Canon Divergence: The Quarter Quell [4/9]

[lorata]

Title: The End is the Beginning is the End
Rating: PG
Characters: Brutus, Lyme, Enobaria, D2 OCs (Claudius, Nero, Odin), Mags, Peeta
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: Brutus makes nice with the other tributes and falls a little more apart. Meanwhile, Lyme gets an uncomfortable reminder that grief is, at its core, a selfish thing.



By ten o'clock, Brutus' prediction of only half of the tributes making it downstairs holds true. He's not the only one who's come to that conclusion; Atala doesn't even bother to wait for the others, just begins her spiel. Brutus tunes out, because it's better to stop listening than to explode at how offensive it is that she's pretending they're first-timers. He doesn't have to say anything anyway; several of the others roll their eyes or look at imaginary watches on their bare wrists.

He's fine until Cecelia slips in late, her face pale, eyes red from crying and framed with sunken hollows. "Oh, shit," Brutus mutters under his breath, but he clamps down on his expression and lets his gaze slide away as though he never registered her. Brutus needs her there about as much as he needs a slice across the femoral artery, and he heads for the edible plants section. Cecelia won her Games by poisoning the remaining tributes; she won't need the practice with toxic vegetation, and it won't hurt Brutus to keep his hand in. He could never remember the difference between wolfsbane and its nonpoisonous cousin the lady's hood, and eventually just told himself not to not to eat the purple ones.

It's a good plan in theory, except that Brutus is trying so hard not to look at Cecelia that he completely misses the wild shock of grey hair at chest level until he almost runs into Mags and Woof. She has her hand on the older man's wrist, patiently removing a handful of leaves from his mouth. "No," Mags says gently, but insistent. Already Woof's lips have broken out in blisters, and Snow only knows what will happen to him if he's swallowed some of it.

"Ah shit," Brutus mutters again. Apparently that's going to be his theme for the day. "Mags, it's fine, I got him."

Woof is twice Brutus' age and weighs almost nothing when Brutus heaves him up into his arms to carry him over to the medical station. Chances are worst thing that happens is he needs his stomach pumped, but even if he dies from it, that's one less person Brutus has to kill a week from now. He lets the thought wash over him and does his best not to let it stick.

He could try to find another station, but that feels an awful lot like running to Brutus, and thing about running is, once you start it's real hard to stop. And so he heads back to edible plants, where Mags stands there watching him, her mouth pinched and eyes solemn. She taps her chest to indicate her thanks, and Brutus nods. "Sure," he says, keeping his voice clipped, but this is Mags. She's known him since he was a wet behind the ears twenty-one-year-old; the first time they met in Mentor Central, she'd seen twice as many tributes through the Games as the years Brutus had been alive.

Mags holds up a green plant with saw-tipped edges, and Brutus knows every plant in Two backwards and forwards but the rest of Panem has never been his priority. "Eat," she says, her mouth working slowly around the word like it's wrapped in a ball of socks. Brutus went to visit her after her stroke; back then the doctors weren't sure she'd ever speak at all. Luckily Mags never let anyone, even people who'd trained in medicine their whole lives, tell her what her body could or couldn't do. She picks up another plant that's similar, but this one has a purple tint at the corners. "Don't eat."

"Yeah?" Brutus takes the leaf from her and twirls it in his fingers. It still freaks him out a little that something so small could kill him when a grown man and a gun would have to try pretty damn hard. "What'll happen if I do?"

Mags grins up at him, baring her teeth. "Shit," she says, and Brutus barks out a startled laugh. "Lots of it."

"Yeah, I don't think anyone back home will be too happy if I shit myself to death," Brutus says, and if there's a sour taste in his mouth he's at least used to it. Arena humour comes easier to him than most. "I'm hoping for something more dignified."

"Me too," says Mags, and Brutus hisses through his teeth. He starts to say something -- what he has no idea, it feels like an apology that catches itself halfway and just sits there, a useless lump of dead thoughts in his vocal cords -- but she waves him off. "Old age. Not pretty. This?" She taps the side of her head where a blood clot caused the stroke that nearly killed her. Her hand still trembles, even three years later. "Wake up call."

Brutus exhales slowly. "That why you did it? Song coulda gone in for Annie. Didn't have to be you." Four had enough Victors to make keeping the youngest and oldest out a viable decision, but they clearly hadn't gone for it.

Mags nods once, sharp and decisive. "Take power where we can," she says, picking up a rock and crushing one of the plants into a sticky paste. "Where we start -- parents' choice. Where we end -- ours." The words come out a jumble, and Mags pinches her mouth together, breathes out hard through her nose and tries again. "Can be ours," she corrects herself, speaking slowly and carefully. Her Four accent has only thickened in her years of staying at home instead of coming to the Capitol for the Games every year, but Brutus is used to it. "If we get the chance -- take it."

"Yeah, see, you and me, we understand each other," Brutus says easily, and only after he's said it he realizes he's using his schmooze for the sponsors voice -- find a point of commonality and push it, make them feel like they're your friend. Except Brutus isn't a mentor and Mags isn't either and neither of them control anything anymore. Still, too late to stop now. "What do you say we stick to what we know, huh? The Arena, are you in?"

Mags sets down the stone. The leftover plant oozes sap from its broken stem, and for some stupid reason Brutus feels sick. "This year, different," she says slowly, and the pinprick of ice in Brutus' chest spreads outward. "New rules. New players."

"Sure, I gotcha." Brutus drops the leaf and feigns nonchalance. "My people will talk with your people later. Good luck with those plants."

He strolls away and doesn't bother to look back to see if she's watching him. Anyway, Mags is a Career the same as he is, and with twice the experience and more Victors to her name than Brutus could ever dream of; whatever he saw on her face would only be what she wanted to show him.

Brutus heads back for the range weapon station because he needs to settle himself, but just his luck, there's the boy from Twelve standing in front of the rack of weapons and looking lost. This is not Brutus' day by any definition, but the Twelves controlled the parade with their flaming capes and that means Brutus needs to show he's not intimidated just because the youngsters know how to work a crowd.

"Peeta," Brutus says in a neutral but not unfriendly voice. The boy whips around, and the teenaged part of Brutus that awakened when he stepped twenty-six years back in time has a laugh that Peeta's nose comes up level with Brutus' collarbone. The boy tilts his head back, eyes wide. "You know anything about chucking spears?"

"Uh, no--" Peeta says, biting off the end of the sentence in a way that means he was going to say 'sir'. Funny, Brutus would've never guessed that a kid from the backwoods would be raised right. Looks like this is the year for shifting paradigms all around. "Not much call for that out in Twelve." He says it in a dry voice, the perfect level of self-deprecation without dipping into self-pity, and Brutus will give him that. He's got the acting down.

"Not exactly a sack of flour is it." Brutus lets a hint of humour into his voice, because the boy was never the problem. It was his stupid love story that took the spotlight off of Brutus' girl last year, but Peeta Mellark is not the reason Twelve won the 74th. He doesn't deserve to be a Victor, but it's not his fault, either. He might have shivered while the mutts gnawed Cato to pieces, but there wasn't much he could've done to save him than roll off the side himself to see if they'd rather chew on someone fresh instead.

"Yeah, not really." The kid's shoulders come down from his ears a little, and he picks up the nearest spear. "You think you could show me?"

New rules, Mags said; new players, too. Like it or not, the Twelves are more wrapped up in this than all the other districts combined, and if Brutus is going to see this through he's got to play the game. "Sure, they're not complicated. This part's always straight, this part's always pointy. Even you can figure that out."

Peeta snorts. "Yeah, thanks," he says, hefting the spear experimentally. Brutus clucks his tongue and takes it away, arranging the boy's fingers into the proper grip so he won't sprain himself the first time out.

Brutus steps back and lets him throw, and while he's not impressed exactly -- he's seen fourteen-year-olds, way back in the day, with better range and definitely closer aim -- it's good for a rookie. For a Twelve it's almost cheating, and Brutus narrows his eyes at the muscles on the boy's arms, which stand out in the sleeveless training uniform. Then again, Twelve started training once they heard the news; Peeta isn't a Career and never will be, but for his district, it's far closer than they've been to one in all of Brutus' lifetime.

"Not bad," Brutus says when Peeta turns around, and damned if the boy's ears don't turn pink from the praise. Fucking outlier families, hug your damn kids. "You didn't hit anything, but you've got the range. This time you wanna line up your sight before you get your arm back."

Chaff saunters up in the middle of Brutus' lesson, and this, at least, is one alliance Brutus isn't worried about trying to make. He has no quarrel with Chaff except for the part where the man is an asshole and drinks away his tribute's lives every year like a point of pride -- which, all right, that's a pretty big part. Chaff thinks Brutus is a privileged son of a bitch, but that suits Brutus just fine; Chaff refused Two's offer of an alliance with Thresh last year, and look how that turned out for them. Brutus could go days without food by feeding on his district pride alone, but at least he has something to be proud of. Chaff is just a dick, and it doesn't bother Brutus none if the man thinks the same right back at him.

"Trying to get in where the getting's good, huh, Brutus?" Chaff asks, leaning his elbow against Brutus' upper arm in a faux-friendly gesture. "Jumping on the Twelve bandwagon like everyone else."

"It's called strategy," Brutus says, keeping it pleasant, but he knocks Chaff's hand away with a careless gesture. "There's more to it than deciding whether to get a beer first or just skip straight to the hard liquor."

Peeta looks between them with thoughtful eyes. No doubt he's imagined all the other Victors as a monolith of support after all these years together, but it's so much more complicated than that. Too bad he'll never get the chance to see how it works. "Uh," he says, running a hand through his hair. "Is everything okay?"

"Fine, everything's fine." Chaff grins at him, his smile big and sharp and nasty. "You better watch yourself with this one, boy. Brutus here, he'll never stab you in the back, but he will gut you from the front and tell himself it's fine because that's the honourable thing to do."

Brutus narrows his eyes, and if they were alone he might risk taking Chaff's bait but here they have an audience. He's not going to let the man goad him into a fight in front of the Capitol's latest favourite victim. "Anyway," he says to Peeta, ignoring Chaff's snort. "Grab another spear and let's try this again."

Peeta, as it turns out, is not a bad kid, and he listens to Brutus' advice with a willingness to learn that's entirely sincere and -- if Brutus were to admit it -- a little too refreshing after all the shit he's put up with today. Born in Two he might've made a good Career; he has the build for it, and the Centre could help him build a persona that's likeable without going over the line to a pushover. He could've been another Devon, easy and engaging, and while Brutus never forgets where they are or why they're here, there are far more annoying ways to spend an hour.

But the real discovery is that Peeta would've made one hell of a mentor. Arms and strength or no, this kid belongs on the sponsor floor; he'd have them eating out of his hands in seconds. The dumb thing is, he'd be much more use to his girl in a place where he doesn't have to worry about running with an artificial leg and fighting with weapons he's never touched before a year ago. That's the problem with the young; so concerned with being there for Katniss that he didn't stop to think where he'd actually be able to help her.

No telling whether Haymitch tried to explain this to him or whether he did and Peeta was just too dumb and in love to listen, but either way, it's too late now.

At lunch time, Peeta sits down with Brutus, the rest of the Career pack and a handful of the others. Peeta doesn't even hesitate, just grabs an empty spot on the other side of Brutus and tells no one to steal his seat. That kind of easy confidence isn't learned in a year; before the Games this boy was popular. Before this he had friends, though likely he doesn't now.

It's worth nothing how well he blends into the group of Victors, joking and tossing around friendly insults as though he didn't just win the year previous, and he might never have taken a life himself but it's still one hell of a skill. Brutus revisits his earlier dismissal and Enobaria's scorn; Peeta might not have a lot of combat skills, but anyone who can work over a gang of seasoned mentors will do the same to the sponsors without even blinking.

What's more of note is that Peeta grabs his girl and convinces her to sit with everyone, and after that Brutus abandons all pretence of tasting his lunch and just watches them while he eats. Katniss Everdeen is a bowstring wound too tight, and each time one of the other Victors needles her she pulls in tighter, but Peeta draws her back with a few easy words or a light touch. By the end of lunch Katniss still hasn't said more than a handful of words, but she stops eyeing them all like they're going to slip poison in her drink, and the whole time Peeta hasn't even let his smile falter.

After that, all right, colour Brutus impressed. Even he spent the first few days of mentoring in awe of his fellow Victors, and they'd been competing through the kids in their care, not actually planning to murder each other. Peeta Mellark is clearly in the Arena just to make sure his girl makes it out safe, and he's going to pull out all the stops to do it. If nothing else, Brutus can respect that.

Nice of the world to make Brutus to start feeling like he maybe understands the kid a little just in time to kill him, but go figure.

That afternoon Brutus trains alone -- he can't look at Mags or Cecelia again, and the others are too drunk or sick to be worth his time -- but he keeps letting his attention drift back to the pair from Twelve. This time it's Katniss who surprises him as she makes the rounds of everyone, including the Careers -- she builds hammocks with Cash and Gloss, and swings swords with an unenthusiastic Enobaria -- and if none of them come away smiling, that's more effort she's put into getting to know them than her entire Victory Tour put together. Peeta watches her sometimes, hard enough that he drops knots and has trouble lighting fires, but then he catches himself and pours his mind back into the task at hand.

Mags' words run through Brutus' mind again near the end of the afternoon: new rules, new players, only this time they take up shop and refuse to leave. In the sponsor ring, Mags has a way of talking in code, weaving a web so that people dance to her tune without ever hearing the music; she passes messages to others by bringing them around to her way of thinking without ever having to say things outright. Now, after her stroke, every word takes concentration and attention she wouldn't waste if she didn't have to. She wouldn't waste her strength on meaningless chatter.

New players. New rules. At the end of training, Katniss and Peeta find each other, linking hands before walking out of the room, and Brutus follows them with narrowed eyes.

That evening, Brutus catches Lyme with a hand on her elbow as soon as he's through the door to the Two floor. "Put in a request to Haymitch," he says, and he's not so far gone that he can't enjoy the surprise that furrows her eyebrows. "I want in with Twelve."

"Really?" Lyme blinks at him. "I can go back down, but I can't guarantee I'll get in to see him. After this afternoon's footage, half the mentors were falling all over themselves."

"Well, no shit," Brutus says, shrugging. "The boy's good. I'm not surprised the rest of them figured it out."

"Wait, what?" Lyme holds up a hand, and this time it's Brutus turn to frown at her. "The boy? Who's talking about Peeta?"

This has been a long day; too many more unexpected turns and Brutus is going to fall on his ass. "Who else would I be talking about?"

Lyme makes a face, but some of the tension drains away, leaving behind good old-fashioned exasperation. "Everyone's clamouring to ally with Katniss after seeing her shoot. I thought for a second you'd lost your mind with the rest of them."

"Did she?" Brutus casts his mind back, and vaguely comes up with her standing and launching arrows at a bunch of fake birds while the others gawked like they'd never seen anyone with weapons proficiency before. "Oh, yeah, guess she did. No, it's the boy I want. Plus Mags said something that made me think we should try to get in on that."

Lyme narrows her eyes. "What did she say?"

Brutus tells her. "That sound like a message to you, because it did to me."

"It could be," Lyme says slowly. "Snow only knows, with everything the way it is this year. But if Mags mentioned new allies, what other new allies could there be? Maybe there is something going on that we don't know about. Maybe Finnick heard something the last time he did his rounds. It might not be a bad idea at least to show interest, even if it doesn't take. If there is something going on, it would be in our best interests to be on the inside."

"We won't make last year's mistake," Brutus reminds her. "We know the girl is dangerous and we know the boy will sacrifice himself to save her. But if Mags thinks we should leverage their popularity, I think we oughta listen."

Lyme drags a hand down her face, eyes staring out at something far away, and for a second she looks old -- older than thirty-eight, older than Brutus or even Odin -- and exhausted. "I guess it won't hurt to ask. He's probably swamped, so I'll leave a message for him at his floor and that'll be it."

She turns to leave, but Brutus jogs after her. "Hey," he says, and he means it to come out serious and reassuring but there's an undertone of anger he can't quite chase away. "I haven't forgotten how Cato died." It's a betrayal of his principles to say it, in a way, since the essence of being a mentor is to give his tributes freely and without regret; to mourn them after the end of the official reflection period is to suggest that there is something to mourn, that their sacrifice alone wasn't glorious enough to override everything else. But principles won't erase the weeks Lyme spent at his house, drinking on his couch in silence; they won't remove her voice, telling him that after the Quell she was stepping down to floor mentor because she'd lost the ability to stay impartial.

("It used to heal," she told him, staring not at him but at light from his standing lamp reflected in her bourbon as she tilted the glass back and forth. "Now it just stays open and infected and rotting. I can't do it anymore.")

Oh, Brutus hasn't forgotten. Now Lyme stares at him for a long second, half-unseeing, then shakes her head. "We're all murderers," she says flatly, and slips out the door.

An Avox shows up with a message from Haymitch right when Brutus is considering hauling his ass to bed after a solid three hours of strategy planning. Lyme's half-buried under a pile of papers and Nero has Enobaria sprawled in his lap, and Brutus isn't going to make Ronan get up or wake Claudius, who's snoring over the past quarter's sponsorship agreements. "I got it," Brutus tells Artemisia, and she gives him a small, awkward smile and goes back to work.

Brutus blinks at the piece of paper in his hand, printed with Abernathy's hurried scrawl. "She's still making up her mind," Brutus reads out loud. "They're leaving the alliance decisions up to Katniss? The fuck?"

"That seems unwise," Odin says, employing one of the first skills Brutus ever learned from him: mastery of the understatement. "She's not exactly inclined to making friends, and victory or no, her intra-Arena politics were not the reason Twelve won the Games."

Enobaria snorts, but Nero hushes her and she settles back with her head tucked in against his shoulder. Lyme frowns, twirling her pen around her fingers. "I sent the request through Peeta."

"Maybe Haymitch didn't actually read it. If you're right and half the mentors went crazy over the girl's shooting, he just assumed we were in for the same reason." Brutus turns the paper over, holds it up to the light and tilts it back and forth, checking for any sign of hidden messages, but there's nothing. He lets it go and watches it flutter onto the tabletop with the rest of the stats printouts. "Well, whatever. Haymitch won't let them go it alone, so someone will talk her round."

Enobaria snickers, but this time when Nero gives her a quelling look she rides right over him. "Maybe we'll get lucky and they will say no to everyone. Let's see her last five minutes on her own with only Lover Boy to help her." She grins, her teeth glinting in the light. "I don't care whether she goes for an alliance or not. If not, I'm cutting out her heart. If she does, then as soon as the alliance breaks I get to skin her alive as a reward for listening to her whining."

Brutus shakes his head and ignores her. Let Enobaria pretend she's eager to get in there and tear everyone's throats out; she wouldn't be in Nero's lap if she was, but they have to make it out sane somehow and he's not gonna begrudge her what works for her.

He is going to wonder what the hell Haymitch is thinking, putting this kind of decision on Katniss' shoulders when the girl ain't even been clean a year.

Ronan taps his fingers against the top of his cane. "This alliance is crucial, especially if Brutus is correct about Mags' message that the Fours will be allying with Twelve this year. We can't afford being pushed to the side when Twelve and the Odair boy already control so much sponsor attention. We have to strike and take it back."

Brutus picks up the nearest personnel file to him, only to drop it back onto the table when Cecelia's dark eyes stare up at him from the page. The file lands on the surface with a hard slap that jolts Claudius out of his doze and makes the others glance at Brutus, their expressions a mix of confusion and concern. This has to stop; he tries to make himself pick up the file again, look at her picture until he dissociates the young woman with three kids from the tribute who will be in the Arena with him, but his hand won't obey the command to move.

"I think it's time we wound things up for tonight," Odin says, a little too loudly, a little too cheerfully, and entirely for Brutus' benefit as though he's an eighteen-year-old having a panic attack. "Brutus, I have a few things to go over with you before sleeping, but we have an early morning so I won't keep you for long."

On one hand, Brutus does not relish another get-your-head-together talk like this is his first Reaping, but at the same time, his head's not in the game and he needs it to be. Two can't afford one of their tributes going in muzzy-brained and conflicted; Brutus needs clarity of purpose and needs it fast, and if it takes Odin smacking some sense into him, he'll take what he can get.

Brutus turns and heads back to his room, but not before noticing that Odin stops to scoop up one of the files before doing so. He follows Brutus, shutting the door behind him and flicking on the broad wall screen to a slow panning shot of the cliffs in the western parts of Two, solid and settling. Odin sits down on the chair across from the bed, too small for him like it is half the Twos who come through here.

Brutus lowers himself down onto the bed, fighting back deja vu and only succeeding because they completely redecorate the Games Complex every year. "I'll get it together," Brutus says when Odin doesn't open the conversation himself, and he's on the wrong side of forty but he sounds young in his head, desperate to appease his mentor. "It's a lot to take in, but I'm fine."

Odin didn't buy his bullshit the first time around, and he's not buying it now. He hefts the file in his lap and tosses it across the room, the pages flapping like a wounded bird's before landing on the bed. Brutus flinches away from Cecelia, but at the same time he lets out a breath of relief. Odin will fix it for him; Odin will help him rearrange it in his head so it's all right.

"You want me to give you the answer," Odin says, and Brutus would nod except that Odin's voice is strange. It's flat and just this side of disapproving, and Odin hasn't spoken to him with that level of blatant authority for decades. "You want me to fix it. You want me to tell you how to justify killing that woman and leaving her children without a mother. How this is the noble and right thing to do."

"She's got kids," Brutus says, the world tilting beneath him. He tries to grip the blankets and ground himself, but they're shiny satin and slip through his fingers. "It's -- I don't know how to make it right. I don't know how I can do it."

Odin lets out a long breath. "If you keep looking for ways to make it right, you're going to destroy yourself before you start."

Brutus jerks back. "What?"

"I believe you heard me," Odin says, and there it is again, the voice Brutus hasn't heard since the days when he needed Odin to knock him on the ground and hold him there until things shook into place. "Do you remember what they told you, when you were a trainee?" Lyme would make a joke about that occurring back in the Dark Days, but Odin doesn't, just gives Brutus a long, level look. "There is no argument toward killing a twelve-year-old that will settle every protest, and the more time you spend trying to devise a justification, that's time you're wasting that could be used for something else. In the Arena you don't have time to make it right; you barely have enough time to act. Whether it's right that you, Enobaria, Cecelia and the others are back in the Arena is immaterial. All that matters is that it's done and you're the one who has to finish it."

It was easy for Brutus to believe that when he was acing kill tests at fourteen, fifteen, sixteen. Even at eighteen when he killed his first tribute, an innocent girl instead of a condemned criminal who deserved the execution. But he's not a child, no matter how desperate the need for reassurance, and it will take more than that to make it right. Brutus will need something stronger than platitudes if he's meant to wrap his hands around a mother's neck until the cannon fires.

Odin narrows his eyes. "No?" he says, sharp and challenging. "You think you deserve more? You think you deserve answers, do you? You won the Hunger Games and that entitles you to a lifetime of having everything explained to you before you obey, is that it? Because that sort of attitude is exactly why we're here right now. We got complacent -- all of us."

This time Brutus opens his mouth and shuts it again. "Fuck," he says finally, and for a moment he can't remember how old he is, only that he feels like he's drowning and finding solid ground at the same time.

"You are not owed justification for your actions," Odin continues, remorseless and unforgiving. "You do not get to decide that you will follow orders only if you can make it pretty in your mind. You are a tribute, and tributes do not have that luxury. There is one -- and only one -- thing required of you, and that, my boy, is your obedience."

The words are a blast of cold water after the grittiness of a day of training: a shock and a welcome all in one, and Brutus nearly gasps from the force of it. Instead he nods, lets the truth sink in and knit him back together. The Capitol owes him nothing, no explanation; not even the years since they allowed him to leave the Arena and come home the Victor. Every trainee is taught to take what's useful and discard the rest; those who are raised to ask questions don't become tributes, and they definitely don't win.

Not everything settles -- a broken bone still aches after it's been set -- but Brutus breathes a little easier, and Odin nods. "Good. But I also want to remind you of something, Brutus. You volunteered so Enobaria didn't have to face her mentor, just as Mags did for young Annie. Both of you did the right thing. But Cecelia --"

Brutus' cheek twitches as he pulls back a wince, and a small part of him wonders how Odin will spin this. Cecelia is here because the Reaping Ball gave up her name; she's here because of a broken promise that will claim her life and her children's happiness. He clings to Odin's words -- duty, obedience, trust -- but a hollowness creeps into the centre.

Odin's eyes go dark. "Cecelia is here because no one did the same for her. She is not Eight's only female Victor, but she is the only Victor with children. The choice, to anyone with morals, is clear. She is here because her people failed her; she is here because they were cowards. There is no magic pill that will make everything all right, but we take what we have and we do what we can with it. You acted out of love and fealty; you will carry out your duty with a surfeit of the same, and lend dignity to those who were denied that right."

Brutus lets his eyes fall closed. Behind him on the screen, the wind whistles over the cliffs and the hawks screech as they dive in search of prey. Brutus is Two and Odin is Two and honour is Two, and he might be in the Capitol but his district is with him everywhere.

"You can't change what has happened, or what's ahead of you," Odin says, his tone softening. "But you know what you must do, and that, Brutus, is a type of freedom that only some of us understand."

Brutus nods. "Thank you," he says. "I needed that."

"And I will be here to set you on the path whenever you need me to," Odin reminds him. "You are my Victor and my tribute. I will do everything in my power to see you through to the other side. But for now, it's time to sleep."

Brutus can't decide whether he wants to sleep forever or never sleep again, but the gentle words of command act like a balm on his frazzled mind. "Yeah. What time's breakfast?"

"Given yesterday's turnout, I think we can safely move it back to eight," Odin says. "Take your time, we can brief after we eat."

Brutus doesn't turn the screen off after Odin leaves, just adjusts the time setting so the sun dips below the horizon and the stars spin out across the velvet sky.

Lyme flips her pen back and forth between her fingers, spinning it round over her knuckles because if she allows it to stop moving, she's going to stab it through someone's jugular. "Now Azalea," she says with a knowing smile, leaning forward and putting as little distance as she can between them without toppling. "You and I both know that Brutus is the one to watch this year. I'd hate to see you wait too late to pledge your support, especially once the prices go up."

The woman in front of her blinks eyelashes long enough to brush Lyme's cheek a full foot away. "Well, I'll be the first to say that Brutus is impressive, especially at his age, but you Twos haven't exactly put in a strong showing these last few years. Who was your last Victor, that little cripple girl a few years ago? And before that was that boy, what's his name, and all he had to do was fight a bunch of twelve-year-olds. Hardly something to inspire confidence."

Claudius, sitting on the far side of the large round sofa, stiffens and grits his teeth for a split second at the reference to his Arena. But insulted or no, he doesn't muddle his words or lose his place in his sentence. Lyme sends him a brief reassuring smile under cover of tucking the pen behind her ear; his lips thin in response before he turns back to his patrons. 'All he had to do' indeed.

Lyme swallows a hundred furious retorts and shrugs instead. Never look desperate; pleading and begging is for the outliers, as a trade-off for having fewer sponsor guarantees to start with. Even if her tribute is starving to death or dying of blood poisoning, Lyme always has to approach the sponsor den with nonchalance, like it doesn't really matter to her one way or another. Like there's always a line of potential sponsors out the door, and she's only asking this one to give them the opportunity to invest in a champion.

"You're not dealing with eighteen-year-olds now," Lyme points out with a vague, dismissive wave. "This is Brutus. There are records he broke in his Games that people still haven't touched. Who did you have your eye on?"

Azalea's hand flutters near her cheek, and Lyme swallows a snort of disgust. Of course. "Well, Finnick, you know, he's just so dashing --"

Lyme nods and pats Azalea's knee in understanding, but also letting the woman feel the iron grip of her hand even when she's not trying. "He's certainly very pretty," she agrees, stressing the last word and letting a hint of condescension curl around it while sending a silent apology to Finnick. She watched his Games the same as everyone, but outside mentor circles, the sheer bloodthirsty terror of it has all been erased by the butterfly, the man who flits from lover to lover and asks for only secrets in exchange for his company. (Amazing, what these people will tell themselves to sleep at night.)

It works. Azalea sits back, frowning as much as she can with the muscles in her forehead frozen to reduce the effects of ageing. "Maybe you're right. Looks won't solve everything; this isn't a beauty pageant, after all!" She titters at what obviously counts as some sort of clever remark in her head; Lyme returns her an indulgent smile.

"You never know." Lyme lets her teeth show. "Maybe the Arena will be a giant room of mirrors and all he'll have to do is dazzle everyone to death with his smile."

This time Azalea laughs outright, the sound sliding and nasty; nothing makes Capitolians happier, after the splash of blood on the camera lens, than humour at someone else's expense. If they had their way, sponsorship deals would be won with mini-Arenas all their own, the mentors and their bare knuckles in a ring, vying for matches and loaves of bread with their fists. "Now, now, my dear, be nice."

"You want nice, you ask the Sixes to paint you a picture. You want to win, you back a Two. That's just the way it goes." Lyme flicks her fingers, pulling her mentor's card with the sponsorship donation number from her sleeve like she used to do with knives. "I'll let you think about it, but don't wait too long. I've got a long list, and sometimes names get lost."

By the end of the day, Lyme would rather lock everyone in the room, choose a few to disembowel, and then collect all the necessary funds from the rest as they cowered in fear than keep playing the game. Instead she smiles, spins elaborate promises that end up binding the sponsor while leaving her free of actual obligation, and exploits every weakness she knows about and a few she only had hunches on. She snaps three pencils in her bare hand by accident, but she shoves the broken pieces down her sleeve and flicks a new one free without anyone noticing.

Lyme grabs Claudius on their way back to the residential complex, gripping him by the back of the neck. "How you holding up, kiddo?"

Claudius gives her a grim smile, his eyes shadowed. "Can I tell you something awful?"

"I challenge you to make it worse than Camphor Dale promising food in the third week in exchange for me fucking him in an alley," Lyme says flatly. Claudius winces, but it isn't exactly news to him that with Capitolites, a night of illicit activities can sometimes net more than a week of verbal wrangling.

"Okay, so it's not that level, but." Claudius runs a hand through his hair. "We said it would be bad for me to mentor years ago --" because he told her if he had to watch his tributes die year after year he'd set the Capitol on fire around him -- "but I think I might actually be good at it. I don't have to play the game like you; one look at my face and they expect me to be mean and try to fleece them. It was almost easy."

He's not wrong, either about his face or his angle. He's not an ugly boy, her last Victor, no matter what he might think after years of living with the district's most gorgeous, but his features do resolve into cruelty. All but his happiest smile -- always in private, usually startled out of him -- makes him look like he's thinking about carving out someone's insides. Odin takes care of the hardcore patriots who support Two and Brutus and his steady lack of surprises; Lyme can catch and convince most of the rest; but Claudius and his nasty grin might draw in the ones more inclined to side with Enobaria and the other, less stable, Victors of the 60s.

Lyme hates that she has to make that choice, and she knows exactly who to hate for it. It just helps about as much as sending a tinderbox in the middle of a firestorm.

"No one ever said mentoring wouldn't suit you because you couldn't close a deal," Lyme reminds him, sliding her fingers up into his hair and giving it a comforting tug. She's doing her best to redirect herself, but the real reason for Claudius sitting out before this year prowls between them like a mutt in a hidden chamber, invisible but growling, and Lyme's own anger drums in her chest. One more year, she told Brutus, sitting on his sofa. She'd do the Quarter Quell, depending on the rules and the candidates, but after that, she didn't have the stomach to continue mentoring in this new world of changing rules and lessening sanity.

And now here she is, fighting for Brutus' life, arguing with coiffed and bedazzled idiots whether the man who's given the last thirty years of his life to serve his country is worth a packet of matches and a tin of dried beef. The anger rises, shooting past the black fire of rage and fury into something else, deep and sparking and all-consuming, and Lyme nearly stumbles on the first set of stairs from the force of it.

"You okay, boss?" Claudius asks, hand at her arm and eyebrows furrowed.

Lyme flicks her eyes up toward the ceiling and the cameras that line the walls. Claudius is still in mentor training and hasn't mastered all the hand signals that the mentors use to pass silent messages to each other, but he gets the message and doesn't ask again.

There's a bit of time before Brutus and Enobaria come back from training; for another day that means all six mentors will get together to pool their contributions and intel from the day and devise a strategy. After tomorrow they'll split into their separate camps to discuss how they'll handle it when the alliance breaks. In any other Games they'd already be doing it, but Lyme cuts all of them a little slack for dragging their feet this year.

Lyme steps away from Claudius before they cross the door into the main Two floor, leaving the moments of comfort just between them. He straightens his shoulders and heads for Artemisia and her pile of notes, and both of them are Lyme's Victors and here they are on opposite sides of the table. Lyme turns away, and she's heading for the bar to pour herself something when Odin stops her with a hand at her shoulder.

"Lyme, might I have a word?" Odin asks, in the tone of a superior who only makes it a question out of politeness.

Lyme keeps the wince off her face -- Odin isn't her mentor and they've never had occasion to say more than a few words to each other before now -- and shifts to take them to her room instead. Odin waits until the door hisses shut behind them, then turns to face her, hands clasped formally behind his back. "I'm speaking to you out of turn, and for that I'm sorry," he begins, and uh oh. "Normally I would take this request to your mentor, but given the circumstances --" A muscle in his cheek twitches, as good as a dramatic hand gesture from a man with his level of control. "I think it's best if you pull back from talking with Brutus, at least for the time being."

Whatever half-theories might have been floating around in Lyme's mind, this was not one of them. She blinks at him -- opens her mouth, shuts it again -- and finally says, "Why?"

She doesn't want to get angry at Odin; he was a Victor years before Lyme was even born, and whether she's in his branch of the hierarchy or not she owes him her respect. But he's right about extenuating circumstances; if he wants Lyme to give up any time with Brutus before he goes back into the Arena, Odin better have a damned good reason.

Odin is one of the few Victors with more than an inch of height on Lyme, and he uses every one of them to look down at her now. "Because if you don't, I'm afraid you're going to kill him."

Maybe on a good day Lyme would be able to stay quiet, to take the order with the grace a good Two should, but she's been in the sponsor pit since ten in the morning, fighting with people who have less worth in all of them put together than Brutus carries in his pocket every day. She spent three hours arguing with a woman who'd enjoyed Brutus' company every month for fifteen straight years -- all the while never letting it slip that he wanted her money and not her -- who now waffled on continuing her pledges because Brutus' odds had slipped two points from his first Games to the second.

"You want to tell me what the fuck you're talking about?" Lyme snaps, and it's suicide to talk this way to someone twenty years her senior but just try it. Maybe he'll snap her neck and she won't have to think about peeling her fingernails off while she watches Brutus die on camera.

Odin doesn't react, either to the profanity or to her insubordination, so points for that. "I understand what you're going through," he says in an infuriatingly patient tone, and this is why he would never have worked as her mentor. Lyme clawed herself to pieces working to get under Nero's skin and pry a reaction from him; with Odin she would have lost her mind trying to get him to do more than raise an eyebrow. "But it doesn't change the fact that you need to give Brutus his space. This is not an ordinary Games, and while we would be foolish to pretend otherwise, he needs to keep his head. He can't do that if you are constantly reminding him how unfair it is."

Lyme pushes both hands into her hair, fingers digging into her scalp. She didn't sleep more than two hours last night, poring over stats and sponsor sheets and every scrap of insider information they've managed to dig up, searching for anything that might help. She even sat with the official Panem Games Statutes, looking for a legal loophole she could pass on to those higher and with more smarts in that sort of thing than she has. She popped three stim pills when she started drooping at two this afternoon, and the burn of artificially postponed exhaustion starts up an itch behind her eyeballs.

"What am I supposed to do then?" Lyme demands. "I can't just smile and say 'May the odds...' like he's eighteen and too blind to know what he's getting into. It's bullshit and he knows it's bullshit." The flood rises, and she fights it down. "I'm not wasting the last few days I have with him on lies."

"My dear girl," Odin says, and his voice stays the same -- calm, even, ruthlessly controlled -- but then it dives down dark like a sabre to the gut. "I'm not sure what world you inhabit, but we are all angry. Some of us, on the other hand, can think past our own feelings to the needs of others."

Lyme sucks in a breath hard enough she nearly chokes on it. "You want to say that again?" she demands, and this is Odin and she needs to back the fuck down because they are Twos and Twos have rules and without the rules they have nothing but it's too much.

"Very well." Odin smiles as though he had to carve the expression himself from a block of limestone. "You are his friend, and you are angry. That is admirable and understandable, but it is nothing -- nothing -- to being his mentor."

That knocks the wind out of her every bit as effectively as one of Brutus' hard tackles to the waist. Lyme runs a hand down her face. "Shit."

Odin ignores her. "When I sat by him after the Arena, when I patched him up and soothed his nightmares and ignored his cries, I told him -- I promised him -- he would never, ever need to become a killer again. We hinge our lives on that promise; you understand that. I told him to find meaning in the rules, in order, in the system. I told him that his loyalty would be rewarded, that he had done his duty and that if he continued to do so then they could ask no more than that. I built his sanity and our relationship on that vow, that the Capitol pays us what we're owed. What do you think it means, then, for me to have to tell him that he must do it again?"

Lyme swallows the bitter taste in her mouth. "That's not what I meant."

Odin silences her with a slash of his hand, and Lyme actually jumps back. "If anyone in this Village can come close to understanding Brutus as I do, it's you, which makes your conduct not merely undesirable but just this side of unforgivable. It is selfishness in the extreme. Your own pain and rage at the injustice does not give you leave to throw it onto him. If Brutus is to survive this then he needs to remember how to be a tribute, not to wallow in futility, and you of all people should know that. He needs purpose. He needs a solid foundation. I am giving him that. I am filling his head full of patriotism and honour, and if it is like packing a wound with cobwebs until a physician can heal it then so be it, but you would let him bleed to death so you might have an outlet for your feelings."

Lyme's eyes narrow to furious slits at the barb sinks home, but after the wave of indignation rolls over her, it leaves the awful, prickling sensation that he's right. She might not throw Brutus a rod and reel and invite him to go fishing in Traitor Lake with her and Claudius, but he is her friend and she thought she owed it to him to let him see her anger. To show him that he wouldn't go unmourned, that even after the Capitol broke every promise and took him, he wouldn't be dismissed as a necessary sacrifice in a year when Panem needed its Victors to give their all -- again -- in order to keep the country together.

But Odin's right. If Brutus is going to walk out of that Arena alive and sane, he doesn't need her sympathy, or her pity, or even her rage. What he needs is to forget there's any chance of him not coming out at all. For Brutus, confidence comes from loyalty, from following orders and doing his duty; it's not Lyme's job to take that away, no matter how much bullshit that might be.

She will give Odin one point; he doesn't harp on her while she's thinking, just stands quiet and waits for her to puzzle it out on her own. When Lyme frowns and crosses her arms, Odin nods and dials down the intensity of his glare. "What would our tributes do, if in the days before the Arena we allowed them to sleep all day, gorge themselves full of every delicacy the Capitol makes ready, just because they're going to die?"

Lyme doesn't have to answer that, and fortunately Odin isn't a power-hungry school teacher and doesn't make her say it. "It is no different," he says. "You cannot think of these as your last days with Brutus; that would mean he has already lost. If you love him at all then you will indeed waste them; you will waste every moment on bullshit, as you put it, because it is precisely that bullshit he needs to make it out alive. Brutus draws his strength from his district. Swallow your hurt and give that to him. Tell him with no uncertainty that he will win and you will be there when he does."

When Lyme was a little girl -- the details of the memory float just out of reach, hazy and forgotten by choice -- she told herself that once she won the Hunger Games she would never cry in front of a man again. Sadly for her childhood self, Lyme has broken that promise more than once over the years (throwing up in Nero's lap, cursing between the dry heaves while he stroked her back and combed his fingers through her hair; crushed half to death against Brutus' chest with his arms around her the night they returned to Two with the chunks of Cato's body removed from the stomach of the mutts and shoved haphazardly into a box) but she does try.

Crying in front of someone else's mentor, a man she respects out of necessity but has never actually liked, pretty much tops the list of things Lyme never, ever wants to do. Too bad it looks like today doesn't give a shit. Lyme presses both hands over her eyes and hopes Odin won't notice -- or will at least ignore -- the ragged hitches in her breath. She struggles to control herself, but in the end the only thing she can do is bite out a hysterical "Can you just --" before the ability to speak dissolves altogether.

Odin takes a step back. "I will handle the negotiations with the other district mentors, if you need some time," he says with an air of graciousness that has always made her want to throttle him.

Lyme wants to stab him in the other eye and drive it right through his skull, but instead she flaps a hand at him and keeps it together just long enough for the door to shut before she loses it.

Half a minute in, everything in the room that can be broken is in pieces, smashed or shredded or sliced, and Lyme stands in the middle of the battlefield, chest heaving as though she's finished a training bout. It's not enough, nowhere near enough, and a decades-old urge begins to rise inside her, one that makes her forearms itch with thousands of insects beneath her skin, and if she could just get a blade and slice them out --

Shit. Shit shit shit shit. Of all the things Lyme doesn't need right now, it's this. Lyme scrubs her face with the torn pillowcase, runs her fingers through her hair and tugs at the hem of her shirt before opening the door. Enobaria's lounging on the couch, hugging a smoothie half the size of her arm to her chest. Brutus must have hung back to talk to Odin on the way out. "Enobaria, I don't suppose you'll let me borrow your knives?" she calls out into the main lounge.

"Fuck you with a cheese grater," Enobaria sing-songs back.

"Right." At least she didn't expect anything else. "D? C'mon, I know you sneaked some in, don't hold out on me."

Claudius' eyes do a guilty flicker like he's trying to decide it's a trap before he slides off the couch and darts into his room, coming out with a folded leather pouch. "Don't hurt them," he says, trying for joking and falling flat, but Lyme could kiss him for making the effort. "Everything okay?"

"Ran out of stuff to break, need something to throw," Lyme says easily, and Claudius laughs. "I'll sharpen them before I bring 'em back and everything." She tousles his hair -- Enobaria, in the background, rolls her eyes -- and Claudius respects his mentor by not pushing.

Throwing knives were never Lyme's specialty; she has the shoulders and bulk for the spear and that made for a much more impressive range weapon, and she never liked the girly ones anyway. Too bad sword and spear are a little harder to get past security. For a second, when she pulls the first knife free of its sheath, her eyes drag down to her forearm and the scars that are almost gone, only visible as a faint white line when the light hits the right way and you know where to look, but she lets out a breath and the urge lessens. When she whirls and flings the knife across the room, the blade landing smack into the wall, it fades altogether.

Lyme throws until she runs out of knives, then wrenches them free, chooses another wall, and does it again. She repeats until her arm aches, then switches to her non-dominant arm and tries again. Before the reading of the card, Lyme had let her coordination with her off hand drop, but the first thing she did after learning she might go back in was pick up a sword and re-train herself to fight wrong-handed. It doesn't translate to range for shit, though, and against her will Lyme laughs at how terrible her aim is.

If she had her way, Lyme would continue until her hands trembled, but in her condition that would take hours and she doesn't have that luxury. Odin threw her a parachute by allowing her time to tantrum and calm down, but much longer and the others will wonder. She and Nero are on opposite sides this year so he won't ask after her, but that's hardly the point. Lyme stops with the frustration still bubbling beneath the surface, but she's not in danger of bursting into tears anymore and that's got to be enough.

She sits down on the bed, pulls the sharpening stone from the back of the pouch, and runs the blades over it. The sharp snick snick of steel against the rough grain of the whetstone at once calms and jangles her, and Lyme measures her breathing by the strokes of the knife. By the time she restores the blades to pristine condition, Lyme has settled herself down. Like it or not, she won't lose it again.

When she finally comes back out, tossing Claudius the pack of knives, Brutus is back and settled on one of the sofas with a file in his lap. He's spent the whole day pretending to give a damn at the various training stations, rubbing shoulders with people he's known for decades and will have to murder in three days, and here he is back at work now that it's his free time. Lyme digs her thumb between her eyes, exhales hard through her nose, and does what every good Career knows how to do: she flips the switch.

"Hey," Lyme says, reaching over Brutus from behind and snagging the file. "You're done for the day, get your nose out of the mentor files. Move your ass to the table and eat."

Brutus glares up at her, and his lip curls in a Game-face snarl that means he hasn't quite put himself back together yet after performing for the cameras. Lyme has never seen it on him in person, and for a second it jolts her with fear, but this is good. This is what he needs to do. "Fuck you."

"Not for a million sponsorship deals," Lyme says lightly, like it doesn't tear something out of her to pretend it's all fine, and she tosses the papers on the table. "C'mon, seriously, you've got weight to maintain. If you need the motivation I'll do a shot for every protein shake you can keep down."

Brutus meets her gaze, and he doesn't say anything but he and Lyme have had entire conversations in the silence over the past twenty years. His eyes hold hers for a handful of seconds, and during them the practiced arrogance falls off his face. For a moment he looks at her with his mouth turned up at one corner in a rueful smile that says he knows exactly what she's doing. Then just like that it's gone, swallowed by his signature blend of exasperation and ego, and Brutus snorts and hauls himself up off the couch. "Fine, you're on, but don't blame me tomorrow when you've gotta take one of those shitty fruity Capitol hangover cures because I've kicked your ass."

Lyme flips him off. Claudius watches them, frowning at the sudden levity, but Lyme shakes her head at him when Brutus moves in front of her and he turns back to the agreements in front of him.

By the end of the night Lyme has downed six shots, but she cheats by dumping an alcohol nullifier onto her food in between. Brutus catches her just before the final drink and roars in outrage, and they wrestle on the floor while the others snort and continue eating like nothing happened. At the end, Brutus takes her down so hard that her head cracks against the floor and she sees stars. Normally Lyme would cuss him out and kick him in the head and demand to know what the hell is wrong with him; now she swallows the vomit, stands up, and punches Brutus in the arm.

"Gonna have to try harder than that, asshole," she says as her head pounds and the floor tips sideways.

"Children," Odin calls out, amused, and nothing in his expression betrays that earlier that evening he tore Lyme to pieces and left her there. "Perhaps it's time to sleep. Big day tomorrow."

Nobody argues, least of all Lyme, who will need to sneak down to the medical centre after everyone's asleep to make sure she didn't just give herself a concussion. Claudius, wearing his full-on worry face, slips behind the couch and presses his fingers against the back of Lyme's skull before she knocks his hand away. "Boss, you took that fall pretty hard," he chides her. "You sure you're okay?"

"I'm fine," Lyme tells him, stressing the word and her authority enough that he bites his lip but backs off. "Go to bed, we've got a long day of kissing-up ahead of us."

Claudius makes a face, and he shoots one last concerned look over his shoulder but he does obey her. Lyme's head swims, and she holds a hand to her forehead as she retreats into her room, only to laugh when faced with the massive destruction in front of her. Right. Lyme leans against the wall, hands splayed against the cool wood for balance, and closes her eyes as she tallies her to-do list. Call an Avox to come clean the mess. Head down to medical to get herself sorted. Find a way to keep up the lie for the next two days, until it's too late and it won't matter whether she's murderous and selfish and emotional or not because Brutus won't be with her to see it.

Lyme takes the elevator instead of the stairs, and she presses her forehead to the mirrored back panel and practices her smile.