sav[i]or -- standalone

k  a  h  i  n  t  a   j  o  n  e  s

Safe.

She finds no comfort in the word, even as it slips soundlessly across her tongue, heavy in a way she had not expected as she tastes it again and again until it has lost all flavor. Temple Jones gets to be safe, for good, and Kahinta makes plans to sneak into town to put her name down for tessera come the change of season. She’s forgotten the names of ten’s newest tributes by the time she’s managed to slip away from the District Square.

In the coming weeks, she doesn’t feel bad when she forgets their faces as well, though the blood stays with her long after Nico Thorne is crowned and twenty-three tributes don’t come back to life.

-----

Though she doesn’t read the stars any longer, her feet cannot shake their unending restlessness. Kahinta settles into a routine of rhythm without purpose as soon as the light grows dim, but it doesn’t help her shake the sharpness that lingers in her lungs, in her stomach. She stares into the darkness of the alleys of District Ten, and hears the answer of her own anger lingering in the shadows, no duller than it had been the day Bette had taken her sister from her. Temple had come back, and it hadn’t fixed the way Kahinta had felt something break inside of her when she had wished desperately for another person to die so she could just feel better. Nothing would ever fix that.

The sharpness lingers, and Kahinta feels the way it splits her under her skin so neatly into pieces.

She lets it, throwing herself into working at home and walking at night and slipping quietly from classes to find odd jobs around town so she can sneak a few extra coins into her family’s savings every week. It splinters her open as the days turn into weeks into months, fraying her nerves until she feels nothing but the cold as she comes to stare down the same alley again and again and again, blindly wishing for something to swallow her whole so that she won’t wake in the morning, but it never comes.

Instead, Kahinta watches silently as people steal away through the faded brickwork and towards the fields, and farther still beyond the proximity fence that doesn’t hum with promise.

-----

It’s after the eleventh time watching them move a huddled figure out into the void beyond the fence that she approaches, following them back through the winding streets until they reach a worn-down building far from the center of town. They don’t take kindly to her intrusion through a broken window, but the small group listens when her teacher from two years prior tells them to leave her be. The woman is softer than she remembers, and it’s a strange thing hearing her speak of safety and rebellion after so much time spent hearing her lecture about the rightful retribution of the Hunger Games.

Perhaps Kahinta has much more to learn about how the world works, far more than she had ever realized before her sister came back from the dead.

Time stops mattering the longer Kahinta works through the starlight. She sleeps when she must, and eats when she can, and stops putting her extra money in with her family’s savings as the group grows from four to five to ten. It’s okay, she tells herself, putting her name down for another tessera so that her family will last the winter. It’s okay, she tells herself, pressing a man and his wife quickly against the rough alley wall as the sound of shuffling feet sends her heart into her throat. It’s okay, she tells herself, taking out the pale green dress she’d been given months before as a thank you and laying it across her bed the night before the Reaping.

Five more years. Maybe safe will mean something again when she can sink her teeth into it. Maybe the stars will find a way to guide her home like they used to.

For now, Kahinta keeps her eyes to the ground.