Katniss sits in the orchard among the fruit trees, scraping a steak knife along a length of lemon tree wood. She wanted a proper whittling knife, but the servants would not bring her one. She asked for another knife, any kind, and they would not bring her that, either. But when she asked for a steak, it came complete with all necessary cutlery. She cannot understand the logic.

The steak knife is far from ideal for the task at hand, but it will need to suffice. The pain in her healing arm is also preventing her from working to the best of her ability, but she is nearly back to normal after a few days of medication. They actually gave her the option, this time, of removing the scar, and she refused. It's her body. Her scars. She wants to keep the few things that belong to her.

Katniss shaves the wood strip by strip, hoping she is doing it correctly. She has only tried this a few times before. But it feels so good to put her hands to a physical task, and to make something with a capacity for violence. She so longs to have a weapon. Her usual nightmares of the Games have been joined by the cast of Curio Nance and the as yet unidentified assassin, who stalk her through crowded parties and stick knives and parasol cocktail sticks into her legs.

She senses Snow's approach before she sees or smells him, though she does not know why. She keeps dragging the knife along the wood, even and calm, and thinks that if he tries to take it away from her she might stab him.

She does not look up at him, not even when he is standing two feet from her. She strips the wood, and she studies the caress of the blade against the shaft, and she takes comfort in the fact that she could easily kill him right now, if she wanted to.

And, oh, she wants to so badly that it fills her veins with kerosene.

'What are you doing?' Snow asks pleasantly.

'Making a bow.'

'Hm.' He doesn't speak for a little while, during which Katniss listens to the song of a bird she does not recognize. They have different birds here, and different plants, and different smells. But the wood in her hands feels good and familiar. 'Are you feeling a need to defend yourself, perhaps?'

'Perhaps.' Still she does not look up at him.

'How is your arm?'

She glances at her bandaged forearm. It stings and hums. They offered her heavy painkillers, but after the first round she couldn't stand how they made her drowsy and confused and vulnerable. The pain is bearable. It's a kind of discomfort she understands.

'It's fine.' Ease the knife into the flesh. Strip the wood. Pretend it's Snow's tibia.

'I wanted to speak to you about your witness statement,' he says, and she finally looks up at him. He wears a more casual outfit than usual, a pale green robe and muslin shirt, and she feels especially short seated on the ground at his feet. But she will not stand. That would suggest discomfort, and that would suggest weakness.

'What's the problem with it? Did I get something wrong?'

'In a manner of speaking, yes.' He is holding a tablet which Katniss presumes displays a copy of the handwritten statement she gave to the Peacekeepers after she had her blood transfusion. As Snow's eyes pass over the words his expression is pained. 'Katniss,' he says, and he crouches down beside her. She leans back instinctively. He turns the screen toward her. 'Do you think this is how to spell my name?'

Katniss looks. The screen displays an electronic facsimile of the words she wrote a few days ago, the handwriting familiarly askew. She follows the indication of his forefinger.

Corryolaness Snow, it reads.

'Yes?' she says, uncertain. 'I don't know. I can't spell. Most of what we learned at school was about coal.' She turns back to her bow. This she knows how to do.

'Katniss,' Snow says again, and there is real suffering in his voice. Katniss forces herself to look back. 'Katniss, my dear, you spelled "reception" with an "s".'

'So?'

'You forgot the "g" in "champagne".'

'Why would there be a "g" in "champagne"?' she says, dumbfounded.

'It's silent, Katniss,' he says, very delicately.

'Okay?' She shrugs. 'I don't see why this matters.'

Snow shakes his head and whatever emotion he's feeling she cannot read. 'Oh, my Katniss…' he murmurs, some degree of amusement in there.

'I am not your Katniss,' she mutters.

'Like it or not, my dear, you are. And I think we will need to get you some literacy lessons. If people see this, they'll think you're... Well, unintelligent. And I know that isn't true.'

'I don't care if people think I'm stupid.' Katniss raises the bow and examines the symmetry of the top and bottom ends, each carved smooth. 'Being able to spell doesn't make you intelligent. You think good spelling would win you the Hunger Games?'

'No, but a high degree of literacy would allow you to read the books that taught you which berries were poisonous, for example.'

'I already know which berries are poisonous,' she snaps. 'We had our own book, you know. A guide to plants. I wrote some of it. No one ever complained about my spelling.' She pulls a face. 'You have a stupid name, anyway. If it bothers you so much, I'll make sure not to write anything anyone might see in future.'

Snow shakes his head. 'I would like to get you lessons. Spelling, yes, but other subjects might be appropriate. Whatever you would like to learn. A musical instrument, perhaps?'

'Why?' she says, exasperated. 'What is the point of any of this?'

'The point is for you to have a life, Katniss.' He speaks so gently. 'And for you to feel like you belong here.'

'I don't belong here. I never will.' Carve the wood. Carve bones. Carve open his skin. Stay alive. 'I don't want – hey!'

He reaches out and takes the bow from her quite easily, and though Katniss grabs for it he lifts it smoothly out of her reach. She hates how tall he is. He examines the bow, turning it over in his hands, and he seems pleased.

'This is quite good craftsmanship,' he says. 'Have you done this before?'

She clenches her jaw, thinks about cutting his Achilles tendon. Instead she leans her back against the tree and stares Snow down with control and loathing. 'Are you just going to taunt me or give it back?'

'I'm not taunting you,' he says mildly. 'Who taught you to do this? Was it your father?'

She folds her arms. The cut one throbs. 'I'm not going to play this game. You can give me back the bow or you can keep it. It's not like I have any power to take it from you. And I can just make another one. But I'm not answering your questions.'

Snow smiles at her. 'I was only admiring it. You can have it back.' He extends his arm, holding out the bow, and Katniss snatches it. She holds it to her chest like a child with a precious toy.

'If you want to touch something that isn't yours, you ask permission,' she says. She didn't intend the double meaning, but she lets it hang in the air. She wants to go back to whittling, but Snow is still crouched next to her. She glares at him from under her eyebrows. 'What?'

'I was just thinking,' he says agreeably, 'that it might be sensible for you to learn a little more about culture. Literature, perhaps.'

'I don't care about literature.'

He stares at her very hard, and Katniss fights the urge to look away. She so loathes it when her hatred and her anger crash against her instinctual, animal fear of him.

'There's something I'd like to show you,' he says at last, and he offers her his hand. 'Will you come with me?'

She keeps her hands on the bow. 'No thanks. I want to finish this.'

'I don't want to force you.' He speaks so pleasantly.

'Then don't force me. Let me do what I want.'

He reaches for her and she leans back, but the tree trunk prevents her getting out of his grasp, and it takes only a moment for his fingers to close around her bare arm and hoist her to her feet. Katniss stumbles, tries to pull away, can't, and instead puts the knife to his wrist, against the bone.

'Let me go,' she hisses.

He is calm as a field of lavender as the serrated blade tastes his skin. 'You're not going to stab me, Katniss.'

'I could cut you,' she says. 'I could cut you just a little. You wouldn't kill my family for that.'

His smile widens. 'Go ahead.'

She pauses. She wants to. She wants to so, so badly. She increases the pressure in her wrist ever-so-slightly, and she feels that he is holding his own wrist against her knife. He leans into it, pressing skin into metal. It's too blunt to cut by pressure alone, but Katniss is an expert at slicing open meat. She yanks her hand away and feels an incredible release: a bow string relaxing, a flight of birds into the sky, a falling rockfall. An apparition of pain goes through Snow's face, and then he is calm and composed again. Katniss stares at his wrist, where the blood is smiling. A perfect cut: not too shallow, not too deep. He'll have a scar. She feels a hot, terrible excitement go through her chest and her gut.

'Do you feel better?' says Snow, and he removes a handkerchief and tries, with some difficulty, to wrap it around the wound.

'Yes,' she says. Her lips are strangely swollen. She can feel herself panting. She frowns as he tries and fails to bind the wound one-handed, then she reaches out and ties the knot herself. The skin of his wrist is hot against her fingertips. He is usually so cold.

'Thank you, Katniss,' he says. 'Now, will you come with me?'

It only seems fair.

They walk together, Katniss not letting go of her knife and bow, and she feels weird and inexplicably dirty. She should have just gone with him when he asked. She does not like how comfortably he walks beside her, despite the blood seeping through his bound wrist. He should not be so content to let her hurt him like this, and she doesn't understand it. There is something here that she cannot comprehend.

He leads her into the mansion and then to his study, where she has not been before. It is always locked and guarded, so whatever secrets it holds have been denied to her. The guards do not even look at her as she follows him in. As long as she is with Snow, she can go wherever she wants.

It's a dark room, lined thickly with books, and there is a huge desk with an oxblood leather chair behind it. She wonders how many times he has sat here and signed pieces of paper that resulted in people's deaths. There are documents on the desk now, and she cranes her neck to futilely try to read them as they walk past.

Snow draws all the curtains. 'What I am about to show you is a secret,' he tells her. 'Not even the servants know about this. I assume I can trust you not to tell anyone?'

She glances up from the desk. He is standing next to a bookcase, observing her.

'Who would I tell? The servants all hate me anyway.'

'They don't hate you, they're just afraid of you. You're quite an unusual girl, Katniss.' He smiles, and then he reaches out to the bookshelf and pulls out a small hardback. He reaches behind it and presses something, and then Katniss jumps as an otherwise unassuming wall clicks open like a door.

'A secret room?' she asks. This gives her a childish delight.

'Come.'

She follows him in. It's a library, only one small room, although the books here are far more pathetic than those in the study. There are no windows and it smells extremely potent and old, not unpleasantly so, but rich and overwhelming all the same. There is a single couch in the middle with a dim lamp beside it, and otherwise everything is dark.

'Forgive the gloom. Light damages the books.'

He holds out an arm to show her in, and Katniss wanders into the center of the room. The door clicks shut behind them. She turns around, staring at the books, confused. Is there going to be another secret room or is this really what he wanted to show her?

'More books?'

'Do you know what these are?' he says quietly.

She shrugs. 'Books.'

He is gazing at her intently. 'These are all the known remaining books from the old world. From our ancestors.'

Katniss blinks at him. 'I thought they were all lost.'

'Purposefully destroyed. Or most of them were,' corrects Snow. 'Why, exactly, I do not know. There was some urge to suppress the culture of that world, some fear of it being seditious. Although I cannot say I have seen much evidence for that in these works.' He reaches out a finger and lovingly strokes the spine of one book. 'These are surviving relics that have been recovered from ruins, or found under floorboards, et cetera. I'm sure there are more out there somewhere, but this is certainly the largest collection.'

Katniss drifts along the wall, her dress catching on some of the more weathered spines. She reaches out and touches a book at random, just to see what it feels like. The spine is half torn and has one surviving word upon it that she does not know how to pronounce. Eyre.

'Not all of the books are in English,' Snow continues. 'Perhaps one day we shall try to translate them.'

'Why hide them?' She looks back at him. 'If they're not dangerous, why can't people be allowed to read them?'

Snow looks around the library with quiet satisfaction. 'Knowledge is power. Some things I prefer to keep for myself.' Then his eyes focus on Katniss, and she pulls a face at him.

'You should let people read them.'

'I intend to. Well, I want to let one person read them, at least.'

He crosses the room, moving close to Katniss, and she jumps a little as he passes. The smell of blood and roses swirls with the must of books. Snow gently pulls a slim little volume from one shelf and holds it out to Katniss.

She stares at the golden words on the cover. She doesn't think she knows the language. The only bit she can make sense of is 'burne'.

'I don't know any of these words,' she says.

'It's a name, the name of the poet,' he says gently. 'But the verse might be a little difficult for you.' He sits on the couch and folds his legs. Some blood smears against the cushions as he extends his arm. 'I'd like to read some to you. Will you sit?'

'I'll stand.' She folds her arms and glares at him from across the room.

'Alright.' He opens the book and flicks through the pages, searching for something. He clearly knows this book well.

Katniss stares around at the shelves. All this lost knowledge… All of it kept here, shored up for the moths, denied to the people who need it most. A great pain wells up in her chest, then shatters. He has made a gift of it to her. Now she, too, can be complicit in keeping it from the people who deserve it.

'Here we are,' says Snow, and he begins to read. '"Here, where the world is quiet; here, where all trouble seems dead, winds and spent waves riot, in doubtful dreams of dreams…"'

His voice fills the room, chasmic and deep, ferrous and fragrant, and Katniss realizes she has never heard poetry like this. She knows songs, and there are folk poems passed down from grandparents – those that survive long enough. But this is completely foreign to her. She clutches the handle of the knife and the bow and closes her eyes. Her skin shivers, despite the close warmth of the room.

'"Pale, without name or number, in fruitless fields of corn…"' he reads, and Katniss drifts.

She does not want to enjoy anything he gives her, but this is so new, and yet so old, and she doesn't know how she ought to float upon it. His voice, divorced from the reality of his evil, is not unpleasant. On the contrary, it is warm and firm and cradling, and it is easy to settle herself into it.

'"Her languid lips are sweeter, than love's who fears to greet her…"' he reads, and Katniss feels a little dizzy. '"She waits for each and other, she waits for all men born; forgets the earth her mother, the life of fruits and corn—'

'Stop,' says Katniss, opening her eyes. Snow stops reading. He tilts his head at her.

'Are you alright, my dear?'

'I want to leave. I want to get out of here. Let me out.'

Snow closes the book. He looks at her with a mix of pity and regret. 'Of course, my dear. You need only press that switch.' He points, and she follows his finger and flicks the button.

The door opens once again and Katniss is out the moment the opening is big enough to admit her. She walks through the study, past Snow's desk, and she at least has the sense to grab a handful of papers before she starts to run. She runs back the way she came, out again to the gardens. She runs and she runs, as fast as her legs will allow, like she is running from the Cornucopia, like she is running for her life. She runs far, far to the edge of the mansion grounds, right to the border, and then she throws herself at the stone wall and screams and beats her hand against it until her knuckles are as raw as her fingertips.

Something is wrong. Something is terribly wrong. She does not know what it is, and she does not know what game Snow is playing with her, but she knows she will not like its conclusion.

She stays there for a long time. It starts to rain. She sits at the base of the wall, her knees drawn up to her chest, and she wants so terribly badly to go home. She wants to be in her mother's arms, and she wants to hold Prim against her. She wants to run through the forest with Gale. She wants to eat warm bread with Peeta. She wants to drink and laugh with Haymitch…

Katniss closes her eyes very tight, then opens them again. She cannot do any of those things.

But there are some things she can do.

She unfolds the crumpled documents and holds them in front of her face. She is dismayed to discover that she cannot understand them, and she starts to feel stupid. The first appears to be a list of numbers under columns marked with letters, S and D, which correspond to another column of jumbled letter number combinations. The second is a map of the Capitol, contoured and colored in blue and red, but there is no key and Katniss does not know what the colors represent. The third and final sheet she grabbed is a letter, and Katniss' heart jumps and then falls as she tries and fails to understand it.

'Dear President Snow,

Initial canvassing has been extremely promising, more so than hoped. There is a great deal of lingering sentiment in even the most tempestuous Districts – indeed, those areas with the highest concentration of seditious sentiments seem the most amiable to a conflagration. This is excellent news. The resistance expected in the Capitol is contained to narrow quarters. This is not to be dismissed, of course, but I am sure you will be able to make progress in these areas. The data is strong, with 1031:743 in favor in C1J43, and 674:225 in favor in C1J42…'

And so it continues. Katniss rereads the parts she understands over and over again. What is this 'conflagration'? Is Snow planning to destroy another District, like the fate that met 13? Surely 12 would be next on the list, or perhaps 11? But it would make no sense for seditious Districts to be in support of their own destruction…

Katniss balls up the paper and stuffs it into a crevice in the wall. They'll know she took it, of course; she'll be on camera. But perhaps they won't be able to see where it's hidden, and she can come back to it later.

She sits there for hours. She lets the rain seep into her, lowering her temperature to that of the grass, and she tries to fit the word 'conflagration' into as many contexts as possible. It's no use, though. She soon runs out of ideas, and she closes her eyes and starts to think again of home. If she could just sink into the soil and stay there forever, Snow would never touch her again…

'Ma'am? Mrs Snow?'

Katniss keeps her eyes closed. Please go away. Please leave me alone. Please don't make me go back to him.

'Ma'am? Ma'am? Ma'am?'

Katniss opens her eyes. A servant is staring at her, her thin face annoyed and faintly repulsed.

'What?'

'President Snow requests that you come inside and get ready for tonight's event.'

'Can I refuse?'

'We have orders to drag you in if you don't come willingly.'

Katniss takes a deep breath. Her hair is soaking, as is her dress. It's better here. It's cleaner. It smells of grass and stone, and not of blood and roses.

'Okay.' She stands. 'Okay. Okay.'

She does not ask what event. She follows the servant back to the mansion, who does not leave her alone until Katniss is seen back to her chambers. Stop her running off. Keep her in line.

There are three dresses waiting for her in her chambers, none of them plastic-wrapped like the stylists usually leave them. Katniss knows instinctually that these have not been designed by the stylists: Snow chose them. She looks at each in turn. The first is black, slender and knee-length, unadorned and simple. The second is midnight blue, floor-length, with a draping bust. The third is dark, ripe red, baring the shoulders and falling loose at the feet. None are low cut, none are exploitative.

He wants her to dress the way he likes. But he also wants to give her a choice in exactly which flavor of his tastes she wreathes herself.

He doesn't hate her anymore. He doesn't think she's a nuisance. He is becoming fond of her.

Katniss cannot think of anything worse.

She tries to calm her racing heart. Fondness doesn't mean anything. Is it romantic? Does he want her as a daughter? Perhaps it is because her own father has been so close in her mind, what with working on the bow, but she thinks there have been paternal aspects to Snow's behavior. He does like to care for her, in his peculiar, horrible little ways. And it would explain his aversion to sexual contact.

And yet…

She knows that is not quite right. There is something about his aversions that is decidedly unfatherly. But she cannot say what. What is the nature of his fondness, then? He hasn't really hurt her, not more than pulling her arm. Well, there was their exchange of blows on the honeymoon, and there was the smack to her face after the auction. But those don't really count.

Katniss blinks, then slaps herself in the face.

Yes, of course they fucking count.

She will not defend him. She will not rationalize what he is. She thinks about her father, and she thinks about Rue, and everyone else in the Games, and she fixes Snow's face next to all of them. Everything is his fault. And if Snow wants to dress her up, she'll let him. And if he wants to read her poetry, she'll let him do that too. She'll hate him openly and infinitely for everything he inflicts upon her, and then, one glorious day, she will kill him.

Katniss wears the red, and Snow wears black. She does not speak to him when they meet in the foyer, and she deflects his little questions about how she finds the dress, and what she thought of the poetry, and if perhaps she might like to take a trip out of the Capitol sometime soon. She only wants to disappear into the ground.

He lets her be during the drive. Their limousine eventually pulls up outside a vast building of blocky gold and silver, with hologrammatic screens advertising oddly underdressed, skinny dancers who walk on their toes and spin in the air.

'What is this?' Katniss asks, peering out with distaste.

'A ballet. "The Dance of the Swans." It's actually a recreation of an ancestral ballet, although only a few remnants exist of the original choreography. Not many people know its origins, of course.' Snow smiles at her, like this is something she should appreciate learning, and Katniss glares dully.

'Why do we need to see a ballet?'

'We do not need to see a ballet, Katniss. This is recreation.'

'So… Do I actually need to be here? Couldn't I have stayed at home?' At the mansion. Not home. Never home.

'I wanted to take you out,' says Snow. 'I thought it would be good for you to be around other people. And I thought you might enjoy ballet.'

Katniss offers Snow her hollow gaze. 'There is nothing you can give me that I could enjoy.'

'You enjoy the gardens,' says Snow pleasantly.

Katniss takes in and releases one dry breath. 'I enjoy thinking about cutting you into little pieces and feeding you to yourself.'

She does not give him a chance to smile back, or offer some irritating witticism. She pushes open the limousine door and is showered with camera flashes, and she pauses and turns and smiles warmly for her watching public. Snow joins her and puts one hand around her waist, and Katniss tries not to let her smile fall. They are both getting better at this: he is more comfortable touching her; she is less likely to throw up. But the anxiety of his touch is ever-present, spreading through her, and she finds herself desperate to get to their seats.

Inside the theater, there is the usual banal small talk to indulge from the other rich and powerful who have come to attend the ballet, but no one is as rich and powerful as them. Katniss holds her husband's arm and laughs and smiles at jokes to which she pays no attention, and she tries to annoy Snow by kissing his cheek when he's talking to people, but this doesn't seem to have much effect anymore. He has tasted her tongue in his mouth; what does he care for her lips on his cheek? She will need to up her game.

She really doesn't want to.

He leads her to their seats, which are in what is presumably the most important box in the house, though they're sharing it with another couple.

'Why do you have to share a box? You're the President,' she says, keeping her voice low so the other couple don't overhear.

'I don't need to share,' Snow replies. 'But those two are Fabiola and Arminius Sura; he is the most important equine breeder in the Capitol. I knew his father. His wife is only a little older than you. I thought you could make friends with her.'

Katniss stares at the couple sharing their box, who are trying to make it look like they are not sneaking constant glances at the President and his wife. Their starstruck peeking does nothing but repel Katniss.

'You want me to have friends?' she says flatly. 'You said I couldn't have any friends. "No confidants," that's what you said.'

'Close friends that you share your secrets with, certainly not. But I see no harm in a little light social interaction.' He gives her a frowning smile. 'You would benefit from it, Katniss.'

She stares at him with empty eyes, then flicks on her best camera-ready smile, stands, and steps over to the couple.

'Hello there! I'm Katniss Snow.' She extends her hand for the woman, Fabiola, to shake, and after an awkward, rictus-grin the woman takes it.

'Fabiola Sura,' she gushes. 'It's such an honor to meet you.'

Katniss has no idea what to say next. What did she used to say to people when she was being friendly? Was she ever friendly? She would chat at the Hob about hunting and kills and what food was on the menu, but none of those topics of conversation are open to her.

'So…' There is another long silence. 'Do you like ballet?'

'Oh, I adore all kinds of dancing,' says Fabiola in a long rush. 'I used to dance myself, before I injured my back. I love ballet especially, and this troupe really is fabulous. When I was a girl, I attended the Capitol Dance Academy, and…'

Katniss feels her mind start to recede. Fabiola's features stop fitting together properly. She can't participate in this conversation. This isn't her life: dancing, fine upbringings, hopes and dreams, a happy marriage to a husband she loves. Katniss feels like a collection of bugs pretending to be a person. She is futureless and made of bone and lies and Snow's touch. There is nothing else inside her except anxiety.

'What about you?' says Fabiola suddenly, and Katniss blinks. She has no idea what this question pertains to. She opens and closes her mouth, then gives a thin smile.

'I need to go back to my husband now,' she says flatly, and Fabiola's own smile falls as Katniss turns away.

There is Snow, waiting for her. He is always waiting for her. She takes her seat at his side, where she belongs.

'You didn't like her?' he inquires.

'I…' Katniss rubs her temple. 'I'm just not a real person anymore, Snow. I can't talk to these people. I can't pretend I'm like them.' She glances up at sees Snow frowning, and she shrugs. 'I feel like a weird, inhuman creature wearing a person's skin.'

Snow studies her. 'Katniss,' he says, in that camphor voice, 'it doesn't have to be like this. If you put in a little effort, things will get easier. A little social interaction will help your depression.'

Katniss thinks her eyes could get so big that her whole face would dissolve into them. 'I get plenty of social interaction, Snow. I get it from you.' She smiles like a corpse. 'I have become a different person. And I hope you like whoever she is, because you're stuck with her for the rest of your life.'

'Katniss,' whispers Snow, and he bends closer to her. Blood-breath on her face; so, so familiar. Katniss closes her eyes and breathes it in. 'I cannot help you if you don't help yourself. I am trying to make your life better.'

'The only thing you could do to improve my life is kill yourself,' she whispers back.

This elicits a dry smile. 'I assure you, Katniss, my death would not improve your circumstances. Not yet, anyway.'

'What does that mean?' Snow only smiles at her, and Katniss scowls back. 'You know what, I don't care. Let's just get through this stupid fucking show.'

They remain in unpleasant silence until the house lights dim, and then the ballet begins. It is, as Katniss expected, dreadfully dull. She gets some interest from watching the dancers do their athletic jumps, and she likes to see the way their muscles move. But she hates how thin everyone is, and she can't follow the story. She's not even sure if there is a story, and she feels too stupid to ask Snow what's going on. She gains some wry, ironic pleasure from just how much she dislikes the experience. Snow truly is hopeless at finding things she enjoys – even if he is a master at identifying what she hates. His knowledge of her is immaculate only insofar as trying to hurt her. This brings little comfort.

The dancers act out their storyline, and Katniss tries to follow what is going on. There is some sequence in which a woman dressed as what Katniss thinks is supposed to be a swan is running around pursued by some man dressed as what Katniss is sure must be a duck when the couple next to them start giggling at some private joke. Katniss eyes them. These two truly do look in love: her soft, glittering eyes; his hand caressing hers; that adoring way they look at one another. Her heart gives a little tug. That's not something she can ever have. No, all she has is Snow.

We're getting shown up, Katniss thinks ruefully.

Snow must be thinking the same thing, as he is eyeing the couple with comparable dislike. He reaches out to take Katniss' hand, which rests on her thigh, and she yanks it away in annoyance. She doesn't feel like pretending to be happy today. She can hear Snow quietly tsk, but rather than argue with her and spoil the ballet he just lets his hand rest there, touching her thigh.

Katniss' skin starts to prickle and she tries to soothe herself. It's alright. It's fine. It's not going to hurt you.

He would probably remove it if she asked. He so does like to pretend he respects her. But he doesn't need to know her weaknesses. She can tough it out, this feeling of his fingertips searing through the fabric of her dress, of his palm creating a burn mark on her. The cuts to the leg she sustained from the assassin tingle beneath the pressure. It provokes a weird anxiety, laced with hatred, spidering out from the touch of his hand across her thigh, into her stomach, and it lands somewhere deep inside her.

She cannot say why this particular touch should offend her so much. Snow has touched her back, her hand, her face, and her lips so many times before. Her thigh is no more precious a body part than any other. She notes how the hatred is stronger than the anxiety, a feverish loathing that shines like fish-scales. When she glances at his hand, she can detect the very edge of the bandage beneath his sleeve. It's the same one she sliced open earlier that day. She wonders if it hurts him to rest his injured wrist against her like this, and her hatred writhes. Perhaps it might start to bleed, oozing out of the bandage, sinking into her dress. Red on red. No one would need to know. The hatred and anxiety and pain tighten and take root, all spiraling out from the firm, warm weight of Snow's hand on her thigh.

It takes Katniss a long time to understand what is happening to her. Her hatred sparkles. Her belly hums. Snow shifts his hand very slightly and his fingertips send icy spasms into her skin and Katniss pictures his wrist opening up like a sticky cherry, and only then does she register a distant, confused twitch in her clitoris.

Oh no.

Katniss' eyes widen and her body tenses, and then she forces herself to relax. It must be a fluke. Perhaps the sight of the underdressed dancers has flicked something in the depths of her lonely brain. But she knows it has nothing to do with the ballet. It's Snow, it's all Snow: his smell, his presence, his wound, pressing against her and doing something blasphemous to her insides.

It's turning her on.

This is not something she can abide. She wants to stand, flee, vomit, kill someone. But she must sit perfectly still, and play her part, and watch the dancers below. She tries to distract herself by counting the steps of the dancers, but this does absolutely nothing to dampen the tremors of heat that Snow's hand is extracting from her. She can feel a little metallic twist of arousal start to unspool inside her clitoris, completely unbidden, and it is with a mix of horror and relief that she finds that the arousal is starting to displace her anxiety. This new unfamiliar warmth laps at her panic disorder so gently, and at some point she realizes that she feels almost calm. On a purely objective, physical level, this is the best she's felt in months.

This should not be possible. She has been touched before: she has kissed Peeta, and she has kissed Gale, and Snow has handled her body in all manner of ways. And yet this single touch, one hand on her thigh, summons something from her that she has not let herself feel in so long she cannot remember. Katniss has masturbated before, of course. An adolescence of starvation and terror hardly lends itself to a strong sex drive, but she has snatched quick, hot moments of self-indulgence on days when hunting was particularly unrewarding. Sometimes it was just something to keep herself warm. Her arousal was a straightforward physical itch, and she fulfilled it with hard, tight orgasms that sated her in what she thought was the most efficient way her body could experience.

But her desire was never anything like this. Layer upon layer of rising, gorgeous heat is laid out inside her, sheets of hot snow. It used to take fifteen minutes of rough rubbing between her legs to prompt a climax, and it always came with surprise: never more than a hot shudder. But her body is now filled with something entirely new. It soaks her; she simmers. Her skin thrums.

Do you want President Snow to make you come? says a voice in her head that weirdly sounds rather like Haymitch.

Katniss swallows hard and bends her mouth to Snow's ear.

'Could you please stop touching me?'

He glances at her, frowns, then removes his hand. 'Of course. I was just trying to keep up appearances. Are you alright? You look very…' He is confused by her red, flushed cheeks.

'I'm fine. Just a little overheated.'

A desperate, needy ache erupts inside her now the hand is gone. She wishes she had something cool to drink. The arousal has stopped advancing, but it has not abated.

She understands instinctively what has happened. The Games broke her, and now Snow has broken the pieces of her some more. She thought her body had reached a limit with its trauma responses, but sexual trauma is a whole new arena. Taking a knife to the face is not the same as taking a hand to the thigh. Her body and mind couldn't cope with the endless, awful touches of Snow's body. And so, like a wound filling with pus, her body has filled itself with arousal. This is her dreadful defense mechanism. So you don't want to go blind with panic every time he touches you? How about it makes you wet, instead?

The ballet lasts an age, but no matter which thoughts Katniss shoves into her head she cannot flush the arousal from her body. It throbs and it prowls inside her, sometimes less and sometimes more, and if she thinks too much about the memory of Snow's hand on her thigh it kicks her like a silver horseshoe.

When the performance reaches its intermission, everybody erupts into applause. Snow stands to clap, evidently pleased with this particular ballet, and Katniss does the same. She is simultaneously disgusted and manically amused to feel her underwear slide viscous between her legs.

Snow turns to her, beaming. 'Wasn't that wonderful?'

'I want to leave,' she says immediately. 'I don't feel well.'

Snow's smile falls. 'You really disliked it that much?'

'Yes, it was awful. Hated every moment. Bored out of my mind. Can we go?' Snow frowns at her. Something is off, obviously, and he does not like a mystery. Katniss shuts her eyes, swallows, and tries to be more appealing. 'Please, Snow? I'd really like to go home, and if this is just recreation, there doesn't seem a need for us to be here. I mean, you could stay, if you're enjoying the ballet.'

'No,' he says, slowly. 'If you're unwell, we can leave. Come along.'

He moves his arm to interlink hers, as they always do, and Katniss doesn't think anything of it until her arousal rears itself again with the hot press of his body against her. Her faint, devoted-wife smile drops.

Is it not going to stop?

She is disgustingly, painfully aware of how wet she is with every step they take. The poor Sura couple try to catch them for conversation as they pass, and Katniss simply holds up her hand to silence them. She is becoming such an asshole.

The moment they are back inside the limousine, Katniss takes a cool bottle of water from the minibar and removes herself to a far corner, diagonal to Snow. Her face contorts as she sits and feels the wet pulp of her cunt slide against her ruined underwear. She covers her private catastrophe by drinking deep of the water bottle as Snow watches her, obviously concerned.

'What's wrong, Katniss?'

She keeps drinking until she can think of something to say, and she does not look at him. 'I'm not feeling well,' she repeats. The water helps a little, but she is still on fire.

'I have a doctor on my staff. Perhaps he should look at you.'

Even from the opposite end of the limo, Katniss can smell his blood-breath: putrid, red-scented. It slides right into the molten gold between her legs.

'I'm fine,' she says, and takes another gulp of water. 'The water helps. I just get sick sometimes. You know that.' She shoots him what she hopes is a glare, but she is terrified something of her arousal will glimmer in her expression.

Snow regards her with concern and pity. She does not know how to look at him. He is the same as ever he was: cold marble, magisterial, impassive. He is old and handsome, but unattractive to her. She feels no desire for him. But some obscene alchemy has shifted inside her, and under his gaze she feels again her clit pulse.

She tries to look at him, but her eyes slide to the side. 'Something about you just makes me sick.'