ajax craine || district two || 2nd retro games || fin

You were normal, once. You had to be, right? Like any other ordinary person, feeling normal emotions and experiencing normal lives, sure. Of course you weren't abnormal, there was nothing different about you. You were just another person, right? Different people experienced different things.

In truth, it's hard to discern when you became the person you are today. When things changed. When you lost your childhood naiveté and became the young man you are. But like with any good, convoluted story, it's usually a good idea to start at the beginning.

See, it's hard to find anything that was truly abnormal for your upbringing. You were born an only child, a fate solidified in stone after your first few breaths as it was clear that the experience wasn't the addition of life, but the transfer of it instead. With no mother in the picture, you were left at the mercy of your father - a bitter, short-tempered man who saw you as the embodiment of where everything went wrong.

See, your parents had been young and in love, once, with the desire for kids always on the cards. But through trial came error, and as the years turned into decades each attempt ended in failure. And then when you were the magic number one that made it through, you rewarded the process with death surrounding your first few breaths of life. And it was obvious, painfully obvious that your father never forgave you for it.

See, your father was a retired soldier in an era of peacetime, at least initially. A man in white drafted from the youth of the district, given an honorable discharge when his knee had been shattered by a drunkard in some backwater district. But there was some part of him that never left the service, some built in anger and rage that he had generated over the course of his service that he had never quite learned to expel. So with criminals and lawbreakers out of reach, he instead vented those years of fury out on the closest object that had earned his ire.

And life was hell. No normal kid could go through that. But you were nothing if not adaptive. You learned how to choke screams back down your throat instead of letting them fly free, how to stifle tears with cool numbness, learned how to transform your pain into anger and hatred of your own.

The war broke out when you were eleven. The Dark Days, they were called, drew forth new life from your father that you had never seen in those years of your youth. Officially crippled, unable to assist on the combative front that you both had desperately wanted, he instead threw himself into the war with a new fervor. Papers were his new obsession, ink and parchment entering and exiting your home at a record pace. It was beyond your understanding, aside from the fact it was important.

There was a funny thing that emerged from your years of abuse. Some victims withdrew into themselves, became meek, timid shells of their former selves. But you'd learned how to turn your wounds into animosity, and through pure spite you made it your life's mission to hate anything your father loved, and vice versa. He hated it whenever you made a mess? You'd go out of your way to ensure as much of the house was trashed as possible. He loved hearing you scream? Well, you would shut your trap and endure whatever pain was delivered in silence.

And when you found out that he too was an oddity in Panem, that despite his service to the Capitol his papers were tracking key information for the rebellion, you decided that as soon as you were able you'd do whatever you could to ensure that he and his love for treachery would burn.

Soon, Capitolite propaganda became one of your hatches. You'd deck your room in it, practically daring your father to comment against it, to slip up so you'd have your justification. And when the beatings were a little more brutal, a little more blood was shed in the aftermath, you clung to the knowledge that you had figured out a way to get under his skin.

You're not sure when the power dynamic began to shift. As you aged, as you grew, as it became ever clearer that your father's genetics reigned supreme within your form, you grew angrier. The rage simmering within your form became harder to contain. And you realized you didn't want to contain it. Once, you'd fought back, a fist to the gut. The black eye you sported for the next couple of weeks was worth every bit of that brief moment of victory.

And still you bode your time. Vengeful but not stupid, you watched, waited, as the war gradually began to shift one way, then the other. Through virtue of fortune, Two was a bastion of the Capitol's beliefs, but even the most secure of structures had its cracks, and you could never be sure if lashing out would catch you into the inferno.

Sure, you burned bright, and you burned hot. But there was a time and a place for a blaze of glory, and this wasn't it. Not by a long shot.

But you'd learned to endure. You waited for your chance. And then, one day, you saw it. Your father, passed out on the drink, had left some key documents exposed. It was almost too easy, collecting them and taking them to a squadron of Keepers (something you'd intentionally chosen, for while with one there was a fifty-fifty chance, with a group, the chances that every single one of them held rebel sympathies was close to none). And it was almost too fast, watching the firing squad execute him for treason.

It's funny. Most people were devastated upon learning they had become an orphan. You had never been happier in your entire life.

Sure, the happiness was short lived. Sixteen year old boys weren't permitted to live and support themselves. And despite your true act of patriotism, your very name painted you as a potential dissident yourself, so instead of enlisting in an academy, you were sent to an orphanage instead.

No matter. You'd grown excellent at biding your time. Even when the war ended at seventeen, even with that treacherous rebel scum had made a mockery of the Capitol's act of punishment a few months later, you knew what your purpose was. You'd enlist, following in the footsteps of your father. You'd train, endure being sent to some backwater just like he was, only you wouldn't be stupid enough to let your career end before it had really begun.

Then, you'd return home. You'd establish your name as one to be trusted.

And then you'd murder that treacherous rebel scum. For the glory of your district. For the glory of Panem.

And for your own self indulgence too, of course. After all, don't normal people get to treat themselves on the job every once in a while?