wrap a bow around this. victor blitz.

 
saffron.

Her slip of paper slid underneath the bedroom door had only one name, but it had puzzled her for a moment. Kirito Miristioma was a stranger - not to Mace, who had spent time with the boy when she was lost in her selfish moments and the two of them had danced on opposite ends of breaking ice. To Mace, he was a friend. To Saffron, he was a face she knew, smiled politely at, but had never bothered to study.

Instead she had watched him drift, as most of the Victors had, in the outskirts of her bubble. She'd stopped getting to know them, save for names, Districts, downfalls. It was sad, really - sad that she had cast them aside. Perhaps it was fear of losing those she cared about. Perhaps it was an echo of her past, disjointed and small, and a table full of victors where her feet couldn't touch the floor. She was older now, older than most of them, each year etched into the skin on her back and behind her eyelids. Each year she grew older, each year they had spent rotting in the ground.

It was time for that to change.

Placed under the tree with a disjointed arrangement of letters that spelled his name, a parcel sat wrapped with a bow. In it contained toys outgrown by the tiny tots she used to cart around the Training Center, now perfect for Kirito's younger children. She'd watched how careful he was around them, delicate and full of love - so far from the killer she'd met on the television.

But so was she.

"Merry Christmas" she smiled at the rest of them huddled around the tree a few nights later, finding her place next to Mace and eagerly awaiting Kirito's unwrapping of her gift.