Lydia Samuels, D11 {DONE}

~*~
'Cause we are broken
What must we do to restore
Our innocence?
And oh, the promise we adored
Give us life again
'Cause we just wanna be whole
~*~

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You don't remember anything from before, and you don't know whether that's okay with you or not. For all of your knowledge your life began when Ella, Zane, and Tiva found you lying unconscious in the woods with a burned arm and empty eyes, asking for your story and getting only "My name is Lydia Emmeline Samuels. I'm sixteen. There was a fire. That's all I remember." in response. But that was over a year ago (you figure you must be seventeen by now even if you don't know when your birthday is), and since then you haven't regained too much of the life you've lost. Tiva says they found you near the District Eleven fence, so you know if you're ever going to find out who you are you need to go there, but there's something about the mention of place that makes you feel a little frightened. You must have done something bad once upon a time, you decide. Something horribly bad, and now you've forgotten all about it.

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You don't remember any luxuries you may have once had, but when Ella mentions having a mirror you can't help but perk up at the thought of seeing yourself in something other than a rippling body of water. She gives an irritable growl and plunges a hand into her pocket, pulling out a pretty little round golden thing encrusted with jewels. Eyeing you warily with dark orbs she presses the disc into your palm without anyone even having to prompt her. In times like these you think she might be warming up to you after a year of suspicious glares and angry scowls. "Be careful. It's the only thing I've got left from One."

You go sit down on a nearby stump, turning the little trinket over and over in your hands for a moment and simply admiring it. Long, spindly fingers trace carefully over the glimmering stones, the rich, deep tones of them sticking out in sharp contrast with the pale flesh that has darkened to a light bronze after countless sunburns and days of hiking through the undergrowth exposed to the light that filters down through the leaves. You've always thought your skin rather pretty (as pretty as skin can be, at any rate), smooth and unbroken by blemishes other than the raised pink smear of the scar that covers your right arm from the back of your hand to the curve of your elbow. You've never had a story behind the seared flesh but Ella says it's a burn scar, so you figure it must have come from the mysterious fire that haunts the back of your mind with deadly secrets you don't really want to know.

You sit the shimmering disk on your lap and gaze at it from further away, letting the shine stick out against the dullness of the faded denim covering your legs. They've always been long even for your diminutive height (Ella says she's five foot six, and you're an inch or two shorter, you think), so the pants don't fit too well, leaving a few inches of skin exposed between the hem and the start of worn leather shoes that are far too big on your tiny feet. You used to get terrible blisters that bled and stung horribly but after gritting your teeth and bearing it for a few months the appendages have become so leathery and callused that sometimes you even travel through the bracken barefoot, not worrying about pain that the toughened skin can no longer feel.

For the first time the thought hits you that you might not like what you see when you open that mirror, and you become more than a little apprehensive. Lithe arms (again, long in comparison to the rest of you) wrap around your petite ribcage, trying to crush the growing uneasiness that blooms behind your sternum. You know you've seen your reflection somewhere before in a place other than in the streams you occasionally pass in the forest, but your broken memory won't tell you whether the sight was pleasant or not, the gleaming treasure in your lap seeming to wink at you almost mockingly in the bright sunlight.

Under your hands you can feel the lean musculature of your own body that's alwas seemed different from the more noticeable strength that Zane and Ella have from years of training for something they won't talk to you about. While the both of them can lift heavier loads than you and have more power, you've always been faster and more streamlined with a quiet kind of strength that allows you to hold complicated positions for minutes on end and leap through the branches with an agility that none of the others can muster, which is why you've always been the lookout. That, and sometimes you think they like to keep you out of the way.

"I can't open it," You growl, struggling to find purchase in the small seam around the edge. It's hard because you always chew your nails down to almost nothing when you're trying to think, and the ragged edges will not cooperate with your desire to open the compact. Ella snorts, walking over and manipulating her own fingers until the disc gives a small pop and divides in two, revealing a circle of polished glass that she hands back to you.

You gasp quietly when you look into it, unused to the startling clarity of the mirror's reflection versus the rippling phantoms you see in the creeks and streams. You would think there was another entirely different person entrapped behind the glass if you didn't know better, but she has to be you because she blinks when you blink and breathes when you breathe, her breath fogging up the glass for a moment so the image clouds over and you have to wait far a while to get another good look.

"I'm pretty," you say softly, running fingers through straight hair the color of wheat that almost brushes your shoulders, the ends hovering over the base of your neck and floating up in a disarrayed golden corona when the breeze begins to blow softly. Your scarred digits leave the sun-bleached tresses to trace over slightly darker brows that hover over wide, slate-blue orbs that look too innocent to belong to someone who apparently defies federal law on a daily basis just by living out here. Your jaw is strong and defined, leading to a slightly square chin above which sit a pair of carnation-colored lips that are too full in proportion to your face, a nose that is rather large with a strong bridge in contrast to your delicate cheekbones. But then you smile and all of your mismatched features seem to fall into place; you glow with a warm sort of radiation, happiness you don't really feel but want others to have, and through the gleaming crescent of white, even teeth, you feel like maybe you're not always unbearably sad. "I didn't know I was pretty."

Ella rolls her eyes, jumping up from her spot on the ground and snatching the disk back out of your hands, clicking it shut and placing it back in her pocket. "Yeah, you're a damn beauty queen."

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"Zane, I think there's something wrong with me." The glow from the fire paints yelloworangered blurs over your flesh in the darkness and you don't like it, but you bite your tongue and stay in your place because it's nice sitting here with Zane and listening to Tiva and Ella's deep, even breathing (he's worth sitting so close to the flames even though they make your scarred arm prickle uncomfortably).

Dark eyes glimmer in the slowly waning embers next to you, and a strong arm wraps securely around your shoulders. "There's absolutely nothing wrong with you, Lydia. Where would you get an idea like that?"

The contact makes you smile because when he's around you don't feel quite so sad (Tiva says he likes you and that's why Ella looks at you with those cold glares all the time), like maybe one day he could be the one to put you back together. But when you contemplate his question your sunny grin turns to something contemplative, showing just a bit of heartbreak. "I can't remember anything. I must have had a life before you found me, but it's just... not there. It's all gone."

Deep down you know that your lack of a history is where the deep sorrow and frustration comes from. You yearn to know your past even though the word gives you a sensation of distant pain, but your fractured memories are caged deep down inside your mind, reluctant to be unearthed. Sometimes the frustration is so intense that it makes you want to scream and cry but you smile instead, because there aren't enough smiles in the world and you can't bear to add to life's already too-deep sadness. You feel like you used to be happy - really happy, not the kind where you make other people smile and it makes you feel not-so-awful - but if you ever were truly content the sensation has been lost along with the rest of you.

"I always feel... fuzzy. Like nothing fits," you murmur in that soft, forlorn way of yours, laying your head on Zane's shoulder as you watch the flames in their amorphous dance and try not to let them frighten you. "If I can't remember anything, then it means something's wrong with me. I thought I might have a weird disease or something, but you said there's nothing wrong so it must be something else."

That's right, you can't be too horribly damaged because Zane says otherwise and he never lies. You trust him above anything else, although you have been known to give your trust blindly to people who may or may not deserve it. Tiva says it's because you have an innocent heart - you are pure where the rest of the world is tainted, and you have an innate belief that every person is truly good at heart. You can never understand why Ella gets so mad at you for these ideals, snapping that her brother didn't die because people were 'good at heart.' But when she goes down that road Zane always silences her with that look, the one that says stop now, before you get our ugly stains all over that pretty soul of hers.[/i]

He sighs heavily next to you (sometimes you feel like the world is too heavy for even his strong shoulders to handle), giving you a soft squeeze and running fingers absently through your hair. "It must be hard."

"It is." You nod softly in affirmation, your eyes holding a whole world full of stories about exactly how hard it is. "I don't know who I am, and sometimes it scares me."

"No, you don't know who you were," Zane corrects you emphatically, breaking your comfortable entanglement to lock flinty orbs onto your iceblue ones. "Who you are is a beautiful girl with a beautiful heart who doesn't need anything she's left behind. What's done is done, and you can't change it, so why dwell on it?"

You've heard this mantra from him a thousand times and you have to sigh because he'll never understand you when it comes to this difference of thoughts. Zane has been running from his past for years while you want nothing more than for yours to embrace you with open arms, and this paradigm is the one area where the two of you just don't mesh.

Although you like to think you have a way with words, you've never gotten your point on this subject through his stubborn ideals, but you decide to try again anyway, standing up in the fire's fading glow and feeling the invisible beath that sometimes haunts you until you have to move. A few twirls and leaps and fluid movements later you stop and look at him, silently begging please, understand me just this once so I don't feel so alone anymore.[/i]

"I love to dance," you say simply, with a small shrug. "I think I must have learned how to once upon a time, but now I just make it up myself. But see, without the memories, I love to dance but I don't know why. I don't know the story behind the feelings I get sometimes, and it makes everything less... real."

You know you're not making sense and frustrated tears well up behind your eyes, forcing you to blink them back so you don't taint Zane's already-dark world with your sorrow. "What I'm trying to say is... I need to know who I was so I can understand who I am. And I don't have that, and it makes me feel wrong, Zane, so horribly wrong, and I hate it."

Try as you might to hold in the sadness and exasperation and unquenchable pain, he sees it all (he always does), and his arms are around you tightly almost without warning, lips pressed gently against your forehead. "You'll figure it out someday. But for now, you're tired. Go to sleep, I'll take the first watch."

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Sometimes they sit you down and try to convince your clouded mind to recall memories you're not sure you want (you have learned to smile even though the sadness never, ever leaves). You hate these days because you can't stand the disappointed looks they get when your fragmented mind refuses to cooperate, leaving you with your doleful gaze and the few facts you know to be true - you know your name is really all you'll ever need, but it never seems good enough for anyone else, so something must be wrong with you.

In the one year of your remembered life you have been close to all of them, freely giving out brilliant smiles even when Zane gets scared when you wander off and forget where you're going and he has to come find you, or when Ella snaps at you for "being too happy" (if only she knew, though, how ugly and depressing it really is inside your head). You secretly wonder how she can't be happy living like this, existing in total freedom.

"Just start with the very first thing you can remember, sweetheart," Tiva says, grasping your hand reassuringly (you like her because she has a sunshine smile like a girl you must have known once upon a time). You always try harder with Tiva because she's always the one who looks so sad when you can't find anything, so you screw your eyes shut and dig as far back in your foggy mind as you can. The memories protest, shrieking and squirming and shying away from your grasp, but with a mighty heave of willpower you plunge into your forgotten past and a fuzzy image dances behind closed lids.



"There's a boy. And me." The image is reluctant to be pulled out of your mind and over your lips; the words struggle to form and even when they do you're not really sure if they make much sense. "Yes, there's a boy and me and we're both little, very little. And he's holding a..." You lose the word in the midst of your concentration, and it mocks you from the tip of your tongue. "Oh gosh, I know this. Lens, flashing lights."

The exact term evades you steadfastly, making you bite back a growl of irritation. You grope around inside your head for the word but it just won't come and the frustration makes liquid fire lap quietly at the backs of your eyes. Fingers knot in your hair and tug sharply, as if you might possibly be able to pull the memories out of your addled brain if you yank hard enough. Tiva's hand grips your shoulder and squeezes softly, bringing you a little closer to reality. "A camera, honey? Is that the word you're looking for?"

"Yes! Camera!" The word makes dormant synapses spark to life, bringing back faded recollections of smiles and clicks and bright flashes of light associated with the image-boy. "There's a boy and me and he's holding a camera... Oh, he's important, I know he is, but I can't figure out why."

You close your eyes again and thinkthinkthink with all your feeble, broken might, trying to grasp onto the boy and see if you can find him somewhere else in your shattered mosaic of a history. With much tugging and struggle and gnashing of teeth you pull up another faded piece of memory, studying blurred features that only you can see intently and your brows furrow and eyes clamp even more tightly shut.



"And there's a lady," you mumble, pressing fingers hard against your temple as you try to translate the obscure picture into real, concrete words. "With the boy and I. There's a lady with us, and she's smiling, but she's sad. It's a shame because she's so pretty."

"Do you know who they are, Lydia?" Tiva asks softly, her hand clasped in yours the anchor tethering you to the tangible world outside your broken mind. You try hard for a moment but come up with nothing, shaking your head emphatically and looking up at her.

"No. Not who they are, only that they're important. Thinking of them makes me feel bad... guilty, I mean. Did I do something bad to them, Tiva?"

Her lips purse in that way that everyone's do when they're debating whether or not to tell you something (are they afraid you'll break?), but her eyes seem just as confused as yours when you meet them with your own vacant cloudyblue gaze. "I don't know, sweetheart. But somewhere inside, you know. We just have to find out where."

"Wait, wait, there's something else." Something swirls closer to the forefront of your mind and you latch onto it with an iron grip even though it fights to escape. For some reason you smell an odd mix of sweat and powder and fresh flowers when you call up the faded image, all blurred pinks and music inside your head that makes you want to twirl and sway. "Dancing. Lots of little girls dancing in a big room."



For some reason this picture makes you happy, and for a moment you relax and allow yourself to sway to the invisible beat. You were content with those girls in that room at some point, that much is clear, but within the image there is one figure shrouded in a corona of magnetic light that draws you to her. "I think... there's a girl, and... I think we... we danced together? No, not just that. We... Oh, why can't I remember?"

Archaic thoughts strain at their leashes and you are so close to a breakthrough (but you always hover just on the edge, there's no real disappointment when you fail because it happens too often), but she dances just beyond your fingertips, all lithe and sinuous. She makes you think of warm summer days and laughter and then it happens again, another explosion of bright, blurring colors behind your eyelids.



For some reason you have the knowledge that she has been there with you almost as long as the boy with the camera, but you can't recall her name or who she is in the spectrum of your forgotten life, friend, sister, cousin. Your eyes open and honey-colored brows furrow in concentration as your fingers intertwine themselves into a writhing, tangled mess.

There's something about her that's different from the boy that makes her this beautifully broken creature that can't speak for itself, but you can't put your finger on exactly what the problem is so you squeeze your eyes shut again and sift through blurry scenes of swingsets and giggles under the branches of a sweet-smelling tree in full blossom. "She's like me. She smiles a lot but she's always sad. She always needs me to talk for her because people think she's stupid, but on the inside she has all these beautiful words. Does that make sense?"

The look on Tiva's face you that it doesn't, so you shut your eyes again and keep sifting through the endless sands of your obscure flashbacks, everything becoming a solid blur of color and noises that all run together until the most horrifying thing you've ever witnessed jumps almost ecstatically to the forefront of your mind, far too eager to be seen in all its palpable terror.



Through a haze that is a bit lighter than the heavy fog surrounding everything else you can see vicious flames devouring a tiny dwelling with a speed that takes your breath away. In an instant your right arm begins to burn something terrible, prompting you to hiss and grab the scarred flesh in your other hand (you know it can't be real but it hurts and you can't stop the tears). "Fire. A big fire."

And even though you don't want to explore this painful piece of your life it seems to stay glued behind your eyes and in your heart, making you see and feel and live he horror anew in a muted, blurry version of what must have been the actual event.

Trapped. Trapped. Fire on all sides, murky smoke filling your lungs with each raspy, sputtering breath you take. How did it happen this fast, your back was only turned for a second before, how did it spread so quickly? But for now you don't run for the outside, you turn and look up the hall and scream when you realize that they have no way out. You would cry if it weren't so hot and you didn't feel like every last bit of water has been sucked from your body, but you can only cough feebly and reach blindly for the bedroom door, not realizing that you have extended your arm straight through the wall of flame until your flesh sears and you scream in a rattling, raspy contralto that is barely audible over the fire's roar. Shaking your head numbly you turn on your heel and runrunrun, not stopping even after you are over the fence and flying through the bracken because you will never run far enough to escape your guilt. They will die, it's all your fault, and you ran like a coward.[/i]

"Tiva, I'm tired. My head hurts." Your voice is too shaky for your liking, every fiber of your being shying away from the horror of your last puzzle piece, a secret you're beginning to wish you hadn't unearthed. "I don't remember anything else. You found me after that. You found me and I couldn't remember anything except my name, and now we're here. Can we stop now?""

She smiles but it looks all fragile and broken as she gazes up at the towering fence in the distance. "Honey, we'll never really know what happened. You're just going to have to find out for yourself. That fence over there, it surrounds District Eleven. That's where Zane and Ella and I found you. I think it's time you went home, Lydia."

The thought of leaving scares you because Tiva and Zane and Ella are all you've ever known (at least they're all you've known for the past year and there is nothing other than that), but the word home sends a pleasant thrum beating in your chest. "I don't know. I don't know if I could leave all of you."

"This isn't about us, Lydia. It's about you." Zane emerges from the trees in that almost eerily silent way of his, reaching out and tangling his fingers up with yours. "We hate seeing you being miserable because you can't remember the life you used to have. And who's to say that life isn't ten times better than anything we're capable of giving you?"

He tugs you gently toward the rusted metal lattice, and through the iron weave you can just barely make out a row of dwellings that are so painfully familiar that it sends something racing in your brain and all those memories begin to tug even tighter at their restraints. Even though the choice is almost as painful as the blank space in your history, you lace your fingers through the fence, breathing in an earthy scent that smells like home. "I'm going to miss you. All of you."

Although Zane looks unbearably sad as he leans over to give you a boost, he still manages a slight smile. "I'll be around. All you have to do is come looking."

You nod, and begin your ascent.

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Odair

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I'm sorry if she's a bit confusing. In a nutshell, Lydia's memory loss is a result of severe mental and emotional stress. After accidentally starting a fire that she believed killed her family, she developed dissociative fugue, a psychological condition similar to amnesia that causes memory loss. People with dissociative fugue lose their sense of personal identity and impulsively wander or travel away from their homes or places of work. Basically, her mind went into shutdown mode to preserve her sanity. However, dissociative fugue is temporary, and memories can be restored with time and effort. I hope that explains her... vagueness effectively enough.

Main: 95CFB7
Speech: F04155
Thought: F2F26F[/i]
Other: FFF7BD

Theme song is We Are Broken by Paramore.[/color][/blockquote][/justify][/size]