AT NIGHT, District Two bore the ornamental magnetism of a parallel dimension. Of streetlights and moonbeams casting orange and silver-blue halos around the buildings, of grey concrete and weathered stone, of dignified detachment and archaic architecture. Masonry was their district's primary contribution to Panem; along with the weapons that District Thirteen had once been a mass producer of before the entire place was obliterated in a nuclear explosion, and the citizens turned Peacekeepers trained and tapered into military readiness, to be shipped off to the Capitol. That, unmistakably, explained the brutal discipline only this district seemed to possess.

Children grew up sword fighting in backyards, pretending mud stains were bloodstains, with victors for mothers and soldiers for fathers. Military history was a required subject taught in schools at all levels. By the time they reached the age of seven, every child had to make a decision for their future. Participate in the Hunger Games, resign to the quarries, apprentice a blacksmith, or serve the militia. Which path will you take?

But, like most children, Iko's future wasn't a choice. Since she could remember, it'd been the Games or nothing. It's all she had been bred for. To make up for her parents' shortcomings. (They'd both undergone the same training to become a Career tribute, but didn't make the cut for the selection process.) To be the one who'd bring glory to their district. It was everything she'd wanted since.

Shoulders squared, Iko kept her eyes trained forward, watchful of the alleyways she passed. In periphery, the faint outline of the mountains receded behind the buildings and dusty marble mausoleums as she went deeper into the district. Dirt paths morphed into uneven cobblestone, which diverged into smooth pavements, which bifurcated into flagstone. Houses grew less dilapidated as she walked, never breaking stride, never looking over her shoulder. Even when she reached the edge of Alex's neighbourhood, she kept moving at her hastened pace.

The Ivanovich's lived in the upper-middle-class sector next to the Victor's Village, where the houses were aligned in neater rows, more cleaned-up and in much more pristine condition. Iko had been running around this neighbourhood with Alex long enough to know every nook and cranny, every little winding alleyway, every little hideout like the back of her hand. In the same vein, she'd been a welcome guest in their home so often she felt more of a member of the family to them than her own blood.

When she finally spotted the humble house nested in the cul-de-sac, a furtive glimpse told her that nobody was awake in their household. But there was the apple tree in Alex's backyard, a branch aligned with his window, and how different could climbing that very tree at twelve years old be than now, aged seventeen and barely three inches taller?

As it turns out, the difference is everything. Balanced precariously on the branch, Iko bites down on her tongue to keep from spitting every curse flying through her head as it dips and groans under her weight. At least she can peer into his bedroom window now, though. Perhaps her efforts, though suicidal, might not be entirely futile after all.

        She raps her knuckles against his window. It rattles slightly from the sharp impact, and for a moment, she is convinced the glass might shatter. But her knocking only grows more desperate as a wind billows through the sector, rustling the leaves. The branch dips abruptly and her heart jams in her throat. Nope, she thinks, fervently, nope, nope, nope, never doing this again.

        "Alex," she hissed, chancing a glance down. Her head spins. Heights were never a problem to Iko, but, at the present, the ground looked more like a gaping black hole in the darkness than a patch of grass. Fingers seizing in a chokehold around the branch, she sucks in a slow breath and cuts her eyes toward the window. "Alex. Wake up."

Through the glass, she can just make out the faint outline of his dresser, the bed pressed against the far wall, and a shapeless lump under the blanket. A sharp pain lances through her palm, as though a splinter had speared itself into her hand, but she clings onto the branch with a marked resolve. She shuts her eyes. Counts to five under her breath. Her pulse is a bucking horse, her skin a cramped stable. She feels it everywhere.

When she opens her eyes again, Alex is standing by his window, glaring at her. Blonde hair mussed, eyes still foggy from sleep, lips pulled into a scowl, but the window was open and he was already half-leaning over the sill with outstretched arms, ready to catch her.

        "What the fuck is wrong with you?" Alex grumbled, voice raspy from the rude awakening, reaching out to grasp her arms so tenaciously as though he were afraid that if he slackened even a tiny bit, she might plummet to her death. His shirt is crumpled, and his skin is warm to the touch. "You're shaking. Why can't you use the door like any other normal person? And why aren't you wearing any shoes? You can let go, I got you."

Eventually, she unstuck herself from the branch and tumbled gracelessly into his bedroom without much ceremony. Her heart is still pounding as she flips over onto her back.

        "Hi," he says, looming over her. Even in the dark, his smile is disarmingly blinding.

        "Quiet," Iko says in a breathless pant.

        "Comfortable down there?" Alex snickers, a devilish glimmer in his eyes. Then, as an afterthought, "nevermind, you must be used to the air by now."

        Narrowing her eyes, the contemptuous glower Iko slanted him was icy enough to freeze all of Panem.

        "Touchy-touchy," Alex sneered, laying down on his back beside her.

From peripheral vision, she spies an easel sitting in the corner of his room, a painted canvas, and a glass bottle filled with paintbrushes. Surprise flits across her features, brief as a passing shadow.

"You're painting again." It comes out more of a statement than a question.

A sheepish grin slips onto his lips. "Yeah. Vesta bought me new paints yesterday."

Vesta Ivanovich was a brooding sixteen year old who, unlike the rest of her family, wanted nothing to do with the Games. Iko rarely ever saw her, since she was always locked in her room, presumed to be working on sketches or reading. There was not a violent bone in her, at least, until someone pilfered her precious colour pencils. She was what her mother might've called a soft touch, all spindle-thin limbs and a deceitfully innocent face, with an affinity for artistic creativity—the only visible trait she shared with her older brother. But the fact that she'd bought Alex a gift for no reason other than charitable mood came as a surprise to Iko. Vesta was anything but benignant.

        "How kind of her," Iko remarked, voice tinged in disbelief. Alex let out a breathy laugh. She notes how the corners of his eyes crinkle when he does that. Out of the blue, warmth engulfs her hand as Alex pulls her hand to his, fingers threading with hers. She doesn't pull away. Then he rests his palm flat against hers, as though comparing sizes. It's a distinct difference.

        "Say we put aside District pride and self-assuredness now. Be honest with me for, like, two seconds," Alex said, breaking the silence that'd settled over them like a comforter. "Are you scared?"

The words are unspoken, but she knows exactly what he's asking about.

Coolly, she flicks her eyes to him. He's frowning at her, mouth turned down in the way that suggests he's trying to figure her out. Scrutinising her. Piecing her together like some sort of unsolvable puzzle. She gets that she gives off the enigmatic overtone. But it isn't all that complicated. In fact, Iko would consider herself a reasonably open book. If only people realise that they need to start asking the right questions instead of all the wrong ones. Because this, the truth: she is not a maths problem, she doesn't need to be solved.

Ten hours to the Reaping but her heart beats more fearfully at the dizzying height from the apple tree than at the prospect of fighting to survive in an arena where losing meant certain death.

Tonight is the last time you will doubt, she'd told herself the night before. Tonight will be the last time you question your abilities. Tonight, you fall asleep knowing you will win. You will win this, and you will come home. Losing is not an option. You are ready. You are better. Weakness does not make a home within you. You will slit their throats in their sleep and you will revel in the bloodbath. Death is your shadow. You will deliver the killing blow. Everything that you know draws down to this fine point. You win. You come home. You're rich and they will bathe you in glory.

It had been with that last thought that she extinguished every candle flame of doubt, locked the smoking wicks and melted wax deep under, where the light doesn't reach, where she herself can't reach. Inside, she is the coldhearted killer the live feed from the camera crews will deliver to the world. Inside is a world of ice and stone. Nothing will tether her to any shred of remorse. Nothing will cloud her judgement. There is no room for error. She will come home to glory, she will see her mother smile for the first time in eleven years, and she will find a proper home with.

        "No," she tells him now, voice unfaltering, gaze unwavering. And for once, it surprises her how it tastes like the raw, unadulterated truth. Her first instinct is to ask him if he's afraid, but she knows his answer. Through their palms, she can feel his pulse thundering against her steady one. "Are you?"

        "Not for me," Alex admitted sotto voce. "I just need you to make it back in one piece. Alive. I don't care what else happens."

        "You don't worry about me. You worry about your place next year," Iko drawled, feigning haughty bravado, lackadaisically picking at her nails, but he doesn't laugh. Then, a sudden thought flickered to the forefront of her mind, a flash of a memory from yesterday. A laugh and a smile that never quite reached his eyes, his features twisted strangely with indistinguishable emotion. And another memory, a stray bullet thought, thick with an ugly sickness: What would it look like, to have the light fade from his eyes? That one, she stuffed down, guilt clawing at her chest, as she asked, "Tell me what Minerva wanted to talk to you about last evening."

A shadow lapsed over his features, and he trained his gaze on the ceiling, like he could melt a hole through the roof. Lips pursed, Adam's apple bobbing, Alex said, "nothing—" and he sounded a million miles away— "just told me I needed to step up my hand-to-hand combat game, some administrative stuff. Mom forgot to pass her the cheque for this month's payment, is all." And then he grinned at her, a stabbing attempt at reassurance, but something was discernibly missing. Iko couldn't quite put her finger on it.

For a moment, she holds his gaze, searching his impermeable countenance for a clue. Sharp eyes boring into his skin, unspooling the tangled threads of emotion, whittling him down to his core. Even the tiniest hint of a crack, she might be able to decrypt, given time, but there was nothing. Not even a twitch of a muscle to dissect. Too many times, Alex wore his heart on his sleeve, but that didn't mean he didn't know how to masquerade his primordial feelings in other ways, an eclipse of convoluted disillusionment; just the same as how cold indifference was Iko's mask. After a few seconds, with no dents in his armour, a smile locked over a secret, and a blank in her mind, she gave up her inspection. But she kept her eyes on him, and he watched her watch him with a level stare.

        "What?" He asked, laughing nervously. "Why're you looking at me like that?"

        "Like what?"

        "Like you want to ki—" he cuts himself off then, sucking in a slow breath. Casting his eyes to the strip of sky outside his window, Alex bit down on his bottom lip. In a perfect universe, where Iko didn't spend her entire life watching other people, analysing their emotions and their actions, learning how to read the shifts in their moods and pretending she genuinely cared about saving their feelings, she might have easily disregarded the tinge of red staining his ears. She might've been ignorant to the hitch in his breath, or the slight crack in his voice, or the way he avoided her sniper's stare like the plague. But she didn't. This was far from a perfect universe. She didn't like leaving loose ends. She didn't like her best friend keeping secrets either.

        "Like I want to... what?" She pressed, even though she knew what he was going to say. Some might consider this cruel, constantly pushing buttons the way she did. A part of her felt guilty for wanting him to admit it, but she wasn't entirely oblivious. Especially to how he felt.

        "The sun's rising," he said, clearing his throat and jerking his chin at the window. "Look."

Disappointment weights a stone in her gut, but she squashes it down and turns to follow his line of vision anyway. She doesn't pursue the subject further. Eight hours to the Reaping and they're lying on their backs on Alex's bedroom floor, staring out the window as they watch the sun rise, making the gruelling climb up the mountains in the distance, golden sun rays igniting the snowy caps in a halo of light. Sunlight filtered in through the window, soaking up the floorboards in a rum-coloured glow. Times like these are deceiving. Panem always looked a little prettier in the sunrise and the sunset. But the prettiest things can be the most dangerous. Everyone learns this lesson the hard way.

        "I think I can hear dad in the kitchen," Alex whispered. Iko didn't find that surprising at all. Everyone in Alex's family were early risers, whereas her mother wouldn't get out of bed unless absolutely necessary. She flips onto her front and he meets her stare with a lopsided grin. "You should eat with us. If you want to, that is. Last I heard, Cass wanted pancakes but the twins wanted waffles. Vesta's swearing off animal produce, though, I don't know why. Reaping Day breakfast is always a compromise."

        "And what did you want?"

        "I don't know, actually," Alex said, huffing as he sat up. "But you can be the tie-breaker for today's breakfast. Your vote holds the most sway in the household now."

        "I don't want to intrude," Iko said. "Your parents must be sick of seeing me now. I was just here two days ago."

        "Nonsense." He dismissed her protest with a flippant wave of his hand. "The twins don't care, but they're grubby seven year olds so nobody cares about their opinion anyway. Vesta's always too grouchy to pay attention to anything, Cass is basically obsessed with you and my parents love you. You're practically family."

AUTHOR'S NOTE.
i miss writing this fic so much ugh