Chapter Text
[ Held close all the time, knowing
This was all for you ]
He woke to the flashing lights of a silent room. Instinctively, he reached to his side for Amberlite's knife. There was not a knife there, nor was there a belt. In its place was a white and blue-spotted hospital gown.
"Where's her knife?" He asked.
He tried to sit up, but his hands were bound by cuffs at his side. He repeated the question, louder this time. When he didn't receive an answer, he asked again even louder. And louder, until the question was asked in sobs and through a flood of tears.
"Where's her knife? Where's her knife? Where's her knife?" He shook up and down on the firm mattress of the bed. He wondered if the bed would topple over. He hoped it did.
Before it could, half a dozen Capitol doctors stormed into the room. Every one of them had syringes in hand. Creek yelled and screamed as the needles fell upon him.
As the liquid was pushed into his blood, dark spots swarmed his vision.
His sleep was deep.
But it was far from peaceful.
The next time he awoke was to the hum of a train. A familiar face peered over him, wrinkled and twisted with concern.
"Creek?"
"Saxony." He returned and found his voice weak and raspy.
"You've been drugged and revitalised for three days now." He reached for his shoulder and found the skin unnaturally smooth. "We're on a train back to the Capitol, where you'll be interviewed by Julia and officially crowned as Victor." She sighed. "And now I've got that bullshit out of the way. How are you?"
"Shit."
Saxony smiled. "I think I can understand that."
"Saxony…" He said. "Where is the knife? Please, that's all I have left of her." He grabbed at her wrist and held it tightly.
She nodded. "I know. I did what I could. They have the knife but…" Her head tilted and her eyes softened. "This is your first lesson as Victor. With them, everything comes at a cost."
He did not hesitate. "What do they want from me?"
That was when Saxony revealed all in which she had held back. It seemed that the Careers were not the only ones who had taken to calling him the Traitor. With all their favourites dead, the Capitol had chosen to embrace his cutthroat persona. Now, he was expected to play into it.
"No." Was his first response. "I thought that was me. Really, I did. But you were right; Saxony and I can't pretend to be that person any longer."
Tears welled in her eyes. "I know. And I am so sorry." She shook her head. "But you don't have a choice; none of us do. It's not just the knife, Creek. They have your family now."
His family.
He might as well have been stabbed, straight through the heart. They were the one thing that, now, kept him alive. Now, he was the sole person that could keep them alive.
It was all too much as the weight of his family's lives crashed down on his shoulders. He was reduced to a shamble of tears and snot.
He knew, now, for as long as the Capitol had them, he could never be free. He would have to wear the face of the Creek he had left in the Arena, the one he had so deeply loathed.
"Isn't it better to die?" he asked. At least, then, his family could not be used as a pawn for his own complicity.
Saxony grabbed his chin and lifted his eyes to meet hers. "Wouldn't you rather fight?"
The Traitor, they had branded him, and so the Traitor he was. In his Victory interview, he boasted about his infiltration of the Careers and the way in which he outsmarted them.
They projected his kills on the screen behind him. He flinched as he stabbed Felicity through the back. He was hit with the sudden realisation that the people, those that he had killed, had been real. As real as he was, as real as Amberlite.
They had families, too. People who had loved them. Perhaps people who were alone without them.
It overwhelmed him and the mask almost slipped in favour of the snivelling mess he had become.
But then Glade's face was in his mind, full and youthful. And Skye and Forest, who held the burdens he had left behind. And his mother and father, who had always chosen what was best for the family.
And Amberlite, who had urged him to reconcile with them. It was her final wish that gave him the strength to smile in the face of the horrors he had inflicted.
He may as well have been a member of the jeering crowds as he was crowned. For it was not him that leapt and pumped his fist. Nor was it him that gave the final words to the Capitol… "Do anything it takes to win. It will all be worth it in the end."
(It had not been worth it for the loss he now felt.)
His feet carried him from the stage whilst his mind floated away. Only Saxony was able to bring him back to Earth as she embraced him tightly. "Well done, Creek." Her voice was but a whisper in his ear. "Their time will come. I promise you."
He nodded.
Once, he may have said that the Games were a just punishment for the rebellion of the Districts. What were 24 deaths, anyway? To him, it had been a statistic. A pattern to find. A trend to graph. Now, they were the children who had lost their lives so that he could stand before the world in his lifeless misery.
The Capitol's time would come.
And the odds would not be in their favour; he was sure of it.
The Victory tour began with the Career Districts. Creek looked out at the crowd, only once, when he had first entered One's stage. They had held signs made of white sheets; all splattered with a red eerily similar to that of blood. They had spelt the word Traitor.
Creek had spluttered every word from the cue cards as fast as he could. The crowd drowned him out with their jeering and booing. He wondered if Castella's family was out there. If they, too, held the signs and boo'd as he wrapped up his speech.
At the platform of Four, he was met by Felicity's mother and father. They were the sign of District wealth with their pearl jewellry and gloved hands. Each of them shook his hand.
"A well-earned Victory, despite what others might say." Her father said.
Her mother continued. "The one who is victorious, is always the most deserving. That is our belief. Congratulations, you bested our disappointment of a daughter."
"She was good." He said, thinking back to the girl, who had only hoped to make her family proud, that he had stabbed in the back. Her mother's dark eyes, that stared at him so fully, were too similar to her daughter's. He pushed past her as he mumbled an apology.
Twelve stared at him with blank faces. Upon stepping out, he had seen the sunken faces of his aunt and uncle – lifted on a pedestal above the crowds. He had not looked their way since.
"The Games have repeated, without fail, for 70 years. But for us, this one is momentous." His voice was monotonous as he read from the provided cards. "As Twelve's first Victor, I have shown that the odds, as slim as they may be, can be placed in favour of any one person.
He flipped over the card and choked on the next word. "Amberlite…" He fought back tears. "Amberlite was my cousin. We grew up together and, somehow, lost one another along the way. The Games brought us back together, and for that I am…"
Horrified, furious, heartbroken.
But those were not the words the card had chosen.
"Grateful," he spat out. In haste, he ended his speech. "Thank you." District Twelve did not clap for him; they did not boo; they simply stared. Creek left the stage in silence.
Saxony met him by the train, her arms wide in embrace. He fell into them, cold and stiff. Amberlite had shown him warmth and melted away the cruelty of his facade. The Capitol had forced the mask back on, and the coldness had returned. He wondered, now, if the warmth of love was worth the pain of its loss.
"Creek?"
He pulled away from Saxony, and she nodded to him. "I'll wait in the train."
He turned and found his younger brother, wide-eyed as he looked up at him. "Skye." As his brother ran into his arms, he held him tightly and remembered Amberlite's words.
Don't give up on them. And don't let them give up on you.
As his brother's frail body shook in his arms, he wondered why he had ever pushed him away. He decided, then, that he would never let go of him again. "That wasn't me. " He croaked. "On that stage. They made me… They made me say it all…" Tears fell onto his brother's shoulder in floods.
"We know." He looked up to find his mother and father, their smiles sad as they took in the sorry sight of their son. "We know that now, Creek." His father repeated. Then, they too wrapped themselves in the hug.
Forest did not come and Creek did not expect him to. That relationship would take time, and he was now ready to invest every hour it took.
The Capitol may have shaped him into a monster.
But, as his family surrounded him, he shrank back into the innocence of that boy in the cave. All he had ever done, he had done for them. Now, they knew that, and they would do the same for him.