shot me down from the live wire. lili.

Someone grabs me in the dark.

"Help me, sweet girl, please help us," their hands are bony and ice-cold, blood spilling into the wrinkled crevices on their forehead. I shudder and yelp, push them away with my own shaking hands, scream with everything I have "get off of me-!"

I don't stick around to see if they hit the ground.

Adrenaline after-shocks and the icey winds of the night dry out my throat as I pant, heaving in as much air as I can. My feet ache, my legs scream, louder than my voice now a shrill whisper. "Teddy... Teddy... have you seen Teddy?"

"Who?"

"The victor! Teddy Ursa, have you seen him?"

"No fuckin' clue love! Try the Victor's Village!"
"Teddy Ursa? Bet he's eating a grand fuckin' meal right about now!"
"In case you haven't noticed we've been a bit fucking busy!"
"Fuck the victors and fuck that Ursa kid!"

"FUCK YOU! T-TEDDY?!"

The hospital. I've never been. He spent half of his life there and I don't even know what it looks like, let alone where it is. I run and walk and cry in circles, follow my nose, ask for directions that fall on deaf ears - the same five houses to my right and then to my left. It all looks similar, like five minutes ago, like five hours ago. Curse my house-bound habits, curse my privilege, curse my lack of care to memorise the place I call home.

All the factories and the buildings and the trees are the same, lazy copies of one-another designed to drive me mad. I walk for what feels like  hours into the clouds of chaos and smoke and ash. I walk right through them and out the other end but I am still on my own, no Teddy in sight. The evening turns to that of the night, my teeth chatter, and my tears threaten to freeze before they hit the ground.

I am useless, my efforts fruitless. A silly little girl shivering in the night, dropping to her knees and gasping as the dirty sludge of snowfall past hits my skin. Goosebumps rise and I shake - out of fear, out of a desperate need to keep my body moving. I hear a child crying and people yelling, but all I can do is freeze and whisper my brother's name over and over and over again.

"Teddy... Teddy... Teddy...."

What if he's dead?

What if I've lost him again?

What if he's alive, but I'm too late?

What if he's home? What if he went home and I wasn't there? What if he went out to look for me?

What if...?

After a while, when the wind howls in my ears and the cold forces me up, I creak to life and heave my boot-clad feet back towards the Victor's Village illuminated in the light of the moon.

No energy left to speak his name, I can only hold it on the tip of my tongue and close to my heart and pray to God I find him there safe and sound with Pan and Mal and Georgie.

With our family.