★ {EDMUND PEVERELL} ★ D12 [FIN]

★ { n a m e } edmund josiah peverell
★ { a g e } fifteen
★ { g e n d e r } male
★ { l o c a t i o n } district twelve

But when you ran you tripped and fell
On a path that lead you straight to hell
This is my salt in your wounds
This is my "I told you so"

Why do they get to look like him?

It’s not fair. Peter, Susan, even Lucy – they get the soft, honey-golden hair and bright, crystal-blue eyes, the fair skin, all the nice, pretty features that my father possessed. They’re the ones people always fawn over, how gorgeous they all are, how they look so much like their old man. But me? I’m stuck with too much of my mom’s genes. Dark hair that’ll never lay straight and soft like theirs does, eyes so deep brown they almost look black, skin with a sickly pale pallor as though I’ve lived under a rock my whole life. I get the big nose (people say Lucy and I have the same nose, but hers is dainty and small so I know they’re lying), the bushy brows, the thin, lanky figure that none of them were cursed with. I get to look like a filthy Seam child while they get to look like royalty, and it’s not fair.

It’s not so much that they’re all so “flawlessly beautiful” and I’m not, but more of that they don’t deserve to look like they do, like Dad, and I do. None of them loved him like I did, I can tell you that for sure. Not even Peter, who looks like him more than anyone in the family. Maybe that’s why he’s always trying to pretend he’s in charge of everyone now, like he can play man of the house now that Dad’s gone along with the days Peter and I used to wrestle out in the yard and play soccer when the weather was nice, gone along with the laughter and carefree smiles and teasing (not hurtful) words. He and I don’t get along, at all, and he thinks it’s because I’m jealous or something when really he has every right to be jealous of me. He may have the brawn, but I’m the one with the brain. He thinks he’s Dad, but he’s not. He’ll never be anything like Dad was.

Susan’s not as bad, probably the most tolerable of my siblings since she actually has a brain rattling around up there in her pretty blonde head, but her skull’s annoyingly thick under all that hair and she’s almost always right - and I hate being wrong – so she’s not exactly pleasant company even though I need a good talking-to sometimes, even though Susan’s the only one I can count on no matter what because she's kind and mature like that. Pretty dense and quite full of herself if you ask me.

Lucy, though, she’s such a child. Sure, there was a time when we used to play hide-and-seek together (I was always the only one who could find her), when we used to curl up beside each other beneath the covers whenever there was a storm outside and the lighting was too bright and the thunder too loud and scary. But only little kids are scared of thunderstorms now, and only babies play hide-and-seek, so I stopped. I grew up and she didn’t. She still plays her games and smiles when no one else does and makes a habit of lighting up everybody’s world while I stay in my room and read Dad’s old books and laugh at things I shouldn’t and say hurtful things because I’m a “spiteful, nasty little rat who only cares about himself”, according to Peter. We’re too different now, she’s still stuck in her make-believe dreams while I pulled myself out of that phase a long time ago. It’s about time she did, too, because I miss talking to her, I miss all the hugs I got and all the times she held my hand because she was always the only one that could tell when I was upset her doe-eyed happiness and naivety is just downright annoying.

And Mom. How in Ripred’s name did she – just a Seam girl, nothing special about her, just one of many fish in the sea that all look and sound and act alike – manage to snag someone like Dad? I’ve seen the pictures, the ones where there were wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, not between his brows, all clean clothes and smooth hair and not a smudge of dirt on his skin. We could have had that, we could have lived like kings and queens of the District (like I know I’m meant to), but marrying Mom knocked him down a few rungs on the ladder and he was never really able to stop himself from sliding a few steps further down every day since. He was never home much, smiled even less, but being his son made me feel less like a dirty slumdog and more like a prince. Like I was worth something.

When the Peacekeepers came and my mother shooed us to our rooms – she was afraid, I remember, but Dad was smiling so I thought everything was going to be okay - I grabbed Lucy’s wrist and pulled her to the door with me so we could hear what was going on. They were saying that he was a criminal, that he – Lucy ran off then, and I wanted to but stayed – was under arrest for his involvement with an underground drug empire (ridiculous, right?) and he was to be avoxed and pay for his crimes by serving in the Capitol for the rest of his life. They took him away and I never saw him again. They took him away for something he didn’t even do. He couldn’t have done those things, he was better than that, I know he was.

But he’s gone now. He left me with a brother who tries way too hard to fill shoes he shouldn’t have to and an older sister who’s too smart for her own good and a little sister who needs to grow up and quit pretending everything’s fine, because it’s not. Nothing’s fine now, but one day it will be. One day I’m going to make something of myself, I’m going to be like Dad was, how he used to be. I’m going to be great like him.

One day, I’m going to be king.

Can you breath in, reach and let it out
The evil inside that's eating you out tonight
With every venomous move I will suck you up and spit you
Out of my life, get out of my sight!

★ { o t h e r } ★

★ { f a c e } simone nobili (with permission from shine<3)
★ { p l o t s } clover/tristen’s narnia plot/sibling snatchers
★ { s o n g } shameful by atreyu
★ { c o d e } oDair