::It's/not that//I HATE you [Chaos]

People here get by. They don't flourish or go on to do great things, they manage. Despite the long hours, scant food and grueling work, they still find it in them to smile after they finally come home from hauling logs and swinging axes. Each and every one of us sports the frame of the lower districts - not haggard enough to be skeletons, but perhaps just a bit too small to be considered healthy. I'm no exception - my ribs jut out from my awkward boy-hips and seem very out of place with my slight shoulders, but... at least the townspeople make it so that's all they've had to worry about. The tiny community that I moved into with my grandfather taught me to be wary of other people, but not afraid. That I shouldn't be ashamed of my face though I still hide it, and learn to intergrate with reality. Others here don't notice a little boy that surveys the world, watching them with a curious apathy about how normal life is supposed to be. I got by, and so did they. I could heal.

Until school started.
My fragile grip on confidence was diminuitive at best, but when I first stepped into those halls, it imploded in a spectacular array of backlash. While some of the kids feel sorry for me and leave me alone - something I'm unbelievably grateful for - the others enjoy taunting me by tugging at my mask and lighting matches in my presence. Perhaps it's because I look different than them, or that I'm undeniably ugly in the face of the soft-eyed girls and chiseled boys, but I've grown to hate the long, winding hallways that have too many people in too small a space.

My ragged frame is pushed along with the flow, being jostled to whatever destination may await. While my books protect my chest from the brunt of the attack, each move shifts my mask and makes the hooks embedded into the fine plains of my skull twinge in pain. They move as a singular organism - writhing and moving but never once halting their onslaught. It takes all the gravity I'm able to conjure to root me to the Earth and not be whisked away with the bell-induced mayham, each struggling to get to the cafeteria before the hot food has run out and they be reduced to nothing more than cold slop. Nobody noticed when I stopped eating - what's the point? I'll never get the good stuff anyway.

With great difficulty I deviate from the flow and push through the crowd, muttering embarrassed apologies to those that I cut off. They hiss and throb but continue on their way, never once stopping. When I step out into that one hallway that's always less busy than others I'm allowed to breathe, free from the crowd of faceless strangers that wants nothing more than to devour me whole.

I linger until it has cleared out entirely; people avoid this place because of the dull lighting, mildew stench and the creepy teacher that stalks the rooms around this time. Still, it's the only place I can hear myself think. The distant roar of the cafeteria rebounds through the dim corridors even as I shoulder my way through the heavy doors, only to be met by an unpleasant and entirely unwelcome sight.

A boy.
In my space.

"Who the hell are you? Go somewhere else, this is my place." I scowl in secret and try and take a few deep breaths to gain whatever courage is needed to stand up for myself, but as my hesitant strides come closer and his face is revealed, it seems to sap whatever sureness I possessed. It's that Capitol boy... the one who takes great pleasure in taunting those different. I would know.

A hand unconsiously comes up to play at one metal hook, before I clear my throat nervously and rock on my heels. "Um, n-no. This is my place, and um, I'd like it if you left."



[OOC: Ugh. Lemme know if you want me to change the line about taunting them or whatever.]

I'll never admit to it, but I like watching people that are in pain. Not for any sadistic thrill, but because I'm genuinely curious about their expressions and the emotion that hangs off of them like a heavy blanket. This boy... for all his rage and threatening, has a sadness in his face that he tries to veil with a cruel smirk and angry words. Perhaps it's because he's thrust into a world that suddenly makes no sense - all work and hardship with nothing he was ever used to, none of the casual comforts that he once enjoyed. I can relate, but I certainly harbor no pity. Despite the slight shudder when he gets up and the sneer that plasters on his face, I stand my ground and regard him warily.

"What's wrong with your face that you have to hide it, boy?" I have to resist the impulse to cry at the familiar jab to my face, swallowing down the hurt that throbs an erratic beat in the hollow of my throat. While it's nothing new, it never gets any easier; I see the expression on his face that every sick person gets from a healthy one. Contempt, no matter how well meant. He says something else, but I'm lost so far in my little world that it comes out as nothing more than garbled, incomprehensible speech.

Which is most probably why I can't flinch away fast enough from the incoming fist that shatters all thoughts of peaceful confrontation.

I take two steps back, reeling and pressing down hard at the intricate wooden mask to stop the throbbing. Blood drips slowly from where the blow has pulled against the hooks, and my remaining eye waters dangerously to blur my vision. My thick tongue presses hard against the roof of my mouth, trying to relocate the pain to somewhere controllable. Fixable. Still, words fail me even as I try to think up a snappy comeback so that maybe he'll respect me even a tiny bit. A sharp twinge on the right side of my face alerts me to the sudden influx of cold air, and I watch in horror as the piece that covers the ruined socket of my right eye wobbles on the floor before going still.

For a moment all is silent and I slowly raise my face to stare at him, open and closing my mouth to attempt to force any words at all. Still, nothing comes out, and I'm hypersensitive to each lukewarm breeze that creeps inside my skull and touches against the charred insides. My fingers cramp from pressing the mask so hard to my face, but all the will drains out and I shivershudderstill. I've tried so hard to just fit in here, but now that this... thing has seen me there's no way I'll ever live it down.

"Whas' yer pro'lem?" I sniffle, creating the words into mumbled speech. People are always so confusing. They take things too hard and last out too quickly, never stopping once to think of alternatives. "It's not m' folt you're he'rah." My gaze draws to the piece of innocent wood, now quiet, resting by his foot. A teacher walks by and breaks the tense moment, but doesn't bother to raise any questions at the tears that threaten to spill or the clenched fists, simply averting his eyes and continuing on his way.

Sometimes I wonder if the other Districts are any different. If people actually give a damn and help each other out. Where we aren't ruled by silent and the constant tempo of axes splitting wood, and the sharp hiss of exhaled air from exertion. A long time ago before I was set free by Papi, I thought that the Capitol was the epicenter of evil. They were the reason that we suffered so, while wallowing in superficial baubles and detrimental tendencies that will one day be the destruction of us all. Watching him, all I can see is a fallen society in which they are just too scared to be normal, so they make up in the form of vain wishes and over-exaggerated banquets declaring their greatness to the gods.

But who are the gods to decide our worth?

"No!" Through my jagged and almost incomprehensiable speech it comes out as more of a slurred scream that rips at the scarred remains of my throat, eyes sparking with horror as the brutal snap of wood echoes along the abandoned hallways. At once I am inately aware of how exposed I feel with my empty socket gaping helplessly into the void of sleeping consciousness. Emotions clash as I'm not sure how to feel - struck between horror at the thought of going the rest of the day without cover; or disgusted by his blatant arrogance and little smile that grows at my pain. An odd mix of equal parts paralysis and fury renders me boiling with frozen rage; fists clenching even as the sheer weight of what I feel allows both of my lips to curl back, deadened side responding to my ire with pleasantly surprising swiftness. It coruscates from the center of my chest outwards, allowing the slumbering anger that has been building since the scarring incident to be released upon an outlet who is more than deserving of this ugly consequence.

"Wha' th' hll is yer issoo, dum'ass?!" Because of this churning pit of feeling my words are even less coherent than usual, complacent personality vanishing momentarily in the wake of this travesty. I feel tears pressing up in my good eye, sorrow overriden by wrath as I scramble over and pick up the fragmented pieces in shivering fingers. A familiar wave of helplessness washes over me and I attempt to fit them back into the smooth breach but they just crumble back out, fingers catching on the ragged pieces and promising aching splinters. Something between a sob and a growl sounds from my throat and I glare up at him from my prone position on the floor even as I try and push them back together again. "Jus' cus yoore n'able to duh neething usful dun me'en yoo haff to be me'an." And I can't get rid of his self-satisfied smirk from my mind, even as another choked whimper escapes when the fury slowly drains out to stricken fear. How am I going to go to school like this? People can't see my face - they don't deserve the truth that they hound me for. I've come so far in repairing my shattered confidence, I'm not letting it be usurped now by some Capitol pretty boy who doesn't know how to suffer.

I am going to pay for it later with blood and tears, but some small part of me wants to show him what it's like to be District born.
"Now do you want to leave?"
In return slippery fingers clench along the ruined shards and my jaw grits so hard that the stark muscles can be seen even through the scar tissue that ropes carefully over the right side of my face with less vigor than my left; it makes the scars shift angrily like a serpentine beast that slithers underneath the skin. "Nho." I must act now, for my bravado is disappearing in a flourish of badly mimed plots and vague ideas of heroism. I give a strangled shout and whirl to face him, hands blindly guiding the sharp wooden pieces to their target.
Nothing matters; not the teacher that could potentially appear, not the disappointed gaze of my grandfather. I am angry and hurt and tired and somebody must pay for the selfish mistakes of the world.

I encounter less resistance than I originally thought - all the watchings of the Hunger Games and difficult battles punctuated by glancing wounds have nothing in reality. The shard opens his thigh with vicious abandon, sinking in deep and spewing blood to stain the rugged fabric of his pants a deeper dark. My fingers pushpushpush even though they keep slipping off the soaked material, slathered in vicous fluid that gets under my nails and makes me feel so filthyfilthyfilth--

My heels scramble back of their own accord and I shove my body away from him, hands creating bloody prints on the floor like a victim attempting to crawl desperately from their fate. Inside my chest my heart hums a rapidfire beat that sings erratically in time to the adrenaline flowing through my veins, unaware of the cause but responding just the same. Something so rebellious is a thrill but at the same time a disappointment - my natural instinct to flee is smothering the natural high of doing an act that is scorned.

"Schtill smi'ing naw?" I mutter in an awed hiss, watching the waterfall wrap around his leg and pool in his shoe where it remains in a thick puddle of dribbling life. We are alone in our own little bubble of turbulent thoughts and chaotic emotions; the embodiment of teenage angst at its best. Consequence is but a word to describe the inevitable fall from whatever pedestal you have set yourself upon from being larger than the norm because we all know that being different never amounts to anything but all I can feel is smugness irritated by an odd flash of fear. Sometimes it takes a little dosage of your own medicine before you stop feeling something more than human.