The Hunger Games: Entropy (A Clato Fanfiction: NTI Series, Book 2)

Chapter 17

CATO’S POV

That was just plain rude.

I treated Clove to a nice evening and all I got in return was a stab wound to the leg. She’s not getting that kind hospitality from me again until she shows some remorse for deliberately making my life more difficult.

Between staying here and trying to go home, I’d rather try to go back home, even if it means walking on a bad leg for a few hundred steps.

As I finally find the strength to stand up again, I try to apply as little pressure as possible to my leg as possible. Each step I take feels like being wounded over and over again, no matter how hard I try to keep the injury immobilized.

**********

After the most difficult period of walking in my life, I finally manage to get back home and patch up the wound on my leg.

As I trudge up the stairs toward my room, I begin to realize just how lonely the life of a Victor is. Besides the Avox servants that live here, I come home every day to an empty house and vegetate in my room for the rest of my time. I didn't think this was possible, but my life has become just plain boring. It just isn't fun anymore.

I had to deal with a bad leg wound, nagging pains in both of my shins, a bloody nose that feels dislocated, and mild internal bleeding. Clove could’ve come really close to killing me not too long ago and she has yet to show any remorse her unacceptably violent behavior.

I offered her everything she wanted and all she did was take her emotional response to unfortunate circumstances way too far. Based on what I offered her and what she reciprocated, I don't deserve to deal with her spastic attitude and symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. I have every right to live my own life, just like she does.

For all I care, she probably deserves everything she got, both from Snow and her mentor. Maybe if both of them really found a way to really scare the living daylights out of Clove to the point of no return, she’d snap right back into being a more reasonable and rational person.

Still, I don't think there's such a thing as a "rational and reasonable Clove Engstrom." She doesn't apologize to anyone.

I feel tempted to protest Snow's ruling because this whole thing happened and I never anticipated or planned it to begin with. I also feel like wringing my wrists around Clove's little head and twisting it sharply to the left. That would show her not to mess with me. She had no right to mess with me or my win from the very start.

Damages aside, I never wanted this to happen in the first place.

I should have never gone with Lysander. He was never my friend. He probably would have walked me into a dark alley, beaten me up, and robbed me with a gun at point-blank range for all I care. Good riddance.

For all I know, some of the other players and prostitutes have already lined up some way to rob me for whatever they can get. Would I have signed to become a Victor knowing I would have to deal with this shit? 

I’m honestly not even sure anymore. I might have been better off learning my Father's trade and helping him manage the quarries.

No, that's not possible. Father would never let me manage the quarries after our series of interpersonal confrontations. I deserved to win the Games from Day 1.

**********

As the sun sets and the evening peeks inside my window, I only wonder what’ll happen on the Victory Tour.

Snow told us that we needed to prove to all of the quarrelsome districts and their denizens that everything that happened during the Games was an accident and that the Capitol made the right decision in keeping both of us alive. I guess we also need to prove that the Capitol is both most generous and most honorable.