Disclaimer: I don't own the Hunger Games. Obviously.

It isn't the sort of building at which one ends up accidentally. The Training Academy, rather, is too abrasive with its striking size and stone exterior, too disconcerting with the brutality of its interior, to even feign friendliness. Its walls, walls of weapons which would leave even the most accomplished of collectors drowning in waves of envy, hold nothing unrelated to killing, maybe maiming (blatant torture, unfortunately, is frowned upon) - spears, knives, swords, throwing stars, and the like. Rows of doomed dummies stand in stoic anticipation of their inevitable demise and replacement on the padded floor of each gym.

Coherent words rarely cluster the air around their black plush bodies. There's a certain cacophony, to be sure, but it is instead composed of grunts, pants, and perhaps the occasional growled threat or warning, the sharp censure or praise of a trainer (it doesn't matter the mood of the message; somehow the tone remains unchanged). The Academy is not a place well suited for chatter, whether it be mindless or deep. It's thrashing and throwing. It's stealth and silent plotting. It's the fresh blood stains that smirk up at the District Two trainees from the floor.

Clove, personally, has yet to find a place homier.

Or maybe had would be a better way of putting that. As in past tense. As in when she could take advantage of the Academy's bloody terseness and behave as anti-socially as she liked.

As in before her trainer, Calliope, pulled her aside to inform that she was one of the few being assigned a fucking training partner due to her apparently "poor socialization skills."

Clove scowls. She happens to be quite fond of those.

For once, it's not a relief to enter the gym. For once, it's all that she can do not to storm right back out. The dagger sheathed against her thigh (in direct violation of the Academy's warnings against trainee possession of outside weapons within its walls) almost itches, goading her to do so, to storm back into Calliope's office and use it to erase the woman's words by cleanly slicing the older, clearly cracked, woman's tongue off, leaving her a mute mess incapable of reissuing the order. Clove doesn't do this, of course, for a number of reasons, the least of which being that such behavior would probably do more to prove Calliope's whole speech about the dangers of her 'misanthropic approach to life' and 'inability to collaborate with others' than anything else that she can possibly think of. Anyway, she'd hate to lose the dagger that technically should be laying on her bedside table, rather than sliding against the pale skin of her leg in a comforting leather-clad, embrace.

Honestly, though, as if this plan is going to help her. If they think that forcing her to spend her beloved training time with Cato Ludwig, of all the brawny, brainless idiots out there, is going to be anything other than a precursor for murder, then she's given far too much credit to the Academy's intelligence over the years.

Cato Ludwig. It doesn't take her furious ice blue eyes long to locate him. She may have spent the years cultivating the inconspicuousness of a particularly poisonous breed of wallflower, but every heave of his chest seems to demand that every living figure in a ten foot radius observe his presence.

Way too much credit.

Her only consolation is (and she garners this impression from the sight of several mutilated dummies, along with what looks to be a matching set of battered knuckles which he must have literally beaten against the nearby wall) that he's hardly more pleased about this arrangement than she is.

For the first time since the meeting, she manages to push the scowl off of her face, in favor of a smirk. Good. Not that he has anything to be upset about. He's gaining a brilliant tactician with a lethal aptitude for knives as a partner. She's the one stuck with a brute who likes to hit things.

He catches her eyes with his own, assessing her, evaluating her. Waiting to see if she'll approach him. Clove turns away and walks towards the glass container of knives mounted against the wall and its myriad of glinting blades. She doesn't need to assess him. No, she already knows everything that she needs to.

It's a comfort to wrap her fingers around the handle of her favorite knife, to feel her pathetically small hands grow deadly with the weight of Medea, her nickname for this particular weapon, against her palm.

Holding her head high, she walks towards Cato.

Partners - her fist clenches around Medea- or not, she's ready for battle.

Cato looks at her as she might look at a butter knife. His pupils, clad in bright blue irises, skirt over her as if she were nothing but a weak, insignificant mockery of what a trainee should be. It's true that if she had a few more inches to bolster her height, she might intimidate more easily (unfortunately, very few people realize with much immediacy the damage that a 5'3" girl can do). She used to think their slowness was unfortunate, at least.

Clove smiles sweetly at the enormous male, perking up her wallflower petals, hiding the poisonous leaves. She's since learned the fun of toying with people who doubt that she'd even be worth the trouble of playing with, let alone pulling a set of puppet strings herself. Not that it's a tidbit that takes much work to discover.

His own weapon of choice seems to be a sword. But she already knew that. She's seen him before slicing dummies, going through the motions of swinging his long blade. She's seen most people. Cato may have spent the duration of his life immersed in too heavy a dose of self-absorption to have already become familiar with her skill set, but she's aware of almost everyone's.

Screw Calliope. Clearly, life as a misanthrope has its advantages.

And it's people like him who remind her of that; boys pretending to be men and overcompensating with large weapons of bulk, who believe fully that all it takes to obtain something is one look, one blow. Boys who know they have the looks of Adonis and act as though a superior physique couldn't be found in all of fucking Panem.

"You lost, little girl?"

The words are so absurd, so utterly creepy, pedophilic, that Clove may have laughed if they hadn't been directed towards her. Underestimation, she's learned to appreciate. It's patronization that irks her.

Shoulders tensing with irritation, she crosses her arms. "We're in a gym, not a labyrinth."

A bemused look overtakes Cato's face and she wonders for a moment if he's seen his mistake in underestimating her. If so, it's a less amusing reaction than some that she's witnessed in the past. The revelation, after all, is usually the best part.

There's still time for that, though.

A few more seconds are devoted to appraisal, but that quickly leaves Clove twisting her knife around in boredom. She's had a lifetime to appraise every single person in this room, and doesn't have any deep seated inclination to help him catch up.

"Look, you stay out of my way. I stay out of yours. We get through this with as little interaction as possible." With any luck, she won't even have to break the implied rule against torturing fellow trainees.

Cato props himself against the gym wall with a smirk, apparently having forgotten the snarl with which he had greeted that same padded mass only moments earlier.

"No need to worry." Apparently it is possible for people to smirk through their voices. "I'll go easy on you."

Goody. Impossible as it had seemed, he was, in actuality, even less perceptive than she'd been anticipating.

His fingers, annoyingly large, gruff, and everything that her own, when naked of knife, fail to be with their girlishness, reach out to stroke the pink flesh of her check. "Wouldn't want to hurt such a pretty-"

Clad between her fingers, the blade whips itself out in less time than it would take a camera to flash, slicing the offending hand against the wall.

There. She smiles truly now, satisfied. That was the revelation she was looking for. The sudden speechlessness, the harsh glare, the blatant disbelief that she just thrust her knife, tip-first, into the center of his palm.

"Nope." Eager fingers jerk the favored weapon right back into their possession. "Wouldn't want that."

It's almost impressive, the restrain the shows. His hand must be throbbing, but he doesn't clutch it, doesn't attempt to soothe the pain.

Of course, maybe "restraint" isn't the best word to use in reference to him. Especially since his immediate reaction is to lunge at her petite form, bringing her down to the floor in a tackle.

Squirming beneath him, she glares up at his maddened features - the narrowed, bloodshot eyes, the contorted mouth.

"You little bitch," he grounds out.

If he hadn't thrown the "little" part in, she might have taken that as a compliment. As it is, she continues to struggle against his weight.

No. She won't let him win. She's just as strong as he is. Stronger. And she'll chop herself up with her own blade before giving him the satisfaction-

God, she's an idiot. Body stilling suddenly with the realization of just how exactly he has managed to pin her down so effectively to the ground, she focuses on his monstrous hands. They've trapped her own fists, knocked Medea several feet away from their tangled figures. Pathetically slender or not, however, her naked fingers, aren't entirely useless either. Clutching her sharp nails into the flesh of his palm, Clove digs into the wound left by her knife, ignoring Cato's slick blood and the way it smears over her skin like a flimsy makeshift mitten.

He growls before emitting a low grunt of pain, the kind that might escape some sort of wild dog (Clove doesn't think the comparison is completely unapt).

That's when a trainer, apparently deciding that they've been left to their own devices for long enough, finally intervenes, prying a snarling Cato off of her and sending him to medical. Clove receives a quick nod of approval. Which, really, makes absolutely no sense, since the whole point of this assignment was to improve her people skills - not that she's about to complain.

Socializing will be so much easier if it goes synonymously with stabbing.

Honestly, she doesn't understand why he's quite so angry. Granted, underused as her people skills her, Clove does understand that taking a knife to someone's hand is not usually the most efficient way to earn good will, but District Two has enough medicine to patch him up easily. There's hardly even a scar (which has to admit, is a bit disappointing. She wouldn't have minded a souvenir). And it's not even as though anyone would dare laugh at Cato fucking Ludwig for anything, not even his very publicly displayed inability able to beat a girl who barely reaches his shoulder blade. Well, not much, anyway. Never to his face.

Oddly, this does not seem to comfort him.

It's a good thing that she really has no desire to earn his good will. Her eyes dart over to the case of knives. It's those that she desires.

He's waiting for her again that day in the same spot, leaning against the very wall to which she had pinned his hand only a day earlier.

For a moment, she hates him. She hates his size, his muscles, hates her own waiflike façade that, when she's lacking a knife, isn't always quite as much of a façade as she would like.

Such thoughts, of course, fall away from her head once Medea is back in her grip - which is good since, even once she reaches him, his eyes continue to scorch her figure. She bites back an amused grimace. Apparently her days of invisibility have ended.

Clove cocks her head. "I wanted to thank you," she says with a mocking demureness. "For offering to go easy on me yesterday." Smugness quirks her lips. "I really needed that."

Smirk from the day before still in place, albeit with a more sinister gleam hiding within it, he leans towards her. His next words, the promise behind them, caress her left earlobe with a proximity that leaves her with a keen desire to stab him again. "You will."

Clove meets his burning stare steadily with her own icy orbs.

Not likely.

Author's Note: So, this is my first attempt at trying to write Clato... Since they've sort of become my new OTP, I just couldn't resist. Let me know, please, whether or not anyone would like me to continue. Constructive criticism is also always welcomed :) If there's demand for them, future chapters will, hopefully, be longer.