The primroses Peeta planted last year are blooming again, their yellow making a splash against the emerging green of spring. Their petals, deceptively delicate, wave in the wind, but somehow always manage to retain their shape, until it's time for them to fly away.

I trace an outline on the petals, then run my fingers through the new dirt, letting it fall to the ground. It's private here, helping me relax and take in the newly emerging world. So gray and dormant for months, now signs of spring are popping up everywhere. and the Seam is once again becoming a lively place. If I tilt my head just right, I can even hear singing in the distance - from a person, not just the returning birds.

Now I can finally allow myself to remember.

The morning of that fateful Reaping, I woke to a cold bed because you had crept in to be with Mother. Only your cat was up when I rose and dressed for hunting, hissing good morning, his usual greeting to me (he's never forgotten that you were his savior who prevented one of his nine lives from being short). Then I went downstairs and found a far more pleasant gift: a cheese from your goat wrapped in basil leaves. When I met up with Gale, he'd brought bread, and with the berries that ripened at this time of year, we had a feast. Of sorts. Or a last supper, but we wouldn't know it for a few more hours.

Over bread topped with cheese and berries, we discussed running away. Half-seriously, on my part, but we couldn't possibly leave our families behind. The thought of what would happen if we did was a brake, jerking us back to reality. So, after a dry suggestion to "wear something pretty," Gale and I parted, and I returned home. I wore a dress Mother chose, and you wore an outfit I had at my first Reaping. Perhaps, though I'm not the superstitious type, the thought crossed my mind that it would bring you luck. And that combined with the fact that your name was entered only once, the odds really were in your favor.

However, that day, they weren't.

I'd protected you from being put in the community home, after Father died. I'd kept you and Mother from starving (thanks to a generous gesture on Peeta's part, which gave me the strength to keep going). And not permitted you, under any circumstances, to take out tesserae. Math has never been my subject, but I was sure that having only one name in that glass ball was as close as you could get to being immune.

But I couldn't protect you from the moment when Effie Trinket dipped her talons in that glass ball and read out your name.

So I did the only thing I could. You wouldn't have lasted five minutes in the Hunger Games arena. I, well possibly, a few days if luck was with me. Glory, no, Effie, I didn't do it for that. Maybe that was what propelled the Careers, trained from toddlerhood in the ways of winning. Not for us in District 12, whose priorities are simple: adequate food, clothes and lodging. But I promised to win if I could, then I was sitting on the train, heading for my new destination.

Before I left, however, I did one more thing: warned Mother not to succumb to the grief that had wrapped around her like a noose after Father died. She promised, assured me that she now had the right remedies should that be necessary. But the memory of those dreadful days was still fresh then, the wound of her inability to care for us still raw. You'd already forgiven her, but I hadn't. Forgiveness seemed too close to forgetting, and that felt like a luxury I couldn't afford. Not if I wanted to hold our family together. Strength was what was needed most.

The truth was I believed I'd never see you again. I figured I'd be coming home in a wooden box, if lucky, not too disfigured, still recognizable as the Katniss you knew. But with bloodthirsty Careers, natural hardship, and high tech horrors cooked up by the Gamesmakers, that didn't seem likely.

My single advantage (I thought) was knowing how to hunt. Perhaps my skill with a bow and arrow (provided there was one there for me to use, in the first place). Another, I discovered, was that I knew hunger, was familiar with the gnawing sensation, which came in handy when supplies ran low in the arena. A third, though it took me a long time to realize it, was that Peeta truly cared for me - that it wasn't just an act to play up to the Capitol audience and snare sponsors. Charm comes naturally to some people, but not me (hence Haymitch's comparison to a dead slug). But it was in that arena that I finally learned that being on the receiving end of kindness takes strength, too.

I'm sure, had you gone to the Games, Peeta would have formed an alliance with you, and your skill with medicinal plants would have had its place in your survival. Had I paid as close attention to Mother's remedies as you, Peeta might not have even lost his leg. But it doesn't do any good to dwell on what-ifs.

Against the odds, Peeta and I both survived, though we didn't know at the moment we held the nightlock berries to our lips that we had set in motion something much bigger than the Games and ourselves.

When I woke up, my troubles were just beginning, but I wouldn't realize to what extent until later. For now, I was mostly glad that we had both been spared. And I was ready, at long last, to return home.