elio kane. / d4. ( fin )

[gamemaker tallis 🧚🏽‍♂️kaitlin.]

E L I O

eighteen
for a boy with
wax wings

[gamemaker tallis 🧚🏽‍♂️kaitlin.]

i.

I won’t make it out of this alive.

You can tell me that as many times as you want, remind me over and over and over again. I do not need to hear it again, but still you’ll tell me and still you won’t need to.

I have lived my life knowing one single thing above all else.

The soft ones always die.

[gamemaker tallis 🧚🏽‍♂️kaitlin.]

ii.

Whenever people talk about me behind my back, they talk about defiance.

They call me prideful, say that every time I reach for something just out of arms length, that it’s because my father told me not to do it. They talk about me as if I cannot be helped, as if the world has been against me taking flight before I was even born.

They make me smaller than my father, an object of his creation, a rebellious thing rebellious only for the sake of rebellion. They tell me that I look like something Ripred sent, tie me to the ground with their next breath, tell me that I am nothing more than my fathers son; an earth-bound ángel capable of bleeding out.

I am his toy, or maybe his pet.

I am his silly little boy who wants to fly too close to the sun.

[gamemaker tallis 🧚🏽‍♂️kaitlin.]

iii.

”Don’t spend too much time by the water. The last thing I need is you drowning.”

[gamemaker tallis 🧚🏽‍♂️kaitlin.]

iv.

Sometimes I hear a voice in my head telling me to do things.

I’m not sure who it is, or where it comes from, but sometimes it’s there and sometimes it’s not. Sometimes it tells me to do things that Dad has told me not to do, and sometimes it tells me to do other things. It tells me to steal a loaf of bread from the marketplace one day, so I do it. Snatch it off a cart and then walk away as if nothing ever happened.

I didn’t even eat it; I handed it off to a man curled up by the docks who looked like he needed it.

I was already down by the ocean, doing exactly what I wasn’t supposed to do. I didn’t need to selfishly eat something I didn’t need, too.

Sometimes I like to talk back to the voice in my head, have entire conversations with my ceiling.

It makes Dad look at me in despair sometimes, but he doesn’t ask questions about things he doesn’t understand.

[gamemaker tallis 🧚🏽‍♂️kaitlin.]

v.

"You were born with rebellion in your bones," she whispers to me one night, right into the crook of my neck, my arm wrapped around her shoulders. "Your breath is gunsmoke."

My father is an inventor, some soul from before reborn into my father's body, capable of great and terrible things. The Capitol tries to enlist him time and time again, get him to create things for their war on their own people, but he turns them down every time. Maybe it's for different reasons than I would, maybe it's because he's selfish enough to want to keep his inventions for himself, but there's a part of me that respects him a little bit more every time they come knocking and walk away empty-handed.

Unlike my father though, I have never been one for idly sitting by, watching as the world changed and stayed exactly the same around me.

My voice was made for war.

I was born to lead picket lines, to be the loudest shout at the head of an army of soldiers ready to take on the entire world. I was born for death, mine or my enemy's.

I don't know if Four loves or hates me for it, but I will take it all the same.

[gamemaker tallis 🧚🏽‍♂️kaitlin.]

vi.

"Stop spending so much time in the sun. You're going to turn into a pile of ash if you aren't careful."

[gamemaker tallis 🧚🏽‍♂️kaitlin.]

vii.

"He's a good boy, I swear," my father pleads with the Peacekeeper coming to haul me away. "He's a good boy! He won't do it again!"

I smell like decay. I smell like the end of times, like a boy who could ruin the world if I just asked the sun in the right way. With a smile and the flick of my wrist, I could break bones—no, I would.

I am a boy made of metal and gunfire, my father's son, forged in fire and anger. I am an ashen boy, nothing but a prop, a toy, something for the district's amusement, never to be taken seriously despite the daggers hiding behind my teeth.

I could rip your throat out with a smile.

I would.

"Please! He's a good boy!" my father prattles on, begging the Peacekeeper to let me go, please, just this once. "Give him a chance, please! He's a good boy! He's just a child! "

As if age has anything to do with innocence.

[gamemaker tallis 🧚🏽‍♂️kaitlin.]

viii.

"Did you hear what happened to Elio?"

"Keepers got him, right?"

"Yeah. I heard my mom talking to our neighbor about it. That shit's crazy."

"Right? I heard he didn't even do it. I heard it was the guy who lives two streets over from you... fuck, what's his face, you know? The one who always has on too many rings. I heard he's the one who beat the guy to a pulp."

"Yeah I know who you mean. He's bad news. Why do they think it was Elio?"

"I dunno. People just always assume it's Elio, don't they?"

[gamemaker tallis 🧚🏽‍♂️kaitlin.]

ix.

The world could be mine if I would just take it. All I need to do is smile my wicked smile at the right person, scream from the right rooftop. All I need is the exact right moment for a revolution.

All I need to do is burn.

[gamemaker tallis 🧚🏽‍♂️kaitlin.]

ix.

You see?

The soft ones never survive.

The sun shines down on us and tricks us into thinking that maybe, just maybe, we can make it work. That kindness can outlast us all. They don't tell us that you can craft your own wings, that we don't need our fathers to build us up and tear us down time in and time out in order to become strong. They tell us that we can fly as close to the sun as we like without any consequences, that the fragments of our lives can be left on the horizon, burning embers in the distance.

But it's a lie.

That's why I killed him.

[gamemaker tallis 🧚🏽‍♂️kaitlin.]

x.

(It was me. I killed myself.)

(I would do it again.)

[gamemaker tallis 🧚🏽‍♂️kaitlin.]

ripred_bot

[ryan]

This is gorgeous omg.