TWISTED // Clato | ✓

Chapter 6: I Will Stun Them

CATO'S POV: 

I pick moodily at the cow's tongue in front of me. Every bite I take my stomach regrets, but I have to keep eating or Brutus will know something's wrong. Even now, he keeps glancing suspiciously at me every now and then.

"Where's the girl?" he says finally.

Luckily, Marcella answers before I can say anything. "I presume she's having another temper tantrum. Poor little Clove gets them so much," she says, almost in a lamenting way. My stomach rolls over uncomfortably, like the cow's tongue is poisoning me. The cow's tongue and Marcella's piteous tone combined.

Clove doesn't need that kind of pity. She's strong, but you have to really get to know her in order to discover her soft side. I feel like I almost had.

Before I blew it with Glimmer. What was a grand scheme has now been destroyed, just like our plans for her to volunteer. It's always me. Always my fault. I'm the one that keeps ruining everything.

The cow's tongue lurches around in my stomach again and this time I know there's no escaping it. I excuse myself as inconspicuously as possible before I charge into the spotless golden bathroom and retch into the crystalline sink. 

I feel a little better once the cow's tongue and all it reminds me of is out of my stomach. My hands, sweaty and weak, find a sponge and mop up the mess. For once, I don't want to create more work for other people. I feel like I've already done a pretty good job of it.

CLOVE'S POV:

I can't do this anymore. I can't be here in this place. Volunteering was a mistake. A huge one. A fatal one. 

I scream horrible things at the patterned ceiling, at the automated wardrobe, at the ugly bust of President Snow in the corner. I tried to move it before, but I couldn't get it off its iron pedestal, so now I just have to sit and feel like it's staring at me.

Just like I did on the train, I find my precious knife collection and begin tearing things up. Forgetting any attraction I previously felt for the room, I smash dishes, rip blankets, and shatter mirrors. With every action I do however, my anger refuses to abate. Instead, it increases. Finally, I'm too overcome by my own anger and grief to continue.

Boiling tears of mixed anger and pure grief pool in my eyes as I sink onto the purple and gold tiles of my bedroom with all my energy drained from my fury attack. I'm still wearing my training suit, but I don't care as I drag a blanket from my bed and wrap it around my shoulders.

Why is this happening to me? What's happened to the Cato I knew in District 2? The Cato who was proud and discerning, and who never settled for the wrong girls? I press my face into my hands. I knew I was asking for too much when I hoped to maintain a relationship with Cato even as we prepared to head into the Games together. Even if I win, what's the point in living? Cato will be gone. He's as good as gone even now, especially since he's hit it off with District One. Marvel and I are the outcasts of Cato and Glimmer's relationship, and we'll be the first ones they try to get rid of. Then what'll become of Cato and Glimmer after that? I know only too well. They won't both be able to escape. Glimmer'll fall first. Cato, broken, will stagger like a zombie through the remnant of the Games until he is finally vanquished or he takes the crown. But if he wins it will only be half-heartedly. He'll be empty. Feeling the same awful way I did when he volunteered.

I drag myself out of my training clothes and into the same pair of fuzzy pajamas I wore last night. I crawl between the sheets, feeling weak and shivery, much in contrast to the comfort of the previous night. 

Love can build a castle. I think of Cato and I standing on the riverbank. That moment where we were happy, with nothing to lose and everything to gain. But love can also knock down walls, in both ways. It can both tear down the barriers between us and break into pieces the structure of our relationship.