I jump violently, dropping my knife. I should be trying to pick it up, but I am not.

Instead, I am looking up at the sky frantically, as if it'll show me the answer to my question.

Was that Cato's cannon? Was that his end?

My mind is plagued with worries long before I start running, and long before the tears start streaming down my face.

"Cato?!" I yell, sprinting back in the direction I had come. "CATO?!"

I skid to a halt upon reaching a jacket, Cato's jacket, with a small pile of berries on it. My worries go into overdrive, because I recognise those berries, and if he's eaten them-

"CATO! CATO!"

I scream wildly as I run round the corner, grunting as my body slams into a muscular chest.

"Whoa- a-are you okay?" Cato asks, holding my arms as he looks me up and down. I can't imagine what I must look like; I am crying, and gasping, and my mind is reeling.

"I heard the cannon, I- I thought-" I panic, my body and voice shaking.

"No," Cato shakes his head, holding out the same berries he had put on his jacket.

"That's nightlock, Cato, you'll be dead in a minute!" I scream, slapping all the berries from his hands. Less than a minute, somewhere in my hazy mind thinks. Because my father used to tell me that you'd be out the second they hit your tongue.

"I- I didn't know," Cato stammers. Despite all the combat training they do in Two, they clearly don't train them very much on survival skills.

"You scared me to death," I tell him, leaning forward and wrapping my arms around him, murmuring. "Damn you."

He pants into my shoulder. "I'm sorry," he whispers. "I'm sorry, Sage."

And for the minute, I decide to believe him.

☦︎☦︎☦︎

It doesn't take us long to find her body.

I was hoping for Thresh, personally. Because he's the one that would be harder to fight combatively.

But it isn't, because when we find it, the body, it has a feminine face, and red hair, and fresh berry stains straying round her lips. The rest of the nightlock lies in her hand, uneaten.

"I didn't even know she was following me," Cato shakes his head. "I- God, I'm so stupid."

"You're not," I shake my head. "You- it was actually really smart, but it was just that you didn't mean to do it. She must've assumed they were safe, because you were going to eat them, so she stole a few. She's really clever."

Cato nods. "Too clever."

I nod, kneeling down and taking the berries from her hand.

"What are you doing?" Cato asks instantly. "Eat those, Sage, and I swear-"

"It's fine," I interrupt him. "I'm not going to eat them, we're going to try and set another trap."

I can't help but smirk, because there's only three left now; only one person between Cato and I going home.

"Who knows? Maybe Thresh likes berries too."

And Cato is smirking with me, because he knows in his heart that we can do it.

That we can win.

☦︎☦︎☦︎

The sky is dark in a couple of hours, and as we walk back to the cave after our hunt, in which I manage to catch two rabbits, blackness reigns above.

"What time is it?" Cato asks me.

I look up, estimating. "A little after noon."

"Why is it getting so dark?" He frowns at me.

"Must be in a hurry to end it," I roll my eyes.

I try not to think about the possibilities. Either I go home with Thresh, and Cato dies. Thresh goes home with Cato, and I die.

Or, the scenario I, him, and hopefully the audience all want.

Cato and I go home together.

I am holding my knife tightly as we tiptoe our way through. Since it's dark, Thresh could be plotting his attack, and he could be anywhere, we still don't know where his hideout is.

There's a faint howl and behind me, Cato jumps.

"Did you hear that?"

I nod, turning back. The finale is clearly upon us, though I am barely recovering from the last fight.

We make a little more progress, slowly walking on. At this point, I am gripping my knife so hard I don't know if I'm ever going to be able to throw it.

Then the howl gets a lot louder, and this time, it comes along with a scream. I jump closer to Cato, as he draws his sword.

"What was that?"

I shake my head, turning to him, my voice laced with sarcasm. "It's the finale."

Despite the very human scream, no cannon gets fired. Clearly, Thresh is stronger than the gamemakers gave him credit for.

"Let's go," I murmur, beginning to walk even faster than I did before. Cato is more hesitant behind me, as he is not blessed with the hunter's tread.

We creep throughout the woods, him with his sword and me with my knives. Neither of us know yet if our opposition is going to be a human, or if it's going to be whatever muttation the gamemakers force upon us. All we know is that at some point, there's going to be a confrontation, and we'll need to fight for our lives in it.

It comes sooner than I expect it.

One moment, Cato is standing there, poised, and the next a- a creature is pouncing upon him. It's a creature with menacing eyes and sharp white teeth. Its growl is low and its claws are sharp. I don't know what it is, but I don't want to.

"CATO!" I scream, instantly sending a knife into the mutt's head. It screams in agony and buys Cato enough time to grab his sword, which he dropped, and swing it so hard it cuts right through his attacker's neck.

I am sure he kills it, but we don't stick around to find out. He gets up and we run as fast as we can through the woods.

In my clouded brain, I know that logically the only way we can conquer these mutts is to find higher ground. A tree would be an ideal option, but they could probably climb that, too.

So the only other way to outrun them is the Cornucopia.

Cato seems to have caught me up on this, because he yells. "Cornucopia!"

And I nod.

Another mutt is soon chasing us. I can hear it behind us, but I don't look back. There are probably four or five by now, by the rumbling sound of their feet on the ground, but I don't bother looking. We need to get to the-

We are there sooner than I thought we would be, panting and groaning and in pain, but not stopping. We clear through the trees onto the plain, seeing the Cornucopia lying forty metres away. We're so close, so fucking cl-

"AAAARRRRGGHHH!"

I am not sure how I end up falling. Maybe I trip, maybe I don't pay attention, or maybe it's just circumstance.

But next thing I know, I'm hitting the ground with force, screaming in pain.

"SAGE! SAGE, NO!"

My head spins as Cato charges back towards me, his hands suddenly around my arms, hauling me upwards. This does not improve my dizziness, but I can't concentrate on that in the moment because the growls sound considerably nearer-

Then I'm being scooped up into Cato's arms as he runs at full speed towards the Cornucopia. We reach it around ten seconds before the mutts do, and in those seconds, Cato tips me up the right way, giving me a leg up. I clamber onto the shiny, smooth metal, quickly reaching down to help him up in turn.

He jumps, using my hand to hoist himself up, moving his leg just seconds before a mutt gets a bite out of it.

"Are you okay?" He pants as he stands up, his hands on my arms and his eyes searching me wildly.

"Yeah," I nod, though I'm not really. My body is aching, my head spinning, and my legs burning. "I-"

I'm cut off as my neck is grabbed, and a pair of rough hands are pulling me backwards. A strangled scream tears from my throat as I'm dragged off Cato, trying desperately to fight but my body too tired to.

I know instantly what is happening, though. Clearly, Cato and I are not the only ones who thought of the Cornucopia.

The mutts hound us from all sides of the horn as I am thrown to the ground, hitting it hard and crying out.

"Sage!" Cato screams desperately, and it's only then that I realise I am millimeters from the edge. I scramble backwards as my ally throws a rough punch at Thresh's jaw, who is distracted. It hits its target perfectly, and sends him flying to the ground, howling in pain.

I should get up, my dazed mind thinks, but I am too tired to carry that out.

"Sage! Sage, get up, come on!" Cato is by my side in an instant, his hands gentle on me, pulling me upwards. My whole words spins as I stand on shaky legs, not quite certain that they're not going to give out.

Thresh isn't giving up easily, though. In another instant, he has me by the collar and he's throwing me across the top of the Cornucopia. I grunt and splutter as I land, sliding uncontrollably.

But then Thresh gets to me, or is it Cato? I can't really see, but the hands on me are calloused and rough, so it must b-

It's not Cato.

Because the hands on me are also upon my neck, pressing hard and strangling me.

"Ur- ag-" I choke, wondering if this is the end, if this is what it has come to-

"ARGH!" Cato, however, has other ideas, and before I know it he has lifted Thresh off me, throwing him across the horn's shining top.

I splutter and black dots crowd my vision as I sit up, vaguely hearing Thresh and Cato fight in front of me but not really seeing it. I know they're fighting, though, because they're yelling and I can hear the sound of knuckles hitting skin. I don't want to think about who's knuckles they are, th-

"No! SAGE!"

In the next few seconds I can comprehend, I'm being roughly headlocked and a knife is being drawn to my neck. If I was thinking clearly, I would be crying because of what happened to Rue, but I'm not.

Instead, I close my eyes, my whole world still turning, as Thresh yells. "Throw and I kill her!"

It's then that my vision focuses on Cato, standing around five metres away, one of my knives clutched in his hands. I don't know when he took it and I don't know how, but he has it.

And I'm not entirely glad of it.

"C-Cato," I utter, my lips moving before my brain thinks. "Cato just throw-"

"Be quiet," Thresh hisses in my ear.

"Cato, please," I ignore him, tears streaming from my eyes suddenly. "I- I can't let you die because of m-"

"Shut up!" Thesh tightens his hold on me, and I'm being strangled again.

Cato shakes his head, the knife in his hand still aimed straight at Thresh, but also at me. Because I've become his human shield.

"Come on, throw it," Thresh taunts. "Hit me or her, and then the other one will go home with you."

"No..." Cato shakes his head, murmuring to himself. His face shows sadness and desperation, but I don't know what he's going to do about it.

Then, before I can even think, he switches his aim, and throws. The knife flies straight, and slams right into where he means it. Thresh's hand.

The boy screams in pain and instantly releases his hold on me, stumbling backwards. Cato wastes no time in sprinting forward, and toppling him off the top of the horn.

I try not to listen to the growls of the mutts, and to the agony of Thresh's screams. I don't want to think about what he's feeling right now. I just want the cannon to boom.

"Pl- PLEASE!" He's screaming, and I can't help but take a step forward, taking a knife from my belt.

In a brief lapse of the mutt's feasting, I throw, and the knife embeds right into his neck. The cannon fires in seconds.

I don't feel shame this time, I only feel pity as the mutts slowly slink back, looking at each other before running back off into the woods.

Cato and I turn to each other wordlessly, taking in each other. He is bloody, with a split lip and a blossoming bruise on his cheekbone. I am probably no better. My neck is hurting, and I can feel the bruises on the back of my head. I am still shaking, as well.

Without another word, Cato is enveloping me in his arms, wrapping me up in his arms and pressing my body to his. I reciprocate, my arms looping around his body as I let out a relieved sigh.

We've done it.

We've won.

We've done something I never thought possible before, something I never realised would happen. I expected to die when I volunteered for Prim.

I never expected this.

The sky becomes light as we pull apart, and we can't help but smile slightly at each other as we slide down off the Cornucopia. My body has entirely relaxed, and I'm feeling lighter than I have in weeks.

I look to Cato, a smile slowly breaking out on my face. "We did i-"

"Attention, attention tributes."

Just the way Claudius' voice sounds has me pulling a knife. I look to Cato, and he is just as clueless as me as the voice continues from above us.

"There has been a slight rule change. The previous revision, allowing two tributes to win the games, has been revoked. Only one victor may be crowned. Good luck. And may the odds be ever in your favour."

I want to laugh.

I want to cry.

I want to run at Cato and give him my knife.

I want to do a lot of things. But all that I actually end up doing is looking at the boy with the blonde hair, blue eyes and perfect face across from me.

"Go ahead," he tells me instantly, opening up his arms.

"Are you fucking crazy?" It doesn't come out angry, though. My voice is strangled and shaky. "No."

"One of us should go home," Cato tells me. "And it should be you, Sage."

I shake my head, kneeling down despite the pain and laying my knife on the ground. Then I take the belt containing the other ones off and lay it down, as well.

"It should be you," I argue. "Just- just make it fast, okay?"

Cato shakes his head, his eyes flashing. "Killing you would be like killing a part of myself, Sage."

I shake my head. "You were raised to kill, and I was born to die," I tell him. "This was always going to happen."

"You're right," he nods, taking this in. "One of us has to die. They have to have their victor."

But do they?

And then I am suddenly reminded of something. And it's not knives, or swords, or machetes or mutts. It's something else. Something in my pocket.

Something we will stop this with.

"No," I say, striding forwards. "They don't."

I reach into it coat, and not before long I pull out the nightlock.

Cato's eyes widen, and his jaw locks.

We saved these to set a trap for Thresh.

But now we're going to trap the Capitol with them.

"Why should they?" I murmur, looking from the berries to Cato and back.

"Sage-" he starts, his hand reaching for mine.

"Trust me," I tell him, using my spare hand to cover his.

Then, I gently tip half the berries into his hand, holding it softly, and not before long we both have a small amount of them. Small, but deadly.

Enough to kill us both before the Capitol can stop it.

We look at each other slowly, not even trying to imagine what the people in the Capitol and those in the districts, what our families and loved ones, are saying.

"Together?" Cato murmurs, and it's all I can do but nod.

"Together."

"Okay," he nods, lifting his hand slightly. "One..."

"Two," I reply.

He makes direct eye contact with me, holding up his spare hand to cup my cheek.

"Three."

Then we're both lifting the berries upwards.

"Stop! STOP!"

They're about halfway to my mouth when Claudius' strangled cry rips through the air. Cato and I look up, even though we know we won't be able to see him, and then we look to each other, instantly hugging tight as our names get shouted from all angles.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, may I present the winners of the seventy fourth Hunger Games, Sage Everdeen and Cato Hadley!"