[fic: the hunger games]
blood is blood and bone is bone
the hunger games. cato x clove. movie!verse. spoilers. dare to step on my cracks, she says, and I'll be sure to break your back ~2800 | r
Cato does not volunteer so much as grabs the tribute by his skinny shoulder and tosses him aside. He ascends the stage like god climbing the steps heavenward. He’s grinning, let’s the escort raise his broad, long arm high above his head. The crowd is a deafening roar of approval. District 2 never fails to bring out the strongest fighter, the most likely contender. Cato’s hand closes in a solid fist, to show them his strength.
Clove’s arms cross over her chest, and she grins. Two more years, and it’ll be her up there, lapping up the applause and love and approval-two more years, but she’s still the best with a knife. And she can see the little grey ring of dents right underneath Cato’s elbow. She gave that to him, the very first time they met, sunk her teeth deep enough into skin to touch bone. He thought he could push her around because she was littler, younger, but she showed him. She showed them all. Her knife rests against her thigh, more familiar to her than her own hand. Twenty meters off a bird lands on the cement roof. Clove could hit it square in the chest.
And-that’s her name, Clove realizes. That’s her name, in plain blank print on plain white paper. Her name and for a minute all she can think is-it’s too soon, I have two more years, two more years to get better, and Cato-and then he tilts his head, challenging, and hands familiar as her own curl inward to invite her forward.
There’s not a shake in her step when Clove comes up the stage. Things don’t always work out like you want them to-that’s the first thing the trainers teach you-the Gamemakers will practically see to it they don’t, and the difference between a Career and a Tribute is a Career is always in control. Always.
She meets Cato’s eyes easily, and shows him a smile full of teeth that says killing you will be a pleasure.
They fuck on the train, which only seems a natural course. They know each other. Clove might even say she knows Cato better than anyone else. Her parents, a thin, shaking woman and a broad flat-faced father who had a tendency to raise his hand-not anymore, not since Clove carved her initials on his wrist-only look at her with a vague short of pride; we made this creature of death and blood and rust, and when she takes glory it will be ours as well. But Clove has no intention of sharing, not with them.
Cato knows her. He’s knocked her down and dragged her up. She’s split his lip and broken his ribs and in the training compound they forged each other into honed steel. And in the shadows of her room, he picks her up (because he is stronger and taller than her and never lets her forget it) and presses her against the door. Her legs fall on either side of his hips, her nails dig into his shoulders, through the soft, stretchy material of his shirt where a loose, sliver of thread shines silver in the moonlight.
His hand closes over her mouth. “Don’t scream,” he says, all smiles-that’s a challenge too. One of the others broke her arm once, snapped it clean, but she hadn’t screamed. She had only watched as Cato drove his face into the ground, over and over again. She never screams. You’ve already won half the battle, if you don’t scream.
She’s wearing a dress, some silly confection of silk and lace for the Capitol cameras-the Capitol doesn’t want to look into her eyes and see only the bloodlust; they want someone they can love. But they will love me, Clove thinks and curls her fingers into Cato’s tuff of blonde hair, they will love me or I’ll rip out their hearts.
Her dress parts around his hands and he pushes up inside her. Oh, there is pain, so much pain. But she is a creature feed and dieted on pain, on cruelty, on knives pushes through skin. She thrives on it, and bites down into Cato’s shoulders, mouth drying over the fibers. She shoves pain aside. This is a Game, and she must play the Game. And she struggles and heaves and thrashes against him.
I’m the Victor. I’ve always been the Victor.
She claws her way back to his mouth, sinks in, all teeth and tongue and blood. Hers or his, she cannot tell. Does it matter? He closes one around her throat, not tight enough to choke but the intent is there. She left the indentations of her teeth on his arm, once, and now she leaves jagged red lines down the side of his face with her nails. She comes when he bites down hard enough on her lip to make it bleed.
And she comes without screaming, and grins with blood-stained teeth when he climaxes with a grunt inside her. Clove always wins.
Clove never misses. Not once. The knives are an extension of her will, and she’s only ever wanted a heart. She knows they’re watching, eyes on her and what she can do-smaller than the other Careers, but she’s faster, deadly, she possess a razor-edged quality, a desire to win but also a determination to win, winning is all that matters, all that’s ever mattered to her; if victory is the head of a pin, then she has been balancing on it with one toe all her life.
Cato slices the head off a dummy, revels in the stuffing pouring out of it, picks it up and blows it at the nearest Tribute. Your blood, he might be saying, won’t be half so fun, but will be so much sweeter. Later, he’ll leave hot, red markings up her thighs, pant against the shadowy junction between them and she’ll press his head there, but will not scream like he wants.
His eyes track to the other Tributes, takes them in, measures them. They’ve been trained to not only kill, but to demoralize, put on a show for everyone around them-who wants to fight a boy who can snap a neck in two, who wants to fight a girl who knives never miss a heart? Cato looks at each tribute and licks his lips, like a lion scenting fresh blood.
She doesn’t look. Why would she? They’re all just corpses, and she doesn’t have much use for corpses.
Cato kneels between her legs, one hand curved at the thin skin that stretches at the back of her knee. She has a long, jagged cut up her calf. His. Cato smiles fondly at the memory and traces its path with one, feather-light finger.
“I’m going to miss you when you’re dead,” he tells her.
Like a cat, Clove arches beneath him, up into him. Her smile curves like a knife blade along her mouth. “Funny,” she says, “I was about to tell you the same thing.”
He laughs, and it sounds like a rusty blade. He laughs when she pulls him down to her, and she tastes the bitter salt of it on her lips. She swallows it, and guides him inside her. The Capitol is an iridescent glow outside her window, and Clove winds her arms around his neck.
Tomorrow, Cato doesn’t look her way, doesn’t acknowledge her as his shoulder brushes by her head. Clove merely shrugs. Easier this way, she thinks. After all, hard to slit the throat of the guy you’re sleeping with.
Lover Boy and Girl on Fire might think playing to the audience’s sympathizes might win them the Game, but Clove knows better. The Capitol only cares about carnage, and she’ll give it to them in brilliant hues.
Crimson always looked best on her.
Cato jams his sword up into 7’s stomach, spilling hot blood on the bright green grass. A girl creeps up behind him, a knife in her hand.
You don’t know the first thing about knives, Clove thinks as she yanks the girl’s head back by the roots of her hair. She draws her knife across her throat, pressing down hard enough to feel it cut into muscle and bone. Blood rolls down her knuckles, drips off her palm. She reveals in it. She was trained for this, made for this, it’s a validation of her existence. She wipes the back of her hand across her mouth, and tastes the metallic tang of blood on her tongue.
When he comes in close enough, Clove presses a bloody hand to his shirt. It leaves a dark, wet stain at his abdomen. It won’t show up on the screen, perhaps, but it doesn’t really matter. This is not for the Capitol. This is for her.
“No one kills you but me,” she says.
And Cato smiles the only way he knows how. With all his teeth.
With her back propped against the log, Clove takes shots at the little lizard unfortunate enough to cross her path. Pop. Pop. Pop. Each land in the tiny, green body. Dark, sticky blood wets the moss beneath it.
To her right, the bitch from 2 offers up a tilling laugh. It’s enough to make Clove want to pull out her tongue. In the dark, cast in the red-orange shadows of the firelight, Clove smiles at the thought. The heels of her black boots dig into the soft earth, bedding down. Above her, she can feel the eyes of the Girl on Fire watching her. That makes her smile, too.
Glimmer laughs again, knees bumping against Cato’s as he leans one arm into her. Clove throws another knife. Pop. Another little lizard goes down.
Go on, she thinks, go on and keep smiling. Just keep smiling. That way you’ll look pretty for the cameras when he slices your throat.
She’s not so pretty when they circle back around after the Tracker Jackers, face puffy and bloated and purple, like a dried out fish left to bake on a rock.
Cato nudges her body with one boot. The bow Glimmer had been carrying-and being a general pathetic idiot with, in Clove’s opinion-is gone. Girl on Fire has a weapon now, but it only ignites Clove’s blood. Killing is fun, but only if there’s a challenge.
“Well,” Cato says. He glances over at Clove. “Saves me the trouble.”
And then fifteen years of training is suddenly left to flicker in the wind because it doesn’t have to be just one, it can be two. It can be her and Cato, standing up on that stage in the Capitol, in their finest, skin still gritty with the dirt of the arena. All or nothing, that’s what she’s taught. Live or die, her or them. But suddenly it can be her and him or them.
It’s the very first time Clove falters.
Cato looks at her. The muscles in his arms jump. He steps toward her.
She says, “Pity. I was looking forward to kicking your ass.”
They slide back into easy little slots. She is still the skinny, lethal little kid who left teeth marks on his arms. He’s still the tall, broad kid who’d dangle her feet above the ground just to prove to her that as tough as she is, he is always always always going to be tougher and stronger and better.
“You would have tried,” he tells her. And that’s the thing. She really would have.
“You feel like hunting?” he asks.
There’s something vicious in his eyes, and Clove likes it. She runs her tongue over her stained teeth.
“Always,” she says. “Let me have the Girl on Fire, though. I’ll make a good show of it.”
He’s like a wolf, still tensed muscles and a constant starvation lingering at the corners of his eyes. The first time she’d seen him, he’d been fighting nearly six years older than him in the training ring. He’d broken that kid’s back and she heard one of their mentors say, that boy’s gonna take all of it.
No, Clove had told herself, no I will, and you’re an idiot for not seeing what I can do. And she had gone to bed with her teeth tinged with the sharp, biting taste of him, with her mark on him, and imagining a million different ways for him to die.
His hand, a closed fist, brushes up against her cheek. “I know you will.”
She’s not even a foot off the ground, but she has the sensation of vertigo, and stares into the dark, dark eyes of the tribute from 11. And in his eyes she sees her reflection, as if for the first time. A skinny little girl with gnarled dark hair and a pale face and wide, wide eyes and a bloodied mouth.
Like that, years and years of training melts away. She’s not a Career anymore. She’s fifteen and she’s scared and she doesn’t want to die. Is that what it feels like for everyone else? For that stupid bitch Glimmer, for all those corpses in the Cornucopia? Did they know this feeling, at their end? She could vomit. She could vomit.
She’d always told herself they were corpses already, and what did she care about corpses? But they weren’t. They weren’t corpses until she made them, and she won’t be a corpse until this boy makes her one.
Stars burst in her eyes when the back of her head cracks against the metal wall of the Cornucopia. The Girl on Fire lays in the grass, mouth open. Clove thrashes. Oh, she wants to live. She wants to live so much. She didn’t realize what it meant, until now. They wanted a show, the Capitol needs blood and adventure and action, and she has always thought herself the star of it. But she’s not. They’ll get a kick out of this, the Career getting her face smashed in for a kill that wasn’t even hers.
“Cato!” she screeches. For the first time, she screams. She’s never screamed, no matter what was done to her-the broken arms or the broken ribs or the long gash up her legs; not a sound, not a single sound, because if you don’t scream, you’ve already won half the battle.
She screams. She screams for Cato. They could have won, but more importantly, they could have gone home. Clove hadn’t realized, until watching the sunlight reflect off the dark face of her death, that more than anything she wants to go home.
“Cato!”
Clove doesn’t feel the second time the back of her head hits the wall. Thresh has already made her a corpse.
Cato finds her in a pool of blood and brain matter, and tries to piece the fractured bits of her skull back together.
“Get up!” he screams at her, thinking dully that Clove always hates it when he screams-don’t scream, you idiot; they’ve already won if you scream-but he can’t stop. “Stay with me, Clove. Stay with me! You have to get up!”
Four to go. They were so close. So close. How can this be her, in this green little meadow with the Cornucopia passing a grey shadow over her? No one kills you but me, she had said, and who was going to kill him now?
He shakes her, over and over again, begging and pleading and swearing and crying. Blood rolls down, mingles with his tears, and leaves messy remains on her face below his. He can’t stop shaking her, telling her to wake up. She’s dead. She’s dead and dead and dead, but he can’t quite comprehend how or why or fully grasp her lifelessness.
Boom! goes the cannon, and there’s another dead. And Cato stares into Clove’s upturned face and realizes, like being doused in ice water, why he can’t seem to understand how she can be dead. Her eyes. They don’t look any different. She looks the same dead as she did alive.
Vomit rises up in an acidic wave, and he twists to the side and retches, shoulders heaving. She looks the same dead as she did alive. And he and Clove-they’re the same, two lethally sharp blades forged in the finest, hottest fire District 2 had to offer; he left his mark on her, and she left her mark on him because they’re the same.
Cato’s fingers move sideways, brush up against cracked knuckles. It’s wrong, he thinks, there should be a knife. She’s never gone anywhere without a knife. He turns his head, forces himself to look into her alive-but-dead face. If he kissed her, would he notice a difference? He can’t force himself to find out, and wonders if while he lays in the bloody grass if he looks dead-if anyone could tell the different between her and him, her death and his life?
We’ve been corpses all along.
the hunger games. cato x clove. movie!verse. spoilers. dare to step on my cracks, she says, and I'll be sure to break your back ~2800 | r
Cato does not volunteer so much as grabs the tribute by his skinny shoulder and tosses him aside. He ascends the stage like god climbing the steps heavenward. He’s grinning, let’s the escort raise his broad, long arm high above his head. The crowd is a deafening roar of approval. District 2 never fails to bring out the strongest fighter, the most likely contender. Cato’s hand closes in a solid fist, to show them his strength.
Clove’s arms cross over her chest, and she grins. Two more years, and it’ll be her up there, lapping up the applause and love and approval-two more years, but she’s still the best with a knife. And she can see the little grey ring of dents right underneath Cato’s elbow. She gave that to him, the very first time they met, sunk her teeth deep enough into skin to touch bone. He thought he could push her around because she was littler, younger, but she showed him. She showed them all. Her knife rests against her thigh, more familiar to her than her own hand. Twenty meters off a bird lands on the cement roof. Clove could hit it square in the chest.
And-that’s her name, Clove realizes. That’s her name, in plain blank print on plain white paper. Her name and for a minute all she can think is-it’s too soon, I have two more years, two more years to get better, and Cato-and then he tilts his head, challenging, and hands familiar as her own curl inward to invite her forward.
There’s not a shake in her step when Clove comes up the stage. Things don’t always work out like you want them to-that’s the first thing the trainers teach you-the Gamemakers will practically see to it they don’t, and the difference between a Career and a Tribute is a Career is always in control. Always.
She meets Cato’s eyes easily, and shows him a smile full of teeth that says killing you will be a pleasure.
They fuck on the train, which only seems a natural course. They know each other. Clove might even say she knows Cato better than anyone else. Her parents, a thin, shaking woman and a broad flat-faced father who had a tendency to raise his hand-not anymore, not since Clove carved her initials on his wrist-only look at her with a vague short of pride; we made this creature of death and blood and rust, and when she takes glory it will be ours as well. But Clove has no intention of sharing, not with them.
Cato knows her. He’s knocked her down and dragged her up. She’s split his lip and broken his ribs and in the training compound they forged each other into honed steel. And in the shadows of her room, he picks her up (because he is stronger and taller than her and never lets her forget it) and presses her against the door. Her legs fall on either side of his hips, her nails dig into his shoulders, through the soft, stretchy material of his shirt where a loose, sliver of thread shines silver in the moonlight.
His hand closes over her mouth. “Don’t scream,” he says, all smiles-that’s a challenge too. One of the others broke her arm once, snapped it clean, but she hadn’t screamed. She had only watched as Cato drove his face into the ground, over and over again. She never screams. You’ve already won half the battle, if you don’t scream.
She’s wearing a dress, some silly confection of silk and lace for the Capitol cameras-the Capitol doesn’t want to look into her eyes and see only the bloodlust; they want someone they can love. But they will love me, Clove thinks and curls her fingers into Cato’s tuff of blonde hair, they will love me or I’ll rip out their hearts.
Her dress parts around his hands and he pushes up inside her. Oh, there is pain, so much pain. But she is a creature feed and dieted on pain, on cruelty, on knives pushes through skin. She thrives on it, and bites down into Cato’s shoulders, mouth drying over the fibers. She shoves pain aside. This is a Game, and she must play the Game. And she struggles and heaves and thrashes against him.
I’m the Victor. I’ve always been the Victor.
She claws her way back to his mouth, sinks in, all teeth and tongue and blood. Hers or his, she cannot tell. Does it matter? He closes one around her throat, not tight enough to choke but the intent is there. She left the indentations of her teeth on his arm, once, and now she leaves jagged red lines down the side of his face with her nails. She comes when he bites down hard enough on her lip to make it bleed.
And she comes without screaming, and grins with blood-stained teeth when he climaxes with a grunt inside her. Clove always wins.
Clove never misses. Not once. The knives are an extension of her will, and she’s only ever wanted a heart. She knows they’re watching, eyes on her and what she can do-smaller than the other Careers, but she’s faster, deadly, she possess a razor-edged quality, a desire to win but also a determination to win, winning is all that matters, all that’s ever mattered to her; if victory is the head of a pin, then she has been balancing on it with one toe all her life.
Cato slices the head off a dummy, revels in the stuffing pouring out of it, picks it up and blows it at the nearest Tribute. Your blood, he might be saying, won’t be half so fun, but will be so much sweeter. Later, he’ll leave hot, red markings up her thighs, pant against the shadowy junction between them and she’ll press his head there, but will not scream like he wants.
His eyes track to the other Tributes, takes them in, measures them. They’ve been trained to not only kill, but to demoralize, put on a show for everyone around them-who wants to fight a boy who can snap a neck in two, who wants to fight a girl who knives never miss a heart? Cato looks at each tribute and licks his lips, like a lion scenting fresh blood.
She doesn’t look. Why would she? They’re all just corpses, and she doesn’t have much use for corpses.
Cato kneels between her legs, one hand curved at the thin skin that stretches at the back of her knee. She has a long, jagged cut up her calf. His. Cato smiles fondly at the memory and traces its path with one, feather-light finger.
“I’m going to miss you when you’re dead,” he tells her.
Like a cat, Clove arches beneath him, up into him. Her smile curves like a knife blade along her mouth. “Funny,” she says, “I was about to tell you the same thing.”
He laughs, and it sounds like a rusty blade. He laughs when she pulls him down to her, and she tastes the bitter salt of it on her lips. She swallows it, and guides him inside her. The Capitol is an iridescent glow outside her window, and Clove winds her arms around his neck.
Tomorrow, Cato doesn’t look her way, doesn’t acknowledge her as his shoulder brushes by her head. Clove merely shrugs. Easier this way, she thinks. After all, hard to slit the throat of the guy you’re sleeping with.
Lover Boy and Girl on Fire might think playing to the audience’s sympathizes might win them the Game, but Clove knows better. The Capitol only cares about carnage, and she’ll give it to them in brilliant hues.
Crimson always looked best on her.
Cato jams his sword up into 7’s stomach, spilling hot blood on the bright green grass. A girl creeps up behind him, a knife in her hand.
You don’t know the first thing about knives, Clove thinks as she yanks the girl’s head back by the roots of her hair. She draws her knife across her throat, pressing down hard enough to feel it cut into muscle and bone. Blood rolls down her knuckles, drips off her palm. She reveals in it. She was trained for this, made for this, it’s a validation of her existence. She wipes the back of her hand across her mouth, and tastes the metallic tang of blood on her tongue.
When he comes in close enough, Clove presses a bloody hand to his shirt. It leaves a dark, wet stain at his abdomen. It won’t show up on the screen, perhaps, but it doesn’t really matter. This is not for the Capitol. This is for her.
“No one kills you but me,” she says.
And Cato smiles the only way he knows how. With all his teeth.
With her back propped against the log, Clove takes shots at the little lizard unfortunate enough to cross her path. Pop. Pop. Pop. Each land in the tiny, green body. Dark, sticky blood wets the moss beneath it.
To her right, the bitch from 2 offers up a tilling laugh. It’s enough to make Clove want to pull out her tongue. In the dark, cast in the red-orange shadows of the firelight, Clove smiles at the thought. The heels of her black boots dig into the soft earth, bedding down. Above her, she can feel the eyes of the Girl on Fire watching her. That makes her smile, too.
Glimmer laughs again, knees bumping against Cato’s as he leans one arm into her. Clove throws another knife. Pop. Another little lizard goes down.
Go on, she thinks, go on and keep smiling. Just keep smiling. That way you’ll look pretty for the cameras when he slices your throat.
She’s not so pretty when they circle back around after the Tracker Jackers, face puffy and bloated and purple, like a dried out fish left to bake on a rock.
Cato nudges her body with one boot. The bow Glimmer had been carrying-and being a general pathetic idiot with, in Clove’s opinion-is gone. Girl on Fire has a weapon now, but it only ignites Clove’s blood. Killing is fun, but only if there’s a challenge.
“Well,” Cato says. He glances over at Clove. “Saves me the trouble.”
And then fifteen years of training is suddenly left to flicker in the wind because it doesn’t have to be just one, it can be two. It can be her and Cato, standing up on that stage in the Capitol, in their finest, skin still gritty with the dirt of the arena. All or nothing, that’s what she’s taught. Live or die, her or them. But suddenly it can be her and him or them.
It’s the very first time Clove falters.
Cato looks at her. The muscles in his arms jump. He steps toward her.
She says, “Pity. I was looking forward to kicking your ass.”
They slide back into easy little slots. She is still the skinny, lethal little kid who left teeth marks on his arms. He’s still the tall, broad kid who’d dangle her feet above the ground just to prove to her that as tough as she is, he is always always always going to be tougher and stronger and better.
“You would have tried,” he tells her. And that’s the thing. She really would have.
“You feel like hunting?” he asks.
There’s something vicious in his eyes, and Clove likes it. She runs her tongue over her stained teeth.
“Always,” she says. “Let me have the Girl on Fire, though. I’ll make a good show of it.”
He’s like a wolf, still tensed muscles and a constant starvation lingering at the corners of his eyes. The first time she’d seen him, he’d been fighting nearly six years older than him in the training ring. He’d broken that kid’s back and she heard one of their mentors say, that boy’s gonna take all of it.
No, Clove had told herself, no I will, and you’re an idiot for not seeing what I can do. And she had gone to bed with her teeth tinged with the sharp, biting taste of him, with her mark on him, and imagining a million different ways for him to die.
His hand, a closed fist, brushes up against her cheek. “I know you will.”
She’s not even a foot off the ground, but she has the sensation of vertigo, and stares into the dark, dark eyes of the tribute from 11. And in his eyes she sees her reflection, as if for the first time. A skinny little girl with gnarled dark hair and a pale face and wide, wide eyes and a bloodied mouth.
Like that, years and years of training melts away. She’s not a Career anymore. She’s fifteen and she’s scared and she doesn’t want to die. Is that what it feels like for everyone else? For that stupid bitch Glimmer, for all those corpses in the Cornucopia? Did they know this feeling, at their end? She could vomit. She could vomit.
She’d always told herself they were corpses already, and what did she care about corpses? But they weren’t. They weren’t corpses until she made them, and she won’t be a corpse until this boy makes her one.
Stars burst in her eyes when the back of her head cracks against the metal wall of the Cornucopia. The Girl on Fire lays in the grass, mouth open. Clove thrashes. Oh, she wants to live. She wants to live so much. She didn’t realize what it meant, until now. They wanted a show, the Capitol needs blood and adventure and action, and she has always thought herself the star of it. But she’s not. They’ll get a kick out of this, the Career getting her face smashed in for a kill that wasn’t even hers.
“Cato!” she screeches. For the first time, she screams. She’s never screamed, no matter what was done to her-the broken arms or the broken ribs or the long gash up her legs; not a sound, not a single sound, because if you don’t scream, you’ve already won half the battle.
She screams. She screams for Cato. They could have won, but more importantly, they could have gone home. Clove hadn’t realized, until watching the sunlight reflect off the dark face of her death, that more than anything she wants to go home.
“Cato!”
Clove doesn’t feel the second time the back of her head hits the wall. Thresh has already made her a corpse.
Cato finds her in a pool of blood and brain matter, and tries to piece the fractured bits of her skull back together.
“Get up!” he screams at her, thinking dully that Clove always hates it when he screams-don’t scream, you idiot; they’ve already won if you scream-but he can’t stop. “Stay with me, Clove. Stay with me! You have to get up!”
Four to go. They were so close. So close. How can this be her, in this green little meadow with the Cornucopia passing a grey shadow over her? No one kills you but me, she had said, and who was going to kill him now?
He shakes her, over and over again, begging and pleading and swearing and crying. Blood rolls down, mingles with his tears, and leaves messy remains on her face below his. He can’t stop shaking her, telling her to wake up. She’s dead. She’s dead and dead and dead, but he can’t quite comprehend how or why or fully grasp her lifelessness.
Boom! goes the cannon, and there’s another dead. And Cato stares into Clove’s upturned face and realizes, like being doused in ice water, why he can’t seem to understand how she can be dead. Her eyes. They don’t look any different. She looks the same dead as she did alive.
Vomit rises up in an acidic wave, and he twists to the side and retches, shoulders heaving. She looks the same dead as she did alive. And he and Clove-they’re the same, two lethally sharp blades forged in the finest, hottest fire District 2 had to offer; he left his mark on her, and she left her mark on him because they’re the same.
Cato’s fingers move sideways, brush up against cracked knuckles. It’s wrong, he thinks, there should be a knife. She’s never gone anywhere without a knife. He turns his head, forces himself to look into her alive-but-dead face. If he kissed her, would he notice a difference? He can’t force himself to find out, and wonders if while he lays in the bloody grass if he looks dead-if anyone could tell the different between her and him, her death and his life?
We’ve been corpses all along.