Finnick let her go and didn't try to pull her back when she turned toward the stove. His expression grew serious when she continued speaking though, an expression he rarely wore, no matter what the circumstance.
"Katniss," he said, and for once, there was no quip to his voice. "What happened to you, and what happened to Peeta, none of that was your fault." It wasn't fair, any of it, the burden they had put on her. He was as impressed with her as the rest of them, he knew. She could bear up under a lot. But living with her had also reminded him that she was seventeen. And as much as she didn't like to be called a kid, that's what she was -- or at least, that's what she should have the right to be. At seventeen, he'd been three years out of the arena and still couldn't imagine contending with everything she had survived. At twenty-four and ten years out of the arena, he still felt she did a better job of contending than he did.
And he wondered if no one had told her that before. That it wasn't her fault, that she shouldn't have had to risk her own life to save her sisters, that she shouldn't have blamed for saving Peeta's. Saving the world and starting a rebellion should have never fallen on her shoulders.