Rowan - D3

We won't get far
Flying in circles inside a jar
Because the air we breathe
Is thinning with the words that we speak


Put him in a line up, and he’s just another small, average size, skinny boy who’s never had a full stomach in his entire life. He’s just another gaunt faced teenager with starving hazel eyes that would look feral if they weren’t beaten into submission. Rowan had that look, that submissive-feral look; only his was more wild than submissive. His jet black hair was cut short, but it was still shaggy and messy no matter what his mother tried to do with it. His hair was often greasy from the lubricating oils and gear lubricant that was always on his hands, always dyeing his skin a darker shade. He was fair skinned, like his mother, but their resemblances stopped there. Mostly he was the spitting image of his father; unkempt jet black hair, gray hazel eyes with that wild, starving look in them, square jaw, strong chin, slightly long beak like nose and thick black eyebrows that made him look something like a bird of prey. It was aggravating for him, to be teased and made fun of for how he looked – because honestly none of them were any prettier.

You're on the floor
Fearful of what's outside your door
But the codes and keys
They can protect you
From the pangs of jealousy

Most of the boys in the district are just as tall as him, all roughly five feet and ten inches tall, some are shorter, some are bigger, but height only makes your back hurt more after you’ve been stooped over a work table all day. Some of the boys are broad shouldered and look lean and strong, not Rowan. He’s stoop shoulders – though maybe they’d seem broader if he wasn’t always slouching - from spending years hunched over, he’s scrawny by comparison – maybe only topping a scale at one hundred and thirty pounds if he’d lucky, and his hands are bony and nimble instead of thick and strong. His legs are bowed from the way he sits on his work stool, perched, feet on the middle wrung, toes pointing out and down. Sometimes he even takes off his shoes and socks, tucking them under his work bench so no one sees. He’ll curl his toes around that middle wrung, and then he really does look like a bird, perched and hunched over, ready to take flight.

When you scream
Love you see
Like a child
Throwing stones at the sky

Years in the workshops have taken a toll on Rowan’s body. Already he’s got plenty of scars on his hands arms and elbows from where he’s been sliced open by shards of metal or glass that have a tendency to go flying from the high powered hand tools they use to use and shape the metal or plastic or whatever material they’re working with. He’s got a nasty burn on his left shoulder from where a pocket mine – specially made for peace keepers – detonated prematurely. It was faulty, and only half the blast, but Rowan’s shoulder was burned from the heat of the explosion, little pieces of glass and plastic shrapnel had lodged themselves into the muscle, and at times he could even feel some of the pieces that were still there, poking at the muscle or digging into the bone. Nobody sees these scars though, these imperfections, he tends to wear long sleeved loose fitting shirts – some of which belonged to his father – some are a little big, but they’re usually warm and comfortable, never pressing on his still sore shoulder. Inside the workshops he has to wear safety regulated head-gear, once outside those doors though he pulls a black knit cap onto his head. You’ll almost never see him without that hat…

Little sparrow, little sparrow
Precious fragile little thing
Little sparrow, little sparrow
Flies so high and feels no pain

Keep your head down, say what they want to hear, go to school, do your work, go to work, get your job done, go home, shut the door and don’t come out until morning. That’s how everyone lived their lives, terrified to death of white uniforms, and Rowan was one of them. Keeping his hopes high and his head low, but that was probably different from everybody else. Nobody in District 3 really had hope. All they had were their meager little lives, and it was enough for them. It could never and would never be enough for Rowan. Ever since he was little he’d been kicked too many times, had his head shoved in the dirt by peace keepers and bigger boys, hell he’d even been tormented by his own father. You kick a dog enough; it’s going to start to fight back. He’s kept that anger and that resentment locked inside his whole life, biding his time, sitting like a snake, waiting for the right moment to strike. Cool and calculating, those gray hazel eyes just watched and waited and held back tears as he took blow after blow, waiting, biding his time.

If I were a little sparrow
O'er these mountains I would fly
I would find him, I would find him
Look into his lying eyes

He’s always felt like an outsider, like he never really belonged here. He was dreamer, closing his eyes and imagining grass and trees and deer in a meadow full of flowers, but when he’d open his eyes, it would all just be industrial waste again. That imagination, along with his observant nature, lead to idea, and those ideas led to secret inventions beneath his bed. He’d always thought life would be so much easier if the people were just allowed to use some of the things they created, they could get more work done and live better lives, but that thought – voiced out loud – had gotten him a slap across the face from his mother. “Don’t think like that, don’t talk like that, understand?” He could never understand her fear; never understand why she was so afraid of just talking. She was just another frightened puppet though, desperate just to get through another day. Anger boiled inside his veins, no one understood him, no one understood his ideas or his dreams, they all called him a fool, told him to just let it go, put his head down, and get back to work. He couldn’t let it go though; he could never let it go.

I am not a little sparrow
I am just the broken dream
Of a cold false-hearted lover
And her evil cunning scheme

When he was a child he was like so many of the other kids, obedient and trusting, devoted to the Capital and his parents, doing what he was told to, and then he felt hunger and pain. In primary school he’d been something of a clown, making everyone laugh, but as time passed, he found he had no heart for laughter. He dreamed of more than these haunting faces, in fact he resented everyone around him, hated them all for their complacence and how they were just like docile cows, being herded here and there and doing what they were told. It was maddening, how badly it made him want to take them all by their shoulders and scream, “Don’t you know we’re better than this?!” But he didn’t, he kept to himself, and watched all the life wither and fade from them, watched as they fell into the swirling tide of life in District 3. He wanted more than this, and one day, he’d have more than this.

It was a small little two bedroom tenement he had to call home, the roof leaked and drafts always blew in through cracks in the walls they’d tried to stuff with newspapers, and even though it was a dilapidated shack at best, it was more the people that made it home. At least, when his father wasn’t there. His father was a big burly man ho worked mostly with the heavy machinery, he’d had big muscles in his teenage years, but now he was just a scrawny and stooped as the other men. He was still fierce and scary as hell – especially when he drank. He’d throw things, break things, and there were even times when he’d strike at his wife, Rowan’s mother. Rowan was the youngest of three boys, and sometimes he felt like an only child – both his brothers were much older and had homes and families of their own already. Of course, since the time he’d been a small boy his father had loved to rub it in his face that he was just a mistake, just another unwanted mouth to feed. That was why he’d been such a joker in school, because he tried to hide what he was going through, trying to use smiles and laughter to feel the lack of love he felt.

Things only got worse the older he got. When he was twelve and his father was in one of his drunken rages, Rowan had stood up to him gotten in his face and protected his mother, it didn’t matter through. Rowan’s father had lifted him clear off his feet and practically thrown him into a wall. It hadn’t stopped him though, time and time and time again Rowan stood up to his father, and there were bruises and broken bones and cuts and scrape and scars from their scraps, but he refused to back down, refused to let his father dominate him. The insults had hurt at first, until Rowan had steeled himself to his father’s slurred words. He wasn’t worthless, he wasn’t a disappointment, how could he be? His brother’s may have taken the beating and tucked their tails like frightened little puppies, but Rowan wouldn’t, he couldn’t. There wasn’t a single part of him that wanted to bend to anyone’s will but his own. Just like everyone else did. All he could hope was the one day the man would drink himself to death and then Rowan and his mother would be left in piece.

Home wasn’t the worst of it though, as Rowan got older, school got harder. The boys got bigger and bigger and he stayed relatively the same. At first it was only words, teasing words about his looks, taunting about the bruises or the cuts on his face, and then it got physical. It didn’t matter who started it, and Rowan usually never did, he was always the one on the ground, curling into a ball while boot after boot went into his rips and back and kidneys. Sometimes, he’d stumble home with more injuries than he’d left with that morning. He found happiness in one place though – more like one person. She had a smile that could light even the darkest places in his heart, soft brown curls that fell to her cheek and big doe brown eyes that always seemed to have a question. They were the same year in school, and she’d come to his defense once, standing between him and the other boys, staring them down. He admired her for that. She had guts.

Kayla became his first and only friend, and they were nearly inseparable, except after school when they headed off to their respective shops – which was when the bullies started to prey on Rowan again. They weren’t afraid of Kayla, she was tiny wisp of a girl that looked like she’d float away in the breeze, but she was still a girl, and they’d at least been raised with enough sense not to lay a hand on her. Usually, after a long shift at the workshop, Kayla would be waiting to walk home with him, her smile wiping away all of his frustrations at his most recent beating. For three year everyone referred to them as a pair, said they’d get married one day, and maybe that’s what would have happened, is she hadn’t be reaped.

At thirteen Rowan had watched his best friend die in the arena. Nothing can compare to the emptiness it brings, nothing. Hollow, Rowan returned to his life, and the bullies found no joy in beating him when he didn’t fight back, the taunting had no reactions to fuel their fire – Rowan was a ghost. It took the explosion to bring him back to life. It was maybe a year after Kayla’s murder when the pocket mine had gone off. He could still remember it, seeing his co-workers, and people he counted as ‘friends’ blown apart. A hand here, a finger there, the worst of it, however, had been when he’d looked over at the bodies, and seen their faces blown clear off their skulls. Such carnage changes a person, and Rowan had been changing – evolving – his entire life.

He wanted out. He wanted a way out of the constant cycle of drinking and beating with his father, out of the constant cycle of watching kids he knew die in the arena, out of the cycle of nightmares of Kayla’s smiling face being either blown apart by a pocket mine, or her throat slit like it was in the arena. He was on the brink of something, he just didn’t know what