BASICS
Faceclaim: Brandon Sklenar
Name: Sterling Whitvale
Age: 34
Gender: Cis Man
Home: District 8
Role: Civilian/Rebel
Personality: Bullheaded, protective, self punishing, adaptive, analytical, cynical, and direct
Song: Black Hole Sun by Sound Garden
BIOGRAPHY
The name Sterling conjures images of shining silver, splendor, wealth. But Sterling’s life has only ever been covered in grime. In soot. In dirt, sweat, blood, tears. Although he had been trained to stop shedding the latter years ago. Like most in District 8, his family was not wealthy, and they worked in the mills that supplied the great folks of the Capitol and favored districts with their expensive frocks, and the rest of Panem with their rags. His mother and sister worked on the handmaid items, working their deft fingers to the bone with intricate stitching and complicated beading, while his father worked on the line for the more mass produced items. Sterling, with an innate skill and interest in the workings of machines, became the intern for the machinist at the mill that produced the peace keeper’s uniforms, putting in his four hours of work after school every day.
It wasn’t a pleasant existence, too poor to make any upward strides and too tired from work to find another way to do so, but his family got by. That is until the 53rd hunger games. On the day of the reaping, his sister was exactly one week, only 168 hours from being 22, no longer eligible for the hunger games. And their parents, despite not having much, thought of themselves as having enough, so never let their children put their names in for tesserae. But in a--and this phrase is so lacking to describe the devastation--bout of bad luck, Stella’s name was plucked from that god damn stupid bowl, and she was plucked from their lives, just like that.
They were supposed to have three years of calm, with Stella finally being over 21 and Sterling having 3 years before he was 15 and eligible to be reaped. But fate was a cruel bitch, and snatched those three years from their hands right as they reached for it. Sterling loved his sister dearly, but she was not meant for the harsh realities of the hunger games (although, who is, really?). Her hands were meant for making beautiful things, not to hold a weapon. Her eyes were used to narrowing in on fine details, not scanning for threats. And even at the young age of 12, as he hugged his big sister, begging for her to stay, as if she had a choice, Sterling knew that she wouldn’t survive the games.
She survived for awhile simply by hiding. But between lack of sponsors and supplies, she grew weak and tired and ill, and after being spotted by a career, young Sterling watched with wide eyes and a gnawing in his stomach as his sister was slaughtered on the screen in front of him. That gnawing feeling has never left him, a constant reminder of the injustice, of the macabre and demented way of their society.
The week before his very first reaping, Sterling was determined to never have to stand in the plaza in front of the justice building, waiting to see if his own life would be sold to the capitol in exchange for a small period of entertainment. So he took advantage of his position at work, manufacturing a complication with a machine at the mill, so he and his mentor would have to stay late to fix it. Leaving the factory that produced the peace keeper suits empty of workers and practically empty of guards. He stuffed a suit into his rucksack, and made for the door. His plan? Wear it to the border, to where district 8 bordered 12 and then bordered free land. He had heard all the rumors to keep people from trying to make it out there, but he didn’t believe a word of it. And even if they did turn out to be true, it’d be better than having to face a reaping year after year, always wondering if it was his turn to have his golden string of life cut short by those damn three hags known as the fates.
But his mentor Aloysius, caught his wrist, and without saying a word, took his rucksack and returned the stolen suit. He knew something Sterling didn’t, and that was the fact that the quarterly inventory would be taken just the next day, which would have left Sterling with nowhere near enough time to get far enough away before they found out a suit was stolen. So his plan was thwarted, but the rebellion that had started in his gnawing gut had not been extinguished, and in fact started to make it’s way under his skin, into his beating heart, and would lie dormant within him until it was needed.
Every year, during the games, he could feel it, burning in him, but it really only started to roar some 9 years after that fateful night, when at 24, after a grueling 16 hours trying to fix the turbine for the biggest mill in the district, he almost quite literally ran into Cecilia. He wouldn’t tell her this until some time in to their relationship, but he recognized her instantly. Not from the games themselves, as he refused to watch, but the reaping. It was his second to last year of eligibility, and he remembered having to wipe the one rogue tear that ran down his cheek as he watched the coverage of her young brothers holding on to her, remembering when he had done the same to his own sister.
Loving her was finally what awoke that smoldering rebellion inside of him, and fanned it until it became a flame. Seeing the disgusting hold the capitol had on the woman he loved and being unable to do anything about it made him want to burn it all down. That fervor only increased as their family grew from the two of them, to three, to four, and finally five. He knew no amount of submission to Snow and the capitol could keep their children safe. The thought of them, standing in front of the justice building, waiting to hear if their names would be called, made him sick to his stomach. And he refused to let that happen. While his heart screamed rebellion, he knew in his gut that he would do whatever it took, even if that meant reverting to his plan of some 17 years ago, stealing peacekeeper suits and sneaking them all past the district border.
He stupidly said as much in a drunken state to someone at a tavern, and for once luck was on Sterling and his family’s side. Not only was the person not someone to turn a person in for that blasphemy against the capitol, but they were someone who felt the same, and were connected to the startings of a group of rebels inside District 8. Between Sterling’s fervor for the cause and his access to the capitol through his wife and the ridiculousness of the capitol’s obsession with their family, Sterling has proven himself to be a helpful member of the cause.
Now, he just needs to get his wife and kids out of the capitol and it’s crosshairs before it’s too late.
