Picket Fence is Sharp as Knives Chapter 12: Proof of Life
Hey guys, tik tok went down so I had to write fanfic again. Thats how this went. In reality I had been working on this for a while and I just work a lot of hours so it takes me a lot of time! That being said here it is, Chapter 12 (!) of PFSK. Crazy Crazy. We are now officially on year..three.. of ARWBFB au writing which is crazy. If y'all are still around you deserve an award.
This is also interestingly the first chapter that is not a taylor swift lyric. It's entirely because the entire concept of this is so distinctly different examples of proof of life, and I cant find a lyric to reflect that the way I wanted.
AO3
Masterpost
If you do not like blood or body imagery this is not the chapter for y'all that is for sure. I also toned down the sex to nearly nothing sorry guys.
As always I'm like..let me thank my friends especially @ohhowwehavefallen who listens to my clato rambling all day every day. @districtonekisses is an ACTUAL angel who listens to my ranting about this au on the DAILY and i'm so thankful to her. @afterfawn as always, of course who puts up with my BS.
Well lets just do it!
Fragile. Fleeting. Futile.
These are the things Clove knows life to be, in different words. After all, she’s been motherless for six years, and is reminded of the futility of her own existence by the cruel sneers of her grandmother. It’s at the academy, in the eight daily hours of training, where she is reminded ad nauseam that if she loses focus for even a moment her life will be fleeting and abruptly ended before she is nineteen years old.
Being desensitized to death, or maybe being made indifferent to life, starts early in training.
The bodies belong to criminals, the enemies of the Capitol that exists to protect and guide them all. They are post execution, and their bodies are so generously donated to the future tributes, to give the opportunity to give these criminals the chance to turn the shame of their discretions into pride for the district through training future victors.
(Rumor is that older trainees actually perform the executions, something Enobaria refuses to tell Clove no matter how many times she asks over dinner).
“It’s an honor to have training tools like this, no other district gets such personal experiences with anatomy before the games.” Enobaria lectures, leading Clove with hands on her shoulders to stand at the left side of the corpse. “You can’t kill effectively if you don’t know what you’re aiming for.”
Leave it to District Two, to leave out crucial parts of human anatomy and physiology in their education, but breeding incredibly effective assassins in their children.
They were excellent anatomists where it counted.
There is no preparation for this lesson, no lectures on circulation or where to aim. It’s meant to be this way. The shock value was supposed to be a tool to wean out the first batch of the weak— as if an eight year old flinching at the sight of an open corpse was anything less than normal.
“Come here, Clove.” Enobaria pulls her flush to the metal table, and sneakily slides a metal stool beside her to lift Clove onto. Fair is fair, and how would she learn if she couldn’t even see?
(Clove never finds out that no one else in her class was too small to see on their own)
It’s her first time seeing a dead body in the flesh. She has seen all of the games, including her mother’s, over and over again. Yet there’s something about this- flesh that is still too pink, organs ripe with blood, and a smell- god a smell she cannot explain— absolutely assaulting her senses. It’s her job to take him in, the neat flaps of skin and muscle dissected back to expose the internal organs like wrapping on a package. She makes the mistake to look to his head, where glazed over eyes stare straight ahead, lifeless. There is the briefest moment where she swears the grey eyes of the cadaver flickered over to look at her.
Clove gasps, and nearly steps back to fall off the stool, when she is caught on the arm by Enobaria The organs are plush and almost healthy looking, and that heart- that heart undeniably beats in his chest. “Baria, is he alive?” Clove half whispers, eyes flickering over the stuttering motion of cardiac wall.
“He’s dead how it matters, Clove. And it’s Enobaria only here, don't forget.” Enobaria warns, bringing Clove’s hands back to the open body. “It’s a development from the capitol, and we’re thankful for the opportunities this gives us. Give me your right hand, Clove.”
She doesn’t wait, and simply grabs Clove’s little arm, pinching her second and third fingers between her own. “Okay so, what you’re feeling now, ignore it. It’s bowel. Cut through it, they’ll die eventually, but it’s not what you want. You want to be sure you’re going to get a kill, seconds can matter in the games.”
As soon as her arm hits the warm, gooey, worm-like structures she wants to recoil, her head whipping to look away from what she sees before her. “I-“
“No. Don’t you dare flinch. You aren’t getting eliminated like this Clove, you’re not weak, your mother didn’t die for you to get knocked out at the sight of intestine, look at me, and learn what you’re doing.” Enobaria snarls, grabbing Clove’s chin in her left head and forcing her to look down and into the cavity.
Clove braces herself as her fingers are woven deeper, until they settle on something soft and tubular, a couple of centimeters wide. It pulses under her fingers, and with the little bit of pressure of Enobaria’s fingers squeezing over hers, she can feel the tension building and releasing, a pulse becoming a thrill, ebbing and flowing with the pressure of their hands.
“This right here is what you go for to kill someone. It’s the biggest artery in the body, that comes right from the heart. If you’re drawing a kill out, if it’s about the entertainment, this isn’t the way to go. Once you hit this, it’s going to go fast. It’s called an Aorta, and it’s the money shot. This feeling under your fingers, no matter how faint, is proof of life. And you need to be sure you stop it. ” Enobaria takes her left hand, and runs from nearly the top of Clove’s spine all the way to her hips which makes the little girl shiver . “It’s all thought here…it connects to the heart. Then down your hips it splits into other arteries…”
Enobaria leads Clove’s hand down to feel the split, then back up to feel other points of bifurcation. “Any of these, kid. Hit any of them. The ones down here, they go to the legs. Cut the inside of the thigh for those. This whole big tube though, you just need to knick it. It’s easiest between the ribs and hips, where there's less bone In the way. You can get a kidney too, but this is your goal.” Clove feels her fingers pressed a little deeper, running into something hard. “This is spine. It’s going to protect this from behind. You need to come in on an angle..squeeze, feel how the flow changes with your pressure..” Enobaria smiles in approval as Clove’s little hands constrict, and Enobaria can feel the change in pressure on her own. “Good job, kid.”
Enobaria keeps elaborating on anatomy, on the best places to cut for a fast versus quick death. How in the bloodbath it’s about fast, bloody kills, and the best spot to hit. She is an excellent teacher, as if Clove should expect anything less from her recently victorious mentor.
Clove tries to internalize all the words and their paths-the aorta, the Iliacs, renal something- but all she can focus on is the strum of a pulse under her fingers. Someone’s entire life line contained in this little soft tube. “Why isn't there any blood in this guy?”
“It’s all contained. Blood isn’t floating around, it’s contained in all these little tubes and channels. You have to open one for blood. Keep your hand there..” Enobaria’s instructing, but her hand slips out of the field of Clove’s vision.
She’s so distracted by the thrumming she doesn’t notice a thing until she feels something cold In her free hand. When she looks, she realizes it’s one of her beloved little knives fitting naturally in the curve of her hand. Clove’s head snaps up to look at Enobaria, a million little questions filling her evergreen eyes. Questioning, almost, if Enobaria is suggesting what she thinks.
“Go ahead. Cut it.”
“Where do I-“ Clove stammers, looking rapidly between Enobaria and the body, her fingers still hooked around Aorta to hold it steady.
“You just go for it. Figure it out.” Enobaria instructs, but stealthily takes a step back. “No hesitation, Clove.”
She braces herself, not letting her eyes look to the face, when she takes her knife in her right hand and all but severs the structure in two with one fast swipe of her wrist.
Clove watches, as the heart first flutters faster for merely seconds, before stuttering to a final stop in under a minute. It dawns on her now, as blood fills the cavity and coats her hands, that the body does not work at all like she thought. There's no thrumming, no pulse, no..anything..dancing under her fingers now.
Would that count as her first kill? She wonders only momentarily, before she feels her hands being pulled out of the sticky, coagulating substance .
“You didn’t take any fingers off, right?” Enobaria inspects, ensuring that none of the blood is Clove’s own. Satisfied by her evaluation, she brushes a thumb over Clove’s cheek. “You’ve got blood freckles.” She returns to inspect the body, heartbeat ceased and firmly dead even to Clove’s untrained eyes.
“Good work, Clovey. Get going, you need to shower before class.” Enobaria gently takes her off the stool, gently nudging her between her shoulder blades to move forward. “Go. You did good.”
“…thank you, Baria.” She murmurs, practically running off to find a shower before her basic math class that morning. She finds her blood covered fingers coming up to her neck, her wrists, the bend of her leg, desperately searching for her own pulse, finding proof of her own life and viability.
Life is fragile, she decides, if she can feel it fading under her fingertips.
——————————————————————————————————
She had watched him in the games, watching as he cut someone clean in two through the torso, leaving their upper and lower bodies in two hemorrhaging halfs. She watched him kill a lot, with that sun kissed flush to his skin and the sweat gathering at the base of his neck. He was efficient, he was ruthless, he was hot, and most importantly to her, he was alive.
So Alive, Clove notes, her hands planted firmly over the places of his chest from where she is on top of him. His hands squeeze into the flesh around her hip bones, bruisingly tight, guiding the rise and fall of her hips when all she can do is close her eyes and whimper for more.
He is so alive, he is alive and under her, he is alive and inside her, he is alive and holding her now.
Even with her eyes squeezed together, she can undeniably feel the shared life between them in the way he moves inside of her, the way her hands desperately grasp at the sunburned skin of his chest.
It is under her fingertips, where she can feel the increasingly speedy but steady beat of his heart under his skin. It races, likely as does her own, and even with her eyes squeezed shut she can feel with certainty that they are alive.
In this short moment it does not matter that she has to go to training in the morning without him, that walking is going to leave her with an aching reminder of her current –and frankly, all night long– activities. It doesn’t matter that she’ll likely be physically punished for what she’s doing now.
All that matters is that he is alive and so is she, and when she comes the gasp that escapes from between her lips is yet another example of proof that she is alive.
Alive, Alive, Alive.
——————————————————————————————————
They throw her into her cell. That is not an exaggeration. They grab her under the arms, lift her feet from where they drag on the ground, and fully toss her against the concrete floor before slamming the door locked behind her.
She does not give them the satisfaction of hearing her breath catch when she hits the floor, of giving them the satisfying groan when it feels like her bones crunch under the weight of her body, or letting herself whine out loud when she reflexively puts out her hands to catch herself and the bleeding, broken remnants of her wrists flop in agony and let her land right on her face. The door slams shut and she feels it reverberate through her body as it echoes through the cell, somehow bouncing off of her cinder block prison. The second the door is shut, and she can be sure they don’t get to see her suffer, she lets out the sob she had held back, trying to use what strength she has left in her legs to get up against the wall. She can barely walk, barely move her legs without the feeling of her hips being ripped out of their socket. She cannot support herself on her arms, with the breaks in her wrists, her severed tendons, and certainly not to forget the dislocations and bruising around both of her shoulders. She doesn’t know what she looks like, but she can only imagine it’s a corpse.
She can see the horrific purple and blue discoloration of her hands, of her legs. If she turns her arm the right way she can see greens and yellows, evidence of bruising that is already healing. It’s the same way with her scars– all horrific, jagged lines in various stages of healing– some of which have even been reopened time and time again. All are markers of her stay, markers of the things they do to her.
Her body carries the scars of knowing that it does not matter that she was the best. She was the most loyal. She had given her life to these games, to her district, and it didn’t matter.
She didn’t matter.
All of the blood is not only trapped in her joints and in her skin, but it pools around her. Crimson red and sticky, and it is not the first time she has been coated in blood, and as of late it was not uncommon to be covered in her own. She isn’t even sure where this particular episode was coming from– she just seemed to be bleeding from everywhere all of the time. For all she knows her back could be flayed open and she is so blinded by pain she is none the wiser.
There's a lot of blood this time, so much so that the already small room seems to be caving in on her at a rapid speed. The fingers of her right hand find her left wrist, and she fights through the agony when she presses down to desperately search for her own pulse. She can’t find it and she’s dead, she has to be dead, why else wouldn’t she have a pulse? She can hear Enobaria in her head– Enobaria, is she alive? Is she angry at her?-- telling her to check, always check for the pulse, make sure the job is done.
She didn’t think death would be like this.
She doesn’t mean to lay back down on the floor, but the concrete meets her skull anyway. She must make some noise, and when she forces her eyes open, through the single missing cinderblock in the top left corner, she is face to face with Marvel through the six inch space.
“You’ve looked better. You’re so pale it’s like you’ve never seen the sun.” There's a sunken look to the skin of his eyes, but still an unmistakable spark of kindness as he tries to make her laugh, but that kindness is quickly replaced by something that can only be relayed as concern. “Clove? Hey, Clove seriously, are you okay?’
She forces her eyes open as wide as they can go, which is barely enough of a slit for green to be seen. “I’m dead. We’re dead and we’re in hell.”
“You’re talking to me, you aren’t dead.” Marvel chides, but doesn’t look away from her as she very clearly has to fight not to die. “Why do you think you’re dead?”
“No pulse…” she slurs, using all the effort she has left to lay her wrist by her face. “Dead with no pulse.” Her ability to form coherent, abstract thought clearly slips away from her as fast as the blood pours from her body.
Marvel slips his own skinny hand across, and when he goes to grab her wrist she retracts in pain, actually unable to hold back her cry this time and his hand instinctively drops hers with a soft apology.
“Hey, hey I'm sorry…” He instead finds the side of her neck and presses in, giving her a reassuring pat on her shoulder before his face comes back into view with the retraction of his arm. “It’s there. It’s weak, but it’s there. You’re alive.”
“I don-wanna-be” Clove mumbles, eyes fully shut now, “everythinghurts, I can’t breathe.”
“No no, you want to live, You want to live to get home to Cato, remember? Out of the two of us you gotta get home.” And in reality, it would more likely be him than her. They starved him, they gave him a few beatings, but really they just showed him the truth of Glimmer, maybe in a way they did him a favor. At the very least Cato might kill him if Clove dies and he doesn’t.
“Mmm…you got…-immer.” Clove tries, but the words escape her as she feels the sticky warm sensation of blood reaching her face. “Cato’s dead.”
“I don’t have her, I never did.” Marvel cools, but this is not about him, this is not about his own losses or the betrayal he faced at the realization of Glimmer’s disingenuity. “He isn’t dead. If they were dead they’d have killed us already. Why hurt you if it doesn’t get to him, right?”
“He didn’t come.” Clove slurs, trying hard to catch her breath and never seeming to be able to get enough to make her brain feel less fuzzy. “He always came when I needed him and he didn’t. He’s dead too.”
Marvel gives a soft sigh, and shakes his head though she cannot see it. “Clove you don’t know- Clove? Clove where is all this blood from-” It’s seeping through the single block opening now, deep red and metallic, a slow but unending trickle. “Clove, seriously Clove this isn’t funny, wake up.”
It’s a last ditch effort, not that he can do a single thing for her if she’s dead, but he reaches his hand back in and feels for her throat. Her breathing is there, shallow, uneven, but there. He finds her pulse, too, thready, weak, irregular.
But it is there. She’s alive. For how much longer she will be, though… well.
(He never tells anyone, but he is absolutely sure if they were not found when they were that she would have been dead within a week)
——————————————————————————————————
“Clove?” Her voice is soft, wavering, unsure as it calls out to the otherwise silent room. They sit in beds a few feet apart, in an otherwise bare and nondescript room. It’s technically Clove’s room, too, but she spends all nights and the majority of the time with Cato understandably. Now, Cato is at some mandatory meeting, and Marvel is…well she doesn’t know because he doesn’t want her to know.
Clove sits in ‘her’ bed for now, laying relatively still as she flips through some book that is so old Glimmer cannot read the title. All she can really see is that the pages are so old they’re tinted yellow. She doesn’t glance up, only flipping through the pages absently, as if she is waiting to find something interesting. “Yeah, Glim?”
Her voice cracks in her throat before she can even get the words out, as she anxiously scratches at her wrists. “...can I come sit with you?”
Clove starts to make a face, she can feel her eyebrows scrunching together, before she looks up from the old novel in her hands, to actually see Glimmer. Her eyes are so red, the skin around her nose raw from the irritation of continuous tears. Her hair is in its seemingly permanent frizzy state, honey blonde grown to the top of her eyes before the bleach and capitol coloring continues past that point. She is such a far cry from the bombshell the capitol loves to exploit, and yet, she seems so much more authentically Glimmer. “I…yeah. Sure, Glimmer.”
Clove shifts to the left side of the bed, and Glimmer wastes no time, untangling her legs and hopping off the bed before she scurries over to Clove’s half of the room. She doesn’t press under the covers, only to sit side by side on the left half of Clove’s bed.
“Do I want to ask if you’re okay or…” Clove starts feeling, instead of shared body heat, the actual weight of Glimmer curling up into her side, a blonde head resting on her shoulder. “Glimmer?”
“I just miss being wanted.” Glimmer whispers, curling up on her side and clinging to Clove much against her invitation. “Everyone wanted me and now no one wants me. It’s nice to feel another person.” She explains, and as much as Clove may not like it, she can feel warm tear drops hitting her skin through her District issued pajamas.
“Oh.” Clove says softly, shutting her book with her left hand and placing it on her thighs. She doesn’t even mean to do it, but she lets Glimmer take her right hand to hold, too. “...We want you, Glimmer. Maybe not in the way you’re used to, but I like having you around.”
“You don’t have to lie, Clove. I’m not anyone’s person anymore. Maybe no one ever liked me to begin with! They liked how I looked, but even I was just a cheaper, second rate version of my sister for the people who couldn’t afford Cashmere.” Glimmer explains, quickly working herself back up to a sob, a heavy, awful sound that catches in her voice. “It’s all I was ever good for.”
“No..No, Glimmer that's not true. At all. We like you Glimmer. We don’t care what you look like. I don’t care how good you are in bed. I don’t care, Glim. You’re…my friend. You are probably my first friend, because Cato doesn’t count now. I’m glad you’re here, with me. I’m glad you’re alive.” Clove finds herself intertwining her finger’s with Glimmer’s, squeezing so softly that it was both uncharacteristic for her but also the best she could do with the current weakness she still faced. “You’re like..my best friend, Glimmer. And I am so glad you’re here. Who else would I talk to? Annie, so she can tell me all about using the ocean to clean her energy? Even when we get out of this place you will still be my best friend, Glimmer. I’d say even a District apart, but there’s not even going to be a Two to go back to at this rate.”
“...you can come live with me, if you want. While Two rebuilds…” Glimmer offers softly, her other free hand coming to hold their joined hands. “Thank you, Clove. I’d really like to stay your friend.”
“I think we’re kind of stuck together now, Glimmer. Especially if you let Cato live in your house, he might never want to leave.” Clove subconsciously drops her head on top of Glimmer’s, dark hair mixing in with blonde. “You’re worth so much more than they made you think.”
Glimmer just sort of shrugs, nodding her head towards the book in Clove’s lap. “What were you reading?”
Clove grabs the old book in her left hand, and thumbs through the pages for Glimmer to see. “It’s a recipe book, from something called a Depression? And not the way we feel but I guess it was a thing a long time ago, where people had no money and had to make really bad food. I guess that’s what we’ll be working with when all this is over, but the options suck”
“I’ve never used my kitchen, you can break it in however you like.” Glimmer flicks through the pages absently, before handing it back to Clove. “What’s the first thing you want to make?”
“Anything with flavor.”
Glimmer laughs, a soft girly giggle that Clove can’t help but echo on her own. She feels the soft shaking of her shoulders as she leans on her, but she is drawn to the feeling of someone else's hand in hers.
There is a comforting strum of Glimmer’s thumb over hers, a gentle occasional squeeze between the bases of her fingers reminding her that she is here, she is with her, and they are alive in this place together.
——————————————————————————————————
“I’m glad you’re too slow to get off the couch, I think if you could still get up on your own I’d be dead.” Cato teases, holding both his hands out to her, not really giving her a choice to accept them before his large hands are encircling her elbows and pulling her to a standing position. His hands come to rub at her upper arms soothingly, “What’s wrong, baby?”
“Don’t fucking underestimate me.” Clove tries to threaten, but it falls short as she audibly sighs with the ease at which he pulls her to a standing position. “If I was going to kill you it was going to be last night when you ate that incredibly looking steak that was just so red and juicy and I felt like I had to chew on leather–” Clove starts to complain, but she is quickly out of breath and needs to take a deep inhale before she can even consider continuing her ranting.
“You’re..upset over dinner last night? I can go get you some right now-” Cato quirks an eyebrow, but gives her arms a reassuring squeeze. “That I could fix–”
“NO. Cato. I can’t have that, because I am growing your child, and I can’t eat that because it could hurt him. Or Her. But him.” Clove snaps, but goes to lean her head on his chest. She is stopped by the barrier that is her own body, and the space that is filled with their well grown child gets in her way. She wants to scream in frustration, but instead her body betrays her with the threat of tears. “Speaking of him, he’s kind of my problem. He was supposed to come out Tuesday and it is now Friday and would you look at that, he’s still nestled up in my fucking ribs, Cato. I need this kid out.”
“I promise you, as soon as he’s out, I will go cut you a piece of steak right out of one of Annie’s cows, it’ll still be breathing when you take a bite.” He offers a playful smile, but her frustration is palpable, and instead his hand comes to cradle the back of her head, pulling her against his chest. “I know, babe, I know. I mean we could try what Glimmer said–”
“I know what Glimmer said, and no, we are not having sex. That got us in this fucking mess, in fact, we’re never fucking ever again.” She huffs, before burying her face in the thin fabric of his shirt. She can hear, and feel, his heart beating under her ears, a steady, solid sound that has now carried her through an entire war. It’s almost the sound of home to her.
“And Glimmer only said that because Annie said that, you know she wasn’t doing that. Besides, Her girls had the courtesy to come four weeks early, not overstay their welcome by four days. She’s a hypocrite.”
“He’s just cozy in there, Clove. I can’t blame him, I’d also just live inside you as long as I could if I was allowed. You’re literally his home.” Cato plays, but lays his chin on top of her head, the hand that is not cradling her head coming to rub circles on her lower back. “It’ll be over soon. He’s just an overachiever. Or maybe he doesn’t want to come out because he knows he’ll have to meet our friends. Would you want to come out knowing you’d have to see Marvel?”
“I thought about literally cutting him out myself–”
“Okay no you are not doing that, I know you’re good and all Clove but–”
“Shut up. I said I thought about it. I obviously didn’t do it. I couldn’t really see where I'd need to cut, and frankly I wouldn’t be able to stitch myself back together, and yeah you’re good with your fingers but you have never been good at a suture, even when we were teenagers.” Clove tries to shift her weight, looking for any comfort she can get in this permanently irritating state. Everything hurts. Her joints, her back, her neck, hell even her feet just ached. “Mostly, I know I could hurt him, and we have made it way too far for me to risk hurting him now, Cato. He’s safe in here. I’ll never be able to keep him this safe again.”
“We’ll protect him Clove, even on the outside.” He promises her, letting his hand come down to the under curve of her belly, letting himself press up just enough to take the extra strain off of her joints. She audibly relaxes, not only melting into him but letting out a genuine sign of relief at the release of weight from her hips and spine.
“We’ll try, but he’s just so safe, and he’s warm, and he’s never hungry…I feel bad trying to evict him.” Clove murmurs, pressing herself just slightly forward to take advantage of shifting even more of the weight of her abdomen into his hands.
“It’s our job to take care of him, Clove. He’ll be safe and he’ll be warm, and unfortunately he’ll probably be hungry a lot because he’s mine but we’ll take care of that, too.” He kisses the crown of her head, his thumb stroking at the side of her belly. “What do you think he’s doing in there?”
“Mmm, he’s moving because you’re talking to him.” Clove brings her own hand down, hovering a few inches above her pubic bone before pressing in. “Here’s his big head..” She tracks her fingers up, expertly following the curve of her baby’s spine and body, until she reached, “here’s his body.. and his feet are all the way up in my lungs. Where he kicks them incessantly.”
“He’ll just be a fast runner, strong legs and all.” Cato tries, holding her cheek and chin in the flesh of his palm. “Do you actually think he can hear us talking?.”
“A runner? What are you going to have him training for, Cato? His interdistrict baseball team? And what if it’s a girl?” She teases, but lays her head to be caressed in his hand more fully. “Of course he hears us, he’s right there, and he moves a lot more when you talk. He likes you.”
“Hell yeah I am. We’ve got Victor genes, baby. They aren’t going to waste. Hunger Games or baseball, I don’t care, he’s gonna win whatever it is. Our five year old will absolutely wipe out a five year old from district one, it’ll be a big rivalry. A girl, too, our daughters will also be incredibly athletic you know. They’re kind of bred for that kind of thing.” Cato grins, leaning down to catch her lips in a kiss, that while it starts soft and gentle, quickly evolves beyond that with the fiery passion that so often becomes all that is Cato and Clove. It’s her who pulls away first, with significantly less lung capacity these days, gasping for a deep breath.
“Do you still like me even though i’m fucking huge?” She almost pouts, blinking green eyes up to him with skepticism. “Like really fucking huge.”
“You’re not huge you’re straight up entirely baby, I am quite literally holding our kid through your skin right now.” He offers, leaning back down to catch her lips in another quick, yet equally as adoring, kiss. “Of course I still like you, babe, I love you. So much. Plus, you’re like so hot. Maybe even hotter than usual-”
“I’m still not having sex with you ever again.”
“I know, but I mean it.” He promises, and the warmness in his voice almost makes her believe it. “Besides, I don’t want to hurt it-”
“Oh fuck Cato, your not that big, i’m sorry to tell you–” She rolls her eyes, turning her face up and out of his hand. She winces as she feels one of those big shifts in her rib cage, and ends up stepping back away from Cato. “Can you go start a shower for me? That way by the time I make it upstairs it’ll be warm enough?”
“It’s big…” He mumbles in response, but withdraws his hand away from her lower belly in retaliation. “Sure. Can I join or-”
“No, Cato.”
“...I can just watch.”
“No, Cato.”
He huffs, loud enough for her to hear, but turns to stomp up the stairs anyway. “I’ve seen you naked before you know.”
“Not like this!” Clove calls up after him, before turning on her heels and sinking back into the couch he had hauled her out of. It was exhausting, at this point, to even be on her feet that long.
She pulls her feet up to the couch, having learned her lesson of letting them hang on the floor and barely being able to walk as a result. All the shifting and motion translates directly to her child– boy or girl, which technically it still could be a girl– who decides to roll it’s back to the other side of her abdomen with feet still solidly extended into her torso.
Her fingers find the spine of her son again, and she prods gently to feel him roll to the other side. “Your dad loves you a lot, you know that? He wants you sooo bad.”
But then again…so does she.
“If you could just come out to actually meet us that would be great.” Clove whispers, firmly poking at her own belly. She is greeted directly with what is so clearly a limb– could be a foot, could be a hand— sliding up under her skin and looking as if it is going to break out and escape right through her flesh. “I’d like to see that hand from the outside.”
She pokes again, and is once again responded to with movement that she can feel so distinctly that she would swear her son is right there, just under her skin, even though she knows it not to be the truth. There’s muscle between them, skin, fat, fascia, and even more muscle that keeps them apart. Something like six or seven layers of her own tissue separating her from the baby she made. Seven layers one way, but at the same time there is nothing that separates them, as he literally exists only inside of her.
There is so much between them and yet nothing at all.
Is he just abnormally strong, to so clearly be felt under her fingertips? Or is this just a reminder of how fragile her own body is, how thin seven layers can feel between herself and the thing she wants the most.
“I just want to see you, buddy. I’d also like my spine back, but mostly I’d like to see you. Find out what you look like… maybe finally name you..” Clove talks aloud, a sweetness in her voice truly reserved only for the moments when she is alone with herself and her body. He reacts to her, like he always does, wiggling around and pressing into her as if all he wants is to see her too. LIke he’s also trying to break through to actually see the woman whose voice he never ceases to hear. Maybe he also would like to have a name, even, and not continuously be referred to as baby or buddy.
She has felt a lot of life under her fingers. Pulses, heartbeats, sweat, a hand in hers, a muscle twitch. This, though, is unlike anything she has ever fathomed. A pulse is an abstract way to connect to a heart beat, but this? This is pure, distinct life under her fingertips.
A few days later, he is real and he is fragile on her chest, but he is alive. It’s fascinating, almost instantly, how naturally he fits exactly there, how his favorite place seems to be right over her heart, as if that is the place he had been living and growing.
(Maybe it may as well have been, because it certainly feels like she is looking at the embodiment of her heart when she watches him nestle into her skin.)
She even finds that while she started to love watching his little hands and feet under her skin, she is even more in love with the way his entire hand grasps her finger.
It dawns on her, when he falls asleep again and again over her heartbeat, that while Cato and the sound of him alive is her home, maybe the proof of her own life is home to her son.
Life is fragile and fleeting, but it is anything but futile.
Life is fantastic.