I only just recently started THG and have only read the first book, so sorry if there's any inaccuracies cx For the Caesar's Palace Monthly Writing Contest, and the prompt was the song Where Is My Mind :-)

c/p prompts: knife

four elements c/p challenge: forest, cup, confidence

And now it was too late, too late to go back. Thresh had already smashed her head in with a sharp rock, and now she couldn't go back. Funny how things work, that Clove only just now, at the brink of death, realizes the monster she'd been. But it was too late to turn back, change her actions. Or even just apologize but she had waited too damn long to just realize what she had done, what the others had done, what was being done here in these bastardly Games- not that she would say that out loud, though. She was in enough trouble already, what with going to die at any moment.

Where the hell had her mind been during the Games? Clove hadn't always been such a fucking monster, though. Sure, maybe a part of it was always inside her from the beginning, but it was the Games that had changed everything. And now she was a brutal monster. She now enjoyed cutting and carving up people like she was a goddamn butcher.

She was a stonemason of District 2, a quiet young girl. Not a monster. But it was too late.

District 2 built the damn foundation of this country. Without them, there would be no strong, fortified streets of Panem. They were the strong backbone. Needed. Essential. But why did they have to only be essential because of their stone and strength?

Clove, of course, had been trained for the Hunger Games for so, so long. She had trained for so much of her life. She was a Career. And maybe that's where it started? They had trained Clove to be a violent and vicious monster. But it still lead back to the Hunger Games, requiring her to be the violent and vicious monster to survive and win. Not fitting their mold? You lose. Consolation prize is death, and that's what the Hunger Games teaches you.

It was a shame that Clove didn't even ever get to finish prettying up her victims with her knife. They had all died before she could finish the artwork, leaving her with no masterpieces, even, to pay back for turning her into a monster.

And... Cato would mourn her because of her being a monster, if he was even capable of mourning now. Cato would remember her that way, and saw her in that way, but that's not who Clove was.

The same was true for everybody. The Capital, all the spectators, all her fans. They viewed her as a monster. They would remember her in that way, and they had seen her in that way, but that's not who Clove was, not really.

... Maybe Cato felt the same as her? It was a long shot, but surely the other tributes felt the same way deep inside, even if they would only realize it when they were standing in Death's cupped hands, about to be swooped away. At least, Clove was pretty sure the tributes from non-Career Districts felt this way about the Games.

Especially that Katniss girl from District 12. She was idiotic enough to wear the mockingjay pin into the arena. Now the Capital will question her, assume she's a rebel.

What had Katniss been thinking? Where had her mind been?

And still, Clove wondered: Where had her own mind been?

Clover hadn't considered herself a rebel, persay, but...

Anyway, it was already too late, too late, too late.

And the vicious and violent monster girl was now gone, and with her went Clove, who was something more than just that.