Brutus knew that he had been born to fight. He wasn't sure if he wanted to fight, but what choice did he have, really? His parents were both Victors, and they were the children of Victors. He had been pulled out of school at the age of eight in order to train. He didn't know how to do anything, except fight – the only thing he knew how to write was his name. He didn't need to know anything else. He had been raised to fight, and that was what he would do. He would win, or he would die.
So what choice did he have? None, he supposed, and raised his hand to volunteer.
0o0o
The Capitol loved him. He wasn't sure why. All he did was beat his chest and roar, as so many had done before him. Martina and Nero and Lex had done the same. He was nothing original. He had the same tanned skin and steely blue eyes and muscly build of many others in his district. He had the same vicious personality – at least, he thought he did. Brutus wasn't exactly sure who he was. How much of me is really them?
0o0o
He had never been allowed to cry, as a child. He had always been told to 'man up' and 'stop being such a pussy' and 'act like a Victor'. He supposed this was why emotion felt so unnatural to him. He couldn't help but be disgusted at those who had cried at their interviews. But he began to understand their tears when he had killed his first person. She had been small. Only thirteen. She had had long brown braids and big dark eyes that stared straight into Brutus' soul as he killed her. He felt as though she had seen who he was – he had seen through all his muscle and his manufactured personality. She had stared through the protective layers Brutus had built around himself, and she saw a scared little boy, who wanted desperately to go somewhere that felt like home. He had stared down at her, into those large bottomless eyes, until she stopped breathing. Her shirt had the number 8 pinned to it. He hadn't even known her name.
0o0o
He was the leader of the Career pack. Of course he was. His father had been the leader and his mother and both his grandfathers and one of his aunts. His aunt had died, though, and Brutus wasn't meant to talk about her. He had been seven when she died. His father had made him watch, even though he didn't want to. She had screamed, long and loud, and her hand had reached out to the camera as if she knew it was there. Brutus thought for a long time that she had seen him watching. He felt as though she had been asking for help. "You'll never bring shame to this family as she did, will you, son?" his father had asked, his face still and solemn like a statue. Brutus had shaken his head. He wished his aunt was alive.
0o0o
It had come down to Brutus and his district partner. Her name was Daniela, and she had fiery red hair and serioud eyes that were the colour of coal. She was small and bad-tempered, and her favourite word was 'shit'. Her favourite food was apple crumble, and she hit the bullseye with her knives every time. She was eighteen, like him, but she seemed years older and centuries wiser. Brutus liked her very much. He didn't want to kill her, not at all, but it was what he was supposed to do. He didn't want his parents to be ashamed of him. He didn't want them to pretend that they were childless, that they had never had a son who died in the Games. It was better to be childless than to have a child who had died in the Games. He didn't want to kill Daniela, but he did anyway.
Her last breaths had been rattling, and her blood was warm and dark and sticky and it covered his hands like too-tight gloves.
"I'm sorry," he had said, so quietly that only she had been able to hear.
She had stared up at him, her red hair spread out on the dewy glass like a cloud. "Make them proud, Brute," she whispered back.
"I'm sorry," he said again. He didn't know what else to say. In training, he had never been taught what to say to a dying person. A person who was dying because of him. So Brutus said the only thing that made sense to him. "I'm sorry."
"Brute. I-" she said. Then her eyes rolled back in her skull and those horrible rattling breaths stopped. For the rest of his life, Brutus would wonder what she had been going to say.
0o0o
He had thought it would be easy, from that moment onwards. He was a Victor and he had made his family and his district and his country proud. Just like he was supposed to.
"You were so brave," his mother said when he got home, holding his face in her hands and kissing him once on the forehead. She wasn't a very affectionate person – she rarely handed out compliments. That moment should have meant mountains to Brutus, but he still felt empty. He didn't feel brave. How was it brave, being a foot taller and half a metre wider than every single one of his opponents? How was it brave, learning how to fight from birth, when most of the kids in the arena had been hungry and stunted and tired their whole lives? Brutus didn't think that being born into privilege was brave.
In the months that followed his win, they cheered his name as they marched through the streets. Wherever he went, he had people asking for his autograph. They whispered his name as they walked by. By then, Daniela's name had been wilfully forgotten. Her parents pretended she had never existed, as his would have done if she had come home. Brutus promised her that he would never forget her name.
Am I the only one who remembers her? He wondered that sometimes. He didn't know how to find the answer.
0o0o
He had always done what people told him to do. He had never been allowed to think for himself, after all, so why should he try to change things now that he was a Victor?
They wanted him to roar and snarl and beat his chest. They wanted him to be vicious, they wanted him to be feral, they wanted him to act like an animal. Who was he to be anything but? He had won because they wanted him to. Twenty-three people had died, seven of them at his hand, because he had been told to win. Why should he give up and pretend to be anyone else except the person they all wanted him to be?
Who am I? Brutus wasn't even sure who he wanted to be.
0o0o
Enobaria had been one of his tributes. She had reminded him of Daniela, because she was small but full of rage and fight and fire. She hadn't been like him. She was one of the orphanage kids, sold to the Academy at the age of four and taught how to be a warrior. Like him, she had never known anything else. Unlike him, she wanted to be a warrior.
Brutus knew she would win. He knew that Daniela would have won, if he hadn't volunteered. Enobaria cut down tributes as though she was a lawn mower, mowing down grass. It was what she had been programmed to do, after all; like him, she would never disobey orders. She was a soldier, after all.
0o0o
He had been wrong about Enobaria. She was a soldier, a warrior, a fighter, yes, but she was also a person. Sometimes Brutus forgot that they were all people, because most of the time he felt like a machine. The Capitol had never liked Enobaria as much as they liked him – they admired her, sure, but even the Capitol knew when something was horrific. She had become horrific in the arena. Maybe she had always been horrific, but Brutus didn't think so. People weren't born vicious – they were only taught.
It hadn't been a surprise when she had been reaped the second time. No-one could control Enobaria, not Brutus or the Academy, or the Capitol. They knew this. They were scared of this, just like Brutus was, but for different reasons.
Brutus volunteered. It was what he was meant to do, after all, and who was he to go against orders?
0o0o
Chaff had got him. He had heard the man from Eleven coming, but a part of Brutus was tired of being a machine, and so he had pretended not to hear Chaff's heavy footsteps as he snuck up behind. He wanted to be a human, and wasn't sure how to make up for a whole lifetime of being manufactured. He didn't know how to be a human, but maybe he could learn, in the brief moments before death.
He had stared up at Chaff, in the moments before he died. For a second, he didn't see Chaff. For a second, Chaff was the little thirteen-year-old girl Brutus had killed, all those years ago. They had the same eyes, Brutus realised – dark and bottomless, like a deep, empty well. Brutus wondered who Chaff was, and realised, in the second before he died, that Chaff was a human, just like Brutus.
I am me, Brutus thought. I am a brute and I am also a human. He smiled. And then he died.