Tarragon Lovecraft // Avox // [FIN]

I didn't ask for this life.

I was born into it; I had no choice in the matter. In fact, I wouldn't have even been born had my parents not needed me to do their dirty work. Or rather, cover up all their dirty work. My parents - along with my seven older brothers - are part of a very elaborate drug ring, all covered up by a very "lovely" and "respectable" furniture business. It's amazing just how much Capitolites want new furniture. I didn't realize until I got arrested that they actually do change their furniture every week. It's ridiculous. They're ridiculous.

And if I still had a tongue I would tell them so.

But instead I sit silently and wait to refill their tea or wine glasses, live to polish their shoes and iron their clothes, and let's not forget I'm meant to get on my hands and knees like a slave and scrub the floors of their mansions on a daily - yes, fucking daily - basis. And it's all because I was born and raised to sit behind a desk of two very powerful druglords.

My parents didn't really care about my welfare; never had. So I wasn't all the let down when I got thrown under the bus during the interrogations. So I guess in some way I got off lucky, having known from the very beginning that it would come to this. It was much harder for my eldest brother to swallow, seeing as he had been under the impression that he would take over the drug business and was Dad's favorite. Somehow he thought that all the extra attention he got was love. But because I was in charge of funds and smiling at the front desk of the business I knew Mom and Dad only loved one thing: Money.

So it was clear that once I had been apprehended I was done for. Though I still am unsure of just how I - the innocent one who never went out in the streets or handled the drugs or anything - wound up taking the fall for it. Really, it's quite a feat that my parents pulled off that I would very much like to know how exactly they managed it. Only having me and one of my brothers take the fall? Damn. Must've had that planned since before any of were even born.

I see my brother now and then. He's as silent as I am, tongue gone, dressed like a puppet, dancing the way his Capitolites want him to - just as I do for mine. But our paths do not cross very often, which I assume is part of the system, and I don't really care to see him. At least not anymore. Yes, I love him, and the two of us have been through a lot together, but seeing him reminds me that I am not the same.

He wouldn't recognize me now. I remember how much I used to look like him, how I used to be a spitting image my father and my eldest brother. Now I look in the mirror and don't even realize it is me I am looking at. It's this ... disgusting thing some of the Capitolites have been doing. For years I hadn't been all that broken by what had happened to me, but this--- this makes me feel broken and lost. I've tried to ignore it - all the changes and modification they have made - but I'm placed in front of a mirror so often now that I'm forced to look at myself for hours on end.

And it's just so much harder than anything I have had to endure in my life.

I've always been stubborn and rather rebellious at heart. I would've made a great hitman had I not been so small. But I never disobeyed my parents - I only ever through stinging comments their way or made witty sarcastic remarks. And then when I had been condemned and brought to the Capitol I was released from under my parents' collective thumbs and I rebelled in every way possible. I was beaten to the point of near death quite often. For awhile it was like a weekly routine. But after a year or so I grew just as bored of it as my Capitolites did and I decided to just accept my life as it was, sort of like I had with my parents.

But that was before this stupid-disgusting-sick-grotesque...thing that happened to me! I guess I hadn't recognized just how sick these people really were. (Which yes, I realize is stupid of me considering they send 23 kids to their deaths every year for fun.) But to make me a living, breathing replica of someone who is dead? To reconstruct me into someone who had died years ago because you have this innate need to own everything? Because you are so deeply obsessed with past tributes that you pay thousands or millions or trillions of dollars to have them reborn?

I wasn't expecting to wake up one day looking like Naveen Casovnik. I didn't ask for that. These people act as if interrogations, whippings, beatings, my tongue, and 2 years of service weren't enough for them. Ripred how much more do they want from me? Fuck them. How dare they take every bit of my identity from me. Every last scrap of my old self is gone. Hell they are even making me act like her - or at least they want me to. They have me watching the 62nd like it is my lifeline. The only benefit of that is seeing Peridot Myler and remembering home...

But seeing home - even just glimpses of it - makes me miss everything I had been all that much more. I miss my blonde hair. My blue eyes. My thin lips, my thick and unshaped eyebrows, my nose (though I couldn't tell you what is changed about it, it just is different), Ripred I even miss my crooked tooth. Now I look like a pampered tribute most every day of my life. Brunette, green eyes, "perfect!" as the people who own me say, just like they would say of a doll whose outfit was on point.

They've taken to calling me "Navy."

I've taken to ignoring them.

I've still got enough of that fiery piece of me to resist this. I just can't look at my own reflection anymore without feeling lost. I'll just try to ignore the way I look. Just keep my eyes trained on those pompous assholes that did this to me, glare at them and hope can burn a hole through their skulls. If I learned anything at all from my parents it was that everyone is a threat and everyone should be treated as such. With malice and hatred and every ounce of bitterness within my veins I will keep myself alive. Me, Tarragon Lovecraft.

I'm a survivor. I will live.