Irene Sykes D4 {Fin}

Irene Sykes
Sixteen years of age
Female
The Fourth District Of Panem
odair
FC is Malese Jow
Theme: Absolutely by Nine Days

Coppery shoulder-length hair cascades from her head like a waves tossed in the ocean, often carefully combed over with to conceal her face from others. Behind those locks hides the haunted caramel eyes of someone who has never learned how to deal with loss. A wide nose and rounded ears usually disappear beneath her hair as well.Lips that never seem to really be open are kept pursed together. The girl that has so very much to say keeps so much of it under lock and key. Her face pales like a lighthouse whose torch has been dimmed from lack of use.

The middle sykes sister dresses herself in plain clothing, making every attempt to blend into the background, to not be seen. She stands at 5’6 , fairly shorter than her older sister Katrina. Her frame is petite, fairy-like. She walks with her arms entwined behind her back in carefully measured steps. A saddened outlook on life evident by the very way she carries herself, the way she drags her feet, and always looks at the ground.

Introverted, she makes it a point to avoid contact with people, not wanting them to ask her what's on her mind or what’s the matter, or a dozen other diatribes that do nothing for what she fails to manage to get out of her head. Some would tell you that while pretty and smart, she acts like no one wants her or that there is nothing for her to care about. Irene feels alone, braving the storm of life but drowning in the rough undertow of of a stress-filled sea.

She’s been told that she is pretty, but she daren’t believe it, having overheard her mother say that she was ugly some years ago. It might only have been idle conversation, but she had taken it to heart, letting it define her and refusing to believe she deserves anything good. Having taken the martyr role to heart, she tries to help out others when she can, but only when they wouldn’t know about it. This is coupled by her sisters personalities, the one preferring to be alone and the other a manipulative fiend who takes advantage of her good nature.

She has let herself become a doormat, taking what people say or tell her to do without question. Her older sister is oblivious to her feelings, as well as not knowing that the youngest has a sharp tongue with which to belittle Irene. She's been called dumb, she'd been made fun of by her peers for being "that quiet girl", but the saddest part is that she both takes their bullying to heart and believes it. She is no fan of the annual games, owed to her brother's fear of it, and tries to avoid watching it if she can.

The middle child of the sykes sisters, she has never felt like she belongs always feeling like she was left out in the rain, unable to identify with her goal-oriented older sister, or hold an intelligent conversation with the younger one. Her parents are married to their work, leaving the kids to fend for themselves most of the time. The only family member she felt she could ever confide in was her older brother Branden; the one who never came home. Irene had never been good at handling loss, and so when her brother was reported missing at sea, she felt herself slipping into a depression, something that has lasted to current time.

Home life is dull for her; she wishes she could be as strong as Katrina, instead of standing in her shadow; often watching her sister take a boat out and sail around the shoreline. Irene is a thinker, not a speaker or a doer, spending her time wistfully imagining better things and remembering better times from behind her window panes; like the time her brother had taken her fishing, despite his aversion to water, or the few occasions all of her siblings had gotten along. She is living in the past, but to her it is far better than the present.

Her childhood was mundane and unimpressive and her teenage years are looking to be the same. It was spent watching others live their lives without doing any living herself, excepting by living vicariously through the conversations she's overheard of other districts, or by listening to her sisters friends. All she wants is for sisters and her to get along; for their parents to actually do something for them, for her brother to come home, and most of all for someone to tell her that things are going to be alright.