The Stars
Title: Silence
Characters: Cuan, the rest of them
Word Count: 1,346
Warnings: Possible sociopath warning, info. dump
Disclaimer: I do not own the Hunger Games and the inspiration for these characters comes from another series entirely.
Notes: Cuan is hard to characterize, but I think this chapter was worth the headache trying to get into his mindset. Huge info dump at the end telling you what order everyone joined in and something about what they're like.
I'm not sure whether or not Cuan is a sociopath. He is certainly not a psychopath, but his psyche is kind of hard to understand. Hope this helps.
015: Silence
Cuan honored silence in his subordinates.
The sense to understand when to be quiet and when to speak was indeed a rare gift, as he discovered early in life. It could mean the difference between life and death, but it was also dignified - and Cuan was nothing if not dignified.
Even as a child he could vague remember thinking that all his peers were delightfully crude and unrefined. Their mouths jabbered without a single significant syllable emerging from the slew of words they spoke. It had been a matter of grave perplexity to him.
Perhaps in retrospect it bothered him so because no other event from his childhood stood out in his mind. Despite what people thought, even from members of his own group, Cuan had grown up a relatively normal child. He had lived in the orphanage, grew up playing in the trash heaps, and attended the Reaping in the cleanest shirt he could scrounge up.
In truth, Cuan could barely remember those days but knew exactly how they had occurred regardless. Most of his youth was spent learning more efficient techniques for survival and before he was ten years old, he had begun to read.
There were few books available in District 3. No one had time to read any and the pickings were slim due to censorship, but Cuan found a way to sate his curiosity by spending hours after school browsing the limited shelves there.
In that way, Cuan had been a quiet child. He was never loud or overbearing, but he wasn't strange or creepy either. He knew when to smile in public and how to hold a conversation.
But he never did understand how people could be so unrefined and graceless until he realized with striking clarity one day that there was just a difference between them and that was that.
There was no reason why or how. Cuan was not born much differently from the others and yet there was this distinct gap between them. Eventually that was the one question he stopped searching for an answer to because there was no answer.
And so he sought other people who knew to honor silence like he did. It was never easy, but he saw it as a challenge. There was something that separated him from the rest of the lawless children who played and survived and lived in the junkyard.
And it wasn't until his last year of being in the Reaping that he began to realize just what that was.
The answer had been staring him in the face for all these years.
Because unlike his peers, Cuan felt neither horror nor fear when he watched the Games. He didn't find amusement or perverse pleasure from watching people die, either. And he didn't think that the children who had died necessarily deserved it. In fact, he knew for a fact that they had done nothing to deserve such fates.
What really made him realize the truth however, was a single question proposed to him by someone he had grown up with.
"Aren't you afraid?" he'd asked Cuan. "Weren't you ever afraid it would happen to you?"
Cuan considered that question. He'd declined to answer it immediately and stayed up all night thinking about those words. By that point in time his childhood memories were sparse and hazy, though. It was difficult to recall what he'd really felt like on the day of his first Reaping.
What he knew at that moment though, was that he was not afraid of going into the Games and playing them or dying through other means. If he happened to die at the hands of another, he supposed that it was what some would just call "fate".
He also happened to find his answer that night.
Those people were part of a world that had little to do with him. As Penka would explain it, in a conversation Cuan was not supposed to be privy to he imagined, for a man like him there were only a few factions in his world.
There was "us" or the small group that was an intimate part of his world, the people he genuinely cared about to some emotional extent.
There were their clients and their targets, which comprised the professional part of his life.
And then there were the "others": everyone else who did not fall into the other two categories. They included citizens from District 3, people from the Capitol, and all the people in Panem.
Because the ones from that "other" group were unrelated to Cuan in any way, he didn't particularly care what happened to them. Whether they lived or died was of no concern to him.
And so, after his last Reaping Cuan set out to search for the people who would fit into that category of "us", the likeminded people who lived as he lived. He didn't do it out of a need for companionship, but perhaps to simply see if there were any others in this world who could value silence like him.
Penka was the first he found, a girl two years older than him who was well liked by many boys but who was completely blank faced and unamused with their advances.
It was that girl who would become one of the most loyal of his subordinates. She never questioned him but at the same time never followed him blindly. She didn't idolize him. He could always see the gears in her head churning as he spoke. If he needed a calm, intelligent opinion he could always count on her.
Haakon came after her. Unlike them though, the man was loud and sometimes violent. He was brash and arrogant, but strong - almost stronger than Cuan. Most of his talents fell into the category of brute strength and finesse, but he also had a good head on his shoulders and respected those who knew the hardships of battle.
Next was Sche, who had been a nurse but a very bad one. Her bedside manners were terrible and she hated whining children especially. While her skills were fine tuned and her hands frighteningly steady, she was cold and uncaring and the hospital was reluctant to hire her even as a normal nurse.
Sche was normally silent, but her words were biting and unforgiving. What Cuan had noticed were her instincts - never wrong, never specific, but just enough to save your skin.
Just after Sche came Faiz, just a year younger than Cuan but completely silent and emotionless. His specialty was killing in complete silence, leaving no evidence behind of his presence. When he killed it was nearly bloodless, always silent, and somewhat beautiful a sight to watch.
It was a while after Faiz that he and Sche spotted Syarnark and decided to take the child under their wing, as well. While some people like Sche never smiled, Syarnark was always smiling even after a shopkeeper had beat him senseless for stealing or when he was watching something grim like the Hunger Games.
It was a valuable skill. Cuan had liked that about the boy - how hard it was to tell whether he was hurting inside or simply joyful.
Matiy was unexpected, but Haakon was the one who discovered her overwhelming strength in an arm wrestling match. Her childlike personality and absentminded view of the world was prominent, but also like a child her simplistic mind processed straightforward information everyone else might overlook.
And in that way their little group had been formed.
Cuan wasn't expecting to add any others. He didn't know what he was doing asking Pyro to join them. The kid was nothing like the others - not even Syarnark, who was close to his age when he joined. He had a sense of morals and was loud about it. He was somewhat clumsy and easily angered.
But when he'd gazed up at Cuan he'd been silent - asking an innocent question but listening to the complex explanation with nothing but curiosity.
And Cuan for the second time in his life didn't quite understand what he felt and why.