Julian/Bean ~ District 1 ~Rewrite ~ WIP

Julian/Bean ~ District 1 ~Rewrite ~ WIP Dec 8, 2012 16:17:39 GMT -5

Post by Ally is tentatively back on Dec 8, 2012 16:17:39 GMT -5

Main
"Speech"
"Other"
Thoughts
"Lyrics"

Name: ~~Julian~~ Bean
District: 1
Age: 18
Gender: Male
Sexuality: Asexual

"I am the son, and the heir.
Of a shyness that is criminally vulgar.
I'm the son and heir.
Of nothing in particular."

{Appearance}

I make my way through the spaces between the ramshackle hovels that the highest districts lower class calls houses with a precision and speed gained only by either a very good memory, or many years of practice. I have both.

My old, ragged coat, brown and worn at the elbows, swishes around my mid-thighs, making me appear at least marginally broad-shouldered and imposing, though the reality is that I'm not just slender (although that's likely my natural body type) but skinny, clocking in at approximately eighty-five pounds, which, for all my lack of height (five feet one inch, which I will never cease to be bitter about), is pretty damn low.

My quick eyes, colorless and as inviting as a bucket of acid, scan the street for impediments, purloined cash burning in my pocket and the feeling of invisible trammels loosening. The middle-aged man with the salt-and-pepper hair was only too happy to steady an obviously frail elvish-looking young man, and he never noticed my fingers twitching in and out of his pocket.

I'll be the first to admit, honestly, that I do look frail, thin and pale and quiet as I am, but weak is something I refuse to be. Weak is a little boy named Julian in a laboratory screaming for his mother, and I'm not him anymore, haven't been for thirteen years.

"Here, let me help you with that." I say calmly to the young mother struggling to unload bags of groceries from her car as she attempts to wrangle her four shrieking offspring. She looks comically surprised, but goes along with it, chatting happily with me after shooing the children into their family shack.

Her name is Kendra, she's twenty, she thinks my eyes are gorgeous, and she's as generous a tipper as you'll ever see around here, so she's obviously recently fallen from money. I don't ask questions, merely pocket my hard-earned five dollars, smile, and promise to come back in the most earnest voice I can manage.

I doubt she'll miss the ten dollar bill she left on the coffee table.

I chew absently on the corner of my thumbnail, a nervous habit that I've never been able to kick. A quick little cough forces it's way out of my chest, and I growl a little, impatient with the mild, but persistent, tightness in my lungs for the past year or so.

Slim fingers comb through light brown hair the color of old leather as I knock hesitantly on the door. A stocky boy, about a half a foot taller than I am ever likely to be opens the door with a smirk on his face. "Well! If it isn't little Bean. What brings you here, runt?"

My pale lips, medium-thin and chapped, twist a little at the old nickname. "Capitan." A friend from the early days, Jay's right hand man, Capitan is a steady individual, not overly bright, but not an insufferable moron, either. He's good for grunt work, and keeping pests in control. "I've got a preposition."

He'll do.

"You shut your mouth, how can you say,
I go about things the wrong way.
I am human and I need to be loved.
Just like everybody else does."

"I know you're only squatting, but is there need to live in a sty, Cap?" I snap out mordaciously as I wander in and take a seat on the sagging couch.

He scowls, short temper flaring obviously in the back of his eyes. "You said you wanted to talk, so talk." I bare my teeth at him in a parody of a grin, even as irritation flashes in my core.

This is all part of the big picture, however, so I reply cordially, ''We are clearly talking. Or am I hallucinating?" His expression is suitably unamused. Good. "Alright." I say with a sigh. "Here's the thing. You have no intellect or ambition. I, conversely, have both, but lack necessary musculature to command very much respect."

"So?"

I huff. "So, I, personally, am tired of lurking in the shadows. I want to make something of myself. And you, too, if you help." And there we go I can see the hunger in his eyes, striving for something more than what he's had for most of his life. I feel a deep sense of satisfaction, one that's familiar from years of careful negotiations, whether with adults or children, friends or foes. I am a politician in an era where politics are life and death.

"So, you in?" I ask with a smirk, knowing the answer.

The smacking of dry, grimy palms in the silent house sounds like a victory.

~

It's been a few weeks since I we got our little operation running, and I can honestly say they've been good ones. I've got a roof over my head, food at least every other day, and a dull roar of conversation drowning out the volume of my own subconscious, for the most part.

Granted, none of the kids working for me us realize that I'm the mastermind behind the plans keeping them fed, but that's how I like it- there's less danger with a front man attracting the bullets. And I'm a coward who rather dislikes the taste of lead.

"When you say it's gonna happen now.
What exactly do you really mean?
See I've already waited too long.
And all my hope is gone."

{History}

Before I was Bean I had a whole other life. A home, a family, and the barrels of untouched potential and dreams, possible or otherwise, that all children have. I was young and innocent. (Funny, really, that my name actually means "young" in Greek.)

Before there was Bean, my name was Julian.

I was born in the late spring, when the weather's just starting to turn hot, but the air still smells damp and new. My parents' names were Sarah and Cyrus. (And while knowing that's nice and all, knowing our last name would be infinitely more beneficial.) They were a youngish couple, from what I remember, not quite established in their careers, but doing well enough. They already had one son, a large, chubby dark-haired boy who they affectionately called "Nicky" (Short for what? Nicholas? Nikolai? Niklaus? There's so many options but I just can't ever remember.)

My father was big and had a booming laugh and smelled of tobacco and cherries, and my mother looked a lot like I do, small with light brown hair and colorless eyes, and my clearest memories of her are singing at the top of her lungs as she whirled around the kitchen in brightly colored sundresses. (Nicky and I sang along- I got her voice but Nicky sounded like a dying cat.) And Nicky and I would chase each other around the house and everything was perfect while it lasted.

It all disappeared one night in a rush of big, dark, shapeless bodies and the sickly-sweet scent of chloroform.

You sometimes hear, on the news, those tragic stories about toddlers snatched from their beds. People probably heard about me, too. Two year old disappears from home. No witnesses.

The next three years after that were the lab.

Most people dream about blood and carnage and noise, but my dreams are all sterile white walls and beakers and quiet and scalpels slicing into me and a lightbulb that I swear flickered -without a pattern, I might add- for three years. I dream about a man in a lab coat who had me call him "Uncle" and then showed me pictures of ink splotches and people and sometimes my brain and told me to tell him what I saw and then screamed when I wouldn't answer. I dream bout being helpless and tied down and cold and then I wake up too scared to scream.