"Kiss me," he says as Effie Trinket blows kisses to the camera, "we're on television."
I am going to die. Not here. In the arena, desperate and bleeding.
Unless I beat the odds, I am not coming home.
So I could leave him here if I wanted. I could. I could make a name for myself as the girl who stood alone.
There is a chance I will make it through the games, and there is a family depending on my choice.
I won't break my mother's heart. Not unless I have to.
I reach up and tousle his hair - Trinket is squawking about my volunteering to the microphones that bend for our blood - and I pull him close to me for a kiss.
I don't know if I love him, but I am learning to enjoy his kisses.
He is clean-shaven, dusted with flour and smelling of baking bread. His hair is smooth with a hint of curl, cut and shaven short to stay out of his eyes.
If I am lucky I will have to kill this boy.
If I am not he will kill me.
"Be strong, Katniss," he mutters in my ear as we pull apart.
The anthem is playing, and Trinket is silent for once. I see tears wobbling in her eyes.
The song isn't sad - patriotic pablum that calls us to die for country - but Trinket dabs at her face all the same.
I study her behavior. I will know Capitol people, very soon.
Trinket has always puzzled me.
She cries so easily, laughs so easily. Has no restraint, no inner core of strength and silence.
That is why they fear us. We don't wear our hearts on our sleeves out here.
To me it sounds like a good way to get them torn off.
In the farewell suite I say goodbye to him for a moment. He presses my hand to his lips, kisses the calloused fingertips.
"I'll see you soon."
I smile for him and let the Peacekeepers usher me inside.
The divan is upholstered in velvet, luxurious as fur, and the carpet is thick around my boots. I am out of my element.
So are all the others who have sat here. The velvet is napped where nervous hands have clutched, dotted with tiny rips where the fabric has given in.
I hear voices outside - my family and his conferring.
I wait, unanxious. I am good at waiting.
His father enters, a broud-shouldered man as dusted in flour as his son.
He nods. "Katniss."
I nod in return. We are on good terms, he and I. In the hard winters I split my catch with his family, who need the meat, and in turn he makes sure we are never short of bread.
"You have a token?"
We're allowed one thing to take with us - a memory. No weapons, of course.
"Yes." A lump of anthracite as long as my thumb, a constant weight in my pocket to remind me of what I am fighting for.
I am carrying a piece of the thing that killed my father, an amulet against it.
In school they say to fight fire with fire. That is why the Games exist - evil shall with evil be expelled, and violence met with violence.
I carry the bone of a monster.
The monster will not take another of my family.
I pull the coal from my pocket and show it him, then hide it away again.
He nods again and rises.
"Don't forget where you come from, Katniss."
The baker is gone with a quiet step. For such a large man he is good at hiding himself from notice.
I am expecting my mother to come, or Prim.
Instead it is the boy I know so well, mischief in his eyes.
"Aren't the Peacekeepers supposed to make sure we don't escape?" I ask.
"They're supposed to." He grins. "I asked your mom for a moment alone with you. She understands."
Of course she does.
He sits next to me on the couch, a dog settling in a familiar spot. There's a glint of gold at the breast of his shirt, a badge or a pin.
"Gale wanted to come see you," he says.
"Why didn't he?"
He shrugs. "He gave me a message for you and left."
"He's afraid of me." I brush hair out of my face, strands coming loose from the braid.
"His mother's sick," he counters.
"True." I have to concede the point - she has 'flu and my mother is worried. "What's this?" I poke at the badge, straddle him to get a closer look.
"Madge gave it to me," he says as I trace the outline. An arrow caught in a slender beak, wings in mid-flap. I've never seen a 'jay that looked like this one, but I suppose artistic license is at play.
"I don't know why," he says before I can play-threaten him. "She came in and said something and pinned it on me and left. I think she means it to be my token."
"I didn't have anything in mind for you." I scowl at him. "It'll do, I guess."
He smiles, then winces. "Get off. I think you're on my kidney."
"Entrails," I say, correcting him as I sit next to him rather than on top of him. "Your kidneys are at the back."
"You would know." He pats his abused stomach. "I think I'll live."
"You'd better. I'd rather not be alone out there."
He flashes that smile again, then grows serious. "Katniss-"
"You said Gale had a message," I remember.
"He told me about trapping," he says, fingering the pin, smudging the 'gold'. "He doesn't just catch food, does he?"
"No, he sells fur too sometimes." To the rich people in the town, mostly. Madge has a stole of fur he trapped.
"He asked if I'd ever seen a fox in a trap."
"I have." Killed them, too, although of course I leave the fur to Gale - he thinks fox is gamy, and would rather use the money from the fur to buy other meat. More fool he.
"He says if they have to they'll chew through their legs to escape." His eyes are distant, searching his memory for the message.
"They will." Not unless they have to. I've seen Gale's empty traps before, only paws inside them and trails of blood in the snow.
"We're in the Capitol's trap now, Katniss." He turns and leans towards me, takes my hands in his.
"I'm not gnawing through my leg."
"You won't have to." There is a faint and feral shine in his eye. Like the dogs that I see in the forest, furtive, the spiritual sons of wolves.
He squeezes my hands. "If we work together, Katniss, I think we can get out. Will you promise me that? Can we work together?"
I haven't even met the other tributes yet. We may not have a chance to work.
But I would rather die legless in the forest than caught in a hunter's trap.
I let him see me smile. "We'll have to."
Note: Spot the reference in the summary, leave me a note saying what it is, and I'll tell you the twist to this story.