A/N: Still not the biggest fan of AU's out here, but they're very slowly growing on me. I was watching this movie today for the nth time and just remembered how brilliant I find this plot, so I figured I'd try to mold it into an Everlark. Don't know if it will work and lord knows how often I'll be able to update, but this stupid plot bunny needed out of my head. So, here it is.

Enjoy!

Disclaimer: The Hunger Games and all the characters in this fic are the property of Suzanne Collins. 'Unbreakable' is the brainchild of M. Knight Shyamalan's and property of whatever studio made the movie. I make no money off any of this so don't sue.

It was too bright. Unnaturally bright.

The light was choking him. No. Wait. It was blinding him…and suffocating him.

That shouldn't be right.

Disoriented, he brought a hand up to squeeze the bridge of his nose. He squinted his eyes to slits in an attempt to focus better, simultaneously choking out a series of strangled coughs. Neither the new narrowed perspective nor the moisture that flooded his eyes at his lungs' inability to oxygenate fully helped him see through the morphing cloud of hazy brilliant yellow white that apparently cocooned him. It appeared impenetrably dense and encroaching, menacing, smothering.

Through his dazed confusion, he attempted to keep calm, focused. Whatever the blinding haze that surrounded him was, it was obviously affecting his cognitive function- and his mobility. He tried taking shallow breaths through his nose to stifle his coughing fit and closed his eyes to assess his situation. He could move his right hand. That he knew because he'd just rubbed his face with it. His other arm felt weighed down by something his impaired vision made impossible to identify. But, he wiggled his fingers, tentatively. Yup. He definitely still had a left arm.

He frowned. Why would he think he'd be missing his arm? That was a randomly silly thing to think, wasn't it?

Apprehension, the source of which he could not fathom, started coiling in the pit of his stomach as he continued his evaluation of his current condition. He was prone, somewhat. At least, it felt like he was horizontal, or at the very least, he was on his back, reclining over something slanted at a steep angle. His feet were dangling off it, whatever it was, from his knees down, and his right leg arched out at an uncomfortable angle. Realizing this, he tried readjusting it and registered for the first time the obstruction between his legs, impeding his movement. The object in question was heavy – stiflingly heavy – and it weighed down on the lower half of his body at least to his lower ribcage. It didn't feel like it was crushing him and he was not in any particular discomfort from it, unless one counted a serious case of leg falling asleep discomfort, but he was impossibly pinned. Once again, when he opened his eyes and let them travel downward to where his torso should be to investigate further, he saw nothing but milky yellowish white. He let his head fall back against whatever that was behind it with an exasperated, wheezing groan.

He tried to get his sluggish thoughts to realign. Something had happened, obviously. Something fast. And, if the growing feeling of dread in the pit of his stomach was any kind of indication- something very, very bad. Focusing on his limited breaths, he tried to take his mind back to a few moments ago, or was it minutes? Hours?

He realized with a start that he had absolutely no bearing on time. Whatever this crap in the air was, it was really doing a number on his cognitive function. The knowledge did little to mitigate his growing anxiety. If someone didn't find him soon, whatever this stuff was would likely either suffocated him or kill every brain cell he had.

Banging his head against whatever that was he laid on to vent some frustration, (Had that been a metallic clang he'd heard as his skull made violent impact? Or, was he already too delusional to discern sounds properly?) he tried once more to concentrate. He tried to remember the last thing he could before the bright white light.

X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X

"You shouldn't be arguing a point you could possibly never hope to understand, Mellark." Madge's eyes shone fierce with determination, even in the almost completely dim bus.

"Excuse you? How am I incapable of understanding? Oh, I get it. You're making this a gender implicit thing," Peeta responded with just as much candor. He knew the passionate student council president only referred to him by last name when she was especially frustrated, pissed or cornered in an argument – in this case, it was likely all three – but he wasn't about to back down from this just because they were friends. He wasn't captain of this debate team because he was pretty.

"So what? You're saying a guy can't get raped by a girl? That just because our bodies physiologically automatically respond to stimulation, regardless of our willingness or consent, making it easier for an accoster to take advantage, the violation is less intrusive, disgusting or real? Explain that one to me, Madge?"

The blonde in the seat behind his floundered, opening and closing her mouth several times, her eyes wide as she tried to compose a retort. The riposte eventually came from Bristel, however, who was seated across the aisle from her, her tanned arms crossed across her breasts and her legs stretched out and interlaced across the seat. She huffed out the words as if explaining it to a toddler. "No one is saying that, Peeta. But regardless how far we've come when it comes to gender equality, no one can expect a guy and a girl to respond to that the same way. We are emotionally wired differently than you guys are. Going through that… it can destroy everything a woman believes herself to be. Having to go to a hospital, open her legs, and have someone probe and photograph her after something like that. You can't tell me you don't understand how some women would just rather pretend it never happened and move on with their lives."

He locked his intense electric azure eyes on her arctic greys to accentuate his response as soon as she'd finished speaking. "But that's the problem, isn't it? You can't just pretend that never happened. It's a horrible crime. It's a desecration and the victim deserves to heal as much as the perpetrator deserves punishment. Neither can happen if the crime is kept in the dark. Women who try to move on without admitting it to anyone just cause the damage to fester and become worse and worse with time. Without evidence or prosecution, the criminal who did this has no deterrent to keep him from doing it to someone else."

When both girls remained quiet but pensive, the wheels in their heads obviously working to find a counter argument, he quickly continued, "At least, you guys have a rape kit to aid you in proving what was done to you actually happened. When it happens to us, we hide the shame because of the stigma that we know will inevitably come of it, tell someone and pray they won't humiliate us or outright laugh in our face about it, or just plain call us liars. So, yes, there is merit in rallying for every female rape victim reporting the assault within the seventy-two hours allotted time, regardless whether it was a friend, a boyfriend, a complete stranger. It shouldn't make a difference. It is a protection to you. None of you knows what kind of diseases the kind of bastard that will do something like this to you may have. The evidence collected can be used to prosecute the offender. And, if you choose not to press charges, that'll be the end of it, anyway. But, at least there's physical proof that what happened to you happened. You can never be branded a liar… and you can start to heal."

Neither girl looked particularly convinced by his argument, not that he was surprised, they hadn't just won their fifth debate competition this year on a fluke, after all. As far as he was concerned, these were the most brilliant argumentative minds in the state. And they were well on their way to proving it.

Just as Madge made a sound in the back of her throat to object his position, however, they felt the bus lurch forward rather violently, forcing theirs, their teacher coach Mr. Dalton's and the eyes of the other seven kids on the bus to travel towards the driver. Most of those eyes had just startled to wakefulness, the ride already having taken an hour through the faintly falling snow and almost everyone catching up on some much-needed shut-eye since it would likely be past eleven when they reached the school and they still had classes tomorrow.

Before any of them could register what was happening, they heard the high-pitched squeal of all six of the vehicle's tires simultaneous straining. Peeta thought he heard the driver frantically screaming back to them to hold on to anything they could, but who could tell over the shrill of the tires? A split second later, he felt himself catapult sideways… and… and upward? He definitely felt the weightlessness of being airborne for a moment. He also heard it.

The screams.

He was too disoriented to tell which scream was coming from who, but the world burst into a cacophony of sound an instant before his shoulder made hard impact with something, something that felt solid when he'd first hit it but became pliable with a discernible 'crack' instantly afterward and he was weightless again an instant later. The screaming seemed to augment after that, though it seemed to come from everywhere, surrounding him, tormenting him, accompanied by the deafening sound of warping metal and shattering glass. In the proceeding seconds, parts of his body collided with several different things (and body parts- someone's arm had caught him right between the legs and he was sure he'd caught a foot to the stomach at some point).

As the tumbling continued, he noticed the noises were changing. The horrified, pained screeches, gradually eclipsed almost completely by the sound of the bus coming apart. He found this terrified him far worse than the screams had and the next scream that resounded through the chaos was his own. It was a frantic wail, a plea to everyone, to anyone, to just hold on. That they would be safe.

He found his shout cut short when he landed with such force on what was now the ceiling of the bus; all the air left his lungs at once. It took him a second to catch a breath and try to sit up so he could look around, maybe help anyone else who was hurt. But the bus lurched sideways again and he found himself careening forward, his arms and legs reaching out for purchase to stop his momentum until he finally came to a halt, his legs spread and twisted awkwardly due to his previous flailing, dangling out two of the bus' windows, precariously.

The instant he believed he would stop moving, he tried to sit up, get his bearings, try to help anyone in worse shape.

His next cry to his fellow bus occupants died on his lips when the seat just above his head, which had somehow managed to shift a full ninety degrees during the tumble, gave a strained metallic groan before plummeting toward him. He barely had a split second to react, propelling himself back and to the right with both his arms as fast as he could.

It wasn't fast enough to keep the heavy seat from slamming down on his chest, unexpectedly propelling his head back with bruising force against the metal ceiling.

Darkness soon followed.

X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X

"Oh, thank god. We have one with a pulse over here! Jackson, bring the oxygen! I found one!"

Peeta strained his eyes open to find a shadow looming over him, almost nose to nose, in the mist of impossible white. Now, he was sure he was delusional.

"Hey, sweetie," the figment of his oxygen-deprived imagination said in a very soft, unmistakably female whisper. "You are a very special little boy, you know that?" 'Little boy'? How screwed up was he that this was the best endearment his mind could conjure? At the very least, something that would feed his ego instead of making him feel like he still wet his bed in his last few moments of life would've been nice. And why did his mirage sound like it was crying?

"Get this crap off of him, Mitchell. I can't get proper vitals with him half buried under all this. And he's freaking conscious. If under this his body looks like any of the oth-" Peeta heard his she-figment take a deep, choked breath. "Just get your butt back here and help me move this off him already!"

Within moments, he was feeling the weight on his torso lifted, a plastic mask being pulled gently over his mouth and nose so he could breathe more freely. Huh? Maybe this wasn't all happening in his imagination, then? 'Oh, no!' That meant everything he'd heard was real? Where was Madge? Where was Mr. Dalton, Bristel, Thom. God! Delly was going to kill him if he let something happen to Thom.

He sat up frantically, far too quickly, and immediately felt his head swirl from the gesture. The woman by his side, who'd apparently been looking away at something beside her, immediately turned back to him. He still couldn't make her features out through the haze, but he definitely noted the panic in her voice as she trilled in chastisement, pulling him back to laying somewhat roughly by his shoulders, "What in the name of all that is holy are you doing, child? You could have a broken neck. Do you have any idea how dangerous it is for you to move in your condition?"

His condition? He felt just fine now that he could breathe, with the notable exception that all he saw was white blinding fog and blurry shadow people, of course. He wasn't jumping to tell her that, though. "What is my condition?" He was shocked to note how raw and raspy his own voice sounded to his ears. What had he inhaled?

His shadowy rescuer seemed to hesitate shortly before answering curtly, "Your condition, young man, is lying on your back in an upside-down bus that tumbled eighty-three feet off an embankment, landed very precariously on an outcropping of pines and caught fire. Now, I need you to stay in 'your condition' for the next few minutes so that I can get a neck brace on you, figure out what else might be broken, dislocated or bleeding on or in you before I can haul you out of here. Because I definitely don't want either of us in here if that fuel tank decides to explode instead of just sparking up a few more flames like before. You got me?"

Peeta was about to nod his assent, but decided against it after thinking better of it. If she thought he had a broken neck, nodding wasn't exactly what she wanted him to do, was it? So he just settled for a subservient "Yes, ma'am" and allowed her to finish her assessment of his injuries. Once she was satisfied he was safe to move, she called two other figures, these decidedly male, to strap him to a board and carry him out of the bus through the back door. He could only stare up the entire time. His head immobilized by the neck brace.

He looked on as they passed row after row of seats, most twisted and bent almost beyond recognition. He looked on as, interspersed throughout all those seats and what used to be the floor of the bus, he saw the unmistakable splatter of crimson. So much red. He shut his eyes to the unsettling sight just as they cleared the threshold. When he opened them again it was to the view of clear night sky, flanked by pine brush sweeping by.

It was beautiful. It felt wrong.

Where was everyone else?

He could tell for the first time when they placed him on the crane to lift him up to the awaiting ambulance, just how far the bus had fallen. His stomach sunk further with this knowledge as he continued to wonder as to the whereabouts of his other debate teammates.

He didn't bother asking the people who accompanied him on the ambulance on the trip to the hospital. Although he had a pretty good sense they knew, he doubted they had the pay grade to tell him anything.

So, he waited patiently, more quietly than he could remember ever having been in his entire life. When the ambulance arrived at the hospital, it didn't pass his notice the commotion outside the emergency room as he was unloaded onto a gurney and wheeled inside. He couldn't see them, of course, but he could hear them. There were dozens of them, frantic. Screaming, asking, demanding to know who it was that had arrived. Who had been saved?

His stomach sank further.

By the time he'd been wheeled into the trauma room, he wasn't shocked at the discovery his sideburns were saturated in his own tears.

"Oh, baby, you're crying. Are you in pain? Does something hurt?" It was the same woman who'd first found him. She was standing directly over him, and he could see her clearly for the first time. She was in her late fifties with rich dark skin and kind, dark almond eyes that showed such deep concern. His heart only broke further looking at her, but he found it impossible to respond. Maybe, that's why she continued in an encouraging tone, "My name is Doctor Seeder and I'm going to take such good care of you, baby, you hear?" He could feel her stroking his hair affectionately as she spoke. She cleared her throat and he noticed the moisture she blinked away, trying to sound stronger than she outwardly showed. "But, I need you to help me now, okay? I need you to tell me where it hurts so that I can make it better. And… and there are some folks here. Folks who would love to know you're doing better, too. So, if you could tell me your name, I'd sure appreciate that, honey."

That did it. He couldn't keep flogging this poor woman, regardless of the fact she was a complete stranger. No one this kind deserved this.

"Peeta," He moaned out hoarsely, pitifully, then cleared his throat and tried again more forcefully. However, the result wasn't very loud, either way. His throat was just too raw from smoke inhalation and the horrible foreboding feeling twisting his insides. "My name is Peeta Mellark, Doctor Seeder. And nothing hurts. The tears… I think it's just the shock of all this."

The doctor nodded, a small smile inching up the side of her mouth before she sobered to spout instructions to the team surrounding her in the room.

"Okay, people. This boy needs a full panel. I want a scan of his chest and neck stat, x-rays on all extremities. Just because he doesn't feel it, doesn't mean something's not fractured. The swelling could be blocking nerve impulse. I want him checked head to toe."

Just as the orderlies wheeled him out to radiology, Peeta caught the last bit his doctor told the nurse, her voice sounding so different than it had inside the trauma room- haggard, impossibly defeated.

"Tell those folks out there, the reporters and… the parents. Tell them there was only one survivor of that damned overturned District Twelve High bus tonight."

"And his name's Peeta Mellark."

A/N: If you like where this is going…

Please Review!