Katniss wakes when a heavy hand rests on her shoulder, and for a moment she thinks it's her father. But no. Long dead. Long buried in the earth where he died.
Snow?
It is a struggle to open her drugged eyes. She hopes to see eyes like a frozen sea. That immaculate smile. Sweet, live blood smell. Roses.
She gets none of these things. She does not recognize the face looking back at her, but she knows the uniform. One of Snow's team.
'What is it?' she slurs.
'You can go into the medical suite now, ma'am.'
This is all the stranger says.
Katniss struggles from the sheets, her indigo dress so creased, her face throbbing. Her heart beats violently inside her. What sight have they prepared for her? Is this a horrible surprise Snow planned for her on the occasion of his death? Will someone she loves be strung up and cut open, like Gale was? Will they still have their eyes?
Her feet silently cross Snow's bedroom, through the lounge, into the hall, back to the medical suite, and her hands push through those doors once again. She fades through the plastic sheeting. Her feet are so cold against the tile. The hall turns, and beyond this is a wide, white room. The last time she was here, she was being assessed and violated. How sharply she recalls that antiseptic smell, the crowd of machines, something beeping. It's another landscape of her trauma.
There are only two beds. One bed, the one that once held her as the doctor examined her insides, is tidy and perfectly made, as if awaiting someone. The other is occupied.
Snow is sitting up, reading a book.
Katniss is sure she is still asleep, and then Snow speaks to her.
'I thought you should know that everything is under control,' he says, not looking up from the page. 'I didn't want you doing anything else drastic while I was incapacitated.'
Katniss isn't even aware of the steps she takes toward the bed. He is alive, vivid and real. A drip feeds his arm, and he is shirtless aside from thick bandaging across his stomach. The naked reality of his body has never looked so stark as it does under the hospital lights: the gentle slump of age, the sparse hair, that network of scars. She has never seen him look older, but he also looks so alive. They have sent him back to her.
'I thought you were dead.' Her voice is paper and dust.
'I am sorry to disappoint you,' says Snow sardonically, still reading. 'I do intend to keep living for some time yet, if that's not an inconvenience.'
Katniss comes to stand beside the bed, and Snow finally glances up from his book. He is pale and his eyes a little sunken, but they are bright as sun dogs.
'You're okay?' Katniss can barely speak. A sob bubbles in her throat. Her skin trembles. The medication can do nothing to stop tears flooding her eyes.
Snow assesses her. Then, instantaneously, his wry expression melts away. In its place is one of compassion so deep she could drown.
'Yes, Katniss, I'm alright.' His voice is so soft.
Katniss presses both her hands over her mouth, which is stretched open in an ugly, irrepressible cry. Huge and hideous tears fall down her cheeks.
Snow reaches out to her and grips her shoulder in a way he never has before, and he pulls her a little closer to the bed. 'Everything is alright, Katniss. I'm fine.'
Katniss moves closer, and Snow lets her, and then he casts the book aside and reaches out for her and scoops her against him like a child. She is in his arms and weeping, and he is stroking her hair. He hushes her and rocks her, and she does not know if she hates herself or him more.
Her sobs come loud and pathetic. 'I thought I was alone. I thought you left me all alone.'
'I'm here. It's alright. It's alright. I'm sorry I left you.'
'What would happen to me? Where would I go?' She clutches him and buries her face in his neck, breathing deeply the scent of his skin. It does not smell like blood, here. There are the smells of roses, and shaving cream, and beneath that is something peculiar and familiar, some bitter spice. She knows these scents so well. 'I'm not a person anymore. I have nowhere to go.'
She is wretched and tremulous in his arms, and her body — exhausted, wracked with grief, adrift in confusion — reacts as it always does to his smell and his touch: with a base sexual need. She pulls back from the embrace and kisses him. Her kiss is lopsided and salt-wet from her tears, and it's clumsy and inelegant. He returns it cautiously, and one of his hands cups her cheek in that way that makes her feel unreal and precious. The kiss melts through her anxiety and grief and leaves in its wake a soft, lovely arousal, and she feels tranquility fill her with blue light.
She pulls back a little, then reaches under the bedsheets, searching for him, wanting sex, wanting to forget. Her fingers are trembling. Snow stops her and holds her hands very gently.
'Katniss, I have just had a major laparoscopic surgery. I am under strict orders not to participate in any strenuous activity.' He gives a little laugh. 'And I know you like it strenuous.'
Katniss finds herself laughing despite herself, and she presses her head against Snow's. This is good. This feels right, and safe, and she can barely remember the sight of the man who choked her and threatened to murder two dozen children. Right now, he is his best self, and she doesn't want to ruin that.
She presses her lips to his ear. 'Will you at least touch me a little bit?'
His kindest smile. The love in his eyes. He nods, and he acquiesces. His hand goes between her legs, and his thumb finds her clitoris and presses lightly against it, and Katniss grips the mattress of the bed to steady herself. Snow touches her so differently to how she touches herself. He is not rough and efficient; his fingertip is ghostly and delicate, elegant and clever, coaxing tiny flashes of golden pleasure out of her and letting her ache in its absence. He is good at this. He is better at pleasuring her than she is.
He touches her thighs, her cut skin, the very edges of her vulva without trespassing on her cunt. His other hand goes to her breast and Katniss convulses as he offers the same incredibly delicate treatment to her nipples, and then he slides two fingers hard and deep inside her and Katniss moans with uneven gratitude. She feels paralyzed as his fingers fuck her, curving deep inside, and she tries to think about nothing at all as perfect, familiar pleasure drives out the memory of his hand on her throat. As long as she feels like this, she doesn't need to remember what Snow really is.
Katniss' orgasm is different to those he usually gives her. This one grows out of both her cunt and her clit, extracted by the fingers fucking her and the thumb teasing her clitoris, and she lets herself shake as sunlight, ice, and beauty circle out of her again and again and again.
When she comes to, she is gripping his shoulder and panting hard. It takes her some time to look at him, at which point he pulls his fingers out of her and she lets him see the exquisite sensation writ on her face. She feels another sheet of pleasure go through her as he licks his fingers clean. He is so much in love.
'Do you feel better?'
She nods. Her grief and anxiety have been pushed so much further away, and in their place there is no shame, no disgust. Only the bumblebee hum of pleasure and warmth, and her own emotional craving for him.
'I thought you were dead,' she says. 'I saw you lying there, and I was so sure you were dead. And I thought I'd feel happy. I've wanted it for so long. But I just felt…' She feels dead herself when she speaks. 'I just felt alone.
'That's alright,' says Snow, and his tone is very light. 'It's alright to feel alone. I am truly sorry that I left you.'
A shiver of grief goes through her. Without asking, Katniss crawls onto the bed like a cat and rests her head on the pillow beside Snow. The sleeping pills are still heavy in her system. He lies down beside her and gazes into her, and she tries to see into the caverns that lie inside him.
'You're not really going to kill those children, are you?'
He frowns. 'No. I understand it would upset you.'
'I wasn't playing,' she says. 'Do you understand that? I was just trying to help them. I only ever wanted to help the children.'
His expression is strange to her. 'Your trying to help does not preclude you from playing,' he says. 'But it does not matter. The outcome is the same. No Hunger Games this year. Indeed, perhaps no Games ever again.' He shakes his head with amusement. 'My dear Katniss, you have no idea the hell that will follow this. We could have another war.'
She finds she is not much interested in those kinds of consequences. She too much likes the warm feel of his body near hers. They speak quietly, like lovers, like bedfellows. 'You don't seem too concerned.'
'No.' He reaches forth a hand and strokes her hair, and then her face, and then he rests his palm on her cheek. 'I don't care at all for this wretched world. Not anymore. I care about you.'
Her smile fades into his hand on her cheek. 'Maybe I can make this world better.'
'Maybe you can. Maybe you can make it worse.'
She reaches out her own hand, then, and touches his cheek, too. Familiar contours, the curve around his eyes, the slight slump of his eyelids, the lines that connect nose to mouth, that spiderweb out from the corners of his eyes.
She closes her eyes. It is comfortable here. The hospital bed has simple, crisp cotton. It shifts pleasantly against her ear. Snow's breathing is even and familiar.
'Are you tired?'
She makes a small, quiet sound. The pills still drag her down so pleasantly.
She can hear him smile. 'Would you like to get some sleep?'
Katniss is too tired to respond. Her head sinks a little, and there it finds Snow's shoulder. She feels his hand in her hair, certain and sure, safe-keeping her from harm. She is okay, here. He will not hurt her.
Katniss sleeps.
In her dream, the grass beneath her is thick and perfect, like dense feathers, and the flowers are bursts of white. All of them are white: the daffodils and the peonies, the primroses and the dandelions.
Snow sits with her, endlessly smiling, and he is laughing about some joke that she does not quite understand.
It is so warm. The ground ripples. Now she looks closer, she sees that there are undulations, thick waves in the green. She rubs a hand over a swell of grass.
Snow's smile is unbroken. 'Children's graves,' he explains.
She opens her eyes, and Snow's look into hers. Like ice glass. 'Good morning.'
She cannot help but smile back. 'Is it morning?'
He nods. 'Past nine o'clock.'
She feels tremendously better. The huge sleep has flushed out her body of its aching stress. Her grief is gone. Her pain is gone. Her hatred is gone. She is a peaceful void inside, perfect and hollow. A white ice-cave. An empty eye-socket.
'We slept together,' she observes.
'Yes,' says Snow, and he sounds so happy. 'You had a nightmare at one point, but it was only a little one.' He pauses. 'I stroked your hair, and that seemed to calm you.'
A frown passes over her face. 'I dreamt you died, I think.'
She pushes herself up. Snow has draped a blanket over her in her sleep, though she remains atop the one that covers him. She considers this arrangement, then wriggles herself under the blanket beneath, settling her body flush against the warmth of his, feeling his legs on hers, running her feet over him, then placing a hand on his chest and touching that, too. How could she have been so cruel to him? She came so close to losing this, his physicality and his living warmth. How arrogant a child she was.
He lets her run fingers over his chest and his scars, reminding herself of him, caring for him gently with her fingertips. And then she traces the edge of the bandage that wraps his stomach so tightly. There is a big, padded dressing where they cut into him. Whatever it was they had to do (whatever it was she made them do), it was drastic.
'Will you tell me what I did to you?' she murmurs.
Snow nods. 'You punched me in the stomach and perforated an ulcer. It was, I must say, one of the most painful experiences of my life. I went into shock. They managed to resect and repair the affected area.'
'So you'll be okay?'
'This time, yes.' His smile remains, but his eyes harden. 'I must forbid you from ever doing that again. You could have killed me.'
'I'm sorry,' she says. 'I didn't mean to. I was just scared, because you were choking me.'
He does not apologize for this, and she does not expect him to. In the absence of his apology, she moves her head forward and puts one soft kiss on the bare skin of his chest, where she has never kissed him before. In return, he kisses her forehead, and then her temples, and right now, in this moment, everything is so simple. She rubs her cheek against his chest, and she delights in the new sensation of his body against her lips. Why did she deny herself this for so long?
It is some time before she pulls back from her kisses. She turns her face up to his and she has never seen him so happy. 'Will you tell me what's wrong with you?'
Snow doesn't speak for a long time. She waits patiently. She can tell when he is silent in refusal and when something is difficult for him to say. When he begins to speak, his voice is calm and careful. 'I have extensive ulceration, throughout my mouth, throat, stomach, colon… It's severe, to say the least. The ulcers bleed constantly. The condition is handled very well with medication, but in certain instances there can be a perforation or obstruction. These necessitate surgery. This is the most significant complication I've yet experienced.' He smiles. 'Fitting that it should come from you.'
Katniss plays with a piece of loose bandage. 'Have you always had it?'
Snow shakes his head. He speaks slowly. 'No, Katniss. It's caused by poison.'
'Someone poisoned you?'
He shakes his head. 'I poison myself. You know I've killed people. Some by execution, some in the Games, some with my own hands. Poison is just one of many methods in my arsenal, and one I've found particularly effective for dispensing with more high profile individuals whose deaths need to be kept quiet. If you and your enemy drink from the same poisoned bottle, and only your enemy dies, then there is little suspicion on you. But poison is a tricky weapon. With an antidote, one can withstand a great deal of it. But… if you do it again, and again, and again…' He laughs quietly to himself. 'Well, you know what my mouth is like. And how I smell.'
She tilts her head at him. None of this surprises her. He has killed more people than she has ever known, and his mouth is covered in sores and holes and ridges that now just taste like home.
'You must have lots of secrets you keep from me,' she says.
'Hm. Not so many. Not anymore. One or two.'
She has to smile at that. Just everything that ever happened to you to make you this way.
She feels the soft press of his lips and the texture of his beard against her forehead. 'I love you, Katniss.'
She cannot say it back. But she can tilt her head and kiss him, and that will suffice. Then she smiles up at him and he smiles at her. He brushes the hair from her face and she winces. Her left eye is so sore.
'Have you seen your bruise?' he says, and she shakes her head. He reaches out to the bedside table and brings back a mirror, then holds her against him and angles the glass. She looks.
'Oh.'
There they are, cheek to cheek. He is luminous with joy. The left side of her face is a swollen plum, the eye a little half-closed, the skin shiny red.
'You are so beautiful,' he says, and her face hurts a little as he presses his cheekbone against it. 'I broke my rule. I should never hurt your face. But… just look at you.'
Katniss looks. She does not see beauty. She sees a beaten girl.
'Perhaps we don't need that rule anymore,' he says, and sets down the mirror. 'All the rules are changing. No more Games… No more District 13… Anything could happen. We can do what we want.'
She touches her hot face. 'I don't think I can go outside like this,' she says. 'I wouldn't want people to see.' I wouldn't want people to know what I let you do to me.
'Wouldn't you?' His smile is small and glittering. 'Think about it. Everyone would know you were mine.'
With absolute shame, Katniss feels a hot twinge in her belly. The idea does something to her. 'You want the country to know you beat your wife?'
'It could be exciting,' he murmurs.
She does not know what to say. She finds his hand, and there the knuckles are very slightly bruised from punching her. She slides her fingers into his and he grips her, and if it wasn't for the age and size of his hand against hers they could be courting adolescents.
'You hurt me really badly,' she says.
'You nearly killed me,' he counters.
She touches his knuckle. 'I'm sorry. I was just frightened. I couldn't breathe.'
She feels hot blood breath on her cheek. 'I love choking you. There are burst capillaries in your eyes, did you notice? And it makes your body go so tight and tense. It's better than drowning you.'
She plays with his fingers and he strokes the back of her hand. 'I didn't like it.'
'Didn't you? Didn't it excite you?'
She feels strange inside. 'It did,' she admits. 'But it makes me unhappy.' She turns wide eyes to him. 'I don't want to play games like that. It's okay if I ask you to hurt me, but I don't want to be scared like that. Games need to have rules. If I don't agree to play, then it's not a game anymore, right?'
He considers this. 'I suppose,' he says. His eyes slip again to her bruise. 'But what a shame to give this up… To relinquish this version of you… Terrified, struggling, swollen, bleeding…'
'Snow,' she says, and she can hear the hurt in it. 'I don't want a husband who beats me. Please. It doesn't matter if it excites me. I don't want that. Please…' She despises herself for the words that form. 'Please don't hit me again.'
'But you look so beautiful,' he says brightly, like this solves everything.
She stares from her uneven eyes. 'I look like a girl who can't eat properly and whose husband smacks her around. I never wanted to be a person like this. This makes me so unhappy.'
It takes her a moment to parse his expression. He is irritated with her. She is threatening to take away his favorite toy.
'Have you considered how much stronger it makes you?' he says, and his smile is insane. 'All that pain makes you so glorious.'
Her eyes go a little blank. 'Snow,' she says, very carefully. 'If I kill myself, will the pain of losing me make you stronger?'
He does not like this question. He really, really does not like it. He goes empty and white inside, and she sees fragments of things drift through him, flashes of thoughts and decisions and questions and memories. He is picturing her dead. There is genuine fear inside him when his eyes focus again.
'I understand,' he says at last. 'I won't hurt you anymore. Not unless you ask.'
'Do you promise?'
'I promise.' His voice is so beautiful and so soft when he wants it to be. He brushes the hair from her face, and he looks at her bruise with the anticipation of nostalgia.
'Can your medical team heal the black eye?' she says. 'I don't want to have to stay away from people for weeks until it heals naturally.'
His frown is deep. 'Yes, but… Well, do you need to get rid of it so soon? It's lovely.'
'I don't think it's lovely.'
'You can keep it for a little while,' he says. 'A week, perhaps.'
She chews her lip. 'I want it gone today.'
He considers, the oil drill of his mind grinding away. 'Four days,' he says. 'Then I'll let you get rid of it.'
'Snow—'
'Four days,' he repeats. 'It's just too beautiful, Katniss. It would be like burning a painting.' He winds her hair around his finger in quiet delight. 'Stay this beautiful for me for just a little while longer.'
She has no means to argue with him. Oh well. Does it matter? She can take some medicine for the pain, and she can amuse herself in the mansion for a few days. She does enjoy the gardens, and she's tired anyway from the stress of the last few days. She can convalesce until he lets her get rid of the bruise he gave her. It's not so bad.
She rests her head against his shoulder, and he holds her close, and it's nice. Blood smell, the scent of home. The firmness of him. His fingers in her hair. His breathing, overlapping with hers. She can ignore her aching face. He can be so kind to her.
They sit like that for a long time, in calm and repose, as though this is correct way things ought to be. She feels his lips dust her forehead, and she smiles. Could she love him? If she tried very hard, could she love this terrible man? Her wedding ring catches the light and glitters.
'My dear,' comes Snow's voice in her ear, 'I am going to sleep some more before lunch. Nearly dying and then having major surgery can rather take it out of you. You are welcome to stay.'
She inclines her head into his shoulder and pauses there to smell him, to rub her lips against his skin, to feel the hot texture of him against her, and she breathes out a note of affection.
'I think I'll go for a walk. I've already slept a lot,' she says, and raises her eyes to his. He looks at her with love, and then he looks at her bruise with delight. She stretches and Snow watches her muscles pull taut, adoring every new part of her. She swings off the bed, then pauses to kiss his cheek, then his lips, then his jaw and his neck. 'I'm so glad you're okay.'
Katniss goes to the gardens, which are bathed in hot summer light. She feels the most wonderful she has in so long. No anxiety, no hatred, no fear. She is sated still from yesterday's orgasm, and she can honestly say that she has actually done something good as the President's wife. No more Games. No more dead children. The prospect of war sounds like a silly, faraway thing; a made-up bird in the distant sky that little children point and laugh at. She will not let it worry her.
In her crumpled dress she drifts pleasantly through the gardens, and she thinks about Snow, and the strange, intense affection that has grown for him. She pauses by the pond and in its glassy depths she sees her own reflection. She frowns at the catastrophe he has made of her eye. She cannot see the beauty in it, but he can, and she can see some beauty in him. That will have to do.
As she walks, dreaming and drifting, her reveries are interrupted by a familiar, sharp set of footsteps. She turns and smiles with some sarcasm at the approaching, uniformed figure of Sulla.
'There you are,' she says. 'Where were you last night?'
She has never seen a more tired-looking man. 'I'm head of security, ma'am, not your personal bodyguard. When the President is incapacitated, I do have duties other than looking after you.'
'You're tetchy today,' she responds.
'I can't imagine why my blissful three hours of sleep didn't recharge me, ma'am,' he says. She can tell he is trying not to notice her bruise.
'Maybe you should take some time off,' she says.
'When things calm down,' he says. He then presents to her a white envelope. 'This was privately delivered. It's been checked, it's safe to open. An invitation. I was asked to keep it a secret from the President, but I'm sure he already knows, somehow. I ought to tell him directly, but I'll defer to you on this.' He sniffs. 'And hope I don't get shot for my troubles.'
She turns over the envelope. 'An invitation from who?'
She opens it and unfolds the paper. It has none of Snow's handwritten elegance. This letter is on stark white paper and typed in black ink.
Dear Mrs Snow,
I write to request your company for lunch. This meeting is to be kept secret from your husband. I hope you understand that the future of our nation is at stake.
12pm. The Indigo Palm.
Yours,
Senator Daric
She blinks at the letter, then at Sulla. 'Daric? He's not asking me on a date, is he?'
'I don't think so, ma'am.' Sulla's tired eyes flick to the sky. 'Thankfully, not every politician three or four times your age wants to romance you.'
'What does he want? To get me to start a coup?' She rolls her eyes. 'What reason could I possibly have to meet with him?'
Sulla purses his lips. 'Well, Mrs Snow, there has been some… well, a lot of… opposition… to the actions of President Snow over the past year.'
'Oh?' She never pays attention to these things. Well, she'll have to now, if she's to be the next President.
'Yes,' says Sulla slowly. 'The riots in the Districts you know about, obviously. But even in the Capiol there have been protests. There is… a lot of call for him to step down.'
'And for me to step up?'
Sulla looks uncomfortable. 'Well, the common people love you. The politicians… They would prefer Daric.'
'They want a seasoned, experienced senator over a mentally ill teenage girl?' She shrugs. 'What a surprise.' She fingers the letter. She is curious, certainly. She has done nothing without Snow's presence and approval until cancelling the Games, and if she is to be President, it is really time that she made her own decisions. She can hardly afford to ignore her husband's rival. Her rival. 'Okay,' she says. 'I'll meet with him. But we'll need a private room.' She points at her bruise. 'Got to keep up appearances.'
Sulla stops pretending not to notice the bruise. 'That is quite a bad one, ma'am.'
She shrugs. 'Snow thinks it's pretty.'
Sulla's expression is very strange. She has never seen him look like this before. He opens his mouth as though to speak, then thinks better of it. After a moment, he begins to talk haltingly. 'I've been married for thirty years, ma'am. I have never hit my wife.'
'Snow and I hit each other all the time,' Katniss says. 'It's just how we do things. It's okay. I don't mind. And he likes it when I hurt him.'
Sulla continues to look at her oddly. 'Yes, ma'am,' he says, with some awkwardness. He looks like he very much wants to say something else, and then his eyes alight on the mansion behind her, and he thinks better of it. 'Anyway. I will ready the car for you.'
The Indigo Palm is a funny establishment, the kind of place Katniss knows Snow would despise but which fills her with odd delight. There are huge statues of birds in tropical colors that tower over her, and artificial waterfalls, and plastic plants everywhere. The whole thing has a vibrant, rainforesty feel.
Her request for a private room was unnecessary; the entire restaurant has been booked out for the occasion. No doubt Daric has done this to impress her. She is not impressed. If Snow wanted privacy, he'd flatten every building in the surrounding block with their inhabitants still inside.
She sees Daric at a central table beneath a plastic palm that glows in colorful neon. He wears a dull, navy suit, and he grins with perfect white teeth as she approaches.
'Well, well,' he says, and his eyes rest unashamedly on her bruise. 'Mrs Snow. It's very good to see you again.'
He offers his hand for her to shake and she ignores it, sitting, helping herself to the menu. It's nice to be out somewhere different. Snow never takes her on restaurant dates. She really ought to ask him to. It might be nice to do more things as a couple other than fuck and, well, beat each other.
Daric is contemplating her bruise. As much as Katniss dislikes the focus of his eyes, she despises even more the way she can see his brain working, deciding on how it wants to use this to his advantage. When the decision is made, she might as well be able to hear a mechanical click.
'I wanted to talk to you about the current President, Miss Everdeen,' he says. The mistake in her name is deliberate.
'Mrs Snow,' she corrects.
He does not correct himself. 'You know that many of the Capitol have issues with how the President has run this nation for some time. The rebellions that followed in the wake of the 74th Hunger Games, the numbers of Peacekeepers dead, the attacks in the Capitol… And that's not to mention his more personal behavior. The murder of Curio Nance — a senseless tragedy. His absence from public life. And, of course, his marriage to you. Some might regard it as an exceptional romance; others as the sign of an old man unable to control his baser instincts. As for myself, I am sure you did not enter into this marriage without an awareness of its political advantageousness.'
Katniss does not take her eyes from the menu. There are lots of interesting drinks on offer with names she can't understand or pronounce, and there is a list of fourteen different steaks. She hopes Daric is paying. She realizes, vaguely, that she has access to none of Snow's finances.
'Miss Everdeen—'
'Call me Mrs Snow or I'm leaving,' she snaps. Then she shows the menu to a waiter. 'I'll have a strawberry daiquiri and…' She points at the meal she wants and doesn't want to mispronounce, cote de boeuf. She had so liked the daiquiri that Snow ordered for her so many months ago, and this one will have alcohol in it.
Daric regards her with a facile expression. 'Mrs Snow, I cannot tell you how it breaks my heart to see you like this. You were the Victor from District 12. I remember watching your Games live. To watch someone so tenacious and so determined claw her way to victory… It was spectacular. You had such life inside you. You fought against everything they threw at you, and you won again and again. You were an icon! A symbol of strength! You were the mockingjay. Do you know how many people wore your symbol in private? This nation truly could have been reformed.'
'What do you care? You're Capitol. You hate the Districts.' She accepts her daiquiri from the waiter, who gives Daric a glass of red wine. She slides the straw between her lips and, with dull disgust, sees Daric's eyes flick to her mouth. Oh. So he does want to fuck me. Brilliant.
'What I'm saying, Mrs Snow, is that it's a travesty to see you like this. To see a young woman of such fire and such independence let herself be…' He pauses for effect. 'Let herself be beaten. Be abused. Let a man treat her like garbage.' He shakes his head. 'Whatever disagreements you and I might have on political matters, I assure you that it gives me no joy to see a beaten woman.'
Katniss slurps her straw loudly. Just looking at this man is giving her a stomach-ache.
'Is this really what you want?' Daric continues. 'Do you want to remain married to a man four times your age that beats you? What would Primrose think?'
Katniss removes the straw from her lips. 'I don't think you give a shit about what my sister thinks, and I think you should keep her name out of your mouth.'
He looks very slightly annoyed. Then he washes the annoyance away like it was never there. 'Katniss—'
'Mrs. Snow.'
The annoyance returns. 'Have more respect for yourself than this. Don't let him treat you this way. I have powerful friends. I could help you get away from him. We could protect you. Keep you safe.'
Katniss smiles joylessly. The last person who said that to her was Gale. And look what happened to him.
'You don't care what happens to me,' she says. 'You only want my husband out of the picture so you can take power.' She puts her lips back to the straw, then frowns. The pain in her stomach is really quite noticeable. Is she sick?
'Of course I care what happens to you,' says Daric in a gross, syrupy voice. 'I have immense… immense respect for…' A weird shimmer goes through Daric's expression. 'Forgive me, I…' The shimmer becomes a grimace, and then he is openly in pain. 'I don't… I apologize, I feel unwell, I…'
Katniss stares, assuming this is some kind of ploy, and then she watches with cool horror as a thick, inexorable line of blood starts to appear from Daric's nose. As it crests his lips, she feels the pain in her own stomach balloon.
'Help!' she shouts, and she hopes Sulla hears her. Daric's face hits the table, hits his plate, sits blank-eyed on a white napkin as his face twitches.
There is a hand on her arm. 'Mrs Snow?' It is Sulla's voice.
'It hurts,' she says, bent over, clutching her stomach. 'Something is wrong.'
The pain is incredible and she tastes blood, but consciousness remains her domain. Sulla lifts her over his shoulder like a sack of kittens, then strides from the restaurant without a backward glance for Daric. Katniss sees waiters flock to him. To his corpse? She cannot say if he's still alive.
She remains conscious all the drive back to the mansion, writhing in pain in the backseat, and Sulla presses odd-tasting pills between her lips.
'I can't believe this,' she hears him mutter. And then, so faraway she is not sure if it's real: 'To his own fucking wife.' The next things Sulla says are loud and close: 'Try to stay conscious, Mrs Snow. Katniss? Stay awake for me, okay?'
She is carried then from the car, into the mansion, upstairs, back to the medical suite, to that freshly made bed that seemed to be waiting for her. Snow is here, on his feet, in pajamas and a robe, his expression strange to her. She reaches for him in her agonized state and her fingers clutch uselessly on the air. She is deposited in the clean bed, next to which stands that hateful doctor. The pain in her stomach is wildfire.
'Give her more of the antidote,' says Snow.
The doctor looks uncomfortable. 'Sir, she's had 120mg already.'
'She should be better by now.' His voice is a glacial crack. 'Give her another tablet.'
Katniss opens her mouth to accept one more pill from the doctor, and her wild eyes find Snow. Her hands reach out again, imploring, confused, in so much pain that she cannot speak, and for a moment he simply stares at her hands as though he cannot understand what she is doing with them. And then he steps forward and he takes them, and he kisses her fingertips, and he smiles down at her with that eschaton of love.
'It's alright,' he hushes. 'You'll be alright. You had a very mild dose.'
It is difficult for her to find her voice. 'Dose of… what?'
'Just rest a moment.'
He smiles, and she takes deep breaths and Snow holds her hands. In time, Katniss feels the pain in her stomach start to ease. It is still white agony, but a little more distant. He is pleased with her progress.
That blood taste is still rich in her mouth, and Katniss puts her tongue against her lips. It is very wet.
'Ah,' says Snow, then places a white cloth to her mouth. 'Just spit.'
She does so, and watches in fascination as bright, fresh-kill blood fills the napkin. Snow then brings her a cup of water to swill and spit again, and then her mouth tastes a little more normal.
But there is something weird and soft and uneven in her mouth, just in that patch that she used to chew so much. There is a wide, flat opening on the inside of her cheek, like a blister, and it tastes like blood. It hurts to wedge her tongue into.
The pain in her stomach has dulled to a low hum. She is finally able to speak without pain. 'What happened?'
Snow looks at her with radiant bliss. 'Queen takes bishop. A simple move.' He makes a weird, pleased sound with his lips and teeth. 'There are those who long suspected I was behind the rash of poisonings in the Capitol… Well, they will be far less likely to suspect me now my wife has been the target of such an attack. I shall issue a public statement to denounce it immediately. Of course, there are still some that will suspect, but… This was helpful.'
Katniss cannot quite understand what he is talking about. 'Daric and I were poisoned?'
'Daric lives, unfortunately.' He purses his lips with displeasure. 'He anticipated. Took some general antidote, probably charcoal-based. Didn't work as well as yours, of course, which was specifically developed for this poison, and you already have some immunity built up.'
'Immunity?' She is so confused.
'Yes, of course. I've been putting a little of it in your food for months. Not enough to damage you, of course. Just to take the edge off.' He chuckles. 'That's one of the reasons I was so keen on you eating, my dear.'
She tries to understand, but it's hard. The understanding comes to her in clear, simple letters, written in the sand, and then the sea of her mind washes over them and wipes them away. She writes them again. They wash away. This cannot be happening.
'You poisoned me?' she whispers. 'You've been poisoning me for months?'
'Mm, technically not the latter. It is only poisoning if it causes injury. A small amount to build immunity does not count.'
Her lips feel very dry. Snow is smiling at her with all his pleasant, unimpeachable contentment.
She tries to speak again. 'You poisoned me,' she repeats. 'You poisoned me without even telling me?'
'If I told you, you might not have gone along with my plan,' he smiles. 'Daric has been extremely difficult for me to target. He is a paranoid man. I simply couldn't pass up the opportunity to try to kill him. His survival is a setback, but his condition is severe. He won't be able to move against me while he's in this state, and he will be much easier to dispense with now he's vulnerable and hospitalized. I cannot have him running around free, trying to pass nonsensical laws about District and Capitol miscegenation. "Keep Capitol blood pure." Oh, please.' He rolls his eyes. 'Getting rid of trash like him is crucial to secure your legacy as President. Your safety.'
All of these words drift through her. She feels devastation. The fawn bleating at its dead mother. The bird confused by its motionless chick. 'You did this to… to keep me safe?'
He reaches out and takes her hands again in his, holding them, trapping them. 'Yes. I know it might be confusing, but this was the best way—' Katniss yanks her hands way, and Snow looks at her with a question. 'Katniss?'
'You poisoned me,' she says again, as though this might make it not real. 'How could you do that? I…' The next sentence in her mouth is insane and absurd and shameful to her, but it is also true: 'I trusted you.'
Snow tilts his head. 'You trusted me to keep you safe,' he says. 'And I did. I will always protect you.' He looks at her hands like he wants to take them again, but he doesn't. She is radiating anxiety. 'Are you alright?'
'You promised not to hurt me.' Her voice is thick. She wants to cry. The ulcer inside her mouth is bleeding slowly. 'Just this morning, you promised not to hurt me anymore.'
It is as though he does not understand. 'I had no intention of hurting you. This wasn't personal, Katniss. It was a political necessity. And you are quite alright, aren't you?'
She sits in the hospital bed. Her mouth bleeds. Her face is burnished with the black-eye. There are fingerprints on her throat you can only see in a certain light. And inside, the ash of her heart drifts away in the wind.
Snow is still staring at her. 'Are you alright, Katniss?'
'I'm fine,' she whispers. 'Could you… leave me alone for a little while? I think I need to rest.'
He is lightly confused, but unconcerned. 'Of course. I'm well enough to return to my chambers.' He stands. He offers her one brilliant, insane, loving smile: 'I love you, Katniss. This was the best thing for you. I promise.' He bends and kisses her. His wonderful, awful smell. 'How amusing that we both hospitalized one another in the same twenty-four hours, hm?'
Her smile is so faint, the barest leaf skeleton of a smile. But he accepts it gladly.
Once Snow is gone, Katniss lies alone in the bed for a long time. She touches her fingers to her beaten face, and her tongue to her ulcer. She strokes her sore stomach and her neck, which still feels the ghost of his hands on her.
He does love her. He cares for her with infinite compassion, and he is trying. Oh, he is trying so hard to love her properly. Death himself tries to love her, and this is what he does.
She sends one of the servants to fetch Sulla, and then she waits. He enters smartly, the clack of uniformed shoes on clean floor, and he bows sharply at her bedside.
'Ma'am.'
'I want to ask you something.' Her voice is very soft. Sulla nods slowly. 'If Snow ordered you to kill me, would you do it?'
Sulla stares at her. 'I don't think the President wants to kill you, ma'am. If he forgave you cancelling the Games, I don't think there's anything you could do to upset him.' He pauses. 'He's pretty fond of you.'
'But if he did. Hypothetically. Would you do it? Would the staff?' she says. 'Knowing that I'm going to take over soon. Knowing that he doesn't have long before someone usurps or deposes him, or he dies. Knowing that I'm the safer bet. Would you really take his side over mine?'
Sulla has to think about this for a very long time. 'I think,' says Sulla very carefully, 'in the current climate… there may be more support for you than your husband.'
She smiles. 'Thank you, Sulla. Now, can I have your gun?'
It's amazing how quickly a doctor will work with a gun to his head. Healing the bruise takes only minutes: an odd procedure with a laser, and then her skin is buffed and polished to a dewy glow. The evil doctor hems and haws about removing the tracker, but Katniss loads Sulla's nice black revolver and aims it at his tibia, picturing the satisfying crack of splintered bone, and the doctor does as he is told. She does not enjoy sitting again with her legs spread, a shaft of metal shoved into her, but the penetration hurts less. She's used to it now. Getting the metal insect ripped out of her flesh is more painful, and she bleeds, but the relief is worth it. Once it has been deposited in its dish, she considers shooting the doctor anyway, but she decides that enough violence has been done for one day.
She goes to her chambers and searches her closets for a suitcase. What should she pack? A few of the more sensible dresses of which she's grown somewhat fond. A pair of shoes. The nice knife Snow gave her. Guns. Ammunition. Her medication. That ought to fill a suitcase. There is nothing else she needs or wants. She will leave this life behind her in the dust.
On her bedside table is a stack of political texts Snow picked out for her. Basic, childish guides to the Capital system, books of theory, and his own unfinished memoir on presidential life. She packs all except the memoir. She does not want his thoughts in her head.
As she tosses in the final book, she hears a thunder of footsteps in the hall. She looks up, alarmed, and she hears the doors to her chambers burst open. A moment later, Snow is in her bedroom, panting heavily, worn and exhausted, and blood seeping through his bandage. She has never seen him in such a state.
Strenuous activity, indeed.
She regards him coolly. 'Is something wrong?'
It takes him a long time to catch his breath. 'The tracker… Your heartrate flatlined. The team told me you were alright on the cameras, but…' He leans against a table, gasping, one hand on his heart. She wonders if the shock might kill him. 'I thought… The poison…' He takes one huge breath, then exhales. He reaches for her shoulder and Katniss shrugs it off. He is confused. 'Katniss?'
'I had the tracker removed,' she says. 'I had to threaten your doctor at gunpoint, but he complied.'
She thinks about packing a second pair of shoes. The heels are tedious, but she might as well have a back-up pair. It's not like there are good shopping opportunities in District 12.
'Why?'
She glances at Snow. 'Because I hate the tracker. You know that.'
He is confused, and he is angry. She wonders if he will give her another black eye. Let him try. She has Sulla's revolver tucked into her belt.
'I would like to put it back,' he begins, and then his jaw clenches. 'But… if it makes you this unhappy, I suppose it can stay gone.' He frowns. 'Perhaps you would consent to a tracker under the skin.'
She gives him a withering look and drops some underwear into the suitcase.
'Alright, perhaps not,' chuckles Snow. 'You and I must find ways to compromise, Katniss.'
'Yeah,' she says lightly, with sarcasm. 'I let you choke me. Beat me. Drown me. Cut me. Poison me. Drug me. In return, you let me play out your fucked up sex and pain fantasies.' She shoots him a look. 'Bet you couldn't find anyone else traumatized enough to play them with you before, huh?'
He is discomfited and quiet inside. 'It is true I haven't played with anyone the way you and I do for some time,' he says carefully. 'But it is not often that I love someone. You are the first person I have loved in a very, very long time.' His eyes follow her as she deposits rolls of socks into the suitcase. 'Are you… going somewhere?'
'District 12,' she says. 'I figure until I actually become President I don't even need to be in the Capitol that much. You attend most of your meetings on video link anyway. I don't see why I can't do the same.'
'Oh,' says Snow. 'You didn't consult me on this.'
She shrugs. 'No, I didn't.' Tosses a few pieces of gem-heavy jewelry into the bag. Someone can sell those.
'Well,' he says brightly. 'If you'd like another vacation, that could be feasible. If we make occasional trips back to remind the Capitol who we are, this shouldn't cause too many problems. And I can teach you about presidential life.' He smiles at her. There is some blood on his gleaming teeth. 'It might be nice to live together in one of those little houses in the Victors' Village, rather than in separate wings of the mansion. A normal couple. We can sleep in the same bed every night.' He sounds delighted.
Katniss stares at him. Her eyes are dark ash grey. 'No, Snow, you stay in the Capitol. You're the President. Do your job.'
'But then we wouldn't be together,' he says, failing to understand. 'It would take so long for me to visit you. We would hardly see each other.'
'Yeah, probably.' She considers the suitcase. Is there anything else she needs? 'Until you die, there's not really any point in my being here. Now my presidential nomination has been announced, it's not like we need to keep playing happy newlyweds. If there's a threat to my succession then I'll come back, but otherwise I'd much prefer to stay in District 12.'
She decides to take the knife out of the suitcase and keep it on her person, safe beneath her belt. The guns are nice, but she has been throwing knives since childhood. They are a comforting weapon.
Snow is silent for a long time as she zips up the suitcase. Then he says: 'You're leaving.'
She glances up. 'Yeah. I'm going back to District 12. I thought we established that.'
His face is the most careful blank she has ever seen it. 'But you're leaving. We won't be together anymore. Are you…' He is very, very quiet, and Katniss pauses to watch him. Even now, after all this time, she cannot divine the mysteries in the ice plains of his blue eyes. 'Are you leaving me? Are you trying to end our relationship?'
She rolls her eyes. 'Snow, as I've tried to tell you, we're not in a relationship. You just made that up. And now I'm going to be President, and everybody loves me, and everybody hates you. So I don't have to live in your dream world anymore. I can go home, and no one can stop me.'
'Katniss…' There is wild panic in his eyes. 'What is happening? Why are you doing this?' He speaks with pain and grace. 'I love you.'
It is a little sad. 'I don't love you,' she says. 'In fact, I hate you. That never changed. And I'm glad to get away from you at last.'
'But I don't understand,' he says. 'We… You fell asleep beside me. Everything was so wonderful this morning. The way you touched me… I thought… What has changed? Why are you so upset?'
Katniss thinks about stabbing him. 'Because you poisoned me,' she hisses. 'You promised you wouldn't hurt me anymore, and then a couple of hours later you poisoned me. And you've been poisoning me for months.' She bares her teeth. 'You lying sack of shit.'
His expression is confusion and horror. 'No, Katniss. No, no. I wasn't trying to hurt you. This was to protect you. I didn't…' He blinks, unmoored. 'I didn't think it would hurt you. I did it because I care about you.'
She is disgusted. 'You caring about me is you at your worst! This is what I've realized, Snow. The more you try to be kind to me, or take care of me, the more you hurt me. The more you try, the worse you are. A tracker in my fucking uterus.' She fingers the knife on her belt. 'I have tried so, so hard to care about you, or to like you, or just to tolerate you. And I can't do it anymore.'
Snow's eyes fall to the knife and the play of her fingers. She can see thoughts and decisions rattling through his brain.
'Do you want to cut me?' he says, eyes still on that knife. 'Would that make you feel better? That has worked before.'
She feels faintly sick. 'No, Snow. I don't want to cut you.'
'There are things you could do,' he says rapidly. 'Things you might enjoy, that might make you feel better. She used to… Perhaps you would like to take something from me? Then you could feel things were even.' He tilts his head at her. He steps closer. His proximity nauseates and disorients and arouses her. 'You could cut out one of my eyes—'
'I don't want to!' she screams, hands raised, trying to protect herself from the horror of him.
He grasps her arm. 'Katniss—'
She yanks away. 'I'm leaving. Let me go.'
He stares in absolute incomprehension. 'But…' His eyes are huge, the pupils infinite wells. 'You're mine. You're my girl on fire. I love you. We are meant to be together.'
She gets as close as she can to him. The smell of rot and death on his breath. 'You're delusional. And you're disgusting.' Her expression changes in an instant. Scorched earth. 'Fucking a nineteen-year-old girl. What did you think was going to happen?'
He stares, uncomprehending, barren ice and confusion. She grabs the suitcase. He stands there, staring at nothing, emptied out, and she does not look back. There, alone and pathetic, she leaves him.
She can finally go home.
