Linus Cohen (District Eight)

Orphan boys from the district public homes never look particularly pleasing to the eye, and Linus certainly was never any exception. He MAY turn into an attractive young a lad one day, but for a boy barely at the onset of puberty, that day has not been today, nor was it yesterday. Linus is gaunt and unhealthy looking, skinny to the point his ribs are somewhat visible when he takes off his shirt, looking like he's hardly ever seen a decent meal in his entire life. Those who would assume that are entirely wrong, Linus has NEVER had a decent meal in his life, much of his fare, like in his youth, still coming from trash bins and dumpsters as what the state deems acceptable to feed him and his "orphan ilk" never seems to leave him satisfied. And if Linus doesn't go under some serious dietary changes soon, his anticipated growth during puberty may become stunted.

Linus has unkempt jet black hair which tends to often fall over his eyes, and there is not a single hair on his head that isn't the same uniform color of sable blackness as all the others. His eyes, surprisingly for a young orphan boy who's seen a great deal more than anyone his age (or in general,) should have to, Linus' eyes are dark and piercing, and when he leers at someone, they tend to get the unnerving feeling that he's starting at something on the other side of their body. Short and skinny, the young boy looks very unhealthy, but then again, this isn't uncommon among the orphans of the nation, or just the people of District Eight in general, being the most populace but at the same time one of the poorest and least valued districts in the nation. His dark colored, shrewd looking slanted eyes, his unruly, sable black hair, and his scarred body from years of abuse and scrapping and clawing to survive, are largely what make this boy slightly intimidating to be around, even if he is barely old enough to be reaped. His voice is shallow and feeble and undeveloped as with any child his age, but it's not his speaking that makes this boy's shear presence unnerving, it's his silence which does that so well.

Linus has been through more than most have, and certainly more than any should have to be. If there is anything more terrifying than the years of loneliness and fear and isolation that he endured after his family was gone, especially for a four year old boy, it would be the games, though to Linus, having seen the latter himself and having experienced the former first hand, that his a highly debatable topic. Scars cover his body from years of abuse at the hands of his public home guardians and harsh weather, burns and sometimes harsh injuries, and his generally malnourished makes that visage no better. People see him by his simplest definition, a dirty, good for nothing, parasitic street rat who never has and never will amount to anything. And if that's what people see, more often then not, Linus finds, that is what they will go out of their way to affirm.

So how does a young boy deal with that kind of injustice, that kind of prejudice? Easy, he walls himself off from everything, everyone, and finds pleasure in his own, far more pleasant company than that of the vicious, ignorant baffoons he calls his piers and his protectors. Linus doesn't socialize, he reads, Linus doesn't do, he plans, Linus doesn't feel, he thinks. To him, there may as well be no one else in the world, since no one else in the worth has ever proven themselves worthy of his affections. The rest of the human race are bullies, ignorant, beast like bullies, ESPECIALLY the children, and why would a boy of Linus' intellectual mettle and philosophical depth want to associate with anyone like that? He wouldn't, and that is why Panem isn't a nation to him, it's merely the background noise to the symphony of his life.

Linus trusts no one, nor does he like anyone, hell, people just flat out aren't his forte. He doesn't care about them, they don't really matter to him, their petty scheming, distasteful self love, and hypocritical talk of justice. It's true, Linus doesn't think humans amount to much, he believes they are arrogant to think that they are any less insignificant to the universe at large than any other given animal, a statement which they all too often themselves prove to be wrong. Does he care about the fate of humanity? Yes. Does he go out of his way to be a good person? Yes. And he despises himself for it almost as much as he despises the rest of the human race for almost never proving his tightly clung to survival mantra of "humans do have a little bit of goodness somewhere deep down inside" correct.

In laymen's terms, Linus' personality is defined by a single operative phrase.

"Why should I care?"

Linus never had parents or siblings, though he can vaguely remember at time before that was true, we he did live in a nice house, he did have two loving, attentive parents, and he did in fact have a small baby sister, before the flames made all that go away. What he DID have was a name, and an nigh unbreakable will to live, so for the next few years, the four year old boy did what he had to do to survive. Linus still has some deeply unpleasant and upsetting memories of him sleeping next to chimneys to keep warm, and wearing the same tattered clothes every single day for months at a time, at least. But the years of loneliness and fear and being looked down upon, yelled at, and sometimes physically assaulted were the better years of his life, if you ask Linus. Because when he finally WAS sent to the northern public home of the district, it was more horrific than any of that could have ever been.

When he was on his own, all Linus needed to worry about was his physical health (which, admittedly, sometimes took some pretty stern beatings,) but until Linus entered a the public home for the first time in his life, he never knew what it meant to stare true misery and destitution straight in the face. The children who had been there longer than him, the marks on their faces from the indiscriminate beatings, their eyes simply... hollow, frightened Linus more than anything else in the world he had experienced. He was almost eight when they took him in, an illiterate eight year old closer in both appearance and demeanor in to a skittish, frightened animal than a human boy. Learning was... hard for him, at first; He was not a stupid child, he was actually quite bright, it was simply that it is very hard to teach an eight year old to read better when he doesn't even know what the alphabet IS, let alone the letters in it. He took to mathematics more quickly, but eventually, his progress made great strides in all fields, and Linus often prides himself on his ability to easily dissect almost any field of study now that he is a much older boy.

The word "scholar" may have seemed foreign to an illiterate, abused street rat, but it certainly isn't to Linus, who spends almost all his time alone, away from his tormentors, reading quietly to pass the time, creating fascinating new worlds where he is the king and anything goes, where the world is simply so much brighter than the dark, dank reality he must always will himself to return to. The district library is often where he spends his myriad of free time, although since he can quite obviously see that much of it has been censored, he also uses... alternative method of finding literature. The real world does not matter to him, why should it? It has never been kind to him, it has never been worth living, but the other worlds he creates and reads about, he sees those as worth living FOR. The nation is a mess, the people can't stop feeling sorry for themselves long enough to change that, and the very world around him seems to want Linus dead. And just why oh why would he ever want to take any part in a world that shuns and despises him, the small, bookish, malnourished orphan boy who's family had the audacity to burn alive and leave him to be the rest of the district's problem?

Simple, he doesn't.

First repeated use district! Yeah!