A/N: Thanks for reading!

"What are you talking about?" Rose demands. Naiya wraps an arm around Rose's shoulders, quieting her.

There's no halfway about it. I plunge in, telling them everything about where I'm from and how I got here. I keep my eyes on the table for the most part, glancing up to my friends once in awhile, fearing their reaction. If I'd let Bear come, maybe he could have helped me get through this. When I run out of explanation, it's silent. I bite my lip anxiously. They probably hate me.

"I don't believe it ..." Naiya says. When I look up and meet her gaze, she says it again. It's a lot to take in, but she seems to accept it.

She smiles faintly, comfortingly. "It was meant to be. You're where you're supposed to be."

Like the bombs I escaped by coming here, Rose explodes. "How can you say that?"

She turns away as if to leave, and I worry I shouldn't have taken the risk. I've shattered her trust. But this fury is directed at her mom. Naiya, who clings to believing that everything is for some greater purpose, takes strength from her belief that there's a reason for all our suffering.

It's comforting to believe it's meant to be. But doesn't that mean that my family is meant to be dead? That my home is meant to be destroyed? I understand Rose's reaction. Rose has come back from the war broken and lost. To believe that what's meant to be, is, goes against everything she feels. It covers the gaping holes the war has left behind with a mysterious veil, demands we accept the horrors we could not change. Spinner gone. How can any of this be meant to be?

Naiya looks chastised for the moment. They've had this argument before.

Even after calming herself, Rose is resistant. "But, why?" she asks. "I don't get it. If your dad really didn't know about the bombs ..."

"He didn't, I swear," I rush to say. "It was just the war."

"Oh baby he was just trying to protect you however he could. And he did - you're here. What a miracle," Naiya says, hugging me tightly. I melt into her just a little bit, feeling relief for admitting the truth wash through me.

With Rose as my interrogator, I answer as fully and honestly as I can. Every answer I give leads her to another question, but gradually she seems to be more accepting of it all. "Why tell us now? Why not tell us before? Who else knows?"

"Nobody knows. Just Bear, and Mick. Nobody else. I wanted to tell you - a million times. I was scared. I'm so sorry, I really am." I explain about Mrs. Everdeen, about the decision I've made about my identity.

Sometimes sitting at the table, sometimes pacing the floor, through many tears, we get through her questions. I keep to my own side of the table, a tangible symbol of the gulf between us I dare not cross. Rose keeps to hers. Finally Rose asks, "Did he know?"

I search my feelings, trying to honestly convey what Spinner had known. "I never told Spinner. But he knew ... I think he knew I was running, when Johnny turned up with me. But there was a war on. He just accepted it. He never knew what I was running from. He never asked."

Rose is silent. Her head drops and she buries her face in her hands sobbing. Fresh tears collect in my eyes. I don't know what else to say.

"He never said," she murmurs. Feeling his loss acutely, I go straight to her, embracing her, feeling our grief knitting us together.

Later I recount their reactions to Bear. Of Rose I say, "She's hurt. I don't know if it was better or worse that Spinner never knew."

There's one more person I need to face. I get to tell him soon after the night with Rose and Naiya. Even though the hospital isn't built yet, some of the Capitol's patients are already being moved to District 4. We meet him at the train station, all smiles and tear-streaked cheeks. My heart breaks to see him wheeled off the traincar.

Johnny is finally home. He'd been caught in a bomb blast, or was it a pod, I don't even know if he knows for sure. Though his face is the same, his body has been torn apart in the war. His skin is marred by burns scars. His right arm is gone below the elbow. His right leg amputated in the Capitol after being torn beyond repair by flying shrapnel. He's waiting for prosthetics, like Peeta's leg. Too many soldiers need too many operations, too many limbs need to be replaced. The medical facilities not destroyed in the war can't handle so many patients. Johnny is just one in a long line - one reason Paylor is helping us build the new medical facility.

Telling Johnny is so easy, probably because I'm not breaking a trust. He already knew I wasn't from 4, he just didn't know the whole story. Telling Johnny is long overdue. It's thanks to him, to his invitation that first day, that I am here. That I am alive. I owe him everything, and if Mick is like a brother to me, well then so is Johnny. I would do anything for him.

Naiya knows I've made my decision. Still, one day at work she leaves me with a folded page, saying only, "I think of you when I read it."

Opening it I read:

Prospective Immigrants Please Note

Either you will
go through this door
or you will not go through.

If you go through
there is always the risk
of remembering your name.

Things look at you doubly
and you must look back
and let them happen.

If you do not go through
it is possible
to live worthily

to maintain your attitudes
to hold your position
to die bravely

but much will blind you,
much will evade you,
at what cost who knows?

The door itself
makes no promises.
It is only a door.

A/N: Naiya's note to Madge is a poem Prospective Immigrants Please Note by Adrienne Rich, written in 1962.