real {saffron/patricia}

new

« Prev
1
Next »

rook
Veteran Member

2,361 POSTS

Pronouns: he/him
last seen Sept 26, 2023 15:42:53 GMT -5

who needs another thing to be sad about?

real {saffron/patricia} Oct 20, 2015 18:31:08 GMT -5

Quote

Post by rook on Oct 20, 2015 18:31:08 GMT -5

♕ { p a t r i c i a v a l f i e r n o} ♕
victor of the 68th annual hunger games

god i'm scared
to think back
about everything that has come before me
my time and future history

"And with great courage and valour, our Tributes wake to a new world around them. Two have already died, but these twenty-two brave fighters have lived another day. What horrors await them? Fellow Tributes and Muttations alike lurk in the shadows of this-"

My eyes struggle to focus on the glare of the television. Eight in the morning. Ripred. My hand lazily swipes over the marble counter and flicks the kettle's plastic switch. The low rumble of boiling water muffles Claudius Templesmith's commentary, which is probably for the best. They're showing replays of Saxton cutting down Paige Hope, for those that missed it yesterday. I wasn't sure if Saxton and Tyler had it in them to kill, but the Arena has a tendency to bring out the worst in us. Saxton's definitely got that instinct that it takes to go all the way.

Lethe is getting showered, which leaves me as babysitter for two year old Phelix. He stares at the television set with curious eyes. When I was his age, I was watching propaganda cartoons, not murder.

"Phelix, come away from there, okay?" I call to him from across the room. He turns around with an expression of inward concentration.

"Okay Tisha." He waddles into the kitchen area and finds one of his many children's books that litter the carpets.

The hissing of the kettle indicates that the water has boiled. Robotically I reach over and lift it up, pouring into a ceramic mug. The ground coffee beans froth into a brown muddy liquid, and the potent aroma rises up my nostrils, gently waking me up. Phelix hops up onto the counter, opening a colorful book that is half his size. I can't believe how big he's getting.

I glance around the room. Same as it was three years ago. Ripred, has it really been that long? Time flies when you get a second chance at life, I guess. Still, it feels like yesterday I was here, alone and afraid, with no mentor and no support. Yeah, that's not really something that leaves you. So much has happened since then. I've met someone who makes me feel like I can keep going. Diamond. I've had the luxury of being bale to see Rose grow up. But those were rights I had from the start, and had taken from me. I earned them back, but they were always mine. Phelix scribbles on his book with an oversized pencil, occasionally glancing up at the television.

"You and Mommy." He says.

I stare at him, my heart in my mouth. What? He's two years old, how does he-

"You and Mommy" He repeats, pointing at the television.

The replays, the highlights. It's always there, it's always on at some point during the day. He's spent weeks in the Capitol, kept up here in the apartment with that television. He must have seen. He must think it's a show or something. I-... He's staring at me with an innocent curiosity that makes me angrier than anything I can imagine.

"Yeah," I mumble, defeated again by the Capitol's sick regime, "Me and Mommy."

Having received an answer, Phelix goes back to scribbling in his book, unaffected. I grind my teeth, my palms pressing against the cold marble surface. Damn them, damn them all. He's a child, and already they've sucked him into their warped world, turned his innocence into something else.

I can't take it.

As soon as Lethe comes out the shower, I grab my purple hoodie. I pause, my hand resting on her bedroom door. No. I won't fight over this. What am I supposed to say? Why aren't you protecting your son from the horrors of the Games? Who am I to tell her how to be a mom? And it's not like he can be kept from it forever. Maybe it's better he grows up with it. Who fucking knows. I let go of the handle, turning away. I need to think. I need to get out and think. I bite my lower lip and swiftly leave the apartment.

The corridors are always so unnervingly long. It's like you can't see end from end. These buildings are absolute juggernauts, sitting in the middle of the Capitol, monuments of the nations greatest success. Every time I see them on the train journey inwards they fill me with such dread that I feel like I weight a ton. It's incomparable.

Walking these halls used to feel so forbidden, because we were all on borrowed time. Me, and Pearl, and Crusader, and Cha. It's like we all knew our futures had been taken from us. Galaxy, and Barney, and Asa, and Fionnbar. Each step was like walking on a grave. Our graves. Now I'm free to roam where I like, go where I like, and not worry about how much time I have left. I won my life back, and twenty-three pairs of hands are holding my feet up. The silence in these places always unsettles me, but I stride onwards, towards the elevator.

The doors close behind me and I am grateful for the small, confined space. I used to be quite claustrophobic after my Games, but it didn't take long for me to push past that. The only real fears I still get are pitch blackness and sharp objects.

The floors shoot past, light after light, level after level as ascend up the building. It goes so fast that I feel like I will be launched in to the night, high above the Capitol skyline. Wouldn't that be nice? As much as I hate this place, it is beautiful, even if that beauty has come at the cost of millions of lives. I feel bad for admiring it, like it's all one big taboo. I've hit the button for the rooftop. I feel like getting some fresh air, think things over. Phelix. How does that kid know about us already? He's only two years old. He shouldn't even have a concept of any of that. He probably just saw our faces on television. The thought of that toddler watching me stab Galaxy in the chest makes me want to be sick all over the expensive carpet.

The elevator slows, and unexpectedly opens on the tenth floor. A flash of orange. At first I think I'm looking in a mirror, but it's just Saffron Lowe. I narrow my eyes and scrunch up my face. The girl is a year younger than me, but you wouldn't be able to tell. The Capitol's always barking on about how identical we look. You could almost call them twins!! Yeah, shut up. I'm nothing like this girl.

"Hey." I say, moving to the left, assuming that she wants in too.

my i've wandered this library
for years now
killing time
whilst time slowly kills me

word count: 1114, graphics: rook
theme: books by tall ships

an hourglass is just a glass with sand inside

✨ zozo.
Retired Staff

8,205 POSTS

Pronouns: she/her
last seen Nov 23, 2024 18:42:16 GMT -5

bloomtodeath

real {saffron/patricia} Oct 21, 2015 5:10:41 GMT -5

Quote

Post by ✨ zozo. on Oct 21, 2015 5:10:41 GMT -5

SAFFRON LOWE

Suffocating.

I am suffocating - shoving lies down people's throats and regurgitating my own until I can't breathe for a second longer. Hopelessly wandering through a shroud of deceit I am stranded with no lifeline, no hand to hold. Just a million fingers pointed at me and screaming culprit, liar, murderer.

I killed Lucy. I killed Ewe. I killed all those other children that sat before me and heard my lies of bringing them home.

I don't know what to do anymore. I've forgotten how to live without lying and screaming and this overwhelming feeling of sheer chaos that lives underneath my skin.

They want to stuff me in a bright pink dress and sit me down in a gigantic chair and play pretend like I'm still their tiny little porcelain doll playing tea parties and interviews. I don't even know who I want to be but they seem to have that figured out for me too. Today I am furious, relentless, and unapologetically pissed off. I hate tea. I hate bows. And I god damn fucking hate pink dresses.

"I'll get them to dye it" Blue insists the second he wheels the ghastly thing through my door. "I'll send it back and demand neutrals."

"And the bow?" I gawp, the first words these walls have heard in days.

"I don't know, Saff. I'll try everything I can, but-"

"But they want the little girl" I spit, quaking spasms rushing through my nervous system.

Blue doesn't say anything.

They get her when I'm left to the privacy of my own company. She explodes, throwing a glass at the wall and watching it shatter and I flinch at her destruction and the memories it brings back. But she doesn't stop. She kicks the table over, flings a remote at the television screen replaying frightened children damned to death, screams and yells and throws herself on the floor in defeat. Her heart aches. Her head hurts. Her throat closes up and I watch the ghost of a girl that once stole a crown that she no longer needs fade away into nothing.

When my chest stops heaving and my arms stop shaking, I stand up and let the aftershocks carry me out of the room.

Doors open to a sanction I haven't quite named yet, but anywhere is better than being there when the debris of my meltdown is discovered by our new bimbo of an escort. The girl I was supposed to be stands before me, strong and proud and unafraid. I meet her gaze and-

(The glass hits the wall over and over and over and over again.)

- and I flinch.

"Hey."

"Howdy" I say on default, biting it back as soon as I speak. They're in my head already and it's barely been a week since we arrived. I'm afraid of her, like they want me to be. Maybe that scared little girl hasn't left me. Maybe I was wrong.

My fingers twitch with lightning and know for certain that I was.

"Sorry, I-" fumble, freak out, fall over words and forget how to speak.

"I couldn't take watching that massacre anymore."

AND I'M COMPLICATED, YOU WON'T GET ME
I HAVE TROUBLE UNDERSTANDING MYSELF
MY HEAD IS A JUNGLE

Last Edit: Oct 21, 2015 5:12:04 GMT -5 by ✨ zozo.

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

rook
Veteran Member

2,361 POSTS

Pronouns: he/him
last seen Sept 26, 2023 15:42:53 GMT -5

who needs another thing to be sad about?

real {saffron/patricia} Oct 22, 2015 17:43:04 GMT -5

Quote

Post by rook on Oct 22, 2015 17:43:04 GMT -5

♕ { p a t r i c i a v a l f i e r n o} ♕
victor of the 68th annual hunger games

god i'm scared
to think back
about everything that has come before me
my time and future history

"Howdy" Saffron's voice is richer than I remember. Last time we spoke was on my Victory Tour, she was only sixteen then. Now she's becoming a woman. Her jaw is more defined, her makeup more fierce. She is taller, but not quite as tall as me. Sometimes you're too busy on your own life to realize how much other people change. I have to admit, I don't see Saffron all that often. Once, maybe twice a year, and even then not to talk to. She strikes me as someone who is very private. The Capitol always paint her as the innocent princess, but I've seen the blood on her hands, and it's the same filthy red that stains mine.

They call us Victors, but it's just a fancy word for murderer, survivor, or opportunist. If we have anything in common, it's that gut instinct. I remember it so fresh like it was this morning that the Training Center instructor told me killing was the hardest thing I'd have to do in the Arena. I find it painful to remember how easy it actually was. My sword piercing through Cha's neck was like sticking a knife in butter. So fucking easy to take someone's life. How fragile we all are, and they paint us as these statues of victory and solidarity, but the truth is that we'd all die just as easy as the others.

I don't judge Saffron Lowe, because I don't know the first thing about her. I know how the media paints her. I know what people say about her. I know what she did in her Games. I've been a Victor for long enough to realize that it's such a painfully lonely experience that it changes you into this... this... this thing. This existence that's so unique and proud and... I don't know. I said we'd die just as easily, but maybe not. This changes us. It does make us stronger, if you let it. Others might crumble, and collapse, but I'm going to keep on surviving, like I have since I was fourteen. No one's sticking me with a knife, not even Snow.

Point is, Saffron's evolved within herself, and no one knows what she's really like, or what goes on in her head, just like no one can read me. There's so many layers to her that she has hidden what she's really like from the rest of the world, and she probably only shows what she's really like to the people she cares about. I only think this because that's what I do. That's what I've done since that final cannon boomed and I got on that hovercraft home.

"Sorry, I-" She trips over her own tongue, searching for words. She is agitated, and I'm not sure why, "I couldn't take watching that massacre anymore."

The Games. It seems impossible to escape it, especially here of all places where the whole charade is practically gift wrapped and sold to you as merchandise. There's even a Patricia Valfierno action figure for fuck's sake. Who the hell would buy a doll of me? Yeah, complete with level action sword and night vision goggles. It fills me with nausea. Everything about this place is so sickly and putrid.

"That's fine," I say, allowing her space to enter the elevator with me, "I was going to the roof to get some air if you want to join me."

Truth is, I could use the company. I miss Diamond, I haven't seen her in five months. My sister isn't here. They're about the only two people in my life. Saffron seems infinitely complex with garrisons of her own problems no doubt. I might not know her very well, but she seems like the sort of girl who can hold a good conversation, and that's what I need right now to take me away from the blood and the killing and "You and Mommy". Me and Lethe. If she didn't have kids, I'd probably have smashed her front teeth down her throat by now. Ripred it makes me so angry just thinking about it all.

Sometimes I think I get too angry, and then I wonder if there's any point in getting angry at all if there's nothing you can do to change the way things are, or the way things happened. I try and shrug it off, push past it, but it's always there. Injustice is like a parasite. I find myself trying to forgive Lethe, but every time I imagine us on good terms, it's like there's a cancer burning in the side of my head. She left me to die. She cast me aside like I was just another dead number on another wasted year, but I crawled and crawled, and I came back breathing. Believe me, I want to move on. I want to be on good terms with her, but now can I? How can I do it? Not for her, I don't give a shit about making her feel better, but how could I hold myself in any regard if I forgave her for this? It's like I'd be casting aside everything I've stood for all these years just so I don't have to frown every time she walks into the room.

I sigh and extend a thin finger to press the button to take me to the rooftop.

"Coming?" I ask Saffron, who stands there, oblivious to the hurricane inside my mind. To her, and everyone else, I'm calm as always. Composed, Claudius Templesmith could call me. "Such finesse in this young woman." Sharp. Attentive. It's a front, it's all just levels on levels, masking the human underneath. I measure up Saffron with my eyes, up and down. She's doing it too.

my i've wandered this library
for years now
killing time
whilst time slowly kills me

word count: 954, graphics: rook
theme: books by tall ships

Last Edit: Oct 22, 2015 17:46:34 GMT -5 by rook

an hourglass is just a glass with sand inside

✨ zozo.
Retired Staff

8,205 POSTS

Pronouns: she/her
last seen Nov 23, 2024 18:42:16 GMT -5

bloomtodeath

real {saffron/patricia} Nov 8, 2015 3:09:39 GMT -5

Quote

Post by ✨ zozo. on Nov 8, 2015 3:09:39 GMT -5

SAFFRON LOWE

"Oh. Right." I follow my words in a hurry into the lift, enclosed in a glass world next to a stranger who I really shouldn't be so distant with. In fact come to think of it, I barely know anything about Patricia at all.

The doors close and I feel her eyes studying me, trying to make something of the girl who can't string a sentence together without tripping over her words unless she's set alight and blazing with anger. There is something foreign about being anything but angry lately and even though the heat from before still simmers on my skin I stumble on through the silence as we rise.

"I haven't been up to the roof since..." I begin, sorting through memories to finish my words. There are gaps in my mind swallowing names and faces and places and yet I cannot recall a single time I felt the wind in my hair as I looked down at the world below, tiny and insignificant. Not since the arena.

"Actually," I confess "I don't think I've ever actually been up there before."

We arrive with a ding and I am startled at the sound and my sudden openness. Moments where I become an open book have always been around the other victors but back then I was young, too young to understand that opening my mouth only took them back to the moments they wanted to forget. Regardless, they welcomed me in with open arms and took the weight of my suffering in moments and words and silence. Maybe that's why I told Colgate and Leon that they'd be okay. What a shit load of good that did them with dead siblings and another hole ripped into what we've left them to crawl on with.

Patricia seems to be holding herself fine, but what would I know. We're strangers, after all.

Curiosity lures me outside and the clean air hits me first. Real, clean air - not laced with gas to keep me quiet and on my best behaviour or lost in a dazed state of delirium for the cameras. It almost distracts me from the low hum of below, a quiet reminder that this terrible city still keeps on going. Terrified of going any closer to the edge in fear vertigo will fling me off of the edge I turn back to Patricia and smile.

"I guess I should have come up here sooner, huh?"

The sunrise smiles as if it agrees.

AND I'M COMPLICATED, YOU WON'T GET ME
I HAVE TROUBLE UNDERSTANDING MYSELF
MY HEAD IS A JUNGLE

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

rook
Veteran Member

2,361 POSTS

Pronouns: he/him
last seen Sept 26, 2023 15:42:53 GMT -5

who needs another thing to be sad about?

real {saffron/patricia} Dec 11, 2015 20:57:08 GMT -5

Quote

Post by rook on Dec 11, 2015 20:57:08 GMT -5

♕ { p a t r i c i a v a l f i e r n o} ♕
victor of the 68th annual hunger games

god i'm scared
to think back
about everything that has come before me
my time and future history

The training center still unnerves me. The anxiety grips my chest like I'm heading into the Arena tomorrow morning, when really all I'll be doing is sitting around waiting on Lethe and watching over Phelix. I shouldn't feel so wound up and tight, but there's something about the weight of this entire building that compresses against the sides of my head and makes me want to scream. Hundreds of Tributes come and go, but this place stands at the center of the Capitol, always so clean and sterile, like it's washed and ready for the next batch. It's a giant crypt - not a memorial, but a nameless tombstone, shadowing the Capitol, and they all look to it with such pride. Being inside it is like walking in a corpse. It's taboo, constant taboo.

"I haven't been up to the roof since..." She pauses, her mind flickers back, and so does mine. Since before, right? Many Tributes go up to the roof to get some air and clear their heads on nights where they can't close their eyes in fear of what their minds will conjure up. It's never that simple. Sometimes it's better to close your eyes and face your worst hypotheses than it is to run away from it all.
"Actually," Saffron cuts my trail of thought with a velvet chord, deeper than I remember it being last time we met.
"I don't think I've ever actually been up there before."
My Victory Tour in Ten. She took me into the bathroom and tried to induct me into her and Mace's little friend group. It was surreal and I wasn't in the right frame of mind to understand any of it.

I went to the roof back when I was one-of-twenty-four, and not one-of-one. Back when I was just a number, a statistic. I was forgettable, overlooked. I preferred that. I'm not really one for the limelight, and that's been reflected in the frankly poor media coverage I've got since winning. No one really cares about what Patricia Valfierno is up to, because Patricia Valfierno doesn't do anything or love anyone - As far as they're concerned.

Up on the roof, Pearl and I discussed the Cornucopia. What we were going to do and how we were going to do it. We knew pretty early-on that we were going to try and get inside of the horn, and then hold everyone else off until they'd either ran away or ran straight into my sword. She told me she was talking to someone called Barnabus, and he could potentially convince another guy to join us, at least for the short term. The other guy was Asa, who I nearly killed on more than one occasion out of sheer distrust. It sounded good, and it worked. If we hadn't gone to the roof to talk strategy, I would probably be dead right now.

Levels on levels, masks over expressions, hiding what's real and what's genuine. Levels on levels, shooting past as we rise through the training center's hundred-floor spine. It's moving so fast that I get a sick feeling in my stomach that we'll smash straight through the roof and into the sky, but of course we don't. The elevator comes to a gentle stop, and the low hum of renewable-energy motors dissipates into nothing more than a soft buzz. Stainless steel doors pull back, flooding us in crisp, cool morning air.

Saffron steps out first. Adventurous, it seems. Of course, that was the theme of her Arena, wasn't it? One big adventure. Perhaps too big for children under the age of fifteen, but then it's not too much of a difference when you're accustomed to seeing teenagers die every year anyway. It was a Quarter Quell - The Capitol's way of keeping things fresh. They delivered it well. Saffron Lowe emerged from that wonderland the absolute picture of what they wanted from their theme. They made her everything they wanted her to be, and more. The definition of innocence, year after nauseating year. They layered her with so much false identity and put-on personality that I almost believed it myself. Like everything here, it's an act. Eventually you just get good at differentiating between the genuine and the horseshit.

"I guess I should have come up here sooner, huh?" She chirps as I step out of the elevator and frown at the harsh sunrise. It's too early. Phelix's harsh crying woke me at five in the morning, but this is much worse. Burning light stings my retina, and my top lip snarls up towards my nose in a disapproving pout. Somehow, I can never get enough sleep. It's either rude awakenings, scheduled alarms, or hauntingly realistic nightmares. The holy trinity of post-traumatic stress disorder.

My eyes feel heavy. There were days before my entire life got twisted into this bloody mess that I would spend on a computer. Not just days, but deep, deep into the nights too. Writing code, bypassing firewalls, devising bugs that could shut down entire systems. I illegally moved to District Three for three to learn how to do all of that, just so I could come back to Five and use it to illegally steal money, and then illegally spent it on drugs for bad men who said they'd hurt us if we didn't. Ironic that after all of the crimes me and my sister pulled off, I was made to go and kill other people legally.

I haven't so much as touched a computer in four years. All those directory trees on the command line, going down and indent, down and indent, branching here and there. Repository stacks, remote pulling, method on method, stored like packets of information in my brain. It's all there, but I can't recall much of it any more. It's like not speaking a language for a number of years, or not working with a set of tools. It all just sort of drifts away. All the algorithms and routines for solving problems are dissolving as each day passes, and to be honest I don't have a need for that skillset any more. Since I shut off the power in my Personal Training Session the Capitol wouldn't dare have me anywhere near a terminal, and I have no financial need to use it back home.

It's the way it is. The Capitol even relinquish us of our talents.

There's one skill they'll never take though, and should the time come when I need to kill someone again, I'll still know exactly how to do it. Exactly how to do it.

Whitewash sun bleaches over my skin, and I stretch my legs out by pacing over the wooden canvassing, tangenting from Saffron Lowe. The entire weight of this building is now beneath me, for once. I force a smile, turning to my fellow Victor and one-year my younger.

"I'm not the aesthetically appreciative type," I jab a thumb towards the fields of skyscrapers growing all around us, each one twice as tall as the last, all stabbing at the pink sky. Architecture and man-made beauty was never really my thing, and since the Games I haven't really been one for nature either. So question is - Why am I up here? It's not exactly an escape when all you can see is giant golden emblems of the Capitol. And I'm sure as hell not here to throw myself off the roof, because not only would that be stupid and a waste of my life, but also because they've got forcefields to stop Tributes from doing that. Maybe I wanted fresh air. Maybe I needed to clear my head. Or maybe I was just banking on someone else coming up here.

"Since when did the Capitol's famed Child-Victor suddenly grow up?" I fold my arms and look her up and down. Everything about her since we met a few years ago in Ten has changed. Hair, height, expression, accent. It's all matured. She's not that kid any more, and I'm interested to know exactly what she's become.

my i've wandered this library
for years now
killing time
whilst time slowly kills me

word count: 1337, graphics: rook
theme: books by tall ships