After the bombing, Katniss' nightmares rub against her mind like sandpaper. Everything smells of smoke from the Capitol burning, even at Snow's mansion, and in her dreams she is tormented by balls of fire and dead, skin-blackened corpses that cry out to her for help she cannot give. She wakes and sleeps again so many times that the shape of her bedroom no longer seems real, so when she opens her eyes after nightmares of melted eye sockets and sees a figure watching her, she isn't sure that it's real. The figure is fuzzy in the dim witching dark, but tall, and she is still half-asleep as she pushes up onto her elbows. The room is cold and smoke-rich. Is a window open?

'Snow?'

'No, it's me.' The voice is a familiar whisper. It is the sound of home, the sound of leather boots on broken twigs, of a felled buck, of freedom and fresh leaves…

'Gale.' Katniss is awake now, upright and alert. It takes her less than one second to look at every camera in her room and realize that Gale is caught on all of them. 'You can't be here. You have to leave.'

He coasts across the room, hunter-silent, and then he is at her bedside and it is all Katniss can do not to throw her arms around him.

'It's so good to see you,' he says.

'Gale, you're on camera. They'll be here any second. You have to leave, now.'

Gale waves his hand. 'It's okay, we hacked the cameras. The feeds are playing a loop of you sleeping peacefully.' He grins with pride and excitement, but Katniss' stomach is boiling acid.

'No, Gale, he's watching. He's always watching. Whatever you think you're doing, whatever plan—'

'I've come to get you out of here,' whispers Gale.

This is such a stupid idea that Katniss is momentarily silenced. 'What?'

'Yeah. I know I was supposed to wait, I know I promised, but we had such a good opportunity. The bombings tonight created real chaos. The Peacekeepers are spread so thin, communications are still disrupted… The Capitol doesn't know what hit them.' He grins in the dark. 'We dug a hole right under the fence of this place, coming up from the sewers. You can leave with me.'

Katniss feels very aware of how underdressed she is, only wearing her silk-and-lace negligee and underwear. 'Gale, I can't leave. I agreed to this marriage to prevent a war. To save lives. If I leave now…'

'The war is already happening, Katniss. Sure, the wedding put a dampener on a few things, but the rebellion is going strong. We have a real chance of winning this, Katniss. Now we have District 13 on our side, we can take down the Capitol.'

'District 13?' she says, dumbfounded.

'Oh, yes. They have weapons, and soldiers, and— I'll explain everything, Katniss. Just come with me. Think what it would do for our side if you joined us! If you denounced the President!' He beams at her. 'You were the spark that set this whole thing in motion. Katniss Everdeen, the mockingjay.'

Katniss can hardly dare to imagine it. Could she go back to her family? Would they be safe? Would Snow ever let her go?

'I'm Katniss Snow now,' she says uncertainly.

Gale's face fills with pain. 'I know. I see clips of you on the TV almost every day, you know. It breaks my heart, Katniss. You look like…' He shakes his head in grief and disgust. 'I see the way he touches you. I can see it's killing you. I can't do it. I can't keep watching you kill yourself every day. Just come with me and we can get out of here.'

She pulls her lips tight. This is a lovely, stupid dream. 'Gale, even if I wanted to, I couldn't. Do you know how many people Snow has on his security team? It's a miracle they haven't caught you already. Go out the way you came. I can't come with you.'

Gale is beautiful in the moonlight. His hair is shorter, shaved close to his head, and his lips are a wide, excited smile. He is so happy to see her.

Katniss reaches out, knowing she shouldn't, and Gale takes her hand. It ought to feel wonderful, but her body cannot understand it. Is this how she should be touched, by Gale, a good person that loves her? Or is her body only meant for Snow? The sensation of Gale's hot fingers is incomprehensible against her skin.

'C'mon, catnip,' he whispers in the dark. 'Let's go.'

He pulls at her arm, and Katniss resists, but she is so close to giving in… She could leave… She could escape Snow… Everything could be the way it's supposed to be…

Several things happen in the next few seconds.

First: the door slams open. Second: faceless men explode into the room.

Third or fourth? One is a warm, wet spray hitting her face. The other is a gunshot.

Katniss isn't sure which comes first.

Katniss tries to interpret the facts available. Gale. The security team. A gunshot. That familiar metallic taste that she knows so well from Snow's lips is now in her open mouth. Gale slumps against the bed and against her body.

'Threat neutralized,' says a voice, faraway from her. 'Sweeping now.'

Katniss realizes that Gale is strangely wet. His head is damp with something that looks deep, shimmering black in the moonlight. He's bleeding, of course. He will need a bandage. Will they fetch her a bandage? She places her hands on Gale's head, where the blood is coming from. It's so wet. There is something else sliding over her fingers, something her hunter's years of disemboweling animals identifies in an immediate, abstract way.

Brain.

But that is ridiculous. Gale's brains are all on the inside, where they belong. Why is Gale so quiet and still now? He must be unconscious. His body is warm against her chest, just like it has been the dozens of times they've embraced and wrestled, and when he kissed her…

'He needs a doctor,' she says, and her voice reaches her as if from the end of a tunnel. She lifts one hand to her face. Blood coats her elbow and is seeping into her lap, spilling like a dammed spring.

She does not even realize when Snow comes into the room. She has no idea he is there until he is right in front of her, speaking carefully.

'Katniss, he's dead.'

Who is dead? Glimmer? Is he talking about Glimmer? Her body was so wet and slimy, too…

Snow will help Gale. This absurd idea floats over to her and she sinks her nails into it and will not let go. He is her husband, and he can be kind to her, sometimes, when he isn't smacking her around or wrenching her arm or psychologically torturing her.

'He needs a doctor,' she tells Snow. 'He's bleeding. He needs help.'

Snow reaches out with incredible tenderness and enfolds Katniss' wet, dripping hand in his own.

'It's too late, Katniss.' His voice is so gentle. 'We need to get you away from here.'

'But…' Too late? Too late for what? 'He's still warm…'

Her eyes have adjusted to the dark, and now she can see Gale's face in the moonlight. He looks so strange, his mouth slack, and there is an uncommon flatness in his eyes. Gale's eyes are always so bright.

'He needs a doctor,' she tells Snow, whispering so the security team cannot hear. Perhaps they don't want Gale to see a doctor. 'Will you get him a doctor? Please, Snow?' She kisses him, just in case that will help, and when she pulls away Gale's blood is on his mouth, too.

'Of course,' says Snow in that powder-soft voice. 'We'll take him straight to the medical suite. Come along. Let's get you away from him so the team can take him to the medical suite.'

Katniss lets Snow guide her from the bed, pulling her other hand away from Gale, and she releases a soft 'oh' as her hand lets go his skull and thick globules of brain flop onto the carpet.

She does not know what happens next. All she knows is that Snow does not let her go. He leads her by her hands through unfamiliar rooms, corridors labyrinthine, umbrous and uncanny. The next thing she knows is a rush of hot water, streaming over her body. She becomes aware she is in a bathroom, much like her own only larger, but many surfaces here are covered with little pill bottles. She realizes this must be Snow's private bathroom and does not know why he brought her here.

The water hits her like soft rain, like hot blood. Snow busies himself with bottles of soap and shampoo and sponges, and Katniss plucks her nightdress with her fingers. The fabric has soaked her neck and breasts with blood, Gale's blood, and very quietly she knows she cannot stand it and peels the bloody silk from her skin. It falls damply at her feet, washing blood into the drain.

'Now, let's get you cleaned— oh.' Snow looks, and then does not look, at her blood-burnished breasts. He does not make her put the ruined slip back on. With careful delicacy, Snow starts to sponge the blood from her bare, bruised arms. He touches her as he touches his roses, as though she is something miraculous to be severed from the soil. Once the blood is clean from her arms he assesses her hair, which is also sticky, then massages shampoo into her scalp, and Katniss frowns as she realizes she is letting him do this. She makes no objection at all as he teases the blood out of her long, dark hair, or as he rinses free the soap. She stares at the tile and she thinks about Gale. Not the brightness of his smile or the way his voice always rang deep inside her, but the emptiness of his eyes and the wet, ugly sound of his brain hitting the carpet.

'Katniss?' says Snow. He presses the sponge into her hand and lifts her wrist, putting it to the blood still streaking her breasts, and Katniss has enough presence of mind to scrub herself clean. Snow averts his eyes and thick drops of rosy water fall from her soft nipples.

Once she is clean, Katniss holds out the sponge again like she does not know what to do with it. Snow gently takes it from her and glances her over.

'There we go,' he says, in a tone Katniss' mother might have used before her husband was blown into pieces. 'I'll get you a robe.'

She lets him encase her in some huge, white, fluffy bathrobe, which must be his as it's many sizes too big for her and drapes comically from her arms. She follows him from the bathroom; it's so much easier to let him guide her than try to think for herself and think about Gale's open skull.

She can take in his bedroom properly, now. She has no memory of passing through it the first time. For someone so fond of white, there is little of it here. The bedding is a deep forest green, the carpet indigo, the walls a dark wood. She wanders to the bed without being told and touches the bedsheets, and wonders at how soft they feel compared to the smooth wet blood on Gale's forehead.

'Katniss?' says Snow from behind her. 'Do you understand what happened tonight?'

She feels nothing, understands nothing. She nods once, then sits on the edge of the bed.

'Gale is dead,' she says. It has become real now. 'Did you know they would shoot him?'

'That was unfortunate,' Snow says frankly. 'Gale Hawthorne was on our most wanted list for his rebel activities, and orders were to take him alive to extract information. But after that assassin's attempt on your life, I instructed my security to keep a closer eye on you. If anyone laid a hand on you they were to be incapacitated instantly.' He shakes his head. 'Extremely frustrating we will not be able to get anything useful out of him now.'

Katniss nods, unable to quite follow these words. 'Frustrating,' she echoes.

Snow looks at her, considering, then perversely says: 'I am sorry for your loss. I know you were close.'

'He was my friend,' she says distractedly.

'This is why I make it a point not to have friends. Caring about people is inconvenient.' He regards her, wrapped in his robe and sat upon a bed that no one but him has used in decades. 'If you want to rest here, that's alright. You can hardly go back to your chambers until a clean-up crew has been through them.'

Katniss is already climbing into the dark sheets. It smells of roses, but she has become accustomed to that. She can't go back to her own room now, maybe ever, which is full of blood and ghosts. If sleep takes her, then everything will be alright. But before her closed eyes slides a shimmer of red blood and she has to open them again to wash it away.

'Do you have any sleeping pills?' Her voice doesn't sound anything like her anymore.

'I do.'

He brings her two tiny white tablets and Katniss dry swallows.

'Thank you,' she says, and she wonders vaguely if all of this is going to make her a liability. Will Snow shoot her, too? He would be generous enough to her to wait until she was asleep, at least.

'Do you want me to stay?' asks Snow.

This question floats around Katniss in all its feathery absurdity.

'I want you to die,' she answers.

The laugh Snow gives her has no mockery in it. 'That isn't a "no".'

The weight of the bed shifts as he sits at its foot, and as Katniss gazes at him she has no idea what he thinks of her anymore.

'I hate you,' she says, quite suddenly.

Snow only smiles at her. 'That's alright, Katniss. Try to sleep.'

The pills sneak up on her. One moment her eyes are open, and Snow's pale silhouette is intercut with blinks that show her Gale's body again and again and again. The next, she is in a dark, quiet place, one that smells of pine. Someone silent walks beside her, someone helping her to hunt and kill things. She does not turn to look at her companion, but she is sure it must be Gale… She is sure he has come to hunt with her one last time… But when she does look, the eyes that meet her are cool and blue and the smile is one she knows and loathes deeply. But she does not want to be alone and so she walks with Snow through the woods, and when they sight a young buck he raises his finger to point and he says, 'Now, Katniss! Kill it, Katniss!' The buck turns to them, and Katniss sees its eyes are exactly the grey of Gale's. She looses one arrow, then another, then another, and they flood into the body of the deer and bring it down in a beautiful rain of silver. Once it is dead, Snow dips his hand in the blood and raises it to his lips to taste it, and then he puts his bloody, spit-wreathed finger in her mouth for her to lick, too, and he says: 'That's my girl.'

Katniss wakes trembling, and her body is on fire. At first she thinks she is feverish. Is she sick with something? Something other than Snow? But then the memories crash against her: Gale, Gale dead, Gale's skull cracked, the yolk of his brain in her hands. The heat and the shaking are just the aftershocks of her trauma. She lies there, thinking about Gale in the woods with a bag full of squirrels on his shoulder, and about Gale's dead eyes blank like buttons. There is no grief inside her yet: only emptiness and the anticipation of grief. The pain will come. For now, she is an outline of where the pain will be filled in.

She sits slowly, blinking at the unfamiliar room, and then remembers she is in Snow's bed. She is cradled in blood and roses. Something else is not quite right. Her body is so hot, and as she shifts in Snow's bed a peculiar horror dawns on her. When she slips a hand between her legs, she feels her cotton underwear is thickly wet with arousal. Katniss yanks back the sheets and finds she has stained the coverlet beneath with a narrow moist patch. The shimmer in the light reminds her again of Gale's brains.

'Ugh.' She rubs her hands over her legs, bare beneath Snow's robe. Everything smells of her own sex. All her trauma responses are getting confused. Snow's touch, Gale's blood, the panic and the nausea: it's all pooling downward, flooding her cunt. Being touched, dressed, undressed, violated, drowned, hit, paraded, celebrated, and over and over feeling Snow's hands and lips on her have jammed a screwdriver into her mind. Now her anxiety glitters with arousal. It cannot be undone; it can only undo her.

She rises and strips the sheets. Snow cannot discover the disgusting new things that are wrong with her. She is surely on a knife's edge of her utility to him. It is easier to have something to do: strip the bedding, don't think about Gale's open skull, put the sheets in the hamper, don't think about the wet flop of brain on carpet. If there are people watching her on cameras right now, hopefully they will assume she is just trying to be clean. She considers sticking her ruined underwear in there too, but if she is on camera there is no way that wouldn't raise questions.

Someone has left clothes out for her, an extremely plain and modest white dress, a white lace underdress, and flat shoes. Katniss wonders if Snow or his team are even aware that pants exist. Whoever left the clothes had the good sense to leave clean underwear. After some consideration, Katniss pulls the clean pair over her soiled ones rather than risking carrying them around. She wonders what would happen if she gave them to one of Snow's security team to dispose. Would they treat it like an armed bomb? Probably.

She pushes open the door of the bedroom cautiously and is surprised to see Snow there in the lounge area, sitting at a coffee table, taking breakfast like it's any other day. He is a little untidier than he usually is, his hair not perfectly set in place, dressed in a casual shirt and pale blue robe. He looks up with undeniable relief when she enters.

'I'm glad to see you up and about,' he says.

Katniss pads over and sits opposite him. There is toast and orange juice and pancakes and all kinds of jam. She looks at the jam, then looks to the silent servant waiting in a corner.

'Take all the jam away. The red stuff, anyway.'

Snow watches her with some amusement. 'You have something against jam this morning?'

She picks up a piece of dry toast and starts to pick pieces off the crust. 'It looks like blood and brains.'

'I see.' He pauses out of politeness, and after enough time has passed he asks, 'How are you feeling?'

Katniss shrugs and puts a small piece of bread into her mouth. She rarely has any appetite these days, and especially not today.

'Right now, I don't feel anything. I feel—' Inexplicably aroused and my clit is on fire. '—just tired. Confused. It hasn't hit me yet. It will. And when it does, I don't know what I'll feel.' She chews a corner of the bread. 'Gale was one of the most important people in the world to me. And now he's dead, just like so many other people I've cared about.' She snorts around her half-chewed bread. 'And you know what's really awful? I can't even blame you this time. What was he thinking coming here?'

'Indeed,' says Snow. He is sipping a thick, milky coffee. 'I'm sure Mr Hawthorne was made rather over-confident by the success of the bombings. Last night was a good night for the rebellion. They've done some damage, but rest assured there will be dire consequences for this.' He thins his lips. 'I had wanted to avoid this. The casualties that will ensue, well…' He shrugs. 'The necessities of war. As for Mr Hawthorne, it seems he hoped to take advantage of the chaos to, what? Rescue you?' He smiles. 'As if you need rescuing.'

Katniss swallows a little piece of bread and feels her stomach contract with nausea. She replaces the toast on the rack. No, she doesn't need rescuing. She needs to be shot in the head, just like Gale.

'He said they hacked your cameras,' she says.

'They did.' Snow smiles at her. 'But we have multiple networks of cameras, and it would be almost impossible to compromise them all. That charming little loop of you sleeping only played on two of the five cameras in your bedroom. I had one camera installed that even my security team doesn't know about.' His eyes glitter. 'No one can reach you without my knowing.'

Katniss smiles thinly. 'How reassuring.'

Snow continues. 'It seems that Mr Hawthorne's trespassing here was driven by a personal agenda rather than attempting to further the rebels' interests. Quite interesting, really. I don't know if you're aware, but the Hawthorne boy commanded quite a position of authority in the rebellion. He really worked his way up over these past three years. How unfortunate for them that he went rogue and got himself killed. I only wish we could have got more information out of him.'

Katniss rotates an empty coffee cup in its saucer. 'You mean by torture?'

'Yes, I do.'

'How would you have done it?' The ceramic cup makes a soft, high-pitched shhhing against the saucer. 'Are there standard torture methods?'

'We use different methods for different subjects,' says Snow, and he sips his coffee. What a pleasant conversation they are having. 'People break differently. We might have started with electrocution.'

Katniss watches her husband across the coffee table. 'Have you ever tortured anyone yourself?'

'Oh, yes. A long time ago, before I became President, it was an important part of my work.'

'Were you good at it?'

Snow gives her the smallest of smiles. 'Yes, I was very good.'

She stares into nothing. Gale could have withstood torture for a long time. But forever? She does not know. 'How would you have tortured me?'

'An interesting question,' says Snow, and he sets down his cup to examine her. 'You are easily manipulated through your loved ones, as you know. Psychologically, that would be the most expedient route.'

'What about physical torture?' She asks this like she's asking for more sugar.

Snow's mouth is still, and yet Katniss still feels like he's smiling at her. 'You don't like being cooped up. You like the fresh air, and freedom. You're afraid of mines and caves and the underground, on account of your father's death.' He leans forward. 'We could feed a breathing tube into your lungs and then bury you alive.'

Katniss stares at him. 'Oh. Yes, I wouldn't enjoy that at all.' She offers Snow a forced, cheerful smile. 'Will you send Gale's body back to his family?'

Snow has his cup half-raised to his lips, but he puts it down. 'No. For a boy of his standing among the rebellion to break into the President's mansion and… Well, I can't say what his plans were regarding you, but it is treason. His body is therefore subject to certain expectations.'

'What do you mean, expectations?'

Snow's face is impassive. 'The body will be publicly crucified and left on display, as an advertisement of our success over the rebellion and as a warning to any who might consider supporting them. I will give a speech, of course. You shall accompany me and say a few words. Denounce him.'

'Denounce Gale?'

'Yes. There is a paragraph prepared for you. It shouldn't be too taxing, just a few minutes of speaking. A couple of points to ensure he is received not as a martyr but as a failure, a coward, et cetera. I'm sure you can manage it.'

'Oh,' says Katniss again. These terrible words float past her and she can barely comprehend their meaning. She tries not to think about the hole in Gale's head. 'Has anyone you ever loved died?'

Snow looks at her. 'Yes,' he says.

'Did it hurt you?'

He considers this. 'Yes, it hurt.'

'Good.' She fingers the sugar cubes and watches them glitter. 'I hope it still hurts you. I like to think about you in pain.'

He smiles. She cannot tell if it is a smile of joy or pain or pride or regret. 'I know you do.'

They take a hovercraft to the City Circle for the speech. It's a short distance to fly, but Snow seems to think it's safer than driving, given how a lot of things seem to be on fire. Katniss is getting ready, still unable to feel anything, but when she pulls off her morning dress and examines the outfit they've left her, she thinks there must have been a mistake. It's sleeveless. She cannot wear a sleeveless dress. Her arms bloom with the fat bruises Snow planted on her skin the night before.

She pulls it on over her underwear then sticks her head into the hovercraft corridor and yells at the first servant she sees. She's stopped even thinking of them as people.

'Hey! This isn't right. I need a jacket or something.'

The servant bows politely. 'This is the outfit we were instructed to deliver.'

Katniss waves her arm under the girl's nose. There are two huge bruises, purple and green, from where Snow put her in that dreadful armlock. You can see his fingerprints.

'Do you see these bruises? Do you think Snow wants the rest of Panem to see them?'

The girl looks extremely uncomfortable. 'I know the stylist was explicitly told to choose a sleeveless dress.'

Katniss looks at the servant in anger and disgust, as though it is her fault. 'Fine. I'll go speak to my husband about it.'

She finds Snow in the hovercraft lounge. He has chosen to dress impressively today: pure white, fur-lined, a half-sable. He looks unreal.

He smiles at her approvingly. 'Ah, you look perfect.'

Katniss bares her arm and the huge bruises Snow gave her. 'And what about these?'

Snow exhales, and it is only then that Katniss realizes that something terrible is going on. 'That is an important part of the narrative. Now, we will be live in about five minutes to address the Capitol — and, indeed, all of Panem — and announce the death of one of the major players in the rebellion.' He fixes her with the kind of frozen unquestionability that he has not shown her in some time. 'We have decided not to call this a politically motivated attack. It will not do for the rebels to think they can reach me in my home. Instead, well… that's where you come in.' He hands her a tablet and Katniss looks at the glowing words upon it. 'This is the speech you will deliver. Officially, Mr Hawthorne only made it into the grounds, where you were taking a late evening walk. You can see the rest for yourself.'

Katniss' eyes skim the words. She isn't quite sure what she's reading at first; none of it matches with the details of Gale's murder. Then she stops. She rereads, and she rereads, and she understands. She looks at Snow with a riptide of fury and disgust.

'No. Absolutely not. I will not say this.'

'Yes, you will,' says Snow, and there is no compromise in his voice.

'No.' She hesitates, and then she throws the tablet against the wall with such force the screen shatters. 'You can't make me. I won't. You can't make me say these things.'

'You will read the speech as written. If you refuse, I will have one of the other Hawthorne children killed. The girl — Posy, I believe? — is not yet ten.' He is immaculate in his serenity. 'I could arrange for her to enjoy a very unpleasant death.'

Katniss breathes out heat and disgust, and she takes a step away from him. This is the man who bathed her. This is the man who dried her hair, and who let her sleep in his bed like a child. This is the man who touched her so tenderly. She shakes her head, not in refusal of the task but in acute rejection of the monster he is.

'It will save people's lives,' says Snow reasonably. 'Your speech will prevent the Hawthorne boy from becoming a martyr. No riots will be started in his name. You are doing a good thing.' He smiles. 'Take consolation in the fact that you really have no choice.'

Katniss stares. She nods smartly.

Then she leans forward and spits in his face.

Snow's expression is incomprehensible as her saliva froths on his lips, but Katniss does not look at him for long. She goes to the hovercraft door to stand and wait, like a dog, and a moment later Snow joins her. He is replacing his handkerchief into his breast pocket, which must now be smeared with her spit.

'Let us begin,' says Snow, and he presses the button to open the hovercraft door.

It's one of those painfully bright yet cloudy days, where you can only see white and yellow in the sky yet everything seems to glare. Katniss blinks in the light, and then she tries to take in the sight beneath her. There is a vast crowd and a rush goes through them as the President and his wife emerge, but there is no cheering. They are excited about something. Katniss looks over them and cannot make out a single face. They might as well be ants.

Then she sees the body.

She manages not to gasp, or faint, or do anything more than let out an odd, soft sigh. Gale's body has been nailed to a pillar that must be ten, twenty feet tall. His arms have been broken at the elbow and bent back around the pillar, nailed in place, and his feet are nailed together, and his head is held up by a leather band. Birds have already had one of his eyes.

Katniss looks away. It's not Gale anymore. It's just the husk. Sight the hare, gliding the fields; land an arrow in it. It goes from living creature to meat. Gale is gone. He is safe, somewhere, in the sky.

They ought to return his body. It belongs in the soil, in the earth he loved to walk. Not in the Capitol. Not with Snow.

Perhaps if she asks Snow nicely enough, he'll return his bones…

Snow's voice rings out across the arena with imperial pride and a beautiful severity.

'People of Panem,' he calls. 'I gather you here to bear witness to the crucifixion of this man, Gale Hawthorne, executed for treason. He was a member of the radical sect that has sought to destroy this country that you love, and which loves you, so dearly. But the actions that brought his death were not politically motivated. No, they had a far more mundane and… perverse genealogy. I turn to my wonderful wife, Katniss, who witnessed this execution firsthand.'

He steps back from the podium. Katniss feels lightheaded. She steps up. The wind lifts her hair up and down quite playfully. Everyone is looking at her.

She begins to read the autocue.

'Gale Hawthorne was once a friend of mine,' she reads, her voice like a weak, broken string. 'We grew up together. I cared about him as a friend, but… he always wanted something more. When I told him I was engaged, he was furious. He said that no one deserved to have me but him.' She swallows. Gale's parents will be watching this right now. His little brothers, his tiny sister… 'He used the resources of the radicals to get to me. He scaled the wall of our home, while I was in the garden. He…' She fumbles. Snow touches her arm in a way that looks to everyone across the country as loving reassurance. But what it really says is, Do as I say, or your friends will die. Katniss continues. 'He tried to rape me.' There is a low gasp from the crowd below. She glances at the bruise on her arm, the one that Snow gave her, and she knows that a nation will do the same thing in unison. 'I am so grateful that he was incapacitated before anything could happen. He…' There are a few more lines remaining, but her vision has become too blurred to read. She looks at Snow, beseeching him, and he seems to deem that her performance has been adequate.

'That's alright, Katniss,' he says, and the whole nation hears. 'Thank you for being brave enough to tell them what happened.'

I'm going to fucking kill you, I'm going to put out your eyes, I'm going to kill you, she thinks.

She doesn't hear the rest of the speech. Snow is saying something about how this is all the rebellion is, how they're barbarians and savages, and how all will be exterminated. She closes her eyes and pictures Gale: Gale, with a brace of rabbits and a punnet of strawberries, just for her. Gale, pushing her off a log and laughing at some stupid joke she made. Gale, looking at her like he might one day be able to love her. Gale kissing her.

She opens her eyes and sees his corpse. For the first time, she becomes certain that she is going to faint.

She turns to leave just as Snow concludes and the audience erupts in cheers and boos to celebrate the death of the traitor who tried to rape the President's wife. Katniss has barely stepped back inside the hovercraft when her legs give out entirely and the ground rushes up to her, but a familiar arm catches her.

'There we go. I've got you.'

'Don't touch me!' she shrieks, and tears free of Snow's grip. 'Don't touch me, don't fucking touch me!'

'Katniss,' he says, very quietly and firmly. 'Keep your voice down. People might hear. They can't think that you…' He trails off, and Katniss feels fire flush her body.

'Can't think what? That I despise you? That I want to die? That I want to cut off my face? Oh, no, we can't let them think that! We have to let them think I like you touching me! That I like it! That I like this!' She presses her body against him and wraps her hands around his neck, feeling the shape of him, tasting his blood breath as it hits her face. 'We have to make sure everyone thinks I'm happy! I'm so happy! I'm so fucking happy! I like this! I like this so much!' She is starting to shake again, her teeth chattering whenever she isn't screaming into his face. Snow remains unmoving, his hands hovering around her ready to grab or restrain, unsure what to make of this new fit. 'I like it, I like it, I like you touching me!' Her trembling fingers find the button of his fine suit trousers and she starts to pull at it, just like she pulled out those trackerjacker stings… Her fingers are so nimble under pressure…

'Katniss,' says Snow firmly, and he pulls her hands away. 'Stop this.'

She yanks her hands away and pushes against him, insinuating the full, shaking heat of her body against his, all the warmth of her hatred and obscure arousal. She slides between his legs, pushes him against the wall and finds, finally, his mouth with her lips. Her kisses are sharp and violent, and he returns none of them.

'Come on, just do it,' she whispers into him. 'Just fuck me. Just get it over with. You can pretend I like it. I can pretend, too. Isn't that what you want?'

He isn't touching her. He isn't restraining her, either. He stands still, just like one of those stupid statues of himself, and he lets Katniss' body ripple against him. She is variably shaking and burning, terror and nausea crashing against her bitter arousal. Just to feel something different. Just to make something terrible come to an end…

At first, his lips are unmoving against her small, hard kisses. It is an extraordinary strangeness when she feels those cold lips part for the first time, almost incidentally at first, and then with soft, gentle welcome. Then they are kissing, properly kissing, not for cameras or crowds but for each other and the pure insanity of the thing. Katniss' mind pulses. She can feel parts of herself disintegrating into phosphorous arousal. Her lips find new, soft contours of his mouth, and his lips hold hers, and the most sacrilegious part of it is that it feels good. All her anxiety distils into glimmering sexual pleasure.

Snow does not kiss her as Peeta or Gale did; Gale's kiss was quick and hard, and Peeta's was soft and gentle and warm. Snow's kiss does not fill her with warmth: it burns her. He is deep and delicate, and the texture of him is strange, and his beard is peculiar against her, but Katniss feels something travel from her cunt through her gut and her ribs and neck and out of her mouth in a low, soothed moan. Snow's hands, firm and familiar, curl around her face and neck and hold her like a new-budded rose, like a baby bird. He is so tender… She does not feel mocked, she does not feel hated… She feels worshipped. There is blood flowing from Snow's mouth into hers, and she welcomes it… She feels throb after throb of arousal and nausea pass through her… She has never needed anything so intolerable…

'That's enough,' whispers Snow, and then he is pulling away. He half-collapses against the wall as Katniss, her world spinning, lets herself fall into a couch. She is shivering to the very depths of her bones. Snow drags a hand over his face in loathing, though if it's loathing for her or him she cannot tell. 'We cannot do this, Katniss. You're not well. You're confused. This is…' He gestures at the room and her lithe and sweating body. 'This is obscene. It's a parody. You do not want this, and I…' He shakes his head. He looks like he's dying. 'I never wanted your life with me to be like this.'

Katniss wants to swear at him or tell him that she's going to cut open his belly and spill out his entrails in a smooth, shiny sigh, but instead she bends over an empty ice bucket and vomits up bile and little pieces of toast. They sit soggy against the glint of the metal. There is some blood in there, too. Blood she's swallowed from Snow's mouth, or has she vomited so much lately she's damaged her throat?

'You kissed me back,' she murmurs.

'It doesn't matter.' He's evasive. 'It was a momentary lapse.'

She clutches the leather of the seat beneath her and studies the weave of the carpet. 'Why did you kiss me back?' She looks up at him. He will not meet her gaze. 'Don't lie,' she whispers. 'You promised.'

Still, he refuses to look at her. It takes a very long time before he is willing to commit anything to words. 'I kissed you back,' he says very slowly, 'because I enjoyed how it felt.' He presses on, leaving no opportunity for her to interrupt. 'And that was inappropriate of me. And it won't happen again.'

She gazes up at him as though he is speaking another language. 'But you hate it when I kiss you,' she murmurs, adrift in confusion and arousal. 'You always do. You never like it.'

Snow does not look at her. His pupils are seeking something that she cannot see.

'I always like it,' he says, with private tragedy.

Katniss doesn't know what to say. She also doesn't know what to do with her limbs. Nothing seems to connect to one another anymore. What is she made of? What is inside her?

Where is Gale?

'Gale,' she says, as though this might summon him to her. Then the grief finally hits her. She curls herself up like a dead spider and she screams. She cannot cry, she can only wail and keen and stuff her hand into her mouth to muffle her yells. She tries to grieve Gale: just Gale, nothing and no one else. Not the wreck of her life, or the person she used to be. Just Gale. But it's hard to separate it all out. She draws him in her mind, over and over, particularly his smile. He'll never smile at her again. His mouth will rot apart like wet paper. He will not be allowed to go in the ground, where he belongs. This is not fair. He ought to sleep in the earth, alongside his and Katniss' father.

Katniss opens her eyes.

Snow is still watching her, studying her. She cannot tell if he is angry, or disgusted, or concerned. Perhaps he is waiting to see if she tries to hurt herself.

'You can't hang the body there forever.' Katniss is satisfied to hear how calm and steady she sounds. 'Other people will need to be crucified there at some point, right? Send the body back to his family.'

'Katniss—'

'You will do it,' she says, her voice a violent rush, magma melting through rocks. 'Let it hang for however long it has to. Then send it back.'

He is empty, he is nothing. Just a light wind over infinite ice. 'And why would I do that?'

Katniss looks up at him. Her eyes burn. She contains wildfires. 'Because I am asking you to, and because I am your wife.'

Snow is impassive. And then he nods once, slowly. His voice is soft. 'Alright, Katniss.'

She remains contorted for a moment, fire and hatred twisting her bones, and then she lets out a great exhalation and feels every piece of her deflate. 'I want to go home,' she says.

Snow nods. 'We'll go straight back to the mansion. I'll—'

'No,' she says, slowly. 'Not your house. To District 12. I want to go home.' She sniffs. 'Not to stay. I know I can't stay. Just to visit. I want to see…' She wants to say she wants to see her family, but that's not exactly true. How sickening it would be for them to know what she's become! But she wants, she needs to see the Hawthornes. She needs to explain things. They need to know the truth. In the end, she just says, 'I want to see my family.'

Snow watches her. He is calculating something in his heartless, inhuman way. Katniss wonders what checks and balances he is measuring to determine whether or not this boon should be granted.

'Alright,' he says at last. 'You can visit. I'll have my people call your family and let them know we're coming.'

He turns to go, but Katniss calls after him. '"We"? You're coming too?'

'Why not?' He smiles at her, though Katniss cannot interpret its meaning. 'I still haven't properly met your mother.'

'I don't want you in District 12.' Oh, what she would give for him to have never come there in the first place… 'I want to be alone.'

'You can't be,' he says coolly. 'It's too dangerous. I'm not letting you out of my sight.'

Katniss takes this threat and swallows it whole. 'Fine. Whatever.' She screws her fists into her eyes until lights dance, and she indulges herself in a beautiful merry-go-round of images: opening the cut on her thigh, pulling off her fingernails, slamming her hands into walls, somehow finding the knife Snow gifted her and cutting her arms into ribbons… Her chest surges and throbs with the need for something that would stop her feeling this anxiety and this grief, her constant companion and her new friend.

But she's not allowed to hurt herself now. Just one more thing Snow scooped out of her. Add it to the list.

Something grim and hideous occurs to Katniss. She lowers her hands from her face and looks up at Snow with empty eyes.

'Snow,' she says, in a voice that has lost its sureness. 'I really want to hurt myself. I need to. The pain helps. I feel like I'm going to fall apart without it.'

He regards her, then shakes his head. She thinks there is disdain in the curl of his lip, but she is not sure if it is something else.

'I know you don't want me to, so… so I thought…' She knows even as she speaks that this is the bleakest gift she has ever requested of him. 'I thought you could hurt me instead. You could hit me, like you suggested last night. Or you could twist my arm again. I know you liked that.' She has no idea what his expression suggests; it's an unscalable cliff face. She casts around. Next to the ice bucket holding her vomit are various other drink-making accoutrements: a cocktail shaker, stirrer, glasses, and, of course, a corkscrew. It's a little blunt, but that's okay. She's been cut with less beautiful things before: trees and rocks and claws. Her fingers close on it like a blackbird on a wire. 'You could cut me, like I cut you,' she says. 'The scar on my thigh, perhaps. It wouldn't leave a new mark. No one would see.' She offers a foul grimace. 'Come on. You owe me.'

She stares up at Snow and sees in his eyes the beautiful glitter of sunlight on untouched snow, like she is out for an early hunt while the rest of the town sleeps. His lips are set in that thing that is not quite disdain, but those lights inside him are radiant.

'I can do that,' he says, and something is wrong with his voice.

This is a terrible idea. Katniss pulls the hem of her dress high, angling it with care, keeping one leg covered and exposing the other. She keeps the skirts bunched between her legs. If he can taste her fear, how easily can he smell her cunt? The unhealed scar is an inch across, reopened time and time again. It should be her scar, just hers to play with. But she will share it with Snow if she has to. She shares everything with Snow.

They don't know how to angle themselves. Should she lie down and spread her legs for him to sit between? Unthinkable. Instead she crosses her leg, her wounded thigh on top, and she feels panic and thrill echo through her as she watches Snow carefully lower himself to one knee in front of her. He accepts the corkscrew from her hand. He stares into the fresh scabs like he could fall into them.

With intent and delicacy and a thick sense that whatever it is they are doing is awful, Snow lays his left hand on her knee to steady the limb. He raises the corkscrew.

His eyes meet hers. They blaze. 'Are you sure you want me to do this?'

She isn't. She nods.

He lowers the corkscrew to her skin, and as he starts to apply pressure Katniss closes her eyes. The sensation is a dull, small press against her leg, and then it is a hungry tooth, then it is a curious sensation of opening and release. A thin, lovely line of pain opens inside her and she rests her head on the back of the seat. For several ecstatic moments she is not thinking about her dead friend. She is only thinking about the red gift Snow is giving her thigh.

She has no idea how long this lasts. One moment she is floating, the next moment the sharp point is gone. She hears Snow stand before she opens her eyes, and she feels dirty regret and shame lap at her light-headedness.

Snow stands before her. He holds the corkscrew, bloodied at the end, and he is looking between her thigh — which bleeds nicely, but not deeply — and the red-tipped end of the corkscrew.

'Thank you.' Katniss tries to sound like she's merely accepting a dish from a waiter. 'That feels better.' She adjusts her dress, covering her skin, and she knows that they have both done something they ought not to have done. 'It's alright,' she says, reassuring herself, trying to reassure him. She tries to speak in his language. 'If you do it to me, then it's alright, yes? I didn't hurt myself, it's just a game. You're the one in control, so it's okay.'

Snow is not looking at her. He is studying the spiral of the corkscrew; she sees the silver mirrored in the pale blue of his eyes.

With helplessness and with inexorable hunger, Snow puts the tip of the corkscrew into his mouth and sucks off her blood.

Katniss has never been so appalled. She is sure she is going to throw up again.

Snow pulls the metal from his lips and presses them together.

'No,' he says, weird and slow, and regretful, and soaked in peril. 'No, I am not in control.'