snuffing a flame.

Background color
Font
Font size
Line height



╔═══*.·:·.☽✧ ✦ ✧☾.·:·.*═══╗

snuffing a flame.

volume two; murder

╚═══*.·:·.☽✧ ✦ ✧☾.·:·.*═══╝



Cato awoke to a world of chaos and panic. Searing pain erupted from his shoulder and he could barely recognise the insects that flew around him as Glimmers screams filled the air. His feet were carrying him from the swarm faster than his mind could catch up. He was vaguely aware of another's footsteps crashing behind him in their desperation to escape the pain. Clove was ahead of him by a few paces, always the faster of the two. 

The screams echoed in his ears as they grew into a strangled cry for help, but the beauty from district one was long gone now. Cato had no doubt that her face would be plastered in the sky tonight. His body felt like it was on fire. He could almost feel the venom coursing through his veins, tainting his blood and filling him with an indescribable rage. Cato Hadley was not known to be gentle, to be kind, but he had never known anger like this.

The logical side of his brain tried to reason with him. Immense anger was a symptom of tracker jacker venom, designed to make tributes ready to spill the blood of their peers. He tried to remember that Elora was watching but all thoughts of her were left behind as the anger consumed him. All he could think about was how he let his guard down and that district twelve scum had taken advantage of it. How she had, essentially, beaten him in the fight for glory. He wasn't sure whether it was the anger of his shame that motivated him to return to the scene of the crime. 

If she was still there, he would take the killing shot.

He found Glimmer before he found Katniss. Once a beautiful girl, her body was now so grotesquely mutilated she barely looked human. The lumps protruded from every inch of her skin, blotches of pale purples and greens coating her body. He can see the fear in her eyes, the panic, forever sealed within her. Her dead eyes look right past him as he slides her eyelids shut and Cato cannot suppress the shiver that runs down his spine at the feeling of her dead skin on his. 

It is only when steps back with the intent to hunt down the girl who had done this, does he realise what is right in front of him. Or more accurately, a lack thereof. The bow and arrow was gone, pried from Glimmers dead hands. Upon further inspection he realises that Katniss had to break her fingers to free the bow from the dead girls grip. He can feel the bile rise up his throat but he pushes it down. With a small body and a few tracker jacker stings, Katniss couldn't possible have made it too far. The venom would have affected her far more than him, and if she was so disorientated that she couldn't shoot a bow this would be easy for him. 

Cato furrows his eyebrows in confusion and turns his head a few times. The pain in his chest grows and he can feel fear that is not his own seep into his soul. The danger had passed, hadn't it? The tracker jackers were gone and he was still alive. He brings a palm to rub at his chest, wanting to alleviate the discomfort that he knows is not his. His other hand grips his sword tighter, and his body takes a fighting stance, ready to battle whatever danger Elora is so worried about. 

The crunch of a leaf under foot alerts him to Peeta's presence. Cato whips his body around to face the boy just as Peeta brings the knife down, aiming for his heart. Cato is quick to response and brings his sword up just in time for the incoming blade to meet it. He advances now, knowing that Peeta has lost the advantage of surprise. 

The boy backs away from him for a moment before surging forward with a strength Cato did not know he possessed. Their weapons clash against each other once more. Cato surges his head forward and brings it smashing into Peeta's. Disorientated and shocked by the sudden collision, Cato takes the opportunity to disarm him. His sword comes down in the next second, dragging through Peeta's skin and muscle with ease. The blood pours out of such a major wound and Cato is sure that he has slashed through an artery with the sheer amount of red that surrounds him. Peeta becomes just another face to see projected in the night sky. 

Cato leaves him to bleed out on the forest floor, and though he feels the anger in him subside and the venom beginning to fade, he continues his search for Katniss. Now is the best opportunity he will get. Now that she has the bow and arrow he can't allow her to escape. She wouldn't have wasted time trying to pry it from Glimmers dead body, have gone through the trauma of having to break her fingers, if she didn't know how to use it. No, that was how she got her eleven and he was sure of it. 

Enough talent to score so highly with a long distance weapon means she could pick the other tributes off one by one without ever having to get into a fight. If Cato wanted her dead, he would have to do it now, while she was too far under the venoms influence to fire a decent shot. He finds her unconscious and curled up on the forest floor.

Guilt nags at the back of his mind. She has no chance to defend herself, if he kills her while she's out cold she doesn't even stand a chance. It feels wrong, somehow, like he should awaken her first, so that she can at least fight back. He remembers what awaits him should he return home, thinks of Elora and the stress he has already put her through.

The crunch of bones giving way echoes through the silence of the woods as Cato Hadley snaps the neck of the Girl on Fire. 


✯¸.•'*¨'*•✿ ✿•*'¨*'•.¸✯


Elora Clarke was sixteen years old when she was reaped. She remembers the day clearly, remembers the look on her parents face. She had been wearing a blue dress with a pretty white ribbon tied around her waist. Her hair was longer then, trailing down her back in thick dark strands. She had always been jealous of the other girls from her district, with their lovely blonde curls, it was such a distinctly district four look. 

She had left her house with her parents by her side. Her nimble fingers grasped the locket around her neck. If one were to open the clasp and look inside, there would be a picture of Noah on one side, and Adrian on the other. When her name was called her fingers had practically flown to the chain around her neck. Elora Clarke was a hunger games legacy. Her mothers strangled cry sounded through the town square but Elora did not turn to face her.

It was the first time that Elora had really looked at Finnick, and saw him for who he truly was. She could see the sadness on his face at the thought of a whole family destroyed by these games. Three siblings, all dead by the same fate. 

She tries not to think about the way her mother had looked at her when she returned, but the day would never fade from her memories no matter how badly she wished it would. She remembers sleeping in an empty house that night, far too big and far too luxurious to live in alone, yet there she was. She had cried that night, and many nights after, struggling to cope with the blood on her hands and the knowledge that her mother wished she had met the same fate as her brothers before her. The same fate as the children Elora had murdered, wished that it was her blood on someone else's hands. 

Elora wonders how her parents felt watching her games. Watching as the only person left that they loved slaughtered others without mercy. Watched as her eyes shone at the freshly spilled blood. She imagines it felt something like how she feels now, watching as Cato kills a young girl in her sleep. She tries to suppress the burning in her throat but in the end her body defeats her, and Elora spills her breakfast into the bin beside her.

She can feel Finnick rubbing her back soothingly and all she wants to do is cry. The tears that run down her cheeks are so hot it feels as though they are burning her. She cries and cries as her back heaves and more food is expelled from her stomach. How dare she sit here, sick to her stomach, crying over the blood that Cato has spilled as if she hasn't done the same. As if she didn't kill little kids the same way he has. As if she doesn't have just as much blood on her hands. Elora can't help but think of how perfect they are for each other. Two killers, made to be together. Two halves of the one soul, both just as sick and twisted as the other. 

Elora brings her body back into an upright position on the couch and watches her Cato walks away from the dead bodies of district twelve. She watches as he walks back to the cornucopia to meet with his alliance. Watches he recounts the deaths of the children he murdered. She knows she had forgiven his crimes before he even committed them, but Elora can only hate herself as she thinks of her mother and how they must have felt the same.

Had her mother sat in her childhood home and vomited the same way she had? Had her father rubbed her back the same way Finnick had soothed Elora? She wonders if her mother felt guilty at the resentment of her own daughter, wondered if she ever thought she didn't deserve the comfort her father had offered up so readily while she grew to detest their only living child. God knows Elora has never felt deserving of Finnick. She wonders how her mother feels when she sees her now, when they stand at the same markets or walk the same beach, knowing that she had abandoned her daughter. Elora wonders if her mother still wishes for her death, if only so she doesn't have to look at her anymore. 

Elora hates that she can understand her mother, can understand the disgust she felt when she looked at her, she knows how hard it is to look past the blood. Watching Cato has given her a new insight into exactly how her mother had felt, yet she still cannot comprehend the way her mother so easily discarded her. Elora knows that is still Cato, that when he comes home they will wash away his blood together, and she will rejoice in his return to her. 


a/n

sorry it took so long! my finals at uni are finally over, and now that exams are finished I can get back to writing. Thank you all for sticking with the story, I appreciate all of you so much.


You are reading the story above: TeenFic.Net