Disclaimer: I don't own the Hunger Games. The extended back story and characterizations are mine.

1. Clove (District 2)

Clove hates her eyes.

She's five years old and her mother's sprawled on the cold floor again with a pile of empty bottles that lay scattered all around the woman, broken pieces of glass glittering innocent in the fluorescent lights of their house. Clove's worried about her mother, but she remembers her brother telling her to ignore her if she elapses into one of her episodes, so she pretends not to see how the beads of blood are trickling out of her mother's slim fingers.

But then her mother bleats out her name before she can go up to her room. The little girl kneels beside her mother, ignoring how the tiny fragments of glass dig into her muddy knees because her mother cups her face into her bloody, shaking hands. The desperate hazel eyes of her mother stares straight into her own dull brown ones as she croons, "You look just like him – you have your father's eyes."

When her mother dies of a kidney failure and her father doesn't turn up to the funeral because he's busy with another whore, Clove wants to claw out her eyes and thrust it back into her father's hands because she doesn't want them, ever.

She doesn't (she remembers her brother prying her fingers away from her face before any real damage can be done). Instead, she settles with hating everything about herself for the next ten years.

Especially her dark brown eyes.

2. Bloodbath

She throws her knives sharply in measured, pre-calculated directions after her hands grab the collection of knives that are obviously hers. One knife buries itself between District 3's eyes, while another causes District 10's forehead to bleed in copious amounts (Cato swiftly decapitates the girl after that).

It's almost too easy killing the boy from District 9. Hasn't anyone ever told him never to turn his back towards a Career?

Especially when Clove can't see their eyes.

As he falls, another pale face is revealed to her bloodthirsty gaze. Katniss Everdeen. In an instant, Clove selects the best blade from the numerous knives in her hands as she begins chasing after her pretty-eyed prey. She wouldn't allow tributes with noteworthy eyes to die such a simple death by ordinary knives – they deserved a much worthier performance, a finer blade.

It takes one second to take aim at her skull and another to throw it at the running with full force. But District 12 fortuitously lifts the orange bag and her elegant knife is embedded into the damned backpack, disappearing into the heart of the forest.

Clove snarls loudly but doesn't pursue any further. Her anger is evident as she retreats back to the Cornucopia, where the golden horn is splattered with red and tributes are dropping around them like flies. She refuses the initial bloodbath to end without another kill on her part.

With one flick of her wrist, a crude excuse of a knife sinks into District 5's scrawny chest. Later, she's following Cato and the assembled Careers towards a lake without a second glance back at the reddened earth the Cornucopia now sat above.

All of her victims had brown eyes.

3. Taffet (District 8)

Some people are just born ignorant, and she knows the District 8 female is no exception just by staring with disinterest into the pair of scared, dark eyes.

They're no pleasure to look at, not even with the glowing embers of the fire she'd so stupidly started in the dead of the night. Clove doesn't flinch when Cato's sword punctures through the girl's gut. She gives Cato a little pat on the shoulder before she crouches right next to the dying girl's head, brown boring into brown.

They look no different alive than in death.

4. Nettie (District 4)

Clove isn't exactly mild by nature – heck, just standing next to Cato when he's in one of his rampages makes her look like a freaking angel. However, she understands the magnitude of importance of how she presents herself to the viewers and potential sponsors that would save her life if she needed it, so she usually keeps her temper under control.

Nonetheless, when she sees Trap (the boy from District 4, and a pre-organized ally) have his face hacked into bloody chunks of meat by Glimmer, she almost throws a dagger into the back of the blonde's head.

Luckily for District 1, Cato unwittingly saves her life by preventing the same fate to befall on Nettie, who's having a difficult time herself from splitting Glitter's skull in half with the heavy axe in her hand. While Glitter stammers out her supposed genuine mistake to an unconvinced Nettie, Clove is still silently fuming to herself.

Thank goodness she still had one pair of District 4's infamous sea-green eyes to admire.

5. Glimmer (District 1)

She thinks Glimmer has the most enchanting eyes in the world, even more so than Cato's or Marvel's.

Glimmer is beautiful overall, and even Clove, who's never given a second thought about her appearance (who can afford to waste time on frivolous beauty products when there are knives to sharpen, trainers to fight, and dummies to slay?), feels as attractive as a slug standing next to her. Clove doesn't miss the glances Marvel sneaks at his district partner or the more blatant signs of approval that radiates from Cato whenever Glimmer walks in front of him with her hips swaying from side to side. She has curves in all the right places and thick, glossy golden hair and legs that go on for miles.

But what Clove envies the most about the older girl is her eyes. They're as clear and as deep as the emerald pendant that was settled on her mother's throat before she was cast far underground. They're the kind of eyes that make people falter in the middle of their sentences if they stare into its crystal depths for too long.

Forget Glimmer's voluptuous figure; Clove would kill for those eyes.

So when Clove stumbles after Cato in her poison-induced haze, she thinks she's hallucinated Peeta's bleeding thigh, Glimmer's distorted, hardened face, and Cato retching in the nearest bush before she's embraced by a body of water that soothes the stings. Clove's dirty nails are digging into the swollen bump in her shoulder to extract the metallic needle embedded within while she absently listens to Cato explaining to Marvel the state that Glimmer's body was left in after the tracker jackers were through with the blonde.

She's confused when Marvel and Cato both grimace at the image of a ruined beauty. All she can see are those emeralds that glitter back at her through the bloated eyelids, still as deep and clear as the emerald her mother was buried with.

Clove thinks Glitter has never looked more beautiful.

6. Peeta (District 12)

She's lighting their fire near the Cornucopia while Marvel, Glimmer, and Nettie are picking the contents of the golden horn clean when she sees Cato coming back from the woods. She's about to return to coaxing the flames to burn brighter, but upon closer inspection, she sees that Cato is not alone. The blackened matches fall uselessly from her hands as she stands up sharply, and the rest of the Careers pause in favor of discerning this turn of events.

"I thought you're supposed to bring back a body, not a prisoner," Glimmer remarks, but Cato pays the blonde beauty no mind. He has a heavy arm slung over Lover Boy's shoulders, but Clove is all too familiar with Cato to know that his grip restricts, rather than welcome the new addition to their team.

While Lover Boy introduces himself ("Hi, I'm Peeta") while the Careers grunt out their names in response, she unabashedly looks at him straight in the eye, searching for any traces of deceit, any white splatters of insanity.

Instead, all she sees are the baby blue of his widened eyes. It unnerves her, and she doesn't like being caught off-guard, so she spits out her name ("Clove") and returns to the fire with intent to watch the whole arena become engulfed in its flames.

It doesn't get any bigger, so she settles down and takes out her collection of knives. She takes the smallest one by the wooden hilt and begins to scar the dirt ground with a scowl. The thought of Peeta's imminent death comfort her slightly.

His eyes are too pure to suit the arena. And everyone knows that nobody comes out of the Games alive by playing fair. A few meters away from her, Peeta demonstrates his skills with weaponry (mainly a knife) to Marvel. Despite himself, Marvel looks on with approval. Clove rolls her eyes and shuffles closer to the fire to warm her hands. She'd learned to do that when she was ten.

She wonders who'll be the one to corrupt his virgin eyes. Maybe she'll kill another tribute in front of him, slowly, painstakingly, just to watch the innocence drain those blue eyes. And then her face breaks into a gleeful grin.

She hopes Katniss Everdeen will be the one to break him first.

7. Elec (District 3)

Clove notes with exasperation that Cato has a knack of picking up stray tributes.

It is as if her district partner had already forgotten Lover Boy's betrayal (which she's honestly not surprised about at all. Her gut instincts were never wrong). But before she and Marvel can object to the newest addition, Elec from District 3 stuns the both of them to silence by blowing up a mine he's reactivated. She grudgingly accepts him as a Career (this short, thin boy from District 3 – what was this world coming down to?), but she doesn't bother interacting with him, save a couple of barking instructions.

He has brown eyes. And whether they're sparkling with intelligence or not, she will have no qualms piercing those utterly lackluster irises until his years of accumulated knowledge bleed along with the dull colors.

8. Marvel (District 1)

If Glimmer's eyes are emeralds, then Marvel's eyes are blue sapphires of the darkest shades streaked with mad dashes of white every time a tribute dies in his hands (she's counted three so far).

When Cato and Clove are approached by the tributes from District 1 for the first time in the training center, she doesn't notice Marvel in favor of staring enviously at Glimmer's green orbs until the older girl turns her full attention to Cato. It's only when Marvel extends out a hand to Clove that she refocuses on this tall boy in front of her.

Whatever skepticism she holds against him is erased when she sees the glint in his dark blue eyes that is so often reflected in her own when she thinks about feeling the blood pool her hands as another throat is slit by the hilt of her knife.

He doesn't disappoint. She thinks she can watch his eyes all day as they light up in delight every time his spear punctures another tribute's gut, head, chest… She almost gets a dart to the head watching him during the bloodbath (Cato yells at her later for losing her concentration, but she shuts him up with her knife buried behind the tree behind him, inches above his head).

She lets it slip one time while they're waiting for the girl from District 12 to come down from her tree. Glimmer's too busy snuggling into Cato's arm and her district partner soaks up all the attention like the arrogant bastard he is, and Lover Boy is drifting off to an uneasy sleep to her left. And Marvel's eyes are doing magic as the glow of the fire burns the embers in his eyes, so Clove bluntly states that she likes his eyes.

She snorts loudly when Marvel returns the compliment. That just further supports her theory on the boy – no sane person would ever think such a thing.

It's a good thing that he leaves her and Cato after the brute of her district partner snaps Elec's neck. She doesn't think she'll be able to bear the wild light leave those dark eyes in her hands.

But as Marvel's smirking face fills the black sky that night, it's obvious that the girl from District 12 thinks otherwise.

9. Rue (District 11)

With the exception of the opening ceremony of the Games and their personal interviews with Caesar, Clove hasn't properly met the twelve year old from District 11.

It's a good thing for the tiny, dark girl that they don't ever directly encounter each other's paths during the Games either. If Marvel hadn't beaten her to it first, Clove would've stuck a knife to the little girl's temple with savage pleasure.

Brown eyes are never supposed to be that bewitching. Never.

10. Katniss (District 12)

Cato once said her obsessions would wind up killing her. There was that fascination with glass that resulted in the deep, jagged scar she still sports on both her palms. Then she developed an interest for climbing trees (that dissolved completely when she broke her left leg, resulting in two weeks of house arrest).

Clove contemplates carving out those stunning steel grey eyes from District 12's sockets, but decides against it in the end. They are maximized to their full allure with a spunk that's unique to the tribute, and she thinks they'll be useless lying in her small hands.

So the tip of her silver knife skims down from the eyelids to rest on those high cheekbones with a loving caress. She'll save the eyes for later amusement, and because she can't bear the thought of ruining such pretty little things.

"I think we'll start with your mouth."

Cato once said her obsessions would wind up killing her.

It does. But she never learns, does she?

11. Thresh (District 11)

In the midst of her fear, Clove catches the flicker of unadulterated ruthlessness and hatred that knows no bounds in those deep, black eyes.

She doesn't know whether to laugh or cry. So that's the last face her unsuspecting victims see before she murders them. It's hauntingly magnificent.

12. Cato (District 2)

All she can see is Cato and his blue, blue eyes staring down at her frantically as he cradles her head in the crook of his arm. She wishes he'd stop doing that – it makes the words he's whispering buzz around her dented skull before they fade into incoherence.

His blue, blue eyes are filling up her vision and suddenly she remembers. She remembers those eyes tightening with intensity as they circled each other in the training academy. She remembers those eyes searching her face for signs of pain when he gently checks up on her swelling leg after her fall from a rotting branch. She remembers those eyes involuntarily sweeping the arena for her when she wordlessly disappears to take a piss. She remembers those eyes burning with an inexplicable emotion when the Gamemakers give both of them a chance to go home.

She remembers, she remembers…

His head his bent down to hers and she faintly observes that his blonde hair is sticking up in all directions again. Her shoulder is soaking wet but she doesn't understand why – why would the Gamemakers make it rain? – and his fingers ghost over her cheek, the only part of her face she can doesn't feel the numbing pain in.

"Don't go," he pleads, those blue eyes filled with foreign fear and despairs that act as barriers to the white hot anger she sees locked behind. She wants to see the unleashed fury that transforms Cato into a breathtaking monster, but she thinks she won't have that chance ever again.

The thought makes it harder for her to breathe.

"I'm so tired, Cato."

"Stay with me. Please. Clove, just stay with me for one more minute…"

She's afraid that if she looks into his beautiful eyes any longer, she'll have a harder time giving up on fighting, giving up on her right to live, giving up on Cato. She's so tired – she doesn't want to struggle anymore.

So she closes her eyes, staring into nothing but blackness as the helpless "Please" echoes through the void of her mind again and again.

A/N: I've been a little (*coughalotcoughcough*) obsessed with Clove as a character lately - this idea sprung up on me in the middle of the night and I spent a couple of days fleshing it out until I was satisfied. I hope you all enjoyed it, and a review would be much appreciated! :)