Midnight Fast and Far Away // [Safe]

[d10f ekta ram // [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

It was somehow worse to be in the Capitol when he actually wanted to be here. He felt like a traitor. In Ten, the only alone time he ever truly had with Saffron was stolen - moments in the woods, ladders stashed strategically beneath bedroom windows. At the Lowe's, they slipped quietly through the night out of respect for her mother; at the Emberstatts, they did so out of respect for his children. He was pretty sure they weren't fooling anyone, but they kept up the charade. He wanted to be a good father, to model (another?) healthy and respectful relationship.

He had every intention of being with Saffron forever, and in knowing that, he wanted to savor every moment, every milestone. He felt no rush towards anything, only a total grounding in the moment. When she kissed him - when she put her hands to his shoulders and rolled en pointe just to reach his face - he knew only that single, eternal moment. Which was to say nothing of the temptation she induced. They shared a bed but Mace was ever so careful not to push his luck, to wait for Saffron. It wasn't chivalry, and it wasn't entirely love, either. After so many years with Julian, he wasn't at all sure he could love Saffron the way she deserved to be loved. That fear, a tiny and easily squashed thing, ruled his thoughts, more than his tributes, more than the Games, more than his friends and children.

Until he watched the Bloodbath and a girl he barely knew who looked nothing like Saffron took a knife in the eye.

It was past midnight, bordering on dawn, when he threw a hooded sweatshirt over his chest and took the elevator down to the dark dining hall. Always the staff left out small treats. Before the sixtieth, they'd only been little bon bons and water. Now, a kettle of tea steamed and ham and cheese rolls were piled high. He'd taken a handful on an iron plate and sat down at his usual table, next to dreams and ghosts.

He stared at the food, and in the dark, it became a slice of cake - the most decadent chocolate cake he could imagine.

He shoved it violently away from him. The rolls bounced gently against the table while the iron plate clattered on the linoleum. Mace put his face into his hands, fingers reaching for his slowly receding hairline, when he felt her hands on the back of his neck.

He took a deep, long breath, and then moved his hands to clasp Saffron's cold ones. "I should have let her have the cake. Percy. I should have paid more attention to Kizzy and Bailey and I'm fuckin' tired of feeling this way, Saff." He turned over the bench to face her, drawing her between his legs. The shadows hid most of her face, the dim light just barely catching her eyes. He gazed into them. "Maybe you were right, way back when. I don't have room in my head for them and for you, 'n I'd rather just have you."

[[ retro gm ] angel lí ✨]

S A F F R O N ;

In the dark, clasped between her fingertips, a sealed envelope with worn edges with a message written by a ghost haunts the night. She swears she feels a heartbeat inside of it, or perhaps it's the echo of her canon firing or her glass shattering on the floor beneath her when the boy from Two plunged a spear into Persephone Delacroix's eye. Saffron forgets to breathe for a second, the world tips, a little girl pattering after her down the hall except she doesn't call out this time, she passes right through her and disappears. Breathes out, in.

Something inside her sinks. That long-forgotten feeling whispering underneath her skin. (She cares. It hurts.)

Percy of Nine lingers in her every atom for the rest of the night.

She lies with the dead girl's last written words underneath her pillow and her lover at her side, drifting through the hands in her hair and soft, grey eyes and warm murmurs of his voice before slipping into  a world where Percy of Nine dances beside her and sneaks out of her bedroom door, finger against her lips, vanishing from sight.

The victor blinks violently in her haze of wake, hands instinctively reaching beside her and sits up when all she finds are sheets and space in the place of him. A crack in her doorway that wasn't there before leaks warm light into the room where they sleep and she knows.

Moments later she finds him grieving, the clatters of his anguish thundering through her like a pulse. His hands shake something furious and all she can do is  use her own to try and steady his violent hurting.

"Maybe you were right, way back when. I don't have room in my head for them and for you, 'n I'd rather just have you."

And it is there again, the elephant in the room left to melt beside a shared blanket 4 long years ago. The difference between the both of them - his kind heart, her reluctance, their shared grief. Yet he cares for her anyway, despite all of Saffron's flaws, despite the fact that for a second I'd rather just have you was more important than anything else. That's enough for her.

Slowly, surely, she takes a seat next to him and pulls out the envelope from her side. A butter knife in her hands slices the paper, noise filling up the cafeteria and its emptiness, and the Victor flinches at her actions. It is an intrusion, a blade to her life and memoir and the Delacroix family but Saffron does it anyway because she is selfish, and in love, and would cut out the hearts of twenty-three more children if it meant the burden on his would lessen.

Clearing her throat, she begins at the end.

"This is my goodbye, Cal, because I don’t know if there’s oblivion or your sunrise or your stars, I don’t know if there is another side where we’ll see each other again. I just don’t think I can win, because I’m not you, I’m not invincible. I always wanted to be like you—I swore I would be someday, but who was I kidding?"

Saffron pauses to glance at Mace, the words of a dead girl on her tongue and in the air all around them. Her eyes meet his and she can feel it in their language of words without sound, without meaning, without need. 

Saffron was kind, once, perhaps, in a different life where she didn't pierce her only friend's lungs and push her sister down the stairs and scream with rage at helpless children with their tongues cut out of their mouths.

She would kill to be like Mace but can't take the chance that he'd still love her with even more blood on her hands.

Despite his silence she continues anyway.

"So this is my goodbye, Caly. I know that it’s just words on a page, but I’d rather write it to you than never give you one at all. You deserve a goodbye, some form of contact before—you know. Because I love you, I really really do, Cal, and I’m sorry. I can’t say it enough.

When I’m gone, I don’t want you to be sad forever. I want my death to be your sunrise—I want you to be happy. Please be happy, Cal. I want you to marry Abraxas and grow old with him and have children, to be what you wanted to be before the church, before the gang, before everything.

I can’t fix what I’ve done, I can’t take back the words that got me here, but I have hope, Caly, that my death will mean something.

Who knows, maybe I will see you at the sunrise."

The letter rests on the table and she moves with ease despite the weight of Percy's goodbye hanging heavy in the air. Minutes of searching find her triumphant and she falls back into her place next to him, a slice of cake stolen from the fridges placed in front of them both.

"For Percy" she smiles gently, stabbing a small slice of frosting and cake with a stray fork  and gesturing for him to do the same. 

Behind them, way out over the horizon of the Capitol, the sun rises and smiles.

ooc; thank you to the lovely я𝑜𝓈𝑒 for writing the letter from percy <3