The next morning Alec doesn't bother to get breakfast. He waits in his room, lying on his bed and staring up at the ceiling, until the trainer comes to fetch him. His stomach rolls and rumbles, complaining against the emptiness, but when Alec imagines sitting down at the table and eating his usual bowl of plain oatmeal and side of apple chunks, everything turns to ash in his mind. Grabbing food at odd hours is one thing, but eating breakfast is something normal people do in their normal lives; once he eats breakfast, Creed being dead will become normal too.
(It is normal now, Alec isn't kidding himself. Creed's body is in a Capitol mortuary waiting for the trip home. But taking that first step himself is too much.)
He does get dressed, at least, so that when the trainer opens the door she doesn't have to wait for him. Alec picks up the box and tucks it under his arm, the sharp edge digging into his hip, and he follows her through the corridors. All the trainees are at morning exercises, and the empty halls ring with Alec's footsteps against the metal floor. They pass the main gym on the way out, ringing with shouts and the slaps of bare feet on wood as the trainees go through their calisthenics, but Alec keeps his eyes ahead and doesn't peek through the door to catch anyone's eye.
It's a long walk to the front door, and Alec can count the number of times he's gone through it in the past three years. Each cohort gets monthly leave to go into town, to buy treats with their pocket money and flash their bracelets for discounts from impressed shopkeepers, and many don't come back until after lights-out though Alec always did. He hasn't walked through the big front doors on his own since his parents dropped him off, and Alec hesitates in the entryway, clutching the box hard enough that the cardboard dents beneath his fingers.
Dad and Mom stand next to their car at the bottom of the steps, matching Alec's memories down to the lines around Dad's mouth that mean he's trying not to frown. For a second everything washes in hard — there's space, everywhere, as far as Alec looks, open ground and land all the way to the too-distant mountains, the sky above him far too high to touch even with the world's largest scaling rope — and Alec nearly chokes, nearly calls it all off and begs them to keep him here.
But no, the Centre — and Creed, and Selene — and everything with it is behind him. Whatever happens next, there's only one way to go. Even a tribute can't crawl back onto the platform and expect it to lower back into the ground.
"Thank you," Alec says to the trainer. The summer heat slaps him hard in the face as he leaves the Centre's climate-controlled interior, and Alec squints against the sun bouncing off the polished limestone steps as he heads down to his parents.
"Son," Dad says, pressing Alec's hand like an adult. He looks — smaller, somehow, though no less postured or fit, but then Alec looks straight ahead into Dad's eyes and realizes for the first time just how tall he's grown. As boys, people always commented on how much Creed looked like his father; maybe now Alec has finally hit that mark. He tries to catch their reflections in the car window but Dad moves to open the door.
"Welcome home," Mom says before slipping into the front seat.
Alec slides into the back, folding his legs to make room in a way he never had to at thirteen, and he closes his eyes and feels the lurch of the car moving into gear in his stomach. He can't watch the Centre disappear behind him, and so he leans his forehead against the window and doesn't open his eyes until the car stops.
"Take your things inside and get settled," Dad says. "We'll call you down for lunch."
For a minute Alec stands on his front step, clutching the box of possessions just as he did that day on the steps of the Centre, but Mom beckons him in and he follows. Through the front room, around to the hallway, up the stairs to his room, everything is the same from the paint on the walls to the placement of the furniture to —
Alec stops dead in the door to his room. It's his room still — there's his desk, and his dresser, and the bedside table where he fell out of bed and cracked his skull once — but only half of it. There's a single bed in the corner in place of the bunk bed he and Creed shared, and dark, unfaded patches of hardwood where Creed's desk and dresser used to sit. Alec pushes open the door to Creed's half of the closet but it's empty too.
In a surge of panic Alec squeezes into the closet and feels around with his fingertips, searching the wood on the inside until he finds it. Quick scores in the wood, indentations made with a pocket knife that Alec traces and reads as the relief presses his chest: 'Creed and Alec 59'. For a long, breathless moment he's back there, Creed squeezed in against his shoulder and giggling, both of them shushing each other as Alec gripped the penknife and Creed guided his hand.
He stays there, hand pressed to the clumsily-carved letters, until Mom calls him down for lunch. Alec braces himself for questions about the Centre, about Residential, about Creed or Selene or their training, but they don't ask and Alec's mouth goes dry when he tries to bring it up. In the end it's easier to eat in silence, letting his thoughts swarm around his head while his parents talk to each other in polite, even tones while never quite making eye contact.
The spot across the table from Alec draws his gaze even the chair removed, and Alec shouldn't but he can't help it. He's more used to the empty spot at the dinner table with two years of Creed in Residential, but it makes the memories come back in odd surges. Before Alec left for Residential there were six dried butter beans balanced precariously on the rim underneath the table from a meal over a decade ago when Creed didn't want to finish his vegetables. Their parents never found them and Creed and Alec vowed never to tell and to see how long they stayed there. Now he imagines crawling under the table right there to see whether the beans have remained, like the secret words hidden in his closet.
Alec doesn't look, even after the meal finishes and they all take their plates to the sink. Until Alec actually checks, until he sweeps his hand under the rim and feels nothing but dust and plain wood, he can tell himself that Creed's last mischief is still there, untouched even with everything else swept away.
"Why don't you go explore," Mom says, touching Alec's arm and startling him out of a daze. He's not sure how long he stood there, staring back at the table with his plate in his hands. "See what's changed. Dinner's the same time as always."
It beats heading back upstairs to sit in the room that both is and isn't his, and so Alec heads outside. He doesn't bother with his shoes, letting the grass prickle the soles of his feet as he takes the back path through the yard and into the woods. The air is still in the midsummer heat, the leaves above barely stirring in the faint breeze.
Once Creed and Alec buried a shoebox filled with silly knickknacks and letters to their future selves, intended to be dug up ten years later. They ended up giving in and opening it a week later, and while the spot in the garden has long grown over, Alec can still pinpoint it, behind the rosebush at the corner of the foundation.
Near to that is the tree where Selene pushed Alec and broke his arm; a short walk would take him to the stream where they used to play Arena, making water filtration systems out of old shirts and bowls; a little while after that, the clearing where Selene first showed Alec how to practice for their orange beads. To the north is the spot where he and Creed used to sit and talk whenever Alec felt discouraged by his failure to please Dad, and while the rope has long rotted away, the branch above him still holds grooves from the swing the two of them convinced Dad to hang years ago.
Alec stops, curling his toes into the ground and rocking back onto his heels unable to choose a direction. Memories of Creed and Selene follow him wherever he goes, whether it's the woods or the stream or the path to school, and Alec can't bear to look and see whether everything has changed, like his bedroom, or if it's all the same, waiting for two friends who will never come back.
He can't just stand there, not when Mom or Dad might look out the window and spot him frozen like an outlier on the platform after the gong fires, and so Alec chooses a direction without thinking and heads off. His feet carry him forward with no need for input from his brain, and Alec lets his mind turn off until he stops at his preprogrammed destination.
The Valent house stands proud and tall and welcoming all at once, with the porch Alec used to climb to get up to the lowest gable and up onto the roof, the drainpipe where he slipped and twisted his ankle, the ivy vines up the side that they nearly set on fire once while playing with a 'borrowed' flare. It looks exactly the same as it did when Alec left three years ago, the blue trim still freshly painted against the white siding and the front walk free of weeds and cracks.
Alec pushes open the front gate before his brain catches up with him, and he crosses to the door and raps his knuckles against the wood. Thirty long, terrifying seconds later, the front door opens and Alec looks down — down! — at Aunt Julia.
Aunt Julia and a little boy maybe two years old, with dark hair and bright blue eyes just like Selene, and Alec was raised to be polite and trained to keep a straight face with a broken rib but he can't help gaping.
The boy ducks his head into Aunt Julia's shoulder, and she strokes a comforting hand over his hair. "Alec," she says, stepping back, and the three years of distance are there in her voice but her smile hasn't changed. "Come on in, I'll get you something to drink."
Aunt Julia holds Selene's tiny doppelgänger against one hip as she pours Alec a glass of water. The boy stares at Alec as they sit down at the kitchen table, and Aunt Julia props him up in her lap and hands him a small cup of his own. "Kit," she says, leaning down to catch the boy's eye. "This is Alec. Alec, this is Kit. Do you want to say hi?"
Kit hesitates, pulling his cup closer, but then he gathers his courage and bursts out, "Hi!" before going back to staring.
Alec tears himself away. "Kit?" he asks. It's not a common name in Two, but then again, neither was Selene.
"Christopher," Aunt Julia says, her mouth quirking, and she runs her hand across Kit's hair again. "But that's hard to say."
Christopher is not a Centre name, too many syllables, and Kit most definitely isn't. Alec knows better to ask, but he can hear the back off, he's ours in the boy's name as clearly as if they had tattooed it on his forehead. When the time comes, thirteen-year-old Kit will not be bringing home a piece of paper asking them to waive their parental rights. While no son of a Peacekeeper could get away with avoiding the Program permanently, Alec will be surprised if he stays long enough to touch a weapon.
"How old is he?" Alec asks, then stops, studies the boy with the bright, intelligent eyes, and smiles. "How old are you, Kit?"
"Two," Kit says, holding up the proper number of fingers and glancing up at Aunt Julia to check. He flicks his eyes back to Alec, considering, and that's his mother's measuring gaze that holds Alec still. "Alec like trains?"
"I do like trains," Alec says. The relief inside him wells up to the point of bursting; for the first time since Creed's Games he actually feels like talking, like he can speak instead of swallowing down whatever he wants to say, even if it's just talking about a toddler's hobbies. "But I've never been on one. What about you?"
"Yes!" Kit waves his hands, and Aunt Julia moves the cup out of the way. "Mama family far away. Big train. Very fast!"
Alec only met Aunt Julia's brother and his family once, a long time ago, and doesn't remember very much. Really, the only thing that's stuck is Selene thought the house full of grownups was boring and convinced Alec and Creed to help her hide everyone's shoes. "I'm jealous," Alec says, blinking back the memories. "What about toy trains? I used to have one."
Kit brightens, and he squirms until Aunt Julia lets him down. "I show you," he promises, and scampers out of the kitchen.
Aunt Julia watches him go, a soft, fond smile on her face. "He looks like —" Alec begins without thinking, but Aunt Julia's eyes tighten and a flash of pain crosses her face. "—both of you," he finishes as smoothly as he can. Inside he kicks himself; of course they'll know that their son looks like his absent sister. They don't need Alec pointing it out like a Games commentator.
"He does," she says, her tone neutral but guarded. "You're back. How are you?"
Alec lets out a long breath at the question, but Aunt Julia doesn't withdraw. He pushes his hands into his hair — he can, now, no cameras or trainers watching to check his reaction — and leans forward until his elbows hit the table. "He deserved better," Alec says in a low voice. He'd never dare say so in front of Dad, or the trainers, or any of the kids still in the Program, but this is Aunt Julia. If nothing else, he could always be honest here.
Her mouth thins. "I know," she says. It's a simple acknowledgement and she doesn't take it further, but even that lays a cooling balm against Alec's raw nerves. "Paul saw him off at the Justice Building."
"Did he?" Alec swipes a precautionary hand across his eyes, but his fingers come away dry. "I — good. I'm glad. Dad — hasn't said anything yet, about Creed. I don't know if he's going to. I don't know if I want him to."
Aunt Julia doesn't venture a prediction, but she does stand up to refill Alec's water glass. Right then Kit comes back, arms laden with wooden engines and cars, and Alec laughs and helps him place them on the table before they all fall everywhere. Kit scrambles up onto the chair, placing himself firmly on Alec's lap and connecting the cars together, having apparently decided to stop being shy. Alec lets him, listening to the chatter about which cars go in what sequence and obeying Kit's orders to move this one in front of that one. He doesn't bother trying to keep up, just sits and basks in the presence of so much life.
It's not hard to imagine, with an empty house and Selene's ghost around every corner, why Aunt Julia and Uncle Paul would want to fill the silence. Alec and Aunt Julia don't talk much more after that — what is there to say that wouldn't be sticking fingers in a wound that's still gaping for both of them — and Alec lets Kit drag him around the house for a full tour of all his favourite toys and hiding places. By the time Aunt Julia asks if Alec wants to stay for dinner, it's been hours and Alec hasn't thought about Creed or Selene or the ache in his chest more than a handful of times.
"I should go back," Alec says, and the weight settles back on his shoulders at the thought of the silent dinner table and the scrape of forks against plates, but they're his parents and he owes them. Kit puts on an exaggerated pout, and Alec laughs and drops down to one knee. "I'll come back and play another time if you want me to," he says, and Kit beams.
"Kit, go put your trains away, Daddy's going to be home soon," Aunt Julia says, and Kit takes off. "You can come over any time you need, Alec."
Alec nods. "Thanks," he says. "I — I'm sorry, but I don't want to say anything wrong, does — does he know? About Selene."
Aunt Julia sucks in a sharp breath, but then she collects herself and shakes her head. "Not yet," she says. "Not until we know what to tell him."
Not until he has a Victor or a corpse for a sister. Alec swallows, and the pressure behind his eyes builds and builds and the rock in his throat blocks his air and everything feels loud and hollow at the same time —
"Alec," Aunt Julia says quietly, and pulls him in for an embrace.
He doesn't cry. Alec lets her hold him, bending down to rest his forehead against her shoulder, and he counts off ten seconds — ten seconds to forget about being brave and stoic and grieving with respect, ten seconds of Aunt Julia's steady fingers combing through his hair — before stepping back. "Thanks," he says again. He calls out goodbye to Kit, who darts back in to wave and demand a high five, and forces himself to head back out.
Creed's interment happens two days later. A call from the Program Head Office and they take a car out to the Field of Sacrifice, standing in a small huddle with both mentors as two pine boxes are lowered into the ground. It's the first time Alec has seen a Victor up close since Devon — Enobaria and Claudius have mostly stuck to themselves, no visits to see the trainees in Residential like some of their predecessors — but it feels wrong even to look at them for more than a glance.
They're the only family there. The girl goes into the ground with no one but her mentor to mourn her, away in another part of the field with her tribute-siblings, and Alec is here to bury his brother but he can't stop thinking about that girl. What must it have been like, standing in the Justice Building for an hour with no one coming to see her, waiting for the train and knowing that the only person who cared whether she walked out or not was the mentor assigned to bring her home? Did she think to herself that at least someone would show up if she died?
What kind of family doesn't even come to watch their dead daughter's funeral? The field is dotted with headstones behind the waving grasses and flowers, over one hundred dead teenagers sleeping beneath their feet. How many of them went into the ground without a second thought from the people who raised them for those first thirteen years?
Alec startles out of his reverie when he registers the handle of a shovel being pressed into his hands. There's a dark smattering of dirt on the top of Creed's coffin already, Dad and Mom standing off to the side, and — oh. Alec's throat tightens, and he digs the shovel into the ground and tips a scoop of soil along with the others. The dirt hits the wood in a scattered series of thumps, falling like clumps of hail on the shed roof the time Alec and Creed got caught in a summer storm.
He steps back and hands the shovel back to the waiting crew, eyes stinging.
There's no ceremony, no speeches. Callista drops a handful of seeds onto the soil once the workers fill in the hole, and she steps back and raises her fist to her chest. "Mountains and earth," she says, bowing once to the headstone and once to the mountains behind, and Alec and his parents follow her example. Standing here in simple clothing, her dark hair pulled back and warm golden skin free from the Capitol-levels of makeup, Callista looks less like the Butcher of 41 and more like a mother who lost another son.
She turns to them with a sharp, hawklike movement, and Alec nearly jumps. "His things are yours, if you want them," Callista says. "It's your right."
Dad lets out a slow breath, then shakes his head. "No. You're his mentor, the right is yours."
Callista nods, eyes narrowed in what Alec would guess to be a flash of respect if he dared, then waves her hand in a gesture that needs no words to signal the end of the conversation. Alec turns to follow Dad and Mom to the car, dried grass rustling against his ankles, when Callista stops him with a word. "You," she says, and Alec freezes. "The brother."
He swallows hard, and he should say 'yes' but the words choke back the way they have since leaving the Valents' house. Alec nods instead, and Callista holds out her hand. "For you," she says, and drops a circle of braided leather and glass beads into Alec's palm. "He asked that you have it."
Alec stares at the bracelet, amazed that something so small and light could weigh down his arm like a concrete brick. It's been scrubbed clean since the Arena but traces of blood still linger in the centre of the beads, clinging to the inside. His breath comes hard in his chest, and he has to do something, say thank you to the Victor who just gave him back a piece of his brother — walk away before Dad notices and comes back to see what's wrong — but he can't.
"He didn't talk about them," Callista says, looking past Alec over his shoulder. Her eyes flick back to him, dark and intent and watchful, and Alec's feet stay rooted to the ground. "He did talk about you. Your brother didn't fear death. He feared what would happen to you without him there to watch over you. I had to give him drugs to make him be quiet and go to sleep." She exhales hard through her nose, exasperated at the memory, and it's not funny but the ghost of a laugh escapes Alec as he closes his fingers over the bracelet and slips it into his pocket.
Callista steps forward and takes Alec's chin in her hand, fingers pressing hard into his jaw. "Your brother is dead," she says. It's not quite venom in her voice but it's close, pain drawing the lines around her eyes until her gaze bores through him. Alec sucks in a breath but she doesn't let go. "You are not. Let's not waste it, shall we?"
She steps back, repeats the shooing gesture with her fingers and strides off to meet her fellow mentor on the other side of the field. Alec stays frozen for a few more heartbeats, then tears himself loose and all but runs for the car.
Dad watches him in the rear-view mirror all the way home, but he doesn't ask and Alec doesn't offer.
Alec can't sleep that night. Creed's bracelet sits under his pillow, tucked into the pillowcase away from anyone who might come looking, and Alec's mind has been spinning since they got home and he can't take it anymore. He flings off the covers and heads downstairs for a drink of water to ease the headache pounding in his skull, knuckling his sandy eyes and fighting back a loud yawn.
He makes it to the cupboard and has one hand at the edge when a soft sound from the living room stops him. This house and Dad's habit of appearing around corners taught Alec stealth years before the Centre did, and he creeps back through the kitchen and peers around the door without making a sound.
Dad sits on the edge of the couch, feet planted on the floor and elbows digging into his knees, holding a piece of paper in his hands. It's angled away from Alec so he can't read what's on it, but the pile next to Dad, half scattered across the couch cushion where movement from his hip knocked it over, that's visible enough. They're all drawings or letters from Creed, most of them from before he joined the Program based on the size and shape of his handwriting.
Most of them are family portraits, the four of them standing in front of the house, but Alec catches a glimpse of a few where Creed is taller than Dad and has a shiny sword and a crown on his head. His throat tightens, and Dad sets the paper in his hand aside — MY HERO: JOSEPH SEWARD printed carefully in block letters at the top — and fishes out an old photograph, the edges creased and worn.
Alec nearly gives himself away craning to see it, and when Dad's hand finally moves so the glare from the lamp no longer obscures the image, the memory punches Alec hard in the chest. It's the three of them — Creed, Alec and Selene — dressed up for the kids' costume party at the annual Peacekeeper gala. Selene and Alec are wearing white, with their fathers' belts looped twice around their waists and carved wooden guns strapped to their hips. Creed has a wooden sword covered with foil to make it shiny, and he's smeared brown paint to make Arena dirt on his face and grins as he loops one arm around Alec and Selene's shoulders. Alec looks uncertain and Selene vaguely mulish, resenting having to pose, and in Alec's fuzzy mind as soon as the camera shutter closed she writhed away and put her 'gun' to Creed's head to arrest him for unwanted hugging.
Dad presses both hands to his forehead, the photo crumpling in his grip, and the air feels thick like molasses but Alec tears himself away because he has no right to see this. His father is strong and brave and stoic, and he gave his son to the Hunger Games without reservation like any good parent and never questioned his duty, end of story. It's not Alec's place to sneak around corners and watch him break.
The next morning Alec still can't find the words, but he fills out the application to the Peacekeeping Academy that he'd been ignoring on his desk and leaves it on the breakfast table. With Creed gone it's up to Alec to be the son Dad wants; he owes his father that much.
"Uncle Joe!" Kit bursts out, tearing past Aunt Julia through the open door and scampering down the front walk. Dad laughs and drops down into a crouch, scooping the boy up into his arms. "Uncle Joe, present? I deserve it!"
"Do you now," Dad says with mock sternness, drawing his mouth into an exaggerated frown and raising one eyebrow. Kit giggles and claps his hands, squirming with suppressed laughter, and finally Dad grins and pokes him in the nose. "As it happens, I did bring you a present. What do you think it is?"
Kit goes through an increasingly ridiculous set of guesses as Alec stares, his brain spinning as he tries to process what's in front of him. The 'do you deserve it' game is familiar, forever burned into Alec's memory, but the rest of it — Dad swinging Kit into the air with a wide smile, Dad holding Kit upside-down like a monkey-mutt while the boy's face turns red and his laughter turns to hiccups, Dad teasing Kit about bringing him a real tiger-mutt from the Capitol — none of this matches with the imposing figure who frowned at Alec through his entire childhood.
Mom has already slipped past them and headed inside, but Alec stays behind, standing off to the side to watch. Dad sets Kit back down on the ground, then reaches into his pocket and holds out his fists for Kit to examine. "If you guess the right hand you can have it," Dad says, lowering himself to eye level. "If not, then I suppose I will keep this present all to myself." He hides both hands behind his back, and Kit dithers for a while, hopping from foot to foot with one finger in his mouth, before finally tapping Dad's left arm.
If that weren't enough to make Alec's head want to burst already, now Dad actually shifts the hidden item from his right hand to his left before moving his hands out front to show Kit. "Well done," Dad says, holding out a small, hand-carved train engine, as the echo in Alec's memory says Better luck next time! "You have keen instincts. Now what do you say?"
Kit beams, showing off his small, perfect teeth. "I deserve it!" he proclaims, one hand on his hip, and he looks so much like Selene, proud and sassy and completely unafraid, that Alec takes a step back.
He's not the only one. Dad's face shadows for a moment, just a flicker like a wisp of cloud across the sun, but then he winks and drops the toy into Kit's waiting hand. "That you do," he says. "Come on, then, let's help set the table."
It's not just that night, either. They eat together with the Valents two or three times a week, even more than in the old days, and each time they come over Kit runs to Dad first. Dad doesn't bring him a present every time, and if not Kit pouts but forgets soon enough and drags him off to look at the latest construction project he's built in the family room out of wooden blocks.
That's not the weird part — Alec and Creed used to show Dad their projects when they were little — but the part where Dad kneels down and lets Kit explain and tells him he has a gift for architecture, that's weird. He doesn't point out where the foundation of Kit's block skyscraper is uneven so too much vibration in the floor will make it topple. He doesn't point out the traffic flow problem in the middle of the highway system.
He does give suggestions if Kit asks, and the praise is always specific and never over the top effusive or insincere, but even so. Alec sits on the couch with his feet curled under him and watches them, the way Kit scrambles up into Dad's lap the way Alec never did even at his age, and his insides twist with jealousy in a way that hasn't happened since he was ten.
It's ridiculous. Alec spent his entire childhood swallowing envy over Creed, the favouritism and how everything in life fell into place, and now what did that give him? Creed is dead and Alec has over a decade's worth of memories tainted sour by his own bitterness and resentment. He's not about to do the same thing to a toddler.
There could be a hundred reasons why Dad treats Kit differently. Kit isn't his son and the expectations are different, no Centre or Peacekeeping from an early age for this one, so no need for Dad to encourage that kind of attitude. Maybe it's Creed's death, maybe it was the three years with neither of his sons at home that made him miss having someone young around.
Alec isn't going to ask, that's for sure, and he isn't about to make the same mistake with Kit as he did with Creed, or even Selene. He and Kit are different people with different lives, and if Alec can't help wondering what it feels like to be a little boy who gets hugs whenever he asks for them — to be a boy who could ask for hugs — that time is over and there's no point in getting weepy about it now.
It does mean that the words choke off at the Valents' house the way they do at home, unless he comes over to see Aunt Julia and Kit alone without anyone else around. If Aunt Julia notices that Alec sits through dinner without saying a word, she's apparently decided it's his business because other than a few pointed glances she doesn't comment.
Dad and Mom still haven't noticed, and at this point Alec is almost glad. He spends his days studying, working through the lessons he missed during his years at the Centre so he can get his schooling completed and join the Academy. He saves his words for when they matter, but as the weeks pass and Kit's chatter continues whether he gets a response or not, Alec speaks less and less.
When a full week goes by and Alec hasn't said anything once, it hardly even feels like a milestone. The next day Kit pulls a book about hovercrafts from the shelf and asks if Alec will read it to him, and Alec slings an arm around the boy's shoulders and sets the book across both their laps and breaks the streak of silence without fanfare. It's not like any of it matters.
The Victory Tour is over and the girl who killed Creed safely back in her district when Alec completes the education portion of his pre-Academy application. The next step is a psych evaluation, but after all his years in the Centre Alec knows how to answer questions the way they want to be answered. He's grown up steeped in Peacekeeper pride; he barely even needs to practice to get through the interview, and when the acceptance letter arrives a week later Alec isn't exactly surprised.
He's not disappointed either, not exactly. He'd thought maybe they would sense that he's parroting, but Alec has said the words for so many years that it hardly makes a difference how deeply he believes them. Dad lost one son and that leaves Alec, and the Sewards have been Peacekeepers since the Dark Days and beyond. Alec can't exactly turn his back on all of that just because he has misgivings, can he? Especially when he couldn't even put words to them with a pistol pointed at his skull.
The Academy is — fine. There's a lot of talk about reprogramming, training kids who've held weapons since the age of ten how to use them to subdue and deescalate rather than murder. Nothing but nightsticks and pistols on duty, no knives or swords or machetes or anything that the Centre gave them, and the trainers are patient with the kids who slip and accidentally go for the jugular and everything is fine.
Alec, at least, doesn't need the reprogramming, and he has plenty of practice playing the good soldier. For the first time he doesn't have to struggle to place high in the initial personality assessments, rating high on obedience and leadership ability without the added need for hyper-aggression and over-the-top violence. Nobody asks him to pick fights or break ribs when it's time to finish a fight; it's over when the other trainee gets pinned to the mat, fast and clean, and that's all there is to it.
It's fine except for the days when they learn techniques to use against an untrained opponent — though they don't use the word 'opponent' or 'target' here, instead it's 'assailant' or 'detainee' or 'dissenter' — the days when they hand the trainees a thin metal pole and show a diagram of where to hit to drop another person without causing permanent damage. Alec stares at the baton in his hand and thinks about using it against someone smaller, weaker, desperate from addiction or starvation or madness; imagines cracking it across their wrist, their knee, their kidneys.
Pain compliance, the trainers call it. Instead of killing blows and death strikes they talk about the continuum of use of force, but caution that spending too much time talking will likely result in more people being injured or worse. The best way to avoid a messy situation is to stop it from happening, they say, and so Alec learns five ways to choke without killing and where to place his foot to keep someone from standing.
His old classmate Payton is there — Payton who bounced back when Alec ground him into the floor but got cut for coming back from his first kill test laughing and insensible — and during their off time he talks big about getting a posting out in an outlying district and keeping the traitors in line. "They'd take over the country if we let them," he says, others nodding, and Alec tunes him out and goes back to loading the practice pistol.
(The pistols remind him of Selene, out in the woods with her father and their friends, laughing with the men and shooting cans from tree branches and beaming under their proud shouts. Selene's eyes glittering as she mis-aims and hits a squirrel on the leg instead of square, watching it writhe and squeal in the leaves until she notices Alec watching her and finishes it off. But training is training and no matter what memories clamour for attention, Alec doesn't miss a step.)
The trainers do talk about killing in plain language, at least. Odds are most officers stationed in Two won't ever have to fire a lethal shot, but those posted in Eleven or Eight or Six where dissent and crime run rampant compared to the rest of the country, they won't be so fortunate. It's not the same as the Arena, the trainers tell them; this isn't about an audience, or playing for the camera. It's about efficiency, cold and effective and impersonal. Over and done with fast before anyone else gets hurt, no games.
Hunting practice means Alec starts off one of the best shots in his class, and it's almost easier. Shooting is detached; it places him far away from the target in most cases, and unlike swinging a sword his body won't shudder from the blow. The recoil from a military pistol is nothing compared to the wrenched shoulder Alec nursed for three days after hacking through a man's neck with a shortsword.
(Decapitations looked so quick and easy on television. He'd thought it would be clean. Instead the blood flew in spatters and hit him on the face, and when he opened his mouth to cry out in shock he tasted it, hot and bitter and salty on his tongue. It had taken him six tries to get through while the body flailed and thrashed on the ground, and he nearly fainted but held his ground. The trainers passed him, giving him high marks for effort and showmanship, and afterward sat him down for pointers on how to make the stroke count the first time.)
After a few months they graduate from flat boards with painted silhouettes to human analogues, made with ballistic gelatine and plastic bones. Later they'll work on moving marks and speed drills, but today it's about getting used to a more human-shaped target. First in line, Alec lines up his shot, exhales halfway and fires, aiming for the T-zone made by the eyes and nose like the trainers told them.
The 'head' explodes in a mess of artificial bone and blood, sending chunks of gel flying. The skull spirals off the platform from the force of the shot, rolling onto the ground and coming to a stop near the trainer's foot, and the white backing board splatters dark red in a furious pattern like a camera freeze frame.
"Good," the trainer calls out. "Solid shot, but watch your stance. You're still shifting your weight at the last second. Next!"
Alec stands frozen for another second, but the girl behind him mutters "Move!" and he forces himself out of the way before the trainers notice.
That night he dreams of his kill tests, only they stare at him with bloody holes in their eye sockets or with portions of their skulls blown off and bits of brain showing through. Alec wakes with a gasp, clutching his chest with one hand and flinging away an imaginary pistol with the other, and rather than trying to go back to sleep he climbs up onto the roof and stares up at the stars. The sky hasn't changed since the times he and Creed and Selene used to do this, and if Alec closes his eyes and wishes hard enough then maybe they'll be there when he opens them.
Instead it's the empty roof, cold and hard with the shingles edged with frost, and Alec shivers alone until he can't take it anymore and crawls back inside.
Alec almost asks Uncle Paul once, what it felt like to shoot his first criminal and how different it felt to making his first kill at fourteen. If it was easier to push away the guilt without having to scrub the blood physically from his hands; if it had helped to know that whoever he'd fought was working against the general harmony and safety of the people.
But then Alec looks at Uncle Paul's cane, thinks of the dissenter from Four who put a harpoon through his thigh and ended his career in the field, and the question fades. It feels like a silly question, a whining one, and anyway Alec couldn't begin to articulate what he wants to hear in answer. That it's easier, that the weight of responsibility fades with time? That one day he will be able to put a bullet in a man's spine and another in his skull and go home to a hearty meal of rare-cooked meat without a second thought? And so the question sits inside Alec's chest until it withers just like all the others.
The Academy is pleased with his progress, at least; they send home reports each month, and Dad reads them with pleasure at the dinner table and often stops to clap Alec on the shoulder and give him a warm smile. It's the first time Alec can remember getting this much affection and approval, no Creed to steal his thunder with grander tales and no footnotes about Alec's lack of commitment to excessive violence to temper his black and white scores.
It's just that Dad's smiles come with the memories of shifting his grip on the nightstick to deliver a more debilitating blow, and Dad praising his marksmanship swirls together with dropping a classmate to the ground with three precise chest wounds during a rubber-bullet live drill. It's all mixed up and confusing and muddled, Dad's smile and the twisting in his gut, and trying to tease them apart is about as effective as separating dirt from water without ending up covered in mud.
Kit, at least, doesn't care about Alec's training scores, and unlike his sister he's never dragged Alec in for a game of Peacekeepers or Dark Days. Instead Alec amuses himself on his visits by helping Kit build taller towers, the boy sitting on his shoulders and demanding which blocks be passed up to him as their construction rises above both their heads.
One afternoon in spring Aunt Julia calls Alec into the kitchen. The town had been hit by a sudden thaw following the last storm of the winter, and Alec's boots are solid with slush and muck as he kicks them off and lines them up by the front door. Kit's boots and coat are missing, and Alec gives the empty spots a curious glance on his way past.
"Kit is with Ramon today," Aunt Julia says, interpreting Alec's look. "I wanted to talk to you."
Alec exhales slowly and takes the hot drink she hands him, warming his fingers against the ceramic mug. He settles down onto the kitchen chair, and Aunt Julia takes a seat on the adjacent side. "You haven't been talking," she says, and the sip that Alec had taken to cover that very silence goes down too fast and makes him cough. Aunt Julia waits until Alec settles, and through it all her dark-eyed gaze is serious and steadfast without being sharp or judgemental. "You talk with Kit, and sometimes with me, but for the most part —"
He sets down the mug, pushing it across the table with one finger. "Not much to say," Alec says, trying for nonchalant, but speaking the words out loud takes much more effort than he'd expected. The urge to pull back the words, to swallow them like usual, comes almost before he forms the sentence, and he has to push himself to make an actual sound.
"Alec," Aunt Julia says, soft and disappointed, only Alec has a lifetime of weathering other people's displeasure and she's not aiming it at him. "I'm not angry with you," she says a moment later, confirming his thoughts. "But I do wonder what you think you're doing."
This time an easy answer doesn't come to mind, and Alec spreads his hands instead. Aunt Julia waits, not impatient but not backing down, and Alec considers before finally adding, "My duty."
Aunt Julia's mouth thins. "Alec, I know we talk a lot about how duty isn't just for things that make us happy, but it's not only the things that make you unhappy, either. There are ways to do your part and still be happy with what you're doing."
He laughs before he can stop himself, a harsh sound that scrapes in his throat, and Alec takes another large sip to try to soften it. "That's not really a factor," he says. "I'm not hiding my secret dream to be an artisan or a bricklayer. It was always Peacekeeping."
"It's easy not to think about alternatives when you're never given the choice," Aunt Julia says. Alec stills, and she nods. "Being a Peacekeeper is a good job, and a good life," she continues. "It's a proud profession, and I'm sure you'd do it credit. But it is not the only way to serve your district. You wouldn't even be the first in your family to choose another path."
No, Alec has heard of distant cousins who became trainers or teachers or Centre administration, even politics — but they'd all had siblings who joined the force. Each branch of the family sends one Seward to the Academy every generation, and that tradition has not been broken in all the years since the first traitor war.
"Peacekeepers help people," Alec says. It's the thing he's clung to since joining the Academy, the thing he tries to remember whenever he closes his eyes and his darkened vision fills with blood and broken bones. "I like helping people."
"There are other ways to be a Peacekeeper, too," Aunt Julia counters. "Have you thought about becoming a field medic? I've known you a long time, Alec. I think you could have a talent for medicine."
It's been years since Alec hurt himself while playing and went inside to have Aunt Julia patch him up, but the memories stick. She always explained everything she did, from applying salve and bandages to stitching up a nasty cut above his eyebrow, telling him why head wounds bleed more and what makes bruises and why they hurt. Sometimes when Alec didn't want to go back outside and face the Peacekeeping Inquisition just yet he'd stayed behind and asked her questions, learning the proper way to wrap a bandage or tie a tourniquet. He'd found it soothing, even with the pain, and Aunt Julia's implacable demeanour even as she rinsed his blood from her hands and cleaned her instruments never failed to settle him.
He'd never once considered becoming a doctor himself — or had he? His memory stirs; there's a faint echo in this conversation, maybe they talked about it once when he was younger, but Alec can't quite grasp it. Alec blinks and sits back, and Aunt Julia's mouth quirks just a little in mild triumph. "It's something to consider," Aunt Julia tells him. "Not everything is guns and enforcement and patrols. The Corps needs doctors as much as it needs soldiers."
"I'll think about it," Alec says, and Aunt Julia smiles.
Alec looks it up at the Academy library later. Field medic is indeed a specialization that the Academy trains, but the more he looks into it, the more he recoils. Field medics aren't sent out throughout Two on routine assignments like the domestic Peacekeepers; they're brought with the heavy assault squads to handle injury in combat. Their jobs are to keep their soldiers alive during the fighting, and to do the same to anyone they're up against — at least, long enough for them to be taken in for questioning.
It might mean healing but it also means more death, and the more Alec imagines watching his comrades shoot and kill — when he pictures patching up a prisoner so they can be interrogated later — his blood chills.
Aunt Julia works at the central hospital in the emergency ward; she deals with heavy injuries and lots of blood, and more than once she's saved a person's life — or failed to do the same. She often gets called in at terrible hours, and she disappears with her supplies and comes back in the morning and sleeps until noon before going back for the afternoon shift. Once she got brought down south after a mining cave-in, and she hadn't talked about it but she'd come back silent and grave.
That night Selene crawled in Creed and Alec's window and told them she'd eavesdropped on her parents talking; there had been a man whose leg had come clean off and who died when Julia tried to sew him back up, and a woman whose head got half bashed in but managed to walk away from the operating table alive.
Blood and death and heavy decisions in both, and they might be made with a scalpel instead of the barrel of a gun but at the end of the day it's very much the same.
Alec tries not to think about it, afraid he'll chase the idea away if he puts too much pressure on the details. Instead he waits until the next time he and Aunt Julia can have some time alone, and when she nods and fetches him a mug of coffee it's all Alec can do not to burst.
"I don't want to be a field medic," Alec says. Aunt Julia frowns but he keeps going before she can ask. "It's — I don't want to be near fighting, or guns. I hate them and I hate combat and I don't want to leave the district. And I'd want to know that anyone I helped would be going home, not back out into the field or to jail or who knows where." It's the most he's spoken in one go in a long time, but now that he's started the words tumble over one another like the slide of gravel that warns of a rockslide.
Aunt Julia doesn't interrupt, only nods to let him know she's listening, and Alec sets down the mug and moves his hands away in case he manages to knock it over with over-enthusiastic gesticulating. "I want to help people," he says. "I want to save people. I want to make people's lives better. But not just soldiers or prisoners, I want — families, and kids, normal people. Do you think I could do that?"
"Not in the Corps," Aunt Julia says carefully. "The only official medical position is on the field. Academy-trained doctors also work at the Centre, sometimes, but —"
Alec winces. Yes, that would be kids, all right, but he can't imagine having to set a child's broken bone only to tell them to get back out there and keep fighting. Can't imagine writing notes on whether they cried or screamed or swore or sat through it bravely, so the trainers could issue a reprimand or a surprise helping of dessert.
"I didn't think so," Aunt Julia says lightly. Selene is still there — she'll be gearing up for volunteering in the summer, they'll be announcing the decision soon — but she doesn't let it shake her. "Those are your options if you stay with the service, but they're not the only ways to be a doctor. There are plenty of posts in towns all around the district, serving the families and people who live there. The stakes might not be as high — and the pay and prestige certainly isn't — but is an option." She studies him for a moment, eyes serious, then nods. "I think you could be good there, too."
"I want that," Alec says. He'd been a healthy kid for the most part and only vaguely recalls the doctor's office his parents took him to for medicine, but when he searches his memory he does find images of comforting, matter of fact voices and capable, soothing hands. Very much like Aunt Julia, in fact. "But I — do you think I could?"
"If you mean do I think you'd pass the training and be successful, then yes," Aunt Julia says, and Alec straightens up with pride even though it's silly. Her personal and decidedly biased judgement is not a selection committee, and she has no serious data to base that on. "I'm sure the Academy would write you a good recommendation, even. But if you're asking me what to tell your parents, I can't answer that."
Alec nods. It might not be the answer he wanted, but it is the one he expected. "But it's a good job?" he presses. "It's — respectable?"
"It is," Aunt Julia reassures him. "Like I said, you would not be attending a lot of high-profile galas, but no one would scoff at a doctor. It's a fine career path."
Alec grins — actually grins, his cheeks aching after a few seconds at the unfamiliar sensation — and he darts up from his chair and kisses her on the cheek. Aunt Julia laughs and pats him on the shoulder mock-condescendingly, then shoos him off to find Kit.
What to do next Alec has no idea, but as it turns out, he doesn't have to. The next time they're over for dinner, Aunt Julia pulls him aside right when he and his parents are leaving and hands him an envelope. "It's an application for medical training," she says quietly. "There's no deadline, they accept new students every month. Look it over, see what you think."
Alec slips the envelope under his shirt and tucks it in his waistband. Aunt Julia tugs at his hem, pulling it straight where it got caught in his belt, and gives him a conspiratorial wink. It's all Alec can do to keep another ridiculous grin from taking over his face on the walk home.