Canon Divergence: The Quarter Quell [3/9]
Title: The End is the Beginning is the End
Rating: PG
Characters: Brutus, Lyme, Enobaria, D2 OCs (Claudius, Nero, Odin), Gloss
Warnings: Background mentions of prostitution
Summary: When the Victor Games are announced, District 2 must send its heroes along with the rest of them. Brutus hopes doing his duty will silence the voices telling him this is wrong; Enobaria wants to burn the traitor Mockingjay for bringing this on people who only ever followed orders. Lyme needs to make it through without stabbing President Snow in the eye. Katniss saw what Katniss saw because it's what the powers that be wanted her to see. This is the other side.
Chapter Summary: Everything about the Capitol is familiar and faraway at once.
It's easier to think about Brutus, the tribute, as a separate person while talking strategy with Odin. They go over his appearance, what facial expressions Brutus ought to restrict himself to, whether he should go for familiar in the weapons training areas or try to shake things up and be unpredictable. They talk, and the act of planning and organizing settles the last of Brutus' nerves -- not jitters, Careers don't get jitters -- until the train pulls round the bend, flashing along the track that circles the lake at the city centre.
Brutus looks through the window at the glittering marble and glass. He's done this for over half his life now, made the trip almost every year whether he had a tribute in the Arena or not, save the handful of years he had a new Victor to take care of back in Two. The entire Capitol is a jewel of architecture, Panem's best artisans and carvers plucked from all over the country to build it, but Brutus does what he always does; he scans his eyes over the buildings and picks out the ones made from District 2 materials. There, that's marble from Palomine Bluffs; the pillars on that building there are The Plateau's best limestone. Brutus' own hometown, faded to nothing but a few pricks of sensory memory now and then, contributed the granite for the detailing on the municipal Justice Building.
District 2 is tied in with the Capitol in ways that the others can never hope to be; Two sends its children, its soldiers, its weapons, and its very bedrock. One stubborn snatch of recollection sticks in Brutus' brain no matter how many times he tries to forget it: a tall man, broad and muscled as Brutus -- father, likely; warmth like afternoon sunlight tinges the memory and suffuses him with calm -- hands Brutus, who's much, much smaller, a hunk of unworked stone. "This stone right here could end up on the countertop of the president," the man says to Brutus, who stares at it, eyes wide. "So don't no one try to tell you Two ain't the heart of this country."
If you paid him, Brutus couldn't tell you why those thoughts rattle around in his brain now, when he needs to be sharp -- when Brutus the tribute is counting on him to be on his game -- and he sits back from the window, cheek twitching. The train will disappear into the tunnel soon enough and there's nothing Two about that, poured concrete and tangles of electrical cables that flash past in bursts of light.
Brutus the Victor and Brutus the tribute keep themselves at a respectful distance until the train hisses to a stop at the station and Brutus automatically heads to the back of the car, closest to the mentor's entrance. He'll have to start checking the numbers, scanning the stats and running the sponsor polls -- but Odin stands in his way, face twisted. "Brutus," he says, and his voice cracks on the first syllable like Brutus has never heard in all the years they've known each other.
Enobaria pushes past him toward the tribute door at the front of the car. "Dumbass," she shoots at him, knocking Brutus in the shoulder on her way through.
Brutus with his thirteen years on Enobaria has earned more respect than that, but right as he's about to ask her what she thinks she's doing, it hits him. There is no hierarchy between them. Not anymore. Tributes start at zero.
Zero, and Enobaria's already jumped in with both feet while Brutus shuffles at the edge, sticking one foot in at a time. Brutus doesn't look at Odin. "Won't happen again," he grunts.
The door slides open to the prep area, white and blank, the scent of astringent stinging Brutus' nostrils and jolting him back decades. Ahead of him Enobaria hisses, a short, sharp intake of breath that Brutus almost doesn't catch as the door shuts behind them. Brutus follows the cant of her head and bites off a hiss himself: it's the bins by the door where the tributes are meant to strip off their clothes in preparation for meeting the prep team.
Even Enobaria stops there, her hands spasming into fists at her sides, but finally she clicks her tongue against her teeth. "Don't have a heart attack from the thrill, now," she tells Brutus, and pulls her shirt over her head.
Every Career tribute practices stripping down for prep teams and submitting to their pawing. By the time they actually make it to the Capitol, nudity is no stranger than breathing. Brutus is not self-conscious even now, but the last time he did this he didn't know his district pratner's favourite food. He couldn't trace the scars on her body with his mind from watching her Games, the same as all of Two and Panem with him. She wasn't thirteen years his junior, in a position where she's earned his protection and he her deference.
Brutus turns his back as he tugs off his clothes, stomach twisting. Enobaria doesn't make any cracks after that, and soon after they step through their private doors on opposite sides of the empty room.
The prep team that descends around him isn't the one that got him ready for the Games the first time; they're all too old now, well past the Capitol expiration date of forty. Brutus gets a new team every decade; he's only been to the Capitol a handful of times with this particular set, and never for a full Remake. They look like infants, fluttering around him and giggling at his chest hair, and Brutus doesn't move because he's Two and he's a tribute and Two tributes don't move in Remake, but. But.
"Look at you, all rugged and shaggy," chides Lumilla, a tiny, stick-thin girl just into her twenties when she joined Brutus' team five years ago. She runs a hand down his chest. "We'll have to get rid of that, you know. You're not in District 2 anymore."
Her partner, Carnassus, gives her a sharp look. "He might not be in District 2 ever again," he hisses, and Brutus ignores the obvious assumption that because he's silent, he can't hear them, and looks up at the uniform ceiling instead. "Have some respect!"
Lumilla sucks in a breath and falls silent. "I know," she says, and her hands tremble against Brutus' skin. "I just -- it does feel strange."
Brutus stares ahead until they finish, leaving him pink and scrubbed and smooth like a newborn puppy. It's just hair. Hair grows back; the injections they gave him will keep it from returning for the next month, but after that it will come back. Brutus bites down hard on the if that follows and throws it across the room by the scruff of its neck.
"We're going for strength with you this year," says his stylist. Unlike the prep team, Nala has been with him since the beginning, despite being given two chances to retire. She's run from age like any Capitol citizen, performing every known surgery to keep her youth, which means that she looks half Brutus' age instead of being nearly a decade above it. "Now I know what you're thinking, this is a Quarter Quell, we should go for flashy, but --" she purses her lips. "I think dependable is the image we should strive for."
Brutus knows what she means. Appeal to the Capitol's love of tradition, play himself as something solid in a world of fluff. He looks at her, this woman who saw him through the Arena and countless Capitol appearances, and gives her a small, humourless smile. "So we're not jumping on the flaming costume train then? Not gonna mix the themes and go with a volcano?"
"Definitely not," Nala says sharply. "Fire burns out and fades away. Stone is forever."
Brutus keeps his face neutral, but inside he lets out a sigh of something that might be relief if he were allowed to feel it. "That sounds an awful lot like Two thinking to me. You going native?"
"Well, you spend enough years in that primitive district of yours, you can't help absorbing a few things," Nala says in a brisk voice. "At least you've kept in shape, that makes this easier."
"What do you think I am," Brutus retorts, and he never would have joked this way with his stylist the first time round, but some clocks just won't unwind.
The rest of the day does its best to drive Brutus insane by flinging memories at him in all directions, muddled and mingling through all the years. It's the wrong side of the glass for everything; his experiences in the Games Centre prep areas for one year as a tribute have long been buried by all the times he did the same as a mentor. By now Brutus would have hit the Control Room to check the initial standings of his tributes, to see how the first Capitol crowds liked the look of them as they exited the train. Instead he's hustled off to wait for Nala and the prep team to finish up his parade outfit.
Brutus closes his eyes, lowers his breathing into a meditative slowness, and goes through the other tributes' stats in his head.
The waiting area for the chariot tribute parade mills with tributes, only two of them actually within the normal Reaping window. Enobaria, dressed in gold with her teeth newly polished and gleaming, leans over to Brutus. "Look, it's like the world's most embarrassing Victor reunion."
Brutus has no authority to scold her anymore -- Nero gives her a look that makes her roll her eyes but shut up regardless -- but what's worse is that she's not wrong. All around them is a mixture of the young, still-pretty Victors and their older, infirm, or addiction-wracked comrades, each of them dressed as though they were eighteen years old. They all wander between the chariots, chatting as though they're here for a party and not to kill each other, delaying the inevitable.
Enobaria's right, but it's not funny. Brutus curls his fists; he and Enobaria got off easy, standard warrior costumes for the both of them, although no armour-maker would ever leave bare arms or midriff, but the others -- Four's stylists have dressed Finnick Odair in nothing but knots of rope, which, given what gets done to that boy, makes Brutus' vision darken. He's at the Twelve chariot, flirting with a disapproving Katniss Everdeen, who at least isn't fainting over all that skin. They left Mags a little more dignity, but not much, and nowhere near what a Victor of over sixty years deserves.
Enobaria snorts at the Tens and their flaming belts, but Brutus has to look away. They're Victors and mentors, all of them, whether they took their jobs seriously or drank themselves into a stupor and never climbed back out. They deserve respect. They're all participating in the Hunger Games for a second time, making this already the greatest honour and sacrifice that any Panem citizen has ever seen, and Snow willing will never see again. They deserve more than to be dressed as farm animals or sheafs of grain or an explosion at a textile factory.
Caleb of District 5 bends and vomits all over his sparkly costume while his stylist sighs and pulls out a towel from her supply bag. She wipes him down, an easy enough job given that they've dressed him in waterproof material.
Gloss wanders over to say hello; he and Cashmere hardly have any costume at all, spray-painted with glitter and little else. "Well at least you two don't look that embarrassing. Let me level the playing field." He lifts his palm and blows a handful of sparkles at Enobaria, who bares her teeth at him. Gloss glances out at the wide archway leading to the main courtyard, and his smile turns brittle. On their chariot, Cashmere stands still while her prep team fusses with her hair, woven through with gold and silver threads.
"I bet they're drooling, calculating how much they can charge for one of us if we win," Gloss says in a low voice, thickened with disgust only barely tempered with his usual black humour. "If it's me, maybe I'll negotiate for a cut of it."
Brutus grits his teeth to stop himself from reacting. Gloss cracking jokes in front of him, in front of the mixed team of mentors and Victor-tributes both, just throws Brutus even more off-balance. But then Enobaria snorts and rolls her eyes. "You wish," she says, getting in his space within friendly rival distance, jockeying but not challenging for real. "Two's taking it this year, but nice try."
Brutus doesn't get it until Gloss' shoulders fall, just a fraction, and the line of his jaw stops looking like it could cut glass. Then Brutus has to fight even harder to stay neutral, because Enobaria's just made a promise, and now it's his turn to back it up. "She's right," Brutus grunts. "Don't get cocky just because you're half my age, kid. One doesn't have a chance."
Gloss flicks his gaze over to Brutus. "We'll see," he says before sauntering off.
Nala adjusts the line of Brutus' tunic, her hands shaking. "Well, I think you're set," she says into the silence, breaking the spell, and her cheer might be as thin as Mags' costume but it snaps them all out of it. "Heads up, look fierce, and I'm sure you'll knock them dead."
The first trumpets play, and ahead of them, the One chariot jerks forward as the horses break into a trot. Brutus starts to take a step back, let his tribute climb up the steps into the carriage, but this time he catches himself before he actually makes the wrong move. His blood pounds in his temples as he takes his position, staring out over the heads of the night-black horses into the square beyond.
"Anyone say 'deja vu'?" Enobaria quips, her tone as nonchalant as usual, but even she curses under her breath. All around them the chatter dies, replaced by the jingle of harnesses and swish of fabrics as the other tributes get into position.
He and Enobaria stand with a third person's space between them, hands joined and arms raised, their linked fists at level with their shoulders. It's a show of solidarity in the face of uncertainty without looking like they're desperate and clinging. As their chariot pulls out into the circle, Enobaria digs her nails hard into the back of Brutus' hand. He retaliates by crushing her fingers, and she snorts out a laugh without changing her expression. Some of the tension eases.
They don't wave or smile -- Two rarely panders, even in a regular year, and this time would only come off like begging -- but they do look. Brutus casts his gaze over the sea of faces, holding position for a second each time so whoever's in that direction will think he's looking right at them. He can't tell which chariots get the biggest reaction, not without craning around far too obviously, but they'll check the footage later tonight.
President Snow gives the typical speech, nothing fancy, though he tosses in a few words about the dual honour of a double sacrifice. "Each one of you here has already proven your worth," he says, his voice echoing through the circle. "Now you will do the same again, in an Arena filled with nothing but worthy opponents." (One of the Sixes sways, but her stylist tethered her to her chariot, and it keeps her upright.) "We honour you for your courage, and thank you for your sacrifice."
Brutus keeps his head up until the last of the chariots return to the prep area and the doors close behind them.
More attendants and security here than in other years, though not surprising. Irregular years always amp up the precautions, and there's never been a room this full of practiced killers before. It's just Nero and Odin waiting for them. "Did Twelve steal the show again?" Enobaria asks with poorly-feigned nonchalance. Across the room, the lovebirds hold hands as they make their way toward the elevator, their costumes glowing like embers.
"Too soon to say until we watch," Nero reminds her, which means, very likely, yes.
"The Parade hardly decides the outcome," Odin says, giving a nod over Enobaria's head to one of the mentors behind them. "There's more than flashy presentation in the works this year, and neither of you is about to repeat last year's mistakes."
No, they're not. Cato and Clove allowed themselves to fall careless and complacent, but Brutus and Enobaria won't make that mistake. Even Enobaria, who likes to take her time with her kills, knows better than to stop for a monologue without tracking the surroundings for enemies.
They watch the repeat footage of the parades and check their odds over dinner, eschewing the banquet table for the main common room and eating with their plates on their knees. Enobaria sits on the floor, her back resting against Nero's shins, and for a split second Nero's hand twitches out to run a hand over her hair before he catches himself. Brutus rips his gaze away before Nero sees him looking; the man deserves privacy in his slip-ups the same way any of them do.
Nothing surprising about the tribute parade, except that the costumes have gotten even tackier this year. "What the fuck are they supposed to be?" Enobaria asks, leaning forward when District 7's chariot reaches the cameras. "Have any of these people even seen a tree?"
Claudius, budged in between Lyme and the corner of the couch, tugs his legs up to his chest and rests his chin on his knees. "I don't get it. These aren't teenagers they've never met before. The stylists know these Victors, they've worked with them for years. Why aren't they trying harder?"
"This is what the sponsors want," Lyme says, her voice flat. "Nobody actually wants to see a parade full of tasteful, elegant costumes. They're here for the spectacle, and this year is double. That's all."
Claudius grits his teeth. "It's Twelve's fault," he says under his breath, mulish and pretty damn brave considering how many authority figures are sitting around him. "All of this, it's them and their stupid rule-breaking that's doing it to the rest of us. It's not fair that they get the costume everyone's talking about."
Ronan clucks his tongue, and he leans over and pokes Claudius' shoulder with the bottom of his cane. "This is why you're not a mentor, boy. It doesn't matter what the costumes look like. The fact of the matter is, those two are going to kill themselves to save each other; you can see it in their eyes. They're flash in the pan, nothing more." Claudius rubs at his arm with a rueful expression, and Ronan nods. "Not that we're going to underestimate them, or anyone. But you wait until tomorrow's training, and you'll see."
The television replays portions of the Reaping, and Brutus watches himself rush for the stage like he's eighteen again, nothing but determination colouring his face. Good. "I think there's no real surprise there," chuckles Caesar Flickerman, pausing the footage on a close-up of Brutus' face, lips pulled back into a snarl. "Brutus always was one of the most bloodthirsty Victors. I was older than I care to admit when I saw his Games, and I tell you, that final moment was one of the most chilling things I've seen. I'd be disappointed if he'd decided to sit this one out."
"He and his district partner certainly are relishing the opportunity to go back to their glory days," his partner agrees. "I know I won't be able to look away when it's time to watch Brutus and Enobaria together in action. Maybe she can give him some tips on how to use those teeth of his."
Nero grabs the remote and turns off the television, his expression grim. "I think that's all for tonight," he says. "Everyone should get some rest, we'll want to be the first ones downstairs tomorrow morning and that means an early sleep."
"If by that you mean play cards until midnight." Enobaria stretches back, tipping her head to grin at him upside-down. The filagree on her fangs reflects the light from the chandelier. "Okay, maybe not midnight, but you guys have put me back on a Centre diet, and it sucks. If it's my last week to live, I'm going to win some cake out of you before I go."
Nero gives her a stern look, but Enobaria doesn't flinch. "All right, missy, but that assumes you're going to beat me, and that's just not going to happen." He leans forward to catch Ronan's eye. "You in?"
They're likely going to talk strategy, what to do if it comes down to a Two showdown, but it's as good a cover as any. "I might be an elder, but I can out-bluff the two of you blindfolded," Ronan says, lifting himself out of his chair with dignity. "I'll see the rest of you in the morning."
Once they've gone, Odin stands and claps Claudius on the shoulder. "Come, my boy, let's get you familiarized with the sponsorship agreements. Paperwork is not the most exciting part of mentoring, but it is important." Claudius flicks his eyes toward Lyme, but she only nods, and he scrambles to his feet and follows Odin. "We'll have breakfast at six," Odin says, and he leads Claudius away to his suite.
Artemisia gathers up her paperwork and slips into her room without speaking, and Brutus lets her go because what the hell is he supposed to say. That leaves Brutus alone with Lyme, sitting together in the lounge like they have countless times before. One year ago they were here, fretting as Cato strolled into Clove's room, not even bothering to sneak despite it being against the rules.
Lyme elbows him. "You think our mentors are trying to get us alone in the hopes we'll finally hook up?"
Brutus makes a face at her, but the ancient joke helps, weirdly enough. He and Lyme went on exactly one date, deciding with mutual agreement that they would both rather fillet themselves and be served as the entree at the next Victor barbecue than ever sleep together. "Is this your way of saying you want to, because I hate to tell you --"
"You wish, caveman," Lyme shoots back. "You couldn't handle me in your prime, and that's way behind you."
"Look who's talking, you've never slept with anyone who wasn't half your size and pretty."
Lyme snorts at him, but she doesn't bother with another riposte. Instead she leans back against the sofa cushions, bracing herself with her fingers laced over her bent knee. "Everyone's spooked," she says, not looking at him. "The mentors, I mean. Nobody knows what's going on or who to trust. I don't know if you can count on the traditional pack this year."
Brutus frowns. "I already talked to the Ones. Enobaria and I, we agreed to --"
He doesn't need to finish the sentence, luckily; Lyme's been in the game almost as long as he has, and she doesn't say anything but her mouth thins. "I'm not talking about the Ones. I'm talking about Four."
Brutus stops dead. "Are you serious?"
Lyme runs a hand through her hair. "I mean, it's not in stone or anything, all right, so don't panic, but it looks like something's going on. I tried talking with Tyde but he kept giving me the runaround, said they were waiting to see how things play out."
"What's there to play out?" Brutus demands. "There hasn't been a Games without a Two-Four alliance since as long as I can remember. This isn't untested kids, we all know each other. They know what we bring to the table. What are they waiting for?"
Lyme shakes her head. "I don't know. But maybe hold off trying to ask Mags or Odair about it until we have a better idea. I'll keep talking to the mentors, see if I can figure it out."
She'll never manage on her own. When it comes to alliance agreements and sponsorship deals, Lyme is a scalpel, easing her way through with words and cunning like she navigated the minefield around the Cornucopia during her Games. But if the Fours are playing their own game after half a century of alliances, then this calls for a sledgehammer. Never mind picking and slicing and searching, it's time to dive right in and start smashing away until the truth comes out.
It's the reason Brutus and Lyme work so well together; Brutus is the most ruthless mentor Two has, able to bully and badger to get what he wants when the most delicate, peaceable negotiations won't do. There are times when his method won't work, when it's Lyme's subtlety and calculation are what they need, but not today. Everyone's too busy tiptoeing; someone has to jump in.
Except that's not Brutus' job, not this year, and he has to trust that Lyme can do her job.
"I'll keep an eye out in training," Brutus says, rubbing his forehead. "Odair was cozying up to Twelve today. I thought he was just trying to get to her, you know how he is with fresh blood, but maybe not."
"I'll keep trying," Lyme promises. "But it looks like everything might be up in the air in more ways than one this year."
"Great." Brutus glares across the room at a blank spot on the wall; another loose stone in his foundation, just what he needs.
Lyme swears like a quarrier. "I shouldn't have brought it up. It's just --" she waves a hand. "All of this. I don't know. If it'll throw you off your game, tell me and I won't."
"No, I want to know." Brutus curls his hands into fists, waits until she looks at him. "I'm serious. I'm not eighteen anymore, you can't just throw me back in blind."
"Yeah."
Lyme and Brutus have built a friendship on comfortable silence, on being able to sit and drink or go through paperwork and not need to say anything for hours. They've never been afraid of quiet, and Brutus might know that he and Lyme would never, ever work as a couple but he can still read her as well as he can himself. He knows she's struggling with something when she touches the Victor tattoo on her right wrist or fiddles with her cuffs. That when she rolls up her sleeves to bare her forearms, whoever's in the vicinity better run before she explodes. Very likely she knows how to find the hidden discomforts in his posture, maybe even better than Brutus does.
This is different. This is the kind of quiet that fills the room, choking and drowning Brutus until he wants to pick up a spear and hurl it through the air to see if he can cut through it like a curtain, bring it down.
Finally Lyme laughs, a short, ugly sound. "Okay, this officially sucks." She curls her hands into fists before forcing her fingers to open again, splaying them out against the air. "We should sleep."
Brutus heaves himself up. "Yeah, don't feel bad, you've still got a few more chances if you want to try to seduce me," he says, because if he doesn't the silence will keep chewing on him like the mutts did to Cato.
"Fuck you." Lyme flips him a rude gesture.
"Not into that, sweetheart," Brutus drawls, and that's an old joke, too. He knows how Lyme likes to do her boys, and he always tells her he'd rather take a spear to the leg.
It's a gamble, but it works; Lyme growls and charges him head-on. Brutus could brace himself and stay standing, but he lets her knock him over backwards so he can twist midway down and slam her into the floor.
It's a messy fight. They can't lie when sparring no matter how much they try to hide elsewhere, and that's half the point. Lyme's arms tremble when she hooks her elbow around his throat and chokes him until he throws her. Brutus pauses when he gets her back against the floor, pressing his forehead against her shoulder before she shoves him off. At last he gets her down for real, but she heaves her legs up and deals a hard kick to his head, knocking him sideways. They both flop back against the carpet, chests heaving.
Brutus doesn't feel better, not exactly, but he has his head above water now. He flops one hand to the side and says "Not bad, sweetheart" while giving Lyme a condescending pat on the ass; she leans over and punches him in the throat. Brutus finally laughs, gasping for air, and soon Lyme snickers beside him.
"This is so fucked up," Lyme says finally, one arm draped over her eyes.
"Tell me about it." Brutus rolls over and gets to his feet, offers Lyme a hand up just so she can bat it away and call him a sexist bag of dicks. It lets him keep a hold of himself until he's in his room with the lights off, and by then the aches and bruises make themselves felt until it's easier to sleep than think.
He and Enobaria head down for training the next morning at seven, after a bland breakfast and a quick strategy session. "You realize there's going to be absolutely no one here," Enobaria gripes, and her hands swipe uselessly at the sides of their black and grey training uniform. "Ugh, no pockets, of course," she mutters. "This just keeps getting worse."
"Guessing they don't want any of us swiping stuff from the stations." Brutus doesn't look at the Peacekeepers who guard each door they pass. They'll be from Two, like any of the best of the best who score gigs at the Capitol, and at least ten years younger than Brutus. They'll have grown up with Brutus as a legend, watching the highlights from his Games when they repeat every year. He's glad for the visors.
Enobaria grins. "Well now I'm going to have to steal something just because you said that."
Brutus gives her a look. "How old are you?"
"Eighteen all over again," Enobaria says in a dark singsong, the kind of voice that sounds like blood smells. "I'm allowed to have a second adolescence. I'd say so are you, but you're old, it'd just be embarrassing."
The door to the training room slides open in front of them, and they cross through into an empty space. No other tributes, only a handful of trainers, and the Gamemaker booth at the end is empty.
Enobaria runs her tongue over her teeth, then licks her lips to get rid of the smear of blood. "How many do you think are going to show up?"
Brutus does the math in his head, counting through the ones who are too sick or impaired to make it, adding the ones who likely won't have two fucks to rub together to make a caring-fire. Cashmere and Gloss, he guesses, will come down by ten; they're Career enough that they won't skip the whole thing, but young and brimming with repressed anger so they'll want to sleep in. "Maybe half," he essays. "I dunno, we'll see."
Enobaria folds her arms and looks around, scuffing her boot experimentally against the soft, protective floor, cushioned so tributes don't break too many bones ahead of time. "Looks a bit different than in our day -- or, well, mine, I should say." Brutus knows what she's going to say before she does, as it's a standard joke that everyone from the sixties or above loves to make, but he lets it slide because it's familiar, the mocking almost comforting. "What did they use to train Careers way back before the last Quarter Quell?"
"Ha, ha, ha." Brutus rolls his eyes, and he marches over to the weapons station. "Yours or mine?"
Enobaria eyes the racks of sharp and shiny things with a hungry gleam. She's allowed weapons in the Village the same as all Victors who clear recovery, but Nero always kept an eye on her. "Age before beauty," she drawls, waving an arm at the swords. "Don't want you to break a hip early on."
"You know you're pushing it," Brutus tells her. He doesn't actually care, but he's not about to let her get away with calling him old in front of the cameras, either.
The trainer in charge of weapons lets them peruse, choosing swords that work best for their reach. "No blood," she warns them. "I mean it, now."
Enobaria flips her sword over in her hand in a showy fashion, the way the cameras love but the trainers warn never to do in an actual combat situation. She makes sure to nick Brutus' arm on the way back to the start position, and he doesn't dodge because Enobaria will relax once she's drawn it. "Oops," she says, grinning. The trainer sighs but doesn't waste her time pushing for an apology.
Enobaria is fast, one of the quickest Victors District 2 ever produced; her specialty, before she lost her mind and went for the throat, was death by a thousand cuts. She would dart in, get in a hit, and leave before her opponent, hopped up on adrenaline and fear or rage, noticed she'd got them. She'd provoke them until eventually they collapsed from blood loss and she moved in to finish them off. It never came off as cowardly because of the way Enobaria did it, deliberately provoking and teasing, and by the end she never failed to work the other person up into a rage.
Past his prime or no, Brutus is no slouch himself. He likes to wait the other person out, to keep grinding and grinding until exhaustion wears them down and he overpowers them in the end. Both he and Enobaria can make quick, clean kills when they have to, but they also know how to put on a show.
Since it's a play fight, an exhibition match for the ever-present cameras even without the Gamemakers' physical presence, Brutus steps back and hefts his sword. "Stop just before body contact," he says. "Death strike wins, so don't fuck around."
"Who, me?" Enobaria grins, then lunges.
Brutus wins two out of three, but only because they're fighting clean. In the Arena Enobaria will have more than just a sword. She likes keeping knives tucked up her sleeve and into her boot, and if it comes down to them he'll have to watch out. For now, though, it's about form, and in a straight-up match Brutus will beat her almost every single time.
Afterward, Brutus hands his sword to the trainer in charge of the station, even though he knows they won't bother to sharpen it and will probably just throw it away. Weapons are disposable to the Capitol, but Brutus can't bear to toss it on the ground and leave. Enobaria doesn't bother, laying her sword on the top of the rack and sauntering off.
The matches took up the better part of an hour, and after that they split up. Official training still hasn't started, but it's always good to look eager. They need to play into the narrative Enobaria started when she forbade anyone to volunteer for her, which Brutus continued when he ran for the stage. They can't look like they're hesitating, not when a fair portion of the other Victor-tributes will be happy to get their hands on a Career. They say it's not personal, but Brutus wasn't Reaped yesterday -- not the first time, anyway.
Enobaria swings herself up onto the parallel bars with a bored expression; Brutus eyes the other set but decides against it. He screwed up his left shoulder in training, years ago, when the trainers worried more about getting him ready for the Arena than making sure he'd be in peak condition if he came out. He wrenched it again during his Games, and over the years it flares up again if he pushes himself. The last thing he needs is to make a dumb mistake and throw out his arm before they start.
The survival stations are still being prepped, and so Brutus takes a turn in front of the dodging machine, ducking and darting to avoid the balls of paint while hitting the ones he can't avoid with a flat paddle. He finishes with his uniform clean of pink smears, as Enobaria drops down from the bars and brushes chalk from her palms. It's fifteen minutes to ten.
"Now what?" Enobaria asks. "Basket-weaving, maybe? Seems about your speed, old man."
"You know, little girl, you're asking for a basket to the face," Brutus shoots back, but then the door to the training room hisses open and the Twelves walk in, hand in hand.
Brutus and Enobaria draw closer together, standing as a unit with arms crossed as they watch the youngest Victors make their way into the room. Enobaria leans into Brutus' space. "Don't they look cute," she says, low enough that the kids won't hear them. "How much of that romance do you buy? I want to say it's bullshit, but that girl can't act for shit either, so I dunno."
Brutus shrugs. It's not his job to decide whether the games the other tributes are playing are genuine. "I think however it started, they're both Victors," he says, watching them as they circle the stations, fingers twined tightly enough that their knuckles pale. "Whether it was real when they started, they'd be idiots to push each other away now. They're not going to find anyone else."
Odds are Twelve won't get another Victor before the centennial, and certainly not soon enough to make a match for either of them if Twelve wins the Quell. Like it or not, those kids are all they'll ever have. No one will understand them like they do each other, and anything they try with anyone else will only ever die like a flame trapped in a jar.
Not that Brutus has experience. Definitely not like it would matter anymore if he did.
"She's a Victor," Enobaria agrees, grudging. "He was just along for the ride."
"Doesn't matter." Brutus shrugs. "They went through it together, that's what counts. It ain't about who's got more blood on their hands."
Enobaria narrows her eyes. The others are trickling in now, and the Twelves glance at them as they enter, sticking together and refusing to let go. "It'll count when the sponsors eat up the romance like that's all that matters," Enobaria mutters darkly. "Because you know, those of us without adoring fiancés aren't worth shit."
"It's just the pre-show," Brutus reminds her, still watching as the teenagers shy away from everyone else. The boy looks curious enough, studying the other Victors, but Everdeen's face is hard, suspicious.
The Twelves haven't done the mentor circuit with the rest of them; haven't learned everyone's nervous tics as the hours creep onward and the remaining tributes catch a few short hours of sleep. She doesn't know that Hester from Nine sings under her breath to keep herself awake, that Edwin from Ten uses pencils and pens and anything in reach as drumsticks until everyone around him is ready to choke him to death. That Beetee, for all his glasses and twitchy appearance, has a sense of humour so dark and biting that half the time his targets don't realize he's just skewered them through. That most of them cheat at cards, but only a handful of them are any good at it, and if you got Woof drunk enough, back before he lost his hearing and half his mind, he could list off every Victor's tells when bluffing.
These kids are not part of the family yet, and now they never will be. Brutus knows exactly why the girl keeps her distance; why bother to get to know people just in time to kill them? Brutus gets it, and the hard truth is, if Twelve refuses to make alliances this year, that makes it easier for the rest of them. Last year everyone else fervently hoped the lovers would die in the dirt so their own could make it home anyhow. Better not to confuse things.
Katniss finds Brutus and stares at him, eyes hard and narrowed. Brutus stares back. He's surprised and a little impressed when she doesn't flinch away, and they lock gazes until her boy tugs her in another direction. She casts one last look over her shoulder as he leads her toward the paints, and Brutus puts her out of his mind.
She's marked for death as surely as if the Capitol painted a target on her back; if the other tributes don't kill her, the Arena and the Gamemakers will. He has bigger things to worry about.
Rating: PG
Characters: Brutus, Lyme, Enobaria, D2 OCs (Claudius, Nero, Odin), Gloss
Warnings: Background mentions of prostitution
Summary: When the Victor Games are announced, District 2 must send its heroes along with the rest of them. Brutus hopes doing his duty will silence the voices telling him this is wrong; Enobaria wants to burn the traitor Mockingjay for bringing this on people who only ever followed orders. Lyme needs to make it through without stabbing President Snow in the eye. Katniss saw what Katniss saw because it's what the powers that be wanted her to see. This is the other side.
Chapter Summary: Everything about the Capitol is familiar and faraway at once.
It's easier to think about Brutus, the tribute, as a separate person while talking strategy with Odin. They go over his appearance, what facial expressions Brutus ought to restrict himself to, whether he should go for familiar in the weapons training areas or try to shake things up and be unpredictable. They talk, and the act of planning and organizing settles the last of Brutus' nerves -- not jitters, Careers don't get jitters -- until the train pulls round the bend, flashing along the track that circles the lake at the city centre.
Brutus looks through the window at the glittering marble and glass. He's done this for over half his life now, made the trip almost every year whether he had a tribute in the Arena or not, save the handful of years he had a new Victor to take care of back in Two. The entire Capitol is a jewel of architecture, Panem's best artisans and carvers plucked from all over the country to build it, but Brutus does what he always does; he scans his eyes over the buildings and picks out the ones made from District 2 materials. There, that's marble from Palomine Bluffs; the pillars on that building there are The Plateau's best limestone. Brutus' own hometown, faded to nothing but a few pricks of sensory memory now and then, contributed the granite for the detailing on the municipal Justice Building.
District 2 is tied in with the Capitol in ways that the others can never hope to be; Two sends its children, its soldiers, its weapons, and its very bedrock. One stubborn snatch of recollection sticks in Brutus' brain no matter how many times he tries to forget it: a tall man, broad and muscled as Brutus -- father, likely; warmth like afternoon sunlight tinges the memory and suffuses him with calm -- hands Brutus, who's much, much smaller, a hunk of unworked stone. "This stone right here could end up on the countertop of the president," the man says to Brutus, who stares at it, eyes wide. "So don't no one try to tell you Two ain't the heart of this country."
If you paid him, Brutus couldn't tell you why those thoughts rattle around in his brain now, when he needs to be sharp -- when Brutus the tribute is counting on him to be on his game -- and he sits back from the window, cheek twitching. The train will disappear into the tunnel soon enough and there's nothing Two about that, poured concrete and tangles of electrical cables that flash past in bursts of light.
Brutus the Victor and Brutus the tribute keep themselves at a respectful distance until the train hisses to a stop at the station and Brutus automatically heads to the back of the car, closest to the mentor's entrance. He'll have to start checking the numbers, scanning the stats and running the sponsor polls -- but Odin stands in his way, face twisted. "Brutus," he says, and his voice cracks on the first syllable like Brutus has never heard in all the years they've known each other.
Enobaria pushes past him toward the tribute door at the front of the car. "Dumbass," she shoots at him, knocking Brutus in the shoulder on her way through.
Brutus with his thirteen years on Enobaria has earned more respect than that, but right as he's about to ask her what she thinks she's doing, it hits him. There is no hierarchy between them. Not anymore. Tributes start at zero.
Zero, and Enobaria's already jumped in with both feet while Brutus shuffles at the edge, sticking one foot in at a time. Brutus doesn't look at Odin. "Won't happen again," he grunts.
The door slides open to the prep area, white and blank, the scent of astringent stinging Brutus' nostrils and jolting him back decades. Ahead of him Enobaria hisses, a short, sharp intake of breath that Brutus almost doesn't catch as the door shuts behind them. Brutus follows the cant of her head and bites off a hiss himself: it's the bins by the door where the tributes are meant to strip off their clothes in preparation for meeting the prep team.
Even Enobaria stops there, her hands spasming into fists at her sides, but finally she clicks her tongue against her teeth. "Don't have a heart attack from the thrill, now," she tells Brutus, and pulls her shirt over her head.
Every Career tribute practices stripping down for prep teams and submitting to their pawing. By the time they actually make it to the Capitol, nudity is no stranger than breathing. Brutus is not self-conscious even now, but the last time he did this he didn't know his district pratner's favourite food. He couldn't trace the scars on her body with his mind from watching her Games, the same as all of Two and Panem with him. She wasn't thirteen years his junior, in a position where she's earned his protection and he her deference.
Brutus turns his back as he tugs off his clothes, stomach twisting. Enobaria doesn't make any cracks after that, and soon after they step through their private doors on opposite sides of the empty room.
The prep team that descends around him isn't the one that got him ready for the Games the first time; they're all too old now, well past the Capitol expiration date of forty. Brutus gets a new team every decade; he's only been to the Capitol a handful of times with this particular set, and never for a full Remake. They look like infants, fluttering around him and giggling at his chest hair, and Brutus doesn't move because he's Two and he's a tribute and Two tributes don't move in Remake, but. But.
"Look at you, all rugged and shaggy," chides Lumilla, a tiny, stick-thin girl just into her twenties when she joined Brutus' team five years ago. She runs a hand down his chest. "We'll have to get rid of that, you know. You're not in District 2 anymore."
Her partner, Carnassus, gives her a sharp look. "He might not be in District 2 ever again," he hisses, and Brutus ignores the obvious assumption that because he's silent, he can't hear them, and looks up at the uniform ceiling instead. "Have some respect!"
Lumilla sucks in a breath and falls silent. "I know," she says, and her hands tremble against Brutus' skin. "I just -- it does feel strange."
Brutus stares ahead until they finish, leaving him pink and scrubbed and smooth like a newborn puppy. It's just hair. Hair grows back; the injections they gave him will keep it from returning for the next month, but after that it will come back. Brutus bites down hard on the if that follows and throws it across the room by the scruff of its neck.
"We're going for strength with you this year," says his stylist. Unlike the prep team, Nala has been with him since the beginning, despite being given two chances to retire. She's run from age like any Capitol citizen, performing every known surgery to keep her youth, which means that she looks half Brutus' age instead of being nearly a decade above it. "Now I know what you're thinking, this is a Quarter Quell, we should go for flashy, but --" she purses her lips. "I think dependable is the image we should strive for."
Brutus knows what she means. Appeal to the Capitol's love of tradition, play himself as something solid in a world of fluff. He looks at her, this woman who saw him through the Arena and countless Capitol appearances, and gives her a small, humourless smile. "So we're not jumping on the flaming costume train then? Not gonna mix the themes and go with a volcano?"
"Definitely not," Nala says sharply. "Fire burns out and fades away. Stone is forever."
Brutus keeps his face neutral, but inside he lets out a sigh of something that might be relief if he were allowed to feel it. "That sounds an awful lot like Two thinking to me. You going native?"
"Well, you spend enough years in that primitive district of yours, you can't help absorbing a few things," Nala says in a brisk voice. "At least you've kept in shape, that makes this easier."
"What do you think I am," Brutus retorts, and he never would have joked this way with his stylist the first time round, but some clocks just won't unwind.
The rest of the day does its best to drive Brutus insane by flinging memories at him in all directions, muddled and mingling through all the years. It's the wrong side of the glass for everything; his experiences in the Games Centre prep areas for one year as a tribute have long been buried by all the times he did the same as a mentor. By now Brutus would have hit the Control Room to check the initial standings of his tributes, to see how the first Capitol crowds liked the look of them as they exited the train. Instead he's hustled off to wait for Nala and the prep team to finish up his parade outfit.
Brutus closes his eyes, lowers his breathing into a meditative slowness, and goes through the other tributes' stats in his head.
The waiting area for the chariot tribute parade mills with tributes, only two of them actually within the normal Reaping window. Enobaria, dressed in gold with her teeth newly polished and gleaming, leans over to Brutus. "Look, it's like the world's most embarrassing Victor reunion."
Brutus has no authority to scold her anymore -- Nero gives her a look that makes her roll her eyes but shut up regardless -- but what's worse is that she's not wrong. All around them is a mixture of the young, still-pretty Victors and their older, infirm, or addiction-wracked comrades, each of them dressed as though they were eighteen years old. They all wander between the chariots, chatting as though they're here for a party and not to kill each other, delaying the inevitable.
Enobaria's right, but it's not funny. Brutus curls his fists; he and Enobaria got off easy, standard warrior costumes for the both of them, although no armour-maker would ever leave bare arms or midriff, but the others -- Four's stylists have dressed Finnick Odair in nothing but knots of rope, which, given what gets done to that boy, makes Brutus' vision darken. He's at the Twelve chariot, flirting with a disapproving Katniss Everdeen, who at least isn't fainting over all that skin. They left Mags a little more dignity, but not much, and nowhere near what a Victor of over sixty years deserves.
Enobaria snorts at the Tens and their flaming belts, but Brutus has to look away. They're Victors and mentors, all of them, whether they took their jobs seriously or drank themselves into a stupor and never climbed back out. They deserve respect. They're all participating in the Hunger Games for a second time, making this already the greatest honour and sacrifice that any Panem citizen has ever seen, and Snow willing will never see again. They deserve more than to be dressed as farm animals or sheafs of grain or an explosion at a textile factory.
Caleb of District 5 bends and vomits all over his sparkly costume while his stylist sighs and pulls out a towel from her supply bag. She wipes him down, an easy enough job given that they've dressed him in waterproof material.
Gloss wanders over to say hello; he and Cashmere hardly have any costume at all, spray-painted with glitter and little else. "Well at least you two don't look that embarrassing. Let me level the playing field." He lifts his palm and blows a handful of sparkles at Enobaria, who bares her teeth at him. Gloss glances out at the wide archway leading to the main courtyard, and his smile turns brittle. On their chariot, Cashmere stands still while her prep team fusses with her hair, woven through with gold and silver threads.
"I bet they're drooling, calculating how much they can charge for one of us if we win," Gloss says in a low voice, thickened with disgust only barely tempered with his usual black humour. "If it's me, maybe I'll negotiate for a cut of it."
Brutus grits his teeth to stop himself from reacting. Gloss cracking jokes in front of him, in front of the mixed team of mentors and Victor-tributes both, just throws Brutus even more off-balance. But then Enobaria snorts and rolls her eyes. "You wish," she says, getting in his space within friendly rival distance, jockeying but not challenging for real. "Two's taking it this year, but nice try."
Brutus doesn't get it until Gloss' shoulders fall, just a fraction, and the line of his jaw stops looking like it could cut glass. Then Brutus has to fight even harder to stay neutral, because Enobaria's just made a promise, and now it's his turn to back it up. "She's right," Brutus grunts. "Don't get cocky just because you're half my age, kid. One doesn't have a chance."
Gloss flicks his gaze over to Brutus. "We'll see," he says before sauntering off.
Nala adjusts the line of Brutus' tunic, her hands shaking. "Well, I think you're set," she says into the silence, breaking the spell, and her cheer might be as thin as Mags' costume but it snaps them all out of it. "Heads up, look fierce, and I'm sure you'll knock them dead."
The first trumpets play, and ahead of them, the One chariot jerks forward as the horses break into a trot. Brutus starts to take a step back, let his tribute climb up the steps into the carriage, but this time he catches himself before he actually makes the wrong move. His blood pounds in his temples as he takes his position, staring out over the heads of the night-black horses into the square beyond.
"Anyone say 'deja vu'?" Enobaria quips, her tone as nonchalant as usual, but even she curses under her breath. All around them the chatter dies, replaced by the jingle of harnesses and swish of fabrics as the other tributes get into position.
He and Enobaria stand with a third person's space between them, hands joined and arms raised, their linked fists at level with their shoulders. It's a show of solidarity in the face of uncertainty without looking like they're desperate and clinging. As their chariot pulls out into the circle, Enobaria digs her nails hard into the back of Brutus' hand. He retaliates by crushing her fingers, and she snorts out a laugh without changing her expression. Some of the tension eases.
They don't wave or smile -- Two rarely panders, even in a regular year, and this time would only come off like begging -- but they do look. Brutus casts his gaze over the sea of faces, holding position for a second each time so whoever's in that direction will think he's looking right at them. He can't tell which chariots get the biggest reaction, not without craning around far too obviously, but they'll check the footage later tonight.
President Snow gives the typical speech, nothing fancy, though he tosses in a few words about the dual honour of a double sacrifice. "Each one of you here has already proven your worth," he says, his voice echoing through the circle. "Now you will do the same again, in an Arena filled with nothing but worthy opponents." (One of the Sixes sways, but her stylist tethered her to her chariot, and it keeps her upright.) "We honour you for your courage, and thank you for your sacrifice."
Brutus keeps his head up until the last of the chariots return to the prep area and the doors close behind them.
More attendants and security here than in other years, though not surprising. Irregular years always amp up the precautions, and there's never been a room this full of practiced killers before. It's just Nero and Odin waiting for them. "Did Twelve steal the show again?" Enobaria asks with poorly-feigned nonchalance. Across the room, the lovebirds hold hands as they make their way toward the elevator, their costumes glowing like embers.
"Too soon to say until we watch," Nero reminds her, which means, very likely, yes.
"The Parade hardly decides the outcome," Odin says, giving a nod over Enobaria's head to one of the mentors behind them. "There's more than flashy presentation in the works this year, and neither of you is about to repeat last year's mistakes."
No, they're not. Cato and Clove allowed themselves to fall careless and complacent, but Brutus and Enobaria won't make that mistake. Even Enobaria, who likes to take her time with her kills, knows better than to stop for a monologue without tracking the surroundings for enemies.
They watch the repeat footage of the parades and check their odds over dinner, eschewing the banquet table for the main common room and eating with their plates on their knees. Enobaria sits on the floor, her back resting against Nero's shins, and for a split second Nero's hand twitches out to run a hand over her hair before he catches himself. Brutus rips his gaze away before Nero sees him looking; the man deserves privacy in his slip-ups the same way any of them do.
Nothing surprising about the tribute parade, except that the costumes have gotten even tackier this year. "What the fuck are they supposed to be?" Enobaria asks, leaning forward when District 7's chariot reaches the cameras. "Have any of these people even seen a tree?"
Claudius, budged in between Lyme and the corner of the couch, tugs his legs up to his chest and rests his chin on his knees. "I don't get it. These aren't teenagers they've never met before. The stylists know these Victors, they've worked with them for years. Why aren't they trying harder?"
"This is what the sponsors want," Lyme says, her voice flat. "Nobody actually wants to see a parade full of tasteful, elegant costumes. They're here for the spectacle, and this year is double. That's all."
Claudius grits his teeth. "It's Twelve's fault," he says under his breath, mulish and pretty damn brave considering how many authority figures are sitting around him. "All of this, it's them and their stupid rule-breaking that's doing it to the rest of us. It's not fair that they get the costume everyone's talking about."
Ronan clucks his tongue, and he leans over and pokes Claudius' shoulder with the bottom of his cane. "This is why you're not a mentor, boy. It doesn't matter what the costumes look like. The fact of the matter is, those two are going to kill themselves to save each other; you can see it in their eyes. They're flash in the pan, nothing more." Claudius rubs at his arm with a rueful expression, and Ronan nods. "Not that we're going to underestimate them, or anyone. But you wait until tomorrow's training, and you'll see."
The television replays portions of the Reaping, and Brutus watches himself rush for the stage like he's eighteen again, nothing but determination colouring his face. Good. "I think there's no real surprise there," chuckles Caesar Flickerman, pausing the footage on a close-up of Brutus' face, lips pulled back into a snarl. "Brutus always was one of the most bloodthirsty Victors. I was older than I care to admit when I saw his Games, and I tell you, that final moment was one of the most chilling things I've seen. I'd be disappointed if he'd decided to sit this one out."
"He and his district partner certainly are relishing the opportunity to go back to their glory days," his partner agrees. "I know I won't be able to look away when it's time to watch Brutus and Enobaria together in action. Maybe she can give him some tips on how to use those teeth of his."
Nero grabs the remote and turns off the television, his expression grim. "I think that's all for tonight," he says. "Everyone should get some rest, we'll want to be the first ones downstairs tomorrow morning and that means an early sleep."
"If by that you mean play cards until midnight." Enobaria stretches back, tipping her head to grin at him upside-down. The filagree on her fangs reflects the light from the chandelier. "Okay, maybe not midnight, but you guys have put me back on a Centre diet, and it sucks. If it's my last week to live, I'm going to win some cake out of you before I go."
Nero gives her a stern look, but Enobaria doesn't flinch. "All right, missy, but that assumes you're going to beat me, and that's just not going to happen." He leans forward to catch Ronan's eye. "You in?"
They're likely going to talk strategy, what to do if it comes down to a Two showdown, but it's as good a cover as any. "I might be an elder, but I can out-bluff the two of you blindfolded," Ronan says, lifting himself out of his chair with dignity. "I'll see the rest of you in the morning."
Once they've gone, Odin stands and claps Claudius on the shoulder. "Come, my boy, let's get you familiarized with the sponsorship agreements. Paperwork is not the most exciting part of mentoring, but it is important." Claudius flicks his eyes toward Lyme, but she only nods, and he scrambles to his feet and follows Odin. "We'll have breakfast at six," Odin says, and he leads Claudius away to his suite.
Artemisia gathers up her paperwork and slips into her room without speaking, and Brutus lets her go because what the hell is he supposed to say. That leaves Brutus alone with Lyme, sitting together in the lounge like they have countless times before. One year ago they were here, fretting as Cato strolled into Clove's room, not even bothering to sneak despite it being against the rules.
Lyme elbows him. "You think our mentors are trying to get us alone in the hopes we'll finally hook up?"
Brutus makes a face at her, but the ancient joke helps, weirdly enough. He and Lyme went on exactly one date, deciding with mutual agreement that they would both rather fillet themselves and be served as the entree at the next Victor barbecue than ever sleep together. "Is this your way of saying you want to, because I hate to tell you --"
"You wish, caveman," Lyme shoots back. "You couldn't handle me in your prime, and that's way behind you."
"Look who's talking, you've never slept with anyone who wasn't half your size and pretty."
Lyme snorts at him, but she doesn't bother with another riposte. Instead she leans back against the sofa cushions, bracing herself with her fingers laced over her bent knee. "Everyone's spooked," she says, not looking at him. "The mentors, I mean. Nobody knows what's going on or who to trust. I don't know if you can count on the traditional pack this year."
Brutus frowns. "I already talked to the Ones. Enobaria and I, we agreed to --"
He doesn't need to finish the sentence, luckily; Lyme's been in the game almost as long as he has, and she doesn't say anything but her mouth thins. "I'm not talking about the Ones. I'm talking about Four."
Brutus stops dead. "Are you serious?"
Lyme runs a hand through her hair. "I mean, it's not in stone or anything, all right, so don't panic, but it looks like something's going on. I tried talking with Tyde but he kept giving me the runaround, said they were waiting to see how things play out."
"What's there to play out?" Brutus demands. "There hasn't been a Games without a Two-Four alliance since as long as I can remember. This isn't untested kids, we all know each other. They know what we bring to the table. What are they waiting for?"
Lyme shakes her head. "I don't know. But maybe hold off trying to ask Mags or Odair about it until we have a better idea. I'll keep talking to the mentors, see if I can figure it out."
She'll never manage on her own. When it comes to alliance agreements and sponsorship deals, Lyme is a scalpel, easing her way through with words and cunning like she navigated the minefield around the Cornucopia during her Games. But if the Fours are playing their own game after half a century of alliances, then this calls for a sledgehammer. Never mind picking and slicing and searching, it's time to dive right in and start smashing away until the truth comes out.
It's the reason Brutus and Lyme work so well together; Brutus is the most ruthless mentor Two has, able to bully and badger to get what he wants when the most delicate, peaceable negotiations won't do. There are times when his method won't work, when it's Lyme's subtlety and calculation are what they need, but not today. Everyone's too busy tiptoeing; someone has to jump in.
Except that's not Brutus' job, not this year, and he has to trust that Lyme can do her job.
"I'll keep an eye out in training," Brutus says, rubbing his forehead. "Odair was cozying up to Twelve today. I thought he was just trying to get to her, you know how he is with fresh blood, but maybe not."
"I'll keep trying," Lyme promises. "But it looks like everything might be up in the air in more ways than one this year."
"Great." Brutus glares across the room at a blank spot on the wall; another loose stone in his foundation, just what he needs.
Lyme swears like a quarrier. "I shouldn't have brought it up. It's just --" she waves a hand. "All of this. I don't know. If it'll throw you off your game, tell me and I won't."
"No, I want to know." Brutus curls his hands into fists, waits until she looks at him. "I'm serious. I'm not eighteen anymore, you can't just throw me back in blind."
"Yeah."
Lyme and Brutus have built a friendship on comfortable silence, on being able to sit and drink or go through paperwork and not need to say anything for hours. They've never been afraid of quiet, and Brutus might know that he and Lyme would never, ever work as a couple but he can still read her as well as he can himself. He knows she's struggling with something when she touches the Victor tattoo on her right wrist or fiddles with her cuffs. That when she rolls up her sleeves to bare her forearms, whoever's in the vicinity better run before she explodes. Very likely she knows how to find the hidden discomforts in his posture, maybe even better than Brutus does.
This is different. This is the kind of quiet that fills the room, choking and drowning Brutus until he wants to pick up a spear and hurl it through the air to see if he can cut through it like a curtain, bring it down.
Finally Lyme laughs, a short, ugly sound. "Okay, this officially sucks." She curls her hands into fists before forcing her fingers to open again, splaying them out against the air. "We should sleep."
Brutus heaves himself up. "Yeah, don't feel bad, you've still got a few more chances if you want to try to seduce me," he says, because if he doesn't the silence will keep chewing on him like the mutts did to Cato.
"Fuck you." Lyme flips him a rude gesture.
"Not into that, sweetheart," Brutus drawls, and that's an old joke, too. He knows how Lyme likes to do her boys, and he always tells her he'd rather take a spear to the leg.
It's a gamble, but it works; Lyme growls and charges him head-on. Brutus could brace himself and stay standing, but he lets her knock him over backwards so he can twist midway down and slam her into the floor.
It's a messy fight. They can't lie when sparring no matter how much they try to hide elsewhere, and that's half the point. Lyme's arms tremble when she hooks her elbow around his throat and chokes him until he throws her. Brutus pauses when he gets her back against the floor, pressing his forehead against her shoulder before she shoves him off. At last he gets her down for real, but she heaves her legs up and deals a hard kick to his head, knocking him sideways. They both flop back against the carpet, chests heaving.
Brutus doesn't feel better, not exactly, but he has his head above water now. He flops one hand to the side and says "Not bad, sweetheart" while giving Lyme a condescending pat on the ass; she leans over and punches him in the throat. Brutus finally laughs, gasping for air, and soon Lyme snickers beside him.
"This is so fucked up," Lyme says finally, one arm draped over her eyes.
"Tell me about it." Brutus rolls over and gets to his feet, offers Lyme a hand up just so she can bat it away and call him a sexist bag of dicks. It lets him keep a hold of himself until he's in his room with the lights off, and by then the aches and bruises make themselves felt until it's easier to sleep than think.
He and Enobaria head down for training the next morning at seven, after a bland breakfast and a quick strategy session. "You realize there's going to be absolutely no one here," Enobaria gripes, and her hands swipe uselessly at the sides of their black and grey training uniform. "Ugh, no pockets, of course," she mutters. "This just keeps getting worse."
"Guessing they don't want any of us swiping stuff from the stations." Brutus doesn't look at the Peacekeepers who guard each door they pass. They'll be from Two, like any of the best of the best who score gigs at the Capitol, and at least ten years younger than Brutus. They'll have grown up with Brutus as a legend, watching the highlights from his Games when they repeat every year. He's glad for the visors.
Enobaria grins. "Well now I'm going to have to steal something just because you said that."
Brutus gives her a look. "How old are you?"
"Eighteen all over again," Enobaria says in a dark singsong, the kind of voice that sounds like blood smells. "I'm allowed to have a second adolescence. I'd say so are you, but you're old, it'd just be embarrassing."
The door to the training room slides open in front of them, and they cross through into an empty space. No other tributes, only a handful of trainers, and the Gamemaker booth at the end is empty.
Enobaria runs her tongue over her teeth, then licks her lips to get rid of the smear of blood. "How many do you think are going to show up?"
Brutus does the math in his head, counting through the ones who are too sick or impaired to make it, adding the ones who likely won't have two fucks to rub together to make a caring-fire. Cashmere and Gloss, he guesses, will come down by ten; they're Career enough that they won't skip the whole thing, but young and brimming with repressed anger so they'll want to sleep in. "Maybe half," he essays. "I dunno, we'll see."
Enobaria folds her arms and looks around, scuffing her boot experimentally against the soft, protective floor, cushioned so tributes don't break too many bones ahead of time. "Looks a bit different than in our day -- or, well, mine, I should say." Brutus knows what she's going to say before she does, as it's a standard joke that everyone from the sixties or above loves to make, but he lets it slide because it's familiar, the mocking almost comforting. "What did they use to train Careers way back before the last Quarter Quell?"
"Ha, ha, ha." Brutus rolls his eyes, and he marches over to the weapons station. "Yours or mine?"
Enobaria eyes the racks of sharp and shiny things with a hungry gleam. She's allowed weapons in the Village the same as all Victors who clear recovery, but Nero always kept an eye on her. "Age before beauty," she drawls, waving an arm at the swords. "Don't want you to break a hip early on."
"You know you're pushing it," Brutus tells her. He doesn't actually care, but he's not about to let her get away with calling him old in front of the cameras, either.
The trainer in charge of weapons lets them peruse, choosing swords that work best for their reach. "No blood," she warns them. "I mean it, now."
Enobaria flips her sword over in her hand in a showy fashion, the way the cameras love but the trainers warn never to do in an actual combat situation. She makes sure to nick Brutus' arm on the way back to the start position, and he doesn't dodge because Enobaria will relax once she's drawn it. "Oops," she says, grinning. The trainer sighs but doesn't waste her time pushing for an apology.
Enobaria is fast, one of the quickest Victors District 2 ever produced; her specialty, before she lost her mind and went for the throat, was death by a thousand cuts. She would dart in, get in a hit, and leave before her opponent, hopped up on adrenaline and fear or rage, noticed she'd got them. She'd provoke them until eventually they collapsed from blood loss and she moved in to finish them off. It never came off as cowardly because of the way Enobaria did it, deliberately provoking and teasing, and by the end she never failed to work the other person up into a rage.
Past his prime or no, Brutus is no slouch himself. He likes to wait the other person out, to keep grinding and grinding until exhaustion wears them down and he overpowers them in the end. Both he and Enobaria can make quick, clean kills when they have to, but they also know how to put on a show.
Since it's a play fight, an exhibition match for the ever-present cameras even without the Gamemakers' physical presence, Brutus steps back and hefts his sword. "Stop just before body contact," he says. "Death strike wins, so don't fuck around."
"Who, me?" Enobaria grins, then lunges.
Brutus wins two out of three, but only because they're fighting clean. In the Arena Enobaria will have more than just a sword. She likes keeping knives tucked up her sleeve and into her boot, and if it comes down to them he'll have to watch out. For now, though, it's about form, and in a straight-up match Brutus will beat her almost every single time.
Afterward, Brutus hands his sword to the trainer in charge of the station, even though he knows they won't bother to sharpen it and will probably just throw it away. Weapons are disposable to the Capitol, but Brutus can't bear to toss it on the ground and leave. Enobaria doesn't bother, laying her sword on the top of the rack and sauntering off.
The matches took up the better part of an hour, and after that they split up. Official training still hasn't started, but it's always good to look eager. They need to play into the narrative Enobaria started when she forbade anyone to volunteer for her, which Brutus continued when he ran for the stage. They can't look like they're hesitating, not when a fair portion of the other Victor-tributes will be happy to get their hands on a Career. They say it's not personal, but Brutus wasn't Reaped yesterday -- not the first time, anyway.
Enobaria swings herself up onto the parallel bars with a bored expression; Brutus eyes the other set but decides against it. He screwed up his left shoulder in training, years ago, when the trainers worried more about getting him ready for the Arena than making sure he'd be in peak condition if he came out. He wrenched it again during his Games, and over the years it flares up again if he pushes himself. The last thing he needs is to make a dumb mistake and throw out his arm before they start.
The survival stations are still being prepped, and so Brutus takes a turn in front of the dodging machine, ducking and darting to avoid the balls of paint while hitting the ones he can't avoid with a flat paddle. He finishes with his uniform clean of pink smears, as Enobaria drops down from the bars and brushes chalk from her palms. It's fifteen minutes to ten.
"Now what?" Enobaria asks. "Basket-weaving, maybe? Seems about your speed, old man."
"You know, little girl, you're asking for a basket to the face," Brutus shoots back, but then the door to the training room hisses open and the Twelves walk in, hand in hand.
Brutus and Enobaria draw closer together, standing as a unit with arms crossed as they watch the youngest Victors make their way into the room. Enobaria leans into Brutus' space. "Don't they look cute," she says, low enough that the kids won't hear them. "How much of that romance do you buy? I want to say it's bullshit, but that girl can't act for shit either, so I dunno."
Brutus shrugs. It's not his job to decide whether the games the other tributes are playing are genuine. "I think however it started, they're both Victors," he says, watching them as they circle the stations, fingers twined tightly enough that their knuckles pale. "Whether it was real when they started, they'd be idiots to push each other away now. They're not going to find anyone else."
Odds are Twelve won't get another Victor before the centennial, and certainly not soon enough to make a match for either of them if Twelve wins the Quell. Like it or not, those kids are all they'll ever have. No one will understand them like they do each other, and anything they try with anyone else will only ever die like a flame trapped in a jar.
Not that Brutus has experience. Definitely not like it would matter anymore if he did.
"She's a Victor," Enobaria agrees, grudging. "He was just along for the ride."
"Doesn't matter." Brutus shrugs. "They went through it together, that's what counts. It ain't about who's got more blood on their hands."
Enobaria narrows her eyes. The others are trickling in now, and the Twelves glance at them as they enter, sticking together and refusing to let go. "It'll count when the sponsors eat up the romance like that's all that matters," Enobaria mutters darkly. "Because you know, those of us without adoring fiancés aren't worth shit."
"It's just the pre-show," Brutus reminds her, still watching as the teenagers shy away from everyone else. The boy looks curious enough, studying the other Victors, but Everdeen's face is hard, suspicious.
The Twelves haven't done the mentor circuit with the rest of them; haven't learned everyone's nervous tics as the hours creep onward and the remaining tributes catch a few short hours of sleep. She doesn't know that Hester from Nine sings under her breath to keep herself awake, that Edwin from Ten uses pencils and pens and anything in reach as drumsticks until everyone around him is ready to choke him to death. That Beetee, for all his glasses and twitchy appearance, has a sense of humour so dark and biting that half the time his targets don't realize he's just skewered them through. That most of them cheat at cards, but only a handful of them are any good at it, and if you got Woof drunk enough, back before he lost his hearing and half his mind, he could list off every Victor's tells when bluffing.
These kids are not part of the family yet, and now they never will be. Brutus knows exactly why the girl keeps her distance; why bother to get to know people just in time to kill them? Brutus gets it, and the hard truth is, if Twelve refuses to make alliances this year, that makes it easier for the rest of them. Last year everyone else fervently hoped the lovers would die in the dirt so their own could make it home anyhow. Better not to confuse things.
Katniss finds Brutus and stares at him, eyes hard and narrowed. Brutus stares back. He's surprised and a little impressed when she doesn't flinch away, and they lock gazes until her boy tugs her in another direction. She casts one last look over her shoulder as he leads her toward the paints, and Brutus puts her out of his mind.
She's marked for death as surely as if the Capitol painted a target on her back; if the other tributes don't kill her, the Arena and the Gamemakers will. He has bigger things to worry about.