D3SPAIR | klaus & atticus

[MATTIO]

atticus manor

Being allowed to leave the Champignon Élysées for the first time in over a week served as a reminder to Atticus that the life he lived was caught in rotation. His chest collected loose change whenever he entered the Capitol, his nostrils reeking of stainless steel and overpriced liquor. He grew heavier inside watching a pair of tributes from home enter the arena and never come back. The jackpot in his stomach poured out for the victor every time, a singular congratulatory handshake going their way before hopping onto the train for a long ride home in silence.

He boarded District Three's bullet train. The suitcase with his luggage got stuck on every silver step, its wheels spinning out until the fourth step when Atticus picked up the entire suitcase. He carried it to the storage room without a word to Klaus, who watched from the car booth. The train started to move without warning as soon as he made it to storage. Luggage, never quite strapped in right by the train staff, was already out of sorts. Atticus slid his belongings underneath the table, hoping it might not have as much wear and tear there.

The storage room was the only room on the bullet train without windows, meaning that when the lights were off, it was absorbed by complete darkness. It was his favorite place to be on the way to the Capitol when the tributes were giving him stress, or on his way home when the absence of a new victor left him in distress. The train was where he learned to break down, especially once his kids were old enough to recognize when something was wrong.

Atticus flicked the light switch and gripped the train car rail to keep from dizzying himself. In and out. He preferred to grieve in silence, even in his first year as Victor. Everyone saw him break down in the Games. For Quadrys. For Sol. Nell. Danny. Astrid. Atticus forced himself to become more private after that. No statements, no more appearances that were required, and, perhaps most importantly, no allowing the Capitol to build an infatuation with his children. Part of him regrets it; how he lived his life as a secret so well-hidden that even he couldn't find it. Twenty-three years of dilemma and being stalled in nothingness dried him up to the point that he only cried when he was sure no one else could hear it. Atticus warred with himself in the darkness, wells in his eyes battling exhausted outward huffs.

He left the room a few minutes later, all the red he afforded to his eyes gone. Atticus made his way back to the front of the car where the only other passenger on the train resided. "The back is a mess, as always." He sat one table away from Klaus. Atticus was always friendly, but he'd never considered himself close with the only other victor from Three. Smiles, pleasantries, small talk, and the occasional parenting advice when Atticus needed it. He had kids much older the Silas, Eryn, and Maddox. Yet another regret of his, refusing the help of the one person in the world who carried a comparable burden.

Atticus read the Capitol's District Three magazine. The magazine promoted the new technology that Three was making for Capitolites to play around with. Occasionally, he spotted his name credited to some of the projects. Small, slightly opaque, and at the bottom of the page. He mostly invested in robotics or improved travel technology.. Outside of being a victor, that was his source of income: financing projects and plans as well as taking care of the administrative work with his direct connections to the Capitol. Atticus tried his best to help the workers on these projects receive quality contracts from them. Good pay, good conditions, and as little exploitation as his status could get the Capitol to commit to.

That was something he was good at. It kept him busy and prevented him from dwelling on his failures as a mentor.

"Hmm…" Atticus said, his eyes barely inching above the magazine to look in Klaus's direction. If one thing remained consistent across his lifetime, it was that he was always an awkward conversationist. "I think they've given up on keeping balloons and party streamers in the storage room, too. The 'Victor' ones. Would've been funny if this year was the year."

There was a somber inflection in his voice. If only.

[clover ❁]

---

Klaus Goravich

---

The merry-go-round kept on turning. It refused to stop. Nobody was getting off. Thirty-four years of the spinning made Klaus question why he had fought so hard to climb aboard. 

On the train to the Capitol each year, it was quiet. Years ago, it had been different; Daisy and Penelope had come along, until they were old enough to be left with Klaus' sisters. The very last year they had travelled to the Capitol with him - Daisy had been eleven, Penelope had been nine - was the year that Atticus had climbed aboard. Giving up is a gradual process. A spark of hope can dwindle and falter for a long time before it finally goes out. Klaus had warned the children to stay away, as he always did. 

They don't come home, he'd promised, a gift of truth he had learned the hard way. 

But Daddy, Penelope had said, her eyes wide and earnest, you came home, didn't you? 

Klaus had stroked a loose curl behind her ear and smiled sadly at his daughter. "I was very, very lucky. I got to come home so I could be with you."

The child had accepted this. After all, she had seen the pantomime play out many times before herself: the tributes go to the Capitol, and the tributes do not ever go back. But that year, Atticus did, and Klaus watched as this boy of eighteen climbed back aboard the train, and went back to District Three. 

Sometimes, they are lucky. Sometimes, they go home. 

That had been the last year he brought the children. That had been the last year that his ember of possibility had been fully extinguished, trodden down and put out by a heavy boot. Regardless of what happened in the arena, he had realised, the children who boarded the train would never, ever go home. Someone else would go home in their place. A strange, terrible monster, who has a hollow inside of them they'll forever try to fill. A mirage, a shadow, a ghost of who they had been. It was irrelevant what happened in the arena; the train ride home was filled with ghosts. They took up all the seats. Klaus thought that this might be why Atticus spent so much time hiding in the storage cupboard. He didn't blame the kid. (The kid! The kid was forty-one! The merry-go-round spins faster and faster every year until you lose count of its rotations and just allow it to take you where it pleases.) 

There had been nothing he could say to Atticus, not really. Of course, he had done all of the things that had seemed right and polite, but he had always understood Atticus' reluctance to exchange more than obliging small talk with him. What was there to say? They understood each other inherently, carried the weight of each year's failures together, spread out across their combined shoulders. Each of their death tolls climbed sky-high as they failed, again and again, to bring anybody home. Together they collected jars of apologies to hand out to families - to parents and sisters and brothers who looked upon them as strangers who had been given, inexplicably, exactly what had been taken away from their own children. There was nothing to say. Just companionable silence, a shared misery, a mutual sorrow that went deeper than words.

It wasn't that they ignored the tributes, either. They did what they could when there was nothing to be done. It was like swimming against an unrelenting tide: may the odds be ever in your favour may the odds be ever in your favour may the--- Klaus just had nothing to give. There was no secret to victory. It was an unfortunate accident, a twist of fate that grabs hold of you with iron grip. It happens, for better or for worse, and it doesn't seem to matter, really, what you do. The coin will flip one way or another. The only real secret is that the answer is arbitrary, and Klaus continues to wrestle with the question of whether or not any of it really matters either way. 

Atticus didn't get lucky. Neither of them got lucky. You lie to your children, sometimes, because its the only thing you can do. Klaus had told Atticus, a couple of years ago, on a train ride just like this one: Your job is to protect them. It's more important than being honest. It was perhaps the closest thing the two men had come to confession. He wondered what Atticus would tell his children this time. He wondered if they would ask why Daddy couldn't have saved the tributes this year, kept them safe. Klaus was glad his children were all grown up now, hardened by the world and old enough not to ask stupid questions. He was getting tired of lying. 

The train began to move slowly, and then gained pace. Klaus fixed his gaze on the horizon to give the impression that they weren't moving so fast, and then adjusted it to the foreground. It blurred. He looked up. Atticus was standing in the aisle, apparently emerged from the space between compartments. "The back is a mess, as always," he said, reasonably cheerfully, referring to the storage compartment. Klaus didn't go in there very often. He was worried he might find somebody crying inside. 

Atticus set himself down in a seat (near Klaus, but not so close as to impose) and began flicking through one of the magazines the Capitol provided for them. He caught a flash of the cover; District Three. Somewhere in there there was a double-page spread about Klaus' newest film, the one he had spent the previous year making. It had been a documentary about The Rose Plague. In particular, the critics had loved the scene in which a small boy had succumbed to the disease. He had died holding hands with his sister. They'd had to pry apart their fingers, because he had died in the night, and when the girl awoke he had stiffened so much she couldn't get free. She had died, too, four days later. Klaus had to stop himself from reading the reviews. He averted his eyes from the magazine in Atticus' hands. 

"I think they've given up on keeping balloons and party streamers in the storage room, too. The 'Victor' ones. Would've been funny if this year was the year." 

Klaus remembered his surprise when, after Atticus' victory, they had brought out the streamers. There had been such a fuss. Daisy had filled her pockets with party poppers and set them off unexpectedly, the sudden noises making Klaus irritable and jumpy all the way home. He didn't recall any streamers after his own win. Maybe they'd done the same back then, cleared the storage room after years and years of empty trains. Nobody had expected him to break the cycle. Or, maybe he just forgot all about it, blocked it out. 

Klaus looked out the window again, as though suddenly interested by the scenery. "Would've been funny." He blew air through his nose, a half-laugh, half-sigh. "You know I've done this journey thirty-four times now? Thirty-five if you count the first time." Outside, the Capitol was already rushing away from them, the sparkling skyscrapers of the inner city dwindling, threatening to retreat completely into the lull of the districts. "Why do you think you're the only one who's ever come home, in all that time?"

Around and around and around and around. May the odds be--- Klaus gripped the table to try and stop the spinning -- ever in your favour. Lucky. Lucky. Lucky. The train was silent. The ghosts in their booths listened in to see what Atticus had to say. 

[MATTIO]

atticus manor

The scenery around them shifted from excavated urban planning plains to the forests that lie as a border between the Capitol and District One, Three's neighbor. Atticus couldn't imagine the awkwardness of the small talk that must have occurred between Mace and Saffron on their way back to the far away District Ten. With that new victor, Andal, too. He was grateful in that regard that he and Klaus didn't have such attachments to one another or to the tributes they mentored.

"Would've been funny." From Atticus's view, Klaus was, at best, entertaining his small talk attempt at passing the painful time. He spoke about this being his thirty-fourth time as a mentor in District Three. It was Atticus's twenty-third. It dawned on him for the first time that kids like Wolf and Javier weren't alive to watch either of them win. Klaus probably grew up with their parents as well. "Why do you think you're the only one who's ever come home, in all that time?"

For a whole minute, Atticus stared just past Klaus toward the window. His lips opened as if about to say something, but swiftly closed again as if it was a bad idea to start an answer not fully formed. He could think of a million reasons. Perhaps District Three lacked the physical skillset in their technological age to have kids naturally strong enough to train to have a good shot at winning. Or maybe they weren't socially "cool" enough to find allies who were strong enough to protect them. There were a few recent exceptions, like Brennan Fitzgerald and Magi Karp, who did get within reach of victory. Magi had Lara, who'd gotten a kill early but died herself. He watched the boy get stronger and stronger, evolving before he died to Gamble. And Brennan, well, he doubted Brennan as much as the boy doubted himself, but he drew first blood with the help of his allies.

Those factors did their best to limit how much luck would play into the Games, but at the end of the day, they were still a game of chance and good luck. "Logically speaking," Atticus rolled his eyes at his own mentioning of 'logic.' Spend two decades bouncing between two lives and you'll realize just how illogical their world is. No amount of brainwashing their conditions into normalcy could prevent that realization for a victor. "Well, probability and chance and the like. We should have had another person sitting here with us by now. But that's not the case."

Atticus got the sense from recent conversations with high-ups in the Capitol that they were growing tired of Three's poor performances. Sly remarks about Klaus and Atticus being incompetent at their job and Capitolite slang referring to them as "old Doomers" irked him. Atticus pondered why he won when no one else from home could in over three decades. It was Klaus's initial question, after all. He was a shy but content kid in the Seventy-Second, with three good allies. When he ran from the bloodbath, they let him back in when they didn't have to. They carried him through, constantly, when he was on the brink of death. Together, their alliance killed countless: Cecelia, Amerika, Basil, and Noelia. Even Atticus had killed Eryn. After that, Atticus killed Sol and Astrid did Nell. That, combined with Atticus beating Danny and Ezero, meant their alliance had killed eight out of twenty-three tributes. He could barely count on two hands the number of victories the succeeding District Three tributes had.

His eyes squinted as he thought of what to say next. "Perhaps the Games don't lend well to Three's kids these days. They're all so smart and have good ideas, but the training they get tells them the only way to kill is with a sword or a spear." Atticus would sometimes look at the inside of the arenas from the viewing lounges of the Training Center and count the number of ways that tributes could manipulate their environment. But after years of spilling blood being the primary way of whittling numbers, why would they feel compelled to think to do so? "District Three's edge comes from creativity. Maybe we should take an unconventional approach to mentoring to suit that better."

Atticus paused, acknowledging the flaws in that argument immediately. "Of course, that implies that every kid in Three has the time or resources to start with. I had them, and lots of kids certainly do, but there are just as many who don't. And they all have the same odds of being reaped." Even that wasn't true considering tesserae was a necessity for the poorer citizens of Three.

"That's one assessment, anyway," Atticus's eyes widened, another awkward joke to level the mood on the horizon, "the other is that we might just be horrible teachers."

Could both be true?

[clover ❁]

---

Klaus Goravich

---

He had counted at the beginning (how could a person help it?) but it had all faded away over time, until the numbers and names were all mixed up. Now Klaus doubted he could even name all of the failed District Three tributes who had died under his mentorship, not without prompting of some kind.

It had never been a job he had put much time into. It had seemed, immediately, like a losing game. His own victory made so little sense to him he had felt he had nothing to pass on. How do you win the games? You get lucky. You let other people sacrifice themselves in the name of your health, one after the other, until twenty-three martyrs have given their life for yours. Klaus knew he didn't win because of any incredible swordsmanship, or strategy. He won because nobody lay a hand on him. He won because right at the end, it had been an undamaged Klaus against a near-death Fitz Ripley. The winning blow had been a strike that barely grazed Fitz's thigh; that was how weak he had been when Klaus was declared the final survivor, the captain of the ship. How could he translate that into advice for his terrified tributes? Hope everybody overlooks you until there is nobody else left to look at? 

His contributions were instead marked by apologies. Words spoken, money given. Although it could be said that Klaus was a terrible mentor, it could not be said that he wasn't generous. Fantastic. At least when your child dies in the arena, you'll be guiltily reimbursed by the only man who had ever made it home. His filmmaking began as an apology of sorts, too. Sorry I can't say this, maybe I can show you. He turned the camera on broken things, things that hurt, things that Panem needed to see. This, he had been certain, was his legacy. And yet on the empty train home, it did not feel like nearly enough. It's much harder to do right the first time than it is to say sorry. 

Atticus didn't respond to Klaus' question for so long that Klaus thought he hadn't heard. It was easy to lose your grip here, to spin away into the blur of the scenery, to be in every District, everywhere but there. When his fellow Victor finally responded, Klaus jumped a little, having almost forgotten that he had asked.

"Logically speaking... well, probability and chance and the like... We should have had another person sitting with us by now." Klaus glanced about himself, skimming his eyes over rows upon rows of empty seats. "But that's not the case." That much was certainly true. "Perhaps the Games don't lend well to Three's kids these days. They're all so smart and have good ideas, but the training they get tells them the only way to kill is with a sword or a spear."

"District Three's edge comes from creativity. Maybe we should take an unconventional approach to mentoring to suit that better." The corners of Klaus' mouth twitched in response to this. Hadn't they already been taking an unconventional approach to mentoring? "Of course, that implies that every kid in Three has the time or resources to start with. I had them, and lots of kids certainly do, but there are just as many who don't. And they all have the same odds of being reaped."

Klaus considered this. A tale as old as time. Districts with money -- One, Two, Four -- bringing home success after success, while those with less struggled along, sending weaklings into the Game to battle with Panem's strongest. Klaus had money. Atticus had money. And Klaus knew they both gave it away liberally. It wasn't enough. It would never, ever be enough. There was something else missing. 

"That's one assessment, anyway," Atticus said, his tone shifting from serious to something Klaus couldn't quite name. "the other is that we might just be horrible teachers." At this, Klaus laughed out loud. It was funny because it was true. (But it was not funny, because none of this was funny at all.)

"You're right, you know. About all of it." Klaus couldn't believe how quickly Atticus had grown up in front of his eyes; a child, and now, his equal. The two of them, really, were just the same. Two lucky ones amongst a hundred unlucky soldiers, never really knowing why the pieces fell into place the way they did. Just thankful. Just resentful. Just lost, still, despite everything.

"Against all odds, we suffer still. They're born into poverty, they spend their lives learning, but not learning anything that matters in there. I just can't put my finger on exactly what it is that matters in there." 

Klaus sighed. "I'd never picked up a sword in my life before I reached the Capitol - had you?" 

He realised that he knew very little about Atticus' childhood. Had it been warm and loving, a house full of children, with food on the table every night, just like his own? Had he had a mother who read him bedtime stories, brothers that teased him, sisters who thought he was the most important boy in the world? Was that the difference? Something intangible, something far more valuable than money. 

"Sometimes, I think they've lost before we even meet them."

[MATTIO]

atticus manor

His fellow mentor's laugh at Atticus's most recent joke gave him the okay to chuckle. Atticus always worried about overstepping boundaries when it came to the topic of the Hunger Games, especially when it had to do with Three's dead children. That was why he rarely spoke about it with Hunter and his kids. How much might they look at him differently if they learned he learned to cope in ways like this? Atticus's seasonal depression desensitized itself in moments like these, blaming himself and laughing about it afterward. In many ways, it was ridiculous to blame himself; he couldn't go in there and fall on the sword for every tribute he mentored.

Atticus poured himself a cup of coffee while Klaus spoke. Most of what he had to see was in agreement with Atticus's assessment. Money was at the root of the district's problems. The Capitol, in its constant disappointment, has overlooked Three for the past two decades as they wait for a new star to emerge from their batch of tributes. The issue was that in rejecting Three's economic stress, they'd created a blackhole that took away any star's potential glow. Without its shine, all they could be was dust.

"I'd never picked up a sword in my life before I reached the Capitol. Had you?" Atticus shook his head, adding a splash of creamer and a sprinkle of sugar to his coffee (no more than that, though, as sugar was known to make his stomach ache.) He stirred it all together, thinking of a fifteen-year-old Atticus Manor wielding a sword or spear. Never in a million years would he, nor would his parents ever have allowed it. He was meant to be an inventor, a tinkerer taking after his grandfather's plans to build machines that would leave the Manor's filthy rich. A hammer or screwdriver, sure, but a fighter? No way.

Atticus settled in the same booth as Klaus now, sitting across from him. His coffee mug shook as the bullet train began to turn on a bend. He took a delicate sip to keep it from overflowing. "Sometimes, I think they've lost before we even meet them."

He stared at the coffee rather than Klaus, nodding slowly in agreement. What a devastating thing to concede. District Three, willfully leaving its children unprepared for what the future might hold simply because they lacked the infrastructure to do so. "Some districts are just more adequately prepared to succeed in a hostile environment." His fingers poked upward, counting off the districts as he listed their strengths. "One, Two, and Four have their academies, Seven is strong from their lumber work, farming in both Ten and Eleven is notoriously taxing, and Twelve, well, mining is an occupation of endurance and exhaustion."

Atticus had some ideas of how to become competitive from that perspective. "Our problem is that we want Three's kids to be more prepared for this. We've identified the root of this problem: that our industry doesn't create inherently strong or physical prospective tributes." He flipped through the magazine, page after page of fancy inventions and technologies. Not a single weapon in sight, though.

"We can't just change the district's industry to be 'weapons,' so how do we use all of this to our advantage? What's our solution?" Even his problem-solving felt mechanical. "How do we create the equivalent of a career academy for intelligent people who are trained since they're five to create the country's best tech?"

Atticus worried that such an attempt may be put down, given how much the Capitol hated Three for its failures. Such an inventive narrative and solution would not be easy to get past their ever-watching eye.

[clover ❁]

---

Klaus Goravich

---

It was funny how in over twenty years of shared roots and shared failings, Klaus and Atticus had never spoken like this. It felt fragile; Atticus avoided looking at Klaus, focussed intently on his coffee. His words were chosen carefully, almost fearfully, as though at any moment the precarious bubble they were in might burst, and they would be thrust back into the place where things go unspoken.

Atticus confirmed Klaus' suspicions. Neither of them had ever held a weapon before one was thrust into their ungrateful, clammy hands. Like Klaus, he probably dreamed of growing up to be an inventor, not a Victor. They learned feverishly, studying the rules of machines, of electrical currents, wiring and refurbishing and fixing things; always putting them together, never breaking them apart. 

Klaus watched Atticus sip his coffee. He thought about having one himself, but he'd already had several that morning before they departed. Maybe that explained some of the jittery feeling in his chest, a little of the shake in his hands. He was prone to shaking; he'd had to construct a stabilizer for his camera, because no amount of focus could stop it. Klaus felt safe watching Atticus' face as he spoke. The man seemed so dedicated to avoiding eye contact that Klaus was confident he wouldn't look up to meet his gaze. If he had of, he would have looked away, but instead he studied his features as he spoke. 

He gained momentum as he went. Klaus thought Atticus had been waiting to say this to somebody for a long, long time. He should have asked a decade ago. Instead they'd let it fester, let it worsen, watched the Rose Plague decimate their already impoverished home. Klaus had seen children crouched in the streets, begging for food. That wouldn't have happened, back when he was a boy. There had been so much more hope, so much more promise. Unfortunately, that hope had landed in his hands, and he hadn't caught it. 

Atticus blamed the industry. He pointed out the inherent lack of physicality, of strength among Three's citizens. He stated the obvious: there was nothing that they could do to change that, no real way to put weapons into the hands of children as a just in case. 

"How do we create the equivalent of a career academy for intelligent people who trained since they're five to create the country's best tech?" Atticus asked.

Klaus blinked at him. "We don't. We could never do that." It was true; the Capitol would abolish it before the first brick was laid. District Three was not a place where you could get away with that sort of thing. It would be a tremendous step out of line. Neither Klaus or Atticus would be any use to the people of Three if they were dead, or Avox, or worse. Out of the window, District One with its gleaming buildings rushed by them. The scenery was blurred; Klaus couldn't see any details, but he had been there before, and he could clearly envisage the difference between the Capitol's golden child and his own derelict home. It wouldn't take the train long to pass from one to the other, but they might as well be on different sides of the world. 

"Even if we could, it wouldn't work. Putting a sword in the hand of a lamb doesn't make it a dragon." The face of the boy and his sister flashed in his mind; poster children of an insurmountable cost. "They can barely feed these children. Half of them are orphaned, the plague took everything."

He sighed, frustrated. It was all well and good that they were finally talking, but now that their cards were laid out on the table, it was clear that it was a pointless exercise anyway. What good is sharing the same question when neither of you can conceive of a solution?

"Glory is a far-fetched pipe-dream, far out of reach. Three is barely surviving the day to day. They're smart, sure. Smart enough to know it's not worth bothering. A reaping is a death sentence."

Klaus ran a hand restlessly through his hair. He wanted to believe something could change, but a lifetime of hard truths weighed heavily on his chest.