red_b_rackham | Girl on Fire Ficathon: 2 Cato/Katniss fills

Alright, LJ is acting funny for some reason for me - I was just able to post short replies to various comments in the Girl on Fire ficathon, but then when I tried to post my fills, it just was giving me captcha codes forever and won't post. So rather than fighting the dang thing, I'm trying another approach. ;)

Fic Title: Dead Already
Fandom: Hunger Games
Pairing: Cato/Katniss
Rating/Warnings: PGish
Prompt: cato/katniss, i struggle with the feeling that my life isn't mine
For:

jada_jasmine

A/n: AU, Peeta dies before the scene with the mutts. Playing on movie!Cato's emotions at the end of the movie...

~

I’m dead already. Didn’t know that ‘till now…

Katniss moves through the trees silently, searching for game. Dusk is closing in and she still needs something to eat.

There is a soft rustling or splashing noise and then what distinctly sounds like a sniff. Confused and curious, she moves as much as she dares and is able to just barely peer around the large tree she is hiding behind. Roughly twenty feet away, crouching beside a shrub at the edge of the stream is Cato, the tribute from 2. His large sword is discarded but clean beside him, and he’s gently scrubbing his bloody hands in the cool water. Thin tracks of water slide down his cheeks.

Wait.

Was he… crying?

Of course she doesn’t think he was incapable of it – alright, that wasn’t exactly true. The Careers (of any Games) were almost always the coldest, strongest, most violent and trained – emotionless. They liked spilling blood, winning, taunting, being superior – they were taught to be so from the earliest age. The idea of one of them displaying an emotion different than that was completely foreign. And one as vulnerable as crying?

He’s just playing to the cameras, she thinks immediately. He’s trying to rack up sponsors by pretending he has a heart.

Katniss shakes her head and decides it would be a very good thing to get far away now. Ignoring what she’s seen, she creeps from shadow to shadow until she is sure she’s out of earshot, then breaks into a run.

Katniss is still in the Games when the last Careers finally turn on each other. She had thought they would’ve tried to stick it out until the end, but seeing as how there’s only four competitors left, she guesses they must’ve felt it was time. She lost track of Peeta sometime ago, and but she heard two cannons today. At night, it’s the girl from 2 and Peeta that light up the sky.

Make that just two competitors left.

She frowns with regret – despite doubting his motivations for nearly the entire time she knew him, it was clear to her after he saved her from the Careers during the tracker jacker attack that he had been trying to protect her the whole time. She can’t help feeling the loss of him, of a fellow District 12 tribute, of – and it sounds weird, maybe too strong a word and not strong enough – a friend.

Katniss dips her head and covers her eyes, pretending to cry a little. She has to keep up the star-crossed lovers bit, after all. (She does care, of course she does, but not to the level they expect her to.)

While it is the last place in the arena she wants to be, Katniss knows she’ll need to head to the Cornucopia. All other water sources have been dried up by the Gamemakers and the lake is likely all that’s left. And when the mutts attack, she and Cato both hurdle across the open space to the Cornucopia, not bothering with each other for the moment – she doesn’t have time to consider anything but running like hell.

Katniss reaches it first and hauls herself up, scrabbling for hand holds. She hears him call out behind her, turns, and it’s only one split second: she knows she should do nothing, let the mutts gets him, and she will be the victor. Maybe it’s instinct, or stupidity, insanity or the image of him silently letting tears roll down his cheeks when he thought he was alone, or maybe that she’s not willing to let someone be mauled to death (if he has to die, she’ll make it clean and quick – somehow that’s more fair, and she doesn’t know why that matters). Whatever it is that makes her do it, she reaches down and he grabs her arm. As she’s pulling, she has a moment of horror thinking he has played her and is about to pull her down to be killed by the mutts instead. He doesn’t, however, and she helps him up, and they collapse backwards, panting and shaking as the mutts try desperately to get at them.

She comes to her senses first, scrambling away from him, bow aimed at his heart immediately.

Cato sits up slowly, still trying to catch his breath and doesn’t seem at all surprised by her action. His face is bruised, bloody and swollen and there are deep, red slashes in his arms and legs. She wonders how much trouble his fellow tribute from 2, the girl who was so good with knives, gave him when he killed her. She wonders if (hopes) Peeta did some of the visible damage to Cato too, that he fought hard.

“Go ahead,” Cato wheezes. “I’m dead already.”

She hesitates, doesn’t shoot, and there’s no reason not to.

His eyes are bright and shining. “You know, we’re built for this. In 2. My whole life, I was… I was built for this. I didn’t have a say, didn’t have a choice, I just was. I was learning to wield weapons probably by the time I was old enough to walk.” He chokes a little, spits.

“And you… you come from the… coal district. The,” he laughs bitterly, swaying and weak. “The goddamn coal district. You get an 11, and you… What have you done with your life? What training or money or privilege…”

He falls quiet for a moment and she still hasn’t shot him, hasn’t ended it. It’s like she needs to hear him out, let him finish, say what he has to say.

“You had nothing. And you’re here, same as me.” He shakes his head and she’s almost struck by the sadness she sees in him (so Careers are humans too), thinks of the moment by the stream. “Neither of us had a choice.”

Katniss almost wants to argue with him, to point out that they both volunteered, that they did have a choice. But she thinks of Prim entering the Games, and how the simple act of being in the Games in his District is the highest honor. How every step has brought them to this moment.

“No,” she says quietly. “We didn’t.”

They’re still staring at each other when he points to his chest with a trembling finger and whispers, “Make it count.”

She finally lets the arrow fly.

I’m dead already.

~
~

Fic Title: The Way Out
Fandom: Hunger Games
Pairing: Cato/Katniss
Rating/Warnings: PGish
Prompt: cato/katniss; I'll pull the devil down with me one way or another
For:

magic_knickers

A/n: AU, they're the last two standing.

~

“What if we didn’t have to?” she asks.

“What?” He’s positive he didn’t hear her correctly.

She doesn’t lower her bow and he doesn’t lower his sword and he’s too busy wondering why she hasn’t just killed him already. He’s great with a sword, but she’s out of his range (though he’s not out of hers). But she’s lost too much blood from that slice in her head, he’s limping and bruised, and they’re both broken, both have more or less accepted defeat. All she has to do is let go of that arrow and it’ll be over (finally).

“What if,” she begins again, a bit slower, softer yet more deliberate. “What if we could end this, without either of us winning?”

She’s crazy, he decides. The head wound, the blood loss – it’s gotten to her. Perhaps she’s got a fever, an infection. There’s no other explanation for the words coming out of her mouth right now. Something snapped and 12 went nuts in the arena (it wouldn’t be the first time it had happened). And besides, what good would it be if neither of them win? The entire point of this stupid horror show is to win. That’s it, there’s nothing else. One of them has to come home in a pine box with a letter of regret from the powers-that-be, and the other one goes home amid riches and luxury and honor. Besides, she comes from the poorest district, so all over again he’s struck by the absurdity of her suggestion (doesn’t she want this? Need this?).

And yet, despite this, he can’t help himself.

He smirks, snorts as if this is funny. “What d’you mean?”

“Ever since I stepped forward to save my sister, everything has been out of my hands one way or another. They control every little thing.” She lowers her bow just the tiniest of notches. “What if we took control, for once? For one last time?”

He doesn’t know how to respond to this, still isn’t completely sure he gets what she wants to happen here. But her words are resonating, even if he knows they shouldn’t. He’s never had the chance to decide his own fate, not once. Even when he volunteered back in 2 for the honor of being in the Games, it was all prearranged – it’s your year, they’d said and he’d been so ready to win. His clothes, his meals, where he lives, who he interacts with, trained with, is trained by, what he’s trained for… He’s never done it without being told or ordered, convinced or persuaded, or just doing it because he knows he should, because that’s how it’s always been done.

And that, he realizes with an overwhelming cold shudder and a deep sickening thud, will never change. They own him. Always have, always will.

Suddenly he doesn’t see another tribute about to kill him or be killed, he sees a way out.

Cato drops his sword, heart hammering in chest. (He can imagine the shock of those back home, of those watching, crying out what the hell is he doing!?) Even if she was screwing with him and she shoots him here and now, he’s choosing to die, he’s choosing not to fight. (A feeling that’s terrifying and terrifyingly liberating.)

The girl on fire doesn’t shoot, however, but lowers her bow and drops it. She reaches into her pack and pulls out a handful of dark berries wrapped in cloth, holds out them out. They each take some into their palms, the juices dying their hands purple and he likes this color better than blood, he thinks.

“Together?” he asks.

She nods and they tip the berries into their mouths at the same time.

Katniss bites down and lets the berries slide down her throat. I’m sorry, Prim. She thinks and hopes her sister will understand. She’s too hurt, she can’t beat Cato. She could try hitting him with an arrow, but if she misses or doesn’t kill him right away? No. She realized when the sun came up and they were face to face, the only two still standing, that she couldn’t win. But she’s not going to let the Capitol – or 2, or Cato, the monster who murdered Peeta and so many more tributes – win either.

It’s the one last thing she can do, can control, can decide...

Can choose.

The world is getting foggy and she feels herself crumbling to the ground, is aware Cato is too. She thinks she hears frantic voices – Claudius, perhaps – and hopes they die before they can be “saved”.

~
~

Thanks for reading, feedback appreciated! And hopefully LJ stops being weird so I can get back to properly filling prompts...

~Red

Girl on Fire Ficathon: 2 Cato/Katniss fills

no subject

no subject