this is not your palace | nico & saffron.

[✨ zozo.]

saffron.

She can handle Fayre and Royce dying. It's a sad, routine disappointment and five to ten minutes of feeling like a failure - but she can handle it now.

Cedar Halt's face melting off of his skull is another thing entirely, and she barely stumbles to the bathroom in time to let her lunch meet porcelain - but she handles it. 

When she puts Quinn to bed that nights she holds her a little too tightly. It's hard to let go of her squirming child, "Okay Mommy," she protests. "I sleep now."

Saffron sleeps and Quinn's face melts into her hands. But she can handle nightmares, finding Mace in the dark and staying close to her daughter the next day. Dreams, she reminds herself. They're just dreams. The horror of what they might represent in 6 years to come is another thing entirely, but the 65th Victor knows she'll get to it if she has to.

Paige is pregnant again, she can handle that.

There's two more kids dead, she can handle that.

But she sees a tiny little girl from Eleven who could be her daughter walk through the arena to meet with a red-head from Twelve who could be Saffron and she can't handle it, pushing up from her seat and excusing her behavior. "I just need a minute-" she begs, "Just a minute-"

("This is not your palace,
and you are not the queen.")

It's Ewe Saw's words that she thinks of first when she runs into Nico Thorne.

("No, you're right. I'm not.")

("But I'm the King now.")

She wonders if Nico Thorne has learned to carry the weight of his heavy crown yet. 

"Nico," she breathes, realising this was the first time the two of them had properly spoken. There's never a need for introductions in the Training Centre, so she doesn't bother telling the boy what he already knows. Instead she asks a question, looking for her own answers.

Because she'd always been selfish.

"Shouldn't you be in there, watching it all?"

title + quotes from 65th & 81st finales