The weather remains unpleasantly misty. Beautiful and silver, yes, but moist against Katniss' cheeks and threading her hair with water droplets. It is by turn too warm and too cold, and she is either shivering or sweating with little comfort in between. Snow does not complain, although she sees the same scattering of water and sweat over his hair and skin. The water droplets caught in his silver hair look like dew on a spiderweb.

Sleeping with him becomes another part of their insane, esoteric routine. She has always preferred sleeping with a bedfellow, and to her surprise Snow is not an exception to that familiar comfort. Once they have accustomed to one another's presence, he takes to sleeping on his back. He does not move in his sleep, unlike Prim, who would wriggle all over the place. She always finds him in the morning in the same position as when he went to sleep, though always awake first, eyes gazing down at her.

He breathes very differently to Prim and to Peeta: deeper and louder. It is one of the very few things about him that she finds loud. Once, Katniss is woken in the night by some trivial nightmare of low-grade panic and she is startled to hear a low, gentle snore beside her. She listens in the dark, paralytic with absurdity and glee, and then presses her hand over her mouth to stop herself dissolving into laughter. This noise, poorly suppressed, wakes him.

'Miss Everdeen?' comes the sleep-thick voice next to her from the dark.

Katniss swallows her laughter. 'You were snoring.'

A moment of silence. 'Oh.' She can hear him swallow. 'I apologize.' There is a trace of embarrassment in it.

'It's fine, I don't care. It's just funny.'

It's impossible to see anything in the tent. But a moment later, Snow's voice reaches her again through the dark: 'You snore sometimes.'

'What? No I don't.'

'Yes, you do.' He sounds a little more awake now and there is amusement in his voice.

'Peeta never told me I snored.'

Snow shifts very faintly in the tent. She feels him brush briefly against her side, the warmth of his thigh and the slight, hard bulge of his hip. He is bonier than Peeta and Prim.

'Mr Mellark is too polite to tell you that.' His voice is slipping into sleep again. 'I, on the other hand, am always honest with you.'

In a few moments, she hears his deep breathing resume. And shaking her head, she gets comfortable once again and drifts into a dreamless sleep.

Out on the road, they talk more easily with one another. Not that Snow has ever had any hesitancy about speaking to her, not since her coronation, but it gets easier for Katniss to talk back. Conversation often springs from the landscape. They discuss different names for the flora, which Snow has learned from books and the military, and which Katniss has learned from her father and folk tradition. Snow teaches her about the geography of the landscape and she is surprised to discover how much she likes listening to his warm, engaging lectures on the shape of the hills and the rising mountains, and on the distant shore. She has never seen the sea.

'What's the sea like?'

'On the one hand, I could tell you that it is simply like a massive lake, with waves bigger than the largest men you've known. On the other hand, that doesn't capture it at all.' She looks at him and the wind tousles his hair. Today he is using a thick branch as a walking stick. 'It is vast. Silver-grey. Blue, sometimes. Lonely. Think of a thunderstorm. Then think of that thunderstorm held within a lake, but it goes on forever. That is the sea.'

She finds she likes it when he talks like this.

Other times, their conversations are less pleasant.

When Snow is in an avuncular mood, it is easy to forget what he really is. There is this sense of Snow, the affable old man, who has a tendency to displace the President who once lived in her head. But every now and then she is forced to remember the reality of him and she chastises herself for being so forgetful. She learns to prick her ears whenever he mentions Peeta or Gale, or anything that might to lead to them. He knows these are sore, weak spots to her. The domesticity of her love for Peeta. Her resentment of Gale. These are things he wants to pick at. It reminds her what he is: her enemy, always. Only muzzled, now. Not safe, not friendly. Just in a cage.

They have what passes for a pleasant conversation about the species of wildflowers that erupt along the edge of the broken road they walk, and Snow tells her their scientific names.

'Taraxacum, the dandelions,' he tells her, indicating a crop of the familiar yellow-headed plants. Katniss pauses to pluck one. 'They are actually related to daisies, bellis perennis. Did you know daisies aren't native to this country?'

'How could I possibly know that?' she smiles, and he smiles back.

'They were brought here from some other place, long ago. They're everywhere now, of course.'

Katniss twirls the dandelion in her fingers. 'What's the proper name for primroses?'

'It depends on the species. The common primrose is primula vulgaris. That one is easy enough to remember.'

'We have lots of those growing outside our house,' she replies, idly twirling her dandelion.

'Yes, I know,' he says. 'I saw Mr Mellark plant them.'

Her fingers clutch a little tighter on the dandelion. 'Oh yeah. I forgot you had a camera there. You already know all that.'

'He planted a great deal of them, I could hardly miss it.' A slight pause, and Katniss knows that he is building that moment of tension before he says something nasty. 'That must have reminded you often of your sister.'

This isn't quite what she expected. 'Yes, it did,' she says honestly. 'That's the point. Something to remember her by.'

'And is that helpful for you? Walking out every day into a memorial to your sister, one that you didn't even choose?'

'Yes,' she says spitefully. 'It was a nice thing Peeta did. It's the kind of thing you do to mourn a sister.'

'Is it really?' Snow seems unaffected by her hostility. If he meant to tug at the thread connecting her and Peeta, he has failed to do so. And then, almost unthinkingly, he adds: 'It's not how I mourned mine.'

This almost makes her stop walking. 'You had a sister?'

His expression remains as bright as ever. 'I did. It's not a fact noted in my biographies. She only lived a few hours. Practically stillborn. Oh, but I did love her.' He breaks into a warm laugh, his smile broad and glittering. 'Such a tiny baby. I could hold her in my hands, and I was only six. She fit inside a shoebox. I remember making her a nest, to try to keep her warm.' He laughs again, and Katniss stares askance. 'Poor thing. She never had a name. But I treasured the days we spent together.'

Something scratches Katniss' brain. 'I thought you said she only lived a few hours.'

'Oh, she did. But I kept the body for a little while.'

Katniss stares. 'You… what?'

He shrugs. 'We were in the midst of a series of air-raids. The adults had far more important things to do than worry about a boy with a shoebox.'

They continue walking, and Katniss has no idea what to say. She pictures some strange, tiny child with big blue eyes clutching a cardboard box of rotting skin, and then she shakes her head to clear that image. That is not something she wants her head, and she doesn't want to think about what it must look like in Snow's.

The weather turns, the drizzle swelling to rain, and a hard wind picks up. It becomes too unpleasant to talk and they can only keep their heads bowed and put one foot in front of the other. When dusk settles in and the road hasn't offered them anywhere protected to camp, Katniss becomes concerned. The wind is foul and a fire would be impossible in such rain, and they are cold enough as it is. But just as she had almost given up hope of a warm, dry evening, the road bends and a crumbling farmhouse appears among the trees. It must be centuries old, stone-built but sagging, and the two of them stop in unison and appraise it.

'Shall we investigate?' shouts Snow over the gale.

'Might as well,' she calls back.

Snow pushes down the rotten door and they pick their way inside. Katniss removes the hood of her cagoule and looks around. It's in disappointing disrepair. The roof has completely caved in, making the upper floors unusable, and the lower floor is filled with pools of stagnant water. Katniss shines the flashlight around disconsolately.

'Not exactly homey,' she says.

'I saw a storm cellar outside. Come on.'

Snow doesn't wait for her leave; he just walks out, confident she will follow. And follow she does, returning her hood, skirting the side of the house and idly noting how easily she does as he asks. Her original plan of dragging him on a rope for hundreds of miles seems exhausting.

Snow locates a couple of metal doors set into the earth, chained and padlocked. He picks up a brick and beats this against the rusted lock a few times with no success, then hands it to Katniss.

'Miss Everdeen, would you try?'

She takes the rock, bends, raises it, then brings it down hard against the lock. This time it breaks and she gives Snow a simple grin, which he returns with his quiet smiles. It's nice to solve problems. It makes her happy.

The storm cellar is dank and one wall is covered with mushrooms that Katniss does not think it wise to eat, but it is relatively dry. It still resembles someone's home, even centuries later. There is a cot bed and shelves of supplies, although she doubts any of these would be edible. A desk holds a long broken radio and electronics too rusted, too old to identify. Some hoarder must have lived here, hoping to survive the end of the world. She lets her flashlight beam pass over the nooks and crannies and it settles on a human skeleton, propped in the remnants of a rocking chair.

'What a miserable place to die,' she says.

Snow goes to the skeleton, then knocks his foot against an empty glass bottle at its feet. 'Well, we can only hope they died drunk and happy, Miss Everdeen.'

She turns her flashlight away back to the supplies. These are strange names and brands from a culture long, long dead. This is a world so old that even Snow wouldn't have a memory of a person with a memory of the place.

'Doesn't look like we can eat any of this,' she says, wondering what a rotting box labelled Ho Hos once contained.

The flashlight beam rests on a glass cabinet and suddenly Snow's eyes light up. 'Ah!' He crosses the room and stops in front of it. The shelves are stocked with bottles of spirits, some amber and some clear and some a bright green. Snow tries the door, which is locked, then yanks it so hard the rotten wood snaps. He removes an ancient, dusty bottle and smiles at it affectionately. 'This will still be consumable,' he says, and shows her the bottle. The bottle declares itself single-malt scotch, oak-aged, Washington smoke.

Katniss looks skeptical. She reaches in and pulls out a larger, cleaner, plastic bottle. The faded label says Old Crow. 'What about this?'

Snow stares at her, then delicately takes the bottle from her hands and replaces it. 'I think not.'

Most of the furniture is in poor condition, but Katniss finds a couple of plastic chairs that are still standing and pulls them around the firepit Snow builds on the stone floor. They dine on eggs and foraged greens, and decide not to risk any of the centuries-old packets of mystery food. Snow talks about the bottle and explains how scotch whisky is made, and that this is something so old that even the Capitol elite would find it difficult to afford. He brings them two beautiful crystal glasses and picks a dead spider out of one.

'Even as President, I wouldn't indulge in something like this very often.' He holds the bottle and smiles at it the way parents smile at newborns.

Katniss speaks through a full mouth. 'Are you an alcoholic?'

Snow gives her a flat, irritated stare. 'Given that I haven't had a drink in years, I doubt it. But I miss having a fine drink, on occasion.'

'Must be hard for you,' she says. 'Giving up all your fine Capitol things to live in that apartment. And then you had to give that up to live in a tent.'

Snow's smile is nostalgic. 'It is true I miss it sometimes.' He shuts his eyes. 'I miss fresh, bean-ground coffee. Whole milk and cream. Tenderloin steak. Pistachio macarons.' His eyes reopen. 'But if you don't think about such things, Miss Everdeen, then you don't miss them.'

She stuffs delicious duck egg in her mouth. 'You sound like you grew up spoiled.'

'I grew up starving during wartime, Miss Everdeen,' he says, a little sternly. 'And I experienced plenty of hardship in the military. I am quite accustomed to ascetism.' His eyes drift back to the bottle and they fill with love. 'But that doesn't mean I can't appreciate the finer things when gifted to me.' His eyes return to her. 'Would you like some?'

'I don't drink much. Being drunk feels like being weak.'

'A sensible axiom,' says Snow, stroking the bottle. 'But once in a while is harmless. Do you never drink at home?'

'Not really. Peeta makes beer sometimes, but I don't like the taste.'

He smiles at her over the bottle. 'Well, Miss Everdeen, I am going to partake. I have no wish to pressure you to join me.'

Katniss frowns. 'You're not going to get drunk, are you?'

Snow tilts his head. 'Would that bother you?'

The idea is deeply unpleasant. Snow is so controlled, safe to be around as long as he is in a good, affable mood. But in his wrath, Snow has killed thousands. What would he be like as a drunk? Uncontrolled, unpredictable, violent? She doesn't want him drunk. It would be like her mother's catatonia, watching the person she knew recede behind something worse, something less human.

He can sense her discomfort. 'No, Miss Everdeen,' he says at last. 'I have no intention of getting drunk. I am a dull drunk.'

She is still unsure. 'Do you get drunk often?'

His smile is a little condescending, but it's warm. 'No, Miss Everdeen.'

The bottle is uncorked, which makes a satisfying noise that Katniss enjoys. Without asking, without thinking, Snow hands her the cork and she accepts it. It's an inexplicable gesture. But she wants to feel its texture, to study the inky stamp on its side, to smell it, and to roll it between her palms. Somehow, he knew she would take a small, simple pleasure in this.

Snow pours himself a small glass. It's a tiny amount compared to what she's used to watching Haymitch drink.

'Wait,' she says as he raises the glass to his mouth. 'Actually, I'll have a little.'

He does not mock her indecision. He only nods and smiles, replaces his glass, then pours her an even smaller amount.

'That's hardly any,' she says, and Snow laughs. He pours a tiny bit more.

'It's very strong. Forty-seven percent, ninety-four proof.'

Katniss doesn't know what that means. Haymitch's white spirits usually came in unmarked jugs. Snow hands her the glass.

'Take it slow, Miss Everdeen.'

She glares at him and raises the glass. Snow inclines his own to her politely, and they both drink.

Katniss lowers the glass from her lips. 'That is absolutely disgusting.'

A brief pause, and then Snow bursts into laughter. She blinks, caught off guard. He laughs and smiles often, but this is the hardest show of humor he has yet shown.

'I am sorry, Miss Everdeen,' he says, wiping away a tear. 'I do not mean to laugh at you. That was just…' He shakes his head. 'You are drinking the rarest whisky in existence, and that's your judgment. It's just…' Another smile tugs his mouth. 'It's endearing.'

Katniss rolls her eyes, then takes another sip. 'Do you get used to the taste?'

'I suppose so,' says Snow, drinking. 'I like the taste, myself.'

Katniss examines her glass. The whisky tastes foul, like what she imagines gasoline must taste like, but it burns her throat in a weird, pleasant way, too. Whoever would have thought she'd be drinking whisky with the President?

She takes another sip. 'We could play a drinking game,' she suggests, mostly in jest.

To her surprise, Snow smiles. 'Alright.'

'What, seriously?'

'I like games, Miss Everdeen. I would prefer chess, but I will consent to a drinking game. Seeing as I am a seasoned drinker and nearly twice your body weight, I am at a serious advantage.'

'Oh.' She considers. She doesn't even know many drinking games. There was one the teenagers would play in the Hob, one Gale liked to play and which Katniss sometimes watched and never joined. It seems embarrassingly infantile a game for Snow. And yet it could be useful to her. A way to gather information. 'I only know the one,' she says.

Snow's smile glints in the lamp light. 'I am open to anything, Miss Everdeen.'

'Okay. Well, it's pretty straightforward. It's called "Never Have I Ever". You have to say, "Never have I ever…" followed by something you either have or haven't done. If you have done it, which means it's a lie, you have to down your drink. If the other person has done it, they down theirs.'

Snow's smile broadens. 'Let's make it take a sip of your drink rather than downing it. Either I will have to pour glasses in droplets, or you'll be unconscious within a few minutes.'

'Fine.' She drums her fingernails against the glass and waits for him to pour them both half-full glasses. This is a good idea. If Snow keeps to his promise of never lying, it's an excellent opportunity to fish for information. She decides to start with an easy one. She fixes Snow with a cool smirk. 'Never have I ever murdered thousands of people,' she says. 'Now you drink, because that is something you have done.'

Snow smiles. 'Understood, Miss Everdeen.' He takes a slow sip of his drink, then it's his turn. He considers for a moment. 'I have never—'

'No, you have to say, "Never have I ever." That's the point.'

He laughs at this. 'Of course, Miss Everdeen. Never have I ever broken someone's heart.'

Shame and guilt flood through her. She immediately regrets the game.

Has she broken both Peeta and Gale's? Just one? Whose?

Scowling, she drinks. Snow, she notes, does not even touch his glass.

'Never have I ever had my heart broken,' she counters, and does not drink.

With interest, she watches Snow raise his own glass to his lips. 'You are made of harder stuff than some, Miss Everdeen,' he comments. 'Never have I ever killed someone's pet.'

She screws up her face at him. 'Of course I haven't done that. What a weird question.' But her gaze momentarily darkens as she remembers Buttercup. That scrawny kitten that she tried to drown, and which she would have let die a dozen times. He lives still, she knows, scavenging the outskirts of District 12. Peeta leaves food out for him sometimes and, once every few months, she finds the stupid cat inside their home. Looking for Prim. Waiting for her to come home.

Her eyes meet Snow's again and he is studying her, reading her insides. Then he gives a lazy, elegant shrug, then drinks. Katniss wishes she had chosen a different game.

But this is useful, she thinks to herself. This is how to learn what he is.

What does she want to know about him? Everything and nothing. There is President Snow, who she knows by violence and cruelty and propaganda. Then there is Snow, who she knows by the flavor of the meals he cooks and by the rhythm of his breathing asleep beside her. What else does she know? He tortured her with graceful cruelty. He loved someone, once. His family are dead. He gifted her white roses. He genuinely believed in the nightmare that was Panem under his rule. He attempted suicide yet views it as a philosophical experiment. She has no idea what to ask. It's like opening a box of writhing insects and trying to alphabetize them.

'Never have I ever…' She considers. Start at the beginning, with childhood. That's simple. 'Cheated on an exam,' she says.

Snow, unimpressed with the question, takes a drink. She does the same.

'Never have I ever cheated in a relationship.'

She glares at this. 'Well, I haven't either. If you mean that me kissing Gale counts as cheating, it doesn't. I wasn't even really with Peeta then.'

'I am not implying that you cheated,' Snow says, smiling. 'I was only curious how you conceptualized it. After all, as I recall, Mr Hawthorne kissed you. He sort of grabbed you.'

'Whatever,' she snaps. 'If you've ever cheated, you have to drink.'

'Cheated, no, I haven't,' says Snow simply. 'I have had open arrangements with lovers, but never cheated. I'm afraid I've been boringly faithful, Miss Everdeen.'

The word lover in his mouth is bizarre and unsettling, so Katniss shifts subjects. It's the same word he used for Peeta. It's odd to her not only because it's Snow talking about relationships but because it implies sex. Neither Peeta nor Gale have been her lovers — not successfully, at least.

She thinks of something funnier. 'Never have I ever kissed a boy,' she says, and takes a sip.

Snow's head tilt implies a kind of bored disappointment. Then he drinks.

Her mouth falls open. 'Seriously?'

'I was in the military for almost ten years, Miss Everdeen. There are few who didn't at one point or another.'

This absolutely stuns her. Snow with another boy. She can hardly imagine him with a woman.

'Don't you think that sort of thing is immoral?'

His eyes are dark. 'Do you?'

'No,' she says quickly. 'But you're… I don't know.' She tries to explain what she means, and in the end all she can say is, 'You're so… tightly buttoned.'

Snow raises his eyebrows. 'Miss Everdeen, I have no moral issue with homosexuality. People of the same gender, of different races, of different ages, of consanguinity… I could not care less what kinds of couplings people prefer. I am surprised that you would be offended.'

'I'm not!' she says defensively. 'Just surprised. I didn't know you'd ever been a…' She stops herself short of saying something offensive, the kind of words that everyone threw around in District 12. She does not want him to think her ugly and vulgar.

'It wasn't an issue of desire,' says Snow. 'It's just the sort of thing that happens on occasion when a group of male soldiers are kept together for long periods without female company. I never initiated, and I did it only when it would have seemed churlish to decline.'

'Men actually wanted to kiss you?' she says skeptically.

'Yes,' he says, surprised at her surprise. 'People told me I was attractive in my youth.' A playful smile catches his mouth. 'They called me "pretty".'

She bursts into raucous laughter. 'If you say so. Anyway.' She points at his glass. 'It's your turn.'

Perhaps it is his irritation with her provinciality, but there is some of that cold, dry cruelty hoaring his smile. 'Never have I ever fucked a man.'

Katniss stares. Snow does not drink. She looks away, her face blushing crimson. She raises the glass, puts it back down, then raises it again.

'I don't know,' she says.

'You don't know?' He does not even try to hide his delight.

'Is that why you wanted to play this game?' she says, her voice cutting. 'To ask me about my sex life?'

Snow seems to reconsider something. 'No, Miss Everdeen,' he says carefully. 'I was just curious.' He tilts his head. 'You dislike it when I use profanity, don't you?'

Still, her eyes avoid his. 'You can say what you want. I don't care.'

'I will refrain. It truly is not my goal to make you uncomfortable.'

'And yet you want to ask about my sex life,' she bites back.

His eyes glitter. 'I said it wasn't my goal. I didn't say I would never do it.'

'Whatever. Never have I ever…' She tries to think of something clever, but nothing good comes. How is she supposed to divine anything of Snow? 'Never have I ever stolen anything,' she finishes lamely and drinks.

Snow, also bored with this question, drinks.

'You need to try harder, Miss Everdeen. That's the point of the game.' Both of their drinks are almost empty and so he refills them, that rich liquid shining darkly by the firelight. 'Never have I ever killed someone I cared about.'

She wants to strike him, to shake him. She pictures Finnick, gnawed to pieces by monsters, and her mercy kill. She drinks quickly. Snow, however, does not.

She stares at his untouched drink, then his uncanny eyes. 'Really?' she says sarcastically.

Snow shrugs. 'I have killed many, but cared for few.'

Her hatred for him bubbles inside her. She rubs her fingers against the glass, studying the shimmer of whisky within, and she tries to think of something that might hurt him. Stick with childhood. Think of something good.

Then it comes to her. A vicious little smile tugs her mouth and her grey eyes fix on his. 'Never have I ever been beaten by my father.'

Slowly, a huge, revolting smile crawls across his face. She has never seen him look so happy. So proud.

'Very good, Miss Everdeen,' he crows, and he drinks. 'You understand the game.' He smacks his lips. 'Never have I ever hated my mother.'

Now it is Katniss' turn to shrug, unimpressed. 'I don't feel anything so strong for my mother as hate.' She turns the next question over in her mind, choosing her words carefully. 'Never have I ever been bullied at school,' she says, and does not drink. She certainly wasn't poplular, but most kids were too afraid of her to start anything. Snow, too, does not drink. 'Really?' she says.

Snow's smile is nostalgic and eerie. 'All the other children were terrifed of me, Miss Everdeen.' He pauses, considering the extent of the information he wishes to divulge, and his nostalgic smile grows. 'When I was nine years old, I witnessed an older boy sexually assault someone I liked.' The smile grows and grows. 'I put broken glass in his food.'

Katniss leans back, hard. 'Oh,' she says, for lack of anything better to say.

'You would have done the same,' he smiles, 'if it were Primrose.'

She has no response to that idea. 'Well, Prim is dead,' she says shortly.

Snow inclines his head as if to acknowledge her discomfort and shift topic. He smiles at her across the firelit gloom. 'Never have I ever said "I love you", and it been a lie.'

He does not drink. Neither does she. Snow stares at her, hard. Then she drinks.

'You're so fucking sneaky,' she says. Well, if they're going to be cruel to each other, she might as well take it up a notch. 'Never have I ever watched someone I loved die,' she snaps, and downs her drink. Snow does the same, though more slowly.

He pours two new fresh, healthy glasses.

'You ought to go more slowly on this one, Miss Everdeen,' he warns. 'It's your third.'

'Don't tell me what to do.' She thinks about what else she can say to hurt him. Then she remembers the one thing that seemed to provoke his sharpest discomfort. She smiles with lush cruelty. 'Never have I ever raped someone.'

Snow does not drink. But for a moment, just a moment, something like indecision flutters across his features.

'You had to think about that one,' she says.

'I did. And the answer is no.'

'It's not good that you had to think about it.'

'I think about a lot of things, Miss Everdeen,' he says gently. 'And the answer is no.'

With the whisky sliding through her and her hatred caramelizing, Katniss hooks on a sneer. 'Never have I ever killed an innocent person.'

Snow raises his glass, she does the same, and they share a semi-sarcastic toast. Both drink.

Then Snow says: 'Never have I ever let someone die to save myself.'

She allows herself a long exhalation at that, then puts her glass to her lips. 'I was the mockingjay,' she says. 'A lot of people died to keep me alive.'

Before she has a chance to tip the whisky into her mouth, Snow raises his own glass. They both drink.

The cruelty comes more easily with the alcohol burning inside her. He deserves to be hurt, after all. What other little horrors are shored up inside his skull?

'Never have I ever been raped,' she says plainly. Snow raises his eyebrows. Neither drink.

Snow smiles at her with something a little more genuine. 'Never have I ever been in love.'

That's an easy one. They both raise their drinks, and then Katniss considers. Has she? Has she been in love? Is that what she feels for Peeta?

As she considers, Snow drinks deeply. His blue eyes burn like the whisky.

'If it takes you that long to decide, Miss Everdeen, the answer is no.'

She glares, then drinks a mouthful anyway. 'This is a stupid game. What would you know about love? How could you have room in your heart to love anyone? It's full of corpses. Dead bodies and spiders.'

He is gazing into her, strange lights in his eyes, some expression she cannot trace. 'I believe you love Peeta Mellark. I do not believe you are in love with him.'

'What does that even mean?' She feels the words come a little more lopsided than she intends.

'I know what love means to me,' he says. 'But what does it mean to you? An indifference to which you have become accustomed?'

'You're intolerable,' she snaps. 'You want to know what love is? It's stability. It's support. It's loyalty.'

He smirks dismissively. 'Yes, if you're a labrador.'

She wants to smash the glass into the smiling skull of his face. 'And what do you think love is?'

Snow's eyes are on fire. 'Coherence. Knowledge. Joy. Revelation. Sense.'

She scrunches up her face. 'You are so weird. Why are you so weird? Is it because you shot yourself in the head? Were you normal before?'

The smile he gives her is one of feathery delight. 'I assure you I was exactly the same before and after the bullet lodged in my skull.'

Katniss decides she has had enough of Snow for one day. She stumbles to her feet. 'It's bedtime. I'm going to bed.' The room revolves rapidly around her and the floor seems to climb to the ceiling. For a moment gravity takes her, then two firm hands catch her arms. Snow's face revolves into her drunken view. 'Let me go.'

'You were about to fall, Miss Everdeen. You drank too much.'

'I'm fine,' she seethes, but upon his hands freeing her she stumbles again. This time, when the hands catch her, she makes a concerted effort to remain upright. 'I'm fine, Snow. I'm not that drunk.'

'Miss Everdeen,' says Snow, amused, not letting her go. 'You are, if I might say so, extremely drunk.'

With inebriated difficulty, she studies his face. There is a flush to his cheeks and his smile is less controlled than usual. More of his hair is out of place than he would usually allow.

'You're drunk,' she observes.

'A little,' he concedes. 'My tolerance is not what it was. But you need to lie down.'

'I don't want to lie down with you.' There is a weird terror in her voice.

Something flashes through Snow's expression but it is gone as soon as she sees it. 'There is a cot bed, Miss Everdeen. You can sleep on that. I will take the floor. Come along.'

With slow, clumsy, drunken reluctance, Katniss allows herself to be guided across the room and to the cot. She is unaware of whatever transition occurs between sitting on the cot and lying upon it, but the next thing she knows Snow is covering her with the sleeping bag. She wriggles her toes. They feel oddly unburdened.

'Did you take off my boots?' she slurs.

'I did. They are by the cot.'

'Don't…' she manages. 'Don't touch my feet.'

Snow regards her, unable or unwilling to hide his amusement. 'I won't, Miss Everdeen. I was only trying to make you comfortable.'

Unconsciousness is already clawing at her, insistently dragging her into the dark, but stubbornness keeps her anchored.

'Why are you doing these things?'

He seems far away from her, tall and distant and silver. 'Your discomfort is unnecessary, Miss Everdeen. Will you drink some water?'

Between blinks, Snow is at her side once again. Somehow there is a canteen at her mouth, which Katniss drinks from obediently. It feels good, nice and clean and clear in her throat. She tries to pull her mouth away, but Snow presses the bottle again to her lips and she continues to drink, spilling some, annoyed but too drunk to complain.

'Alcohol dehydrates you,' comes Snow's voice from above her. 'Your hangover will be less if you drink water now.'

The canteen leaves her mouth and Katniss wipes water and spit away on the back of her hand. The room continues to carousel around her. She has only been drunk once before in her life, after the announcement of the Quarter Quell, and now she remembers how unpleasant it can be.

'I have placed a bucket by the bed,' comes Snow's voice. 'If you need to throw up, you can use that. Alright?'

'I'm not a child,' she mumbles.

'I am aware of that.' He laughs quietly. 'You haven't been a child in a long time.'

'Not since I had to kill other children in the Games.' The room spins, and with it spins the memory of blood.

'You were still a child then.' Snow's voice is soft. 'But now…' That laugh again. 'Yes, now you're a killer.'

Katniss wouldn't be able to respond to that one even if she was sober.

In the moments before drunken unconsciousness takes her, a question occurs to her, dredged up from some strange depths.

'Hey… Snow?'

He is shaking out the bedroll onto the floor. 'Hm?'

She pushes herself up a little. Head lolling a bit, eyes two little fires, hair a loose tide (who loosed it? Did he loose it? No — the band is around her wrist). 'Are you being nice to me… acting like this… because I got all your family killed? And I'm what's left?' She moves her head a little closer to him and drops her voice to a mocking whisper. 'Are you going to be my new dad, Snow?'

There is a curious stillness in his expression. A dislike. A withdrawing.

'Never jest about that, Miss Everdeen. Use the bucket if you need to throw up.' His voice is clipped. 'I have left you both water canteens by the bed. There are also some dry crackers there, if you need to eat.'

She tries to roll her eyes but she lacks the coordination. 'Sorry,' she says, attempting sarcasm and falling short. But then her eyes close for a final time and behind her eyes blooms a film reel of staccato images: Snow's cruel face when she rode in her chariot at the Quarter Quell, Cato's ruined corpse, that dead child in the road with the face of Prim, Snow's kindest smiles, and the huge mass of the blue ridge mountains, swelling forever into the sky.

Long hours of sleep pass in a blink, and then nausea wakes her. It rises slowly through her body, almost pleasantly, and then the sensation overwhelms her and she sits up sharply.

'Oh…'

She pauses, turns, sees the bucket in the dawn light, then immediately hangs her face over the rim. She sweats and heaves. This might be the worst she has ever felt. Being stung by hallucinogenic wasps was a more pleasant physical sensation.

'Miss Everdeen?'

Something touching her hair. She tries to cringe away but every movement douses her in more nausea.

'Don't,' is all she can say.

'I don't want you to get vomit in your hair, Miss Everdeen. Shall I tie it back?'

'Stop touching me.' Even in the sea of her nausea she can cling onto the flotsam of her hate for him. How dare he? How dare he touch me?

The hands leave her hair immediately. 'Of course.'

She trembles and quakes, trying not to moan, and she feels Snow watching her. How she wishes he wouldn't. She wants to tell him to go away, but forming any words is difficult with the sickness clogging her stomach.

'You could put your fingers down your throat,' Snow suggests. 'That will trigger the vomiting.'

Nausea rises and falls within her. 'Shut up.'

The sickness is interminable, but eventually the waves of despicable nausea crest to the point that her stomach contracts and vomit surges up her throat, filling the bucket with the water she drank, now acidic, and pieces of dinner. She immediately feels immensely better.

She collapses back on the cot. Her skin is clammy and she is too cold, but otherwise she feels relief.

Staring at the mold-thick ceiling, she does not look at Snow when she says, 'Sorry. I'm sorry about what I said last night. About your dead family. That was rude.'

Her first real apology to him. How strange.

'That's alright, Miss Everdeen,' he says. 'You were very drunk.'

Blinking, still sick-feeling, she inclines her head to look at him for the first time by the light of the morning and recoils.

President Snow! screams her subconscious.

He must have found some scissors and a razor in the night, because all of his untidiness has been neatly clipped away. The shock of his hair is back to its usual length and his beard, which had become so huge and fluffy, is neat and sharp again. His moustache is perfect and his teeth smile beneath it with a too-familiar cruelty.

'Are you alright?' he says, and she realizes what she mistook for cruelty is really just pleasant amusement.

'You cut your hair,' she says bluntly.

'I did. While you were indisposed I investigated the house and found a shaving kit. I took the liberty of adding the scissors and a razor to my pack, if you will allow that, now you know I am not plotting your murder.' His head tilts. 'Are you alright, Miss Everdeen?'

'You look the same.' She is too tired and too sick to put her emotional guard up. 'You look like you did when you were President.'

'But I'm not the President anymore,' he smiles. 'I just wanted to be tidy. I prefer it.' His eyes drift to Katniss' own hair with a look of exasperated despair. 'You have vomit in your hair, Miss Everdeen. I did warn you.'

Automatically, her fingers go to her hair and pull free a chunk of undigested food, which she flicks into the bucket. Fear quivers around the remnants of her nausea. She feels for her knife still strapped against her hip. Snow has removed her gun and placed it neatly on the little stool beside the bed, and next to it leans her bow and quiver.

How could she have been so stupid? He could have killed her. She let her guard down so spectacularly and so incidentally. Play a drinking game with the former President. What a truly idiotic thing to do. He could have slit her throat and she would have deserved it for such stupidity. Haymitch chose her for this mission because he respected her competence, and now she needs her prisoner to hold back her hair while she vomits? If she had acted so casually in the Games she would have been dead within hours.

But she is not dead now. Snow did nothing to harm her. He saw her to bed and covered her with the sleeping bag. He brought her food and water and the bucket.

He took care of her.

And now, Snow's pale blue eyes are examining her with their cold, academic curiosity. 'Are you alright, Miss Everdeen?'

'I'm fine,' she says flatly. 'What else have you been up to?'

A luminous, oddly childish smile lights his face and he glances across the room to the chairs. There is a pile of books and one lies open on the top.

'I found some books,' he says unnecessarily. 'They had some unusual ones.'

'Oh.'

What absurdity. While she lay drunkenly insensate, President Snow found some books, gave himself a shave and a haircut, then came back to read while she drowsed. From confusion more than anything else, she helps herself to one of the crackers.

'Do you want to get ready to leave?' asks Snow, and she shakes her head.

'I need to rest longer. I feel awful.' She indicates his pile of treasures. 'You… read your books.'

He offers a polite, if sarcastic, bow. 'Whatever you say, Miss Everdeen.'

At first, Katniss spends her time with her eyes closed hoping sleep will transport her through the worst of the sickness. But as she starts to feel a little better, she starts to watch him read. It's strange. Her mother never read. Prim only read her schoolbooks. Peeta isn't much of a reader, even though their new house in the Victors' Village has plenty of books, none of which she understands. She ignores them, too. They always seemed a stupid joke from the Capitol, a way of reminding you that you don't deserve the life they had bestowed upon you.

Snow reads with absolute absorption. It's like watching Gale hunt, only more so. He barely moves. His eyes skirt over each line, back and forth, and he is perfectly silent, not mouthing the words as he goes. Then he finishes a page, turns it, and repeats the process. His gaze never falters. She can hear his fingertips turn the page and imagines the texture of his fingers, the way they're a little rough like birch bark, and she imagines the thick, different texture of the pages against them. The sound of heavy, turning pages is pleasant in her hungover queasiness.

'What are you reading?'

'Petrarch's sonnets,' he says. Then, at her confused expression, he clarifies: 'Love poetry.'

She rolls her eyes. 'Oh, how boring.'

'You would say that,' he smiles. 'You have never been in love.'

She lies back on the bed and studies the ceiling for a while. Her foot hurts, the one with the frostnip, but she doesn't feel up to investigating it. The smell of vomit tickles her nose and she wishes Snow were in another room, not here, smelling her vomit and sweat.

And so they pass the hours, Snow with his book, Katniss with her sickness, until she is sufficiently recovered to set out once more. They pack up their supplies, leaving the bucketful of vomit, and Snow's gaze says a mournful farewell to the whisky. Then they return to the road.

They hike in silence for some time. It is still cold and wet and Katniss' mind wants to turn over the questions exchanged the night before. Some were surprises, some were not. Snow's childhood still seems an impossible, faraway thing to her. A myth, a rumor. It is so difficult to believe he was not born the age that he is, that he did not spring forth from the history books a ready-made tyrant.

But he was young once, as she is. And he loved and he lost those who he loved. He must have felt terrible pain, as she has — as she still does. Yet he chooses not to think about it. He chooses not to think about the dead bodies that litter his past as he chooses not to think about pistachio macarons and fresh coffee.

She looks at him. He looks back at her and smiles one of his infinite cheerful smiles.

'Snow?'

'Miss Everdeen?

She takes a breath. 'You really don't want to kill me? After all that happened? After trying to kill me for so long, and after I got your family killed? You don't want vengeance?'

Snow shakes his head. 'Vengeance is worthless. As I told you three years ago, I take life when I have reason to. Vengeance is irrational. I have nothing to gain from your death, and the world would be worse without you in it.' His gaze darkens by the faintest shade. 'I already thought you were dead once.'

'When?'

'You took refuge in some building that the Peacekeepers destroyed. They announced your death.'

'Oh, I remember now,' says Katniss. 'Caesar called me Panem's "once favorite daughter".' She pulls a face of disgust. 'Strangers pretending to be my father. Disgusting.'

'They told me you were dead.' Snow's voice is deep, smooth obsidian. 'I didn't much like it.' He gives a little breath of laughter. 'Now that was on occasion on which I got drunk.'

She blinks at him. 'Really?'

'Yes.' He laughs again. 'My aide found me passed out on my desk, as I recall. And then she told me you were alive.' His eyes turn on Katniss and she flinches with the blinding joy that blazes within. His smile is a spotlight of madness. 'I have never been happier.'

Words fail her. 'Well,' she says eventually. 'You immediately sent mutts to kill me after that.'

His smile softens and darkens and saddens. 'I had to keep trying, my dear. Again and again, I had to try to kill you. And you survived every time.'

'Not everyone survived,' says Katniss. 'A lot of people died to protect me.'

There is no regret in his expression, only a light, open melancholy. Exactly like a faded, pressed flower petal. 'Such is war, Miss Everdeen.'

'All the best people died,' she murmurs. 'And the worst ones survived. Coin. You. Me.'

'I agree with you on Coin,' says Snow. 'I will not argue with you about me. But you deserved to survive. This world was made to have you in it.'

'If you say so,' she breathes. Snow's insanity can be exhausting. 'Encouraging words from my mortal enemy.'

His laugh is full of joy. 'You are so much more than my enemy, Miss Everdeen. You were my equal. My challenger. My foil. And now you are my protector.'

She sighs. 'Sure. As long as you don't start thinking that we're friends.'

'Oh, goodness, no,' says Snow, and there is a real, dark terror to his voice. She looks at him strangely. 'We would never be friends. I killed nearly everyone you've ever known, I tortured your loved ones, I tormented you… No, there is too much blood between us. We could never achieve something so prosaic as friendship.'

'Then what is it you want from me?' she says. 'I'm not stupid, Snow. I know how you act around me. You enjoy my company. If it's not friendship you want, what is it?'

'Fellowship.' His head tilts. 'Harmony. Resonance.'

'What on earth does that mean?'

'It means there are echoes of you inside me… And of me inside you.'

Her mouth falls open, aghast. 'Because you traumatized me,' she manages. 'You hurt me. Over and over again, for years, you hurt me. First the Games, then forcing me into a relationship with Peeta, then the Quell, destroying my home town… And the war…' She can barely keep track of all the horrors he has inflicted upon her, and yet he walks beside her, pleasant and smiling, like these are merry memories they made together.

'We were at war,' says Snow gently. 'We no longer are. I regret nothing that I did to you; no, it was all necessary to try to win the game. But the war is over now, and I give you my word I will not hurt you again.'

The breeze ripples over her skin and she shudders. Is that something she can believe? The conductor of her worst nightmares, no longer wanting to hurt her? All her terror, all her anxiety: all of it gone?

'Wouldn't that be a nice thought?' she says, and she manages the sarcasm. 'I had this neighbor, back in 12, before the war. Her husband drank. When he drank, he beat her. My mother treated her wounds sometimes, when he hurt her real bad. My mother would try to tell her to leave him. But he would show up at our door and promise her he would never do it again. And you know what? It never stopped. No matter how much she wanted to believe him and no matter how many times she went back to him, he beat her again.' Before her, the mountains heap up in huge, dark-blue drifts. 'I'm not naïve, Snow. You'll hurt me again.'

He has no reply to this at first and the only sounds are their feet on the rough road beneath them. When he finally speaks, it is careful and soft.

'I am not some common drunk, Miss Everdeen. I did not hurt you out of sadism, or some impotent need to exercise power over a poor, abused girl. I hurt you because you were my equal and my enemy. And you survived everything. It delighted me.' She does not look at him as he speaks. She does not understand him. 'Do you understand that difference? I wanted to defeat you, yes, but… I also wanted to see you strive. To defeat me.'

'Which I have,' she says bluntly. 'I have defeated you.'

Snow's smile blooms like a sunflower. She has never seen a happier, stranger man. 'Yes. Yes, you have!' he exclaims. 'Fantastic. Just fantastic.'

Donald Sutherland passed away the day before posting this chapter. I think I will be able to continue writing and posting, but it's not impossible I will take a hiatus. I am greatly saddened by his passing.

Snow's dead sister is referenced in The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (novel).

Snow's comment about love is taken from Donald Sutherland's discussion of Snow's feelings for Katniss: 'You can't say that he fell in love, but… his life gained some semblance of coherence, knowledge, joy, revelation, sense. Things were put together; it wasn't just frittering out.'