incandescent { safe }

[[ retro gm ] angel lí ✨]

We spend minutes taking photographs and seconds glancing at each-other when we think the other isn't looking and hours upon hours apart. This new-found solidarity is cold and some days I hover by Mace's door and crave the warmth he brought me for years and years. But I don't want that anymore and I'm most certain that he doesn't either.

I don't know what I want.

Yes I do.

With contradictions played like chords on a piano against my skull I seek the sanction of anywhere but here. It is deathly quiet without 24 guests hovering in these halls and their silence reminds me of their absence. Of the almost imminent smothering of their sparks. Muscle memory kicks in and I slide into the elevator effortlessly. A finger hovers at the rooftop button, then back to the tenth level, and finally clicks GROUND. I feel myself sinking and close my eyes.

Hitting the ground I awake to a freezing world not meant for one fueled with fire. Each time I open my eyes and see this terrible place I scold myself for thinking that one day I will see something different. Choking on memories of unfinished answers and the smoke of my diminished hope I swallow down fury - but it comes back, wave after wave, until I find myself stumbling out of the building and thrown into a world of bustling Capitolites too caught up in their own world to know who I am. It's terrifying, this place, but it's also anywhere but inside and anonymity is a luxury I hardly get these days.

Lungs filled with something other than the artificial oxygen they pump into our bodies to keep us quiet and dazed and behaving ourselves my body begins to unfold. In deep breaths I heave in once, twice, three times - fists shaking, heart ablaze. They can put us on pedestals and promise us empires and write our names in gold but it doesn't stop us from crumbling back down to the people we really are.

I don't want to rule this place any longer. I never really did. I just wanted to go home to the people I loved: to Mom and Paige and Mace. I have all but destroyed them too, and I am so angry at this city and all its false people and the victory too good to be true that began all of this mess.

But most of all, I am angry at Snow. And myself. 

And Mace.

I think I'm falling back into the arena again. SNAP - I can hear the wind howling through my ears. And screams. And an explo-

Shrapnel tears through my skin and agony knocks me off of my feet. In a SNAP there is smoke, everywhere, in a SNAP there are people running and screaming, in a SNAP sirens howl against the sky and flames erupt around me and in a SNAP I hit the ground and I forget how to breathe.

Blue skies disappear through billowing curtains of grey and a smear of red coats my hands. I am detonated - on my feet in seconds - making my way through the chaos as panic takes a hold of my skeleton and I step, step, step (Mace Mace Mace where's Mace Mace Mace where is he where's-)

"Mace?" I call, but all of their faces are unfamiliar.

"MACE!"

I find my words but forget how to breathe.

USED TO GIVE EACH OTHER THE WORLD
I'D RATHER BE BLACK AND BLUE
THAN ACCEPT THAT YOU WITHDREW

[garnet beauford d8 [earthling]]

a note from the desk of

Mace Emberstatt

of District Ten

when you never thought that it could ever get this tough,
that's when you feel my kind of love

He's been freezing for a year. It's worse in the Capitol, where it happened. Right in this very room. Since they arrived for the Seventy First, Mace has avoided sleeping in the bed. He's slept on the floor, in an arm chair, curled up in the bath tub. When he does sleep, snatching a few hours here and there, it is due to pure exhaustion. He no longer dreams. He falls asleep shivering and wakes up numb.

His youngest children spend the days in the creche or with Kieran. Even Juliet - whose smile and quick mind he has missed - isn't enough to crack the ice. He's always waiting. Waiting for the next time he crosses paths with Julian, waiting for the next time he misses Saffron, waiting for the next shard of ice to penetrate his slowly hardening heart.

It's almost evening but he's just rising from the floor next to the radiator. He's not sure when he slept last before this nap. The blankets are knotted from where he collapsed upon them. They would bother Reggie. They would bother Julian. He nudges them towards the radiator and then steps into the steaming shower.

His skin is red when he steps out, but he's still just this shy of shivering.

The Training Center convulses. Or does he?

He lifts his steel gaze to the ceiling to find the light swinging like a pendulum. He's drawing one leg of his jeans over his left leg and the other over his right as he bursts into the emergency stairwell. Ten flights of stairs fly and it's only on the second to last floor that he even realizes the blood is pounding so hard in his ears that he cannot hear. There's a few more people trickling in, the ones who had slow to figure out that the elevator has halted. They bark names at him but none of them are Julian, his children or Saffron.

He doesn't make to the creche. One of the wranglers is standing outside, directing people to the emergency exits.

"I don't know, maybe an earthquake?" She's saying to someone else when she spots him. Mace holds up four fingers. She nods. "They're all outside."

And they are, in an alley between the Training Center and the next skyscraper. His three youngest are on a blanket. A Peaceekeeper puts his hand on Mace's bare shoulder and flashes something in his eyes. "Mace Emberstatt, accounted for."

"Julian Bryze? Kieran Emberstatt? Saffron Lowe?"

The Peacekeeper consults his phone and nods. "Mr. Bryze and Mr. Emberstatt are accounted for."

Mace swallows around the snowball in his throat. "Thank you," he says, which might be the first time he's ever expressed gratitude to a Peacekeeper. Out of the alley onto the avenue which has been flooded with people and broken glass. The shattered windows slice into his bare feet. He knows, somewhere in the back of his mind, that Saffron was supposed to be out doing some sort of promotional thing. This year, more than ever, all of the victors are. He still has the bruise and stitched up gash on his upper left cheek to prove that he's done his duty, albeit on behalf of someone else. Fucking robotic muttations.

The anger comes to him as heat, thawing tight tendons and stiff joints. He pushes Capitolites aside, casting this way and though for plain red hair.

MACE!

His name, as he's not heard it for twelve years. He reaches for a leather jacket that isn't there, for the hilts of knives long gone. But he isn't in the Fifty-Ninth, not even in the arena that exists in his head. He is in a smoke-filled street, staring right at Alexander Hood. "You never scream my name," he reminds her. You're always with me. He reaches for her snowy face, fingers hooking beneath her pointed jaw.

He squints as Alexander and Saffron merge. "Saff?" He asks, his voice too close to breaking to raise over the chaos. Her hair is red but so is her face and now so is his hand. He's no longer gently cupping her face. His hands fly over her skull, checking for wounds, wishing there was a pack of medical supplies at his back.

In the arena of a bombed Capitol, he doesn't have a rucksack or a sword. He doesn't even have a shirt or shoes. But he has her.

"Tell me where it hurts."

[[ retro gm ] angel lí ✨]

There is an axe in the back of my head. Another slams into my spine. Arms wrap around me like skyscrapers and warmth towers over me.

"You never scream my name."

I think I've hit my head. Hard.

But I am screaming. There's just no sound leaving my lungs.

There never is.

"Tell me where it hurts" he begs, and I try to tell him. I try and break myself apart until there's nothing left of me except tiny fragments of glass and ice and place them in his hands. I try to tell him where pain shatters at every movement but I've forgotten how to speak. My words spill from my throat as silent gasps for air and I watch as they spill out onto the floor as the voices of ghosts, mingling with the smoke and dust and blood and shattered panes of windows splattered on the ground.

Our gazes catch fire and it burns to keep them locked but shrapnel has ricocheted through my mind and severed my vocal chords. I try to scream but it's no use. To speak is to destroy. Terror holds a knife to my throat and presses a spindly finger against my lips.

So I tell him through my eyes instead.

Everywhere. Everywhere, like the smoke surrounding us. Everywhere, like the sirens wailing. Everywhere, like the agony seeping into my skin at his touch. A finger grazes my chest and hovers at my heart for a second too long before it relocates to the gash my shoulder, the drilling in my temples, the axe wound in the back of my head. A trail of blood follows it's journey and marks a map of pain across my skin. I am an atlas of freckles and whispers and streaks of scarlet messily strewn across my face, but despite this I am still so terribly lost for words.

The axe still plunges its blade into my skull again and again and again. Something booms against the ground - a truck or an aircraft or another bomb - and suddenly the world tips over. I collapse with it. My arms stretch out and grasp at my saviour's bare arms to steady myself, vision wobbling. Silent static pours from my mouth and surrounds us both until all I can see is those sad grey eyes I love so, so, so much.

His name blooms in my mind and the axe-bearer backs away. I grip his hands tightly and my terror extinguishes. Wisps of ghosts from my past fade away with smiles on their faces. I stop shivering in winter's freezing grasp.

In all of this darkness he is my light.

"Mace" is all I can summon from the depths of my grief. "Mace."

Mace. Mace. Mace.

"Everywhere. Everywhere, Mace."

COLLECTING NAMES
OF THE LOVERS THAT WENT WRONG
(AND YOU CAUSED THIS)

[garnet beauford d8 [earthling]]

a note from the desk of

Mace Emberstatt

of District Ten

when you never thought that it could ever get this tough,
that's when you feel my kind of love

He's not quite finished checking every inch of her skull and neck when Saffron puts her hands on his arms. He lowers them, letting his fingers fall from her shoulders, down the short length of her ribs. Her hands on his biceps, his resting just above her hips. She is bloody but not bloodied, whole but in pieces.

Mace.

His name has always been a weapon: a ball of cold metal with spikes protruding. But in her mouth, it is something else, something that heals rather than destroys: a scalpel or a chisel. Whatever has existed between them for the last six years tugs at his muscles, encourages him to wrap her up in his arms and hold her fast. But he cannot draw her any closer while she is speaking his name.

Everywhere, Mace.

He's shivering, not violently but enough that his fingers tap tap tap against her right hand as he takes it away from his bicep. He moves it over by degrees until it rests against the thudding of his heart.

He should tell her. He should have told her already. But she is bloodied and he is weak and they are surrounded by the Capitol that has twisted their lives into wreckage. He bows his head, curving his spine until he can rest his forehead against hers. Every movement is slow, at odds with the swirling chaos around them. He is desperate to be her blade, to be the knife that cuts away all the grief and misery and the violence. But you cannot hope to save a life when you are wholly surrounded by the cancer that tries to claim it.

"Not here," he breathes, mingling with her breath. "I can't make it stop while we're here."

[[ retro gm ] angel lí ✨]

I exhale - ragged, shaking, terrified - and breathe him in. 

My love should not have found a home in his shaking bones, in his cautious grey eyes, in the warmth of his skin pressed into mine. My love should not be discovered in the midst of a battlefield surrounded in panic and chaos. My love is a killer and may finally be the death of me. My love is shivering, hesitant, and I want so terribly to forge our two souls into one but he's right. This is not the time, nor place. 

"Okay," I sigh, steadying my body and my words and my anguish, but not my heart. Trepidation spills from my mouth as white noise and I feel his hands pick mine up and press my bloodied, fractured life line to the thudding underneath his chest. Slowly, surely, I breathe in time to the beating of his heart. It reminds me that the sun still shines and the world keeps turning, and through all of this, we are still alive.

"Okay."

I know without him having to speak.

I don't want to let go. And I don't - I won't let anyone rip him away from me. Arms cling to my last hope and lead him out of this battlefield, weaving through Peacekeepers and reporters and frazzled Capitolites. Broken glass clinks underneath my feet. Sirens still wail. But I am brave, and this time I will save the ones I love from this arena instead of leaving their broken bodies in the chill of the snow.  In this dream world we swirl and swim until the madness is left behind us. My hand tightens on his as reality fades into view, heart swelling at the sight of his children alive and obliviously happy. 

Falling back into sanction, I find my love right in front of me and watch it thaw our freezing, bleeding hearts until we're nothing but warmth and white light, incandescent. 

For the first time in my life, I feel safe.

I NEVER MEANT TO FALL FOR YOU
BUT I WAS BURIED UNDERNEATH
AND ALL THAT I COULD SEE WAS WHITE