maryam volk / d8, 1st games / fin
Aug 28, 2019 21:24:52 GMT -5
Post by goat on Aug 28, 2019 21:24:52 GMT -5
maryam volk
18
female
district 8
18
female
district 8
It helped that you were unsuspecting.
The round face, the soft blonde hair, the glimmer of your freckles in the sunlight. You were the perfect portrait of an innocent young woman. Your mother knew this, knew you’d be a valuable asset to the cause, but she didn’t want to make you do anything you didn’t want to do. She had taught you well, instilling anti-Capitol sentiments in you from the moment you could understand them. When the war began, it seemed like the exact thing your mother had been hoping for. Maybe even the type of thing she’d helped orchestrate. Her penchant for discordance was well known, and getting involved with the Rebellion seemed too obvious. Too dangerous.
If there was one certainty about your mother, she always put the greater good before herself.
You had always been a little too selfish for that.
In the beginning, you were able to stay in Eight. Your mother helped run a small base of operations there, helping to funnel rebels into the district. People would approach her for weapons, or rations, or any other useful things she may have had stockpiled, and you would make the deliveries, emerging into the plain-sight mornings with bullets shoved in the bottom of your basket. Nobody had the mind to bother a girl barely out of childhood taking some bread to a neighbor.
There was a thrill to it, doing something like that right under their noses and never getting caught. It was the type of thing a girl could get addicted to.
The next year, you put your hands on a gun for the first time. Your mother gave it to you, taught you how to point and shoot, how to plant your feet so the recoil wouldn’t knock you off them. You practiced aiming over and over, imaging a Peacekeeper in the sights of your bullet.
You dreamt about it.
You shouldn’t have.
When the Peacekeepers finally raided your home, you and your mother were already gone. One of them had tracked you past the border, into the forest, and when he lunged for your mother, you reached for your gun.
Plant your feet. Aim. Fire.
You had never seen so much blood in your life.
You were going to see a lot more soon.
Your mother had contacts, places in other Districts where you could hide. You bounced from attics to basements, throwing your knives and bullets into fights when you were needed, escaping when capture seemed too likely. You were good at this. You were good at being quick, at being deadly. Sometimes you liked it, the feeling of dirt caked under your fingernails and blood running down your face. Sometimes you cried, even though you tried not to, but children were not built for war, and the rebels knew this, and so they did not judge you when you did.
It seemed only fitting that you’d be caught the one time you went back to Eight. It’d been years since you left, even more since the war started. Your mother had received a distress call from an old friend and couldn’t ignore it. She told you you could stay, but you didn’t want to spend another day in that bombed out factory in Ten. The aging smell of burnt flesh and metal had been making you sick.
When you arrived, you arrived in the midst of a battle, the Peacekeepers trying to overtake a block that had been Rebel controlled for months. You and your mother dove in, trying to aid the fading rebels, but the barricades fell and neither one of you were quick enough. You heard later that your mother was the first arrested, but you’ll never know if it was true. All you remember is emptying your gun into the first Peacekeeper that tried to approach you, laughing with your entire chest, because how funny, how absurd this entire situation was. Hilarious, a child thrown into war, a child who enjoyed it.
As another twisted your arms behind your back and dragged you away, all you could do was throw your head back and laugh harder.
The round face, the soft blonde hair, the glimmer of your freckles in the sunlight. You were the perfect portrait of an innocent young woman. Your mother knew this, knew you’d be a valuable asset to the cause, but she didn’t want to make you do anything you didn’t want to do. She had taught you well, instilling anti-Capitol sentiments in you from the moment you could understand them. When the war began, it seemed like the exact thing your mother had been hoping for. Maybe even the type of thing she’d helped orchestrate. Her penchant for discordance was well known, and getting involved with the Rebellion seemed too obvious. Too dangerous.
If there was one certainty about your mother, she always put the greater good before herself.
You had always been a little too selfish for that.
In the beginning, you were able to stay in Eight. Your mother helped run a small base of operations there, helping to funnel rebels into the district. People would approach her for weapons, or rations, or any other useful things she may have had stockpiled, and you would make the deliveries, emerging into the plain-sight mornings with bullets shoved in the bottom of your basket. Nobody had the mind to bother a girl barely out of childhood taking some bread to a neighbor.
There was a thrill to it, doing something like that right under their noses and never getting caught. It was the type of thing a girl could get addicted to.
The next year, you put your hands on a gun for the first time. Your mother gave it to you, taught you how to point and shoot, how to plant your feet so the recoil wouldn’t knock you off them. You practiced aiming over and over, imaging a Peacekeeper in the sights of your bullet.
You dreamt about it.
You shouldn’t have.
When the Peacekeepers finally raided your home, you and your mother were already gone. One of them had tracked you past the border, into the forest, and when he lunged for your mother, you reached for your gun.
Plant your feet. Aim. Fire.
You had never seen so much blood in your life.
You were going to see a lot more soon.
Your mother had contacts, places in other Districts where you could hide. You bounced from attics to basements, throwing your knives and bullets into fights when you were needed, escaping when capture seemed too likely. You were good at this. You were good at being quick, at being deadly. Sometimes you liked it, the feeling of dirt caked under your fingernails and blood running down your face. Sometimes you cried, even though you tried not to, but children were not built for war, and the rebels knew this, and so they did not judge you when you did.
It seemed only fitting that you’d be caught the one time you went back to Eight. It’d been years since you left, even more since the war started. Your mother had received a distress call from an old friend and couldn’t ignore it. She told you you could stay, but you didn’t want to spend another day in that bombed out factory in Ten. The aging smell of burnt flesh and metal had been making you sick.
When you arrived, you arrived in the midst of a battle, the Peacekeepers trying to overtake a block that had been Rebel controlled for months. You and your mother dove in, trying to aid the fading rebels, but the barricades fell and neither one of you were quick enough. You heard later that your mother was the first arrested, but you’ll never know if it was true. All you remember is emptying your gun into the first Peacekeeper that tried to approach you, laughing with your entire chest, because how funny, how absurd this entire situation was. Hilarious, a child thrown into war, a child who enjoyed it.
As another twisted your arms behind your back and dragged you away, all you could do was throw your head back and laugh harder.
