𝗚𝗔𝗦𝗢𝗟𝗜𝗡𝗘¹, clato [catching fire au]

vi. haunted hell

006. | haunted hell

❝𝘮𝘦𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘴 𝘧𝘭𝘢𝘴𝘩 𝘣𝘦𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘮𝘺 𝘦𝘺𝘦𝘴, 𝘪'𝘮 𝘭𝘰𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦
𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘰𝘪𝘴𝘰𝘯 𝘪𝘴 𝘬𝘪𝘭𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘮𝘦, 𝘵𝘢𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘳❞

𝐂𝐋𝐎𝐕𝐄 𝐖𝐀𝐒 𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐓𝐈𝐂𝐔𝐋𝐀𝐑𝐋𝐘 𝐇𝐀𝐔𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐃 in her dreams that night, the intrusive image of Blaze's face from his holographic screen burning inside her brain and refusing to leave. It wasn't a shock, that after she had made such a fool of herself in an attempt to defend his honour, it was him that lured the failure over her head as she slept. Restricting her breathing with his vengeful stares, suffocating her in her own guilt until she couldn't take it any longer, refusing to let her wake up. The nightmares were troublesome enough on an average day, but if for some reason she feared she had failed that day, the terrors became even more horrifying, only intensified by the overwhelming feeling of regret. 

Weakness had always been her greatest fear, after all. 

She found herself tossing and turning deep into the night, still struggling to find peace when the sunlight began to break through her curtains. After her terrors would finally allow her to escape from their grip, finally managing to open her eyes to the safety to the bedroom that still felt so alien to her, it was almost impossible to find sleep again. Still, she wasn't sure she wanted to find sleep knowing what awaited her the second she closed her eyes. 

These days, it was unlikely that she would be able to sleep past dawn. It had been that way from the very second she left the arena six months ago, but the past few weeks had seen it intensifying greatly. The addresses, the holographic screens, the families of her victims sobbing or burning holes into her skull with their eyes - she was thankful to claim any sleep at all. Still, she missed the days that she could sleep soundly through the night with no distractions, and she was beginning to despise the sound of the birds twittering outside her window. 

Refusing to fall victim once again to the prison behind her closed eyelids, Clove once again tossed her bedsheets towards the foot of her bed, and prepared to expose herself to the blinding yellow light of daybreak. It was such an early hour that the automatic heating system that her lavish, new home provided had not yet kicked in, and so she felt the bitter January air brushing against her skin as cold as the frost that clung to the window panes. Still, growing up in the hostile environment of the mountains had meant she had grown to tolerate, if not even to be comforted by the cold weather, and so she welcomed the bleak weather like an old friend. 

Her skin still sticky from the terrors of her sleep, she dragged her feet towards the bathroom with the intention of finding shelter from the cold in the shower. Shaking her bed clothes away from her body and kicking them across the greying bathroom tiles, she turned on the shower to its highest temperature and let her skin burn red under the stream of boiling water. The heat turned her pale complexion a raw shade of pink, and the sudden shift in temperature sent shockwaves running through her body, but she had long since grown immune to physical pains. 

If anything, the burning rush normally succeeded in heating the outer layers of her skin until her body fell completely numb, a feeling she had found herself craving in the recent months, and so her shower setting had remained on the highest setting since her return and would probably continue so until her fears had washed away.