Chapter Fifteen - Part Two

I've become a good judge of time since I came to the arena, much better than I ever was at home, back when I only cared that I rose at dawn so I wasn't late for training. And that means I can tell it's at least two hours before dawn when we reach the familiar part of the forest that surrounds the Cornucopia. We had rushed here, thinking it would take us all night to reach the place where the feast will be held, but we must have been closer than I thought and shouldn't have bothered.

"All we can do now is wait," I say, coming to a halt and turning to look up at Cato. "There's no point looking for anyone until the feast starts."

He seems to agree as he sinks to the floor at the base of the nearest tree and pulls me down with him, holding me against him so we both stay warm despite the Gamemaker-induced freezing temperature. I want to talk but I don't know what to say. I wouldn't know where to begin without sounding every bit as pathetic as the Girl on Fire and Lover Boy, so instead I simply cling to the fact that in a few short hours this nightmare could all be over and we could finally be allowed to go home. I close my eyes and listen to the slow, steady rhythm of Cato's heartbeat, imagining I'm not in the arena at all but that I'm actually curled up in his room at the Training Centre, back in the familiar bed that's so small it only just holds me as well as him.

When I open my eyes again I can see the first hint of dawn in the sky through the trees. I could almost laugh as I abruptly realise that we very nearly missed the feast. What would District 2 think? Two of the most formidable fighters in the history of our Training Centre not attending a Hunger Games feast because we were asleep at the time. I don't think we'd be very popular. Besides, it's time to get this over with. I want out of here and so does Cato. We want out of here together.

Cato has always held me as tightly in his sleep as he does when he's awake, and now is no exception. When I whisper his name to wake him, he just turns slightly and pulls me even closer, his hand flat on the small of my back as he crushes me against him in a way that makes me want to forget I'm in the arena.

"Cato, wake up," I say, speaking louder this time. "It's dawn. We have to go."

He loosens his grip enough for me to be able to look up at him, and when I do, he leans down to kiss me. "I'll go if you want to stay here."

"Have you ever known me to back away from a fight?" I retort, and he shakes his head without breaking our eye contact. "It's the best way, I know you can see that. What's the point of going together and having the other tributes flee the Cornucopia while Katniss shoots at us with Glimmer's arrows? You might think you are but you're not indestructible."

"Neither are you. I should be watching your back."

"More like I should be watching yours," I reply, only half joking and immediately side-stepping that particular discussion. I still remember the blind rage that possessed him when the supplies were destroyed and I can't help but think the Games have changed him as subtly but irreversibly as they have changed me. It pains me to see it and I know that the longer we stay in here, the worse it will get. "Don't underestimate Lysandra if you see her." He opens his mouth to voice the disagreement that's written all over his face but I reach up and put my finger to his lips. "Just trust me."

"Always," he replies, cupping my face in his hands and staring at me with the same fierce intensity I still clearly remember from the night before they brought us here.

I close my eyes and he lightly runs his thumbs over them. I can feel every scar and callus on his skin, all there as a result of years of fighting, all a direct contradiction to this uncharacteristic gentleness, which brings a lump to my throat and makes me realise that we'll both miss the feast if I'm unable to tear myself away from him. And in spite of everything I am when I'm with Cato that I never am with anyone else, I am what I am and I still want a shot at Katniss Everdeen.

"I have to go. We have to try, you know that. Or we won't be going home."

He nods, accepting the knife I hand to him as I check the carefully altered lining of my jacket that contains at least a dozen more, and I watch as he puts it into his pocket before I turn to walk away. I don't get far, as before I can take more than one step, he yanks me back towards him, lifting me up and leaning me back against the tree under which we had slept as he kisses me. The rough bark digs uncomfortably into my back but I couldn't care less. Nothing is certain in the Hunger Games, and even though neither of us have dared to talk about it, we both know this could be the last time we ever see each other. Only when I lift my legs up and wrap them around his waist to support myself does he stop, smiling against my lips as he pushes me gently away and lowers me back to the ground.

"Enough, or I'll never let you go," he says as he pushes me lightly in the direction of the Cornucopia. "Remember your promise," he calls after me less than a second later.

I'm unable to stop myself from turning back to look at him, and he remains standing beneath the tree, still as powerfully built and imposing as he was when we left home but with the pale first light of dawn highlighting the torn and filthy clothes he wears. He hates those clothes, and even though he never told me so himself and I didn't ask, I know it's because of the memories they make him recall, memories of the boy he used to be before he became the man I love.

He smiles that painfully familiar half-smile that's forever etched into my mind and I realise I've never loved him more than I do now. I remember what I promised but I know I will only call him if I think he can save me. No matter what I told him, I wouldn't ever call him to his death even if remaining silent resulted in mine.

I walk through the trees until I can see the Cornucopia, then I make my way around to the other side so I can see the entrance, always remaining well concealed in the trees. As the front of the golden horn comes into view, a table bearing four backpacks clicks into place before it. I immediately notice a large black one marked with the number 2, but I swiftly look away. Whatever Claudius Templesmith said, that's not what I'm here for. I'm here for three more deaths, nothing more and nothing less.

I see a flash of coppery-red as a small figure darts out of the Cornucopia and grabs a green bag from the feast table before I even register what I'm seeing. Lysandra. How like her to come up with a strategy like that. Maybe Marvel wasn't that far wrong when he called her the 'fox-girl'. The only difference is that I'd use the nickname in reference to her sly and cunning nature as well as her appearance. I watch as she races for the woods, heading straight towards Cato, and find myself hoping that he remembers what I told him. She's clever and that makes her dangerous. I can sense it.

Then all thoughts of the girl from District 5 are abruptly banished from my mind as I see a sudden movement in the corner of my left eye. Katniss. Heading for the table as fast as her legs will take her.

I sprint forwards, my hand instinctively reaching into my jacket for the nearest knife as I go, letting it fly towards the dark-haired girl from the coal district before she gets as far as the table. I quickly see that I was right about her being able to use the bow, because she deflects my knife with it at the last second, stringing an arrow in the same movement and firing it directly at me.

I quickly conclude that archery must be more than part of the reason for her training score, because she possesses the same deadly accuracy with the bow as I do with my knives. I turn to avoid the arrow but I'm not quite fast enough and it sinks deep into my arm. All I feel is the pain that is trying to consume me, but I push it away. Pain is nothing. I've known it all my life. I'm stronger than pain and it can only make me weak if I let it.

Forcing myself to stay focussed on the positive, I tell myself to be grateful it's my left arm and not my right as I struggle to pull the weapon out and keep moving at the same time. I briefly look down to watch the steady stream of blood seeping from the wound, but I don't have time to do anything about it now because Katniss already has her backpack.

She pulls the tiny orange thing onto her arm as I pull a second knife from my jacket, ignoring the painful protest from my left arm at the movement, and I quickly throw it at her before she can turn to fire an arrow at me.

I get her this time and I clearly see the blade slash across her head, fighting the stab of annoyance I feel that it was a glancing blow and not a direct hit. I care nothing for how they die anymore. All that matters is that it's quick so I can get out of here. Katniss staggers backwards as I continue to race towards her, and she's so far off her mark when she fires her next arrow that it wouldn't have come close to hitting me had I been Cato's size.

I slam into her, using my momentum to make up for my lack of strength and weight, and she falls flat onto her back with me on top of her, my knees pressing into her shoulders. Just like Cassia taught me at home, I think, smiling at the memory despite the situation.

Cassia Carpaccio had been barely taller and heavier than me when she had won one of the very first Hunger Games, and she never said so but I know she took pride in my success by how she went out of her way to help me despite her famously prickly nature. I'd only been twelve or thirteen when she had instructed me to always remember exactly how difficult it is for a person to get up if they can't lift their neck and shoulders, but I did as she said and never forgot her lesson. The first time I ever saw the old woman laugh was when she made me practice on Cato when he bravely but stupidly told her she was talking rubbish and that there was no way I could hold him down. Even now I can still clearly see the looks on both of their faces when she was proved right.

I look into Katniss's eyes, seeing a mixture of fear and defiance staring back at me. There's a lot more of the latter than I'm used to. Her eyes are grey, like mine but darker, and her skin is a pale olive colour that's nothing like Cato's. It's the first time I've ever really looked at the girl who has been my greatest competition ever since the day of the reaping, the girl who very nearly ruined my life with her fabricated love story, and I realise I have just enough hatred left inside me to at least even out the balance between fear and defiance a little before she dies.

"Where's your boyfriend, District 12? Still hanging on?" I ask harshly, deciding to test my theory about the Capitol healing Peeta.

"He's out there now. Hunting Cato," she snarls, replying with aggression worthy of my district not hers.

I can't resist a smile at the thought of Peeta hunting Cato though. Give it less than five seconds of my lover realising Peeta is in a position to hunt anyone and the boy from the coal district will swiftly become the hunted instead of the hunter.

"Peeta!" screams Katniss, her voice echoing around the plain even when I punch my fist hard into her throat to silence her. I look up and scan the trees just in case Lover Boy is about to prove my far-fetched theory true, but I soon realise she's bluffing.

"Liar," I snarl back, replying to her with as much venom in my voice as had been in hers. "He's nearly dead. Cato knows where he cut him. You've probably got him strapped up in some tree while you try to keep his heart going. What's in the pretty little backpack? That medicine for Lover Boy? Too bad he'll never get it."

I open my jacket slowly and deliberately as I select a knife, as unable to resist tormenting her as I have been any of my other opponents who have tried to defy me in the past. I have every intention of slitting her throat, hearing her cannon sound and then going to find Cato, but she doesn't know that. I'm a child of a Victor and the District Two Training Centre, so I know how to put on a performance.

"I promised Cato if he let me have you, I'd give the audience a good show."

I've made Cato a lot of promises over the past couple of days, meaning every last one of them, but I can say with absolute certainty that none of them involved Katniss Everdeen. I know he wants her dead as much as I do, but I think we both agree that if we have any scores to settle then they are well away from this arena. But once again, she doesn't know that, and as the implication of what I just said sinks in, she begins to struggle. Not that it gets her far. She doesn't have the strength.

"Forget it, District 12. We're going to kill you. Just like we did your pathetic little ally…what was her name? The one who hopped around in the trees? Rue? Well, first Rue, then you, and then I think we'll just let nature take care of Lover Boy. How does that sound? Now, where to start?"

I thought I would hit a nerve by referring to the girl from District 11, and from the look on her face it's plain to see I was right. I scan the surrounding area one more time as I wipe the blood from her face with the already filthy sleeve of my jacket, before tilting her head from one side to the other, watching her terror increase. Her defiance continues as she attempts to bite my hand, and I secretly admire her courage as I pull her away by her hair.

That will do, I decide. I have what I want and she didn't prevent it in the end. Her and Peeta's stunt at the interviews probably did us a favour in the end, as they would certainly have influenced the Gamemakers' decision to implement the rule change as much as me and Cato. Enough is enough. I lower my knife down to her face, running the very tip of the blade along the outside of her lower lip.

"I think… I think we'll start with your mouth. Yes, I don't think you'll have much use for your lips any more. Want to blow Lover Boy one last kiss?"

I prepare to lower the blade and slash it across her throat, but as I'm about to she spits forcefully in my face. Suddenly she isn't Katniss anymore, as for some unknown and irrational reason, her action reminds me so sharply of my nightmare and how I had done the same to Augustus, that I'm immediately transported back to that horrific place. I shake my head to clear the image but it doesn't work.

I abruptly feel like I'm above myself and looking down, that someone flicked a switch and the barrier holding back all my fears and memories has vanished into thin air. I try to pull myself back but I can't. A tiny voice in my head tells me that the one person who could make this right is too far away.

The logical part of me knows I'm seeing Katniss when I look down, but the rest of me blocks out the girl's face as all of the suppressed emotion of the past three weeks bursts out of me and replaces it with something else, something that is all of my worst enemies, dead and alive, all rolled into one defiant, mocking sneer that I can't escape.

I see Augustus, not as the broken man I left back in the Capitol but as the powerful, unstoppable version created in my mind by the tracker jacker venom. I see Cassius, the man who sought to replace Cato and was killed by my lover at his reaping trials because of it. I see Gaius, he whom I hated above almost any other, the man who murdered my half-sister. Then I expect to see Peony herself, the girl who was my responsibility, the girl I should have protected, however it's not her I see but our father, the man who haunted my childhood and set me on the path that ultimately led me to this place. I hate him for that and for so many other reasons besides, and it's with his image in my mind that I lower the blade not to Katniss's throat but back to its original position at her lower lip.

"All right, then. Let's get started."

I feel the tip of the knife puncture her skin just as I'm suddenly lifted violently into the air. For a fraction of a second, until my mind properly processes what's happening, I think that it's Cato. But then I abruptly realise I'm wrong. The man who holds me in the air like I weigh no more than a feather is every bit as strong as my lover, but I don't need to look down to see the mahogany brown skin of the arm that's clamped like a vice under my chest to work out that it's someone else entirely.

Even with my back pressed painfully into his chest to the extent that I can't turn to see his face, I know instantly that my momentary lapse into insanity has allowed District 11 this opportunity to take advantage of my weakness. I struggle with all my strength and feel an unfamiliar panic welling up inside me when I quickly realise that I can no more break free of him than I can of Cato when he holds me and really means it.

The thought of Cato makes me frantically scan the tree line, partly hoping he will come to save me and partly hoping he will stay well away. I look between the trees, which are still cloaked in a darkness not yet breached by the dawn, willing him to appear and frantically fighting back my tears when he doesn't.

Even as I try desperately to come up with a plan to get out of this, my mind slips more and more into overload. I try to reach for a knife but Thresh's grip is too strong and his clenched fist digs agonizingly into the arrow wound in my arm, clouding my thoughts with pain.

I'm still futilely fighting him when he flips me over and throws me to the ground with such force that even my small body makes the arena floor vibrate when I land. I hear a loud crack and it's accompanied by a burst of agony I've never felt the like of before that I can't seem to fight. I look down briefly to see my right leg is twisted at an unnatural angle beneath me, clearly broken. Even if I could focus enough to be able to, there will be no running away now.

The pain is so great that for a second everything fades to darkness as my mind reels from the shock, and when I return to reality, Thresh is towering over me, filling my vision entirely so I can see nothing else. Through the pain I hear him shouting. It takes me until he's finished speaking to comprehend what he said. What he accused me of doing. Rue. This is about her. He thinks I killed her.

"No! No, it wasn't me!" I shout, scrambling away from him, the pain every movement of my leg causes threatening to overwhelm me, making my hands shake so much that I can't even grasp the front of my jacket to help me reach for one of my knives to defend myself.

"You said her name. I heard you. You kill her? You cut her up like you were going to cut up this girl here?"

Thresh steps towards me, a huge stone in his hand the only weapon he needs, and I realise it's all over. This is it. And I can't even fight back. I am a true disgrace to District 2, just like my father always told me. But even though that should matter to me, it doesn't. What's worse, what's the only thing that means anything, is that I'm a disgrace to him. He loved me because I was strong, because I wasn't like everyone else. Now look at me. When it comes down to it, I'm no different at all.

"No! No, I-" Thresh takes another step forwards, his face expressing more rage than I ever thought him capable of as he raises the stone to strike, and I abruptly forget my pride, my desire to fight my own battles and my need to always be in control of my own fate. I abandon my thoughts of remaining dignified to scream at the top of my voice for the person who has always rescued me in the past, the only person I have ever loved. "Cato! Cato!"

"Clove!"

I hear his reply, and his voice is full of a desperate panic I've never heard before, probably in response to the same panic in my own call, but he is too far away. Not even he can save me now.

"Cato," I breathe, my voice little more than a whisper as Thresh brings the rock crashing towards me.

Everything turns to black once more, but a second later I regain consciousness enough for the pain to hit me. It feels like someone has set me on fire, like I've been stabbed with a thousand knives all at the same time, and everything around me is spinning around and around so that focussing on a single point is impossible. I hear a low groaning noise of absolute agony, and I just about comprehend that I'm the one making it. I can hear an unintelligible jumble of words from somewhere close by but they mean nothing when I can think of nothing but the pain.

So this is how I'm going to die. Not in the Arena at home or in the ring at one of the prize fights like I imagined, or even as an old woman resting safely and peacefully in Cato's arms as I have also dared to imagine in my rare, more fanciful moments, but here on the freezing cold arena floor, slowly and in unimaginable pain for the Capitol's entertainment.

Nothing that's happening around me registers until I hear his voice, his heavy, racing footsteps making the ground shake and my pain even worse as they get closer and closer. I don't care. All that matters is that he came for me, and even as the grief I hear in his voice as he continues to call my name rips me apart, I can't help the strange feeling of elation I get from knowing how that grief is only there because of the strength of his love for me.

Then he sinks to the floor beside me and I struggle harder than I ever have before to focus on his voice.

"Stay with me, Clove. We have so many sponsors, just hold on for a bit longer and they'll send us medicine. Clove, say something! You can't leave me, I won't let you. We're meant to win this thing together. Why do you think the Gamemakers changed the rules? This is the first year two tributes can return home victorious and they did it for us. Clove!"

He reaches down to shake me and I cry out weakly, a pitiful moan escaping my lips before I can stop it. I try to open my eyes but I can't and it takes me several attempts to speak, hating myself for having to ask what I have no choice but to ask him. I can't see him but I can still sense his movement, and he leans down so he can hear me. I almost wish that he wouldn't.

"It's over, Cato. Please…end it…"

"No!" he shouts, his voice painfully loud as he pulls away from me. He grasps both of my hands in his, gripping me as if he can heal my injuries with the force of his will alone. "I'll never do it! I never could have done it!"

"As I never…would have…killed you," I whisper haltingly. "This…this is mercy. Cato…please…"

I lift my hand up and away from his, feeling myself shaking violently as I tap his jacket pocket. Even that tiny movement exhausts me totally and makes my mind spin. Then I feel him move and eventually manage to open my eyes, which find his immediately. He just stares at me, unsure of what to do, a wordless picture of pain and grief I can hardly bear to look at.

"Please, Cato. It hurts. I'm dead already. There's nothing you can do. Please…do this one last thing for me…make the pain stop," I say, my voice getting weaker and weaker as I strive to find basic words that normally come to me automatically. I can't bear the pain anymore. I'd put myself out of my misery to spare him the task if I could but I simply don't have the strength. I take as deep a breath as I can, preparing myself for one final effort. "Do it," I say in a slightly more forceful tone, my eyes locked to his, mostly because focussing on him is the only thing keeping me conscious. "Then make sure you win this thing for both of us, or my ghost will find yours and kill you all over again as a punishment."

He stares unblinkingly at me, and I see the exact second he makes his decision by the look in his eyes. "I'll kill him for this, I swear it. I'll kill them all."

Then he sits up, still focussed intently on my face as he takes a deep, shuddering breath. "I love you, Clove Jacia. More than my own life. You have my word that he will die for this." His voice is barely audible, for me and not for the cameras. His words are mine and I hope they can't hear.

I watch as he raises the knife, drawing it sharply across the palm of his own hand as he seals his oath in blood, the meaning of which will not be lost to those watching back home. In District 2, what he just said and did in my name means as much as any vow at a marriage ceremony. A cool breeze blows across my face and I feel the wetness of my tears on my cheeks as I notice them for the first time.

Then he leans back down over me, his lips brushing mine as I feel him position the knife over my heart however hard he tries to hide it. A single tear trickles slowly down his face, the very first I've ever seen him shed. I'd wipe it away if I could but I can't move.

"I will be with you again very soon, my Clove," he whispers, and I vaguely register what that means as I briefly feel a sharp pain in my chest before everything vanishes and turns to darkness.

Epilogue

I've heard many people say that just before a person dies, their whole life flashes by before them, and though I had never seen how that could be true, I know now that they were right. I expect it's the overwhelming pain that's making me delirious, giving me hallucinations which are so vivid it's like watching my life playing back on a television screen, but the images I see and the emotions I feel are so real that I feel like I'm living them all over again.

I see a young boy dressed in a filthy shirt, with material bound around his feet because he doesn't have any shoes, and although I only have a vague recollection of how it felt to be that boy, I know instantly that he's a younger version of myself. As soon as I realise that, I suddenly stop watching the boy and become him instead, giving me the odd sensation that I'm looking down on myself but living the memory at the same time.

I'm thrown roughly out of a familiar building onto the dark, forbidding streets of the part of District 2 that nobody in their right mind wanders through in daylight never mind in the pitch black of the middle of the night. When I turn to see the face of the person who cast me away, I abruptly remember what I'm living through for the second time. This was the night I killed someone for the first time. I was seven years old.

I never knew who my mother was. She could have been one of about ten women who made a living in one of the many dilapidated houses in the backstreets of the poorest part of the district where I spent the first years of my life. They survived by selling the only thing they had left because it was the only way to stay alive, and any children they had belonged to all of them and none of them at the same time.

I stayed there because I knew nothing else, and because there was one woman who was always nice to me, who always had a kind word and something to eat. I knew even then that she wasn't my mother because her skin was too dark, but I had wished that she was for as long as I could remember.

That night after running my usual errands, I ran to find her like I always did, barging into her room to share the loaf of bread I'd stolen. But she wasn't waiting for me with her familiar smile. Instead she was lying motionless on the narrow bed, her murderer still standing over her. Without thinking I sprinted over to him, jumped onto his back and drove my knife into his throat before he even knew I was there.

That was when the owner of the house walked in, the one we all worked for. He took one look at the scene before him and then lifted me up by the back of my bloodstained shirt, telling me that seeing as he already has two bodies to dispose of whilst avoiding the ever watchful eyes of the Peacekeepers, he is unfortunately going to have to leave it to someone or something else to be the death of me. He lamented dramatically and graphically about how grieved he was that he had no choice but to deprive himself of the pleasure of killing me himself, but I felt no fear. In fact I felt nothing. The anguish caused by the death of the woman I thought of as a mother numbed all other emotions.

I wonder if that man remembers me all these years later, now he's undoubtedly watching my slow and agonising death on his television screen?

However I didn't die of starvation or something a whole lot more horrific like the man who cast me out from the only home I had ever known had predicted. I was determined to prove him wrong by surviving and I survived by doing what I'd always done - running errands, stealing and spying. I found that as I was so good at it, I was never short of work and was able to earn just enough to stay alive.

I was nine years old when one of the most powerful men in the criminal underworld of District 2 ordered me to steal something from the infamous Training Centre, right from under the nose of the man who controlled it, the formidable victor of the Hunger Games known to me only as Vikus. I can't remember what I was supposed to steal. Looking back now, I don't think that it mattered much to anyone. It wasn't what I was to have stolen but the actual act of stealing from a rival that mattered. I hadn't wanted to go but at the same time I knew I had no choice.

I was raised to be a good thief, and so that was the first time I'd ever been caught stealing. If I'd known what would happen then I never would have done any of it. To this day I still think that if it hadn't been for Her then I would have preferred a quick execution at the hands of the Peacekeepers to what I endured.

Vikus kept me locked up in the Training Centre for what felt like all eternity, inflicting every form of torture he knew and probably a few more besides. Despite what I've become, how physically easy it is for me to kill, I still remember that time of my life and shiver with something that must be fear.

It took a long time for Vikus to get what he wanted, but I'm ashamed to admit that I begged him for the mercy of death in the end. It was that plea for mercy, that weakness, which finally made him let me out of that tiny room, and the next thing I knew, he was telling me he'd spare my life if I worked for him instead of his rival and started training to become a tribute in the Hunger Games.

I could already fight and I'd killed before, so it didn't seem like a hardship to me and it wasn't a difficult choice to make. I found that as I was sitting there slumped in the chair opposite him, battered, bruised and broken, I had lost my determination to survive and had found something totally different. Powerful and undefeated as he was, from that day onwards I became determined to become better than Vikus, to become stronger and more skilled than him so that one day I could have my revenge. I wanted nothing more than to make him beg me for his pitiful life in the same way he made me beg him for mine.

The golden wall of the Cornucopia swims before me as I half regain consciousness at the thought of my hated mentor. I've spent most of my life hating, I've known nothing else so it's as natural as breathing, but until I came to this arena, I've never hated anyone more than I hated Vikus. Even as I regret how I'll never have my vengeance, I wonder what he's thinking right now as he watches me die.

Even now, as he watches from the Control Room as his dream of mentoring another District 2 victor slowly slips away, he has no idea that with two very recent and very different exceptions, every person I've ever killed has died wearing his face. I want to tell him. There's bound to be a camera pointing right at me, because the Capitolians will want nothing more than to see my death up close, and suddenly I want to talk. I want him to hear. I want him to know that he never defeated me.

But then a vicious growl reaches my ears as they stop fighting amongst themselves and begin to torment me once more. The renewed pain swiftly pushes me back away from reality and the memory of Vikus almost disappears.

And that's how I began my life at the Training Centre. I trained harder than anyone my age and harder even than most of those due to compete in the reaping trials. Nothing else mattered but my determination to do everything in my power to achieve my single goal of having my revenge upon the man who tortured me in that tiny dark room underneath the Arena. I maintained that single-minded determination constantly, nurturing it until it became so strong I could barely conceal it from those around me. After a while, I hardly noticed how virtually everyone I trained with avoided me, how some of them cowered away in fear when they caught my eye.

Then one day, when I was thirteen years old and about a month away from attending my second reaping, everything changed. For that was the day I saw Her.

She was always different. A tiny, wild-looking, dark-haired girl with the white skin of the District 2 upper classes but with a Training Centre token around her neck just like mine. When she saw me staring, she glared right back as if she wasn't half my size.

I pretended I wanted the knife she wore on her belt, but I didn't. Knives were her thing, even then. What I really wanted was an excuse to challenge her. I saw something in her even then, even if I didn't quite realise at the time how completely she would conquer me in the end.

She didn't disappoint me that day or on any other that followed it, and we became friends and allies before we were old enough for there to be anything more between us. We were united in our fight against the whole world and everyone else in it, and after only a short time, I couldn't imagine it being any different.

I would have died for her even then, and I proved it to her and to the whole Training Centre when Vikus tried to have her killed in the Arena and I passed her the weapons she needed to save her life. She was thirteen years old and she killed for me. She ended that boy's life on Vikus's command because she knew that if she refused to do so then it would be my life that would be forfeit.

That was the first time I acknowledged that I saw her as more than my friend. She wasn't like everyone else even then. She was better than them, and I remained by her side as we both grew older, noticing how different she still was.

It's a harsh life in the Training Centre, and many of the girls quickly learnt to survive by fighting for the affections of the most powerful and influential boys more fiercely than they ever fought in the practice ring, trading their favours for protection from everyone else, but she never did. She fought like a demon against anyone who challenged her, never more strongly than against those who sought to claim her as theirs. The first time we ever argued was when I tried to explain to her that the way she reacted to them only made their desire to possess her even stronger. After all, by then nobody understood what it was to desire her better than I did.

I never understood why she used to react as she did, where her fear and hatred of being touched came from, a fear that remained with her even in the Capitol Remake Centre. No matter how many times I asked her, even when she lay sleepily relaxed in my arms years later, she would never explain. She said there was nothing to tell and that it was just the way she was.

Maybe it really was just something that was always there, but by the time she had her fifteenth birthday, when she was begging me to take her to the prize fights I'd already been competing in for over a year so that she too could contribute towards raising money for the plans we'd already started to make, it was only an incredibly stupid or incredibly brave man or boy who would mess with Clove Jacia.

I'd always doubted my own intelligence in her presence and had long since made the decision to be brave.

It didn't take long for her to wear me down, and once she had almost got the better of me in the Arena for the first time, I finally conceded that she was ready. She shone that night, a beacon of light in the damp and dark old storeroom where the fights were held, and the pain I feel in reality fades to nothing as I remember how I lifted her high into the air, spinning her around and around as we both celebrated her victory.

I remember everything about her and not even the almighty Capitol can take that away from me. I remember the way the moonlight reflected off her pale skin as we stood on the roof of our disused warehouse, the look she sometimes had in her silver eyes that nobody but me ever saw. And I remember the way her tiny hands trembled when they trailed across my skin that night as she found the courage to overcome her biggest fear. I'd never cared for anyone or anything before. I didn't even think I could. But she proved me wrong that night, no matter how I tried to fight it.

For such a long time I kept telling myself I didn't really feel anything for her, that I didn't need her, that what I did feel was something any person can feel, simple lust and nothing more. I even tried to tell myself she felt the same about me, that the fact she trusted me so completely and yet still pushed anyone and everyone else away with her now renowned ferocity was an insignificant detail. Yet little by little, the voice in my head that told me she meant nothing got quieter and quieter until eventually it fell completely silent.

She told me so many times that she didn't need protection from anyone and she was right, she was more than capable of looking after herself. But I couldn't help it. I always knew I was never worthy of her, and yet I couldn't stop myself from trying to be. Whenever anyone looked at her with desire in their eyes, I wanted to stand in front of her so she couldn't be seen. Whenever anyone put yet another scar on her body during a fight in the Arena, I wanted to give them three in return. Whenever anyone dared to touch her, I felt a blinding, murderous rage that was stronger even than that I felt when I thought of my need to make Vikus regret what he did to me.

I wasn't whole without her. I wasn't happy unless I was touching her, listening to her tell me I'd stand no chance if we fought even as I held her in my arms like I could protect her from the harsh world in which we were both forced to exist. There were times when I wanted to possess her, to dominate her entirely, and yet even as I did, even as she allowed me to, I soon realised that she possessed me in equal measure. By the time she had her sixteenth birthday, I was hers as surely as she was mine.

About a year later, I won the reaping trials. I won the right to represent my district in the Hunger Games in the usual District 2 way - by defeating all of my competitors in a fight that was often to the death. It's not my victory I remember though, not the cheers of the spectators as I finished off my final opponent, nor the words of congratulations from the mentors who seemed so certain that I would soon be one of them. It's not even the knowledge of how I was that bit closer to achieving what I'd been so determined to achieve for so many years.

I thought I was just over a month away from finally being able to have the victory I'd dreamed of for so long, not just in the Games but over the man who taught me the true meaning of hate, and yet that doesn't change how what I remember most from that day is Her. I remember the red tunic she wore, the way the wind ruffled her hair as she watched me fight from her position at the Arena gate, and the way she pushed through the crowd so she could stand by my side as soon as my final opponent crashed unconscious to the floor. She looked up at me with such pride in her eyes that I suddenly wanted both this year's Games and next year's to be over already so we could make the plans we'd been dreaming up together for years into the reality we had imagined.

For a brief moment I continue to see her as clearly in my mind as if she were standing beside me, but then she slowly fades, the mind-numbing, excruciating pain returning as I'm dragged further into the Cornucopia.

The movement pulls on every single one of my wounds. I hear myself cry out because of the pain and I bite my lip hard, stopping it from happening again, at least temporarily. Clove used to say there was a better life after this one and she refused to believe death was the end. She'd seen so much death and destruction in her short life, and I knew that belief was her way of dealing with knowing that she could be next. I knew better than to question her. I used to tease her though, telling her I'd haunt her for forever and a day if what she said is true. She made me promise I would. And that's why I must die with dignity and without showing my pain. If there's a chance she can see me now then I will not shame her as greatly as I have failed her. I have to be strong.

That thought allows me to fall temporarily into the bliss of unconsciousness once more, but the memory I relive makes me wish for the physical pain to return as a distraction from the emotional pain that replaces it. Reaping Day.

I knew as soon as Selene Fairfax drew Clove's name from the reaping ball, placing us in the same Hunger Games with no way out, that I would never be the one to kill her. I was determined that the only way she would die would be if the Capitol killed us both. But my determination wasn't enough. I failed her, and knowing that has caused me more pain than the Capitol's muttations which still surround me ever could. It's fitting I should die now, in a situation that could have been prevented if I'd just got to the Cornucopia a minute sooner. Together we could have defeated both the mutts and District 12, alone, as ever, I had no chance.

It's been so long since they dragged me in here that my ability to feel individual injuries is a distant memory, and I realise my body must have become accustomed to the pain because I don't feel it anywhere near as strongly as I did at the beginning. I can feel myself slipping away into a much more permanent unconsciousness and I know it won't be long now.

It was probably the Capitol's idea of a joke to make the muttations look like the tributes. I should have guessed as I stare into the eyes of the wolf that's crouched in front of me that they wouldn't be able to resist one final torture. The wolf has silver eyes, eyes that are unlike those of any natural wolf. Her eyes. I killed many of the mutts when I first fell from the top of the Cornucopia but I couldn't kill this one. I can't kill anything that has those eyes.

I hadn't imagined this ending to my life. I've thought about my own death almost constantly since the feast, for since that fateful morning I knew it wouldn't be far away, but it was going to be on my terms not that of the Gamemakers. I promised her I'd win the Games, that I'd kill the one who took her from me, but not that I would return to District 2. To think of going back to the place which is so full of memories without her is unthinkable, and up until the last time I was conscious, I still had her knife in my pocket, a knife I'd kept there safely for when the time came. Then the entire nation would have known the truth. Then the whole nation would have understood that I'd never live in a world that didn't have Her in it.

I wish it could have happened like I'd planned. Not just because I can't stop thinking of how I've failed her by not winning, but because it still gives me great pleasure to imagine how the Capitol would react to having to send their victor home in a wooden box next to another box just like it, one which bears the one who saved his life long before the loss of her ever gave him reason to end it.

The wolf with my lover's eyes bares its teeth at me as it attacks once more, and I fall into darkness yet again, hypnotised by those eyes, which never change no matter what pain and injury the creature inflicts upon me.

I must have passed out, because when I eventually succeed in my struggle to open my eyes, I can see the pale light of dawn shining in through the open front of the golden horn. The muttations are still there, their attack unrelenting, and I abruptly realise the pain must have finally made me lose my mind when I hear her calling to me. She calls my name in a voice that contains none of the pain the arena caused her to feel. She sounds like she used to, she sounds like she did on the day I won the reaping trials and we thought we could rule the world.

If I'm mad then I don't care. She's with me and that's all that matters.

She appears at the entrance to the Cornucopia, holding her tiny, pale hand out to me, but when I try to reach for her, I can't move. She looks questioningly at me and I struggle to whisper a word I can barely distinguish when I finally succeed, desperate for her not to go, for her to stay with me to keep the pain away. It sounds like I say 'please', a word that sounds so strange and unfamiliar coming from my lips, but that doesn't matter. I've always been willing to say anything for her and this is no different.

She smiles that sly half-smile I'll never forget. Then the pain vanishes as the world turns to black and I know that it's finally over.

She was right about so many other things that I should have known she was right about this too. The next time I open my eyes, it's to find that all of my pain has vanished so completely it's merely a vague and distant memory. As I stand and leave the shelter of the Cornucopia, I discover I'm healed so completely that I can walk with the familiar swagger I remember from my life before the arena.

Then I see her, perched on a rock a short distance away, staring into the golden horn with the most terrible expression of horror and pain that I've ever seen on her face. She doesn't see me so I call out to her.

"Are you here to kill me all over again then?"

She doesn't reply when she turns to face me, the terror and pain suddenly replaced by stunned amazement as she slowly shakes her head. I walk quickly over to her and hold out my hand. She hurriedly accepts it as if she thinks I could vanish at any moment. I want to tell her that I'll never leave her, that I won't let her go for a second time, but I quickly realise that the Clove I know and love would roll her eyes at that and tell me accusingly that if I don't stop being so pathetic then I'll be quoting Capitol love poetry next.

Therefore I do the next best thing and smirk down at her as I lift her off her feet, holding her so tightly that she couldn't begin to struggle even if she wanted to. I soon realise that she doesn't want to when she wraps her arms tightly around me as I take us both away from our old life to something infinitely better.

28/03/2012 - I can't believe it's been over two years since I wrote this... But I'm still here, so if you've read this far then I'd love to hear what you think...