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✨ zozo.
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Pronouns: she/her
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bloomtodeath

darling. safe, 92nd. Oct 24, 2022 20:23:43 GMT -5

Post by ✨ zozo. on Oct 24, 2022 20:23:43 GMT -5

She wants to hold her children tight, never let them go.

Whenever death strokes a bony thumb against Saffron Lowe's cheek, she wants her children. To clutch them to her and keep them from harm. A mother's instinct, or perhaps one of innate, blistering fear - every parent who gives a damn in this country feels it. That panic. That adrenaline rush each year, birthday candles blown out and graves covered in dusty orange District Ten dirt - Enzo is safe, Quinn is not. She still wants - no. Needs them. To reassure herself that their hearts are still beating.

There were three cannons today - then a fourth, right in the middle of the room.

"Breaking News..." the announcer reads - even they look solemn. Saffron doesn't hear the words, she reads them scrolling at the bottom of the screen.

PATRICIA VALFIERNO DIES AGED 42

Shortness of breath, fourty-two candles waiting in the kitchen cupboard for her next birthday cake. Saffron blinks - stumbles forward, arms outstretched, and clutches Mace with a death-tight grip.

"Today, Panem mourns the loss of 68th Hunger Games Victor - Patricia Valfierno."

Saffron wants -
needs -

No. No no no no she had just-
hadn't they just seen-?

No. No, they hadn't. Not this year. Saffron had thought it was just the changing of batons, a victor's inheritance, business as usual. Lethe then Patricia then Lysander. That's all. That's all-

How?
Please Ripred don't tell me she-

At that terrible thought her grip tightens around Mace, pulse racing to hear his own. He's alive, she tells herself. He is alive he is alive he is alive.

But I wouldn't blame her
if she-

Fuck.

She can't look at Mace. Not yet. Doesn't want that confirmation, the pain in his eyes, to reaffirm what she fears most. He is heavy in her arms, like stone - shock, she remembers being too stunned to speak for days and months and years.

And now it is her turn, debt repaid.

"Call the kids," Saffron asks someone, everyone, no-one. Her voice is hollow. Her mind is anything but.

Still, she clings to Mace.

"Get me on the phone with my children now."

SAFFRON.

table by elegant

Last Edit: Oct 24, 2022 20:25:42 GMT -5 by ✨ zozo.

“and men said that the blood of the stars flowed in her veins.”

Baby Wessex d9b [earthling]
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cameron stood in line for an hour for a stupid ride for me <3 best <3

darling. safe, 92nd. Nov 13, 2022 22:09:17 GMT -5

Post by Baby Wessex d9b [earthling] on Nov 13, 2022 22:09:17 GMT -5

♕ m a c e ♕

❝ one more word,
and you won't survive ❞

He feels like he should have seen it coming.

He feels it in the depths of his stomach, the way he'd felt when Aesop had disappeared into a blizzard. The way he felt when Alexander struck her name and slipped away. He should have known.

Which is illogical, given how far he and Saffron had removed themselves from the Capitol's gossip chain. They'd be warned: freedom came at a price, and that price was information. So when the Gamemakers announced the volunteer twist or the High Council decided anyone could be reaped independent of gender, Mace first had to process the surprise -- and then everything else.

He and Saffron are alone, together, hearing the same impossible words. PATRICIA VALFIERNO, DEAD.

She mistakes him for stone.

He's so much more fragile than that. He's ice, frozen through to his core. The very same core that should have warned something was truly wrong with... whatever Patricia was to them. One of their cohort. A colleague. A friend. A kindred spirit. A leader. Their leader, albeit a begruding one after Katelyn had disappeared.

Distantly, through the layers of ice and frost keeping him perfectly still, he hears Saffron cry, "get me on the phone with my children now."

He wants to nod his agreement but he can't. Everything -- muscles, tendons, bones, the very blood in his veins -- are seizing.

And yet Saffron still holds him close, holds him tight, shares some of her warmth.

Mace shudders.

And then, with chattering teeth, engulfs her in his embrace. "Not the children," he begs, voice close to shattering. He knows they'll find out soon enough and he can't be the one to tell them. First, because it might upset them. Worse, because it might not. Patricia is important, but their children have full, mostly happy, lives that haven't been polluted by the Capitol's politics.

Unlike Saffron's life. Unlike Mace's.

Unlike Patricia's life had been.

He presses his chilly forehead to her own. "The Victors," he says, trying desperately to still his vibrating bones. "We all need each other. Now."