Brooklyn Raine District 4

Name: Brooklyn (Brooke) Raine
Age: 16
Gender: Female
District/Area: {District 4}
Appearance:
Brooklyn has a height of 5'7" and weighs about 132 lbs. She has a BMI of 20.7, being one of the better-fed kids from her district, which gives her an advantage in strength, but running has never been her forte. Brooklyn's dark hair falls to her waist, and she can never bring herself to cut it, even though she ends up looking like a bed head immediately after brushing it. She has dainty lips, but her upper lip is slightly thinner than her lower lip. This makes her look like she's always wearing a half-smile, and some people have trouble taking her seriously for it.

She has high, rosy cheekbones and a straight nose she inherited from her mother. Her feline eyes are her most striking quality, though, with their mysterious burgundy sparkle tinged with emerald towards the outer ring, framed with long, dark lashes.

Brooklyn has strong, broad shoulders from her experience with swimming, but worn, scarred hands from handling nets and skinning fish. A deep, angry scar runs down her left cheek as a gift and reminder of the Capitol's supreme power.

Personality:
Brooklyn is a skilled swimmer, crafty snare maker, and she can handle a spear and a knife decently, but that’s about where her talents end. She suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, haunted by the memories of her family’s tragic history. She can be very eccentric and hard to handle sometimes, because when depression hits her she can be very unpredictable with her mood swings, her impulsiveness, and her withdrawal. Her usual charm disappears, and she becomes very irritable.

She has trust issues, but she doesn’t show it. Most of the time she tries to maintain a stable life by helping out the fishermen of her district, keeping a reasonable grade average in school, and supporting her mother at home. When she puts her mind to something, it’s almost impossible to break her determination. She can destroy all hope and happiness in a person within a matter of seconds is she sees fit, and without remorse.

Nevertheless, it’s hard for her to hate people and make enemies, because deep down, she believes that there’s a potential for the world to be a better place, and that every person, no matter how bad, can be redeemed. However her strong sense of justice sometimes interferes with that resolution, especially if harm hits the people she loves.

History:
Brooklyn Raine was born to a family in a district better off than the outlying districts, even if she wasn't from One or Two. Her family had an income enough to keep them running on a moderately life standard with a few special treats every now and then. She learned fishing, swimming, making nets and traps before she learned how to walk, which she always thought of as an advantage for her future.

Her mother, Meredith, always cared about the family and took care of her drunken father every evening after they both returned from work, even when he lashed out at her. When her father, Kai, was sober, which only happened once a million years, they could spend a pleasant evening or two as a family until he began drinking again. At that very age of seven, Brooklyn learned pain. Her mother did her best, but she could only tolerate Kai at best. Brooklyn despised her father for never being there for her, but as she grew, she learned to tolerate him as well. Her mother revealed little about Kai's troubles, but enough to let her know that her father was paying severely for a decision he made, and it was all that they could do to pity him.

She held on to her sanity, her hope for a better future, thanks to Ocean, her older brother, with whom she used to spend evening after evening by the coast playing games entirely based on their imagination. He taught her how to survive the world they lived in. Ocean had much more experience than her about everything, whether it was fishing, school, handling their father, or simply enjoying life. He told her tales about a time when he remembered their father as being better than he was now, a time when Brooklyn was only a toddler crawling up beside Ocean when the arguments between their parents first began. He was her best friend, her idol, her shelter. As they grew older, they began interacting with other people. Ocean chose to largely keep to himself, but Brooklyn was adored by a large group of friends in school and even the adults in the district had grown sympathetic to her despite her father's reputation. Her vivacity spread like wildfire, and she managed the crowd perfectly. Brooklyn came to love and even trust them little by little, but she always loved Ocean best of all.

Everything ran smoothly at some point in her life; she had her Sundays with Ocean by the coast, she had her friends at school, she had the fishermen she helped at “work” in return for a few scraps that kept the family going when combined with Ocean and Meredith’s earnings, and a drunken father who floated around the house like a pet and occasionally went to work.

Then Ocean made a discovery. Brooklyn had never realized the depths of his misery. The boy she knew, the one with the amazing imagination, honesty, and purity, disappeared that night. In his place stood a fully grown man at the age of eighteen, with lines of sadness on his face the likes of which she had never seen before. He asked her to run away with him and escape the cruelty which awaited them. When Brooklyn refused to leave everything behind, she knew she’d never forget the broken look on her brother’s face. Betrayal. A whole week passed by without a single exchange between the two, and then came Brooklyn’s birthday. One thing she had not expected that day was to find two Peacekeepers at her door, at which moment she realized the true extent of her father’s crimes. He’d sold her to the Peacekeepers in exchange for his own life, because he wanted Meredith and Ocean to have a good life with the support of a father and husband, even if it meant losing Brooklyn.

She could handle that… she could handle the thought of Ocean living at her expense, but Ocean couldn’t. He knew this was an unofficial arrangement between the Peacekeepers and her father, and he knew he could handle only two Peacekeepers. And he did it; Ocean killed two Peacekeepers. Now they had to run. For him to survive, they had to run. But Kai couldn’t, and Meredith couldn’t leave him. So it was down to the two of them, and Brooklyn suddenly felt a huge pang of guilt for not having done this before.

They ran. Out and away from the district… but only so far until the Peacekeepers caught them. They tortured Ocean in front of Brooklyn’s eyes. This was his punishment for killing the Peacekeepers. When she tried to interfere, a Peacekeeper striked her and opened a deep gash adown her left cheek. This was her punishment for running away, but furthermore, her punishment was watching Ocean die an agonizingly slow death in front of her eyes, and she couldn’t do a single thing about it.

They let her live. They returned her to District 4 with whatever sanity she had left, to suffer the gift of survival. Ocean had died for her to live, and now she was the living example of the pain Capitol could inflict on anyone at any given time. Her father committed suicide shortly thereafter, and all she could feel for him was hatred, disgust, and pity, for being such a low creature. Her father had killed Ocean. She had killed Ocean. The Capitol had killed Ocean. And Brooklyn had no intention of forgetting that.

Codeword: odair