rusty lacour. twelve. cb.

They were so wrecked with grief that they had another child without even realising it.

A relief, they supposed. This child would grow up knowing nothing of Thirteen, and it would not damn him like it had their daughter. The Freeman name died on Piper's tongue and all traces of her died in that arena for they forbade to speak of her ever again. Talking about her kept her alive. It kept her innocent rebellion alive. Rather a dead daughter than one that walked their house like a ghost.

So they replaced her with a son, and he grew up and had a son, and he a son too. But his eldest child was a daughter and his grandparents sucked in a short breath - the first girl since Piper. Not that anyone else in their family knew it. When Rusty Lacour's great grandparents fell asleep in their beds and never woke up, Piper Freeman died again.

Rusty had always been a grumpy child. There seemed to be a permanent frown on her face, even when she was happy. Some might blame bone structure, others the harsh reality of living in the poorest District in Panem, but Rusty just found everything and everyone dissatisfying. Most at peace when she was completely alone, she strove to find parts of the District where she could be left to her drawings and her books, re-reading the same copies over and over again until she knew them line by line. 

Where her little brother Posy was lovely and charming, Rusty was everything but. She was calloused and blunt, a child of Twelve through and through. In some ways she carried her ancestors grief without even realising it - born with the weight of Piper Freeman grounding her to the soot-stained earth. She never felt at peace at home, gazing past the electric fences with quaint curiosity. Something inside of her yearned, yet she did not know what for.

Out of sight, out of mind, she carries on as Rusty Lacour with a nameless ghost stowed away in her soul.