This is an AU in which Cato manages to win the 74th Hunger Games.

Inspiration comes from this quote: "My sorrow, when she's here with me, thinks these dark days of autumn rain are beautiful as days can be." ~Robert Frost, My November Guest

I. Rain

I'm wonderstruck, blushing all the way home.
~Taylor Swift, Enchanted

When it rains, he finds himself captivated.

They meet like most people do: on accident.

He's ten and he's rushing through the streets, trying to get home before it begins raining, but it starts downpouring and he can't see two feet in front of himself, and he collides with something. When he looks down, he finds not the bush that he's expecting, but a little girl with dark hair and the beginnings of a smirk on her lightly freckled face.

She's tiny, and she's smirking at him. Jesus Christ. He doesn't know if he should be amused or offended. He decides on the latter. After all, this is District 2. Eat or get eaten. It's a perpetual quest for dominance.

"Watch where you're going," he snaps, blue eyes flashing. It begins to rain hard, soaking them both in seconds.

She isn't intimidated. If anything, her smirk goes from the corners of her mouth to her entire face.

"You were the one who ran into me," she says nonchalantly. Her voice is high and something about it makes him pause and study her. She's not very intimidating, at first glance. She's noticeably small, and her voice is high and girly. In fact, he could feasibly call her annoying. But she intrigues him. At age ten, he may be young, but he's already risen to the top of the food chain in his grade. In two years, he'll be going to the Academy. She has every reason to be scared of him. He could rip her apart, and no one would notice.
But she's not scared. Her dark eyes are glinting with amusement, red lips twisted into a smirk that says I win.

"How old are you?" he asks, demeanor abruptly changing. This girl has the ability to infuriate him, but he's got to admire someone who does it on purpose at her own risk.

She studies him critically for a second and then says, "Seven."

A three-year age gap. Ten years from now, it won't seem nearly as big as it does now. But no—the hierarchy would still be different. Twenty and seventeen. He would be a victor, and she would be a wild card.

"What's your name?" he asks.

"What's yours?" she replies. She's smart enough to know that with the shifting power here, it's not safe to give someone who's higher up on the food chain your name without getting theirs, as well.

He smiles at that, sharp blue eyes turning soft, blond hair dripping. "I'm Cato," he says.

She smiles then, too, the smirk replaced with something entirely new. There's a softness to that smile, and he tries not to think about how the District, inevitably, will harden her until there's no softness left. "Clove."

And then she's gone.

They don't speak for another five years. For the first two years, they never run into each other. And for the next three, he's stuck in the Academy while she's stuck outside. Sometimes, he thinks of her, but quickly brushes away the thought. What should a girl he met five years ago matter to him?

But one day, he wakes up to a thunderstorm, and his mind flashes to a memory that he's been trying to convince himself to forget. He shakes himself, dresses, and runs down to the Training Center to practice, even though he's woken up an hour early and he doesn't get much sleep, anyway.

Maybe when he's lost himself in his dreams of the blood of strangers, he can lose her.

It's stupid, he thinks. He talked to her for...what? Five minutes? A seven-year-old girl shouldn't have this effect on him. And yet he's still thinking of her, five years later.

He bursts through the doors of the Training Center with a strange ferocity, grabs the first sword he finds, and throws it at a dummy 100 yards away, slicing it cleanly through the neck. It takes a moment for him, breathing hard, to realize that he is not alone.

"Well, well, well," says a high-pitched, semi-childish voice that makes his breath freeze in his throat. "I always knew you had anger issues."

He turns around slowly. So much for forgetting.

She's changed. The childish naivety is gone, replaced by a hard smirk. She's taller, though not tall, and slightly curvier, though not curvy. She looks more matured, shaped by District 2.

But the dark hair and the dark brown eyes and the red, red lips are the same that have been haunting him for five years now.

"I'm not angry," he says, unable to think of something wittier to say.

"Mm-hm. Whatever you say, Cato."

"I'm not angry, Clove," he repeats, trying not to dwell on the fact that she remembers his name.

She smirks at him again and raises and eyebrow. "Keep telling yourself that." And then she turns away, gripping a handful of knives he's only noticed now, and sends one sailing into a dummy's heart. Seemingly unimpressed by her own throw, she throws the rest of the knives at the same dummy, hitting fatal spots with each flick of her wrist.

He clenches his jaw and turns away, heading to the now-decapitated dummy and retrieving the sword. It's only then that he realizes how oddly heavy the sword is compared to what he usually practices with.

He grunts and slashes away at the dummies, relishing the distraction his burning muscles provide. Soon enough, he's sweaty and and tired and he's hacked through all of the dummies. He tries not to turn around and start watching her.

He fails.

Her dummies are covered in targets and the bulls-eyes are covered in knives. She's good.

Of course, she's probably been training all her life, but it takes skill to be able to that only after a few months at the Academy.

"What's so interesting?" she says, not even looking at him. Cato turns away.

He can hear the smile in her voice. "You know," she says, "it's okay to watch me."

Cato stiffens. "I wasn't watching," he growls, and tries to walk away.

She laughs. "What're you so worried about, Cato? A small girl who's three years younger than you who just happens to be good? Human contact? Most of the kids here have friends, you know. But you don't."

He turns red. "I'm not scared of you," he says, slowly and deliberately. "And maybe I don't need friends."

But just like one rainy November afternoon five years ago, on this stormy November morning, she isn't intimidated. Without even bothering to face him, she smiles and says, "You know, just because one person hurt you, it doesn't mean that everyone else will."

He flushes red, and struggles to push away the memory of his father, drunk, beating him until Cato snaps one day and stabs him in the leg. And there's a deeper feeling than anger, too: pain. Because if your own parent tries to hurt you, who won't?

"My father is none of your business."

"Tell that to all of District Two."

"District Two is pretty big."

"So are people's mouths."

He doesn't say a word.

She sighs. "You can't use one person to judge everyone else, Cato."

He remains silent. The rain starts letting up, lightning fading, thunder stopping. As the class ambles in, she puts away her knives and leaves without a word. As she walks past him to go out the door, he feels her brush him lightly.

It's only later that he finds the red leaf in his pocket. And he hates it, hates her for being able to get into his mind like she knows him better than himself.

He's in too deep before he realizes it.

Suddenly she's that one person he can't stop running into. And then, one year later, she's moved up to his level at the Academy, and he can't even try to avoid her now. It really doesn't help that he just might be a little jealous. He's already ahead of most boys his age, and she's three years younger, and she's most certainly not big for her age.

"This is Clove. She's thirteen," the instructor tells the class of big, brawny boys and a few big, brawny girls. Clove looks so small, so out of place here with all these children who could snap her neck in one second with very little effort. All the kids eye her. You don't belong here, they seem to say, and indeed, when the instructor stops talking, they all move to the wall to watch as see what she does. It's a sort of ritual, now. When someone gets elevated, evaluate the competition.

She doesn't disappoint. Seemingly unaffected by being the only one in the center of the room, she grabs a handful of knives from the rack and throws them, one by one, at a dummy in the far corner of the room. She hits the bullseye every time.

After that, the group grudgingly accepts her. Cato does not meet her gaze, even though he knows she is watching him.

But as most things go, life does not want to agree with him.

He supposes he really shouldn't be surprised when it happens. In their fiercely competitive District, a younger girl who has somehow moved up further than anyone anyone knows would not be taken well, and he supposes his surprise is the product of his assumption that no one would dare cross her.

It's late at night and he can't sleep because the rain keeps pounding his window with a strange ferocity. After two hours of lying in bed, he decides to take a walk.

Slipping on a jacket and shoes, he walks out the door into the hall and slips quietly through the sleepy walls of the Academy until he can slide out into the rainy darkness of the night. He's planning on just getting himself a little tired from traipsing through the rain, but he stops once he hears the voices.

It's not even hard to tell whose they are. Octavian and Augustus, the two most annoying people Cato knows. Unfortunately, they're big enough to be in level eight with him, but it doesn't really matter when everyone knows they'll be too stupid to ever be tributes without someone volunteering in their place.

"Fucking thirteen. How the hell did she even make it in?" hisses Octavian not-so-quietly.

"Who?" asks Cato.

"You know who. Clove," spits Augustus.

Cato's stomach drops. He isn't exactly surprised, but it's different, having it confirmed.

"What are you gonna do about it?" he says, trying to keep his face blank.

Octavian thinks for a minute, then says, "Teach her a lesson."

"No," says Cato, before he can stop himself.

"What?" says Octavian, annoyed. "What do you mean, no?"

"Stay away from her."

"Why do you care?" says Augustus, raising an eyebrow. "She's nothing to you."

Cato stiffens. It's true. He really shouldn't care.

"Stay away," he repeats. "Or I'll see to it that you will wake up one morning with your legs gone."

It's enough to shut them up, because Cato doesn't make empty threats, and they know it. Still, they're stupid enough not to back down yet. Octavian is still glaring at him, and Augustus is noticeably stiff.

Cato smiles tightly. "Or maybe you won't wake up. Maybe it'll be your heads that disappear."

They both turn pale and back away from him, backing into the building, and suddenly, Cato is quite ready to fall into bed and sleep.

He turns to follow them in, and he's almost to the door when he thinks he sees something glimmering in the darkness.

But in the next moment, the rain blows right into his face, and he's suddenly aware of how wet he is, now that he's been caught in the downpour. He brushes the water away, and when he looks back, he can't see anything there anymore.
When he goes to sleep, he does not dream, but when he wakes and goes to train the next morning, he catches her eye when he picks up his sword just as she turns away, and he thinks that maybe he did see something last night, after all.

He isn't sure when it changes, but somewhere in between, they become friends. After a year of sparring together, they're both more toned, faster, stronger. She shies away from hand-to-hand combat; he relishes it. He cannot fight long-distance, but that's her best. With each other playing on the other's disadvantages, it's like a match made in heaven.

And one day, they end up walking everywhere together. Eating together. Talking to each other.

It's nice, he thinks, to have a friend. He doesn't need friends. He really doesn't. But it's nice to have one in this place that reeks of blood.

Augustus and Octavian do not bother her, or him, after that one night last year. It's not really surprising that they've stayed away, but he can't help but wonder at how in a district in which bravado is the best thing one can possess, they have backed down so easily. Still, it's not like he's complaining.

Somewhere between last autumn and this one, she seems to have matured. She's less revealing of her own feelings, training to become an enigma. She's less volatile now, but far more underhanded.

With another year comes another ascension through the levels and another (new) level of awareness. He resists for a long time. He tries not to stare at her red, red lips; her dark eyes; her small, slim figure. He tries to keep from ever having to touch her outside of sparring, and begins distancing himself again once more. Sometimes, he catches the hurt in her eyes that he's pushing her away, but it's better for them.

It's only a matter of time, so when he bursts, it isn't really a surprise.

It starts with Clove managing to pin him while sparring. Granted, she does it by kneeing him in the crotch, but they live in a world of denotation, and so by everyone's standards, that fact is extraneous. He grits his teeth, glares at her smirking face, and then gets up to spar with someone else.

After training, he's putting away his sword and all the dummies he's assaulted today when she comes up to him. There's no one else around, and he tries not to groan at his lack of an escape route without a distraction.

"Cato," she says assertively. "I need to talk to you."

Instinctively, he knows this won't be a conversation he'll want to have, so he changes the subject before she can pursue it. "Kneeing me was cheap today."

"Since when were the Games ever fair?" she retorts. "It's the food chain. Protect your liabilities. And besides, don't change the subject."

He sighs, puts the sword on the rack, and begins walking faster than normal out of the center. He thinks he's lost her by the time he's about halfway to his dorm when he feels an elbow ram into his crotch and he reflexively keels over.

Dimly, he realizes that he hadn't even heard her footsteps, but that thought escapes him when she pins him for the second time that day.

The wind rustles through the trees, and it registers in his mind that he's lying right now with her on top of him, and from this angle, the first raindrop that falls seems to land alarmingly close to his head.

"Why are you avoiding me?" she says. "And don't even bother trying to say that you aren't."

"I—" he stops. It's amazing how she can still predict what he's going to say before he can even think to say it himself.

"Well?"

"Maybe it's better," he says slowly, "if we stop."

She barks out a laugh. "What, exactly, is there to stop? Practice? Stopping that won't help you in the arena."

"Stop...this. Whatever we are."

She clenches her jaw, looking away for a second, and then turns back around, face unreadable.

"Fine," she hisses, bending her face down closer to his, sweet, bitter breath blowing across his face. He hopes that she can't tell how his breathing has just hitched, how his face feels hot. Hopefully, she won't be able to see how all he can think about is how red those tantalizing lips are, and how very, very close they are to his.

"May the odds be ever in your favor," she mocks, leaning even closer, tempting him even more. Her breath dances across his face, and he could swear he sees her eyes darken for second.

And then she's gone, and a curtain of rain has somehow begun pouring from the heavens, as if the sky is crying with him. It's better this way, he tells himself, but the rain drowns out his thought, and he lets it happen, because he isn't entirely sure that it's true.

II. Snow

I know I'll always ache with an empty heart.
~Ellie Goulding, Joy

When it rains, he takes an umbrella.

He changes sparring partners, and his new opponent is a girl named Adrianna. He vaguely remembers them being childhood friends, but he hasn't talked to her since they were five. She's the polar opposite of Clove: big and blonde and most definitely better with a sword than a knife.

He feels vaguely uneasy at the way she stares at him and the way she's too enthusiastic about hand-to-hand combat, but he brushes it off. It doesn't really matter to him what Adrianna thinks about their practices.
Sometimes, he sees Clove looking at them, but he always looks away.

He wakes to a thunderstorm, and knows that something is about to happen. He's not superstitious, so the storm—so much like the one when he had first seen her here—does not, in his mind, mean anything. Not does the red leaf on his window, so odd now that most of the leaves are dry and brown. It's pure instinct, the one thing even District Two cannot quite train you for.

When he gets to the Training Center, the trainers announce that they will be evaluating their hand-to-hand combat with randomly assigned partners. Of course with his luck, he ends up with her.

They make no eye contact and speak no words until they reach the mats, where they do the mandatory handshake and get ready.

At the whistle, he pounces like a lion, hoping to end this as soon as possible. With his size—especially compared to hers—the scale should be tipped all the way in his favor.

But it isn't. After all this time wrestling her, he knows she's like a fish—tiny and impossible to grasp. There are some merits to being small, and having more space is one of them.

They grapple for what seems to be eternity, when he feels her shift. His mind flashes back to the moment a few months ago, when she kneed and pinned him and all of the sudden, he severed all contact.

No. It's better for both of them to take a step back. He had his reasons for going. Good reasons. Because here in District Two, where death is something to celebrate and the smell of blood is something that the children dream of, anything other than rage and bloodlust is something to be eliminated.

Everything seems to freeze as he finally manages to anticipate her next move.

Her elbow moves towards him.

He moves to block her from elbowing him in the crotch.

As his arm sweeps her elbow away, her side becomes vulnerable, and he takes the opportunity to pin her.

They're both breathing hard, and he sits up quickly before he does something he knows he'll regret. Once she catches her breath, she says drily, "You finally managed to block that."

It strikes him as yet another piece to the puzzle that is Clove. Somehow, she's managed to speak to him, even after everything he's done to her, and she doesn't know how much she means to him.

He looks in to those dark eyes and replies, "I had to protect my liabilities."
And when the corner of her mouth lifts up and she smiles with a hint of sadness, he thinks that somehow, maybe, she finally understands why.

The next time they interact is during the reaping. He's been assigned to volunteer, as well as Adrianna. He can't help but think of Clove, so small and yet so deadly. So unlike most District Two to-be tributes.

It's not well-known that tributes are assigned. He hadn't known until his trainer told him that the Council had decided that he should be their male tribute and his district partner would be Adrianna. In all honestly, he's not sure what to make of it. He'd already been planning on volunteering, but the fact that they secretly assign tributes doesn't settle right with him.

Reaping day is cold and drizzling and it's spring. When he wakes up, he eats breakfast calmly, dresses, and makes his way down to the Justice Building. The District Two escort, May deVive, is dressed in a hideous green dress that reminds him vaguely of goose poop. She's also sporting unnaturally maroon hair electric blue skin.

They're all shuffled into their sections, and he manages to get the spot closes to the staircase leading up the stage. He makes himself not look across the aisle to see where Clove is.

Eventually, they get started. He tunes out everything May deVive says until the actual Reaping.

"Let's start with the boys first this year," she says cheerily in her stupid Capitol accent and husky voice. He's thrown slightly off-kilter at the nonchalant way she says it. No one starts with the boys. Why now?

Still, it doesn't matter. He will be a tribute either way.

Her hand claws through the ball until she finds a slip and opens it. "Octavian Caesar," she reads aloud.

Octavian shrugs and grins and begins to saunter up to the stage. Cato opens his mouth to volunteer when another voice calls out.

"I volunteer!" Augustus screams.

Cato clenches his jaw. These are his Games, and he does not want to suffer whatever punishment the Council administers if he backs down.

He runs up the stage before Augustus can even make it up to the first stair. "I'm the volunteer," he says. Augustus still runs up and tries to shove him out of the way, but Cato, nonplussed, punches him and shoves him off the stage. It's not like he'll get hurt—the stage is what? Ten, twenty feet up? Nothing compared to the things in the Training Center—but he's sure he'll be the undisputed tribute now. Besides, it's not like it's unusual for this sort of thing to happen.

May deVive smiles. "What's your name?"

"Cato Ludwig."

"Ladies and gentlemen, your male tribute of the Seventy-Fourth Hunger Games, Cato Ludwig!" she says. "Now for the ladies."

Her hand seems to grope around in the ball for an eternity before she finally pulls out a slip. "Clove Fuhrman."

His brain freezes.

But then it thaws again, because Adrianna is going to volunteer.

Except—

Clove, dressed in a red dress the color of autumn leaves, makes her way onstage, and he still has not heard a single volunteer. He glances over to the crowd and finds Adrianna's pale face, her frozen figure, and he knows she's chickened out. As he meets her eyes, he sees something else in her gaze, but he's too scared for Clove to really think about that right now.

When they shake hands, his palm easily dwarfs her fingers, and he tries not to think about the last time they touched, when he'd thought maybe, once both had gone through the Games, they could go back to the way things were.

He's led into the Justice Building by two white-uniformed Peacekeepers, and when he turns to look back at his District one last time before he comes back either a victor or a corpse, he sees four more Peacekeepers grabbing Adrianna and marching her away.

Vaguely, he remembers that that's the way to the whipping post—and the gallows. It's not that much of a surprise to him. He vaguely thinks he should be more curious about which fate is for her, but the thought vanishes almost as quickly as it appears.
The last thing he sees before being shoved into the Justice Building is her, being ushered into a separate entrance, and then he is in.

After he says goodbye to his mother ("I'll come back with a crown on my head," he says, and tries not to think about how if he does, she'll come back in a coffin) and makes it to the train, he ambles aboard. The mentors this year are Brutus and Enobaria, but May deVive tells him that they'll come into the room once they arrive at the Capitol. Then, it's just him and Clove, alone on the train.

Finally, he can't take the silence anymore. "You weren't supposed to be a tribute this year," he says in a rush.

She blinks, looking torn between feeling confused and offended. She finally settles on angry.

"What's that supposed to mean?" she snaps. "I can win these Games."

He shakes his head. "They assign tributes. Adrianna was supposed to volunteer."

"Oh."

They lapse into silence again for the rest of the ride.

III. Storm

And God knows I'm not dying, but I breathe now.
~Ellie Goulding, My Blood

When it rains, he wakes.

That night, he can't sleep. It's not the images of the crowd cheering for District Twelve of all places that really gets to him, though for show, he makes himself angry. It's the fact that the more support that goes to Twelve, the less that goes to them, and if one of them is going to make it home, they need sponsors.

It was a sunny day in the Capitol, and now it's a clear, cloudless night. It bothers him. He picks up the remote at the table and scrolls through the scenery until he finds one of a rainy autumn forest. He sits there, staring at it for a minute, trying to persuade himself to block off his emotions before he does something stupid.

But when his door opens and a small figure creeps in, whispering, "Cato?", his resolve wavers. Even in the relative darkness of the room, he can see those dark eyes glinting and those red lips teasing him.

"Clove?"

He feels, rather than sees, her crawl up on the bed and sit next to his now-upright form. "I can't sleep."

It's odd, he thinks, that she's choosing now as a moment of weakness, when he is probably the only person who has the ability kill her in a few days' time. But there's a certain comfort to be had in this, this slow chipping away of the mental walls that have been instilled in them since birth.

She's sitting a safe distance away, not touching but not too far. Somehow, his arm finds its way around her shoulders and pulls her close. "Neither can I."

The onscreen rain drips.

"Do you remember," he says quietly, listening to the drip-drip-drip of the water, "how we first met?"

She's silent for a moment, and then says, "No."

"Neither do I," he lies, trying not to show the hurt in his voice.

Somehow, her head is on his shoulder, and they're pressed together now, and here in the dark, it's easy to pretend they're not headed to certain separation.

"How am I supposed to kill you?" she whispers.

He shakes his head. "We shouldn't be thinking about that."

They sit in silence for a moment. Another leaf falls. The water drips.

"I'm sorry." It's odd; he's never apologized for anything before. He's been trained not to feel anything akin to guilt. And yet here he is, pouring his pent-up guilt out to her.

"For what?"

"For leaving."

She lets out a bitter laugh. "And then where would we be now, Cato?"

He pauses. It's the very thing that's been his justification all this time. But now, with so little time left, it feels like it was the wrong decision.

"I should have enjoyed everything before it was too late."

She pauses for a moment, and then says, "You did what you needed to do."

He turns again, and her face is right there, red lips shining in the light of the window, dark eyes shining with the only truth she knows.

"No," he says. "This is what I needed."

And then, like in a romance that only could exist in another world, he kisses her. It's not tender, not sweet, not soft, but rough and hungry and full of desperation. Her hands claw at his back, setting fire to everything she touches, leaving marks that will surely still be there in the morning. Somewhere in between, he thinks he mumbles "I love you" in the wildfire, and he breathes her in, like she's oxygen and he's a dying man who's just gotten his lungs back.

And then she stops and pushes him away. Like a power cord being pulled out, the spark vanishes. He can't conceal the hurt in when he looks at her, silently asking why.

She smiles ruefully and touches her throat, where he can see she'll have bruises already forming. "I have to protect my liabilities, Cato."

This time, he is the one smiling back sadly, silently telling her I understand.

The next morning, they don't say anything about the night before.

At trainings, the stupid Twelves seem rather unremarkable. The girl spends all her time at survival stations, and the boy keeps going to the camouflage area. Cato doesn't bother watching them; rather, he decides, along with Clove, to band with One and Four (Careers, as usual) and intimidate the rest of the measly tributes.

The stupid District One girl, Glimmer, takes a liking to him and won't stop flirting with him. He's pretty sure she's absolutely useless, seeing as she hasn't demonstrated any real skill, but he takes one look at Clove's expression and decides to keep Glimmer around.
When Glimmer's not looking, he throws a wink at Clove, and she glares back.

At nights, she does not come into his room, but he swears that sometimes, he can hear shuffling outside his door, and he wishes he had the guts to find her.

For interviews, she comes out in a red dress the color of fall leaves like the one she wore for the Reaping. He tries not to flinch when he sees it.

On the other hand, his stylist has dressed him up in a simple black suit, no wrinkles, no creases. It's perfectly perfect, and he feels unnaturally clean. He sees her shifting slightly, and knows he's not the only one struck by the oddity of wearing such fine clothes when they're used to blood and dirt.

"You look pretty," he says after a long moment of silence. She nods.

"You look alright yourself."

And then they lapse, once again, into silence until she's called up for her interview.

As she's joking around with Caesar Flickerman and projecting her personality up for sponsors to ravish, he's trying not to watch, because if he does, he knows he won't be able to think straight for the rest of the night.

When it's his turn, he walks up, pasting a cocky smile on his face before facing the crowd. He's adopting the usual District Two persona: violent, bloodthirsty, absolutely heartless. And in all honestly, he could easily make that a reality.

The interview goes by in a blur. The only thing, in fact, that he even remembers about any of the tributes is Lover Boy. And that's because he knows exactly what he's talking about.

The only difference is, Lover Boy has nothing to lose and everything to gain in saying it. Cato has everything to lose in saying it. And maybe everything to gain, or nothing, but he won't take the gamble.

It's their last night before they go in.

He lies in bed, unable to sleep, and eventually changes the window to the same scenery he'd turned it to the first night: autumn leaves and rain. The steady sound of the water falling from the pretend sky soothes him.

But something's missing. He hears a shuffling outside his door again, and this time, he opens it to find Clove. Without a word, she brushes past him and sits on his bed, turning to watch the window.

When he sits next to her, he hugs her before he can talk himself out of it. "I might let you win," he says. It's not something he's dared to voice aloud, but it's been there ever since she was reaped.

She pulls back to look at his face and shakes her head, pained. "No. You can't do it. If one of us comes out of there alive, it'll be in District Two style. Besides, they'd hurt me anyway if you killed yourself so that I could win."

He sighs. She's right, of course, but if he could just make it look like—

"Cato?"

"Yeah?"

"I lied."

"When?"

She leans against him. "When I said I didn't remember our first meeting. I remember every part of it."

They're silent again for another moment. A raindrop drips. A leaf falls. It's the same color as her Reaping dress.

"Cato?"

"Yeah?"

"You lied, too, didn't you?"

For the first time in his life, he almost wants to cry. "Of course I did," he says desperately. "How could I forget?"

And this time, she is the one to kiss him first, and then they're disappearing into the dark.

And there in the dark, the water keeps dripping and somehow, even though it's not quite real, it's almost as if at least one thing in the world could last forever: this feeling of perpetual falling, of being suspended in the air, of being, if only for a moment, free.

IV. Downpour

And I never would've played with my conscience in the fields where I was in their company.
~Ellie Goulding, In My City

When it rains, he breathes.

Time seems to move differently in the arena: it's both slower and faster, definite and indefinite, but always, always, infinitely more precious.

When they find Fire Girl, she's burned and weak and somehow, she manages to get up that damn tree and evade them anyway.
Glimmer is absolutely useless with a bow (actually, she's useless in general) and loses a few arrows to Fire Girl, and when Cato catches Clove's eye when Fire Girl grabs them, they don't need to speak. They already know what those arrows really mean to her: survival. It dawns at him then that of all the stations she'd been to, she had studiously avoided the archery station.

His jaw clenches and he looks over at Clove, knowing that she's already thought of that, and probably more. How on earth did they miss that?

Lover Boy says something about waiting her out until she starves. Cato snaps back an affirmative and they all settle under the tree. Glimmer instantly attaches herself to his arm like an eel the moment the anthem is over. He doesn't shake her off.

He isn't sure if his mind is just cloudy with all these emotions buzzing around, but is that jealousy in Marvel's eyes?

"I'll take first watch," Clove announces.

Cato looks at her questioningly. "You sure?"

She nods and looks away. Lover Boy falls asleep quickly, mumbling Fire Girl's name as he slumbers. Marvel sleeps, too, turning away from Cato and Glimmer. Glimmer snuggles into Cato's arm and falls asleep quietly. Once he's sure she's asleep, he scoots away from her, making sure that none of those golden hairs are stuck to his body.

Clove is on the other side of the tree, and quietly slips around. She's heard him for sure, but makes no move to even look at him as he settles next to her. When his arm snakes around her shoulders, she flinches.

He isn't deterred. "I can take first watch," he says quietly.

She still doesn't look at him. "I can do it."

"No, really—"

"Don't you have some snuggling with a member of Future Prostitutes of Panem to do? Blondie McBlondie?" she snaps. "Don't mind me."

He tries not to crack a grin and, assuming from her glare, fails. "Oh, I see how it is."

"How what is?"

"You're jealous." He tries to stifle the smile that's begun creeping up again.

"Jealous of a brainless blonde with too many sexual and not enough survival instincts? No, thanks. I could slit her throat right now and she'd never notice a thing, other than the fact that we're trapped in here for God knows how long with a lot of males around."

He lets a smirk creep through. "Yes. I think you are."

The hand holding the knife twitches, fingers tightening. "Please. Maybe in District One, that's how it works, but you should know that in Two, we have more important things to worry about."

"Jealous."

"Not."

"Jealous."

"Not."

He tightens his hold on her and leans his head against hers. "Jealous."

"Not."
He chuckles at the hitch in her breath and kisses her temple. "Don't worry," he says. "I'm only setting everyone up for a good show when we get to kill her. It'll be something to watch when she tries to seduce me and you cut her up into dainty little pieces."

"I'll carve patterns into her skin," promises Clove maliciously.

He grins at her tone. "Jealous."

"Not."

"Don't worry," he says again. "I prefer smart girls."

He wakes to buzzing. At first, he thinks he's just imagining it, but when he opens his eyes and sees the golden bodies of tracker jackers swarming everywhere, he knows he's in deep shit.

One sting. It feels like someone's stabbing him, and the world begins to blur a little at the edges. He looks around dizzily to see everyone scrambling hears screaming—Glimmer's? Tara's? It's not Clove's—and manages to find Clove, grab her arm, and run towards what he thinks might be the direction of the lake.

Cato!" screams Glimmer. "Cato!"

He doesn't bother looking back. Through the haze, he sees Tara stagger and fall. The world looks oddly shiny and he falls into the lake and he's all wet and there are leaves everywhere and there's blood, and Clove is turning into a tree with red leaves—

Lover Boy. Somehow, through the nightmares, he gets up out of the water and runs back to the tree where Fire Girl managed to escape them. He hears Lover Boy yell, "Run!" and catches a glimpse of Fire Girl sprinting away, bow and arrow in hand. Lover Boy turns to face him and Cato blindly slashes with his sword in rage, managing to hit his upper thigh in a place that he remembers to be ideal if you want your opponent to get an infection or bleed out. He wants to cut him in half, too, but all of the sudden everything explodes into blood and he's turning away, running, running—

He kills tributes mindlessly in the space between, because he knows he isn't getting out of there alive—well, not if he can help it—but the kills are a means to an end, and he will get her out of this arena if it's the last thing he does.

And hopefully, it will be.

It's twilight when they hear it. Claudius Templesmith's voice echoes across the arena, reminding them of the world outside, and he wonders what, exactly, is going on. It seems too early for a feast.

The actual words don't register in his mind, but the meaning does. Two tributes can win this year. Two. Only Twelve and them are left in pairs, and he, for one, couldn't care less that it's really for Twelve's benefit.

Two tributes.

Both he and Clove and go home.

He looks at her, and reflected in her eyes are the same emotions coursing through him: hope and joy and love.

In one motion, he has her in his arms, and he never wants to let go, because maybe, just maybe, he won't have to, after all.

V. Sleet

Baby, don't forget my name when the morning breaks us.
~Ellie Goulding, Bittersweet

When it rains, he tries to wash it all away.

It always has to end.

Feast.

Feast.

Feast.

The word echoes through his head like a sword against armor.

Somehow, Clove manages to convince him into letting her go. He tries to ignore the feeling in his gut telling him that this is a mistake.

When he hears the scream, he takes off running as fast as he can towards the Cornucopia.

When it comes to them, he's always too late.

VI. Drizzle

I never knew that daylight could be so violent.
~Florence + the Machine; No Light, No Light

When it rains, he is numb.

He kills Eleven first, since he's the first one Cato manages to hunt down. He finds none of the expected happiness in feeling the rock smash against Eleven's skull, no pleasure in exacting his revenge.

He kills Five when the Gamemakers get bored and send wolf-mutts that are replicas of the fallen tributes to draw the two to the Cornucopia. He clambers on, trying to catch his breath from sprinting, and when he does, he rushes forward, sword flashing, and swiftly beheads her while she's climbing up.

And somewhere in between Eleven and Five, Lover Boy dies. It makes sense—Cato knows that without medicine, the spot he hit would either bleed out or get infected—but still, he knows it isn't really because of him that Twelve is eliminated.
No, it's Clove's, for managing, in the last possible second after being yanked off of Fire Girl, to slash with her knife and slit Fire Girl's throat, eradicating any hope Twelve had of surviving, getting rid of that last barrier for Cato—a final gift for all of the words neither of them ever said.

There is no joy in winning.

VII. Calm

And oh, poor Atlas; the world's a beast of a burden.
~Florence + the Machine, What the Water Gave Me

When it rains, he pretends that it doesn't hurt.

Being the stereotypical District Two victor comes naturally to him. He's all brutality wrapped under a layer of charm, like the gleaming, deadly swords that once mattered to him. Or, if he allows himself to think about it, like those jeweled knives that she so loved to play with. The Capitol knows about them now, of course, but even Caesar Flickerman—either because he knows Cato won't (can't) speak about it, or because he has some shred of sympathy left in him— does not bring up the subject.

The interviews pass in a blur, and soon enough, he's back at District Two.

Home.

It doesn't feel as good as he thought it would.

He's a mentor for the third Quarter Quell. This time around, everyone's thrown back in the loop again, save for the victors.

Regardless of age, all citizens will be reaped.

And there are no volunteers.

Somehow, Two gets lucky and the male tribute is eighteen, almost like another version of himself. Cato doesn't think they'll have a problem, since a lot of the tributes aren't in great shape like Julius is, but then he watches Twelve's reaping.

Gale Hawthorne. Nineteen, definitely fit, and when they get to the Capitol, Hawthorne seems to have something against Cato. It isn't until the interviews that it clicks. Caesar Flickerman asks him about Fire Girl (Katniss Everdeen, that was her name) and about how they're cousins, and after a short pause, Gale Hawthorne nods. But Cato knows it's not entirely true. Somehow, the thought is enough that Cato finds himself needing to keep his distance and refer to him by both first and last names, a formal version of guilt.

It's stupid, he knows, to bury it under a name. But it's all he has.

The arena is truly amazing. Clockwork. It seems so simple, yet no one really grasps it at first. Only Gale Hawthorne figures out to keep moving clockwise, away from blood rain and monkeys and poisonous fog. It makes sense. He's genius at snares, and Cato realizes that really, this arena is a giant snare in itself.

The last two tributes standing are Julius and Gale Hawthorne. And while Julius has been training all his life, Gale clearly knows how to shoot a bow and makes ingenious snares for food, and when the final fight happens, it's bloody and terribly close, and then Gale manages to stab Julius in the side, and while it isn't deep enough to kill—yet—it certainly is going to keep Julius incapacitated. Cato expects Gale to finish the job.

Only he doesn't. Instead, he laughs bitterly in Julius's agonized face and says, "You can keep the victory. And when you get back, tell that mentor of yours that he's not the only one who's had the girl he loves taken away from him by these Games."

And then Gale Hawthorne throws himself off a cliff.

(When he sees it, he swallows, ignores it, and tries not to let himself consider following Gale Hawthorne off that cliff.)

(He secretly sends the Hawthornes half of his victor's rewards every month.)

He mentors some years, and he's good at it. All of the tributes he mentors come home alive fairly after his first year. Winning the Games as a mentor is almost as taxing as winning the Games as a tribute. It's all about sponsors and politics, and screwups can be deadly.

He hates the reminder of how, given just a few more sponsors, maybe she would be here with him now.

Ever since his Games, there's been a bitter relationship between his District and Twelve and Eleven, and the latter two tend to band together now. It doesn't really matter, since they still don't ever win, but it prickles his conscience anyway.

From time to time, he runs into Haymitch or Seeder or Chaff, and he tries not to think about how he played a role in their tributes' deaths. They never talk, but he can see the accusation in Haymitch's alcohol-ridden glare and Seeder's casual avoidance of speaking to him, and Chaff's leaving the room whenever he's around unless he's required to stay.

Not that he blames them. Sometimes, he hates himself, too, for the same reasons—and one more.

He knows what Snow makes most of the mentors do in the space between. For whatever reason, it doesn't apply to him. It's not like he isn't attractive enough, or charming enough, or whatever other criteria applies—he most certainly is. Once, Cato runs into Finnick Odair, and even the sea-eyed victor is confused, until he gets a look in his eyes that makes Cato realize what Finnick has just realized.

It seems as though even ruthless President Snow takes pity on him.

He wishes he didn't. Maybe it would be easier if he could lose track of himself.

Secretly, he hates mentoring. But without death to distract him, what else is there?

He sees Adrianna at one point—he can't remember which year it is, exactly—and dimly, in the back of his mind, acknowledges the fact that she hasn't been executed. He's behind her, at first, though, so he can see scars from the whip extending past the neckline of her shirt. He walks a little faster to catch up to her, and it begins to drizzle.

If it were anyone else, he'd feel sympathy. But all he can see when he sees Adrianna, alive and well, is an angry, angry red. He's angry for a lot of reasons: for being her partner instead of Clove's, for her being alive while Clove isn't, for not being reaped. But mostly, he's angry because she let Clove go in instead of her, and now Clove is dead.

"Adrianna," he says coldly. She turns.

"Cato! I haven't seen you in person since..."

Since the reaping. Since you chickened out. Since you ruined my happiness.

His jaw clenches. "Yes," he hisses. "So they let you go with just a few scars and your life."

She stiffens. "And the scorn of the District."

"And in return," he says, "I lost everything to your cowardice."

Her eyes flash. "My cowardice? I was not a coward!" she spits.

"Not volunteering when you were supposed to, even after training all your life for it? Letting a little fifteen-year-old go instead? How is that not cowardice?" he roars.

She sniffs. "Clove was perfectly capable."

"She's not here now, is she? You threw her to the wolves." He's about to say something else, but then he glimpses a familiar glint in her eye.

His mind flashes back to all those years ago, and the change in her eyes when she looked at him even back then.

"You didn't chicken out," he says slowly. "You let her go on purpose. For whatever reason, you decided that you'd rather get the whip than take her place."

"No, I—"

"You said it yourself: you're not a coward. So how could you do it?"

"I—" she stops. "I—"

He sees it then, in the reddening of her cheeks, the tears in her eyes at his anger, her overtly happy greeting.

"I can't believe you," he says, and begins to walk away.

"Wait! Cato!" she calls out, but he doesn't turn. He can hear footsteps behind him, and soon enough, she's walking next to him.

"You've already done enough damage," he says.

She grabs his shoulder, forcing him to stop, and says, "I'm sorry, Cato, but I loved you and I just couldn't go in there with you—"

He laughs bitterly. "That's a load of shit. You didn't go in with me because you were jealous of Clove."

"I—"

"You sent an innocent girl to her death," he continues, "because you were jealous. And you still are, because I still love her despite the fact that she's gone. You're pathetic."

He walks away from her, and this time, she doesn't follow. The drizzle eventually washes his unshed tears away.

Eventually, he retires from mentoring. In District Two, where there are more victors than needed, it's actually an option. He's still young enough, he supposes, to keep going, but he can't go in anymore and watch his tributes come out alive when the only tribute who ever mattered to him didn't.

He never really remembers any of the years anymore; the arenas and tributes blur together: mountains and deserts and rainforests,

Antony and Gaius and Crassus. The only things that really stand out in the haze of his mind are two numbers: 74 and 75.

VIII. Sunlight

And there's no remedy for memory; your face is like a melody: it won't leave my head.
~Lana Del Rey, Dark Paradise

When it rains, he lets go.

He dies from pneumonia after he stands outside for four hours in a storm.

He's out there because, for a moment, between the raindrops, he could see dark eyes and a knife and red, red lips, and the truth is, he's much better with her than without.

Fin.