TWENTY FIVE -
Stay with me.
Stay with me, Clove.
You're gonna be okay.
There is a mattress of dead leaves beneath me when I wake. My fingers reach out, skeletal grey-green foliage crumbling under their touch. My head hurts, the skin of my brow tight. When I try to open my left eye, a sharp pain flashes above it, prickling my forehead. I smell blood.
I'm sprawled across the forest floor, staring up at the canopy with my one good eye. Light is slowly fading, creeping towards dusk. For a moment, I'm completely disorientated. Then a blurry stream of pictures seeps into my head. The feast. Katniss and I battling on the grass. I almost had her. Almost. Until Thresh had me. The sound of his cannon echoes in my ears, his body slumped at my feet with the spear lodged into his chest.
Cato killed him. He saved my life.
I struggle to sit up, dislodging the second jacket draped over me like a blanket. It's the same burgundy red as my own, made up of enough fabric that I could probably wear it as a dress. I prop myself up against the tree beside me and take my surroundings. Cato must have set up camp here whilst I was out – there's a new fire pit, smoking faintly, the spear still flecked with Thresh's dried blood discarded next to it. Our packs are open and spewing their meagre contents across the dirt. But there's no sign of him.
"Cato?" I call out tentatively, wincing at the raspy sound of my voice working its way from my throat. I sound like a worker who's been smoking cigars and breathing in quarry dust for the past twenty years. The hacking coughs that follow bring my District partner hurtling into the clearing, sword swinging at his hip.
"Clove!" He collapses to his knees beside me, pulling me close and burying his face in my hair. "You scared the hell out of me." I sink into his arms, relief flooding through my bones. He's been near water, shirt clinging to his skin where it's splashed him, and as soon as he disentangles himself from my hold he thrusts a canteen into my hands. I raise the bottle to my lips, drinking steadily until the parched, desert feeling clears my throat.
"I'm okay, I'm alive." I mumble, and though my voice sounds much better my left eye is still squinted against the pain across my forehead. Though Thresh never managed to carry out his true intention, the rock still must have glanced off my brow as he went down. I reach up gingerly towards the wound, but Cato grabs my hand between his own, frowning at me.
"Don't touch it, you'll make it worse." He scolds. He reaches into the pocket of his trousers and pulls out a small tin. On unscrewing the lid, I notice that it's some kind of ointment or cream, pale sickly green in colour. "Sidonia sent us this for it and it seems to be working. You're probably due another dose soon anyway." Cato glares up at the fast oncoming darkness as if it might indicate a time, but the sun's rise and fall seems to have been all over the place during the last couple of days in the Games. I'm not sure what constitutes a day anymore. I can't even figure out how long we've been in the arena.
"So, how long was I out this time?" I mutter darkly, but Cato just squeezes my hand, brushing his thumb repeatedly across my skin. Somehow, it must neutralise my expression.
He gives me a small smile. "The feast was this morning so less than a day, but you still had me worried. I wasn't sure how bad the damage was going to be." He fixes me with a solemn gaze. "I thought I was too late. When you blacked out I wasn't sure whether you were ever going to wake up again. I carried you back here to check up on you, and as soon as I was sure you were still breathing okay the parachute showed up." He holds up the small container.
"Guess you've managed to earn a spot in Sidonia's good books. Cato – the only Hadley Sidonia Reyes will happily agree isn't a grade A jerk." I joke, motioning with my hands to form a banner in the air between us.
Cato rolls his eyes but scoots up closer to me. I lay my head in his lap and let the events of the day evaporate from my skull. The thrill of overcoming Katniss, her body pinned beneath my feet, the knife heading for her throat. Every second made me feel invincible. Like a ruthless queen. Somebody who deserved to wear the victor's crown on their head. And then Thresh plucked me into the air like a rag doll. The thought of it sends a shudder racing through my body and I hear the splintering crack of rock against bone in my head.
"Clove?" Cato's hand comes up to brush my shoulder. "You good?"
I mumble assent, and he presses a soft kiss to my temple in return. It's almost impossible to believe how gentle he can be, when he wants to be. Over the past couple of weeks I've quickly come to realise that whatever emotion Cato has, the dial is flipped to one hundred without any chance of turning it down. Pride, melancholy, rage. Love. He feels everything in its highest form possible. Perhaps others see it as a defect, but I think it might be the reason I've always been so drawn to him.
Thresh's face appears in the sky that night, and I have to force myself through the special delivery Capitol meal Sidonia has sent down to us via the second parachute of the day. Every bite makes me feel sick to my stomach, but I'm ravenous and need to keep my strength up if Cato and I want to have any chance at hunting down the final three tomorrow morning. It's only the two from 12 and Finch left now, and however clever the redhead girl might be she's still unarmed.
It's becoming more and more likely that the final battle of the 74th Hunger Games will be between the two pairs of star-crossed lovers. I bet the crowds in the Capitol are wild for it, placing money on their favourite couple to win.
And it will be us. Cato and I are going home. We will bring a pair of crowns back to District 2.
After Cato applies a fresh coat of medicine to the cut across my forehead, we finally get round to taking a look at what's in the pack we retrieved. With me out for the count for most of the day, Cato tells me he'd completely forgotten about the pack in favour of fretting over whether I'd live to see it's contents or not.
When he tips the bag, two rolls of strange material tumble out onto the leaves. Folded piles of tightly knit mesh, the same pale shade as my skin. I reach out and pull the smallest set towards me, opening it up to reveal a tough jumpsuit, designed to cover neck to ankle. Body armour.
Beside me, Cato opens up his own gift, scoffing in amazement. "Come on, you've got to be kidding me Reyes." He mutters to himself, grin spreading across his face. The one thing we required desperately doesn't heal or nourish. And it's become frighteningly clear that we didn't really need anything at all.
° ° ° ° °
For the next two days, it rains. Relentlessly. Lakes are gathering in my boots and my clothes are soaked through, hair matted in a dark tangle and sticking to my neck. Even when Cato and I manage to find ourselves a spot to camp – a tiny alcove beneath a jutting canopy of rock – the storm seems determined to drown us. We prop ourselves against the stones, knees pulled up to our chests as we eat leftovers from Sidonia's parachute meals. Both of us are adamant that hunting in such weather would be impossible, however much we're itching to track down the last few tributes and jump on that train, so instead we try to keep ourselves amused with more stories from back in 2.
Cato tells me about his uncle's wedding, and how him and Aviva managed to trip the bride on her way up the stairs by stepping on the train of her dress. I can imagine the two of them as little kids, the young blonde boy with oceans in his eyes and the tiny girl with her red hair in two braids chasing after him. The thought makes me smile – perhaps Cato's childhood wasn't just filled with senseless bullying after all.
There's no doubt that Darius Hadley's quest for glory has ripped through that family like one of his famous arrows, picking off anybody too weak to hold up its stellar reputation, but maybe there's a chance that Cato might escape with some shred of reality left in him. And something tells me he might not have been so lucky if I hadn't come to Games too.
At nightfall, and with the sky empty of tributes, Cato helps me apply the last of the medicine to my forehead. It's pretty much healed up, and I'm able to open my eye fully, though if I move my face in a certain way it still sends a sharp jolt of pain behind my brow. I try to be careful of the expressions I use but it's difficult when Cato seems to be one of the only people able to bring out the silly side of me.
I take first shift on watch, knives braced in my hands as torrential rain continues to fall around our camp. It's unlikely anybody is going to ambush us in this – finding another tribute during a storm of this scale would be a mission in itself – but Cato and I both agree it's better to be safe than sorry. At first I manage to keep busy, chewing on some mint leaves and swigging water from my canteen. But every crack of thunder has the image of Thresh holding the rock above my head burning into my mind, until I'm curled up in a ball and rocking back and forth slowly under the sheeting rain, tears streaming from my eyes.
At some point the crying, the thunder or both must wake Cato, and he's pulling my shivering body back beneath the shelter of the rock. I'm soaked and freezing and still choking on the panicked sobs leaving my throat. I feel like my chest is trying to cave itself inwards, squeezing against my lungs until I can't breathe.
I almost died. I almost died.
"Stay with me Clove, you're okay. You're safe, he's gone. He can't hurt you anymore." Cato. His words repeatedly whispered into my ear, and his arms curled around me like a shield slowly help to loosen the knot in my ribcage. Gradually, my breathing returns to normal.
Ironically, for someone so prone to blind rage, Cato is incredibly talented at calming me down.
AUTHOR'S NOTE -
As if I would kill off Clove when she has so much more to accomplish in the next two books! Come on guys I'm not that evil :P Also I don't like this because it's filler but we're almost at the enddddddd :') I'm SO GODDAMN EXCITED to write this ending I don't think you understand. Either way I hope you enjoyed even though it's short a fillerish :// Much love - Vee x