Maybe it's the way she lays in his arms, stiff, like a doll, that keeps him from laughing even bitterly at her question. This is the stuff he should be guffawing over, the fact that she's getting an entirely wrong picture of the kind of guy he is. And it isn't even because he's tried to shape up lately, though he has. With Katniss, it's always been circumstance. He happened to come across her when she first arrived. They happened to stumble in the same damned cloud of nightmare fog together. And now, whatever she's been through tonight, she's run across the island only to wind up practically at his doorstep, even though he's never invited her there before. Seems like the last thing he can describe that as is not going away.

Then again, it's also possible that she's asking about that stupid tendency of his to cling to anyone who tumbles by, sticking to them like velcro. He does, after all, have that choice to walk away. He's simply not sure how to go about it anymore.

"Catnip, I go away all the time, and I'm pretty sure I run faster'n you can say Wile E. Coyote. But I'm tired, and you're tired, and maybe neither of us are much like ourselves tonight," he says, before shifting her weight largely in one arm and on his knee while he breaks one hand free just long enough to grasp at the front door of the hut and push it in, a warm blast of air hitting them full on as he steps inside.