lili ursa. six. fin.

I never trusted myself. Thought I was going mad, dreaming up Teddy. Imaginary friends are one thing, but a brother I could hear and see and touch with my own hands was another. I'd ask about him and my parents would say nothing, my brother squinted - searching through his own memory. I peered through peepholes and into photographs and looked for him in every place I could but I never found him.

And then there he was. Theodore. Someone else found him for me in a crowd, summoned him up on stage, the kids in my class all peered right back at me and connected the dots.

I wanted to say hello. To say goodbye.

Instead my parents scooped me up and made me watch him slaughter Emberly Lowe. It was supposed to be a lesson. At that age I think it taught me what they wanted me to learn - that lost families of victors only end up in an early grave. So I stayed away from him, went about with my life, and Teddy Ursa was just a memory again.

I think I was eleven when I cracked. Malachi was always too sweet, too lovely, to yell at my parents. I wasn't. Think they saw the violence in me early on, maybe that's why they smothered me with lies and scrubbed out the truth. I get that they were just trying to protect me. I'm their kid.

But so is Teddy. Was, Teddy. Is. I don't know.

We've got the same eyes, he and I. They're big, almost too big for our faces. Same coloured hair, the same shaped jaw. We look so similar. I wonder if we're similar on the inside, too. I haven't killed anyone before but maybe he's angry at my - our - parents, too.

I wonder if he was always this angry at my age. I sure as hell have always been furious. It's like my fists are in a permanent state of balled up, digging my nails into my palms to stop hot tears spewing from my brown eyes. There's tiny scars littered over my skin, arched to match my palm lines and they tell me of my future - full of rage, full of healing.

When I'm not angry I'm lonely, and when I'm not lonely I'm curious, staring up at my bedroom ceiling and wondering. Dreaming. Imagining. My room is small and there's a crack in my ceiling - I wonder if my soul put it there, or if it was always there. Maybe the universe put it there, waiting for me to arrive in this world, jagged and imperfect.

Maybe the universe put Teddy up on that stage, waiting for me to say hello.

I used to have pretend conversations with him in my head, but then I realised I was making up a version of my brother that might not be true. And that wasn't fair to him. I couldn't meet him one day with a false sense of hope, or a false sense of who he was. I had to remind myself that Teddy Ursa, despite everything that we share, is a stranger. So did my parents. Over, and over, and over again.

Until I decided that my relationship with my brother wasn't theirs. It was ours. And sure, it might exist in my younger self's imagination, and right now it doesn't exist at all, but it was one half mine. One half his. If he wanted it. I'd like to think he would. At least, I hope he does. A relationship with a stranger who's my brother sounds a lot more appealing than a relationship with my lying, secret-keeping parents.

Maybe that's why I packed up what little things I had, hot tears spewing from my eyes like the furious words I had screamed at my parents, and marched myself up to the Victor's Village.

Emberly Lowe didn't have a choice in her fate. But her sister Clementa did.

I always fashioned myself to be more of a Clementa, anyway.

It's what I told myself when I knocked three times on Teddy's door and held my breath as the door creaked open, bag slung over my shoulder and cheeks still flushed with fatigue. This is my fate, and he's my family, and I'll live with my decisions.

I say what I've always wanted to say. What I've said a thousand times, and yet never spoken allowed.

"Hello, Teddy."

Goodbye, old life.