Forbearance • A Cato Hadley Story

2.26

From there Livia had taken the responsibility of caring for Nate. He was so out of it that he could barely even say the two words that he had been repeating over and over again. The words 'tick tock' kept echoing in the blonde's head and not just because of the boy saying them. It was too specific and too out of the ordinary for them not to mean something. She knew that she was insane for thinking so. But of all phrases, why 'tick tock'? It couldn't have been a coincidence.

As she cupped some of the water from the lake in her hands and splashed it into Nate's hair, she kept thinking about all of the possible meanings. With each splash of water that seeped through to boys locks came less and less blood, slowly being cleaned out as she continued with her pattern. For a moment the blonde looked back on the beach, simply just to make sure that everyone was doing alright after all of the events that had taken place.

Of all people, it was Beetee who caught her eye. He was about halfway up the sand, focused on spinning some sort of wire with Eliza's help. "What do Beetee and Eliza have there?" the girl asked as she continued to sightlessly wash Nate's hair. Johanna and Lennox stood beside her cleaning off each of their weapons, only taking a moment to look back to see what Livia had talked about before looking back at their weapons.

"The coil? It's some kind of wire." Johanna explained mindlessly. Livia changed her direction of focus back to washing the boy's hair out. With each splash of water that soaked through his hair came little to no blood from the blood rain, whereas before a decent amount would trail down the back of his neck. "Did they get it from the cornucopia?" she questioned curiously, not bothering to make any form of eye contact with the two girls near her.

Johanna sighed with an eye roll as she looked over to Lennox, signaling that it was her turn to respond to the teen this time around. It wasn't that Livia was trying to cause annoyance to anyone. She was simply curious and wanted answers. She just wanted to figure out what in all hell was going on when she was being told little to nothing. "Took a knife in the back to get it." the girl from Twelve began.

She was just about to go on when a cold splash of water hit the back of Nate's neck, causing him to gasp loudly and yell a startled "Tick tock!" in response. It was this that caused the couple to lose it. The two had tolerated the boy muttering the phrase but it was getting to be too much for them. As the two walked away Lennox stuck her arm in the air to wave a fed up 'goodbye' to Livia as she yelled back at her. "Have fun with nuts." she told the blonde, leaving her alone with the boy from District Twelve.

The teen was almost appalled by the woman's attitude towards her district partner. Whether or not someone likes their ally, they're still allies. As the girl looked out into the opposite half of the arena from where she stood, she noticed grey clouds surrounding the same tree that she had seen be struck by lightning the night before.

And just as she had predicted, lightning struck the tree yet again. Nine times to be exact. What the girl didn't understand was why it had been nighttime when the tree had been struck before while this time it was light out. When the lightning had stopped making contact with the tree, Nate looked up at the girl with a dazed look on his face as he repeated the phrase once more. "Tick tock." he muttered. That was when the realization of the two supposedly random words finally began to make sense to her.

It was all starting to line up. The fog, the rain, the monkey's, the giant wave of water, everything. It all made sense now. "It's a clock. It's a clock. Oh my God. It's a clock! Nate, you're a genius!" she exclaimed, cupping the boy's cheeks excitedly. Still very unaware of what was happening, he gasped, almost as if he was trying to imitate Livia's excitement, and cupped her cheeks as well.