WHEN THE GILDED DAWN COMES, those bruising moments before sunrise where the sky shutters, caught between oblivion and reluctant waking, Alecto is already out of bed and changed. Two years after her Games, and she still hasn't broken the military routine that'd been drilled into her bones from the Academy, a conditioning that laid out the foundation of her life's structure. Like clockwork, her eyelids had snapped open the moment the nightmare ended, wrenched herself from the middle of it, like a body pulled from a car crash. She'd dropped to the ground to do her circuit of warm-ups, a series of push-ups and crunches and other exercises that kept the blood pumping to her extremities, rough her heartbeat to the surface of her skin, to the hollow of her neck, until she was slick with sweat and panting from the exertion. In a sense, she was exactly like her father. Creatures of habit still trapped in the cage. The door was open, but neither of them knew how to leave. Like finches, they were doomed to a life in captivity. Creatures of commodity, weak with fear.

After her nightmare the night before, she hadn't stopped seeing him, and he never stopped visiting her in her sleep. The March Hare of her fever dreams. The haunting never stopped. Every shadow that flickered singed her nerves was his silhouetted figure lurking round the corner, waiting for her to drop her guard, every whisper of sound through the silence was the drag of a knife against the wall. In her dreams, she was knee-deep in a river of blood and she kept running and running, but she wasn't moving. And the tide was climbing. And the March Hare kept coming. When he caught up with her, one of his plastic eyes was dangling by a thread, and his ears were chewed up and flea-bitten, his fur raggedy and worn, his clothes patchy and filthy. And when he raised his knife, Alecto felt her stomach plummet.

Even though her muscles were burning, screaming for her to take a break, threatening collapse, Alecto didn't stop, didn't let the pain take her. Her parched throat ached for water, but she didn't stop, because if she stopped, that meant succumbing to the weakness. Coughing from the dryness, Alecto pushed and pushed and pushed. And when her arms finally gave out, when she'd lost count of the reps, when she'd begun to see spots obscuring in her vision, and her head begun to spin, Alecto stopped. After, she showered and cleaned herself up, then she headed out to the living room.

During training, Alecto felt the shift in the atmosphere when the others clocked Katniss and Peeta's attendance. The frost was melting. Where there used to be a rift between the new victors and the old (albeit, Alecto didn't bother factoring herself into the equation, considering she had just won a year before the two, and she was more a stranger to the others, having been a subject of self-alienation), something had clicked into place, and there was a cohesiveness now. For the first hour, Alecto stood with Atlas and the District 1 victors. As they navigated the weapons stations together, competing at every turn, trying to beat each others' bests, Alecto caught her father surreptitiously glancing towards the District 12 victors.

"Fascinating couple, aren't they?" Cashmere asked, though her question seemed loaded with ammunition. She flashed Alecto a grin, but there was a dark sheen in her light eyes, a bitterness Alecto recognised, because Iko wore it, too.

Currently, as the career pack were stationed at one of the survival stations weaving hammocks together, Katniss was being painted into a field of flowers by the morphlings from Six, aided by Peeta, who had somehow found the strength outside of their addiction to drag themselves to the Training Centre. In periphery, Alecto caught her father shooting them curious glances every once in awhile, which wasn't the concerning issue. The problem was that there was this conspiratorial look brewing on his face, like a storm, and nobody else seemed to notice it—that slight pinch between his brows, the downward tick of the corners of his mouth, the fractional narrowing of his eyes—but Atlas Heller was a painting wherein the details were all in the subtleties, and it took years practicing careful observation to interpret.

Alecto nudged her father.

Without missing a beat, he turned back to the knotted length of rope in his hands that'd formed a halfway decent hammock, the tempest in his expression bled back into its typical indecipherable neutrality. Even as her fingers worked until she felt the friction of the ropes sting against her rubbed-raw skin, Alecto didn't take her eyes off her father. She watched him in periphery, tracking his micro-expressions, the feathering muscle of his strong jaw and the vein pulsing prominently against his temple as he tied off his hammock. Sometimes, she wished she could cut open his skull, unspool the thoughts thundering inside his head, string them out before her so she could read the wires without having to base it all off his tics and behaviours. Pattern recognition only went so far.

"You're staring," Atlas mused. He glanced up at his daughter. "You can go play with your weapons if you want. I can see how much you hate the survival stations."

Alecto's lips twisted fractionally in defiance. It wasn't that she hated the survival stations nor were they boring to the point where Alecto considered abandoning her efforts altogether—they'd already taken the tour of a handful that seemed useful enough, and learnt all that they could from the station guides, and she'd even found the poisonous fruits and berries identification station fun—it was just that she wanted the feel of a weapon in her hand. She knew she was good with weapons, and she'd made the hilt of a sword or the handle of a gun fit her grip over thousands of hours. It made her frightening, even to the seasoned fighters.

And she'd dreamt of the March Hare again. Every little shadow set her on edge today. It took minutes to remind herself that

Atlas merely tipped his chin towards the open swords station. "Just go."

A surge of adrenaline struck Alecto's veins, and even before she'd gotten her hands on a weapon, she was thinking about the song of a blade arcing through the air and the weight of precise destruction in her palm. Without casting a glance back, Alecto dumped her half-finished hammock on the table and practically broke out in a sprint across the room before her father could grab her by the scruff of her neck and pull her back to his side, her eyes gleaming with a hunger, dead-set on the swords glistening on the rack.

Alecto ran her fingers over the blades, the cold of the metal stinging against her fingertips. A flicker of movement in the corner of her eye caught her attention and flushed her veins with pulsing panic. In one swift motion, she snatched a blade off the rack and swung round, arm lashing out like a reflex.

The station trainer let out a squawk of alarm, but Alecto shook off the hand he planted on her shoulder.

Smoke grey eyes flashed sharp as the blade at her throat, meeting Alecto's glacial stare with equal fervour and ferocity. Katniss tilted her chin up, refusing to back down. It was clear that she thought it was a threat, some kind of game Alecto was playing. Iko had mentioned once, when she thought Alecto wasn't listening—nobody ever thought Alecto was paying attention, but she was, always—that a lot of the victors were familiar with each other, but they didn't know anything about the fresh-faced victors. They'd been making passes at Katniss, harassing her, toying with her, trying to get a rise out of her just to see if she'd react with anything else other than embarrassment or irritation. They were nothing but tests. Petty distractions.

But unlike them Alecto hadn't been playing. She didn't want to get to know Katniss. In fact, she wanted nothing more than to eviscerate her. Because the truth that Alecto had puzzled together like pieces of a shredded document assembled into a haphazard story, was that Katniss was the cause of all this. It was Katniss who defied tradition and rescued herself and Peeta from the Games. It was Katniss who'd incurred President Snow's sick sense of retribution. It was Katniss who'd put her and her father back into the arena.

If there was someone to blame, Alecto wanted to put it all on Katniss, not because she actually deserved it, but because Alecto could kill her.

"I just wanted to talk," Katniss said, her voice steady and her stare smouldering as a pile of burning coal.

Lips pressing into a severe line, Alecto held Katniss' gaze for a moment longer. Between them, the tension curdled the air, and Alecto saw a phantom mirage of the flames flickering in Katniss' silhouette, just like her tribute parade costume. If Katniss was the heat of the flames, an inferno come blazing through the town, threatening to raze rebellion into the earth, Alecto was hypothermia, her blue-eyed stare harsh and heartless as the unforgiving winters that stole infants from their cradles and left them still and lifeless in the morning for their mothers.

Katniss stepped away from the edge of Alecto's sword. She cast a look over her shoulder at someone, and Alecto followed the trajectory of her stare to where Peeta stood with her father at the edge of the knife-throwing section with a couple other victors. In turn, Peeta sent Katniss an encouraging nod. Steeling her expression, Katniss turned back to Alecto, who hadn't once wavered.

Nodding stiffly, but in understanding, Katniss took Alecto's silence as an answer. "Okay, you don't talk. That's fine. I don't either. Everybody's been trying to talk to me, and it's exhausting."

Alecto lowered her sword. If she so much as skimmed the tip of the blade over Katniss' skin, the Gamemakers watching the exchange would sic Peacekeepers on her like attack dogs and she'd be thrown into the gauntlet alone, cut off from sponsors and any kind of advantage. But that didn't mean she had to be Katniss' friend, and Alecto didn't think Katniss was looking for friends either. If anything, her approach was to make nice. Katniss had done the same with everyone else. Between the previous day's training session and today, there had been some sort of shift in Katniss' attitude; the efforts to extend acquaintance with the other victors presented more prominently as she made conversation and tried out the stations with the separate clusters. They shared the same misanthropic nature, but the difference between them was that Katniss needed the added layer of protection from her allies.

Nobody could ever tell, but Alecto had been watching her. By some universal force, Alecto's focus, whether central or in her peripheral vision always drifted to the girl on fire. She wasn't entirely sure why. Sometimes, Alecto watched Peeta too. He seemed more at ease with the inter-mingling than his partner. They were largely opposite in demeanour, and Alecto often wondered how that dynamic played out behind closed doors, without the cameras and without the hovering eye of the public. What transpired between them when no one was watching? Alecto supposed she'd never be privy to those exchanges, just like nobody knew what Alecto and her own father were like when they were by themselves.

She wondered if Katniss felt alone, too.

"You're good at swords," Katniss remarked, fixing Alecto with a measured look, half-wary and half-determined. Determined to do what? Alecto couldn't say, nor did she care. It seemed to pain her, a little, and her conversation was stilted and forced. Alecto had noticed this one thing about Katniss above anything else. She wasn't a people person, and had a predilection for solitude. Which was fine. So did Alecto. But Alecto had something Katniss didn't—the option to keep to that preference.

Katniss picked up a sword. It see-sawed in her white-knuckled grip. Though Katniss was almost as tall as Alecto, who was already tall for her age, she was thinner than Alecto, who was already all wiry muscle and lithe build. And though the strength of archers was not one to scorn, it was clear she wasn't adapted to the explosive power of sword fighting. Holding a sword was instinctive, but to distinguish a seasoned swordsman from a novice was to notice the sword they picked. A balanced blade could make or break the battle. The blade in Katniss' hand was too heavy for her. It was the most classic model, but it wasn't a good fit.

Caught between wanting to correct Katniss and wanting to keep her knowledge to herself which also kept Katniss at a disadvantage, Alecto bit down on the tip of her tongue. She flipped her own blade over her knuckles in contemplation. The sword Alecto had picked was one of the longswords on the lighter side of the selection. It was a symmetrical blade, simple and effective, made of carbon steel and forged for battle. Since the day she'd graduated from training with wooden swords to real, traditional weapons, Alecto had stuck to the same model. It never failed her.

"That sword's too heavy for you," a gruff voice at Alecto's shoulder commented. "It'll throw off your gait. I can already see you straining. You should pick a lighter one."

Katniss snapped round, features hardening in shock. A beat passed, then, she put the sword back on the rack and picked out a thinner one. "Like this one?"

"No," Altas said, his voice quiet, but Alecto read the amusement in his tone. "Swords have to be proportionate to your own body because it becomes an extension of your arm when you wield it. Alecto can show you."

Alecto narrowed her eyes at her father. What did he think he was doing? It wasn't as if the basics were a trade secret, but what was he doing, helping an opponent?

Katniss glanced at Alecto.

Locking her jaw, Alecto surveyed the weapons rack until she found what she was looking for. Alecto plucked a short sword off the rack and thrust it into Katniss' hands. Katniss tested the weight, and nodded in approval. Alecto noted the lack of strain to keep the blade steady. Every beginner practiced with a short sword. It allowed them to focus on technique and footwork more than the strain of an extra weight. Compared to other weapons, a sword was only as deadly as its user, and a clumsy stance would prove more hindrance than help. 

Wordlessly, Alecto turned towards the swords station, ignoring Katniss. She knew she was being cold, and thought Katniss' efforts were valiant, Alecto had no use for her in the arena. If she'd gleaned anything from the past couple days, it was that Katniss was to be held at arm's length, and culled when Alecto had the chance. It wouldn't matter if there was a wall of allies constructed around her, Alecto would cut them down and emerge blood-soaked and victorious.

There was no line to wait behind, so Alecto slapped her palm against the screen that took her to the settings page, laying out her options for her. She set the level of difficulty to the maximum. She didn't care to save her best performance for the private sessions—that tactic was tired, and the Gamemakers had already witnessed her at her deadliest—and she didn't want to hold back. A shadow fell over her, and Alecto felt her father's presence hovering at her shoulder as he reached over and changed the settings. Grinding her teeth, Alecto slanted her father a dubious look, as if to say, medium difficulty, really?

"Play nice," Atlas murmured under his breath, so only Alecto could hear. He jerked his chin at Katniss in a surreptitious move, so quick and so subtle Alecto almost missed it. "Take the lead in this fight. Don't forget, you're also a new victor. It's not just them. Show them what you're made of."

Realisation dawned on Alecto then. Nobody would ever watch her if all eyes were on Katniss, impressing them with her shooting on the other side of the facility. But put them together, and the focus would shift to the same area, and the concentrated attention would latch onto the fact that Alecto was the superior sword arm.

Alecto and Katniss stepped onto the platform, and the station trainer shut the glass door, and fired up the simulation. A yellow beam swept across the room, and Alecto followed it, glancing around to survey her surroundings and calculate her angles. There was a second level they didn't have access to, but were vulnerable to getting jumped from. The glass walls around them darkened as the projections began to terraform around them in a digitised mimicry of an open courtyard and a siege of moving targets shaped like people.

As natural as breathing, Alecto fell into her combat stance, sword raised and eyes wolf-sharp. Katniss stood at her back, watching her six. Though Alecto knew they were meant to combine their efforts in some semblance of team work, and that she was meant to watch Katniss' back to prune the opponents in her blindspots, Alecto let the rest of the world fall away. Shut out the distractions of the air conditioning unit humming, and the automated sounds within the simulated gauntlet. Truth was, Katniss wasn't her father, and Alecto couldn't trust her to watch her back because they didn't know how each other moved.

Every fight was an exercise in control. Not just of the weapon in hand, but control of your fear, of your anger, of your pain. Fighting was about mechanics, levers and breaking points, timing and speed. Fighting in close combat was just about seeing if you could disable the other opponent's machine first.

The first opponent came charging at them with all the aggression of a battering ram.

Alecto let it come within range before she swung her blade clean through the faceless simulacrum. It threw its arms up and broke away into digital cubes that blinked out of view in seconds.

One by one, the simulations surged forth, weapons raised, only to be met with the end of Alecto's blade as she ducked and swung, as she moved with a frightening fluidity that could only come with years of discipline and mastery. Inside this moment there was nothing but the weight of the sword in her hand and the adrenaline tearing through her veins. Alecto moved like a hurricane and struck like a viper, slipping up close to her victims but never letting anything touch her. Behind her, Katniss was fending off her own opponents with a vigour and resilience that matched Alecto's with measurably less skill of the craft.

At this rate, Katniss was starting to slow, and they were cutting it close. The simulation was only meant to accommodate one person, and Alecto had to watch Katniss' sword, which had come close enough to nick Alecto a couple times, along with her back. To beat the simulation, none of them could sustain recorded 'injuries'. It was clear Katniss had never learnt how to fight with a partner before—at least, not with a close-range weapon. Honing on the years of training with a partner she barely knew, Alecto tried to match pace with Katniss, one eye on the goal and the other on Katniss' steps. Where Katniss left herself exposed, Alecto covered double-time. 

As more opponents began to attack simultaneously, Alecto planted herself behind Katniss, who called out to her each time an opponent managed to slip past her guard just in time to alert Alecto to its advances.

Something in Alecto clicked into place, and she began orienting herself around Katniss' movements, picking up the slack. Where Katniss fell short in technique, Alecto made up for with stamina and speed. It wasn't exactly a partnership, but they no longer fought as individuals. Together, they fought in tandem, their swords like quicksilver in the artificial lighting.

The world around her tunnelled as five moving targets charged at her. Alecto's grin was skeletal, unsettling and vehement. Violence called to the song inside her veins, tapping on the electric power inside her. Then she was upon them, slicing and twirling and ducking. All five simulacrum were defeated and destroyed before the next cluster could even move.

A sword fight was all about momentum. About rhythm and elegance. Alecto fought with the vicious grace of a panther, muscles rippling as she hacked away at her opponents with a vengeance. No time to rest. No room for error. Every blade sought a killing blow, and Alecto was going to deliver.

Teeth bared as though she were striking for the jugular, Alecto slashed her way through the next wave of faceless simulacrum sicced upon them, dodging and rolling clear of an opponent that brought their sword down in a wide arc. Alecto rocked back onto her feet and, without hesitation, thrust her sword between their ribs. With a lightning-quick dexterity, Alecto snapped round and cleaved her sword clean through the next target. Its midsection split into two, and when it hit the ground, it burst into a million digital smithereens. Heart pounding, her veins iced with a sick thrill, she met the next cluster of opponents with a ruthless ferocity, relentless in her counter-attacks and moving as if a storm unleashed, seeking to destroy. If she let her imagination run a little off its chains, she could smell the blood.

Another simulacrum launched itself at Katniss, and she flinched instinctively away from its weapon as it swung. It advanced on her, slashing and stabbing without mercy. Katniss had no choice but to give up ground. As the simulacrum swung its blade, Katniss thrust hers upwards to meet it. In a soundless crash, both blades—digital mimicry and real—clashed. Katniss gritted her teeth as she pushed, trying to free her blade from the pressure, but unable to.

(Before they'd begun, the trainer had said something about new developments in technology, and it was magnets that simulated the feeling of pressure against your own weapon, a better imitation of resistance.)

Silently, Alecto slipped up behind the simulacrum.

At the same time, Katniss found an opening as her blade slipped.

In a flash, both swords skewered the simulacrum's midsection from both sides, the tips of their blades pointed upwards to form an X. It went limp, its own weapon falling to the ground and disintegrating into nothing. When Alecto and Katniss wrenched their swords away, the simulacrum dropped to the ground, and immediately shattered into pieces of yellow light.

At last, there was the sound of a generator powering down as the simulation ended and the projections on the walls melted away, revealing the glass and the training centre behind it. Katniss flicked her stony-eyed gaze to Alecto, cocking her head as if unsure what to make of her.

Chest heaving, Alecto lifted the hem of her shirt with her free hand and wiped the sweat dripping down her brow out of her eyes.

When Alecto turned to seek her father's gaze out, she had to clamp down on her own shock.

It wasn't just him standing behind the glass, watching the two young victors standing on the platform.

All the victors had gathered behind Atlas, who stood with his arms crossed over his chest, a million expressions painted over their faces. Even the morphlings, who could barely stand for minutes at a time had dragged themselves over to kneel by the platform.

Alecto tensed, her spine going rigid as she felt her skin prickle with discomfort. This much attention stripped her bare, made her feel too naked, as if she were a carnival animal inside a cage it didn't know how to leave. There was a moment where Alecto thought they might've been looking at her, but she glanced at Katniss, and remembered: she wasn't the commodity in the cage. They must've come to witness Katniss hold her own in an area that wasn't of her expertise.

It was Katniss who first extended her hand to Alecto, so tentative and uncertain, Alecto almost mistook it for mistrust.

Pinning Katniss with a level stare, Alecto considered her for a second.

And then she took her hand and shook. It wasn't alliance, but a solidarity of some sort.

When Alecto stepped off the platform and let the station trainer take the sword out of her hands, it wasn't Katniss that drew the stares, or parted the crowd. Cashmere grinned at Alecto, shark-like and predatory as he complimented her on her prowess. Gloss held out a fist, and Alecto bumped her knuckles against it. Finnick stood beside her father, and when he met Alecto's gaze with a small smirk which he quickly covered behind a hand, he turned and clapped the older man on the shoulder. Eyes lit like a glowering hearth, Johanna held Alecto's gaze for a heart-stopping second, before she set her jaw and lifted her chin. Chaff started clapping, and, like a spark, it caught, blazing through the crowd as the others began to applaud the performance.

And it was all for her. All of a sudden Alecto didn't know what to do with her hands.

When the crowd dispersed, Alecto sought her father out.

And the smile on his face blew the ground out from under her feet.

Public displays of emotion on the unshakeable countenance of Atlas Heller were rare as rubies, which was why Alecto was more rattled than she already was. Brows furrowing, Alecto frowned up at her father. Had he planned this? Had he called the others over to spectate?

No, it wasn't possible. Her father hadn't done anything but watch. He wasn't the type to make a spectacle of things, and preferred to keep to himself. Everyone else must have come of their own accord.

"Don't let them forget," Atlas said, but the glimmer of approval in his tone might as well have said: you are my daughter, through and through.

A raw feeling ravaged Alecto's chest, like a volcano radiating a decimating heat, seconds away from blowing. Scanning her father's face, holding his proud stare for an endless moment, as if any second now, it would all fall through, Alecto felt the carnival beast inside her and its hunger, and how, just by seeing her father's disarming smile, the lock had come off and she was ready to break out.

Ready to maul the world just to be able to immortalise this one moment.

AUTHOR'S NOTE.
hellooooo i always feel bad asking for feedback but like i'd really love to hear your opinions!!!! literally one short comment goes a loooong way :)