THG Head Canon (10)
The cycle of punishment in the 74th Hunger Games all began with the boy from District 3. The Gamemakers wanted to punish him for using their weapons for himself, but he was killed by Cato. The Gamemakers wanted to punish Cato to show that only the Capitol itself could overpower those who defy them, hence the decision to give him a slow and bloody death. Since Katniss was the one who finally put Cato out of his misery, thereby ending the Capitol’s punishment of Cato, she became the Gamemakers’ next target. She still would have suffered, albeit in a smaller scale, even without the berries.