Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The air behind the tannery always smelled like old blood and piss, but it was their spot. No one bothered to check on a bunch of teenagers loitering by the broken fence rail with a few tobacco rolls passing between them. 

Calla leaned back on her elbows, smoke curling from her mouth. “You lot are pathetic. One lil’ shift and y’all are creaking like old men.” 

“Easy for you to say,” Tamsin shot back, grinning. “All you do is scrape hides. Try hauling feed sacks all day.” 

Harlee snorted, stealing the roll from his fingers. “You did three before ya quit to piss ‘round the salt blocks. Don’t go actin’ like the hardest working man in 10.” 

That got a round of laughter. 

Jory tipped his chin at her, lips curling. “Careful, Har. Keep runnin’ that mouth and I might have to shut it for ya.” 

Calla scrunched her nose. “You’re disgusting. Come on, Harlee,” she shot, jutting her head. “ Break his nose. Save me the trouble later.” 

“Oh,” he crooned, pulling Harlee by the hips to his own. “She wouldn’t dare.” 

He always was like this. Even after he finally kissed her months ago, he couldn’t help but be so crude in his flirtation. Part of it annoyed her, the roughhousing, chasing home, jabs of elbows. But teasing him back was too fun to resist, and the heated kisses stolen behind the slaughter houses or barns were fun too. There, when it was just the two of them, he was almost a different person. Still teasing her, but careful and attentive. 

Harlee immediately jabbed back an elbow to his ribs, knocking the air from him so she could step free. “If that’s the best flirtin’ you got, Jor, no wonder them milkmaids laugh every time they see ya.” 

The boys howled, and Jory bent double wheezing. He tried to play it off, coughing a laugh through a grin. “Fiesty’s all right by me,” he rasped, rubbing his side. 

Harlee rolled her eyes, bringing the roll of tobacco up to her lips again, unimpressed. 

Tamsin shook his head, smirking as he took the roll from Calla. “You’ll never learn, Jory.” 

“Reckon he likes the pain,” Calla teased, and they all laughed again. 

The banter slipped easy into another round of complaints about shifts and foremen, the way it always did. No one mentions the smells of blood, how even after years of it sometimes it still made them gag. No one mentioned the Reaping, a week away now. 

From the corner of the tannery road, a small cloud of dust rose and drifted toward them. It shimmered in the heat before settling enough to reveal little Colby Brant, panting hard, his shirt plastered to his back.

Damn kid always runs everywhere, Harlee thought a bit amused. 

“Col, I swear if you snitch on us…” Harlee started. 

“I won’t! On my life,” he said, huffing for breaths. “Can I just…?” 

Harlee didn’t even look at the others, she just passed the roll on before jerking her chin for him to come join them. Colby knew the rules. He could sit, but he couldn’t touch. Not the cigarettes, not the roll. Not while Harlee was there.

She’d always wanted a little brother. And the neighbor boy, two years younger and small for his age, had filled that space like he was made for it. After the lashes, he’d started sticking to her like glue. She didn’t mind it much. When he was with her, the bullies left him alone. 

“What’s the matter, kid?” she asked, watching him catch his breath.  

“Nothin’” he answered, huffing. 

“Colby, my boy,” Tamsin said with a grin, “she ain’t gonna drop it ‘tl you tell her.”

“It’s just Eban and them,” the boy replied, looking down at his boots as he toed a rock. 

Harlee felt her jaw tighten at the name. Eban Kellson-- fifteen, same as her and Calla-- had been trouble since before he hit his growth spurt and decided to make it everyone else’s problem. He was what the grown-ups meant when they said a bull was born mean. When they were nine, he’d snapped another kid’s arm during batball. No one doubted it was on purpose.

“What’d Eban do this time,” Calla drawled, not surprised. 

“Colby, what’d we talk about?” Jory chimed in, lazy but firm. “Get a knee in that kid’s gut once and he won’t bother you again.”

Harlee glanced sideways at him, surprised. She didn’t remember hearing that conversation before. So Colby hangs around Jory when I’m not around, huh?

“I know,” the kid muttered, shoulders drooping as he slumped onto the lowest fence rung beside Harlee. 

She ruffled his hair. “What’d Eban do this time, hm?” 

“Nothin’.” Colby sighed, exasperated. “Just sayin’ shit to say shit.” 

Harlee flicked her fingers, wordless, and the cigarette passed back to her. She took a drag, watching the smoke curl upward into the hot, still air.

“What’d he say now?” Calla pressed, tone flat with boredom.  

“Jus’ stuff about the reaping,” he mumbled, hardly audible. 

Harlee’s brows knit. The Kellson name stirred an old memory-- their older sister, reaped a few years back. 58, maybe? She couldn’t remember for sure. Either way, Eban of all people had no right to mouth off about it

“Rough him up good just one time, kid,” Jory chimed. 

You’ve mentioned that, Harlee thought as she rolled her eyes. There was no sense fighting it. She looked back down at Colby, his blond hair catching gold in the late afternoon light. He was so small, all freckles and sunburn, but something about him-- his quietness, his stubbornness-- made her fiercely protective.

“Want me to handle it?” she asked softly, brushing his hair back. 

The boy batted away her hand, scowling. “Nothin’ to handle.” 

She hummed, not convinced, but dropped the topic. If he wanted to listen to Jory and fight his own fights, she’d let him try. 

Colby leaned forward, looking up at Jory. “You talk to that foreman about my apprenticeship?” he asked a bit sheepishly. 

“At the slaughter house?” Harlee asked, brow arched. 

Jory grinned, tilting his head. “Hey, not all of us want to smell like horse shit or rot.” His smirk flicked to Calla and Tam. “No offense.” 

“Because smellin’ like guts is all the better,” Calla said dryly. 

Jory ignored her and plucked the shoddy cigarette from Harlee’s fingers. “He’d make a fine butcher. Boss man said he’d think ‘bout it, Col.” 

Colby jutted his jaw and nodded once.  

Calla checked her little pocket watch and groaned. “Gotta get home for supper. Tam, care to walk me?”

Tamsin hopped down from the fence, trying to look smooth. Jory gave a teasing whistle as they disappeared around the corner, earning himself an elbow from Harlee.

“So,” Harlee drawled, turning her attention back to Colby. “Slaughter house, huh? Gonna be the best butcher in all of 10?” 

He shrugged. “Just need somethin’ til I can go out to the ranches.” 

She smiled, messing his hair again. Fair enough. That was her plan-- and last Jory talked about it, that was his plan too. Well out past town, where the air was wide and the Peacekeepers came less often. Ranch work paid better, barely, but it came with food and quiet. All you had to do was rent the horse and bedroll. 

But Colby didn’t match her smile. He looked down into the dirt. “How many slips y’all got?” 

“Both of us got twenty four.” Jory’s voice was casual. It sounded like he was talking about how many raffle tickets they had entered at the fall festival. A raffle for some prize like a pie, not the prize of being sent off into the Hunger Games. 

“I got eighteen,” Colby mumbled. 

Harlee ran her fingers through his blond strands again, gentler this time. He might’ve looked like a runt, but he was the eldest of six. They weren’t reaping aged yet. Like her, he was taking all the tesserae for his family. But she wanted to comfort him. 

Scrunching her nose, Harlee said the same thing her Daddy always told her. “Hey, that’s hardly noticeable. How many names are in the boy’s bowl, Jor? What’s it-- twenty eight thousand?” 

“Twenty eight thousand eight hundred and thirty three,” Jory said, exhaling smoke. 

“See? Eighteen in that lot is practically nothin’,” Harlee said, trying to sound reassuring. “Say, if you look at it like it were a thousand pies and each kid in the reaping gets a slice, your’s is hardly half a single pie in that thousand.” 

Jory chuckled. “A bit over half, actually,” he mumbled, correcting her math. Harlee swatted him, specifics really didn’t matter. It was the principle. 

“Less than even a 0.1% chance, Col. All us.” She really hoped this was helping. “No sense in worryin’ over something that hasn’t happened yet.” 

“She ain’t much for math, but she’s right, kid.” Jory nudged him with his boot. “Now, Eban Kellson…” 

Colby rolled his eyes. “Knee him in the gut. I know, I know,” he grumbled. 

Harlee chuckled. “Alright, fighter. Let’s get you home for supper.” 

“Care for me to walk you home, Harlee?” Jory crooned. 

She rolled her eyes. “You live five houses down from us. It’s walking yourself home, dumbass.” 

He laughed, and the three of them-- Harlee, Jory, and Colby-- started down the dusty road toward their part of town, the tannery smoke curling behind them, the last light of day catching the edges of their shadows.

As they reached the top of their road, Colby impatiently darted ahead of them, the last smear of sun turning the dust gold. He yelled back something about how they walked too slow. Harlee faintly wondered what the Brants were having for supper that had Colby all too eager to get back. 

When he was out of sight, the noise of the town dimmed to cicadas and the crunch of gravel beneath their boots. Jory’s shoulder brushed hers as they fell into a slow, unhurried pace.

“You shouldn’t be encouragin’ him to fight,” Harlee said after a moment. Her tone wasn’t sharp-- just tired, edged with concern.

Jory let out a low chuckle. “It’s the only way they’ll leave him alone. He gets one good hit in, Eban’ll back off. That’s how it works.”

Harlee rolled her eyes, kicking a rock down the road. “Fair enough,” she muttered. “Just don’t be surprised when he actually knees somebody in the gut and gets himself whipped for it.”

“Then Sadie’ll patch him up same as you,” Jory said, grinning. “Probably without the good drugs, though.” 

She gave him a look-- half exasperation, half amusement-- and shook her head. In the past year, he sure hadn’t let her forget how she’d been half-naked on his kitchen table, rambling through a Capitol-grade morphling haze. Anytime she made a decent point he didn’t like, he’d throw it back at her-- how she’d spent hours mumbling about her back looking like a bladder ball.

Which, to be fair, it did. Harlee hadn’t seen the whole thing-- the Aguilars’ mirror barely showed more than your face-- but from what she’d glimpsed, and from the uneven texture she could trace when she dared run a hand over it, her back was ugly. The skin was raised and puckered in places, smooth and deadened in others. When a storm rolled through, the scars went tight and tender, like the air itself was tugging at them. Pal said that was normal. Most of the time, though, she couldn’t feel much at all.

“Oh, c’mon,” Jory crooned, bumping her lightly. “Boys don’t get whipped for fightin’ somethin’ out between themselves. I’m just teasing.” 

Harlee smirked but tried to sound unamused. “Yes. It’s all very funny.” 

Colby had long since disappeared ahead of them, and maybe he had a point about their leisurely pace. Fireflies were just starting to flicker in the ditchgrass as dusk rapidly approached. When they reached her place, the front door stood propped open, letting the warm evening spill through the house. Only the screen door was shut, its mesh dark against the glow inside. She could hear the low hum of her mother’s voice somewhere in the kitchen, and the rhythmic scrape of a spoon against a pot.

“Well,” she said, turning back to him with that faint, knowing grin. “Thanks for walkin’ me home. Guess I’ll see you in the square tomorrow.”

He nodded, but didn’t move, just looked at her like he wanted to say something else.

Harlee leaned against the front fence, smirk tilting sharper. “Don’t go gettin’ all sentimental on me, Jory. You’ll ruin that reputation of yours.” 

He huffed a laugh. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Good,” she said, straightening and swinging the gate open. “’Cause I’d hate to think you were sweet on me or somethin’.”

“Would you now?” He tilted his head, half-grinning. 

“Don’t flatter yourself,” she shot back, rolling her eyes. Her tone was dry, but there was a flicker of amusement beneath it-- she liked the game, liked keeping him a little off balance. 

When she reached the steps, she looked over her shoulder just once, mostly to check if he was still standing there. He was.

“Night, Jory,” she called, her voice lighter now.

He smiled. “Night, Harlee.”

She pushed through the screen door and let it close behind her with a soft slap, the sound swallowed by the chirring of crickets. Inside, the air smelled of beans and fresh bread. She could hear Cheslee fussing with Dun over setting the table. 

Harlee lingered by the door a moment as she slid out of her boots, eyes tracing the chipped wooden floor. It was strange, how normal it all felt-- how every year the night before the Reaping looked exactly the same. The same supper smells, the same arguments, the same little comforts pretending to hold the world steady.

She rolled her shoulders carefully, testing the pull of the scars. The skin tugged but didn’t ache as she crossed the den toward the kitchen. Tomorrow, her name would be in that bowl. Same square, same song, same dance as all the years before. There wasn’t anything new to fear in it. The Reaping came whether you trembled or not. 

And Harlee wasn’t trembling. 

Chapter Text

Morning came early, same as it always did. The light was pale and slow to fill the bunk room, filtering through the warped slats of the shutters. Harlee sat up without needing to be called, her body already moving through the motions before her mind caught up.

She washed first. The water in the basin was cool, raising goosebumps on her arms as she scrubbed at the grime that had worked itself deep into her skin. The rag was rough, frayed at the corners, but it did the job. She dragged it across her collarbones, down her arms, over the scars on her back that no longer stung when the cloth touched them. Just numb.

When she was done, she dawned her dress. The same pale blue dress as every Reaped-- gifted three years ago, thought it barely passed for proper square attire now. She and Cheslee had picked the tacks out the night before she wore it last at the fall festival, letting the seams breathe a little. It fit snug at the ribs now, loose nowhere else, and the hem hit her mid knee. It’d be the last year she could get away with wearing it, probably. 

Harlee walked back into the den to find Cheslee curled on the small sofa, braiding her own tangled hair with the faded ribbon between her teeth. She slunk to the floor in front of her sister. Cheslee gathered Harlee’s hair into a simple ponytail, pulling tight against her scalp. 

“Hold still,” she mumbled around the ribbon. 

Harlee did, eyes fixed on the wall ahead. When Cheslee finished, she tied the ribbon tight, a small bow at the top. Harlee reached back and touched it once-- a habit, maybe superstition-- and gave a faint nod.

Cheslee pushed Harlee up to her feet, spinning her around to get a good look at her. “Startin’ to look real grown up,” she said softly, smiling. 

Harlee rolled her eyes, though there was no real heat behind it. Cheslee only said that because she knew what was under the dress-- the marks cut into her back, the proof of what “grown up” meant in District 10.

Breakfast was quiet. Nine bodies crowded around the small table, elbows bumping as they passed the beans and tesserae bread. The air smelled of salt and smoke from the wood stove. Harlee ate slow, her thoughts already half a day ahead.

Tomorrow she’d walk to the Justice Building again-- probably with Colby-- and sign for another nine tesserae. Thirty-four slips next year, she figured. Getting close to a full pie in the thousand. She tried not to dwell on it. This year she only had twenty-four, and twenty-four was hardly anything to worry about.

The morning continued like normal for the day. The family trailed behind her in twos and threes-- Momma and Daddy trailing behind, Cheslee fixing the ribbon that refused to stay tied in her own hair, Dun kicking pebbles like he always did when he was nervous. 

As they approached the square, Bay fell in step beside Harlee and gave her ponytail a playful tug. Cheslee swatted him-- hard-- before Harlee got the chance, erupting little snickers among the siblings. 

“Twenty five and don’t act a day over ten,” Cheslee muttered as she dropped her hand, intertwining her fingers with Harlee’s again. 

The Justice’s Building’s pristine gray stone came into view, the roads were thick with families. The smell of sweat and starch filled the air. Peacekeepers stood at every corner, their rifles slung and their helmets gleaming too bright in the light.

At the edge of the square, Cheslee caught Harlee’s arm. She pressed a quick kiss to her cheek, the same way she always did. “See you after,” she murmured.

“See you after,” Harlee echoed, and meant it. She turned before the moment could linger too long and joined the line forming near the rope barricades.

The Peacekeeper taking names didn’t look up when Harlee gave hers. His voice was flat as he repeated it, pricking her finger and smearing the blood against the logbook with a rough swipe. The sting was brief, hardly worth flinching for.

Inside the roped section, the fifteen-year-old girls’ corral was already half full. Harlee spotted Calla near the back, arms crossed and expression unreadable.

“’Bout time,” Calla murmured as Harlee slipped in beside her.

Harlee shrugged. “Could’ve been worse. Could’ve gotten here early.”

Calla huffed a quiet laugh. Around them, the crowd settled, the hum of conversation tapering off into silence. By this age, they all knew the drill. There was no point in whispering about odds or wishing each other luck anymore. That kind of talk belonged to the twelve- and thirteen-year-olds, the ones who still thought words could sway anything.

Ten minutes ​​later, the show began. Same as every year. The Mayor’s gravely voice, the flickering Capitol movie about the war-- it all blurred together. Harlee didn’t bother pretending to watch.

Instead, her eyes swept the crowd of girls in front of her. Six hundred, maybe more, all lined up neat and sunburnt. At some point one of them would get their name called. It always had to be someone. The thought didn’t stir much in her; there was the same number behind her, and the same number again across the square in the boys’ sections. Three thousand and eighty nine kids in the reaping this year. Being one in that number felt almost meaningless. 

She craned her neck a little, trying to spot Colby among them, though she knew she wouldn’t. The poor kid was short for his age-- he probably couldn’t even see the stage from where he stood.

Harlee almost laughed when the escort strutted up to the microphone-- he looked more like a rooster than the years before. It wasn’t just his walk now, his hair and beard were a startling shade of red, and when he moved, the light caught on the strange sheen of his suit. Feathers, she realized, squinting. His damn suit was covered in feathers.

She bit her tongue to keep from snorting and made a mental note to tell the others later. Tamsin would probably piss himself laughing when she pointed it out. 

“Welcome, welcome to the Reaping of the Sixty-First Annual Hunger Games!” the man crowed into the microphone, voice cracking with theatrical excitement.

Even sounds like a rooster, Harlee thought, biting back another grin. The absurdity of it all tugged at the corner of her mouth. Maybe, when this was all over, everyone would get a good laugh out of it in the grove that night.

“As usual,” the escort trilled, “ladies first!”

The escort made it a whole show. Chest puffed, chin up high, and strutting like he owned the stage. He dove his hand into the massive bowl, the little slips of paper fluttered like pale moths as he dug into the bottom. Around Harlee, a hush rippled through the crowd-- soft breaths held, bodies gone entirely still. 

She didn’t feel much of anything. By now, after so many years watching the same ritual, it all blurred together-- the movie, the anthem, the reach into the bowl. There were tens of thousands of slips in there. A number so big it barely meant anything.

When there are that many names, you can put distance between yourself and the fear. You tell yourself you’re part of a crowd, that odds are just math, that the world has to be cruel to someone else this time.

The escort plucked a single slip from the bowl, holding it delicately between two manicured fingers. Harlee’s gaze stayed unfocused, drifting somewhere above the stage. He coasted back to the microphone, unfolding the paper and clearing his throat. 

“Harlee Aguilar!” 

It took a second for the name to reach her, to make sense. The sound of it landed flat in her ears, like it belonged to someone else. For a heartbeat, no one moved. Then heads began to turn. 

But a name had to come out of that bowl. Harlee hadn’t forgotten that. So when it was hers, she didn’t flinch. She just exhaled, long and steady, and shook off Calla as the girl instinctively clutched her arm. 

Her legs carried her forward before her mind caught up. Each step sounded too loud against the cobblestones, like someone else was walking in her place. She could feel eyes on her-- hundreds of them-- but they blurred together into one faceless gaze. Peacekeepers shifted to either side as she reached the aisle, their presence a cold formality. Harlee kept her chin lifted, shoulders back, every motion deliberate and steady. She wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of seeing her afraid. 

When she reached the stage, she climbed the steps without hesitation and took her place under the sun. It was too bright, too hot. Her palms itched, so she folded her hands neatly behind her back, staring straight ahead into the crowd.

In the fifteen year old girl corral, she could easily see the spot she stood moments ago. Calla had her lips pulled in, another girl that had been standing near them had a hand gently on the girl’s shoulder. Next to her, a gap. No one had filled it. If anything, the other fifteen year old girls had drifted away from it as if she had been something contagious. 

“Levi Herdman!”

Her gaze snapped to the right. From the farthest corral, a boy stepped forward-- every inch the picture of District 10. Tall, broad-shouldered, built like he’d been raised on heavy labor and slaughterhouse work. His forearms were thick and corded, skin browned from sun and grit. She couldn’t see much of his face beneath the brim of his hat, tilted low, but the way he walked-- slow, unbothered-- told her everything. Like he had nowhere else to be. Like it didn’t matter.

Your family, she reminded herself.

Her eyes lifted to the crowd of adults, scanning for a cluster of eight. But the square was packed, a sea of faces-- over twenty thousand, not counting the children penned into the corrals. The search was pointless; she couldn’t pick anyone out in that mass. She’d see them soon enough. They got to say goodbye.

Levi Herdman reached the steps, and her gaze drifted toward the boys’ section. She tried to find Colby, but he was swallowed by the crowd-- maybe shorter than she thought, or just hidden behind older boys. Her eyes snagged instead on Tamsin.

Tamsin Montal stood three sections back, his face a mirror of Calla’s-- straining not to react, not to let it show for the cameras, surely searching for any tears. Next to him was Jory, taller, hat gone. He had stuck that stupid feather in it; now it was missing, like he couldn’t bring himself to wear it right now. He was proud of that hat, he was proud of that feather. Why wasn’t he wearing it now? His lips were tight, jaw locked, eyes glassed over in that way that said he was trying not to see anything at all.

Very faintly, Harlee thought about how much it was going to suck for them to have to watch her die.

When instructed, Harlee turned and shook the boy’s hand. A sign of interdistrict camaraderie. She looked up to his face and recognized him, but couldn’t exactly place him. He squeezed her hand-- maybe in recognition-- before letting go. Very suddenly, Peacekeepers were around her again, holding her by the elbows and leading the pair into the Justice Building. 

The room they just about shoved her into was formal. The air was stale, like this was the only thing it was used for. She knew that was true-- this room existed for one purpose and one purpose only. Harlee walked to the closest window. The glass was thick, the frame was nailed shut. Beyond it, iron bars cut the view into neat, even squares. They weren’t decorative. They were a reminder.

No getting out. No running. No shortcuts. 

She rested her forehead against the cold pane and closed her eyes. Her heartbeat thudded heavy and uneven in her chest, each one echoing in the silence like it was trying to fill the space. The quiet wasn’t peace-- it was a trap. Every breath she took felt too loud.

Well, she thought, odds sure ain’t shit. 

The corner of her mouth twitched. She could almost laugh. All that talk of odds and math-- none of it had meant a damn thing. Pies and slices, names and slips, didn’t matter. The bowl didn’t think, didn’t choose. It just spat out a name without discrimination. 

And all it took was one. 

One slip of paper. It didn’t matter she had twenty-three other slips in that bowl, because it was only that one slip that mattered. 

The handle rattled and Harlee turned around. She knew there were three goodbye slots, but had no idea who would come in first. Leaning back against the window sill, she tried her best to look casual. She tried to exude the aura of Levi Herdman-- a boy now forever bound to her as her District partner in the 61st Hunger Games. Total indifference to the situation. 

The door opened, and before she could fully register it, Cheslee was on her. It happened in a blur. Harlee tipped onto her toes, fighting against the squeezing arms, trying to peer past her sister’s shoulder. The rest of her family stood lined up behind her, composed-- or at least trying to be.

Momma leaned on Daddy, eyes downcast, fixed on the cowhide rug. The men stood rigid, all except Dun. His eyes were red, and Harlee could hear the soft sniffling as he murmured something, following Cheslee’s lead.

“Levi’s a good boy,” Roan said, voice tight.

Dun’s voice cut in, wavering. “We work with him. He’ll stick with you.” He drew a shuddering breath. “Ches, let the rest of us get a hold of her-- she’s our little sister too.”

Cheslee’s arms squeezed tighter. Harlee thought she might crack a rib, but finally Cheslee relented, pushing her gently toward the waiting line. Harlee stood there for a heartbeat, unable to meet any of their eyes. Cheslee’s hand lingered on her back, fingers tracing the edges of a numb scar like she could feel the pain through the fabric.

Dun came forward first, tugging her into his chest. Man, he and Roan always smelled like the hogs they butchered. That much was certain when Roan joined the hug, hands rubbing the back of her neck beneath her ponytail.

When they let go, Bay scooped her up without hesitation, her feet dangling. She looked over his shoulder at the others-- Pal and Rein standing stiffly, hands on their hips, jaws tight. Harlee realized she wasn’t sure she had ever hugged them before.

Arms wrapped around Bay’s neck, she finally looked at her parents and felt the truth of it: she barely knew them. Daddy, Pal, Rein-- always off on some distant ranch, returning only for a night or two, collecting tesserae, and demanding silence in the house while they slept in a proper bed.

Cheslee’s hands wrapped around her again, warm and familiar, while her gaze found Momma. Cheslee had been nine when Harlee was born. Every memory of her childhood was up on her hip or in her hand. Bay had once explained how Momma had been exhausted-- her eighth pregnancy had taken a toll-- and Cheslee had been her caretaker, the one who stayed when Momma couldn’t. Sometimes, he’d said, mothers got sad after birth, and it wasn’t anyone’s fault. That was the world she’d grown up in. And until now, Harlee hadn’t realized how little contact she’d had with her mother-- and how much she might have wanted it.

Bay lowered her to her feet, right in front of their parents, but before she could test whether Momma would reach for her, Cheslee tugged her back into her arms one more time.

“It’s alright, Bluebell,” Cheslee whispered, voice cracking. “You can cry. You always shoulda been allowed to cry.”

Harlee probably couldn’t even cry if she tried. When had she last done it-- excluding after the whipping? She couldn’t remember. A large, calloused hand rested on her shoulder as Cheslee let go. Suddenly, she was in Daddy’s arms.

She wished they hadn’t all come at once. She wanted Cheslee’s arms alone, the ones that had always comforted her best.

Boots pounded down the hall like distant thunder. Less than a minute now. Daddy held her firmly, shoulders back. Momma’s hand, hesitant and foreign, cupped her cheek. Harlee flinched for a heartbeat, then leaned into it, into the warmth.

“Listen to Buck,” Momma said, stern.

Harlee nodded, resting against her hand, eyes flicking to her father. Say something. Just something, she thought. But he remained silent.

The door swung open. Cheslee yanked her in for one final hug. Seven other hands touched her-- shoulders, arms, heads-- last goodbyes compressed into a single, impossible moment. Then Cheslee was pulled away, fingers gripping the pale blue fabric of her dress.

“You stick with Levi, Harlee!” one of her brothers called just as the door slammed shut.

Before she could even sit with that last goodbye, the door swung open again-- and just like before, she was engulfed in another suffocating hug. It knocked the wind clean out of her.

“Tough as nails. You can do it.”

Calla.

Harlee bit her tongue. She wasn’t going to be the one to tell her otherwise. That wasn’t her problem. Probably would fall to Tamsin anyway. Oh, how did one of us luck out here, she thought, half amused. He’ll get to hold her tight after I’m dead.

Her gaze found him over Calla’s shoulder-- Tamsin, his hands braced on Colby’s thin shoulders. The boy’s face was wet, but he wore a scowl, as if he thought it might make him look older, as if maybe no one would notice the crying.

Harlee jutted her chin toward him, and Tamsin released his grip. Colby darted forward, and Harlee pushed Calla aside, catching the boy and hauling him onto her lap as she sat back on the leather couch. His small arms locked around her neck, his face buried into her skin. She stroked his hair, slow and steady.

She hoped someone would hold him like this when she died. Someone who’d tell him to close his eyes right before it happened.

Tamsin sat down beside her, elbows on his knees.

“Jory too good to come tell me goodbye now?” she asked, because teasing came easier than anything else. Even now.

“He’s… he’s comin’ in next,” Tamsin murmured.

She didn’t ask why. Didn’t care much either. Maybe she was a little mad about it, that he’d get his own time when Cheslee hadn’t. But anger wasn’t going to change a damn thing-- not when she was the one trying to soothe a sobbing kid about her own death.

“It’s gonna be alright, Col,” she whispered.

“Liar,” he sniffled.

“Lee, look at me,” Tamsin said, voice suddenly urgent. She didn’t. Her eyes stayed fixed on Calla, whose face was crumpled and blotchy.

“Try,” he pressed. “Don’t make it easy for ‘em. You hear me? Don’t you make it easy.” He rubbed her shoulder until she finally turned her head. “You start thinkin’ like you’re already dead, and you might as well be.”

“Whatever are you gonna do without someone to help you calm Viper,” she said flatly. Her voice had that same dry edge, the one she used when the truth was too heavy to lift.

Tamsin wasn’t amused. Maybe still sore about that bruise the mare had left on his backside.

“Harlee, he’s right,” Calla said quietly, but firmly.

She tightened her arms around Colby’s small frame. They don’t get it, she thought. I don’t wanna talk about it. I don’t wanna think about it. I just want to get through this room.

“Can’t you try?” Colby mumbled into her neck, his breath warm against her skin. “Please, Harlee. Please.”

She looked between Tamsin and Calla, the message plain enough without words: he’s your responsibility now. But they just stared back at her with the same look Colby had given her-- a desperate, pleading one. Good grief, she thought, irritation pricking through the numbness. Aren’t I supposed to be the one getting comforted here? Not getting lectured, surely. 

“Levi’s brothers an’ us are gonna start collections for y’all,” Calla said finally, her voice thin but steady. Her arms stayed crossed, like she was afraid that if she let go of herself, she’d come apart. “Get the mayor to send it off to the Capitol-- get y’all some bread.”

Harlee almost laughed, but the sound stuck somewhere in her throat. Bread. Like the Games could be softened by a care package. She wanted to tell Calla not to bother, that no amount of bread or coins could make a difference in the Capitol. Like anyone in 10 could scrape enough coins together for anything worth notice in the Capitol. But she didn’t. There was no sense in hurting her more than this moment already had.

So she only nodded faintly and turned her attention back to Colby. His breathing had gone uneven, hiccupy from crying. She smoothed his hair, her thumb tracing the back of his neck where it met the collar of his shirt. The motion steadied her more than it did him.

Behind her, Calla’s voice wavered again, and Tamsin tried to steady it-- something about hope, about fighting smart. Their voices blended into a low hum, like insects droning outside a window in summer heat.

Harlee let it all fade. She didn’t need hope, not now. What she needed was this small, solid body in her lap-- the reminder that, for a few more minutes, she was still here, still real, still warm enough to be clung to. 

When they left, Harlee suddenly felt a lot colder without the clinging boy in her lap. Before she could dwell on it the door rattled open again and, as promised, Jory sauntered in. He stood leaned against the shut door, sleeves rolled up now, the casual ease of his usual grin replaced by something tighter, more deliberate. His eyes didn’t seek to amuse or distract. They were fixed on her.

“Why’d you not come with the others?” she muttered.

He gave a soft sigh, leaning off the door and taking measured steps toward the couch. Every movement seemed to echo in the quiet room. When he sat beside her, he didn’t speak immediately. He let the silence stretch, heavy and deliberate, before he reached for her hand.

“You know why,” he said simply, his voice low, carrying a weight she couldn’t joke away.

Harlee nodded, squeezing his hand once. He probably was the closest thing to a sweetheart she had-- the only one she would ever have now. And yet, the seriousness in his face unsettled her. She wasn’t used to seeing Jory without the teasing, the lightness that always made her smirk. She wanted to memorize him, yes-- but not like this. Not shadowed by the Reaping, by looming death, by all the things she’d have to face alone. This wasn’t how she wanted to remember the closest thing she had to a sweetheart. 

She almost wanted to throw in a tease—ask who he was planning on necking after she was gone. Maybe that Miller girl, the one a year older and friends with Tamsin. But before she could even form the words, a hand cupped her face, tilting her gently, and their lips met. It wasn’t like the other times. There was no stolen daring, no teasing challenge. This was slow, deliberate, tender.

When they finally parted, he pulled her onto his lap, resting his head against her shoulder. His arms held her firmly, thumbs tracing the fabric that separated them, a quiet rhythm that somehow anchored her.

“You could try,” he murmured, voice low and almost hesitant. “You’re tough as nails. You could do it.”

Harlee let out a small, wry scoff, her hands rising to tilt his head back toward hers. Their lips met again, this time with more heat, more familiarity-- the kind of contact that felt like it belonged to a world outside this one.

Ever since those twenty lashes, everyone had been telling her she was “tough as nails.” But hammer beat nail. So nails weren’t exactly tough in her book. But there was no use in arguing the point now. Not when all that mattered right now was the minutes left. 

The muffled clatter of boots echoed down the hallway. Harlee’s chest tightened. Just one more minute, she pleaded silently, deepening the kiss as if she could hold the moment in place by sheer force of will. Then came the knock. The Peacekeepers.

“I--I gotta go,” he murmured against her lips, but he didn’t move right away.

Harlee didn’t either. It was him who finally slid her off his lap and stood. She watched him-- the set of his jaw, the square of his shoulders, the tears brimming that he wouldn’t let fall. Cowboys don’t cry, she reminded herself of that childhood sentiment that was carved in her bones. The door opened, the suited Peacekeeper stepping in with his empty face and gloved hands.

Jory didn’t look back as he left, but she watched him until the door shut. She stared at it long after, listening to the boots fade down the hall, each step dimmer than the last. Then it was quiet again. Heavy, stifling quiet.

She pressed her palms hard to her knees, steadying her breath. No crying. That wasn’t allowed.

After a moment, she pushed herself up and went to the window. Her heart thudded so loud it seemed to fill the room. Then the latch rattled. The Peacekeepers had come back. Expressionless. Efficient. Gloved hands turned her toward the door and guided her through the corridors. Each hallway felt longer than the one before it, every corner and flight of stairs closing in until the sound of her own boots echoed like a second heartbeat-- steady, hollow, doomed.

As they led her on, she clung to the things she could still keep-- little scraps of memory she could tuck away and maybe see again right before she died. Cheslee lifting her onto her hip. Dun and Roan bickering in whispers after lights-out. Her Daddy’s smile. Her Momma’s worn, leathered hands rolling dough for supper. Calla’s laugh, rough and barking like a farm dog’s. Jory-- his hands, his voice, the rare moments he was soft with her.

And the horses. She thought about the stables, their restless shifting in the straw. Would they understand where she’d gone? Would they think she’d left them on purpose?

Her throat ached. She thought of the lambing pens, back when she was small enough to think reaping was something that only happened to other people. The spring nights, chasing stubborn ewes, tagging newborn lambs, the nippy dogs snapping at her boots.

That had been hers. But it was gone now.

The ache in her throat deepened. She didn’t cry. Not yet.

Chapter Text

The burn in the back of her throat flared into white-hot rage.

The Peacekeepers were anything but gentle. They didn’t even let her set a foot on the train herself before shoving the tributes aboard. The doors slammed shut behind them, and the train lurched forward, nearly toppling both of them. Levi went first, slipping into a sitting room; Harlee followed, her boots heavy against the polished floor.

The space was disgustingly lavish. Plush sofas, gilded trim, thick carpets. Harlee’s stomach twisted. She knew this feeling-- the same she’d felt when gifted the reaping dress: a calculated, condescending display, like a dog being fed scraps before being led out behind the barn. Bit of cheese here, pat on the head there, while the bat swings just out of sight. Sick pity, scaled up to a horrifying degree. She wanted to shred it all. Rip the curtains, drive a fork through every cushion, leave nothing whole.

What was the point of it? That’s what she couldn’t wrap her head around. The Capitol didn’t care about them a single bit-- District meant nothing to them. So why this display? Why this show? 

A soft, low pat beside her pulled her from the urge to destroy.

“C’mere,” Levi mumbled, gesturing to the space on the sofa next to him. That simple, quiet invitation grounded her, if only a little. Harlee blinked, still tense, still burning-- but for now, she listened to him. Dun and Roan trusted him. That was enough for her. 

“We’re stickin’ together,” he drawled. “Don’t care what they say.” 

They? She thought quickly before realizing. Right, the mentors. She remembered how her Momma said to listen to Buck, that must’ve been the most recent Victor. Harlee swallowed hard and nodded, her eyes drifting to the window. The world outside blurred into gold and green as the train picked up speed. 

Levi scratched his jaw. He looked older than he was. Eighteen, but he carried himself like a full man. Weathered, worn down by work. His shirt was a pristine white-- probably new-- but he still smelled like hay and hog and blood just like her brothers always did. There was something comforting about it now. 

The door at the far end of the car hissed open, and two men stepped in. 

Holstein came first-- the older one. His gray hair was thick and slicked back, the shine more oil than polish. Harlee knew he’d won more than forty years ago-- was it back in 16? She couldn’t remember-- but his body didn’t show his age the way she expected. He was short, slightly hunched, but stocky under the suspenders. Built like a man who’d never stopped working.

“Well,” he barked, voice rough as gravel, “you’re a sorry-lookin’ pair.”

Levi’s jaw flexed, but he didn’t rise to it. Harlee just stared back, face blank. Was this old man serious?

“Now, Stein,” Buck said as he came in behind him, clapping a broad hand on the older man’s shoulder. “Don’t start with that. No sense tellin’ ’em they’re doomed right off the bat.”

The old man scoffed. “Just realistic.” He dropped into a cracked leather chair across from them, the seat groaning under his weight. “One of you’ll be meat by the fourth day at the latest.” He squinted, then nodded toward Harlee. “Probably you,” he muttered. “The other’ll wish you were. Better get comfortable with that.”

“You don’t say that to her,” Levi snapped.

Harlee almost smiled. Someone clearly needed practice with that 'getting comfortable' part, and it wasn't her. None of this was shocking-- not really. Just confirmation of what she already knew. District 10 had spit out three victors in sixty years. Why would they expect to be any different? The Games weren’t a chance; they were a death sentence.

“Aww,” Holstein crooned. “What? You sweet on her?”

“Oh, shove that shit back up your ass, old man,” Harlee shot back before she could stop herself. Marked for slaughter, sure-- but she wasn’t going to be bullied all the way to the stockyard. 

Holstein just chuckled, leaning back in his chair, clearly entertained. Buck-- arms crossed, expression somewhere between amused and weary-- didn’t bother to intervene.

“Y’all work?” Buck asked finally, steering things elsewhere.

Levi’s scowl hadn’t faded. “Swine house,” he said flatly, then jerked his chin toward Harlee. “Stables.”

Buck nodded. “Been on the post before?”

Harlee huffed, the corner of her lip twitching upward. It was easier to ask who their age hadn’t been on the post before. That’d be a shorter list.

“Yes,” Levi answered, his tone clipped.

Buck shot a look at Holstein, raising his brows like he was saying, See? Worth talking to ‘em. Holstein only shrugged, unconvinced.

“Where’s the third one?” Levi asked suddenly. “There’s three of you. Where’s she at?”

Holstein’s eyes narrowed. “Resting.”

“Y’all won’t see much of Lassie outside of meals,” Buck added, his tone lighter. “But she’s a damn good cook, I’ll tell you that much. Either of y’all like egg salad?”

Harlee blinked. “Egg salad? That’s really what matters right now?” she asked, her voice thick with disbelief.

“Six days till the Games,” Buck said with a lazy grin. “Plenty of time for egg salad to matter.”

She leaned back into the cushions and crossed her arms. Fair enough, she supposed.

Holstein stood with a groan and patted Buck’s shoulder twice. “I’m gonna take a nap before lunch. You have fun babysittin’,” he muttered.

As he left, Harlee caught Levi out of the corner of her eye-- his mouth half open like he wanted to say something, then snapping shut again. Maybe he was starting to get it. That man didn’t care. Clearly. And there wasn’t much point in spending the six days they had left trying to make him.

She glanced at Buck, now stretched out in the chair Holstein had vacated, hat tipped low and smile still plastered on. He seemed kinder, sure. But caring about the right things? Probably not his strong suit either.

The man squinted at her, smile quirking up again. “You Bess and Ray’s girl?” 

Harlee hesitated. Bess and Ray? The names sounded strange, like something from a story she’d heard once and forgotten. Then it hit her-- her parents. She nodded.

He gave a short laugh. “Well, I’ll be damned. You look just like your momma,” he said, voice rich and easy. “She’s the one who taught me how to eviscerate a chicken back in-- oh, man, when was that?-- 39 or 40.”

So that’s why her mother told her to trust him. He gutted chickens to her satisfaction.

“Good grief,” the man went on with a grin, “how many siblings you got now? It felt like she was pregnant for years.”

“Six,” Harlee said flatly. She didn’t really see the point in talking about this. 

Levi shifted beside her, crossing his arms. “Aren’t you supposed to be mentoring us? Not chattin' family trees?”

The man’s smile didn’t falter; if anything, it softened. “I don’t like talkin’ business before lunch,” he said, patting his stomach like he was only half joking. “Bad for the appetite.”

“Well, we do,” Levi snapped. “We’re stickin’ together. Don’t care what y’all say.”

The man tilted his head, eyes narrowing just enough to show he’d taken measure of Levi. “Good plan,” he said after a moment, easy again. “Two heads better than one.”

Levi didn’t move. Harlee could feel the tension between them-- Levi sitting stiff, ready to prove something, and the man too at ease, like he’d seen this same dance a hundred times. 

“Y’all like playin’ cards?” Buck asked. 

This man really doesn’t have much of a serious bone in his body, Harlee thought as she shrugged. Levi didn’t move a muscle. 

“Let’s play a few hands of hold ‘em. No gambling, of course-- what’s money to folks like us, hm?” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a banded deck. 

Folks like us, she repeated in her head as he shuffled. Right. The ultra rich and dead kids walking. 

“So you two stickin’ together, huh?” Holstein crooned. 

They had spent hours playing cards with Buck, who insisted real mentoring would start after supper. Particularly after the Reaping recaps. Supper was a stiff affair, like lunch. Harlee had never seen a table so full before. Rich meats, a plethora of greens, she counted five different types of potatoes. Levi kept nagging her to go back for more-- to fill her plate up. That was where she got the first real bit of mentoring advice, from Lassie: eat up. 

Now they were sitting in a room with a flat screen that was somehow a television to watch the Recaps. 

“Yes,” Levi said through a clenched jaw. 

“Well, let’s see what y’all are up against,” Buck said, flicking on the television bolted to the far wall.

The screen hummed to life, casting the room in a flat, cold glow. It was just starting with the District 1 reaping. No one in the Districts really watched these recaps-- it wasn’t mandatory, and there wasn’t much point when the parade came the next night. And the parade was always mandatory to watch.

Oh, that fucking parade, Harlee thought, jaw tightening. She could already feel the itch under her skin at the thought of whatever ridiculous animal costume they’d get stuck in. Feathers, probably. Something shiny. Something humiliating. Just like their escort, whose name Harlee was now just making a point not to remember.

“Districts 1, 2, and 4 always spit out volunteers,” Buck said.

No shit.

“Avoid ’em at all costs in training. Don’t give ’em a reason to hunt you down,” he continued. “If their numbers hold, they don’t split apart till after the final 8.”

Hold. That word echoed in her head. He meant if they stay alive that long.

Onscreen, the boy volunteer from One raised his hand confidently toward the crowd. He looked like someone who’d been preparing for this since birth-- because he probably had.

The stream rolled through the usual suspects. Districts 1, 2, and 4 all turned out tall, sleek killers with steel in their smiles. But 3 and 5 eased something small in her chest. Harlee couldn’t forget that only one face on this screen would still be breathing in a few weeks. District 3’s kids were wiry, nervous. District 5’s looked half-starved and sunless.

She glanced at Levi beside her-- broad-shouldered, quiet, his jaw working as he watched. Sticking with a District partner wasn’t always a guarantee, but in 10 it was custom. Harlee was glad for once that he actually looked like he’d killed something before.

When District 6 flashed on the screen, something old and sharp stirred. A memory she didn’t like to touch. She’d been eleven, the last of her siblings still in school. The final four that year had burned her mind into smoke and bone: three blackened bodies writhing in front of the cornucopia. 

“Six won’t give you any trouble,” Holstein grunted, voice rough as gravel. “Cowards hide till the end. Just don’t let ’em sneak up on ya.”

The tributes on screen didn’t look cowardly to Harlee. Just hollowed out. Tall, lean, wide-eyed. People who’d already seen too much. How far would they go? she wondered. What would they do to win?

“Keep an eye on Seven,” Buck said. “Don’t mess with ’em if they got an axe. Just high-tail it outta range.”

Holstein gave a dry snort. “Which is far,” he muttered. His lips twisted like he’d just tasted old blood. “And here comes the fodder.”

He meant Districts 8 and 9. Maybe he had reason-- their tributes were young, fragile-looking. But how did he already know that? Harlee tried to recall: hadn’t a girl from Eight won a few years back? 55, maybe. She remembered it faintly. That was after the underground year. She’s pretty sure the boy from 7 won that one. 

Then District 10 appeared. Her own reaping replayed-- the still camera, the crowd’s stiff silence, the Peacekeepers’ white gloves. Her gut twisted. Home. She missed it with a physical ache. And she knew she’d probably never see it again.

“You did good,” said Lassie softly. It was only the second time Harlee had heard her speak. The woman’s eyes were downcast, her voice so quiet it felt like an apology. Even at dinner, she hadn’t seemed entirely there. Even then, just like now, her words seemed rehearsed. Like something drilled into her to say. Eat up. You did good.

Holstein smiled faintly, though it didn’t reach his eyes. “They did, Las.” He rubbed her shoulder with a gentleness that surprised Harlee. “We always get good ones, don’t we?”

Lassie’s lips twitched in a ghost of a smile. She nodded, but her gaze stayed far away. Harlee saw through it-- the way Holstein’s comfort was meant for her, not for them. It wasn’t about reassurance. It was about survival of a different kind.

The final Districts came and went. 11’s boy didn't look like the thirteen year old he allegedly was; 12’s kids looked like ghosts. Harlee wondered what it felt like to grow up on coal dust and hunger, and if maybe that was worse than dying in an arena.

The Capitol seal flashed. The broadcast ended.

Holstein cleared his throat and pushed to his feet with a grunt. “Y’all’ll do fine,” he said. “Better pickin’s of the stock.” He offered his hand to Lassie. “C’mon, Las. Let’s get you some rest.”

They left without another word. The door clicked shut behind them.

Buck stayed where he was, arms folded across his chest, the dim blue of the screen flickering over his face. “He ain’t lyin’,” he said finally. “But y’all need to be smart. All of Panem already thinks you two’ve killed before-- even if it’s just cattle or hogs.”

Levi frowned. “Ain’t that a good thing?”

“Yes, but also no.”

Harlee’s brow furrowed. “I don’t work slaughter,” she muttered. “Never killed nothin’.”

“Don’t matter,” Buck said, tone quiet but firm. “And don’t tell anyone that.” He rubbed his beard, eyes narrowing in thought. “You walk a fine line, kids. Keep your head down in training. Mouth shut. Let the others wonder what you’ve done. Me and Stein’ll talk you up to sponsors, get some money flowing.”

“So what, I just lie and let everyone think I’m a killer?” Harlee said flatly.

Buck met her eyes. “Yep. Because you’re gonna have to be one if you wanna go home.” His voice lost its drawl then. It was steady, heavy. “And y’all do wanna go home, right?”

Harlee’s jaw clenched. She didn’t answer. But she did. She wanted to. Damn it, she did. She thought of Tamsin’s voice in her head: You start thinkin’ like you’re already dead, and you might as well be.

She thought of Calla’s barking laugh, Cheslee’s arms lifting her from the dirt, her daddy’s smile, her momma’s calloused hands. 

Oh, fuck this, she thought bitterly, forcing the lump in her throat back down. I’m not layin’ down and bleedin’ for their show.

Chapter Text

It won’t be fun, but you’ll be pretty. 

Harlee would’ve laughed about that now-- how casual Lassie ​​had said it that morning on the train, like prettiness was some kind of mercy. With the pain she was feeling, she doubted pretty was going to be the outcome.

They’d washed her three times-- three whole times-- with different “soaps” that stung like acid. She knew damn well she’d scrubbed herself clean before the Reaping, but apparently that wasn’t enough. Apparently, District 10 dirt needed extra purification. At least the livestock back home don’t get their skin scrubbed and power washed until after they’re dead. 

Then came the waxing. Everywhere.

Don’t I need that? she thought bitterly as she bit back a yelp. What if it’s cold in there?

It sure was cold now and she missed her body’s fuzz. The prep room smelled of chemicals and flowers, but underneath it was the sour scent of metal. They’d stripped her the moment she came in, tossed her old clothes in some bin-- Capitol silk or not, they were gone now. She lay mostly naked on a metal slab, a towel thrown over her whenever someone remembered modesty was a thing.

After they’d slathered her raw skin with a dozen kinds of balm, the team froze. They looked at each other-- uneasy, whispering like something had gone wrong.

“Please tell me you don’t have to wax me again,” Harlee muttered. Buck and Holstein had both warned her not to mouth off to the prep team. Be polite, keep your temper, don’t give them a reason to talk about you. But if they came at her with that wax again, she wasn’t sure she could keep that promise.

“No, dear,” said the one in charge-- Io, she remembered his name. His voice was soft, like he was breaking bad news. “It’s just… your back.”

Harlee frowned. “You have to wax my back?” She knows it's not hairy, nothing more than a bit of fuzz. Do they really have to wax that? 

He laughed nervously. “No. The… scarring. We’ll have to skip lunch to stay on schedule.”

She shut her eyes. Of course. The scars. She noticed the prep team had been treating them something like boils or warts, avoiding touching them for too long directly with their hands. Harlee ignored it then-- keep your temper-- but this was ridiculous. They’re beautifying her for slaughter, and they go pale at some scars? The scars that the Capitol had no problem giving to her? 

Their silence said it all. The way they pretended not to stare. The way one of them wrinkled their nose before catching themself. It wasn’t disgust at her-- no, it was disgust that she didn’t fit the Capitol’s idea of beautiful. 

Harlee was counting to ten again. It was about all she could do to not snap at them about how her back’s skin wasn’t beautiful because of their precious Peacekeepers. 

A hand stroked her hair. “It won’t hurt,” Io murmured.

Harlee opened her eyes, scowling. “Don’t lie to me.”

He chuckled, unoffended. “Okay. It’s going to hurt. But you don’t get a choice, so roll over-- and maybe one of us will hold your hand.”

At least he was done pretending. That was something. The smallest, stupidest something. She rolled over.

Io offered to hold her hand through it, but Harlee brushed him off. No one had held her hand when she got these scars-- she didn’t need someone to hold it now while they erased them.

The table was cold, humming faintly beneath her bare skin. A tray of delicate instruments gleamed under the overhead light: metal prongs, wired pads, bottles of thick, shimmering ointments that looked like melted pearls. The air smelled sharp, chemical.

“Try to stay still,” one of the other preps said softly, as if that made a difference.

The first touch was gentle-- too gentle. They smoothed the ointment across her back, gloved fingers tracing the raised lines that had once been lashes. It tingled. Then it burned.

Harlee bit the inside of her cheek.

The second touch wasn’t gentle at all. The pads pressed down, and the table clicked. Current tore through her skin, making her muscles jump without her permission. It was like being whipped from the inside out, her body remembering every strike but unable to move away from it this time.

She stared at the wall in her line of sight, at the neat paneling and pale trim. Tried to count the lines, the pattern of it, anything to keep her focus somewhere other than her back. 

Harlee hadn’t made a sound when she got these scars, and she wasn’t about to now. Back then, she’d waited until she was in near-privacy-- twitching on a kitchen table, out of sight-- to let it hit her, to groan through the pain. This wasn’t that. This room, with its white lights and humming walls, felt more like the post.

The tile wasn’t cutting it for distraction. It was too white, too close, too easy to focus on the hum in the walls and the sting crawling under her skin. Harlee forced her thoughts anywhere else.

Levi.

Was he getting the same treatment right now? Probably. She hoped not-- but she knew he was. And if he was, it was probably worse. His back had more scars. Older ones. She didn’t want to picture that either.

So she thought about home. The stables, the smell of hay and damp wood, the sound of hooves shifting in the straw. She thought about the foals that dropped last spring-- two colts and a filly, all stubborn little things, glued to their mommas’ sides. Tamsin and her had been stuck with tending them, mostly because no one else wanted to get close enough to be kicked. The mares were mean as shit about it, ears pinned, eyes wild. Took a whole month’s wages in apples before they’d even let the pair close enough to brush the babies. And even then, the mares would keep one eye fixed on them the whole time, breathing hot and sharp through their nostrils.

That was how it was supposed to be.
Mothers were supposed to protect what they made. Keep close. Watch over.

Her own momma hadn’t been like that.

The thought came fast, uninvited, and she clenched her jaw. That woman had taught her now-mentor how to gut a chicken, sure-- but she’d never taught Harlee much of anything. Not softness, not safety. Maybe she didn’t have it to give.

Okay, enough. Think of something else, dumbass, she told herself. There wasn’t any sense in working herself into a jealous fit over foals and their moody mommas. They were yearlings now-- even their mommas didn’t care who they were anymore. 

Her body involuntarily jerked, hard. Harlee bit her tongue until she tasted metal. 

Jory. 

Of course her mind fluttered there-- she was half-naked on a table, back searing in pain. That was how she met him, properly. The first time Jory really saw her was when she was hurt like this, and now, somehow, it felt fitting. She welcomed the thought, even if she rarely thought of him at all.

In the last year-- especially the last few months-- their friendship had been peppered with those half-stolen moments where he’d tug her behind a barn, down the alley by the slaughterhouse, anywhere just this side of out of sight. He’d kiss her then. The first time, he’d grabbed her face so suddenly she thought he meant to hit her; she nearly kneed him before instinct turned to something else. Her hands had gone from shoving to clutching the front of his shirt, holding on.

Some sweetheart, she thought with a grimace as her muscles spasmed again, body jerking against the table.

She was fifteen. He was just a year older. It wasn’t serious-- couldn’t be. They were both going to leave the second their reapings passed, drifting from ranch to ranch under the wide open sky. Maybe that’s what made it easy. Temporary. Unanchored. Daddy probably would’ve killed her himself if he knew she was necking some boy behind the pens. 

She never thought about those stolen moments after they passed. They didn’t seem worth the space-- just flashes, nothing more than that. But now they were memories, and Harlee figured she might not have much else left but memories soon enough. So she clung to them. She tried to trace the smallest details-- the taste of dust on his lips, the smell of hay on his shirt, the sound of horses stamping in the next stall-- as the prep team seared her back flat.

Hours had blurred into something syrupy and strange.

They painted her face for so long her skin felt like plaster-- layers of powder, shimmer, something slick on her lips that tasted like berries and chemicals. They buffed her nails until they gleamed, then painted them pearly white, the color of bone. Her hair was twisted and pinned so tightly it pulled at her scalp, and when they fixed the weight of something to her head, she realized-- too late-- that they were horns. Heavy ones. Smooth, cool, and wrapped in gold wire. 

The outfit was fur. All fur. A halter top that climbed to her throat and stopped low on her spine, leaving her entire back bare, the skin still tender and new. A skirt that barely qualified as one, little more than a pelt draped across her hips. When they slid the boots onto her feet, she almost laughed-- tall, black, split at the front like hooves. It felt like a joke she wasn’t in on. 

A goat. They had made her a fucking goat. 

When they finally stepped back, murmuring in satisfaction, the stylist-- Theodosia-- entered. She didn’t say a word at first-- just circled Harlee once like a buzzard, appraising. Her red nails tapped against her chin, then gave a single nod. She nudged Harlee toward a section of the wall then pressed a button and a mirror appeared. 

Harlee didn’t register it as a mirror at first. She only did because who else would be wearing this costume. 

The girl staring back wasn’t her. The horns gleamed, her skin glowed, and her eyes-- wide, outlined in dark gold-- looked too bright, too alive. The boots made her stand taller than she ever had before, legs long and sharp. If she was supposed to be a goat, she thought faintly, she was a damn fine-looking one.

But then she turned-- just slightly-- and caught sight of her back.

Her breath hitched. The skin was perfect. Pale, smooth, not a trace of what had been there before. It was like those scars had never existed-- like the pain that gave them form had been wiped out of her body, out of memory.

“Heard they were quite stubborn. Tough girl,” Theodosia finally said. Her tone was casual, flat. Like the hours of torture over getting rid of those scars was nothing more than a missed lunch. 

But Harlee didn’t say anything back, she didn’t snap. She couldn’t look away from the stranger in the mirror. 

The halls buzzed. Other tributes passed in glimpses-- District 4 glittering in sea glass, District 7 draped in bark and moss. Every costume looked like a mockery, a joke at their expense. Harlee didn’t feel like laughing. The hooves on her feet clicked against the tile with each step, sharp and hollow.

A goat? Of all animals it had to be a fucking goat? 

The noise grew louder as they turned a corner, and she caught the first whiff of the parade’s holding bay-- oil, heat, and the sharp metallic tang of the air that filtered down from the Capitol above. The chariots waited there, sleek and gleaming, each harnessed to a pair of gorgeous horses. 

And there-- by their own-- stood Buck and Holstein.

Both men were grinning. Holstein’s grin was the same mean little smirk he always seemed to wear, but Buck’s had genuine pride in it, the kind of look a rancher gives a good horse before the auction.

“Would you look at that,” Buck drawled, hands on his hips. “Y’all clean up just damn fine.” 

Holstein snorted, chewing on a toothpick, muttering something about hookers. 

Harlee didn’t dignify that with a response. Her eyes went to the chariot instead-- two white horses stamped and snorted before it, their tack gilded and absurd. And beside them, waiting, was Levi.

He turned at the sound of her steps. His expression softened just a little when he saw her. The horns on his head caught the light the same way hers did, gold and gleaming. He wore a fur halter too-- backless like hers-- and tight, fur pants that tucked into matching hoof-boots.

“’Bout time,” he said under his breath. His voice carried a dry humor, but she could tell he’d been waiting on her. “These horses’re fat. Surprised they’ll get us down the avenue.” 

Harlee smiled faintly, more at the horses than his comment. They were beautiful-- sleek, unreal, impossibly polished. She doubted they weren’t held to some strange Capitol standard. Just like people. She reached out and stroked one’s neck, feeling the smooth, oiled hair under her palm.

“Alright,” Holstein grumbled. “Get on the chariot. Y’all can love on the horses after.” 

Harlee cast him a sideways look but followed Levi to the back of the chariot. The fur of her skirt brushed against her thighs as she climbed up, the movement pulling it higher than she liked. Buck reached out a hand to steady her; she ignored it.

“Now remember,” he said, tone soft but firm. “Smile. Wave. Look alive. Every sponsor in Panem is watchin’.” 

Holstein’s tone was rougher. “And hold the damn rails.” 

Harlee hesitated, then gripped the bar in front of her when Levi gave her a quick nudge. He leaned back slightly, eyes tracing the exposed line of her spine.

“Damn,” he muttered. 

Harlee snorted. “Like they didn’t do the same to you.” 

He glanced over at Buck and Holstein-- Buck practically glowing with pride, Holstein pretending to be too busy to care. “So much for us lookin’ like killers, huh?” His gaze flicked back to Harlee. “Hard to pull that off with a soft back.” 

“I think it’s harder to pull off lookin’ like a goat than anything,” Harlee shot back.

Levi laughed, head thrown back to where the gold of his horns caught the light. 

“1’s off,” Holstein barked over the increasing noise as the doors far ahead opened. “Smile. Wave,” he echoed. 

Harlee snapped her attention forward. The massive doors to the avenue were open, blasting in color, heat, and sound of the awaiting Capitol. The horses snorted, anticipating their turn to move. Buck slapped the side of the chariot with a grin, repeating again to hold on.

When the chariot lurched forward, Harlee understood why. The horses were well-trained, but the motion was rough, jerking her weight from side to side. They rolled out into the screaming streets of the Capitol, and she forced herself to stand tall-- horns gleaming, bare back prickling under the new skin, every instinct in her screaming to duck, to hide.

But she didn’t. She kept her chin up. 

The noise blurred into background hum soon enough, but the sight didn’t. The stands overflowed with people-- hundreds, maybe thousands-- dressed in colors so bright they made her eyes water. She focused instead on the chariot ahead of them, District Nine’s pair dressed in what looked like bread. Edible, maybe. Ridiculous, definitely. At least Ten didn’t look the stupidest. Just gilded goats.

Halfway down the avenue she realized-- damn it-- she hadn’t been waving. She lifted a hand, stiff at first, forcing her mouth into something that looked like a smile.

Levi didn’t have to force a thing. He looked perfectly at ease, one hand on the rail, the other lifted lazily in greeting, that smug half-grin on his face like this was just another day.

As the chariot rolled to a stop, Harlee kept her eyes on the horses. She didn’t need to look anywhere else. She already knew what was happening-- knew the rhythm of it, same as the Reaping. President Snow would give his speech, say his polished words about sacrifice and unity, remind them all that in a few short weeks, only one of them would still be breathing.

Harlee didn’t need the reminder.

So she let her gaze stay fixed on the pair before her. The white horses stood perfectly still, heads high, muscles shifting like silk beneath their coats. Their manes caught the floodlights, pale gold against the shimmer of their bridles. They didn’t flinch at the noise, or the flash of cameras, or the way the crowd roared for blood dressed as spectacle.

They didn’t need reins, either. There wasn’t even a driver. The horses just knew what to do-- they performed without command, without fault, every movement smooth and synchronized.

Harlee admired them for it. How they were trained to perfection. How they didn’t make mistakes. How they looked so damn beautiful doing it.

If only people were that easy to train.

It was easier to think about that-- to trace the curve of a gleaming flank, the quiver of an ear-- than to imagine the tributes around her: the loaves of bread, the tangle of wire, the knives, the claws. The ways they’d die. The ways she might kill them.

The horses were better to look at. Better to think about.

The applause rose like a wave-- louder, brighter, suffocating. The chariot began to move again, the horses stepping into a perfect synchronized trot as they turned off the corso and back toward the mouth of the tunnel beneath the City Circle. The light dimmed around them, the noise echoing off marble and concrete until it was only a dull roar behind them.

Harlee exhaled through her nose, chest tight from the heat and the weight of the crowd. She looked up at Levi. The gold horns on his head caught the low, artificial light, but his grin had softened into something smaller-- something real. When he met her gaze, he gave a short nod, the kind that said, you did fine.

She didn’t say anything back. Just watched the horses ahead, their bodies gleaming with sweat, hooves striking rhythmically on the stone.

When they came to a full stop in the underbelly of the Games Center, handlers in shimmering uniforms rushed forward. Buck and Holstein were waiting. Buck’s grin hadn’t dimmed, his face flushed with pride and adrenaline. Before Harlee could climb down, he was there-- hands on her waist, lifting her from the chariot like she weighed nothing.

“Hey--” she started, heat sparking in her voice. “I can get down myself, I’m not--”

But Buck was already digging into his coat pocket. When his hand came out, it was full of white sugar cubes. He didn’t even glance up as he offered them, just said, “For the horses. Be quick.”

Harlee froze for a beat, the words disarming her irritation. She snatched the cubes without another word and turned, hurrying to the front of the chariot.

The horses stood patiently, breath puffing in slow, even rhythm. Their eyes-- deep and dark-- followed her as she approached, calm and intelligent. Harlee reached up, palm out, and the nearer one dipped its head slightly.

“Good girl,” she murmured. 

The sugar began to dissolve in her fingers as she fed them each a cube, the horses’ lips brushing her skin-- velvet soft, careful, almost reverent. Levi had been right; they were a little thick through the middle, spoiled by Capitol hands. But they were beautiful, glossy and strong, and-- unlike the tributes they’d carried tonight-- they’d be alive next year to do it all over again.

“Ah,” Levi drawled, walking up next to her. “So you are a horse whisperer.” 

Harlee rolled her eyes, but the corner of her mouth twitched up despite herself. She reached to offer the last cubes to the farther horse, spreading the sweetness evenly. Its lips tickled her palm as it snatched them up, chewing with soft, wet clicks. The other horse, not to be left out, bumped her arm with a nudge that nearly made her stumble.

Harlee raised her hand, rubbing its nose. “No more,” she murmured. 

Levi laughed, patting her shoulder. “Good, we got supper. They make you skip lunch too?” 

She nodded, still too sore and tired to share his humor. She gave the horses one last stroke along their noses before turning away, following the others toward the lift. It didn’t dawn on her right then-- she was too focused on ignoring how the fur itched and her new skin burned-- but somewhere between the stable and the elevator, it hit her.

That might be the last time she ever saw a horse.

Probably would be.

Quit that, she snapped at herself, jaw tightening. She could practically hear Tamsin’s voice in her head: If you start thinking like you’re already dead, you might as well be. And Tamsin was right. What good was it, thinking about graves she might never fill? It didn’t help. It just twisted her up inside like a cornered rattlesnake, fear coiling tighter with every breath.

But even with that fear rattling in her chest, Harlee made herself stand a little taller, meet her reflection in the mirrored walls of the elevator, and breathe. She wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction of watching her go down easy. And she couldn’t think like that-- like she was already gone-- if she meant to fight her way back at all. 

On the 10th floor, Harlee let Theodosia lead her to what was now her room for the next five days. The woman’s hands were brisk but not unkind as she unpinned the horns from Harlee’s hair, setting them down carefully on the vanity. She showed her the shower next-- a tall glass thing with metal prongs and too many knobs-- and told her to be quick before slipping out the door with the faint scent of perfume trailing behind.

Harlee stood there for a long moment, staring anywhere but the mirror. She didn’t want to see herself yet. Not like this-- still dusted in glitter and paint. When she finally stepped under the water, it hit her like a storm: too hot, then too cold, pounding so hard it felt like needles. She washed with her eyes shut, because that kept the sting out and because she wasn’t ready to face what they’d made of her.

But afterward, towel wrapped tight around her, she couldn’t avoid it anymore.

The mirror took up half the wall. She’d never seen herself this clearly before. The warped shimmer of water troughs, or the cloudy pane in her family’s washroom-- that had always been enough. It had shown her a vague idea of a girl, one whose features blurred in the surface. But this was different. This mirror didn’t lie.

For a moment, she almost laughed. Maybe those boys who flirted with her at the stables or along the fence lines hadn’t just been bored after all. She was… pretty. Or she’d been made that way. The Capitol had a talent for sanding things down until they shone.

Then her eyes caught her back.

Her breath hitched. She turned her shoulder to the glass, slowly, almost afraid to look. The skin there was smooth, unmarred. New. Not a mark left from the whip, not even a shadow of where the scars once crisscrossed like split leather. It was as though none of it had ever happened.

That’s when she realized: the girl staring back at her wasn’t her. Not really.

That other girl-- the one yanked from the crowd, the one with dirt under her nails and whip marks down her spine-- she was gone. The Capitol had peeled her off like a hide. What stood here now was something polished and perfect and hollowed out.

But maybe that wasn’t a bad thing. Maybe this new girl, this stranger, was what she needed to be. Someone who could stand there, bare and unflinching, and not look scared. Because Harlee was scared-- terrified down to her bones-- but the girl in the mirror didn’t have to be.

She studied the reflection longer. The shimmer on her skin, the smoothness of her back, the faint curve of a smirk that didn’t feel quite hers yet. If this was what they wanted to see, then fine. She could wear this girl like armor.

Harlee still had her head, as stubborn and prideful as it was. They still wouldn’t see her cry. She wouldn’t bleed for their entertainment. She wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of seeing the fear underneath this polish. But that stranger in the mirror, wearing her skin would sure make it easier. 

Chapter Text

Lassie Lopez was one damn a cook-- Buck hadn’t lied about that. The woman had also taken a particular shine to Harlee, though she figured Lassie probably did that with every girl doomed to roll through her care. There was something off about her. It had always been hard to see from the Reaping stage, but up close it was plain as day. She was quiet, too quiet. When she spoke to the tributes, it wasn’t with warmth-- it was like she was reading lines carved into her skull long ago. Her eyes had that faraway glaze, as if she wasn’t fully in the room.

Still, Harlee let Lassie do her hair the first morning of training. What was the harm? Besides, the woman made pancakes. Real ones, soft and golden with Capitol flour instead of the chewy tesserae grain. 

Lassie’s fingers worked steadily, weaving small braids from Harlee’s hairline down to the nape of her neck before twisting them into twin buns.

“Best to keep your hair out of your face,” the woman said softly, in that same practiced tone.

Holstein watched from across the room, smiling faintly. Harlee could tell she’d made the right choice letting Lassie fuss with her hair-- he looked quietly pleased, like she’d passed some unspoken test.

“Very pretty, Las.” He said, tone softer than he carried with the tributes. He turned to Levi now, but his voice didn’t catch any heat yet. “Y’all stick to the stations today. Worry ‘bout weapons and fightin’ tomorrow.” 

Levi nodded, swallowing the rest of his glass of milk. “What about allies? Should we look for that?” 

Buck and Holstein exchanged a glance like there might’ve been a joke. 

“Don’t go out of your way,” Buck said. “Remember: head down, mouth shut. Don’t give anyone a reason to come lookin’ for you in the arena.” 

Levi set his jaw and nodded like he was etching the rule into stone. Harlee tried to do the same. The girl she decided to be-- the one in the mirror-- was more like Levi Herdman. Level-headed. Nonchalant. Pragmatic about the fact they were already halfway to dead.

They arrived for training five minutes early, though only about half the Districts shared the same idea. The others stood in loose clusters, all keeping close to their partners. Harlee folded her arms and planted herself beside Levi, trying to look disinterested-- like one of the men back home waiting their turn to break a wild horse in the pen.

Any illusion of that confidence vanished the moment Levi propped his arm on her head. Perfect height for him, apparently. He crossed his ankles, picking absently at his nails, paying the elevator’s ding no mind.

Harlee bit her cheek. He was better at this than she was. He wasn’t acting tough-- he just was. 

The drove of Careers-- that’s what Buck called them-- trotted out of the elevator together. They weren’t taking any of it seriously, jostling and teasing like this was recess instead of training for their own execution. Then again, training was something they’d been doing their whole lives. Two and a half days here wasn’t going to change a damn thing for them.

Still, they had the sense to shut up when the Capitol instructor stepped forward-- a fit man in sleek black fabric-- and began explaining the layout of the room.

Weapons-- duh-- took up the entire right side of the room. Rows of mats, racks of steel, human-shaped dummies on poles. Two trainers demonstrated hand-to-hand techniques for anyone who needed help pretending they didn’t. Beyond that, a whole sea of targets waited for knives, spears, axes, tridents, arrows. Death might stare you in the face here, but it didn’t mean your murderer would. Great.

The left side of the room was all survival stations-- that’s where Holstein wanted them to start. Harlee half-listened to the instructor’s spiel, something about fire-starting, shelter, water purification. She’d figure it out when she got there.

Her eyes wandered instead to the far wall. The entire thing was a matte black, jagged and uneven like rock. A thick crash pad ran its length. A climbing wall.

She tilted her head up-- at least, as much as she could under Levi’s arm still resting across it. Above the wall stretched a web of ropes and beams: a Capitol-style obstacle course, neat and sterile. No dirt, no bark, no splinters. She looked around again. Nothing that even resembled a tree.

Strange, she thought. Trees were a lot easier to climb than walls.

Whatever.

They were released to spend their time as they chose, and Harlee fell into step beside Levi as they moved toward the stations. The first one they came to was knot tying-- something both of them already had a measure of skill in. The instructor, a woman with vivid purple skin, seemed almost too eager to watch them work. She ran through a few basic exercises to test their abilities.

Harlee moved with ease, her hands precise and confident. Bowline, square knot, the five hitches she already knew-- each executed cleanly. Levi was competent, but his movements were slower, more deliberate.

He let out a soft chuckle, half-frustrated, shoving his rope across the table toward her. “It’s fine. You’ll be there to do it for me anyhow.”

Harlee rolled her eyes and flicked the rope back at him. He would be tying his own damn knots if she had anything to say about it. 

Next up was edible flora and fauna-- which she quickly learned meant anything that might grow or crawl outside. And again, nothing about trees or anything that grew on them. Cactus fruits, sure, but nothing like nuts or berries. 

One of the instructors was far too enthusiastic, demonstrating how to identify venomous snakes, alive or dead. Harlee didn’t care about snakes, venomous or not. The sight of one-- even imagining one-- made her muscles tense. At the stables, the horses’ sudden skittishness at snakes had taught her enough: she’d get the fuck out of the way first and ask questions never.

Each station was slow going, at least an hour a piece. By the time they reached first aid, Harlee was running on fumes. Maybe that one should’ve waited until after lunch-- because by the seventh method for treating a sunburn, her brain had officially tapped out.

She was never good at paying attention in school anyway.

Now, she just toyed with the glob of aloe an instructor had handed her, spreading it thin across her forearm. The sensation was cool and soothing, strange against her skin that still didn’t feel entirely like hers.

“Bet you wish you had some of that for your back, huh?” a voice muttered.

Her gaze snapped up. District 5, judging by the insignia on his uniform. Ashen skin, dark hair, a crooked smile.

He scrunched his nose slightly. “Me too.”

Harlee exhaled through her nose-- half amused, half wary-- but didn’t bother replying. A moment later, the Capitol instructor called for lunch, and she stood automatically, falling into her now-familiar stride beside Levi as they headed for the mess hall on the far end of the floor.

The boy from 5 followed.

“Name’s Kepler,” he offered, easily slipping into pace with them. Taller than her, leaner, older maybe by a year or two. “District 5.”

Harlee gave a polite, noncommittal smile. Buck had told them not to go out of their way to make allies-- but she wasn’t sure that was what this boy was after anyway. Something about him was off. Slick. Like the aloe drying tacky on her arm.

“My mentor said you two got the same… back message in prep yesterday,” he said, glancing over her to Levi. “Said that aloe might help. I might try to grab some myself.”

Levi hummed, tone unreadable. “Neat,” he said flatly.

Before Kepler could reply, Levi caught Harlee’s sleeve and steered her toward one of the food stations. Cold cuts and cheeses-- sandwiches. District 10 enough.

Kepler followed, unbothered. Persistent, or just stupid.

“On the market for allies?” he asked, voice low, watching the Capitol attendant lay down bread like they were crafting art instead of lunch.

“Bit early for that,” Levi said, clipped but polite, offering a genuine “thanks” as he took his tray.

Kepler scoffed. “It’s what now? Hundred and sixteen hours ‘til the gong? When else is the time?”

Harlee swallowed hard, jaw tightening. She tried to look indifferent, but her stomach twisted. Hundred and sixteen hours.She couldn’t help counting the math of it-- how short that was.

Levi grabbed her tray before she could, spinning on his heel toward an empty table. “We’ll think about it, 5,” he said over his shoulder.

Harlee followed without a word. She wished she’d said something-- anything-- but Buck’s advice echoed in her head: Keep your head down. Mouth shut. That, at least, she could do.

The mess hall had twelve tables-- one for each District, spaced far enough apart to make the room feel emptier than it was. Each table could fit half a dozen people, but no one sat close to another District unless they had to. Except of course the Careers, who pushed the two closest to the door together so they could all spread out. 

Levi set down their trays and muttered something about getting water before heading off, leaving Harlee alone.

Harlee sat with her shoulders tight, tracing her finger along the lip of the plastic tray. She wasn’t really looking at her lunch-- just doing what Buck told her to do. Keep your head down. Easy enough. She could manage that.

“He your big brother or something?”

Her gaze lifted. Kepler-- District 5’s finest-- stood at the end of the table Levi had claimed for them.

“No,” she said flatly.

She had to answer, sure. But she could still keep her mouth mostly shut.

Kepler smirked. “I’m kidding. You’re obviously too pretty to be related to him.”

Harlee rolled her eyes, unimpressed. Compliments on looks didn’t go far with her. Not when, in a hundred and sixteen hours, looks wouldn’t matter at all.

He set his tray down at the edge of the table, glancing over his shoulder toward the door. Harlee didn’t follow his gaze-- she was too busy trying to figure out how to keep him from actually sitting down before Levi came back.

“Can we sit?” he asked, looking back at her with his hands on his hips. “Careers aren’t great table neighbors.”

Before she could reply-- mostly because anything she said would’ve sounded too sharp-- Levi reappeared, somehow carrying two glasses of water and juice in one hand.

“Plannin’ on sittin’?” he asked, brow furrowing. Not unfriendly, just measuring.

Kepler shrugged. “If we may. Doesn’t have to mean allies or anything.” His tone was bright, a little too practiced.

Levi shrugged back, setting the juice in front of Harlee. “Fine by me.”

Kepler grin widened as he dropped onto the bench beside Harlee, waving over a girl from across the room. Same uniform, same District. She was pale, her freckles standing out against her skin, hair a neat sheet of blonde tucked behind her ears. She didn’t look thrilled to be joining him, but she did-- sitting a careful space away from Levi.

She did not look happy to be there.

“Acie,” Kepler announced. Then, in a mock-formal tone, “Levi.” He extended his hand across the table dramatically. “Harlee.” 

Harlee’s brow furrowed. They hadn’t told him their names. Had he memorized them from the Reaping broadcast?

“Thanks for letting us sit,” the girl said politely, her smile thin as paper. Her tone sharpened when she turned to Kepler. “You listen to Wattin too much.”

Harlee almost smiled. Clearly, District 5 didn’t get along.

“Oh, don’t be an anion about it,” Kepler drawled, propping his elbow on the table. “Don’t look down on us just because you’re too good to see the post.”

“I don’t-- ” the girl started quickly, eyes widening. She darted glances between Harlee and Levi. “I don’t look down on you for that.”

Harlee took a slow sip of her juice, hiding her amusement. The girl was doing exactly what Buck had told them to do-- don’t give anyone a reason to find you in the arena. Still, there was something satisfying about the nervous flicker in her eyes. Because in the Capitol’s eyes, Harlee realized, they already were killers. Whether they’d earned it or not.

“Absolutely not,” Holstein spat, eyes narrowing. “You lost your damn mind?”

Buck shrugged, a curl at the corner of his lip. “District 5 could be good. Kids’re fed. Older. Boy’s eighteen, girl’s seventeen. What other options for allies do they got?”

“Each other,” Holstein grunted, stabbing his fork into his meat.

Harlee focused on her mashed potatoes, letting Lassie’s gentle fingers brush the stubborn strands of hair from her face distract her. All Levi had mentioned was that they’d eaten lunch with District 5 and spent a few stations in silent company.

“Their boy’s a real handful,” Levi added, smirking as he nudged her elbow. “Annoying as all get out.” Harlee couldn’t help but agree—Kepler was definitely irritating.

Buck ignored him. “I could talk to Elle. She’d be sweet on the idea.”

Holstein slammed his fork down, meat rattling on the plate. “Sweet on it? Because those kids’ll just slit their throats while they sleep,” he muttered, then louder: “They even touch a weapon today? Competent?”

Harlee shrugged, letting Lassie brush that same stubborn strand back for the third time. “Wasn’t paying attention.”

“Their girl-- Acie-- was messing with the spears before lunch,” Levi offered. “Didn’t see much, though. Busy with the station.”

Holstein fixed Buck with a pointed look, as if that settled the debate.

“Let me talk to Elle,” Buck said, persistent. “See what they know about those kids. We’ve got the upper hand-- ours know how to fight and take a beatin’.”

“The boy-- Kepler-- he’s been on the post before too,” Harlee added, almost absentmindedly.

Buck mirrored Holstein’s earlier gesture, extending a hand toward her as if her comment justified him.

“Kepler and Acie,” Lassie said softly, almost dream-like, a smile tugging at her lips. “Nice names.”

Harlee had to admit-- though Lassie might be slightly unhinged, she was by far the most tolerable mentor in the room. Mostly because Holstein and Buck needed to bicker like this to breathe.

“I think Lee and I can fare fine by ourselves,” Levi said flatly. “Ain’t that better? Less people to divvy rations to.”

Holstein tapped the table, maybe in agreement. He shot another pointed look at Buck, who merely twisted the corner of his mouth, resigned but unwilling to lose.

If the politics of an ally beyond Levi was this political, Harlee didn’t see reason to bother. She could almost taste the simplicity of it: herself, Levi, and no one else. If she was going to make it out alive, that would be enough. The politics of alliances, the mentors’ debates, the careful calculus of who might be useful-- none of it mattered if she couldn’t survive herself.

This is all so insanely absurd, she thought, letting the words float through her head like smoke.

The fancy train, the meticulous erasure of every scar on her back, the monotonous, tedious training-- what was the point? In just a hundred and ten hours, she reminded herself, they would all be reduced to numbers, statistics, headlines. Body matter, acrid dirt, metallic blood.

And yet, everyone played along. Pretended it mattered. Pretended they had a choice. Harlee never pretended well, never cared to. Her survival had always been muscle memory, quick thinking, and stubbornness-- the same instincts a horse uses maybe-- not worrying over who smiled at the right time or who might be a convenient ally.

Her gaze drifted back to Levi, sitting across from her like he belonged anywhere, unconcerned with all the theater around him. He understood the rules without caring about them, and that was the only lesson she’d take seriously: survive by knowing what matters and ignoring the rest.

And what mattered was simple: staying alive. Every action, every choice, boiled down to a cold calculus-- pick the thing that prolongs your life. Simpler said than done, maybe, but Harlee knew it. She acted on instinct, the kind that had kept her ducking under swinging hooves, sidestepping hidden snakes coiled and ready to strike. This instinct had kept her alive, and it would do so again. 

The Games themselves were nonsense. All the pomp, the Capitol’s glittering horseshit, the “rituals” and “strategies” they paraded like they mattered-- it was a theater designed for people who had never learned to survive. Harlee could play the part if she had to, smile when the cameras rolled, wave at the sponsors, but she wouldn’t bleed for their entertainment. That girl in the mirror-- the scar-free, polished version of herself-- wasn’t scared. She was a mask. Harlee would wear it, but underneath, she would keep every nerve, every reflex, every cunning thought tuned to one purpose only: staying alive. 

And she had to play the part. 

The next two days of training passed in a dizzying blur. Lassie fussed over her hair every morning, hands steady as ever, braiding and twisting with precision that Harlee barely noticed anymore-- mostly because her mind was elsewhere. District 5’s pair stuck to them like glue, much to Levi’s barely concealed annoyance. Harlee shared the irritation. Kepler reminded her of the older boys at the stables-- the ones who flirted at the worst possible time, when survival or work came first. Screwed up priorities. She was quick to mention that-- but not the why-- when her and Levi pushed to smother that alliance. 

In the assessment, Harlee pushed out a modest six. Levi scored an eight. Not that his score shocked her-- he was strong and sure figured out various weapons on their second day of training-- but that theirs were so close caught her off guard. She had just spent her time swinging a heavy sword, using it more like a ball bat than something that could stab, and running between fire-starting station and scrambling up the rock wall. Maybe the gamemakers recognized her speed or stamina-- or maybe it was simply knowing she’d be paired with Levi, probably for the rest of her life-- and that had inflated her score slightly.

That part was easy enough-- the showing up. The interview prep, though, that was a different beast entirely.

She spent the morning with Theodosia in what was called a ‘fitting.’ It involved standing on a small stool while the woman pinned the garment to her form. Harlee hoped desperately that it wasn’t the actual dress she’d wear tomorrow; it certainly felt delicate enough to shred if she so much as breathed wrong. Then came the lesson in walking: impossibly thin, towering heels that seemed designed more to punish than to elevate. Harlee wasn’t unfamiliar with heels-- her boots had their own lift-- but those had a purpose: catching a stirrup, gripping the wood. These were five inches tall, the width of a pencil, forcing her weight onto the balls of her feet with every precarious step. Pain shot up her legs with each shift, a reminder that “beauty” in the Capitol always came with a price.

Lunch brought a brief reprieve, thanks to Lassie’s famously comforting green bean casserole, and then it was time for the real trial: the interview content itself. Harlee had expected the relief of escaping the stylists to be tempered by hours with Holstein and Buck. She braced herself for arguing, bickering, the usual power plays. But instead, she found the two mentors-- astonishingly-- on the same page.

“Alright, kid,” Buck drawled, leaning forward. “Can you do witty?” 

She shrugged. She’ll do whatever they want. 

Holstein let out a quiet sigh, fingers scratching his beard. “Think she oughta do cham. She’s a pretty thing… they’d eat it whole.” 

Wit, charm. Harlee wondered what the difference was. One made them laugh, the other made them want her. Either way it accomplished the same thing: got sponsors to like her. And sponsors liking her meant money. Gifts in the arena that could save her life. 

Back leaned back, letting a slow grin spread across his face. “Do whichever feels more natural. But don’t give it all up at once. Keep ‘em guessing.” 

Harlee nodded lazily, head resting against her arm propped on the side of the chair. 

“Now, your voice,” Buck continued, snapping his fingers for emphasis. “Capitol eats that accent of ours alive. Don’t hide it. Let it ride. Just a little sing-song, a little… music. You say one word wrong, they think it’s cute. You let it linger, they melt. That’s their poison, kid.”

Holstein nodded slowly, more careful, almost tense. “They’ll like it, sure… just…” He sighed. “Remember, it’s a tool. Don’t let it make you… too open. You want to tease, not give them a doorway into the real you.”

“Tease, huh?” Harlee muttered, letting the word roll around in her head. That she could do. She could tilt her head, let her eyes flash, let a word drip from her lips like honey without meaning it. It wasn’t lying, exactly. It was survival. Not any different than how she sometimes flirted at the stables to get some older boy to do a chore for her. It worked a bit over half the time, that was a good enough success rate for her to be confident about it. 

Buck leaned forward again, voice casual, almost bored. “Try it. Say something about the food they put in front of you. Make them smile. Quick, clever. And accent, accent, accent. Every syllable counts.”

She opened her mouth and tested it. “Oh, my, this… green bean casserole is… delicious,” she said, letting the pitch and rhythm of her words stretch just so, drawing out the soft vowels more than she naturally would.

Buck grinned, snapping his fingers. “That’s it. Just like that. Tiny bit of exaggeration. Not enough to be ridiculous, enough to make them lean in.”

Holstein’s voice came softer, careful: “And eyes. Don’t just speak with your voice. Speak with your eyes. Don’t give them the wrong hint, but… intrigue. You can smile, let them wonder what you’re thinking. Keep it light.”

Harlee tried again, tilting her head, letting a small smirk play across her lips. The words sounded foreign to her own ears, like someone else entirely had stepped into her voice. She didn’t like it, and yet-- she could feel the control it gave her. Even if the Capitol thought it was for their amusement, she was learning to make it hers.

Chapter Text

Harlee still wasn’t sure what the point of that “fitting” with Theodosia had been-- or the torture session in those damn heels she’d nearly died walking in. Because for the interview, she looked nothing like the polished Capitol doll they’d been fussing to create. Instead, they’d dressed her up like some sweet little belle. 

The dress was ruffly and gingham, puffed out just enough to make her look younger, stopping just above her knees. They’d even given her boots-- real leather, fancy, like the kind Daddy would’ve saved for weddings or the Fall Festival. Brown, but with pale green stitching to match the checks of her dress. Io-- who Harlee had decided was the only tolerable person in this group-- had tied lacy ribbons into little bows on the tabs of the boots.

It was girly. Childish, even. But it beat looking like a goat again, so she didn’t complain.

“What was the point of the heels yesterday?” she asked, curiosity getting the best of her as she looked down at the ribbons flanking her calves. 

Theodosia smiled, laughing a little like there was some joke. She tilted the girl’s head up by her chin to carefully paint her lips yet another color, in search for the perfect shade. “Holstein insisted we go for cute. Claimed the heels made you look too grown.” 

Harlee hummed but didn’t say anything. She didn’t really see a difference in whatever they put her in. At the end of the day she was just being dressed up for slaughter, right? 

Harlee was one of the first to line up for the procession onto the stage, guided down a narrow hallway and parked near the back beside the two kids from District 12. She didn’t bother with small talk. Instead, she kept her mind busy rerunning Holstein’s plans-- each one sketched out like the diagrams she’s seen before, drawn in the dirt for a ball game.

Tomorrow. The arena.

Holstein had been confident about one thing: Levi would come up near the mouth of the Cornucopia. Harlee’s spot, though, was a mystery.

“They want y’all to run in and get yourselves killed,” he’d grumbled, hunched over one of his rough sketches. “That’s the point of it. Like a cattle chute. Don’t fall for it.”

Harlee was smaller, and quicker by virtue of it, but she wasn’t quick enough to risk the mouth. The plan was simple: grab a bag and run. Which direction-- well, that depended on what they saw before the clock hit zero. If they weren’t on opposite sides of the Cornucopia, they’d have to decide quick. The default was to head tailward. That was the rule. Never turn your back on the mouth.

“That’s how you get a spear, knife, arrow-- somethin’-- through your spine,” Holstein had said.

Now, standing there in line, the plan felt fragile. One step wrong, one bad bag, one unlucky pairing, and it all fell apart.

After the bloodbath, the goal was to disappear. No heroics, no hunting. Let the Careers play butcher while they hid and waited for the numbers to thin.

“You get far enough, those bastards won’t bother,” Holstein had said. “Gamemakers don’t send nothin’ you can’t survive. Not good television. But you gotta earn that distance first.”

It all boiled down to one thing: hope.
Hope the bloodbath didn’t take them. Hope the right bag was close enough to reach. Hope they could snag something as a weapon. Hope they found water, or food, or wire for snares. Hope the Careers didn’t catch their scent. Hope the Gamemakers didn’t get bored.

Hope-- that was the foundation their plan stood on.

A low whistle broke through her thoughts. Harlee looked up to see Levi, polished within an inch of his life in an impeccable suit stitched with curling patterns that matched his boots.

“Don’t we clean up nice, huh?” he said, grinning lopsidedly as he fell into line behind her.

Harlee smirked. “Uh-huh. Like one of your prize hogs.”

“Oh, no,” he shot back in mock seriousness. “Could never best District 10 swine.”

She snorted. Admittedly, he wasn’t wrong. The whole thing-- the gowns, the suits, the staging-- reminded her of the Fall Festival back home. The show animals, brushed and scrubbed, bows tied in their tails, all lined up to be judged. Best in show.
Only difference was, when this show ended, someone had to die for it.

“Lookin’ awfully fine, Miss District 10,” a voice drawled.

Harlee turned her head. Kepler. Of course. But before she or Levi could reply, a man appeared and gave the boy a firm shove forward.

“Very charming, Kep,” the man said dryly. “Save it for Flickerman.” He threw Harlee and Levi a polite, tight smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes before steering the boy back toward his place in line.

Levi let out a short, half-amused breath. “Tomorrow might not be so bad if I can get my hands on him,” he muttered.

Harlee wasn’t sure if he meant it-- but a small, uneasy part of her suspected he did. Maybe she even agreed. It hadn’t taken them more than an hour on the second day of training to decide they wanted nothing to do with District 5. Acie was tolerable, but only in comparison. Quiet. Withdrawn. At least she didn’t talk just to hear herself talk. Kepler, on the other hand, never seemed to stop. Every joke, every smirk, every lazy flirt grated worse than the last.

And for what? They were competitors. It wasn’t like charm was going to earn him mercy. Flirting didn’t make her like him; it just made her want him farther away.

“Might be a race to it,” came a voice from behind Levi—the girl from District 11, tall and older, with a grin like she meant it. “Boy can’t keep it in his pants even with his life on the line.”

Harlee glanced back at her, trying not to let her face twist. The joke hit too close. It was too casual, too easy, this talk about killing. Maybe that was how you had to be-- make it sound like a game so you didn’t have to think about what it really meant.

That was what Buck meant when he told them to keep their heads down and mouths shut. Every single one of them knew what they were here for. To kill. Maybe the ones from 1, 2, and 4 were the only ones truly eager for it. Everyone else-- if they had to do it-- would probably just start with the people who annoyed them most. Twenty three people had to die, and a Victor cannot come out of the arena with their hands clean. 

Further ahead, on stage, Harlee heard the noise from the crowd erupt as Flickerman graced the stage. There was a little screen in the far corner of the room, surely not meant for the tributes to watch but they got to anyway. On stage the lights flared brighter-- blinding even from behind the curtain-- and the audience’s roar rolled through the floor, rattling up Harlee’s legs.

“Good evening, Panem!” Caesar Flickerman’s voice boomed, smooth as oil, trained to sound effortlessly delighted. The audience answered in a wave of shrieks and applause. Harlee could picture his wide smile, the gleam of his perfect teeth, the way his eyes would sweep the crowd like a performer soaking up worship. “What a year it’s been-- and what a show we’ve got tonight!”

The applause swelled again. The words washed over her. “A show.” That’s all it was to them. A parade of doomed kids with painted faces and fixed smiles.

“Let’s meet our tributes!” Flickerman crooned, arm sweeping toward the curtains.

The procession of the soon-to-be dead began. It was a slow crawl forward, a solid few beats before the movement snaked down the line to them. Harlee shifted her weight from heel to heel, feeling the movement of the ribbon tied onto her boots. She’d been told to smile when she walked out, to look alive, to let that accent do the heavy lifting. She’d practiced it all day-- how to be endearing without looking scared.

They began moving, and suddenly she was under the hot, bright stage lights. The noise hit like a wall-- roaring, clapping, screaming things indiscernible. The air was thick with perfume and static. Harlee kept her chin up, a small grin in place, and reminded herself what Buck had said: witty, charming, a bit of a tease. 

They walked to their seats-- her skirt brushing against her knees, Levi’s boots shining under the glare-- and settled beside the pair from District 9. Girl, boy, girl, boy, lined up like livestock at the county fair.

Nineteenth. That’s when she’d go.

Nineteenth to speak, nineteenth to smile, nineteenth to pretend that dying could be delightful.

She tried to think about anything but her own nerves. Harlee had never spoken in front of a crowd before. The only time she’d ever been the center of this much attention outside the reaping she’d been on her knees with her back bared-- her ‘audience’ watching each lash land. At least then, she was allowed to keep her head down. This was different. Here, she had to meet their eyes.

She was grateful to be in the back row. Grateful, too, that she sat right in the middle-- safely deeply framed by others on all sides. Her gaze fixed on the girl in front of her, District 4’s tribute, whose dark hair was slicked into a sculpted bun, every wave of it gelled to mimic the ripple of water. Harlee watched it move with each breath the girl took, hypnotic enough to dull her own heartbeat.

Then, suddenly, that girl stood. The empty white chair she left behind gleamed under the lights-- identical to the other twenty-three, plastic and spotless, meant to hold bodies without drawing attention to them. That was the point. They weren’t meant to stand out, not yet.

The interviews dragged on. Even with only three minutes apiece, time seemed to crawl. By the time District 5’s turn came, the audience’s laughter and applause had softened, dulled into polite rhythm. Harlee’s attention drifted too. How did anyone sit through this whole thing? Back home, the square would be packed for the broadcast-- mandatory, but still an event. People would whisper, trade gossip, speculations. No one really watched anyone but their own.

And that’s when it hit her. Everyone from home would be watching. Momma and Daddy. Rein, Palomino, Roan, and Dun. Bay and Cheslee. Jory, Tamsin, and Calla. Colby. The stablehands. The teachers. Every person who’d ever seen her, known her, pitied her-- or seen her spit blood at that Officer years ago.

A sharp ache tightened in her throat. She might be dead tomorrow. She didn’t bother listing how-- it didn’t matter if it was a blade, a fall, or hunger. The odds were simple: dead or not. And in-- damn, District 8 already?-- nine minutes, they’d all see her. Alive, dressed up, smiling.

They’d see her pretend.

Holstein had told her to perform. Buck too. Witty, charming, a tease. Harlee could manage that if she had to. She had those pieces somewhere inside her, but they weren’t the whole of her. She was more than that. She was more than that.

But it didn’t matter. Not here. This interview wasn’t for the folks back home-- it was for the Capitol. For the people who’d decide whether she was worth saving, worth sponsoring, worth watching die.

So she’d play her part.

So when it was her turn, as Caesar Flickerman called her name, Harlee stood with a big smile. She carefully folded her hands behind her back, swaying her hips slightly as she walked to the chair next to the man-- letting the skirt of her dress ruffle with each step deliberately. 

When she reached the center of the stage, she let one hand slip free, giving a playful little wiggle of her fingers to the crowd. Then she turned to Flickerman, smile brightening as though she’d been waiting her whole life to meet him.

“Miss Harlee Aguilar, District 10!” he boomed, repeating himself again. He grasped her hand with both of his. 

She sat, crossing her ankles neatly, shoulders drawn back in perfect poise. Inside, her stomach felt like it was full of kicked-up dust. But she kept smiling. The Capitol liked girls from 10 who smiled. They liked that slow drawl, that sweetness. They liked when it sounded like honey even if it was really just grit.

“Well, aren’t you a sight!” Caesar exclaimed, his voice booming with delight. “Harlee, darling, you look as fresh as springtime.”

“That’s mighty kind of you to say,” Harlee replied, her accent sliding warm and easy.

“Tell us, Harlee,” Caesar continued, leaning closer, “what does a girl like you do down in District Ten? I imagine there’s hard work involved-- but something tells me there’s a little mischief, too.”

Harlee laughed softly, eyes glinting. “Oh, I don’t know if I oughta say, Caesar," she drawled. "A lady never kisses and tells-- and she sure doesn’t kill and tell either.”

The audience gasped and then burst into laughter. Caesar threw his head back, delighted. “Oh, I like you already! Keeping me on my toes.”

Harlee tilted her head, keeping her smile. “Guess I just learned when to keep my mouth shut.”

“Well, then,” Caesar said, theatrically fanning himself, “when you do get to open that mouth, what do you talk about for fun? What do you do back home when you’re not working?”

“I play bat ball,” Harlee said, settling back in the chair, crossing her legs with a little kick that fluttered the ribbons on her boot. “Pretty good at it, too. Hit mean sluggers-- probably half-way to District 11 if I catch it right.”

A round of laughter rippled through the audience. Caesar wagged a finger at her. “Now, that’s a swing I’d like to see! We’ll have to keep our eye on you.”

Harlee smiled, ducking her head just slightly. “You might not wanna stand too close.”

The laughter grew louder. Caesar beamed. “Now I hear you’ve got a big family back home-- seven kids, is that right?”

She nodded. “That’s right. I’m the youngest.”

“The baby!” Caesar cried. “They must spoil you rotten! With a face like that, who couldn’t?”

“Oh, I don’t think anyone in 10’s got time to spoil anyone,” she said, still smiling. “You pull your weight, or you get left behind. Bein’ the youngest just means I know how to survive on table scraps,” she drawled, then looked at the audience and gave a wink. “Feel like that might come in handy here soon.” 

That got another laugh-- this one warmer, approving. And then her buzzer went off. It had passed in a flash, almost too quick. As she stood, taking Caesar’s hand again, she smiled brightly. Harlee hoped she had done well, but she already knew she had. 

As she walked, the lights caught on her boots and the ribbon bows Io had tied. She didn’t let her smile falter until she sat back down. Only then did she let her shoulders fall. The applause still echoed faintly in her chest.

They’d liked her.
That was the point, wasn’t it?

Back in the District 10 apartment, the mood was strangely light. Everyone seemed relieved, even proud. Lassie practically glowed as she ushered Harlee and Levi inside. Holstein gave one of his small, approving nods and said they’d done fine, that the crowd liked confidence and smiles, and they’d managed both. Buck was his usual easy self, propping a boot on the table and telling Levi he’d “cleaned up real good,” then turning to Harlee with a grin, saying her bat ball bit would have sponsors laughing all night. 

After quick-- potentially final-- showers, they were called out again. Neither of them felt hungry, but Lassie insisted on feeding them anyway. Roast, buttered rolls, and sliced fruit that gleamed under the lights. They ate because it was easier than arguing. And because they were both aware that this might be their penultimate meal. 

Afterward, the talk circled back to strategy. Buck went over their plan again-- sixty seconds, grab a bag, run tail direction if they could, no turning their backs on the mouth of the Cornucopia. Holstein’s voice was gruffer, but the message was the same: no heroics, no wandering near the Careers, just distance, quiet, and patience. 

Lassie stood behind Harlee as they talked, absentmindedly combing her fingers through the girl’s hair, humming something soft and unfamiliar. Harlee didn’t mean to find comfort in it, but she did. When the meal was done and their reminders had been drilled into the ground, Holstein finally told them both to get to bed.

It was late when Harlee slipped into her room. Her stomach was heavy, her hair smelled faintly of Capitol soap, and she felt too clean for what tomorrow would ask of her. The lights from the city spilled through the window, sharp and unnatural, with the faint sound of a celebration below. For a long moment she just sat there, dressed in unfamiliar pajamas, thinking of Lassie’s hands in her hair, of Holstein’s sketches, of Buck’s casual grin. They’d all said you’ll do fine. 

Maybe they believed it. 

Maybe they had to.

She gave an honest try at sleep. Closed her eyes. Focused on the soft give of the mattress, the pillows, the gentle hum of Capitol air systems. But rest didn’t come. The fear pressed in too close. Harlee-- the real one, not the girl in the mirror with the ribboned boots and polite smile-- was terrified. Beyond terrified.

She couldn’t stop thinking about dying. The ways it might happen played behind her eyelids like a cruel reel: a knife sliding between her ribs, the wet choke of her own breath filling her lungs; a slit throat, her hands slick and useless against the flow; a spear through the gut, spilling her insides into the dirt. It didn’t even have to be someone else who did it-- she could fall from a ledge, take a bite from the wrong snake, brush against something wrong in the dark and have an infection by dawn. There were a thousand ways to die in the arena, and only one way to survive.

By killing.

Who was she kidding with all her tough talk, all her mirror-girl bravado? She’d chickened out of working slaughter back home before she even gave it a chance. Not because she couldn’t stomach blood-- she’d grown up around it-- but because she couldn’t stand being the one to make that final cut. To end something that hadn’t done her harm. She remembered saying it, two years ago, face buried in Cheslee’s middle: I like lambs. Just not what comes after.

And now here she was, thinking about killing like it was inevitable. Necessary. She could justify it-- of course she could. It was the Games. Kill or be killed. She wasn’t going to lie down and make it easy for anyone, wasn’t going to let herself be another body on the dirt. When it came down to it, she’d fight, claw, bite if she had to. She’d kill or die trying.

But the thought still stuck in her throat, barbed and splintered. Because maybe this wasn’t just fear or survival talking. Maybe that quiet girl in District 10-- the one who couldn’t slit a lamb’s throat-- was already gone. Maybe she hadn’t been pretending all week after all. Maybe the Games had already started changing her. And maybe, deep down, she’d let them.

What felt like far too soon, Harlee woke to a soft hand on her shoulder, half-dreaming of District 10-- of horses snorting in their stalls and the smell of lanolin on lambs. The hand belonged to Theodosia. A pit of dread hollowed out her chest almost instantly. Not because of the woman herself-- Theodosia wasn’t awful, really, quiet and careful in the way she moved-- but because of what her presence meant. It was time.

She dressed in silence, pulling on the simple black clothes Theodosia had laid out. “Just for the ride over,” the woman said gently, as if soft words could dull the meaning of them. Then came the elevator ride to the roof-- smooth, humming-- and the sight that waited above: a hovercraft, suspended in the pale morning air like some great, soundless predator.

Theodosia gestured toward the ladder. Harlee hesitated. For half a breath, she wondered if she could just… let go halfway up. End it before the Games ever began. Maybe her neck would snap clean, quick. But the thought fizzled almost as fast as it came. Waste of a thought. Waste of nerves.

She gripped the ladder and began to climb. The air thrummed around her, hot with static. Then-- something like a magnetic pull seized her still. Frozen mid-motion, her body stiff as iron while the ladder retracted into the belly of the craft. The hum deepened, a mechanical purr under her skin. She couldn’t move, couldn’t even twitch, but she felt it when the needle slid into her arm-- sharp, clean, deliberate.

The tracker.

Well damn, they sure aren’t going to lose me, she thought dryly. 

The ‘ride over’ was as bleak as she’d imagined it would be-- silent and suffocating. But shorten than she thought travel to the secret arena location would be from the Capitol. When it finally ended, Theodosia was the one to guide her off the hovercraft and down a narrow hallway.

The stockyard.

The pit of dread in her chest expanded, swallowing her stomach. They were under the arena. Maybe exactly under the place where Harlee Aguilar would take her final breath. The thought stuck like a thorn-- this idea that the last place she’d ever be might be something entirely man-made. Not home. Not real. Just steel and dirt and lights. Maybe she’d never see home again.

Get it the fuck together, Harlee. Now’s not the time for a pity party.

There wasn’t time to wonder who the girl in the mirror had been anymore. Harlee had to be her now. She had to wear that version of herself until the end-- whether that end came in blood or in victory. Chin up. Pragmatic. A killer.

Harlee found her launch room disappointingly bland. A small bench, a chair, a table, and the gleaming launch pad on the far wall. The arena uniform sat folded neatly on the bench, and Theodosia picked up each garment in turn, inspecting them as she instructed Harlee to undress.

The underclothes were thin and breathable-- fitted boxer shorts and a tank top. The socks were thick, padded where blisters liked to bloom. Theodosia made a quiet sound of disapproval at the color of the cargo pants as she handed them over but noted their utility, pointing out the two zippered sections that converted them into capris or shorts.

“It’s going to be a scorcher,” she said. “Moisture-wicking socks, sweat-absorbing tank top.” Theodosia smiled faintly, but it didn’t touch her eyes, as she passed over the overshirt. “But you’re from Ten. Used to the heat, hm?”

Sure, lady. Harlee thought, dry as the arena probably would be. She remembered that year the Gamemakers had cranked the temperature in the arena to one hundred and twenty degrees. No place in District 10 got heat like that. Nowhere in Panem did anymore. 

The overshirt was light and loose, its sleeves ending at her forearms. She buttoned it carefully under Theodosia’s watchful gaze. District 10 brown-- that same ugly, mud-dull color they always used to mark her district’s tributes. Still, Harlee was thankful it was the overshirt and not something smaller, like the kerchief Theodosia folded in half and tied around her neck, muttering about sun protection. She’d be able to spot Levi in it, and identify the other tributes by sight alone if they all kept them on. 

Last came the boots: thick-soled, sturdy, made for climbing and running both.

Harlee let Theodosia do her hair. If it really was going to be as hot as she said, she’d want it up and out of the way. Theodosia copied Lassie’s style from the first day of training, but the buns sat higher now, secured by four tight, scalp-pulling braids. Harlee didn’t complain. The last thing she wanted to worry about in the arena was her hair sticking to her neck.

“One more thing,” Theodosia murmured.

She took Harlee’s wrist gently and tied a ribbon around it, knotting the bow twice.

The ribbon.

The one from her hair at the Reaping.

Harlee hadn’t thought about it since-- hadn’t thought about a token at all. You only thought about those things if you were nervous about the Reaping, and Harlee had made it a point not to be nervous. Everything since the Reaping had moved too fast for her to care, really. But now she was glad to have it.

Confusion must’ve shown on her face, because Theodosia gave a small, soft laugh.

“Lassie submitted it for approval,” she said. “Said you left it on the train.”

Harlee nodded, fingers brushing the ribbon’s soft lace. She thought about Cheslee—how she always swore it was lucky, how it kept her safe through seven Reapings. Harlee decided not to question it. One year out of ten was still better odds than she’d had before. Maybe that was enough to count as luck.

Theodosia’s hand brushed one of the tight braids absently—a small, almost unconscious gesture of comfort.

“Try to grab one of the bags with a sleeping roll,” she said quietly. “It’ll probably get cold at night.”

Harlee looked up. The woman sounded so certain, like she knew. Did she? Or was it a guess-- an educated one, born of watching tributes march to their deaths for years? It didn’t really matter.

What mattered was the next step. Staying alive. The careful calculus of choices.

Find Levi.
Find a bag in her running line.
Run tail-ward.

Simple enough. She could do that and not die.

The voice over the speaker called two minutes to launch. Harlee stood, slow but steady, and crossed to the circular platform. Two minutes felt like too much time-- long enough to realize there was no stopping this. Long enough for panic to find the cracks in her resolve.

She forced her breathing even. Her hands were steady. Her heart wasn’t.

She wasn’t the girl in the mirror now, or the one in the kitchen who couldn’t stomach killing. This was the girl who’d do what she had to. 

She fixed her eyes on the ceiling as the countdown began, jaw tight, pulse roaring in her ears.

Sixty seconds.

Chapter Text

It was dark for longer than she expected. How deep underground was the stockyard?

The thought vanished when the platform shuddered to a stop and the world exploded into blinding light. Harlee flinched, eyes watering against the harsh glare. Shapes blurred and burned behind her lids before her vision began to clear-- brown-red dirt, maybe sand, or both.

Levi, she reminded herself. Find Levi.

Blinking hard, she turned her head, eyes still swimming. Black on her right. Purple on her left. Districts 8 and 12? Didn’t matter-- they were smaller than her.

“Let the Sixty-First Hunger Games begin!” boomed the voice overhead. A cannon fired.

Sixty seconds.

Fuck.

Harlee’s gaze snapped straight ahead. The Cornucopia gleamed under the sun, throwing back shards of light like a blade. She was positioned left of its tail-- thank Panem. She couldn’t see into the mouth. She didn’t want to.

Scanning the top half of the ring, she spotted him-- brown shirt, tense shoulders, eyes fixed on the mouth of the Cornucopia.

Don’t do it, she begged silently. Don’t be a hero. Don’t be an idiot.

Levi’s face was unreadable. He was thinking about it. And then-- damn him-- he decided.

He was going in.

He’s going to get himself killed trying to grab some sword he’ll never even swing.

Her eyes flicked to the tributes flanking him-- blue, red, white: Districts 4, 2, 1. Careers. The slaughter pen. Breaking up that drove: 5’s orange, 11’s chartreuse, and Levi’s brown.

Forty-five seconds.

Finally, Levi looked her way. His mouth twitched up. He pointed into the mouth, then high, over the Cornucopia’s curve. A gesture that only said one thing: going in, meet you beyond the tail. Like going into the mouth of the Cornucopia in the Hunger Games wasn't suicide. 

No. Dumbass. That’s not the plan.

She shook her head wildly, but he only spread his fingers. Trust me, the gesture said.

She didn’t.

Thirty seconds.

Fine. If he wanted to die, that was his business. She couldn’t save him.

Harlee dropped her gaze to the dirt, scanning for supplies along her escape line. If Levi’s suicide run somehow worked, she’d grab them both a bag. Slower, sure, but maybe he’d need one.

Fifteen seconds.

She mapped the route, committing each bag’s position to memory. She didn’t know what the others would do-- hopefully not whatever Levi was planning. Maybe she shouldn’t have modeled mirror-girl after him. Or maybe the Games had already changed him too.

Five seconds.

She risked one last look, it might be the last time she ever sees him. He leaned forward. So did she.

The gong.

Harlee launched herself off the platform. Her boots hit hard-packed red dirt-- not sand-- and she sprinted, lungs searing. She reached the first bag and snatched it by the strap without slowing. Two more yards, another one.

She didn’t stop. Didn’t think. Just ran.

Holstein said to run, and she’d damn well run.

A third bag lay near the tail-- a small pouch really-- she grabbed it, slinging the heaviest bag over her back and twisting the smaller across her chest. Her arms pumped harder, body cutting through heat and panic.

The ground stretched ahead into flat nothingness. A hundred yards out, the horizon just dropped. It could be a steep slope. Or it could just be straight down. 

Great. Guess you’ll find out the hard way.

She didn’t look back. Not yet. You never look back when you’re running.

Twenty yards from the edge, she slowed, chest heaving, eyes scanning behind her finally. And then, there he was. Levi. Charging full speed from the Cornucopia, dirt spraying behind him. Two long black things in his hands.

Relief hit so hard she almost laughed.

The edge came fast-- it was a sheer drop. Of course it was. Twenty feet down to a wide ledge of red stone. Without thinking, Harlee dropped to her butt and swung her legs over. Her fingers gripped the rock, spinning to face the wall her feet easily found purchase. 

It held solid. A Gamemaker wall, made to be climbed.

She gripped, shifted her weight onto one foot, careful and quick, scampering down as quickly and safely as possible. She was six feet from the ground when hands seized her waist. Harlee yipped, dropping the smaller pack from her mouth-- until she saw him.

Levi.

He set her down and yanked the heavier bag off her shoulders, slinging it onto his own. Then, wordlessly, he handed her one of the black things he’d been running with. 

A matt black metal ball bat. 

He bent to grab the fallen pouch, shoved it in his pocket, then glanced uphill. A sloped path-- an easier way down. Of course.

“We need to go. Now.”

She didn’t argue. Her feet obeyed. “You went into the bloodbath for these? Not even a sword?”

She was pissed at him for not following the plan. For having her thinking he was already dead, even if it was just for a few minutes. All for some metal ball bats, really? He didn't even grab himself a bag. 

“Nothin’ else.”

“What do you--”

“It was only bats, Harlee. We need to go.”

They ran down the sloped path and into the canyon throat, the world narrowing to a ribbon of red rock and the heavy thud of their boots. Wind grabbed at them, hot and dry, throwing grit in their mouths; the sun hammered heat across them even this close to the ground. Above them, the echoing noise of the Cornucopia-- yells, the ugly percussion of bodies hitting something hard-- shrank into the distance until it was a chorus of muffled thumps and an occasional shout that might have been triumph or might have been terror. Either way, it sounded far away now, and that distance steadied something in her.

Her breath burned. Her hands ached under the straps. She should have been elated-- alive, a few yards further, the plan working-- but a tiny, persistent grind had wormed into her head: only bats.

No blades. No spears. No hooks or tridents or anything that would pierce and be quick. Just blunt metal-- things made to smash. The in her hand now was the same weight as the one at home, the bat Rein had given her that she used in batball games-- but it felt much much heavier as the realization sank further and further in. 

The Gamemakers had given them clubs. They wanted a pounding. They wanted it slow.

The thought lodged there and would not let go. How long did it take to turn a person into nothing but a wet, quiet heap? How long did it take to beat a body until there was no fight left, until the canon called the end? It was a different kind of killing-- messier, more intimate. Bats meant faces and skulls, meant the long labor of breaking someone down with repeated, animalistic blows. It was not a collision or a clean slice; it was prolonged work, a grinding erosion of a person’s life by hand. The image of it was worse than any spear or arrow-- no heroics, no quick mercy, just the slow, repetitive business of violence.

Her pace faltered, and Levi’s hand closed around her forearm, tugging her forward as the path dropped to the floor of the chasm. 

“Come on,” he said, breath ragged.

Her legs obeyed, forcing her stride longer, faster. 

“Not even a knife?” she asked, glancing down at the bat in her hand.

“No,” he said flatly. His gaze didn’t waver. “There were just twenty-four bats, Harlee. We need to put distance. Focus on that.”

She nodded, letting the thought of weapons fade. Distance-- that she could manage. She pushed herself harder, letting the thrum of her heartbeat guide her.

Looking up and around, she took in the surroundings properly. The massive walls stretched high on either side, layered in streaks of ochre, rust, and sun-bleached beige. Shadows pooled along the walls, making the dusted dirt of the canyon almost soft in hue, cooler than the blistering heat in the middle under sky. The top ledge had to be over three hundred feet, explaining the slow, tense ascent of the launch chamber. To her right, less than a hundred feet away was another wall of equal height. They were enclosed in a deep, wide trench that yawned and twisted into the distance.

Her mind ticked over the geography lesson she vaguely remembered from school-- canyons were supposed to have rivers, weren’t they? She blinked against the bright daylight filtering through the gap above.

“This a canyon?” she asked, voice blunt and panting.

Levi gave an amused breath through his panting, the edge of his lip twitching. “We can call it whatever you want.”

Harlee scoffed, dry and bitter. How generous of you, she thought, forcing herself to keep moving, keep her focus on distance, and on staying alive.

But her mind fluttered back to the clubs as soon as the canons rang, all but an hour later. Levi halted, stopping to finally catch his breath. They’d slowed down to a jog, but the adrenaline keeping them going was wearing off fast. 

One canon. 

Two canon. 

Three canon. 

Four.

Harlee’s lungs clenched; she held her breath as if the sound itself could tell her something. Four. That was it. Only four. Twenty left alive, counting them. The number hit like a stone.

Normally there were more in the bloodbath-- always more. She’d seen summers when the first hour chewed down at least six, the most she can even remember was fourteen. It was normally between a quarter to half the tributes. Never as low as a sixth. 

Harlee’s eyes slid over the canyon floor without really seeing it. Her mind kept replaying the image of bats-- only bats. The Gamemakers had handed them blunt instruments and a mandate for ugly, up-close violence. It didn’t have the neatness of a blade. You didn’t fall cleanly. You didn’t go quiet the instant you bled out. You were turned into something slow and wet and ending by increments.

How many hits before someone stopped fighting? How many misses, how many lucky glances, how many blows to jaw and ribs, until the canon finally called it done? Did their attackers go for the head, quick and efficient, or savor the breaking-- ribs caving, lungs failing, the long, sick rasp of air leaving a body? The image made her stomach coil.

And then the real question pressed in: How would she do it?

She’d already decided she would. That part was settled-- kill or be killed. Harlee knew she’d kill. But the thought of doing it with a bat felt barbaric in a way a blade never had. A knife can be quick, surgical; a spear can be clean from a distance. The bat was more personal. If she was going to kill, she wanted to look away and be done with it-- you can’t do that with a bat. She couldn’t do that. Not if she wanted to live. 

They hit a fork in the canyon splitting to two smaller trenches and Levi didn’t hesitate-- he cut right. Away from the wall that the gentler slope they’d come down was and toward a ragged stretch of rock that climbed in flinty teeth. He didn’t want to chance finding an easy path between them and the Cornucopia; better to control the choice than hope for luck.

This part of the canyon felt meaner. The walls jutted in and out, throwing dark ledges and shadowed alcoves; great boulders sat like teeth in the basin, breaking sightlines but never offering a clean hiding place. Harlee craned her neck; above them was nothing but a hard, flat blue sky, flanked by the tall rocky walls. The openness made her feel tiny-- minuscule-- like a rat trapped in a barrel with no lid. There was nowhere to disappear. All they could do was keep moving, run the canyon in circles and hope the circle didn’t close.

Sometime later, just about when Harlee was going to ask for a break to catch their breath or at least slow to a walk, they found a small stream. Stream might be the wrong word, a lopsided half-circle arcing out from a small slit in the wall and then cutting back in a few feet later. But it was water. And the first they came upon-- but Harlee wasn’t exactly looking for tiny streams like this. 

Levi crouched beside it, dipping a finger in. It was surprisingly deep, bit deeper than the length of his entire forefinger, but only a few inches wide. Gamemaker made. 

“Let’s stop here. Check our bags. Get water,” he said bluntly. “Probably shouldn’t stray far from here. Hadn’t seen a drop of water the whole hike.” 

Harlee nodded, sinking to her knees beside him. She shouldered off her bag and silently pleased there’d be a canteen in it. Levi copied her, meticulously laying out the contents of his large backpack. She copied his lead. 

Between them they had a decent haul. Harlee’s bag didn’t have much: a canteen, a thin wool blanket, a coil of thin, a pouch of dried jerky, two bandanas, and a basic sewing kit. Levi’s pack held the better cache: two canteens, one twice the size of the others they have, a thick sleeping bag, matches with kindling, wire snares with premade loops, two pouches of jerky and fruit, and a proper first aid kit. Bandages, iodine, medical tape, an ankle wrap, and thin splints for fingers. 

“You made out like a bandit, huh?” he asked, nudging her lightly with a smile. “Good job.” 

Harlee smiled faintly. Her eyes had gone to their bats again. 

“The pouch,” she blurted, remembering he shoved it into his pocket. 

He pulled it out, inside was a few dozen small white circular tablets. They looked like the pills they gave the horses sometimes. 

Harlee furrowed her brow. “That electrolytes?” 

Levi looked up at the sky, squinting against the sun. “Reckon.” He looked down at the small stream again. “Probably not a lot of water around, then.” 

She nodded, but didn’t really know if they could say that just yet. Electrolytes sure helped when it was hot for dehydration, but you still needed water. She reached for the first smaller metal canteen, the one from her pack, and silently unscrewed the top. Levi took it to fill, head looking over their shoulders every so often as if anticipating someone sneaking up on them. 

“I think we oughta keep walking,” Harlee said before she fully thought it. It was more in reaction to his clear uneasiness. He didn’t think they had gotten far enough yet, if he did then he wouldn’t be looking over his shoulder like that. 

His lips twitched to the side then he shook his head. “No tellin’ if we’ll be able to find water further down. Water’s our priority.” 

Harlee furrowed her brow. “No,” she corrected. “Water’s the priority after we get far enough out.” Holstein literally reminded them that last night. 

“This…” He looked up, vaguely gesturing at the walls around them. “Canyon is a different Game than what we thought we were walkin’ into, alright? We only gotta worry about people comin’ at us from one way.” He jutted his head towards the way they came. He made about about the walls brining security, limiting the direction of threat. 

Harlee held his eyes a beat then looked further down the stretch they were heading. “Don’t know that,” she muttered. 

It was the blunt truth. She could handle hope being a major factor in the plan for the bloodbath, but not any longer than that. She didn’t want to just sit here with only one way to run if one of the eighteen others stumble upon them in their camp less than a two hour leisurely hike from the Cornucopia. Fuck that. 

“Hand me the iodine, would ya?” he muttered, lifting the canteen from the stream. 

Harlee picked it up, but held it hostage, wrapping both hands around the plastic bottle. 

Levi didn’t look amused at the childish display. “Fine,” he relented. “We’ll hike ‘til sundown, but if we don’t find water we come back tomorrow.” 

Besides herself, she smiled, passing him the bottle. 

“Damn,” he muttered. 

Her smile faltered. “What?” 

He unscrewed the top, carefully dropping in the appropriate amount of iodine before screwing both lids back on. Levi then picked up the iodine bottle, clutching it. He gave it a small shake in hand, minor frustration. “Plastic,” he said flatly. 

As he moved on, grabbing the other small canteen, Harlee furrowed her brows. “So?” What does he have against plastic? It's lighter than glass, easier to carry.

“Not glass.” He dipped the bottle into the stream, watching as it filled slowly. “Can’t turn it into a weapon-- somethin’ sharp.” He looked at their supplies laid out. “None of this can.” 

Harlee looked back to their cache and suddenly understood what he meant. No knife, no hatchet. No rope. The wire is in small, precut strips. Nothing that can be used to kill someone. No slitting, no strangling. Just the bats. Only the bats. 

She silently watched as he filled the canteens, focusing her mind on the careful flow of water rather than the bats. Anything but the bats. 

The cannon cracked twice more as they pressed on; the sun slanted low, throwing long fingers of shadow through the twisting walls. They hadn’t found water beyond that wisp of a steam, but they were almost a full day’s distance from the Cornucopia now. Safer. And with rationing and the electrolytes tucked into Levi’s pack, neither of them had drunk much. 

They made camp in a shallow alcove cut into the canyon wall-- “cave” felt generous. You couldn't stand in it, just barely squat without banging your head. It was enough: cover from the open plain, a place to blink in the dark if anyone walked by. Levi unrolled the sleeping roll while Harlee folded the wool blanket; they stuffed the rest of their kit inside for insulation. He split the jerky, handing her every other strip, and they sat with their knees drawn up, waiting for the sky to bruise into night.

“We’ll have to go back to that stream tomorrow,” Levi muttered. Conversation had been thin all day, both tributes clearly thinking. Harlee guessed his were the same as hers-- get farther, find water, stay quiet-- totally not the shape of the bat in her hand or what it would mean to use it.

“We got enough,” she said, chewing. “Remember Holstein: stay near water, not on it.” He was older than the Games themselves by a year; his words were law here. 

“Yes. Ma’am,” Levi crooned, earning a half-hearted smack from Harlee and a short, guilty laugh from him as he took a sip from the canteen.

After a pause, he nudged, softening. “Roan an’ Dun always said you hit mean sluggers.”

Harlee shrugged, eyes on the rim where twilight bled into black. “Yeah… wasn’t lyin’ ‘bout that,” she murmured. She avoided looking at the bat. For just a moment longer, Harlee wanted the bat to just be a ball bat. 

Levi cleared his throat, voice low. “I been thinkin’... best way to do it.” He tapped the metal of his bat like it was a thing to be consulted. “Get the knees first. Get ‘em to the ground. Then ribs or belly-- knock the wind outta ’em so they can’t fight back. Then… the head.” His nose twitched, but voice remained measured. “And don’t stop till the cannon says stop.”

Knees, ribs, head. Clinical. Practical. Harlee liked plans. She was good with plans.

“Smart,” she agreed, finally glancing at the bat beside her. Not imagining the act, just accepting it as fact. After another breath she asked, quieter than she intended, “How long d’you think it takes, Levi?”

He studied his bat, the canyon hush making his answer feel heavier. “I dunno,” he said at last. “Till you hear the cannon.”

They were silent again, chewing their strips of jerky and passing back and forth the water. With both, they were careful not to consume too much, aware of how precious it was to them. Harlee forced her mind to think about nothing at all until the anthem and Capitol seal thrummed in the sky. 

The girl from 3.

The boy from 3. 

The girl from 6. 

The girl from 9.

The girl from 12. 

The boy from 12. 

Harlee dropped her gaze to the dirt, barely able to make out the scattered rocks in the dim light. Six cannons. Six gone. They had all been alive less than twelve hours ago-- standing on the stage just the night before, side by side, pretending civility. That was what she couldn’t shake: how quickly it all changed. The polite smiles, the practiced bows, wiped away the instant the gong sounded. She didn’t even know their names. That felt wrong somehow-- like she ought to remember something about them.

“I’ll take first watch,” she said quietly. “You can get some sleep.”

Levi pressed his lips together, then gave a small, crooked smirk. “We’re too far to hunt, huh?” He nudged her with an elbow. “Think we both earned a little shut-eye.”

She shook her head, still not meeting his eyes. “Holstein said--”

“I know what Holstein said,” he interrupted. “Take turns. Keep watch. Don’t get lazy. Yeah, yeah.” He rolled his eyes for show. “So I’ll take first watch. You need your beauty sleep.”

That earned him a sharp side glance-- half glare, half exhaustion. “Fine. But tomorrow we gotta figure somethin’ for sunburn,” she muttered, rubbing her face. Her skin felt hot, tight. The day had baked it raw.

Levi grinned faintly, tipping his head toward the little alcove. “Yes, ma’am. I’ll get brainstormin’,” he said, drawl thick with teasing. “Now go on. Get some rest, kid.”

The air was cooling fast in a deep dark that the stars above barely cut. Before crawling into the sleeping bag, Harlee reached for the wool blanket and nudged it closer to him-- a small, wordless offer. Then she slipped into the bag, too big for her frame, and zipped it shut tight. Rolling to face the canyon mouth, she could just make out Levi’s silhouette against the various shades of dark.

She closed her eyes. She thought of nothing-- no bats, no cannons, no District 10. Just the sound of wind whispering through stone.

Chapter Text

A canon rang at dawn on the 2nd day of the 61st Hunger Games. Then again that evening. The girl from District 7 and the boy from District 9. 

Before the second one, Harlee thought she heard screaming, faint and far away. A girl’s voice. Levi said it was probably just the echo bouncing through the canyons, and she decided to believe him. Still, after that, he seemed much more content to stay put in their little alcove instead of going back toward the stream.

Harlee had to ask about the Cornucopia. She hadn’t seen a thing really-- not the mouth, not the fighting, not even really the surroundings. Levi described it to her. The far side, facing the mouth, was a dry thicket, all sharp bramble and dead brush and dead trees. He figured that’s where half the non-Career tributes ran. He hadn’t seen another way down into the canyon except the path they’d used-- but that could be others further along on the ridge. 

When asked about the bats, he hesitated. He had been tossing at palm sized rock up and down. Lazy, rhythmic. Now it stilled in his head. 

“Deeper in, there was the expected stuff,” he began. “Duffle bags. Tents, probably. Crates of food. Water.” He began tossing the rock again. Up, down. Up, down. “Then lined up front, blockin’ it kinda, was a rack. Long. Plastic.” His mouth twitched-- nervous habit she recognized now. “An’ on it were twenty-four bats. No more. No less. Lined up real nice, one by one.” 

Harlee hums softly, lips tightening.  

“Nice of ‘em to make sure there was one for each of us, huh?” he muttered, nudging her with his boot. 

She scoffed. “Sure.” 

What she wanted to ask was simple: why bats? 

But no one really would have that answer that’d be satisfying. It’d be like asking why the Hunger Games?

They could claim it’s about atonement, about sacrifice for the sake of peace. But Harlee knew it the moment she got on that train to the Capitol-- spectacle. Entertainment. That’s all it was, really. If it was about atonement, the Districts had sacrificed enough. Probably long ago. A hundred and twenty two-- twenty four now, Harlee corrected--- tributes a piece. That’s… Damn, maybe everyone was right about me bein’ bad at math, she thought dryly as she quit trying to multiply and just brute added the number to itself eleven times. That’s… one thousand four hundred and eighty eight tributes in total. Sixty Victors, soon to be sixty one. One thousand four hundred and twenty seven dead for ‘atonement’. 

Yeah, right. 

The 3rd day had a canon in the evening. The girl from District 8. And then the 4th day was silent. They killed time by tossing rocks up and hitting them at the opposite wall. But that fun quickly ended when the rocks kept crumbling against the bats. The metal things didn’t even get a scratch on them from it. Either they were harder than they looked or even the damn rocks were designed to be unusable as a weapon. Harlee got the sense it was the second one. The Gamemakers wanted a bludgeoning, but they wanted it their way-- with the clubs. 

They had been rationing heavily, escaping the heat in the shade of the alcove that was remarkably cooler-- but Harlee couldn’t stand not having eyes up and down the stretch for too long. They slept in shifts and nibbled through a pouch of jerky each. Yet, for all their rationing, they had to go back to that stream to get more water. It was over half a day’s hike, if not even longer. They had been working on adrenaline then, they'd be moving a bit slower now. 

They decided to leave just at dawn. Their snares-- if you could even call the skinny things that-- hadn’t caught a thing. And Harlee hadn’t seen a thing either. But nighttime was the animal’s, particularly the ones that stalked and scavenged and were hungry. She felt better about traveling in daylight. 

Their sunburns were peeling, Harlee’s more than Levi’s. But to his credit, he did come up with an idea. They tied their gray bandanas across their faces, one covering their scalp and brow, the other their mouth and neck, leaving only their eyes exposed. It worked. Mostly. They looked like a pair of outlaws from an old story. The thought made Harlee smile behind the cloth, just for a second.

They split whatever they had left and stowed the packs carefully, rationing bites and sips in case they were forced to scatter. The walk back to that trickle of water ate up most of the day; they reached it an hour after noon, the canyon squeezing the sun down to a hard, ruthless light, canteens well past drained. 

Rounding a final jag, Harlee froze and grabbed Levi by the sleeve. At the water, squatted low, were two people in chartreuse District 11 overshirts-- a boy and an older girl. The boy sprang up first, bat in both hands, but he didn’t come closer. Harlee and Levi both mirrored him, fingers tightening around their own handles.

The girl from 11-- Faun, her name is Faun-- twisted the cap onto her canteen with slow, steady movements. She stayed squatted low, bat right at her feet. She didn’t reach for it yet.
“Y’all can turn right on around,” she said. “Leave. We won’t come after you.” She glanced up at the boy, and Harlee saw she had a deeply bruised eye. “Right, Spud?” 

“We’re just here to get some water,” Levi said flatly. “Then we’ll be on our way. Not lookin’ for trouble. Just water.” 

The boy’s face hardened. “Find your own, 10,” he said. “This is ours.” 

Harlee watched Faun’s expression. It was the same as Spud’s: possession, and the willingness to defend it.
Levi murmured to her, quiet and quick, “You take the boy. I yell ‘run’, you run.” Then, louder, he stepped forward. “Let us fill our canteens and we’ll be gone, alright?” His voice stayed level, but his hands clenched the bat.

Faun rose. Spud moved with her. They closed the distance before anyone else could decide to intervene.

Harlee didn’t think-- she reacted. When Spud swung, she ducked and answered in one motion, the bat connecting with a crunch at the knee. He buckled. She didn’t pause: another strike into ribs. The boy’s grip on the bat loosened; he curled, arms instinctively trying to cover himself.

Knees, ribs… Head. 

Once... 

Twice... 

Three times... 

Four... 

Five... 

Six... 

Seven... 

Eight...

Nine...

Ten...

Eleven...

Strong arms suddenly seized her, lifting her feet off the ground and pinning her arms to her sides. She didn’t drop the bat; she fought, swinging blindly, lungs burning. She screamed for them to get off-- but the voice she heard through the panic was Levi’s, close and steady.
“It’s me, Lee. It’s me.”

Relief should have come with that name, but it didn’t. Not yet.

“You said hit till the cannon,” Harlee panted, every word ragged. “There wasn’t a cannon!”

Levi’s hands tightened. “There was,” he said, voice raw. “Two. Harlee, look.”

She turned because he told her to. Faun lay rolled on her side, a terrible stillness to her. And Spud-- Spud’s face was a caved in bowl of blood and flesh; she couldn’t bring herself to look long. The bat fell from her slack fingers. Her knees gave out and Levi caught her, holding her upright.

“It’s okay,” he said, in the gentle scraper’s voice one used with a skittish horse.
He hauled them away from the bodies to a spread of rubble and set her down on a broad stone. He pulled the emptied canteens from his pack and hers.
He spoke in short, steady bursts, grounding words and not platitudes. “Sit. Breathe. I’ll get water. I’ll grab their stuff. We move.”

Harlee’s breaths came quick and thin. The world felt both too loud and dull, the canyon’s color washed out. She nodded, barely, the motion automatic, as the shock rolled under her ribs like cold water.

Sound seemed to smear and slow-- Levi’s footsteps a long drumbeat, the canyon wind a distant hiss-- and she felt as if she were looking at herself from the wrong side of a pane of glass. The world had gone soft at the edges. Her hands didn’t seem to belong to her; they were just tools she’d been given to hold a bat with. Her heartbeat thudded too loud in her ears and too far away at the same time.

She catalogued them the way you count birds on a fence: Faun. Spud. Faun had been older-- maybe eighteen-- calm in her interview, poised in a way that made people nod. Harlee could still hear that quiet certainty in her voice when she’d told the Capitol something polished, a line practiced for cameras. Spud had been smaller, stocky, compact. He hadn’t looked thirteen. Not really. Maybe fifteen, maybe sixteen. He’d been close to her size when he stood up. Close enough to make her stomach twist.

The images didn’t come sharp-- they were blunt, like the bat had left impressions on the inside of her skull. Instead she had flashes: Faun’s hand on her canteen, Spud’s face as it rose toward her swing, the dull sound the bat made when it connected, the way the canyon swallowed the echoes. She tried to remember the sound of Faun’s voice at the interview, Spud's joke he had made with the instructor at the fire starting station, anything to make them human again, but even that was muffled, as if the canyon were rubbing the color out of everything.

And then, like a stone flicking in a still pond, Colby’s face came into her head: small, freckled, always running, always a little too eager to prove himself. Thirteen. The same age as the boy she’d just reduced to silence. The thought exploded in her chest. Did he see it? She thought about the slaughterhouse, how they have a small screen up in the corner that the Games ran on constantly. If he didn't see it live, he'd see it later. She imagined the mandatory recaps-- the square full of faces, the hiss of public mandatory viewing-- and pictured him there, maybe with his hands over his mouth, maybe with his eyes wide. Would anyone tell him to close them? Would anyone choose for him what to see? Would Colby understand she’d done what she had to-- or would the color of the footage be all he had left of her?

You had to, she tried reassuring herself. You had to. You had to. You had to. 

Her mind supplied worst-case spirals with idiot efficiency. The memory of their house clustered with the image of a little television-- Momma’s hands working, Bay’s jaw tight, Cheslee’s eyes wet. Would they all have to watch the moment she crossed the line? Would the faces she loved become the faces that judged her? Harlee couldn’t tell which was worse: the idea of them seeing her in that exact motion, or of their not knowing and assuming the worst.

Very suddenly, Harlee was sprawled in the dirt. The impact jarred her teeth, and a sharp, stinging pain flared across the sunburnt skin of her arm. For a long, disoriented second, she couldn’t piece together how she’d gotten there. They must’ve started walking again-- she didn’t remember standing up from that rock, didn’t remember the first step. Now she was facedown in the canyon dust, her thoughts several paces behind her body.

Levi’s hands were on her before she could try to move, hauling her upright with an easy strength. He brushed the grit from her clothes, his own breath heavy from the hike. The left sleeve of her overshirt had torn open, and thin lines of blood welled where she’d scraped her arm.

Levi pulled down his bandana then caught her wrist and pulled it closer to inspect. “Hold still,” he muttered. But Harlee wasn’t looking at the cut-- her eyes caught on the frayed ribbon knotted around her wrist. She had forgotten it was there entirely. The sight of it, even dulled and sweat-stained, was steadying. Something about that small, familiar pressure calmed her. Something about the sting helped pull her back into her body.

“I’m fine,” she said quietly, the words muffled behind her bandana.

Levi’s mouth twitched, something between a grimace and a tired smile. “We oughta stop for the night, hm? Get that cleaned up. Rest.”

Harlee shook her head, stubborn. “We need to keep movin’.”

“Sun’s goin’ down anyway,” he said, tugging lightly at her wrist. “Nice spot just up ahead-- we’re stayin’ there.” He didn’t wait for an answer, just started walking, pulling her with him.

When she lifted her gaze, she saw he was right-- the sunlight had already retreated, the canyon turning gold to gray. How long had they been walking? She didn’t ask. Her mind still felt fogged, trailing behind her steps. She looked down to her arm again, focusing on the sting, on the thin streaks of red. But her eyes snagged elsewhere-- on Levi’s hips.

Four bats hung there.

Her throat went dry. She turned her eyes forward immediately, refusing to look again. She didn’t want to think about them. Not here, not ever-- not in this canyon, not back home on the batball field. But she knew she’d have to. She knew she’d have to pick hers back up eventually.

Just for a moment, though, she let herself pretend those bats didn’t exist at all.

They made camp in a narrow inlet cut into the canyon wall-- wide enough at the mouth to crouch in comfort but tapering to a slit of shadow a few yards back. The darkness would hide them if anyone walked by; that’s what mattered.

Harlee peeled off her overshirt and let Levi clean the scrapes, his hands practiced and brisk as he rinsed grit from the cuts and wrapped them with careful knots. She listened only half-present as he reminded her to keep them clean; the salt of the wound and the sting in her forearm kept pulling her back into her body. As dusk smeared the canyon in bruised orange, she set the tiny sewing kit on her knee and stitched the torn sleeve together. The motion steadied her-- even spacing, thread pulled just tight enough, needle slipping in and out with methodical focus.

“You’re good at that,” Levi said, tugging the bandana off his head. 

She hadn’t taken hers off just yet; Harlee didn’t want the cameras catching much of her face. She wasn’t going to cry-- she didn’t cry-- but she couldn’t promise the rest of her expression wouldn’t betray her.

She cut off the thread with her teeth and shrugged. “Benefit of bein’ the youngest. Always gotta mend hand-me-downs.” 

It wasn’t a joke. Levi chuckled and shoved a hand into her pack. “Alright. Supper time. Let’s try some of this fruit, hm?”

She wasn’t hungry-- not after what she’d seen-- but she drank, careful and small, and accepted a dried wedge of orange. It was chewy and faintly sweet, a surprising comfort.
Levi watched her for a long moment, then said quietly, “You did good.” He wasn't talking about the sewing. 

She gave him a faint nod and looked down at the ribbon knotted around her wrist-- Cheslee’s. She wanted home more than anything: the cramped cot, Cheslee’s steady breathing, the ordinary quiet of the Aguilar house. Instead she sat here under a hard sky, wrapped in dust and in the knowledge that twenty-three children would be dead before this was over.

She kept turning the scene over in her head, trying to understand the shape of it. It had been too simple, too blunt. Spud, and probably Faun, had aimed for the head. Harlee’s own strike had been lower, more mechanical: knees to buckle, ribs to fold, the wind knocked from someone’s lungs. It had felt ugly and animal, nothing like the clean, practiced stun they used back at the slaughterhouses. There, you hit once-- a single, hard blow, the way the pair from 11 had tried to do it-- and the animal didn’t really know it was coming. Here the violence had been loud, up close, and hungry for spectacle. Cruelty for show, not necessity. That thought sat heavy in her chest.

“She land a hit on you?” Harlee asked. “Faun.” She named the dead girl aloud as if the sound might anchor the memory. As if it could be anyone else.

Levi chewed slowly. “Shin. When she went down,” he said. “Just a bruise.” He swallowed. “That’s it.”

Harlee flexed the bandaged arm and felt the sting of fresh scabs and the dull ache beneath. It would heal-- skin would pull itself together, scar over, become something she learned to live with. But the taste of it, the way the canyon had watched them do what needed doing, had already crept under her skin.

“Next time,” he said with a quiet conviction. There was purpose in it-- certainty. There would be a next time. “We shouldn’t hesitate. No sense in talkin’.”

Harlee nodded. He was right. Only one person left this arena alive, and letting people run was a mistake. Letting them plead, reason, or stall for time was worse. That was how people came back around later-- how you ended up with a bat at your temple. Mercy got you killed.

The anthem started up, booming against the canyon walls, the sound ricocheting through the dark like thunder. Harlee forced herself to look up. She always made herself look-- it felt like a kind of penance. She had to see them as they’d been before. Unbroken. Unbloodied. The Capitol showed their faces high above, bright against the night. She watched the girl first: her hair loose now, not tied back beneath a bandana, falling around her face in a soft halo. Her eyes were dark and defiant, the same as they’d been when she’d told them to turn back. Surely she had smiled once. Everyone smiled before the Reaping. Harlee wondered what it looked like when she did-- when she laughed.

Then came Spud’s face. He looked younger up there, gentler than he had by the stream. Maybe, when they took that photo before evaluations, he hadn’t yet realized what was coming. Maybe he thought he had a chance. He was strong enough to believe it. But that didn’t matter, not in the end. The Games weren’t about strength; they were about choices. Spud made the wrong one. So did Faun. That was the difference-- the only difference-- between the dead and the living.

Harlee sat in the glow of the anthem’s fading light, feeling the truth of it settle into her bones. They had chosen right. She had to keep choosing right. 

“I’ll take first watch,” she muttered, tugging the wool blanket closer.
Night in the canyon came with a sharp drop in temperature, the heat bleeding away until the air bit against her raw skin. She wrapped the blanket tight around her shoulders and pressed her back to the cool stone just outside their little inlet.

Levi didn’t argue. Maybe he was too exhausted, or maybe he understood that she needed the quiet-- the space to sit with it. With the truth of what they’d done. What she had done.

Harlee drew her knees to her chest and stared at the bat resting beside her. In the pale blue light of the moon, it didn’t look like much-- just cold metal. Levi had cleaned it, or maybe it was one of the ones he swiped from the tributes they killed. The moon itself was almost full again, the third night in a row it had hung big and bright. Too bright. It wasn’t an accident. It never was. The Capitol didn’t leave anything to chance, not even the damn moon. They wanted the tributes visible. Easy to track. Easy to hunt.

Her eyes drifted to the direction of the water-- the place where they’d killed those two kids. There had to be other sources of water in this arena. There had to be. But what if there weren’t? What if the whole design was built around that single stream, the only trickle for miles, forcing them all toward it? The Capitol loved that kind of symmetry-- survival wrapped around slaughter.

Harlee’s stomach twisted. She tried to reason it out like she had before: they didn’t have a choice. They needed water. Spud and Faun wouldn’t share. That’s why they fought. That’s why it happened.

But the thought didn’t stick. The more she turned it over, the more it came apart. Would they have shared if they just turned back and waited their turn? Did they mean it when they said they wouldn’t follow, hunt them down? She could still see the girl’s face when she’d said, “Turn back.” There hadn’t been malice in it-- just firm exhaustion. Fear. Maybe even mercy.

Harlee’s throat went tight. She pressed her fingers to the ribbon at her wrist, tracing its edge. Cheslee’s ribbon.

How much was shown on screen? The whole thing? The way she swung, the way she didn’t stop until Levi pulled her away? Her face was nearly entirely covered with bandana, she must’ve looked emotionless. Ruthless. Bits of the bottom of her pants are covered in splattered body matter and she didn’t flinch at it. Harlee hadn’t flinched at any of it. After, she just… went off somewhere else in her head. 

She looked back down at the bat. It didn’t look like a weapon-- it looked like something from home. That was the worst part. She’d swung one just like it at home, except its metal was shiny and dented. Harlee remembered it clearly, she likes-- liked-- batball. That was one of her favorite things to do on Sundays if she didn’t have to go out to the stables for long, go out to the field by the school and play with the other kids in town. She didn’t have to think hard to bring up the memories: swinging and hitting home runs, sliding in the dirt to the bases to just show off she could, Colby cheering from the fence. It was a game, then. A joke. 

And as she looked at the bat now, Harlee realized there wasn’t much difference. It was still a game. It just wasn’t entirely her Game now. 

“C’mere,” Levi hissed through the quiet. His voice was low, cutting clean through the whisper of wind in the canyon.

Harlee looked over her shoulder, annoyed. “What--”

“I can’t sleep,” he interrupted. “And your chatterin’ teeth aren’t helpin’. C’mere.”

She hesitated. The canyon wall behind her was cold stone against her back; the blanket around her shoulders did almost nothing. She could feel the shiver deep in her ribs, like it had settled in her bones and wasn’t ever leaving.

Levi was sitting up in the sleeping bag against the wall, the flap open. He jerked his head for her to come closer. “It’s warm,” he said, like that was the end of it.

Harlee stayed still for another long second, chewing the inside of her cheek. “Someone needs to keep watch,” she murmured.

Levi gave her a small, crooked grin. “Can’t keep watch if you turn to a popsicle.”

That was probably true. Still, she didn’t move. The thought of closing her eyes for more than a blink made her stomach twist. Because every time she did blink, she saw it: Spud’s face caved in. The sound of bone and wet ground tangled up in her memory. She couldn’t bear to see it again, not even in her dreams.

But Levi just waited, patient. He didn’t tease again. Didn’t press. He just lifted one side of the sleeping bag a little higher.
“You’re freezin’, Harlee,” he said quietly. “Ain’t no shame in stayin’ warm.”

Finally, she caved. Dragging her bat along by the handle, she crawled over. The sleeping bag was too big for her and barely big enough for both of them, but as soon as she slid inside, the heat hit her like a tide. Her body thawed all at once, fingers tingling painfully as feeling returned.

Levi zipped it partway closed, tucking the edge under her arm. He pulled her in, her head settling against his chest. She could feel his heartbeat-- steady, slow, solid. The rhythm of it made something inside her unclench for the first time all day.

“Go on,” he murmured. “Get some sleep. I’ll take watch.”

She wanted to argue. Wanted to remind him that she’d said she would take first watch. But her voice wouldn’t come. The exhaustion pressed in heavier than the cold now, weighted and dull.

Her muscles still ached-- her arms, her hands, her shoulders from swinging. She tried not to think about why they ached. Tried to focus instead on the warmth. On the quiet. On Levi’s chest rising and falling against her cheek.

“Can’t sleep,” she mumbled finally, barely audible.

He sighed, slow and steady. One hand stayed around her shoulders, firm and grounding, while the other came up to her head. His fingers brushed gently atop one of the braids Theodosia did days ago now, surprising still holding well. It was comforting. It reminded her of her brothers.
“Want me to tell you a story?” he asked quietly. 

Harlee’s first instinct was to shake her head. She was too old for stories, too tired, too-- something. But the silence between heartbeats was too long, and her throat hurt too much to say no. So she gave a small nod instead, the motion brushing her temple against his shirt.

He waited, giving her a moment to settle. His hand stilled in her hair.

“Somethin’ from home,” she murmured, half hoping he’d heard her, half hoping he hadn’t.

He did.

There was a pause-- the kind that meant he was sifting through memories, deciding what was safe to speak aloud. What wouldn’t hurt too much to remember. When he spoke, his voice was low and rough, but steady, like an old song remembered by heart.

“Few summers back, I worked at the swine breeding barn,” he began. “Feed mean old sows and tryin’ not to get my finger bit off. But the little piglets that dropped-- oh just about three new litters a week, I swear-- were the best part. Those little corkscrew tails would wag and wag. And they play all rough-and-tumble, chasin’ and bumpin’. Cutest damn things in 10, honest.” 

Harlee closed her eyes as the story continued, listening to how the words vibrated through his chest under her ear as he continued to talk about piglets and sows and gilts and boars and barrows. As she drifted, weight of the day carrying her down and down, she realized this story was for him too. Half-asleep, she wrapped an arm around him, registering that he needed comforting too. They were both still kids after all-- that was the point of these Games.

Chapter Text

Harlee woke at dawn on the sixth day of the 61st Hunger Games, curled in the warmth of the sleeping bag with her head pillowed on the wadded wool blanket. She was still half-dreaming when she caught the faint smell of smoke. By the time her mind caught up to her senses, she was sitting bolt upright, hand closing around the bat beside her.

“Easy,” Levi drawled from just outside the inlet.
He was crouched in front of a small fire, its glow haloing him in the morning haze.

Harlee’s scowl came before her words. “You didn’t wake me for watch.” Her voice was flat. “We’re supposed to take turns.”

He only shrugged, using the handle of his bat to scoot a battered metal thermos off the fire’s edge. That’s new, she thought, brow furrowing—before he spoke again.

“Someone sent us coffee,” he said, shaking his head with a soft scoff. “Say thank you to the sponsor. That’s why I let you sleep.”

Harlee muttered a begrudging, “Thank you,” as she crawled out of the bag and toward the warmth of the flames. Then she froze. A few feet away, two rattlesnakes lay belly-up in the sand, heads crushed flat. The sight was both grotesque and oddly neat—two perfect kills.

“Those from the snares?” she asked. But she didn’t remember him setting any.

Levi gave a low laugh. “Went to take a leak and nearly pissed on the first one. Second came rattlin’ before I could even get both hands on the right bat.”

Harlee exhaled through her nose-- half a laugh, half disbelief. It was easier to let it be funny than think about how close he’d come to dying while taking a piss.

Levi sipped from the thermos and grinned. “Was thinkin’ I might try to cut off the rattles. Make you a pair of earrings.”

Harlee snorted. The snakes were long-- three feet at least-- pale scales glinting faintly in the light. “Think I’d rather have a keychain,” she said around a yawn. “For all the keys I got on me.”

That earned a laugh out of him. A small one, but real.

Breakfast wasn’t much-- a strip of jerky, two pieces of dehydrated orange, and watered-down coffee-- but it passed for a meal. They packed up quickly after. Both of them wanted distance from yesterday’s stream, though neither said it aloud. Levi called it looking for another water source. Harlee just nodded. They both knew what it really meant: not going back there.

Levi insisted on bringing the snakes along, saying they were good luck. He wanted to find a sharp section of rock later to cut off the tails for the rattles. Harlee didn’t see much point in arguing. Dead things kept the living ones away. That was logic enough.

She slung one of the snakes at her hip, securing it tail-up through the elastic of her belt-- rattle against her hip, head bumping her boot. The weight was odd, throwing off her balance. She adjusted it, grabbing the limp body by the neck to loop it higher, and that’s when she saw it.

No fangs.

Her stomach turned. She ran her thumb along the gums just to be sure, and found only smooth, empty ridges where teeth should’ve been.

It never could have killed him.

The realization struck small but sharp, cutting through her morning haze like a splinter under skin. They never showed a tribute pissing on television. Not once. The Gamemakers hadn’t sent the snakes to kill him-- just to scare him. But Levi, pants down, startled half to death, swinging a bat in panic-- that wasn’t for Capitol viewers. That was for the Gamemakers themselves.  

Harlee threaded the snake’s fangless head through the loop, pulling it up so it curled above her knee before letting the elastic snap it into place. She could picture it all too clearly: a white, sterile room in the Capitol, walls glowing with the projection of their canyon. The Gamemakers in their sharp uniforms, skin tinted ridiculous shades of blue or gold, leaning back in their chairs with steaming mugs of coffee, laughing. Laughing at Levi-- indecent, one hand on his member and one hand on a bat-- jerking in surprise and swinging blind at the sound of a rattle.

The image made her stomach twist. Not entirely from seeing half-naked Levi—though that wasn’t something she wanted to picture, ever-- but because of the principle of it. All of this-- the hunger, the thirst, the cold, the dented-in faces-- wasn’t chance or consequence. It was designed. Entertainment, down to the smallest humiliation.

She’d always known that, in the vague way every tribute did. You grow up hearing that the Capitol watches every second. About the big room of important people that push buttons and make things happen in the arena. But this felt different. Crueler. Smaller. They weren’t just making them fight-- they were making them look stupid.Making them into a joke.

And that was the point, wasn’t it? To strip them down to something that wasn’t human at all. To the Capitol the people from the Districts weren’t really people. Just something to laugh at while they sipped their non-watered-down coffee. 

The sixth day passed without another cannon. Their hike had only dragged them deeper into the canyon’s maze, the walls growing higher, the air thinner. Even with their bandanas tied the same as before-- foreheads covered, cheeks shaded-- Harlee could feel the sting of her unbandaged forearm where the skin had already started to peel. Her hands ached when she flexed them, tight and pink from sunburn. Levi, that lucky bastard, was going bronze instead of red now.

By nightfall, the sky was the color of rust and dust, and after the anthem faded, a silver parachute drifted down through the darkness. Levi grinned and let her open it—said it was only fair since he’d opened the one before dawn. Inside was an empty canteen, the same kind as the one clipped to his pack. No note. There never was. But the message was clear enough: don’t forget what matters most. Water. 

“We oughta just go back,” Harlee muttered.

It had to be Holstein’s way of yelling at them from the Capitol, a sponsor’s nudge turned warning. If they wanted to play explorers, they’d need water to live long enough to do it.

Levi shook his head, taking the canteen from her. “That’d take a day’s hike, maybe more,” he said. “There’s gotta be another source somewhere. That stream we found came outta nowhere-- it don’t make sense it’s the only one. There’ll be another.”

He said it like he believed it. Like he had a map tucked in his head or Holstein whispering directions in his ear. But Harlee couldn’t bring herself to trust that kind of hope. But she didn’t want to go back to that wisp of a stream-- not with the blood still soaked into the dirt there, not with the ghosts waiting for them beside it. So she agreed. 

When the cannon fired on the seventh day, they froze. The sound echoed through the canyon, sharp and hollow against the rock—but no screams followed. Later, when the faces appeared in the sky, it was the boy from District 4. The first of the Careers. They didn’t speak about it, but the same thought crossed both their minds: how?

Their own supplies were thinning even with the strict rationing—barely enough to keep them upright-- and the Careers had surely taken the Cornucopia. It didn’t make sense. Harlee wondered if they’d turned on each other, or if the Capitol had simply decided someone needed to die to keep the show moving.

By now, she and Levi were eating and drinking just enough to stay conscious. “Eating sleep,” Bay would’ve said-- sleep was the main course for supper, for lunch, for breakfast. Their water was running low, and the day’s hike hadn’t revealed any new stream. Harlee could almost hear Holstein’s voice from the Capitol, calling them idiots for wandering deeper.

On the eighth day, with half a canteen between them and the sun already clawing at their necks, they finally heard something.
Not water. A sound that froze the breath in Harlee’s chest: a short, sharp yelp, followed by muffled crying. Not far, maybe, though the canyon made distance hard to judge. They pressed themselves flat against the wall, listening. No cannon. No follow-up cry. Just silence.

Levi met her eyes, then jerked his chin for her to follow. They crept forward, hugging the canyon wall, moving from shadow to shadow. At every bend, Levi paused, peered around, waited. Ten careful minutes later, they found the source.

He stopped them with a raised hand. Together, they leaned just far enough to see.
The canyon widened ahead into a sun-washed corridor, and there-- against a jagged rise of stone-- two figures sat slumped in matching electric orange shirts. District 5. They weren’t moving much. They both looked to be sitting on the ground. 

Levi pulled her back out of sight. His voice was barely a breath. “Got the energy for an ambush?”

Harlee’s throat tightened. She didn’t want to. Damn, she didn’t want to. But wanting didn’t matter. She gave a small nod.

“Alright,” he whispered, glancing back toward the opening. “Looks like they’ve only got one bat. Maybe two. Hard to tell.”

Her mouth was dry. “Who should I…?” she muttered.

“The boy,” Levi said quickly. His eyes stayed hard, unblinking. “He’s hurt. Leg, I think. Take him.”

The boy. Not Kepler. She knew he was doing it on purpose-- turning him into an object, an orange shirt, a problem to solve. Harlee tried to do the same. To strip away the face, the name, the story. Just another obstacle between her and going home.

Levi squeezed her shoulder once, then pressed himself against the wall, bat low. Harlee mirrored him, her heartbeat roaring in her ears. She tried not to think, not to feel-- just to wait for his signal.

Levi took one long, steadying breath, then hissed, “Go.”
He rounded the corner in a blur of motion, sprinting straight for them. Harlee followed not even a full heartbeat later, a careful half step behind, bat clutched tight in her hand.

Acee saw their approach first, head springing up. She didn’t hesitate, eyes widening, she took off running the opposite direction. No bag, no bat. A chase. But that was Levi’s problem because Kepler wasn’t moving from his position, sprawled on the canyon floor, propped up on an elbow. 

Harlee skidded to a stop a yard away from him-- out of reach of a bat-- as Levi kept running, chasing after the blur of orange further down the canyon. Harlee’s eyes were stuck on her, she had a decent head start and was almost at the next bend. But Levi would catch up, because he didn’t have much of a choice but to. Just like Harlee didn’t have a choice about what she was going to do. She put both hands on the bat now, chest heaving from the exertion, and looked down at Kepler. 

And she suddenly saw why he hadn’t tried to run. 

Fibula compound fracture. Right leg. 

He was in clear agony. Eyes red, puffy, face wet. His hand gripped the bat. 

Kepler threw the metal club away. It didn’t go far, just clanging out of his grasp.
“Take off that damn bandana, 10. I want to see your face while you kill me,” he said through gritted teeth. 

Harlee’s gaze flicked back down to his leg. This wasn’t a fair fight at all. She looked up to where Levi and Acee had gone. He hadn’t caught up to her yet. The canyon was silent except for her own panting and Kepler’s strained breath. Hesitantly, she lowered the bandana down to her neck and pulled the other back to expose her eyebrows. He wanted to see her face, she could grant a dying boy his wish.

Her eyes found him again. This wasn’t any easier. Not when he wasn’t going to put up a fight. Not when he was ready to just lay down and bleed. 

Despite his clear pain, that crooked grin of his flickered.
“Funny, running into you like this.” He huffed a breath, amused with himself. “If I’d known, I would’ve gotten you flowers, huh?” 

The corner of her lip twitched. Of course he was flirting. Even when he was about to die.
“How’d it happen?” she asked softly before she could stop herself. 

He shifted, trying to pull himself up more. Harlee had to stop herself from instinctively going to help him-- for a fraction of a second she had forgotten the situation at hand. 

“Me and Acee palling around? Oh, you know…” He tilted his head. “We were actually great friends back in 5, obviously.”

Harlee didn’t laugh at the attempt to make her, her gaze was stuck on the protruding bone. It cut through the leg of his pant, sheening in the blazing sun. The brown cargo pants had a dark spot around the wound-- blood. 

“That was a joke,” he muttered.
He shifted again, letting out a groan as he pushed himself up to lean back on his palms. Kepler didn’t look down at the damage, he kept his eyes on her.

“Was trying to climb up the wall,” he said, voice strained. 

That was the dumbest idea Harlee had ever heard. Scaling up-- what?-- three hundred feet? And then what, Kepler? Her face clearly showed her thoughts, because he laughed. 

“Yeah, not my best idea.” 

A sickening screaming echo came-- Acee-- and Harlee remembered what she was here to do, hands mindlessly tightening on the bat. She wasn’t sure if she was going to raise it yet, Kepler spoke again before she could. 

“Just a minute, pretty girl…” he said, voice tight. “Let me tell you what I know. Then, we’ll figure out the best way to kill me. Deal?” 

Harlee nodded. 

He huffed, almost relieved. “The way Acee went leads to a stream. Tiny thing, keep an eye out or you’ll miss it. Left hand side. Not even a half hour’s hike. Another half day’s hike and you’re back in the stretch that has access to the Cornucopia.” His gaze dropped to her hands. To the bat. “We think the boys from 7 and 8 got the girl from 4. They're buddied up-- hiding out in that dead forest. That should occupy the pack for a few days. Boy from 6’s down here somewhere, but he won’t give you any trouble. Doesn’t even have a bat.” 

He looked up to her eyes again, stupid grin on his face again. But it was strained. Harlee just wanted to put him out of his misery-- like a horse with a broken leg. That imagery was more literal than she liked.

“Glad it was you that found me. 10 knows how to make this kind of thing quick, huh? And you have a history with bats too…” He tried to give a low whistle, but it came out too breathy. “Maybe the odds are in my favor.”

Harlee didn’t say anything. The echoing sound of Levi’s bat against body was faintly echoing now. 

“Come on, Harlee,” he seethed, either in pain or frustration. He laughed. “Give me something. I’m a dying man.” 

A physical pang hit her chest as he used her name. She didn’t know what to give him. She wasn’t going to lie and say she was ‘sorry’, because the truth was she wasn’t. Not a single bit. She wasn’t going to lie either and say it wasn’t going to hurt because she didn’t know that for sure. She had nothing to give him other than a bludgeoning. 

“I’ll make it quick,” she resigned. She could do that. 

His smile faltered. He looked her up and down. It looked like he wanted to say something more, but for what was probably the first time in Kepler’s eighteen years of life he shut up. 

Acee’s canon rang, echoing loud through the canyon. Both their eyes snapped to it’s source, even if the death was hidden by jutted bends. 

It was time. They both knew it. 

“Alright, let’s get this show started,” he said with a tight inhale, looking down at his leg now. “I’ll lay down, keep my head up a bit so hopefully the first blow just knocks me out. You go back a few paces, come up and strike. They’ll splice and edit it real pretty.” He looked up at her, forcing that grin again. “And don’t forget to smile, yours is dazzling.” He winked. But it was all a poor attempt at covering up the agonizing pain he was in, even in his clear state of shock.

Harlee drew her lips in a line, unamused, two fingers drumming on the grip.
“Okay, Kepler,” she said.

If he wanted his death to be a whole production, so be it. She backed up another yard as he plopped down to the ground with a groan. 

He rolled his head to the side then lifted it. “Pull your bandana’s back on. You’re a cowboy, right? ” he croaked. “Pull it down at the canon. And don’t forget: smile.” 

She couldn’t help but roll her eyes as she obliged, even if that did sound like a good idea. Not the smiling, but she didn’t want to have to worry about not reacting as she killed him. Harlee wasn’t sure if he was going to give her a signal as the canyon’s calm still stretched. 

“Alright, Harlee,” he hissed. “Showtime.” 

That was a signal if she ever heard one. But she hesitated a second, then sped to him. Raising her bat, Harlee used her momentum and weight to deliver a strong, sickening blow. She wasn’t sure if he was right, if that first blow would knock him out. There wasn’t time to think about that, she just kept going. Five strikes and the canon echoed. 

Harlee stopped at it this time. She did as he asked, pulling her bandana down to show her face and smiled. As she pulled back the one on her head, she looked down at Kepler’s corpse. She felt she owed that to him: to look. It took everything in her to keep that smile on her face. The side of his head was bloodied, caved in where she repeatedly hit it with the bat. His skull had cracked in, she couldn’t tell if she could see his brain or not but didn’t look more to find out. 

She stepped over him, picking up his discarded bat, and casually added both to her belt. District 5 had managed to snag a small backpack-- about the same size as hers-- from the Cornucopia. She grabbed that too, and then began a casual, unhurried stroll, towards the bend Levi and Acee had run down. Harlee didn’t look back. 

Entertainment. 

That’s all this Game was. She knew it. Kepler knew it. He wanted his death cinematic, surely to be replayed over and over again across Panem. And she gave him that-- not even just because he asked. But because Harlee knew it was all about entertainment. And entertainment got you sponsors. And sponsors meant she wouldn’t be eating sleep for supper tonight. Entertainment. Fuck, if that gets her home-- Harlee can do entertainment.

Chapter Text

Kepler hadn’t lied-- the stream was exactly where he said it would be.
Harlee forced herself not to think about him or Acee as they filled the canteens. Two large, two small, plus the half-full one they’d taken from District 5. The water ran clear, almost tauntingly pure. She rinsed the sand from her hands, but it didn’t make them feel any cleaner.

They sat with their backs against the stone, eating what was probably the largest lunch they’d had in the arena. The new pack had been a gold mine: fruit leather in every color, a wool blanket identical to their own, and another sewing kit--- same Capitol issue, same crisp black thread. Well, a gold mine this late in the Game at least. 

“Half a day that way and it spits us out by the Cornucopia,” Harlee said absently, chewing on a strip of blue fruit leather. It stuck to her teeth, sweet but strangely floral. Purple was grape; she’d decided blue was something artificial, or maybe those blueberry things she had heard about, but it didn’t matter. It was sugar. Calories. Fuel. 

Levi nodded, staring at the canyon ahead. He didn’t ask how she knew. “Then we’ll go the other way,” he said simply. “Put distance.”

Harlee swallowed, then shrugged. “7 and 8 are still up in that thicket. Careers’ll be busy with them.” She tore off another strip-- green this time-- and popped it whole into her mouth. “6’s down here but doesn’t have a bat,” she said through the chew, voice flat.

Levi bit into his strip and chewed slowly. The canyon was silent but for the soft, tacky sounds of their eating.
“She begged,” he said finally, his voice low. “Tears down her face. Kept sayin’ please. Just-- please.”

Harlee didn’t look at him. She kept her eyes fixed on the rock wall ahead, jaw working methodically. She didn’t want to talk about it. Not about the girl’s voice or the boy’s hand reaching for his broken leg, not about the blood that still clung to the soles of her boots. Not about how they were eating food from the District 5 pack for lunch.

The irony wasn’t lost on her. It had been, what, two weeks since that first communal lunch on the training floor? Or maybe yesterday. Time here didn’t move right. Every day stretched out like a lifetime, and every lifetime ended in a single sound: a cannon.

And more cannon sounded later. Just before dusk. One and then another ten minutes later. They made camp in an inlet just around the bend from the water, a stone's throw really. There wasn’t any sense in going further, not when according to Kepler-- and she did trust what he said-- the only other soul down here was the boy from 6. But the second cannon made her stomach drop. She was sure it was the boys from 7 and 8, that the Careers had finished them off up in that thicket and now they’d be down in the canyon tonight. 

But Harlee was wrong. The anthem played and immediately the face of the girl from District 1 gleamed in the sky. And then, the girl from District 2. 

As Acee and Kepler’s faces shined in the sky, she ran through the list of who was left in her mind, trying to remember their names. The boy from 1-- Prosper, what a stupid name. The boy from 2-- Remus. The boy from 4-- Decklan. The boy from 6-- Wheelbur, another dumb name. At least it makes it easy. The boy from 7-- Palmer. The boy from 8-- Flax. And then the two of them: Levi and Harlee. 

She was the final girl in the Game. Her head turned to Levi but found him already looking at her, a small smile on his face. Something about his expression carried pride, looking at her. No one ever looked at her like that often. 

“Final eight,” he said. “Whatcha think folks at home’ll say about us-- last District with both tributes still standin’, huh?” 

Harlee couldn’t help it, a smile crept up on her face too. “Who do ya think’ll be interviewed for you?” she asked. 

“Obviously my momma! Woman’s liable to be polishing her necklace right now. Probably makin’ my daddy shine his shoes like his feet’ll be broadcasted to all of Panem.” 

Harlee laughed. 

He did too, chuckling softly. “Bet all five of your brothers are fist fighting out in a field right now over who loves ya most.”

She bit down her smile-- imaging it. “Well, then-- guess Pal’ll be talkin’ nice to the camera.” 

Levi scrunched his nose. “I got money on Dun, kid’s scrapy. He tell you about that fight he got into couple months ago?” 

She shook her head. “Came home with a blacked eye but wouldn’t say a word to none of us about it.” 

“Oh, of course. In the end he got his ass handed to him, but--” 

Levi’s story is cut off by the rattling echo of another cannon. 

Seven. 

Final Seven, not eight anymore. 

The silence hung long after the echo faded to nothing but the wind. They’d have no way of knowing who it was for sure until twenty four hours from now, when the tribute to the fallen flashed again across the sky. 

Suddenly, no one was in the mood for stories-- even if they were now one step closer to the place all of them took place: home. Because they hadn’t forgotten the only rule of the Hunger Games: only one is crowned Victor in the end. 

“Head on to bed. I’ll take first watch,” he said quietly. 

Harlee did argue, just nodded as she crawled into the sleeping bag. She zipped it close, pulling the open top tight around her face. One of the bats was carefully laid next to the roll-- just in case. 

She pushed her mind from wondering whose cannon that was, but it was such an important question she couldn’t ignore it. Most likely scenario, it was the boy from 6 somehow walking around this place without a weapon. Best case scenario, it was one of the Careers, ideally Remus from 2. He was the biggest, brawniest. He looked like his skull would dent the bat, not the other way around. But that’d only happen if the pair from 7 and 8 were a force to be reckoned with if they managed to off three careers in half a day. 

But-- then again-- she didn’t know. Maybe the Gamemakers sicked some mutts on the pack to spice things up, test the strength of the alliance that needed to break before the end. They could be breaking apart, like Holstein said they would when numbers started to dwindle. Alliances are temporary. No one forgets that. 

That brought her back to Levi again. Her District partner. Her ally. 

He had to be thinking about it too, because it was the only thing to think about. 

“You’re not gonna run off in the middle of the night, right?” she asked quietly. Harlee hadn’t meant to say it aloud, but she wasn’t going to be able to sleep without the answer. 

He turned to look at her, illuminated by the artificial full moon. “No,” he said. “I’d never.” 

She nodded, not sure if he could see but the moment felt too heavy for words. Harlee closed her eyes, and focused on imagining home-- the Aguilar house, preparing for her final eight interview in a controlled frenzy. Cheslee braiding her and Momma’s hair nice, Daddy putting on his nice boots, her brothers yanking out the tails of each other's shirts and quacking. Anything but imagining what would happen if her and Levi were the last two standing. 

The cannon from the eighth night belonged to the boy from Four. After that the ninth and tenth days crawled by in a strange, welcome quiet-- no cannon, no sudden screams, nothing to slice the air. Harlee kept expecting noise; instead came an almost theatrical silence. Maybe the Gamemakers were saving something. Staging the final eight-- seven, really-- for a big moment. Whatever the reason, the lull was a small mercy.

Levi said there was little point in moving camp anymore. They’d put good miles between themselves and the Cornucopia; why risk more? Harlee argued only enough to steer them a hair deeper into the canyon, then stopped. Arguing wouldn’t change a thing, and these days she was stingier with energy than with words.

Time filled the same way it always had: small rituals, dumb games. The pair talked, mostly about nonsense things, but there really only was so much to talk about. They passed hours tossing fist-sized rocks at each other for “practice,” watching stones splinter on the canyon floor, the pieces spraying like cheap, dusty confetti. Every brittle crack of rock pulled her back to the shape of what she’d done-- how easy it had been to break bone, how quick the bat had been, how final.

In the quiet, the thought came and frightened her-- the one that didn’t want to stay: she didn’t have the stomach to slit a stunned lamb’s throat back home, not even imagine herself doing it. Yet here she had no trouble battering a boy until his face was gone. The thought sat wrong and sharp, but it came and left in a flash. This is different, she told herself. It’s the Games. The difference-- the excuse-- was both a balm and a blade.

On the morning of the eleventh day, a silver parachute drifted down from the sky and landed at Harlee’s feet while she was on watch. The sight startled her-- it hadn’t made a sound as it descended. She woke Levi at once. Sponsor gifts were for both of them; it didn’t feel right to open it alone.

Inside waited a miracle of warmth and smell: pancakes, sausage, scrambled eggs with cheese and ham, and a cup of milk still cold enough to sweat. They split everything evenly. Harlee argued that Levi should take more-- he was bigger, stronger, that was the way it worked at the Aguilar table-- but he only gave her a look she couldn’t read.

“It’s from Lassie,” he said after a moment. “You’re her favorite. She’d be offended if you didn’t eat your share.”

He was teasing, probably. Still, the pancakes did remind her of Lassie-- soft and golden, simple, good. Lassie’s voice came back to her in snatches: Eat up. Keep your hair out of your face. Good job. Harlee’s hand drifted to her hair. Whatever gel Theodosia had used was still holding, but she wished she’d asked Lassie to do it that last night instead. Like she had done every morning of training. Lassie’s touch had been gentler, steadier-- something like care.

It was a type of care foreign to her. It wasn’t like Cheslee or her brothers’ care for her. It was something more like that of a mother. A real one. 

By late morning, Harlee offered to fetch water alone. The canteens were empty again, and the stream was close-- a few corners away.

Levi didn’t like it. “We shouldn’t split up,” he said, his voice firm. 

“It’s around-- like-- two corners,” she shot back. “We can’t haul all our gear there just to come right back.”

He’d been sitting cross-legged, shaking the snake rattles in each hand like a pair of maracas. The dry sound had been grating on her for an hour, and she swore he was doing it on purpose to annoy her. 

“Boy from 6’s still down here scavenging,” she added, more sharply than she meant to. “If we both go, he’ll raid the packs. It’ll take five minutes. Could’ve been back by now if you stopped throwin’ a fit.”

Levi narrowed his eyes, jaw working. The water wasn’t far-- maybe a three-minute hike, a couple bends around jagged stone. They’d already talked through this: the boys from 1, 2, 7, and 8 hadn’t been down the canyon in days if at all. They wouldn’t know to pitch their voice, mind their step to prevent the echo; Harlee and Levi would’ve heard them coming from half a mile away.

Before he could argue again, she stuffed the last empty canteen into the smaller pack, slung it over her shoulder, and grabbed the bat.

“I’ll be right back,” she said, flashing him a grin before she pulled up her bandana again.

She figured he’d follow her anyway. Eleven straight days of the Games, eighteen since the Reaping when everything in her world included him. She knew Levi, he’d follow a minute behind. 

He was like a brother, she thought as she turned the corner.
And damn if he didn’t irritate her like one too.

Harlee minded her step, both hands steady on the bat. The canyon wind carried only its own voice-- no birds, no insects, not even the rasp of a pebble sliding loose. For two and a half minutes, there was nothing but her breathing and the hollow echo of her boots on stone.

Then she froze.

It was faint-- so faint she almost missed it over the wind-- but there it was: splashing. Small, uneven. Then a wet, quiet sound, like lips meeting water. Slurping. Someone was drinking from the stream.

Harlee eased forward and peered around the corner, just enough for one eye.

Wheelbur. The boy from Six.

He’d been older-- seventeen, she thought-- and in training, he was built like a train. Broad shoulders, heavy arms. She hadn’t realized they made them like that in Six. She thought they only made addicts.

Now, though, he looked hollow. Gaunt. Like a shadow of that boy from a week and a half ago. On his hands and knees before the trickle of water, trembling, scooping handfuls to his mouth.

Harlee glanced back the way she’d come. No sign of Levi. Not yet. Maybe he hadn’t followed her after all.

You can do it, she told herself. Just get on with it.

There was only ever one ending to this kind of moment. Holstein had warned them about 6-- how they hid until the numbers thinned, then came out to strike. And when they did, it wasn’t clean. Harlee remembered the 57th Games, the three bodies charred black and still twitching on screen. She’d been eleven. That had been enough to teach her that the Games didn’t care how you died-- only that you did. And that 6 was always good for a show. 

She moved before her thoughts caught up.

He never looked up. Never saw her coming. One heartbeat he was there, alive; the next she knew, he was still, body on its side, head caved in. The cannon cracked across the canyon, echoing back and back until it disappeared.

Harlee grabbed his arm-- still warm-- and dragged him a few feet from the stream so the blood wouldn’t seep into the water. When she dropped him, the sound of dirt skidding behind her made her spin, bat ready.

It was only Levi, breathing hard, his own weapon drawn. He took in the sight-- Wheelbur’s body, Harlee standing over it-- and gave a small, wordless nod. The kind that meant: you did what you had to.

He slung the bat back onto his belt. Harlee did the same and knelt by the stream, refilling canteens with water right where his hand had been moments before.

She looked back at him once. Not at the head-- she couldn’t-- but at the rest of him. The wasted body. Skinny wasn’t the right word, neither was gaunt. He would’ve died anyway, she thought. Maybe not today. But soon. Starvation, thirst-- something slower, crueler. Maybe it was mercy.

The next three days, the Gamemakers turned the weather vicious. It was down to the final six.

Harlee didn’t know why they were doing it-- why the nights were suddenly so cold their breath fogged in front of their faces, forcing her and Levi into the same sleeping roll just to stay warm; or why the days burned hot enough to blisters on skin, leaving them gulping down their water supply again and again.

Two sponsor gifts came through: a pouch of electrolytes on the eleventh night, and cold tomato soup near noon on the fourteenth day.

Two weeks in the arena.

Her thoughts blurred together in a haze of thirst and exhaustion. Normally, the Gamemakers would stir things up if it got too quiet, but that hadn’t happened yet. Which meant Harlee and Levi were the only ones bored. Whatever was happening, it wasn’t down here in the canyon. It was up there-- on that ridge.

They both knew better than to go looking. They didn’t know that terrain like they knew these twisting stone walls. The pair from Seven and Eight did. So did One and Two.

“What d’you think they’re doin’ up there?” she asked finally, breaking the silence. They’d been passing a rock back and forth for over an hour just to have something to do.

Levi shrugged. “Couldn’t tell how deep that thicket went. Probably a big game of cat and mouse. Doubt you can even get a clean swing with a bat in there.”

Harlee nodded. That made sense. Still, she couldn’t shake the thought—what if the four of them had teamed up? What if they were circling around right now, taking the long way down the canyon?

Holstein had said to plan for two weeks, maybe three, depending on how things moved. She hadn’t known what that meant until now-- how time could crawl and sprint all at once. She didn’t want to stay here any longer than she had to. But the only way to speed things up was to go to them. And she didn’t want to do that. 

But Harlee wasn’t in charge of the Hunger Games.

The sound hit the sky like a blade: trumpets, not a cannon. Claudius Templesmith’s cheery voice followed, echoing down the stone corridors.

“Hello, remaining tributes of the 61st Annual Hunger Games! The Gamemakers would like to invite you to a feast at dawn, where you’ll find something that’s been desperately missing from the arena. May the odds be ever in your favor!”

Immediately, Levi started rolling up the sleeping bag. No hesitation. They needed to move now in order to reach there before dark. That meant a half-day hike, and daylight was burning fast.

“C’mon,” he said, shoving one of the small backpacks toward her. “It’s gonna be real weapons this time. Swords, knives-- something other than these damn bats.”

Harlee hesitated. A cold weight settled in her stomach. She’d wished for things to start moving again-- and now that they were, she wanted to take it back. Feasts always meant blood. Why couldn’t the others just kill each other off up there? Why couldn’t it end without her?

“Harlee,” Levi said, sharper this time. “If either one of us is gettin’ home, we can’t show up to a sword fight with a bat.”

She nodded and started packing the bag. The canyon around them was silent, heavy. For a moment she just looked at the walls-- the jagged shapes that had been her shelter for nearly two weeks-- and realized they were leaving it behind probably for good.

Before setting out, they both drank until their stomachs felt full, water sloshing heavy in their bellies, before refilling the canteens. Harlee stood watch out of habit more than caution, tip her bat resting on her boot while Levi crouched by the stream. When he handed her the first canteen, she caught him watching her. His gaze lingered for a few seconds too long before dropping back to the water.

“If it comes down to just you and me,” he said quietly.

Harlee kicked him lightly in the leg without looking at him. “We’re not talking about that. Got four cannons before it’s a problem.”

He twisted the cap off the next canteen, sighing. “Four ain’t a lot. Not with the feast.”

She bit the inside of her cheek, tasting blood. She didn’t want to talk about this. Didn’t even want to think about it.

“I know,” she muttered finally.

She pulled the bandana up over her face. The other was already tied over her head, shielding her from the sun. The cameras couldn’t see her expression that way-- whether they were watching or not, this wouldn’t be part of their show. Levi nudged her shin, trying to get her attention, but she only glanced down at him, eyes hard. Beneath the cloth, her jaw was clenched, her brow tight.

She didn’t want to imagine what would happen if it came down to the two of them. But she couldn’t stop herself. The truth pressed in on her like the heat. If it came to that-- if it was just her and Levi left-- she’d do it. She’d kill him. Just like she had the others. Three of them now: Spud, Kepler, Wheelbur. She’d probably do it without hesitation.

The thought made her sick.

Did that make her a monster? Or just a fifteen-year-old girl who wanted to go home and really didn't have any other choice? Did she have a choice? Did any of them? 

Levi looked up at her again, and she knew instantly that he wasn’t thinking the same thing. There was no way he’d ever kill her. He didn’t need to say it. It didn’t make sense, not really-- every alliance in the Games was temporary-- but she could tell. He still believed in something decent, even here.

Harlee swallowed, forcing herself to speak. “After the feast, I’m cuttin' loose. We're splittin' after that.” She didn’t add the words if we both survive.

Just because she could do it didn’t mean she wanted to. Didn’t mean she’d like it. But she would do it anyway. Because that’s what getting home meant. Harlee finally understood what Cheslee meant those years ago about the sheep, about working slaughter. You don’t gotta like it to do it. Harlee understood that better than anyone back in 10 did now. 

Levi drew his lips into a tight line. “Not a chance,” he said. “If we both make it out of that feast-- I’m not leavin’ you. No.”

By Panem, Harlee thought. You’re a real idiot. Don’t make it come to that.

She felt the words rattling loose inside her like pebbles in a tin. The sensible part of her agreed with him fast and cold: two heads are better than one, and there was no shame in clinging to whatever advantage you could. Holstein had said the same thing with less feeling. Logic sat on her shoulder like a second, quieter voice. Stay together; ration together; cover each other’s blind spots. It was the only plan that made long odds look less lethal.

But the rest of her-- something older, aged years in the past weeks, and knotted and stubborn-- tensed at the notion of forever depending on him. She pictured his hands lifting her from the ground when she couldn’t stop swinging, the way he’d tucked her in the sleeping roll, the small brotherly jokes that had kept her from unraveling. Those were the memories that would scrape at her when the choice came. She did not want to be the one who put a bat to his head. She did not want to do it.

So she swallowed. Hard. The wet sound of her own throat filled the small canyon. Harlee turned her face away and kept her gaze hard. She let her words be half an agreement, half a tease. She didn’t like how serious everything was so suddenly, Harlee wanted to go back to just ten minutes ago when they were playing catch with that rock. 

“Fine,” she said, voice low, practice. “Have it your way. No need to throw a fit about it.” 

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Levi relax, letting out a little laugh. Harlee felt her own muscles inside her jaw work to hold everything down: fear, disgust, the horrible calculus she’d already done in the dark. For now she would be the teammate he needed. For now she would pretend the choice would never come. 

But when the time came she’d do what it took to survive. She’d do what was necessary to get out of this arena. The thought landed like a stone, heavy and clear. She kept it there and didn’t let it roll. 

Chapter Text

The Gamemakers drove the temperature lower that night than Harlee thought was even possible. The cold was a living thing-- sharp and predatory, seeping through every seam of their gear. She and Levi huddled together inside the single sleeping bag with both wool blankets, teeth chattering, breaths pooling as frost between them.

They’d taken shelter in a shallow alcove just big enough for the both of them to crouch. From there, they watched thick, heavy flakes of snow drift down outside the narrow mouth of rock. Neither had ever seen snow before. Back home in District 10, the coldest mornings brought only a film of frost, the kind that crackled underfoot and vanished with the sun. This was different. This was unreal-- snow stacking, melting, freezing again in slow, silent layers.

The sky had been blotted out for hours, swallowed by a cloudbank so dense it erased any sense of time. They could have been in the dead of night or the pale hour before dawn; only the dim, cold light shifting through the canyon hinted at change. But neither of them trusted the Gamemakers’ moon anymore not to trick them. 

They slept in shifts, though “sleep” wasn’t the right word for it. Levi dozed fitfully, twitching at every crack of ice or distant echo. Harlee, somehow, managed to drift deeper-- something that shamed her when she realized it. His nerves were wound tight as tripwire, while hers, for once, had gone quiet. That scared her more than anything.

Near what felt like an hour before dawn, Levi shook her awake. She surfaced from warmth and dreamlessness, still cocooned in the sleeping bag, her head pressed against his middle. The air bit the moment she stirred. It wasn’t any less bitter now-- if anything, it had gotten worse.

Before they set out, Levi insisted on tending her scrapes and blisters again. Harlee tried to wave him off, embarrassed, but he wouldn’t hear it. The wounds had been getting ugly-- angry red edges from sunburn and cold, split skin rubbed raw by grit and salt. The cold tightened the pain into something sharp; the heat before had made it swell and fester. Either way, it hurt. It was probably all infected, despite their efforts. 

She sat quietly as he worked, jaw clenched, while he dabbed iodine over her arms with careful, deliberate hands. The smell was metallic and stung her nose. He used just enough-- counting drops under his breath-- to make sure there’d still be enough left to clean one last canteen’s worth of water.

They packed their bags with the kind of care that came only from exhaustion and routine. Every ounce mattered now. Harlee shifted the contents of hers until the weight felt even-- one canteen, a bundled wool blanket, and one of the sewing kits wedged between the two to keep from rattling. Levi’s larger pack held the same, plus the sleeping roll. 

The luxury of that sleeping roll became apparent as the sound of a cannon tore through the stillness. It echoed long and low across the canyon walls, then faded into nothing.

Final Five, Harlee thought. 

Maybe the cannon marked a freezing death, or maybe someone had just wanted to get one last bat-bludgeoning in before morning. The thought didn’t feel real anymore, not the way it once had. It was just another sound. Neither one of them needed the reminder anymore of where they were, what they were here to do. 

They had no food left-- hadn’t for days, not really, save for what parachuted down from the sky. Despite what Holstein said about not rationing so heavily you starve with half a pack’s worth of food, Harlee wished they rationed it more. Breakfast was nothing but the water from canteens they already planned to abandon before climbing the ridge. 

Every pound of weight was a liability. Up there, on that ridge, they had to be fast. Beyond fast if they wanted to have a chance at reaching an actually supplied Cornucopia. Harlee was aware of what they were walking into: another bloodbath. The very thing Holstein had told them to avoid at all costs. But that was different. If they didn’t go, didn’t get something better than a bat, then they’d surely be dead. 

As Harlee raised the canteen to her lips, she caught something strange out of the corner of her eye. The snow outside was vanishing-- melting so fast it looked like time had been sped up. In seconds, the ground was bare again, the air still biting but suddenly dry.

Showtime, Harlee thought, a dry flicker of humor sparking somewhere beneath her ribs. That’s one way to tell them to get moving. 

The climb to the sloped path they’d used to reach the canyon was shorter than either of them remembered-- too short, almost. The thought made Harlee’s stomach knot as they dropped to a crouch on the slope, where Levi’s head would crest the edge if he stood too tall.

“I’m gonna peek,” he whispered. “See if I can tell where we oughta go.”

Harlee gave a single nod. The feast put them at a disadvantage-- they both knew it. If the other alliances had splintered, which at least one cannon suggested, they only had the strength of numbers. But they had the biggest disadvantage: they had to run in blind. 

Levi rose slowly, balancing on the balls of his feet so that only the top of his head and his eyes cleared the slope. The gray bandana he wore blended almost perfectly with the sky-- a dull, pewter color that made him nearly invisible. Harlee almost laughed at that. Camouflage by accident.

He dropped back down beside her. “Not a clue,” he muttered, exhaling through his nose.

“This is a dumb idea,” she said under her breath.

He gave a humorless half-smile. “The dumbest.”

For a long moment they just looked at each other, the kind of quiet that said everything words couldn’t. It was a dumb idea-- reckless, hopeless, the kind of move Holstein would be cursing them for as he watched from the Capitol. Harlee could almost picture him now, muttering into his coffee about two kids too stubborn for their own good.

“Let’s get up a little higher,” Levi muttered finally, his voice low but decisive. “Stay low. We should be able to hear the table rise when the feast starts.”

She nodded and followed as he crawled forward, knees and palms sinking into the cold earth. He stopped just short of where his head would break the horizon line, dropping to one knee for balance. Without a word, Levi tugged his bandana up over his nose. Harlee mirrored him, though there was no sun to guard against yet. Maybe it was habit now. Or maybe it was superstition-- because if the weather pattern the night before continued, the sun might just burn them alive.

“I’ll lead,” he whispered. “We’ll run around the right side-- keep the thicket off our backs.”

Harlee nodded. She realized she hadn’t even seen the landscape up there since the first bloodbath just over two weeks ago, and then her vision had been sticky-- focusing on Levi, the bags, the tailward direction. 

He nudged her, demanding her full attention. “I yell ‘run’, I go down, anything at all…” he muttered before taking a sigh. “You bolt, Harlee. Understand me? Get out of dodge. Promise me that.”

She dropped her eyes down to the bat in her hand, then to the one on her hip, jutting back into the dirt. Harlee nodded again, looking up at him so he knew she meant it. 

“I promise,” she said, voice barely audible. 

He nodded.

The silence stretched for what felt like hours. Dawn-- or what the Gamemakers decided dawn was-- broke somewhere above them, but the sky remained flat and gray. Harlee wasn’t sure what they were waiting for: a mechanical sound, a cannon, the scrape of weapons on metal? Her chest ached with the strain of listening. All she could hear was the rush of her own blood, pounding behind her eyes.

Levi, though-- he was steady. Of course he was. He was Levi Herdman.

He glanced at her once, then moved. Popped up a split-second before she followed. Together, they crested the ridge and broke into a dead sprint across the frost-bitten dirt toward the Cornucopia.

Harlee pushed her legs harder than they’d ever gone. Her lungs felt too small for her chest, each breath stabbing like glass, but she didn’t slow. She kept just behind Levi-- close enough to match his rhythm, far enough that he could lead. The bat slapped against her thigh with every stride.

But the distance closed in a flash. The horn grew larger, gleaming faintly beneath the dull sky. They streaked past the old podiums, now meaningless monuments to the dead.

Harlee fell back four feet, five feet, five and a half, six feet behind Levi’s pace preparing to stop. Levi banked left around the edge, Harlee’s eyes followed him. She could just see the flash of his gray bandana as he disappeared from view-- 

Then came a sound. 

A wet, solid thud.

Metal meeting fragile skull. 

Then again. 

She didn’t keep her promise. 

Her feet were already moving. She rounded the curve, spotted the red overshirt, and swung. The bat connected with a sharp crack, driving into Remus’s knee. He shouted, crumpled-- she swung again, the ribs this time, and again, the skull, and again, and again-- until the world stilled and the cannon fired.

Levi Herdman. A boy she saw as a brother, sprawled out on the ground. The back of his head was dented in, bandana sopping up blood in a small bowl. 

Laid over his legs was the boy from District 2. 

Remus. His name was Remus, she thought. 

A terrible realization struck her quickly: she didn’t know which of them was dead. There had only been one cannon. It might not have even been either of theirs. 

The table. 

Harlee looked up to the table and her stomach dropped. 

Food. That's what was on the crisp white table cloth atop shining silver platters. 

Steaming meats. 

Pillowy bread. 

Glistening fruits. 

Creamy mashed potatoes. 

Perfectly iced slices of cake. 

The best the Capitol has to offer. 

It was a literal feast. Food. Not real weapons. Not the bloodbath the audience had been promised. But it still was that, wasn’t it? A bloodbath-- two boys laid at her feet, dead or dying. 

She dropped her attention back to them, stepping forward and crouching. She felt Levi’s neck first, searching for a pulse. But-- fuck-- she couldn’t tell. She didn’t want to touch him, not when he looked like this. 

Harlee grasped for Remus’ neck. He was still warm, like Levi. Like all freshly-dead people are. But he wasn’t the bulky Career she remembered from training anymore. His body looked hungry-- like Wheelbur from days ago now. 

He was probably starving. 

They all were. 

And that’s when she understood. The empty snares. The meager sponsor gifts. The endless, gnawing hunger she had ignored, even when it became more than anything she was used to back home. It was less than scraps, what they had been given in here. The Gamemakers hadn’t just wanted them to fight-- they wanted them to starve, to turn feral for a bite to eat.

A faint pulse tapped her fingers. 

It hit her all at once what that meant. 

She didn’t have to finish Levi off. Because he was already dead. 

With no ceremony, Harlee stood. 

Her bat came down. 

Once. 

Twice. 

Three times.

Four.

Cannon. 

It was over in an instant and an eternity. Time warped, twisted. When she finally stopped, she didn’t recognize herself in the girl standing over their bodies.

Levi Herdman had been dead for both a second and a lifetime.

Harlee didn’t cry. Harlee Aguilar didn’t cry.

But her throat burned all the same.

Her gaze snapped back to the table as her heart pounded in her ears. Gleaming silver platters, a feast that could’ve fed all five of them left still fresh and warm. Something curdled. It was an insult. The biggest of them all. Bigger than the opulent train that took them here. Bigger than the painful removal of scars their peacekeepers gave her. Bigger than the rattlesnakes with their teeth pulled. 

She wasn’t fucking hungry. 

She wanted to smash it all. Bludgeon the entire contents of the table to mush the same way she had reduced the head of four boys now. Spud. Kepler. Wheelbur. Remus. This was an insult to them. It was an insult to her, to Levi, to all twenty four children thrown into this damn canyon. 

Calmly, she shrugged off her pack. She was going to do it. She was really going to do it. But something stopped her, cutting through the deafening sound of the blood boiling in her ears with rage. 

A yelp. 

Garbled. A dying-cry of someone who knows they are dying.

Her attention focused. It came from the far side of the Cornucopia, around the corner. 

She could hear it now: the dwindling to the final two. 

Maybe she should’ve ran. She had promised Levi she’d run. Shove loose food into her bag and bolt. Get out of dodge. 

But Levi was dead. 

Harlee flipped the bat in her hand. Once. Twice. A trick she had picked up at the batball field back home. As she listened to the repeated, sickening thuds, she looked at the way the top of the matt bat shined-- reflecting the dull light of early morning. 

She was ending it. Right now. And they’d let her. Because it makes for a good show. And that’s all this is. Entertainment. A television show. 

Harlee crossed the mouth of the Cornucopia, ignoring the teeming table. Rounding the corner she found District 8 purple, Flax, getting his chest caved in by the District 1 boy, Prosper. She could hear Flax, the gargling, wet breaths. Prosper didn’t even have the decency to hit the boy in the head. His back was to her, and he was far too enthralled rattling off some nonsense in a monologue to hear her approach. A showman, through and through. 

She flipped the bat one more time-- might as well add some flair to it-- and then pulled it back. Harlee shuffled, like she was running in to hit a pitch at homeplate, and then drove her full force into the side of his knee. The crunch cut louder than Flax’s waning gurgle. 

Prosper’s words broke into a ragged, surprised cry. Harlee didn’t think about why he was taking his sweet time, having his own personal production over here. It was a mistake. A mistake that will cost his life. He was as stupid as his name, she figures. 

She struck him in the side of the ribs as he hit the dirt, knee shattered. Flax’s cannon rang. Harlee knew it was his cannon because as she pulled her bat back, she didn’t hear his wet breath anymore. Good. She didn't want to have to kill anymore than one more person.  

With every last bit of strength and energy left, Harlee brought the bat down. 

And down. 

And down. 

And down. 

And down. 

And down. 

And down. 

And down. 

And down. 

And down. 

Ten strikes to the boy's head and trumpets, a brassy orchestra of celebration, erupted across the gray sky. 

Ten strikes to reduce Prosper’s face to a flat, bloody puree of flesh, bone, and brain. 

Ten strikes to leave Harlee Aguilar as the Victor of the 61st Hunger Games.