Thresh Reilly

Day 7

Thresh Reilly isn't too surprised to have made it this far into the Hunger Games.

He scored highly in training and before the games he's pretty certain that only the Career boys, Mellark and maybe the boy from 10 could have fought him physically one on one with any chance of winning.

Even then Thresh would have fancied his chances against all of them.

Thresh never expected the games to play out as they have so far though.

The last of The Career Pack is out, gone, kaput, and really most sincerely dead.

Suddenly the game is wide open.

It seems whoever's left in the arena has realised that too because a cannon went shortly after The Career Packs faces appeared in the sky and another one went this morning.

A large part of Thresh hopes it wasn't little Rue who died. His district partner is a sweet girl who doesn't deserve to be in the games.

No one does really.

Then again part of him hopes that maybe she's gone peacefully so he doesn't end up having to kill her. It's the Hunger Games and a sweet little twelve year old can't win.

Thresh somehow isn't surprised when the shining sickle comes down from the sky. It's nothing like the ornate pronged trident that Odair was given in his games but it still must have cost a pretty penny.

He thinks what his big sister Jenny or his grandmother would think of what's about to happen and realises at this point they'd want to see him win.

Thresh sighs inwardly to himself.

He'll go hunting tomorrow.

Day 8

Thresh's first reaction after seeing the faces in the sky the night before is to cheer.

The 12's are dead. The favourites are dead.

The only ones left in the arena are himself, Rue, the boys from 10 and 3 as well as the girl from 5..

Thresh has now become the favourite as he is the only one left of those who were potential favourites before the games began.

The Girl from 5 was a forgettable nobody.

The Boy from 10 had a lame leg.

The Boy from 3 is diminutive and weak.

Rue is fucking twelve years old.

Thresh is beginning to have a headache when he nears the forest having walked from his corn field.

Just in time to see the girl from 5 look like she's fleeing for her life from something.

She looks terrified.

In the trees above both of them and close behind the girl there is something coming. Thresh can hear the branches creak and see the trees move slightly as the something gets ever closer to his and the girls location.

Almost certainly a mutt.

The fox faced girl catches a glimpse of him before darting back into the forest attempting to weave a difficult path and lose whatever happens to be in the trees.

The trees have stopped moving.

The mutt in the trees seems to be making a calculation.

The movement in the trees starts again but heads away from his location.

He thinks whatever the something in the trees is then it must at least be clever.

Thresh shudders at the thought.

Mutts can be terrible things especially if they have a degree of sense. Any person who's seen the 26th games can attest to that.

Thresh doesn't let his thoughts stray to the mutts from the 30th or the 44th games.

He has nightmares enough as it is from this arena.

If Thresh spares a thought as to how good Rue is at moving through the tree tops he dismisses the idea the thing in the trees could have been her instantly.

He can't bring himself to even begin contemplating a world where the little tree hopping girl from his District can make someone run with as much fear in her eyes as the girl from 5 had.

It's just not possible.

The cannons that night confirm Thresh's suspicions.

Day 9

Thresh is really regretting the decision to go hunting.

As the boy from 10 attempts to stab him in the leg once again with his bloody pointed stick Thresh thinks to himself he might have screwed up here.

He managed the element of surprise, but little else, against the crippled boy from 10 who apparently is better at one on one fighting than he looks.

Thresh's scythe is wedged in a tree after the 10 boy ducked a blow and 10 seems to really want to survive this fight.

Thresh does too but isn't sure he will anymore.

The two of them have been going at it for nearly twenty minutes and they've been anything but quiet.

Which is probably why what happens next surprises Thresh.

10 manages to sweep Thresh's legs out from under him and is about to aim his pointed stick into Thresh's chest before pausing mid action. The boy gives a few choking noises and sways for a moment or two before collapsing to the floor.

A cannon goes.

There nestled in a tree, just 8 feet away, is a very small figure with a thin tube like object in her hand.

It takes Thresh a moment to realise what the object is before his suspicion is confirmed when he looks at the 10 boy's body again. A small object is lodged in his back.

A dart.

The small figure has a blow gun.

Rue smiles at Thresh.

"Howdy Partner. Looks like you needed a hand there." Rue positively beams.

Thresh is mildly disturbed at this. Rue did just kill someone after all. Thresh is already feeling guilt for the part he played in the boy's death that is even worse than the considerable guilt he felt about the 7 boy he killed in the bloodbath.

"You alright Rue? Things been going ok?" Thresh asks his district partner. They're both 11 and Rue is a good person so Thresh is very confident she won't kill him at this point. Rue doesn't strike him as someone who wants to kill their own district partner. He thinks she's too sweet.

He's right of course.

The reaction the girl gives is so very much like the Rue he's known during training.

The arena is clearly affecting her as Rue looks significantly more sombre than she did a moment before.

"I'm fine Thresh but it's been a tough couple of days. Katniss was finished by tracker jackers. I really wanted to help her but I just couldn't in the end." Rue says quietly. She curls in on herself a little.

Thresh knows Rue really liked the girl from 12 and part of him wants to give her a hug.

It's hard losing someone you thought could be a friend. Even in here.

He attempts to distract her a little but the next thing he says only seems to make her feel worse.

"Do you have any idea what happened to Mellark?"

Rue pauses a moment but the answer she gives makes more than enough sense to Thresh.

"The Career pack turned on him. Cato cut him bad with a sword, but it was an arrow that killed him in the end."

That makes sense to Thresh. The girl from 1 got the bow that was in the pile at the cornucopia. His suspicion is that it was meant for Everdeen because 1 girl could hardly shoot in the bloodbath and it would easily explain Everdeen's ridiculously high score. 1 must have got a lucky shot. Thresh feels sorry for Mellark then. A lingering arrow wound is a painful way to go.

Therefore, Thresh isn't really surprised as to why Rue looks upset at Mellark's death as well.

She is after all a sensitive girl from what Thresh has seen in their time in training and on the train from 11.

From their time together he can tell she's dwelling on both 12 tributes deaths. It might just be a delayed reaction to her killing the 10 boy though. It's a hard thing. He knows from the 7 boy's death on the first day. Either way what he says next is meant with love and concern in an attempt to distract Rue from the pair from 12.

"Don't feel guilty Rue. Only one can make it out. There's no need to blame yourself."

Rue pauses for a moment and her eyes flash with something that Thresh thinks might be guilt.

He dismisses the thought instantly, his brain quickly reassuring him it's just Rue being her sensitive self.

Thresh thinks Rue must be a very sensitive soul indeed if she's guilty about the 12s.

It's not as if she killed them after all.

Rue quickly recovers herself and gives Thresh a smile. The next thing she says is initially a surprise but in the end he understands the reasoning.

"It's the final four Thresh and I don't want to kill you… But it's too late to ally with each other anymore. I think we should just walk away now. 10 was just me helping my District partner. Is that ok?" She asks hopefully.

Thresh gets it. Rue doesn't want to kill her District partner.

That's good.

Thresh really doesn't want to try and kill Rue.

With her dart gun he isn't sure he'd succeed.

Would he even want to? Even if it was his life on the line?

Thresh agrees with Rue. There can be no alliances.

"S'all right Rue. Friends though. Until…"

"Until the final two. If we make it that far."

Rue smiles as she says that.

Thresh hopes one of the others kill her. He's definitely not sure he can anymore.

Before she goes Thresh thinks back to his encounter with the fox faced 5 girl from the day before.

"Rue! Careful in the trees. Seemed like a mutt was chasing the 5 girl yesterday that moved around up there. Could be dangerous with something like that you know."

Something about the smile Rue gives back unsettles Thresh a little though he's not sure why.

"Don't worry about any monsters Thresh… I'll be fine."

"If they can't catch me they can't kill me."

"If a mutt is in the trees. I think I can handle it."

And Rue Priestly darts away.

Thresh pauses for only a moment before he realises that Rue didn't seem to believe him about the mutt.

That's foolish in Thresh's opinion.

Thresh hopes Rue isn't getting overconfident. By the way the 5 girl ran whatever thing is in the trees is pretty damn dangerous.

Day 10

It's day ten and Thresh is determined to figure out what the boy from 3 has been doing all this time.

He's almost certain that the boy is near the cornucopia from the fires that come from the area at night but he has yet to figure out what the boy's strategy is.

Thresh hates the games. Since he was four years old he has been terrified of being reaped. Ironically given his size and the hard work he can do he hasn't ever taken tesserae. The Peacekeepers like a big uncomplaining worker and Thresh's sister then Thresh himself fit that to a tee. Best to keep the big ones alive so the work gets done. If the weaklings starve that just weeds out the slow workers.

District 11 is a cruel place.

Thresh's reaping was genuinely bad luck. A worker as efficient as Thresh isn't easy to come by in 11.

Still Thresh was paranoid he'd get reaped anyway and it's a good thing he was because Thresh knows more about the games than most in 11.

Enough to know that the 3 boy being in the final four is a blaring warning siren of "Bad,Bad,Bad!"

Maybe he was the one to finish off The Career Pack. It wouldn't be the first, second, third or even fourth time for a tribute from 3 to do so.

The 3's at least kill quickly and efficiently usually.

The events of the 17th games being the biggest exception to the rule.

How 3 is still underestimated by so many other districts Thresh doesn't know.

People must have short memories.

Thresh doesn't underestimate the 3 boy though and approaches the cornucopia on the morning of the tenth day as stealthily as possible.

A voice stops him.

"You might not want to step there 11. It would be the last thing you ever do."

A short distance away the fox faced girl from 5 smiles at him.

Something sharp glints in both her hands.

"Stop. Slow down. Destress 11. I'm not going to attack." The girl says quickly showing the small knife in her hand that would take an expert to throw.

"This is just a precautionary measure against the vicious thing in the treetops." The girl rattles off quickly.

"The Mutt?" Thresh mutters eyeing the trees warily despite himself.

"The Mutt?" The 5 girl questions. Then her face falls slightly into almost an expression of sympathy. "You don't know?"

"Don't know what? Why you stopped me. Course not!" Thresh replies coolly. His eyes swivel then lock on her hands again.

That small knife wouldn't do much damage.

"You really don't know" 5 mumbles before eyeing Thresh sympathetically once again "I'm sorry 11. I really am. I don't want to be the one to have to tell you. I'd have rather you guessed yourself. I'm surprised you haven't figured it out. After all you saw me running from her the day before yesterday."

Thresh realises then. He realises what the girl's implying. His next words are laced with anger.

"You're scared of Rue? That's insane! She's twelve! She's innocent!"

Even as he says the words he knows that's not the whole truth anymore.

The cold empty eyes of the boy from 10 with a dart in his neck are proof enough.

"That thing in the trees was a mutt. You're crazy! Or lying... I don't like liars 5." Thresh says desperately.

He hopes and prays what the 5 girl says next will prove that she's lying.

The 5 girls though says something he could never have expected.

"Who do you think got the 12s 11? You think they just killed themselves?" The 5 girl questions him.

"Everdeen was finished by tracker jackers. The 1 girl got Mellark with an arrow and Cato cut him." Thresh asserts his voice laden with conviction. "I said I don't like liars 5!"

In the background of his head though a voice is starting to nag away.

What the 5 girl says has got Thresh thinking.

He remembers back to what Rue had actually said. He recalls her words exactly. A good memory is too important an attribute to ignore in the games after all.

"Katniss was finished by tracker jackers."

Everdeen was finished by tracker jackers. That's what Rue had said. Tracker jacker poison can kill and that's what Thresh thought she meant.

"But what if the poison didn't kill her?" The voice in Thresh's head whispers to him.

He's seen workers before in 11 who got too near the nests and got stung. If you're stung a couple times it's an insane amount of pain and days of hallucinations.

You're dead to the world.

You're not actually dead though.

But you would be oh so easy to kill.

Thresh thinks back to what Rue said next.

"I really wanted to help her but I just couldn't in the end."

Rue wanted to help Everdeen but if Everdeen was stung badly, unconscious to the world, and the faces of The Career Pack appeared in the sky…

Thresh feels physically sick.

He remembers that night. A few minutes after the final face appeared another cannon rang out.

An alliance with Everdeen while the pack was alive would be a great idea. With the pack dead…

Thresh fully comprehends what happened.

Throughout his realisation the 5 girl is watching him. Pity is the only expression he sees on her face.

Bile is near the back of Thresh's throat as he manages to croak out his next question.

"What happened to Mellark?"

5 answers as if reciting a page from a textbook.

"He was camouflaged lying in the mud. He had a very bad wound in his leg. I'm surprised he didn't bleed out completely. She found him in the late morning. I was watching from nearby of course but she didn't see me while she did it. Mellark looked completely distraught a few seconds after she started whispering. I don't even think he was surprised when she plunged the arrow into his heart."

"I think he'd wanted to die since he guessed it could have been Everdeen's face the previous night."

"Cato cut him bad with a sword, but it was an arrow that killed him in the end."

Thresh wants to shout at the 5 girls that she's lying. He want to shout at her that Rue is sweet and innocent. The 10 boy was a fluke that was done to save him.

The 10 boy was a fluke.

Everdeen died from tracker jacker stings.

Mellark was killed by the careers.

Thresh wants to shout all that but he knows in his heart it isn't true.

The truth is in the 5 girl's words.

His district partner isn't the same girl she was before the games.

Her hands are already drenched in blood and Thresh knows now that he wouldn't be killing innocent little Rue any more.

That Rue is as dead as the three people she's killed.

5 girl is still standing and watching him.

Now he realises why.

"You don't think you can fight her alone do you?" Thresh says. "That's why you stopped me moving forward. Why was that dangerous anyway?"

"Land mine. 3 Boy has rigged the entire glade that has the cornucopia with them. Even I don't know exactly where everything is. I reckon it's probably why we're still all fighting each other rather than being brought together. He's armed, well supplied and has one hundred and forty four mines strategically placed around him. Or he could have. I counted only as far as ninety-three. Mines which only he knows the exact location of. Any of us missteps then its boom. Boom. Boom. Boom."

"Fucking 3" Thresh curses.

5 girl smiles and replies:

"My thoughts exactly"

Thresh realises he quite likes the girl from 5. She's wily and from the sound of it not a killer yet.

At this point she's a better person than anyone else in the arena.

She doesn't have has blood on her hands. He only has one death, and that's the boy from 7. An act he doesn't want to repeat if he can avoid it now. He doesn't want to become less of what he is. To become unrecognisable.

Not like what he suspects is happening to Rue.

"You know where most of the mines are?" Thresh asks.

It might be the final four but Thresh will hold out on not being changed as long as possible.

The 5 Girl might not be a truly "good" person, no one still in the games could be anymore, but the 3 boy needs to be taken out sooner rather than later and he'd rather work with a person who seems to at least partially want to make it out of the games as a semi-decent human. .

Thresh tries to ignore the whispers in the back of his mind that the 5 girl can do what he doesn't want to contemplate doing even now. Thresh doesn't like to think about the fact Rue might need to be an even higher priority target than the boy from 3. He'd rather kill the enemy he knows he can finish rather than the twelve year old he got reaped alongside. No matter what she might have become.

"Yep I know where a lot of them are. Apart from obvious signs like slightly disturbed earth I have a good idea about where roughly eighty of th-" The 5 girl begins before beginning to choke.

She tries to speak several more time during the following ten seconds she remains standing before she falls like a puppet with its strings cut.

Thresh barely registers the movement in the trees just after the cannon sounds.

The only thing he can focus on is the dart in the 5 girl's neck.

Day 11

There are 3 people left in the arena of the 74th games and Thresh is the only one of them that hasn't killed multiple people. The bulky eighteen year-old has killed one person in self-defence during the bloodbath.

The slight boy from 3 who can't be over fifteen has killed three people.

The twelve year old from 11 who doesn't even reach five foot tall has killed four.

Thresh doesn't know what to think anymore.

The world has gone topsy-turvy and somehow Thresh thinks that in The Capitol he might even be seen as the underdog.

The Capitol might not be wrong in this case...

Thresh is caught between The Devil, that his district partner has become, and the Deep Blue Sea, that is the boy from 3 and his ocean of mines.

The final confrontation is coming and soon. .

It is inevitable.

Somehow it is not today though.

Thresh has been waiting for the water to dry, a mutt attack, a bloody natural disaster. Any of those things that would drive tributes together.

There is nothing.

Somehow the Capitol is content to wait.

Instead it is a day filled with tension.

Thresh barely sleeps that night.

Day 12

He must drift off somehow because that morning he is woken up by an explosion.

Then he hears another.

And another.

Thresh moves closer to the cornucopia glade.

The Rue that isn't "his" Rue is triggering mines, with thrown rocks, as the boy from 3 watches on from the cornucopia in bafflement at Rue's audacity and more than a little bit of fear.

Each mine would proabably be deadly to anyone standing on it but they've been spaced well apart. Thresh quickly sees what Rue is doing.

She is clearing a path from the trees to the boy from 3.

Thresh doesn't know why he does it but he bounds into the glade the cornucopia lies, though he is careful to avoid any part of the ground that looks disturbed in any way.

By some miracle he does not step on any mine.

Within moments he is next to the boy from 3.

As he looks in the boys eyes there is some fear but mostly just acceptance.

Thresh makes his second kill of the games as his scythe slices through the air towards the 3 boy's neck.

A cannon goes.

Then silence.

"Why?"

That is all she says when the boy from 3 falls to the ground in two pieces.

"You've killed too many Rue." Thresh says. He tries to be firm. He tries not to have the statement laced with the heavy disappointment in her he feels.

Or his horror at what Rue has become.

"But Thresh I onl-" Rue begins.

"Only killed one person? Or was it two? Three? Four? Don't try that Rue because I know now Rue! I know the truth. Four people Rue. You've killed four people. Then… Then you lied to me about it" Thresh states. "How Rue? How could you?"

Thresh watches as the little girl he was reaped with changes before his eyes. Her face hardens and her expression transforms. She is someone else now… Determined, calculating, righteous…

And cold.

Thresh realises it is not a coldness born of dismissing emotion. It's a different coldness. An aid to get home to see family that has allowed her to create a wall around the actions she's taken and continues to take.

Or Thresh hopes so at least.

Thresh hasn't developed this coldness yet. Until the boy from 3 he hadn't killed anyone but the boy from 7. He hasn't planned any kills. Hasn't committed murder in the truest sense of the term.

Rue has developed this coldness though.

Thresh thinks she had to develop it the second she decided to do what she did to Everdeen.

His heart is fully broken when Rue finally speaks.

"I never lied to you Thresh! I just didn't tell the whole truth. It didn't matter. It doesn't matter Thresh."

"I've done what I've had to do Thresh! I'm so close now! I can see my brothers and sisters. My mom and dad. I can go home!"

Another part of Thresh dies a little inside as Rue raises her blow gun to her lips.

Thresh is almost hit by the dart that follows seconds later.

Thresh is fighting for his life now.

He dodges and weaves while Rue runs out of range of his scythe and keeps firing.

If a dart hits Thresh he's dead.

If Rue missteps on the boy from 3's mines she's just as dead.

Neither make a mistake for nearly eight minutes.

In fact neither party ever makes a proper mistake of that nature.

Thresh ends the duel by chucking a hand axe located in the huge pile of supplies the boy from 3 had hoarded.

He had hid behind the pile just to last a few seconds longer.

The hand axe a last ditch effort to stop the onslaught of darts.

He just wanted the darts to stop.

He just wanted to live.

It strikes Rue Priestly in the stomach. A mortal wound. She looks down in shock for a moment at it then tries to walk forward. She makes it a few steps before collapsing to her knees.

Thresh is horrified.

What has he done? How could he do it? This is not the way it was supposed to be. Not like this. He goes to her and begs her to say something. Anything.

Rue only says six words.

"I just wanted to go home."

Those words make Thresh feel like even more of a monster if it were possible.

"I'm sorry Rue. I'm so sorry."

The little girl he met the day of the reaping seem to reappear then. The smile she gives him is one laced with pain but it seems like it conveys forgiveness.

What Thresh does next he does out of mercy.

Quickly he breaks the blade of his scythe so only the sharpened last few inches remain like a dagger.

Thresh is in tears as he stabs her in the heart with it.

He can't watch her linger on in pain. He can't do it. Even after what she's done.

He's still crying, as he hugs Rue, when her cannon goes twenty seconds after the makeshift dagger has done it's work.

He continues hugging her, tears still running down his cheeks, long after the trumpets announcing his victory sound.


Hello Vesine here

The got pretty dark pretty fast. It's almost as though I marked this fanfic as a tragedy/drama.

It's certainly not a romance.

If you enjoy this fanfic please read my other ongoing fanfic The Grim Grey Path to Freedom. It is a labour of love and I'd appreciate any favs, follows and reviews of it.

Also if you feel like it do the same for this fanfic as well.

This fic is more of a scratched itch from something that bugged me in the original novel and movie as opposed to full storylines.

In case anyone's wondering the victors are being done in my opinion of the likelihood of them winning after the initial first chapter.

As you can probably tell certain event will be explored as we progress along each au from the initial decision.

The 5 victors will all be based around little butterfly effect actions that happen each day resulting in each tribute winning in a different way as events change.

This fanfic is incredibly fun in thinking of ideal points of divergence.

Next chapter is Finch McCarthy because everyone loves Fox face right?

Rue doesn't. Rue definitely doesn't.