The night before Creed's Reaping, Alec breaks his streak of following every rule at the Centre by disobeying three at once.
Everyone over fourteen knows how to jimmy the doors so the automatic locks don't kick in after lights out, but tonight is the first time Alec has ever done it. He waits until the night trainer passes by on her rounds, then slips out into the dimly-lit hallway and hugs the wall until he gets to the kitchens. There he works the lock on the door to the storage room — Tanner showed Alec how to do this when they were thirteen, Alec jittery and looking over his shoulder every two seconds, and Tanner couldn't stop vomiting after his third kill test and got cut but Alec remembers — and makes off with a couple of apples and a handful of oatmeal cookies.
That's two, enough for laps and suicides until his muscles turn to jelly and Alec throws up all over himself, but the worst one is still coming. His third is bypassing the corridor that will take him back to his room in the Junior Wing, with the rest of the kids who haven't done their Field Exam yet, and sneaking down past the Senior dorms to the big suites right at the end of the hall where nobody gets to go unless they have a gold bead on their wrist.
Creed's name went up on the list last January at the end of the Victory Tour. For the last six months Alec hasn't managed to see him at all, and yesterday a trainer pulled Alec aside and told him that, brother or no, he wouldn't be allowed to see Creed off at the Justice Building but would have to go back to the Centre with everyone else. Alec has been in Residential for nearly three whole years and never even showed up late to breakfast, but if they think he's going to let his brother walk into the Arena without a goodbye — well.
Now Alec is out after hours in a restricted area with his hands full of stolen snacks. He hasn't talked to Selene since she took her Centre Exam — no goodbye party for her, just like she predicted, and Uncle Paul and Aunt Julia had stayed home and not come over for dinner or anything for a week after — but he likes to think she'd be proud.
Unfortunately, being new at rule-breaking means Alec isn't exactly good at it; he got himself here but he didn't factor in how to get into the locked Volunteer suite on his own before one of the trainers catches him. Alec stands in front of the door for a minute as his heart thuds in his chest, but finally he knocks the bottom of the jamb with his foot and prays that Creed is awake. He's going to feel very stupid if his brother decided to get a good night's sleep instead.
Alec's breaths seem to fill the hallway with their echoes until he swears the trainers will be on his back any second, but then a sliver of light appears under the door and a light scraping clicks at the lock on the other side. A moment later the door opens and Creed stands in the gap, face confused for a second but clearing as soon as he realizes. "Hurry up before they see you," Creed says, stepping aside to let Alec pass and shutting the door behind them.
The bright light stings Alec's eyes after creeping around with nothing but the small, round nighttime illumination at the bottom of the walls close to the floor, and he stands there blinking stupidly, holding the apples and cookies in the biggest room he's seen since leaving their parents' house.
"It's big, isn't it," Creed says. He puts his hands on his hips and spreads his chest in an imitation of Dad's best power pose, and Alec almost laughs because Creed never does that unless he's embarrassed and trying not to rub his neck. "It's weird. I guess it's so we get used to it before we're in the Capitol. Nobody wants to see Twos ogling everything like we're a pair of farmers."
"I guess not," Alec says. His own room in the Junior wing is a ten-foot shoebox; the bed touches three of the walls, and there's just enough room for a small dresser and a bit of floor space. They say the Senior dorms get a desk and a bit more space, but Alec won't know for sure until he passes his midpoint exam. All Alec's friends have had theirs and moved on; he's the only one in their year left. He's trying not to think about why they're holding him back, or what he might have to do in order to earn it.
Creed finally turns his attention to the food in Alec's hands. "Did you steal those?" he asks, incredulous, and when the hot flush creeps up Alec's throat Creed laughs and takes the ill-gotten bounty from him. "This is great! It's a real feast. Come on in, sit down for a while. You must be freaking out after all that."
Alec makes a face but doesn't argue, and he sits down in a chair while Creed pulls a knife from under his pillow. He scores the first apple around the centre, then grasps it in both hands and twists. The apple breaks apart with a loud crack that makes Alec jump, but Creed only holds it up with a bright, boyish grin and shows Alec the half with the seeds, arranged in the distinctive five-point star pattern. Uncle Paul showed them that, years ago; Alec had thought it magic, at the time. A few quick strokes with the knife and Creed pops out the core, tossing the pieces without looking to land in the garbage can with a dull rattle.
"Here," Creed says, handing both halves to Alec and starting on the second. He's contented as he works, focused on his task as though tomorrow weren't the biggest day of his life, and Alec can't help but watch him. His hands are large and wide-knuckled like Dad's, palms and finger pads scored with calluses and small healed-over cuts, and he hums to himself as he slides the knife through the apple's flesh. He grins at the seed pattern in the second one too, and for a second he's ten and not eighteen, time sliding away from Alec in a strange rush before Creed flips the knife in his fingers and the light flashes on the blade.
Alec takes a bite of apple, sweet and tangy and crisp all together, and for once it doesn't taste like dirt and guilt for having filched it. Creed slices off a chunk and bites it right from the tip of his knife, and he leans back in his chair and props his feet on Alec's thighs as though it hasn't been years since they've really spoken properly. "So," Creed says, gesturing with his knife hand. "How are you? It's been forever."
"My kill test," Alec says. The juice will dry sticky on his fingers but it feels weird to lick it off like they're kids, and so he sits and presses his fingertips together, feeling the resistance when they separate. He did the same thing with the blood two years ago, and quickly blinks to clear the image from his mind before it can coalesce.
"That's right."
They didn't talk about it then, not really; Creed had found Alec on top of the climbing wall after he came back to the Centre, pale and with a new, shiny red bead that kept drawing his gaze. Creed dropped down next to him and they sat with their legs dangling over the edge, Alec pushing his feet against the numbered outcroppings. For a long time he'd thought they sat in silence until finally he'd registered Creed's hand on the back of his neck, his brother's voice repeating "It's okay, you're okay" until it turned to meaningless syllables in Alec's mind.
Alec had cried, he thinks, but he'd kept his breathing even and not let himself make a sound and Creed didn't point it out. The trainers never called him out and he'd moved on with the rest of the Fourteens, so if he had it must not have been other than then.
The silence stretches between them like a wire pulled taut, and just like a wire Alec hesitates to slice it in case it snaps back and slices him. Five years have passed — one-third of Alec's life — since Creed and Alec have been able to talk about anything for real, and Alec's brain crowds close with words and confessions that he shoves back because he knows better than to bother a tribute the night before the Reaping.
Creed sighs, digs his heel into Alec's leg. "Come on. This is the last time we'll be able to see each other for a while. Tell me something new. You're still my brother."
The first thing that comes to mind, Alec immediately silences by shoving a whole chunk of apple in his mouth and working it around in an attempt to chew even as his face burns. Creed is the perfect tribute and the perfect Seward, and he's going into the Arena but if he'd chosen to be a Peacekeeper instead then he would've become a perfect one of those, too. And twenty years later he'd marry his sweetheart from the Academy and have two beautiful, perfect children and start the whole thing over again.
That's Alec's job now, and the apple goes down in a hard lump as he swallows, trying his best to shut out the memories of Chase's hands on his biceps. Now Creed's eyebrows have knit together, and he pulls his feet out of Alec's lap and sits forward, abandoning the knife and the apple on the end table and fixing Alec with the same concerned stare he's worn since they were little. "Hey," he says. "Tell me."
Alec runs a hand through his hair. "You remember Devon, the way he was with the Careers?" he says finally. Back then Alec only had Creed's description, but since then he's actually seen it. Devon's manipulation of the Pack has been a trainer staple since it happened, though the trainers haven't recommended anyone actually go so far as to replicate his tactics. "With the girl from One and the — boy from Four?"
Creed raises an eyebrow. "I think it's burned into my brain. If you're wondering if that's going to be my strategy, by the way, it isn't. Not unless my mentor tells me to, anyway."
Alec tries to imagine Creed kissing half the Pack and snorts. "No, that's not what I meant. I meant — the part where he kissed boys and nobody cared."
Creed's gaze turns sharp and thoughtful, and Alec holds his breath on the exhale so it won't be obvious. "I wouldn't worry about that," he says. "Everybody goes through that phase in Residential, it's just because we're not supposed to fraternize with potential district partners. You must have noticed the trainers don't care, and they stamp out anything that's not okay."
It's funny, Alec almost expected Creed to make the same sour face Dad did when they talked about Devon's strategy, and he'd prepared for the awful, sinking feeling of his brother's judgement. But this, the airy dismissal, this almost sticks worse. "I'm not talking about the Residential phase," Alec says, curling his hands. "I know about that, and it's not — you didn't, did you?"
"Well, I did, sort of," Creed says, flashing Alec a wicked grin that will look great plastered across two-storey screens tomorrow. "For practice, anyway. Like I said, in case my mentor told me to. I couldn't be flopping around with no idea like an idiot." Alec gapes at him, and he laughs, finishing the last of his apple with a flourish. "It was all right," Creed continues with his mouth full, and that, at least, will not be making it into any televised scenes. "I don't think I'd do it for fun, though, girls are better."
Of course. Of course Creed did everything set out in front of him, even going through the Residential phase in the most obedient, approved and — most importantly — perfunctory fashion. Anger flashes in Alec's chest, and before he can reconsider he blurts out, "It's not a phase. I mean — not always. I mean, I don't want it to be."
Creed blinks as Alec's face burns, and for a second the Volunteer falls away and there's Alec's brother underneath, startled into confusion and out of his usual charm. "Well, that's all right, though," he says finally. "Twenty years is a long time, and then you'll be all right to do your duty after that."
The bubbling of worry inside Alec stops dead and sinks down, spreading through his chest and his limbs with an odd, final sort of heaviness. Twenty years of service is a long time, more time than Alec can even contemplate when he's still trying to make it through the Program day by day, and maybe Creed is right. Maybe after twenty years Alec will fix himself and the odd restlessness that drives him awake at night, maybe by then he will be ready to settle down with a girl — woman — and have kids like he's supposed to.
Meanwhile Creed will be in the Victor's Village doing whatever he wants — he could kiss all the boys if he wanted to and no one would say anything, though of course he won't — because those are the rules. Win the Games and you win the world, and it's right that glory follows sacrifice because that's what this country is built on except — except with Alec it will be backwards, won't it, every day counting down to everything he's managed to keep and will one day lose.
But this is the last night they have together, and Alec is not a child. "Who do you think your mentor is going to be?" he asks instead.
Creed grins. "I know, actually. It's Callista. They told me last week."
"Callista?" Alec says, and that was not the proper tone of reverence he's supposed to use when discussing a Victor, let alone The Butcher of 41, but — Callista. "Callista who cut that boy's heart out while she was — while they were —" Alec saw that footage once, when he and his friends spent their free time one evening watching highlight reels. For a week afterward he couldn't close his eyes without the images playing in his mind.
Creed laughs, though he does turn a bit red. "Well, she hates being copied — remember what she did to the girl from Nine whose stylist gave her the same hair? — so I don't think that's what she'll tell me to do."
"I hope not," Alec says, grinning back, and now he wishes Selene were here instead of off in the Senior dorms because she would have loved this. She'd cackle at the idea of a strait-laced Seward with Two's craziest mentor — She has her own line of S&M clothing, he hears her howling in his head, Do you think she'll make you a mini-version to model? — and it's been a long time since Alec thought about her really but now missing her makes his chest ache.
He could try to make her jokes but they'd only come out awkward if he said them, so Alec settles for laughing and poking Creed in the ribs instead.
The more they talk the years fall away, and the various beads glittering on their wrists no longer represent months and years apart but links forged between them. Alec has killed the same as Creed has; he's jumped in the same frozen lake in January and learned to claw himself out before the shock set in. He'll never be a Volunteer, will never see the Arena or the glory of the Capitol, but they have this now, two boys and a handful of black leather strands and a pile of bodies between them. Whether Creed always beat Alec in their footraces hardly matters now.
Finally Creed leans back, reaches his arms over his head and stretches his triceps, gripping each elbow in turn. "I should sleep," he says with a small, apologetic smile. "I don't know how they expect me to, but —"
"No, I know." Alec swallows, and the urge rises to fling himself at his brother and hold on tight like he never let himself when they were children, but no. Creed isn't just his anymore; even as he sits there in his room, dressed in Centre-provided sleep clothes with his hair mussed and a fading training bruise on his cheek, Creed is somehow bigger, more, his eyes going faraway as he looks at the clock ticking away the hours.
Instead Alec holds out one hand and presses the other in a fist over his heart. "Mountains and earth," Alec says. Creed smiles at him, regal and almost solemn and far above him like the golden eagles that swooped across their namesake mountains back home, and Alec can't leave it there. "Mutt-face," Alec adds recklessly, heart pounding a few beats.
Shock widens Creed's eyes for a split second, then he laughs, drops his fist from the formal farewell position and pulls Alec in for a hard embrace. "Mutt-breath," he shoots back, gripping Alec's shoulders and pressing a rare kiss to his hair.
Alec pulls away first so Creed doesn't have to be the one to do it, and this time he salutes properly. He takes one step back, and then another — it will be fine, the Arena is in a week but the Games will be over in a month and they'll see each other soon, they will — as the air around him seems to thicken, dragging him back. "Good hunting," Alec says finally, one hand on the door frame.
Creed grins, sharp and predatory. "Indeed," he says. "See you on the other side."
Creed goes down in a spray of blood, clutching his stomach and scrambling to hold everything inside as the faces of the dead tributes fade from the sky above. The boy from Seven stares at the sword in his hands, too big and too heavy and so awkward he only barely managed to swing it once except once is all he needed. Creed was hard asleep, exhausted after nearly three days of paranoid awareness, when the other boy stumbled onto his hiding spot; he'd dragged himself half-awake and was staggering to his feet with one hand groping for his machete when the blow struck.
Alec can't breathe.
"My goodness!" bursts out Caesar Flickerman, his cheerful voice jamming a knife in Alec's spine. "That certainly was an upset! Let's take a look at that again, shall we?"
The camera rolls back thirty seconds then spools out in slow motion, blood spattering the camera lens as Creed crumples and the lines of his strong, handsome face go slack. Alec's chest burns and his nails dig into his palms and around him the room full of tribute candidates has gone stone-silent.
"I think I jumped right out of my seat," Flickerman says. "Claudius, check my hair, will you? If I've gone white I'll have to make an appointment with my stylist, stat!"
One of the trainers lets out an irritated growl and hits a button on the remote, cutting the commentary audio. Without the breezy stage patter the sounds of the Arena come through the speakers twice as loud, Seven Boy's ragged breaths and Creed's tortured, wheezing gasps for air like the rasp of a steel file over bone.
It's a bad wound, ugly and jagged, and the numbers flash red in the corners indicating the severity of the injury and the likelihood of survival. Creed splays his hand over the red smear on his shirt, thrashes with his free hand until his fingers close around the hilt of his weapon. The movement jars Seven into taking a step back; Creed, his face fixed in a rictus of pain and determination, pushes himself to one knee and swings.
They're not close enough for Creed to make contact but it spooks Seven anyway, and the boy turns and runs rather than risking coming any closer for a finishing blow. His footfalls vanish into the distance as Creed sways but stays upright, balanced with one leg bent and the tip of his machete scraping against the concrete. He stays there for a few more seconds after silence descends — the second blip on the tracker in the corner of the screen disappears, indicating only one tribute in the area — then collapses again.
Any minute now, Alec thinks. There's not a sponsor gift out there that can fix this one.
Pressure builds in Alec's throat but he pushes it down, the sting of bile at the back of his throat. On his left, Kevin — still the smallest and the fastest, but now with an odd intensity in his eyes more often than not — shifts uncomfortably and mutters "shit" under his breath. Alec ignores him, all of his vision tunnelled toward the screen, skin prickling and ears strained, waiting for the cannon.
No cannon. The minutes stretch on and still no cannon; the main Games feed switches away from Creed to flick through the other tributes — Seven Boy running with awkward strides, the sword bumping against his back; the girl from Six darting out from her hiding place to find food; Angelique, from One, exhausted and thin-lipped but determined as she stalks the streets. The Two feed stays on Creed, nowhere else to go after Myrina died two days ago, and every time he exhales Alec thinks this time, this time — but then comes another gasping intake of breath, then another, as Creed's face pales and his eyes glaze over.
When they all trooped in this afternoon Alec caught sight of Selene a few rows up near the front, sprawled with her year-mates between a dark-haired boy and the redhead Alec recognized as Petra, her rival. Alec drags his gaze away from the screen and finds her now, sitting stock-still with her legs crossed and her back as ramrod-straight as Alec's. As the first hour passes and Creed still clings, Petra reaches over and takes her hand. Selene doesn't look at her or even move, but her grip tightens. They sit together, two girls whose hatred for each other is Residential legend, white-knuckled hands clasped as they watch Alec's brother die.
The main feed stays away; when they do flip over to Creed for an update it's in the background on the screen behind Caesar Flickerman and his commentators, and even they only make perfunctory marks and move on to the others. This won't be playing well with sponsors, this slow, lingering death of a Career tribute from the district where deaths are meant to be short, brutal and glorious. If Creed had been a torturer then they could at least play up the irony, but he'd been honourable: clean combat kills, no hamstringing and leaving them for later. They'd started calling him the Angel of Death after he'd put a starving girl out of her misery, and there's no way to spin this.
After three hours, the trainer gets up and stands in front of the screen. Alec lets out a sharp cry of protest that he stifles with a hand over his mouth, and the others in the room stir and shift. The room is emptier now than at the start, two thirteen-year-olds and one fourteen having been escorted out for crying, though one of the fourteens, a dark-haired girl half the size of everyone else, drags her gaze away from the blood with obvious reluctance. Her companion, a big boy in the year above, stretches and looks bored. They'll still be here tomorrow; the ones who cried, definitely not. Meanwhile Petra and Selene let go and cross their arms, never once looking at each other.
"Everyone out," the trainer says. "It's late. Get some sleep, we'll do an announcement if anything happens."
The others filter out but Alec stays, glued to the floor even when he tries to obey. The trainer gives him a sharp look. "That means you," she says, warning.
Felix, one of the boys in Alec's hear, lingers near the door. "Come on, Alec," he says kindly. He's one of the best in their year, nobody has ever managed to win a sparring match against him, but he's also the nicest of them and Alec wishes they could all forget the killing and just go home — "I'll walk with you."
"No," Alec says. It takes him a few tries, his mouth dry and lips cracked when he tries to wet them, and the trainer thins her lips but Alec forces himself to be calm. Nobody ever got what they wanted at the Centre by bursting into tears. He bites back the instinctive 'please', never quite trained out of him despite years of trying. "I have to watch. He's my brother, I owe him that much."
Onscreen, Creed's eyelids flutter closed and he passes out again. Good. Maybe this time he won't wake up; every time the cameras catch his eyes rolling back and forth in panic Alec nearly screams.
The trainer taps one finger against her arm, then clicks her tongue. "You cry, you're going to bed," she says, and the words are harsh but Alec understands her meaning. If he's lost it enough to cry in front of people, here, then the emotional risk of sticking with it outweighs the benefits of passing the test. They're here to be broken, but not destroyed. He hates that he knows this.
"Yes sir," Alec says.
Felix disappears, then comes back a minute later with a pair of cushions stolen from the nearest common room couch. He hands one to Alec, who takes it on autopilot, and sits next to him without talking.
Felix isn't Selene — he's never pushed Creed into the lake and cracked up laughing when he surfaced, spitting water, with his hair in his eyes; he doesn't know that Creed's favourite colour is the deep blue of the sky just after the sun sets — but Alec can't ask her to be here. They don't talk anymore, and Selene is playing to win. She can't afford this kind of emotional distraction, and maybe it's better like this. Selene wouldn't cry, same as Alec, and the two of them pretending they're all right would be too much.
The trainer glances at Felix, opens her mouth as if to protest, then shakes her head and lets them be. She pulls up a chair near the door and sits down with a folder of paperwork braced on her knee, glancing up now and then to check on Alec or what's happening onscreen.
They watch, and nobody speaks. Once the trainer gets up and comes back with a cup of water, which she presses into Alec's hand before going back to her seat. He stares at it, unsure what he's supposed to do, but Felix covers Alec's hand with both of his and lifts the cup to his mouth. Muscle memory takes over when the water touches his lips, and Alec drinks, swallows, repeats like a good little Centre soldier until it's gone. Afterward he crumples the cup and tosses it into the garbage can across the room, where it falls in a long, perfect arc.
Alec pulls his legs to his chest, resting his chin on the top of his knees. Creed's eyes find the camera sometimes, unseeing and accidental, and each time Alec swallows a handful of sharp stones. The Hunger Games are about honour and glory and the beauty of sacrifice, but there's nothing beautiful here. It's just death, ugly and messy and agonizing, one rattling breath at a time.
After a while Alec's mind drifts away from the image and sounds onscreen, back down the mountain to the house he grew up in. His parents wanted this for Creed; they dedicated him to the Program as a baby, sent him to the Centre as soon as they would take him. They talked about the Games at dinner, encouraged Creed to build mock Arenas with blocks and household objects and strategize Career Pack tactics while arranging the vegetables on his plate.
Dad never talked about this part. It was always Creed the Victor ever since they were old enough to know the word. When Creed said he wanted to make wings out of bedsheets and jump off the roof and fly, Dad cautioned him that he'd only fall and break his arm. But when Creed drew up plans for his house in the Victors' Village and pranced around the yard with a stick as an imaginary sword, Dad never sat him down and reminded him of his odds. No one ever told Creed he should be realistic and prepare himself for the possibility of never coming home.
What is Dad thinking now? He and Mom didn't stay up all night watching the Games like the big parties in the Capitol that sometimes made it on TV, but Alec can't imagine him going to bed now and checking in on things in the morning. They're probably awake the same as Alec, sitting in the living room and not talking. Maybe Uncle Paul and Aunt Julia are there, too, or maybe they're at home at their house doing the same.
Sacrifice, Dad used to say with a solemn frown, is not just for things we're willing to give up. If anything, the greater the love, the better the sacrifice.
Alec used to grit his teeth when Dad said stuff like that because it seemed easy enough to say, and what had Dad given up anyway? He'd wanted to be a Peacekeeper, he'd finished his active duty covered in commendations and married Mom and had the perfect son on the first try. It hadn't been a sacrifice to send Creed to the Centre, he'd been proud and happy the whole time. Alec had never caught his father crying over one of Creed's photos after he went into Residential, or making sad faces when Creed's birthday rolled around and he wasn't there to celebrate it.
But for all that, Alec can't imagine Dad watching this and brushing it off with a line about how he'd given his son willingly and so accepted his death the same way. He can't imagine what Dad is doing, either — he's never seen him cry, or break down, or show any kind of sorrow — but this is Creed, and Dad might have talked big about sacrifice and honourable death but Alec thinks he must have always secretly pictured Creed winning, too.
He definitely can't see Dad thinking it's all right because he still has one son left, but that's a horrible, stupid, selfish thought and Alec pinches his forearm with his fingernails to chase it away.
Alec glances over at Felix, who hasn't said a word or moved except to shift his balance now and then. People expected him to drop out after his first kill test but here he is with the Centre bracelet around his wrist, red, orange and silver beads glittering against the black strands. For the first time since Felix sat down, Alec breaks the silence. "Do you still want to do this?" he asks in a low voice so the trainer won't overhear. "After all this, every year, you still —"
Felix runs his fingers over the bracelet, still not looking away from Creed. "Volunteer?" he asks, and Alec doesn't answer but he nods anyway. "Yeah. I mean, of course."
The spark of anger that the trainers have been trying to tease out for years starts up in Alec's chest. "Even seeing stuff like this? What if this is you in two years?"
Felix looks at him, eyes serious and old and a little bit sad, the way Creed's did before he took the Residential exam. "If I don't volunteer it will be somebody else," he says. "Like you, or Kevin, or Grant. And if none of us, it would be someone who's not prepared." He turns back to Creed, whose vitals have plummeted almost to nothing but who's still alive, stubborn as always. "I'm willing to do that so someone else doesn't have to."
Creed said the same thing, back then. It's noble, probably, or honourable, or however many other of those words that speeches like Felix would get in training, but that's not the word that floats to the top of Alec's mind. That word is stupid, and worse than that — a waste. A horrible, awful waste that Creed's entire life boils down to eleven years of training, three weeks in the Arena, one well-placed sword stroke and a night of taking too long to die. Potential and talent and charisma, none of that means anything in the end. The concrete doesn't care if it's Creed's blood or the blood of a tribute who never contributed anything to anyone. Either way, both of them never will again.
"I guess," Alec says finally, because he has to say something, and Felix squeezes his shoulder.
Against his will, Alec is drooping by the time the proximity alarm on the Two feed lets out a warning. He shakes himself and sits up straight, knuckling his eyes and pushing hands through his hair as the main feed shows the girl from Six converging on Creed's position. The District 2 feed pans out as she closes in, pulling away from Creed's waxen face to take in the entire scene.
She actually trips over him, not surprising in the dark and however long it's been since she had a good meal. For a horrible second Alec is convinced she's going to turn and run — she backs up, gasping in shock — but then she stops herself and inches closer, one hand clenched around her knife.
It's been so long — seven hours, Alec calculates blearily, though it takes him four tries to get it right even with the clock in the corner — and if she leaves Creed here then who knows how much longer it will be. Alec holds his breath as the girl kneels next to Creed's unresponsive body. She shifts awkwardly, trying to find the right angle as her hand shakes, but finally she positions himself by his shoulders. She mimes a practice strike above his neck, then another, and on the third she drops her hand and drags the blade across his throat.
Creed's breath stutters, and a few seconds later the cannon fires. The girl scrambles to her feet, sways for a second like she's about to be sick, then turns and runs. She doesn't bother with Creed's machete; she's wiry but small, and would likely fall over backwards trying to wield it. A few seconds later her footfalls fade and Creed is alone.
The trainer lets out a long breath — beside Alec, Felix doesn't move but his eyes pinch at the corners — and Alec tightens his arms around his knees because if he doesn't the ground is going to disappear and swallow him.
A low chime sounds over the Centre loudspeakers to mark the death for those not watching, and somewhere in the Senior wing Selene will have heard it whether she'd stayed awake or forced herself to sleep. Onscreen a hovercraft descends, claw-cage extended, and Alec watched Creed fight and he watched him die but he can't watch this, his body flopping loosely in the hovercraft's grip as his insides spill out, and Alec presses his hands over his eyes and takes harsh, shallow breaths that burn his lungs until Felix tells him it's done.
He looks up in time to see the hovercraft disappear before the Two feed flickers out.
Alec intends to be brave, to honour Creed's sacrifice with the proper reverence, but everything spins and his stomach rebels. On the main feed Flickerman is talking about strategy and how the girl from Six has handily added one more to her tally and just might be a contender, and the last thing Alec thinks before it all goes black is at least he didn't puke all over himself first.
The Games end in a showdown between the girl from Six and the boy from One with an upset that leaves the girl standing and the golden boy bleeding on the concrete, or so Alec hears later. He doesn't leave his room long enough to see any of it for himself, and the trainers don't come to fetch him for training or analysis sessions or anything. When his stomach finally protests too much to ignore Alec drags himself out to the cafeteria for a protein shake, but no one tries to get him to stay.
They don't even haul him out for the finale, and that's when Alec knows that whatever else happens, he's done here. Getting in trouble at the Centre is one thing, but when they don't even bother, that's when they've given up. He'll be out with his cardboard box of personal effects by the end of the week, once they have time to process the paperwork.
Felix comes to see Alec once, rapping softly at the door and calling through the crack, but Alec rolls over to face the wall and doesn't answer. He wraps the thin blanket around himself, fingers digging into the fabric, and there are no trainers here to watch him and no scores to match or anyone to care so it doesn't matter anymore, but while Alec's eyes burn they stay dry.
He tries, once, conjuring up every soppy childhood memory he can, all the promises the made in boyish earnestness that would never come true now, but all that does is make Alec's stomach churn at the selfishness of it. Creed is dead, and Alec wallowing and trying to feel sorry for himself won't make it any better. He might not believe all the talk about honour and nobility in death anymore, but ridiculous pantomimes of grief don't help, either.
Alec's anger at himself buoys him up enough to head out and take a shower hot enough to turn his skin bright pink, but when he tries to ride the wave and eat a proper lunch the food sits in his stomach like a bag of wet sand. He chokes down half a protein shake and returns to his room on shaking legs, and once back inside he does pushups until his arms collapse.
The day after that, the trainer who stayed with him and Felix shows up at Alec's room with the piece of paper that says he can go home. Alec saw it coming but it still hurts, less like a slap to the face and more like a muscle ache deep in his side. He gathers his things into the box without really paying attention, and he signs the release form after only a cursory scan.
It's not until the trainer holds out her hand for his bracelet that Alec balks. Like it or not, the bracelet has been part of his life since he was eight years old. Each strand represents how hard he fought to get it, throwing the first punch and reacting with aggression to things he'd much rather let slide. Even more than that, the bracelet gives meaning to everything he's done for the past eight years.
With the bracelet, Alec is a tribute trainee who followed orders and passed the tests the Centre threw at him. The red beads are an accomplishment, a rite of passage that binds him not just to the others in his year but to Selene and Creed, even while separated. It lets everyone in Residential know exactly what he's done and how hard he's worked; a boy sitting and staring at his meal without eating, turning the dull kitchen knife over and over in his hand, means nothing on its own, but a glance at the bracelet to see a new, shiny red bead tells the rest of the story. With the bracelet, every life taken at Alec's hand was part of a greater purpose.
Without it, Alec is a sixteen-year-old who wasted over half his life trying to become something that doesn't matter, trying to live up to a brother he'll now outlive instead. Without the bracelet the kill tests stop being tests and just start being kills, three people who died because Alec murdered them with nothing grander to make that fact less ugly.
"It's standard," the trainer says, almost gently, when Alec covers his wrist with his hand and holds his arm close to his chest. "No one gets to keep theirs except the ones who age out."
Slowly, fingers fumbling with the clasp, Alec unfastens the bracelet and lets it fall into the trainer's open hand. His wrist looks strange, bony and naked, a pale strip of skin beneath the head of his ulna. Alec immediately tugs the sleeve of his uniform down to cover it, releasing a slow breath once the fabric reaches the back of his hand.
As an afterthought Alec remembers his watch, the one Dad gave him on his seventh birthday. They don't wear watches in Residential but he'd brought it with him anyway, and Alec pulls it from the box and fastens it around his wrist, over the empty space. The links pinch his skin — he's filled out since he was thirteen — but it's better than nothing, and Alec breathes a little easier.
Neither of his parents made it to eighteen either; they were farmed out to the Peacekeeping track at sixteen, just like Alec would have been soon enough. At the end of the day all three of their wrists are bare; does it really matter that his parents tested out and Alec is being discharged for a breakdown?
(It says so on his paperwork: honourable discharge: psychological, extenuating circumstance. Not exactly something to frame on the refrigerator, but it beats failing a test, probably.)
"One more thing about your release," the trainer says as Alec reaches for his box. He stops, frowning. "The Centre runs a transition program for anyone coming out of Residential. You'd live in one of the dorms with other ex-trainees, with counsellors and tutors to get you ready for life outside."
Alec swallows, folds his left arm behind his back to stop himself from reaching for his wrist again. "Or?"
"There's also your parents," she says. "In most cases that's not an option, parents sign away their rights when you enter Residential and they're not equipped to deal with trainees who've made it as far as you have. But given your family's connection to the Program and the Corps, you're also cleared to go back with them. A lot of trainees from the high-level families choose that route."
Alec takes a step back until his calves hit the edge of the bed, and he falls heavily onto the hard mattress. He'd never really thought about what would happen after; joining the Peacekeepers was always the next step as soon as he was old enough to understand what it meant. "I thought I'd just go right to the Academy."
The trainer shakes her head. "No, nobody does, not straight away. There's a transition period for everyone. It's just up to you whether you'd like that better at the dorms or at home."
It's been three years since Alec said goodbye to his parents at the steps of the main Centre building, but that doesn't mean they've been absent. They've lived with him every day, judging his actions and weighing his successes and pushing him to be better at every step. But the Alec they remember isn't the one who left, and if Alec can't even decide if he likes who he's become, how can he expect his parents to?
Then again, the thought of living in a dormitory full of counsellors and washout ex-trainees who have no idea who Creed is, who've never met him or heard him laugh or watched him play a prank and then put on his best innocent face afterward — people whose strongest memories of Creed will be him bleeding out on camera — that thought makes Alec's stomach clench. He might not be able to cry over Creed's death but that doesn't mean he can close the book and put it away, either.
Dad and Mom will have lost their son; if nothing else, that grief is something they all share. For once, Alec and his parents have something more in common than the Program.
"I want to go home," Alec says. His voice cracks but it doesn't matter anymore; the paperwork is signed, and he doubts they'll go to the trouble of revising it now to add that he sounded like a baby. "I want my parents."
The trainer nods. "We'll make the calls tonight," she says. "Everything else will go through tomorrow. For now —" she gives him a look that's sympathetic but hard at the same time. "I'm not going to tell you to stay in your room, but don't upset the other trainees or you'll be removed. Understood?"
"Yes sir," Alec says. He thinks of the thirteens who were pulled out for crying, how many of them came back the next day at breakfast and how many found themselves at the detox dormitory instead. He has no desire to run through the halls screaming about Creed's death, demanding that the others wake up and realize that everything is futile. Like Felix said, if not them then someone else, and without tributes brave enough to volunteer, District 2 would be a cesspool of fear and uncertainty for everyone just like in the districts.
That doesn't mean he wants to find Felix and listen to his calm idealism, either, not when Alec can more readily imagine the boy with a sword in his gut than standing on stage wearing the victory crown. Really, there's only one person that Alec needs to see.
He finds her at the range, lined up square to the targets with the butt of a crossbow braced against her shoulder. The rest of the range is deserted — range weapons are never as popular, too far for the spray of blood and the rush of close combat — and Selene stands alone with a whole pile of bolts lined up beside her. Alec stands back by the door, noting the fierce economy of motion as she reloads and fires again and again until the targets bristle like victims at a firing range.
Four years apart means Alec can't read her anymore, and even as kids Selene often confused him more than he ever understood her, really. Still, he watches her as she shoots, and Selene always mastered every challenge with a deadly grace but now that characteristic smoothness stutters into choppy, almost furious gestures. She never misses — each shot hits its target dead-centre with a dull thunk — but the longer she's there the less practiced her movements get until she's jamming the bolts into place with the same vehemence that she might knife an opponent.
Finally Selene fumbles the string when trying to notch it back into place, and it slices the underside of her fingers. She hisses and pulls back, sucking at the beads of blood and staring at the line of red across her hand with a dark expression. Alec steps away from the wall, letting his feet fall hard against the floor, and Selene whirls around to stare at him.
"Hey," Alec says. Selene eyes him warily, and Alec keeps his hands at his side and doesn't close the distance between them past ten feet. Don't upset the other trainees, they said. "I'm out. I'm leaving tomorrow, I just — I didn't want to go without seeing you."
The words sound thin and pathetic, like slapping one of the colourful bandages Aunt Julia used to put on his knees over a gaping gut wound (Creed's hands pressed to his stomach, red red blood seeping between his fingers) but what else is there? Selene's eyes narrow but she doesn't close herself off, and her hands twitch as she fights not to shove them in her pockets because that's her tell and Alec knows it as well as he knows his own.
Next year, likely as not it will be Selene standing on the Reaping stage, holding the hand of another brilliant, brutal boy and roaring at the crowd. She's good, she's always been good, and Selene might have watched Creed die the same as everyone else but she's never been one to let herself be held back by someone else's failure.
(Alec didn't stay for the trainers' recap of Creed's mistakes, but he's seen enough Games to hear the commentary anyway. Creed pushed himself too far, stayed awake too long instead of finding somewhere to hole up for catnaps throughout the day, and when he finally fell asleep he crashed too hard to wake up in time. Alec imagines Selene listening to the trainers, eyes sharp and face serious as she files that information away so that when it's her turn she won't go down like that. For every tribute who falls, the death analysis might seem tacky but it could also save a life.)
Alec fights to find the right words as they crowd his mind, and at the front of the pack are all the ways he could beg her not to stay, not to do this. Whatever happened to being a Peacekeeper like her father (the Centre happened, and Petra happened, and the trainers and razor competition and her own gut-deep stubbornness happened), and how is Alec supposed to go on alone knowing that this could be the last time he ever sees her?
Selene's frown deepens, and Alec calls on every inch of his training, digs down to the core of steel inside him that his father fought so hard to put there. The odds are never in their favour and the Centre fills their heads with lies but — but. It also means that if this is Selene's last year to live, she'll live it believing she's invincible, that she can overcome everything and win because she's the best of the best and soon everyone will know. If she dies then she dies, and filling her with doubt for the sake of his own peace of mind won't change that.
Alec straightens his shoulders. "Good luck," he says. If his district is built on a lie then it's at least a lie that lets them live without fear. "Kick Petra's ass, I know you will."
Selene doesn't smile, and Creed's ghost floats above them and makes the air heavy, but her mouth does quirk just a little. "You bet," she says. She swallows and picks at the hem of her shirt, just for a moment, before catching herself. "You, too. Good luck, I mean."
"Thanks," Alec says. He hugged Creed before he left but Selene is different, wilder and even more untamed than when they were younger. She wouldn't want him to, and anyway, touching her now — making this all real — would only break whatever control Alec has managed to keep. He gives her a wave, awkwardly formed as he stops himself from the traditional Two salute that would only make her scoff, then turns and does his best to outrun his doubts without tipping them off by taking off at full speed.