No matter what we breed
We still are made of greed
- Imagine Dragons (Demons)
Cato tailed after the Clove, barely blocking the door to her bed chambers from shutting with the heel of his foot. He squirmed his way in and then closed the door behind him, looking at Clove with a stunned expression. He'd seen her angry hundreds of times, hell, maybe even thousands, but in front of a training superior?
"Come here to make fun of me?"
The blond boy had no pity, only advice, "Muddling around in self-misery isn't going to help, Clove."
She ignored his admonitions and instead picked up a spiral bound notebook from her side table. The brunette leafed through the pages, looking for any footnotes she could have created in her haste on the tribute from District Twelve.
"None of this going to tell you what's important," Cato instructed her, prying the book from her hand gently and flinging it towards the dresser. "Now, let's discuss this rationally. How do you think 12 got her 11?"
"Maybe she pulled a Glimmer," Clove deadpanned.
"What makes you think she's an archer?"
"Not exactly what I meant."
Cato crossed his arms. "Demeaning the pack isn't going to win you any favors or any sponsors."
"If you paid attention, Cato, you'd realize you're the only one who actually likes her."
He chuckled at the inflection in her tone. "Is that jealousy, Clove?" Cato smirked, walking closer to his district partner for a better glance. "I told you before, I'm not interested in Glimmer. She looks eerily like my mother, actually."
"Oh, is that what your long glances are supposed to be? In case you weren't told, gazing longingly at your 'mother' isn't normal."
"I'm keeping tabs on the pack," Cato retorted. "That's what a good leader does."
"You do realize you have to kill them all, right?" Clove asked him, still unkind. "These people are going to die, most likely by your hand. You need to get comfortable with the idea that their lives are expendable."
Cato grinned easily. As he leaned in closer to her to make another smart remark, Clove flinched, and he lost his playfulness, defensively demanding, "Why do you keep doing that!"
"I'm not doing anything!"
"You keep looking at me like I'm going rip you limb from limb," Cato challenged. "You need to wipe the doe-eyed, pathetic look off your face. We're not even in the arena yet, dammit!"
"I can't help that every single second you draw near I wonder if this is the time you'll do it..." She had begun to hyperventilate, "Wonder if..."
Cato was sure she'd succumb to her anxiety any moment.
"What are you talking about?" He replied, his patience thin. Cato grabbed her arm to reel her in and work to ground her in place. "I haven't done anything, Clove."
In an outrage, Clove yanked her arm away from him and shouted, "You tore my shirt open and tried to make me have sex with you, Cato! I didn't just imagine that! You trying to play it off isn't going to change what you did."
"I would never-" Cato said, taken aback.
"What?" She challenged scathingly. "You'd never actually rape me? Then stop playing these sick head games!"
On its merits, he couldn't say for certain Clove was being honest. All of these matters could be reconstructed, a coercive tale told, but he trusted what he saw in her eyes. He trusted the fear she held dearly.
He could tell that he had done something terrible, committed an immeasurable crime against her, but he couldn't remember the details.
Awkwardly, he stepped back as she began to sniffle. "Clovey, please don't cry."
"Well, I'm sorry my feelings are an inconvenience for you!" Clove responded, violently pushing him away.
"Clove, we can work this out. I promise I would never-"
"Work it out? HOW?" Clove asked, growing more enraged by the moment. "You tried to hurt me purposefully in a way I could never hurt you back. Well, I guess you win, Cato. You made your point, whatever the hell it was."
The blond watched as she wiped away her angry tears. Cato stood awkwardly, unsure what move to make next. He hadn't meant for this conversation to unfold the way it had.
"Clove," he began, quieter now.
"Do you know what's the worst part?" Clove asked, curling in on herself. "You tried to make it my fault. You acted like I wanted you to be that way to me, when I had only tried to be with you before out of affection."
"I-"
Clove gave him a heated glare and he shut up immediately.
"We made a promise to each other, but I guess I was the only one dumb enough to think that it actually meant something."
"It does mean something!" Cato replied, confused and frantic.
Clove only coolly corrected him. "No, it doesn't."
Every night it was the same voice taunting him. The sharp nails glided down his chest, leaving scarlet, gaping marks in their wake. The state of his boxers afterwards always made him sick.
Some nights, he cried himself back to sleep, an invisible, intangible coat of slime covering every inch of his skin. On the other side of the wall, he heard their tears the very same.
On this night he discarded his saturated boxers and kicked them to the side. Cato stood up and selected another pair of sleepwear.
He'd been retiring to bed early each night to ensure he got at least a few hours of good sleep. A few days, he'd been fortunate to do so. The rest, he'd suffered through the sleepless nights with mixed anxiety, terrible aches, and other side effects of detox.
On this night in particular, his nightmares had been particularly violent.
Cato had seen horrible things in his lifetime; Ghastly images of inner anatomy dangling out of tributes' chests, bathtubs filled to the brim with blood, even the battered corpses of dead children. He had tried not to see Oliver in every surface of the dark-haired child he'd once been forced to torture as a part of candidacy training.
No, what had taken a hold of him on this night was the image of Clove's royal blue blouse torn towards her chest, and in the wake of it, her standing absolutely terrified, and unable to speak. Though he'd seen it in a dream, he knew every single pixel was true.
What had he done?
Why couldn't he remember?
Cato struggled to counteract the image with more pleasant memories: His brother bringing home a brownie for his eighth birthday (that had been a nice memory to get back and he made a note to thank Clove), throwing baseballs with Dicey (they'd done this all their lives), making fun of all the dumb things Nero's girlfriend said with Felix during Annex warm-ups, the first time he had met...
He couldn't remember.
It was almost as if the particular memory had been sealed in a password-protected, titanium-reinforced vault.
Panic came in the realization's wake.
He needed to see her. Though one side of him warned him to 'forget her,' the other vehemently opposed the idea, citing several reasons why that would be a bad decision. He didn't need several reasons, though. He only needed one.
Clove was his just as much as he was entirely hers.
Or at least, that was his reasoning when he pounded on her door with no concern for the rest of Malee, Felix, or Athena.
Clove opened the door. Her dark hair loosely flowed down her back and she stood there in a lime green sports bra and a pair of black sweatpants clinging to her petite hips. As soon as she saw his eyes travel, she crossed her arms, and gave him a threatening glance. The loathing still lingered in her eyes, but it'd happened too fast. She couldn't assume the mask of bravery quickly enough.
"I thought you were sleeping."
"Yeah, I was."
He stood there, transfixed.
When had everything become so complicated? He'd needed to see Clove. He'd seen Clove. Why hadn't he left yet?
She gave him a strange, bothersome look, "What's wrong with you?"
Every answer he could form was far too dramatic for the conversational nature of her question. Cato stood awkwardly, his throat constricted, eyes vaguely red, and his posture sickly.
"If I had been in my right mind, I promise I never would have done it," he said, finally, his head downcast. "Not to you, not to anyone."
"Your promises don't really hold much weight, Cato. Why can't you assume responsibility for the choices you've made just once in your life?" she told him, not unkindly, but certainly unsympathetic.
When he failed to muster a reply to her accusation, Clove added, "It's not fair to me that you think an apology is going to take back what you did. It's not like I don't know that it's not like you to act that way— not to me, not to anyone— but you did."
He looked at her, and with a grainy, quiet voice remarked, "I don't want to be the kind of person who would do these sort of things, but I don't know how to stop it."
Clove didn't say anything in return and only continued her sketch of Rio. "That's really good," Cato told her, looking over it. She'd captured the terrified glint in the thirteen year old's eyes and penned it in magnificently.
Her silence served as an instant source of frustration for the blond teen, "How can I earn your forgiveness?"
"My forgiveness isn't really worth much," She informed him, honest and inattentive. "Two weeks from now I'll be dead and none of this will really matter. You'll move past it eventually."
"Can we just...not talk about the Games?"
"That'd be a first."
"Yeah, it would be."
He leaned against the wall and pulled his arms behind his head. "I need you do me a favor," Cato remarked.
"What type of favor?" She asked him plainly.
"I need you to tell me the story of how we first met," Cato said, sitting a respectful distance away from her on the bed.
Clove resigned herself to the moment and thought about it. She laid her head back against a pillow and told him, "It's not very interesting."
"I can't remember," he said. "I'm losing my history without the pills and I don't know what I can do to get my footing back."
"Alright, alright," Clove replied, working to placate him. "There's no need to cry."
"Tell the story, short stack." Cato shot back.
"Well, it was nearly ten years ago," Clove began. "It was my very first day, and I'd already managed to gain the respect of all the instructors. They said to each other, 'Now Clove Holloway, she's be a born winner. She's-'"
Cato's face broke out into bewildered laughing. "I've lost my memory, not my mind. Clove, really!"
"Hey, stop interrupting. You're missing the best part," she huffed.
"Is that so?"
"They handed me a royal crown and declared that I had become queen. And so I left my course in search of a proper meal. Queens, they have too eat too, of course."
Clove cut off. "But," she began to chastise, "I found the court jester resting in a vacant spot, rummaging through my things. I wasn't sure how to approach. I sat by his side to make sure he was comfortable with my presence."
"How kind of you, your highness," Cato interrupted, lightly.
Clove nodded fervently. "I'll have you know that I was a very just and fair ruler. Still, the jester broke proper court etiquette. Since it was his first infraction I decided to show mercy and chose not punish him. Instead, I extended my hand in friendship and as a dowry, gave the small lad a bounty of trail mix."
And suddenly he saw her again in a new light. It left him with a heaviness in his chest.
"Now the court jester was a shy fellow," she said, almost melodic in her speaking. "I didn't much see him after that, except when fulfilling the dowry. I decided naturally that had to change."
Clove turned away from him.
"You were invited into a tight-knit group that included a princess, a medic, and a military man. For a few years, the two of us met in secrecy, and things were docile."
She bit on the nail of her pointer finger, deciding how to develop the story next.
"One day a queen from the dueling kingdom, Hellery, attempted to work her way in as a Trojan horse. You and your foolish comrades fell to her side and betrayed me. I'd gravely injured Hellery's sister in combat and Hellery's sister was her most prized knight."
"Keep going," Cato murmured. "I'm listening."
"I fell very ill. My prized throwing hand had been smashed to bits, so I took to strategy games. One of the members of your group, a princess of the court, a very violent, red-haired child, approached me in my chambers and grieved. We were able to make peace."
He hadn't known that — that Dicey had apologized to Clove.
Why hadn't they told him that?
"Now, you, your apology came later. Much, much later, but the small gestures they really spoke to me. After the prized knight's wounds healed, you traveled to a long distance to Hellery's castle under the guise of switched alliances and you broke Sir. Paxton's arm."
"I don't remember telling you that."
"If you think for a second that Paxton Watson can keep a secret then you might be better off as a court jester."
"And how did this story end?" He asked, peppering a yawn that encouraged him back into restfulness.
"I don't know," Clove said. "I'm still trying to decide."
Written: August 11th, 2012
Edited: April 3rd, 2017