title: no flaws when you're pretending

author: ivory muse

rating: t, verging on m. depends on your gore tolerance, though nothing's horribly explicit. plus, clove's mind is a creepy place.

genre: drama/horror

characters: clove, cato

summary: life is suffering; fortunately, she has some say in who will suffer. - clove

a/n: my somewhat rambly interpretation of clove's early years and the training of the careers. i might expand on this later if plot bunnies nibble my toes.

Her childhood is an enormous mass of grey- that's the bulk of what she remembers whenever her thoughts drift into that territory. The dull, rough grey of her tunic, the gleaming, deadly grey of her shuriken, the smooth, practically untarnished grey of the linoleum floor beneath her well-trained feet, the threatening, absolute grey of the barbed-wire fence that encloses her within the compound. A bleak, utilitarian color, perfectly suited to the facility she has been raised in, one designed to take wide-eyed children fresh off their mother's teats and turn them into hardened warriors who can kill without wringing their blood-soaked hands.

It's a slow process, but they have plenty of time.

So she dedicates herself to following orders because there's nothing else here but schedules and uniforms and marching in place. She's told to run six miles a day and she does it, she's told to practice throwing knives at a punctured wooden target until she can barely lift her arms and she does it, she's told always think about how she might best serve her district and she does it like a little machine, constantly in unthinking motion. Disobedience simply never occurs to her. She does not know what it means.

Then one day she's seven and deemed old enough to begin fighting against actual people, and she discovers that by waiting for precisely the right instant to strike, she can force a boy twice her size to his knees. Everybody else is clumsy, making such elementary mistakes- their steps are awkward and lumbering, their movements erratic and hesitant.

Her teachers praise her with cold-lipped smiles and force her to work all the harder.

When she's twelve she becomes eligible for the Hunger Games, but not a soul in Districts One and Two takes the reaping seriously, and not even the most prodigious twelve-year-old is ever chosen to volunteer. Instead, she watches the televised gore and horror and hopelessness with stoic indifference. What does it matter to her if pawns on a playing field suffer? They were weak and soft and deserved swift elimination.

Fourteen is when she realizes that she loves pain- not feeling it, of course, she's not some kind of masochist, but inflicting it upon her hapless victims makes her feel a sort of sick glee. Sniveling girls with slack grips on their wooden weapons, callow, arrogant boys who barely consider her worthy of their blows, teenagers that should be safe in their homes, not forced to murder on demand- it's all blended adrenaline to her, the rush of power as her opponents crumple to the ground. She especially relishes when she can see the fruits of her labor, the blood and bruises painting translucent skin in blue and red and green and yellow, forming twisted rainbows. Eyes on the prize, eyes on the prize and it's all worth it in the end.

At fifteen she pierces her way through every-single-fucking-competitor and even nicks a few jugulars while she's at it and wins her place as female tribute- next to Cato, a hulking almost-man who resembles an inferno when he swings his sword. More silver-tongued praise (such a CLEVER girl, such a STRONG girl, such an OBEDIENT girl, try not to notice that you've broken the bank and this is your half-assed reward, darling) but it doesn't fucking matter anymore. She's the best and she has rusty stains imprinted behind her eyes and beneath her fingernails and on the tips of her blades to prove it.

That's why on reaping day she puts on the ostentatious lavender dress she's been given and marches off towards her age group, trussed up like a goose for slaughter. When their nauseatingly enthusiastic presenter (now, boys and girls, let's not forget about your blood debt to the Capitol!) announces that some sickly child of thirteen who's never even been through the academy is to bring glory to District Two, her hand whips through the air before the chit reaches the podium.

As she ascends her throne, luxuriates in the crowd's deafening cheers, she does not notice her parents' nervous faces or the forced quality of some cheerful expressions. This is her place, and there is no room for doubt.

She's eleven, watching an opponent bleed out with a steady, experienced gaze. She's ten, doing lunges with burning legs under her teachers' harsh tutelage. She's six, wrapping her inexperienced, chubby fingers around the handle of a knife for the first time. She's two, a naive, loved girl who knows nothing and yet knows everything.

Clove throws her head back and smiles like the sun into the cameras' harsh glare.