Chapter Text
I don’t actually sleep. I’m not stupid enough to trust Jill after just announcing that I plan to single-handedly end the Games in the morning, if I get the chance.
No, I rest, but I don’t sleep. A nice sharp rock under my side ensures that, even if my eyes badly want to drift shut, I can’t get comfortable to drift off.
Two canons go off in the night, with another not long before dawn.
Whether the deaths are caused by a tribute or by a Gamemaker, I know I’m not the only one that wants this to end. I do the math in my head. There’s myself and Jill, and four other tributes. It’s hard to know if Cha-cha is one of them. She was still in the Games before the night at least, and I can’t imagine the Gamemakers would deliberately take out a glittering career.
I bet Cha-cha is still out there.
As soon as the dawn begins to light up the Arena, I’m up. I roll up my blanket, and attach it to my pack, and consider my cold beans.
Fuck it, why not.
I raid the nearby rubble piles, pulling out any wood I can see. The noise wakes Jill, who was cocky enough to sleep, who blinks blearily.
“Whatcha doing?” she asks, rubbing a hand across her eyes.
“Making a fire.”
“Wait, what?” She perks up, staring at me. “But that’ll just make us targets!”
“Great, then they can use their energy coming to me,” I reply lightly, stacking the wood into a small pile and using one of my knives to shave off a small pile of wood slivers to use as kindling. “Now, give me those matches I know you’ve been hoarding in your pack. I want my breakfast warm today.”
I hold my hand out expectantly when she dithers, until she gives in with a sigh, and digs out the small pack of matches. I strike one, and carefully coax the flame to take on my kindling. “You’re free to leave,” I suggest idly, although part of me hopes she won’t.
It’ll be much easier if she dies in the melee, taken down by the blade of a career.
Because I’ll never be able to sleep again without being haunted by the face of my little brother, if I deliberately hunt down and kill his first and last crush.
She huffs, and she mutters, but she stays, stuffing her kit into her own pack and checking over her gun. There’s two bullets loaded, and she digs in the pocket of her jacket to produce two more.
“Four left. Guess I better make them count, huh?” she says softly, closing her fist slowly and then putting them back into her pocket with a little pat.
“Guess you better had,” I reply, carefully not thinking about the rest hidden in my bag.
There can’t be two winners in the Games. She has her chances, and I’ve got to look after mine. I promised Klaus I would come back. I promised I would win. I may not have said it aloud this time, not like my first Games. But I said it to myself, when I knelt on my bed, alone on the train taking me away from home, and said my goodbyes to the empty room.
We’re twins. It doesn’t matter how far away we are, I know he’ll have heard me. Just like I heard his sniffle, and the teary “I know you will.”
I enjoy my breakfast, warm beans in a sweet tomato sauce, running my spoon round and round the tin to scrape the juice until Jill tells me I’m unbearable, and stomps off with her gun to find a better vantage spot. I make sure to keep an eye on where she goes, and figure out her lines of sight.
There are four bullets, and four other tributes. If I take even one of those tributes down without Jill taking a shot, then there will be a bullet left for me at the end.
And then I wait.
I walk around the fire, check all of my knives. I (carefully) dump out my pack and stuff my pockets with things I think might make useful weapons in a pinch. I even do some stretches, which seems absurd but why risk pulling a muscle at the crucial moment?
The canon fires almost before I’ve registered the sound of the shot. I jump back against a wall. And then quickly, but carefully, make my way to the end and peer around it.
The woman from District Seven lies face down in the dirt, a growing puddle of red creeping out from under her chest, and there, by her right hand, is an axe. I jump over the rubble pile and run to scoop it up, sliding the knife in my hand back into the harness so I can grasp the red handle with both hands.
It’s a sponsor weapon. It has to be, for the blade to be so keen and the edge undamaged. If this had been at the cornucopia, it would bear the marks of the Arena, the story of its wielder, just as Diego’s knives are scratched, and stained, and one even has a notch in the metal.
No, this is fresh. A weapon from her District, intended for this finale. I am no lumberjack from District Seven, but I’ve helped Luther split logs before back home, and I know how to take an even swing.
So when the male tribute from District Ten comes stumbling out of what used to be a side street, I don’t hesitate to take a swing. I aim for his wrist, hoping to take off his hand. He’s too well muscled and too tall for me to be able to take off his head, but if I can render a hand useless (or better yet, completely detached) I know I’ll stand a chance.
I remember him from the training centre. He hadn’t particularly stood out for his weapon mastery, although he wasn’t too shabby either, but in the hand-to-hand he’d put everybody to the mat, even the instructor. Somehow, he’d managed to predict his opponents' movements and get them into grips that meant they couldn’t get any leverage on him, as if they were simply another one of the rambunctious sheep or pigs from his District.
My aim is truer (and my swing heavier) than I’d anticipated, and I manage to take his left hand clean off in a spray of red. He howls in pain as I stumble, off-balance and following my axe, just in time for a bullet to bury itself in the wall over my shoulder.
There’s a heavy blow between my shoulder blades from the hand he still has attached, and I fall forwards, losing my grip on the axe so I can stretch my hands out to catch myself. My entire chest feels like it has seized, and I try in vain to draw breath into my empty lungs. I hear my opponent call me a “little bastard”, and then there’s another gunshot, and the tribute is falling to the ground next to me, pawing at the hole in his chest with his bleeding stump, and coughing wet blood in my face.
I recoil, and scramble back against a wall, my own chest heaving as I recover from being winded. The tribute stills, and the cannon sounds.
Two down. Three to go.
I’m just getting my breathing back under control when Jill screams. I jump, looking up towards the building with the blown-out window where she had set up her sniper's nest, in time to see her be cracked across the face with the barrel of the gun.
And then, as she reels from the blow, I see a pair of hands shove into her chest.
And she falls, backwards, out of what used to be a window, but is now just a hole in the wall.
Crunch.
I don’t run over. I don’t go and check on her. If she’s not dead already, there isn’t anything I can do to help. Instead, I hurry to duck around the corner, out of the line of fire from whoever got the gun from her. There’s still a single bullet left to fire, by my estimation.
It’s not going to be mine.
I realise I’m still gripping the axe and adjust my grip to hold it more firmly.
Jill’s cannon sounds.
I brush the hair that has fallen down in front of my eyes back off my forehead, only realising my hands are covered in blood when my grip on the axe slips. I wonder what I look like, if I’m giving them enough of a show.
Probably not, cowering behind a wall.
A final shot sounds out, and the female tribute I recognise as being from District Nine falls from a building opposite, where I hadn’t seen her hiding. There’s a thud, and a strangled scream, but it takes nearly a minute for her cannon to sound out.
And then there were two, I think grimly, and begin to scurry through the maze of broken-down walls and half-standing buildings. Whoever it was that took down Jill, they probably know where I was hiding, and they are all that is left between me and my family.
It doesn’t matter who they are. I am going home. Whole, and alive, and not in the plain cardboard coffin stamped with my District Number that is all the dignity that the Capitol afford to fallen tributes.
All they afforded to Ben.
But this game of cat and mouse is tiring. My shoulders ache from how tense I am, and I can feel the thud of my nervous heart against my ribcage. My blood feels aflame with adrenaline, and it’s all I can do not to jump on the spot to let out some nervous tension.
I barely register the sight of the gun barrel swinging out from around the corner before pain is exploding across my forehead. I feel sick, and my vision pops and fizzles with black stars. I feel the axe fall from my shock-numbed fingers, and I barely manage to swing my booted toes out of the way of the falling blade as I stagger against the wall.
But there’s no time to recover, and I feel a hand grab the back of my jacket and swing me away, and then back towards the wall. I manage to get my hands up to protect my head from being bounced off the brick, and then I begin to struggle. I swing my head back, and connect solidly with my attacker’s nose, and they let go of me with a pained cry. I can feel hot blood in my hair as I spin around, the world going blurry for a second from my own head wound.
Cha-Cha.
Of course, it’s Cha-Cha.
“Shit!”
Cha-Cha is… possibly the worst outcome here. She’s mean, she’s efficient, and she wants it in a way that I don’t think any of the rest of the tributes did. Diego may have fought the volunteer in his district to keep his place as tribute after the draw, but Diego was prideful. He couldn’t stand down in a fight, he wasn’t the type to pick his battles. The rest of us were reaped, and nobody offered to take our place. We didn’t expect them to (although it didn’t stop me from still hoping, deep down). Nobody wants to face the Arena twice. Even the careers, who train and train all their childhood, who fight and have elaborate rituals leading up to the Games to determine who is allowed to volunteer… nobody came forward.
Only Cha-Cha.
I lunge for my fallen axe as she reels from the impact, one hand flying to her now bleeding (and hopefully broken) nose, even as she screams—
“You’re going to pay for that, you little—”
The other hand I don’t see coming, not until it connects solidly as a fist against my cheek, snapping my head sideways. My mouth fills with blood as I accidentally bite my tongue. I swing my axe in retaliation, but she somehow blocks it with an impressive kick, wrenching it from my grip and sending it spinning away across the dirt.
“Ooops,” she taunts me with a grin.
Hand to hand it is then.
She’s bigger than me. Taller, and broader in the shoulder (to my embarrassment). After winning my own Games I’d started growing in earnest on the more lavish diet my winnings afforded us, but I hadn’t started to fill out my taller frame with muscle yet, they way Luther had by my age. I’m not going to be able to win this on strength, or technique.
I send a quick prayer than my speed doesn’t fail me now. I duck under a follow-up roundhouse kick, on hand slipping up to my knife-harness, and manage to shove her off balance by throwing my weight into her side before her leg has even returned to the ground. I don’t give her chance to get the baton hanging from her belt, instead slashing at whatever is nearest and scoring a slice across her hip.
Then, I run.
I bolt past the campfire, swinging my boot into the burning embers to kick them back at Cha-Cha as she pursues me. I hear her curse, but it only buys me a second. Two, if I’m lucky. I don’t waste my breath on shouting taunts to her. I race around the corner, trying not to be sick as my head throbs with every footfall, and I dig my hands into my pockets even as I duck into a mostly standing building and run up the rickety staircase.
I duck behind the pillar at the top of the stairs, and as Cha-Cha races up the last step, I pounce. I grasp her arm, using her own momentum to pull her around me in a circle and towards the railing that is the only thing between us and the edge. As she goes to topple over, I sling the parachute string I had kept in my pocket around her neck, and brace myself against the short half-railing.
And over she goes.
My arms nearly wrench out of their sockets, as they and the rope take up her weight, and I scream as the rope pulls through my palms and rips at my skin. The railing digs into my hips so hard I’m sure my pelvis will be black and blue in minutes, but I hold on. The muscles in my arms and shoulders burn, and even though the pressure is excruciating I’m glad I wrapped the string around my hands as I ran, because it’s all that keeps me from dropping Cha-Cha as she struggles against the noose I have made for her.
It all seems to go on for forever. The struggle, the burning in my arms, the horrendous choking noises she makes as she fights to free herself, legs kicking at nothing but air, and hands holding no knife with which she can cut herself free. But slowly, her struggles become weaker, until she barely twitches, and then, just as I think I can’t hold on another second longer, the cannon sounds.
I let go immediately, crying out as the rope slices through the already tender and abused flesh of my palms, and I’m left collapsed over the railing, utterly spent. I sob with relief, but also at the pain that radiates out from my head and all down my body.
“I promised Klaus. I promised,” I gasp. “This was for you, and for Ben.”
As the Arena fills with the sound of trumpets, the winners chorus, I lift myself from the railing, careful not to look down at Cha-Cha's corpse that must be crumpled on the floor below, and sit down carefully, slumping back against the pillar.
Horace Herb’s voice fills the Arena. “Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you your Quarter Quell Champion—”
I give in to the darkness.
They tell me I slept for a full day after the Games. I laugh, which makes them frown in concern, because I could have sworn that I slept for longer. It felt like longer, and yet it felt like no time at all.
I could sleep another day, but they don’t let me.
Instead, as soon as I’ve eaten the breakfast they provide me, I’m being chivvied out of bed and into a soft bathrobe. Dot, my stylist, and her team descend, and I’m quickly stripped of the scant handful of hairs that had dared to regrow on my body in the few days since they last plucked me like a goose. When they begin setting the make-up for the televised winner’s interview, they have to apply several layers of powder to hide the deep purple bruise that still blossoms on my brow from the barrel of the gun.
“Lucky that Cha-Cha didn’t take out any of your teeth!” They comment brightly when I wince, not faltering in the slightest as they continue to pat me with powder.
It turns out my breakfast was actually my lunch, and there’s not much time until the Victory show begins. Dressing is simple, aside from the fancy knot that Dot does in my tie. A three-piece suit of the deepest black, the only colour the blue tie, which shifts and shimmers and almost sparks when I move. A call-back to my electric parade costume.
Dot pats me on the shoulder, says she’s so pleased that I won, and then I’m whisked away by my handler Lila, who arrived to lurk in the doorway as Dot fussed with the lapels and the crisp shirt collar. She smirks as she tells me to follow her, but the grin doesn’t reach her eyes, and close-up the heavy makeup can’t hide their puffiness. I follow her and her sparkling red heels quietly down the hallways of the mansion, but I don’t offer any apologies for Diego.
I can’t be sorry that her lover is dead, when it means that I am alive, and that I get to go home to my family.
“Here you go,” she says, stopping in front of a pair of ornate double doors, and resting her hand on the handle. “Try not to rile my mother up, will you? I’d like not to be thrown out of the Games completely.”
And before I can recover from the revelation that Lila is the daughter of the Head Gamemaker, she’s opened the door and I’m being pushed into the office, trying not to trip over my own feet.
“Mr Hargreeves,” she says, turning from where she was inspecting her elaborate silver-blue gown in a mirror. A ribbon sash denotes her rank as Head Gamemaker, laid over a gem-encrusted corset. A heavy-looking silver-something piece of jewellery encircles her neck and extends over her shoulders like a web. It’s fitting imagery for a Gamemaker, a spider and her web.
“Madam Gamemaker,” I reply, unsure of why I am here. This didn’t happen after my first Games, after prepping I was taken straight to the live interview. I realise suddenly that I don’t even know her name. She rose to the position so rapidly after handling three successive Victors from District One, helping the mentors pull in record-breaking sponsor donations for the tributes, that she was simply known as ‘The Handler’.
“I thought it prudent to confer with you about your Victory Wish,” she says smoothly, picking up a pair of thin, glittering gloves from her desk and pulling them on. “It wouldn’t do, to be unable to grant your wish, live on television.”
It’s said like an assurance, as if she wants to help me, but I can hear the sharp steel threat under the velvet cloth. You best not wish for anything rebellious, it hisses.
“That seems wise,” I reply, wondering if I’m meant to take a seat in the chair in front of her desk.
“Quite. And don’t bother sitting, I expect our dealings will be swift, and we are due on television imminently,” she says swiftly, as if reading my mind. I don’t think she can, of course, because that would be absurd. But I try to school my face regardless. “Now, chop chop. What were you going to wish for?”
Immediately, I think of Ben. His overjoyed face when I returned from my first Games. His terror when his own name was read at his very first reaping. The resignation and pain of his last few moments.
And I think of Klaus, face pale as he took Ben’s hand and they both headed into the reaping square. Of how, next year, he will head into that square alone, with neither twin nor younger brother beside him.
Would the odds be in his favour?
“I want immunity,” I say boldly. More boldly than I feel, but I go with it, clasping my hands loosely behind my back the way I’ve seen my father do when he has business associates around for dinner. “Immunity from the reapings for a tribute and their family. Their brothers, their sisters, and their cousins. Their children too, if they are a Victor,” I add hastily.
She frowns. “I cannot do that. There would be uproar, if we were to show such favouritism. And what of those families who rely on the tesserae their children earn? Surely it isn’t fair to subject them to starvation, rather than the chance of glory?”
“That is my wish,” I say, even though I realise I’m not going to get it. But all I can see in my mind is the dread on Klaus’ face as he faces another reaping day, and I can’t give up.
The Handler gives me a withering glance, then glances at the elaborate clock behind her desk. “Immunity for a Victor,” she stresses, “and any full-blooded siblings that are alive at the time of their victory.”
“All siblings, and any children the Victor may have,” I bite back, thinking of Ben. Of his cold body sent home in a cardboard box, still clothed in his bloodstained arena garments. Of how his face had lit up when he met Jill, his eyes going starry with his first crush, and how he never got to live.
The clock chimes softly. “Fine,” she tuts, sliding her hands along her forearms to smooth out the wrinkles in her gloves. “Immunity for a Victor’s siblings and for the Victor’s children. And you owe me a favour, Five.”
I shiver. A favour is no small thing in the Capitol, not with a games official. I can feel her web tighten it’s hold on me, and wonder if I’ll ever break free before she devours me completely, but it’s worth it. It’s worth it. Klaus will never face a reaping day again. Little Claire will never have to stand in that square, and Allison will never have to fear for her daughter’s name being called.
“Time to go!” Lila bursts in through the door, clapping her hands and striding over to grasp me by my shoulders and lead me out. I manage to duck my head in thanks to the Handler before I leave.
I’m bustled to the stage, and Dot appears to dab me with what feels like the one-hundredth layer of powder, and then I’m being shooed to the wings, and counted down for my entrance. There’s a sea of faces in the gloom, flashing lights of pictures being taken, an overwhelming roar as I walk over to the plush armchair by Herb, who is bouncing on his heels as he introduces me.
The interview is a sweaty, nervous blur. My smile feels wooden, and I second-guess nearly everything I say. I cannot afford to slip up, I need my wish to be granted. The only time I answer honestly, is when Herb asks about my brother.
“I love my family. I won for them both, Klaus and Ben.”
Then I have to sit through the replay of the Games. From my pale face at the reaping and the electrifying entrance at the tributes parade, to teaming up with Diego, and watching Jill take the shot that ended his life. The brutality of the final morning, and a close up of Cha-Cha’s face, slowly turning puce as I hung her with the very thing that usually means salvation in the Arena.
The crowd cheers once more as Herb announces me the Quarter Quell Champion, and Lila walks out with a golden laurel crown to rest on my brow. They go absolutely wild when the Handler walks on to the stage, and it takes several minutes before they quiet enough to let her give her speech.
“— and to our Champion, our Victor of all Victors in this Quarter Quell, we grant a wish.” She turned to face me, and beckons me to join her at the centre of the stage. “What do you wish for, Five Hargreeves?” The crowd whistles as even the Handler uses my nick name. It’s unlikely I’ll ever be called anything else now, in the Capitol.
“I wish for the family of all Victors, past and present, to have immunity. That their brothers and sisters, and any children that the Victor may have, to be spared from any and all reapings.” I step back from the microphone to allow the Handler to speak, and I catch the briefest flash of pure fury in her eyes before she schools her expression. She thought I hadn’t noticed that she hadn’t mentioned if the agreement extended to those who were already Victors. But I have, on this small thing, out-foxed her. She cannot refuse to grant my wish, a seemingly reasonable wish, in front of the entire nation.
After all, I’ve not asked that they be immune from the Games entirely. The career Districts can still volunteer for the glory if they please.
But Klaus is safe. Little Claire is safe. They will never be reaped for a Hunger Games.
I barely listen to the formalities of my wish being granted, and the firework displays to celebrate the end of the Games. I allow Lila, and Dot, and the rest of the prep crew to manhandle me backstage, wipe my face clean of makeup, and bundle my weary body into the car that will take me to the training centre.
I sleep more deeply that night, than I ever have in my life, too exhausted to dream, or have nightmares about the horrors upon horrors that I have witnessed and those I have inflicted.
I’m woken by the sound of the curtains being pulled back, and the bright sunshine landing across my face. Lila claps her hands and hurries me out of bed, and I’m hurried onto the train home before breakfast.
The Handler is not best pleased with me, she says as I silently butter a bread roll, the Capitol rapidly disappearing into the distance. Best to make a sharp exit back home.
It’s only a few hours before we pull into the station, the huge hydro-power dam looming over us as I exit the train onto the crowded platform, searching the faces of the crowd desperately until I find who I’m looking for. Then I’m running down the platform, and Klaus is running to meet me, sticking his elbows into anybody that doesn’t move out of his way fast enough, Luther in his wake throwing apologies over his broad shoulders.
We meet in a violent clash of desperately clinging limbs, and even though my head throbs where Klaus bumped into my bruised temple I don’t care. We’re alive, and as Luther engulfs both of us into a bear hug, I’m sobbing with relief in to Klaus’ shoulder. Further down the platform I can see Allison, with little Claire in her arms, walking towards us at a more sedate pace with my Father and Uncle.
I’ve done it. I’ve won.
And for us, the Games can finally be over.