bertolt fubar >> peacekeeper [fin]

Bertolt’s mother had the same green eyes as him but they held a malicious glint unlike anything he’d ever seen before. She would never physically hit him, oh no: physical violence never crossed her mind aside from the occasional slap to the face. However, she did yell at him relentlessly, justifying it to “make him detach himself from her in order to be a better soldier.” She was a very tall woman and her towering presence, sided with toxic words, sent the little boy into a panic each time a raging episode occurred. He began to harbor panic and it weighed so heavily upon him that even a small glare from his mother or a classmate would tip him over into a full-on panic attack.

From a very young age he learned to withdraw himself from everyone else. The confined spaces of District Thirteen did not allow for someone like him to cloister up in a place any larger than a stock closet until he quickly outgrew the tiny space. It was his safe haven, a place to retreat to when things just became too much for him to bear and when he felt the tingling of an oncoming panic attack. Bertolt learned far too early what solitude was and he despised it, yet nearly lived by it; walking down the halls he would keep his eyes down, stay near the wall, stop his arms from swinging by keeping his hands bunched up by his chest, and make himself as small as he possibly could.

He grew at an astonishing rate and surpassed the majority of his classmates in height, which only made it harder to hide from everyone. The stock closet quickly became too small to house and protect him from his fears, forcing him to find somewhere else to cope. Barricading himself in his room would not suffice so he scoured Thirteen in search of a vacant closet and found one in a lower basement level. Bertolt spent many hours down there, huddled in the corner of it, words ricocheting around his head: ”Bertolt! I didn’t ask for your opinion, keep your mouth shut!” “Why don’t you ever speak?” “C’mon, Bertolt, we learned this yesterday, why don’t you remember?” “Where are you going to? Don’t run in the halls!” The things spoken to him were not necessarily awful at times but his mind warped them into personal threats, so he drew in on himself even further, not speaking for days at a time. It didn’t bother him.

Bertolt did make two friends, however: Reiner and Annie. Reiner didn’t say bad things, only asked a few times why Bertolt never spoke despite the shrug he would always receive in response. The blond never pressured, only encouraged, and whenever the taller one felt the icy fear start to twist his stomach into knots, Reiner tried his best to help. At first Bertolt turned on his heels and made a frantic dash to the basement closet, completely leaving behind his one friend, but ever so slowly he stopped running. He learned to keep his feet planted by Reiner, shut his eyes tightly, clench his hands into fists until they trembled, and fight back the tears while the panic tore like a storm through him.

Oh, it was embarrassing. The lanky boy thought for sure that Reiner would poke fun at him for being so terrified whenever anyone presented a trigger, but he didn’t. He stayed right there, weathering every bit of that storm, providing the harbor needed to slowly bring Bertolt back around to his proper senses.

Annie, on the other hand, was nearly the polar opposite. She was quiet and withdrawn, much like Bertolt himself, but she possessed a hidden persona that terrified him many times. Despite her size she was so much stronger than him and anyone else he knew that he greatly dreaded the day he would be forced to spar with her. He much preferred Reiner’s company, though occasionally he didn’t mind sitting silently beside her since he knew she wouldn’t make him talk. For that, he always thanked her wordlessly.

Then, without any kind of warning, he was scooped up, hooded, and smuggled through the Capitol’s underground, and left for a week in the streets. Having never seen the Capitol or its people before, the young boy was completely and utterly terrified when he saw blue and green people, whiskers protruding from faces, stones embedded along arms, and many other things. His anxiety shot through the roof and he fled to the alleys, avoiding the nightmarish people at all cost. Bertolt was certain he’d die of a heart attack, if anything; drunkards stumbled past him at night, peppermint striped children sneered at his ratty appearance when he passed by, and long-lashed shopkeepers screamed in unknown dialects when he was caught snatching food. Where was Reiner? Or Annie? Why was he alone?

“It was only training,” Thirteen’s instructors explained when they pulled him back down to be transported home.

Bertolt had no time to calm himself in his safe spot before the instructors shoved him into a hard chair and strapped him down. He struggled and yanked against the leather while refusing to answer questions about the Capitol until they struck his face with a fist, forcibly making him succumb. With tears in his eyes he answered their questions and whimpered when a syringe was stabbed into his arm, injecting tracker jacker venom.

It was all a blur over the course of a few weeks, but Bertolt Fubar quickly learned to hate the Capitol with every cell in his body.

It concerned him that all his memories, even the safe ones with Reiner and Annie, were now fringed with a haze. With those ones in particular he never felt anything other than serenity; but with scenes from the Capitol, a mixture of dread and desire to overpower came to him. For the first time he found himself willingly – although still a bit reservedly – acting out and participating more in training.

(“Take the tyrants down. They treat the district like livestock so we’ll bring the slaughterhouse to the Capitol.”)

Bertolt started to learn how to wield an urumi despite all the caution the instructor gave about it. He was told it wasn’t the best weapon of choice considering that it could be deflected by even thin armor, but the way the flimsy steel carved into the air mesmerized him. The instructor also warned that the wielder had to keep the weapon moving in order to minimalize injury to themselves which he learned the hard way, spending many hours in the medical wing for stitches that he kept hidden under a jacket or long sleeves. Often he wore the urumi as a belt, and as a result there were many scars to form around his waist.

Beyond that, he subjected himself to learn about pressure points and acupuncture. It was rather interesting to him to figure out the weak points of the human body and where one could place a strategic strike – not relying on brute strength – in order to take down an opponent. Since he still towered over the majority of his fellow trainees, Bertolt moved much slower than them, so finding a fighting style that didn’t emphasize strength quickly fell into line with him. For acupuncture, he took to learning it mostly to help out Reiner whenever his muscles were sore and in need of some relief. Every needle he stuck into Reiner’s skin came with a frightened and mumbled “sorry” as he prayed that he’d put it in the right spot to not cause too much pain.

Mixing chemicals to produce toxic gases also became an area of study; however, it was much harder for him to figure it out due to the chemical makeup and equations and whatnot. There were many attempts at properly mixing bleach with other liquids and often it ended disastrously for him, and over the course of the training he came to have bleach spots on his dark skin all along his hands and arms. Bertolt still tried, finding a few toxic mixtures that were his favorites.

All of it was learned in order to “defend himself against the Capitol.” He never quite understood exactly what those rainbow-colored people did to him but he started to doubt his training when the orders came down for him, Reiner, and Annie to infiltrate a certain Peacekeeper squad in the Capitol. The group hadn’t hurt him specifically yet he was told to eliminate them “for the greater cause.” As far as Bertolt was concerned, they were innocent, but something in his gut told him the opposite and he wasn’t sure why. The superiors only reinforced the orders, saying it had to be done. (But senseless murdering was bad, wasn’t it?)

So he would be forced into staining his calloused hands with the blood of innocent people and he didn’t want to – but what choice was there?

That was the life you lived when you were stuck between the devil and the deep blue sea.