Careers Have Feelings Too | CLATO | GLARVEL |

Chapter 20

A/N: Trigger warning: suicide, depression

CLOVE POV

My twin sisters were in the bathroom for hours that day. I had no idea what was going on, all I heard was the gasps and sobs and cries, all I saw was my two sisters going into the community home's schoolroom-like block of toilets and not coming out. For the rest of the afternoon, I drew pictures in the back of the tattered paperback I'd never given back to the library. I was almost ten. My older twin sisters, Petal and Daffy, were twelve. 

I knew about Daffy. I knew the other kids didn't like her much, I'd seen them push her about and shout at her. It's what happens in District Two: you're either accepted or you aren't. I never noticed it much, caught up in my own obsession with drawing and running around school playing like we were in the Hunger Games. Petal got in with the right crowd, but I'm not sure what happened with Daffy's friends. Perhaps she never had any at all. 

I did listen to some of their conversation. And I only wish I had been older, or they had, so they would've known what they were talking about and what was at stake. I wish I'd tried to help instead of flouncing off, bored, to go and find someone to talk to. All I was hearing was things I didn't like to be reminded of; "Mommy's gone forever," and "Dad left us here." 

I think I came into their little talk. "Clove will be upset," Petal said. Daffy dismissed it and said she didn't care. 

Then later. I was laying awake in our community dormitory, aware something wasn't right with my sisters. I heard Daffy get out of bed and leave the room, and in the split second it took for me to decide to not follow her, I condemned us all forever. 

Her body was found in the morning. There were ambulances, peacekeepers, everything. All I remember of that wake-up call was inexplicable noise, deafening shouts and screams and cries from anyone who spoke to me. I remember opening my eyes, blissfully unaware of the day that was about to come, jumping out of bed to look through the window at what was happening. The other children gossiped, and I left to go and find a nurse, a creeping lump in my stomach beginning to form. 

And that was that. The woman on duty that day held me as I cried on a shoulder that smelt of expensive perfume and washing powder. She was soft and warm, and she told me her name and that she would look after me, genuine tears in her eyes as she held my hand.

"Obviously self-inflicted," barked the Head Peacekeeper. I wasn't supposed to hear that. The Peacekeepers and the ambulance staff maintained enough of the status quo, and then left us all, a matter of hours after it happened. After the rush of adrenaline was over, the reality set, and I was alone with a gaping hole in my life that wasn't there before. I did all the regular things. I drew more in my book, I spoke to my friends and that nice nurse who hugged me tight, I ate lunch and lay in bed. But even walking felt different, as if I was walking into my own imagination. Or my own nightmare. 

My sister was different. Petal, who isn't Petal anymore. She decided to renounce anything that tied us to our estranged father, and that included her name, and so she became (legally) Winter Kentwell, as soon as she turned sixteen. With the name change came everything else, the drinking, the drugs, the violence, everything adult that I was exposed to before I even understood it. The two of us switched foster care homes like the Capitol switch fashion, each set of parents welcoming us with bright, shining promises and leaving us with dark circles under their eyes. It was a relief when I enrolled in the free training program designed for the poorer families who wanted the most basic defence training for their children in case they were ever reaped. And then it was a relief that I was noticed and enabled to keep going, the state granting me the ability to train and die for them, disguised as financial support. Winter always hated it, but I hated her choices, too. 

Finally, she was eighteen, and we began renting. We were out of the community home at last, free from those corridors filled with ghostly memories. I thought things might change now we were away from foster care and the home where Daffy would stay forever, and they did, but not for long enough. 

So I trained. I trained, and worked, and studied, and trained. And now, in the arena, every child I kill reminds me of what Daffy did in that bathroom: it's a swift breaking of the fragile cord that keeps us together. Every last look in their faces is her. 

I wake up.

A/N: Bit of a shorter one this time but I wanted to keep the original backstory I had for Clove, whilst making the way it's written more mature and realistic of how she might feel (I hope that's come across). I think this explains a lot of why she is how she is, why she spent so much time training and tries to come across ruthless and uncaring. 

Hope everyone's still enjoying it though! Thanks for everyone's votes and comments, they mean so much! x