what did a little rage ever hurt?
i think you're painting it in a bad light;
you're thinking of yelling, screaming, no-good anger,
throwing shit with no real direction.
what did a little righteous fury ever do to you?

Icho Griffith (16)

District Eleven

three years ago

Icho's walks through the district were usually pretty quiet and uneventful. He never got far. He knew that his parents would be calling him back soon after he left every time, so it was pointless to really go beyond the town. It was only recently that they let him start going off on his own, without any adults with him or any friends accompanying. They were kind of stiflingly overprotective, but he guessed that was what he got for being born into the mayor's family. Oh well, if only he had just had a chat with destiny before being born about his free-spirited nature, maybe his parents would've mellowed out. Really, it was all his fault.

Sometimes when he walked through the streets, he saw the kind of people who huddled in sketchy alleyways, but his parents had always told him to walk past them. That some of them—not all, but some—were dangerous, and could hurt Icho if they really wanted to. So when he saw them curled in on themselves, some with their hands in their hair and their faces buried into their knees, some with their faces turned upward toward the sky, some with their eyes hollow and endless—when he saw them, he looked the other way and marched forward.

This was the nicer end of town. On the west side of the square, where everyone was peaceful and happy, and the dangerous, scary homeless were few and far in between.

But today, Icho's parents were out. He wasn't supposed to go on walks when they were out, especially not in the summer when he had no schedule and could wander for as long and as far as he wanted, but he couldn't help himself. The opportunity presented itself in the form of the spare key hanging on the hook, just begging him to put it in his pocket and go on an adventure.

He wanted to stop by Lucy's house and bring her out on the walk with him, but he wasn't sure if she would snap at him for that. Plus if his parents saw him walking around with Lucy, they might get annoyed. They didn't really approve of her.

So he just went further into the town than he normally did, looking around at all of the people as they went about their business. There were so many people bringing their baskets outside of little shops, people walking in and out of the bakery, people with big bags on their back carrying things into the town for selling. He knew that some were poorer than the mayor and the mayor's family, but all of their problems were heard by his father. He knew this. He'd seen his father work. He'd seen him stay up late in his study, going through his papers, solving problems. He cared deeply, even when he couldn't fix every problem. Icho knew this.

Once he got past the square, further into the southeast end of town, he knew that he would have to turn back soon. His parents wouldn't be home to know how long he'd been gone for, but this wasn't the area he was supposed to go to. He heard that this was the dangerous end of town, although he'd been through their occasionally. He wasn't totally sheltered. Plus, the school he went to was on the outer edge of the city.

He waved to the guy that his dad always bought oranges from, smiling at the old man as he went past him down the road. He was a really pleasant old guy.

It was so warm outside that day. He looked up at the sun beating down like it was going to melt him, squinting against it. It left pieces of itself stuck in his eyesight and he kept squinting around as he walked for a while because of it, the glare of sunlight clinging to him. As he turned the corner, rubbing at his eyes as the bright, glowing black spot faded, he bumped straight into someone. He stepped back, disoriented, to see who he'd just run into.

"Oh!" he said, holding his arms out, even though he wouldn't be able to help right them at this point. Or maybe at all, since they were bigger than him. "Sorry, I wasn't looking where I was going."

The woman looked down at him, and Icho saw the kind of clothes she was wearing. They were all a little raggedy, and more revealing than what most people on the west side of the city wore. He swallowed back what his parents would tell him at this point, though. He had already bumped into her, so he wasn't going to just run away without apologizing.

"That's okay," she said. There was a short pause where her eyes were narrowed, which Icho didn't like at all. He wanted to run away from her, but that would probably seem pretty rude. "I think I recognize you, don't I?"

He didn't know how she would. Some people knew him as the mayor's son, but that was more people who interacted with him often enough to know his face. This woman didn't seem like she was one of the people who often spent time talking to the mayor—or had spent any time, really, especially not in a situation where she would've seen Icho.

"Probably not," he said, sure she was mistaking him for someone else. He started to duck away from her, his heart racing. It felt like it was inching its way up his throat, and he really just wanted to go now.

"No, I do," she said, with a sly grin on her face when he turned around to look at her again. "You're the mayor's son."

"Oh. Maybe," he told her, because he didn't know what else to say. He didn't want to confirm it, but his tongue slipped before he could outright lie to her. He really just wanted to get back home. He just needed to get around the block and start booking it back home. Maybe his parents were right about staying in the west.

"Don't you wanna know how I know that?" she asked, and it seemed like there was a dirty little secret she wanted to share with him. Some awful piece of information she was just dying to unload on him. And—he did really wanna know. That was the part that sucked about it, so he stopped against his better judgment. "Mmmm, I better not. Why don't you ask your dad about the lower town, kid?"

He stared at her for a moment, expecting her to think again and actually tell him what that meant, but she didn't. She turned around to stroll away, so he started running in the opposite direction as fast as he could. He was so scared that he stopped thinking, and forgot to turn around the block to head back home. He just kept running, ignoring weird looks from people, until he was panting and his chest burned, and he was sure that he was far, far away from that woman.

He looked around where he had ended up, seeing the people who were doing similar things on the other side of the city. He realized that this was the end of town his parents really didn't want him on. He was almost outside of city limits here, where the buildings were fewer and farther in between, and everything further out was little clusters of houses, and beyond that, fields for farming for miles and miles, with little towns popping up here and there. He hadn't realized he could get here so quickly. He hadn't realized how closely he stuck to his house until now, when he saw what was out here not even an hour away.

The houses were so run-down here. No one was wearing nice clothes. Everyone looked even more ragged than the woman he'd run into, and he didn't think there was anyone in sight who had had enough food to eat lately. Gaunt faces and skin hanging off the bones of people slumped against brick walls, and— He was going to throw up. He walked as quickly as he could over behind a big abandoned building and threw up on the concrete below his feet. He didn't look at it, not wanting to throw up more, and felt disgusting all over. Like he was covered in grime. But he was pretty sure he'd seen a dead person hunched against a wall back there, just sitting against it, in the city. And people were walking around it as if it didn't used to be a person. There was one mother who had been shielding her child's eyes as they hurried by. Surely someone was coming to get it, but the people who couldn't avoid it until then were just… continuing on. Like this was— normal.

He couldn't connect this with his District Eleven. With the District Eleven that his father worked for. He went home quickly, feeling downright pissed. He felt like Lucy. He felt like raging against everyone on the street, and when he walked past someone who looked dressed up in their nice clothes on the square, someone who nearly bumped into a woman because he wasn't watching where he was going, he wanted to scream at them. He didn't even know why, because they hadn't done anything wrong, but they weren't paying attention. No one was paying attention— He hadn't been paying attention, but he was thirteen. Barely thirteen. Was his father this absent-minded too? He had to be.

He got home and slammed the door behind him, staring at it like it had affronted him. And then he sagged down and walked slowly into the living room, and by the time he collapsed in the living room, he was sobbing.

three weeks later

He'd asked his father about the people in the lower town, the person who was leaned against the wall, dead. When his father told him to drop it, he was so angry he left. He didn't care if his parents were scared, if they didn't know where he was. He hoped that they were worried. The people of the lower town were definitely worried about starving to death, but they couldn't just call the Peacekeepers and ask them to fix that for them like his father could call the Peacekeepers to ask them to collect him.

He knew he didn't have long before someone found him. He kept his hood up, despite how hot it was outside, and snuck back down to the east end of town. He went further than that, leaving the city, and went out to the people doing chores and working outside their old, collapsing homes. He felt sick to his stomach just being there while he was well-fed and in nice clothes, seeing some of the scraps of fabric people called clothes that were hanging on clothing lines.

There was one woman who was sitting in a rocking chair out of her front porch, whistling softly to herself and looking up at a tree, where a couple of hummingbirds were flitting about each other. Or maybe it was the mockingjay up in the branches that Icho just saw, eerily silent as the woman sung to it.

Icho bit his lip, unsure how to start talking to her. He whistled up to the mockingjay, and after a moment, it copied his tune. The woman looked over at him and a gentle smile crept up her face, like it was afraid of manifesting at first. "Well," she said, and her voice was so pleasant and inviting, Icho forgot his fear. "Guess it likes you better than me."

"I guess so," he said quietly. He nodded and stepped over to her, standing on the outside of her makeshift fence of falling-down scraps of wood shoved into the ground. He put a hand on one of the sturdiest posts and asked cautiously, "Do you mind if I ask something weird, ma'am?"

She looked taken aback, and it took her a few seconds to answer, but then she shook her head. "No, I suppose I don't. I'm an open book," she told him.

"Okay," he said, nodding. "I'm the mayor's son." He figured that was the best way to start it, because he was going to sound pretty ignorant here. And he didn't want to totally embarrass himself, although maybe that just made it worse. He didn't know. "And I just… I just wanted to know what it's like here. I never really leave the city."

The woman looked at him for a moment, studying him with the corner of her lips turned up and her eyes locked on him curiously. "Ah," she said, "you're a very forward boy. Okay." She looked away from him, up at the birds again, and it seemed like she was thinking. He hoped she was thinking, and not just ignoring him because the question was dumb, or something. "Well, it's much harder than what you must live like. I can't blame you for that, though. We all just… survive out here. I don't know."

That didn't exactly tell him what he wanted to know, though. He leaned forward against the sturdy fence post. "Ma'am, I— I was walking, and I saw someone was dead. And everyone was just walking around them, as if it didn't even matter," he said, his voice shaking for the briefest of moments. He had no idea if he should be saying this.

She nodded and looked down. "Yeah, that's… that happens," she said. She smiled bitterly, her eyes downcast. "I appreciate what you're doing here, love, but you should go."

He stared at her for a moment and turned away, letting out a quick, heavy breath. That was the worst. But he wanted to know more. He needed to know more.

He asked more people around the area until he saw a Peacekeeper approaching, and then he began running, hiding behind houses and hurrying back toward the city. It was easier to evade there, although he kept turning around corners and finding more Peacekeepers looking. He made it all the way home without being grabbed by one, and he burst in the door, looking for his father.

His mother came up to him when she saw him entering the house. "Icho Griffith, where have you been—?"

He brushed past her and toward where his father was starting to stand up in his study. "People are dying, Dad," he said, looking up at him as if he was taller. As if he was a grown man like his father was. "The Peacekeepers are brutal, violent. They mistreat the people. They're from Two. They think our poor are lesser than, so they don't treat them right, and you don't do a thing. You have dinner with Peacekeepers, Dad. While they steal children away from parents. While parents lose their children to hunger in an agriculture district."

His dad looked at him with raised eyebrows, but he waited until Icho was done raving to speak. When he was finished, panting from the run, from the anger, from the speech, his father said, "That's unfortunate, Icho, but—"

"Unfortunate?" he exclaimed, his voice rising up an octave in indignation. But he wasn't even embarrassed. He was too angry for that right now. "Was the person I had to step over in the alley when I was running back home unfortunate? Is that all they are to you, Dad?"

His father sighed and shook his head like Icho was stupid. He wasn't stupid. "Icho, you don't understand. And I won't have you speaking back to me in my house after you gave us such a scare like that," he said. He pointed out of his study, looming over Icho like he could step on him. Infused with the power that the Capitol handed over to him in return for ignoring the plight of his people, for making his son dumb with ignorance. "Go to your room."

"I will," he snapped. "And I won't ever come back out."

He turned on his heels, ignoring his mother again, and locked his door when he was tucked away inside his unlit bedroom.

a month before the reaping

Icho peeked out from around the side of the building. The Peacekeepers ran past, so he leaned back against the brick and shut his eyes, breathing in and out slowly to catch his breath. Yeah, so he was going to get his ass kicked, even if he made it back home without a Peacekeeper catching him. If he made it back home, though, the ass-kicking would be alleviated some, so that was really all he was going for.

It was the third time this month he was going to get close to a whipping again, but the Peacekeeper he'd punched had been fucking around with this young single mom, in a really gross, predatory way. He'd seen it when he was going by to visit Day in the fields, and he couldn't stand by and watch that shit happen. Maybe it was easier for him because he knew punishments were never as bad for him, with his father in the middle to lower them each time, but hell, he may as well have taken advantage of that privilege.

He jogged back home, watching as the reception of the mayor's son transformed from nonchalant to a little resentful. He remembered when he was younger, when the baker used to wave at him. Now all the high-society people—well, as high society as one gets in the districts—of Eleven hated how he stirred the pot. Which made him beyond happy, really. There was nothing he liked more than unsettling people who loved their blissful ignorance.

He stopped jogging and just started walking the rest of the distance home. His steps were light, almost bouncy even, content in the knowledge that he had made it out of this one all right, and it the Peacekeepers would be pissed yet again, not only that he challenged them but that he relatively got away with it.

And then he jerked away so harshly it felt almost like he was flying through the air, a hand on his arm and his legs collapsing out from underneath him as they failed to find the ground again. He got dragged a couple feet before his feet found traction and he started scurrying along after the unhelmeted Peacekeeper. It was Jo, one of the angriest, nastiest of them all, with a square jaw like all the big, buff fuckers in Two, and steely blue eyes that held nothing but hatred and looked for nothing but violence.

"Fuck you," he snapped at the guy, trying to get away from him. He knew he'd get roughed up before he was sent home this way, and that was how the Peacekeepers liked it. They liked when they had full autonomy over how much punishment they dished out to the problematic mayor's son, the little shit who gave them such a hard time. It was hard to be snarky when he knew how much their fists and boots hurt, when he remembered the last time he'd come home with bruises everywhere, a busted lip and bloody nose and black eye, and the one time he'd received a broken rib. Yeah, so this was actual hell on Earth, excuse him for being scared shitless.

"Might not be such a good idea to try to wiseguy your way out of this, buddy," the Peacekeeper snarled, wolflike teeth glistening at him like a taunt.

"Kinda sucks that you think 'fuck you' is really a wiseguy insult, buddy," Icho said, jerking his arm away as hard as he could. The Peacekeeper's grip faltered and Icho was free. He propelled himself forward as fast as his feet could carry him, nearly stumbling as he tried to find his rhythm as he took off.

His house wasn't far from where he'd been when Jo grabbed him, so it wasn't long until he had hopped over his fence and was safely within the boundaries of his house, where Jo would have to politely knock on the door and inform his father that Icho was due for some kind of ass-kicking. He waved at Jo with wiggly fingers and an overconfident grin that he didn't actually feel in his still-racing heart, and turned primly away to go inside.

so there is icho and now we only have 5 left to go! i'll have his district partner show all the reaping shit in her chapter, i just didn't think it fit and i wanted to publish this tonight so i can hopefully start emerson if i have time tomorrow

i really enjoyed this tho, i feel like i didn't get across everything about him i wanted to, like i feel like i only really portrayed his excessively good side here, but that was just the nature of the 3 scenes i wanted to write with him, but i'm excited to write such a cocky fuck-you character going into the capitol for the games

anyway chapter question: what would be your big fuck you to the capitol if you could give one to them?