if you don't look too hard. teddy.
Mar 25, 2019 20:30:02 GMT -5
Post by ✨ zozo. on Mar 25, 2019 20:30:02 GMT -5
L I L IShe spent a lot of time up in that room of hers. Princess of the Victor's Village, little Lilibeth Ursa reigned in her bratty, feisty arrogance. For the first time in her life she felt valued, doted on by stylists who fawned over her hair and eyes and most importantly, her last name.
She was untouchable, skipping to and from her first two reapings and sighing when it took too long to wrap up. The kids at school gawped at her and although her parents tried to tempt her back by banging on the front door when Teddy was away she laughed at them, peering down from the highest window and flipping a middle-finger.
Thirteen, almost fourteen, 24 kids went in and 24 kids went out. That shook her to the core. Corpses walking around Panem, two in District 6. It was a medical miracle, people whispered, a forgiveness from the Capitol. Snow had heard Six's weeping and handed them just this one thing.
Lili knew better. It was a warning. So she slid down the staircase at fourteen, almost fifteen, so much taller than she had been when she first knocked on Teddy's front door, and fell back down to earth.
Watching Teddy's games never scared her. The sister of the victor knew they were supposed to, but everything about Teddy made her feel better. Even when he killed that girl from Ten, swords clashing in the air, Lili never once flinched at the sound of death. Perhaps it was morbid, but she rather liked seeing her brother become a victor. It made her feel special. Like they were worth something, the Ursas. Teddy had made them more.That's why she loved him. He'd given her something without even knowing it, and took her in without even knowing her. Of course Lili loved her brother because he was her brother, but she perhaps loved what he had gifted her youth just as much.
But reviving dead tributes wasn't an act of love. She could rewind the television screen and watch Teddy kill someone, rewind again and bring them back just to watch them die again. She didn't do it for them - she did it for her. Her own self-righteousness. Sitting selfishly in luxury stained by the blood of Emberly Lowe, Lili didn't care - because the Capitol didn't.That thought weighed on her for a long time. When Teddy eventually came home, a few weeks shy of the 81st Reaping, Lili sat crossed-legged in the living room with a question on her tongue. She pulled her gaze from the television screen, Capitolites obsessively guessing this year's theme in the background, and looked at her brother.
"Why'd they do it, Teddy?" she asked, because her brother always had the answers to her questions - even if he didn't know it himself.
"Why bring them back?"