"It takes a few moments to find Cato in the dim light, in the blood. Then the raw hunk of meat that used to be my enemy makes a sound, and I know where his mouth is. And I think the word he's trying to say is please."

-The Hunger Games, pgs. 340 - 341

Convergence

Katniss watches Cato fall with a sort of detached acknowledgement of what awaited him below.

A survivor by nature, she would've expected to feel some sort of satisfaction over defeating a top rival within the Games. But any shred of emotion has utterly abandoned her as she stands there, watching, hands tight around the smooth silver of the bow. There is nothing but a yawning pit of emptiness there, deep down in her heart. It should bother her, she thinks, the lack of emotion she has. Instead, she watches the boy who loved to kill fall to the mutts who wait to kill him.

Predators hunt in packs, after all.

And Cato finds his way to the eager jaws of a larger pack.

It's his armor that slowly becomes his undoing. Cato fights the best he can, but Career or not, he is still only human.

He counts the bites carved into his flesh after the mutts inevitably overwhelm him. Each one is a punishing reminder of everything he failed to do, the physical pain on par with the mental pain he inflicts upon himself. He beats himself up mentally as the mutts do their best to shred his body to pieces. Their whining and growling grows more rapid and frantic as they continue their assault on his limbs, bloodlust frenzy soaring to greater heights as they struggle to tear the armor from his body. Their teeth gnaw away stubbornly, undaunted by the protective gear that works as a barricade against the full strength of their bite. His precious armor has sentenced him to a slow, brutal, bloody death.

The mutts set upon his right arm gleefully when the armor covering it finally gives way. They taunt him with their fangs, running their salivary lips and yellowed teeth over the surface of his skin. Their breath smells like dead flesh and innocence and they strike with their bites without warning. It only takes a couple of direct gores from their teeth before they have Cato crying out in agony. The sound of his voice, worn raw and stinking of despair, excites them further and renews their desperation to rip apart the rest of the armor. Cato screams and screams and screams.

He screams until all that's left of his voice has been whittled down to match what's left of his arm. It's then, and only then, does he finally reach his limit.

"Please," he begs, asking for the mercy that he wouldn't have given her if their situations were reversed. He knows she knows this, knows he would have left her to die slowly and painfully while he celebrated atop the Cornucopia. He knows he doesn't deserve to ask, but he cannot stop himself from pleading for the small act of kindness only she can give him.

"Please…"

Cato has lost, and Katniss has won.

"Please!"

As Katniss readies her arrow, Cato, first in everything he has done in life, has had enough. His heart beats once, twice, and then comes to a halt.

As the cannon booms over the arena, instead of the mercy kill she intended, Katniss's arrow hits the mutt that was about to bite off Cato's head.

Peeta, lying in a pool of growing blood, attempts to staunch the blood flow. He lifts the cloth to inspect his wound, winches, and replaces the bandage. At the sound of the cannon, he jerks his head up and asks, "Katniss, that cannon...does that mean…?"

Katniss is standing at the edge of the Cornucopia, overlooking the sight below. Her body, rigid with anxious energy, doesn't ease its tension. She turns her head over her shoulder and Peeta glimpses a vulnerability in her eyes. Her relief that it's over, finally all over, is clear and Peeta realizes just how much she worked to hold it together.

"The mutts are leaving— Cato's dead," she tells him. The words are matter-of-fact, disconnected from any emotion.

Peeta struggles to rise, and Katniss rushes over to help him stand. "Don't overdo it," she says. "You don't have the tourniquet for your leg anymore."

He offers her a faint smile. "Well, good thing we are going home. With some help from your mother, I'm sure I'll be fixed up in no time." She wordlessly agrees.

Katniss and Peeta struggle their way down the ledge, completely exhausted. The stress and fatigue of the Games has taken its toll on them, and it shows. When they reach the ground, Peeta's body is shaking so badly that he has to sit down immediately. Katniss sits down too and leans against him, all too aware that the camera is still on them as they stare at Cato's body a short distance away. The fallen Career is crumbled on the ground, covered in gore. His ravaged armor is somewhat intact around his abdomen, but completely destroyed in other areas. The blood splashed over it, however, cannot be missed.

"You killed him before the mutts could?"

Katniss shakes her head. "No, the cannon went off just as I took the shot. I ended up hitting one of the mutts instead."

The blond glances down at his mangled leg, feeling the push push push of blood leaving his body far too quickly for it to possibly be alright. "If they could do this to me with only one bite, I don't want to imagine how he felt down here with them for all that time. Nobody deserves that. Even him."

"I don't want to think about it," she tells him, shuddering.

The two stare straight ahead into the waiting cameras they cannot see but know are there, and wait for the Games to officially end.

The gamemakers are in an uproar and there is nothing Seneca Crane can do about it. With President Snow undoubtedly watching, Crane's anxiety heightens as he tries to regain control of a Game that has started to crumble from the moment the girl from 12 volunteered.

Some controllers watch the monitors, mystified, as the two tributes who remain from District 12 refuse to kill one another. Crane's grand finale, his triumph and key to regain President Snow's approval, has turned against him and he is at a loss of what to do. His rattled thoughts on how to possibly fix this mess all bleed into each other, and there's no doubt in his mind that he's officially screwed.

Snow may still be at the mansion, but it doesn't take Crane much to imagine what he say if he were here now. "Just what are you going to do, Seneca?" echoes the voice of President Snow in his head, his phantom figure twirling a soft white rose between the tips of his fingers. "What will you to do?"

Two victors.

No victors.

Each option terrible and damning.

He hurriedly debates the merits of both, watching as the monitor displays Katniss and Peeta reaching for nightlock-flavored suicide. Dying together would cause an uproar larger than Snow will ever tolerate, but granting them both their lives could spark even bigger problems across Panem. It was just too hard to say. Sweat trickles in greasy lines down his forehead, leaving trails on his cheeks and puddling in his beard.

Two victors, he decides, are better than no victors at all, and presses the loudspeaker to stop the pair just in time. The control room is deadly quiet after his announcement, an unspeakable feeling of dread creeping around the room and spreading from person to person like a disease. Two victors for the Hunger Games? It's too dangerous for them to even begin to comprehend.

The Head Gamemaker draws out a rumbled handkerchief and blots his face. The cloth smears the sweat around but doesn't do much to help. He nearly jumps out of his skin as an assistant informs him that President Snow is on the hologram phone and it would be in his best interest not to keep him waiting.

"Two victors you have given me," states Snow's hologram on the call monitor. "Two."

Crane blots his forehead again and rushes to answer. "I know it's unheard of sir, but how could a Hunger Games not have a victor? It would create—"

"Martyrs," Snow interrupts. "You would have given me a pair of martyrs."

"I know sir, that's why I thought it would be best to act as quickly as I did to stop them."

"So instead," Snow thunders in his quiet way, "You've given Panem hope. Have you forgotten what we've discussed about hope?"

"Of course not, sir!" Crane reassures him anxiously. "But I—"

An assistant gamemaker approaches Seneca Crane again, skin pale and face drawn. "Sir?" she calls to him, but Crane waves her away as if she were an obnoxious gnat. "Not now, can't you see I'm busy?" he reprimands her in his high pitched way. "I'm sorry, President Snow."

Snow doesn't raise his voice an octave above normal, but he doesn't really need to in order for his words to carry the weight he places behind them. "Two victors, Crane. You better—"

"Sir?"

This time Snow is the one interrupted as the assistant gamemaker tries again to deliver her message. She hops slightly back and forth from one anxious foot to another, a nervous bird in many respects, and hopes she lives to see tomorrow after this. Snow finally turns his unfeeling gaze onto her, Crane babbling nonsense in the background.

The President stares her down, his eyes glinting dangerously as he asks, "Just what is so important, miss?"

The assistant gamemaker squirms under such a stare and her voice comes out as nothing more than a squeak. She gulps, attempting to regain some composure, and points in the direct of the monitors. Clustered around them are the rest of the gamemakers, slack jawed expressions splattered all over their faces.

"It's the male tribute from District 2," she manages to get out. "It's his heart. It started back up—" and her voice grinds to a halt as she sees the look Snow has on his face. The screen with the tribute's picture has the words 'ALIVE' glowing underneath, the tracker in Cato's body verifying that the boy was indeed back among the living. For Crane, it's the affirmation of a nightmare that he did not believe could possibly get worse.

"What do we do, sir? We already have the retrieval team out there right now with the District 12 tributes and every television station is streaming this nationwide."

Snow looks to the monitor that shows Katniss, the girl who has already caused him so much trouble, speaking with the retrieval team and gesturing towards Peeta, who is still on the ground. The second monitor shows a body covered in battered, bloody armor and a boy that should be dead but isn't.

"Leave him there," Snow orders. "Don't bother with him. And for heaven's sake, don't let the rest of the nation find out."

Crane protests, still in a state of shock at the further worsening of his already perilous situation. "But his chest. You can see it rising and falling."

The Head Gamemaker is silenced with a look from Snow. "He has already been declared dead, hasn't he, Seneca? How much does it matter if he died a few minutes ago or in a few moments from now? Dead is dead, and that tribute is dead. Do you understand me?"

Crane gulps. "Yes sir. No treatment."

"Don't mess this up, you fool. Your stupidity has caused enough trouble already," Snow says softly. "If you tell Panem that the District 2 tribute is still alive, it will only further destroy the entire purpose of this event. The Hunger Games has only one victor and you have already botched that up. Keep your idiotic mouth shut for once in your life and let that boy die."

Crane has enough sense to close his mouth and obey his President.

As the medical team gets ready to load Peeta onto the hovercraft, Katniss does some hovering of her own. "He is going to be fine, right?" she asks, and nods her head along to their reassuring replies. She won't believe them until Peeta is out of the arena and in a hospital, getting the help he so desperately needs. She wants them to put Peeta back together and then they'll get the hell out of the Capitol and away from Snow. Going back to District 12 isn't any safer—there is no place in Panem safe from a government that makes a show out of children killing children—but at least it's familiar and that's all Katniss wants right now.

At the thought of home, Katniss instinctively reaches up to touch the mockingjay pin that has never left her since she started the Games. Her heart thuds heavily when she finds it missing. She unzips her battered jacket and runs her hands across the empty, glaring space where the pin once sat.

Noticing her frantic movements, Peeta calls to her, "What's wrong?"

"It's my pin—my mockingjay pin. It's gone."

Despite being strapped to a gurney and clucked at by the medics for moving, Peeta still attempts to lift his body and glance around the arena for the missing pin, as if he could find it. "Did it fall off when we were fighting Cato?"

Uncertainly flashes across her face. "Maybe. I'll look over there," she tells him, and heads back over to the Cornucopia before anyone can stop her. The cameras zoom in to follow her path, catching the little clouds of dust that rise up from her footsteps to cover her boots. The dirt settles and sticks in random patterns on top of drying blood that cakes the leather.

Katniss passes by the mutt she killed, her arrow wedged deep within the soft tissue of its brain. The creature died with its mouth open in a snarl, ropes of bloodied saliva hanging from its teeth. The grotesque sight reminds her on some level of Clove.

She finds her pin moments later, half submerged in a damp pool of sticky blood that oozes out from Cato's mangled arm. Bending to retrieve it brings her far closer to the face of her rival than she would have liked, and she can't ignore the stillness of his body. Cato was always so quick to act, always in motion. Seeing him lying on the ground, his endless energy finally snuffled out, disturbs her more than she would have thought.

"Victor Everdeen, hurry!" One of the medics calls out to her, eager to leave the arena behind. Katniss draws herself up, the pin clutched safely in her hand, and gives the broken form of Cato one last look. The brutal way he died will haunt her for some time to come, but she's not sad that her enemy is gone. It was his life or hers, after all. One of them had to take the fall in the end. Better it be him.

Katniss turns away, ready to leave, but something draws her gaze back. Later on, as they're getting ready to pull the three of them from the arena, she regrets whatever made her take a second look at the boy whose never given her a reason to. As much as she'll go over it again and again in her head, she'll never be able to pinpoint what exactly makes her turn back. It could have been the slight rise of his chest, drawing air raggedly into his lungs, that catches her attention. Maybe not. All that matters is that she looks back, and what she sees causes her to stop.

Impatient with waiting for her to return, the medics appear to retrieve Katniss. They fuss at her, telling her to leave the corpse alone and to come along with them. But Katniss, unable to stop herself from confirming what she suspects, places her finger along the side of Cato's neck.

There is a pulse.

With the cameras fixated on her every movement, the words fight their way out before she can decide whether or not it's best to keep them in.

"His heart, it's still beating."

The sentence slips out, unbidden, sliding past the lips of a girl who cannot understand how such a brutal boy could still have his life when so many other tributes had theirs ripped away. No second chances for them.

Panem erupts from the announcement, and President Snow finds himself with three victors.

Seneca Crane finds himself very much dead.

::

Originally posted on 3/29/2012. Edited on 12/3/2015 and 5/11/2017 for grammar and sentence structure.