Remus Jørgensen :: Four :: Fin

REMUS

He can still remember the soft sound of his Mother's voice when she would whisper of worlds he could only imagine. Fields full of fragrant poppies that would push up through the starkest of soils to dance with the wild roses. Streams kissed with coolness that would wander through the whistling reeds of growing grass. These were the flowering fields of his Parent's past, a world entirely different from the one where all the power is that of Panem's. Oh how Remus wished he could have seen even a second of that world. Those stories would always send him on the most amazing of adventures within his dreams.

Remus liked the ocean, but it was never the same as the fascinating fields he dreamed about. He would wade in the water letting the salt sting along the brims of his brown eyes, but he felt empty, weightlessly wandering within the waves. He would collect sea shells from the sands and sculpt structures on the shore, but still his desires were drowned. Remus was an explorer at heart, filled by a fire fueled by the flames of adventure. He wanted to witness the world, to see those flowering fields somewhere far beyond the stretching surface of the sea. In the prison of Panem, he was a lost anchor tethered to bottom of the ocean.

Then there was the Rebellion, the Dawn of the so called "Dark Days."

Remus was twelve when the first bombs blasted through the Autumnal air. People hidden under haze and beneath manipulated masks mangled the streets of District Four and cried out against the corruption of the Capitol. For a while, Remus watched while Rebel soldiers secured sanctions throughout the different sectors and as smoke stained the skies. The young boy was imbued with a new exhilaration at what he was witnessing. His family raised up arms among the Rebel army and instantly he was a part of a powerful pack of passionate people. He wanted to be more than a watcher though, more than a child waving a banner from his window. He wanted to fight for the flowering fields.

Remus' chance came with a call for a new selection of scouts. Adults were proving to be too big of targets, too easy for the Capitol to discover. So, they drafted children. Among the first chosen was Remus, a natural runner and a boy who already wanted to see the wilds beyond the boundaries of his District. However, he wasn't alone. The new smaller scouts were always to be in pairs for protection. Remus' partner was another boy named Levi. Together, they became some of the most successful and important aspects to the Rebellion.

Sprinting and surviving became Remus' life. From recon to traversing messages from one camp to another, Remus and Levi found themselves in the unknown areas between the Districts almost eternally. Yet they quickly became experts of the most protected passageways and the safest selections. Remus never lost the lust of wonder when he was out in the wilds. Levi leaned more into the logistics, it was about drawing accurate maps and assuring the right information be delivered. They were both just boys, yet they were each fighting a war in their own ways.

But as history shows, the war was lost.

Remus remembers the day with dark certainty. It had only been a few weeks since he had turned thirteen and Levi had turned fourteen. Despite differences, the two boys were best friends bonded by the bloodied bandages they bound around one another. They were sent that morning from one of District Four's final fronts to assess how far through a nearby valley the Capitol forces were. It was estimated to be at least a days journey away and the front lines would need the information gathered by the scouts to properly prepare for the incoming attack. Remus and Levi came stumbling out of the shadows into the Capitol lines in only four hours.

The two boys barreled through the forests fleeing while the sky screamed with steel shots from the mouths of guns. They needed to warn the Front Lines or else they were going to be slaughtered, but before then they themselves needed to get awa... Remus watched while Levi's body wrecked into the ground as bullets burrowed beneath his skin. Tears toiled down Remus cheeks as both grief and fear overtook every ounce of his body. The last thing he saw wasn't a barrage of bullets, but a swarm of insects.

Remus woke up in a ditch with blisters boiled across his body and an eye swallowed up by swollen skin and blood. It took him nearly three days to make it back to the District, which by that time, had already fallen. What little remnants of the Rebels remained took him into hiding. They treated him as well as they could, but his eye was lost forever to the mutts' venom. He became a scarred shadow sitting again at the window watching while the world died.

It's been three years since then. Out of everyone in his family, Remus is all that's left. Some died fighting, others he watched while they were executed. As an orphan, he has served silently restoring the structures devoured by the Dark Days. His skin is a map work of scars from the stingers, but who doesn't have scars these days? He used to believe his breaths came on the backs of beckoning breezes, now he isn't so sure. He went into the wilds and he never found those flowering fields his Mother used to tell him about.

Now he is just a boy, weightlessly wandering through the waves wondering whether he's already drowned.