Brutus Lore.
Purpose.
The only time that Brutus ever truly understood why he was alive was during the Hunger Games.
Things were simple there. No worrying about training, or his family, or the baby. Just worrying about one thing and one thing only: killing everyone.
But too soon the final trumpets had sounded, and he'd been sucked up into a hovercraft and sent back to a life full of nothing. Just a family that was only now starting to care about him and a wife that he didn't even like that much. But he'd never leave Vala, no matter how much he loathed her, because she had the one thing that could help him become whole again in her stomach.
Alias.
His son. And he'd be damned if he left the child a bastard.
So Brutus stayed, and put up with Vala's incessant whining from sunrise to sundown until Alias was born.
But it didn't help. Not like he'd hoped it would, anyway.
Taking care of Alias wasn't really a purpose. It was just something he had to do. And Brutus failed to see any of himself in this little lump of a child that so resembled his younger, better looking, and blonde brother.
The child's hair color definitely hadn't been the first sign of unfaithfulness in their marriage, but it was the last straw, and eventually he ended it with Vala. Kicked her out without so much as a slice of bread and gave Alias to the young couple who lived next door.
That way he could remain somewhat present, but no longer responsible for the child that wasn't even his.
The couple was nice, but naive. The woman, Lyme, was coming off of a Hunger-Games-winning-high that Brutus himself knew well.
He decided not to warn her that it would fade before the end of the year.
The man, Sikes, was a bit more difficult to read. He was a skinny, sickly looking man who looked positively childish when he stood next to Lyme. As if his appearance wasn't bad enough, Sikes hardly ever talked. Brutus was the one who never talked. That was his thing, and he was physically imposing enough to get away with it.
Sikes wasn't.
Brutus never got the chance to figure him out, though, because Sikes was dead by the time Lyme finished mentoring her first pair of tributes.
You pick up on things when you don't talk, and Brutus was able to pick up on more than Lyme thought. He knew why Sikes had been killed, and though it disgusted him there was nothing he could do about it. So he tried to forget it.
From then on, he saw much less of Lyme and even less of Alias. So he put all of his effort into training future tributes, hoping it would give him some sort of purpose.
And it did, for a while. Until the Hunger Games rolled around again and both kids from District 2 were killed by that sniveling, axe-wielding fiend of a girl from District 7.
So Brutus remained lost for some time again, staying quiet, talking to no one except for Alias on his occasional visits, but even those conversations were stilted and awkward and full of calm pleasantries with deep anger hidden beneath them.
Had he actually paid a fraction of attention to his not-son, he may have figured out his plans beforehand.
But Brutus paid attention to no one, and therefore it came as a complete shock when Alias volunteered at the Reaping Ceremony the following year.
Brutus' first instinct had been to kill Lyme, but that would have just left Alias at a disadvantage with one mentor, so he bided his time.
His last few weeks with Alias were not as they should have been. They should have been filled with hugs and meaningful conversations and encouragement. Instead they were filled with so much yelling and training and strategy that by the end of the week the look of hatred shone in Alias's eyes every time he looked at either of his mentors.
The only thing that made it bearable was that Brutus knew he could apologize after Alias won.
But he didn't.
That pathetic mess of a girl from District 4 who had Finnick Odair practically hyperventilating in the control room did.
And then there was no point again, for a long, long time.
Lyme quit being a mentor and refused to go the Capitol, no matter how much they threatened her.
So Brutus left her alone and mentored with and Hanel, and old victor who understood what the Games could do for a person. Together, they mentored a female tribute into winning the seventy first Games.
It wasnt enough.
But that's how he got by for four years, mentoring and watching death and training and watching death until an announcement for the Quarter Quell came onto his tv, unbidden and unwanted.
Brutus went upstairs before he could hear what new and exciting way the Capitol had designed to kill tributes this year, because honestly, he didn't care.
He was allowed exactly ten minutes of peace before the knock came on his door.
"Hello, Brutus," Lyme said, uttering her first words to him since a broad sword on a child's neck had irrevocably severed their already minimal communication. "Did you catch the Quarter Quell announcement?"
Though tempted as he was at the words 'Quarter Quell' to slam the door in her face, Brutus allowed her enough time to explain.
When she was done, he nodded and allowed her in. Because purpose always overrules old disputes in Brutus's book.
Actually,
he mused quite some time later as the hilt of his kife slammed into the one-armed drunkards side, leaving his back completely open to an attack he had been positive wouldn't come from the blonde-haired, blue-eyed baker,
purpose overrules every thing.
