Day 1
The kid from room 32 wasn't wearing pants.
This wasn't exactly a big shock. Last night, he had screamed on and off for three hours about how he wanted to go home and that this was all a mistake. As soon as a nurse had gotten close to advancing to his room, he had stopped abruptly, and then started up again as soon as the nurse went away again. He kept this up until finally they just stationed someone outside his room all night. After that, silence radiated from his room. It was as if he was making so much noise purely as a reassurance that someone was going to acknowledge he was alive.
Really, the only shocking part of the whole episode was that it barely distracted Peeta from the bowl of corn flakes and the sad, bruised orange on his tray. But he'd already accepted that seeing a crazy kid half naked in the morning was going to be part of his normal routine now, just one item on a checklist of things that never went away: the blue flowered wallpaper, the crumpled magazines on the tables that were last updated two years ago, the soft blaring of the Channel 4 morning news on the ancient TV in the background. Violet, the floor nurse whose scrubs are always a shifting shade of the color she shared a name with, would change the channel to some soap opera at 2:30, when lunch was done and everyone was in quiet time He only knew this because that was the time he had come in yesterday.
"Come on, Finnick, it's alright. Let's go get you dressed," Violet and another floor nurse, Octavia, were already on their feet, holding onto the shaking, underwear and hospital gown-clad boy as they led him back to his room.
As he watched two nurses escort Finnick away, Peeta dug the flimsy edge of his plastic knife into his orange rind and asked himself, once again, how the hell he ended up here.
That answer was rather long and winding, tracing back maybe three and a half years or longer, depending on how you wanted to look at things.
The short version was that less than two days ago he had tried to kill himself in one of the most tourist-ridden parks in the city at two in the morning, and had been rescued by a well-meaning, insomniac-ridden local who had found Earth's last payphone and had called the hospital.
Apparently this was the best-case outcome for this scenario.
What a giant fucking treat.
He had spent a few hours in suicide watch downstairs, sucking down water, meds, and Jell-O, until he was brought up to the fifth floor of the St. Crane Hospital yesterday afternoon.
As far as he knew, Floor Five served a few other functions, but its main attraction was the Youth Psychiatric Ward. Peeta found it kind of funny that he'd been born on Floor Three of the same hospital, got a broken arm treated once on Floor Four, and was now leveling up once again.
The irony of this entire situation was getting a bit exhausting, to be honest.
He got off the peel of the orange and slid a few slices into his mouth before picking up the plastic spoon on his tray. He resolved to get in a few bites of cereal, no matter how bland it was.
He briefly flipped the spoon over and wished that it was metal, purely for the purpose of getting some sense of what he looked like now. As far as he knew, there were no mirrors on the floor, and the last time he seen his own reflection was less than forty-eight hours ago, when he was getting ready to go on what he had hoped would be his last journey to the park. Even then, he'd looked like hell, skinny and tired and undeniably insane.
It made him think about how his old guidance counselors really weren't fucking around when they listed off the physical effects of depression.
Maybe he looked a little less crazy now. Maybe.
He gulped down a few more bites of his breakfast and then eventually abandoned the milk-logged cereal left in his bowl. He got up and dropped the remnants of his meal off at the tray station, then turned down into the hallway. He had maybe an hour of free time before his first round of therapy for the morning, and while he could probably break into the books his dad had brought yesterday afternoon, all he felt like doing was ignoring everything. He wanted to ignore the rattling A/C system in his room and the jittery roommate who sat on his bed and nervously touched the circle of bruises around his neck. He wanted to ignore that he was here, and not back in his bedroom with his life actually together.
Ignoring was a bad habit, of course. It was what had made him ultimately end up here.
But he figured he had a little more time before he had to stop for good.
The group therapy room was about as uplifting as its named suggested.
Its walls, much like the rest of the floor, were a creamy white, and the only pop of color came from the dark blue in the ubiquitous molded plastic chairs that seemed to be in every room. Eight of these chairs were currently set up in a circle, and half of them were already occupied, one of them by a crisply dressed woman Peeta assumed to be a counselor, and the other three by kids. Two of them, a guy and a girl, were sitting next to each other and having a rather in-depth, fast-moving conversation. He didn't exactly want to walk into that, but he also didn't want to seem like a loner. So instead, he grabbed a spot next to the other occupied chair.
Once he was seated, he looked over and examined his therapy-mate.
She was a girl, maybe about his age. Her black hair hung loose over one shoulder, wavy and frizzy, frayed at the ends and clearly damaged. Her ears sported several small pierced holes, red and scabbed over, and there were identical spots on the side of her nose and under her pouting, chapped bottom lip. She had on a white t-shirt which looked way too small, and a pair of jeans that were ripped at one knee. There was a solid three inches of her back showing where the hem of her t-shirt didn't meet the waist of her jeans. He could see top of her underwear peeking out; white, with pale blue stripes.
He felt his face burn after noticing the last detail, and he quickly averted his eyes, even though he knew she hadn't seen him. Since the moment he had entered the room to now, her eyes had remained straight ahead, staring at nothing in particular. Not that there was anything in this room that would be interesting to look at, save for the neon hue of their counselor's blouse.
Despite her obvious disinterest, something in his brain told him it was a good idea to introduce himself.
"Um, hi,"
Her eyes moved slightly, enough to glance over at him and then back ahead.
"Hey," she returned, drawing out the 'y' sound.
"Um, I'm Peeta. I got in yesterday. Have you, uh, been in longer? Wait. No. Sorry. That was a stupid question. Don't answer that,"
"Yeah, I wasn't going to," she said. She flicked her eyes up to the final few kids that were filing into her seats, and then mumbled, mostly to herself, "Oh, looks like we're starting in three, two…"
"Well, looks like we're all here. So, good morning, everyone!" the counselor at the head of circle trilled as soon as the last person sat down.
"Yep, there we are,"
"How are we doing today?" There was a stretch of silence that somehow formed the words, Well, we're in a mental institute, so, just swell.
"Well then. Quiet bunch today. But, hopefully we can get to talking soon. I have a question for all of you," she chirped. She was met with a few looks that told Peeta she always had question.
"I want you all to think back, to when you were very little, let's say three or four. What did you want to be when you grew up? What do you think that says about you? You know, what we're interested in as children can really hold some interesting things in how we handle our futures," she turned with a trained smile to the girl sitting next Peeta, "Katniss, would you like to go first?"
The girl lifted her head and blinked once, "No, Effie, I really don't,"
"Oh, come on now, surely you can come up with something,"
She straightened up slightly, lifting her chin. Peeta thought he heard someone close by mumble, "Oh, shit," as she did so.
"Well, gosh, let me think. When I was a kid I wanted to be a fucking astronaut, because I wanted to get off this planet and away from all the shit that comes with it, and then I grew up and you know what? I still wanna get off this fucking planet, but NASA doesn't hire burnouts who have a failed chemistry grade and a juvie mark on their record,"
The room collapsed into a few coos of "ooh" while the counselor, Effie, fumbled to direct the question to the boy on the other side of Katniss.
Katniss slumped back into her seat, her face more tired than victorious, and she went back to staring at the wall in front of her.
Even several minutes later, Peeta found himself more caught up in her display than the discussion going on in the rest of the circle.
This was going to be an interesting week.
The afternoons were set aside for art therapy. Apparently, they used to have art and music options on the floor, but their old music instructor had died a couple years ago and they had yet to find another teacher willing to spend their time with a bunch of insane teenagers.
Still, Peeta would've chosen art either way. The art room was one of the few places back at school he felt like he wasn't going to break apart. It had giant windows, and since the school was built on a hill, he could look down and see everything, from the symmetrical soccer fields with their neat dark and light mow lines to the curvy and irregular border of the lake at the end of town. He would often sneak in outside of class, during his study halls and lunch periods, until he realized that keeping his grades up and painting so much at the same time was a nearly impossible task.
Needless to say, the art room in the hospital, with its one large cabinet filled with supplies and a clear lack of a view outside, couldn't begin to compare. When Peeta finally made it to the front of the line to collect his supplies for the day, he quickly found there were only two tiny brushes left, and the only paints they had in stock were the sets of primary colors in cheap, small plastic pots connected in a line, the kind they gave to little kids. He sighed in frustration and instead resigned to a few pieces of paper and a couple of pencils before he turned and searched for a place to sit.
Katniss, the girl from the morning session—who had never actually ended up truthfully answering Effie's question—was sitting by herself at one of the tables, hunched over the synthetic wooden surface. As he got closer, he saw she was folding a piece of paper into some kind of origami shape.
He stood awkwardly next to the table before he cleared his throat softly and said, "Sorry, do you mind?"
She looked up briefly, regarding him with the same boredom she'd given him that morning.
"No," she said firmly, in a way that inferred it should have been obvious that she didn't really care where he sat.
"Oh, um, thanks,"
She didn't react, instead going back to her project, which was turning out to look like some kind of bird. Peeta wanted to comment on it with, "Oh, that's cool" or "Is that a crane?" or even "Oh, I've always wanted to do that. Could you teach me, maybe?" but it was obvious from her initial reaction that she had no interest in engaging with him.
He instead took a seat next to her and laid his own materials in front of him, although he made no move to touch them.
There was an art teacher walking around the room, a volunteer in a flowing dress and cardigan, who was stopping at random tables and offering encouragements as she went.
"Think of something that inspires you," she cooed as she went around, "A hobby, maybe? Or maybe something from your childhood. Anything, really,"
Peeta wasn't exactly an expert, but he guessed that telling a bunch of teenage burnouts to draw inspiration from their hobbies and childhood wasn't the best idea.
Still, he tried to best to follow that line of thinking, and thought about what kind of art he'd created before the darker things moved in.
The biggest theme that came to mind was that he used to draw a lot of people. Family, friends, classmates, random people on the street. He never thought of it was weird, it was just a thing he almost couldn't help. He just saw the saw someone moved their hands, or the way they laughed, and suddenly his hands were practically twitching to get to a pencil.
Of course, that passion faded out around the same time his general motivation to stay alive did, and he wondered if he even knew how to sketch out a face anymore. But he'd obviously hit rock bottom and kind of figured that there was no real point in holding back.
He pulled his pencil across the surface of the page, creating a heart-shaped head and a thin, graceful neck. The marks for the edges of the eyes and the sides of the nose became next, along with the curve of the ears and the first long line of hair.
It wasn't until he became aware of his constant glances to the girl next to him that he realized he had subconsciously begun drawing her.
He considered stopping right there, but he kept going because, well, he'd never stopped drawing something before, and also, there was the weird fact that after her outburst this morning, she had become the most inspiring thing he'd seen in a while.
And more than that, it was clear she was already taking control of her own portrait, whether she knew that or not.
The face had started as a quick sketch, just eyes and a nose and a mouth and maybe a few extra scars and freckles drawn on. But there was a voice that vibrated from his brain to his fingers that said, No, this girl is a hell of a lot more than that. You can do better.
So he put in more details. Details that didn't make sense, or even look human, really. Flames on her eyelashes, broken mirrors in her eyes, ivy in her hair, folded origami bird wings behind her shoulders. The old piercing holes became stretched like bullet wounds, and her mouth puckered like it was in the middle of a shout.
The final line led his pencil coasting against the surface of the paper, and he dropped the pencil with a huff of breath and a distinct cramp in the side of his hand he immediately moved to massage.
His eyes scanned over the somewhat superhuman drawing he'd just done, and he felt a rush of relief through his stomach that made his mouth quirk upwards.
He could still draw. And it felt good.
"Is that—is that me?"
Peeta's head snapped up and he saw that Katniss was leaning over, her eyes trained on the paper. Her hand was already creeping towards it, and she gingerly picked it up and continued to examine it.
"Um…yeah," he admitted, tucking his hand behind his neck, "I hope you don't think it's weird,"
She nodded briefly and then squinted her eyes.
"Shit, this is accurate," she mumbled after a moment, tracing her fingertip along the cracks in her irises and the fire above them. She shook her head, "I fucking hate it,"
"Oh, um—"
"No, it's good. I just mean…the eyes kind of creep me out. And, um, the fact that my face is on fire doesn't help. But…thanks, I guess," she held it out to him and he took it wordlessly.
"It looks nice, though, really…" she tried again, and he realized that through her prolonged silence she was waiting for him to tell her his name. Of course, he'd already introduced himself that morning, but unsurprisingly she hadn't remembered.
"Peeta," he finally supplied.
"Right. Peeta. Thanks,"
"Alright, everyone! Clean up your projects, you all have a little bit of free time before dinner," the teacher called out in the back of the room.
Katniss quickly got up from the table, as did everyone else as they went back to the cabinet to tuck away pencils and unused pieces of paper.
Peeta stayed at the table and looked down at the rejected drawing. He could clearly see now why she had hated it so much: her eyes were shattered and downtrodden, while the firm lines of her mouth and downward slope of her eyebrows clearly showcased anger.
He'd thought she'd looked so beautiful at first, but he could see now that all he'd done was shown her being pissed off and broken. No one wanted to see themselves like that.
He quickly crumpled and paper between his graphite-covered hands before he stood up from the table to put his supplies in the cabinet and toss his ruined drawing in the trash.
Day one and he'd already majorly creeped out the first person he'd even attempted to speak to.
Great start, Mellark. Great fucking start.
Day 2
"Hey, I need a favor,"
Peeta looked up from his breakfast and was startled to see that Katniss was sliding into the chair next to his. Her hair was pulled tightly away from her face today, and she had on the same worn jeans, this time with a hacked-up gray tank top on the upper half of her body.
"Um, okay?"
"I need you—I need you to draw another one of those pictures you did yesterday,"
"I thought you hated them," he countered. He'd meant it to be joking, but instead it had come across as cutting.
"Sorry," he mumbled, at exactly the same time she said, "Look, I'm sorry,"
She laughed quickly at their fumble, "I just—I am sorry, okay? That drawing was good. I just—I didn't know how to take it, I guess. But yeah, I really—fuck, I'm rambling. Can you just take this shitty apology and maybe consider doing another one?"
"Apology accepted, sure. But—why do you need another drawing?"
"Um, I promised my sister when she and my mom came to visit on Tuesday that I would try to get better, and I told her I would bring back to something to prove it. I thought—shit, she's not stupid, she's not going to believe that I learned how to draw like that in a few days, but…" she sighed and brought her hand up to the side of her head, even though she had no stray hair to push back, "Maybe she'll at least see I made a friend,"
"Oh. Okay, yeah sure," he started pulling apart the toast on his plate and smiled, "So, what, we're friends now?"
She made a sound through her noise that sounded vaguely like a laugh, "What, you want it to be more official? Exchange friendship bracelets or something?"
"Right. Sorry. But yeah. I'll do it,"
"Oh, God. Oh, God, thank you," she reached out her arms and briefly wrapped his shoulders in a loose hug, "Okay. I'll see in the art room later,"
She pulled away from him, then got up from her seat and went over to get her own breakfast tray.
He briefly hoped that she would come back and sit with him again, since he really did wish he had someone to sit with, but she went over to a different table and he forced himself to turn back around and focus on ingesting some breakfast.
He'd have to wait to see her until that afternoon.
"Hey, sorry I'm late,"
Peeta had barely sorted out his supplies for the day when he looked up and saw Katniss rushing to take a spot next to him. He hadn't been worried about her running a few minutes later—in fact, he was glad he had more time to prepare—but she seemed pretty flustered as she rushed into an explanation.
"My individual session ran over. Dr. Aurelius can really run his mouth, I swear. But, um, we can get started now, I guess,"
"Hey, don't worry about it," he agreed, sliding out a single pencil and piece of paper from his stack, "Can you maybe tell me about your sister? That would probably make it a little easier,"
"Right. Sorry," she tossed her head, making her hair sway against the back of her head, "What do you need to know?"
"Everything. Just—everything you can. Whatever comes to mind,"
"Well, she's thirteen. She thinks she's twenty-five, though. I still think of her like she's five, but, whatever. I guess we can disagree on that, because she has her shit together a lot better than me. Not that that's hard, I guess,"
He nodded as she spoke, beginning a rough outline. It would help if he had a picture, but he was making everything generally the same shape as Katniss', but he kept the face and the outline of her eyes a little rounder. He looked up when she paused and motioned with the tip of his pencil.
"Keep going,"
"Sorry. I'm just thinking. Um, she's always happy, always believes in you. She just lights up a room. She wants to be a doctor, and God knows she's smart enough to do it. Like I said, she has her shit together pretty well. And she can dance, too, which is—great. She's good, and it makes her happy, but sometimes I worry, because her teachers can get a little intense. But, yeah, she's great. She's just a great kid. The only thing that kind of sucks about her is how I'm always left worrying about her, I guess. That and her cat. God, I hate her fucking cat," Katniss paused, running her hands over her jeans as Peeta kept working on the picture, "Oh, and she's blonde. Like, ridiculously, middle-of-California blonde. So…don't shade in her hair, I guess,"
His pencil worked furiously over the page as he filled in details as they came: after her basic features were in place he added in the wings of a caduceus tucked into the waves of her hair, a pair of ballet shoes by her temple, the curve of a cat's tail across her shoulders, and a set of flower petals surrounding a sparkling, determined set of eyes. He added a small smattering of freckles under her eyes and last few curls to her hair and then set his pencil down and passed it over to Katniss.
She picked it up and looked it at, her eyes looking it over with the same level of scrutiny yesterday's drawing at brought had on. This time, though, she looked a lot happier.
"Do you think she'll like it?" he asked hopefully.
"Yeah. I think she will," she set it down and slid it over to him, "Um, could you sign it, maybe? I think maybe she'd like that,"
"Sure," he scrawled his signature in the corner of the paper and handed it back, "I would color it in, too, but I don't think the crayons in here would be great for that,"
"No. No, this is fine. Better than fine, really. She'll love it," she shook her head, "It's weird—this looks so much like her, and you didn't even have a picture or anything,"
He shrugged as he picked up a plastic sharpener from the center of the table and started to crank the dull pencil through it.
"I just got a sense, I guess," he explained, "Um, what's your sister's name?"
"Prim," she answered, running her thumb over paper's surface. She sighed and then pressed the paper close to her chest and closed her eyes, "God, I miss her,"
"Hey, it's—it's alright," Peeta reached out and set his hand on her shoulder, "You'll be out soon, right?"
"Yeah. Yeah, I guess so," she opened her eyes again and looked over at him, "Hey, do you maybe want to eat dinner with me and some other people tonight? I just—I keep seeing you eating by yourself, and no offense, but it's kind of fucking sad,"
"Oh, yeah. Yeah, I'd love that,"
"Okay, awesome," she smiled and turned as the teacher once again called out that it was time to clean up their materials. She looked back at the small pile of brown and yellow pencil shavings on the table and stack of unused paper and then at him.
"Need some help?"
"Oh, yeah, that'd be great,"
She swept the shavings into her hand and got up to throw them away. As she walked past him, he caught a slice of black fabric peeking over the low top of her jeans, and a beat later realized he was once again looking at her underwear.
He ripped his eyes away and focused far too intensely on cleaning up the extra pencils in front of him.
If he was going to make friends, he really needed to stop accidently checking them out.
Finnick Odair was a lot saner up close.
He was the first person who noticed Peeta as he sat down at Katniss's usual table, and he greeted the newcomer with a tired but warm smile. After the first round of introductions from everyone at the table, Finnick was the first to jump into conversation, and was surprisingly candid about the circumstances that had first landed him in the ward.
Between his physical appearance and engaging conversation skills, it was clear that if Finnick was born into more normal circumstances, he would've been one of the few people that actually enjoyed the social ins and outs of high school. Of course, that prospect was made impossible by a childhood of abuse and an adolescence of drugs had ended up in a near LSD overdose. That incident was what landed him first in the ER and then up here for a round of psych treatments, but not before the aftershocks of the trauma had led him to that first breakdown.
Finnick sat next to Annie, who was a small, quiet girl with thick brown hair hanging down to her waist and covering her eyes. It was clear that Finnick had a major crush on her, seeing how he was constantly stroking the back of her hands and keeping his eyes on her face when she spoke. In a soft voice, Annie pieced together, with understandable difficulty, the story of how she had watched her boyfriend get murdered by a gang, an event she had been in and out of therapy for several times over the last year. She was one of the kids that wove in and out of this place every few months, whenever a particularly bad panic attack occurred.
Johanna was the last in their group, and noticeably the most sullen. She blamed her own situation simply on a lifetime of depression and anxiety paired with being batted between foster homes and relatives who didn't know how the hell to deal with her, but didn't elaborate beyond that.
"So, Peeta, what about you?" Johanna had asked after the five of them were done with their introductions.
"Um, I attempted,"
"Ah, shit, looks like you and Kat have something in common, then,"
"Shut up," Katniss mumbled as she shoved a chewy piece of bread into her mouth.
"She doesn't like to talk about it," Johanna pointed out, "Obviously,"
"Johanna, back off," Finnick whispered, his thumb rubbing against Annie's wrist, "It's okay, Katniss,"
She offered him a small smile and then looked back at her picked-over tray.
"Peeta, Katniss was telling me you do drawings," Finnick said, turning his attention away from Katniss again.
"Oh, yeah, I do,"
"I was wondering—could you maybe do one for me, too? I just—they sound cool,"
"He better do one for me, too, then," Annie interjected with a soft laugh.
"Well, shit, I want one too," Johanna put it, stabbing the last of her cubed pineapple with her fork, "Think you can handle that many drawings, Peeta?"
"Of course. I'd love to do them, really,"
"Wow, thanks, man. And by the way, we promise we're not just trying to your friends for the free portraits. Or at least, I promise I'm not,"
"Well good thing you have at least one real friend, because the free art is all I'm here for," Johanna broke in with a laugh. Peeta managed a laugh, too, and the conversation soon shifted away from him and onto other things: the obnoxious color of Effie's dress that day, along with bets on when exactly she was going to quit this job, and then onto how their individual sessions had gone that day. Even a few lighter anecdotes about their lives before the ward got mixed in.
At the end of dinner, as they all started to clean up their plates and stand up, Finnick offered up an invitation.
"Hey, Peeta, we have a little free time before bed tonight. There are some old board games in the rec room, and, well, they're not great but we're just been playing them and hanging out the last couple of nights. Do you maybe want to come along?"
"Oh, yeah, that sounds great," he said, "Um, hey, thank you for guys for…hanging out with me, I guess. I kind of thought I was just going to suffer through the rest of my time here alone,"
"Alone? Never," Johanna said. She slung an arm over his shoulders, "You're in the nuthouse now, hon. And the one plus side of that is crazy, fucked up kids like us tend to stick together. Yeah?"
"Yeah, I guess," he agreed. Of course, he'd never met someone who came close to feeling the way he did. Or at least, no one in his old life had ever admitted to it.
Johanna removed her arm from his shoulders and pushed ahead in the line, "Hey, Odair, if you could stop holding hands with your girlfriend, there, the rest of us would like to turn in our trays so we can see how our new friend fares in Candyland,"
Finnick told her to shut up, and they all laughed as Finnick and Annie tried to put as much space between them as possible. Peeta felt his chest clench as he laughed.
He'd almost forgotten what to felt like to have friends like this.
Day 3
It took about five minutes to decide that Haymitch Abernathy was the greatest thing to ever arrive to the fifth floor.
Effie had apparently gotten the flu, leaving another counselor to taking her place. He had opened with, "Effie gave me a discussion question for today, but it's fucking awful so we're not going to do it,"
He went on to lead a surprisingly enjoyable group session. Haymitch admitted that he had actually been also been hospitalized for some mental health issues as a teenager and as a young adult, and encouraged everyone to speak about whatever they wanted, because he claimed he hadn't gotten to do that enough when he was still in therapy.
It was also kind of awesome that he was a lot more lenient about letting them curse.
The looser structure quickly livened up the room. Kids were swapping inner thoughts and rants mixed in with dark jokes and a few stories, even a few things that sounded like poetry. Peeta mostly sat and listened, although he put in a few comments where he could.
Katniss remained silent in the chair next to him, occasionally smiling or nodding her head at a comment from the rest of the group. Then, as Johanna closed out of her third rant for that morning, Katniss cautiously raised her hand. Peeta turned in his chair to look at her as Haymitch called on her. Although he'd only been a few sessions with her, it was clear she didn't like to talk during these types of things. She cleared her throat gently and then began to speak, her words a bit disjointed and rushed as she worked through her thought.
"Sorry, this is really connected to anything. I guess I've been thinking about how we all ended up here, and I wanted to talk about it," she said, chewing on her already ragged bottom lip, "And the only thing that keeps coming back to me is-everyone's sad, right? But I know a lot of really sad people that never end up in a place like this. And it's not that everyone else is better at hiding it or whatever. Sometimes I just think that everyone else got a limit of how sad they can get before they let it out. And we just—keep going until it breaks out,"
She shrugged, "That's all I have, I guess. I just—that's what I've been thinking about,"
Haymitch bit down on his pen and nodded thoughtfully, the way he did when any of the kids had something to say. After a moment he slid the pen out of his mouth and pointed it at Peeta.
"Peeta, you seem pretty engrossed by that. What do you think of what Katniss just said?"
"I think she's damn accurate, that's what I think," he said immediately, "I mean, normal people don't end up here, that's for sure. Normal people end up on other floors of the hospital, getting casts and medicine and well wishes. But not us. I just—it's bullshit that we had to get broken in the worst place. Because when you break your body, everyone runs to sign your cast and make you chicken noodle soup. But then when your mind breaks, everyone runs in the opposite direction,"
The room hummed in agreement at his statement, and Haymitch nodded as well, gnawing on the end of his pen once again.
"So what are we going to do about being broken, then, huh? Any of you want to be broken for the rest of your lives?" he addressed the circle once Peeta was done.
"Of course not, that's not what he meant," Katniss put in.
Haymitch held up a hand and pointed to Finnick, who had half-raised his hand, "Yeah, Finnick? Go ahead,"
"Well, I guess the way I see it is that you can break, and then you can do three things: You can let yourself stay that way, which by all accounts is a pretty shitty idea. You can try to put yourself back together exactly the way you were before, and just accept the fact you're never going to be perfectly whole again, or…"
"Or, what? Come on, Odair, the suspense is killing us!" Johanna called out.
"Or you can realize we have one advantage unbroken people don't have, and that's the fact that's it's a hell of a lot rearrange ourselves into something new. Better, maybe,"
Haymitch nodded thoughtfully, "Anyone else?"
When no one responded, he tucked his pen back into his shirt pocket, "Well alright then. I think that's a good note as any to end on. Now get out of here, guys,"
The room cleared out as everyone headed towards the door. Katniss caught Peeta's elbow as he got up and leaned over to whisper, "Hey, can we talk?"
He nodded and they walked out behind everyone else. As the rest of their group filed to their rooms or the individual session rooms, they stayed leaning against the wall outside the therapy room. Katniss ran her teeth over her bottom lip and then spoke.
"So, they told me that maybe I can go home tomorrow,"
"Really?" he smiled, "They told me the same thing,"
She nodded, although she's wasn't really smiling, and he prompted her.
"That's good, then, right? Apparently we're ready to go back to the real world,"
"I think 'ready' is a relative term, but, yeah,"
He tucked his hands into his pockets and leaned his weight further into the wall behind him, "I'm going to miss this place in a weird way, actually. Like, the whole mental ward thing isn't exactly spectacular, but…"
"What, it feels nice to be around people who get you or whatever?"
"Yeah, I guess. It's messed up, I know, but…yeah,"
"No, I get it," she looked down, grabbing her hands into the material of her tribal-print skirt, "But, at least we have one more day in the nuthouse,"
"Good," he said, "Because I have a lot of drawings to get done,"
None of others from their group at art therapy the same time they did, so Peeta and Katniss sat at what had become their usual table by themselves that afternoon. Peeta sketched out the drawings as Katniss filled him in on any additional details she could scourge up about their friends. Other than that, she quietly helped him by sliding along new sheets of paper and constantly cranking his pencils through a sharpener, and then cleaning up the resulting piles of wood shavings.
Peeta remained focused on his work, and worked rapidly to fit in all the details before they faded in his mind.
Finnick's love of the ocean became forth-crested ocean waves in his hair and fish scales painted on his neck. His mouth was curved into a confident smile, but Peeta made sure to shade his eyes enough to balance out the slickness of his grin. Annie came together with her cheeks pressed into the spirals of seashells and her eyes into the gleam of an uncut pearl, her expression soft and quietly happy. Johanna was all angles and the roughness of the outdoors, and her collarbones soon sprouted into branches and her hairline became highlighted with sharp edge of an axe weaved into her hair.
Peeta finished them in record time and set them aside as he worked out the locked-up muscles in his wrist. Katniss reached over to pick up the drawings, and started to look over them, a smile quirking over her lips as she took in each individual detail.
"They're gonna love these, you know,"
"Well, that's what I'm hoping for," he spread out his hand and pressed the side of it against the table, where the muscles still felt sore. As he watched her continue to look at the drawings, a thought came to him, and he stopped rubbing his hand and instead reached for his pencil again.
"Hey—I never drew you,"
She looked up and tilted her head, "Yeah, of course you did,"
"Yeah, the demonic thing from Wednesday. But, I guess I know you better now, so—I'd like to give it another shot, if it's okay,"
"Oh. Okay. I guess that's alright," she pulled her hands along her hair, which today was pulled into a thick braid over one shoulder, "Do you want me to answer any more questions?"
"Only if there's something I want me to know,"
"Let me see if I can think of anything," she kept pulling her hands along her braid, and while she was thinking he started on the rough outline. He was just getting beginning to draw the curved, smiling shape of her mouth when she spoke.
"I used to go outside a lot before. I would go on hikes on the weekend when I needed to get away, and I just liked getting to be out in the woods for a little bit. It was better than being in the suburbs all the time, you know? Of course, that kind of got harder to do in the last year," she paused again and he took the silence as a chance to doodle some leaves onto her cheeks.
"I used to sing, too. But I haven't done that in a few years,"
He nodded and then looked up at her. Her eyes looked misty and unfocused, and for a second he was seriously afraid she was going to start crying.
"Are you okay?"
"Yeah," she snapped into focus and cleared her throat, "Yeah, I'm fine, it's just—I haven't thought about this kind of thing in a long time,"
"I understand," he assured her, then went back to drawing. He knew they didn't have much time left in the session, so he sketched rapidly: berry-laden branches lacing her neck, musical notes in her hair, a strong set of feathered wings outside of her shoulders. He finished with a final swirl of his pencil just as the instructor called out to clean up.
He handed it off to her and ignore the cramped pain in his hand as she examined the final portrait. .
"Do you like it?"
She nodded wordlessly and reached out her arms, and he instinctively fell into them as she hugged him.
"Thank you," she whispered against the shell of his ear.
He was so overwhelmed by the weight of her arms around him that his mouth couldn't form the words "You're welcome" fast enough.
Friday night on the ward was movie night.
After dinner, the entire floor, both first-time check-ins and kids who had been there since the beginning of the week, rushed into the rec room and pulled out some old carpet squares from the corner and huddled together at the front of the room.
Octavia pushed the floor's ancient TV in on a rolling stand and plugged it into the wall along with the VCR. Because of the outdated player, their viewing options were limited to whatever happened to be on the bottom couple channels and the hospital's set of well-worn '90's and early 2000's movies on VHS tapes.
The movies were far more popular.
The group passed the movies between each other until they finally decided on an old Robin Williams movie. Quiet seeped into the room as the movie started, and Peeta swore it was the first time he'd seen a group of teenagers so focused and quiet.
He and Katniss were sitting at the back of the room, a little removed from everyone else, which didn't really matter since everyone was so engrossed by the film and weren't really focused on who was sitting with them and who wasn't.
After the movie had been playing for a few minutes, Peeta's eyes fell away from the movie and instead to the front of the room, where he caught sight of Finnick and Annie sitting side by side and holding hands as they watched the film.
He nudged Katniss's shoulder and pointed to them, and she shook her head and sighed.
"I swear, only those two could start dating within three days of being in a psych ward together,"
"Yeah, they really are," he agreed. They sat for a few seconds in quiet, then he risked opening his mouth again to ask her something that had been nagging at him.
"Hey, Katniss?"
"Yeah?"
"Johanna said yesterday that you attempted,"
"Well, she's not exactly lying," she huffed. She stared down at her feet and flexed them so that the chipped polish on her toenails gleamed in the dim lights of the room.
"I just—you probably don't want to talk about it, but—" he took a breath, "I just feel like I known you pretty well, and it's this giant thing missing…"
"Well, to be fair, you never told me about your story, either,"
"Yeah, that's fair. But I'll only tell mine if you tell yours,"
"Okay," she sighed, "Um, Peeta?"
"What's up?"
"Can you—I'm sorry, can you go first, maybe?"
"Sure,"
He tried to trace back exactly to where he had gone wrong. But it definitely wasn't a thread in a labyrinth; it was twisted and hard to trace. He knew what his point A was, and he was already painfully aware of his point B, he just couldn't connect them.
Eventually, he decided to just tell it that way, with the connection twisted and unclear.
"Well, I started out fine. I guess we all start out okay, to some degree. I was great growing up. My dad always said I was a happy kid, always happy and running around and talking to people. I remember when I was like that, too. But then I got into high school and things just started to feel different"
"High school's a bitch, isn't it?"
"Yeah. I can't really figure out how it started, but my classes weren't exactly easy. All honors and AP, at a super competitive school with people who were a lot smarter than me, including my friends. Suddenly, no one talked to each other at lunch anymore, we were all just fixated on that night's calculus homework. And then home was the same. My mom didn't exactly help. She was the valedictorian of her class and went to some Ivy League school, but my dad ended up knocking her up before she could graduate. I think she was always bitter about that and pushed my brothers and I constantly to be the best. Apparently I had the most potential, so I can the worst of the pressure,"
He rolled his eyes as he thought over the pure irony of his last statement, and then kept going.
"I would get home and I would stay in my room all night working. At some point I stopped eating, which didn't end up great since I passed out at two in the morning, and once I came too all I was worried about was the few hours I missed of studying for my English test. So I had that at home, and then at school everyone was still concerned with asking how my grades were and if I was volunteering enough. Even my friends were like that. I just didn't feel like a human being anymore,"
He paused and took a breath as he attempted to continue, "I don't know how to describe it, but it felt like the world was too heavy all of a sudden, and yeah, I could see a future but every step came with a lot more shit. Like college had debt and adulthood had responsibilities and then you got sick and died. And I realize that was going to be my life. And I wanted to give up but I still was trying so hard. I assumed that was how everyone felt, though. Depression didn't even enter my mind. And then…Jesus, I don't know, I ended up standing on the edge of a bridge on a Monday night, and it didn't hit me until then that 'Hey, dummy, normal kids don't feel this shitty', and by then I was already bending my knees to jump,"
"But you're here,"
"A guy out for a walk grabbed me from behind and pulled me off. He dragged me to the nearest payphone and didn't let go of me until the ambulance pulled up to the park,"
"Lucky you,"
"Yeah. I didn't really think of it as lucky at first, but, yeah, I guess I am pretty lucky," he turned to her and leaned in, "Okay. Your turn now,"
Her smile fell and when she opened her mouth her voice shook, "I—I don't know if I can,"
"You don't have to,"
"No, I guess…no, I will. You told me your story, so I'll tell you mine. That's fair," she leaned her head against the wall and puffed out her cheeks. It looked like she was mentally preparing to run a marathon. And once she began, it was clear that she's wasn't far off.
"I actually didn't have that fucked up of a childhood, you know? I mean, I didn't grow up in a crack house like Finnick did, I wasn't an orphan like Johanna, I just…I was normal. A mom and dad and a little sister. I mean, my dad died when I was still kind of young, and my mom had some trouble with depression after that, but we were still in it together, you know? That's what she would tell us every night at dinner, right before she would take her anti-depressants. She would hold our hands and say 'We're going to do this together, girls, we are.' And we did. But then I had to go and fuck it up,"
She took a breath and he reached over to touch her shoulder. She looked down at his hand and gave him a grateful smile before carrying on.
"Anyways, I know what you mean about high school—that's where I started to slip down, too. I made friends I really shouldn't have made. Seniors, mostly. Kids that drove shitty, fast cars and smoked and cursed a lot. They were scary as hell, sure, but they liked me and they were funny and they invited me to parties so I stuck with them. But then they were into drugs, of course, and I got sucked into that, too. I was staying up late, getting high or drunk or both, and my grades were going to shit, but I didn't care, because I was a fucking idoit," she sighed, "Mom and Prim tried to get me to stop. It didn't get noticeable into sophomore year, apparently. And that was only after I dyed my hair and had a friend pierce my lip. Like I said, stupid. And apparently slow to heal,"
She chuckled as she pulled on the scarred skin under her lip and then grew quiet again, "I got arrested last spring after they found some coke in my locker. And then it got bad. Mom kicked me out the night after I got out of juvie. I'm surprised she didn't do it sooner, actually, but whatever. I went over to my friend's place. He was happy to see me, actually. Said I could take the couch, that he had a fresh pack of beer in the fridge, that I could stay as long as I liked. He kept asking all these questions, and, fuck, Peeta, I don't know, I felt like I had someone, you know? But then we were getting kind of tipsy, and he kept touching my legs, and I tried to push him off, but…" she shook her head, "Well, a drunk girl against a guy twice her size and you can guess what happened next,"
"Oh my god," he breathed out. His eyes were wide as he kept his eyes on her face, which was surprisingly stoic, "What did…what did you do?"
"He went to take a piss afterwards and I stumbled my drunk ass out of there and ran to the nearest shelter. Thank God it was only a block away, too, or he probably would've caught and killed me before then,"
"After I got back with my family, I just felt so alone. I didn't tell Mom what had happened, and she probably wouldn't have listened to me even if I did. The day I found out I wasn't pregnant was the best damn day of my life, and the only person I had to share my victory with was the nurse at Planned Parenthood. I changed schools in the fall, because I sure as hell couldn't hang out with any of my old friends anymore. But all of the kids at my new school just saw me as a fucked up juvie kid, which, shit, I was, and I didn't have anyone to talk to. I had Prim, I guess, but what was I going to do, spill all that out to this beautiful, innocent thirteen year old?"
"I felt like that for months, just alone and trying to cope with this thing by myself, and I guess—I guess Sunday was my breaking point," she shook her head, "Attempting's pretty easy when your mom has a lot of really strong pills in the house,"
She was silent for long enough that Peeta could tell she had finished her story. He couldn't come up with any word that can serve as an appropriate reaction for what she had just told her. Suddenly, his tale of too much homework and untreated anxiety seemed like child's play compared to what she had gone through. He told her as much, but she just scoffed.
"God, don't say that. I know we all swap sob stories around here like they're fucking ghost stories at a bonfire, but there's not pointing comparing them if we're all here. Alright?"
"Alright," he agreed, "Just—sorry, how did you deal with it? I mean, what was almost a year ago, how did you keep getting up every day and going on for so long?"
"The same way you did. The same way anyone did. Because it's a habit we're programmed not to break. And yeah, that's a shitty explanation, but that's all I can do to explain it,"
She paused, almost as if she was reflecting on her own words, then she broke into a smile, and Peeta could practically see the gears in her head shifting to happier things.
"You know, I was telling the truth during your first session. I really did want to be an astronaut when I was a kid. But it wasn't because I wanted to escape this planet, exactly—I guess it was because the world seemed too small for me, you know? I used to look around at all these forests and oceans and mountains and cities and thought 'Well that's cool, but not enough for me to see'," her smile twitched at the edges, threatening to fall, "I wonder how I went from thinking I was too big for the world to thinking it was too big for me,"
"I think you're underestimating yourself a little,"
"Yeah, or maybe I finally got to see the truth,"
"Maybe—oh, God, I'm going to sound like a dumbass for saying this,"
"Well, shit, now I really want to hear it,"
"Fuck. Okay. I was just thinking-maybe you don't have to be big enough for the world. Maybe you just need to be strong enough for it,"
She stared at him for a few seconds, then her face crumbled as she clapped her hand over her mouth to muffle her laughter.
"Oh my God, that is bad,"
"God, I warned you, okay!"
"No, I guess it was sweet, or whatever. Did you get that out of Effie's handbook of bullshit inspirational phrases?"
"Jesus, shut up," he mumbled.
"Hey, I'm kidding. You know I'm kidding, right?"
"Yeah, I know,"
They both drained out a few more chuckles, and then they were met with another warm stretch of silence before Katniss spoke again.
"Peeta,"
Her voice was so different from a minute ago, it startled him. Her voice was soft and urgent, shy almost, and far cooler than what it had been earlier. He turned to her again and blinked against the darkened atmosphere of the room.
"Yeah?"
He could see now that her expression was just as timid as her voice, and she bit down on her bottom lip and shifted in place before she spoke again, although her eyes never left his.
"Don't—don't think too much into this, okay?"
He felt lost to what she was referring to, but he still went along, "Um, okay?"
She blinked, leaned over and pressed a kiss against his lips. He jumped in response, but she didn't move to pull away, and he didn't exactly what to, either, so he closed his eyes and shifted his body physically closer to press into her more.
This was messed up. This was so, so messed up. You don't kiss a girl in a mental ward. Especially not after knowing her for three day, and especially not after she unloaded what she had just told him.
He was a jerk. He was such a jerk. He couldn't keep kissing her. It didn't matter if he thought she was pretty, or thought her smile was the best thing he'd ever seen, or if she smelled intoxicating, like spring-scented soap, or if she kissed softly and with the perfect amount of pressure.
Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck he couldn't stop kissing her.
Luckily, she pulled away first, and blinked at him before pulling away and pressing her lips together.
"I'm sorry," she whispered, "I—I just—feel too much sometimes. And—I don't know, I like you, I guess, and-I'm sorry. Again. Sorry,"
"It's okay," he replied, "I—I liked it, I guess. I mean, fuck, sorry—yeah. It was nice, I guess. But I won't think into, I guess. Not if you don't want me to. It can be just a kiss,"
"Just a kiss. Right," she agreed, then spoke again, "Peeta—I want you to know—you don't have to be scared of hurting me,"
"What?" he stuttered.
"I mean—after what I just told you I know you think I'm fucked up for life and I'm never going to be able to love anyone ever again or some shit but…I don't know, I'm getting better, I guess. A lot of meds and places like this help. But if I don't want you to worry about it, okay?"
"I—I won't," he said, "And—I don't think you're fucked up,"
"Well, on second thought I guess you can think that. I kind of am,"
"Well, I am too, and from one fucked up kid to another, I think you're pretty incredible,"
"Thanks ," she gave him a final smile and then turned back to the TV and sighed, "What the fuck is going on with this movie?"
"A jungle took over their house. Clearly,"
"God, the nurses have shitty taste in movies," she laughed, "Hey, Peeta?"
"Yeah, Katniss?"
"Thanks for listening,"
He shrugged, "It's the least I could do,"
"And…you can take it as more than a kiss if you want to. I mean, I wouldn't mind,"
"You'll allow it?"
"Yeah, I'll allow it," she reached over and grabbed his hand, which he squeezed it in return.
They didn't speak for the rest of movie. They didn't touch again, either, except for the constant pressure of their palms pressed together. Peeta became hyperaware of the graphite staining his hands, bits of wood stuck under his fingernails and the sweat that couldn't help but push out of the skin on his palm. But Katniss didn't let go. At some point during the end, she pressed her head against his shoulder, and he breathed in the scent of her hair as she did.
He realized it was selfish to call it more than a kiss. It was selfish to assume that they could walk out of his ward hand-in-hand and completely, totally okay. They were never going to be okay, and one kiss wasn't going to change that.
But sitting in the darkness, with her hand laced in his and her forehead pressed to the seam of his t-shirt, he felt like maybe they had a chance.