no one could save me but you // [73rd D10 Train]

[Baby Wessex d9b [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

The tributes had been sequestered elsewhere in the Mayor’s home, rotating through their tearful goodbyes. Mace knew he ought to be empathizing more with them; once, them had been him. And while these tributes – like all of those since the Sixtieth – were important to him, no one had ever rivaled Saffron Lowe.

She’d tugged him into the servants’ alley, which led to the kitchens. Mace was pretty sure Marlboro didn’t have any servants, but it was a tidy, dark place. By memory, he brushed the hair back from her face, melded his lips to hers. There were so many reasons to stay hidden in the shadows, and so few to board the train. In the Capitol he would see his best friends and his daughter. It was those faces – and those alone – that ever made him board the train.

Eventually they unwound, Mace grumbling about duty. He held fast to Saffron’s hand as they walked the familiar path at the back of the procession. His wave at the station was half-hearted, his mind dark and dreamy.

Mace directed the two impossibly young tributes to the dining car and sent his children to the sleeping car to wash up for dinner. For a wonder, they obeyed him. In the stolen moment before they had to prep their tributes, he leaned over Saffron’s shoulder and grazed her earlobe with his teeth. “More later,” he promised and then straightened, becoming the Victor Mace Emberstatt, instead of the besotted boy next door.

Saffron and he moved as players on a stage, each step routine. They occupied the dining car couch, across from the tributes. He’d discovered, only by talking to the victors, that not everyone passed the majority of their ride in silence. Julian had always scoffed at the lack of etiquette among Teners, but Mace found the slow, winding road towards conversation the most appropriate thing. It gave him time to size up the boy and the girl, to see more than a polite greeting and grief-stricken eyes.

At last he reached out with his free hand, first to the boy he did not know, and then to the girl he did. “Sorry to be meetin’ ya like this, Kizzy, but it’s a pleasure all the same. Bailey, it’s been awhile.” But clearly not long enough. He would have liked to have never seen the Truus girl again.

[Arrows]

District 10 Female Tribute 73rd Hunger Games

Bailey Truus There is nothing to fear if you don't fear death.     Another hour wastes away into the limited amount of time before the slaughter. Before twenty four tributes stand before the Court of Death and twenty three are declared guilty while one is declared innocent. Before blood stains metal and metal slices skin. Before humans lay butchered and slew across an unforeseeable landscape. Just like the last 72 years before this, and just like five years ago when Esme's heart breaking verdict of guilty was delivered in front of every living being in Panem. It was never a Game nor was it about Hunger. It has forever been nothing more then an express route to the unknown beyond for all except one unlucky survivor. Two of these survivors witch Bailey would be meeting with once more for the second time in her life. Only this time it was in preparation for her own Court appearance and not the girl she should have replaced.      To every side of Bailey the crowd of citizens shifted with unease. Every pair of eyes following each of her steps wondering one question. Could she be our next victor? Just the thought made Bailey scoff. Bailey wasn't walking towards the highway to life, she was trekking towards the highway to hell. Bailey was determined to find Esme at the end of her journey no matter how quickly that journey ended. To see her soft sea blue eyes highlighted by the brilliance of her sandy blonde hair. If Bailey was meant to die sooner now instead of seeing her District again than so be it. If she was suppose to return home once more than so be it. Bailey didn't care about who died or if she died. All that mattered is that she remembered which Court she was entering. The arena is no place to find retribution and forgiveness. It is a place to serve for the sins you have committed and to take part in performing more of them.      Bailey was pulled away from her morbid mind as the body of a sleek steel door slid out of her way revealing a plethora of dining options. A sick and short laugh slipped out of Bailey's mouth at the sight. She found it rather suiting the Capitol chose to plumpen up their tributes before sending them to be butchered. Just as she and every other butcher did across the nation, only this time instead of filleting cows they would be slicing human skin. Not to mention the butchers would all be children mostly with no experience. That was perhaps one thing Bailey actually believed could give her nudge up against several of her competitors. Still Bailey decided to move past her moment of thought as she cut herself a piece of some small pastry and sat down across from Mace and Saffron.      Not long after sitting Bailey's plate laid empty and set aside while her fingers wrapped gently around Mace's rough hand in a shake. "Yeah it has. Hopefully we have both learned a bit since the last time." Bailey said sharply before recoiling her fingers and slinking back into her seat. It wasn't that Bailey disliked either Mace or Saffron but she quite frankly didn't give a shit about what anyone thought of her. If sponsors hated her then so be it, she wasn't entering this death laced Court for their money. Bailey was paying for her silence five years earlier, and at least she was able to admit that to herself instead of wallowing in self pity.

[✨ zozo.]

S A F F R O N .

It is easy to forget when distracted. She swore she wouldn't forget. Ever. And even though that little girl lives on within her, as do all of those ghosts, the corporeal body sleeping next to her is all that consumes her. She drinks him in, every trace, every memory. Mace, and she, and all that follows them. It is all she wants to remember.

Selfishly, she does not want to share him. She does not want to share Mace's attention with anyone, their intimacy with cameras and flashing lights and wide-eyed Capitolites, his hands near anyone else. In the same way she grasps at her sister's deathly-still body and the memories of her father and the faces of the children she left in her arena. Mine, something inside her seethes. (Mine, she thought, fighting Lucy in the snow for another day of her life. Mine, she thought, slamming her weapon into Ewe Saw's broken body for a crooked crown upon her head.) It is childish, yes, but it kept her alive. She doesn't know whether to love it or hate it.

But she loves him all the same. Mace: safety, promise, sanction. Night after night she falls asleep by his side, thin layers of clothing and sheets all that seperate them. She forgets what nightmares feel like for a moment, and when they do return she is greeted with towering arms to fall into as she shakes.

They are killers, lovers, a hunger between them that overflows and spills and boils with newfound infatuation. In the light they dance, smile, fall into each other. At night, when the world fades away and Saffron's realities greet her as ghosts crawling through her skull his presence strikes them down. Dying images of Paige's body as broken as her soul, Kieran's eyes pooling red, he kills them all. Muffled screams turn to gasps, to whispers, to kisses. And he is there, gentle, kind, always with his words that send her back to sleep.

It is easy to forget they are killers until they're paraded back on that stage as such, forced to set aside their love for a moment, made to share what was once undivided attention. Two damned children (she feels childish herself, grasping his hand in hers, desperate not to let go) sent to die, miserably hoping they might survive.

It's not easy to forget that she did.

And there they are, mirror images staring back at the two of them. A boy from the fields with skin scorched by the summer sun and a girl who's family has already been torn apart at the hands of the filthy-rich. Not Kieran, not Paige - but God, they could be. 

She lets Mace do the talking, of course. The girl speaks first after his formalities, words bitter and fierce and laced with trauma. This one's got tongue. Not that her own did Saffron any good.

She leans into Mace, head cocked to the side, and finds words that might have died on her tongue were it not for his salvation.

"The Capitol are going to tell you you're here to learn how to survive. But you don't learn that in a training centre. You learn that before you step up onto that stage and become theirs" she begins, turning her head to glance at the boy too, sounding older than she feels. "You use that to survive."

She can't bring herself to admit that although she learnt to survive, she never learnt how to repay the dead.

table by fox