FEAR EXPLODED FROM THE CORE OF HER SPINE as the boy wrenched him off her and threw her to the ground. Lying on her back, Alecto wasn't frozen from the shock of the impact or the pain of the blow, but from the sheer, paralysing terror as she watched her district partner advance on her. Beneath her, the checkered tiles felt like mallow, like she was sinking into it and no matter how much she fought, no matter how much she writhed and thrashed, it felt like she was stuck in treacle and her limbs wouldn't cooperate. Though she knew the ground was rock solid, made of marble, easily escapable, she was helpless. Trapped.

All she could do was lie there, watch as his tall shadow fell over her like an imposing stain, as something wet and thick trickled from the hole cut into his chest where his heart should've been, dark as a void. As he stood over her, the sword in his hands gleaming, Alecto made the horrific realisation that it was blood pouring down the front of his shirt from the sucking chest wound. And that she couldn't see his face. Couldn't make out the features she'd memorised from years of watching his sure movements, stalking him like a predator in the prairie, as the shadows elapsing over his face obscured everything but the wicked grin like a vicious slash in the darkness. Cold dread clawed at her chest, and Alecto opened her mouth into a scream, at the same time the boy opened his.

All that came out was his voice, that velvet rasp she couldn't shake:

"You'll never be your father."

And then the sword came bearing down on her in a bright arc.

Mouth open in a silent scream, Alecto wrenched herself out of the dark just as the blade made contact with her skull. Outside, the world was still just as dark as the inside of her room, and there was only the silence. Wide awake now, her heart pounding and pounding and pounding away in her chest like a rabid prisoner beating his desperate and manic fists against the bars of her ribcage, Alecto breathes hard, chest heaving, the memory slipping from her head like a smokestack bleeding ghosts. When the fog dissipates, her mind is sharp and reeling. It's not real, it's not real, it's not real, he can't hurt you anymore, it's not real, it's not real, it's not real— that boy is dead. You know it. You've held his stilled heart in your hands, warm flesh proof that you would be going home.

But the fear had remained. And Alecto was trapped there, inside that very last day in that insidious arena that'd sought to drive her off the deep end, like splinters stuck under the skin; inside that very last day like an overturned bowl of blood; inside that very last day that stretched on landslide-heavy and unending. Nobody ever left the Games without leaving something behind, and taking a piece of the arena with them. Her father had taken the stoic cold, the arid tundra freezing up his insides. Iko had taken with her the teeth, the talons, the wild of the old world and the prehistoric preserved in memory, stuck in the past, unable to move on. Alecto had taken the mania, this madness that'd been coursing right through her. In wonderland, the back of the tape that'd captured the 73rd Hunger Games read, the dreams turned sour and the poison rotted the insides. Hallucinations caused by toxins released by white roses in the maze drove the tributes mad. An interview with the Gamemakers of that year disclosed that some of the hallucinations were strong enough to corrupt the mind for nights on end.

Her hands hadn't stopped trembling. Alecto didn't dare close her eyes. Every time she blinked, she saw it. The monster haunting her at every corner of the labyrinth, the twisted maze of her mangled mind. The march hare, a grey silhouette the size of a man cut into fragments by the shadows, the vicious, blood-rusted blade in his hand gleaming like a fang. Every night, he came at her, forcing her deeper and deeper into the arena. Every night that elapsed, his fur looked worse and worse for wear, made patchy and decayed, stained and matted with the red of blood. At every turn, she saw him. Every flicker of movement, every blurry shadow in periphery, every brush against something soft but firm, every whisper of the wind through the rafters and flutter of wings was him, coming after her, stalking her, the slick of his blade against the walls echoing down the corridor of her skull.

Only the march hare haunted her more than the last boy she'd killed to get home.

There was a stampede in her blood that unworked her. Over and over, with shaking hands, Alecto picked the bones off the floor and put her body back together. Wasn't that what life was like, running from the ghosts within you that tore you apart at your seams? How many times had she died in the night only to get out of bed next morning? In her dreams, she is always the hunted. In her dreams, he is always laughing, taunting: stupid girl, the arena will devour you soon, and it's always soon and she's always running.

Disentangling herself from the sheets that'd wound itself around her body like a white python, Alecto wiped the sweat dripping down her brows, and slid out of bed and made her way to the bathroom. 

Upon entry, the motion sensors triggered the automated system, and the lights came flickering on along with the panel of options that presented itself to her on a projected screen that greeted her. With a wave of her hand, the panel vanished, and Alecto was left standing by the sink to deal with her reflection. In the mirror, Alecto's face was unblemished and contorted into its solemn expression. Her skin was pale and littered with small scars where the point of Nikolai's knife had dug into her temple on the left side of her face, trailing in a broken line down to the left corner of her mouth. Her white-blonde hair was wild and unkempt, untamed and untameable, falling in snowy wisps around her sharp shoulders. Her eyes—her father's eyes—were ice and death, nothing survived in them. Only ghosts and other dead things survived the frost.

A beat passes, and Alecto starts moving.

And doesn't stop.

It's like swimming: if you stop, you drown.

She flicks the tap on, bends over the sink and washes her face after gulping water straight from the tap to soothe her dry throat, then straightens and starts brushing her teeth. She ignores her reflection, stares at the foam dripping into the sink so she won't have to see movement and set the hairs on her body standing on its end the way it always did each time she thought she saw the march hare again. When she's done washing up, she heads out to the closet, where the lights flicker on, and the clothes arrive on a rack that slides out of the wall through a panel. There's a whole selection to go by, but Alecto only chooses what's most familiar to her: a simple, breathable grey shirt and stretchy black leggings.

Moments before the sun rose, casting light over the gleaming rooftops of the buildings and the skyscrapers marring the horizon outside her window, Alecto began her morning routine. The first set of push-ups were excruciating, and she struggled through a fast fifty before she flipped around and started the crunches. With each movement, each strain, her muscles burned, and her body threatened to shudder apart, but she refused to stop. Refused to give in, a perpetual motion machine, refused to let herself get lost in the memory maze again. Only when her arms buckled under her, and the sun had begun to stream light into her room, did she quit. She showered quickly, let the automatic drier blow away the droplets of water and dry her hair, and swapped her clothes for a fresh set.

When it was time to get to breakfast, she shoved her feet into a pair of combat boots that, although were new, felt as though they were already comfortably moulded to her feet. When she walked, they dragged no weight, and she made no sound.

Everybody knows that there's nothing you can do about the skeletons in your closet, nothing you can do to expunge the guilt and absolve the innocent blood staining your conscience, so you dig a hole in the ground and you bury the bones.

* * *

AT EIGHT, ALECTO AND HER FATHER WERE THE FIRST ONES TO MAKE IT TO TRAINING. Her father was watching the clock with that ever-present frown on his face, and Alecto was watching the Gamemakers milling about in their elevated platform cut into the wall, sipping their drinks and engaged in conversation, paying no mind to the two tributes milling about the training facility. They weren't allowed to touch the weapons just yet, but that didn't mean they couldn't look. Alecto surveyed the scene. Separated by glass walls, the training simulations were lined up around the room. In the middle were survival skill stations—perhaps needed for a refresher course after years of living in luxury and wealth. Nobody in this room needed to struggle to get by anymore, but they got by chased down by the psychological scars.

"What do you think the arena's gonna be like?" Atlas asked, looking at his daughter.

Alecto shrugged. She pointed to the Gamemakers. It's up to them.

"I suppose," Atlas said, his expression twisted into that stoic mask, before he regarded her with that impish gleam in his eye she rarely saw. "Wanna make a bet?"

Alecto narrowed her eyes. Nodded.

"Last year was a forest. I don't think it's going to be anything like that. Maybe a coastline, a beach. Or an abandoned city. I think it's an abandoned city. What do you think?"

Alecto held up a finger. First option. She didn't know why, but she had a feeling she was going to be right. Atlas grunted in assent, and they shook on it.

At half-nine, the elevator doors slid open, and Katniss and Peeta alighted, entered the room holding hands. Alecto thought about what Evander had said last night. How real can it be? It looked pretty real to her, not that it mattered in any capacity to her survival or her father's. Across the room, Katniss met Alecto's steel-eyed gaze, and her features shifted into a scowl.

By ten, only half the victors had shown up, and when Atala, the head trainer, ran through the list of training simulations and survival stations, seemingly undeterred or indifferent to the lack of attendance, Alecto spotted the District 1 tributes. She caught Cashmere's eye, and the blonde woman sent her a toothy grin, all pearly whites and savage charm. And when Atala released them from the briefing, the victors dispersed in groups to the different stations. This place was supposed to be a proving ground, but there was no need to show everyone how monstrous you can be if you've already shown that you could take a handful of lives for the crown. That, and the fact that everyone in the room had already been acquainted with the ugly sides of themselves. They'd all been through the same thing, and there was just as much blood on their hands as there were on your own.

Immediately, Alecto dragged her father by the wrist to the spear-throwing section, where Peeta and Chaff stood, admiring the weapons. Katniss had disappeared to a survival station in the back of the room.

"Atlas, how've you been, my man?" Chaff greeted, with a welcoming smile, and clapped her father on the arm with his only hand. And when her father responded in kind, Chaff's smile didn't falter. He regarded Alecto with just as much congeniality, but there was a distance between them and Alecto wasn't sure if it was her that'd created the rift or him that'd put it there. Either way, neither of them dwelled on it, and Chaff gestured at the weapons rack. "You want first go?"

Without hesitation, Alecto snatched a spear off the rack and headed towards the throwing line three dozen yards from the target. Winding her arm back, Alecto sucked in a steadying breath, and then she threw as she exhaled. The spear sliced through the air, and skewered the dummy through the bullseye hard enough to set it rocking back and forth from the force.

Alecto headed back to the group, and her father nodded in approval. Shy of beaming with pride from the validation, Alecto felt her steps lighten. Both Chaff and Peeta looked impressed.

"Nice," Peeta said, sending her a smile.

Alecto met his friendly gaze with a stiff nod. Peeta's smile turned puzzled, but didn't question her vow of silence.

One-by-one, they took turns hurling spears at the target, inching back from the throwing line, pushing the limits as far as the station trainer allowed them to. As they wore down the weapons rack, they talked about anything else other than the Games. Alecto listened in, but didn't participate, and although Peeta tried his best to include her, he gave up after she practically gave him the cold shoulder.

After awhile, only Atlas and Alecto's spears maintained their accuracy. Peeta's spear began to fall just inches shy of the target when they hit sixty yards, and by then, Chaff had retired to a survival station, where he had Johanna rub his aching shoulder as they made light conversation. Her dark skin was slick with oil from the combat station, having just gone her round with the trainer, and she held her shirt in one hand. Her sports bra was grey, soaked through with sweat. Her body was made of hard planes and defined lines. Alecto eyed the stark ridges of muscle, the way her back muscles rippled each time she made a show of jamming her thumb into Chaff's shoulder, eliciting a playful shout of faux agony from him. Their laughter echoed around the room, a jarring current clashing with the slick of weapons and grunts of effort from the other victors. Something in the pit of Alecto's gut burned when she spotted Johanna and she quickly looked the other way just as Johanna turned.

"I think I want to go brush up on my hand-to-hand combat," Atlas said with a huff, watching the line for that station diminish slowly. "You coming?"

Alecto shook her head and pointed to the sword-fighting station, where the District 5 male tribute was hunched over in the corner, hurling his guts out, filling the air with the sharp tang of wine and regurgitation. Atlas shrugged. Before she turned away, he told her, "make some friends, would you?"

Alecto scowled, and her father rolled his eyes, muttering something about anti-social behaviour as he . Friends. For nineteen years, she'd had none (save for Johanna, but, then again, Alecto didn't know the word to describe the nature of their relationship). Nobody came close enough to know her like that, and it wasn't like she tried either.

As she approached the weapons rack posted by the station, the trainer by the station seemed to recognise Alecto. She grinned at her, but Alecto only stared blankly, ignoring her efforts for reconciliation. Alecto picked up a short sword, hands closing around the hilt like the weapon was an extension of her hand, like it'd been made for her.

"On a scale of the morphlings from Six to you're going to slaughter us all, how fucked are the rest of us?" A sharp voice at Alecto's shoulder snarked.

Alecto pursed her lips, but she didn't grace Johanna with an answer. Instead, she moved towards the training simulation, but Johanna side-stepped directly in front of her, blocking her way. Johanna's shirt had been abandoned, and her thick black hair was bound up in a ponytail, little wisps escaping near her hairline slicked against her forehead with sweat. She stood with her arms propped up on her hips, and there was a wicked smirk painted on her lips. Alecto stared her down with a flat expression, not wanting to engage. But each time Alecto tried to sidle past her, Johanna intercepted, not letting her get to the training simulation, mirth sparking bright in her dark eyes.

Gritting her teeth, Alecto smothered the flames of her frustration, refusing to give Johanna the satisfaction of knowing she was burrowing under her skin. If Johanna was offended by her distinguishable lack of engagement, she didn't show it. Instead, she persisted.

"So?" Johanna asked, cocking her head, a dangerous gleam in her searing gaze.

Alecto only feigned stepping to the right before darting around her, her shoulder colliding with Johanna's. The contact sent her heartbeat skyrocketing, and she felt Johanna spin round with the force.

"This is how you wanna play, huh?"

Alecto ignored her as she stalked towards the simulation.

Johanna rolled her eyes, blowing out an explosive sigh. "Whatever. Come talk to me when you've taken that stick out your ass."

Alecto didn't even grant her a glare. Hurt flickered briefly across Johanna's expression before she spun on her heel and stormed off towards another training simulation, where she wrenched a rather vicious looking axe off the weapons rack, yelled, "outta my way, fish man!" at Finnick, when he approached her with a flirtatious grin, and began hacking away at the simulations with gritted teeth and the fury of a thousand tempests at sea.

Just then, her father came over. "Everything okay?"

Flipping the sword over her knuckles in a practiced move, Alecto shrugged, nonchalant, and then she scurried up to the simulation floor before anyone else could stop her.

At lunch, Alecto watches her father and a group of other victors—including Peeta—push together a few benches to form one big table, so that everyone can sit together and eat. Alecto wonders what the Gamemakers must make of this act of tribute solidarity. Either way, she doesn't entertain the thought for long. Avoiding Johanna is a difficult task, considering her loud chatter never seems to be far from earshot, and they do bump into each other a couple of times while Alecto's at the food-laden carts scooping food onto her tray. Though Alecto's suctioned herself to her father to prevent socialising with the others, it proves to be a little counter-productive, considering her father's still making polite conversation with the others.

When they finally take a seat, Alecto wedges herself between Katniss and her father. She takes a look around the cafeteria, noting the diminished numbers of victors who'd managed to drag themselves out of bed and into some semblance of sobriety. They were a feeble bunch, but the amount of noise they'd made as they talked about their lives at home and about the other victors they'd been acquainted with during their years could've been mistaken for a crowd in an auditorium. Only Katniss ate in silence, and to Alecto's relief, Katniss hadn't tried to make conversation. It was clear that although the silence between them was far from companionable, they had this understanding that if neither engaged, they'd be comfortable. It was so strange, that their Games had come in succession, and that Katniss was almost Alecto's age. On her victory tour, Alecto had visited the destitute and desolate District 12 and had been met with a wall of pitiful faces, sunken and swollen from starvation—and if she hadn't been so numb during those months, she'd have been horrified by the conditions.

"Here," Atlas said, spooning a bunch of sliced carrots onto Alecto's plate, and despite her visible aversion to greens, she let him. "Eat more greens. Your mother's turning in her grave already because I don't make you eat enough vegetables."

At the moment, Alecto felt Katniss' gaze drilling into the side of her face. She didn't really know why, but she continued ignoring Katniss.

After lunch, against her father's advice to hit some of the survival stations to brush up on her knowledge of basic survival skills, Alecto kept up with the swords, because she missed the feel of a real weapon in her hands. Back home, she'd only had her father's punching bag to keep up her fitness with, and since she'd had no reason to return to the Academy, she'd gone without practicing. She spotted her father at the knife-throwing station, accompanied by Finnick and the two District 1 tributes, and figured he was solidifying the career alliance.

At the press of a button, the simulation commenced. And Alecto started moving. Each time a simulation came running at her, she swung and hacked and slashed without mercy, light on her feet and lightning-quick. She moved as easily as she breathed, and the motions all came back to her like a reflex. Blood rushed to her ears, and her heart raced, adrenaline pulsing through her body. In the moment, Alecto lost herself in the training, in the violence, and didn't dare stop. One of the simulations charged at her, and she ran it through with her sword and the simulation disintegrated. Alecto swung round as another snuck up on her and sliced through it in one fell swoop.

When the simulation ended, and the projections blinkered and disappeared, Gloss joined her for a second round. Alecto was grateful that it was Gloss who'd joined her and not his twin. Cashmere talked a blue streak about anything, and it was tiring to keep up with, even when Alecto was only half-listening. Gloss was polite, and he only spoke to warn her of a simulation coming up behind her. He didn't expect a response out of her either.

Immediately after, Alecto rejoined her father at the knife-throwing station. Atlas handed his daughter a belt of knives, ten gleaming blades in each pocket. His had already been secured around his waist. Aided by the trainer manning the station, they picked out the high-difficulty setting on the simulation, and stepped into the simulation floor when the trainer gestured for them to enter. Alecto had never fought alongside her father before, and she didn't expect their performance to gel in synchrony. It wasn't like at the Academy, where every candidate was paired up with another in a buddy-system, training together for years, until the most optimal pair were selected to participate in the Games.

"Ready?" Atlas said. They stood back-to-back, falling into the familiar combat stance that their bodies were so conditioned to.

The first simulation came at them so fast Alecto barely had time to react as it leapt off the raised platform. Only to be met with a knife to the chest from Atlas, over Alecto's shoulder. Alecto didn't stall. In one swift motion, she spun round and sent two knives hurtling towards two simulations charging at them with weapons in their hands. They fell apart, disintegrating when her knives struck them in the head. As they fought, Alecto noticed that her father tended to put himself between her and the simulations. They didn't fight like they'd have been paired up in the Academy. Rather, although the dynamic was fluid, they fought separately rather than together. Alecto hadn't had the time to read her father's fighting style, and the same went for him.

When they ran out of knives and the simulation died, they tabulated their scores and realised they'd only missed one target. Atlas frowned, fixating on their one mistake, but the trainer had notified them that they'd just had the most successful run out of everyone in the room, save for the District 1 tributes.

"Let's try a survival skills station," Atlas said, as they walked away from the knives. Alecto's lips twisted in dissent, but Atlas only pinned her with a hard stare, and chastised her, "don't get cocky. It's not all weapons and fighting in the arena. Two years is a long time without any practice."

Alecto rolled her eyes, but followed him to the knot tying station anyway. There, they encountered Mags, Finnick's district partner. Atlas' typically stoic expression immediately softened as she mumbled her greetings, and, as she began to show them how to tie a complicated knot, a flicker of movement in Alecto's periphery made her flinch involuntarily, and sent her heart racing, but she recovered by bending down to fiddle with the laces on her boots. As she hunched over, wincing from her visceral reaction to nothing at all, Alecto turned to face the source.

Gathered before the archery station were a bunch of the other victors, watching Katniss Everdeen shoot down target after target that the trainer began to throw up. Like it was a game, and Katniss looked the most at-peace Alecto had ever seen her. With each object that the trainer threw into the air, Katniss nocked and loosed an arrow in one swift motion quick as an impulse. She moved with deadly precision, and Alecto immediately knew. That girl was a threat. Still, it was impressive, and it seemed the others shared the same sentiment. Even her father, who was hardly impressed by much, stopped working on his knot to watch.

And when Katniss' arrows ran out, and her quiver was empty but her face was not, the silence that struck the room was deafening.

AUTHOR'S NOTE.
some johanna and alecto interaction.... as a treat :) kind of

BUT GUYSSSS IM SO EXCITED??? FOR THE GAMES TO START????? it's gonna be amazing 🤍 also atlas' ultimate moment when he turns against cashmere and gloss to solidify his allyship with katniss and peeta??? :) it's gonna be glorious