Injured Creed: Part 4
As promised, Alec's Games (with like ....... 0.2% of the actual Arena, we know the drill by now) -- mostly Creed feelings
The day before the Reaping, summer descends as it always does: thick and heavy and oppressive, knocking the birds silent, wiping out even the faintest breeze, silencing all but the cicadas, their screams the one act of defiance against the burning sun. It’s worse in the inner districts, Dad told him once when Creed complained about having to weed the vegetable garden in the mugginess of day; they don’t have the mountains to shield them and bring the rain, nothing but dry, flat, desert heat - or worse, in the plains, rolling waves of humidity coming off the crops that sticks to your chest and slaps the air right from your lungs. Still others get the weather mixed with lungfuls of pollution from factories or coal mines.
Be grateful for your district, Dad said, as Creed grumbled and scuffed his toes in the soil, overturning a clump of grass he’d been half-heartedly tugging. Not everyone can be so lucky.
Creed is grateful, but the day before his brother stands for the Reaping, he wonders if kids in the districts are allowed to complain about the weather without getting a full lecture about honour and duty. Tomorrow Alec will Volunteer, and Creed - Creed’s faith will see him through, he has already promised. Tomorrow he will meet his brother in the Justice Building, see him face to face for the first time in years and tell Alec exactly what he needs to hear.
But today -
Well. For now, it’s today. And today the cicadas scream in the trees and the leaves hang limp on the branches and the only words Creed can conjure are the ones he knows, he knows he can never say.
It should be me.
Alec can win. He will win, there is no other option, and he is smart enough and strong enough and good enough just like Creed always said when no one else listened, but it’s Creed’s fault he’s here. Alec never liked the Program. He never liked the violence, never liked the killing, never wanted to start fights. If Creed had been smarter, stronger, faster, better, Alec would be home right now, living the life he’s meant to live. Instead Creed stumbled, and now it’s up to Alec to finish what he started. The little brother making up for the eldest’s failures.
It should be me.
A whole lifetime of living other’s dreams. Shouldering other’s expectations. That he braced his feet and bent his knees and took the weight doesn’t make it fair.
He tries to write it down, commit his thoughts to paper to untangle the wild snarl and find something workable in the mess, but when he sits back it’s the same thing over and over, scrawled across the page: it should be me it should be me it shOULD BE ME -
“Creed.”
He drops his fork. Metal clatters with a force that startles him, and when the noise stops rattling his senses there’s Mom studying him from across the table, eyes narrow and intent. “Come on,” she says. “Outside.”
Relief snaps in him like the first hard crack of thunder over the mountains. He pushes his plate away and follows her out; Dad watches them go, a look of tight quiet pinching his features.
Creed and Mom spar … a lot, these days. Way more than they ever did when he was younger. It’s embarrassing, or maybe it would be, if Creed had any room left in him for shame, if he hadn’t burned all that away in those ugly, early weeks, lying in his bed flinging apathy and self-hatred into the universe like clouds of poison. Now he doesn’t care. Most kids outgrow sparring with their parents by the time they’re itching for the Residential signature, while here Creed is, long past Reaping age, desperate for the mental clarity that only comes from throwing down with his mother in the backyard while the squirrels hurl protests at them from the trees.
Mom likes to joke it keeps her sharp. She fights a lot of shitty teenagers at her job (she would never call them shitty, but, let’s call a Twelve a Twelve), cocky ex-Careers fresh out of detox who think they’re the stuff and don’t need to listen to a bunch of civs. As if the Program wouldn’t stock the feeder school with ex-Centre teachers, but it means Mom spends most of her free periods challenging kids out on the lawn. Half for dominance and respect, she says, but also it’s the only thing these kids know. They’ve spent upwards of a decade, some of them, getting slapped down every time they ask a question. If they stirred up trouble and didn’t get called outside to settle it, a third would burn the place down and another third would quit.
Structure, Mom says. Everyone needs structure.
Creed doesn’t mind Mom using him to keep her skills sharp, but tonight he’s not thinking about mouthy fourteen-year-olds drawling what are you gonna do about it in the middle of a civics lesson. He’s thinking about Alec in that big, empty Volunteer suite, freshly scrubbed, the next day’s outfit laid out for him, practicing the entrance he’ll make when the escort calls for volunteers. He’s thinking about Alec’s mentor, up with sponsor files late into the night, and he’s tried to guess who it would be (Emory? Devon?) until it drives him mad.
Mom’s arm catches him across the chest, fingers closed around his arm, leg hitting him firm in the back of the knees, knocking him off-balance. He flies back, slams into the ground hard enough to wallop the air from his lungs. Clarity hits him like a boulder to the chest: for a few wonderful, agonizing moments, the only thought that floods his mind is pain, sharp and searing, and the raw, desperate need to fill his lungs with air.
Mom reaches down, clasps his wrist and hauls him to his feet. Creed bends over, hands on his thighs, sucking in ragged breaths, until the same ugly thought worms its way back in like a muttation scratching at his back door. He pushes himself up, blood hot in his face. “Again.”
She doesn’t ask him. She’s a teacher and a Peacekeeper, not a therapist, she’s not qualified to reach into the mess inside Creed’s head and untangle it into nice, smooth threads. Creed isn’t a trainer, he’s been out of the Program for years now, he can’t tell if it makes his fighting sloppy or if it’s painted all over his face, but Mom was a trained interrogator (he’s pretty sure, though she never said so to her boys) and whenever the hawks in his brain rise to fever-pitch, that’s when she knocks him down. Again, again, again, wordless and impassive and absolutely free of judgement, as first Creed screams, then breaks, then sobs, then finally stands, winded and exhausted, flushed out clean and whole again.
He reaches inside, searching for the guilt. He finds nothing, a hollow that when he knocks it with his knuckles rings clear with purpose. Creed staggers on one foot - Mom might get in trouble with his physiotherapist next month but he doesn’t care, he doesn’t care - and now she steadies him by the shoulders and gives him a rare smile. “Better?”
His throat is raw. He could climb to the peak of Eagle Pass and sing at the top of his lungs for hours. “Yeah.”
Mom smiles again. “Good. Go eat your dinner.” He’s halfway back to the house when she calls his name. He turns, glances back at her, the whole line of his body a question. “Fetch your father.”
Creed stands at the back porch and watches her for a moment first, stretching out her neck and shoulder against the golden glow of the evening sun.
The sun burns hot on Reaping Day, the last year when it will matter. Oh, every year matters, every year the sacrifice is real and vital, every year two very living, breathing teenagers will stand up on that stage and dedicate themselves to death or glory, but after this that sacrifice will be a little more distant, more remote, more abstract. Creed won’t know their names, their favourite weapons, the snack they liked to wheedle from the trainers in exchange for joint locks or proper footwork or weapon grips or a clean disarm. He won’t know the worst fear the tracker-jackers conjured up in those final months of testing, the ones they shared crammed knee-to-knee in his room with a pilfered bottle of terrible wine from the staff cupboard that Milo sneaked out the next night to replace.
And the worst part is, it’s already started. He doesn’t have room in his brain for all the others, every year for the rest of his life. Easier to let that fade. He’s not sure whether he understands the grown-ups (he is a grown-up) or hates them.
No time for that now. Now there’s Alec, and only Alec - but it’s Lyme and Callista on the stage.
They told him to come. They’re all there, Dad, Mom, Uncle Paul and Aunt Julia, Uncle Ramon and the others. The Valents didn’t get a card last year, and it wasn’t Selene. That has to mean something - but Callista? Lyme? Alec should be Brutus, or Emory, even Devon. Is it all a joke?
He doesn’t know the girl. Not from their town, must have joined Residential from a different Transition facility. She stands by Lyme, looking proud and stoic with hints of something deeper. So that leaves - no. It can’t be. Not Callista the Butcher. Whatever happened in the past two years, there’s no way -
“I volunteer!”
Creed chokes on his own breath.
His first, idiotic thought is - tall. Last time he saw Alec, across the room during free time, he’d been with a group of his friends at, what, fifteen? Near the end of his growth spurt, or so Creed had thought, and unlikely to get much taller. But now he recalls the smoothies he’d choked down every morning after passing his field exam, the growing pains in the final years as he shot up those extra inches and his muscles expanded. Even so, it must be the stage effect, the double screens and the distance and the delicate Capitol escort who waves him to the stage, because Alec seems gargantuan. Whipcord muscles, not bulked out like Creed had been, but if Creed stands next to his little brother now he swears he’d have to crane his neck to look at him.
Fancy, he tells himself. Imagination. His brain struggling to hold on to something tangible as Alec throws his head back and grins, sharp and feral.
“Ohhhh … shit,” Mom murmurs under her breath, in a tone full of wonder. A ripple of shock at the blasphemy hits Creed like a blast wave, but he doesn’t dare turn to stare at her.
Callista is a golden statue behind his brother, eyes shining with pride.
“Brothers, huh?”
Creed jumps. The Peacekeeper standing guard at Alec’s door grins at him. “I - what? Yeah. I mean, yes sir.” He grips his hands so tight behind his back his fingers ache. Did he limp when he came in? Can they see the scar tissue on his knee through his pant leg? Do they know he tried to come here first, that it should have been him, can they see the years of training and the ghost of the Arena in his eyes? Or do they think he’s like everyone else, letting their little brother make the sacrifice because they weren’t good enough?
(Mom throws him to the ground and waits as he staggers to his feet, hands curled loose at her sides, watching.)
He lets out a breath.
“Yeah, I could tell.” The officer opens the door and winks over his shoulder. “Five minutes.”
Creed had to argue for five minutes alone, jaw set and feet planted. For a weird, sliding moment they’d reenacted the conversation Mom loved to tell at parties, when Creed was far too young to remember - “That’s my baby!” “That’s your baby brother, Creed, but he’s my baby” “No! That’s my baby!” - but all too soon his parents exchanged glances and stepped back, allowing him time with Alec first.
He’s even larger than life in the wood-panelled room, standing with his back to the window, warm, mid-morning light throwing his curls into a glowing halo. Creed can’t breathe. Alec swallows, the tension in his throat the only change in his expression.
“I wanted this,” Alec says, and what? “Don’t try to talk me out of it.”
Creed reels back. “What? Of course you did. You were always good enough, I’m just glad you finally believe it.”
This time the corners of Alec’s eyes tighten. “That’s a weird way to remember it. You used to say you wished you were me because no one cared what I did.”
Creed doesn’t remember that conversation either, but he’s not ending his last conversation with his brother on a fight, not for all the limestone in the quarries. “I don’t care what I said. I was a kid and an idiot. I washed out. You didn’t. I’m proud of you. And you probably don’t need to hear that anymore, and that’s good, but I am, so too late now.”
Alec stares at him for a long moment. “Selene wasn’t kidding, you really are sincere. I couldn’t always see it up close.”
“Thanks so much,” Creed says dryly, and what he’d really like to do is knock Alec to the ground for a wrestling match or catch his head under his arm and ruffle his hair, but he can’t. Alec is a tribute now, not his brother, and he’ll need to leave all that behind once he steps aboard that train. “I know you can do it. Whatever we used to say as kids, you’re strong, the strongest of all of us, and you always were. Even when I was shitty and self-absorbed I knew that. Whatever happens in there, I’m going to watch every single minute of it.”
A long silence passes, and Creed is ready to turn and leave with the awkwardness stretched between them, before Alec finally exhales. “Yeah,” he says. “Thanks.”
“Just remember to sleep,” Creed bursts out. “You always push too hard, you never wanted to look weak, but remember it’s just as important to rest -“
Alec socks him so hard he knows he’ll be tracing bruises well after the Games begin in earnest. “Are you seriously giving me Arena pointers right now? You? Now? Fuck off.” And then he laughs, before Creed can decide whether to be more shocked to the sucker-punch or the swearing. “God, you never change. Look, I’ll call you. On the other side, all right? So don’t be all tragic and weirdly noble about the last time we’ll ever see each other.”
Creed’s eyes snap wide and his breath sticks in his chest. Alec’s grin twists, the savage satisfaction of the Reaping stage but with the edges softened. “Ha, thought so. Loser.”
“Asshole,” Creed shoots back, but his voice cracks. “You’re not allowed to say things like that. I had my whole weirdly noble speech already written out.”
“Too bad.” Alec stretches his arms over his head. He is taller than Creed, only an inch or so, but it feels like a lifetime. “I’ve got plans on plans, motherfucker.”
Alec’s interview suit is a deep blue, with running silver threads like veins of quartz. He sits back in his chair, fielding questions with a confident air that stops just shy of arrogance. Creed sees their mother in him more than ever now, the flashes of dark humour, the sharp smile. too. More than once Dad’s gaze flicks over to her, but he stays quiet.
“So,” Flickerman says, teeth flashing in the light. “You’re handsome young man. Anyone waiting for you back home?”
Odd question for a Two, since they have to pretend they sprang out of the rocks as fully-formed tributes, but Alec rolls with it. “Maybe? I can’t stop anyone from waiting,” he says, and winks when Caesar says ‘Ouch!’ with an exaggerated grimace. “No, I’m kidding, I have better things to do than break hearts. Who has the time? I do have a brother, though, and I look up to him a lot. He got me through a lot of tough times when we were younger.”
Flickerman clasps his hands over his chest. “Oh! Brotherly love. Isn’t that sweet. Are you going to win for him?”
Alec tilts his head, and his eyes catch the light. “For him? No. I’m doing this for me. For me and my district, like I said. But I hope he’s watching all the same.”
Mom reaches over and gives Creed’s knee a reassuring shake.
“You’ve been watching me.”
Two days in, Alec corners the boy from One against a tree at the edge of the clearing the Pack has declared as their home base. And either he’s right, or whatever happens next is significant enough for the Games editors to cut it that way, because Creed noticed it too, the last few hours of the broadcast full of shots of 1M shooting Alec long, smouldering looks just barely in-frame.
1M - Leander, the pop-up chyron reminds them, dial in to add funds now! - scowls. “Have not. Ego much?”
“Yeah-huh.” Alec grins at him, slow and sure as his gaze slides down and drags back up, and oh. Oh, there’s the Callista tribute in his brother, holy shit. He looks for ten-year-old Alec playing tributes in the woods, dying dutifully as Selene stabs him with a tree branch, and comes up empty. “Nothing wrong with it. So what do you think? I’m hot, you’re hot, it’s the end of the world.”
Leander’s nostrils flare. He probably would not want to know that the running feed in the corner of the screen with his vitals registers an uptick in his heart-rate. Creed and his family always watch the raw feed, no commentary, but he can only imagine what Flickerman makes of that. “What the fuck is wrong with you? That’s your reason? We’re going to die, let’s make out?”
Alec’s eyes narrow, just a fraction, giving him a look of - not anger, but intensity. Creed has the ridiculous thought that he looks like Selene even before he says, “Why not?”
Leander’s knees buckle when Alec kisses him, but he gets his feet under himself soon enough. Creed lets out a disbelieving noise when the cameras pan up toward the treetops, leaving the sound on to fill in the gaps in viewers’ imaginations, but the Games have always been more skittish about kids groping than killing each other. And if he’s completely honest, he’d rather watch his brother skewer someone than get handsy, so he can’t get too high and mighty.
“Well,” Mom says, desert-dry, the same tone that’s trickled down to both her boys through some magic of genetics, “He didn’t get that from you, Joe.”
A high, sputtering sound cuts the living room silence; Creed turns to see Julia stifling a laugh into her hand. Dad turns his gaze up to the ceiling with the air of a man calling the heavens for eternal patience. “You would have shot me,” he says, and Julia loses it completely.
It’s the first time anyone has spoken since the countdown, and the tension doesn’t ease but it does crack a little, like how the first roll of thunder signals a break in the pre-storm humidity.
They call him for an interview when Alec hits the Final Eight.
“What?” Creed says, too shocked to stop himself from questioning Program staff. “But families don’t -“
“He mentioned you,” the woman says, brisk and businesslike in a way that makes Creed think of Uncle Paul when someone very important makes his life very difficult. “On camera. Remember? Can’t exactly go back on that now.”
This isn’t Alec’s one-on-one with Flickerman in the Capitol, on stage under blinding lights played to a screaming crowd. It’s not live, there’s no audience, and the woman from Head Office tells him they’ll cut and edit his answers as they see fit depending on the narrative the Capitol and Alec’s mentor agree to present. The interviewer is a reed-thin man in a feathered suit with sculpted lavender curls who lifts Creed’s hand with two fingers and tells him he has a face meant for the movies.
“Thank you?” Creed’s knee ached as soon as he stepped foot in the Centre building in some kind of weird, sympathetic echo. Stepping into the pretend-Remake room for makeup and an appropriate suit nearly gave him a full-on flashback, but he’s fine. He’s not going to have a fucking regression while Alec is out there fighting for his life.
He’s had half a lifetime of media training and the questions are foam-tipped. He tells them Alec is brave, and driven, that he’s never backed down from a challenge. He doesn’t tell them about giggling together late at night from the bunk bed, or that time Alec got so jealous they rolled around on the front lawn punching each other in the face, or that Alec was too shy to ask for a second cookie after school. “He is the bravest person I know,” Creed says. “And I know it’s cheesy, and he’d roll his eyes so hard if he were here, but I don’t care, if he wants to fight me for it he’ll have to win first. He’s my hero.”
“Thank you for your time,” the Capitol envoy says, and shows him to the door. On his way out Creed passes a big boy Alec’s age dressed in the Capitol’s idea of what normal teenagers wear these days (or maybe Creed is just out of touch). They make eye contact for a long second; the boy shrugs helplessly and slips inside.
Poisonous plants. Giant snakes. Monkey mutts with teeth the size of Creed’s hand. Acid rain that eats through foliage, sending Alec diving for cover into a crevasse in the rock face. By the time Alec faces his final opponent on the clifftop, he’s exhausted and bloodied, sepsis racing through his body, arm purple and swollen, the fingers of his right hand refusing to close around his spear haft. It feels sacrilegious to make a noise louder than a breath, now; Paul is the only reason any of them have eaten, coming in with bites of food and water every time he gets up to stretch his leg.
Creed can’t breathe. Can’t move. Can barely blink, terrified to close his eyes for even that hundredth of a second. But then -
But then -
He dislocates his knee victory dancing around the living room. His physiotherapist will tear a strip off his side for the next six months. Creed does not give a single, flying fuck.
Alec won.
He won.
His brother’s coming home.
End of summer a letter arrives, rich, thick paper and crimson ink. Creed slices his finger on the flap trying to open it, and he’s sucking a bead of blood when the words sink in: your brother and recovery and improving and asked to see you
After that are two more words, underlined so sharply the pen nib scored the paper. He imagines Callista sitting at an elaborate desk, somehow holding a gilded fountain pen with her dagger-tipped fingernails, underlining once, twice, just in case he’s too thick to understand the first time.
only you
Creed’s breath stops in his chest. Mom finds him still holding the letter, the rest of the mail scattered across the table, the skin of his finger still caught between his teeth. She reads over his shoulder, and when she’s done her breath hisses soft between her teeth. “Mom,” Creed says, choked. “Mom, I can’t, if only one of us can go -“
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Mom spins him around, grips him by the shoulder. “We all knew we would never see him again. Now they’re breaking the rules for you. That’s incredible. We’re not going to waste it.”
We all knew. Except that in the Justice Building, Alec told Creed he would call for him, and Creed never once thought he meant only him. Why wouldn’t he have asked the whole family? He would have said something earlier, if he’d known. Warned them, maybe, or apologized, or - something, besides stand here with the invitation in his hand, staring at Mom and feeling like his whole world tipped sideways.
Mom tweaks his nose like he’s five years old, except Creed was five years old, once, and he’s pretty sure she never did that then. “Go,” she says. “You deserve it.”
The day before the Reaping, summer descends as it always does: thick and heavy and oppressive, knocking the birds silent, wiping out even the faintest breeze, silencing all but the cicadas, their screams the one act of defiance against the burning sun. It’s worse in the inner districts, Dad told him once when Creed complained about having to weed the vegetable garden in the mugginess of day; they don’t have the mountains to shield them and bring the rain, nothing but dry, flat, desert heat - or worse, in the plains, rolling waves of humidity coming off the crops that sticks to your chest and slaps the air right from your lungs. Still others get the weather mixed with lungfuls of pollution from factories or coal mines.
Be grateful for your district, Dad said, as Creed grumbled and scuffed his toes in the soil, overturning a clump of grass he’d been half-heartedly tugging. Not everyone can be so lucky.
Creed is grateful, but the day before his brother stands for the Reaping, he wonders if kids in the districts are allowed to complain about the weather without getting a full lecture about honour and duty. Tomorrow Alec will Volunteer, and Creed - Creed’s faith will see him through, he has already promised. Tomorrow he will meet his brother in the Justice Building, see him face to face for the first time in years and tell Alec exactly what he needs to hear.
But today -
Well. For now, it’s today. And today the cicadas scream in the trees and the leaves hang limp on the branches and the only words Creed can conjure are the ones he knows, he knows he can never say.
It should be me.
Alec can win. He will win, there is no other option, and he is smart enough and strong enough and good enough just like Creed always said when no one else listened, but it’s Creed’s fault he’s here. Alec never liked the Program. He never liked the violence, never liked the killing, never wanted to start fights. If Creed had been smarter, stronger, faster, better, Alec would be home right now, living the life he’s meant to live. Instead Creed stumbled, and now it’s up to Alec to finish what he started. The little brother making up for the eldest’s failures.
It should be me.
A whole lifetime of living other’s dreams. Shouldering other’s expectations. That he braced his feet and bent his knees and took the weight doesn’t make it fair.
He tries to write it down, commit his thoughts to paper to untangle the wild snarl and find something workable in the mess, but when he sits back it’s the same thing over and over, scrawled across the page: it should be me it should be me it shOULD BE ME -
“Creed.”
He drops his fork. Metal clatters with a force that startles him, and when the noise stops rattling his senses there’s Mom studying him from across the table, eyes narrow and intent. “Come on,” she says. “Outside.”
Relief snaps in him like the first hard crack of thunder over the mountains. He pushes his plate away and follows her out; Dad watches them go, a look of tight quiet pinching his features.
Creed and Mom spar … a lot, these days. Way more than they ever did when he was younger. It’s embarrassing, or maybe it would be, if Creed had any room left in him for shame, if he hadn’t burned all that away in those ugly, early weeks, lying in his bed flinging apathy and self-hatred into the universe like clouds of poison. Now he doesn’t care. Most kids outgrow sparring with their parents by the time they’re itching for the Residential signature, while here Creed is, long past Reaping age, desperate for the mental clarity that only comes from throwing down with his mother in the backyard while the squirrels hurl protests at them from the trees.
Mom likes to joke it keeps her sharp. She fights a lot of shitty teenagers at her job (she would never call them shitty, but, let’s call a Twelve a Twelve), cocky ex-Careers fresh out of detox who think they’re the stuff and don’t need to listen to a bunch of civs. As if the Program wouldn’t stock the feeder school with ex-Centre teachers, but it means Mom spends most of her free periods challenging kids out on the lawn. Half for dominance and respect, she says, but also it’s the only thing these kids know. They’ve spent upwards of a decade, some of them, getting slapped down every time they ask a question. If they stirred up trouble and didn’t get called outside to settle it, a third would burn the place down and another third would quit.
Structure, Mom says. Everyone needs structure.
Creed doesn’t mind Mom using him to keep her skills sharp, but tonight he’s not thinking about mouthy fourteen-year-olds drawling what are you gonna do about it in the middle of a civics lesson. He’s thinking about Alec in that big, empty Volunteer suite, freshly scrubbed, the next day’s outfit laid out for him, practicing the entrance he’ll make when the escort calls for volunteers. He’s thinking about Alec’s mentor, up with sponsor files late into the night, and he’s tried to guess who it would be (Emory? Devon?) until it drives him mad.
Mom’s arm catches him across the chest, fingers closed around his arm, leg hitting him firm in the back of the knees, knocking him off-balance. He flies back, slams into the ground hard enough to wallop the air from his lungs. Clarity hits him like a boulder to the chest: for a few wonderful, agonizing moments, the only thought that floods his mind is pain, sharp and searing, and the raw, desperate need to fill his lungs with air.
Mom reaches down, clasps his wrist and hauls him to his feet. Creed bends over, hands on his thighs, sucking in ragged breaths, until the same ugly thought worms its way back in like a muttation scratching at his back door. He pushes himself up, blood hot in his face. “Again.”
She doesn’t ask him. She’s a teacher and a Peacekeeper, not a therapist, she’s not qualified to reach into the mess inside Creed’s head and untangle it into nice, smooth threads. Creed isn’t a trainer, he’s been out of the Program for years now, he can’t tell if it makes his fighting sloppy or if it’s painted all over his face, but Mom was a trained interrogator (he’s pretty sure, though she never said so to her boys) and whenever the hawks in his brain rise to fever-pitch, that’s when she knocks him down. Again, again, again, wordless and impassive and absolutely free of judgement, as first Creed screams, then breaks, then sobs, then finally stands, winded and exhausted, flushed out clean and whole again.
He reaches inside, searching for the guilt. He finds nothing, a hollow that when he knocks it with his knuckles rings clear with purpose. Creed staggers on one foot - Mom might get in trouble with his physiotherapist next month but he doesn’t care, he doesn’t care - and now she steadies him by the shoulders and gives him a rare smile. “Better?”
His throat is raw. He could climb to the peak of Eagle Pass and sing at the top of his lungs for hours. “Yeah.”
Mom smiles again. “Good. Go eat your dinner.” He’s halfway back to the house when she calls his name. He turns, glances back at her, the whole line of his body a question. “Fetch your father.”
Creed stands at the back porch and watches her for a moment first, stretching out her neck and shoulder against the golden glow of the evening sun.
The sun burns hot on Reaping Day, the last year when it will matter. Oh, every year matters, every year the sacrifice is real and vital, every year two very living, breathing teenagers will stand up on that stage and dedicate themselves to death or glory, but after this that sacrifice will be a little more distant, more remote, more abstract. Creed won’t know their names, their favourite weapons, the snack they liked to wheedle from the trainers in exchange for joint locks or proper footwork or weapon grips or a clean disarm. He won’t know the worst fear the tracker-jackers conjured up in those final months of testing, the ones they shared crammed knee-to-knee in his room with a pilfered bottle of terrible wine from the staff cupboard that Milo sneaked out the next night to replace.
And the worst part is, it’s already started. He doesn’t have room in his brain for all the others, every year for the rest of his life. Easier to let that fade. He’s not sure whether he understands the grown-ups (he is a grown-up) or hates them.
No time for that now. Now there’s Alec, and only Alec - but it’s Lyme and Callista on the stage.
They told him to come. They’re all there, Dad, Mom, Uncle Paul and Aunt Julia, Uncle Ramon and the others. The Valents didn’t get a card last year, and it wasn’t Selene. That has to mean something - but Callista? Lyme? Alec should be Brutus, or Emory, even Devon. Is it all a joke?
He doesn’t know the girl. Not from their town, must have joined Residential from a different Transition facility. She stands by Lyme, looking proud and stoic with hints of something deeper. So that leaves - no. It can’t be. Not Callista the Butcher. Whatever happened in the past two years, there’s no way -
“I volunteer!”
Creed chokes on his own breath.
His first, idiotic thought is - tall. Last time he saw Alec, across the room during free time, he’d been with a group of his friends at, what, fifteen? Near the end of his growth spurt, or so Creed had thought, and unlikely to get much taller. But now he recalls the smoothies he’d choked down every morning after passing his field exam, the growing pains in the final years as he shot up those extra inches and his muscles expanded. Even so, it must be the stage effect, the double screens and the distance and the delicate Capitol escort who waves him to the stage, because Alec seems gargantuan. Whipcord muscles, not bulked out like Creed had been, but if Creed stands next to his little brother now he swears he’d have to crane his neck to look at him.
Fancy, he tells himself. Imagination. His brain struggling to hold on to something tangible as Alec throws his head back and grins, sharp and feral.
“Ohhhh … shit,” Mom murmurs under her breath, in a tone full of wonder. A ripple of shock at the blasphemy hits Creed like a blast wave, but he doesn’t dare turn to stare at her.
Callista is a golden statue behind his brother, eyes shining with pride.
“Brothers, huh?”
Creed jumps. The Peacekeeper standing guard at Alec’s door grins at him. “I - what? Yeah. I mean, yes sir.” He grips his hands so tight behind his back his fingers ache. Did he limp when he came in? Can they see the scar tissue on his knee through his pant leg? Do they know he tried to come here first, that it should have been him, can they see the years of training and the ghost of the Arena in his eyes? Or do they think he’s like everyone else, letting their little brother make the sacrifice because they weren’t good enough?
(Mom throws him to the ground and waits as he staggers to his feet, hands curled loose at her sides, watching.)
He lets out a breath.
“Yeah, I could tell.” The officer opens the door and winks over his shoulder. “Five minutes.”
Creed had to argue for five minutes alone, jaw set and feet planted. For a weird, sliding moment they’d reenacted the conversation Mom loved to tell at parties, when Creed was far too young to remember - “That’s my baby!” “That’s your baby brother, Creed, but he’s my baby” “No! That’s my baby!” - but all too soon his parents exchanged glances and stepped back, allowing him time with Alec first.
He’s even larger than life in the wood-panelled room, standing with his back to the window, warm, mid-morning light throwing his curls into a glowing halo. Creed can’t breathe. Alec swallows, the tension in his throat the only change in his expression.
“I wanted this,” Alec says, and what? “Don’t try to talk me out of it.”
Creed reels back. “What? Of course you did. You were always good enough, I’m just glad you finally believe it.”
This time the corners of Alec’s eyes tighten. “That’s a weird way to remember it. You used to say you wished you were me because no one cared what I did.”
Creed doesn’t remember that conversation either, but he’s not ending his last conversation with his brother on a fight, not for all the limestone in the quarries. “I don’t care what I said. I was a kid and an idiot. I washed out. You didn’t. I’m proud of you. And you probably don’t need to hear that anymore, and that’s good, but I am, so too late now.”
Alec stares at him for a long moment. “Selene wasn’t kidding, you really are sincere. I couldn’t always see it up close.”
“Thanks so much,” Creed says dryly, and what he’d really like to do is knock Alec to the ground for a wrestling match or catch his head under his arm and ruffle his hair, but he can’t. Alec is a tribute now, not his brother, and he’ll need to leave all that behind once he steps aboard that train. “I know you can do it. Whatever we used to say as kids, you’re strong, the strongest of all of us, and you always were. Even when I was shitty and self-absorbed I knew that. Whatever happens in there, I’m going to watch every single minute of it.”
A long silence passes, and Creed is ready to turn and leave with the awkwardness stretched between them, before Alec finally exhales. “Yeah,” he says. “Thanks.”
“Just remember to sleep,” Creed bursts out. “You always push too hard, you never wanted to look weak, but remember it’s just as important to rest -“
Alec socks him so hard he knows he’ll be tracing bruises well after the Games begin in earnest. “Are you seriously giving me Arena pointers right now? You? Now? Fuck off.” And then he laughs, before Creed can decide whether to be more shocked to the sucker-punch or the swearing. “God, you never change. Look, I’ll call you. On the other side, all right? So don’t be all tragic and weirdly noble about the last time we’ll ever see each other.”
Creed’s eyes snap wide and his breath sticks in his chest. Alec’s grin twists, the savage satisfaction of the Reaping stage but with the edges softened. “Ha, thought so. Loser.”
“Asshole,” Creed shoots back, but his voice cracks. “You’re not allowed to say things like that. I had my whole weirdly noble speech already written out.”
“Too bad.” Alec stretches his arms over his head. He is taller than Creed, only an inch or so, but it feels like a lifetime. “I’ve got plans on plans, motherfucker.”
Alec’s interview suit is a deep blue, with running silver threads like veins of quartz. He sits back in his chair, fielding questions with a confident air that stops just shy of arrogance. Creed sees their mother in him more than ever now, the flashes of dark humour, the sharp smile. too. More than once Dad’s gaze flicks over to her, but he stays quiet.
“So,” Flickerman says, teeth flashing in the light. “You’re handsome young man. Anyone waiting for you back home?”
Odd question for a Two, since they have to pretend they sprang out of the rocks as fully-formed tributes, but Alec rolls with it. “Maybe? I can’t stop anyone from waiting,” he says, and winks when Caesar says ‘Ouch!’ with an exaggerated grimace. “No, I’m kidding, I have better things to do than break hearts. Who has the time? I do have a brother, though, and I look up to him a lot. He got me through a lot of tough times when we were younger.”
Flickerman clasps his hands over his chest. “Oh! Brotherly love. Isn’t that sweet. Are you going to win for him?”
Alec tilts his head, and his eyes catch the light. “For him? No. I’m doing this for me. For me and my district, like I said. But I hope he’s watching all the same.”
Mom reaches over and gives Creed’s knee a reassuring shake.
“You’ve been watching me.”
Two days in, Alec corners the boy from One against a tree at the edge of the clearing the Pack has declared as their home base. And either he’s right, or whatever happens next is significant enough for the Games editors to cut it that way, because Creed noticed it too, the last few hours of the broadcast full of shots of 1M shooting Alec long, smouldering looks just barely in-frame.
1M - Leander, the pop-up chyron reminds them, dial in to add funds now! - scowls. “Have not. Ego much?”
“Yeah-huh.” Alec grins at him, slow and sure as his gaze slides down and drags back up, and oh. Oh, there’s the Callista tribute in his brother, holy shit. He looks for ten-year-old Alec playing tributes in the woods, dying dutifully as Selene stabs him with a tree branch, and comes up empty. “Nothing wrong with it. So what do you think? I’m hot, you’re hot, it’s the end of the world.”
Leander’s nostrils flare. He probably would not want to know that the running feed in the corner of the screen with his vitals registers an uptick in his heart-rate. Creed and his family always watch the raw feed, no commentary, but he can only imagine what Flickerman makes of that. “What the fuck is wrong with you? That’s your reason? We’re going to die, let’s make out?”
Alec’s eyes narrow, just a fraction, giving him a look of - not anger, but intensity. Creed has the ridiculous thought that he looks like Selene even before he says, “Why not?”
Leander’s knees buckle when Alec kisses him, but he gets his feet under himself soon enough. Creed lets out a disbelieving noise when the cameras pan up toward the treetops, leaving the sound on to fill in the gaps in viewers’ imaginations, but the Games have always been more skittish about kids groping than killing each other. And if he’s completely honest, he’d rather watch his brother skewer someone than get handsy, so he can’t get too high and mighty.
“Well,” Mom says, desert-dry, the same tone that’s trickled down to both her boys through some magic of genetics, “He didn’t get that from you, Joe.”
A high, sputtering sound cuts the living room silence; Creed turns to see Julia stifling a laugh into her hand. Dad turns his gaze up to the ceiling with the air of a man calling the heavens for eternal patience. “You would have shot me,” he says, and Julia loses it completely.
It’s the first time anyone has spoken since the countdown, and the tension doesn’t ease but it does crack a little, like how the first roll of thunder signals a break in the pre-storm humidity.
They call him for an interview when Alec hits the Final Eight.
“What?” Creed says, too shocked to stop himself from questioning Program staff. “But families don’t -“
“He mentioned you,” the woman says, brisk and businesslike in a way that makes Creed think of Uncle Paul when someone very important makes his life very difficult. “On camera. Remember? Can’t exactly go back on that now.”
This isn’t Alec’s one-on-one with Flickerman in the Capitol, on stage under blinding lights played to a screaming crowd. It’s not live, there’s no audience, and the woman from Head Office tells him they’ll cut and edit his answers as they see fit depending on the narrative the Capitol and Alec’s mentor agree to present. The interviewer is a reed-thin man in a feathered suit with sculpted lavender curls who lifts Creed’s hand with two fingers and tells him he has a face meant for the movies.
“Thank you?” Creed’s knee ached as soon as he stepped foot in the Centre building in some kind of weird, sympathetic echo. Stepping into the pretend-Remake room for makeup and an appropriate suit nearly gave him a full-on flashback, but he’s fine. He’s not going to have a fucking regression while Alec is out there fighting for his life.
He’s had half a lifetime of media training and the questions are foam-tipped. He tells them Alec is brave, and driven, that he’s never backed down from a challenge. He doesn’t tell them about giggling together late at night from the bunk bed, or that time Alec got so jealous they rolled around on the front lawn punching each other in the face, or that Alec was too shy to ask for a second cookie after school. “He is the bravest person I know,” Creed says. “And I know it’s cheesy, and he’d roll his eyes so hard if he were here, but I don’t care, if he wants to fight me for it he’ll have to win first. He’s my hero.”
“Thank you for your time,” the Capitol envoy says, and shows him to the door. On his way out Creed passes a big boy Alec’s age dressed in the Capitol’s idea of what normal teenagers wear these days (or maybe Creed is just out of touch). They make eye contact for a long second; the boy shrugs helplessly and slips inside.
Poisonous plants. Giant snakes. Monkey mutts with teeth the size of Creed’s hand. Acid rain that eats through foliage, sending Alec diving for cover into a crevasse in the rock face. By the time Alec faces his final opponent on the clifftop, he’s exhausted and bloodied, sepsis racing through his body, arm purple and swollen, the fingers of his right hand refusing to close around his spear haft. It feels sacrilegious to make a noise louder than a breath, now; Paul is the only reason any of them have eaten, coming in with bites of food and water every time he gets up to stretch his leg.
Creed can’t breathe. Can’t move. Can barely blink, terrified to close his eyes for even that hundredth of a second. But then -
But then -
He dislocates his knee victory dancing around the living room. His physiotherapist will tear a strip off his side for the next six months. Creed does not give a single, flying fuck.
Alec won.
He won.
His brother’s coming home.
End of summer a letter arrives, rich, thick paper and crimson ink. Creed slices his finger on the flap trying to open it, and he’s sucking a bead of blood when the words sink in: your brother and recovery and improving and asked to see you
After that are two more words, underlined so sharply the pen nib scored the paper. He imagines Callista sitting at an elaborate desk, somehow holding a gilded fountain pen with her dagger-tipped fingernails, underlining once, twice, just in case he’s too thick to understand the first time.
only you
Creed’s breath stops in his chest. Mom finds him still holding the letter, the rest of the mail scattered across the table, the skin of his finger still caught between his teeth. She reads over his shoulder, and when she’s done her breath hisses soft between her teeth. “Mom,” Creed says, choked. “Mom, I can’t, if only one of us can go -“
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Mom spins him around, grips him by the shoulder. “We all knew we would never see him again. Now they’re breaking the rules for you. That’s incredible. We’re not going to waste it.”
We all knew. Except that in the Justice Building, Alec told Creed he would call for him, and Creed never once thought he meant only him. Why wouldn’t he have asked the whole family? He would have said something earlier, if he’d known. Warned them, maybe, or apologized, or - something, besides stand here with the invitation in his hand, staring at Mom and feeling like his whole world tipped sideways.
Mom tweaks his nose like he’s five years old, except Creed was five years old, once, and he’s pretty sure she never did that then. “Go,” she says. “You deserve it.”