I found a dark, infernal place I don't want to face anymore
Somehow, I won't stop feeding the pain
My heart's just the same as before
I found a dark, infernal place that I don't want to face anymore...
...somehow
So now I'm stuck here
Between the guilty and the insincere
The words I spoke have left here all alone
- Demon Hunter
Previously:
"So, here's how we should do this. I tell you all about this Thursday and then we all get shit-faced at my place Friday. Bring Volpe, Kat too, and let's just forget that we ever had to take a class this fucked up."
"Sounds messy."
"Parties usually are."
"No, what happened to you," Clove said, carefully.
Cato grinned weakly, "Way more than messy."
Fall Semester, Week 6
Clove first hopped on the 'graduate in three years' train a couple years back. Sage had been in her terrible twos and Clove spent most of her days wiping tables and wondering if this was what her life was really reduced to.
Things between Gale and herself had been tense. Their first year in Charlottesville had been catastrophic. So they ditched family housing and split. When he had picked up the last of his things, trinkets — a crinkled, vintage-stained hunting guide, a mason jar of leaves, and his favorite coffee mug — he'd been reserved, self-conscious.
It's not like we were ever married, but I never thought I'd be getting a divorce at 21.
We aren't one of Posey's puzzles, Gale. You can't force a piece that doesn't fit. It just doesn't work that way.
As Clove wipes a few tables for Bonnie and Venia and casually catches freshman line in and out of Fabios, she thinks to herself about the so-called cause she's spent the last few years studying. Her entire academic program has centered itself around the criminal justice system and its interactions with intervening systems and circumstances. So, while she's apt to distinguish between robberies, burglaries, and theft, she doesn't know her way around a child support worksheet or petition to establish custody.
Even to carry the sheet in her messenger bag posits an ache in her bones. What Clove does know is that she and Gale are treading on incredibly thin ice.
As she returns to the kitchen, Clove's eye catches the defrost of quite a familiar feast on the counter - heart-cut ravioli. Gale doesn't normally drop in uninvited. It's a deal to keep their safe spaces safe - something has to be refuge from audacity, but only one customer at Fab's is privy to heart-cut ravioli.
"Today of all days?" she whines, with a wince. No news is generally good news.
"You should talk to him," Titus says, softly. He doesn't acknowledge the betrayal of not informing her of their arrival, allowing her sufficient time to hide. Titus reaches into his book bag, pulling out a stuffed elephant plush. "Maybe this will help," he offers, "Talia said she that if she was getting an elephant, then I had to grab one for Sage, too."
Clove holds the plush with a bemused expression. To be honest, she likes them more than Sage. "Well, Ty, you can show it yourself because it looks like the unavoidable just became unavoidable."
Titus shrugs, accepting the plush back, and makes his way to the dining room. It's easy for him - he has no attachments. Well, not many.
The minute Sage sees him, her eyes light up, "Uncle Ty!" she squeals and barrels into his arms. Titus swoops her up and hands her the elephant plush, which she clings to, rubbing her flushed, chubby cheeks across its face, "How was No-folk Zoo?"
"It was hot hot hot," he says, with a grin. From what Clove's seen the last few years, Titus is the probably world's biggest cliche - dick to world, exemptions for those eight and below. His loyalty to her little one is one of the things that has made them a pretty good duo.
Gale looks back towards her, catches her eye, and tells the affectionately reunited duo he'll be back shortly.
"Hey," he trails off, hesitant. "We should talk."
This feels uncomfortably familiar, too, too familiar.
As Clove leads him to the back office, she thinks about the crumpled up child custody petition in her bag, and exhales. It becomes clear in that moment that that's the last thing she wants. Good to know she's figured out that one at the very least.
"I, uh, Sage said you haven't been sleeping well lately and I just - I guess I just wanted to check in and see if you're doing alright. I never apologized for being a dick a couple weeks back and I've been kicking myself in the head ever since."
"I'm okay," Clove replies, finally. She wipes the look of discomfort off her face, reasoning that if someone knows her, it's him. "It's fucked up. I feel on edge all the time and statistically, shit like this doesn't happen but once in a lifetime for a very small group of people, and it's like you said, I live next to a bunch of crooks."
Gale's quiet for a minute, looking thoughtful, "You know you're welcome over any time. I hate that you've been living in fear, specially since you're one of the gutsiest people I know."
No one hates it more than I do, she thinks.
"You remember the deal we made freshman year?"
"I remember."
But she doesn't want to.
"I want to start applying. I know I'm probably not a good candidate for Tech anymore, but I might have a good shot, maybe at Dominion, Commonwealth, James Madison. I want us to make this decision together, and I'd really like your help-"
His inclusion is generous, but it makes a strong statement all its own. Gale is ready for college. She feels selfish thinking that she would never have to face the day, when she should know better. Soon the ball will be in his court, though. "Anything stand out?"
Gale shakes his head. He eyes her, assessing her resistance, and then leans against the wall. Carefully, he says, "I would have been done bout a year and a half ago. Bet I look good in a cap and gown. You're not backing out, are you?"
The crumpled-up custody papers pose a thought that she dismisses nervously. "Change is hard, that's all."
"A lot of things are hard," Gale says, slightly patronizing, "But if we can make it through having a kid in high school -"
Technically, you'd graduated. I was the one in high school.
"-and having jobs and social services up our ass, then we can do this. No more threats, Clove. If you won't do it, I'll file for partial and we'll have to make it work, but you know-"
"Who's making threats now?" Clove asks sharply, surprised by the shift in conversation.
She inserts herself threateningly into Gale's personal space. "I am Sage's mother, and even if you were the world's best dad, you didn't carry our daughter in your uterus. You didn't endure the stares, the pointed fingers - you weren't the fucking punch line. You weren't the one in jeopardy of becoming a statist-"
Gale scoffs.
"Would it have made a difference if I were her mom and you were the dad? You would be touting yourself as a gainfully-employed, nearly college-educated father who I would be lucky to have in Sage's life. You can't keep using the mom card on me. I've done-"
"Your insecurity is not my fault, Gale Hawthorne," Clove says, shrewdly. "I have never thrown my education in your face and I have made just as many sacrifices as you have."
"If that were even remotely true we wouldn't be here!" He retorts, his affect dismissive, opening and closing his right hand in frustration. "I gave up college for you and-"
"For Sage," Clove corrects, quickly.
Gale sighs, "For both of you, and when it was your turn, you wouldn't make the sacrifice, but you promised I would have the same chance. This was our deal, Clove."
"You want to take Sage from her friends, and what? Take me away from mine? Getting me isolated a second time won't work-"
"God, do you even hear yourself? Don't go getting the wrong impression. This isn't about you."
Clove steams for a minute. "You are the one who keeps trying to spend weekends with me. You are one sending the wrong impression, so why don't you take Sage home, put her to bed like a good parent, and get the fuck out of my face!"
"Clove-"
"You think you're better than me! You thought it then and you think it now."
"Maybe I did think it back then! You were a sophomore with shaggy black hair and too many fucking bracelets who didn't even know how to smoke a cigarette the right way, but it's not like that anymore. We've come a long way since then."
This conversation begins veering dangerously.
"Sage, she's my only priority," Clove cuts in, before he can say any more. "Look, do what you have to, Gale. This is my job, and contrary to popular belief I'm actually expected to work."
"Clove-"
"What did you expect, Gale," she asks, returning to the kitchen, "A happy ending? C'mon, you know better than that."
His bewilderment is familiar. She finds solace in that.
"Well, look who decided to show up today," Dr. Abernathy gripes at Cato and Clove. He leans back in his chair, "You think by the time kids get this far, you don't have to make attendance like a, like a requirement or something."
Clove sets her bag on the desk. This year the university introduced rolling desks - gray, plastic desks with wheels - great for group discussions, a hot mess in any other situation. "We've been meeting up to complete the weekly timeline," she says, grabbing a hold of the desk before it can get away from her.
"Yeah, yeah, I see that. I learned all about your first day of kindergarten. Great stuff, really, but, uh, Miss Holloway, did you grow in Pleasantville?" He comments, petulantly. "Your partner can utilize his cute little doodles as much as he wants, but it won't substitute for real meat and potatoes content."
Clove turns to Cato, muttering under her breath, "Dr. Hackjob wants meat and potatoes, he's gonna get it."
They take their seats at the very right-hand corner of the room, with Cato musing, "What if you just lived the most average life - white picket fence, dog, soccer practice, minivans, homecoming, your first drink, first fuck, prom, balloons and streamers? Daddy ain't a CEO and mom ain't Erin Brockovich. There are people out there like that."
"Not you," Clove observes.
Then adds to herself, and not me.
Cato props himself up, shrugs his shoulders, and takes a hot sip of his coffee before asking, "Just because I lived this doesn't mean you have to. If this is getting too weird and personal, we can cut it short."
"I think this being too weird and personal is the point," Clove says, inattentively, keeping a wary eye on Dr. Abernathy.
Dr. Abernathy flips a switch for the projector and begins scanning his computer icons for the week's lecture materials. His scarlet t-shirt and black pant suit are drastically mismatched, especially in regards to formality, which unfortunately is attention-drawing for her.
Why that outfit? Why meet halfway? It looks… sloppy. "You ever wonder what his story is?"
"Nah," Cato mumbles, fumbling through his belongings. "He's a regent professor. They're the top-tier, you know, make the most money actually. So, what he says and what he does probably aren't in sync, but I bet he grew up poor, or bottom of the barrel middle-class. He hides his affluence, hides it like it's shameful. Guys like him are an easy read. They're too wrapped up in pretense to practice the nuances of subtlety."
Am I supposed to know what any of that means? Clove wonders to herself. She's about to ask when Dr. Abernathy begins his lecture on the history of the first wave of Cuban immigrants - the wealthier ones, he clarifies for a student who wasn't asking.
Clove's attention is selective, making note of what's important and deleting the rest. She reorganizes her planner, thinks about the bills due Friday, and ponders what she and Sage will be eating for dinner before Sage goes back to Gale's for the weekend.
"You can all disperse now," Dr. Abernathy says, returning to his seat. "And really, enough of the 'Janie was my least favorite cousin because she was a bitch.' This is supposed to reveal bias, barrier, and intervention."
Students shuffle across the room to meet up with their partners. A few groan at Dr. Abernathy's critique, with one girl with loose, lovely red curls Clove is instantly jealous of exhaling a rather dramatic, exaggerated sigh as she picks her things up. "Not like it's my fault Janie's a cunt."
Clove smiles slightly. She likes the girl already.
"If we had the time I'd take you to DC, show you round myself," Cato tells her, rolling his desk around, "I've always been a visual sorta guy, but neither of us has six hours to spare and I might just fling myself off the train tracks if I go back, so…"
Clove can't help it, she draws him back, giving him a concerned once-over. "Cato," she says, emphatically, "What happened to you?"
He takes a hefty breath, is soft, then says, "It's not about what happened to me. It's about what I did to someone else." Cato doesn't even take a breath before adding, "Ever been to Mint Springs? It's peaceful, quiet. Might do us some good."
Mint Springs is a hiking trail, but it also is used recreationally, and with just cause. The leaves are crisp, yellow-hued, orange, rusty. A gentle breeze shows its emotional support. In the summer, kids swim in the springs and people from all over visit to camp out.
The moment of truth is upon them. "Fuck," Cato breaths, trembling.
Clove wants to tell him she's not good at this, that he's making her feel very uncomfortable, and that if whatever happened to him is this bad that maybe he should gloss over and get back to talking about Jim Carrey movies.
This is weird, intimate. She liked him better when he was making racist (that might be a little dramatic) jokes about South Americans and their cocaine habits, when he mistook Cuba for Colombia, when he asked her why she was wearing a wet braid and pajamas to their group meeting last fall. She doesn't want him to be human, vulnerable, because then she'd have to look at him as individual and not a composite of all her personal pet peeves.
Clove wants to claim maternal instinct push her to give him a reassuring rub on his back, but she hardly is maternal towards her own child, let alone a grown adult. Yeah, definitely feels weird.
"Let me just preface this with the fact that my family is really fucked up," he begins. Cato laughs softly, bitter, breathes in. "So you remember how I said that Jack liked wrestling? Well, he said boys become men when they learn to protect themselves."
She can think of about hundred ways to teach Sage to protect herself - looking both ways when crossing the street, not getting in cars with strangers, using the buddy system...
"So he taught us how to fight."
yeah, that's not one of them.
"Were you any good?"
"Not as good as Marvel, not at first anyways. My brother's kinda the king of keeping himself moving, and I was more into math than muscle, really. Jack didn't really like Marv, much, though, because for as good as he was, he was didn't have the testosterone to do much with it."
"No one has testosterone at eight. Your dad knew that, right?" she deadpans.
Cato's eyes bulge slightly, and he says sandpaper slow, "That sociopath is not my dad. I don't have a lotta' alternatives, but if there's something that gets me through the night it's that his DNA isn't a strand like mine."
"Noted…"
"So Jack's idea of a good time is to have the two of us fight, and at first it's kinda fun, because Marvel's not bad for being a year behind, but it gets weird real quick. He starts to egg us on, tells us if we're going to finish, we need to finish in style. It gets bad."
Cato bridges his fingers, clicking his tongue in concentration. "Being the underdog sucks, and Jack made it miserable. You lose a fight and still try to get a word in edgewise and he'd say that one's greatest weakness is giving up and then he'd smoke his Swishers and tell you to buzz off."
Dicey was philosophical, too. She figures the worst sort of people cloak themselves in big words and small ideas.
Blondie agrees, because he continues, "I got good fast, started getting in fights at school. At home, though, when Jack ordered a knockout, I'd go for the kill. I felt on the top of the fucking world, then, and it was the only time he treated me like a person and not just an extra body. One night, he comes home and rallies us for this fight, getting really wrecked, and I get Marvel blue in the eye. The little shit cries the whole time and refuses to go with Cash to walk Porkchop, so she tells him she's not going unless someone goes with her, can't really do that in DC. Jack gets up to say something back nasty, spills his beer, and trips over the dog and breaks his spine - the dog's spine, not his."
Cato winces at Clove's gasp of horror. He waits for a second, before realizing she has no comments to verbalize.
"Porkchop died instantly. Well, I hope so, but that sound… Marvel blamed me because it wasn't really safe to blame Jack, but tell that to an eight year old with resentment issues. The drama caused a huge rift between Jack and my mom and they were always fighting and she got in the middle of Marvel and me once and I got her in the arm pretty bad, so she drags my ass into her room and has me by the neck…"
"This is fucking enough! Do you want your ass dragged away by fucking CFSA - because they'll train you into a good fucking son, with no food, eight brats in one room, and three pairs of dirty underwear."
"Anyone is better than you! You're so dumb. All my friend's moms say so. They say it a lot, and you don't even care."
The little Clove does know about Cato - he hates his mother, hates his not-father, hates people who can't commit, hates olives - is pretty negatively skewed. Sure, he's a vivacious story teller and relatively considerate, but what she remembers most is his episode a few weeks back when he found out she'd faked his assignment.
Anger burns through his bones, powers his motions. She realizes that now.
He continues, "Then my brother got in the middle of us, but that didn't really help much, because he and Cash weren't around much, not if they had a choice. If he hadn't got in between us…"
Disheartening doesn't even begin to describe how Cato loves. Clove doubts her capacity to feel such grief, and his ability to convey is powerful, a tool she wonders if he utilizes often.
"Over the next six months, things got rough between the both of us. Jack kicked up our training a notch and it was better to be on Jack's good side than his bad, so Marv had his fair share of ass-kickings." He laughs acerbically, "God, once mom yelled at all of us that this needed to stop or the school was going to call CFSA, and Jack dragged her into the room and when they returned she didn't have much to say, but her throat quivered every so often like she wanted to."
Clove figures she should be writing this down, but to do so feels disrespectful, clinical, ingenuine.
She feels like she could give him an escape, but the last time she tried to (over text a few days ago), he'd said the retelling was crucial to everything that would follow on his end.
"For Marvel's 8th birthday, they got him a Gameboy. It was one of the few times money wasn't tight. Marv got pretty haughty when I asked if I could get one for Christmas, saying that I'd get angry with it and wreck it just like everything else, and well, he wasn't wrong."
"What does that mean?"
"I got mad and broke his arm so badly that the ambulance took him to this creepy children's hospital with stars painted all over the walls, and when the docs pulled Jack and mom away, Marv asked me to give him his backpack, so I grab it, and that's when a can of dog food crushes my pinky toes, and I have to ask why the hell he has dog food with him."
Clove gives a wary laugh, because it sounds like something Sage would do. "Little weird," she agrees.
A stilted fifteen second silence elapses before Cato says, "He wanted the food so he could give it to Porkchop, and I reminded him that Porkchop was dead, and he looks at me, his eyes puffy, 'Porkchop's mine, and when I see him in heaven I'm going to feed him all the cans he can eat,' and I tell the little bugger that he's got a while before that happens and venture off to a vending machine or nurse with leftovers and he says that when he's dead he wants them to play 'I believe I Can Fly,' and I get mad and ask him what he's thinking about all that stupid stuff for, and he gets quiet."
Cato's face falls and gazes abstractly towards his hands.
"I just wanna make sure I have it for Porkchop. What if they don't have chicken in Heaven, and what just Oreos and pizza? Dogs can't eat that stuff."
"I already told you have to die to go to Heaven, dumbfuck."
"I know that! I'm just… I'm getting ready."
"Getting ready for whatttt."
"To go to Heaven."
"What are you talking about? You're not dying!"
"-It took him a minute to say it, but what Marvel meant is that he thought one day I'd go too far - that I'd be the one to put him in an early grave. We were kids - nine and eight, and I kept trying to think of all the things I had done in my life that were good - I wasn't a bad student and I liked to read and when mom was hurt, I'd try to sit her down and clean her up, but I realized that as much as Jack was a nightmare for all of us, I was his right-hand and the first to kick someone's ass on command - like a Doberman on a tight leash."
Clove's nose aches, her throat dry. Cato's face is blotched, with dampening cheeks and forgiving laugh as he wipes the cuff of his shirt across his eyes.
She wraps her arms around him, his breath ragged, scratchy. "To me, our fights didn't count. It was like on television - it didn't register to me, because the next day Marvel'd always put on this smile and never let the mask crack. He was good at selling a story and explaining things away. I can't do that. And once I noticed… the bruises down his back, his ugly orange cast, and the motions he'd make, tense - I wanted to die."
And they never saw it coming, she recalls in the recesses of her mind.
"I really wanted to just shrivel up and die, but I couldn't do that - I owed it to Marv to protect him," Cato says, his voice watery and hollow. "Jack figured if I wasn't going to listen and Marv wasn't going to listen, maybe we'd find a leather belt compelling."
Cato flinches, swallowing.
"Let's run away."
"We can't! Mom would be so sad, and besides, where would we go?"
"We can take her with us."
"We can?..."
"Pinky swear."
Marvel looked him in the eye, wrapping his arms around Cato's forearm and leaned in. Softly, he murmured into Cato's chest, "Okay."
A breeze drives leaves away in a torrent. Clove clutches to her sweater, hopes with abject misery that the story will soon be over, but the car ride back seems equally dreadful.
Cato leaps off the table, bolts towards the lake. "Wait, where are you going?" Clove calls out. "You don't have to tell the story if you don't want to-" but don't drown yourself... He slows, skidding against the dirt, and grabs a flat rock from the mud. Her heart thumps. He's not going to... it ricochets in the water, tide to tide a handful of times, before sinking.
Skipping stones - this is what a rogue Disney kid on meth does when they have a frenetic meltdown.
"Mom, please get us away from here. I'll be good and keep after Marv and I'll share all my food."
"Cato, stop this. We can't just leave your dad-"
"You said he's not my dad! and he's a really mean dad to Marv, so what's the point? Don't you love him?"
"And you are any better? Your dad has a lot on his plate, beside we don't have money to move. We count on your dad to survive. Maybe you'll understand when you're older."
"Mom, please, please, please!"
"Get off of me. You're too old to be begging like this!"
"Mom, please, I'm scared. I'm scared all the time and so is Marv and please don't let him be mean to us anymore. I'll be the best son ever. I won't be bad anymore and I'll do chores and be nice and I'll protect you from the bad guys out there and please mom. Why don't..."
"...What did you say?"
"Why don't you love me like him?"
For how much he seems to hate his mother, she's surprised that worked on her. Clove can't imagine him - young, ruthless, cowardly. When she tries to, all she can see is grief in his eyes too soon, too young.
"So we packed up the important stuff. Well, not the really important stuff, but we packed up clothes and books and toys and mom realizes she didn't actually have a plan and we had too much shit. So we go to the library and ask the librarian and she tells us maybe the school social worker would know, and mom just decompresses."
The way he gestures, it's more like her head exploded than decompressed, but Clove digresses.
"Later on she tells my older brother-"
"You have an older brother?" she asks, suddenly, pursing her lips into a frown.
Cato blinks, "And a sister. I thought I told you that first day."
"Uh-"
He runs a hand through his hair, "Don't worry. They're not important."
Well, that's pointed.
"Where was I?"
"School counselor," Clove supplies.
"Oh, yeah. So mom didn't like her because the bitch - her words, not mine - told her that she needed to spend more time with us, which, by the way, was never the problem. Mom was really, really pissed at that - the lady was practically telling her we were deformed, I guess, and blaming it on her, so she calls up the food stamp office to tell them to hold her new card because we were moving and eventually they gave her the phone number to get us into a shelter for people being hurt by their husbands."
Finally, a happy ending she can latch onto! "I'm glad things worked out."
Cato smirks, "Not even a little."
He grabs another stone. "If you're lucky, you go to a shelter with staff who give a shit. Some of the more shady ones had crackheads and ex-felons and all the good stuff you need when someone's been beating the shit out of you and your kids."
"This place is disgusting."
"Shut up, Gloss! I like it!"
"That's because you're with you're own kind here," he'd scoffed.
"Gloss, take a hike."
"But mom, Cashmere agrees with me! These people are weird, and I saw two of them yelling at each other."
"Mom, will he be able to find us here?"
"This is just temporary, Cashmere," she said, quelling their fears.
"But, it wasn't," Cato says, and grabs another stone.
AN: This fic takes place during the 2012-2013 school year since I started it last spring. Cato was born in 91, and Clove the year after. CFSA is the DC equivalent to Child Protective Services. Thanks to familiarstranger and anonymous for your review! I had to split up this chapter because it go uber long. Party hardy next time on ISIS.
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