'I'll never let you go' Chapter 22

Clove

            Weightlessness was not something I'd experienced often when I was alive. Ever since I could remember I'd felt guilt for my mother's death and then when I was older for my father's. Both of these combined meant that it constantly felt like a giant weight was pressing on my shoulders, the blame I carried was my burden. The only time when that weight lifted was when I was with Cato and we acted like idiots together, just because we could. Once, when he brushed my hair out of my eyes and looked into them, I could have sworn the weights had fallen off and I was flying in the heavens and dancing among the stars. But even that feeling was nothing compared to what I am feeling now.

            I am rushing upward, so fast my head is dizzy and my stomach is turning inside out. I struggle to hold on to that last image of Cato, holding me, begging me to stay with him. Oh, I would, I would if I could, I promise you, Cato. I want to stay with you. But I slipped away and now I'm rushing down to hell. Or should be, but it feels like I am going upwards. I can't go up, I need to go down, down to where the evil people die because I am an evil person. But I still keep on going up.

           

It's been hours, or minutes, I'm not sure. Maybe this is it, forever flying, or falling. Maybe I'll never see anyone ever again. Maybe this is death. But then there is a rush and my ears pop and I am pushed up onto a surface with a gasp. My chest rises and falls in a steady rhythm as I try and figure out what has happened. There is a warm glow in front of my eyes and it spreads down to my toes and breathes on my face. A cool breeze waltzes through my hair and when I take a breath through my nose, it smells like spring. Cautiously, I reach out my left arm and it touches…grass. Long, thick, luscious…grass. My fingers lock into it and enclose a fist full of grass into my palm. I open my eyes.

The brightness blinds me for a second and I squeeze them closed again, but my curiosity gets the better of me. Slowly, ever so slowly, my eyes edge open again and take in the sight of long blades of grass, blowing gently in a breeze that is soft and warming, with clovers, my beautiful clover flowers, intertwined in the grass as if they are being embraced. I breathe out and they flutter in its wake. I direct my eyes upwards and see a cornflower blue sky with wisps of white clouds tangled in the blue. Beauty. Beauty all around me.

Suddenly, I get the uneasy impression that someone is watching me. I stagger up onto my elbows and my eyes widen in fear. Standing not three feet away from me are all my fellow tributes who fell before me. There is Marvel and Glimmer, Marina and her district partner, Titus, the Sparrow. All are dressed in white, the girls in short sundresses, the boys in shirts and linen trousers and all are staring at me with a confusing expression on their faces. It is not angry, as would be expected, but almost pitying, which only makes me more and more nervous. Really, they should all be furious with me, shun me. I cannot even bring myself to meet the eyes of the tributes my knives ended the lives of, standing there, so calm, so quite. It is very un-nerving and I feel my heart rate increase rapidly. Then, the little Sparrow steps forward. She moves lightly on her toes and is barefooted but doesn't seem worried about stepping on something. I shuffle further back on my bottom but she holds out a hand to me instead.

'Don't be afraid, Clove,' she says. And, just like that, I'm not.



'Come find me,' I told him. Will he have understood me? The giant from Eleven, my killer, is here now. The sanctuary that I had been welcomed into suddenly didn't feel safe anymore. Instead, I wait for him in the meadow where there is a viewing pool so I can see him. I see his sufferings on his own, I see how he blames himself.

Don't, I ache to tell him. Please, please don't. Come find me.

I watch as he returns to our cavern and touches all the walls, searching for some evidence that I was ever there. He cradles a silver blade and strokes it the way he stroked my hair so often when I was stressed and he needed to relax me. He cries.

Don't, I want to beg. Please, come and find me.

I am still watching as our mutts jump out at him and he screams with anguish when he recognises Glimmer's eyes. We trek him all the way back to the Cornucopia, where he runs into Lover Boy and Fire Girl who climb on top of the structure to escape us. Marina's mutt leaps for Cato's leg. No! I scream at my mutt, don't let her do it! Miraculously, she complies and bites Marina's mutt on the scruff of her neck, who gives a yelp and slides down the metal of the Cornucopia. Cato staggers to his feet and makes a grab for Peeta's neck. He doesn't really want to kill him, I know he doesn't. Cato can snap a neck in seconds and it be all over. He doesn't want to kill Peeta Mellark. If he did, Peeta would already be dead. Fire Girl has an arrow notched at Cato's neck in a blink of an eye and her fingers tense at the bow. Why isn't she shooting? Then I realise: if she shoots, Peeta will go down with Cato and Fire Girl doesn't want to lose the boy she's fought so hard to keep.

'Go ahead. I'm dead anyway. Always was right?' A tear trickles down my cheek and I let it fall onto the grass. We were, Cato. You and I. Born to die.

Come and find me.

I watch and see the secret communication between Fire Girl and Peeta Mellark. She shoots Cato on a bloody traced cross he has drawn on the back of Cato's hand and then he shoves Cato in the chest and sends him flying over the ridge of the Cornucopia and plummeting to the ground. Our mutts descend.



It would be killing me, if I wasn't already dead. The way we tear at his insides, his groans and pleas for death, the way that, just once, he whispers for me. But I am dead. And he will be soon too. So we just have to endure it, for a short while.

The huge, black mutt makes a dive for him and his head lashes back with pain. My heart aches and I whimper. My mutt does too and takes a step forward to lick his cheek. Startled, Cato's head snaps around to look at her. His brilliant green eyes, even in eerie moonlight, meet with my mutt's electric blue ones and his features relax slightly. She nudges his shoulder gently and he slumps back.

'I love you,' I whisper to him. Maybe, somehow, he can hear me.



It is nearing dawn on earth. He is still breathing, moaning, gasping for life. Fire Girl stumbles to the edge of the Cornucopia and looks down on him.

Please, I beg her silently. You have the power. Bring him back to me.

He reaches up a hand and mutters: 'Please' almost mirroring my words. Take me back to her.

Fire Girl fumbles with a new arrow and directs it into the pack of mutts, to his heart, which belongs to me. my mutt gives Cato one last loving nudge and steps back to let the arrow pierce him and take him away from there. I breathe out. Finally, it is all over.

I turn my head toward the spot of grass where I came up, expecting him to appear shortly. Sure enough, there is a blinding light, so bright I have to look away, but once it fades and I grow accustomed to the light, I look back. There he is, lying in the patch of clovers, his chest rising and falling as he breathes hard. I smile, and step towards him, watching as he mirrors my first movements when I first arrived: reaching out, the shock of finding the grass, opening and then shutting his eyes…getting the feeling that someone is watching him…

He bolts upright and stares at me as if I am a ghost, which I probably am now but anyway. Fear and then disbelief register in his face before he stutters my name.

'Clove? Is that really you?'

I hold out both my arms to him and smile. 'You found me.'

He leaps up from the grass and stumbles across to me, grabbing me into a hug. I fall into him and gasp, finally breathing properly for the first time. We clutch at one another, so relieved to be together again, Cato and Clove, Clove and Cato. My head is resting on his chest and his arms hold me tightly, not letting go.   I hear crying and look up to see Cato has tears flowing freely down his cheeks and into my hair.

'Hey.' I reach up to brush them away. 'Hey. It's okay. I'm here now. We're together.'

'I'm never letting you go away from me, ever again,' he says roughly, burying his head into my shoulder. I reach out and brush his hair, holding him close and soothing him like a small child. We stay like this, intertwined, two parts of the same whole, for a long time until Cato has cried all his tears away.

'I need to tell you something,' I whisper to him.

'Yeah? Anything, Clove, anything.'

'I'm in love with you.'

His face breaks out into a grin of delight and he draws me in close. 'Well, at last. Because I'm in love with you.' And he presses his mouth to mine. As soon as we pull apart, I launch up onto my tip toes and throw my arms around him to kiss him again. His arms encircle my waist and we are both grinning like fools. For one moment, everything is perfect.

'What, no knives, Clover?'

'Oh, shut up.'