Ione Ashwood - wanderer

I’m not calling for a second chance
;
I’m screaming at the top of my voice

My name was Kaya Lentach…

I was born with bright red hair - the subject of much teasing and jeering in school. It was long and stringy and in direct contrast with almost anything I tried to wear. Mum used to make me wear this awful purple hat. She'd traded precious morsels of food for the yarn of wool she used in order to make it for me. I didn't have a hat in another colour and so was forced to wear the horrid thing to school during the winter months. After a few years I remember losing it. Or misplacing it purposefully. I honestly cannot remember. I do, however, remember the tears and the long lecture that mother didn't hesitate releasing upon my return home.

I'm paler than I would like to be, and my skin has a habit of burning after even a short exposure to the sun. Red face and red hair often caused even more jubilation in school. I have dark eyes, am short and skinny, with tiny wrists and weak ankles. Last I checked I was definitely over five foot tall. Maybe five four. I've tried growing stronger ever since leaving District Nine, but there's really very little you can do when you're starving and trying to support another person on the side. I suppose I will always stay like this - which makes me useless in battle, but hey, I'm a fast runner. 

Nowadays my hair is different. It is blonde. Or brown. I'm really not too certain. It took months of stealing, weeks of selling my body for profit, basically years of doing anything I could to protect us. But my hair has gradually changed colour. The fire red hair was simply too unusual, too out there and it did nothing to help camouflage me. 

I have scars now that mar my skin. I was lucky, really, to have gone so long without any signs of hardship. The spattergroit left pock marks on my arm, deep gauges in my skin. It's the same for my brother. But there are also cuts and scars that cannot be attributed to illness. Those are souvenirs left from my incarceration in the DC - before I was let go. An ugly jagged one runs down the side of my face where I was slashed by a dagger. There are the tell-tale signs of cigarette burns all over my legs - so I keep them hidden. Those scars I find particularly ugly, particularly haunting. I will never thank my fortunes enough though, for the DC spared my brother, who was in death throes at the time. We were and are lucky. 

I used to wear dresses and skirts, and pretty things. My parents couldn't afford much but mother insisted on spending what we had on things that would disguise our poverty. It was a laughable attempt, but it did allow me to wear clothes that my neighbours couldn't. Nowadays that is different. I wear whatever we have to hand. I wear some of Trig's older stuff, clothes he's grown out of quickly since he hasn't stopped growing in two years. 

We make do.


hello, hello.
There is no place I cannot go
my mind is muddy but my heart is heavy
Does it show?
I lose the track that loses me,
so here I go

p e r s o n a l i t y :

My name was Kaya Lentach…

I used to be more gentle. Softer. Now I would call it weak, the kind of personality that will get you killed in this world.

Despite the violence within the family, despite the bitterness of my reality, I didn’t grow up emotionally stunted, or edgy with an inherent hatred for everyone and everything. I watched some of my classmates turn from wide-eyed children to spiky adolescents, often turning to drugs as the only reprieve from our monotonous lives.
So yeah. I wasn’t all rough-edged and I somehow managed to avoid the drug scene. I think I was a happy child.

Dad was angry almost all of the time, especially after drinking copious amounts of alcohol, and he’d let us know that we were disappointments. The insults simply rolled off me. I remember when I first met Flight, how very different we both were. I still believed that people were/are good.

And it wasn’t until the blood coated my own hands that I realised just how naïve I had been all my life.

I’ve turned my back (if that’s even possible) on my old worldview. I like to believe that I am no longer that bright souled little girl, the girl that believed in happy endings and fairytales. No. In fact, I think only a single part of my one-time personality managed to get carried through; my temper. I carry all my emotions on my sleeve. I’m quick to cry, quick to anger. My temper can flare up momentarily and I lose quick control. I try nowadays, I really do. But it’s hard. Some parts of my personality, I guess, cannot be buried quite so easily. I don’t believe I could ever love again. My ability to love died with my old self, and that’s that.

Two years down the line and I think the rough edge that I’ve avoided all my childhood has finally caught up with me. When I dyed my hair and changed my clothes, I also let go of the innocent, former me. My brother was still a child – not even old enough to enter the Hunger Games. The loss of our parents meant that the role of guardian and provider passed right on to me. I was still young, though not a child, myself.

I’m now happier to inflict violence, to steal, even to kill. If there is no other way. I still don’t particularly enjoy this, any of this, ‘cause this isn’t who I was and isn’t who I wanted to be – but you do what you must in order to survive.

And so I sent some men to fight,
and one came back at dead of night
said he’d seen my enemy, said he looked just like me
so I set out to cut myself
and here I go

h i s t o r y :

My name was Kaya Lentach…

I was born twice and as such, I have two histories, two separate lives that somehow always lead back to Flight. She was my best friend, then lover, then wife, then ? But I’m getting ahead of myself.

My first lasted until I was eighteen.

I was born on the outskirts of District Nine; in a neighbourhood of thieves and drunks. Sure, it wasn't quite the slums, but it certainly wasn’t like one of the nicer houses near the town centre. I was lucky to have a stable family home. As far as stable even could exist in D9.

Everything in Nine is ruled by hunting, trapping, skinning and my childhood wasn’t so different. Dad was employed as a small-game hunter, up until he injured his back, rendering him useless for the work force. He didn’t have the sort of luxury that came with an education and he hadn’t learned a trade, had no skill beyond catching things and killing them, really. Mother had been used to a relative life of… not wealth… but shall we say with few complications? After dad lost his job she had to go begging. She probably did some other stuff that she didn’t share with us children, but I never bothered to ask either.

I met Flight when I was… probably eleven. I can’t say exactly, but we were definitely kids and I met her during school. Flight was Tammy then and she was different from all of the other children. Even the ones who already seemed older than their years, who were violent and cruel; none of them could compare to the darkness that appeared to shroud Flight. I was curious, as children are, and the fact that the other children told me not to play with the ‘freak’ only made her a greater enigma, a secret to be revealed. So I pushed and prodded and got on her nerves for so long that we eventually became fast friends.

Maybe I was a welcome distraction for her inner turmoil? Or maybe we just worked well together? Either way, somehow we became fast friends. I was so sheltered and naïve and Flight really, really wasn’t. I got into trouble, skipped school, pick-pocketed in the streets, got a little mouthier than usual with father. None of that truly worried my parents. What they were worried about was Tammy corrupting me in different ways. In ways that plagued their nightmares. My parents didn’t approve of any behaviour that would incite ire and judgement from neighbours. Kissing a girl definitely would. So they forbid me from seeing her, my only and best friend, and because I was young and still terrified of dad’s fury, I agreed. I stayed away, and probably broke her heart in the process.

I tried making new friends over the years that followed. I grew quieter, focused my energy on my little brother, Trig, seven years my junior. An awful circumstance brought Flight and me back together again when I was sixteen. We picked up where we left off and I was aware that however dark Flight had been in childhood, it had amplified over time. She was more closed off towards me now and sometimes I grew sad and frustrated. Flight revealed darker truths in the months that followed. I discovered that the monster that had already been raging inside her at the age of eleven had now helped her commit terrible, horrible crimes. The monster also helped her save me on multiple occasions. I was split in how I felt about the monster – a monster that was a part of the person I loved more than anything.

I was witness to murders, to frenzied bloodbaths produced in the act of saving Luna, a friend of Flight’s whom I had falsely accused and almost killed in the process. I wore blood on my own hands.

And then there was the night that changed absolutely everything. I still find it hard to connect all the missing pieces, to really make sense of what happened on that fateful day. There’s a flash of light and mother is lying dead, a wailing Trig at her side. Father turned on me next, but Flight intercepted. He died and I felt nothing. I had even felt sadness for the Peacekeepers that Flight had murdered. Peacekeepers who were human garbage, who had tortured and killed. But I felt nothing when I stared down at my father’s bloodied and bruised face and listened to his last desperate gasps of air.

The next few months passed quickly and I was happy. I took on the role of guardian for Trig – though he despised Flight, who was soon to become my wife. We barely even had time together, a few months of bliss, months that were destroyed by a disease that infected the entire town. I survived the Spattergroit, and so did Flight, though physical signs of the illness can be found to this day, but Trig refused to get better. We ran out of medication and even the meagre supplies offered to District Nine didn’t save him. People were dying. The lucky ones died fast, but most would suffer like we did, for weeks on end and in terrible pain.

And so one day I left. I took Trig and left to find the Capitol, to get him healed. I only had one family member left and my brother was everything. But I left District Nine and I left Flight.

That's where my second life begins.

We never quite made it to the Capitol, but Trig got better anyway. 

Trig was healed, luckily, but I brought the attention of the Peacekeepers on me and was transferred to the Detention Center.

It was not a good stage in my life. The Peacekeepers wanted information about Flight, the Flight who had murdered so many people in such horrific ways. Yes, she was guilty, I knew she was guilty. But I also knew the real Flight, beyond the monster and I knew that there was so much more to this strange and wonderful person I made the mistake of falling in love with. I didn’t talk, I didn’t confess anything. I said I didn’t know a thing about the bloodbath involving some Peacekeepers in District Nine. Of course my words didn’t count for much and they tried to get information out of me in other ways. I got battered and bruised and emotionally scarred until I started fearing even my own shadow. When I closed my eyes then, I would see ghosts and shadows that moved, clawing towards me in the never ending darkness. When they realised how terrified I had become of the dark, they switched off the lights in my cell, forever trapping me in an endless loop of my nightmares.
 
I now carry the scars and burn marks from my time there, but eventually they had to let me go. Maybe I was there for weeks, or months, perhaps even a year.  

I took Trig, and limped into the forest. Some forest. I don’t know which forest. I wrote a letter to Flight, telling her I wouldn’t be coming back home – it was for Trig’s good. Her past would catch up with her, with us, and end up getting us both killed. If it weren’t for him, I would never have hesitated in going back to her. My life be damned. I managed to pass the letter off to someone in District Two, a lady I’d made acquaintance with who seemed nice enough. I stole her name, Ione, for myself. I took someone else’s surname for good measure. And I knew I would have to change my appearance as well. I don't know if the letter ever reached Flight -- if she still wonders what happened to me, but I can't risk writing a second one. 

Trig became Kit. We don’t really have a permanent address and instead try to keep moving. I don’t even know for sure in which district we are, I prefer to hunt and gather rather than visiting the often crowded and definitely unsafe cities. Maybe District Two - where the DC was. I’ve grown used to our vagabond life. I’m twenty-two now and Kit is fifteen. He’s grown taller and stronger than me, and he’s definitely not a little child anymore. I kept the ring. Even in my lowest moments, when I really should have pawned it off for food or shelter, I kept the ring.

I kept the ring.

and maybe someday we will meet,
and maybe talk
and not just speak
don’t buy the promises ‘cause,
there are no promises I keep.
and my reflection troubles me, so here I go.

I’m not calling for a second chance,
I’m screaming at the top of my voice
give me reason
but don’t give me choice
cause I’ll just make
the same mistake again.

saw the world turning in my sheets,
and once again I cannot sleep
walk out the door and up the street;
look at the stars
look at the stars fall down
and wonder where did I go wrong.

b a s e d    o n:

old character Kaya Lentach

f a c e c l a i m :

Behati Prinsloo.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

so here I go…