D5 ] Patrick Bison \\ finished

[анзие (Anz)]

Name: Patrick Joel Bison
Age: 14
Gender: Male
District/Area: District 5
Appearance:

i
i don't have a picture
yet
eep

Personality:

History:

Codeword: odair
Comments/Other:

uh lots of wip going on here hi

I kind of did it in a chapter-esque style because... idk. I didn't want to bump it? xD;

[анзие (Anz)]

[presto]

DISTRICT 5 x FOURTEEN x MALE x JESSE MCCARTNEY

[/presto]

If this is to end in fire
Then we should all burn together
Watch the flames climb high into the night
Calling out father, oh, stand by and we will
Watch the flames burn auburn on the mountain side

I

Mummy never liked Patrick.

Patrick's always been the outcast son, never mind that he's Mummy's only son, the one to be left behind and forgotten even though they're meant to be family. Mummy picks out the worst parts of him and displays it like a rare violin before an admiring crowd (at least, that's how Patrick imagines the scene to be). Only the violin is broken and all its flaws are highlighted; maybe the neck is a touch too long, maybe the chin-rest is a little off-center. 

Mummy delights in making Patrick sad that way.

Except that Patrick doesn't think she realizes that she's making him sad. She just likes telling everyone that he's a no-good waste of space. He might be; he's not sure about that. After all, doesn't Mummy get so very angry with him when he doesn't do as she asks in time. It doesn't matter if there's not enough time in the end, just so long as he gets it done by the time she says it should be done...

Mummy really doesn't like Patrick.

Maybe it's because he's so short. He's only five foot three and he feels like he can't grow fast enough to catch up with everyone else. He's got oversized appendages even, hands and feet clumsily tripping with everything that stands in their path. It might be the way his shaggy blond hair doesn't sit the way she wants it to on his head, or the way his face refuses to mature to the man he thinks he's meant to be - thinks he might be sometime in the future.

Maybe it's because Patrick's nose is crooked from when he fell and broke it, feared to tell anyone and by the time Mummy noticed it was out of place. (She didn't hit him but she looked like she wanted to.) Maybe it's because he cries quietly at night from the monsters of his mind, or flinches when strangers brush unconcernedly against him on their way by. Maybe it's when he smiles with all the joy that a child can radiate that she's most unhappy with him, when his thin lips stretch into a joyous grin and large blue eyes sparkle with undiluted happiness that she hates him most.

Or maybe it's because he rarely speaks but to sing, and always sings to the rhythm of any work she's making him do - the songs range from little made-up ditties and wordless tunes to the famous capitol music by famous capitol people. Patrick holds admiration for the way their voices sound over the radio and television, but Mummy thinks they're a waste of time when Patrick can well do as everyone else in his district does: their work, and quietly too. It makes him a little sad when she turns off the sound and he can't hear the voices of people he considers angels.

She thinks he's a waste of space, really.

Patrick can't help it though. He can't help that he loves music of any kind - if he can he'll learn any instrument there is available to him (rare); loves sinking so deep into his thoughts until he's imagining scenes of places that he's never seen, thinking through actions and reactions until he's no longer sure if he's responded aloud or in his head; loves observing the people and things around him, noting the way people treat others, the way they act; loves loving. Though he rarely has the chance to show it for the shyness that pins his care down.

Part of him supposes that it's a good thing Mummy's decided to leave him with his estranged Daddy, even though he misses her (even though he wakes up in tears late at night with the bloodied, tongueless face of his younger half-brother at the forefront of his mind in a strange bed and strange people who he's terrified will never love him for all his chaotic emotions).

He's scared of his new family but he wants to love them, too."

[анзие (Anz)]

[presto]

DISTRICT 5 x FOURTEEN x MALE x JESSE MCCARTNEY

[/presto]

And I know dark clouds will gather me
And I know my way is rough and steep
And I'm going there to see my mother
And I'm going there no more to roam
And I'm only going over home now

II

Patrick thinks he's seen what terror is. He thinks he saw it in the face of his estranged half-brother when the boy who isn't a career (but ought to have been) knelt down on Shadow and chopped raggedly at his tongue. He saw it on the face of every tribute in their final moments and concludes that terror is pain, and pain is death.

And so it's their faces that haunt him at night. He dreams of their dying expression, the way their eyes stare sightlessly into what feels like his soul. Sometimes their eyes are alive and scared and wordlessly beckon him to save them (Save us, save us, and he runs, runs fast but not fast enough because his feet are too heavy, dragging along behind him, and then he can't move at all and they're getting further away). He has nightmares of flames rising so high that they envelope his being and flicker over his vision, of a sword flashing in front of his eyes as though they were a camera carefully placed to make it seem as though the sword slices through his neck.

(He knows it doesn't, he wakes up and his head is sitting upon his shoulders, and there is no blood and that's telling, but his mind races and in the dead of the night Patrick thinks he's been made dead.)

Sometimes he dreams about Shadow, even though he doesn't know him. When he's not dying before his eyes, Shadow's in fields and racing through without fear and that makes Patrick wake up crying because he doesn't know where Shadow is now (and he'll never get the chance to know him).

These are the monsters of his mind.

But his mind isn't all monsters and men.

Sometimes it's beautiful. Sometimes it's music notes dancing around him, pouring out from his heart into the empty canvas of his dream (and he wakes up and remembers them, sings them to himself in the day until Mummy is sick and tired of his voice and his tune). Sometimes it's pure joy and his pure heroine without a face is with him to hold his hand through muddy bog to flowers and flower fields. Sometimes he's alone but at peace in places he's never seen outside his mind: a house by the river, a tree on an island with cool calm lake waters around, a grass field before distant, towering mountains. Sometimes he rests his fair hands on the rain-kissed ground and feels the pain soak away to let music in.

And Patrick can go on.

The monsters have not won.

[анзие (Anz)]

[presto]

DISTRICT 5 x FOURTEEN x MALE x JESSE MCCARTNEY

[/presto]

And I hope you remember me
And if the night is burning
I will cover my eyes
For if the dark returns then
My brothers will die

III

Mummy decided to leave him with Daddy after Shadow was killed.

Patrick doesn't quite understand her reasons - not that she's in the habit of giving him any - and he's not going to ask, either. (Her reasons won't be something he'll want to hear.)

He's never met his Daddy before this, and Mummy never spoke to him about the other half of his parentage (and the brothers he only vaguely knew of for the simple reason that he recognized their last names as his own). So he worries about the family that might or might not love him.

(He doesn't look very much like his brothers, maybe it's because he's been growing up in the clutches of his mother instead?)

Daddy probably doesn't know who he is, either. At least, not at first, and not by name (only by the look on his mother's face when their gazes met). Patrick wonders if he'll grow as tall as his father, wonders if his hair will darken to brown like Shadow's when he grows older, wonders if his face will turn angular and sharp so he's the paler mirror image of his father.

When his mother goes, Patrick and his father stare at each other for a very long time. Then Patrick goes to sit in the corner and watch the world.

(It's what he does best, after all. It's who he is.)

None of his family can get him to speak for the first few days, and to Patrick it feels like the music has died in his throat, wilted in his mind to flat or screechy notes, and the lovely music that once floated through his mind was a far, unreachable star.

(He tries not to wake anyone up at night, and he's not sure how many of them hear his fear.)

They're strangers to him, and so he hides when he can. Under beds, in closets, in the kitchen cupboard and once on the windowsill behind a light curtain. That way he can watch them but they can't see him at all (or so he thinks). In Patrick's opinion, it's a win-win situation.

He sinks lower and lower each day, missing his mother terribly, wondering if anyone here cares (Mummy cares, she just doesn't know how to show it) about him at all.

(He grows to love them.)

He starts singing a week after his move here. Just a little tune that wouldn't get out of his head, and it blossomed so beautifully into something greater - a full-blown song. And he laughs when he realizes, his face lighting up like a star, and music pours out of his heart and soul.

Patrick grows happy again.

The flowers slip back into his dreams at night.

-fin-

And as the sky is falling down
It crashed into this lonely town
And with that shadow upon the ground
I hear my brothers screaming out
I see fire

[admin kay]

<///3 Shadow. So many feels!

ACCEPTED!