An arrow. It was hard to believe that that was all it took to have the wrath of Cato on your back. It’s funny, because Clove couldn’t count the number of times that she’s done something much worse to Cato, and he’s never shoved her ass-first onto the floor. With her self defense training versus his strength, if he pushed her like he pushed Porky Pig, she probably would have landed on her tailbone so hard that her vertebra would have shattered one-by-one all the way up her spine.
“You really think metal detectors always work? My jacket is made out of a special fabric, I could smuggle a magnet in my pocket and not even the strongest metal detector could pick it up. I’m not just a pretty face you know…”
She let Cato wander back over to the couch, and took the liberty of poking around the room. She knew that there were probably listening bugs planted around here, but she could always take a peek anyways and see if there was anything interesting to borrow.
She headed over towards what appeared to be a jewelry box, and opened it like a little kid on Christmas. Much to her disappointment it was empty. The smell of smoke began to waft through the room, and Clove ran her fingers along the bottom of the jewelry box. It felt like leather, maybe deer? She was about to inspect the bottom of the box when she realized that she was in fact, smelling smoke.
She felt a chill roll up her spine, and in her ears she heard the high pitched scream of her mother for help. She felt the flames lick around her legs, warming her body painfully as the burns and the scars began to set around her feet. Her father grabbed her by her wrist and tugged her out the window…
Cato grabbed her wrist, tugging her to the window and she bumped up against the cool glass. She snapped out of her flashback, mindfully shifting from foot to foot as she noticed that there were people running screaming from the gallery.
She began to shake and gasp for air. She was in another fire…
She started seeing spots, and willed herself not to black out. There was nothing on the planet earth that scared her as much as fire. Every time she would walk past a house with a fire place in the window, she would shut her eyes as tight as she could and run away from the reflection. Even the colours orange and red terrified her. There was no way in fresh hell that she would ever let anyone know how terrified she was of fire, or anything to do with it. Especially not Cato fucking Mars.
Cato walked to the door and gingerly touched the doorknob to check for heat. When he found none, he lifted his shirt to cover his mouth from the smoke that was bound to enter the room when he cracked the door open. He had one hand on the doorknob and he turned to Clove, freezing when he saw her.
She knew she was shaking, but she held out her hands and could barely see the shape of her hands from the amount of shaking that she was going through. She looked up at Cato with wide eyes and entirely expected him to abandon her there, but instead he took her hand awkwardly and wrapped an arm around her waist so she wouldn’t topple forward. The way he took her hand, it was like he’d never held anyone’s hand before in his life, which made her almost laugh out loud because every single girl in 2 would follow Cato around like a mob. She’d even seen girls who had taken photos of him and taped them to the inside of their lockers, laughing at the lipstick kisses.
Cato began to tug on her shirt, and Clove almost knocked his teeth out when she realized that he was trying to keep her from suffocating. She swatted his hand away and covered her mouth with her t-shirt by herself, nodding shakily at Cato as they managed to amble out of the office.
The hallway was completely engulfed in flames. There were sirens blaring all around them, and Cato kept walking like he had been in a thousand fires and had never been afraid of anything in his life. He walked ahead of her to push the doors open, and Clove saw what looked to her like the marks of a whip on his back. It could have been the smoke getting to her, and she shook her head and followed him out the door.
They emerged from the building, coughing and wheezing as a crowd gathered around them staring and gawking. At first, Clove thought it was because they were still holding hands and she quickly dropped her hand to her side. But it wasn’t until after the Peacekeepers had her surrounded and in handcuffs that they realized why they were staring.
They thought she had done it.
