By the time Cato runs into the star crossed lovers from 12, he's been running for almost an hour. About half way into the run he'd stopped, thought about maybe trying to take the creatures on, whatever they were. He'd stood stock still in a clearing, waiting for them to catch up to him and eventually one had. The creature had slunk out of the bushes, glared at him, howled to the others that it had him, that the prey had been found. In no less than a few seconds he took in its appearance. It was smallish, almost runty. Dark long fur covering its grotesque contorted body. A pair of dark eyes shining out of the both human and wolf face, the only part of the thing that wasn't covered in the fur. The most particular pattern of freckles across its mutated cheeks.

Cato had immediately turned and ran, wretching, screaming, abandoning any plans he had of taking the mutt down. He didn't need to read the number dangling off the collar to work out who the creature was, or who the Capitol was trying to represent with it, the freckles had given it away.

Kill them Cato.

Who had she meant? As he ran blindly through the woods, the creatures snouts occasionally snapping at his heels he played the sentence over and over in his head. Kill them Cato. He couldn't help but think that just finishing off the other tributes was enough now to avenge her, that somehow, someone in the capitol would pay for what had happened to her when he got out of this place. The stunt with the mutts had sealed the deal, at least in his mind. Someone would pay dearly for what had happened to Clove.

The rage and hate that builds up from these thoughts keeps him running even though he's on the brink of absolute exhaustion. When he runs into the tributes from 12 he doesn't even consider stopping, hopes that they'll be too slow to work out what's going on and that they'll keep the dogs at bay till he gets to his destination. He can already see the cornucopia up ahead, even more angular and frightening in the night. He picks up his pace, practically bursts into the clearing by the lake, the clearing where there supplies once were, where the garish capitol object lies. The clearing where she died, he reminds himself, feels his chest constrict.

Just get to the thing, climb the thing, then deal with the pain his mind hisses at him and he listens to it, somehow pulls himself up atop the awful structure. Then he collapses onto his back, dealing with the pain , trying to lock the sound of her voice screaming his name out of his head.

He eventually hears the girl on fire and lover boy shouting to each other below him, the slick sound of an arrow hitting flesh, a mutt yelping and then the sounds of boots and hands scraping against and up the metal edges.

"Can they jump?" he asks through a haggard cough, not expecting any kind of answer. He doesn't get one, but the boy has heard him, reiterates his sentence to the scowling girl. His stomach has tied itself into knots, sending waves of pain throughout his whole body. Clutching hold of it, trying to suppress the pain he turns his attention to the awful mutts below him. He can see Marvel, a tall gangly awkward looking thing, leaping up towards Everdeen. Glimmer with her cartoon green eyes and sun kissed fur lying dead at the gangly mutt's feet, 12's arrow protruding from her neck. Only one of them is really all that interested in him. She leaps furiously up the side of the cornucopia towards him, still too small even in mutt form to get high enough purchase. Grimacing he scoots away from the edge so he can't see those eyes in that head, but he can't escape the sound of her claws scratching the surface.

Kill them Cato, the voice whispers. He glances over at the two struggling tributes across from him, both so occupied with the Mutts. It's so easy to get to them unnoticed, to slam his fist against the side of the boys face and then pull him into a headlock, cutting off his air. When the girl turns around to face him and he can see first the shock, then the pain and worry that crosses her features it's not nearly as rewarding to him as it should be. He can only imagine that his face looked like that to the girl from five when he first heard Clove screaming his name. Briefly he wonders where that girl is, what happened to her, then finally comes to the conclusion that if she's not here she's surely dead. He becomes aware that the Everdeen girl has her bow loaded, aimed right at his head. Cato laughs, grins, it's almost ridiculous. He squeezes the boy's neck tighter.

"Go on, shoot. Then we both go down and you win." he smiles, knowing this is the moment that the girl from twelve will finally have to prove just how much she really cares about the lovelorn boy he has trapped in his arms. He hopes she doesn't care enough, that she'll send them both toppling over the edge, releasing him from his misery. Clove's eyes with the light leaking out flash across his mind, making his heart lurch painfully against his ribs.

"I'm dead anyway. I always was right? I didn't know that till now." He's practically crying, because he knows it's true. All his life, all their lives, he and Clove had trained for the games in that academy, been told that they were training to be careers, training to bring pride and honour to their district. They'd both always thought that meant they were being trained to win, but it wasn't true, not really. Winning it seems is just a bonus. In reality they were just being reared for the slaughter, trained up for their deaths to be some light entertainment for all of Panem to watch.

He looks up at the sky, laughing, hoping their old trainers are watching this, that they know he knows what they've done to him, what they let happen to Clove. "How's that? Is that what they want huh? He hears Everdeen stretch the string of her bow, ready to shoot him. He whips his head back around, glares at her, can't believe she'd do something like that to him while he's in the middle of such a character defining moment, while he's pouring his heart out to her. The blood boils underneath his skin.

Kill them Cato

"Nu uh, no, no. I can still do this." He can see her now, as though she's actually there, standing next to the girl on fire. Her arms folded across her chest, head cocked to the side, ghost of a smile disguised in the corner of her lips, Baiting him, egging him on like she always had, just with a simple smirk on her pretty little face. He must be delirious. "I can still do this." He says again, locking his eyes with the ghostly figure beside Everdeen.

"One more kill. It's the only thing I know how to do. Bring pride to my district." He smiles at his girl, his butcherbird, lets a tear roll down his cheek just for her to see. "Not that it matters."

He's so focused on the ghostly Clove that he doesn't realize what the boy is tracing across his fingers until it's too late, realizing only seconds before the arrow shatters through the bones in his hand, sending him reeling backward in pain, giving the stupid lover boy the opportunity to push him hard over the edge into the eager waiting mouths of the mutts.

He fights them hard for what must be something like an hour, managing to kill maybe six or so of the things, always managing to throw the Clove mutt away from him. But eventually the exhaustion kicks in, making him slow, making him weak. When she comes for him, latches onto his leg he doesn't fight to push her back, try to kill her. He can't, even if it's just an awful muttation with her genetic coding melded into its makeup.

So he just falls and lets them all surround him, lets them begin to tear their way into his flesh. Occasionally he falls out of consciousness, and there his memories flash across his mind. Picking up his first sword at age six, his mother crying and kissing him as she leaves him at the academy age nine, sealing his fate, this fate. He remembers Clove so young and so small throwing knife after knife into a set of revolving dummies, piercing them where the heart should be each and every time. He remembers her at the age she was now, smirking at him while eating breakfast in the academy mess hall, remembers how her hand felt when it wrapped itself around his under the table on the train, remembers her sneaking out of his room wrapped only in a sheet the night before they were sent into the arena, knows she thought he was still asleep. A thousand and one memories play out in his unconscious world, almost all of her.

Every time the pain pulls him back to reality he finds himself fighting to go back to those memories, that place of peace, the only place she exists now. He tries to free himself from the armour, make it quicker, but his fingers have been eaten down to bloody pulps and the pain is just too much.

"Please" he begins asking, to no one in particular, just to anyone who will listen. The game makers, the mutts, Everdeen and her stupid lover,asking for at least one of them to finish him, let him go, let him fulfil the destiny he was raised for. He's delirious, the world is an awful haze. He sees her again, his Clove, standing up atop the cornucopia, looking down at him with such pity and sorrow. Sometimes she looks like the Everdeen girl, with her bow raised, aimed at his face. But mostly it's Clove, dark eyes trained on his, asking him what he wants, a knife held carefully in her hand.

"please." He asks again, no, begs her. Clove nods, raises the knife, throws it. He sees it spinning through the air, and again is unsure whether it's an arrow or one of her knives. Then he feels it pierce the skin just between his eyes, and he fades back into the memories.

The canon fires. Brutal bloody Cato is no more.

So I finished it, so many awful sad Clato feels went into this. I'd love to know what you people who are reading it thought of it, so if you liked it, I would really appreciate a review :)

I mean you don't have to, but I would really like it, and it would make me happy :)

I hope it made sense, you know?