BY THE END OF THE TRIBUTE PARADE, all Atlas wanted was to return to his chambers and strip off every piece of this ridiculous costume practically suctioned to his body and collapse into bed. Each percussive clash of a gong throughout Panem's national anthem still rang loud and clear in his ears, and each slow blink brought forth every face of every child he'd slashed to death all those years ago in an arena he'd tried to sever himself from to the back of his eyelids like an after-burn seared into the darkness. The moment he'd stepped off the chariot, his appetite had vanished.

When he'd glanced over to Alecto, however, her face was a sheet of steel, and her piercing blue eyes sliced through every tribute before her as she strode forward, cutting a straight line through the crowd bustling and bumbling around in the Training Centre. In the murky background, he could hear Evander rattling off about their dinner options to Alecto—who wouldn't answer him, testament to her less-than taciturn character—his voice a faraway sound as though Atlas had his head submerged underwater, and Atlas had to wonder if anyone else was as sick as he felt. Until he flicked his gaze forward and noted how quickly Chaff, who'd been within eye-shot, averted his gaze as though he'd been electrocuted upon contact. But, no, the victor from District Eleven hadn't been looking at Atlas.

Whether it was the way Alecto had won her Hunger Games or her unnerving vow of silence and general recondite nature, Atlas couldn't tell. What he could see, however, was how unsettled all the tributes seemed to be as she stalked towards the elevator, directed by the Capitol attendants with Evander and their escort in tow.

All these seasoned killers, professional survivalists who could slice another human being to pieces and rig explosives without blinking an eye in the face of all the damage they could do and all the destruction they have done, and not one of them could stand to maintain eye-contact with his nineteen-year-old daughter.

"Hold the doors!" Evander called, speeding his pace up to a slow jog as the elevator doors began sliding shut. In the nick of time, the doors stalled and then parted once more as a Capitol attendant hit the button on the side of the elevator.

Already, there were a party of four in the elevator: Atlas' gaze first zeroed in on Haymitch, who only smirked when he spotted the gold band adorning Atlas' ring finger, to which Atlas gave him a tight smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. Then he spotted Katniss, who glared at him with palpable mistrust, grey eyes guarded, and Peeta, who nodded awkwardly and offered him a small smile. Lastly, Atlas spotted a very naked and very smug Johanna Mason leaning lavishly against the railing, unbothered by her exposure as she talked a blue streak to Katniss, who stood stiff, clutching onto Peeta like she was on the verge of self-ejecting from the elevator and he was the last thread holding it all together. Every inch of Johanna's skin had been spray-painted gold to match her tribute parade costume, and it scintillated under the lights of the elevator.

Clearing his throat, Atlas averted his gaze respectfully as the elevator doors shut on the cramped party.

Beside him, Evander laughed, and let out a playful wolf-whistle as he gave Johanna a glancing once-over in appraisal. "Looking good, Jo."

Johanna only sent him a sardonic smile, all venom and teeth. Instead of gracing him with a response, Johanna turned to Alecto, who'd been pushed up against her from the lack of room. "You like?" Johanna asked, her tone half-mocking-half-flirtatious.

Blushing beat-red, Alecto looked away as Johanna picked up the ends of Alecto's white-blonde hair and ran her fingers through the wiry strands. Alecto's spine was ram-rod straight, and she looked every inch just as pained as Katniss, who tilted her head up and cast her smouldering gaze skyward. When Johanna turned to talk to Peeta, Alecto dropped her gaze to her feet, and Atlas caught the crease between her furrowed brows and the ghost of a frown on her lips—the first sign of emotion on her face that Atlas had seen in awhile that wasn't anger. Lifting a brow, Atlas watched the emotions chasing each other across the stoic plane of his daughter's face. Was it jealousy, that green-eyed glint in Alecto's eyes as Peeta chatted away amiably with the gloriously flesh-naked Johanna? It couldn't be. Alecto didn't seem like the jealous type, but that could only be outwardly. Internally, Atlas wouldn't know. Alecto kept her internal world private and impermeable, so nobody could stick their hands in there to mess things up.

When the elevator stalled on the second floor, Alecto is the first one out before the doors could even fully slide open. Atlas followed closely behind, bidding the others goodbye. Evander knocked his knuckles against Peeta's in a friendly gesture.

At dinnertime, after the Avoxes had laid out an exceptionally opulent spread at the table, Iko's entrance was announced by the quiet ding of the elevator pulling to the second floor and the clap of thunder outside the building. Lightning flashed, illuminating Iko's silhouette, showing, for a fraction of a moment, the permanent scowl etched onto her glass-sharp features, her ink-black hair loose around her shoulders. Even though Iko had excessive wealth, her clothing—olive green shirt and black pants tucked into combat boots—was modest, dull enough to pass for another training uniform. Presently, she walked without a cane, and her excruciating hobble was practically gone, subsided to a limp so subtle Atlas would've never noticed if he hadn't spent everyday of the past two years studying her, learning to read when Iko needed help that she wouldn't ask for. Her elbow was missing its splint, having been pieced back together by the expensive doctors in some Capitol hospital, and even though it was clear she didn't want or need a fuss, Evander rose from his seat, concern plastered over his expression.

"Took you long enough," Evander said, smiling as he went to her, feathering a hand on her lower back. "Does it still hurt?"

Rolling her eyes, Iko waved him off, but let him pin her with a searching look to inventory her newfound mobility. She flexed her newly repaired arm, the smoke-black wolves roaring up to the moon of her elbow snarling. "I'm fine, Ev. All fixed up."

Still Evander walked with her to her seat, and when an Avox moved to assist her, Evander was first to pull the chair out. Irritation thundered over Iko's expression, but she didn't comment. Only pulled her plate towards her as Evander took the seat beside her, and began to pile as much food onto her plate as she could while Atlas tapped the lip of her wine glass and an Avox responded in kind, pouring Iko a drink without prompt.

As they settled into the comfortable silence, only permeated by the dissonant scrape of their cutlery against the porcelain plates, and the light, mindless chatter between Alastor and Alecto's stylist, Atlas couldn't stop thinking about Haymitch's words: ask Iko about her ankle. His eyes kept catching on the gold band around his ring finger, and he didn't quite understand what this meant, but the feeling sat inside his gut like a pill that wouldn't dissolve.

Rebellion was something Atlas had never considered, but he could feel the heat of the fire, ignited by the one Katniss Everdeen, could see the glow of the flames razing the hills, and wondered when the inferno would come knocking down his door. He hadn't dared to even think about it. The consequences were too great to bear and he'd heard the stories of rebels silenced by Snow, their tongues cut and their backs sliced to ribbons by the lash of a whip. Had even heard the rumours of the lower Districts revolting, the rumblings of something bigger than themselves. He'd heard about the gunfire, the tales of the massacres that the Peacekeepers who'd been trained in District 2, the home he'd always known, brought back to their families, and the blood of the poor and the starving and the angry that speckled their hands. Atlas abstained from rebellion because he had a child to protect. He'd only shaken President Snow's hand twice—once when he'd won his Hunger Games, and the second, when he'd been invited to one of the President's extravagant galas and had done it as a courtesy—and Altas had sworn to himself that those were the only times he would ever be in direct contact with the president of Panem. Incurring his wrath was the last thing he wanted. Alecto's silence was unsettling, but it wasn't permanent as the servants surrounding them.

At least, he hoped it wouldn't be.

"Shall we talk training strategy?" Evander asked, eyes alight, and Atlas could see the ideas brimming, the cogs turning. Iko called it his mentor-face—he'd worn it during the time he'd mentored both Iko and her district partner, Alex, and it was equal parts cutthroat business-savvy and his own sunny disposition. His tan hands made a tower atop the table, his used plate whisked away immediately as the Avoxes replaced it with a clean one.

"It's pointless," Iko said, pursing her lips as she toyed with the mashed potatoes in the corner of her plate, "what haven't the Gamemakers seen already? Everyone's a victor in that room, and we've turned out all our tricks."

"That's why we need to think of something fresh," Evander pointed out, undeterred by Iko's pessimism. "Something that makes you stand apart from the others. Like Iko said, everyone in that room's a victor already, but who's going to be the one to come out on top? The victor of victors. That's how we have to sell this." Then, Evander's mentor-face seemed to soften at the edges, a mask lowered, as he regarded Alecto and Atlas. "I know it's a little different, and the circumstances suck, and I'd be sorry to see any one of you go, but we're going to need every bit of help we can get from the viewers in the Capitol. We have to appeal to them. Already, nothing comes before Katniss and Peeta's deal. We're clutching at straws."

"Alecto's a sharpshooter," Atlas said, chewing pensively on a stubborn piece of meat. "It's her specialty, but so is Katniss. They'll definitely give her the bow and arrow, and there's no guarantee that there's going to be non-traditional weapons in the arena."

"We could bring in the career alliance," Iko said, sipping at her wine. "During the group training sessions, start competing against one another. That's gotta be entertaining to watch. You're already friends, so what's a little friendly competition?"

"We'll have to push strong from start to finish," Evander said. He pointed his steak knife at Alecto. "You're fast. I know it. I watched your Games, and I got your stats from your old trainer back at the Academy. You clock a faster mile than Iko, and that's saying something. You're also the second youngest tribute in the arena. You'll be able to beat out over half these victors. And you—" Evander turned to Atlas, ocean blue eyes ablaze like the devil— "I know you're in retirement or something, but I see that muscle on you, the military-toughness that's still in there, old man. You're much healthier than most of the victors who've fallen prey to morphling and drinking their days away. The odds aren't stacked against you that much. And you have something that Cashmere and Gloss don't have. I know those two. They're pretty and they have teeth, but they see this Quarter Quell as a petty fight. You two, on the other hand, would kill for yourselves and for each other. That's something not many will understand. Everyone's fighting for themselves in there, but you're fighting for each other."

"Except Peeta and Katniss," Iko deadpanned.

Evander's grin turned skeletal, turned shark-like and wicked. "Yeah, but how real can that be?"

Underneath the laid-back, easy-going exterior that Evander put up, Atlas glimpsed the deadly career tribute, the vicious victor who'd walked backwards out of the death match with his arms outstretched to collect his accolades. They all saw it, too. Alastor blinked in shock, and the two stylists glanced up at Evander, stunned by his audacity. Crossing her arms over her chest, Iko leant back in her seat, the corner of her lips tugging up in a smirk, like she was waiting for Evander to say something that would blow the room to pieces. Like she was just waiting for the chaos to ensue.

"I mean," Evander said, the menace vanished, his equable and convivial disposition slipping back into place, already back-pedalling, remembering himself, "Somewhere in the crowd, there's gotta be a daughter and her father rooting for the people reflecting their situation, y'know? Sympathy points—personally, I'd argue that your situation's a little more tragic. You can find another partner in your life, but you can't find another father or another daughter. Not everyone likes a romance story."

Iko sighs in disappointment. "I liked where you were going with the first point."

Evander shrugged. "I have my reservations. You must have yours, too, don't you?"

Miming sealed lips, Iko smirked, like she knew something nobody else did, and trapped between her teeth was the eternal secret she never let anyone in on.

Later, after desert, when they watch the recap of the Opening Ceremony, none of them have much to say at all. Atlas cringes at his on-screen self, and averts his gaze, unable to keep watching. Again, it's just Alastor and their stylists making small comments on the state of the costumes, and how nobody has had any fresh ideas besides the District 12 stylists.

When the recap draws to a close, with Caesar Flickerman and Claudius Templeman making their closing remarks, Alecto excuses herself first, shooting up without ceremony and darting towards her room. Throughout the entirety of dinner, she'd kept her head down, and she'd barely participated in the conversation regarding their training strategies. But she'd heard everything. Whether she chose to retain that information or not was up to her, and would become clear tomorrow. Somewhere in the hallway, Atlas heard her bedroom door click shut.

After that, everyone decided to follow suit, bidding each other goodnight and retiring to their quarters. Atlas pressed a button on the remote control, and the hologram projector blinked out. Together, the remaining three victors walked as a group towards the bedrooms.

Evander's room was the first stop, and he paused by his door, sent Iko a look. "Wanna watch a movie, or something?"

Iko shook her head. "Not tonight. I just wanna pass out for eight hours."

"Okay, then," Evander said, shrugging nonchalantly. He scratched the back of his neck, and sent Atlas a sleepy smile. "Night, guys."

And then his door shut and Atlas turned to Iko with a searching glance, jutting his chin at Evander's closed door. "So how long has that been going on?"

Iko rolled her eyes, sneering. "We're just friends, dad. We hang out. I mean, we live next to each other, for fuck's sake."

Atlas grunted, and rubbed a phantom itch on an old scar mottling his left bicep. "Thought you didn't have any friends."

Iko narrowed her eyes into slits. "You're right. My friends are either dead or dying. It's a tough place to be in."

Atlas sighed. "When will you forgive me?"

"I don't need to."

Atlas pursed his lips, looked away, then turned back to Iko, who stood there, waiting expectantly. His gaze darted down to her leg, and his voice was solemn and low. "How's the ankle?"

The effect was instantaneous. Iko's expression hardened like molten lava solidifying in the open air. She snatched his right hand up, and saw the glint of the gold band around his finger. She tapped a nail against it thrice, like a warning.

"Come," Iko said, her voice barely above a whisper, but still a command that froze the air between them.

She strode into her room, and Atlas followed suit a beat later. Iko led him into her ensuite bathroom, pulled the toilet lid down, twisted the tap to turn on the water with more force than required. Atlas sensed the tension in her body, the sharp and mechanical movements overtaking her actions as she gestured for him to take a seat while she leant against the sink.

For a long moment, she fixed him with a razor-sharp stare, her dark eyes burning up like twin thermonuclear furnaces. Under her resentful gaze, Atlas didn't falter. He stared back, twice as stoic. He wouldn't relent. He'd made his choice, and if Iko was going to stay angry with him, so be it. He wanted her to look at it this way: his daughter was about to enter the Games for the second time, and he would tear himself to shreds on the outside. It wasn't that he didn't trust Alecto's capabilities, it was that the Games were unpredictable, and just because you escaped once by the skin of your teeth didn't mean you would be allowed to do so again. But he didn't know how. He'd already exhausted all his words with her.

As the water from the tap gushed into the sink, filling the air with a deafening static like the roar of a waterfall, Iko exhaled sharply through her nose.

"Why'd Haymitch ask me to talk to you?" Atlas asked, breaking the silence. He lifted up his hand, the ring gleaming under the pharmaceutical lights. "What have I bound my life to? What does this mean for Alecto?"

Iko's expression cooled immediately. "I made a deal with Haymitch. We do everything in our power to keep Peeta and Katniss alive—" her tone cracked, but it wasn't like she was about to cry, it was more of a lapse in her composure, where the bitterness leaked through the gaps— "and Haymitch guarantees there's a contact on the inside who can get everyone on the Mockingjay's side out. Alive. There are victors in this building who hate Snow as much as the rebelling districts do. I hate the man. Every night, I dream of tearing him apart, limb from limb, for what he's done to Alex. He's screwed us all, and he's screwing us all over again."

"So, it's personal."

"It's personal for everyone," Iko hissed. "I came from nothing. I was dirt poor, and I received nothing. I could've died, and nobody would've cared. My only option was the Games to drag me out of my poverty, and it happened, at a cost that crippled me. But there are other people, other people who aren't so lucky, other people who didn't have the same opportunities and options as I did, and their poverty is generational. They're trapped in that cycle forever, policed until the skin on their backs are broken and bloody, and if they drop dead, their families aren't even allowed time to mourn. They're exploited, and they're tired, and we've all been so fucking blind. We thought that the money and the training and the military upbringing made us better than them, but we're not. If anything, we're worse than the actual enemy. We're their lapdogs. And they're angry. I'm angry. Aren't you? I know Alecto is. Your daughter's being dragged through hell again. Doesn't that make you want to fight?"

"It makes me fear him," Atlas said, his voice nothing but a broken whisper. Fear was a small bird with its wings beating against the cage of his heart, frantic and desperate and unable to stop the avalanche crashing down on them all. All those words Iko was spouting could sick the dogs on them; Snow could have them slaughtered, and Alecto... Atlas couldn't bear to look at his own expression in the mirror. If there were cameras or bugs in the room, or if the door happened to be too thin, they could be in a predicament worse than mortal danger. "I don't want to fight anymore, Iko. A rebellion's happened once, and look how that turned out. They'll just keep winning, and we'll just keep dying."

"It's different this time," Iko insisted. "All our lives, we thought the fight was just between the districts, and we've just kept killing each other, hating each other, when we should've been unionising against the Capitol. They put your kid in the arena. Not the other districts. And Katniss—she's a little rough around the edges, I'll give her that, but she's done something nobody else has. Before, the rebellion was all anger without spark, and the fire starved before it could even light. This time, we have something catching. It's bigger than all of us. Katniss has banded us all, and we're not going to deny what's happening. We can't waste it."

Atlas shook his head. "Say I buy into all that. How can Haymitch guarantee that the both of us would get out? Is there any insurance?"

Iko shook her head. "You just have to trust."

"You're asking a lot." Atlas couldn't trust. Haymitch was a smart one. This could very well be a ploy to lower their guards and get Alecto killed so Katniss and Peeta would win. How Iko bought into that, Atlas didn't understand. Iko was the last person who would believe something this far-fetched. "And you're saying that, if I accept this offer, if I choose to join forces with Katniss and Peeta, I'd have to double-cross Cashmere and Gloss?"

"Yes," Iko snapped. "What are you not hearing? It's our only chance. I don't want to lose you or Alecto. I don't want to have to choose between the both of you. You say you want my forgiveness? Don't make me choose. Accept the alliance, and I'll tell you who you're working with."

Conversely, Atlas supposed, they both had their reasons. He had his for volunteering for this Quarter Quell, and Iko had hers for being angry with him. And just like he was trying to find community with her, she was just as well trying to make him understand.

"What's going on, Iko?"

The look on Iko's face was indecipherable as she dragged a finger down the length of the sink, tracing the lateral pattern of the grooves in the marble. "I never had a father. My mother never kept any pictures, so I don't even know what he looks like, and I couldn't even rely on imagination to stitch together some semblance of an idea because she never spoke of him, and asking for any information about this mystery man was essentially asking for a beating. I grew up, alone, in a shitty little shack we could barely call a house because it was falling apart with age and lack of proper care and we couldn't afford repairs. My mother was wheelchair bound and she had no means of income because she couldn't work, so we relied on tesserae and the charity of strangers.

"In her own way, I supposed she loved me, but it wasn't the kind of love that I needed. It's not the kind of love you have for Alecto—the kind of love I wished I got the chance to know, but I have to make peace with the fact that I never will. Alex was the closest thing I had to family. He loved me. For years, he loved me, even when I was monstrous and broken and didn't know that I could be loved, or that I had any to give. And then he was gone. And I had no one.

"The day Alecto volunteered for her Hunger Games was the day I realised I didn't have to be so alone. Because, on the train that first day I was her mentor, even though my tutelage was harsh because I'd shut my heart and became this mangled, cold thing, you took me in. I may not have grown up with a father, but I ended up finding one. You only really had to care for one child, and yet, you treated me like your second. You let me into your home and never asked anything of me in return. Why? I've always wanted to ask, but I never knew how. Do I just remind you of your daughter? Why else would you care about me?"

Why me?

In the silence permeated by the white noise of the guzzling water running from the tap, Atlas measured Iko with an undaunted and unfaltering look, and in his heart—that old, braying thing that still kept on kicking like a stubborn ox despite the losses he'd suffered and the stresses threatening to snap at its strings—an ancient ache shook loose. He heard the strain in her voice—one note away from cracking apart. Despite the cool mask she wore, the defiance in the jut of her sharp chin, Atlas saw the fear and the pain behind the armour. Iko was afraid. Afraid and consumed by the human condition of the need to be loved and to know that she could be loved. And Atlas understood why.

For so many years, practically all her life, Iko had parred herself down into the shape of a monster, because it was what served her. But, deep down, she was just like everyone else, vicious tenacity aside, there was the little girl inside screaming to be heard, begging to be loved, whose pleas were silenced and shoved into a drawer. But hiding it away wasn't the same as extinguishing it for good. Atlas heard the desperation underlying her callous tone. All Iko wanted to know was if he cared about her because she deserved to be cared for, and not because his feelings towards her was contingent on the fact that she was just some caricature of Alecto that he couldn't bear to leave out in the open for the world to ravage.

As a father of one, Atlas knew his sole responsibility lay with Alecto, but as a father of one, he also felt a certain compulsion to care for the calf whose mother had left in the cold to grow its own set of teeth and whose father was not even a wisp of a memory. No human being was mean to be alone. People were meant to help each other, and no matter how independent, no matter how accustomed to the solitude, you couldn't live if there was no one there to take care of you. And Atlas cared. It was his only vice. He cared more than he could protect from the world.

From what little Atlas knew, the house that built Iko Moriyama was broken shards of character and sheer willpower haphazardly glued together by harsh hand and violence and that eternal anger like a dark force binding the jagged pieces by force alone into something half-whole. Iko carried her hatred around not like a burden to bear but a talisman, this fleshy, malignant thing that she didn't know where to put down or how to excise. And Atlas pitied her. For her hatred had one target with no face. One target that was barely a ghost. Her father, whom Iko had no memorabilia of, so she couldn't even place her malevolent feelings towards because there was no face to hate. Not even a name. A surname, perhaps, but no first name to even speak. In that alone, there would be no catharsis, no absolution of her hatred. Iko had to hold that hate inside her until she could mould it into something akin to a protective and resistant armour, until she couldn't recognise where the plating ended and where the flesh began. And when the Games ripped away the only person she had ever loved, Iko could finally put all that hatred on President Snow.

It didn't make the pain any easier to bear.

"Because you needed someone," Atlas said, finally, his tone stunningly unwavering. Exhausted, maybe, because Atlas was tired of having to explain his intentions over and over. "Because you were just a girl, and everyone needs someone. We've all done horrible things, but we did them to survive, and we did them because we believed they were the right thing. And just because we've committed those unspeakable acts doesn't mean we're not worthy of being cared for. I may be just some old man with my own baggage, and you may not believe me, but I just care about you, Iko. I can't not, and I choose to care. I do it without condition."

Iko's eyes went glassy. She blinked, and tears rolled down her cheeks. Atlas had never seen Iko cry before—not even when Alex was brought up around her—and his heart plunged like a stone into his gut. Her gaze maintained its glowering intensity, though.

"Now, do you understand why I'm so mad at you?" Iko sniffed, wiping away her tears with the back of her hand. "Alecto means everything to me. She's like my little sister. But you mean everything to me, too. I can't lose you. I can't lose another person I love. Do you see? I've lost everything once, I cannot afford to do it again. I will do everything in my power to help Alecto because it's what you want, and it's what you'd die for, you have my word, but I can't help you. I can't save the both of you. You're not Katniss and Peeta. The system has no use for you or Alecto."

Atlas held her stare for an endless moment. "I don't know your father, and I hope I never will, but he made a huge, unforgivable mistake, leaving you behind."

Iko let out a laugh, but there was no humour tied to the action. "For the record, Evander was wrong. You don't get another partner in your life. At least, I'll never get another one. But you can find another father."

Atlas grunted, and opened up his arms, drawing Iko into a tight embrace. "Come here, stupid girl."

Unable to stop the tears, Iko shut her eyes and leaned into the hug. The last time she'd been held like this, Iko had been seventeen, and Alex had been a warm body, and it'd be the last time they'd ever hold each other. She hadn't realised how starved of touch she'd been until now.

Iko sniffled. "I love you, Dad."

Letting his eyes fall shut, Atlas' jaw clenched, and his throat swelled thick with unchained emotion.

"I love you, too, kid."

AUTHOR'S NOTE.
it's been almost a year since i updated this lol i am so sorry

ANYWHORE. ik i've definitely lost readership, but if you're reading this and if you're still invested, thanks :') means everything to me 🤍

also iko makes a ton of points and i stand by that. eat the rich y'all