futile || cato's story ✔️

hunting

"Have your one," I offer to Marina as we stand over a girl who is still gurgling out breaths despite her seeping throat.

Marina jogs back several yards and carefully angles her spear, launching into the air with an angle that sends it rocketing straight down into the girl's throat, severing whatever remained to keep her alive. We all laugh and cheer at the kill. I lend a genuinely impressed smile. Maybe Marina's got some worth here.

There's one other. That damned boy both the guy from Five and I took a hit at.

"That cut was a killshot," I spit to no one in particular as he twitches and moans. To make up for it, I sit pinning his legs and drive my blade into his stomach yet again, this time dragging it from his gut up to his sternum before delivering a final blow to the skull. I quiver with rage that I cannot reign in, ready to destroy anything that gets near me.

"Cato." A distant voice pulls me out of it, muffled as if heard through water. So muffled that I jump when the face quickly materializes from my peripheral. Familiar brown hair and eyes and youthfully freckled skin.

"Fuck." I slide off the boy's body and jest, "Why didn't you use stealth as your primary skill..."

"I've been standing here the whole time, Cato. You were a little lost in the art."

"Just making sure the job was done."

It's her turn to lift me from the ground, and our hands linger together for one beat more than necessary.

On cue, the cannons begin. Clove and I distance ourselves as we walk back over to the lake. Eleven dead, all laid out around us.

"Twelve to go," Glimmer says jauntily, literally wiggling her eyebrows.

I bite my lip. Clove's elbow finds my shoulder.

"Hey!" Marvel suddenly shouts, pointing back towards the horn. "Hey, it's Twelve!"

"I just said-"

"Katniss?" Clove and I turn in unison at the prospect of the twirling Girl on Fire who stole the high score from us in training.

"No, the other one!" Marvel's already running for the cornucopia, where surely enough Katniss' little Loverboy is crawling out of the hull.

"Peeta," Marina recalls. "Guess that's why they didn't take any bodies..." They never do so with living tributes within so many feet. I refrain from reminding her that some of the dead also weren't dead. Better to leave that frustration in the past besides.

"Come here to fight us all by yourself, Twelve?" Marvel taunts, nearing the boy with a raised spear in hand-- the same one.

"No, stop! Wait!"

I'm close on Marvel's heels, ready to savor the kill of that embarrassing bitch's embarrassing blushing and crushing partner.

"Why shouldn't we kill you now?" Clove scoffs, a handful of knives on the ready, sharing disgust for Katniss and, by default, this boy.

"I- I can help you find Katniss! I know where she went, we- we planned it together!"

"Planned what?" Glimmer rightfully scoffs. "Did you somehow get a full map of the arena beforehand?"

"No, our mentor. I don't know how you do it, but he trained us together and told us both to-"

"Wrap it up," I demand.

"She went that way into the forest. I saw. She'll- she'll be traveling as deep into those woods as possible, trying to find-" He so cleverly stops himself before revealing what will certainly be "water."