Trigger Warning: Death of a major character, sexual abuse, self harm/mutilation, opiate addiction, disordered eating, depression.

Home is in Your Skin

"Real or not real, I am on fire."

i.

I'm not fully aware of what I'm doing until I hit seventy-five miles an hour, putting as much distance between myself and Boulder as fast as I possibly can. Trees are flying by on either side of the two-lane highway in a watercolor blur of ashy browns and blacks but all I focus on is the endless road ahead of me, the roar of the wind against my windshield, and the grit of my tires against the tar vibrating my car's frame.

I don't want to call it running away, even though that's what it technically is. I am just 'choosing me', as Prim would have said, and I know she would be glad that I am finally moving forward, even if I'm not really moving on. I guess Prim would be glad of a lot of things if she was still here.

But she's not, so Prim's not glad at all. She's just dead.

Estes Park isn't a decision, its just where I end up - miles from Boulder and the burnt out shell of Building #12 and the adoption center where Gale and I met.

That's probably a huge part of the attractionto the place.

The air is different though too - so clean and cold that it stings in your throat and lungs, and it's so quiet that I can pretend I spent my whole life running through forests instead of hiding in dusty closets, and no one and nothing can remind me that it isn't true.

I live in my car, and it's my best living situation yet, bar the lack of running water. Every night I pull onto the shoulder of a different road, tear open a 99-cent bag of sunflower seeds and recline my chair as far back as it will go. Its the happiest I've been in years, all alone under the black velvet sky, the winking gaze of white stars overhead and my feet frozen to numbness in my wool socks. Miserably cold and slowly starving is still better than a foster home.

I lose myself in that black sky.

Breathing, in and out, over and over. Not thinking. Just being.

Living on autopilot.

It takes me a week of quiet and isolation for it to hit. How the events of the past few years would always be with me. How I would never escape them, no matter how fast or how far I run. There's a hurricane in my mind and I am in the eye staring into the chaos all around me, wondering if my umbrella will be enough when I disappear in the wind and the rain.

And that's when I know.

I am not waiting to be swallowed by the storm. I already have been, and all that remains of me is the absence another girl left behind. Like a bleach stain, or the split knee on a pair of pants. I am a person-shaped nothing.

I touch the scars on my back and arms gently, curiously, as though I'd never seen them before. And then I'm screaming and I can't stop, scratching them into gaping bloody trails and yelling until there's nothing left in me. Then, raw and hungry and bleeding, I tuck into a ball and cry.

I cry for Gale. We only ever had each other, and now we don't even have that. I cry for Prim, who was too fucking good for this world and all the shit in it. I cry for me, selfish enough to try and leave both of them behind in my past, but not selfish enough to just off myself and really leave it all behind. I cry because I am a coward and I must deserve all of this because what else makes sense?

The storm passes. The morning dawns, clear and blue. I put my car into gear and drive.

In the weeks that follow, I try to put myself back together.

I bathe in the near frozen streams on warmer days and hope to God no one catches me out here - naked, shivering and pink, covered in puckering scars. I pick up some line-cook work and eat some real food, rent wilderness survival books from the library and read them curled up on my backseat with the cleanest duvet I can find at Goodwill. Even though it smells like mold, I don't mind it so much. Its warm and heavy and for a split second in the mornings I can almost pretend I'm not all alone out here. I pretend someone's arms are wrapped around me. Solid. Warm. Safe.

And then one night, with my windows fogged up like shower doors and my heater choking on its last breath, 'American Pie'comes on the radio and I fall over the console to turn the volume up as loud as it will go. My throat is so dry I am sure it's completely useless, but to my surprise my mouth opens like it's not even mine anymore and I sing and sing and I haven't forgotten a single word of that song -not one single word. It's like me and Dad are sitting in this shitty car together, like he's right here next to me, belting out our favorite song on the side of a mountain in the middle of March.

It's a whole eight minutes long - that's a long time to sing like I'm doing, and I haven't tried to in years. It feels like I am running. My heart is galloping and I can't keep my throat from tightening or my eyes from burning but I don't stop because it isn't Don Maclean coming from my radio, it's Dad and he's singing to me about the world ending in silence and fire, and I am answering him, telling him that it did, telling him that I've been voiceless this whole time because the world really did end and by some sick twist of fate I'm still fucking here.

And I really wish I wasn't.

Then suddenly there's a loud rap on my window, and I am so startled I just swing the car door wide open instead of rolling down the foggy window and the last tinkling notes of the song blast embarrassingly loud into the silent night air.

In the snow in front of me is a woman with the most terrifying scowl I've ever seen. She couldn't have been a hair over five foot and is maybe a hundred pounds soaking wet. She tells me I'm brainless. Then she offers me a job.

Her name is Johanna Mason, and she owns a few cabins up on one of the mountains that she rents out to tourists and weirdos. I say weirdos because her cabins weren't structures in the traditional sense - they're what look like wooden domes but are really something called yurts. They're kind of dreamy; magical in a real way, not in a Disneyland kind of way.

They're a little weird. So is she.

It's perfect.

I really like Johanna. She built this place from the ground up on all her own, with nothing but a few power tools and some buckets of paint. She painted all the yurts different colors, so they're like rainbow polka dots in the pristine snow, and with the lights on and smoke trailing out of the chimneys, they're damn near fantastical. Like a real-life fairytale.

Before she did all this though, she was a journalist for the New York Times stationed in Kabul. A small group of militants kidnapped her and held her hostage, but when nobody came to rescue her -'We don't negotiate with turr-er-ists', she mocks coldly - they let her go. In the middle of the Hindu Kush mountains.

"And that's where the real story starts," she assures me. I think she thinks that I'll ask her to go on. It would be the friendly thing to do, after all. But I don't. I don't say anything.

I don't care to know anything else about her, including how she made it back home, because I don't want her to ask me any personal questions and because I can already see that Johanna Mason is just like me. We survived something we know we shouldn't have and we're still trying to figure out if there is, in fact, a way to live after near-death, or if you're always trapped between the two.

As far as I'm concerned, the jury's still out.

Despite the down economy, Johanna's business is doing miraculously well, even in the winter. She needs someone who can do minor repairs, give directions to tourists, and in the spring, lead tours through Estes Park's numerous hiking trails. I take the job because really, what else am I doing?

And where else would I go?

She gives me a yurt to live in right next to hers and I immediately regret being so judgmental of these little houses. It's like living in a mushroom cap. They're surprisingly spacious and cozy on the inside, with a wood stove that doubles as a fire place in the dead center, and furniture all around. Mine just has a mattress and a stove, but Johanna's has all manner of odds and ends from her days as a reporter, including a small collection of decorative axes from all over the world. Eventually, I might add some personal things to mine too, but for right now, empty and small is all I want.

Winter melts into spring, and nobody comes looking for me, not even Gale. I'm not sure they'd ever find me here, but I'd hear from someone if out-of-towners were asking about me. We don't have TVs and we're so high in the mountains that we don't even get radio reception. Johanna doesn't know I'm technically a missing person, but I think she suspects something. I have to be careful.

I don't tell her anything. Not about the public housing I grew up in. Not the food stamps. Not the fire. Not the foster homes. And especially not about my family or Gale. She never asks either. Johanna is as sharp as those axes that hang on her walls, but I don't think she likes very many people to know it.

In April we're booked to capacity and even though I don't like other people very much, I love talking to our guests. They come from all over the United States and beyond - families, business men, burn-outs, hikers, Mormons and even a guy Johanna and I suspect is part of a drug cartel. I take them on hikes, set up barbecues and bonfires, but mostly, I listen to their stories.

I pretend I don't live in my skin. I pretend the scars on my back and arms washed away in those freezing rivers when I scrubbed myself raw, naked and blue-lipped in the snowy forest. I uneat those sunflower seeds. Reverse my car back to Boulder. Wrap myself in Gale's arms. Tuck myself into his bed.

I go back to the start to find where things went so wrong and spend my nights solving the puzzle of how to get three people out of a burning building alive.

I decide I don't need anything in my little house. Just me and my stove and my bed - and other people's lives dancing on the walls of my closed eyes like shadows. Like dreams.

It's May when I meet Peeta Mellark, and I've spent a month wrapped in a warm blanket of escapism. But first, here's the truth: I don't trust men. I dread them.

They're only ever greedy eyes and too many hands.

I dread sex and the inevitable horror I will see on my partner's face when he discovers what I look like when I'm down to just my skin, with my back and arms a mottled mess of tight, shiny scars. It was bad this winter when I couldn't afford the lotion to rub on them. They cracked and bled and scarred back over, and now there's even more of them to hate.

Only Gale knows what I look like, even though he's never really seen all of it. I made him fuck me with my shirt on and the lights off. He was so patient with what a neurotic mess I was and all I ever did was tell him that I didn't trust him enough. I never undressed in front of him, even though he begged and pleaded with me.

He told me he thought I was beautiful. Beautiful no matter load of good all that did him in the end. It helps that we met as teenagers in the system and had been inseparable ever since, and that we had more history than just our few awkward fucks in semi-darkness. I think he thought eventually I would get over it.

I didn't though, and the 'why' of that lies in the second half of the truth: I hid from him because I never wanted to see that look on his face.

I've only ever seen it once. On a different man. Before Gale.

It was through a cloudy plastic curtain as the plunking of water against porcelain roared in my ears and I thought "wrong wrong wrong" over and over and so hard that the room was spinning in circles like I was a carousel and the man on the other side of the curtain was greedy for his turn. Tight muscles around the nostrils tugging at the top lip, narrowed eyes, head leaning back and away- it was disgust. I dread someone looking at me like he did.

So I never let Gale see me, and he still wanted to marry me. I couldn't tell him that I didn't want a husband. Didn't want another family that could burn away to ash. I never deserved Gale Hawthorne and now that I don't have him, I probably won't ever have anyone again.

But that's ok. Empty and alone suits me.

So, it's April when I meet Peeta.

It's near dusk, the warmest it's been so far this spring, and the sky is a sugary pink-orange gradient that turns the jagged peaks of the mountains a deep, shadowy black. Johanna and I need groceries and we've just parked in the parking lot of a run-down Safeway and are making our way inside when I hear a wolf whistle and my insides completely freeze. Johanna's eyes narrow and she turns murderously towards the beat-up white pick-up we had just walked past. I'm surprised when I see that it's not a man behind the wheel of the car, but a young girl with a wide, flat nose and a rambunctious halo of dark curls. She's cute - willowy, with a round face, smooth cheeks and slight gap in her front teeth.

There's something almost fairy-like about her. It must be her eyes. They're beautiful and dark, but with a hint of poorly hidden mischief.

"Rue, what in the hell are you doing?" Johanna guffaws.

The girl hides her giggle behind a hand and leans out the open window of the pick-up.

"Hey Johanna," she says with a smirk, "How you been?"

Johanna snorts.

"Busy, runt. Too busy to chatter. We're booked full up."

Then a tawny, wide-headed dog pops its head out the window too, and I can hear Johanna's iron will whistling as it sails out the window and away into the sunset.

"Hey Mutt," she practically sings, and runs a hand over his head. The dog laps vigorously at Johanna's wrist, trying to lick any part of her he can reach. Rue catches my eye and giggles, rolling her eyes skyward. I reach my hand out to pet the dog too, but before I can another hand catches mine.

"Careful," a male voice says. "Mutt isn't the friendliest to strangers."

Panicked, I twist around and come face to face with warm blue eyes, crinkled just slightly in the corners, and a bemused grin. I should yank my hand away. I should move my eyes off of his face.

I do neither.

"Oh," I say stupidly. "Sorry, I didn't even think."

He grins even wider and shrugs as he drops my hand, switching a plastic bag of groceries from hand to hand.

"Not a big deal. Mutt's just a little nervous. But I wouldn't ever forgive myself if something bad happened to you."

You're way too late for that party, I think. But I don't say anything. Just look away from him awkwardly. I know that I am frowning as much as I know that there's nothing I can do to fix it. I'm an open book. Always have been.

He clears his throat, obviously nervous that he's said or done something wrong. I want to tell him not to worry, that I'm not worth that, and anyway, it's useless because I'm not the kind of person you should want to get to know better in the first place.

"I'm Peeta, Mutt's, uh, dad? Owner sounds so weird, I hate saying it."

"Katniss."

"Katniss - like the plant. That's cool."

"Yeah, guess so."

"Do you want to meet him?" he says, gesturing at Mutt who is straining against the firm hold Rue has on his leash to lick Johanna cheek.

"Will he like me do you think?"

My eyes flicker back to him and then down at the gravel and debris on the tarmac below. Spots of green and burnt rubine glass. White chips of rock. Shining speckles of mica and sand. What am I doing?

I don't like animals, and they like me even less.

"Only one way to find out," he says, and I can hear the goofy smirk in his voice. "Rue, will you hand me his lead?"

The car door opens and Mutt leaps out - he's at least sixty pounds of wriggling, slobbery pitbull. Peeta nudges him towards me, leash wrapped firmly around his wrist and hand.

"Put your hands out," he says, "Palms facing up."

I do.

Mutt stills, eyeing me warily, his dark eyes flashing as he dips his head and approaches me with twitching nostrils. His body wriggles side to side as his tail swings eagerly between his back legs. He sniffs my pants at the knees, his hot breath tickling my shins.

I look up nervously at Peeta, Johanna and Rue, who are watching him with varying degrees of amusement. Peeta's grin is the widest of the three.

Suddenly, I am wilting like a plucked flower in the sunlight.

I am back in the courtroom in Boulder, swearing to tell the truth as I lay my hand on the bible so lightly that I am barely touching it and I think that maybe, if I am only brushing it, I won't feel compelled to tell the whole 'truth'.

Animals have never liked me. They smell who I am. They know me, probably better than any human could hope to and Mutt will too. I can't lie to this dog - he will out me to Johanna and Peeta and Rue and they will know me for what I am:

Violent and cowardly. Distrustful and selfish.

Mutt's tail wags a little more and he licks the fabric of my pants right below my left knee. I'm not sure if I'm relieved or amazed. I suppress the breathy laugh that threatens to come out of my mouth.

"You like her huh, buddy?" Peeta says.

The dog twists around and plops his butt on my shoes, looking up at me with a wide grin, his cheeks flapping wetly as he pants and I smile nervously and rub the broad expanse of his tawny head between his ears. His fur is like velvet.

"I do too," Peeta stage whispers with a lopsided grin, as he bends over to vigorously rub Mutt's chest. Mutt's head lolls comically in response.

"Katniss is one of the good ones," Johanna says. "Mutt's a pretty good judge of character."

Peeta's baby-blues flit shyly up to mine, so he's looking me directly in the eyes when I think:

No, he's really not.

The first time I met Gale it was under the fluorescent lighting of an adoption center's waiting room. I'll forever associate him with the dark mud I saw on his boots that day, dry and dusty against oil-slick black, trailing behind where ever he had walked. Brown dirt on sterile linoleum tiles in a room that smelled like pine sol. Our social workers were in some sort of meeting and left us to our own devices.

I was staring at him, I knew that, but there wasn't much else to look at in the claustrophobic waiting room, and Gale was a kid my own age who was trapped in the same shitty predicament I was. I focused right in on his shoes, terrified of meeting the dark, piercing eyes of the boy sitting across from me.

"What?" he demands angrily, "Ain't seen Docs before?"

"Huh?"

"Docs. My boots?"

I nod my head yes quickly, afraid that this was a thing I was supposed to know about but didn't because I was poor. I desperately didn't want him to know I was poor. Or think I was stupid.

He leaned his elbows down on his knees, his hooded eyes glittering in amusement.

"Then why are you staring? See something you like?"

I blanch, leaning back in my seat as he leans forward in his and stares at me with a look on his face that I'd come to know as greedy.

"What's your name shy girl?"

"Katniss," I croak, but it's so quiet that I guess he doesn't hear me right.

"Catnip, huh? I can see that," he says, as he leans back in his chair and spreads his long legs out in front of him. I have no idea what he means.

"No," I say, clearing my throat. "I said I'm Katniss."

"Well I like Catnip better," he says. "I'm going to call you that."

"I'd prefer it if you don't," I say, but as much as I hate the nickname and as obnoxious as Gale is, I like the way he doesn't ask my permission. I like the way his hair hangs in his face. I like his boots - the Docs - and I like how tightly he laces them. I like that the sleeves are cut off his t-shirt, and I don't know what a Led Zeppelin is, or why those words are printed on his shirt, but I have a feeling I'll like that too.

Gale doesn't pretend that I can or should trust him, but the chips on our shoulders are perfectly aligned and that, at least, I can trust.

Up until the day I slip out of bed in the middle of the night, throw myself in my car and fly off to the mountains, he still calls me Catnip.

So the night I meet Peeta, after we get home and split to our separate yurts, and I lay in bed with the low fire in the wood burning stove dwindling, I whisper Gale's name into the flames and hope against hope that he can feel me thinking about him, lost and empty on a rock in the sky.

I touch my bottom lip with my index finger and whisper an apology that sticks in my throat. Apologies are never for the people you want to forgive you. They're for you - so you can forgive yourself. Gale told me that, and I know it's true because I need to say the words even if he can't hear them.

And even though I'm hoping he knows I'm sorry, I'm really truly sorry, I hope he also knows that I'm not asking for forgiveness. I would never ask that from him. We've had to forgive a lot of people in our lives and we had to live with the affect those words can have on you when you don't mean them.

So I don't ask that of Gale. Especially because I don't even deserve it.

I think about Dad. How disappointed he'd be to know that I turned out the way that I did. I think about how the last he knew of me was as a moody thirteen year old who demanded things we couldn't afford, like vacations and name brand sneakers and a computer. I think about my grades, the fights I got in regularly. I think about the words "problem child"- how my dad hung his head in the parent-teacher meeting where told him I punched Cato Howards in the throat. I think about the nights he went hungry so me and Prim and Mom could split the last potato or cup of lentils, and how I never appreciated that either, just whined about how we couldn't afford to eat at a restaurant.

Dark shadows dance on the wall and I watch them like a movie. I remember words and faces I'd left behind. I remember the night Gale proposed.

Then I open my mouth and sing, because there's nothing I can do to fix anything, and I don't even know how much of me is even left.

After that, I sort of … slip.

Like I've been crawling up a wet slide.

There's no other way to describe it; no clearly defined moment when I realize it's happening. Just bits and pieces that start to add up, like the morning I look in the mirror and don't recognize the vacant expression on my face. Like when I start to forget what I'm saying half-way through my thought. When I start to get tired before the sun has even set.

An emptiness hums steadily in my chest and drowns out the drum of my heart until it's nothing but static.

I'm fuzzy and hollow, drifting like a loose spiderweb. Or dust in the sunlight. I forget to buy groceries one week, and realize I hadn't noticed because I'd forgotten to eat for two days. Oh well. I crawl into bed. Turn out the light. Wake up the next morning. Do it all again.

By the time I realize something is wrong, it's too late. Johanna knows before I do because suddenly she won't leave me alone. She wants to talk, but I don't even catch half of what she says. It's too much. Too fast. I'm so tired. Then the morning comes that I wake up with not a single word left in my mouth - and no air left in my chest to expel it even if there had been. Lethargy seeps into my limbs, and my eyes sullenly trace the beams of wood that arch over my head to where they connect in the middle of my house.

Moving my swollen tongue around in my mouth, tasting the sourness of my teeth and cheeks, I decide I'm not getting up.

One day. Two days. I don't move. I stare with hot eyes at the ceiling, following the same lines over and over without comprehension of how they all fit together. Sometimes a burning moisture stings the outermost corners of my eyes and I understand objectively that I am crying, but not when I started or how I transition from that to sleeping, to waking up with my sight trained at a different part of the house entirely.

The blankets are torn off me on day three, and I glare viciously at Johanna as she throws them across the room.

"Up. Get up. Get up. You stink. You haven't been to work in days. Whatever shit this is, it stops now."

Hoping that 'now' is negotiable, I resign myself to the chill on my skin as I roll away from her. An unreal familiarity, something like de ja vu, washes over me then ebbs away.

My weakness must disgust her, because she storms out of the house. I wouldn't blame her if it did. I can't even get out of bed to get my blanket back. I even disgust myself.

Darkness creeps in. I sink into the black-and-blue shadows of the night without moving. Distantly I realize that she will fire me and I will lose everything I have built for myself here, but I can't bring myself to care. What difference will it make if I sleep here, or somewhere else entirely? The nightmares will be the same no matter where I am.

I am closing my eyes when the door swings open. Johanna must be back for another round. The bathroom light clicks on. I hear the shower curtain being pulled back and water thundering against the bottom of the tub. Heavy footsteps I don't recognize.

Then, he's there, sweeping my greasy hair out of my face with a soft frown.

"Hi. Johanna said you'd need some convincing, but she'd like you to get up."

I don't say anything, but unlike Johanna, Peeta Mellark doesn't need me to speak to understand that I'm not leaving this bed on my own. He lifts me gently and holds me against his chest like I am nothing more than a child.

For the first time in days I feel something that isn't bottomless lethargy. It's viscous and boiling, snapping and popping in my chest like hot oil- a spotty, dirty concoction of fear, shame and anger. How dare he touch me. How dare he see me, when I am this.

But he is disconcertingly warm. Alien and solid. It's been so long since someone has touched me. I can't believe how much I've missed it. It easily could be my energy leaking away from me again, but I decide not to fight. If he was going to hurt me, he would have already done it. My body slumps against his chest and my fingers twist loosely in his shirt.

In the bathroom, he settles me with my back against the tub, gently tipping my head back until it hits a towel he has laid over the porcelain. My hair hangs in loopy knots and whisper-like tugs of my scalp tell me that it has hit water and is swirling in the rushing bath.

"What are you doing?" says a crackling voice that sounds very much like mine.

"Johanna is worried about you. She's not really… equipped to watch this happen to someone else. She's a good friend of mine, and now you've got me worried about her too."

Someone else. Relief prickles along my skin. At least I am not alone in my misery.

I am glaring at him as his hands run through my hair, wetting the strands from tip to scalp. Goose bumps race along my skin and I am grateful for the long sleeved shirt that hides my arms. Though the water is warm, my hair turns cold and a shiver nips a trail down my spine.

At some point, my eyelids sink down over my eyes, and I realize how hot they are. They're burning. Liquid eases out from underneath them, and I am horrified to discover that I am crying, and the tears are dripping down into my hair.

I decide that I hate Peeta Mellark.

He finishes soaping my hair, and is just beginning to rinse it when I push him roughly away with my arm, sending him backwards. For a moment, there is a tense stillness between us. He watches me nervously as I glare at him with swollen, furious eyes.

"Sorry," he murmurs in surprise as his face burns pink. He stumbles a little as he stands. "You want to finish on your own?"

Shaking with anger, I feel my face twisting into a snarl.

"I never needed your help."

"Ok. I'm sorry. I'll be right outside."

The snick of the door closing triggers a quiver in my lip and I clench my jaw to keep myself from screaming. I think frantically, where can I burrow myself?

Underwater.

So that's where I go. I strip, sink myself into the water in the tub until I am completely submerged. I meant to cry here, but the heat from the water smoothes out the tension in my jaw and neck and suddenly I am more exhausted than angry. Every light clink and rustle is magnified a hundred times and I catch a glimpse of a smaller, quieter world. I stay under until my need for air becomes overwhelming.

When I emerge from the tub, fragrant and warm, my skin puckering and my hair in a loose, wet braid, I feel something shift inside of me. Not better. Not different. But like I have refocused the camera in my mind.

As I leave the bathroom, Peeta is leaning against the wall with his head back and his eyes closed. They flutter open when I walk into the room dressed in my old, sour clothes.

He sits me on the bed. I mean to fight him again, but I am losing my will to do much of anything besides crawl back underneath the blanket and find my way back to sleep. A steadying hand on my shoulder is my only clue that I had been listing to the side.

"Not yet. You need to eat something."

He puts something round in my hands, and when the smell of it hits me, I feel hungry in a way I haven't felt in forever.

Its bread. And its warm.

"I'm going to check on Johanna now. I'll be back tomorrow."

And then he's gone.

I try to eat. Because I should. Because I know I have to. Because my stomach feels cavernous, and even though I've managed to ignore it, it does actually hurt.

Mechanical. That's how I do it. I am a machine and I need fuel. Bite after bite, until I've eaten nearly half. Then I'm too tired and I need to rest.

My bed smells like a sick body, pungent and heady, but I'm too tired to care.

Finally, I roll onto my side. Tuck my legs into my body. Sleep.

For the first time since I left Boulder, I don't dream at all. It's a real sleep, with no voices, or flames or racing hearts. Like dense black wool, it swaddles me in a heavy silence that takes me hours to crawl my way out of.

When I wake up, the sun hasn't risen. I lie there staring up into the indigo sky from the window that sits above my bed and I understand why this feels familiar. I was once on the other side of this, from the outside looking in. With Mom.

I remember the slippery silk of her pale gold hair in my hands. The smell of Johnson's soap and human sick. Her eyes, pillowed in the dark folds of her lids, drifting shut. Midway through, I am screaming her awake because she's stopped breathing in her sleep. Its just apnea. She's not really dead. Gasping and sputtering, she mumbles out a disjointed apology. The shampoo bottle has fallen in the bath water and as she sits up, I understand that this must happen often. I have only caught a glimpse.

The bottle bobs by, its promise of 'No Tears!' peeking out through the suds on the surface of the water. I am furious. I am helpless.

The oxycontin she's addicted to will kill her. And there is nothing I can do.

When Peeta arrives to check on me that morning I am already dressed, tying the laces of my boots on the front porch. I meet his eyes. The knot is a promise - I don't need to watch my fingers as they pull it tight.

I stand and walk away. I have a dawn hike to lead, and no time to feel ashamed of what those blue eyes have seen of me.

A/N: So this roller-coaster of a fic is 'Home is in Your Skin'. As you can tell, I'll be dealing with some seriously dark content, but rest assured, this chapter is as bad as it will get in terms of angst. Everything from here on out gets better.

This is part two of my 'Without Series', inspired by toxic plants from around the world. This story is inspired by foxglove, and this AU is 'a world without Panem'.

I would like to dedicate this chapter to the wonderful folks who helped this fic happen:

-My good friend M, who's initial input was critical to helping me set the scene.

-My lovely pre-reader Purple_Cube, who helped me make some important decisions, and corrected every single instance of "its vs it's" through the entire chapter. If you haven't read her work yet, I so highly recommend that you do, because her work is awesome!

-And, finally, my incredible beta Opaque, who's feedback and insight is not only mind-blowingly astute, but also comes from a deep understanding of the characters and themes of the Hunger Games. Where I'd be without her I don't know. But since she basically introduced me everything I know about Peeta, it would definitely be a world without him. And who wants that?

Questions? Comments? Updates and Outtakes? Come find me on tumblr (link is on my profile).

Thanks for reading!