maxyn kersey, district four | finished

You were born into a world of bony hands and bleeding knuckles; protruding ribs and torn lips. You never knew your mother -- just a memory that comes when you sleep, of dying fingertips against a screaming infant's cheeks, but even then, you think you simply made that up inside your head to keep yourself warm at night. Your father didn't hate you for killing your mother, for being a parasite that stole her life in sacrifice for its own, and you're grateful for that, but all those who knew her say that you took her everything onto yourself: her pale hair and blue eyes, pasty skin stretched around thin bones. Her last breath, which was your first.

(But, no: you don't think about that anymore.)

At least, you shouldn't. No one ever blamed you, no one ever once gave you a reason to hate yourself -- but in your stubborn, reckless years of youth, and still today, you made your own reasons. For forcing your father to raise a child alone -- one so similar to his fallen beloved. For being so frail, sickly. For being common trash among Four; dirtied palms and chewed fingernails making up your entirety. You were bitter and lonely, fed everything a broken child could pray for, and yet you selfishly hated yourself. You vomited up the food and the love your father never let you live without, alongside the courage people deemed you to have. They said a survivor boy like you, going so far in life against all of the odds, should be grateful. But what was there to be grateful for when the walls of your home had more cracks and dents than those on your flesh?

You didn't find a purpose in life until you found Canterbury Scarlet. "It's just Kent," he corrected, all flesh and sweat and blood, and you watched in awe of his training -- a mess of a boy made both of fiery skin and blood of gasoline, and in that moment, the art of fighting burrowed its way into your mind. I could be something, you thought. I could work off this pain, I--

"You can train with me, y'know. If you want." Seven days of sitting and watching, and Kent invited you to stand beside him. He took it easy on you with the first hit, but you still bruised. He pinned you in under two minutes, but that sensation was the closest to flying that you'd ever felt. The next day, he pinned you in three. The day after that, he kicked you so hard in the shin that you forfeited the match. Eight days in, and you sent a hook to his jaw at just the right angle that it knocked him out. You were crying when he woke up, thinking you'd lost your first friend, and with him, your purpose. But he smiled a bloody grin.

"That's it, Max."

Max. Not Maxyn -- just Max. And it felt like home.

---

Four years later, you feel that you could topple mountains with Kent at your side. Your bony knuckles are now lined with callouses, and your bones are layered with thicker skin -- and no one cant hurt you; not anymore.

{ Though, it's wise to remember: no one had been swinging punches at you in the first place; no one had been trying to destroy you.

-- Just yourself. And you're not sure if you've surrendered the war against your entirety, or if Kent only offered a stalemate that hadn't been an option before he found his way into your life. }

But you shake your head, 'cause you don't think about that anymore:

instead, you think of the sharp inhale that you take after you're punched in the gut, or the way your skin burns when your arm is twisted into a submission hold. You think about the way the blood drips down the cracks across your knee like you're something of the earth: like you're something beautiful and meant to be appreciated, and Ripred, there are moments he looks at you and you feel your chest constrict so tightly that you can't breathe -- you suffocate in his presence, and somehow that's what keeps your heart pumping.

"Max, are you alright? You look like you're about to explode."

And then you deflate: your skin flushes and you exhale everything -- because he has that talent. He brings everything out of you: all of those dark thoughts you locked within yourself in your youth; all of those warm feelings when he places a hand on your shoulder -- and there's moments when you sit alone with him on rooftops and he wraps his arm around your shoulder, and those are the moments that you're not afraid:

not of yourself, not of the setting sun -- not of anything. You met a boy who taught you how it feels to be alive, and you are so grateful for that. Because life is not about sitting in silence and waiting for the break of dawn; it's not some sort of metaphorical dance-in-the-rain-but-pray-you-don't-can't-a-cold nonsense.

Life is real, and it hurts. It's the way he kicks your jaw when you lose your footing, and the way he pulls you back up and wipes the blood away from your chin with a smile. It's the way he breaks you so you don't have to do it yourself, and it's the way your body crumples and he drapes himself over you with a laugh -- like you're an altar and he's someone holy; like you give him some reason to worship you, but-...

Oh, he is the moon and you are the tides -- you'll never stop trying to reach for him. And that's your curse: you fell in love with your best friend. He taught you how to harden your body and your emotions: he saved you from yourself, and he destroyed all of your enemies, but fuck. You're not safe from him. You never will be.

He gave you all the weapons that you needed to protect yourself,
and you gave him everything he needs to destroy you.