the pen of doves // 80th. saff/enzo

 

Having an argument with a screaming four year old about why she couldn't have yellow in her hair like Mommy's wasn't exactly how Saffron had wanted to start her day at five o'clock in the morning, but here she was, five hours later and Quinn still refused to come out of her room. It had been very clear from an early age that being a Mom was not a natural talent of hers. Try as she might Saffron did not seem to possess a shred of the parenting skill, with Reggie or her Mom or even Kieran having to come over from across the path just to quiet Quinn. She kept Emerson awake, he explained weeks prior in the gentlest way possible. Saffron, mortified, had wanted to crawl into a hole and never come out.

But even Kieran, purple crescents under his eyes and a five o'clock shadow and his own child to look after, was able to reason with a raging Quinn Emberstatt. Everyone in the goddamn world could, except Saffron. And fuck it was tough without them around. Kieran and Mace absent in the Capitol, Reggie was the mayor now, and her Mom deserved her own life. Saffron, by request, had nearly shoved Mace into the train carriage herself. Quells, she said, were too much. And he was still patient and kind and kept his mouth shut when she knew he wanted to raise his voice too - lord knows she had raised hers far too often the past four years. She even started screaming back at Quinn, so desperately exhausted of trying to be a Mom and failing hopelessly, until Mace would barge in and pick Quinn up and mumble something about patience as he shut the door.

It was unfair to be mad that he wasn't here when she'd been the one who had sent him away. Part selfishness, part jealousy, part desperation to prove she could do it. But damn it, she was pissed. At herself for struggling, at his ease of keeping his daughter in line - never mind that he had done it four times before. Her whole life was tantrums and bed times and thrown food, a whirlwind outweighing the tiny little moments of love when Quinn was falling asleep on her shoulder or when she fell over and stopped crying for her Daddy and wanted her Mommy instead. When she ran after TF the cat and giggled through the hallway. They were beautiful moments - but they were rare, far too much time in-between them. Saffron wasn't sure how much longer she could take it.

Five hours later and all out of her own frustrated tears, she sat at the top of the stairwell with her head in her hands. Quinn had stopped howling, at least. The phone had rung and rung and rung and Saffron had let it, unable to move from her seat on the stairs, bouncing her knee up and down and concentrated on breathing. It rang and rang and rang, until it stopped, and all she could focus on was counting the rings and counting the seconds and counting the years since she'd left the arena. One two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve, thirteen fourteen fifteen, she was fifteen, she was twenty-nine, she was trying not to break, to throw herself down the stairs, to fall apart like her daughter. Willing herself not to beg and scream and cry like she was four, fourteen, twenty-four, how old was she again--?

"Miss Saffron?" a little voice squeaked from below and instantly she was upright, trembling - so afraid of the sound of youth. "Miss Saffron?"

He stepped into her vision, boy from the television - and she rubbed her eyes, this was a dream. 

"I-?" fifteen fifteen fifteen fiffteen fifteen, you are fifteen you are twenty-nine your daughter is four. He is Eighty, the Eightieth games.

Someone had said they had lost them both. Mace had. Over the phone, briefly, his voice gruff - it was all coming back to her now, one hour of sleep and she was bitter about it that morning, she was the one suffering, she was selfishly angry to hear him and then all she wanted was to see him, to pull him close, to tell him she was sorry.

"I thought the girl... Mace said the girl from Four-?"

He lived. She had dreamed it up, the phone call, the girl from Four. 

But no, Mace wouldn't lie to her. If she was sure of anything it was that he would never lie. He was honest with her, always, and she was twenty-nine when he had called and told her that the boy and girl had died. This year, the year of the Eightieth games. Two weeks ago. Temple and....

"I'm Mace's kid!" and she stumbled at that, catching herself against the bannisters just in time to  choke out a surprised breath - the gravitas of what that meant wrapped around her neck.

He had lied to her.

"What?"

"He gave me the key, I promise I didn't break in."

"No," Saffron replied, straightening up as she descended the stairs, good hand clutched tightly around the handrail. "No, you're the boy on the train. And you died. You're not-- you're not Mace's kid."

But his eyes, his hair, his jaw - he could be.

He could be both.

"I need to..." she stammered over her words, dragged back into the silence she had sat solemnly in for years and years and years. "Sit... down."

The lounge was four steps too far so she opted for the bottom stair, the room spinning - perhaps this was a strange dream. Inhaling deeply, she took a moment for herself and peered up at the kid no older than she was when she had won. A little more rugged than she had remembered, although that was through a sleep-deprived haze, maybe she shouldn't've been so quick to cast the kids off as dead this year. But his eyes, his hair, his jaw - he could be what he claimed.

Something in his eyes seemed all too familiar, and she prayed to god it was just the reflection of a soul too young to have survived an arena.

"Sorry," she shuddered, casting her thoughts aside and gathering her words. "Start again?"

Then Quinn started howling at the top of her lungs -  "I WANT PAPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!"  - and Saffron groaned into her hands.