blair havoc | district 2 (fin)

g l o r y .

The word is so simplistic, yet such a poignant reminder of why I'm here. Havocs are nothing without glory; I've learned that lesson and I've learned it well, engraving the word within the confined walls of my mind over and over until I am condensed into nothing but an empty shell trying to prove itself. The futility of such a thing is almost laughable. Glory meant more to me before now, before my mother's life ended and my own begun; in the fourteen years I knew her before she died, not once did I feel like anything more than just a pawn to her, a trophy to be displayed only when required then locked away into a dusty old cabinet, its existence forgotten until it is needed again.

I'm not sure which is worse - that, or the fact that I didn't mind being her pawn. The only real feeling I remember is the rush of pride whenever I saw the not-so familiar smile light her face when I'd done something correctly, the sense of knowing I've brought the three essential things to my family - pride, honor, and glory.

Those feelings, of course, were not felt often. I spent most my days feeling nothing, indulging in my many methods of escapism such as sneaking out through the window of my homespun bedroom onto the darkening streets of District Two. Often I was alone, my lack of talent for forming and keeping solid relationships being one of my many fatal flaws, though one or two times I may have found some familiar face from the training academy and latched onto their group of delinquents. I guess I've always had a fear of being shunned - it's practically wired into every Career's brain, the terror attached to the idea of being an outcast, a disappointment, dishonorable. I've been all three of those things for as long as I can remember, so long that I feel as though it has numbed me.

Humans fear things. That is who we are, our innate need to survive, the flight or fight instinct and adrenaline rushes built into us from birth. The thing which separates us is what we fear, and how we deal with it. I've never really known anything outside of my own home and the training academy. Surrounded by self-proclaimed 'fearless' Careers, it's easy to see how the lower districts can fear us, the way we handle weapons with confidence and attack with little hesitation. But over time, after spending hour upon hour training alongside these warriors, you can break them down. See what really lies beneath the surface - fear. Like every other human, they fear. They bleed, cry, breathe - they can die, and they know in the back of their mind they can die.

Death becomes less terrifying once you see it happen. If you see it once, and allow yourself to experience the full blow of witnessing it, you develop a resistance - just like to any little illness. My resistance came earlier than most. We all see twenty-three deaths once each year, but we see it from the security of our homes, the artificial projection onto the screen separating us from the reality of what is happening. Blood is celebrated, losing life becomes mundane, and people end up brawling over who gets to sign up for their death sentence next.

If only they knew that dying does not make you a hero.

➳➳➳

It starts with a kiss. A simple kiss, nothing attached to it; I don't even think my parents knew what love was when they decided to commit to it. My mother, with her ash blonde hair, and my father with his dark, hands clasped and fingers entwined as they whispered sweet nothings to one another. I suppose one thing leads to another in these situations, and she ends up with a swollen belly and a lifelong commitment she isn't prepared for.

The next reaping day, a name is called, and my mother remains still. She knows she's supposed to call out and step up to the stage in place of the other girl, but with her hand pressed to her belly and her head bowed she holds her tongue, ignoring the discerning looks from those around her, the other Careers who expected her to be stepping forward. She hears a hiss of "coward" from behind her and a pressure in her heel. Another girl steps forward, and as soon as it ends, she runs home, ignoring the shouts from her peers and cradling the small lump in her abdomen holding the cluster of cells which would become a child carrying her blood. Her name, blood, and glory.

Eight months later, and she's gripping his hand as she makes her desperate final effort to push the child out, teeth clenched and knuckles turning white. When she's done, and her child is lifted to her lips so she can plant a kiss on its forehead, he squeezes her hand and tells her he loves her. She repeats it back. They pretend they know what love is, just for the sake of basking in this moment.

➳➳➳

I've never known love; only broken bottles on empty pavements, spending nights with strangers and whispering meaningless promises into the ear of someone doomed to leave eventually. Is there really any glory in living that way? Mother wouldn't say so, I'd imagine, but Father seems content to spend the rest of his days drinking his sorrows away in a pit of his own misery. At least I get outside every once in a while, even if it's to lollygag around questionable areas with questionable people. At least I'm sane.

I'm not as broken as him, but I'm not whole either. I'm caught somewhere in the in-between, the numb oblivion of not knowing how I truly feel. There's no longer any need to bring glory to my name, when the woman who wanted it is dead. I know it would have been her dying wish had she been able to make one, but I can't find the energy to be a strong person. It's tiring. I go to training out of boredom, having a lack of things to do. The district only really comes alive for me in the night, and I don't want to become a nocturnal like some people I know.

Three years have blurred together like ink in water, fading between day and night and day and night and I don't know who I am or why I'm here- and a name. Blair Havoc. Some sort of sense of identity, I suppose. The only good thing my mother left behind for me, amongst the bad memories and internal scarring from the psychological torment of being told I was never good enough.

I wonder if I ever could have been everything they asked for. When I can stomach looking in the mirror and being faced with who I appear to be to others, I see nothing but mistakes. I don't want to be perceived this way, with narrowed eyes and pale, broken skin. It bothers me, how small and fragile I look to others, but what bothers me more is how small and fragile I feel within myself, as if I've been eroded down into a broken fragment of who I used to be - whoever that was. So I push myself up to stand at my fullest height, shove a couple of socks down my shirt then tell myself that I am in control of myself and I decide what I do. Then I head out, make bad decisions and come back to a drunken father staring emptily at a white wall, and wonder if anything will ever change.

It does. Things change. I'll become eighteen and stop bothering about being a Career. Get a job, find some unfortunate soul to marry and have kids or whatever. That's the 'goal', is it not? But the idea of such a future is mundane, so tedious I doubt I'd be able to last till I'm thirty before running from it. I don't want to run forever. I don't want things to keep changing.

Things change, but they don't necessarily get better. I'll always be frail, small-framed, covering up with over-sized sweaters and hiding behind hoods and darkness. I don't want who I am to be dependent on my looks. Above all, I've only ever really wanted a blank slate, a canvas to paint whatever patterns I please on. To eradicate everything in my life and run, carrying myself away with the wind and running until I find somewhere worthwhile. But to stay anywhere too long is to resign yourself to a mundane existence, to routines and comfort and familiarity. Is there any glory in living in comfort?

I decide I will reinvent glory, and make it my own. And when that happens, I'll make myself proud - because if the validation won't ever come, why should I wait?