Alec's first major breach of rules at the Centre had been sneaking out to see Creed. At the Academy, it's breaking into the director's office to obtain a copy of his file so he can attach it along with his application. He could ask, but there's no way to guarantee that it won't get back to Dad, and Alec wants to be sure. Dad isn't going to like it, the first Seward to break with tradition for generations, but if Alec has a guaranteed acceptance then it might be easier to swallow.

"Better to ask forgiveness than permission," Selene used to say, and that had been a common maxim at the Centre. There the trainee wisdom had held that if doing the thing was worth whatever punishment the trainers would assign for it, then may as well. Alec never subscribed to that particular theory, but now it fills him with an almost giddy glee.

Dad would say no if Alec asked, but even he must respect doctors. When he sees how hard Alec has worked, even behind his back, he'll have to understand.

Being an alumnus of the Centre means Alec is his own legal responsibility even without having passed Reaping age, and he seals the application and drops it in the mail all on his own without requiring a guardian's signature. That night he has to slip out of bed and go for a run just to calm his jitters, and after he climbs into bed, individual muscles jumping in protest and brain spinning despite the physical exertion, Alec closes his eyes and pictures the first acceptance letter that doesn't fill him with creeping dread.

He doesn't dare tell Aunt Julia on the odds that it will jinx it, even though jinxes are a superstition that Dad says belong to the quarry and have no place in a modern home. The hope buoys Alec through the next two weeks of training, even as they learn holds that break the wrist or the arm and start moving away from techniques to subdue larger, armed opponents and onto smaller, unarmed ones. Soon he won't have to do this anymore; soon Alec will stop having to cram his head full of different ways to hurt people and start learning ones that heal.

It's a perfect plan, until the day Alec comes home to see Dad sitting at the table with an envelope and a piece of white paper laid out in front of him. "Alec," Dad says evenly, and Alec's hand automatically tightens to stop himself from dropping his bag. "Would you care to explain what this is?"

Alec might not have been good at juvenile delinquency as Selene, but he knows better than to offer up an excuse or apology before he's sure. Instead he crosses the room and picks up the paper, taking in the official letterhead of the District 2 Medical Centre and the words 'Congratulations and welcome'.

Pride and elation swell up inside him, but the look on Dad's face douses them cold. It's the face he made the only time he ever laid a hand to Alec as a boy, the day he sent him out back to cut a green shoot from the tree in the backyard and soak it in water before handing it over. The soles of Alec's feet twinge in memory, and Alec swallows.

"I don't want to be a Peacekeeper," he says. "I want to be a doctor."

They're the first words Alec has spoken inside his house in eight months, and they may as well have caved the roof in.

"I see," Dad says, his expression still frozen hard and deceptively neutral. "When were you going to tell me of this? Or were you hoping I would just not notice that my son switched careers without ever consulting his parents?"

Alec bites down on his tongue to stop from wetting his lips. "I wanted to make sure I got in," he says, grasping for the certainty that had held him when he mailed the application. It made so much sense before, but it melts beneath Dad's level gaze. "If I didn't, it — I didn't want to waste anyone's time."

"Don't lie to me." Dad doesn't yell, doesn't slap the table or even raise his voice at all, but Alec flinches back anyway. "If you actually thought you were acting honourably, you wouldn't have sneaked around like this. You would have come to talk to me like a man."

Alec opens his mouth, shuts it, and tries again. "I wanted to!" he says. His voice scales up, sounding like a little boy's, and it's as though the years between him now and the frightened boy who jumped whenever he heard footsteps are like layers of clothing, slowly peeling away one by one. "I wanted to, I did, I just — I didn't know how to say it."

"I thought you were happy being a Peacekeeper," Dad says. His fingers tighten against the tabletop, knuckles turning white. "It's what you've wanted since you were a little boy."

"No, Dad, it's what you wanted!" The words tear themselves loose before Alec can stop them, but it's too late now. There's no sticking a scab back on once it's been pulled away. "I never wanted the Program or the Academy, I just — you never listened!"

Dad jerks back, a minute movement that scarcely puts an extra inch between them, but he may as well have staggered back from a physical blow. Alec nearly babbles apologies but grits his teeth and swallows them down. "I see," Dad says again, though not quite so icy calm this time. "And I've just forgotten all the conversations we had about this, did we? All the times you came to me and explained how you feel and we discussed things like adults, those have all slipped my mind?"

Alec winces. "No, I —"

"You don't talk to me," Dad says. "You've never talked to me, not like your brother did. And now you're punishing me for failing to have a conversation I never knew you wanted —"

"No!" The ground is giving way beneath him, and Alec flounders to stay steady. "No, it's not — I didn't know what I wanted, Dad, and so I just kept trying, but it wasn't right. It wasn't me, but I didn't know what was, so I didn't think there was anything else to do. And — and now I do."

Dad nods, but it has the air of an Arena cannon rather than an offer of reconciliation. "Is there anything else you would like to tell me?" he asks. "Any other important life decisions I have been cruelly forcing you into against your consent?"

It would be suicide to answer, as good as a skinny outlier tribute taking off for the cornucopia because their panic says move and they don't have the brains to direct their legs where. But each year the first five minutes are a bloodbath no matter how many mentors must advise their tributes to run away, and so Alec speaks.

"I don't like girls," Alec says. Not that he's had much opportunity to find out what he does like, but what clandestine experiments he has managed have been enough. His face burns under Dad's impassive stare, but he keeps going. "I don't want to marry a girl and have kids someday. I still — I think — I want to get married and have kids, but not with a girl. People can do that if they want, if they're not Peacekeepers. One of my friends at the Centre, he had two moms. They adopted him from one of the children's homes. I want do to that."

Five seconds of eternity later, Dad finally answers. "So not only are you refusing to follow the family path, you're refusing your duty to this family altogether. You're the only Seward left, Alec, what happens to us if you have no son to pass on our name?"

"If I adopted I would give them our name," Alec says, and this time Dad actually reels backward but he presses on. "It's not just blood that makes a family. We're not related to the Valents but Selene and Kit still called you Uncle Joe. I'd still be a Seward, and I'd want my kids to be too. Just — not like you thought, maybe, but I'm still your son."

Dad lets out a long exhale, and he moves to brace his hands flat on the edge of the table. "If you do this," he says in a low voice, and for the first time something cracks underneath before he pushes past it. "Then no, you aren't."

"What?" The air leaves Alec's lungs in a whoosh, and he staggers and has to brace himself with one hand against a chair. "What, for becoming a doctor and not liking girls? You're going to disown me over that?"

"If my son has lied to me all his life and never trusted me with the truth, if my son thinks that his secrets are too good to share with his father, if he thinks it's more honourable to go behind my back and try to manipulate me, then what sort of son is that?" Dad pushes back his chair and stands up. His face has gone pale, but a slow flush creeps up from his neckline. Alec can't move. "If all this is true then I didn't have a son. Instead I had a liar who lived in my house and ate my food and availed himself of every advantage I gave him and then flung it back in my face. So yes, Alec, if this is your choice then I want you to know exactly what you're choosing."

For years the Centre tried to help Alec find his rage, to dig deep inside himself until he hit that well of anger that would let him override his better instincts and his doubts and the little voice that said maybe we shouldn't, with little success. Alec couldn't even describe what rage felt like, not like Selene who snapped and screamed and shoved at the slightest provocation once the Centre gave her permission. He half suspected he wouldn't even know if it happened.

Until now.

It boils up deep inside him, starting in his gut and spreading to his chest, crushing his insides and squeezing his lungs, but instead of fear or panic that paralyzed and held him frozen, the anger fans him, feeds him. "If a father only wants his son if he plays by his rules and fits his mould and follows in his perfect footsteps then what kind of father is that?" Alec shoots back. "You didn't have a son, you had an imaginary one and you never cared to see if he was real. You don't love me, you never loved me. You loved someone who didn't exist. And I — I deserve better!"

Dad's hand actually flies up, and Alec has spent years training to fight and recognizes a blow when he sees one but he holds himself still. Let it land, let Dad strike him right across the face and see how that feels. But Dad catches himself, drops his hand to his side, and takes a ragged breath. "Get out," Dad growls. "Right now. Get out of my house."

Alec snatches up the paper and shoves it haphazardly back into the envelope, the bottom edge crumpling but who cares. He pushes past Dad and runs up the stairs to his room, and he grabs Creed's bracelet from inside his pillowcase and slides it over his wrist. For a second he looks around the room, trying to gauge what he should take with him, but no. No, the loop of leather and glass around his arm is all that matters.

He stops when the light from the window catches the glass face of his wristwatch. Alec has worn it every day since he was seven, barring those three years in Residential. After leaving the Centre he bought extra links so the band fits, and he hasn't removed it since. It's been a symbol of Dad's pride and faith in him for almost a decade, and some days it fills Alec with encouragement and other days each ticking second may as well be the Arena's countdown clock but it's always part of him. Alec slides his finger under the strap and pulls the clasp loose, starts to pull it off, but he freezes as soon as it leaves his wrist.

Alec holds the watch in his hand and stares at it, but finally he slides it back over his hand and fastens it again. Call it weakness, or sentiment, but Alec can't leave it here.

Dad is still there when Alec comes back down. When Selene was a little girl she threatened to run away whenever Aunt Julia told her to clean her room, and Uncle Paul pretended to take it seriously and told her how much he'd miss her until she changed her mind. It's a stupid thought for a stupid boy, and when Dad says nothing as Alec heads for the door and picks up his bag, Alec can't find it in himself to be surprised.

Surprised, no, but angry — yes, anger finds him. Alec holds up his arm, letting Dad see the bracelet, and his father's eyes go wide and startled. And good! Let Dad be the one left reeling for once, let him know how it feels to be hurt and betrayed. "Creed's mentor said he didn't talk about you at all," Alec says. The words twist ugly in his chest but it feels good, too, and for that moment he understands Selene in every one of her dark rages. "He talked about me. So maybe you never knew him, either."

He turns and storms out, slamming the door behind him, and Dad doesn't call out or come after him. Alec slings his bag over his shoulders and breaks into a run.

At first Alec heads toward the road, but soon he takes a sharp detour and ends up at the Valents' house. Aunt Julia answers the door, and after one look at Alec's face she takes a step back. "Alec, what happened?"

"I got in," Alec says, a spike of pride running through him even with everything else. "I got the letter today. And I told Dad and he said I can't be a doctor and his son at the same time, but I can't be a Peacekeeper and myself at the same time and I choose me. So I'm leaving, but I wanted to tell you first." He pushes a hand through his hair, jittering and edgy and eager to be gone, but Aunt Julia's shocked face holds him here, at least for now. "You believed in me. You were always good to me. Whatever happened, I knew that you would love me and accept me, and that's — that means a lot."

Aunt Julia stares at him. "Alec," she says. "Are you sure? What did he say —"

"It doesn't matter what he said," Alec snaps, and Aunt Julia's nostrils flare but she doesn't flinch. "He doesn't want me as his son unless I do everything he says, and if that's what he wants then I don't think I want him as a father."

Her eyes flick downward, and she catches the bracelet on Alec's wrist and lets out a sharp breath. "Alec," she says again. "I'm just going to ask you one more time. Are you sure?"

Alec almost laughs. He's walking on a thin, crackling layer of ice with a raging river underneath, and the ice might not be safe but it's better than falling through. If he turns back now he will, he can't cross the same path twice, and Alec doesn't trust himself to make it back to shore. "Please," he says, running a trembling hand over his face. "Please don't ask me to stay, because if you ask me to stay then I will. And if I do —"

Aunt Julia swallows, and without another word she pulls him in for a hug. "I understand," she says. "Wait here." She disappears into the house, comes back a moment later with a folded paper bag she presses into his hands. "We keep it for emergencies," she explains, and Alec tries to jerk back but she holds him firm. "No, listen, you'll get a stipend while you're in training but you'll need to find somewhere to stay and food to eat and everything else." She presses her lips together and holds him with a stare that reaches into Alec's chest and yanks his heart free. "I didn't help you before, not the way I should have. Let me help you now."

Alec takes the money and slips it into his pack. His eyes prickle but stay dry, and this time he's the one who wraps his arms around her shoulders. "Thank you," he says. "I — I can't come back, but I'll write. I promise."

"Good," Aunt Julia says, leaning back and tapping him on the chest with one finger. "Because Kit will be asking about you, and I'll never hear the end of his questions if you don't." She gives him a smile, and Alec almost takes it back right there because she lost Creed and she's going to lose Selene and now she's losing him, but he has to do this and she understands. Of all of them, Aunt Julia is the only one who ever understands. "Mountains and earth, Alec. I'm proud of you."

Alec touches his fist to his chest, then turns and walks away.

Alec makes the trip to the main Reaping square on his own that summer for the first time in his life. At twelve, his first eligible year, he'd gone to the square in the company of his parents, and they'd spent the trip in sombre, respectful silence to honour the upcoming sacrifices who would now step in for Alec if his name were called. Selene and Creed had already been in Residential, and they stood in clusters with the others in their year while Alec joined the youngest at the front. He'd strained to catch a glimpse but the crowds stood between them, and afterward the Centre kids headed back and Alec found his parents without any of them spotting each other.

The next year, and the years after that, Alec joined his fellow classmates in the Residential group, all of them standing at attention with one hand clasped around their wrists. It had been different, then; for the first time Alec drank in every detail of the ceremony with an almost panicked focus, knowing that after they got back to the Centre they would be quizzed for details.

This year — no parents, no Centre, no Academy, no one prodding him awake at dawn — Alec almost misses it. The day is ingrained in his mind the same as it is is in everyone else's, but Alec is halfway through dressing and getting ready before it hits him that he still has to stand in the square. He's not yet through his Reaping years, still a child by Two reckoning, and yet when Alec thinks about everything that's happened to him it feels almost absurd. He's at least five years older than he was last summer, he swears it; the Alec who stood next to his classmates and fought not to squirm in the oppressive heat is a little boy long dead.

But rules are rules, and Alec heads into town with everyone else. The pale strip of skin where his bracelet used to sit feels like a flashing sign even with his watch to cover it, and every time Alec passes someone he expects them to zero in on it and demand to know why he didn't make it. No one does; this is Reaping Day, and whether people have sons or daughters in the lottery or not, everyone has their own thoughts to occupy them. No one has time to gawk at a teenager's wrist.

It's strange making the trip by himself, stranger still to start to walk toward the area where the other Centre kids stand before forcing himself into the middle with the other civilians. Alec gives his name to the bored woman sitting with the roster, and he waits for her to challenge him and demand to drop the surname that's been taken from him but she doesn't. She only nods, pricks his finger and gestures him away.

His parents will be here, somewhere, and Aunt Julia and Uncle Paul as well. There's no official mandate for his mother and father to be here, not when Creed has done his duty and Alec failed his, but he would bet every bit of money Aunt Julia gave him that they'll be here to support Selene.

It's her year this year, and it's been five years since District 2 pulled in a Victor and maybe that will be enough to save her. Maybe Creed's death, messy and disturbing and embarrassing, maybe that will be the price that will let Selene come home. It's not a trade Alec would ever want to make, but if Creed had lived this year then it's absolutely out of the question for Selene to be the Victor, too. It's been thirty years since Two managed back-to-back Victors, and the only ones who've done it since were the siblings from One a decade back.

If Selene makes it home, it won't be worth Creed's death but it might at least make it feel less pointless. If she doesn't —

Alec stomps down on that thought, hard, and digs his fingernails into his palms until it stings. Whatever happens, Alec isn't going to sleep much for the next month but he certainly isn't going to start digging her grave before she even steps on stage. The more pressing question is whether Alec would be allowed to see her in the Justice Building. The Centre can't forbid him as a graduate, and he might not be family but that's not against the rules either. As far as he can tell there's no precedent to keep him out, not anymore.

Then again, whether Selene would want to see him, that's something else. He last saw her the day he dropped out, and from now on whatever happens their lives will diverge even further. Victors aren't forbidden to see friends from their childhood, but why would they want to? What would they have in common with someone who hasn't seen what they did?

It's not hard to realize that Alec will spend the rest of his life regretting it if he doesn't go to see her, but this isn't about him and his comfort, it's about Selene. Once the ceremony is complete, he won't have much time to decide whether it would help or hurt her for them to talk one last time.

This year, Alec can't focus on the ceremony. He spends most of the speeches in a haze, thinking about Creed in the crowd last year, twitching with anticipation and the need to keep it off his face, and now Selene, standing with her classmates and knowing that this is the last time she'll ever have to see them. It's too bad they're not allowed to talk about the Program or any of their training, otherwise he bets Selene would use every opportunity to slam Petra for losing, but maybe she'll reinvent her rival as a jealous classmate or playground opponent.

The thought makes Alec smile, just a little, though he wipes it away before any of the roving cameras catch him. There are no trainers to scold him or make him run laps for it, but if he happens to make the broadcast and Dad and Mom see it tonight, no way in all twelve districts is Alec going to be grinning like an idiot.

They call the male tribute first this year, and this year's Volunteer is a big, dark boy who lumbers up the stairs and glares out at the crowd. Alec doesn't need a trainer to point out that he's downplaying his speed, that he might look heavy and slow but he's probably the second or third-fastest sprinter in his class. He'll save the speed for when he needs it and the cameras will love him for it, but for all his skill and size he's just another obstacle between Selene and victory and Alec pushes him aside.

Next up, the girls. The girl who's reaped looks about fourteen, long blonde hair plaited back from her face and tied with ribbons. The escort puts out the call for volunteers, and Alec holds his breath and shifts his stance to plant his feet more firmly and doesn't look around no matter how much he wants to —

It's not Selene.

For a second Alec thinks he's misheard, or that maybe Selene's voice has changed since he saw her last, but when the crowd parts and the cameras project the female Volunteer onto the giant screens, it's not Selene who takes her first step toward the stage. Instead it's a girl half a head shorter with hair the colour of a flaming sunset, and the gold bead flashes on her wrist as she lowers her hand and strides forward.

It's Petra.

The cameras do catch Selene, just for a second, standing in the back with her classmates and a hard, unreadable expression on her face before her eyes flicker to the screen and she forces herself to feign excitement. Then the view switches back to Petra as she saunters up and stands beside her enormous district partner, her head barely coming to his shoulder. She tosses her head and gives the escort a perfect, arrogant smile and announces her name like she just did everyone an honour letting them hear it and it's not Selene, it's not Selene it's not Selene —

The rest of the ceremony could involve dancing monkey muttations and Alec would not have noticed. Petra and her partner disappear into the Justice Building, their mentors behind them, and the crowd slowly disperses. Alec tries to dash back toward the Centre kids but it's too late, the trainers have already whisked them away. He stands there at the edge of the square, listening to a little boy negotiating with his mother over whether they can get ice cream on the way home, until a uniformed Peacekeeper wanders over and politely reminds Alec to get a move on.

"If that's a friend in there you can go wait outside the Justice Building," the man says, not unkindly. "If not, you'd better run on home."

"Yes sir," Alec says. He casts one last look in the direction of the Centre and tries to imagine what's running through Selene's mind before he gives up and heads back to his apartment.

Alec's shoebox apartment doesn't have a television, but the common room at the first floor does. On the first day of the Games he heads down and curls up in a corner of the couch, ignoring the others as they pass bottles of beer back and forth and make predictions about the outcome of the bloodbath. That stops when the cameras cut to the Arena — a dry, sandblasted hellscape — and the cornucopia, filled to the brim with nothing but maces.

"Shit," mutters one of them, and Alec swallows hard. They'd trained him mostly on spears because it gave him distance, better than the up-close slashes and stabs with swords or knives. Maces and flails and morning stars are even worse, no distance when each blow caves in bone and the weapon has to be pried out of whatever's left.

He doesn't have to have been in Petra's year to know that it's not her weapon, and it wouldn't be Selene's either. Alec releases a long breath and a prayer of thanks that it's not his childhood friend in that Arena, staring certain death in the face. Not that Petra shows it, her expression hard and determined as she rakes her gaze over the field, and Alec has no doubts that Selene would have managed just as well. It's not going to stop him from being glad it isn't her.

After the bloodbath ends and the initial cannon fires, Alec shivers and looks away while the Pack moves away so the hovercrafts can collect the bodies. It will be a long day before anything interesting happens, and usually at the Centre the trainers would let them stop watching through afternoon exercises until the recap in the evening. Here —

Here there are no trainers, and no reason to sit through anything but the mandatory evening broadcast. The television has to stay on but there's no one here to make him watch, and Alec owes Petra his attention because she's here instead of his friend but that doesn't mean he has to see everything. The freedom is dizzying, and Alec pushes himself up off the couch and heads out and no one stops him. No one even questions; the others' attention waned once the last of the outliers fled or dropped dead, and Alec gets all the way back to his room without anyone saying a word.

The Games are — interesting. That first night the girl from One grabs Petra and pulls her in for a long, messy kiss. Alec blushes and sits on his hands so he doesn't cover his eyes like a ten-year-old, but even worse, it doesn't stop there. The broadcast is cut for family viewing — all of the violence, less of the sex — so it doesn't show everything, but it sure shows enough. Alec finally closes his eyes and waits for it to end, and he can't help wondering what Selene is thinking watching this.

That night Alec tries to sleep but he can't stop wondering about Selene, alone in her room in the ex-Program detox dormitories, and what she's feeling. Whether she's calm, or furious, or numb; whether she laughed at her rival turning the Games into a sex show or whether she's spitting nails. Would she be analyzing Petra's every move and comparing it to what she would have done, or is she content to let the tribute play her game without ruthless self-commentary?

And what, one, two, three weeks from now, will go through Selene's mind if Petra loses?

Except Petra doesn't lose. It's a close showdown, the closest in years, but in the end the girl from One lies bleeding out into the mud while Petra, knee and hip and wrist smashed and blood pouring down her face, forces herself to her feet and staggers onto the waiting hovercraft.

It's District 2's first win in five years, and around him the room erupts into cheers as Alec sits in silence and his thoughts threaten to drown him.

If Selene had been the tribute, if she had won, then Alec could almost bear it. Lose his brother but keep his friend, even if she's not his friend anymore and never will be; if it couldn't be Creed then at least Selene is better than an outlier. But Petra — Alec has nothing against her, personally, other than the years of Selene's furious ranting about her face, her haughtiness, her everything, but if only one Two could have won these last few years, why not Creed?

Not a worthy thought, that, especially not about a girl who survived a final battle that Alec would most definitely not have, but he can't stop thinking it. On Reaping Day he'd been so relieved Selene was safe that he could barely breathe, but now that it's over — now that Two's Victor will be returning to a lifetime of glory — Alec would almost rather it be Selene on the victory stage.

That thought lasts until the final interview, when Petra hobbles onstage in an obvious mix of excruciating pain and a cocktail of the Capitol's best medication. Alec hasn't finished his medical training yet but he takes in the way they've padded her dress to cover the mess at her hip, the way her pupils dilate wide despite the blinding flashes of light onstage. There's no way she should be walking; they should have wheeled her out in a chair, except that's not the way for Two, is it.

Without heavy intervention, Petra will never walk again. When that thought hits, Alec remembers the time Selene sprained her foot and had to stay off it for two weeks, how even with crutches and a walking boot she'd all but gnawed her own leg off out of frustration. How the worst tests at the Centre hadn't been climbing the ropes until her palms bled or running laps until she collapsed but the ones where she had to sit still and be quiet.

If Selene came out of the Arena with an injury that meant she couldn't walk, Alec can't say she wouldn't swallow an entire bottle of painkillers to get it over with now. Knowing Selene and her need for freedom, Alec can't say he would blame her for that choice.

That night Alec kneels on the ground before getting into bed and offers up an apology to Petra for ever wishing her ill. It's not just Selene's life in the Arena she saved by volunteering, it's all the years of pain and rehabilitation and frustration ever after. "Thank you," he says in the darkness, and wonders if right now Selene has slipped out to the roof to stare at the stars.

Alec finishes up his training the next spring and gets his post, an apprenticeship in the mining town below Eagle Pass. The doctor there is looking to retire and wants someone to take over the practice, and it might not be exciting like Aunt Julia's work at the hospital or prestigious like a Centre doctor but it's steady and the people who live there are good people. Doc Harper introduces him around town and everyone claps him on the back and tells him welcome. Alec goes back home with two pies and an armful of potatoes and can't stop grinning for the rest of the night.

He settles into his job right before the 73rd Games, just in time to see Felix volunteer. He's every bit as wide-eyed and enthusiastic and sincere as Alec remembers, only this time the numbers are not on his side. Alec doesn't go see him at the Justice Building because he can't do it, he can't look his former classmate in the face and know that this time, for certain, he's going to die.

He does. Seventeen days in a pack of muttations descends from the trees and tears Felix apart. Alec misses the live broadcast but catches the highlight reel on the recap, and twenty minutes isn't seven hours but it's long enough. The room is silent as the cannon fires, and Alec swallows bile. He knew it would happen — Felix and Petra aren't a dynamic enough pair to allow for a double victory — but that doesn't make it easier.

The next day Alec busies himself with work, and while it doesn't make Felix any less dead, it's better than holing up in his room and stewing. That evening, as Alec sits with his last patient of the day, the woman lays her hand on his arm. "He was your age, wasn't he," she says. "Our boy this year."

Alec nods and focuses on getting her baby to swallow the eyedropper of medicine without spitting it up all over the place. "Yeah," he says. "I knew him, a couple years ago."

There's no way to tell her what that means, that he and Felix rarely spoke except that night when the now-dead boy sat with Alec so he wouldn't watch his brother die alone. He hasn't told anyone about Creed since coming here; they know his last name but Creed, like all Careers, dropped his long before the Reaping. There's nothing to tie them together except for the bracelet that once again lives in Alec's pillowcase, and he's glad for it.

"Snow bless our volunteers," she says in reverent solemnity. "May they sleep in peace."

"Snow bless," Alec echoes, and pokes the baby in the stomach to make her laugh.

He sees Selene once before then, at a bar in the ex-Career part of town. She's with a friend, a girl a little bit older, and they're laughing and leaning into each other's space in a way that suggests it's not just to hear each other over the music. It's the first time Alec has ever seen Selene interested in anyone — before Residential she made fun of boys and after they were never close enough for Alec to notice — and it startles him that it's a girl until he remembers this is Selene. She's hardly going to care about what people think, and sure enough the other girl says something to make her laugh and Selene tugs her in for a grin and a kiss.

Alec can't remember the last time he saw Selene laugh like that, pure enjoyment without the undertone of blood and knives, and strange as it is, it's nice to see. She's having fun like a teenager, sneaking kisses and whispering in the girl's ear and bursting into laughter at the look on her face, and when she waves her glass to call for a refill her wrist is bare just like Alec's.

Selene doesn't notice Alec, tucked into the corner at the end of the bar and trying not to stare. For a while Alec contemplates going over to talk to her, but what would he say — and more importantly, how would he know what not to say? Alec hasn't spoken to his parents since the day he left, and his letters to Aunt Julia carefully avoid any mention of Selene. He has no idea if Selene went back to her parents or if she knows about her brother, and any conversation they try to have would soon trip and fall over something better left unsaid.

In the end Alec says nothing, and eventually Selene throws her arm around the other girl's waist and drags her out. Alec finishes his drink, pays his tab and heads out, hands shoved into his pockets, and after a while he finds himself whistling. Selene is happy, and Alec is finally in a place where he wakes up every morning without dreading what he has to do that day.

He goes for a run on the way home to burn off the alcohol, and when Alec gets back there's a basket of apples at the front desk as thanks for helping a family of kids down with whooping cough at his last placement. Alec snags one, salutes the distant mountains where Creed is buried, and takes a large, satisfied bite.