Clair Gravenstein

Tribute
Clair Gravenstein is a Tribute created by Yoonie. Please, don´t use her without Yoonie´s permission as she belongs to the person who made her. She is not finished.



"I´m nothing but a charred and dirty forbidden fruit. I shouldn´t be alive." - Clair Gravenstein

Information
Name: Clair Gravenstein

Age: 18

District: Seven (Eleven, Nine)

Gender: Female

Height: 5´4

Signature Weapon: Throwing axes



Personality:

Clair is overall a very careful, reserved girl who doesn´t like to be agressive and wants people to like her. She doesn´t like to be a burden to anyone. She can be a bit downbeat, since she feels responsible for what happened to Martha, she feels as though if she had acted differently, things could have turned out ok. Clair is a person who will often take the responsebility and burden off someone else´s shoulders and carry them herself. She wants to help out people in need with anything they might need, although she does not trust herself in being too useful. Clair is very shy in big crowds and can sometimes come off as arrogant to some people, since she is so quiet people might think she is ignoring them. She can be very bright and cheerful at times, normally when people really need a ray of light to help them on their way, but normally she is just very quite and careful.

Backstory:

My life has never been a dance on roses. From the day I was born, I have had it very rough and I live in a world where you have to be tough to survive. I was born on the 4th of January, in the middle of the most brutal blizzard District Seven had suffered in centuries. My parents were poor scavengers in the streets of District Seven, and they had just barely survived the gruesome snowstorm. But that was until my mother suddenly screamed and my father understood that she was going to have a baby. Right in the middle of the raging storm, in the dead of night. My father tried his best at helping my mother give birth to me, but he didn´t have any knowledge on how to do it and no help either. A mere hour after giving birth to me, my mother fell uncounsious and died in the gutter. So my father had to raise me all on his own, in the streets with rats and vermin.

Me and my father never had a house to call home, or anything at all. All we had were eachother, it was a damn good thing we were very close and trusted eachother. From the age of three, when I could walk and udder a few words, my father had me helping him get food on the table. We were scavengers, we took the food nobody else wanted anymore, from trash cans outside residential areas, or large containers outside shops or the Justice Building. We had honor, we never stole anything, we only took what was already free of charge. However, this ment that we never ever had any money, and when I was ten years old my father got very ill. He had Pneumonia, and for a few weeks he struggled, while I desperately tried to keep him alive. In the end, he fell asleep and never woke up again. I can never forget the terror when I tried to shake him up until I realized that he was already dead.

With both my parents dead, and no other living relatives, I was dumped in the local orphanage. I was a gloomy, dark place, but it was the closest thing of a home I had ever known. The matrons were kind people, who cared for the kids and made sure they were well fed. Sometimes I would get sad and want to go back to my father again, but in those times the matrons would always be there for you. They would comfort you, and assure you that tomorrow would be better and it would all sort itself out in the end. Of course, I could never get my father back, but as a child it helped very much to understand that someone was hearing me and cared about my wellbeing.

In addition to the matrons, I wasn´t lonely in the orphanage. I often played with the other kids, a great deal of them had gone through the same thing as I had. They were great friends, but it was always hard to talk too much to them about the past, since it was a rather touchy subject, for me as well. I didn´t have a best friend, instead I was friends with everyone, and even though I wasn´t close to any of them, they were great fun to be with. But then, one day, came the incident that changed my rather happy life for good.

It was a sunday in the middle of summer, I was fourteen years old. I was very happy at that time. The grief from the loss of my father hadn´t dissapeared, but it had dimmed with time, and I had now learned to accept that he was dead and there wasn´t anything I could do with it. I had a summer flirt, a boyfriend if you will. His name was Lukas. I remember him even now, and how strong my feelings for him were. Looking back, I realize that it was just a little taster of love in the future, we would never become married and grow old together or anything like that, but it was nice all the same. Me and Lukas were outside in the garden of the orphanage, just dozing off in the grass and watching the sky fly past us. Then suddenly one of the matrons came over to us, and asked to talk to be privately. I smiled at her and told Lukas I would be back in a minute. I never saw him ever again. The matrons took me to her office on the second floor. There I saw a woman I had never ever seen before, a curious woman with lank black hair and very fancy clothes. The matrons tried to say it to me as calmly as possible, that this woman was my new mother, I had been adopted away.

It was kind of funny, whenever I had thougth about finding new parents for me before, I would be happy and I couldn´t wait for it to acually happen. I dreamed of being adopted away to a rich young pair who always let me do whatever I wanted, every child in the orphanage´s dream. But over time, the orphanage had become my new home. It was depressing and gloomy, but it wasn´t the place itself that was home. It was the people here. The matrons, who always comforted me and helped me through my day. The other kids, who althougth I never was anyone´s bestest of friends, I could always count on to have fun with. And now Lukas, it seemed impossible to be able to move away from him. I wanted to tell the woman that I was happy here, that this was my home now, but I knew that she probably had a reason that she did not have children, maybe she had tried for years and years and this was the only solution. I didn´t want to be rude to her or offend her, and I had dreamed about this day. After some last words from the matrons to my new mother, my adoptee took me to her car. I asked if I could say goodbye to Lukas before we left, that it was important. She just asked who Lukas was and then took off. As we rolled out of the driveway, I saw Lukas running after the car in the car mirror. He was crying out for me.

"You promised, Clair! Come back, I love you! Don´t leave me alone!"

Long after the car was a long way from the orphanage, his words still echoed inside my mind. I was crying, and I was sure Lukas did too. But I was certain I would come back and visit him, we could get married someday. If I had known I would never see him again that day or the hell that awaited me in my new home, I would have jumped out of the car and fled for my life.

My new mothers name was Martha, she was a rich aristocrat who lived in a huge mansion in the Victor´s Village. Apparently she had won the Games when she was seventeen years old. Martha was kind to me, but she was very strict. Her house was bigger than I could have ever dreamed of, her libary was the size of the kitchens in the orphanage. Not too long after moving in with Martha, I had forgotten everything about my old home, the matrons and my friends. But I never really forgot about Lukas, and he was the only one missing in the picture. I wished I could see him, that we could be together again, then everything would be perfect. Martha taugth me to become a sophisticated woman, to talk in polite tones, to walk with grace with high heels without tripping, to enjoy the finer things in life like tea, poetry and walks in the sunlight. I first thougth it was boring, to never play outside, but after a while I adjusted. I got new friends, who were the daugthers of Martha´s own friends. We spent out time together by discussing books, practicing instruments and dancing. I got quite good at the flute, and I got private lessons by Martha.

Even though it seemed perfect on the outside, something seemed off about my new mother in my view. Her behavior, although nice, seemed forced somehow. I tossed away my uncertainy and just wrote them off as boggles of the mind, but now that I know better, I wish I had suspected something back then. Everything could have been easier.

It started slowly, but steadily, the unveiling of the real Martha. As I got older, around the age of sixteen, she started to deny me to see my friends. She would constantly make up excuses for it. "Evelynn is sick today, her mother told me, I don´t want you to catch something that´s bad for you, dear." Things like that. Soon I realized I hadn´t been with my friends for three months. Martha started to get more and more edgy and cross towards me, she gave me curfew so I couldn´t go outside the house after six o`clock. One night, when I confronted her about her change of behavior, she did something I thougth she´d never do to me. She slapped me clean in the face, and screamed at me for being disobedient. I didn´t understand what had happened to Martha, why she was so angry at me all of a sudden. She had been a bit strange from the start, but I could never have imagined her like this. I decided to investigate in the matter, so one night, when I woke up, I saw it was one o´clock. I decided to take this oportunity to find out what was going on.

When I had put my clothes on however, I found my door locked. It didn´t really surprise me at all, looks like I was not allowed out of my room at night anymore either. However, I used my hairpin to pick the door open and stepped out into the hallway. There I realized that there was one room that had always been locked, from the very day I moved here. Martha´s office room, a room I had never entered or seen anyone enter in all my years here. I sneaked to the door, and then used my hairpin to pick open that door, too. I remember my amazement as it opened, I hadn´t believed it would acually worked. I slipped inside, careful to not make too much sound, and started to search the drawers for any clues of anything. I was at the verge of giving up, when I glimpsed a photograph under the leg of Martha´s writing desk. I picked it up, and was shocked to see a picture of myself.

However, when I looked more closely, I saw that it wasn´t myself at all. It sure did look like me, but the girl in the photograph was a lot younger than me, maybe thirteen or fourteen years old. Still, it was scary how similar she looked to me, we could have been twins. There was also a second girl in the photograph, but she did not look any like the other one. She had dull, dark hair and had an air of gloom around her. Both girls were wearing expensive-looking, traditional District Seven dresses. Then I saw the date it had been taken. It was dated around May 27th, fifteen years ago. Adding the numbers, I realized that it was now fifteen years ago since Martha won her Games. And the dark-haried girl in the picture´s dress was identical to Martha´s. Not only that, they also looked alike. So if was Martha who was in this picture, for fifteen years ago, then the other girl was maybe her sister? It had to be, it looked like kind of a family photo. I tried desperately to think back to the Games fifteen years ago from now. There had been a twist, but I couldn´t remember if it was a Quarter Quell or not. Double the amount of Tributes in the Games. Martha was the only one who lived, of course, being the Victor.

I should have ran far away back then, but since I was so caugth up in my own thinking, I didn´t hear the hurried steps down the stairs. Martha had woken up, and instantly checked my bedroom. She screamed in panic, as she realized Ophelia wasn´t in her bad anymore and the door was unlocked. She ran down the stairs and saw the office door unlocked and wide opened. Martha ran inside and saw Ophelia standing there, holding the photograph of herself. I raised my voice, wanting answers out of Martha.

"Who is this girl in this picture? Why is she identical to me?"

Martha screamed and hid her face in her night shawl, but I wouldn´t give up. I wanted answers, and I wanted them right here and right now. Why she was trapping me in my own home, stopping me from seeing my friends and locking my door at night? What was it that she would not tell, not me, not her friends, not anyone?

"I needed... to keep you.. safe. From yourself, from anyone who would ever hurt you! Please, Ophelia, listen to reason! The world is a dangerous place, I can´t afford to lose you again!"

At that time, I didn´t understand a thing. Why was Martha refering to me as Ophelia, a name I´ve never heard in my life before? What was it about this that she didn´t want to lose me again? I pondered about this for minutes on end, while Martha was crying on the floor, screaming a guttural, not-understandable lamguage. Until it finally lodged in for me. Double the Tributes in Martha´s winning Games. A missing sister I had never heard anything about until now, who ceased to excist for fifteen years ago. Martha´s strage behavior over me, and my resembelance to her sister.

Ophelia, Martha´s sister, had been Reaped together with her for the Games, since it was a Quarter Quell there was two females and two males for each District. The two sisters had been in the Games together, but at some point or another, Ophelia had died. But Martha survived, and moved here, to the Victor´s Village in District Seven. Somehow, Martha had come in contact with the matrons at my orphanage, maybe she had been shown a picture of me or something. She recognized who she, in her disorted mind, thougth was her long lost sister Ophelia. She adopted me and took me here, where she could keep me save. She had started to lock me up in here because she wanted to keep her sister safe. Even though it touched me, I wouldn´t let her keep it up.

"Martha, I am not your sister Ophelia. She is dead, long lost in time. Please, just let me go, and we can be a family again."

At that moment, Martha totally snapped. She snarled at me, screamed and kicked around her. I was intimidated, and backed into a corner. The woman I once thougth of as compassionate and kind was raging in front of me like a psychopath. She was blocking the door, there was nowhere for me to run away to. Martha approached me with sogging steps, spit dripping from her mouth and her eyes red with fury and sadness.

"No, Ophelia! This is for your own good! You... you can never leave, because I love you! I couldn´t save you back then, but now I can make it up again for you! Just please... stay here with me!"

At that point, I had had enough with this mad woman. Her sorrow and grief over her dead sister had led her down the path to madness, I didn´t know what she would be capable of doing to me. I wanted to leave, right now. Mad people are unpredictable, dangerous. Martha had changed somehow, the old one was gone at least. Now there was just this Martha, a pityful wreck of a woman who so desperately clinged onto her own past, hoping so save some scraps of it.

"No. You´re not my sister. You can´t keep me here forever."

Martha jumped me at that point, but I dodged her. However, she was a grown woman, and she overpowered me. She stood on top of me. She slipped a blade out of her dress sleeve, and brandished it in front of my face. I screamed for help, but there was nobody in the house to help me. Martha seemed to talk to herself rather than me.

"Dicipline...Be a proper lady...By force of will if neccesary...This is good for you, dear sister..."

She lunged the blade down towards me, aiming to stab me in the stomach. However, I lurched her over my body and wiggled free out of her grasp. I looked down at her, she was knocked down unconcious. However, I didn´t trust her to stay down for very long. I wrote a quick note for her, like small goodbye. If I was a different person, I would have used her own knife on her right then and there and killed her. But I felt pity for her. Martha wasn´t an evil person. She was deranged, yes, maybe even insane. But I still remembered all the memories of her, before all of this had happened. I could understand her grief, some people never truly get over the loss of their loved ones. I am lucky I had the matrons in the orphanage to help me after I had lost my dad, because if I haven´t it might have been me who had been in Martha´s own shoes. She probably didn´t have anyone to talk to when she was sad or lonely. It´s weird how something like that can make such a difference. I finished writing my note to her and put it down on the floor, where I knew she would see it. Then I stole her keys to the house, unlocked the front door and ran out into the cold, dead night.

I knew where I was going. I was coming back to the orphanage, I had to see Lukas again, I had to keep my promise to him. I realized then, while I was running through District Seven, that it had been two years since I had seen him last. I couldn´t wait. I would live in the orphanage again, the matrons couldn´t possibly make me stay with Martha again after what I had just experienced. However, when I got there, the matrons informed me that while I had been gone, Lukas had been adopted away to a couple in District Two. At that exact moment, my whole small world came crashing down at me all at once. Lukas was gone, maybe to never even come back again. I never got to fulfill the promise, that I would come back to him. My memories of him were foggy too, I could barely remember how he looked like. Whenever I tried to imagine him in front of me, his face was blank. The matrons still let me stay at the orphanage, and they even suggested reporting Martha to the Peacekeepers for her abuse. But I told them not to, I wanted to spare Martha her dignity at least. She didn´t deserve being locked up or even whipped. I also discovered a lot of the kids I had grown up with in the orphanage were also gone, some to other Districts like Lukas. Even though it had changed a great lot, this place still felt like the place where I belonged.

Not long after I had came back to the orphanage, however, I got a messaage from one of Martha´s friends that she had been found dead in her living room. The cause of death was poisoning, believed to be suicide. That day I felt grief like I never had before except when my father died all those years ago. I had horrible thougth that it was my fault she died, that she wouldn´t have killed herself if I had stayed. Every time one part of my brain tried to tell me that I had to run away, she could have been dangerous to me, another part told me that I could have stayed and tried to help me. I fell into depression like no other. It was like I stuck in a deep well. I was contstantly trying to claw myself up the walls, but every time I tried I just fell deeper and deeper into the well. When the day fo Martha´s funeral came, I couldn´t seem to muster the energy to get up from bed even. I tried and tried, but to no avail. The day passed from morning to night without me leaving the bed, and feeling more and more guilty for every day that passed after it.

Then, when I was eigtheen years old, karma seemed to have finally caugth up to me again. I was Reaped for the Hunger Games, just like Matha and Ophelia back then. Now I finally understood the helplessness they had felt, as I stood on the stage in the Square. The matrons I had grown up with, and some of my old friends from the orphanage was crying for me, but other than that, nobody knew who I was. I wondered if this was how it was for Martha too. Family and friends cared and cried, but the whole rest of the world shrugged their shoulders and moved on. I hadn´t even gotten to visit Martha´s grave yet. I knew who I wanted to win the Games for. Not myself, I wouldn´t deserve to live. No, for Martha. Maybe, she had been mad, thinking I was her sister. But I didn´t want all of her love and carefulness go to waste-I would live on.

Strengths:

Weaknesses:

Alliance:

Clair will either ally with her District partner or a small alliance of other Tributes from outlying Districts like Nine, Eleven or Twelve. She will be careful when selecting her allies, as she does not want too many, since the risk of being backstabbed will be bigger then, and she wants to make sure she can trust them to be good people.

Bloodbath Strategy:

Games Strategy:

Reason For Winning:

Token:

Clair´s token is a golden medalion with a core of pure amethyst. She got it as a gift from Martha when she first moved in with her in the Victor´s Village. She keeps it as a charm, since it is a symbol of Martha´s love for Ophelia and her, and her will that lead her to survive the Games. Clair hopes it will help her do the same.

Trivia

 * Gravenstein is a variety of apple discovered in Gråsten, Denmark in 1669. This corespondents to Clair´s lunaii, as she is seen holding an apple in it.
 * She is very vaguely based off a user on the Hunger Games Wiki and the Hunger Games Roleplaying Wiki, appearance wise.