Victor Alec - arm woes
Alec's arm tries too hard to be an arm. Look, it makes sense. Luckily the ones who need to get it, get it.
(contains Alec learning to deal with his amputation)
(EDIT: Now with the missing first few paragraphs added back in)
Every single morning, Alec wakes up and stares at his stupid arm, lying in its stupid case on its stupid bench beside his bed. Every morning he sits up, checks his shoulder for sores or blisters, then drags himself over to the full-length double-mirror setup at the end of his bed. He manoeuvres himself sideways so it looks like his right arm is where his left should be, and goes through a series of stretches and hand exercises to work out the cramps and pins and needles in the ghost limb his brain and body are convinced are there.
Every morning he showers, struggles into his socket harness one-handed, and spends a good five minutes just glaring at the arm before finally giving in and screwing it into place. There’s always a second before it connects, when he tries to flex and the fingers just sort of sit there, but then the connections align with his nerves and everything clicks into place and it’s fine, it’s amazing, isn’t it wonderful? It’s like he never lost his arm at all, unless he touches it and feels the smooth, cool plastic beneath his fingers instead of warm skin and muscle.
It’s - fine. The arm is fine. It’s a marvel of Capitol bioengineering, that it can move and respond to his thoughts and do almost anything his actual arm can do. Alec wasn’t kidding when he told President Snow that every time he looks at it, every time he reaches for a glass of water or bends down to pull on his shoes he gets a full slap in the face reminder of the Capitol’s involvement in his life.
Only it’s not quite what he told the president. It’s not the warm glow of their generosity and love that fills him, rather it’s the icy flood of anger that he only has this arm because they didn’t care enough to save his real one. The smooth pink skin and metal joints remind Alec that the Capitol wanted him picture-perfect and weeping with gratitude for the fancy quick-fix version. It’s not real, the arm is fake and the healing is fake, it says that Alec is fine and good to go, ready for the cameras with all of the mess of the Arena behind him.
Except he’s not. The Arena still hovers, the deaths and the blood and the mutts with their claws and their fangs and their weight closing in on him when he closes his eyes. Alec still can’t walk through the orchard without his throat closing tight in panic, without his breaths running tight and his brain flipping into overdrive telling him there are mutts in the trees, and he hates it, he hates it because it’s not true, he knows it’s not true, he’s safe and there will be no more mutts ever again, but he can’t make his brain stop. He can’t walk in the orchard and he can’t sit near windows and he can’t sleep without knowing everything is locked and Emory is sitting in the chair next to his bed like he’s a fucking child and that isn’t fine, is it, but the shiny pink arm attached to him says he should be.
The arm says Alec shouldn’t still flinch when he hears footsteps in his house, shoulders tensing for that half-second before his brain catches up and marks the tread as someone safe. He should be over it, all the bullshit with his dad was years ago, he was a kid and it doesn’t matter anymore, he’s faced far worse than a few slaps on the hand from someone who loved him and wanted him to grow up strong, and the arm reminds him of that. He should be past that now, the scars of his past have long been wiped clean. The arm is a bright, shiny symbol of the growth and progress that Alec just can’t seem to let himself find.
Whenever Alec wears his arm he feels broken, ugly, like he’s falling apart on the inside and desperately trying to hold himself together. He doesn’t feel like the proud, confident Victor he’s supposed to, the boy who beat the odds and did what his perfect, amazing brother couldn’t; instead Alec finds himself thrown back to his childhood, stumbling and faking it and going through the motions and waiting for the moment when everyone around him looks up and realizes he’s an enormous fraud.
When Alec wears his arm, he looks at himself and sees a lie.
One morning he can’t do it anymore. He doesn’t mean to do it, he means to get up and go through the routine like always, really he does, only this time when he picks up the arm and holds it in his hand the weight drags him down. He feels the jungle pressing in on him, feels the vines snake around his wrists, feels the hot breath of the monkey-mutts on the back of his neck and the trace of their fangs at his shoulder. And today when he imagines putting on the sleeve and screwing the physical representation of the Capitol’s bright, cheery, fake-it-for-the-cameras smile into its socket for another day, a low scream rises up inside him.
He doesn’t scream. Instead the world blanks for an instant: something inside his chest snaps as though an invisible knife sliced through his sternum and let his ribs fly open, and when Alec comes back to himself he sees the arm across the room, on the floor in the corner along with a toppled-over end table.
Shit.
Alec scrambles to his feet, panic exploding like a sword shatters bone as he fights a sickening wash of fear. How will he explain a broken arm to the Capitol, how can he sell this to the president when he’s meant to be overwhelmed by gratitude every time he so much as flexes his fingers - but no, no the arm is fine, no dents or scratches. It looks like Alec will not have to go to the Capitol and explain to the president that he took a very expensive, very gracious gift and smashed it against the wall like a tantruming child.
He sits back, heart pounding, and takes a minute to collect himself while staring down at the arm resting in his good hand. He should put it on. This is ridiculous. He had his outburst, he got it out of his system, now it’s time to move on and go about the rest of his day like an adult.
Except … except who cares? The Capitol isn’t here. President Snow isn’t waiting for him in the kitchen. This is Alec’s house, there are no camera crews here waiting to film his every move, and until it’s time to go to the Capitol for the Tour, no one cares what he looks like or what he does. Not today, anyway.
The pressure builds inside his head. He feels - ridiculously - like he did when he was little, when he and Creed got home from school and Dad said he could take a cookie from the jar and Creed took two and winked at him, and Dad wasn’t watching but what if he was, what if he counted all the cookies before dinner every night, what if he found out somehow, and Alec stood there and stared at the cookie jar as it got harder and harder to breathe until finally Creed said okay okay I’ll put it back see Alec it’s fine but Alec ended up not taking a cookie anyway in case Dad found out he’d even thought about it.
A single thought arcs through his mind like a lightning bolt, clear and striking: what would Selene do?
Alec drops the arm to the floor and stands up, the motion jerky and off-balance. He pulls on a t-shirt, lets the empty sleeve hang loose, and heads downstairs.
Emory glances at him when he hits the kitchen, already making breakfast. “Morning,” she says, gaze flickering to his arm. “Everything okay?”
“I don’t want to wear it,” Alec bites out, sounding defensive and ridiculous in his own ears.
“Sure thing,” Emory says mildly. “There’s fresh juice in the fridge, if you wanna grab it.”
Alex exhales, the tangles in his spine unknitting. “Yeah, okay,” he says. “Can we have pancakes?”
He heads over to Selene’s later, finds her sprawled on the couch with her feet in Claudius’ lap like some kind of teenage empress. “I like the new arm,” Selene says. “Very minimalist.”
“Fuck off,” Alec shoots back, rewarded as always by Selene’s huge grin whenever he uses profanity, even if the word sits strangely in his mouth. He got used to swearing at the Centre because it’s what they expect of him, but it never really fit. He hopes he’ll be able to ease back out of it, once the Tour is past and he can leave the last of the Arena aggression behind for good, save it for special occasions when he wants to make Selene laugh. Selene pulls back her legs, and Alec drops down onto the couch between her and Claudius so she can let them fall back down across both of them. “I dunno, I got sick of it today. It tries too hard to be an arm.”
“I think I know what you’re getting at but I’m not quite there,” Claudius says, shifting so his arm extends across the back of the couch. Alec’s heartbeat kicks up, and a lifetime of self-protection and distance and maintaining careful, meticulous separation wars with the invitation until Selene rolls her eyes and lifts one foot to nudge him in the leg with her heel. He lets out a short breath and moves sideways to lean his weight against Claudius, who brings his arm down to rest over Alec’s shoulders as casually as Selene’s legs drape across both of them.
Alec chews on his lip for a minute, trying out words in his head before he makes a mess of them out loud. “It’s - it looks like a real arm, but it isn’t, and that makes it feel more fake,” he says finally. “It’s pretending to be something it’s not, instead of embracing what it is. And that … makes me feel like I’m pretending too?”
He waits, breath sticking in his chest, for them to laugh, or scoff, or tell him it’s stupid, that it’s just an arm and he’s ridiculous. But Claudius only makes a vaguely sympathetic noise and pats his side, while Selene looks thoughtful. “Clearly you need a badass robot arm,” she says. “Come on, let’s go blow something up down by the lake.”
“Selene,” Claudius says, half in warning, half in resignation.
“That’s why I said the lake,” Selene says, angelic. “Lots of water. We’ll bring buckets. It’ll be great! Do you want to cheer Alec up or not?”
Alec meets Selene’s gaze, just for a second, and even as she keeps a straight face the sheer mischief dancing in her eyes is enough to knock him back to their childhood, all the way to the early days before the fascination with blood and torturing squirrels and the death list sank its hooks in her and turned that light dark and wicked. In that moment he doesn’t care if they burn half the forest down. He turns to Claudius and grins at him half upside-down. “I am very sad. Very emotionally fragile. I could do with a good distraction.”
“For fuck’s sake,” Claudius mutters, shoving Selene’s feet out of his lap and nudging Alec off his shoulder. “Yeah, sure, okay, let’s go blow things up, I’m sure nothing about this will go horribly wrong, at all.”
Selene winks at Alec. “He just doesn’t want to admit he thinks it’ll be fun. Don’t worry, he’ll come around when he sees how cool it is.”
He doesn’t wear it the next morning either, and this time it’s easier. The day after that Alec doesn’t even twitch, though it feels strange to see it sitting there and so he tosses a spare t-shirt over it as it lies on his dresser so it doesn’t stare at him while he dresses. Emory still doesn’t say anything, letting him talk about it or not on his own time, and finally near the end of the week as Alec continues not to wear his arm and the weight in his chest gets lighter and lighter he finally gives her his explanation, half holding his breath and staring down at his plate.
“Well,” Emory says, fork stuck in her eggs. “Maybe let’s not say that at your next press interview, but all right.”
Alec tightens his fingers over the edge of the table. “That’s it?”
“Your recovery isn’t a lie,” Emory fixes him with a pointed look. “But we don’t wear what the stylists give us at home, either. If right now your arm makes you feel like that, then you don’t have to wear it while you’re here. We’ll figure something out.”
Selene and Misha take a trip to the Capitol for a few days after that, and Alec tries not to mope. He and Claudius are still finding their balance without her, and for the most part it’s pretty quiet. A lot of music and walks through the Village and up the mountain trails, and gentle sparring practice to help Alec find his equilibrium.
“I don’t hate the arm,” Alec mutters one afternoon as he struggles to unwrap his sandwich one-handed. Claudius is watching him while pretending not to, checking to see the point where he should quietly reach over and help before Alec gets too frustrated. For some reason that annoys him today even though that was Alec’s entire method of dealing with Selene growing up. “I’m not doing this to be stubborn.”
“You don’t have to explain yourself,” Claudius says. “You already gave us your speech, it’s fine. You don’t have to keep trying to justify it.”
Alec scowls down at his sandwich. “I was just thinking about how they’d probably love this narrative too, that’s all. Poor brave Alec wants to do everything himself without any help, and that’s not it either! I just - they did this to me, and I don’t want them to pretend they didn’t. They don’t get to erase what they did to me and pretend it was nothing, but I shouldn’t have to do this so they can feel inspired by my struggle either. It’s bullshit.”
Claudius bites his lip, expression turning uncommonly solemn. “Hey, buddy, I’m not disagreeing, but.” He taps two fingers at the side of his head, then twirls them in a circle that encompasses the woods around them. It takes Alec a second, but then he gets it: the trees have ears. A low shiver runs through him. Treason? Claudius thinks this could be treason? And Claudius, not Brutus or Emory or any of the staunch loyalists, but Claudius who ran a dangerous game and only hits the Capitol when he absolutely has to, usually in disguise because he’s under orders to fade away and disappear.
If Claudius thinks Alec skirted treason, well, he would know.
Alec lets out a ghost of a laugh and finally fumbles the knot open. His sandwich is a little smushed, but not too worse for wear. “Right,” he says. “Yeah. Thanks.”
Claudius gives his shoulder a sympathetic shake, then scratches an irritating itch below the joint when Alec makes a hangdog face at him.
Two weeks later, Selene interrupts Alec’s breakfast by bounding into the kitchen and dropping a large box on the table. “Hey,” she says, grinning wide with all her teeth. “I got you a present.”
Alec stares down at the box. “It doesn’t look big enough to hide a dead body … could have a baby in it, though. Lene, you shouldn’t have.”
She rolls her eyes. “See, you’re lucky because I do nice things for you even though you don’t appreciate me. Are you going to open it or do I have to do it, because I am not patient enough to wait for you to get around to it when you feel like it.”
The funny thing about Selene, Alec recalls from their childhood, is that her gifts might be utterly inexplicable, but also, perfect and somehow oddly touching. She had a knack for completely baffling gifts you never knew you needed, and Alec regretted having to leave them behind when he moved into Residential. The idea of renewing that tradition now is an alarming one, if only because Alec could never keep up.
But now she’s here, puffed up and pleased with herself, and she could have filled the box with worms and Alex will still open it because he wants to know what’s got her so chuffed. Damn it all.
Emory’s off to the side with her coffee, holding her mug in two hands as she leans against the counter and hiding her smile as she takes a sip. She’s also not interrupting to give commentary or ask Selene what’s in it, letting them have their moment as though she isn’t even here. And okay, what, now Emory knows, which means Selene checked with her, this is a mentor-approved gift, and is this why Selene and Misha disappeared for a week -
Screw this. Alec tears off the lid of the box and tosses it aside, nearly knocking over his glass of orange juice while Selene bounces on her toes.
For a second his brain struggles to identify the shiny, blue and silver object as anything at all. It’s definitely cool, and futuristic, whatever it is, and it has Stark-tech written all over it which also explains a lot. Selene’s friendship with the genius engineer from Three is one Alec doesn’t understand and is a little afraid to, but apparently it netted him a fancy … something. The question is, what?
And then he sees the fingers.
Alex gasps.
Selene’s grin threatens to break her face. “You said you didn’t want one that looked like a regular arm.”
“So you got me a robot arm?” Alec reaches out and touches it with one finger, expecting cold metal, but the surface is surprisingly giving to the touch despite the lustre, warming under the pressure of his hand.
“No, I asked for that, but Tony said it would be too heavy and wouldn’t do what you wanted. You’re welcome for sitting through a whole lecture on robotics versus bionics without wandering away, by the way. Try it on.”
Selene has the grin back again, and Alec looks down at the arm and swallows. But Emory only smiles when he glances at her for permission and reassurance, and she wouldn’t set him up for failure or disappointment. Alec’s heart hammers as lifts the arm into place, fitting it over the socket - then gasps again as a series of tiny shivers run across his shoulder and down his spine, as though dozens of fingers reached inside him and joined hands.
“Think fast,” Selene calls out, and whips an apple at his head.
“Hey!” Alec snaps, snatching it out of the air before it can hit him in the face.
One-handed. Right-handed.
Alec looks down to see the apple nestled comfortably in his palm, caught between his shiny new fingers, the skin firm and unbruised. He moves his arm in a slow circle, tosses the apple back to Selene, finds the motion completed without a second’s hesitation. As he moves, ripples of blue light follow faint webs over the arm’s surface, almost like lacing. It’s beautiful - and unignorable.
Alec’s chest aches. “Lene -”
“You said you didn’t want an arm that pretended like nothing happened,” Selene says. She’s not grinning now. There’s still a smile, but a small one, a little crooked, and she’s got some of her weight on her back foot. Like if Alec starts vomiting too many feelings she might turn tail and run.
“You’re right, I did,” he says in wonder. This one doesn’t pretend anything. It is what it is, no apologies, and Alex flexes the fingers and lets out a delighted laugh. “How do I charge it? I don’t see a charging port.”
“Oh, well, you know Tony.” Selene snickers. “He’s always got to show off. He built you a mini arc reactor so you never need to power it up. He said you’ll die long before the arm does.”
Alec gawks at her. Now the back of his head flashes a warning, a little voice that sounds like his father reminding him never to accept favours unless you know exactly what you’ll be paying in the end. “Lene … that’s way too much. What do I owe him?” Sponsor funds? An alliance in a future Games when they’re both mentoring? A quick patter of panic dashes across his breastbone.
“Nothing, you dork. It’s my gift, my favour. Plus it gave him the chance to show off, which is all he wants in the first place.”
And of course now Alec had made himself a walking billboard for Stark Industries to anyone with even a remote recognition of the company’s intellectual property, which couldn’t be a downside. He grins a little, even as Dad’s voice in his head sharpens. If someone offers you a product, you are the product! he’d snapped once when he caught Alec using a free pencil emblazoned with the logo of a local business one of the other kids’ parents had brought in on career day. Never provide yourself as free advertising.
“Well, tell him thank you,” Alec says. “I’d tell him myself but I feel like I might use too many feelings words.”
Selene’s still wary, caught like she half wants to warn him not to get mushy but is also aware she probably shouldn’t. And so Alec pushes aside the urge to fling his arms around her and hug her, to bury his face in her shoulder and leak tears of joy for the next million years, and instead tosses back the last of his juice and claps his hands together. “I want to go test this out. Sparring? Maybe now I can finally kick your ass.”
Her eyes flicker like she knows exactly what kind of overemotional travesty he had to swallow to get there, but she doesn’t call him on it. “You wish,” Selene says, shoving him. “You’d need more than two hands to defeat me!”
She says it in a bombastic, for-the-cameras melodrama voice like those terrible martial arts movies on the Capitol channel, and Alec laughs and tackles her. “Outside!” Emory reminds them. Selene gets Alec in a headlock and he hooks his arms around her waist, and they both drag each other out into the yard, laughing the whole way.
Later, after Selene heads home, Emory draws Alec in for a sparring match of her own, pinning him to the floor in the living room. “That’s a real nice thing she did, and I okayed it, but you know you can’t wear that in the Capitol,” Emory says, her arm heavy and reassuring across his chest. “It’ll be bad for you, and bad for that Mr. Stark, too.”
Alec nods. “I know. I have to be grateful for what they gave me.” Emory’s eyes flash sharp and intent, and a second later Alec’s words catch up to him. “I mean - I am grateful. I’m grateful and it’s important to show it. That’s all I meant.”
Emory shifts her weight a little heavier onto his breastbone. “You remember that,” she tells him, her voice low in warning. There’s no joke in her eyes now, no teasing warmth. “You wanted an arm that didn’t erase what happened. That means you need to remember too. We keep you safe here, but don’t get lazy. It’s never over, Alec. Victory is not a joke, and the Capitol isn’t something you throw away because you don’t like the cost.”
He swallows, an echo of the talk with Claudius in the fingers that walk down his spine. “Yes ma’am,” he says. “I won’t forget.”
“Good.” Emory sits back. “Why don’t you go for a run, clear your head.”
He runs for an hour until his lungs burn and his legs shake, the blue and silver of his arm flashing in the sun.
(contains Alec learning to deal with his amputation)
(EDIT: Now with the missing first few paragraphs added back in)
Every single morning, Alec wakes up and stares at his stupid arm, lying in its stupid case on its stupid bench beside his bed. Every morning he sits up, checks his shoulder for sores or blisters, then drags himself over to the full-length double-mirror setup at the end of his bed. He manoeuvres himself sideways so it looks like his right arm is where his left should be, and goes through a series of stretches and hand exercises to work out the cramps and pins and needles in the ghost limb his brain and body are convinced are there.
Every morning he showers, struggles into his socket harness one-handed, and spends a good five minutes just glaring at the arm before finally giving in and screwing it into place. There’s always a second before it connects, when he tries to flex and the fingers just sort of sit there, but then the connections align with his nerves and everything clicks into place and it’s fine, it’s amazing, isn’t it wonderful? It’s like he never lost his arm at all, unless he touches it and feels the smooth, cool plastic beneath his fingers instead of warm skin and muscle.
It’s - fine. The arm is fine. It’s a marvel of Capitol bioengineering, that it can move and respond to his thoughts and do almost anything his actual arm can do. Alec wasn’t kidding when he told President Snow that every time he looks at it, every time he reaches for a glass of water or bends down to pull on his shoes he gets a full slap in the face reminder of the Capitol’s involvement in his life.
Only it’s not quite what he told the president. It’s not the warm glow of their generosity and love that fills him, rather it’s the icy flood of anger that he only has this arm because they didn’t care enough to save his real one. The smooth pink skin and metal joints remind Alec that the Capitol wanted him picture-perfect and weeping with gratitude for the fancy quick-fix version. It’s not real, the arm is fake and the healing is fake, it says that Alec is fine and good to go, ready for the cameras with all of the mess of the Arena behind him.
Except he’s not. The Arena still hovers, the deaths and the blood and the mutts with their claws and their fangs and their weight closing in on him when he closes his eyes. Alec still can’t walk through the orchard without his throat closing tight in panic, without his breaths running tight and his brain flipping into overdrive telling him there are mutts in the trees, and he hates it, he hates it because it’s not true, he knows it’s not true, he’s safe and there will be no more mutts ever again, but he can’t make his brain stop. He can’t walk in the orchard and he can’t sit near windows and he can’t sleep without knowing everything is locked and Emory is sitting in the chair next to his bed like he’s a fucking child and that isn’t fine, is it, but the shiny pink arm attached to him says he should be.
The arm says Alec shouldn’t still flinch when he hears footsteps in his house, shoulders tensing for that half-second before his brain catches up and marks the tread as someone safe. He should be over it, all the bullshit with his dad was years ago, he was a kid and it doesn’t matter anymore, he’s faced far worse than a few slaps on the hand from someone who loved him and wanted him to grow up strong, and the arm reminds him of that. He should be past that now, the scars of his past have long been wiped clean. The arm is a bright, shiny symbol of the growth and progress that Alec just can’t seem to let himself find.
Whenever Alec wears his arm he feels broken, ugly, like he’s falling apart on the inside and desperately trying to hold himself together. He doesn’t feel like the proud, confident Victor he’s supposed to, the boy who beat the odds and did what his perfect, amazing brother couldn’t; instead Alec finds himself thrown back to his childhood, stumbling and faking it and going through the motions and waiting for the moment when everyone around him looks up and realizes he’s an enormous fraud.
When Alec wears his arm, he looks at himself and sees a lie.
One morning he can’t do it anymore. He doesn’t mean to do it, he means to get up and go through the routine like always, really he does, only this time when he picks up the arm and holds it in his hand the weight drags him down. He feels the jungle pressing in on him, feels the vines snake around his wrists, feels the hot breath of the monkey-mutts on the back of his neck and the trace of their fangs at his shoulder. And today when he imagines putting on the sleeve and screwing the physical representation of the Capitol’s bright, cheery, fake-it-for-the-cameras smile into its socket for another day, a low scream rises up inside him.
He doesn’t scream. Instead the world blanks for an instant: something inside his chest snaps as though an invisible knife sliced through his sternum and let his ribs fly open, and when Alec comes back to himself he sees the arm across the room, on the floor in the corner along with a toppled-over end table.
Shit.
Alec scrambles to his feet, panic exploding like a sword shatters bone as he fights a sickening wash of fear. How will he explain a broken arm to the Capitol, how can he sell this to the president when he’s meant to be overwhelmed by gratitude every time he so much as flexes his fingers - but no, no the arm is fine, no dents or scratches. It looks like Alec will not have to go to the Capitol and explain to the president that he took a very expensive, very gracious gift and smashed it against the wall like a tantruming child.
He sits back, heart pounding, and takes a minute to collect himself while staring down at the arm resting in his good hand. He should put it on. This is ridiculous. He had his outburst, he got it out of his system, now it’s time to move on and go about the rest of his day like an adult.
Except … except who cares? The Capitol isn’t here. President Snow isn’t waiting for him in the kitchen. This is Alec’s house, there are no camera crews here waiting to film his every move, and until it’s time to go to the Capitol for the Tour, no one cares what he looks like or what he does. Not today, anyway.
The pressure builds inside his head. He feels - ridiculously - like he did when he was little, when he and Creed got home from school and Dad said he could take a cookie from the jar and Creed took two and winked at him, and Dad wasn’t watching but what if he was, what if he counted all the cookies before dinner every night, what if he found out somehow, and Alec stood there and stared at the cookie jar as it got harder and harder to breathe until finally Creed said okay okay I’ll put it back see Alec it’s fine but Alec ended up not taking a cookie anyway in case Dad found out he’d even thought about it.
A single thought arcs through his mind like a lightning bolt, clear and striking: what would Selene do?
Alec drops the arm to the floor and stands up, the motion jerky and off-balance. He pulls on a t-shirt, lets the empty sleeve hang loose, and heads downstairs.
Emory glances at him when he hits the kitchen, already making breakfast. “Morning,” she says, gaze flickering to his arm. “Everything okay?”
“I don’t want to wear it,” Alec bites out, sounding defensive and ridiculous in his own ears.
“Sure thing,” Emory says mildly. “There’s fresh juice in the fridge, if you wanna grab it.”
Alex exhales, the tangles in his spine unknitting. “Yeah, okay,” he says. “Can we have pancakes?”
He heads over to Selene’s later, finds her sprawled on the couch with her feet in Claudius’ lap like some kind of teenage empress. “I like the new arm,” Selene says. “Very minimalist.”
“Fuck off,” Alec shoots back, rewarded as always by Selene’s huge grin whenever he uses profanity, even if the word sits strangely in his mouth. He got used to swearing at the Centre because it’s what they expect of him, but it never really fit. He hopes he’ll be able to ease back out of it, once the Tour is past and he can leave the last of the Arena aggression behind for good, save it for special occasions when he wants to make Selene laugh. Selene pulls back her legs, and Alec drops down onto the couch between her and Claudius so she can let them fall back down across both of them. “I dunno, I got sick of it today. It tries too hard to be an arm.”
“I think I know what you’re getting at but I’m not quite there,” Claudius says, shifting so his arm extends across the back of the couch. Alec’s heartbeat kicks up, and a lifetime of self-protection and distance and maintaining careful, meticulous separation wars with the invitation until Selene rolls her eyes and lifts one foot to nudge him in the leg with her heel. He lets out a short breath and moves sideways to lean his weight against Claudius, who brings his arm down to rest over Alec’s shoulders as casually as Selene’s legs drape across both of them.
Alec chews on his lip for a minute, trying out words in his head before he makes a mess of them out loud. “It’s - it looks like a real arm, but it isn’t, and that makes it feel more fake,” he says finally. “It’s pretending to be something it’s not, instead of embracing what it is. And that … makes me feel like I’m pretending too?”
He waits, breath sticking in his chest, for them to laugh, or scoff, or tell him it’s stupid, that it’s just an arm and he’s ridiculous. But Claudius only makes a vaguely sympathetic noise and pats his side, while Selene looks thoughtful. “Clearly you need a badass robot arm,” she says. “Come on, let’s go blow something up down by the lake.”
“Selene,” Claudius says, half in warning, half in resignation.
“That’s why I said the lake,” Selene says, angelic. “Lots of water. We’ll bring buckets. It’ll be great! Do you want to cheer Alec up or not?”
Alec meets Selene’s gaze, just for a second, and even as she keeps a straight face the sheer mischief dancing in her eyes is enough to knock him back to their childhood, all the way to the early days before the fascination with blood and torturing squirrels and the death list sank its hooks in her and turned that light dark and wicked. In that moment he doesn’t care if they burn half the forest down. He turns to Claudius and grins at him half upside-down. “I am very sad. Very emotionally fragile. I could do with a good distraction.”
“For fuck’s sake,” Claudius mutters, shoving Selene’s feet out of his lap and nudging Alec off his shoulder. “Yeah, sure, okay, let’s go blow things up, I’m sure nothing about this will go horribly wrong, at all.”
Selene winks at Alec. “He just doesn’t want to admit he thinks it’ll be fun. Don’t worry, he’ll come around when he sees how cool it is.”
He doesn’t wear it the next morning either, and this time it’s easier. The day after that Alec doesn’t even twitch, though it feels strange to see it sitting there and so he tosses a spare t-shirt over it as it lies on his dresser so it doesn’t stare at him while he dresses. Emory still doesn’t say anything, letting him talk about it or not on his own time, and finally near the end of the week as Alec continues not to wear his arm and the weight in his chest gets lighter and lighter he finally gives her his explanation, half holding his breath and staring down at his plate.
“Well,” Emory says, fork stuck in her eggs. “Maybe let’s not say that at your next press interview, but all right.”
Alec tightens his fingers over the edge of the table. “That’s it?”
“Your recovery isn’t a lie,” Emory fixes him with a pointed look. “But we don’t wear what the stylists give us at home, either. If right now your arm makes you feel like that, then you don’t have to wear it while you’re here. We’ll figure something out.”
Selene and Misha take a trip to the Capitol for a few days after that, and Alec tries not to mope. He and Claudius are still finding their balance without her, and for the most part it’s pretty quiet. A lot of music and walks through the Village and up the mountain trails, and gentle sparring practice to help Alec find his equilibrium.
“I don’t hate the arm,” Alec mutters one afternoon as he struggles to unwrap his sandwich one-handed. Claudius is watching him while pretending not to, checking to see the point where he should quietly reach over and help before Alec gets too frustrated. For some reason that annoys him today even though that was Alec’s entire method of dealing with Selene growing up. “I’m not doing this to be stubborn.”
“You don’t have to explain yourself,” Claudius says. “You already gave us your speech, it’s fine. You don’t have to keep trying to justify it.”
Alec scowls down at his sandwich. “I was just thinking about how they’d probably love this narrative too, that’s all. Poor brave Alec wants to do everything himself without any help, and that’s not it either! I just - they did this to me, and I don’t want them to pretend they didn’t. They don’t get to erase what they did to me and pretend it was nothing, but I shouldn’t have to do this so they can feel inspired by my struggle either. It’s bullshit.”
Claudius bites his lip, expression turning uncommonly solemn. “Hey, buddy, I’m not disagreeing, but.” He taps two fingers at the side of his head, then twirls them in a circle that encompasses the woods around them. It takes Alec a second, but then he gets it: the trees have ears. A low shiver runs through him. Treason? Claudius thinks this could be treason? And Claudius, not Brutus or Emory or any of the staunch loyalists, but Claudius who ran a dangerous game and only hits the Capitol when he absolutely has to, usually in disguise because he’s under orders to fade away and disappear.
If Claudius thinks Alec skirted treason, well, he would know.
Alec lets out a ghost of a laugh and finally fumbles the knot open. His sandwich is a little smushed, but not too worse for wear. “Right,” he says. “Yeah. Thanks.”
Claudius gives his shoulder a sympathetic shake, then scratches an irritating itch below the joint when Alec makes a hangdog face at him.
Two weeks later, Selene interrupts Alec’s breakfast by bounding into the kitchen and dropping a large box on the table. “Hey,” she says, grinning wide with all her teeth. “I got you a present.”
Alec stares down at the box. “It doesn’t look big enough to hide a dead body … could have a baby in it, though. Lene, you shouldn’t have.”
She rolls her eyes. “See, you’re lucky because I do nice things for you even though you don’t appreciate me. Are you going to open it or do I have to do it, because I am not patient enough to wait for you to get around to it when you feel like it.”
The funny thing about Selene, Alec recalls from their childhood, is that her gifts might be utterly inexplicable, but also, perfect and somehow oddly touching. She had a knack for completely baffling gifts you never knew you needed, and Alec regretted having to leave them behind when he moved into Residential. The idea of renewing that tradition now is an alarming one, if only because Alec could never keep up.
But now she’s here, puffed up and pleased with herself, and she could have filled the box with worms and Alex will still open it because he wants to know what’s got her so chuffed. Damn it all.
Emory’s off to the side with her coffee, holding her mug in two hands as she leans against the counter and hiding her smile as she takes a sip. She’s also not interrupting to give commentary or ask Selene what’s in it, letting them have their moment as though she isn’t even here. And okay, what, now Emory knows, which means Selene checked with her, this is a mentor-approved gift, and is this why Selene and Misha disappeared for a week -
Screw this. Alec tears off the lid of the box and tosses it aside, nearly knocking over his glass of orange juice while Selene bounces on her toes.
For a second his brain struggles to identify the shiny, blue and silver object as anything at all. It’s definitely cool, and futuristic, whatever it is, and it has Stark-tech written all over it which also explains a lot. Selene’s friendship with the genius engineer from Three is one Alec doesn’t understand and is a little afraid to, but apparently it netted him a fancy … something. The question is, what?
And then he sees the fingers.
Alex gasps.
Selene’s grin threatens to break her face. “You said you didn’t want one that looked like a regular arm.”
“So you got me a robot arm?” Alec reaches out and touches it with one finger, expecting cold metal, but the surface is surprisingly giving to the touch despite the lustre, warming under the pressure of his hand.
“No, I asked for that, but Tony said it would be too heavy and wouldn’t do what you wanted. You’re welcome for sitting through a whole lecture on robotics versus bionics without wandering away, by the way. Try it on.”
Selene has the grin back again, and Alec looks down at the arm and swallows. But Emory only smiles when he glances at her for permission and reassurance, and she wouldn’t set him up for failure or disappointment. Alec’s heart hammers as lifts the arm into place, fitting it over the socket - then gasps again as a series of tiny shivers run across his shoulder and down his spine, as though dozens of fingers reached inside him and joined hands.
“Think fast,” Selene calls out, and whips an apple at his head.
“Hey!” Alec snaps, snatching it out of the air before it can hit him in the face.
One-handed. Right-handed.
Alec looks down to see the apple nestled comfortably in his palm, caught between his shiny new fingers, the skin firm and unbruised. He moves his arm in a slow circle, tosses the apple back to Selene, finds the motion completed without a second’s hesitation. As he moves, ripples of blue light follow faint webs over the arm’s surface, almost like lacing. It’s beautiful - and unignorable.
Alec’s chest aches. “Lene -”
“You said you didn’t want an arm that pretended like nothing happened,” Selene says. She’s not grinning now. There’s still a smile, but a small one, a little crooked, and she’s got some of her weight on her back foot. Like if Alec starts vomiting too many feelings she might turn tail and run.
“You’re right, I did,” he says in wonder. This one doesn’t pretend anything. It is what it is, no apologies, and Alex flexes the fingers and lets out a delighted laugh. “How do I charge it? I don’t see a charging port.”
“Oh, well, you know Tony.” Selene snickers. “He’s always got to show off. He built you a mini arc reactor so you never need to power it up. He said you’ll die long before the arm does.”
Alec gawks at her. Now the back of his head flashes a warning, a little voice that sounds like his father reminding him never to accept favours unless you know exactly what you’ll be paying in the end. “Lene … that’s way too much. What do I owe him?” Sponsor funds? An alliance in a future Games when they’re both mentoring? A quick patter of panic dashes across his breastbone.
“Nothing, you dork. It’s my gift, my favour. Plus it gave him the chance to show off, which is all he wants in the first place.”
And of course now Alec had made himself a walking billboard for Stark Industries to anyone with even a remote recognition of the company’s intellectual property, which couldn’t be a downside. He grins a little, even as Dad’s voice in his head sharpens. If someone offers you a product, you are the product! he’d snapped once when he caught Alec using a free pencil emblazoned with the logo of a local business one of the other kids’ parents had brought in on career day. Never provide yourself as free advertising.
“Well, tell him thank you,” Alec says. “I’d tell him myself but I feel like I might use too many feelings words.”
Selene’s still wary, caught like she half wants to warn him not to get mushy but is also aware she probably shouldn’t. And so Alec pushes aside the urge to fling his arms around her and hug her, to bury his face in her shoulder and leak tears of joy for the next million years, and instead tosses back the last of his juice and claps his hands together. “I want to go test this out. Sparring? Maybe now I can finally kick your ass.”
Her eyes flicker like she knows exactly what kind of overemotional travesty he had to swallow to get there, but she doesn’t call him on it. “You wish,” Selene says, shoving him. “You’d need more than two hands to defeat me!”
She says it in a bombastic, for-the-cameras melodrama voice like those terrible martial arts movies on the Capitol channel, and Alec laughs and tackles her. “Outside!” Emory reminds them. Selene gets Alec in a headlock and he hooks his arms around her waist, and they both drag each other out into the yard, laughing the whole way.
Later, after Selene heads home, Emory draws Alec in for a sparring match of her own, pinning him to the floor in the living room. “That’s a real nice thing she did, and I okayed it, but you know you can’t wear that in the Capitol,” Emory says, her arm heavy and reassuring across his chest. “It’ll be bad for you, and bad for that Mr. Stark, too.”
Alec nods. “I know. I have to be grateful for what they gave me.” Emory’s eyes flash sharp and intent, and a second later Alec’s words catch up to him. “I mean - I am grateful. I’m grateful and it’s important to show it. That’s all I meant.”
Emory shifts her weight a little heavier onto his breastbone. “You remember that,” she tells him, her voice low in warning. There’s no joke in her eyes now, no teasing warmth. “You wanted an arm that didn’t erase what happened. That means you need to remember too. We keep you safe here, but don’t get lazy. It’s never over, Alec. Victory is not a joke, and the Capitol isn’t something you throw away because you don’t like the cost.”
He swallows, an echo of the talk with Claudius in the fingers that walk down his spine. “Yes ma’am,” he says. “I won’t forget.”
“Good.” Emory sits back. “Why don’t you go for a run, clear your head.”
He runs for an hour until his lungs burn and his legs shake, the blue and silver of his arm flashing in the sun.