Everything is going wrong. Katniss' thigh bleeds pleasurably and a little wet blood has sauntered down her leg and stained her shoe; the grief of Gale's murder beats inside her; she can still recall with eidetic fidelity the sensation of Snow's willing lips on hers; and the juicy, open pomegranate of her cunt remains insistent against the seat of the hovercraft.

She does not look at Snow. She is too upset and frightened and aroused to even nurse her hatred for him, which is usually her psychic center. Hate Snow, remain human. Now she is unmoored. She is turning into him.

When the hovercraft approaches the mountains that crest beyond District 12, Katniss peers out of the window and waits for something familiar to rise up in her. Surely she can find something of the old Katniss Everdeen here, among the coaldust and the pines? She waits in vain for the inky mess of trauma inside her to melt away and for the girl she used to be to reform. Before Snow, before the Games… Was there ever a time before Snow? Hasn't he always been in her life, controlling her before he even knew she existed?

'There's blood on your shoe.'

Katniss glances up. Snow is staring at her feet. He has drawn tight every one of his myriad barriers and not a glimpse of his emotional state shows to her. Katniss looks at her white, kitten-heeled shoes, specifically chosen to emphasize her purity as she lied to the nation about an attempted rape. Her thigh has bled leisurely all the way down to the toe point, which is now streaked with red.

'Oh,' she says. She traces the red thread with her eyes and sees some damp patches on her dress. 'Guess the dress is ruined, too.'

'You should change,' says Snow. His voice betrays nothing.

'I guess.' She doesn't understand his logic. Her brain is still working a little slowly as it tries to digest the sight of Gale's corpse and its gleaming eye-socket.

'You don't want your mother and sister to see you covered in blood,' Snow supplies helpfully, and Katniss nods.

'I don't have any clothes.'

'I believe there is a closet of emergency outfits in the other room,' says Snow. 'I will choose something for you.'

Katniss watches him leave. His absence is peculiar to her. When she's alone, she feels less and less like a human being. When she's with Snow, she feels more and more inhuman. These two things are similar, but not quite the same. Isolation erases her; Snow rewrites her. She is his creature as much as she is his wife.

This absurd and frightening thought sends a leisurely quirk of pleasure through her clitoris, and she grits her teeth and focuses on the clouds. Make a game of it. What animals can she see? Severed limbs are what she sees, floating in the blue.

Snow returns, a dress in hand, and presents it to her. It's sensible grey wool, long-skirted and long-sleeved, a garment actually suited to the climate of District 12 in the winter.

'Will this suffice?' he says.

'It's fine,' says Katniss, not in any kind of mental state to have opinions on dresses.

'Put this on, too,' says Snow, and hands her a large dressing. 'To stop the bleeding.'

'Thanks.'

She stands and she feels the frictionless kiss of her wet underwear against her cunt. That's fine. It doesn't matter. That's just normal, now. That's just how she is.

She kicks off her shoes, and then she starts to pull her arms free of the sleeves.

'Katniss.' Snow's tone bites. 'You can get changed elsewhere.'

Katniss stares at him for a moment, then resumes her undressing. She pulls the dress free of her chest, down to her waist, exposing the white silk of her chemise. 'Why? It's nothing you haven't seen before.' She remembers standing in his shower, naked save for her panties, and how hard Snow had tried not to look at her. He is looking at her now and his expression remains completely impassive. She pulls the dress free of the rest of her body and throws it to the floor, then stands before Snow in just her underwear. He can see the dull bronze of her hard-muscled thighs. There are those cuts from her encounter with the assassin, and then there is her own special wound that he has so recently opened.

She looks around for a cloth, then shrugs and wipes the blood from her leg with the already blood-stained dress. She then peels off the sticky back of the bandage and covers it neatly over her most recent wound, then smooths the edges. Snow watches her work, completely unreadable and unreachable. He might as well be made of stone. But she can smell his blood breath, even from several feet away, and it makes the hair of her legs stand on end. It makes her vibrate.

It is strange to be so undressed in the presence of a man who… what? Desires her? She has no idea what lurks behind his eyes, or under his clothes. He has seen so much of her, and she has seen so little of him. Not that she wants to see more. His body is of no interest to her. And yet she is drawn to something in him: how he has conditioned her to want him, without even meaning to.

Once the dress is on, she presents herself to Snow with only a small measure of sarcasm. 'Is this okay?'

He looks at her: really looks at her. Studies her. Makes a cartography of every detail, of how the dress hugs her waist and hips, how it shapes her thighs, how her calves shine. How her hair is in slight disarray, how one of her hands is tapping its fingers against her side with anxiety, how her eyes are watching him just as he is watching her.

'Yes, it's acceptable,' he says.

'Happy to have your approval,' she retorts, then throws herself back into her window seat. She can see the beautiful rumple of tree-thick mountains. They look so small from up here.

Snow holds something up to her. 'Shoes?'

She glances back. 'Oh, yeah.'

She reaches out to take the suede pumps, but Snow does not hand them to her. His expression is utterly illegible, the rich contours of his ageing face just roughly hewn rock.

'May I?'

At first, Katniss has no idea what he means. Then she traces the direction of his gaze to her bare feet, and his request makes sense.

She can be nothing but confused. 'Why do you want to put my shoes on me?'

Snow's expression is an empty tundra. He is quiet for some time. Then he answers: 'I would enjoy it.'

'Oh,' she says. She chews her lip. Gale's body hangs for the flies in the center of the Capitol, her thigh throbs where Snow cut into it, and he wants to put her shoes on her. The pumps are dove-suede stilettos and they are beautiful. 'Am I allowed to say no?'

'Of course,' says Snow. 'I always respect your consent, whenever it's possible.'

'You mean whenever it's convenient,' she snaps back.

Snow frowns, just a little. 'No. Whenever possible.'

She shakes her head, amused and disbelieving and feeling herself veer into some absolutely insane absurdity. Is he just trying to help her in her disoriented state? No, Snow never just tries to help. It's a game, like it always is. Helping, cajoling, controlling. Flirting.

Yes, this is flirting.

Katniss doesn't know much about flirting, but she knows a little. It's supposed to be laughing at jokes, whispered conversations, joy and humor and gentle thrill. It's not supposed to be cutting each other and having her feet touched.

But this is the game they're playing. Well, if it's a game, she's going to win.

She sticks out her foot more childishly than she intended. Anxiety skips over her skin as Snow lowers himself to one knee, a mirror of his position when he cut her, and he sets one shoe on the floor. With one hand he reaches out for her foot and Katniss considers kicking him in the face. She could break his nose. His cool palm closes over the skin of her foot and she feels absurdity, disgust, electricity, and an intimacy she has never known.

Snow's fingers suddenly grip her foot tightly and turn it, examining the sole, his expression bemusement. 'Katniss, what do you do to yourself?'

'What do you mean?'

'Cuts and callouses,' he says, running his thumb over the hard edge of her foot pad. There is an extremely quiet shhk noise as the soft skin of this thumb catches against the rough fray of her callous. 'I suppose this is what happens you run barefoot around my gardens for hours every day.' But he is not displeased with her. If anything, he likes how she has hardened and scarred herself. That's his favorite way for her to be.

He slides her foot into the mold of the shoe, which is perfectly her size, and he does so with the delicacy of someone painting the wings of a butterfly. Then he takes her other foot and places that oh-so-gently into the other shoe, and there his fingers linger, on the boundary between skin and suede, and for the briefest moment she thinks he is stroking the skin of her foot. And then he is standing, and his hand is gone, and she still can't read anything in his expression.

'Snow?' she says, and she doesn't know what she means to say next. She has a huge question for him, but it is a question made up of so many smaller questions; a susurration of starlings. She drops her eyes. 'Nothing. Never mind.'

She can feel Snow's eyes on her, so heavy against her skin, and she wonders what broken, segmented thoughts crawl around inside his skull. But she is distracted by a sudden familiar sight beyond the windows: the spire of a town hall. District 12.

'We're here,' she says.

There it all is: the tidy, pretty houses of the merchants' district; the sprawl of the Seam; the forest; and the town square.

'What a miserable little place,' says Snow, peering out. 'You deserved so much better.'

She shakes her head. 'Everyone deserves better.'

'No,' says Snow, and when she meets his eyes he is offering his first smile since before he cut her. 'Most people deserve very little. But not you.'

Oh, how she loathes him.

Their hovercraft, cloaked, takes them straight to the Victors' Village to avoid the crowds of District 12. There will be no public appearances on this trip, no posing for photos. This is just for her: to let her see her family, and to try to put some of the broken pieces of her mind back where they belong.

Snow's thoughts must be on a similar track, because as he pulls on a pair of leather gloves and a scarf he suddenly asks: 'Have you taken your medication today?'

'Yeah,' she lies. 'Before we left.'

She has not taken any of it, of course. She has no wish to get better. She doesn't wish for much of anything, anymore.

They touch down lightly in the middle of the street, which is always completely empty. District 12's Victors' Village was a slightly less sad affair once Peeta and Katniss' families joined Haymitch, but it remains a desolate place. Victors' families are not usually permitted to remain in the Village once the Victor moves out (or kills themselves, which is far more often the case), but Snow has charitably permitted her mother and Prim to stay in their home.

A team of guards disembark first, led by Sulla, who stand with guns drawn. It's a clear warning that anyone who tries to hurt them will be obliterated on sight. Is it overkill? Or is this how dangerous things have become? Is Snow taking reasonable steps to protect her, or is he fencing her into the tiniest cage he can build?

Snow exits next, walking down the first two steps of the hovercraft, and then he turns and offers Katniss his gloved hand.

She looks at his hand, then at him. 'There's no one here, Snow. We don't need to pretend.'

Snow's response is not quite a direct answer. 'You don't need to take my hand if you don't want to.'

That dirty, broken part of her does want to take it, of course. And she would like his hand to touch her elsewhere, too. So, polite and composed, she slips her round hand inside the leather grip of his glove, and she lets him lead her down the ramp.

Snow speaks to her as they walk, voice rubbing low against her ear, and Katniss feels such arousal break through her that she thinks about dashing her brains against the wall.

'What tone would you like us to adopt for your mother?'

Katniss blinks at him. 'What do you mean?'

'Well, frankly, my dear, I don't care what your mother thinks of our relationship. There is no political utility to her opinion. But you might prefer us to continue playing our customary role, and I am willing to indulge you. What exactly do you want your mother to believe?'

This is not a question to which she has given any consideration. 'I don't know,' she says. 'I told my mother than you and I were… That we were going to be happy together.' She frowns. 'I think I want her to believe that. It's easier for her to imagine that I'm happy.'

'Alright. Whatever you prefer.' He speaks as though the whole thing is a game. Which, really, it is.

'Prim isn't going to be happy,' says Katniss. 'She really doesn't like you.'

'Somehow I think I know how to handle the hatred of Everdeen women,' he says, and Katniss realizes he has made a joke. She does not laugh.

They walk along the street that Katniss knows better than her own body, which is now a stranger to her, and Snow interlocks their arms like they are on a lovers' stroll. The perfect picture of husband and wife.

'I've always despised this District,' he says as they walk. 'It stinks of desperation. Humanity at its most base.'

Katniss almost opens her mouth to make an absolutely revolting joke about the smell of her own wet, needy body, but she swallows it.

'Maybe there would be less desperation if people weren't starving to death,' she mutters. 'It's your fault it's this bad.'

'My dear, it is a little more complicated than that, I assure you. Do you have any idea what it took to enact your thirty percent rations raise? The tax levies I had to institute, the cuts I had to make, the favors I had to pull?'

'No,' she snaps back. 'Because you never tell me anything.'

'If you behaved less like a feral child and more like the President's wife, perhaps I could tell you more.'

'Oh please,' she hisses. 'You tell me nothing because you like me in the dark and under your control.'

'That's true enough,' he says reasonably. 'I do like to control you.'

Her eyes dart to him. He has never admitted that so openly before. 'I hate being controlled.'

'I know.' He looks at her and there is some of that wild pleasure in his eyes. Almost imperceptibly, the soft leather of his gloved fingers rub against the back of her hand. 'You wouldn't be half so interesting if you didn't.'

They stop outside her house and she steps forward, pulling her hand away from Snow's irritating caresses, blocking him from her vision. She allows herself to pretend, just for a moment, that everything is alright. The air of District 12 is coal-thick but beautiful to her, familiar and medicinal in her lungs. Perhaps Snow and Gale and all the rest of it was all just a horrible dream. And then the door opens, and her mother is standing there, and the last two months melt into nothing. Her mother looks exactly the same, if a little more tired.

Her mother can't control herself. She runs toward her daughter and catches her in a tight embrace, holding her like she was a little girl, and something horrible shifts inside Katniss.

This is wrong. This isn't how she should be touched. Touch is trauma, and sex, and Snow. Her body revolts and convulses, and she pulls away from her mother's embrace. Fortunately, her mother doesn't sense her discomfort.

'Katniss, my love, it is so wonderful to see you,' she says, and her smile falters. 'Goodness, you've lost so much weight.'

Katniss pulls on a plastic smile. 'It's the fashion in the Capitol,' she says.

There are a hundred confused questions in her mother's eyes. 'Are you alright?' she says, and it means so many things. Does President Snow hurt you? Did Gale really try to rape you? What has happened to you? Where has my little girl gone?

It takes Katniss a moment, but she is able to construct the gentlest and loveliest smile she has ever given. 'I'm alright, mother,' she lies. And when her mother beams back at her, reassured and relieved and believing, Katniss' heart breaks a little.

Then her mother stares behind Katniss with wide-eyed mania. 'And… President Snow. It's… What a pleasure. What an honor.'

Katniss had briefly forgotten that Snow was even there, and she suddenly feels thrust into a farce. Snow is a master at this sort of thing. He extends his hand, takes that of her mother, then holds it between his and smiles into her eyes like he feels divinely fortunate to meet her.

'Please, the honor is entirely mine. I am only sorry we could not be closer acquainted before now. I have an extremely busy schedule, but there is no excuse for going so long without properly speaking with you. Please forgive me. I hope to rectify the error today.'

Her mother laughs with insane delight and Katniss wonders if she could go and throw herself down a mineshaft somewhere. She looks at Snow and her mother standing together, and then she has to suppress a laugh. He could be her mother's father. What a ridiculous family they make.

They go inside and settle at the dining room table, where her mother has laid out the finest spread with the best China. It all looks pretty pathetic compared to what Katniss has become accustomed to in the Capitol: a pile of lumpy scones, cream that's fresh and local but no doubt a little off, watery jam. The tea is not the strange, fine, perfumed kind you get in the Capitol but basic green tea. Snow does not seem to mind; he sits and starts to pour himself a cup, while Katniss' mother disappears to extract Prim from wherever she's billeted herself.

'Your mother is so unlike you,' Snow murmurs, and Katniss wants to cut any words about her family out of his mouth.

'I take after my father.'

Snow nods, making a mental record of this, and then casually helps himself to a scone and jam and cream. Katniss wonders if these are her mother's cooking or Peeta's. There is something blackly amusing about Snow eating Peeta's cooking.

'You should eat something,' Snow says. 'You haven't eaten since breakfast, and you barely ate then, and you vomited it up.'

'I'm not hungry.'

He looks at her without sympathy. 'You need to eat. If you keep this up, eventually I will have to force-feed you.'

Katniss clenches her jaw and thinks that she would like to take the butter knife from Snow's hands and put it into his skull. But instead she reaches out, takes his scone, then licks off the cream and the jam in one fat-tongued exuberance. She tosses the saliva-glistening scone back onto his plate.

'There,' she says. 'I ate something.'

Snow stares at the spit-wet scone, perhaps furious, perhaps amused. Calmly, he reaches for the jam and the cream again and spreads them over the same scone once more. Katniss looks at him with disgust. He lifts the scone to his mouth, takes a bite, chews, then tilts his head to meet her appalled gaze. She challenges him, he accepts it.

Is this flirting? Is this playing?

It takes an embarrassing amount of time for her mother to reappear. No doubt convincing Prim to take tea with the President proved a lengthy affair. When Prim walks in, Katniss expects happiness to explode in her chest, but her joy is weak-edged and dim. Prim's soft face looks at Katniss, and then she looks at Snow. There is a childish, pure, unguarded revulsion in there that fills Katniss with shame.

'And this must be Primrose Everdeen,' says Snow, standing and extending his hand again. Prim does not take it. Snow laughs at this like it's the most endearing thing in the world.

They sit down for tea, and Snow continues to be charming and delightful. He lightly flatters her mother's cooking and tastes, and offers warm but appropriate insights into his affection for her daughter. Katniss smiles vaguely and nods along, and wonders at how easy the pretending has become. It's nothing at all to hold Snow's hand and beam at her mother and sell the picture of ideal romance. Her mother, obnoxiously, will not refer to Snow as anything other than Mister President, even when he tells her twice, 'Call me Coriolanus, please; we're family.' It's embarrassing. It's provincial.

Prim does not drink tea, and she does not make conversation. Whenever a comment is directed at her, she remains in sullen silence. She isn't sulking; she is distraught.

'I am very glad we got this chance to talk together,' says their mother, who still seems to struggle making eye-contact with a son-in-law who's almost twice her age and who could have her killed in a heartbeat. 'I was worried when I didn't hear from Katniss for so long, and then I saw…' Her expression flickers. 'I saw the announcement about Gale, and…' There is fear in her face. She wants so badly to ask if her daughter is alright, but does not know if such a question might get someone shot.

'I'm okay, mother,' says Katniss, and offers her best attempt at a reassuring smile. 'I'm not hurt. What Gale did was…' The words stick in her mouth. She cannot do this. She cannot tell these lies to her family.

Fortunately, Snow is completely willing to tell them.

'What Mr Hawthorne did was unforgivable,' he declares. 'The fact that he got anywhere near my Katniss fills me with…' There is a pause, and for the briefest moment Snow's words are absolutely sincere. 'Absolute rage. But she is safe. I will always keep her safe.' He raises Katniss' hand to his mouth and kisses it. Katniss vaguely registers this is the first time he's done that. It's a new sensation to feel his beard brush over the soft back of her hand, and it somewhat tickles. Horrific and unwelcome, the image drifts into her mind of Snow taking her breast into his mouth and kissing her nipple in the same way. A spasm of arousal goes through her abdomen and Katniss wants to cut herself with something.

Not in front of Prim. Not in front of my mother. Not in my home. Not here.

Her mother is so desperate to accept these lies. 'I'm so glad,' she says. 'I must say, what we see on the television sometimes… It seems like the Capitol is a more dangerous place than it once was. Those bombings. I was so worried for Katniss.'

'You do not need to worry,' says Snow in that perfect, uncontestable voice, and where other people hear reassurance, Katniss hears threat. 'I would never allow anything to happen to her.'

But against the obsidian of Snow's voice, there comes a little challenge: a second, small, soft voice. A little incredulous, a little hurt.

'Why are you doing this?'

Everyone looks at Prim. Her face is taut with pain and confusion, and more than a little loathing.

'Honey?' says their mother, uncertain.

Prim's eyes, which are always so soft, are fixed on President Snow. Her voice is gentle but strong, a plait of spider-silk. 'How can you stand this? She hates you. She hates this. Why are you making her do this?'

'Primrose!' exclaims their mother, but Snow raises a hand to silence her, and she closes her mouth.

'Go on, Primrose,' says Snow, his voice a satin threat. Katniss watches him and knows that if he makes any move to hurt her sister she will sink her teaspoon into his eye socket.

Prim swallows, and then she speaks clearly. 'You took my sister. You came here and you took my sister like you were picking an apple. You could have had anyone. You could have had someone older, someone who didn't have a family. And now you parade her on television, and you've come here to show off to us that you can get anyway with anything. You're…' Her face twists. 'You're evil.'

It's a strange moment. Prim echoes something that Katniss has thought a thousand times, and her hurt is righteous and true, but Katniss also knows that it's wrong. Snow never wanted this. Whatever tortuous, disgusting feelings he has since developed for her, he never wanted this marriage. This was not his design.

Wasn't it…?

'Is that really how you feel?' says Snow mildly.

'Snow?' Katniss mutters, a quiet plea, forgetting his forename.

'It's alright, my dear,' he says. 'I understand that your sister is upset. It's difficult to lose a family member.'

'Don't patronize me,' says Prim in her tiny voice. 'I lost my father. I almost lost my sister in the Games. I was sure she'd die. And then she came back, and everything was going to be okay. And then you came and took her away. For what? So you can have a…' Prim struggles for words she doesn't know to describe a situation she doesn't understand. '…a pretty young wife? You could have anyone. Why her? Why my sister?'

Snow looks perfectly content. 'Because I love her,' he says.

Snow's words, just another gold-leafed performance, barely register to Katniss. 'And I…' she begins, and she can't say it. She can't lie to her sister. What would be the point? Prim sees through her like glass. She fumbles, the kind of mistake that might get her a death threat from Snow if she did in the Capitol. 'He is very important to me,' she says. That's true enough. He is the most important person in her life, the infernal sun around which her trauma revolves.

Katniss can see the tears start to quiver in Prim's eyes. She stands and runs from the room, and the clatter of feet on stairs tell them she has gone to her bedroom.

'I am so sorry,' says Katniss' mother, who is ashamed in such a banal way that Katniss wants to shout at her. 'Primrose is very young, and she's not very mature. Not like her sister,' she hurriedly clarifies. They're only four years apart, after all. 'She doesn't mean any of it.'

Snow waves his hand in polite dismissal. 'No need to worry about it. It's always difficult when change happens in a family.'

Katniss is staring up at the ceiling. 'Perhaps I should go speak to her.' She glances at her husband and they exchange a question and answer that her mother cannot perceive. 'I should make sure that she's alright.' I should make sure she isn't going to say things like that in public.

Snow nods his approval and Katniss stands, then gives him a kiss on the cheek. It isn't until she's out of the dining room that she realizes she didn't even mean to kiss his cheek. She didn't even think about it! It's as natural as breathing. It disorients her to realize this, and then Katniss loses any memory of climbing the stairs. Kissing Snow, him kissing her, his lips on her skin… The idea of his kisses elsewhere on her body… Red-trails over her stomach from the bloody sewer of his mouth… She blinks when she finds herself standing in her own bedroom, muscle memory having brought her here. She pinches her skin and tries to dissipate the arousal, but it doesn't do much. All she can do is put it out of mind as she backtracks to Prim's room, where she knocks at the door.

'Go away,' comes the muffled voice.

'Prim, please,' says Katniss, and is relieved to hear how much like her old self she sounds. She pushes open the door.

Prim is lying on the bed, glaring at the ceiling. Buttercup is curled between her legs and gives Katniss a welcoming hiss. She cannot help but smile. This is almost normal.

'Can I sit?'

'No,' says Prim with a voice that has clearly been crying, and Katniss sits anyway.

They say nothing for a long time. Katniss can hear the distant murmur of Snow entertaining their mother with some obnoxious small talk. He'll be able to make her laugh, and play into her most prosaic sensibilities, and by the time the day is over she'll probably have forgotten he's the reason her husband got blown up. How much easier it must be to believe the pretty lie.

'I need you to be strong for me,' says Katniss. She reaches out for Prim's hair, but something stops her before she touches it. She should wash her hands; she's been touching Snow. She doesn't want any particle of him to get on Prim. Prim is the last good, pure thing in the world. 'This is how it's going to be. I don't like it any more than you do.'

'I don't know how you can stand it.'

'Because I have to. Anyway, it's not so bad. I'm getting used to him. He's…' She casts around for any singular word that describes the unquantifiable, lunatic relationship she has with Snow. 'He's considerate,' she concludes. Yes, that's correct. He considers things. He considers her in all different kinds of ways — and she considers him. 'And anyway, if I don't pull this off, we're all dead. So it's a good thing I'm doing such a good job.' She smiles. This is supposed to be reassuring. It isn't.

Prim rolls over and looks at her. 'Did he kill Gale?'

Katniss lets out a long, weighty sigh that she didn't know she'd been holding in. 'No. His security team did. Gale broke into my bedroom. It was a stupid thing to do.'

'Was it true what you said? About the attempted rape?'

'No,' says Katniss softly. 'Snow made me say it.'

Prim shakes her head and there is something primal in her revulsion. 'He's evil.'

'I know.'

'And you let him…' Perhaps Katniss is imagining it, but she is sure that some of Prim's revulsion remains as she looks at her sister. 'You let him touch you.'

'I have to,' says Katniss, and then she realizes that she just lied to her sister. Sometimes, sure, she has to touch him. But other times? When she forces herself on him? When she hurts him, and assaults him? That's all her fault. But it's different. Snow deserves to be hurt; she isn't culpable. She has to make him feel bad… She has to punish him…

'Will you kill him?'

Katniss blinks at that. 'I can't. If I did something like that, you would get hurt. He's made sure of it.'

'I don't care,' snaps Prim. 'You should kill him. One day. Find a way.' She looks at Katniss and the tears in her eyes are ones of black fury that rival Snow's. 'Promise me one day you'll kill him for touching you.'

Katniss says nothing. She has no promises to offer. Then, at last, she says: 'I'll try.'

Katniss returns downstairs to Snow and her mother making absolutely horrendous chitchat about gardening, and it takes only one thin smile to her husband to communicate that it's time to end the teatime. He reads her so well now.

'I must thank you for your hospitality,' Snow says, shaking her mother's hand. Katniss despises how charming he can be. 'Before I leave, Katniss, do indulge me in showing me your bedroom.'

Katniss stares. She forgets to play her role for a moment. 'Why?'

Snow remains warm and perfect. 'I'm curious. I want to see where you grew up.'

'We only moved here when I was sixteen. I grew up in a different house.'

'I would consider sixteen to nineteen an age of growing up.'

He is polite and smiling, but even Katniss' mother can sense the unpleasant edge in their volleys. Katniss tries to tidy herself into something more agreeable. 'Of course,' she says. 'It's just upstairs.'

She leads him up there, grinding her molars, then shoves into her old bedroom like she used to. It's unchanged, save for a layer of dust.

'Here it is,' she says. 'Extremely unremarkable.'

Snow walks into the room, looking around with slow care. 'Every Victor's house is identical, as you know,' he says. 'That's why it's so interesting to see what individuals do to make it personal.'

With complete ease, he steps through the room and runs his fingertips over Katniss' personal possessions: a wooden box, a painting by Peeta of some flowers, an embroidered picture of a lake that Prim made, a haphazard pile of jewelry left over from her public appearances. His fingers tarry on a photograph, a copy of the same one that stands in the study as well as her mother's room and Prim's. It was ancient and faded by the time they could afford to make copies, and the subject's features have blurred into memory.

'Your father?' Snow says pleasantly.

Katniss wants to kill him. 'Yes.'

'Do you miss him?'

Katniss could scream. 'Yes. He was a good man. Do you miss yours?'

Snow's expression is strange. 'No.' The single syllable speaks of a hundred things that Katniss cannot discern.

Snow turns away from the picture, already interested in other things: the coverlet now, which he rubs his fingers against.

'Katniss Everdeen,' he murmurs, and he walks around the bed, touching the sheets and the pillow in ways that Katniss finds inexplicable but repulsive. 'To think you slept here for three years. Did you have nightmares?'

'Yes,' she says through her teeth.

'Fantastic.' He rubs the skin of the pillowcase. 'I'd love to know more about your nightmares.'

'I wouldn't.' Her voice comes a little choked. 'Why are you even here? Why does this room interest you at all?'

He turns to her. His face is still; his eyes are cold infernos. He speaks with clarity and purpose: 'I want to know everything about you.'

It is not an exaggeration, she knows. He means it. He wants to know everything. She is his new fascination. It's terrifying, and along with the terror comes the lacy feel of sexual excitement in her cunt.

'Why?' she pleads. What is wrong with him? Why is he so drawn to her? Why is she so drawn to him?

He smiles pleasantly. 'I like to know things.'

'But why? Why about me?' She is desperate for some piece of information that will make the insanity of his fondness and his fixation make sense.

'Well, we are in a relationship.'

She recoils. 'No, we're not,' she says immediately.

Snow tilts his head. 'Yes, we are.'

'I… No, Snow, we are not in a relationship. We're married. That's different.'

'Yes, it's different. But we are nonetheless in a relationship.' He is polite and serene, and speaking insanity.

'You… Snow, you don't get to disagree!' She realizes she is shouting and drops her voice to a low whisper. Prim is only feet away, on the other side of the wall. 'You don't get to decide something like that. What does that even mean? We… It's not like we're… Oh for…' She wants to pull her hair out. 'Snow, what does that mean? What are you talking about?'

He is absolutely unaffected by her fear and fury and disgust. He takes a step toward her, careful and gentle. She can see the two of them framed in the mirror. Her darker, fuller skin; his pale, heavy face. Over threescore years apart. He raises his hand and tucks a lock of her hair behind her ear. Katniss' heart is beating so hard she can see the reflection of her sternum trembling.

'It's alright,' he says, as though this is supposed to be reassuring. 'This is an unconventional relationship, of course, but a relationship nonetheless. You know I care about you. I look after you, and you… entertain me.' He smiles: infinite, blissful peace. 'You can resent it all that you like, but this has always been a relationship.' His eyes flick to the side. Memory and fondness distance him. 'In a way, we've been in a relationship since that day I crowned you, haven't we? Perhaps even before,' he muses.

'No.' Her voice is thick. 'That's…' Her words fail her. Snow's reality is not her own. 'I'd like to get out of here now,' she says hurriedly, wrapping her arms around herself, absolutely primally terrified.

'Of course,' he smiles. 'We will need to remain in District 12 for the night, but we can stay in one of the other empty houses.'

Katniss frowns. 'Why do we need to stay here? It's only a few hours' flight back to the Capitol.'

Snow contemplates her. 'Can I trust you, Katniss?'

She genuinely does not know the answer to that. 'You can trust me to kill you in your sleep one day,' she says.

Snow smiles with roiling warmth. 'Good.' He takes a seat on the edge of the bed, then gestures beside him. 'Sit down, please.'

Katniss keeps her distance. 'I'm fine here.'

Snow's expression is curious. 'Why won't you sit?'

'Because you're frightening me.'

There is a little confusion in Snow's face. 'That is not my intention. I assure you that you are perfectly safe. It's only that I need to share some information with you that might come as a bit of a shock.'

Katniss regards him, her terror mollified by the ridiculousness of seeing him sitting cheerfully on her little old bed, and then she comes to join him. The mattress is much harder than the ones to which the Capitol has accustomed her. Sitting next to Snow, on a bed she used to touch herself in, Katniss thinks abstractly about letting him touch her.

But there is nothing romantic or sexual in Snow's aspect. He links his fingers and speaks with purpose. 'We cannot go back to the Capitol tonight because of the risk of a possible counter-attack from District 13.'

Katniss stares. Gale mentioned District 13. She had forgotten, what with the abscess of grief that has been necrotizing her insides. 'What?'

'It's a complicated story,' says Snow. And then he explains to Katniss a few things that leave her open-mouthed and hating him in entirely new ways. District 13 lives. The Capitol has been lying about it for decades. They've been left alone on account of their nuclear capabilities. They have allied with the rebellion. It is them who are responsible for the bombings. They might have the strength to bring down the Capitol.

'It's unfortunate,' says Snow as Katniss feels this information hit her in the face over and over. 'We left District 13 to their own devices for fear of mutually assured destruction. But they have grown cocky. They have weapons that could wipe us out, yes, but they've been living underground with extremely limited resources for decades. We, on the other hand, have been developing some of the finest weapons humankind has ever produced. In the last few years, I have had researchers prioritize the issue of neutralizing District 13, should the conflict ever come to that.' His expression is empty. 'Tonight my forces will drop a nuclear bomb on District 13. We hope that this particular weapon will be undetectable to them, but there is a not insignificant risk that they will sense its approach. If they do, they will have the opportunity to launch their own missile. That would obliterate the Capitol and make the surrounding land radioactive and uninhabitable.' Snow tilts his head from side to side like he's balancing sums. 'It's a difficult risk to quantify. The risk that they detect the weapon, and then the risk that they return fire. Once we launch the attack, District 13 is doomed. There may be scattered survivors living on bases outside of the main silo, but their numbers will be reduced by at least 97%. They have no chance of recovery. If they fire back, it will be out of spite. A lot of unnecessary dead in the name of pettiness, but Coin — she's their leader — is a bit of a wildcard to me. Either way, the rebellion ends tonight.'

Katniss churns with shock and confusion and, beneath all that, the sudden, sharp, parasitical knowledge that this entire marriage was the wrong decision. District 13 has been alive all this time? With nuclear capabilities? They could have fought back! The rebellion could have won!

Was it Katniss, smiling in a wedding dress, that gave the Capitol just that little edge to hold onto power long enough to keep District 13 at bay?

'So,' she says, plucking thoughts from the maelstrom of her mind. 'We're staying here tonight because… the Capitol might be gone in the morning?'

'Indeed,' Snow smiles.

'Are you… going to evacuate?'

'No.' Still, he smiles. 'We can't give District 13 any warning of what we're about to do. A few people have been relocated — crucial staff members, my granddaughter, her family. The rest will remain.'

'How many people would die?'

'District 13 would see around ten thousand casualties. In the Capitol? Hundreds of thousands.' He smiles with what he must think is kindness. 'But you will be safe. As will your family. We will all be safe here.'

They sit together on her little bed. Somewhere a mockingjay is singing a bar of a folk song whose words Katniss can't quite recall. The late afternoon sun warms the room and lights a corona behind Snow's gleaming hair.

'What would happen to us?' Her voice is cracking.

Snow speaks as though this is the most ordinary situation in the world. 'If the Capitol is destroyed, it would be a severe blow to the stability of Panem. The population hit would be absolutely devastating. But we would recover. You and I would relocate to District 2, and eventually — long after my death, unfortunately — Panem would claw its way back. Humanity would survive.' He reaches out as though he means to take her hand, but seems to think better of it, and instead he merely taps his fingertip against her thumbnail. 'Nothing would change between you and me. We would continue to rule this country.' A quiet pause. 'As husband and wife.'

She does not speak. She is too exhausted to be terrified. With fatigue and grief, she rests her head against Snow's shoulder. She feels him stiffen against her, but he makes no move to push her away.

'When will we know if the Capitol survived?' she murmurs.

'By dawn.'

They sit there for a long time. Snow smells of sweet roses and blood, as he always does, but she can also scent the artificial Capitol smell on him, too. It's out of place here in District 12. In her fragile madness, she enjoys the firmness of his shoulder supporting her.

It's such an easy, tiny thing to shift her head, push forward, and kiss him. A little kiss, like lilac melancholy, soft and pretty. He is so solid against her, so real, when nothing else is.

Snow pulls his head back. 'You shouldn't do that, Katniss,' he says gently.

'But you like it,' she says.

'You don't.' He stands, enforcing space between them, smoothing his clothes, remaining cool and distant and presidential. 'We should leave, Katniss. It's getting late. We should find somewhere appropriate to spend the night, and wait for news.' He glances around the room. 'You can stay here if you'd prefer. You might like to spend more time with your family.'

Katniss shakes her head. 'What, and lie to them about why I'm here and the fact that hundreds of thousands of people might die tonight?' She gives a little laugh. She doesn't even like this bedroom. Her room in the house in the Seam, shared with Prim — that meant something. This place? It's just the box that housed her after the Games killed something inside her that she could never recover.

When they leave the bedroom, Katniss spares one desperate, lonely glance at Prim's room. And then she keeps walking. No goodbyes. Keep it efficient.

They return to her mother, Katniss feeling faintly sick and subdued. They make abrupt and awkward goodbyes on the porch, and Katniss cannot help but be impressed by how sincere Snow sounds when he says oh, yes, we must do this again. It would be easier to never see her mother again than submit to this embarrassment.

Katniss wanders to the sidewalk. She pauses to give her home one last goodbye.

Her eyes are immediately drawn to the western wall, just visible at this angle. There is something there she didn't notice when they first arrived.

The mockingjay symbol.

Her heart leaps. She hasn't seen it in so long! That whisper that there is something, anything, to the future of her world other than Snow. And it's on her very house! Someone, somewhere, still remembers her as Katniss Everdeen. Someone still has hope for her. Someone believes she still has a future.

Katniss feels all of this in a millisecond. Then she sees the rest of the graffiti. It's a bit faded; someone has clearly tried to wash it off, but not with much success.

The 'O' of the mockingjay symbol glows bright. But two letters have been added on either side. Katniss reads the word they make, emblazoned on her house.

WHORE

She stands there for a long time. She tries to pluck some emotional reaction out of the usual ocean of anxiety that is now her permanent state. She finds nothing else inside her.

Would things have changed had she gone with Gale? Had they somehow, miraculously, made it back here, could the rebellion have turned things around before the launching of that nuclear bomb? Or would the rebels have cut off her body parts and sent them back to Snow? Their traitor, his whore, taken to pieces?

I haven't even fucked him, she thinks. Then, in wild insanity, her brain adds: Yet.

She quickly averts her eyes, pretending she hasn't seen anything, not wanting Snow to spot the graffiti and order the execution of everyone in District 12 who owns a paintbrush.

Snow joins her, pulling on his leather gloves, as cheerful as though this is any other day. They walk down the street together, the winter air harsh against her bare neck.

She clears her throat. 'I'd like to go for a walk,' she says. 'See Haymitch and Peeta, while I'm here.'

'And the Hawthornes?'

Katniss stares at Snow. 'What?'

He smiles down at her, gentle and cruel. 'I am not about to let you try to undo all the fine work you did with that speech. Did you really think I didn't know why you wanted to come here? Throw yourself at the Hawthornes' mercy and tell them how terribly wronged their son was?' He shakes his head at her. 'You ought to know me better.' He slides his arm around hers, and Katniss' anger and grief break upon involuntary arousal. 'I'm not letting you out of my sight, Katniss. It's not safe.'

'But… Can I at least visit Peeta and Haymitch?'

Snow considers it for the briefest moment. 'No.'

'Why?'

He looks at her. 'It's not safe,' he repeats. And then he considers a moment longer. He is always honest, he insists, but just how honest is he willing to be? 'And after the incident with Mr Hawthorne, I don't much feel like letting you spend time with any other men. He touched you.' Snow's lip curls. 'I didn't like that.'

Fear rattles through her, and Katniss cannot help but picture Peeta too with a hole in his head, his corpse strung up next to Gale's. Just another body. Snow doesn't even keep count. She turns, cranes her head, sees Peeta's house. There is a light on. He must be in there. He's so close! Someone who truly cares about her. Someone that could hold her and tell her everything was going to be alright.

Snow keeps walking, Katniss hooked against him, and the house slides out of sight.

Well, that's it, she thinks. She is alone with Snow. Just how he wants it.

She breathes in the smell of pine and coal, and the memories of her childhood start to float back to her in broken pieces like ash. Running the streets with Prim. Her mother taking her shopping. A brief, old memory of her father smiling at something she cannot remember. Gale bringing her a whole, bursting basket of blackberries.

Katniss starts to cry.

She tries not to. She feels it first in her throat, hollowing her out and filling her with grief, and then she feels a hum in her lips and a heat growing in her eyes. She breathes in hard and tries to steady her body. She has always been good at suppressing tears, ever since her father died. She has had so much practice. But her eyes get hotter and hotter, and then her vision blurs, and then it's impossible to disguise her harsh intakes of breath as anything other than quiet, humiliating sobs.

She can hear that Snow is listening to her. She doesn't know how she can hear it, but she can. Something about the stilling in his bodily movements and the gravity of his eyes on her that she can sense without even looking at him. She has never cried in front of him before, not properly. She never wants to show him vulnerability like this.

'Katniss…' Snow's voice is that awful, feather-soft tone he uses when he thinks she's acting like a child, when he thinks she needs taking care of.

'Shut up,' she says, and wipes at her face, but the tears keep coming. 'I hate you so much.'

Snow leads her to the front door of a house that is identical to her own.

'This one will suffice,' he says, and removes a key from his pocket. Katniss tries not to think about what it means that he brings a key that will let him into any house in the Victor's Village — or, perhaps, any door in the town. It's his dollhouse they're living in.

Katniss follows him in. The hallway is identical to her own house, decorated with all the pointless tchotchke the designers must think are so crucial to completing the luxurious life of a child-killer. She catches a glance of her ugly, wet face in the mirror and tries to wipe away more tears, turning away from Snow. Her skin is so puffy.

'You really don't want me to see you cry, do you?' says Snow, shutting the door behind them, and Katniss keeps her face turned away. 'It's a little pointless. I've seen you cry before.'

She looks back at him through wet eyelashes. 'When?'

'You cried when the District 11 female died,' he says pleasantly.

It takes Katniss a moment to realize what he means. Rue's death. The Games. Those recordings of her misery that he must so like to play.

'Oh,' she says. Her grief sharpens at the edge. 'Do you like watching me cry?'

Snow considers this as though it is the most reasonable question. 'Yes,' he says. His own answer seems to give him pause. 'I do not like that you are grieving. But I do like watching you cry. It's interesting. Your lips change, and your eyes—' He reaches for her, but whatever he's about to do is stopped in its tracks when Katniss smacks his face. It's a hard blow and Snow takes a moment to rub his jaw in irritation. 'That was uncalled for, Katniss.'

'You're a fucking monster,' she breathes. 'You're the most evil man I've ever met.'

He is still touching his jaw where she hit him, not to soothe the pain but to recall the shape of the blow. 'You're still upset about Mr Hawthorne,' he says. 'Try to control yourself.'

She slaps him again. She knows that he could stop her, but he doesn't.

'I am upset about everything!' she yells. 'Gale, District 13, the Capitol, you… Oh, why are you like this? What is wrong with you? What went wrong in your head that makes you treat people the way you do?'

'I only treat you like this, Katniss,' he says, and his voice is low. He takes a step toward her, she takes a step back. He runs a hand over the skin where she hit him. Something dances in his eyes. 'Are you hitting me because you want to play?'

'No, I don't want to…' She evaluates him, in his abhorrent majesty and casual mastery over everything that she has ever held dear. Her ruination breaks upon him with total indifference. 'Okay. Fine. We can play. What game?'

'Whatever you like,' says Snow, and she can taste his excitement. 'Would you like to hurt me, or shall I hurt you?'

A huge pulse of arousal goes through Katniss' cunt and chest and into her spine. She can feel her body shimmer into heat and feel desire swell in her putrescent cunt.

'What about a different game?' Her eyes go from his eyes to his lips. 'Do you want to kiss me again?'

Snow's expression changes in an instant: excitement dissolving, a door slamming shut. 'No.'

'Why not? You kiss me all the time.'

His jaw is set hard. 'Actually, Katniss, you are incorrect. I have kissed you three times. Once at our wedding, and twice at the reception, when occasion demanded it. Every other time we have kissed, it is because you have forced it on me.'

Katniss blinks at this. He's right. Snow hasn't kissed her since the day after their wedding. But she has kissed him so many times she has lost count.

'You kissed me back after Gale,' she counters. 'And you like kissing me.' The way that he held her with such sensitivity, like she was made of glass, and the way his lips opened to her with an almost religious gratitude, are not things she will soon forget. She raises her head to his. She can feel tears still in her eyelashes and on her lips, and she must smell of salt to him. All she feels is grief and arousal. 'Please. Just kiss me.'

He holds her eyes like vises. 'No. You don't want that. It will only make you feel worse.'

'Perhaps I want to feel worse,' she says.

She remains paralyzed as he reaches out and touches her face, the soft leather of his glove soothing against her hot and agitated cheeks, and his thumb wipes away her tears. 'I don't want to hurt you like that, Katniss.'

'But you like hurting me!' She blinks away falling tears and they paint the leather of his gloved fingers.

'I told you,' he whispers, stroking her, comforting her, insinuating himself into her. 'Pain is a tool. Some forms of pain are useful. Others are not.' He smiles into her. 'Sexual trauma is not useful to me. It will damage you in unhelpful ways. And we can do other things, Katniss. I know you enjoy them. I enjoy them too.' There is a ridiculous optimism to his voice. 'We can play games.' Their faces are too close. Her lips vibrate with his voice. She can feel the heat of his whole body radiate against her. 'We both enjoy hurting each other. It's alright. We can keep doing that.' His eyes are huge. 'I enjoyed cutting you very much.'

She is utterly adrift. 'Snow… Do you think what you did… Cutting my thigh, and…' She does not want to verbalize the sight of her blood between his lips. 'Do you think that isn't sexual?'

Uncertainty clouds his eyes. 'It's different,' he murmurs.

'How?' she implores.

The leather of his glove has been warmed by her cheek, and still he holds her.

'The pain is something you can enjoy,' he says, with intense deliberacy. 'You would not enjoy… You would despise…' Whatever thought so distracts him, he shakes it away. That glittering contentment again lights his eyes. He takes his hand away from her face, and then he gently, politely removes his gloves. Katniss' skin ripples like the wind in grass as he returns the cool skin of his hand to her cheek, and then his other hand joins it. She is held like petals in a calyx. 'Cutting each other is different. It's useful. It serves a purpose.'

'How is cutting me useful?'

He is keen to explain this, like it justifies something. 'It conditions you to pain, and it helps you withstand more pain in future. It develops you. It calms you as well, you said so yourself. And it's useful for us, too. Our relationship. It brings us closer together.'

'Our relationship?' Her voice cracks. 'You think this is good for us?'

'I think we are in a wonderful place right now,' says Snow. He cradles her face with adoration.

'My best friend was shot dead yesterday and you made me accuse him of rape. You made me look at his mutilated body,' she whispers.

Snow dips his face even closer to hers. 'And how did that make you feel, my dear?'

'Like I'm dissolving.'

He is ecstatic. 'You're dissolving into me.'

She feels she would collapse if it wasn't for his hands supporting her face. 'Snow, that isn't a good thing. I don't…' She must pause to breathe as the heat of his hands on her face extracts a long, ecstatic coil of pleasure out of her. 'I don't think I will come from back from this.'

'Of course you will,' he whispers. 'I will help you. I will take care of you.' Katniss can see nothing but his face: the lights of his eyes, the myriad delicate ways age has deformed his skin, the desire he does not know how to hide. 'Katniss…'

She angles her lips, and he angles his away. He gives a tiny shake of the head. He will not kiss her.

'Do you really think this is going to work?' Her whisper grates on her ears. 'You won't kiss me, but you think cutting me and traumatizing me will make me better?'

'But you are getting better,' he breathes. There is reverence in it. 'You are becoming so fantastic.'

She closes her eyes and lets her world narrow to the sensation of his fingertips caging her face. Aching pleasure seethes through her body. 'Snow, I'm dying.'

'Don't say that,' he hushes. 'Will you look at me?'

She does as she is told, and new tears spill over her eyes and slide along his fingers. 'I don't know how to keep feeling this unhappy.'

'I don't know how to make you happy,' says Snow, and there is absolute honesty and helplessness in it. She is a riddle he is not designed to solve. A little more optimism comes into his face. 'But I know how to do things that you like. You like to hurt me, don't you?'

Katniss is so gently appalled. 'Yes,' she says, as though this is a joke, and the way Snow is stroking her cheeks fills her with the taste of a pleasure she cannot quite reach.

'Then you can hurt me. 'We both like it. You like to hurt me because you hate me, and I like it because I like you. We can meet in the middle. Relationships are about compromise.'

Among her horror and disbelief for this awful sentiment, she feels a stab of pity for him. 'Is that… is that what you want? For the next ten, twenty years we just… we hurt each other?'

He smiles. It's inhuman, it's tragic. 'Yes, Katniss. I would like that very much.' He looks over her, and he is glowing. 'There are so many ways you could hurt me. And I could do things to you that you can't imagine. You think the Games are a creative torture?' He is so close to her face she can feel the heat of his skin on hers. His fingers caress her. She can hear his tongue in his mouth. 'We could have such a lovely time.' He tilts his head with a question. 'Why are you still crying?'

'I don't know,' she says, and a sob deforms the words. 'Because you are the worst thing that has ever happened to me, and yet you're so happy.'

'You make me happy,' he murmurs. His eyes rove over her face, drinking her in. 'You are spectacular when you cry.' This only makes the tears come harder, and then she starts to sob again, shaking, trembling. Snow's expression is kaleidoscopic. 'Shh, Katniss,' he says.

She moves closer to him, seeking something: comfort, or warmth. The way Gale's strong arms made her feel. Or to steep herself in that sexual desire. Anything to drown out the despair. Snow moves his body away from her, maintaining that pointless buffer of air that keeps her skin, her breasts, her keen-edged lure away from him. He will not hold her properly, but he settles his fingers around the back of her neck and strokes her soft little hairs. It's soothing, it's dementing.

'I hate you,' she cries. 'Will you hurt me again?'

'Of course,' he smiles, as though this is the kindest thing he could possibly do for her. 'What would you like me to do to you?'

'Kill me.' She is weeping, now.

Snow doesn't like that. He shakes his head once, hard and sharp. 'Never, Katniss. No. Never ask me that. I could never let you go.' He brushes the hair back from her face, and Katniss feels her cunt grow hotter and more desperate. 'Can I do something else for you?'

She wants his mouth on her — and she wants other things, too. He is massaging her cheek with his thumb, over and over again, hot rainbows of soft friction. It's making her swell and leak.

Through tears and self-loathing and incredible desire, she says: 'Will you have sex with me?'

He doesn't like this either, but he does not push her away. Only tremors of air separate their lips. 'No. You don't want that.' Lingering as brief as a hummingbird, his thumb grazes her lips. Katniss' whole body spasms. He is pressing against the line of propriety with such pressure it must surely snap. 'Please stop asking me to do these things to you. You're grieving, and you're lonely, and you're confused. That's why you think you want that. But you don't.'

'Then just kiss me,' she cries. 'It won't hurt me. I promise.'

His face is immaculate, unyielding, just another carved visage on a coin. But his eyes are fracturing. She can see him falling apart. Katniss quivers. He has nursed his private enjoyment of her kisses for… how long? He aches for her in his terrible, unfathomable way, and she is not really sure which of them is tearing into smaller shreds. And she knows the exact words to open him up. She knows how to win this dreadful battle.

She whispers like a silkworm. 'Don't you want to know how I taste when I'm crying?'

There is a shift inside him. The silver fondness in his eyes hardens. Hunger uncurls itself. The grip on her face becomes less delicate, and Katniss knows she has had a little victory. He is trapping her, now, and she is trapping him.

When he kisses her, he does so with teeth. He doesn't bite, but the sharp edges of his mouth slide over her lips and clutch at her. This is a new sensation, unsettling to her very soul, but her body surges with silver and gold. She tries to kiss back, tries to get her soft lips around his, but his mouth leaves hers and then kisses her cheek, up her face, and Katniss realizes he is tracing her tears. She trembles with shock and nausea as his tongue, iron-smelling and red, licks her cheekbone and her lashes and her eye-socket. She gasps in quiet horror, then her fingers curl around his arms and hold him as he laps at her, paralyzed with the revulsion and the intimacy and the scent of him.

He tilts her head and puts his mouth to her other eye, and Katniss whines. Her body sparks; she does not know what is happening to her. She wants it to stop, she wants it never to end, she wants Snow to eat out her eyeball so she and Gale can match.

'Oh fuck,' she murmurs, beyond overwhelmed, feeling madness settle inside her, feeling arousal explore her body with blind confusion. 'Snow? Please? Snow?'

She doesn't know if she's asking him to stop or asking for more, but his lips return to hers and she gives every atom of her body over to him. She lets her tongue taste the iron and rot of his mouth. It is foul and it is intoxicating. She finds his worst mouth sore, right in the center of his left cheek, and she works her tongue into the wound like a hungry cat. Her lips push against him like soft waves. Somewhere in the mess of it all she tells him she hates him, and then she crushes their faces together and she cannot speak anymore. They seek each other desperately, illogically, straining to collapse their lips and bodies into one. Katniss wraps her arms around his neck, interlacing her fingers, tying herself in a tight little knot. Snow's own hands go to her back, holding her against him, and she feels so remarkably small. His hands span the width of her back so easily and they hold her against him, like he wants to protect her, like he couldn't bear to let her go.

Katniss feels the full, heavy heat of his body against her and her arousal trembles. Is this really going to happen? She doesn't know how to do this; she doesn't know how to fit their bodies together. Should they lie down? Can they do this standing up? Should she open her legs? Does he even want to feel her naked skin and her cunt, webbed with vile honey?

She never imagined her first time would be this way.

Snow's tongue ever so gently enters her own mouth, and she moans with obliterating pleasure. For the first time, she feels a note of Snow's own pleasure echo her back, so low, and so deep as it resonates through her own mouth.

'Katniss,' he says against her mouth, and she licks into him.

She doesn't know what to do. Her fingers search for the clasps of his jacket, struggling to understand the most simple mechanisms of undressing, but then she finds the hidden fastenings and starts to free them, one by one. Will he remove her dress, or ought she to do that?

She frees the last clasp and then slides her hands beneath the jacket, feeling for the briefest moment these impressions: the smooth, rich cotton of his shirt; the warmth of his torso; the strange swell of his chest which is so different to those of the boys she has touched before; the undulation of soft, older skin.

Snow's hands flinch from her body like she is drenched in acid and they grasp her wrists.

'What are you doing?' His voice is terror and fury.

She falters. 'I'm… I'm undressing you.'

'Why—? No — shut up.' He pushes her away from him with such force she collides with the doorframe. It only hurts a little bit.

'What's wrong?' Katniss says, face tear-gilded, mouth swollen. 'Don't you want to do this? Don't you… Don't you like me?'

Snow shakes his head at her, absolute horror in his eyes. 'That's not the point, Katniss. We can't… That was…' He swallows. He shakes his head as though trying to get her out of his thoughts. 'That was too much. We shouldn't have…' His mouth twists.

Katniss shifts her body, desperate and confused, desiring him, desiring death. She can feel her cunt rub slick against her dress. 'I don't understand,' she says. 'I thought you liked this. I thought you liked kissing me.'

'But you don't,' he shouts, startling her. 'You find me disgusting — as you so like to remind me. You don't want this.'

And then she realizes.

He really doesn't know.

He doesn't know her disgust has a sticky, golden edge. He doesn't know how wet she is for him. He thinks this is pure self-harm and grief and confusion. He doesn't know that her clit is hard and swollen, that her cunt leaks thickly at his touch, that she has been on the edge of orgasm for the past week. He still has no idea of the foul corruption she carries inside herself.

She wants to pull off her fingernails, but instead she jams her thumb into the fresh wound Snow gave her on her thigh and jolts of lovely grounding pain go through her.

She feels humiliated.

'I hate you,' she murmurs, disoriented by arousal and the knowledge that she is the most repulsive creature on the planet.

He is trying to calm himself, breathing hard, swallowing, not looking at her. 'We should take some space away from each other for the night.'

Katniss shakes her head immediately. 'No. I want…' I want to feel you inside me. But she cannot say that. Snow will not admit that reality. Instead, she gives voice to the one thing he will allow: 'I want to hurt you.'

They know this is a bad idea. There is precedent.

Snow's lips are a little parted. He looks like he could eat her. 'How?'

She is sick of him setting the rules.

'I want to fight you,' she says.

She backs into the parlor, reaches out, grasps a bowl of dried scented flowers, upends it, then throws the bowl at the wall. It misses Snow's head by several feet, but he puts up a hand to protect his eyes.

'That is not what I had in mind,' he says, surprised and a little annoyed.

'You don't get to decide what we play,' she shouts. 'You don't get to control me. You don't want to kiss me? You want games instead? I'll give you games.'

The next thing Katniss throws is a lamp. This connects with Snow's shoulder, but it's a bad throw and glances it off with little damage. Then she throws the end table.

Snow, rubbing his arm from the latest blow, looks at her with more anger than desire. 'Katniss,' he warns, his voice hot tar.

'What, going to call your security team in to protect you from your hysterical wife?' She sees a glass statue meant to represent a victorious child, which is really quite beautifully made despite its repugnant subject, and then throws that, too.

Snow is ready for this one and he steps easily out of its wake. It shatters into icing sugar.

'After their previous overreactions, I have given the security team instructions not to apprehend you unless there is serious risk to my life.'

She steps to the left, he steps to the right. They draw out the perimeter of the parlor, watching each other, weighing the air between them. The furniture is transforming itself in Katniss' eyes into potential weapons. Furniture legs, a metal candlestick, the excellent fire-poker… What she really wants is a blade, of course… Something to peel him open with…

'How many people have you actually killed?' she says through the silence. 'Killed with your own hands, I mean. Not sent to their deaths. Killed yourself.'

His eyes are voids. 'More than you.'

She wets her lips. 'How badly do I have to damage you before you do something to hurt my family?'

He watches her. 'I would never allow you to damage me that badly.'

She pauses. 'Good.'

Then it is such a straightforward matter to leap the couch, pivot to the fireplace, grab the fire-poker, and raise it above her head just as Snow crashes into her.

They fall into a couch, then onto the floor, and then Katniss is sliding away. She is so much quicker than him. She pivots and brings down the fire-poker, but it is blocked by Snow's arm. It hits bone and pain shoots through his features, and a moment later Katniss has leapt away again, keeping out of his reach, relying on her speed.

'I fucking hate you,' she spits, and then she launches another lamp at him. He sidesteps, and she throws an ashtray. This makes impact, cracking just the corner of his head, and Snow gives an ugly shout of pain. There is blood on his face, now. Katniss grins with all of her teeth and a lolling tongue.

She darts away, into the hall, considers the front door but goes for the stairs. She doesn't want to escape; no, they're not going to stop playing this game. She skips around the balustrade, throwing herself up the stairs, taking two at a time. Snow's hand shoots through the wooden banister rails with such force that one snaps clean in two, and then he grabs her ankle and yanks her to the floor. A step slams into her face and she tastes blood. Snow has to release her to get up the stairs, and then she takes off again, climbing, flying, planning her route.

The house has the same layout as her old home, so it is trivial to run for the room that ought to be her bedroom and slam the door, then turn the lock. She has some time, a good few extra seconds; his older legs will not tackle the stairs as easily as her. She fumbles her way into the bathroom which, so generously, is stocked with toiletries for whatever poor, trauma-riddled Victor takes up residence here. They leave you the nicest razor blades, should you want to end it peacefully in the bath.

There is banging on the door. The lock won't hold for long.

She unscrews the razor, unpeels the blades, slots one in at ninety degrees and then tightens the razor. The blade sticks out, half an inch of death, and she catches sight of her reflection.

She is insane. Her teeth are wide and grinning in a sunken face, her eyes are massive, her hair is a rats' nest. There is blood all over her lips. Snow's blood.

She is going to get some more.

There are three very loud thuds, and then the door shatters open. Snow has beaten it down with some stupid bust that Katniss realizes — with hilarity — actually represents his own head.

The shit they decorate these houses with, she thinks.

Then Snow lunges at her and she swings her weapon back and forth, slicing the air into neat sections. His cry is a low gasp. His hand explodes into red.

Blood. More blood. He likes her in it, she knows. She will get as much of it on her as possible.

She goes to him. His left hand is bleeding a lot, but no arteries are damaged. She is operating on instincts that are not her own, that she has leeched from him. He is too confused to stop her as she takes his blood-wet hand and places it against her face, kissing his palm, coating her tongue in the blood, sliding it between the limina of the gash. He stands still and lets her: unmoving, perplexed, entranced. It tastes different to the blood of his mouth, thicker and richer, and Katniss wonders if her own blood has its own distinct vintage.

'Katniss—'

His voice is choked and confused, and his fingers cup her chin as she rubs her face into him. Overcome and savage, she sneaks her incisors around the edge of the open skin and bites down, and Snow shouts again in pain. He grabs her, his hands so strong on her wrists, and her world blurs as Snow throws her to the floor as easily as if she were made of straw. The razor skids out of her hands, and then a moment later he is on top of her.

There is no weapon in reach. She doesn't stand a chance under his body weight, and she thinks she has already lost.

'I'm going to kill you,' she laughs, and she licks his fresh blood from her chin. It's so easy to taste him now. The taste of hate, and home, and sexual desire.

He glares down at her, now restraining her hands, and Katniss laughs up at him. She will always find ways to hurt him. She will pick the locks of his body and mind and flood inside him like poison. They will feast on one another until they both split open.

And then she feels it. As he restrains her, looking down at her with exasperation and hatred and a silver knot of other things she cannot read, she feels the change in his body.

Against her thigh, alien to her but unmistakable, is the hard imprint of an erection.

She stops moving. Confused horror drenches her expression. An instant later he senses her realization. He is off her in moments, standing, backing away. But she can still feel the ghost of his erection pressing into her.

'What…' she begins, disorientation giving way to revulsion and, beneath that, the rancid pit of her own arousal. 'Oh…'

'I'm sorry,' he mutters, smoothing his hair, but this does nothing for his modesty. The anger in his face is tainted with shame. 'I wanted to avoid this. This is why…' He is having some private dilemma, shaking his head again, furious and fraying. 'This isn't appropriate.'

Katniss doesn't know what to say. It is not a surprise. It's what she always suspected. But it's one thing to theorize, it's one thing to scent the trace of desire. It's quite another to feel the hard penis of a man in his eighties rubbing against her leg.

So, this is what it is. There is nothing paternal to his feelings for her. The shape of his fondness is a hard cock, just as the shape of her loathing is a warm, wet cunt.

How apposite.

'Have you wanted me this whole time?' Katniss whispers. 'You always told me you weren't interested in sex, over and over. But I knew, I knew that something was wrong. There was always something off about the way you behaved. Not wanting to touch me… Pretending it was because I was young… Why would you even care?'

'You are too young for this!' Snow shouts. 'I always told you the truth, Katniss. I never had any desire to inflict this upon you.' He gives a desperate shrug. 'Of course I want you. I've wanted you for a long time. You're exquisite. I've never known such a violent being. I want to…' He makes a bizarre gesture: his hand reaching out, the fingers clawing and convulsing the air, as though he could rip inside her. 'I want to inhabit every piece of you.' He closes his eyes, swallows, breathes, and reopens them. 'But you're a child, you see. This is immoral.'

'You are going to lecture me on immorality?' She is aghast. 'Snow, you're a murderer. You traffic children. I can't even begin to comprehend the number of terrible things you've done.'

'Yes,' says Snow, and he sounds calmer. 'Yes, you are correct. I do terrible things. I do them because they are necessary. This—' He gestures at the unspeakable energy between them. '—is not necessary. There is no justification to my desire for you.'

Katniss shakes her head. 'Do you think if you don't fuck me it makes all the other awful things you've done okay? Kids get raped because you allow it, but as long as your personal sexual desires aren't involved, it's fine?'

'I have my ethics,' says Snow, his voice granite and diamond. 'You may not agree with them. You don't need to. You only need to know that I have no wish to inflict this obscenity upon you. Perhaps I make you feel less lonely, and perhaps you find some emotional comfort in physical intimacy with me. But you do not want more.'

'Yes, I do,' she says, then her voice drops to a whisper. 'Don't you understand? Don't you get it?'

A frown creases his brow. 'What do you mean?'

'Snow.' She is distraught. She is desolate and eaten up inside, filled with ropey worms. She feels the tears on her cheeks before she even knows they're coming. 'I want you. How can you not know that? You… when you touch me… it turns me on.'

Snow's entire being seems to reset itself. 'What?'

'You make me wet,' she says. Her words are so tiny. 'Something is wrong with me. I'm…' She is starting to shiver. 'I feel so hot inside right now. I get so wet for you. I'm turned on all the time. I don't know why. I want—'

Snow holds up a hand to silence her and, just like all of those dogs that obey him in the Capitol, she falls quiet. His expression is horror.

'Get out of the house,' he says.

'What?' She laughs in confused disbelief. 'Snow, we—'

'Get out.' He sounds like he hates her. She starts to feel afraid.

'Snow?' she says, and her voice cracks. 'Can we please talk about it?'

He gives a barely perceptible shake of the head.

Katniss is crying. She cannot stop. 'Please, Snow.' She wipes at her nose and gives a minute, pathetic laugh. 'You… you said you liked to watch me cry.'

She is so desperate for some humor or humanity out of him. None comes. She has never seen such uncompromising cruelty in his face before.

'Leave. Now.'

Her hand covers her mouth to keep in her sobs, but the tears streak her face freely as she walks past him, down the stairs, to the door once again, and out into the street.

It is getting dark.

Somewhere above, beyond her scope of sight, a nuclear warhead soars leisurely to its soft home in the soil.

She is quite alone.