pan graves; wanderer; fin

Your name is Pan Graves, no matter what it says on the reaping check.
You don't know if you're still on it, since you've run away-and it makes you laugh, curled-over belly-shaking laughing to imagine them calling you at the reaping- "Peter Graves", all official, and for them to wait for someone who wasn't there.
You think you're too old for that now anyways. Not that you enjoy thinking that-it leaves a sour taste in your mouth, like a hangover. Age looms over you as an ever-present threat in the corner of your mind.
Is it warm out here, or is that just you? Maybe you're nearing the coastline again. That would be lovely.
You'll take any excuse- you strip your t-shirt off, exposing golden skin covered in tattoos. You aren't exactly sure where some of them came from, honestly. You think you remember a shady warehouse at the edge of the Capitol that let you go without paying as long as they chose the designs, and you let them, of course. Others, though- needles and ink, jammed into your finger, spelling out 2 * R. Second star to the right-and it's fitting enough, the line from the fairytale you've molded yourself into.
You heard it as a child, and from then on, you were Peter Pan, and later you dropped the beginning and you were Pan. In a way, you like it even better- being called by the name of a long-forgotten god.
Your last name is Graves because your daddy dug them, and his daddy before him, and so on. Not you. You were never meant for that constant reminder of mortality, dying, old age, starvation-you can't stand it. You never hugged him for the lingering stink of grave dirt and corpses.

The wind ruffles your hair-dark and short except for the front, where it's getting longer and you can barely see. It tangles and curls naturally, but you're vain, so you straighten it. You'd be lost without the porta-straightener you lifted from the house of a one-night-stand on the edge of the Capitol.
You wear eyeliner, too, when you have it. The precious smudgy pencils never last long with you, because somehow you always manage to find more uses than what they were intended for. Truth be told, half the time you go home with girls you're just as much looking to raid their makeup stashes as to sleep with them. You usually don't take much-moreso the chipped, neglected stubs left at the bottom of the bags. They won't be missed and neither will you.

You're pretentious, one could say. Maybe it's true- you have narrowly deep thoughts about things like humanity and the universe, and the things that linger out there in the cosmos. You're willing to tell these thoughts to anyone willing to listen, and more than a few hookups have ended with you being called "crazy" and chased out. Maybe you are, just a bit. You think that's just fine.

You don't want to grow up. The thought of it makes you sick.
That's a big part of why you ran away, really. You knew that if you stayed you'd be doomed to a life of digging graves, married to someone for convenience and not love.
Permanence disgusts you. You've never wanted a life of structure, of schedule, commitment. You want to be able to come and go as you please, but you know that if you go home you'll never have that again.
That's why you don't go home. You stay wandering-sometimes staying by the same spot for a few days, sometimes repeating your favorite visits, haunting people until you see them move on. When you knock on someone's door and hear a stranger's voice, that's when you move on. You never get too attached, either. Commitment and stability were never fated for you.

Your mother loved you, maybe a little too much. She never understood your wanderlust, tried to keep you home the whole time you stayed. You doubt she was surprised to find you gone, but you like to think she still cried. She was that sort of person.
She didn't do anything to fight the inevitable. That's what made you different from her, down at the core. You fight everything, she fought nothing.
You're determined that you will never let others decide your path.

You're a rolling stone, a wanderer in the truest sense of the word. You refuse to settle, because you're terrified that the second you let yourself still you're going to get older and older. That's the thing you're most scared of, deep down, more than anything else. You could deal with dying young, because at least then you'd still stay beautiful, still be remembered as you want to be.
And you don't want it any other way.

Maybe that makes you a disappointment, in a way. You were an only child, your parents' only hope of continuing the family line-though why they would want to, you haven't the faintest. Your family was never particularly extraordinary, and you like to think of yourself as the exception that proves the rule. If you, the outlier, could be so fantastic, so different, what did that say for the rest of them? Content to stay where they were born, burying strangers for their whole lives? The thought horrifies you. Never. Never. Never, not for you.

If you were never meant to be anything special, you may as well try. Being destined for greatness feels like a logical thing to you-and if you weren't, you're going to try your best to get there anyway. You fight a war with destiny, like you can't decide if you were born for moving forward or if you defy your own fate with every step away from home.
Home is a foreign concept now, anyways. You don't need anything but the things you carry with you.
Shiny trinkets, mostly, as it happens to be. You have clothes that are ripped and mended again and again- and a sewing kit for the mending. Food isn't much of a problem, as there's more edible things out in the wilds than one would expect. You use trial and error when feeding yourself, and if you slip up and poison yourself, well. That's not so bad.
You like pretty things. Little things, like jewelry, useless figurines. You have a nasty habit of nicking them from people's homes- you don't have any use for them, but you've always been a collector. There are worse things to get involved with, you figure. Petty theft isn't the worst crime you could be committing.

There are hollows in your bones, you're absolutely sure of it sometimes. Anything to explain the ache you get when you stay somewhere for too long, when you feel the dust start to settle. The thought of permanent residence terrifies you. You wake up from nightmares of weddings and funerals, an endless cycle of life and death, others and you until you die yourself.
You don't want that. You don't care if it's in the stars' design for you, there isn't any way you could let that happen.
That's the thought that keeps you moving, keeps you restless, keeps you from forming any kind of meaningful connection with anyone you've ever met. People are limited with you. Every relationship has an expiration date before you can't breathe, and you run, leave them far behind you.
You still don't regret it. You still don't regret any of it.