Katniss' waking thoughts break upon her in bits and pieces. Her feet are cold. The fire is dead. Her nose is numb. President Snow is alive.

This last thought is what rouses her and she bolts upright, draws her knife, and waits, frozen. Her eyes flick around the forest. There is no sign of anybody, just the orange tent, unnatural and tumorous in front of her.

Is he inside there? It's absurd that he should be here with her, in the woods and the dirt. A man of smiling bones and pristine electricity. It cannot be real. She must have dreamt it.

Standing silently, knife in hand, Katniss grips the zip of the tent and yanks it down.

A pair of bright, silver-blue eyes meet hers. 'Good morning, Miss Everdeen.'

There he is, just as she left him. He is sat awkwardly, legs bent, hands tied behind his back. The bedroll provides some protection from the rock-rough nylon base of the tent, but he cannot have spent a comfortable night. And yet he looks charming and cheerful as ever, smiling up at her with foreign joy.

But that vibrant blue gaze is ringed on one side by the bruise she gave his temple the day before. It is now horrific: deep black in the center, rainbowing into indigo and blue at the edge. There is a yellow-green verge starting to show. She did that.

Snow knows what she is staring at. 'Does the sight of the bruise trouble you, Miss Everdeen?'

'No,' she says, a little too quickly. 'I've seen worse injuries. Peeta lost his leg in the Games, you might recall.'

'Yes, I do,' he says mildly, and adds no further comment.

She glances over the interior of the tent, as though expecting him to have assembled some terrible weapon in the night as she slept, but there is nothing inside except a spray of muddy grit. He is just an old man in a tent, an old man whom she has beaten.

An old man who murdered thousands of people, she reminds herself.

'I'm going to look for some food,' she says. 'You stay in the tent.'

'I must use the bathroom first, Miss Everdeen.'

She groans and rubs her palm into her temple. 'Again? Seriously?'

'Believe it or not, I have to do that multiple times a day,' he smiles, always amusing himself.

'Fine.' She sheathes her knife. 'Me first. Then I'll untie you.'

He bows in polite assent, and Katniss stalks off to find somewhere private. She locates a crop of bushes some distance from the tent and pauses, making absolutely sure Snow isn't coming after her, then relieves herself. She wonders idly if living in the wilds will be a terrible trial for Snow. She is accustomed to the woods, though she always returned home to a warm bed and a working toilet. Still, the Games taught her plenty about pissing in bushes and wiping her ass with leaves. She is rather annoyed that Snow does not seem more put out by his fall in station. He is a man who lived in the utmost Capitol luxury, and now he has to sleep in a tent and use a tree for a toilet. Why is he not more affected by this?

She rests a hand on her knife as she approaches the tent again but she can see Snow inside, sitting and waiting for her, like some savage wolf that only pretends to be a well-trained domestic pup.

'I'll untie you now,' she says, and Snow obligingly turns his body so his wrists are easy for her to reach. Cautiously, she climbs into the tent and immerses herself in a heady odor of salt and blood. The rose-smell is gone. The scent of Snow's skin is stronger than yesterday, filmed with sweat, and she can see smudges of dirt on his clothes. Untying him means touching her fingers against his once again, but this no longer provokes the same uncanny terror as yesterday. His hands against hers are still human hands. He's just a man. He is not a literal monster.

'Thank you, Miss Everdeen,' says Snow once his hands are free, and Katniss notices there is more blood around his wrists than before. The ligature marks are keen and purple-red, and there is an ooze of red on the underside.

'You should put some antiseptic on your wrists,' she says. 'Infection can kill you much quicker than starvation out here.'

'You could always stop tying me up,' he ripostes, pulling on his boots, but there is a smile in it. It's all just a game to him. He really has nothing to lose.

This time she hangs back as he goes off into the bushes to relieve himself. She would rather they allowed one another privacy when possible, and she can easily track the shimmer of his silver hair through the trees. He can't escape from her easily.

As ever, he makes no attempt to escape. He returns to her smiling and agreeable, like they are old friends meeting for a good meal. Which, in a perverse sense, is almost true.

'I'll look for food now,' she says. 'Our supplies won't last, and if there's anything edible around here I want to make use of it.'

'Of course, Miss Everdeen. Shall I assist you?'

'No,' she says, loaded with bile. 'You stay here.'

He pauses in their little clearing. 'Alright.'

'But I don't want you running off.'

'I won't run off.'

'I can't trust you.'

His amusement is starting to look pained. 'Miss Everdeen, what do you suggest? I would greatly prefer if you didn't tie me to a tree.'

'It's what you deserve,' she snaps.

'It's not about what I deserve. What I deserve is a complicated topic.' And then, quite casually, he sits on a boulder. How did he contrive to find the only comfortable boulder in the clearing? 'Consider, first, the death toll. Over the years, I calculate that I am directly responsible for the deaths of at least twelve thousand people. You might also choose to add the deaths for which you hold me indirectly responsible: those dead from famine, poverty, poor working conditions… your father…' His eyes flash and his smile grows big and reptilian. 'What punishment would I deserve for those twelve thousand deaths? A life for a life? To die twelve thousand times? Since that is impossible, what do I deserve? What pain? What torment?'

He speaks with melody and poise. It is easy to let him trick her like this, to slide comfortably into his web. She does not know how to climb out again.

'You deserve more suffering than could ever be inflicted on you,' she answers levelly.

'Exactly,' he says brightly. 'And if that is the case, dealing out what I deserve is impossible. Thus we can dispense with the notion of retributive justice and consider alternatives. Perhaps I should try to repent for my crimes? Offer my services to the families of those I harmed?' This notion clearly amuses him. 'Well, I doubt they would accept it, and as I am unrepentant, any such services would be insincere. Now, from a utilitarian perspective, we should consider that I am now powerless and harmless, and thus any punishment of me is pointless. How, then, could I best be of use?'

'You could best be of use by shutting up.' She wants to hit him again. 'And you're not harmless. You might look it, but you're not. The things you say.' She shakes her head. 'I don't know what you deserve. Not yet. But I'll figure it out.'

'Miss Everdeen,' he says, and there is a touch of the overly-patient schoolteacher to his voice. 'Have we not established that what I deserve is irrelevant? What matters is what you want. And you do not want to hurt me.'

'Yes I do,' she says automatically.

'You want to hurt President Snow, the powerful man who warred against you,' he says levelly. 'But me? A helpless old man in your care?' He shakes his head. 'But we do not need to argue the point. If you disagree, prove it. Hit me again.'

Smile curving his face, eyes glittering, he inclines his head to offer her his unbruised temple.

There is no point considering it. She has no desire to hit him again, even if it would wipe that smug grin off his face.

Katniss slowly exhales.

'I am going to look for food,' she says. 'And I don't want you running off. Give me your boots.'

Real annoyance surfaces through his self-satisfaction. 'I only just put them back on, Miss Everdeen.' But he does as instructed, untying them again. Katniss watches those quick fingers, a little fascinated by his movements, and accepts first his left and then his right boot. She suppresses a smirk at his socked feet.

'Are you going to carry those with you?' he asks as she knots the laces together.

'Nope.'

Katniss hangs the boots around her neck, trying to ignore their peculiar fragrance, then walks to a likely-looking tree. She tests her fingers on the bark, then begins to haul herself up, step by step, feet finding footholds, fingertips reading the trunk like it's written in her mother tongue. Once she's ten feet up, she grabs a branch, then she swings her body on top of the branch and hugs it like a possum. She stabilizes again, then positions her feet and carefully rises, hands outstretched, balancing expertly. Then she removes the boots from her neck and hooks them neatly over a higher branch, at least fifteen feet from the ground.

Then she descends. Upon facing Snow again, she greedily anticipates his annoyance.

He looks ecstatic.

'That was fantastic,' he says. 'Truly. You are remarkable.'

Anger crashes against an involuntary warmth at his praise. 'I climb a lot of trees,' she spits. 'Anyway. I'm going to look for food.'

There she leaves him, staring up at his pendulous shoes like they're a sign written in the stars.

He is a bizarre man.

Katniss returns to the camp with a miserable offering for breakfast: nettles, chickweed, and a smattering of hickory nuts. To her surprise, Snow has already relit their fire, though she refuses to comment on this. She retrieves his boots, then allows him to borrow the antiseptic and bandages from the medical kit for his wrists. And so they settle down for the morning: her cooking breakfast, he tending his wounds. The stew is pathetic with only nettles and chickweed, and upon cracking open the nuts she is dismayed to find all but two are rotten. She tosses the rejects aside in disgust.

'Not the right time of year for nuts,' she mutters.

'We shall have to hope you find some animals to kill,' discourses Snow pleasantly, wrapping his wrists in a thin layer of gauze. 'It would be unfortunate to starve to death out here.' He says this like starving to death is the equivalent of a bit of bad weather.

They eat their sad breakfasts, one nut each and the stew, Snow from the saucepan and Katniss from the cup. For all Snow likes to talk, she has a thousand questions he could answer that she doesn't want to put to him.

'Do you think we could dispense with the zip-ties?' Snow says at last. He raises his bandaged wrists, which are already a little red-stained from the blood beneath. 'I am finding this irritating. And as you say, infection is a killer out here.'

She glares at him. 'I don't want you running away.'

'So you keep saying,' he says quietly. And then, suddenly, he changes the subject: 'What happened to the Hawthorne boy? You said he was in the rebellion?'

'Yeah,' says Katniss. 'Gale is still a soldier.'

'Interesting,' says Snow. He spoons damp nettle into his mouth without complaint. 'And your mother?'

Katniss does not want to discuss this. She can smell Snow's game. 'She's fine,' Katniss says. Gale and my mother. People he hasn't seen on the camera. He knows they don't come to District 12.

'And Abernathy joined the rebellion,' Snow observes. 'So it's just you and Mr Mellark.'

'Do you have a point?' she snarls.

'I do.' He nods to himself. 'You must feel very abandoned.' He looks around them, at the low hanging branches of the pitch pines. 'But I am not going to abandon you, Miss Everdeen.'

She stares, aghast at him. 'I wish you had!' she shrieks, and she hears a rustle of feathers as birds take off at the noise. 'I wish you hadn't been obsessed with me! I wish you hadn't forced me into the Quarter Quell! What even was the point? It stopped nothing. Saved no one. The war happened anyway, and you lost.'

'You were equally as obsessed with me,' Snow counters. 'As I said to you in the greenhouse, that was exactly my folly. We spent too much time watching one another.' He glances around at the forest and heaves a kind of pleasant sigh. 'Well, there isn't much to do now except watch each other, is there?'

She shakes her head in bitter exhaustion. 'I don't even know why I'm bothering with this stupid trip.' And then, at a lower volume, she adds: 'It's not like killing Coin will make my sister any less dead.'

Snow allows her a moment of fire-crackling quiet. 'It must be difficult to look after someone for so long, and then have them disappear from your life.' He smiles a wild, insane smile. 'Now you're looking after me.' The light in his blue eyes seems to cool. 'It makes a change from playing housewife for Mr Mellark, I'm sure.'

Katniss pulls a face. How he loves to get back to the subject of Peeta. 'Come on. Enough chitchat.' She starts to repack the cooking supplies and is mildly surprised to see Snow start to take down the tent of his own accord. Well, fine. He can be useful if he wants to be.

Is that the utilitarian solution he proposes? If she cannot punish him, should she make use of him somehow?

She does not know.

The ground spreads out before them at an incline. They continue on the tarmac, spread with leaves and ancient, abandoned litter. Between the trees one glances the mountains, those big dark green rolls of topiary, and Katniss wonders if anyone crosses those on foot anymore. She has never been so far from home, but strangely it feels more like going deeper into home. There was the meadow, and then there was the forest, and beyond that was freedom. That is where she is now.

She would prefer it if Snow were not at her side.

They walk on for some silent hours, and Snow seems to respect her preference for an absence of conversation. This does, however, mean her brain is not distracted by anything. Talking about Coin means thinking about Prim, and her thoughts drift back to her sister as though there is some low current in her brain, dragging everything back to this one subject. Prim's smile. Her golden hair. Her beautiful eyes. The explosion of her body into fire.

'So,' she says, trying to scrub away the image of Prim's burning face from her brain. It's not a real memory — Katniss saw only the explosion — but her brain continues to conjure it. 'If you weren't intending to kill me or ally against Coin, what exactly was your plan in setting up in District 12?'

'As I said in my greenhouse,' says Snow, his breath a little stretched from exertion, 'we had so much to discuss. It's unfortunate that you and I never got the opportunity to speak more during the war.'

'I tried to talk to you,' she says with spite. 'I called you. I asked you to take me instead of Peeta. You said no. We could have talked then.'

'That was not a sincere offer, as you are well aware.' He clucks his tongue. 'You were simply stalling. I was offended, to be frank. I never lied to you, and yet you saw fit to try to deceive me.'

Her face contorts with disgust. 'You kidnapped Peeta! And Johanna, and everybody! And you tortured them!'

'Miss Everdeen, you and your friends were fighting in a war. You enlisted of your own volition. I tried to keep you out of it, if you recall. I told you I did not want us to be in a real war. You chose to ignore that. And so I had to use more extreme methods. All is fair in love and war, after all.'

Love. It's a subject he so enjoys invoking with her. It's the things we love most…

'What you did to Peeta — the hijacking — wasn't fair,' she says at last. 'It was… cheap. Nasty.'

Snow laughs roundly. 'Perhaps, Miss Everdeen. But highly effective.'

She stares at the back of his head with loathing. 'Effective? What, are you stupid?'

Snow looks at her with surprise and is evidently insulted. 'I'm sorry?'

'You spent, what, weeks brainwashing him to kill me, and now I'm dating him.' Dating. That's one way to put it. 'That seems like a total failure.'

His lips twist in amusement. 'An interesting point. Though not for the reasons you think.' The trees part and a huge dark hill slumps over the landscape. 'I had no intention of Mr Mellark ever killing you. I only wanted him to hurt you. Not physically — although that was a useful side effect. I wanted you to understand what sacrifices love demanded. It weakens you. Mr Mellark was your weak point; that much was clear from the Games.'

'If I hadn't had Peeta, I would have died in the Games.'

Snow suddenly stops walking. 'Do you really believe that?'

Katniss pauses too, looking back at him. His eyes are bright and cold, seeing something inside her that she herself doesn't see.

'Yes,' she says, but there is uncertainty in it. 'His romance narrative is what made people care about me. What got me sponsors. And he kept the careers away from me.'

Snow shakes his head with the same slow threat he showed at his mansion, after his toast. 'That boy cheapened you. You would have won the Games without him. You would have found a way.'

'Then I would have had to kill him.'

'Yes,' says Snow through a slow smile, as though nothing gives him greater relish than the idea of her murdering her closest comrade. 'And you would have been the stronger for it. I told you, if you recall. We are destroyed by the things we love. Mr Mellark was your weakness, as was Mr Hawthorne. They were easy to exploit. If you hadn't grown so attached to the boys, then you would have been far more difficult to manipulate.'

She thinks about picking up a rock and braining him with it. 'What, was that a lesson you wanted to teach me? Don't have boyfriends, because some lunatic might kidnap and torture them?'

Snow breaks into deep, delighted laughter. 'Yes, something like that. Look.' He extends his hand and she follows it. A creek glitters between the trees. 'Water. We should refill our canteens.'

They pause at the creek and Snow teaches Katniss to use his water purifier, which acts by slowly sucking up the water through a series of filters. He first explains how to use it, then he explains the mechanism. Katniss watches his fingers gesture between the different levels of filter and she thinks, bizarrely, that he could have been a good teacher. Her own schoolteachers were all pretty poor and she knows so little about the world outside of coal and survival and the Games. What a different, better world it could have been if Snow had gone into education rather than politics.

Katniss deposits clean water into their canteens and they both drink deeply, then refill them. Katniss is not overly concerned by the specter of thirst; there are many rivers and creeks and springs crossing the landscape, but if they ever get trapped somewhere it will pose a problem.

They return then to the road, making brisk progress, and thankfully Snow doesn't offer any more questions or comments about the value of Katniss murdering Peeta. They stop for lunch and Katniss again allows Snow to eat his share, even though he doesn't deserve it, and as they walk on the afternoon sun starts to make everything pleasant and golden. Light shines through the leaves in a way that brings Katniss singular pleasure and relief, and it puts her in such good spirits that she actually skips over a fallen branch in the road. She can almost forget about Snow.

Her peace and her enjoyment of the beautiful afternoon is suddenly broken by a noise. Something that doesn't belong. Something mechanical. She stops dead and Snow does, too.

'Do you hear that?'

Snow shakes his head. 'What do you hear?'

She listens a moment more, straining to identify it. Then she realizes, just at the moment that Snow hears it too.

'Hovercraft engine,' he says.

'Into the woods,' she says, grabbing Snow's arm without a second thought and running into the tree line. They duck under branches, Katniss ahead, her ears tracking both the approaching engine and the pace of Snow's steps behind her. A bramble-rich thicket offers cover and she barrels into it, ignoring the cuts and thorns. 'Hide. Now.'

He obeys without question, rushing after her, and they both head into the depths of the thicket. They drop to their knees in a hollow among the thorns, panting quietly. Katniss is aware of how silent Snow is beside her, so animalistic, like a cat watching for something it cannot determine as threat or food.

A hovercraft appears above them, obscured by topiary, crawling lazily across the sky. It is extraordinarily loud, not like what she was used to during the war. Katniss finds her hand going to her gun. It won't help, of course, not against a craft that size, but she can't help it.

The craft crosses leisurely and Katniss spies the Capitol symbol emblazoned on its underbelly, ornamented with Coin's 13. Who else would be coming after her?

It does not see them. It continues to cross the skies on its mysterious trajectory, and after it has disappeared from sight they wait for the sound to fade, too. Even when the forest is silent again, Katniss still waits a long time before speaking. Snow seems to be waiting for her to give an all clear.

'It's gone,' she says.

'Coin,' says Snow. 'She knows we're out here.'

This induces an acute sadness in Katniss. Coin has wanted to kill her for a long time, so it shouldn't bother her that she's stepped up her game now that Katniss has joined the rebellion. And yet the knowledge that she is not truly free out here, not truly alone, upsets her. It was supposed to be just her and Snow.

'Dammit,' she says.

'Some hovercrafts are equipped with heat-seekers,' Snow comments. 'Not many, though. They're expensive. We lost most of them during the war. That one was an old vessel, a KX-429. That was why it was so loud. She isn't sending her best. That's good. Either we're not a top priority, or this is the best she's got.'

'If she flew a cloaked one while we were walking the road, we'd be dead,' Katniss murmurs.

'Indeed. Perhaps that's the end of the open road for us.' He turns and smiles at her, and Katniss cannot imagine what emotion he's feeling. Nothing seems to faze him.

There is nothing she likes about this.

'Fine,' she says, and crawls out of the thicket. 'The woods it is.'

Katniss keeps her bow drawn and an arrow notched. If they don't start finding game soon, their food supplies will be exhausted within the week. Although they've already eaten lunch today, her stomach is gnawing at her. The packets aren't enough calories, not with the amount they're exerting themselves. And there are only eight packets remaining in Snow's pack, along with her supply of nutrition bars. Even if they drop to quarter rations, it won't last and they will exhaust themselves. And Katniss suspects that Snow needs to eat more than she does. He is old, but he is not frail. He is almost twice her size and he eats everything she gives him. They could both die out here.

'Walk more quietly,' she snaps at Snow.

'I apologize, I did not know I was walking loudly.'

'You are going to frighten away everything edible.'

'Perhaps you should go ahead. I lack your hunter's training.'

'So you can run off?'

'Miss Everdeen!' Snow stops walking, laughing, and Katniss stops too. She does so despise him. 'We are in the middle of the woods. I have no weapons. I have no map. Why on earth would I run away?' He looks at her with a kind of affectionate exasperation. 'I am not going anywhere.'

'I don't trust you,' she says, bitter and sharp.

He regards her for a long time. When he speaks, his voice is clipped and precise. 'Abernathy might have abandoned you, as did that useless Hawthorne boy. But I promise you, Miss Everdeen, I am not going anywhere.' His smile glitters. 'I never lie to you.'

'Haymitch did not—' she begins, then catches herself. Don't let him rile you. She yanks on the end of her braid and grinds her teeth. 'Fine,' she says at last, and dumps her pack. 'Wait here. Don't wander off. I'll see if I can land anything substantial.'

'I shall remain in this very spot, Miss Everdeen,' he smiles. 'Would that you had let me bring a book.'

He is intolerable, she thinks as she strides off. Only, that isn't quite it. It is easy to feel hate for him, and easier still to feel anger, and yet he is not quite the monster she expected. Nothing about him is really what she imagined.

There were really only the two opportunities for them to get to know one another before: his visit to her study, and her visit to his greenhouse. Her coronation was too brief, and their video call too public and manipulative. The Snow in her study was a man who terrified her and who seemed to take pleasure in doing so. The Snow in the greenhouse was avuncular and polite. Some people only show their true colors once they're in power; Coin is a perfect example of that. But which of the two is the real Snow? Both of them? A man who would delight in terrorizing her, but equally delight in sharing a pleasant conversation?

She bends beneath branches and seeks out animal trails in the leaves, and she thinks of their last conversation. He said he was sorry. I wanted to tell you how very sorry I am to hear about your sister. She was being manipulated, of course. He needed the rawness of Prim close to the surface. Needed her bleeding to poke at the wound.

And yet they had agreed not to lie to each other. So does that mean it was true? Was he really sorry?

Thoughts of Prim make her injuries smart, and Katniss tries to shrug them off as she scales a tree. She isn't sure what she expected Snow to be like, but he seems to have picked up just where they left off. That final conversation among the roses, smiling at her, open and eerie and happy to see her.

She draws an arrow and runs the feathers through her fingers. She does not understand him. Fortunately, she does not have to.

She only wishes he understood her a little less well.

Katniss returns to the camp with a turkey on her back and a grin on her face, and Snow matches her cheer.

'Good hunting?'

'Excellent,' she says, dumping the carcass. She is surprised to see that Snow has built and lit a fire, with a neater pyramid of sticks than those that characterize her own. There is even something gently simmering in the saucepan.

He senses the question in her gaze.

'Mint and pine tea,' he explains.

'I didn't know you knew how to build a fire.' She sits on one of the logs Snow has dragged in to serve as a seat, and then begins the arduous process of plucking the bird.

'Miss Everdeen, this is not my first time camping in a forest, I assure you.' He sits with her and pours her a cup of tea, which Katniss reaches for, and then she hesitates. Snow looks at her with genuine exasperation. 'I am not trying to poison you. For goodness' sake, Miss Everdeen.' He takes a sip first, then offers again.

Thirsty and resentful, and aware that if Snow really isn't trying to kill her then she's being abominably rude, Katniss takes the cup and sips it from the opposite side. She can see the faint, damp imprint of Snow's lips on the other side of the cup.

'Thanks,' she says warily, then places it down on the ground. She'll wait and see if she has any adverse reactions.

As she plucks the turkey, Snow returns to the task he was absorbed in before. She watches, frowning. He is chipping at a small piece of wood with a sharp stone, though to what purpose she cannot say.

'What are you doing?'

'Trying to whittle,' he says. 'Usually I would use a knife for this, of course, but I am content to make do.'

'You know how to whittle?'

'A little. As I said, this isn't my first time in a forest. I spent a lot of time out here in my youth.'

'You had a youth?' she says sarcastically, and he smiles.

'I did. I was your age once, you know.'

'Hard to believe.' She watches his hands. They are so unlike the hands of anyone she has ever known, so much older, thick-knuckled, but deft and confident. He moves his hands in ways she's never seen hands move before. 'So when were you out in the forest?'

He looks at her with a smile that anticipates good conversation. It annoys her a bit. 'I came here first when I was a boy, younger than you are now. I spent a couple of months with the Peacekeepers. Then I returned to the Capitol for University and an apprenticeship as Game-Maker.'

'There's a Capitol University?'

'Oh yes.' He considers. 'If things had gone differently — if the war had been averted, perhaps — you might have studied there.'

She stares at him. 'District people do not go to university. Even Victors.'

'I could have pulled some strings.'

'Like you pulled strings to get me killed in the Quarter Quell?'

This time, his smile has a faint madness to it. 'And yet you survived. But I digress.' His fingers work the stone against the soft wood, coaxing some shape she cannot recognize out of the inner bark. 'I enjoyed my studies, but I found Game-Making frustratingly academic. None of my colleagues really knew what they were talking about. The man who designed your Game, Seneca Crane, had never even been further out than District 4. Dreadful.' He blows some woodchips from the thing in his hand. 'So I went back to the Peacekeepers. I spent ten years with them, travelling the country, learning to shoot, learning to kill, learning to hurt others and learning to withstand pain myself. I spent some months in forests not all that far from here. I recognize much of the flora.'

'Learning to hurt others?' she says, turning the turkey carcass in her hands. 'You mean torture?'

'Indeed.' The stone in his palm eats again and again into the wood. 'I was very good at it.'

She feels the familiar fear and revulsion rise inside her. 'You're evil.'

'No, Miss Everdeen, I am not.' He stops his whittling and holds up the finished product. Katniss stares. Though a rough and clumsy beast, it is obviously a bird. A moment later she realizes it's supposed to be a mockingjay. Snow smiles at his creation. 'What do you think? This flint is a far more awkward tool than to what I'm accustomed, but I am not displeased with the outcome.' He sets it down on the log beside her. Katniss stares at it like it might bite her. 'Anyway. I shall see if I can locate anything to complement the turkey.' He stands slowly, palms pushing on his thighs to help him rise. 'If, that is, you give me leave to do so, Miss Everdeen.'

She is a little caught off guard. 'Okay. Sure. Don't go too far.'

'I will remain within shouting distance,' he says, and then strolls off between the trees, completely at ease.

The wooden mockingjay regards her with blank, peculiarly lifelike eyes. Katniss picks it up and turns it around so it isn't facing her. She doesn't need another pair of eyes on her.

It is good to eat real, fresh meat. Snow has found chicken-of-the-woods in addition to another heap of mint, and they gorge themselves. Snow eats neatly but voraciously, and this confirms Katniss' suspicions that he would have struggled more than he admitted on a diet of her leftovers.

They sit quietly after, full and sated, neither particularly relishing the idea of covering another five or ten miles before sunset. Katniss sips at the tea Snow made and begrudgingly admits to herself that it probably isn't poisonous. Snow stares at her, as he always does.

'Why are you always staring at me?' she says, annoyed.

'There isn't much else to look at,' he answers. 'You didn't let me bring a book.'

'You like to watch me,' she says. It's an accusation and a statement.

'That is true. Ever since you won the Games, I've been watching you. Does that trouble you?'

'Yes,' she answers immediately. 'All of the horrible things you did trouble me. You broke into my house and left a rose there just so I would know that you could. So you could feel powerful.'

Snow laughs richly like this is a fond shared memory. 'I wanted you to know I could reach you at any time. Not just physically, but...' His eyes glitter. 'Emotionally.'

'Did you leave that yourself or did one of your flunkies put it there?'

'I left it myself,' he says, and his voice is gentle.

'So you were in my house alone?' She doesn't like this.

'I was.' He considers this memory, holding it in his mind like a specimen of a strange and beautiful butterfly. 'It smelled of leather.'

'Did you just go in the study?'

'No. I went in every room.'

Her throat constricts. 'My bedroom? Prim's?'

'Primrose's only briefly. But yours, yes. I was curious. I recall its untidiness. Mud on the floor. Bed unmade. Clothing all over the place.' His smile is odd. Almost paternal.

She raises her head and speaks savagely. 'Did you go through my underwear?'

Snow's face softens with offense. No, not offense: hurt. 'Of course not.' He pauses. 'Miss Everdeen, my interest in you has never been prurient. It is important to me that you understand that.'

'Oh sure,' she says, laughing. 'If you hadn't needed me and Peeta to pretend to be happy newlyweds, you'd have done to me the same as you did to Finnick Odair. I'm sure I would have fetched a good price.'

There is silence, and eventually she looks at him. There is a strange agony in his features.

'What do you mean, Miss Everdeen?'

She shrugs. 'You let Victors get raped for money. Finnick told everyone. You know that.'

'That is a complicated subject, Miss Everdeen.' Snow interlaces his fingers. Her eyes focus on a single freckle on his knuckle so she won't have to look at his face. 'I know you like to think of me as the sole arbiter of all that happens in the Capitol, indeed in all of Panem. But this is simply untrue. This country is a system. It has a thousand cogs. My job is to keep the system running. If you pull out one of those cogs, it falls to pieces. Many people demanded that Victors like Mr Odair be made sexually available to them. There was a system in place to enable such exploitation. And it was useful. It prevented a caste of people who could amass immense social power from doing so. Yes, I allowed it.' He stares into the fire, his expression clouded. 'But I would have never have allowed that to happen to you,' he says. 'At least, not after the Quell.'

She tries to take in his gaze. It does not meet hers, but the fire instead. Flames, red and gold, shiver in the blue of his eyes.

'Why? You hated me.' She scoffs. 'I would've thought you'd enjoy the idea of Capitol perverts passing me around.'

Those blue mirrors, flame-filled, flick to hers. 'No,' he says, and the word is like an anchor dropping into a deep sea. 'I would never have taken pleasure in that.' His tone lightens. 'And I never hated you, Miss Everdeen. You irritated me at first. You were a nuisance. I did want to kill you, in the beginning. But hatred? Never.' What a private, cryptic smile he wears. 'Indeed, after the Quell, I grew quite fond of you.'

'I'm flattered,' she says with flat loathing.

'I would not have sold you to, as you say, Capitol perverts. You were too… useful. Too notable. Had you been the Victor of the Quell — which, in hindsight, I believe you would have been — then there would have been a different future for you.' He shakes his head with faint disgust. 'I would not have allowed them to touch you.'

'If you could have protected me, then you could have protected Finnick.'

'But I don't care about Mr Odair,' Snow says, as though it's the simplest thing in the world. He shrugs. 'There are thousands of beautiful young men and women who prostitute themselves in the Capitol. Mr Odair was valuable to people. I allowed his value to be exploited. This kept certain people content and maintained order. Maintaining order and stability is the job of a President.'

'Maintaining rape? That's your job?'

'And killing,' he says, completely unfazed. 'Miss Everdeen, did you think rape would cease to exist in my absence? Do you have any idea what chaos there is under Coin? The number of children who have simply disappeared from the system?' He shakes his head. 'I grew up during the Dark Days, Miss Everdeen. What little government we had was focused entirely on the war effort.' Blue and flame meet her eyes. His voice is black granite. 'I watched children raped to death in the streets. You might despise the actions that occurred under my reign, but do not make the mistake of thinking that overthrowing me abolished them. Indeed, it made it far worse.' His gaze seeps into her, and he wears a strange, secret smile. 'This is to say nothing of Coin's personal appetites.'

'And what of your personal appetites?' she spits. 'Which Victors did you keep for yourself?'

His face turns to her, thick with firelight shadow, and she leans back involuntarily. There is a wrathful disgust in there that repels her.

'I don't fuck children, Miss Everdeen.'

Fear sparks in her. She doesn't like the sound of profanity in his mouth, or the wide stare of his eyes, or the gentle flex of his fingers. Her hand goes to her knife. Snow sees this and considers, and then he relaxes.

'It is a complex issue, Miss Everdeen,' he says finally, his voice affable once again. 'Yes, as President, I was the most powerful person in Panem. I was also an administrator. I ran a system. In places I would try to improve that system, which largely concerned eliminating epidemics, blights, quashing rebellions… Liberating Mr Odair from a life of voluptuous luxury was hardly high on my agenda when certain districts were tearing themselves to pieces in uprisings and famines.' He shrugs. 'People cared about Mr Odair's case because it was lurid. That is all.' He rolls his eyes, genuinely irritated about something. 'This nation has teetered on the brink of anarchy for decades. And Mr Odair draws viewers by complaining about, what? A couple of Capitol bigwigs involved with bizarre fetishes or committing incest? Don't you find it terribly infantile?'

Katniss' lips are pursed and cruel. 'Kids were raped and killed,' she says, holding onto this clear, simple thought, 'and you could have stopped it.' She speaks with clarity. 'I think you're evil.'

'You are permitted your opinion. Children died, and I could have stopped it. Children were raped, and I could have stopped it.' He tilts his head at her. 'And when, Miss Everdeen, Coin proposed another Hunger Games for the Capitol children, what did you do?'

Katniss feels cold steel go through her. The New Hunger Games, instituted by Coin, voted into existence by her. She only voted in support to trick Coin into trusting her; she had no intention of ever letting them actually happen. But Coin survived, and the Games happened anyway.

Coin had promised there would only be the one. A final, symbolic Games.

But the next year, there was another. And the year after that.

And all of this is her fault.

'You voted for them, didn't you?' he murmurs, his voice that jaguar purr. 'Twenty-three dead children. And the Victor, a fifteen-year-old girl, the daughter of the former finance secretary. I watched clips of that child on the news, riddled with trauma. I could see her collapse in on herself. I know Coin sold her to whomever would take her.' He pauses again, letting his words sink nice and deep into Katniss' brain. Then he regards her with a strange peace. 'I knew that child. She went to school with my granddaughter.'

Then Katniss realizes. That photograph of a child in Snow's desk drawer. Of course Snow's granddaughter had been reaped; Johanna insisted. Katniss hadn't even watched the Games. How could she? She was mourning Prim. She had no space in her heart for more dead children. She does not even know which of the tributes was Snow's granddaughter.

'Your granddaughter died in the Games,' she murmurs.

A cruel smile flourishes on Snow's lips. 'Should I lay the charge of that death at your feet, mockingjay? She was twelve years old. You were once her hero.'

Katniss is emptied of words. She feels nothing. She is vaguely aware that her hands are trembling.

Suddenly, Snow's expression completely changes. 'Oh, my dear Miss Everdeen,' he says. 'It was not my intention to upset you. I was only trying to make an academic point.' He pours them both a full cup of tea, but Katniss' stomach has iced. 'I only mean to say that life is complicated. As I once told you, terrible things happen in war. But they happen in peacetime, too. Terrible accidents keep at bay even more terrible accidents. And all we can do is hope that we and our loved ones are spared.'

He sets Katniss' steaming cup down in front of her again, but Katniss doesn't touch it. Then she grasps the cup, empties it into the soil, and stands.

'We have to pack up,' she says, sniffing deeply to obscure any trace that she might want to cry. 'It can't be even three PM yet. We have miles to cover today.'

Snow looks at her for a moment, his eyes interested in something, though in what she cannot say. Then he nods once. 'Of course, Miss Everdeen.'

They pack in silence. Katniss tries not to think about dead little girls, but how can she not? She tries to picture Snow's granddaughter, but her brain only throws up pictures of Prim. Prim on fire. Prim dying confused. A little girl in the Games, just like Rue, and little boys too, and as she feels an incredible sorrow threaten to take her entirely, she hears Snow quietly whistling to himself, as though he had not a care in the world.