your destruction // your rebirth { saffron oneshot }

It gets easier for her mother to spill little cracks of light into the darkness that was her memory. Often spontaneous and rarely long, but it was enough for her. Small doses kept them going.

"Did you know he picked your name?"

The victor's head jerks upwards, eyes awake and heart open.

Her mother looks out the window and smiles. "I loved Kira. But he loved Saffron. He promised to let me name the next one a simpler name. But of course he picked Paige's middle name, as I did with you."

Saffron Kira and Paige Sparrow.

They hang in their minds and on the tips of their tongues. But Saffron, by reputation, cannot speak.

"He looked to the burning summer sky, pointed at it, squinted and said 'Saffron. The colour of the sunset.'"

(She is 11 years old again in a fleeting vision of memory - running, running, running - from nothing but her own shadow. She was always scared of the dark of the night but chased the sun home just to say goodbye.)

She drinks in the evening sky and feels her father's warmth wash over. Endings are bittersweet but what the sky brings after dusk is just as magnificent.

---------

She finds the remnants of her former self in her sister - silent and still. Her eyes still glimmer with embers but the raging fire has been dimmed by the endless winter that froze this house cold. Once they burned bright from the light of the sun. Now the sisters are snuffed out by white walls and white seasons and ice clinging to their insides.

It breaks her to open the door and see Paige crumbling but she'd rather die than say she never tried to help her sister hold her broken pieces together. This house only has room for one broken girl at a time and Saffron is not sure she'll ever be completely fixed. She is well acquainted with depression stitching her lips shut and weighing down her chest but seeing it seeping from the holes in her sister's soul shatters her own.

Perched on the end of her sister's quilt-covered sanctuary, a thousand things dance through her mind. Nobody could help her but Mace and his words, so she'll try and craft her own and pray her sister alights once more.

"I know you don't remember anything about Dad but..." she starts, hesitant and terrified. "Do you ever wonder what happened to him?"

Paige has no words. To her surprise Saffron finds that the silence hurts more than the knives she used to send spiraling into her head from her mouth.

"I've been thinking about it for a while now and I think I want to find out."

Be brave. Be brave. Be brave.

"Whether he's dead, or alive, or..."

(She should not fear her own voice but it cracks anyway.)

"It all sounds impossible, right? But I've got to at least try."

Answers were not what she expected from her sister, nor words, but without speaking she seems to have brought them to life. With a kiss of her sister's head and hands trembling the victor stands and finds Paige struggling to speak, lips torn open and anguish dripping from her mouth.

"Saff?"

"Yeah?"

"Close the door."

She heeds her sister's words and sets off to do just that.

---------

A few days before the nightmare begins again her mother tells her another story. This time there is no fondness in her voice or a happy glistening of what could be tears. There is just sadness. And fear. Saffron always thought that her mother was the bravest person she knew but the brave can shatter every once in a while. She of all people should know this by now.

"He was dragged away. They took him from the front field before he had a chance to speak, or defend himself..."

Saffron cannot speak. Or breathe. That is nothing knew to her, but this revelation is.

"And when they took you away too, I thought..." Her mother is crying - something she rarely sees. "I'd never see you again. But I thought that if he were there, and if he saw you..."

Words aren't needed. She understands now.

She understands why her mother could not speak for all of those years.

---------

Mace has been with them for weeks now and it hasn't gotten any easier. Her heart aches for Juliet a thousand miles away and her siblings left to live without her. It aches for her family - her entire family - now separated through a crack in the road between their homes and a scar plunged through Mace's heart.

She doesn't knock, but her fist hovers over the door. She doesn't want to see him but doesn't want to find an empty room either. There was a time when they could tell each-other anything. Distance never mattered. And now the space between their souls is worse than it has ever been, even under the same roof. Lies catch at her throat whenever he passes her by and she is reminded all over again of the tragedy they have all become. 

Her heart aches for Mace and the forever with him she will never be granted.

"Mace?" she begs, forehead pressed against the cool surface of the door.

"I don't know if you're home but..."

Speak, she thinks. Speak, for fucks sake.

"But I'm going to be gone for a few days and-"

And I want you there with me.

And I need you there with me.

And I want you.

And I need you.

"And I was wondering if you wanted.. if you would..."

She trembles violently in his silence, magnitudes engulfing her in their destruction.

"...if you would want to come and help me find my Dad."

Nothing. 

She shouldn't have expected anything other than that. He doesn't need her anymore, after all. 

But Saffron still needs him.

---------

She has memorised parts of this journey. Compromised of landmarks and dips on the horizon and familiar flashes of memory from hours upon hours of staring out at the uninhabited world, a no-man's land of possibility taunting her year after year. But it's not really no-man's land - it's the Capitol's land. It's Snow's land, and a chill run downs her spine at the very mention of him. This is no time to freeze - she must thaw, burning like the sun she was named for.

Any trace of liquid disaster evaporates from her cheeks. Skin on fire, heart on fire, terrified of discovering the other half of her creation and what has become of him, Saffron has to remind herself that for a sun to be born a star has to die but she's still damn sure he didn't deserve a fate worse that death - but death would be harder to swallow. The world keeps moving without her, a blur behind glass too far out of reach to touch and the victor stays frozen within herself and her tortured past.

---------

The girl escorting her through the halls of the Capitol buildings carries herself with grace and elegance, as poised as those on the thrones of the government. They all know her name but Saffron will never know theirs. She wonders if they know each-other's names scrawled on pieces of paper or if they are just faces without voices, made up of freckles and scars and traces of their parents. Perhaps they've all forgotten who they used to be.

"August Lowe" Saffron tries, throwing the name into the air as both a question and a statement.

The girl stops and looks at her, an eyebrow raised.

"Do you know him?"

Nothing.

"August Lowe?"

The girl gives the slightest shake of her head and sets off again down the halls. 

The victor sighs and follows, closing the door behind them.

---------

President Snow's presence makes her hands shake and her eyes dart frantically around the room. It has been so long since she sat in this seat and she swears it were larger the last time. Everything seems smaller - or perhaps she is bigger. It's hard to tell these days. He contemplates her words, pretending to consider them by weighing out the pros and cons of her request. Though something in his eyes tells Saffron that he made up his mind long, long ago.

"Miss Lowe" he begins, leaning forward across the regal desk adorned with intricate patterns and littered with treasures a smaller, younger Saffron would have craved to snatch up and keep for herself. "Although pleasant to be graced with your company, you should know by now that criminals in Panem are a threat to the peace the Capitol has brought to the Districts. To resurface and revisit these cases would be a threat to the very reason we reprimand them in the first place."

She swallows and smiles. "Of course, sir."

President Snow adjusts his sleeves and rests his wrists on his desk, all the while never breaking his line of sight on the girl who sits across from him. "It is, however, a topic of which I do understand your interest in. No doubt you'd want to find out whatever crime your father committed to damn his two daughters to a life with one parent."

Her heart picks up and her fingers tighten against the wooden arm rests. This must be what hell feels like. She's come damn close to it 6 years ago but this place is far worse.

Swallowing her pride, she remains silent.

"The people of the Capitol do indeed enjoy when Victor's visit their city - and I would never deny them that pleasure, but I'm afraid you have come to the wrong place to look for answers, Miss Lowe."

"I'm sorry?"

He smiles and in that moment she knows she's damned herself for coming here. "You may find that when seeking knowledge your answers are in the very first place you looked for them."

Her home flashes up on the screen between them - but she recognises the masses of people, the dust, the heat shimmering on the horizon, the barren wastelands of drought and a Justice Building being emptied of nearly everything inside of it.

"This was 5 years ago" she states, confusion filling her throat and tainting her confident facade. She aims to be a lion-heart but never quite learnt to roar.

"In the drought following Colgate O'Leary's victory, District Five offered to lend it's heat-powered turbines to District's Ten and Eleven. They were operated by burning coal to power machinery and water supplies to help support the crops and dying cattle."

Images flash before her - some duplicates of memory and others foreign like his words.

"I'm sure you are aware that neither Ten nor Eleven have access to coal, and Twelve can barely produce enough for the Capitol as it is."

This makes no sense.

"I'm sorry, sir, but I don't quite understand."

The screen flickers again, and piles of boxes fill trucks, arms, and then sheets of paper are poured into the flames powering the district.

"District Ten used whatever they could to keep them running, Miss Lowe. Things worth burning."

Things like 15-year-old criminal records.

Smoke billows upwards until it spills from the hologram, pouring into the President's office and filling her lungs. It burns and aches and suffocates her, flowing from her eyes and ears and mouth. A fire can burn and break and destroy but smoke can be just as deadly.

She can't breathe.

She's forgotten how to breathe.

Saffron is swimming in a current of tragedy and cannot fight the waves that pull her down, strip her of her understanding and drown her from the inside-out.

"So you're telling me..." the victor begins, panic rising in her lungs and stealing her breath with every rise and fall of her chest.

"That there is no possible way to recollect information of the whereabouts or outcomes of a man arrested 18 years ago in a District that destroyed its records in the drought following the 66th Games?"

Saffron nods.

"That is exactly what I'm telling you, Miss Lowe."

And then Snow takes out a hand gun from his desk, unhinges the safety, and shoots her right in the chest.

The world falls apart.

Everything hurts. This must be what it is like for a star to die - to explode and erupt from the inside out.

August Lowe dies in that moment, all hope of his discovery eroding in the echoes of a gunshot. Blood bubbles up from her insides and erupts from her lips, scarlet words spilling into the room in gargles and desperate, wide-eyed chokes. All she can hear is screaming, screaming, screaming, coming from every inch of her except her throat. Acid fills her insides and she falls forward in defeat and the last thing she sees is red and red and red and red and-

Saffron blinks, and Snow smiles.

---------

She was wrong. Death would have been easier to swallow.

This isn't easy, but neither are words. Wrapped in a silent aura she exists Snow's office and hears nothing but static. She needs a lifeline, she needs words, she needs steps and reasons and answers and Lucy, Ivana, Cerise, Mace.

She needs him more and more every day. There was a time where he was the only person on this earth she could speak to and she yearns for that ease, lips stitched up by fear and frozen tight by mistakes and bitter words. Unrequited love crushes her suppressed heart and silences words she wishes she could say.

But there aren't any names Saffron can whisper from the arena anymore to keep her sane. There aren't any strong arms to fall into this time. There isn't a single sound in her throat to scream out and shatter the fragile entity she finds herself in.

This new world is falling apart but the walls of it don't crack like they did when her life ended in the arena and her new one began.

Her heart does instead.