the girl who played with knives || clato ✔️

38

Cato

My feet keep dragging on everything on the ground, and Clove is getting heavy after a while of sprinting with her in my arms. She keeps telling me to put her down, but I know she couldn't make it.

The mutt is gaining on us, I can tell. So could we lose it in the woods? I'm not sure, it seems pretty agile. So I just keep running. If we could just outrun it. If we could just...

Fynch. Thresh. Clove.

Me.

If I stopped running, I could distract the mutt before it got to Clove. But what if after it was done with me, it just killed her? Or what if Thresh got at her again? I don't know what to do.

Then we hit the cornucopia clearing. Which is when we hear the screams, guttural and almost inhuman. And then Thresh bursts through the other side with one of these mutts hanging off of him. He collapses, still screaming, and I can hear something, something that just tells me he's dying. And I've got nowhere to go.

Clove struggles out of my staggering grasp and starts scrambling away.

"Clove!

"To the cornucopia!"

The cornucopia? We soon reach it, and I'm opening my mouth to ask why when Clove starts an attempt to drag herself up the side. Something clicks and I lift her up, before dragging myself up and out of reach of the mutts, just barely. A deep gash in my ankle may never heal. Blood soaks the golden cornucopia.

"Cato." Clove frantically drags me to the peak of the horn as claws scratch up the sides. "Your foot!"

"It's fine." I lean against her, avoiding looking at my mangled foot or the beast below. "We'll be fine. You're going home, Clo-" I'm cut off by the boom of the cannon as the sky darkens and the rain stops and there's Thresh's face in the sky, shrouded in silence.

It's strange how the rain just stops. One second, it's pouring, now, it's left us cold and wet and scared in the quiet darkness. So quiet... Wait, where are the mutts?

"Clove, the mutts," I whisper. Then the pain hits me and I gasp and writhe, before stilling again, my breath heavy.

"Look." She lifts my head so I can barely see the last of the mutts slipping into a chasm in the ground.

"How...?"

"Shh. It's okay, Cato. Just relax. We're okay."

Clove

He's losing blood so rapidly it may be killing him, and I'm not sure how to staunch it. There's hardly anything to salvage there...

I take off my jacket, but the material's waterproof, so I doubt it would work to keep blood in. My shirt will have to do. I peel it off and immediately throw on my jacket again, cold biting my bare skin. Then I wrap the shirt all around Cato's ankle.

"Clove, did we win?"

"No." I sigh. "Fynch is still out there."

"Damn her," he breathes deeply, staring up at me with his worn and dirty face. I press my fingers gently against his cheek.

"We can take her. We just have to find her." Not so hard, right? But that would require getting down from this safe haven, and into territory where a mutt could sprout from the ground and kill us at any second. It would also require Cato walking.

"Clove... What do we do?"

"You can't do anything." I mutter with a kiss. "Not on that ankle..." After thinking for a moment, I come to a conclusion. "I'll do it. I'll find Fynch, and I'll kill her, and we can go home. Finally."

"No. You'll die."

"Cato, you seem to have very little faith in me," I snort, holding his hand.

"You'll die," he repeats in a whisper. He seems to be drifting from consciousness.

One last kiss, and I've got to go or I never will. I slip away from him, pulling a knife from my jacket. I slide down the cornucopia and onto the firm ground, on edge for fear of mutts. I scan the horizon, and I discover my search may not be so arduous. As in, there's the flash of Fynch's flaming hair, watching me from a few feet beyond the trees.

"Don't run..." I whisper as I stalk towards her. I could probably outrun her, but I'm just not up to a grueling chase, hunting another human. "Don't run." She's slinking back towards the trees. Only a few yards. Just a few. I glance at the blade in my hand, small and aerodynamic.

And I throw it at the girl disappearing into the trees, switching from a leisurely walk to a sprint. The knife strikes her back, but she hasn't fallen yet.

A take another knife and chuck it, passing by my face to wipe away tears or rainwater. I'm honestly not sure which. But as I arrive at her curled up body, the body of a girl I killed in such a selfish way, I think it's most likely the prior.

"Oh my god," I kneel at her side. I take her hand. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Fynch, I'm so-"

"R..." Fynch pushes a syllable out. "Ru..."

"What?" I pant.

And she wheezes out a single word.

"Run."

Cato

I hear her scream, waking me from my unconsciousness.

Clove

The lone mutt left above ground slams into me as Fynch's cannon sounds, knocking me into her body in a cruel trap. I let out a scream as claws and teeth dig at my back. Then another. And I'm just screaming one long, continuous drone as I try to pull the knives from Fynch's back to protect myself.

Cato

But no, it's not Clove's scream. It doesn't sound right.

Must be a dream. A dream. It's all a dream. I slip back into darkness.

Clove

"CATO!" I wail as I tumble onto my back, staring straight up into the mutt's face. I take my knife and stab at it rapidly, but it's stronger than a person. A person... All these people we've killed... "CATO!"

It's throat. Slice its throat. But it dodges, and pain sears through my wrist as its teeth clamp down.

"CATO! CATO! Cato! Cato. Ca-"