jacob partridge » d7 » complete

Waking up like an animal
I'm all ready for healing
My mind's lost with nightmares streaming
Waking up, kicking, screaming
Take me out of this place I'm in

appearance - -

When you look in a mirror, what do you see? Do you think the person staring back at you is a copy of yourself, or can you recognize how your eyes distort the image? They'll magnify every flaw and zoom in on every little blemish. They'll make you think you're ugly/fat/too pale/too freckled/too gaunt/too this and too that and not enough of this, this, and this. Maybe you have a checklist in your head and as you go down your self-esteem shrinks, turns from something comfortable to something in which you're begging, pleading, asking it to turn off and just. Stop.

Now take what you feel. Take the ideas of distortion and broken images, take all of that and apply it to someone who's head is half in one place and half in another. For him the image wavers, even the flattest plane of glass twists and blurs in the edges when he's not paying attention, shadowed by things he can't make out. They curl and whirl and make his eyes flicker. He hasn't seen himself without them in months. He knows they're not a part of him though, knows that all he should be seeing are gentle waves of dark hair, ruffled and unkempt. He doesn't want to look for long enough to comb it properly, can't stay still as a clock ticks away in the background so he can pick the leaves out of his hair.

If his eyes aren't already broken they're breaking. Those blue orbs that used to be so bright, shining with the fascinating stories that he was fed. He nurtured every single one, let them grow his entire life. They were given to him seed by seed by his grandfather, and he wouldn't ever let them go. His eyes were full of a thousand different lifetimes of knowledge, the true gaze of someone who had searched and found and fallen in love a thousand different times. Believing eyes. Lately, blinking eyes. Eyes that had begun to doubt what they saw, but still light eyes. Intelligent, even. He doesn't look anymore though, isn't sure if they're still the same blue or if even the colours in his gaze will begin to change as he finds unexplainable things in the world around him.

Now what he sees of himself is mostly his long forearms, his rather thin wrists and lean legs. He's become a fan of the boots tied to his feet, clunky leather with thick soles and hard toes, worn all over. They were meant to keep him from getting crushed while he worked in the forests, though he doubted they would ever have offered much protection. Tucked into the tops of his ankles, just a bit up his calves, are dark pants filled with a thousand holes that he can't explain. No matter how careful he is, they always wear their way into his knees, and now he's just given up on trying to keep them from opening up. His shirt is no better, fraying at the edges and often with buttons missing or seams popping, ripping the neck as it catches on a branch and causing his collarbone to peak through the thin fabric. All over pale skin, paler than healthy. He doesn't look healthy, and he's not sure if he ever has. All hard edges and chiselled planes. The look of someone sinking into themselves, drowning in their own frame. In some lights he looks dangerous. In others, he just looks like a scared little boy. A shadow of the pudgy kid sitting on his grandfather's knee that he once was.

- - personality

What do you do when you can't tell between real/fake/here/there? What can you do when you forget how to tell what's a story and what isn't? Do you let go of everything you can't touch, or do you just accept your fate? Can you let go of all of those years of believing in the make believe, let go of the explorers and conquerors and warriors that have always been your heroes? Is that even an option? What would you be without all of these beings that made you the person you are, who make up your skin and your bones and your flesh as much as your very own mind? They're entwined so tightly into your life that it's not a simple method of saying goodbye. There's no easy way out anymore, and maybe it's not so bad after all. You're still yourself. You can still tell between right and wrong, and that's what matters, right? Values make a person. Not sanity.

Then again, it can't be proven. He's still normal enough to smile, to laugh. Everyone says he's gotten over the death of his grandfather well. He went to his funeral and he shed a few tears, but no one could blame him for that. He still shows up to work, as reliable as ever. Everyone above him on the field tells him how well he's doing, coddles him now that he has no one left in the world. He still waves them off and tells them all that it's just part of life. No one can really tell that there's something going on with him. No one can tell that he's slipping, sliding, falling with no idea of where he'll land. When his eyes stay somewhere for too long or his head suddenly snaps to the side they just think he's a little bit paranoid. It makes enough sense. Work isn't easy in District 7, there's always dangers to look out for. Average. He's perfectly average.

As average as he's ever been, anyways. If there's anything a bit off-kilter about him it's with his grandfather and his stories to blame. Everyone recognized him as a crazy old bat, someone senile. Maybe he'd had bad experiences with a Peacekeeper, was questioned by the Capitol, almost got turned into an Avox, had a bad father/mother/sister/brother. The rumours are endless, and to be honest, his own grandson doesn't know which one is true, or even if any of them are. He never asked. He asked for a lot of stories, but never ones of his own family. He just didn't want to know. Maybe if he had he wouldn't be where he is now, but it's too late. The damage has already been done, and there's no one left to question. Any stories to be told where taken to the grave, any secrets had died and were now trapped in a casket with no body to keep them company.

At least for all that he sees and hears he can still fake it. As long as he does everything that's asked of him. As long as he stays at the orphanage, where no one is quite right in the head. Maybe that's it. Maybe it's just the water. Maybe there's something in the walls seeping into his mind and poisoning him, bit by tiny bit, turning him into one of them. One of the ones that has really lost it, who can't seem to tell the difference between up or down or left or right or dead or alive. For now though, he's still the same boy who isn't the biggest conversationalist and isn't a fan of affection, but he's up for a good joke. A laugh. Maybe he can turn all of the strange happenings inside of his mind into a fairy tale for his children and grandchildren, or maybe he'll take it to the grave too. Maybe he won't get that far. Or maybe this is just the start.

history - -

Children love stories. It's a basic component of life. They don't like to be trapped somewhere, especially somewhere as awful as District 7, where there's the thuds of trees falling all too often, the horrific screeches of power tools that would never pass a safety regulation test. The cries of those who end up on the wrong side of a falling log, who have their legs crushed or their lungs caved in by a branch. The wind knocked out of them as their skulls crack on the ground. No one would want to stay in a place full of risk, not when there's no good guys and no bad guys and no way to fight off the things that hide in the dark. So his grandfather made them up. Stories of things that could be chased away or slaughtered, things that snapped and gnashed but never won. Most importantly, things that you can run away from.

His grandfather was all he ever had, and he became all he ever wanted. He didn't need a mother or a father, not when he had one man to create a thousand different figures that could save him from the monsters that hid under his bed, in his closet, in the shadows at the corners of his room. He was even well provided for. Food, shelter, water. He had to work, sure, but he didn't mind. Not when he had the idea in his head that some day he'd turn into an immortalized character, someone who would inspire children after him. He wanted to be eternalized in the same way that he knew his grandfather would be with all of the tales surrounding him. For a little boy with no parents, he did well. He had a good life, and he didn't know when it all changed. He didn't even know why. He just knew that one day he woke up, expecting his grandfather there, and he wasn't. That was okay. He left sometimes. For hours, days, weeks. He came back with new legends, even when he got older and started to ask for explanations, even when he accepted them as fiction. He would come back. It would be okay.

They found the body later, torn apart by beasts. Mutts, they'd said. That was when he first noticed that there were things creeping in the corners of his eyes, things that ran away when he tried to look at them. They wouldn't stay for long, but he knew they were there. They taunted him just often enough to make him question what was going on. They wouldn't leave him alone, and they followed him to the Peacekeepers who landed him in the orphanage and threw away the key. He didn't know who his old house was given to. He had no say in it. He wasn't old enough to have his own property. It wasn't like he received an inheritance. Just his grandfather's journal with all it's blank pages which he hadn't even bothered cracking open since he'd received it. He got nothing. Absolutely nothing at all but the creatures that began to haunt him in the night without his grandfather to remind him how to chase them away. And now he has no idea what to do.

"I know this is my final way of crossing over into the realm of the unreal, that this is the final straw and nothing past this point can be recognized as normal. I'm deciding to accept the fact that I'm just as distorted as the realities my - our - grandfather fed me. I want you to know, possible future me, that once upon a time there was a boy. A normal boy who sat on his grandfather's knee to listen to fairy tales where the good guys always won and the bad guys always died. One where people fell in love and it triumphed over everything. I want you to know that once you believed in all of those things, and that's probably why you are who you are now. What you are now. Because you welcomed the monsters and beasts. You begged for your chance to fight them head on, and that's what you're doing right now. If I don't win against them, maybe you'll have to. Maybe by the time this gets around to you, you won't want to win. I don't know what these things want from me, or if they want anything at all. I don't know if they'll go away. I don't know if the people in this orphanage will make me want to lose my last connection to sanity.

Right now, I don't even know what's sane and what's not.

At least I know what I'm afraid of. Maybe I'm better off than everyone else in this District. Maybe you are, too. Maybe we all are up in this orphanage. The forgotten, discarded, unwanted. Maybe we're better off than you all. At least I know my place. At least they're a family where everyone else fights and torments each other, too afraid of the Games to enjoy their own company.

(And there's a girl, you see, and I don't want to be terrified - I don't want to think they'll take her away. I hope you remember this girl, because I swear, she's worth remembering. Even with everything going on I know she's worth that much, and probably so much more. She's different just like everyone else here, but she's beautiful. If you've forgotten, I hope I've reminded you. I really do. She's gorgeous in the way that broken things often are. In the way that you become infatuated with the idea of fixing something and putting it back together just to see if you can, but I don't want to fix her. I just don't want her to look so sad. If this will help, then I think it might just be enough to keep me from fearing change, because that's all this is, right?)

Tell me when you figure out, though, won't you? Tell me when you find your grand journey and your happy ending. Then write it down and burn it, burn every last ash, because you don't want to do this to anyone else. You asked all of your questions. Maybe now you're getting all of your answers.

Was it ever worth asking, Jacob? Tell me, was it?"

plot by tristen and clover
template and graphics by chime
faceclaim is mathieu crosetti
lyrics by daughter