Hunger Games: Lyme's First Tribute [4/5]
Title: Nobody Decent
Rating: PG
Warnings: None, this chapter
Characters: Lyme, Brutus, D2 OC Victors (Artemisia, Callista, Emory)
Summary: District 2 Victor Lyme, two years fresh from the Arena, gets her first tribute to mentor. Her vow to remain aloof to avoid getting attached lasts until she finds Artemisia: wicked, irreverent, blase and a little unhinged, whose childhood photos showed bruises her Games training never put there.
Chapter Summary: Lyme wants to give Artemisia something good before the Victory Tour drags the rug out from under her. Luckily she has a whole Village to help her out.
Lyme wakes up in the middle of the night, and as she blinks awake in the darkness she runs a quick check to see what brought her out of sleep. Heart rate and breathing even, no pounding or aching in her chest, which means no nightmares even if she didn't remember them. No crashes of thunder rattle the window panes, no gusts of wind moan through the cracks, and no branches scrape at the sides of the house. Not weather then, either.
The rest of the house is silent, and Lyme narrows her eyes. There's no reason it shouldn't be silent -- Artemisia took her pills after dinner and went to bed like a good little Victor -- except that Artemisia has never been a good little Victor yet she complied with tonight's medication routine without complaining. Lyme swears under her breath and throws off the blanket, swinging her legs over the edge of the sofa. The wooden floor is cold against her bare soles, and she heads for the stairs, balancing on the balls of her feet and stepping close to the walls to avoid creaking.
It's probably nothing, except Lyme is quickly learning that those are the times when something definitely is happening. You can't turn your back on a fresh Victor for a minute, so they say, but the bumps in her own recovery and her girl's restless spirit make Lyme wary of constant supervision. Sometimes privacy has to come before trust, she figured, but that's a great theory until something breaks. She makes it up to Artemisia's room without making noise -- stealth isn't something you just forget, especially when dealing with a Victor who apparently spent her pre-Residential days breaking and entering -- and pushes open the door a crack.
Artemisia's bed is mussed, the blankets askew and one pillow on the floor ... and entirely missing its supposed occupant. Lyme drags a hand down her face. "Shit," she mutters.
Lyme fights down the initial spike of panic with a wash of logic. No way could Artemisia slip past her out the front door; it might have been two years since the Arena but Lyme would wake at the sound of someone else's breathing no matter how quiet they tried to be. There's a chance she's hiding under the bed or in the closet like a child hoping to scare her mother, but Lyme doesn't think so; hiding and waiting requires, well, waiting, and patience and Artemisia go together like Brutus and ballet.
She immediately zeroes in on the window, and the sash is down and the curtains still but Lyme will still bet her stipend that that's where her errant Victor went. Lyme crosses the room and pushes up the window, taking in the distance to the ground below. Ten feet, maybe a bit more; enough to jump and not break anything if you do it right, but probably not enough to risk it. Not when the gate guards would stop Artemisia from leaving, and her girl might be crazy but nothing has indicated she's willing to climb over barbed wire just to stick it to her mentor.
Artemisia might have headed for the trails, but again, she's not stupid, and a mountain path in the dark is a surefire way to get your leg broken. Since Artemisia seems to think sitting still is one step away from insanity, Lyme can only assume she'd avoid anything with a high chance of landing her in weeks of bed rest.
None of the Victor houses have drainpipes near the windows (the architects aren't stupid either) and that leaves only one possibility. Lyme sticks her torso through the window and twists around to look up, but there's nothing to see but the bottom edge of the roof and the bright speckling of stars in the sky above, framed by dark fingertips of tree branches.
Nothing for it, then. Lyme reaches out, curls her fingers around the edge of the roof and heaves herself up, arm muscles straining once her feet leave the purchase of the windowsill. Still, she's climbed far worse in training wearing weighted anklets and carrying a full pack, and a few seconds later Lyme hauls herself up and over the edge.
Artemisia sprawls on the roof, arms folded behind her head, one foot dangling lazily over the other bent knee. "Well done," she says, teeth glinting in the moonlight. "I thought for sure you'd run out the front door first."
"You'll have to get up earlier in the morning for that to work," Lyme drawls, and she should be angry, probably, should scold or tell Artemisia to get back inside right now, but the sight of her girl, safe and alive and grinning wickedly, fills her with nothing but relief. Lyme stretches out on the shingles a foot or two away and stares up at the sky. "Couldn't sleep?"
"Nah."
"That happens when you pocket your meds instead of swallowing," Lyme says. No way could anyone get onto the roof with the dosage her girl should've taken. "Where'd you put them?"
Artemisia snickers, but this time there's a nasty edge to it, dark and challenging. "Like I'm telling you."
Lyme glances over, eyes narrowed, and she thinks back to when she was fresh out and the desire to push, to rebel and strike out and disobey burned beneath her skin. She'd tried to stuff her pills between the sofa cushions, wanted to get them out of the way and never think about them again, but Artemisia doesn't hide from things, she twists them into weapons. She'd keep them close.
"They're in your sock," Lyme hazards, and she's rewarded when her Victor's eyes widen for just a second before her nonchalant expression returns. "Hand 'em over."
Artemisia stiffens, and for a second Lyme thinks they're going to have to scrap right here on the roof, but then she snorts and digs two fingers under the edge of the fabric around her ankle. "Cheater," she says, but her tone is more amused than mulish, and she slaps the pills into Lyme's outstretched palm. "You saw me do it."
Lyme doesn't answer; either Artemisia thinks Lyme has eyes in the back of her head or that she's preternatural, and both of those work for a mentor's purposes. "You're too off-schedule to take them now," she says, and slips them into her pocket. "We'll start again tomorrow."
"I don't like them," Artemisia says, her voice like gravel. "They make my head all fuzzy. I hate that."
"Nobody likes them," Lyme says. "You still have to take them."
"I couldn't fight if someone attacked me when I'm on the meds." Artemisia's posture stays loose and languid, but her voice tightens and her breath comes hard and shallow. "I just -- how am I supposed to sleep when anybody could come in and kill me?"
Lyme panicked the first time the medication took hold, dragging her down against her will and carpeting her brain in soft wool. She'd reached for a knife and been unable to close her fingers around the handle even if Nero hadn't replaced it with a hairbrush when she wasn't looking. But just like Nero did then, Lyme knows what to say.
"Nobody would kill you, because I'd rip them in half first," she says. "They wouldn't get a foot inside the house."
"My hero," Artemisia sing-songs, but her shoulders lower and she shifts position, rolling over onto her side to stare at Lyme. "So what do I get for busting out?"
Lyme raises an eyebrow. "You don't get points for housebreaking, not even from the inside out. Maybe a cookie for creativity."
Artemisia bares her teeth. "That's not what I meant and you know it. I don't mean what are you gonna give me, I mean what am I gonna get."
Her voice twists and turns ugly, and Lyme's breath sticks like knives in her chest because that's familiar, too. Artemisia's imitating someone, and nobody in the Centre ever talked like that. Nobody in Lyme's life ever did except for one person. Artemisia's files never mentioned it explicitly but bruises don't lie, and while sometimes Lyme wondered, now she doesn't have to.
Rage floods her again, and Lyme takes a breath in through her nose and lets it out between her teeth, trying to unclench her jaw. "Nothing," she says. "I'm not going to hit you so you'll listen."
"You should," Artemisia says, flat out, and something sparks behind her eyes. "It's the only way to make me. My old man knew me for way longer than you, and even he couldn't figure it out."
"Your old man sounds like a fucking idiot," Lyme says before she can stop herself, but while she can't keep the words from tumbling out she at least manages to lance the venom before it's too late. "And I'm sure he tried really hard, too."
Artemisia laughs. "Don't kid yourself, mentor, I'm a nightmare. You'll see."
Lyme exhales again, fingers digging into her palms. "I guess we will."
They don't talk for a while, but finally Artemisia fidgets. "So now what?"
Lyme quirks her mouth. "So now I go down and get us some blankets in case it gets chilly and we stay here until morning, or we go back inside and try our luck. You have any preference?"
Artemisia frowns, first in confusion, then deeper, like she knows there's a trick somewhere and she can't decide who she's more angry at, Lyme for playing it or herself for not being able to root it out. "You'd really stay out on the roof all night just because I don't feel like going inside."
Lyme shrugs. "It's not going to rain, so why not? Weather's nice."
"I could push you off." Artemisia says it casually, her tone like the first experimental swing of a new blade, testing weight and balance before turning to strike.
Lyme doesn't blink. "Girl, you could try," she says, and this morning she pinned Artemisia to the floor until both shoulders hit the ground and held her there until her Victor stopped spitting.
The pause stretches out longer and tighter, but finally Artemisia laughs. "Okay, okay, I won't try to murder you tonight. I do want to stay outside, though. Inside is -- I dunno. The walls kept getting smaller."
"They do that," Lyme says. "It's nice to look up and see real stars, not the Gamemakers' grid."
"Yeah." Artemisia huffs a laugh, half wonderment half confusion. "I keep forgetting you went through all this."
"Everybody here did," Lyme reminds her. "You're not alone."
"No, I'm not," Artemisia says dryly, and Lyme remembers that frustration, too, feeling like winning the Games meant she'd signed away all privacy without ever realizing she was holding the pen. But when Lyme ducks back inside and climbs up with a couple of blankets draped over her shoulder, her Victor is still there. Artemisia takes the blanket Lyme hands her and rolls it up under her head. "If I have a nightmare and happen to kick you off the roof, though, that's not my fault."
"If you have a nightmare and manage to kick me off the roof, I deserve it for getting slow," Lyme counters, and this time when Artemisia laughs she actually sounds like she means it. "You sleep, I'll be here."
Artemisia closes her eyes and evens out her breathing. She fakes sleep for a good twenty minutes while Lyme rolls her eyes in the darkness, but finally the cadence of her breaths changes and she's down for real, forehead puckered in a frown. Lyme hesitates -- touch wakes her, sometimes -- but finally she reaches over and combs her fingers through Artemisia's hair, barely grazing her scalp. Slowly, slowly, the furrows smooth away, and Artemisia exhales in a quiet sigh.
Lyme stays mostly awake, alternating between watching her and slipping into a light doze, until the sky turns pink behind the jagged black mountains and the morning birds take up the call. She places her own blanket over her sleeping Victor when the air turns chill in the cold light of pre-dawn; Artemisia stirs when the first sunbeam hits her face, and she yawns and flails absently at the light, smacking herself in the forehead.
"Breakfast?" Lyme asks, having long snatched her hand back and moved a respectable distance away.
"Mmr," Artemisia says, squinting one-eyed. "Are you cooking, 'cause right now I think I'd burn the house down."
Lyme winks at her. "Yeah, I'll cook, then we can go outside and spar so your muscles don't hate you for sleeping out here."
Artemisia rubs a hand over her face and sits up, Lyme's blanket draped around her shoulders and her hair sticking up at the back. "Sure," she says casually, and Lyme has to look away before her face betrays her. "I want eggs."
"Eggs it is," Lyme says, and Artemisia's mouth twitches in a smile.
The nice thing is, the Arena guilt seems to have skipped Artemisia completely. The bad thing is there's a countdown on that; they might run but it's always chasing, and no one, not even the most complacent or vicious Victors, make it through their Victory Tour without it catching up.
Brutus says his Tour passed in a haze of drugs and night terrors and a sick twisting in his stomach that never went away. He saw the faces of the dead behind his eyes, felt their bones cracking under his fingers. "I know I did right by doing it, and I gave them good deaths," Brutus says, and he and Lyme don't really do this, don't talk about feelings, but this is blood and metal and nightmares, which is different. "But I'm telling you, it didn't matter for shit when every time I went to drink water I thought of the girl whose neck I snapped to get some."
"It wasn't guilt, exactly," Callista tells Lyme one rainy afternoon when Nero has custody of Artemisia. Lyme sits on the couch and tries not to telegraph how much she hates cats, because Callista's mangy alley rescues can tell. As soon as she glares at one, three of them are in her lap, purring and trying to rub their asses in her face. "I just -- well, I was a silly little thing, you know, buoyed up on the glory. I thought everyone loved me. The Victory Tour was the first time I realized they didn't." She raises her wine glass in a wry salute. "Far from it, in fact. Naiveté at its finest, I know."
With Artemisia, it's not that Lyme thinks she's naive; her girl doesn't think everyone loved her, no one who murdered a boy with a baby back home is going to fall for that, especially not one with as thin a veneer of duty as Artemisia. She's like Lyme, going into the Arena for herself and her own demons rather than any kind of overarching purpose, and her thing is that everyone might hate her but she's convinced herself she doesn't care. Whether that survives the Tour is another matter, but Lyme would put a hell of a lot of money on no.
Lyme isn't going to force that out of Artemisia ahead of time. Lyme came out of the Arena trying to scrub it from her skin -- literally, scouring her Victor tattoo with soap and salt and fingernails -- and her Tour memories are a mess of screaming and dull-eyed stares and curling in Nero's lap with his thick fingers combing the glitter from her hair. She'd Volunteered because all her life people called her a monster, and it amused her to prove them right; the Tour had shown her just how true that had been. She'd applied for mentor training as soon as the Centre would allow it so she could start building a wall of pebbles to hold back the raging sea of sin and guilt.
So no, Lyme is in no hurry. Artemisia's crazy comes from the Arena itself and all the expectations riding on her for the win, but also from three weeks of doing absolutely whatever she damn well pleased before coming back to the Village with its rules and its walls and its benign, suffocating togetherness. She tasted blood and they took it away, and Lyme remembers that, too; she'd killed ten people in the Arena, and now she wasn't allowed to use a can opener.
The only way she can think to vent the pressure so that Artemisia doesn't completely lose it is to give her somewhere to get rid of it. She's not going to send her off into an alley with a knife like Callista used to do as a young Victor, but she needs to leave the Village and know that her mentor won't be breathing down her neck the whole time. Lyme talks to Brutus first to get the okay (his expression, like he's trying not to spit out something unpleasant because his mother made it, or maybe like if he laughs everyone he loves will get shot in the head, makes Lyme skewer him with a glare), then to Emory to double-check.
"Why me?" Emory asks, frowning. "You're her mentor."
"Well, exactly," Lyme points out. It's -- tricky, with Emory, who hasn't mentored yet because Brutus is afraid she'll break with her first loss, but so far the older girl hasn't shown resentment toward Lyme for having her own Victor before she's even tried once. They grow the Odin branch in some special soil, apparently. "Who wants to go to the bar with their mentor?"
"I did." Emory gives her a blank-faced stare, and Lyme very diplomatically does not say 'exactly'.
"I think it's important to give her time with other people," Lyme says instead. She had no one but Nero for months, and between her pre-Arena issues and all the mess that got jumbled up inside her head after, she'd gone into autumn pretty much hating his face, his voice, and everything about him before he fixed it. There were days when even his breathing seemed too loud. "I don't want to crowd her or make her think she can't have fun without me there."
Emory just looks at Lyme like she started reciting a recipe for sandwiches that involves the eyeballs of babies, but finally she nods. "All right," she says with a sigh. "Ground rules?"
And -- oh. Lyme hadn't thought of that, and she covers the fumble as well as she can by pretending to think about it. Emory would be a good mentor, head full of rules and procedures and precedent before she's even looked at a tribute file, and sometimes Lyme wonders if the universe made a mistake and is doing things the wrong way round.
(Too late to take it back, though; Artemisia is hers and hers forever, and all that means is Lyme has to strike the balance between letting her girl know she's staying, and driving her away by holding on too hard.)
"Don't let her go home with anyone," Lyme says, and Emory licks her lips and tries, not very successfully, to hide a grimace. "It's not like that, I'm not telling you to take her out to a sex club and then tell her she can't have fun, just -- wherever she goes, she's going to want to. I've read her file. She was -- enthusiastic. Don't stop her, just don't let her leave, either."
She leaves out the part where Artemisia has been doing everything she possibly can to get Callista to notice her, since that seems to fall on the 'too much information' side of things. Lyme is trying to convince their most straight-laced Victor to take their newest wild child out, not make her run screaming in the other direction.
Emory pinches the bridge of her nose in a gesture that's so classically Brutus that Lyme has to swallow a laugh. "You sure know how to sell a fun night out, let me tell you," she says dryly. "All right then. Take her out, let her get some of this out of her system, but make sure she stays put. Anything else?"
"I don't know if she'll try to get drunk," Lyme says slowly. Artemisia's file is full of her sneaking out and heading to bars and kissing every girl who said yes, but it seems more like she was chasing the thrill of it. The incident reports list her coming back with blood on her knuckles, not alcohol on her breath. "She'll probably try to start a fight, though."
Emory tilts her head. "Let her throw a few punches, but stop it at blood?"
"Something like that." And it's weird, but hearing Emory say that, free of judgement -- a hint of understanding, even -- shoves some of the weight off Lyme's shoulders. Her girl is a Victor who has Victor issues and it's okay; everyone in the Village understands that, no matter how it manifests. "I just want to give her a bit of freedom so she doesn't choke herself trying to get it on her own."
Emory nods. "It's a good idea," she says, and Lyme waits for her to say what she's owed in return, but she doesn't. She just shakes her head, laughs a little, and scrubs a hand through her hair. "Okay, I'll do it. I'll call you when we're leaving so you know when we'll be home."
Sometimes Lyme thinks Brutus and his Victor can't possibly be human, wants to poke at them looking for wires or the transponder where they receive messages from their computer overlord, but other times she feels like she failed a basic element of Be a Good Person class and shouldn't even bother with the makeup exam. "Thanks," Lyme says, and it hits her that this is probably the longest conversation she and Emory have had in two years. "I'll buy you a case of beer or something."
"Don't worry about it," Emory says, waving a hand, and seriously? "It takes a village, right?"
When she tells Artemisia, her girl actually does a double-take. "Wait, really? You're letting me go out alone?"
With Emory doesn't qualify as 'alone', but the fact that she's framing that way means it's working already. "I think you're ready," Lyme says, leaving it at that. "Try not to give Emory a heart attack, though, she's Brutus' girl and we have to be careful with people like that."
Artemisia smiles, sharp and carnivorous and terrifying, and oh dear. Even if Emory isn't asking for a bribe, Lyme bets Brutus will demand one by the end of the week. "I'll do my best, Mom," she says, batting her eyes and twirling a strand of hair around one finger. It's the most terrifying thing Lyme has ever seen her do, and this after watching her disembowel the Six boy and stand over him until the cannon fired.
"Brutus will kill me if you break her," Lyme warns, and she's rewarded when Artemisia lets out a delighted laugh. That ... probably should not have been the response, but oh well, too late now.
"Nah," Artemisia says, slinging an arm around Lyme's waist and butting her head against her shoulder while Lyme very carefully does not suck in a breath. "My mentor could kick Emory's mentor's ass."
"Just don't say that on the playground or we're all in trouble," Lyme shoots back, but she ruffles Artemisia's hair. "I totally could, though," she adds, and her Victor grins.
Friday afternoon, Artemisia hauls Lyme into her room. "Okay, sit," she says, imperiously, and Lyme raises her eyebrows and perches on the edge of the bed. "I need you to give me opinions."
Lyme almost wants to glance around and look for hidden cameras. "Opinions on what?"
"Politics," Artemisia says, deadpan, and when Lyme gives her a look she rolls her eyes. "Clothes, obviously, I'm going out, I want to look good. Everything I have is 'oh look I sleep on the couch all day and eat pasta out of the pot' clothes. Is there anything in here that's nice?"
"Uh." Lyme blinks. This is something they didn't cover in mentor training. "I'm not sure I'm the person you want to ask. I know how to dress myself and that's about it."
Artemisia stops, narrows her eyes and gives Lyme the once-over, then she claps her hands together. "Okay, fine, will Callista come over and help me, then? No offence, your look works for you, but it's not really mine."
"Thanks for that," Lyme says, bristling a little even though she's not offended or stung at all, definitely not. She's heard way worse. "Callista will put you in heels and a dress, just so you know."
"I don't have her curves so probably none of her dresses will fit, but I look killer in heels, " Artemisia says without thinking, and oh, right, normal people. "Plus I've seen hers, and she could put them through a guy's neck. Sounds good to me." She holds up a hand when Lyme flattens her stare. "No, I'm kidding, I'm kidding, I promise."
Lyme wouldn't be a Victor if she didn't have an appreciation for gallows humour, and she's made enough cracks about murdering people with clothing or household objects to know when someone isn't being serious. "That's fine," she says, standing and stretching her arms over her head, bending one and tugging at the elbow to loosen a knot in her shoulder. "I'll go get Callista and you two can do your thing. Meanwhile I'll go throw some heavy things around and grunt a lot."
Artemisia laughs, but then a line appears between her eyebrows and she reaches out to catch Lyme's arm. "Hey, I wasn't kidding when I said you look good, though. You're totally intimidating and it's great. I couldn't pull it off."
No relief hits Lyme between the shoulder blades, and she most definitely does not fight her mouth as it attempts to twitch into a smile. It's stupid to feel relieved that her Victor isn't mocking the clothes that make her feel the happiest about herself she's felt in years, the ones that allowed her to channel the rage and power inside her and not try to stuff herself into someone else's box. It's not a thing. Lyme doesn't care.
She does stifle the strangest urge to tug Artemisia in close and kiss the top of her head, which, what? Instead Lyme throws an arm around her girl's shoulders and tugs at her hair. "All right, I'll go call the world's most murderous prep team."
Artemisia bares her teeth. "Not gonna go for the 'she'll make you look killer' joke, I see," she says, and this time Lyme laughs.
"Punning wasn't my image," Lyme says, pulling out her phone.
It's good anyway, really, since the whole point of going out tonight is about Artemisia bonding with other Victors, and dressing her for the occasion is definitely better than letting Callista drag her to the Capitol to one of her bondage and fetish clubs. Lyme leaves them alone for the preparation, and she grabs her sword and heads back to Artemisia's to run through forms in the backyard while she waits.
Her arms shake by the time Artemisia emerges out the back door and poses on the porch, one hand on her hip. "Ta-da," she says, grinning, but it's a full-on, regular grin, not her nasty Arena smile or her winking camera smile or the one that smells blood, and Lyme can't help but return it. "What do you think?"
Callista put her in something tight, short, off the shoulders and missing half the back, but it's still more fabric than anything a Capitol stylist would put her in, and for Callista it's actually pretty subtle. Lyme can only assume this is meant to go under something with a lot more straps and buckles. For her exit interview Artemisia's prep team curled her hair and pinned tiny daggers to dangle between the ringlets, but Callista's left it loose, wavy and a little bit wild. She looks -- normal, happy, and even better she actually looks eighteen, not like a kid sexed up far beyond her age so the Capitol audience won't feel guilty drooling over her. For the first time since the Reaping, her clothes don't look like they're just waiting for an artistic spray of someone else's blood.
Lyme relaxes just a hair, and Callista shoots her a thumbs up from the doorway, out of Artemisia's eye line. "You look good," Lyme says, resting the flat of the sword against the curve of her neck to give her arm a bit of a break. "But now I do have to make the 'knock 'em dead' joke or I get fined by the universe."
Artemisia just grins wider, taking the porch steps down two at a time -- in heels, no less, and Lyme could kill five different people five different ways with a broken pencil but she'd probably snap her fibula if she tried something like that. "You're the best," she says, and a glow spreads through Lyme's chest. "Seriously, the best. I'll bring you back a souvenir."
"No you will not," Lyme says, pointing her finger in an exaggerated gesture that's really only half kidding. "No stealing things from behind the bar, or from other patrons, either." She learned her lesson after Artemisia came back from Ronan's with a carved wooden bishop from his chess set in her pocket; Ronan let her get away with it three times before telling her he'd buy her a set of her own but leave his be. The Centre files didn't say anything about Artemisia being a compulsive thief, at least not more than most kids who went through a phase of smuggling out weapons for extra practice, but apparently they don't know everything.
Artemisia only beams at her, but she doesn't sass or argue, and her eyes barely flickered at the sight of Lyme holding a weapon. "Can we go get Emory?" she asks. "I know it's too early for the club, but maybe we can get dinner first."
There's a cadence to her voice there, all false-casual but with a hopeful lilt at the end that makes Lyme narrow her eyes, especially when Callista covers her mouth and lets out the world's worst cover-a-laugh cough for someone who still tops the Centre's showmanship scores decades later. "I'm sure you can," Lyme says carefully, because oh.
Two years out and Lyme is no more interested in finding someone than she was when their mentors forced her and Brutus out on a date. She absolutely refused to do the same thing with Artemisia, to scour the Village for anyone within the appropriate range of age and sexuality in the hopes that one of them will like her girl and make a happily ever after. Lyme knows absolutely nothing about Emory's tastes -- she's never gone on a date as far as Lyme knows -- but Emory would be steadying, if nothing else.
She's not going to say anything about it either way. It wasn't a setup and the less Lyme thinks about it, the better.
"I'm gonna run in and grab a jacket," Artemisia says, disappearing back into the house, and Lyme pulls a rag from her pocket to wipe the sweat from the handle of her sword while Callista glides down to join her.
"You know, if she still looks like that at thirty, I might take her up on the offer she made me," Callista says idly, and Lyme chokes. "She's a very sweet girl."
Not too many people would vaguely hit on someone's Victor while the mentor is standing right there with an enormous sword; Callista gets props for her guts, Lyme will give her that. That's all Lyme will give her, though, and she fixes the older woman with a hard stare. "Don't even," she says, a growl filling her words even as she tries to stop it.
"She's a decade too young at the moment, and even I have limits," Callista says mildly. "She doesn't like boys at all, by the way, that should please you. Fewer testicles for you to crush preemptively I'm sure."
Lyme pretends she didn't hear that because Callista is right, and that's just embarrassing. Even worse because Brutus would agree with the relief, and nobody needs that.
Emory agrees to dinner over the phone, answering with her usual vague pleasantness that answers absolutely no questions about whether she knows Artemisia is stealthily inviting herself on a date. Lyme runs home to drop off her sword in the meantime, trying not to think about what sort of pick-up strategies or who knows what else Callista might be giving Artemisia in the meantime. She grabs an apple from the crisper on her way out just to give herself something to do with her hands because suddenly she's restless, even though it's stupid.
It's just an evening; Lyme hasn't had a night to herself since the Reaping, she should be happy for the chance to get something done. She could hit the Village gym for real, pound out a good solid workout and start to regain the muscle definition she's lost from the months of inadequate sleep, hasty meals and constant attention. She could even head out to town, check out the shops and get something to eat using real, metal utensils instead of plastic. It's a night of possibilities, that's what it is, and Lyme should look at it that way.
She rolls the apple around in her hands on her way back to Artemisia's house, and when she gets there Lyme rubs her fingers over the smooth skin, probing for bruises and mushy spots while Artemisia chatters. It's -- charming, almost, how animated she is, and if this goes well then they can make this a part of their weekly schedule. Snow only knows she'll need it once the Tour preparation kicks into gear for good, and starting next summer they'll have chosen Artemisia's public facade and everything she does anywhere near the possibility of a camera will have to be crafted to fit within that. Now is the best time for her to go out and have fun, kiss a few girls and knock a few heads and get some of the stir-crazy out of her system.
They sit together on the porch swing after Callista heads back to her place with her collection of clothing she brought over for Artemisia to try, and Artemisia leans her shoulder against Lyme's arm while Lyme forces herself to keep looking out over the yard. "I'm feeling good today," Artemisia says, tipping her weight into Lyme's space just a little. "It's nice."
"You're doing well," Lyme says. "I'm proud of you." The bad patches still come close together, and a good day today still might mean that tomorrow Artemisia will pull everything out of her cupboards and throw it through the kitchen window to see what Lyme will do or whether she'll get mad, but as every Victor knows, you take each day sunrise to sunrise. She takes a risk and moves her arm, stretching it out along the back of the swing, and Artemisia shifts to lean against Lyme's side.
Artemisia tilts her head back and gives Lyme a smile that's only just a little bit shit-eating. "So, what, you're saying I'm the good kind of crazy?"
Lyme jostles her shoulder. "Yeah, girl, that's exactly what I'm saying."
Emory shows up not long after that, bearing a screw-top glass jar filled with reddish jelly. "I made rosehip-apple jam this morning," she says, and Lyme has lived in District 2 all her damn life and she has no idea what a rosehip is or how a person should eat it. Sometimes she thinks Emory must be making things up, except that she and Brutus go camping with nothing but the clothes on their backs and a hunting knife for upwards of a week and they come back looking fed and happy, so who the hell knows.
"Thanks?" Lyme takes the jar and examines the contents. Half the Village must have kitchens stuffed with Emory's preserves, though Lyme will admit they're usually good.
"It's not as sweet as some of the fruit stuff," Emory says. "I know that's not really your thing, so I figured you might like this."
It strikes Lyme that she has no idea whether Emory likes sweet food or not, and once Artemisia is more settled in then this is probably something she should work on. Lyme doesn't make friends easily but this is ridiculous, and it can't have been easy for Emory to have a new Victor just three years down who all but ignored her existence. "Thanks," Lyme says, shifting a little. "You guys gonna head out, then?"
Emory glances at Artemisia, and her polite, neutral smile falls away to wide eyes and mild alarm when she takes in her outfit. "Wait, that's what you're wearing?"
"What's wrong with it?" Artemisia asks, her voice sharpening with defensiveness, and her fingers twitch at the edges of the jacket like she wants to pull it closed but isn't letting herself. Lyme leans her weight a little closer onto Artemisia's side.
"Nothing, but I'm definitely underdressed," Emory says, and Artemisia sits back, feathers smoothed. "Plus you look like you're going to get cold pretty fast. Weather's falling quick after dark this time of year."
Artemisia cocks her head and gives the other Victor a winning smile that Lyme is glad Brutus isn't here to see aimed at his girl. "It's okay, I'll just borrow your jacket if I get chilly."
Emory shrugs. "Sure can do. I picked a nice place to eat I thought, but looking like that everybody's gonna stare. Most people aren't going to look so nice. If you don't mind then we can walk there from here." Her eyes narrow at Artemisia's shoes. "Or I could drive."
"Let's drive," Artemisia says, and her voice has taken on a tone that Lyme has never heard before, similar to the prey-stalking from the Arena but with a small lilt of hesitation to it. Lyme hasn't heard Artemisia be anything but certain in her life. "That way we can stay out later and not worry about walking back."
This time Emory laughs. "Ain't nobody going to bother the two of us after hours, but well enough. Lyme, I'll call you when we're leaving, all right?"
Lyme nods, and part of her feels bad for not warning Emory when she obviously has no idea what she's in for, but them's the breaks. If it goes well then it goes well, and Lyme will be happy; if Emory isn't interested, then there's really no one better for Artemisia to suffer her first rejection than the woman who embodies all the elements of quarry manners, so full of courtesy and humility that she almost makes Brutus look rude.
"Shall we?" Artemisia asks brightly, holding out her hand, and Emory snorts and crooks her arm so Artemisia can tuck her hand into the join of her elbow.
Lyme heads back out over the yard to her house, holding the jar of jam awkwardly in both hands, because it feels too strange to stand and watch them go.
Brutus stops by an hour later with a case of beer under one arm, a bottle of brandy in one hand, and a sword belted to his waist. Lyme's fingers tighten on the edge of the doorknob. "I don't need whatever this is," she says. "I'm fine."
"I know you are," Brutus says amiably, jostling his way past her into the house and dropping the drinks on her kitchen counter while Lyme scowls. "Just thought you could use the company."
Lyme drums her fingers against her biceps. "You realize that your being nice makes me want to start checking under my pillows for spiders."
Brutus snorts, unbuckling his sword and leaning it in the corner. He drops onto the far stool at the kitchen counter and leans back against the wall, propping his feet up on the one next to him as he cracks open a beer. Apparently in the quarries they take 'make yourself at home' as a given when it suits them. "Look, first time Emory went out without me, I damn near ripped up all my flooring and put new ones down just to give myself something to do, ain't no shame in that."
"I'm not --"
Bruus raises his eyebrows and Lyme shuts her mouth. "Plus it's been a long time since we've gotten tipsy and beaten the shit out of each other. I figure you've gotten soft, since you haven't had anybody to fight but your Arena-crazy baby Victor for the last few months. Unless you're afraid of the challenge."
Lyme stomps on the swell of gratitude and grabs a glass from the cupboard, shoving Brutus' legs off the stool with a pointed look. "You'll have to try harder than that to goad me, caveman."
Brutus takes a long pull of his beer and sets it down on the counter hard enough to thump against the polished granite. "I'm not goading anybody, I'm just sayin', I haven't had a day off training in some four years now, so I can see why you might be intimidated --"
She knows what he's doing, she isn't an idiot, but Lyme could do with the cheering up and it's not every day she gets to hear Brutus say he's missed her. Lyme flattens her eyes at him, then lifts her glass and knocks back the brandy in one go, silently apologizing to the drink for wasting its potential like it's cheap vodka. "Fuck you," she says, and she reaches under the counter for a bottle of tequila, banging it and a pair of shot glasses on the counter. "You're on, then."
"You're gonna make me drink booze from Ten?" Brutus complains, but he slides the case of beer down to the far end of the counter and grabs the salt shaker, twisting off the lid. "I'm definitely kicking your ass."
They don't get to rip-roaring drunk, they're not stupid. Even with her anxieties keyed up, both Lyme and Brutus are mentors now, and that's flipped something in her head; around the point where they're pushing up their sleeves to compare biceps and taunt each other, Lyme's brain pings a warning. She shoves the booze away, hauls herself up from the stool, and drags both her and Brutus to the bathroom to stick their heads under the shower at its coldest setting. It leaves them soaked and sputtering and cursing, but well sober enough that grabbing their swords and heading out back to swing them around would only get them a raised eyebrow from Odin and Nero, not the full on mentor stare.
It does feel good to let go. Artemisia isn't the first Victor to have the crazy bubble up so strong it drives her to irresponsible things, and both Lyme and Brutus tried to run from theirs as soon as they could, throwing themselves into training and mentoring and actually pulling out a kid so they had no choice but to grow up fast. Lyme can't remember the last time she fought with alcohol buzzing in her system, grinning and tossing out filthy insults and cackling with triumph as Brutus' mega-adult quarry-values duty-first mask peels off and she finds the Victor underneath. Beneath all that politeness and honour he's just like her, a kid with blood on his knuckles and the Arena two steps behind. It's all shark smiles and words dredged from the deepest pit mines on the coldest Januaries, and Lyme says you kiss your mother with that mouth and Brutus flings back yeah well you'd know better so you tell me.
They end up sprawled on the lawn, Lyme with her head pillowed on Brutus' leg, digging the back of her skull into his thigh so he grunts in irritation. "It's stupid to miss her for one night," Lyme says, staring up at the stars. Here the outline of the trees are a sharp black silhouette, the clouds low on the horizon and too far down for her current vantage point.
Brutus flails a hand in her direction and ends up smacking her in the ear before he finds her head, condescendingly patting her. "Way I figure, mentoring means going a little stupid," he says, moving his hand out of reach of her teeth when Lyme twists and takes a snap at his fingers. "Parents think these little wrinkly, screaming things are the best thing in the universe, right? Same deal."
Lyme jabs him in the knee. "Maybe your Victor is a wrinkly screaming thing, but mine's perfect."
"Fuck you, sweetheart."
"Not for all the grain in Nine, asshole."
"The fuck are you gonna do with all the grain in Nine?"
"I dunno, stuff it up your ass!"
Brutus laughs, then Lyme laughs, and once the crazy dam breaks they're both cracking up right there on the lawn, bruised and still a little tipsy with their swords lying in the grass off to the side. The Centre never told her it would be like this, and if they had Lyme would have scoffed and taken out the next training dummy right in the groin because she thought all she needed was the Victory, her freedom, and a Village with a gate that locked from the inside. Now she punches Brutus in the leg to hear him grumble, and she's actually dozing off on him when her phone buzzes in her pocket.
"We're heading back," Emory says in Lyme's ear, and Lyme sits up and combs bits of grass and dirt out of her hair from the time Brutus took her down. Lyme strains to pick up Emory's tone, but there's too much background noise, people shouting and laughing and the music thumping overhead. "I'm driving back, so less than half an hour."
Lyme thanks her, then heaves herself up and gives Brutus a hand so he can slap it away and mutter about uppity girls trying to make him feel old. They bring the swords inside, and Lyme takes down a bottle of anti-hangover pills and tosses one to Brutus before crunching hers dry. Brutus rolls his eyes and pours himself a glass of water to drink with his.
"I think Artemisia likes Emory," Lyme says while they wait on the porch, glancing over at Brutus. She braces to punch him if he says her girl isn't good enough for his, but he just clicks his tongue against the roof his mouth, thoughtfully.
"Hope it ain't serious," he says finally. "Emory and me, we've talked about it. Dunno if it's the Program or the Arena or what, but she's not into that."
"Girls?" Lyme asks, because fair enough, neither is she, which made for a confusing adolescence when she couldn't decide whether she wanted to kiss boys, break their necks, or both.
"Anything," Brutus says neutrally, and he runs a hand over his face. The buzz from the tequila and the rush from the fight are fading, and Lyme is alternately shaky and crashing; Brutus looks the same.
He doesn't give details, and Lyme doesn't ask. Emory wouldn't be the only one to come out of the Arena without a desire for sex or relationships, and maybe it's less complicated that way. "Here's hoping she cuts that off before it spreads I guess," Lyme says. "Artemisia can -- fixate."
"Hadn't noticed," Brutus says dryly, but he holds up a hand when Lyme goes to sock him. "No, I get it, but Emory's not cruel, or stupid. She'll figure it out and she'll shut it down, and she won't turn to stone if your girl hits on her. It'll be fine."
They fall silent after that, and not long after the sound of Artemisia's laughter floats up over the trees. It's not the wild, half-crazed cackling of a Victor who's tasted blood that night, and Lyme exhales and loosens her fingers from their death grip on her knees. She stands up and dusts off her jeans before Emory and Artemisia round the path.
Artemisia is wearing Emory's jacket and Emory's arm is around her waist, and for a second Lyme thinks Brutus might have made a miscalculation except then they step into the orange glow of the porch light and never mind. Artemisia is grinning, but Emory wears the face of someone who's spent an entire afternoon picking up a rabbit and carrying it out from the middle of the road, only for it to turn around and dash back in.
"There," Emory says with exaggerated patience, and she peels Artemisia's arm from her shoulders and all but dumps her in Lyme's lap. "We're home now."
Lyme gives her a sharp glance, but there's no alcohol smell emanating from Artemisia's breath or clothes, and when she tips back her head to grin at Lyme her gaze is clear. "Did you have fun?"
"I got in a fight," Artemisia says, beaming, and Emory snorts and flops down onto the porch step beside Brutus, who gives her a pat on the shoulder. "It was great. I stopped before blood, too, just like Emory said, just hit him in the throat and he went down like a little Six."
"Oh?" Lyme rubs her fingers over Artemisia's scalp, ignoring the turn of phrase that will most definitely be trained out of her before the Tour. "What else?"
"I kissed all the girls," Artemisia says. She closes her eyes and lets out a happy sigh, stretching out her foot and resting it on the railing. "Alllllll of the girls."
"Yes she did," says Emory, sounding drained but not judging, so there's that. "Even the straight ones. More than one will be going home confused tonight."
"Well, wouldn't you?" Artemisia asks, but then she laughs and points one finger back over her head. "No, wait, I asked and you wouldn't. Did you know Emory doesn't like girls? No boys either. What a waste."
Lyme flicks her between the eyes. "Hey. Nobody is a waste just because they won't kiss you, and Emory is right there."
Emory presses thumb and forefinger to the inside corners of her eye sockets. "It's fine, we had a nice talk and a few drinks and everything was -- fine."
Artemisia wrinkles her nose. "Emory would only let me have two beers. Two beers! And no shots. I could've drunk so much more."
"And then been in no shape to throw any punches, much less kiss any girls," Lyme points out, and against her will she's charmed by the thinking frown that wrinkles Artemisia's forehead. "Good night, though?"
"Yes," Artemisia proclaims finally. "Yes, yes, definitely. I want to do it again."
Emory sighs, just a little, but then she smiles. "Sure, let's do it next week," she says. "But you're bringing your own coat."
Artemisia chuckles to herself as Brutus and Emory take their leave. "She didn't know it was a date, and I didn't know it wasn't," she says after, and Lyme freezes but her expression stays on the wistful side and never crosses over into anger or bitterness. "We got all the way through dinner. She held the door, she got my chair, she even glared at some noisy guys outside to fuck off. She figured it out when I asked her to dance, though." She sighs, then brightens. "Too bad, she's really pretty, but there were lots of pretty girls there."
Lyme doesn't really want to hear about this, and so she tugs Artemisia to her feet and starts them back on the path toward her house. "I'm glad you had a good time."
"It was a good idea," Artemisia says, only stumbling once when her heels snag on a pine cone. "I guess mentors aren't always spoilsports."
"I guess we aren't," Lyme says, and her Victor snickers and knocks her head against Lyme's shoulder.
Rating: PG
Warnings: None, this chapter
Characters: Lyme, Brutus, D2 OC Victors (Artemisia, Callista, Emory)
Summary: District 2 Victor Lyme, two years fresh from the Arena, gets her first tribute to mentor. Her vow to remain aloof to avoid getting attached lasts until she finds Artemisia: wicked, irreverent, blase and a little unhinged, whose childhood photos showed bruises her Games training never put there.
Chapter Summary: Lyme wants to give Artemisia something good before the Victory Tour drags the rug out from under her. Luckily she has a whole Village to help her out.
Lyme wakes up in the middle of the night, and as she blinks awake in the darkness she runs a quick check to see what brought her out of sleep. Heart rate and breathing even, no pounding or aching in her chest, which means no nightmares even if she didn't remember them. No crashes of thunder rattle the window panes, no gusts of wind moan through the cracks, and no branches scrape at the sides of the house. Not weather then, either.
The rest of the house is silent, and Lyme narrows her eyes. There's no reason it shouldn't be silent -- Artemisia took her pills after dinner and went to bed like a good little Victor -- except that Artemisia has never been a good little Victor yet she complied with tonight's medication routine without complaining. Lyme swears under her breath and throws off the blanket, swinging her legs over the edge of the sofa. The wooden floor is cold against her bare soles, and she heads for the stairs, balancing on the balls of her feet and stepping close to the walls to avoid creaking.
It's probably nothing, except Lyme is quickly learning that those are the times when something definitely is happening. You can't turn your back on a fresh Victor for a minute, so they say, but the bumps in her own recovery and her girl's restless spirit make Lyme wary of constant supervision. Sometimes privacy has to come before trust, she figured, but that's a great theory until something breaks. She makes it up to Artemisia's room without making noise -- stealth isn't something you just forget, especially when dealing with a Victor who apparently spent her pre-Residential days breaking and entering -- and pushes open the door a crack.
Artemisia's bed is mussed, the blankets askew and one pillow on the floor ... and entirely missing its supposed occupant. Lyme drags a hand down her face. "Shit," she mutters.
Lyme fights down the initial spike of panic with a wash of logic. No way could Artemisia slip past her out the front door; it might have been two years since the Arena but Lyme would wake at the sound of someone else's breathing no matter how quiet they tried to be. There's a chance she's hiding under the bed or in the closet like a child hoping to scare her mother, but Lyme doesn't think so; hiding and waiting requires, well, waiting, and patience and Artemisia go together like Brutus and ballet.
She immediately zeroes in on the window, and the sash is down and the curtains still but Lyme will still bet her stipend that that's where her errant Victor went. Lyme crosses the room and pushes up the window, taking in the distance to the ground below. Ten feet, maybe a bit more; enough to jump and not break anything if you do it right, but probably not enough to risk it. Not when the gate guards would stop Artemisia from leaving, and her girl might be crazy but nothing has indicated she's willing to climb over barbed wire just to stick it to her mentor.
Artemisia might have headed for the trails, but again, she's not stupid, and a mountain path in the dark is a surefire way to get your leg broken. Since Artemisia seems to think sitting still is one step away from insanity, Lyme can only assume she'd avoid anything with a high chance of landing her in weeks of bed rest.
None of the Victor houses have drainpipes near the windows (the architects aren't stupid either) and that leaves only one possibility. Lyme sticks her torso through the window and twists around to look up, but there's nothing to see but the bottom edge of the roof and the bright speckling of stars in the sky above, framed by dark fingertips of tree branches.
Nothing for it, then. Lyme reaches out, curls her fingers around the edge of the roof and heaves herself up, arm muscles straining once her feet leave the purchase of the windowsill. Still, she's climbed far worse in training wearing weighted anklets and carrying a full pack, and a few seconds later Lyme hauls herself up and over the edge.
Artemisia sprawls on the roof, arms folded behind her head, one foot dangling lazily over the other bent knee. "Well done," she says, teeth glinting in the moonlight. "I thought for sure you'd run out the front door first."
"You'll have to get up earlier in the morning for that to work," Lyme drawls, and she should be angry, probably, should scold or tell Artemisia to get back inside right now, but the sight of her girl, safe and alive and grinning wickedly, fills her with nothing but relief. Lyme stretches out on the shingles a foot or two away and stares up at the sky. "Couldn't sleep?"
"Nah."
"That happens when you pocket your meds instead of swallowing," Lyme says. No way could anyone get onto the roof with the dosage her girl should've taken. "Where'd you put them?"
Artemisia snickers, but this time there's a nasty edge to it, dark and challenging. "Like I'm telling you."
Lyme glances over, eyes narrowed, and she thinks back to when she was fresh out and the desire to push, to rebel and strike out and disobey burned beneath her skin. She'd tried to stuff her pills between the sofa cushions, wanted to get them out of the way and never think about them again, but Artemisia doesn't hide from things, she twists them into weapons. She'd keep them close.
"They're in your sock," Lyme hazards, and she's rewarded when her Victor's eyes widen for just a second before her nonchalant expression returns. "Hand 'em over."
Artemisia stiffens, and for a second Lyme thinks they're going to have to scrap right here on the roof, but then she snorts and digs two fingers under the edge of the fabric around her ankle. "Cheater," she says, but her tone is more amused than mulish, and she slaps the pills into Lyme's outstretched palm. "You saw me do it."
Lyme doesn't answer; either Artemisia thinks Lyme has eyes in the back of her head or that she's preternatural, and both of those work for a mentor's purposes. "You're too off-schedule to take them now," she says, and slips them into her pocket. "We'll start again tomorrow."
"I don't like them," Artemisia says, her voice like gravel. "They make my head all fuzzy. I hate that."
"Nobody likes them," Lyme says. "You still have to take them."
"I couldn't fight if someone attacked me when I'm on the meds." Artemisia's posture stays loose and languid, but her voice tightens and her breath comes hard and shallow. "I just -- how am I supposed to sleep when anybody could come in and kill me?"
Lyme panicked the first time the medication took hold, dragging her down against her will and carpeting her brain in soft wool. She'd reached for a knife and been unable to close her fingers around the handle even if Nero hadn't replaced it with a hairbrush when she wasn't looking. But just like Nero did then, Lyme knows what to say.
"Nobody would kill you, because I'd rip them in half first," she says. "They wouldn't get a foot inside the house."
"My hero," Artemisia sing-songs, but her shoulders lower and she shifts position, rolling over onto her side to stare at Lyme. "So what do I get for busting out?"
Lyme raises an eyebrow. "You don't get points for housebreaking, not even from the inside out. Maybe a cookie for creativity."
Artemisia bares her teeth. "That's not what I meant and you know it. I don't mean what are you gonna give me, I mean what am I gonna get."
Her voice twists and turns ugly, and Lyme's breath sticks like knives in her chest because that's familiar, too. Artemisia's imitating someone, and nobody in the Centre ever talked like that. Nobody in Lyme's life ever did except for one person. Artemisia's files never mentioned it explicitly but bruises don't lie, and while sometimes Lyme wondered, now she doesn't have to.
Rage floods her again, and Lyme takes a breath in through her nose and lets it out between her teeth, trying to unclench her jaw. "Nothing," she says. "I'm not going to hit you so you'll listen."
"You should," Artemisia says, flat out, and something sparks behind her eyes. "It's the only way to make me. My old man knew me for way longer than you, and even he couldn't figure it out."
"Your old man sounds like a fucking idiot," Lyme says before she can stop herself, but while she can't keep the words from tumbling out she at least manages to lance the venom before it's too late. "And I'm sure he tried really hard, too."
Artemisia laughs. "Don't kid yourself, mentor, I'm a nightmare. You'll see."
Lyme exhales again, fingers digging into her palms. "I guess we will."
They don't talk for a while, but finally Artemisia fidgets. "So now what?"
Lyme quirks her mouth. "So now I go down and get us some blankets in case it gets chilly and we stay here until morning, or we go back inside and try our luck. You have any preference?"
Artemisia frowns, first in confusion, then deeper, like she knows there's a trick somewhere and she can't decide who she's more angry at, Lyme for playing it or herself for not being able to root it out. "You'd really stay out on the roof all night just because I don't feel like going inside."
Lyme shrugs. "It's not going to rain, so why not? Weather's nice."
"I could push you off." Artemisia says it casually, her tone like the first experimental swing of a new blade, testing weight and balance before turning to strike.
Lyme doesn't blink. "Girl, you could try," she says, and this morning she pinned Artemisia to the floor until both shoulders hit the ground and held her there until her Victor stopped spitting.
The pause stretches out longer and tighter, but finally Artemisia laughs. "Okay, okay, I won't try to murder you tonight. I do want to stay outside, though. Inside is -- I dunno. The walls kept getting smaller."
"They do that," Lyme says. "It's nice to look up and see real stars, not the Gamemakers' grid."
"Yeah." Artemisia huffs a laugh, half wonderment half confusion. "I keep forgetting you went through all this."
"Everybody here did," Lyme reminds her. "You're not alone."
"No, I'm not," Artemisia says dryly, and Lyme remembers that frustration, too, feeling like winning the Games meant she'd signed away all privacy without ever realizing she was holding the pen. But when Lyme ducks back inside and climbs up with a couple of blankets draped over her shoulder, her Victor is still there. Artemisia takes the blanket Lyme hands her and rolls it up under her head. "If I have a nightmare and happen to kick you off the roof, though, that's not my fault."
"If you have a nightmare and manage to kick me off the roof, I deserve it for getting slow," Lyme counters, and this time when Artemisia laughs she actually sounds like she means it. "You sleep, I'll be here."
Artemisia closes her eyes and evens out her breathing. She fakes sleep for a good twenty minutes while Lyme rolls her eyes in the darkness, but finally the cadence of her breaths changes and she's down for real, forehead puckered in a frown. Lyme hesitates -- touch wakes her, sometimes -- but finally she reaches over and combs her fingers through Artemisia's hair, barely grazing her scalp. Slowly, slowly, the furrows smooth away, and Artemisia exhales in a quiet sigh.
Lyme stays mostly awake, alternating between watching her and slipping into a light doze, until the sky turns pink behind the jagged black mountains and the morning birds take up the call. She places her own blanket over her sleeping Victor when the air turns chill in the cold light of pre-dawn; Artemisia stirs when the first sunbeam hits her face, and she yawns and flails absently at the light, smacking herself in the forehead.
"Breakfast?" Lyme asks, having long snatched her hand back and moved a respectable distance away.
"Mmr," Artemisia says, squinting one-eyed. "Are you cooking, 'cause right now I think I'd burn the house down."
Lyme winks at her. "Yeah, I'll cook, then we can go outside and spar so your muscles don't hate you for sleeping out here."
Artemisia rubs a hand over her face and sits up, Lyme's blanket draped around her shoulders and her hair sticking up at the back. "Sure," she says casually, and Lyme has to look away before her face betrays her. "I want eggs."
"Eggs it is," Lyme says, and Artemisia's mouth twitches in a smile.
The nice thing is, the Arena guilt seems to have skipped Artemisia completely. The bad thing is there's a countdown on that; they might run but it's always chasing, and no one, not even the most complacent or vicious Victors, make it through their Victory Tour without it catching up.
Brutus says his Tour passed in a haze of drugs and night terrors and a sick twisting in his stomach that never went away. He saw the faces of the dead behind his eyes, felt their bones cracking under his fingers. "I know I did right by doing it, and I gave them good deaths," Brutus says, and he and Lyme don't really do this, don't talk about feelings, but this is blood and metal and nightmares, which is different. "But I'm telling you, it didn't matter for shit when every time I went to drink water I thought of the girl whose neck I snapped to get some."
"It wasn't guilt, exactly," Callista tells Lyme one rainy afternoon when Nero has custody of Artemisia. Lyme sits on the couch and tries not to telegraph how much she hates cats, because Callista's mangy alley rescues can tell. As soon as she glares at one, three of them are in her lap, purring and trying to rub their asses in her face. "I just -- well, I was a silly little thing, you know, buoyed up on the glory. I thought everyone loved me. The Victory Tour was the first time I realized they didn't." She raises her wine glass in a wry salute. "Far from it, in fact. Naiveté at its finest, I know."
With Artemisia, it's not that Lyme thinks she's naive; her girl doesn't think everyone loved her, no one who murdered a boy with a baby back home is going to fall for that, especially not one with as thin a veneer of duty as Artemisia. She's like Lyme, going into the Arena for herself and her own demons rather than any kind of overarching purpose, and her thing is that everyone might hate her but she's convinced herself she doesn't care. Whether that survives the Tour is another matter, but Lyme would put a hell of a lot of money on no.
Lyme isn't going to force that out of Artemisia ahead of time. Lyme came out of the Arena trying to scrub it from her skin -- literally, scouring her Victor tattoo with soap and salt and fingernails -- and her Tour memories are a mess of screaming and dull-eyed stares and curling in Nero's lap with his thick fingers combing the glitter from her hair. She'd Volunteered because all her life people called her a monster, and it amused her to prove them right; the Tour had shown her just how true that had been. She'd applied for mentor training as soon as the Centre would allow it so she could start building a wall of pebbles to hold back the raging sea of sin and guilt.
So no, Lyme is in no hurry. Artemisia's crazy comes from the Arena itself and all the expectations riding on her for the win, but also from three weeks of doing absolutely whatever she damn well pleased before coming back to the Village with its rules and its walls and its benign, suffocating togetherness. She tasted blood and they took it away, and Lyme remembers that, too; she'd killed ten people in the Arena, and now she wasn't allowed to use a can opener.
The only way she can think to vent the pressure so that Artemisia doesn't completely lose it is to give her somewhere to get rid of it. She's not going to send her off into an alley with a knife like Callista used to do as a young Victor, but she needs to leave the Village and know that her mentor won't be breathing down her neck the whole time. Lyme talks to Brutus first to get the okay (his expression, like he's trying not to spit out something unpleasant because his mother made it, or maybe like if he laughs everyone he loves will get shot in the head, makes Lyme skewer him with a glare), then to Emory to double-check.
"Why me?" Emory asks, frowning. "You're her mentor."
"Well, exactly," Lyme points out. It's -- tricky, with Emory, who hasn't mentored yet because Brutus is afraid she'll break with her first loss, but so far the older girl hasn't shown resentment toward Lyme for having her own Victor before she's even tried once. They grow the Odin branch in some special soil, apparently. "Who wants to go to the bar with their mentor?"
"I did." Emory gives her a blank-faced stare, and Lyme very diplomatically does not say 'exactly'.
"I think it's important to give her time with other people," Lyme says instead. She had no one but Nero for months, and between her pre-Arena issues and all the mess that got jumbled up inside her head after, she'd gone into autumn pretty much hating his face, his voice, and everything about him before he fixed it. There were days when even his breathing seemed too loud. "I don't want to crowd her or make her think she can't have fun without me there."
Emory just looks at Lyme like she started reciting a recipe for sandwiches that involves the eyeballs of babies, but finally she nods. "All right," she says with a sigh. "Ground rules?"
And -- oh. Lyme hadn't thought of that, and she covers the fumble as well as she can by pretending to think about it. Emory would be a good mentor, head full of rules and procedures and precedent before she's even looked at a tribute file, and sometimes Lyme wonders if the universe made a mistake and is doing things the wrong way round.
(Too late to take it back, though; Artemisia is hers and hers forever, and all that means is Lyme has to strike the balance between letting her girl know she's staying, and driving her away by holding on too hard.)
"Don't let her go home with anyone," Lyme says, and Emory licks her lips and tries, not very successfully, to hide a grimace. "It's not like that, I'm not telling you to take her out to a sex club and then tell her she can't have fun, just -- wherever she goes, she's going to want to. I've read her file. She was -- enthusiastic. Don't stop her, just don't let her leave, either."
She leaves out the part where Artemisia has been doing everything she possibly can to get Callista to notice her, since that seems to fall on the 'too much information' side of things. Lyme is trying to convince their most straight-laced Victor to take their newest wild child out, not make her run screaming in the other direction.
Emory pinches the bridge of her nose in a gesture that's so classically Brutus that Lyme has to swallow a laugh. "You sure know how to sell a fun night out, let me tell you," she says dryly. "All right then. Take her out, let her get some of this out of her system, but make sure she stays put. Anything else?"
"I don't know if she'll try to get drunk," Lyme says slowly. Artemisia's file is full of her sneaking out and heading to bars and kissing every girl who said yes, but it seems more like she was chasing the thrill of it. The incident reports list her coming back with blood on her knuckles, not alcohol on her breath. "She'll probably try to start a fight, though."
Emory tilts her head. "Let her throw a few punches, but stop it at blood?"
"Something like that." And it's weird, but hearing Emory say that, free of judgement -- a hint of understanding, even -- shoves some of the weight off Lyme's shoulders. Her girl is a Victor who has Victor issues and it's okay; everyone in the Village understands that, no matter how it manifests. "I just want to give her a bit of freedom so she doesn't choke herself trying to get it on her own."
Emory nods. "It's a good idea," she says, and Lyme waits for her to say what she's owed in return, but she doesn't. She just shakes her head, laughs a little, and scrubs a hand through her hair. "Okay, I'll do it. I'll call you when we're leaving so you know when we'll be home."
Sometimes Lyme thinks Brutus and his Victor can't possibly be human, wants to poke at them looking for wires or the transponder where they receive messages from their computer overlord, but other times she feels like she failed a basic element of Be a Good Person class and shouldn't even bother with the makeup exam. "Thanks," Lyme says, and it hits her that this is probably the longest conversation she and Emory have had in two years. "I'll buy you a case of beer or something."
"Don't worry about it," Emory says, waving a hand, and seriously? "It takes a village, right?"
When she tells Artemisia, her girl actually does a double-take. "Wait, really? You're letting me go out alone?"
With Emory doesn't qualify as 'alone', but the fact that she's framing that way means it's working already. "I think you're ready," Lyme says, leaving it at that. "Try not to give Emory a heart attack, though, she's Brutus' girl and we have to be careful with people like that."
Artemisia smiles, sharp and carnivorous and terrifying, and oh dear. Even if Emory isn't asking for a bribe, Lyme bets Brutus will demand one by the end of the week. "I'll do my best, Mom," she says, batting her eyes and twirling a strand of hair around one finger. It's the most terrifying thing Lyme has ever seen her do, and this after watching her disembowel the Six boy and stand over him until the cannon fired.
"Brutus will kill me if you break her," Lyme warns, and she's rewarded when Artemisia lets out a delighted laugh. That ... probably should not have been the response, but oh well, too late now.
"Nah," Artemisia says, slinging an arm around Lyme's waist and butting her head against her shoulder while Lyme very carefully does not suck in a breath. "My mentor could kick Emory's mentor's ass."
"Just don't say that on the playground or we're all in trouble," Lyme shoots back, but she ruffles Artemisia's hair. "I totally could, though," she adds, and her Victor grins.
Friday afternoon, Artemisia hauls Lyme into her room. "Okay, sit," she says, imperiously, and Lyme raises her eyebrows and perches on the edge of the bed. "I need you to give me opinions."
Lyme almost wants to glance around and look for hidden cameras. "Opinions on what?"
"Politics," Artemisia says, deadpan, and when Lyme gives her a look she rolls her eyes. "Clothes, obviously, I'm going out, I want to look good. Everything I have is 'oh look I sleep on the couch all day and eat pasta out of the pot' clothes. Is there anything in here that's nice?"
"Uh." Lyme blinks. This is something they didn't cover in mentor training. "I'm not sure I'm the person you want to ask. I know how to dress myself and that's about it."
Artemisia stops, narrows her eyes and gives Lyme the once-over, then she claps her hands together. "Okay, fine, will Callista come over and help me, then? No offence, your look works for you, but it's not really mine."
"Thanks for that," Lyme says, bristling a little even though she's not offended or stung at all, definitely not. She's heard way worse. "Callista will put you in heels and a dress, just so you know."
"I don't have her curves so probably none of her dresses will fit, but I look killer in heels, " Artemisia says without thinking, and oh, right, normal people. "Plus I've seen hers, and she could put them through a guy's neck. Sounds good to me." She holds up a hand when Lyme flattens her stare. "No, I'm kidding, I'm kidding, I promise."
Lyme wouldn't be a Victor if she didn't have an appreciation for gallows humour, and she's made enough cracks about murdering people with clothing or household objects to know when someone isn't being serious. "That's fine," she says, standing and stretching her arms over her head, bending one and tugging at the elbow to loosen a knot in her shoulder. "I'll go get Callista and you two can do your thing. Meanwhile I'll go throw some heavy things around and grunt a lot."
Artemisia laughs, but then a line appears between her eyebrows and she reaches out to catch Lyme's arm. "Hey, I wasn't kidding when I said you look good, though. You're totally intimidating and it's great. I couldn't pull it off."
No relief hits Lyme between the shoulder blades, and she most definitely does not fight her mouth as it attempts to twitch into a smile. It's stupid to feel relieved that her Victor isn't mocking the clothes that make her feel the happiest about herself she's felt in years, the ones that allowed her to channel the rage and power inside her and not try to stuff herself into someone else's box. It's not a thing. Lyme doesn't care.
She does stifle the strangest urge to tug Artemisia in close and kiss the top of her head, which, what? Instead Lyme throws an arm around her girl's shoulders and tugs at her hair. "All right, I'll go call the world's most murderous prep team."
Artemisia bares her teeth. "Not gonna go for the 'she'll make you look killer' joke, I see," she says, and this time Lyme laughs.
"Punning wasn't my image," Lyme says, pulling out her phone.
It's good anyway, really, since the whole point of going out tonight is about Artemisia bonding with other Victors, and dressing her for the occasion is definitely better than letting Callista drag her to the Capitol to one of her bondage and fetish clubs. Lyme leaves them alone for the preparation, and she grabs her sword and heads back to Artemisia's to run through forms in the backyard while she waits.
Her arms shake by the time Artemisia emerges out the back door and poses on the porch, one hand on her hip. "Ta-da," she says, grinning, but it's a full-on, regular grin, not her nasty Arena smile or her winking camera smile or the one that smells blood, and Lyme can't help but return it. "What do you think?"
Callista put her in something tight, short, off the shoulders and missing half the back, but it's still more fabric than anything a Capitol stylist would put her in, and for Callista it's actually pretty subtle. Lyme can only assume this is meant to go under something with a lot more straps and buckles. For her exit interview Artemisia's prep team curled her hair and pinned tiny daggers to dangle between the ringlets, but Callista's left it loose, wavy and a little bit wild. She looks -- normal, happy, and even better she actually looks eighteen, not like a kid sexed up far beyond her age so the Capitol audience won't feel guilty drooling over her. For the first time since the Reaping, her clothes don't look like they're just waiting for an artistic spray of someone else's blood.
Lyme relaxes just a hair, and Callista shoots her a thumbs up from the doorway, out of Artemisia's eye line. "You look good," Lyme says, resting the flat of the sword against the curve of her neck to give her arm a bit of a break. "But now I do have to make the 'knock 'em dead' joke or I get fined by the universe."
Artemisia just grins wider, taking the porch steps down two at a time -- in heels, no less, and Lyme could kill five different people five different ways with a broken pencil but she'd probably snap her fibula if she tried something like that. "You're the best," she says, and a glow spreads through Lyme's chest. "Seriously, the best. I'll bring you back a souvenir."
"No you will not," Lyme says, pointing her finger in an exaggerated gesture that's really only half kidding. "No stealing things from behind the bar, or from other patrons, either." She learned her lesson after Artemisia came back from Ronan's with a carved wooden bishop from his chess set in her pocket; Ronan let her get away with it three times before telling her he'd buy her a set of her own but leave his be. The Centre files didn't say anything about Artemisia being a compulsive thief, at least not more than most kids who went through a phase of smuggling out weapons for extra practice, but apparently they don't know everything.
Artemisia only beams at her, but she doesn't sass or argue, and her eyes barely flickered at the sight of Lyme holding a weapon. "Can we go get Emory?" she asks. "I know it's too early for the club, but maybe we can get dinner first."
There's a cadence to her voice there, all false-casual but with a hopeful lilt at the end that makes Lyme narrow her eyes, especially when Callista covers her mouth and lets out the world's worst cover-a-laugh cough for someone who still tops the Centre's showmanship scores decades later. "I'm sure you can," Lyme says carefully, because oh.
Two years out and Lyme is no more interested in finding someone than she was when their mentors forced her and Brutus out on a date. She absolutely refused to do the same thing with Artemisia, to scour the Village for anyone within the appropriate range of age and sexuality in the hopes that one of them will like her girl and make a happily ever after. Lyme knows absolutely nothing about Emory's tastes -- she's never gone on a date as far as Lyme knows -- but Emory would be steadying, if nothing else.
She's not going to say anything about it either way. It wasn't a setup and the less Lyme thinks about it, the better.
"I'm gonna run in and grab a jacket," Artemisia says, disappearing back into the house, and Lyme pulls a rag from her pocket to wipe the sweat from the handle of her sword while Callista glides down to join her.
"You know, if she still looks like that at thirty, I might take her up on the offer she made me," Callista says idly, and Lyme chokes. "She's a very sweet girl."
Not too many people would vaguely hit on someone's Victor while the mentor is standing right there with an enormous sword; Callista gets props for her guts, Lyme will give her that. That's all Lyme will give her, though, and she fixes the older woman with a hard stare. "Don't even," she says, a growl filling her words even as she tries to stop it.
"She's a decade too young at the moment, and even I have limits," Callista says mildly. "She doesn't like boys at all, by the way, that should please you. Fewer testicles for you to crush preemptively I'm sure."
Lyme pretends she didn't hear that because Callista is right, and that's just embarrassing. Even worse because Brutus would agree with the relief, and nobody needs that.
Emory agrees to dinner over the phone, answering with her usual vague pleasantness that answers absolutely no questions about whether she knows Artemisia is stealthily inviting herself on a date. Lyme runs home to drop off her sword in the meantime, trying not to think about what sort of pick-up strategies or who knows what else Callista might be giving Artemisia in the meantime. She grabs an apple from the crisper on her way out just to give herself something to do with her hands because suddenly she's restless, even though it's stupid.
It's just an evening; Lyme hasn't had a night to herself since the Reaping, she should be happy for the chance to get something done. She could hit the Village gym for real, pound out a good solid workout and start to regain the muscle definition she's lost from the months of inadequate sleep, hasty meals and constant attention. She could even head out to town, check out the shops and get something to eat using real, metal utensils instead of plastic. It's a night of possibilities, that's what it is, and Lyme should look at it that way.
She rolls the apple around in her hands on her way back to Artemisia's house, and when she gets there Lyme rubs her fingers over the smooth skin, probing for bruises and mushy spots while Artemisia chatters. It's -- charming, almost, how animated she is, and if this goes well then they can make this a part of their weekly schedule. Snow only knows she'll need it once the Tour preparation kicks into gear for good, and starting next summer they'll have chosen Artemisia's public facade and everything she does anywhere near the possibility of a camera will have to be crafted to fit within that. Now is the best time for her to go out and have fun, kiss a few girls and knock a few heads and get some of the stir-crazy out of her system.
They sit together on the porch swing after Callista heads back to her place with her collection of clothing she brought over for Artemisia to try, and Artemisia leans her shoulder against Lyme's arm while Lyme forces herself to keep looking out over the yard. "I'm feeling good today," Artemisia says, tipping her weight into Lyme's space just a little. "It's nice."
"You're doing well," Lyme says. "I'm proud of you." The bad patches still come close together, and a good day today still might mean that tomorrow Artemisia will pull everything out of her cupboards and throw it through the kitchen window to see what Lyme will do or whether she'll get mad, but as every Victor knows, you take each day sunrise to sunrise. She takes a risk and moves her arm, stretching it out along the back of the swing, and Artemisia shifts to lean against Lyme's side.
Artemisia tilts her head back and gives Lyme a smile that's only just a little bit shit-eating. "So, what, you're saying I'm the good kind of crazy?"
Lyme jostles her shoulder. "Yeah, girl, that's exactly what I'm saying."
Emory shows up not long after that, bearing a screw-top glass jar filled with reddish jelly. "I made rosehip-apple jam this morning," she says, and Lyme has lived in District 2 all her damn life and she has no idea what a rosehip is or how a person should eat it. Sometimes she thinks Emory must be making things up, except that she and Brutus go camping with nothing but the clothes on their backs and a hunting knife for upwards of a week and they come back looking fed and happy, so who the hell knows.
"Thanks?" Lyme takes the jar and examines the contents. Half the Village must have kitchens stuffed with Emory's preserves, though Lyme will admit they're usually good.
"It's not as sweet as some of the fruit stuff," Emory says. "I know that's not really your thing, so I figured you might like this."
It strikes Lyme that she has no idea whether Emory likes sweet food or not, and once Artemisia is more settled in then this is probably something she should work on. Lyme doesn't make friends easily but this is ridiculous, and it can't have been easy for Emory to have a new Victor just three years down who all but ignored her existence. "Thanks," Lyme says, shifting a little. "You guys gonna head out, then?"
Emory glances at Artemisia, and her polite, neutral smile falls away to wide eyes and mild alarm when she takes in her outfit. "Wait, that's what you're wearing?"
"What's wrong with it?" Artemisia asks, her voice sharpening with defensiveness, and her fingers twitch at the edges of the jacket like she wants to pull it closed but isn't letting herself. Lyme leans her weight a little closer onto Artemisia's side.
"Nothing, but I'm definitely underdressed," Emory says, and Artemisia sits back, feathers smoothed. "Plus you look like you're going to get cold pretty fast. Weather's falling quick after dark this time of year."
Artemisia cocks her head and gives the other Victor a winning smile that Lyme is glad Brutus isn't here to see aimed at his girl. "It's okay, I'll just borrow your jacket if I get chilly."
Emory shrugs. "Sure can do. I picked a nice place to eat I thought, but looking like that everybody's gonna stare. Most people aren't going to look so nice. If you don't mind then we can walk there from here." Her eyes narrow at Artemisia's shoes. "Or I could drive."
"Let's drive," Artemisia says, and her voice has taken on a tone that Lyme has never heard before, similar to the prey-stalking from the Arena but with a small lilt of hesitation to it. Lyme hasn't heard Artemisia be anything but certain in her life. "That way we can stay out later and not worry about walking back."
This time Emory laughs. "Ain't nobody going to bother the two of us after hours, but well enough. Lyme, I'll call you when we're leaving, all right?"
Lyme nods, and part of her feels bad for not warning Emory when she obviously has no idea what she's in for, but them's the breaks. If it goes well then it goes well, and Lyme will be happy; if Emory isn't interested, then there's really no one better for Artemisia to suffer her first rejection than the woman who embodies all the elements of quarry manners, so full of courtesy and humility that she almost makes Brutus look rude.
"Shall we?" Artemisia asks brightly, holding out her hand, and Emory snorts and crooks her arm so Artemisia can tuck her hand into the join of her elbow.
Lyme heads back out over the yard to her house, holding the jar of jam awkwardly in both hands, because it feels too strange to stand and watch them go.
Brutus stops by an hour later with a case of beer under one arm, a bottle of brandy in one hand, and a sword belted to his waist. Lyme's fingers tighten on the edge of the doorknob. "I don't need whatever this is," she says. "I'm fine."
"I know you are," Brutus says amiably, jostling his way past her into the house and dropping the drinks on her kitchen counter while Lyme scowls. "Just thought you could use the company."
Lyme drums her fingers against her biceps. "You realize that your being nice makes me want to start checking under my pillows for spiders."
Brutus snorts, unbuckling his sword and leaning it in the corner. He drops onto the far stool at the kitchen counter and leans back against the wall, propping his feet up on the one next to him as he cracks open a beer. Apparently in the quarries they take 'make yourself at home' as a given when it suits them. "Look, first time Emory went out without me, I damn near ripped up all my flooring and put new ones down just to give myself something to do, ain't no shame in that."
"I'm not --"
Bruus raises his eyebrows and Lyme shuts her mouth. "Plus it's been a long time since we've gotten tipsy and beaten the shit out of each other. I figure you've gotten soft, since you haven't had anybody to fight but your Arena-crazy baby Victor for the last few months. Unless you're afraid of the challenge."
Lyme stomps on the swell of gratitude and grabs a glass from the cupboard, shoving Brutus' legs off the stool with a pointed look. "You'll have to try harder than that to goad me, caveman."
Brutus takes a long pull of his beer and sets it down on the counter hard enough to thump against the polished granite. "I'm not goading anybody, I'm just sayin', I haven't had a day off training in some four years now, so I can see why you might be intimidated --"
She knows what he's doing, she isn't an idiot, but Lyme could do with the cheering up and it's not every day she gets to hear Brutus say he's missed her. Lyme flattens her eyes at him, then lifts her glass and knocks back the brandy in one go, silently apologizing to the drink for wasting its potential like it's cheap vodka. "Fuck you," she says, and she reaches under the counter for a bottle of tequila, banging it and a pair of shot glasses on the counter. "You're on, then."
"You're gonna make me drink booze from Ten?" Brutus complains, but he slides the case of beer down to the far end of the counter and grabs the salt shaker, twisting off the lid. "I'm definitely kicking your ass."
They don't get to rip-roaring drunk, they're not stupid. Even with her anxieties keyed up, both Lyme and Brutus are mentors now, and that's flipped something in her head; around the point where they're pushing up their sleeves to compare biceps and taunt each other, Lyme's brain pings a warning. She shoves the booze away, hauls herself up from the stool, and drags both her and Brutus to the bathroom to stick their heads under the shower at its coldest setting. It leaves them soaked and sputtering and cursing, but well sober enough that grabbing their swords and heading out back to swing them around would only get them a raised eyebrow from Odin and Nero, not the full on mentor stare.
It does feel good to let go. Artemisia isn't the first Victor to have the crazy bubble up so strong it drives her to irresponsible things, and both Lyme and Brutus tried to run from theirs as soon as they could, throwing themselves into training and mentoring and actually pulling out a kid so they had no choice but to grow up fast. Lyme can't remember the last time she fought with alcohol buzzing in her system, grinning and tossing out filthy insults and cackling with triumph as Brutus' mega-adult quarry-values duty-first mask peels off and she finds the Victor underneath. Beneath all that politeness and honour he's just like her, a kid with blood on his knuckles and the Arena two steps behind. It's all shark smiles and words dredged from the deepest pit mines on the coldest Januaries, and Lyme says you kiss your mother with that mouth and Brutus flings back yeah well you'd know better so you tell me.
They end up sprawled on the lawn, Lyme with her head pillowed on Brutus' leg, digging the back of her skull into his thigh so he grunts in irritation. "It's stupid to miss her for one night," Lyme says, staring up at the stars. Here the outline of the trees are a sharp black silhouette, the clouds low on the horizon and too far down for her current vantage point.
Brutus flails a hand in her direction and ends up smacking her in the ear before he finds her head, condescendingly patting her. "Way I figure, mentoring means going a little stupid," he says, moving his hand out of reach of her teeth when Lyme twists and takes a snap at his fingers. "Parents think these little wrinkly, screaming things are the best thing in the universe, right? Same deal."
Lyme jabs him in the knee. "Maybe your Victor is a wrinkly screaming thing, but mine's perfect."
"Fuck you, sweetheart."
"Not for all the grain in Nine, asshole."
"The fuck are you gonna do with all the grain in Nine?"
"I dunno, stuff it up your ass!"
Brutus laughs, then Lyme laughs, and once the crazy dam breaks they're both cracking up right there on the lawn, bruised and still a little tipsy with their swords lying in the grass off to the side. The Centre never told her it would be like this, and if they had Lyme would have scoffed and taken out the next training dummy right in the groin because she thought all she needed was the Victory, her freedom, and a Village with a gate that locked from the inside. Now she punches Brutus in the leg to hear him grumble, and she's actually dozing off on him when her phone buzzes in her pocket.
"We're heading back," Emory says in Lyme's ear, and Lyme sits up and combs bits of grass and dirt out of her hair from the time Brutus took her down. Lyme strains to pick up Emory's tone, but there's too much background noise, people shouting and laughing and the music thumping overhead. "I'm driving back, so less than half an hour."
Lyme thanks her, then heaves herself up and gives Brutus a hand so he can slap it away and mutter about uppity girls trying to make him feel old. They bring the swords inside, and Lyme takes down a bottle of anti-hangover pills and tosses one to Brutus before crunching hers dry. Brutus rolls his eyes and pours himself a glass of water to drink with his.
"I think Artemisia likes Emory," Lyme says while they wait on the porch, glancing over at Brutus. She braces to punch him if he says her girl isn't good enough for his, but he just clicks his tongue against the roof his mouth, thoughtfully.
"Hope it ain't serious," he says finally. "Emory and me, we've talked about it. Dunno if it's the Program or the Arena or what, but she's not into that."
"Girls?" Lyme asks, because fair enough, neither is she, which made for a confusing adolescence when she couldn't decide whether she wanted to kiss boys, break their necks, or both.
"Anything," Brutus says neutrally, and he runs a hand over his face. The buzz from the tequila and the rush from the fight are fading, and Lyme is alternately shaky and crashing; Brutus looks the same.
He doesn't give details, and Lyme doesn't ask. Emory wouldn't be the only one to come out of the Arena without a desire for sex or relationships, and maybe it's less complicated that way. "Here's hoping she cuts that off before it spreads I guess," Lyme says. "Artemisia can -- fixate."
"Hadn't noticed," Brutus says dryly, but he holds up a hand when Lyme goes to sock him. "No, I get it, but Emory's not cruel, or stupid. She'll figure it out and she'll shut it down, and she won't turn to stone if your girl hits on her. It'll be fine."
They fall silent after that, and not long after the sound of Artemisia's laughter floats up over the trees. It's not the wild, half-crazed cackling of a Victor who's tasted blood that night, and Lyme exhales and loosens her fingers from their death grip on her knees. She stands up and dusts off her jeans before Emory and Artemisia round the path.
Artemisia is wearing Emory's jacket and Emory's arm is around her waist, and for a second Lyme thinks Brutus might have made a miscalculation except then they step into the orange glow of the porch light and never mind. Artemisia is grinning, but Emory wears the face of someone who's spent an entire afternoon picking up a rabbit and carrying it out from the middle of the road, only for it to turn around and dash back in.
"There," Emory says with exaggerated patience, and she peels Artemisia's arm from her shoulders and all but dumps her in Lyme's lap. "We're home now."
Lyme gives her a sharp glance, but there's no alcohol smell emanating from Artemisia's breath or clothes, and when she tips back her head to grin at Lyme her gaze is clear. "Did you have fun?"
"I got in a fight," Artemisia says, beaming, and Emory snorts and flops down onto the porch step beside Brutus, who gives her a pat on the shoulder. "It was great. I stopped before blood, too, just like Emory said, just hit him in the throat and he went down like a little Six."
"Oh?" Lyme rubs her fingers over Artemisia's scalp, ignoring the turn of phrase that will most definitely be trained out of her before the Tour. "What else?"
"I kissed all the girls," Artemisia says. She closes her eyes and lets out a happy sigh, stretching out her foot and resting it on the railing. "Alllllll of the girls."
"Yes she did," says Emory, sounding drained but not judging, so there's that. "Even the straight ones. More than one will be going home confused tonight."
"Well, wouldn't you?" Artemisia asks, but then she laughs and points one finger back over her head. "No, wait, I asked and you wouldn't. Did you know Emory doesn't like girls? No boys either. What a waste."
Lyme flicks her between the eyes. "Hey. Nobody is a waste just because they won't kiss you, and Emory is right there."
Emory presses thumb and forefinger to the inside corners of her eye sockets. "It's fine, we had a nice talk and a few drinks and everything was -- fine."
Artemisia wrinkles her nose. "Emory would only let me have two beers. Two beers! And no shots. I could've drunk so much more."
"And then been in no shape to throw any punches, much less kiss any girls," Lyme points out, and against her will she's charmed by the thinking frown that wrinkles Artemisia's forehead. "Good night, though?"
"Yes," Artemisia proclaims finally. "Yes, yes, definitely. I want to do it again."
Emory sighs, just a little, but then she smiles. "Sure, let's do it next week," she says. "But you're bringing your own coat."
Artemisia chuckles to herself as Brutus and Emory take their leave. "She didn't know it was a date, and I didn't know it wasn't," she says after, and Lyme freezes but her expression stays on the wistful side and never crosses over into anger or bitterness. "We got all the way through dinner. She held the door, she got my chair, she even glared at some noisy guys outside to fuck off. She figured it out when I asked her to dance, though." She sighs, then brightens. "Too bad, she's really pretty, but there were lots of pretty girls there."
Lyme doesn't really want to hear about this, and so she tugs Artemisia to her feet and starts them back on the path toward her house. "I'm glad you had a good time."
"It was a good idea," Artemisia says, only stumbling once when her heels snag on a pine cone. "I guess mentors aren't always spoilsports."
"I guess we aren't," Lyme says, and her Victor snickers and knocks her head against Lyme's shoulder.