fic: set yourself on fire (the hunger games)
set yourself on fire.
the hunger games. once upon a time, there was a girl on fire, and there was a peacekeeper's daughter who doused her flame in blood. OR, that AU where clove becomes the mockingjay. victor!clove/gale and past clove/cato. rated pg13. 1404 words.
Once upon a time, there was a Girl on Fire, and then there was a Peacekeeper’s daughter who doused that flame in blood.
This is what happened after that.
They take her to the Capitol and remake her for her adoring crowds, all glitter and taffeta and long, fluttering eyelashes. They give her a dress of gunmetal gray that shimmers as she poses in front of the cameras and paint her fingernails silver, the color of cold steel, the color of the knives she used to win the Games, the color of the knife she buried in Cato’s back when Claudius Templesmith reversed the rules on them. Her lips are red, the precise color of fresh blood.
They ask if she wants any special alterations. When she can’t think of any, she lets them dye her hair the same steely silver. Clove, the cold, sharp victor from District 2; bred for glory and damn straight she achieved it.
Caesar asks what went through her mind as she made her final kill and she wants to laugh and tell the truth; say that yes, she’d been itching to open Cato’s veins since the moment she laid eyes on him back home in the training center in 2 but when they fucked, it was so good, bloody with sharp edges and bite marks and half-moon nail marks up their backs, the only way either knew how to feel, and why couldn’t they both be victors? Why not them instead of the star-crossed (star-crossed, what a stupid word) lovers from District 12? But she understands the rule was never intended for them, and that there could have only been one, and so she flutters those new long eyelashes (with the silver tinsel bits on the end, they really spare no expense here) and says that she just wanted to bring glory to her district. And this is true.
Caesar grabs her hand and raises it high above her head, demanding a round of applause for Clove, the pride of District 2, and she breathes in the adulation, knowing that this is what she was meant for.
They kill her family.
She makes a mistake, just one, in the Capitol, and they kill all of them; her father and her mother and her brother and sister, all dead in their beds at home in the Victors’ Village. “You will be cooperative, I imagine,” President Snow had said during her coronation, and she had nodded, never assuming the implications.
They kill her family and the Quell takes her back into the arena, and for the first time in her life, she doesn’t know what to do. Death, she has been taught, is something that can easily be avoided; it is a consequence of not being good enough. Run faster, train harder, be the best and you will survive.
She did everything they asked of her. She did everything, and she’s still here, sleepless in the same Capitol apartment on the night before the Games, just like last year. Only last year, she fell asleep almost immediately, comforted by the notion that victory was only a few days away.
This year, she wonders if she wouldn’t be better off losing.
(Shake it off, Clove; you can still do this. Your arm hasn’t gone weak in the year since your last kill.)
They crack the force field and make her the face of a rebellion she didn’t know she wanted. “Why me?” she asks, and they tell her that she is living proof of the Capitol’s corruption; that even those who buy into their lies completely are punished for no good reason; that Snow is so heartless as to kill a sixteen-year-old’s entire family to rebuke her for a careless word at a party after four glasses of wine too many.
“You are the Mockingjay,” they say, “though you have never been in charge of your own destiny. But now you can be.”
They make her the face of a revolution she didn’t know she wanted.
She goes along with it because she has no choice.
Johanna Mason is a horrible, cocksure, arrogant woman and the closest thing to a friend she will ever know.
She sees the age in Johanna’s eyes, even though she’s not so old, and she can tell that Johanna is not so far removed from what she could have been with a few years’ Mentoring under her belt. Old and defeated and addicted to whatever there is to be addicted to.
In the Capitol, before the Quell, Johanna had laughed in her face when she tried the psych-out defense. “Save it for the cameras, kiddo,” she said, clapping her on the shoulder and laughing again when she stiffened.
In 13, there is nothing to laugh about, particularly when the Capitol pulls out the bombs and they must tunnel deep underground, into bunkers and barracks where there is little light and the everpresent noise of explosions and fire. And so she seeks out Johanna Mason, because Johanna Mason is a mirror from which Clove cannot pull herself away.
“Don’t come crying to me, kid,” Johanna says, morphling tracks visible in her skinny arms and scars all over her body, but Clove sits next to her and they stare into the distance without saying anything. Their type isn’t much for conversation.
The rebels bomb the quarry rock in 2 while Clove is out shooting little videos to stick it to the Capitol, and when she sees the footage replayed live on TV, she feels sick.
Her cousins. Her uncles and aunts. Parents of the children she knew long ago in 2, before she learned to kill and ceased to be a child. Maybe some of those children themselves; it was an awfully long time ago and some of them, at least, were a few years older.
They are dying, trapped in an avalanche of stone and dynamite, and she is here, dressed in a skintight black suit with wings, decorative knives affixed to her belt and made big and shiny for the cameras.
The rebel from 12 is in her bed. With the lights down, when he’s mostly silhouette and shadow, he reminds her of Cato, all sinew and muscle.
She wonders if she reminds him of the girl he speaks of on occasion, the one she killed, the girl who was on fire.
He says nothing of the scars that cover her body, the scratches and jagged edges that turn her into a living map - this is where Romulus Caine threw a knife when we were 12, this is where Juno Valla hit me with an arrow, this is where Cato told me he’d kill me someday, this is where I laughed and told him to dream bigger.
He doesn’t fuck like he’s trying to end her life. She isn’t sure if she enjoys it, but she doesn’t really care anymore.
This is her life. Paying lip service to the war; a rebel soldier tracing her scars with his lips.
The Capitol-dyed silver is long gone from her hair.
“We hold another Hunger Games,” Coin says, “with the Capitol’s children.”
“Yes,” Clove says, when the vote comes to her, because despite it all, the war and the loss that have engulfed her in the two years since the Reaping, she has never lost the part of her that
The vote is unanimous. Coin executes Snow on TV. Let the 76th Annual Hunger Games begin.
“I expected more,” says Clove, in her new Capitol apartment, staring at the wall, a knife in her hand just for old time’s sake.
Gale shakes his head. “We all did,” he says.
She looks at him askew. “It’s not going to last, is it?”
“The apartment? No. I imagine the building codes here have taken a dive since the war,” he says.
“Fuck off, Hawthorne,” she says, flicking the knife at the wall. She’s still got a hell of an arm.
He finds another girl not too long after this day, someone from his own home district. He leaves. It’s nothing new. She’s not surprised. Everyone leaves her, sooner or later.
It isn’t The Great Peace they had all hoped for. It’s only the antebellum.
There is another war, not so long after.
She isn’t part of it, of course. She doesn't care much anymore.
the hunger games. once upon a time, there was a girl on fire, and there was a peacekeeper's daughter who doused her flame in blood. OR, that AU where clove becomes the mockingjay. victor!clove/gale and past clove/cato. rated pg13. 1404 words.
Once upon a time, there was a Girl on Fire, and then there was a Peacekeeper’s daughter who doused that flame in blood.
This is what happened after that.
They take her to the Capitol and remake her for her adoring crowds, all glitter and taffeta and long, fluttering eyelashes. They give her a dress of gunmetal gray that shimmers as she poses in front of the cameras and paint her fingernails silver, the color of cold steel, the color of the knives she used to win the Games, the color of the knife she buried in Cato’s back when Claudius Templesmith reversed the rules on them. Her lips are red, the precise color of fresh blood.
They ask if she wants any special alterations. When she can’t think of any, she lets them dye her hair the same steely silver. Clove, the cold, sharp victor from District 2; bred for glory and damn straight she achieved it.
Caesar asks what went through her mind as she made her final kill and she wants to laugh and tell the truth; say that yes, she’d been itching to open Cato’s veins since the moment she laid eyes on him back home in the training center in 2 but when they fucked, it was so good, bloody with sharp edges and bite marks and half-moon nail marks up their backs, the only way either knew how to feel, and why couldn’t they both be victors? Why not them instead of the star-crossed (star-crossed, what a stupid word) lovers from District 12? But she understands the rule was never intended for them, and that there could have only been one, and so she flutters those new long eyelashes (with the silver tinsel bits on the end, they really spare no expense here) and says that she just wanted to bring glory to her district. And this is true.
Caesar grabs her hand and raises it high above her head, demanding a round of applause for Clove, the pride of District 2, and she breathes in the adulation, knowing that this is what she was meant for.
They kill her family.
She makes a mistake, just one, in the Capitol, and they kill all of them; her father and her mother and her brother and sister, all dead in their beds at home in the Victors’ Village. “You will be cooperative, I imagine,” President Snow had said during her coronation, and she had nodded, never assuming the implications.
They kill her family and the Quell takes her back into the arena, and for the first time in her life, she doesn’t know what to do. Death, she has been taught, is something that can easily be avoided; it is a consequence of not being good enough. Run faster, train harder, be the best and you will survive.
She did everything they asked of her. She did everything, and she’s still here, sleepless in the same Capitol apartment on the night before the Games, just like last year. Only last year, she fell asleep almost immediately, comforted by the notion that victory was only a few days away.
This year, she wonders if she wouldn’t be better off losing.
(Shake it off, Clove; you can still do this. Your arm hasn’t gone weak in the year since your last kill.)
They crack the force field and make her the face of a rebellion she didn’t know she wanted. “Why me?” she asks, and they tell her that she is living proof of the Capitol’s corruption; that even those who buy into their lies completely are punished for no good reason; that Snow is so heartless as to kill a sixteen-year-old’s entire family to rebuke her for a careless word at a party after four glasses of wine too many.
“You are the Mockingjay,” they say, “though you have never been in charge of your own destiny. But now you can be.”
They make her the face of a revolution she didn’t know she wanted.
She goes along with it because she has no choice.
Johanna Mason is a horrible, cocksure, arrogant woman and the closest thing to a friend she will ever know.
She sees the age in Johanna’s eyes, even though she’s not so old, and she can tell that Johanna is not so far removed from what she could have been with a few years’ Mentoring under her belt. Old and defeated and addicted to whatever there is to be addicted to.
In the Capitol, before the Quell, Johanna had laughed in her face when she tried the psych-out defense. “Save it for the cameras, kiddo,” she said, clapping her on the shoulder and laughing again when she stiffened.
In 13, there is nothing to laugh about, particularly when the Capitol pulls out the bombs and they must tunnel deep underground, into bunkers and barracks where there is little light and the everpresent noise of explosions and fire. And so she seeks out Johanna Mason, because Johanna Mason is a mirror from which Clove cannot pull herself away.
“Don’t come crying to me, kid,” Johanna says, morphling tracks visible in her skinny arms and scars all over her body, but Clove sits next to her and they stare into the distance without saying anything. Their type isn’t much for conversation.
The rebels bomb the quarry rock in 2 while Clove is out shooting little videos to stick it to the Capitol, and when she sees the footage replayed live on TV, she feels sick.
Her cousins. Her uncles and aunts. Parents of the children she knew long ago in 2, before she learned to kill and ceased to be a child. Maybe some of those children themselves; it was an awfully long time ago and some of them, at least, were a few years older.
They are dying, trapped in an avalanche of stone and dynamite, and she is here, dressed in a skintight black suit with wings, decorative knives affixed to her belt and made big and shiny for the cameras.
The rebel from 12 is in her bed. With the lights down, when he’s mostly silhouette and shadow, he reminds her of Cato, all sinew and muscle.
She wonders if she reminds him of the girl he speaks of on occasion, the one she killed, the girl who was on fire.
He says nothing of the scars that cover her body, the scratches and jagged edges that turn her into a living map - this is where Romulus Caine threw a knife when we were 12, this is where Juno Valla hit me with an arrow, this is where Cato told me he’d kill me someday, this is where I laughed and told him to dream bigger.
He doesn’t fuck like he’s trying to end her life. She isn’t sure if she enjoys it, but she doesn’t really care anymore.
This is her life. Paying lip service to the war; a rebel soldier tracing her scars with his lips.
The Capitol-dyed silver is long gone from her hair.
“We hold another Hunger Games,” Coin says, “with the Capitol’s children.”
“Yes,” Clove says, when the vote comes to her, because despite it all, the war and the loss that have engulfed her in the two years since the Reaping, she has never lost the part of her that
The vote is unanimous. Coin executes Snow on TV. Let the 76th Annual Hunger Games begin.
“I expected more,” says Clove, in her new Capitol apartment, staring at the wall, a knife in her hand just for old time’s sake.
Gale shakes his head. “We all did,” he says.
She looks at him askew. “It’s not going to last, is it?”
“The apartment? No. I imagine the building codes here have taken a dive since the war,” he says.
“Fuck off, Hawthorne,” she says, flicking the knife at the wall. She’s still got a hell of an arm.
He finds another girl not too long after this day, someone from his own home district. He leaves. It’s nothing new. She’s not surprised. Everyone leaves her, sooner or later.
It isn’t The Great Peace they had all hoped for. It’s only the antebellum.
There is another war, not so long after.
She isn’t part of it, of course. She doesn't care much anymore.