Alfonso Izar - District 11 - Fin

You wished that he came home.

You told yourself that you were going to volunteer for him that day that he was reaped. He was too fragile to go into the games, and he never would have survived.

He was older, but you felt obligated to save him from a death that was probably coming from a mile away.

You clung to an absolution that you were the next Izar to die. Everyone pegged him to stay out of the games. That they had already taken so many of their kids already that they deserved a break.

However, that would never happen. The Izars would never know peace if it bit them in the ass.

They were all doomed to die. Including you.

One games at a time.

---

So you told yourself that you would stay busy with whatever you needed to in order to make yourself happy.

You tried to be useful in places that no one expected you too. The farms, the city building, hell, you even tried to become the secretary to the mayor here, but nothing worked.

After a while, you would get bored and try to figure out that you weren’t useful to anyoneu here.

No.

You were just another kid who would never realize his true potential because you would probably be reaped in the games and sent to your death, just like Gabriel.

---

So you tried to run, and you didn’t make it that far. Actually, you didn’t even make it past your house.

The thought of you neglecting such a lineage, a large group of strong people that had braved such hardships felt like a cop out.

You told yourself countless times that you were the strongest Izar left in the bunch. However, no one understood why because after 24 games, there was still not a single Izar victor.

None alive to tell the tale of living inside a place where murder was your only option. Murder was your friend above anything else. At least, that is what you saw.

---

And you watched in horror as your brother tried desperately to hold onto his life. Even going as far as to set the one of the people on fire in front of their eyes. He was an Izar after all. He would not go out without a fight. That is what they were known for.

However, minutes later, the boy from nine, who looked soft in his expression struck him down. And down went another Izar. But more importantly, down went your brother.

The boy who picked you up when you tried to tell your family secrets that you never thought you would have too.

The boy who watched you conquer fears that only ripred could fathom.

You didn’t fight people. No. You fought demons along with Gabriel, but no one knew that like you. Not even your little brothers.

You were silent. You were stoic.

Your family knew nothing personal about you.

---

But when you were around other people, it was like night and day. Difference was a word that people couldn’t even begin to use on you.

You were passionate about things that people didn’t think a boy from 11 could be.

You collected or bought fruits with whatever money you made, taking some of them and giving them to the family, but keeping others in order to create things that boys from your district usually didn’t do.

You mashed fruits together to create pigments that no one imagined existed, and drew art that no one thought could come from the poor.

Sometimes people walked by and saw your work and asked if someone important was here in the district, even when you were in the middle of creating it in front of their eyes.

The Izar’s were not known for being artistic. They were known for dying in the games. Or for running amok outside of them.

For you, it was hard to live in a world where people pegged you as weak. Most people thought with the amount of Izar’s that had already been in the games, there should have been a winner already yes?

No. Because you knew at the end of the day, the Izar’s crumbled like dust under pressure, and try as you might, if you went into those games, you wouldn’t last long.

Your head would be on a pike, and your soul eviscerated by the sounds of tributes singing your name in death.

However, you wouldn’t cry about that, because that is the way you would want to go out.

A death that could stand the test of time.

---

But that wasn’t you. No. You were not going to be in the next games, and you were sure that luck or fate, or whoever decided to step into meddle with your demise, would keep you from it.

Instead, you knew you would live on to continue to paint things that you didn’t believe were possible.

You longed to use real paint, but you knew that you could never afford it. And then you would live your naïve life and tell everyone about how much you missed your brother even though there was no point in missing someone that would be forgotten by everyone else.

Instead, you painted murals on the side of buildings where people lived in order to make sure that people knew the depravities of whatever was going on in Panem. You would never sign them though because you never wanted it to blow back on the Izar name.

The Izar’s were not vandals after all.

Just you.

And that was something that you could accept about yourself.

However, you did have another task, to live for the brother that you lost.

Gabriel would have wanted that.

But he also would have wanted to live. And so with your little brother and the whole family behind you.

You would do what Gabriel couldn’t do.

Live.