TWO YEARS LATER
Scattered pops of gunfire have rattled the hills for the past few months like the Harvest Festival fireworks as the rebels break against the walls of the stronghold at Eagle Pass. They can't breach the fortress, not without something bigger than foot soldiers armed with assault rifles, but that doesn't mean they're not trying. After months of watching riots and executions and explosions in the other districts on TV, having the fight come within spitting distance of Alec's home is more than a little surreal, and definitely terrifying.
Before this, it almost didn't seem real. The rule change in the 74th had thrown Two into a frenzy; most of the people in town thought their kids would bring it home before the pair from Twelve took the crown, but once Cato and Clove died it was just another year. Two dead kids in the ground like all the others, nothing special here. The Victory Tour had passed with a few polite speeches here in Two, nothing of the rumours of fire and fury in the other districts. The double-sacrifice of the Victors in the Quarter Quell had been treated with reverence and respect; it could have been untrained children, or parents, or a ban on Volunteers, but this time their Victors were allowed to protect them for a second time. Even when the Arena fell and the mandatory broadcasts and propos kicked up to multiple times per week, after a while news of the uprisings faded to background noise.
Until the rebels brought their attacks to Two, and the Capitol followed.
The Capitol has sent garrisons of Peacekeepers down to fortify the passage, and sometimes they come swaggering into town. You can always tell the ones born and raised in the Capitol and sent to the branch Academies there; they're flashier with their weapons, freer with their speech, and more than a few women have stood in silence while a man in a white uniform winked and stepped in close to whisper offers that would be politely but firmly refused.
Two has its rotten officers sure enough, the Academy is brimming with those deemed too violent to stay in the Program without coming out sadistic beyond all saving, but they're sent away to the districts, not here. Capitol officers used to make Dad roll his eyes and sigh about the counter-productivity of using the corps as a repository for debtors and glory-hounds, and now they're here, swanning down from Command on their off days and demanding discounts from the shopkeepers with toothy smiles.
Outside the battle rages on, and scarcely a week goes by without the roar of another attack on Central Command. Alec and the others have learned to take it as part of daily life; the rebels don't march into town because they're not that stupid, not when villagers in the smallest mining town on the outskirts would take up weapons against them, but their very presence nearby shakes the foundation, just a little bit.
The war is no longer something that happens out there. Everyone walks with their shoulders a little higher, tempers a little more frayed, and Alec tries not to think about the part where the other districts were never given the luxury of being nervous from a safe distance.
(Because they're traitors, of course, his mind supplies, and traitors get what they deserve, but the justification sits like ashes in his throat whenever the broadcasts show children with blood streaming down their faces, or shell-shocked teenagers holding younger siblings in their arms. Traitors get what they deserve but what could possibly deserve this, explosions and dust and people screaming as they scrabble through the rubble to unearth the crushed bodies of their loved ones.)
(Alec dreams of Creed at night, eyes wide and unseeing, only instead of the Arena it's the broken-cobbled streets of Eight, and instead of an outlier's sloppy slash with a too-big sword it's firebombs or a blood-splattered Peacekeeper's rifle that takes him down.)
He dreams most on nights when the gunfire rolls down from the mountains, wakes up prickling with sweat and a vague sense of unease, like walking through a spiderweb and being unable to pick off all the strands.
(Creed, eyes milked over and skin ashen from blood loss, sits on a crumbling balustrade and picks at his shirt, fused to his arm, as fabric and flesh peel away together: "This is our country," he says, voice faraway and hollow and right there in Alec's bones, "We can't let her fall like this.")
One night a pounding on his door tears Alec from an uneasy sleep. Alec doesn't bother reaching for his robe — enough miners suffer accidents in the middle of the night and end up on his doorstep that he sleeps in his clothes — and he's awake, the last of the dream fragments shoved away, by the time he's at the door. It'll be another cave-in, judging by the urgency of the fists against wood, one of the men with his leg crushed and mangled below the knee, but if they got him here fast enough then Alec should be able to save him.
It's a whole group of them there on the doorstep, supporting a man who's slumped between them, blood soaking his shirt and dripping down to pool on Alec's doormat. "Are you the doctor?" one of them asks, and — what? Who else would he be, one doctor per town and everyone knows that —
Alec's vision zeroes in on the grey uniforms with the icon of a bird, wings upswept, on one sleeve.
Alec's hand tightens around the edge of the door but his gaze keeps tracking the injury out of professional habit; that's a gunshot wound — no, two right in the torso, with one more graze on the arm — and not one to shrug and walk off. Without treatment this man will be dead. He basically is dead already, it would take a doctor with every ounce of conviction and stubbornness and a little dash of miracle to pull him out of it.
This man is a rebel, a traitor, this whole group standing on Alec's doorstep at one in the morning are traitors, but their guns are holstered and they haven't shoved their way in and placed a muzzle between his shoulder blades and demanded that he help their comrade. Alec swallows the sour taste in his mouth and steps aside. "Get him in," he says, brusque. "My office is just through that door. Put him on the table."
He works through the night and scarcely notices the time. One or two of the rebel soldiers stay with him, and Alec gives them orders in a clipped voice — fetch this, clean that, heat this, hold that — that get obeyed in seconds because apparently even traitors recognize authority when they hear it. His patient wakes once or twice from the pain, thrashing and yelling, but a jab of morphling and Alec's arm across his throat send him back again.
By the time the clock on the wall marks half an hour to the morning shift siren, the waxy pallor has faded and blood has returned to the man's cheeks. The wounds are clean and sewn, the bullets sitting in a cup on the counter, red fingers of blood swirling at the bottom. Alec staggers back, wipes his arm across his forehead, and only after he verifies the patient's condition does he let exhaustion hit.
A rebel soldier rushes to his side and catches his arm, leads him to a chair, and Alec bites off a hysterical bubble of laughter because this is what his life is now. "You can't move him," he says. One of them hands him a glass of water and he drains it in seconds, wishing for something stronger, but no way is he drinking with his house full of rebels. "You try to move him, he goes into shock and dies." Alec leans back, knocks his head against the wall. "The kindest thing you can do for him now is let me call the Peacekeepers and have him arrested. He'll be taken care of in prison."
"That's not an option," says one of them immediately, of course he does. Alec opens one eye and gives the man an unimpressed stare. "We didn't have you heal him just to turn him over to be tortured."
"Nobody would be tortured," Alec says, bristling, but the conviction that used to follow his words flits just out of reach, and he sags instead. "Look, it's up to you. I'm just telling you what's the most realistic option. If you try to take him back to wherever you're holed up, he will die."
"He'd rather die than be turned over to the Capitol," the soldier says firmly, and it shouldn't be funny but it is, all these people so willing to tear themselves apart — and for what? At least Creed was eighteen with his head stuffed full of propaganda; what's their excuse?
Alec shrugs. "Fine," he says. "Your blood is on his hands, not mine."
"You could take care of him until he's ready to go."
It's a woman, one of the ones who stayed out of the way while Alec did the worst of the surgery because she was too big and broad to do much but block him if she hadn't. Alec didn't pay her much attention then, focused on his job, but now he sits up and frowns. Something about her voice triggers Alec's memory, and he sweeps the room until he finds her, leaning against the wall in the corner and dwarfing the man next to her by a full head of height.
"You're kidding me," Alec says, and all right that might not be the most polite thing to say to the woman who won the Hunger Games the summer of Alec's first birthday but it's been a long night.
Lyme looks back at him, and she doesn't take offence, just fixes him with a quiet sort of stare that unsettles Alec down to his bones. "I know that's asking a lot," she says. Blood smears her face, streaked up into her hair where she's run her fingers through it. "But you're right, we can't move him, and we can't turn him in. It's too much of a risk."
"And asking me to harbour a traitor in my guest room while he heals up from an attack on my district, that's not a risk at all," Alec counters. Lyme doesn't flinch, not that he expected her to recoil from an exhausted twenty-year-old country doctor. "If I keep him here, that puts me at risk, and that puts the entire town at risk. These are good people here; I'm not going to put them in danger. I've saved his life and that's enough."
The others glance at each other, then one by one file out of the room, leaving Alec alone with the Victor and the man unconscious on the table. Alec studies Lyme with bald curiosity, too tired to be polite about it. She's not like Devon, five years after her; she stuck to mentoring and gigs in the Capitol, no grassroots movements here in Two, no orphanage visits or elementary school career days. Not a few people think she's standoffish, too good for her district, except that she's mentored nine times since her victory — ten if you count the Quell — and people don't put themselves through that for no reason.
"My brother died in the Arena, you know," Alec says, the words coming out before he even really registers them. "He believed in — everything. All the right things. Honour, glory, all that. You're a Victor, you must have believed all that and more. Why?"
Lyme doesn't ask why what. Instead she sighs, rubs a hand across her forehead and grimaces when bits of dried blood crumble off. "Why didn't you tell us to fuck off at the door?"
Alec frowns. "That's not fair, it's not the same. I'm a doctor, I can't just let someone die when I can stop it, no matter who they are."
Lyme spreads her hands.
Alec sits back against the wall, suddenly drained twice over. "Shit."
"Shit," Lyme says in agreement, and it's not funny at all, the country is falling to pieces and Alec has just become an accessory to treason, but maybe that's why he laughs. Lyme doesn't join in, but her mouth does twitch a little. She lets him run himself out, and when Alec swipes a hand across his eyes and tips his head back, she says, "We could really use an ally."
"An ally," Alec says, and now they're both just repeating each other. That should be funny, except it isn't, and he gets up to check the patient's heart rate just to give himself something to do. "You can't set up base here, I have patients to look after. They need to know they can trust their doctor."
"I'm not talking about a base. Just somewhere to go in case we get hit and can't make it back without a patch-up."
"No," Alec says again, more firmly this time. Amazing how much easier it gets, mouthing off to a Victor he would have been starry-eyed over if they'd met in another circumstance. "Definitely not. Every single time you all march through here, what do you think that will do to the town? Every time you come here you risk someone seeing you. Every time you come here you risk Capitol Peacekeepers rounding everyone up en masse to see how many other traitors are being hidden away in loyal people's homes."
He's not sure why he keeps saying traitor to her face like that, except it feels good to twist the knife a little somehow. Dad would be proud, probably — except that thought takes what little satisfaction Alec got from the jab and turns it sour.
Lyme lets out a breath. "I'll bring them. Not the squad."
Alec pinches his nose, trying to press away the headache growing between his eyes. It doesn't take much imagination to picture Lyme struggling all the way from the battlefield with two injured soldiers on her back, all alone and without backup, and he hisses. "Look, right now you all need to get out. The shift siren is going to go soon, and that'll mean the overnight miners coming in from the trains and the morning crew going out and you'll get caught and I don't want that on me. I'll keep your guy until he's ready to move but you need to leave."
She nods and stands up, and the weirdest thing about all this is that Alec is only a few inches shorter than she is, maybe, even if she is twice his bulk. Some Seward genes breed true, if none of the ones that count. "If you say no then you say no," Lyme says. "We'll find another way."
Alec nods. Again, they could have pulled a weapon and tried to force him to help, and maybe it's because they're too good for that and maybe it's because everyone knows you can't threaten a person into saving your life, not forever, but either way it feels like something. "Don't get killed," he says as Lyme leaves. It's stupid, but the idea of another Victor dying over this stupid war feels like such a waste.
She does laugh this time, a small huff of air. "I'll try."
The soldier's name is Dale. He doesn't tell Alec where he's from, but his accent says the backwoods of Two and his bearing says ex-Career. They don't chat much, other than for Alec to ask questions about his condition, and Alec can't help wondering what happened to make him turn. Whether he finished out his twenty or broke contract, whether he joined for idealism or out of desperation or something else entirely.
Despite the lack of personal chatter, it's clear after a few days of Dale regaining full consciousness that he respects the hell out of Lyme. "She's not a traitor," he says to Alec once, stabbing his spoon into his bowl of stew with vigour. "I don't care what anybody says. She's a hero."
Alec didn't say anything either way, but doesn't bother pointing it out. Whatever her actions, it's not Alec's place to judge. Lyme fought for her district and her country, she killed ten teenagers in the Arena and mentored over half a dozen others, and that's just what made it onto the cameras. Whatever course of events piled up to make her turn her back on her people and join the rebels, to her it must be justified. Alec has no right to say otherwise on her behalf.
Dad would disagree, but if there's anything the last twenty years have demonstrated, it's that Alec is not his father.
"She takes care of us," Dale says. He shoots Alec a challenging glare, and Alec keeps his expression neutral with the ease of years of practice. "They send us in, all those cameras and everything, we have to make it look good, but she doesn't care about that. She knows how to do her job and how to keep the people who follow her safe. That's more than a lot of people can say."
Alec refills Dale's water glass and sets it down next to him, tapping the side in a pointed gesture. Dale takes it and downs half in one long, noisy gulp, and Alec amuses himself for a moment by wondering what it is about District 2 that makes them all so well-trained. "What about the district?" Alec asks. He shouldn't — don't engage, don't empathize, always dehumanize the enemy, they're not people unless you let them be — but he isn't going to go up to his Victor and demand she answer. "She's attacking her own — your own — people."
Dale shrugs, and he fishes in the bowl for a chunk of carrot. Alec had to roast them before cooking; they're getting the withered ends of the produce now that production is down throughout most of the country. A few more months of war and it won't be the bombs that kill people; it will be the snow and their empty bellies that do it for them. "Not civilians," he says. "She won't strafe and she won't hit anything that's not strictly military. If the war hits the streets in Two it won't be because of her."
Alec pushes back his chair and stands up, turning to stare at the eye chart on the far wall and focusing on the smallest row of letters. "You can't really believe that," Alec snaps. "You really think it will stop with Eagle Pass? You think, whatever good she does, that if your rebels decide it's time to take the district, that she'll be able to stop them? I've seen the footage. Districts on fire, kids dead in the streets. The only reason it hasn't happened here is that people aren't fighting back, but keep pushing and they will. Peacekeepers aren't the only people willing to defend the district."
"The rebels aren't the ones killing those kids," Dale says. Alec expected an outburst, but his voice stays calm. "The rebels aren't the ones bombing factories and hospitals. It's our people who are dragging families into the streets and shooting them in the heads on live TV. You don't know what we do — what I did, before I found another way."
(The trainers at the Academy pressing a baton into his hand, showing him the right way to grip to exert maximum force with minimal effort. Control techniques, they called it, showing a video of a sneak thief in District Eight resisting arrest. Pain compliance, they said, when the girl from Six with drug-reddened eyes and track-marked forearms shrieked and dropped to the ground.)
"War kills people," Alec says. Selene used to roll her eyes through the Games monologue every year but the words still roll through Alec's mind like thunder. War, terrible war. "Yours is no different."
"Then don't join," Dale says. His spoon clatters in the bowl as he shoves it away, dropping his feet to the floor in a heavy thump. Alec doesn't turn; his palms itch at his sides, and he almost wishes Dale would try to jump him just so he could have a fight and chase away the unease. Wouldn't his old Centre trainers be proud. "You stay here, country doctor, and stick your head in the tunnels until they cave in around you."
Alec curls his hands into fists. "I saved your life," he says, turning around and giving Dale his best ex-Career stare. The soldier doesn't flinch. "I haven't turned you or your outfit in. Don't push me."
"Don't expect a pat on the back for minimum decency," Dale says. "Look, kid, I was you once, and now I'm here. However different you think we are, we're not, except I've got courage and you don't. But I saw it, and one day maybe you will too."
The question sits in Alec's throat today as it has every day, but he won't ask, even if with Dale more talkative now than he's been all week. Asking Lyme and hearing her two-word answer had been bad enough. Whatever changed Dale's mind, turning a young Peacekeeper with his head stuffed full of Centre rhetoric to a rebellion that's never done Two any favours, odds are it's not something Alec needs rattling around in his head.
Dale turned against the Capitol without a dead brother and a changed childhood friend to sour him against his birthplace. Alec pushes the thought away, swallowing down the unpleasant, crawling sensation like the time a ladybug crawled into his juice glass without him noticing.
"Get some rest," Alec says instead, picking up the dishes and avoiding Dale's eyes, sparkling with medication and revolutionary passion. "You need to be mobile in three days."
He should have called the Peacekeepers that first night, and nothing is stopping him from leaving the room and picking up the phone now. Alec might even get Uncle Paul, depending on who the local dispatch sent him off to, but as he drops the dishes in the sink and stares at the phone, he can't actually make himself reach out and take it.
Instead Alec turns on the television to the twenty-four hour news cycle. It's a split-screen as always, showing statistics of prisoners captured and executed, terror cells routed out and targets saved from rebel attacks. There are clips of buildings aflame, people screaming and fleeing from explosions, mothers clutching children to their chests and grim-jawed teenagers with blood and soot smeared across their faces holding weapons too big for them.
War, terrible war, and in the corner President Snow's face stares at the camera and promises peace, peace if only the rebels lay down their arms and stop inciting violence.
Peace, the President says, and Alec watches as a Capitol hovercraft firebombs a warehouse reportedly filled with rebel agents. The running ticker across the bottom states that they ignored all requests for a non-violent surrender, but Alec sees no mediation agents with megaphones, and no weapons fire emerges from the building before it collapses under the assault.
Alec shuts off the screen, tasting bile and copper, and he spits blood into the sink and fetches an ice chip from the freezer to soothe his bitten tongue.
Lyme shows up at the end of the week, alone and dressed in borrowed civilian clothes that do nothing to disguise the power she exudes even when standing at Alec's back door waiting to be let in. The only thing that would save her from instant recognition is the exhaustion; Alec didn't notice last time when he'd been soaked to the elbows in a dying man's blood, but now he sweeps a critical gaze over her, noting the hollows in her cheeks and the dark circles under her eyes, the spots where the borrowed shirt sits loose over her shoulders not only because it's ill-fitting but because she's dropped weight.
"You need to eat more," Alec says automatically, ushering her inside and ignoring her glare. Doctor's immunity is good for something.
"You and Claudius should form a club," Lyme shoots at him as she pushes past. Alec stares after her for a minute before deciding just to let that one go. "How's he holding up?"
"Stable," Alec says, following her through to the back. She doesn't hesitate once to ask Alec which way to turn even after only coming inside once, and Victor recall is at once impressive and a little bit creepy. "He didn't spew any intel while on his meds, either, don't worry, and none of my regular patients noticed anyone else here. You should be fine."
Lyme stops just before the door, leaning her weight against the frame and not exactly blocking Alec but not inviting him through, either. "And you didn't tell anyone."
Alec taps his thumb against his leg, but stops a second later when Lyme's gaze flickers toward the movement. "I said I wouldn't. Don't make too much out of it."
She nods, acknowledging the point. "You said your brother died," Lyme says, her voice gentling without softening. How many years of image training did it take her to find the perfect balance? Alec crosses his arms. "Is that when you left?"
He narrows his eyes. "Who said I was in?"
"Do you want a list?" Lyme says, amused, and all right, fair enough, anyone with experience could probably read Centre in Alec's posture no matter how much he tries to erase it. "But nobody gets to be a doctor without a few years in the Program, not unless they're a backwater sawbones, and you're not."
"Good guess," Alec says. He could push past her, end the conversation — don't engage, don't humanize — but he stays, looking her over. She has her jacket pulled down over her wrist where the Victor tattoo sits, and when she catches Alec looking she moves her hands behind her back. "Does it matter?"
"Your brother was the boy in the 71st," Lyme says, and Alec hisses a breath and falls a step back. "You look alike, now that you mentioned it. I was off that year but I remember him. Tough year."
She doesn't apologize, which Alec had half expected even though she wasn't the one in the mentor seat that year, and he swallows a sudden stirring of anger. "Are you going to use my dead brother to try to turn me?" Alec snaps. "Like I said, he believed in everything, never questioned even once. I don't think turning traitor would be the best way to honour his memory."
Lyme keeps her gaze level and doesn't apologize for that, either. "He deserved better," she says simply. "They all do. Every kid, every district. It's not right."
"Twenty-three deaths every year is a fair price for keeping the country safe," Alec parrots before he even registers his own response. The words fill him with about as much certainty and comfort as they ever did, which means a chill passes over him even inside the house, but damned if he'll let her manipulate him. Not like this. Not with Creed.
Lyme's expression hardens just a hair, and there's the Victor underneath the exhausted rebel, all tight lines and danger thrumming underneath her skin. Her posture shifts, one foot sliding to the side to distribute her weight more evenly, and Alec edges back in response. Two fighters testing each other out, checking for openings. "I don't think you believe that," Lyme says. "I also think you know it's more than just the Games. It's fine for us, here, our two-a-year buy us safety and security and everything else we all grow up with, even in the quarries. But out there?" She doesn't gesture, nothing theatrical, but she doesn't need to. "Out there their kids die and they get nothing for it. Here Peacekeepers mean what the name says, but in the districts, what do you think they stand for? The promise of peace and protection is a lie, and I think you know that."
Alec, if he'd graduated from the Academy, would not have been sent out to the districts where dissent was heaviest and the iron rule tightest. Not with his aggression scores as low as they are; the whispers said only the people who failed out of the Program for liking the kill tests too much got posted out in the outskirts. It doesn't take a genius to imagine why.
"What do you want from me?" Alec asks finally. "I already told you, I won't let you make a base here, and I'm not giving you intel even if I knew any."
("This is Central Command," Dad said, ushering Creed and Alec in through the door and waving his hand. Alec gaped at all the computers and consoles, so many people bustling and big screens full of maps and information and little points of light. "This is where your Uncle Paul and I work. Uncle Paul is the head of personnel, that means he knows where everyone is and where they're going. He coordinates mission teams and handles appointments and transfers. I'm the chief of homeland defence. That means I keep the people in our district safe. Stay close and I'll give you a tour."
"Can we see where the weapons are?" Creed asked, trying his best nonchalant face.
Dad laughed. "If you deserve it," he said, and Creed discreetly pumped his fist once Dad turned his back.)
"No one will ask you for intel," Lyme says with a certainty that makes Alec raise his eyebrow. Anyone who promises that strongly without authorization is either naive, optimistic, lying, or a combination. Lyme catches his expression and amends, "I won't, and neither will anyone I bring with me. But we need somewhere safe to go if someone gets hurt worse than our field medic can handle. Somewhere we can trust."
Alec forces his tongue between his molars to stop his jaw from grinding. "What even is your plan? You can't take Eagle Pass with a handful of soldiers. You're just going to keep running against a wall and losing people one by one until you're all dead. It's the only stronghold that didn't fall under rebel assault the first time. That's not an accident."
Lyme spreads her hands. "I'd rather die running against the wall than be the wall," she says. Alec clicks his tongue but she only shrugs. "My orders are to take the Nut — that's what they call it, don't blame me — and that's what I'm going to do. If we can take the stronghold then we take the district without having to fight in the streets. If they have to go town by town then it's going to be bloody, and I don't want that." She stares Alec down, and he's glad for his upbringing if only because it gave him the practice not to fidget under her heavy gaze. "Two will fall," she says simply. "One way or another. I'm here to make sure we still have people left when it does."
"And when you take it?" Alec asks, even as his brain demands to know what the hell he thinks he's doing. This is a Victor — his Victor, the one who won the Games the closest to his birth, even if she's not the first he remembers — but the boiling inside him won't settle down out of nowhere. "There are thousands of people working there. Almost all of them are Peacekeepers past their twenty. They all have families. My —"
Alec snaps his mouth shut, biting off the words before he betrays anyone, but no. No, he won't help them. Lyme's math makes sense, in terms of pure numbers — take a military installation to avoid spreading out to civilian targets — but that doesn't make the war just. It doesn't make those deaths right. It also doesn't mean that the people working at Central Command are acceptable casualties. His father might never want to see him again but that doesn't mean Alec will aid the rebels trying to march in and put a bullet through his brain. Dad and Uncle Paul and Selene's Uncle Ramon and all the rest, all Peacekeepers who are doing their best with a country that other people set on fire.
"I'm a doctor," Alec says finally. He channels Dad and cools the flames, turning it to ice and steel and stone. "If someone comes to me and needs help, then I'll help them because it's my job, but that's all. Please don't ask me for anything else."
Lyme's cheeks pink for a moment, angry splashes across her skin that make Alec wonder what his face is doing, but it's too late now. "Agreed," she says. "Let me grab my soldier and I'll get out of your way."
Alec stays back while Lyme fetches Dale, and he leads them out through to the back and locks the door behind them.
He's far too addled to sleep, but when Alec turns on the television it's nothing but gunfire and actual fire and people dying in the streets. It's the president promising order with surrender and a growing count of casualties inflicted by the rebels, and Alec might not agree with Lyme and the rebels but it doesn't mean this is what he wants, either. Alec learned how to spin a story at the Centre and the broadcasts are nothing but propaganda and sensationalism and it's bullshit, every second, and everything is fuzzy and underwater and he can't take it anymore.
When Alec snaps back to himself there's a hole in his television screen and sparks coming out from the wiring and the paperweight on his table is missing. "Shit," Alec mutters, running a hand over his head. He never had blackouts in the Centre, not like some of the kids who rage-blanked and woke up with blood on their knuckles, but first time for everything.
He doesn't bother cleaning up the glass tonight. Alec drags over the chair from the kitchen table to stand over top the worst of it so he doesn't accidentally step on it in the dark, then grabs his shoes and hits the trails behind the house.
Alec's head is no more clear when he comes back home a few hours later, dripping with sweat and muscles protesting from the run, but at least he's too tired to stay up thinking about it. He collapses into bed, still damp, and doesn't wake up until morning.
"Thanks, Doc," says Burt Townsend, stretching out his arm and wriggling his fingers. "Was worried I'd have to take time off, and with Shelley and the baby we can't afford that right now."
"You would have if you'd come in a day later," Alec says, giving the man a stern look. "This is why you come to me instead of trying to tough it out. You go back and tell the rest of the boys, you hear?"
He's still working on his country doctor demeanour, after a childhood of speaking deferentially to anyone older regardless of social status, but the people in town don't need a kid who's shy and meek and polite. They also don't need the precise, measured language Alec was raised with — in a Peacekeeper it's official but in a doctor it's uppity, some big fancy city doc who don't know nothing about how real folks live — and he still stumbles over getting the proper mix of casual authority down.
Burt laughs and touches a hand to his forehead, so at least Alec managed it right this time. "Will do," he says. "Jim's got a bum knee he don't want us to know about, I'll start poking him before it gets too bad and he does something stupid."
Having gotten his cooperation, Alec doesn't push it. "Just tell him it'll save him money down the line," he says. "A quick visit here is worth the week he won't be off without pay when he can't put his weight on it."
Burt grunts and tugs his shirt back into place. "Ain't that the truth. I hear tell in the Capitol if you get sick you get money to stay home and have someone wipe your nose for you. Must be nice, eh?"
Alec doesn't look at him, focusing all his concentration on gathering up his things and putting them back in place. "Maybe we should all join the rebels," he says lightly, putting just enough bullshit into his voice that Burt will know it's a joke if he's not pushing for truth. "See if their benefits are any better."
The man barks out a laugh, harsh and amused and defiant all at once. "Oh yeah, that's a great plan. I bet that's real high on their list, hey? Blow up the refineries, blow up the dams, blow up the train tracks, and oh hey let's get sick leave out to the people who want them to go the hell home. Those rebels don't give a shit about us out here, and that's fine because I don't give a shit about them."
"Good thing we stick up for each other then," Alec says, holding out his hand.
Burt shakes it, gripping tight. "Damn straight. Listen, you got a free night this week, stop by for dinner. Shelley's been after me to ask you since you fixed my ankle last spring."
Alec smiles. "Will do," he says.
After Burt heads out Alec closes up for the night — the day miners always come in late after the shift so they don't waste any money having to come in during work hours — and heads out to the porch. Eagle Pass makes its same grey shadow against the sky as always, and at least tonight there's no rumbling of gunfire coming from its base.
Lyme showed up with another injured rebel a few days ago, and Alec patched the woman up and sent them off without a word. He'll keep doing it, bandaging their wounds and burying the bullets in biohazard boxes to keep anyone from snooping, but Alec can't help wondering how many times it will happen. How many loyal Peacekeepers Aunt Julia is treating at the central hospital at the same time.
District 2 might fall in spite of everything just like Lyme predicted, but Alec spent his childhood under the shadow of Eagle Pass and he knows the truth better than she does. They'll never take Command, not with a thousand soldiers, and whether Lyme is right and that means the fire spreads to the people or whether Two stays the bastion it did in the first war and lets the Capitol win, either way, this holding pattern will snap.
Gunfire in the hills and Peacekeepers in the streets and tense jokes among the miners, this can't last forever. The problem is no matter how hard Alec tries, he can't figure out the best way for it to end. There's blood and death at every turn, be it rebels or Capitol or those in the middle, and by the time Alec drags himself inside his toes have fallen asleep from the chill and he's no closer to an answer.
"I'm sure that's a metaphor for somethin'," Alec mutters in his best blue-collar drawl, and stamps his feet to get the feeling back before heading inside.
The explosion tears through Alec's dreams and drags him awake, pulling him to his feet with his heart leaping in his chest. The windowpanes rattle from the aftershock along with the distant hiss of rain — no, not rain, rocks, thousands of them, cascading down the side of the mountain in a flood. The rumbling builds, not sharp like artillery but low and rolling like thunder, and instead of fading it grows louder and louder as more of the mountainside comes down with it.
Alec shoves open the window and pushes his head through before flinging a hand in front of his eyes at the brightness. The flash in the sky fades fast enough, but the sky glows red over the mountain as gouts of flame burst from the rock. A plume of smoke grows higher and higher, blotting out the stars in the swath of black sky above the sea of scarlet.
As a child Alec learned to recognize the signs of a rockslide like everyone born and raised in Two, but this is different. Now comes the telltale rattle of gunfire, and smaller explosions ring the mountain as gaping holes appear in its side, visible even from this distance as dark patches of emptiness.
Two things could have happened: either the rebels breached the stronghold and those inside decided to blow it up rather than let it fall into enemy hands, or —
Less than a minute later Alec is up and dressed, his bag slung over his shoulder. He shoves his feet into his boots and snatches up the keys to the worn-out truck he inherited from Doc Harper. There are cries throughout town as the residents wake and see the destruction, and Alec's brain takes up a litany of cursing as he throws the truck into gear.
A woman runs into the street as Alec drives past, and he slams on the brakes to avoid careening into her. "You have to help them," she says, clinging to the the edge of the window. It's Mrs. Clark, her face streaked with tears. "My James, my boys — they're on the overnight shift down in the mines. If that mountain comes down they'll be trapped. Please, I don't know what's to be done, but if you see them —"
Alec hadn't even thought about the mines beneath the mountain; even after living here for the past two years his thoughts immediately went to the fortress and the Peacekeepers, not the good men and women working underneath. "I don't know what I can do," Alec tells her. His mouth has gone completely dry, his tongue sandpaper. "But whatever I can do, I will."
"Bless you," she sobs, and backs up to let him pass.
There's a blockade on the road when Alec reaches the square, grey-uniformed rebels armed with rifles and machine guns. "Stop!" one of them shouts, readying his weapon and pointing it at Alec when he exits the truck. "Nobody gets through. Just go back and nobody else will get hurt."
The guns in his face are bigger than any Alec ever dealt with in his early days in the Academy, and Dad kept his service pistol but nothing else in the house. It doesn't matter; there are people dying, crushed or suffocating or bleeding to death, miners and Peacekeepers and administration and yes, even rebels, and they're not going to keep him back with a few bullets.
"I'm a doctor," Alec snaps, holding out his bag. "Look through it, I'm unarmed. I'm here to help."
"No one is allowed —"
"Wait," calls a woman, jogging over from inside the square. "Wait, it's all right, he's one of ours. Lyme cleared him."
The man narrows his eyes. Machine gun fire splits the air, and now that Alec is closer the sound of wails and shouts filters up from the tunnels. He grits his teeth, but he can't help anyone if he charges now — or if he protests at being called one of theirs, those responsible for murdering who knows how many of his people. "Are you sure?" the man asks, stepping closer.
"He pulled a bullet out of Margot's shoulder last month! Yes, I'm sure," she says. "Let him go in. We left the tunnels open for a reason, he may as well do what he can. Just stay away from the fighting until it's over."
Alec nods and closes his bag, and one of the soldiers peels off to escort him. The sound of the battle is deafening, far worse than anything Alec faced in his training either at the Centre or the Academy, but his heart has steadied. He has a job to do and he knows how to do it; nothing else matters.
He follows his escort toward the tunnel exit, skirting the worst of the fighting until they arrive at the small, open square. It's ringed with rebels and lined with bodies, and exhausted miners huddle in clumps with their hands on their heads. Most of them are wounded, hastily bandaged with strips of cloth torn from their clothing.
"I'll take it from here," Alec snaps, and if the soldiers feels insulted at being ordered by a civilian then too damn bad. He kneels down beside one of the men who's gasping in an odd cadence, and sure enough when Alec presses a hand to his side he finds broken ribs. "It's all right," he says. "Lie down, you'll be all right."
It's chaos and blood and screaming, and the more miners stagger out of the tunnel the worse their condition. The longer it takes them to reach the surface the further back in the mines they were when the explosion hit, and they stagger out with the last of their strength, limbs smashed and blood soaking their clothing. They need far more than what Alec can do with his limited equipment and the few vials of morphling he rations out in micro doses, but anything is better than letting them slowly bleed to death on the concrete. The rebels sure aren't doing anything but point guns at the wounded.
Like always, Alec's world narrows to the injured and his work. Hours pass but he barely notices, occasionally stopping to work out a cramp in his hand or stretch his back. The less injured miners he presses into being his assistants, barking out instructions and ignoring the soldiers as long as they don't interfere. The gunfire continues long into the night, but at least the explosions have stopped and the last of the rockslides seem to have stopped. Now and then a shower of rocks shivers down to the ground, pattering in harsh staccato, but no more massive tremors or avalanches of stone. The inside might still collapse but the mountain isn't likely to come down on top of them.
Distant shouting makes it through the hail of weapons fire. Alec recognizes the cadence of a rallying speech with the echoes of someone mic'd for sound, but tunes it out; whoever's out there trying to sway the crowd one way or another, their politics are not his business and not important. Even President Snow himself couldn't order Alec away from his patients while there's still work to do.
The speech continues in the background, and Alec finally staggers to his feet, knees aching. One of the miners grabs his elbow to steady him, and Alec runs a hand over his face, wiping away sweat and blood and grime. "Is that everyone?" he asks. His voice scratches in his throat, thick with exhaustion and dust.
"I think so," the miner says. "You saved us —"
"Not everyone," Alec says sharply. He turns to the nearest soldier. "Well? I don't hear anymore gunfire, does that mean I can get some help? Or at least more supplies?"
And just because the universe hates him, one last rifle shot cracks through the air, followed by an uproar that sends three of the soldiers off in the direction of the square. Alec flings up his hands and stalks back toward the tunnel, only to run into one final group of miners stumbling out through the gap, hauling a pair of limp, broken bodies — one man, one woman — behind them.
"Dead?" Alec asks, and the man at the lead nods. Exhaustion presses down on his shoulders. "Put them over there, where —"
The words cut off as the group moves into the light. There's not much left of the bodies that's recognizable as human, half-crushed to pieces by what looks like a cave-in, but they're not in miner's garb. It's military, District 13 greys with the mockingjay symbol along the arm, and the woman — "Stop," Alec says finally, though forcing out the word almost costs him control over his nausea. He kneels down by her ruined head and reaches down, lifting one muscled arm to check her wrist.
The tattoo is gone, burned off by an inexpert hand, but the scar tissue still swirls in the telltale ring, dotted with what once was a collection of circles representing orange, red, silver and gold beads. "Oh shit," Alec says. He lets the arm down gently, reverently, and sits back on his heels. "Oh shit."
"Who is it?" asks the man. "They're not one of ours, not dressed right."
"It's Lyme," Alec says, and the men around him gasp. The last time they spoke he barely looked at her, his chest tight with fury at her attempts to turn him. She was a traitor, turning her back on her people and twisting her actions around in retrospect to make it sound like the good of the district, but — she'd been here, underground, helping the miners escape, until the mountain killed her.
Alec pushes himself to his feet and orders the nearest soldier over. "You just lost your commander," he snarls. "Better report that up to whoever's tallying up your casualties." He glances down at the body next to her, marks the intact ink around his wrist before moving on to the bloodied face. "Make that two," Alec adds dully. He can take a wild guess at what caused Lyme's Victor to join her in a fight against her own people in an attempt to save them, but either way he followed her to the end. "Now, did anyone bring help?"
"There's a group of doctors coming from town," the soldier says. "They were down at the square, they should be arriving —"
Alec waves him off, then turns around to stare across the rows of crumpled bodies at Aunt Julia.