Katniss is shivering. Where are the blankets? It's so cold. Her sleepy mind tells her to press her body against Peeta beside her. He is always hogging the blankets. For the briefest moment, warm cotton-clad skin makes contact with her forehead before the body beside her jerks away and a stern voice says, 'Good morning, Miss Everdeen.'

Wakefulness crashes through her and she opens her eyes. The glowworm orange of the tent. Her bare legs. White, blue-striped boxers falling to her knees, and shiny burns beneath. A huge sweater over her torso. Beside her, a man's body: less muscled than Peeta, longer, taller, and older. She recoils.

It is not Peeta, of course. It's just Snow. She meets his eyes, which are blue and alert. He does not look like he just woke up.

Katniss pushes herself from the ground, shaking off grogginess, and tries to fold into a seated position far from Snow. It is difficult in the confines of the tent, and her knee collides with his leg.

'What time is it?'

'It was dark when I awoke, and that was about an hour ago. So it will be a little after dawn.'

'What have you been doing for the past hour?'

He makes a faint sound of irritation. 'Well, I haven't been reading a book, Miss Everdeen, since you didn't allow me to pack one.' Then he smiles. 'Mostly I have been thinking.'

'You think too much,' she mutters.

She doesn't want to ask him what he thinks about. Taking over the rebellion, killing people, corrupting her, somehow. As she glances over her body, it occurs to her that her bare legs are thick with the hair that the stylists always insisted on ripping off for the Games and she wonders if the sight of them are unnatural to Snow. Maybe every young girl he's ever seen is hairless and shining, artificial and perfect. Another thing about her to repulse him.

She unzips the tent, blinking in the dull dawn. The river is still there, a little calmer than the night before, and the day is bright and cold. Another shiver skitters over her skin. The days are growing cooler. Spring is further away than she thought, and there may be yet a cold front to contend with. Plus, they're heading north.

She half-crawls from the tent and rubs her fingers against the clothes hanging above the dead fire. Remarkably, her slipshod washing line has done the trick and the hours of hanging over the fire have left them reasonably dry.

'The clothes are wearable,' she says, and gets out of the tent. Snow joins her a little more slowly. His age shows less and less, except when he has to sit up or down. Each collect their clothes from the line and Katniss frowns at the way their socks sit flush against one another. It looks unclean to her. She doesn't want anything intimate of him touching her. And yet there she stands, wearing his spare socks and underwear, and his huge sweater draped over her shoulders. She grabs her bra quickly and stuffs it into her heap of clothes.

There is a moment of mutual hesitation, and Katniss feels keenly conscious of her bizarre state of undress. Yet Snow does not look at her, not at her unshaven legs or her burns, though she amuses herself with the sight of his open neck and bare, mud-flecked feet.

'I'm going to get changed in the tent,' she says. 'Don't come in.'

He inclines his head. 'Of course, Miss Everdeen.' He pauses. 'You are welcome to keep the socks and underwear, if that makes things simpler.'

'I don't want to keep them,' she snaps, then disappears inside the tent. She zips it up firmly, then waits a moment to check Snow isn't going to try to open it. An irrational thought. She is content that whatever other evils he might be capable of, he has no intention of molesting her. If anything, it's like having her own grandfather for a camping partner. Not that she would know. All her grandparents died before she was born.

She strips off Snow's boxers and pulls on her own familiar underwear, then her pants, then dispenses with Snow's sweater and shrugs on her spare t-shirt, shirt, and sweater. She regards the discarded clothes. Carefully, she raises the sweater to her face and inhales. It smells of her, richly soaked with her sweat. Apparently the dunking in the river was not sufficient to scrub away a week of travel-dirt. Chewing her tongue, she next bends to pick up the underwear. She turns them over in her hands, then very gingerly examines the interior crotch. There is a smudge of dampness there, of whatever mysterious substance her vagina secreted in the night. Perhaps she should burn them. The thought of returning them now to Snow, even washed, turns her stomach.

Katniss emerges cautiously from the tent, but Snow has already replaced his own sweater, coat, socks, and shoes. She watches him for a moment, amused and perplexed by him, this old man who is now gathering wood for a fire so they can eat breakfast together.

'The sleeping bag is still water-logged on one side,' he tells her. 'I advise that we wait to leave until it dries out. It will be a terrible chore to carry otherwise.'

'Fine,' she says, keeping Snow's underwear screwed up in her hand. 'I'm going to hunt. I want a fresh, hot meal.'

'I have no objections to that,' he smiles.

She pauses, uncomfortable, then thrusts the sweater back at him that now smells so deeply of her. 'This is yours.'

He accepts it and does not query after the rest of his clothes. Those will just be hers, now. It does indeed make things simpler.


Katniss goes to the river to scrub herself marginally clean, then finds a nice, high spot in the rocks above that gives her an excellent view of the surrounds. From there she waits and watches until a sleek, beautiful hare takes an interest in the shallower part of the stream. There is a pitiable curiosity to it and Katniss almost considers not releasing her arrow on the beast, but her hunger outweighs her sentiment. This is certainly no time to get merciful about hunting. That way of thought leads to death.

The arrow looses smoothly from the bow. It's not a great shot and she catches the animal in the side, pinning it to the ground. She hurries after the twitching body and quickly breaks the creature's neck. She has really had enough of suffering for one lifetime.

The arrow rinsed in the river, Katniss heads back to camp. The fire burns rich and full, and the tent is still here. But Snow is gone.

'Snow?'

Her heart starts to pump with violence and fear. She drops the hare, draws her bow, then turns about her heel in the clearing. Has he run away? Is he waiting to kill her? Is he—

'Miss Everdeen?'

She spins on the spot and only a decade of training prevents her from letting go the arrow and landing it in Snow's chest. He stands between the trees, one palm heaped with mushrooms. He tilts his head at the bow in a question.

Katniss carefully lowers her weapon. 'I thought you'd run off,' she says, her voice almost level if it wasn't for the terror pulsing in her neck. 'Or that you were about to try to murder me.' She tries to make this sound like a joke, but her attempt is a failure.

Snow glances at the mushrooms in his hand. 'I was gathering honey fungus,' he says. There is something like hurt in his voice. 'I thought it would improve our breakfast.' He seems to be giving the mushrooms significant consideration. Then, very gingerly, he sets the pile down by the fire and stands, brushing dirt from his hands. 'Miss Everdeen,' he says carefully. His blue eyes fix on hers with unshakeable certainty. They are like ice glass. 'I am not going to leave you. I am not going to hurt you. I give you my word.'

It is so hard not to believe him. He is sincere and open and cool, a perfect lake of clear blue water.

'Sorry if I don't find it easy to accept that,' she says, trying to sound sarcastic and strong, but there is a tremor in her voice she despises. 'I have trust issues.'

'Of course you do,' he says mildly. Then he sits beside the fire and begins to tear the mushrooms apart with his fingers. She still forbids him a knife. 'I can imagine it must be impossible to trust anyone. Coin betrayed you. Your mother abandoned you. The Hawthorne boy was responsible for the death of your sister. Even dear Mr Mellark tried to strangle you, didn't he?'

She does not ask how he knows about that. She sits as far from him as she can and sinks her knife deep into the body of the hare, then slides back its skin.

'Peeta was brainwashed,' she says forcefully. 'He didn't even really know who I was. You were the one that did that to him.'

She empties out the bowels of the hare as Snow delicately peels each fungus from its neighbor. With repulsive casualness, he says, 'Do you know why we were able to break Mr Mellark?'

'Because you tortured him with trackerjacker venom,' she mutters.

'Because he was weak,' says Snow simply, and Katniss looks at him with sharp eyes. Snow's expression is open and uncomplicated. 'Had his love for you been stronger, he would have been able to resist.'

That old hatred for him froths up in her again. She feels her lip curl back over her teeth. 'No. Being unable to withstand torture is not evidence against love.' She pulls out the heart of the hare and pretends it's Snow's. 'You don't know what it's like. You can't imagine the pain he was in.'

'Yes, I can,' says Snow reasonably. 'I've been tortured many times. Twice with trackerjacker venom. That's how I'm able to wield it so effectively.'

Her nerve falters. 'When you were in the Peacekeepers?'

He considers. 'Some of those occasions were then, yes. No amount of venom could ever have convinced me to hate you.' Those eyes find hers again, and they are inhuman.'Mr Mellark was just weak. They would never have broken me.'

She is stunned. Words tumble over themselves in her mind, and then her answer comes. 'There's nothing left to break inside you. You're already broken.'

A horrible smile peels back his face. 'We may have to agree to disagree.' His voice drops and his eyes do not meet hers as he adds the mushrooms to the pot. 'I believe there are things to break inside me yet.'

They eat in silence, though Katniss is more unnerved by Snow's words than upset by them. Once the sleeping bag is dried out, they take down the tent and set out once again. Snow doesn't pass further comment on Peeta, and Katniss wonders how best she should stonewall his attempts to broach that topic in future. She understands what he's doing, of course. Peeta is her last tie to District 12 and to any hope of a domestic future. Cut that thread, and she's a drifter. How easy it might be to talk her around to joining the rebellion permanently, to becoming the mockingjay once again. And if they succeed and overthrow Coin? Why, then she might be poised to be the next President. Then Snow can whisper his poison into her ear and shape the world the way he wants it to be through her.

No, she does not want that. She wants neither the hearth and pointless domesticity of District 12, nor the responsibility and weight of ruling in the Capitol. What does she want? Out on the road, even with Snow at her heels, it is hard to want for anything else. She has the open sky and the grass and trees, and the challenge of the daily hunt, and a meal on the fire in the evenings. If she had better sleeping conditions, the occasional hot bath, and a better travelling companion, she might be something close to content. The moments when she gets too far ahead of Snow and forgets that he is there and has nothing to her world but grass and sky — these are when she is happiest. This day is especially spectacular. Ecstatic blue skies. Clouds painted casually above her. She strides out, feeling nothing but the primal beat of the earth into her feet, and she feels good and calm and free.

'It's beautiful out here,' says Snow, and Katniss tries to ignore him. 'I never walked the mountains in my youth. The landscape really is fantastic.'

She grunts in acknowledgement. Stories of Snow's youth are the last thing she wants to hear right now. She ought to try to absorb every piece of information possible from him, but there are things that lurks inside him she does not want to hear. There is a well of dark, sticky, unpleasant tar behind those cool eyes into which she does not wish to fall.

A warm evening settles in as they descend to the root of a valley, one clearer of trees and thick with heavy grasses. Something big glints in the twilight and Katniss strays from their route to seek out a huge pond, its surface a perfect sketch of the darkening sky over the tops of the trees. It is graced by a herd of ducks and Katniss salivates at the sight of them.

'If one of them comes ashore I'm going to shoot it immediately.'

'Let us hope for good fortune,' smiles Snow.

She doesn't need to tell him that she plans to camp here; he knows instinctually. They erect the tent in a patch shielded by bushes. They're getting quicker at this. He assembles the frame with his strangely nimble fingers, and her more agile body stretches out the canvas. He studies her, she knows. Her habits, her interests, her desires: he soaks them up with a desperate thirst. Without a country to rule, she is the sole object of his fascinations — and his only means of regaining power. It troubles her, of course, but what can she do about it?

It is a beautiful spot. The grass is lush, wound with dandelions and speckled with green-and-gold, and above the sky settles itself into a gentle, deep blue. The stars bloom prismatic above them, and Katniss feels happy. It's a calm and silent evening, save for the occasional argumentative honks of the ducks. They seem uncurious but equally unafraid, and Katniss keeps shooting them jealous looks as she collects tinder for the fire. She gathers tinder, Snow gathers fuel: that's how, without discussion, they know how to split the chore.

Absorbed in the little tasks of daily survival, she starts to hum to herself without even noticing. An old tune her father taught her comes to her mind. It takes her some time to place the lyrics, but once the first words trip her memory the rest slip into her mouth with ease.

'It's winter again at the end of the year,

All now are gone, my loved ones so dear;

The grave of my father grew barren too soon,

And now I have none but the man in the moon.

My brothers are gone, my sisters are fled,

I'm sleeping alone in this empty bed.

And all I have left are the words of the dead,

And I hope they will welcome me soon.

Till then all I have is the man in the moon.'

It is a sad song, she knows, one about death. An old legend that Death was a man who lived in the moon. It has come to her often in the past years, but she has not sung it aloud before. It promises too gentle a death, too tempting. But the day is so beautiful that she feels she can sing it without danger.

'I know that one,' comes Snow's sudden voice behind her, and Katniss starts. He holds an armful of thick pieces of wood. 'I heard them sing it out in District 12 long ago, when I visited in my youth. But the lyrics were different.'

And then the strangest, most awful thing happens. Snow sings. His voice is pleasant: not perfect, untrained, but in tune and bassy. Katniss freezes and stares as he echoes her melody.

'Oh winter, you've come, at the end of the year,

Come now, my loved one, and sleep with me near,

Cold mouth will kiss me once again soon,

Now that my love is the man in the moon.

'I like your version too,' he says. 'Though it is rather bleak.' He sees that she still isn't moving, and he pauses to tilt his head at her. 'Miss Everdeen?'

Nausea trembles through her. She has not heard another person sing that song until her father taught it to her, so many years ago. And now she hears that same melody coming from Snow's mouth.

'Never sing again,' she chokes out.

He laughs. 'As you wish, Miss Everdeen. I didn't think I was that bad a singer.'

'It's not that,' she mutters.

'Then what is it?'

She shakes her head. 'I don't like it. Just don't do it.'

'Alright,' he says, a curiosity in his voice. 'I admit I am not a man much given to singing. I hadn't heard that one in, oh, fifty years. You brought back the memory.'

'I don't know how you even know that song.' She is angry with him, but more with herself — though it is easier to be angry at Snow. 'It's a District 12 folk song. Don't you have your own stupid Capitol songs?'

'We do,' says Snow, and together they begin to build the fire. She sits back as he positions the logs, watching his hands work. His skin and his movements are growing more familiar to her: the cleverness of his fingers, the lines of his knuckles. 'But your District is known for its musical culture. Nowhere else has songs quite like yours. Do you know "Bright Morning Star"? I love that one. It's very old.'

She does know it. An ancient song, indeed. Bright morning star a-rising, oh where are our dear fathers? Some are down in the valley praying… Some have gone to heaven shouting… Certainly not a song she has any inclination to sing around Snow.

'I know it,' she says, voice clipped. 'I'd like to stop talking about this now.'

Snow's strange eyes glimmer at her in the twilit dim. 'Of course, Miss Everdeen.'

They drag logs to the fire to sit on and settle in for dinner. They have had good fortune foraging alongside the road today: hawthorn leaves and nettle, and wild garlic and chickweed. The pond is generous enough to offer some unripe katniss plants, and Katniss studies their map while Snow cooks the stew.

'It's a while to go yet, but eventually we'll pass near this big ruined city,' she says, her finger tracing the route. 'I've never been to a real ancestral ruin.'

'Richmond,' says Snow, and when she looks at him with a question he explains. 'The ruin you mention is what was once called Richmond. It used to be one of the great cities in this region, before the disasters. It's also one of the places I stored a cache of supplies. If you wanted to divert through there, it could be helpful to replenish our food stores.'

'Maybe,' she says, studying her map. It would have never have occurred to her to let Snow dictate the path of their journey when first she set out, but now this seems a perfectly natural suggestion. It excites her to think about what an ancestral ruin might be like.

'It's a beautiful night,' says Snow. 'The stars out here are the brightest I have ever seen. That is something you don't get in the Capitol. Light pollution.' Snow glances up at the sky and points, and Katniss follows his finger. 'Do you know the constellations, Miss Everdeen?'

'Yeah.' She finds the bright star that marks the Little Lynx and points her own finger at the constellation below it. 'Big Lynx. Little Lynx.' Her finger moves to another collection of stars. 'Dandelion.'

Snow laughs at her side. 'Those are not the correct names.' He indicates again the same constellations. 'Ursa Major. Ursa Minor. I have no idea what your dandelion is supposed to represent.'

Katniss feels hot anger and inexplicable sorrow clutch in her throat. 'Well, those are the ones I was taught.'

'By your father?' says Snow, his voice light and curious.

Katniss pokes the fire to cover the strange, sad feeling she is having. 'Obviously.'

'He was incorrect. I imagine the standard of astrological education in District 12 isn't very high.'

'Don't talk about my father,' she snaps. 'And he wasn't wrong. Those are what we call them.'

'In District 12?'

'No, just…' She screws up her eyes. Why does she want to cry? Why does Snow bring these appalling, embarrassing reactions out of her? 'That's just what my father called them, and that's what I call them, too.'

There is a long moment of silence, overlain with the crackle of the fire and the low, occasional bubble of the stew.

'I apologize, Miss Everdeen,' says Snow at last. 'I like "Big Lynx" and "Little Lynx". I can see how a lynx makes more sense than a bear.' He tilts his head at the sky. 'It does seem to have a longer tail.'

She accepts his peace offering, but she doesn't much want to think about the stars again. It reminds her too much of dead people. And yet Snow persists in life, the one man who deserves death more than any other. And she could give it to him, and yet she does not. Every day, she chooses not to kill him.

'Did your father—'

'Stop it,' she snaps, and Snow raises his eyebrows. 'Just stop. Stop talking about my family and my friends, like you know me. You know nothing about me.'

'But I do know you.'

'Why, because you watched me for years?' she spits. 'I watched you on those television screens all my life. My earliest childhood memory is of watching you projected in the town square giving some speech. And I know nothing about you.' She turns the arrow over and over in her fingers, watching the ducks, waiting to kill.

'Miss Everdeen,' says Snow, and despite herself she looks at him. His smile brims with strange affection. 'Of course I know you. And you know me far better than you think.'

'How could you possibly know me?' she mutters.

'Because I am an extremely intelligent man,' he says without humility, 'and you were the sole object of my obsession for years. I know about your kindness, and I know about your cruelty. I know of the wild violence inside you, and the compassion you show for those in need. For your sister. For that girl from District 11. For me.'

She screws up her face in revulsion. 'I don't show you compassion.'

'Miss Everdeen,' he laughs. 'There are tens of thousands — perhaps hundreds of thousands — of people in this country who, were they in your position, would have hacked off my hands at the wrists, who would have blinded me, who have dragged me in bleeding agony across this wilderness with nothing but delight for my suffering. But you did not do this.'

She shakes her head and runs a tongue over her teeth. 'I think about killing you every day.'

'But you don't. And you won't. Because you have an incredible ability to care for others less fortunate than yourself. Even your greatest enemy.' He heaves a strange, great sigh. 'You would have been fantastic at leading this nation. You still have a chance to be.'

'Don't get started on that again.'

'But it's true,' he says. 'Coin was never suited for the presidency. This country is too unruly for someone so fond of discipline. And if the rebellion needs a new leader, then you—'

Suddenly Katniss raises her arm, aims the arrow, and shoots. It's a perfect shot: silver death flying through the dark and lancing the poor unfortunate bird who was foolish enough to wander into the shallows.

'Yes,' Katniss crows, then jumps to her feet, grinning despite herself. 'Duck for dinner.'

Snow smiles up at her in a peculiar way. 'Miss Everdeen,' he begins, and then shakes his head. 'Never mind.'


Katniss' rancor for Snow is soothed by a hot, fulfilling meal, and it's easier to tolerate his nonsensical ways with a stomach full of duck meat. He tells her a little more about geography. He explains the shape of the Appalachian mountains and how far the sea lies to the east, and the shape the world used to be before the rising of the tides. He tells her about the loss of places she has never heard of like Norfolk and Washington, and the floods that took them, and the numbers of dead.

'How long ago did this happen?' she says through a mouthful of duck.

'Hundreds of years ago. The records from that time are slim, but I have collated what knowledge there is.'

'Why do we know so little about it?'

Snow eats more delicately than she does, taking neater bites, and sometimes Katniss thinks he looks at her uncultured, messy eating with an almost affectionate disdain. 'From what I have learned, after the fall of the old world, there was a rise in a radical group who sought to destroy all knowledge that came from it.' He speaks engagingly, his eyes blue and gold in the firelight, and he instructs her without condescension or annoyance. 'They were not entirely successful, thankfully. Several hospitals and laboratories across the country preserved our medical knowledge. A few libraries endured. But vast swathes of the culture of North America was lost.'

'Why would they want to destroy that?'

'They believed the world had grown corrupt.' Snow shrugs. 'Attitudes driven by superstitions, religions, cults... But they mostly succeeded in their attempts to purge this country of its history. It has been very difficult to learn what happened.'

'I know none of this,' says Katniss. 'If you care about this information, why not let people actually learn it?'

'Too much information in the wrong minds is dangerous, Miss Everdeen,' smiles Snow, and he rests his face on one hand. His palm shifts the skin of his cheek, and Katniss studies the smooth dips and strange valleys of his face. He never stops smiling at her.

'I'm going to bed,' she announces, somewhat petulantly, and then she remembers the sleeping arrangements. 'Are you… Do you mind sharing the tent?'

'Not at all.' He smiles at her, this deathlike man who ought to try to kill her, but who instead smiles and, now, sleeps beside her. 'The nights are extremely cold. As long as you are comfortable with it, Miss Everdeen.'

Katniss nods, first uncertainly, and then more firmly. 'Okay. Well, I'm going to get changed, so…' She shrugs. 'Knock, or whatever, before you come in.'

He nods. 'Understood.'

Leaving her boots outside and climbing inside the tent, she zips it up behind her and then flicks on the flashlight. She hesitates a moment before pulling off her jacket and unhooking her bra. She doesn't know why. Snow has been, if nothing else, very respectful of her space and body. She isn't sure how she wants to dress to sleep next to him. It's cold now, but with the two of them and the sleeping bag it will warm up. In the end, she decides to keep her pants and socks on and sleep in her t-shirt and shirt.

She is fingering her braid when she hears Snow's voice outside the tent. 'Miss Everdeen? May I come in?'

'Yeah, it's fine.'

The zip opens and Snow's face appears, so familiar to her now, and then he opens the door of the tent. There is a moment of awkwardness as he bends and steps over her, and Katniss watches his feet as they try, gingerly, to navigate her body. He lies down beside her, apologizing as his knee brushes her leg.

Katniss remains sitting up, considering, her fingertips playing on her braid. Then she loosens the tie and begins to unwind the plait. It's more comfortable to sleep without, with her hair open and soft rather than bound and hard. But there's a vulnerability to it she does not enjoy.

This time, she feels Snow's eyes look away from her. It brings her some reassurance that he respects her privacy on this. She lets her hair loose and shakes it out, then slips the band over her wrist and looks back at Snow. How strange to see him lying beneath the sleeping bag. He has only removed his coat to sleep. She notices that his feet are sticking out, his pants tucked into his socks for warmth. Of course. The sleeping bag is the tubular kind, with the zip beginning a little way above the rounded end for the feet. There would be no way to fit both of their feet beneath it without them flush against each other. She decides not to comment on this and turns out the light.

Carefully she reclines beside him, and it's easier to find a comfortable position now they have had some practice. She feels his body brush against her as she settles herself and each, still, jolt at the moments of contact. But she relaxes herself into the bedroll and makes peace with the places where Snow's body inescapably push against hers, and then it's not so not bad. She tucks the edge of the sleeping bag around her shoulder. It's much warmer with something to sleep beneath, though she still shivers.

'Well,' she says. 'Goodnight.'

She hears Snow's voice murmur back to her: 'Goodnight, Miss Everdeen.'

She lies in the darkness, Snow beside her, and finds herself fidgeting. After the river incident she was too exhausted and relieved to do anything more than pass out, but now she is nervous and overly conscious of his body beside her. The body of President Snow. She can smell the blood-scent of his breath, but she can also smell his sweat and that different, odd, rich smell of his hair and scalp. His breathing fills the tent, slow and steady, and Katniss tries to clear her mind. It's difficult. This is too intimate, too real.

'Snow?'

'Hm?'

She chews her tongue over what to say next. She just wants a distraction, something to stop her thinking about his body hot and real beside her. 'Where did you learn the constellations?'

'From books, Miss Everdeen. We had a fine library.'

'Oh.' She fiddles with the shiny fabric of the sleeping bag. 'Did your father teach you them?'

'No,' comes Snow's voice immediately. Then again, a little softer: 'No. He never taught me anything.'

This is an odd comment, and Katniss decides not to pursue it. She turns on her side, face against the canvas of the tent, and her last thoughts before sleep are of her own father, trapped underground, looking right into her, and the perfect moment when his face is still whole before it disintegrates into a hundred tiny bloody pieces.

Her own screaming wakes her. She is dying. She is underground, buried, and the air in her lungs is being replaced with dirt. She claws at the dirt, trying to dig her way out, and she realizes she does not know which way is up or down.

'Miss Everdeen?'

Cool blue voice in her ears. He's the one burying her. Snow's smell, all around her. Snow's bloody dirt. Sobs drown out her screams and she starts to tire, but she can feel air in her lungs with every heaving breath.

Light blinds her, and then her wild eyes take in the canvas of the tent. She is not being buried alive. Katniss gasps, her shirt drenched in sweat, and her eyes meet Snow's. He holds the flashlight and looks at her with a mix of concern and aversion.

'You were having a nightmare,' he observes. There is something unpleasant in his voice.

Katniss stares at him for a long time, her chest rising and falling with the remnants of panic, and then she sits up and yanks open the zip of the tent. In damp socks, she stumbles into the freezing black and collapses on the grass a few feet away from the tent. There is no moon tonight and she can see nothing beyond the faint beam of the flashlight behind her.

Katniss cries.

Almost a whole fortnight without a real night terror. A record for her. Physical activity and exhaustion have perhaps kept them at bay, but they always find a way back to her. This was one of her old dreams, of the death of her father, but Snow was there too. Of course Snow was there. He's everywhere, always.

'Miss Everdeen?'

She does not turn back to the tent. 'Leave me alone.' She despises the way her voice bends around the sobs in her throat.

Katniss cries it out. She wishes Peeta were here to comfort her, but she is alone. Just her and the stars and the animals, and Snow. There is no worse person she could be trapped with. He probably thinks this is funny. It's all his fault, after all. He must so enjoy gifting nightmares.

In time, her sobs leave her and she has nothing left to her lungs but hiccups, and then Katniss wipes her eyes and her nose a few times before standing to walk back to the tent.

To her surprise, Snow is still awake, sitting upright, watching her. She looks at him with vehement hatred as she crosses the threshold.

'What?' she spits, challenging him, zipping up the tent.

Snow's thick, grey-white eyebrows raise and he shakes his head very slightly. 'I was concerned, Miss Everdeen.'

'Every nightmare I have is your fault,' she says, and lies down beside him, turning away, waiting for him to turn out the light.

'You are quite safe, Miss Everdeen,' says Snow, and his voice is low and rough like a river over pebbles. 'Is there anything I can do for you? I could sleep outside, if you'd prefer.'

Katniss has no idea what to say to that. 'Just turn out the fucking light.'

There is a pause and she cannot imagine what is going through Snow's head. 'As you wish, Miss Everdeen.'

Darkness returns to the tent. Sleep, however, eludes her for hours. When she finally does sleep again, her nightmare is a calmer one. Those rabbits running into the warren. They will lose all their loved ones to the blades, she knows, and yet she cannot help them.


It is late when Katniss wakes, and she is cold. She feels the absence beside her and rolls over into it, stretching her body, frowning as her face presses into the patch where Snow slept and inhaling the smell of him. Then she sits up, blinking, and wonders where he is.

He's gone, says a panicked part of her brain. You told him you were going to that old city, and now he knows the rebel base must be nearby and he's going to sell you out to Coin. Haymitch is dead. Gale is dead. It's all your fault.

She pauses and she breathes. No. Snow is not going anywhere. She believes him. She calms herself, then pulls down the zip of the tent.

There he is. He is sat by the fire, which is happily crackling, and he is cooking something.

He looks up at her. He smiles. 'Good morning, Miss Everdeen.' He has smoothed back his hair and beard, looking tidier, looking also a little younger. Not by much, though.

'You're still here,' she says.

'Of course.' He glances around at the vast pond, the huddle of bushes, the tent, the fire, Katniss. 'There is nowhere else I would rather be. Breakfast? I have a treat for you.'

She is immediately distrustful. She pulls her boots back on, then stumbles sleepily over to the fire. To her extreme surprise, there are three eggs frying in the pan.

'Eggs,' she says stupidly.

'Yes,' says Snow, amused. 'Duck eggs. I plundered the nests this morning while you were sleeping. There are eight more we can take with us.'

For a brief, insane moment, she wants to give him a hug. And then she realizes where that urge comes from. Her father cooking for her, out hunting, showing her how to poach from nests and cooking her fat goose eggs.

'Do you not like eggs?' says Snow, and Katniss realizes her expression has transmuted into miserable revulsion.

'No, I like eggs. Sorry. I was just… thinking about something.'

She sits, melancholic, and watches as Snow serves the eggs with wild garlic, one for him and two for her.

'Are you homesick?' says Snow.

She gives him a flat, irritated stare. 'For what, the pile of ashes you left me where District 12 used to be?'

'You were rebuilding,' he says mildly, cutting up his egg with the edge of the spoon. 'You and Mr Mellark. A home is built from your loved ones, after all.'

Peeta's name in his mouth always rankles her. 'And what about you? Are you homesick? Did you care about abandoning your wife and family when you ran away out here?'

Snow laughs with deep, lush warmth. 'Miss Everdeen, all of my family are dead.' He takes a bite of his eggs, chews, and swallows. 'My wife died decades ago. My son was shot by Coin's people. His wife was shot, too.' He scoops up another piece of egg. 'My cousin was killed during the taking of the Capitol. And as you know, my granddaughter died in the Games.' Again, he chews and swallows, then looks at Katniss with an expression she can only describe as blithe contentment. 'There was nobody I loved left at the Capitol.'

Katniss turns her own eggs around on her plate. Had she known these things? Yes, surely — she had heard something once about putting down the threat posed by Snow's son. But his wife, too? Had they really posed a threat? Or was that just cruelty? Loose ends?

There are two things she can say. Good: you deserved it. The other thing is what she actually does say: 'I'm sorry.'

Snow quirks his eyebrows and shrugs. 'I don't dwell on these things, Miss Everdeen. Don't blame yourself.'

She is suddenly not so very hungry for eggs. Snow warned her. These things happen in war. And he truly meant it. So many deaths, and was it even worth it? Was it worth it to depose a man who right now is sitting next to her, eating eggs, the light in his eyes not even slightly dimmed and a smile always at the corner of his mouth?

'I guess that's not much of a home to go back to,' she says at last.

'No,' says Snow brightly. 'But you have a home, Miss Everdeen. You will be able to return to it one day, I'm sure. No doubt Mr Mellark misses you.'

Katniss frowns. 'Yeah, I'm sure he does.' She chews her lip. 'I didn't know you lost your son. That must have been hard.'

Snow pauses in eating his eggs and considers this comment seriously. 'We weren't close,' he says at last. 'I had little hand in his upbringing, which I regret. He was a spoiled, idiotic child. No greater ambitions than drinking and whoring — if you'll excuse my crassness. I liked his wife, though. She could have done better than my boy.'

Katniss knows even less what to say to this. After enduring only stilted niceties in District 12 about her dead sister, it's refreshing to hear someone talk about a dead loved one in such frank, unpleasant terms.

And then an absolutely bizarre thought comes into her mind. There is only one other person in her life with children, and that's her own mother. She has never been able to ask anyone this before.

'Snow… Did you want to have kids?'

This time, Snow's laugh is unusually clumsy in its disbelief. 'Of course not,' he says. 'But I was the President, Miss Everdeen. One has to sell the appearance of being a family man. I did not do a good job parenting my son, but I have always prioritized my work. I do not regret putting the country before my family.'

Katniss wants to keep her hands busy. She puts them to the dark fall of her hair and starts to weave her braid. 'I don't want kids.'

'Of course you don't,' says Snow immediately, sharply, and Katniss' eyes dart to him. They hold each other's strange, honed gazes. 'You're a hunter. Not a mother. Any idiot could see that.'

'You can be a hunter and a mother,' she counters. 'Like a female tiger. They do all the hunting for the males.'

'Lionesses,' Snow corrects, with an odd unpleasantness. 'Tigers are solitary hunters. But anyway. You're not a lioness.'

Katniss rolls her eyes. 'No, I'm a fucking mockingjay.'

'No,' says Snow, with such biting firmness that she feels like a reprimanded schoolchild. 'You're a girl. Or a woman. Whichever you prefer.' He breathes in slowly. 'If it's not too inappropriate of me to say, Miss Everdeen, I find the idea of you with children vaguely sickening.'

She stares at him. 'Why?'

'Because you don't want them,' he says simply. 'That much is obvious. You're a wild creature.' He pauses, and there is an old, cruel twist to his lips. 'But Mr Mellark wants you to have them, doesn't he? Does he want to domesticate you?'

She suddenly does not like this conversation. Was that why he listed off his dead family? To wheedle a way back around to Peeta, to gnaw at that thread?

'Stop trying to get at me through Peeta,' she snaps. 'You're so manipulative. Is your son actually dead or did you just say that to try to get back to this topic?'

Snow tilts his head at her. 'He's dead. They showed me the pictures of his body when I was held at that bank. I recall the shape of the hole in his face.' He looks at her very hard. 'I never lie to you, Miss Everdeen. And besides,' he says, brightening, 'it's not me you're irritated with. It's Mr Mellark.'

'What do you mean?'

'It's obvious. He wants children. You don't. You feel pressured to have them for his sake.' His eyes go curiously cool, like some arctic sky. 'Don't do it.'

They speak no further of the topic over breakfast, and Katniss is still mulling over these comments even as she disassembles the tent and Snow puts out the fire. Even as they turn back to the road, which is misty and damp today, the conversation still rattles through her mind. The choice has hung over her for so long. Have kids and make Peeta happy, or get shot by Coin. She knew, deep down, she would eventually need to choose the former. Otherwise, she might as well kill herself. Has this bizarre journey granted her a third option, or is that choice still waiting for her? Peeta by the fire with a freshly baked pie, a little child clutching his leg and smiling up her? Would it be so bad?

It is this very thought she finds herself saying out loud. 'It wouldn't be so bad. It's what people do. I'm sure I'd love them once I had them.'

Her heart jolts as Snow suddenly steps out in front of her, wheels around, and blocks the road. He stares down at her, his eyes brumal and blue, and she marvels at how tall he is.

'It would be so very easy, wouldn't it, Miss Everdeen?' His voice is pack ice encasing her spine, paralyzing her. 'One dull night. A little too much wine. The boy tells you how beautiful you look, and how beautiful your children would be. And the only thing you need to do is not tell him no.' Katniss can barely hold those staring, deathly eyes. 'Lie down, let it happen. And he'll be so delighted when you no longer bleed.' The scalding winter in his eyes dims somewhat and he shakes his head. 'Do not do that to yourself, Miss Everdeen.' His gaze flicks over her body. 'It would be a tragedy.'

Then he falls back beside her and begins walking again and Katniss, somewhat haltingly, follows suit. She cannot explain the feeling inside her. There is fear, and distrust of Snow, yes; but also that bizarre reassurance that he seems to induce in her. It's the first time anyone has ever voiced the possibility of her having children as a negative.

She tries to put this bizarre conversation out of mind, and together they continue to walk the road in their now-familiar rhythm, Katniss always a little ahead, but Snow keeps pace well. He looks so much healthier than he did when they first set out, as though exercise and good company have rejuvenated him. Conversation gets easier, and though Katniss sometimes tries to stonewall his attempts to draw her into discussion about the weather and the plants and the gorgeous scroll of blue mountains, it is hard not to slip into the rhythm of his little remarks. He tells dry jokes, too, and though she never laughs, he provokes the occasional smile.

He is talking to her about a particular kind of deer that used to inhabit the area and if the species is still likely to be found when the road curves and they both stop stock still.

There are two bodies in the road.

Snow steps immediately into the tree-line, his arm guiding Katniss, and she lets him shepherd her as she removes her bow. They drop and wait, watching the horizon, and Katniss notches an arrow.

It is silent. The sun is bright and sharp, casting one uneven shadow from the two heaps in the road. One large, territorial condor is perched atop the bodies, gorging itself. If she strains her ears, she can just hear the rustle of its feathers. There are no other sounds. No people. Just two bodies and the scavenger.

Katniss takes step by cautious step through the trees, feline and wary, her leather boots almost silent against the leaves. There is nothing and no one here. Two shapes, both huddled in coats. One is big and dressed in greys and browns, the other small and brightly colored.

Once they are level with the bodies she steps out of the trees. The condor opens its wings, unhappy to be interrupted, but as Snow joins Katniss it deems these two rival predators too large to be worth the argument. It spreads the massive canopy of its black wings and slowly takes to the air, leaving Katniss alone; alone with Snow, and with the bodies.

She lowers her bow.

It's a man and a child. She closes her eyes against the caverns where their faces used to be, their missing parts, the host of maggots. She cannot guess the age of the man; the child, by her size, cannot be older than ten.

'They've been dead for days,' observes Snow. She opens her eyes and looks away to watch Snow conduct his examinations in her peripheries. The girl's puffy coat is so cheerful, pink and yellow and green. 'Bullet wounds to the back of the head. Judging by their position, they were shot on their knees. Father and daughter, I would wager. The clothing suggests they're from District 6. There has been conflict there, particularly in the poorer regions of the north. Refugees fleeing from Coin, perhaps.'

'Oh,' is all Katniss can manage.

Snow stands slowly, hands pushing against his thighs. 'Rather poor practice, to shoot refugees and abandon their bodies.'

'Oh yes,' Katniss whispers. 'Better to abduct them and turn them into avoxes, right?'

'Naturally,' says Snow, with dry surprise. 'That way the man could still be useful. We would not do that to a girl this age, however. She is too young to be held responsible for her actions.'

Katniss stares at him, then turns, takes three paces from the bodies, and throws up. She swills water in her mouth and calms herself, and Snow does not bother her as she reorients her dizzy mind. It's been a while since she saw a dead child. The bodies get so small when they've been dead a few days, once they start to shrink.

She spits out a chunk of vomited-up egg, swills again, then shakes herself. Pale-faced and grim, she returns to Snow. He has pulled the bodies' warm winter hats over their faces to cover the wreck made by the animals and the insects. There's not much to be done to cover up the stripped-clean bones of their hands.

'We should bury them,' says Katniss.

'No, we should keep moving. This means Coin's people can't be further than a few days away. It is unsafe to linger.'

'That is a little girl!' Katniss shouts, and Snow looks oddly taken aback. 'We're not leaving them here. They need to be buried.'

'Miss Everdeen, it really isn't wise to—'

'I'm burying them,' she repeats. 'If you want to run off, fine. I don't care. I'll find you anyway. But I'm burying them.'

Still shaking, her skin clammy, she walks back to the trees and finds a patch of soft earth. She doesn't have anything to serve as a shovel, so she seeks out a suitable stick and starts to gouge out a shallow trench in the soil. She isn't sure what to feel. How many dead children has she seen? Hard to say. She saw so many of them in pieces. Two dead kids is worse than one. What if one is cut into two different pieces? Better or worse? Is it still one child?

She pushes those thoughts away. She does not have the luxury to fall apart, to lock herself in a dark corner as she did after the death of Prim. She has jobs to do. Right now, her job is to dig a grave. And is it so surprising to her that Coin's people would make a fleeing child kneel, then shoot her in the back of the head? She has done worse. Coin kills children: that's not new information. Snow did, too. They are not so different. Snow examined that dead child like she was just a piece of meat to be appraised. He is no better. Just a different breed of monster.

She refuses to look up as Snow's heavy footsteps join her, but a frown flits across her face as she sees him pick up a similar piece of wood and join the gravedigging. It goes faster with the two of them. Neither speaks. This is a simple task for the two of them to accomplish.

Once the hollow is deep enough to accommodate two bodies she stops.

'That'll do,' she says. 'We don't have time for anything better.'

She pauses, examining the grave. She will need to drag the man; he will be too heavy to carry. But the girl? She can pick her up. She must be so light. Katniss takes deep breaths and tries and fails to will her limbs to move.

She barely hears Snow leave and return, but then there he is, at her side again. He strains to move, for in his strong arms is the body of the dead man. It is fortunate, perhaps, that the condor ate enough of the corpse to lessen the weight. Snow lowers it gently into the grave. Katniss just stands there and waits, tasting the remnants of half-digested eggs and stomach acid, as Snow leaves again and returns with the body of the girl. He lays her down very carefully, her own pink bobble hat covering the untidy remnants of her face, next to her father.

'Shall we bury them? We need to get moving.'

'I have to say something,' whispers Katniss. 'If we just drop them in the ground, it doesn't mean anything. There has to be something. I wish we knew who they were.'

She thinks that Snow is growing annoyed with her. But he bends again to the grave and she watches, frowning, as he goes through the pockets of the bodies' coats. He seems to know exactly where to look. This is not, she thinks, the first time he has gone through the pockets of corpses. Then he climbs again from the makeshift grave, holding in his hand a wallet and identification papers.

'The man was Toll Overhill,' he says. 'The girl was travelling under the name Letitia, but this is a forged passport.' He flicks through the wallet and pulls out a slim, faded photograph that depicts the man and girl, grinning and alive, with a woman beside them. A family. 'I imagine the mother is dead.' He pulls out another piece of paper. 'This is a library card, and well-used. The father, at least, must have enjoyed reading.' He peels an old, faded scrap of paper from the depths of the wallet. 'A grocery list. "Milk, bread, mushrooms, onions, grapes." Grapes are expensive in District 6. A gift, perhaps, for the girl.' He tilts his head at her. 'Is that enough? Can we leave?'

She does not answer him. Quietly, with ceremony, she begins to scrape the displaced dirt back into the grave. At least she got to bury these two. She has passed so many bodies left unburied. No one buried Prim. There wasn't enough left to bury.

With the bodies loosely covered with dirt and leaf litter, Katniss pauses. It's not enough. Why can't it be enough? Why doesn't she know the right things to say? The only real funeral she's ever been to was her father's. That had been a silent day. Her mother had nothing to say.

'Miss Everdeen?' says Snow. His impatience is palpable.

'There should be a eulogy,' she murmurs. 'But I don't know how to say them.'

A quiet, thin breath of irritation sounds beside her. And then, with clarity and patience, Snow quietly recites: '"Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light; I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night."' He looks at her, and she at him. 'Will that suffice?'

There is some silence. The breeze shimmers through the trees above. Then she says: 'Yeah. That's fine.'

And together, neither speaking, the sunlight startling, they walk away from the grave and return to the road once more.


'Bright Morning Star' is a traditional Appalachian folk song. The Man in the Moon is my own.

The poem quoted by Snow is 'The Old Astronomer to His Pupil' by Sarah Williams.