January: Sex

They have their good days and bad days.

Good days are Katniss lying naked on Snow's sheets and Snow kissing her nipples and the arc of her breast while curling a fingertip around her clitoris and plucking her like a harp for so long that Katniss is paralytic with ecstasy by the time he pushes two fingers inside her and orchestrates an orgasm of such agonizing totality that she forgets who she is, and who he is, and the whole awful mess that they've become. After, she is so overwhelmed with the molten aftershocks that she can't even feel her usual post-orgasmic disgust for him, and she gives him the gift of her affection. She pushes her shivering body against his and wraps her arms around his neck, and he holds the small of her back and strokes her in soft, low-tide waves.

This is their most golden time: when she is glowing in the wake of her orgasm, but not yet satiated; when sexual response admits the pleasure of his touch but doesn't roil with shame and disgust. These few minutes are when he is most tolerable to her. She gives him kisses of gratitude and he accepts them with adoration. Thank you for making me feel good for a little while. Thank you for making me not want to die for a little while. She does this for long, tingling minutes until the pleasure finally starts to recede and her disgust for him returns, and then she abandons him.

Bad days are Katniss having a traumatic episode so severe that she tries to hide in a chimney, and she cuts up her arms so brutally on the bare bricks that she has to see the doctor, and that triggers another episode, and she is so incoherent with screams and violent fits by the end of it that they have to tranquilize her, and then she doesn't remember the incident at all.

Or it's Katniss seeing on the news that Snow has bombed some small town in District 11 where unrest was stirring, and then she asks him about it, and he casually tells her that there were almost four hundred civilian casualties. And Katniss doesn't know what happens after that because she dissociates so hard, but she knows that Snow has stitches in his arm later that day and the only cutlery she's given for dinner is a plastic spoon.

Or they have a disagreement, which becomes a tiff, which becomes Katniss smacking Snow. He thinks they're playing, she disagrees, and then she's getting thrown to the floor where her wrist takes the weight of the fall and her wrist bone suffers a hairline fracture. Snow kisses the bruise with apology and sexual ecstasy, and Katniss makes him let her break his little finger in recompense. She wishes he didn't agree. The crunch of his bone wriggles parasitically through her nightmares for weeks.

Sometimes the good days go bad so quickly. She comes to his bedroom one night because she is itching between her legs and because she can't stop thinking about opening her thigh with a razor blade, and he is delighted to receive her. His euphoria at every moment of soft attention she bestows on him is infinite. She does not listen to whatever it is he says to her: she only crosses his dark bedroom and into his arms, which receive her with cotton-soft gratitude, and there she gives her lips to him. Kissing him can be repulsive, but it can also be warm; and besides, the line between repulsion and arousal is so thin, now.

It's simpler for Snow. He likes to kiss her because he likes her. She can feel it in the tenderness of his lips and the way he holds her face with worship. Claustrophobia and hatred squall inside her, and then she feels the kick of arousal. That makes it easier. She is already reaching for his pants, already moaning into his mouth, already thinking about which position she wants him to take her in.

Snow pulls back and gently restrains her hands. 'Katniss,' he says, with warm amusement. 'You know, we don't always need to make love. Physical intimacy doesn't always need to be sexual.'

Katniss' eyes are like empty coffins. 'Why would I want intimacy with you if there wasn't sex involved?'

Snow blinks, and she can almost see something shifting behind his eyes. Then he is cool and composed again, smiling at her.

'You might learn to like it,' he says. 'Can I kiss you again?'

Katniss shrugs. It makes no difference to her. Nothing makes any difference.

Snow approaches her again, and he winds his hands around her face like she is the most fantastic, priceless creature to have ever lived. He is slow and deliberate, pressing his lips on hers with incredible care and love, a sweet and exquisite kiss. Katniss endures the intimacy of it and she tries to stay put, but her erotic disgust is climbing around inside her. Yes, she likes this. She hates it, and that means she likes it. She likes the things she hates. She doesn't make sense anymore. She feels her chest ache with pain and allows Snow to feel a long, pleasured note vibrate through her mouth into his.

He pulls away, and he gazes into her with affection and rapture. 'How did that make you feel?'

'Wet,' says Katniss flatly. 'Will you fuck me now?'

Snow frowns. This is the closest she ever comes to upsetting him.

But he's hardly going to turn her down.

The sex is spectacularly good — getting fucked into pieces, contorted with pleasure, not looking at him and coming so hard she thinks she will shatter — and afterwards Katniss murmurs into his ear that he makes her feel so good, that this is the best she ever feels, that this is almost like what happiness feels like. And in those moments, she is able to let him hold her and she feels just a little less alone.

They lie in his bed together after, Katniss regaining her breath and orientation, Snow gazing at her body and running his fingertip over the shoreline of her shoulder, breast, and waist. He tells her she is perfect.

And then he asks, 'Are you ever attracted to me?'

She regards his face and his body: drooping skin, faded, stained, marked, scarred, unevenly haired. So aged and wretched to her.

'No,' she says casually. 'I still find you disgusting.'

He does not seem offended, but he does seem curious. Not like a cat, but a spider. 'Then why do you enjoy sex with me?'

She shrugs. 'The disgust turns me on. I don't know why. You broke me.'

There is something distant about him. 'And is that it? That's the only thing you feel for me?'

'Yes.' She laughs harshly. She does not mean to be cruel, but Snow does so bring it out of her. 'What, did you think I was genuinely attracted to you? That I thought an eighty-year-old man was sexy?'

Snow's smile is wry but faded. 'It would be improbable.' He shrugs a bare, scarred shoulder, and his fingertips trace her collarbone with reverence. 'Perhaps your feelings might change.'

'I doubt it,' she says flatly. 'Everything about you is so repulsive to me.'

Still he strokes her, like she is an alien, ethereal creature. 'I do not believe that is true. There are things you like about me.'

'Hardly. You just don't like it when I call you disgusting.'

'You can call me whatever you like, Katniss,' he says lightly. Back and forth over her collarbone, back and forth, a soft bow on a silent cello. 'I don't mind.'

'You don't mind when I call you a disgusting creep?'

His expression shimmers like a seashell. 'I choose not to mind.'

This perturbs her. She wants to tell him to stop touching her, but his absorption in the slur of her collar is strangely fascinating. 'What other things do you choose not to feel? Humanity?'

'I have chosen not to feel lots of things,' he says, as though this is a normal sentence. 'I learnt that skill as a boy.' He retracts his fingers, rippling them in the air like she has coiled some piece of electricity around them. 'Katniss.' He frowns at her collarbone. 'You really ought to eat more.'

Her stare is empty. 'You ought to mind your own fucking business.'

February: Life Plans

Snow plans futures. Vacations they can take, hobbies she might learn, skills and knowledges and professions he can bestow upon her. He unfolds future after glittering future for her to try on, and Katniss smiles wanly and waits until he moves on to his next obsession.

Katniss plans endings. Often Snow's, but increasingly her own. Throwing herself from the hovercraft. Slicing her wrists open. Going for a swim in the pond and taking all her pills, then lying down in the cold water. Or starving slowly into nothing, fading into loose bones in Snow's arms. These thoughts drift from vague suppositions to constant companions, and the change is so gradual she does not notice. Killing herself would be sweet like hot chocolate.

Snow talks to her of her coming years, while Katniss can barely countenance the coming days. They sit in the back of the limo, on their way to some event whose purpose Katniss has already forgotten. Snow strokes the back of her hand and tells her something about how she might like to take up charity work, like in the lie he told her mother.

'Something you find more purposeful,' he says. 'Something that lets you help and care for people. You enjoy that, don't you? You enjoyed looking after your sister.' She feels his rough skin caress her hand. Thinks about his fingers inside her cunt, thinks about him choking her to death. 'Perhaps that's something that would help you. Having someone to care about.' A little pause. 'Would you like to have children?'

She turns a hateful gaze on him. 'No.' Then she frowns. 'You can't get me pregnant, can you? You're too old, right?' They never use protection. He never offers, and she's never asked. She has grown to enjoy the feeling of his cum leaking out of her.

Her question surprises him. 'Rather late for that thought to worry you. But no, men can remain fertile into quite old age. Given that the male life expectancy in District 12 is — what, sixty-five? — you might not have known that.'

Katniss stares at him and, in reflex and horror, places a hand over her abdomen. Snow laughs at her, though not with cruelty.

'I didn't mean to worry you, Katniss. Given my…' He considers how much information he wants to offer. '…various medical issues, it is extremely unlikely that I have viable sperm.' He pauses. 'That could change, perhaps. There are alterations that could be made to my medication.' His gaze burns, and Katniss thinks about putting a needle into his eye. 'Would you like to have a child?'

Her hatred shines. 'With you? No.'

'Why not?'

This is a repugnant question. She takes a breath. He is still stroking her hand with scalding fondness. 'Because I hate you, and I hate the idea of having children in general, and I hate the idea of having children with you even more.'

'Do you think that could change?'

She is savage. 'No. Besides, don't you already have a kid?' She knows nothing about Snow's child — a son, she thinks. He's never in the news, and Snow never mentions him. She doesn't even know his name.

I don't know the name of my own step-son, she realizes with abject hilarity.

Snow's gaze is unusually intense — which is saying something, for a man incapable of looking at her normally.

'I never cared for fatherhood,' he says. 'I had nothing to do with the raising of my son. I only consented to have a child because the domestic stability of a family was expected of the President. I handed him off to my wife, and she handed him off to the staff, and I assumed the whole thing would take care of itself. I barely spoke to him until he turned eighteen. Quite the disappointment. Unintelligent, emotionally stunted…' He frowns. 'It had not occurred to me that a child needed parents, if their basic needs were otherwise met by nurses and governesses. My own parents…' He cuts himself off. Katniss watches intently. He tells her so very, very little about his childhood. He shrugs, and consents to share with her a tiny fragment of information. 'Well, they were not active presences in my life, and I never needed them to raise me. Perhaps other children are different.'

Katniss cannot help her eyebrows arc. 'Yeah, you grew up into such a well-adjusted person.'

He completely misses her sarcasm. 'Not everyone is as independent as I am — or as you are, for that matter. We both raised ourselves.' He looks into her eyes, and the smile that spreads over his face sickens her. 'You and I are different to other people. We could make a spectacular child.'

Katniss sets her jaw like concrete. Leans in close to his face. He smiles. He always smiles when she's close to him. 'If you got me pregnant, I'd throw myself down the fucking stairs.'

'Would you?' He is curious.

'Yes.' She has never been more certain of anything in her life.

The strange light that animated his eyes dims. 'Well. No matter.' He removes his hand from hers and turns his gaze to the window. 'Some things aren't meant to happen.'

March: Obsession

Snow is not normal. She knew this, of course, from quite early in their hideous marriage: his violences, his fixations, his mood shifts that she cannot discern. But she comes to learn that Snow's mind has a uniquely peculiar texture. He accepts her cruelty like little pebbles into a vast lake, and there they sink into endless feet of mud. He smiles when she smacks his face. Their quarrels leave no mark on him, even when she is still furious and seething.

Katniss comes to learn why he has held onto power so long, and why he is so good at what he does. He is monomaniacal, fixating on a problem — a supply chain disruption, a siege, a dispute — with burning fervor until it is solved. And then he moves onto the next problem. Or he moves back to her.

And he never tires of her. She is a problem that cannot be solved.

One day she is wandering the mansion, aimless, barefoot, but reasonably stable. She approaches a door and panic floods her as she hears screaming, low and pained and terrified for dear life, but then she registers that it is tinny and electronic. Just a recording.

Then she realizes the recording is of her screaming.

She pushes open the door. This is the television room, where she watched so many clips of Snow to pass through her madness. She can see the back of Snow's head, silhouetted white against the huge hologrammatic screen he watches. On it is her own face, her eyes alive with terror, Clove atop her. It's the Games. Katniss watches the massive, electronic facsimile of her face start to whimper in pain.

'Why are you watching this?'

Snow pauses the screen. Her face is frozen in close up, mouth open, agony sharp in her features. She remembers this moment. She thought she was going to die.

Snow turns and looks at her, his smile a slice of delight. 'I like to see how you react to fear, and to pain. Come.' He beckons and she drifts over, like she's in a dream, disoriented by the unreality of her own screaming face staring back at her. 'Look at you.' He presses a button on the remote and the moment rewinds, then it replays: her head thrown back, a sharp whimper escaping her. He pauses it again. 'I cannot decide if you are more beautiful crying or screaming. And there are so many different ways you do both.' He takes her hand and brings it to his lips, then kisses the torn fingernails with reverence. Without warning, he puts the tip of her raw fingers in his mouth and Katniss shudders in disgust. His blood is going to mix with hers. The barriers between them grow less and less. 'I want to know everything about you.'

He thinks she is so special. And isn't she just a girl? Is there really anything unique about her, or is it all a madman's delusion?

'Why do you want to know so much?' Her voice is cracked. She wishes he'd turn off the screen and her shimmering, childish face.

Snow stares at her, those cool blue eyes, and he holds her hand so firmly she could not pull it away if she tried. 'Because it helps me feel closer to you. Feel control over you. Feel every little ridge inside you. I know where you were born. I know how your mother and father brought you up. I know how your father died, and the parts of him they recovered. I know how your mother gave into depression. I know how you supported your family. I like to think about that, sometimes. Little Katniss Everdeen, running around District 12, scrabbling through trashcans.' He laughs to himself like this is a delightful anecdote. 'There's footage of it, you know. I had my team scour the archived security tapes from that period. Would you like to see?'

Katniss would not like to see. But Snow releases her and then switches out the tapes, removing one labelled Katniss Everdeen — 74th Hunger Games and replacing it with one labelled Katniss Everdeen — miscellaneous archive footage.

He presses play.

The first image is low quality, a close zoom on a figure in a crowd shot at the back of a Reaping. It's her mother, young and beautiful, clutching a tiny squalling child in her arms. The child is indistinct in the heavy zoom, but there is no one else that baby could be. Baby Katniss.

'We can skip this first part,' says Snow, and hits fast-forward.

At comical speeds, Katniss sees herself again in a performance in the square, a little child. She is singing some patriotic nonsense about the glory of Panem among her schoolmates. The child is malnourished and more freckled than Katniss is now, but the resemblance is unmistakable. Next she's caught on camera at a flogging, watching with curiosity and fear in the blurry background as a man (mostly cropped from the foreground) is beaten to death. Then it's her first Reaping, twelve years old, and there's a good shot of her wide-eyed face. Then the next Reaping. Then the next. Katniss' yellow dress gets shorter and tighter on her as she ages.

Katniss is absolutely horrified.

Then comes the scene to which Snow alludes. It's security footage of what appears to be a violent assault, but it's hard to tell because Snow or his team have cut it from the foreground. All attention is on a little figure at the back of the shot, as skinny as a wormy rat, pawing through a trashcan. Young Katniss, barely fourteen years old.

Snow presses pause.

'Look at you,' he murmurs.

Katniss' eyes take in her childhood self without comprehension, and then they flick to Snow's. He is watching her electronic face with absolute contentment.

'How much…' She swallows. 'How much footage is there of me?'

'Not as much as I would like. Plenty after the Games, of course. But I wasn't watching you before that.' He turns off the screen and reaches out his other hand to her waist, spreading his fingers around it, testing her size. 'I'm watching you now.'

She is quietly terrified. 'Why?'

He smiles at her with such soft, delicate affection. 'Because, Katniss, I know you intimately. I know you better than you know yourself. But I want more. I want to know everything. I know you so well, and yet you still surprise me.' He grips the bones of her hips so hard it almost hurts. 'One day you won't be able to surprise me anymore.'

'Oh,' she murmurs, terrorstruck. 'Snow?'

'Hm?' He is so absorbed in touching her waist, not just from erotic fixation, but from concern for the wasting of her flesh.

She speaks as firmly as she dares. 'Will you take the tracker out of me?'

Snow frowns. 'I do not want to.'

Grits her teeth. Calms herself. Tries again. 'Why?'

'Because it lets me know that you're safe.' His voice is smooth and calming. 'It ensures that at any time I know your location and your heartrate. I can always know.' He measures her hip bones with his fingertips in obsessive veneration. 'I find that very soothing.'

Her voice comes choked. 'I don't.'

His monomania is a bottomless spiral, drilling into her deeper and darker, never tiring, only becoming more and more submerged inside her. One night she lies in his bed, naked and cool against the night, while he, still fully dressed, asks if he can kiss her body. She acquiesces. Sometimes it's a fascination to her, too, to watch him watch her. He kisses her feet and her legs and her thighs, over and over, and as the minutes pass she wonders exactly how long he would do this for.

There is a clock telling her how many minutes have passed, and she watches it and waits. He kisses her thighs, and she waits. He parts her legs and runs his hand over and over and over the shape of her lower thigh, and he walks kisses over her skin. She has heard the phrase every inch many times, but she has never seen someone put it so literally into practice. His lips touch every pore of her left thigh, and she looks at the clock and half an hour has passed. Then it is time for her other leg, during which he becomes captivated by the scar where her wound used to be. He kisses the scar, then he kisses it again, and then again, and he moans against her skin, and Katniss is dimly afraid when an hour passes and he has still not left that spot.

'Aren't you getting bored?' she says. She is trying to make a joke of it.

Snow's eyes glint at her from the dark. 'I could go without sleep for days, just studying your body,' he says. She is terrified to know he means it.

'I don't think my body is that interesting,' she says. She is desperate for him to be normal for a change.

He presses another kiss to her scar and when his lips come away there is a little blood on her leg. He wipes it off with his thumb, unconcerned.

'You're wrong,' is all he says, and he returns his lips to her skin.

At the two-hour mark she makes him stop, and he is confused when she leaves his chambers without letting him fuck her. But she is terrified. She runs back to her own rooms and she locks the door and she goes to the bathroom, where he promised he wouldn't watch the cameras, and she locks the door there too and climbs into the smallest space she can find — a narrow area between the shower and the wall — and she sits there and has a quiet panic attack.

President Snow likes me. President Snow is obsessed with me. He wanted to kill me, and now he wants to kiss blood into my wounds.

She is sat like a stupid insect in Snow's jaws while he licks her and all she can do is hope he does not bite down. Which he will not do, not so long as he finds her interesting.

And he will always find her interesting.

April: Intimacy

At some point, Katniss notices that Snow has stopped removing his shirt during sex, and he keeps his pants on if he can. He doesn't want the sight of him to offend her. Katniss prefers it this way. She has no wish to see his dying body and to think about what an evil thing he is, or to watch the motion of his erection in and out of her.

Sometimes she is curious, though. One night, his shirt comes loose during sex and she sees the glimpse of a scar she's seen before on his chest, and she is too distracted to keep chasing her orgasm. She climbs off him and Snow waits, confused, as she unbuttons his shirt with the cool interest of the mortician. She opens him up and sees that his scars are many: thick and white, blade-scars, bullet-scars, and mysterious lesions.

Perhaps he is uncomfortable with her examination, or perhaps it is the knowledge of her hatred for his body that he dislikes. But he sits stiffly and lets her look at him, and he does not seem to mind when she reaches out to touch the texture of his thickest, wildest scar.

'How did you get all these?'

'Combat, mostly. After I graduated I became an apprentice game-maker, but I found it frustrating. I had such a limited understanding of trying to kill and being killed. Most game-makers treat it as a purely academic question, but… I wanted experience. It's much easier to learn how to inflict pain upon people in an arena if you know what it is to be hunted yourself. So—' He pauses, swallows, as her hand trails his chest. She never touches him like this. She feels his heart quicken and her curiosity overwhelms her disgust. How strange that he is so affected by her. '—I returned to the Peacekeepers for some time. It was educational. You need to know what it is to both hunt and be hunted to design the perfect Games.'

She feels his breath grow deeper as she rubs her palm over his sternum. How remarkable that this brings him such strange, intimate pleasure. Has he ever been touched like this? Before he invited her into his bed, who was the last person he allowed to see his skin?

'Show me your back,' she says.

'Katniss,' he says, and for a moment she thinks he is going to argue. A quiet cataclysm drifts through his closed-eyed face, and then he nods and assents and shrugs his shirt off his shoulders. He turns and she shifts, and she sees the mess of scars there, too. These are, somehow, worse. Ancient scars from who knows what. Growing up in District 12, you come to know a whipping scar when you see it. And there are little round white ones, too, the like of which she's seen on the arms of boys with violent fathers who always have a cigarette nearby. Whoever this man is, Coriolanus Snow was damaged long before he came to her.

'These aren't all from combat,' she observes, and he turns back to her.

'No.'

She does not expect more of an answer. 'What's that one from?' She points at a very, very old piece: a series of white flecks over his forearm, like scales. He must have had it for decades.

Snow's voice is drawn tight. 'Broken glass.'

She stares at him, and his eyes meet hers, and she decides not to pry further. Let him keep his box of nasty secrets buried in the muddy heart of him. Whatever horrors punctuate his wretched past won't make him any more tolerable to her.

'You can put your shirt back on,' she says. He does so, obedient in the way he would only be to her, and she leaves hers off. He can get his pleasure from looking at her immaculate, unscarred body and chest in return for sating her curiosity. 'Why didn't you have your scars healed? Can't your medical team do that?'

'They could,' he says, fastening the last, highest button, hiding his skin from her. 'But I prefer to remember the things that have happened to me.'

'You want to remember the people who have hurt you?'

He frowns. 'No. But there are always lessons to learn from suffering. Pain is temporary, but always educational.'

'I disagree.' She pulls her bare legs to her chest and rests her chin upon them. 'I think that's a lie we tell ourselves to make the pain easier.'

'There is always something to learn if you look hard enough.' He is smiling at her. This is a real conversation. They have so few.

She tilts her head at him, and he reaches out to trace her feet with his hand. His palm rubs her skin with the quietest reverence.

She considers his strangeness and his tenderness, and his inhuman structure. Perhaps she'll take one more peek into the void of him. 'What's your worst memory?'

This takes him a moment to answer. It's as though he is unfamiliar with the concept. But then his eyes settle on something faraway, something she cannot see.

'I do not wish to share that with you,' he says, very carefully. He does not like refusing her requests. He tries again. 'I witnessed an act of disrespect.'

She tries to see into him. She tries to peer into the oil-thick, black-depthed pool of him and see whatever humanity must, she know, lurk at the bottom. She sees bright curls of it, sometimes, rising up through the dark. She sees his affection for her, and his consideration, and his care. She glimpses parts of a real person.

But it's not enough. It's never quite enough.

It doesn't need to be. They can build their relationship from bricks other than human feeling. She pulls on an encouraging, playful smile. 'Do you want to make me come now?'

And of course he does. He gives her pleasure endlessly, selflessly, as though every quiver of her orgasmic body is a revelation to him. He has to. It's the single, blinding ember the cold night of their relationship warms itself around.

May: Nightmares

Her anxiety is less, but the depression is worse. Rather than feeling panic, she doesn't feel much of anything at all. She continues to spit her medication into the shower drain. Grey days, structureless, punctured by parties and events and Snow's erection inside her. The anxiety comes, still, at night, when she sleeps and dreams of the Games or other horrors that Snow has forced her to experience.

One night, Katniss wakes up from a nightmare, and she is still screaming when Snow finds her cowering in the corner behind the curtain drapes. He lures her out of there with soft, reassuring words, and he sits with her as she goes through her usual cycle of terror, realization, sorrow, anger, and then exhaustion. He leads her back to the bed where Gale died and he sits next to her, watching her quiver faintly with trauma.

Snow's voice is immaculately calm. 'Would you like me to make love to you? That often calms you.'

Katniss' gunmetal eyes are perfect blanks. 'Okay,' she says.

She climbs into his lap, straddling him, and waits patiently for Snow to massage himself hard. Neither removes their clothes beyond what is absolutely necessary, and there is little passion in it as Katniss maneuvers herself with some awkwardness onto Snow's erection. It does make her feel better. Snow moves her slowly, rocking her, and she buries her face in his neck. She doesn't really know if he's trying to be kind to her, or if this is just a new kind of game. Or maybe he just wants to fuck her. But it feels nice: not even particularly sexual, but comforting.

She has so exhausted herself from her nightmare that she does not even notice when her sleepiness creeps up on her, or when she stops moving her hips. It's warm here, and there is something straightforwardly calming in his arms around her, holding her close and steady, and in the rocking motions of his cock inside her. One moment she is lost in the strange mix of smells of Snow's neck — blood, roses, shaving cream, some deep and bitter spice — and then she is drifting in sleep.

The next thing she knows is that she is suddenly, sleepily awake again, blinking and confused, and that she is still sitting in Snow's lap, and she can still feel him inside her.

She makes weird, wet noises in the back of her throat. 'What—'

'You fell asleep,' says Snow very gently. 'I didn't want to disturb you.'

Katniss shifts her thighs and feels Snow's soft cock still buried inside her. 'I… With you inside me?'

'It seemed to soothe you,' he says, smiling at her. It is one of his most tender, most caring smiles.

This is anathema to her, that she should be soothed by his cock inside her, but the revulsion she feels shimmers so easily into arousal. And then she is shifting her thighs again and enjoying the feeling of fullness, and she can feel Snow getting hard inside her again. He fucks her, and the moment after she comes he pulls away and lets her sleep, and Katniss manages not to dream again that night.

Other nights are worse. Once, Katniss wakes up screaming, and Snow is inside her. He is fucking her slowly, roughly, and she starts to beat his chest and scratch at him with her useless fingers.

'Get off me, get out, stop!' He is off her in seconds, and Katniss slaps his cheek. 'What were you doing?' she screams at him.

'Katniss?' His face is full of concern. 'Are you alright? What's wrong?'

'You ask permission! You don't rape me while I sleep!' Her voice is an alarm bell.

Snow's expression is one of the most unsettled she has seen. 'You weren't asleep,' he says. 'You came into my room. You started to kiss me. You asked me to… Katniss, don't you remember?'

'That didn't happen! You fucking liar! I was asleep!' She has no memory of this, but the open discomfort on Snow's face is giving her pause. She is, indeed, in Snow's bedroom. How did she get here? 'I didn't… I don't remember…' She puts one hand to her head. She was having a nightmare. In her nightmare, a pile of severed children's hands kept growing and growing and growing, tumbling down in soft, wet waves. She reaches for Snow. 'I'm sorry. I got confused. I'm sorry. Come on. You don't have to stop.'

She tries to get him back inside her, but Snow is pulling away.

'Katniss, I don't think you're well enough for this.'

'Shut up.' She wraps her strong, muscled legs around his waist, and it's extremely difficult for him to disentangle her.

'Katniss, please stop—'

He is still hard, and it isn't so very difficult to maneuver their bodies back together, to feel his cock against her well-fucked cunt.

'Katniss,' says Snow, and he makes a weird sound of displeasure and physical gratification as she pulls him inside her again. 'Stop. Take your… Katniss.'

His hands push against her, trying to make some distance between them, but her thighs are too strong: her best, hardest muscles. What could an old man possibly do to stop her? She holds him against her, locked inside, and she searches for arousal inside the pit of confusion and terror inside her. If she can just find a scrap of pleasure, she can hold onto it as she floats out to sea…

She barely notices Snow's face, which is set with reluctance and irritation. 'Katniss.' She is rocking her hips, sliding him into her, making him fuck her as much as he tries to push her away. 'I'm asking you to stop. You're not well.' His voice is strained with the effort of fighting her and the arousal she always provokes.

She moans, even though there is little pleasure in it, and she does not let Snow go. He stops resisting. He starts to fuck her again, without passion, but his lips seek out hers.

'Will you kiss me, Katniss?'

She doesn't feel like it today. He always likes to kiss her, like it makes their unmoored, insane fucking have some meaning. Her own lips remain impassive as he tries to press awkward kisses around her panting mouth. He is trying to make the sex into something nice, even if he doesn't want it. She doesn't care if he doesn't want it. She doesn't care if she doesn't want it. The sex is the endless inevitability their lives crash toward.

The next day they take a silent, staid breakfast together. Snow has taken to enforcing a shared breakfast-time to ensure that she eats, which is extremely annoying. The weight loss has become problematic. Her clothes all hang off her like the wings of a dead insect, and even the tabloid newspapers are having a hard time spinning her starvation into a fashion statement. A fine, downy hair now covers her skin, her lips are chapped, and her hair has grown brittle. Katniss knows the signs of malnutrition, and yet she cannot force herself to care. She cuts up her required grapefruit into tiny pieces, and she takes the smallest spoonfuls of her oatmeal that she can. She wishes he would just let her starve herself. That would be a soft, gentle death.

Once Snow has finished his own breakfast, he sets down the cutlery with a sense of purpose and interlaces his fingers. 'I'd like to talk to you about last night, Katniss.'

She draws shapes in the oatmeal. She thinks she's drawing a fish, but then she realizes it's actually a hanging man. She stirs away the picture and starts again. She doesn't answer Snow, but he continues regardless.

'I always try to respect your sexual boundaries.'

'Except when it comes to putting a tracker in my uterus,' she mutters. There is no anger anymore, only resentment. That's just the kind of thing he does. It's normal.

'That is not about sex,' he counters.

She wants to scoop out his insides. 'Sure, a piece of metal shoved up my vagina has nothing to do with sex.'

He chooses to ignore this. 'As I was saying, I always try to respect your consent to sexual activity. I never want to initiate anything sexual with you if you don't want it. You know that.'

Katniss says nothing. Draw pictures. What is it now? Now it's the face of a dog, with the eyes of her dead friend.

'If I ask you to stop, I want you to stop. Do you understand, Katniss?'

She raises her empty eyes. 'I understand the words you're saying, yes.'

'Good. So, if I ask you to stop, you'll stop, yes?'

She is an open grave. 'No.'

'Katniss.' He shakes his head. 'I don't care if you force yourself on me. I don't care if you hit me, or insult me, or try to hurt me. I never ask you to stop. But last night was different. You were not well. We should have stopped, and I asked you to, but you refused. You cannot do that. It's very bad for you.'

Katniss clutches her silver spoon and the nastiest, cruelest smile cuts open her mouth. 'Snow, are you accusing me of raping you?' She opens her teeth wide. 'How very melodramatic'

She sees his jaw twitch. 'Somehow, Katniss, I don't think you would be taking such a caustic attitude if our genders were reversed.'

Katniss sets down her spoon. 'You think I'm too stupid to know that men can be raped? Finnick Odair was raped. Over and over. It's still happening. And that's because of you.' She stares into him. 'Maybe if you want me to stop hurting you, you should stop allowing the murder and rape of children.' She shrugs. 'I think I enjoy it more when you don't like it, anyway.'

'It's not about what I like, or don't like.' His low voice is so soft. 'It's about you, Katniss. You don't want to force yourself on me. It doesn't make you happy. Last night… You were barely there. It was like making love to a ghost.'

Katniss feels her anxiety start to itch at her. She has always been Snow's victim, all of her life. His abuse has defined her since her poverty-wracked childhood. Dead father: his fault. Dead friends: his fault. Snow is the one who whores out teenagers. Snow is the predator par excellence. Has she really become so poisoned that she does the same things? Is she becoming worse than him?

She cloaks her fear in anger. 'Make up your fucking mind. Did I make love to you or did I rape you?'

Snow gives this question long, careful consideration. When he speaks, there is an odd vacancy to his smile. 'There is no distinction. Not when it's you.' His empty smile dances. 'I am simply happy to be with you.'

Her anxiety starts to crest. She thinks of Finnick at that auction, winking at her. Fourteen years old when he won the Games. He thought she was the same as all the other buyers. And is she so different now? Shards of the previous night snag her mind: the struggle of Snow's body against her thighs, his voice saying stop, his pathetic surrender to her…

'So…' She screws up her eyes. 'You're upset that… if I raped you… that would be bad for me?'

'Exactly.' He keeps on that horrid smile. 'I worry about you, Katniss.' He drains his coffee and stands, as though this is any normal conversation. 'I need to go to work. Please eat that.' He indicates the grapefruit. 'I really am very worried about you.'

Katniss sits at the table alone for a long time after he leaves. It's hard for her to accept what's happened; it comes to her in pieces, washing up on the shore of her mind. Little broken bits of some terrible disaster that she has to piece together. His poison has got inside her, and now she is becoming worse than him. She has her own, different, honed cruelties. She has become something despicable.

Katniss thinks that it really might be better to die. Yes, it really might be better to die than live as the creature she has become. It would be better to die.

June: Love

Katniss wakes warm to a blanket of birdsong in the bed where her best friend was shot in the head, and she feels happy. Sunlight in green and gold drifts through the heavy curtains, and clouds of dust sparkle in the air. She remembers, vaguely, how it felt when Gale's brains slid through her fingers, and she feels at peace. She is ready. The good, gleaming hour has come. She is going to kill herself.

She feels lighter. Everything feels easier, like the gravity is a little bit lower. She floats and bounces around her bedroom, choosing a pretty dress covered in yellow daffodils to wear, and taking a little more time with her hair than usual so it sits just right. She will look nice for her last day.

There are a few things on her to-do list. She goes first to the gardens, and in the air of fragrant Spring she says goodbye to those things she learned to love during her time as wife and prisoner. The big lawns she ran around, the orchard where she liked to sit, and that algae-limned pond. She touches each in turn and says a quiet farewell.

She sits in the orchard for some time, and she thinks about all the people she would like to say goodbye to and cannot. Her mother. Prim. Peeta. Haymitch. She does not need to say goodbye to Gale, of course. Perhaps she will see him soon. She pictures each face in turn and conjures their laugh, their scent, the feel of their arms around her. And then she says goodbye, and she parts from them. She has loved people in this life, and she has been loved, too. This is, really, all that matters.

There is, of course, one person she must say a proper goodbye to.

She sings to herself as she makes her way to Snow's study, and by now the guards are unbothered by her appearance. They have grown accustomed to Katniss Snow, the sylph who ghosts the mansion with their boss' cum sliding down her thigh. She knocks gently. Snow knows her knock.

The door opens. He is always so pleased to see her. He must have meetings today, because he is dressed in a blazer of pavonine blue and green, the shirt beneath a perfect white. He smiles at her, his wife who smacks him and uses him for sex like he's not even a real person, and she smiles back.

'Katniss,' he says by way of greeting.

She kisses his cheek. 'Are you busy today?'

'I have a great deal to do in the morning. My afternoon is a little more flexible. Is there something you need me for?'

'Nothing urgent,' she says. And then, quite ignoring the guards, she says, 'Would you like to make love to me this afternoon?'

His smile is the aurora over barren ice. She never calls it making love, and he likes her doing so very much. 'Of course. Shall I come find you?'

Her own smile is ripe and soft. 'Sure. I'll see you later.' She kisses him again, this time on the lips, and she lets him feel the affectionate touch of her fingertips on his face. This is okay. She doesn't mind. She wants to let him have a nice goodbye. He doesn't deserve it, of course — but she wants it to be nice for him. A little mercy. He likes her so, so much, after all.

When they end the kiss, Snow is looking at her with that glowing contentment he reserves only for her. 'You look so well today,' he says. 'I'm so glad.'

She beams. She only has to stay alive for a few more hours. She has never been happier.

Katniss has a few little things to prepare. Quite by chance, she runs into Sulla on the way to her rooms, and she stops him to ask some trivial invented question about if it might be safe for her to go on some walk or other. He answers her, and she smiles, and she stands on her tiptoes and kisses his cheek.

Sulla's head jerks back like she's an electric eel. 'Please don't do that, ma'am,' he says. 'I value my life.'

'My husband wouldn't murder you for a cheek-kiss,' she teases.

'He very well might, ma'am.' Sulla rubs at his face in displeasure.

'I just wanted to thank you. You've been kind to me.'

There is confusion and pity, too, in Sulla's eyes. 'I just do my job, ma'am.'

She nods. 'It's appreciated.' She wants to say, Goodbye, Sulla, but that would be too dangerous. He would suspect. And then they would take away all her escape routes. Can't allow that. Not when she's so close.

There are only a few tasks to complete, a collection of stepping stones to lead her into the water. She goes to her room and her unused writing desk and there, in her shaky, childish handwriting, she writes a letter to her mother. It is hard to say anything at all, so she keeps it brief. There are only three sentiments she needs to convey: I love you, I know you tried your best, I am happy now. Her letter to Prim is longer, more meandering. It expresses incredible love and apology, and the promise that things will be better now, and a thousand hopes for her future. Finally, she takes out a third piece of paper and writes Dear Snow. It is difficult to know what should come next. She considers the windows beyond her writing desk which give her the flowering vista of the gardens, and she sees all those rose bushes in perpetual, bleached bloom.

She puts her pen to the page.

Dear Snow,

You were wrong. I couldn't cope. I'm sorry to disappoint you. If you have ever felt anything for me, do not hurt my sister.

She pauses. Is there any sincere affection she can spare for him? As she watches a distant, heavy bee attempt to navigate the apple-blossoms, she adds a final sentence.

Thank you for trying.

Katniss

She sets down the pen and blows on the ink, and then she places each into an envelope and gives each its appropriate name. There are only two tasks left to complete.

She summons a servant and places an order for lunch, and then she sits by the window and waits, smiling as she watches two wood doves quarrel for possession of a tree branch. She has not felt so happy since… Why, she cannot remember.

A knock at the door, and then the servant enters with her prize. Fillet mignon, thick with garlic butter, the kind you could only ever saw pictures of in District 12. A big glass of rich tawny port. And an ice cream milkshake: mint and chocolate. And a steak knife.

Katniss brings the food to the floor and eats with considerable hunger. What delicious things they can bring her here. It is only the knife she needs, of course, but the steak is succulent and sweet in her mouth, and the ice cream is perfect. They have added a dribble of strawberry syrup, and she thinks the gleam of syrup on the shine of ice cream will look quite the same as her own blood on the bathroom ceramic once she saws open her wrists. And then it will be over. She will be free. She does not have to wait much longer.

A knock at the door. She knows Snow's knocks perfectly, too. They might as well come from inside her own skull.

She greets him, and they are both so happy to see the other. He is her last goodbye. She is his only light.

'You look wonderful, my dear,' he says, and he kisses her deeply. His eyes take in the devoured meal. 'I am so happy to see you have your appetite back.'

'Yes,' she smiles. She doesn't want to lie to him. She just wants her nice goodbye.

She leads him to the bed, fingers interlinked, the Spring light setting them on golden fire. She enchants him so easily.

How sweet their kisses. How delicate his fingertips upon her. How he holds her like an infant creature to be nursed, or like a terrible power to be worshipped. There is not much arousal in her, only a sweet affection for a kind farewell, but her excitement comes anyway when he starts to kiss her breasts, and when he holds open her thighs, and when he lets her feel his erection against her. He makes love to her so gently, and so carefully, and she thinks how sad it is that someone capable of such gentleness should also be capable of such profane, evil violence. What if he was a good man? How different would everything be?

He holds her in her orgasm, drinking her, and she gazes into him with gratitude. She breathes in gasps, her skin and her cunt singing with pleasure. It's the best she ever feels: wonderful, full, glowing; a fat little firefly. One last time. He strokes his knuckles and his fingertips over her cheek as he lies inside her. He is so happy, and so is she. Just one more hour to stay alive. Just a little more.

And then everything goes horribly wrong.

She will never forget this moment. His glacial gaze. That voice speaking in bassy tune with the seismic aftershocks of her orgasm. It's when Snow first says to her: 'I love you.'

Her world cracks. The happiness dissolves. Sickness sparks inside her, then hatred, then confusion, all at once. She starts to struggle.

'Get off— get out of me—' Her legs shake as she tries to get his erection out of her. She kicks him, she scratches. She has to get away, has to escape. Concern breaks over his face and he tries to pull back from her, severing their bodies, and then Katniss hurls herself out of the bed. She spits the blood-taste of his mouth onto the sea-soft rug. 'Don't say that! Don't ever say that!'

Snow turns himself on the bed, sitting, reaching for her with real compassion. 'Katniss—'

'You're disgusting. Do you understand me? You're fucking disgusting. I hate you. I want you dead. I want to kill you. You don't…' She wants to cry. How dare he do this to her, on her special day? 'You're a monster. You don't know what love is. There is nothing good inside you.'

Snow shakes his head at her. 'Katniss, I understand very well what love is. I thought you knew how I felt about you.'

'You don't have feelings!' she screams. 'You don't feel anything for me! I'm just your — your whore. I'm just something for you to parade around and show off. That's all I should ever be to you!'

'Katniss,' he says, and there is terrible sorrow in it. 'It's alright. You know I care about you. You don't need to feel the same way. I just thought…' He looks around the bedroom. The lace drapes sway hauntingly. The thrum of insects interweaves the bird song. It is lovely and warm. 'You seemed happy today. I thought we were in a good place.'

'I was happy,' she spits. He has ruined everything. Why does he always do this? Ever the fly on her birthday cake. 'You ruined it.'

He looks so very sad. 'I am sorry. You just seemed so much better. I hoped the medication was working.'

Katniss stares at him. Then she laughs, and she falls to a chaise longue, and she laughs some more. Shudders of hyena-laughter wrack her body and she sprawls across the couch, cackling, lying on her back, half-falling, her hand on her face.

'I never took any fucking medication,' she says through her laughter. 'I threw it all down the fucking drain, and you never noticed.'

It's the funniest thing she has ever said. Waves of hysteria rip through her, again and again, until she starts to tire. When her laughter subsides, she turns her head and looks at Snow from her upside-down lolling position on the couch.

He looks absolutely heartbroken.

She lifts herself, the laughter fading. 'Sorry,' she says, her hair falling to the floor. She picks herself up, tidies herself, and then looks at Snow again. The heartbreak hasn't lightened even a little bit. 'Are you okay?' Me, asking President Snow if he's okay. What a joke.

'Oh, Katniss,' he says, and then he buries his face in his hands. She has no idea what to do. He lifts his face and he looks a thousand years old. 'Why won't you let me help you? If you continue to behave this way, you're going to kill yourself.'

Katniss stares. 'Yes, Snow,' she says. She cannot lie to him. Her hatred cools and then she, too, is still and frozen inside. 'I am. I am going to kill myself. I was going to do it today, and all I wanted was to give you a nice goodbye. Now you've made everything horrible — like you always do. Now I'll have to wait. And you're going to make it difficult for me.' She is so irritated. 'It was going to be a perfect day, and you ruined it.'

Snow does not speak for some time. You can hear the birds in the garden, those winged strangers whose songs Katniss does not know. The room smells like fresh grass, as well as blood and roses.

And then, with such absurdity that it pulls Katniss right out of her suicidal reverie, Snow stands, naked from the waist down, walks to the chaise longue, and kneels at her feet. He takes her hand in his and his eyes — which Katniss now realizes are exactly the blue of the forget-me-nots that grow around abandoned mines — are chasmic with pain.

'Please, Katniss,' he says. His voice sears her skull. 'Please don't die. I don't know what I'd do without you, Katniss. My life would be over. I'm not asking you to stay alive for me. I know you despise me; I know you hate me more than anything. And that's alright. I don't mind. Your hatred makes me happier than any other person's love ever could. But you must live. You must.' He has a strange, nostalgic smile as he traces the veins of her hand. 'You will have a life beyond me, Katniss. I am not the end. One day I will be dead, and you will still be alive. You will still be young. You have so much you could do. You could have a family. Or you could live with your sister. You will find someone to love — someone you could love in a way I know you could never love me. There is a whole, beautiful, perfect life for you beyond me. There will come a day that you feel something other than despair. There will yet be happiness in your life. I promise. You know I would never lie to you.' He kisses the back of her hand first and then her palm, and then he enfolds her fingers as though she could hold the kiss against her. 'Will you please take your medication? Will you please try to get better? Please, Katniss. As your husband, I am begging you.'

Katniss cannot say why, but in that moment, she thinks of Prim. Prim with her ducktail on the day of the reaping. Her own voice screaming out of her throat: 'I volunteer! I volunteer as tribute.' The simplicity of the thing. How little thought it took. The knowledge that, oh yes, of course, you would give your life for that girl. How could you ever live without her?

Snow's eyes are more familiar to her now than those of anyone she has ever known. They are ice-burned into her. But there is, she thinks, something beautiful about the brilliant honesty of him. Not lovely, or good. Yet there is beauty in this dreadful love he has for her, and in his supplication, and in the pitiable magnificence of him. Her ally and her protector — her husband — is the most terrible man who has ever lived. And yet he loves her.

It isn't much to live for.

But it's something.

Katniss' surrender is more exhaustion than joy. 'Okay,' she says. 'Okay. I'll take the pills. I'll try harder.' She feels so little as she stares into the relief and radiance of his eyes, but she does feel a tiny piece of something. 'I need you to help me more. I can't survive like this. I need more in my life than you, Snow. I need people… structure… freedom… I need things I don't have right now. And if I don't get them, I can't go on. Do you understand?'

He nods. 'I will try to understand. I will try to help you. If it kills me, I will try to make you happy.'

Katniss' smile is dry and wan. Yes, it very well might kill him. And he is truly content with that.

How strange and wonderful and horrible a thing to know that no one will else ever love her like this.