Writing: Garrett and Breen

    I don't even know where to start with these two. I haven't written much for them, but they've grown in my head a lot, so know that the stuff I post here isn't nearly all of it, just the stuff I felt the inclination to put pen to paper for. Er, finger to keyboard for.

   The inspiration for Breen and Garrett came from the series The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins. Mainly, the brokenness of the characters in the last book. A lot of Garrett was based on Haymitch and how he dealt with his time in the Games, while Breen started similar to Katniss and bloomed into something else entirely.

   There isn't much in Breen and Garrett's story that is humorous or light hearted. They are broken people living in a world trying to recover itself after a time of fighting, pain, and death. Breen lost both her family and herself in the concentration camp where she'd been imprisoned because of her father's role in the government. I don't know about Garrett yet, but he's experienced a lot of pain as well. His is subtler, but it's definitely there.

   My bits pick up when Garrett and Breen, rescued from the camps for some time (maybe a year?) are travelling with Ryan and Miriam Wiley on a campaign of sorts to put Ryan in charge of the healing nation. Part of their campaign is reminding the people of what the country has gone through and what they can't go back to, and they use Garrett and Breen as an example of the horrors they must escape.

   Once again, I've haven't written much for them, so there'll just be a couple blips that I have written.


    The worst part was that they didn't seem to care.
    She screamed for them to just kill her and let the pain stop, and their faces never changed, never flinched. Her tortured cries and anguished sobs never had any effect on them.
    And that may have been the worst part in Breen's pain. Not the torture, physical or psychological, but the inhumanity of it. The detachment from the belief that human life is something sacred to be protected.


    Garrett lounged in his chair on the stage, watching the crowd with a disgruntled expression.
    The head of this whole fiasco, Ryan Wiley, stood with his hands spread as he repeated a speech Garrett had heard countless times, with just a few tweaks to make it a bit different from his last.
     He was aware of Breen’s presence to his right, where she sat with her head bowed, gaze on the ground. The previous night had been another long one for her. Everyone in their campaign party probably knew it, considering the way her screams had resounded through the train in the night.
    The man squinted up at the partially cloudy sky, his head aching from the light. He hadn’t slept the prior night either, and having to be here at this motivating speech thing was eating away his nap time.
     Already having spoken his small part, Garrett was able to deduce they were over halfway done. Breen would speak right before the end, and was usually able to come up with something that portrayed all that had happened to her with only a few words. As long as it was a good day.
     A bad day could equate to a simple line about change, which Miriam no doubt had tried to get her to say at some past gathering like this one.
    He let out a silent sigh, shifting in his hard-backed chair to see if it alleviated the pain in his back.
    “—Breen Avery and Garrett Jarbow are reminders of what we cannot allow this country to sink back into!” Wiley said into the microphone, voice loud with his urge to drive the point home. “They fight everyday to regain who they were before their arrest and subsequent torture.” He turned to look back at the two, sorrow in his eyes. “Breen, would you mind joining me?”
     Garrett watched as she got to her feet to do her odd shuffle-walk towards Wiley, and noted that he, wisely, did not extend a hand to aid her.
     Most of their horrors had been similar, but some had been entirely different. His memories of those ones made him drink more. Hers made her refuse any form of touch, whether intentional or not.
     Ryan continued to talk, but the male tuned it out, mind going back to where it always did when he had nothing better to do. Every moment he’d spent in the camps that Walker wanted to use as an example had been burned into his memories, inescapable even in the deepest sleep or glass.
     So lost was Garrett in his own thoughts that he nearly missed Breen’s closing words.
     “—would rather face the horrors of that camp a hundred times over before I had to watch anyone else suffer like we did,” she spoke into the microphone, voice unsteady, like it usually was if she decided to speak.


   When the two of them were finally free to live their lives as they pleased, they knew there was no way they were going to be able to part ways.
  There were no words needed that day.
  Garrett had hoisted the one bag that carried all of their things and held out a hand for Breen to take. She'd been reluctant to take that first step off the train, knowing that they wouldn't be coming back to it.
  They had no place to go, but they had money that had been donated by supporters of the Ryans to give them something to start with.


   And that's about it for them. I think I've got more in notebooks, but considering the numerous notebooks I have got... it would take more than a little while to actually find the small scrawls I've done. So.

   I'm not going to say I hope you enjoyed it, but perhaps you found it interesting? Feel free to leave a comment if you've got any pressing issues/opinions on this drabble of mine. Thank you very much for reading.

   Ad astra per aspera.
   To the stars, through difficulty.