micah jaroux || district one || fin

There are those that look your way and wonder how you could want for anything, how a boy with all of your privilege could possibly even know the meaning of suffering. It's only a testament to how well you've spent your eighteen years of life perfecting your mask.

See, you may have it all on the outside. A boy who recently came into a heap of wealth upon the passing of the person who until scant years ago had sat upon the poisoned throne. You're strong, and fit, and healthy, the results of a decade's worth of pushing your body to its limit evident on everything from your jawline to your obliques. Had you shown any aptitude for bloodthirst, hell, you may very well have been the first in line to throw your name in as the next monarch of District One.

Oh, you desire that crown, all right. Despite your perfect looks and the family fortune at your back, you are not perfect. Not whole. Far from it, as a matter of fact.

See, you're the last one. The last Jaroux. The last descendant with their name and their blood flowing through your veins. A victim of circumstance as well as just pure, shitty luck.

It started with your blood. The very same running through your veins and gifting you life also held the countdown of an atomic clock, a ticking time bomb just ready and waiting to tear you apart from within. Genetic abnormality, a curse of an ancestor crossing the Capitol and bringing down their wrath upon the entire bloodline, or just pure witchcraft, you never knew for certain. Had no desire to learn, really, either.

For with all of the privilege and plenty that carrying your name held, the blade that gave you strength was double-edged in nature. Children of your family are lucky to live past their twentieth birthday. To make it to twenty one was considered stretching the very limits of what nature or Ripred above allowed; to make it to twenty five was considered a pipe dream.

In a way, you're lucky. For you, you're something of a late bloomer. By the time reaping eligibility was considered a thing of the past, nine out of every ten children that carried the name of Jaroux had began to succumb to the curse in their blood. The heart condition that killed while young and struck while younger still, and so far you've avoided that sock in the gut. But it's not a matter of if, but when. A one hundred percent affliction rate. A one hundred percent mortality rate. If there was to be an abnormality, a black sheep in this particular family curse, they would have appeared by now. And you are not so foolishly optimistic.

You are strong, sure. Stronger than many that have come before you, in spirit as well as body. Such is the armored shell that must appear when one has a mother, free of both name and affliction, who ruled over her child not with love, but with envy and greed towards what she could only possess in the event that the name died out. Such is the cage that forms around one who's first memory is of his own father who tried to kill him out on the streets of Two, claiming it was a mercy to stop the infection at its source before he was gunned down by half a dozen men in white. A mercy, perhaps, but not for you.

Such strength is built on brittle stone. But you must endure. Your eighteenth has come and gone, and your last chance at salvation - for the family name, yes, but also for you - is rapidly encroaching. And sure, there are those that look upon you and take only what they can see at face value, never bothering to dive beneath and see the rot just waiting to erupt from within. They see the golden throne and the sculpted body and think, wow, what a lucky, privileged boy.

You know better. There is no golden throne without a crown forged in iron extracted from blood. There is no future when the curse of an ancestor dead so long their name has been forgotten lies heavy over your head. You are no perfect golden boy who has never suffered a day in his life. You are no spoiled heir destined to live out the rest of his days in opulence and excess comfort.

You are a Jaroux. And for you, that means you must claim your life in the blood of the innocent.

For if not, your birthright will be the dirt.