noah fel || district eleven || fin

Ever wonder what it's like to have your fate intertwined so tightly with someone else that you cannot possibly imagine life without them? Not even in a creepy way or anything, but just that one person that you've been around so long that a world without them seems utterly unfathomable?

Yeah, that was me for a while. Me and my older brother, someone I've known for literally my entire life. Which okay, in the grand scheme of things, isn't terribly long. But one hundred percent of sixteen years is like, a lot of days. Five thousand or something like that, I don't know, math has never been one of my strengths. But that's the story. Or the basis of it, anyway.

See, Jacob was my brother through and through. Sure, we may have been born to different parents, but our situations were similar. Doorstop babies, adopted in by a loving couple, spared an otherwise horrendous life in an orphanage or foster home, and yeah. I think we were both made Fels before our respective first birthdays, but I can't remember for certain.

What I do know is that as soon as I was able to think and recognize shit, he was right there alongside me. A brother in arms if not a brother in blood, though that never seemed to make a difference for either of us. If I was the rising storm, the challenger to the throne, he was the calm sea of green, the wise ruler who knew each and every way to intricately manage his subjects.

Not that me nor any of our siblings ever saw him as a tyrant. And why should we? He was our brother, the eldest, the protector, the guidance. In him we trusted secrets too risky for our mothers, sought advice from one who had experienced such dilemmas months ago instead of decades. And each and every time, assistance would be there to guide it. Sometimes uncertain, sometimes unsure, but never without benevolence.

That was why I was happy in my role of assistant eldest, the Roman candle to Jacob's anchor. The mere act of presenting myself as competition was enough to ensure he would do his best both with us and with the world as a whole, someone to nip at his heels whenever he grew lax and someone to assist when he got lost in his own thoughts and worries.

I never wanted his throne. But it was torn from his grasp and placed into my hands nonetheless.

And it's weird, basing your entire existence around that of another, but I suppose that's how many people thrive in this day and age. Some people grow up smothered in the influence of their elders, for better or worse, whilst others do what they can to distance themselves to become as much their own person as they possibly can.

I never imagined a life without my older brother there to guide me through the worst and the best that life had to offer.

And yet here I am, sitting in his shattered throne, a broken crown resting heavy on my laurels.

Five had become four, but instead of the ones below stepping up to fill in the gap left behind there's just an aching hole that nothing and no one can possibly hope to fill. And yet I must try and fill it in, regardless. It's far, far too much of a burden for one singular seventeen year old to shoulder, and yet I must try anyway.

Not trying means much more than simply breaking into little tiny pieces. Not trying means receiving looks of pity from people I barely know, people who think that just because I share the last name with one of the damned that suddenly I've ceased to function as my own person. Not trying means being treated as if I have the plague, for no one will so much cast more than a nervous glance in my direction, nor come within several feet of me.

I'd watched from afar as such treatment affected the Izars and Rhodes and Miristiomas. Never in a thousand lifetimes did I ever imagine it would happen to me. But that's the bitter irony of the Games, huh? It's supposed to be the thing that never happens to you, the odds of one of even an entire family being selected out of thousands and thousands was supposed to be so laughably small that it could never possibly happen to you.

And to suddenly have those very odds decide to give you the middle finger and tear a hole in your very being? Well, it's no wonder I was avoided for the first month after classes returned to session. No one wants to be associated with the brother of the damned, after all.

So that's why I play pretend. Yeah, Jacob was dead, but I was still Noah, the same kid who cracked self-deprecating jokes and goofed around in class. Lighthearted, not a care in the world, that was me, all right.

But I suppose I've never been great at crafting falsehoods and fabrications. I suppose I did a shit job of hiding the anger and the hatred within, for things have never been quite the same.

Oh no, it's not directed at the people from my home. It's not their fault that they stood by and watched as my brother was butchered alive on screen by one of our very own, a girl who thinks herself above consequence simply because she played the puppet-master's game.

Oh no. The Capitol was the one who took my brother away from me. Their biggest mistake was leaving me to take his place.

I'm not so forgiving like Jacob was. And for each sideways glance I receive or pitying remark heard, I think to those on top, those who tear families apart for nothing more than a glorified method of entertainment. And I think as to how it is their thrones that should be shattered, how their crowns should be broken over their heads.

The Capitol took my brother, my poor, sweet, kind brother who would never hurt a fly. And for that, there will be hell to pay.

That is my vow, and I will fulfill it, or my name is not Noah Fel.