Brutus swims, and there's no way out.
(that's stupid, he's never been swimming, he's been tossed in a frozen lake in the middle of January and taught how to claw himself out, does that count, probably not)
The water is black and cold and empty. It presses against him like a wall, like a blanket. Like the air weighed down heavy with humidity. Nothing, nothing, no thing, no things around him, but the surface, white and shining above him. He can do nothing too; stay down, sink, fall forever, down, down, down. Do nothing until he is nothing. It wouldn't take much. Dying is easy. Twenty-three kids do it every year, but not Brutus. Not Brutus.
Brutus fights. When he fights there's pain, and voices, and bright bright lights, but his brain tells him pain is good. The trainers used to tell them so. Pain meant they were doing it right.
He fights some more. His eyes, someone replaced his eyes, turned the lids to stone, but he opens them, shoves every bit of strength into it -
(he's strong, the strongest tribute the Arena has seen since Odin, he lifted a rock the size of a small child and threw it at a mutt that chased him)
"That's my boy," says a voice by the bed, deep and rich. Familiar. It smooths away the jagged remnants of Brutus' fear like the rock tumbler he built as a boy.
(was he ever a boy, probably not, little boys have rock tumblers and learn the names of stones but they don't kill people, little boys have rock collections not a tally of kills that goes past their fingers)
"Come back to me, Brutus," the voice says. His name catches him like a fishhook, drags him up. Brutus pushes his eyes open again. The world swims, so much swimming, but then it's back, getting clearer and clearer. The giant shape next to him sharpens until it's a man, large and muscled and battle-scarred. "There you are. Stay with me."
Odin, mentor. Brutus, tribute. The Hunger Games. Blood and screams and burning deserts that turned to ice in a matter of minutes. Skulls that caved like watermelons beneath his fists. Trumpets.
Not tribute. Not anymore. Victor.
Brutus forces his tongue between his lips. "I won?"
Odin smiles. Odin never smiled at him before. Always solemn, serious. Approving but distant. But now he smiles, the lines of his face rearranging as though a mountainside decided to get up and walk away. "You won, my boy."
Hands grab at his mind, pull him down, but Brutus wants to stay. Needs to stay. He grasps the blanket but it's too soft, not real enough, nothing to ground him. Panic scrabbles in his skull.
"Here." Odin takes something from a table, reaches over and presses it into Brutus' hand. It's sharp and jagged and rough; it digs into his fingers and makes him hiss at the pricking of pain. "It's a geode, from District Two. You brought it with you when you entered Residential. I got it back for you."
Brutus grips the rock hard, hefts the solid, heavy weight of it. Rubs his finger over the rough outer surface, the jagged spikes inside. Every kid who entered Residential got to take a box of things from home. Some didn't bother. Some took toys, or books. They weren't allowed to take photos or letters. Brutus packed his rock collection. One boy laughed at him, once. He never laughed again, not at Brutus or anyone else.
The breath slides into his lungs with less trouble now. "Thank you," Brutus rasps out.
"You're a Victor now," Odin tells him. "You did everything they asked of you and more. I'm proud of you. We'll talk later; for now, sleep."
Brutus wants to, but stops. He lifts his right hand - heavy, so heavy, maybe they cut it off and replaced it with one made out of lead - and turns it over. It looks like a normal hand, but not his hand. There's something wrong with it, soft and pink and smooth -
(he slammed his fist down into Ten's skull, again, again, again, again, bone cracking beneath his fingers - maybe it was his fingers - and the blood and brains splattering upwards)
He gasps. Flexes his fingers. They respond, curl into a fist and spread back out again. Except Brutus had no fingers when they pulled him out, just a mangled mass of blood and skin and bone. He held it to his chest as they pulled him out.
"They fixed your hand for you," Odin says. "Titanium bones, and they managed to regrow the connective tissue. Don't ask me how. They wanted to cut it off and give you a hook instead, something terrifying. I told them to risk the surgery instead."
Brutus shifts the rock to his other hand, then back again. He rolls it between his palms, curls the fingers of both hands around it and pokes his thumbs into the gap in the underside, stroking the edges of the crystals. He's safe. He's won. Odin gave him a piece of District Two to keep with him. The Capitol gave him back his hand.
"Sleep," Odin says again. Brutus wants to protest, but he can't remember how. Words, he can speak words, he's done it before, but now they swim in his head and skitter away before he can catch them.
He sleeps. When the nightmares start to chase him awake, Brutus squeezes the rock, throws it at the people in his head, and they leave him alone.
"Eat this," Odin says a few days later, hands him a dark wholemeal roll from District Two, warm and fresh. No butter, no jam, just the bread. Brutus shifts the rock to the crook of his arm, splits the roll in his hand and breathes in. The rich, heady scent of Two. Of victory. The geode pokes him in the elbow, a reminder, as he tears the roll to pieces and eats.
He has a house in the Victors' Village now. Odin takes him there himself, walks Brutus through the rooms, lets him look at it, take it all in. The ceilings, high enough that Brutus will never hit his head no matter how straight he stands. Furniture strong and sturdy enough to hold his bulk, even if he flops on it with exhaustion instead of settling gingerly with care. (Who got the bill for the sofa in the Games Complex, the one that creaked under Brutus' weight and snapped when he collapsed onto it after a long day of training? Maybe they'll take it from his stipend.)
It's not a grand house, nothing that Brutus and his humble roots would be ashamed of having. Master and guest bedroom with solid furniture; a good, honest shower in the bathroom with two knobs, hot and cold, no floofy Capitol scents and nozzles for Snow knows what; an office and a kitchen and a private gym in the basement. A sitting room large enough for a handful of friends, but not big enough to host a Capitol-sized party. The furniture is a mix of comfortable and utilitarian, the walls painted a calming blue or left their natural wood. The main room has a fireplace with a mantel big enough for all his rocks. Nothing ostentatious. It looks Two.
Brutus lets out a breath. He presses his hand to one of the walls. That's good Two trees what made them, not pines from Seven; he recognizes the grain. It doesn't look like Brutus imagines the house of an eighteen-year-old boy would look like.
"Is this what people my age like?" he asks Odin. He can't say 'kids' or even 'teenagers', those words sound so silly, so small, like ants. He's not sure he's ever been one of those. He can't stop opening things, cupboards and drawers and the refrigerator. Can't stop touching.
"This wasn't made for people your age," Odin says. "It's made for you. If you want anything else, ask me and I'll get it for you."
Brutus swallows and closes his eyes. The house is still there when he opens them.
If he cracks the windows at night, the gentle swish of leaves from the yard outside follows him into his dreams and chases the nightmares away.
Brutus spends the first while mostly asleep. He meant to protest, but Odin gives him medication and water and Brutus knows better than to question, an so he drinks it down without complaining. Except that one week turns into two, and all he's done is lie on the couch or the bed, eating when Odin prompts him and dragging himself to the shower every few days. He takes the mood stabilizers and something else for his nightmares; the meds leave him muzzy-headed, never quite on his game.
"When can I taper off?" Brutus asks Odin. He's made it down to the gym a few times; Odin won't let him lift weights, not when he might drop them on himself, but he uses the pull-up bar and does pushups as much as he can. He's dropped at least twenty pounds since the Arena, and he feels the loss as though they did take his hand.
"That's for me to decide, not you," Odin says. He has a pile of work on his lap, pen scraping across the paper. "Trust me, I'll let you know when you're ready."
Brutus scowls. He barely manages to pull it back when Odin glances up. His mentor's raised eyebrow tells Brutus he isn't fooling anyone. "Yes sir," he says, but for the first time in his entire life, the words ring hollow, like striking a chisel into a flaw in a slab of marble.
That night, Odin hands Brutus his medication. He holds the pills in his palm - one white and round, one oblong and twin-coloured - and stares at them as Odin putters around the kitchen, fixing dinner. Brutus can't even help with the cooking yet because Odin doesn't trust him around knives, and the whole thing is ridiculous.
All his life, Brutus never questioned authority, never disobeyed an order. Now, something burrows inside him and gets its claws in his insides, and there's a monster living in his brain that takes Brutus' arm, holds it over the sink, and tips his hand so the pills fall down into the drain. Odin doesn't look up from the counter; he didn't notice. Brutus' heart skitters in his chest, then settles.
That's all he has to do. It's the medicine that's making him like this. The medicine stuffs his head with wool, drags his limbs down and makes him sleep all day. Skip the medication, and Brutus will be back to normal and Odin will be proud of him for recovering so well. Brutus holds back a sigh of relief, glad he figured it out.
Brutus wakes up in the Arena, with its bleached sand and bleached rocks and bleached bones. There's blood in the sand and on his hands and the sun beats down on his shoulders, and he doesn't scream because Careers don't scream -
"Easy," Odin says, close, and mentors don't talk to tributes in the Arena and Brutus is not in the Arena. He jolts awake to the cool darkness of his bedroom. Odin sits by his bed with a pitcher of water. "You're safe. You never have to go back there again."
That's a promise, a promise signed in blood by Brutus and every other tribute who ever went into the Arena, and Brutus sags. He takes the water from Odin and drinks it down. Water is the best drink in the entire world, cold and clear and perfect, and it drives the images out of his head.
"That seemed like a bad one," Odin says, neutral. "We might have to check your dosage. I'm not sure your medication is working."
Brutus' pills clattered down the drain, the sound covered by the thud of Odin's knife against the cutting board as he chopped the vegetables. Brutus can do this. He is more than brain chemistry and stress responses. He is a Victor. He is Two. He exhales. "I'm all right."
"I'm here," Odin says, giving him a keen-eyed look, and this is the problem, this is why Brutus needs to shape up. It's been weeks and he still needs his mentor beside his bed. He should be better than this. "Get up, we'll have a round of sparring before you go back to sleep."
Brutus does; he play-fights with Odin at one-tenth his Arena strength but it's still the best he can do, and Odin pins him like a kitten and reminds him he's not going anywhere. Sparring is meant to leave Brutus feeling safe and cared for and protected, but this time it twists in his chest, like choking on the last sip of a drink or missing the bottom step in a staircase. He's outgrowing mentor sparring; it's a good sign. Maybe he's not so far behind after all.
No more nightmares, but Brutus wakes anxious and scrabbling at the blankets anyway. He gets a grip on himself before the panic sets in, stares at the square of pink-orange sunlight on his floor, broken by the soft shadows of the trees outside the window. He's safe. He's home. He's recovering.
The next night, Brutus turns the pills over and over in his hands as his brain wars against itself. He stands at the sink with his back to the kitchen, the lines of his shoulders tight. The kitchen window faces the mountains that curve behind the back of the Village; if he went outside and sat on the roof, the sunset glinted red and gold between the trees. Here it's too low for the last of the sun to make it through; the warm automatic lights have clicked on instead, bathing the kitchen in a soft orange glow.
Behind him, Odin picks through the refrigerator. Most of the food in it comes from the other victors - for the first month, someone brings meals so the new victor never has to cook - but Odin enjoys cooking. He says it's a good bonding activity for men, creating something out of raw ingredients, and calming for victors.
Brutus runs the tap, holding a glass of water under until it overflows. At the same time he tilts his palm; the pills stick to the sweat on his hand, then slowly, slowly release their grip and slide down. They swirl into the drain with the water. Brutus lets out a breath. It's for his own good.
"Brutus," Odin says.
Brutus actually jumps. Over a decade of training, standing blindfolded in a room with nothing but his fists as a trainer armed with knives runs at him, and he jumps at the sound of an unexpected voice. He flails at the tap, shutting off the flow of water.
"I let it go once because we're all allowed to make mistakes," Odin says, and oh. A chill spreads through Brutus from his spine to his fingers and toes. "But twice, my boy, that's the beginning of a pattern. And I'm not about to let that stand."
Brutus should turn around. His feet refuse to move. He grips the edge of the sink. "I shouldn't need them. I'm weak."
Odin says nothing. Brutus winces. "My boy," he says finally. "I took my medication for six months, and no one told me I was weak. If you want to recover, if you want to be strong, you can't cheat. Strength doesn't come from cutting corners."
"I want to go back to training," Brutus says, and this is insane. This is more backtalk than he's done in his entire life, but the countdown is up and the tributes are running; no sense in pulling back now. He turns, swallowing hard when faced with Odin's blank expression. "I want to go outside. I want to do something, not just sit here. Is that what I won the Games for, to sit on the couch and sleep all day? I'm better than that."
"Nobody's better than that in their first stretch of recovery," Odin says. "Not even you. You'll notice we didn't hand you a spear the first day you showed up at the Centre. Recovery is like everything else; you must build, and you cannot skip steps."
Brutus clenches his jaw. He's not seven years old now; he's eighteen and a Victor and not a child. He can't make his mentor proud by curling up with a blanket and watching terrible television all day.
Odin narrows his eyes. "All right, let's solve it this way. You and I are going to spar. If you win, you may stop taking your medication and do whatever you wish. If I win, you will take your medication until the doctor clears you to come off it, and you will trust my judgement."
"That's not fair," Brutus says without thinking. The fire's strong in his chest now, the stupid, suicidal kind of fire that sends a meat tribute running for the Cornucopia and straight into a Career's spear. "You've got years on me and I'm fresh out. You're setting me up to lose."
"And that is a problem for you, is it?" Odin challenges.
"I know my place." Brutus crosses his arms. "I'm not trying to be insubordinate, sir. But I know what I need, and it's not being treated like I haven't done my kill test yet."
Odin raises an eyebrow. "All right then. Now you and I are going to spar because I say so."
"Fine," Brutus says tightly, and he almost wants to refuse - the fire of rebellion burns underneath his skin - but now that he thinks about it, he wants to fight more.
Not mentor sparring, which ends in Odin winning and telling Brutus he'll protect him forever, because Brutus doesn't want that anymore. He wants to fight, real and dark and bloody, skin tearing under fingernails and bruising beneath the weight of hands. They made Brutus a killer and a killer he is, and how is he supposed to live the rest of his life pretending that never happened? He never wants to take a life but he can't just forget it, either, and fighting is as part of him as his very bones.
Odin takes him outside, and the air is no longer as sultry as it was in the thick of summer but there's no snap of autumn, not yet. It's awkward and in between, just like Brutus, like everything, and he peels off a spiderweb that gets caught on his shoulder as he walks through it and drops into a ready stance in the grass.
Odin bends his knees and eyes Brutus but he doesn't charge, and normally Brutus would wait for the signal to begin the match but today he's too mixed up and angry and the world is wrong and tilted. Normally he would play by the rules but today Brutus leaps forward, his weight low, and drives a blow at Odin's abdomen where he still has a scar from the sword that sliced open his guts near the end of his Games.
It's a weak point that is too much of a cheap shot for Brutus to deal with usually, but today he wants to go for it, wants to find all of Odin's weaknesses and peel them back, since he's so keen to shove Brutus' own in his face.
It doesn't work. Of course it doesn't work. Odin anticipates Brutus' move and throws his weight back, and Brutus overbalances and nearly falls on his face when Odin counters with an elbow strike between his shoulders. Throughout the whole fight Brutus is off, a half step behind where he should be, and Odin doesn't hold back. Brutus is winded and sore far sooner than his pride would have allowed him to anticipate, but Odin doesn't slow down.
At last Odin gets him on his knees, one arm twisted up behind his back. "I could break it," he tells Brutus. "One more twist, that's all it would take, and I will, if that's what you need. Do you understand me? You will eat, you will sleep, and you will take your medication as directed, because I am your mentor and I know best. That does not mean I will pat you on the head and tell you what it is you want to hear. That does not mean I will let you buy into this delusion that you are special, because while you are the most important person in the world to me at this moment, that does not give you the right to live outside the rules. It does not exclude you from human frailty."
Brutus grunts, pain shooting up his arm, and Odin presses down further. "Do - you - understand," Odin says, punctuating each word with pauses, and Brutus wants to say yes, wants to believe, but it's all twisted and jumbled inside him and he doesn't know what he wants anymore.
He's always been the best, and there's a crown sitting on his mantel and the blood of nine tributes on his hands to prove it. Now that that's behind him, Brutus has no idea what to do.
Brutus roars in impotent, frustrated rage, and that's when Odin does it. He jerks Brutus' arm back one last time - the bones give way with an audible pop - and now Brutus is screaming because there's fire pouring from his shoulder to his fingers.
Odin lowers Brutus to his knees, and Brutus has felt worse pain in his life but that doesn't help him now. He tries to remind his nerves that they survived a knife in the ribs and fingers smashed to powder but they don't care, just keep sending fire fire panic help to his brain.
"I will hurt you if that is what you need," Odin tells him in his ear, his voice low and serious and intense. "But I will always, always put you back together."
Another snap - Brutus nearly bites off his tongue - and then the wash of pain recedes to a dull throb. He blinks up at Odin in confusion, eyes swimming, and he moves his arm, gingerly. No awkward angles; the skin remains unpurpled, and no bones stick through the skin. Finally Brutus gets it. "Dislocation," he says, gasping out through the heaving breaths. "You didn't break it at all."
"No," Odin agrees, and he lets a hand fall to the back of Brutus' neck, fingers digging in. Brutus lets out a shuddered gasp. "Brutus. You think that your prize for victory is living alone and untouchable. This is not true. Others will always be able to hurt you, not just me, and not just as a test. Your winning did not exempt you, and your obedience will not always save you. But just as there are threats, so there are allies. You will never be alone, never be isolated, from either help or danger."
"I don't want to be weak," Brutus says, his eyes closed, and he rubs at his shoulder, the muscles twingeing beneath his probing touch. "I - I can't."
"You are," Odin says simply. "You will always be weak, as I just demonstrated, because you are human. But I pulled a boy from that Arena, not a robot creation of the Gamemakers, and it is that boy who has my trust and protection." He keeps his hold on Brutus' neck, his hand firm and steadying. "One day you will be a mentor and you will see it. You will be the rock in someone else's storm, but you cannot do that if you refuse a firm foundation now. All right?"
"Yes, sir," Brutus says finally, and he still feels a shiver of dissatisfaction but it's fading, like the last line of fire on the horizon after the sun has set before it's swallowed up in the calming blue of night. "I'm sorry."
"I'm proud of you," Odin says in response, and Brutus snaps his head around to stare at him. "Yes, that's right. You have made me prouder than any parent. You are one of the finest Victors this district has ever seen, but more than that, you show potential for greatness after, too. But in order for that to happen, you must trust me. I put my faith in you when I chose you as my tribute. Can you do me this small favour now? Trust that I do what I do, not because I wish to humiliate you, not because I have no faith in your strength, but because I wish to see you rise to everything you could ever hope to be."
Brutus lets out a breath, steady this time. "Yeah," he says, and this time it isn't sour.
"Good," Odin says, and he claps Brutus on the opposite shoulder. "Now. Take your medication and I'll see to that shoulder, and tomorrow, after you've had a good night's rest, I'll take you up the mountain. I think half your problem is that no Two does well away from rocks for long. We need to get you grounded again."
Brutus thinks of the cliffs beyond the Village, the feel of good, solid rock beneath his hands, rocks he can lean his whole weight on and not care any more than he would the presence of a fly on his back. Real rocks, rocks forged by nature over thousands of years, not created in laboratories for the sake of the Games.
He imagines climbing, merging his own physical strength with the unwavering power of the mountains, and for a moment he almost feels it. The sun beating down on his back, the wind whipping at his clothes, his fingers burning from the constant grip and his calf muscles cramping in protest. Reaching a ledge and looking down at his Village, his city, his district, at everything he fought and bled and killed and nearly died for.
"Yeah," Brutus says again, and there are tears in his eyes that he doesn't remember giving permission to form. "Yes please."
Odin smiles, and his eyes are shining, too, so maybe he's right, maybe weakness doesn't always mean death and shame. "That's my boy," he says. He stands and reaches down to give Brutus a hand up.
In training, Brutus always smacked those away. Now he hesitates, then grabs Odin's hand and lets his mentor pull him to his feet. "I'll finish the cooking," he says. "It'll probably be shit, but I want to."
Odin grins at him, and the last of Brutus' irritation slides away. "I will take the risk."