Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/769720.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Rape/Non-Con, Underage
  Category:
      F/F
  Fandom:
      Hunger_Games_Series_-_All_Media_Types, Hunger_Games_Trilogy_-_Suzanne
      Collins, Hunger_Games_(2012)
  Relationship:
      Katniss_Everdeen/Peeta_Mellark, Katniss_Everdeen/Original_Female
      Character
  Character:
      Katniss_Everdeen, Minerva_Snow
  Additional Tags:
      Non-Graphic_Rape/Non-Con, Non-Consensual_Drug_Use, Power_Imbalance,
      Stolen_Moments, Scars, Hospitals, Restraints, Sexual_Coercion, First
      Time, Original_Character(s), Social_Commentary, Memory_Alteration, Canon
      Compliant, Aftercare, Not_Happy_Fluffy_Tasty_Bunnies
  Series:
      Part 1 of Prisons_Without_Bars
  Stats:
      Published: 2013-04-22 Words: 5487
****** Conquests ******
by A_Kiss_of_Fire_(TigerDragon), Bright_Elen
Summary
     Katniss Everdeen has never thought of herself as anyone's property,
     not even after her reaping, but there's no denying that the Capitol
     has gotten its use out of her as bloody entertainment. When she left
     the arena - before they tried to take Peeta away - she thought that
     was all they wanted. But this is the Capitol, the heart of Panem, and
     when you win one game, you've just bought your way in to another one.
     After all, winners are a valuable commodity.
Notes
     For the canonically curious, this scene slots neatly in at the bottom
     of page 350 of the first edition of The Hunger Games and includes its
     own explanation of why it's not in the book. We've taken a couple of
     slight liberties here by filling in around the edges of canon (for
     instance, there's no evidence for or against President Snow having
     daughters except that he does have a granddaughter, and we've
     invented a couple of pharmaceuticals), but for the most part we hope
     that this piece fits in the same tone and genre as the original.
     Which, by the way, means you need to take our tags very seriously.
     This is not a nice story. It doesn't pretend to be.
I’m dreaming of Rue, bloodied and shrouded in flowers, when I come awake biting
my lip bloody to hold in the rush of tears and the low agony sounds that I
don’t dare show the cameras. My eyelids flick and flutter, trying to clear the
vague yellow glow out of my vision that my dulled mind is screaming means I’m
sun-drenched, a target, going to die, and then I smell the sharp antiseptic and
feel the softness of the bedclothes against my bare skin.
I’m not in the arena anymore, lashed to a tree to keep from falling out or
tucked in against Peeta in that little cave, watching and listening to him die
by inches. We won.
I won. I’m alive.
I shift against the restraint band that my body’s already anticipating, already
thinking about swearing at the walls again - futile or not, it makes me feel
better sometimes, caught in this perpetual twilight while they feed me and mend
me and polish my nails - and then my right arm moves freely, nothing plugged
into it, and I’m suddenly still again, taut with a tension I can’t explain. My
eyes blink all on their own, still dazzled, trying to adjust, and I think about
calling out for Peeta.
“You’re smaller than you looked on the screens, Katniss Everdeen.”
My head snaps around to see who spoke and my body jerks against the band to try
to get away, all reflex even before my mind catches up to that voice - a
woman’s, unfamiliar, touched by that strange lilting pitch of the Capitol’s
accent and the over-long sss, but I don’t want to imitate or make fun of her
voice because now that I hear it, I understand what Octavia and Flavius and
Venia are mimicking. It doesn’t sound sing-song or silly. It sounds like a
hunting bird’s call mixed in with a snake’s hiss. It sounds dangerous.
The dazzle finally clears from my eyes, and the black blot sitting at the foot
of my bed starts to resolve itself into a woman’s body. I see the hair clearly
first - long, ridiculously ornamentally long and only barely braided, so ebony
black that it picks up faint blue highlights from the yellow light - and then
the pale white arms, the glitter of carved silvery metal wrapped across the
forearms like some sort of ceremonial armor, the long ivory throat and the
clinging silken dress almost as black as the hair, so the two mingle together
and with my eyes still blurry, it’s hard to tell where one starts and the other
stops. The face comes into focus last, pieces at a time like one of those video
composites - lips a crimson so dark that it’s almost black, the lipstick
dipping in a clean narrow line down almost to her chin, narrow jaw, sharp
cheekbones, delicate nose, black-line eyebrows, heavy black eyeliner that
surrounds each eye and traces out almost to her temple on each side, a delicate
curl descending like a fishhook from the left eye that stops just above the
nose. Piercing gray eyes, pale, the same color as a hovercraft hull and somehow
just as hard.
My eyes flick to the black half-dome on the wall I know the camera is sitting
under.  “I lost some weight.”
“The camera’s off,” she offers, still studying me the way a hawk looks at a
rabbit. It makes my skin itch. “All of them, in fact. The microphones, as
well.” My face must give something away, because she laughs very softly in a
way that doesn’t sound like any laughter I’ve ever heard before. There’s
absolutely nothing warm about that laugh at all. “Don’t look so surprised,
gladiatora. Not everything is for public view, after all.”
I try not to glare. What the hell is she planning? I force myself to relax,
exhale slowly, and even risk faking a small smile. “I hate those things.”
“An unpleasant necessity of life,” she agrees, lifting a light plastic cup from
the small table at the end of the bed and offering it to me. “Drink?”
Her nails are long, painted a strange dark metallic color that on second look
I’m not even sure is paint, and they look sharp.  It looks like water, but it
could be anything. I can’t help a dry swallow, but I shake my head. “No,
thanks.”
“If I wanted you drugged,” she points out in a voice of sweet, deadly reason,
“don’t you imagine that I’d have done it while you were sleeping?”
Even though there’s something about this stark woman that makes me think she’s
as creepy as she looks, I can’t think of a reason she would come talk to me
just to drug me. Besides, while I don’t feel any other symptoms of dehydration,
I want that drink pretty badly.
“Okay.”
She extends her hand enough for me to take the cup easily, and I have to force
myself not to swallow it in greedy gulps that will make me sick sooner or
later. The slow, careful sips are a kind of minor torture, and she just sits
there watching me watch her. Maybe I ought to be used to being on display by
now, but I’m not - this is different from the cameras, closer and more
dangerous, and I can’t begin to imagine what she wants from me. That alone
scares me, at least as much as I still have the ability to be scared. Maybe
it’s the lingering aftereffects of the meds or maybe it’s just the eighteen
days of being hunted, wounded, hungry, thirsty, furious and scared so bad I
could barely feel it that leave me feeling drained of emotion. Peeta. I need to
know he’s going to be on the train home. I need to hold Prim.
Maybe I should ask this woman on my bed about Peeta, but I don’t. I’m not sure
I’d trust her answer, no matter what she told me, and I know I’d trust it less
than the red-haired Avox who’s already told me he’s all right.  It’s not
enough, but I have to see him myself to be sure. To know it’s real. She’s not
going to help me do that - I don’t know how I know, but I do. I’m learning to
listen to that whisper in me that has started to sound like Haymitch, and it
tells me there’s nothing safe or helpful about the woman at the end of the bed.
Wait for the other shoe, sweetheart, it tells me.
“The burn on your calf,” she asks, eyes still intent. “May I see it, Katniss?”
It’s a strange moment to rediscover my modesty, after all the prodding and
primping before the Games and the bloody, desperate, stripped-down reality of
the arena, but caution and ‘Haymitch’s’ voice tell me that a woman who can have
the cameras turned off in my hospital room isn’t one I should refuse. Besides,
it’s just a scar, and she might be a doctor.
And I might be President, sweetheart, but I wouldn’t count on it.
I peel the sheet back carefully, exposing my calf and my knee but as little
else as possible, and the roughened flesh is a dull red and white - less
noticeable than it was after the ointment, but still a scar the size of my
hand. She makes a soft, delighted sound and bends forward over my leg, reaching
out with those sharp-tipped nails and slowly caressing the ridges and crevices
of the scar, and her voice is a husky whisper that startles me because I don’t
have any idea what it could mean. I’ve never heard anyone talk like that back
home, or since I arrived here.
“It’s beautiful,” she tells me. “You applied my ointment perfectly.”
“Uh, thanks,” I say, flatly. Why is she complimenting me for that? Do they have
specialists to apply their own ointment for them here? “It wasn’t that hard.”
She laughs again, lower and throatier than before, and her palm comes to rest
over the burn as she lifts her eyes to mine and takes one of my burn-welted
hands. Those cool, delicately sharp nails trace across my scars - the old ones
from hunting, the new ones from the arena - and she watches my eyes while she
does it. My pulse jumps and shivers, and my cheeks burn. I don’t know why,
either, except that there’s something uncomfortably intimate about the gesture.
It’s not her enthusiasm alone - most people in the Capitol love the Games, and
they only make me angry. Like my prep team, most of them aren’t cruel or
malicious, just so shallow that they can’t see the tributes as real people.   
I get the sudden, clear feeling that for this woman, the tributes’ humanity is
why she loves the violence. She likes the fact that I’m a murderer. I can’t
help shrinking back a little.
“You don’t need to be frightened, gladiatora. I’m not going to hurt you.” Her
lips curve in a way that reminds me of Glimmer, but she doesn’t let go of my
hand. “And you’re not going to hurt me, either, because I have no less than
three ways to summon Peacekeepers that require neither leaving the room or the
use of my hands. Just so we both know where we stand.”
I bare my teeth in a grim smile. “Like I could forget where I am.”
“Of course not. You’re a clever girl, Katniss. I knew that from the moment I
saw you shoot the apple.” Surprise must register on my face, because she laughs
again - that low, husky sound that makes all the blood try to rush into my
skin. “Oh, no, I wasn’t there. You’d have remembered me. But I was watching. I
always watch the presentations. Sometimes the Gamemakers miss things in their
ratings.”
Coming into my room, and now this. If she can ignore the Capitol’s rules, this
woman is very dangerous indeed.
“Who are you?”
She laughs softly and turns my hand over, palm up, before I really realize that
she’s doing it. Then she bends down and presses those dark crimson lips to my
palm, and when the soft wetness of her tongue flicks across the callouses
there, the rough patches that years of using my bow in the woods have etched
into me, it’s everything I can do not to yank my hand away from her like she’s
inflicted a fresh burn. I don’t know why I don’t, except that I’m not ready to
cross this woman. Not yet.
“Minerva Theodora Snow, my dear Katniss. Very much delighted to meet you at
last.”
I can’t flee, and I can’t fight. The only thing I can do is play along, and it
makes me scream inside.
To distract myself, I concentrate on the new information. Snow? A relative?
Even looking as her closely, it’s hard to tell her age, especially with the
Capitol makeup and rejuvenation technology available to her. She could be
anywhere from eighteen to forty.
A daughter or granddaughter, then. I didn’t know the President had children,
but I guess if I were him I wouldn’t tell anyone, either. Still, that means
someone had to marry him, and that strains my mind just thinking about it. I do
remember some mention in a schoolbook about his dear, departed wife. I wonder
how she died, then decide I don’t want to even think too hard about that with
this woman in the room.
She’s still watching me, and she still hasn’t let go of my hand, and I’m not
sure there’s an inch of skin left on it she hasn’t touched. Maybe she thinks
so, too, because she lets go and reaches across me to take my other hand
between both of hers. That gesture, I know, and it makes my blood run hot and
cold.
Peeta touched my hand that way in the cave, while I was lying next to him and
playing at  loving him for the cameras. But the look in her eyes now is hungry,
and there’s none of Peeta’s kindness or warmth there.
“What do you want?” I ask her, even though my voice sounds more like ice and
stone than my own.
The edge of her mouth curls up in a strange, small smile, and she reaches up
with those glittering nails to brush them lightly through the dark, ragged
strands of my hair. “Did you know, clever Katniss,” she murmurs in answer,
“that in the old Roman Empire, long before the Dark Days, women of breeding
would bid for the favors of the gladiators - their tributes?”
In the Seam, a lot of the girls get food from the Peacekeepers without putting
their names in the drawing. For a price. Now I understand.
“So how much did I go for?” It comes out tired and bitter, because suddenly
nothing about these people surprises me anymore, and then she smiles and
somehow I know I’ve said the right thing. That she wants to tell me how much
she paid for me. Vanity? Something else? Whatever it is, it’s a weakness. A
weapon. I need to remember it.
“Not as much as I won betting on you, my gladiatora, but enough to buy a
penthouse outright and furnish it in style. Of course, they closed the bidding
after your dramatic demonstration of your devotion to your dear Peeta, so it
might well have gone even higher if they hadn’t. Fortunately, I was able to
prevail upon them to accept one last bid.”
“Because you’re Snow’s daughter.” Her gray eyes flash, and I know I’ve put a
foot wrong, but it’s hard to care that I’ve hurt her precious feelings. Hard
not to think about having this woman in the arena instead of Glimmer and Clove
and Foxface.
I understand how people could do that to other people a little better now, too.
“Among other reasons,” she murmurs, just a little stiffly, and lifts my hand to
her mouth again to run her lips over the half-faded welts of the burns. “It
would be tiresome to explain. Suffice to say that they were prepared to be
reasonable once I made my wishes clear.”
I snort a laugh. “Nothing here is reasonable.”
It’s a stupid thing to say, an invitation to trouble, but instead of being
furious or calling the Peacekeepers, she just laughs and kisses my wrist.
“Clever Katniss, indeed.”
She doesn’t move for a long moment, and all I want is to get this over with.
“So? What are you waiting for?”
“I wanted to talk to you. Take my time. Enjoy you.” Her lip curves again in
that thing that I’m not sure is a smile at all. “You’re more precious than
gems, Katniss. The girl who was on fire, right here where I can touch her. Who
would want to rush that?” She leans forward over me without letting go of my
hand, the delicate points of her nails digging in at the back of my neck, and
her lips slowly trace the puckered scar above my eyebrows.
Unexpectedly, the softness of her lips on my skin drives a hot pulse of
electricity down from my head to my guts and... lower. My heart speeds up and I
start to feel warm, and my breath catches before I can stop myself. I frown at
her. “What did you give me?”
“Flora-7. A small dose. Just enough to make things physically easier for you.”
She gives me the answer factually, calmly, without any trace of sentiment, and
then touches her lips to my cheek in a way that makes me shiver again. This
time, I can’t tell if it’s because I want to jerk away or not. “I’m not a cruel
woman, Katniss.”
Somehow I believe her. Believe that she doesn’t intend to damage my body,
anyway. And  compared to making me a murderer in front Panam and then
applauding me for it, making me do this isn’t likely to wake me up in the
middle of the night. After all the blood and horror, the ugliness of this
moment feels more like an echo than a fresh wound.
I feel warmer now, my skin almost tingling, and I decide to give in. It can’t
be worse, some part of me that still has a bite whispers, than letting Flavius
and Octavia and Venia rip all the hair out of my body just so I could look
pretty before the slaughter.
She must see my face change, or maybe my eyes, because her voice drops out of
that high, fluted tone and down into a murmur that seems to climb in under my
skin like a violation of silk. “Beautiful Katniss,” she breathes into my ear,
and then her nails are under my chin and she’s kissing me. It’s not like
Peeta’s kisses. Her mouth is softer, and it tastes like roses and spices, and
he never handled me like a trained pet when he kissed me. There’s a tempting,
scary kind of helplessness to that - like falling asleep in the tree the moment
the pain stopped, even with the Careers down below me just waiting to kill me.
All I have to do, that touch promises, is not fight her. If I don’t fight her,
it won’t hurt.
And it’s not just me I’m protecting. She could arrange whatever she wanted for
Gale or Prim, or Peeta’s family.
So instead of fighting her, I fight my own impulses. I try to focus on the way
my body feels and not how much my hands itch for my arrows or even my knife. I
try to focus on the softness of her hair and the low, eager sounds she makes,
because the same instinct in me that knows which way a doe is going to break
when it runs understands that the better I am at this, the faster she’ll be
satisfied. Then she’ll leave, and I’ll go back to sleep, and I’ll try to
pretend that this didn’t happen even when Haymitch tries to ask me about it and
winds up with another drink instead.
I fight, and I win, because I have to win to survive. Not so different from the
arena, after all. There’s only one moment when I’m really in danger, when I’m
sure I’m going to fail this test the way I almost failed the Gamemakers’ test
before I thought to shoot the apple.
We’re kissing. She’s naked and over me, our bodies touching, and the delicate
black filigree tattoos of tigers and hawks across her shoulders are moving with
the slow bunch of her muscles as she touches me. The thin black gloves she’s
wearing are tough, tough enough to turn the sharp points of her nails into a
delicate glide, and they seem to warm themselves so that it’s easier and more
pleasant when my body clenches around them. I can’t breathe, I feel feverish,
and the way she’s smiling down at me makes me want to scream that I’m not a
meal, damn it.
Her fingers shift, pulling another sharp buck of my hips out of me, and she
speaks for the first time in... I don’t know how long, now. A long time. Maybe
forever. “Lovely, Katniss. Even your Peeta doesn’t know how lovely you are, how
lovely you can be, but I knew it from the moment I saw you shove your way out
of that crowd and volunteer.” Her voice is low and urgent, heavy with
excitement, but there’s something else in it, too. Something possessive and
intimate that makes my body tighten in ways I can’t explain. “So brave. So
clever. A survivor. Then I heard you promise your sister you’d win, and I knew
you would. I knew. I bet everything the oddsmakers would take on you that
night, and you’ve repaid me so perfectly. Incomparable. There won’t be another
like you for ages, and you’re mine. My gladiatora. My Katniss.”
No, I think, you don’t own me. Not you, not the Capitol, no one. Never. “Yes,”
I say, hoping that my heavy breathing makes it sound convincing.
There’s a sharp sound in her throat - pleasure, I’ve learned to recognize by
now, and more intense than when she made me learn to use my mouth on her - and
her fingers shift, curl and press in a way that sends a hot flash of sensation
through my whole body. Like jumping into a pond, it’s the only thing that
exists for the  moment it lasts. As glad as I am for the escape, my mind starts
to race again almost immediately, searching for danger, waiting for the moment
to act.
She doesn’t stop there, of course. That would be too easy. I’ve only got a
shadow of the endurance I had before the arena, but she uses all but the last
scrap of it.
I’m trembling and shaking and dizzy, when it’s finally done, and she settles
down against me and strokes my hair gently, as if she cares, and that tempts
some stupid part of me to cry. I won’t, though. I won’t cry for her. She’s had
too much of me already, and I won’t give her that.
Her fingertips trace my calf again, feeling the scar there, and the question
just comes out of me before I realize that I’m asking it. “They’re fading -
they’ve been fading since the first day I woke up. Why didn’t you wait
until...?”
“Until they were done erasing you from your own skin?” She laughs indulgently,
pressing another kiss to my forehead, and shifts her arms around me in a way
that puts my head against her shoulder. “You’re a clever girl, Katniss. You can
tell me that.”
“Because you wanted them,” I tell her wearily, too exhausted to put any anger
in the words. “To show I was really there. That I really killed Cato and Marvel
and Glimmer and the girl from District 4. You’d have taken me with the blood
and the dirt still on me if the doctors had let you.”
She chuckles softly, bending enough to kiss the scar above my eyebrows again,
and I know I’m right.
“Did Haymitch know it was you? When you bought the medicine.” I’m not sure why
I want to know, except that if he did, I can be angry with him.
“No. That would have been rather indiscreet of me, wouldn’t it?” She smiles and
tucks my hair behind my ear, the one I’m only now getting used to having my
hearing back in, and there’s something in the gesture that makes me think of
Prim and Lady. “I used a shell ID to make the payment - an anonymous
consortium. I’m sure he assumed it was a group of gamblers looking to better
their chances of winning.”
“Why would you hide how rich you are?” I watch as she sits up, as she inspects
each item of her clothing before starting to put any of it back on. “I thought
everyone in the Capitol loved showing off.”
“My father doesn’t like us to interfere in the Games. He thinks it’s too
encouraging to the Districts to know that my sisters and I might favor one of
their tributes.” She laughs softly, lips curving in a smile that doesn’t quite
show how bitter she is. I recognize it anyway. “Of course, as usual, what my
father really means is that we aren’t to get caught doing it.”
I snort again.
She chuckles as though I’ve said something funny, anyway. “Appearances are
everything in the Capitol, my dear Katniss. Truth is a luxury that only the
most powerful can afford. Not even my father can speak his mind and do as he
pleases, not all the time.”
My eyes narrow into a glare. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
“It should,” she retorts as she seals herself into her dress, smiling at me as
though the glare doesn’t disturb her at all. Maybe she’s used to being hated. I
don’t know. “If my father were free to do as he pleased, you’d be dead - you
and your beloved Peeta both. Tragic failures of medicine to piece together your
broken bodies after you gave your utmost for the Games. He loathes defiance.”
I open my mouth to say something angry, then pause. “You can’t mean that those
empty-headed Capitol crowds actually matter. What could they be good for
besides talking about themselves?”
“That is precisely what they are good for, my dear, and precisely why they
matter.” She can see I don’t understand, and she sits back down on the bed in a
way that tells me that she’s decided to humor me. Or maybe she just likes
having someone to talk to. How many people, I wonder, does a daughter of the
President have that she can speak her mind to? Another weapon.
“No government, not even my father’s, can long endure without the consent of
the governed,” she explains to me, as though I’ve asked why apples fall out of
trees. “That consent can be bought, bullied, swindled or extorted, but it has
to be given. One cannot shoot everyone, after all.”
You could, I think bitterly, but then you’d have to actually do some work
yourself. “But why the people here? Why not just have the bare minimum of
people you need here? The Districts do everything anyway.”
“The Districts do. The Capitol is.” She smiles at my frustration. “This is
where the power is, my gladiatora. This is where the tools are, not just the
hovercraft and the guns but the medicine and the broadcasting equipment and the
dream of civilization. A rebellion in the Districts can be burned away, because
one can always replace miners or farmers or craftsmen. But to suffer a
rebellion here, in the Capitol? It would destroy the very thing that one needs
to rule. One might as well try to save one’s own house by burning it down.”
It occurs to me that I would really, really enjoy burning her house down.
Almost at the same time, I realized that President Snow’s small lack of freedom
is something I definitely shouldn’t know or think about.
“Why are you telling me this?” I ask warily.
“Because I can. It’s been a long time since I had the opportunity to say
whatever I felt like saying - longer than I suspect you can imagine - and it’s
liberating.” She laughs softly, catching my hand with hers, and kisses my wrist
again. “Ask me anything you like, Katniss. Anything at all.”
I look at her closely. “You aren’t worried I’ll talk?”
“Not in the least.” She catches the sudden flicker of fear on my face and
shakes her head, reaching up to cup my face with the hand that isn’t holding
mine. “Don’t worry, my exquisite Katniss. You won’t suffer any ‘accidents’ on
my account.”
I notice she isn’t promising that there will be no accidents at all.
“There’s no point, anyway. Nothing is going to change.” The words stick in my
throat like I don't want to say them, but what else is there to say?
She smiles, then, as though I’ve said something funny, and then she kisses my
mouth again lightly and reaches for the narrow black boots with the high heels
that she was wearing under the dress. They look hideously uncomfortable, even
compared to the heels Effie likes, and I can’t imagine how she stands walking
around in them. She must see me looking, because she pauses and holds them up,
and then she chuckles softly and arches an eyebrow at me. “Wondering about my
wardrobe?”
I wasn’t, exactly, but even as tired as I am, it doesn’t seem smart to say
that. So I just shrug. “I thought everyone in the Capitol wanted to wear as
many colors as possible.”
“It’s a way to make yourself memorable, which is how you gain in status,” she
affirms. Then she catches my look and laughs softly. “But I’m not dramatic
enough to compete. Is that what you’re wondering about, Katniss?”
I nod, finally pulling the sheets up around me again. It’s good to be covered,
even as little as that.
“In a city full of peacocks and magpies and jays,” she asks me as she pulls the
elaborately engraved, silvery bracers back across her arms and locks each of
them in place with a touch of a glittering fingertip, “what could be more
distinctive than a raven?”
I nod. She’s almost done dressing. I just want to be left alone.
“I thought of asking you to stay, of course. Promising to look after your
mother and spare your sister from the reaping if you’d consent to remaining in
the Capitol as my... companion.” The thought makes my insides clench, and even
the promise isn’t tempting. I wouldn’t trust anyone but myself or Gale to look
after Prim, anyway. I must give my reaction away somehow, because she chuckles
and shakes her head as though she might have expected a no. Then again, after
the nightlock berries, maybe anyone would have. “But it would rather spoil the
story of your romance with your rustic baker’s son, wouldn’t it?”
If that’s the case, he must be all right. I relax a little, even give her a
faint smile. “I’d look terrible in Capitol makeup, anyway.”
She laughs, voice bright and sharp and hissing again, then shakes her head.
“I’d never dress you in such dross,” she tells me, as though explaining
something very important. “Leather and armor, as befits a huntress, and just a
hint of shadow to bring out those eyes. And your weapons, of course.”
“They’re tools, not accessories.” I can’t keep the scorn out of my voice.
“I know.” She smiles, or at least does something with her lips that most people
would call a smile if they couldn’t see her eyes. “I’d find a use for them,
just like I’d find a use for you.”
My stomach tries to drop through the bed, and I have to bite the inside of my
mouth to keep control. I say nothing, hoping she’ll interpret my silence as
something she wants to hear.
“How close would you need to get, my dear Katniss,” she says, almost in a
whisper, “to feather my father with one of those arrows? In the eye, of course.
Properly.”
As much as I want her gone, it’s a nice fantasy, and I can’t resist. “Depends
on the wind. Between fifty and a hundred yards, give or take.”
“Our balconies at the country estate are closer than that. You’d only need one
shot, wouldn’t you?” Her eyes don’t leave mine, and now I can’t tell if she’s
sharing a fantasy with me or genuinely asking a question.
No point in false modesty. “Yes.”
“Pity you won’t stay, then.” She reaches up and brushes her fingers along the
upper curve of one of the bracers, metal over metal, but I hardly notice. The
clear, cold, pale gray of her eyes seems to take up the whole world.
I feel myself slipping into unconsciousness. I hate the idea of falling asleep
in front of her, even though I won’t really be more vulnerable than I already
am. “I guess nobody likes him, do they?”
“Who could?” She laughs again, very softly, and keeps watching my eyes even
when they’re too heavy for me to keep open for more than a few seconds at a
time. “I’d suggest you rethink my offer, after you get home, but since you
won’t remember it, there’s no point.”
“You drugged me again.” It’s hard to sound indignant when you’re almost asleep,
and I’m not really trying. It’s like being angry at a cloud for the rain -
pointless.
“I drugged you before you woke up. Not just the Flora. Reverie, as well. You
won’t remember me at all, except perhaps for the length of a dream.” She draws
close again, close enough to kiss my lips one more time, and I can’t seem to
move enough to get away from it. “But I’ll remember you, Katniss Everdeen, my
gladiatoria. You may be certain of that.”
My eyes close again, for the last time, and I wonder if this is what drowning
feels like. Then I’m past worry or fear or stubbornness. Past anything at all.
When I wake up, my mouth tastes strange - roses and spice and something else -
and the tubes are in my arm, the restraint around my waist, one of the mute
attendants already lifting my bed to a sitting position so I can be fed. I
feel, vaguely, as though someone else ought to be in the room. As though I’d
glad they’re not.
I can’t remember why, and I’m not awake long enough to try to figure it out
before the cool drugs from the IV send me drifting off again.
 
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