kyle riverstone [capitol/GM, FIN]

kyle riverstone [capitol/GM, FIN] May 30, 2016 16:54:28 GMT -5

Post by sadniss everdeen on May 30, 2016 16:54:28 GMT -5

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kyle riverstone

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thirty one

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capitol

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73rd gamemaker

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well I have brittle bones it seems
I bite my tongue and torch my dreams
have a little voice to speak with
and a mind of thoughts and secrecy

You are not a success story.

When you were born, your first breath was not an impossibility. You did not overcome odds embedded in the twisted turns of your genome, or gasp despite the chord wrapped around your throat. When you came into the world, it was quiet; a whimper instead of a wail.

Your mother loved you, but only because a mother must love her child.

That is not to say she did not care for you. She cradled you in the pocket of her arms, pressed a wooden cross to your brow and whispered psalms into your slick-soaked skin. She took you from the midwife when you sobbed and held your tiny ear to her heart until you softened. For all her future faults, all the blame you could lay at her feet, her hands were the first warmth you ever truly knew (and could argue, still know now).

But sometimes her love wavered and trembled, grew frayed and thin at the edges because when she would hold you and look down and--

You had your father's eyes.

As you grew older, you had his mouth, too. His voice. The crooked smile that exposed a hard curve of white, too sharp to be comforting. It softened with age, broadened and lost its edge, but she would look into your face and see him looking back at her and she just. She couldn't. Not in the way that you deserved.

Your father didn't love you.

From the time that you had ears to listen, he would lean over your crib and recite prayer, his little black book with yellowing pages and stains that warped words to be known only in memory. You would grasp at the cross around his neck and sob when he smacked your fingers away until you were red and tired and quiet and he would begin again. You were the only child, the only one of his to shape, and he borrowed the words from his book and gave them to you like a gift. But this gift was poorly packaged and rotten, it made you sick when you bit into it, but you took it anyway because it was the only thing he knew to offer.

You attended church from when you were four. It wasn't a real church, really; the priest held mass in a dark basement and the candles cast shadows that warped like demons, like Peacekeepers, like non-believers who walked the streets above. Those congregated would murmur and hum and hold their burnt books - those that survived the Burnings would never be complete again. Whole sections had been reduced to ash and the priest filled in the blanks with his own teachings, his own troubles. Your father hung on his every word and before long it was easy to know his moods solely by which readings he chose that night.

Church was always the worst part of your weeks. You always wished you could wear a skirt to church but you tried once and Father hit you so hard your ears rung for days. You, in your Sunday-best, your hair unevenly parted and messy brown around your eyes, your knobbly knees peeking out from your Sunday-shorts and the priest's hand heavy on your thigh. He would teach you scripture with the sleeves from his ratted gown brushing the bare skin of your calf, the whorls of his fingers tattooed on your bones and his eyes watching as you struggled to remember the prayers.

A man is always assertive, Kyle. He always takes what he wants. He always tells people when enough is enough.

Your father has always said this, taken you by your shoulders and shaken it into you, but when you were eight and told the priest no he moved his hand from your knee to your hip in the dark. It was always just you, had always been just you, and enough for you wasn't enough for him.

The only one who noticed was Hazel. She was small and soft and spoke to you like you weren't tainted. She explained math and held your hand at lunch and bumped her shoulder into yours, playing with your long fingers and long hair, and you started to understand how you could love something so much it hurt. She was your only friend.

What do you need of friends when you have the Lord?

She never quite understood the little black book you carried everywhere, torn and burnt and yellow, but that was okay. She never came home to meet your mother who had become quiet and withdrawn as your father swelled with passion and waistline, but that was okay, too. She never questioned the fingerprints around your wrists or the bite-bruise on your collar or how some days you couldn't meet her eyes when she asked. Instead, she let you try on her flower-patterned dresses and braided your too-long hair and painted your nails. Her hand was warm on the battered parts of you and that was enough.

Hazel made you brave - if not for yourself, for her. You were thirteen when you found your voice because a boy had dared to touch things that didn't belong to him. He left with a broken nose and you made artwork out of his blood, a pretty red flower splattered against the lockers, speckled in blue-black bruises against your knuckles. Father yelled and swore and raged but Mother smiled her secret little smile when he wasn't looking that sometimes made you think she really did love you.

You were thirteen when that power made you careless and you told your father what the priest does in the dark. He broke you over the back of the couch, his hand just as heavy in your Sunday-shorts, and forced your mouth (rouged, lacquered with saliva) to form repentance. Bits of the Hail Mary got stuck between your teeth as you chewed it up and spat it out, your cheek against the black book and your eyes caught in the glow of the streetlamps. If this is what the Lord wants, you give it to him.

Maybe it was deliverance, maybe it was justice, but your mother's silhouette lingered in the reflection of the window long after everything had gone quiet. To this day the feel of corduroy under your cheek makes you tremble but her hand pressed your eyes shut (the eyes you inherited, the ones that stopped her from loving you as she should) and something shifted in the dark.

A week later, you stood in Hazel's bathroom and sliced off all the hair your father had wound into his iron fist. When she asked why, you ducked your head to hide the new bruises and said he touched it, but he's gone now and that was enough.

*

You're older now. Your smile is kinder, your posture straighter. Your knees do not wobble and your voice does not shake. The magazines report your easy stride and quiet confidence. An intricate meshwork of ink crawls up your arms in a mixture of your own thoughts and the dizzying designs Hazel had once drawn in marker. They know of your strength, your charm, and your fierce protectiveness to those you hold close.

They do not know the way that Ambrosia lays you out sometimes, wrists bound and red, and whispers in your ear while you tremble. They do not know the way you lie between them in a soft sleep-shirt and a skirt and let their warmth still that shaking part inside of you. They do not know the way your eyes linger where they shouldn't sometimes, how it makes you want to rip off your own skin and return to that dark basement where you belong. They do not know that some days you look in the mirror and see yourself in clerical clothing it makes you wish that you'd never been born.

To them, you spent a quiet life in the modest area of the Capitol until you were thirteen and your father passed away in his sleep. You were a shy child, coming into your personality at the same time as your body, and the few fights you started in school were always to protect your own. When you graduated, you had just shot over six feet and everyone could see that your mother raised a contemplative and charming man. They ask about your past and they always get a placid, polite it was normal.

By all accounts, you are not a success story. You did not rise from oppression, did not shake ghosts from your shoulders to find your own footing in the world. Perhaps you've fallen in bed (and in love) with more than one person, but when asked you simply smile and let the rumour roll over the strong spread of your back.

After all, you have far worse secrets to keep.

things cannot be reversed
we learn from the times we are cursed
things cannot be reversed
learn from the ones we fear the worst
and learn from the ones we hate the most