Post by Wolf Tears on Aug 19, 2010 15:38:32 GMT -6
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gotta fight gotta strike
'cause there's no turning away
from what you don't want to know
These days, he’s just known as Toivo Vaalia
(Toi is retired- those who could call him that are gone)
He is, evidently, Male
Despite drawbacks, he’s survived to be 15
Though his parents hailed from District Nine,
Thirteen is the only true home he’s ever known
gotta see gotta be
if they're all going astray
don't let them take you in tow
Most people, looking at Toivo’s for the first time, aren’t quite sure whether to call him pale or dark. Generally they just settle on “monochromatic,” because there’s no real answer to that question- he is both. His hair, which usually looks like he just woke up because even when he does bother to brush it just goes all unruly on him again, is a dark brown almost deep enough to be black. His eyes aren’t quite that dark, but they are a relatively deep shade of grey, with a bit of dark brown lurking underneath- and they seem all the darker for the shadows under and inside them, shadows borne of fatigue of life rather than lack of sleep.
His skin, though, is remarkably pale. (At least, what you can see of it. Toivo frequently forgets splatters paint all over his hands and lower arms, and doesn’t really care enough to wash it off.) Some of that is from genetics, but a great deal is also from spending so much time inside. Either way, the contrast between skin and hair is striking.
In terms of looks, not much else about him is interesting. Toivo is... average. Very average. Possibly the only thing about his face that isn’t average is how soft it looks. He’s seen sorrow and you can tell, but even so something about the shape of his face just screams naïveté. Maybe it’s just the thin nose and the wideness of his eyes, or perhaps it’s that he’s never been in any real danger, outside of hunger. Excepting his hands and lower arms, which have often been scraped up because he falls so frequently and puts his hands out to break the fall, he lacks the scars of childhood adventure that others tend to accumulate in their early years.
Toivo’s always been a pretty casual person, clothing-wise. Jeans and a t-shirt are the way to go. In winter, he swaps out the lightweight shirts for long sleeves, but even then you’ll never see him in anything too formal. Easy to get into and out of, and comfortable to wear- those are his only requirements for clothing, and with the exception of the formal black suit he wore to his mother’s funeral, everything in his wardrobe fits them.
Whatever he’s wearing, there are a few accessories that Toivo will never be without- more tools than accessories, really. His light grey crutches, the type that encircle the forearms, are a permanent fixture any time he’s outside his house. The others are slightly less obvious, but he still needs them if he wants to walk very far: a set of knee braces. Both these things draw a lot of odd glances, and more questions than he’s ever really enjoyed answering.
He will, though- just press a bit, and he’ll give in and tell you that for whatever reason, his brain didn’t form exactly the way it was supposed to, leaving him with a damaged cerebellum and therefore ataxic cerebral palsy. Anything involving movement is harder for him than it should be, from walking (he always looks like he’s about to fall over, and frequently does) to just speaking (his voice always has a slight tremor in it because he can’t form the words smoothly enough). If he tries to do anything requiring precision, such as writing, the limb he’s using will begin to shake uncontrollably. It’s not the most debilitating condition out there, but it’s pretty up there when it comes to limiting what he can do. Every moment of his life has been affected by it, and every moment from now on will be as well.
At exactly five feet tall, Toivo is pretty short for his age and sex, even when standing at his absolute tallest. Similarly, at only eighty-five pounds he’s quite small for his frame- but then, what can you expect? He has no muscle on him whatsoever, and any fat reserves have long since been burned by his body to stay alive.
gotta leave gotta bleed
you've gotta stop lying still
'cause this is no kind of life
Toivo used to be shy. He could talk to people he didn’t know, but his voice would hesitate and words would trip over one another. It wasn’t until you really got to know him that he would actually talk to you with only one catch in his voice- the one caused by his difficulty with moving his muscles. Nowadays, though, he’s a full-out recluse. It’s not just that he has trouble approaching people and talking to them, it’s that he goes out of his way to avoid it. Only four people have ever been close to him, and two have died, so for most people the difference is barely even there- but ask those other two, the teenagers he used to call his best (only, really) friends, and they’ll tell you just how different he is. Even with them, he barely talks, and never about anything important. He used to be okay conversing with strangers if they approached him first, but now he squirms and desperately tries to force an excuse to get out. It’s as if he’s gotten to be afraid of them, they’ll say with odd looks, never realizing that that’s exactly what has happened. He is scared- scared of what they’ll do or say to him, and scared that they’ll leave him. He pushes people away from him so that they can’t go away.
His usual self must still be in there, though, because he doesn’t try too hard. He always stops just short of rudeness. When he was a child, during that one year in school, several of the crueler children figured out that even when the teacher was around, they could still hurt him via a lack of courtesy. He remembers that, and still feels the sting even now, so he avoids doing anything that might cause anyone else to feel the same hurt. He’s considerate almost to a fault, and all the more so because he’s never sure what will give someone else pain. For all that he wants other people to stay away, he cares deeply about their welfare, and yet he’s awful at empathizing. You usually have to tell him what mood you’re in if you want him to know, and as a general rule he hasn’t a clue what to do about it once he knows. Still, he recognizes that he’s bad at dealing with people on an emotional level, and that very recognition makes him even more thoughtful, even more careful how he goes about his conversations.
Likewise, Toivo is very generous when it comes to people in need- unless they need money. The years have taught him to be very careful with his money, and unless someone is obviously about to die he will pretend he has no change rather than give it to them. That said, he’ll give away anything else he needs to- items, food, time, effort- to pull someone out of a hole, as long as they don’t want him to stick around afterward. (Just because he wants to help you doesn’t mean he’s not afraid of you.)
Sometimes consideration goes just a little too far, though. Toivo hates conflict, and even the slightest hint of it will send him scrambling. He will invariably run away rather than face a quarrel, in part because he doesn’t want to hurt the other person but also largely because he doesn’t want himself to hurt. It’s an odd combination of cowardice and courtesy, and when he’s backed into a corner it becomes even more prominent. Many a time has Toivo been called irrational, or bad at problem-solving, because his brand of conflict resolution generally has nothing whatsoever to do with the problem at hand. He doesn’t care about the problem. He just wants to stop hurting, and he wants the other person to stop hurting. He wants the argument to go away, and it doesn’t matter to him whether or not it’s actually solved.
Luckily, he doesn’t have to worry about that very much, because even before Toivo spent a lot of time locked away in his room. His mother never painted much during his lifetime- between him and the rebellion and then trying to make a life in District Thirteen, she rarely had the time or the money for materials- but the few times she did helped transfer her love of the art to her son. It’s difficult for him, because of the intention tremor (one of the more distinctive symptoms of ataxic cerebral palsy is that trying to do specific movements, like holy a paintbrush, causes the moving limbs to shake uncontrollably), but when his hands shake and mess him up, he just waits for it to dry and paints right over the mistake. Toivo is a particularly determined sort of person when he wants to be; he’s normally pretty unmotivated, but should he actually decide to adopt a project of some sort, odds are he won’t come up for food, sleep, or air until every detail is firmly in place. That, at least, has not changed in the past few years and probably never will; the only difference is that he spends even more time on his pet projects.
Not that things like eating are ever high on his list, anyway. It’s not uncommon for Toivo to wonder why he’s so hungry, only to realize that he hasn’t eaten anything in almost two days- not because the food wasn’t there, but because he just forgot to eat. The kid has plenty of common sense, but absolutely nothing in the way of observance. The only time he really pays attention to his surroundings is when he’s studying something so he’ll know how to paint it- or, if you’re lucky, during a conversation. It’s as if he’s saving up all his observation skills for those few moments when they really matter. He’s always been like that- there’s no help for it, it seems. It drove his father crazy to live with two people who would pick every speck of dust off a spoon and yet take weeks to notice a splatter of blue paint on the wall, but there was never anything either Toivo or Elisa could do to change themselves.
As long as the past is under discussion, another thing that Toivo used to be is hopeful. He hung a lot of dreams on a lot of different stars, and wished fervently for every one. That was back before his tenth year, when he was still a child and still naïve enough to believe that wonderful things can happen. It was before his father died, before he had to give up his savings and with them any hope of a cure, before he realized that he would never cease to be a burden. Above all, it was before his mother died and he was helpless to do a thing about it. That day, he took every remaining hope he had- not a lot, because all of the ones about building a better life for himself and his mother died with her- and set it on metaphorical fire so that it wouldn’t hurt him anymore. He still daydreams a lot (he’s been known to miss whole conversations because he was off in his own world), but now they’re just memories or meanderings about the present, not wishes for the future. Every time he closes his eyes, he sees desperation to return to what used to be rather than plans for what could be.
Because what can be, for him? Toivo is the kind of person who needs a purpose, and he can’t imagine any reason for him to stay alive. He wants to help people, but how? He’ll never be able to help rebuild Panem’s ruins- he can’t even walk on his own two feet, let alone stay standing while he lifts and moves heavy things. He can’t work with people face-to-face, because he’s afraid of them and because most people avoid those with disabilities like his. Anything behind the scenes is out, too, even simple desk jobs, because anything he can do would get done a lot quicker by someone who can write and move without uncontrollable shaking overtaking their limbs.
He would turn to the scholarly world- you don’t need to move much to study and think- but honestly, Toivo has never been the brightest chip off the brick. He’s pretty intuitive, as street-smart as his life has allowed him to be, but information seeps out of his brain as quickly as it gets there, and he has trouble grasping new concepts. Toivo lives in the abstract, with his paint and the remains of his dreams, and he doesn’t know how to pull himself out of that into the concrete world, even the concrete mental world.
Everything he can think of that he could do for the world has been considered and eventually rejected. He’s not physically capable of this; that involves too many people; all of those would get done better if someone else did them. Every time he thinks he’s found something to reach toward- and believe you me, there are things that he could do that would do a lot of good for Panem- his own insecurity teams up with voices he hasn’t heard in ten years and together they bash that faint hope over the head.
And so, with (as far as he can tell) no reason to live, Toivo’s stopped doing so. He hasn’t killed himself, and isn’t planning to- the boy doesn’t hate himself, he just doesn’t see the point in his existence. He’s not broken or breaking, just slowly winding down. Everything about him is becoming a shadow of what he used to be- hope fading to vague longing, timidity to avoidance, kindness to fear. He’s withdrawn into himself, become slower to wake up in the morning and quicker to escape into sleep. He needs someone to step in, kick his gears a little, and give the key on his back a good harsh winding-up, but no one can; even if they knew enough to want to, he wouldn’t let them. He’s too afraid they’ll hurt him- or, worse yet, leave him. As it is, it’s going to take a lot of luck to pull him up, or pretty soon his mind is just going to finish shutting down, and his body is going to follow suit.
you don't need guarantees
you just want something to build
before you turn to the knife
Elisa Nollapeli wasn’t much- which, in the old days, tended to be a good thing. Make too big a name for yourself, and before you knew it the Capitol would notice you, which could be either good (you might just see yourself as mayor someday if you played your cards right) or very, very bad. (Why do you think so many people disappeared in the dead of night, or were publicly whipped- executed, even- for reasons that were never explained?) She wasn’t a rebel or a politician, or important in any way at all- she was just a painter in District Nine who sold commissions wherever she could to feed herself. She would have been happy staying that way for the rest of her life, too- she wasn’t what anyone could call rich, but she was making it well enough by the standards of her District, and she loved painting with a passion that outshone any struggles. It didn’t matter how little she ate each night, as long as she had enough paint and canvas to draw the meal. Hers was a pretty young face that somehow, even after being weathered hard by years of struggling in financial water, managed to remain soft. A painter can’t afford to have their eyes glaze over, and hers never did- every day of her life, she would see things the way a child saw them, full of wonder and beauty. She could find art in anything and everything, and whiles others broke down under the stress of life in Panem, that art fueled her love of life.
She was yanked from her peaceful life at the age of twenty-three, when the younger of her two older sisters (Katri, a twenty-five-year-old medic) went off to join the rebellion. It wouldn’t have been a problem (the family certainly wasn’t upset with her- they worried, but by all means, they applauded her!), but she was new at the game of secrecy and not meant for it; she forgot to be careful going home one night, and a Peacekeeper caught and killed her.
Elisa wasn’t intending to sign up, honestly. She went to the place where Katri had been meeting the other rebellion members, yes, but it was only to meet these people who her sister had believed in and pay her respects to them. Before she knew it, though, she was wrapped up in their world and had become a weapons repair girl. The rebellion was young in those days, more a loose cluster of organizations in each District that fought amongst each other just as often as they made a useful move against the Capitol, but despite the chaos she found out that enjoyed working with these people. Their vision was astounding- really, it was no wonder Katri had gotten pulled into things so fast, the idea of freedom was almost addicting. Perhaps more than that, she loved working with the things they brought her- guns mostly, stolen off the bodies of dead Peacekeepers. Pulling them apart and putting them back together in a way that made them work was almost as much fun as finding the right way to shade a certain tree at noon.
The existence of Vieno Vaalia didn’t exactly hurt, either. Originally from District Nine like her, he was a twenty-seven-year-old carpenter who turned rebel when the Capitol dragged off his apprentice. The two met on the way to a meeting, and hit it off in no time. Inter-rebellion relationships weren’t exactly encouraged, lest people become distracted from their work, but they were generally considered better than spilling all the organizations’ secrets to a civilian, so most people turned a blind eye as the two grew closer and closer. He was a communications spy, anyway; they rarely worked together or even saw each other during the day, and both were far away from the front lines. There wasn’t a whole lot of danger, everyone figured.
And there wasn’t, until Elisa ended up pregnant. That would have been a lot more trouble if she had any other job, especially one in field work. As it was she worked as hard as ever, refusing to cut back her hours at all despite her colleagues’ constant insistence that she get some rest. Like her son would one day be, Elisa was the sort who would not stop working once she dedicated herself to something. The rebellion was nothing against the Capitol; they needed everything she could give, and even a child inside her had to take second place to that.
Until he was born, that was. Infants take a lot of time to take care of, especially infants who choke easily and can’t move as well as he should be able to. Elisa had to cut back drastically on her work, and hated it because she knew they were short on mechanics during that time- but despite that, she adored her son. Both parents did, for that matter. Even when he began to show signs of having difficulty with movement, they were only worried, not upset that their son wasn’t perfect; they got one of the rebellion’s medics to consult his tomes for a diagnosis, and once they got it they spent as much time as they could reading up on his condition so they would know how to help him. Never once did they criticize him for having an imperfect cerebellum.
Outside of that, they were pretty much a normal family, and Toivo spent his first several years in relative peace. Two other families that Elisa and Vieno were fairly close to had children about Toivo’s age (a boy a year older than him named Sindri, and a girl called Yente who was several months younger), and the three sets of parents helped each other raise the children- one set of parents would babysitt while the other two were working, and so forth. The three grew up almost as close as siblings, and would remain that way for years.
When he was five, his parents agreed that he had to have some form of education. The next school year that started in District Nine saw Toivo staggering in, as steady on his crutches as he could possibly make himself and eager to unearth the mysteries of learning in the way that only a young child can be.
Unfortunately, the experience was far from what the dreamy, talkative young Toivo expected. He wasn’t good at his classes; his parents had taught him basic reading and arithmetic, but as soon as they moved on to other, slightly more advanced things he began to fall further and further behind. Learning to write was especially hard for him, thanks to motor control that was even worse than your typical child’s. Most of his classmates were kind to him, but the few that weren’t were particularly nasty, targeting not just his obvious disability but also his constant need for help in class, his barely-legible handwriting, and even his politeness.
He never said a word about the teasing to his parents, but the teacher mentioned in quietly to them at one point, and Toivo didn’t go to that building the next year- he was, in fact, homeschooled for the rest of his school career. It was probably the right choice, especially because work in the rebellion was becoming more demanding and the family was started to need to move around, but in some ways it was also already too late. Some of those words would follow him for the rest of his life.
Elisa and Vieno never told their son why they had to move from place to place, but eventually it made itself apparent. The increasing rebellion activity made things dangerous, and when Toivo was nine, Vieno was taken away to the Capitol. His fate, avox or death, is unknown to this day, but no one in District Nine ever saw him again. His mother would have left the rebellion entirely then, so that she could grieve quietly and take care of Toivo, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Rumors were floating around of organizations banding together now that a Quarter Quell, which was sure to give the rebels an extra push, was right around the corner. The rebellion needed her more than ever, and they both knew it.
Toivo spent a lot of time that year either on his own or with his friends, studying and dreaming of days when he and his mother would live together peacefully.
The year after, the rebellion finally succeeded, and Panem’s government was overthrown. Elisa no longer had to work for the rebellion, but she didn’t feel like she could go back to painting in District Nine, either. After some discussion with between them, the family of two moved to District Thirteen to help resettle it.
Unfortunately, Elisa was three things: a mother, a painter, and a weapons mechanic, none of which were much good in the new District (except, of course, being a mother to Toivo, who was still ten and desperately needed his parent). Despite her best efforts, they quickly spiraled into poverty.
That alone wouldn’t have started Toivo on the road to the jaded, fading thing he would one day become. Plenty of people have lived through poverty and remained optimists. The problem was the jar. Toivo had borrowed (and never returned) a large glass jar from a neighbor when he was about four, and throughout his childhood he would save a little money whenever he could. His biggest, most important dream had always been to run on his own two legs, and it had been given support in the form of hope. He was going to save up enough money to go to a hospital in District Six and get a cure.
Toivo aged about eight years the day he realized that he would never even have a chance to get to District Six if he and his mother starved to death. He gave up his District Six fund, and with it went his longest-lasting dream. Between that, Elisa’s meager income, and the money they were given to help with Toivo’s CP, they made it okay for the next few years, and sometimes they even had enough to start filling the jar again. Something always came up, though- usually, the need to eat- and the savings never reached half of what they had been. Both tried their best, but slowly it sank in that he would never go to District Six.
And then that he would never run.
And then that they would always live like this, desperately scraping for both money and happiness.
His dreams slipped away from him, one by one, but there was always a bit of hope. There was always the example of his mother, who had helped the rebellion succeed in the face of impossible odds. If she- and they- could do such insane, impossible things, then why couldn’t he?
He never should have found out the answer to that. Toivo was good at fulfilling plans once he set his mind to them, and his determination should have driven him out of poverty and straight to District Six. The universe didn’t exactly agree, though, and decided he needed to be disillusioned. The day after his fifteenth birthday, Elisa choked on a piece of stale bread and died. He was there, and attempted to save her, but couldn’t control his limbs well enough to successfully perform the Heimlich maneuver. She stopped coughing, stopped breathing entirely, and soon enough her pulse died away.
He went to live with his aunt, an elder sister of Elisa’s who had also moved down to District Thirteen. Laila is kind to him, but doesn’t really know how to deal with him or his disability, and the two are not close. She doesn’t realize what’s happening to him because she doesn’t know how he used to be and can’t see the changes, and he wouldn’t let her in if she tried. He’s even pushed away Sindri and Yente- pretty easy, really, because their families went back to District Nine and their only correspondence these days is through letters. He just stopped replying, and though he sometimes gets a letter from one or the other asking what’s happened and what they can do to fix it, he never lets himself put pen to paper. In truth, it’s gotten to the point where he no longer wants to; this half-life of his doesn’t make him happy, but he’s grown comfortable with it. Even if he saw a point to stepping back into the flow of the world (which he doesn’t, because he’s convinced he’s as good as useless to the universe), he would be too afraid of what would happen to want to take the leap on his own.
He doesn’t want anything anymore, really. He’s just fading slowly, waiting for the day when he finally turns into a wisp and blows away to oblivion.
gotta move gotta choose
you've got a difference to make
don't watch it happen again
gotta change rearrange
something's bending to break
it's just a matter of when
you're gona set your hope on fire
F97A7A - FAC37A - FAFA7A - 87FA7A - 7AFAEE - 7A83FA - F67AFA
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gotta fight gotta strike
'cause there's no turning away
from what you don't want to know
These days, he’s just known as Toivo Vaalia
(Toi is retired- those who could call him that are gone)
He is, evidently, Male
Despite drawbacks, he’s survived to be 15
Though his parents hailed from District Nine,
Thirteen is the only true home he’s ever known
gotta see gotta be
if they're all going astray
don't let them take you in tow
Most people, looking at Toivo’s for the first time, aren’t quite sure whether to call him pale or dark. Generally they just settle on “monochromatic,” because there’s no real answer to that question- he is both. His hair, which usually looks like he just woke up because even when he does bother to brush it just goes all unruly on him again, is a dark brown almost deep enough to be black. His eyes aren’t quite that dark, but they are a relatively deep shade of grey, with a bit of dark brown lurking underneath- and they seem all the darker for the shadows under and inside them, shadows borne of fatigue of life rather than lack of sleep.
His skin, though, is remarkably pale. (At least, what you can see of it. Toivo frequently forgets splatters paint all over his hands and lower arms, and doesn’t really care enough to wash it off.) Some of that is from genetics, but a great deal is also from spending so much time inside. Either way, the contrast between skin and hair is striking.
In terms of looks, not much else about him is interesting. Toivo is... average. Very average. Possibly the only thing about his face that isn’t average is how soft it looks. He’s seen sorrow and you can tell, but even so something about the shape of his face just screams naïveté. Maybe it’s just the thin nose and the wideness of his eyes, or perhaps it’s that he’s never been in any real danger, outside of hunger. Excepting his hands and lower arms, which have often been scraped up because he falls so frequently and puts his hands out to break the fall, he lacks the scars of childhood adventure that others tend to accumulate in their early years.
Toivo’s always been a pretty casual person, clothing-wise. Jeans and a t-shirt are the way to go. In winter, he swaps out the lightweight shirts for long sleeves, but even then you’ll never see him in anything too formal. Easy to get into and out of, and comfortable to wear- those are his only requirements for clothing, and with the exception of the formal black suit he wore to his mother’s funeral, everything in his wardrobe fits them.
Whatever he’s wearing, there are a few accessories that Toivo will never be without- more tools than accessories, really. His light grey crutches, the type that encircle the forearms, are a permanent fixture any time he’s outside his house. The others are slightly less obvious, but he still needs them if he wants to walk very far: a set of knee braces. Both these things draw a lot of odd glances, and more questions than he’s ever really enjoyed answering.
He will, though- just press a bit, and he’ll give in and tell you that for whatever reason, his brain didn’t form exactly the way it was supposed to, leaving him with a damaged cerebellum and therefore ataxic cerebral palsy. Anything involving movement is harder for him than it should be, from walking (he always looks like he’s about to fall over, and frequently does) to just speaking (his voice always has a slight tremor in it because he can’t form the words smoothly enough). If he tries to do anything requiring precision, such as writing, the limb he’s using will begin to shake uncontrollably. It’s not the most debilitating condition out there, but it’s pretty up there when it comes to limiting what he can do. Every moment of his life has been affected by it, and every moment from now on will be as well.
At exactly five feet tall, Toivo is pretty short for his age and sex, even when standing at his absolute tallest. Similarly, at only eighty-five pounds he’s quite small for his frame- but then, what can you expect? He has no muscle on him whatsoever, and any fat reserves have long since been burned by his body to stay alive.
gotta leave gotta bleed
you've gotta stop lying still
'cause this is no kind of life
Toivo used to be shy. He could talk to people he didn’t know, but his voice would hesitate and words would trip over one another. It wasn’t until you really got to know him that he would actually talk to you with only one catch in his voice- the one caused by his difficulty with moving his muscles. Nowadays, though, he’s a full-out recluse. It’s not just that he has trouble approaching people and talking to them, it’s that he goes out of his way to avoid it. Only four people have ever been close to him, and two have died, so for most people the difference is barely even there- but ask those other two, the teenagers he used to call his best (only, really) friends, and they’ll tell you just how different he is. Even with them, he barely talks, and never about anything important. He used to be okay conversing with strangers if they approached him first, but now he squirms and desperately tries to force an excuse to get out. It’s as if he’s gotten to be afraid of them, they’ll say with odd looks, never realizing that that’s exactly what has happened. He is scared- scared of what they’ll do or say to him, and scared that they’ll leave him. He pushes people away from him so that they can’t go away.
His usual self must still be in there, though, because he doesn’t try too hard. He always stops just short of rudeness. When he was a child, during that one year in school, several of the crueler children figured out that even when the teacher was around, they could still hurt him via a lack of courtesy. He remembers that, and still feels the sting even now, so he avoids doing anything that might cause anyone else to feel the same hurt. He’s considerate almost to a fault, and all the more so because he’s never sure what will give someone else pain. For all that he wants other people to stay away, he cares deeply about their welfare, and yet he’s awful at empathizing. You usually have to tell him what mood you’re in if you want him to know, and as a general rule he hasn’t a clue what to do about it once he knows. Still, he recognizes that he’s bad at dealing with people on an emotional level, and that very recognition makes him even more thoughtful, even more careful how he goes about his conversations.
Likewise, Toivo is very generous when it comes to people in need- unless they need money. The years have taught him to be very careful with his money, and unless someone is obviously about to die he will pretend he has no change rather than give it to them. That said, he’ll give away anything else he needs to- items, food, time, effort- to pull someone out of a hole, as long as they don’t want him to stick around afterward. (Just because he wants to help you doesn’t mean he’s not afraid of you.)
Sometimes consideration goes just a little too far, though. Toivo hates conflict, and even the slightest hint of it will send him scrambling. He will invariably run away rather than face a quarrel, in part because he doesn’t want to hurt the other person but also largely because he doesn’t want himself to hurt. It’s an odd combination of cowardice and courtesy, and when he’s backed into a corner it becomes even more prominent. Many a time has Toivo been called irrational, or bad at problem-solving, because his brand of conflict resolution generally has nothing whatsoever to do with the problem at hand. He doesn’t care about the problem. He just wants to stop hurting, and he wants the other person to stop hurting. He wants the argument to go away, and it doesn’t matter to him whether or not it’s actually solved.
Luckily, he doesn’t have to worry about that very much, because even before Toivo spent a lot of time locked away in his room. His mother never painted much during his lifetime- between him and the rebellion and then trying to make a life in District Thirteen, she rarely had the time or the money for materials- but the few times she did helped transfer her love of the art to her son. It’s difficult for him, because of the intention tremor (one of the more distinctive symptoms of ataxic cerebral palsy is that trying to do specific movements, like holy a paintbrush, causes the moving limbs to shake uncontrollably), but when his hands shake and mess him up, he just waits for it to dry and paints right over the mistake. Toivo is a particularly determined sort of person when he wants to be; he’s normally pretty unmotivated, but should he actually decide to adopt a project of some sort, odds are he won’t come up for food, sleep, or air until every detail is firmly in place. That, at least, has not changed in the past few years and probably never will; the only difference is that he spends even more time on his pet projects.
Not that things like eating are ever high on his list, anyway. It’s not uncommon for Toivo to wonder why he’s so hungry, only to realize that he hasn’t eaten anything in almost two days- not because the food wasn’t there, but because he just forgot to eat. The kid has plenty of common sense, but absolutely nothing in the way of observance. The only time he really pays attention to his surroundings is when he’s studying something so he’ll know how to paint it- or, if you’re lucky, during a conversation. It’s as if he’s saving up all his observation skills for those few moments when they really matter. He’s always been like that- there’s no help for it, it seems. It drove his father crazy to live with two people who would pick every speck of dust off a spoon and yet take weeks to notice a splatter of blue paint on the wall, but there was never anything either Toivo or Elisa could do to change themselves.
As long as the past is under discussion, another thing that Toivo used to be is hopeful. He hung a lot of dreams on a lot of different stars, and wished fervently for every one. That was back before his tenth year, when he was still a child and still naïve enough to believe that wonderful things can happen. It was before his father died, before he had to give up his savings and with them any hope of a cure, before he realized that he would never cease to be a burden. Above all, it was before his mother died and he was helpless to do a thing about it. That day, he took every remaining hope he had- not a lot, because all of the ones about building a better life for himself and his mother died with her- and set it on metaphorical fire so that it wouldn’t hurt him anymore. He still daydreams a lot (he’s been known to miss whole conversations because he was off in his own world), but now they’re just memories or meanderings about the present, not wishes for the future. Every time he closes his eyes, he sees desperation to return to what used to be rather than plans for what could be.
Because what can be, for him? Toivo is the kind of person who needs a purpose, and he can’t imagine any reason for him to stay alive. He wants to help people, but how? He’ll never be able to help rebuild Panem’s ruins- he can’t even walk on his own two feet, let alone stay standing while he lifts and moves heavy things. He can’t work with people face-to-face, because he’s afraid of them and because most people avoid those with disabilities like his. Anything behind the scenes is out, too, even simple desk jobs, because anything he can do would get done a lot quicker by someone who can write and move without uncontrollable shaking overtaking their limbs.
He would turn to the scholarly world- you don’t need to move much to study and think- but honestly, Toivo has never been the brightest chip off the brick. He’s pretty intuitive, as street-smart as his life has allowed him to be, but information seeps out of his brain as quickly as it gets there, and he has trouble grasping new concepts. Toivo lives in the abstract, with his paint and the remains of his dreams, and he doesn’t know how to pull himself out of that into the concrete world, even the concrete mental world.
Everything he can think of that he could do for the world has been considered and eventually rejected. He’s not physically capable of this; that involves too many people; all of those would get done better if someone else did them. Every time he thinks he’s found something to reach toward- and believe you me, there are things that he could do that would do a lot of good for Panem- his own insecurity teams up with voices he hasn’t heard in ten years and together they bash that faint hope over the head.
And so, with (as far as he can tell) no reason to live, Toivo’s stopped doing so. He hasn’t killed himself, and isn’t planning to- the boy doesn’t hate himself, he just doesn’t see the point in his existence. He’s not broken or breaking, just slowly winding down. Everything about him is becoming a shadow of what he used to be- hope fading to vague longing, timidity to avoidance, kindness to fear. He’s withdrawn into himself, become slower to wake up in the morning and quicker to escape into sleep. He needs someone to step in, kick his gears a little, and give the key on his back a good harsh winding-up, but no one can; even if they knew enough to want to, he wouldn’t let them. He’s too afraid they’ll hurt him- or, worse yet, leave him. As it is, it’s going to take a lot of luck to pull him up, or pretty soon his mind is just going to finish shutting down, and his body is going to follow suit.
you don't need guarantees
you just want something to build
before you turn to the knife
Elisa Nollapeli wasn’t much- which, in the old days, tended to be a good thing. Make too big a name for yourself, and before you knew it the Capitol would notice you, which could be either good (you might just see yourself as mayor someday if you played your cards right) or very, very bad. (Why do you think so many people disappeared in the dead of night, or were publicly whipped- executed, even- for reasons that were never explained?) She wasn’t a rebel or a politician, or important in any way at all- she was just a painter in District Nine who sold commissions wherever she could to feed herself. She would have been happy staying that way for the rest of her life, too- she wasn’t what anyone could call rich, but she was making it well enough by the standards of her District, and she loved painting with a passion that outshone any struggles. It didn’t matter how little she ate each night, as long as she had enough paint and canvas to draw the meal. Hers was a pretty young face that somehow, even after being weathered hard by years of struggling in financial water, managed to remain soft. A painter can’t afford to have their eyes glaze over, and hers never did- every day of her life, she would see things the way a child saw them, full of wonder and beauty. She could find art in anything and everything, and whiles others broke down under the stress of life in Panem, that art fueled her love of life.
She was yanked from her peaceful life at the age of twenty-three, when the younger of her two older sisters (Katri, a twenty-five-year-old medic) went off to join the rebellion. It wouldn’t have been a problem (the family certainly wasn’t upset with her- they worried, but by all means, they applauded her!), but she was new at the game of secrecy and not meant for it; she forgot to be careful going home one night, and a Peacekeeper caught and killed her.
Elisa wasn’t intending to sign up, honestly. She went to the place where Katri had been meeting the other rebellion members, yes, but it was only to meet these people who her sister had believed in and pay her respects to them. Before she knew it, though, she was wrapped up in their world and had become a weapons repair girl. The rebellion was young in those days, more a loose cluster of organizations in each District that fought amongst each other just as often as they made a useful move against the Capitol, but despite the chaos she found out that enjoyed working with these people. Their vision was astounding- really, it was no wonder Katri had gotten pulled into things so fast, the idea of freedom was almost addicting. Perhaps more than that, she loved working with the things they brought her- guns mostly, stolen off the bodies of dead Peacekeepers. Pulling them apart and putting them back together in a way that made them work was almost as much fun as finding the right way to shade a certain tree at noon.
The existence of Vieno Vaalia didn’t exactly hurt, either. Originally from District Nine like her, he was a twenty-seven-year-old carpenter who turned rebel when the Capitol dragged off his apprentice. The two met on the way to a meeting, and hit it off in no time. Inter-rebellion relationships weren’t exactly encouraged, lest people become distracted from their work, but they were generally considered better than spilling all the organizations’ secrets to a civilian, so most people turned a blind eye as the two grew closer and closer. He was a communications spy, anyway; they rarely worked together or even saw each other during the day, and both were far away from the front lines. There wasn’t a whole lot of danger, everyone figured.
And there wasn’t, until Elisa ended up pregnant. That would have been a lot more trouble if she had any other job, especially one in field work. As it was she worked as hard as ever, refusing to cut back her hours at all despite her colleagues’ constant insistence that she get some rest. Like her son would one day be, Elisa was the sort who would not stop working once she dedicated herself to something. The rebellion was nothing against the Capitol; they needed everything she could give, and even a child inside her had to take second place to that.
Until he was born, that was. Infants take a lot of time to take care of, especially infants who choke easily and can’t move as well as he should be able to. Elisa had to cut back drastically on her work, and hated it because she knew they were short on mechanics during that time- but despite that, she adored her son. Both parents did, for that matter. Even when he began to show signs of having difficulty with movement, they were only worried, not upset that their son wasn’t perfect; they got one of the rebellion’s medics to consult his tomes for a diagnosis, and once they got it they spent as much time as they could reading up on his condition so they would know how to help him. Never once did they criticize him for having an imperfect cerebellum.
Outside of that, they were pretty much a normal family, and Toivo spent his first several years in relative peace. Two other families that Elisa and Vieno were fairly close to had children about Toivo’s age (a boy a year older than him named Sindri, and a girl called Yente who was several months younger), and the three sets of parents helped each other raise the children- one set of parents would babysitt while the other two were working, and so forth. The three grew up almost as close as siblings, and would remain that way for years.
When he was five, his parents agreed that he had to have some form of education. The next school year that started in District Nine saw Toivo staggering in, as steady on his crutches as he could possibly make himself and eager to unearth the mysteries of learning in the way that only a young child can be.
Unfortunately, the experience was far from what the dreamy, talkative young Toivo expected. He wasn’t good at his classes; his parents had taught him basic reading and arithmetic, but as soon as they moved on to other, slightly more advanced things he began to fall further and further behind. Learning to write was especially hard for him, thanks to motor control that was even worse than your typical child’s. Most of his classmates were kind to him, but the few that weren’t were particularly nasty, targeting not just his obvious disability but also his constant need for help in class, his barely-legible handwriting, and even his politeness.
He never said a word about the teasing to his parents, but the teacher mentioned in quietly to them at one point, and Toivo didn’t go to that building the next year- he was, in fact, homeschooled for the rest of his school career. It was probably the right choice, especially because work in the rebellion was becoming more demanding and the family was started to need to move around, but in some ways it was also already too late. Some of those words would follow him for the rest of his life.
Elisa and Vieno never told their son why they had to move from place to place, but eventually it made itself apparent. The increasing rebellion activity made things dangerous, and when Toivo was nine, Vieno was taken away to the Capitol. His fate, avox or death, is unknown to this day, but no one in District Nine ever saw him again. His mother would have left the rebellion entirely then, so that she could grieve quietly and take care of Toivo, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Rumors were floating around of organizations banding together now that a Quarter Quell, which was sure to give the rebels an extra push, was right around the corner. The rebellion needed her more than ever, and they both knew it.
Toivo spent a lot of time that year either on his own or with his friends, studying and dreaming of days when he and his mother would live together peacefully.
The year after, the rebellion finally succeeded, and Panem’s government was overthrown. Elisa no longer had to work for the rebellion, but she didn’t feel like she could go back to painting in District Nine, either. After some discussion with between them, the family of two moved to District Thirteen to help resettle it.
Unfortunately, Elisa was three things: a mother, a painter, and a weapons mechanic, none of which were much good in the new District (except, of course, being a mother to Toivo, who was still ten and desperately needed his parent). Despite her best efforts, they quickly spiraled into poverty.
That alone wouldn’t have started Toivo on the road to the jaded, fading thing he would one day become. Plenty of people have lived through poverty and remained optimists. The problem was the jar. Toivo had borrowed (and never returned) a large glass jar from a neighbor when he was about four, and throughout his childhood he would save a little money whenever he could. His biggest, most important dream had always been to run on his own two legs, and it had been given support in the form of hope. He was going to save up enough money to go to a hospital in District Six and get a cure.
Toivo aged about eight years the day he realized that he would never even have a chance to get to District Six if he and his mother starved to death. He gave up his District Six fund, and with it went his longest-lasting dream. Between that, Elisa’s meager income, and the money they were given to help with Toivo’s CP, they made it okay for the next few years, and sometimes they even had enough to start filling the jar again. Something always came up, though- usually, the need to eat- and the savings never reached half of what they had been. Both tried their best, but slowly it sank in that he would never go to District Six.
And then that he would never run.
And then that they would always live like this, desperately scraping for both money and happiness.
His dreams slipped away from him, one by one, but there was always a bit of hope. There was always the example of his mother, who had helped the rebellion succeed in the face of impossible odds. If she- and they- could do such insane, impossible things, then why couldn’t he?
He never should have found out the answer to that. Toivo was good at fulfilling plans once he set his mind to them, and his determination should have driven him out of poverty and straight to District Six. The universe didn’t exactly agree, though, and decided he needed to be disillusioned. The day after his fifteenth birthday, Elisa choked on a piece of stale bread and died. He was there, and attempted to save her, but couldn’t control his limbs well enough to successfully perform the Heimlich maneuver. She stopped coughing, stopped breathing entirely, and soon enough her pulse died away.
He went to live with his aunt, an elder sister of Elisa’s who had also moved down to District Thirteen. Laila is kind to him, but doesn’t really know how to deal with him or his disability, and the two are not close. She doesn’t realize what’s happening to him because she doesn’t know how he used to be and can’t see the changes, and he wouldn’t let her in if she tried. He’s even pushed away Sindri and Yente- pretty easy, really, because their families went back to District Nine and their only correspondence these days is through letters. He just stopped replying, and though he sometimes gets a letter from one or the other asking what’s happened and what they can do to fix it, he never lets himself put pen to paper. In truth, it’s gotten to the point where he no longer wants to; this half-life of his doesn’t make him happy, but he’s grown comfortable with it. Even if he saw a point to stepping back into the flow of the world (which he doesn’t, because he’s convinced he’s as good as useless to the universe), he would be too afraid of what would happen to want to take the leap on his own.
He doesn’t want anything anymore, really. He’s just fading slowly, waiting for the day when he finally turns into a wisp and blows away to oblivion.
gotta move gotta choose
you've got a difference to make
don't watch it happen again
gotta change rearrange
something's bending to break
it's just a matter of when
you're gona set your hope on fire
