Lanna hates her baby sister more than anyone in the world.
Perfect, beautiful Hanna, already shining like a star in her classes, the fastest the strongest the most deadly Career in her class. Already half a Victor, her teachers murmur, then cut their eyes to Lanna. It's a shame about the sister. Shame shame shame about the sister.
Lanna is never going to be Harvested, never going to get to play. Never going to go to the Capitol, and show them what she can do. Hanna will. Hanna will go in and blaze bright and burn the arenas down, and the Capitol will love her and fear her and bow at her feet.
It isn't fair. Lanna didn't ask to be blonde and brown-eyed and pretty, with a voice that makes you smile and sing along, light and lithe and not good at killing the way they want her to be. She can't shoot a bow with perfect precision, can't even lift a sword, let alone fight with it. Hanna is lean in all the right places, sharp like a blade, built for death. Hanna has edges where Lanna has curves, fifteen different ways to kill with the hair that Lanna can only brush and straighten and condition. Hanna's smile could rip you open; Lanna's only makes you smile right back.
People look at Hanna and see death, trust her to bring death, and that is exactly the sort of thinking that gets you into the games.
The only thing people trust Lanna at is to trust her to be pretty, sell her beauty to some Capitol man looking to have some fun with a District girl (she'll never be worth anything, she'll just shame the district if we send her in)
That's not right. Lanna wants fear, wants fame, wants the glitter of the Capitol on her skin. Lanna wants destruction.
So when Hanna Linnet! is called, like everyone knew it would be, her baby sister already running up the stage, bright-eyed and murderous and ready to shine, Lanna screams, I volunteer!
The Capitol plays it up as a selfless act of devotion to her sister. Lanna smiles at Hanna, and through her eyes blurring with joy (not love never sadness), that smile has the barest hint of teeth.
Hanna seethes.
And of course everyone knows the story. Lanna Linnet goes in and sings the three-headed muttations to sleep, convinces the handsome blond boy that she's in love with him, that the Capitol cannot tear them apart, that they will be prince and princess together. Will Regison swallows every word, blue eyes huge with stories of knights and princesses and happily ever after (didn't his fucking district beat fairytales out of him?). He becomes her knight, becomes her prince in shining armor, and when she mounts the unicorn-muttation with the shining sharp golden horn, blonde hair brilliant and brown eyes sparkling, the Capitol falls in love with the One girl who has never looked more like a princess.
(When the muttations turn on them she falls to her knees weeping and screaming and wailing, slashing the throat of her unicorn-muttation. But there is the slyest smirk on her face as Will Regison's blood drenches her snow-white steed.)
She comes home to be crowned Victor, and it is sweet.
But the sweeter victory is when her sister throws a screaming rage fit when the Capitol tells her, no, no, you can never Volunteer. Don't waste your beautiful sister's act of selflessness now.
Lanna has won.