Alexander Athos, District 2 {DONE}

[marguerite harvard d2a (zori)]

Alexander Athos

Former Peacekeeper

Gym Owner

Forty

True Neutral

[marguerite harvard d2a (zori)]

Maybe if he’d had a reason to stay, he wouldn’t have turned to become one of them.

Easier when you have better options. Alexander had never been a whiz at school, much less a fountain of ambition. Hard to have either when home was marked with a checkered past. Not that he’d want to bore you with a sob story. People in the districts all had seen shit, and his wasn’t that much more than the vanilla crap people were accustomed to.

A deadbeat dad that took off with some other girl when he was five and his brother Michael was three. A mother that struggled to make ends meet doing clerical work for one of the masonry firms, she stretched herself a million different directions at once. By the age of six Alexander had had the talk, that if he was old enough to turn on the stove, then he could break him and his god damn brother breakfast. Could’ve been something to lure him away to a new life, if he hadn’t been worn down with all the evenings and nights he cooked a can of beans, or meaty-os for the two of them to eat.

Boredom seemed the real killer. Stuck in a lonely apartment with a television that got three channels, they made up imaginary games with one another. Stupid shit that had them imagining flying off to the moon, or some other universe. Pirates that stole all the treasure they could find, rich enough to forget about how hungry the two of them were. Knights that saved the day, and were given the keys to the castle. Games that took them away from the dark little hallway and out of their tiny closet of a bedroom to somewhere beautiful.

He grew like a beanpole, inching up and away from his brother toward the sky. Settled into training with the other boys, not so much a standout as one that could hold his own. He’d found training meditative in so much he could shut his brain off and forget about life for a while.

Out on the mats he was just one of the guys. Alexander, someone that they all knew as quiet but quick enough to cut shit off when he needed to. A cool customer that lived on the other side of town, away from the big manses and people who’d been raised with all they’d ever wanted. He tended to congregate with the same sorts of a folk. They seemed more genuine, as though they weren’t always looking for an angle of some sort.

When he was a teenager, his father tried to come back into his life. Something about watching one of the kids get butchered on television made him want to reach out to Alexander again. They’d gone out to eat, seen a movie, and even shared a beer or two. Real channel two sort of stuff, the one that shows all the capitol bullshit about happy families across panem? His father asked Alex if he thought he could make up for what he’d lost. And Alexander shrugged.

You can’t go back and make those memories, pops. You could get back with us. Except it’s not what you want, probably. Just wanted to see if I’m worth it, and – save it. You don’t have to worry if I’m going to die.

They didn’t talk after that.

No one was surprised at his signing up as a peackeeper. He’d put on some wait through high school, and all the muscle would be put to good use. He’d sign whatever papers the recruiter needed for him to sign (nevermind the clause about total fealty to the capitol, just give him the check).

The money wasn’t the only reason he was doing it, though getting to send a paycheck back to his mother and brother seemed good enough. It was that after the training academy, he’d be able to be reassigned to somewhere else in the world. Even if it was one of the shittier lower districts, it still meant getting out of two and starting somewhere new.

He’d spend hours talking to Michael about all the things he was going to see. In between having to yell at districters for not following the rules or standing around doing nothing while the VIPs ran reapings, he could settle into a space where no one knew who he was, or what he was about. The allure to leave all of it behind came out loud and clear, almost too much so for his brother. He couldn’t tell if his kid brother wanted the same sort of future, aside from the small sort of smile he’d have whenever Alexander would talk about getting away from it all.

His first tour of duty was in five, which was easy enough. He got his beak wet patrolling the streets. Crime wasn’t so bad back then, right around when the girl wound up winning the whole thing. He supposed it was lucky, being in the right place at the right time. Not having to put up with too much bullshit from districters or high command. Meant on his off hours he had more time to explore.

He eased into the life, the barracks he had to check in and out of every day. The early hours and late evenings that could try some man’s souls. The way some of them had a strict honor code. Or that others rarely even smiled as though their hardness translated into some sort of badge of honor. For Alexander, this was a job. No more, no less. Getting to wear white wasn’t some high honor for him as much as it put a healthy amount of money into a bank account and kept him well fed.

There were those too that now and again raised the specter of how harsh they treated the people in the districts. Civil liberties bullshit they’d harp on, as though the capitol would ever really write any of them up for obsessive force. Now and again there’d be a citation from the mayor’s office about it, but he knew that those pretty much went into a shredder before seeing the light of day. No, if they had to get a little rough, they’d get a little rough. That was just how the work was done, and how all of them were taught to do things.

He saw time in most of the middle districts. Seven was especially boring. All those trees, all the men with beards. Not much to redeem it, aside from it was where he got his first promotion. The sergeant major position, a little step up on the ladder for having done the bare minimum. Then again, he’d not made an ass out of himself or his commanding officer, so after so many years, they had to give him sort of bone.

Not to mention he never complained about the dirty work. The times that he’d had to rip families apart, or smash through doors and bust up a whole house. He learned not to care about what he was doing, and think about the little time he’d have off. The guys who’s beds he could find, the drinks in the dive bars, the serenity of watching the sun set on another day. That much he could use to wash away any sort of atrocity he had to commit.

The way he saw it, they were just a smaller piece of a much bigger machine. Yeah, now and again they let things slip through – there was no need to be a total dick all the time. It was too exhausting to hold up the tough exterior, especially when it seemed the districters were scared enough of them. So what if he wasn’t the biggest bootlicker out there? He made his money, he went on year after year, and he felt like he was happy enough.

It wore on him, thirties setting in, that he had drifted across districts and had so little to show for it. They started to station him in the lower districts – as though sending a signal – to pass his last years in the service. Maybe they saw him as the sort of man who could handle the rough and tumble of Ten, but he saw it for what it was. They gave him a shitty assignment to know his attitude and energy had lacked what they needed to move up.

He didn’t mind the smell of horseshit and the way the men seemed hardier than the rest.

Eleven was his last district. He had a sort of revulsion at the people, covered in dust, almost as though they’d given up on even pretending to want better for themselves. There were pockets of resistance here, too, he found. People who spoke a language other than the official of Panem. A mayor that seemed to stoke something alongside his smile. And then, in his last few months, the biggest fuck-up he could’ve imagined: a full-scale riot during the games.

He finished out the last of his twenty-years with a discharge that noted he’d been one of the few on-duty.

There was no commendation ceremony, no retirement lunch, no “thank you for all of your service.” Just a notice that he’d be returning back to his “home” in district two, his visa to eleven expired.

So he returned to a home he’d flirted with but spent less time than not over the past twenty years.

But much had changed, enough that he hadn’t felt it a homecoming. Michael was a doctor, with a wife and two kids. His mother had retired, and lived on the investment and pension she earned. She’d taken a lover, a man she refused to marry but that she spent her time with all the same.

They tried to reconnect, to have the dinners and go out to bars and whatnot. They’d always written to one another but – it was a half-hearted sort of exchange where he couldn’t tell you what they’d ever written about. It was as though he sat down to dine with strangers when he ate with them. People so far removed from who he was then that he couldn’t find a space in his heart to want to know them. And for them, the feeling that this was out of obligation (and maybe a bit of fear) more than anything else.

At least he could start anew. A business venture presented itself in the form of a training gym. One where he could take the same techniques he’d learned over his years, alongside the career training afforded to him, to raise the young and stupid into something better. That, and it was a way he felt he could make easy money.

He put down part of his savings in it, wanting a fresh start. If it didn’t work out, he’d sell the whole thing, but for now, he’d give it time.

A few years was all it took to see the clients come in, and the space transformed. He was brutal in his expectations of them; he found a new sort of life that had been lacking out in the districts. Here, he could show them what they needed, and who they could become. And he’d push the ones who couldn’t until they broke. They all needed it, after all.

For the first time in a long time, the well-built man aging gracefully into forty started to feel he’d found a space for himself. One that he could build all on his own, provided no one got in his way.

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[goat]

accepted xx