eos greene {a v o x} done

e o s  g r e e n e

I throw my hands against the bars, numb fingers wrapping around wrought iron with each violent strike. The tears which left grimy streaks down my cheeks were not ones of sorrow or hopelessness, but anger and revulsion. It was all that I had felt for the six long years they’d trained me. The rebels have told me the truth, a disgusting truth, one I had tried so hard to right. Back in Ten, where the world smelled of grass and animals, where the people were sleepy and quiet and kind. I missed it all so much now, the damp rocks surrounding me were suffocating. More than a decade ago now, before my brothers pulled me into a world of death and destruction, we would run through the cow’s fields dressed in little more than torn jeans. Back then it didn’t matter that we were on the brink of starvation and that every night our stomachs cried for food that would not come. Once upon a time, I was happy.

”Fuck you all!” my scream falls upon deaf ears, the pale white forms I could make out in the distance continue their agendas without so much as a glance my way. It was important never to let them have power over me; that is what Achilles had told me. Fight until they have a gun to your head and then keep fighting. Death was a better alternative than giving into the tyrants that ruled our society. He would save me, my big brother would. Sure he had run as soon as the peacekeepers grabbed me, sure he had denied any connection with me when all attention was turned upon him, but my brother was no coward. Achilles would come for me. He and his friends had taught me all I knew, had convinced me to pull this stunt. They wouldn’t just leave me.

Bruises have formed upon sweaty palms, the constant rattling of my cage leaving dark kisses upon my knuckles. The rough metal had long since torn the skin, leaving only burning patches. Fear, it was something different than the anger that had blindly coursed through me the past hours. As consuming as it was, it felt nice to feel something different. It was my own fear, not a fear Achilles had told me to feel. Because Achilles wasn’t here and I was alone. Soon enough they’d drag me into interrogation and I would admit my guilt with pride. That is what a good rebel would do. I was a good rebel.

Sleep must have overwhelmed me before I could completely ruin my hands. When I was forced awake they were stained with blood and I could feel every frantic heartbeat within them. At least three peacekeepers restrained me, stuffing dry cloth into my mouth as the dragged me down a row of cells. I fought each and every one, reaching for them with broken hands and kicking out with feat too weak to dent the white suits they hid behind. ”MMFH MhM HM.” I screamed every profanity I’d learned in my nineteen years, it seemed an awful short time in the face of a cruel death. The gag dissolved my brave words into muffled screams, they might as well have been pleads for freedom, as weak as I looked now.

The room was meant to intimidate and it did just that. Ropes cut into my wrists and rubbed against my ankles as I was bound to a chair that would not budge no matter how hard I threw my body to either side. Hopelessness, a new emotion forced its way into the eyes I could see reflected in the peacekeeper’s visor. They were familiar eyes, my eyes. The eyes that now leaked with angry and fearful tears. A gloved hand finally freed my mouth, and I gasp like a child taking their first breaths. My tongue moves rapidly around my mouth, restoring he moisture the gag had taken from it. "Fuck you." I coughed wiping my mouth on my shoulder. "At least look me in the eyes you smug bastard!" the peacekeeper still only regarded me through his visor, and my voice shook as I spoke. "What are you going to do to me?" it was a battle to keep my voice strong, the words punctuated by awkward pauses in my desperation not to stutter. 

"Do you deny your guilt?" The son of a bitch finally spoke, and the anger bred within me rose once more.

"Of course I don't!" I spat at his feet, once again struggling against my bonds, "You caught me red handed, w-why bother with this!?" My voice broke, I couldn't stop it. They had trusted me to be strong, yet here I was tears in my eyes and fear in my voice. Achilles would have hated me, had he seen me now. I was meant to get caught, that was the plan the whole time. The peacekeepers had to see me trying to take their weapons, but he'd promised it wouldn't end like this. He'd promised me as soon as the job was over we'd run and we'd be safe. We'd lay low in the wilds until the uprising began. Questioning anything was worthy of punishment, as was denying a job. This was my fate since the moment I allowed my brother to take me to the basement and let him tell me all about the Capitol and their cruelty. It was my fate the moment I believed that he would really come to save me, when I believed he could.

I was going to die, the realization hit me as hard as the peacekeepers hand. He sent my head spinning, sent stars spiraling about my eyes. The only good thing about his blows were that I no longer only focused on the hands I had ruined. "Fuck you." I repeated the words after each of his blows. When my eyes began to swell and my head began to spin I still pushed the spiteful words through my teeth. This son of a bitch wasn't going to get the last words, I wouldn't let him. 

"You know what I hate?" He laughed, holding my face to his, helmet having fallen off during my interrogation. 

"Fuck you." 

"Someone who doesn't know when to shut the fuck up." My eyes focused on him for only a split second, and I opened my mouth to retort. 

Pain, worse than anything inflicted upon me in the past hours days? weeks?, it was scalding and freezing at the same time. I sunk in and out of consciousness, body unable to compensate the trauma the peacekeeper had inflicted. I thought of nothing but death, knowing that my life was over and not understanding why. Had he stabbed me? Shot me? Dying was slow and painful, I could hear screaming somewhere in the recess of my mind and somehow I knew it was me. The rebel was not strong as he should have been, was not what Achilles has raised him to be ever since mother and father died. My brother had been my everything and in my last moments I was to let him down. My last moments would be that of a coward, screaming and sobbing at death's doorstep until it mercifully led me away. 

When the world came into focus once more, it was not the afterlife, it wasn't my bed or the cell once more. I sat in the interrogation room, soaking in my own blood,  the peacekeeper across from me twirling a knife between his fingers. "Fuck you." I tried to speak, waiting for my tongue to wrap around the words I so desperately wanted to say. "Fuck you!" I tried again and again, yet all that escaped me were indistinct grunts and whines. It was gone, the tongue i had been searching for in my waking moments was no longer my own. If I looked hard enough, I probably could have seen it upon the floor or even my scarlet-soaked lap, but I didn't dare. There was no hurry to be covered in my own sick as well. He hadn't killed me, no that was too easy, he had sentenced me a fate worse than that. 

"Whoops." My interrogator snarled as he wiped blood, my blood, onto his suit. "It seems I slipped, but I'm sure my superiors won't mind, right?" I could only respond with an enraged grunt. 

You're a good-for-nothing bastard and no one will believe that bullshit story. I hope they drag your tongue out through your-

"What's that? Nothing to say? What a good slave! You're a natural kid!" 

He plunged a syringe into my flesh and once again my world went black. 

Despite the peacekeeper's encouraging words, I was less than a natural avox. It wasn't easy adjusting to life without my tongue. Often finding myself speaking in garbled rasps and grunts. Everything tasted of nothing and all the food I ate was shoved to the back of my mouth, carefully chewed and swallowed with some amount of difficulty. Even without my voice I fought everything. My first owners were some rich assholes who expected me to do their bidding without question. And in a way, that's what I was supposed to do. I couldn't stand being complacent, sitting pretty in the place I hated more than anything in the world. My first day there I threw scalding tea onto a forty-something man. They beat me half to death and it was three days before I could move. They left me in their backyard those three days, a bowl of water and food sat just out of my reach. I could barely raise my arms to pour the water down my throat. They treated me like a dog because that's all I was now. 

Once I was better I fought, and when I recovered from that beating I fought again. My owners could have killed me easily in any of the months I stayed with them. No one would care as my life was theirs now. I was property to be owned, after all. "It's the principal!" I heard the man screaming at his wife from my vantage point on the stones outside. "I'll break this fucker if its the last thing I do!"

And break me he did. My fingers were broken many time over, food and drink taken from me for the slightest mistake. I was never a naturally bulky man, but every inch I once possessed had melted off of me by the time he was done. The hatred I felt for the capitol was never my own, and with each beating it leaked from my eyes and pooled upon the stone that was as good as my bed then. My eyes were blackened inside and out, permanent bruises blooming upon my shoulders from laying upon the stone for hours without so much as blinking. Fighting became a stupid alternative to keeping my head down, to surviving. I didn't care how much of a coward I had to be if I was still alive the next day. Just as I was molded into a perfect rebel by my brother, I was molded into the perfect servant by this man. Executing orders with so much precision he would never have an excuse to hit me again. Not that it kept him from doing so. 

I wasn't angry at his smug tones whenever he spoke, wasn't angry when he bragged to his guests about the wild beast he had tamed. Nothing was what I had to be, and nothing I was. Save for nights spent outside, finally able to move I would press my back against the glass doors and cry. My knees pulled to my chest and head resting upon them I cried for everything I wasn't. Achilles had never intended to save me, of that I was sure. No one cared enough to save me, nor to treat me well. I didn't know who I really was, but whoever that is, they're a truly terrible person. It's the only reason I'd deserve a life like this. 

He's done with me, he says. Bored that I no longer put up any challenge to his requests, bored he has no reason to hurt me any more. I've lost my second home now, and I honestly don't want to know what lies ahead. Adapting - surviving - is my only option now.