AN: Sorry that this chapter is shorter than the others I've been putting out! I've been trying to make them longer, since that's feedback I got on my other stories but this was a difficult chapter for me to write, for some reason, and school started back up today. Writing is really something I enjoy that's a stress relief for me so I'll make time to keep working on these. As always, thank you SO much for the reviews! I've gotten some really great feedback on this and it makes me really happy. :) Have a great back to school, everyone (if that's possible) . . .

"Bye, love," Hazelle murmurs as she bends down to kiss Prim on the head, just as I do. Prim hugs her tightly back, and Hazelle glows from the gesture. Hazelle lives for her children, and it's easy to tell, from the way she embraces Prim to how hard she worked when Posy came down the measles.

"And you," she continues, moving down on to me. "Stay safe out in those woods, you hear? I don't need any broken kids to take care of," but, her serious face breaks into a smile and she hugs me tightly, too.

I grin. Hazelle accepted, and embraced the idea, of me basically being one of her own.

She proves the idea when she moves down the line to my mother. Instead of wrapping her sturdy arms around my mother, she grabs her at the shoulders and tips her forehead closer. "Stay around for these kids. Stay around for them."

My mother's face is just as plain (yet still just as strained and absent) as it always is. Hazelle stares a bit longer into my mother's eyes, but she realizes they're as empty as the rest of my her.

When she moves back towards me, she sighs. "Take care of yourself. And Prim. If you never need help, you know where we are."

I nod. "Thanks," I reply. It's a basic, ordinary thanks, but Hazelle knows it's as heartfelt as I can get.

"Good," she smiles, squeezing my shoulder.

Gale's the next one in line. I part my lips to thank him, but he's already got me in a hug for the fourth or fifth time again that day.

"Sunday?" he asks.

"Sunday," I answer. "The rock. Like always."

His smile is back. "Like always, Catnip."

I punch his arm. "Bye, Gale."

He smirks back at me. I put my arm around Prim as we turn back to our house, Prim and I linked at the hip while our mother drifts off to the left. I'm the only one of us who crosses the path between our house and the Hawthornes' to not be totally blinded by the darkness. Prim grabs at me every time she starts to go down, but I'm there to pull her up.

She's not quiet, either. Years of tearing through the woods has gifted me a soft tread, but I also admit to have being quiet to begin with. Any time Gale brings up the idea of running off (which has become more and more, lately), my first excuse is Prim. Not that she can't make it through the forest as fast as we can (she can't), or that she's far too fragile to ever last on pieces of raw meat and whatever water we could find (she couldn't). My biggest fear about pulling her into the big, bad woods with us is how loud she is — they'd catch us in a moment.

We make it to the house eventually, and I tuck Prim into bed, while my mother lingers in the room, a while longer.

"What are you doing?" I snapped. I felt almost bad for a moment, staring back at the ghostly face.

"Katniss, why are you angry at me?" she said quietly.

I narrowed my eyes slightly. "Are you saying that you don't know why?"

"No, Katniss," my mother said softly, folding herself onto a chair. But, she didn't sit like most people, stuffed into the very back of the chair, slumped down, grateful to be off their feet. She perched at the end, her torso slightly leaning forward, hands folded primly in her lap, feet stiff and square set on the floor.

"Oh, come on," I rolled my eyes. "Don't play this game. I don't have time. I have to provide for this family. Know what that's like? Making sure your daughters have something to eat every night?"

My mother's thin face aged her far beyond her years. I imagine that one upon a time, she must have been some sort of pretty, with her blonde hair and blue eyes. Now, she's so wispy, so nonexistent, just barely there. "You," she pauses, as if the emphasis on the single word was exhausting, "You know that your father …. that was difficult on me."

"And, you think it wasn't hard on me? On Prim!? You left her without a mother!" I yell, throwing up my hands. "I lost my father! Don't act like that didn't affect me!"

"Katniss, he knew the Seam. This was his home … this isn't natural for me. This isn't where I belong …" but, when she speaks, she trails off with every point, too tired to end each sentence.

I stand up from where I had taken a seat beside her. "You're poor now! You don't have any money! This is where you belong, with the rest of the poor, struggling people! You're not a merchant anymore!"

Her haggard face pinches together. "Please, Katniss, you know …"

"'I know'! 'I know'? What do 'I know', Mom? I'm only in school half the time because I'm the only one who can make sure Prim eats!" So many years of emotionless existing may have worked to my mother's advantage, as she hangs in her chair, sitting motionlessly. None of my words register, and it's like arguing with myself.

"Stop feeling sorry for yourself!" I scream, collapsing down to the floor and crashing my wrists into the floor. "Stop acting as if you being a miserable, pathetic excuse of a human being will change anything! It won't, Mom! He's dead! Dad's gone! That mine blew him right to pieces! Okay?! He's gone!"

I know Prim will wake up if I keep on like this, but every time I scream at my mother, she never reacts. It never comes across her face, it's like she doesn't even know that I'm angry, that she's hurt me, that she's hurt Prim …

She doesn't realize know, even if my eyes are starting to squeeze out tears that I don't really feel. "Why don't you get this!?" I cry, my voice turning scratchy. "Why don't you understand?! Why aren't you here anymore?"

I think I see a tear in my mother's eye, caught behind the mask that fogged up between her and us. "Katniss …"

"No!" I sob. "No! Can't you see, that this is why I hate you?! You're not here anymore! You're not living!"

I slam my fists into the floorboards again. I can feel the force of my palms ripple through the floor, through the nonexistent foundation, the rotted wood. "Stop staring at me!"

She looks even smaller in her chair now, still teetering at the edge of the seat. But, when I look at her face, look at the wrinkles that don't just line her eyes or her lips like the laugh marks Gale has or the smile marks Hazelle has, but long lines, that traverse across her face, make her so much older than she really is, so much more unlovely than she might have been.

But, there's a tear, traveling down one of those lines. Her eyes suddenly seem so much brighter, illuminated by her wet tears. "I'm sorry …" she whispers, but she doesn't look at me.

In fact, I can't see where exactly where she's looking, but my best guess is somewhere far beyond what the human eye sees in present time. She's looking somewhere far behind the right now, maybe looking to the merchant sidewalks she toddled upon when she was young, meeting my father for the first time. Maybe she's looking back to the last time she sang, out in the woods with my father and I, when I was little, and those damn birds stopped to listen, and sang it back right at her. That was the last time I had heard her sing. The last time she looked as young as she was.

"I'm sorry …" she repeats.

I pull myself from the floor, brushing my fists, which are quickly bruising from where I struck the floor. I squint my eyes together, blinking away the little bit of wetness caught up in my eyelashes. I look to my mother, still set on her chair, frailer than ever. "Stop," I say, before I turn to the bedroom.

Prim's little blue eyes are staring wide eyed at me, between the door crack. "Come on little duck," I hum, taking her in my arms. "Don't worry about that. You need to sleep, you have school tomorrow. Come on, little duck."

I keep repeating little phrases to my little duck, my little bird, until she's lulled back to sleep, this time in my arms. Truthfully, dreaming to become a little bird is useless, when I have my own bird already in my life. Maybe I can't be the bird, can't be the one flying off on new adventures, but isn't it just as sweet to protect the little bird, nourish the little bird? And when the time comes, watch that little bird fly for the very first time?