{lucy & saffron} queen and lionheart {day 5 blitz}

You remember what your last morning at home tasted like - mothballs and porridge and your father's old coats. His scent was preserved as though the wardrobe was a time capsule - each jacket uncrumpled and untouched. Almost like your family expected him back before dinner. (Part of you still ran in a hurry of flustered footsteps every time there was a knock at the door, letting yourself believe just for a moment that it was him.) Now, though, you have learned it's far easier to have trust in your own demise than the disappearance of someone you love. Do Peter and Susan and Edmund love you enjoy to have faith that one day you'll sit tucked up in the closet with your knees to your chest? (Maybe then they'll believe you when you shout about a tunnel leading into the darkness. After all of this, maybe they'll have the patience to finally listen to your stories.)

It's easy for you to fight to see them again. But while they watch, you are blind. Today, you struggle with the heavy weight of not knowing, and sadness pools in the pit of your stomach. Silence comes from home, despite your desperate pleas. They may hear you, but they do not shout back. (Even if they did, you know deep down you would not know, despite your listening. It still aches in a place you never knew existed.) It is perhaps for this reason that you do not struggle when Saffron speaks your name. You don't flinch, you don't stiffen - you crumble. More than anything, the feeling of someone caring - reaching our their fingers to hold your hand or brush the hair from your eyes - is absent. And you are angry at everybody for pushing forward with blades rather than kisses.

"Want to go on an adventure?" Saffron asks, and she is irresistible to you. The smile you adopted as a baby is still plastered to your face - no longer do you grin, like when you drew blood from your victims or shouted terrible questions at Storm. Even so, the corners of your lips are upturned with hope. (You didn't dare to think of the untouchable Cerise as a friend for you feared your life was weaker than she had ever been, and yet she had fallen. Ivana, you didn't have time to know.) Saffron, though, you gaze upon with admiring eyes. Her words from earlier echo around your head in an eternal chorus. (She told them not to hurt you, not to touch you, and she didn't let you follow your allies to the grave.)

"I think we ought to," you say, sounding just a little more hollow than you were on reaping day. "Can I show you my kingdom?" You tuck a strand of bloody blonde hair behind your ear and point to one of the ancient redwoods that stretches high into the sky. It reminds you of a book Susan once read out to you about branches that stretch so high they reach into other world. The Faraway Tree, you recall, hoping that perhaps you can find a less terrifying reality with Saffron, hidden in the clouds. (It hurts to hope, and yet it helps to hope.)

And so you start to climb.

as the world comes to an end
i'll be there to hold your hand
'cause you're my king and i'm your lion-heart

we're here to stay, we're here to stay
howling ghosts they reappear
in mountains that are stacked with fear
but you're a king and i'm a lion-heart

When you were small, you were never too brave. It was Edmund who clambered onto the roof in protest of something long-forgotten. He told you that you were a baby if you were too scared, so you clambered halfway up the ladder and sat here swinging your legs, arms crossed over your chest. It was only after a few hours of repeating "I'm not scared, I'm not-" that Peter gave up his coaxing and climbed up to get you back. As his strong hands tightened around your tiny waist, a tear rolled down your cheek. Into his shift, you confessed that you feared falling. He pressed his lips against your cheek and breathed warm breath against your forehead and told you it would be okay. That they all already knew, and that it was okay to be afraid, no matter what Edmund said.

It was easy for you to follow them - you fit so perfectly into their shadows, and they were stable and sturdy and never strayed too far ahead without looking back to check you were alright. (It was easy to sit at the kitchen table and play while Susan washed the dishes, chattering away to her about your fictitious escapades and implausible exploits. You didn't lie - not once did you pretend that these things were real, but you wove stories into webs, drifting in and out of your pretences.) While your siblings grew up, you planted your feet firmly in childhood. It was safe, there. Listening at doors, you learned early on, only ended in nightmares and too-long winters.

"I'd be honoured," Saffron professes, and for the first time in your life, you are the leader. She follows you, reaching up for branches and feeling for footholds, trusting the path you forge. (You aren't entirely sure that you have that much confidence in yourself, but it feels good to be at the very least equal, to press on upwards without for a single second feeling alone.) "Thank you for fighting for me, Saffron," you say without looking at her. You listen for the rustle of the leaves below you, suddenly unsure and worried that your words are falling upon thin air. You reach down and grab her hand, helping her higher. "At home, I was the baby. Everyone was my protector. And I suppose I'm not quite sure how to be all alone." You wonder how easy it would be to aim a weapon at someone from up here, tangled in the branches, and then hate yourself for thinking it.

"Thank you for not leaving me alone."

as the world comes to an end
i'll be there to hold your hand
'cause you're my king and i'm your lion-heart

we're here to stay, we're here to stay
howling ghosts they reappear
in mountains that are stacked with fear
but you're a king and i'm a lion-heart

You are trapped, you decide, in the very best of ways. Perhaps the situation isn't entirely favourable - it ends in your ow murder, of course - but even so, the branches form a cage that shields you from the world. Beside you, is Saffron, and your heart stings when you realise that at the very most, you have days left together. (There is a countdown somewhere afar, the minute hand cutting down the moments until you say goodbye.) You shake away the idea of death, because the leaves form a shield and Saffron has always been your sword. Happiness is more easily found when your fingers are interlaced with hers, your bitten fingernails digging into her skin.

"Want to know a secret?" she asks you, and without taking a breath she spills it. Her words are soft and smooth, like ointment to your wounds. Maybe she trusts you - maybe she simply understands all too well what you realised yesterday; fate is going to snatch away everything, secrets and lies included. (It doesn't matter any more, and so you tell someone in the hope that they will listen.) "I'm scared of being alone. I've spent a lot of time adventuring by myself, but I always had people to come home to. Now...." You picture her home in your mind. In your imagination, it is a house just like yours, with peeling paint and smoke drifting from the chimney, the front door unlocked. (Does Saffron have a father or a mother who tell her stories, like yours used to before they left you behind?)

"Just don't leave, okay? Not now. Besides - who else am I gonna fight for?" You reach the top of the tree first, and lean back against it's trunk. Looking down is simple - it seems like the fall is endless, a rush of space and broken promises. (You could jump, right here, right now, and never have to feel another sword against your chest. Nobody would tear through your flesh again, and your family wouldn't have to look at the television and see your killer. Nobody would feel the piercing pain of murder, not like you felt when you stole the lives of Eden and Storm. You could be free. From here, you could fly.) Saffron blinks at you, pleading. Do your eyes give away the voice in your mind? It screams.

"I'll stay," you say, uncurling your tightly wound fingers from the redwood and leaning back just a little. Not once in your life have you lied - always, you painted pictures from the truth and protested earnestly until everybody learned to believe you. (Only, on that final day, they didn't.) You look out across the arena, at the mountains and the never-ending maze and the golden horn at which your plight began. That day, you and Saffron were together. But you can't bend the truth so far as to pretend it'll last for eternity. "I promise I'll stay until the very edge of forever." You're on top of the world, the wind in your hair and a fire in your hearts. They looked at you aghast on reaping day, with eyes wide, foretelling of a nightmare. From here, though, your kingdom holds only beauty. You are too high to see the bloodstains on the grass - only the speckle of buttercups catches your eye.

"This is it, Saffron. The whole wild world. The beginning and the end, I suppose." You lean back even more, feeling the wood bend against your weight. It holds you, but it whispers that you might be a little more carefully, shift a little more weight to safety. "Today, it's all ours. Yours and mine, alright? Just for now, we get to rule it endlessly." The forest threatens to swallow you whole, but you can hear Saffron's heartbeat beside you, and it holds you up. (You couldn't fall if you tried.)

as the world comes to an end
i'll be there to hold your hand
'cause you're my king and i'm your lion-heart