Charlie Darwin [District 8]

One glance makes it apparent that Charlie is, to say the least, rough around the edges. His light brown hair always sticks up in odd places while being stuck down with sweat and grease in others. Charlie doesn't really care too much about his appearance. For example, he gets his hair buzzed off once a year, usually in the summer, and just lets it grow out the rest of the time, no matter how shaggy it appears the rest of the time.

He is an average-sized boy at five feet ten inches, maybe 130 pounds, but fairly well muscled from the strain of keeping himself alive. His neck is thick and masculine, topped with a proud jaw. Charlie's pale skin is dotted with scars from various encounters with the hardships of his life.

During the the rare better times, Charlie Darwin has a broad, goofy grin that, when paired with his ridiculous laugh, makes it obvious that--despite what he has been tasked with--he is still, in a way, just a boy. Some people cite his laugh as obnoxious, but it is intoxicating. When Charlie laughs, the people around him want to laugh, too--or punch him in the face.

Most of Charlie’s clothes are riddled with holes and stained from dirt, grass, and blood, among other things. Especially during the hot summers, he often opts to go shirtless rather than wear one of his few shirts that are scarcely more than rags. You would think that being in the textile district would mean that it would be easy to acquire new clothing or at the very least patch some of the holes, but from Charlie’s experience this has not been the case.

The only thing Charlie wears that resembles wealth is a single small earring. He would not have cared for something so frivolous usually, but his ear was pierced by scissors quite on accident while getting his hair cut. Thinking the hole looked rather ridiculous on its own, he got a small steel stud to decorate the hole.

More than anything, Charlie is impulsive. He does not think before he acts, he simply goes on instinct. In some instances, this can come in handy--Charlie is always the first to respond to immediate danger when quick action must be taken. However, his impulsive nature more often than not will land Charlie in a sticky situation. Getting into trouble is something that he has always been very good at.

This quality makes Charlie rather bold and maybe even courageous, putting others before his own safety. His fight-or-flight instincts point to fight much more often that flight, which earns him a lot more injuries than he would have, if he were more like his twin and thought before he jumped in to whatever situation head first. He is, and always has been, something of a troublemaker.

Because of his impulsiveness, it is easy to say that Charlie has a tendency to grow impatient quickly. He doesn’t like to wait for more than a few minutes at a time--if that--and can’t really sit still. Charlie can’t stand to wait around for news or to let other people handle situations while he simply stays put. Waiting is something he refuses to do on principle and by his very nature.

Over the course of his life, Charlie has had to develop a very good skill at improvisation. He’s had to--never developing any semblance of a plan before he takes action means that Charlie has had to make things up as he goes along. He can be careless at first, but he thinks quickly on his feet and is usually able to make up for it.

Charlie can be obnoxious at times, rarely considering other people’s feelings or how the things he says or does may affect them. He doesn’t mean to be tactless, but he can come off as insensitive or arrogant to strangers, often provoking fights due to his impulsiveness and reckless nature.

He is not a very guarded person, doing little to conceal his emotions because he doesn’t really care how other people see him. How others regard him does not really matter to Charlie. This doesn’t mean that he’s bad at keeping secrets--quite the contrary. He’s spent his teenage life lying about his mother (or lack thereof) and has yet to slip up. If something important needs to be kept a secret, you just have to be direct about it with Charlie.

The one person Charlie is different towards--more sensitive to, more patient with--is his twin sister, who is very much his opposite. Where Charlie acts on impulse, Elizabeth considers everything before doing anything, and he likes to leave the important decisions effecting both of them to her, since she is much more versed in careful planning and thinking. Sometimes her inaction drives Charlie crazy, but he’d never purposefully do anything to upset her, because his twin is literally the only family he has left, and he loves her very much.

It is easy to say that life has been less-than-perfect to Charlie. In fact, it is too easy--less-than-perfect is a gross understatement. Life has, in fact, been rather horrible to the Darwin twins. Even for Panem, where tragedy and poverty are the norm, the pair have experienced an unfortunately larger amount of woe than the average household.

Presently, Charlie does his best not to draw much attention to himself. He works with leather under the apprenticeship of an exceedingly old man named Mr. Taker, who, in all honesty, rarely does anything more than nap, or, ‘subconsciously supervise,’ as he puts it. Charlie does just fine in his work, but does not manage to make much money, due to his position as apprentice.

It’s not like poverty is new for them. Even at a young age, the Darwins never seemed to have enough money for anything. The family was always on the large side--the twins had five other siblings in total--and what little money was brought in was quickly halved by their alcoholic mother’s drinking habits.

And funerals. The Grim Reaper seemed to be quite fond of the family. Or, at least, was a big fan of visiting the Darwin residence. Death is something that Charlie and his twin are, sadly, more than familiar with. It’s not anything he managed to get used to--each dose of misfortune brings him a fresh wave of grief.

It started with Oliver. Younger than Charlie and Elizabeth by a year, he was always sickly. At his healthiest, he was slight, skeletal, fragile. A diminutive boy, frequently bedridden with high fevers and stomach illness, it was little surprise that Oliver didn’t make it to his fifth birthday. He died of consumption just after turning four. Though he was young, Charlie has a very vivid memory of gripping Elizabeth’s hand at their little brother’s funeral. They lived in District 8. They knew what death was, what death meant. It was still painful for the entire family.

The next to go was the infant Margaret. Being so young, her death did not have as much as an impact on Charlie as the deaths of his other siblings. However, as the little boy Charlie remembers it, Margaret’s death seemed to take the greatest toll on their mother, who began to drink. Heavily. She’d get very, very angry, beating her husband, blaming him for the deaths of her children. Then she’d be sad, quite. And then she’d be still, passed out in the tattered old armchair.

The Darwin household managed to avoid death for several long months, throughout which Stephen Darwin suffered the abuse of his alcoholic wife. He’d leave the district on shipping business for weeks at a time, regaining his strength for the fresh round of black eyes, bruises, and welts he’d receive.

But one day, when the twins were seven, little Abigail was trampled by horses. Stephen was again blamed for this misfortune, and suffered for it. One night was worse than the others. Shouts. Curses. Sounds Charlie and his siblings were used to. But the beating was worse for Stephen, who left the district on business the next day, broken arm in a sling. This time, he didn’t come back. He’d always come back, but this time, he never returned.

Several years passed, by-and-large uneventful in which their still-drunken mother managed to convince herself that she was right, and it was Mr. Darwin who was to be blamed for the deaths of her three children. Now that he was gone, her four babies were safe, were they not?

They weren’t. Adventurous, careless Isaac, Charlie’s then-eight-year-old brother ran full-speed into the district fence, expecting the power to be out. It wasn’t. The poor boy, the closest to the ten-year-olds in age, was electrocuted, killed on the spot. Charlie was most moved by this death than by that of any of his other family members--aside from Elizabeth, he was closer to Isaac than any of his other siblings. The boy looked up to Charlie, who always made sure to look after him. And then he was gone.

Anthea, their final sibling--aside from each other, that is--was taken from Charlie and Elizabeth when they were both twelve years of age. Another accident that could have been avoided. Their mother finally decided to blame someone other than Stephen for the death of their children. Unfortunately, this someone was herself. Spiraling into a deeper depression, their mother lived in a drunken stupor for the six months it took for her liver to finally give out on her.

This left the remaining Darwins--the two of the original nine--with a dilemma. Option one: report the death of their mother and be sent to an orphanage, possibly separated from each other, living in worse conditions than they were. Option two: keep her death a secret and just look after each other. Raise themselves the rest of the way--as they had done since the death of Margaret--and stick together.

They’d decided to go for the second option, working as many hours as they could spare to make enough money just to get by--on top of the tessera they took out to support themselves. Charlie got an apprenticeship at a leatherworker’s shop, and Elizabeth set to work in the fields. Their lives have been anything but easy, and, now approaching seventeen, still have a ways to go before it gets any easier at all.