Chapter Text
After she watches her sister erupt into fire, Katniss wakes to white. She surely must be dead, and perhaps this is wherever the dead go. But in time the white resolves itself into a room. Shiny white walls, shiny white ceiling, shiny white floor, her skin shiny white with scars. At first, she knows only pain. She lies on a hospital bed and her lesions are tended and cleaned while she sleeps, and she is kept separated from the world by morphling. She never knows where she is, and she rarely knows who she is.
There is no one else in this white void. Sometimes a few distant, jumbled words drift into her, and sometimes she thinks a hand touches her body, but she sees no one. There is only pain, unconsciousness, and more pain. Her thoughts rarely achieve more clarity than to note the vaguest details of her surroundings: bed beneath her, white around her, pain within her.
She is there for days, or weeks, or longer. She moves from black sleep to the white room, and then one day she blinks, and she realizes that she is awake. Her brain is slow and grinding, but it works. The pain in her body has dulled.
The first thought in her addled brain is, Is Prim okay?
She tries to sit up, but finds this impossible. There is still too much pain gnawing through her bones. Her body hurts, and it has been burned. She wears a loose, white hospital gown and nothing else, and beneath it her skin is a patchwork of healing pink and white. Parts of her are still unpleasantly blackened. She survived the blast. Did anyone else?
She turns her eyes from her body to her surroundings. She is in a white room, perhaps 75 square feet. She lies on a hospital bed. Her wrist is bruised from what she guesses is a canula, but it has since been bandaged. There is no sign of medical equipment, though she is sure it was here while she slept. The whole ceiling glows white, one big rectangular luminescence. The floor is a single smooth sheet of white rubber, broken only by a drain in the corner to her left. There is a shower head above this, but no obvious way to turn it on. On the opposite wall, set to her right, is a door. Above the door is a camera. There is nothing else in the room. Nothing, except her.
Katniss tries to sit again, and this time she manages a few inches. Her bed is basic: one pillow, one blanket, a sheet over the mattress. She cannot see anything of the frame. She has never seen a room with so few things in it, and with so much white.
She does not hear footsteps. The first sign that another human is nearby is the door opening, and Katniss’ heart jumps. She expects a doctor, or Heavensbee, or Haymitch, or maybe even Coin. The rebellion has won, it must have, and she is in some hospital being cared for as the Capitol is taken. That must be what is happening.
She does not expect President Snow.
‘It’s lovely to see you awake, Miss Everdeen.’
Terror swells inside her. He looks well. Deep grey suit, white rose, beard freshly trimmed. He does not look like his home is under siege by the rebellion. He does not look frightened, or concerned. He looks like a man gorged on contentment.
She does not know how to speak to him. But this is alright, because Snow can speak well enough for her.
‘You may be wondering where you are,’ he says with mocking twinkle. ‘Perhaps you are in a Capitol hospital. Perhaps you are in my home, in the basement, while the streets parade with celebrations of our success over the rebels.’ He offers up a different shade of smile. ‘Or perhaps we have lost. Perhaps you, me, and a few loyalists have retreated deep underground to hide from the new regime instituted by President Coin.’
She feels her heart batter her chest, but it is from anger more than fear. She only wants to know about Prim. Who cares what happens to her, if Prim is okay?
‘But I shan’t tell you the answer,’ says Snow. ‘Not yet.’ His eyes dwell briefly on her body: her scarred arms, that patch of burnt flesh on her right elbow, the sad way her bare feet stick in the air. ‘Information is precious, isn’t it? You will come to learn that.’
He walks over to the bed, and Katniss’ limbs freeze up. She wants to attack him, or to flee, but she has no weapons and her body is heavy with pain. Could she make it to the door? Could she make it beyond, barefoot and aching with her healing flesh?
Snow sits gently at the foot of the bed, hands folded, and he regards her with something like pride. ‘Let me tell you one thing, Miss Everdeen. You will never escape. This is the first piece of knowledge that I will grant you. You will never escape. It may take you some time to accept this, of course. But we agreed never to lie to one another, and I am not lying to you now.’ A tiny smile graces the corner of his mouth. ‘Do you understand, Miss Everdeen?’
She does not understand. Right now, she only understands anger and fear and the knowledge that Prim is not in this cell with her.
Snow’s smile grows with her silence. ‘But perhaps,’ he continues, ‘if you are very good, and you show that you and I can be friends, then perhaps I shall let you out of here.’
Katniss searches for her voice. She used to have one, she is sure. She has misplaced it somewhere in her stinging, aching body. It takes her some groping to find, but when she does, she manages a short rasp: ‘My sister?’
Snow’s smile remains the same. He gives the faintest shake of his head. ‘I shall not tell you anything else for now. I will let you rest, and think about what it means to be my prisoner.’ He stands, smooths his clothes, and regards her with delight. ‘You and I will get to know each other very well, Miss Everdeen.’
Katniss despises following President Snow’s instruction, but she has little choice other than to rest. Her body is exhausted with pain and her mind is saturated with horror. After days of fighting through the city, watching people die, wading through body parts, nearly dying and killing and nearly dying and killing over and over again, she is spent. And before that was the hiding, the training, and the anxiety of being trapped underground in District 13. This is the first time since the assault on the Capitol she has been forced to rest: doped up on morphling, confined to a bed, with nothing to do but heal. She collapses in on herself, desperate to recuperate.
And it’s not like there is anything else to do inside her cell.
Some time after President Snow leaves (minutes? Hours?), there is an odd sliding sound and Katniss jolts in surprise as a wall panel opposite swings downwards and a shining metal toilet appears. She regards it distrustfully, then looks to the camera. They are going to watch her, whatever she does.
Her bones and muscles seething with pain, Katniss slides herself from the bed and walks stiffly, limpingly over to the toilet. She is able to position her hospital gown to give her some modesty when she sits, and she glares at the camera as she urinates. Who is watching her? Is Snow watching her? He so does love to make her feel observed.
She looks around for some toilet paper, but they have provided her with none. On the back of the toilet is a tiny sink, so she washes her hands and between her legs, and before she is finished the toilet and sink disappear again into the wall and she jumps back with a start.
Her legs feel less stiff now she has stretched them a little bit, and so she surveys her cell. The bed has a metal frame and four legs, and precious little other detail. The shower head is too high to reach, as is the camera. She is in no rush to try the door; obviously it would be locked. She pulls on it casually to pretend she doesn’t care whether or not it opens. It does not move.
She walks a lap about her cell, looking for anything else of interest, but there is nothing. Bed. Shower. Camera. Door. This is it.
Stress and pain exhaust her, so she retreats to the bed. One uncomfortable mattress, one flat pillow, one thin blanket. This is all she has been permitted.
Katniss pulls the blanket over her head, hiding from the camera, and she closes her eyes and pictures Prim. Is she alive?
Prim’s face. Her bright eyes. The explosion. Her face engulfed in white.
Perhaps she survived. It is not impossible. Nothing is impossible.
Katniss drifts into sleep, and she dreams of white grass erupting with white-burning roses.
A noise awakes her, and Katniss sits. Pain encircles her limbs. Sitting is hard, and opening her eyes is hard, and thinking about Prim is hard. She tries not to think about anybody else; she simply can’t. She barely has room in her skull for the image of her little sister burning.
There is something new in her cell. On the floor by the door is a tray, and on it a cup and bowl and spoon.
Thoughts of Prim and the pain blocked out her ability to feel hunger, but now there is food here she feels her stomach make a confused, plaintive rumble. She does not remember the last time she ate. They must have been feeding her somehow while she slept, but she has no memory of it. No memory of food. No memories of so many things.
She slips from the bed with difficulty and feels her legs burn with weight and movement. She pads lopsidedly to the tray, then sits on the floor beside it. White tray, white bowl, white cup, white spoon. It is a miserable meal. A bowl of beige-grey muck, too textureless to be oatmeal. It is smooth and thick and shiny. She raises the cup and only wonders for a moment if it might be poisoned, then takes a sip. Water. Her mouth welcomes water. She gulps it down, forcing herself to leave half of the cup full, then turns her attention back to the bowl.
She holds the spoon with difficulty; her hands are still healing and her motor functions seem to be slow. She dips it into the bowl and extracts a stiff spoonful of the strange substance, then holds it to her nose. It smells of very little. Dairy, perhaps.
Gingerly, her tongue extends and tastes the substance. Utterly flavorless. She tastes a little more, but there is nothing to the meal but the faintest memory of bland soup or off-milk.
Pulling a face, she replaces the bowl and downs the rest of the water. This little excursion has tired her and so, arms and legs like lead, she half-crawls back to her bed. It is difficult to lift herself back onto the mattress and she feels a curious humiliation as she crawls over it, positioning herself again for sleep. She wishes they had left her some underwear. It’s just the gown and nothing else, the cotton flush against her skin. At least it covers her thighs and her chest.
Katniss slides under the single blanket once again and she buries herself beneath it, blocking out the constant lights, and she waits for sleep. More food, perhaps, will come once she is better.
Healing is hard, and Katniss sleeps most of the time. When she’s conscious, her head is full of questions and terrors and unknown buzzing flies. She cannot imagine a scenario wherein Snow has both lost the war but succeeding in abducting her. Far more likely that the rebellion was defeated, which is poor news. But where is she? Why has he taken her? Where is everyone else?
As the pain heals, time passes. Katniss comes to know a new reality. There is nothing to do.
She observes this vaguely at first. She is bored. There is nothing to do. White walls and floor and ceiling. Bedframe, sheets, mattress. Drain. Shower. Door. Camera. The occasional toilet. She is not permitted to decide when it appears. At least she can use the shower drain to urinate. When the shower first turns on, she regards it distrustfully and counts the minutes until it turns off. Five. Five minutes of water, and no soap. Katniss shoots the camera a resentful glare. She is not so desperate for cleanliness that she will strip naked for them. Not yet, anyway.
When the next meal comes, it is identical to the first. She is awake for this one and sees it appear through a slat in the bottom of the door, but when she calls after her server there is no response. It is the same plastic tray, cup of water, bowl of grey slop, spoon. She is growing hungry.
Katniss understands they are not going to bring her different food.
Tired and sore, she carries the tray to the bed and lies upon it, and she forces herself to eat mouthful after mouthful of the slop. It revolts her, tasing of nothing. Surely they it has been made it this way on purpose: flavorless, unstimulating, to suit the white room and her white bed. Snow has taken away colors and flavors and autonomy, and he has locked her up here alone.
It does not take long for Katniss to understand what is happening. She is not merely being held prisoner: she is being tortured. A gentle torture, to be sure, but a torture nonetheless. Snow has ripped away everything that grants her control or mental stimulation, and in its place is nothing. White and white and her own body, and nothing else.
She thinks she can cope, at first. Snow does not visit again. She tries to count the days, but it is very hard without any means to track time. Her own sleep patterns deceive her. She finds herself sleeping a lot, because what else is there to do? Pace her cell, play with the bedsheets, listen at the door, eat her slop, wait for the shower to turn on, exercise, braid the hair that remains to her after she was set on fire. This is all that is left to her.
Weeks pass, she is sure. She counts her meals: they number 56. It is her only means of tracking time. She wonders if Snow has forgotten about her. Someone keeps delivering the meals, but perhaps there is an automatic system. Perhaps she is buried in the earth at the mercy of some computer that is programmed to keep her alive forever, and she’ll rot here until she can kill herself.
Prim. This is the main subject of her thoughts, but sometimes they drift to other people. Peeta. Gale. Haymitch. Her mother. District 13 and Coin. Are any of them alive? Will she ever see them again?
Is she still alive?
Is she in hell?
Katniss wakes from drowning in white foam to see she is not alone. She startles and her limbs jerk, and President Snow looks down at her as though her primal fear brings him infinite delight. She sits bolt upright and her fingers claw the sheets.
He smiles at her, neat and proud. Her eyes wildly take in his charcoal blazer, his pale blue shirt, his dark pants, his shining shoes, his white rose. She stares into his smiling face and his features don’t seem to fully cohere. She has been alone too long in the white. She has forgotten how to look at people.
‘Good morning, my dear,’ he says, this perfect man who hates her so much.
It is still hard for her to talk. She has not been practicing. Her voice is a harsh rattle: ‘Where is Prim?’
‘Perhaps I will answer that today,’ he says. ‘Perhaps not. We have things to do first.’
Overwhelmed by his presence, Katniss fails to notice the silver tray set down on the foot of her bed. Her eyes now linger on it. Shiny metal tray. An assemblage of sharp objects. Tools whose purpose she cannot imagine. Her heart beats fast.
‘What are you going to do to me?’ she says. Speaking is not getting any easier.
‘I’m going to torture you. Is that alright?’
Fear swells her. This is the simple, straightforward fear of damage to the flesh. An easier fear than the fear of her sister dead.
‘Can I say no?’
‘I’m afraid not,’ he smiles. ‘But I shall give you choices. I am curious which of these you will choose.’
She does not look at the tray. ‘Why?’ she manages. ‘Why are you doing this to me?’
His eyes glitter. ‘So many questions, Miss Everdeen. But I will answer this one. I am breaking you. But don’t worry. I won’t allow you to stay broken. This is simply the first necessary step in rebuilding you. Now, look at the toys I have brought for us to play with. Come. Look closer.’
She thinks he is just taunting her, but he is quite serious. She leans over. Studies the glimmer of metal teeth and sticks and round things and sharp things. She shakes her head. ‘I don’t know what these do.’
‘They hurt you, my dear,’ he says, and then he introduces them to her. He picks up the first piece. A scalpel. ‘This one is straightforward. It is for cutting you.’ The second piece is a kind of thin spatula. ‘This is for removing your nails.’ The third is a drill. ‘For drilling,’ he says simply. The fourth is bigger, bulkier, with a curved head and some kind of mechanism inside. ‘This is for burning you.’ Finally, the pliers. ‘These are for breaking bones, or pulling your teeth.’
He waits for her verdict. She nods to show she understands. Already her brain is making rapid choices.
‘Which would you like to play with today, my dear?’
She studies her new metal friends. She doesn’t want to get to know any of them. ‘You’re a monster,’ she says.
‘Oh no.’ His tone is pleasant and agreeable. ‘I am not doing this in the name of sadism, Miss Everdeen. Although I admit I harbor a certain academic curiosity as to how you will respond to pain. No, this is all necessary for you. For your… development.’
‘Development into what?’
She wonders if she could choke him to death. She might still be healing and sore and slow, but he is old. Jump from her bed. Close her hands around his neck. Kill him. And then what? Would someone let her out? Or would they kill her?
‘Development into the best version of you,’ says Snow, and he smiles. It seems his smile never quite leaves his face. ‘Now, Miss Everdeen, I have prepared this selection for you. What is your preference?’
‘I don’t have one. I’m not playing your game.’
‘You don’t have to,’ he says mildly. ‘But if you don’t choose, then I am likely to use them all on you. If you participate, then I might omit one or two.’
Her eyes rest on the tray. Torture is new to her. She has been hurt before, of course: burned and beaten and cut and starved and tormented. But to be held against her will and cut into, over and over? This is new. Pain is no stranger to her, but she does not know how much she can withstand. Perhaps it will be easier to think of it like a game; she certainly has enough practice with those.
There are five options. Maybe he will use three of the five. Which are the worst, the pains that make her the most terrified? The drill makes her heart race to look at and think about feeling against her skin. And she does not want her teeth pulled out. Getting burned provokes a deep stress response, but it would be better to get that one over with. It won’t damage her too much.
She points at the bulkiest piece, and Snow smiles.
‘Wonderful. Burning it is. Now, do I need to restrain you, or can you lie still?’
She laughs with hysteria. ‘I don’t know, I’ve never been tortured before.’
‘You are good at withstanding pain,’ he says thoughtfully. ‘But I don’t want you to thrash around and ruin the experience. Shall we tie you down?’
She covers her fear with snarling lips. ‘You can do whatever you want. You know I’m in no position to argue.’
‘You can argue all you like, my dear,’ he smiles. ‘Perhaps sometimes I may even be persuaded by your arguments. Now, if I don’t tie you down, will you be able to sit still for me while I burn you?’
She sneers. ‘I’ll try.’
She can deal with being burned. What a familiar, friendly pain it will be to her.
He switches on the device. Something whirs inside, and Katniss watches with heart-shaking anxiety as the round tip glows orange. She shuts her eyes.
‘No, Katniss,’ says Snow firmly, and she feels fingers touch her chin. She flinches at the texture of his skin and her eyes open. ‘You must watch what I do to you. No going away inside. I want you entirely present. Otherwise you won’t learn what you ought to from the experience.’
‘You’re insane.’
A horrible, creeping light fills his face. ‘Oh no, Miss Everdeen. I assure you I am not. Now, where shall I burn you first, my dear?’
She considers this briefly, then turns her head away. ‘My shoulder. The left one.’ Her voice is empty.
‘As you wish,’ he says brightly.
She jolts as his hands touch the sleeve of her gown, and she wants to retch as she feels the coarse skin of his fingers slide over her smooth shoulder, pulling back the short sleeve, exposing her flesh. Then the hands leave, and Katniss tries to keep her breathing deep and steady.
The sound comes first, and then the pain. The hiss and then the deep, hot, stinging circle, radiating out, her shoulder throbbing. The pain gets bigger and bigger inside her shoulder, spidering out, huge and white inside her. She does not scream, but she curls away from the pain and the contact and she kicks her legs and groans through her teeth, and she thinks about her sister on fire.
The tool retracts.
‘There,’ says Snow. ‘How do you feel?’
She rests and she pants. ‘Fuck you,’ she says.
‘Now, Miss Everdeen. Don’t be impolite. Answer the question.’
Her heart is going very fast and her shoulder throbs. She turns to look at it. It’s not even that bad. One big rising patch of thin skin, the embryo of a blister. First degree. It can and will get worse.
‘I feel like you just burned my shoulder,’ she spits.
‘I’m sure you can do better than that, my dear. Describe the pain for me.’
‘It hurts, that’s what it feels like.’
He is very pleasant and calm, and then suddenly he jabs the tool forwards. She is caught off guard. It catches her again in the shoulder, just below the old spot, and she yelps like a kicked dog in surprise. The pain is short and sharp, an angry wasp under her skin.
She puts a hand to her shoulder but cannot grip it for its hot tenderness; she can only hover her curled, shaking fingers over it.
‘Well?’ says Snow. ‘Perhaps you are clearer, now, on what the pain feels like. Can you tell me?’
She breathes rapidly for a few moments, trying to calm the intense, primal response that courses through her. ‘It feels hot,’ she says at last. ‘Like hot ants under my skin. Okay? Is that what you want to hear?’
‘That’s excellent,’ says Snow. ‘You did very well to tell me that.’ He reaches into his pocket and there is a low rustling, and then Katniss watches with absurdity as he produces a small, plastic-wrapped sweet. ‘For you.’
She stares at it. She hasn’t eaten anything but grey slop in… well, however long it’s been. But she is not going to accept treats like a dog.
‘No thank you,’ she says. ‘I’d rather just get burned again.’
‘Of course,’ he says brightly. ‘That was the lowest setting. Shall we try settings two and three?’
‘Can I say no?’
He considers. ‘You can. You can rest, if you’d prefer. But we shall only have to resume again later. I thought you would prefer to get it over with.’
She puts her hands to her face and rubs them. How long will she be trapped in here? How many things can he do to her? What is it he wants from her? What does he mean by development?
Is someone coming to rescue her?
‘Okay,’ she says. ‘Do whatever the fuck you’re going to do.’
‘Alright. We shall progress to level two. Would you like to be burned in the same spot?’
Her shoulder feels like a clanging note of pain. It’s stuck in her teeth. But more pain elsewhere hardly seems a better situation.
‘Same spot.’
‘Wonderful. You’ll have a lovely scar.’
And then the tool is put to her flesh again, and this time she screams. She only manages to stay still for a very little while before she is pushing to get away, to get off the bed, onto the floor, anywhere she will be safe.
‘Miss Everdeen,’ comes a warning voice. ‘You need to sit still to let me do this to you.’
She opens her mouth and the words come out with venom. ‘It fucking hurts. I can’t sit still.’
‘Then I shall tie you down,’ he says, as though this is a kindness. ‘I have some nice, comfortable restraints for you.’
He reaches to the floor and produces two sets of padded cuffs, and Katniss starts to feel despair creep into her. She does not want to be tied down. Like how they tie the legs of lambs before they slit their throats.
Snow reaches out for her wrist, quite politely, and Katniss’ brain works more rapidly than it ever has. The scalpel. She can reach it. The moment his hands are occupied with the restraint she sits up, smacks his temple with the palm of her hand, leans over, grabs the scalpel. Jams it forwards. Hears a groan of pain, feels blade enter flesh. Hurls herself from the bed, half-runs, half-falls to the door. It is locked. She pulls and pulls and pulls, and then a moment later something sharp bites her arm and an overpowering exhaustion floods her. She feels dizzy. She collapses to her knees.
Snow has drugged her.
Darkness takes her and her final thought is, How unfair.
When she wakes again, Snow is still there. His hand is bandaged. She does not know how much time has passed. Minutes? Hours?
‘That was very impolite of you,’ he says, chastising her like she’s a child. ‘Everything I do here is for your own good. I am only trying to help you. Can you not respect that?’
She tries to sit up, but her wrists catch against something. The cuffs. She is tied to the bed frame, now. Her ankles, too, are tied in place. She rattles them pointlessly, then forces herself to lie still and breathe.
No more scalpels for her.
‘I think we can continue now,’ he says, and once against raises that horrible glowing tool. ‘I was not finished burning you. It was rude to interrupt me.’ He smiles. ‘Now, my dear, I shall decide where to burn you this time. You have been too disobedient to be allowed to make your own decisions.’ He looks her over as though she is a fat steak to be cut into. ‘I hope you won’t think it prurient of me to burn your thigh.’
She is frightened. Katniss registers this in a distant, straightforward way: she does not want to be hurt. She is frightened of the pain. There is nothing more to it than that. In a way, this is much simpler than many of the other horrific traumas she has experienced. He hurts her, she endures it, it stops. She does not have to worry about hiding or fleeing or fighting. She only has to accept the pain inside herself.
‘You can burn me wherever you want,’ she says through a stretched, broken voice. ‘I don’t care.’
‘I think you do,’ says Snow, smiling. ‘What if I scarred your face?’
‘I don’t care,’ she repeats. Her face was just pretty enough to make her a compelling tribute for the Games. Let him ruin her. Let him make her repulsive. It would be easier, would match how she feels on the inside.
Snow regards her impassively. ‘Interesting.’ He flicks the switch into its final position. Level three. ‘Miss Everdeen, I am going to expose your thigh now.’
She wants to be a still lake. A rocky mountain. A tree that hardly feels the winds. But she is none of those things. She is a trembling girl. Her breath shakes as he pulls up the gown. She cannot help but frown. She doesn’t want to expose herself to him, but he leaves enough coverage for modesty. She doesn't think this is sexual. But she is not sure.
He turns on the tool. This time, it glows white.
Katniss thinks of her sister, exploding into white. The mattress vibrates with how much she is shaking.
This time, when the pain enters her body, she screams. It is a rope of pain, or a snake, delving into her flesh, cutting through skin and muscle like a birthday cake, and spiraling down into her knees and up between her legs. She is vaguely aware that she is begging for him to stop, but those words do not seem to belong to her.
The tool retracts. The pain remains, though less. Her whole body convulses. There are tears on her face. She is sweating worse than she ever has before.
‘How did that feel?’ says Snow. He speaks as though he were asking after the weather.
Katniss’ teeth are chattering. ‘Like something alive inside me. It hurt. It was too hot.’ She tries to stop her mouth forming the next word, but it comes anyway: ‘Please.’
‘You’re being much more well-behaved,’ says Snow. ‘Clearly, pain is an effective tool for you. Of course, it remains to be seen if you react this well to all kinds of pain, or just burning. Does it remind you of your sister?’
Her entire body shivers with white pain. She nods. That hated word comes into her mouth again: ‘Please stop,’ she says. She sounds like a bleating animal.
‘I will stop burning you if you do something for me, my dear.’
Her eyes are red and wet. ‘What?’
He smiles. ‘Thank me for your lesson. Say, “Thank you, President Snow, for the lesson.”’
She feels grey inside. She does not want to hurt more. She opens her dry mouth. ‘Thank you, President Snow, for the lesson.’
She has never seen a man so delighted.
When Snow next visits her, bearing that silver tray and the cuffs, Katniss feels fear fill and overwhelm and overspill her. Her mind soaks with it, and she cannot think properly. She does not like her mind overruled by her body like this, and she suspects that this is part of what Snow is trying to cultivate. What he wants to develop in her.
Snow plays out the charade once again. Presents the tray of instruments like they’re delicious cakes. Lets her examine them. Lets her choose.
Katniss chooses the scalpel.
The pain is much, much less than being burned, and she breathes an incredible relief when he slices up her skin and it doesn’t feel so bad. He puts blade to skin like an artist and Katniss can almost pretend this is some routine medical procedure that she has to submit to. Unpleasant, yes, but necessary and nontraumatic. She doesn’t even need to be restrained. She lies still and stares at the ceiling, and she lets him cut up her thighs and her arms for some indeterminate length of time. She hardly feels anything at all.
‘What do you think, my dear?’
She raises her head to look. He has done all sorts of things to her. He has made a neat crosshatch on her left arm. On her left thigh is a stark crimson rose. The artistry is blunt, but it is not unbeautiful. Her right thigh bears a flawless, soaring signature: Coriolanus Snow.
Despite her exhaustion and the pain that still seethes in her from the burns, she still feels disdain and disgust. ‘You marked me with your name?’
‘Of course,’ he says. ‘You are, after all, now my property.’
‘I’m not property,’ she spits. ‘I’m a person. A human being.’
‘Human beings can be property,’ he politely rebuts. ‘It’s really not a matter you can argue, Miss Everdeen. The concept of property is concerned with rights. And I alone have the right to do whatever I want with you.’
‘You have no right.’
‘Oh? And what do you think a right is, Miss Everdeen?’ He tilts his head. ‘It is not an abstract truth. It is a legal reality. Rights are bestowed upon you by the state. And they can easily be taken away. In your case, I have taken all of your rights. This makes you property.’ He smiles like a happy cat. ‘Protest it all that you like, but it makes it no less true.’
She does not know how to argue this. She looks at the oozing lines on her thigh.
It’s okay, she tells herself. They healed everything that happened to you after the Games. Once they rescue you, they’ll heal this, too.
When he is finished with the scalpel he gives her the opportunity to rest, but Katniss shakes her head. She would rather get it over with, and she does not want him to think she is weak. Let him cut her up all she wants. Reduce her to pink ribbons. She can take it. She can survive him.
But he is finished with cutting, so it is time for her to make her third choice. This is harder. Drill, spatula, or pliers. She does not want to lose her fingernails or her teeth, and she does not want to be drilled. It is not a term that should be connected with the human body. Bodies are not for putting new holes in; this is straightforward. Snow watches her with great interest as she looks between the three presents he has made her.
‘Can I choose the scalpel again?’ she tries, and he shakes his head. She was not so foolish to get her hopes up. ‘Where will you drill me, if I pick that one?’
‘It’s a surprise.’
‘I hate you so much,’ she mutters. ‘One day, I am going to kill you. I am going to make sure that I am the person who sees the lights go out of your eyes.’
He is unreachable, perfect satisfaction. ‘No, you won’t,’ he says. ‘Will you make your choice?’
She touches the pliers. ‘I suppose you won’t tell me if you’re going to break my bones or take my teeth?’
‘Perhaps I’ll do both.’ He says this like they are having terrible fun.
She thinks about losing her fingernails. She runs her fingertips over them. Will they grow back? Maybe. If they don't, then that’s not so bad. Lots of things don’t grow back. But it will hurt very much, and she does not want to lose her claws.
If she chooses the drill, where will he put it?
Into her eyes?
She touches the spatula and she nods. Goodbye fingernails.
‘Wonderful,’ says Snow. ‘Would you like to be restrained for this?’ He offers this like he’s doing her a favor.
‘Sure. Whatever.’ It makes it a bit easier if she doesn’t have to worry about staying still. She extends her wrists and lets him bind her, the two of them helping the other to get her into this helpless, humiliating predicament. She settles herself in her bed and tries not to mind the choke of the soft restraints around her wrists and ankles. How long will it take to pull off all her nails? Will he do feet as well as hands? One minute each? Twenty minutes total? She can cope with that.
Snow considers her, prostrate and shaking. It’s been hard to stop shaking since the burning. Then he walks to the foot of the bed.
Two large hands lift her bare foot, sheathing her sole and bridge in his palms, and she closes her eyes.
‘Miss Everdeen—’
She immediately opens them again. She forgot the rules. She has to stay present.
The spatula slides under her big toe. She takes deep breaths. Thinks of water. Sloshing over her, cooling her, submerging her. She can be safe in a cold lake. She can—
She screams. The pain is short, magenta, ripping. One big tear, and then the nail is gone. She kicks her feet over and over again and beats her fists pointlessly against the mattress.
With insanity, she looks at Snow. He lifts her toenail between his fingertips and examines it under the light.
‘This used to be a piece of you,’ he observes. ‘And now it is just… trash. I could transform your whole body this way. Do you understand?’
She is, thankfully, in too much pain to feel a great deal of terror. She nods slowly. Snow mimics her.
‘I know you do, Miss Everdeen. You’ve done very well. I’m going to take two more of your nails, and then you can rest. Alright?’
She exhales huge relief. Only three nails. That is so much easier than she thought it would be. How lucky she is.
The second toenail is a smaller one, and the ripping hurts less, and she manages not to scream. She is shocked when he moves away from her feet. She was hoping to spare her fingernails.
Oh well. Cannot afford to be precious about such things.
Snow takes her hand in his, and a huge shiver goes through her body. His touch is cool, his skin strange, and she does not like the way he gently strokes the back of her hand as he holds it. The spatula slides under her thumbnail, and she feels her breathing increase.
Her scream is short, and she is able to dispel much of the pain through kicking her bleeding feet.
‘There we go,’ says Snow, comforting her. ‘All over now. Well done, Miss Everdeen.’
Hatefully, she does feel comforted. She watches him place her fingernail on a pile on the tray with the other two.
Her breathing is heavy. She is sweating. Relief and gratitude fill her like cool water. ‘Is that all? Are we done?’
‘Yes,’ says Snow. ‘For today. I want to play with at least one more of these. I’ll tell you what. Since you’ve been so good, I’ll tell you that if you choose the drill, I will use it on your feet. How does that sound?’
She lies there. Rocks of dread emerge through the evaporating relief. ‘And the other choice is the pliers?’
‘Yes.’
She stares at the ceiling. ‘I don’t want to lose my teeth.’
‘That’s a risk you would take,’ he says, as though he is her ally in trying to puzzle out this question.
‘The drill,’ she says at last. ‘Can we do it now? Just get it over with?’
‘So eager.’ He smiles at her and she feels hatred and fury and sickness. But none of those will help her get it finished.
She swallows. ‘Yes. I’m eager.’ She shuts her eyes for a moment. Runs her tongue around her teeth. Opens her eyes. Forces herself to say the words. ‘Would you please use the drill on me now? I would like that.’
She is sure she sees a current of electricity pass through him. ‘Excellent,’ he breathes. ‘How well you’re doing. Well, Miss Everdeen, since you asked so nicely, yes. We will finish with the drill today.’ He picks it up. Presses a button. A quiet, wasp-like whir. ‘This might hurt quite a lot.’
The next minutes pass with insanity and with agony. The drill bit is small and medically shiny, and Katniss watches with abstract, surreal horror as it enters her flesh. It is not a hungry tool; it does not eat in far. But it is curious. Once it has burrowed into one part of her flesh, it retracts, and then it wants to explore somewhere else.
After the second hole, Katniss throws up with pain. Watery slop and bile spill over her chin and the neck of her hospital gown, and Snow pauses to let her cough it up. He brings her a cup of water and allows her to drink, and he tuts with sympathy as he dabs her vomit-slick chest with a towel. She gazes up at him and tries to understand something. She tries to understand anything.
Katniss receives five holes in her feet, by which point her whole body palsies with the unendurable horror of it all, and her thoughts have fallen to pieces, and then Snow stops. He places the drill back on the tray. Katniss’ eyes have never been so wide. Her mouth is stuffed with pain. Hyperventilation makes her chest vibrate.
‘You have done so well today,’ Snow says with quiet pride. ‘I am extremely pleased with you. I think you’ve learned your lesson. Are you thankful for the lesson?’
It is very difficult for her to speak, and when she does her teeth clatter together and almost make the words incomprehensible. ‘Th-thank you for the – the lesson, P-P-President Snow.’
‘Wonderful.’ He glows white and perfect. ‘I do not think I will have to hurt you again for a long time. I hope you never give me cause to punish you.’ He tilts his head at her and Katniss, her body crawling with pain and fear, does not know where to look. ‘I think you deserve a reward for being so good. A little piece of knowledge. What do you think?’
What choice does she have? She gazes up at him, eyes fat and white in her sunken face, and she nods deliriously.
Snow nods back. ‘Your sister,’ he says. ‘She is dead.’ A pantomime of sympathy lights his face. ‘I am very sorry, my dear.’
Katniss hardly hears. This knowledge seeps into her burning skin and her new bloody wounds, and there it nestles itself, bright alongside her open flesh.
She turns her face from Snow and she cries. And Snow, in his infinite mercy, leaves her to weep.