The doctors stay silent as they lead him through the door they just entered from.
Immediately, they start bustling about, pulling what must be a hundred items off various shelves and out of a multitude of drawers.
One of the doctors gestures for Cato to put Clove on one of the two beds in the small makeshift hospital.
Reluctantly, he places her down on the nearest bed. He stays close, right by her side. He doesn't trust anyone else is this room.
The obviously Capitol doctor re-enters the room and heads straight towards Clove.
She is middle aged with her dark grey hair slicked back into a high ponytail. Curls sit stiffly at the back of her neck and more are plastered to the sides and top of her head.
Her face is powdery white. Under the bright fluorescent lighting, she looks translucent. Her eyeliner is silver and her eyelashes long and spindly and a shade of purple Cato can only describe as disgusting.
Her lips are silver and lined with purple and her eyebrows match perfectly. There is nothing appealing about this woman whatsoever. But Clove needs help.
She shoos Cato away and the other doctors quickly surround the bed.
Not a single word is uttered.
The room is silent. Cato can feel the minutes slipping through his fingers as he paces around the room. He sticks as close to the bed as he can.
The tries to get a glimpse of Clove but the doctors have their heads bent over and are rubbing all sorts of ointments onto the wound.
He wants to scream. He wants to scream in frustration, wants to throws a chair, knock everything off the shelves, throw one of the doctors across the room.
But he keeps pacing.
These people are Clove's only hope.
Finally, they wrap some bandages tightly around her middle and step away. Cato can't help but assume that the world will be entirely different when he steps off the plane since the doctors took around a thousand years.
The doctors turn and scatter, returning to whatever they were doing before the craft landed.
The purple - lashed lady looks at Cato, "She'll be as good as new in a few days. She should wake up any minute now."
The words sound strange to him after the room being silent for so long but he nods anyway.
Clove's eyes are still closed. Her chest is rising and falling slowly and Cato thinks this is the first time he's ever seen her look so peaceful.
The lady walks away and starts typing something rapidly into a screen attached to the wall. But Cato doesn't care. Because all he can think right now is 'please wake up'.
Despite there being 5 other people in the room, Cato suddenly feels so desperately and achingly alone.
He realises he misses 2.
He misses jokingly taunting Clove at the Acadamy.
He misses the Hunger Games only being a fantasy. He misses it only being a dream. Something that he could only imagine.
But now he doesn't get to only imagine.
He can still feel the blood on his hands. Can still hear the snapping of bones and the boom of the cannon.
He's proud he won for his district. Even if the weaklings from 12 survived too. He's proud. He's always been taught to be proud.
Proud of killing.
Winning the Hunger Games has been something he has always dreamed of. It's what he trained his whole life for. So it's incredible.
It's disgusting.
He's proud. He won.
But at what cost?
YOU ARE READING
We Could Have Been Great
FanfictionWhat if Cato and Clove had survived? What if there had been four victors instead of two? Snow's empire was built to fall. This time there is no way for Snow to land on top. But who will fall with him?
