♛ eyes are open finally {saffron & klaus}

♕ saffron lowe ♕

Heavy hangs the head that wears the crown.

And my chest. And my heart. And my arms and my legs and my entire being. Taking step after step after step is still so hard, so agonizingly hard, because there are 23 other children that once stood beside me (they still do, they still do, they still do) that should be taking these steps with me. (They float behind me, connected at the seams that I ripped into them, never to touch the ground again. Weightless, invisible, nothing but air.) So heavy I am that I should become one with the ground, never to float off into the sky to join them all. Never to climb another tree and proclaim my rule, never to soar above everyone for the sake of make-believe. Here I shall stay, rooted to the ground, until they bury me - old, alone, afraid - into the earth.

I tiptoe, terrified of awaking horrors within these walls. What exactly I am afraid of finding I do not know. But nightmares now seep into my conscious world and fall through my realities as I walk through it, a survivor, battling them over and over and over again each time I close my eyes or drift away from conversation for too long. I wonder if the other Victors (strange, to categorise myself along with such greatness, to walk beside strangers I saw only on television and amidst the crowds of home, catching blurs and glimpses of them, too fast to steal away) can feel their nightmares, too. Can they reach out and almost touch the others that died in their place again and again and again with each canon fire? Do whispers of what once was catch between their teeth and float against their fingertips and collide in every waking thought? Do they need the others to be their anchors, scared of finding themselves so alone that their thoughts shall consume them and what they did will steal away their soul forever?

Maybe. Maybe not. But I find myself watching, quiet as a mouse (I feel like a mouse, tiny and trembling, next to their tall frames), Klaus Goravich walk just a few step, step, steps in front of me. And it takes everything I have to pull my feet from the ground and the grips of those who follow me through my forever and step after him. So silent are my footsteps that I could be floating. (They all laugh at me, pathetic little me who still feels pressure beneath her feet, and I take back my silent words and swallow them down again.) I watch, and wait, and observe. And finally, I am caught red-handed.

He doesn't yell, or start, or even flinch. To me, Klaus was always very kind. Quiet, and kind, and old beyond his years. Maybe that's what compelled me to follow him, to watch him for a moment - to see a silent soul (that's what I'm becoming: silent, ghostly, air) and how he lives without the commotion they all seem so used to (and I a foreign stranger who has walked into it all). He walks towards me and lifts me up and I let him, let him absorb me as I am and pull me into the air that I once longed to float away in.

"I'm so sorry, Saffron," he whispers, breaking away to look me in the eyes. "I am so, so sorry."

I realise in this moment what I was seeking - not words of flattery or brainwashed glory from the hundreds that surround me. None of that. What I needed - what I still need - is understanding. Understanding that I am no hero, no victorious ruler that they claim me to be. I am lost, and afraid, and relieved, and guilty, and haunted, and weightless, and most importantly alive, and there are too few people in this world who understand.

This is no time for tears, so I blink them back and smile.

"It's ok," I croak, dreadfully quiet and dangerously close to exploding once more. "It's ok. It has to be ok."

I have to be ok. The alternative is unspeakable.

♕ saffron lowe ♕

For the first time in forever, I smile. (When was the last time I smiled? Was it towards Ivana across the training centre, admiring her note-taking? Was it at Cerise as I handed her a tablet to ensure her life stayed intact and that she could drink? Was it to Lucy as she held my hand high up in those trees? Forever, and ever, and ever ago.) I don't remember much about before, a bright, tangled jumble of memory and thought. And the in-between haunts me every day, so I plod along through the present and look towards the future, because it's all I can bare to reach out and touch. (They all try to reach out, too, but of course they fail. Frozen in time, I feel them come to a stand-still.) Klaus is kind, just as I had envisioned - and I take those words and believe.

"Thank you," I whisper - and in that moment this stranger, this kind, kind stranger, becomes my friend.

I wondered, for a long time, if I would ever believe in anything again. Before, and in-between, and even after when it was all done. I am so new to this afterwards; this potential-filled, heart-beating continuation of living. It's hard to know what is real and what is all a dream, but I can breathe in and out and count my heartbeats and feel the cool glass of water between my fingertips (it's too cold, too much like the ice, too much like Lucy's sword, so I snatch my fingers back and breathe her memory away), and I believe in life and living and that at this moment in time, anything is possible because I am alive.

"That's what Mace said," I reply after a while. Raising my eyes from the water in the glass to meet Klaus' caring eyes, I continue softly. "He said, on the train, before..." (It does not need to be said. Sitting across from me is one of the few people who shall understand this silent language I shall speak for the rest of my life. It's ok, I tell myself. He understands.)

"H-he said that every day is worth living." I fade off again, drifting into the blank of the walls around me - but this time, the memories twitch the corners of my mouth upwards at the thought of them. I blink, and back into reality I fall. "He said that sometimes the things that are hardest in life are the most worth it."

His words fall off the tips of my tongue as if they were just spoken. I shall hold onto them for the rest of my days as tightly as I hold on to my 23 souls.

"Is he right, Klaus?"

24 souls hold our breath, and we stare back at him with question.

"Is living worth all of them?"