The Blood of Her Sins By xAccioDumbassx
Summary: When her older sister, Marigold, is reaped for the Seventy Sixth Annual Hunger Games, Lilibeth Tune volunteered in her place in order to protect her sister as well as her sister's unborn child. She doesn't intend to survive the games, let alone kill people in them. But when one thing leads to another both play out. A rebellion is rising in some of the Districts and it's her job to get inside information.
You may be wondering how she got herself into this situation. You may be wondering who in their right mind would ever want to marry the son of the president of Panem, the heir to Panem in fact. The answer to the first she really didn't know herself. But the answer to the latter was simple: she didn't want to marry him. Although she most certainly wasn't in her right mind either. Not crazy, but not completely sane. The Seventy-Sixth Annual Hunger Games had made sure of that.
The girl was only eighteen and it was already the morning of her wedding. Most women's dream. But for her, it was a nightmare.
The dress was too glittery, big, sparkly, over-the-top and flawless. Oh yes flawless. That's what she had been told anyway by her mother, sisters and soon to be in-laws. But the dress was anything but.
It reminded her quite a bit of herself, in fact.
Something so many people- most people- thought to be flawless. Although the two were anything but flawless. Especially her.
She thought it rather ironic that she'd be comparing herself to a dress right now. A fancy piece of cloth to make someone look pretty, while she was usually that someone who everyone wanted to make look pretty.
Yes. The two fit together perfectly.
'You are the perfect bride, my dear, sweet Lilibeth," Her mother had told her just minutes before, melancholy tears threatening to spill from her own eyes. 'It's just too bad that this day isn't as special as you have always hoped it would be,'
The girl could have laughed. Such a naive child she had been. She would never truly forgive her parents for never really preparing her or her siblings for what was to come when they would turn the age of twelve. Never. While they would mention it briefly. They would always promise that their children would be safe from the Hunger Games as long as they didn't volunteer. There were thousands upon thousands of kids in District Four after all, What were the chances of one of their six children being thrown into the arena to die? Well, it turns out large enough, as the Tune family would soon discover.
Phien. How she missed him so.
The eldest of the Tune children. The first- yet not the last- to go into the Hunger Games. Yet, unlike his younger sister, Phien would not make it out of the arena alive.
Her mother had then asked a question that was all too familiar with Lilibeth.
'Do you regret it?'
Lilibeth had known what that question meant even the first time it was asked. Did she regret volunteering.
She had laughed in most people's faces then and there.
No.
Better her than her older sister, Marigold.
It was Marigold's final reaping. She was eighteen. She was engaged. She was about to settle down in the marketplace with her soon to be husband and get a higher education. She was going to be happy. But she hadn't taken even a minute of the training that was offered in school. Marigold didn't know how to use a sphere. She didn't know how to use a trident. Heavens she didn't even know how to use a knife. She would most likely have been the first to die. And the unborn child currently growing inside of her wouldn't help her either, Lilibeth's niece or nephew.
Lilibeth just shook her head violently.
Her mother still held disdain that it had been the beautiful and useful Lilibeth, the girl that had caught the eye of the wealthy mayor's boy, to go into the Hunger Games instead of average and less useful Marigold, who had married a fisherman.
Her mother had held disdain for Marigold since the day she had announced their engagement; she had been furious to find out that her eldest daughter was pregnant at the age of eighteen. She had even felt hatred when her daughter, so full of life and spirit before the games, came back broken and destroyed emotionally, even physically.
Her mother had made her disappointment clear to Lisabeth when saying goodbye after the reaping.
When she became engaged Lilibeth thought that her mother would be happy. He was rich, he was soon to be president. But her mother was anything but happy for one of her daughters to be marrying into the Snow family.
There were many things she regretted, however. Oh so very many indeed. But perhaps the main one was surviving.
The person in the mirror was unrecognisable now. So had she been for the past three years from the moment her hand went up at the reaping.
The ringlets of her chocolate locks were placed neatly on her shoulders. She hated it. She hated all fancy things by the time of her victory tour. She craved a sense of normality, something that soon would be entirely abolished from her life. Just something to tell her that it would be ok and that this wouldn't be the entirety of her life before she even lived. But Lilibeth knew that it would be. She had no choice in this matter. She knew that she would be forced to bear her husband's children and act like the most perfect and happiest bride there was. She knew that she would someday be the first lady, again, a dream that many girls and women alike had, but for her, again, it was a nightmare.
She looked at the person in the mirror once more. How on Earth had she gotten here? Was there anything that she could have done to stop this disaster from happening?
Lilibeth, the now so-called beautiful bride, stood in front of the long yet wide mirror. Her life had turned into shit and she had absolutely no power over it at all.
The presidential palace as large and extravagant as it may be wasn't home and it never would be either. Her home was in District Four. She missed the sea. She missed the waterfalls. She missed the beaches. She missed the markets and the aroma of fish that would drift around them as she and her family shopped. And most of all, she missed normality.
Oh, how did she get herself into this mess? Well, it's a long story...