spanish sahara. kass & saff.

She wept silently as Kassandra Nerys flew into the starry sky.

Saffron had watched her own games a dozen times, her finale several more. Watched her puncture Lucy's lungs, watched her crawl towards Ewe Saw and weep and scream and tremble over his dying words. She had tasted her own trauma so many times that it had become a familiar, normal, bearable taste, easier to swallow each time. But this, a mirror image of a tiny girl with a steely glare and little words and the sheer will to keep going, this was something else.

They had broken her, put her back together again, tied her down and shrunk her and stretched her, bent her to their will and stuffed her into tiny clothes and laughed as she balanced on oversized furniture. She was fourteen when she died and fourteen when she lived and now she's thirty-one, thirteen, three and a millennium, older than the games, younger than her own daughter, most of the time she can look at the clock and will it to tell her the truth but Kassandra Nerys of District Eleven looks right at her through the television screen and she doesn't know what day,
year,
month,

she shatters, and puts herself back together again, all in a second.

There's a reason why she doesn't go to see her immediately. The others had said something about being there and teaching her young and support systems and you understand, right Saffron?

Yes, she understood. Better than anyone. And only then had she thrown her first down on a table-top and snapped back a painful "We can't fuck her up this time!" silencing the room of Victors for one second,
two seconds,
seventeen years.

She had stood up, excused herself, thrown up over the balcony. Because what the fuck did Klaus and Opal and Mace not try and fail to do all those years ago for her? What had they not done that she could?  

Saffron doesn't have an answer for Kassandra. She doesn't even have an answer for herself. Not when she looks in the mirror that morning. Not when she looks in it again and sees the newest Victor staring back at her.

"Hi," she croaks, words. They're easy, and they're impossible, for people like Saffron.

Fuck.

"For what it's worth..." she manages, looking up through the windows of the Training Centre, "I think you're gonna handle this a lot better than I did."

^{[ dars ] [ song ]}