orange and the red oak table takes up a majority of the space. There’s a crystal chandelier that hangs over the center of it. With her here, there’s now an uneven amount. She sits between Ajax and Cato, who keeps whispering things to her. 

As they eat, they all quiz her. Clove is fine with it. 

Cato is laughing at something one of them said, but Clove is stuck in her mind. As they’re walking out the front door and down the steps of the porch, she doesn’t think they were fond of her, not that she expected them to be. She has yet to prove herself. 

A bird loudly caws, prompting her to look at him. Above, the moon glows radiantly, creating a ripple effect on Cato’s golden hair. He notices her looking at him and says, “I’m too tired to drive you back right now. You can stay the night or walk.” 

Technically, Clove had lived a couple of hallways away from Cato for a long time, however, the mere thought of staying with him, in a place where there were no rules, or worse, the rules were made by him, disgusts her. But she doesn’t know the way back from the Academy from here. Inwardly, she scolds herself for not paying better attention on their drive of all the turns they made. 

She opens his car door to get her knife, which she had left behind for the first time ever and slams it shut in a calm sort of frustration. Then, she spins around and stomps past him, into his residency. Clouds had drifted over the moon, blocking it from sight.

“I’ll give you a toothbrush,” he calls, following after her. Up the wooden stairs they go, Clove with her hand on the banister, to the second floor of his house.

He doesn’t wish her a good night, simply hands her a toothbrush and leaves her alone, just the way she preferred. She finishes her preparation for sleep by braiding her hair with swift fingers. She chose the bedroom at the far end of the hall. 

The clock on the nightstand projected that it was just before midnight when she got into bed. Now, it says 2:00 in red. In all of that time, she hadn’t managed to fall asleep, tossing and turning restlessly. The bed she lays in is at least three times bigger than the one she sleeps on back in the Academy and far plusher. The mattress dips with her and the pillows must be made of feathers or something. Discomfort isn’t as foreign to District Two as the other Districts would believe. Clove didn’t mind, the most important nights of her life will be spent on hard ground.

Long minutes are spent debating the merits of getting out of bed to use the restroom, until she decides to just get up. The doors, thick wood, concealed the noise coming from below. Forgetting the bathroom and her minor need to relieve herself, she follows the sound of movement and scraping metal and a blowtorch down stairs, her hand sliding against the light yellow wall as she goes. She stops on the very last step and focuses on what she’s seeing. Cato sits on a stool, blowtorch in one hand and sheet of metal in the other. He’s paying close attention to what he’s doing. The tip of his tongue is sticking out of the corner of his mouth and he hasn’t noticed her yet. She clears her throat. 

He looks over at her before turning the blowtorch off and putting the metal down on a tray. “Hey.”

“Hey,” she nods gently. She’s unsure. A moment of silence passes that’s so awkward, Clove can’t stand it. Her nose is scrunched. “What’re you doing?”

“I chose metalwork. Y’know,” he replies, “for my hobby.”

“Oh.” She looks around the room. The station he works at takes a majority of it up, but in the corner is a couple of things he’s made. Nothing good enough to be brought upstairs and in the open it seems. 

“I just have to have something to show the Capitol every once in a while,” he says, drawing her attention back to him. It’s a dimly lit room and Clove can’t imagine why Cato would have a nervous expression on his face, but it looks that way. 

She nods again. 

“Have you thought of what yours is going to be?”

Truthfully, she has not. All of Clove’s dreams revolve around becoming a Victor or being a Victor, but not once has she stopped to consider what her hobby would be. “Any suggestions?” she asks him, just to fill the silence. 

“Cooking.”

Clove scrunches her nose again. “Why?”

He lifts one of his shoulders in a half shrug. “There’s knives involved.”

She laughs a little, closing her eyes to picture it. She wasn’t going to take his suggestion, but she really has no clue what to choose and cooking is as good as any other hobby. 

She’s shaken out of her thoughts by the sound of Cato moving. He’s getting up, setting everything down. The shadows cast on his face prevent her from truly studying him. Her toes curl around the edge of the polished wooden step as she watches him tidy up or whatever. 

He turns to her. “You should get some sleep.”

Clove peers at him curiously, the dim light casting a warm glow on his features, making him look incandescent. His hair has never been able to lay flat.  They’re just standing there, looking at each other. She nods a little in agreement and turns around, going back the way she came. 

The breakfast he makes her is the worst she’s ever had. Her father’s cooking is better. For the first time in her life, she complains. She grumbles about how she’ll eat at the Academy. 

He wasn’t awake when she first woke up. She supposes that’s due to no longer being at the Academy, having to wake up at a certain time and that she too will be like that, though she can’t picture it. She didn’t know what to do, so after she had been awake for an hour, she knocked on his door, almost pleading with him to get out of bed. It was terribly awkward, the novelty of being in a Victor’s Mansion can only cover up the fact that it’s his for so long. 

The entire ride back she fiddles with the hem of her shirt and stares out the window, watching blankly as trees rush past. Clove thinks Cato swerved to annoy her because he was laughing pretty hard when she looked at him. 

He lets her eat breakfast, sitting with her before he continues his attempt at teaching her how to proficiently maneuver a sword, his breath hot on her neck as he gives instructions and informs her what she does wrong. 

She watches his broad, retreating form as he goes down the long hallway before he turns a corner and then she goes to lunch. 

To the surprise of no one, she is announced as this year’s volunteer. The aggravation she felt a year ago today is long forgotten. The only thing she feels now is satisfaction. 

Like all trainees chosen by the Academy to volunteer, they will fight with the trainees chosen by the other academies for the spot. In a car similar to Cato’s, she drives along with two trainers and the boy volunteer, Drakon. He’s the same age as Clove and the Academy has elected to send him into the arena as a sacrifice. 

They arrive at a building with rounded walls, pulling off the road and stopping in front of the brick building. Clove and Drakon, who were sitting in the back, get out of the black vehicle, but wait for instructions by their trainers before doing anything but standing in the dirt. 

They follow the Trainers inside, only to realize there’s barely a roof at all. All there is is an awning reaching out a couple of feet around the perimeter of the one wall to provide shade. Clove spots the other Academies tributes and Trainers huddled together before looking out. 

The circle they stand in is large. Afternoon in late June typically features a high and strong sun and now is no different. Peaks of trees can be seen and a flock of black birds flying. On the ground, in the center, is a pile of weapons. Clove already knows what they were brought here to do, remembering Cato’s warning. It is cemented by the evenly spaced, slightly raised stands around the weapons. Clove takes a deep breath, turning back to face Drakon, watching as he absorbs it all. 

“Listen up,” a man commands, a Trainer from another Academy. Clove looks back at her Trainers quickly to see how they take to the tone in his voice, but they appear neutral to it. As if the man carried out a chore neither were jumping at the chance to fulfill, even if it means showing the dominance of the Academy they represent. His voice is sturdy as he continues, “We will place you on a podium and you will stay on it until you hear the sound of the gong, only then are you allowed to leave it. Once the gong sounds, you kill for the spot as District Two tribute of the Seventy-Fourth Hunger Games! You may help each other. The last male and female standing will be chosen.”

Clove is directed to a podium directly across Drakon’s. There, she waits, collected. The countdown starts from twenty, not sixty like in the actual Hunger Games. Her Academy had similar trials to this, ones she excelled at.

The sound of the gong ricochets off the brick walls, revertabrating in her ears, but she has already taken off, paying it no mind. The knives are in her hand and she turns instantly to throw at the closer of the two girls. It goes through her neck and she falls down with a loud thud. 

She was at the first one at the heap of weapons and she stays close to it now, only a little aware of the movements of the boys around her. She doubts any Academy would choose tributes close enough to each other to form alliances in a fake version of the Hunger Games. 

The other girl loses some of her brunette hair as she dodges Clove’s dagger. A clump falls to the ground, but she doesn’t seem to mind. Clove sneers as she tightens her grip on the knife she wields. 

Though the other girl, who is much taller and bigger than her, gets her hand on a quiver stocked with bows and an arrow, in addition to an ax, she still loses, as many do when facing Clove Kentwell. Battle is her strong suit. 

The girls fall faster than the boys and Clove walks away from their fighting mostly uninjured, save for the large cut in her left shoulder from the ax. Her vision waivers as her mind blanks with pain. She curses herself for even getting in this position. If the girl had used an arrow instead of an ax, Clove wouldn’t have even blinked. The Academy would shoot arrows into its students frequently when they were younger in numerous spots to save them from experiencing a new sensation in the middle of a fight. Battle is the last place one would want to be surprised. But arrows are different from axes and Clove grits her teeth to keep any trace of pain off her face. 

Quickly, a Trainer escorts her back to the Academy alone, where her wound will be treated, leaving the male trainees to war.

The day before the Reaping, he stays longer than he usually does. Lunch is either his que to leave or to arrive, but never before has he actually eaten with her. Yet, he watched her like a hawk, to her dismay, as she ate. And he stayed even after that, repeating everything that he thinks could come in use as though they won't see each other again before she goes into the arena. There is nothing left for him to teach and no time left to do so even if there were. 

People look at them strangely as he accompanies her back to her dorm room, sneering at her or looking him up and down. Clove is reminded of how he acted before he went into his own games. She isn't going to let him in her room this time. Clove knows how to do many things well and not making the same mistake twice is one of them. 

At her door, instead of opening it, she spins around. They’re close, Clove didn’t realize just how close until they came to a stop. He looks at her expectantly and she wants to scoff at his arrogance. She looks at him expectantly too, naturally waiting for him to leave. He makes everything more difficult than it needs to be. 

“Good night,” Clove politely offers. Never once in her life has she been placating, but she supposes now would be a good time to try. It’s practice for her upcoming interview with the irritating Caesar Flickerman. 

Very rarely has Clove been the one to look down on Cato. It has only happened when he’s splayed on the ground, bested in a fight. Cato’s eyes looking down on her is how it usually is and is how they are now, his head also tilted some. 

“Remember that time the power went out?” he asks, voice low. 

Clove could hear people still in the hall, few as they were, quiet as they were. Stealth is instilled into them from a young age, they naturally move around quietly now. 

She does remember when the power went out, when she was fourteen. She remembers the icy winter wind howling, causing even the sturdiest of trees to sway. She remembers how Cato pushed her into a snowbank for no reason at all. Lessons had been canceled, the only break the trainees have been given in their life. Clove doesn’t know why Cato is asking this and cautiously nods in response, careful not to encourage a conversation starting. 

“The food was terrible,” he says, voice still low as he chuckles to himself. He looks back at her and the neutral mask she keeps on her face permanently is the only sight he’s greeted with. He continues, “You holed yourself up in your room, only coming out for food. In the arena, you can’t do that-”

“The lights will be on in the arena,” I interject. Why he’s even telling her this, she doesn’t know. She doesn’t even know why he remembers what she was doing during the power outage, inconsequential as it was. 

“Maybe.” His lip quirks as he gazes down on her face, hair pulled tight from her scalp into a high braid. He had visited while she was healing only a couple of days ago, interrogating her about how it went. The only answer she gave was “I’m alive, aren’t I?” Her shoulder is completely head now, as if it had never  been injured in the first place. 

Clove can recognize she is being studied, absorbed even, and restrains herself from looking longingly at her door, which her shoulder is pressed against. Cato says, “You’re going to hate the alliance,” before pushing off the wall and turning around to walk away. 

Clove doesn’t stare after him, immediately moving to open the door as soon as his eyes left her. It is his voice that draws her attention back. “Try to get a good nights rest.”

The walk to the center square, where the Reaping is held, isn't necessarily long, about an hour or so. When she was making this walk at age thirteen, it was raining. Now, it is sunny. The others from the Academy, and even not from the Academy, of Reaping age walk with her. Some talk to their friends, others, like her, walk alone. Clove wears a white dress given to her by the Academy with thin straps that puffs out at her waist and the same black flats that she wore for the past two years. She decided this morning to pull her dark hair into a braid that hangs off her shoulder. She walks determinedly into the main town of District Two, not minding the dirt that she kicks up falling on her once pristine shoes.

At the square, a Peacekeeper, in her all white suit, takes her blood and marks it down before directing her to the place Clove is to stand as if she had never gone to a Reaping before. She is by no means late nor is she one of the first people there. Crowds of parents and their ineligible children towards the back, male children to the right, and female children to the left. Clove joins the other girls, slotting into place near the seventeen year old ones. 

She waits in the July heat, amplified by the other bodies surrounding her, for what feels like a long time, but is only really ten or so minutes. Once again, her eyes find Cato's, who is already on stage with the other Victors, but this time, she looks away quickly. This is about her. 

Clove wonders how Nix handles the heat in his long, bejeweled trousers which shine so brightly with the way the sun hits each individual one, almost blinding her. Though just outside the main city of the District, there is a large, mining mountain called The Nut that casts a long shadow on the city, it doesn't reach the town square, where children from all over District Two gather for this annual holiday. Nix stands distractingly beside the screen where every year, the Capitol plays the same message to the Districts, one Clove and every child in Panem knows by heart. Today, his hair is jet. Tomorrow, who knows? He tastefully waits a moment after the video finishes before bounding up to the microphone. 

The first name pulled is always a girl's. Clove prepares, but of course Nix must take his time to unwrap the once folded paper that holds the name he's about to be interrupted calling and fully wrap his painted fingers around the microphone. "Sw-"

"I volunteer!" Clove shouts, loud as she can. A loose strand of her hair had fallen out of her braid and she wants to tuck it behind her ear, but knows the Games have already started for her, that they started as soon as the cameras flicked to her. She walks confidently down the center aisle to the stage, the girls she was standing around letting her go. No one is taking this from her, this is the will of the District and soon, she will be the pride of it. She smirks to herself at the thought. Her gait is measured and graceful as she goes up the few steps to the stage, walking all the way over to where Nix awaits. 

As she draws near, Nix turns back to the microphone in front of his pale blue tinted face and asks, "And what is your name?"

"Clove Kentwell," she answers, voice clear and strong. She can feel the gazes of so many on her and she revels in it, knowing she is one step closer to being their savior. 

The boy that volunteers is her age, a boy named Evander with wavy chestnut hair that goes past his ears and muscles that are apparent even when hidden by his shirt, which is a similar color to Nix’s skin as if they coordinated. He’s around Cato’s height, she notes when he comes to stand beside her. His arms are crossed too, his sleeves straining, and Clove almost scoffs. Initially, she decided not to evaluate her district partner on stage, in front of people, but that went out the window soon enough. She can’t help herself. But her smirk only grows wider when she deduces that he’s no threat, not that she ever thought he would be one. She feels secure that victory will be hers. 

They shake hands, Clove tightening her grasp to warn him of her, while the cheers of District Two increase. He smiles down on her, sincerely, but wickedly. His hazel eyes sparkle. This will be fun, Clove decides. 

Nix makes his usual closing remarks. Saying, “And may the odds be ever in your favor,” before leading them off stage and into the Justice Building where they are separated into two rooms. For half an hour after the Reaping, Clove waits alone. It doesn’t definitively answer her question of her father’s status. For all she knew, he could be dead in a ditch. Clove thinks she’d prefer that. 

Soon enough, Clove is on the train, on a direct ride to fufill her destiny. If she believed in that sort of thing.  

Her and Evander are led to the dining cart of the train by Nix and settle into seats that are next to each other at the pristine glass table that holds a wide variety of food. Neither of them touch any of it, though it all looks undeniably more appetizing than what they’ve eaten for all their lives. 

Enobaria and Cato join them shortly, after being called for by Nix, who is still standing. They walk into the room secure in the knowledge that they’ve already won the Hunger Games. When Enobaria’s eyes fall on her, she smirks and flits her eyes to Cato. 

Enobaria and Cato both sit down across from their tributes, backs to the walls of the train. Clove feels the start of the train and watches through the window behind Cato as they pull out of the station. It amazes her how fast the train moves and how little she can feel it. In fact, if she hadn’t felt the train start to move, she’d only be able to recognize the fact that they’re moving at all by the blurring trees out the window. Her eyes return to Enobaria. 

Like most of District Two, Enobaria is tall at five foot seven, which Clove remembers from the profile they did on her in history class. Her skin is a warm brown and her hair is dark like Clove’s. Her eyes are a honey brown as they examine the pair in front of her. Cato is Cato. 

There was no doubt in Clove’s mind that Enobaria would start, considering this is Cato’s first time mentoring. “Alright,” she says, “We’ve read your files.”

They go over tactics, Clove and Evander’s angle for their interviews. She already knew what Enobaria was going to say. There aren’t many options for District Two. 

Enobaria sets her crystal glass of red wine down dramatically and puts both of her hands on the arms of her chair before pushing out. “Let’s go watch the other Reapings.”

Evander is quick to follow after her, but Cato says, “Be right there.”

Clove sees Enobaria and Cato make eye contact. It’s long and intense. After she leaves though, Cato’s gaze returns to his drink in front of him. They stay in silence for a long time and Clove wants to know why they stayed behind in the first place. 

“You look like an angel,” he states, voice low and bringing a glass of a bronze liquid to his lips and dragging his eyes up and down the parts of her he can see. When he brings the crystal chalice down again, he licks his bottom lip to clear it of any residue. “It doesn’t suit you.”

Clove looks at him intently reclining with barely concealed disgust. He wanted to stay behind to insult her? His chair isn’t all that near to the table, his arm is around the back of said chair, and one of his legs rests on the other. “Let’s pretend we don’t know each other,” she says tightly. 

“Enobaria already knows we do.”

Clove rolls her eyes. “Fine. Let's just go join the others.”

The chair she sits in squeaks as she pushes it back, not checking to see if he’ll follow her.