Iden Averill D2 (Done)

Heathen. That's what they called him. A word to be bounded to his name with irony. They would look at his blonde hair, laughing at how much of an atrocity it was to their family. Blonde hair, green eyes, his shorter stature compared to the rest of them, he was an insult and truly not a part of the family. Blonde locks of hair shining gently in the mirror as he swipes it up, huffing in frustration, like he did every morning. A dull green in his irises shine through his appearance. They've seen more horrors than anyone else's have seen. Their words scrape at his ears when they weren't around doing it themself. The whispers of his own existence. "That's the bastard son of the Averill family. The son of a whore." He's heard it all. The whispers that he hears of the insults they call him stabs him in the back. Pain and suffering since the day he was born into the world.

The mirror reflects the body that he's trained on his own. Career training was a part of his life as it was his father's only time to forget about Iden. The bastard child that should have never been born to the family. Iden Averill, bastard of the family. First name coming from the whore of a mother he once had, she no longer breathed upon the earth. Arms carry strength with every swing of the blade in his hand. The words upon his father's lips screams out to his already fatigued form, "Faster Iden! Faster!" His hands tighten even more, the blade swings forward, but only gashes the dummy. "You swing like a girl, Iden, no wonder your mother named you that." His brother spits out like poison. The person who truly made his blood boil with every word said, but also the only one who truly gave any fucks about him. His brother was the one who forced him to train. The brother who was only half related to himself, a legitimate child born with dark hair and dark eyes, just like his father's and mother's. Blonde was the color of a bastard in the Averill's.

As the day continues on, brother and father screaming across the yard to fix any little thing that was wrong with his skills. They tried to hone him since the other siblings had already honed their own skills to perfection. A word that Iden truly learned to hate. Perfection. The only thing Averill's strived for in District Two. Never had he learned that lesson of being perfection. There was no way for him to reach that as he was soiled with the blood of a whore. That didn't stop him from trying for so many years. Every time he tried, his father would speak the same thing over and over again, "You'll never be a true Averill, Iden. Give up." Never did he give up on that. Averill was a tag stuck upon him only to hide away his true failure in life. He swings with everything he's got, heart upon the blade that he's used for so long.

"Bloody hell boy, I've seen your sister hit harder than you could have." The blood boiled like it did every training session that his brother forced him to do. Every time he had tried to swing harder, smarter, braver, quicker, and so many more ways, it wouldn't be right. Legitimate children swung like pros that he never truly was like, especially as a boy. While his half-siblings trained, he sat inside being taught things that avoxes would have been taught. The only thing he could be seen as, inferior in every way. That's when he snapped at his brother. Only words stab his brother like the sword did to the dummy, "Go lick a bloody fucking asshole. At least our sister has better choice in men than you do." A smirk that reached across the face, that screamed at him in every way possible, waiting for his moment of brokenness. Iden knew the words that would surely come as they did every time he angrily said something stupid.

"At least my mother wasn't a whore."

That's when he snapped on him like every training session before. The blade swings with a new fiery passion that burns inside of him. His father always wondered why he never truly quits on his own name and trying to bring honor to them. Only Iden himself knew of why he never quit. It was moments like the one he had forced himself into then that truly showed why he did what he did. The brother across from him knew it too. Everyone but the two of them would never know truly why he never gave up. It was for all the suffering, a method of forcing himself to live in a world that didn't want him alive. Threats of being tossed out of the home hang upon him like the empty threats of his half siblings who pledge to murder him one day. The truth was in fact that everyone admired his determination to stay alive, yet everyone despised him for it.

The clang of metal on metal makes Iden snap out of his own thoughts. Half brother slashes at him, the smirk upon his face parts for words to flow through, "That's the Iden I know. Hot head who needs to be reminded of what happens to him." Hot headed was a word that could be used to describe the anger coursing through his veins in that moment. His brother knew it was an easy weakness of his. A weakness that he used every time that he could. A weakness that stabbed him in the heart over and over again. His arm slashes forward as his brother blocks it like it had been nothing. The smirk on his face never disappears as his brother's leg sweeps him off of his feet. The blade that had been in his hands clatters to the ground far away from him. The laugh that rolls off of his half brother's tongue makes him angrier than before, but the words are filled with pride and wisdom, "Iden, calm down. That was pathetic, just like your stance. Anger in combat doesn't work well, it only clouds your mind and eyes from seeing what's right in front of you. If you were paying attention, you could easily have taken me down. And I was going easy on you. God forbid I do anything to try and cheer you up. That's enough for today. Go do whatever you bastards do."

His brother's form disappears as the footsteps' sound vanishes within the large home that they lived in. Everything was bigger, shinier, brighter, and richer in their house, except for Iden. The place never felt like home for him in the slightest, so instead of going inside. He grabs the blade and continues swinging at the dummy like his life depended on it. Their words claw at him with every word. The biggest and sharpest one being the word whore that would escape their lips like a poison, slowly killing his insides. Everything tried to make him feel inferior, weak, a monster, but he was none of those. Survivor is the word that he would use to describe how he's still alive and kicking. He's survived much more than people ever thought he would have. His half-brother knew this just as much as he did, that's why he was always so tough on him. Iden was a survivor in a world of no survival.

Inside the home, everyone watches him, waiting to tell him he did something wrong, but where his skills in combat falter, his chores and housekeeping skills are superior. It had been what he learned from a young age, combat wasn't his specialty since he never learned it at a young age, but he learned to cook, sew, clean, and heal. Useless was something that couldn't describe him even if his father wanted it to so badly. His skill sets were different than the rest of the siblings, but he knew something that they didn't. His half-brother was the only one who had ever come up to him and asked to learn, for the sake of himself. Idean had told him he would, only if he would train him in combat, just in case his name is pulled. THe agreement had been made and they worked together every day that they could, unless his half-brother was too busy with another male in his bed. Iden never truly understood why love was so important, when love never truly existed for himself. All that was given to him was atrocities and hatred, yet that never stopped him from living a life that he would make him proud to be alive.

"Iden! Come here, boy." The words come out from his step mother's lips, a younger woman whose brown hair and brown eyes add to her youthful glow. The glass in her hand filled with none other that the red liquid she drowns herself in when she thinks of Iden. She doesn't speak, only shakes the almost empty glass of red liquid. The signal was clear as he pours more into the glass like the servant that she had wanted him to be. There had been an argument when he was little of what the two would do with him. Her words still haunted his mind with every word she had spoke of at the time. "Just lock him up. Let him die of starvation. No one would care." The tears that fell from his face as he ran away could have filled the ocean in District Four. That had been the last he remembered of their talk of killing him, but they never went through with it. His half brother had told him that their father was being merciful to his soul, even though he hated him with everything. Iden knew that it hadn't been his father's decision either, something else made them decide not to kill Iden. Iden would never truly know what changed their minds. All he knew was that someone got his so called mother and his father to spare his life, even as he grew older.

Terrors in the night haunt him as he sleeps in his room, the smallest room in the entire house. His step mother's words speak through, "If he's going to live, he's getting the smallest and farthest room from everyone else's rooms." The words she spoke never truly breaks him like she wishes they would. They only power him to continue living even if it's torture. The nightmares that crawl in the night, pull at his skin. Memories of the day his mother died. The words upon his father's lips, little green eyes hiding away in the dark through a crack in the door, a knife with blood upon it's blade. Money and secrets lie within the Averill's walls. Iden only knew about that one, but his father held many more that he would never truly learn. "I'm sorry, but I can't let a whore and her child live anymore." A whore and her child. The words had been so frightening for the longest time. That day, he learned of what it meant to survive. Little green eyes watch as his mother is stabbed through the heart, death taking her hand into teh afterlife. The memory makes the sleeping male shift uncomfortable, until he wakes up in a cold sweat. A scream threatening to leave his body, but couldn't. If anyone knew what he did, his body would be found within a room, a suicide note written up. Just like his mother's body.

Spared for being a child of a whore, only to suffer the words over and over again, as his siblings, step mother, and father made him live the horrors everyday. No one knew of what had happened to his mother, only his father and himself did. That's how he would keep it. A list sits in his room, hidden in a corner. A list of only two names, a knife hidden within the paper. The names were his step mother's and father's. The two he wanted to kill so badly, but couldn't as he was too weak to do so. Just like his whore mother as he believed it to be. The day was beginning, the note lays hidden away. Another day of torturous names, a rough career training session, chores to do, and family to treat as the holy, even when they were the disgraced ones.

Every day he lives with his mother's name bounded to his own, a waste of space as some of his siblings had called him. His half brother cared a bit, but he was truly the only reason he had something to live for. The smirk that sits on his half brother's face as they eat in silence. His sister's words ask him pleasantly, even though there was nothing pleasant about them, "Father told me that you would do my chores instead of training today." A grown from his half-brother echoes across the room and as the two fight, all Iden can do is watch as poison flies between the two. He breaks it up easily, a glimmer of satisfaction, "Sounds like I have a lot ahead of me. I better start now. You two can fight all you want, but if you break something, father will have your heads instead of mine for once." That straightened the two of them up quickly, as Iden exits to go complete twice the amount of chores.

That's when his half brother caught up to him, a smile upon his pale face, "Let me help you. After all, this would be the perfect time to hone my own practical skills instead of showing up everyone again. It gets boring after awhile." A laugh falls from his own lips. His half brother was the reason he continued on trying to impress his father, continued to live, and continued being Iden Averill the whore's son. To spite his father was another thing that gave him joy in his world of torture through names. Everyday wasn't a terrible one, but not everyday was a good one either. He was just surviving. The bastard who survived open ended threats and the ridicule of a name.

As they work on the chores, the day falls, but as they finish, an hour is left for training. His half brother already dragging him by the sleeve out to the yard where their father provided a few weapons and dummies to practice on. As his hand grips the sword, he can feel his passion and stubbornness to survive in his heart. He swings his blade forward, the laugh that escapes his brother is the typical one. The words that fall from his lips don't mean harm, but to encourage him. Their blades clash, their eyes meet, and all he can feel is something more than being a whore's son, he feels like a real sibling and that's all he could ask for. The whore's son who survived the ridicule and empty threats through everything, only because he wants to prove himself as a part of the family. Honor was the only thing that would change his father's mind and he was going to try and prove himself. His half brother swings and he dodges. Iden swings back, knocking his brother down. As his brother stands, words flow gently out and all he can do is smile down at Iden. A sense of praise and honor resonates within him.

"You bastard! You're gonna have to try harder than that if you're gonna beat me."

This was what made his life worth living.