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clatoera · 11 months

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Always Remember We’re Burned For Better Chapter 13(!!!): Don’t Blame Me (Love Made Me Crazy)

...well here we are! Happy SN TV day!! and the 13th Chapter!! I’m aligning spiritually with my god (t swift) rn. (this was posted today on purpose).

Alright so. We have entered the final book so to speak. We are in the war. Now the war is exactly what this fic was always going to be about. And as such the chapters are smaller (4500 rather than 7500) as the war is raging outside and each chapter is less events. Think of it more as a typical fic from here on out, where less happens per chapter, because this is quite literally what the meat of the fic is supposed to be. The war is not one chapter, the war will be many. Cato is unhinged. Glimmer is going mad. The next like..brick of chapters is essentially all set to Don’t Blame Me because like... welcome to the war💜

Major major trigger warning as there is blatant self harming tendencies here.

AO3

Masterpost

Title from T swizzle of course

As always this is for my bestie and my loves on this site, who literally never make me shut up and I owe my whole life @ohhowwehavefallen and @afterfawn (and we’ll add @clovecato this time because she will appreciate the SN TV release date for ch 13 and a couple other TS references in the text this time)

Things are going to be different. We have less shippy moments ahead for a few chapters. This portion is about desperation and the loss of love and the lengths one will go for someone they love and to protect them.

“Kill him Cato.” One blonde ex-victor hisses to the other, the girl tightening the frighteningly deep grip of her nails on the neck of one of her fellow victors. With Finnick on the floor she’s got her hand on the throat of Beetee, watching with frantic eyes as Cato’s arm slips tighter around Plutarch Heavensbee’s neck.

And oh, Cato is close. Neither of them asked for whatever the fuck this is–wherever the fuck it is, actually– and neither of them would have done it had they had even the slightest choice.

Victors, losing their ability to make their own choices yet again, as if anyone is really shocked.

“You’re going to take us back for them right fucking now.” Cato warns, dragging Plutarch by the throat, not even flinching for a second at the hands clawing at the bulk of his arm. “You’re going to turn this freak show the fuck around.”

“We can’t do that–” The man in Glimmer’s grasp gasps out, only resulting in her tightened grip on his flesh.

“Ohhhh we can do that.” Cato insists, a laugh that can only be described as unhinged slipping out from him. His other hand finds the top of Plutarch’s head, holding head cocked and ready to snap in an instant. “We’re going to do that.”

Glimmer flashes him a look, the look of a mad woman, not angry but mad in the way only a woman who has been ripped away from her loved ones, upended in a strange place far without her consent could be. He knows, then, that if he makes the first move she will follow. If he flicks his wrist to decapitate someone internally she will dig her claw like nails into a neck and exsanguinate the man in her grasp.

They took them. They took them against any wish they might have had, and as a result left them looking guilty. They let them look like criminals themselves, like traitors, treasonous traitors.

It wasn’t even about the two of them now, though, no. They knew they wanted nothing to do with this.

It was for Clove, it was for Marvel, who would be seen as treasonous traitors, too. Suspected traitors who were left behind.

“You know the thing about us,” Glimmer purrs– no, not purrs, hisses like a snake in the grass, about to attack without more than a seconds notice– “Sure, you can keep knives or swords or spears away from us.. But we don’t need any of that.” She digs in and blood pools around the edges of her long nails, seeping out from the flesh of the other past victor. “Look at Cato. You think he needs a weapon to kill you? And God I know that i’ve been waiting years to tear a man’s throat open..”

“You do that and it’s a one way ticket to ensure you never see those other two again.” A new voice rings out, causing Cato and Glimmer both to snap their attention towards the shadowed doorway. Despite the intrusion Cato does not loosen his grip, Plutarch Heavensbee turning all shades of maroon and indigo in his chokehold.

“How did you make the cut?” Glimmer snarls, backing up so that her back was secure against a wall and she could not easily be snuck up on, those arena instincts still flooding through her circulatory system like a hunted animal (which, really, wasn’t she anyway). “Bribe them with a lifetime supply of scotch?”

Haymitch Abernathy comes into view, giving slow claps with his hands. “I knew you two would be trouble, believe me, I did not advocate for your rescue.”

“Oh, rescue, that’s what you call this?” Cato nearly growls, following Glimmer’s motion to protect his back from the unknown.

“Compared to the alternative, yes, this is a rescue. You’re welcome.” Haymitch glances between the two feral careers, who share pupils that are blown wide, dark and never ending as a product of their anxieties and adrenaline. “The smart thing to do here would be let them go..”

“The smart thing would have been taking all four of us-” Glimmer taunts, pressing in deeper with the tip of her french manicure, reveling in the choking sound coming from Beetee as a result.

“You especially should be thanking us Glitter-”

“That’s not my fucking name!”

“Whatever, Shimmer Sparkle Shine, the point stands that you should be thanking us. You don’t think your little commentary was going to have you on a hit list? If you had been left behind I can promise you’d be dead– or begging to be, soon.” Haymitch plays his luck, stepping closer to Glimmer than Cato, hands up in surrender and defense.

“So you left them, what, to punish us? So he can be killed in my place, for the crime of loving me after all they did?”

“There was no selection process, sweetheart. You two were simply closer to the one we wanted. We thought you’d be useful, and we brought you too.” Haymitch does not go to grab Glimmer– doing so would certainly be an act of war against what remained of this career alliance, and would without a doubt result in the death of the mastermind of the revolution at the hands of loose cannon Cato Hadley.

“The one you wanted, who’s–” Cato starts only to be interrupted again by the high pitch wails of a girl.

“You liar!” Katniss Everdeen screams, launching herself full force at her past mentor. While he catches her by the wrist the ensuing power struggle catches both Cato and Glimmer off guard.

For a minute it felt as if they were on the same team, and if she took out Haymitch Abernathy they could get the others. She has something in her hands, that she’s trying terribly hard to lodge into the neck of Haymitch, and he can’t help but think that if she had been one of them she’d have succeeded by now. She could take Haymitch, Glimmer had Beetee, and Plutarch was as good as gone the minute he decided. They could do it.

She is screaming something absolutely incoherent, at least to Cato who feels like all of his senses are suddenly dull. This is not the instinct of a career in the arena, no. For a fleeting moment he wonders if this is how a prey animal feels, as every nerve in his body desperately screams for him to find Clove.

Clove.

Clove who is gone because of her.

“They left Peeta, too!” The blonde woman recognizes, piecing together phrases from the ensuing fight between Katniss and Haymitch, throwing back her head in an almost witch-like laugh, something more akin to a cackle than the high pitched sweetness she is so known for. “Of course they won’t go back for ours, they left Loverboy too! Come on Katniss, put on a good show for us, pretend you know how we feel!”

Katniss Everdeen and her stupid, unbelievable love story. With her pins and her gifts and her outright disregard for all things Panem.

It was her fault, really.

Cato sees red. Red like the dress Clove wore when she won her first games, red like the wine the night before the quell, red like the shared favorite crimson hue of him and his wife, and above all else red like the blood he is going to choke out of the Girl on Fire’s eyes. Blinded by a sea of red behind his eyes, he tosses the game maker to the ground, ignoring the choking gasps he lets out. He can vaguely hear Glimmer frantically say ‘cato, no’ in the background, as she realizes he dropped the other major leverage they had.

His right hand wraps around the throat of Katniss Everdeen in an instant, lifting her light frame from the ground and slamming her skull against a metal beam directly behind Haymitch’s left shoulder.

“It’s all your fucking fault!” He absolutely snarls, dangling her a solid foot off the ground as he crushes his palm against her airway. “It’s all your fault, you couldn’t just fucking die. Or better, be a Victor and be grateful” Cato smacks her head off the wall again, feeling how her desperate claws at his hand are already getting weaker and weaker. “At the very fucking least, i’m not letting you slip away again, Fire girl.”

“Grateful? Kids are dying, people are dying! Open your eyes!” Haymitch defends, trying to wrench Cato off of her to no avail, waving someone over that Cato cannot identify from his peripheral vision. “Is this really the life you want?” Haymitch directs towards Glimmer this time, “I know you don’t want to continue on like you were, you know there’s nothing to be grateful for.”

The sudden grasp of a firm hand on his arm throws Cato off, and when he turns his upper body he is faced with the slightly smaller stature of some boy he’s never seen, who looks a little too much like Kantiss to not be related. She was the oldest sister that he knew, so a male cousin maybe?

“Get off of her,” The boy threatens, and he at least distracts Cato long enough that he loosens his grip so Katniss can fall and scamper off. She collapses to the floor, grasping at her neck and gasping for air. “Noone wanted you one and two psychopaths here anyway,”

“Gale that is enough,” Haymitch warns, stepping forward to evaluate Katniss as if she had not tried to claw his eyes out only moments prior. “You’re not helping by–”

“We’ve already got this capitol whore- everyone sees the way you show off.” He directed towards Glimmer with a half thought nod of his head. “I’m glad the little psycho bitch isn’t here too. She’d be a waste of valuable food and air, I hope they kill her for us–”

What happens next is a flurry of events, the order of which is lost on Cato and Glimmer both.

Cato’s fist makes contact with Gale Hawthorne’s nose with a satisfying crunch, and before he can get a retaliation shot in, a second fist comes in contact with Gale’s jawline. The blow takes him down, and when his head hits the concrete floor it makes a satisfying crack, the man entirely unconscious even as Cato goes in repeatedly with punches, over and over until even the sound of his breathing gurgles with blood. It vaguely reminds him of his win in his games, all those years ago, though the motivation is very different. While the last time he had wanted to go home to her– how he just wanted to punish everyone who left her behind.

Cato can vaguely hear Glimmer egging him on, cheering on him to kill the man, to make him pay, before the tone of her voice becomes a frantic, warning yell of “Cato watch OUT!”

Something pinches his arm and the world shifts into a blurry hue of bodies and metal. The last thing he sees is his favorite shade of blood– not of Katniss Everdeen, but of her kin nonetheless.

Cato’s world goes dark and when he hears a yelp from Glimmer he knows they’ve gotten her, too.

The first thing he notices is that he can’t move his hands. Well, not more than a few inches. The metal around both wrists secures him down, and when he tries to lift himself to a sitting position he realizes exactly how hard that is with his current restraints not only on his wrists but on his hips as well. His eyes fly open and he quickly absorbs the sterile white energy of the room, which is directly offset by the metal clanging on the bed. Somewhere between a hospital room and a jail cell, that's what this had to be.

The sound of scratching combined with the clanging metal tells him that, fuck, he isn’t alone. His senses must still be dulled if he didnt think to look for any other dangers in the room- clearly, whatever they gave them, worked its magic.

The scratching, though, is not the sound of a rodent working on a corpse or an animal scratching to escape, when he finally cranes his neck, he catches a familiar head with blonde pigtails.

Oh, it’s just Glimmer.

But it isn’t just Glimmer, happy, shining, golden girl Glimmer.

He’s a career, he’s seen plenty of horrific things in years of games reruns, he’s seen plenty of mutilation.

What Cato is not expecting is to see Glimmer cross legged in bed, hunched over with thick rivulets of blood streaming from open scratches along her forearms. What he is even more surprised to see, is the way she is repeatedly digging her nails into her own arms, over and over, heavy handed scratches adding to the gashes in her arm.

“What are you–” In horror, he starts, as for all he’s seen victors hurt each other, he’s never seen someone so blatantly hurt themselves.

“I can’t help it.” Glimmer half explains, scratching in her arms as if she has the most severe bug bite in the world, an itch so deep she has to carve it out from her very bones. “I can’t stop.”

Cato stares, eyes comically wide in horror at the absolute mutilation Glimmer works into her otherwise flawless skin. “That has to hurt, Glimmer.”

“That’s the point.” She whispers, before grasping her bloodied wrist and using her own blood as enough lubrication to slip the offending metal ring over one wrist. “They usually get rid of the scars,” they being the Capitol and the source of her usual severe abuse and resulting anxieties. “I can’t help it..I can’t stop.”

Cato can’t tear his eyes away when she slips through the handcuffs, using her own blood as a mechanism to do so. “How are you–”

“You think this is the first time someone’s left me handcuffed in my own blood, Cato?” Glimmer reminds, before flinching and forcing the other one down over her wrist, immediately grasping at her dually freed wrists. “It hurts like hell, but it works.”

Glimmer hops off her bed, and Cato gets a good look at her for the first time since their ‘rescue’ from the Arena.

Her blonde hair is in the same half braid half ponytails as in the arena, but now frizzed and blood matted. The blood that runs from her arms is not confined to her hands, but instead covers the bed sheets and the skin of her face. She’s been changed into a gray cotton pajama-esk set that reminds Cato of something in a textbook about a psychiatric ward. Even that is soaked through with deep maroon blood, making her look all the more like a walking corpse. This is not the Glimmer the world knows, this desperate, bloodied girl. Of course, this may be the Glimmer plenty of capitolites have left behind.

Glimmer settles herself on the edge of the bed, and grabs him by the wrist, noting how her hand cannot even close all the way around. “Your hands are much bigger than mine, I'm not sure if it’ll work.” She warns, before she starts milking blood from her arm right onto his. “I know you aren’t afraid of a little blood on your hands.” She tells him before she braces his arm with one hand and the metal with the other. “I’m only trying once, you’re useless to us both if I break your wrist– actually, give me your non-dominant hand.” She braces the handcuff again and squints her eyes at him. “Don’t be a big baby–”

“Why would I be a- What the FUCK” Cato yells, trying to retract his hand so he can hold it to his chest. In a pleasant surprise, he realizes he can and that Glimmer successfully broke him out of the restraining item. “How did you–”

“LIke i said, not a stranger to handcuffs and blood.” She holds up her hands for him to give her the other, and with the same bracing strategy, she frees his other hand with less of a shock to his system.

Cato twists his freed hands, loosening the stiffened ligaments with loose circles of his wrist. “...what have they done to you, Glimmer?”

“Enough that I'd rather be dead than go back. I don’t know what the fuck is going on but.. I’m not sure they can do anything worse to me here.”

Cato’s chest tightens when the depth of that settles in. He gives a small nod but can’t stop the flurry in his mind. Clove is there. Clove is there. Clove is there.

“What the fuck’s happening?” He leans forward, loosening the leather around his ankles and realizing he is in the same psych ward uniform as Glimmer, now with matching blood stains. “Where are we?”

“District Thirteen is what I keep hearing.” She offers half heartedly, now finally wiping at the blood in her arms to try to make it stop now that she has no more use for it. “That can’t be right. But, I guess there's some big plan. Overthrow the government. My guess is firegirl is going to be their fearless leader. They were all in on it. Finnick..Jo..that's why they refused us, if I had to guess.”

He scoffs, remembering the frightened, screaming girl he had left gasping on the floor. “Yeah, she’s a great leader of the new world alright.” Cato swallows the stuck feeling in his throat, and he can’t resist any longer. “...and they’re left behind?” Cato confirms what they already know, reiterating Glimmer’s meltdown not long ago.

“And since we’re here..we may as well be Finnick or Katniss or Johanna, in their eyes…” Glimmer nods, holding her arms closer to her body to put pressure on her shredded veins. In barely above a whisper, and without raising her eyes to look at him, she allows herself to ask her biggest fear. “...do you think they’re alive?”

“Stop. They have to be.” Cato snaps, before ripping at the bed sheet underneath him, turning it into a long white strip. “We can’t say anything different. They have to be alive. We’re loved in the Captiol, we’re adored…they won’t hurt them. ”

“What do you think they’re doing to them, Cato, I know what they’ve done to me, and they loved me too–”

“Stop, Glimmer. All we can do is hope they are alive or they let them go. I gave my entire life to being the perfect victor, and the perfect tribute. That has to be worth something.” He takes the long cotton strip and rips it again in two, before taking Glimmer by the elbow and beginning to wrap down her arm. The White sheet turns scarlet in an instant, but the blood does not seem to continue to leak out.

“They might be better off dead. I wouldn’t wish what’s been done to me on anyone..” Glimmer admits, letting him pressure-wrap her arms before letting both fall to her lap, as she now sits cross legged on his bed. “Thank you.”

“Yeah, well, you helped me, I help you.” He rubs at the back of his neck with one hand, before glancing around the room. “They can’t be dead. We can’t think like that, because then what do we have? We just..have to go get them back and then we get the hell out of here and go home and show that we don’t support this–”

“I’m not sure we really have a home to go back to.” Glimmer admits, rocking just a little now that her arms are no longer scratchable. “I can’t go back to one, not after what I said.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong–”

“You don’t speak against the hand that feeds you, Cato, even if it’s also the one that beats you.” She blinks back something that can only be tears, as she looks up to the ceiling. “And maybe..maybe I don’t want to support the Capitol.”

Glimmer hears the door creak open, and both of them react like the wounded animals they are. Cato cracks his neck, primed and ready for a fight with clenched fists, while she uncurls her own hands to give her full use of her jagged nails.

“I was told you two were going to be restrained.” Haymitch announces, strutting into the room with his hands up in defense. “I just want to talk.” He waves off someone coming in behind him– guards, maybe? “Just the three of us.”

“Oh great, just who I want to see.” Glimmer scoffs, jumping onto her feet to run if she needed to, to climb, to hide.

“They wanted to send in Finnick, but he’s still recovering from Glimmer’s little antics.” Haymitch explains, sitting on Glimmer’s empty, bloodied bed. “Did you maim yourself?”

“What’s it matter to you?” Cato snaps, and if Glimmer weren’t between them, he’d likely lunge at this man, too. “Why would you care if she did,”

“Because, if you play along, we can all be on the same team here.” He offers, leaning back on his hands. “You remember all that stuff, Victors working together for each other–”

“Yeah, thats long over when you left my–”

“We work together now.” Haymitch interrupts Cato before it can become a whole outburst. “You two, Finnick, and Katniss are here. The majority of the work falls to Katniss, she’s who we need to lead this thing.”

“You want us to show our support for Everdeen?” Glimmer rolls her eyes, and takes a step towards Haymitch. “Go out there and say that we love this silly little revolution and guarantee that Marvel and Clove end up dead before the broadcast cuts? Are you stupid? Do you think WE are stupid?”

“We’re NEVER going to agree to–”

“Let me finish. You four are here. Johanna, Peeta, Clove, and Marvel got left behind. It wasn’t the plan. But that's what happened. The Capitol went into Four and got Annie Cresta too. All of you, here, have the exact same thing on the line.” Haymitch holds up a hand to prevent them from interrupting. “Before you ask, no. We do not know where Enobaria and Brutus and Cashmere and Gloss are. Cato, I looked into your sister, too, and as far as we can tell she is safe in two. So no. I can’t say if everyone you love is safe or not. But there is an opportunity here. There is a life after this war that you can have. Glimmer. You can avoid the horrible things they’ve done to you. You can have anything you ever wanted that I know you and your siblings have given up. Cato..well, I’m not sure a life without games appeals to you, but it will at least be a life with her.”

Glimmer falls into the bed, immediate guilt flooding her when she realizes she has not yet asked about her siblings. Cato must feel the same, for any sun bronzed skin of his face goes ghostly pale at the mention of his baby sister. Noone considered that they, too, could be in danger. Noone considered that the people back home would be hunted down, though Annie Cresta proves that to be the case indeed.

There’s something about it, though, for Glimmer. The thought, the offer, the chance, at a life after the games where no one can get to her again. She would be lying to say otherwise.

“My advice? Lay low. Stop going kamikaze on everyone you see. You aren’t going to be a symbol, no. That’s on Katniss. You two just..lay low. Stop losing your minds. The president down here doesn’t really want you here, but frankly, we are your best shot at getting Clove and Marvel home to you both. Lay low. Stop making a scene. Stick to yourselves.” Haymitch suggests, looking at the two bloodied victors, with bruising wrists and the look of murder in the back of their eyes. “And please, leave Katniss alone. She lost Peeta today, too.”

“Oh yeah, sure, and where is the actress of the year? Getting ready to start her mourning performance? Does she have a death veil on?” Glimmer snarks, but does not make any move to actually go at the elder man again.

“Katniss is in District Twelve–”

“Oh so she got to go home?” Cato starts, but is immediately cut off.

“There IS no District Twelve! It’s ash! It’s rubble. She’s walking over the bodies of the people she grew up with. This isn’t a little game, you two. This is a war now!”

An announcement overhead leaves Haymitch staring at two dumbstruck faces, a look of fear in both of their features. He gives a heavy sigh and stands. “I have to go, strategy meeting and all. But please. Heed my advice. Just..keep your heads down.”

He slips out the room without so much as a goodbye, leaving two terrified, dumbfounded victors in his wake.

Glimmer chokes out a response first, body frozen as she processes it all. “...they took out a whole district?”

“A lower level district–” Cato offers as a comfort, though he knows it is moot. One could go as easily as twelve, though maybe two was protected by the sheer value of their product, weaponry. Though maybe they were making human weapons, too, in the form of twelve year old killers.

“......what are we going to do, Cato?” Glimmer turns to him, tears shining in the brink of her spring colored eyes, looking a little bit like a spring storm forming within her.

“Whatever we have to. To keep them alive. To get them home.” He offers, though with the way his shoulders fall, it is not an easy decision on him. “We just get them home.”

He’s staring off, letting the reality of this day set in. A war. He got dragged into a war with Clove left on the other side. He’s brought back by a soft sniffle from Glimmer, and when he looks to her, he sees the tears streaming down her face.

“I miss him, Cato.” She cries out, before burying her eyes into her hands, the burning sting of tears in her wounds making her cry even harder.

“I miss her, too, Glimmer.” He agrees, and he looks away from her as he feels that rage mounting in his chest at her abandonment. He wasn’t good at playing fair, at playing along with what others wanted when it was outside the context of the games and training. Noone told him how to behave, how to act.

“I don’t want to do this without them.” Glimmer admits, pulling her knees up closer to her chest.

As much as Cato wants to offer words of rebuttal, that they will never have to do this without them, that they will be back together soon, he can’t bring himself to lie to her. To lie to himself.

He offers no words of comfort as the war outside the walls bleeds directly into their hearts.

#clato fanfic #arwbfb tag #always remember we're burned for better tag #cato and clove fanfic #thg fanfic #This is glimmer heavy this time #and cato #glim glam and cato against the world #my unhinged man and my mad woman

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