harley royce. three.

Of course she blames them.

How could she not? They ruined her life, her brothers life, and made her mother's life one worse than death. She doesn't give a shit about her father's rotting corpse - if you play stupid games, you win stupid prizes. But the thing that makes her blood boil is that the ones who never knew of the game got the worst deal and in a strange, morbid way, her father - the culprit - got out the easy way.

They played. They lost. And yet they still think they won, the Prescotts and the Belgraves. Prancing around town as if they'd never stepped a single foot in the Detention Center. Cowards, she spits in silence. Traitors. Her thoughts turned dark those two years, all of sixteen rotting away in a cell when she should be flourishing. The only good thing about sitting in juvi was knowing her brother couldn't be reaped - but some days, the worst days, she thought seven days in a hellish arena would be a nice change from seven months in that place. After weeks of insisting she and Maxen knew nothing she gave up trying to fight a losing battle and decided to try her luck and winning the war. 

The thing about being so unassumingly quiet, so quiet you might as well not be there, is that it makes you an awfully good listener and an even better observer. So Harley observes, and watches, and when she thinks she's cracked you she'll smirk for half a second and it's as deadly as the drugs her Daddy sold. She smirks when she's won, the moment your arm falls to the table after an arm wrestle. She's a girl you don't want to see smile: because it's either a lie, a warning, or something so strange and foreign it makes you feel unsettled, ill with unease.

She is a wicked thing, Harley Royce. You wouldn't know it looking at her. Mousy brown hair and big eyes coloured pale green, fingernails too long for comfort and the drabbest remains of her mother's wardrobe that wasn't stolen by thieves in her absence. If the Belgraves were red, and the Prescotts were silver, the Royces were green for their dead father's eyes or tawny for their locks of hair. But she'd rather be grey, dull and unassuming. She's normal at first glance, even if you look past the dead stare and the sullen face and her complete lack of enthusiasm for anything or anyone - save her brother.

They labelled it depression and called it a day, ticked some boxes and handed her a box of something godawful from Six that she flushed down the toilet that night. Drugs had ruined her life once and she wasn't about to let them ruin her life again. After all, Harley needed a sharp mind to start anew. Two years had given her enough time to plan and now she sits with her vices and her tricks, dead-set on finding the money buried with her father's death.

She's not sure if Max gives two shits about the money or if he'd rather play fake-gangster-artist, but she's roping him in one way or another. Hugo Belgrave might not hit girls but Harley has a suspicion Max will hit on his sister if she gives him good enough reason to. They've never really spoken about what happened to them, and perhaps they never will, but Harley knows better than anyone that you don't spend two years in that shit-hole Centre and come out the same person. Hell, she went in as Charlotte and came out as Harley, having shed everything about her former self starting with her name. She's angry - even if she doesn't show it. She bets Max is too. And what better way to bargain with her brother than with vengeance? Revenge is a dish best served cold and Harley hasn't felt warm in a long, long time. 

Three days after they arrived back to the shell of their home Harley had thumped her lanky, pale arm on the dining room table and told Max to get out his stick and poke kit from underneath his bed. Amidst the odd freckle and random scar sitting atop her ulna bone now lies two little lines. She hopes to get that number up to six, a line through four and another for good measure. Her Dad is dead and her Mom is as good-as. The Prescotts and the Belgraves can join them and she's desperate to feel the sharp twang of Max stabbing her skin, marking victory and justice. She's always liked pain. It masks what's left of the dull ache in her chest and now it serves another purpose, another meaning.

It means the next time she feels it the Royce kids will be one step closer to getting what's rightfully theirs.

come get ur girl dars