i.

Cato and Clove are exactly the same.

He knows it from the day he meets her, from the moment he first watches her throw knives and can't help but think she's the most beautiful thing he's ever seen.

"What the hell are you looking at?" she asks him, tiny body and black ponytail and thin, pale limbs nothing close to intimidating. But her eyes are cold; dark and red; and he knows better than to think she's weak.

"You," he throws back, smiling and shrugging.

She gives him a punch to the mouth, and then her name, enunciating each and every letter slowly and clearly, like Cato better damn well remember it.

ii.

And he really does remember it.

Clove.

He repeats it to himself every night, like a mantra, like it somehow holds the answers to life and death and the universe and all the things in between.

Clove.

He's really not very sentimental, but he tucks each and every letter into little pockets in his brain, determined not to forgot.

C-L-O-V-E.

Clove.

He can't seem to get those cold eyes, that dark hair, that tiny body, out of his head.

iii.

A few days later, he watches her again, something close to entranced by her sharp, calculating wrists and her cold, hard stare and her taut, black ponytail that swings around her shoulders like it belongs there.

She's too young for him and he knows it, but he can't seem to pull his eyes away from her small breasts and her smooth waist and her round, pink lips.

He's broken out of his trance when a pale set of hands pins him against the wall.

"I told you not to stare at me."

He grins, determined to win this game.

"I can't help it. You're too charming."

Young as she is, she senses the sarcasm dripping off his voice and presses her knife against his neck.

"I'll kill you. I really will."

He laughs, and although she's not conventionally charming, he can't help but think that, in her cold, dark way, she's certainly charming to him.

iv.

A year later, he kisses her, hard and fast and in the middle of combat, when he's got her pinned on the ground and his knees pressed into her small chest.

He can't help it, really; her breasts have gotten larger, and her hips have gotten wider, and God, her lips are right there.

She tastes sweet and dry, just like he expected; her lips are small and rough and round, and he knows he's going to want to kiss them again.

"What the hell?" She shoves him off her like she's the one who's twice as big as he is, instead of the other way around, and stalks off, huffing and violently retying her ponytail.

Cato just smiles.

v.

He finds her in her dorm that night and kisses her again.

She doesn't push him away.

vi.

And a year later, Cato thinks he's in love, thinks he's fallen hard and fast for this tiny girl named Clove.

He's not sentimental, he really isn't, but Clove has become something close to the only light in his cold, dead, bloody world; she's become his heartbeat, part of his existence; she's pulsing in his bloodstream and she's reflected in his eyes and she's part of every single breath he takes.

vii.

He kisses her a lot, and he fucks her, and she never says that she likes it, but he knows she does.

"You know, you really are kind of charming, in your own fucked-up way," he tells her one night, when he's eighteen and she's fifteen, as he traces the shape of a bruise he left on her neck just ten minutes before.

She rolls her eyes and slaps away his hand.

"You're an asshole."

"You're a bitch."

They do this every night, and Cato always sees a whisper of a smile behind Clove's dark, cold eyes.

viii.

He loves her.

He really does.

ix.

But it all falls to shambles the day before the reaping of the 74th Annual Hunger Games, when District 2 chooses Cato and Clove to be this year's volunteers.

He never saw it coming. He'd just assumed. He assumed that he would volunteer this year, and Clove would volunteer next year, and he wouldn't have to kill her and she wouldn't have to kill him and everything would turn out fine.

x.

That night, he tells her not to volunteer.

She tells him not to volunteer.

He says that that's not fair; this is his only year.

She says that that's not fair; this could be her only year.

He punches her, and she slaps him.

"You're an asshole."

"You're a bitch."

And everything falls apart, just like that, because Cato loves Clove and she's the only life left in his world, but he loves blood and he loves blades and he loves death and that's what the Hunger Games is-

And suddenly, he realizes how cold his own heart really is.

xi.

The next day, he volunteers and stands next to her on the stage; next to those cold dark eyes, next to that tiny body, next to that dark hair, and he loves her and hates her and suddenly feels her slipping out of his world.

xii.

And during the remaining days before the Games, they do not speak, or touch, or even cast sidelong glances at one another.

This thing they had-this volatile romance of blood and flesh and cold, cold hearts-was doomed from the start.

xiii.

Maybe a cold heart cannot be warmed by a cold one, Cato thinks that night.

There is fire in Clove's eyes but only dry, empty ice inside her soul.

xiv.

Clove and Cato are exactly the same.

And five days later, as she dies in his arms, he realizes that even if he gets out of these Games alive, there is nobody left that he will ever be able to love like he loved her.

xv.

Her heart was cold, yes; her voice, her skin, her knives, and every fiber of her soul was frozen like ice.

But he feels warm, much too warm, without her.

a/n: thank you for reading! i've gotten so much support for my writing on here, and i just want to thank every single one of you who reads my fics or favorites them or leaves behind reviews. i'm absolutely terrible at replying to reviews and pms, but i always read every review or message i get, and if you have ever said anything to me about my writing, i want you to know that it means the world xx