Forbearance • A Cato Hadley Story

2.13

The next morning Livia and Cato finally arrived back home in District Two. It felt nice to be back. Cato had previously informed Livia that he had a few things to attend to before he returned to his home so the pair agreed to meet up later on that day. Once they exited the train that they had been extremely anxious to get off of from spending nearly two weeks on the vehicle, the muscular boy pulled the blonde in for a quick kiss and went on his way.

In the opposite direction of her significant other, Livia went to find her father. A few days before she had left for the tour he had gotten a job and was meant to start a few days after she left so she knew he would most likely be working when she got back. Thankfully she only needed to search for a few minutes before she spotted her father a long ways away down a dirt path on his way home from work.

The moment she spotted him she darted down the path and jumped into his strong arms, holding him tight. After the two weeks she had experienced she just needed her father. "Papa," she whispered as he set her on the dirt below their feet. For a moment her father simply stared at his daughter, taking in the fact that she was back and standing right in front of him. "When did you...?" he trailed off, completely confused as to why his daughter was back so soon.

After Livia's mother passed he never truly knew how to keep track of the days. To him the days just sort of blurred together and he couldn't keep up. "We need to talk." Livia told her father, as she grabbed his hand and pulled him along back to the house. When the father and daughter arrived Livia, who was thankful Chloe was apparently still on her way back from picking up food at the market, pulled her father into her room and both of them sat on the bed.

"We need to leave the District." she told her father. Instantly he looked at her in confusion and squinted his eyes at her comment. He didn't even, for a second, understand what she meant or why she would say something like this. "What do you mean we need to leave?" he asked, completely oblivious to the meaning behind her words. Livia sighed defeatedly and dropped her head for a moment, knowing her father wasn't understanding a thing she had been saying.

"We can go into the woods, like we always talked about. We can leave right now, we can be far away from here by tonight." she pushed, grabbing his hands in hopes of gaining his attention. In response to her action his eyes met hers and for the first time in the whole conversation he finally let what she said sink in. "Yeah, who's we? You and your fiancé?" he asked harshly. Livia was taken aback by the harshness of his tone. He never spoke to her that way and it hurt. Not to mention that he had always liked Cato so where the sudden dislike came from, she wasn't sure.

Tears threatened to spill from her eyes as she let go of her fathers hands and looked down into her lap. "It's not just me and Cato anymore. Snow threatened to have us all killed." she told him, her voice raising a little so she could keep his attention. After the way her father had spoken to her she wasn't going to hear it from him. She was trying to save both Cato's family, as well as her own, and her father, in her opinion, was being an ass about it.

"Who's us?" he asked harshly with a roll of his eyes. For a split second Livia glanced out the window as she wanted to look anywhere but at her father right now. "Well he didn't exactly give me a copy of the list, but a good guess it includes Cato and his mother as well as me, you, and Chloe." she snapped, becoming tired of his tone and how he was acting.

Biting the inside of his cheek, Mark pondered for a moment, trying to figure out why any of this was going on. "Unless what? You and Cato get married?" he asked. Finally his tone was no longer the harsh one he had been dragging on with the past couple of minutes, and was now much softer as he spoke. Livia relaxed hearing the man's tone changed and replied kindly to him.