PART TWO: A DAUNTING PRESENT
(POV - Clove)
When I come awake, the pain in my head bombards me with every inch of strength that it has. I'm knocked back down onto the bed with a major head rush. Hundreds of little tubes branch out of my skin. My brain swims. The room I'm in is stark-white in color, overwhelming with its brightness and its cold, empty feeling. A table is in the corner of the room. A single ivory chair sits next to it.
I should be in the games right now. Thresh should be pummeling my skull with a rock, and Cato's name should be on my lips, mixing with the blood and dirt, paining me with how much it hurts to scream. I should be listening to the noise of my own cannon echoing in the far distance. I should be drifting into blankness. Dead.
The plastic tubes slip from my body. I tear at them; swat them, strangle them with their own clear cords. A machine whirs beside me as I tug two slick tubes from either of my nostrils 'What's happening? Where is he?' I wonder. The crumminess in my throat is thick. The thoughts come so quick, so foggily and tangled in eachother that I can hardly make them out in my own mind. Where is Cato?
The bed creaks, its metal wheels half-turning with my movement. The realization hits me and I feel empty in the center. Cato is dead.
I don't cry because I'm too ashamed to do so. Instead, I force myself to evaluate my thoughts. With each idea that passes, it feels as if I'm dragging a blade over my own flesh. The initial pang of hurt comes first, and then the part that makes me wish I'd never been revived. The part that makes me feel like sleeping for an eternity.
An irritating beep emanates from the device beside me, and I watch as blood drips from the IV needle when I pull it from under my skin. A bit of it dribbles down my wrist and pools in harmless bubbles on the sheets.
Enobaria comes by and her dark brown eyes bore into mine, her fangs flashing angrily as she complains about my death in the games. Ha-ha, I was killed by an Eleven tribute. Such a lame death, I know, but try telling that to the tributes I killed in the arena. It's such a dark thought, but if they had tried hard enough, maybe they wouldn't have gotten their asses kicked. I don't even know who won.
Then my mentor tells me that I've been brought back to life - that I did die - and I find that hard to believe. Those deaths in the arena were real. The blood beneath my nails, the knives, the soft thud of a body slumping lifelessly to the ground... That was more real than anything had ever been to me.
And with a special little medicine, the Capitol can just reverse death. It's been a secret for a while, I suppose, but my voice rasps when I attempt to ask how long it's been being hidden. It's a thing that no-one outside of the government can know, I assume. A bunch of stupid, bull-crap secrets.
So, I'm in a hospital of sorts. A skinny doctor takes me though a few tests, like walking and bending over and doing freaking squats, and eventually, I'm able to escape those dipsticks. An aimless journey through the hallways, a few quiet sips of water from the fountains I shamble by, and my headache has nearly become bearable enough for me not to feel the immediate urge to stab the nurses I come across.
Another water fountain sits by, perched against a wall and beckoning my dry throat to come to it. I take a sip and groan about the water being half-warm, ignoring the nosy eyes of working passersby that take peeks at me. I'm getting tired of being alone. I wish I had asked where Cato was or where the other Careers were being kept so I wouldn't have to be by myself right now, just shambling around aimlessly.
The lukewarm water trickles down my throat. It brings a clarity to my mind, buzzing me more to life with each drop. "Clove?" Someone utters from behind me. I sputter at the water, little droplets landing on my vest as I turn around. Glimmer looks the same. Her light blonde hair reaches her elbows, glittering in crisp waves, her large green eyes bright and determined. "Oh my God, Clove!" She rushes to me, and when she reaches me, she stands, not quite knowing what to do, her arms out in front of her as if offering a hug. She brings her arms back down when I stare at her as if she's insane. Good idea.
"Glimmer, what the fuc -" I begin to say, and a woman narrows her light brown eyes at me as she passes, dutifully pushing her cart of supplies. "What the hell?" I ask, lowering my voice. "Where's Cato- did they revive him? He didn't win, did he?"
Glimmer furrows her brows at me, and I'm slightly irked at the oddness of the thought of Two's own favorite blonde oaf winning. Cato always had potential, but I never thought of him as a victor. Maybe a second-place winner, behind me, of course. A real victor, though? Like Finnick Odair and Johanna from Seven? Only in Cato's dreams.
Glimmer shakes her head, her full lips pursing together. "No. Katniss and Peeta - the 'lovebirds' from Twelve - they beat him to it. Kinda just... shot him into a pool of wolf-things."
I hurry to seal my lips - my jaws are about to fall open. I wasn't Cato's best friend in the arena, and we weren't dating, but there is a catch to all of that. When you spend weeks with a dude, protecting him from weapons and trying to keep two other idiots from getting mauled, you may bond a little with him. You may begin to consider that 'dude' an actual acquaintance of yours. "So is he here?" I ask Glimmer.
She gives me a revealing half-smile and her eyes glitter, like there's a message behind them. I half want to carve the smile off of her face. "Of course. I haven't seen him, but Marvel mentioned him once or twice in conversation." Marvel. I pretend not to hear his name, and I stick to the basic thoughts, like, where is Cato? Should I find him? What room is he in? Will I be spending all of my time in this goddamned hospital?
Glimmer's waiting for me to say something, and I nearly sigh, wondering how she ever mustered up the ability to survive through the Games. But then I remember that she didn't - she was stung to death before even Rue was killed. And I inwardly laugh off my ass at that.
"Uh, Clove, I stay on the eighth floor. That's where the revived tributes' rooms have been placed. I'm going to take a nap; I can show you where your room is on the way."
I want to snort at her. Major red flag. Walking and talking involves a conversation. No thank-you. "Thanks princess, but I've got a hospital to check out," I tell her. It's times like these that I wish I had a knife to twirl in my fingers, but shaking my head and furrowing my brows seems suitable. Her reaction is just the same, flipping blond locks over her shoulder and raising her nose pompously. Nurses clop past us in their not-made-for-the-job heels.
"I'll just have Marvel show you tomorrow."
"No," I blurt, walking diligently past her toward where she had gestured. She follows behind, and I silently take note of her tiredness and shuffling feet. "God no, Glimmer, what's wrong with you? You know how I feel about that dofus. He wore a feathery boa for the tribute parade -"
"- Not his fault," Glimmer cuts me off.
I sigh inwardly at the blonde, and when I start toward a pair of held-open doors, Glimmer turns me by the shoulder to a small glass elevator. "Doesn't matter." I tell her. "Half of the time he dresses like he's gay." I say these words and Glimmer neglects to look at me. She's a few inches taller than I am when we step side-by-side into the elevator. Even so, that doesn't stop me from glaring daggers into her head.
Her lips part, green eyes darting towards me. She seems to search in her mind for the words she should say, and I roll my eyes before she can. "You're feeling alright, aren't you?" It seems more awkward for her to ask than it is for me to hear it. I cross my arms, brows furrowing. An insult readies itself to fire past my lips, and I think that she can feel it coming. Her next words are bitten. "I don't want Doctor McCary to be mad at me tomorrow for not - "
I sniff at the blonde beside me. My feet are bare; cold as stand on the elevator metal. "Oh, really? I'll let him know where he can shove his doctorate," I tell her. It might be self-absorbed, how my lips crack into a smirk at my own joke, and I can feel Glimmer eyeing me over, but it doesn't count for a damn. Her gaze taints itself with jaded disappointment; her pink lips growing pursed and thin.
The elevator's glowing numbers dwindle. Floor eight. The glass walls clatter as the box rocks to a stop. Glimmer tries to turn to me as she leaves. I don't follow. A second - one second is all I allot her to smudge her lipstick on my behind. "Clove -" There are rings around her eyes. Purple lines in otherwise impeccable skin. It seems like a heavy effort for her to smile - do do anything but gaze. She didn't look this bad in death.
"Glim -" The word falls from my tongue, but it's cut off when my eyes land on the image of Marvel. Yards past her, he moseys, and the hall's bright light illuminates his every annoying inch. "Sorry - nope - can't do it." Before her lips part, I smash a random button so hard that my finger turns red; sore. Her emerald eyes roll.
The hospital room that Enobaria had me hidden in was on the floor that the elevator finds itself rolling back to, and now, my mind tumbles with the thoughts and wonders of where my counterpart must be. I know how he dies already; even now, somewhere deep and dark, dozens of insults marinate so I can tease him for it. If I'm going to look for him, I'm starting here.
Every metal door is coded with a padlock. The missing key is a card, presumably one for them all, I suppose, but I don't really find myself giving a damn. To my every side, nurses stumble by in sterile uniforms. One of them is bound to have a key on their person, whether it's tucked into a slutty purse, speckled with cheetah print and rhinestone bullshit.
My body feels heavy. As I lean against the wall, my shoulders droop. Everything on me has been... 'polished'. Minimal scars reside on my flesh. And somehow... somehow, that irks me. Whoever doctor McCary is, he's seen every inch. I purse my lips together as I wait for a nurse; one who looks vulnerable for no-one to really miss her. The first woman who approaches me parts her lips with a complaint, but my fist is already marking its name into the side of her face before she can utter it, and her body crumples to the ivory tile at my feet. Yes, I'm barefoot, still. And she is unconscious.
A maintenance door to the left of our bodies opens with the use of her card key. It's a simple maneuver, shoving her limp corpse into it. Her skull cracks with a slick thump as it swings into the wall. Trails of blood leak onto the ground. The door closes with ease. Behind it, her body is hidden, so I leave.
Her card is a hunk on plastic in my renewed hands, and I slide it through a metal box near a door and continue on my trek through the quiet hallways. My bare feet slap against the tile. There are multiple sections to this place. The hallway branches off into two corridors, and I find my fingers brushing the walls of the one with the large '2' painted onto its entrance. Lookie there - I was right about something. My eyes trail over the hinges of the room I once lay in, and feet apart from it is a door identical to mine.
I don't hesitate. My hand wraps over the silver handle of Cato's door. And when I turn it; when I lean against it, push it open, the sight that greets me is repulsive. The sudden wave of nausea overtakes me like a hurricane. I can't pinpoint the reason.I double forward. My hand dives to my stomach. It's nothing short of gruesome. Cato's mangled body is a pad of mangled flesh lying of the surface of his hospital bed, ivory sheets pooling over his vitals. Not one inch of flesh goes without injury. Stitches trace his bits of skin in crude brown lines. My hand reaches for my mouth on its own accord. I feel colder than usual.
I'm not sure why I do the next thing I do, but I sure as hell feel like I have to. Stepping further into the sterile room, I reach a palm to Cato's bent shoulder. My feet are quiet over the tile. His flesh is like a furnace beneath mine. His blood boils. Nausea. Sickness. They duel over a place in my empty stomach. And then his eyes flutter awake.
My figure moves backward suddenly. Raw horror is etched into the creases of his face deeper than the shock in mine. His voice is shaky and scared with every word - every aching, painful syllable, and his agony glows through his demeanor. "Clove." His voice quavers. "Clo - Clove, it won't..." A scream, and a fearful yelp passes my lips. "It won't stop!" His voice cracks with his effort.
The spit that slithers into my mouth is bone-dry. I shove it downward. "Cato -" His scream of pain is overbearing.
"Get them off me, Clove! Get them -" In a sudden jerk, every ounce of him surges forward, and pure muscle clamps over my wrist. It wrenches, twists as I try to move off, and pain spikes through my arm's bruising flesh. "Get them away from me!"
An inch of fear juts into my tone. I'm yelling, now, for anybody. Every care is thrown into the air with my dense screams, but no-one can hear me. No-one can hear me over his demonic pain. "Cato! Cato!"
"Take your knife, Clove! Clove, take your knife and kill me. Please!" His screams meld into a mournful sob - a long string of mumbling an agony. It's as if he's subjecting himself to this torment. His endless hell consumes him. I have no knife. Everywhere I look, I have no knife, and my eyes can only dart, helpless. "Clove!"
A bald man shoves his way into the room with a line of nurses following behind. "What the hell are you doing? His eyes are om mine. The man takes hold of my hand; wrenches it from Cato. His voice is filled to its trembling brim with something I can immediately place. Worry. For me. For his... patient. My eyes float to the 'McCary on his medical robe. He doesn't wait for me to answer, and as one of his nurses jolts to Cato's side, another one of them wraps their hands around me.
She runs me through the halls, and I drop the access card I had. Every elevator is a rushing tube of horror. The lights scald me, so with my memories, I find myself aching to hide - to forget every bit of what I saw, but I know that that it weak. I am pushed into my room beside a metal door labeled 'M2'.
It was worse. There was more pain in his death - it was worse. As I sit on my bed, my hands tremble. My legs feel frozen. "Where were you?" Enobaria jumps into the room before the door can spring shut, and a tremor of annoyance jitters through me. I neglect to turn to her. My eyes are solid. On the ground; wrenched tightly shut in petrification. Her hand is on my shoulder, and I know not to move. I know to ignore her. "Where the fuck were you, Clove?" She hisses at me.
'Ignore her.' But I can't. "Get out of my room!"
Her grip only tightens, and I swallow down a pained wince. "Don't you talk to me like that." Her voice quavers on the final word. I scoff. Weak. "Clove, why don't you listen?" She asks. It's a rhetorical question. I can tell. The tone of her voice - the inexplicable hurry that boils inside it.
My mind flashes back. I killed a nurse; escaped the hospital room; bothered... terrified Cato. My chestnut hair brushes my legs with my head's every quivering shake. I know why I don't listen. But the better question is why is she such a bitch?