Killen Timmerhout

Killen Timmerhout is a tribute made by Xax. Please don't use Killen without his permission."When I'm away from you I'm happier than ever. Wish I could explain it better; I wish it wasn't true."

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Name: Killen Timmerhout

Age: 16

District: 7

Gender: Male

Appearance: Michael Provost

Height: 5’8

Personality: Killen is above all, someone who enjoys having engaging conversations. Doesn’t matter if they’re on topics he’s interested in or if others agree with his opinions or not, so long as they get his mind going and working. This doesn’t mean that he’s one of those people who talks non-stop, but rather someone that, if given the chance, will never turn down a verbal sparring round. He has a very strong character and critical judgement skills. Not one to blindly obey others, Killen is someone that unconsciously always looks for flaws in others plans, not with a desire to minimise them, but rather to always be on the road to improvement. He doesn’t have a hard time disagreeing with his peers, leaders or superiors vocally, but he also has enough common sense to know when it is prudent to do so and when it isn’t. While he does enjoy defending his perspectives and ideologies, and even more when he achieves persuading others into sharing them, he’s also perceptive enough to see when people’s own ideas are immovable and he respects that; well knowing that he’ll only lose time and effort in attempting to do otherwise.

He’s an intellectual, observant, and savvy individual that enjoys theoretical ideas, and whose creativity is only limited by reality and viability. He enjoys puzzles and challenges (both testimony to his rather competitive nature), and overall just any opportunity that allows his mind to be rivalled, specially if it’s so hard to resolve that by the time he does it, he feels full of accomplishment and self-satisfaction. Perhaps what he enjoys the most in the world is being told there’s something he isn’t capable of doing and then going ahead and doing it. Perhaps a romantic both in the platonic, and non-platonic sense, Killen is very hard not to get along with, if at least on a superficial level. He’s got so many interests and likes and enjoys knowing more about them through research and conversation, so he is always learning even more and finding ways to connect with other people.

Killen is the type of person to always try to look at the good in people (though not ignoring their flaws) which in a way could testify a bit of his slight naïveté. This trait is also visible in his attachment issues, which were the very reason for him remaining for so long in a toxic and abusive relationship despite recognising it for what it was. Since then, while he’s remained mostly the same and still somewhat wears his heart on his sleeve, he’s currently still hurt and rather emotionally vulnerable. Though as mentioned before, he adores meeting new people and connecting with them, it is with a significantly fewer amount of people that he really bonds with, and to those, he will quickly grow attached to, and feel emotionally vulnerable should they betray or abandon him, whether physically or emotionally. With a very noble spirit, it’s easy for him to forgive others and want to help those in need if he notices that their intentions are true. A kinaesthetic at heart, Killen is someone who usually looks forward to having contact with his surroundings in order to understand them, and this includes bonding with people.

Backstory:

'DISCLAIMER: Trigger warnings for suicide and abusive relationships. Reader discretion advised.'

Jonathen Timmerhout was a hard-working man through and through. After having his own father die over a machinery accident when he was only fourteen, Jon had to grow up quicker than the rest of his peers and drop out of his education to get into the lumber industry to provide for his mother and his three younger sisters. One shift didn’t provide enough money seeing as his pay couldn’t be the same as a full-grown, experienced man’s considering their difference in productivity so Jon was forced to do two to get by. The days were arduous and his health couldn’t take working for so long and sleeping for so little in the long-term, so he had to find diverse ways to increase his productivity and quickly. By the time he was fifteen, he only had to work for a shift and a half, and at sixteen, he matched the pace of the average male adult, so he cut it down to just one full shift.

Though his health and overall life quality increased significantly from just this, his family could still only barely make it with his pay, and his sisters started requiring more and more money as they grew up and needed supplies for their education so Jonathen decided he would need to become even better at what he did. Besides signing up for tesserae for both of his sisters, he found out new techniques, devices and cheats that he’d use to cut as many trees as quickly as possible, seeing as he got a commission depending on his efficiency.

Whenever others were taking their lunch breaks, he just kept cutting. While others would take small breathers in between chopped trees, he would move from one to the next without so much as the bat of an eye. Essentially becoming a machine, Jon had no time to make friends at work and the others would just see him as the odd man out. Whenever he arrived home, he’d be so tired that he’d sometimes would just have dinner and crash. He tried to make the most of the time that he had with his family, but it really wasn’t much, and he was often irritable from the hard days’ work. They understood, so they just gave him space, but that only rendered him feeling very lonely. Time went by and he grew up to be a strong, determined and no-nonsense man with a difficulty to relate to others. By the time he was twenty-two, he was the most productive lumberjack in his company, and among the best in the District. He would take pride in such a feat if he’d achieved it out of pride, or ambition, but it was out of need, so it was only a reflection of just how bad his situation was.

Things were going decently. The Timmerhouts were now living more comfortably and he even had been saving for a while when suddenly his mother fell ill, and though they tried to save her by paying for the best doctor his money could afford, she died a few weeks afterwards. Though strictly speaking that meant one less mouth to feed, he was reasonably destroyed by the situation and was left with taking care of his sisters all by himself. Luckily, Malissa, the eldest was of age now, so she helped as best as she could, and while their home’s income didn’t exactly double by this, it was still a lifeline for the broken family.

It was around this time that Jonathen fell in love with a young girl after running into her in the main square on his free day while buying the groceries. She had fair skin, emerald eyes and hair that the colour of raw wheat that reached the small of her back. She was deaf after slowly losing her hearing over the past few years but could otherwise speak somewhat clearly and was adept at lip-reading. Her name was Saryl, and she came from a rather wealthy family, so her parents didn’t approve of Jon, who, in their eyes, wasn’t a good catch.

Saryl felt moved by Jon’s drive to care for his family and following a rather short courtship, the two got married, which ended in having Saryl’s family turning their back on her and her new family. Jonathen’s sisters loved Saryl and they quickly became friends. She was rather shy and reserved, much like Jonathen, but she was sweet, noble, and joyful, as opposed to her husband. The two started saving up again to have a child of their own and Malissa even offered to help. As soon as they had enough for one, they decided to go for it, but Saryl ended up giving birth to two girls and a baby boy at the same time.

The three children proved to be a great challenge for the Timmerhouts seeing as only Jonathen and Melissa were the ones who worked and had to provide for eight people in total, so Jonathen had increase his time working yet again, until Saryl also found a position to work in, but due to her different capacities, she was offered an outraging wage. Still, anything would be of help so she took it and left the triplets to be raised by Jonathen’s remaining twin sisters who still weren’t of age but had already finished their education.

And so it was that the triplets grew up seeing little of their mother and even less of their father. Jonathen would often be grouchy after the long days and sometimes, when he would drink, he would blame their financial struggles on the children for being born in the first place. When Killen was around 7 years old though, a man in a high position of power within the lumber industry in District 7 was killed, and someone had to take his place. It was a job that still required lots of physical labour but also entailed leadership skills, planning, and a focused approach to it. Surprisingly, the spot was offered to Jonathen due to his arduous hard-work for years, and this lifted a huge weight off the family’s shoulders. Saryl left her job, and Jonathen’s twin sisters could now afford to get jobs as well so all of a sudden, the household had a large influx of income.

The Timmerhout had never been in such a position so they didn’t really know how to manage it, but Saryl had been before getting married so she took care of it and invested it wisely. Two years later Malissa’s boss died, and she took his place instead, and a year after that, both of the twin sisters’ superiors passed away, spots which they were quick to occupy swiftly as well. The coincidences struck as odd to the family, but they never really commented on it. Perhaps fate was finally being kind to them in mysterious ways. Neither of Jonathen’s sisters had been married and the unorthodox household had learned to always share their money so by the time Killen was 12, the Timmerhouts had suddenly become one of the wealthiest families in District 7 among those with new money. Jonathen had stopped drinking at all and he was in such a position that he could allow himself not to go to work every now and then just to spend time with his wife and kids. The triplets all liked each other well enough, but Jonathen had a hard time getting along with Killen. Whether they liked it or not, both had grown up in very different times, financial environments and social situations.

Where Jon was very physically-gifted, Killen was on the leaner side and more intellectually-oriented. Where the father had grown up working from a young age, Killen hadn’t had the need to at all, and while he wasn’t by any means a slouch to the objective outsider, somehow seeing his son not having a job as a teen was irritating to Jon. Jonathan was also very masculine, tough, reserved and stoic, whereas Killen had a buoyant, extroverted and sensible personality. It didn’t help that, having been raised completely by females, Killen didn’t really care for being perceived as particularly virile or masculine in society. Killen cared about other people’s feelings and had a very artistic side to him, but for Jon this was useless coming from who he envisioned to be the family’s future breadwinner. In Jonathen’s mind, this wasn’t what having a son should be like, and this often led to heated discussions between the two, even if at the end of the day they genuinely loved each other.

Killen enjoyed volunteering at a centre in the district where differently abled people went, seeing as his mother had taught him sign language and he liked helping others who didn’t have that many people to talk with aside from their respective families. He became friends with a mute and deaf girl named Gina and soon after the two became a couple. She was bold, and brave and loved sharing her opinions, traits which Killen came to greatly admire and they often would go on and have their own adventures around the large woods of District 7. Sadly, not only was Gina mute, and deaf, but she also had a brain condition which she’d purposefully kept from Killen that killed her only a few months into their innocent, pubescent romance.

This left Killen utterly heartbroken and despondent. His sisters had made many friends and he couldn’t really find someone he connected with quite like he had with Gina for a while. He missed it so much, that perhaps he fell in love with the idea of having a girlfriend again just to be reminded of her. And there it was. Just before he turned 13, he found Narcissa Mallory. She was a year above Killen, but she was similarly bold and loud like Gina and this greatly attracted him to her. She found his attentions amusing at first but eventually she reciprocated them. She liked his interesting, bright personality and conversations but even more so his sensibility and eagerness to please.

As it often happens with young individuals who think they’re in love, Killen fell head over heels for her. He had so much love to give and no one to give it to, that when he found her, he knew she must be the next recipient of it. He became friends with her friends, impressed her parents with his good manners and would often find cute little ways to dote on her. She’d often find very short letters from him in the pockets of her trousers, or fresh-cut blooms waiting for her in her school desk. One time, he even gave her a small wooden peacock carved by himself, seeing as that was her favourite animal. It made her feel special; powerful, even. And she liked power.

Eventually she learnt how to control Killen. Most times it was emotional manipulation, others it was overplaying jealousy, and then a few select times she’d even gaslight him to make sure that his attention was always on her and absolutely no one else. It was a slow process going from their cute little romance to this full-fledged toxic relationship; so slow that it took Killen quite a while to notice it. Even worse, by the time he did, it was too late for him, because he found out that he genuinely was in love with Narcissa. Or at least he thought as much.

He tried bringing the subject up to her, but she only gaslighted him further, claiming that she was doing nothing wrong and that it was all in his head. She was behaving like a normal girlfriend would but his insecurities made it seem otherwise. He should be grateful she wasn’t breaking up right then and there with him for making such outlandish claims. He was understandably confused. Was it all just a matter of perspective? Was he really in the wrong for being treated that way?

To make matters even harder, Narcissa’s father, Terrence Mallory, was appointed mayor a few weeks after that, and him wanting to make a gracious gesture to his daughter’s boyfriend, named Killen’s father as the highest-ranking official of the lumber industry in District 7, which, in turn, meant Panem as a whole as well. Killen felt indebted to the Mallorys. He couldn’t possibly break up with her now, could he? Besides, it definitely wasn’t all bad. She had a lot of good in her, and surely the good overshadowed, right?

Maybe he would have believed that had things in their relationship not taken a turn for the worse. The emotional blackmailing worsened and when he finally had the courage to even mention considering breaking up with her, she threatened that if he did such a thing then she didn’t know if she could make it through without taking her own life. Guilt-tripping him further into her web with her guiles, Killen swallowed it all up and continued being with her, even if it made him miserable.

When he turned 16, though, he couldn’t take it anymore and he broke it off with her. A proud woman to the bone, Narcissa went ahead with her threat and attempted to off herself a few days later by purposely overdosing with home drugs. Luckily, Terrence found her on time and took her to the hospital, where her health was salvaged. Whether she really intended to die or not, Killen didn’t know, but if he knew of someone who was willing to risk her life in order to further control Killen’s emotions then it was Narcissa. Terrence, in a fit of rage after hearing Narcissa’s twisted side of the story, where she put all the blame on Killen, decided to get back to him however he could, and as Mayor of District 7, he figured that would be easy to come by.

After weeks of thorough investigation on the Timmerhouts, he found the perfect excuse. He found out that the mysterious deaths of the work superiors to the Timmerhouts all those years back had evidence that incriminated Saryl. It wasn’t damning evidence, to be fair, but it was there, and he quickly concocted a motive for her, and voilà, he got her arrested by the Peacekeepers for a quadruple premeditated murder from years past. Killen didn’t know whether his mother had actually committed the crimes or not, and he frankly didn’t care. What pissed him off was that had he never been with Narcissa, or at the very least had cut her off from his life when it was still early, nothing of this would have happened and he felt responsible for it.

And so, he went to Terrence to broker a deal. Killen had always been good at talking and his silver tongue and verbal sparring skills proved to be of use when he convinced the mayor to let go of his mother and let her go back home. But not without a price. Killen had said that the problem was him, not his mother, so Terrence should take it out on him instead. The Hunger Games were coming up, and so he promised he would volunteer for them just so his mother could get back home safely to his family. Terrence agreed to it, but instead told him that he didn’t want Killen looking the hero in front of Panem, so instead he’d rig the Reaping so that his name would come up instead. Besides, that would ensure that one way or another, Killen would be sent off to the Games.

Saryl was brought back to the Timmerhouts and he told his family about the deal. Saryl cried for her son as any other mother would, but Jonathen simply smiled wistfully. His son had never seemed more like a man to him, but Jon felt sorry for himself for not noticing it had always been there, and he’d only been to blind to see it until it was too late. He whispered four words he’d never spoken to his son before in his ear when he hugged him and Killen became a sobbing mess. Words he’d always strived for, even if unconsciously. Words which he never knew whether he was worthy of or not. Was ‘I’m proud of you’ really that much to ask for?

They both made it official via signing documents and when the day of the Reaping came, and his name was drawn from the ballot, he knew that there was no coming back. He walked over to the podium, and there, in between the girls that were there for their final reaping, was a fully recovered Narcissa that, save for the dark circles beneath her eyes, looked as beautiful as the first day he’d met her, and though later he couldn’t be quite sure if he imagined it or not, he could swear at that moment that he saw her mouthing at him two words that chilled him to the very marrow of his bones.

I win.

Primary Weapon: Twin Tomahawks

Alternate Weapon: Battle-axe

Strengths:


 * Creativity: Due to his somewhat artistic background and constant desire to challenge his mind, Killen can come up with helpful ideas rather easily, and isn’t encased to thinking “inside the box”. While not all of his ideas are executable, as should be expected, a high percentage of them are problem solvers.


 * Nobility: His heart is really in the right place, and this translates in him being a genuinely good person and others therefore recognising this in him. While this also has a downside, he truly believes in karma and good attracting good, so he’s confident that if people want to get near him, they’re also share some of his values.


 * Competitiveness: His mind is a very busy place, and it adores being just that, so he’d always looking to be challenged, and if not by others, then by himself, and there are few other things he loves as much as winning and proving himself right, so losing is never an option for him, and this, paired with his creativity can become a deathly combo.

Weaknesses:


 * Attachment Issues: Killen’s heart is very open and he has a tendency to get close to others and try to establish a connection with them quicker than what is probably wise and then get attached to them due to the lack of love in his life.


 * Emotional Vulnerability: Tied in with the previous concept, and particularly now after his last relationship ended, Killen is currently in a state in which he’s constantly reminded of it, and this can be distracting, hurtful, and at worst, leave him emotionally vulnerable in critical moments.


 * Naïveté:  Perhaps not the best word to choose from, but Killen definitely does want to see the best in people, and in a world where children are sent to kill each other on a yearly basis, this is definitely a trait that could be seen as unforgivably innocent and perhaps even immature.

Fears:


 * Having no one: While not particularly the same as being alone, he does, however, have a fear of not having anyone to trust in or talk to at the very least when he's in need of it, which is partly why he's always looking to bond with others.


 * Spheksophobia: Killen has an irrational fear of wasps, specifically because he was once stung by one on his left pinky toe and it got infected to the point where it had to be amputated as a child.

Trivia:


 * Killen is loosely inspired on the song Happier Than Ever by Billie Eilish.


 * Timmerhout means 'lumber' in Dutch.