[How could you possibly ever consider yourself in debt to me when I killed him?
The words have an odd, numbing effect. Because they remind her. She and Cato are playing their own game here. Living together, sex, even things like her birthday. They're as much act as reality, they both know what each other is, what they are. They are tributes from District Two, trained at the Academy to kill and good for little else. They would leave each other to die if threatened at all, kill each other if it came to that. What Twelve did with the berries never would have happened; they would have fought tooth and nail to win. They were not noble. There no love, not really.
So why should it matter at all? Twelve had killed Cato. She would have done the same thing.]
Easy.
[As east as throwing a knife or weilding a mace. As easy as leacing behind a screaming pack member swarmed by trackerjackers. As easy as lying in wait for a trap to spring.
Easy.
Clove never looked away, eyes locked on Katniss.]
Don't you get it, Twelve? [It was so obvious to her.] I'm not like you.
[She would never have volunteered for someone. She would never have protected a badly wounded ally. She would never have risked her life to save Cato. She would never have defied the Capitol.
That was the difference between Careers and not. Humanity. She didn't feel human. She knew what empathy and sympathy were, of course, but any experience feeling them was weak and very fleeting. She had never had any need for them, so her capacity for them was diminished, at best. She doubted it even amounted to that.
Which made her a good Career.
Which was all she was ever supposed to be.]
I don't care.
[Not about Cato dying. Not, her cool and even voice suggested, about even Cato himself.
She'd miss him... but this place was a Game like any other. Someday, it would be "kill or be killed." Someone else killing him would only mean she wouldn't have to do it.
action;
The words have an odd, numbing effect. Because they remind her. She and Cato are playing their own game here. Living together, sex, even things like her birthday. They're as much act as reality, they both know what each other is, what they are. They are tributes from District Two, trained at the Academy to kill and good for little else. They would leave each other to die if threatened at all, kill each other if it came to that. What Twelve did with the berries never would have happened; they would have fought tooth and nail to win. They were not noble. There no love, not really.
So why should it matter at all? Twelve had killed Cato. She would have done the same thing.]
Easy.
[As east as throwing a knife or weilding a mace. As easy as leacing behind a screaming pack member swarmed by trackerjackers. As easy as lying in wait for a trap to spring.
Easy.
Clove never looked away, eyes locked on Katniss.]
Don't you get it, Twelve? [It was so obvious to her.] I'm not like you.
[She would never have volunteered for someone. She would never have protected a badly wounded ally. She would never have risked her life to save Cato. She would never have defied the Capitol.
That was the difference between Careers and not. Humanity. She didn't feel human. She knew what empathy and sympathy were, of course, but any experience feeling them was weak and very fleeting. She had never had any need for them, so her capacity for them was diminished, at best. She doubted it even amounted to that.
Which made her a good Career.
Which was all she was ever supposed to be.]
I don't care.
[Not about Cato dying. Not, her cool and even voice suggested, about even Cato himself.
She'd miss him... but this place was a Game like any other. Someday, it would be "kill or be killed." Someone else killing him would only mean she wouldn't have to do it.
So, she can't care.
She won't.
She doesn't.]