[From this prompt on Tumblr: an AU where there was no rebellion and Brutus won the 75th Hunger Games.]
Brutus will never know what woke him. The oppressive heat, the headache that's pounded in his temples for three days, the whine of insects in his ear like a drill through his skull … a shift in the underbrush, an animal moving in the trees overhead, the telltale rasp of metal against leather, years of training and paranoia long-buried and now dragged screaming to the surface … In the end it doesn't matter. One minute Brutus is stretched out on the jungle floor with his sword tucked against his chest, the next he's staring up at Enobaria standing over him, the firelight flickering on the gold tips of her fangs and the naked blade she's holding at his throat.
Time slows.
Brutus' brain fires at high speed, turning over a thousand possibilities: he's dreaming, he's hallucinating from lack of sleep and dehydration, this is Enobaria playing a joke, there's a giant leech on his neck and she's about to pluck it off and they'll both laugh about it later, except when does Enobaria ever joke, when is anything in the Arena ever less than deadly, he needs to find his weapon, get into guard, needs to fight her off without killing her, not yet, needs to convince her it's not time to split the pack yet there's still half the Arena left to fight alone they don't have the strength —
A cannon fires and Brutus jerks back. There's blood, hot and wet on his hands, smearing his fingers, his palms, all the way up to his wrists. There's blood on his sword too, only he can't see most of it because it's inside Enobaria, shoved right through her to the hilt. He can't see the blood on Enobaria, funny enough, it's too dark and it doesn't show up against her smooth dark skin in the low lighting — it will for the cameras, they have filters for that, he thinks distantly — but there's a glistening wetness at her mouth and her eyes stare blankly up at him, wide and white-rimmed and accusing.
It wasn't supposed to be like this.
Brutus promised Lyme he'd fight, he promised her he wouldn't lie down and let Enobaria take the crown without trying, but he didn't — he never — he thought they'd split up, that if he won she'd go down fighting someone else and he'd get to avenge her killer and come back with at least a little of that balm on his conscience. Except that was stupid, childish, the kind of daydream a young tribute tells himself, and Brutus knew better. If the last year has taught him anything it's that there is no honour, no reward, and no redemption, not for him, not anymore.
He wants to scramble away from her body, wants to turn and vomit in the bushes until he forgets the feeling of Enobaria turning deadweight in his arms, the thrust of his sword that turned a living, breathing person into meat — but of course he can't. Brutus is here and he hates every second but that's not his job, not his role, not him, and so he pushes back the distaste, swallows the bile, and lets nothing touch his face.
Brutus pulls his sword free, wipes the blade against his leg. He kneels, takes Enobaria's hands and crosses her arms over her chest before the rictus sets in, bends her hands so the blades lie in a V below her collarbone. He can't show regret at her death but he doesn't have to pretend he liked it, either, thank Snow for small mercies, and when he finishes giving her a good warrior's rest — eyes open, face snarling at the sky — Brutus steps back.
For the briefest moment Brutus thinks of Nero, wonders if Enobaria's mentor will do the district-honourable thing and transfer his unused funds to Odin like he would in a normal year — but those are mentor thoughts and Brutus is not a mentor. He touches his fist to his chest, and he doesn't say the usual Two invocation because Enobaria would hate it but there's nothing else to say, and so he drops his fist and turns away.
There's no more sleeping now, not with the adrenaline still pounding in his blood before the inevitable crash that will leave him shaking. Brutus gathers their supplies, stamps out the fire, and cuts a path back through the jungle. He hears the hovercraft descend but doesn't turn, can't bear to see the limp ragdoll dangle of the body in its claws.
Dawn breaks across the island, tongues of blood-red and gold licking across the eerie pink sky as Brutus staggers from the jungle, one leg dragging behind him, blood spattering from a gash in his thigh onto the wide green leaves at his feet. The beast behind him lies dead, jaws agape, claws still stained from where they caught him, but Brutus killed him and that makes this one wedge that's safe all twenty-four hours of the day now, at least. Unless the Gamemakers send something else, but so far they've been consistent.
Brutus collapses onto the sand just past the tree line, watching the blood eddy and pool into a thick, dark slurry. His thoughts run slow, delayed by pain and exhaustion, as he stares up at the painted sky. Hard to remember that just over a day ago he and the others were crouched here, watching the Alliance toss seafood into each other's mouths on the beach, laughing and giving each other playful shoves in the surf. Hard to remember that a few hours ago Enobaria was still alive.
He's going to die here, probably. These Games were not made for him. Whatever show the President wants, whatever narrative he's trying to tell, it's clear that Brutus is not meant to be the Victor, not this time. He tried, he did his best to follow orders, play the game and do his part, but he's failed. It's not District 2 who will carry Panem past this hell and into the final quarter of the century, and it's all his fault.
Brutus should be angrier about this — and he could be, maybe, there's a low curl in his gut if he looks for it — but mostly he's just tired. Bone-deep tired, the kind that drags him down, the way that drowning or freezing to death tricks you into thinking that you know what, just give up, it'll all be over soon. Over twenty-five years he's been doing this, his Arena and all those kids he mentored since, the death and starvation and murder for the sake of entertainment, and for what? What's the point of it anymore? What was the point of it ever?
He's still bleeding. He has no medical supplies, not even a needle and thread. He could strip off his shirt and make a tourniquet but the effort is too much, too hard. Instead Brutus finds himself staring at his thigh, watching the blood spread, the creep of liquid down the sand. The trickle will hit the edge of the surf soon and won't that be pretty, the dark almost-black of the thick, muddy blood turning a bright, startling scarlet once it hits the saltwater. Picturesque, that's the word.
The two-tone note of a parachute pulls his attention away, and Brutus looks up to catch the canister before it hits him on the head.
It's a medical kit — just the basics, some salve and material for stitching, plus a slap-on pressure bandage — and a canister of oatmeal, the good kind with bits of real apple and nuts mixed in. Brutus stares at it for a second, his throat tight, then sees the note. It's typed, of course, no time to send anything handwritten from the mentor's seat, and unsigned, but it may as well have been hand delivered by Lyme herself:
THE FUCKING FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU? COME HOME SO I CAN KICK YOUR MOPEY ASS!
Brutus blinks, sputters, then bursts out laughing right there in the sand. He laughs so hard his hand shakes and he stabs himself with the needle, keeps practically giggling until he almost dribbles the oatmeal down his front like a fucking child. "Thanks for that," he says when he finishes, saluting the sky with his eyes closed. "Message fucking received."
He gives himself half an hour to rest, then picks up his things and takes a deliberate step — not back into the jungle, but onto the beach. It's time to hunt.
Peeta Mellark dies first.
Brutus catches him on the shore, standing lookout while the others hunt. He's standing in the surf, spear in hand, face twisted in a small grimace as he rubs at his leg. The metal is crusted with sand and salt, though at least the Capitol-made limb isn't rusting, but it's got to be hot under the sun and the skin has started to blister and redden, rubbed raw where the stump of his leg joins the prosthetic.
He looks, Brutus thinks uncomfortably, seventeen, young and sunburnt and exhausted and way over his head. He squints out over the beach, blinking against the sun as he digs the heel of his hand into his thigh muscle. It's a quiet, human moment, and Brutus doesn't have time for this. They had their moment of camaraderie in the training room before the Arena but that was before, and the boy would kill Brutus if he had the chance and that's the way it has to be.
Brutus kills him quickly, a sword thrust through the back, yanking the sword free in an arc that sends blood spattering across the sand. The kid falls, eyes comically wide and mouth hanging open, and Brutus dashes into the waves and runs across the surf to hide his tracks before darting back up into the trees and circling back through the woods.
He's there when the cannon fires and Katniss Everdeen screams "Peeta!" in a ragged, heart-rending cry that not even a Career could fake. He's there when she crashes through the undergrowth, steps out and swings his sword across her throat like the world's deadliest clothesline while she's unslinging her bow. She falls, her blood a fountain from the severed arteries until her heart stops beating, and Brutus jumps back onto the shore to give himself better footing in case of pursuit.
They both look young like that, bleeding out onto the sand, but he can't think about that. Guilt is the luxury of the living, and until the trumpets blow, Brutus is a dead man walking.
Brutus waits on the shore, weapon ready, but the others are smart. They know what the cannons mean, they can do the math, and they're not about to rush out and make the same mistake Katniss did. All three of the remaining tributes are strategists as well as killers, and Beetee has been in this game even longer than Brutus has. If he's going to get out of this alive, he'll have to tilt the playing field.
Absurdly, Brutus thinks of Enobaria, a memory so strong it stings. She was playing chess with Ronan on his porch, and Brutus stopped by on his evening run to watch because he couldn't imagine it ending well. Sure enough Ronan boxed her in, trapped all her key pieces with nowhere to go, and no matter what move she made he'd have her. Brutus had stood there, half ready to call for Nero in case Enobaria lost it, when instead she lifted one arm and swept all the pieces onto the ground except her king.
"Whoops," Enobaria said, grinning toothily. "Looks like you didn't insure the board against an act of god."
At the time Ronan had laughed, and Brutus had slapped his forehead before jogging back to his house. Now Brutus looks back at the jungle, the thick, dense growth that blocks all view more than a few feet from the beach, and a very Enobaria-like thought worms its way into his head.
Asking the sponsors directly is always a gamble, but this time it works. The idea of spending the next two weeks or more waiting for the last four tributes to kill each other can't be an exciting one as far as the sponsors are concerned, even if the Gamemakers decide to change up the clock gimmick and start adding deadly elements more than one wedge per hour. Brutus doesn't even want to know what it must have cost, but soon the parachute falls, bringing with it a jug of sloshing liquid.
It takes him most of the morning to get it laid. Long, straight lines from the beach up to the tree at the rear boundary, twice per wedge. He does the ten o'clock last, waiting for the tidal wave and coming back so it doesn't ruin his handiwork, and at the end he runs one long line along the edge of the tree line in a complete circle along the beach. The whole time Brutus waits to run into the others but they're keeping their distance, likely making their own end-game plan.
(He wonders, with grim amusement, which one of them will turn on the others first if they manage to kill him instead. Or maybe they'll all hold hands and force the Gamemakers to send mutts to tear them all to pieces.)
At last he finishes, and Brutus' back aches from bending and his hands are red and blistered from accidental splashing, but he's done. Brutus tosses the empty jug and takes three deep breaths, pushing back the twisting unease that tells him this is not how a Two wins the Games, this is not how true victory is earned.
But true victory is earned once and never revoked, or so it was once upon a time. In this strange new world, the old rules don't apply. Brutus pulls his flint from his pocket, strikes a spark, and lets it fall.
For a moment nothing happens — it is humid, after all, the air hangs thick with moisture until every breath chokes, what if it's not enough — then fire blazes and the air turns hot and dry in seconds. The flames race along the lines of liquid but they don't stay there, as the surrounding vegetation crisps and blackens, the wood losing its moisture with audible pops and hisses. Soon the entire jungle is aflame, and Brutus staggers back into the water even as the sand shifts and slides beneath his feet because otherwise the heat buffets him like a physical slap.
Each wedge catches at a time, and Brutus rounds the island with the waves lapping at his legs, watching. It's not until the two o'clock wedge that he hears it, a mad crashing sound that carries even through the deafening roar of the wildfire and the gradual collapse of the jungle. It's out of pattern, confined to one area and getting closer, and Brutus runs to make it to the right patch of shore before Johanna Mason and Finnick Odair stumble out into the clear.
They're both coughing and wrapped around each other, but while Johanna is red-faced and furious, Finnick collapses on the sand, pale and unmoving. "Get up!" Johanna shouts, kicking at him while not actually making contact, and Brutus doesn't know what happened to Odair when he wasn't busy charming Katniss or catching fish but it must have affected his lungs because he can't get up. He tries, a heroic effort that leaves him gasping and collapsed on his side, and it's such an awful, painful effort that for a moment Brutus forgets he's here to kill them and almost asks what he can do.
But then Johanna screams "Fuck this!" and rushes at Brutus with a shortsword the size of her forearm, nose and eyes streaming and teeth set on edge, and everything else falls away.
Johanna fights hard, but Brutus is bigger and faster and he's not working with a pair of lungs half full of smoke and ash. (She didn't cheat, is what it really means, but there's no time for that, not now.) Brutus wears her down, kills her quick when the desperation reaches her eyes and her swings go wild, the second before the realization hits and the fear sets in. She's a strong kid, brave as hell, and she deserves to die fighting, not terrified on her knees.
Of course she's dead either way so what does it really matter, but Brutus tells himself it does as he crosses the beach and puts the still-wheezing Odair out of his misery.
Two cannons. Two bodies. No Beetee. Brutus frowns, waits, but there's no third cannon and no Beetee emerging from the trees. Of course, this could be an elaborate trap — he could have escaped, he could be waiting on the far side of the island, he could have fashioned an elaborate breathing device out of jungle tubers and hidden beneath the surface of the water — but Beetee is also ten years older than Brutus with none of his physical conditioning.
The flames continue to roar, licking the edges of the beach. Still no cannon. Still no Beetee. "Shit!" Brutus mutters to himself, and sheathes his sword. He strips off his shirt, soaks it in seawater and wraps it around his face, then plunges into the jungle.
He finds Beetee halfway up the path, crumpled in a heap beneath a fallen tree. The tree is heavy and full of sap, probably the only thing keeping him alive as it's slow to burn, and Brutus kicks away the underbrush to clear a path so he can drag the older man free. He can hear Lyme screaming at him all the way from hear, asking him what the fuck he's doing, but Brutus can't let it end this way. Not like this.
Beetee weighs next to nothing, all whipcord and bone, and Brutus drags him out through the burning trees and ducking below vines with flames dancing across their length. Finnick and Johanna are gone when he makes it back, though their blood still stains the sand, and Brutus lets him fall to the ground.
Behind them smoke billows up in thick clouds that hit the dome of the Arena and gather. The air is thick with it now, gritty and choking, and bits of ash fall like rain. Now and then the breeze blows sparks past the trees, hissing when they hit the water and stinging against Brutus' skin. Beetee lies on the sand, waxy and still, but breathing.
And, well — now what?
Brutus scrubs a hand across his forehead. It comes away filthy, streaked with sweat and grime, smoke and blood. He coughs, coughs again until he spits out a wet chunk of something slimy and black into his palm. Brutus stares at it for a moment, dumbly, tries to tilt his hand and let it fall to the sand but it clings stubbornly until he wipes it against his leg. Beetee opens his eyes, inches himself up onto his elbows, and Brutus draws his weapon, muscles tensed, still half waiting for this all to be an elaborate plot. If there's anyone not to underestimate in the end game, it's the man from Three.
But Beetee only looks at him, eyes bloodshot, and wets his chapped lips. A thin line of blood trickles down his chin. "Is this how you're going to justify it to yourself?" he asks. His voice rasps, dry and cracked in his throat, but it doesn't tremble, and his gaze is defiant. "Is this how the honourable Brutus will be able to sleep at night? He made sure to give us good, clean deaths in combat instead of letting us perish in the flames?"
Brutus is not about to be baited, not on camera. "It's a shitty way to go," he says. "Sword's faster. There are worse ways, like electrocution." The biggest of Beetee's victims had taken six agonizing minutes to die. Of course, last year Cato cut Peeta Mellark on the leg and he languished in the mud for a week with blood poison in his veins, but that's not the point. This is a chess match with an audience of millions and a single capricious referee. "I wasn't gonna leave you there."
"If you're feeling that charitable, I'd be happy to accept your sacrifice," Beetee says dryly. Brutus says nothing, and Beetee favours him with a thin, humourless smile. "I didn't think so."
The conversation dies, and Brutus tries not to fidget. This isn't how his Arena went, his were fast, clean kills or brutal, bloody slogs to the end of their endurance, nothing like this. No chatting, no strange battles of wits. Odair had been out of it so it could easily be deemed a mercy kill, if the audience forgot that Brutus was the one who set the fire in the first place.
But Beetee's breath whistles as it leaves his chest, and his skin has an odd sheen. One hand shakes as he presses it to his chest. "I'd hoped you'd be better than this," Beetee says suddenly. "Expected? No. But hoped, yes. Of all the years, I thought maybe this might be the one that made you see. But here you are, every bit their dog as ever, for all the good it will do you."
"Now more than ever we need to be strong," Brutus shoots back. Here, at least, he knows his lines, Beetee practically fed them to him, even if deep inside he has to hide the slick churning. "What else did you think was going to happen?"
Beetee nods sagely. "What else indeed," he says, his voice tight. His eyelids flutter, and a low convulsion runs through him. "This is why you could never be one of us."
Brutus is in the middle of figuring out what the hell that's supposed to mean when Beetee gasps, stiffens, then goes still, one hand still clutching his shirt. A moment later the final cannon fires.
A sudden deluge quells the flames, and as the trumpets play a voice announces Brutus the Victor of the 75th Annual Hunger Games. The hovercraft descends, the sun emerges and a rainbow splits the sky.
It feels nothing like the first time. Nothing at all.
He wakes in the hospital, exhausted and empty, with not even relief to fill him. Long habit leads Brutus to glance to the side, where instead of his mentor it's Lyme folded into the ridiculous tiny chair. "Hey caveman," she says, and passes him a glass of water. Brutus spills it all over himself but she doesn't laugh, just takes it when he's done. Her eyes are shadowed under the Capitol makeup caked over her skin. "Odin's making all the preparations so I'm on babysitting duty."
"How bad is it?" Brutus asks. A low headache pounds in his temples, and for a long, glorious moment he imagines actually hitting the morphling button by his head before dragging his gaze away.
"Pretty bad." Lyme runs a hand through her hair. "A bunch of mentors got dragged out on the third day and nobody would tell us why, and there were actual riots in the Capitol when the lovebirds died, if you can believe it. But as far as I know, everything's under control."
Everyone in Panem knows what 'under control' means. In his younger days Brutus found it comforting on his best days and necessary on his worst. Now Brutus wets his lips and swallows a grimace. "Who —"
"Not right now," Lyme says, her tone deceptively breezy, but she glances at him with eyes hard as flint. "You're supposed to be resting, remember? Odin would kill me if I let you talk shop when you're meant to be sleeping."
"Right, right," Brutus says, forcing himself to sound light, casual. It's never over. "Why don't you sing me a lullaby then, so I can fall asleep like a good boy?"
"Fuck you," Lyme tosses back, which is familiar enough that it counts as a lullaby or something because Brutus falls asleep not long after.
The next time he wakes it's Odin in the chair, and Brutus is in his forties, not eighteen, but his throat closes and his eyes sting anyway. Odin rests a hand on the top of his head, and he leans forward and leans his forehead against Brutus' shoulder. "Oh my boy," he says, low and ragged. "I'm glad to have you home."
The cost hangs heavy in the air between them. Odin doesn't speak of it, and Brutus doesn't ask.
With this year the Quarter Quell, Brutus expected weeks of victory celebrations before being allowed to go home, so it's a shock when three days after his release from the hospital Odin tells him they have permission to leave. His interview, one dinner, practically no parties or galas to speak of, it's unheard of — except that the more Brutus listens, the more he hears whispers of what happened while he was in the Arena. Mentors from Three, Four, Six, Eight and Twelve dragged away and never seen again; executions all over the districts; mass arrests here in the Capitol following a wave of citizen protests; and, most strangely, the quiet disappearance of Head Gamemaker Plutarch Heavensbee.
Something happened the third night of the Games, but Brutus has the distinct feeling that in this case, the less anyone knows, they safer they are for it.
The train back to Two is a somber one. It's the five of them in the Victor carriage: Brutus and Odin, Lyme, Claudius and Ronan, with Nero in the tribute car with Enobaria and Artemisia keeping him company. Nero hasn't said a word to Brutus since he got back and Brutus can't find anything himself that might make it better. Even worse because Lyme is here, with him, having chosen her side against her mentor for the second time in the last decade. Here at least she hesitated when they boarded, staring after Nero when he climbed into the tribute car alone. It was Artemisia who shook her head and waved her on, who followed Nero and laid a hand on his massive shoulder, leaving Lyme to stand awkwardly on the platform, hands fisting and unclenching at her sides.
Poor Claudius looks like someone ran him over with a truck, which is about how Brutus figures he'd look if this were the first year he threw his hat in the mentor ring. Claudius doesn't talk either, just curls up on the window seat with his forehead pressed against the glass, watching the scenery flash past outside.
Brutus doesn't lean on Odin, because while he's a Victor for the second time he's not a teenager. He does, in fact, feel very, very old, and any show of weakness might shatter him. He sits ramrod still for those long, silent hours as the train rushes through the mountains, and he tries to count the trees or find patterns in the clouds to stop his mind from slipping. He can't close his eyes or he sees Enobaria staring up at him, or nears the sounds of Odair's laboured breathing or Everdeen's agonized scream or Beetee's rattling gasp as he entered cardiac arrest.
Odin reaches across him to open the window and Brutus jumps, but then the sharp, familiar scent of pine floods the car and now he is eighteen all over again, wide-eyed and wondering. Brutus' throat clenches and his breath sticks in his chest, and a noise escapes him that could perhaps be charitably be described as a gasp but only realistically as a sob, yet no one says a word. Claudius keeps looking out his window, and Lyme watches the dance of the rainbows from the chandelier prisms, and Odin looks straight ahead with one hand on Brutus' shoulder, and Brutus turns his face to the window and cries as the train cuts through the mountains.
At the train station, everything is a little off. The usual crowd is there, but subdued, and they raise their fists for Brutus when he steps onto the platform but there's no roar. After a pause someone applauds, then it catches in an awkward scatter until the whole crowd claps, but by then Brutus mostly wishes they would stop. No children mob him, Program bracelets around their wrists, begging for autographs or fight tips; no teenagers slink at the sidelines, pretending they're too old and too mature to care about seeing a Victor.
They're all adults, mostly working class and Peacekeepers, but everyone is off-balance and no one seems to know what to do. Brutus' exhaustion doubles, and he shakes a few hands but lets Odin pull him away to the waiting cars without protest. Nero has already gone, Lyme and the others with him, and when they get to the parking lot Brutus freezes at the sight of several more cars from the Village with no sign of the Victors who drove them.
It hits him a second later. Of course, they'll be here to watch Enobaria's coffin put into the ground before coming home to welcome Brutus back. Brutus lets his eyes fall shut, takes one deep breath, then another, and opens them to see Emory waiting for him by her truck. "Good to see you," she says, quiet and earnest, and Brutus nearly loses it again right there in the damn lot, public be damned.
Emory's always been perceptive, so instead of opening the door she steps forward and hugs him, lets him breathe in the scent of her and ground himself in her presence. Odin moves around behind them, slips into the truck and starts up the engine, but Brutus stays there with his girl, breaking all the rules of the mentor tree and its strict hierarchy of authority and comfort by letting her hold him and rub his back.
"Hey now," Emory says eventually. "We gotta get you home, Petra will be chewing the gates. Only way I could convince her to stay back was to tell her there weren't enough seats."
Brutus laughs a little at that, even as it sits hollow in his throat, and he lets Emory slide into the cab first before taking the window side. He focuses on the drive, the paved street that turns into a gravel road that turns off onto a dirt lane winding between the trees, breathes in the familiar scent of home and watches the mountains grow in front of them. He doesn't let himself think about Nero and Devon and all the others standing in a long, silent line while one of their own gets lowered into the ground.
Then they're home, and they step through the gate and Petra launches herself at him at full speed like a tiny, red-haired missile of pure muscle. Brutus nearly falls right on his ass, and he catches her and lifts her into the air, spins her and holds her against his chest as she cries and laughs and clings to him, alternately pulling back to beat him with her fists and shower him with curses.
Brutus laughs, and cries, and laughs again, and for that moment — like the first full breath of air after breaking the surface of the water — everything finally, wonderfully, feels the way it should.
The next year is a shit-show.
They cancel the Victory Tour. Brutus isn't surprised, exactly, not with half the mentors dead and another chunk still missing, but it's still a shock to see such a longstanding tradition put aside. The Tour will continue next year, says the official announcement, but this year President Snow feels that the country has no time for celebrating. Not with so much work to do.
Brutus, if he's being honest, doesn't pay much attention. If there's one good thing to come out of this whole fucking mess, it's that he is finally, honest to fucking goodness retired. No more mentoring, no more sponsor deals, fuck it and the whole fucking mess. From now on it's Brutus, his porch, his beers, and however long his brain gives him before it starts climbing the walls from boredom.
The surprise — or maybe not — is that Lyme retires, too. They don't talk about it, but the day Brutus hands in his paperwork Lyme shows up with a six-pack of beers for him and a bottle of whiskey for her, and something about the set of her jaw tells him right there. They sit together on Brutus' porch swing, make a silent toast and drink without talking, Lyme with her legs tucked under her and Brutus pushing the swing with one foot against the ground.
He still dreams of Enobaria, but that's a small price to pay for living.
District 1 wins the next Hunger Games, a pretty little girl who smiles and flirts and winks over her shoulder and makes all the right promises with every teasing smile. Brutus can't watch more than five minutes before he's sick to his stomach, and he thinks of Cashmere and Gloss dead in the water — Finnick Odair coughing in the sand — and the price that the remaining Victors and all the ones to come will have to pay to make up for their loss. He doesn't let himself learn her name.
District 1 wins the year after that, too, a boy this time, and before he's even pulled from the Arena the commenters are already salivating. Brutus puts a bottle through his television screen and stalks out to the gym. He stays there until his arms are shaking and he takes a hard fall from the pull-up bar that knocks his shoulder out of place.
The next year it's District 10. She's a pretty girl too, strong and proud with flashing dark eyes, and she stands with her feet planted and hands on her hips, the tilt of her head just shy of arrogance. With District 4 out of favour following its role in the failed we-don't-speak-of-it in the 75th, District 10 has risen to take its place. Its people are strong, its children used to death and slaughter, and at the end of the day, humans are just another type of animal, after all. It doesn't take much to see that soon there will be athletic clubs popping up all over the district.
Emory's boy wins the year after that, her first, the first of any mentor who won after Lyme. Brutus should be proud of her, should be glad that the next generation has finally made its mark, but as he watches the boy — so young, were they always this young? — blink up at the sky, face smeared with blood and grime, the only thing that Brutus tastes is sour.
Before he knows what's happening, Brutus finds himself standing, leaving the house and taking the wooded path over to Lyme's. He pushes open the door hard enough that it bangs against the wall, and she looks up at him from the couch, startled. At least, she's startled for a second; after that she relaxes, and it's weird but after that moment everything about her says, finally.
"Listen," Brutus says. His voice sounds too loud in his head, his heart a thundering staccato. "What would you done if I'd'a died that time?"
Lyme's eyes glitter. "You know exactly what," she says, her voice like a cobra, coiled and looking for a foot to strike.
Brutus' breath rasps in his chest. He hasn't mentored in five years but he has been listening, and he's heard the rumours. Uprisings. Blockades. Networks of spies and traitors from district to district, running everything from supplies to fugitives to secrets. Whispers that the missing Victors weren't executed, but were taken to a hidden Capitol facility and held there in case they're ever needed for leverage.
"Okay," Brutus says, and just like that — like the swing of a sword, like gravity taking over after stepping off the cliff — it's easy. Practically inevitable. If there's a Victor afterlife, Beetee will be shitting his fucking pants right now. You could never be one of us, indeed. "Tell me what I need to do."
Lyme smiles.