Fear Landscape
ten minutes later
"Hey, calm down," he comforted the girl, who sat sobbing in the chair.
She wiped a tear from her cheek, which left tear stains down her pale face. She looked up at him, her eyes watery.
"What happened in there, Katniss?" He asked softly.
"I was in this…this place. An arena. And people were watching me, watching me almost die. There was fire and then he almost died…." Her voice choked. "We survived and then these awful people wanted to kill us, and we went back, we went back, Toby, and then I almost died, and it was a clock, and then they killed her, they killed Prim…"
He remembered the slight, blonde girl from Visiting Day, from Amity.
"It's okay," He said in a soothing tone. "You're okay."
She began to nod, and then broke down again.
"How long do you think you were in there?" He asked.
"It seemed… Four, it seemed like years." She took deep breaths and began to calm down.
"You took ten minutes, Kat, ten minutes." She held her hands to her face and curled up in the chair, sliding to the floor, where she crumpled like a rag doll.
"I don't want to do this anymore, Tobias," she said softly.
His heart broke for her, broke for the broken girl he loved. Who he couldn't help loving.
"Do what, Catnip?" He asked, using one of his many pet names for her.
"Be Dauntless. Be this." She gestured to herself. "I don't think I can handle going through this again, Toby! I'm going to kill myself if I have to do this again!"
"Hey." His voice was firm yet upset, he was tearing himself to bits inside.
"What?"
"Don't you dare talk like that, Katniss, just don't. If you killed yourself, I don't think I would be able to… to handle it."
"You would get over it, Four, you would survive." She pulled at the elastic holding her braid together and wrapped it twice around her thin wrist, letting her dark hair flow freely around her shoulders. Her hair was long and wavy from being kept in a braid. He felt an urge to run his fingers through it.
"Katniss, I don't think I could…. Just don't do anything stupid, okay?"
"If you have to say that, you haven't met me yet." She sounded as though she was only half-kidding.
"Do I look like I've been crying?" She asked him. He pretended to be examining her, but really, he was just trying to remember everything about her pretty face.
"You look strong, Kat, really strong." He wasn't lying.
She stood up and began to walk towards the door. She reached out to grasp the doorknob and he clasped his hand over hers before she could twist the doorknob.
"What?" She looked up at him. He towered over her.
"I love you." He told her truthfully.
She didn't respond, just smiled and pecked him on the lips.
"Bye," she said simply, twisted the doorknob and left. He was surprised. Normally she would tell him she loved him back. After she left him, he allowed his next initiate to come in and began their fear landscape, but Katniss didn't leave his mind.
oOo
A couple of hours later, there was a knock on his door.
"Four?" Zeke said as he entered Four's apartment tentatively.
"What is it, Zeke? I'm busy," he said stiffly.
"It's really important, er, one of the initiates have gone missing."
His head snapped up. "Missing? Who?" She clouded his thoughts. Of course she did. She was beautiful.
"Uh," he checked a scrap piece of paper in his palm. "Some chick named Katniss Everdeen."
He tensed and his hands formed fists.
"Are you okay, dude?" Zeke asked. "Come on, let's go find her."
"No."
"What?"
"No. I have to find her myself."
Where could she be? Amity, back to Prim and her family? She wouldn't have. She left them for a reason. Erudite? Of course not. He knew that Katniss hated the Erudite; she thought they were stuck-up. He also knew she didn't particularly enjoy the Abnegation; she thought they tried too hard, which he didn't disagree with wholeheartedly. He knew Katniss wouldn't last a minute in Candor, she spoke too quickly, without thinking. And if she couldn't stay in Dauntless, not even with him, where would she go?
The answer came all too quickly to him.
Outside the fence.