the girl who played with knives || clato ✔️

39

Clove

My voice dies in my throat. Everything hurts: my hand- what's left of it- and my head and my arm and my face, my back, my chest. This is a battle I cannot win. Already I sense consciousness slipping away. I struggle to stay above, waving blindly with the knife gripped in my left hand. My only hand. My head is killing me, blurring my vision, nauseating me.

Fynch, still hanging on, struggles away from the mutt and I.

I never miss. I never... miss...

Cato

I wake up with a jolt at the loudest scream yet, pure terror and pain. Frozen by fear, I breathe heavily. My leg. My leg...

One more scream. It's unidentifiable. It's insane. But there's only one person it could be.

Clove

Suddenly the pressure is relieved. The mutt must be gone. I can't tell though. I can't tell anything. It still hurts just as badly and my eyes seem to be glued shut. My heartbeat throbs in my ears. Fynch says something but I can't make it out. I slip away from the tangible world.

Cato

"Clove..." I wheeze. Soon enough, the adrenaline kicks in. "CLOVE!"

I sit up violently. I drag myself across the slick metal of the cornucopia, both our blood mixed with rainwater. When I reach the edge of the horn, I take a heavy breath before sliding down and landing on my battered foot.

Clove

Cato screams somewhere. I know it's him. It has to be. Thresh is dead. Fynch is dying beneath me. It hits me that we're the only three left, he and I and her.

Cato

I cannot walk. I don't think I could ever walk again. The pain tears through me. I lay there limp for a while, panting.

My right hand reaches far ahead of me and paws at the muddy ground. I lift my head and see Thresh's body yards away in the clearing. I struggle to my knees. I drag myself several feet as rapidly as I can manage.

The arena is eerily silent, no mutts growling, no kids screaming. Kids screaming. I contributed to that. I killed so many. How many was it? I try to count but the list is foggy. I don't care anymore.

I pass by Thresh, rotting on the ground. Thresh, who nearly killed Clove. Thresh, who I hated. Thresh, who looks so peaceful there, his eyelids tilted shut and his face blank. That scowl is gone. That scowl... A sudden burst of anger ignites me. I turn away from him. I sit on my knees. I lift my left leg and plant it firmly on the ground. I rise, my right foot bearing no weight. Caught off guard, I crash to the mud again, tangled in a heap.

On the second attempt, I stumble several steps, using my mangled foot merely as leverage, dragging my body behind my left leg, staring fiercely ahead.

That's when I see her. She and Fynch both, lying in a heap, their mingled blood pooled around them.

"Clove!" I scream. "Clove!"

But I'm not speaking loud enough because she doesn't get up. She can't hear me. She can't hear. If she could, she would be rising and running to me.

"CLOVE!" I bellow.

Fynch moves around, certainly wounded and wobbly but appearing virtually pristine compared to Clove. I yell her name again, and Fynch stares straight at me, fear in her eyes, like a doe caught in the sight of a hunter.

Backing away, scrabbling like a spider on her hands and feet, she says something but is too far away for me to hear.

I fall again and scream, not from the physical pain but at my frustration. I simply can't get there fast enough. I can see Clove slipping away. She gives off the appearance of death. But there was no cannon. No cannon. She's okay. No cannon. I repeat the mantra and crawl on my hands and knees, determined to reach Clove before anything else can.

Fynch shouts, "Cato! Think this through! There's no way they'll let you both win! It goes against tradition!"

I wonder why she's saying this, then realize that, of course, she's trying to weasel her way out of losing the game.

"You're all that stands between us!" I shout as I near her. Mere yards. "I have to kill you before Clove dies!"

I'm nearing hysteria and panic. I can see Fynch is as well, but she's better at hiding it, feigning calmness.

"It won't work. She's... she's dead already."

We're close enough to speak in normal tones now. And I'm close enough to truly see the fear in her wide eyes. I can also see Clove fully. Clove, mangled, bitten, stirring in and out of consciousness.

"You're wrong," I growl at Fynch, who is panting and crawling slowly backward.

"Cato, you can't both win. Please just think."

Hot tears burn my face. I pick up the nearest object- a fallen tree branch- and hurl it haphazardly at Fynch, who flinches but stays where she is.

I turn my attention to Clove. Her chest, her arms, her legs, everything is torn apart. I hold her left hand in both of mine, trembling as I feel her blood seeping into me. I reach for her other hand, but there's nothing there. My God. I drop both hands and gasp, more tears leaking out.

Her throwing hand. Her weapon. Gone. I resist nausea.

"Clove," I whisper, my voice swaying. I set my palm across her wounded forehead and stare into her face. Her eyes are squeezed shut. Her lips tremble and she shivers. A thought grips me: "Clove... together. Together."

She doesn't finish the promise. She doesn't say or do anything but lay there and faintly moan.

"We have to let her go," Fynch is muttering in the distance, deep emotion in her voice.

I just stare at Clove, nearing lifelessness, incoherent.

I hear Fynch sobbing. I hear myself doing the same.

"This shouldn't have to happen," she's saying, struggling over the words. "It's disgusting," she groans, hiccupping. "It's cruel. It's inhumane. It's-"

"Shut up," I whisper, a whisper being all that's left within me.

Fynch, surprisingly, inches closer.

"What are you doing?" I snap. "You should be running. I could... I could kill you."

"I know," Fynch cries.

The three of us sit there as the sky lightens to a dim grey. I hold tightly onto Clove's remaining hand and murmur her name repeatedly.

Who could save her? Certainly someone. Certainly the Capitol. The Capitol can accomplish anything. The Capitol can do whatever it wants. The Capitol chooses who lives and who dies. The Capitol chooses whether to save Clove. The Capitol-

No. They can't-

"I decide," I say audibly. "This isn't about-"

Fynch's breaths hike.

I curse loudly and turn to her, murder in my eyes.

"Please don't," she pleads weakly. "It won't work."

"It will... Dammit, it will! I can win this, Fynch! We both can! Not- Not you."

My sword has fallen somewhere back in the deep woods where we first encountered the mutt. All of our supplies are there. Everything I need right now. The medicine, the weapons.

Several knives lay around Clove, tinted boldly crimson with her blood. I reach over her and take one, a menacing blade, long and sharp.

"You won't stop us," I growl, I'm not sure to who. But I'm scrambling towards Fynch, who gasps, shouts, and rushes unsteadily to her feet. She backs away a few steps before sprinting into the trees. I swear violently and rise to my knees, then to my feet. I attempt to run after her but make it only a few feet before I slam into the ground, smacking my face on the ragged dirt.

"NO!" I shout as Fynch flees. "DAMN IT!"

I scream unintelligibly in her direction, sobbing and crawling weakly into the forest.

I've made it another yard or so when I hear a cannon.