When It's All Over // [ Saffron!/Mace ]

When It's All Over // [ Saffron!/Mace ] Dec 18, 2013 21:55:31 GMT -5

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Post by Baby Wessex d9b [earthling] on Dec 18, 2013 21:55:31 GMT -5

for what it's worth, I have a slow disease that sucked me dry... I always aim to please
but I nearly died

He’d dropped kisses on Juliet and Kieran’s heads before he bolted from the nursery. He wondered if Opal would forgive him, for the mess she’d found him in, for his abrupt departure. It didn’t matter though, not now, not now that everything would be alright. He started to the right, on the most direct path. After a few steps, he came to a complete halt. It would take him through the middle of the center, including the foyer and dining hall. There was no chance he would escape the questions, the fans, in time. And now not just his fans. Saffron’s fans.

His mouth twitched up into a smile as he turned around and shouldered his way into one of the waitstaff passages. It took him several wrong turns and backtracking, but eventually he made it to the hovercraft launch tunnel. He remembered it unlike many of the victors, because he had not been drugged or unconscious when he was returned to the Training Center. They had all but finished patching him on the flight back, and though he had been quiet in his vigil, he saw the path in his dreams, the path that brought him back to the land of the living. To Julian.

An avox stared at him, bug-eyed as he jogged down the tunnel. It felt good to run, felt good to have the sickness in his throat gone, wept out of his system. His leather boots slapped on the smooth tile, echoing down the empty hall. But he could hear it, the whirr of the hovercraft descending. For the first time in a week he felt warm, the ivory cashmere sweater suddenly a burden instead of an asset. He grabbed around the neck, loosening its hold, refusing to be choked by fine things. Because he’d been trying to choke on them for the last five Games. Champagne and macaroons, prime rib and mashed potatoes, gold-flecked gummies and plum torte. Anything to bury the feeling he had released in the nursery, anything but to feel the complete failure. And he had still failed; when he returned to Ten, he would go with Marlboro to Mantel’s funeral.

But there would be only be one funeral this year.

He pulled up just outside of the metal doors, huffing with the exertion. Beyond, he turned the clank of the hovercraft landing. Mace shifted his weight from side to side, unable to keep himself still. He could take off the sweater, but what if he got cold when the fresh air came in? Was it even cold outside? Maybe Saffron would want it. Whatever she wanted, he realized, he would get it for her. Even if that meant tussling with Peacekeepers and arguing with doctors. He knew her recovery would be long, but he intended to make it the easiest of any victor. He shrugged out of the sweater, a plain white shirt underneath. And that’s how he stood, clutching his paltry gift, as the doors parted and the whirlwind of the hovercraft’s engines blew into his face.

He squinted against the daylight, looking for her in the chaos. He saw only a shadow, a blood-stained shadow, before she barreled into him. He wheezed, stuck for a moment in the past, in all the years his arms had been empty. And then he closed the sweater around her, hugging her sticky little body to his. “You’re here,” he said, putting his cheek to the top of her head. “I’ll be damned, Saffron Lowe. And I ain’t never letting you go.

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banner credit: jurate
lyrics:placebo for what it's worth

When It's All Over // [ Saffron!/Mace ] Dec 19, 2013 1:32:04 GMT -5

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Post by ✨ zozo. on Dec 19, 2013 1:32:04 GMT -5

♕ saffron lowe ♕

"Saffron?"

(No, no, go away, please, I said we could sleep, I promised-)

"Saffron!"

(No, I need, I need to, they need me, can't you hear them? I need to go-)

"Saffron, wake up! We're here!"

Bright lights and brighter people bring themselves forth against my tired eyes. (Is it childish of me to think it were all a dream? That I would wake up at home and that none of it were real?) They're familiar, and unfamiliar, and I think that perhaps I have awoken to the end of a nightmare, in that fuzzy in-between as you drag yourself awake to find yourself shaking, sweating, thwarted by the horrors your own head has conjured.

I always hated nightmares - if you weren't safe in your own head then where else could you go? And now, now I can never escape them. They've traveled from my head into my heart, my bones, my bloodstream. Nestled in my being, all of them, they're all my nightmares. I can list their names off the tip of my tongue (I don't dare yet, not now, it's all too soon.) And then I think that perhaps I am really asleep, for in the lights and foreign faces everything replays across my eyes, and it all begins to crumble inside of me just as it did when Ewe fell down, and I'm bolted down by the hands of morphling that grip me still and there's nothing I can do but open my mouth and screa-

But all that falls is a single syllable.

"Where-"

A shrill voice cuts me off, but it doesn't matter. My head is still pounding, my body slow and blurred, dragging itself out of a drugged sleep (how long have I been under - seconds, minutes, hours?) "We're back in the Capitol!"

No, I think fiercely, swallowing my words. "Where... where's Ma-"

"Soon, child, you'll see him soon. Now, as for your hand-"

I don't care about my hand. I don't care about anything. I need to scream and cry and break free of this medicine prison they've twisted me into and bound me with shackles of vials and liquid and Mace, I need to see Mace, it's very important, or I'll explode-

"- and it just fits on, like a glove - very lifelike, you see? Nobody will notice it's not real. And they tried to hook it through your nerves - you'll be pleased to know that we have only the best of the best surgeons for our victors, Miss Saffron - so you might be able to move your fingers with time, but as you grow older we'll need to replace it..."

I try to move my right fingers. She lied - I feel nothing. All I feel is blood. There's blood on my shirt, still. There's blood in my hair and my face and limbs and I'm still covered in Lucy's blood and Ewe's blood and the bright lights are opening up and they've got me sitting up, standing up, they've pumped me with something that jerks my system into alert and it's open, the open air, I'm free, I'm free and we can all go home, and it's all too much and they're all gone and I'm running, running as fast as I can because there's someone waiting for me who can stop all of this and his name is-

Mace.

I hit him with a thud and explode.

"You’re here," he says through my crackling sobs and panicked tears. In a silly second of gallantry I wonder if he'll be cross that I've stained his shirt - but the way he clings to me as I did to him boarding the train tells me that it doesn't matter. None of it matters.

"I’ll be damned, Saffron Lowe. And I ain’t never letting you go."

In the midst of everything, I think I smile.

"Can we go home, now?" Please, I beg. Take my hand. I want to go home.

But I have a feeling that I already am.