kaius brennus » one » complete

[/font] [/color]

Shoulders back, head tilted up, eyes over your head. Never quite meeting your eyes, not unless you’re of equal or greater status. Feet gliding, long legs covering the floor in the languid movements of liquid mercury poured from a golden goblet. Careless. There’s no other way to explain how he moves, like he always knows where he’s going, is completely certain of his next stop and his final destination. Not stopping for anyone or anything, certain of the fact that those who know what’s best for them will find themselves scurrying out of his way. Will fall away from him with one lazy flicker of his gaze, training a stare that could kill on any one that thinks they can share his paths. Share the greatness that he’s been handed down by inheritance and whispered stories, not by his own accomplishments. The way he moves, it’s as if he believes he could walk on water if he tried.

Maybe he could. Maybe he could intimidate even the ocean not to swallow him whole as his feet slid over its glassy surface. Maybe he could convince even it of his own importance, of the way in which his head tosses and his shoulders roll with each step forwards. Making everything seem more grand than it really is, adding a new kind of worth to even the most simple of movements. He has complete control of every part of his body, knows just how to conduct himself in order to turn heads after him, whether he’s running, toes hardly brushing the ground for milliseconds at a time as he bounds over the ground with merciless speed, or he’s strolling along without a worry in his mind. He is not just the master of himself, but of all those in his presence. The way he moves is not something to be taught or learned, but something that is carried by blood and money.

coun·te·nance
/ˈkountn-əns/
¹a person's face or facial expression[/font]

Ease. It’s written all over his face, unmarked by scars and freckles, unblemished and clean. He has a wicked smile, the kind that looks more like the razor-thin edge of a knife than that of a boy. Then again, he’s not just any boy, he’s a Career. He doesn’t need to scowl to show disdain, doesn’t need to train his face at all. His gaze does the work for him, the things that his full lips don’t need to do. He has the glittering, sea-glass eyes of a bird of prey. Calculating, observing, watching out for every movement and waiting to see what comes next. Intelligent, yes. The kind of eyes that can memorize entire scenes, full days, complete textbooks. Eyes flickering with an unhidden temper, waiting for a spark to ignite the gunpowder stored within his bones, to spring him into action with untold consequences. Everything about him is angular, from the cheekbones that rise out of his face to the hard edge of his jaw, the corner at such a hard edge to it that it seems as if there’s no flesh over the bone at all.

He’s a dangerous kind of beautiful, a threatening sort of gorgeous. The kind of boy who wears his qualifications on the curl of his mouth and the tilt of his chin, the kind who stretches out his neck just so everyone can see the tendons pop, can see how his pulse beats steady under his skin, waiting for something to put it into the hammering action that will have his hands balled in fists, his muscles tensed and ready to spring. He has an awful sort of expression, a permanent challenge to all those around him which he wears as easily as the most welcoming of smiles. There’s nothing fake about how he wears his attractiveness. He’s perfectly comfortable in his own skin, aware of his own appearance and happy to use it like a whip. A certain leisure to how he schools his features into that of the spoiled, that of the boy he’s meant to be.

ut·ter·ance
/ˈətərəns/
¹a spoken word, statement, or vocal sound[/font]

The way he speaks is black-painted poetry. Every word comes out harsh, inflected and run over his tongue in such a way to make even the softest of vowels laced with a particular hatred for all those that have ever been near him. He doesn’t so much speak his words as he does spit them, no matter what he may be saying. They’re mismatched and patched together in a way that’s uncharacteristic of the well-bred, of the patiently created and connected. His voice still holds the softness of luxury, the drawl and drawn out vowels of old money. There’s fluidity to the tone in which he uses, an accent bathed in gold and silver, but still there’s a raging intonation to his words that doesn’t match the silky-warmth of his rough voice, the scratchy way in which he speaks as if he’d rather yell.

The only time he takes care with the piecing together and weaving of his vowels and consonants and letters and syllables is when a range of curses falls from his lips, drowning the listener in all sorts of colourful swears and horrible words. He makes them sound loving with his care to put them together in just the right way, as if he’s an artist mixing drastic, conflicting colours on a canvas with the utmost attention to how to splash them all just right to create a masterpiece out of things that would otherwise be discarded. His challenge of authority moves all the way to the way in which his lips and tongue run over the words that somehow were banned in history, the things that make mothers cover their children’s ears as they look on with a certain kind of wonder. He makes a song out of forbidden things, turning those words in which some can make so musical into a cacophony of things better left unsaid.

Then, the one thing that should never have made its way onto his skin:

tat·too
/taˈto͞o/
¹a mark with an indelible design made by inserting pigment into punctures in the skin[/font]

Tattoos have always been a form of identification. To create a distinction between tribes, to mark kin, to show all those in a community a certain status or disposition. Perhaps spiritual, perhaps religious, or maybe just purely vain. A permanent art piece to wear on your skin is often no laughing matter, but to him, it was just another ploy. A new way to cause the annoyance of his brother, to get the older boy that he despises so much to turn his back on him for another reason. Still, the thing that stretches across his back is glorious, an intricate design that moves and shapes itself in a way that makes it seem liquid in its movements, not permanent but instead an ever changing creature that has taken temporary habitat upon his skin.

There’s no explanation, no easy description of the ink that covers his back. It weaves its way over his ribs, snaking in between the bones and hiding beneath, over, between his shoulderblades, reforming as he stretches and moves. It curls over his shoulders and kisses his collarbones, tries to edge its way up the side of his neck, though its tendrils don’t make it far. Its not so much art as it is monster, a menagerie of patterns and swirls, of secretive creatures that have never made it into this world. Thorns and flowers, beasts of every species, all kinds of things made of the darkest of ink. He’d sat for hours in a chair, the only time he managed to stay still for any amount of time without the urge to yell as his body was punctured over an over, breaking the skin and turning him into something new. Bleeding into his veins and turning him just as much monster as the depictions running across his spine. As ethereal as his moods, flickering and sparking and twisting over his skin, a madness to the designs that suggests mistakes were made and covered by new creepy-crawlies.

It is part of him, and he part of it. The two are inseparable, and on him is the only place such a chaotic design would belong.
[/blockquote][/justify][/size]

- - persona

What makes a man anything more than a hollow shell? Who decides what makes humans better than anything else in this world, any of the other things that creep and crawl and breathe? If it’s humanity itself, than we’re sorely mistaken to think that we can be any better than animals when instinct takes over. When it’s fight or flight, we’re nothing better than the rest of the creatures in this world, but still we tilt our heads up with pride and keep walking along, two feet striding one in front of the other to an unknown destination. We continue to move forwards to nothing at all, just hoping beyond hope that we meet someone, find something, accomplish some feat that will prove to ourselves that our very existence was worth it. If we die with nothing to show for it, then we’re the worst kind of person, aren’t we?

Still, not everyone shares that sentiment. Some people are more than happy simply to live, to do as they please and not wait around for other people’s opinions. It takes too long for the world to make up their mind on a person. It’s a wait full of backstabbing and whispers, of eyes flickering up and down and anywhere that’s away from the rest of the crowd’s, unable to meet a thousand gazes staring back at you as you await your fate. There’s those that couldn’t care what the verdict is, whether they’re charged as guilty or named innocent. What does it really matter, in the grand scheme of things? Either way, people forget. They’ll forget your name, your ancestor’s names, your children’s names. They’ll all be whispers of the past someday.

Some people really just don’t care for everyone else’s words. They’re meaningless, the equivalent to a different language altogether. A bothersome fly buzzing around their ears, only to be batted away. He is one of those people.

war·ri·or
/ˈwôrēər/
¹one who is engaged in or experienced in battle

[/font]

War is an awful thing. Screams and yells, hollers and wails, terrible screeching of metal on metal and the crunching of armour as it caves inwards, imbeds itself into the fighter it was supposed to keep safe. The clinking of chains and the thunder of horse hooves on plateaus and hills covered in blood, the smell of copper pungent in the air. The wind will carry the smell away, and the grasses and weeds will soak up the blood of the fallen, of the wounded, of those who will never make it back home. Water will rinse it away, as far as it can reach. A thousand beasts and wild things will thrive on the solution of reddish liquid, will lap and lap until their tongues will never be rid of a metallic taste. The heroes will go home, looking on the inside as their dead comrades do on the outside.

Now imagine what it would be like to fight a war against everyone. A war with no real beginning and no real end. A constant throb, as steady as your pulse, a part of your life that you can’t pinpoint the reason of, or even what you could possibly gain for it. Just something that you’ve always lived with. Something that you’ll die with. It’s not something you can easily discard, not even something that you can break away from. At some point, you made a vow to keep on fighting this battle where the enemy is everyone else, and your allies are nonexistant.

He’s the commander and all of the soldiers of his own battle, of this thing that he’s created for himself without meaning to. He’s alone in his stand against the world, against all those who he doesn’t have reason or intention to respect. There’s nothing in it for him, nothing but the hope that someday he’ll break free of this fight that slips through his fingers as easily as water. One man against all the rest. Him versus the world. And he doesn’t even have anything to gain from it.

ar·mour
/ˈärmər/
¹a quality or circumstance that affords protection[/font]

Some people say that the only way to avoid pain is to wear your weaknesses like armour, gleaming and shining, a flashy covering for your skin and bones and everything in between. A layer that’s supposed to save you from flickering steel and the wicked words that pour out of people’s mouths. To wear your weaknesses proudly is to be brave beyond imagination, to be greater than any man ought to be. It’s difficult to admit to yourself that you possess weaknesses in the first place, and harder still to decide what exactly they are. Many people will go through their entire lives wearing the lightest of their weaknesses as a simple chainmail, thinking that as long as there’s something between them and harm, they’ll be fine. It’s the weaknesses that they can’t find, the ones they kick aside and bury under everything else, that’s truly what they’re afraid of being found out.

Some think that these words of wisdom are insane, though. There’s easier things to wear than a shell of insecurities and uncertainties. There’s lighter materials to wear, ones that will allow them to breeze by in the world, fast and agile while everyone else buckles under the weights on their shoulders, suffocate as their breastplates and helmets crush their lungs and throats. Sometimes, it’s easier to sew a silk out of vowels and consonants, commas and full stops and hanging questions. Everyone already possesses a tongue, a weightless thing, and it only takes a bit of fine tuning to turn it into something sharp. A bow with it’s string pulled taut, words ready to be shot like arrows into your back. Straight through your heart.

His arrows are dipped in venom, dripping with poisons that will melt any human from the inside out. Don’t ever ask him for a lie. His honesty reigns supreme. His truths are as blunt as a club, and just as painful when they crash into your skull. He won’t dilute his sentences, won’t make reality anything less than what it is. The blunt truth is hard to hear, especially when there’s no kindness to muffle the blow. His hatred runs deep; he doesn’t give everyone a clean slate at first meeting. He waits for them to earn anything but blind rage instead of waiting for them to prove that they deserve nothing better. Most of the time, they’ll never know anything else from him. His fights are legendary, a string of outrageous comments, things that should never be said. He knows. He knows that he’s wrong, but the thing is, he just doesn’t care.

He knows people though. He knows that staring someone in the eye will make them whither under his stare. There’s very few that can keep his gaze without looking away, without letting their eyes flicker down in submission. He’s not a leader, though he radiates dominance with his unbreakable gaze. If you can earn his respect, he’ll follow you into the most unwelcome places, will back you up until the day he dies. His loyalty is undefeatable, but it’s nearly impossible to receive. His armour makes sure of that, it’s mix of horrible truths and cold eyes and deadly silences, the kind that beg to be filled by something. Anything. Just some sort of indication of life under this compromise of a boy that could have once been something great.

in·trep·id
/inˈtrepid/
¹resolutely courageous; fearless[/font]

What does a man have to fear once he believes that he’s lost everything that has any worth to it? What can he think to grasp onto, to hold tightly between his sweating palms when there’s nothing left for him in the world, nothing that he can lose to the gnashing jaws of any predator or the whips of a Peacekeeper? When he has everything, nothing outside of his reach, but isn’t afraid to lose any of it, then there’s no reason to cower. Only reasons to keep his chin held up high in the arrogant expression of a king sitting upon his throne. An indefatigable ego will not allow for things such as dread to snake their way around his throat and choke him off. In fact, it won’t allow for many things.

So what does he have to fear? He’ll never starve. He’ll never lose a fight when it counts. Chances are, he’ll never be reaped, not when everyone else wants to rush up on that stage and volunteer before him. Not when chances are, the person who’s called would never back down from their spot. He could never pull the amount of tesserae that some could, thanks to having only one sibling. His wounds heal. His armour protects him from everything else.

So he charges into everything headfirst. Reckless is the only word that could describe him. Not brave. Bravery and courage comes from a goal, from a mission to save a princess locked up in a tower or slay a fire-breathing dragon. He simply takes dangerous actions because he doesn’t care. Doesn’t care if he lives or if he dies. There’s really no one left to remember him either way, and if nothing else, he’d rather go out with a bang. He has no boundaries, no limits, no fears; only the belief that he could intimidate even crackling flames to stay clear of his skin, for to burn him would be to make a deadly mistake.

hab·it
/ˈhabit/
¹an established disposition of the mind or character[/font]

Slam, crash, bang. Everywhere he goes he leaves the echoes of slamming doors behind him, the stop-shuffle-stomp of his feet as he walks away. There’s nothing to be gained from creeping around like a scared little mouse. The whole world is at his fingertips and he’s not going to sneak by. Everyone needs to know he’s there, that he’s there and he’s not to be ignored. He doesn’t need to be mad to kick down a door, to throw it into the frame so hard that the plates rattle in the house next door. It’s not like he’ll get in trouble, not when there’s no one left to chastise him. At least, no one that he’ll listen to.

There’s something strange about a boy that’s not really a boy, a certain kind of oddity to the way this one hides. He’ll pick at scabs that he gave himself, jumping off of buildings and letting his arms skid across the pavement. It’s not so much a nervous tick as it is something to do, something more than sit around when he’s chained like a dog to his brother’s leash. Even he has his tale though, his little teller of when the gears in his head aren’t clicking quite right. He doesn’t bristle, not like he does when he’s been hit, suddenly more awake than anyone else to walk the Earth. A sudden flare of power and muscle and alertness that makes it seem as if he walks a corpse road, awaiting the stirrings of danger to finally open his eyes. He doesn’t run his hands relentlessly through his hair or drop his eyes. He just paces, taking up enough room for an army, suddenly something bigger than himself that charges the air with tension as easily as a broken wire.

Then, when pacing isn’t quite enough, when his legs don’t get tired or his head doesn’t clear, he really has no choice but to try something new. Not smoke the pretty cigarettes that some do, a cigar pressed to his full lips and blowing up into the air. He tried it once, maybe twice, but it never brought any relief, though still he carries the form of breathing. Heavy intake through his nose, light on the exhale through his mouth. No, but he’ll drink himself into oblivion, into bleariness and dusty rooms, a world swirling with colours that are too bright and the laughter of a man who knows that no one else is laughing with him. It’s a bad habit, maybe, but it makes things easier. Sometimes, that’s all a person can ask for. [/blockquote][/justify][/size][/color]

historia - -

Books are often split into three parts: the preface, the story, and the epilogue. The preface is often an introduction, a way of getting to know the characters and the settings before you’re swept away by plot twists and new faces, by beasts with clicking claws and gnashing teeth. It sets the mood of the story, leaving you with a chill down your spine that makes your fingers itch both to turn the next page and to turn all of the lights on, makes your toes dig into the bottoms of your shoes as you stop yourself from looking into all of the closed doors and darkened rooms of your house, the library, maybe even the bookstore itself. Or maybe it makes you sigh as you wonder how the poor, lonely girl or boy will ever find their true match when all of the fates are against them, when even destiny seems to work against this glorious match made in heaven. Or maybe it’ll simply make you yawn and put down a book, deeming it boring, slow, any number of things that makes you want to stop before you reach the true tale trapped between those pages.

Then the story will go any number of ways, if you choose to continue on. So many ways that there’s not room in the world to describe. However, the epilogue is something else. Not quite a continuation, as oftentimes it doesn’t pick up right where the last chapter left you stranded. Instead, it tells of their adventures after those fateful last words, recounts how the tables have turned and the tides continue to ebb and flow. A constant reminder that no matter what happens, life will go on as it always has. The world could collapse pages before, and still the epilogue would be there to tell you that for all of the deaths and all of the disasters that your heroines and heroes have faced, they too must keep moving forwards, since there’s no turning back. Once you finish a page in a book, you can never reread it in quite the same way.

Now, wouldn’t it be so easy if our lives were so straight forwards? If we could pinpoint the beginning, the middle, and the end? Could turn back a few pages and notice, with a certain kind of accomplishments in our hearts, that we’ve found the climax, or the turning point, or picked up on all of the foreshadowing that came chapter upon chapter before? How much easier it would make our lives if we could so easily tell when everything changed, or could find where our stories finished and the epilogue began, or even when we could stop kicking our feet at dust and spring into action as the prefaces of our own lives came to a resounding close and gave way to the adventures that we would remember for years to come. But it’s not quite so easy. Not for anyone. Sometimes, what you believe to be your entire story is really just the beginning.

be·fore
/biˈfôr/
¹in store for; awaiting

[/font]

Owen Brennus was a rich man, even a powerful one. The kind of person who could walk into a room and grab it by the knot of its tie, thrust it up against a wall by its collar and keep it suspended there for hours, or of walking in and shaking its hand, as if it were an old friend. An already respected companion, even. He had a way of making those around him feel both intimidated and safe, of catching everyone’s ear and talking them into anything. He once said that he could talk a hundred men over a bridge into rushing waters filled with the most grotesque of mutts, and knowing him, no one questioned it. No one even scoffed. It was just a generally accepted statement. Owen was a man that was made to control other men. Ripred had broken the mold so hard on the day he was born that there must have been a great earthquake to shake the lands, one that left even the grandest buildings in the Capitol in rubble. Of course, there was no such thing, but he was in the business of entertainment, not truths, and his son was in the trade of listening, not believing. It worked. He was a good story teller, and, once upon a time, his son was a great audience.

If Ripred did in fact break the mold to make Owen, he would have used that same one to make his three sons. The eldest held his authority, the tip of his head and the waves, the way that he walked not as if he were looking to own land, but as if he already did. As if the world was already his and he just let the rest of the populace believe that they had some say in their crops, in their houses, in the things that they tended and the places they were born. Cathal was a king born with a crown upon his head, a matching one upon his father’s. Then there was Kaius, with his smile built for war and gleaming eyes like newly minted armour, the finest sword just out of a blacksmith’s shop. Then came Darren, with his shaggy head of curls spun tight with humour and charm. A true son of a rich man. He had little girls chasing after him before he knew how to properly run away, back when they all still had cooties. Still, all three have hardly a drop of their mother in them, a meek little thing named Tulle. A girl married while pregnant, as not to bring dishonour on the name Brennus.

Yes, Owen was a scoundrel. A man who left for months, to who knows where, and came back with sweet breads and fanciful gifts, with boxes and bags and ribbons that glimmered in the sunlight of District 1. He wasn’t a great man, but he was a great businessman, in a business that had nothing to do with morals. He still told tales though, every time he came home. He once told his middle son, for his name always sounded like something else on his lips, like “poison” or “venom” or “death” or maybe something as simple as “disappointment”, that when he was born, all of the cattle in District 11 cried blood as red as the oceans had turned in District 4, and all of the coal mines in District 12 heard only silent canaries before the men within them choked to death on fumes. The list went on with every district, even reached the untouchable Capitol as the children there were born like mutts, part human and part bird with spectacularly coloured feathers.

Kaius was not in the business of believing, but it was a story that was hard to ignore.

up·bring·ing
/ˈəpˌbriNGiNG/
¹the treatment and instruction received by a child from its parents throughout its childhood.[/font]

How do you raise a child that tastes like arsenic in your mouth? How do you nurture this baby when sometimes, you can’t even believe he’s yours? It’s hard indeed to love a broken thing. No matter how much he loved his father, no matter how much he looked up to him in a way that made him more god than man, he was still a changeling child. The gift of one of the fey, leaving an inhuman child on a parents’ doorstep when the true child was off in the Summer Court, dancing away as it learned the ways of winged things. He might have held his son in his arms, was even there waiting outside the door as he was born, but still he never quite believed that he was his own. Of course, he was. His mother was too delicate a thing to cheat. A low born by District 1 standards, a girl who once had not a single penny to her name. She loved him, surely. Just not enough to make up for the emptiness that came with a father as ethereal as a ghost.

So he was shipped off to school or prayers every day with his brother. Professional academies with fancy names and imposing buildings, with campuses that could take hours to cross when his legs were short and his feet still tripped him up as they grew. He toddled and teetered, but back then, he still believed in education. Still believed in a future. He didn’t notice the fact that all of his lessons went around in circles, just telling him again and again of how the Capitol couldn’t be beaten. How they had to be feared. How the Games were a merciful event, and most of all, how winning them would grant a man a crown, the most prized crown in all of the Districts. The only one that really mattered. He just took it for truth, since he was small and unfettered, already working on trying to be someone he wasn’t.

Every day when he got home it was always the same. If his father wasn’t there, it would be homework or playing with his brothers. Then, if his father was there, then he found himself battered and bruised the next morning, showing off splits in his full lips and bruises over his cheekbones with pride. The evidence of his father’s teachings. Boxing lessons, every night that he was home. Owen was a good teacher, if nothing else. Once a feared Career, a perfect candidate for the Games he never made. As time passed, only music lessons on strangely named instruments, how to throw a proper punch, and an extensive memory of Latin verbs and nouns and adjectives remains in his head from all of the years of lessons that he sat through. Of all the classes he now skips.

fu·ture
/ˈfyo͞oCHər/
¹the indefinite time yet to come[/font]

Some people are lucky enough to have their entire lives written out for them from the beginning. Maybe not in great detail. Maybe it’s a sort of path, one much like being told by a fortune teller what may be in store for them. Whispy words and flyaway stories, strings of lies and lucky guesses all woven together to create a dream catcher with surprisingly accurate warnings. Things that could just be written off by coincidence, like bumping into an old friend at a grocery store or being approached by a neighbour, asking if they could buy a hat or a jacket that they spotted you wearing for an ostentatious price when you were just told that money would be coming your way. Little things that could be said to happen to anyone. Everyone fights with their brothers, and not many live to a ripe old age in the Districts. It’s easy enough to look at someone and be able to tell that someone close to them must have died. Of starvation, disease, maybe an accident at work. Possibly an injury brought on in training that they didn’t expect to fester as it did. Still, just lucky guesses. Anyone could make them.

Then, sometimes you don’t even have to be told what your future will look like. Not over crystal balls and tarot cards, not over tea leaves and strange-smelling smoke. You don’t have to hide away in a tent or a gypsy caravan as a woman sings and yells and calls out in a voice that doesn’t quite seem like her own. You merely have to look around you, at the way you live and the way you will always live. The grand mansion unseen in almost all of the Districts, the jewels that twinkle at your mother’s throat, not good enough for the Capitol but too beautiful to throw away. Expensive things that tell of wealth. Old money. Always better than anyone who stumbles across a thread of gold in the rocks or a diamond mine. New money burns in the pocket, whereas old money is there to stay, to grow and grow without even the slightest bit of work. Land goes directly into cash when you have dedicated employees and years of accumulated knowledge on your side.

This was to be his future. His everyday. A new house, yes, but surely just as grand. Not the entire business, as that was his eldest brother’s to own, but money and lands were to be signed to him. Even without that his surname alone would get him far, would have people falling at his feet and begging for a chance to work with him thanks to his father’s influence, and his father before him, and a long line of father’s fathers that all gave him a life full of ease. There was no need for him to ever lose a night of sleep, not even due to the Games. Sure he put his name in for the tesserae, but so did everyone else in District 1. He had nothing to fear, not even the poverty that grabs hold of so many in Panem. He was born a little lord, and he never thought his titles could be touched.

crux
/krəks/
¹a vital or decisive stage, point, or event.[/font]

What do you think it would be like to have a carpet swept up from under your feet without seeing anyone move it? How do you think you’d react if suddenly you found yourself up in the air, and then you were falling, slipping, landing on your back with the wind knocked out of your lungs? Would you gasp for air, or would you just lie there stunned, not even remembering to breathe until your sides ached and all of the shocks controlling your brain sent frantic signals to your muscles, telling you that you needed oxygen, that you’d die without it? It’s hard to tell until you’ve actually found yourself flattened out on the floor with nothing to show you how you ended up there, with only the clipped memory of falling but no real recognition of how it happened or why it had to happen to you. It may be a way that our minds work to protect us, telling us that it’s okay. We’ll be okay, and there was nothing to worry about, because if there was, then we would have remembered. Right?

Sometimes you just beg for amnesia, for the release that would come with forgetting a certain point. Most of the time, you’ll start out that way after seeing something you shouldn’t have, never would have asked to see. With nothing at all except for the aftermath held in your mind. Then the memories will slowly get there, will bury under your skin and never let you go. Just the ringing in your ears that takes you a hundred times to recognize as your own yell for help, for someone with medical experience that could do the impossible. That could bring a man back to life. Then there’s the glimpses of blood, more blood than you’ve ever seen in your life. Staining the pavement a sickly shade of red-brown, glimmering and wet and somehow still sticky in the middle when the edges have dried to a crust. A shell over the road that should tell you that it’s already too late, even when your heart keeps hoping and your eyes keep blinking, waiting for the whole thing to go away. To wake up sweating and screaming in your bed.

Instead, he never woke up from his nightmare. Owen Brennus’ body was taken away. There was a funeral where everyone wore their best clothes, looked as crisp and clean as if they were all going to interviews, not to a man’s final resting place. A sea of black, so many men and women that he’d probably made playful jibes at in the comfort of his own home. Many more still that would often lead him rushing into his office grumbling, though they were too rich to ignore. And three little boys with dry, red eyes, standing beside a woman who no longer knew how to speak.

Later, the will was read, and those three boys were met with news that they’d never expect. They might have had everything, but they didn’t have a home. They weren’t allowed anywhere near their house, or the woman within it. They had all the money in the world though. It was easy enough to find a place, an old warehouse where they could live together. Even though the older two couldn’t stand the sight of each other and the youngest was too afraid to fix his brothers. They were a family not only stolen from, a family where their father was taken from them in the dead of the night with a bludgeon to the head, but one where the mother wasn’t a mother at all but instead a butterfly trying to fly away with flaming wings and boys who didn’t know what to do. Who didn’t know anything at all.

He needs to get away. He needs to leave his eldest brother, though he doesn’t know what to make of Darren, of his curls and bright smiles and laughter that needs to go untouched from the cruel twist that found itself leaping on the Brennus boys with no warning shiver of grasses or growl to tell them that it would ever come. There was no calm before the storm, not unless their entire lives were built on the precipice of a climax that would find them all half-drowning in a world that they’re too young to understand and too old to simply float by in. They weren’t made for responsibilities, they were made for decisions that couldn’t go wrong and dollar signs that they’d never have to wait for. Now it’s another year of Kaius to wait, with the oldest brother in charge of finances until that birthday in which he’ll finally be free. Because that’s all he wants.

No, that’s what he needs. What he wants is his father back, but he can’t have that, no more than he can have a key to the vault signed in his name early.

So that’s how a life can turn upside down in less than a day. In once simple hit of an unfound weapon, drenched in a father and a husband and a scoundrel’s blood. Some object that will never be searched for held by a man who will never feel justice weigh heavily upon his shoulders, since really, no one with any authority cares. For all of the power that Owen had, he’s still nothing to the authorities. Just another piece in the games that extend so much farther past what’s shown on screens throughout Panem. A warning to even the richest and most respected men in District 1, to the sons of all of those men and the wives and the grandchildren and anyone who’s spoken to any of the four in the market. There’s no such thing as safety in the Districts.

Society makes pawns.

Circumstances have made Kaius what he is today.[/blockquote][/justify][/size][/color][/blockquote]

[/td][/tr][/table][/center]