Rafe - Wanderer (Complete)
Feb 10, 2012 19:39:04 GMT -5
Post by Kheft on Feb 10, 2012 19:39:04 GMT -5
Name: Rafe
Age: 17
Gender: Male
District/Area: Wanderer
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It would be easy to judge me, all you who look in on my life and try to place me into one category or another. Black or white. Good guy or bad guy. Is it so easy for you then? That you can sift through my actions and by this means define my soul?
I'm not much given to talking, it's like bleeding your life out onto the earth for general inspection by a world who wouldn't bother to offer you a tourniquet. So, listen closely the first time while I'm telling my story, it's not likely you'll hear it again.
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(( I still remember the world ))
(( From the eyes of a child ))
(( Slowly those feelings ))
(( Were clouded by what I know now ))
(( I still remember the world ))
(( From the eyes of a child ))
(( Slowly those feelings ))
(( Were clouded by what I know now ))
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Where are you from? People always ask that question because it's the easiest opening line to personal drama. Which District was your home before you ended up here? Well my life didn't begin with a family in a District, might be good or bad, depends on what you knew growing up. My life began in a box.
It's the first real memory that I have. A wood apple crate with slats nailed so close together that only thin strips of light made their way into my prison. And a prison it was. Like being buried alive, but knowing that life was carrying on as usual just over your head, just beyond where you could reach…and it was passing you by. I thought I might die there, in that little wooden world. I was small, but still my legs had to be folded just so and my arms tucked around so that I fit. I can still remember the screaming terror of being unable to do anything, not move, not eat, barely breath.
How did I get into that box? Well that's the mystery, isn't it? I don't know…and I'll probably never know. Why didn't I call for help? Well that's the only thing that I remember from before the box.
"Don't make a sound, Rafe, not one cry. You must be ever so quiet."
That's it, just that warning, and then the box…for days.
When they finally found me I was so emaciated I looked like the skeleton of a child, packed away in that crate. My box-world had been on a supply train bound from the Capitol into District Ten. There was a lot of speculation about who my parents were and if I was a Capitol child or slipped on board at a stop in any of the other Districts. But no amount of investigation ever turned anything up, and I could never tell them anything. I survived that early life experience, although to this day, I can't abide closed spaces…or apples.
With no family to ship me back to, I became the sole problem of District Ten. Well the mayor didn't know what to do with a little boy whose skin didn't fit his bones and a shock of black hair that never learned to lay flat. Still, there's plenty of work to do in District Ten, and never enough hands to complete it. I was bedded down in a barn and put under the watchful eye of an old cow herder named Gus. In one day, my world had gone from the small enclosure of a wooden womb to being birthed into the sprawling expanse of a cattle ranch.
Gus became a surrogate father to me, teaching me how to rope a calf and truss him up for branding. To ride a horse without needing a bit or saddle for guidance. I think the man could speak with the animals, at least they always took to him in ways beyond understanding. He taught me all that I know and love to this day. But growing up is assured of one thing, pain. It finds us old or young, the great equalizer in life.
Rustlers had been plaguing our neighboring ranches, snatching steers from the herds at night. We were on guard 'round the clock because of it. Double the usual number of hands, and the dogs went out with us. Didn't make a difference though in the end. The rustlers came down on us like shadows of men. Amidst a spray of gunshots, like acid rain, and the panicking bellow of cows being separated out and rounded up, and the baying of the dogs…I found Gus lying on the ground, bleeding out from a wound in his neck that gaped like a second mouth.
And then I ran.
I ran from everything that adult world stood for. The death and violence, the hatred and pitilessness. I fled District Ten, and I never went back.
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(( Where has my heart gone ))
(( An uneven trade for the real world ))
(( Oh I... I want to go back to ))
(( Believing in everything and knowing nothing at all ))
(( An uneven trade for the real world ))
(( Oh I... I want to go back to ))
(( Believing in everything and knowing nothing at all ))
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For the second time in my life, the world opened up into a larger and scarier place. From apple crate, to cattle ranch, and now deep into wilderness. Only this time I had no Gus to watch over me - no adult to take me by the hand. I had run away from growing up. In this new world apart, I met Peter.
We bonded over our mutual desire to never become what we hated in adults. We dreamed of building our own District, where only children would live together. A sort of Utopia. I wasn't the only one, there were a few others, along with Tink who had run away with Peter. Together, we became our own family of sorts, with Peter as the glue that held us all together. But dreams only last so long, right? At least mine did.
It was the day I found Neeko, he was just a kit then. A tiny, scarlet splotch of fox fur with one paw caught in a hunting snare. His big ears twisting around, terrified of my footsteps approaching. Golden eyes met my own, and I fell in love for the first time. He must have been so tired out from trying to get loose, because when I started working on the wire that was embedded in his limb, he barely showed a tooth. I had just about gotten him free, when she showed up.
I said that day was the first time I fell in love, well it was also the second.
I won't tell you about her, I just won't. She's a memory that I'm not willing to share with anyone. A pristine spot in my life that was too beautiful to last. I tried, though. I begged her for months to run away from her family in the District and join our lost boys. She kept putting me off, unwilling to leave everything behind. In the end she did, but she left me behind too. They called her name in the reaping, I would find out later that she died in the bloodbath.
I learned something very important from that experience: Pain and loss is not the sole property of adulthood, and it can't be avoided by clinging to childhood. It touches everyone. It was then that I realized I couldn't avoid growing up by isolating myself and burying my head in the sand. These revelations in my development were the beginning of a schism that would grow to swallow up my relationship with the lost boys.
I was angry and grieving my recent losses, and soaked in bitterness against the Capitol, and all of those people in the District who had stood by without a single voice raised to volunteer. Peter never understood, he was still deluded by visions of a childhood Utopia, lost in that impossible fantasy of eternal youth. He was blind and wouldn't listen to what I had to say. We fought, and the verbal fights came to blows, and then I left.
We'd had interactions with Hook and his gang before. They were a destructive and angry lot, but with this new bitterness fresh on my tongue, I felt I understood their reasoning as I had never before. I went to them and found a place among their numbers. It was tentative at first, but I didn't expect Peter's reaction. I was shut out, an enemy to them. I lost all the friends I had made among the boys, and the rivalry between the two groups only grew fiercer. The feelings of betrayal at the deflection of my former mates drove me more firmly into my place with Hook. He at least understood my overwhelming need to make them pay for her death. He took me in and befriended me when no one else did.
My life seems to be a pattern of expansion, but that's really the definition of growing, right? Growing up...
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(( Where has my heart gone ))
(( Trapped in the eyes of a stranger ))
(( Oh I... I want to go back to ))
(( Believing in everything ))
(( I still remember ))
(( Where has my heart gone ))
(( Trapped in the eyes of a stranger ))
(( Oh I... I want to go back to ))
(( Believing in everything ))
(( I still remember ))
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The fire popped, sending a shower of sparks billowing upwards into the night as the boy finished speaking and sat down again on a log that had been pulled up for a seat. His eyes glimmered with reflected light, like chips of jet beneath heavy brows, their careful consideration of each face present set more than one person shivering. The fire played over his features like a lover's hand, turning soft skin to cold-edged plains, his already chiseled features looking sharper and hawkish. Dark hair, cut short around the sides of his face, fell long at the top, sweeping across his forehead in stiff, glossy locks. It was a face at once interesting and angry.
Lots of rumors were whispered behind his back, speculation on his past. Not even this story-telling would silence them. He had told different variations of the story over the years, and none of them exactly matched up. Some thought that he had run away after killing a man in his sleep. He looked strong enough to have killed them when they were awake.
Whether from ranchwork or mining or fishing, Rafe's body was honed by some difficult life, sculpted into long, lean muscle and broad shoulders. He was tall, which made his age difficult to gauge for accuracy. With his nut-brown skin and dark hair, he might have been an Indian from old books. Heavy-knuckled hands were covered with a network of scars, but they were quick in movement.
His skill was well-known, and an unusual one. He had brought it with him, a curious weapon made of polished river rocks fastened to thin cords of woven hemp. It brought down man and beast alike, wrapping around the limbs and ensnaring them in flight, occasionally shattering a bone in the process. Hook used him to capture other gang members for questioning.
If he truly had called the Lost Boys friends, then it was a bitter soul indeed who showed no compassion or remorse for turning this weapon on them as well. He kept no company except Hook's, and no one heard more than the necessary words from him. Although, he could often be found speaking in soft tones to Neeko, a red fox who followed him around like a devoted companion.
Sullen. Solitary, Bitter. Cold. All words that had been spoken about Rafe by enemy and ally alike. He was useful, but not well-liked, and even less understood. As if with a bladed weapon, he separated issues into black and white, refusing to see any shades of gray. You were with him, or against him…there was no in between. And if nothing else from his stories was true, the fact that he hated those who lived in the District was. He called them 'sheep for the slaughter'. They lived under a cruel regime and refused to fight back. Weak and powerless, they survived by allowing others of their kind to take the knife instead. The only time his voice was raised was in favor of a plan that would target the unsuspecting District dwellers.
Codeword:Odair
** Character for Neverland plot by Stare
