[[Not quite sure where this came from. Please pardon the length and consider this a paltry apology for my absence.]]

[Clove's stylist shakes his head and looks doubtfully down at Clove, all dolled-up in a sweet dress and a pink-lipped scowl, and says, "Oh, the camera never lies."

And Clove sneers at him and flips her hair so it smacks him on his green-painted face, because she can't take his fleshy skull in her hands and shake him as she screams it does, she knows it does.]

Her father had used to be a Peacekeeper for the Capitol, and once Clove started training in earnest to volunteer, he told her about the time he'd guarded the Gamemakers' room during the Games. The Gamemakers, angels in white, tastefully cutting the camera away from acts that even the Capitol abhorred. Oh, they cut away from treasonous sayings, too, but there were some things so depraved that even the bloodthirsty Capitolites refused to see.

(Oh, clothes ripped from flesh, flesh ripped from bone, and screams all the while, hidden from the viewers.)

(The camera didn't catch Clove swearing and screaming at the wind, "Hypocrites, every damn last one of you! Let's see how much you like to burn!" as she pats out flames on her outfit and hisses as she burns and Cato puts a hand over her mouth and murmurs vicious promises in her ear: "We'll kill them all, we will.")

And the Capitol died, yes, but not at their hands, for they died and their spirits died long before.

Clove had trained her whole life beside Cato, the perfect team created to destroy the competition and then each other. But Clove lost the will to live somewhere along the way, frightened by her own immorality. Saving her life made her lose her soul.

Cato lived by Clove and for Clove, because he recognized she couldn't be alone. He was stronger than she in the end, or perhaps weaker, because he never felt the same moral guilt or need for companionship that she did.

She was only sane with someone else. He was only sane when he was killing.

They're both nearly sane when their clothes are scattered and she's digging her nails into every inch of him she can reach and he's wrapping his hands around her throat and they're grinning, they're whole.

(The camera didn't catch Clove, lying awake at night with her head in her arms, gazing up at the star-sprinkled sky and whispering, "I want to die.")

She gets her wish the next day, when Thresh takes her head and slams a rock onto it, once, twice, thrice, and she's screaming for Cato- ohgodpleasenoidontwanttodie- and he runs over but he's too late and he holds her, strokes her cheek as she gasps and falls still.

Cato feels no triumph, just relief when Clove's killer topples by his feet and the cannon fires and for the first time he's truly alone. He should be gleeful that he's avenged Clove's death, but instead he just feels hollow. Maybe he's not cut out to be a killer after all.

Cato doesn't want to die until he's shredded by the mutts, skin peeled off, hard-earned muscles exposed to the night sky and the stars. Then he's grateful for the girl who ruined it all as she sends one arrow at him and he's lost to darkness.

[The camera saw a sweet, sarcastic little girl in a flouncy dress and a cruel, vicious murderer with a cold smirk who threw insults like they threw punches and died as violently as they had lived.

The camera lied.]