There is no worse way for a Two to break a bone than climbing rocks. None. Tripping over shoelaces would be embarrassing, in a ridiculous, can't-believe-it-happened kind of way, so over the top that everyone would have a laugh and move on. Slipping in the shower, same deal. A grisly sporting accident - not that Twos bothered with that shit, but not the point - would at least give some kind of badass points; same with training or sparring or pretty much anything else that a good Two hasn't been doing since birth.

It's as bad as a Four nearly drowning or a Ten forgetting how to break the amniotic sac on a newborn cow. Brutus may as well have strangled himself with his own umbilical cord and be done with it.

The doctor says it's not his fault, could've happened to anyone, but Brutus has lived in Two all his life and he knows how to read the cliffs. He knows how to check the terrain and suss out stress points. The part where he didn't even spot the rockslide until it took him out is just as bad as his thigh bone snapping when he fell.

The only good bit in the whole mess is that Brutus made it down the mountain and back to the Village himself, having reset his leg and braced it solid with a good branch and the strips of his torn shirt. Pain jarred through him with every step but at least it gave him something else to think about, and with each new wave of it Brutus cursed and gripped his makeshift walking stick and told himself that if he survived on his own he would boot his own ass into last Wednesday.

Falling down a mountain, for fuck's sake.

It wouldn't be so bad - Brutus has had worse, they all have, and if nothing else a little pain is a solid reminder that his body is here and working and that everything good can be taken away - except that Lyme appoints herself as his babysitter. The first time she shows up at his house, grinning and bearing a bag of groceries, Brutus rears back in horror. "No," he says, voice flat, and when he uses that voice the new victors stop their shit and listen.

Lyme just grins wider. "Oh yes," she says, gleeful. He hates her. "You wouldn't want your kids seeing you all laid up like this, now would you? Goes against the natural order of things. I'm only here to help my dearest friend in his time of need."

Brutus drags a hand down his face. "You know what, fuck you."

She snorts. "You first, asshole. Plus you'd have to catch me."

And all right, points to Lyme, because Brutus laughs into his palm despite the frustration and the very present itch starting up underneath the plaster. "I really don't know why we didn't work out. It's just so magical."

This time she winks, and she hefts the bag higher in her arms. "I'm gonna drop this stuff off in your fridge, you want me to make you something? I can cut it up into tiny little pieces for you if you want."

Brutus shoots her the bird, which Lyme mimes catching in mid-air and eating. As soon as she disappears through the door to the kitchen, Brutus tries to jam his fingers into the gap between the cast and his thigh, but no such luck. Stupid giant fingers. He settles for sticking a pencil in and wiggling it around, but it doesn't actually reach the itch and Brutus hates everything.

Lyme comes back with a sandwich and a beer, and Brutus is evaluating how much he values his junk staying exactly where it is versus how perfect the setup is when Lyme gives him a look that says she knows. "Say it and I break the other leg," she warns him.

Brutus snickers, but then Lyme sets down the plate and the bottle on the coffee table, just far enough out of Brutus' reach that even if he stretched out as far as he could, his fingers would only barely brush the edge.

He gives her a betrayed look. "Oh, come on. Really?"

"Like you wouldn't do the same," Lyme scoffs, and Brutus wants to make a huffy retort about how he's a gentleman, unlike some people, but let's not kid himself. For a minute he thinks she's going to make him say something humiliating first - in which case bring on the starvation training, Brutus lasted ten days before the Centre doctors intervened - but then she leans forward and pushes the sandwich into reach.

He's almost afraid to eat it, but Lyme wouldn't actually dose his food with anything unless he seriously pissed her off. Most likely she just wants to watch him squirm, and so Brutus tears off a huge bite and pushes it into his cheek. "Thanks," he says, but then Lyme pops the top off his beer and slides it down and he shifts right back into aggrieved. "It's my leg that's broken, not my hands," Brutus grumbles, snatching the beer away and downing half of it in one go.

"I just want to make sure you're okay," Lyme says, patting his other knee. "Plus I owe you for that time I got the flu and you kept asking if it was possible to get pregnant from pretty boys letting me fuck them."

He'd forgotten about that one, and Brutus tries to arrange his face into a neutral mask but it's too late. "Okay, okay," he says at last, holding up his hands in surrender while keeping two fingers curled around his beer. "We're even."

Lyme gives him a sharp-toothed smile that would have the sponsors leaping for their wallets. "Oh, caveman, we are so, so far from even."

Over the next two weeks, Lyme offers to chew Brutus' food for him, to carry him up to bed, to order a few of her pretty boys to give him sponge baths (that one got a "Fuck you" so violent she nearly fell down the stairs laughing) and to tuck him in and sing him lullabies at night. In the meantime, Brutus' doctor threatens to strap him to a chair and insert a catheter if he doesn't stop trying to get up and train, and so Brutus grits his teeth against Lyme's mirthful mocking and his doctor's admittedly unavoidable advice and works from home.

Three weeks later, Lyme comes in and drops Brutus' mail on the desk without joking that she should make him say pretty please first. Brutus raises an eyebrow and scoops it up before she can change her mind. "You're being nice today," he says. "You coming down with something?"

Lyme coughs, and her ears actually go red. "Claudius told me I was being mean. Nothing kills a good bout of immaturity like your kid crossing his arms at you."

Brutus stares at her for a second, then barks out a laugh. "Oh, shit, I'm sorry. You can tell your boy I'm not crying into my cereal every night, so he can turn off the guilt-eyes."

"Yeah, I told him you can take it, but apparently that wasn't enough." Lyme rolls her eyes. "Anyway, I promised him I'd try to be nice, which is too bad because I had a great one up my sleeve. Too bad you'll never hear it."

She parks her hip on the side of the desk, drumming her fingers against the wood. "I think he just doesn't get what it's like having somebody on the same level," Lyme says, and Brutus winces. Nobody's come out on either side of Claudius for years; he has a lifetime in front of him of people to defer to but nobody to sit and joke with as equals. "Anyway. I told him I'd behave, because it was keeping him up at night thinking of you crying yourself to sleep."

"Bring him over for dinner," Brutus says after a minute, and Lyme glances at him in surprise. "I'm going crazy in here, and if your boy's there to keep a leash on you, then maybe I won't want to commit murder-suicide by the end."

Lyme nods, but she still doesn't go. Brutus is wondering whether she set a bomb in his house and is just waiting for the reaction when she finally glares at him. "You know why I'm giving you shit, right? I thought after a couple of weeks you'd get it but I'm starting to think you don't."

"Enlighten me."

Lyme narrows her eyes. "Because you climbed down a mountain with a Games-damned broken leg when you had a perfectly good phone, that's why. You've got kids to think about. Almost twenty years out and you're still pulling this shit, the fuck is wrong with you?"

Brutus sits up, anger straightening his shoulders. "It's just a leg, and I obviously made it down just fine."

"Yeah. You did. Just like you walked out of the Arena, because we all know that if you survive something, there's no way it could've gone wrong." Lyme scowls at him, and Brutus fights back the thought that he liked it better when she was tormenting him. At least that he could ignore. "Maybe you don't give a shit about yourself, but other people do, including me. So you do that again and I'm gonna dress you up in a tutu, wheel you out in front of the Village, and alert the media, do you hear me?"

He stares her down but Lyme stares harder, and Brutus might be pissed but she has righteous anger on her side and that trumps personal affront any day. Finally Brutus gives in, breaking eye contact with a grunt, and he picks up his pen and twirls it around his fingers. "So, to show me that I should stop being so independent and accept help, you then spent three weeks making me hate every kind of help I could possibly get."

Lyme laughs, finally, miming a strike to the heart. "Hey, I said I wanted to help, I didn't say I was good at it."

"You really suck," Brutus agrees. "How are your kids still alive again?"

"It's a miracle," Lyme says dryly, and she nudges Brutus' good leg with her foot. "Seriously, though, you made me talk about feelings. I used the c-word for you. Do that again, I kill you myself. Deal?"

Lyme raises her eyebrows, challenging and joking but not really, and she might have annoyed Brutus from here to Eleven and back again but she did make sure he was safe, she did keep his kids from seeing him at his most vulnerable, and she had breached their no-emotions agreement to say she cared because he had to hear it.

"Fine, I guess I'll give you one," Brutus says, and Lyme nods in satisfaction. "You still need to work on your bedside manner."

"You could be a less irritating patient, but that's not going to happen either."

He ticks off a point in the air. He still isn't sure how Odin survived having him as a tribute, other than sparring with him six times a day so Brutus would calm the hell down and listen. "All right, all right. Get your boy, I'll haul my ass down to the kitchen, and we can eat and show him we're playing nice like adults."

Lyme nods, and this time she heaves herself off the desk. "Sounds good, I'll go get him," she says, and on her way out she clasps Brutus by the shoulder and shakes him. "Not being a complete dumbass looks good on you. Keep it up."

Brutus throws his pencil at her head as she leaves. After the door shuts, Brutus sighs, grabs the crutches propped up next to his desk, and heaves himself up onto his feet. When he makes it out to the kitchen, there's a brand-new pack of his favourite beer on the counter. Brutus decides to make the spiral kind of pasta that Lyme likes best, just because.