Archive of Our Own ^beta

The Centre stipend comes every month, direct to the house because most of the quarry towns aren't set up with personal accounts. It's a mix of food tickets for basic staples, free tesserae rations, and vouchers that can be used as currency at any business or redeemed for cash at the nearest bank. Heidi hands the envelope to Brutus, seven years old and solemn, and lets him heft its weight in his hands. "This is because of you," she tells him, and his eyes go wide. "This is your contribution, little man."

"This is mine?" Brutus asks, looking up at her. "I really did it? I really helped?"

"You did," Heidi says, and he's her baby but he's also her little man, and she doesn't bend and kiss his hair like she did before he joined the Program. He's too old for that now, at least when he's in such a serious mood. "We know you have to work hard at the Centre, so I wanted to show you what you get for it."

For the next week, everything they buy, Brutus asks if they bought it with the stipend. "Did you buy this with my contribution?" he asks when Heidi takes the milk out of the refrigerator and pours him a glass at dinner. "Was this mine?" he asks again when she kneads the dark wheat dough in her hands, breaks off a piece and hands it to him to form a roll.

"Yes, it is," Heidi tells him, whether it is or not, as long as she thinks she can get away with it.

"You shouldn't do that," Marc says to her one night, after Brutus is safely in bed. "You get it in his head that it's all about the money and he'll stay forever just because he won't want to give up the stipend."

"If we make it about us then it's not about serving the Capitol with his corpse," Heidi says, and Marc's jaw goes tight in the darkness but he doesn't argue with her. "The longer he frames it as a way to help his family, the longer we can keep them out of his head. I did this myself as a girl and I came out just fine. Trust me."

Marc makes a disbelieving sort of noise that Heidi don't much like, and she rolls over, pinning him back against the bed with her hands hard against his shoulders. "You gonna trust me or what?" she demands. "I'm your wife. I'm the mother of your boy, and I'm the only one who's been in the Program. So it's your move."

He stares at her for a long time, then something in his expression breaks, and he twists his hand into her hair and pulls her down. Heidi expects him to kiss her but he doesn't, just wraps his arms around her and buries his face in her neck. "Of course I trust you," Marc says, his fingers pressing into her shoulders. "It's them I don't."

"It'll be fine," Heidi tells him with conviction. She knows their boy. He's a good boy, solid and true. "And it makes him so happy to help. We're raising him right."

Marc lets out a breath. "We are, aren't we."

"Damned right we are," Heidi says fiercely.

And for a few years, everything is good. The Centre gives Brutus an outlet for his rages, and he keeps getting bigger and keeps growing stronger, and each strand the Centre puts around his wrist means the kids at school are a little more hesitant about teasing him for having young parents and no money. The stipend helps them fix the leak in their roof and put in double windows so the house doesn't keep so chilly in winter.

The only problem is that each of the strands around Brutus' wrist are black, and Heidi knows what that means. She never made it to the top third back in her day; she was in it for the money and her family, not to stay, and wasn't hard to keep in the middle of the class because there were so many kids who wanted it more. She didn't have to sabotage herself, just not try quite so hard, and the five strands on her bracelet were a solid dark blue.

Heidi tries to talk to Brutus about it when he's around ten, but he just frowns and tilts his head. "I don't get it," he says. "I'm not trying to win, I'm just doing what they tell me. I can't help it if I'm bigger and stronger than the other kids. I thought you and Dad always want me to do my best."

"Sure, we do," Heidi says, and bites off the part where she says 'except for the killing' because that's Marc's line and she needs to stay on this side of the fence. Brutus knows what the Games are; they don't make him watch the murders no matter what anyone says, but he does sit for the Parade of the Fallen at the end of each night, one fist over his chest in solemn silence if ever there's a Two on that list. "Just remember why you're there. We're not sending you into the Games."

"I know that!" Brutus says, and he rears back, his eyes big and blue and hurt. "I know why we're there, I just, the longer I stay the more I can help, that's all. I know what I'm doing. They can't make me kill anyone."

"I know, and I trust you," Heidi says, and at ten he's definitely too old for kisses but she does anyway, because this time she needs to remind him that he's her baby and she loves him and she can't imagine life without him. "Now, you gonna make your mom do all the dishes by herself after a hard day at work?"

"No ma'am!" Brutus says, straightening up and squaring his shoulders. "You sit right down and put your feet up, I'll take care of it."

He still needs to stand on his toes to get to the bottom of the sink, and Heidi watches him with a twist of fear in her heart. They still have time. They do.

When he's twelve he nearly kills someone. They send a messenger down to the quarries and pull both Marc and Heidi out, covered in dust and dripping with sweat, to tell them what their kid has done. There's a boy been sent up to the city to the big fancy doctors because theirs with the country medicine and simple equipment ain't enough to save him. There's a boy out there with a broken neck clinging to life and it's their boy what's done it.

"I need you to tell me what the hell was going through your head to make you think that was a good idea," Marc says, and he doesn't yell, he never yells, just gets cold and furious and disappointed, but this time it's close.

When he was little and got into fights Brutus used to hunch and apologize. He'd curl in on himself and Marc would have to tease it out of him, have to chip around the useless rock to get to the veins inside, and finally he'd whisper what they said. This time Brutus doesn't. He grits his teeth, eyes flashing, and he still has blood drying on his knuckles and he hasn't noticed. The fear sets up a drum roll in Heidi's chest.

"Some idiot thought it would be funny to talk shit about Mom," Brutus snarls, like he's forgotten who he's talking to, and maybe he has. Worse still, maybe it doesn't matter to him right now. "Yeah, me, they thought it would be a good idea to talk about my Mom. I wasn't gonna let that go."

"What did they say?" Heidi asks him, quiet and firm, and that breaks him out of it a little in the way that Marc's distress can't. His eyes flicker to her, then widen as he recalls that his mama is standing right there. "Brutus, tell me."

"They said they know why you guys married young," Brutus says, and this time there is hesitation but it's not because he's ashamed. It's because this is the sort of thing you don't say in front of a lady, especially not your mother. "They said it's obvious why. They said my ma worked in the quarries and everyone knows what that means, only reason a girl goes down there is to get passed around like --" He stops, cheeks flaming scarlet, and his teeth snap shut. "They said does my daddy even know I'm his. They said -- Do I gotta continue?"

"No, you can stop," Marc says, and he's a gentle giant, her husband, but that is one thing that will get him riled quicker than a summer storm blows up from the mountains. Heidi knows without having to say anything that tonight they'll make love like a wildfire, and after he'll hold her close and spit nails and tell her she's perfect, that it doesn't matter what the liars think and say, the two of them know the truth and that's all what matters. "All right, son, that's sure a reason to get mad, and I don't think any boy could stand by and listen to that said about his mother and just walk away. But that don't give you cause to be snapping anybody's neck, and if you ever do that again --"

"I wanted to make sure he never said ignorant shit like that again," Brutus says, full of venom, but he's calm again, calm as ice. "Now nobody will. The whole point is I never have to do it again, and at least now I know how. Before I would've had to keep trying."

That night Brutus sticks close to his mama and helps her with the dishes just like he has every night since he was a little boy, and before he goes to bed he holds her tight with his face in her shoulder and she strokes his hair. "I love you," he tells her, fierce and furious and unbalanced, for the first time since this afternoon sounding unsure. "Did I do wrong, Mom? I just wanted to protect you."

"Well, you said you won't ever have to do it again," Heidi says, her heart hammering in terror. "So you make sure you don't."

"Yes ma'am," Brutus declares, and kisses her cheek. Heidi looks into his big blue eyes, his daddy's eyes, and she believes him.

They sign the paperwork for Residential when he's thirteen because for the first time Brutus stands up to his daddy, looks at him with his jaw clenched and his shoulders in a precise line and tells him he wants to stay. It's where he belongs, it's his duty and he's proud to do it, and he'll stay good and keep true and he'll come back, he will. He just needs to stay a little longer, make a little more money, through the deadweight years of thirteen to sixteen until he's old enough that when he comes home he can start right away in the quarries.

"I'll come back," Brutus says, proud and tall and strong. "I will. And once I'm out I'll never hit girls again, Dad, I promise."

"We've killed him," Marc says the night they walk him to the train and watch it speed away with him inside. They lie in bed, an endless chasm of six inches between them.

"You don't know that," Heidi says.

Marc rolls over and faces the wall. "Yeah, I do," he says, and shakes off her hand when she tries to touch his shoulder.

He'll come back to them, he will. Marc says they've taken him already, that their boy is slipping away and there won't be nothing left to bring back, but he's wrong. Heidi knows he's wrong. A few more years, that's all it is, and he'll come home, safe and angry and with enough killing under his belt that he'll never need to kill anybody ever again no matter how bad the rages get. No matter what anybody says.

The years tick on and the money keeps coming. It used to be a celebration when Brutus was young enough to be proud; now that he's gone, each one serves as yet another reminder that their son isn't here. Each chunk of money means they're less likely to get him back at all. The year Brutus turns sixteen Marc stares at the envelope with the closest to hatred that Heidi has ever seen on his face. He clutches it so hard his fingers dent the heavy paper, and his hands tremble.

"I just want to burn it," he says, his voice rough like the gravel they walk over every day. "I don't want any of the money anymore. I can't -- we know what he does to get it, Heidi! How can we buy food with his blood?"

Or other people's blood spilled at their boy's hands; Heidi knows just as well as Marc does what Brutus does to earn his keep at the Centre. By sixteen he'll be on his way into the Seniors, and that means he'll have killed at least three people, maybe more.

Heidi puts her hand on Marc's wrist; his muscles are knotted and ropey from years of labour, but her hands are just as broad and every bit as strong. "Don't burn it," she says. "He wanted to do this for us. Don't make it for nothing."

Marc shuts his mouth, jaw working, but it's storm season and the next week a big one blows a bunch of shingles off the roof and they have to get it fixed or risk the whole thing caving in. Principles, Heidi thinks, are funny things.

Heidi didn't think he would make it to eighteen. Whatever happened in the Centre, he would still be their boy underneath it all, the boy who loved collecting rocks and watching the sun go down over the quarries because all the money in a place like District One couldn't buy a view like that, the sun glittering over the exposed veins of quartz. He'd come back to them, and they could put this all behind them and live together as a family.

The year he turns eighteen, Heidi can't pretend anymore. Brutus' birthday has become a black day on their calendar, a day when she and her husband barely talk or even look at each other. Used to be they'd take the day off come hell or high water, and Marc would pull his fiddle from the closet and Heidi would take the money she'd saved for flour and sugar and milk and make them a cake, enough for one big slice each and one for Brutus to take to school with him tomorrow. Now, they take separate shifts at the quarries so they don't have to make it so obvious that they're avoiding talking. But for all their fighting, all the awkward silences and tense dinners, the nights Marc hits the bar on the way home, not to drink but so she'll be in bed when he gets back, Heidi never thought it would come to this.

Brutus is eighteen, it's April, and the Reaping is in two months. There's no way he made it all the way to the end just to fall at the finish line; the whole world might have collapsed under her, but Heidi knows her boy. He's stubborn and strong and a champion, and he ain't never given up once in his life. If he's still there it's for exactly one reason, and that's to win it; he won't be coming back with a bracelet ringed with white, the symbol of someone who aged out instead of getting cut, who stayed through so the chosen Volunteer would have a backup in case he died.

She still can't believe it. Despite everything -- despite Heidi being a practical girl, a girl who learned her family's finances when she was eight to keep them afloat, who started looking for a good man to keep her well when she was sixteen -- she can't bring herself to accept it, can't wrap her mind around the idea that this is happening. Not until she and Marc stand in the square in front of the Justice Building, straight and silent in the heat, as the boy's name is drawn from the reaping bowl.

The name they call is Theodore Payne; Heidi has no idea who that is -- not from their town, and besides, what the hell kind of fancy name is Theodore, probably some merchant's kid up from one of the central towns -- and doesn't care. She holds her breath, and beside her Marc is like a statue carved of granite.

"Are there any volunteers?" asks the escort in a peppy sort of voice, and Heidi closes her eyes.

Please. Please. Please, please, please, for the love of Snow and Panem, please let it be someone else.

"I volunteer," calls out a strong, clear voice, and Heidi's breath catches because she has no idea if it's him. She hasn't seen Brutus since the week he turned thirteen, and his voice had broken but it wasn't like this, strong-chested and deep. There's an undercurrent of familiarity to it but that could just be the panic, and Heidi sucks in a lungful of air and holds it as the crowd parts. The Volunteer this year is big, like they always are -- ain't been a scrawny Two as long as she can remember -- so that could be anyone. The boy's head is shaved, likely to make him older and scarier, and so she can't tell if he was blond or brunette or what before.

"What was that?" the escort says, like an idiot, cupping his hand around his ear and gesturing to the crowd. "I didn't hear you!"

"I volunteer," comes the voice again, even louder, and then he turns and the cameras get a good glimpse of his face, pulling in and projecting his image onto the screens on either side of the stage. Heidi shoves a fist into her mouth so fast her teeth scrape against her knuckle and she tastes blood.

That's their Brutus, and she knows it even before he gets up to the stage to say his name. Heidi knows by the way his blue eyes blaze just like Marc's, and more than that he's grown up to look just like his parents. That's her jaw and her cheekbones setting his face, and he's got Marc's nose and ears that are all his own but the whole thing is like her and Marc mixed together and put up there for everyone to see.

Marc makes a choked-off noise in his throat, and they can't say anything because the cameras will find them -- the cameras always scour the crowds -- and so they stay still, so, so still, like the time Benny got himself half-buried in the mines and they had to inch their way in to get him so the whole thing wouldn't give underneath them.

"Brutus," says the escort, and Heidi flinches to hear her boy's name said in the Capitol accent. "That's a good strong name. A victor's name if I ever heard one, am I right"?"

This time Heidi jerks back, horrified at such a blatant disregard of tradition and local superstition. You never, ever say anything like that before the Games finish and the trumpets sound; not only is it bad luck, but it puts forward the tribute as a sure thing, and nothing bores the audience and makes the Gamemakers more sadistic than a guaranteed winner.

Marc swallows like he just took a mouthful of rotting meat, and he still doesn't talk but his hands ball into fists and Heidi knows why. Brutus is a good name, a strong name, a solid District Two quarry name, and there were three others in Brutus' school alone. It's not like they had this planned for him. They didn't sit with their baby in their arms thinking about what name would sound good when shouted on the victory stage.

The rest of the audience doesn't like it either, and the only good thing is that very likely the escort will be fired as soon as they it the Capitol for the breach. It's not much comfort now.

"So any hints of what we can hope to expect this year?" the escort asks, leaning in close and running his hand over Brutus' biceps, which are about the size of his head. "Ooh, those muscles, aren't you impressive!"

"A good show," Brutus says after a pause, and that's him too, all careful with his words, but Heidi can tell when they're rehearsed. "You won't want to stop watching, that's for sure."

"How exciting!" the escort coos, and then it's on to the girls. Heidi makes sure to forget the girl's name as soon as she hears it, because for the first time in her life she doesn't just want any Two to win.

Her son is in the Hunger Games, and Heidi needs him to come back.

The crowd disperses after the ceremony, and amid the whispers from those what know him Heidi hears excitement. The Volunteer looks strong and determined, but not just that; he's solid and reliable. The perfect choice for the Capitol in the lead up to the Quarter Quell, a reminder of the districts' failures of the past. Redemption, they're calling him. Heidi calls that sort of talk jinxing, and wishes she could bash them all across the mouth and tell them to shut up.

"We need to see him," Heidi says to Marc, who still hasn't moved even when everyone else has gone. Brutus left, too, into the Justice Building with the mentors and escort and the mayor, and they both stare at the tall white building like they expect it to spit him back out and tell them it was all a joke. "We're allowed to see him, we're his parents. We have that right."

Marc finally lets out a long, slow breath. "I don't know," he says. "I'd like to remember him the way he was. Not whatever's in that building."

"What do you mean 'whatever'?" Heidi hisses. "That's our son in there whether you like it or not. He's here in that room because of us, the least we can do is wish him well."

Marc snorts, a sound that has no amusement or fondness in it, and passes a hand across his eyes. He doesn't say anything -- can't, not with the square covered in Peacekeepers and cameras and Snow only knows how many people working for the President -- but when he drops his hand she sees it. Wishing Brutus well means wishing him best of luck as he murders as many children as he can.

Heidi meets his gaze and holds it, and yeah, that's what it means and that's what she's saying. Those other kids, they all have parents who want them to come home just as hard, and Heidi won't feel guilty about wishing them dead just as much as they're wishing the same on Brutus. "I'm going," she says. "Whether you're coming or not."

Marc winces, but then he runs a hand over his head. "All right," he says, shoulders tensing. "I'll go with you, it ain't right for you to go by yourself. But whatever you're hoping to see, it's not gonna be there."

"I'm not hoping anything," Heidi says, lying through her teeth. "But it ain't right to let him go without saying goodbye, either."

They have to show their ID at the door to the Justice Building, and the man in white takes them away, probably to check them against the Centre files because Brutus didn't give his last name on stage. None of the Careers do, a symbol of how they've left everything behind in service to the Capitol. Finally he comes back, gestures them to follow him.

The Justice Building is the finest Heidi has seen in her life, all oak panelling and smooth stone walls, and they even commissioned a whole load of marble for the inlays and pillars. The Centre never wasted time with that, good regular cement and wood painted white, and Heidi finds herself calculating how many months in the quarries it would take her team to dig all this out, how many masons and cutters and builders it would've taken to get this built. Even then, she knows it's nothing compared to what Brutus will be seeing tomorrow in the Capitol.

"You've got three minutes," says the Peacekeeper outside the door, and his visor's down but Heidi still thinks she sees surprise on his face. She wonders how many parents even bother to show; most of the kids she remembers back in her days in the Program came from families whose folks didn't give much of a damn. She guesses it must be rare, which makes sense. What kind of parent would hand over their child to the slaughter just like that? She pushes the thought down and stamps on it like a cigarette.

It's Brutus even more clearly here in the room with them, not blown up larger than life on the screens, even though he's taller than both her and Marc now.  Bigger, too, in a way that don't just come from hard work, and Heidi holds back a wince at the thick veins bulging out in his overlarge arms. They've juiced him, and good, getting him as big as they can before the Games start, and his skull is bigger than Heidi's but still looks small on top of that thick neck.

Marc says nothing, just tenses up beside her, and Heidi swallows down a hundred idiotic things. Things like 'do you remember us' and 'we're your parents' and, most incongruously, 'hey little man'. Brutus doesn't seem to care that they're standing there in silence; his gaze flicked to them for a second when the door opened, but after that his eyes went flat and disinterested and he stared at the wall instead.

"I'm proud of you," Heidi says finally. "You always did what you set your mind to doing."

Brutus says nothing, just taps one finger against his forearm. The morning light streams in through the window and catches on the coloured beads against his wrist, the beads that represent how many lives he's taken. Heidi very carefully does not count them. Finally he glances at them like he's annoyed they're still there. "I'm not doing this for you," he says, and finally it hits Heidi that it's not that he practiced all his words on stage, it's that he's trained himself out of his quarry accent. That's why he sounds like a stranger rehearsing his lines; he's dropped the 'ain't's and 'don't's that come from growing up in a town that plays fast and loose with grammar, evened out his vowels so he sounds neutral. He's built like the quarries but doesn't sound like it anymore, because Twos are meant to represent the whole district, not just where they were born and raised.

It's stupid, but that hits Heidi harder than everything else. She's already got to deal with them taking her son away; do they have to erase them from his very existence, too?

Brutus gives them another look, this one sharper, more clearly irritated, and it's a hint to leave him alone that don't need any words. He's keyed up, for all his deadpan expression, his fingers tight against his arms, and he keeps looking out the window, quick and furtive like he knows he should stare straight ahead but can't help himself. He's excited, Heidi realizes with a sickening drop in her stomach. He wants to go.

Marc lets out a shattered laugh. "That's it?" he demands. "That's all you have to say to the woman who brought you into this world? All those years we raised you, everything we taught you, and that's all you got to say to us. That you ain't doing this for us." Brutus doesn't move, doesn't even look at him, just curls his lip ever so slightly. "Well you just keep that in mind then," Marc says, his voice cracking like he's close to hysteria. "Because the last thing I need is a killer dedicating their murders to me!"

He turns and storms out, slamming the door behind him. Heidi stays where she is, and she's nauseated and horrified and all she wants to do is turn back time to the day she decided to put him in the Program and punch herself right in the face, but she can't. Ain't no turning back time. Nothing to be done but move forward.

Heidi wets her lips. "May the odds be ever in your favour," she says, keeping her voice steady, but she can't stop her accent from slipping into the thickest quarry brogue just out of the shock of hearing him speak without his. "We won't trouble you no more. And I know you'll do your best no matter what anybody says, but still." This is her baby, the last time she's ever going to see him again. Odds are, in three weeks she'll watch him die on television. "Mountains and earth to you."

It's the traditional District Two invocation of luck, and Heidi doesn't know why she said something so old-fashioned except maybe she hopes it will crack his armour and let a little of her son show through. It doesn't. Brutus tilts his chin up to acknowledge he heard her, and that's the best she's going to get. Heidi turns to go, pausing with her hand on the doorknob because this is it. There is nothing after this.

"Sorry about the loss of your stipend," Brutus says, and Heidi doesn't look back, doesn't turn, because that would ruin it. She just nods, same as him, and shuts the door behind her.

It was, she thinks, leaning her back against the door and closing her eyes, supposed to be comforting. When tributes die their families get paid five years more to compensate them for their sacrifice; when they win, the families get nothing. That cold, calculating statement, as upsetting as it is to hear her whole lifetime of raising and loving him reduced to an envelope of money in the mail, was as much of an overture -- a mark of respect, maybe, that she didn't snivel at him or call him a monster -- as Brutus is capable of making. They were his family, but now that's over; he's going to win, and when he does, he's not going to come knocking.

Marc isn't waiting for her when she makes it outside, and a look at the schedule tells her he's probably taken the first train back, the one she missed by about five minutes. Heidi isn't surprised. She takes a seat outside by the tracks and stays there long after the tribute's train pulls away. Brutus and his district partner stand tall, not waving, not looking, eyes hard with determination. It's another hour before the next one comes that's heading far enough south to take her home.

Heidi half expects Marc not to be there at all when she gets back two hours later -- or to see her own things packed into a bag and left on the front stoop -- but he's there, fixing the roof with the kind of determination that means if she interrupts his task he's going to fall to pieces. Heidi doesn't. She shuts herself in the bedroom instead, holds a pillow over her face to muffle the sound, and screams until there's nothing left.

They don't talk for the rest of the day, and the force of their not-talking is like a physical presence, like those rare summer days when the rain is stuck behind the mountains and the humidity climbs until everyone in the quarries move in slow motion. Heidi doesn't push it -- she has nothing to say to Marc anyhow, not really -- and so despite the heat of summer she just goes outside and chops wood. By the end of the afternoon the pile is half the size of the house, which'll do them nice once the weather starts to turn in fall.

They can't use the wood now, not when it's sweltering. By the time they can, twenty-three more kids will be dead, and odds are Brutus will be one of them. The thought hits Heidi on the downswing and throws her off, wrenching her shoulder as the axe strikes the wood against the grain. She hisses, pulls it free, and drives it into the block where they keep it. She's not thinking about that, she's not, and Heidi heads inside and grabs herself a handful of ice from the freezer and shoves it haphazardly into a towel, holding it against her aching muscle. The sting of the cold against her skin keeps her grounded, keeps the hysteria and panic at bay.

That night Marc goes to bed before the parade, and Heidi breaks the agreed-upon silence to ask him why. It's not as though they're killing anybody right now. "I ain't sitting through that cattle show," Marc says tightly. "You have fun."

Heidi grits her teeth and turns back to the television. They don't use it except for Games-time and days when there's a mandatory broadcast; it costs too much to get the signal sent out this far into the sticks, and what are they going to watch anyway? It's not like anyone in the quarries has time for My So-Called Capitol Life or those terrible movies made by B-list victors looking to scramble a bit of presence to get sponsor money. Heidi's never got the hang of watching television, and she knows down at the bar they order drinks and snacks and make the most of it, but she can't. Even choking down dinner felt like shoving her face full of dirt and expecting it to taste good.

It's the year before the Quarter Quell, and this year the theme of the chariots is excitement and anticipation, at least according to the commentators. Heidi ain't exactly a fashion expert or nothing -- all she knows is blue looks good on her, blue eyes and blonde hair and fair skin turned brown by the sun -- but she never manages to figure out the theme. It's always just kids dressed up in funny costumes what don't make sense, and the commentators can talk all they want about what it represents, she's pretty sure it's all just hooey. The Games are one thing, but the spectacle is something else.

She grimaces when the One chariot pulls out, its tributes dressed in fluff and glitter and not much else, and Heidi was sixteen when she met Marc and she weren't exactly innocent but it still don't sit right with her, the way they trot those girls around like they're meat. But she has no time for that thought today, not when the Two chariot is next, and there's her Brutus, tall and proud and terrifying.

They've dressed him in armour like some kind of warrior from the story books like they usually do, bare-armed with strips of leather tied around his biceps to bring out his muscles, and splashed war paint across his face. It looks like he dipped his hand in blood and ash and smeared it across his cheekbones, which is likely exactly what they were going for, and Heidi's stomach churns. This is not her baby, not the boy who looked so shocked the day he kicked another boy's face in for calling his daddy a dumb monkey and came home trailing blood from his shoe. It's not her baby except it is, because there's Marc's eyes blazing on the screen, true as life, and it's her stubborn jaw clenched to hell as he looks out at the crowd and dares them to love him.

There are others, of course, but Heidi barely pays any attention, straining to catch any glimpse of the Two chariot, either in the background of the other shots or in the corner as the tiny boxes for each district line up at the bottom of the screen. Brutus stares out at the crowd, ignoring the cameras in a way that isn't really ignoring at all, because he's not looking at them but always turned at the best angle; Heidi remembers starting to learn how to do that when she was eleven, years and years and years ago.

Brutus' expression is hard, the set of his jaw and tilt of his head almost a challenge. He's not begging the audience to cheer for him -- isn't cowering and cringing like the outer districts, and he doesn't wave like the Ones in their sparkles and feathers -- he just is, tough and unrelenting, and Heidi swallows back another wave of fear. He looks like a boy who could shove a spear through a twelve-year-old's chest and not blink. He looks like a boy who could twist another boy's head off his shoulders.

He doesn't look like her son. He looks like a victor.

It's good, Heidi reminds herself. She'd rather him come back covered in blood than not at all. She doesn't think about which way Marc would want it.

She doesn't remember a word of the President's speech, or any of the stuff that isn't about Brutus. Caesar Flickerman, already the most popular commentator in history despite just cutting his shiny white teeth on the interview stage a few years back, throws handfuls of adjective at the screen like he's hiding a full thesaurus in his hair. Heidi hears her son called 'rugged', 'strapping', 'burly', and every other word for muscles she's ever heard and some she hasn't, and it's only the first day. She's a little curious to see what they'll pull out by the end of it -- invent new words, maybe, or turn his name into one -- or if they'll just repeat.

Once the tributes disappear through the arched doors of the Games Complex, Heidi turns off the TV and stares at the grey screen. They'll be replaying footage from the tribute parade all night, shooting from different angles and cutting it together, and the Two-only feed will be nothing but Brutus and his district partner and interviews with former victors brought in to give their thoughts on this years' candidates' chances. She can't watch that.

Heidi has to draw a line somewhere. She will watch when Brutus is live onscreen, but if she lets herself get sucked into the rest of it, she'll never want to leave the house. It will be bad enough when the Games start and she'll have to work for most of it, but she doesn't need to see this now. She can't scroll through all the channels, hoping for a new frame, or she'll go crazy. It's not like she doesn't know what she'll see anyway; Brutus is playing District Two Incarnate, and that means nothing but scowls and crossed arms and seriousness until the countdown starts.

She doesn't go to bed that night, just punches a couch cushion until it's soft enough to rest her head on, and rolls over with her back to the room. It's bad enough to think about Brutus, all alone in that giant, luxurious Capitol suite, wondering if he's thinking about home -- he's not, she knows he's not, but she's his mother and that does things to a person -- without doing so while staring at Marc's back.

It's a rough couple of days after that. Heidi and Marc wake up and get ready in silence, and Marc leaves early so he can catch breakfast at the diner while Heidi eats at home so they don't walk together. They choose opposite sides of the mine to work at, and Marc stops at the bar on the way home after their shift is done, not coming back until Heidi is asleep. They alternate who gets the bed and who gets the couch without talking about it, an unspoken common courtesy in the middle of their silent battle.

They don't talk to each other at all until the night before the interviews. The Two-only channel hosts a repeat of the important segments for those just coming back from the quarries, and Heidi turns it on to see that the Gamemakers have given Brutus a score of ten. It's a good, solid score, high for a Career but not a target like an eleven or twelve would be, and Heidi lets out a sigh of relief. The number spins around on the screen next to Brutus' serious face, and that's when the front door opens and Marc shuffles in, kicking off his boots and dropping his gear.

In less than forty-eight hours, Brutus will be in the Arena. Heidi tries to picture watching that with Marc in stony silence on the other side of the house, and something inside her snaps. She turns off the television and marches through the house to confront him.

"I'm goin' to bed," Marc spits out gruffly, the way he always does if Heidi tries to break the stalemate.

"Wait." Heidi catches his arm, and his muscles tense beneath her fingers. They've never fought this long about anything in their entire lives, and they've known each other since they were younger than Brutus is now.

He stares her down, jaw clenched with every bit of anger and stubbornness in his body, and the fight sings in the line of his muscles and the angle of his stance. He's jumpy and pissed and ready to break, and if Heidi keeps at him that'll be it. Marc doesn't like shouting and he doesn't like arguing but he will if he has to, and it's close. He's got one foot in the water and all Heidi needs to do is push.

Heidi doesn't cry much. It was Marc who cried at their wedding, Marc who burst into tears the first time he held their baby boy in his arms and Brutus curled his fingers around his daddy's thumb. Heidi's never been a crier, her old man ran off when she was a kid and she took care of her momma and her sisters like he'd never been there at all, and it always seemed a little silly to wail after that.

But now she looks at her husband, the man she fell in love with so fast it shocked her, the father of her son, and the longer she stares the more she sees the pain blitzing off him like a downed cable in the rain, and she just can't. Heidi sucks in a breath. "If you want me to go I'll go," she says, and that ain't what she meant to say but once it's out she knows she means it.

Whatever Marc expected her to say, this obviously wasn't it either. His jaw falls open. "What?"

"You heard me." It's been so long that Heidi forgot that crying hurts, that it stings the eyes and builds up pressure in the head and at the back of the throat. It's miserable, crying is; no wonder she doesn't do it. "It's my fault he's out there. I'm the one who suggested we put him in the Program. I'm the one who said to trust them and let him stay. I'm the reason we don't have our son anymore. I killed him. All you ever done was try to get him back."

Marc shakes his head, gawking at her, and his throat works but he doesn't say anything, just wets his lips like he's trying but he can't.

"If I leave it'll be you they feel sorry for," Heidi says, and the boulder's rolling now and there's no stopping it. "You'll be the one who's wife run out on him after he lost his kid to the Games. Nobody'll think to blame you, everybody knows you treat me right and never lay a hand to me. They'll know you didn't give me a reason to leave, it'll all be my fault. That's the way it should be."

"Heidi --" Marc says, but he stops, helpless.

"You can tell them anything you want," Heidi says, and it's getting harder to talk now with her throat all jammed up with tears. It's their home, the first thing Heidi ever really owned that was hers, and there are more memories crammed into the little house than could ever fit in a person's mind, but something's gotta give. "Tell 'em I run off with another man, tell 'em I went fame-crazy on account of Brutus, I don't care. They'll say my old man was a runner so it ain't that surprising his girl was too. Just tell me and I'll go as soon as you want me to."

"Is that what you think I want?" Marc bursts out finally, his throat scratched and raw. "I lose my son, you think I wanna lose my wife, too? You've been my girl more than half our lives, you know that! Why would you think I want you to go?"

"Well I don't know what you want!" Heidi shouts, wiping at her eyes with the back of her hand. "Nobody'd blame you. No couple ever survives having a tribute in the Games, they told us that when we signed him up." It's true -- regardless of whether a tribute lives and becomes a victor or gets shipped home in a box, the parents always, always split up somewhere along the way. Too much guilt, too much confusion, too much loss; too much blaming and finger-pointing and ugliness to weather. It's like the pain of a miscarriage, except instead of mourning a child they never knew, they get thirteen years of memories to slap them in the face on top of it.

"Games damn it!" Marc says, and he's shaking and wide-eyed and pale underneath the layer of dust and dirt and sweat. "I don't care what they told us about statistics."

"Then why can't you look at me?" Heidi asks, shoving him in the chest so he staggers back until he hits the edge of the table. "You're never going to forgive me whether he wins or dies. I'm holding on by my fingernails already. I can't do this at all if I have to do it with you avoiding me for the rest of our lives. I'd rather just call it now. Cut the leg off before it poisons the rest of the body."

Now he's crying, too. Once Marc was a handsome kid with a camera and a fiddle who stole Heidi's heart and breath in the same moment and not the confused, coiled, desperate man in front of her, and it's Heidi's fault they're like this, lashing and furious and alone, not sitting on the couch as a family with their son safe between them.

"No," Marc says. "No. I can't. Not you too, babygirl. Please no." He sucks in a shuddering breath. "I can't watch him on that TV. I can't look at him and keep trying to find the little boy who used to play with rocks in the backyard. I'm sorry, Heidi, I just can't. Brutus is dead and I'm not gonna watch it, I won't, but I can't lose you too."

Every breath that makes it down her throat feels like she's sucking on nettles, and somewhere out there Brutus and his mentor will be going over his scores and his private session, prepping for his interview tomorrow, and that just makes everything worse. "I don't want to lose you either," Heidi says, and they're in the room where Brutus used to run to greet his daddy after he got home from work, all the way until he was twelve years old and it's too much, too much. "But I can't stay if you ain't gonna be here. And that means all of you, not just your body, you understand me?"

Marc grabs her, crushes her to him and clings to her so hard he'd break her if she were an itty-bitty thing but she ain't, Brutus gets his strength just as much from her as he does Marc. "I'm sorry," he says into her shoulder, squeezing her tight. "I'm so sorry, sweetheart."

They don't say anything for a long time after that, they just hold on tight like they're the only solid thing in the middle of a valley washout. Finally Marc pulls back, and he holds Heidi's face in his massive hands and kisses her, their mouths slimy with tears and snot, but she doesn't care. "You know I can't watch," Marc says, only this time it's a plea, not a challenge.

"I know." Heidi grips him by the back of the neck. "You know I can't not."

His shoulders slump, but then he nods. "Yeah, I know." Marc steps back far enough to drag a hand down his face. "Come to bed?" he asks. Heidi nods.

They don't talk there, either, just lie there in each other's arms until the siren for the morning shift wails and tears them awake.

Heidi watches the interview alone, late at night during the rerun hour, curled up in her armchair with her knees pulled up to her chest. They've dressed Brutus in a dark grey suit with blood red accents, and the first thing Caesar does is remark that the stage feels awfully hot under the lights and wouldn't Brutus like to take off his jacket. He does, showing off arms that strain against the silk shirt they've put him in. He rolls up the sleeves, baring forearms the size of Heidi's head; the Capitol audience cheers and swoons like they've never seen muscles before.

The young man who gives the interview isn't the boy Heidi remembers, and she stares at him, studies the hard slant of his eyes, the wicked curve of his mouth when he leans back in his chair, arms crossed, and gives the audience an arrogant stare. It's all the worst parts of Brutus when he was a child, the days he got cocky and angry and full of himself -- the days when Marc took him out back and made him lift rocks until his arms trembled and he remembered how to be humble -- and none of the sweetness.

But that's good, Heidi reminds herself, as Brutus bares his teeth in a sharp, wolf's grin and cracks a joke so dark and deadpan that it takes the audience half a minute to realize it just happened. The Brutus she remembers would never be able to win, and she wants him home. She wants him alive. It's good he's changed, good he's gone hard and terrifying, because that's how he's going to survive.

If she'd stayed it would've done the same thing to her. It happens to all of them. It's not that Brutus is a monster. It's not.

"So do you have any tips for your fellow tributes?" Caesar asks, leaning forward, and Heidi always wonders who writes these questions because some of them seem absolutely idiotic. "You know, in the name of sportsmanship and all that."

Heidi can just imagine what Marc would say to that. Brutus tilts his head like he's considering the question, like it's worth his time instead of being offensive and antithetical to the very reason he's up there. Finally Brutus nods. "I guess I'm not that fast," he says in that strange voice, cultivated and completely lacking his home accent. "If you're quick and you run, you could probably catch me." He turns to the audience and gives them that smile again, the one that makes Heidi think of blood in the water. She shivers. "I'm just not sure you'd like what you found if you did."

Caesar chuckles, the audience guffaws, and the other tributes pale as the cameras swing around to gauge their reactions. Heidi closes her eyes and presses her knuckle between her eyebrows.

She doesn't sleep that night, doesn't even try because there's no point. Instead Heidi heads in to the bedroom and climbs out the window, lies down on the roof on her back and looks up at the stars. The sky down here in the quarries is breathtaking, black as coal with the scattering of stars across its surface like diamond dust, and Heidi looks up at it and wonders if Brutus is doing the same thing. Not that he'll see anything natural; the Capitol is the city that never sleeps, and like as not the whole sky will be a wash of orange from all those lights. It's one of the reasons Heidi's never felt right in cities, whenever she makes it down to one; it just doesn't feel like proper nighttime unless she can stare up at the constellations.

No stars in the Arena either, not with the forcefield covering everything. Heidi wonders if Brutus got to see the sky at all before he left for the Capitol, if his room in the Centre had windows and if he bothered to look out and memorize the home sky for what might be the last time. Maybe he didn't; maybe the Centre rooms have no windows, Heidi never made it far enough in the Program herself to see the dorms. Maybe the last time Brutus saw the stars he was dumped in the middle of the woods for his mock Arena exam. Maybe he hasn't seen them since he left home five years ago.

No moon tonight. Heidi lies on the roof in the darkness and lets the memories wash over her. Holding Brutus for the first time, red-faced and squalling. The first time he smiled. The day he learned to walk, frowning with a face as serious as the Reaping, testing his balance against a table leg until he got his feet under him. The first time he came home from school with another kid's blood on his fists. The time Heidi put on some music and pulled him in for a dance, him standing on her feet and holding onto her waist.

She cries for the second time that week and doesn't bother to try to hold it back, because tomorrow it's all over. One way or another -- whether Brutus beats the odds and makes it to the end through the slaughter of children, whether another does the same to him -- her little man is not coming home. Heidi has sworn to love whatever comes out regardless, but she won't have the right to see him, to hold him, to tell him she'd be his mother if he wanted her. Her three minutes in the Justice Building is all she got and all she'll ever get.

Heidi doesn't know when Marc climbs through the window of their bedroom and joins her, she's crying too hard to hear the slide of the sash, the scrape of his hands and knees against the shingles. But one minute she's choking on her tears alone, the next Marc is there beside her, pulling her into his arms and holding her with her head against his chest. "I'm sorry, babygirl," he says into her hair, and he could be apologizing for any one of a thousand things and Heidi doesn't ask which one. "I'm so sorry."

Heidi traded two shifts for the first day of the Games off. Marc goes to work, and before he leaves Heidi grabs him, tugs him close and clings to him for several long, shuddering breaths. But he has to go and so she lets him, and it's the second week in July and the house is sticky from the heat but Heidi grabs a blanket to wrap around herself anyway as she settles herself down in her armchair and turns the TV on to the Two-centric Games channel.

The preliminary coverage feels like it takes forever -- they recap the standings as the tributes are flown to the Arena, the scores and the training and the odds, and Heidi's heart sticks in her throat when she sees Brutus' pre-Arena odds standing at 3-1, the best any tribute could ever hope for -- but finally it's over. The cameras pull back -- the music swells -- and as the Panem anthem plays, Heidi gets her first look at the Arena. The breath knocks straight out of her chest.

It's a wasteland. No buildings, no forests, no cover -- nothing but rocks and long stretches of ground, already baking in the mid-morning sun. No vegetation, not even any water; they'll have to woo the sponsors if they want to survive this one. The little ones from the urban districts with no money and no wilderness skills have no chance. Heidi grips the arm of her chair until her fingers ache. It's not the best Arena she's ever seen, but for a Two -- for Brutus, who learned the importance of working and living hard early on, even before the Centre -- it could be worse.

The platforms rise -- the screen splits, showing the official Capitol feed on one side and the Twos on the other -- and Brutus narrows his eyes against the glare. Despite the sun overhead all the tributes are in jackets, which means that they can't count on the weather staying warm just because it's hot right now. Likely as not they'll have cold nights later, like Heidi's heard it gets out in the desert. Brutus takes in the area around the Cornucopia with a few quick glances -- marks which tributes are closest and opposite to him -- but then he shuts it all out, staring at the giant metal horn in the centre of the platforms like it's the only thing in the whole world.

Heidi can't breathe -- she has to punch herself in the chest just below her collarbone to get herself to suck in a startled gasp -- and when the counter ticks down to zero she nearly vomits. Brutus tears himself from the platform, and he might have made that joke last night about not being fast but it's not true to watch him. He swerves, snatches up the sword nearest to him, and runs past the fourteen-year-old tribute from District Five. Without even looking at her he swings his weapon in a wide arc; it catches her across the throat, and she falls in a spray of blood.

Brutus doesn't even break his stride, just keeps running.

Heidi has watched the Hunger Games since she was too little to understand why all the kids kept screaming and why everything was always red, and she thought she'd be prepared. She'd have to stop and do the math before she could figure out how many children she's seen die, and after a while they stop being so hard to watch -- it's like hitting her thumb a second time after she's already whacked it with a hammer, the pain from the first drowns out the second. She thought that would make it easier to watch Brutus kill.

It doesn't. Really, really doesn't. Heidi screams and claps her hands over her mouth to muffle the sound because she can't stop. Brutus' expression is fierce and determined but it's also detached; it's the Cornucopia with its pile of weapons and supplies that he's focused on, not the tributes who are in his way. He cuts his way through three more before he makes it to the horn, and there he finally stops and lets the others handle it, sifting through the haul with a marked disinterest toward the carnage going on behind him.

They made him this way, Heidi reminds herself. He has blood splattered across his shirt and all the way up his throat. This isn't him. They made him.

Brutus picks up a spear, hefts its weight experimentally in one hand, then turns in a casual, deceptively lazy motion and hurls it through the air. It narrowly misses the boy from One -- "Hey!" he shouts back at Brutus, giving him a rude gesture -- and flies straight into the chest of the girl the One boy was about to stab.

"That was mine, asshole," the One yells across the field, sauntering over. Sweat dots his forehead already.

"Then don't take so damn long," Brutus calls back, nonchalant. "What are you, a damn cat? Don't play, just do it."

The One snorts, and he takes his time with the next one on purpose, drawing a long, slow line across the boy's throat and nudging him with his foot as he gurgles on the ground. "Listen, monkey, you don't tell me how to play my game and I won't harp on you about yours, you got that?"

Brutus rolls his eyes. "Monkeys have tails, dipshit, I think you mean ape. And this ape's got five to your three, so I'd quit yapping if I were you." He bares his teeth in an unfriendly smile. "Just some free advice for you."

"Oh, shut up," One mutters, and stalks off in the direction of a rack full of daggers.

Not real. Heidi presses both hands to the sides of her face. Not real not real not real.

The girl from Two and the boy from Four pick up a pair of swords and circle the Cornucopia site, checking the downed bodies for any lingering survivors, while the boy from One and girl from Four pick over the supplies. "Not a lot of food in here," calls the Four girl, confirming Heidi's suspicions. They're going to be relying on favours from early on.

Heidi has never wished for more than her lot, not since she was a kid and had to send her sisters to school in shoes made from old scraps, but now she would give everything for the ability to send Brutus whatever gifts he needs.

The One girl comes up behind Brutus and trails one finger across the backs of his shoulders. "So," she says, her voice syrup-sweet. "You were pretty hot back there."

"Yeah?" Brutus says, noncommittal, but he does raise his eyebrows at her while he rummages through a pack.

"Oh yeah. Though not as hot as it is out here, this is crazy." She unzips her jacket and pulls it over her head in a lithe motion; Brutus' eyes flick to her just enough to let the cameras know he sees what she's doing and isn't gay like Heidi's pretty sure the Four boy is, but then he's back to work, professional and collected. "Listen, we'll have some time, why don't we have a little fun?" she asks. There's blood drying on her neck, matting her hair below her chin.

Brutus glances up for real, raking his gaze over her, and his eyes spark, dark and intense in ways that have nothing to do with the blood and carnage except maybe they do. He reaches over, peels the end of her ponytail away from her throat, and brushes her hair back over her shoulder. "Maybe later," he says, giving her a shark's grin, but then the cannons start to fire and they stop.

Thirteen cannons; just over half the tributes gone, leaving a fair number to starve or burn or freeze or whatever the Arena wants them to do while the Careers are out looking. Heidi swallows as Brutus picks up his spear. "Right, we should clear a space, let them pick up the bodies and hose down the rocks," Brutus calls out to the others. "Let's fan out, see if any stragglers are close by, then double back and pack it in for the afternoon. Let the others get tired of running."

The One boy narrows his eyes. "Yeah? And who put you in charge?"

Brutus doesn't even bother arguing, just tosses his spear and catches it in one hand and lets one eyebrow creep up his forehead, and finally, just like before, the One by snorts and turns away. Just like that, the Pack has its leader. Heidi isn't surprised; it was always going to be Brutus. He's been a leader since he was five, commanding the other kids at school into armies and factions when they played Dark Days at recess.

Her son, the king of the killers. The cameras cut away to show what the surviving tributes are doing, and Heidi needs a drink. Good thing the bars open early during Games-time; the only trick will be finding one that isn't laying odds and taking bets from the patrons. Heidi knows it's no different from any other year just because it's her boy in there, but at the same time, she's not sure she could listen to that without breaking someone's jaw. She finds one of the smaller dives where she used to grab some work as a kid -- technically too young to be around alcohol but they hadn't asked and that means she favours them now -- and curls up in the back booth with a beer until it's time for Marc to come home.

He doesn't ask. Heidi doesn't tell him.

The Games play out to the usual standard for a good long stretch; Brutus stays alive, and he and the Pack sit and enjoy their dominance of the Arena while the others hide and starve and fall into the Careers' path once every couple of days. Just like Heidi feared, the Arena itself can't make up its mind, and one day they go from burning sun to blizzard in the space of a few hours. The Pack splits into pairs, curled up together in insulated sleeping bags -- the Fours stick together, and the Ones and Twos split and pair off with the opposite sex of the other district -- and they spend the rest of the evening huddled around a fire.

"So," says the One girl. They've all stripped out of their jumpsuits and sit pressed together in their underwear as per survival training protocol, nothing to do with the cameras oh no, and she's curled up against Brutus' chest with his arm around her shoulders. "We're going to be here anyway..."

Brutus gives her a long look-over, at least the parts of her he can see over the sleeping bag; the frost rimming her eyelashes makes her look almost angelic. Not for the first time, Heidi can't believe what good actors they are. "Why, you got something in mind?"

"Hey!" says the One boy, struggling in his bag across the fire. "Don't you fucking touch her!"

"I'm not yours to play with, sweetie," the One girl shoots back, and it's light and teasing but with a hint of something ugly underneath that Heidi can't parse and is pretty sure she doesn't want to. The girl looks at Brutus, and there's a moment of ungraceful shuffling while they shift positions without getting out of their shelter before she ends up in his lap, arms around his neck. "I might have a couple ideas. You want to compare notes?"

"Well, you know apes," Brutus drawls, twisting his fingers in her frozen hair and yanking her head back. "We're not that good at reading and writing. I'm more of a hands on kinda guy." She winks at him, and Brutus pulls her down for a hard kiss, biting her lip and drawing blood, bright red against her blue-tinged lips.

It hits Heidi that with Brutus training seriously since thirteen -- and rumours have it that the male and female candidates are forbidden from seeing each other to avoid situations where lovers might have to go into the Arena together -- this might actually be his first kiss. Heidi's first was not all that magical -- she was fourteen, he was thirteen, it was behind the school building and they both got busted a second later -- but it also wasn't on camera in front of thousands of viewers, the blood of seven dead kids between them under their fingernails.

The cameras stay on them, likely because the sight of two killers making out is the best television the Arena has going, especially with the One boy clearly fuming and the Two girl rolling her eyes so hard it's likely giving her a headache. Heidi watches because she can't look away, because like it or not this is still Brutus and she still owes it to him to sit through it. When Brutus was little she used to joke that he'd better bring home the first girl he kissed, because he was always so serious and would probably end up marrying her no matter how young they were, and Brutus first wrinkled his nose but then looked thoughtful.

The kissing heats up -- the girl presses herself closer against Brutus, who wraps his arms around her and tugs her flush against him -- and Heidi's terrified they're going to go through with it and have sex right there. It almost bothers her more than the killing, because the Capitol is the one forcing him to murder those kids, but they didn't tell him to get off with another killer in front of everyone, but they don't. The Fours have fallen asleep together after making faces and pulling the top of their bag over their heads, and the One boy is fuming when the Two girl pulls a knife out of nowhere and throws it at the others.

The knife slices through the sleeping bag and falls to the frozen ground with a thud. Brutus and the One girl pull back, and his district partner gives them both an unimpressed look. "That's enough, all right?" she says. "Do what you want, but food's kinda at a premium here, and I don't want to lose my lunch after I worked so hard to get it."

"Yeah, yeah," Brutus says, and he kisses the One girl once more, his hand wrapped around her throat, but they stop and settle down to sleep instead.

"Touch me and I rip your fucking hand off," warns the Two as she and the One do the same.

"I don't need to touch a dyke like you," he snaps back. "I'm not desperate."

Brutus finds the closest camera and rolls his eyes at it before closing them.

A week later an earthquake takes out nearly half the remaining tributes, and just like that, they're pushed right past the Final Eight down to the Final Six. The alliance splits -- literally -- when a fissure tears itself through the ground, and Brutus and the girl from Four stare at each other across the giant crack in the rock before turning and running in opposite directions.

Both the Ones and Brutus' district partner die in the quake. It's him, both Fours, the boy from Ten, and two outsiders Heidi can't remember that's left. Heidi has to work that day and misses the live feed, but Benny stops her on the way back home and yanks her into the bar to watch the recap footage. She sits on a stool, the other denizens of the bar clustered around her and pressing cold drinks into her hands, and they keep touching her arms and shoulders like they can send strength directly to her through their hands. Heidi isn't going to tell them to stop.

Brutus is shaken but unhurt, except he's lost all his supplies -- including all the food and water the Pack collected from the sponsors over the past few days. The sun beats down hot and unforgiving, the air shimmering above the ground, and Brutus grunts and wipes at his eyes with his forearm. "Any chance of some water?" Brutus asks the sky, but it doesn't answer him. "Right," he mutters, and marches off.

Heidi sits up straight like somebody done stuck her with a live wire. "I've gotta do an interview," she says.

Kev gives her a look. "Ain't no Two ever had interviews with parents," he says, and he doesn't have to say why because they all know it. Twos respect the hell out of every tribute who goes into the Arena whether they come back a victor or not, but it's one thing to say that about someone else's kid and another to stare your own right in the face.

Heidi grits her teeth until her jaw aches. "Ain't no Two ever been my baby," she says, raising her chin.

Kev runs his tongue over his teeth, frowning, but he doesn't look mad, just thinking. "My girl works with a girl whose brother's cousin works at the Centre," he says. "I'll see if I can't get someone to make a call, maybe someone'll come down."

Heidi lets out a breath. "No need," she says. "I'm takin' the first train in tomorrow, and if they don't let me in I'll climb through the windows or set the whole place on fire, as long as someone will take my shift."

"I've got tomorrow off," says Briar, and Heidi's chest squeezes with relief. "Don't even need to trade me for it, I'll do it for you. That's your boy in there."

If this keeps up, Heidi's gonna have to turn in her tough card, because her eyes sting. She takes a long pull of her beer to cover it. "Appreciate it," she says, and Briar gives her a tight smile.

"Anything that could bring one of ours home," Briar says, and they all clap Heidi on the back.

The next morning, Heidi puts on her blue Reaping dress, kisses Marc goodbye as he leaves for his shift -- his jaw tight, hands clenched into fists at his sides, he ain't happy but she expected that and he doesn't try to stop her, so there's that -- and catches the first train into the main city. From then on its another train to the District Two Athletic and Personal Growth Centre, and the big white building that Heidi hasn't set foot in since the day she and Marc dropped Brutus off for the first time when he entered the Program.

It takes a fair bit of convincing, but finally, early that afternoon, Heidi sits at a wide oak table, granted an interview with a Capitol reporter whose name, apparently, is Truffles, and whose hair looks like it's made of spun sugar. There's no guarantee her segment will air, they tell her; they'll have to run it through their own filter, have the trainers and mentors analyze it to make sure it will help him, and from then on the Capitol censors will have a look at it, but it's better than nothing.

"Don't worry about the dress, dear," the reporter says to Heidi, who hadn't until that moment -- it's clean, and mended, and she only ever wears it once a year so it's not even all that worn -- and waves a hand. "It'll look folksy. That's good, nice and down to earth."

"Thank you kindly," Heidi says neutrally, because she ain't gonna let herself get offended at something like that this early in the game. Right now this woman could insist Heidi admit she was raised by wolves and she'll do it, if it'll help bring Brutus home.

"Well, let's get started, shall we?" Truffles says. "So, you're Brutus' mother." Heidi nods. "I must say, you look awfully young to have a son who's the usual age for a Volunteer, but he looks just like you so I suppose it must be true. Must be all that good, fresh District Two air!"

"Hard work and clean living," Heidi says, no idea how she's supposed to answer that. "But I'll thank you for the compliment all the same."

Truffles smiles and bobs her head. "So why don't you tell us something about Brutus as a boy? I'm sure we're all dying to know what he was like when he was younger. Big Brutus, you know, one of the highest weight classes in history! What was he like when he was a Little Brutus?" She giggles at her own joke.

"Weren't never a little Brutus," Heidi says, and she meant to try to keep her accent in check but it slipped out. "I mean, sure, he was smaller like anybody, but he wasn't little, not really. He was always proud and strong. Always respected his elders, never gave sass to his betters, always tried to do what's right by his family and his district." The words taste like dust in her mouth but she keeps going, hoping that if Marc sees it he'll forgive her. Her hands itch like the blood of the kids Brutus killed is on her fingers. "Ain't a surprise to anybody that he's all grown up and a little taller, that's all."

"What's it like, then, seeing him up on that stage? Or now, doing so well in the Arena?"

This time Heidi doesn't have to act so much. She lets her expression go hard so they can all see exactly where Brutus gets it. "I'm proud as hell," she bursts out, raising her chin. "Even as a boy he did what he needed to do, always wanted to work hard and pay his dues. Now he's doing right by his country. If he wins, the whole district will thank him, but he don't need to win for me to be proud of him. I was proud of him before he ever picked up a sword, and I'm proud of him now."

"So does this mean we can expect a big reunion if he wins?" Truffle asks, her eyes wide.

That is one of the questions the Centre briefed her on, and Heidi is ready. "Well that ain't up to me," she says. "Brutus ain't just my son no more, he stood up on that stage and he dedicated his life in service to the Capitol and that means he belongs to everybody now, the district, the country, the Capitol, all of us. It's by his strength and the Capitol's mercy he makes it out, if he does, and that makes him an adult and he can make his own decisions." She swallows, holds back the urge to tell the cameras that if he'd have her she would be there in a second, because she knows he wouldn't and it won't help him to make him look weak. "Even if I never see him again, him walking out would be more than I could ever ask for."

"Still, it must be difficult, seeing your son in the Arena," Truffles says with mock sympathy, and for some reason this gets Heidi's skirts in a knot more than anything else because this woman doesn't care. She'll move on to the next interview target and forget all about Brutus as soon as she's back on the train. "So much excitement, isn't it frightening?"

Heidi narrows her eyes. "Brutus is fighting to do his district proud and come home," she says. "I'd do the same for him if I could, but I can't, and that means all I can do is watch. A little blood don't scare me. I want everyone to know that he's got the whole town at his back. We're all rooting for him. Whatever he's gotta do to come home, we'll be waiting to welcome him."

"One last question and then we'll let you go," Truffles says, leaning her chin on one manicured hand. "Has anyone ever told you Brutus looks a lot like you?"

"Well, his daddy and I ain't nothing special," Heidi says carefully, because she was warned about this too. "We look like a lot of folks in Two, which I guess means Brutus looks like the district more than anything else. But I'll tell you one thing, those eyes, those are his father's, but that mouth of his, that's all mine."

Truffles laughs, delighted, and claps her hands together.

"I'm impressed," says the head trainer to Heidi after Truffles leaves, taking her hair and her crew of cameras and lights with her. "We might actually be able to use that."

"I hope so," Heidi says, though a piece of her aches at the thought of just what she'll be forgiving -- what she already has forgiven, what Marc hasn't and maybe never will -- if Brutus does make it back home -- but the time to lay blame has long passed. "If they keep it, when can we look for it?"

"If it goes through all the proper channels, you can look for it tomorrow, after the Parade of the Fallen," he tells her. "We'll keep in touch in case they need you for any followup information."

Assuming Brutus is alive tomorrow for the footage to be relevant. If the earthquake has proven anything it's that anything can happen, and boys as big as Brutus have fallen before. A couple years back, the Two boy -- big and muscled and brutal as anything -- died because one of the smaller tributes hid in the rocks and got him in the throat with a poison dart. There are five other tributes still out there, including two Careers and one boy almost as big as Brutus with a lifetime of herding and slaughtering cows behind him.

Heidi is not going to think about that. She can't, not if she's going to stay sane. He will be alive tomorrow, he has to be, and he will make it out. End of story. "Thank you," Heidi says, and leaves it at that.

Marc still has a few more hours in the quarries by the time Heidi gets home, and she should head out and pick up the last of her shift for the extra money, but as she passes the television on her way to change out of her dress, the dead grey screen pulls her back. She shouldn't -- she has to -- and so instead of heading to work she sits down and turns on the TV, already set to the Two-exclusive channel, the death count in the corner and the surviving tributes' names and positions scrolling across the bottom of the screen.

It's been a day since the earthquake, and Heidi doesn't remember if Brutus had any water on him when it hit. He's still stalking instead of staggering, though his stance isn't quite so perfect and his steps not as crisp; he's torn his sleeves and tied the loose fabric around his head to keep the sweat out of his eyes. The stats on the side of the screen indicate his hydration level is sub-optimal but not life-threatening, and Heidi isn't worried yet. Any Two from the quarries has dealt with dehydration before, since they can't exactly stop for water breaks every hour; Brutus moved to the Centre before he ever got that experience, but even so, it's in his blood.

Still. Another day without water and it will be a problem; hopefully the sponsors will decide that watching tributes pass out and die half-baked on the ground isn't much more interesting than seeing them freeze. Heidi's mouth turns sour.

Around an hour later, Brutus catches up with one of the remaining outliers -- a fifteen-year-old girl from Nine, used to working in extreme weather and not getting enough to eat, if nothing else -- as she kneels by a trickle of water in the rocks. Heidi grips the arm of her chair, and she scours Brutus' face for any flicker of hesitation, any sign that might indicate he doesn't want to do it, but there's nothing. The girl gasps and scrambles back on all fours; Brutus, grim-faced and silent, marches on her, picks her up, and twists her head until her neck snaps.

Heidi thought at the beginning that it would get easier to watch, that after the initial bloodbath she'd hit that threshold and not be able to feel anymore, but it doesn't. She hit that point with the Games themselves years ago, but when not even a muscle twitches in Brutus' face to betray any indecision, all Heidi can hear are Marc's words that this is not their son. Brutus drops the body in a crumpled heap and collapses to his knees as the cannon fires, digging his hands into the crack in the rock and sucking mud off his fingers. He doesn't even spit out the grit, unwilling to waste the moisture in his saliva.

Brutus glances up at the sky, squinting against the sun, rubbing his forefinger against his thumb as the mud dries and crumbles away. The sweat on his skin is nothing but a thin sheen; soon he'll stop producing it altogether as his body goes into lockdown. He doesn't beg the sponsors for supplies -- the Careers are allowed to ask in the early stages, when it's all arrogance and playing around, but not when it's later and they're actually desperate -- but it's almost as good as, from someone with his discipline. Heidi lets out a breath and all but forgets about the dead girl at his feet.

Please, Heidi thinks. Please someone have mercy.

A few moments later comes the distinctive chirp of a parachute, but even before the cameras zoom in on the shape, Heidi knows it's too big to be water. Brutus does, too, his expression closing off even more than it already was, and he picks up the sword and holds it up, letting the sunlight glint off the blade. "Right," he says, voice tight, and he licks his dried lips. "Guess I'll keep hunting then."

He keeps the sword in his hand and heads out across the wasteland, leaving the cracked mud and the girl's broken body behind him.

"How'd it go?" Marc asks when he gets home. He pokes at his food, eating because he has to or he'll never keep his strength up tomorrow, and they can't afford to take any more time off. Heidi tries, but every time she puts anything in her mouth she thinks of that girl lying dead on the ground, how Brutus didn't even look at her, and she's trying, she's trying so hard to let it go but this time it just keeps crawling back. "Which way did you spin it, all the times he helped you with the dishes, or the time he snapped that kid's spine when he was twelve?"

"Marc." Heidi sets down her fork, readying a lecture, but she can't do that either. She drops her head into her hands instead, digging the heels of her hand into her eyes. "Please."

He sighs, then there's the clink of fork against plate and the scrape as he pushes his chair back. "I'm sorry," Marc says, and he stands behind her, rests his hands on her shoulders, uncertain but still there, and at this point that's all Heidi can ask of him. "That wasn't -- I'm sorry."

"I love him," Heidi says. She loves her boy with the big blue eyes and the big strong hands and the blood under his fingernails and the deaths on his shoulders. She does. She doesn't think about who she's trying to convince.

"I know," Marc says again, something twisted in his voice, which comes out hoarse. "I know, sweetheart, I know."

Heidi's not crying, not again. She's cried more during these Games than she remembers crying her entire life; sooner or later a person has to run out of tears, don't they? Marc clucks his tongue. "Okay, babygirl," he says, and Heidi is the same size as him but he pulls her chair back and lifts her into his arms anyway. Heidi's big but she ain't rocks, and he hasn't done this since Brutus was little but she doesn't fight him. She's tired of fighting. She lets him carry her to their room and get her out of her dress and work her muscles over with his hands -- so much like Brutus' hands, maybe Brutus would've learned to give massages like this if he hadn't learned to kill, maybe if he wins he'll still have that chance.

Heidi falls asleep with Marc's hands running over her shoulders. She dreams that Brutus, seven years old and wide-eyed, brings her a heart in his hands. "Look, Mama," he says, the blood running down his wrists and pooling on the floor. "This is my contribution. I contributed, just like you wanted!"

She jolts awake in the darkness -- the sky still cobalt, the birds silent -- and chokes down the sounds so she doesn't wake Marc, lying sprawled next to her with his arm across his eyes. Heidi slips out of bed, pads into the other room and turns on the TV, hitting the 'mute' button before it wakes. The early-morning footage is mostly repeats, but the constant count shows all the tributes since Brutus' last kill are still alive. It's pouring down rain now, and Brutus has wedged himself into a small cave in the rocks, sleeping uneasily with his hand wrapped around his sword. His skin is flushed, fevered, and Heidi closes her eyes and offers up a prayer of apology for doubting him earlier . He doesn't look any less terrifying or murderous in his sleep -- even his resting facial expression now is a dark scowl -- but he used to curl like that on the couch when waiting for Marc to get home from the night shift and Heidi can't chase the thought away.

It should probably bother Heidi that she's able to lock away that girl's death so fast, but Brutus' lashes flutter against his cheekbones and apparently that's all it takes. She wonders if being a mother counts as a kind of insanity. There's no answer to that question, though, and Heidi turns off the television, goes back to bed, and slides in under Marc's arm for the last couple of hours until the siren.

Two more children are dead by the time Heidi makes it out of the quarries and to the bar to catch the recap broadcast; one of the remaining outlying tributes finally finished starving to death, trapped beneath a bluff by a fallen rock, and the boy from Ten came across the girl from Four while she was sleeping and bashed her brains in with a rock. That means two more tributes are out of the way, two more kids that Brutus doesn't have to kill himself on his way home. It's just the boys now, Two and Four and Ten, and Heidi can't help being relieved, no matter how screwed up it is, that Brutus won't have to kill any more girls.

It doesn't make a difference except it does, because to Marc it's far worse when a man murders a woman than the other way around. If Marc's ever going to look past the veneer of blood and try to forgive his son for what he's done, it will be easier if the final kills are tributes the same size and sex as Brutus. If the last image of the 49^th Hunger Games isn't Brutus pulling a sword out of a young girl's chest.

Two tributes down, and they air Heidi's interview that night. Marc doesn't want to watch it and so she heads into town instead, so he can go to bed without hearing the sounds playing from the other room. She knows even before she makes it inside that the interview played because they all shout when they see her, clap her on the back and tug her inside. "You looked great," Kev tells her, punching her in the arm. "They're gonna play it again in about ten minutes, everyone's talking about it."

Heidi sits down at the bar with a beer someone else pressed into her hand, no charge they said, and even though she's prepared for it she still lets out a small shriek and covers her hand when she shows up on screen. Next to the Capitol reporter Heidi looks almost insultingly provincial, her blonde hair cut short and simple, her blue dress incredibly plain; Heidi's quarry-formed muscles put her at least twice the size of Truffles' fashionably thin frame, and her sun and wind-blasted skin is dark and rough next to the reporter's smooth, pale face. The commentators coo over her, wondering how to get that 'rustic look' with Capitol fabrics and cosmetics. Heidi crosses her arms over her chest and tries to will her face to stop reddening.

"You look good," Briar says to Heidi, nudging her. "Not like you're a cake turned into a person. You're District Two, not Capitol. Don't worry."

Heidi gives Briar a small smile, but then everything else flies away because the interview starts. It's an entirely different experience to the one Heidi only barely remembers in the aftermath; they intercut hers with clips from Brutus' apparent classmates and sports coach, obviously cribbed from the Centre and lying through their teeth, and even show a few pictures of Brutus in his early teen years that the Centre would have provided. Heidi's throat clenches to see him in that space of time he missed -- not so big yet but sullen and serious, with hair until about fifteen -- and Briar's arm comes up around her waist to squeeze her tight.

She didn't know how she came off to Truffles at the time, focusing only on the questions and making the answers good enough to pass muster, and now Heidi is almost amazed at the woman on the screen. She's angry and proud and defensive, her head up and eyes blazing and fists clenched, and she's not begging the sponsors for their money or the Gamemakers for their pity, but she humanizes Brutus all the same. She's not a weak old lady crying for her baby to come home; she's fierce and defiant and almost imposing, and the editors helpfully set up a side-by-side comparison of their faces until Brutus shines out of her features.

By the time she says the line about his daddy's eyes and his mama's mouth, the bar erupts into cheers. Heidi loses track of who slaps her back and shakes her hand, and all she can think is that maybe she's done it. Maybe she's given him just enough of an edge that the next gift he gets will be food and not steel.

And maybe -- not now, but if he wins, then maybe -- one day Brutus will see the interview himself, and even if he never talks to Heidi again, at least he'll know that his mother loves him, and was willing to tell the whole country how much.

After the interview closes, the cameras change to the Arena, where Brutus, his glassy eyes fever-bright, reaches up to catch a sizable canister of water, the silver parachute glittering under the luminescent netting of the Arena sky. The bar lets out another roar of approval, and Heidi presses a hand to her chest to try to massage away the sharp ache of relief.

After Brutus takes a few mouthfuls -- rationing, who knows when he'll get more, and with only four remaining it's likely he won't -- Heidi stops and frowns. "When was the last time we saw him get any food?"

They stop and think, and Heidi swallows, her mouth suddenly dry. "Before the quake for sure," says one of the men, frowning. "And I don't know I ever saw him with anything but some dried meat and berries for the days before that."

With a tribute like Brutus, it's not enough to have him fight opponents who are large, or fast, or smart; he's bigger and stronger than all of them. In order to make him interesting, the Gamemakers have to challenge him, push him to the edge, and for Brutus that means starving him, taking his water, rousing him from sleep with swarms of biting insects or a sudden onset of hail. Heidi clenches her jaw. "He needs something to eat," she says. "They'll be pushing for them to cross paths soon and then it'll all be over. We gotta get him something."

"How?" It's a fair question. "This stage in the game, a whole year's salary could go toward a loaf of bread."

The others quickly confirm they'd be willing to toss in as much as they could, but they all got families to feed and clothe and kids who'll need shoes once the weather starts to turn. Maybe if half the district pitched in, but with less than a thousand people between them, there's no hope. Heidi's fingers dig into her palms. "Let me have the phone," she says to Al, the bartender, and he passes it over.

The number for Brutus' mentor sits at the bottom of the screen. The bar falls silent as Heidi dials, stays silent as she waits through the annoying hold music -- the Panem Anthem as played by what sounds like nose flutes -- and sucks in a collective breath when finally it clicks through and Heidi sits up straight.

She doesn't bother to tell Odin her name; the legion of hoops she passed through on the way to get to him will have done that. "I want you to help me help my boy," she says. "What can we buy, and how much will we have to give so they'll actually give him food and not another weapon?"

Odin's voice is rich and sonorous, even through the tinny connection as they haggle, and the more they talk, the calmer Heidi feels. He's a hero of his generation even though he's a good ten years younger than Heidi herself, and it sets her at ease to hear him. "You see what you can raise, and call me back as soon as you know," he says at last. "I'll see what I must do to make it happen." Heidi relays this to the others, and once more the air fills with shouts. She probably has bruises on her shoulders by now.

Once Heidi hangs up the phone, the chaos only intensifies as everyone shouts what they can afford to scrimp up. Al hands her the stub of a pencil he uses to write up the inventory at the end of the night, and Heidi grabs a napkin from the bar and starts scrawling down numbers. The bar phone never gets put back on the hook as people call their spouses, their families, their friends, begging for help; others run out into the town to canvass their neighbours, coming back and shouting amounts from the doorway.

For herself, Heidi busies herself with writing the numbers and adding them up -- she's always been good at math, she learned herself how to do the books after her old man took off -- and once it's done, she nearly cries all over again. It's not like it's enough to build a library or nothing, but they might actually be able to get her boy something to eat if she can work a small miracle. "Give me the phone again," Heidi says, swallowing hard. "I gotta make a couple calls first."

Her first is to the foreman in charge of her unit at the mine. "I been working for you a long time," Heidi says, the words coming out in a rush. She used up all her pretty persuasion with Truffles, and now there's none but desperation left. "I swear to Snow I won't ever ask you for a favour again, but I gotta ask. Is there any way I could get my harvest bonus early? I want to put it toward some food for Brutus, if I can."

Silas pauses. Heidi was fourteen when she started working for him -- the first favour he ever did her was to look the other way when she handed him her birth registry card, swore up and down later it said sixteen -- and she's been a good worker, as far as she knows. Never asked for advances, never shirked her duties. "That puts me in a bit of a spot," he says. "I don't exactly carry that kinda cash on hand."

"Please," Heidi says. "Take it out of my next month's pay and make it up if you have to, but I need to give him that money."

"All right," Silas says at last, and Heidi lets out a gasp and has to bite down on her knuckles. "You been hard at it since you were a wee thing, don't seem right to say no to you now."

The phone pulls itself out of Heidi's hand, and she whirls around to see Marc at her elbow, his expression guarded. "Mine too if I may, Silas," he says into the phone, and Heidi nearly falls over. She grips the edge of the bar to keep herself standing. "Yeah. Yeah, I know. Once this is over, you come by, my missus and I will make you something. Yeah. Yeah, bring Jim too, it'll be good to see you both. Yeah. Thank you, sir."

He hangs up the phone, takes the pencil from Heidi's slack grip, and writes down a final set of numbers on the napkin. "Well, it ain't like sending him a knife, is it," Marc says when Heidi gapes at him. "No harm in feeding him one last time."

Heidi grabs his face and kisses him amid whoops and yells; she tastes the hesitation, feels it in the press of his fingers against her jaw, but it doesn't matter. Even if he thinks Brutus is a killer, even if he never accepts Brutus as his son again, there's a chance that after this Heidi won't ever be banned from saying his name.

She calls Odin back, and this time she's send straight through him instead of routed through the system. Heidi swallows hard, and her heart hammers in her throat as she reads off the number. "Is it enough?" she asks.

Odin pauses; Heidi assumes he's checking calculations himself. "I want you to know, I appreciate the effort you and your hometown have made," he says. Heidi can't tell if that's a good or a bad thing. "I believe that hard work and dedication like you have provided should be rewarded; I will make enquiries as to the cost, and any deficit in the funds required will be made up from my own fund."

It knocks the breath right out of Heidi's body. She should say something, some kind of speech, but all she can do is gasp raggedly into the phone and say 'thank you' over and over and over as Marc's hands dig into her arms.

"He's sleeping now," Odin says. "I'll send him your gift in the morning. That will give me enough time to ensure the full spirit of your generosity is carried out."

"Thank you," Heidi says, but Odin is a busy man and she doesn't want to waste his time, and so she hangs up. "We did it," she tells everyone, and in the grand scheme of the Games it's nothing, but it feels like so, so much.

The worst part is knowing she has to go to work tomorrow, but Heidi can't wrangle another day off after getting such an enormous favour from Silas. It's hard enough to fall asleep, and around two in the morning, for the first time in months -- since before Brutus' eighteenth birthday, really -- Marc shakes his head, grabs her by the arm and rolls her over on top of him. "Here, let's get you tuckered out," he says, and kisses her.

It's not playful and banter-filled like their sex usually is -- Heidi likes to pin him, hold his hands above his head and dare him to flip her over; Marc likes to bet her he can make her shout loud enough to wake the neighbours -- but somewhere amid the desperation and darkness, the clinging and shaking and ragged breath, Heidi finds her husband again. Afterward he holds her close, runs his fingers through her sweat-dampened hair and kisses her forehead.

"I haven't been the easiest to live with," he tells her in a low voice. "I'm sorry about that, truly. We said for better or worse, come avalanche or rock slide. I gotta mean that."

Heidi finds his hand and nearly crushes his fingers in her grip.

Heidi arrives at the quarries as dawn breaks over the hills, the sun red and bleeding over the horizon. Heidi's no more superstitious than the next person, but at the same time she can't help but thinking that means something. Brutus won't see it, no sunrises and sunsets for him unless they're hand-painted by the Gamemakers, and so that's something, but at the same time, Heidi stares out at the scarlet sky and feels a shiver run down her back and take root at the base of her spine.

Odin is going to send their gift to Brutus today, and more than anything Heidi wishes she could see it. They collected the money last night before going home, sent it off to the station to be taken to the nearest bank that can wire it through on the first train in. More than anything Heidi wishes she could watch when he gets it; it's just the sunset and her nerves talking, but it feels like something is set to happen today. They've been a short, brutal Games so far this year, and she can't imagine what would happen to stretch them out any longer.

It's coming. Heidi knows it the way she recognizes an incoming storm by the prickling on her skin and the change in the air, the way any miner hears a rockslide long before the boulders begin to cascade. Whatever it is, it won't be long, and Heidi is terrified she'll miss it. Her watching won't make a difference but it feels like it does, like maybe if she's there when it all goes down her presence will -- well, it's stupid, but she can't change how she feels any more than she can make the sun rise and fall just by wishing.

Except then she gets to her section and there's a surprise waiting for her; an ancient-looking box on a rickety stand, and Heidi's throat tries to climb out of her mouth because it's a television. It's old, the screen black and white to save on interior space, and likely used in emergencies to pick up signals from the Capitol when the regular lines go down, but it's a television.

Silas stands next to it with his arms crossed over his chest. "Now I expect you to work same as you always do," he warns her. "Ain't nobody gonna be standing around doing nothing all day or it comes out of your pay, just like it would any other day. But I figure you should get to see when the gift arrives, since you went to all that work to make it happen."

"If my husband weren't right here I'd kiss you," Heidi bursts out, and Silas is pushing seventy with grandbabies what are Brutus' age, and he snorts at her. "Hell, I'll do it anyway, and he'll just have to be jealous." She leans down and kisses his cheek while the others grin; Silas huffs and cuffs her on the shoulder and looks pleased. Marc gives her a smile that, if pained, is at least trying, though he positions himself where he can't see the screen.

They work, and the tiny television crackles with updates. A roving pack of muttations chases the Ten boy up a rock face, snapping and growling at his ankles as he clings to the rock, exhausted and terrified and grim; the Four boy, gone mad from dehydration and trauma and everything else, stalks the Arena with his spear, muttering to himself about all the things he's going to do when he gets home, just as soon as he tears out the other tributes' ribs and makes himself a nice vest. Brutus scours the rocks for food, any food, but of course there's nothing.

Around midmorning, Brutus' paths cross with the Four boy on a bluff overlooking the unbroken plain of rocks below. Brutus grinds to a halt as the boy emerges from a grove of scrubby, leafless trees; the Four growls at him, eyes white and wide and crazy, mouth flecked with foam.

"I know who you are!" the Four shouts, pointing his spear at Brutus. "You're one of them! You're not real. You're not real and this isn't real, it's just a conspiracy. Well I won't let them get me!"

Brutus rears back a little, hefting his sword. "You know you're crazy, right," he pronounces, his voice rasping with thirst and exhaustion.

It takes all Heidi's restraint to keep working, glancing over when she can. Four shouts at Brutus for a while as Brutus circles, keeping his weapon between them, but finally something snaps and they lunge at each other. Heidi nearly drops her hammer on her foot; someone calls for a five-minute water break, and they crowd around the TV, passing around a canteen and taking swallows of warm, tinny water that do nothing to wet Heidi's dry throat.

It's a messy fight; Four's insane and sloppy, and Brutus still has his head but he's tired and hungry and overheated, and he swings his sword like Heidi does the sledgehammer and pickaxe at the end of a long, exhausting shift. At the beginning weeks ago, all horror aside, Heidi could almost admire the artistry in the way they moved, one with their weapons; now it's ugly, two kids beating the living hell out of each other.

The fight ends with Brutus' sword in the Four boy's gut, Four's dagger protruding from Brutus' ribs. Brutus breaks free with a grunt; Four collapses, slowly, knees first, then the rest of him, like a building scheduled for demolition with charges set at the base. The cannon fires; Brutus pulls the knife out of his side, wincing, and yanks his sword free, wiping it as clean as he can with the hem of his dirt and sweat-encrusted shirt.

"He did always take care of his things," Heidi says in a low voice, and someone squeezes her shoulder as they go back to work.

Brutus staggers away from the body to give the hovercraft room to pick it up; he covers his eyes to protect them from the dust and flying rocks as it emerges, kicking up a breeze, the first air movement he'll have felt in days. Afterward he looks out at the sky. "One left," he says, half to himself, and that's when it happens. First the beeping, then the shimmer of sun on a silver parachute, and Heidi gasps and nearly takes out her kneecap again.

Brutus glances up, mouth tight, probably expecting another weapon, but then his eyes widen at the canister. He catches it before it hits the ground, takes the card and turns it over to read the message: A TASTE OF HOME - FROM THE PEOPLE OF DISTRICT 2.

For the first time since the Games started, a flash of something genuine crosses Brutus' face, and for a moment Heidi forgets the blood splashed across his face, the broken nose and bruised cheekbone; for a moment he's just her son, eighteen and hungry and tired, and she has to close her eyes. When she opens them again the vulnerability is gone, and Brutus touches his fist to his chest in the traditional Two symbol of greeting and thanks, looking to the camera with a mix of humility and pride on his face.

The entire quarry stops, sets their tools down, handles resting against their hips, and returns the gesture. Heidi only hopes the people in the main square, watching on the big Capitol-loaned screens -- the only ones the cameras will be pointed at -- do the same.

"My thanks," Brutus says, and opens the canister to find the dark wholemeal rolls from their district and a round, ripe apple. A smile crosses Brutus' face that has no murder in it, and he drops to the ground cross-legged and tears into the apple with a satisfying crunch.

"We did that," Heidi says, emotion gripping her until she can barely breathe. She strikes the ground with renewed vigour, cleaving the bedrock of their very district. She is Two and Brutus is Two and in this moment, regardless of whether they still count as family, they are connected. The sun doesn't beat down quite as hard; the rocks don't feel as heavy.

Brutus finishes the apple, core and all, turning to spit out the last of the seeds on the rocks. He takes a break before moving onto the bread -- no point throwing it all up because he didn't pace himself -- and does stretching exercises instead. He favours his left shoulder in a way Heidi doesn't much like, moving it extra slow and keeping his face careful neutral like the quarriers do when they don't want to get sent home and lose the afternoon's pay, but it's not his sword-arm so she hopes it won't hold him back too much.

It takes Brutus an hour to finish the bread, and he keeps one roll back, put back into the canister with the whole thing slung over his arm like the parachute strings were the strap of a bag. He takes another final swig of water, ties the canteen and his sword back around his waist, and sets off down the cliff. Now and then his left hand brushes his right wrist, curling his fingers around the Centre bracelet, the beads chipped and crusted with blood, the only sign of comfort-seeking Heidi's seen from him.

One left. One left. One left.

The thought sits in Heidi's brain like a litany, pounding in her veins with every strike of the hammer against the rocks, vibrating down her arms and settling in her chest until everything fades away.

At noon, they send the pack of mutts his way. Of course they do; the earthquake took out a good swath of the Careers, and that means the others have to make up for the lack of interest. With only two left, they're not going to drive them together just yet, and so now it's Brutus' turn to run from the slavering dog-creatures with their fangs the size of his hand.

Except he doesn't run. Brutus stops and turns, digs his heels into the ground and grips his sword two-handed; he bends his knees and bares his teeth and roars out a challenge. Silas calls for lunch, and once again they all stop, sit, crowd around the set, Heidi in the front with the others pressed in close. Heidi loses track of whose elbow jabs her side, whose hand is at her back, but then everyone shuffles and Marc muscles himself in beside her, letting Heidi lean against him and soak up his presence because he's here, he's watching, and it's only because Brutus is fighting dogs and not other tributes but it doesn't matter. He's here.

Brutus swings the sword with new determination, and he has food and water in his belly and the promise of victory close, so close. "You wanna try me?" Brutus yells at the beasts as he guts one mutt, then skewers another. "Keep it coming! I'm not losing to a bunch of fucking dogs!"

At last, Brutus stands in a heap of mutilated mutt-corpses, himself bleeding and shaken, but at the same time alive and defiant. He grips the pommel of his sword -- stuck through to the hilt in the last mutts' side -- and heaves, but it stays stuck. Brutus actually drags the whole carcass a few steps before he gives up and runs his hands over his face, smearing blood and sweat everywhere. "Fine," he snarls, and aims a kick at the dead dog's side. "Keep it, if you want it so bad. My gift to you."

He leaves the sword where it is, and draws the dagger he stole from Four. "Let's end this," Brutus says to the sky, savage and terrifying and beautiful, and he eats the last of his bread and drinks the rest of his water and tosses the canisters away.

The boy from Ten finds him an hour later, and once again Silas calls for a stop. They'll all have to stay extra late to make up for it but Heidi doesn't care and neither does anyone else. This time Marc isn't there beside her -- he keeps working on his own, quiet and determined with his posture ratcheted closed, and the others don't ask or say anything, just leave him be -- but everyone else is, a sweating, sticky pack of support that Heidi clings to even as she can't tear her eyes away.

She watches the whole thing. Every brutal, horrifying bit of it, as the two boys pound each other to pieces with nothing but their fists. Brutus gets his knife stuck in the Ten boy's ribs right away, but the boy is hopped up on exhaustion and adrenaline and doesn't even notice, and it's lodged in too well to pull it out. And so they fight, slow and relentless and dogged, blood streaming and bones cracking, and the bile rises higher and higher in Heidi's throat as the last of the boy who was her baby disappears.

Finally -- it feels like hours, but the clock in the corner of the screen indicates it's only minutes -- Brutus gets the boy on the ground, straddles his ribs, holds him with one massive hand against his chest and drives the other down, down, down against his skull until, at last, it caves in a mess of white and red and grey. Brutus keeps punching even after the Ten is long dead -- he's gone, he's mad, he's broken -- and Heidi presses both hands over her mouth and chokes back sobs. Arms come around her and she doesn't know or care who it is, just grips their wrists and fights to breathe.

The cannon fires, and that shocks Brutus out of it. He pulls his fist out of the mess -- his hand lies mangled, the fingers crushed to pieces, he'll never use that hand again unless they make a miracle -- and stares out across the wastes, breathing hard, eyes wide. He's forgotten where he is, who he is, what he's doing, and Heidi's heart has splintered into a thousand pieces.

And then the trumpets, clear and bright as a chorus of angels, and Brutus staggers to his feet, face tilted up to the sky.

"Congratulations to the victor of the 49^th annual Hunger Games!" comes the announcement, and at last Brutus' expression breaks and he looks human again, bloodied from mutilated fingers to elbow, his face painted with it like a horrible mask.

Brutus sways on his feet, holding what's left of his hand to his chest, and something clicks. "I dedicate this victory," he croaks out, "to my district and my country." He stares at his hands, uncomprehending, until the hovercraft appears, then he remembers his duty again and climbs the ramp.

Heidi stays, eyes fixed on the tiny screen, until the hovercraft rises into the air and the footage cuts to the commentators, then bursts into a flood of tears.

She can't eat dinner that night, even though there's nothing wrong with the food. It's too much, too overwhelming, and Marc is doing his best to keep quiet and not show her how disturbed he is but she ain't stupid, and he's not eating either. "Like it or not, it's over," Heidi says finally, breaking the silence. For Brutus it's just the beginning, a lifetime of service and gratitude, mentoring or training or whatever it is he chooses to do, but for them, after the final stage show with Flickerman, this is it. No more involvement, no more connections. Nothing but whatever interviews make it down to this neck of the woods.

"Yep," Marc says, and he has been trying despite how twisted up inside this made him, and Heidi has stopped trying to push him because it's not fair. "Maybe now we can have a normal life again."

There is no normal life for the parents of victors, not really, not when they'll always see their children on the television screen but never in person, have to watch them grow up from afar, remembered forever while they themselves age and fade and die in obscurity. Heidi still regrets nothing. She could sit in a pool of her grief and guilt and let the 'what-ifs' fill it until she drowns, but there's no point in that. She and Marc did what they did and that's all there is to it, and now instead of a son they have a victor they'll never get to touch.

The Centre will send them a letter of thanks, Heidi remembers from the paperwork years back, in recognition of their gift to the Centre and their country, but it's a formality. The parents aren't the ones who trained him, who fought for him. All they did was give birth to him and hand him over and they're not entitled to any public recognition. Marc wouldn't want it anyway -- Heidi shudders a little to think what he would say if anyone tried -- and Heidi would never be able to accept it with any real grace. She can't take credit for carrying and birthing him as though it means something when he's the one who clawed his victory out of the dirt with his own hands.

"I'm glad we helped him," Marc says, pushing his vegetables around his plate. "That boy, the one who won. It feels right. Just, babygirl, don't ask me to think of him as ours. We lost our Brutus at thirteen and that's that."

"I won't," Heidi says. "I know." Meanwhile she can't think of him as anything but theirs -- theirs and alive, brilliantly, amazingly, miraculously alive -- whether she has the rights to him or not. She won't ask him for anything, not ever, and what memories he has of her that weren't driven out by years in the Centre and those weeks in the Games will fade until nothing is left -- maybe snatches, her voice singing him a lullaby, the colour of her hair in the kitchen in the morning sun, the feel of her callused hands stroking his forehead the time he caught a fever -- but that's all right. He's alive. That's all that matters.

In the Arena, Heidi didn't notice how much weight Brutus lost, not with all the mud and sweat and dirt and blood, but now, a few days later, sitting on the stage in a suit that would have strained against his muscles a few short weeks back, Brutus looks exhausted and drained. He's still big, bigger than Heidi, than Marc, even, and they've taken care of him in that big Capitol hospital, likely pumping him full of fluids, but he's almost deflated now. He looks like a normal muscled teenager instead of a caricaturist's idea of how one should look.

Gone, too, is the dark, pre-Arena arrogance; now he's humble, grateful to the Capitol for allowing him to live and be their victor. It's a gratitude that Heidi feels down to her very core, and like Brutus she will never, ever be able to repay it; even more so for Heidi because Brutus is the one who's responsible for making up the debt, not the parents who gave him over.

"I've never been that good with words," Brutus tells Caesar Flickerman, and he gestures with his right hand, rebuilt completely so that if Heidi hadn't seen it smashed to pieces herself, she never would have known. All his injuries are gone, erased by the Remake Centre, leaving him a normal, if oversized, earnest boy. "So I guess I'll just have to prove it myself by being a good mentor and everything. I want to give back the incredible honour they've given me."

"And so you shall," says Flickerman with a wide, bright smile. "Now, there is one thing I've been dying to ask you, and I think our audience has too. Your Games had a very special moment that is quite unusual for tributes from your district. I'm referring, of course, to the interview your mother gave."

They bring up the footage of Heidi on the screen behind him and replay the interview; Heidi ignores herself, magnified five times her normal size, and looks at Brutus instead, searching his expression for any kind of surprise or shock. He watches with careful, neutral politeness, and of course Odin will have warned him, let him know to expect the question. Maybe they'll have watched it on their own together, so Brutus could have his first, raw reaction without a dozen cameras pointed at his face, searching for the slightest twitch.

"I think this just shows that District Two understands the Hunger Games better than most," Brutus says when the screen flicks off and the cameras turn their focus back to him. "I'm grateful to everyone from my district who supported me. They're one of the reasons I volunteered, and part of why I'm here today." He sits up straight, and this time he looks to the cameras, not to Flickerman. "I'm proud of my district, for who they are and for the faith they put in me. I can only hope I lived up to that faith."

After that, the conversation moves on, and that's the last time Heidi will ever hear of herself mentioned by Brutus. She served her purpose and helped to bring him home, but now that he's a victor he needs to cut his ties even further. He's the Capitol's boy now, and Heidi knows that -- she said that to Truffles on purpose, even -- but she still has to pull out a small sliver of disappointment, the remnants of a tiny buried hope that maybe he'd thank her, even acknowledge her personally.

Heidi knows he can't, that his image is tied into being an amalgamation of all of Two and not tied back to a single family, but even worse, she knows he wouldn't anyway. For Brutus, having his mother testify on his behalf is no better than his imaginary coach or friends that the Centre invented. It means nothing to him, will be connected to no memory or feeling because he'll have worked to push that back and lose it every bit as thoroughly as he trained himself out of his accent.

It hits her harder than she thought it would. Heidi will carry around a Brutus-shaped hole in her soul for the rest of her life -- she and Marc will likely tiptoe around it forever, avoiding it like an infected wound they're afraid to lance -- but Brutus won't miss her, or Marc, or any of their time together, because he has his mentor, his fellow victors, his duty to the Capitol and to the new tributes of District Two, to fill that gap. Brutus is Heidi's missing limb, grafted onto a new body with no reason to think about the old one.

"Did you really expect any different?" Marc asks her, coming up behind her and laying his hands on her shoulders. "What was the boy gonna do, suddenly turn soft and beg his mama to let him come home? I don't think so."

"I didn't expect nothing," Heidi snaps, sharper than she meant to because she doesn't want him to be right. "He did what's right and so did we, that's all there is to it."

The day before Brutus leaves the Capitol to head back to Two, Heidi gets a letter in the mail. It's written on good, thick paper, the kind that creases good and proper and has fibres when you tear it, and her heart skips with fear at the large wax seal on the envelope before she registers the 'O' instead of 'S'. It's much less terrifying to get a letter from Odin instead of the President, and when Marc goes to shower off the worst of the quarry from his skin, Heidi slides the envelope open.

It takes her a while to read because she was never too good at it -- numbers, fine, but words not so much -- and Odin always uses five-dollar words like they're gonna be outlawed tomorrow, and when she finishes Heidi closes her eyes and holds the paper against her chest, breathing out nice and slow through her nose so she doesn't lose it.

I wish to thank you personally for your efforts in aiding the public relations element of Brutus' Games, Odin writes in flowing, elegant script that marks him as the son of someone rich enough to afford good schooling, not just the kind that learned him his letters and the important bits of history. You are, I'm sure, cognizant of the rarity of your actions, and you ought to be commended, if not officially, then at least by someone who understands. Your words and generosity contributed to Brutus' victory and you should be made aware that I, as his mentor, am grateful. However, you must also realize that for his own safety and emotional security, you cannot be allowed to see Brutus henceforth. He has a new life and a new role, and it would not do to confuse him; recovery is a difficult process for any victor, and it will be best for him to make a clean break. I will not cheapen your actions by reminding you that you have given up legal rights and are not entitled to his winnings nor to a house in the Victors' Village; I am sure you understand. Instead I once more give you my gratitude, and assure you that Brutus is a fine boy who will be well looked after. You need not be alarmed for his wellbeing.

Heidi traces her fingers over the broad, sweeping signature under the last Yours faithfully, swallowing hard against the rock in her throat. It's a tremendous honour for her to get anything from Odin at all, even though he was careful not to mention the words 'parent' or 'son' anywhere in it and to keep the language as distant as possible. He didn't have to send her anything or acknowledge her participation, and even this letter, a polite brush-off as firm and unyielding as Heidi has ever heard, is more than she could have asked for.

The water in the shower cuts off, and Heidi grabs a book from their shelf at random and shoves the letter between two of the pages at the centre. To shake the last of the feeling away, she catches Marc before he slips into their bedroom to change into his clothes and tells him she's holding them hostage until he pays the toll. Marc chuckles, catches her around the waist and tells her he'd rather be an outlaw, and if both of them laugh a little too hard and kiss a little too fierce out of a desperate need to prove something to themselves, it doesn't matter.

They get an hour off when Brutus' train rushes through the district to the main city, and all the quarriers crowd the barriers by the tracks, waiting to catch a glimpse. Kev offered Heidi his day off as a trade in case she wanted to ride in and see Brutus arrive at the Justice Building in person, but she declined, and he didn't push it after that. Instead Heidi stands shoulder to shoulder with her friends and family, listening for the low hum that signals the train coming.

The driver must've seen the crowd ahead, because when the train does arrive it's at half speed, and instead of waving through the windows, Brutus and Odin stand just inside the open door, one hand lifted in greeting, the other pressed to their chests in traditional gesture. The crowd around Heidi goes crazy, waving and shouting and throwing summer daisies, and in the centre of it Heidi alone stands still, her fist held over her heart.

Maybe she imagines it; maybe she just sees what she wants to see; maybe it's a hallucination from the heat and exhaustion. But Heidi knows what she sees, whether it's real or not: Odin touches Brutus' shoulder and murmurs in his ear, and for a split-second Brutus' bright blue eyes meet hers, hold and dig into her like a nail in the bottom of her foot, before the train whips him away.

It's the last time Heidi will ever see her son save on television, and he's already far away, disappearing into someone else, someone with no parents, no family but the one joined in blood that's spilled instead of shared. The last time she'll ever see him, and all she has to remember him is a moment of eye contact that she very probably invented.

It's enough. "Well," Heidi says, taking a deep breath and clapping the nearest person on the shoulder. "Back to work."