They pass a week walking the woods and hear no more hovercrafts, so Katniss risks returning to the road. The weather grows cool, and in the mornings frost gilds the ground outside the tent and freezes the feelings out of Katniss' nose and toes. She starts to dedicate an hour of early morning to waiting in a tree for something to kill while Snow remains at camp. She has much more luck without Snow dragging her down, and this provides them with enough fresh meat to stop them breaking into their preserved supplies. True to his word, Snow makes no attempts to escape. Every time she returns from hunting, successfully or no, she finds him waiting by the fire and he smiles at her with Spring-fresh new joy.

After the discussion of Snow's dead granddaughter, they talk less. Snow drops his barbs about Peeta and her friends, and Katniss comes to suspect Snow is trying to give her space. This isn't pleasant to her. The idea that Snow is trying to respect her emotional needs makes her queasy.

One morning, Snow makes a few sparse queries about their direction and the weather conditions, and Katniss brushes off his comments with brusque shrugs. She can hear him listening to her as they walk, quirking his head at her like a dog, trying to read the texture of her silence.

'Miss Everdeen?' he says at last, and Katniss does not answer. 'You've been very quiet this past week.' His breath is a little less strained than once it was. He is growing accustomed to the physical activity. 'I am concerned.'

She rolls her eyes. Pulls leaves off a passing laurel and tears them into shreds. 'I really don't care about your concern.'

'I have a right to worry about your wellbeing. You have been melancholic since we discussed my granddaughter. You have a history of mental health issues and your state of mind concerns me. After all, if you were to kill yourself, I would most likely die out here.'

She stops short. She turns and looks on him with weird, unsettled anger. 'Why would you think I was about to kill myself?'

Snow looks at her mildly. 'You've been suicidal before. People talk, Miss Everdeen. I know you tried to kill yourself after the failed execution of Coin.' He pauses very briefly. 'Although I don't know by what method.'

The sunlight is vibrant through his white hair, which is tremulous in the wind. His pupils are small in the bright of the day, one eye ringed with the healing imprint of that green-blue bruise, and both are fixed on her face.

Katniss thinks about spitting on him. Instead she says, 'Starvation.'

Then she turns back to the road. She can sense a shift in Snow, something peculiar.

'That's a difficult way to die, Miss Everdeen.'

'Well, I failed, so you can gloat all you like at my weakness.'

Bizarrely, Snow laughs. She feels disgust and, once again, her old urge to kill him. He is still the snake in her study, taunting her with smiles, encircling her tighter and tighter. If only she could murder him.

'If you truly wanted to kill yourself, Miss Everdeen,' says Snow through his laughter, 'I have no doubt that you could accomplish it. I am glad that you thought better of doing so. It would be a duller world without you.'

'What the fuck would you know about it,' she mutters, aiming a kick at a pebble. Despair is not an emotion available to him, clearly. It is too human, too sweet and bitter. She recalls the melody he whistled as they discussed his granddaughter's death, and she hates him even more. There is nothing of value in him. One monstrous cog in the inhuman machine of the Capitol, one she needs to carry so it can be slotted back in somewhere else, grinding out information until its gears are worn to bone.

Then Snow says something she does not expect.

'I tried to kill myself once.'

This makes her stop again, and it takes Snow a moment to stop too. He is still smiling, and she cannot understand why. She cannot think of a sentence less well-suited to a smile.

'What?'

'I would have been a little older than you are now,' he says, walking on, and Katniss walks after him, unable to stop herself. 'I am glad that I survived, as I am glad that you survived your attempt. Otherwise, we wouldn't be having this conversation.'

Katniss is experiencing a level of surreality entirely new to her. The stupidest questions come to mind. 'How did you try to do it?'

Snow's smile is bright and pleasant as a field of daisies. 'I shot myself in the head.'

Her mouth drops open. 'Is that why…' she starts to ask. Is that why you're so monstrous? Did something get messed up in your brain? But she swallows this. 'How did you survive?'

'Luck.' He turns to her. 'It was an old gun. Old gunpowder, poor propulsion. The bullet lodged in my skull.' He touches his forehead, right between his eyes. 'Knocked me out and bought me a couple of weeks in hospital, but there was no lasting damage.'

They walk side by side, and Katniss tries to process any of this. She can barely admit the image of a younger Snow into her mind, a boy her own age, putting a gun to his own head. It does not frighten or upset her, but it disorients her. A thread in a color she did not expect has been wound into the tapestry of what she knows of Snow.

'Why did you do it?' she asks quietly.

'It was a philosophical question, really,' he says brightly, breathing hard as they climb a hill. 'I could not justify to myself any reason to continue living. And so, suicide seemed the more rational option.' He lets out a pleased ah as they reach the top of the hill. 'It wasn't out of depression. Although,' he adds, considering, 'it was a rather dark time in my life.'

They pause at the top of the hill. The road tumbles down before them, separating two vistas of trees. There is a spray of wildflowers along the grass that lines the side of the road, and Katniss wonders how her life could have ever reached this point.

'Let's stop for lunch,' she says, mostly because she has no idea what else to say, and Snow does not argue.

They quietly chew yesterday morning's catch of cold, dry squirrel meat, and Katniss' eyes keep flicking uncertainly to her companion. Snow has an eternal solidity to him. He has been an old man for as long as she can remember, and she always assumed he would go on being an old man forever. The idea of Snow as young, as hurting, does not seem possible to her.

'Why was it a dark time for you?' she says at last.

Snow gives a minute shake of his head. 'An important person left my life. If you don't mind, Miss Everdeen, I do not wish to discuss it.'

'What, does having someone pry into your personal life make you uncomfortable?' she says sarcastically. 'The way I remember it, you secretly filmed me and Gale, and then you forced me to get engaged to Peeta.'

Snow laughs. 'That is true. Well, in the name of equity, I can tell you a little.' He finishes his meal, then points to the road. 'Let's walk and talk. Conversation distracts me from my knees.'

They pack up. They're quick at this now, working in unison, working silently, not needing to communicate what goes where. He lets her set the pace of any task and anticipates her needs, working around her, almost unnoticeable. It's strange. But she will not complain about getting things done efficiently.

'So who was this important person?' says Katniss once they've set off again. 'Your first girlfriend?'

Snow laughs his rich, happy laugh. 'No, Miss Everdeen, she was not my girlfriend.'

She considers this. 'But she was a girl.'

'Yes, she was a girl. We grew up together. I admit that when we were very young children, I did think we would get married. Foolish of me, but all children are fools.' He gives an odd shrug. 'She was everything to me, for a time. But as we grew up, I came to understand that she did not care for me as keenly as I did for her.' He shakes his head. 'I am the first to admit that I can be an intense person.'

Katniss is helpless to prevent a lopsided guffaw. Intense. That's one word for thousands of white roses blanketing the remains of District 13.

'Well,' continues Snow, 'I was away for some years, on an operation with the Peacekeepers. When I returned, she had decided she no longer wanted me in her life. She…' He lapses into silence. Unusual for Snow. Katniss waits until he phrases whatever strangeness is troubling his brain. 'She had changed. She was a different person. I couldn't see the girl I loved in her anymore.'

'People change,' says Katniss uncertainly. And then, unable to stop herself, she says: 'Peeta changed.'

He shakes his head. 'Very different situations. Mr Mellark had a schoolboy crush on you. He barely knew you. My… She…' He shrugs. 'No one has ever known me better. And I believe she hated me, by the end. I left her in my mid-twenties and I never saw her again.'

That makes sense to Katniss. A childhood friend of Snow, growing up trapped by his violent obsession, breaking away the first time that she could. This fits into the puzzle of who he is.

'What happened to her?' she asks.

'She died.'

Katniss frowns. 'I'm sorry,' she says on instinct.

'Don't be. In a way, the girl I loved died long ago. I put her in a box in my mind.'

Katniss does not know what to say to this. She could never put Prim in a box. In her mind, Prim roams an endless meadow, flowers in her hands, a smile on her face, free and wonderful forever.

'Well,' she says stiffly. 'I think trying to kill yourself over an ex-girlfriend is pretty stupid.'

Snow's face turns to hers and she meets his glacial eyes, and a shudder trips up her spine. He almost looks disappointed with her.

'As I said, she was not my "girlfriend", Miss Everdeen. Do not misunderstand. And it wasn't because of leaving her that I tried to kill myself.'

'Then why?' She looks at him blankly. 'To solve a "philosophical question"? That's stupid too, and I don't believe it.'

She is reflected in the studious blue of his eyes, which consider her so finely. 'I tried to kill myself because that day, I learned that the one human being who thought I was a good person utterly despised me, and I no longer saw a purpose in living.'

Katniss feels only surprise. 'But you're not a good person,' she says. 'I can't imagine you were ever a good person.'

'Oh, I believe I am,' says Snow, quite blithely. 'On that point, I know we will disagree. But I have ethics and convictions, and maybe one day you'll understand them, or at least develop some sympathy for them.'

A hateful, disgusted laugh bursts from her throat. 'If ever I develop sympathy with your ethics then I hope I shoot myself, too.' She shakes her head. 'I feel sorry for her, whoever she was. Being loved by you must be the worst thing in the world.'

Snow looks at her strangely. 'Perhaps, Miss Everdeen. Perhaps.'

They road takes them downhill until they reach a fork, a big road heading west and a smaller track heading east, and Katniss opts for the latter. It's the direction they ought to be going and there is more tree cover to protect from any passing hovercrafts. The track is overgrown and long-abandoned, and sometimes she isn't confident they're even still on it anymore. But there are just enough remnants of gravel to suggest the corpse of a road, and so they head on between the trees. The day is growing dark and cold, and the trees at least offer some shelter from the growing wind.

The sound of water comes up on them, first a distant drone, then a low roar. The track soon brings them to the sight of its source: a huge river, vast and wide, carrying water that must come from the mountains. It has a white-frothing rage to it, and there are chunks of ice carried by the current. An offshoot from the highest, coldest mountains, carrying its freezing water down to the valley below. The road winds casually to the foot of a bridge, which beckons them over.

It's a broad bridge, designed for vehicles, but several planks are rotten. Katniss steps gingerly up the ramp, testing her feet against the boards, though it remains solid beneath her feet.

'It still looks safe,' she said, and taps her foot against the wood. It holds perfectly. She takes another step, then another, and it feels just as firm as the ground. She looks back at Snow. 'I think it's fine.'

Snow follows cautiously, testing his own weight on it. He is heavier than she is, but still the bridge holds.

Katniss has little experience with bridges. There were few structures of any kind in the woods of District 12, that no man's land of pine needles and wild animals, and there were no rivers in town. She only becomes aware of the danger once they are halfway across, once the wood beneath her starts to sink under her heels, once the ice-laced rush of the river below overwhelms her hearing. She begins to reconsider their route, but before she can change her mind about the decision to cross Katniss feels a plank crack beneath her.

'Snow—'

It all happens so fast. She steadies herself on the planks, tightening her hands, and then the bridge gives out from under her.

There is a brief moment of gravity, and then the shock of freezing water. Her brain collapses into panic and for a moment her thoughts are inhuman chaos — but then her father's voice speaks from the deepest recesses of her mind. It was he who taught her to swim, out on that lake, and he taught her about collapsing ice and treacherous waters. If you fall into freezing water, stay calm. Breathe normally. Shock is what kills people.

'Katniss!'

For a brief moment in her disoriented state, she is sure her father is here beside her. A deep, masculine voice calling her name, calling to help. Soothing and strong.

And then she remembers that her father is dead, and she turns her head in the water to see Snow. The bridge brought him down too. He turns his head too at the same moment she does and they both make eye contact, each acknowledging that the other is alive. Her feet scrabble for purchase in a riverbed too deep for her legs to reach and the current starts to take her, and survival instincts throw her body into a crawl stroke, aiming for the shore. She vaguely notes that Snow is standing, braced against the current.

He's too tall, she thinks deliriously, and then without speaking the two of them start to swim.

It's hard: the water is strong and impossibly cold, and Katniss can feel it leech her strength with every stroke. If she hadn't had so much practice in the lake of the woods, this would have drowned her in minutes. She is relieved to see that Snow's stroke is long and confident, and part of her freezing, shocked brain wonders where he learned to swim. She cannot think he learned as she did, in a dirty lake, ankle-deep in mud.

Snow hits the shore first, and then he turns and grabs her collar and hurls her up onto the scree with a strength he has not shown before. He deposits her like a wet kitten and then they both crawl up the bank, gasping for life, and once they are free of the river they both rest for a moment. Katniss puts together the basic facts: they are both alive, they have reached the shore, they are extremely cold. The cold can kill them.

'We—' she begins, her teeth chattering, 'we should start a fire now. Camp here.'

Snow nods. He is shivering all over. There is ice in his bright white hair.

They are soaked. They walk a few more pathetic steps from the bank to a flat stretch of ground, then drop their sodden packs. Katniss does not need to issue orders; Snow fetches a log and thick sticks, and Katniss gathers tinder. Both of their hands are shaking badly as they pile up sticks and moss, and Katniss dimly realizes that they could die like this. How long does it take for hypothermia to set in? The cold could take hours to actually kill them, but only minutes might remain before her fingers stop working. If her motor control is too poor to start a fire, then that's it. They're dead.

She is trembling badly as she holds the flint and steel, striking it again and again, and each time it fails to catch. Snow crouches with her, watching, and then without asking he suddenly takes it from her hands. She does not know why she lets him; her brain is too cold to think. She watches as his own shaking hands strike the steel, and then a spark lights the dry moss. He blows on it, his breath uneven, and the flame catches. Katniss immediately cups her hands around it and feels the blissful bite of heat eat into her numbing fingers.

For a while, neither of them says anything. They crouch by the tiny fire, their packs ignored, and try to reheat their freezing hands. They pause only to adjust the kindling or add another piece of wood. In a few minutes the pins and needles subside, the fire grows, and Katniss does not think they are at imminent risk of freezing to death.

'We need to change,' says Snow. 'These clothes are soaked.'

She nods, shivering. 'I have a spare outfit in my pack.'

The next minutes are bleak. Each go through their packs, and Katniss finds that her oilskin cloths have done exceedingly little to keep her spare clothes dry. The tent is also dripping, but that is at least waterproof. The sleeping bag is unusable.

'Damn,' she mutters, unravelling her sodden spare clothes. Is it better to take off what she's wearing and sit naked by the fire?

'Those are useless,' says Snow, and she looks over to where he is unpacking his own spare outfit. It is sealed in a fancy Capitol waterproof bag, and despite the horrible predicament Katniss cannot help but roll her eyes.

'Good for you,' she says.

'We can share these. You'll get ill if you keep those on, and we are a long way from any doctors.' He unpacks the clothes and removes a shirt, sweater, pair of pants, socks, and underwear. He considers these for a moment, then hands Katniss the sweater. He gives the pants deeper consideration.

'You wear those,' Katniss says quickly. 'The sweater will be huge on me anyway. It'll be like a dress.'

'Not very warm, though,' he muses, still considering the pants. The problem is as obvious as it is stupid. There's no easy way to split a single outfit.

'Either way, one of us will be half-naked,' she says, her voice quavering with cold.

'It's not correct that I wear four items of clothing and you wear one,' he says, and even with the cold vibrating in his voice Katniss doesn't think she can argue. 'Take the underwear at least; it'll be long on you.'

'I'm not wearing your underwear,' she says through chattering teeth.

'Then take the pants,' he says, exasperated and offering them.

Katniss groans. Snow's legs are stupidly long, and it makes no sense for her to be in clothes that will drown her.

'Just give me the underwear and the sweater,' she says. She is too tired to argue. In fact, she is getting very tired, and she doesn't even feel that cold anymore. She feels almost warm inside. She thinks it would feel very nice to go to sleep.

That's the hypothermia talking, something in her brain says. It would feel nice and lethal to go to sleep.

'Tent?' she says to Snow. While he unpacks it, Katniss assembles a makeshift clothes line by tying her rope between two branches, spread across the fire. By the time it's tied off, Snow has assembled the tent. The two regard one another briefly, then wordlessly turn their backs on one another and strip off their sodden clothing. She does not look at him and she prays he does not look at her. More than any issue of modesty, she does not want him to see the geography of burn scars that now map her skin. It would be a dreadful, repulsive intimacy for him to see what has happened to her. However much she despises Snow, there is no denying that he had some measure of respect for the mockingjay. What respect could he possibly have for the used up rag of burns and trauma that she actually is?

Katniss is relieved to note that Snow's boxers are either brand new or, at least, very clean, and she smiles to see that they are so long that they fall almost to her knees. The sweater is also comically large on her, draping off one shoulder, but she is far past caring.

She turns back to Snow, expecting him to be dressed, but he is still buttoning his shirt. She catches the briefest glimpse of his upper chest as he buttons.

Scars. A tapestry of them.

She tries to file that away in her freezing brain for later.

'Sleeping bag is soaked,' she mutters, kicking the sodden pile. It is too heavy for the clothes line, so together they stretch it out around the fire and then hang up their clothes. She hesitates a moment before adding her bra to the line, but Snow doesn't even spare it a glance. Katniss regards the sad, limp hang of her socks next to Snow's, and again surreal amusement flutters through her. They wedge their shoes around the edge of the fire to dry, her boots and his larger pair pressed together, like two parents and two children.

She and Snow both look at the tent. There is no question about what happens next. Together, each absolutely spent, they both step inside and sit at the entrance, four legs extended to the fire, four hands warming themselves. Snow is pressed flush against her side, but she is too cold and exhausted to think about anything other than keeping her body warm enough so that she'll still be alive in the morning. Their body heat is useful to one another.

Utilitarianism, says some sleepy part of her brain.

They rest for a long time. The fire is well-built and crackles happily, warming them, keeping them alive. The river continues its impatient rush. Somewhere a crow is expressing its objections about whatever matters bother the birds.

It is Snow who speaks first.

'Are you alright, Miss Everdeen?'

She nods heavily. 'Tired. But fine, I think.'

Snow points at her foot. 'That is not fine.'

Drowsily, she follows his finger. There is a fat pink blister on one of her toes, and the skin is purplish.

'Must be from my hiking boots,' she says.

'No. That's frostnip. You must have got that from sleeping outside. I warned you how cold it grew at night.' He indicates the darker tinge of the skin. 'That will become frostbite if you're not careful.'

'Oh.' She studies the swell of the blister. 'Are you sure?'

'Yes. I've seen men lose their feet to frostbite before.'

She glances at him. Cool, murky droplets meander down his hair and nose, and his eyes are grey. He meets her curious gaze.

'When did you see that?'

'In my Peacekeeper days,' he says. 'Fighting in the mountains. We were snowed in for some time.'

'Oh,' she says again. This man is eighty years old, and she knows so little about the years that preceded his presidency. She shrugs off his comment. 'Well, we have a fire. We're okay.'

'Yes,' says Snow slowly. 'We're okay.'

He hesitates, then Katniss watches him lean forward and unroll the new, clean socks from his feet. Even with the cold and the exhaustion, this is funny to her. His bare feet are nothing like Peeta's. They are darkly veined and there are rough hairs sketching the stark architecture of tendons and pale skin.

'Here,' he says, handing her the socks. 'Frostbite can kill you.'

Katniss does not know what to say. She dutifully pulls the socks over her own feet and winces at the pressure of the fabric against the blister. The idea of her blister bursting and soiling his socks provokes a surreal nausea, so she tries not to think about it. If that happens, she will simply keep the socks forever. Goodness knows he owes her more than a pair of socks.

As she leans back again, she realizes that the burn scars on her right leg are perfectly visible, unhidden by the underwear. There is a mess of wormy white flesh that stretches past her knee, cupping her kneecap, which commemorates the immolation of her sister. She immediately drops a hand to cover the scars, but Snow must have seen it. Either way, he does not pass comment.

They sit in silence for some time longer, and Katniss feels a little of her strength return. They will not make any further progress today, that much is obvious. Until their clothes are dry, they're stuck. At least they still have preserved food.

As she gazes into the fire, trying to calculate how many days they can afford to stay put, she hears a low, odd noise beside her. She looks at Snow.

He is laughing.

'What's so funny?'

He turns a bright, genuine smile on her. 'This.' He indicates everything surrounding them. 'What an adventure.'

And despite her hatred of him and her physical discomfort, she finds a smile drag at her mouth. If nothing else, it is good to be alive. Yes, it is good to climb out of a freezing river, and to see the pines reach up around her, and not to give into the dark like she had once so wanted to do. It is good to live.

Then something funnier occurs to her. She gives Snow a sly, askance look.

'You called me Katniss.'

'Hm?'

'In the river. You called me Katniss.'

'Oh.' Bizarrely, he looks the most embarrassed she has ever seen him. He looked more at ease with the humiliation of the rope and the zip-ties. 'It was quicker to yell. I apologize, Miss Everdeen.'

She rolls her eyes. 'I really don't care. Call me what you want. Just not mockingjay.'

'I will call you Miss Everdeen,' says Snow delicately.

She looks at him strangely, and he at her, and once again she does not understand him. He is from another time, another world, another morality. A being whose humanity only seems to accord with hers in brief moments of coincidence. He smiles at her, and then she looks away.

'What a day,' she says, and pulls free her braid without thinking about it. She can hardly go to sleep with her hair sopping wet. She airs the spray of her hair in front of the fire, running her fingers through it, and she can feel Snow watching her every movement. She turns her head sharply, her eyes flints, and scowls. 'Do you have to watch me all the time? Do you have to stare at my hair like a pervert? It's gross.'

For the first time, Snow drops his gaze. 'I apologize, Miss Everdeen. I just find you interesting.' He opens his mouth to speak again, but he seems to struggle for the correct words.

Twice in one day, she thinks. Unusual for Snow.

'I like watching how you interact with the world,' he says carefully. 'I like studying you. It has nothing to do with your being a…' He gestures vaguely, with an edge of something like panic. 'A gamine.'

'A what?'

He bares his teeth. 'An attractive young girl.' He says this like it physically pains him. 'You fascinated me because you beat me, again and again. Because you outwitted me. Because you continued to survive, and triumph, and lead, and show yourself again and again to be extraordinary. That is why you interested me.'

Katniss stares at him. With quiet spite she says, 'If I hadn't been a young girl, I wouldn't have been eligible for the Games. If I hadn't been attractive — or, whatever, vaguely presentable — then I wouldn't have won any sponsorships, and I wouldn't have survived the Games. Nor would they have made me the mockingjay.' She tosses a twig into the fire. 'So don't pretend your weird obsession with me has nothing to do with that.'

Snow is quiet for some time. 'You have a point,' he says. 'But please know that, whatever you might think of my personal ethics, I have no base interest in you.' It is with some difficulty that he meets her eyes. 'I understand you are afraid of me, and I accept that. But I do not want you to see me as a lech.'

'If you rule over a country with the legalized rape of teenagers, then that might just be how some people see you,' she bites back.

'Miss Everdeen,' he says, and his tone is cold granite. 'I was the President. If I was so inclined, I could have taken sexual advantage of every Victor who caught my eye. No one could have spoken against me. But I didn't. I am not interested in that sort of thing.'

'What, are you a eunuch?' she mutters, and Snow breaks into a grand, rich laugh.

'No, my dear. But the ethical question aside, such depravity does not interest me. And if it's all the same to you, I would prefer if we moved away from this subject.' He inclines his head and his gaze flicks elsewhere. 'I do not find it a comfortable topic to discuss with a girl your age.'

She is still unsatisfied, but she relents. So he might not have sexually exploited the Victors. But there is something missing in this account of himself, though she cannot say what it is. That, however, must remain a question for another night. She is utterly exhausted, and she can see the same tiredness in his face, too. The tent beckons behind her, and she realizes that these conversations were inevitable at some point. She's a girl, he's an old man, and he orchestrated her romantic life for a year. Whatever truce they might now share, there is a whisper of something inexplicable and unsettling between them. Something echoed in the ecstasy of her bloodlust for him. Something that lurks in his parade of smiles.

'I want to sleep,' she says firmly, shaking off these thoughts. 'I'm exhausted, it's getting late, and we can't go anywhere anytime soon. You're exhausted too. There's no sleeping bag, and it's freezing. So we're going to share the tent and try to keep warm, alright?'

Snow is very still for some time, and then he nods slowly. 'If you are comfortable with that, Miss Everdeen.'

She shrugs. 'It's a necessity. It's survival. Comfort is irrelevant.'

His smile is wan. 'Yes, I suppose it is.'

'I'll be next to the entrance,' Katniss says. 'I don't like feeling trapped.'

'Understood, Miss Everdeen.'

They shift awkwardly, switching positions, and then Snow climbs in and stretches out at the far side of the tent while Katniss does the same by the entrance. The tent is far too small for two people. They are both pressed into the walls to avoid touching each other. Katniss is spent enough to fall straight asleep, but Snow will not stay put. He keeps moving away from her, first trying to sleep on his side, then rolling on his back, and irritating her with every movement.

'Do you have to keep shifting around?'

'I apologize, Miss Everdeen. I am just… unaccustomed to sharing sleeping arrangements.'

'I should be the uncomfortable one,' she mutters. 'I'm the teenage girl sharing a tent with an old man.'

She can hear the frown in Snow's voice. 'Aren't you twenty, Miss Everdeen?'

She pauses. Calculates. 'Oh. Yeah.' She forgot about her birthday. How time passes. 'You kept track of my birthdays?'

'I keep track of many things, Miss Everdeen.'

Even with the mutual cold and the exhaustion, it's still awkward. They don't know where their bodies ought to go. Katniss likes to sleep with her knees pulled high to her chest, whereas Snow prefers to lie straight and supine, and it is a ridiculous jigsaw puzzle trying to get both of their bodies comfortable without touching. As exhaustion takes her, Katniss no longer cares if her body brushes against his, but Snow always recoils like she's burning him.

Maybe he's disgusted by my scars, she thinks. What she says is, 'You'd think you'd never slept next to someone before the way you keep cringing away from me.'

It's part cruelty, part fishing for information. She knows so little about him, and now his hot and breathing body keeps clashing against hers: his legs against her ankles, his arm against her back, his hip against her backside.

'I have little experience with it,' he says, his voice clipped. 'We sometimes slept in close quarters on Peacekeeper missions, though I never slept well when we did.'

'Didn't you sleep with your wife?' she says sarcastically, but his answer surprises her.

'No, of course not.'

She turns her head and looks at him strangely. 'Why not?'

He looks back at her. 'We didn't like each other that much.'

'Oh,' she says, dumbfounded, then lays her head back down. 'I should've brought a bigger tent,' she says. 'I didn't really think of you as a living human being I would have to transport. I figured I could just put you in a ventilated box like a snake or something.'

She feels his laughter vibrate through her before she hears it.

'I apologize for the inconvenience of my humanity.'

And what an inconvenience it is.

Sleep comes suddenly, and Katniss dreams of the rabbits again. They are going into their warren, trying to flee the winter, and she wants to warn them not to go inside. Don't they know their warren has been filled with biting steel and traps? But she cannot find her rabbit-tongue, and she can only speak like a civilized human, and they do not understand her. One by one, she watches the kits cut up into little pieces…

It is dark when she wakes. The fire is out, and there is a wind. She stirs, elbowing Snow in the chest, and he makes a dull noise of protest as this wakes him, too. Katniss fumbles for the zip in the darkness, then yanks the flap closed and blocks out the wind. She sits down hard in the dark, shivering, and her eyes seek out the black shape where Snow might be. Then she squints as Snow flicks on the flashlight. Outside, the wind shakes the walls of the tent and she can hear the river rage with more enthusiasm.

'It must be the middle of the night,' she says, and rubs her face. 'We slept so long.'

'But we're still alive,' he says, and smiles at her.

She sits cross-legged, which means her knee is wedged against his shin, but there is really nowhere else to put her limbs. Snow lies against the far wall of the tent, his face lit oddly from below, but his smile does not frighten her anymore. That's just how he always looks at her. He is in exceptional disarray, his hair a catastrophe, his beard growing ever-longer, but he remains cool and poised. How she envies that.

'This was such a stupid idea,' she says. 'Abduct you, trek across Panem. Help the rebellion. Take down Coin. I mean, what are you going to do to make a difference?'

'Very little,' he says. 'I do have some useful information, but it isn't going to win your war. I know more about the rebels' activities than you do. It's doomed, I assure you.'

'Then what am I doing out here?' she mutters.

Snow's smile widens. 'Camping.'

She clenches her teeth at that to prevent anything resembling a smile from escaping.

'How much do you know about the rebellion?' she asks.

He smiles privately to himself. 'A fair amount. They are not very good at encrypting their communications, although they have improved over the years. Organization is poor, resources are low. Few are soldiers with actual experience. It's a ragtag collection of those who were unwilling or unable to assimilate into Coin's regime. I'm sure you can imagine the state of a rebellion who are forced to put disgraced military personnel in their positions of leadership, just because there is no one else with sufficient competency to do the job. I am aware Abernathy is high up in the ranks of the District 12 branch.' He shakes his head with a chuckle. 'I am sure you can infer the state of things.'

She can indeed. She has had very similar thoughts herself.

'How do you know all this? Did you spend all of your time in that sad apartment listening to radio broadcasts?'

'Some of it,' he says straightforwardly. 'I had plentiful food and water, and climbing all those stairs was rather difficult, so I avoided going out when I could.' He tilts his head. 'I don't believe I'd left the apartment for over a month when you arrived.'

'So what else did you do with your time?'

'I read. I wrote. I contemplated my memories. I have lived a long life and have a great deal to think about. For exercise, I had my bicycle rotor, which also provided electricity for the computer. That was how I always started my day.'

She scoffs. 'What, you'd get up, cycle until you could turn your computer on, then just stare at me on the District 12 camera?'

Snow's voice is suddenly very soft. 'Yes,' he says. He does not look at her. 'The camera doesn't capture much. But I would see you leave your home to hunt in the mornings. I rarely had enough electricity to watch you return, but… I always watched you leave.'

'That sounds extremely boring.' She snorts with laughter. 'Wow, if I decided to have a lie-in and not go hunting, that must have been a dull morning for you, huh?'

Still, Snow's voice comes incredibly soft. 'Yes. Yes, the days in which I didn't see you were dull indeed.' He tilts his head and then those strange blue eyes meet hers. 'Those were the darkest days, for me.'

His intensity discomfits her. Again, she tries to laugh it off. 'So, what, was staring at me for one minute every day the only human contact you got for three years?'

'Seven seconds.' His blue eyes are warm and gilded. 'That was how long the camera usually captured you. Seven seconds.'

She has no response to that. It is oddly appalling.

'That must have been lonely.'

'I am not a man much inclined to loneliness,' Snow says, his tone light. 'But, yes. It was isolating. But then, you were isolated too.'

'I had Peeta,' she contradicts.

'And I had you,' he says brightly.

She does not know what to say to that, either. Stripped of his power, his excellence, his wealth and his dreadful, shining exceptionality, he is such a terribly sad and strange old man, and he doesn't even seem to realize.

And, in a way, with the departure of her mother and Gale, and the death of her father and Prim, and the hostility of the entire nation to the girl who tried to kill the president, it is almost nice to know that someone cared about her the entire time.

'Miss Everdeen,' Snow says at last. 'Can I ask if you finally accept that I don't want you dead?'

She examines him. His eyes are almost green in the yellow flashlight. Like a deep lake. She recalls the feeling of his hand grasping her back, hauling her to shore. There was a desperation in it. There was fear. Whatever evils this man wants to commit, his obsession with her is real. And there is some soft thread within it.

'Yes,' she says at last. 'Though I don't understand why. You were so keen on killing me before.'

His smile is golden in the light. 'I never wanted to kill you, Miss Everdeen. I had to kill you. That is a different thing. You were a threat to my regime. As you can see,' he indicates the tent, 'I no longer have a regime. Therefore, I have no reason to kill you.' He pauses. 'And I enjoy your company. You are an interesting person.'

He smiles at her, and she frowns back. He looks so comfortable with himself and the insane situation, the top button of his shirt undone, the rough hang of his skin visible in a way she has never seen before. His beard is growing really quite unkempt, softening at its longest parts. She should have let him keep the beard scissors.

'Well, your attempts to kill me aren't something I'm going to easily forget,' she says quietly. 'I have more nightmares about you than anything else.'

'I often dream of you killing me,' says Snow.

Katniss' frown deepens. Dreams, not nightmares. She does not like the differentiation. Perhaps Snow senses this discomfort, because he shifts further away from her and smooths his clothes. On instinct, Katniss jostles the neck of her sweater, which has slipped down and is baring her shoulder.

Not your sweater, she corrects herself. Snow's sweater.

But it doesn't smell much of him, more of mothballs and dust. It can't have been an item that got much wear. And besides, she is getting used to his smell. The roses have all but entirely faded, and now he mostly smells of sweat. She probably smells the same.

'Miss Everdeen,' he says, and his voice is low and gentle. 'Shall we get some more sleep? There are still some hours before it's daylight, and there is no need to waste the flashlight battery.'

She considers the narrow strip of space beside him, then nods. Whatever goes on in Snow's brain, he does not mean to hurt her — at least not anytime soon. She lies down, careful to keep their bodies apart, but the space between them is a fragile margin. The heat of him is stronger than when they first slept, when he was still cold from the river. It is, at least, a preferable alternative to freezing to death.

Snow flicks off the flashlight, and then she feels him shift onto his side beside her. This allows more space between them as their bodies tesselate, but means she can feel his warm, blood-smelling breath against her neck. For a moment she misses Peeta. But then, much more keenly, she misses Prim.

She closes her eyes and sees a parade of dead children. Cannons in the sky. Her own face, beaming with pride, alongside dead child after dead child. Rue. Clove. Thresh. Prim. Prim again, in a different aspect. Prim again. Prim again.

'Snow?' she says in the darkness of the tent.

'Yes, Miss Everdeen?'

She has no question. She only wants to think about something other than Prim. She chews her lip and shifts, and she can hear Snow listening to her.

'Are you alright, Miss Everdeen?'

'Fine,' she says immediately. And then, perhaps because she is bone-tired and sleepy, and because the sensation of Snow's breath against her is so strange, she says: 'I was just thinking about my sister.'

A pause, then a longer, lower exhalation of breath against her neck. That blood smell. It sends a faint shiver of fear up her spine.

'I am sorry,' says Snow. 'It must have been a terrible pain for you to lose her. It must still be.'

Her eyes stare blindly into the dark. 'Do you think about your granddaughter?'

Another pause. The low tide of his breath against her. And then: 'I try to never think about her at all.'