This fic will be coming to an end soon, there are only a few chapters left. :O I never thought it would come so far, it's by far the most popular fic I've ever posted. I haven't got any more Clato fics in the pipeline, but I will be finishing the ones that I have posted. Also, I'm in the middle of two Finnick/Annie fics, and I have another one planned that I may or may not post after this fic has been finished. After that though, I'm sure if I'll bale to post much more, but I have a sequel sorta planned out for A Diamond Among Rocks.
Oh and guess what? I don't own The Hunger Games.
Cato shot one last glance over his shoulder before boarding the plane. When he was saw no green eyed, black haired girl, he sighed inwardly. Who did he think was going to happen? That Clove would just drop everything and come see him off? It wasn't as if she'd actually want to say goodbye to him.
"She's not coming, man." Finnick said, pushing Cato forward by the shoulder.
"I wanted her too." He shrugged in response, and made his way down the plane. Flying first class meant that they had more room, nicer snacks, comfier seats, and no screaming fans.
"Yeah, we know you did." Marvel sighed and slid into the seat next to Cato. Finnick then sat down to Marvel's left. Peeta wasn't with them- he had wanted to stay with Katniss.
"So Finn, talk to me about this movie deal." Cato said, eager to put Clove out of his mind.
"Well, it's called 'The Hunger Games'. You'd be trying out for the role of Alexander. Basically, the main character is a girl who gets sent into an arena with twenty three other teenagers to fight to the death on live TV. You've be playing the toughest tribute, the trained leader of the Career alliance. The Careers are pretty much a group of lethal killers who are out to get Jennifer, the main female character. She has this thing going on with her district partner Josh, you try to kill them and it gets messy and you die. Just read the script." Finnick explained.
"Right. Sounds crazy." Cato frowned as Finnick rooted around in his rucksack and handed Cato the script.
"They have such weird names." He mumbled as he flicked through it.
"The auditions are next month. Production wouldn't be for a while, and it would be filmed in North Carolina." Finnick added.
"Hey." Marvel said to one of the flight attendants. "Why are we taking off?"
"There's a girl stood in front of the plane. She's refusing to move unless she sees Cato Woods. Says her name is 'Clove'. She sounds like some kind of super fan." The flight attendant shrugged and hurried off.
"Oh my God." Cato shot out of his seat and all but leapt over Marvel and Finnick to get to the isle.
…
"Annie?"
"Come in!" Annie responded to the knock at her door. Katniss walked into the room and sat down on the edge of her bed.
"Hey." Annie greeted her warmly.
"Hey." Katniss greeted back, looking warily around the room. There were clothes, books and magazines strung all over the place. After Mandy had died, Annie had postponed moving in with Finnick. She had unpacked her cases, and she was only now getting back to re-packing them. In a week's time, she would be with him in an entirely different state.
"I thought you were taking Clove to the airport." Katniss said, picking up one of Annie's t-shirts and folding before placing it in her suitcase.
"I got Johanna to leave the twins with Paylor and Effie so that she could take her instead of me. I'm sure she's better at running reds than me, and she's definitely a faster driver." Annie shrugged and chucked a balled up pair of shorts into her case. Katniss sighed and folded them for her.
"You think she'll make it?" Katniss asked, leaning back on the bed. Clove was her half-sister, but the fact that they had different dads had never bothered either of the girls. They were almost as close as Clove was with Johanna. Katniss had been rooting for her since day one with Cato.
"God, I hope so. She'll mope for the rest of her life if she doesn't." Annie laughed, tucking a pair of flip-flops into the side of the suitcase.
"She could just call him when he lands." Katniss said thoughtfully.
"She would never do that. I had to guilt trip her into going to the airport in the first place. It's weird, it's like a part of her doesn't want to sort things out with Cato but the rest of her does. Only, she's listening to that one small part that doesn't." Annie stopped packing and sat down next to Katniss on the bed.
"You know she has major issues with…Well, with everyone." Katniss laughed.
"Yeah, but everybody has to leave at some point. She should just be going for it. It's Cato Woods, for God's sake." Annie grinned.
"What happened to Finnick Odair?" Katniss teased, propping herself up on one elbow.
"Shut up." Annie laughed. "Do you ever just wonder how this whole thing happened to us? I mean, Oregon girls don't meet guys like that every day."
"I wonder all the time. If Cato hadn't been eating that sandwich on the bus, or if Effie wasn't so fussy, or if Marvel hadn't gotten his nose broken…None of this would have happened." Katniss said, all traces of teasing gone.
"It's scary." Annie admitted.
"Yeah. It really is."
…
"Drive faster!"
"I ran the last three reds!"
"I don't care! His plane leaves in fifteen minutes!"
"You're stressing me out! Never stress out a pregnant woman!"
"You're not even pregnant anymore!"
Clove gripped onto the handle of the passenger seat door as if her life depended on it. Johanna was already driving eighty miles an hour on a forty miles an hour road, but Clove needed her to drive faster. She'd never forgive herself if she was too late.
"We're nearly there, I promise." Johanna assured her, but the speedometer was still climbing.
"Well we had better be, seeing as his plane leaves in nine minutes!" 'Stressed' was too weak a word to describe what Clove was currently feeling. She also felt like one of the biggest idiots that had ever walked the Earth. She should have trusted Cato as soon as he came back for her. If he really had been sleeping with Glimmer then he wouldn't have left New York. Now she had to chase him down because she'd been an unforgiving bitch and had only just now realised that she needed him.
"Look." Johanna nodded her head as they turned a corner. The airport was coming into view.
"Thank God." Clove breathed a sigh of relief.
"You don't have time to run through the whole damn airport to get to his plane, so you're going to have run straight onto the airfield." Johanna said as she pulled sharply into the parking lot.
"I don't know which plane is his! And I don't want to get sucked up like the birds do sometimes!" Clove yelled.
"Calm down, Clo! I did my research. Don't I always?" Johanna raised an eyebrow at her and pointed at a posh looking plane. "It's that one."
"Thanks!" Clove yelled as she jumped out of the car, not even wasting time to slam the door behind her. She sprinted through the car park and climbed the fence that separated it from the airfield. She kept running and didn't stop until she was in front of Cato's plane, which was being loaded with the passenger's bags and luggage.
"Get out of the way!" A man in a luminous green coat yelled at her.
"I need to see Cato Woods! He's on that plane!" She yelled back.
"We'll call security! One of the other men threatened.
"He has to know that I'm here!" Clove yelled. In a few minutes the cases would be done loading and she would be sucked up by the engines. Or worse, the plane would take off and she'd have been too late.
Just as Clove spotted two security guards approaching her, she heard Cato's voice over the sounds of the taking off planes.
"Clove!"
"Cato!" She called back, grinning.
"What are you doing on the airfield?!" He yelled. The security guards reached her and clamped their hands down on her arms. They started to drag her away, back inside the airport building.
"No!" She screamed and tried to pull away, but they were too strong. They had dragged her inside the building in the space of three minutes.
"Clove!" Cato ran inside the building after her.
"I didn't think you'd get off the plane." She admitted as he opened his arms for her. She stepped into them, wrapping her own arms around his middle.
"What are you doing here?" Cato whispered into her hair. He ran his hands up and down her back, checking that she was actually there and he wasn't dreaming.
"I couldn't let you leave." Clove sniffed, biting back tears. When had she become such a wimp? That was easily answered; when she fell in love with Cato.
"You made it pretty clear that you didn't want anything to do with me. I thought you wanted me to leave." He pulled back so that he could look Clove in the eye.
"I…Could never want that." She admitted.
"I'm confused." Cato frowned. "This morning you were yelling at me to leave and saying that it wouldn't work, yet five minutes ago you ran screaming onto an airfield to stop me from going."
"I said a lot of stuff that I thought I meant, but I didn't. I was trying to stop myself from loving you because you're so out of my league it's like a whole different game, but stopping the Earth from moving would probably have been easier." Clove said, laughing shakily.
"Don't say that. If anyone's the superior one here, it's you. I'm an asshole." Cato scowled.
"And I'm a bitch."
"Well, yeah."
"Maybe I shouldn't have come. Maybe I should have just…Let you go back." Clove stepped backwards, unable to look him in the eye.
"Hey. I don't want to leave if you want me to stay." He reached for her hand and this time, she didn't yank it back.
"I don't want you to stay. That's the thing." Clove said, frowning at the floor.
"Oh." Cato said, sounding disappointed.
"I want to go with you, but now you've missed your plane and it had all your stuff on it and your friends and that's all my fault."
"I don't care." Cato grinned. "We can catch the next flight tomorrow."
"I'd like that." Clove smiled, taking his other hand.
"I'd love that."
And when he kissed her, it didn't just feel amazing.
It felt right.
