The first time Brutus walks into Mentor Central - that's what the Career mentors call it, though Brutus has learned that the outliers tend to use 'Death Command' and he's not okay with that - he nearly has a heart attack. The doors slide open soundlessly, working in the background to such perfection that he almost doesn't notice, just like everything about the Capitol, like rules and structure and authority, and Brutus steps through into the room full of computers and monitors and promise.
This is the place where it happens. This is where everything becomes magic. Brutus was born and raised for the Games, and he'd never thought any further than that, but this is what he was meant for. The Games are what he was always meant to do, but mentor is what he was destined to be.
Brutus could never work at the Centre; his years there are too fresh in his mind, the trainers who said again again again until his body collapsed beneath him, who let him wrench his shoulder in training because chances are he wouldn't be alive long enough for it to affect him in the long run, who knew he loved his mother and made sure he had to kill one in his second test. Don't get him wrong, trainers are important, and without them Two wouldn't exist the way it does. Without the trainers they'd be sending fresh, terrified kids in to freeze and die like the other districts. Brutus would never even think of disrespecting a trainer, but he still couldn't do it himself.
Trainers get a pool of hundreds and work to break them until the perfect two remain, and those who don't make it are sent to rehabilitation and counselling because Two doesn't throw anyone away, but it doesn't change the part where the job exists to tear those kids to pieces. A fair number of victors go back to the Centre but not Brutus.
Trainers look for potential in kids with broken noses and blood on their knuckles; they push the children until their muscles turn to jelly and their lungs to sand, looking for the ones who drag themselves up with fire in their eyes and push past their limits to the impossible. They learn to catch the glint of a future victor in the clench of a jaw or the swing of a sword. They're masters, curators of talent and skill and determination, and it's because of them that Brutus made it through the Games.
But it's because of his mentor that Brutus is here today, alive and whole and sane, because Odin reached into his mind and untangled the mess the Games left him in, because he reached past the monster and found the beginnings of a man.
Brutus spent his whole life learning to destroy, thinking that his ultimate act would be one of murder for the sake of glory. Now that he has another sixty years ahead of him, Capitol-willing, Brutus wants to use it to build instead.
Victors deserve respect because they did their ultimate duty, they followed the Capitol's orders to their last breath and then they just kept breathing, but mentors are something else. Mentors take the chosen ones and they save them, they leap into their own battlefield with the sponsors and come out triumphant, bearing matches and food instead of a victory crown, and they help their tributes when the tributes can no longer help themselves. After victory, the mentors are there to stitch them back together and remind them how to be human.
Victors are legend, but mentors are heroes. Brutus still can't believe he's allowed to live in the Victors' Village sometimes - he walks through the streets, weaves between the trees and the houses and tries to process that he's here, that he belongs with these people whose tapes he grew up watching until he had them memorized - but Mentor Central is even more incredible.
Brutus lets out a breath, and he's got his war face on because it's better than his little-boy face, the one where he's twenty-one years old but looks half that because he just wants to run around and touch everything and remind himself it's real, that he's here and deserves to be here and nobody's going to take that away.
There are other mentors in the room, seated at their stations and familiarizing themselves with the equipment, or wandering around and slapping each other on the backs, and Brutus fights back the wave of insecurity, that he has no right to stand in this room with these giants, because it's not true. He won the Games, he's trained to be a mentor, and that's all that matters. They wouldn't have let him take the helm this year if they didn't think he was ready.
"Well, look who's here," says Chaff, and Brutus watched his Games from inside the Centre with the other trainees, saw him cut down the Careers with as much determination and satisfaction as any kid from Two trained to see themselves as champion of justice, and it's surreal to see him here, now, lounging in his chair with a drink in his hand. "Just can't keep you Twos away from the bloodbath, huh."
Brutus narrows his eyes out of reflex - it's been three years but the fight sings in him still, it sits under his skin and flows through his lungs and sometimes he still has to call Odin at three in the morning to spar until his bones crack because he's afraid of what he'll do if he doesn't - but Odin is behind him now, solid and sure, and Brutus exhales and lets it go. The buzzing stops. Brutus gives Chaff a nod instead, and that's not a fun reaction and so the other man goes back to his console.
Brutus steers clear of Haymitch Abernathy because he doesn't know what to say. If Brutus had been a year younger it would've been him in the Quarter Quell, and if things had gone the same way around he probably would've died in that volcano and it would still be Haymitch sitting here in that mentor's chair. Brutus tries not to play comparison games - there's no point, too many factors to play, and that's why the victors try to shut down the 'what do you think would happen if you'd been in the 47th' kind of questions from interviewers - but there's no question that Abernathy played a good game and got a shit deal out of it, if the rumours are true. Brutus doesn't know if they are; he asked and Odin shut him down and that's all there is to it.
It's surreal and Brutus feels like a kid, like the time Ronan came to the Centre to give the trainees a talk and Brutus was maybe ten years old and stared up at the man who had started it all, the first Career victor, the one who gave the Capitol the assurance that this system would work and every thought disappeared in his head except for wow. And now he's played chess with Ronan on his porch and lost horribly while Ronan smoked his cigars and cackled that young kids don't know everything now do they.
He's a little dizzy as Odin takes him through the room and makes the introductions - he's met them before, of course, on his Tour, but it's one thing to meet them in their home territory with their victor hats on, something else to see them here, in their element, in the place where they make their miracles - but he's handling it. Brutus deserves to be here and they all have to know that, and he's okay until Odin steers him around to a chair in the corner and shows him to Mags.
Brutus doesn't remember his Victory Tour stop in Four much, but even then he'd been in awe of Mags, single-handedly responsible for making Four into a Career district. Now, here in Mentor Central, Brutus looks at this woman, who mentored for all of Four with precision before pulling out one of her own - who's brought Four as many victors as One with half their resources - and it doesn't matter how many times Odin says he's worthy, Brutus knows he isn't.
This woman. Four has made it into the top six every year since she started mentoring - Brutus has the stats memorized - and she might not have the win record but that's just because she's done more Games on her own than any Two ever has, or will. Mags has authority and calm and a way of looking at the camera that reminds it just how fortunate it is to be pointed at her, and she could be Two except that the sea is wound through her the way the rocks and mountains are with Brutus. Mags understands the rules and how to work them, bend them to her will without ever breaking, how to get what she wants without it ever turning back around on her tributes.
Of all the mentors Brutus studied during his last year of training, Mags is his favourite. She knows when to push and when to coax, and her style doesn't mesh with the one they've crafted for Brutus - all blunt force for him, no backing down - but that's just because he couldn't pull off what she does, covering steel with soft fabric so that people don't realize they've been cut until after she's already swung the blow.
All of Four's Victors are hers so far, and however well she's taught Four's next generation of mentors, somehow they haven't managed to catch her spark, her magic . As far as Brutus knows, no one in Panem has ever matched Mags' record, and chances are, no one ever will.
Odin claps Brutus on the shoulder, and he's not going to baby him because the others are watching and Brutus would rather crawl into the food processor and get rematerialized as lamb steak, but Brutus appreciates the accepted level of comfort and reassurance. "Mags, you know Brutus," Odin says, and back in the Village he uses the term 'my boy' but not here, not in the world of professionals, and Brutus is grateful for it.
"Good to see you again," Mags says, and she grips Brutus' hand in hers, firm despite her creeping past middle age - she's only in her fifties, which is unheard of in a place like Twelve but in Four is still respectable and hale. The years of fishing and training are clear in the strength of her fingers, and she looks up at Brutus from her significant height disadvantage with proud eyes. "You'll do well here. You look like you belong."
"Thank you," Brutus says, and he's glad when Odin moves him on to the Two console because he's supposed to be good at speeches but everything just flew right out of his head.
No one expects Brutus' tribute to win. It's his first year in and no one's pulled that off, Career or no, but after all the sleepless nights, the caffeine and stimulants until his eyes itched and burned in his head, sponsor deal after sponsor deal until even Brutus' short naps were crammed full with dreams of negotiations and promises, Brutus' girl stands in the field of victory, blinking up in confusion and disbelief as the voice announces her win.
It's not the best victory, by the numbers. It was Brutus' girl and a runaway favourite from Five, a crippled boy with a chip on his shoulder and surprising talent for murder, and everyone thought this would be the year Five finally got their second. But then the Arena took Averett and that left Emory by default, and a by default winner is a disappointment any year but even worse when it's a Two.
Brutus doesn't care. He's glued to the screen, breath coming sharp in his chest, and his girl is alive and she's coming home and she could've won by hiding in a cave the entire time and Brutus wouldn't care. She's alive.
Mentor Central goes silent, and finally, when the hovercraft picks her up and it's finally real, it's happening with no take-backs, the spell holding Brutus breaks, and he feels the silence on him like icy rivulets of rain running down the back of his shirt.
He straightens his shoulders, but they didn't prepare him for this. He's already taken grief counselling - all the mentors do before their first run - but they didn't tell him what to do in the case of a miracle and the entire room looks at him in jealousy and hatred.
Haymitch Abernathy's glare makes Brutus wish he weren't a Two just so he could flinch, but he is and he can't and so he holds it for a second before moving on. Haymitch's girl - a little one, just twelve years old - made it past the bloodbath, but went crazy from the isolation and got herself killed, no other tribute to blame for it. That's two years in a row Haymitch has lost his tributes, and unless something huge happens in Twelve, it's the start of a long, dark road for him.
Phillips, from Six, won the year before Brutus, and as the only victor from his district without morphling for blood, he's been running the show on his own. He's lost his kids each time, too, but he doesn't look at Brutus, just stares at his console with a taut jaw.
And so it goes. Brutus can't imagine there's ever a celebration in this room when a tribute wins but it shouldn't feel like this, should it, the resentment and fury building up until the room fairly chokes with it. Mentors can't hold grudges - they taught him this back in Two - because there's no point, everyone knows there's only one Victor and everyone is here for the same reason. It's hypocritical and small to blame the people who are there doing the same thing you are. It dishonours the tributes who fell, the fellow mentors, and the Capitol all at once.
But blame they do, and Brutus tries to shove it back because it doesn't matter, Emory's alive and he'll be allowed to see her once she's stable, but it creeps under his elation and turns it bitter. He swallows, and he wants to smile because she's alive she's alive she's alive but he can't.
Until he looks up and sees Mags walking across the room, spine straight and head up, and her boy nearly got Emory when the alliance broke but he didn't, and Brutus sucks in a breath because where Mags leads, the others will follow. The room is already divided against him, and if Mags joins them, that means Brutus will be cut off from the other mentors forever. Brutus is a loner but he loves community, and he doesn't want that.
Mags stops in front of him, and if Brutus weren't a Two and didn't have the strength of the mountains and the quarries in his bones he might have flinched. "You have a gift," Mags says, and Brutus swallows hard. "The Capitol will be watching you now. Some of us have the option of staying out of the spotlight, but not you. Not anymore. Learn to take that for the blessing and the curse that it is. Make it work for you."
She looks at him, her brown eyes clear, and she holds him in his chair as sure as if she'd harpooned him. Brutus swallows hard because of course she'd know - Mags named herself as one to watch early by making Four's Career program out of nothing - and she's marking him as one of them. Relief hits him hard, but Brutus only nods. "Yes ma'am."
Chaff blows out a breath through pursed lips. "Right, like the Golden Boy here needs any more excuse to think he's better than us."
Mags turns, slowly, and Chaff sinks down in his chair as if under fire. "He won't win every year," Mags says, and Brutus winces but he knows it's true. "Their deaths will keep him humble." Chaff grumbles, but no one says anything further, and Brutus can barely breathe. Mags turns back to him and gives him a small smile. "Go to her. It's always hard when the Victor isn't a favourite. Make sure you tell her she is loved. She'll need to hear it."
"Yes ma'am," Brutus says again. He drops his headset on the console and tears off for the hospital.
Three years later, Brutus' boy Malachi goes down in a crumpled heap and spray of blood when the tribute from Five smashes his skull in with a hammer. Brutus doesn't react because he can't react, because he doesn't know what to do, because his entire brain has frozen into a never-ending stream of no no no no nonononono and he can't stop staring at his screen, the life signs flickering red and blinking off. He can't react because the entire room has gone silent, looking at him, except of course for Caleb, whose boy is only one more kill away from victory, and Brutus knows they want to see him crack.
Emory could have started training this year but Brutus said no, said she wasn't ready. She's itching to do it, to bring home a tribute and erase the stigma against her that all the publicity on her Tour couldn't quite shake, but with Lyme winning last year that meant Two would have to pull off a miracle to bring home another, and everyone knows Brutus is that miracle-maker. He's not giving his girl her first on a year both Twos are guaranteed to die.
Still, he'd thought - it doesn't matter. The hovercraft lowers the claw and picks up Malachi's body, blood still seeping from the ruin of his skull, and he was a good kid, strong and arrogant and Two down to his bones. Son of Peacekeepers and dedicated to the Centre as soon as his seventh birthday hit, if anyone was the perfect tribute to bring an unprecedented victory to Two, why not Malachi?
They're watching him, and Brutus doesn't meet their gazes and he doesn't move and doesn't react because this isn't about him, it's about Caleb and Blight and how one of them will bring home his first Victor ever. Brutus doesn't even bother thinking about which one he wants to win; there's no point because it's not Malachi, so what does it matter? But the others still eye him, and he catches sympathy in the eyes of some and the twist of malice on the lips of others, and Brutus sits still, so still. He should get up and leave except everything is over and he can't make his body behave.
Footfalls behind him, light but purposeful, and a hand falls on his shoulder, solid and strong. Brutus doesn't move, but he flicks his gaze to the now-dead monitor and sees Mags' reflection in the screen, her head barely above his despite her standing next to him as he sits in his chair. He closes his eyes.
"Didn't see you at my chair when I lost Brooke," Chaff snorts. "Why are you babying the Two?"
"No one is babying anyone," Mags says, her voice firm, and Chaff blows out a hard breath through his nose. "But this is his first. It's a moment that deserves respect. There is no one in this room who has not shared this moment." Her gaze hardens before she turns and Brutus loses sight of her reflection, but the temperature of the room drops as everyone younger than fifty looks away. "And the only ones in this room who did not receive my respect and condolence when this moment happened to them are because they're older than I am."
"It's just a Two," mutters someone, and Brutus doesn't bother trying to pick out which of the outlying mentors said it. It doesn't matter when they're all thinking it, and he's almost glad for the numbing of grief because it stops him from tearing himself out of his chair and pummelling the speaker into a pulp.
"Say that again," Mags says, her voice like ice, and it's not directed at Brutus but even he feels it. Her hand still has not left his shoulder. "Each child in this Arena is a sacrifice. If you can't put aside your differences and respect each other, then have respect for the little ones who perish. After death there is no One, or Two, or Twelve. Corpses do not have district identification. You should all be ashamed."
Finally Brutus can't stand it anymore, and he pushes himself up onto his feet. Mags lets her hand drop to his arm, and he looks at her for a long, agonized second, her eyes pinning him in place. How many tributes has she shepherded to their deaths, and how long did it take her to lose count? "Thank you," Brutus mumbles, the words clumsy and stupid in his mouth like marbles, and he doesn't flee the room because they're watching but it's close.
He never tells Mags anything more than that hurried 'thank you'; it feels like he should, but Brutus can never find the words, and finally enough time passes that it would be strange to say anything now, and so he doesn't.
Brutus hears the news at the weekly assembly, sitting between Lyme and Emory on the benches in the community centre, a few months shy of twenty years after Brutus walked into Mentor Central for the first time. It comes at the end of the meeting, read out by Ronan, almost as an afterthought except it isn't. "Mags had a stroke," Ronan says, and the entire room sucks in a breath. "Reports say she's stable, but no one knows if she'll ever be a mentor again."
Ronan's expression is neutral, his voice steady, but his entire body is ratcheted tight, and he holds his cane until his knuckles whiten. They won a handful of years apart, and mentored together for a decade before Ronan pulled in enough Victors to start Two's mentor rotation program.
It's a crushing blow for Four, with the 72nd Games so soon. Brutus will have a girl in - Petra, small for a Two but with a fire and desperation in her eyes that he couldn't turn down - and he can't remember the last year Mags sat one out. The mentor part of his brain notes that it'll mean increased odds for his girl to have Mags down for the count, and Brutus hates himself even as he thinks it but he can't help it. They're programmed that way.
Even Enobaria winces; she has no real respect for Mags, or anyone other than her own mentor, but old age and natural afflictions terrify her the way most people are afraid of drowning or closed spaces. Now she shudders and lets out a quiet 'fuck' as Nero rests a hand on the back of her neck.
"Visitors?" Brutus asks immediately.
Ronan nods. "They've asked that visits be restricted to a single delegation of one or two representatives per district, for those who can get clearance for the journey. I've already checked, and District Two is cleared to send a pair of Victors. Volunteers?"
"You should go," Nero says to Ronan, and the others quickly agree.
Ronan nods in acknowledgement and thanks. "And the other?"
"Brutus," says Lyme after a pause, and Brutus turns to look at her in surprise. Lyme has worked alongside and against Mags as much as he has, and Lyme's always been the soft touch of the two of them. Brutus wouldn't send himself on a condolence call.
"Why not you?" Brutus asks, before anyone can second Lyme's suggestion. "You're the one most people want at the hospital bed, not me. I'm not going to be telling her to get up and run laps."
Lyme snorts, but it's habit rather than real annoyance, the sound unaccompanied by her usual eye-roll. "I'm good at sympathy," she says. "Mags won't want that. She'll want strength. I vote you."
The others do, too, and Brutus accepts their judgement without further argument, though the responsibility weighs heavy on him. He's never been good with invalids; the loss of strength from something that can't be avoided or controlled is one of the most terrifying facts of life. Brutus fights time with his own body, continuing workouts more gruelling at forty than half the trainees in their teens, in the hopes of staving it off. He has no idea what to say to someone robbed of the use of their mind and body.
"She doesn't need you to fix it," Lyme says at his shoulder as they break up after the meeting. "It's just being there that's important."
Brutus runs a hand over his face. "I still think -"
"Brutus," Lyme says, her voice grave, and she almost never uses his name, so he glances at her. Her expression is shuttered, but she runs a hand through her hair, a gesture that usually means she's chasing away unwelcome thoughts. "Trust me."
As much as he hates to admit it, Brutus knows when to accept defeat.
He sits across from Ronan on the train, watching the grey buildings of Three flash past outside the window. "Why isn't she in the Capitol?" Brutus asks, grudging. Two has the best medical facilities in Panem, but the Capitol itself is a close second, and most severe cases get sent there.
"She asked to be home," Ronan says. He's never been the most talkative of Victors and neither has Brutus, and they've made most of the trip in silence. "Not much they can do for her, anyway, not with a stroke. Best thing they can do is put her somewhere she feels safe and loved and let those who care for her stay close."
Four is different from Two. It's Career but it isn't, and they train their children but they don't isolate them, and that means their Victors have a better chance of parents not shutting their kids out when they come back. Most of them, if they don't have kids of their own, have brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews, and Mags herself has always been surrounded by loved ones. Home is the best place for her; she's not like Woof, from Eight, all alone in the Village by himself with his own mother's blood on his hands.
If Brutus had a stroke - for a second he freezes at the mere thought of it, because Enobaria isn't the only one terrified at the thought of her body dying around her - then who would sit with him? He has his mentor and his victors, he has Lyme, but none of them are anyone Brutus would want seeing him helpless. He has no family, no loving parents or siblings left to stand by him who would not be embarrassed or uncomfortable at a victor laid so low.
But, Brutus hasn't made it through twenty years of mentoring with his sanity intact by allowing every lone thought to run rampant, and he shoves it all back with years of practice. It's his fault for being complacent in the first place, for forgetting that every day since he entered the Arena is a gift from the Capitol that could be returned at any time, and he would be happy to pay it all back. Worrying about things like aging is a luxury compared to when he knew he would die at eighteen.
Still. Ronan is the same age as Mags, has known her since the day he stepped off the stage from his interview with Romilda Mapplethorpe and found her waiting for him, and Brutus can't imagine what she's feeling. To know that one day, it will be himself and Lyme who are the seniors of the Victors' Village, retired from responsibility with some twenty youngsters beneath them. It's dizzying and Brutus closes his eyes, blaming the twist in his stomach on the whiplash of scenery outside the window.
They're greeted by Tyde, one of Four's most public Victors, when their train whirrs to a stop. The Village in Four sits down at the beach, the houses on high stilts to protect from the high waves and hurricanes that strike every spring. Brutus is used to the scents and sounds of Two - the chirping of woodland birds, the smell of the pines - and the sharp saltwater tang of Four's coastal air startles him.
Still, Four smells safe and solid, and even without a connection to it, Brutus knows Mags was right to come here. The fisheries are located out past the Village, so there's no creak of equipment or angry cries of seagulls as thy dip down to steal a catch; no smell of oil and tar from the boats. Just the water and the breeze, and Brutus might miss the comforting presence of the mountains but the sea has its own strength.
"She doesn't want sympathy," Tyde says, his voice rumbling in his chest as he leads them down the narrow path to the beach entrance. "She's had enough of that, Capitol envoys clucking about the poor brave soul, all that. Don't. She needs strength."
It's exactly what Lyme said back in Two, and Brutus can feel her satisfied nod in the back of his mind. He resolves not to tell her, because she'll never let it go.
"Don't worry," Ronan says smoothly. His cane sticks in the loose sand, but he is not a man to stumble, and he picks his steps with care. Tyde leads them up, away from the waterline where the sand is firmer, and Ronan nods his thanks.
Tyde takes them up to what must be Mags' house, and Brutus is struck by how lively it is, even in the aftermath of the incident. Children play about the pilings, striking at each other with driftwood swords or sending dolls on grand adventures up the low scaffolding; older ones sit together, twisting nets out of rope or practicing on long filaments of seaweed. There's an impromptu cookout on the beach, and one man perches on the roof of Mags' home, patching up a loose shingle.
They give Brutus and Ronan the polite but tired greetings of those used to a stream of well-wishers, and Brutus nods but doesn't take up their time. He's here because two of their own died at his hand years ago, and they might not be old enough to remember, most of them, but Brutus does. The last thing they need is for a Two to try to make himself friendly in a place where he clearly doesn't belong.
"Shoes," says Tyde, gesturing to a mat outside the door. "Sorry, just, Mags hates it when people dirty up her floors. Feet are one thing, but leave the footwear outside."
"My feet are dirtier than shoes," announces a youngster on the way down, shooting them a gap-toothed grin.
"Yeah, but Mags knows a lost cause when she sees one," Tyde shoots down the steps as the boy scrambles past, and he ruffles the tangled hair, frozen stiff with dried salt. "They love her," he says with a shrug that's somewhere between apologetic and not. "C'mon in."
Twos are many things, but beloved of children is not something any Victor has ever managed to pull off, even the one who would have wanted them if things worked out differently. Brutus tries to imagine a stream of kids playing in the shade of the houses in Two's Village and nearly loses hold of his senses.
She's not in bed, which surprises Brutus for a minute until he remembers who it is they've come to see. Mags reclines in a curved wicker chair almost like a hammock with a solid frame, and her skin is waxen and her eyes shadowed, but she looks up when they enter and gives them a smile. She holds out one hand - trembling, the fingers clawed, and Brutus is ashamed at his initial urge to look away - and Ronan takes it, sitting in the chair one of the boys offers him.
"This is a surprise," Ronan says, and back in the day he won his Games with charm as much as he did with force, but he's been retired so long that Brutus has forgotten what it sounds like when he flips the switch. His voice is warm and almost teasing, an undercurrent of flirtation that nearly knocks Brutus right onto his ass. "I was expecting a sad old invalid, but here you are, looking like you could stand for the Reaping all over again."
Mags snorts, and she pinches his arm. Ronan just grins and lifts her hand to his mouth, pressing a kiss against her knuckles. How different must it have been in their youth, before the first Quarter Quell, when everyone lived in the hopes that soon the Capitol would tire of the Games and find a new way to remind the districts of their mercy? Mags and Ronan had no way of knowing that fifty years later they would be here, more dead children between them than either could have imagined.
Stop, Brutus tells himself harshly, and he purposely bites down on his tongue hard enough that he winces at the sting, welcoming the distracting tang of blood. It's all this mortality stuff getting to him, and that will help precisely no one.
Ronan and Mags talk, in a fashion, for a long time; Ronan talks and Mags responds with nods or small gestures, and Brutus does his best to ignore the frustration in her eyes when she tries to speak but her mouth refuses to cooperate. She still hasn't regained the use of her left side, her facial muscles slack and her arm limp in her lap, but so many others would have given up already. Brutus is panicked simply at the thought of suffering a stroke, but here Mags is, surviving one with more dignity and grace than Brutus can manage in the hypothetical.
At last she waves him over, and Brutus comes to take the nearest chair. The words stick in his throat, and instead of speaking, Brutus takes her proffered hand and squeezes it. There's strength in her fingers yet, and Brutus manages a small smile. "Are they all taking care of you here?" he asks finally. "I'd be happy to start an inter-district incident by cracking skulls if they're not catering to your every whim." He looks around with exaggerated care. "I don't see any kids fanning you with palm leaves."
Mags laughs and pats his hand, and Lyme thought she would want to see Brutus but he doubts this is what she had in mind, him cracking stupid jokes because he can't think of anything else to do. He lets out a breath. "You're a hell of a thing, you know," Brutus says, and Mags has enough control of her face to raise one eyebrow. "Most people catch a cold and they're glad for the excuse to lie down for a few days. You, it takes a medical catastrophe just to get you off your feet for a week. Maybe this is the universe telling you it's time to relax, since you were too stubborn to listen before."
It twists deep inside him to make light of it, but Mags only snorts. She raises her good hand and pokes Brutus hard in the chest, once, twice, then raises her eyebrow again. It takes him a second, but then Brutus chuckles. "Yeah, me too, don't worry. I'll be out there until my brain decides the only way to get me to take a day off is to shut down production for a few days."
"You make me look bad, is what you do," Ronan says, and he mentored every year for over a decade so that the new Victors had the support system they needed before being tossed in on their own, and yet so did Mags, with half the resources and for twice as long. "Look at me, retiring at fifty like a chump. You're going to give us seniors a bad rap all over the district, make us come back to work just to keep up with you."
They stay for a while longer until Mags closes her eyes, and the boy in the corner - nephew, cousin, neighbour, who knows - steps forward. "I think she should sleep," he says, and Mags cracks one eye to glare at him but he just scowls. "You need to sleep," he challenges, and Brutus and Ronan aren't going to push their luck.
"Take it easy," Ronan says. "If I know you, the relaxation will hurt you worse than the stroke, but somebody's gotta drink all those tropical cocktails, hey?"
Mags smiles, and Brutus waves before shutting the door behind them on the way out. The waves lap at the pilings as the tide comes in, and Brutus takes a deep breath of the sea air.
"We'll take care of her," Tyde says. "I know you Twos are all about the mountains and everything, rock of the nation and all that, but there's something to be said for the sea. She's not going anywhere yet."
Brutus glances up at the house. "No," he says, and his insides still squirm but the crawling panic has lessened. Lyme was right; there's no need for sympathy here. "I guess she's not."
At the Reaping for the 75th Hunger Games, Mags steps up for a stricken Annie Cresta. She shakes off the offer of aid and walks up the stairs to the stage herself, back straight, and Brutus knew it was coming but jagged glass sticks in his stomach anyway.
It's bad enough that this is happening at all, but it's even worse because the commentators don't know what to do with it. They titter about how sweet she is and joke about whether Mags has gone senile and thinks it's her first Reaping all over again.
Ronan growls under his breath, fingers twitching hard against his thighs, and Lyme curls her lip in disgust. "That's gross!" Claudius exclaims, and it's such an understatement that nobody bothers to scold him for speaking out of turn.
The cameras focus on Odair, whose expression has gone slack, losing its picture-perfect Career smirk, and Mags grabs his face and stares him down, muttering something that the cameras don't catch. Mags deserves so much more than this, tossed back into the Arena in a body that's been trying to shut down around her for three years, and offered up as chum to commentators who giggle and wonder aloud if she knows she's just halved Four's chances of taking home the crown this year.
She deserves more than their patronizing scorn, their dismissal. A woman like Mags, who's given her entire life to the survival of her district and its children, should get to die at home, surrounded by people who love her. All she had to do was stay silent - even coming back from retirement, Mags' presence in the mentor command centre would draw the sponsors like sharks to blood, which would be enough to justify her not volunteering - and she could have all that, but no. She couldn't let a terrified girl fall to the Reaping, any more than Brutus could have stayed back and let Enobaria go into the Arena with her mentor.
In that moment, Brutus understands Mags better than he ever has. They're all watching the screen, and so before anyone notices, Brutus touches his fist to his chest in the District Two gesture of respect and farewell.
He doesn't talk to her in training. He can't. But when he hears she chose to take a nap for her entire fifteen-minute session with the Gamemakers, Brutus lets out an unbidden bark of laughter and nearly drops a weight on his foot.
Brutus knows Mags' face will be in the sky before he sees it. She wasn't with the others on the beach all day, and Odair would never have left her alone if so. Gloss, Cashmere, Wiress all flash above them before Mags appears, solemn and imbued with more dignity in one portrait than the entire Capitol audience put together, and Brutus wants to look away but he can't.
"If I were old, that's how I'd want to go," Enobaria says out of nowhere, startling him. "I mean, not stuck in a bullshit Arena because of Katniss the Ever-Bitch, but. Fighting. My own terms. Not wasting away in a hospital somewhere. I told Nero if that ever happens to me and he hasn't kicked the bucket himself yet, I want him to pull the plug."
Brutus nods. There would be no room filled with grieving loved ones for him and Enobaria, if they'd lived long enough to see the kind of years that Mags did. And even for Mags, surviving one stroke just meant another would come eventually; the timer started, the hourglass tipped over for the last time.
If nothing else, Mags made her death her own, and she saved Annie Cresta's life in the process. Brutus' own legacy will not be anywhere near as great.
One thing Brutus knows, whatever scheme the alliance is planning, Mags would have been in on it. The least Brutus can do is go down to the beach to see whatever it is they're up to. "Get some rest," he tells Enobaria. "We move by midnight."