MINERVA'S OFFICE WAS LOCATED ON the second floor of the training facility. Since the elevator was broken and was currently undergoing maintenance, they'd thundered up the staircase, bickering back and forth as they bumped and hip-checked each other. She'd forced him to put on a shirt after making sure the swelling on the bruise at his jaw had gone down a little.

Presently, they were standing outside the door to Minerva's office, waiting for an answer to Iko's knock. Until, finally, a muffled voice: "come in!"

Taking a seat on the plastic chairs lined up against the wall in the corridor, Alex offers Iko a tiny grin. "I'll wait for you out here."

She nods, and turns to open the door.

Before she'd relegated herself to Head Trainer of this academy, Minerva Valdez had reaped the rewards of becoming a victor of the 60th annual Hunger Games at the age of sixteen. She'd been a shoe-in on the glory for her practicality and unparalleled ability to strategise and manipulate the combat environment to her advantage, and was revered as the most fearsome Career tribute. Since Iko had watched the televised screening of Minerva's Hunger Games, she practically worshipped the ground the woman walked on. Even now, eight years later, with Iko following in her footsteps, she was still someone worth insurmountable admiration. For someone to maintain the level of respect Iko had for Minerva was impressive, considering Iko could count on one hand how many people she looked up to.

"Hello, Iko," Minerva greets, smiling up at Iko from the seat behind her desk, "is Alex waiting for you outside?"

"He is." Eyes flitting dispassionately over the paperwork scattered all over the desk, Iko took a seat on the chair opposite Minerva. "You wanted to discuss something?"

"This will only take a few minutes," Minerva said, reassuringly, "I wanted to talk to you about tomorrow."

A cold feeling stabbed at her heart. Her expression froze. "I'm still volunteering."

"Don't worry, the board thinks you're still the most suitable candidate for this year's tribute, and so do I."

A surge of pride pricked Iko's chest. Minerva leant forward in her chair, propping her elbows against the table. "Just standard procedure, making sure you know your stuff, yada-yada. Don't stress out too much, I know you like to worry about every little thing, but what you need is a good night's sleep—"

Iko almost laughed at the sheer absurdity of the notion. Sleep? An impossible feat; no, tonight would be spent strategising, working her angle, refining details and sharpening her claws. Tomorrow, all eyes would be on her as she walked up to that stage. Tomorrow would not be the final nail on her coffin. Tomorrow, what should the cameras see? But there was no use arguing. Minerva's expression was nothing but solemn.

"—don't rush into anything. Consult your mentors. Keep your allies close, and more importantly, your district partner. I've already briefed Julius about the same thing, and I trust you understand where I'm coming from. You're the most hardworking student in this academy, which is why you deserve to enter the games this year. But don't over-exert yourself. Don't do anything stupid, okay?"

Nonplussed, Iko blinked. "You know I won't."

"Good." Satisfied with her answer, Minerva stood. "You're a smart girl. Just make sure you make the right choices, and see sense in what your instinct tells you. It's there for a reason."

Instinct was everything she'd been relying on lately. It was dangerous, she knew. In just a blinking moment, instinct could turn on her and betray her with any single misstep, but she's learnt how to think twice before leaping. Make the calculations of her trajectory before acting. This is the person her mother had bred, a show horse who knew a few clever tricks. This is the person her district had moulded her to become, a soldier of rapier precision with no room for error.

"You're gonna be fine, Moriyama. You always are."

Stomach knotting, Iko rose to her feet. How can you say that? You can't guarantee survival, she wanted to argue. Death doesn't discriminate between predator and prey. Everyone goes back into the same box. But she didn't. Because Minerva believed in her. Because she couldn't afford to accept failure as an option. Because failure meant death and she couldn't accept dying in a game that wasn't hers to command. If you can't beat the odds, change the game. If you can't change the game, then you go out fighting. You fight and you keep fighting because giving up means you lose. Giving up means you're too weak to handle your own fate. Giving up means letting down the people who were betting on you to stand on your own two feet with a knife in your hand and resist the ones who thought they could snuff you out under their shoes. Hit back.

As though sensing the apprehension wrapping around Iko's neck like a tightening noose, Minerva reached across the desk and clasped a hand over Iko's shoulder and gave a reassuring squeeze. "Do me proud, yeah?"

Iko slanted the woman a surreptitious look. She couldn't keep the frost out of her tone when she said, "bet that's what you said to Julius as well, right?"

Julius Korchak was supposedly the male tribute she was meant to enter into the Games with. Personally, Iko wouldn't have picked him as her district partner. Even though he was a finessed swordsman with decent enough combat skills, he was too rash, too cocky for his own good. He was more walking hazard than help. But she couldn't contest the board's executive decision on the matter. For one, Iko didn't think they'd care much about her professional opinion. That, and the fact that the only person she could name that was more worthy of being this year's male tribute was Alex. And going into the Games with him was not an option since only one of them could make it out. Hence, she opted to remain silent and keep her opinions to herself. The only solace Iko took from this was that once she got out of the Games alive, she could finally have everything she wanted. Plus, Minerva said once that Alex would get his chance for next year's Hunger Games. He was a perfect candidate.

Minerva laughed. "Of course. But between you and me, that kid's always been a loose canon. Amazing at spears, but talent only gets you so far. I don't like to play favourites, but you're probably our best shot at this year's victory."

In the past few months that she'd been forced to work with him, Julius was almost impossible to coordinate with. Alex had been much easier. Much more adaptable. Iko barely managed to find her footing with Julius as a functional team.

"Oh, yeah, before I forget, would you mind calling Alex in on your way out? Thank you. Goodnight, Iko."

Iko pushes the door open.

           "Hey."

Iko twisted round to face her.

Regarding the young Career tribute with a stern look, Minerva said, "I mean it, okay? If I see you chucking knives downstairs, I'll put my foot through your face. Go home, eat a big dinner and get some sleep. I'll see you at the Square tomorrow."

When Iko strode out the door to find Alex, he was slumped in the same chair she's left him in, half asleep.

She kicked him in the shin. He started awake, dazed for a second, before his eyes sharpened and he glared up at her.

     "Minerva wants to talk to you."

Flummoxed, Alex raised a brow, but stood anyway. "What for?"

Iko shrugged. "Maybe she's finally kicking you out because your knife-throwing skills are abysmal."

He shot her a deadpan look.

Returning his bemusement with a brittle smile, Iko pushed him towards the door. "Go. I'll wait for you downstairs. But don't tell Minerva."

Before he could question her vague demand, Iko started down the corridor, head held high, not once looking over her shoulder. He watches her disappear down a corner before shaking his head and entering the office.

When Alex rematerialises from Minerva's office twenty minutes later, he finds her in the training room, a knife in her hand. Thirty yards away stands a full-bodied target, the hilts of three knives embedded in its heart, one sticking out from the bullseye on the head, peppered with holes from where she'd yanked the blades out. Silence smothers the room in a sea of static; the only sounds being the electric hum of the light and air conditioning generator.

As the knife in her hand finds its home in the heart of the target, she catches his movement from periphery, and smirked. He knew better than to sneak up on her while she had her best weapon in hand. But as he approached, she sensed something off. She couldn't quite put her finger on it, but it definitely had something to do with the way his brows were knitted together and his features were twisted strangely with indistinguishable emotion, as though distracted by his own thoughts. Iko squinted in suspicion, as though she could immolate the problem out of him with her burning scrutiny.

"Didn't Minerva tell you to go home?" He asked, dragging a hand through his blonde hair.

"Don't you know I hate stupid questions?"

He laughs, but it doesn't quite reach his eyes. Now, she knew there was definitely something wrong with him. "That, I know," he mused, "more than anyone in the world."

"Then stop." The knife in her hand lodges into the centre of the target with a dull thud.

"You stop," Alex said, "you hate stupid questions, and yet you engage in doing stupid things. Which one of us is the hypocrite here?"

Iko had nothing to counter that with. So she sets her jaw, seals her lips shut, flips the penultimate knife in her hand idly. Then she steps back to the forty-five yard mark, and throws it. The knife hits the target hard, the hilt trembling from the force of the impact. Bullseye. Her heart starts beating again. Purposefully ignoring his burning gaze, she starts with the last knife. It sinks into the next target.

After a moment of palpably unbearable silence and glaring disapprovingly from the sidelines, she hears Alex give a sigh, tip his head back and mutters something barely audible about insufferably stubborn little shits put on this planet to drive his blood pressure through the roof. Iko watches as he crosses the room to the archery station. She watches as he picks up a bow from the weapons rack, notches two arrows before drawing the string and letting them fly. Her eyes follow them. They lodge themselves into her target, both on the bullseye. Head and heart. She twists round to face him and pins him with a scowl, but there was no heat behind it.

"You're stressed," Alex remarked, approaching her. "Don't try to deny it. I know you're avoiding something." His voice was soft. Concern furrowed his brow.

She stiffened, movements growing mechanical as she turns back to the target. Too automated. The next knife ends up lodging itself half an inch shy of the bullseye. Her jaw flexes in frustration. Pursing his lips at the lack of a response, he bends down and pulls out the extra knife permanently concealed in her boot and hands it to her. Without meeting his searching gaze, she snatches it out of his grasp and hurls it at the target with more force than necessary. It hits the bullseye so hard the target trembles on its stand.

           "Is this about your mom?" His voice had dropped dangerously low, a bare murmur that prickled her skin. "You don't have to listen to her, you know? Whatever she tells you, it's just her projecting what she couldn't achieve onto you. You're not weak, you don't need her approval. You don't have to enter the Games if you're not ready just to prove a point."

          "I'm not doing this for her," Iko said, coldly. But it tasted like a lie, as did all half-truths.

There was something she was avoiding, but it had nothing to do with the Reaping or the Games or her mother's approval. In the weeks leading up to today, she'd been waking up in a cold sweat from nightmares that ranged from hyperrealistic to simply absurd. She could be watching herself die at the hands of a faceless opponent, or she could be running from a rabid monkey. Either side of the spectrum, they all boiled down to one thing she'd been working to avoid since she began training: feeling vulnerable. She hated being helpless, because it meant she wasn't in control of anything. And if she wasn't in control of her predicament, she might as well be dead. But she didn't dare voice her pressing concerns. It sounded cowardly to speak something this irrational into existence.

          And she was anything but a coward.

         "Wanna talk about it?"

She tells him, "no." Her voice is flat, her expression shut tight, and he doesn't look the least but convinced, but she pushes her lie forward, mustering every iota of conviction she could scavenge within her to look him in the eye and say, "I'm fine."

           She tries to mean it. Some entombed part of her wonders if she's trying to convince him or herself.

Later, Iko walks home alone, taking a detour for the long way back after she'd seen Alex to his doorstep. Like the proper gentleman, he'd offered to accompany her home, but she'd declined. He looked exhausted from the day's effort and he didn't argue when she'd told him she wanted to be by herself for awhile. The last meagre moments of complete privacy before every little movement, every little twitch of a muscle would be recorded and broadcasted live on television for the world to see.

Home is not actually a home by any means. It is a house—built from wood, sitting limp and lifeless on the edge of the District—but it is not a place for living any more than it is a place for leaving. Back in elementary school, the teachers had given the students—shiny, cherubic faces plastered with idle boredom, the brainless idiocy of adolescence—an art project, instructed them to draw their homes. Some of the kids in Iko's class had coloured in a standard sketch of a squarish house, a picket fence and windows with curtains. Some smashed up crayons and ground the pencils to unusable nubs before sketching something of unmarketable artistry. Iko hadn't drawn anything.

A home, when she'd allowed herself to daydream long enough to picture it, might have been a couch with motley cushions seated before a fire blazing in a hearth, a serene picturesque of comfort. Warmth from flames, a surrogate for the lack thereof from her own mother. Home, in reality, wasn't a home, but a house barely standing on its haunches, creaking floorboards and groaning doors. It wasn't difficult to imagine, with all the mould infestations and water damage sustained over the years, that rats and all sorts of demonic creatures might crawl out of the woodwork at any given moment. There were times when the shadows looked like ectoplasm seeping through the walls and floorboards in the middle of the night.

Of course, there was no shortage of the bugs that came through in the night since they couldn't afford the extra cost on window grates and the nights spent shivering half to death in the winter because there was no built-in insulation or heating regulator to warm up the alcove. That was the price they had to pay, though, for living in the poorer sector of District Two. With her mother bedridden from a work accident in the quarry some years ago and her father still a missing figure in their lonely household, there was no one to play breadwinner. Perhaps that's why she worked herself half to death. Winning the Games meant coming back to wealth beyond her dreams. She could leave this pathetic substitute of a house for a real home in a neighbourhood closer to Alex's, with real heating, and a kitchen stocked with food from the market she couldn't afford now. For the time being, they survived on rare charity from rare kind souls, the meagre grain from the tesserae she'd signed herself up for each year, and the untapped aspirations passed from mother to child. For the time being, that was enough to get by.

But it didn't feel like living.

           "It's eight o'clock," said a gravelly voice, flat with disapproval, just as Iko shut the door behind her and slumped into the living room. "You're late."

She tensed.

Clenching her teeth, Iko screwed her eyes shut for a second, trying to ignore her mother's searing gaze bearing down on her back. When she turned to meet her mother's cool gaze, her insides withered a little. The air between them hung heavy, a leaden weight threatening to crush her bones and pulverise her stirring guts. In the suffocated silence, Iko's split lip throbbed plaintively. Every wound sealed beneath the antiseptic salve seemed to reopen and every bruise iced down to a tame discolouration pounded with the dread punching through her chest. Although paralysed from the waist-down, Akari Moriyama had a way of making people feel small. And right now, standing a head taller than her wheelchair-confined mother, Iko felt like a bug roasting to death under a magnifying glass in the sunlight.

Not many people got the chance to see Iko and her mother standing side-by-side. They'd spent the majority of their lives avoiding each other. But on the rare occasion that they didn't, there was no mistaking that they were mother and child, fractured isolationists with the same inky hair, sharp features, alabaster skin and black eyes void of warmth.

Might as well throw in acerbic existential bitterness under the many qualities she'd inherited from her mother, Iko thought, a sour taste in the back of her mouth.

          "Minerva wanted to discuss a few things," Iko said in a clipped tone. She eyed her mother's hardened expression, the aged lines on her grey features, the shadows lapsing over the hollows of her gaunt cheeks, noting the two bowls sitting on opposite ends of the small dining table where the older woman was sat.

          "The Reaping."

          "I'm still volunteering," Iko snapped, eyes sharpening, and felt the temperature in the room drop. The words dragged across her tongue, sharp as a knife.

So the only difference between them was Iko would be volunteering for the Games tomorrow. To accomplish what her mother could not.

Perhaps that was the problem, the gaping chasm driven between them. Perhaps that was why Iko couldn't stand to be in her mother's glacial yet smothering presence for longer than an hour. Perhaps that was why Akari Moriyama couldn't stand to look at her daughter for more than that same hour. Perhaps, once, there had been laughter behind those closed doors. Now, there was only a loveless tolerance, and a climate cold enough to freeze empires. Underneath it all, the old wound of an absent husband-slash-father. Too much lost in translation and a speechlessness that didn't come from a lack of words, rather, the opposite. There was so much to say that neither knew where to begin.

Akari nodded stiffly, eyes cutting to the two bowls sat on the table. "Dinner's on the table. Sit."

Doing as told, Iko painstakingly swallowed the icy rock formed in her throat and averted her gaze to the lukewarm meal set on her side of the table. A thin broth with a small mound of cold rice was barely enough for someone who'd undergone the raw, intense training to become a Career tribute, but it was all they had to live on. She wasn't about to complain. Their predicament felt like an anchor to the neck, but she was too exhausted to argue. Fatigue washed over her as she dug into her first mouthful.

They eat in a brutal silence, letting the shrieking crickets and the distant rumbling of the blast furnaces in the quarries fill the static. Iko doesn't say anything as she clears her empty bowl in the broken sink. Her mother doesn't comment on her dire table manners. They don't speak even when Iko escapes to her bedroom. Only when she finally shut the door behind her did her windpipe unlock and let out a trembling exhale, as though she'd been holding her breath in the whole time.

* * *

DEATH BLINDS HER IN HER SLEEP, flames licking at her heels, heat smothering her lungs. She's running, running, running. Pounding down the endless corridor, lungs seizing, muscles burning. One chaotic storm after another.

           Everyone is dead and she is alone and her skin is peeling, blistering. Bright red, aggravated patches of searing pain seeping into her bones. Agony spikes sharply in her right ankle—it's twisted, she thinks, but doesn't stop. Her hospital gown billows behind her, tangling around her screaming calves. Sweat drips down her forehead, down the channels of her collarbones, flows continuously down her back, tangles with the hair sticking to the nape of her neck. It's growing increasingly difficult to breathe.

           Eyes fervently darting around the smoke infested hallways, she struggles to pick out the exit, the flickering sign mocking overhead as she passes, all knocking elbows, hips, sides, edges against walls that seem to close in on her, set alight by the inferno scorching the wallpaper a vibrant amber.

           It delights in the chase, waiting to consume, toying with its prey. Hissing and whispering like whips, raging and charging like a feral beast. She doesn't want to think about what it is capable of once it gets ahold of her. Her ankle buckles under her and she hits the ground, hard.

           A shameful cry rips from her throat. Scrambling blind on her hands and knees, she claws desperately around for the wall. No time to feel sorry for herself. Sobs rack her chest and tears cling to her eyes like sticky film. She can feel the heat behind, gaining on her with a sick glee, hungry. Eager to burn. Humiliation floods her chest. Lying sprawled on the ground, no exit plan, no sense of bearing. This isn't the way it's supposed to end. But this is her fate. There's nothing she can do.

           She's on her feet again in a second.

           Black smog floods into the stairwell when she bursts through the set of double doors, inferno surging behind her, it's demonic, possessed. It seeks to kill, kill, kill. She trips and staggers down the steps. One foot infront of the other, arms clashing with the metal railings. The fire spills after her, only three, two, one step behind.

          And then the unthinkable happens. Inevitable, predictable, anticipated, yet not. She hears glass shatter somewhere in the distance, hears aggressive, triumphant, vehement roaring, hears the sound of her own blood thrumming in her veins.

          The world explodes in a white heat.

           You lose.

          When she dies, she wakes up cold.

           In the tangle of her sheets, she jolts upright, gasping. Her stomach bottoms out like a rug's just been yanked out from under her feet. Reality tastes like sandpaper. Bitter and acrid as truth. She sucks in a sharp inhale. Her throat burns, cold air searing against her insides.

           Heart stuttering, her body aches for the frigid taste of oxygen. Little by little her vision adjusts to the new influx of light, but she is, instead, soaked in not-quite darkness. The world comes into focus too quickly. It's still dark, probably the crack of dawn with the sunlight only just peaking out from the base of the mountains some distance away. Nobody else is awake in this ungodly hour.

            There is no hope to fall asleep again, Iko knows this as her chest seizes at the thought of retreating back to her pillow. Trekking a quaking hand through her matted hair, she clambers out from under the covers and winces as the little pin-pricks of the early dawn chill surges over her exposed skin like a cold wave rushing the shore. The haphazardly parted curtains flutter demurely with the light breeze, and she spies fragments of the muddy night above leafless, thinning branches of the shedding trees in the distance of the city. It's bitingly chilly because someone must've accidentally left the window open and her blood prickles and her gelid veins feel leaden, but she feels much better.

          There's something thrilling about being the only one awake when everyone else is sound asleep. When you're the only one and there's finally enough space to think. But that is dangerous, as far as Iko knows.

               Which is more deadly, the bullet or a thought? (Answer: a bullet can kill a person, but it is, intrinsically, the thought that pulls the trigger.)

               So she does the only thing she can do as she waits for morning: unthink.

Ten hours to the Reaping and she knows she can't stay. Not in this house, with its suffocating silence tightening around her neck like a noose, air cloistered under the walls that always look like they're about to give and festering shadows threatening to swallow her whole. So she perches herself on the edge of her bed, bare legs dangling out into the cold, toes tracing dusty circles on the cold marble tiles. Before she can talk herself out of it, she clambers over the window sill, doesn't think to acknowledge the small splinters slipping under the skin of her calloused palms and drawing blood she does not make to wipe off. Like a slow, relieved exhale, midnight greets her with a small, steady breath of wind. It caresses her feverish skin, pecks at her dry but almost-healed lip, combing phantom fingers through the hair hanging around her collarbones.

           Ten hours to the Reaping and her feet are bare when she hits the dirt path snaking the channel of her neighbourhood. She doesn't want to be alone, and there's only one place she can go.

AUTHOR'S NOTE.
i know it's taking So Long to get to the games / reaping but i'm forging Connections for Later Use ;)