Desma Prather, D9 {DONE!}

The I.V. and your hospital bed
This was no accident
This was a therapeutic chain of events

Desma Celine Prather.
Eighteen years of age.
Of the female gender.
Residing in the Ninth District of Panem.

This is the scent of dead skin on a linoleum floor
This is the scent of quarantine wings in a hospital
It's not so pleasant
And it's not so conventional
It sure as hell ain't normal
But we deal, we deal

To look at Desma Prather would be to see a relatively typical (if sickly-looking) young woman of District Nine. Her height is a mildly diminutive five feet, three inches, and she is severely underweight at only ninety-nine pounds. slightly tanned skin covers her petite bone structure, and is usually marred with purple, black, blue, and yellow bruises in various states of healing. In addition to bruising easily she also has very fragile bones and can often be seen on crutches or in a sling as the result of simple everyday accidents. Due to her low weight, Desma's collarbone protrudes rather sharply, dancing right along the line between elegant and emaciated. Her arms and legs are spindly but uniquely graceful; delicate hands with long pianist's fingers bear the scars of several chemical burns, the seared flesh showing a bright white against the normal tan tone. Her posture is usually good, with her back straight and her head held high, but if she is feeling sick or in pain she tends to slouch.

Her hair was once thick and lustrous, falling to the middle of her back in chocolate-colored waves, but lately it has become brittle and unhealthy, the color more flat and the sheen more dull, breaking off every time she brushes it and becoming increasingly thinner, often falling out in large pieces. Desma does the best she can to maintain her hair's remaining beauty, conditioning it with a homemade concoction of egg yolk and olive oil a few times a week. This treatment is effective and makes her hair somewhat more attractive, but leaves it with a very odd, earthy smell.

Desma's face is rather round in appearance, although her cheeks are somewhat sunken, not nearly as plump as they were in her childhood. Thick, dark brows seem to constantly be quirked up a little higher than normal, leaving her visage with a perpetual look of surprise, skepticism, or curiosity, depending on the expression on the rest of her face. She has full cupid-bow lips that conceal fairly well-cared-for teeth, neither horrid yellow nor pristine white, and straight enough to not be disfiguring. Desma's nose is an object of disdain to its owner, the small size and button shape making her look younger than she really is. However, she takes great pride in her eyes, round, grey-green, and expressive. Their former radiance is slightly downplayed by the heavy bags that now hang beneath them, the bruised appearance dimming the light that once shown through, but they are still reasonably pretty, especially after Desma puts on the (rather exhorbitant) normal daily dose of thick makeup that she wears to improve her sickly pallor.

The clothes she wears tend to be rather shabby and threadbare, but she still manages to look put-together. At home she'll usually wear the most comfortable thing she can find, sweatpants of some sort and an old tee shirt, pulling her hair up in a messy bun. When she goes out with friends, Desma usually will wear her hair down and find some sort of skirt and blouse combination, gravitating towards pastel colors, mainly her favorite, lavender. At work she wears a simple blue jumpsuit that is universally unflattering on all those who wear the uniform, with her hair pulled back tightly to keep it out of her face heavy gloves on her hands as a precaution against more chemical burn scars than she already has.

At first glance, Desma Prather would appear to be typical teenage girl, albeit a rather fragile-looking one, but as is often the case, first glances are completely wrong.

The anesthetic never set in and I'm wondering where
The apathy and urgency is that I thought I phoned in
It's not so pleasant
And it's not so conventional
It sure as hell ain't normal
But we deal, we deal

Desma, to be frank, just doesn't give a damn. Her decisions are often poorly thought out and rash, leading the girl into all sorts of messes. She is impulsive and spontaneous, changing her mind on the spur of the moment and acting without rhyme or reason sometimes. She has a very "carpe diem" outlook on life, determined to make each day an adventure and get the most out of every minute she has. Once upon a time she was quite the party animal, staying out with her friends into the wee hours of the morning and creating all sorts of mischief around the District, but as of late she feels too tired to get into her old antics. She'll still hit the town for an occasional night out, but the activity leaves her drained and unable to function well the following day.

While she isn't necessarily a mean person at heart, Desma tends to be a bit antisocial. She values her close friends but is distant towards others, preferring not to get close to people for her own reasons. She loves being around people but abhors being the center of attention, preferring to sit back and watch the action rather than be a part of it. Desma isn't overly-talkative, but she's no wallflower, often engaging in lengthy conversations with those she feels close to. She is extremely intelligent although she never graduated high school, but prefers not to show off too much of her brainpower for fear it will alienate her friends. When she isn't working or engaged in some other sort of activity, Desma's true passion is origami. Her delicate fingers are incredibly skilled with the art of paper folding, and her room is packed to bursting with thousands of paper figures of all shapes and sizes. She will often make up her own designs, weaving a flat sheet of paper into a rose or a horse or a boat in a matter of minutes.

Desma's outlook on life isn't too sunny, but she has good reason to feel the way she does. She is the consummate pessimist, truly believing that anything that can go wrong, will. This said, she still throws caution to the wind and does whatever she pleases, knowing that things are all going to crash and burn anyway. She simply doesn't care anymore. She is very witty, enjoying a good verbal sparring match every once in a while. Her sense of humor is very dry and acerbic compared to her peers' more simpleminded definition of what is comedic, so it's not very often that people laugh at her quips and jokes.

She likes to be around people physically, but psychologically Desma prefers to be isolated, an introverted extrovert, so to speak. She'll smile and laugh and goof off with her friends, but her true thoughts are always locked securely in the depths of her mind, their dark content an entirely separate entity from her sunny exterior.

"How can she be going through all that and still be so happy?" people often ask.

She can't, Desma silently answers, herself the only one to hear the response.

Just sit back and relax
Just sit back and relapse again

Desma is an only child, although she had four other younger siblings that all died in infancy. Desma was the only child born to the Prathers while District Nine was still responsible for hunting, and although she'd never say anything, she knows that the chemical exposure from the nearby plastics plant played a hand in the deaths of her younger brothers and sisters. Her mother was a homemaker for the most part, although she ran a small sewing business on the side, and her father was a trapper-turned-plant-worker who was forced into a job mixing chemicals to make various types of plastic after the Ninth District's industry change that took place just shortly after Desma's fifth birthday.

When Desma's father became ill, there was no explanation for it. He simply got sick, took to his bed, and was dead within six months. Desma had just turned eight. The young girl and her mother were left reeling, unable to provide a stable income after the death of the Prather family's sole provider and paralyzed with grief at the loss of the father and husband they had both loved so much. Desma's mother kicked her career as a seamstress into high gear, staying up all hours of the night sewing by candlelight after they couldn't pay the electric bill any longer, but the meager amount of money she pulled in was barely enough for food, much less utilities and a house to live in. After a year of just barely scraping by, Desma began an "apprenticeship" at the plastics plant where her father had worked - a thinly-veiled euphamism for child labor.

There weren't that many young children in the District whose parents would allow them to labor in such an environment, but little Desma and her mother were so desperate for supplementary income that she took the job without batting an eye at the long hours or pitiful wages she received for her hard work. She was often made to do dangerous jobs, mixing chemicals to create the basis of several different plastics, often getting horrible burns on her hands from where a stray droplet would splash onto her skin. The most alarming thing Desma had to do at work, however, was a job that was given to her just after her fifteenth birthday. The plastics were manufactured in large, vat-like reactors that had to be cleaned after each use, and because of her small stature and agile grace the task fell to Desma. She spent long periods of time crawling into still-hot reactors, inhaling chemical fumes up close as she scrubbed away at any remaining plastic residue by hand. It was a deplorable job, but at least it was money.

Just after she dropped out of high school at age sixteen, Desma began to feel strange. She experienced frequent dizzy spells that would hit without warning, often so severe that she was brought to her knees by the onslaught of them. She was constantly fatigued no matter how much sleep she had gotten the night before, her body achy and weary even on days when she hadn't been exerting herself at work. Desma began to notice bruises peppering her body as the slightest provocation, a simple stubbed toe turning her entire foot black and blue. She knew something was wrong, but she kept quiet about it, unwilling to see her mother go hungry for the sake of sending her to a doctor.

She wasn't able to hide her sickness once the fainting began. Desma started to pass out frequently after physical activity, sometimes staying unconscious for several minutes while her friends and coworkers hovered over her nervously. When she fainted while standing on the lip of a reactor she was preparing to clean, falling ten feet and breaking several bones, a few of her coworkers finally told her mother what had been happening. As soon as her broken limbs had healed enough to allow for tests, Desma's mother forced her to visit the local doctor's office to get blood work done. But what was strange was that the blood work was followed by other things, scans, x-rays, long sessions of questioning about her symptoms. When the diagnosis came, it was grim. Leukemia. Terminal. Incurable. Already spread to the bone marrow. Unstoppable.

She had a year to live.

If she was lucky.

The day of her diagnosis, Desma rushed home and ran to her room with all the speed she could muster, grabbing a pen and a piece of spare origami paper. Sitting down at her desk, she began to write all the things she wanted to do before she died, ending up with several more sheets of paper full of scrawled-out wishes. After narrowing it down, crossing out the impossible, improbable, and utterly ridiculous, Desma was left with a list of ten tasks to accomplish in her last year on earth. Getting a pushpin, she carefully tacked the list onto the wall above her bed.

1. Learn to tango.
2. Go cliff diving.
3. Build a snowman. A full-sized one, not a puny one.
4. Go outside the fence.
5. Kiss in the rain.
6. Throw a kickass party that no one will ever forget.
7. Learn how to bake, or cook, anyway, how to make good food.
8. Write a memoir.
9. Fall in love.
10. Make 1000 origami cranes, give to aforementioned loved one.

Ten things in one year. She figured she at least had a shot.

Can't take the kid from the fight
take the fight from the kid
Sit back, relax
Sit back, relapse again
Can't take the kid from the fight
take the fight from the kid
Just sit back, just sit back

The codeword you are asking for would be Odair.

You're a regular decorated emergency
The bruises and contusions will remind me what you did when you wake
You've earned a place atop the ICU's hall of fame
The camera caught you causing a commotion on the gurney again

Main
"Speech"
Thoughts
"Others' Speech"
Lyrics

Can't take the kid from the fight
take the fight from the kid
Sit back, relax
Sit back, relapse again
Can't take the kid from the fight
take the fight from the kid
Just sit back, just sit back
Sit back, sit back, relax, relapse
Sit back, sit back,
You can take the kid out of the fight

Desma is played by Mila Kunis.
Song is "Camisado" by Panic! At The Disco.

The I.V. and your hospital bed
This was no accident
This was a therapeutic chain of events