Lora's Birthday 2019: Creed and Alec feelings
anon wanted Creed and Alec feelings. WARNING: what happens to Creed happens to Creed. this is not an AU.
He loves - and hates - that Alec’s here.
Alec’s not a killer. He’s better than Creed, better than Selene, than that girl Selene spent their entire childhood rolling around in the dirt with, than all the kids in their little circle who fought and scrapped and dreamed of glory on that stage. Creed’s parents chose his path but it’s also in his blood: no amount of duty and cradle promises could light the fire that burns inside him. They chose but he chose, and chooses, every single day.
(He tried to explain it to Selene once, before he took his exam, both of them lying on their backs in the grass and staring up at the clouds. “You know you sound completely crazy when you talk like that,” Selene said, tilting her head against his to give him an incredulous look. “You’re twelve, not - a Capitol video voiceover.” “I’m not a boy, I’m a statement of faith,” Creed intoned, holding it for a good three seconds before he cracked up. “Oh my god, you’re the worst,” Selene shot back, ripping up a handful of clover and throwing it in his face.)
Alec has his own path, and he walks it Seward stubbornness, all gritted teeth and clenched-fisted determination, but it doesn’t infuse him the same way. Creed has tried not to think about it, because it feels like a betrayal to admit that Alec isn’t like him, that he’s not - well, not good enough, that he fails to live up to Father’s standards. It doesn’t mean he’s a failure, just that he’s different. He’s kinder, softer, though no less headstrong, and if he’s not a killer then Creed doesn’t know what he is. But while there’s no doubt in Creed’s mind when Selene walks through the Centre doors, a shiny orange bead flashing on her wrist, he can’t help a squeezing knot of fear that maybe, maybe Alec won’t cut it.
But of course he does, because he might not be a natural-blooded killer but he is a Seward (isn’t anymore, on paper, but is in his blood - and so is Creed, a secret carved into his bones where the trainers can’t see) and Sewards don’t fail even if they’re filled with doubts. And so as much as Creed wishes there was another path for Alec, one that didn’t mean snapping necks of chipmunks while the trainers watch and learning how to wield a spear and spending evening after evening in the same common room but never looking at each other, he can’t imagine what that path might be.
He also didn’t realize how much of his brain - neatly shunted off, compartmentalized, carefully put away so it didn’t bleed over and distract him - had been saved for worrying about Alec until he doesn’t have to. Now that Alec’s here, Creed’s focus returns to laser sharpness with a clarity that shocks him. He thought he was at maximum before, always trying his best, pushing past the others, jockeying for first with bloody-toothed resolve.
Now? Now it’s like he doesn’t even have to try. He could give a little less and the others still couldn’t touch him - but he does, of course he does, he’s Creed (he’s not a boy, he’s a statement of faith, and his brother is here, safe under his watch for the first time in their lives) - and with his effort he races past the others and leaves them shocked and choking on his dust.
(He doesn’t talk to Alec. He can’t - they made a promise. They can’t be friends with Selene, and it’s not fair to meet up without her, and they won’t go back on it. But he does listen, lurking around the trainers to catch snippets of conversation. He learns his brother has high scores despite the fact the trainers know his heart isn’t in it; learns he’s good enough that this frustrates them. Creed feels a mix of emotions in his chest and can’t tell whether it’s disappointment or pride.)
Whatever else happens, he’s good enough that the trainers will recommend him to the Peacekeeping Academy. It’s a good life, steady and solid, guaranteed employment and a family and a pension, and friends and comrades who will follow him for the rest of his life, as long as he gives his service, and Alec is nothing if not willing to serve. They’ll take care of him when no one else can. They have to. For Alec’s sake … and for Creed’s.
Callista calls him back on the way to his room. “Come,” she says, settling on the couch and crossing her legs, gesturing to the spot beside her. Creed drops down next to her, nerves buzzing all along his body. He nearly flung himself onto the sofa like a child. Callista fixes him with her steady, golden-eyed gaze. “You’re distracted.”
Creed scored a ten at the private sessions, same as his district partners. No one else made an eleven this year. It’s a solid showing. The audience laughed and gasped at all the right spots during his interview. Caesar smiled with his too-white teeth and covered his mouth in pretend-shock and leaned in close like they were best friends and once, just once, gave Creed a sharp-eyed look that said maybe he was more than a silly man in a ridiculous suit, and Creed a boy parroting words his mentor gave him.
Creed swallows. “I’m focused,” he says quickly, straightening his spine. “I know what I have to do.”
“Don’t waste my time,” Callista says, and he jumps, but she doesn’t sound angry, just … intent. “I know you can do it, that’s why you’re here, but you most certainly are not focused. This is your last chance for guidance, Creed, don’t waste it. Tell me what you’re thinking.”
The flush rises up his throat in a hot wave. He thought he hid it better than that, but Callista’s piercing stare tells him there will be no wiggling out from under this blade. “My brother,” Creed says. Callista lets out a quiet exhale through her nose but otherwise keeps her reaction back. “He’s my baby brother, I’ve always looked out for him, and now I’m not going to be there. I wish I knew that he’d be okay, that’s all. It would make all this so much easier.”
Callista studies him, expression unreadable. “That’s not my Victor talking. Are you afraid?”
“Of dying? No.” He lifts his chin, proud to know it’s true. Creed made his peace with death years ago, screaming in the woods with no one but the Centre’s drone cameras circling above him as his witness. He is ready to die. He always has been. The only school assignment Creed ever failed was when the teacher asked them to imagine the world ten, twenty, thirty years in the future. His vision had narrowed like a funnel and given him nothing: any attempt to place himself in this imaginary world felt wrong, like cutting out a self-portrait and pasting it into a photograph where he was never meant to be. “I’m ready. But Alec - we talked before the reaping, and he just seemed - he said some things, and I don’t know, he didn’t seem right. Like he had doubts, like he didn’t want -- what our parents want, and if you knew them you’d know, that’s not a small thing. I’m worried about him. I need him to be okay.”
Callista’s face pinches a little around the nose. “He is your brother, yes? He shares your blood? Then surely he is stronger than this wilting flower you are painting for me. If he wishes to defy his parents, he will. If he does not, then these doubts are not as important to him as one conversation made them out to be.”
Creed laughs before he can stop himself. “You’re right, he is strong, I’m just - he’s my brother, and I worry. I should give him more credit. But … can I ask a favour?” Callista inclines her head, and Creed keeps going, words rushing and tumbling over each other before his mind can catch up and tell him this is a stupid, stupid idea. “If I don’t - would you check up on him for me? I don’t mean you have to keep tabs on him forever, I just mean … once. Check on him once. See if he’s okay. And.” He fingers the bracelet around his wrist, the strands and beads that have marked his life for the last eleven years, all the anger and competition that burned between them and drove Alec to frustration every time he fell behind. “Give him this, maybe? I want him to have something of mine and I can’t think of anything else. I mean … I don’t have anything else, really. This is it.”
Callista slaps her hands against her knees, the motion loud and jarring in the quiet of the common room. “And once I’ve agreed to your laundry list of unnecessary death demands, can we be finished? If you’re going to be distracted, think about what colour you’re going to paint your brother’s room in your new house in a month’s time, since that is the task I will actually be fulfilling.”
He laughs again, strangely delighted, both by the question and her utter, unshakeable confidence, which he feels like a warm glow blossoming all throughout his chest. “Blue,” Creed says. “Alec likes blue.”
“How original,” Callista says in a light drawl. “But now you’re going to drink your cocoa like a good boy and sleep, because I have had enough of your nonsense.”
“Yes ma’am.” Creed watches her order the drink from the machine in the corner, doesn’t argue when she pulls a vial from her pocket and tips several drops into it without even bothering to hide the fact that she’s drugging him. He probably deserves it after all that. She marches him to his room, orders him out of his interview suit and into a whisper-soft pair of pyjamas, then hands him the cocoa and stands there as he drinks it down. He falls asleep with Alec’s face in his mind and Callista’s hand on his forehead.
It hurt at first. It doesn’t anymore. Sometimes it comes back: sharp, jagged, filling all his understanding for a bright, blinding second, tearing at him until there’s nothing else, until he thinks he can’t stand it, this has to be it, there’s no more left - but then it’s gone, it’s gone, and he’s back to floating, his body empty and broken on the ground.
He’s sorry, Alec.
Sorry there won’t be any house with a blue room for you to live in. Sorry he can’t give you your own room and then never use it because you spent five long years apart and you’re not going to sleep in separate bedrooms now that you’re back together. Sorry he can’t introduce you to Callista, watch her face make that pinched-exasperated expression, hear her say So you’re the brother he never shut up about, watch your neck turn red and pretend you’re not pleased.
He’s sorry he didn’t know about Mom and Dad. Sorry he said that stupid thing about getting married even though you didn’t want to, like it’s not that big a deal. He was thinking about the Arena, how the Arena makes everything else feel small, except the Arena is a lifetime of preparation crammed into three short weeks, it’s not the after, and marrying someone you don’t love and pretending that’s the life you want is so much worse. He’s sorry, he never should have said that. He’s sorry you’ll remember it forever. He hopes, he hopes, he hopes (and there’s the pain, and for a second he doesn’t hope anything except make it stop until it does, back to the floating place) you won’t listen. That you’ll do what makes you happy.
It hurts again. It hurts so much. More than the trainers said it would, more than he ever let himself think even in those ugly, quiet hours in the middle of the night when he snuck out and sat on the roof, staring up at the stars and wondering what sacrifice would really feel like. When he ran through the death list and imagined every awful death he could happening to him and went to bed shaken but satisfied, because he’d pictured it all and now he wouldn’t be surprised.
It’s worse. It’s so much worse. And now it doesn’t stop.
But then - hands, hands at his chest, his neck, cool steel at his throat. He opens his eyes, it hurts, it’s hard, it’s dark, everything blurs, there’s a face and he can’t see it, but - brown eyes, he sees brown eyes. Wide, wet, terrified. Young. Only one person he knows has eyes like that.
Alec.
Alec’s here. He’s here to take him home.
Thank you, he says, or tries to say, but he’s too far for words now and anyway it doesn’t matter, Alec understands. He always understands.
The steel bites his throat and the pressure releases and it doesn’t hurt anymore.
He loves - and hates - that Alec’s here.
Alec’s not a killer. He’s better than Creed, better than Selene, than that girl Selene spent their entire childhood rolling around in the dirt with, than all the kids in their little circle who fought and scrapped and dreamed of glory on that stage. Creed’s parents chose his path but it’s also in his blood: no amount of duty and cradle promises could light the fire that burns inside him. They chose but he chose, and chooses, every single day.
(He tried to explain it to Selene once, before he took his exam, both of them lying on their backs in the grass and staring up at the clouds. “You know you sound completely crazy when you talk like that,” Selene said, tilting her head against his to give him an incredulous look. “You’re twelve, not - a Capitol video voiceover.” “I’m not a boy, I’m a statement of faith,” Creed intoned, holding it for a good three seconds before he cracked up. “Oh my god, you’re the worst,” Selene shot back, ripping up a handful of clover and throwing it in his face.)
Alec has his own path, and he walks it Seward stubbornness, all gritted teeth and clenched-fisted determination, but it doesn’t infuse him the same way. Creed has tried not to think about it, because it feels like a betrayal to admit that Alec isn’t like him, that he’s not - well, not good enough, that he fails to live up to Father’s standards. It doesn’t mean he’s a failure, just that he’s different. He’s kinder, softer, though no less headstrong, and if he’s not a killer then Creed doesn’t know what he is. But while there’s no doubt in Creed’s mind when Selene walks through the Centre doors, a shiny orange bead flashing on her wrist, he can’t help a squeezing knot of fear that maybe, maybe Alec won’t cut it.
But of course he does, because he might not be a natural-blooded killer but he is a Seward (isn’t anymore, on paper, but is in his blood - and so is Creed, a secret carved into his bones where the trainers can’t see) and Sewards don’t fail even if they’re filled with doubts. And so as much as Creed wishes there was another path for Alec, one that didn’t mean snapping necks of chipmunks while the trainers watch and learning how to wield a spear and spending evening after evening in the same common room but never looking at each other, he can’t imagine what that path might be.
He also didn’t realize how much of his brain - neatly shunted off, compartmentalized, carefully put away so it didn’t bleed over and distract him - had been saved for worrying about Alec until he doesn’t have to. Now that Alec’s here, Creed’s focus returns to laser sharpness with a clarity that shocks him. He thought he was at maximum before, always trying his best, pushing past the others, jockeying for first with bloody-toothed resolve.
Now? Now it’s like he doesn’t even have to try. He could give a little less and the others still couldn’t touch him - but he does, of course he does, he’s Creed (he’s not a boy, he’s a statement of faith, and his brother is here, safe under his watch for the first time in their lives) - and with his effort he races past the others and leaves them shocked and choking on his dust.
(He doesn’t talk to Alec. He can’t - they made a promise. They can’t be friends with Selene, and it’s not fair to meet up without her, and they won’t go back on it. But he does listen, lurking around the trainers to catch snippets of conversation. He learns his brother has high scores despite the fact the trainers know his heart isn’t in it; learns he’s good enough that this frustrates them. Creed feels a mix of emotions in his chest and can’t tell whether it’s disappointment or pride.)
Whatever else happens, he’s good enough that the trainers will recommend him to the Peacekeeping Academy. It’s a good life, steady and solid, guaranteed employment and a family and a pension, and friends and comrades who will follow him for the rest of his life, as long as he gives his service, and Alec is nothing if not willing to serve. They’ll take care of him when no one else can. They have to. For Alec’s sake … and for Creed’s.
Callista calls him back on the way to his room. “Come,” she says, settling on the couch and crossing her legs, gesturing to the spot beside her. Creed drops down next to her, nerves buzzing all along his body. He nearly flung himself onto the sofa like a child. Callista fixes him with her steady, golden-eyed gaze. “You’re distracted.”
Creed scored a ten at the private sessions, same as his district partners. No one else made an eleven this year. It’s a solid showing. The audience laughed and gasped at all the right spots during his interview. Caesar smiled with his too-white teeth and covered his mouth in pretend-shock and leaned in close like they were best friends and once, just once, gave Creed a sharp-eyed look that said maybe he was more than a silly man in a ridiculous suit, and Creed a boy parroting words his mentor gave him.
Creed swallows. “I’m focused,” he says quickly, straightening his spine. “I know what I have to do.”
“Don’t waste my time,” Callista says, and he jumps, but she doesn’t sound angry, just … intent. “I know you can do it, that’s why you’re here, but you most certainly are not focused. This is your last chance for guidance, Creed, don’t waste it. Tell me what you’re thinking.”
The flush rises up his throat in a hot wave. He thought he hid it better than that, but Callista’s piercing stare tells him there will be no wiggling out from under this blade. “My brother,” Creed says. Callista lets out a quiet exhale through her nose but otherwise keeps her reaction back. “He’s my baby brother, I’ve always looked out for him, and now I’m not going to be there. I wish I knew that he’d be okay, that’s all. It would make all this so much easier.”
Callista studies him, expression unreadable. “That’s not my Victor talking. Are you afraid?”
“Of dying? No.” He lifts his chin, proud to know it’s true. Creed made his peace with death years ago, screaming in the woods with no one but the Centre’s drone cameras circling above him as his witness. He is ready to die. He always has been. The only school assignment Creed ever failed was when the teacher asked them to imagine the world ten, twenty, thirty years in the future. His vision had narrowed like a funnel and given him nothing: any attempt to place himself in this imaginary world felt wrong, like cutting out a self-portrait and pasting it into a photograph where he was never meant to be. “I’m ready. But Alec - we talked before the reaping, and he just seemed - he said some things, and I don’t know, he didn’t seem right. Like he had doubts, like he didn’t want -- what our parents want, and if you knew them you’d know, that’s not a small thing. I’m worried about him. I need him to be okay.”
Callista’s face pinches a little around the nose. “He is your brother, yes? He shares your blood? Then surely he is stronger than this wilting flower you are painting for me. If he wishes to defy his parents, he will. If he does not, then these doubts are not as important to him as one conversation made them out to be.”
Creed laughs before he can stop himself. “You’re right, he is strong, I’m just - he’s my brother, and I worry. I should give him more credit. But … can I ask a favour?” Callista inclines her head, and Creed keeps going, words rushing and tumbling over each other before his mind can catch up and tell him this is a stupid, stupid idea. “If I don’t - would you check up on him for me? I don’t mean you have to keep tabs on him forever, I just mean … once. Check on him once. See if he’s okay. And.” He fingers the bracelet around his wrist, the strands and beads that have marked his life for the last eleven years, all the anger and competition that burned between them and drove Alec to frustration every time he fell behind. “Give him this, maybe? I want him to have something of mine and I can’t think of anything else. I mean … I don’t have anything else, really. This is it.”
Callista slaps her hands against her knees, the motion loud and jarring in the quiet of the common room. “And once I’ve agreed to your laundry list of unnecessary death demands, can we be finished? If you’re going to be distracted, think about what colour you’re going to paint your brother’s room in your new house in a month’s time, since that is the task I will actually be fulfilling.”
He laughs again, strangely delighted, both by the question and her utter, unshakeable confidence, which he feels like a warm glow blossoming all throughout his chest. “Blue,” Creed says. “Alec likes blue.”
“How original,” Callista says in a light drawl. “But now you’re going to drink your cocoa like a good boy and sleep, because I have had enough of your nonsense.”
“Yes ma’am.” Creed watches her order the drink from the machine in the corner, doesn’t argue when she pulls a vial from her pocket and tips several drops into it without even bothering to hide the fact that she’s drugging him. He probably deserves it after all that. She marches him to his room, orders him out of his interview suit and into a whisper-soft pair of pyjamas, then hands him the cocoa and stands there as he drinks it down. He falls asleep with Alec’s face in his mind and Callista’s hand on his forehead.
It hurt at first. It doesn’t anymore. Sometimes it comes back: sharp, jagged, filling all his understanding for a bright, blinding second, tearing at him until there’s nothing else, until he thinks he can’t stand it, this has to be it, there’s no more left - but then it’s gone, it’s gone, and he’s back to floating, his body empty and broken on the ground.
He’s sorry, Alec.
Sorry there won’t be any house with a blue room for you to live in. Sorry he can’t give you your own room and then never use it because you spent five long years apart and you’re not going to sleep in separate bedrooms now that you’re back together. Sorry he can’t introduce you to Callista, watch her face make that pinched-exasperated expression, hear her say So you’re the brother he never shut up about, watch your neck turn red and pretend you’re not pleased.
He’s sorry he didn’t know about Mom and Dad. Sorry he said that stupid thing about getting married even though you didn’t want to, like it’s not that big a deal. He was thinking about the Arena, how the Arena makes everything else feel small, except the Arena is a lifetime of preparation crammed into three short weeks, it’s not the after, and marrying someone you don’t love and pretending that’s the life you want is so much worse. He’s sorry, he never should have said that. He’s sorry you’ll remember it forever. He hopes, he hopes, he hopes (and there’s the pain, and for a second he doesn’t hope anything except make it stop until it does, back to the floating place) you won’t listen. That you’ll do what makes you happy.
It hurts again. It hurts so much. More than the trainers said it would, more than he ever let himself think even in those ugly, quiet hours in the middle of the night when he snuck out and sat on the roof, staring up at the stars and wondering what sacrifice would really feel like. When he ran through the death list and imagined every awful death he could happening to him and went to bed shaken but satisfied, because he’d pictured it all and now he wouldn’t be surprised.
It’s worse. It’s so much worse. And now it doesn’t stop.
But then - hands, hands at his chest, his neck, cool steel at his throat. He opens his eyes, it hurts, it’s hard, it’s dark, everything blurs, there’s a face and he can’t see it, but - brown eyes, he sees brown eyes. Wide, wet, terrified. Young. Only one person he knows has eyes like that.
Alec.
Alec’s here. He’s here to take him home.
Thank you, he says, or tries to say, but he’s too far for words now and anyway it doesn’t matter, Alec understands. He always understands.
The steel bites his throat and the pressure releases and it doesn’t hurt anymore.