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lorata · 5 months ago

Note

Wait I just did the maths and Alec was 12 in Claudius’ arena. What was that like watching with his parents? Did Joseph use it as a teaching moment ‘this is what happens when you break the rules’ sort of deal

Anonymous asked: Just realised Alec would’ve been 12 and watching Claudius’ arena with Joseph and Adora, did they say anything? Did they comment? What did the trainers say?

OKAY WELL SIX MONTHS / 6,000 WORDS LATER HERE WE ARE

warnings for uhhhhh generational trauma and child abuse and the cycle of trauma / abuse / fear / fascism / all that good Seward soup

FIC BELOW:

-----

Creed left for Residential a week before the Reaping, and his absence stretched long and thin as the Games played out. One of their tributes died quick, a heavy blow to the head that took him out before he hit the ground. The other managed to drag herself into a tree with a seeping gut wound, blood oozing between her fingers and dripping down the branches, face upturned at the camera for a sponsor parachute that never came. No signs of life but the flutter of her lashes and the steady drip-drip-drip of blood until both stilled and the cannon fired.

“Bedtime,” Dad said, then almost as an afterthought, “You too, Selene.”

Alec dragged himself off the sofa, limbs heavy. Selene kept sitting, eyes fixed on the television with a now familiar glint. “Lene,” Alec said, sharper than he meant to.

Her gaze snapped to him, sharp with irritation, and he saw the Centre-reflex in the coil of muscle at her shoulder. Saw her wind up to hit him before the moment cleared and she was back in his living room, both their parents watching. “Whatever,” she said with sarcasm-shaded casualness. No points for subtlety, trainee, said the trainer in back of Alec’s head, but at least she followed.

No jockeying for space at the bathroom mirror now that Creed had gone. Alec missed it with a desperate ache, but elbowing Selene now wouldn’t bring back the easy playfulness of the early years. She brushed her teeth, spat, and marched into the bedroom without a word, leaving Alec to stand there with his mouth full of foam and his chest a gaping hole.

By the time Alec ventured into his room Selene had already vanished into the top bunk (Creed’s bunk). Alec stared at the lump of blankets in the reflected hallway light before giving up and crawling under the covers.

“I wouldn’t have tripped,” Selene said. The blankets rustled — the mattress creaked as she rolled over to face the wall — and soon her breathing evened out into sleep.

Alec tried, really he did. Except that eyes closed or open, squeezed tightly shut or held wide until they burned he still saw it: the red-black splatter of arterial blood onto wide jungle leaves.

-----

December: icy winds whistling from the mountains, blowing snow that stung his cheeks, endless promotions for the upcoming Victory Tour. Selene’s thirteenth birthday.

No party, like she predicted. Instead, Alec’s window slid open as he hunched over his desk, struggling with an essay about the Solstice, and Selene dropped through. Snowflakes scattered on her dark hair, slowly melting. “Yo,” she said. “Got the signature.”

Alec swallowed hard. “You going tonight?”

“Yeah. Uncle Joe’s going to drive me.” Not Uncle Paul. Not Aunt Julia. Selene rubbed one cheek with her shoulder, a short, jerky movement, avoiding Alec’s eyes as he gaped at her.

Selene barely spoke to her parents anymore, tension filling their house until it choked. But they weren’t the only ones; shared family dinners had stalled out since the fall. Selene’s parents didn’t want her going to Residential, everyone knew that. He didn’t know his parents had gone behind their backs.

“Oh,” he said. “Well — knock ‘em dead?”

“You know it.” She punched his arm. “Don’t wuss out without me.”

“Yeah, right. Like I’d stay here by myself where it’s sad and boring.” Alec shoved her back, and for a moment they could have been horsing around like old times, if not for the damp-edged sheaf of folded paper clutched to Selene’s chest. “Don’t break all the records before I get there.”

Selene didn’t wave as the car backed away down the narrow lane, but Alec watched the headlights bob through the trees anyway. “Are they mad?” he asked. The thought twisted his insides.

Mom held onto the question before she answered. He liked that she took him seriously, but hated that she had to think. “She would have walked,” she said at last. “Liking and accepting are different things.”

Not a no, Alec thought, but not ‘we are banned from the Valents’ house forever’ either. He didn’t like it, but he could accept it. One kill for Mom.

-----

Aunt Julia handed him his favourite mug, steaming and filling the kitchen with mint. Alec took it without paying attention, curling his palms around the sides instead of grasping the handle. He jerked back with a hiss, liquid sloshing over the rim onto his fingers. Only Centre-training kept him from flinging the mug away.

“Alec!” Julia darted forward. “Did I burn you?”

“No,” he said quickly, and hid his arms behind his back. His throat clenched. “No, I’m okay. Sorry. It’s fine.”

Julia studied him for several endless seconds. At the Centre Alec learned to take a punch to the face without flinching, but under Julia’s direct scrutiny he buckled and held out his hands. She curled her fingers around his wrists, turning him to face her so she could examine the angry weals slashed across both palms.

“I fell,” Alec said in a low voice. Julia caught his gaze and held it, but this time he squared his shoulders and stared back, steady. “I fell,” he repeated. “It was my fault.”

(Spring meant young, green branches, and Dad had been distracted. Usually he was precise: two short strokes each, but this time Mom had darted in to stop him. She’d ordered Alec to the Valents’ and pulled Dad aside, and as he edged out the door he’d caught the the sharp snap of her tone.)

Julia sighed, but only stood up to fetch the medicine kit. Alec watched her smear cream over the parallel cuts and tape his hands, and took a deep breath as she finished. “Is something … happening? Outside. Dad is really tense.”

Like Mom, Julia considered her words before answering. “I’m almost twelve,” Alec insisted. “I’m not a kid anymore, you can tell me.”

“You know Paul and your father can’t talk about work at home,” Julia warned. “But I do think the country is … uneasy. Seven had an unconventional win, and those are always unpredictable. I think everyone will be on edge until the Reaping.”

“We learned about that in Civics,” Alec said slowly. “Unrest happens in cycles. The districts get restless after the Tour but quiet down when the next Games start.”

She favoured him with a tight smile. “Exactly. A few more months and things should go back to normal.”

-----

“Elias Linden!”

Alec inhaled sharply through his nose. Reaching into his mind he yanked out half a dozen memories of the switch stinging his palm, Dad’s hand knocking his face to the side, the burn of his thighs as he counted down the minutes of his nightly wall-sits, so that when the camera drones swung past his row the image of his face that flickered across the enormous screens stared out calm and impassive.

(Alec, seven years old, desperate and terrified to start a fight so the Program will notice him.)

(A group of kids with Centre bracelets, tossing a ball back and forth in a circle.)

(A kid in the middle, wrist bare, face screwed up tight and lower lip wobbling.)

(“You’ve had your turn. Let someone else play.” “Last chance, kid. Go away.”)

(Alec in the office with a broken nose, split lip, a bag of frozen peas held to his face. Kid in the middle vanished as soon as the fists started flying.)

Elias Linden.

Out of all the twelve-year-olds in District 2. Alec must have fought the bullies over him a dozen times those next few months. Elias never said thank you — never looked him in the eye — and once the Centre called Alec stopped picking fights, too exhausted to think about the merchant boy with the hunched shoulders and hunted expression.

Elias didn’t look like a kid who’d learned to fight once his recess saviour forgot about him. The drones zoomed in on those same hunched shoulders, same clenched jaw, same stupid fancy clothes that made him a target for every pre-Residential tyrant in the central quarter.

And now —

“I volunteer!”

Alec pressed his knees together against the automatic urge to buckle. He had actually forgotten. Year after year of summers in this square — Creed’s lifelong obsession — and still, for those 30 seconds it was real. The Arena had swooped down and curled its claws around Elias, around all of them, like everyone else in Panem.

But they weren’t the rest of Panem. They were Two, and Alec couldn’t breathe. For a handful of seconds he got it, got why Dad always used that reverent voice when he spoke about the Games, why Creed puffed himself up so big and important. Alec knew Elias and they’d called his name; it could have been Alec. But it wouldn’t be Elias, and it wouldn’t be Alec, not this year, not any year.

Because of the tall, blond teenager with long limbs and steely eyes who strode down the central aisle, mouth curved in a hard sneer. And one day, because of Creed.

Alec bit his tongue until he swallowed blood and cheered with the rest of the crowd, a hollow in the pit of his stomach.

-----

Without Creed, now without Selene, the afternoon yawned. A whole summer with no one else for company; even Alec’s usual trick of calling up an imaginary Selene to devise likely activities wouldn’t save him now. Maybe he could dam the creek and teach himself to swim in the shallows? That would take time, if nothing else.

“Alec.”

He never jumped on the outside anymore, even when all his insides clenched into knots. But Dad’s serious voice made Alec’s heart start running laps, and he turned around slowly, brain doing somersaults trying to figure out what he’d done wrong. Forgot to make his bed? Left his breakfast dishes on the table? Splashed water on the sink and didn’t wipe it?

“Come inside and see this,” Dad said. “It’s important.”

Most kids at school didn’t start watching until the Reaping, maybe the year before so they knew what standing in the square their first year meant, but even Alec only sat down with his parents for the evening recap. A low chord of foreboding plucked in his chest. Quicksand dragged his limbs but he forced himself into a Peacekeeper’s march to join his parents in the living room.

Tucked into a corner of the sofa, under cover of his knees, Alec twisted anxious fingers in the crocheted afghan as one after another, district after district, kids his age walked shakily to the stage. This year the Games would have a whole stage of Elias Lindens — or Alec’s entire class at school.

“What happened?” he asked, once the footage switched to commentary. The Games correspondents didn’t have any theories, or if they did, they weren’t telling. Dad pressed mute on a discussion over the ongoing trend of seersucker in the outer tributes’ Reaping shirts.

‘This,” Dad said, slow and heavy, and Alec’s brain filled in the rest of the sentence along with him as he had done thousands of times — only without the ghost of Selene’s imitation trying to make him giggle —

This is what happens when we break the rules.

“Aunt Julia said,” Alec said, needing to show he understood, needing desperately to be a grownup. “She said there was unrest in the districts. Like how we learned in school.” Dad said nothing, which meant he wasn’t wrong, and so he continued, one foot in front of the other. “So this is — a reminder? That the Games are not a joke. That — that obedience is not a joke. That … they think they’re smart enough to find a way around the rules, if they’re tricky, but they’re not. The Capitol is the boss no matter what.”

Mom nodded. “Yes.” Now the Reaping footage returned in split screen, the only Volunteers (One, Two, Four) waving at the roaring crowds. Her face pinched, eyebrows drawing close, one corner of her mouth turned down. “Their job will be to carry out the punishment.”

“Because we’re the sword,” Alec said, on surer ground now. Anyone who made it to Transition knew this one. District 2, the tool, the weapon, acting as the Capitol willed. Creed had that speech memorized since he was five years old. “We don’t write the message, but we send it.”

They sent him back outside after that, and Alec hauled himself up the willow tree in the hopes that wind in the branches and the solid bark beneath his back would settle the uneasy churning in his stomach. All those weeks of Dad working overtime, the growing tension, a whole nation under the thumb for disobeying. Alec squirmed when Selene sneaked an extra cookie in front of him, never mind widespread treason. And now, six tributes in charge of delivering the Capitol’s retribution. Alec didn’t envy them that task. What did you do with tools, after all, once they’d outlived their use? There would only be one Victor this year, same as any other.

He clenched his eyes shut and focused on the rustle of leaves overhead, the drone of insects and scream of a distant hawk.

-----

Nothing surprising about their girl this year. Strong, beautiful, definitely deadly, stalking the training room in ‘unreleased’ footage that fools nobody but they still do it every year. Dad liked her; Mom said she should smile more. Then they had a brief argument about double standards in tribute sponsorship — Dad: “No one ever asked Nero to smile” Mom: “I am well aware” — while Alec wedged himself in the sofa corner as usual, hoping they forgot about him.

The boy, though —

Right from the start Alec could tell that the male tribute from Two would be unconventional, a thought that chilled his spine. Alec watched, chest squeezed so tight his ribs creaked, as the rangy boy chatted up outlier tributes, postured with the other Careers, and looked up at his mentor with such raw need that Alec looked away, burning with second-hand humiliation. Not exactly the ruthless murder machine that the Reaping set up for him to be.

Once footage ‘leaked’ of a Two v. Four showdown in the training room, both boys bristling for a fight, bodies tense and pushed up in each other’s space, eyes locked, faces so close they breathed the same air. Alec’s face burned, his whole body flashing hot, and he had to fight the urge to fling the blanket over himself, horrified to be in the same room as his parents, even though nothing about that made sense.

“What is he playing at,” Dad groused. “Actually, no, what is his mentor playing at. That boy’s only doing what he’s told. She knows better. Our job — and the stakes — could not be more clear. This is not the year to get clever.”

Alec didn’t bother answering, having long learned to differentiate between Dad’s ‘vent’ and ‘require response’ modes, and so he tensed when Mom ignored the signs. “She wants her kid to survive. There’s no shame in that.”

“That is not what the Games are for,” Dad said sharply. “Not this year. Not any year. They’re bigger than the life of one tribute, one mentor. Lyme knows that — or at least, she should. If she’s forgotten, then that’s one more piece in why this year is necessary.”

Mom’s face tightened, and Alec expected the silence to stretch the way it sometimes did at the dinner table, awkward and awful, but she fired right back, fast enough he nearly flinched. “Of course they’re more than a single life, but that doesn’t make that life irrelevant. It doesn’t mean she shouldn’t try everything she can to bring him home. Or should she dig a grave as soon as the paperwork is signed?”

“Alec,” Dad said, without looking at him, “Outside.”

Alec scrambled off the couch and out the door so fast he bashed his knee, hip and shoulder against various corners on the way out. He did not slow down until he hit the woods.

-----

Next morning, creeping downstairs to grab breakfast and duck outside before his parents woke, Alec ran into his father on the way up, squarely-folded blanket and pillow tucked under his arm. “Um,” Alec said, burning with a sense of shared embarrassment he couldn’t articulate.

“Alec,” Dad said, like any morning, except he fixed his gaze to the left of Alec’s head. Alec scrambled to the side, pressing his back against the wall to let him pass.

-----

“And with that, we’ll be right back to hear from our electrifying tributes from District 3!”

The camera wiped from Caesar Flickerman’s glinting smile to a panel of forecasters as Mom soundlessly muted the television. Alec’s knees dug into his chin and he held himself small, willing himself to shrink, dissolve back into the fabric of the couch, disappear entirely. Don’t move. Don’t breathe. Don’t even blink. Don’t do anything to draw attention. A mouse in the shadow of a hawk, waiting.

Dad’s moods had always filled the house — Creed never believed him but Alec could sense them with his eyes closed — and now it seeped into the living room, thick and unstoppable, like the low roll of thunder before a storm or gush of oil from an overflowing bucket. “Joseph,” Mom said, warningly, but then she stopped, looked at him, and her tone shifted, turning almost gentle. “Joe. It’s all right.”

“What about that is all right,” Dad gritted out. “The instructions this year could not have been more clear. One knows. Our girl knows. They’re playing along, they’re following the rules. The boy is not following the rules. He’s not following the rules, Dora —”

“I know,” Mom said, soothing. Alec had to breathe, finally, and drew air in through his nose as slowly as he could stand. “I know. But they know this as well as you do, they know the cost. They wouldn’t play this game for no reason. There must be a plan.”

“Oh?” Dad spun to glare at her, eyes wild. Don’t move, hissed Alec’s brain, don’t move. “What about all that about mentors and tributes and digging graves and lives not being irrelevant? Throwing our son in my face? Maybe she’s done the math and decided that it’s worth it, like you said. Maybe she doesn’t care who pays the price as long as one boy comes home. They don’t know.” His breath came ragged now. “They don’t know. They don’t know what happens when you break —”

Mom crossed the room in two sharp strides and knelt in front of Dad’s chair, holding his wrists. “Alec,” she said without looking away from Dad, “Go find Paul and Julia. Fast as you can.”

Frozen, Alec couldn’t move until Mom’s slap-sharp “Now, Alec!” tore him from his spot.

-----

Aunt Julia and Uncle Paul were washing the dinner dishes, television on mute in the other room, when Alec slammed his way in the front door. Julia jumped and dropped a drinking glass, which dropped into the sink with a wet plorp. “It’s Dad,” Alec said, chest squeezing. “The District 2 boy said something in the interviews and I don’t get it but it made him — he’s not — Mom said I should come get you —”

Julia and Paul exchanged a look. “Should I,” Julia murmured, and Paul shook his head. “I’ve got it,” he said, and he kissed the top of her head, folded the dish towel on the counter, and headed out. He squeezed Alec’s shoulder on the way past, his hand warm and solid.

“I don’t know what happened,” Alec said. He felt very small and very stupid and he missed Selene so much it hurt.

Julia sighed. “Let’s finish up the dishes first.”

Alec opened his mouth to protest, but Julia held out the towel and he stepped forward to take it from her automatically. And once he had the towel she handed him a glass and the rest sort of followed, and the rhythmic motions of drying the dishes didn’t make the earlier events disappear but they did help quiet the jangling in his brain, at least a little. Finally, Alec placed the last plate on the shelf and hung the towel up to dry, and Julia gestured him over to the table.

“I don’t know what happened either,” Aunt Julia began, and fair enough, they didn’t even watch the interviews. Until Alec came bolting in they wouldn’t have known there was anything to worry about. “But Paul and your mother will sort him out. Peacekeepers, you know. They understand things we can’t, sometimes.”

The urge to tear at the skin by his nails, to pick and pull until his fingers bled, bubbled up strong, and Alec exhaled hard and pressed his hands flat to the tabletop. Pushed down hard until his knuckles ached and his joints shook. “Do you think he’ll ever tell me?”

Aunt Julia frowned. “About tonight? Or something else?”

How even to explain the spectre that stalked his house, haunting the hallways and hanging over Alec’s shoulder any time he considered the kind of playful rule-bending that Selene took for granted as a childhood rite of passage. Alec stared at the table, following a grain of wood from the edge until it disappeared from view. “I don’t know how to — I feel like there’s something big I don’t know. Like he’s always not telling me something.”

Julia laughed.

A snort, not a fully belly laugh, and stifled by her hand once the sound caught up with her, but even so Alec bristled. “It’s not like that,” Julia said. “I only mean, Joseph always has something on his mind. But it has nothing to do with you — or anyone else, really.”

“But —” Alec clicked his tongue in frustration. “Shouldn’t I know? It seems like if I just, if I knew, I’d understand and it would all — make sense. Him. Me. All of it.”

She studied him, eyes dark and serious. “Alec,” Julia said finally. “It’s not your job to manage your father.”

Several summers ago, Selene pushed him out of the willow tree in the backyard. He’d landed on his side, shocked and winded, the breath driven from his lungs, one arm caught under him, wrist bone snapped in two. It came back to him now — not the blow or the pain or the fear, but that moment when he slipped from the branch before he hit the ground, when time elongated and he’d been weightless, floating.

“What,” he said finally, stupidly. “I’m not.”

“Hm,” Julia said. “I’ll make cocoa.”

-----

After the cocoa, Julia sent Alec upstairs to get ready for bed. “You’re welcome to stay here until things settle down,” she said. “I’ll make up the room for you.”

Despite absolutely nothing being different — Selene hadn’t even taken any belongings with her — the yawning cavern of her absence echoed so loudly that Alec actually stole one of her favourite shirts to sleep in out of spite, in the hopes that she would appear in the window to fight him for it, or something. Obviously she didn’t, because that was stupid, which meant that when Julia came back in to say goodnight she found Alec with ‘CAREFUL, I BITE’ emblazoned across his chest.

“Do you think we’ll get punished for what the Twos are doing?” Alec asked. “Dad’s worried, I know that much.”

Julia sat on the edge of the bed and brushed his curls back. “Your dad’s worried because his job takes him closer to things than most. I think if anyone knows their duty, it’s Two. Any mentor worth two stones knows how to keep their tribute and the district safe. Now sleep.”

She poked a finger between his eyebrows, then bent to kiss his forehead. Alec closed his eyes and let himself believe her.

-----

Tree shadows criss-crossed the ceiling as Alec tried to will himself to sleep. Two Boy had aimed the target back at the districts, blaming the families of the tributes for not volunteering. Except that — the outer tributes were usually scrawny, and starving, and had never seen a weapon in their lives. They hadn’t trained in a secret academy for years, had they? Mom and Dad and the trainers always said the Centre was a privilege. It wouldn’t be a privilege if everybody was allowed.

So what, then.

He could hear Selene’s dismissal already: not our problem. Even Creed would argue that training or no, it was the older sibling’s duty to protect the younger, and they would have to live with the guilt of that failure. But Alec had stood in that Reaping square, had watched Elias Linden take that first shaky step forward, and if no one else had taken his place? What if Alec had been thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, and never held a sword? Would he have done it?

Alec didn’t even want to go to Residential. He’d never volunteer to die.

Okay. If it wasn’t the Careers, and it wasn’t the districts, then whose fault was it?

Alec jumped out of bed, sheets tangled around his feet so he nearly tripped and slammed into the floor face-first. He pushed Selene’s desk chair out of the way into the middle of the room, pressed his back against the wall and bent his legs until his thighs burned and his brain gasped in relief.

He counted to five hundred, then dragged himself, twitching and trembling, back to bed.

-----

Normality attempted to reassert itself with breakfast: scrambled egg and toast with a generous tablespoon of homemade rhubarb jam from the neighbours down the road. As always Alec hesitated at the jam — a definite indulgence, and he hadn’t done push-ups or anything this morning — but Julia had already spread it on the bread and asking for a plain slice would be rude. Julia and Paul shared another glance as he sat down, and Alec tensed.

“Your dad and Uncle Paul are going back to the office today,” Aunt Julia said, carefully. “We’ll all watch the recaps in the evening.”

Alec let out a breath. Aunt Julia was on-call for emergencies at the hospital and Mom’s school was out for summer vacation. Senior staff at Eagle Pass, meanwhile, had a work-from-home rotation for Games month, and it wasn’t Dad or Uncle Paul’s turn to be on site. “Is everything okay?”

“It’s an unconventional year already,” said Uncle Paul. “Safe to say the Arena will be a stressful one. We agreed it’s better if we’re not glued to the screen all day.”

Not exactly a lie — Paul and Julia only ever watched the recaps — but Alec knew the sound of an intervention when he heard one. “Okay,” he said slowly. “I guess I’ll … go hang out in the woods?”

Julia poured him a glass of juice. “You can take the fishing gear if you like. I’ll pack you a lunch.”

-----

He left the fishing gear at home, haunted by the memory of gulping mouths and pleading eyes on the last trip Dad tried to take him on, which left his original dam-the-river plan as the only option that sprang to mind. Alec trudged home at dinner time soaking wet, covered in mud, having heard absolutely no stupid jokes or threats or feats of illogic all day. The only time he fell into the creek, he’d tripped on his own.

Hanging out by himself sucked.

-----

Twelve-year-olds died every year. Alec had even seen them. But even compared to the hulking gods of the Careers they’d still been older than Alec and somehow more mature, even if they sobbed their way from Reaping to unceremonious death.

Now they were his age. His classmates.

The recap didn’t linger too long on their deaths, screaming and running and fighting to scale the forcefield walls. Two Boy took out one in the first few seconds — first kill of the game — without even looking. Dad grunted under his breath, a noise Alec recognized as now you’re playing ball. Unfortunately they saved most of the bloodbath time for the Career drama, Two versus Four and the shouts of betrayal between them. Dad was bracketed on the couch between Mom and Uncle Paul, and Alec tried not to look at him.

Two Girl gave it her best shot, but even she couldn’t take down four Careers on her own. “He left her there,” Alec said in a small voice. Sure, it was the Games, and alliances were only temporary, but — still.

“He made his choice,” Dad said, flat and grim.

He’d made everyone else’s choices for them too, apparently. After killing Two Girl the Pack stared at each other, then split. Everyone for themselves from day one. Alec swallowed the sour taste in his mouth. At least his parents paid for the raw feed so he didn’t have to listen to a commentary track on top of everything else.

And so it went, day after day. An ugly Arena for an ugly year, full of traps and tricks to create excitement before a bunch of kids Alec’s age could die slowly on their own. “It is a punishment for the districts,” Alec said once, watching the girl from Twelve dissolve in acid rain, screaming until her lungs filled with blood. “But not —” Not one carried out by the Careers, he’d begun to say — not with their tributes struggling to survive alongside the outliers, hardly the glorious tools of the Capitol’s vengeance the Reaping promised them to be. The sense of exception granted by the Volunteers had levelled.

He froze as soon as he registered he’d spoken aloud, but Dad only sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “We have a narrative,” he said, reluctant. “We’ll see how it plays out.”

Two Boy started this, and so almost against his will Alec started to pay attention. While the Ones and Fours faced mutts, Two alone dragged himself out of the collapsing ground for hours and hours. Alec imagined the trainers asking, why? Why perseverance rather than combat? Humility over glory? Perhaps humiliation for the one who’d broken the rules? Bringing him low while the ones who’d played along got to earn their survival with honour and prestige.

Boring, Selene would say, for sure. Who wants to watch this dude crawl out of a hole for eight hours. Let’s go back to the fights.

-----

Two killed Seven after sharing a meal and talking about home, and Alec swallowed nausea. How could he do that, how could he — chat about family and little sisters and share chocolate and names and then slit his throat like that, like it didn’t even matter, pick up the dead boy’s token and take his snacks like it didn’t bother him. Alec thought of Selene sitting in Residential with the thirteens, watching, taking notes, of Creed, and the air around him had gone thin and thick all at once, pressing close around him and squeezing, squeezing, but none of it sliding into his lungs no matter how he gasped —

“Bed,” Mom said firmly, her hands on either side of his face. She snapped her fingertips against his cheek and he could breathe again. “Come on, Alec.”

He let her drag him into bed and tuck him in as she hadn’t done in years, physically lifting his legs over the edge of the bed and rearranging him bodily like a toddler. “I don’t want it,” Alec whispered, choked. “I don’t want Creed in there.”

“Creed,” Mom said firmly, “will not be like that.”

Alec pressed his arm over his eyes, breath shuddering. “He’ll still have to kill them. The ones my age.”

“He won’t have picnics with them,” Mom said. “He won’t make a game of it. And he won’t antagonize the President and the Gamemakers, either. You know that.”

He didn’t look at her. Pushed his arm down harder until coloured lights spun behind his lids. “Do you want him in there? Really?”

The bed creaked as Mom drew back, mattress bouncing with the sudden removal of her weight. “Good night, Alec,” she said, sharp and repressive, and it wasn’t fair and he shouldn’t have asked when she couldn’t possibly give an answer that would make him happy but her tone left no room for an apology.

Jeremy, Two Boy had said. Like my old man. He’d actually named his father on television. A father who — according to his interview — turned him out into the streets and left him homeless. Alec curled into a ball and tried to ignore the churning deep within.

-----

I hope the popcorn tastes good, said Two Boy, saluting over Nine Boy’s corpse with his blood-stained dagger. Try using thyme.

Dad stiffened. And there it was again, that little jolt in Alec’s spine, that sense of wrongness, the turn of his ankle on the stairs, the give beneath his foot that spoke of a sinkhole in the yard.

Two Boy hadn’t mentioned brothers. Maybe he didn’t know. Maybe he really did mean it to shame the district families, except. Except. If it were Creed he’d be sick with anger and guilt and fury, no one in the districts was eating popcorn — even in Two that was gauche, as Dad would say, so where — then who —

Alec met Dad’s eyes without meaning to, both of them fingers clenched on knees, breathing through their noses. This is what happens, Dad always said, when he ordered Alec to the wall, or sent him to his room without dinner, or cut a switch from the dogwood coppice in the backyard. This, and this, and this.

I get it, Alec wanted to say, desperate and terrified, but his voice died in his throat. I get it. He’s going to get us all in trouble.

Dad’s mouth thinned. He nodded, once, and turned back to the television without a word.

-----

Two Boy dragged himself across the frozen grass to the hovercraft as his vitals plunged downward at the bottom of the screen, but at the last possible moment he made it. The Gamemakers bestowed their favour, bringing out the sun to grant him that last burst of strength to get him to the ramp.

The Capitol assented. He had struggled enough, been humbled enough. A satisfactory narrative could be fashioned. District 2’s little traitor could come home.

Alec glanced at Dad, but phones were ringing off the hook all over the neighbourhood as soon as the trumpets blared. They all watched the recap knowing who would win. “Well,” Dad said finally, “this will be a fun cleanup.”

-----

No more of the districts-at-fault in the post-interview. No more inflammatory political commentary. They dressed Two in a too-big suit like a little boy wearing daddy’s clothes, had him blubber all over his mentor and cry about only ever wanting a family. Alec would never have believed it as a Two interview if he hadn’t watched the Games from start to finish.

Boring, said the Selene in his head again, absolutely disgusted, but the iron grip of terror around Alec’s chest loosened, maybe, a little. Obvious, sure, but maybe that was the point. Maybe playing poor-little-helpless-boy would be enough to forget this was one of the most dangerous Victors Alec had ever seen.

-----

After the closing ceremony, Dad called Alec outside. They stood together on the porch, shoulder to shoulder, looking out over the front walk as fireflies flitted in and out over the lawn. “Alec,” Dad said slowly. “These past — I’ve — I wanted to —”

Alec’s palms itched. The cuts from the switch had healed, pale pink stripes along his life line, nearly invisible. “It’s okay,” he blurted out. After everything that happened, everything he’d seen and heard, an apology from his father for showing emotion might actually explode his brain. “I get it. Now things can be normal again. Right?”

“I hope so,” Dad said, with feeling. He paused, and for a long moment no sound but the wind rustling the leaves and the call of two horned owls in adjacent trees. At last he let out a long breath and rested a hand on Alec’s shoulder. “I know it isn’t easy, but you’ve always tried to do what I ask of you. I know that.”

The sun had long set, only a thin, bright strip of light at the very base of the horizon above the buildings of town. Alec blinked away the stinging in his eyes. “Thanks, Dad.”

They stood there a moment longer, then Dad clapped his shoulder and stepped back. “Come on, then, let’s head in before the mosquitoes eat us alive.”

#lorata answers #anonymous #we must be killers: tales from district 2 #my writing #oc: alec seward #oc: joseph seward #oc: adora seward #is this too niche for ao3 lol #EDIT: too late it's on there lol

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