someday, i'll be redeemed // maxwell
Oct 4, 2019 1:00:08 GMT -5
Post by lance on Oct 4, 2019 1:00:08 GMT -5
trigger warning: depression and suicide
It’s bitter.
The second to last thing I ever taste is bitter. I suppose that’s what I get for relying on discount beer to give me a high. But when you’ve lived the life that I have lived, well, such things are seen as necessary sacrifices for the greater good.
Heh. You’d think that three years later, the almighty fucking Ripred above would see that I’ve served my penance for stabbing a dying boy through the heart to grant him mercy and fighting for five, long, terribly brutal days to survive while others died for me. That three years later, I’m not reminded of the goddamned trip to hell and back after I hear the name Larceny Theft! ring out across a town square not once, but twice in a row, as if deciding that not yet have I suffered, not yet have we suffered, the twin hellions and the boy who took them under their wing because despite his better judgement, he couldn’t carve out his own heart and survive the process.
No. Some higher power desired more, decided that plucking twenty four perfectly good teenagers from their homes and sending them broken and only partially functional as if a broken shell was any better than a lifeless corpse. As if part of me didn’t die when Denali Lyons tore me open with her knives, set me ablaze with her flames. As if I’m not reminded of five days of torment every damn time I look at my arms, riddled with scars gained from the greedy, desperate blades of my foes. As if I can’t remember staring down set after set of hateful eyes every time I look into a mirror, every time my fingers trace the remnant of the wound my own district partner from home gifted me as she made sure I was outnumbered two to one before engaging me in battle.
I should have died in that arena. It would have been a mercy compared to what came next.
But three years on, I now recognize the genius of the Capitol’s plan. The same old death year after fucking year would grow stagnant, become accustomed, especially after eight decades of the norm. But this, a slow acting poison disguised as mercy, this was genius. Pluck the blank canvases out from their homes, decorate them to their liking with crimson and pain, and send the broken magnum opus back to whence they had come as a living, breathing reminder of just what exactly the Capitol was capable of.
Oh, some could handle it, I’m sure. The pampered Careers with half a dozen options for employment ready and waiting for them after they’re finished practicing how to murder for their entire childhood, the well off fucks from wealthier backgrounds who can afford to be fixed back to a state somewhat resembling human, or the places like Six and Seven and Eleven that have a whole support system of victors who have been there, done that, know what every part about it is like aside from, you know, actually fucking dying.
Point is, there’s a reason why the twins and I gravitated towards each other, a reason why I found common ground with the relative of a tribute dead now nearly a decade. We were underdogs, the kids with a fucked up background and nothing to lose. Sure, I had my brother back home to return to, a promise I needed to keep. But I had no delusions from the very first moment I nearly lost my life in the bloodbath, found myself afoul of wave after wave of rivals who decided that they’re rather kill a malnourished boy from a district that hadn’t seen a Victor since I was four instead of each other.
And heh, who fucking knows. A different world, and this malnourished son of gang leaders with no combat training under his belt would have gotten to the very end through sheer determination alone. The fact that I survived to the fifth day despite facing down the odds thrice before was proof enough of that.
But I digress. The twins, Carter, me, we were the underdogs. Four kids from three homes with arguably more to gain than to lose in a game that prides itself on death and despair. There’s a reason I say I should have died in that arena, a reason I’m sitting here tonight on this rooftop right smack dab in the center of fucking town with the cheapest alcohol money can buy and a treasured heirloom from my parent’s nightstand.
And I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Jordan be damned, I never should have made that fucking promise to come home. Sure, it might have been different if I’d been Annie Morrisen, if I’d gotten the fat paycheck that came with proving your superiority over twenty three equally unfortunate kids and the celebratory status that came with it.
But no one gives a shit about the losers, about the ones who prove unworthy. And that fact does not change just because there’s still breath in my body instead of dirt. They stitch you up, restart your heart, clean away the worst of the blood and gore, and send you home, as if rehabilitation is measured in how pretty you look and not at how stable you are.
Everything to gain and nothing to lose, that would have been my fate had it been any other year. Either a cash reward to change my life, or a blade through my heart to end it. Enough food for the rest of our lives, or one less mouth to feed.
God. It fucking sucks when you’ve been the one to look after your sibling for eighteen years, and then after a month of hell and high water, you spend the next three being looked after by them.
I’ll say it again. There’s a reason I should have died in that arena instead of plodding along, a shell reanimated by the Capitol to continue on wasting air and consuming resources better spent on more worthy souls. My family was never wealthy to begin with, not after my parents were forcibly retired from the gang life and sent to waste the rest of their years as recluses in some backwater on the edge of town. Getting help was out of the question; hell, simply dealing with me was almost too much to bear.
There’s a reason that before the very first year I’d returned home had concluded, I couldn’t go a day or a night without a drink.
There’s a reason that after Larceny’s name was called for the first time, I suffered a panic attack, and henceforth refused to leave my bed for a week.
There’s a reason that by the time it was called the second time, I’d decided that enough was enough.
Some people could enter that goddamned hellscape of an arena and emerge with the ability to put their broken pieces back together. Some people were lucky enough to leave with their scars the worst part of their torment as loving hands with deep pockets cleansed whatever was impure on the inside.
I was not one of those people. And yet I tried. I pretended. I walked on my own two feet and took in the world with my own two eyes until it became all too apparent that I was only alive because of the actions of puppet masters and not through my own design.
I flirted with the idea that winter, and solidified it come spring. Ripred demanded a price. The Capitol demanded their sacrifice. And if the two boys that had sacrificed themselves to delay that price had done so merely to give me time to take that decision and make it with my own two hands, then heh, I suppose when I descend into the fiery pits of hell that I’ll be greeted in good company.
I made the pledge the month before, the preparations the week of. Scouted out a vantage point nice and high and centralized, made sure my parent’s piece was loaded and at the ready before I swiped it.
And the day came and went. The night arrived, and I found success in my heart, for I knew my plea had been heard. Larceny Theft would not be selected for the slaughter. He would have the rest of his life to live before him.
But with the boon comes the price. In his place, another of our sacred twenty four had been named. And though Wander Sibley had laughed in the face of a second round of death, though a volunteer from the ever reliable Career districts had deemed herself worthy to take the spot, I alone knew the significance. A promise sealed, a reminder, a willingness to cooperate by offering the first concession. Larceny would not be selected; Wander would not have to die.
And so, I must now uphold my end of the bargain.
That’s how I found myself on top of this building in the center of town the morning after two more kids were plucked from their homes to be sent to their deaths, an empty can of beer in my right hand and my parents’ loaded pistol in my left. And despite it all I take comfort in knowing that when their end comes, it will be far more swift, far more painless, than my own.
My name is Maxwell Temple. And by Ripred, by Jordan, by myself, I tried. I fucking tried. But I failed. Because in the end, I’m only fucking human. And if the sun trying desperately to shine its warmth through the smog that makes up my home is any indication, this is no goddamned fairy tale.
Every year without fail, the Capitol demands blood. But this year, it will get one sacrifice early.
The last thing I ever taste is cold, hard metal.
Ironic, I note, gradually applying pressure to the trigger.
It’s bitter.
The second to last thing I ever taste is bitter. I suppose that’s what I get for relying on discount beer to give me a high. But when you’ve lived the life that I have lived, well, such things are seen as necessary sacrifices for the greater good.
Heh. You’d think that three years later, the almighty fucking Ripred above would see that I’ve served my penance for stabbing a dying boy through the heart to grant him mercy and fighting for five, long, terribly brutal days to survive while others died for me. That three years later, I’m not reminded of the goddamned trip to hell and back after I hear the name Larceny Theft! ring out across a town square not once, but twice in a row, as if deciding that not yet have I suffered, not yet have we suffered, the twin hellions and the boy who took them under their wing because despite his better judgement, he couldn’t carve out his own heart and survive the process.
No. Some higher power desired more, decided that plucking twenty four perfectly good teenagers from their homes and sending them broken and only partially functional as if a broken shell was any better than a lifeless corpse. As if part of me didn’t die when Denali Lyons tore me open with her knives, set me ablaze with her flames. As if I’m not reminded of five days of torment every damn time I look at my arms, riddled with scars gained from the greedy, desperate blades of my foes. As if I can’t remember staring down set after set of hateful eyes every time I look into a mirror, every time my fingers trace the remnant of the wound my own district partner from home gifted me as she made sure I was outnumbered two to one before engaging me in battle.
I should have died in that arena. It would have been a mercy compared to what came next.
But three years on, I now recognize the genius of the Capitol’s plan. The same old death year after fucking year would grow stagnant, become accustomed, especially after eight decades of the norm. But this, a slow acting poison disguised as mercy, this was genius. Pluck the blank canvases out from their homes, decorate them to their liking with crimson and pain, and send the broken magnum opus back to whence they had come as a living, breathing reminder of just what exactly the Capitol was capable of.
Oh, some could handle it, I’m sure. The pampered Careers with half a dozen options for employment ready and waiting for them after they’re finished practicing how to murder for their entire childhood, the well off fucks from wealthier backgrounds who can afford to be fixed back to a state somewhat resembling human, or the places like Six and Seven and Eleven that have a whole support system of victors who have been there, done that, know what every part about it is like aside from, you know, actually fucking dying.
Point is, there’s a reason why the twins and I gravitated towards each other, a reason why I found common ground with the relative of a tribute dead now nearly a decade. We were underdogs, the kids with a fucked up background and nothing to lose. Sure, I had my brother back home to return to, a promise I needed to keep. But I had no delusions from the very first moment I nearly lost my life in the bloodbath, found myself afoul of wave after wave of rivals who decided that they’re rather kill a malnourished boy from a district that hadn’t seen a Victor since I was four instead of each other.
And heh, who fucking knows. A different world, and this malnourished son of gang leaders with no combat training under his belt would have gotten to the very end through sheer determination alone. The fact that I survived to the fifth day despite facing down the odds thrice before was proof enough of that.
But I digress. The twins, Carter, me, we were the underdogs. Four kids from three homes with arguably more to gain than to lose in a game that prides itself on death and despair. There’s a reason I say I should have died in that arena, a reason I’m sitting here tonight on this rooftop right smack dab in the center of fucking town with the cheapest alcohol money can buy and a treasured heirloom from my parent’s nightstand.
And I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Jordan be damned, I never should have made that fucking promise to come home. Sure, it might have been different if I’d been Annie Morrisen, if I’d gotten the fat paycheck that came with proving your superiority over twenty three equally unfortunate kids and the celebratory status that came with it.
But no one gives a shit about the losers, about the ones who prove unworthy. And that fact does not change just because there’s still breath in my body instead of dirt. They stitch you up, restart your heart, clean away the worst of the blood and gore, and send you home, as if rehabilitation is measured in how pretty you look and not at how stable you are.
Everything to gain and nothing to lose, that would have been my fate had it been any other year. Either a cash reward to change my life, or a blade through my heart to end it. Enough food for the rest of our lives, or one less mouth to feed.
God. It fucking sucks when you’ve been the one to look after your sibling for eighteen years, and then after a month of hell and high water, you spend the next three being looked after by them.
I’ll say it again. There’s a reason I should have died in that arena instead of plodding along, a shell reanimated by the Capitol to continue on wasting air and consuming resources better spent on more worthy souls. My family was never wealthy to begin with, not after my parents were forcibly retired from the gang life and sent to waste the rest of their years as recluses in some backwater on the edge of town. Getting help was out of the question; hell, simply dealing with me was almost too much to bear.
There’s a reason that before the very first year I’d returned home had concluded, I couldn’t go a day or a night without a drink.
There’s a reason that after Larceny’s name was called for the first time, I suffered a panic attack, and henceforth refused to leave my bed for a week.
There’s a reason that by the time it was called the second time, I’d decided that enough was enough.
Some people could enter that goddamned hellscape of an arena and emerge with the ability to put their broken pieces back together. Some people were lucky enough to leave with their scars the worst part of their torment as loving hands with deep pockets cleansed whatever was impure on the inside.
I was not one of those people. And yet I tried. I pretended. I walked on my own two feet and took in the world with my own two eyes until it became all too apparent that I was only alive because of the actions of puppet masters and not through my own design.
I flirted with the idea that winter, and solidified it come spring. Ripred demanded a price. The Capitol demanded their sacrifice. And if the two boys that had sacrificed themselves to delay that price had done so merely to give me time to take that decision and make it with my own two hands, then heh, I suppose when I descend into the fiery pits of hell that I’ll be greeted in good company.
I made the pledge the month before, the preparations the week of. Scouted out a vantage point nice and high and centralized, made sure my parent’s piece was loaded and at the ready before I swiped it.
And the day came and went. The night arrived, and I found success in my heart, for I knew my plea had been heard. Larceny Theft would not be selected for the slaughter. He would have the rest of his life to live before him.
But with the boon comes the price. In his place, another of our sacred twenty four had been named. And though Wander Sibley had laughed in the face of a second round of death, though a volunteer from the ever reliable Career districts had deemed herself worthy to take the spot, I alone knew the significance. A promise sealed, a reminder, a willingness to cooperate by offering the first concession. Larceny would not be selected; Wander would not have to die.
And so, I must now uphold my end of the bargain.
That’s how I found myself on top of this building in the center of town the morning after two more kids were plucked from their homes to be sent to their deaths, an empty can of beer in my right hand and my parents’ loaded pistol in my left. And despite it all I take comfort in knowing that when their end comes, it will be far more swift, far more painless, than my own.
My name is Maxwell Temple. And by Ripred, by Jordan, by myself, I tried. I fucking tried. But I failed. Because in the end, I’m only fucking human. And if the sun trying desperately to shine its warmth through the smog that makes up my home is any indication, this is no goddamned fairy tale.
Every year without fail, the Capitol demands blood. But this year, it will get one sacrifice early.
The last thing I ever taste is cold, hard metal.
Ironic, I note, gradually applying pressure to the trigger.
It’s bitter.
