Hunger Games: Nero backstory
Today on things I wrote and never got around to posting -- here's snippets of Nero through the years, age 7-18. I have posted bits of hit here and there (like killing his stepfather) but not the whole thing in one piece.
WARNINGS: child abuse, ableism, mentions of sexual assault/incest, death, Hunger Games-typical violence
Nero at seven years old is the biggest boy in his grade, though nobody notices. He knows how to stay out of sight, to hunch his shoulders and keep his head down and just keep shuffling so that people look past him. He’s too big for the bullies to bother, and since he never takes anyone else’s lunch the other kids don’t pay attention either. He’s just there, in the corner, like a rock or a lump of coats or an old hat somebody forgot about.
The teachers only ever call on him at the beginning of the year and he never answers, just sits and stares at them without moving his face. Soon enough they stop. One time he hears a couple of them talking; one says it’s a shame about him, how he must’ve been dropped on his head as a baby and now he has a brain full of rocks. How he’ll probably end up in the mines, because at least you don’t have to know how to think or read or use fancy words to grab a pickaxe and smash stones. They flinch and stop mid-sentence when Nero turns the corner but he just walks past without letting his expression flicker.
“See?” says one of them once he’s past. “Nothing there. He seems sweet enough, at least.”
Sweet. Nothing there. Brain full of rocks. The words rattle around in Nero’s head and won’t settle down, buzzing buzzing buzzing like bees in a jar, and he takes the long way home. He winds up one side of the street and down the other, cutting through yards and gardens until finally he can’t put it off anymore. Finally he’s home, the big white house with the white front gate, pretty as a picture, where he opens the door and toes off his shoes, quiet, quiet, way more quiet than a big boy his size should be. His classmates are still tripping over their feet, running into tables, crashing into each other at recess and being sent inside with bloody noses but Nero knows stealth.
He’s crept halfway down the hall to the stairs when the study door slams open. “And where the fuck were you?”
Sweet. Nothing there. Brain full of rocks. Nero whips around and glares at the man filling the door frame, barely any light making it around his massive bulk. “What the fuck do you care?” Nero snarls. If only his teachers could hear him now. “I was walking.”
“The hell kind of language is that?” his father demands.
“The hell do you think I heard it?” Nero challenges back.
Stomp. Stomp. Stomp. The picture frames on the wall rattle. Nero lets his face go slack and his body limp a second before the blow lands (he used to steel himself but that hurts worse, live and learn). It rocks him back and then it’s over. Stomp stomp stomp the other way, slam goes the door and crash goes a picture frame as it hits the floor. Count to five and there’s the creak of the office chair, heavy and loud from a lot of weight dropped on it fast. Good, that’s safe then.
Up the stairs one at a time and there she is, tall and willowy at eleven like Nero guesses their mother must’ve been. All the pictures are gone now so he’ll never know. “Nero,” Missy chides, kneeling down. She holds his face in her hands, thumbs the sore spot on his cheek. “Why do you do that? Why do you make him mad? You know he can’t help it when you talk to him like that.”
Nero looks up at his half-sister, her big brown eyes and smooth dark skin. Last time he kept his mouth shut, his old man grabbed Missy’s arm and twisted it up behind her back for not clearing the plates fast enough after dinner. Dark finger marks bloomed against her forearm for days.
He shrugs. Missy’s mouth goes thin, and he pulls free of her and pushes past into his room, shutting the door behind him. That night they eat, and Missy clears the plates and washes the dishes, and his old man only grunts and heads back to his study without comment until bedtime. Another job well done.
Nobody ever notices Nero, but the pretty people in the white uniforms do. “Hey there,” says a lady, and she has bright shiny teeth and dark shiny hair and Nero stops in the hallway. She’s pretty and she’s smiling, and nobody pretty smiles like that at Nero unless they want something. “Have you heard about the Athletics and Personal Growth Centre?”
Nero doesn’t answer, just stares at her like he does the teachers. Her friend, a tall, pretty man with a smile that’s just as bright and shiny, flags down a couple of kids and presses brightly-coloured papers into their hands. Nero blinks once, slowly. People think he’s stupid when he does that.
The lady’s smile sharpens, eyes going just a little bit narrow like she knows his trick and he ain’t fooling. “It’s like an after school club,” she says. “You meet up with a bunch of other kids from all over, play sports and games, and you get a nice snack before going home. It’s a lot of fun.”
Fun, games, sports? No thanks. Nero blinks again, slower this time.
She beckons him forward with a gesture, reaches under the table and slides him a piece of paper. It’s different from the other ones, filled with laughing kids with the same bright, shiny smiles as they run and climb ropes and throw big, colourful balls. These kids are older, harder, their smiles just as bright and shiny but less wide and happy, more like they know a secret. A girl rests a sword across her well-muscled shoulders; a big boy has another around the neck, flipping him down onto the mat.
This time Nero doesn’t blink. He frowns instead. The lady’s smile twists, takes on an edge. “You also learn to fight.”
Fight. A drumming starts up in the back of Nero’s head, and he forgets all about blinking and frowning and staring. “Fight how?” he asks. The words are the first he’s spoken in school in two years.
She grins, folds the paper nice and small and hands it to him so he can slide it into his pocket and it won’t make a bulge. “Come by and see.”
Nero learns to fight, all right. He learns how to break a wrist with a flick of his hand; where to land a punch to make the eyes tear and swell shut; how to swing a sword so it slices through a target without jarring his arm so badly he drops it. He learns how to throw a spear in a perfect arc; how to set his own shoulder after dislocation; how to say more with a hard stare and clenched jaw than a hundred spitting curses. He learns the home districts of over 700 boys and girls and how they died, but not any of their names.
All this by the time he’s twelve years old. The Centre is more efficient than school ever was.
The problem is, at thirteen you’re supposed to go full-time. At thirteen you move into the Centre permanently, lose your last name and family ties and become not just a Centre kid but a tribute candidate, and Nero can’t do that. He can’t leave Missy alone in that house for five years until he wins the Games and comes to save her. Especially not right now, not when she’s been throwing up every morning in the bathroom even while trying to hide it.
It’s okay, though. He’s had five years of training and he can hold his own; his old man will be sore about the loss of the stipend once Nero quits, but he can fucking deal. A few more years and Missy will be past Reaping age, able to get a job and earn her own money, and Nero will be fifteen and that’s old enough to work in the mines if you’re big enough they don’t ask.
The head trainer calls him into her office and asks him if he’ll be taking the entrance exam for Residential. Nero shakes his head. “You’re top of your year, you know,” she says. “Number one.”
He didn’t expect that. Each kid who goes to the Centre wears an identical bracelet made of woven leather strands; every year they get a new one one, coloured white, blue or black based on where they rank. Nero’s have been black each time, but so have one-third of his cohort. He didn’t know he was first.
Nero has never been first at anything before, except maybe for lining up and taking a beating.
“Can I ask why you’re not going to stay?” she asks him, tilting her head. “You’re very talented. I think you could go far.”
Nobody’s called him sweet-nothing-there-head-full-of-rocks in years. Here Nero is nothing but potential, raw and powerful. It feels good, but Missy means more than a hundred black strands. Nero shakes his head again.
She studies him, tapping one finger against the desk. “There’s someone at home,” she says. “Someone you don’t want to leave.”
Nero hesitates, but the Centre has done right by him so far, and what are they going to do, march into his home and shoot Missy so he’ll have no one left? They’re not bad people, and everybody who goes into the Arena has a choice. Just like everyone has the choice to say no. “My sister,” he says slowly. “She’s sick.”
The trainer nods. “That’s hard, I understand,” she says. “Remember, if you enter Residential you’ll have an even higher stipend, which could help her buy medicine.” He hadn’t thought of that; it must have shown on his face, because she smiles, not unkindly. “You still have time to decide; you can take the exam any time the year after you turn thirteen. Sometimes we can help people in ways other than being there in person.”
He tells her he’ll think about it, just because the people at the Centre have been nicer to him than anyone in the world except for Missy, but there’s no way. There are almost a hundred other kids who will be testing into Residential, but Missy only has one brother.
The old man’s shouting tears Nero out of sleep. He pushes off the blankets, stumbles and nearly falls from his bed to the floor, legs shaking. His father’s voice thunders through the halls, coming from outside Missy’s room at the end of the hall near the stairs. Nero throws open his door, bare feet slapping against the cold floor.
“What the hell is this?” he roars, waving something in his clenched fist. Paper, crumpled in his hand. “I found this in the trash, now you tell me what’s going on!”
“I don’t know,” Missy says, rearing back, both hands over her stomach the way she used to protect her face. “I don’t know what that is -“
“Oh, I think you do,” he snarls. “Whose is this then, the boy’s? Now tell me, you lying slut! Tell me whose it is! Who have you been sneaking around with!”
Missy jerks back. “No one!” she cries out, and this time her voice rings with anger. “It’s yours! Whose else would it be? You’re the only one who - who ever -“ Her voice breaks, tears streaming down her cheeks before she covers her face with both hands. “Like I would want anyone to touch me after -“
“Liar! You lying little bitch!” In all the years of listening to him rage, Nero has never heard him this furious. It drives a sharp spike of ice between his shoulder blades. “You come here right now, so help me -“
He takes a lunging step forward toward Missy, who flings herself back until she hits the wall. Nero can’t see his face but he can guess at the ugliness twisting the hard features; he darts out from his room and barrels into his father, shoving him at the waist. “Leave her alone!”
His old man whirls on Nero, glaring down at him. “Stay out of this! Go back to bed before I make you sorry you ever were born.”
Nero balls his fists, and slowly, deliberately, he places himself between his father and his half-sister. “No,” he grits out. “Leave her alone. I won’t tell you again.”
“You go to that fancy Centre for a few years and you think you can take me on?” he demands, lip curling. “You’ve shown me disrespect since the day you could talk, but this is it. I’m sick of your mouth, you and your lying whore of a sister both!”
Nero still can’t read the paper, and he’s heard kids at the Centre snarl whore and slut at each other during some of the nastier training bouts, but none of them ever used the words in a way that told him what it means. But right now, with his father spitting and shouting, muscles tensed and veins bulging, it doesn’t really matter.
And the thing is - Nero has training, but in the Centre he never fights anyone except kids his own age. If he fights a trainer there are weapons and they’re teaching him the proper forms; they aren’t over twice his size and coming at him with rage-twisted features. If he passes his entrance exam then he’ll start learning techniques for people much bigger but it’s too soon, what can he do -
Missy gasps and slides along the wall until she finds the door, ducks inside and slips into the opening. Good, but it won’t keep her safe for long. Nero’s blood pounds in his ears; everything tunnels to himself and the man in front of him, the man who’d done something to his sister, something that even if Nero can’t tell what it is he knows it’s bad right down to his gut. Something to do with Missy hiding and throwing up in the bathroom each morning, coming out shaking and red-eyed before disappearing into her room.
Nero stumbles backwards - his foot hits the edge of the stairs, his balance skewing - he nearly falls but catches himself, flinging his weight forward and tripping a few steps onto the landing just in time.
His old man, not so much. One foot goes over the edge, and for a second he catches himself - for a second he has his balance, he’s going to right himself and come back - but as time slows down, the decision crystallizes in Nero’s mind.
Before his brain can catch up and stop him, Nero reaches out and shoves, hard.
Thump-thump-thump-THUD crrrrunch.
A slumped shape at the bottom of the stairs, unmoving, head twisted oddly. Nero’s breath sticks in his throat; he creeps down the stairs one at a time, slowly, slowly, in case it’s all some kind of trick. Finally his feet leave the stairs and touch the floor; Nero creeps forward, bends down and looks close.
Breathing. His eyes are wide and glazed, and don’t flicker when Nero passes a hand in front of them, but the pulse in his neck flutters and air exits from his mouth in small, rapid puffs. Nero hisses, and an odd, dark twisting starts deep in his gut.
Ever since Nero can remember he’s taken hits so his old man would leave his sister alone, but it wasn’t enough. Whatever happened - while Nero was at the Centre, or while he slept, when, who knows - he couldn’t stop it, didn’t even know until it was too late. What’s to stop him from doing it again?
If Nero stops it now - stops it for good - he could take the entrance exam and go into Residential. That’s five more years of training, five more years of monthly stipends to help Missy. Then a lifetime if Nero wins the Games, a big house and anything she wants.
If he doesn’t -
A wash of red fills his vision, filling him down to his toes. His old man’s head already lies at a strange angle; a little more and - and.
Nero stands, legs unsteady, but then he places his foot down at the edge of his father’s jaw and his muscles stop trembling. He sucks in a breath, waits - no response, not even a twitch - and presses down as hard as he can, turning the head just that last bit more.
Crack.
Something bubbles up inside him, maybe laughter maybe vomit maybe both, and Nero staggers back. He kneels down, checks the throat, the nose - no pulse, no air. The feeling churns again and oh, this time it is vomit, sour and rising and pushing up up up, but they taught him how to swallow it down in training and so he does. Barely, sucking in gulping breaths of air and sticking his head between his knees and pinching the skin of his forearm until the pain registers, but it’s enough.
The trainers would give him a cookie for not upchucking. Wonder what they’d give him for an early kill.
The laugh explodes out of him before he can yank it back. He’s seen tributes laugh after a kill on television but never understood it, not until it’s all too much and it needs to go somewhere. Nero claps both hands over his mouth to stop it but he can’t, and when he looks up there’s Missy at the top of the stairs, staring back at him.
She isn’t laughing. Not even close. Her eyes are wide and brown and frightened, her mouth ajar, and Nero has seen that look before. Seen it every time his old man gave him a smack or knocked his head against the wall. Fear and horror and revulsion, only his old man isn’t here now. He’s lying at the bottom of the stairs, dead, and they both know whose fault it is that he’s there.
Half a dozen phrases crowd Nero’s mind - it was an accident; he fell; I didn’t mean to - but what comes out is, “I had to do it.”
Missy’s breaths come in shaking gasps. “Nero, what did you do?”
“I had to!” Nero says again. “He - he hurt you!”
“That doesn’t mean I wanted him dead!”
Anger spikes through him like a knife jammed up from the base of his skull. “Well he’s dead now!” Nero snaps, and she flinches away. Why isn’t she happy? She hated him, too, and whatever he did to her - whatever he was going to keep doing to her - was so awful that she never told Nero. “He’s never going to hurt you again.”
Missy shakes her head. “Nero, he’s not the one I’m scared of right now.”
Everything is wrong, slipping sideways and he can’t stop it. Nero’s eyes burn, and he stalks away, grabs the phone off the cradle and hits the number of the local Peacekeeper garrison. He gives his name and address when the man answers. “I killed my dad,” Nero says. He’d be surprised at his level of calm except what’s there to be surprised about anymore? “You should come take me away. You don’t need to hurry, I’m not going to run.”
He hangs up the phone, then sits down on the couch and waits.
They tell him he has a choice, the uniformed Peacekeeper who shows up at the door with the Centre official beside him. He can continue on with the Program and enter Residential once he turns thirteen, or he can join the juvenile offenders camp out west and break rocks fourteen hours a day until society deems him sufficiently rehabilitated.
Luckily for them Nero has run out of energy, because otherwise he might have laughed in their faces. Choice, right. He almost says the young offenders camp except that he’s heard of a couple kids who went there and never any who come back, and Nero might have a lot of rage and a fair amount of spite underneath his skin but he’s not suicidal.
Nero going to the mines to break rocks for the rest of his Reaping years wouldn’t help Missy, either, and so Nero bites his cheek and looks up at the clean-cut man and woman standing over him. “What about the stipend? My sister needs it.”
The lady from the Centre nods, short and professional. No shiny smiles and pretty pamphlets for him this time. Nero’s not surprised; nobody stays nice when they don’t need to anymore. “We can have the stipend sent to your sister, or to relatives if she has anywhere else to stay.” Nero shakes his head. “Head Office will arrange everything, but you need to come with us.”
Nero wants to look back over his shoulder to see if Missy is there listening, but no. She hid once the officers showed up, her bedroom door slamming while they all milled about and dragged the old man’s body out on a stretcher and bundled him up in the back of the big white van. She’s not going to come down and say goodbye. She’s going to stay in her room and cover her ears with her hands and stay there until the monster is out of her house.
“My sister is sick,” Nero says. He still doesn’t really understand it, not all the way, but that’s the sort of thing that seems important. He did kill his old man over it, after all. “If somebody helps her, then I’ll go.”
It’s a stupid threat - it’s not a threat at all, really, when the power is all on one side like that it’s more begging than anything - but they exchange looks and nod. “Someone will take care of her,” the Centre lady says. “Come on, Nero, it’s time to go.”
He doesn’t bring anything with him. There’s nothing in this house he wants that he can take. Nero shrugs his shoulders, scrubs a hand over his face and doesn’t look back.
“I heard he didn’t even take the entrance exam. I heard he’s a special case.”
“Oh yeah? Why is he so special?”
They don’t try to hide the whispers. This is Residential now, no secrets here. Nobody flinches when anyone rounds the corner because all of them were the monster in their own hometown once upon a time. The first year is a lot of butting heads and scrapping at free time and seeing who listens to the trainers when they say to cut it out. Kids who lose too many fights get cut. Kids who spit at the trainers and keep going get cut, too. Didn’t take Nero long to work out the rules.
Nero doesn’t say anything. In Residential it’s easy enough to go quiet again, nod at the trainer when they give him orders, speak when they tell him to and keep his mouth shut the rest of the time. But he does stare, and it’s funny how many kids who are used to fighting and breaking noses hate it when you stand there and look at them.
These two definitely hate it. He can see it: the tension around their eyes, the way their mouths thin, how they shift their posture so they’re standing at an angle to each other, widening their stances. Oh, he’s so scared. Have either of these kids ever seen a real fight, he wonders, or are they playground bullies hopped up on no-foul dodgeball and Centre brownies every time they gave somebody a scraped knee? He doesn’t move.
“So how come you’re a special case?” the first one challenges. “We earned our right to be here. We deserve it. If they’re letting in trash I think we deserve to know.”
They’re thirteen, Nero thinks. And here they all are in Residential, no parents, no families, everyone here on merit, but that’s parents behind those words as clear as the curl of his lip and they see something when they look at him. He’s not the one I’m scared of right now, Missy said. The Centre will train the spoiled rich boy out of this kid sure enough. They’re not going to train the killer out of Nero.
“Sure,” he says, and smashes the kid’s head into the wall until he hears the crunch.
A trainer pulls him aside later. “Listen,” she says. “Don’t do that again.”
Nero stares at her. Knows better than to talk back, question a direct order, but this feels - different. Years of listening, reading facial expressions and vocal tics for anything that might turn sharp or nasty. This is - he’s not sure what, but he’s pretty sure it’s not about the use of excessive force.
She catches his expression and gives him a flat stare. “I mean it. You want to terrify some cocky little shit, grab a sword.” Nero keeps staring, face slack and still, and she sighs. “You’re the only thirteen-year-old here who’s killed before. You’re here to learn how to do it nice and pretty for the cameras. You’re not here to bash in skulls. Use the swords.”
He frowns, and she sighs. “It’s not just about the Arena, Nero. It’s about walking out the other side. Weapons give you distance. We don’t have a lot of that, with what we do. Take it where you can.”
That afternoon, Nero takes the sword, feels its weight in his hands. The balance. Thinks of standing at the foot of the stairs, blood pooling dark at his feet. Remembers asking the Peacekeepers if the Centre would buy him new shoes or if he’d have to train with stains on the bottom of his sneakers. Thinks of the crumple of the boy’s forehead as it hit the wall, the spurts of red that coat his fingers and dry sticky and rinse pink when he washes his hands in the sink.
Distance, she said. Weapons give you distance. The Centre taught him to find his anger and his rage and let it bubble and boil until it spilled over into his hands, until there’s nothing else to do but lash out and fight. He thinks of all that and pushes it into the sword, imagines the steel soaking it up like the water they stick the blade in after it’s forged.
For the first time Nero thinks - maybe they’re right. Maybe it really is a show. Maybe he can push it all into the sword and keep it far away, and it won’t infect him like it did his dad.
He wins his fight, and his hands are clean.
Five years later the platform rises. A sun-bleached Arena, rubble and rock and rust-red stone, the distant horizon a sea of heat shimmer. And at the centre of the ring of tributes a waist-high jumble of broken concrete, rebar and crumbling brick.
WARNINGS: child abuse, ableism, mentions of sexual assault/incest, death, Hunger Games-typical violence
Nero at seven years old is the biggest boy in his grade, though nobody notices. He knows how to stay out of sight, to hunch his shoulders and keep his head down and just keep shuffling so that people look past him. He’s too big for the bullies to bother, and since he never takes anyone else’s lunch the other kids don’t pay attention either. He’s just there, in the corner, like a rock or a lump of coats or an old hat somebody forgot about.
The teachers only ever call on him at the beginning of the year and he never answers, just sits and stares at them without moving his face. Soon enough they stop. One time he hears a couple of them talking; one says it’s a shame about him, how he must’ve been dropped on his head as a baby and now he has a brain full of rocks. How he’ll probably end up in the mines, because at least you don’t have to know how to think or read or use fancy words to grab a pickaxe and smash stones. They flinch and stop mid-sentence when Nero turns the corner but he just walks past without letting his expression flicker.
“See?” says one of them once he’s past. “Nothing there. He seems sweet enough, at least.”
Sweet. Nothing there. Brain full of rocks. The words rattle around in Nero’s head and won’t settle down, buzzing buzzing buzzing like bees in a jar, and he takes the long way home. He winds up one side of the street and down the other, cutting through yards and gardens until finally he can’t put it off anymore. Finally he’s home, the big white house with the white front gate, pretty as a picture, where he opens the door and toes off his shoes, quiet, quiet, way more quiet than a big boy his size should be. His classmates are still tripping over their feet, running into tables, crashing into each other at recess and being sent inside with bloody noses but Nero knows stealth.
He’s crept halfway down the hall to the stairs when the study door slams open. “And where the fuck were you?”
Sweet. Nothing there. Brain full of rocks. Nero whips around and glares at the man filling the door frame, barely any light making it around his massive bulk. “What the fuck do you care?” Nero snarls. If only his teachers could hear him now. “I was walking.”
“The hell kind of language is that?” his father demands.
“The hell do you think I heard it?” Nero challenges back.
Stomp. Stomp. Stomp. The picture frames on the wall rattle. Nero lets his face go slack and his body limp a second before the blow lands (he used to steel himself but that hurts worse, live and learn). It rocks him back and then it’s over. Stomp stomp stomp the other way, slam goes the door and crash goes a picture frame as it hits the floor. Count to five and there’s the creak of the office chair, heavy and loud from a lot of weight dropped on it fast. Good, that’s safe then.
Up the stairs one at a time and there she is, tall and willowy at eleven like Nero guesses their mother must’ve been. All the pictures are gone now so he’ll never know. “Nero,” Missy chides, kneeling down. She holds his face in her hands, thumbs the sore spot on his cheek. “Why do you do that? Why do you make him mad? You know he can’t help it when you talk to him like that.”
Nero looks up at his half-sister, her big brown eyes and smooth dark skin. Last time he kept his mouth shut, his old man grabbed Missy’s arm and twisted it up behind her back for not clearing the plates fast enough after dinner. Dark finger marks bloomed against her forearm for days.
He shrugs. Missy’s mouth goes thin, and he pulls free of her and pushes past into his room, shutting the door behind him. That night they eat, and Missy clears the plates and washes the dishes, and his old man only grunts and heads back to his study without comment until bedtime. Another job well done.
Nobody ever notices Nero, but the pretty people in the white uniforms do. “Hey there,” says a lady, and she has bright shiny teeth and dark shiny hair and Nero stops in the hallway. She’s pretty and she’s smiling, and nobody pretty smiles like that at Nero unless they want something. “Have you heard about the Athletics and Personal Growth Centre?”
Nero doesn’t answer, just stares at her like he does the teachers. Her friend, a tall, pretty man with a smile that’s just as bright and shiny, flags down a couple of kids and presses brightly-coloured papers into their hands. Nero blinks once, slowly. People think he’s stupid when he does that.
The lady’s smile sharpens, eyes going just a little bit narrow like she knows his trick and he ain’t fooling. “It’s like an after school club,” she says. “You meet up with a bunch of other kids from all over, play sports and games, and you get a nice snack before going home. It’s a lot of fun.”
Fun, games, sports? No thanks. Nero blinks again, slower this time.
She beckons him forward with a gesture, reaches under the table and slides him a piece of paper. It’s different from the other ones, filled with laughing kids with the same bright, shiny smiles as they run and climb ropes and throw big, colourful balls. These kids are older, harder, their smiles just as bright and shiny but less wide and happy, more like they know a secret. A girl rests a sword across her well-muscled shoulders; a big boy has another around the neck, flipping him down onto the mat.
This time Nero doesn’t blink. He frowns instead. The lady’s smile twists, takes on an edge. “You also learn to fight.”
Fight. A drumming starts up in the back of Nero’s head, and he forgets all about blinking and frowning and staring. “Fight how?” he asks. The words are the first he’s spoken in school in two years.
She grins, folds the paper nice and small and hands it to him so he can slide it into his pocket and it won’t make a bulge. “Come by and see.”
Nero learns to fight, all right. He learns how to break a wrist with a flick of his hand; where to land a punch to make the eyes tear and swell shut; how to swing a sword so it slices through a target without jarring his arm so badly he drops it. He learns how to throw a spear in a perfect arc; how to set his own shoulder after dislocation; how to say more with a hard stare and clenched jaw than a hundred spitting curses. He learns the home districts of over 700 boys and girls and how they died, but not any of their names.
All this by the time he’s twelve years old. The Centre is more efficient than school ever was.
The problem is, at thirteen you’re supposed to go full-time. At thirteen you move into the Centre permanently, lose your last name and family ties and become not just a Centre kid but a tribute candidate, and Nero can’t do that. He can’t leave Missy alone in that house for five years until he wins the Games and comes to save her. Especially not right now, not when she’s been throwing up every morning in the bathroom even while trying to hide it.
It’s okay, though. He’s had five years of training and he can hold his own; his old man will be sore about the loss of the stipend once Nero quits, but he can fucking deal. A few more years and Missy will be past Reaping age, able to get a job and earn her own money, and Nero will be fifteen and that’s old enough to work in the mines if you’re big enough they don’t ask.
The head trainer calls him into her office and asks him if he’ll be taking the entrance exam for Residential. Nero shakes his head. “You’re top of your year, you know,” she says. “Number one.”
He didn’t expect that. Each kid who goes to the Centre wears an identical bracelet made of woven leather strands; every year they get a new one one, coloured white, blue or black based on where they rank. Nero’s have been black each time, but so have one-third of his cohort. He didn’t know he was first.
Nero has never been first at anything before, except maybe for lining up and taking a beating.
“Can I ask why you’re not going to stay?” she asks him, tilting her head. “You’re very talented. I think you could go far.”
Nobody’s called him sweet-nothing-there-head-full-of-rocks in years. Here Nero is nothing but potential, raw and powerful. It feels good, but Missy means more than a hundred black strands. Nero shakes his head again.
She studies him, tapping one finger against the desk. “There’s someone at home,” she says. “Someone you don’t want to leave.”
Nero hesitates, but the Centre has done right by him so far, and what are they going to do, march into his home and shoot Missy so he’ll have no one left? They’re not bad people, and everybody who goes into the Arena has a choice. Just like everyone has the choice to say no. “My sister,” he says slowly. “She’s sick.”
The trainer nods. “That’s hard, I understand,” she says. “Remember, if you enter Residential you’ll have an even higher stipend, which could help her buy medicine.” He hadn’t thought of that; it must have shown on his face, because she smiles, not unkindly. “You still have time to decide; you can take the exam any time the year after you turn thirteen. Sometimes we can help people in ways other than being there in person.”
He tells her he’ll think about it, just because the people at the Centre have been nicer to him than anyone in the world except for Missy, but there’s no way. There are almost a hundred other kids who will be testing into Residential, but Missy only has one brother.
The old man’s shouting tears Nero out of sleep. He pushes off the blankets, stumbles and nearly falls from his bed to the floor, legs shaking. His father’s voice thunders through the halls, coming from outside Missy’s room at the end of the hall near the stairs. Nero throws open his door, bare feet slapping against the cold floor.
“What the hell is this?” he roars, waving something in his clenched fist. Paper, crumpled in his hand. “I found this in the trash, now you tell me what’s going on!”
“I don’t know,” Missy says, rearing back, both hands over her stomach the way she used to protect her face. “I don’t know what that is -“
“Oh, I think you do,” he snarls. “Whose is this then, the boy’s? Now tell me, you lying slut! Tell me whose it is! Who have you been sneaking around with!”
Missy jerks back. “No one!” she cries out, and this time her voice rings with anger. “It’s yours! Whose else would it be? You’re the only one who - who ever -“ Her voice breaks, tears streaming down her cheeks before she covers her face with both hands. “Like I would want anyone to touch me after -“
“Liar! You lying little bitch!” In all the years of listening to him rage, Nero has never heard him this furious. It drives a sharp spike of ice between his shoulder blades. “You come here right now, so help me -“
He takes a lunging step forward toward Missy, who flings herself back until she hits the wall. Nero can’t see his face but he can guess at the ugliness twisting the hard features; he darts out from his room and barrels into his father, shoving him at the waist. “Leave her alone!”
His old man whirls on Nero, glaring down at him. “Stay out of this! Go back to bed before I make you sorry you ever were born.”
Nero balls his fists, and slowly, deliberately, he places himself between his father and his half-sister. “No,” he grits out. “Leave her alone. I won’t tell you again.”
“You go to that fancy Centre for a few years and you think you can take me on?” he demands, lip curling. “You’ve shown me disrespect since the day you could talk, but this is it. I’m sick of your mouth, you and your lying whore of a sister both!”
Nero still can’t read the paper, and he’s heard kids at the Centre snarl whore and slut at each other during some of the nastier training bouts, but none of them ever used the words in a way that told him what it means. But right now, with his father spitting and shouting, muscles tensed and veins bulging, it doesn’t really matter.
And the thing is - Nero has training, but in the Centre he never fights anyone except kids his own age. If he fights a trainer there are weapons and they’re teaching him the proper forms; they aren’t over twice his size and coming at him with rage-twisted features. If he passes his entrance exam then he’ll start learning techniques for people much bigger but it’s too soon, what can he do -
Missy gasps and slides along the wall until she finds the door, ducks inside and slips into the opening. Good, but it won’t keep her safe for long. Nero’s blood pounds in his ears; everything tunnels to himself and the man in front of him, the man who’d done something to his sister, something that even if Nero can’t tell what it is he knows it’s bad right down to his gut. Something to do with Missy hiding and throwing up in the bathroom each morning, coming out shaking and red-eyed before disappearing into her room.
Nero stumbles backwards - his foot hits the edge of the stairs, his balance skewing - he nearly falls but catches himself, flinging his weight forward and tripping a few steps onto the landing just in time.
His old man, not so much. One foot goes over the edge, and for a second he catches himself - for a second he has his balance, he’s going to right himself and come back - but as time slows down, the decision crystallizes in Nero’s mind.
Before his brain can catch up and stop him, Nero reaches out and shoves, hard.
Thump-thump-thump-THUD crrrrunch.
A slumped shape at the bottom of the stairs, unmoving, head twisted oddly. Nero’s breath sticks in his throat; he creeps down the stairs one at a time, slowly, slowly, in case it’s all some kind of trick. Finally his feet leave the stairs and touch the floor; Nero creeps forward, bends down and looks close.
Breathing. His eyes are wide and glazed, and don’t flicker when Nero passes a hand in front of them, but the pulse in his neck flutters and air exits from his mouth in small, rapid puffs. Nero hisses, and an odd, dark twisting starts deep in his gut.
Ever since Nero can remember he’s taken hits so his old man would leave his sister alone, but it wasn’t enough. Whatever happened - while Nero was at the Centre, or while he slept, when, who knows - he couldn’t stop it, didn’t even know until it was too late. What’s to stop him from doing it again?
If Nero stops it now - stops it for good - he could take the entrance exam and go into Residential. That’s five more years of training, five more years of monthly stipends to help Missy. Then a lifetime if Nero wins the Games, a big house and anything she wants.
If he doesn’t -
A wash of red fills his vision, filling him down to his toes. His old man’s head already lies at a strange angle; a little more and - and.
Nero stands, legs unsteady, but then he places his foot down at the edge of his father’s jaw and his muscles stop trembling. He sucks in a breath, waits - no response, not even a twitch - and presses down as hard as he can, turning the head just that last bit more.
Crack.
Something bubbles up inside him, maybe laughter maybe vomit maybe both, and Nero staggers back. He kneels down, checks the throat, the nose - no pulse, no air. The feeling churns again and oh, this time it is vomit, sour and rising and pushing up up up, but they taught him how to swallow it down in training and so he does. Barely, sucking in gulping breaths of air and sticking his head between his knees and pinching the skin of his forearm until the pain registers, but it’s enough.
The trainers would give him a cookie for not upchucking. Wonder what they’d give him for an early kill.
The laugh explodes out of him before he can yank it back. He’s seen tributes laugh after a kill on television but never understood it, not until it’s all too much and it needs to go somewhere. Nero claps both hands over his mouth to stop it but he can’t, and when he looks up there’s Missy at the top of the stairs, staring back at him.
She isn’t laughing. Not even close. Her eyes are wide and brown and frightened, her mouth ajar, and Nero has seen that look before. Seen it every time his old man gave him a smack or knocked his head against the wall. Fear and horror and revulsion, only his old man isn’t here now. He’s lying at the bottom of the stairs, dead, and they both know whose fault it is that he’s there.
Half a dozen phrases crowd Nero’s mind - it was an accident; he fell; I didn’t mean to - but what comes out is, “I had to do it.”
Missy’s breaths come in shaking gasps. “Nero, what did you do?”
“I had to!” Nero says again. “He - he hurt you!”
“That doesn’t mean I wanted him dead!”
Anger spikes through him like a knife jammed up from the base of his skull. “Well he’s dead now!” Nero snaps, and she flinches away. Why isn’t she happy? She hated him, too, and whatever he did to her - whatever he was going to keep doing to her - was so awful that she never told Nero. “He’s never going to hurt you again.”
Missy shakes her head. “Nero, he’s not the one I’m scared of right now.”
Everything is wrong, slipping sideways and he can’t stop it. Nero’s eyes burn, and he stalks away, grabs the phone off the cradle and hits the number of the local Peacekeeper garrison. He gives his name and address when the man answers. “I killed my dad,” Nero says. He’d be surprised at his level of calm except what’s there to be surprised about anymore? “You should come take me away. You don’t need to hurry, I’m not going to run.”
He hangs up the phone, then sits down on the couch and waits.
They tell him he has a choice, the uniformed Peacekeeper who shows up at the door with the Centre official beside him. He can continue on with the Program and enter Residential once he turns thirteen, or he can join the juvenile offenders camp out west and break rocks fourteen hours a day until society deems him sufficiently rehabilitated.
Luckily for them Nero has run out of energy, because otherwise he might have laughed in their faces. Choice, right. He almost says the young offenders camp except that he’s heard of a couple kids who went there and never any who come back, and Nero might have a lot of rage and a fair amount of spite underneath his skin but he’s not suicidal.
Nero going to the mines to break rocks for the rest of his Reaping years wouldn’t help Missy, either, and so Nero bites his cheek and looks up at the clean-cut man and woman standing over him. “What about the stipend? My sister needs it.”
The lady from the Centre nods, short and professional. No shiny smiles and pretty pamphlets for him this time. Nero’s not surprised; nobody stays nice when they don’t need to anymore. “We can have the stipend sent to your sister, or to relatives if she has anywhere else to stay.” Nero shakes his head. “Head Office will arrange everything, but you need to come with us.”
Nero wants to look back over his shoulder to see if Missy is there listening, but no. She hid once the officers showed up, her bedroom door slamming while they all milled about and dragged the old man’s body out on a stretcher and bundled him up in the back of the big white van. She’s not going to come down and say goodbye. She’s going to stay in her room and cover her ears with her hands and stay there until the monster is out of her house.
“My sister is sick,” Nero says. He still doesn’t really understand it, not all the way, but that’s the sort of thing that seems important. He did kill his old man over it, after all. “If somebody helps her, then I’ll go.”
It’s a stupid threat - it’s not a threat at all, really, when the power is all on one side like that it’s more begging than anything - but they exchange looks and nod. “Someone will take care of her,” the Centre lady says. “Come on, Nero, it’s time to go.”
He doesn’t bring anything with him. There’s nothing in this house he wants that he can take. Nero shrugs his shoulders, scrubs a hand over his face and doesn’t look back.
“I heard he didn’t even take the entrance exam. I heard he’s a special case.”
“Oh yeah? Why is he so special?”
They don’t try to hide the whispers. This is Residential now, no secrets here. Nobody flinches when anyone rounds the corner because all of them were the monster in their own hometown once upon a time. The first year is a lot of butting heads and scrapping at free time and seeing who listens to the trainers when they say to cut it out. Kids who lose too many fights get cut. Kids who spit at the trainers and keep going get cut, too. Didn’t take Nero long to work out the rules.
Nero doesn’t say anything. In Residential it’s easy enough to go quiet again, nod at the trainer when they give him orders, speak when they tell him to and keep his mouth shut the rest of the time. But he does stare, and it’s funny how many kids who are used to fighting and breaking noses hate it when you stand there and look at them.
These two definitely hate it. He can see it: the tension around their eyes, the way their mouths thin, how they shift their posture so they’re standing at an angle to each other, widening their stances. Oh, he’s so scared. Have either of these kids ever seen a real fight, he wonders, or are they playground bullies hopped up on no-foul dodgeball and Centre brownies every time they gave somebody a scraped knee? He doesn’t move.
“So how come you’re a special case?” the first one challenges. “We earned our right to be here. We deserve it. If they’re letting in trash I think we deserve to know.”
They’re thirteen, Nero thinks. And here they all are in Residential, no parents, no families, everyone here on merit, but that’s parents behind those words as clear as the curl of his lip and they see something when they look at him. He’s not the one I’m scared of right now, Missy said. The Centre will train the spoiled rich boy out of this kid sure enough. They’re not going to train the killer out of Nero.
“Sure,” he says, and smashes the kid’s head into the wall until he hears the crunch.
A trainer pulls him aside later. “Listen,” she says. “Don’t do that again.”
Nero stares at her. Knows better than to talk back, question a direct order, but this feels - different. Years of listening, reading facial expressions and vocal tics for anything that might turn sharp or nasty. This is - he’s not sure what, but he’s pretty sure it’s not about the use of excessive force.
She catches his expression and gives him a flat stare. “I mean it. You want to terrify some cocky little shit, grab a sword.” Nero keeps staring, face slack and still, and she sighs. “You’re the only thirteen-year-old here who’s killed before. You’re here to learn how to do it nice and pretty for the cameras. You’re not here to bash in skulls. Use the swords.”
He frowns, and she sighs. “It’s not just about the Arena, Nero. It’s about walking out the other side. Weapons give you distance. We don’t have a lot of that, with what we do. Take it where you can.”
That afternoon, Nero takes the sword, feels its weight in his hands. The balance. Thinks of standing at the foot of the stairs, blood pooling dark at his feet. Remembers asking the Peacekeepers if the Centre would buy him new shoes or if he’d have to train with stains on the bottom of his sneakers. Thinks of the crumple of the boy’s forehead as it hit the wall, the spurts of red that coat his fingers and dry sticky and rinse pink when he washes his hands in the sink.
Distance, she said. Weapons give you distance. The Centre taught him to find his anger and his rage and let it bubble and boil until it spilled over into his hands, until there’s nothing else to do but lash out and fight. He thinks of all that and pushes it into the sword, imagines the steel soaking it up like the water they stick the blade in after it’s forged.
For the first time Nero thinks - maybe they’re right. Maybe it really is a show. Maybe he can push it all into the sword and keep it far away, and it won’t infect him like it did his dad.
He wins his fight, and his hands are clean.
Five years later the platform rises. A sun-bleached Arena, rubble and rock and rust-red stone, the distant horizon a sea of heat shimmer. And at the centre of the ring of tributes a waist-high jumble of broken concrete, rebar and crumbling brick.