Married AU: Claudius Pushes Thor
Claudius didn't mean to. Thor just fell. TW: mentions of child abuse.
He's already in a pretty bad mood.
Claudius hates school. He's always hated it, especially when he didn't have to sleep outside anymore so there was no need to use the building as protection. He hates math, the way the numbers dance around on the page and laugh at him, like sometimes he looks at the number thirty-four and then a second later it's a forty-three and when he asks one of the other kids they laugh and call him a baby who doesn't know his numbers. Before Claudius could just flash his wrist, stare at them while they counted the strands on his bracelet and imagined how many ways he's learned to kill people already even if he doesn't have beads yet. He can't do that now. His wrist is bare and naked and he wears the thick leather band Mom gave him because that way at least he stops trying to touch what isn't there.
He hates reading because the letters do it too, they swim and run and the words hurt his head until he wants to stick fingers in his eyes. Claudius learns best like all Careers, by listening and repeating, and it's okay when he's home with Mom and she can read to him until he remembers but he can't do that all the time.
But tonight Mom has a work thing, and Claudius is over at Brutus and Frigga's house and that's kind of cool, if nothing else because he's still getting used to the part where he's actually invited to other victors' houses for parties just like how he imagined it when he was seven years old and sleeping behind a dumpster. Except it's even better because he didn't even have to kill a bunch of teenagers and get horribly traumatized first.
It's cool except for the part where Claudius still has to do his homework, even though it's stupid and he hates it and if he'd stayed in the Program he wouldn't have to do it anymore. He's thirteen now and he would have done his Centre exam and been moved into residential officially, which for him meant less about moving because he already lived there and more that he wouldn't have to go to school.
He kind of likes science. He's good at remembering all the things they have to do for the experiment if his lab partner reads them first, and history's good for the same. But they make the kids read books and write about them and Claudius really, really hates that. What's the point of writing books if you're just going to make someone else write about them? When does it all stop? Doesn't District Seven have enough to do without being forced to make all the paper for his stupid homework assignments?
Brutus and Frigga are doing that thing where they wash dishes and flirt with each other and everyone pretends like it's not totally obvious. Claudius doesn't care really, but if he has to watch Brutus hit Frigga with a dishtowel one more time he thinks he's going to puke. He's glad to see happy victors and everything, and it's not like they kiss each other when he's over, but it's almost worse that they don't. It's like seeing this weird sort of secret code that ends in kissing where he can't see it, and just, gross. Claudius is never getting married.
Homework gives Claudius an excuse to leave, at least, and he curls up in the corner of their massive couch with his stupid book, reading with his finger on the page moving one word at a time. He has to say the words out loud under his breath, and it takes forever but at least it works, as long as nobody bothers him. Which is great if he's at home, not so much if he's in the same house as Thor. Claudius kind of misses the time when they didn't trust him alone with Thor.
It's not that Thor's bad, he's just seriously annoying. He never leaves Claudius alone -- not a lot of kids in the Village, and now Frigga has gone back to training the older kids she can't bring Thor with her anymore, and he misses them. That means he latches on to Claudius like some sort of bouncy leech.
Sure enough he runs in right when Claudius is in the middle of reading a stupid long sentence for the third time after getting lost around the second line. "Deeeeeeee!" Thor shouts, and Claudius frowns because that is Mom's nickname, okay, but he knows he can't expect a baby to know that. "Dee, play with me!"
"I can't," Claudius says, and he pulls his feet up onto the couch, creating a wall between them. "I'm doing my homework."
"No homework!" Thor says, tugging on Claudius' pant leg. "Not important homework!"
"Not arguing there," Claudius mutters under his breath, but out loud he just sighs and pulls his book higher up. " Yeah, well, I have to do it, so."
He doesn't hate Thor. Claudius just has no idea how to deal with kids who aren't old enough for the Centre. Honestly, he's not sure about kids who aren't old enough for the Reaping, in the Centre he usually ignored the ones his age and younger and hung out with the residential kids. Nobody seemed to care.
"Dee, up!" Thor demands. "Up up up! Come play! No boring books."
"Count to one million," Claudius says without looking up. "I'll come play when you get to a million."
Thor plops down on the floor, or so Claudius guesses from the thump. "Onnnnnnnnne," he says, and oh Snow on the trees he's going to do it out loud, right here. "Twoooooooo..." Claudius closes his eyes and prays for patience as Thor mumbles something that might be numbers or might be an evil magic spell before finishing with a triumphant, "ONE MILLION PLAY NOW."
Claudius slams his book down onto his lap and gives Thor his scary face, the one that made even bigger kids wet themselves, but Thor just grins at him. "I'm busy," Claudius says slowly, pausing between each syllable to make absolutely sure he gets it. "I will play later. Okay?"
"Is now later?" Thor scrambles up onto the couch. "Is it later now? Now? Now?" He grabs at Claudius' book, and when Claudius jerks it out of his hands, one of the pages tears. "Oops," Thor says, and holds it out to him.
"Okay, that's it," Claudius snaps, and he's had enough. He's trying to be mature and responsible and do his stupid homework and talk to Thor like he's a person but it's like he doesn't even want to understand. "Leave me alone, okay?"
He shoves Thor, and the kid squawks and flails his arms before falling right off the couch onto his head. Claudius has about two seconds of staring at him in a panic and wondering if he's killed him (wouldn't that be funny, ha ha what if he's a killer anyway) before Thor's face scrunches and he starts to cry for Daddy. Claudius has a few seconds to think about how weird it is for a kid to get hurt and cry for Daddy of all people, who does that seriously, except that's not just Daddy, that's Brutus and no wonder.
"Oh shit," Claudius says aloud, eyes wide, and the teachers tell him not to swear but Mom says she'd rather him swear than hit people and he just pushed Brutus' kid off a couch so he figures this one's justified.
A few seconds later Brutus comes stomping in -- Claudius is kind of surprised the pictures on the wall don't shake -- and his face is worse than Claudius' could ever be, no wonder Thor isn't scared. "What the hell happened?" he asks, but then he bends down and scoops Thor up and checks his head where the bump is already forming. "You're not bleeding, buddy, you're okay. No blood, see?" he holds up his fingers, and Thor gives him a suspicious sniff and grabs them, checking them over just in case Brutus is lying.
"Dee mean," Thor pronounces, and he gives Claudius a perfect Career pout, like there are cameras there to pick it up and broadcast all over Panem what a sad little boy he is. "Dee won't play. Dee pushed. Dee spoilsport!"
"I didn't mean to," Claudius says quickly, and Brutus turns to him, Thor's face buried in his neck, and he is dead. So dead. "He just fell, I didn't --" Shit. "I'm sorry!" Shit!
Brutus narrows his eyes at Claudius, and Claudius swallows hard, but once more Brutus just ignores him for now and goes back to Thor. "Okay you, go find your mom and tell her to kiss it better, okay?" Brutus says, and he lifts Thor up and gives him a kiss on the forehead himself. "Then you go play and let us talk."
Uh-oh.
"Okay," Thor squirms, and he's smiling all over the place and if he can smile like that then it didn't hurt that much so why did he wail. Claudius does not understand kids. "Mamaaaa," Thor yells as he tears off out of the room. "Mama I hurt real bad!"
Brutus turns back to Claudius and folds his arms. "So. You gonna tell me why you pushed my kid off the couch?"
Claudius shrinks back against the cushions. "It was an accident," he says, and he holds up his book, pointing to the torn page. "He just, he was being really annoying -- I mean, I was annoyed -- I couldn't concentrate with him poking me and I just, I wanted to make him cut it out, that's all, I didn't mean to make him fall. I didn't think it would hurt him."
Brutus gives him a long, hard look, like he's waiting for Claudius to stop bullshitting him and come clean, and panic rises in Claudius' chest. "I mean it!" he bursts out. "I didn't want to hurt him. I know everybody thinks I do, and you all think I'm not safe to be around kids because I'll set them on fire or something, but I don't actually want to. I don't like hurting people for no reason and I'm trying not to hurt people when I get mad and I wasn't that mad, I was just annoyed and --"
"Whoa," Brutus says, holding up one hand. "Okay, I believe you." He sits down on the couch while Claudius does his best trying not to hyperventilate. "But look, Thor is three, okay? So however much you think you're controlling yourself, you've gotta double that."
Claudius nods, and he pulls his knees up to his chest again. "And now you're gonna tell Mom and she's going to be disappointed because she said she could trust me and now she can't." He shoves both hands into his hair, and then he looks at Brutus with his arms the size of Claudius' thighs, and he swallows. "Could we trade? You could just punish me now and then Mom wouldn't have to know."
Brutus' eyebrows unbalance. "Not my job, kid, this is between you and your mom. I mean I can make you run laps if you want, but it's not gonna get you out of talking to her."
"What?" Claudius frowns. Sometimes the people in the Village don't make any sense. "What are you talking about?"
"Even if I did punish other people's kids -- which I don't, thanks -- I still wouldn't." Brutus shrugs, and Claudius knows that anyone who won the Games can't be stupid but at the same time it's kind of amazing how much Brutus is missing the point. "You didn't throw Thor off the couch on purpose, so there's no point."
"No, that's not --" Claudius knows he should stop talking. He hurt a victor's kid -- not just any victor but Brutus' kid -- and the worst Brutus would have done was made him run around a lot. "Laps? That's seriously what you'd do?"
A shadow of something crosses Brutus' face. Claudius has seen it before, on some of the trainers during the few times he mentioned what happened before the Centre took him, but he doesn't know what it means. "What else would I do?"
"Um, hit me?" Claudius says, incredulous. "Not in the face or anything 'cause I'm not your kid, but I dunno, you're the victor, not me. And if I know how to hit so it wouldn't show and worry Mom, so you probably know tons more."
Claudius watched his first Games last year, and he saw a tribute turn and vomit all over the ground after making a kill. Brutus has that kind of face now, all twisted and horrified. "For fuck's sake," Brutus says, and Claudius jumps because usually they all try to clean up their language around him. "Kid, there are so many things wrong with that, I don't even know where to start." He drags a hand down his face. "I'm not gonna hit you. I don't hit anybody."
Claudius frowns at him. It's one thing for Mom to say she doesn't hit kids -- she's the soft mentor and everyone knows it -- but if Brutus really wants Claudius to believe that about him, he's gonna have to try a lot harder than that. "Okay," he says. It isn't like he actually wants Brutus to smack him around, and if he thinks there's no point then Claudius isn't going to argue.
"I'm serious." Brutus half turns to face him, his arm along the back of the couch but not within touching distance. "Do I really look like I need to whack people to get them to listen? That's not real authority."
That makes sense, at least. Claudius thinks about what he's seen in the Village since moving here -- or even with the trainers at the Centre -- and compares it to his memories of the group homes, where hands flew freely and most of the grownups never spoke below a yell. "I guess not," he says. "Can I ask you something?"
"Sure."
"I think -- and maybe I'm wrong, but -- it looks like here in the Village, if you have to yell or hit to get somebody to listen then you don't deserve their respect in the first place. Is that right?"
"That's everywhere, not just the Village, but yeah," Brutus says, and well he's wrong about that but Claudius will take the half he understands, anyway. "You need to force people to give you respect, then they're right about not giving it."
Claudius chews that over for a minute. "Then if I can't even make a baby listen to me, how am I supposed to ever get anyone? I tried to be mature and talk to him and tell him I'd play later, but he just kept bugging me."
Brutus smiles a little. "Well, there's your first mistake. You're arguing with a three-year-old and expecting him to argue back. You know what Thor's arguments are? NO, MINE, and DON'T WANNA."
This time Claudius goes all the way to scowling, and he crosses his arms and digs his heels into the couch cushions. "I don't remember being three really, but I know I wasn't like that. If somebody bigger told me to cut it out, pretty sure I cut it out. Until I got bigger and made fires instead."
Brutus makes that sour-lemon face again. "Okay, yeah, but I want you to think about something for a sec. Think about Thor. He's a dumb, selfish, happy kid and my worst problem is making sure he doesn't grow up into a spoiled brat."
Claudius snorts. It's true. From what he's seen Brutus is pretty good with curbing Thor in the worst of his tantrums, and the kid smiles all the time and likes giving hugs and isn't even afraid of Enobaria, though of course his mother is. Claudius doesn't remember a lot since before the age of about four, just a few dark, hazy shapes and voices that make his throat clench and give him the urge to hide under the couch, but that kind of seems like the point.
"You're a great kid," Brutus says. "A good kid, you really are. But sometimes kids should be allowed to be kids, and that means getting to say 'no' even if they have to do it anyway. And if a kid Thor's age hops to it without ever arguing, it usually means there's some asshole making him. I don't wanna be that asshole."
Claudius ducks, pulling his chin down to his chest. "I guess," he says again. It does make sense. "So does that mean you tell him why you're hitting him, instead of just saying he knows what he did even if he didn't do anything?"
Now it's like the lemon grew mould and maybe had worms coming out of it. "It means I don't hit him at all," Brutus says finally, and you know what, nothing makes sense anymore. "Okay, you know what, you really need to talk to your mom about this, but listen. Just because Thor doesn't listen to you doesn't mean you're not worthy of respect, all right? You went through hell to get here and everybody in the Village respects that, so don't worry about that right now. We're here to protect you before everything else."
"Kids at school don't care." Claudius knows he must sound like a whining whinyface but he can't help it. "They sure don't respect me. I don't know how to make them listen. In the Program I got praised if I broke somebody's arm. Now I get suspended."
Brutus presses his lips together. "Sounds like you should talk to your mom about that."
And that's fine, really, because Claudius doesn't want to talk about it anymore anyway. "I should do my homework," he says.
Brutus gives him a look, but lets it go. "You need any help?"
"It's just reading," Claudius says, and he really wants to throw it across the room and maybe stomp on it and pull out the pages, but no, this is his life now. No killing. No more dessert for making someone cry. "I'm just not that good at it."
"Lucky for you, you're in the one place where nobody's gonna care about that," Brutus says, and Claudius feels a little better. "I ain't that great a reader, but if you want I can take Thor outside and Frigga can read to you. You're a Centre kid so I'm guessing it's easier to listen."
Claudius relaxes a little, or at least stops trying to push his ears off his head with his shoulders. "If that's okay."
"I'll ask her." Brutus claps him on the shoulder. "You are a good kid, all right?" he says, and Claudius feels a bit better.
"I did my homework," Claudius says, holding out the paper where he scrawled his essay. It's not the best, and his handwriting really is terrible, but whatever, it's done.
"Good for you," Mom says, only when she says it it's not sarcastic or anything. Claudius needs to ask her how she does that. She pulls him in by the shoulders and kisses his hair. "No more school for the night, it's time to relax."
Claudius gives her a suspicious look. "Does that mean we're gonna talk about what happened with Thor?" He knows she knows because he saw Brutus pull her aside when she came to pick him up. Oh well. It isn't like she's going to kick him out for that; Claudius might not ever want to climb the fence ever again, but the spiderweb of barbed-wire scars across his palms reminds him that there is nothing he can ever do that will make Mom give up on him. That doesn't mean he can't disappoint her. "Am I gonna lose my door?"
"No," she says. "I can tell you that right now, no. You're not losing any privileges this time, not unless you count being alone with Thor a privilege."
"Never being alone with Thor again would be a privilege," Claudius mutters, and Mom laughs. "You're -- not mad?"
"I'm not mad." She kisses his hair again, and Claudius lets out a sigh. "C'mon, let's build a fort first and then we can talk, all right?"
Claudius is probably too old for forts -- okay, he's definitely too old for forts -- but in therapy they tell him he can't keep using Centre milestones as benchmarks for his development now. Just because he would have killed at fourteen and been forced to grow up around that doesn't mean he has to match it now. They said he could make all the forts he wants as long as it makes him happy, so good enough.
Mom brings them bowls of ice cream to eat in the fort, and she tucks Claudius in against her side and loops her arm around his shoulders. "All right, here's the deal," she says. "It's probably not a good idea for you to be left alone with Thor for awhile. You're a Centre kid and you're not used to toddlers, so until you're better at controlling yourself and knowing where a kid like his limits are, you'll just have to stay with me when Thor's around."
"Best punishment ever," Claudius says with feeling, and when Mom raps him on the head with her knuckles he rolls his eyes. "I know, I know, it's not a punishment, but you know what I mean. I just. I just pushed him, I didn't know he'd break." He scowls. "Babies should come with warning signs."
"Believe me, kiddo, I know." Mom makes a face. "I don't understand them either."
"I still don't know how to get him to quit it if he's bugging me," Claudius complains. "I guess it's even better if I'm not allowed to be alone, 'cause then I can just make somebody else deal with it."
Mom grins. "That's my plan. Shove him at Brutus and run. Works every time, seriously." She ruffles Claudius' hair, and he basks the way he always does when they have something new in common.
That reminds Claudius of his conversation with Brutus, and he frowns and stirs his ice cream until it turns into soup. "You know, people have everything all wrong," he says slowly, and Mom puts down her bowl so she can listen to him properly. She always takes him seriously. "My mom used to say you guys -- Careers -- were monsters and that it would serve me right if I joined the Program and sassed somebody and they beat me to death. But you don't do that and normal people do. How come? Is it because you have sparring and pushups and wall sits instead?" He chews on his lip. "I guess it's worse with victors, right? Like, if you can kill people with your hands you have to be more careful about hitting."
"It's not just us, though," Mom says. "Remember when you got into fights at school and I said there's no honour in fighting a civilian? It's double that with kids. Most kids can't defend themselves, especially civilians."
Claudius thinks back just enough that his throat closes and he has to stop. "I guess. It stopped for me when I hit back."
Mom makes a sort of hissing, growling noise in her throat for a second, but she chokes it down. "That's not the point either. You don't express authority over kids by hitting them, period."
"That's what Brutus said," Claudius says, dubious. "But when the hitting stopped, I stopped listening. There wasn't any other way to make me. What else is there?"
Mom tugs him close again, her arm around his shoulders. "Hey, I've never hit you and you listen to me, so what's that make me?"
"Weird?" Claudius says, and her face twists so he keeps going, quickly. "I mean, just, it's like I said. Careers, you've got sparring and laps and pushups and you're big and scary-looking so you don't have to. But civilians don't have that stuff and that's why there's no other way than hitting. Except --" he huffs an annoyed sigh. "Thor's too small for pushups and sparring and he doesn't understand, so Career babies can't really be that different from civilian ones."
He knows he's said something wrong when Mom freezes against his side. "D, do you really think people hit babies?"
Claudius clenches his jaw. "I know they do. They don't understand anything else." His words twist into his mom's voice that time she screamed at Jeremy the only time he ever said maybe she shouldn't, and it makes his shoulders hunch. "You hit them until they're old enough to hit back. That's the way it goes."
"There's a flaw in that," Mom says, very carefully, and Claudius hears the rage in her voice, the way it makes her sound husky, the way she bites off the t-sounds. "You're never going to be big enough to stop me. I'm still never going to do it."
"I know," he says, and sags a little. "I know, I just, I figured that was just you being you."
Mom goes quiet for a second, rubbing her hand over his arm, and when she talks again she's still cautious. "Do you think Brutus hits Thor? Because Thor definitely can't hit back."
"Brutus said he doesn't," Claudius says, and a headache presses itself behind his eyeballs. "I thought he did, and he was just lying or trying not to scare me or something, but -- Thor fell down and he got scared and he cried for his dad. Kids don't do that. It doesn't make sense."
"It makes sense when they know their dad isn't going to hurt them," Mom says.
"Mine never hurt me and I still didn't call for him," Claudius snaps, and Mom actually looks surprised. "He didn't do anything. He just hid in his stupid office with his stupid work and I don't even remember what he looks like anymore." He crosses his arms, and Mom makes a quiet 'oh' sound and pulls him closer. Claudius swallows and fights to get himself under control. "You're right though. Thor cried like he knew Brutus would come for him. And I didn't think pushing him would be that bad because he's obviously had worse, I mean, he's not an angel so I thought they would've -- I really didn't mean to --"
"Yes baby, we know," Mom says, and Claudius calms down again. "But you're right. Does it make sense to want someone who will hurt you when you're upset?"
"People are stupid when they're little," Claudius says, and against his will he curls in on himself. "Even when she -- I wanted my mom until --" the words stick in his throat like dry toast but he forces them out. "-- until she called me the m-word. That's when I knew she really wouldn't help me. Jeremy I knew way before."
Mom runs her fingers through his hair. "I know, baby. But you can want something without thinking it will happen. You don't call for somebody you know won't help you."
"No," Claudius says finally, and all his breath leaves him in a whoosh.
"If the person you wanted you kept hurting you, it makes sense you'd be confused," Mom says, still in that quiet voice, and she keeps petting his hair. "Make you angry. Make you scared."
Claudius's lungs squeeze. There's a hand on his arm, twisting and pulling, except no there isn't, and he grips his arms to make sure. "It wasn't just me. I asked other kids. It wasn't just me."
"I'm sure it wasn't. But just because lots of people do it, doesn't make it right."
Now it's tears, pushing against his eyes like water against a wall, and Claudius squeezes his eyes shut. "I don't want to talk about it anymore." He leans into Mom, buries his face in her side and wraps his arms around her waist. "Can we just -- can we go outside and look at the stars or something?"
"Of course," Mom says, and she rubs her hand over his back. "We still need to talk about this some more, but if you get that hitting kids isn't okay, we can stop for now." She kisses his hair, and Claudius whimpers -- he hates it when he makes that sound but Mom never yells at him for it -- and moves closer. "Hey, D, I want you to do something for me. Can you look at your hands?"
He pulls back just enough to look at his hands again, the twisted scar tissue on his palms and opposite side. The hand around his chest eases up, and the shadows pressing down on him move back a little.
"Good," Mom says, and she doesn't let go of him. "You didn't have those before, remember? You're here now. You're never going back there again."
Claudius sniffs. "Okay," he says, and hides his face in her shirt again. "Thanks for believing me. That I didn't mean to hurt Thor, I mean. She -- some people wouldn't."
"Yeah, well, you're a good kid, and I know that." This time she scrubs her fingers through his hair and over his scalp like she's rubbing shampoo through it, and Claudius' eyes fall closed. "You gonna be okay, kiddo?"
Claudius nods, tracing his fingers over his scars without opening his eyes. "Can we spar, though?"
"'Course we can, baby," Mom says, and she's called him that more than usual tonight but Claudius can't say he minds. She hugs him one more time, then crawls out of the fort and crouches outside, waiting for him. "You know I love you, right?"
"Yeah." Claudius gives her a half smile. "I love you too."
"Good." Mom claps his shoulder. On the way downstairs, she jostles his arm. "You know I'm kind of jealous. I wish when Thor wants to play with me I could tell him I'm not allowed."
Claudius grins. "Ha ha," he says, singsong. "Though I guess I could tell him that you have to stay with me, then we both win."
"Sounds good to me." Mom leads them outside, flicking the porch light on so it's not entirely dark in the yard, and she studies him with narrowed eyes. "Okay D-monster, show me what you got."
Claudius drops into his ready stance. "You're on," he says, and Mom grins back.
He's already in a pretty bad mood.
Claudius hates school. He's always hated it, especially when he didn't have to sleep outside anymore so there was no need to use the building as protection. He hates math, the way the numbers dance around on the page and laugh at him, like sometimes he looks at the number thirty-four and then a second later it's a forty-three and when he asks one of the other kids they laugh and call him a baby who doesn't know his numbers. Before Claudius could just flash his wrist, stare at them while they counted the strands on his bracelet and imagined how many ways he's learned to kill people already even if he doesn't have beads yet. He can't do that now. His wrist is bare and naked and he wears the thick leather band Mom gave him because that way at least he stops trying to touch what isn't there.
He hates reading because the letters do it too, they swim and run and the words hurt his head until he wants to stick fingers in his eyes. Claudius learns best like all Careers, by listening and repeating, and it's okay when he's home with Mom and she can read to him until he remembers but he can't do that all the time.
But tonight Mom has a work thing, and Claudius is over at Brutus and Frigga's house and that's kind of cool, if nothing else because he's still getting used to the part where he's actually invited to other victors' houses for parties just like how he imagined it when he was seven years old and sleeping behind a dumpster. Except it's even better because he didn't even have to kill a bunch of teenagers and get horribly traumatized first.
It's cool except for the part where Claudius still has to do his homework, even though it's stupid and he hates it and if he'd stayed in the Program he wouldn't have to do it anymore. He's thirteen now and he would have done his Centre exam and been moved into residential officially, which for him meant less about moving because he already lived there and more that he wouldn't have to go to school.
He kind of likes science. He's good at remembering all the things they have to do for the experiment if his lab partner reads them first, and history's good for the same. But they make the kids read books and write about them and Claudius really, really hates that. What's the point of writing books if you're just going to make someone else write about them? When does it all stop? Doesn't District Seven have enough to do without being forced to make all the paper for his stupid homework assignments?
Brutus and Frigga are doing that thing where they wash dishes and flirt with each other and everyone pretends like it's not totally obvious. Claudius doesn't care really, but if he has to watch Brutus hit Frigga with a dishtowel one more time he thinks he's going to puke. He's glad to see happy victors and everything, and it's not like they kiss each other when he's over, but it's almost worse that they don't. It's like seeing this weird sort of secret code that ends in kissing where he can't see it, and just, gross. Claudius is never getting married.
Homework gives Claudius an excuse to leave, at least, and he curls up in the corner of their massive couch with his stupid book, reading with his finger on the page moving one word at a time. He has to say the words out loud under his breath, and it takes forever but at least it works, as long as nobody bothers him. Which is great if he's at home, not so much if he's in the same house as Thor. Claudius kind of misses the time when they didn't trust him alone with Thor.
It's not that Thor's bad, he's just seriously annoying. He never leaves Claudius alone -- not a lot of kids in the Village, and now Frigga has gone back to training the older kids she can't bring Thor with her anymore, and he misses them. That means he latches on to Claudius like some sort of bouncy leech.
Sure enough he runs in right when Claudius is in the middle of reading a stupid long sentence for the third time after getting lost around the second line. "Deeeeeeee!" Thor shouts, and Claudius frowns because that is Mom's nickname, okay, but he knows he can't expect a baby to know that. "Dee, play with me!"
"I can't," Claudius says, and he pulls his feet up onto the couch, creating a wall between them. "I'm doing my homework."
"No homework!" Thor says, tugging on Claudius' pant leg. "Not important homework!"
"Not arguing there," Claudius mutters under his breath, but out loud he just sighs and pulls his book higher up. " Yeah, well, I have to do it, so."
He doesn't hate Thor. Claudius just has no idea how to deal with kids who aren't old enough for the Centre. Honestly, he's not sure about kids who aren't old enough for the Reaping, in the Centre he usually ignored the ones his age and younger and hung out with the residential kids. Nobody seemed to care.
"Dee, up!" Thor demands. "Up up up! Come play! No boring books."
"Count to one million," Claudius says without looking up. "I'll come play when you get to a million."
Thor plops down on the floor, or so Claudius guesses from the thump. "Onnnnnnnnne," he says, and oh Snow on the trees he's going to do it out loud, right here. "Twoooooooo..." Claudius closes his eyes and prays for patience as Thor mumbles something that might be numbers or might be an evil magic spell before finishing with a triumphant, "ONE MILLION PLAY NOW."
Claudius slams his book down onto his lap and gives Thor his scary face, the one that made even bigger kids wet themselves, but Thor just grins at him. "I'm busy," Claudius says slowly, pausing between each syllable to make absolutely sure he gets it. "I will play later. Okay?"
"Is now later?" Thor scrambles up onto the couch. "Is it later now? Now? Now?" He grabs at Claudius' book, and when Claudius jerks it out of his hands, one of the pages tears. "Oops," Thor says, and holds it out to him.
"Okay, that's it," Claudius snaps, and he's had enough. He's trying to be mature and responsible and do his stupid homework and talk to Thor like he's a person but it's like he doesn't even want to understand. "Leave me alone, okay?"
He shoves Thor, and the kid squawks and flails his arms before falling right off the couch onto his head. Claudius has about two seconds of staring at him in a panic and wondering if he's killed him (wouldn't that be funny, ha ha what if he's a killer anyway) before Thor's face scrunches and he starts to cry for Daddy. Claudius has a few seconds to think about how weird it is for a kid to get hurt and cry for Daddy of all people, who does that seriously, except that's not just Daddy, that's Brutus and no wonder.
"Oh shit," Claudius says aloud, eyes wide, and the teachers tell him not to swear but Mom says she'd rather him swear than hit people and he just pushed Brutus' kid off a couch so he figures this one's justified.
A few seconds later Brutus comes stomping in -- Claudius is kind of surprised the pictures on the wall don't shake -- and his face is worse than Claudius' could ever be, no wonder Thor isn't scared. "What the hell happened?" he asks, but then he bends down and scoops Thor up and checks his head where the bump is already forming. "You're not bleeding, buddy, you're okay. No blood, see?" he holds up his fingers, and Thor gives him a suspicious sniff and grabs them, checking them over just in case Brutus is lying.
"Dee mean," Thor pronounces, and he gives Claudius a perfect Career pout, like there are cameras there to pick it up and broadcast all over Panem what a sad little boy he is. "Dee won't play. Dee pushed. Dee spoilsport!"
"I didn't mean to," Claudius says quickly, and Brutus turns to him, Thor's face buried in his neck, and he is dead. So dead. "He just fell, I didn't --" Shit. "I'm sorry!" Shit!
Brutus narrows his eyes at Claudius, and Claudius swallows hard, but once more Brutus just ignores him for now and goes back to Thor. "Okay you, go find your mom and tell her to kiss it better, okay?" Brutus says, and he lifts Thor up and gives him a kiss on the forehead himself. "Then you go play and let us talk."
Uh-oh.
"Okay," Thor squirms, and he's smiling all over the place and if he can smile like that then it didn't hurt that much so why did he wail. Claudius does not understand kids. "Mamaaaa," Thor yells as he tears off out of the room. "Mama I hurt real bad!"
Brutus turns back to Claudius and folds his arms. "So. You gonna tell me why you pushed my kid off the couch?"
Claudius shrinks back against the cushions. "It was an accident," he says, and he holds up his book, pointing to the torn page. "He just, he was being really annoying -- I mean, I was annoyed -- I couldn't concentrate with him poking me and I just, I wanted to make him cut it out, that's all, I didn't mean to make him fall. I didn't think it would hurt him."
Brutus gives him a long, hard look, like he's waiting for Claudius to stop bullshitting him and come clean, and panic rises in Claudius' chest. "I mean it!" he bursts out. "I didn't want to hurt him. I know everybody thinks I do, and you all think I'm not safe to be around kids because I'll set them on fire or something, but I don't actually want to. I don't like hurting people for no reason and I'm trying not to hurt people when I get mad and I wasn't that mad, I was just annoyed and --"
"Whoa," Brutus says, holding up one hand. "Okay, I believe you." He sits down on the couch while Claudius does his best trying not to hyperventilate. "But look, Thor is three, okay? So however much you think you're controlling yourself, you've gotta double that."
Claudius nods, and he pulls his knees up to his chest again. "And now you're gonna tell Mom and she's going to be disappointed because she said she could trust me and now she can't." He shoves both hands into his hair, and then he looks at Brutus with his arms the size of Claudius' thighs, and he swallows. "Could we trade? You could just punish me now and then Mom wouldn't have to know."
Brutus' eyebrows unbalance. "Not my job, kid, this is between you and your mom. I mean I can make you run laps if you want, but it's not gonna get you out of talking to her."
"What?" Claudius frowns. Sometimes the people in the Village don't make any sense. "What are you talking about?"
"Even if I did punish other people's kids -- which I don't, thanks -- I still wouldn't." Brutus shrugs, and Claudius knows that anyone who won the Games can't be stupid but at the same time it's kind of amazing how much Brutus is missing the point. "You didn't throw Thor off the couch on purpose, so there's no point."
"No, that's not --" Claudius knows he should stop talking. He hurt a victor's kid -- not just any victor but Brutus' kid -- and the worst Brutus would have done was made him run around a lot. "Laps? That's seriously what you'd do?"
A shadow of something crosses Brutus' face. Claudius has seen it before, on some of the trainers during the few times he mentioned what happened before the Centre took him, but he doesn't know what it means. "What else would I do?"
"Um, hit me?" Claudius says, incredulous. "Not in the face or anything 'cause I'm not your kid, but I dunno, you're the victor, not me. And if I know how to hit so it wouldn't show and worry Mom, so you probably know tons more."
Claudius watched his first Games last year, and he saw a tribute turn and vomit all over the ground after making a kill. Brutus has that kind of face now, all twisted and horrified. "For fuck's sake," Brutus says, and Claudius jumps because usually they all try to clean up their language around him. "Kid, there are so many things wrong with that, I don't even know where to start." He drags a hand down his face. "I'm not gonna hit you. I don't hit anybody."
Claudius frowns at him. It's one thing for Mom to say she doesn't hit kids -- she's the soft mentor and everyone knows it -- but if Brutus really wants Claudius to believe that about him, he's gonna have to try a lot harder than that. "Okay," he says. It isn't like he actually wants Brutus to smack him around, and if he thinks there's no point then Claudius isn't going to argue.
"I'm serious." Brutus half turns to face him, his arm along the back of the couch but not within touching distance. "Do I really look like I need to whack people to get them to listen? That's not real authority."
That makes sense, at least. Claudius thinks about what he's seen in the Village since moving here -- or even with the trainers at the Centre -- and compares it to his memories of the group homes, where hands flew freely and most of the grownups never spoke below a yell. "I guess not," he says. "Can I ask you something?"
"Sure."
"I think -- and maybe I'm wrong, but -- it looks like here in the Village, if you have to yell or hit to get somebody to listen then you don't deserve their respect in the first place. Is that right?"
"That's everywhere, not just the Village, but yeah," Brutus says, and well he's wrong about that but Claudius will take the half he understands, anyway. "You need to force people to give you respect, then they're right about not giving it."
Claudius chews that over for a minute. "Then if I can't even make a baby listen to me, how am I supposed to ever get anyone? I tried to be mature and talk to him and tell him I'd play later, but he just kept bugging me."
Brutus smiles a little. "Well, there's your first mistake. You're arguing with a three-year-old and expecting him to argue back. You know what Thor's arguments are? NO, MINE, and DON'T WANNA."
This time Claudius goes all the way to scowling, and he crosses his arms and digs his heels into the couch cushions. "I don't remember being three really, but I know I wasn't like that. If somebody bigger told me to cut it out, pretty sure I cut it out. Until I got bigger and made fires instead."
Brutus makes that sour-lemon face again. "Okay, yeah, but I want you to think about something for a sec. Think about Thor. He's a dumb, selfish, happy kid and my worst problem is making sure he doesn't grow up into a spoiled brat."
Claudius snorts. It's true. From what he's seen Brutus is pretty good with curbing Thor in the worst of his tantrums, and the kid smiles all the time and likes giving hugs and isn't even afraid of Enobaria, though of course his mother is. Claudius doesn't remember a lot since before the age of about four, just a few dark, hazy shapes and voices that make his throat clench and give him the urge to hide under the couch, but that kind of seems like the point.
"You're a great kid," Brutus says. "A good kid, you really are. But sometimes kids should be allowed to be kids, and that means getting to say 'no' even if they have to do it anyway. And if a kid Thor's age hops to it without ever arguing, it usually means there's some asshole making him. I don't wanna be that asshole."
Claudius ducks, pulling his chin down to his chest. "I guess," he says again. It does make sense. "So does that mean you tell him why you're hitting him, instead of just saying he knows what he did even if he didn't do anything?"
Now it's like the lemon grew mould and maybe had worms coming out of it. "It means I don't hit him at all," Brutus says finally, and you know what, nothing makes sense anymore. "Okay, you know what, you really need to talk to your mom about this, but listen. Just because Thor doesn't listen to you doesn't mean you're not worthy of respect, all right? You went through hell to get here and everybody in the Village respects that, so don't worry about that right now. We're here to protect you before everything else."
"Kids at school don't care." Claudius knows he must sound like a whining whinyface but he can't help it. "They sure don't respect me. I don't know how to make them listen. In the Program I got praised if I broke somebody's arm. Now I get suspended."
Brutus presses his lips together. "Sounds like you should talk to your mom about that."
And that's fine, really, because Claudius doesn't want to talk about it anymore anyway. "I should do my homework," he says.
Brutus gives him a look, but lets it go. "You need any help?"
"It's just reading," Claudius says, and he really wants to throw it across the room and maybe stomp on it and pull out the pages, but no, this is his life now. No killing. No more dessert for making someone cry. "I'm just not that good at it."
"Lucky for you, you're in the one place where nobody's gonna care about that," Brutus says, and Claudius feels a little better. "I ain't that great a reader, but if you want I can take Thor outside and Frigga can read to you. You're a Centre kid so I'm guessing it's easier to listen."
Claudius relaxes a little, or at least stops trying to push his ears off his head with his shoulders. "If that's okay."
"I'll ask her." Brutus claps him on the shoulder. "You are a good kid, all right?" he says, and Claudius feels a bit better.
"I did my homework," Claudius says, holding out the paper where he scrawled his essay. It's not the best, and his handwriting really is terrible, but whatever, it's done.
"Good for you," Mom says, only when she says it it's not sarcastic or anything. Claudius needs to ask her how she does that. She pulls him in by the shoulders and kisses his hair. "No more school for the night, it's time to relax."
Claudius gives her a suspicious look. "Does that mean we're gonna talk about what happened with Thor?" He knows she knows because he saw Brutus pull her aside when she came to pick him up. Oh well. It isn't like she's going to kick him out for that; Claudius might not ever want to climb the fence ever again, but the spiderweb of barbed-wire scars across his palms reminds him that there is nothing he can ever do that will make Mom give up on him. That doesn't mean he can't disappoint her. "Am I gonna lose my door?"
"No," she says. "I can tell you that right now, no. You're not losing any privileges this time, not unless you count being alone with Thor a privilege."
"Never being alone with Thor again would be a privilege," Claudius mutters, and Mom laughs. "You're -- not mad?"
"I'm not mad." She kisses his hair again, and Claudius lets out a sigh. "C'mon, let's build a fort first and then we can talk, all right?"
Claudius is probably too old for forts -- okay, he's definitely too old for forts -- but in therapy they tell him he can't keep using Centre milestones as benchmarks for his development now. Just because he would have killed at fourteen and been forced to grow up around that doesn't mean he has to match it now. They said he could make all the forts he wants as long as it makes him happy, so good enough.
Mom brings them bowls of ice cream to eat in the fort, and she tucks Claudius in against her side and loops her arm around his shoulders. "All right, here's the deal," she says. "It's probably not a good idea for you to be left alone with Thor for awhile. You're a Centre kid and you're not used to toddlers, so until you're better at controlling yourself and knowing where a kid like his limits are, you'll just have to stay with me when Thor's around."
"Best punishment ever," Claudius says with feeling, and when Mom raps him on the head with her knuckles he rolls his eyes. "I know, I know, it's not a punishment, but you know what I mean. I just. I just pushed him, I didn't know he'd break." He scowls. "Babies should come with warning signs."
"Believe me, kiddo, I know." Mom makes a face. "I don't understand them either."
"I still don't know how to get him to quit it if he's bugging me," Claudius complains. "I guess it's even better if I'm not allowed to be alone, 'cause then I can just make somebody else deal with it."
Mom grins. "That's my plan. Shove him at Brutus and run. Works every time, seriously." She ruffles Claudius' hair, and he basks the way he always does when they have something new in common.
That reminds Claudius of his conversation with Brutus, and he frowns and stirs his ice cream until it turns into soup. "You know, people have everything all wrong," he says slowly, and Mom puts down her bowl so she can listen to him properly. She always takes him seriously. "My mom used to say you guys -- Careers -- were monsters and that it would serve me right if I joined the Program and sassed somebody and they beat me to death. But you don't do that and normal people do. How come? Is it because you have sparring and pushups and wall sits instead?" He chews on his lip. "I guess it's worse with victors, right? Like, if you can kill people with your hands you have to be more careful about hitting."
"It's not just us, though," Mom says. "Remember when you got into fights at school and I said there's no honour in fighting a civilian? It's double that with kids. Most kids can't defend themselves, especially civilians."
Claudius thinks back just enough that his throat closes and he has to stop. "I guess. It stopped for me when I hit back."
Mom makes a sort of hissing, growling noise in her throat for a second, but she chokes it down. "That's not the point either. You don't express authority over kids by hitting them, period."
"That's what Brutus said," Claudius says, dubious. "But when the hitting stopped, I stopped listening. There wasn't any other way to make me. What else is there?"
Mom tugs him close again, her arm around his shoulders. "Hey, I've never hit you and you listen to me, so what's that make me?"
"Weird?" Claudius says, and her face twists so he keeps going, quickly. "I mean, just, it's like I said. Careers, you've got sparring and laps and pushups and you're big and scary-looking so you don't have to. But civilians don't have that stuff and that's why there's no other way than hitting. Except --" he huffs an annoyed sigh. "Thor's too small for pushups and sparring and he doesn't understand, so Career babies can't really be that different from civilian ones."
He knows he's said something wrong when Mom freezes against his side. "D, do you really think people hit babies?"
Claudius clenches his jaw. "I know they do. They don't understand anything else." His words twist into his mom's voice that time she screamed at Jeremy the only time he ever said maybe she shouldn't, and it makes his shoulders hunch. "You hit them until they're old enough to hit back. That's the way it goes."
"There's a flaw in that," Mom says, very carefully, and Claudius hears the rage in her voice, the way it makes her sound husky, the way she bites off the t-sounds. "You're never going to be big enough to stop me. I'm still never going to do it."
"I know," he says, and sags a little. "I know, I just, I figured that was just you being you."
Mom goes quiet for a second, rubbing her hand over his arm, and when she talks again she's still cautious. "Do you think Brutus hits Thor? Because Thor definitely can't hit back."
"Brutus said he doesn't," Claudius says, and a headache presses itself behind his eyeballs. "I thought he did, and he was just lying or trying not to scare me or something, but -- Thor fell down and he got scared and he cried for his dad. Kids don't do that. It doesn't make sense."
"It makes sense when they know their dad isn't going to hurt them," Mom says.
"Mine never hurt me and I still didn't call for him," Claudius snaps, and Mom actually looks surprised. "He didn't do anything. He just hid in his stupid office with his stupid work and I don't even remember what he looks like anymore." He crosses his arms, and Mom makes a quiet 'oh' sound and pulls him closer. Claudius swallows and fights to get himself under control. "You're right though. Thor cried like he knew Brutus would come for him. And I didn't think pushing him would be that bad because he's obviously had worse, I mean, he's not an angel so I thought they would've -- I really didn't mean to --"
"Yes baby, we know," Mom says, and Claudius calms down again. "But you're right. Does it make sense to want someone who will hurt you when you're upset?"
"People are stupid when they're little," Claudius says, and against his will he curls in on himself. "Even when she -- I wanted my mom until --" the words stick in his throat like dry toast but he forces them out. "-- until she called me the m-word. That's when I knew she really wouldn't help me. Jeremy I knew way before."
Mom runs her fingers through his hair. "I know, baby. But you can want something without thinking it will happen. You don't call for somebody you know won't help you."
"No," Claudius says finally, and all his breath leaves him in a whoosh.
"If the person you wanted you kept hurting you, it makes sense you'd be confused," Mom says, still in that quiet voice, and she keeps petting his hair. "Make you angry. Make you scared."
Claudius's lungs squeeze. There's a hand on his arm, twisting and pulling, except no there isn't, and he grips his arms to make sure. "It wasn't just me. I asked other kids. It wasn't just me."
"I'm sure it wasn't. But just because lots of people do it, doesn't make it right."
Now it's tears, pushing against his eyes like water against a wall, and Claudius squeezes his eyes shut. "I don't want to talk about it anymore." He leans into Mom, buries his face in her side and wraps his arms around her waist. "Can we just -- can we go outside and look at the stars or something?"
"Of course," Mom says, and she rubs her hand over his back. "We still need to talk about this some more, but if you get that hitting kids isn't okay, we can stop for now." She kisses his hair, and Claudius whimpers -- he hates it when he makes that sound but Mom never yells at him for it -- and moves closer. "Hey, D, I want you to do something for me. Can you look at your hands?"
He pulls back just enough to look at his hands again, the twisted scar tissue on his palms and opposite side. The hand around his chest eases up, and the shadows pressing down on him move back a little.
"Good," Mom says, and she doesn't let go of him. "You didn't have those before, remember? You're here now. You're never going back there again."
Claudius sniffs. "Okay," he says, and hides his face in her shirt again. "Thanks for believing me. That I didn't mean to hurt Thor, I mean. She -- some people wouldn't."
"Yeah, well, you're a good kid, and I know that." This time she scrubs her fingers through his hair and over his scalp like she's rubbing shampoo through it, and Claudius' eyes fall closed. "You gonna be okay, kiddo?"
Claudius nods, tracing his fingers over his scars without opening his eyes. "Can we spar, though?"
"'Course we can, baby," Mom says, and she's called him that more than usual tonight but Claudius can't say he minds. She hugs him one more time, then crawls out of the fort and crouches outside, waiting for him. "You know I love you, right?"
"Yeah." Claudius gives her a half smile. "I love you too."
"Good." Mom claps his shoulder. On the way downstairs, she jostles his arm. "You know I'm kind of jealous. I wish when Thor wants to play with me I could tell him I'm not allowed."
Claudius grins. "Ha ha," he says, singsong. "Though I guess I could tell him that you have to stay with me, then we both win."
"Sounds good to me." Mom leads them outside, flicking the porch light on so it's not entirely dark in the yard, and she studies him with narrowed eyes. "Okay D-monster, show me what you got."
Claudius drops into his ready stance. "You're on," he says, and Mom grins back.