18 DAYS

Chapter 18: The boy from 11.

DAY 13

It is said traumatic grief cycles through five stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. As soon as that canon reverberated under the dome of the Arena, Cato's began circling around the cycle in an uninterupted loop. Emotions antagonistic to reasoning or knowledge, spinning and raging sorrow oscillating between unbriddled rage and complete apathy. The act of revengfull passion and heartless uncaring merged into one being. Trapped inside one body too small for the immensity of that agony with nowhere to go and no idea how to act.

An overcraft appearing in the distance, like a zombie drawn by sounds, Cato goes into his pocket to pull the piece of graphite Clove gave to him the morning of their first day in the Games. As he soflty lays it on her chest, just between her collar bones already loosing their colours, her words ring in his ears. "I want it to be yours so it can remind you that you too have to fight beyond your pain to succeed." At this moment, Cato finally understood what she had meant then. But what she hadn't realized, is that there was certain pains you couldn't go beyond. They just overwhelmed you, stuck you to the ground chocking on agony. In exchange for the rock and its impossible promise, he takes a strand of her hair. 

Cato couldn't remember how many times he had imagined that moment. He thought he'd cry, that his hands would shake uncotrollably, that the pain would make it too hard to move. But his eyes were dry, and he had no problem standing up. If his mind couldn't pick between the two, then Cato would choose both. Before she had been his master, now guiding his heart shot to hell would be unemotional retribution.

"May we meet again." *

Cato steps away, aware the overcraft will be there soon and he needs to be out of the way when it does. Laying down with her had crossed his mind, but he had something to do first. When Thresh and Katniss ran away from the murder scene, he had seen him take both his own and the careers provisions bag. Knowing Cato would pursue him rather than Katniss. So he was going to kill him first, then he'd kill the bitch from Twelve and her loverboy. It wasn't about going back home, it was about loosing the rest of what consciousness he had left in blood and death. Theirs or his own.

Cato steps back into the forest, taking the direction of where Thresh was headed after murdering Clove.

DAY 15

Cato had always been an overthinker, perpetual and compulsive repetition of words, chatter in the skull.** Loosing Clove had been like forgetting his words completely, a constant worrier that had suddenly lost touch with his worry. In that, there was a certain clarity. With the void between his temples, needing to survive, to go on, wasn't so much a conscious decision now, just an action like eating or breathing.

Also in that clarity, the maze of woods had become somewhat peaceful. An empty brain wasn't afraid of anything anymore. So for two days after the feast, Cato had walked around in the forest extremely unaware of where he was going besides that he was. It didn't matter how long it'd take, because at the end of his path Thresh would be there.

Today a thunderstorm had started building up. District Two made of hills, Cato couldn't mistake the formation of clouds being pushed upward into a rising column of air. For now the rain was scarce, barely damping the tipe of his dirty yellow hair.

But soon precipitations would begins to fall out of the storm, creating a downdraft which associated with the cooled hair would create winds too strong to stand against. That was without counting on the hail and the lighting that would come later. The environement wasn't made for that kind of weather, it was clear the Gamemakers were playing with the sky to rush the Games. The feast had only got rid of one tribute, there was still five to go. It was time to end it.