18 DAYS

Chapter 20: The Last fight.

DAY 17

Panting and gasping to catch his breath as sweat pours off his purplish face, Cato leaps onto the Cornucopia scaling it on his hands and feet. Despite his wound and the mutts right on his heels, he still manages to thrown himself up the horn. Twelve struggling to follow him, Cato vulnerably falls to his side, gagging over the edge. Now would be Katniss' chance to finish him off. One arrow, and he is a goner. Worthening his situation, the pain and grief make him doze off. In his feaver, Cato sees wheat, water, a cave, and eyes. Covered by the roaring of animals. It was a dream of hunting, prey where survival of the fittest reigned. 

At some point it felt like the growling is getting closer, finally reaching to tear him appart. Mouth watering fangs. Consciousness bleeding into reality Cato doubles over with cramps harshly pulling at his fresh wound. Terror grappling at his skin. Realizing he is still in the arena and that the sounds were nothing but real, Cato pulls back so fast he almost tumbles off the Cornucopia into the mutts.

« Can they climb ? » He was terrified. He was tired. He wanted to go home. He wanted to die.

"What?" Katniss shouts at Cato.

"He said, 'Can they climb it?'" answers Peeta.

Twelve had taken advantage of Cato's panick attack to make it onto the Cornucopia. But the relief was brief - the mutts have began a new assault. Splitting into two groups at the sides of the horn and using their powerful hindquarters to launch themselves at the small group. Seeing that, Cato instinctively crawsl further up the Cornucopia to a point where he feels the creatures can't reach him. Soon he is twenty feet above the ground. While Peeta and Katniss struggle with the mutts lower down, still afraid to climb up with him, there is a fleeting moment in the chaos. Distracting him. It's the sound of twelve catching on for the second time since dawn appeared

"What is it, Katniss?" , Peeta shouts.

"It's them. It's all of them. The others. Rue and Foxface and ... all of the other tributes,"

Cato hears Peeta's gasp of recognition. "What did they do to them? You don't think ... those could be their real eyes?"

Of course it could be their real eyes. Why hadn't he thought of that? Her beautiful brown eyes. Torn from her face, already rotting in the mud of District Two. A thought crosses his mind. He could jump. No matter how weird to sacrifice for people he hate, he could just do that and let the star-crossed lovers go home. But a feeling washes over him. Not rage like everytime he thought of the girl on fire. But rather an indescribable sadness. So full, so all encompassing. It bleeds everywhere, paints all the world. And he wants them to see it. To taste his tears and take them into victory. Carry his sorrow around for life as they had stolen his from him.

"Kill it, Peeta! Kill it!", Katniss shouts. 

It's taking all their strength to keep both tributes of Twelve on the curved back of the horn. They are distracted. Katniss is able to haul Peeta back onto the Cornucopia, dragging themselves toward the top where Cato guess he has become the lesser of two evils. He still hasn't regained his feet, but his breathing is slowing. Focused by a plan his brain put into motion without his approval, trying to recover in order to enact it as soon as the opportunity offers itself. 

Each time Katniss arms her bow, it sends a chill down his spin. Wondering when she'll turn one hit against him rather than at the wolves. Death has always been his companion, but never quite this literaly. The window comes when an arrow ends up taking out a mutt that can only be Thresh. As soon as Katniss breathes out with relief, thinking she is safe from the hounds, Cato jerks Peeta from her side.

Almost at the lip of the horn, he holds the baker boy into an headlock, cutting off his air. Last time he held someone like that was Thresh, but Peeta's neck was much more fragile. Like dried seawood. Desperatly clawing at Cato's arm, he is too weak, too fixated on inhaling and filling his ribcage than fighting the giant off. 

When Katniss turns around to witness the kidnaping, her face breaks into determined fear. Wincing with her incapacity to reach her loverboy, she is still ready to shoot Cato in the blink of an eye. But he can see her hesitates. From the race in the forest earlier, Katniss figured out he is wearing a chest armor.

When her bow lifts to his face, the boy from Two just laughs: "Shoot me and he goes down with me."

If she takes him out and he falls to the mutts, Peeta is sure to die with him. Simirarly, Cato can't kill Peeta without guaranteeing an arrow in his brain. What she doesn't know is that he doesn't really mind the second outcome. But he doesn't inform her of that quite yet, because he wants her to listen to him first. 

It's his moment. Perhaps his last. Like a condemned prisoner's last meal, a customary ritual preceding execution. Last time to speak, to make his side of the story heard. Her side of the story, he had to say something to make her life matter. So that when the star-crossed lovers would get to go home when she didn't, they'd see his ghost appears in the dark of their closed eyelids. Reapeating these words until the end of time. 

"Go on, shoot me. And he goes down with me and you win. Go on. I'm dead anyway."

It was true. When he reached the top of the horn, Cato had lifted his armor to check his wounds. Clove claws' had penetrated under the lining, digging into his stomach turning his gust upside down. He was going to die, medical help or not. There was no doubting that. But it was more than that. 

"I always was, right? I just couldn't tell until now. How's that?" 

Now that he was staring at death in the eyes, he realizes it had been staring at him all along. From the moment his teachers had decided he would volunteer for the 74th Hunger Games, from the moment Katniss had volunteered for her sister. Not it went beyond that. His entire life Cato had been raised to be a victor, to bring pride to his family and district. Move into one of those houses in the victor's village of District Two and endorse the legacy of the Capitol. But the legacy of Panem was build on dead children. And Cato was just another 17 year-old-boy that had stepped into a century long war as the hero of a cleverly build propaganda film. Somehow they had made him forgot he was also another slave, because there was no pride in dying for your slaver. He thought he was fighting for his people, but really its death they wanted. Because the horror of him killing and dying for Panem would work better to scare the district back into submission than the life of another District Two winner ever would.

"Is that want they want? Huh? I can still do this you know, just one more kill. Because it's all I ever knew, to bring pride to my district, not that matters..."

Clove and him were plotlines in the life of Katniss Everdeen, because the girl on fire had found a way to change her story. Rage pumping inside ever pore of his fever hot skin, Cato had been squeezing at Peeta throat, turning his lips blue. The boy was dying from asphyxiation, but Cato was smiling. Not because he was killing the kid that took everything from him, he couldn't feel it. He couldn't feel anything anymore. The lower part of his body had gone numb. But truly it was his mind that was already gone. In his last moments, he really couldn't make sense of anything anymore.

When Peeta makes a deliberate X on the back of Cato's hand, he realizes what it means exactly one second after Katniss does. Slowly, his smile drops from his lips. He had more to say, but the arrow is arleady piercing his hand. Hitting the last functionning nerves in his body, pulling a last cry out of his lips. 

For a moment, it feels as it Cato might take Peeta with him. But as he loses his footing on the blood-slick horn, Katniss dives forward just catching ahold of Peeta before Cato plummets to the ground. Alone. The grass isn't so far away, but it feels like falling for hours. Diving off a cliff like a bird grasping at warm airstream. But all Cato's wings find is the hard ground knocking the air out of his body on impact.