She begins designing arenas officially when she's fifteen. Her first is the 70th Hunger Games. Katniss starts planning it two years in advance. When she finally presents it to her grandfather, he's more than pleased. She's being cunning and brutal, and that gets the better of the best rewards. He lets her pick another winner.
Katniss can't decide that year, but her arena is a tribute to the first she got a say in. The 70th Hunger Games is designed for a district four winner from the rivers, ponds and lakes of varying and unpredictable depth – some salt water and some fresh – to the collapsing dam that will leave only the best swimmers alive.
In the end she decides to pick the girl, because she's already picked the boy after all. When her grandfather questions her favor to district four she promises that it's merely because she wants a matching set. She thinks the sea prince will like the red haired mermaid she's picked out for him. Katniss has watched them from the video feeds, and knows that the victor already has a sweet spot for the sweet tempered tribute. He'll be trying extra hard to keep her alive.
Katniss deems herself a matchmaker that year, rather than a gamemaker. It sounds a prettier title to the fifteen year old, though her grandfather calls her a gamemaker in the making. She laughs along with the alliteration, grinning even as the boy from four is beheaded and her tribute goes into hiding. Katniss feels bad for only a moment before she's being congratulated once more on the designs she thought up for new mutts.
The half human half fish creatures are hardly original, but she's added her own flair, and made them more horrifying by covering the human like half with scales and adding razor teeth, black eyes and tentacle hair. They're sea monsters, she tells herself as she convinces herself that she is not a human monster. The Capitol commentators shower her with praise; the citizens think she could be a gamemaker for a few years between her political studies.
It's not like anyone but she could have a remote possibility of being President. The Capitol loves their dear darling Katniss Snow who dresses in colors of fire and coal beside her icy grandfather. Fire and Ice, they are called. He is cold and precise, she is warm and passionate. He keeps the whole of Panem under control with a firm hand, and she makes them fall at her feet with kind smiles. At least that's how it goes in the Capitol.
Katniss hasn't left her grand kingdom's central city in years. The Capitol is her home, and the very few times she ever asks to leave it are always shot down with harsh coldness that doesn't thaw for days as punishment. Eventually she stops asking and instead watches the reports and video feeds with increasing worry.
The districts get worse over the years. Katniss worries about the state they will be in when she governs over them one day. How will she fix their starvation? How will she gain their trust? How will she keep this growing rage under control? She knows better than to question her grandfather, but sometimes Katniss wishes he were kinder to his people – and not just those in the Capitol.
Sometimes she wonders if he realizes that those living in the districts are also his people. Soon she realizes that he doesn't consider them much of people at all. They're hardly human to him – no thought given of their lives, their feelings, or their rights. Katniss wonders how she ever made the mistake of thinking he believed otherwise. She never voices her thoughts on the matter to anyone, not even her closest friends. No one must know that she wants better for Panem than what her grandfather brings.
For the time being, she throws herself into the Hunger Games. Katniss plans to show her worth, her hard work and dedication, skill and cunning, through what she can do in planning Games. She'll help them be better, show how wonderfully smart she is – how loyal to Panem. When she realizes how blind she is she has barely begun her work and Katniss has already convinced herself that it doesn't matter anyways. The Capital will never cease loving her, but the districts will only grow in their hatred. She's giving them two dozen reasons a year to hate her all the more.
The districts will never love her. She's the reason the girl from district four is a victor, and the reason the girl has been driven to insanity. For all the pain Katniss caused poor Annie Cresta she'd barely blinked an eye at decapitating the girl's district partner.
The next year she gives district seven the gift of a strong female victor to give them hope. She's only a year older than Katniss is, but they're so different it's hard to believe the age range is so small. Katniss feels much older wielding so many lives in her hands. The gamemakers let her do as he wishes, and though the title isn't official and someone else holds the place, she's Head Gamemaker at sixteen.
Katniss picked out Johanna Mason from the start. The girl trembled like a frightened mouse, commentators joking about her fear making her probable for a fast runner and sponsors laughing at the prospect of supporting such an easy kill. Katniss see's through the act. It's not fear, but well disguised anger. Johanna is a girl with fury packed in tight to every available space in her body. In the arena Katniss knows the girl from eight will put that anger to good use.
She turns out to be more than right. Johanna Mason is a natural killer, wickedly so. Katniss has given her an axe, a poorly sharpened one that sponsors soon are scrambling over each other to be the first to help give the future victor a true weapon of mass murder. Johanna is as sly and cunning as Katniss is. The gamemaker can't wait to meet her in person and see if she keeps this newer fiery Johanna or resorts back to trembling mouse.
When Johanna chops her final opponents head in half with a might swing, burying the axe halfway in the ground with smashed brain and skull embedded around it, the current Head Gamemaker quits and tells her she might as well take his spot anyways. She becomes the youngest Head Gamemaker ever, and one of the few females to hold the spot.
When the news is announced they add credit to the 70th Hunger Games to her title as well as the 71st.
At the party celebrating Johanna's victory, Katniss waits with well concealed anticipation until she gets to meet her victor. She hadn't gotten to meet Annie in person, being far too busy at the last year's celebration, with congratulations on her brilliance going around, to hunt down the unstable victor who was barely held together by her mentors through each night and day. When she gets to meet Johanna the first thing the victor does is let out a startled laugh before she can compose herself.
"I must say, I'm impressed that the person trying to kill me was my own age all along." Johanna laughs nervously after, obviously rethinking her words in her startled state. It's the truth though; Katniss is old enough to compete in the games herself were she from a district. Katniss is the only competitor of the games who will win every single year without fail.
"A year younger actually," Katniss replies with a kind smile. She reaches out and pulls the girl in for a hug, ignoring the way Johanna stiffens as she whispers into the girl's hair by her ear. "I don't think it will be much comfort to know I picked you to win from the start. I'm sorry." She pulls back with a wide grin on her face as if she's shared some grand secret and winks with a nod to a few of the other victors ambling about, the few from eight well drunk with congratulatory drinks. "Careful with the drink, it's stronger than you think."
It's only because Johanna is so well practiced at concealing her anger, Katniss thinks, that she covers it up faster despite the added shock. Katniss thinks there is grief in her eyes for a moment, survivor's guilt perhaps. But she has chosen a fine victor, not just a killer but an actress.
Johanna's eyes flicker to the victors. "I bet you love your victors most of all."
"Well I only have three I claim as mine, so I have plenty of affection to split between all three of you." She glances to where Finnick and Annie are standing huddled together as he pulls in an older woman closer to them, motioning between the two women as the elder takes over comfort of red haired Annie. Katniss's eyes follow Finnick for a moment before looking back to Johanna.
The older girl has followed her gaze and looks a combination of awed and horrified. Her face is neutral when she looks back to Katniss and grins with a tiny bow rather than curtsy. "If I were a man I'd ask you to dance Princess Snow, but as I'm not I'm going to find me a male worth my time if you don't mind."
"Of course," Katniss replies with a grin. "Stay away from the Capitol men, they're all trouble." She throws in another wink after to the nearby eavesdroppers who laugh good naturedly and the men of the group make a quick effort to begin taking up all Katniss's time dancing with Capitol men as partners.
At one point she thinks she sees the sea prince staring at her blatantly, his easy going grin fallen as Johanna murmurs words at him from behind a champagne glass. By the time her dance partner has spun her back around again the victor is already preoccupied flirting with the Capitol women fluttering about a grouchy Johanna.
Katniss goes to bed that night dreaming of bloody axes and mermaids screaming as they drown without fins. She doesn't make a sound. If she does she fears she'll die.
