TWISTED // Clato | ✓

Chapter 30: Saving the Future

Clove.

My arms tighten around her and I hold her close. She's asleep; she really is. But she feels so far away. I bury my face in her hair as the tears start to come. "Clove," I whisper. "Clove; please. Please wake up."

I feel like I'm back in the arena, holding Clove as the life left her. And really, how is this any different? The tears feel the same. My heart feels the same. Empty. The only difference is that we're safe in a hospital, not in an open arena in danger of our lives. And she isn't going to die.

She isn't. Not while I'm here. I can't lose her again. I will go mad, and then the Willard Asylum for the Insane will be the place for me. But I can't let that happen!

Arms reach from behind, prying me from her. I try to push them away, but after lying immobile for six months my arms aren't as powerful as they were when I was in the arena. Two strong hands clench under my armpits and drag me backward across the floor. Then they release me without warning, and I crash to the floor, landing hard on my butt. What are they doing to me??

A needle pokes into my arm and the world goes fuzzy.

"Maybe the asylum was the better place for this one." I wake up to the voice of one of the doctors speaking to another. My back snaps upward as I sit up. "WHERE IS SHE? WAKE HER UP NOW!" I scream myself hoarse.

"He's mad," one of them mumbles. My insides contort with anger. Doesn't he know what it's like to be in love with someone? Does ANYONE HERE know what it feels like to see the one you love an inch from death?

"WHY HAVEN'T YOU WOKEN HER UP YET?!" I shout as they look down at me sympathetically. "SHE'S GOING TO DIE IF YOU DON'T TAKE CARE OF HER!"

My excitement dissolves into exhaustion. My head falls back. I can't do this anymore. I should have died in the arena. We all should have. I deserved that, but I didn't deserve this. False rescue and torture.

Maybe I really should calm down. I'm not earning myself any brownie points with these people.

I'm jabbed with the needle again. Did whoever saved us from the arena know what we'd be going through once we remembered our status? This last thought passes through my head as I descend into the confusing, shadowy realm of subconsciousness.

When I awaken, the doctors are gone. Ignoring my throbbing head, I crawl out of my bed and cross over to Clove's, which sits across the room.

My spirits are dashed. She looks exactly the same as she did however many days ago it was that I last saw her. Please. She has to live. Please save her. My hand finds hers and I squeeze it. There's life in there. I know there is. I can feel it. 

She's survived through so much, each time breaking records. The Hunger Games themselves, which neither of us should have come out of alive. Now this bombing...

We're clearly meant to live. How or why I can't say. Why I'm not dead now, I don't know. But the fact that I'm here tells me something. Gives me something.

I can't give up now. I CAN save her. I CAN find a way to leave this time and place.

We got here somehow; we can get back. We have to leave; that's the reason the past is now in turmoil. Everything that was supposed to happen to bring the future to Panem has been stopped. Clove and I have to leave here before something terrible happens. Images of a zombie apocalypse are drifting through my head but I quickly shut them out as my attention focuses on the girl before me.

"Clover." I use the nickname I've called her in my head for so long now but never dared actually use. It's only now, as she hovers on the line between life and death, that I call her by the name that means so much to me; that is filled with power. I will save her.