cj wade / district 4 (fin)

You've never been one to think too hard about anything, really. 

It's not because you don't care—though you wear a mask of perfectly mastered apathy so well. It's because it's all too much. The world, the way it works, and the endless cycle of bloodshed and death everyone around you is so accustomed to. You're sensitive in every sense of the word, not necessarily shy or introverted, but you feel so damn much that you've spent the last six years perfecting how not to. 

Namely using drugs and finding distractions. 

By age thirteen, you become that guy who can get anything. And truer words have never been spoken. You cultivate an entire business model on the District's contraband, finding and procuring everything for a price. Naturally, you start with your roots. The water and the millions of fish who call it home.

First you feed Four.

You hire four other rats from your neighborhood to do the dirty work: deliver the goods and collect the money. You feel most at ease on the water, in your grandfather's boat, listening to the waves as they lick up the side. This is your real home—the sea.

Second you expand the business. 

Someone has to put food on the table for you and your sister. Someone has to keep a roof over her head and yours, and with your mother dead and your father lost at sea, there's only you. Five more kids from the streets where you live wind up on your doorstep, all of them with skills you could never dream of possessing. 

Riley and Rayna, the twins, are sneaky; stealthy as hell, and the best by far, without ever being seen, to gather information: keeper rotations, shipment schedules,  Capitol spies.

Stanley is a genius in all things. He can decode any message in under a minute, but most importantly, he's good with numbers. He becomes your right hand after two weeks, and you'd trust him with your life, though he's not much of a fighter. But he handles the money with something like god-like reverence and that's all that matters.

Vex is cunning, irresistible to most and desired by many. She keeps at least four Keepers wrapped around her finger with nothing more a wink in their direction. She keeps you and the business safe every time she smiles at them with an envelope of cash in hand.

Leia is the muscle, a career since birth, they've lived their life in more luxury than any of us have ever seen, but their parents are gone and the second they introduce themselves and offer up their home as a makeshift HQ, you trust them implicitly.

If we go down, they go down with us. There's nothing like mutually assured destruction to form the bond of a makeshift family. They're yours now, yours and your sisters—the only family either of you has left. 

Third you meet Flick. 

You fall in love the first time you see him, a magnifying glass in one hand and some disgusting looking bug in the other. Despite the absolute disgust at something so slimy and gross, with like a million little legs, he looks up at you, one eye huge and peering through the thick glass, and the rest, as they say, was history. 

You asked him to marry you a year later. Why? Fuck it, was always your answer. Your father was too much of a coward to stay when your mother got sick, and from the moment you saw Flick, you knew you could be a better man. You knew you would love him until your bones turned to dust, in sickness and in health, as long as you both shall live. When someone's worth it, that's what you do. 

And just like you chose Riley and Rayna, like you chose Stanley and Leia and Vex, you chose Flick. 

His gaze may wander, but he comes home to you every night and that's what matters. He gives you more freedom than you've ever had. He loves your chosen family like they're his own now, too. 

You've spent most of your young life trying to figure out a way not to feel, but Flick taught you how to open your heart, taught you how to love, taught you that there's more to this life than suffering. 

And for that you'll be forever grateful.