Wear My Heart On My Fist //Saffron

[gamemaker kelsier]

[presto]

You don't know what it's like to watch your little brother being lowered into the ground as your parents watch white faced and you wear the suit that you wore for his reaping and it's cold but you can't feel it because you're busy remembering how he came home in pieces and he was empty and dead and his eyes were wide open.

You have no idea how it feels to watch the person you promised you would always protect be covered in dirt. To watch as your hand tosses a handful of sand on the coffin and you murmur, "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust." Knowing full well that it should have been you, it should have goddamned been you. You don't know what it's like to know you've failed the one person who mattered most, just because you couldn't be there to protect him because you live in a fucking dictatorship.

I'll kill 'em all.

Every last one of those Capitolites. All of their children, all of their pets, all of them with their stupid, grinning faces. All those crowds on the television that cheered as Ewe fell. I'll kill 'em, I'll kill 'em, I'll kill 'em.

"You don't mean that, Eye."

I do, Cal. I really do.

"No you don't."

Yes, I do.

"What about the big brothers with little brothers that they want to protect, or the girls like me?"

Do you think those people even feel?

"They must."

I hate them.

"I know."

I hate them, I hate them, I hate them all.

"Shh, I know, I know."

What do I do now. My fists clench and loosen as I stand on the platform for the family of the dead. I see the family of the girl that died standing across from us. We stand above the crowd so that the Victor can see what she has wrought. I hate that, it isn't fair. A part of me says that yeah it is. It's wrong. We're wrong, we're all wrong now.

I am disjointed.

I have become a fracturing of bones, someone sat on my legs and broke me up one by one. We are stars, tossed out and broken. I wonder what is worse while we wait. To be the one dead, or the brother left behind.

The hardest part isn't even that he's dead.

It's that I'm his older brother and everyone knows that older brothers are the ones who take the bullet for their younger brother. An older brother is the protector, the one that the little brother can look up to. I can't even count how many times I defended him in the schoolyard, how many afternoons we spent, him on my back, me running and wooping through the trees to our tree house. I can't say how many evenings were spent, feet over the edge of the boat, him sketching and talking a mile a minute, me nodding and fishing. I can't talk about how many times I've flicked the back of his head to annoy him, or how many times he fell for my stupid sidekick joke.

The hardest part is that he is gone.

Gone, and here I am, trying to figure out where he went.

I think my mother is crying softly. Tears certainly stream down her face. I can't look my mom in the eyes anymore because we all know that I should have been the one going into the games. I'm the one with training, the one who can't read, the one that was whole, the one that understood it was his job to take care of his little brother. I still remember the day that my dad said that Ewe was my responsibility if anything ever happened to them. Well, it's the opposite. Something happened to him instead so now who's going to take care of us?

The crowd shifts as the doors to the mayor's building opens. Saffron Lowe is emerging.

Saffron killed Ewe.

My fists tighten so hard that they shake, but my expression stays neutral. I stare across the square, across the heads of District Four below my feet. I want her to see me. I want her to look at me and see Ewe in me and I want her to feel sorry, I want her to feel so sorry.

Look at me Saffron.

Look at what you made.

“I wasn't there to
t a k e h i s p l a c e .
I was ten thousand
m i l e s a w a y .”

[/presto]

[✨ zozo.]

SAFFRON LOWE

"i want to say i'm sorry
but i'm afraid i don't know how.

because i have been wicked
and my cold antarctic mouth
won't let me speak.

not then,
not now."
- m.n, untitled.

I think I might explode.

(Or wake up.)

This is a never-ending spiral of dreams. I fall asleep, I awake to a new place. The same dream, the same words, but in a different place with different faces. (They all look the same, though. Angry. Grief-striven. Broken.) I don't know how they're going to end. I never knew how dreams were to end. Most of the time I forgot them, let them slip from my mind as easily as if they didn't exist at all. I wish that my nightmare could dissolve like that, have it disappear from my mind and wake up the way I was again. (They don't deserve that. They deserve for me to remember. They deserve for me to tell their tale - not yet. When I'm ready.) I awake to a new place with the same routine, so foreign and unlike myself and yet I know every inch of it. Every word to say, every arm to raise, every nod to give and hand to shake and seat to sit upon. (They all pass by in a blur, leaking from my ears and onto my pillow to seep back into my head when I try and fall asleep. They will not let me forget, not even in my real dreams.)

I awake exploding - screaming and yelling and frantic. And yet I do not call for help, I do not ask to be forgiven, or to forget. I gulp down my pain and feel their horrors sink into me, fall into my bloodstream and back into my memory. I do not want to forget. I will not let myself forget. I shall feel this terror every single night for the rest of my existence, feel their pain and relive the amplified horrors to remind myself what I have done, who I have lost, and what I deserve. I explode, and soak it all in, and relive my routine over and over as they plague my every move because I deserve to rot in the essence of life for being so selfish.

When they call me to the stage I turn it all of. In selfish moments I let myself slip back into the dreamworld filled with paths made for giants and watch them paint the canvas red. And then I blink, and I awake - although the darkness is where I explode and it's the middle of the afternoon and I am expected to be a puppet. People pull my limbs up and down, up and down, run words through my eyes and print them against my tongue and fashion them with my voice and play them out to the people of Panem to remind them of what they have not done. I am an instrument of fear playing across the Districts and nothing can tune me out.

(I catch his eyes and falter.)

The words stop. I linger on a single syllable that stutters through my system "I..." (an awfully familiar sound for more than one reason.) "I..." There is nothing. People shuffle. Murmurs arise. Mace is not here to hold my hand. Klaus is not here to smile. Opal is not here to sweep me into a hug. I am not here, I am not here, I am back in my dreamworld and the world begins to shatter around me like it did when I watched the light fade from Ewe's eyes except there's too much light in his eyes this time there's too much I can't see I can't it's all I no please-

"I-"

- can't look at him.

I can only scream.

"i could say it
but you won't believe me.

you say you do
but you don't deceive me.

they were kids that i once knew
now they're all dead hearts to you."
- stars, dead hearts.

[gamemaker kelsier]

[presto]

She's a little girl.

Which I knew, I knew that, but there is a difference between knowing and seeing. At least for me there is, because I never really knew much, or believed in anything unless I saw it.

She's just fourteen years old, Ewe's age. (Now she's older than Ewe though and she always will be until the gap between them is larger than Ewe's age.)

When I am an old man, my little brother will still be fourteen and I'll have forgotten what he looks like because we never got pictures of him, we were too poor, all we have are his self portraits. They are abstract things that hold galaxies beneath the flecks of paint and what if I'm already forgetting.

What if I'm already forgetting the way the corners of his eyes crinkled up when he laughed too hard at something stupid I said.

I watch the girl on the stage, looking miserably like a cyborg that has gotten it's lines so right that it doesn't even have to look at the typed out message that has been inserted.

I am sixteen years old and what if I had to kill to survive?

• Would I attack other children? (yes)
• Could I cause blood to form from cuts made by my own weapon? (yes)
• Would I attack my own friends? (yes)
• Would I do everything in my power to get back home? (yes)
• Would I kill somebody's little brother? (yes)

The realization hits me like a bullet to the brain.

I study her further.

Long hair, bangs that she looks like she wants to hide behind, eyes that stare out that don't see, a body that I can't tell is shaking but could be, should be. Her voice is sweet, small, strong and bright. It reminds me of Calypso's. Unassumingly complicated. I don't dare break my gaze, but I hope Cal is down there somewhere. I don't know when I became so comforted by having her near, but I am, and I need her by me. I just need someone.

The Victorious on the stage catches my eye and for a few quick seconds we stare at each other.

I don't know what I was wanting to see in her eyes.

I thought I wanted to see that she was proud, hateful, strong. One always wants that, to have reason to hate their enemies. That's what teacher said. Who can hate a dog with eyes like the moon. It's easier to hate a creature that have the sun burning in their eyes.

She screams and the crowd moves backward, instincts taking them far away from the stage.

I blink, uncertain. No one touches her, they all step away from her agony. I should step away from it as well. This is the girl that took everything from me, she took my brother. She took him, she took him, she killed him. I hate her, I hate her, I ha-

No, I can't.

I can't hate her.

She's all that's left.

My legs move and I break my stare. My hands loosen. I jump down from the platform, landing with a practiced roll that brings me right back to my feet and I run.

I run towards the little girl on the platform.

“I wasn't there to
t a k e h i s p l a c e .
I was ten thousand
m i l e s a w a y .”

[/presto]

[✨ zozo.]

SAFFRON LOWE

"i felt very still and empty
the way the eye of a tornado must feel,

moving dully along in the middle
of the surrounding hullabaloo."
- sylvia plath, the bell jar.

I have not yet faltered until today. Something about reading out the same words over and over again in a robotic manner became easier. It shouldn't be easy, looking into their eyes and staring back with nothing, feeling the souls of their loved ones scream to touch them for one last time. It isn't, not really, but each time hurts less and less. That can only mean I am to be presented with an even more terrible fate in the near future, but feeling numb comes naturally and I, as it turns out, am terribly selfish when it comes to not feeling.

But today, today I cracked. You see some of the old victors stutter away, watch as the final traces of their unreal life disintegrate from their minds. I never realised all those years ago that I was watching my future unfold. Never would I dream of a life like this. Now, it seems I'll never wake up from it. I let out a scream and snatch it back, murmurs falling from the crowd into my hearing, but Ewe's brother walks towards me and the nightmare unfolds once more. He is the ocean, the tidal wave, the floods billowing from the ice cube and chasing me into the maze. (Some nights I wake up and I've won, like I did in reality - but some nights are different. Some nights Ewe strikes me down and I crumble into nothing and awake to everything.)

He parts the ocean of people and begins his march. I back away for a moment, stepping back into the past, and then halt as he progresses. (I dare not take my eyes off of him.) I could be selfish and protest, hide away behind Peacekeepers or doors or my own crumbling imagination. I could hide away from the noise of the world and stumble in silence as I have been doing, letting everything collapse inside of me. Or I could be brave. (He was so much braver than I. He was, he was, and he slipped away before I could bring myself to tell him.) I'm brave - I told him I was. I promised I would be brave.

I step forward - once, twice, past a Peacekeeper, and another. (Fear will not paralyse me. Not today.) Five seconds, four seconds, three seconds, two, one-

I shut my eyes and await my end.

"come away to the water
come away to the slaughter
to the ones appointed
to see this through

they are calling for you
they are coming for you."
- maroon five, come away to the water.

[gamemaker kelsier]

[presto]

I FIND I CAN'T STOP DREAMING

[/presto]

It occurs to me that I don't know what I am going to do when I reach her. I just know that I have to.

I shove past people even as they run towards me in fear, or something I don't know. It's just never quite good to be apart of a gathering of people anywhere, not in the Districts. Crowds make everyone skittish, drop a pin and they scatter. I feel like A fish trying to swim upriver. I've got practice though, moving through people, and I twist and push. People learn to stay out of my way. I'm Eye Saw, I train under a Master at the dojo, heck, I've got my black belt. This is ridiculous. I break hear a cracking sound as my open hand finds a nose. I think I've just broken someone's. We're a frenzy, they run from a little girl who is scared and all alone.

I wanted her to be alone, but I don't.

I can imagine Ewe standing terrified and alone on some stage in some alternate world where he lived. He would have been so scared, so terrified of utterly everything because he would be feeling trapped. What does a kid who has killed do when no one understands them, when no one can really try to. I can only thing of how Ewe would feel because I know my little brother so well. No, I knew him. He is dead, he is dead, he is de-

Yes.

So.

He is dead.

She is alive.

She needs someone, so you be the someone that can be there because she is so very alone, and it isn't fair. It isn't fair, it isn't fair, it isn't fair. Well, life isn't. So pull up your socks and deal with it, Eye Saw.

I break out from the crowd and there is only space between us and the stage and there is she stands, alone and momentarily forgotten by the Peacekeepers in the chaos of the crowd. I do not falter. I know what I have to do. Ewe would have done it if he were here because Ewe is like that. I could never understand that, how he could so readily shake the hand of the bully who beat him up in the schoolyard only the day before. I'm not like that, not at all. I could try though, for him.

I reach the stage, and I don't bother with the stairs, leaping up, gripping the edge and pulling myself over instead. She steps forward and there are only steps for me to travel now. She's got her eyes shut and she is waiting for me. Waiting for me to do something like stab her or hit her. I don't know. Some part of my brain marvels at her courage. Another part cries out at her acceptance for death. Please Saffron, not when he could have had it.

I curl my hands into fists and grit my teeth. I don't understand why everything has to be like this. I know though, what I want to do right in this second. I'm not afraid to do it.

I don't falter.

Swooping down to her height, I wrap my arms around her and rest one hand against the back of her head, the other, still in a fist holds her close to me. I hold her protectively against me, an older brother for a lone little girl. I will protect her, if no one else will. I need someone to take care of, and she needs to be taken care of.

"Do not give up your prize so readily, Saffron Lowe. Life is precious here," I murmur.

[presto]

TEMPTATION IS SO FRIENDLY

[/presto]

[✨ zozo.]

SAFFRON LOWE

"those wounds
may never stop stinging
but i can assure you
they will fade."
- r.r, untitled.

The end is warm, comforting. It grips me whole and tugs me in, silences the crashing sea of voices and noise around us. I rather like it, as odd as that sounds. There is no pain - or perhaps there was, but I didn't feel it. I don't remember it. (I hope they all felt nothing, too. I hope that pain was erased from their minds as they floated high into the sky and away from all of this suffering.) I don't get that luxury - I remember everything I did and everything I felt. Yet I feel nothing in this moment. There is no pain. The end feels an awful lot like Mace, like Klaus, like Opal. The end feels like a friend.

Only it's not the end - it's Eye.

Ewe sings underneath my skin. "Tell them I loved them." Although now, in his brother's arms, as I wrap my own around him and fall into safety, I feel his words spin through my head and collide behind my teeth. (I trust him, Ewe trusts him. He tells me it's ok: he's glad to be home.) "Tell them I tried, I tried, I tried. I never stopped trying." I promised I would, so I perch upon my tiptoes and squeeze my eyes shut to stop the floods that chased us to his end from being released into the world (the tears fall anyway) and deliver my oath.

"He loves you" I whisper in trembles, astounded at how my words could possibly be coherent. "He tried, he never stopped, and he loves you, Eye." I have become a message-carrier, an act I promised to fulfill falling off my tongue as a weight falls from my shoulders and back into the sky again. The past tense feels wrong, as if Ewe in this moment did not exist - but he does. I feel him here (I always feel them, dancing behind me, holding my hand, saying silent goodbyes for the last time) and I hope Eye does too.

"He loves you so much."

A ghost smiles behind me as I blink back tears. There's a Peacekeeper approaching us but I manage a sorry excuse for a grin - it's okay, my eyes say. He hesitates as the crowds calm down and I take Eye's hand, wiping my cheeks with the other Capitol replacement, and clear my throat.

The end is safe, and feels like home.

"guilt is the only weapon that you own
you should weight off the good things you have left.

and it won't all fall to your feet
when you're down and on your knees
take everything you need
to set you free."
- gabrielle aplin, on your knees.