in these hands i'll hide { ten train thread }

[[ retro gm ] angel lí ✨]

S A F F R O N L    O    W    E

She doesn't ever forget that her hands once held dead girls hearts and she felt their pulse of living at her fingertips. At night she can hear them in her own heartbeats, in the depths of Mace's chest, in Paige's throat, her mother's embrace. A reminder of their stillness, how their skin and bones turn into flowers and leaves and dust in the summer sun.

Saffron takes Mace's hand, always, and squeezes it tight. The other in Myara's own firm grasp. She wants to scream, to break down and cry and shake until the earth opens up and swallows her whole like they used to her words. Another half of her just wants to sit here, watching the untouchable world flit past them out of windows, her family in chains of hands and veins and love.

And the boy - she feels terrible, but he is not family and he is not hers. She knows that Mace is the voice in her silence and all she can manage to say to him is compromised of glances and tremours and murmurs to Myara and prays he can understand her language of grief. 

"We're made of something better than all of them" she whispers into Myara's hair. "We're made of light, you and I."

Light, in the darkness of that terrible place, placed a crown upon her head. Light, in the chasm of her own damnation, brought Mace and his love to her soul. Light, in the depths of terrible hearts and wicked ideas, placed her family upon that stage. 

She doesn't forget that in one hand lies a killer and a lover, and in the other lies a stranger and a piece of her. 

Dead girl rising to a blood red dawn, she holds on to them both and braces for the moment they're ripped away.

[Avalon]

M Y A R A L O W E

 

She felt confined suddenly, unable to move beneath the currents of a force that had caught her at the fleeting seconds of an undeniable repression. She felt trapped suddenly, like a hummingbird caught in a gold sculpted cage, the flinging door slammed behind her, and she was being carried towards the unknown. Wings battered, torn, and she couldn't shift back into the girl the world once perceived her to be. It was only a matter in the fact that she hadn't been that girl for a long time, she was lowly and it hadn't mattered if the surname was stitched together to form a tapestry - it'd all been perfect until that one line of stitching.

"We're made of something better than all of them", Saffron whispered into her braided hair. She hadn't turned her head, because she worried if she gazed the victor in the eyes for even a second her body would catch stone. Her limbs already felt of the substance, and she was only waiting to be finished off - eventually, (but not now.) 

"We're made of light, you and I.", Myara twiddled her thumbs. Hundreds of thoughts cramming against the linings of her conscience at once, a headache forming to a migraine and all she wished to do were find a way to open the golden cage. It was a complex equation to discover, a plan that had to be sketched out, and executed perfectly. She knew already she'd find a way to escape, but everything comes at a cost more than what the bargain had offered. From the outside it looked simple enough - just win.

Myara finally removed her eyes from her thumbs, she turned to look at Mace for guidance, catching his eyes before a ray of light beamed against her own. It was sun dusted between her and Saffron, a fading sunrise falling to a sunset it only seemed. Looking to Saffron, she moved closer to her hair like she had hers. "And I heard it's true, they say - that light always absorbs even the greatest darkness."

T H E  L I G H T  B R I G A D E

 

[d10f ekta ram // [earthling]]

[googlefont="Great Vibes:400"]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

No matter how many times he was proved wrong, there remained a persistent - even annoying - voice in the back of his head that chirped, "everything is going to be fine. Today is just another day. Soon there will be cherry pie and a softer bed and city lights playing over Saffron's skin in the dark."

When Myara's name is read, Mace doesn't curse the President or the escort. He curses the little voice in his head that told him everything would be fine.

His first instinct is to run home and hide the portrait over the stairs. The stupid fucking portrait, which holds not even a grain of his brother's soul, somehow becomes vulnerable. It had simply been so long since he'd been related to a tribute. A heartbeat later he realizes the obvious: he isn't exactly related to this one. But she is.

He turns to her; she's already gone. Her hand in his has gone cold and he wonders, if not for the tether of his own fingertips, if she would have opened her delicate arms and flung herself into the sun. He's still thinking about that, brooding over it, as they settle on the train. A snippet of conversation about light filters past. "It can also burn you," he mumbles, before realizing it was probably the wrong thing to say.

It's then, for the first time in hours, that he feels like himself. He relaxes his grip on Saffron's hand and reaches out to the boy. "Your last name's Todd? Any relation to Mary?"

[googlefont="Great Vibes:400"]

[Kire]

Ansgar Todd

He had been pulled from his brother and mother after such a short amount of time. Ripred, still ever present, was the only familiar thing surrounding him now. The three faces staring absently were strangers, or would be had the Capitol not brandished their names at the citizens of Panem and especially District ten like weapons. Soon his name would be as well, but the spear point of his memory would be driven into the heart of the Capitol and not the people they oppressed. Ripred's name would spread through his and eventually all of Panem would be united against the white-bearded devil.

He bows his head, touching his palms together and resting his forehead against his hands. Ripred, help me to unite the people of Panem so we may triumph as one over the demons that torture us so. Let us be released to a world of peace and light.

The two Lowes are muttering to themselves, clung tightly to one another so the lines of where one begins and the other ends are blurred. That closeness was one he understood. He had that with his brother. Anselm and himself had always been two halves of one whole. Missing that part of him now, being away from his one friend, was a much harder pain to deal with than he had expected. Ripred filled many of the cracks in his self, but filling a hole in his chest was much harder.

The man, Mace Emberstatt, who had won when the Todd brothers were only three, turned to look at him now. "Your last name's Todd? Any relation to Mary?" He starts slightly at the mention of his mother's name. Then, with a small nod, he speaks. "My mother." His voice is matter of fact, filled with mingled love and longing as her image comes to him. She had been shaking when the peacekeepers had pulled her away, calling to him to tell him of her love for him. Ripred, bless her and guide her in this time of need. Allow her to feel love while I am unable to express it to her. Her final words of love and prayer steadied him slightly as he looked at Mace Emberstatt again. "Are you a man of Ripred, Mr. Emberstatt?"

[[ retro gm ] angel lí ✨]

S A F F R O N L    O    W    E

Child of the sun. A child, always, a cruel reminder year after year that she was a child, is a child, perhaps always will be a child no matter how tall she gets or how crinkled her eyes become or how shriveled her skin gets. Beneath all of the sun, her brown eyes and splashes of freckles and orange turned gold turned bright yellow hair, there lies a child who awakens every year of every Games and screams like she did in that maze. 

Canon fire, she drowns out those memories and shuts the child out. All she has is Myara's touch and Myara's words and she submerges herself in family. For years she would stare out the window and vow never to put her heart back into the tributes like she once did and she laughs at that little girl who longed to explore the world unknown and her curiosity that pointed a gun at Myara's head and threatened to pull the trigger.

Mace's grip loosens and his words are murmurs, some she wants to hear and some she doesn't. Those are conversations for later, when her family is ultimately torn away from her grasp and she cannot whisper in her ears words of strength, a lineage, a birthright.

"You're better than all of them" she breathes - and for once her words taste like truth instead of the empty, bittersweet nonsense she chooses to swallow year after year. If not for Myara, but for herself, the only reassurance that will rest her trembling hands and rabbit-heart.

"We'll beat them. Together."

Or both die trying.