I'm going to sit and wait, and not fall // a collection of drabbles
A collection of drabbles, mostly about the Careers of the 74th Hunger Games, that I've written. Just taking them off my Tumblr and sticking them here for organizations sake. Yup. Enjoy!
Warning for blood, violence, coercive sex, and sex in general. Adult concepts ahoy!
Cato/Clove, high school au
He took Glimmer to prom and she hated it. She would tell her friends that it was because it was so painfully cliche, the star quarterback and the head cheerleader dating and being cutesy together. When they walked by the halls during the days leading up to the dance, Clove would pretend to choke herself and her friends would laugh.
But there was anger in the pit of her stomach, something she hadn’t expected rising in her throat. It tasted vaguely like blood, but not like her own. Blood and anger and hatred. It was silly, really, hating the gorgeous senior with the golden curls and curves in all the right places. What had she expected, really? She was only a sophomore, not as stunning as the girl who glimmered (it truly was a stupid name, though).
Some other football player asked her to prom, Marvel (another silly name) or something like that, but she said no. She went hunting with her father that weekend and took pleasure in skinning the deer that they shot. She liked the weight of the knife more than the grip of a corsage, the dark camo more than flowing fabrics. Clove was not meant for glitz and glamour and parties. She could not smile when people wanted her to, could not laugh at pointless jokes. She had thought that Cato had liked that, liked the odd things she smiled at, liked the outline of the pocketknife in her skinny jean’s pocket, liked the way she bit his lips when they grabbed for each other under the bleachers.
But she would not allow herself to be jealous. Because she was better than that girl with the stupid name. Better at a lot of things.
He did not tell her, but he thought of her that night. When he danced with Glimmer, felt her smooth skin under his hands, he only thought of the scarred body of Clove. Of the bruises she got from her karate class, of her jet black hair in tight braids.
She was not the girl that the quarterback should date or want or crave, but when he slept with Glimmer that night, it was Clove’s name on the tip of his tongue.
Seneca Crane's Beard (that's it just write about the beard)
When he was little, his family had vacationed in District 4. It wasn’t as much of a vacation as it was traveling with his father to watch him work, but Seneca had loved everything about it. It was so different from the Capitol, so different from the stone and glass, from the towering buildings. They hadn’t stayed for long, but they slept in the mayor’s house overlooking the ocean. From the moment he saw it, he could not take his eyes off of it.
There is a difference between the ocean and the lake by the Capitol, and that is in the waves. They took a boat out one day and watched the waves crest and crash and the foam fly up. He adored it.
He was proud whenever the victor came from District 2. It was not his home, but he felt a connection (or at least told himself that he had a connection). So when a girl from there won the 72nd Games and water was at the height of fashion in the Capitol, Secena rushed to have his beard shaped. Just like the waves, he had asked, and they had delivered.
Marvel/YOLO
You only live once, they tell them in the training center. You only live once, so make it worthwhile. To others that would mean to find a nice girl, to settle down and have children. To him, though, it is a way of telling them to kill as many people as they can get their hands on.
He was a good boy, a smiling child until they tore him from his mother as his father died in the street, until they laid the weapons in front of him and told him to pick one, until kill or be killed became a thing. By the time he was 12, blood did not bother him. The crunch of bone, the ripping of skin. It was all normal. He had his spear, and it would fly straight and true.
You only live once, they told them.
His life, like so many other Career’s before him, was short and brutal and bloody. But he had loved every minute of it, loved the feel of steel and the pleading for mercy. He had loved the way that he was feared and loved.
He only lived once, but he had done everything they told him to.
Marvel/Glimmer
District 2 was the powerhouse, the home of monsters worse than muttations. They made cold, unfeeling, stone beasts there, made to kill and slaughter and survive. Their purpose was to draw blood in whatever way possible.
But District 1 had a different focus. There, they basked in luxury, in jewels and precious metals. The children they trained were gorgeous works of art. They might not be as brutish, as bloody as the killer from the second district, but they were just as deadly. They were not to be underestimated.
Her grandmother had won the Games, a fierce, golden woman who looked very much like her granddaughter. The others had made the mistake of underestimating her, of judging her by her beauty and ignoring her skill with a spear. She had killed the last tribute, the boy from two, with the tent pole. No one ever looked down on her again. The blood of victors was in Glimmer’s veins, she was told, and she went willingly when her parents dropped her off at the training center.
Marvel had been a sweet boy, a grinning child, but he had found a love for weapons and sharp things at a young age. When he ran his sister’s rabbit through with a “toy” spear, he had only smiled up at his parents. His sister had cried, and his father had gone pale. This was not what he had wanted for his son. They came for Marvel, and his father had tried to stop them. He watched his father executed in the street, driven through much like the rabbit. This time he did not smile.
The children in the training center came from all walks of life, but they would all become the same beasts. Glimmer and Marvel were drawn to each other when they both reached for the spear their first day. They became close quickly, training together daily. They knew they were destined to compete together.
Sometimes, when they did not feel like being brave, Glimmer would creep down the hall at night and crawl in his bed and they would wrap their arms around each other and remember the life they had before the training center. In the morning, though, he would wake and she would be gone again.
The girls are the ones to grow first, to change seemingly overnight. And she did. She blossomed, becoming a goddess, an angel of death, and the other boys would watch her as she sliced and shot and hit. Curves formed, and she was no longer a little girl trying to live up to the family name. She was a woman, a weapon, a killer. Not to be underestimated.
Marvel watched her too, and he watched the others watch her. At first, the boys would talk about her in the locker room. And he would feel bile rising in his throat and a fierceness boiling in the pit of his stomach, but he would push it down. Then one of the boys, older than him, stronger than him, went too far one day and the fierceness spilled out. His fists found the boy’s face, his stomach, and suddenly he was slamming his head into the locker. It took four other boys to drag Marvel off of him.
The other boy was too injured to continue training.
She grew into her form, though, and recognized her potential. Her beauty was part of her weapon, just like her grandmother’s had been. Glimmer knew how to use it, how to look at a boy in just the right way to get him to do anything for her. She was more dangerous than they thought. And Marvel was dangerous, too, his spear flying straight and true. They were a force to be reckoned with. They knew that they would be in the arena together, killing together.
“I’ll kill for you,” he told her on the nights when she crawled in his bed still. They held each other tighter now, fiercer now, and their mouths would meet and finger would roam and hands would bruise. And she would laugh at him, and the boy who was utterly enraptured with her. “I can kill just fine on my own, love,” she would whisper back, biting his lip and drawing blood.
They were a force to be reckoned with, but overlooked in the training center for the brutal killers from District 2. The night before the Games, she came to Marvel’s room from the bed of the beastly boy. “We’ll kill them together,” she laughed, sliding under the sheets next to him, their bodies melding together. “We will reap our reward."
Marvel/Glimmer, au where they win the games
The brutish boy from District 2 had been the first to die in their pack, falling prey to the tracker jackers. He had tripped, then Glimmer had brought the heel of her boot down hard on his ankle. They never went back to see what state his body was in.
While Glimmer and Marvel tended to each other’s wounds with salve from their sponsors, the monstrous little thing from 2 gritted her teeth and left them behind. She took care of most of the other tributes, slicing and dicing her way through the arena. But when rage motivates you, sometimes you get sloppy.
On the cornucopia, he dangled the girl on fire over the side, letting the mutts do what they did best. She took care of lover boy, slicing his throat with her nails. And then the cannons sound and it is light outside again and it is over. Everything that they have worked for all their lives, the training and the bruises and the broken bones, all of it has paid off. They look at each other and laugh, gripping their hands tightly, laugh with their blood stained hands.
The Capitol wanted lovers. This Game had made it clear. But when they are at the parties, garbed in glittering jeweled fabrics, the looks they get are not ones of reverence. They were not supposed to win. The rule change was not for them.
They are left well enough alone, tucked away in the mansions of the winner’s village in District 1. They do not frequent the Capitol. They are not wanted there, and they are done with their Games.
Sometimes she calls him lover boy and they laugh, but these are not the same laughs that they shared in the arena. The Games drained them of their joy. Eventually, the Capitol takes everything from you, whether you know it or not.
Marvel/Glimmer, they're the star crossed lovers of the 74th games
It had been their new trainer who proposed it, the whole “being in love” thing, and Marvel had grimaced. Their first trainer (whatever his name had been-they weren’t supposed to remember the names of the dead) had been all about strength and fighting skills and power. “No,” had been his answer, short and rough and instantaneously. “I’m not looking weak or powerless.”
She laughed at him then, like she always did when he least expected it. “Oh Marvel,” she said, closer now, hand on his heart, “Power is power. No matter what.” They had been still for a second and then he was on the ground, flat on his back, and she was over him laughing again.
Glimmer played the part well, always looking at him the right way, lips brushing his briefly before they parted each night. It wasn’t that bad of an idea after all, he figured. The trainers knew what they were talking about. Hands would touch the smalls of their backs, eyes would light up when they spotted each other, and sometimes they would laugh together in their rooms at night and forget that soon they would have weapons in their hands, that soon they would have to kill each other.
The Capitol ate it up, their act of Romeo and Juliet. It looked like District 12 was trying the same thing, but 1 always appeared first. They were always first.
She died screaming for him and he sprinted back to her as soon as he realized her familiar footsteps weren’t behind his. Their trainer would have been cheering for him, because that’s what you do when you’re in love. No matter how mutilated and swollen their face is, you go back and you kneel and you plead. He could have told himself that it was a natural instinct, that they had been trained well enough to play this part till the end. But at a certain point it stops being and act (he wondered if District 12 had reached that point yet).
You’re not supposed to remember the names of the dead in District 1, of those who weren’t strong enough to win, who didn’t have power. He remembered hers, and it lodged in his throat when the arrow pierced it.
Cato
The world swirls into reds and blues and Cato wonders when the earth stopped moving.
He was standing over the boy from 11, watching blood and berry juice mix. It stopped a while ago, he knows, probably when the rock came crashing into her skull or maybe when his legs couldn’t carry him fast enough or perhaps when she finally hit the ground and the clots stopped her brain. Somewhere around there.
Or maybe the world had never been spinning. It was all a government plot, something cooked up by the gamemakers and Snow, just like everything else. He lets out a laugh, short and sick, his smile red with blood.
It stopped spinning a while ago, back when he was a child, back before the Games were his life. But then the Capitol got their hands on him. They were the ones turning it now, calculating it just right, making him into the perfect killer.
They had done their job well. Now it was his turn to finish it all.
Cato/Clove, they're the only two left when the "two victors" rule is revoked
They had saved District 12 for last (because there was something beautiful in a team killing a set of lovers) and grinned at each other when they were done. The cannons boomed, a familiar sound by now, and they were done. Everything that they had trained for, practiced for, was at an end.
And then the announcers were back, revoking the previous rule change, and everything was back to normal, the way it had always been.
She was still grinning when he turned to face her, her hand slipping down to grab another knife. “Don’t act so shocked, Cato,” she laughed. “The rule was for the star crossed lovers, not for the tributes that killed them. Plus,” she said, gripping the knife tightly, fingers tracing its blade, “I’ve been waiting to kill you for half my life.”
They put on quite the show between the two of them, between her knives and his sword. He was fast, but Clove was faster, and sometimes she would cut him without him even noticing. But they matched each other. They were equals.
But then she was on the ground and he was still standing, her neck at the oddest angle. It was over. He had done what he was trained to do, what he was supposed to do. And Cato smiled, his mouth full of blood.
And then he hit the ground.
They were equals, two pieces to a puzzle. When he hit, she sliced, and when she laughed at the wrong times he would smirk. And she had hit him just as many times as he had her, knives cutting in all the right places.
He was dead before the hovercraft could reach him, blood pooling out from all his major arteries.
Their hands were inches apart.
Cato/Clove, arena sexytimes
“I get to kill you soon.”
She laughed at him, short and sharp (just like her), laughed at him like she always did. “Not if I get you first.”
The other two careers and Lover Boy side-eyed them. They were an alliance, a team of sorts, but District 1 and 2 were very different places. And Lover Boy didn’t even know what was going on. There’s something off, others would say, about the careers who come from 2. They do something to them there, something other than just training. You can’t quite put your finger on it, but they’re terrifying.
It was a game they played, coming up with different ways to kill people. Part of their training, really. You had to know how to bring down everyone. Glimmer, the blonde, was playing dumb and flirty; that much was clear. She probably thought she could make it to the end like that Johanna girl from years before. Clove called dibs on her, promising to pop out those emerald eyes. Cato had been whispering about slamming Marvel to the ground and breaking every single bone in his body since training started. The kid was too damn cheery. It was like having one of the Capitol representatives following them around. And then there was Lover Boy. He was bait for the bigger fish, for the girl on fire. “It would be best,” Clove had said sharpening her knives and watching the fire one night while they were up on watch, “to kill her little girlfriend in front of his eyes. You hold him down; I get to do what I do best.” Yes had been Cato’s answer. Yes yes yes.
“Make a fire,” he ordered when they treed the girl on fire, stalking off to slash a tree with his sword, leaving the rest of them behind. Glimmer had tried to follow him, to “comfort” him in that lovely way that she did, but he had slashed at her and she backed off.
“You’re going to ruin your sword,” she sang. He hadn’t seen her come into the clearing, but he should have expected that. Clove had a habit of sneaking up on him, on others. She thrived in the shadows, lurking and watching and striking when you’d least expect it. (She would probably get Glimmer at night, when she was curled up on Cato’s arm and Clove would finally just get sick of it. He had thought about warning the girl briefly, to scare her, but it would be more entertaining to see Marvel’s face in the morning when he awoke to his district partner dead.) “And you’re no fun without a weapon.”
That grin was on her face, the one that he had seen many times before (it was the one that she had worn when they had first fucked in the training center). He slammed his blade into the tree one more time, letting it stick there, and then she was on him, pushing him up against the same tree.
When they fucked, it was quick and angry. She slaps her hand over his mouth, because he is always loud when they do this, and the last thing she wants is an audience. But his hands are familiar and rough and when one of his fingers slips down there, she is the one who moans. The bark of the tree is harsh on her bare back, but her nails dig into his neck (right next to the love bite from Glimmer, she notes). They are children born into blood and death and war, so it would not make sense for them to be slow and kind.
She’s gone before he’s even zipped up his pants, back into the trees, back towards their camp. Glimmer lays on his arm that night, curled up next to him, and he can see Clove watching them from a distance. “I’ll get to kill you soon,” she mouths at him, and it is Cato’s turn to grin.
“Not if I get you first.”
Glimmer
Her golden hair is stained with blood (he always loved my hair) and for a moment everything is silent. It’s over, she knows it is, everything that she had been prepared for is done. Back home, Cashmere is probably cheering and Gloss is mourning his trainee, but District 1 is exploding. They’ve got the honor this year, they’ve got the victor.
She shivers and refuses to look down, she won’t look down, she won’t see him. Blood was blood, and she should have been used to it by now, she was supposed to be used to it by now, but it is different when it is the blood of your partner. The girl from 2 had told them nonchalantly one night that they had to kill their pets as part of their training. Something about desensitizing them. It wasn’t that Glimmer hadn’t killed before the arena, because she had, but there is a difference between cracking the neck of a convicted criminal and tearing out the heart of the boy you trained with.
The Capitol parties are full of jewel tones and glitter and fabrics that are like liquid metal. Golden hair is all the rage (he used to pull my braids), and some went so far as to splatter it with red glitter. She would smile and compliment them on their homage to her, but it was a tight smile, a fake laugh, like the one’s she would give to Cato at night.
They used to joke together, her and Marvel, about how gullible that big brute was, how big his ego was that he would believe that every single girl wanted him. They used to joke together, joke and touch and move together. She would bite his bottom lip and draw blood and his fingers would rake through her hair (he always loved my hair). Sometimes the men who bought her now would do the same thing, but it no longer was good or normal.
She shaved her hair off. It would grow back, it would because it always did. They didn’t like it. It made her look “vicious and fierce.” She laughed in their faces. Hadn’t she killed 4 people - no, children - in the arena? Hadn’t she almost fully decapitated the boy from her district, spraying herself in his blood? Hadn’t she always been vicious and fierce?
She shaved off her hair, and she no longer allowed herself to feel. The other victors only nodded in silent recognition, passing the bottle when they had had their fill.
You can be a victor, and still lose everything. Funny how the Capitol had yet to realize that.
Warning for blood, violence, coercive sex, and sex in general. Adult concepts ahoy!
Cato/Clove, high school au
He took Glimmer to prom and she hated it. She would tell her friends that it was because it was so painfully cliche, the star quarterback and the head cheerleader dating and being cutesy together. When they walked by the halls during the days leading up to the dance, Clove would pretend to choke herself and her friends would laugh.
But there was anger in the pit of her stomach, something she hadn’t expected rising in her throat. It tasted vaguely like blood, but not like her own. Blood and anger and hatred. It was silly, really, hating the gorgeous senior with the golden curls and curves in all the right places. What had she expected, really? She was only a sophomore, not as stunning as the girl who glimmered (it truly was a stupid name, though).
Some other football player asked her to prom, Marvel (another silly name) or something like that, but she said no. She went hunting with her father that weekend and took pleasure in skinning the deer that they shot. She liked the weight of the knife more than the grip of a corsage, the dark camo more than flowing fabrics. Clove was not meant for glitz and glamour and parties. She could not smile when people wanted her to, could not laugh at pointless jokes. She had thought that Cato had liked that, liked the odd things she smiled at, liked the outline of the pocketknife in her skinny jean’s pocket, liked the way she bit his lips when they grabbed for each other under the bleachers.
But she would not allow herself to be jealous. Because she was better than that girl with the stupid name. Better at a lot of things.
He did not tell her, but he thought of her that night. When he danced with Glimmer, felt her smooth skin under his hands, he only thought of the scarred body of Clove. Of the bruises she got from her karate class, of her jet black hair in tight braids.
She was not the girl that the quarterback should date or want or crave, but when he slept with Glimmer that night, it was Clove’s name on the tip of his tongue.
Seneca Crane's Beard (that's it just write about the beard)
When he was little, his family had vacationed in District 4. It wasn’t as much of a vacation as it was traveling with his father to watch him work, but Seneca had loved everything about it. It was so different from the Capitol, so different from the stone and glass, from the towering buildings. They hadn’t stayed for long, but they slept in the mayor’s house overlooking the ocean. From the moment he saw it, he could not take his eyes off of it.
There is a difference between the ocean and the lake by the Capitol, and that is in the waves. They took a boat out one day and watched the waves crest and crash and the foam fly up. He adored it.
He was proud whenever the victor came from District 2. It was not his home, but he felt a connection (or at least told himself that he had a connection). So when a girl from there won the 72nd Games and water was at the height of fashion in the Capitol, Secena rushed to have his beard shaped. Just like the waves, he had asked, and they had delivered.
Marvel/YOLO
You only live once, they tell them in the training center. You only live once, so make it worthwhile. To others that would mean to find a nice girl, to settle down and have children. To him, though, it is a way of telling them to kill as many people as they can get their hands on.
He was a good boy, a smiling child until they tore him from his mother as his father died in the street, until they laid the weapons in front of him and told him to pick one, until kill or be killed became a thing. By the time he was 12, blood did not bother him. The crunch of bone, the ripping of skin. It was all normal. He had his spear, and it would fly straight and true.
You only live once, they told them.
His life, like so many other Career’s before him, was short and brutal and bloody. But he had loved every minute of it, loved the feel of steel and the pleading for mercy. He had loved the way that he was feared and loved.
He only lived once, but he had done everything they told him to.
Marvel/Glimmer
District 2 was the powerhouse, the home of monsters worse than muttations. They made cold, unfeeling, stone beasts there, made to kill and slaughter and survive. Their purpose was to draw blood in whatever way possible.
But District 1 had a different focus. There, they basked in luxury, in jewels and precious metals. The children they trained were gorgeous works of art. They might not be as brutish, as bloody as the killer from the second district, but they were just as deadly. They were not to be underestimated.
Her grandmother had won the Games, a fierce, golden woman who looked very much like her granddaughter. The others had made the mistake of underestimating her, of judging her by her beauty and ignoring her skill with a spear. She had killed the last tribute, the boy from two, with the tent pole. No one ever looked down on her again. The blood of victors was in Glimmer’s veins, she was told, and she went willingly when her parents dropped her off at the training center.
Marvel had been a sweet boy, a grinning child, but he had found a love for weapons and sharp things at a young age. When he ran his sister’s rabbit through with a “toy” spear, he had only smiled up at his parents. His sister had cried, and his father had gone pale. This was not what he had wanted for his son. They came for Marvel, and his father had tried to stop them. He watched his father executed in the street, driven through much like the rabbit. This time he did not smile.
The children in the training center came from all walks of life, but they would all become the same beasts. Glimmer and Marvel were drawn to each other when they both reached for the spear their first day. They became close quickly, training together daily. They knew they were destined to compete together.
Sometimes, when they did not feel like being brave, Glimmer would creep down the hall at night and crawl in his bed and they would wrap their arms around each other and remember the life they had before the training center. In the morning, though, he would wake and she would be gone again.
The girls are the ones to grow first, to change seemingly overnight. And she did. She blossomed, becoming a goddess, an angel of death, and the other boys would watch her as she sliced and shot and hit. Curves formed, and she was no longer a little girl trying to live up to the family name. She was a woman, a weapon, a killer. Not to be underestimated.
Marvel watched her too, and he watched the others watch her. At first, the boys would talk about her in the locker room. And he would feel bile rising in his throat and a fierceness boiling in the pit of his stomach, but he would push it down. Then one of the boys, older than him, stronger than him, went too far one day and the fierceness spilled out. His fists found the boy’s face, his stomach, and suddenly he was slamming his head into the locker. It took four other boys to drag Marvel off of him.
The other boy was too injured to continue training.
She grew into her form, though, and recognized her potential. Her beauty was part of her weapon, just like her grandmother’s had been. Glimmer knew how to use it, how to look at a boy in just the right way to get him to do anything for her. She was more dangerous than they thought. And Marvel was dangerous, too, his spear flying straight and true. They were a force to be reckoned with. They knew that they would be in the arena together, killing together.
“I’ll kill for you,” he told her on the nights when she crawled in his bed still. They held each other tighter now, fiercer now, and their mouths would meet and finger would roam and hands would bruise. And she would laugh at him, and the boy who was utterly enraptured with her. “I can kill just fine on my own, love,” she would whisper back, biting his lip and drawing blood.
They were a force to be reckoned with, but overlooked in the training center for the brutal killers from District 2. The night before the Games, she came to Marvel’s room from the bed of the beastly boy. “We’ll kill them together,” she laughed, sliding under the sheets next to him, their bodies melding together. “We will reap our reward."
Marvel/Glimmer, au where they win the games
The brutish boy from District 2 had been the first to die in their pack, falling prey to the tracker jackers. He had tripped, then Glimmer had brought the heel of her boot down hard on his ankle. They never went back to see what state his body was in.
While Glimmer and Marvel tended to each other’s wounds with salve from their sponsors, the monstrous little thing from 2 gritted her teeth and left them behind. She took care of most of the other tributes, slicing and dicing her way through the arena. But when rage motivates you, sometimes you get sloppy.
On the cornucopia, he dangled the girl on fire over the side, letting the mutts do what they did best. She took care of lover boy, slicing his throat with her nails. And then the cannons sound and it is light outside again and it is over. Everything that they have worked for all their lives, the training and the bruises and the broken bones, all of it has paid off. They look at each other and laugh, gripping their hands tightly, laugh with their blood stained hands.
The Capitol wanted lovers. This Game had made it clear. But when they are at the parties, garbed in glittering jeweled fabrics, the looks they get are not ones of reverence. They were not supposed to win. The rule change was not for them.
They are left well enough alone, tucked away in the mansions of the winner’s village in District 1. They do not frequent the Capitol. They are not wanted there, and they are done with their Games.
Sometimes she calls him lover boy and they laugh, but these are not the same laughs that they shared in the arena. The Games drained them of their joy. Eventually, the Capitol takes everything from you, whether you know it or not.
Marvel/Glimmer, they're the star crossed lovers of the 74th games
It had been their new trainer who proposed it, the whole “being in love” thing, and Marvel had grimaced. Their first trainer (whatever his name had been-they weren’t supposed to remember the names of the dead) had been all about strength and fighting skills and power. “No,” had been his answer, short and rough and instantaneously. “I’m not looking weak or powerless.”
She laughed at him then, like she always did when he least expected it. “Oh Marvel,” she said, closer now, hand on his heart, “Power is power. No matter what.” They had been still for a second and then he was on the ground, flat on his back, and she was over him laughing again.
Glimmer played the part well, always looking at him the right way, lips brushing his briefly before they parted each night. It wasn’t that bad of an idea after all, he figured. The trainers knew what they were talking about. Hands would touch the smalls of their backs, eyes would light up when they spotted each other, and sometimes they would laugh together in their rooms at night and forget that soon they would have weapons in their hands, that soon they would have to kill each other.
The Capitol ate it up, their act of Romeo and Juliet. It looked like District 12 was trying the same thing, but 1 always appeared first. They were always first.
She died screaming for him and he sprinted back to her as soon as he realized her familiar footsteps weren’t behind his. Their trainer would have been cheering for him, because that’s what you do when you’re in love. No matter how mutilated and swollen their face is, you go back and you kneel and you plead. He could have told himself that it was a natural instinct, that they had been trained well enough to play this part till the end. But at a certain point it stops being and act (he wondered if District 12 had reached that point yet).
You’re not supposed to remember the names of the dead in District 1, of those who weren’t strong enough to win, who didn’t have power. He remembered hers, and it lodged in his throat when the arrow pierced it.
Cato
The world swirls into reds and blues and Cato wonders when the earth stopped moving.
He was standing over the boy from 11, watching blood and berry juice mix. It stopped a while ago, he knows, probably when the rock came crashing into her skull or maybe when his legs couldn’t carry him fast enough or perhaps when she finally hit the ground and the clots stopped her brain. Somewhere around there.
Or maybe the world had never been spinning. It was all a government plot, something cooked up by the gamemakers and Snow, just like everything else. He lets out a laugh, short and sick, his smile red with blood.
It stopped spinning a while ago, back when he was a child, back before the Games were his life. But then the Capitol got their hands on him. They were the ones turning it now, calculating it just right, making him into the perfect killer.
They had done their job well. Now it was his turn to finish it all.
Cato/Clove, they're the only two left when the "two victors" rule is revoked
They had saved District 12 for last (because there was something beautiful in a team killing a set of lovers) and grinned at each other when they were done. The cannons boomed, a familiar sound by now, and they were done. Everything that they had trained for, practiced for, was at an end.
And then the announcers were back, revoking the previous rule change, and everything was back to normal, the way it had always been.
She was still grinning when he turned to face her, her hand slipping down to grab another knife. “Don’t act so shocked, Cato,” she laughed. “The rule was for the star crossed lovers, not for the tributes that killed them. Plus,” she said, gripping the knife tightly, fingers tracing its blade, “I’ve been waiting to kill you for half my life.”
They put on quite the show between the two of them, between her knives and his sword. He was fast, but Clove was faster, and sometimes she would cut him without him even noticing. But they matched each other. They were equals.
But then she was on the ground and he was still standing, her neck at the oddest angle. It was over. He had done what he was trained to do, what he was supposed to do. And Cato smiled, his mouth full of blood.
And then he hit the ground.
They were equals, two pieces to a puzzle. When he hit, she sliced, and when she laughed at the wrong times he would smirk. And she had hit him just as many times as he had her, knives cutting in all the right places.
He was dead before the hovercraft could reach him, blood pooling out from all his major arteries.
Their hands were inches apart.
Cato/Clove, arena sexytimes
“I get to kill you soon.”
She laughed at him, short and sharp (just like her), laughed at him like she always did. “Not if I get you first.”
The other two careers and Lover Boy side-eyed them. They were an alliance, a team of sorts, but District 1 and 2 were very different places. And Lover Boy didn’t even know what was going on. There’s something off, others would say, about the careers who come from 2. They do something to them there, something other than just training. You can’t quite put your finger on it, but they’re terrifying.
It was a game they played, coming up with different ways to kill people. Part of their training, really. You had to know how to bring down everyone. Glimmer, the blonde, was playing dumb and flirty; that much was clear. She probably thought she could make it to the end like that Johanna girl from years before. Clove called dibs on her, promising to pop out those emerald eyes. Cato had been whispering about slamming Marvel to the ground and breaking every single bone in his body since training started. The kid was too damn cheery. It was like having one of the Capitol representatives following them around. And then there was Lover Boy. He was bait for the bigger fish, for the girl on fire. “It would be best,” Clove had said sharpening her knives and watching the fire one night while they were up on watch, “to kill her little girlfriend in front of his eyes. You hold him down; I get to do what I do best.” Yes had been Cato’s answer. Yes yes yes.
“Make a fire,” he ordered when they treed the girl on fire, stalking off to slash a tree with his sword, leaving the rest of them behind. Glimmer had tried to follow him, to “comfort” him in that lovely way that she did, but he had slashed at her and she backed off.
“You’re going to ruin your sword,” she sang. He hadn’t seen her come into the clearing, but he should have expected that. Clove had a habit of sneaking up on him, on others. She thrived in the shadows, lurking and watching and striking when you’d least expect it. (She would probably get Glimmer at night, when she was curled up on Cato’s arm and Clove would finally just get sick of it. He had thought about warning the girl briefly, to scare her, but it would be more entertaining to see Marvel’s face in the morning when he awoke to his district partner dead.) “And you’re no fun without a weapon.”
That grin was on her face, the one that he had seen many times before (it was the one that she had worn when they had first fucked in the training center). He slammed his blade into the tree one more time, letting it stick there, and then she was on him, pushing him up against the same tree.
When they fucked, it was quick and angry. She slaps her hand over his mouth, because he is always loud when they do this, and the last thing she wants is an audience. But his hands are familiar and rough and when one of his fingers slips down there, she is the one who moans. The bark of the tree is harsh on her bare back, but her nails dig into his neck (right next to the love bite from Glimmer, she notes). They are children born into blood and death and war, so it would not make sense for them to be slow and kind.
She’s gone before he’s even zipped up his pants, back into the trees, back towards their camp. Glimmer lays on his arm that night, curled up next to him, and he can see Clove watching them from a distance. “I’ll get to kill you soon,” she mouths at him, and it is Cato’s turn to grin.
“Not if I get you first.”
Glimmer
Her golden hair is stained with blood (he always loved my hair) and for a moment everything is silent. It’s over, she knows it is, everything that she had been prepared for is done. Back home, Cashmere is probably cheering and Gloss is mourning his trainee, but District 1 is exploding. They’ve got the honor this year, they’ve got the victor.
She shivers and refuses to look down, she won’t look down, she won’t see him. Blood was blood, and she should have been used to it by now, she was supposed to be used to it by now, but it is different when it is the blood of your partner. The girl from 2 had told them nonchalantly one night that they had to kill their pets as part of their training. Something about desensitizing them. It wasn’t that Glimmer hadn’t killed before the arena, because she had, but there is a difference between cracking the neck of a convicted criminal and tearing out the heart of the boy you trained with.
The Capitol parties are full of jewel tones and glitter and fabrics that are like liquid metal. Golden hair is all the rage (he used to pull my braids), and some went so far as to splatter it with red glitter. She would smile and compliment them on their homage to her, but it was a tight smile, a fake laugh, like the one’s she would give to Cato at night.
They used to joke together, her and Marvel, about how gullible that big brute was, how big his ego was that he would believe that every single girl wanted him. They used to joke together, joke and touch and move together. She would bite his bottom lip and draw blood and his fingers would rake through her hair (he always loved my hair). Sometimes the men who bought her now would do the same thing, but it no longer was good or normal.
She shaved her hair off. It would grow back, it would because it always did. They didn’t like it. It made her look “vicious and fierce.” She laughed in their faces. Hadn’t she killed 4 people - no, children - in the arena? Hadn’t she almost fully decapitated the boy from her district, spraying herself in his blood? Hadn’t she always been vicious and fierce?
She shaved off her hair, and she no longer allowed herself to feel. The other victors only nodded in silent recognition, passing the bottle when they had had their fill.
You can be a victor, and still lose everything. Funny how the Capitol had yet to realize that.