BUZZCUT SEASON (Clove)

Chapter Nine

Nothing better to start off a chapter with than floral print. Definitely appropriate for a book about teenagers killing each other.

 "Wait! Three! Agh- whatever your name is! " I ignored her - that was, until she tackled me.

 I yelled with shock as I was thrown to the ground. "What the hell!?"

 I was met with Clove's fierce, brown eyes.

 "What do you mean, 'cheater'?"

I grimaced, "How do you not know this already? Okay, so the Career districts? They-"

 " Career districts? "

 "One, Two and Four. Y'know, the Careers! The ones who kill everybody? We're all afraid of you ...? Well, most of us, anyways. "

 "What?"

 " Anyway, the Career districts, they are all cheaters. You learn how to train before the games! You can kill me in a thousand different ways. You almost always win because of it, too. You get money coming in all the time. We hate you. Meanwhile, the outer districts regularly have people starve to death, and even my district, Three, we have half the population homeless! I should know! "

 "What?!"

 " Shut your mouth, you'll catch flies. And also, get off. It's getting hard to breathe. "

Clove stared at me. "You're homeless?!" An emotion I couldn't discern enveloped her eyes.

 I glared at her as I got to my feet, "Really? That's the only thing you got out of this? Don't rub it in."

She scowled, whipping out a knife. "Whatever. I'm going to kill you anyway."

 My blood ran cold, but I tried to keep on a brave face, "How are you going to do that?" I stepped backwards.

Clove stepped toward me, "With my knives, obviously."

 I stepped backwards again, and Two fowards.

 "Stop moving, Three!"

 One final backwards step, one final shift from my opponent..

Whooosh! Clove hung, upside down, by her leg, from a snare.

                                                                                    ~

Clove immediately screamed with pain. I winced, jumping into action as I took in the blood quickly soaking into her trousers. This wasn't my snare, it must've been another trap that the same tribute set up.

"Get me down! "

I looked up at her, "If I do that, you'll kill me."

 " I can't! " she hissed, "My leg - it's cutting right through my skin!"

 " Well, that is what it's meant to do. That's is one well made snare. 

"Just - Get me down!"

I observed her and then said, " You won't make it two feet if you try to get back to Cato. "

She glared at me. 

 "Fine."

 I went to the tree next to her, and climbed it with ease. Then, I stretched my torso out across the line and began to hack at the rope. Clove wriggled, but stopped with a gasp of pain the snare pulled tighter.

 "Stop moving! It'll just get worse!" I murmured.

I used my knife in a sawing motion and the rope frayed, growing thinner and thinner.. Until it snapped.

Clove came crashing down into the ground, groaning in agony. I scrambled down from the branch. Some kind of instinct kicked in, and I knelt beside her, inspecting her limb by rolling up her trouser leg.

It was a bloodied mess. The ropes had cut deeply - very deeply. I could see bone, and a large amount of flesh and gore.

 "How....bad..." Two got out, moaning from the pure pain. I grimaced.

 " There is no chance you can walk. "

                                                                               ~

I still wasn't entirely sure how I'd gotten into this situation. One moment, she tried to kill me, the next Two's arm wrapped around my shoulder and mine around her waist as I supported her until I could lay her down in my camp.

My camp. I was willingly letting a Career into my camp. A Career who would likely try to kill me as soon as she recovered. 

At this point, she was delirious from pain, exhaustion, and the shock from being almost killed by Eleven (which had just caught up with her). I wondered what happened to Cato.

We reached my camp, and I quickly laid her down in my shelter. I washed the blood off my hands on the stream, and ripped strips of fabric off her and my shirts, some of which I then soaked with water and used to wipe the sticky scarlet from her wound.

I cleaned the cut, visible and viciously painful as Clove passed out from the pain midway through washing it. Then, I wrapped it up in the leftover fabrics and left her, sleeping peacefully in my little den.

This was interesting to write. Just to be clear, it was not her snare that Clove got trapped in, it was a random one set up by Marvel near the start of the games, as we know he's good at from Rue's death. However, this one was a different, more painful, type. Fawn didn't know it was there, and Clove being caught in it was accidental.