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. 

She had experienced the shockwaves of the boiling water on so many occasions that she had been given little reason to think it could have posed any threat to her, but it was for some unfortunate reasoning that on that particular morning the water had directly targeted the half-healed wound on her upper shoulder. It was the brutal scrapings of an axe lodging into her skin so deeply that she was sure she would bleed to death, but the harsh wound had begun to mend over the six months since the arena to form what looked like a blistered burn. 

The feeling of the water hitting the wound created such a stinging sensation under her skin that she was sure she felt almost as much pain as she had when she had originally felt the blade lodge into her shoulder. She bit back on her tongue to hold in the urge to scream out in agony, not wanting to wake up the rest of her restful family, who were not kept awake by such burdens that weighed on her shoulders, but when the trauma buried deep inside her mind took over, her body held no power. 

For a moment she was almost certain she was there again, reaching desperately for one of her knives before the surge of confidence she had felt her entire life was diminished to nothing but fear, feeling the brunt of an axe piercing into her skin. She could almost taste the blood that choked her at the back of her throat, before she could regain control of the fight. 

This time it only lasted a few seconds - the flashbacks had a tendency to differ like that; some minor and fleeting, others all-consuming - but the impact was all the same. 

Perhaps her wound wasn't the hardest pain that she was trying desperately to cover. 

Once out of the shower, she buried herself in her warmest training clothes and attempted to drag a comb through her tangles of raven hair - she wasn't sure that the Academy was the ideal place to be that morning, but given her circumstances, she wasn't sure what else to do. 

If nothing else, she would go for a walk and allow her feet to take her where her mind would not allow her to wander - to the Academy where she had trained her whole life, by the school where she used to have lessons, past the chipping block of bricks that she had once called a home. The fresh air would do her some good, even if the memories would not, but she was quickly learning that memories were not something one could easily escape. 

Given that the sun had hardly risen, Clove was met with utmost surprise when she entered the kitchen after her shower to find her father's broad figure hunched over the kitchen table. Given that he worked tirelessly day and night, and today was meant to be his day off, Clove had not expected to see him awake at all, let alone at such an early hour. 

Magnus Kentwell owned a small workshop just two roads away from the Square, specialising in hand-crafted goods made from wrought iron and twisted metal. His workshop had started out as that of an artists, crafting delicate pieces from a place of creativity and love, but the pieces cost a heavy penny, and decorative crafts weren't exactly in high demand in Two. The workshop soon developed into something more for the purpose of practicality, assisting in the weapons trade with an abundance of hand-forged bullets and steel handles, but Clove knew her father's talent had been wasted on metal railings and copper plates. 

It upset her to see his passion resolved to nothing but dust. 

In any district, independent business was a different path to take. Most of the district's workforce were tied up in production for the Capitol, and from what Clove had witnessed of their neighbouring districts during her tour, there was little room for much else. But for the likes of the outer districts in particular, though a dangerous game to gamble with, some found much more prosperity in individual business than those who chose the route of their district's trade. 

But still, most businesses were passed down between families, and so Magnus's decision to open his workshop instead of following his father into the mines had always been a difficult pill to swallow. Her grandfather had always insisted that Magnus's success as a merchant had been a complete fluke, assisted almost entirely by his marriage to the wealthy daughter of a victor. She couldn't remember much of any of her grandparents, but from what she could recall, her paternal grandfather had always been a little astute. 

It was probably convenient that he had left the earth long before he had to watch Magnus's eldest child follow in his father's footsteps. 

"Good Morning, Pumpkin", her father glanced up from his coffee to greet her, "You're up early". 

Clove managed to find a smile at her father's warm presence, pouring a cup of black coffee from the pot herself, "I was going to say the same to you - isn't it your day off?". 

Her father swallowed slowly, and Clove could almost feel the exhaustion behind his swollen eyes. He nodded, "It was supposed to be, but Lars can't open up this morning like he usually would, and your brother is also preoccupied - and there is work to be done". 

"Jonas, preoccupied?", she spoke rather abruptly, "what could he possibly be preoccupied with?". 

Perhaps she was being harsh on her brother, but that boy had always been a loose canon. He worked almost as tirelessly as her father, when he bothered to participate, but he could also be as useless as a sunroof on a submarine when he wanted to be. She knew that he had little to occupy him outside of his work - after all, what was there to do but work and sleep - but she imagined the lack of freedom in the job put a downer on his trade. 

Jonas was almost as artistically talented as their father. When they were children, he used to carve designs into pebbles and fallen brick that he collected from the road side and hand them to his younger siblings as gifts. It was almost amusing, when you looked at it with a keener eye - Clove Kentwell was not the only sibling to have a fascination with knives. 

"I don't know", her father shrugged, "But your mother fancies that he's started seeing a girl". 

"A girl?", Clove practically shrieked in surprise, struggling to keep the coffee in her throat from spluttering back out of her mouth, "Jonas - a girlfriend? You must be joking". 

"I thought so at first too", her father continued, "but he has been rather, dreamy, lately". 

"He's always rather dreamy", Clove rolled her eyes, taking her parents' suspicions as little more than misinterpretation. She knew her brother, and if her brother had been seeing a girl, she would most definitely know. 

"You have to remember that you haven't been here, Clove", her father's words sent a wave of feeling through her body, "and when you have been, you've been distant. There's a lot that you may have missed, and you're different now - perhaps your brother is different too". 

She paused for a moment, before letting out an exaggerated sigh, "I know, you're right. I don't even know where my head is at anymore". 

"You know that you can talk to me Pumpkin", Magnus leant forward to touch his daughter's hand, "You don't have to shut yourself away all of the time - something happened at the Mayor's dinner the other night, and you haven't been the same since". 

When it came to character and ambition, Clove had always been more aligned with her mother. Leta Kentwell was a machine, taking pain and anger and using them as fuel for her madness, and Clove had always used her admiration as motivation for her own ambitions. Leta had always wished for her children to pursue the opportunities that she had been too unfortunate to achieve, but such a drive often left a gap between her role as a trainer and her role as a mother. 

On an emotional level, Clove had always found herself much more drawn to her father. Magnus was empathetic and kind, and though she knew that both her parents cared about her wellbeing deeply, her father had an understanding of her mental state that her mother had always been inclined not to see. 

"I'm fine", she started, rubbing her temples with her fingers, "it's just- sometimes it's like I never left that place, you know? One minute I'll feel fine and the next I'll be right where I was, pressed against the ground with a sword against my throat". 

Her father nodded with a sympathetic smile, "You're strong, Clove, you always have been. You went into the Games with an ambition and you fought ruthlessly to achieve it. You got through it, and you'll get through this too - you just need to take control of your own madness". 

The power of his words hit her with more force than she had predicted, and suddenly the pang of sadness she had been feeling earlier was overtaken by a wave of confidence she could only describe as an epiphany. 

"You're right Dad", she nodded her head assuredly, "I think it is about time I took control - I'll see you later". 

Before her father even had the chance to say goodbye, Clove was outside of their home with a large thud of the front door, ploughing into the street. Without giving it a second thought, she bounded straight across the street and pushed open the gate of her opposite neighbour, not stopping until she found herself standing directly in front of Cato Hadley's front door. 

Somehow, without even a brief moment of hesitation, she rapped on the door with full force, probably waking up the entire Victor's Village in the process. The first set of knocks were met with complete silence, so quiet that suddenly she felt a sweep of eeriness standing on the front porch of a ghost, but she did not let the discomfort overtake her. She brought her hand up to the door for a second time, continuing to bang on the door until she received an answer.

Just as she was about to bring her hand up for a third, rather irritated round of knocking, she felt the marble beneath her hand swing open to reveal a figure. 

Cato Hadley appeared in the doorway in a stumbled mess, almost completely naked despite the painfully brisk weather. Clove felt her stomach stir at the sight of him, his blonde hair tousled, his face brooding and barely awake, his body lacking in sufficient coverage. If he was trying to make her feel uncomfortably intrigued, it was working, but she knew he wasn't trying to do that at all. 

As much as she hated to admit it, he didn't need to try. He was like this all on his own. 

And she despised it with every inch of her being. 

"Oh, it's you", he scoffed when he caught sight of her, "Do you have any idea what time it is? What do you want?".

"You know you could try to be a little more polite", she snapped back at his retort, her eyebrows raised and her arms folded, but it didn't appear to budge his stance. 

He continued to peer down at her through the gap of the open door, his eyes squinting in the morning light to only confirm her suspicions that Cato Hadley was not an early riser. She had most definitely awoken him from his sleep, or even worse, his activities. In fact, the sullen look in his hollow eyes and the slight slur in his speech even almost leant itself towards the conclusion that he was still very much drunk, having drowned his sorrows deep into the early hours of the morning. 

"I'm not sure what you expect from me at this hour, or what you expect at all", he slurred on, rolling his barely opened eyes, "but if you want something, you better say it quickly before I slam this door-". 

"Alright, alright", she cut him off, holding her hand to the door as he attempted to close it, in order to force it open, "I need your help". 

Cato paused for a short duration of time, his eyes narrowed not from lack of sleep, but instead from complete and utter bafflement at her statement, "What help could you possibly need from me?". 

She sighed, "The other night at the Mayor's dinner, you knew how to recognise that I was having a traumatic episode and you said you knew what it felt like". 

"Yes", he questioned, "And?". 

"You spoke like you knew how to control it", she drew in a long breath, "like you knew how to completely shut yourself away from it, perhaps". 

He looked even more puzzled, or perhaps offended by her assumptions, it was difficult to tell, "So, what? You want my advice - a counselling session? Is that it?". 

"No!", she snapped, catching the sharpness in her own tone and calming herself, "I want you to help me take control of it". 

He stared at her blankly for a few seconds, locking his icy eyes with hers and creating an eerily awkward silence between them. She did not blink, but continued to stare into his eyes intently, as if she were searching for a soul beneath the darkness that overpowered them so strongly. He appeared to be searching too, though what he was searching for even he could not understand. But the flicker of gold beaming out of her honey eyes could speak for one thing only - hope. 

Cato Hadley had been betrayed by hope a long time ago - it would take everything in his power to avoid getting involved with it again. 

"I can't help you", he spoke bluntly, breaking their eye contact, "you should go". 

He attempted to close the front door for a second time, but this time she latched her foot in the open gap and drew closer to him, forcing her body between the door and its frame. 

"What?", she seethed, no longer irritated but rather outraged, "So you're full of advice when I don't want it, yet when I ask for your help you scramble?". 

He closed in the space between them and drew his face closer to hers, so close that she could feel the heat of his breath on her frozen cheeks. 

"I don't do charity", he spat almost in a whisper, yet with assertion, proceeding to send her stumbling backwards onto his porch. 

Clove, refusing to give in, went to take another step forward in anger, her blood boiling, but the door was slammed in front of her before she could even consider moving. 

One slam, and Cato had once again shut himself away from the world, and there would be no telling when - or if - he would emerge again. 

─── 𝐀𝐔𝐓𝐇𝐎𝐑'𝐒 𝐍𝐎𝐓𝐄 ───

Hello lovely people, 

I am happy to confirm, after almost a two month absence, that Dani is indeed alive. 

Honestly, I am SO sorry that this update has taken so long, I know I've promised a hopeful update a few times and a couple of people have been asking when this is coming, but the complete truth is I've been in a bit of a writing slump lately. I started University three weeks ago now but the emotional and physical drain of the move has been a lot harder than I imagined, and the workload is honestly so intense. It's really difficult to find the time to write and when I do finally have free time I tend to be exhausted :(

BUT, it's finally here - this chapter was a little difficult to write, but the next few are considerably easier, so hopefully updates will not take as long. Clearly, I am going for Vee's record of how long I can put off an update for haha. 

Speaking of Miss VeeNyxx, if you are missing the Dani content while she consistently puts off updating her actual books, Vee and I have started a new book together to resolve this exact problem. We both have way too many ideas, not enough time, and sometimes struggle to find the motivation or confidence to update one of our main projects. BUT, we still want to get you guys content, and so 'CHERRY COLA' is a new book up on my account now, where we will be publishing quick  cute little one shots for a number of characters, ships and fandoms. 

Anyway, if you have persisted with this book in my absence and are reading this extremely long and rambling Author's Note right now, I adore you and thank you for your support. 

Much love, 

Dani ♡