#please don’t come for me Jegulus stands this isn’t an attack

[deathnguts]

I know the hunger games AU is owned by Jegulus or whatever because of crimson rivers but I’m gonna different and make it about Bartylus because no one can stop me so here’s a detailed summary/play by play of major events of the AU please give it a chance it’s eaten my brain

No trigger warnings under the cut besides yknow mentions of murder but it’s not graphic, there’s only a cut because it’s long as shit

(not inspired by crimson rivers really at all because I never read it) ((also implied trans regulus at the end because eveyrone that isn’t Sirius or Barty doesn’t know regulus is a man because transphobia and closets and stuff and you can pry trans regulus out of my cold dead hands))

Ok so I imagine that the pure blooded families would be from career districts, like district one (luxury goods) I imagine. And Regulus, per the rules of the game, has never been allowed to participate because Sirius already competed and won when he was sixteen and regulus was eleven. This leads to regulus becoming disillusioned to the glory of the games early on since his beloved brother did come home with the honor but he was completely changed and traumatized and claimed he only came home with his life. Regulus sees the games for the horrific blood bath they are as he grows older due to taking on being his brother’s caretaker since no one else would and Sirius completely let himself go in the throes of depression, making regulus see what the games do to even their winners first hand.

Barty, on the other hand, does not see the games for what they are and he wants nothing more than to go and to win. He’s always believed in the ideology that winning the hunger games is the ultimate honor and playing them is the ultimate rush. I imagine, in the context of this universe, his father would probably be influential enough to be involved in the inner workings of the games. And unlike any other parent involved in the planning of the games, he doesn’t rig it so his son won’t be a participant, he rigs it so he will. Knowing this, every moment that isn’t spent with regulus at Sirius’ winners home or somewhere more comfortable like in town or something, Barty is training for when he’s selected for the games (since the careers have it rigged and all.)

Regulus tries to live in denial about the fact Barty will certainly go and may not come back or maybe come back like Sirius did up until the reaping day that changes everything. Him and Barty are sixteen, just like Sirius was, when they both hear his full name get called. Barty is beaming with pride as he’s pushed up the steps and regulus can barely contain a sob. (He only does because he knows it would be out of place for a career district civilian like himself to mourn such a thing, and he doesn’t want his family thinking he’s a rebel or something.)

Regulus rushes to see Barty before he’s taken away immediately. He’s crying in Barty’s arms and holding him like there’s no tomorrow because there truly might not be. Barty is less brash and loud with his pride obviously, the love of his life is crying in his arms, but he’s not swayed enough to truly be nervous. He simply holds regulus tight and tips his chin up, smiles and tells him he shouldn’t worry because if he’s not just coming home for honor, he’s coming home to marry regulus. They’ll be together forever when Barty gets back, it’ll all be ok. Regulus tries to believe that and gives Barty his favorite of his rings off his finger as Barty’s token from home. Barty puts it on the chain he always wears as a necklace since he knows he’ll be using his hands a lot in the arena.

Once Barty’s on the quick train ride to the capitol (since district one is so close) his smile fades to an even determination and he holds the ring in his clenched fist to his lips the whole way. The other careers will poke fun at it later, seeing as how there’s no way a simple silver ring on an even simpler chain can be weaponized, but what they think doesn’t matter because Barty’s going to kill them.

Barty optimizes on his wild card persona for his training, fashion statements, and marketing himself since he knows the crowd loves a winner who gets their hands dirty. And during his interview, he speaks of how he’s going home to the love of his life and shows off his ring to get real about his near proposal to get the crowd to love him even more. Everyone loves a romance. Regulus watches from home, alone since Sirius would rather die than watch anything to do with the games. He’s shaking from his fetal position on the ground and he can only pray Barty will be right in the end.

Before anyone really knows it, the games begin. Barty gets exactly what he wanted from the blood bath (sadistic violence and securing of the cornucopia. He even takes out his ‘partner’ from district one while the other careers are busy. Because he only has one partner from district one, and he’s not in the arena.) and regulus watches with his heart beating out of his chest.

The games go on swimmingly at first. Regulus is itching to help, to send any gift Barty may need at a moments notice, but Barty truly doesn’t need anything from him since he’s monopolized all the materials. He feel useless and he’s so terrified every second of the day he curses the editors of the broadcast every time his love isn’t on the screen because what’s happening when they pan to anyone else?! Barty’s doing mostly fine for himself since the lower districts are keeping to themselves and the other careers aren’t down to the wire enough to start back stabbing yet. Until they are.

Barty sees it as luck that he’s the youngest career here, halfway naive to the extent of the rigging the games have in favor of his idealization of them. The others single him out in their heads immediately due to his age and his whole ‘lover boy’ show at the interviews. They all agreed without having to discuss that he’s the first to go the second it’s convenient.

The next week or so is spent with the careers staking out the arena and then doing organized hunts for other tributes. They all go off well, the careers always win though not without any fighting back obviously. They lose the girl from four and the guy from three, girl from three gets injured but not enough to sit out and ugh Barty’s annoyed that he has to care about any of them. The guy from two is always sending him off on his own, claiming it’s because Barty’s a ‘crazy fucker’ and it’s like sending a rabid dog to some sheep and he’s certain Barty will come back panting like one with the blood of his win on him (secretly hoping he fails and doesn’t come back at all soon.) But he does, every single time. Barty thinks it’s because he was judged right, everyone else slowly gets more wary of him when they realize he’s not the easy pickings they imagined and he may actually be a problem down the road.

With only a few stragglers from lower districts left, the other careers decide to put him down before they run out of numbers. They go for him when they think he’s asleep, but he’s not an idiot and he knows they have it out for him and he wouldn’t dare to trust them enough to sleep around them. He actually hasn’t slept in days because of it. (Regulus hasn’t either, desperately afraid that he’ll miss even a single second of what’s happening to Barty.) He’s loopy, deranged from all the sadistic heavy lifting he’s been doing. He feels like a rabid dog now more than ever as he’s literally clawing and biting his former teammates when they manage to disarm him after he fatally wounds the girl from two and she fades away without him even looking twice. He takes out the injured girl from four, no was it two? No he just killed girl from two, it had to be… one? Yeah, one. She’s easy pickings and guy from… four, seems mad about it. It’s him and two guys, four and two, and they seem pissed. It’s funny, Barty can’t stop laughing. They really think they can beat him. Hilarious.

Regulus watches in horror and Sirius jolts from his sleep four rooms down when he hears his brother scream because in Barty’s insomnia and shock induced delusions, he gets snuck up on from a boy from five that’d been with them, one Barty hadn’t even noticed. He’s stabbed literally in the back, low and a few inches from his spine with the knife they’d taken away from him earlier.

Barty freezes, but not for long before he feels the knife twist and get pulled out. He practically howls at the pain when he whips around and kicks the guy down. God damn ghost, didn’t he kill him already? He takes his knife back and some other guys come in for the kill but they’re stupid because they’re getting close to Barty and he has his knife back. Barty doesn’t clearly remember what happened next, just that three bodies fell, he got cut again in his thigh and in both his arms, and then he passed out in the pool of blood he’d created.

Drones come ti pick up three bodies, Barty isn’t one of them. He wakes up to the movement around him and he feels like hell. He’s bleeding out, fuck why hadn’t he wrapped himself up before laying down? He did lay down, right? There’s an another drone that comes in and it’s medical supplies. A lot of them. Surely from a very concerned and very wealthy donor. He uses them graciously and waits out a day, maybe two, or was it three actually? for the hurt to subside enough to hunt again. It doesn’t.

He’s drifting in and out of consciousness and he’s not even fully functioning when he’s awake. He keeps getting drones with more medical supplies and he realizes with barely half a mind they’re coming from regulus. He can barely stay awake long enough to use them and keep himself alive with the little control he has and he realizes in this lethargic time that regulus was right. He feels awful, on so many levels. What he had to do, what he did for fun, what got him here, wasn’t worth it. He wants to go home. He hopes his mind will stop being foggy and loud when he gets home.

There someone standing by him, they don’t even have a weapon. They’re looking at him with fear in their eyes, but they’re stepping closer. They’re going to kill him. Barty spits, they’re going to try. His mind is loud and his blood is louder when he’s in another scuffle with whatever stupid fucking lower district tribute the old group missed while policing the arena. Theyre rolling on the ground for any hint of an upper hand. But the tribute’s weak, clearly malnourished and too scared to be calculated because Barty gets on top easy. He has his hands around their neck for just a moment before their long ass nails are digging into his fingers- no, they’re gloves, with razors at the tips. Fuck. He involuntarily pulls back with a hiss and they’re on top of him again. He’s not going out like this.

He kicks them on their back with his good leg and they gasp from the air knocking out of them on impact. He doesn’t have time to get their gloves off before they get their breath back, but he does have time to yank his necklace over his head and over theirs. They struggle and he flips them over to get his thighs on their upper arms to stop their death hands. Their razor fingers are digging into every inch of him they can and he barely feels the pain. Their movements slow and their eyes tear up as silver wrings out their last breath. Barty’s declared the winner. Was that really the last tribute?

It must have been, because he’s hauled out of the arena and into the capitol. Or at least, tried to, because he distantly remembers the terror and adrenaline in him not subsiding soon enough for him to trust the capital people come to retrieve him and he has to be put to sleep because he lunges at one of them. He wakes up and they’ve healed him completely with their capital tech and he wants to go home. There’s the after game interview he can’t hear over the buzzing in his ears and he tells them he wants to go home. He sees his father shortly after since he oversees things like the interviews and Barty tells him he wants to go home.

When he finally does, he could cry from just the sight of his regulus waiting for him right when the train doors open. And he does when he finally has him in his arms again. The two sob together on the ground and they hold each other like lifelines. It takes hours for them to calm down enough to even walk to the car to go home, and they do so pressed close with their hands intertwined. They huddle together in the car, and then they huddle together in bed the second their home. Regulus tells Barty he was right, Barty tells regulus he was right.

They’re both beyond shaken and traumatized from the games, Barty on behalf of eveyrthing he did and what was done to him and regulus because he had to watch. But they’re together now, and there’s never a moment in the future the public will ever them not. They’re shaken and attached at the hip at all times, agoraphobic and terrified of other people in case theyre a threat.

But the capital waits for none and they want a wedding. There was a buzz about it ever since Barty was in the top two for four days. And then when the crowd saw the psycho lover boy choking the last tribute in his way with his ‘wedding’ ring? Oh, now they can’t be stopped. The pair are rushed to the capital again and they cling to each other for dear life. Their wedding is completely planned already when they arrive, surely by game orchestrators and excited producers like their marriage is just an after party for the games. The overly eager crowd of make up artists and designers try to rush them apart for dressing and Barty nearly bites them, so they forgo the tradition of making the groom wait to see the bride in ‘her’ gown.

The crowd isn’t too upset because the display is a testaments to the capital’s newest favorite couples’ unconditional, inseparable love that defied every odd. And that’s the theme of the night. Hundreds of guests neither of the lovers know swarming them with praises and questions about how sad it was to watch their lover almost die and how sweet it was he didn’t and are they going to have children soon and wow double immunity for the baby when it does come with the Black and Crouch winners as uncle and father and-

It takes a near breaking point, luck, and a distraction from Sirius (who’s been itching to fuck with the crowd all night after being forced to be here) for the couple to get away for just a moment to breathe. It’s all so jarring, Barty was dying just two days ago and he got regulus back only a little after that and it’s all so much, too much and it’s so loud. But they’re married now, which he wanted; he’s alive, which he wanted; he’s home in regulus’ presence, which he desperately wanted.

Regulus looks beautiful in the sparkling white dress Barty’s games designer made for him, Barty apologizes that he has to be seen by so many people in it. Regulus says it was inevitable, Barty says it’s still not right. Regulus asks what is. Barty doesn’t answer for a moment. They sigh and hug each other close like they’d been doing non stop every chance they could for the past twenty eight hours. Barty murmurs that in everything that’s happened, in everything he’s done, the only thing that’s remained right since the start is regulus, his love for him more specifically. Regulus snorts a little and teases that he sounds like he’s going to propose. Barty doesnt respond for a moment. Then he’s pulling away from the embrace and regulus almost jumps but Barty doesn’t go far when he gets on one knee and pulls his token necklace from under his suit and over his head and smiles up at Regulus’s dumbfounded face.

Regulus Black, love of my life, my only light in the dark, would you do me the honor-

Yes.

He’s crying, they’re both crying. But it’s better. Everything’s better. Barty’s home, he made it home. They’ll be safe and sound at home.