Prompt Fill: "Amuse Me" - Emory losing tributes
I really do not understand how quick prompts work. I'm also not sure I get the definition of "cheering up" BUT IN MY DEFENCE YOU HAVE TO GET SAD FIRST.
(Thank you to
penfold_x for the prompt, and
xanify for the ending.)
If Brutus had his way he would have insisted Emory stay out another year; she’d only taken one year off, still wracked with guilt and stinging from the loss of her first two tributes. Mentoring is a duty and a privilege, and of course Brutus wouldn’t have denied Emory the opportunity forever, but not this year. Not the year after District 2 pulled a spectacularly entertaining win, Artemisia beating out a dark horse father-to-be from Six and the matched set from District 1 in a thrilling two-on-one final showdown.
It’s never a good time to mentor, not really, but a year where they’re sure to lose ranks as one of the worst. Unfortunately Brutus used his trump card the year after Emory’s win, when Two withheld their Volunteers and sent two untrained kids in to die. Emory had begged to be allowed to take the slot, arguing that someone had to take the hit and she might as well save one of the usual mentors from having to shoulder a tribute who had zero chance.
Brutus had argued her down that time - no one ever mentored their first year out, thank you very much, and Emory might be desperate to prove herself but she won’t go against the rules - and the year after, reminding her that even he waited 2 years before applying. After that, though, she refused to budge, and her mentoring instructors passed her with high recommendations.
In 55 Emory chose Dale, a good, solid boy from Peacekeeping stock, meant to restore Two’s honour after the rocky first half of the decade. Nero went in with Lyme, an angry girl with eyes that blazed and an attitude that screamed insubordination and personal vendettas and a hundred things that meant danger for the status quo and for Village life afterward, if she made it. Given the disaster of the previous few years, Brutus bet that the Capitol would seize on Dale over Lyme any day, and so he’d given Emory the go-ahead for her choice.
Brutus had of course put his name in to run backup for Emory, to keep an eye on his girl as best he could, but the higher-ups considered this a conflict of interest - and startlingly enough, Emory agreed.
“You’d try to shield me,” she said, not accusing or challenging but not backing down either, frowning at Brutus with her bright blue eyes and raising her chin. “You’d want to take the hard parts from me, because you’re my mentor and you want to protect me.”
As much as he’d liked to, Brutus couldn’t exactly argue with that, and so Ronan had come out of retirement to sit with Emory while Brutus peeled the label off of every bottle in his house and picked at the skin on his knuckles until his hands bled. Odin dragged him out into the mountains like he was a fresh Victor all over again to stop him from scouring footage looking for Emory or staring at his phone and wishing he could call, and they’d sparred until Brutus’ muscles ached and he collapsed on the hard, dirt-packed trail, pine needles tickling the back of his neck and the sharp scents of the mountains slowly easing the tension from his muscles.
Dale lasted two weeks, but a wound he’d sustained during the Pack split slowed him down enough to get caught in the fire that ravaged most of the Arena. Lyme took the crown home that year, the backs of her legs pink and shiny from the regrown skin after the flames burned her calves, and Emory returned with good grace and a drawn expression. She’d disappeared into her house and emerged a few days later with enough baked goods to feed an entire orphanage. Brutus drove her to one to deliver them, in fact, and the afternoon with the children clambering all over her and demanding stories and autographs and more cookies chased some of the shadows from Emory’s face.
Emory went to the Field of Sacrifice without him, politely refusing Brutus’ offer to join her when he met her at the train with his pickup. “No,” she said, looking back at the pine box as the men carried it out to the car. “I should do this myself.”
Brutus didn’t argue, but he did ask her what she’d chosen to plant there when she returned and sat on the end of his couch. “Bluebells,” Emory said, staring down at her hands as though expecting dirt and blood to crust the knuckles. “Back home they’re supposed to mean humility. It felt -” She waved a hand vaguely. “I didn’t want to choose something that stood for sadness, too much self-pity. It seemed to fit.”
She’d insisted on trying again in 56, and Brutus, for all his misgivings, couldn’t think of any reason to stop her. This time he did make it to the Capitol, not as her backup but as a floor mentor, hitting the sponsor rings and doing his best to keep the interest up. This time Emory’s girl made it all the way to the Final Six before the boy from Five took her down in her sleep, a respectable enough showing for a young mentor that Emory’s debriefing back in Two afterward had been relatively painless. Not that it made the loss any better, but Brutus had heard of mentors whose tributes lost unexpectedly and had to justify their choice to a committee.
Lyme put her name in for 57, and this year the powers that be designated Brutus as her backup. Turns out he and Lyme got on surprisingly well for being opposites in - well, everything - and Brutus wasn’t surprised by the assignment. He’d been more worried about Emory’s reaction, but his girl only spread her hands and said she’d use the year off to take some extra mentoring courses and build up a stronger sponsor base instead.
He’d prepared himself for Lyme’s rage when her tribute lost, but not what would happen if she won. Except that Artemisia took control of the field early and never ceded it, and Lyme became the youngest mentor in District 2 history to see a tribute through to Victory. Brutus left the Capitol and returned home during the flurry of the victory celebrations, and found Emory outside, working in her garden.
“Hey,” he said, not for the first time wishing he had more of any kind of idea what to do. “How you holding up?”
Emory knelt in a bed of tulips, Odin having convinced her that decorative plants with no nutritional value was not a waste of space, a handful of pulled-up weeds lying off to the side and drying in the sun. “I’m glad she won,” she said, not looking up until Brutus exhaled hard through his nose. “No, I - I’m not going to wish a girl dead because she’s not mine!”
Brutus resisted the impulse to drag a hand down his face. “No, of course not,” he said. “I just meant - how you holding up, that’s all.”
“Artemisia is sensational,” Emory said, digging the tip of the trowel into the earth and pausing as though she forgot why she’d started. “And Lyme is - a gifted mentor.” She sighed and sat back, tilting her head up and looking up past Brutus to the trees behind. “I wish I could’ve brought one of mine home too, but I didn’t. No point giving the new girl anything but support and understanding once she’s home.”
They sparred after dinner, fighting late into the night until every bone and muscle and joint in Brutus’ body ached, but he couldn’t stop until he broke through Emory’s control. At last, right when he thought he’d have to give up and call it a night without a breakthrough, something snapped and Emory came after him fast brutal. She never cheated, never took a cheap shot, but she went for his weakness and exploited every opening he gave her, fighting with a viciousness that her Arena never gave her the opportunity to showcase.
When Brutus finally called a halt Emory had a fractured wrist and he’d had to crack his nose back into place, but Emory actually leaned against his shoulder as they waited for the on-call doctor to make the trip. “She’s better than me,” Emory said, and she didn’t rest her head against him or even shift most of her weight onto his, but their arms touched and for Emory that may as well be a full embrace. “I’ll just have to keep trying.”
And so, as much as Brutus wishes he could have convinced her otherwise, Emory puts her name in for the 58th. This year she plays it with a closer eye to strategy, drawing the male tribute because all of Two’s Victors this decade have been female and any back-to-back wins from any district have all been opposite-gender pairs. Persona-wise the Victors have been all over the place, humble and cocky and arrogant and frightened, favoured and dark horse and everywhere in between, so at least the pressure is off for choosing an appropriate image as anything goes.
What Brutus doesn’t say to Emory is that it hardly matters either way. With Emory, Lyme and Artemisia winning in such close succession, the rest of the 50s will be a bloodbath for Two. The audience has seen their share of careers from the quarry district; One might be able to pull off a strong victory in the latter part of the decade, or perhaps Four, but it would take something utterly over the mountains for Two to overcome the Gamemaker-adjusted odds and come out on top this time.
He won’t say it out loud, even to himself, and certainly not to Lyme. The two of them don’t talk about what it means to be Two’s most up and coming mentors, especially since their luck won’t hold forever. Brutus has seen a tribute through to victory both times he’s sat in the seat, on his own or as Lyme’s backup, and Lyme won her first time out with only a year of recovery preceding her training. Odds are, the next time they’re in the ring, they’ll be bringing their tributes home to the field and not the Village.
Still, while living under the shadow of the mountains and growing up in a quarry town seeded Brutus’ makeup with realism, there’s something to be said for stubbornness. Emory wants her girl to win, and maybe she will - it’s not Brutus’ job to dissuade her, especially not when the Capitol demands sacrifice even more than it does victory.
Brutus will support her this year as he has before, and whether her tribute wins or loses, he will be proud of her. This is a truth carved into the very bedrock of their district, engraved in the Village’s foundations, and nothing will change that.
At least until Games Command calls Brutus into the office and tells him to take the female tribute.
Brutus has never refused an official order in his life, the times he tried hiding his sedatives during the early stages of his victory notwithstanding. He doesn’t start now, but he does have to swallow and count backwards from ten before he trusts himself enough to answer. “Why me?” he asks finally. Questioning orders is one step up from disobedience, but maybe they’re testing him. Maybe someone in the office decided to play a prank and he’s the lucky victim. Maybe this is Lyme’s latest joke, gone up a few levels in sadism with her new girl’s influence.
“You’ve shown incredible promise,” says the Capitol envoy. “And your Victor has demonstrated tremendous dedication. We would love to see what happens when you work together.”
For a moment Brutus’ temper flares, and he allows himself a glorious second to imagine barking out that competing with his own Victor to bring home a Victor is hardly working together, except that of course it is. The glory of victory belongs to the district, not the mentor, and so the sentiment may be misleading but it is not, technically, incorrect.
Brutus stares at the woman and her painted face, the cool-eyed gaze as she studies him as dispassionately as she might the odds board, and as the conflicting emotions war in his chest it hits Brutus that this is a test after all. Country before self, duty before life, honour and sacrifice and not a moment’s doubt, these are the promises he has built his life upon since he was old enough to remember.
The bond between Victor and mentor is the most important in all of their district, but of course it can’t come above duty to the Capitol and the president and to the Games themselves. Which will Brutus choose, Emory or the demands of the people by whose grace and mercy she was allowed to come home to him?
It would have happened one day. After working with Lyme to bring Artemisia home, Brutus won’t be surprised if the next time they mentor together it will be on opposite sides. As the previous generation sits back and lets the young begin to take the reins, Brutus and the others need to get used to setting aside personal conflicts for the sake of the greater good.
“Of course,” Brutus says, hoping he didn’t pause so long as to seem insubordinate, but the woman only smiles and reaches over to shake his hand with her glitter-polished fingers.
“Bullshit,” Lyme says when Brutus tells him later. “If we go up against each other, it won’t be because someone ordered us to as a test of our beautiful friendship. It’ll be because we like kids on the opposite ends of the scale and they make for good dramatic pairings.”
Looking at their Victors, Brutus can’t argue with that logic. “So it wouldn’t bother you?” he asks. He hasn’t told Emory yet, would rather not until he’s at least looked through the files and seen which of the girls he’ll take.
“What, going up against you?” Lyme shrugs, a casual gesture belied by the tight grip she has on her whiskey glass. “Nah. The tributes are dead either way, no matter who the mentor is, and they’re the ones actually doing the killing.”
Part of the unspoken pact between them is knowing when to call bullshit and when to toe it under the rug. Brutus respectfully does not call out the lack of eye contact, but in trade that means he gets to press her on a different point. “Misha then,” he says. “You and her up against each other, you can’t tell me you’d think of it like any other year.”
Lyme pauses, then sets down her glass and pinches the bridge of her nose. “I don’t know. Pretty sure it wouldn’t bother her, and that’s the way I want it. I like that she’s selfish, it’ll keep her sane longer. I think she could go up against me and not lose a lot of sleep over it.”
‘Selfish’ is the last word anyone could use to describe Emory, but with any luck her commitment to duty will help her override the personal awkwardness. Brutus sighs and leans back in his chair, rolling his beer bottle in slow circles across the counter. “Remember when ‘duty’ just meant killing people and learning how to smile with a broken arm?” he asks.
Lyme barks out a laugh. “Oh yeah,” she says with feeling. “Times like this, I almost miss it.”
One benefit to their friendship is that on the rare occasion when Brutus has less than loyal thought processes, he can always count on Lyme to say them aloud so he doesn’t have to. “To simpler times,” Brutus says, lifting his drink in salute.
“Hear, hear,” Lyme says, and clinks her glass against his bottle.
Emory says nothing when Brutus informs her of Games Command’s decision, and he doesn’t push it. No discussion, no bout of sparring, will make this better; they have their duty and it’s an ugly one, and that’s all there is to it. Emory selects her tribute first as the one who put her name in, and Brutus spends a few days avoiding the files the Centre sent him before cracking one open.
He finds his girl, sure enough, proud and idealistic and fiery, the right bend of passion and humility and with a sharp grin that will capture cameras and hearts all over the Capitol. Brutus hesitates, flipping the pen over and over in his fingers, pressing hard until the plastic lets out a warning creak and he lets go before splattering himself with ink. Should he do it? Choose a candidate he really believes in and fight as hard as he can for her, when her victory would mean death for Emory’s tribute?
The thought doesn’t last long, burning away like the traces of mountain mist under the morning sun. Of course he must; the Games only continue if each mentor and tribute try their best and District 2 puts out the best showing it can. Besides, the girl who stares up at him form the page deserves to live and win as much as anyone else. She deserves a mentor who believes in her and puts her survival above personal feelings with others.
He’s gone up against others in the Village before. Callista doesn’t avoid Brutus after her boy fell and his girl made it home, nor should she. Brutus helped see Emory through an Arena meant to murder and humiliate her, dragged her through the morass of her own self doubt and showed her she’s worth living. This won’t divide them, not forever.
(Funny, he thinks later, sitting with a mound of sponsor paperwork in his lap after turning in his application, that he’d been worried about Emory mentoring a surefire loss. Now that he has a tribute in the ring, Brutus can’t stop thinking about the repercussion when she wins. Mentoring is a hell of a drug.)
In the end it doesn’t matter. Both tributes survive the split but fall to the girl from Three, a whipcord-tiny little thing who skulks around the dark tunnels, giant night-vision goggles standing out against her pale face, and electrocutes the Final Four to come home the winner.
For the first time, Brutus returns home not in the main carriage with a wide-eyed Victor but in an empty car furnished with nothing but benches and a pair of plain caskets. Emory sits on the floor at one end, knees pulled up to her chest, and Brutus wedges himself in between the casket and the wall and rests on hand on the top.
Arrogance, to think about what would happen after, to dream of victory and of trying to navigate the awkwardness between his two tributes when one’s life meant the death of the other’s hopes. And yet without arrogance and hope there would be no Games; a mentor cannot walk onto the tribute train defeated or the kids will know it and nothing else will matter. Without a mentor’s faith, even the bravest tribute is doomed.
He and Emory don’t talk through it all, the trip, the reception at the town square, the car rides to the field and the Centre and all the housekeeping that has to be done when a tribute dies. So much more paperwork for a dead tribute than a living Victor, and they’d warned Brutus but somehow he hadn’t realized.
Emory doesn’t look at him as make their way to the Centre to carve the names into the wall of sacrifice. Girls first, then boys, and so Brutus carves the name into the dark surface and hands the chisel over to Emory. She moves slow and methodical, chanting the letters to herself in a whisper - she couldn’t read, knew nothing more but her letters and a few key words when Brutus pulled her from the Arena, spent the next year painstakingly memorizing the sounds and reading children’s books to herself in private, embarrassed to let the others see her deficiency - as she etches the name onto the wall.
At the dedication Brutus shakes hands with his tribute’s parents, lets them know their daughter did everything right, while Emory stands alone, the only mourner for her fallen tribute. Emory scatters bluebell seeds over the grave, and Brutus drops a handful of cornflowers. Next spring both will be a wash of blue, splashes of bright colour for the silent mountains to witness.
Emory disappears into her house and Brutus doesn’t follow. He should, he’s her mentor and it’s his duty to see that she’s all right, but Brutus’ own ache pulls at him and he can’t help her if he’s drowning, too. It’s an excuse, probably, and Brutus should be ashamed of hiding when his girl needs him, but she’d only ask to be left alone and Brutus doesn’t have the energy to fight her, not today.
Every day he means to go see her, check how she’s doing, make sure she’s eating and taking care of herself, but every day the sun shines too bright and cheerful and the birds keep chattering and the mountains smell so much of life and growing things that Brutus can’t stand to leave his house. He wakes, chokes down a protein smoothie, goes downstairs to train, drags himself up for a shower, then repeats the procedure over and over. He wrenches his shoulder, puts on five pounds of muscle, and powers through a dozen headaches as he struggles to read the cramped sponsor paperwork with little more than a quarry education and Odin’s coaching himself.
In the end it’s Lyme who pulls him out of it, Lyme who’s never tasted loss but will soon enough, Lyme who hauls his ass out onto the basketball court and drags the feelings out of him and invites him over for dinner with Artemisia. Misha is irreverent and mocking and very much alive, and Brutus didn’t pull her but he did work backup for Lyme and it - helps, a little, to see her there, perched on the counter and swiping ingredients from the chopping board as Lyme cooks.
He sleeps well that night for the first time in months, and the next day it’s time. Brutus heads over to Emory’s around mid-morning and lets himself in, and immediately the guilt hits him hard in the chest because her place smells of must and sweat and the lingering traces of half a dozen baked goods. She’ll have been doing the same thing as Brutus, blocking out the sights and scents of nature, holing herself up in the house and training and choking down minimal sustenance. It’s too much to hope that Emory has eaten anything she’s made; Brutus will bet a month’s stipend that she’s called the VA to take everything away and donate it to children’s homes.
Brutus toes off his shoes, a long-buried quarry habit that comes from not wanting to fill the house with dust after a day in the mines, and calls out. Emory doesn’t answer, and Brutus hesitates for a moment, trying to decide whether to push on anyway, when a loud crash! from the kitchen makes the decision for him.
He finds Emory standing over the remains of a bowl, shattered on the kitchen floor at her feet. She stares at it, eyes wide and red, and doesn’t react to Brutus’ presence until he comes within arm’s reach. Then she jumps, snaps her head up to look at him and takes a half-step backward before freezing in place. “I broke it,” Emory says. Her voice comes out dull and stupid-sounding, and Brutus swallows. “I didn’t mean to, I just - I broke it.”
“It’s okay,” Brutus says carefully. Emory grew up in the quarries, not poor like Brutus and others whose both parents were miners, but without a lot of extra to throw around. The wastefulness of the Capitol bothered her far more than its callousness and blood thirst. “We can get more, it’s okay. Don’t worry about it.”
“No,” Emory says. Her eyes get wider, nostrils flaring, and her hands open and close, spasming and catching on nothing. “I know there are more bowls but there’s no more of this one, this one was mine and I broke it and now it’s ruined. And I can buy a new bowl but I’ll probably break that too, they’ll keep breaking and there’s nothing I can do about it -”
Oh.
Brutus has enough time to raise one hand toward her before Emory - stoic, quiet, enduring and uncomplaining - bursts into a flood of hard, wracking sobs. “Fuck,” Brutus mutters under his breath, and he skirts the broken pottery to pull her away into the living room. Artemisia crawls into Lyme’s lap like she’s a long-limbed cat and sprawls on her at the least provocation, but Brutus and Emory have never so much as embraced. For Brutus, hugging stirs up awkwardly not-unpleasant memories of his life before the Centre, and Emory was raised in a household where affection and love were understood and rarely demonstrated. After her Victory Emory looked at open physical demonstrations as an expression of her weakness, preferring to get through it with words and perseverance, with sparring as the sole exception.
After a second of debating with himself and Brutus pulls Emory into his arms. She lets out a cry of protest and shoves weakly against his chest, but collapses after a moment and lets Brutus hold her. She’s almost as tall as he is, over six feet and quarry-broad, but Brutus holds on and weathers the storm as she gives in and cries.
“It’s just a bowl,” Emory says into his shoulder, muffled and embarrassed. Her hand fists in his shirt. “It’s stupid.”
Brutus says nothing, the words tangled up and useless in his chest, but he doesn’t let go.
At last Emory runs out, and she sags for a moment before pulling away to wipe at her face with her sleeve. “This isn’t going to be a story for the next Victor barbecue,” Emory says dryly, and Brutus laughs a little, relieved at even a glimpse of her rare dry humour. “You don’t mind if I never make eye contact again, do you?”
Here, at least, Brutus knows his duty. He presses their foreheads together and holds her face, and they’re close and her eyes are wide and red, lashes still glistening with teardrops, and Brutus takes in all that weakness and doesn’t flinch. Emory lets out a long, slow breath and closes her eyes, and she reaches up to hold his wrists. “Okay,” she says finally, and this time the words come out normal. “Okay, thanks.”
Brutus claps the side of her face and lets go. “We can fix the bowl,” he says. It’s dumb, it’s not about the bowl and they both know it, except it kind of is. Brutus never had a head for symbolism, but he’s not a complete idiot. “Bring it to Misha, maybe she can weld it back together in her studio.”
Emory blinks, then stutters out a laugh. “What, stick the bowl back together with solder?”
“Why not?” Brutus challenges. “She’s probably got gold or something to add to it, make it look pretty, even.”
“You’ll always see the cracks,” Emory says, frowning. “I thought you’re supposed to fix things so they don’t look like they broke.”
Brutus raises one shoulder and lets it drop. “Things break,” he says. “Don’t mean they have to stay broken. I dunno, there’s probably someone in the Capitol who’d rave over the beauty of it and make a whole art gallery, celebrating the embrace of the imperfect.”
He’s not great at imitating the Capitol accent like Lyme or her girl are, but Emory snorts all the same, and when she knuckles the last of the tears away her smile holds stronger. “Sure, why not,” she says, glancing back at the kitchen. “I’d feel better not wasting it, anyway, no matter what it looks like.”
“That’s my girl,” Brutus says, knocking her shoulder, and heads into the kitchen to find the dustpan.
(Thank you to
penfold_x for the prompt, and
xanify for the ending.)
If Brutus had his way he would have insisted Emory stay out another year; she’d only taken one year off, still wracked with guilt and stinging from the loss of her first two tributes. Mentoring is a duty and a privilege, and of course Brutus wouldn’t have denied Emory the opportunity forever, but not this year. Not the year after District 2 pulled a spectacularly entertaining win, Artemisia beating out a dark horse father-to-be from Six and the matched set from District 1 in a thrilling two-on-one final showdown.
It’s never a good time to mentor, not really, but a year where they’re sure to lose ranks as one of the worst. Unfortunately Brutus used his trump card the year after Emory’s win, when Two withheld their Volunteers and sent two untrained kids in to die. Emory had begged to be allowed to take the slot, arguing that someone had to take the hit and she might as well save one of the usual mentors from having to shoulder a tribute who had zero chance.
Brutus had argued her down that time - no one ever mentored their first year out, thank you very much, and Emory might be desperate to prove herself but she won’t go against the rules - and the year after, reminding her that even he waited 2 years before applying. After that, though, she refused to budge, and her mentoring instructors passed her with high recommendations.
In 55 Emory chose Dale, a good, solid boy from Peacekeeping stock, meant to restore Two’s honour after the rocky first half of the decade. Nero went in with Lyme, an angry girl with eyes that blazed and an attitude that screamed insubordination and personal vendettas and a hundred things that meant danger for the status quo and for Village life afterward, if she made it. Given the disaster of the previous few years, Brutus bet that the Capitol would seize on Dale over Lyme any day, and so he’d given Emory the go-ahead for her choice.
Brutus had of course put his name in to run backup for Emory, to keep an eye on his girl as best he could, but the higher-ups considered this a conflict of interest - and startlingly enough, Emory agreed.
“You’d try to shield me,” she said, not accusing or challenging but not backing down either, frowning at Brutus with her bright blue eyes and raising her chin. “You’d want to take the hard parts from me, because you’re my mentor and you want to protect me.”
As much as he’d liked to, Brutus couldn’t exactly argue with that, and so Ronan had come out of retirement to sit with Emory while Brutus peeled the label off of every bottle in his house and picked at the skin on his knuckles until his hands bled. Odin dragged him out into the mountains like he was a fresh Victor all over again to stop him from scouring footage looking for Emory or staring at his phone and wishing he could call, and they’d sparred until Brutus’ muscles ached and he collapsed on the hard, dirt-packed trail, pine needles tickling the back of his neck and the sharp scents of the mountains slowly easing the tension from his muscles.
Dale lasted two weeks, but a wound he’d sustained during the Pack split slowed him down enough to get caught in the fire that ravaged most of the Arena. Lyme took the crown home that year, the backs of her legs pink and shiny from the regrown skin after the flames burned her calves, and Emory returned with good grace and a drawn expression. She’d disappeared into her house and emerged a few days later with enough baked goods to feed an entire orphanage. Brutus drove her to one to deliver them, in fact, and the afternoon with the children clambering all over her and demanding stories and autographs and more cookies chased some of the shadows from Emory’s face.
Emory went to the Field of Sacrifice without him, politely refusing Brutus’ offer to join her when he met her at the train with his pickup. “No,” she said, looking back at the pine box as the men carried it out to the car. “I should do this myself.”
Brutus didn’t argue, but he did ask her what she’d chosen to plant there when she returned and sat on the end of his couch. “Bluebells,” Emory said, staring down at her hands as though expecting dirt and blood to crust the knuckles. “Back home they’re supposed to mean humility. It felt -” She waved a hand vaguely. “I didn’t want to choose something that stood for sadness, too much self-pity. It seemed to fit.”
She’d insisted on trying again in 56, and Brutus, for all his misgivings, couldn’t think of any reason to stop her. This time he did make it to the Capitol, not as her backup but as a floor mentor, hitting the sponsor rings and doing his best to keep the interest up. This time Emory’s girl made it all the way to the Final Six before the boy from Five took her down in her sleep, a respectable enough showing for a young mentor that Emory’s debriefing back in Two afterward had been relatively painless. Not that it made the loss any better, but Brutus had heard of mentors whose tributes lost unexpectedly and had to justify their choice to a committee.
Lyme put her name in for 57, and this year the powers that be designated Brutus as her backup. Turns out he and Lyme got on surprisingly well for being opposites in - well, everything - and Brutus wasn’t surprised by the assignment. He’d been more worried about Emory’s reaction, but his girl only spread her hands and said she’d use the year off to take some extra mentoring courses and build up a stronger sponsor base instead.
He’d prepared himself for Lyme’s rage when her tribute lost, but not what would happen if she won. Except that Artemisia took control of the field early and never ceded it, and Lyme became the youngest mentor in District 2 history to see a tribute through to Victory. Brutus left the Capitol and returned home during the flurry of the victory celebrations, and found Emory outside, working in her garden.
“Hey,” he said, not for the first time wishing he had more of any kind of idea what to do. “How you holding up?”
Emory knelt in a bed of tulips, Odin having convinced her that decorative plants with no nutritional value was not a waste of space, a handful of pulled-up weeds lying off to the side and drying in the sun. “I’m glad she won,” she said, not looking up until Brutus exhaled hard through his nose. “No, I - I’m not going to wish a girl dead because she’s not mine!”
Brutus resisted the impulse to drag a hand down his face. “No, of course not,” he said. “I just meant - how you holding up, that’s all.”
“Artemisia is sensational,” Emory said, digging the tip of the trowel into the earth and pausing as though she forgot why she’d started. “And Lyme is - a gifted mentor.” She sighed and sat back, tilting her head up and looking up past Brutus to the trees behind. “I wish I could’ve brought one of mine home too, but I didn’t. No point giving the new girl anything but support and understanding once she’s home.”
They sparred after dinner, fighting late into the night until every bone and muscle and joint in Brutus’ body ached, but he couldn’t stop until he broke through Emory’s control. At last, right when he thought he’d have to give up and call it a night without a breakthrough, something snapped and Emory came after him fast brutal. She never cheated, never took a cheap shot, but she went for his weakness and exploited every opening he gave her, fighting with a viciousness that her Arena never gave her the opportunity to showcase.
When Brutus finally called a halt Emory had a fractured wrist and he’d had to crack his nose back into place, but Emory actually leaned against his shoulder as they waited for the on-call doctor to make the trip. “She’s better than me,” Emory said, and she didn’t rest her head against him or even shift most of her weight onto his, but their arms touched and for Emory that may as well be a full embrace. “I’ll just have to keep trying.”
And so, as much as Brutus wishes he could have convinced her otherwise, Emory puts her name in for the 58th. This year she plays it with a closer eye to strategy, drawing the male tribute because all of Two’s Victors this decade have been female and any back-to-back wins from any district have all been opposite-gender pairs. Persona-wise the Victors have been all over the place, humble and cocky and arrogant and frightened, favoured and dark horse and everywhere in between, so at least the pressure is off for choosing an appropriate image as anything goes.
What Brutus doesn’t say to Emory is that it hardly matters either way. With Emory, Lyme and Artemisia winning in such close succession, the rest of the 50s will be a bloodbath for Two. The audience has seen their share of careers from the quarry district; One might be able to pull off a strong victory in the latter part of the decade, or perhaps Four, but it would take something utterly over the mountains for Two to overcome the Gamemaker-adjusted odds and come out on top this time.
He won’t say it out loud, even to himself, and certainly not to Lyme. The two of them don’t talk about what it means to be Two’s most up and coming mentors, especially since their luck won’t hold forever. Brutus has seen a tribute through to victory both times he’s sat in the seat, on his own or as Lyme’s backup, and Lyme won her first time out with only a year of recovery preceding her training. Odds are, the next time they’re in the ring, they’ll be bringing their tributes home to the field and not the Village.
Still, while living under the shadow of the mountains and growing up in a quarry town seeded Brutus’ makeup with realism, there’s something to be said for stubbornness. Emory wants her girl to win, and maybe she will - it’s not Brutus’ job to dissuade her, especially not when the Capitol demands sacrifice even more than it does victory.
Brutus will support her this year as he has before, and whether her tribute wins or loses, he will be proud of her. This is a truth carved into the very bedrock of their district, engraved in the Village’s foundations, and nothing will change that.
At least until Games Command calls Brutus into the office and tells him to take the female tribute.
Brutus has never refused an official order in his life, the times he tried hiding his sedatives during the early stages of his victory notwithstanding. He doesn’t start now, but he does have to swallow and count backwards from ten before he trusts himself enough to answer. “Why me?” he asks finally. Questioning orders is one step up from disobedience, but maybe they’re testing him. Maybe someone in the office decided to play a prank and he’s the lucky victim. Maybe this is Lyme’s latest joke, gone up a few levels in sadism with her new girl’s influence.
“You’ve shown incredible promise,” says the Capitol envoy. “And your Victor has demonstrated tremendous dedication. We would love to see what happens when you work together.”
For a moment Brutus’ temper flares, and he allows himself a glorious second to imagine barking out that competing with his own Victor to bring home a Victor is hardly working together, except that of course it is. The glory of victory belongs to the district, not the mentor, and so the sentiment may be misleading but it is not, technically, incorrect.
Brutus stares at the woman and her painted face, the cool-eyed gaze as she studies him as dispassionately as she might the odds board, and as the conflicting emotions war in his chest it hits Brutus that this is a test after all. Country before self, duty before life, honour and sacrifice and not a moment’s doubt, these are the promises he has built his life upon since he was old enough to remember.
The bond between Victor and mentor is the most important in all of their district, but of course it can’t come above duty to the Capitol and the president and to the Games themselves. Which will Brutus choose, Emory or the demands of the people by whose grace and mercy she was allowed to come home to him?
It would have happened one day. After working with Lyme to bring Artemisia home, Brutus won’t be surprised if the next time they mentor together it will be on opposite sides. As the previous generation sits back and lets the young begin to take the reins, Brutus and the others need to get used to setting aside personal conflicts for the sake of the greater good.
“Of course,” Brutus says, hoping he didn’t pause so long as to seem insubordinate, but the woman only smiles and reaches over to shake his hand with her glitter-polished fingers.
“Bullshit,” Lyme says when Brutus tells him later. “If we go up against each other, it won’t be because someone ordered us to as a test of our beautiful friendship. It’ll be because we like kids on the opposite ends of the scale and they make for good dramatic pairings.”
Looking at their Victors, Brutus can’t argue with that logic. “So it wouldn’t bother you?” he asks. He hasn’t told Emory yet, would rather not until he’s at least looked through the files and seen which of the girls he’ll take.
“What, going up against you?” Lyme shrugs, a casual gesture belied by the tight grip she has on her whiskey glass. “Nah. The tributes are dead either way, no matter who the mentor is, and they’re the ones actually doing the killing.”
Part of the unspoken pact between them is knowing when to call bullshit and when to toe it under the rug. Brutus respectfully does not call out the lack of eye contact, but in trade that means he gets to press her on a different point. “Misha then,” he says. “You and her up against each other, you can’t tell me you’d think of it like any other year.”
Lyme pauses, then sets down her glass and pinches the bridge of her nose. “I don’t know. Pretty sure it wouldn’t bother her, and that’s the way I want it. I like that she’s selfish, it’ll keep her sane longer. I think she could go up against me and not lose a lot of sleep over it.”
‘Selfish’ is the last word anyone could use to describe Emory, but with any luck her commitment to duty will help her override the personal awkwardness. Brutus sighs and leans back in his chair, rolling his beer bottle in slow circles across the counter. “Remember when ‘duty’ just meant killing people and learning how to smile with a broken arm?” he asks.
Lyme barks out a laugh. “Oh yeah,” she says with feeling. “Times like this, I almost miss it.”
One benefit to their friendship is that on the rare occasion when Brutus has less than loyal thought processes, he can always count on Lyme to say them aloud so he doesn’t have to. “To simpler times,” Brutus says, lifting his drink in salute.
“Hear, hear,” Lyme says, and clinks her glass against his bottle.
Emory says nothing when Brutus informs her of Games Command’s decision, and he doesn’t push it. No discussion, no bout of sparring, will make this better; they have their duty and it’s an ugly one, and that’s all there is to it. Emory selects her tribute first as the one who put her name in, and Brutus spends a few days avoiding the files the Centre sent him before cracking one open.
He finds his girl, sure enough, proud and idealistic and fiery, the right bend of passion and humility and with a sharp grin that will capture cameras and hearts all over the Capitol. Brutus hesitates, flipping the pen over and over in his fingers, pressing hard until the plastic lets out a warning creak and he lets go before splattering himself with ink. Should he do it? Choose a candidate he really believes in and fight as hard as he can for her, when her victory would mean death for Emory’s tribute?
The thought doesn’t last long, burning away like the traces of mountain mist under the morning sun. Of course he must; the Games only continue if each mentor and tribute try their best and District 2 puts out the best showing it can. Besides, the girl who stares up at him form the page deserves to live and win as much as anyone else. She deserves a mentor who believes in her and puts her survival above personal feelings with others.
He’s gone up against others in the Village before. Callista doesn’t avoid Brutus after her boy fell and his girl made it home, nor should she. Brutus helped see Emory through an Arena meant to murder and humiliate her, dragged her through the morass of her own self doubt and showed her she’s worth living. This won’t divide them, not forever.
(Funny, he thinks later, sitting with a mound of sponsor paperwork in his lap after turning in his application, that he’d been worried about Emory mentoring a surefire loss. Now that he has a tribute in the ring, Brutus can’t stop thinking about the repercussion when she wins. Mentoring is a hell of a drug.)
In the end it doesn’t matter. Both tributes survive the split but fall to the girl from Three, a whipcord-tiny little thing who skulks around the dark tunnels, giant night-vision goggles standing out against her pale face, and electrocutes the Final Four to come home the winner.
For the first time, Brutus returns home not in the main carriage with a wide-eyed Victor but in an empty car furnished with nothing but benches and a pair of plain caskets. Emory sits on the floor at one end, knees pulled up to her chest, and Brutus wedges himself in between the casket and the wall and rests on hand on the top.
Arrogance, to think about what would happen after, to dream of victory and of trying to navigate the awkwardness between his two tributes when one’s life meant the death of the other’s hopes. And yet without arrogance and hope there would be no Games; a mentor cannot walk onto the tribute train defeated or the kids will know it and nothing else will matter. Without a mentor’s faith, even the bravest tribute is doomed.
He and Emory don’t talk through it all, the trip, the reception at the town square, the car rides to the field and the Centre and all the housekeeping that has to be done when a tribute dies. So much more paperwork for a dead tribute than a living Victor, and they’d warned Brutus but somehow he hadn’t realized.
Emory doesn’t look at him as make their way to the Centre to carve the names into the wall of sacrifice. Girls first, then boys, and so Brutus carves the name into the dark surface and hands the chisel over to Emory. She moves slow and methodical, chanting the letters to herself in a whisper - she couldn’t read, knew nothing more but her letters and a few key words when Brutus pulled her from the Arena, spent the next year painstakingly memorizing the sounds and reading children’s books to herself in private, embarrassed to let the others see her deficiency - as she etches the name onto the wall.
At the dedication Brutus shakes hands with his tribute’s parents, lets them know their daughter did everything right, while Emory stands alone, the only mourner for her fallen tribute. Emory scatters bluebell seeds over the grave, and Brutus drops a handful of cornflowers. Next spring both will be a wash of blue, splashes of bright colour for the silent mountains to witness.
Emory disappears into her house and Brutus doesn’t follow. He should, he’s her mentor and it’s his duty to see that she’s all right, but Brutus’ own ache pulls at him and he can’t help her if he’s drowning, too. It’s an excuse, probably, and Brutus should be ashamed of hiding when his girl needs him, but she’d only ask to be left alone and Brutus doesn’t have the energy to fight her, not today.
Every day he means to go see her, check how she’s doing, make sure she’s eating and taking care of herself, but every day the sun shines too bright and cheerful and the birds keep chattering and the mountains smell so much of life and growing things that Brutus can’t stand to leave his house. He wakes, chokes down a protein smoothie, goes downstairs to train, drags himself up for a shower, then repeats the procedure over and over. He wrenches his shoulder, puts on five pounds of muscle, and powers through a dozen headaches as he struggles to read the cramped sponsor paperwork with little more than a quarry education and Odin’s coaching himself.
In the end it’s Lyme who pulls him out of it, Lyme who’s never tasted loss but will soon enough, Lyme who hauls his ass out onto the basketball court and drags the feelings out of him and invites him over for dinner with Artemisia. Misha is irreverent and mocking and very much alive, and Brutus didn’t pull her but he did work backup for Lyme and it - helps, a little, to see her there, perched on the counter and swiping ingredients from the chopping board as Lyme cooks.
He sleeps well that night for the first time in months, and the next day it’s time. Brutus heads over to Emory’s around mid-morning and lets himself in, and immediately the guilt hits him hard in the chest because her place smells of must and sweat and the lingering traces of half a dozen baked goods. She’ll have been doing the same thing as Brutus, blocking out the sights and scents of nature, holing herself up in the house and training and choking down minimal sustenance. It’s too much to hope that Emory has eaten anything she’s made; Brutus will bet a month’s stipend that she’s called the VA to take everything away and donate it to children’s homes.
Brutus toes off his shoes, a long-buried quarry habit that comes from not wanting to fill the house with dust after a day in the mines, and calls out. Emory doesn’t answer, and Brutus hesitates for a moment, trying to decide whether to push on anyway, when a loud crash! from the kitchen makes the decision for him.
He finds Emory standing over the remains of a bowl, shattered on the kitchen floor at her feet. She stares at it, eyes wide and red, and doesn’t react to Brutus’ presence until he comes within arm’s reach. Then she jumps, snaps her head up to look at him and takes a half-step backward before freezing in place. “I broke it,” Emory says. Her voice comes out dull and stupid-sounding, and Brutus swallows. “I didn’t mean to, I just - I broke it.”
“It’s okay,” Brutus says carefully. Emory grew up in the quarries, not poor like Brutus and others whose both parents were miners, but without a lot of extra to throw around. The wastefulness of the Capitol bothered her far more than its callousness and blood thirst. “We can get more, it’s okay. Don’t worry about it.”
“No,” Emory says. Her eyes get wider, nostrils flaring, and her hands open and close, spasming and catching on nothing. “I know there are more bowls but there’s no more of this one, this one was mine and I broke it and now it’s ruined. And I can buy a new bowl but I’ll probably break that too, they’ll keep breaking and there’s nothing I can do about it -”
Oh.
Brutus has enough time to raise one hand toward her before Emory - stoic, quiet, enduring and uncomplaining - bursts into a flood of hard, wracking sobs. “Fuck,” Brutus mutters under his breath, and he skirts the broken pottery to pull her away into the living room. Artemisia crawls into Lyme’s lap like she’s a long-limbed cat and sprawls on her at the least provocation, but Brutus and Emory have never so much as embraced. For Brutus, hugging stirs up awkwardly not-unpleasant memories of his life before the Centre, and Emory was raised in a household where affection and love were understood and rarely demonstrated. After her Victory Emory looked at open physical demonstrations as an expression of her weakness, preferring to get through it with words and perseverance, with sparring as the sole exception.
After a second of debating with himself and Brutus pulls Emory into his arms. She lets out a cry of protest and shoves weakly against his chest, but collapses after a moment and lets Brutus hold her. She’s almost as tall as he is, over six feet and quarry-broad, but Brutus holds on and weathers the storm as she gives in and cries.
“It’s just a bowl,” Emory says into his shoulder, muffled and embarrassed. Her hand fists in his shirt. “It’s stupid.”
Brutus says nothing, the words tangled up and useless in his chest, but he doesn’t let go.
At last Emory runs out, and she sags for a moment before pulling away to wipe at her face with her sleeve. “This isn’t going to be a story for the next Victor barbecue,” Emory says dryly, and Brutus laughs a little, relieved at even a glimpse of her rare dry humour. “You don’t mind if I never make eye contact again, do you?”
Here, at least, Brutus knows his duty. He presses their foreheads together and holds her face, and they’re close and her eyes are wide and red, lashes still glistening with teardrops, and Brutus takes in all that weakness and doesn’t flinch. Emory lets out a long, slow breath and closes her eyes, and she reaches up to hold his wrists. “Okay,” she says finally, and this time the words come out normal. “Okay, thanks.”
Brutus claps the side of her face and lets go. “We can fix the bowl,” he says. It’s dumb, it’s not about the bowl and they both know it, except it kind of is. Brutus never had a head for symbolism, but he’s not a complete idiot. “Bring it to Misha, maybe she can weld it back together in her studio.”
Emory blinks, then stutters out a laugh. “What, stick the bowl back together with solder?”
“Why not?” Brutus challenges. “She’s probably got gold or something to add to it, make it look pretty, even.”
“You’ll always see the cracks,” Emory says, frowning. “I thought you’re supposed to fix things so they don’t look like they broke.”
Brutus raises one shoulder and lets it drop. “Things break,” he says. “Don’t mean they have to stay broken. I dunno, there’s probably someone in the Capitol who’d rave over the beauty of it and make a whole art gallery, celebrating the embrace of the imperfect.”
He’s not great at imitating the Capitol accent like Lyme or her girl are, but Emory snorts all the same, and when she knuckles the last of the tears away her smile holds stronger. “Sure, why not,” she says, glancing back at the kitchen. “I’d feel better not wasting it, anyway, no matter what it looks like.”
“That’s my girl,” Brutus says, knocking her shoulder, and heads into the kitchen to find the dustpan.