The Vengeance
The sound of the cannon shook through Harry’s body, more severe than it had ever been before.
Harry could feel the cannon vibrate his very teeth, causing him to stammer on the end of the song he never knew the words to anyway.
“Don’t let them take my sunshine away,” Harry finished, his fingers slowing down from where they had been stroking Trent’s dark hair.
Trent was free; free from the arena, free from the cold and uncaring world he’d been stuck in for not nearly long enough.
The weight around Harry’s lungs disagreed with that idea and it was all he could do to make himself say what needed to be said.
“The Capitol just killed Trent Bailey, a child,” Harry said, quiet at first. He whispered it again, looking down at Trent’s ruined face and he felt a fire start to ignite in his chest.
It was true, wasn’t it? They killed Trent and called it fucking entertainment. Trent getting carved to pieces was the circus that they raised their bread to.
“He was a kid,” Harry said. He lifted his face and glared at nothing, at everyone. “A KID!” he screamed. “HE WAS A FUCKING KID! YOU KILLED HIM FOR NOTHING!”
There was a sharp inhale and Harry didn’t hear it, didn’t care. Harry was sitting on the floor with the head of a dead kid in his lap and nothing mattered more than making someone, anyone, see how fucking sick it all was.
“DID TRENT FIGHT IN YOUR FUCKING WAR?!” Harry screamed, making sure every camera on the floor heard him. Every tribute too; let him find the person who carved Trent and made a show of his death.
“TRENT BAILEY WAS ELEVEN YEARS OLD! HE DIDN’T FIGHT IN A WAR, HE WASN’T A REBEL THAT NEEDED PUNISHED!” Harry felt sick, dizzy with anger in a way that he had never been before. “TRENT HAD FIVE BROTHERS WHO HAD TO WATCH THIS, WHY? WHAT ARE YOU SO SCARED OF, PRESIDENT DUMBLEDORE?!”
Harry almost surged to his feet, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t just drop Trent like his death meant nothing when it was the only death that mattered.
Instead, Harry traced the cuts down both side of Trent’s face, then the one across his throat. That was when Harry sealed his own death, a death he would welcome if his words changed one thing in the entire damn ugly world.
“See this?” Harry asked, cold and calm suddenly. Harry’s finger traced the cut that ended Trent’s life and he knew that his hatred was on full display, more hate than he knew he had in him.
“One day, President Dumbledore, someone’s going to do this to you,” Harry swore. His words wouldn’t be heard in the districts, it didn’t matter. As long as President Dumbledore heard him, heard what Harry hoped was a prediction of his future.
Harry glared at nothing, knowing the President would see his eyes, hear his promise, and hopefully never sleep peacefully again.
“You’ll have to kill me, because if you let me live then I’m going to make you say Trent’s name just before I slice you open.”
And that was the truest promise Harry had ever made. They would have to kill him, because if not then Harry was going to drag the president, the gamemakers, every person involved in the game straight down to Hell.
Harry would go too, peacefully, if only to make sure they were as trapped as they thought he was in the arena they built.
Maybe that was what he would do instead, build an arena and trap them in it. It would be filled with horrible monsters and no food, no means of escape. There wouldn’t be a winner in a game Harry put them in, they would all die as painfully as possible.
Nobody would watch, nobody would know.
Harry would just kill them all one-by-one.
It was the sick kind of thinking that put Harry in an arena to begin with, but that was fine by him. If the people who created the Hunger Games were as filled with fury as Harry was, then he could almost understand how they began to design the game.
Harry could understand, but he didn’t excuse it. They would suffer for it, someway, somehow. Harry just wouldn’t be there to see it happen because they wouldn’t, couldn’t, let him live.
And that was fine, Harry was ready to die if someone heard him, actually heard him.
“I’m going to kill them,” Harry swore to Trent, whispering the promise just to him. “Every last one of them.”
Starting with whoever found a little kid by himself and made a game out of torturing him before taking his life. It had been pain with no purpose, a show for the Capitol and torment to Trent’s family in Eleven.
Harry let out a sigh, surprised at how even his breath was. Harry was ready to end the games, in whatever way that meant. He thought he would be nervous, something. But he felt fine, ready. Like maybe his body had been planning on burning everything down and only waited for Harry to catch up to it.
And he was ready, as soon as he cleaned Trent up. His family had already seen him die, seen him be tortured. It was the last act of kindness Harry would show in the arena to clean his little ally up, send him out of the arena with some sort of dignity.
“If you take his body while I’m gone, I’ll burn this arena down,” Harry warned whatever gamemaker waited for him to leave Trent. Harry needed to get water, he was close enough to a bathroom to get it.
Harry was going to risk it, just make a quick dash to get the water he needed, but someone coughed quietly and caught Harry’s immediately attention.
Blaise was standing just a few feet behind Harry, his eyes raised to the ceiling and his body tense. Harry had sort of forgotten about him, maybe even thought he would go running when Harry threatened the life of the president. He didn’t though, and that was curious.
“What do you need?” Blaise asked Harry in a thick voice. He sounded different than he had when he was trying to play Harry, more childish, a little rough.
Harry didn’t know why he was there, he didn’t care either.
“Water,” Harry told him.
Blaise nodded once then started toward the bathroom with long strides. It was when he walked past where Harry sat on the floor that Harry saw his face, tilted just right where the shadows couldn’t hide his expression.
Blaise’s eyes were swollen, his face twisted up in a mask that Harry recognized. It was one Harry wore when he didn’t want to cry. Harry had worn that mask so many times that it was his most familiar one.
The question was why did Blaise, Blaise who lived in Three and who was playing the Game the way the gamemakers wanted, look like he was about to cry?
It didn’t matter yet, but it probably would later. Later when Trent’s body was being sent back to his family, when the shadowy ideas lurking in the darkest parts of Harry’s mind could be unleashed.
That’s when things like motivation would matter again. Not yet though, Harry had to take care of his ally one last time first.
Harry stood up slowly, laying Trent’s head on the floor as gently as he could. Trent didn’t look younger in death, not like the girls from Four had. Trent looked… he looked destroyed, broken. Trent had been a kid before he was murdered, but he became a casualty.
It was a new category that Harry didn’t know until then.
Tribute. Victor. Casualty.
Trent was a casualty.
Blaise returned when Harry was rearranging Trent to a position more peaceful, less haunting. Blaise didn’t have a cup with him, but he had shed his shirt and got it wet to use as a rag. Harry nodded at him when he accepted it, he had nothing to say though.
Not to Blaise, Harry had plenty to say to Trent’s family.
“Trent was clever,” Harry said as he gently began cleaning Trent’s face. “He was quick, smart. He saved my life.”
It was true. Trent wanted to be Harry’s ally and he saved Harry and Neville both, in a sneaky way that should have offered him better protection.
Harry should have never asked him to watch his back, he should have left him with Neville. Neville, who wouldn’t murder, would have kept Trent safe.
As safe as any of them were.
Blaise didn’t ask any questions and Harry offered no explanation while he cleaned Trent. It should have hurt, talking about a kid who had died in an arena for the entertainment of a country that wouldn’t mourn him.
Harry didn’t feel any pain though, only the heat of his anger that swore someone, everyone, would pay for what they had done. It was a crime, murder, and Harry wasn’t going to let it go unpunished.
“Trent didn’t deserve this, no kid does.” Harry had Trent as clean as he could get him and he faltered as he stood and stared down at him.
Trent with his dark hair and his ruined face… they - he looked a bit like Harry.
How long until that was Harry? Did he have time to do all the things that needed done?
Would anyone pick up where he left off?
“Trent Bailey was a boy when his brother was reaped.”
Harry’s head snapped up and he looked to Blaise again. Blaise wasn’t looking at Harry, he was looking at Trent with an unwavering hard expression. There wasn’t fire in Blaise’s face, not like Harry’s, but there was something close to it.
Smoke, maybe. Shadows as he saw Trent’s death for what it was, hopefully.
“Trent was a boy then and he died a man here,” Blaise said. He did a strange motion with his hand, touching two fingers to his forehead, three to his lips, then four to his chest. “Find peace, brother.”
It must have been a district custom, something Harry didn’t know. Blaise bowed his head and they were silent for a few seconds.
And then Blaise looked toward Harry, looking him directly in the eyes then. There wasn’t any laughter in his golden eyes, no playful flirtations to be the character he made himself. There was only Blaise and Harry and the fire inside them both.
They didn’t need words, not really. They were thinking the same thing, building the same plan.
Harry bent down and picked up the sword that Blaise had and tossed it to him. Blaise carefully opened Trent’s jacket and passed Harry the fang that Trent had been carrying.
Whoever killed Trent had very little time left in the world.
“The others?” Blaise asked when Harry was ready to leave Trent.
Harry shook his head. He didn’t need Neville, didn’t want the other boy. If Blaise wanted to help, so be it. It was revenge though, pure and simple.
“One or Five?” Harry mused aloud, wondering which pair had killed Trent. It had to be a pair, Harry was sure of that, which meant it wasn’t the girl from Ten.
The cuts were smooth, Trent hadn’t been struggling, which meant he wasn’t able to struggle. Trent wanted to win, he wanted to go home. If he could have struggled, he would have.
“One,” Blaise answered Harry’s question without hesitance. “Pansy likes to play with her food.”
In a flash, Harry had Blaise against the wall with the pointed end of the fang directly in the center of his throat. Blaise twisted his sword around to push it against Harry’s side, a warning, and Harry snarled.
“That was a kid,” Harry hissed. “Not a fucking meal.”
Blaise didn’t blink, he only held even eye contact as he nodded shortly.
“Apologies,” he said.
Harry weighed him for a moment, wondering if it would be best to kill him and be done with it. Blaise was interesting and confusing in equal amounts, Harry didn’t want to be distracted while he found the duo from One.
“Why are you doing this?” Harry asked, needing a real answer.
Harry was done playing for the Capitol, thinking about the cameras. It wasn’t a game, it never had been. Harry was going to destroy the arena as fully as he should have done since the dong signified the start.
If Blaise wanted to be memorable, earn sponsors, he would need to find a new partner for it. If Blaise wanted to wreck the games and make everyone regret being reaped for games, then he could stay.
Blaise swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing and pushing against the fang. He still never looked away though and Harry thought there was something genuine in his eyes.
“Because I couldn’t walk away if I wanted to,” Blaise said lowly. “And believe me, bellissimo assassino, I do wish I could.”
Harry warred with himself while he looked at Blaise. It wasn’t as if Harry had a lot of experience with people lying to him, why bother lying to him? Harry liked to think he was decent at reading if a person was decent or not though.
Sirius, the night they first met, had been decent.
Neville, when he asked to be allies, was decent.
Trent… Harry swallowed, thinking about Trent… Trent was beyond decent, too good for the cruel world they lived in.
In that moment, as he stared in Harry’s eyes and let Harry shove the fang just against his throat, Blaise seemed decent. Harry couldn’t explain it, didn’t want to waste time trying even to himself.
“Fine.” Harry lowered his arm and nodded at Blaise. “That’s fine.”
Blaise blinked then and one side of his lips curled up in a ghost of a smirk. He leaned his head toward Harry while his weapon was also dropped from where it had been digging in Harry’s side.
“Kiss for luck?” he whispered.
Harry might smile about that later, just at the pure stupidity. All he did then was look from his bloodied arms to where Blaise had managed to get blood on the side of his neck as well.
“We don’t need luck,” Harry said coolly, once again calm with the plan in place. “We’re the sons of victors.”
Blaise was, anyway. But Harry’s dad made it to the final two of his game, he could have won. It meant something.
The castle was quiet when the boys headed toward the roof. Harry didn’t say that was where they were going, Blaise didn’t ask. Harry only knew that two tributes would be on the roof, four if he was lucky.
Five if he was incredibly unlucky.
Harry forced himself to breathe slowly while they moved with stealthy and quiet steps. There were times when Harry could breathe slowly enough that it felt as if his mind and body were two separate parts.
It kept him from feeling hunger on bad days, pain on bad nights. If Harry was going to end up dying in the next hour, he would do it calmly.
There wouldn’t be any hysterics, they wouldn’t see him cry. Harry would take down anyone he could with him - anyone who bought in the bullshit the Capitol fed them. It might end with a cannon and Harry being as still as Trent, and that would be fine.
The problem was that Harry had nothing to lose, nothing at all. The Capitol put him in the arena with weapons used to slaughter and forgot that Harry had no reason to play by their rules.
Nobody could be hurt by Harry’s actions, nobody could be dangled above him as a threat. Harry could die, but that didn’t bother him.
Maybe it should have, maybe they should have chosen someone else.
Blaise looked at Harry when they reached the top of the tower staircase they had been steadily climbing. He didn’t say anything, but there was a question in the way he had one cheek sucked in, his head tilted.
Harry inhaled slowly, breathing in the sweat that clung to him, the cold air that surrounded him. Harry’s fingers flexed on the fang in one of his hands, his wrist twisted to feel the other one. There was a knife in his pocket, he could feel it burning against him.
Harry exhaled, pushing away his worries, his uncertainties. There was no one in the arena responsible for Trent’s death, they weren’t responsible for the death of Harry’s dad or the ghosts that haunted Sirius.
They were innocent, but someone had to pay.
When Harry opened his eyes, not realizing that he had closed them, he was ready.
To live or die?
To avenge or punish?
It didn’t matter, everything was a circle anyway.
“Ready or not, here I come,” Harry whispered, thinking Trent would have liked that.
“Here we come,” Blaise corrected him quietly with his hand on the door. “Try to not die.”
That was the easy part, it was all Harry had ever done.
The tower they climbed brought them behind the cornucopia. It was lighter on the roof, probably on purpose.
Harry imagined that fights were more dramatic with the golden sign of the Capitol’s offerings in the center of the scene. The purple sky would add an interesting backdrop, if nobody was sick of seeing it yet.
Harry certainly was.
If he made it out of the arena, he never wanted to see the sky in the hour between evening and night again. For as long as he lived, it was tarnished. Ruined. A memory of death and blood and the empty eyes of dead children.
Maybe - Harry had the thought as he and Blaise began creeping around separate sides of the cornucopia, wordlessly deciding to attack whoever waited from both sides - that was how Sirius felt about Harry.
Harry had been the memory of his best friend, haunting him through the district. Every reaping, every time he had to see Harry in Knockturn Alley, it was a reminder of what Sirius lived through, what he lost, what victory cost him.
It didn’t erase the times when Harry had been small and craved comforts, but Harry could understand it.
Sirius ran away from Harry just as Harry would run away from twilight.
Victory cost everyone something; it cost some of them everything.
When Harry made it to the edge of the cornucopia, just at the lip where he could look around it and find who waited for him, he knew it was going to cost two boys their future.
It wasn’t the boy and girl from One who stood there, lazily sitting on crates as they kept watch. It was the two from Two, the muscular boys who wouldn’t look out of place in a peacekeepers uniform.
Blaise was on the opposite side of Harry, waiting for him to make a move. Harry couldn’t see him, he just knew that was what Blaise was doing.
It was Harry’s vengeance, the flame inside Harry that could only be extinguished with blood.
The boys from Two didn’t kill Trent, maybe they didn’t kill anyone. They were partners with the pair that did it though, and that was more than enough motive for Harry to strike.
There wasn’t a great angle for Harry to aim for, so he didn’t try. If he tried to dart behind the boys, he risked being trapped inside the cornucopia, cornered. If he waited to attack until he was in front of them, he would give them time to see him.
In the end, Harry snicked the knife from his pocket and aimed at the side of the head of the boy furthest from him. If he was lucky, just fucking once…
The knife hit the boy in the side of the head, not deep, but deep enough to get a grunt of pain from him.
“Goyle?” The boy closer to Harry - it must be Crabbe - turned to look at his partner and gave Harry the half a second of an opening that he needed.
Harry lunged toward Crabbe with the fang switched back to his right hand. Harry nearly had him, but then Goyle called out to him as a warning just before Harry drove the fang in his neck.
“Ay!”
Crabbe flipped around and had a short-sword in his hand that he tried to catch Harry in the stomach with. Harry turned at the last second and the sword only cut him.
It should have stung, but Harry couldn’t feel it. Harry was in the safe place in his mind where he controlled his body, Harry alone controlled his body, but pain could never reach him.
“Fuckin’—” Crabbe cursed in a language Harry didn’t know, some district specific swear, probably, as he got to his feet. Crabbe was fast, faster than Harry thought he’d be with his thick arms and legs, but he was stupid too.
Blaise had made his move on Goyle, aiming low and sticking his sharp sword in Goyle’s left leg. When that boy cried out, the one Harry fought with turned to help him on instinct.
It was a bad instinct. It was the kind of instinct that would get him killed, if only because Harry was prepared to show him that.
Harry drove the fang forward with as much power as he could, lodging it between the ribs of Crabbe’s right side. When it stuck, spilling his blood and ripping a scream from his throat, it was a triumphant feeling that Harry could only appreciate for a second before a dark blur burst out from inside the cornucopia and knocked him on his back.
The air was knocked from Harry’s lungs and he hit his head on the rough pebbled ground of the roof hard enough to see black spots in his vision.
There was a moment - just one moment - where Harry saw the sky glimmer. Maybe, in the shimmer, it was where the tributes went. They didn’t leave the arena, they only rose above it to watch as the others continued to fight.
And why were they fighting? Why did Harry have to fight?
Someone landed harshly on Harry, pinning his arm to the ground with their knee, knocking his floating thoughts back in his mind. Something round and metal was pressed to Harry’s forehead, right between his eyes.
It took Harry a second to realize what it was, as the spinning thoughts in his mind were momentarily distracted by a flash of colors.
There was a click, a bullet sliding in place, preparing to kill at the command of the boy who stared down at Harry impassively.
The boy loaded it, Harry knew that’s what it was called. Yaxley told him, after one of the first nights Harry had gone to him for food.
“It takes two clicks to end your life,” Yaxley said. He loaded the gun and Harry shook when it was aimed at his face. Yaxley smiled and Harry cried out when he pulled the trigger.
“It’s not loaded, boy,” Yaxley laughed, deep and cruel. “See here?” he twisted the gun, showing Harry a little tunnel on the side. “Idiot boy.”
That gun hadn’t been loaded, but Harry could see the one aimed at him was.
The gun wasn’t important, it would kill him or it wouldn’t. Harry was more interested in the colorful mixture of strings tied together to make a bracelet around the tribute’s wrist.
Harry looked at that and he didn’t cry out, he didn’t shake. Harry only slowly looked from the bracelet the boy wore to his face.
Screams and grunts of pain were dimming in the background, just the music that would be played to Harry’s death. It was unimportant who was winning; nobody ever won anyway.
The sounds fading around him only made Harry think that Blaise was distracted with the boys from Two. It meant Harry would die alone, just him and the brown eyes of the boy waiting for a reason.
“What’s your name?” the boy asked, his voice a rough mess of sounds. The boy was Taylor, from Eleven. If Trent had been right, and Harry suspected he was judging by the surprise attack, Taylor had been hiding in the cornucopia since the games began.
“Why?” Harry asked him, as quiet as the cold air that breezed around them. He flashed a bitter smile, refusing to be afraid. Even if he was, he wouldn’t show it. What could be taken from Harry aside from his life? “You’ll let me go if you know my name?”
“No.” Taylor’s expression didn’t change, he only dug the barrel of the gun between Harry’s eyes harder. “I need to know who to pray for tonight.”
Pray? Pray to who? To a God that Harry never believed in? There were people who did, Harry remembered them from the orphanage.
They prayed to God while they kneeled before the Seal of Panem.
If there was a God, someone with more control than the Gamemakers had over the arena - someone with more control than the President had over the country - then Harry hoped he never met them.
“Harry,” Harry told Taylor, so calm that he hoped the country saw that it never broke him. With a gun between his eyes, with seconds left to live… peacekeepers, gamemakers, presidents, Gods never broke Harry.
Taylor nodded, as if he had already known Harry.
“The kid from Eleven,” Taylor said slowly, “Trent. Have you seen him?”
That hurt, it did. Trent was gone, free. Maybe he had been broken, maybe he didn’t. He was gone though, and it caused an absence of pain that was more startling than if Harry’s chest had actually cracked in half.
Harry didn’t let anything show; not to Taylor, not to the country. They had his tears, they didn’t get any more of them.
“Trent’s dead,” Harry said. When Taylor’s hand shook, his face twisted in pain, Harry knew he had a few seconds to live, if that.
“PRESIDENT DUMBLEDORE KILLED HIM!” Harry yelled. It wasn’t hysterics, it wasn’t emotion. It was Harry ensuring that the fight playing across the nation had the proper background music.
The truth of it. It might have been the kids from One who were partnered with the kids from Two, but they were all puppets being controlled by a government that needed to burn.
The gamemakers could silence Harry in the quiet moments, they couldn’t edit him out when there were five tributes fighting on the roof they designed so cleverly.
Taylor made a choked sound; fear or anguish, it was all the same. There was something that shattered in his eyes then, something broke inside of him.
Harry raised his eyes to the sky, deciding to embrace his death. It might be peaceful, being free. Harry had never put much thought into freedom… if he had, he would imagine it to be warm, comfortable.
There wouldn’t be hunger pains, there wouldn’t be shadows chasing him. No blood, no death, no ice in his chest.
When the gunshot rang out, Harry didn’t make a sound. When the second shot echoed and silenced everything - all the thoughts, all the soft pants from boys fighting for their lives, Harry lifted his head.
Taylor was running across the roof, a long black gun in his arms and another crossed over his back. Harry lifted his hand to touch his forehead and felt no blood, no injury.
The gunshots weren’t for Harry, they were for the others.
Blaise was on the ground, blood dark as it surrounded him beneath the sky that never changed. Another boy was beside him, his body twisted and unmoving.
When Harry looked for the third boy, feeling much too detached from the moment, the cannon blasted once more.
It wasn’t for Harry, of that Harry was mostly certain.
Harry could stand on his legs made of soup and he could walk across the roof to the body groaning on the stones. The boy nearly made it to the tower, to an escape, before he had been shot in the shoulder. Harry could look down at him and see him as an enemy that would have killed Harry if he had more of a chance.
Harry couldn’t be the death the cannon signaled because he was able to raise his hand above the chest that still moved and bring the fang down.
Once, twice.
Harry’s chest was heaving when another cannon blasted again; another death.
It didn’t feel particularly real, like Harry was watching it happen on the screens that would play at home.
There was a boy standing on the roof, splattered from head to toe with the blood spray from other tributes. He only stood there, breathing heavily, while the cameras watched him.
If Harry could yell at him, he would. What would he say?
‘Move’?
‘Take that fang and drive it in your own heart’?
Harry considered that when he looked down at the bone-white fang that gleamed beneath the dark blood. It took an incredible amount of effort to stab someone, he hadn’t known that before.
Nobody warned him that for every step closer to victory, his steps became heavier. They didn’t tell him that killing someone was physically draining, even if he closed his head and heart to the deaths.
Could he do it? Was he strong enough?
Harry was floating somewhere above himself, watching the boy with the dark-hair grapple with an impossible decision. The boy wouldn’t win, he wouldn’t be free. Not until the Capitol set him free… or he freed himself.
The hand gripping his one great weapon tightened and Harry knew what the boy was going to do.
It was for the best - take his own life before someone else could claim it. If the Capitol wanted him dead, better to do it himself. Nobody could cheer for his death, there would be no tribute given credit for it.
No rewards to be earned with his death.
Harry nodded in approval and the boy raised his hand, quick as a flash of white in the perpetual dark night, and —
“Harry?”
The boy dropped his weapon and turned at the sound of his name.
Harry wasn’t disappointed with his choice, he wasn’t.
The boy had to live, he had to. It was all he knew.
Freedom was a concept, never a reality.