NEZUMI // RAT, WANDERER

✌ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ Graphics 5,831 POSTS Pronouns: they/them last seen Apr 17, 2024 14:37:45 GMT -5 “And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good.” - steinbeck	NEZUMI // RAT, WANDERER Mar 26, 2014 6:22:36 GMT -5 Select Post Deselect Post Link to Post Member Give Gift Back to Top Post by ✌ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ on Mar 26, 2014 6:22:36 GMT -5 RAT SIXTEEN WANDERER REBEL/STREET RAT/THIEF/TINKERER/FIGHTER/~~ACTOR~~ LOVING ANYONE ONLY CREATES DIFFICULTY FC: GO SANG GIL SONG: DOOM DADA- T.O.P OTHER CHARACTERS ODAIR
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✌ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ
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5,831 POSTS
Pronouns: they/them
last seen Apr 17, 2024 14:37:45 GMT -5

“And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good.” - steinbeck

NEZUMI // RAT, WANDERER Mar 29, 2014 3:50:25 GMT -5

Post by ✌ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ on Mar 29, 2014 3:50:25 GMT -5

R A T

My family were the free folk.

We lived in the woods.

I was six years old, the day we burned.

Ash rained down upon us, and the smell of bodies burning alive filled the air. Screams, full of terror, rage, pierced my eardrums. I crouched down in the dirt, slapping pudgy little hands over my ears and I wailed, calling for my mother. Leaves that had been our cover for so many years shriveled and died in the heat of the flame, they fell on top of us, the children who huddled together, trying to get away from the guns that spewed flame over our dwellings made of leaves and cedar.

I remember pain, the crispness and heat in the air, it was so hot that everything dried and crumbled on impact. I felt heat hit my body, so painful that I nearly passed out. It sent chains of burning across my back until I thought I might burn up from right inside of myself. The smell of burning flesh filled my nostrils and I nearly threw up, it smelled akin to an animal on the pit but it was my cousins, my parents, my neighbors, my friends. There is not much I remember from that moment, but the men who wore impassive faces and white. The screaming. I remember the screaming, the pain, the smell, the heat. Otherwise it is a blur.

I escaped obviously.

There was a man, spineless, cowardly. Even as he burned my mother and father in front of him, he pushed me into the woods, a heavy shove sending me sprawling. I do not know if he meant for me to escape, or if he was just saving me for later. I was crying then, great hiccuping sobs that made the world blur and wobble. My mouth tasted of gun powder and I could barely breathe from the smoke that filled my throat. Someone took my hand, they dragged me away. I ran from it, the smell, the image of my mother burning alive right in front of me and me being only six years old, unable to do anything but watch. I ran and my back felt like it was burning in half, I was being split into two.

Half of me stayed there, dying with the rest of them, burning into ash. The little boy that I was burned with his mother and father, burned with his wandering village. The other little boy was nameless, and wished to remain so. He ran away from it all, no one thought to look for him, his body should have been among the ashes. Sometimes I think that I did die there, that this life is simply hell.

I didn't have the choice then to stop even if I wanted to. The lady who had taken my hand was making sure that we were moving fast, away from the burning midst the trees. Without her I would have died there for sure, but with her, I clawed and scratched, wanting to go back and rescue our people. She did not allow me, teaching me a valuable lesson then. She told me that risking your life for a lost cause is useless, that not putting yourself first is wrong, because it can only lead to your own death. It did not occur to me at the time that she had contradicted this thought by taking my hand and dragging me with her when she would have been much faster alone.

My back burned with pain, the burn across my back more extensive than we had thought. My shirt was attached to my skin, the leather and fibers of animal hair burning to my flesh. WE only stopped for a short while so that the woman could cut the shirt away from my skin and quickly wrap it with a salve of eucalyptus and mint leaf. Even then, that was not enough, we both knew it. There wasn't anything we could do for it at the time.

We spent the first few weeks of our escape hiding from roaming hovercrafts and heading south, towards the ocean. She said that there was another group there, it was dangerous but they might have gone unnoticed. So we set all of our hopes on it, not knowing what we might do otherwise. My hair, black with a bluish tinge, was long in the style of the free folk. Although it was tied back with a strip of leather, it grew dirty and stringy in our weeks of hiding. We did't have time to wash. There wasn't an available place to stop, not out in the open. We lived in complete anxiety for those weeks, knowing that if we were found we'd meet the same fate as our kin.

Eventually, we reached ocean. I had never been to ocean before, never seen the waves break upon the rocks, the sand get dragged in and out. I had felt relief at finally reaching it, but inside me, anger and horror outweighed every other emotion. The pain from my back and my burn nearly made it hard to walk. I could barely go on, I was so feverish. I don't remember exactly how we found the ocean dwellers, the last leg of our journey being a haze of a heated dreams. When we finally came upon the people who dwelled in the caves by the sea, they found two people who were haunted as well as hunted.

They fed us, but the smell of meat made me retch, I couldn't even stomach the slippery fish that came from the sea. The smell of flesh burning was rooted in me, food was ruined for me. It seemed to be the same for the woman who rescued me from the flame. We survived off roots and berries as we had walked to the sea. They fed me a broth made from seaweed and barley. Then we slept. For many days I lay in the dark, on my stomach as they tried to heal me. My burn was angry and red, infected. They had to cut away skin, it was purple and dead, and then try and sew me up again. I don't remember much of this, having passed out from the pain. I just remember the long days of trying to survive afterwards, even with the image of my mother and father, my brother, my sister, alight in my brain.

I was very angry, all the time.

For two years, the lady and I lived with the cave dwellers, taking on their chores and activities. I slipped in with the other boys, even though my skin was slightly darker, my features different. Where they were shorter, stockier, I was thinner and taller. Their eyes were ruddy brown mainly, or green. My own eyes were like most of those born to the free folk, a soft gray that had seemed to crystallize in the wake of my past trials. I got along fine with the other children, after a fashion, but I was different. Always more reserved anyway, I grew almost cold. I didn't smile enough for the other children, I didn't laugh as easily.

Still, I learned a lot from them. They taught me how to fish, I already knew hunting. Learning to spear fish in the water instead of hares in the woods was not too hard. While I had been recovering, the women taught me how to weave anything from baskets and nets to hard, rainproof cloaks made with cedar. While I began to fit into this new life, the lady who had rescued me could not seem to. Her anger knew no bounds as she had also lost all her family to flame. She was always planning something, some form of revenge. Eventually I made her include me, tossing aside her claims that I was just a child. "I deserve the chance to make them pay," I'd told her, voice cold, "Just as much as you do."

At that time, I did not share my name with the cave dwellers. It was far too complicated and different from their own usual names, I didn't want any of them to call me by it anyway. The last person who had screamed it had been my mother and I didn't want the memory of her and my name to go away. So I simply went as 'boy' for a while. The lady felt the same. So we never called each other by our names either. Like anyone who came to the cave dwellers seeking sanctuary, we were given a home with them. We missed the trees, the sky above us at night. It was only a matter of time before we left.

When we did go, there was no sadness. It had been my home for two years, but I didn't feel anything at leaving. I only felt a further emptiness, as if the bits of me that had survived the night of burning were crumbling away as well. Our plan was made then, we were going to the Capitol, training slowly amidst the trees along the way. The lady taught me hand to hand combat and how to fight with knives, even going so far as to teach me the weight of a gun if I could manage to get my hands on one. It occurred to me then that she had not been a forest dweller all her life. I wondered if my mother and father had been, but I never managed to ask, I was so worn everyday from all the walking and all the training.

She taught me how to be hard too. When we would train, she never went easy on me, teaching me that there was no one who ever would. She reminded me that the Peacekeepers would not hesitate to kill me, even if I was a small child. They'd been burning settlements like ours for far too long. She taught me how to be cold, that we had to be to survive. "Survival is the most important thing, boy. Above all else, survive." There was such hatred in her voice when she spoke those words then, that I knew that if in the end I ended up being a liability, she would not rescue me again. I was determined not to be a burden.

A year passed as we traveled. I celebrated my ninth birthday on the way to the Capitol. It went by unnoticed by both of us, the only thing reminding me that it even was my birthday was the sun setting sooner then expected. Just like that, it was three years since the burning. We sat in darkness that night, too close to the Capitol lights to light a fire. Neither of us had much fondness for flames anyway.

It was a childish belief that made me think that the lady's plan could possibly succeed. It was doomed from the start, akin to throwing a pebble at a giant. It was shocking that we even made it into the Capitol at all, come to think of it. It was such an impossible feat however that the borders of the city were loosely guarded, all of the enemies of the Capitol city contained behind fences.

Still, I should have died that night with the Lady and all thought of revenge would have ended, so in a fashion it would have been over with. Yet there are knots that fray, and I was one of the frayed ends. It was near the hive of the city that she was gunned down, and it was because we stood out so thoroughly in our old furs and clothing stitched together from old clothes. Sometimes I think back and wonder if it had been her plan all along to die. However, the hatred that had lived in her eyes, the anger told me different. She'd wanted to wrap her hands around the neck of the man that had ordered the attack. Sometimes I wake up and my arms are in the air, squeezing shadows.

They didn't kill me. A crazy lady was alright to gun down in front of the citizens, but not a little boy. Instead I was taken to a facility for testing. There were many others too, people so modded out that they barely looked like people anymore. Most if not all were Avox. They did not take my tongue, I was not for the same sort of research apparently. The younger ones, like me, were not modded on. Instead we were made to run through giant mazes, our vocal and physical reactions recorded, presumably for the benefit of the scientists watching. If they saw that we had any school, they worked to hone it, just to see how far our bodies could go. There were times when they would make us train for hours on end, to see how long it would take us to fall over from exhaustion.

They'd starve us, to see how long a human being could go without food, then without water, then without sleep. Sometimes we were injected with venoms, likely to see how much it would take to make us deathly ill. This happened weekly, and you always knew when another kid had died because you never saw him or her again. My tenth birthday was spent on an operation table, being sewn up after a meeting with a giant rat mutt inside the testing area known as the labyrinth. I was not expected to survive that as I had taken venom and a claw to the stomach, but it's incredible what they can do at the testing facility. I've always thought of it as odd that they bothered with making sure I lived.

From then on, I was known as Nezumi. The scientists thought themselves clever. It's a name that translates directly to rat. As if to hurt me, they even used the free folk's language. They dropped Nezumi all together sometimes and I was simply known as Rat. It was easier than Nezumi. I didn't mind. I didn't really care. It was better than being known as a number, and wasn't too different from being called 'boy'.

For my eleventh birthday, they gave me a haircut so that it no longer ran all the way down my back. They cut it to just above my ears. I sat impassively as they cut it all away, knowing that it was only hair, that it would grow back. They could literally do as they liked, all I could do was stew in my own anger and shut myself off to the world. There was no one left alive who might care for me, I was truly alone in this world. As they cut my hair away, I felt a sudden and intense anger, burning even brighter than before. They took and took here, as if it was their right to. There was nothing left that I could call my own.

After that, I became decidedly more difficult. When in the maze, I would take the mechanical mice that they would use to capture us on film and take them apart piece by piece just to see how they worked. They were odd mechanisms, somehow intelligent they responded to the vocal commands of the man who was in charge of them, he went by the title of 'Rat Tamer'. Sometimes as a joke, the other scientists would leave me in the cage of the mechanical rats inside of his workshop so he could find me there in the morning and laugh. I didn't mind much, it suited me. Again and again, I would take them apart just to see how they worked, memorizing them for my future. They would be useful. Even then I planned to have one.

The chance came a few months after I turned twelve.

There was what seemed to be a routine drill, but in fact, it was a legitimate breach. As the alarms rang, our cage doors were opened all at once automatically. Most stayed inside their cell, being Avox, it did not even occur to them to try. It disgusted me, I didn't care about them. I remember being in the simple shift that we wore when we weren't being tested on. Then I remember running down a long corridor, of the Rat Tamer, he saw me, almost caught me I thought but when he tried to wrap his arms around me I took the knife that was in his belt and stabbed it into his chest one, two, three, four times and then I took two rats from his pockets, and the vocal coder he used so often to tame them.

I stuffed them into the pockets of my shorts, they were all scraped metal, not even having fur. I gripped the knife tightly and I ran to where I knew the emergency exit was. The alarms rang all around me, there was only a matter of time until they found that I was missing. I didn't waste any of it. I was small but fast, having had three years of intensive testing which had served as training as well. I was cold blooded, angry. I had killed.

The escape is muddled in my brain, as many things are when you're running on a mixture of adrenaline and deep rooted fear. I remember that it was raining when I made it outside. That was a good thing, it would hide me in the streets, make me harder to spot. My hair had grown back to hang just over my shoulders and it stuck to the side of my head as big fat drops hit me again and again. I was too heated from running to shiver from cold. Part of me had no idea what my plan was, I didn't know where I could go, I panicked. In my fear I made a mistake. I was spotted and when the shot rang out I didn't connect it to myself until the last second. I fell to the side, but too late. The bullet clipped my shoulder but did not do much else.

Still, the pain made me cry out. No matter how often one gets hit, it gets harder and harder to stand back up until you begin to think it is just better to remain lying down in the dirt, where you can be finally free. I lay there for a few choice seconds before scrambling up, knowing that I did not want to die there, not after finally making it out of that facility alive. I was Rat, and Rats survive no matter what. They claw towards the sky, towards life always, even tearing each other apart in the process, just to survive. So I ran into the night.

After some time I realized that I was getting weaker. No matter how tightly I gripped my shoulder, blood was leaking through. My shirt was soaked in it on that side. The sent of iron followed me and I seemed to leave a trail of blood on the cement. So I walked on the grass instead to throw off the pursuers that seemed to be only steps behind. The rain thickened around me, thunder and lightning struck. It was a real storm. My fingers were growing numb, I was cold. I was stumbling to the point where my escape had slowed down so much that if it weren't for the park that I walked through, I would have been found easily. Desperation gripped me.

It was then that I heard the screaming.

It pierced the thunder and rain, filling up the park. It made me pause, wondering what type of idiot was out on a night like this. I knew I didn't have time to stop and help anyone, let alone some wealthy Capitolite. But I knew I needed to find shelter and fast. Already my gaze was becoming darker. I could possibly blackmail the screamer. Desperation made me less careful.

I cannot describe what it was like to come from between the trees and see the boy there, upon his balcony, arms flung out and completely free with his scream. It struck me then that he looked so carefree, a feeling I couldn't remember having since I was six years old. I didn't have time to ponder this, I was fading fast. As soon as he turned to go inside, I let go of my bullet wound and flung myself up onto the balcony, scaling it easily enough. The window was open, my only chance was to get inside before he shut it. Without hesitating, I tore inside, only catching my breath when the rain no longer touched me. He turned around then and the innocence in his eyes was torturous. Jealousy hit me like a brick and I despised him even though he was not my enemy. At that point, everyone was.

Before he could call for help, I ran at him, backing him up against the wall with one hand around his throat. My skin was ridged and scarred after years of testing, it felt rough and hard against his smooth, privileged skin. He was slightly taller than me with short, white hair. His eyes reminded me of the cave dwellers, brown. Brown felt like home in comparison to the eyes I had become used to, a hue of weird colours with ticking clocks and sometimes tattoos inside the iris. My eyes turned to steel as I stared at him, a darker grey than normal from the darkness of the room and the stress. I am desperate to contain this, my body longs to fall to the floor and stay there but I am a rat and inside me, my need to live is stronger. My grip tightens as the phone rings.

Strangely, he does not shout out or look afraid. Instead, he seems to be studying me, an impassive expression on his face blooming into curiosity. I watch as it wilts and falls into concern and then confusion. I find myself intrigued by the way this boy is so open with his emotions, never having been the type to even hint at them myself. It's weird, and I wonder if it is a tactic to make me trust him. I don't have much choice.

"I won't tell her, it's okay."

How the fuck am I supposed to believe that. How can I even think to trust him, how can I? Panic makes my eyes widen and my fingers ache to squeeze harder until I am alone in the room but I know his mother will grow suspicious if he does not answer her call and come to check on him. I don't want to kill him anyway. He's my age. Even if he is my enemy, I cannot kill a kid because then I would be as bad as them. As I agonize, he answers anyway and I tense up, waiting for the bomb to drop. What follows is what I suspect a regular conversation between a mother and her child might be. It's only slightly fascinating. I listen to the murmur of words with only half an ear, my eyes seeming to swim. Each blink takes longer and longer. I ache to close my eyes for longer.

He finishes the call and unable to stop my own self, my hand loosens around his neck. Whether this is because I have come to a decision or because I no longer even have the strength to hold him there, I don't know. He shuts the window and the cold goes away. Warmth seems to fill up the space almost immediately and my bones relax. He says something, I think it's about fixing me up. My only instinct is to object. I know what it means, that phrase. The scientists said it all the time. Terror shoots through me.

I open my mouth, to speak finally, to growl at him until he acts like the hostage he is, but all at once my fragile strength disappears. My arms fall to my side and I stumble forward, right into my own prisoner's arms. Dizziness overcomes me, I can't tell where the ceiling is, lightness fills my head and my eyes shut. I only half feel it as he rests me against the wall and I slump downwards and forwards. I must have lost more blood than I thought. Then he is gone and the warmth of the room begins to seep into my bones. I haven't been so warm in so long. It makes me so tired. All my thoughts of escape leak away, falling to the basic primal instincts of hunger, the need for shelter and the relief of pain.

"Don't you dare touch me."

It takes me a second to realize that those words came from my lips. My hand is on his arm, blocking him from coming near me. I lost a second there, I didn't notice it when he came to kneel in front of me with needle and thread. I know what those items mean though. The tray with the scissors should be first though, where they open me up just to see how I tick. Where is the doctor that records my mental and physical reactions to them opening me up while I am still awake with no pain relief. Where is the nightmarish nurse who was tasked with the job of holding me down as they pulled my skin to the side to see my beating heart?

"If I don't help you, you will die."

I stare at him, the boy who is twelve but holds a voice as hollow as any of the scientists. It is forceful, commanding. He sounds just like them, forcing me to bow to his commands with voice alone. It is hard edged, empty. They are nothing more than words. The only emotion behind them is curiosity, as if he simply wants to understand how I tick as well. I shudder as the needle drives into my skin, but I sit back and let it. I don't have the energy to stop him, he knows it. Just like that, I am tamed. Maybe it's because there are some things you cannot run from.

Still, I give him a threat that is so empty I am surprised that he actually believes it. "I swear to Ripred if you do anything to me I will kill you," I told him, giving him the coldest gaze I could muster. He smiles and nods at that, telling me that he promises that he won't hurt me. (He has broken that promise so many times since, yet never purposefully, which makes it all the more infuriating.) After much swearing on my part and pulling away simply because I could, there being no one to hold me down, he finished. I'll never get over the oddness of feeling your own skin being stitched together. It is odd enough to feel the needle to go in and out, odder still to see it, as if you are nothing more than a torn piece of clothing, in need of repair.

He asks me my name and I must be insane or brain addled from the fever I can feel flushing my cheeks because I tell him it. "Nezumi," I say absentmindedly. Thought it may not be the name I was born with, it is my name now. My broth name is still reserved only for my mother. It will never be spoken again. Not by me, not by anyone. Nezumi is as good a name as any. I don't know why I ask for his name back. I should not allow such familiarity. I should have left as soon as he was done stitching me up. However, the storm outside was still raging. The piece of me that was just a little boy didn't want to go out in that, not when there was such warmth in this room. He gives me his name back- Shion. I repeat it slowly, it being another foreign name I've never heard before. The Capitol seemed to be full of them.

Everything felt vague, I felt dazed, the warmth of the room and of my fever making me far too relaxed. He left to go get dinner and I know I should have taken my chance then and disappeared. For minutes after he was gone, I found myself stuck on the floor, to exhausted to stand. He'd gestured to a flight of stairs, five stairs tall. There was a bed up there. I hadn't ever slept in a proper bed before. I don't count the surgery platforms, because those did have cushioning, but they weren't exactly comfortable. I decide to let all thoughts of running off tonight vanish. It's what they'd expect me to do anyway, to try and get far away tonight. They would not have expected me to take refuge in a house.

Eventually I stand and make my way around his room, touching everything. There are books on medicine, surgery, anatomy, maths, history, endless scientific shit that I've never really thought about. Most things I know come from observations. I only learned how to read out of boredom and necessity. However, there was a thin book about the size of my palm that held sonnets from a man named Shakespeare. I nicked it, unable to help myself after opening it to a random page and reading one line alone. I wanted it. He wouldn't miss it. Even if he did, he could buy another. I couldn't.

I finally made my way over to his bed and fell face forward onto it, bouncing slightly on it. I had never been on anything so soft before. I let out a muffled cry of delight even as my shoulder gave a twinge of pain, of course not healed. I realized then how pitiful I was, nowhere to go, nowhere to stay. I was twelve years old and alone in a city that wanted me dead. If I was ever the type to cry, I might have done so then. I hadn't shed one tear since I was six years old.

I must have fallen asleep for a few moments there then because the next thing I knew, Shion was there with a tray of food. It's not that they didn't feed us at the facility, but you never did know when your next meal was coming there. You might get food for months and feel comfortable and then the next week they were starving you for scientific reasons. It was a general rule among us that were tested on that if you were given food you ate every last bit of it. I sat up, and scarfed every last bit of it down, the flavour exploding in my mouth after three years of the same nutritional gruel. I nearly burned my mouth on the stew, and I had sworn off meat, but when you're starving it doesn't really matter. It was the best thing I had tasted in years.

I finished fast, gripping the spoon tightly in my left hand. Once fed, I perked up a bit, and forgot myself again. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw his hand reaching for me. Without thought, I turned then, faster than before even. Reflexes drove me and within seconds I was straddling him, spoon pressed dully to his neck, my other hand gripping the hand that had reached for me, pinning it to the bed. I didn't even realize that I'd moved, I don't think he was expecting it either. He looked shock for a second, and then that same intrigued look from before came over his features. Fear was never present. Did he think himself immortal? What was it with Capitolites? "You...you're not struggling?" I asked despite myself. I had spent a life time being cold and distant, instilling fear in people, and here was a boy so unafraid that he didn't struggle.

In the next instant, he asks me how I did it. Frankly, my shoulder is burning with pain and I don't have the strength for an idiot like him. Slipping off of him, I hold his hand tightly, as if my body has forgotten how to let it go. "You're so weird, Shion. What's wrong with you?" I don't have the strength to hold this up anymore, this coldness. My face splits into a huge grin and I fall onto my back again, staring up at the roof above us. I dissolve into hysterical laughter, something I can't remember ever doing, and in moments, he joins me. It goes on for some time and I know that if I try to stop, I will cry and I won't be able to stop and so I let it take it's course, even as the feeling of hopelessness overwhelms me.

We fall into silence then but I am not bothered. If this boy wants to kill me I suppose he can, but something tells me that he isn't going to. Call it instinct, what you will. Something about him makes me feel like that for once I am being taken care of. I don't mind the feeling, it's welcome. In some was, I am similar to a dog. If I am treated well, I will not bite the hand that feeds. I feel myself dozing off, hand still gripping the other boy's tightly. I feel secure that way, like I am tethered to the earth so there is no way that I will die in my sleep tonight. He pulls his hand from mine and lifts a hand to my forehead. I lean into it, a soft sigh escaping my lips from the human contact. I hadn't felt such a warm touch in so long.

He goes away and says something that my brain does not compute. It's something about how I have a fever, how he has medicine. Reaching out, I murmur at him, telling him to come back, I'm only tired, I don't need his antibiotics, things I'd never trusted when I'd grown up with only natural remedies. I have his hand once again in my own and it's then that I slip into darkness.

I haven't slept as well as that night, when his hand was in mine. I haven't trusted anyone else with such abandon. I still don't know what made me trust him so much anyway. I can't help thinking my brain was addled with the fever I did actually have. In the morning when I woke up, he was turned to me and we were both under his blanket. I had gotten my usual four hours and then six more. It was high time I left. For a few moments, I studied his face, committing it to memory, so I wouldn't ever forget it. Here was the first person in a very long time who had actually cared enough to help me. It was important that I not forget him, one day if I had the chance somehow, I would repay him.

I slipped away then, using the early morning as my cover. A purple sweater of his sat unattended upon his desk so I took it and changed it for the recognizable and bloodstained testing tunic I wore. It was warm and reminded me of the warmth of his room as I left it that morning, a book of poetry with the rats in my pocket.

Long story short, I made it out of there alive. It was all thanks to Shion, without him I would have died somewhere in the street, soaked to the core and without any blood left inside of me. For the second time in my life, someone had bothered to save me, not caring for the consequences that would come. I hadn't had that for so long. It changed my head.

I went as far as the first district, finding refuge in the slums where no one cares about anyone, where it doesn't matter if a new face appears because the slums are the slums. There are always people dying and always people arriving from somewhere else. The idea is to keep your head down and hope no one notices you. That seemed to work for the most part. I ended up making money, just a bit by becoming a tinkerer. People would bring me broken things and I would fix them. On the side I worked on the rats, hacking them so that thye learned to only respond to me instead. I gave them fur and a tail so that they would become like any other rat in the District, if not slightly cleaner.

Then I put to use a different talent. Although I was never educated in a school or anything fancy like that, the observant part of me had always been able to pick things up. I collected books like they were rare artifacts, and they were in the slums. They were hard to come by, but so worth the money and read I found. My living space became stacked with them. It was the first time I'd had my own place and I found it easy to settle in and make it my own. I traded an old motor I'd fixed for a very old gramophone that only had one song, and hung a painting that someone had given me in payment for fixing their broken television. Like Shion, I held a curiosity but instead of it being in others, it was in mechanical items and how they ticked. I learned by taking things that worked apart and putting them back together.

I read the book of poetry I stolen from him until it became dog eared and I knew every single word off by heart. I'd always had fair looks, the forest folk were decidedly lovely people, having been healthy and strong from living in the words. I was angular and strong, and even though I was more prone to a frown than anything else, I had a voice that carried and sang even when I spoke. This, mixed with the length of my hair and the sharpness of my chin often got me mistaken for a girl before I began to fill out. This never offended me. I used it to my advantage, taking to the Slum's small stage and taking any roles that would come to me. It got to the point that most often I played women, until my theatre company decided to rename me, christening me 'Eve'. I never minded that. When on stage, I never wanted to be Rat anyway, being on stage made me into someone else. I still liked Shakespeare best, and have often reprized the role of Ophelia, again and again.

With that comes the propositions of course. One can't expect to live in such a place and not receive them. It doesn't even matter to them that I am a boy, they're looking for it wherever they can get it. I guess it used to bother me, but there are worse things out there for a boy like me. I have never deigned to accept these propositions, but neither am I a spring flower when it comes to it. There are stages in one's life where one has to scrape the very being of themselves simply to survive. I know that too well.

It has been four years since my escape from the Capitol. My life now is far more comfortable than it was, I even have people who I might deign to call friends, though mostly I prefer to keep to myself, the small retinue I have of robotic rats being the only friends I need. Still, I often find my thoughts going to the boy who saved my life, wondering what might have happened to him because of me. Feelings of guilt grab hold of my heart and give me pause, I still owe him.

It isn't enough to send a rat to the Capitol for surveillance. I want to show him how much taller I've grown, not being able to forget the difference in height from back then. I want to thank him, as I never did.

Perhaps it's time I pay him a visit?

[presto]

[/presto]

Last Edit: Apr 3, 2014 8:06:31 GMT -5 by ✌ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ

compendium / avriel
clown car / pietro
2022 tracker / 2023 tracker / 2024 tracker

✌ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ Graphics 5,831 POSTS Pronouns: they/them last seen Apr 17, 2024 14:37:45 GMT -5 “And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good.” - steinbeck	NEZUMI // RAT, WANDERER Apr 3, 2014 7:48:14 GMT -5 Select Post Deselect Post Link to Post Member Give Gift Back to Top Post by ✌ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ on Apr 3, 2014 7:48:14 GMT -5 complete! (ﾉ◡‿◡)ﾉ～:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ✧ 6697 word! Cass has the dibs pls and thank~~
	Last Edit: Apr 3, 2014 7:52:13 GMT -5 by ✌ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ compendium / avriel clown car / pietro 2022 tracker / 2023 tracker / 2024 tracker

cass Retired Staff 4,822 POSTS last seen Oct 24, 2021 18:11:43 GMT -5	NEZUMI // RAT, WANDERER Apr 3, 2014 8:01:31 GMT -5 Select Post Deselect Post Link to Post Member Give Gift Back to Top Post by cass on Apr 3, 2014 8:01:31 GMT -5 AHAHAHAHA OMG U FLAWLESS HUMAN BEING WORDS CANNOT EXPLAIN HOW HAPPY THIS BIO MAKES ME Rat bby ur writing you omg gurl thank you for doing this plot with me thank you for being such an amazing writer ily and just kasjfkjasbfdjakfsljbsd