alex brooker, district 3 ( fin )

[Stare]

alexandria brooker, fifteen, district 3
"oh, i may be on the side of the angels, but don't think for one second that i am one of them."

it's the last day on earth
in my dreams, in my dreams
it's the end of the world
and you've come back to me

Alex had a picture of her hidden at the back of her drawer.

It was the only one she'd managed to save before the purge. They'd kept them up for the interviews, of course. When the cameras had come in it had been one of the things they'd insisted on filming - walls covered in a toddling, gap toothed baby; an awkward young girl lying underneath an old maple tree; a teen with a crooked smile. As soon as she'd taken her final blow, though, the photos had all come down. Alex had peered around the wall as her mother had thrown them in the bin one by one, tears streaming silently down her cheeks.

The picture she'd managed to save was of the two of them, arms wrapped around each other, laughing at some secret joke they'd shared. It was tucked in Alex's pocket now, worn and bent at one corner. She tapped her heels impatiently against the legs of her chair. Ten minutes. That's how long they'd told her it would take. While she waited she pulled out the picture, thumb smoothing over the edges carefully.

Her parents had been devastated. But beneath the sorrow was something more bitter. Betrayal. It festered there, lingering just underneath the surface, until the mourning ended and all they were left with was the aching reality of her deception.

Alex had thought she'd lost her on the day of the Reaping, but that had been a lie. Danny had never been hers to begin with.

On the day that Danny died, she'd locked herself in her older sister's room and buried herself in the blankets on her bed. She'd never cried so much in her life. Her parents had eventually come up and knocked on the door, but Alex could hear them weeping on the other side and she had no desire to try and weather the storm together. The pain was acute, agonizing, a tear in the middle of her chest. It left her dizzy and alone in a world that suddenly made no sense. She no longer had the girl who had read fairy tales to her, who had stargazed with her, who had taught her to build a fire. Who was she without Danny? How could anyone expect her to outlive her older sister?

When Atticus came back to Three, Alex was sure she'd never hated anyone more in her entire life. The crowd cheered for him, of course, and why shouldn't they have? He'd brought good fortune back to their district, and their other tribute had already been dying, anyway.

Only she hadn't been. In the present, Alex leaned her head back against the wall, the photo resting in her lap. She focused on the sound of a clock ticking too loudly in the empty room. Sometimes, even three years later, she refused to believe it. Danny hadn't been dying. It was a lie, a ruse, a trick the Capitol had forced her into. But if she looked back carefully enough, she saw all the signs. She'd been losing weight, she would disappear for a few hours every now and again, she'd begun bruising far too easily. They were symptoms Alex had memorized in the time since Danny had died.

She'd tried to rob Atticus's house. Her lips twitched up into a smile at the memory of her shaking hands as she stood outside, certain that at any moment a Peacekeeper would come and drag her away to the Detention Center for even considering such a crime. Danny had never talked about her time away there, and her silence had created a fear in Alex worse than if her older sister had told her all kinds of horror stories about it. Still, she'd been rooted outside that window for what felt like years, determined to take something as a small form of vengeance for what he'd taken from her.

At some point, it had started to rain. Alex had stood there, trembling, before she finally turned on her heel and trudged home.

She'd decided she just needed practice. A house that wasn't so big, so intimidating, so full of the man who had slaughtered her sister. The next house was still large, but it was a stranger's. It was an easy hit. There was a jewelry box on top of the dresser right near the window. Looking back, she'd been clumsy and loud and left far too much evidence if the family would have been smart enough to find it. Most embarrassingly, she'd taken the entire box. By the time she'd made it home she'd been shaking so hard she thought she might pass out, hands full of more jewelry than she knew what to do with.

"Alex?"

Her gaze snapped up to meet a pair of storm-cloud eyes accented by a smattering of freckles. Rory. The older girl's expression was exhausted as she approached, slumping into the chair next to Alex and running a hand over her her eyes. "Nothing yet. Didn't mean to scare you."

Alex's heart was pounding so loudly she barely heard her, but she managed a sympathetic smile. "Extra shifts?"

"Always," Rory answered from behind her hand.

"You should go. Get some sleep."

The older girl pulled her hand away just enough to shoot an exhausted glare in Alex's direction. "Not happening. I'm staying right here."

Alex glared back. "This doesn't change anything."

She was expecting a fight - she and Rory got into those often enough these days - but instead her friend just returned to her slouched position with a sigh, gaze drifting toward the ceiling. "This changes everything, ghost girl."

The box full of jewelry was what had led Alex to Rory. She'd kept it hidden for three days before the fear of being caught with stolen goods was too much to ignore. Rory had been the one behind the counter when Alex walked into the small, cramped office. She'd found the address scribbled onto a sheet of paper shoved in one of Danny's drawers and quickly realized what it was for. The gray-eyed girl had taken one look at Alex's nicer clothing and clean appearance and had quickly become less than pleased.

"We don't deal with runny noses or scraped knees here, kid. Why don't you have your parents take you to one of the real doctors?"

Alex had been intimidated, but held her ground. "This is where my older sister came. Danielle Brooker."

Rory had paused at that, eyes sweeping over Alex's face and recognizing the similarities. Her expression hadn't changed to sympathy, though, like so many others would so soon after her sister's Games. Instead, it had become defensive. "Danny came here for her diagnosis. Said she had no family and just wanted the test. She could pay for it, so we did it, and after that we never saw her again. We had no idea who she was."

"Why didn't you treat her?"

Rory had scoffed and gestured around at the room. "We're able to stay under the radar for a reason, kid. Not exactly the latest and greatest when it comes to technology and medication. If your family's as posh as it looked on TV, I'd say Danny had enough money to go somewhere better."

Alex had pressed further, surprised by her own sense of urgency. "Would you have treated her? If you'd had the money to get her the right meds?"

"That's a big if." Rory had shrugged noncommittally. "The real doctors kept Danny alive for a surprisingly long time. The people that come here are the ones who can't afford that kind of care. We do the best we can for them."

The weight of the jewelry box was heavy in Alex's bag. She'd considered Rory carefully before finally saying, "I have a donation to make."

Three years later Rory looked just as tired and generally irritated as she had on that first day, but they'd become friends. At first the older girl had been extraordinarily cautious about accepting Alex's "donations", but time passed. Alex got better at stealing, and the health facility got more desperate. Now they relied on the income.

The clock kept ticking, and Alex rubbed at the scar that writhed down one side of her jaw. Rory noticed. Most people couldn't see very far past the mask Alex had learned to wear over the years, but Rory knew her better than almost anyone else.

"I'm never going to forget the day you got that," she said, gesturing loosely to the scar.

Alex groaned, tipping her head back against the wall. "I thought for sure I was a goner."

Rory chuckled. "Me too, ghost girl. That guy got you good. Couple of inches lower and not even I could have saved you."

Alex's hand dropped to her other pocket, where a knife was tucked safely away. As she'd been stitching up her jaw, Rory had called it an occupational hazard. She'd arranged for Alex to have lessons from another patient at the clinic on how to properly use a knife. Three wasn't a Career district, but it had its share of weapon savvy street rats. She'd been completely awful at first, but time had taught her. Now she thought she was probably better at it than Danny ever had been, even in the Games.

She was becoming better than Danny at a lot of things she wasn't proud of.

Her hand dropped from the scar. "How many people did she kill?"

"Two." Rory was so quick with the answer that Alex almost started, then wondered if she'd asked the question before. "The boy from Ten and - "

"Kite."

Kite, kill me.

Alex leaned her head back against the wall. Two lives. They weren't her burden to carry, but she felt it regardless. And no matter how many "donations" she made, no matter how many drugs she stole, no matter how many lives she saved, it didn't matter. She still saw Dane's glassed over gaze in her nightmares. She still remembered Kite's last moments every single day.

"You want to know a secret?" Alex's gaze was glued to the clock.

"Hm?"

She thought about the people who came into the clinic, staggering and bleeding and dying. She thought about the look in their eyes, clinging to one last hope. She thought about Rory's expression every time Alex brought in more money, or the other workers at the clinic who called her their own personal Robin Hood. She thought about what she might have done if she'd had to watch Danny die in a sterile white bed, slowly and quietly.

She didn't want to say it aloud, but it would rip her apart from the inside out if she didn't let it out somehow. "Sometimes I still can't imagine a future without Danny. But other times..." She paused. Her hands were shaking. "Other times, I think her volunteering was the best thing that could have happened to me."

Rory sighed. "I didn't know you before Danny died, Ghost Girl. But who you are now - that's all you, you know? She can't affect your life anymore."

Alex's heart stopped at the sound of shuffling behind the door. For a moment, she swore she couldn't breathe. Somehow, she managed to answer in a steady voice. "We'll see."

When Jason stepped into the room, his face was pale. Alex could see the muscles in his jaw working. His hands were gripping the clipboard so tightly his knuckles were bright white in the too-harsh lighting. Jason was still young, relatively new to the clinic. He hadn't learned a good poker face yet.

There was ice flowing through her veins. Pure ice.

"My God," Rory whispered.

Jason started to say something about genetics and odds, his words wavering and unsteady, but it was drowned out by Danny's voice echoing in her mind. Ready for another dose of hell? Jason's voice was starting to break. Rory was cursing or praying or both. Mercy is the difference between dying quickly and dying slowly.

But the world had never been very merciful, had it?

A lifetime ago, in a world where Alex was still Danny Brooker's younger sister, she might have broken down. She might have tried to run away. She might have sobbed uncontrollably. But Danny was gone and Alex wasn't the same person she was three years before. She would accept this final gift from her sister with grace.

Amid the swearing and tears, Alex leaned her head back against the wall and sighed.

in my head i repeat our conversations
over and over 'til they feel like hallucinations
you know me
i love to lose my mind

[Stare]

fin

[lance]

so many feels, so much skill. i love her stare, lovely job <3

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