Regrets collect like old friends
Here to relive your darkest moments
I can see no way, I can see no way
And all of the ghouls
Come out to play
/N A M E\ Maddox Ian Ferrell.
/A G E\ Eighteen.
/G E N D E R\ Male.
/D I S T R I C T / A R E A\ Wanderer.

And every demon wants his pound of flesh
But I like to keep some things to myself
I like to keep my issues strong
It's always darkest
Before the dawn
/A P P E A R A N C E\

It's been a while since I got a good look at myself.

I'm not upset about it, I like to think that I'm not vain enough to really care, although if anyone's truly skilled at being self absorbed it's my native people, the affluent sons and daughters of Panem's shimmering, corrupt citadel, but there's a sort of loss of identity when you go for months only seeing your reflection in the rippling surface of a stream or a small glance in a mirror in the darkened hallways of slumbering households that don't suspect a thing. Still, the memories of a childhood in a place where mirrors are altars where everyone goes to worship themselves don't fade away easily, and although I don't like to think of myself as someone who cares too much, I have the ability to remember my looks fairly accurately.

I'm sure I've changed from the way I remember myself - a few months in the wild puts more wear and tear on a person than you'd suspect, especially a person as used to the cage lap of luxury as I am - I know that my hair's grown out, pin-straight raven strands falling into my eyes on such a constant basis that I've developed what's almost a nervous tick, a small twitch of the head every few seconds to shake the dark curtain out of my line of vision. My skin's shifted from what was an initially pale color to a tan that I honestly think suits it better, although it took it quite a few rounds of sunburn to get there. The clothes I brought with me are all beginning to wear out, the fabric becoming threadbare and tattered around the edges, but they serve their purpose, and it's not like anyone important's going to see me in them. In fact, I try to make a habit of not being seen by anyone important. It doesn't do any good to have some wealthy official catch a glimpse of me when I'm robbing them blind.

But some things never change, and even under the harsh scrub-brush of nature there are some remnants of man-made Capitolite beauty that won't disappear. Wide black-brown eyes have gone under the laser so I will never have to wear corrective lenses, teeth have been perfectly evened and whitened to produce a dazzling smile that will never fade, skin surgically altered to never produce a blemish, but perhaps the most noticeable are the swirls of ink up both arms and across the expanse of my collarbone, a bit faded by the sun but otherwise intact, blatant indicators of where I came from and who I am was. Now that I've seen what my home city has done to an entire country's suffering population, I will never be one of those people again.

My build hasn't changed much from what I can tell, other than perhaps putting on a bit more muscle than I used to have. I've always been lean, though, which I suppose is nature's way of making it up to me for having a measly five-foot-eight stature, short limbs and compact torso. If I had to estimate my weight (I should know it after hauling myself up trees on a nearly constant basis) I'd place myself at around a hundred and twenty pounds, but it could be more or less than that given that I haven't even seen a scale since I left, nor am I too interested in taking the time to find one in any of the fine houses that I pay my midnight visits to.

Overall, would someone who knew me from before everything recognize me on sight? Probably. But am I the same person? I'm so far from who I was that who I am won't let me remember.

And I've been a fool and I've been blind
I can never leave the past behind
I can see no way
I can see no way
I'm always dragging that horse around
/P E R S O N A L I T Y\

Some people would call me a criminal, but the title of vigilante seems to roll off the tongue a little smoother.

Maybe it's all semantics, but I'd still be swift to point the difference out to anyone who cared to listen, not that they ever do. At their core, people are people, and the ones I deal with are usually more interested in what I can give them than what I call myself during the process of getting it. But no matter how true that fact may be, I have no right to frown on people for wanting the best for their families, and I've seen the sunken features of too many starving children and the hollow eyes of too many hopeless mothers with too many mouths to feed and not enough money to do it to hold it against them. I've always had this habit of taking things into my own hands because it really is true that if you want something done right you have to do it yourself, and even though that trait's gotten me into more scrapes than I can count over the years, I wouldn't trade it for the world.

Maybe opinions like that make me one of those reckless youths that throws caution to the wind, but that only serves as another description I'd proudly own up to. Adventure calls to me in siren song, it has ever since I can remember, and I've never hesitated to heed that call, diving headlong into the open jaws of the world and letting things fall where they will. And while I may seem cavalier for it, sporting a devil-may-care attitude and an over-confident smirk as I laugh in the face of danger (no one ever accused me of being smart), there are certain areas where I'm deadly somber and stubborn as a braying donkey to boot. I am a rare case, that once-in-a-blue-moon instance of Capitolite and morals existing in the same sentence. Rock-solid ideals are my mode of operation, a sense of chivalry that's disgustingly rare out here in the districts (and it's not just the Peacekeepers, either, even the other male citizens - I see my little sister's face in the features of every mistreated woman I come across and it makes me absolutely livid) coupled with a black-and-white way of seeing justice or lack thereof are what compose the way I see the world, and I would be a liar (honesty, I forgot honesty. Lying is never the best option, take it from someone who grew up in a delicately constructed tower of lies and had to take the long fall down when it finally crumbled) to say that those paradigms haven't affected my life, my choices, me in a very deep way.

I guess the guilt is irrational. I can't help where I was born or who I was born to any more that the people out here can, but every time I have to look at one of those hungry little kids and think about how my childhood was spent goofing off on perfectly manicured parks and never cleaning my plate at dinner when they've never even heard of a playground and are lucky to even have something on their plates most nights... I don't know. It just makes something burn unpleasantly in a heavy knot somewhere deep down in my chest, and while I was never familiar with the sensation of guilt before, I certainly am now. It was worse before I could actually do something about it, standing around in that damnable Peacekeeper trainee's uniform and watching people suffer needlessly. In reality, the guilt was probably why I ran in the first place. Humans as a rule have a habit of avoiding things that are unpleasant, running from them, and some part of me knows that I was running from myself, that the person I've become is still running from who I used to be.

Bringing people some form of happiness is what I'd be content to do for the rest of my life. It's entirely worth the risk, hearing a mother's thanks when I hand her the funds to feed her family three square meals a day for a week, something that had previously been an impossibility, when I watch a little girl's face light up as she cradles a doll that once belonged to one of her wealthier peers that had a whole room full of the things anyway. It's the little things that make it all worthwhile. I used to think that maybe this was my self-made purgatory, working off my guilt until it disappeared and I could fade away along with it, but now I know better. Prince told me once that everyone has a purpose, and after eighteen years on earth I think I've finally figured mine out.

The Old World had superheroes, people who could fly in and eradicate all the universe's evils in one fell swoop, and while I can't fly or lift ten times my weight or shoot fireballs from my hands, I'd like to think that maybe if I can set a few things right in a world that's gone inherently wrong, maybe I can pave the way for others like me to do the same, and there can be a distant hope somewhere in the far-off future of someone who can take this horrid mess of a nation and make it something livable. I've been called an idealist by the people I share these dreams with, even a visionary by a few, but more often than not I'm written off as some ex-Capitol bleeding-heart atoning for the sin of being born with a silver spoon in my mouth while an entire nation went hungry so I could have whatever I wanted. Kid, you talk real pretty about this new world, but it ain't never gonna happen. You couldn't pull up enough men or weapons or courage to take on the Capitol if you worked the rest a' your life. Nothin's ever gonna change, and if you can't get it through that thick skull a' yours you'll end up just as tongue-less or dead as the rest of 'em that tried goin' down that road. You ain't so much a rebel without a cause as you are a rebel without a clue.

And our love is pastured, such a mournful sound
Tonight I'm gonna bury that horse in the ground
So I like to keep my issues strong
But it's always darkest
Before the dawn
/H I S T O R Y\

Life's purposes are tricky things, though, they overlap and blur and everyone wants something different for you, and somewhere along the way it's all too easy to forget what you wanted for yourself in the first place. Or at least, that's how it was for me.

My destiny according to my parents was for me to grow up just like them - A high ranking poster-boy for everything that a good, self-respecting Capitolite embodies: endless vanity, carefully cultivated ignorance, and the knowledge that it's simply unforgivable to ask questions. My mother, the Head Gamemaker's personal secretary, and my father, the Chief Coordinator of Lower District Peacekeeping Forces (such a long name for a boring desk job) would be the first to say that I'm the black sheep of the family, especially now, but even in the earlier years of my life all of their pride seemed to fall on my sister Marla, three years my junior. Mar was everything I refused to be: Compliant. Complacent. Malleable. Nevertheless, we were close, closer than a lot of the siblings I've come to know over the years. It probably had something to do with the fact that Marla was fragile, a sweet, innocent little wisp of a thing with "delicate health" (I could never understand why we couldn't just come out and tell everybody that she had cystic fibrosis and that was why she couldn't run or dance or breathe like the other kids, but the very mention of the idea brought a sheet-white pallor to even my mother's permanently spray-tanned face) while I was nothing if not a doting, overprotective big brother, shielding her from both the kids at school with their harsh judgement of things they would never understand and my mother with her weird obsession with dressing her up and parading her around like a china doll alike. Of the two people I care about that still reside in the Capitol, Marla is one of them.

And then there's Prince. The story behind that friendship is extremely long and drawn out, but in a very condensed form it all began with a playground brawl, a loud-mouthed five-year-old me pronouncing with solid confidence that it was weird for a girl to have a boy's haircut and promptly getting punched square in the face for it. We somehow became inseparable after that, and neither of us missed the undertone of our organized playdates, the hope of our families that maybe we'd end up making a good pair someday. It was laughable to us, though, because we'd always known deep down that we liked each other far too much to get married. It was a well known fact that married people hated each other, and so best friends we remained. We were problem children, Prince and I, blemishes on our families' otherwise perfect images, and we wouldn't have had it any other way. We were absolute hellions, pranking teachers, cutting class, being rebellious in every way we could imagine (I still remember our mothers calling each other in hysterical tears when she came home in a suit and I came home covered in tattoos at the same time. We felt a bit bad about that particular bit of mischief, but it certainly didn't stop us). People talk about sex, drugs, and rock n' roll, and we were the definition of all three, never giving a damn about anything besides causing trouble and having all the fun we could cram into the last few years of our lives that belonged to us before our parents forced us unmercifully into diamond-studded molds and turned us into perfect little marionettes on spun-gold strings. But like all teenagers, there was the tipping point where we took it too far. Or at least, I did.

It was an accident, really, but no one seemed to see it that way because my "accidents" were very rarely accidental. The Training Center is horribly boring in the off-season between Games, and since it's my mother's place of work I was forced into granted an internship there my last year of high school. Well, anyone should have known that's I'd never be content to sit behind a desk filing papers all day, especially with a gymnasium stocked with weapons and all sorts of fun things a few floors beneath me. It's pretty easy to predict what happened next. I may or may not have been goofing off in the gymnasium when I should have been pushing pencils or some such nonsense. I may or may not have been playing with highly lethal archery equipment. One of the arrows may or may not have found its way into the left buttock of a certain Head Gamemaker. Needless to say, my internship didn't last long.

Of course my parents were livid. It was the last straw, they said, they no longer knew what to do with me and for goodness' sake, why can't you just be like your sister and settle down and not stir things up like this, Maddox, why? I didn't have an answer for that other than the simple knowledge that settling down would never be an option, that living a vapid, pretty little life like everyone else would drive me over the edge, but at the time there was no way to put it into words. It was my father that came up with a solution, saying that I obviously needed the discipline that only the Peacekeeping force could provide. I suppose it was meant to be a punishment, but at the time I was ecstatic. I was going to be out of the Capitol, seeing the world and bringing down the swift hand of justice like the superheroes in the vintage comics that were piled high in my bedroom. What could be better?

A more accurate question is what could be worse?

Peacekeeper training was a far cry from what I'd expected. I could deal with the ugly uniforms, put up with the uptight officers and having to make my bed so tightly that I could bounce a coin off the surface of the blankets, but when I actually saw the work I'd be doing... I was trained in District Eleven, one of the four or five areas under my father's distant command. The things I saw there did something to me, hollow, hungry faces and bare feet in the dead of winter, mothers of five and six children trudging home with nothing but half a stale loaf of break and a few half-rotted crops that weren't up to Capitol standards to feed their entire family... I couldn't even begin to process it. How could people live like this when I'd had everything I ever wanted? What kind of benevolent ruling class would force an entire nation to live in such horrible condition for the comfort of a single city? And what kind of real Peacekeepers would take part in that kind of oppression? It was all too much.

I decided to run after having to watch a little girl who looked so much like a skinny, dirty-faced Marla that it physically ached be whipped until she fell unconscious from the pain for trying to sneak an apple out of the orchards. I didn't even have time to think about what I was doing, cobbling together a bag of food and clothes and most importantly a bow and sheath of arrows from the armory before sneaking out of the barracks (if I could sneak out of my apartment under my mother's watchful eye I could weasel my way out of just about anywhere), only stopping off for a quick detour into the room of the officer who'd beaten the little girl into submission earlier that day for the purpose of nicking his wallet from the bedside table. It didn't really register to me what I was doing until I was roaming the dark streets of the District, asking around for information before I was finally able to track down the little shack that housed the girl and her family, pressing the money and some ointment for her wounds into her mothers hand's along with fervent apologies for what had happened - I heard that once someone very important said "forgive them, for they know not what they do," but I don't understand how anyone couldn't know - before I was on the move again, slipping over a bad patch of the fence and fading into the wild like a ghost. If anything remained of my innocence, it was lost that day.

I've fallen into a sort of habit since then, wandering the woods until I come upon one of the fences outlining the Districts, slipping in unnoticed, observing how the people function. It doesn't take much to distinguish the rich from the poor here, the well-fed Capitol officials from the starving citizens, and for the past few months I've made it my job to redistribute the wealth a bit more evenly. It's a bit ridiculous how easy it is to get into some of the houses, cleaning out anything of value I can carry back to the shoddier side of town to give to people who really need it. Oh, I'm bound to get caught eventually, but there's a certain level of fulfillment that comes with improving peoples' lives that makes it worth the risk.

And maybe I'm not a superhero, but I sure as hell feel like one.

Shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, shake it out
Shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, shake it out
And it's hard to dance with a devil on your back
So shake him off
Oh woah
/C O D E W O R D\ Odair.

I am done with my graceless heart
So tonight I'm gonna cut it out and then restart
'Cause I like to keep my issues strong
It's always darkest
Before the dawn
/F A C E C L A I M\ Pete Wentz.

And given half the chance, I would take any of it back
It's a final mess, but it's left me so empty
It's always darkest
Before the dawn
Oh woah, oh woah
/C O M M E N T S / O T H E R\

Shake It Out - Florence + the Machine.

Bio coding style was shamelessly ripped off from Lalia because her posts are the prettiest things ever and I just want to be like her.

[main; 3D6A1D]
[speech; 6EA038]
[emphasis; 8CBC38]
[otherspeaking; BACC39]
[other; A7B242]

Possible beginning of a plot? Maybe? We'll see where it goes.

And I'm damned if I do and damned if I don't
So here's to drinks in the dark at the end of my road
I'm ready to suffer and ready to hope
It's a shot in the dark, and right at my throat
'Cause looking for heaven, for the devil in me... What the hell, I'm gonna let it happen to me.

Heck yeah superheroes! And I totally love the idea of a Robin Hood born of the Capitol. Perfection <3