Kronos Pine {{ District 2 (fin)
May 17, 2014 17:10:24 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on May 17, 2014 17:10:24 GMT -5
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K R O N O S P I N E
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Ares Pine.
Time of Death: 1:29 p.m.
Silence. That is what hangs over the house, falling onto our family as the ugly one's sword goes straight through my own brother's neck, popping skin like a balloon and Ares' blood showering a nearby camera for that extra gory effect.
A long, drawn out beep interrupts the silence, my mother jumping a little and turning to look at me. It is my watch she notices first, my fingers resting gently on the metal object that's been timing Ares' performance in the arena ever since day one, since Ares slashed and diced through the Bloodbath like he'd been trained to do. For a while we'd thought he'd win, tributes falling and numbers dwindling and then bam.
His time had ended.
I can see Arianna wince slightly as Ares falls, words of Francesca Levroux ringing in our ears as Caesar announces the death. "And there goes the second tribute of District 2. Killed by his own partner! How exciting!".
Yes, Caesar, exciting indeed.
My fingers brush against the metal watch that is latched around my wrist before I rise, addressing my family as their jaws hang half-dropped.
"I am going to get some ice cream."
And with my clock still ticking I walk past Arianna, her eyes wide and shock on her face. Past Phyneas, who's just sitting staring at the TV as if he's in a constant struggle with it. Past Mom and Dad, unable to react at their oldest son being stabbed through the neck, gargling sounds still being replayed on the TV.
And back to my normal life.
He is the timekeeper, sitting on a bed made of satin sheets and only the finest pillows. Body draped on top of it like a lazily thrown shirt, fingers twitching ever so slightly as he engages in a staring contest with the white ceiling above him. Eyes like alarm clocks thrown in blue paint, constantly watching the world tick by. A body of muscled twigs, not of inflated muscle like Ares. "He'll be tall, and lanky." is what the doctors said about him when he was first born, and by all means were they right. Even now, at the age of only sixteen, he is already an inch taller than Ares ever was.
A firm grasp on the door handle and a slight shove against the creaky door of his room and one would be met with enough ticking noises of clocks to make anyone go insane.
But not him.
They are his calling. His lullaby, his wake up call. They are what rips him from bedsheets and drag him into a world where his eyes spin like clocks, what drags him down through a mesmerizing state of euphoria where those clocks stop for just a few moments, and his body falls into eternal slumber. They are his pride, broken and bent and bruised and shattered and alive.
They keep him sane. And in this family, sanity is something he desperately needs.
It is a mystery as to how someone like him has obtained so many of the clocks over the years, and how his fingers have worked in partnership with his mind to learn how to fix these broken and bruised things until they are ticking again, in unison with each piece of metal, each stopwatch, each wrist watch smothered with fake gold paint that sit scattered around his room. He sees himself in the thin pieces of glass that lay on top of the hands of watches, sees the blue eyes that have inserted themselves into each member of his family, sees hair that has long since lost the blonde that Ares had. Strong cheekbones, eyes that squint and jump in and out of reality. He has long since thrown mirrors into the trash, cracked the glass that they are made out of and watched his reflection shatter like his family's reputation has over the course of a few years. And he has replaced those mirrors with the glass on watches, staring down at himself as fingers twist and maneuver their way through the trinkets. They are his mirrors, no matter how small.
On a shelf in his room sits four clocks, all stopwatches, and all stopped at a certain time and left to rot. Dust blankets lay themselves down on top of the first two, wrapping the timers in years worth of dust particles, Cassius and Beatrice. The third still harbors his fingerprints from only days ago, dust just beginning to find it's place, Hannah's timer. And the fourth is brand new, black exterior still showing, virtually free of any blankets of dust. Ares.
"Y'know, you should be training instead of sitting around with that clock all day."
Blue eyes locked together in a wordless and silent battle that had been fought countless times before. Because that is what it was, what it always had been. A battle, between man and animal, hunted vs hunted. Ares, an essence of primal instinct, of a hunter in it's finest form. A god of war, prince of blood and slaying, embodying what his name described him as.
And he was just, the opposite.
Aloof, distant, quiet, calm. Everything his brother was not, taken and thrown into a mixer and spat out as Kronos Pine. Yes, he could swing swords and throw knives and shoot bows. He could stab, plunge, pillage and destroy just as Ares could. But he lacked something, a key ingredient for a Pine to be a Pine, for a Birch to be good enough to win the Games. He lacked desire, he lacked the drive to get up and train without Ares practically heaving him from his seat and hardly stopping from throwing him to the ground. His fingers did not reach for swords on their own, did not slice through a dummy's neck just because they could. Ares was the person who forced him through training, stuck a sword in his hands and told him to stab a dummy with it. An instructor, a mentor, a brother in arms and a brother in life.
They built a relationship off of sword fights and target practice, childish competitions to see who could do this better or do that faster. It was the same, day in and day out, Ares' insults and sly comments working their way underneath his skin, digging into his calm frame and pulling on the strings of his sanity. Because that's what Ares did, was designed to do. A boy born to hammer away at his brother's calm exterior until the kid would just crack like glass and challenge the older boy to a competition that would be lost as quickly as it started. But that was life, and over time, he came to accept it for what it was. That Ares was better than him, whether it be in sword fights or combat. And over time, he grew to challenge him not for the sake of winning but for the sake of losing. It was funny, how things worked like that.
He is lost, stuck in a world of time, counting the seconds it takes someone to do something rather than focusing on what they are actually doing. Perhaps that is the reason he is so peaceful, not because he does not let the words and insults of people who aren't Ares bother him, but rather because he does not, cannot focus on the words themselves. Instead, his mind glues itself to the time it takes them to say it, the fraction of a second it takes for their lips to move. It is how he has learned to survive, how he has adapted to the life that was placed around him, filled to the brim with it's clocks and hour hands.
Most of the time, his mouth is sewn shut with invisible, non-existent strings, an aura of quietness surrounding him, twisting and twirling it's way around his body and seeping into the fabrics of his life. He is unnoticeable in a room full of people, tall figure lurking in the shadows that were his personality, only muttering words when he was absolutely, one hundred percent forced to.
In school, he was mute.
But it was not the same as the silence that hangs around him now. It was not purposeful, it was not resolute and determined. No, he wanted to speak, he wanted to spit words out of his mouth like Ares did. His tongue, however, stopped him. It twisted and turned, stopped words from slipping out and, in combination with a feeble ability to comprehend the most basic speaking, he just couldn't. And, as time passed, and his peers moved forth through their language, learning words as each day passed and speaking their language more and more fluently, he was left behind. Stuck, slow, stupid, that's what he was. Incapable of comprehending the English language like everyone else could, or, at least, not as well.
They'd sit him down in a wooden desk, with scratches lining it's surface and little chunks taken off of it by past delinquents and they'd tell him to write a sentence, putting a wooden pencil in his hand, freshly sharpened in anticipation for something that would never happen. And then they'd put a stopwatch on the desk with him, tell him to start writing when the beep went off.
Beep.
But his fingers trembled and his eyes fumbled and as a stopwatch counted down his failures the most he'd get down on the page is a bunch of jumbled lines and illegible scribbles.
Beep.
Over time he grew not to write down a sentence before the clock shattered his silence, but he instead chose to watch it, staring down at every single second it counted down, trying to catch each millisecond as it whizzed by faster than he could imagine. Perhaps it was what awakened the obsession with time and clocks that runs his life now, watching his worth being counted down through a piece of plastic that sat on a wooden desk.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
And the teachers would look on disappointed, their failed teaching methods showing once again. And the kids would look on with raise eyebrows and condescending smirks and he'd sit there wishing that that desk he was in could just sink into the floor and pull him right along with it. Because his words were not good enough, not complex enough for their standards. His words on paper didn't meet them either, weren't comprehendible like their whispers told him. He could not speak.
And so, he chose to stop speaking.
He still did the writing exercises and practices with his teachers, forced words out of his mouth and scribbles out of his fingers. And, over time, as his classmates shot forth he took more measly steps, walking slowly, but walking. And over time, words did form naturally in his head, the scribbles that once adorned his papers became letters, then words and then sentences. But that was it, those practices and sessions were the only place his lips split and he spoke. Elsewhere, he forced silence instead of words, stillness instead of scribbles.
And then, the training began.
They gave him swords and spears, knives and bows, axes and arrows, adjusted his hands and propped his elbow up when he went to shoot. And they watched him, staring down on him with distant eyes and blank faces, a stark contrast to the teachers he learned with.
At first, it nearly turned out to be a repeat of the school situation.
But then, Ares came in, insults standing at the edge of his tongue and radiating cockiness. And he berated him, stomped him down whenever he couldn't hit a target or when he couldn't hack a dummy into pieces. It was an amped up brother-brother relationship, brother turned bully. But, it was different this time. He was not embarrassed, he did not want to sink into the ground and become invisible like during his schooldays. It was different.
It was a spark.
Ares Pine had become something to him, a spark, a trigger, a push, shove. He was motivation, and every insult that fell off his tongue only pushed him to become better, be stronger, be just as good as Ares was at everything. It even willed him to speak when he was with him, part his lips and talk to his brother in a language of bets and competitions amongst the two of them. It was a breakthrough, his quietness shattered by insults and bets.
At least, for the time being it was. Because when the training ended and they returned to their home, he'd once again seal his lips, lock himself in his room and toy with the clocks that he had started collecting ever since they placed one down in front of him and told him "write".
He did not just watch Ares die on that television. No, he watched a spark flicker and go out, a brother in arms and a brother in life die. And with his death came a whole new round of silence and detachment, cut strings and quietness. The boy, his brother, who's insults had pulled him into training and who's competitions had awakened something totally new inside of him was gone. And with it, his spark.
"I bet I can take these all out in thirty seconds"
"I bet I can do it in twenty-five"
"You're on"
Ares Pine.
Time of Death: 1:29 p.m.
Silence. That is what hangs over the house, falling onto our family as the ugly one's sword goes straight through my own brother's neck, popping skin like a balloon and Ares' blood showering a nearby camera for that extra gory effect.
A long, drawn out beep interrupts the silence, my mother jumping a little and turning to look at me. It is my watch she notices first, my fingers resting gently on the metal object that's been timing Ares' performance in the arena ever since day one, since Ares slashed and diced through the Bloodbath like he'd been trained to do. For a while we'd thought he'd win, tributes falling and numbers dwindling and then bam.
His time had ended.
I can see Arianna wince slightly as Ares falls, words of Francesca Levroux ringing in our ears as Caesar announces the death. "And there goes the second tribute of District 2. Killed by his own partner! How exciting!".
Yes, Caesar, exciting indeed.
My fingers brush against the metal watch that is latched around my wrist before I rise, addressing my family as their jaws hang half-dropped.
"I am going to get some ice cream."
And with my clock still ticking I walk past Arianna, her eyes wide and shock on her face. Past Phyneas, who's just sitting staring at the TV as if he's in a constant struggle with it. Past Mom and Dad, unable to react at their oldest son being stabbed through the neck, gargling sounds still being replayed on the TV.
And back to my normal life.
___________________
He is the timekeeper, sitting on a bed made of satin sheets and only the finest pillows. Body draped on top of it like a lazily thrown shirt, fingers twitching ever so slightly as he engages in a staring contest with the white ceiling above him. Eyes like alarm clocks thrown in blue paint, constantly watching the world tick by. A body of muscled twigs, not of inflated muscle like Ares. "He'll be tall, and lanky." is what the doctors said about him when he was first born, and by all means were they right. Even now, at the age of only sixteen, he is already an inch taller than Ares ever was.
A firm grasp on the door handle and a slight shove against the creaky door of his room and one would be met with enough ticking noises of clocks to make anyone go insane.
But not him.
They are his calling. His lullaby, his wake up call. They are what rips him from bedsheets and drag him into a world where his eyes spin like clocks, what drags him down through a mesmerizing state of euphoria where those clocks stop for just a few moments, and his body falls into eternal slumber. They are his pride, broken and bent and bruised and shattered and alive.
They keep him sane. And in this family, sanity is something he desperately needs.
It is a mystery as to how someone like him has obtained so many of the clocks over the years, and how his fingers have worked in partnership with his mind to learn how to fix these broken and bruised things until they are ticking again, in unison with each piece of metal, each stopwatch, each wrist watch smothered with fake gold paint that sit scattered around his room. He sees himself in the thin pieces of glass that lay on top of the hands of watches, sees the blue eyes that have inserted themselves into each member of his family, sees hair that has long since lost the blonde that Ares had. Strong cheekbones, eyes that squint and jump in and out of reality. He has long since thrown mirrors into the trash, cracked the glass that they are made out of and watched his reflection shatter like his family's reputation has over the course of a few years. And he has replaced those mirrors with the glass on watches, staring down at himself as fingers twist and maneuver their way through the trinkets. They are his mirrors, no matter how small.
On a shelf in his room sits four clocks, all stopwatches, and all stopped at a certain time and left to rot. Dust blankets lay themselves down on top of the first two, wrapping the timers in years worth of dust particles, Cassius and Beatrice. The third still harbors his fingerprints from only days ago, dust just beginning to find it's place, Hannah's timer. And the fourth is brand new, black exterior still showing, virtually free of any blankets of dust. Ares.
"Y'know, you should be training instead of sitting around with that clock all day."
Blue eyes locked together in a wordless and silent battle that had been fought countless times before. Because that is what it was, what it always had been. A battle, between man and animal, hunted vs hunted. Ares, an essence of primal instinct, of a hunter in it's finest form. A god of war, prince of blood and slaying, embodying what his name described him as.
And he was just, the opposite.
Aloof, distant, quiet, calm. Everything his brother was not, taken and thrown into a mixer and spat out as Kronos Pine. Yes, he could swing swords and throw knives and shoot bows. He could stab, plunge, pillage and destroy just as Ares could. But he lacked something, a key ingredient for a Pine to be a Pine, for a Birch to be good enough to win the Games. He lacked desire, he lacked the drive to get up and train without Ares practically heaving him from his seat and hardly stopping from throwing him to the ground. His fingers did not reach for swords on their own, did not slice through a dummy's neck just because they could. Ares was the person who forced him through training, stuck a sword in his hands and told him to stab a dummy with it. An instructor, a mentor, a brother in arms and a brother in life.
They built a relationship off of sword fights and target practice, childish competitions to see who could do this better or do that faster. It was the same, day in and day out, Ares' insults and sly comments working their way underneath his skin, digging into his calm frame and pulling on the strings of his sanity. Because that's what Ares did, was designed to do. A boy born to hammer away at his brother's calm exterior until the kid would just crack like glass and challenge the older boy to a competition that would be lost as quickly as it started. But that was life, and over time, he came to accept it for what it was. That Ares was better than him, whether it be in sword fights or combat. And over time, he grew to challenge him not for the sake of winning but for the sake of losing. It was funny, how things worked like that.
He is lost, stuck in a world of time, counting the seconds it takes someone to do something rather than focusing on what they are actually doing. Perhaps that is the reason he is so peaceful, not because he does not let the words and insults of people who aren't Ares bother him, but rather because he does not, cannot focus on the words themselves. Instead, his mind glues itself to the time it takes them to say it, the fraction of a second it takes for their lips to move. It is how he has learned to survive, how he has adapted to the life that was placed around him, filled to the brim with it's clocks and hour hands.
Most of the time, his mouth is sewn shut with invisible, non-existent strings, an aura of quietness surrounding him, twisting and twirling it's way around his body and seeping into the fabrics of his life. He is unnoticeable in a room full of people, tall figure lurking in the shadows that were his personality, only muttering words when he was absolutely, one hundred percent forced to.
In school, he was mute.
But it was not the same as the silence that hangs around him now. It was not purposeful, it was not resolute and determined. No, he wanted to speak, he wanted to spit words out of his mouth like Ares did. His tongue, however, stopped him. It twisted and turned, stopped words from slipping out and, in combination with a feeble ability to comprehend the most basic speaking, he just couldn't. And, as time passed, and his peers moved forth through their language, learning words as each day passed and speaking their language more and more fluently, he was left behind. Stuck, slow, stupid, that's what he was. Incapable of comprehending the English language like everyone else could, or, at least, not as well.
They'd sit him down in a wooden desk, with scratches lining it's surface and little chunks taken off of it by past delinquents and they'd tell him to write a sentence, putting a wooden pencil in his hand, freshly sharpened in anticipation for something that would never happen. And then they'd put a stopwatch on the desk with him, tell him to start writing when the beep went off.
Beep.
But his fingers trembled and his eyes fumbled and as a stopwatch counted down his failures the most he'd get down on the page is a bunch of jumbled lines and illegible scribbles.
Beep.
Over time he grew not to write down a sentence before the clock shattered his silence, but he instead chose to watch it, staring down at every single second it counted down, trying to catch each millisecond as it whizzed by faster than he could imagine. Perhaps it was what awakened the obsession with time and clocks that runs his life now, watching his worth being counted down through a piece of plastic that sat on a wooden desk.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
And the teachers would look on disappointed, their failed teaching methods showing once again. And the kids would look on with raise eyebrows and condescending smirks and he'd sit there wishing that that desk he was in could just sink into the floor and pull him right along with it. Because his words were not good enough, not complex enough for their standards. His words on paper didn't meet them either, weren't comprehendible like their whispers told him. He could not speak.
And so, he chose to stop speaking.
He still did the writing exercises and practices with his teachers, forced words out of his mouth and scribbles out of his fingers. And, over time, as his classmates shot forth he took more measly steps, walking slowly, but walking. And over time, words did form naturally in his head, the scribbles that once adorned his papers became letters, then words and then sentences. But that was it, those practices and sessions were the only place his lips split and he spoke. Elsewhere, he forced silence instead of words, stillness instead of scribbles.
And then, the training began.
They gave him swords and spears, knives and bows, axes and arrows, adjusted his hands and propped his elbow up when he went to shoot. And they watched him, staring down on him with distant eyes and blank faces, a stark contrast to the teachers he learned with.
At first, it nearly turned out to be a repeat of the school situation.
But then, Ares came in, insults standing at the edge of his tongue and radiating cockiness. And he berated him, stomped him down whenever he couldn't hit a target or when he couldn't hack a dummy into pieces. It was an amped up brother-brother relationship, brother turned bully. But, it was different this time. He was not embarrassed, he did not want to sink into the ground and become invisible like during his schooldays. It was different.
It was a spark.
Ares Pine had become something to him, a spark, a trigger, a push, shove. He was motivation, and every insult that fell off his tongue only pushed him to become better, be stronger, be just as good as Ares was at everything. It even willed him to speak when he was with him, part his lips and talk to his brother in a language of bets and competitions amongst the two of them. It was a breakthrough, his quietness shattered by insults and bets.
At least, for the time being it was. Because when the training ended and they returned to their home, he'd once again seal his lips, lock himself in his room and toy with the clocks that he had started collecting ever since they placed one down in front of him and told him "write".
He did not just watch Ares die on that television. No, he watched a spark flicker and go out, a brother in arms and a brother in life die. And with his death came a whole new round of silence and detachment, cut strings and quietness. The boy, his brother, who's insults had pulled him into training and who's competitions had awakened something totally new inside of him was gone. And with it, his spark.
"I bet I can take these all out in thirty seconds"
"I bet I can do it in twenty-five"
"You're on"
K R O N O S P I N E
District Two . Male . Sixteen
