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poppy-battenberg · 6 years

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“i used to see every color. but slowly, it started to fade. not into black and white and gray. just various shades of red. my mother drinks liquid red, my father smokes sticks of red, my brother laughs in the color red. the only pigment my camera captures is red. what i would give to see pink just once.”

NAME

Charlotte “Charlie” Tyr

AGE

Twenty-three

PARENTS

Electra Conduit & Kaelen Tyr

OCCUPATION

Victor of the 150th Games (Hell), mentor for District Three

BACKGROUND & GAMES

It was evident from a very young age that Charlie had acquired her parents’ tendency toward quietness, perhaps because she saw just how much her brother made up for all their silence. To say she never made a statement would be incredibly inaccurate, though. Her first word was “no” and it became her favorite to use over the years. Tantrums were never her forté, but her pout looked so like a scowl and glare it was difficult to ignore such an intense expression on a young face. Whatever protective barriers were put up to try to block the real world from her - including the Games - she tore down quickly and ferociously. She wanted nothing to be kept secret from her, wanted nothing more than to strip herself of her naivety even at a young age. And it turned her sour early.

Charlie inherited her father’s silence but not his ability to fill in the gaps with an expressive face and mannerisms. She could lie without any obvious tells, though she doesn’t see the point in keeping the truth, no matter how hurtful, away from someone. If it loses her friends, or trust, so be it. At least she’s honest. She doesn’t have half an idea about the kind of lies that circulate throughout Panem, but she knows lies are what made her mother insistent on avoiding the summer carnivals, what left her parents riddled in scars, what killed the man her brother was named after. Perhaps the only person she’d be willing to lie for is her brother, as he’s the only person who can really bring out a lighter, more childish side of Charlie that she tried to lock away very early in her life. Her parents never wanted her to be so closed off, but who were they to try to set an example of openness?

The first camera Charlie got was from her Uncle Blaise, actually a hand-me-down to him from her father that he thought it was time for her to have. The thing was outdated and essentially a piece of junk, and she wasn’t sentimental enough to really care whose it’d been before, but it peaked her interest. The flashes startled her at first, but soon enough, she was begging for a newer version, different lenses, a more protective case, a renovation to the large closet in her room to turn it into a dark room. Taking pictures was the only time she felt she was really saying anything, and her pictures grew over time from no more than practice shots of flowers and buildings around the city to up close and personal shots of people from the poorest parts of the Capitol, the redlight district at night, candid shots of mentors as they watched their tributes die. All her pictures are kept in a safe in her room, the pictures that tell the true story of Panem. Her wall is plastered in the pictures of the buildings damaged by the second rebellion that brought about the seasonal Games. If she ever chose to find a way to reveal the pictures on a broad scale, she’d certainly end up in jail. And honestly, she doesn’t care. She’ll spend the rest of her life in a five-by-six if it means she can share the truth.

A five-by-six would be nothing next to the actual hell she was put through in the 150th Games. As usual, she went to Three for the Reaping, technically a citizen even if she spent most of her time in the Capitol. She was eighteen, meant to only have her name in the drawing for a few more years, and then she was supposed to be free. She never had any reason for tesserae, and the Reaping Day was the only time she let herself be optimistic and assume that she would be fine. The 150tht Reaping proved her wrong as her name was called. Her camera had been in her hands and as she started walking toward the stage, the only thing she could think to do was take pictures of the crowd staring at her as she went onstage, the Peacekeepers trying to lead her there and push her camera away. When she got on stage, she refused to say anything, just lifted her camera and took a picture of the crowd.

She was then herded onto the train. Then to stylists. Then to her room. Then to training. She’d never realized being a tribute was so like being cattle, but she took pictures the whole way. The device was never out of her hands until she was forced to place it down before entering the catacombs, and it was soon replaced by her great-grandfather’s watch that she tucked into her pocket securely. Never in her life had she been so terrified, and never had it shown so profusely on her face as she entered the tube leading up to the arena and turned to wave good-bye to her stylist. As she was lifted into the arena, she had no idea when she was actually out of the tube until she realized the air had become a bit fresher. Everything was pitch black, and unlike other years when it was darker, the tribute clothes didn’t have any kind of light on them. She’d been dressed in no more than some black cargo pants and a black tank top and black combat boots.

The countdown began, but it was all that could be heard in the darkness. Charlie wondered if she might be asleep, if it might all be a dream, if she might have somehow passed out in the tube on the way up. All those fears were erased in an instant when the Head Gamemaker announced that the Games were to begin. The moment the phrase was out of their mouth, the entire arena went up in flames. It went right through the center of the circle of tributes and caught onto the frame of the cornucopia, beginning to burn the objects inside almost immediately. It took Charlie only moments to realize she was, quite literally, in Hell.

The flames started to spread, and Charlie barely had time to jump down and take off running on the cracked, dry ground in the central sector before her podium went up in flames. Any tributes who remained standing on their podiums were soon burning like witches on a pyre, and some tributes were risking their lives to try to grab something from the Cornucopia. Charlie turned her back on it all, racing in any direction she could. Fire shot up randomly out of the ground, geysers of flames and molten rock. The heat in the arena was nearly suffocating, and she could feel herself getting dehydrated rapidly. She couldn’t stop moving, even if it meant that she came to a very slow pace. From everything she saw, any tribute who stood still suddenly found themselves atop a geyser waiting to send them up in flames.

The first thing the Gamemakers sent at them was a shower of black, igneous rocks, some of which were flaming. Charlie received a half-full canteen but refused to drink from it until she knew she would probably be on the verge of unconsciousness or death unless she hydrated herself. It was almost impossible to hear the canons over the rocks and the roaring fire, and she had no idea how many people she was left with. She managed to find some caves where she hid, but not before a flaming rock hit her hard in the back, leaving her with a severe burn between her shoulder blades that had her on the verge of tears anytime she tried to move her arms. Ointment came, but it was near impossible to apply it herself.

Part of her wondered then if she might be able to hide out in the cave for the entire length of the Games, but she should have known better. At the end of the first day, sixteen names were projected on the red sky above the arena. She managed to sleep restlessly for just a couple hours before she was awoken by something warm pooling around her face. When she opened her eyes, she found a pair of opened, shocked eyes staring at her. The eyes of her district partner, who’d probably come to find her and stay with her until she woke up because they’d agreed they’d help each other out. His throat was slit, though, and the blood pouring out of it was gathering beneath where Charlie’s head was resting on the cave floor. Her head snapped up quickly to see one of the Careers standing over her with a bloody knife, obviously pulling back his arm as he prepared to plunge the knife into her throat, too. Charlie’s grip on the strap of the canteen tightened instantly and she swung it up to hit the knife out of the girl’s hand. She scrambled to her feet as the girl tried to go for the knife again, swinging the canteen again to hit the girl as hard a she could in the head. The Career seemed relatively dazed, and Charlie took advantage to dive forward and grab the knife. Spinning onto her back, she threw it as hard as she could at the girl and watched as it went right through her neck. She was used to targets that didn’t bleed, and the sight of the crimson seeping out as the Career fell to the ground left Charlie completely frozen.

Another canon went off right before another liquid suddenly came underfoot. Charlie stood up quickly, knife in hand and canteen over her shoulder as she looked around the cave that was only lit dimly by the fires in the distance. The substance filling the cave was black, and smelled unlike anything Charlie had ever experienced. It was absolutely awful. Before Charlie could decide what to do, the black bile no longer dribbled out from the distance of the cave but a rush of it came out. The knife was torn from her hand by the current, slicing along her arm as it was pulled away. She was toppled and flipped around by the substance, just barely making it to the surface before she thought her lungs might burst and gasping for air. Looking toward the caves, she saw that they were barely visible as the bile poured out of them, dousing the flames around the arena as the current was enough to drown anyone without enough swimming experience or muscle mass. It carried Charlie across half the arena, thinning out and depositing her near a mass of rocks that looked incredibly unstable. The moment she hit them, a pile fell on her and pinned her wounded arm to the ground. The bile had gotten into her burn and cut to certainly cause infection, and then she was certain the rocks had broken the bones in her lower arm.

As Charlie tried to take it easy and keep herself hidden among some of the larger rocks, curled up and unmoving, she heard movement. She recognized the taunting voice of one of the tributes from the outer districts who’d always gone after Careers during training. He’d apparently done the math to figure out who was probably alive, calling out the names of the tributes whose faces hadn’t been projected in the sky the night before. He seemed to know how to maneuver through the rocks, and Charlie became increasingly panicked as she heard his voice coming closer and closer, until a dark shadow suddenly fell over her. She looked up to lock eyes with the tribute for only a second before pushing against one of the rocks she’d been trying to hide behind with all her might, pinning his lower body to the ground beneath it as she heard the distinctive sound of his bones breaking. Her movement caused another avalanche of rocks, greater than any of the others before, and she soon went tumbling down along with the rocks as she tried to avoid being buried. Her ankle twisted and the rocks pelted every inch of her body, but she managed to survive the fall. Looking up, she could see where the tribute’s body was beneath all the rubble, and a few minutes later she heard a canon go off.

Her body was exhausted, and she just barely managed to finish off the canteen and eat some granola that had been sent to her before she had to lie down completely again. Her whole body was throbbing with pain, and she had yet to move away from the debris of the rock avalanche. A part of her knew that if another avalanche occurred, she’d be buried and die, but she couldn’t force herself to move. She fell asleep again, surrounded by the rocks as a barrier, and didn’t wake up for hours. When she awoke, it was just in time to watch a volcano going off across the arena. Before she’d even pushed herself up, another cannon went off. She started running as fast as she possibly could in the direction away from the volcano, so intent that she didn’t pay enough attention to where she was going. She tripped over a rock in her way, and toppled head first into a pool of the black bile that had been created after the flood. She was completely disoriented, and had no idea which way was up or down. She started swimming but she didn’t dare open her eyes and she had no idea how to tell where the surface was. Eventually she couldn’t do it anymore, she had to stop holding her breath, and her body started to float down through the liquid as her body and mind gave up.

Beneath the surface, she hadn’t heard the final two canons for the other remaining tributes go off. Something wiry wrapped around her waist suddenly, and she was pulled out of the pool, covered and dripping in the black fluid as the hovercraft’s rope started to pull her up toward it. Charlie began to sputter, turning her head to the side to spit out the bile and regain her proper breathing. It wasn’t until she was on the hovercraft that she even realized what had happened: she was the victor of the 141st Games.

Charlie didn’t go to her mansion in the Victor’s Village in Three, and she has yet to ever see it. She bought an apartment in the Capitol, over near where some of her mom’s old friends had their clubs, and didn’t leave it until her Victor’s Ball. They dressed her in black for the ball, a long, draping dress so it looked like the bile that had poured off of her as the emerged as the barely living victor. She set it on fire during the Ball, while still wearing it. Once as naturally fearful of fire as any rational human might be, the Games didn’t increase the fear at all - it made it seem like nothing. She didn’t even flinch when the flames touched her legs, and threw a glass at the people who rushed to put the fire out.

After the Ball, she retreated back to her apartment and only interacted with people if they came to see her. The only time she left the place was to go out and take pictures, but even that barely satisfied her for a time. She didn’t watch the 151st and 152nd Games aside from a replay of the victory moment, and it took a group of extremely determined stylists to convince her to come to the Victor’s Ball for the 153rd Games. Slowly, she began to go out again, because a friend would only agree to eat somewhere across the city or someone promised a fun, and safe, event was happening outside of her neighborhood. It was all an evident attempt to keep her from permanently becoming a hermit, and it worked. During the 154th she helped mentor from the sidelines, and it brought out more determination in her than she’d felt even in her own games. She started to get more into her groove of mentoring - hardly a soft approach - but the deaths of her tributes during the 155th struck her hard and she skipped the Victor’s Ball. She was determined to bounce back though, mostly with her brother’s encouragement.

Though the Black Eagles have always been on Charlie’s radar, there’s still something about them that she finds skeptical. She knows her parents feel the same, but they’ve also been through enough failed rebellions or rebellions that ended worse than they started to know what to do. What worries her is Jett’s growing interest in the group, mostly because she doesn’t trust he won’t act reckless if he gets in too deep.

TRAITS

+ resourceful, attentive, honest

- distant, pessimistic, blunt

CONNECTIONS

Jett Tyr (older brother)

Open to any and all connections, so please message me!

#au week #next gen au #au bio #charlie takeover #not happy with the graphic but oh well #i couldn't not play my babe

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