"I want it to be that simple." It's the honest truth. I want this to be a strange and cruel quirk of the city that we live in now. But I don't know that I can believe that it is, not when I've spent my life in Panem, in District Twelve. Our lives are led at the whim of the Capitol and of Snow, it's something I feel more keenly now than I have since they made the announcement for the Quarter Quell.

I settle on the couch, not letting go of her hand. The cameras aren't on my mind now and I don't think they're the first thing on Katniss' either. I know that this is something we share, a stress that we can't communicate properly to other people who haven't been through that Arena, no matter how hard we might try to. I sit close, shaking my head as I decide that I don't believe that. Not entirely. "It's too like the Capitol."

She has to know that by Capitol I mean Snow.