Six weeks after Brutus carries Petra from the car to her new home in the Victors' Village, she asks him to kill her.
She doesn't even look at him when she says it. That's the worst part - if there is a worst part, if there can be anything worse than the girl he swore to protect and heal deciding she doesn't want to live, than her wanting him to be the one who does it. She stares up at the ceiling, eyes blank and expression slack, and she doesn't wail or cry or yell or anything, just says it in a voice that's the colour of the sky on a dull winter afternoon. Grey, empty and grey and dead, and when Brutus sucks in a hard breath she releases one of her own and says it again.
"It's not like it would be hard," Petra says. Her tone shrugs when her shoulders don't bother. "One of the babies from the bloodbath could do it now and I couldn't stop them. Just give me an overdose, it won't take long and nobody will blame you. They'll think I took it myself when you were in the bathroom or something. Even you can't be watching me twenty-four hours a day."
Absurdly - uselessly - the thing Brutus wants to do more than anything else is cry. He can't put the pieces of her hip back together. He can't fly back in time to the moments before the girl from District One smashed Petra's pelvis and any hopes of a normal life into oblivion. He can't go back even further and beg the Gamemakers to change the Arena into something less brutal, less curated for maximum bloodshed and minimum compassion than an empty, sand-blasted Arena and a Cornucopia full of maces.
He doesn't cry, of course. Instead he swallows, runs his tongue over his dry lips and forces his voice to stay calm, soothing. "No, sweetheart," Brutus says. "I'm not gonna do that."
Petra doesn't argue, just closes her eyes and turns her face to the wall, and that adds another splinter of glass to the collection in Brutus' chest. If she'd fought him, if she'd argued or screamed then at least that would be something. At least that would be a reaction, at least that would hint that the bright, fiery girl whose photograph socked Brutus in the gut was still in there.
Almost anything would be better than that bleak, terrifying nothingness.
Brutus sits for a long while, his own breathing filling the room in the absence of anything else. Petra's chest rises and falls in silence, and Brutus feels large and stupid and helpless, like he's eighteen again and buzzing from the Arena and accidentally crushed the orange he was trying to peel.
"I'm gonna go get you something to eat," Brutus says finally, heaving himself to his feet. Petra doesn't move.
He doesn't do everything for her, not technically. It's just that for a Two, anything is more than bad enough.
He has to make her drink, because if he doesn't, she won't. That, at least, isn't about courting dehydration and trying to die, if only because as a Career, Petra knows that dehydration is nasty and terrifying and not a peaceful way to do it. Petra doesn't like drinking because the liquids go right through her, and that means Brutus has to help her through to the en-suite bathroom.
The first time it happened, Petra actually fought him, clawed and screamed at him with her face red and soaked with furious, humiliated tears, until Brutus promised to help her to the door and leave her alone once she was inside.
"I don't care if it takes all day," Petra said, eyes blazing. "You do not help me. If I have to go on the floor and mop it up myself I will, but you are not - you can't see me like that. Okay?"
Brutus is her mentor and it's his job to make the rules, but that also means knowing where the lines are. He lets himself imagine having to let Odin help him go to the bathroom like a toddler, and those three horrified seconds are enough that he backs off. It wouldn't change how he looks at her - not after sitting by her bedside for three days while the doctors couldn't answer whether she'd actually pull through - but it's not about him. It's what that would do to her.
"Of course, sweetheart," Brutus said instead, and he held her while she cried hot, bitter tears of relief and shame that soaked into Brutus' shirt, straight through to his heart.
Brutus does have to sit with her while she's in the bath, just because no Two has ever lost a Victor to accidental drowning in the tub, and Brutus isn't going to be the first. Petra tried to argue with him the first time, but Brutus didn't fight her, just shook his head until she gave in. Now she doesn't bother trying to stop him, just goes stone-faced when it's time. For his part, Brutus tries not to show how much her passive acceptance kills him.
Brutus does the best he can to maintain her autonomy - there's a chair in the corner where he sits with his paperwork, and he pulls the curtain closed to give her a bit of space to herself - but it's not how it happens that's the problem. It's that Petra can't even clean herself without her mentor being there to make sure she doesn't die while doing it.
"You really think I care if you see me naked?" Petra asked after the first month of him sitting on the far side of the curtain. Apparently the absurdity of it was enough to lift her voice from its apathetic monotone to a kind of dulled near-amusement. "Half the Capitol has seen it. They train us so we stop caring when we're fifteen. Look all you want."
Brutus doesn't care who walks in on him, either, and she is right - the Centre wrings all body-shame from them when they start the image training - but it's not the same thing. She's more than twenty years his junior and has spent the last three years being pawed at; that phase of her life should be over. "Privacy is one of the perks of winning," Brutus told her, the words dry and useless in his mouth. "Nobody has to look at you if you don't want them to."
She sat in her bathrobe, legs twisted oddly beneath her to accommodate for her injury. The water darkened her red-brown hair to a deep auburn as it lay plastered to her cheek and neck. She frowned, wrapping her arms around herself. "You've seen me worse than naked," she said in a flat voice, and Brutus didn't understand and he couldn't help and he should be better than this. "You see me helpless. Every day."
"Petra-"
"You just don't want to look at it," Petra said, her voice going dark and nasty like a knife turned inward. "That's why, isn't it."
Brutus gave her a hard look, a hundred shades lighter than the warnings he would give before the Arena, but he still can't make himself scold her for real, not now. "Sweetheart, you ever think that you're young enough to be my daughter? There might be other reasons I'm not exactly making a bunch of excuses to see you without your clothes on."
Petra snorted - the closest thing to a laugh he'd heard from her since before the Arena - but she didn't argue, just narrowed her eyes. Brutus pressed his advantage, for the rarity of it if nothing else. "You put something on and I'll look at you all you want, all right? I'm not afraid."
After she pulled on her pyjamas, Brutus sat with her and helped her stretch out her leg like he does every day. He never ever flinches away from the misshapen mess of bone and titanium but he took extra care that day to make sure she knew, let his hands remain steady and solid and unflinching.
He thought, maybe, that would help, but a week after that Petra lapsed into silence, a silence that lasted until she broke it by asking him the one question designed to break his heart.
It's not just that she asks him to kill her. It's that if Brutus were in her place, he might have done the same thing.
Suicide isn't the most common reaction for Two Victors - most of them turn their pain outward, have to be dragged back from sneaking out to start fights in a terrible part of town, or if anything try to harm themselves in non-fatal ways - but there is a protocol. Any mention of suicide triggers round-the-clock watch, but Brutus' stomach churns when he picks up the phone to make the call.
Telling Odin he needs someone to come sit with Petra while he sleeps is admitting to his mentor that he's failed. This isn't about him, it's about his girl and what she needs, but Brutus stares at the phone for five long minutes and that's five minutes he's left Petra alone while she sleeps off the meds. Five minutes too many, that, and so Brutus moves his thumb past the first number on his speed dial and hits the second instead.
"Is she okay?" Lyme asks as soon as she picks up the phone.
They've done this before a hundred times between them, but now Brutus' throat closes and he can't force the words out. "Okay," Lyme says into the silence. "I'm just getting my shoes, I'll be right over."
Brutus uses the three minutes it takes her to get there to lower his head into his hands. He sits and digs his fingers into his temples and allows himself to be crushingly, breathtakingly grateful for Lyme, for a woman with more kills to her name than Brutus, with terrible taste in alcohol and attitudes about gender roles that leave him reeling. Brutus would rather die than sleep with and vice versa, but she understands every one of his silences and is never, ever afraid.
The front door creaks as Lyme slips inside, and she measures her footfalls so she doesn't wake Petra. It's a nice gesture, unnecessary since Brutus has given her enough meds to keep her down for awhile, and she's there by Brutus' side in seconds because all of Petra's house is on the first floor.
She doesn't touch him - they don't touch, not really, and Brutus doesn't know whether he'd lash out and try to break her hand or lean in and fall apart - but she pulls up a chair and sits next to him. No platitudes, no reassurances, just her presence, and Brutus soaks it in and doesn't look at her in case her face mirrors the loathing that's crawling in his gut.
"Did she ask?" Lyme says finally, her voice careful and neutral.
Brutus nods, and she lets the word 'fuck' drag out as long as she exhales. They watch Petra sleep, and after a minute Brutus sucks in a breath. "Did Claudius?"
It's technically a violation - they don't share information about their Victors like that, not unless there's reason - but if there's ever an extenuating circumstance, it's this one. Lyme runs her tongue over the front of her teeth and winces. "He didn't ask, exactly. He just asked me what would I do if he did."
Brutus glances at her, the muscle in her jaw jumping, the hard tendon standing out at the side of her neck. "Yeah?"
"Yeah. I said I'd crawl down after him, drag him out, and shove him back into his own body, then beat him so hard he'd never try it again."
Against his will, Brutus laughs, running a hand over his face. "You would've made an amazing mother."
"Go fuck yourself," Lyme says, but she jostles him with her shoulder and for a second he can breathe again.
He tells her before the feeling passes and he crams it all back inside again, and it should probably make him feel better that Lyme draws a sharp breath like he slapped her. At least it means he's not being melodramatic. Instead, Lyme fights to pull the horror back from her face, the same gnawing, guilt-ridden dread inside him now bringing a few friends along for the ride.
"So I don't know what to do," Brutus says finally, after he loses track of how long the quiet has stretched on with no signs of thinning and giving up. And there, he said it, and it didn't kill him. It's just a sentence anyway, a handful of words; not poison berries, not shards of glass, any baby can make words. Brutus has killed more people than were words in that sentence, how bad can it be - except that once it leaves him someone stabs him right at the base of his spine and twists the dagger.
A mentor should always know what to do. Always. When Emory, his first Victor, told Brutus that the boy from Five deserved to win - that she only made it out by default because the Gamemakers that year decided they didn't want an underdog story so soon after the Quell - Brutus didn't hesitate. He slammed her up against the wall with his arm across her throat and snarled in her face that he'd kill anyone who made her think that. She'd sagged in relief, let her head drop to his shoulder and never said it again.
Not knowing what to do is for outliers, the ones without training or support or who just don't give a damn, and who self-medicate until the pain of the kids in their care is no more annoying than birds squawking outside the window. It isn't Two. It sure as the Reaping isn't Brutus.
Lyme startles him by slapping her hand against her thigh and standing up, digging her phone out of her pocket. "I'm calling Nero, he can watch her. I'll tell him you need a break and I'm getting you out of here, we don't have to tell him why."
Victors in Two try not to lie to each other, but they all respect the value of a little selective truth-telling now and then. Petra twitches in her sleep as the dregs of a nightmare manage to seep through the heavy weight of the drugs he gave her, and Brutus winces. If Lyme weren't here he'd sit on the bed and stroke Petra's hair, but he's already peeled back the skin and let Lyme look at the wound, no need to make her stick her fingers in it.
Lyme heads outside to call Nero and wait until he shows up, but Brutus doesn't move for a few more minutes. With no one there to judge, he perches himself on the edge of Petra's bed and watches her. The mattress dips down under his weight, Petra's unconscious body slipping into the hollow until her arm bumps up against Brutus' hip, and he lifts a hand and brushes her hair out of her eyes.
Emory had come from good, solid quarry stock; tall, blonde, with broad shoulders and a strong jaw and surprisingly wide, pretty eyes. Her angle had been earnest, the working-class girl who made good in the Games, and after she won by default it hadn't been hard to play the humbled and honoured card. A good fit for Brutus, still young and riding on the wave of his own victory and not quite believing he was alive to see it.
Twenty years of mentoring made Brutus a lot older, a little harder, and hopefully a good deal wiser. Petra was his firecracker, a pretty little thing with a mouth on her that could make Brutus' hair grow back just to singe it off again, her file stuffed full of insubordination and sass until Brutus nearly raised his eyebrows right off his head reading it. Her problem if she won, the trainers warned, would be arrogance.
"That won't be a problem," Brutus said. Get her out alive, then worry about rehabilitation. Anyway, he'd dealt with arrogance, knew how to bring it down to a safe level. He didn't worry.
Arrogance turned out to be the problem all right, just not the way he thought.
Nero shows up a while later, and Brutus goes to snatch his hand away from Petra's forehead but it doesn't really matter. Nero nods at him and takes a seat in the chair by the bed, pulling out a block of wood and his whittling knife, tugging the trash can close with his foot to catch the shavings. If Petra wakes up, he'll have the knife hidden before her eyes can focus on it, and Brutus stands up, grateful for Nero's silent understanding.
Lyme's waiting for him outside when Brutus finally makes it out, a sword in each hand. "You took those from my cupboard," Brutus accuses her, folding his arms. He recognizes the pattern on the hilt; each Victor has their own, to stop any confusion in case they get together for a melee.
"Your house is closer," Lyme says, unapologetic as always, and she tosses the larger one at Brutus. Both of them have swords for the other's height and reach at their houses, and she keeps hers, flipping it around over her wrist in a showy gesture. "C'mon, let's fight."
Brutus hesitates, fingers curling around the pommel. The weapon sits heavy in his hand, and he raises it reluctantly, the sunlight flashing along the length of the blade. Out of habit he tilts it to send a patch of light into Lyme's eyes, and she flattens her eyes at him but doesn't flip him off like she usually does. "You don't want to fight me right now," Brutus warns her. The helplessness and rage crawls beneath his skin, begging to be let free. "And even if you're crazy enough, ain't sure I want to."
"Yes you do," Lyme says simply. "And you know I can handle it, so don't start with that crap. Better me than your girl."
That, if nothing else, is not a fact that Brutus can argue, and so he raises his sword to the ready position and salutes her with the tip of the blade. Lyme returns the gesture, then drops her weight, bending her knees and sliding one foot back, and the fight is on.
Lyme and Brutus spar against each other more than anyone else because they're well-matched; Brutus is bigger and stronger but Lyme isn't far behind, and she makes up the difference in speed and agility. When others are watching they play to perfection, but this isn't about the show, isn't about a display of technique. This is about anger and powerlessness and lashing out, and within five seconds, they've each drawn blood. If he'd been fighting anyone outside the Village, that person would be dead.
It feels good, to let that part of him out. The ugly side, the dark, blood-soaked side that comes out sometimes late at night or in the spring when the Reaping crawls near; the side he hides from his Victors because he has to represent sanity and reason and the other side of the fence. With his Victors Brutus needs to be the future, not their past, but sometimes it sucks him down like quicksand, and the only way to get it out is to rip it by the roots and tear it to pieces.
He drives the sword hard, swinging it like an extension of himself, but Lyme is there to block him and he never gets a second hit without her forcing one back on him. The yard rings with the sound of metal striking metal, and if Brutus hadn't drugged Petra from here to District Thirteen and back he'd be worried about waking her. Sweat slides into his eyes but he shakes it out and ignores the sting; his muscles burn and his heart pounds and every time the rage builds he shoves it out through the sword.
It's not enough. The fight drags on but it never slides over into satisfaction; the frustration builds and builds, and if it were anyone but Lyme, Brutus would call the match out of fear of killing the other person. But Lyme can take it, and when he hesitates for a second she lands a blow so hard it actually makes Brutus stagger backwards, falling on his ass so hard it sends a jolt of pain up through his tailbone.
Lyme stands over him, breathing hard, then she lifts her sword and tosses it aside. "Hand to hand," she says. "You look like you need it."
They move to the other side of the yard so there's no danger of falling on their weapons and stabbing themselves. Brutus takes a moment to catch his breath, staring across at Lyme, her muscles coiled and expression intent. Brutus can't begin to tell what his own looks like, but his jaw aches from clenching it and he has a permanent headache building up between his eyebrows. "Ready?" Lyme asks, flicking her fingers, and Brutus charges.
This is better, almost immediately. This is what Brutus needs, grappling and punching and body blows, cheap shots and feet connecting behind the kneecap, fingers jabbed in ribs and hands at throats. It's violent and messy, and just like with the swords it gets bloody almost immediately, except this time it's different. This time it's not clean cuts or tears in fabric; this time it's his knuckles splitting against Lyme's nose, his cheekbone cracking beneath her fist. There's blood in his mouth and in his throat and pain everywhere, but for once - for the first time since the cameras went up on the Cornucopia with nothing but brutal, bludgeoning weapons - there's no fear.
Finally his body actually gives out, and Brutus collapses to his knees at the same time that Lyme falls forward onto hers, hands braced in front of her in the grass. Brutus flops backwards, heaving for breaths, before rolling over because he can't get any air into his lungs. Lyme crawls over next to him and grins, her mouth red and shiny with blood. Her nose is crooked.
"Fucker," Lyme says, and Brutus slits one eye at her, peering through the swelling. "You broke my tooth."
"You're exaggerating," Brutus scoffs, for all of two seconds before Lyme sucks in a breath and spits a piece of bone right at his face. "Oh, thanks," he says, wiping away the spray of blood and spit. "That's mature, that's just great."
"Tooth," Lyme reminds him, flipping him off. "Once the adrenaline wears off it's going to hurt like a bitch."
Brutus' breath rattles in his chest, and now that the fight is over the aches start making themselves felt until he's nothing but a patchwork of screaming complaint. "Suck it up, girly," he says, letting his eyes slide closed, and it's such a relief not to have to filter himself and watch every single word that for a minute Brutus thinks he's dreaming.
Lyme lets her arm fall sideways, her hand on his bicep, warm and solid. "You know what you have to do," she says, and Brutus frowns. "You tried being nice. You've tried hugs and kisses and hand-holding and it's not working. It's time to flip the switch."
"Her fucking pelvis shattered!" Brutus snaps, protective indignation and rage filling him up like wind in a sail. Lyme's the cuddly mentor; she should understand this. "Four of her organs failed before they got her stabilized, it's not like she's bitching over a broken leg!"
Lyme digs her nails into his arm, which luckily doesn't hurt too much because she bites them to the quick. "Yeah, her pelvis shattered, and now her mentor is treating her like he might break her in half. Look, you know I'm not telling you how to raise your girl, but just think about it. Just because she's hurt, doesn't mean she stopped being a Two. What would you want? Would you want Odin to kiss you and tuck you in every night, or would you want him to drag your ass out of bed?"
"The whole point is that I can't drag her out of bed -"
"If you've given up on her, how can you expect her to have faith in herself?"
Brutus slams his mouth shut. Lyme raises an eyebrow, split at the far end by Brutus' elbow, and when he can't answer she nods. "She can feel it, you know. The worst thing you can do to a Two isn't kill us, it's pity us, and she can feel it coming off you in waves. It's not your fault, but now it's time to stop."
Brutus lets his head fall back against the ground, the grass tickling his ear. "Fuck." He drags a hand down his face, then bites off a curse when everything hurts. "Fuck!"
"There, that's your free sample of life advice," Lyme says, and Brutus' eyes snap open because her voice has gone hazy, traveling up into a register she never uses on purpose. "Now I need you to take me to the hospital, because I think I just exploded."
"I think if I try to drive I'll die," Brutus says, and there are 206 bones in the human body and he knows because every single one of them is pissed off at him right now.
It's not funny, none of this is funny, Brutus and Lyme just beat the ever-loving shit out of each other and his girl is in bed dosed to the gills because she threatened suicide, but Lyme starts laughing, and once she does so does Brutus. He laughs and turns his head to the side to cough up blood and saliva onto the lawn. Beside him Lyme lets out a gasping "Holy fuck this hurts," and that makes it even funnier.
He sees Odin's shoes before he can crane his neck to see the rest of him. "You're both ridiculous," his former mentor says, and he bends down and heaves both Brutus and Lyme to their feet, throwing their weight over his massive shoulders. "I'll drive. You two use the time it takes to get there to come up with an explanation that won't land you both in mandatory psychiatric care."
Brutus actually passes out on the way to the hospital - "Not on me, you ass-fucker!" Lyme yelps when he makes sure to collapse on her, huffing out a "ha, ha" into her shoulder - but it's okay. Lyme was right. This time he actually knows what to do.
It takes a day for Petra to come off her meds and notice that Brutus looks like he's been run over by his own lawnmower. "What happened to you?" she asks, blinking up at him, and if nothing else it clears the cloud of depression enough to make room for genuine curiosity and a mix of fascinated horror. "You look awful."
Brutus shrugs. "Got a bit carried away sparring with Lyme," he says, and Petra gives him the side-eye. Hopefully she won't notice that Brutus is sitting very careful in his chair, because Lyme cracked a rib and it hurts like a sonofabitch. It's not a pleasant thing to think about, but Brutus is in his forties now; he can't shake off a handful of fractures and broken bones and go back to work the next day like nothing happened, not anymore. His six years on Lyme have never made themselves felt like this before, and if it weren't for her jaw swelling up like a red cabbage from the broken tooth, she'd likely still be smug over it.
"Right," Petra says finally, and there her expression shutters off again. "Sparring. One more thing I can't do anymore."
This is it. Brutus lets out a long breath through his nose, trying his best not to show the indecision whirling in his chest and sending anxious flutters into his stomach. He doesn't want to do this. If Petra were his daughter, he wouldn't even think of it, and he'd bust the face of anyone who suggested he did.
But here's the thing. Petra's not his daughter. She's his Victor, and Lyme was right. There are rules to how this game is played, and it's about time Brutus follows them.
"Yeah, see, here's the thing," Brutus says, and Petra's eyes fly open wide because he's using his mentor voice - his real one, not harsh or unforgiving but not tolerant of anyone's bullshit, either. "You've had almost two months to lie around, and that's enough. Time for you to get up off your ass and show me you're still the girl I fought to save."
When Brutus was a kid, he broke a finger and didn't tell Medical because he didn't want to admit something so stupid. His finger had gone black and purple and swollen, and eventually he couldn't hide it anymore. When he finally got his ass dragged to the infirmary, the doctors told him they'd have to re-break it so the bone could set properly, otherwise it would never heal right.
"It's for your own good," the doctor had said. Brutus still remembers the feel of the snap beneath the doctor's hand, the howl of betrayal and pain that had fought its way out of him no matter how hard he tried to bite it back.
It wasn't the first time someone hurt him to help him, and it wouldn't be the last. Now, Petra stares at Brutus, face pale and mouth hanging open, like he just took her finger and broke it in two.
"What?" she says finally.
"You heard me." Brutus crosses his arms. "You're acting like you're dead, sweetheart, and I hate to disappoint you, but you're not. You're alive, and it's high time to start acting like it."
"And what?" Petra demands, lifting herself up on her elbows to glare at him. "Just, hop out of bed like I'm fine and start walking? You heard the doctors! They said I should've never been made to walk onstage and now I'm never going to walk again. It's not like I'm being a baby and whining about a broken leg!"
His words to Lyme echo in her voice. Brutus swallows his discomfort and keeps his face impassive. "I'm not saying you should get up and run a mile right off, because I'm not an idiot. But you're never gonna get anywhere if you don't get out of bed, and that's a fact."
Petra's face is blotchy now, angry red spots on her cheeks and a vein throbbing purple in her forehead. "Are you making fun of me?" she asks. The sentence starts out with a crack of pain, but by the end there's nothing but anger, pure and hot and galvanizing. Brutus holds his breath.
"No," he says. "Like I said. I'm just holding out hope that the girl who beat out two hundred other girls to get here is still in there somewhere."
This time her skin purples. "And if she's not?" Petra demands. "Will you kill me then?"
"No," Brutus says again, harder this time, an undercurrent of danger running through his tone. "I'm gonna keep pushing, because I wasn't Reaped yesterday and I know I'm right."
"Oh, you're right, are you," Petra says, her eyes narrowing. "You know everything, you're the mentor, you know my body better than I do, right? I can just walk off a broken pelvis because my mentor says so, why didn't you say it sooner? It might've saved us both a lot of time!"
Brutus doesn't bother responding to that, just reaches under the bed and pulls out the crutches he had made at the hospital. They're good and sturdy, built to hold her weight so Petra's arms won't bear the brunt of it, and he stands them on end and stares at her. "So, you gonna prove me wrong, then? Because I tell you, sweetheart, that won't be hard. All you have to do is keep lying there until you fuse to that bed."
Petra sucks in a wet breath, eyes wide like he slapped her in the face, and she's not wrong. "Fine," she says, her voice ragged. "You think you're so smart. You think you can just yell at me and it'll be better, and then you won't have a broken Victor and you can get a good score on your next performance review. Maybe if I fall on my face and break a few more bones you'll finally leave me alone!"
She sits up, pain spasming across her face, and snatches the crutches out of his hand. Brutus stands back, arms folded, fingers digging into his biceps so he doesn't reach out to help her. Petra hisses and curses under her breath as she gets the crutches into the locked position under her arms, and Brutus bites his tongue because she is hurting. He reads the pain in the hitches in her breath, the sweat that stands out on her forehead, the high, keening cry that breaks free before she clamps her mouth shut and grits out a stream of invectives that the censors would never approve.
It's sitting in Mentor Central all over again, watching her close her fingers over the handle of her mace, struggling to keep her expression level so the sponsors and Gamemakers wouldn't figure out it's one of her weakest weapons. It's begging to be allowed to send her food and water with money he already has, and the Gamemakers saying wait until she makes one more kill.
Petra's arms tremble as she braces her weight, and her legs shake. Her knuckles are white around the crosspiece of the crutches, and her right knee buckles even before she gets herself upright. Brutus grits his teeth until his jaw aches so he doesn't grimace as Petra leans her forehead against one arm and hisses, gasping for air between the shudders that wrack her body.
If this doesn't work, Brutus will try something else. He can't do this again. Even now the urge to apologize and take it back bubbles up inside him, but he can do this. She needs it, and Brutus will do whatever it takes to help her, even if she hates him.
Finally, Petra gets herself to her feet. Her face is a shocking white, and she draws air into her lungs like it's made of ice that stabs her with every inhale. "There!" she spits, flinging the words at him like the daggers she practiced with at the Centre for years and was never allowed to use in the Arena. "Are you happy now? I'm standing! Will that make you leave me alone, or should I dance, too?"
Brutus says nothing, but starts a countdown in his head. He doesn't get very far before Petra blinks, dropping her furious stare to take breaths that get faster and shallower until she's nearly hyperventilating. "I'm standing," she says, confused at first, then she says it again in wonder and almost accusation, like she thinks Brutus has done it for some trick.
"I told you," Brutus says. He doesn't go to her but he lets his tone warm, just a little, like the first sunrise over frozen ground.
"Holy shit," Petra says, and then she bursts into tears.
Brutus lets her cry, because the last thing she needs is for him to hold her when she can't keep control of herself. He keeps back until her legs give out, and then he's at her side with his arm around her waist, catching her before she can fall. The crutches clatter to the floor, and Petra turns her head into Brutus' chest right before punching him, hard, just below the collarbone.
"You asshole!" Petra bursts out. "What kind of psychology is that?"
"I think you're confusing me for somebody from Three," Brutus says in perfect seriousness, and Petra's laugh warms him straight through to his bones. "I'm just a kid from the quarries, I don't know anything about fancy psychology." He runs a hand over her arm, feeling her muscles twitch beneath his fingers. "How you feeling, sweetheart?"
"I hurt like a motherfucker," Petra says with feeling. "No thanks to you. And if it's okay, I think I'm going to pass out now."
Brutus kisses her hair. "Grit your teeth, sweetheart, we've gotta stretch you out and it's been too long since you've seen outside."
"Great." Petra's voice is shaky, and as he lifts her into his arms, Brutus thinks she probably isn't kidding about passing out. "Now the squirrels can judge me."
"Squirrels don't know shit," Brutus tells her, and carries her downstairs.
Four months later, Petra walks across the stage to sit by Caesar Flickerman. Only this time she's not stuck full of metal pins and half propped up with braces, enough drugs in her system to keep her floating and smiling while her bones crushed themselves to pieces inside her. This time she walks for real, under her own power, with nothing but the cane that Odin carved for her out of good, solid Two cherrywood to take her weight.
They asked Brutus if he wanted to stand on stage with her, but he shook his head and voted to stay in the wings. With him there, the cameras would focus on him and how he must have cared for her, and today it's not about him. It's about his girl and the fire she walked through to get here, and Brutus is happy to stay out of her way.
Besides, cameras can do the damnedest thing with eyes, making them look like they're shining, and nobody needs that.
"So, Petra, I think I speak for all of us when I say that those final moments of your Games took my breath away," Caesar Flickerman says, in that affable way he has when talking about someone else's trauma. Over the years Brutus' patience for the man has thinned to the lightest first-thaw ice over the skating pond, and Flickerman being the kindest of the Capitol interviewers isn't saying much anymore.
Brutus is getting old.
"I think it's safe to say it hurt me more than you," Petra says, her tone light and joking and showing absolutely none of the weeks of screaming and waking up nearly vomiting from the pain. "But you know what they say, you can't keep a good Two down for long."
"I think you're right!" Flickerman laughs, looking to the audience to let them know it's okay to chuckle over devastating injury. "But may I just say, you look amazing! If I stub my toe, I need to lie down for at least a week, I don't know how you do it. Do you mind me asking, what kind of regimen do you follow that you look like that?"
There will be cameras on the wings, so Brutus keeps his face appropriately neutral in case they cut him into the footage later. Petra tosses her head and says something airy about going for long walks and watching her diet, and Brutus thinks of the last four months.
He thinks of standing ten feet away in the backyard and taunting her ("What's the matter, princess, are you gonna cry? You want to go back to bed and let me tuck you in?") while Petra hurled abuse right back at him. Thinks of steeling himself against the pain that clenched her jaw and made her muscles stand out in her arms like someone carved them out of marble. Of watching her fall and not catching her, because if he took even a step forward, Petra shoved out an arm and yelled at him ("Fuck you, stay the fuck away you fucker") until he stopped.
He thinks of stretching her out afterward while she left teethmarks in her hand, muffling shouts and curses as Brutus straightened her leg and the muscles and tendons protested. The glassy look in her eyes as they glazed over with pain, how by the end she couldn't even vocalize but could only wave a hand yes or no when he asked if she needed to stop.
Her head against his chest, her breaths slow and even as she drifted away to sleep in his lap, anchored safe by his arms around her and his voice in her hair ("I'm so proud of you, sweetheart, don't you ever think I'm not. You're the bravest person in here, you hear me?").
The look on her face the first time she made it all the way around the house without stopping, how she flung herself at him and whooped and cried and he carried her over to Odin's for a celebration.
A hundred memories, all of them too raw and real and jagged for the cameras, but Petra smiles and turns them into sound bites that will appear in newspapers all over the Capitol. She's brilliant and perfect and Brutus' chest hurts looking at her. Near the end she looks over her shoulder, just a quick glance, and she can't possibly see Brutus standing there in the dark with all those lights in her face, but she sends a smile his way anyway. Brutus smiles back before he can stop himself, though a second later he covers it by coughing into his hand.
She stumbles against him on the way back to the Two floor, the painkillers and mood stabilizers Brutus gave her to get her through it finally kicking in now that she's safe. "I did good?" Petra asks, taking three seconds to complete each blink.
"Yeah," Brutus says, and there are cameras in the elevator so he doesn't kiss her hair, but he does squeeze her arm. Petra tips her head back, her grin slightly loopy from the meds, and Brutus snorts and flicks her forehead with his finger.
Sunlight dazzles over the thick layer of snow on the Village lawn, making Brutus squint and attempt to blink away the purple spots in his vision. The pines hang thick and heavy with ice, the branches tinkling and creaking ominously from the weight. His boots crunch in the snow as they walk, breaking through the hard crust and sending him sinking down with every step.
Petra has it a little better, with her cane to bear some of her weight and less bulk overall. The Tour took a lot out of her like it does every Victor, but like a Two she's drawing strength from the mountains, the clean winter air. "I'm glad to be home," Petra says. Her breath huffs white in front of her face before disappearing.
"Me too." The sun through the trees casts long, dark shadows against the snow, and Brutus doesn't know much about poetry but he thinks it must be shaped like Two.
Petra leans her head against his shoulder. "Thanks," she says, and to a mentor that could be for a lot of things, but then she continues, her voice quiet. "For not doing - that thing I asked you."
It's been months and that day still haunts him, but Brutus allows the shiver to run down his spine at the memory before letting it go. "Any time. It's getting cold, sweetheart, you wanna go in?"
Petra makes a loose fist and blows into the gap between her curled thumb and forefinger. "Nah," she says, testing the ground with her cane. "I think I want to take a walk."