ENDER WINTERS, DISTRICT ONE

“OH AND YOU, YOU'RE ALWAYS HOLDING ONTO STARS”
I think they're better from afar.

AGE . Twenty. Maybe. Probably.
GENDER . Male.
DISTRICT . One.
OCCUPATION . This and that.
SEXUALITY . In love I've always been a mercenary.
TALKING . dammar
DOING . Heartless
DEEP THOUGHT . Hijinx
HEARING . Dog & Butterfly
OTHER . (Heart)


APPEARANCE .

“BECAUSE NO ONE IS GOING TO SAVE US”
Oh and me, well I am fading in the dark.

Let me tell you about a guy named Ender.

There's this guy that walks around wearing my clothes, and my face, like he owns them. He doesn't listen to what I tell him, or what I don't even tell him. He's waiting for me to give up, so that he can take over. I'm not going to lie and say that moment isn't looming. Probably because I'm tired of fighting him. This guy, who's got bags under his eyes from staying up for so long. I've convinced myself now that it's not me, lost up there in the sky. Besides the fact that he looks far more calm, and far more young than I've ever felt. He looks like a guy that hasn't been touched by anything but the sun. I sometimes wonder what that might be like, instead of being forced to slip long, nimble fingers around the ring of a bottle, trying to learn how to make my heart stop.

Except that would be impossible, unless he and I took a knife and shoved it through my sternum, letting blood slip down tan skin, and wounding mortally. Autumn got mad at me the last time he caught me playing with a knife. not that I've ever actually used it. My skin is unmarked, except for random burns and cuts here and there from misadventures, bar fights, and shenanigans. No, usually it's the fists that are raw from punching, and feet tired from twisting and dancing. Or eyes bloodshot after a night spent flying up in the clouds."If humans were meant for flying, the good lord would 'ave given us wings." I guess that I must be a bit Ike Icarus then, we aren't all made for the ground. And I've always been lighter than most, like I have hollow bones. I stand at a measly five feet and eight inches, and weigh next to nothing. Not a lot, I know at least. But it doesn't stop muscles from growing, lending me strength as I challenge death over and over in defying acts.

A mop of sandy hair, blue eyes, what does it matter how it's positioned on the top of my head. Nothing really matters, not anymore. It's all usually in a disarray anyway, hair swept to the side as if blown by the wind. It's cut crudely, the sides shorter than the top of my head, as if someone began cutting it and then got bored. My eyes are slightly inset, under a thick brow, but not so thick that it casts a shadow. The eyes hardly ever shine, mostly the just are dull. Not a whole lot to be happy about, but a reason to pretend to be happy, I've found it in my boys, that reason. So sometimes my eyes can light up a bit for them, and then they are flecked with silver, Nix used to laugh and say they were like stars.

I have an angular face, cheekbones so sharp that you could cut yourself on them. Someone has before, that's the funny bit. From there, I've got a sharp nose that has been broken more than a few times. A chin, with thick lips, and ears that stick out. I'm nothing special to look at. I've got spots though, and I've probably earned them. A tan canvas of marks, people, places and things tell their life stories in pockets of my body, and hollows in my bones. A long white scar runs down my back, like a rift upper left to lower right. I'm weary overall, like I've been run over more than a few times. Maybe I have been, maybe I haven't. I've got muscle, you tend to gain it and keep it after living for so long on the streets like I have. Abs, arm muscles, and sturdy legs. I've been told I have girlish legs in the way they are shaped. Is that true though? Do I care?

I'm known for rolled up pants, suspenders, bow ties, cotton shirts, and the like. Call my style whatever you like because that doesn't make it any different. I'm more likely to go without a shirt anyway, sometimes strolling around the house in a pair of slacks with suspenders and a bare chest. Sometimes things slip my mind, and clothes has never been on the top of the all important list. I wear and bare enough for two at least, as shown by a tattoo that sends inked poison like a spilled glass of water across my skin. On the inside of my left lower arm, there is a feather tattoo. It's completely white and drained of colour, therefore, almost unnoticeable unless I am tan, which is what I normally am. I can't remember why I got it, or for what, but one morning i woke up with it so I must have had a good reason.

Then there was another day that I woke up with a tattoo behind my right ear, tucked discreetly in, as if it were a dirty little secret. When I was able to look in a mirror and see it properly, I found that it was simply three letters, 'N-I-X' with the roman numeral VII inked beside it in smaller letters.I know what it stands for, and why I got it, even if I wasn't coherent enough to make the decision to get it. Dirty fingers reach up every now and then from their own accord to stroke the letters. I suppose it might look like I have a nervous habit of scratching behind my ear. It's alright that they think that. Though sometimes I want to fall to my determinedly always raw knees and dig myself into the earth, it's having those letters there that sometimes rescues me.

PERSONALITY .

“SO DON'T YOU EVER KISS ME, DON'T YOU WISH ON ME”
Why can't you see that.

There's something precious about a candle and it's flame. I can't place my finger on it yet, what it does to me when I lie awake and watch it. It's destroying it's own self, own essence, ever so slowly. It's eating away at it's self, like it's so addicted to it's own taste, that it can't stop it, can't help it's self. I have lain awake at night and watched the candles eat themselves in a matter of hours and minutes. I wonder if it counts each precious moment, or if it just eats away until it can't remember how to count anymore. Does the candle watch me? Does it watch me eat myself up to? Sometimes I wonder, but then I forget, having already eaten the part of me that should care.

I should care, that part of me that knows that hasn't been eaten yet, but it's so quiet, and such a small stirring after so many years, that I barely notice it anymore. I think the ability to wonder about things left rather quickly, leaving things up to the decision of my body and what it wants. Usually it's little colourful pills with smiles on them, that can even bring a smile to my face. My own brand of wings not quite like Icarus's wax ones, but will send me melting away when the sun comes up. Lucky for me I've got a mold to make them and can go out flying every single night if I wished to. Which is often that I go. Too often, some might say, but fuck them. It's like I'm swimming in a sea of people, but I'm hopelessly lost, and they are hopelessly found. I don't know how they do that, never could figure it out, how they all know where to go.

I'm spiraling out of control. I can feel myself slipping slowly through the cracks, digging my own grave so slowly that no one can tell how far down I've sunk and am still sinking. I can feel inches of times and moments being taken from myself everyday, but there is nothing I can do to stop it. I'm so fucking trapped. I feel like a time bomb. Things grasping at straws, load me onto a camel back, and watch us collapse. The only ones I feel comfortable with nowadays are my boys. Sure, we're all fucked up bottom dwellers of society, but at least we do that well. And hey, at least we're together. I wouldn't want to be on this sinking ship if I couldn't be with them as well. They are the only ones who notice, Autumn is the only one who sees the nights where the grave has turned to mud and I'm sinking so fast that I just need a life line.

Sometimes I find it between ruler straight lines on a page, or in the checked face of a mic. If anyone is ever going to listen to me, it's going to be when I'm singing. Maybe because it's something I actually work at. I don't know,I guess, it's so fucking corny, but wen I'm singing, for just a moment I get to forget that I'm me. I'm allowed to forget what I have done, and where I've been. For those few moments, I can be just a boy singing, because if I'm weaving and forgetting, then they're all asleep, all those thoughts in my head, and hidden away. I'm so safe when I'm singing. Lyrics and traces of songs written all over, and when I ran out of paper, written on the walls in fat black sharpie, more lyrics and songs line the walls.

I've been told I'm brilliant before. Not in the way you'd think though. Give me a math equation and I'll have to work it out in more than thirty seconds. I mean things like angles, long division, and physics. Show me a Shakes a spear play, and I won't gush over it. Give me a rubix cube and I'll solve that bitch in under a minute. Ask me where it hurts most to be hit, and I'll show you. Give me a telescope and I'll show you the stars, I'll st outside on the roof for hours gazing at them, wondering if she's up there,a bird up in the night sky. Give me a family and I'd care for them until I couldn't care for anything else anymore. Just don't ask me to love, I don't want to love.

I've got trouble with it, this loving thing. I did it once before, and look at where it got me. Look at where it got her. It's best if I don't let them anywhere near me, anywhere I might be able to hurt them. I've seen myself in action, seen the way I've jammed my hands into places to get rid of another's air. I've watches ten year old hands reach out with force and shove, then fall limp, not doing anything to stop the air from rushing. It haunts. So the likelihood is that you won't ever see me being vulnerable and needing someone. Perhaps the only one who's ever seen me sad is Autumn. But I've been told it clings to me, washing my skin with the scent of it, never letting me go. I don't love, and I don't deserve it. Guilt leaves me undesiring of it, and hatred leaves me strong.

Remember that flame? I think it's gone out sometimes, but other times I can still feel it burning to the point that it drives me crazy. I can't handle it anymore, I run, I go, I leave. I get out and hide for days, doing things and going places that even sometimes I don't remember. But when someone bets me I always take the challenge no matter what. If someone says I can't do something I have to prove them wrong, no matter how dangerous. I don't care, I don't. I sometimes thought I wanted to die, god knows that I've felt it, the need to end things, to run away. Well, i ran didn't I? It's what I'm good at. The candle flame, it burns, it burns. sometimes so much that I can't feel from the heat of it, it eats away. Like the heart has been burned right out of me. If it's still there I cant hear it, it must be shriveled. At least, I pretend it is. I pretend I don't care, like there isn't anything left, and it becomes true.

HISTORY .

“NO ONE IS GOING TO SAVE US”
No one is going to save me.

I was born a few years back. I'm twenty now, so must have been the year of the fourtieth games. It was the first district, so of course I was named Ender. I was to be the proverbial 'End' of the other careers. I don't really know what happened during the first three years of my life. There is a memory that I sometimes hold onto of sunlight and music, but otherwise it's as blank as it should be. My life is divided up into two parts anyway, The time before Nix, and then the time after. She was born three years after me. During the Fourty-third games. I guess that's when things got different. I wouldn't forget those next seven years. And never the way she said my name for the first time.

My childhood was one accentuated with daily visits to the gym to train to be a career. I would be lying to say I didn't like it. I loved learning where the best place to punch someone was, or where the most fatal place to stab was. I never really knew better. Call that a cop-out if you like, but it's true enough. Violence was as close to me in my home, as love was. I never knew when I was six if my father was leaning down to hug me, or to give me an impromptu lesson on how to not end up on my back if he grabbed my arm just so. What I learned of violence, I got from the world outside. What I learned of truth, I got from my parents. But what I learned of love, I got completely from Phoenix.

I grew up in a group of boys, the rugrats of the neighborhood. We'd train together, sleep in a giant pile, and play together. Of course there were no girls allowed, girls were icky, and had cooties. Despite the fact that we were allowed to tear the crap out of each other, in fact, it was encouraged, we liked to protect each other instead. The main thing we needed protection from was Nix and the other sisters and girls in general. For this, we became expert tree climbers to escape, and would taunt from above. When I wasn't with the boys though, I was with Nix. I did big brother things with her, and we bonded. I taught her how to put a worm on a hook and then throw that hook at a peacekeeper and watch them get really mad. Nix probably thought I was crazy for finding that hilarious. But if they took the bait they would chase us, and then adrenaline would pump through me as we ran away. Nix would sometimes jump on my back, she was so little.

I loved the feeling of the tall grass as it whipped my bare legs and ran back home, or to the tree house. I wonder if it's still there? The boys and I built it when we were little, with help from the fathers of course. Nix and I would spend hours up in it, doing whatever. Talking, playing games, sleeping. We did it all in there, all the brother and sister things that I refused to do in front of my parents. i couldn't have them knowing that I was soft, not when they were training me to be a career. At home, I was old and distant. But some nights I'd still find myself going into Nix's room, needing to not be alone, and to have someone to hold. I loved my little sister, which is what made things so much worse. Maybe if I had never loved her, just become the career my parents wanted me to be, it wouldn't have hurt so much. The pain wouldn't have burrowed under and into me. Maybe then I wouldn't feel......like this.

When I was ten, the boys and I were running. I don't know what we had just been doing. It was summer, and that meant my birthday was coming soon. I'd be eleven, one year closer to being in the games. It was what I had spent my life training for, of course I was excited. By that time our friendly boyhood wrestles had already turned into something entirely different. It was no longer all fun and games. Now when we played like that, there was a sense of urgency, and of contests. Who could be tougher? Who could take pain the most? Who was the fastest? Nothing was for the weak anymore, we were all meant to be strong. Showing love? Unheard of.That was the epitome of weakness. We couldn't show compassion anymore, it wasn't what a career did. Everyday we played careers, little boys, in costumes too big for them. I enjoyed it, too.

My little sister, my Phoenix. She was seven the day of the accident. How can I call it an accident. She was seven the day that it happened, the day that I happened. I don't know why she followed us. I told her that she couldn't, that she was a girl, and had cooties, and had to go away. I guess she didn't believe me,I had shown her too much love. If I hadn't shown her that love, would it have happened? Or would she still be safe and.....would she.... If it hadn't happened, I'd still be at home, and we'd still spend nights in the tree house. But it did. As she climbed up to the tree house after us, on the ladder I had installed for her, I was a little boy and shoved her, stupidly. I wasn't thinking, I was just mad.

I remember pushing my arms out. She didn't expect it from me, of all people. Why should she? I'd only ever held her, I'd never hurt her, /I adored my sister./ But my arms pushed out all the same, and in that moment of betrayal from her brother, she let go of the ladder and fell to the Earth far below with a resounding crack. I screamed for her as she fell, terror filling me, I swung out of the tree myself. The other boys were subdued, staring over the lip of the tree house, at her prone, oh god, unmoving, please no, body. She bled, her chest moved, but when I called for her, she didn't respond.I don't remember a lot after that. It's very blury.

I know I carried her through the tall grass, and it wound around my legs, tickling and licking me. But I don't know what I was feeling. I don't know, I think it was numbness. I thought I had killed her at that point. I thought that Nix was dead in my arms. I couldn't see her breathing anymore, and /she wouldn't move./ I know at some point someone took her from my arms. I know that she was taken to the hospital. I know that I wasn't allowed to see her, she was in intensive care. i know that the adults were looking at me like I was a fiend. I was a fiend, I was a demon, I didn't care, I just wanted them to save her. But they couldn't, I heard them talking. They said that she wouldn't ever wake up probably, that she'd die. She might as well be dead. I murdered the one person I loved most in the world.

I'm a monster.

I didn't stick around after that. Why would I, what would I do. I said goodbye to her, she probably never heard me, she was dead. I squeezed her hand which was still warm, and kissed her on the forehead like I used to do when I said goodnight. I remember how she looked in that hospital bed, tiny body hooked up to so many machines. Beeps coming from a variety of things, and I didn't even know how to save her, I couldn't. I was her murderer. Even if she did wake up, which would never happen, she'd hate me. So I left home, I ran. I was afraid. I didn't have anywhere to go, but the cracks of the district. it was almost too easy to slip into the folds. It's almost funny what people will do to a ten year old with no one who would care if he died.

When I was thirteen, I was already on something every other night at least. It was easier to deal with the pain that way. I still trained as well, I ran in the mornings. Sometimes I ran with a younger girl who ad short hair, cropped down, with always the most serious expression on her face. She was a Lightwood, and I a nothing anymore, but we ran together, knowing that the two of us were careers. That was okay, she wasn't training for the games she said once. Funny, because I saw her in them, saw her get reaped. I mourned her passing, I wondered if I had the right to, realizing later that I didn't care.

My history is not important after Nix. The only reason I'm telling you anything is because people have to know about her, what happened to her. It's my curse to tell you who she was and what happened to her. I failed them, I failed them all, I'm used to that.

My life from thirteen to twenty was unremarkable and nothing you need to know. I got into some shit, gained some addictions, lost some pieces, found some again. I've never been a creature of the day light, I know that now. I think that's alright though, because for some reason there are some people that stick to you no matter how disreputable you are. Like the people that you meet and won't go away no matter how much of a jackass you are. My boys, my new group of Rugrats. People call us the Lost Boys, and it fits. Autumn was the first I found, either that or he found me, and we some how picked up the other guys pretty quickly afterwards. I honestly have no idea why they stay with me, in the big empty house I found abandoned. It's old and crumbley, but serviceable. It's not that I want them to go away. Christ I'd miss them.

Even if it would be safer for them to stay away from me.

ANYTHING ELSE ?



OUT OF CCHARACTER .

FACE CLAIM .

NATE RUESS • ENDER WINTERS

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I, ELEGANT .

CODEWORD . Odair