Never Yours (Peeta Mellark X Reader)

Chapter 16--Healing and Helping

YOUR POV

The fire in front of you crackled and glowed a bright orange in the night as the six of you gathered, all of you on the lookout for any incoming tributes or animals coming by. Glimmer took this time to take stock of the remaining arrows; you and Clove sharpened your knives; Marvel was toasting up a rabbit that you managed to kill; Pearl was asleep; and Cato...well, Cato was sitting far away from the group, looking up at the tree Peeta was stuck in, a wistful look on his face.

Looking up briefly from the knife in your hand, your eyes landed on Cato watching Peeta, and your heart immediately gave a pang through your body. Time in the Capitol may not have reshaped everyone's confidence and weakened them, but it changed a lot of the tributes, and right now you saw Cato turn from a monster bad-boy supreme to someone vulnerable, someone...not exactly helpless, but more materialistic. In a flash you remembered what Peeta told you before the reaping--that he didn't want the Capitol to change him. Funny, because you did, a whole lot of people did...

"I don't know if I can keep up with this image," Cato's words floated back to you.

Slowly, you got up and approached Cato, leaving your knives with Clove, and sat beside him as you looked up at Peeta, still in the tree.

"Me too," you whispered, not daring to glance at Cato right beside you.

"Oh. Hey," he whispered back, turning to you with not very much of a smile on his face.

You sighed as you turned to Cato, biting your lip. "Well, you've seen him now. Do you regret making that promise to me? That he and I...that we'd be back together?"

"I don't know how this is going to work without any of the other Careers suspecting anything," Cato eventually admitted, turning back to the other Career tributes. "All I told them was that I wouldn't hurt you, should you join us. But I didn't tell them the other part about you going back to Peeta." He sighed as he looked down at your hand, and inched his hand over so that the side of his hand was just touching yours. "They'd suspect I'd go too far with you. But...I have to."

You raised an eyebrow, praying that at this moment the cameras were turned away. "Cato, what you're doing is actually pretty admirable. Rarely has any Career tribute helped out a tribute not from their district. But why are you doing this? I know you care but--"

"I told you," Cato murmured. "They see me as a potential victor. I'm a killer, (Y/N). But back in the past, I was only a citizen of District 2. My life wasn't only filled with training for the Games, you know. I had a family back home, I had friends, I had people who care." There suddenly came a noise as he whipped his head to the side, as if he sensed an animal or tribute come by, but then he shrugged it off. "They didn't want me to give up on them--to keep being strong. But...it's impossible. I'm just me. I'm just...Cato. I'm not a monster." Here, he moved his hand further so that it overlapped yours, tears threatening to spill down his face.

Cato's hand over yours made you experience a wash of pity, and you too had to wipe your eyes from the welling tears. "It's kind of strange, but Peeta said the same thing to me too. Back in District 12 before the reaping...he said he didn't want to die not being him. That he would die a citizen of 12, not a killing machine who has been blinded by the need to get out the arena alive." This immediately sparked your anger again at the Capitol for having to create this kind of torture, and funny enough, Cato thought the exact same thing.

"If only there was a better way to punish us than these Games!" he finally muttered angrily, picking up a couple leaves beside him and crumbling them in his fist into smaller leaf pieces, throwing them down on the ground again harshly. "It's just sick. The fact that everyone had to show up here, trained or not, to fight against each other as if WE were the enemies, as if WE were never together to fight against the Capitol--"