Tumgik
#tl;dr she's the local mom with a sad backstory!!!
dawnhardn · 3 years
Text
INTRODUCING... DAWN HARDIN
Tumblr media
stitch by stitch, i tear apart if brokenness is a form of art i must be a poster child prodigy
Name: Dawn Hardin
Gender: cis woman
Age: forty-four
Sexuality: bisexual
Height: 5'4
Home District: capitol
Status: stylist
TW FOR FULL BIO: infertility, loss of body autonomy, hospital mention, mention of bugs.
i. of growing up
The mystery that has plagued her entire life is this: Dawn doesn't know her beginning. She knows all about the day she was adopted, oh, that's the part her parents boast about; her entire childhood, all she heard about was how she was saved. Only a toddler when she was plucked from District Nine, with nothing but scraps for clothes and a small pendant on a necklace with Nine's symbol, she doesn't remember much. She doesn't know where her story begins, nothing before that fateful day when she stumbled into her new parents' arms, kicking and crying, a child begging to be loved. Sometimes, when it's really quiet at night, she thinks she can still hear the wheat rustling with the gentle wind.
They were fine folk, her parents, but they had a hard time differentiating between love and possession. She grew up having everything she could ever want when it came to money; the prettiest dresses, the accessories, the hairs, the coolest toys and all the books her arms could carry. And they gave her attention, too. They gave her tenderness, sometimes. They loved her, but in their own way. She always needed to prove herself to them, she was always scrambling for their acceptance. She was their shiny trophy, the poor girl who had to be grateful to be living such a luxurious life, the lucky one, out of so many other less fortunate orphans. They never let her forget that, and despite loving them, too, she was always aching for something more.
When she's young and they push her to work in the Games, she obliges, like she always does. The yearly horror show often makes her avert her eyes from the television, sure, but she can pull her lips back and offer a smile and lie her way through this. Styling was the easiest option to stay far enough away from the carnage, and although it protected her from having to consider some of the more dreadful aspects of the Game, it didn't keep her from mourning every single loss. Every kid that wore her creations was held so dearly to her heart, even when she was just starting. The motherly instinct she felt towards them was something she couldn't hold it in if she tried. The pain of loss never gets easier to face, no matter how much the pile of bodies under her grows.
ii. of loving
She grew up thinking love was a fighting game, one step out of line and you lost it. She thought love meant buying shiny things, and parading around parties, and choking back tears. She had partners in her teenage years, silly flings here and there that never went anywhere, and she thought that was it. Love wasn't unconditional, love wasn't for everyone. 
Like a moth who couldn't find a flame, by her young adult years Dawn had accepted that she was destined to flap her wings around the darkness aimlessly until she tired herself out. And despite all this emptiness, she still carried her heart in her sleeve, a safety hazard as much as it was her biggest strength. Her hands always ready to help someone in need, she was always scrambling to give out the kind of unconditional love she never got from her parents, an empty cup pouring itself to fill others.
Then, she met Aeron. He was kind, and gentle, and he might as well be the Sun itself for the way he warmed up every room he walked into. The connection between them felt immediate, something sharp and undeniable, like the stars had always known their names. Dawn feels as if she can breathe for the first time in years.
She was born to be a mother, she knows this now. She'd grown up mothering every living thing that passed her way, and for a while there, she thought that would be enough; taking care of tributes, taking care of friends, taking care of fleeting lovers. But once she meets Aeron, she realizes the itch runs much deeper. It's a consuming desire, electric all through her body, how badly she wants to have children running around their house. Little ones to climb up the tree in their backyard, and draw on walls, and fill up the house with laughter. Aeron wants to be a father, too. Everything works out perfectly in her life, until it doesn't.
iii. of fighting
She can't dedicate herself to a family while she's still overworked by the Capitol, so when she puts in the request to retire, it's only because it feels fitting. She has an excuse to be let go, and they have an excuse to find a better stylist to put in her place. Someone more passionate, someone with more drive. She's already twenty-eight, she's sure there are handfuls of much younger, much more talented people out there they can choose from.
They don't let her retire. While at first, she thought she was offering them a perfectly balanced way out, now she realizes she was begging. And they hadn't obliged. She'll never forget the way Aeron's face fell when she told him the news, and the way he'd marched out of their house the very next morning, to fight for their future. To fight for her.
The next day, when she comes back home, exhausted and longing for her partner, she notices his coat isn't hanging by the door. There aren't any pots on the stovetop with dinner ready, waiting for her. There aren't extra shoes by the door, no notes on the fridge. She rushes to their bedroom to find none of his clothes in their closet, his toothbrush, his medicine, everything he ever touched, gone. Wiped from existence. She would've thought herself completely insane if it wasn't for the ring still on her finger, his initials written into it.
That's the message they send, to warn her never to stand up again. They send silence. No matter how many times she asks, they never tell her what they did to him. She can be on her knees, she can be pulling her hair out; she has barged into offices screaming until she had to be dragged away by security, and they still never give her anything. Nothing except a few more threats to remind her of the leash they have around her neck. They tug, and she follows.
iv. of giving up
There's no way around it, she knows, and once she understands that, something in her dies. She settles for the reality of never having her loved one back, and it kills her, too. If before she was a searching moth, now she has been caught by the capitol, her delicate wings pinned to an exhibitional board and drying out.
She continues working for them, and with every passing year, she's less and less inspired. The critics drive into her, looking to sink their teeth into easy prey, reminding her she's doing a terrible job any chance that they can. These jabs never work their way under her skin, because there's a state of numbness after she accepts the loss of Aeron in her life. Her dreams, her love, her everything, gone so quickly, ripped from her arms without notice. She has no hopes of him even being alive.
There's numbness, and it's almost uneventful because of it. She feels like she's barely living anymore, simply surviving to get by, pushing one foot after the other to keep moving. There's a spark of wrath somewhere, a flicker of red in the darkness of her chest that leaps around every once in a while, but her own dullness doesn't let it thrive. Another year passes, another Games she works on. That year, when she's sending her kids off to battle, her vision fails her.
She can't remember collapsing, but it must've been what happened. One minute she's within the Game headquarters feeling dizzy, the next minute she's waking up in a doctor's office. Her body shakes with shivers, her hands are as pale as the gown they have her wearing. The staff looks at her with pity, their eyes avoiding hers like they're hiding something. They speak in terms she's never heard of, and they're not direct when she demands to know what happened, but the gist of it is this -- there's more pain for her to carry in her life. She's been poisoned -- they don't tell her how --, and the substance has rotten her insides. She's pushed out of the hospital with the diagnosis of a lifetime of migraines, occasional shaky hands, and the inability to ever have children. That's when she understands the message they're sending.
And she feeds the spark in her chest until it turns into a forest fire.
v. of loving ii
When she loves these kids, now, it's almost out of spite. That's the one thing the Capitol can't take from her, the one thing they've tried beating out of her when they killed her spirits. They almost succeeded, too. They made her feel weak, hopeless, nothing more than an undead carcass dragging herself around without a goal. She won't let them do it, ever again.
So she loves the kids. She doesn't turn away from the screens anymore, she feels every splatter of blood, she cries for every death. She loves them endlessly, and without reservation, and without fear. She offers warm arms they can run into, and a shoulder to cry on, and a caring hand to push their hairs back. If the Capitol wants to kill her for this, then so be it. 
She'll accept death knowing she went down with a goddamn fight.
6 notes · View notes