arcadius granyte || district two || fin

It never was supposed to be like this for you. Not on paper, anyway. There are still those that look back and think to the quiet, humble boy who had once been part of a successful family and wonder where it all went wrong for him, wondering what he could possibly be up to nowadays.

In truth, to ask where it all went wrong is a question that could never truly be answered. For, you suppose, things were never truly right for you at all.

See, there were a number of factors that lined up for you that, if each had been able to have been handled individually might have been manageable, but all together provided the unique environment in which you lived. The perfect image of the Granyte family, carefully forged to present to the outside world, was one that hid a level of rot and corruption behind it. See, the patriarch of the family, David, had long since lost himself to his vices in everything from drink to pretty women; the matriarch, Ina, never a brave woman to begin with, had long since been cowed into submission, and the family's four daughters were held up like prize trophies, suitors for whichever business partner happened to catch his attention and hold it for longer than a few weeks at a time.

In a way, that should have made you the lucky one, the lone son in the family with everything to gain in a male-favored culture. But there was one thing that David held to himself that resembled something akin to honor - a misplaced sense of twisted chivalry that forbade him from taking his anger out on women. That did little to curb his abusive tendencies, only saving the worst for the one target within the household that he held no such reservations towards. In retrospect, you never could remember a time where you didn't look at your father without fear encasing your heart in icy fingers, nor a time where there weren't bruises and broken skin marking the canvas of your body at some point or another. It was simple to brainwash you into believing such things were normal, and easier to scare you into a staunch refusal to mention or even acknowledge the patches on your skin. After all, every time you brought it up, that just added more to the collection.

But you were not stupid, despite what you were conditioned to believe. No one was smarter than your father, the supreme authority on all matters within and without the household. Whether you believed that or not was irrelevant; why defy him when a simple nod would show your subservience and any act of rebellion would bring the pain down on your head twofold?

Like any cornered prey forced into an extended amount of torture before its eventual death, you learned to adapt in similar ways. Anything to avoid the pain for a few extra days. It started with hiding behind your mother, hoping that some scrap of maternal instinct would emerge to save you. When that plan proved futile, then you found ways to occupy yourself outside of the house - until a curfew was placed on you. Then, you found a loophole to that curfew in the form of preliminary Career training the second you turned twelve - and even your father couldn't argue with that one, since the vast majority of kids underwent training at some point in their lives.

But perhaps the most critical adaptation was one that was also entirely involuntary on your part. For what truly set off your father was noise - voices in particular. More often than not, you found yourself beaten black and blue simply for saying something in the wrong place at the wrong time. Questions were discouraged, noises of delight or sadness were stifled, and the very sound of your voice began to become synonymous with pain.

Perhaps it's no wonder that you'd stopped talking entirely before you'd hit double digits, why there were always whispers about the kid who never spoke in your classes, why eventually the only outside contact with the world that you were allowed came in the form of your career training, why by the time of the incident you'd largely learned to avoid your father and his outbursts.

As for the incident itself? Well, there's not much to tell regarding that. By seventeen, you were lean and strong, molded by years of training in the art of child murder. You'd shot up to nearly match your father in height, and though you still had more growing to do had started to subtly challenge his authority at whatever turn you could get away with. The rare victories were worth the defeats, for you'd become so accustomed to bruises and heavy blows between your upbringing and your training alike that even the beatings weren't as bad as they used to be.

But where there had once only been fear grew resentment. Where you'd once cowered away in fear you learned to stand up for yourself. And when this newfound impudence served to only fuel your father's flame, so too did your own fire in retaliation. There was no mother to fear for this time - she'd died years ago - nor sisters to swallow down your tears for either, given that they'd all reached an age where it had been deemed appropriate to marry them off.

So all it took was one night, a stray kitchen knife, and a single thrust, honed into muscle memory by hours of practice, to change your life forever.

In the usual twist of irony that came with Panem, murder was generally discouraged outside of the Games themselves, and patricide itself was a sin in more ways than one. But it was worth it, for even if your mother had lost her spine long ago, even if your sisters were married off to other families, you'd broken your shackles of oppression almost single-handedly.

And if a stint in the slammer was to be the consequences of your actions, then that was a small price to pay in the end.