dirty city, ugly, pretty [d10 train]
Feb 15, 2022 16:29:57 GMT -5
Post by jj jenkins d7. ✨ zozo. on Feb 15, 2022 16:29:57 GMT -5
Shattered glass, and it's like looking in a mirror.
They both know what they're seeing. An echo of a younger, angrier Saffron. A different child every year but they all carry something of who she used to be. Little kids, angry kids, quiet kids, brave kids. Kids with little sisters and kids with red hair. Kids with trauma, kids with rage, kids with too much spirit. Reminders.
Omens.
And here is Saffron afterwards, the 66th and a glass shatters at the bloodbath on the television. The 74th, Myara - a broken heart, a fist carving up plaster walls. The 76th, Emberly falls and her fist finds Teddy Ursa's cheek.
Here is a kid who knows he's doomed no matter if he comes out of the arena dead or alive. Here is Saffron reincarnate - younger, angrier, with far less patience. A Quell kid, damned in more ways that usual. Mace looks at her and she knows, he does too. She's not afraid of confronting her younger self anymore, in any of its forms.
"Hey!" she snaps at Bowie -- she was this, she is this, but she's also a Mom and a friend and a mentor. She's calmed fiercer storms than this. She knows what someone should have, could have said to her all those years ago and didn't - instead they stuck a needle in her neck and the world went black.
"Hey," a little softer, yet still firm. "I get it. I get it, trust me -- hey, look at me."
"Bowie, right?"
His name is laced now, a bullet never meant to be fired. It tastes like gunmetal in her mouth, and she heaves in a breath through her nose.
Exhale, "Save it for the arena, okay? That Avox did nothin' to you," her ginger head tilting to one side. "Take it out on the people that actually want to hurt you. But for now, we're gonna try help you get out of this shitty situation as best we can - the rest is up to you."
She bends down, trying to ignore the clicking of age that verberates in-between her bones, and picks up a lone glass that had rolled toward her feet on the plush velvet floor of the carriage.
"And if you're gonna throw anything," she finishes, arching her own arm back to aim, "make sure you can hit a target first."
Her own glass flies, bullseye dead-center of the television screen at the other end of the carriage. It shatters against the seal of Panem, shards twinkling in the afternoon light.
She smiles at Mace, breaking the silence.
"You can let him go now, hon'."saffron.