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Study Guide
Legend Revenge
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Revenge
In my mind, I make a silent promise to my brother's killer.
I will hunt you down. I will scour the streets of Los Angeles for you. Search every street in the Republic if I have to. I will trick you and deceive you, lie, cheat and steal to find you, tempt you out of your hiding place, and chase you until you have nowhere else to run. I make you this promise: your life is mine. (1.4.71-72)
At the beginning of the book, June is driven purely by grief and revenge. She thinks that these emotions will somehow make the fact of her brother's death better, but they end up not helping at all.
Day's exploits used to fascinate me. But now he is my matched enemy—my target. My first mission. (1.4.87)
Instead of seeing Day as just another person, June comes to see him as a bulls-eye for her grief and rage. All she wants to do is to make him suffer for causing her brother's death.
Thomas's hand touches mine again. "Hey," he says. "Day can't hide from the government forever – sooner or later we'll dig that street brat out and make an example of him. He's no match for you, especially when you put your mind to something." (1.6.33)
Of course Thomas encourages June's revenge-driven quest to find Day—he's trying to cover for himself, because he's really the one who killed Metias. What a cowardly thing to do.
I have no sympathy for a criminal, I remind myself harshly. Just a score to settle. (1.20.14)
June may remind herself time and time again that she has no sympathy, but at the end of the day she can't convince herself that she doesn't care about Day's grief and his family's wellbeing. Why can't she shake off this guilt?
Some small part of me wants to smile at the sight, to feel the joy of avenging my brother's death. I pause, but the feeling doesn't come. My hands clench and unclench. The pool of blood underneath the woman is starting to make me feel sick. (1.22.10)
Even though she thought it'd make her happy to see Day suffer, the shooting of his mother makes June feel nothing but sick and guilty. Unlike Thomas, who doesn't seem affected at all, June starts to realize that she made a huge mistake in her quest for revenge.
I could tear the skin off her face right now if I weren't tied up. "Where are my brothers?" My voice comes out as a hoarse croak. "What have you done with Eden?" (2.1.12)
Day feels nothing but hatred toward June when she originally betrays him, but even so his focus remains on his brothers. He doesn't want revenge immediately—he wants his remaining family members to be safe.
If she had not led to the death of my mother and my capture, if I did not wish she were dead, I would find her absolutely breathtaking. (2.1.14)
In her revenge, June has turned Day against her—even though he was one of the only people who understood and cared for her. She only had Metias before this, and now she's driven away the one other person who was starting to get attached to her.
"It matters because if you hadn't escaped, my brother would be alive right now. And I want to make sure no other filthy street con assigned to the labor camps escapes the system—so that this scenario won't play out ever again." (2.1.55)
June feels a lot of ire toward Day—she thinks he killed her brother—but it's all misplaced. It's never the filthy people from the slums who are doing the most despicable things… it's actually the finely dressed people carrying out the Republic's orders.
I even tell Thomas, as we wander the lavish ballroom with its endless banquet tables and chandeliers, that arresting Day has filled the gaping hole Metias's death left in my life. But even as I say it, I don't believe it. (2.2.3)
Revenge is a completely empty exercise for June. Even though she achieves what she thought she wanted, it turns out that she feels no satisfaction from putting Day in jail and having him executed. It doesn't make Metias's death any easier to take.
I'm supposed to hate you for what you did, I think. But her eyes linger on me in a way that refuses to let me. (2.3.25)
Day could take the same path as June and plot revenge toward her because of his mother's death, but that wouldn't solve anything. It certainly didn't help matters for her.