The Direction Games: A One Direction Fan Fiction

22

22

   I awoke first the next morning – earlier than I usually would have; nearly four in the morning – and waited up for my teammates to rise around me. The entire cave smelled wet, and I could hear the raindrops falling outside, and thunderous roars and cracks of lightning split the sky. Today, I knew every tribute would try to stay inside their shelters.

   The first thing Liam suggested when he’d joined the waking world was we check Louis’s wound for any signs of healing. Louis, who was awake also, consented to this. We agreed we’d do it immediately, whether or not Zayn and Niall were awake (which they weren’t).

   As Louis took my hand again to use as a painkiller, I could see him eyeing me differently; focusing his gaze on the scar running down my neck. Liam told me – only because I could not see it for myself – it still looked pretty bad, but it seemed to be staring to scab over.

   I didn’t let Louis look at me with his horrified expression for long. I averted my gaze, turning the scarred half of my face away from him, and looked somewhere else as Liam bared his wound of its bandages and Louis squeezed. But, Liam’s next remark made me turn back.

   “Whoa!” was all he said.

   I looked to him and, I myself had to let out a gasp as Liam had. Louis propped himself up and did the same.

   We had all seen the deep mark Taylor’s spear had put in Louis’s thigh. It was deep enough to be an entire swimming pool of red for anything smaller than a mouse. It had bled out for the past few days, but, now, that seemed nearly impossible. There wasn’t a trace of the ointment Liam had applied yesterday, and it seemed as if it had been scientifically programmed to bind a wound, for now, it looked like a scar. It still showed depth, and would’ve definitely been the type of scar to need stitches, but it was healing remarkably fast. I couldn’t help but quietly let out a relieved sigh, which came out almost as a laugh. We hadn’t risked our lives for nothing! Louis was getting better!

   Louis had managed to hold the weight of the top half of his body on one elbow. His other hand was over his mouth, obviously covering a grin. I hadn’t even noticed when he released my hand. His eyes were glazed with happiness, and tearing up too. I could see the regret from his attempts to tell us what we could and couldn’t do. We were right all along.

   “You’re definitely getting some of that stuff, Harry,” Liam joked. We met eyes. I could see his relief and happiness too. This medicine was like a miracle granted to us by higher forces. For once, The Capitol had helped us, rather than hurt us.

   Liam found the jar of Capitol medicine amongst the other supplies and put another generous amount on his healing wound. This time, I only felt a small pressure from Louis crushing my hand; a definite improvement over the other times we’d examined his injury. Liam rebound it in bandages and gave me the cream. At the rate Louis injury had healed from the ointment, my scar should disappear by tomorrow.

   “Can you move your leg?” Liam asked Louis.

   Louis’s face fell at his question. “I don’t know,” he said slowly. Liam urged him to try, and so he did. I just barely saw his leg twitch, but there wasn’t much movement.

   Liam thought for a second, processing the information, and concluded Louis needed some sort of physical therapy if he were ever going to successfully move his leg again (though, that was probably stretching the truth a tad). And so, I was appointed as a human painkiller again and felt Louis’s warm hand grasp mine.

   Liam worked on moving his leg upward, bending it at the knee and hip and, once his iron grip on my hand faded, back to its regular position. This was done a few times. Somewhere, in the middle of it all, the sounds Louis made in his attempt to stifle screams awoke Niall and Zayn from their slumber, but they said they did not mind if it was part of Louis’s recovery. I couldn’t see any reason any one – except The Capitol, of course – could object to him healing.

   For the rest of the day, since the rain poured down heavily, we remained inside, feasting on what remained of our food supply when we were hungry, and sometimes slipping into pointless side conversations. It was definitely a slow day in the arena. At some point in the late afternoon, Louis and I both fell asleep to the sounds of pattering raindrops, rumbling thunder and loud cracks of lightning.

   When I awoke again, sometime after nightfall, I could still hear the sounds of rain. In the dark cave, Zayn sat knees to his chest, against the wall of the cave, staring ahead into empty space. Close to me, Niall, Louis and Liam made up a second group. This wasn’t exactly normal.

   “Zayn?” I asked into the darkness. He didn’t even show any reaction to my voice. It seemed as if he were frozen.

   “Harry,” Liam’s voice purred from where the others were sitting. When I turned to face him, he used his hand to beckon me closer to them. Only when I’d joined their group did he tell me what I had missed during my rest.

   “Perrie’s dead, Harry,” he said bluntly in a quiet voice.       “The storm masked her cannon. She probably didn’t have bandages and bled out from where I hit her.”

   “They showed her in the sky about a half hour ago,” Niall added. He pointed his thumb over his shoulder to Zayn. “He’s been like that ever since.”

   “We’re sort of just waiting for it to turn from shock to sadness,” Louis said, “Like Liam when Danielle died.”

   “Just go back to sleep,” Liam purred. “He’ll probably be better in the morning.”

   I watched the movements around me as Niall and Liam got into their sleeping bags, and waiting on my own until they fell into a slumber. I could tell it was hard for Zayn to snap out of this shock. A loved one of mine hadn’t yet gone, and I’d never experienced this. But, hearing Liam describe his love for Danielle that one night, helped me to know that kind of pain – like the pain of hoping your family and friends didn’t get reaped on the Reaping day.

   I pulled myself out of my sleeping bag in the blackness. The rain had stopped shortly after Liam, Louis and Niall had fallen asleep again. Zayn was still up, still in the same position as before – knees to his chest and eyes wide and blank. I doubted he had even blinked the entire time.

   “Zayn?” I asked again, quietly so I wouldn’t wake the others. When he didn’t respond in anyway, like before, I moved to him, and sat up on my knees at his side. I placed my hand on his shoulders as I, again, asked, “Zayn?”

   This time, at my touch, he shivered and his head turned to mine so we were locking eyes; his saddened. And I saw the first sign of shock ending as the smallest crystal tears appeared in the corners of his eyes; probably tears he’d wanted to cry out since he was reaped.

   “Are you okay?” I asked him softly.

   The look he’d given Louis and I just before we’d been hit by the tidal wave of water when he’d confessed he couldn’t swim returned to his face, and he looked like an innocent, baby animal. He’d broken through the barrier of shock into the realm of pure sadness.

   Without words, I slipped my arm around his body and his head fell onto my shoulder. The tears spilled over his eyelids and raced down his cheeks. He’d really felt something for Perrie.

   These were reasons why each day I debated my future. Though it had always been a dream of mine to grow up, get married and have a daughter – hopefully, if my wife let me, named Darcy – but, with the world the way it was, no children, not even offspring of the victors, were safe from being reaped and watching their new friends fall around them, and, likely, being killed themselves. I didn’t want my children to ever feel this way.

   “I don’t want to be here anymore,” I heard Zayn mutter. His voice was small and working to hold back short sobs. It was hardly tears for Perrie’s death, but, more so, tears that this was reality and not just a nightmare we could awaken from. Usually, these tears would be shed before the games begun.

   “I think we all just want to go in one direction,” I said to him. I watched as his gaze trained up to me and his expression became confused. “We just want to go home,” I clarified.

   Zayn nodded. It was where we all had to be. If it meant any of them could return back to their families and friends, I’d take my own life.