THREE MINUTES. That's how much time Iko had to sell herself to the audience during the interview, re-programme herself to seem more likeable, more of the charismatic tribute the viewers could get behind. At least, that's what Aeneas wouldn't let her forget. Unfortunately, transforming her icy personality into the world's most simpatico interviewee to rake in the sponsors wasn't just going to miraculously happen at eight in the morning. Even though her mind was sharp because she was, by nature and demand of routine back home in District 2, an early riser, eight in the morning usually meant school or, during the summer, training. Neither of those required her to be in any shape or form of cordial or charming to captivate an audience. It became apparent after almost an hour of Aeneas playing the role of Caesar, the interviewer, trying to get her to talk about training, about her life back home, about her chances at the Games, that she had a lot of ground to cover.

Especially since she'd been forced into a horrific scrap of a silk blue dress and a pair of what could possibly be the world's most uncomfortable high-heeled shoes. Aside from Reaping day, Iko didn't waste her time in dresses or impractical shoes. They were pretty, but inconvenient, and Iko didn't like how exposed to scrutiny they made her feel. At least in her training attire, she didn't have to care about her appearance. What mattered most was what she could do with the weapon in her hand, or the time she clocked on the mile run. In her dress and heels, she was practically deadweight. Before starting on the interview content, Aeneas had her walking laps around the room just to master her balance on her shoes. Each time Iko cursed viciously or looked like she was about to kick off her shoes in a fit of frustration, Aeneas swiped at her hands with the folder in his hands.

It was in this pair of soul-killing high heels that Iko realised with a flare of irritation in her gut that she furiously missed training. Missed being able to feel the weight of a weapon in her hand, stand in the environment she was most familiar with. Missed moving blind and hitting true, the catharsis of destruction surging through her veins in tandem with the steadying beat of her heart. It felt good to destroy, and perhaps that was all Iko was good at. She tried not to feel bothered by that. Then she tried not to feel bothered that she didn't feel even the slightest a lick of disgust or remorse at herself, at the knowledge that she had ultimately been created to destroy.

Right now, in her room, seated opposite Aeneas in a mock-interview setting, fighting to hold onto some semblance of a smile, Iko couldn't be more out of her element.

"And what's your main strategy going to be?" Aeneas asked, a pained smile on his face. They'd been at this for too long to keep the bright and sunny facade up.

Iko cut him a flinty stare. "It's standard procedure, mostly. You look at the playbook written by the previous victors. There's a certain formula to it—survive the bloodbath, take out as many tributes as possible. Once the initial culling is over, you hunt. You set traps. You weed out the weak. And then you dispose of your allies and you go home. Simple as that."

"No, no, no," Aeneas said, pinching the bridge of his nose in frustration. "Look, you are a lethal girl, alright? And you want the audience to know this. They've seen your score, but you need to give them more. All you're doing right now is giving me answers that just... they're so mechanical. You're force-feeding me a rehearsed answer that... you know what? I'll just say it. You're too unemotional. You sound like a robot spitting out the same lines over and over again, and we both know this interview isn't going anywhere. Where is the charm? Don't forget you're working an angle, and emotionless robot does. Not. Sell."

"If I'm not truthful, what am I?" Frustration clawed at the back of her mind. What was the point of the tribute interviews, anyway? It wasn't like the Capitol actually cared about them. Perhaps the weaker districts had hope that they could have a fighting chance if they collected sponsors by being charming or whatever illusion of likeable. Words didn't change anything. Action was what counted.

"Fake it till you make it, sweetheart," Aeneas drawled, his lion tail flicking in displeasure. "I'm trying my best to help you out here, and I can only work with what you give me, and so far, you're giving me absolutely nothing. You're only doing yourself a disservice here. The audience will eat up anything, but impersonal answers just won't cut it. Get that into your head, please."

But the truth was, if not anger, then Iko didn't know what else to feel when most of the time, she didn't. She wasn't like Alex, who knew how to play to emotion, who could read people as easily as he could be a little more than likeable. Iko wondered how he was doing. It'd been decided that they were going to be coached separately, both on presentation and content. Evander was working with Alex, while Aeneas had been tasked with tackling Iko's hostile chill. Iko didn't understand why she couldn't have gotten Enobaria to coach her instead.

"One last time," Aeneas said, looking a little weary already. Had she worn him down this much? It was possible. Aeneas took a deep breath, plastered on a bright smile that looked a little pained at the edges still. "How are you feeling today, Iko?"

"Fine," Iko said, ignoring the ache in her back as she straightened up under Aeneas' warning look. "Yourself?"

Aeneas let out an explosive groan. "Are you even trying?!"

Out of spite, Iko kicked off one of her heels, her dark eyes glittering with a dark anger. Aeneas watched as it skidded across the floor and hit the door with a sharp thud.

Aeneas sighed. "I didn't think it'd come down to this, but I suppose desperate times call for desperate measures."

From the pocket of his oversized coat, he pulled out a white spray bottle. Confusion flashed across Iko's face. If he was planning on spraying her with acid each time she made a mistake, shouldn't he at least be a little more discrete about it?

Aeneas pinned Iko with a meaningful look. "How are you feeling tonight, Iko?"

"Like a victor already," Iko said.

In a flash, Aeneas's arm shot out as he squeezed the trigger on the spray bottle, releasing a jet of cold water into Iko's face.

Too shocked to react, Iko blinked at him, water dripping from her chin, dotting the skirt of her dress. A beat passed. Rage contorted her features.

"What the hell?!" Iko spat, agitation exploding out of her as she swiped a hand vehemently over her wet face. "What the fuck was that for? I am not a fucking cat."

Unimpressed, Aeneas propped the spray bottle on his knee, pointing it at her like a gun. "Again. With feeling. And stop sitting like you're about to attack me. Try to look less bored, would you? The people in the audience are paying to see you, the least you could do is act like you're willing to give them the time of day." Aeneas cleared his throat, affected his plastic smile—a smile Iko had to dig her fingers into the heel of her palm to forcibly restrain the urge to rip off with her bare hands, because the people of the Capitol were hardly people at all—and levelled his tone. "How are you feeling tonight, Iko?"

He could take her feeling and shove it up his ass. Iko cut him a frosty glare. "Fucking dandy."

That stint earned her another burst of cold water to her face before she could dodge it. Iko spluttered.

"How are you feeling tonight, Iko?"

Stop playing childish games, she could hear her mother's iron voice in her head, a cutting rebuke, a reminder that she needed this because she couldn't go back to that pitiful excuse of a house. A foul attitude was no excuse for imperfection. A monster had many faces. A monster was not just its teeth or claws, but the ability to slip quietly between the skin, make its puppet sink hooks into its own flesh. A marionette unaware that it'd enslaved itself to a life on strings. Clenching her jaw, Iko shut her eyes and inhaled a steadying breath, and felt the resentful burn recede from her veins like a wave retreating from the shore. Wiping the bitter indignant off her face, Iko began on a clean slate. When her eyes snapped open, her expression was carefully blank, void of tension in the lines of her face. Then, slowly, she composed her features. A sardonic grin, sharp and thin and wolflike, the arrogant tilt of her chin, shoulders rolled back.

Iko pinned Aeneas with a lethal stare, eyes glistering with warning, If you pull that shit again, I will kill you.

"Like a victor already," she drawled, the words dripping off her teeth like vitriol.

Triumph broke over Aeneas' face like sunrise. In a fit of excitement, he flung the spray bottle aside and shot to his feet. "That's it! That's your angle! Okay, okay, first things first, let's keep going." Aeneas cleared his throat again. "Tell me something about yourself."

"I strive for perfection," Iko mused. "I will not settle for second if I can be first."

"Too cocky. Dial it down a little bit." Aeneas waved a hand in the air emphatically, but his expression didn't lose its enthusiastic shine now that they've finally gotten somewhere. "One more time. Tell me about yourself. Something that isn't too impersonal, please."

Iko mulled over that for a second. What did she want them to know about her? What could she reveal that didn't give the entirety of Panem more than an inch of information about herself? She couldn't say anything about the Academy. Those kinds of practices were sacred to the Career districts. Technically, they were illegal, but because they were the Capitol's favoured districts, they turned a blind eye and a deaf ear to the heaps of kids from those districts receiving prior training for the Games, even though it was against regulations. Anything for a good show.

"I don't break my promises," Iko said, even though the only promises she's ever made or honoured were in her own favour. "And I'm promising you, right now, that the Capitol will get a show worth remembering this year."

"Perfect!" Aeneas clapped his hands together gleefully. "Can you tell me a little bit about your life back home?"

"Is that really relevant—"

"Tell me about your life back home," Aeneas gritted out, eyes wide and glittering with mania, imploring for her to just work with him.

Iko barely stopped herself from scowling. "I'll miss my old house," she lied. She would miss nothing about the house with its half-collapsed front porch and its weak walls steeped in her mother's bitterness, haunted by a ghost that wouldn't come back. "But I look forward to a new one in Victor's Village."

"What do you think of your district partner?"

Iko pushed down the urge to snap at Aeneas. Any other question would've been welcome, except for this. This one felt like a slap to the face. She couldn't reveal any weakness. They were raised to be cold and heartless, made in the shape of weapons. Feelings complicated this ideal mould of a ruthless killing machine. They weren't meant to grow close to anyone. That's why the partner system back in the Academy had been rearranged countless times to prevent pairs from getting too comfortable with each other. But children found ways to defy orders. Iko and Alex were one example, and now they were paying for their disobedience in blood. Talking freely about Alex meant televising the weak points in her armour. With this valuable knowledge that she could be ruined after all, the other Career tributes would have a field day ripping her apart. No, Iko decided. They could have anything else except this one.

"He's a strong partner," Iko said, keeping the raw edges out of her otherwise cool tone. Half-truths were her safest bet. "But I like a little competition. We'll see who's truly number one after all, won't we?"

It was decided then and there. Iko would play the role of the deadly and aloof tribute, enigmatic, but not totally closed-off. If Iko couldn't be conventionally charming, her charisma would come from her cold and clinical nature. She could show them that she was the right kind of monster.

* * *

NIGHTFALL BLED INTO THE CAPITOL, a darkness descending decadently as the neon lights rose into the skyline, and the parties on the streets began to rage into the night as music pounded against the pavement like a heartbeat. Tomorrow, the interviews would start, and the day after that, they would be shipped off to the arena.

In the fervid ennui of Capitol television, the screen spilling over Iko in a haze of shattered lights and colours as she skipped from channel to channel and watched only the commercials because those, she could stomach, Alex finds her curled up in herself, cheek pressed against the arm of the plush sofa as she pressed buttons on a remote control. Back home, they never watched TV because training occupied ninety percent of their free time, and perhaps that was a good thing. Soap operas were ridiculous and Iko could've sworn she felt her brain turn to liquid lead five minutes into the first one she tried investing herself in. The next one was a watery hospital drama with a cheap production budget, and Iko had to suppress the urge to fling the remote control into the screen because what did these people know about death?

Beside her, she felt the sofa dip as Alex settled in, his footfalls silent and his expression equal parts dubious and curious. Like her, he was dressed in flannel pajama pants and a black shirt. They looked like a matching set. Iko didn't know if all the tributes were assigned a standard set of sleep wear or if he was just that subconsciously intuitive.

"I didn't know you were into fashion," Alex mused, propping his feet up on the glass coffee table as a woman on the screen jabbered on about dresses and shoes and the hottest deals in the Capitol. When Iko flicked him a cool look instead of entertaining him with an actual answer, Alex let out a breathy laugh and patted her foot.

For the length of three commercials on two different channels, they were silent, the light from the screen crippling over their skin, washing them in shadows and dancing colours as women in bizarre outfits jabbered over-enthusiastically about how much more effective this new soap formula was than others and how high and mighty this new model of car would make you feel. Each time they spoke Iko thought she might be getting a toothache in all of her molars, but the truth was her jaw had been clenched so tight because all these people had to be worried about was how much horse power were in their cars and if their clothes were being washed squeaky clean.

Another commercial flickered over the screen and Iko heard the words tribute and merchandise and bets and before she could even think about it, her finger had jammed the off button, plunging the living room in pitch darkness. Silence seeped into the air as Iko felt her blood go cold the way it always did whenever she wanted to make someone hurt.

"So, what's tomorrow going to be like?" Alex asked, shattering the silence. In the mania of the day's events, Iko had almost forgotten they'd hardly gotten to see each other, let alone have a full conversation about anything at all before they were whisked away to practice answering interview questions.

"If Caesar asks me a question about my background, I'll stab him in the eye with my heel."

Alex hummed. "That would make an impression."

"My assessment score should've made an impression."

Alex smirked. Iko didn't have to look. She could already hear it in his tone. "Such a people person."

"Quit it," Iko warned, lightly kicking him in the thigh.

Alex scoffed. "So I'm guessing coaching went fine."

"Aeneas sprayed me with a water bottle every time I said something he didn't like," Iko grunted. She shot him an incredulous look. "I'm betting you didn't get that treatment."

A smug grin slipped over Alex's lips. "Didn't need to. Haven't you heard? I'm the model citizen of charm."

"Careful," Iko said, her voice edged with warning. "All the Capitol ladies will be sending you love notes in the arena instead of anything actually useful."

Alex shook his head. "Man, don't even start. Imagine being born here. What do these people even do all day?"

Iko couldn't imagine it. Not having to work for something. Perhaps they did work, like people did before Panem was Panem, but professions like actual businesses, bakeries, mundane places of industry seemed like such a farfetched notion. Throughout her childhood, her main fixation had been the Hunger Games. Every child who was hungry for the glory felt the same way. Commitment tunnelled their vision until training was the only way they measured their years. Statistics and competing for the top spot took over their lives. Everything they thought about centred on the most efficient way to improve. The lives of the people in the Capitol were so unfathomable Iko's mind went blank each time she tried to think about it.

There was a lake behind the quarries that Alex and Iko used to swim in during the summer when it got too hot after training sessions and their skin might've melted off their bones. Iko lost count of how many evenings they'd spent remedying near-heatstrokes with the cool currents eddying against their fructifying flesh swelling from the heat. Those evenings, they floated in the water, looking a little bit like dead bodies from the way they lay so still and bobbed up and down with every ripple in the surface of the lake, letting the water wash away their irritability. That might've been the only time she'd felt relief not borne out of violence. Iko couldn't imagine not knowing the weight of a weapon in her hand. The idea that these people—save for the Peacekeepers who'd come from there—have never once known the quiet victory in the sound of a knife hitting the bullseye or the vicious catharsis of a sword slashing through a dummy's midsection in a clean stroke didn't sit well with Iko. What did children in the Capitol do? What were they missing?

"They buy soap and cars and watch kids kill each other on TV," Iko deadpanned.

Amusement lit up Alex's eyes. "Maybe they pray that Snow doesn't start throwing in their own kids into the arena to spice things up."

"You ever think Opal's a little bit of a..." Iko waved a hand in the air, searching for the right word. "Y'know... the stuff she says about the saints watching over her and all. You ever think she prays for stuff like that to happen?"

Once, during training, Sage had asked Opal if she dreamed about this as a little girl, and Opal said, quietly, like she didn't want anyone else to hear, that she was blessed to be here. The old saints were looking after her, and her being here was part of their plan, Opal had said while she yanked her sword out from a wound did dummy, like it made perfect sense, like invisible hands had actually laid out this path for her. This might've been the first time Iko had ever used that word. Pray. There were no churches in District 2. Iko wasn't sure about the other districts, but she knew that where she came from, no such saints existed.

"Oh," Alex said, lips tugging into a pensive frown as he scratched the back of his neck with a calloused hand. "Like, a little bit of a phony? I don't know. It's not... I mean, her thing—this religion stuff—isn't something I'm an expert on, so I don't know if I should even critique it like this."

During their brief time getting to know each other, it'd become apparent that Opal seemed to cling to the belief that there was a god out there after all. Iko found that difficult to believe, but didn't express her skepticism. If there was a god out there preaching down to humanity, why were they letting all this happen? But Opal had clarified, when Titus voiced their cynicisms, that the god she believed in wasn't so much a figure preaching down to the patron saints and admonishing sin. The cross around her neck wasn't so much a symbol as it was a comfort. Opal's religion was an uncomfortable subject to touch upon, and each time she spoke of it, her voice dipped low and embarrassed, as though it were some quiet rebellion she'd seeded when she was little and didn't want the Peacekeepers to rip out of her scarred hands. She'd explained that it began with her grandmother, who believed in this evolved form of Christianity that only just barely survived the dark days, and remained hidden in the cracks. It held fast to the belief that whatever happened, happened because it was meant to be. A little bit like fate, with a little more personification. The saints granted Opal strength, she'd told them. Strength to keep pushing. Strength that guided the spear to the bullseye. And in the arena, this faith in old saints and ghost gods would give her the strength to cut down her opponents.

In a district made of stone buildings and stone people with stones for hearts, faith had little room to breathe. The rigidity of their district, kept in line by routine, by clear, distinct categories marking out where things should be and where things will go, didn't allow such infallible notions. District 2 had no such religious beliefs. In the absence of mythology, the closest thing to gods were their proud array of victors, and the closest thing to faith was their loyalty to the Capitol.

Iko shrugged. "Maybe we shouldn't. It doesn't change the fact that we're still here, and we should focus on what we're doing in terms of strategic moves rather than what guides us through the bloodshed."

Alex grinned. "And she's back."

Flicking him a bemused look, Iko rose to her feet. "We should get some sleep. Janus won't let me hear the end of it if I turn up with bags under my eyes, and if Aeneas comes near me with a spray bottle again, the jury won't let me make it to the arena in time for my next kill."

Alex laughed and stood up, too. He tapped her on the forehead playfully. "Goodnight, Miss Diva."

"Try not to embarrass us when you get interviewed," Iko drawled, flicking a lock of inky hair over her shoulder as she brushed past him, his mirthful gaze burning into her back. "Our reputation will not be destroyed just because you forgot how to be charming."

AUTHOR'S NOTE.
i desperately wanna write iko in gale or katniss' POV, but that's gonna have to wait for the third book in the Conventional Weapons series