A/N: There's no telling what clinically depressed people think about their experience when the depression breaks. Often, they still live life in a state that is always less than happy. Hopefully, though, they gain a little more perspective through therapy - and then when they take the time to think about things.

In the books, Katniss's snap judgments are erratic. But when she takes the time to think things through, she comes to the right conclusions. After being inducted into Rue's family, she has a lot to think about. I hope I've come up with a conclusion that is true to her character.

All rights to this derivative work belong to Hunger Games author Suzanne Collins.

I still have difficult moments and difficult days, but my depression never again falls to the same depths and stays there.

Getting to know and bond with the family I never knew I had is life-altering. This story is too big not to have a moral. There are two components to it – value and family.

People say every individual has intrinsic value. I'd thought all of my value was earned – and therefore temporary. But in the end, I suppose I have to concede the point.

During the Games, my value was minimal. I was a cheap piece of expendable entertainment that miraculously didn't get expended. By that standard, so was Rue. Technically, so was Prim. It was her name that was drawn, after all. But I never felt that way about either one of them.

When Rue showed me the tracker jackers, her value to me certainly went up, but I can't say it went up by half. She had most of her value all along, and not because of anything she did. And I never weighed Prim's value against mine for a second when I volunteered.

During the revolution, I was valuable until I wasn't needed any longer. Then I became a burden, a messed-up girl who needed to be removed from society. But people who lose their minds are still fed, clothed, and housed. I had thought I was given those things only because I'd been the Mockingjay. But if someone previously unknown had assassinated Coin and was found to be insane, he or she would still have been fed, clothed, and housed. Under Paylor's government, anyway.

Rue and Prim had value that I never questioned. They still have it, and they always will. But it works the other way, too. At least in District 11, there are people who don't question my value.

Peeta says the people who still hold me in esteem feel exactly this way, even though I regret some of my deeds and will never be the best person in the room. He says the deeds I've done unquestioningly – feeding my family, volunteering for Prim, those that Haymitch and others listed in 13 - prove that it's intrinsic value. He says I have such a strong effect on people because that value is exceptionally high. I'll never believe that part, but I catch myself believing the first part once in a while. I'm proud that I fed my family. I am a survivor. I guess those two things are intrinsic.

I still think Peeta is wrong about one thing, though. I could easily change the way strangers assess my value. I certainly did when I killed Coin. Enough strangers still value me, though, that I wonder sometimes if it wouldn't be as easy as it seems. Peeta thinks it won't change.

Nevertheless, a select few will never question my value. Peeta won't. My brand new family won't. I couldn't persuade them otherwise. At least two other people feel the same way about me – Haymitch and Johanna. Several who are now deceased did – Madge, Cinna, Finnick, Boggs. I feel the same way about all of them. The bonds we formed are unbreakable. The only word I can think of that fits these people is family.

Love isn't the right word. It often is part of the bonds and their permanence. That's certainly the case with Peeta and Rue's family. But some kinds of love are transient. The word has too many definitions. And when it comes to Haymitch, I wouldn't call it love.

Friendship fits sometimes, but it, too, is transient. It isn't strong enough by itself to make the bond permanent. If Johanna was nothing more than a friend, one of us would have killed the other by now.

Need is also the wrong word. Needs are also transient. Gale and I ceased to need each other.

Each of these permanent bonds – these family ties - is unique. Each has its own interface, its own set of rules, its own terms. And no matter how strange its terms are, it carries a cyclic obligation. You give help. You support, you sustain. You keep living it in honor of the deceased.

You accept it whenever it comes back to you, in whatever form it does. Eventually, one of you will use it to rise from adversity or misery. It may even save a life when it happens. Even if you forget about your own, you remember the others' intrinsic values. If they forget about their own, you find a way to make them remember. They will make you remember your own before long.

Sometimes, you get surprised. You learn who is (or is not) part of your family. You learn more family exists than you thought, that the family ties already existed. You learn you have unknowingly fulfilled an obligation, or that you need to fulfill one.

You keep passing the substance of the bond back and forth, or onward within the group, as the case may be. You do it quickly, because one of you may need it quickly. When you keep the cycle going, you are not just half a person. You are whole.

And woven into all of this, you'll find the reason to endure.