THG ficlet: "The Killing Kind"
Title: The Killing Kind
Characters: Lyme, Brutus
Wordcount: ~ 1000 words
Beta: the lovely millari
Summary: After failing to control her tribute during the 72nd Hunger Games, Lyme returns to District Two to face the consequences.
AN: A Spin Control outtake for lorataprose. Happy belated birthday and congratulations on your wedding! It's not much but I hope you'll still enjoy it. :) Also I hope you don't mind that I merrily mixed your and my head canon.
Lyme was standing on the balcony at the top floor of Games Command, holding on to the railing so hard that the veins were showing on her steely biceps.
She didn’t turn when Brutus stepped up to her, but then again, a victor with upper body strength like Lyme’s learned fast not to startle at that kind of movement. Though, a victor with weight like Brutus’ learned not to make any unnecessary sounds long before he actually obtained the title.
Not that that title wasn’t the biggest mockery of all, Lyme thought with an inward snort.
Any victor of Panem learned to think these things but not ever say them aloud.
“If you’ve come to tell me that I shouldn’t have expected any better from the higher-ups, you can go and shove that suggestion up your sorry ass,” she announced without turning her eyes away from the ground underneath.
“Nah, didn’t,” Brutus replied. He stepped closer, having a cautious look down. But the center court was deserted this time of day, nobody playing with the mock-ups and practice targets, set up for recreation rather than training. And that was a mockery, too, because you could hardly call something playing if it involved learning to kill. “I figured you’d be smart enough to know that all by yourself.”
Lyme grimaced.
“She panicked, Brutus,” she said, trying for a shrug and failing when her arms were too tense to obey the command. “They can give me shit for it all they want. I know I was supposed to stop it, although Capitol knows they couldn’t explain to me how exactly I should have done that. Yeah, she was a Career, she should have known what the fuck she was getting into but guess what? Apparently, she didn’t. And I’m supposed to, what, disown her in my memory or something? We can train them all we want, we can give them kill tests, in the end, she got there and guess what, the other tributes were just little kids and guess what, the Capitol didn’t actually give a fuck if she…”
“Lyme,” Brutus said in a warning tone, surprisingly quiet, all without that rumble in his voice and all the more threatening for it, and she shut up.
Taking a deep breath, Lyme stared at the playground and at the barracks behind it, miles of training grounds for their army of child killers.
It was a week after the 72nd Hunger Games, won by a boy from District Ten because he’d been smart enough to find shelter, waiting out that girl from Two that couldn’t hope to last longer than him - not only because she’d been the joke of that Games to the audience, but because a Two tribute just didn’t get to survive if they just screamed and screamed and screamed instead of grabbing a sword.
The only reason district marketing wasn’t completely fucked had been because Finnick Odair had chosen to wag his pretty ass in special ways this year, distracting attention from them.
Apollinara Bear had joined volunteer training at ten, plucked right out of the orphanage. She hadn’t known anything but preparation for the Games in all her life; there hadn’t been any other future she’d have pictured for herself. She’d been tall and athletic and wicked with a katana. Even though some had criticized her for her tendency to hyper-focus during fights, Lyme had singled her out for her sharp marketing instincts and how everybody seemed to freeze in defense when she smiled. There were worse traits in a volunteer, Lyme had thought, than a one-track mind.
The straightforward kids weren’t so likely to wake up screaming from terror after they won, after they realized what it was they had really done.
Lyme stiffened her jaw.
“I’ve got trainees in the running for the next three Games,” she said. “Each had a chance to be picked as volunteer. They’re not gonna let me take any of them to the Games now, not if another mentor doesn’t step up. Not after what happened this year.”
Brutus exclaimed a faint contemplative humming sound.
“They put me on the committee,” he remarked, blinking into the sun as if he didn’t have a care in the world. “Just got the summons.”
She gave him a disbelieving look.
“There’s gonna be a fucking committee?”
He shrugged. “Gotta find out where selection went wrong. She shouldn’t have made any cut.”
“I can tell you what went wrong. You can write that up in your report. You gonna write, We thought she was smart but then it turned out she was dumb. She thought she knew what she’d signed up for, but turned out she didn’t. That’s a bunch of crap, but you and I still know that that’s what that committee’s gonna find.”
Brutus raised his eyebrows at her. “Any recommended changes to the training schedule, too, since you’re doing my work for me now?”
“Give them more kill tests,” she promptly answered, bitterly adding, too quietly for any bugs to pick it up out of sheer habit, “Since it isn’t enough producing two killers each year, we very clearly need whole classes of kids who can’t live with themselves.” And louder, “Give them a better sense of what it’s like. How’s that sound?”
“Like you’re projecting,” Brutus said.
Lyme snorted at him.
They’d made her a killer, too, yes. She had the arms of a smith, and she was a menace with her club, but all she did nowadays was create new little dolls for the Capitol to destroy. Because the crux of that was, the Capitol didn’t actually want killers.
You want to make sure that none of your volunteers ever panic again, stop sending them into a fucking death match. That was what that damn report should say.
Those hadn’t been faceless tributes who’d have died if Apollinara had lived; they had been children, and at least eighteen out of those twenty-four hadn’t wanted to be there. The Capitol hadn’t cared who of them lived, just how they died, and none of the things Apollinara had been told all her life by her teachers had been true.
Before that moment when she should have picked up that sword but instead had run away, nobody had ever even thought to call that girl dumb.
Lyme resolved that she wouldn’t start doing so now.
She thought, Apollinara had been just a little too smart.
Obviously, that was another thing a victor didn’t say aloud.
Characters: Lyme, Brutus
Wordcount: ~ 1000 words
Beta: the lovely millari
Summary: After failing to control her tribute during the 72nd Hunger Games, Lyme returns to District Two to face the consequences.
AN: A Spin Control outtake for lorataprose. Happy belated birthday and congratulations on your wedding! It's not much but I hope you'll still enjoy it. :) Also I hope you don't mind that I merrily mixed your and my head canon.
Lyme was standing on the balcony at the top floor of Games Command, holding on to the railing so hard that the veins were showing on her steely biceps.
She didn’t turn when Brutus stepped up to her, but then again, a victor with upper body strength like Lyme’s learned fast not to startle at that kind of movement. Though, a victor with weight like Brutus’ learned not to make any unnecessary sounds long before he actually obtained the title.
Not that that title wasn’t the biggest mockery of all, Lyme thought with an inward snort.
Any victor of Panem learned to think these things but not ever say them aloud.
“If you’ve come to tell me that I shouldn’t have expected any better from the higher-ups, you can go and shove that suggestion up your sorry ass,” she announced without turning her eyes away from the ground underneath.
“Nah, didn’t,” Brutus replied. He stepped closer, having a cautious look down. But the center court was deserted this time of day, nobody playing with the mock-ups and practice targets, set up for recreation rather than training. And that was a mockery, too, because you could hardly call something playing if it involved learning to kill. “I figured you’d be smart enough to know that all by yourself.”
Lyme grimaced.
“She panicked, Brutus,” she said, trying for a shrug and failing when her arms were too tense to obey the command. “They can give me shit for it all they want. I know I was supposed to stop it, although Capitol knows they couldn’t explain to me how exactly I should have done that. Yeah, she was a Career, she should have known what the fuck she was getting into but guess what? Apparently, she didn’t. And I’m supposed to, what, disown her in my memory or something? We can train them all we want, we can give them kill tests, in the end, she got there and guess what, the other tributes were just little kids and guess what, the Capitol didn’t actually give a fuck if she…”
“Lyme,” Brutus said in a warning tone, surprisingly quiet, all without that rumble in his voice and all the more threatening for it, and she shut up.
Taking a deep breath, Lyme stared at the playground and at the barracks behind it, miles of training grounds for their army of child killers.
It was a week after the 72nd Hunger Games, won by a boy from District Ten because he’d been smart enough to find shelter, waiting out that girl from Two that couldn’t hope to last longer than him - not only because she’d been the joke of that Games to the audience, but because a Two tribute just didn’t get to survive if they just screamed and screamed and screamed instead of grabbing a sword.
The only reason district marketing wasn’t completely fucked had been because Finnick Odair had chosen to wag his pretty ass in special ways this year, distracting attention from them.
Apollinara Bear had joined volunteer training at ten, plucked right out of the orphanage. She hadn’t known anything but preparation for the Games in all her life; there hadn’t been any other future she’d have pictured for herself. She’d been tall and athletic and wicked with a katana. Even though some had criticized her for her tendency to hyper-focus during fights, Lyme had singled her out for her sharp marketing instincts and how everybody seemed to freeze in defense when she smiled. There were worse traits in a volunteer, Lyme had thought, than a one-track mind.
The straightforward kids weren’t so likely to wake up screaming from terror after they won, after they realized what it was they had really done.
Lyme stiffened her jaw.
“I’ve got trainees in the running for the next three Games,” she said. “Each had a chance to be picked as volunteer. They’re not gonna let me take any of them to the Games now, not if another mentor doesn’t step up. Not after what happened this year.”
Brutus exclaimed a faint contemplative humming sound.
“They put me on the committee,” he remarked, blinking into the sun as if he didn’t have a care in the world. “Just got the summons.”
She gave him a disbelieving look.
“There’s gonna be a fucking committee?”
He shrugged. “Gotta find out where selection went wrong. She shouldn’t have made any cut.”
“I can tell you what went wrong. You can write that up in your report. You gonna write, We thought she was smart but then it turned out she was dumb. She thought she knew what she’d signed up for, but turned out she didn’t. That’s a bunch of crap, but you and I still know that that’s what that committee’s gonna find.”
Brutus raised his eyebrows at her. “Any recommended changes to the training schedule, too, since you’re doing my work for me now?”
“Give them more kill tests,” she promptly answered, bitterly adding, too quietly for any bugs to pick it up out of sheer habit, “Since it isn’t enough producing two killers each year, we very clearly need whole classes of kids who can’t live with themselves.” And louder, “Give them a better sense of what it’s like. How’s that sound?”
“Like you’re projecting,” Brutus said.
Lyme snorted at him.
They’d made her a killer, too, yes. She had the arms of a smith, and she was a menace with her club, but all she did nowadays was create new little dolls for the Capitol to destroy. Because the crux of that was, the Capitol didn’t actually want killers.
You want to make sure that none of your volunteers ever panic again, stop sending them into a fucking death match. That was what that damn report should say.
Those hadn’t been faceless tributes who’d have died if Apollinara had lived; they had been children, and at least eighteen out of those twenty-four hadn’t wanted to be there. The Capitol hadn’t cared who of them lived, just how they died, and none of the things Apollinara had been told all her life by her teachers had been true.
Before that moment when she should have picked up that sword but instead had run away, nobody had ever even thought to call that girl dumb.
Lyme resolved that she wouldn’t start doing so now.
She thought, Apollinara had been just a little too smart.
Obviously, that was another thing a victor didn’t say aloud.