Trigger Warning: A few mentions of suicide.


Brutus Michili, District 2

"Last night I dreamed he was trying to kill you

I woke up and I was trying to kill you."

Car Seat Headrest, Beach Life-In-Death


Fighter. Killer. Monster. Victor.

Most people forgot that Brutus Michili was a dreamer.

When he was young, he used to surprise his parents and the other residents of Victor's village with pictures of fantastical creatures, outlandish inventions and magical landscapes. The victors of District 2 smiled sadly. Dreamers didn't belong in Two. They belonged in the Capitol. They belonged in the inventing studios of Three or the mutt labs of Ten. But the quarry district broke dreamers down to rubble.

Agrippinia Michili hoped that her son would outlive her. She also knew that, if he did, he'd have to leave Victor's Village. He'd have to get a job.

Romulus Diodato had a solution. He thought that Brutus would be able to win the Hunger Games.

Agrippinia was hesitant when she agreed to let her son train. As Brutus grew older, she realised that he'd never be a victor. He could memorise every victor's strategy. He could train in every weapon until he was a master.

But Brutus Michili's heart just wasn't in it.

Agrippinia knew that every victor had a spark - a spark that her son didn't have. It would take a miracle to give a sweet little boy like Brutus a reason to volunteer, to win.

To kill.

A miracle happened and her name was Lua Toyota.

When Constantine Cacace had made friends with Luka Starkwain, Romulus had sneered about how he'd found a 'pet outlier'. Although, if anything, Constantine had become Luka's pet Elite, apologising to him with puppy-dog eyes whenever the alliance killed a tribute from District 5. The nickname had stuck.

Agrippinia watched something similar overcome her son when a wide-eyed, soft-voiced artist girl won the Fortieth Hunger Games. Suddenly, Brutus wanted to win the Hunger Games, just like Lua did.

Brutus Michili began to dream of victory.

After that, nothing could stop Brutus. He was the strongest, the smartest, the most vicious. He volunteered for the Forty-Ninth Hunger Games and was the clear victor from the start. Polls showed that he was the most popular tribute since Houghton Field. He scored an eleven in training. As his kill count grew and grew, people began to wonder if he'd break his mother's record.

But when the last outlier dropped dead and it was just the six Elites remaining, Brutus let his district partner kill two of his four former allies rather than just fighting them all off by himself. Brutus' final kill, his district partner after a tense duel, brought his final total to eleven.

He'd matched his mother's record.

After his victory, the other victors from Two, all of whom had known him since he was a child, noticed that there was something wrong with Brutus. He was colder, harder. His dreams became nightmares.

Killing eleven kids would do that to someone.

What hurt Brutus most was his victory tour. He'd killed someone from almost every district. There was no escape from the anger, the grief and the guilt. Even his stop in District 6 was like a knife to the heart. Brutus had spared both their tributes, out of respect for Lua. But he wasn't ready to meet his childhood hero to discover that she was slowly losing herself to morphling.

District 2's little dreamer grew up to find that all his dreams had been broken.

Brutus couldn't end his own life. He considered it, after Palomino Burton's kids were reaped for the Quell and killed by a trend that Brutus had started. But then Palomino beat him to the punch. His wife was executed the week after his body was found. Brutus got the message. He retreated into his perfect Elite shell.

He waited.

When the Quell was announced, Brutus knew exactly what he had to do.

He really ought to have thought through what he would do if Lua went into the Quell as well.

On the first night, Lua's face wasn't in the sky and Brutus couldn't help but smile a little. Clearly she still had some tricks.

On the second night, Lua's face was there, between Elisabeta's and Blight's. Brutus struggled to hold back tears. He'd seen a body be lifted up in pieces a few hours earlier. He tried to console himself with the thought that, if there'd been a beast in the jungle, Lua would've been able to hide from it.

Still, when Brutus found Chaff Mitchell, he asked the man from Eleven if he'd seen how Lua had died before stabbing him. When the artist boy from Twelve knifed Brutus in the back, Brutus used the last of his breath to ask him as well.

"Lua," he croaked. "Do you know how she died?"

Peeta looked at him blankly. Clearly the new kid on the block hadn't bothered to learn everyone's names.

It reminded Brutus of himself. He hadn't known the names of half the kids he'd killed.

"Six female..." Brutus explained.

"There were monkeys," Peeta said, tears beginning to collect in his eyes. "She saved my life fighting them. I held her as she died. She could paint the best pictures. They were so pretty."

"So pretty..." Brutus murmured as the life drained out of him.

He remembered watching Peeta's games. The boy had three kills. The boy from Six in self defence. The girl from Eight out of mercy. The girl from Five by accident. Unless he'd killed someone in this games, this would be his first proper kill.

Brutus' last hope was that the artist boy wouldn't let it break him.


Another little canon surprise. Brutus isn't anywhere near as bloodthirsty as he first seems. In fact, he volunteered for the Quell because he wanted to die. It's a common trend in Career districts of victors mourning their lost innocence and Brutus is probably the most tragic example. Somewhere underneath that tough exterior is a little kid who's terrified of what he's become. It's that side of Brutus that connects with Peeta in the final moments of the Quell.

Next chapter is the Second Quarter Quell, which will be won by good old Haymitch Abernathy. I don't really have much to say about the fifties. By the time I got to writing them in my first draft, I was raring to get onto the sixties because that's where we'll finally get to see a lot of my favourite victors. There'll be more legacy victors in the fifties, that's for sure. Brutus really set a trend.