They both drop. Snow crawls between the cots, Katniss does the same, and the noise of gunfire rattles through her at tremendous volume and disintegrates her mental state. She's back in the Capitol. Peacekeepers are trying to kill them. They'll take Gale. Prim. She has to save Prim.

'Your gun,' shouts Snow as gunfire yells into the room and shatters glass, splinters countertops, and tears holes in their possessions.

Katniss looks. Her gun and bow lie within reach. Her brain isn't working properly.

Snow sees the hesitation and the terror in her face and he looks exasperated. 'Give me your gun. I'm useless otherwise.'

It all crashes inside her: the sound of the gunfire, the smell of District 12 burning, the texture of broken skulls underfoot. Even as bullets seek them out and send pieces of wood flying, something in her brain warns her to stop.

That's President Snow! Don't do it! Don't give him your weapon!

Blithely, she ignores the voice and reaches for the handgun, sliding it across the floor to him. Snow grabs it instantly. Her own hands close on her bow and arrows as she hears the click of the loading gun. She can do this. She is made for this.

It all happens so quickly. The door slams open and there are two figures in it, guns drawn, helmets opaque, looking around. It takes three of Snow's shots to drop the first; the bullets don't immediately pierce his helmet. It is with needlepoint precision that Snow sinks three bullets in immediate succession into the same spot, boring through the protective material. The next gunman dodges with panic back to the safety of the porch and two of Snow's bullets sail into the air. Then the gunman reappears and a third bullet lodges in his helmet, but it does not penetrate.

Six shots. He's out of bullets.

The second figure ducks back behind the door and as he does so something sings past Katniss' ear and something sharp kisses her cheek. A bullet?

They're bad shots, she registers vaguely, notching a second arrow. Untrained men. Otherwise, they'd both be dead.

The figure reappears and Katniss has only a split second to register a dozen impressions: ill-fitting armor, awkward movements, short body, skinny, a gun held in two shaking hands, a fumbling foot. Katniss doesn't need to think as she aims. A decade of shooting and killing written into her muscle memory is more than enough to rule her reactions. She doesn't think about the fact that she's killing someone to save Snow, or which of them deserve to live. She sights the kill, she shoots. Her arrow appears in the man's neck as though there is nowhere else it better belongs, like it has always been there.

She draws a second arrow. She is ready to kill again.

There are no more gunmen. She remains poised and panting, her arrow a shining tooth, Snow's gun a black mouth, and they wait until the silence overwhelms them and they know no one else is coming.

Silently, in unison, they both stand and, still crouched, pad as silently as possible to the open, now broken door. There is nothing outside. No people, no hovercraft.

'How did they find us?' she whispers.

'Smoke from the fire, maybe,' says Snow. 'Another scouting party. We got very lucky. We need to leave now.' His eyes scan her body with mechanical efficiency.

'Are you hurt?'

She shakes her head. 'I don't think so. You?'

'Unscathed.' His eyes flick to the side of her face. 'You're bleeding.'

Without asking, without any of the polite caution he usually shows for her personal space, Snow steps forwards and grabs her jaw in his large hand. He tilts her head and examines her like a fruit he thinks too ripe to purchase. His gaze carves her open.

'I'm alright,' she says. She wants to pull away but those fingers are tight around her jaw and bleeding cheek.

Then he releases her and he's normal again, just Snow, just that old man she's grown so comfortable with. But her mind is ringing with the memory of the man who threatened her in her study, who pulled aside her hair and whispered into her face at her coronation.

Snow's attention turns to the bodies on the floor. 'You killed one,' he observes.

She looks at the smaller Peacekeeper, the arrow standing at a proud and stupid angle. Slowly, like she's in a dream, Katniss drops to her knees and slides back his helmet.

Staring eyes. A young, acne-ridden face. He is looking at something, the eyes almost focused. Blood burbles from his neck. Is he braindead yet? Is he in pain?

'He looks so young,' she breathes.

'Coin lowered the conscription age to fifteen,' says Snow dismissively. 'They're desperate for troops after the war. Uprisings all over Panem to put down.' She can hear him watching her stare at the dying, dead body. 'It bothers you, doesn't it? When young people die?'

Katniss watches a steady stream of blood edge towards her bare, bandaged foot. She yanks the arrow from the youth's face and sees his eyes roll back.

She straightens. 'It reminds me of the Games,' she says stiffly. 'And of Prim. And Rue. Dead kids, everywhere.'

'These were no innocent children,' Snow counters. 'They attacked us.'

'Yeah, and who knows what sort of a choice they had?' She breathes out slowly. She is in shock, she thinks. At least that will help keep her calm. 'That's the first time I've murdered someone in… well, since the war.'

'Killed. It's not murder if it's an enemy combatant,' says Snow casually, as though the difference between killing and murder is a dull, overthought academic problem.

And then Snow's eyes meet hers and they are twin blue furnaces. His smile widens with a sickening mix of pride and glee.

'You killed for me,' he says.

'Yes,' she says, her mind uncertain, her body thrumming with adrenaline and violence. Her eyes, grey and silver-flecked, meet the blue of his. 'It was necessary.'

'It was,' he says. 'You were fantastic. Impeccable.' Pride completely overwhelms his voice. He pauses, hesitancy in his mouth. He is never hesitant. And then he says, 'If I had a daughter…' He cuts himself off, thin-lipped, both pleased and displeased with something. 'Well, I would be proud.'

A weird feeling goes through her. There is a sick warmth at the sentiment. This terrible man who watched her grow up might be the closest person in her life to a father. And her real father, who she loved so dearly that her heart still burns with his loss, is dead because of Snow. There is anger at his words, too: resentment that he should dare to insert himself into her life like this. And then there is something else unpleasant she cannot place. A curious sense of lonely disgust, directed entirely inwards. She cannot comprehend that.

Her eyes drop to his hand, which still holds her gun.

'My gun,' she says, and holds out one hand expectantly.

Snow calmly returns the weapon. His fingers brush hers and the grip is warm from his skin. She places it in her belt, the heat from his hand pressing against her hip.

'We need to get moving,' she says. 'It's not safe here anymore.'

The gunfire has wrecked some of their belongings: the sleeping bag is riddled with holes, Snow's spare sweater has been reduced to threads, and one of Katniss' socks seems to have been scared into nonexistence. They pack quickly and load their bags with as much canned food as they can carry. Enough to get them to that ruined city? Perhaps.

Richmond. What will it be like? What did cities used to be like? What lives did people live before people like Snow and before Panem, when North America was young?

Their hiking is slow. Katniss' healing feet sting with pain and Snow is still hindered by his healing wounds. They forgo fires and eat cold beans, and at night they seek warmth in one another's bodies. The cold front has lifted and Spring is edging in, but without the sleeping bag Katniss still shivers. When Snow offers her the crook of his arm, she flows into it. She curls into him and his scent, relieved to be against him again, no longer separated by the gulf of the cot beds. Night by night she twines around him. Her hair tangles his fingers, her elbows annoy his ribs, his snores wake and amuse her, his shoulder provides a pillow, his beard presses soft against her face… When she wakes she finds him watching her, studying the slow rise and fall of her sleeping breast, or the twitch of her mouth in sleep, or the flicker of her eyes behind their lids. He greets her good morning and sometimes she stares back, sometimes for long minutes, trying to see into him the way he sees into her. He only smiles, an infinite slick of ice. She does not know what lies inside him. Every night she falls asleep with her kind monster, her heartbeat slowing obediently alongside his, and she does not feel afraid. She dreams of the rabbits, but she cannot remember upon waking…

It takes a week to get to Richmond. They approach along a huge grey river, picking through the banks while keeping hidden in the trees. It takes them past fishing cabins and sunken boats, hunks of rust and rotten hulls. When Katniss' eyes spot a broken-down jetty that holds one small, still-intact wooden skiff, she grins.

'Shall we take the boat?' she says excitedly.

Snow looks at her blankly. 'I can't sail, Miss Everdeen.'

She looks at him with equal blankness. 'I thought you could do everything.'

A smile plays at his mouth. 'Flattering as that is, I'm afraid I have no experience with boats.'

Katniss rolls her eyes. 'Well, there are oars and the current flows into the city. How hard can it be?'

It turns out the answer is pretty damn hard, and Snow watches her with utmost amusement as she tries and fails again and again to draw the oars in the correct motion. They spin in slow circles for a while and Snow pretends he is having a wonderful time taking in the warming air.

In time, though, she sort of gets the hang of it, though Snow seems to be playing at being deliberately useless. Aided by the current, the two of them float down the huge grey river, the water stinking, the eddies grasping at the hull. At least it gives her feet a rest.

The boat meanders past a bend and Katniss looks up, and then she almost loses grip on the oars. 'Oh my,' she murmurs.

Katniss has seen the Capitol, she knows what cities look like. But she has never seen a dead one before. Huge corpse-buildings reach to the sky, all cement and girders and everything leaning at the wrong angle. So many things have collapsed. Kudzu has run riot over the skeletons where civilization once was, blanketing everything in green. Sometimes things are recognizable: the occasional car, a still-standing street lamp, a train carriage, a bright parasol. Little imprints of ways of living long since given to decay.

She steers them to a shingle beach and the boat jerks as a low wave pushes them ashore. Snow rises first and offers her his hand. Katniss, rolling her eyes, doesn't take it. She is not his invalid, nor his girlfriend.

Side by side in silence, they walk the abandoned streets. It's a place long given over to dust and leaves, not even a city at all anymore. A loose collection of memories of how people used to live. That's how Katniss felt after the war. Not a real thing, just the outline where something used to be. Sometimes they pass bones. No full skeletons, but bits and pieces. A femur, obviously human. A rib cage that something once gnawed on. A jawbone.

'How did everybody die?' she whispers. Why is she whispering? Are there ghosts to hear them pass?

'Hard to say. Rising sea levels, extreme heat, civil war, supply shortages… There were many causes to the fall of North America.'

'Is there a South America?' Her eyes are drawn to a catastrophe of a building that could have been anything, but a green and white sign still reads Star.

'Oh, yes. Unreachable now. The radiated deserts south of District 10 makes the land bridge impassable. That used to be a different country, you know. Mexico.'

'And they're all dead?'

Snow shrugs. 'I can't say for certain. There was a whole world out there, once. I have heard or seen no evidence that anyone is left alive but Panem. I have always operated on the assumption that we are the last bastion of humanity.'

'Would you have acted differently?' She looks at his strange and familiar face. 'Would you have ruled Panem so horribly if you knew there were other chances for humanity?'

'Perhaps not,' he says brightly. 'But we have to work with the knowledge that we have.' And then a big, simple, happy smile cracks over his face. He points. 'And it looks like we can now acquire some new knowledge.'

Katniss looks. The building Snow indicates has fared better than its neighbours, a huge stone-built edifice, squarish and proud of itself. The windows are shattered and one part of the roof has collapsed, but it looks like something that was built to last. A bronze sign remains and Katniss struggles to read its damaged lettering.

'Museum of Natural History and…' She frowns. 'And zoo-logy? It's a zoo?'

'Zoology. The study of animals,' he says, guiding her in that irritatingly pleasing, gentle way he does. 'I've been looking forward to seeing it.'

She shrugs. 'I've never been to a museum. We didn't have them in 12.'

'A shame,' he says, and he sounds oddly sincere. 'Well, come on. Let us see what time and war have left to us.'

Inside, the building is in more severe disrepair: water damage emanating from a black puddle, a catastrophe of broken glass, and a foul smell like something has used this place as a den or toilet in the past. But the walls still stand, as does what she can see of the ceiling, and you can even still read some of the old signage. Katniss picks her way through broken glass and water and tries to understand what this place might have once looked like.

They find the cache easily. Huge metal crates are stacked in a cloakroom off the entrance, each crate with a combination lock. Snow twizzles one of the tumblers and the lid clicks open, and he smiles with contentment at the bounty within.

'You really were well-prepared,' says Katniss.

'Always. But let's take a look around before we unpack any of this this.' He wanders to an extremely faded sign. 'Ah!' he says brightly, then turns gleaming, anticipatory eyes on her. 'Dinosaurs this way.'

She rolls her eyes and follows. She has no idea what "diner saws" are.

They round the corner, leaving the foyer and entering a vast atrium with an arced, glittering glass ceiling that has somehow survived mostly intact — and then she freezes. Snow stops too, sensing her trepidation, looking back at her.

'What is that?' she whispers.

The skeleton is not just bigger than any animal she has ever seen; it is several times the size of the largest bull, of the grandest deer. Its tail runs from the floor to at least ten feet in the air. Its spine, a link of grey interlocking slabs, crests in a skull with a bulbous, gluttonous jaw and uneven teeth. She has never been terrified of an animal before; sensibly afraid, yes, but never terrified.

She does not even realize she is hiding behind Snow.

'That's a dinosaur,' he says pleasantly, his smile even softer than usual, oddly sweet as he looks back at her. 'A Tyrannosaurus rex, to be precise.'

Her eyes flick fearfully across the forest of its teeth. She can practically hear the bone-rattle sound she would make if caught between them.

'Do those live around here?' Her voice is still a whisper. 'Because I can't kill one of those, Snow. Not with the best bow in the world.'

He is staring at her with an expression of such intensity that it momentarily distracts her from the skeleton.

'No,' he says, with incredible softness. 'No, Miss Everdeen. They've been extinct for millions of years. Bones are all that remain.'

She takes a breath. 'Oh.' Releases the breath. Swallows. Realizes she is standing too close to him, almost cowering, and she straightens herself. But there is no mockery in his expression. He is looking at her with something akin to wonder.

'Do you want to get closer?'

He extends his hand, presenting the monstrosity to her, and keen to overcome her cowardice she steps forwards without fear. It is beautiful, in its slender, skinless way. The teeth mesmerize her. She reaches out and rubs a hand over its foot and its claw. This was a real living being, once. Impossible to believe.

Snow hangs back, letting her explore the skeleton with her eyes and hands, and once she is satisfied she lingers at the almost opaque information board. Only the title remains.

She snorts with laughter and points. 'It's you.'

He drifts to the sign, inclines his head, and reads.

Tyrant lizard king, it proclaims.

His smile is slow, but it grows to massive proportions. 'Well-observed, Miss Everdeen.'

There are other wonders beside the dinosaur, other animals eaten by time, and Katniss becomes completely absorbed. The taxidermied animals have suffered the passing years far worse than the skeletons, but most are still recognizable as the beasts that once they were, all with gleaming glass eyes. The big cats thrill her especially, and to Snow she excitedly relates the similarities between the tattered lion on display and the smaller mountain lions that would occasionally harass her. She is moved, too, by a massive wolf that she swears is bigger than any she has seen before in the forests. Snow trails her, content to listen, and he smiles and nods and agrees at her delighted, meandering commentary.

'What is that?' she exclaims as they enter into another room, and Snow stops beside her.

'That is an elephant,' he explains. He dips his head, levelling it with hers, and points. 'See the tusks? Ivory. They were hunted almost to extinction, before the fall of the old world. And then the climate shift killed the rest. As far as I know.'

She turns skeptical eyes on him. 'How would you know? Did these live outside Panem?'

'Yes, in Africa.'

'What's Africa?'

A brief flash of surprise and then pain flutters through his face. 'It's another continent,' he explains. 'A landmass to the east.'

'Oh.' She shrugs. 'We're never taught about anything outside of Panem at school.'

'I know,' says Snow carefully. 'I intended it that way. More streamlined education, more productivity… less rebellion. But…' He turns his head to the heavy trunk and ludicrous ears of the animal. 'It seems cruel to deny you elephants.'

'You deny us everything,' she snips back.

'Perhaps you could reform the education system, if you ruled Panem.'

Katniss rolls her eyes. 'Don't start that again, please.' She wanders off, then pauses at a display whose weak, faded letters still gesture at the word India. Here, a soft, quiet monster with striped fur that in life must have blazed like coal and flame stares at nothing with its blind glass eyes. It is posed in a hunting crouch, pursuing some small animal that has long since rotted into the display. Katniss rests her forehead against the glass and tries to meet the tiger's artificial eyes.

She feels Snow's presence behind her, looking too at the tiger, and she smells his sweat. Overlaying the tiger she watches the shadow reflections of her and Snow, dim and dirty in the glass, and she imagines what it would be like to see one of these animals alive once again. But they're dead, all of them dead, like District 12, and like Prim, and any hope of a life she might have had.

'If I was an animal, I'd be a big cat,' she says. 'Solitary hunters. They don't have to take care of anyone.'

'They take care of their young,' counters Snow. 'They're not just hunters.'

'You sound like Peeta,' she mutters, and she can feel Snow shift in offence.

'Excuse me?'

'Tigers take care of their young,' she repeats, exhausted. 'You know what feral cats do when they're hungry or stressed? They eat their young.'

Snow watches her, curious. 'Is that what you think would happen, if you had children? That you wouldn't be able to raise them? That they would die?'

Katniss shrugs a shoulder, then turns away from the tiger and properly meets Snow's weird, probing eyes. 'Prim was mine to raise. She died. I don't want anything else to take care of.'

She sees Snow's wry smile forming in his eyes before it ever touches his lips. 'You take care of me well enough.'

She could almost smile. Instead she sighs. 'You're low maintenance.'

They wander through more rooms, some too damaged by time to be worth lingering in, but here and there remain traces of a world that was. Their tracks take them into an area where the rooms are windowless and dark, requiring the flashlight to navigate. The air is a thick, muffled quiet. Katniss is intrigued by a sign reading Early Inhabitants of America and follows a winding corridor into stories of people that came before Panem, even before North America. Even Snow doesn't know much about this section of human history.

There are many intact exhibits here, safe from the sun and the elements. There are arrowheads just like hers, only made of stone, ten thousand years old. She cannot imagine a timeline so long. Her father taught her to make stone arrowheads and she explains the process to Snow, who listens attentively to every word. Katniss puzzles over the information boards, which have survived much better than those in the outer rooms. Snow explains the more difficult words like paleo and lithic, leaning close to her, his finger hovering over the printed words. He is just as entranced as she is by some of the exhibits: bright woven clothing, peculiar masks, and decorated rocks he calls petroglyphs. For once, she feels he is learning as much as she is.

In the center of the dark labyrinth they find something that a sign identifies as a pit-house, and from what Katniss can gather from the faded text, the exhibit is a recreation of a house that people used to live in a long time ago. It is very dimly illuminated by a small skylight above, letting in a few drips of the setting sun. It's just like a real house inside, though small and basic, only one room, and there are bedding areas. Even though it's dark and musty, Katniss declares that this will be their home for the night. If nothing else, they have some protection from anyone or anything that might hunt them. The museum has provided synthetic recreations of animal furs and straws that haven't rotted, so once Katniss shakes out the dust it makes for a soft and comfortable nest. There is even a cooking pit, though it seems to be made of something thin and hollow so Katniss opts to build a firepit outside the house, making use of some of the less interesting rocks on display.

Snow fetches a rich dinner of canned beef stew from the cache and they rest and eat in the dim room, surrounded by the pieces of people and cultures long since dead, and Katniss pulls her knees to her chest and shivers a little, though not from cold.

'Strange to think that there were so many people living here, so long ago,' she muses. 'Generations upon generations. All that knowledge passed down. And then if you don't have children, there's nowhere for it to go.'

'You don't need to have children to pass on knowledge,' says Snow, and it's obvious he is talking about the two of them.

Katniss chooses to ignore him. 'My father taught me to make arrows and bows. Now no one will learn that from me. I don't even know if anyone else in my District knew how to do that. For all I know, he was the only person in the entire country who knew that. And that knowledge will die with me.' She heaves a sigh. 'It's a little sad. At least if you have children, there's someone to pass that on to.'

Something nasty slides into Snow's expression. 'Are you feeling maternal?'

She rolls her eyes and stabs at her canned beef more ferociously. 'Hardly. Maybe I should write a book about the things I know, then at least someone might learn from it.'

'That could be a very good idea. I used to think I would write a memoir one day, but…' He shrugs, smiling. 'I never quite found the time for it, what with the war.'

'I think some people just aren't meant to have children. I'm one of them.' A frown touches her brow. 'What about you? Do you think you should have had a child?'

He indulges a weird smile. 'That's many questions in one, Miss Everdeen. Did the President need to have a child? Did I want to be a father? Did I do a good job being a father? Would I have been a better father had I not been the President?' He takes a deep breath. 'I think, if circumstances had been different, I could have been an acceptable father. I was too focused on my career, on running the country. I only had a child because it was expected of me. I tried harder with my granddaughter. I loved her, but…' Joy briefly lights his face when he mentions her, and then it is extinguished yet again. She is resurrected and killed in an instant in his memories. Then his expression is placid once more. 'Some people aren't meant to be fathers.'

'Mine was a good father,' says Katniss. 'Much better at being a parent than my mother. What were your parents like?'

She asks this question idly, but when she doesn't get an immediate reply she looks to see Snow's expression strange and withdrawn.

He speaks plainly. 'They both died when I was six. My mother did the best she could. I remember her being a kind woman. My father…' He shrugs dismissively. 'He was a hateful man. He hated my mother, he hated me, he hated my cousin… He was callous and violent, narcissistic and unpleasant. He hid his stupidity behind the sheen of respectability granted him by his class. I despised him.' His eyes shine black and orange in the flames like the tiger's fur. 'He was a poor excuse for a father.'

'I'm sorry,' Katniss says at last.

Snow shrugs, then returns to his meal. 'I don't begrudge him for his resentment of me. I was a difficult child to love.' His voice drops suddenly. 'I imagine I am a difficult man to love.'

She watches him the way she watched those peculiar animals, frozen in time.

'Did he hurt you?'

Snow exhales with humor as though this is a silly question. 'I didn't much care what he did to me. What he did to my mother and cousin, though…' His lip curls with disgust. 'I have never liked men who disrespect women.' He shakes his head. 'Anyway. He was shot and killed in the first rebellion, and that was that. Probably for the best.'

There is something pathetic about Snow, even in his cool magnificence. Something that stokes her pity. She reaches out to him and grasps his hand, a small squeeze, passing an instant of her heat and humanity into him. Snow looks down at her hand on his in puzzlement, and then she retracts it. His gaze continues to rest on the back of his hand for some time.

Not knowing what else she could possibly do, Katniss says, 'We should go to sleep.'

There are three bedding areas in the pit-house, but Katniss drags all the fake furs over to one big pile. It's not even cold in the depths of the museum, not really, but she is too accustomed to having a bedfellow. It doesn't feel right to sleep alone, it never has. That's for rich people. The poor people and the animals huddle together: that is how it should be.

Snow does not question the bed she has made. He removes his shirt and socks to sleep and then digs out a comfortable burrow in the furs. Katniss slides in beside him and undoes her braid, looking around her at the glass cases, at the dark memories of people just like her from long ago.

'It's weird that so many arrowheads survived,' she says, unwinding her hair. 'I wonder if they used them for killing people or just animals.'

Snow watches her fingers in her hair, but she does not mind. 'Is it so different?'

'Yes,' she says immediately.

'I watched your kills in the first Games,' murmurs Snow. As Katniss shakes out her hair and lies down beside him, she feels his voice inside her. 'You shoot humans just like they're animals. You're still a novice, but there is a striking efficiency to your violence.'

Katniss watches him in the low light. 'How many people have you killed?'

'Hm.' He sounds comfortable and content. 'Many.' He turns slightly onto his side so he can face her properly, resting his head on his arm. Their faces are inches apart. 'I've ordered executions, poisoned people, dropped bombs… And in my youth I shot people, stabbed them, used incendiary devices… Once I beat a man to death with a rock.'

She shivers. 'Do you feel guilty about any of it?'

'No,' he says simply. 'I try to avoid taking human life, but it does not trouble me to do so.'

What an odd, clandestine conversation they are having. Katniss is reminded of nothing more than sharing her bed with Prim in the Seam, the two of them staying up too late, whispering beneath the covers. Prim, eleven years old, unsure if she was getting her first real crush on a boy. A specific, magical sense of private intimacy.

'Have you ever felt guilty about anything?'

'Yes. And no, I will not tell you what. But never killing. I like killing.'

They gaze at each other. His eyes are so bright and blue. Firm lines run from his nose to his mouth, which is narrow whenever not widened in a smile, and his beard blossoms around it like rich white cotton.

'Why do you like killing?' she asks.

He waits some time before answering. His voice vibrates like an animal purr. 'I enjoy the power of it. But I have never killed because I wanted to feel powerful. I only kill when necessary.'

Right now, in this moment, with his warm breath on her face, Katniss does not feel afraid or hateful of him. It's like having a conversation with a wolf or a jaguar. Something beyond human morality.

He adjusts his head, resting on his arm. 'And what about you, Miss Everdeen? Do you like killing?'

'No,' she answers immediately. I'm normal, she almost adds.

Snow shakes his head, sleepy and pleased with her. 'I've seen you take pleasure in a kill. You take joy in hunting. You find ecstasy in killing for food. And I saw the fire in your eyes at my execution.' His voice is low and full, vibrating into her, smooth pebbles and molten black chocolate. 'You wanted to kill me. You liked it.'

Perhaps it is his tone, perhaps it is the drowsy madness in his eyes, or perhaps it is the basic fact of an adult man lying beside her and murmuring with such intensity, but Katniss feels a small but unmistakably sexual twinge cut through her.

She immediately rolls onto her back so she doesn't have to look at him.

'If you say so,' she says. 'I think we should go to sleep now.'

She feels Snow shift onto his back beside her. He knows when to back off. 'Of course, Miss Everdeen.'

She can still feel him, not just with her body but with all her senses. She can hear his big, deep breathing and the gentle shift of his body against the furs. She can smell him, his sweat and his blood-scent. She can, somehow, smell his healing wounds, not the blood of them but the healing process itself. How is that even possible?

As her mind gets sleepy, she thinks that perhaps they were made for one another. Made to kill each other, made to save each other. Perhaps Snow carved his mad obsession into the rock of himself all his long life, and then when she came into the world she fit perfectly within it. Perhaps they will never escape each other.

It would be nice to never be alone.

It is a rare occasion when Katniss wakes first. She raises herself, yawning, blinking, rubbing hard nuggets of sleep from her eyes, listening to Snow's breathing beside her. His face is inclined to hers but he sleeps still, his mouth open, the deep rhythm of inhale and exhale suggestive of deep sleep.

She glances around their strange home, checking the time against the dark dawn that filters down from above, and then she glances down Snow's body and blinks.

The uneven furs have come off him in the night and some are twined around her own body, but he has not noticed. In the depths of his sleep, unheeding of the world and of her body at his side, some errant chemicals or private dreams have lightly though visibly stiffened him to an erection.

She's not naïve about such things. Peeta has often woken with them before and she understands their involuntary nature, the heightening of testosterone at the end of the sleep cycle. She has never seen one on Snow before, perhaps because of his age. Or perhaps she assumed he was too inhuman for his body to be affected by such basic, helpless quirks of biology. But there it is, faint but real, a ridge of cotton-clad hardness rising between his legs. Larger than Peeta's, she cannot help but acknowledge. It means nothing, she knows, and yet she does not stop staring.

With equal involuntariness, as though a dumb insect has landed on her skin and decided to run amok inside her, Katniss' body sympathetically contracts to reflect this state of arousal. It is a weaker echo, a faint pulse of sexual excitement, but it arrests her nonetheless. It isn't attraction per se, more a primal mirroring. His scent is particularly appealing to her this morning.

Katniss stands, stumbles from the pit-house, and then walks with uneven disorientation down dark corridor after dark corridor, trying to find the way out. She gets lost and lost again, making too many wrong turns, and then eventually she breaks into the bright, cold light of one of the main rooms. She falls to her knees and takes deep, desperate breaths.

This is dangerous. Snow is dangerous. She is dangerous.

What the fuck is wrong with her?

President Snow destroyed her home town. He killed thousands, maybe tens of thousands. The death of every child in the Games is because of him. He feels no remorse or regret. If he was handed back the presidency tomorrow, he would kill thousands more.

And what is she doing? Indulging a crush? Confusing Snow's violent obsession for care? Confusing her own desire for a parental figure with sex? And all the while, a quiet war is boiling across the country and people are dying.

Katniss stands, her veins viscous with anxiety. Thick water droplets fall from somewhere in the big atrium. She notes the chunks of broken glass that lie strewn across the floor and the soft vulnerability of her bare feet. She is the middle of a long-dead world and no one even knows where she is, except Snow. And she has left her weapons with him, and her pack, and her supplies…

She trusts him completely, and she knows she is an idiot for doing so.

Katniss picks her way back through the labyrinth of dim exhibits, following the streaks of light that lead her to the center. There is the pit-house once again, and through its doorless entry she sees Snow. He sits amidst the furs, awake and curious about her absence. Katniss' eyes flick to her bow, but it remains untouched.

Snow looks her over and can instantly read the wary discomfort in her face and the tension in her body. 'Are you alright?'

She does not nod. He quirks his head at her, confused. She wonders if he awoke still hard, if he worries that is what has scared her away.

'You're dangerous,' she says at last.

Snow offers an amused smile. Shirtless and in his long-johns, still half in bed, he looks about him comically. 'And what threat do I pose?'

'I like you,' she says savagely. She does not explain what she means by this. 'I don't want to like you. You're charismatic and compelling, and you've been gentle and kind and patient with me, and I don't know why. You've been like a parent, like… like something else.'

Snow nods slowly. 'I carefully cultivated my role as father of the nation,' he says. 'And I am much older than you. I suppose it is only natural for you to see me in a paternal role. Does that trouble you?'

'Of course it troubles me.' She speaks with hissing bile. 'You're a murderer. You ruined my life. You tortured me. I do not want to like you. I don't want you as a father. Why the fuck would I?'

Snow seems to absorb her, drinking her thoughts and her feelings, leeching something off her as he sinks into her skin. He speaks with careful intent. 'Because you feel safe around me, Miss Everdeen. You have always known where you stood with me — which is more than can be said for any of the other men and boys in your life. When I meant to hurt you, I warned you. When I meant to care for you, I kept my word.' A small smile inflects the side of his mouth. 'You know I have always been honest with you.'

'So what? Is honesty such a good thing? Is honesty more important than not killing innocent people?'

'Only you can answer that,' he says mildly. His eyes travel over her face, looking at her temples and her mouth and her nervous throat as though he is scenting out every feeling she might try to hide. 'It seems to cause you great pain to dwell on the atrocities you feel I committed. Why do you continue to do so?'

'What kind of a question is that?' Fury threads her words. 'You're a monster. How am I supposed to stop thinking about the terrible things you did? To me, to my people?'

'I am a man who did bad things,' he says reasonably. 'I am no longer going to do those things. So why not forget about them?'

She stares at him with absurd horror. 'Forget about what you did to me?'

He shrugs. 'Why not? Forget who I killed, forget the burned bodies, forget your ruined town… Forget all of it. Those are acts that a person did, and that person and I share a past. But I give you my word, Miss Everdeen, that I will not try to hurt you again. So why not forget?'

She wants to gasp or cry or shout at him. 'Because I have to remember! I have to remember what you are! Or I'll get hurt again! And so will other people!'

'You don't need memory,' he says simply. 'Only trust. And I know that you trust me, even if you try hard not to.'

'Is that what you do?' she says, her voice sharp. 'You just forget? You just don't think about the awful things you did?'

'Oh no,' he says with dark warning. 'No, I could never forget. I remember every terrible thing that I have ever done. I have the capacity for it. I can store a great many dreadful things inside me.' His head tilts. 'But you do not have that capacity, Miss Everdeen. So just forget. Forget what I was. Remember what I will be.'

'Is this some kind of sick game?' She can feel every atom of her skin burning. She steps towards him. 'You hardened me. The Games, the Quell, Peeta, the war… You poured cement onto me layer by layer until I wasn't human anymore. I didn't know what was real. I couldn't feel anything but pain and fear.' She presses her barefoot steps into the closest of the soft, synthetic furs. 'And now you want to be kind to me? Strip it all away? Make me trust you? Make me vulnerable again? Is that your fucking game?'

Snow is watching her with inhuman fascination. 'You are not a game to me, Miss Everdeen.'

'Then what am I!' she spits. 'What am I to you! What is this?' She aims a savage, bare-toed kick at the edge of the furs. It rumples undramatically. 'You don't want me as your daughter. You don't want to fuck me. Then what is it you want?'

His voice is low and hollow, a quiet wind. 'I told you, Miss Everdeen. Fellowship. Only the pleasure of your company.'

'So you can take over the rebellion?'

A smile twitches his lips. 'I would like to. I would like to see you rule it, and to take more power from there. I would love to maneuver you into ruling this country. And I believe I could do it, if you wanted me to. I could make you magnificent. Unparalleled. I could make you the hurricane that reshapes the world.' He takes one long, deep breath, then releases it. 'But you do not want that, Miss Everdeen. You want…' He tilts his head and she is absolutely certain he is reading her thoughts. 'You want a warm hearth. Fresh meat. The thrill of a kill. A heartbeat beside you. Someone who understands you.'

Angry tears blur her vision. 'I had that with Peeta. Peeta understands me.'

Snow's smile is huge and cruel and frightening. 'Not like me.'

And it's wretched because she knows — she horribly, horribly knows — that he is right. He has understood her longer than she has understood herself. He has always known her, ever since he placed that crown on her head. Maybe before. Watching her, studying her, seeping into her, getting so deep under her skin she can never get him out.

'My dear Miss Everdeen,' he says slowly, and a seismic shudder rattles up her spine. 'It is true I regret nothing. I am unrepentant. I can do nothing to change my past. But if you want me to never kill an innocent again, I will make that promise. If you want me to forgo any chance of taking over the rebellion, I will release that too.'

'That's only because you're powerless. If someone handed you another bomb, you'd drop it instantly on Coin and try to take over again.'

Snow's eyes drill into her. 'No. I would readily give up on any chance of power in exchange for the certainty of your trust in me.'

She fractures into laughter. 'Oh, what, at eighty years old you're going to start being a good man?'

'There are no good men,' he says mildly. 'No bad men either. Only acts. And I can do good acts. I can be someone who performs kindnesses in your life. It is no repentance, there can be no redemption — and I neither want nor believe I deserve such a thing. But if I cannot be the king to pass you the crown, then I am content to be your charge, your ward. Your guard, at times. Your dog, if that's what you require.'

'And you think I would allow that?'

'I know you will. Because you are capable of incredible kindness. That was always what marked you apart, you understand? What made you so much greater than all the other Victors. That you would have given your life, if necessary, to save your sister. Or to save that little girl from District 11. And you have compassion for me, whether you like it or not, because I am old and helpless. And because I care about you.' He presents his hands, open-palmed, offering vulnerability and devotion and loyalty. 'Will you trust me? Let me protect you, take care of you — and let yourself forget the things that pain you so?'

No no no no no, screams her mind. He'll kill you, he'll kill everyone. He wants to hurt you. Don't be stupid. Don't be so stupid!

But what she says is: 'You would give your life for me.'

'Yes.' Ice caves glitter behind his eyes. 'For nobody else. But for you, Miss Everdeen? In a heartbeat. In less.'

'And you'd kill for me.'

'I would. I have. As you have killed for me.'

Unsure, adrift, and alarmed as much as she feels soothed and safe, Katniss sinks to her knees among the furs.

Snow's expression is only a polite question.

'Why?' she whispers. 'Why do you want to take care of me?'

He is unblinking and terrifying. 'Because I have nothing else left. And because I like you.'

'Why do you like me?'

Very slowly, with cautious reverence, Snow raises a hand and gently shifts one of her curls behind her ear. 'Because, Miss Everdeen, you are miraculous.'

Catlike and confused, she lowers her head closer to his. Snow watches her the way Buttercup used to watch moths. She does not bring her face to his but to his shoulder and neck, bare and rich-smelling, and she breathes in his pores and sweat and dangerous, older, masculine scent. By tiny degrees, she rests her forehead against the bare skin. There is stiff hesitancy in him, and then an obedient relaxation. She does not allow herself to embrace him, but she rests and she breathes, and she smells the age of his slack skin. Then she feels one of his hands rest on the back of her head. It glides slowly over the loose flow of her hair, stroking her almost like a child, and yet not quite. Never quite that.

And in the depths of the perfect safe relief of it all, she knows one thing with certainty: this is going to get someone killed.