Disclaimer: The Hunger Games does not belong to me.

Her father had told her once that it was important for people to stop, sometimes, and remember to put things in perspective. It had been an almost throw away comment while they fished by the lake early one morning, but she had filed it away in her head with all of the things that her father had said to her over the years in the woods. Somehow, things that were said in the woods always seemed to have a greater weight to them than the things that were said in the District as if the atmosphere of coal dust and complacency in the face of oppression smothered and squeezed some of the meaning out of everything - even the words.

Complacency in the face of oppression was not a phrase she had picked up from her father. It had been overheard in the conversations of the adults in this District that was not a District out here in the woods where she and Prim had found themselves and adopted into Katniss's interior monologue in those early days when she was still near panicked at every little thing and being angry with their mother had seemed the only way to channel all of her frustrations and fears. Their mother was complacent. Complacent was the enemy. Complacent meant Prim with sunken cheeks and empty eyes taking small sips of mint tea to try to pretend that there was something worthwhile actually in her stomach. Complacent meant watching Prim starve. Katniss hated complacent.

She had not understood about perspective when she was nine and soaking in the early sunlight tucked up by her beloved father and thinking about the fish they would surely be having for supper that evening. She thought she understood about perspective now. It was Prim's birthday today. Birthdays were not something universally celebrated where they had been raised, but their father had always made a point of finding some small something or other to be given to mark the day. Their mother had always contrived to have something they particularly liked for supper - something that Katniss has enough distance (and she likes to think maturity) now to admit had taken some effort on her part to make happen. (You ate what you had and were pleased to have it when you grew up in the Seam.)

She had found herself wishing that she could have given Prim something better than the small piece of fabric that was tucked in to place beside her normal spot at their table. Prim could have used a dozen or more things that Katniss could rattle off without even needing the time to think it through - she had so many things that she wanted to know that Katniss could not teach her. She had always focused with her father on the things in the woods that were for eating. She had brought back the things that were for her mother's remedies only knowing which plants (and which parts of them) she was supposed to be bringing - very seldom had she known which was for what or why or how it was supposed to be prepared. She knew a couple of the obvious teas - beyond that she was at a loss. Prim would have liked to know more. Her little sister wanted to fix things, and she would have done a beautiful job of taking care of the injured and sick (nerves for that sort of thing were not a trait that they shared in common). Katniss regretted that she could not do more to teach her; she felt guilty about it even (because she knows that this was something that their mother had known and understood and Katniss had taken them away from the woman and lost Prim all of that knowledge).

Thus, she found herself taking some time in the course of her morning for putting some things into perspective.

After all, the fact that Prim did not have a teacher did not seem so awful a thing when compared to the fact the Prim was neither buried in the cemetery lot back in Twelve nor being beaten on and still underfed trapped in the Community Home. Here (even with all of the things she would like for Prim that they could not have) still had to be better than that. It had to be.

Here (she had decided long ago and never since changed her mind) was safer.

Katniss had learned early that there was no such thing as safe, but there was such a thing as safer. You had to weigh everything and pay attention to see which was which. Safer, she had ultimately decided, had a lot more to do with what you did and chose over what happened to and around you. It was something that you could do something about. You did not just have to let things happen to you. You needed to know when the odds were against you and how best to turn them when they were. Sometimes (no matter how many things she was doing), she felt like that was the only thing that she ever truly did. She even thought that she might be sort of good at it. (She had, after all, had years and years in which to practice.)

For example, Prim had not been safe back in District 12. Prim was also not safe in the woods. Neither place was actually safe, but the woods filled with plants and animals made for a safer place than the bare cupboards of their childhood home. The potential danger of predators that lurked amongst the trees was safer than the certainty of Peacekeepers, Reapings, and the Community Home. The stranger that offered them direction had been safer than their mother with her empty eyes and vacant expression. It had been choices between these dangers and those. It had been decisions between this threat and that.

That was reality.

None of that made the woods safe. A better choice was just that - better. It meant that the other choice was worse (not that the first choice was good or easy or actually safe).

The woods were a part of nature. If there was one thing that Katniss had always understood about nature, then it was that (despite its beautiful moments and ability to provide) it was determined to eat you. One misstep, one bad choice - that was all it would take for it to swallow you whole. She had made her peace with that without ever letting herself fall into the dreaded complacency trap. Just because it wanted to eat her (eat Prim) did not mean that she had to stand by and let it. She took what she already knew and learned as she went the things she still needed. This way each day ended with nature in their pot simmering over the fire in preparation for going into their bellies and not the other way around. She trusted nature for all its ill-intentions more because she knew how to work around it. She even liked (or maybe respected was a better word) nature in spite of it all. She could not remember ever feeling like she had control back in Twelve. It might be the passage of time or the fact that her memories were all jaded by those last weeks without their father's protection, but her memories of Twelve were all filled with worry and despair and an utter conviction that everything she was trying was failing.

She fails at things here sometimes, but she has never felt like she is failing. Most importantly, she has not failed Prim here.

Prim has the book that their parents created together and her own ingenuity to teach herself, and she has the chance to use it. They have space to make their own way here. They have space to survive (when Twelve had felt like everything closing in to smother them). She likes having space (thinks that maybe she was just never meant to be very good with people).

The settlement is like that as well - as much as it can be considered a settlement. The people like their space from one another. For all that a family with illness never goes unvisited and volunteers to help with the undertaking of larger projects are plentiful, everyone retreats back to their own home place and keeps out of each other's way in between times.

Katniss had not understood the structure at first - still is not sure she gets all of the ins and outs of it. It is enough for her to know that Prim had been fed and checked on when Katniss herself had had rabbit fever.

It is comforting even, but it is not safe. She is as okay with that as she can be.

She doesn't know exactly how staying back in Twelve would have ended. She likes to think that she would have kept Prim from starving (even if that ultimately meant the Community Home), but she knows that even with everything that can and may go wrong, she will never be sorry that she does not have to watch her younger sister stand in the square with her name in the Reaping Bowl.

Prim is 12 years old today.

She is alive.

She was fed today.

She smiled when she walked out the door to do her chores.

This is all of the perspective that Katniss needs.

She is as well as Katniss is capable of making her. There was nothing else that she had wanted; she had gotten more than she had felt possible in her frantic dash out of the District.

She uses that knowledge to fend off the guilt that likes to creep in when . . . will she has never found a rhyme or reason . There are just times when it is there - with questions she has no way to answer.

What had happened to their mother? Had anyone noticed their house going quiet? Had she simply withered away in the bed she had been so determined not to leave?

The thought that she was a bad daughter creeps up on her at times. What would her father (who had adored her mother) have said to see his oldest abandon her?

She tells herself that she should not feel that way. The woman was their mother. She was supposed to be the one who took care of them - not the other way around. Prim had come first. Prim would always come first.

She also thinks about the bread that had inspired her to not give up that day more often than she should. She never thanked the boy - that thought haunts her more than the wondering about her father's opinion or dwelling on her mother. She never thanked the boy (would never have a chance to thank the boy). She would always regret that. He had made her brave enough to save Prim, and he would never know. He might not ever care - but she did. She was sorry for that even while she was not sorry at all that she had taken Prim away from that house that used to be a home and had become nothing other than a place to sit and wait for death to come and take them away.

This is safer.

This is better.

She would decide the same all over again.