The Reprieve
Blaise Zabini wasn’t what Harry expected if he had thought to expect anything.
When Harry met Blaise during the tribute parade, Harry thought he was a nothing more than a career, someone who had the world handed to him. When they met again during training, Harry thought he could be dangerous, but that he wouldn’t know how to struggle in the arena like Harry would.
Harry had been right in most of the things he assumed. Blaise was a career, he had trained for the day he knew he would be reaped. Blaise was dangerous and he didn’t know how to struggle.
Blaise’s struggle was suffering, simple painful suffering. And as much as Harry knew how to struggle, he didn’t know how to deal with someone else’s suffering.
For a long time after the fight on the rooftop, Harry sat inside the cornucopia with Blaise’s head on his lap. Harry didn’t remember much of that time when he struggled to bring it up, he only remembered thinking that the cannon would blast and Blaise would stop breathing.
Harry might have sang Trent’s song, he didn’t know.
By the time the anthem played that night and grey clouds covered the purple twilight, Harry was more alert. A little more himself.
Both of the boys from Two were dead, one of the twins from Five had died - the cannon must have went off when Harry was lost in his thoughts.
That was the first time that Harry looked in the sky and he didn’t say any names, he didn’t say who killed those kids.
The tribute deaths of the day were announced by district and the photo of Trent grinning in the sky was too much.
“How many…” Blaise had an unhealthy grey shade to his skin, too ashy to match the inky clouds in the sky. Blaise coughed and looked small where he laid; the Capitol had made him small.
“Of us are left?” Harry asked, guessing at his question. “Both from One, you and Theo, one of the twins from Five, the girl from Ten, the boy from Eleven, then me and Neville.”
Nine.
There had been twenty-four and they were down to nine.
Blaise closed his eyes and shivered as he curled tighter into himself.
“Seven left,” Blaise whispered.
Harry counted again and went to correct Blaise before he realized what he meant.
Seven left, seven tributes had to die before two could leave.
“Yeah, seven left,” Harry agreed. The thought made him feel sick and so he busied himself with searching through the crates inside the cornucopia. The weapons were gone, the food was mostly grain and corn kernels. It wasn’t like Harry wouldn’t eat it if he needed to, but Harry didn’t feel hungry at all.
One crate that Harry pried open had blankets in it, three scratchy blue wool blankets. Harry pulled them out and began making a nest in the very back of the cornucopia for Blaise to settle on. If Harry rearranged the other crates, the two of them could be as hidden as the boy from Ten had been inside there.
“Hey, wake up.”
Blaise had fallen asleep while Harry made their nest and Harry had to shake him some to wake him.
“Tired,” Blaise mumbled with his eyes closed.
“Yeah, I know.” Harry tried to heft Blaise up and felt more than heard Blaise’s sharp cry of pain at the movement.
The injury to his leg was bad, but Harry couldn’t do anything about it until he knew they weren’t going to get shot by the boy from Ten if he returned.
“Bite your tongue,” Harry warned Blaise. Harry had a different plan to move him, but it was going to be just as unpleasant as walking would have.
Harry took off his jacket and shirt and rolled Blaise around until they were both tucked beneath him. Blaise had gagged instead of screamed and Harry tried to not get sick himself when Blaise threw up on Harry’s pant leg and shoe.
“That was the easy part,” Harry warned him. “Don’t fucking puke on me again or I’ll leave you here to die.”
That, for whatever reason, made Blaise grin.
“You wouldn’t,” he said, his voice weak. “Where’s the romance in abandoning me?”
“I’ll say I was too upset looking at your nasty leg to stand it.” Harry gripped the parts of his clothes beneath Blaise and steeled himself. “Don’t scream either or we’re both dead.”
As soon as Blaise made what looked like a nod, Harry began dragging him.
It was awful.
Even the short ten feet from the mouth of the cornucopia to the back where Harry had a nest ready had drained all the color from Blaise’s face. It also smeared blood down their path and Harry was able to see how much blood Blaise had already lost.
Harry thought he would be dead by morning.
“Blaise?” Harry kneeled down beside him and tapped Blaise’s cheek to get his attention. Blaise opened his eyes and Harry could see how miserable he was then.
“I’m going to go try and find our knives,” Harry said. “Then I’m going to look at your leg, alright? Just - just don’t go anywhere.”
“Where would I go?” Blaise whispered.
Harry didn’t answer because Harry didn’t know where people went when they died.
“Stay here,” Harry ordered him. He slid his fingers off Blaise’s cheek and lingered for a moment longer. “Stay.”
Harry made a mad dash out to the rooftop where everything had happened just hours ago. Days ago? Harry didn’t know, it was impossible to track time with the sky that had never changed. The only way Harry knew what ended each day were the pictures of the dead.
Maybe the Gamemakers had gotten bored with the constant twilight because they had sent in clouds to cover the sky. Where it had been all dark purple and blues before, there were clouds of grey and black. Even while Harry stared up at them, stunned by the change, they began to open up on him.
“What?” Harry stood on the rooftop with only his pants and boots on and couldn’t control himself. When the rain began to pour down on him, Harry laughed.
Harry stood there with his arms outstretched and laughed.
It was rain, just rain.
Harry threw his head back and let the rain drench him, wash away all the blood, wake him up. It was a gift and Harry laughed until the laughter broke.
It was a gift of rain to wash away the blood of the dead.
Harry’s laughter turned to sobs, horrible sobs that tore at his insides and made him dizzy.
It didn’t matter if the entire country watched Harry lose his mind in the middle of the rooftop. It didn’t matter if Harry was choking on a mixture of rain and his own tears.
Harry hit his knees and hung his head when it struck him hard and sudden: none of it mattered.
Seven more tributes would die soon.
Next year, twenty-three more would die.
Then twenty-three more.
Maybe one year they would allow two to live again, so it would only be twenty-two.
The quarter quell would be the next year and they might reap three kids from each district, which would be… would be…
It didn’t matter.
Live or die, it didn’t matter.
Harry’s life had never mattered before he entered the arena and even surviving it didn’t mean anything would matter.
The rain washed away the blood and sweat, what would wash away Trent’s gap-toothed smile? Susan’s red curls? There wasn’t a rain that could take away the knowledge buried in Harry’s head at how easy it was to kill a human being, how physically taxing it was.
Was there rain for that?
Fifteen dead… for how many of them was Harry the last thing they saw?
What would be the last thing that Harry saw? The cold eyes of a scared tribute who wanted to live? Glistening teeth of a mutation created to terrorize him?
Harry had lost track of himself in the moment. It was happening more and more often in the arena. In Harry’s mind, he replayed the death of every tribute and tried to imagine what they did before the cannon blasted.
It was a quiet beeping that broke through Harry’s thoughts. It was soft, mechanical; it didn’t belong in Harry’s mind.
Harry lifted his head and had to squint through the wet hair that was plastered to his forehead, searching through the sheets of relentless rain to find the source of it. Flying carefully through the sky, a small beacon in Harry’s lowest point, was a white drone with a paper bag attached to it.
“Sirius,” Harry breathed, his eyes locked on that drone. Sirius had sent Harry something. What it was? Harry barely cared.
It was a message of timing, to Harry. A second gift for the night.
Harry wanted to know what could wash away the deaths that would live in the darkest corners of Harry’s mind forever and Sirius sent him a gift. Sirius knew what Harry was thinking, or he knew well enough. Sirius had been where Harry was, he had tried to run from it every moment since then.
There wasn’t anything to wash away the death and blood inside of Harry, but if there was? It was the reminder that Sirius had eventually left the arena.
Maybe Harry would too.
Harry reached out with fingers that were numb and trembling to take the bag when it was dropped before him. It wasn’t very large and Harry felt a small spark of curiosity at what his mentor sent him…
Liquor.
Harry looked down in the bag and recognized the dark brown liquid in the glass bottle and his lips twitched slightly.
“You still owe me a real drink after,” Harry said, looking up at nothing, knowing that he wasn’t alone. It was different, knowing that Sirius was watching. It… Harry didn’t know how to describe the warmth that blossomed in his chest at that knowledge, it was something that felt good.
It was also something that reminded Harry he had an ally waiting for him.
Harry found his knife, the longer knife that Blaise had, one of the fangs, and a sword. The sword was useless to Harry, Blaise’s long knife wouldn’t do him any good either. Unless Blaise was up and moving soon, it would be Harry with a knife and fang trying to defend them.
That made Harry wonder where Neville was, if he would be searching for Harry. The rain and news of the deaths from Two might keep the other tributes off the roof, Harry only couldn’t guess how long of a respite he would have.
Long enough to get Blaise in some condition to fight? Maybe. Long enough to drink? Sirius seemed to think so.
Harry didn’t know how he would get Blaise on his feet again. Blaise might not even last the night… maybe the drunk was to numb his pain? Sirius was passing on his own methods to hide from pain.
Whatever the hidden message in the gift was, Harry had it in his hand with the weapons when he returned to the cornucopia. Blaise looked a little better, he was sitting up anyway.
“You were gone a while,” Blaise said, his voice raspy. “I didn’t think you were going to come back.”
“Was I?” Harry looked at his watch, the only thing he wore on his upper body. It was still ticking and Harry shrugged at the time. Twelve o’clock didn’t mean anything, not when Harry couldn’t judge if it was morning or night.
“I’m back now,” Harry said. He laid all the weapons except for his knife beside Blaise and passed him the bottle. “You might want that, I’m going to look at your leg and I’m sure it’s going to hurt like hell.”
“Bellissimo assassino,” Blaise looked up at Harry with a sudden spark of humor in his expression. “Are you trying to get me drunk?”
“Sirius is,” Harry said. Harry shifted and gave Blaise a crooked grin. “I’m trying to get your pants off.”
Blaise laughed and if it was good that Sirius was watching Harry then that was good too. The laughter was a thousand times better than the screaming that followed.
“Almost done,” Harry swore. Blaise’s only response was a groan, he had screamed himself hoarse when Harry first cut his pants at the leg, exposing the area that had been shot. Harry couldn’t find an exit spot for the bullet and wound up digging the bullet out, a horrible experience for them both.
Harry was nearly finished then though, he only wanted to tie his shirt over the wound, stop the bleeding that he had caused to restart. Blaise had lost enough blood and Harry wasn’t sure that the liquor helped any.
It did make Blaise chatty, something that was as funny as it was annoying.
“My mother said it was fair-haired men who cut the deepest,” Blaise complained, his accent sounding much thicker with the added slurring. “You don’t have fair hair, you have dark hair. Dark like your heart.”
Harry had only had two drinks to Blaise’s many more, but he thought that was still the funniest thing he had heard since the day he had been reaped.
“I’ve got a fuckin’ knife right here.” Harry pressed the blade against Blaise’s thigh, proving his point. “‘S it really a good time to insult me?”
“It’s only an insult if it’s not true,” Blaise insisted. “You’re dark. Dark like - like coal mines!”
“Dark like coal mines.” Harry huffed and finished tying off the strips of his shirt he sacrificed. “I’ll remember that next time you get shot.”
“Don’t joke.” Blaise’s face was covered in a layer of sweat and tears and he threw his head back against the golden wall behind him. “You’ve got no idea how much it hurt.”
Harry snatched the bottle from Blaise and took a long drink of it. Whatever it was smelled awful and burned when Harry drank it, but it made everything else a little easier for him.
“Why don’t you?”
“Hmm?” Harry had been covering Blaise with the blanket and situating himself beside him. They weren’t immediately able to be seen from the mouth of the cornucopia, but they wouldn’t win any fights either.
Harry had to hope that the rain would keep the others away… just a little longer.
Blaise shifted so he could face Harry and he had his face screwed up, like thinking was causing him pain.
“That boy shot everyone except you,” Blaise said slowly. “Why?”
“We’ve got a secret alliance,” Harry lied with a straight face. “He was meant to kill you and take me with him, but I guess we were both betrayed.”
Blaise’s mouth fell open and Harry stayed serious for a few seconds before he laughed. When Harry laughed, Blaise laughed.
“I’ve got no fuckin’ idea,” Harry admitted. The entire interaction was fuzzy before Harry started drinking, it was nearly gone then. “Maybe he wants a romance for sponsors too.”
“Tell him he can find someone else.” Blaise pouted and shifted again, no longer wincing over the pain in his leg, until he was half laying on Harry. “You’re my bid for attention.”
Harry looked down at where Blaise was cuddling into him and raised his hand slowly to rest it on Blaise’s head.
“Is that what this is?” Harry asked, nervously running his fingers over Blaise’s coarse and dirty curls. “Another game?”
Over and over for just a little longer, the games never ended.
“Supposed to be.” Blaise sounded tired, drunk, soft. “Then I saw you, saw you with that kid…”
Harry tried to think back, think about when Blaise seemed different.
“Trent?” Harry asked.
“Mm.” Blaise hummed and his warm breath caused goosebumps to erupt on Harry’s side where his head was nuzzled. “He wasn’t a game to you.”
“No, he isn’t - wasn’t,” Harry agreed, still not understanding. That had been the worst time in Harry’s entire life, Harry only saw those last moments with Trent with rage and pain. How had Blaise seen it with anything else? “Am I a game to you?”
“No.” Blaise said it so easily, no hesitation or thought at all. He was half-awake, drunk, had lost a lot of blood, but he said no.
Harry thought he might believe him. Harry Potter, to one person in the entire shitty world, wasn’t a game to be played or a thing to be used.
That thought kept Harry awake for a very long time, much later than Blaise who passed out right after shifting Harry’s world on the side.
When Harry and Blaise were both awake next, they were still trapped in the cornucopia by the rain and Blaise’s leg. Blaise had a headache, Harry felt sick. Harry imagined they weren’t making very interesting tributes for most of the day as they laid together and talked to pass the time.
Mostly, Blaise talked and Harry listened.
Blaise told Harry about his mother, how she won her games. When Harry asked, Blaise told Harry about the year Sirius won.
“I watched recaps,” Blaise whispered to Harry. “I thought your father was weak, he let Sirius carry him.”
“What made him weak?” Harry wondered. James Potter made it to the end, he finished second. That wasn’t weakness, there was strength in that.
“He never killed anyone,” Blaise told him. “Not one person. Sirius did it all for them. He - he loved you though, you know? He talked a lot about you in his game.”
That made a part of Harry ache and he wondered what life would be like if James had been the victor. Harry would have been raised in a house in Victor’s Village, he never would know how cold it could be at night.
Harry might not know how cruel the world could be, how pointless it was to wish for things.
That boy who died with James Potter wouldn’t have been prepared to enter the arena. That boy would have been the first cannon blast in the sky.
“Sirius said he wasn’t scared,” Harry told Blaise, staring up at the golden ceiling above them and trying to picture his dad in the arena. “I think he loved Sirius, yeah? He - he would have to, to do what he did.”
Because Sirius didn’t kill James and James didn’t leave the arena without any deaths on his hands. It was the two of them and James beat Sirius to the draw when it happened. Maybe Sirius let him, Harry didn’t think so though.
Harry thought James had just loved Sirius more than Sirius loved him and it made him faster, more prepared to die so Sirius could live.
Blaise had his hand on Harry’s naked back, drawing little shapes and designs as the huddled together for warmth. They could have put their jackets on, but Harry wasn’t bothered by his half-dressed body.
“He loved you too,” Blaise said, as if that changed anything.
Harry smiled joyless, just an amused curl of his lips upward.
“Not enough,” Harry said, the truth of it. James wanted Sirius to live more than James wanted to meet his own son. At the end of the Sixtieth Hunger Games, James chose Sirius over Harry.
It wound up being a quiet day, one without any cannons or deaths. When the anthem played that night, shining in the sky while Harry crunched his way through a mouthful of hard corn kernels, no tributes appeared.
“Where do you think Neville and Theo are?” Harry asked Blaise, raising his voice to be heard over the steady rainfall.
“Who knows?” Blaise was trying to stand, using one of the long swords as a sort of cane. It looked painful and awkward, Harry didn’t think he’d be winning any races.
“I should go find Neville,” Harry said, thinking it over as he stood in the mouth of the cornucopia and looked out in the darkness that was as unrelenting as the twilight had been.
“Why?” Blaise took a few shaky steps and had to grab Harry’s shoulder when he got close enough to keep himself upright. Blaise’s fingers were tight on Harry’s shoulder but Harry stayed upright so they could both watch the rain.
“We’re allies,” Harry said, “for… four more tributes, anyway.”
Officially. Harry knew that with the change in the rules that Neville wanted them to go to the end and with Trent gone… Neville might think that was the only possible decision Harry would make. Harry knew he should, Neville had been supportive and never wavered in his dedication to their alliance.
Except Harry couldn’t help but think of the last two boys from District Twelve who had an alliance. One of them killed their way through the arena, the other didn’t kill anyone at all.
Sirius and James didn’t exactly have a happy ending and Harry worried that taking Neville to the end would bring that same unhappiness on him. But how happy would Harry be if he returned to Twelve and had to look at people who knew he could have saved Neville’s life as well and didn’t?
“Harry…” Blaise was calm, thoughtful, when Harry looked to him. Blaise reached out and traced the cut on Harry’s forehead, the one that Anderson left when he should have killed Harry and didn’t.
“Would you choose Longbottom over me?” Blaise asked.
Harry tilted his face some, letting it rest in Blaise’s palm as he stared back at his steady gaze.
“You would choose me over Theo?” Harry asked, turning the question he had no answer for back on Blaise.
“I shouldn’t.” Blaise didn’t blink, his eyes burned with emotions that Harry couldn’t hear in his even voice. “I should take Theo to the end, return home as dual-Victors and forget you ever existed.”
“You could,” Harry said, a small mercy he would give Blaise for the small moments that Blaise gave him. “Who would judge you for it?”
“No one.” Blaise leaned toward Harry and Harry reached out to touch the side of his face.
“No one on earth would judge me, but I would know,” Blaise breathed, his face an inch from Harry’s and his words became fierce. “I would know that we could have been something that the Games had never seen, never known to prepare for. I would know that and I would hate myself, more than anyone else possibly could.”
“Yeah?” Harry was whispering too, caught up in the moment and forgetting that every word they shared was forged in an arena, shared with the country. “What could we be, Blaise? What would you and I be that would matter at all?”
"We would be everything they could never control,” Blaise swore. “We would be the revolution they never saw coming, the pair that was sent to their deaths and returned to deal it back to them. You and I? We could be loved, my bellissimo assassino.”
Harry didn’t know how they moved from staring at each other and whispering words that should be private, should mean something in any other moment of time to being wrapped around each other.
It was the arena, it was the desperate longing to have anything wash away everything that had happened. It was the night that followed twilight, the sign that the end was approaching.
And maybe it was Harry, Harry wanting to hold on to something that existed outside of the games that never ended. Maybe Harry wanted to take the reprieve from the games that was handed to him and selfishly wring every bit of something from it that he could.
It wasn’t mercy that they shared, it wasn’t even happiness or joy. They shared pain and blood and death, Harry knew what Blaise’s screams sounded like and Blaise knew that madness was lurking in the shadows of Harry’s mind waiting to overtake him.
Understanding, maybe. Harry and Blaise shared understand and to have found that in the arena they were sentenced to kill and die in? That meant something too.
It wasn’t the same as Blaise’s speech about love and revolution, but it was enough for Harry.
When the rain slowed, when their reprieve ended, Harry and Blaise were lying together in the nest, naked beneath the blankets and neither caring at what the country might have seen.
“I have to find Neville today,” Harry told Blaise. “But… but if I get to choose…” Harry looked over at Blaise and thought about the understanding they shared, the love that Blaise swore was there.
“If I get to choose, I would choose you.”