A/N: Song for this chapter is "Sick and Twisted Affair" by My Darkest Days. Goes well with Katniss losing it.

Sae makes me a sandwich for lunch, and she doesn't leave until I've finished at least half of it, which, I feel bad for, since it takes me two hours just to accomplish that.

But then around three o clock she finally heads home for the day, telling me that she's left a stew for me in the oven, I've just got to heat it up.

She won't be here to watch me, but she's done this before. If I didn't eat any, she'd know, because when she came over the next day, she'd see that none was gone. I could probably get away with not eating any of it, I guess, by throwing it out or down the drain, but the idea of wasting food still disgusts me.

Then I get the clever idea to feed some to Buttercup. I'm too mentally exhausted to even take one bite, especially after having to force myself to keep the sandwich down.

I sit in front of my television for awhile, though the screen is black. There's nothing on that is remotely interesting to me, and it occurs to me that I have no idea why I even have this television.

I stand up and without thinking, I kick it. It falls over but doesn't break, so I take a lamp and swing it at the television. The light bulb bursts and goes out the second it makes impact with the screen, which I hear crack at the same time. Now, in the darkness, I take out all my inner turmoil on this poor television set.

I throw all my anger and hatred into destroying this television set. This television, that's aired countless hunger games, countless Capitol announcements, my interviews, Peeta's interviews, other tribute's interviews, the one that my sister and mother watched every night, waiting to hear if their sister and daughter was killed yet or not.

I beat it with my bare hands until my front door swings open, Haymitch standing there in my doorway, leaning on the beam for support, drink in his other hand. The fading light of dusk outside surrounds me, and it's then that I realize that I've beaten my knuckles bloody. The sight of the blood makes me stop. Frustrated, I stop, and cower over to a corner, watching Haymitch, waiting for a lecture that I know I'm going to get.

Still not sober enough to be quite aware of what is going on, he demands to know what all the ruckus is. Then he sees me, in the corner, scared, confused, angry, hands bloodied, and his look changes from confusion to frustration. He sighs when he walks over to me.

"Girl, what in the hell are you doing?"

I'm not quite sure how to answer this question.

"I… I don't kn-"I start to say, but he puts a hand over my mouth and tells me, "Shh."

He throws one of my arms over his shoulder and helps me up, then walks me over to the couch and makes me sit.

He observes my hands more closely here, but he struggles to focus, being drunk.

Exasperated, he asks, "Well? Don't you have some kind of bandage somewhere to wrap this up?"

"Bathroom cabinet. There might be something."

Haymitch gets up and goes into my downstairs bathroom. Coming out, he holds in his hand not bandages, but the three, entirely full bottles of pills that I've put in there and forgotten about. He shakes his head as I watch him walk over to the kitchen table. He pauses, just for a moment, before slamming the pills onto the table and forcing me to jump in my seat.

"Damnit! Katniss how are we supposed to help you if you can't even help yourself?"

Part of me wants to protest. To stand up and shout back at him, louder than he's shouting at me. To call him a hypocrit for accusing me of not helping myself when he's standing there killing his own pain with his white liquor. To get in his face and tell him that what I do and how I live is none of his concern. But my resistance would be futile. There are more people here on his side. I'm sure Sae wouldn't be happy to hear that I'm refusing the pills. And if one of them clued Doctor Aurelius in, I'd be in for a lot more trouble. So I just let him get it out of his system. Staring straight ahead, not really paying attention to what he's saying.

At some point in the next few minutes, his yelling calms to normal tone, as he then picks up the bottles and forces me to hold them.

"I'll be back with the boy," he says, "to patch up those hands," he tells me, looking at my bloodied knuckles.

I sigh. "It's not even that bad. I don't need him to come over here."

"No, but he heard the commotion too. Told him I'd come check it out. You know if I say nothing's wrong he'll know I'm lying and come on over anyway."

I curse under my breath. When he leaves, I get up and rinse my hands off in the bathroom, trying to clean them up as best I can so that Peeta won't assume the worst. Maybe I can get away with telling him I fell instead of telling him the truth. Then he'd leave me alone once my hands were bandaged.

It doesn't work though. He comes in and glances at my face, then the tv and lamp, not to mention the broken glass all over the floor, then to my knuckles. Peeta's not stupid. He pieces things together rather quickly.

He gets the bandages he brought from his house out of his pocket. Guess I didn't have any. He kneels down in front of me and holds one of my hands in his, observing the damage.

"It's not as bad as it looks. Though you're the healer, so I'm sure you knew that."

I don't say anything. Then he says, "Real or not real?"

"What?" I say, confused as to what he is asking.

"You're a healer. Real or not real?"

I think about this for a moment. And I know that we had, I mean, have, different opinions on this.

"Well, you used to think so."

"Did I?" He asks me, then he asks me something else but I don't hear what he says, because I'm paying attention to the way he's wrapping my hand. So delicately, precisely. You'd think he was decorating a cake.

"Why do you do that?" I say.

"Do what?"

"Put so much concentration into everything."

He looks saddened, and I don't think he's going to answer me. But once one hand is finished he begins wrapping the other one. Then he says, "Because if I don't, I might fall apart."

It hurts me, in a way I didn't think anything could anymore.

"How?"

"My flashbacks. The littlest things can trigger them. And I never know when one will attack me. I have to be on guard at all times." He tells me, as he finishes wrapping my other hand. He goes slow at the end, though I'm not sure why. Maybe the injury is worse on this hand than the other one.

I can't even imagine being constantly afraid of being attacked by a flashback. But then I realize I don't even know what it is, exactly.

"What's it like?"

"Hm?" He asks me, standing now.

"Your flashbacks."

"It's like, you know the feeling of déjà vu? Where you feel like something has happened before?"

I nod.

"It's like that, only, it doesn't go away the way déjà vu does. It gives me headaches and nausea, and my entire body hurts. Then a memory replays in my mind. Except I never know if it's real or not."

I must look like I'm listening intently, because he continues, "I've worn out the polish on the back of one of the wooden chairs in my kitchen. I have to grasp something while I'm having the flashbacks. Otherwise I can't control myself."

"Like with the handcuffs?" I ask. I'm referring to the handcuffs he requested me to leave on his wrists in the Capitol near the end of the war, not too long ago. He told me they helped to keep him in his sanity.

"Yeah. Kind of."

Never knowing what's real or not? Having to destroy furniture in your house in order to not go completely psychotic? I can't imagine what that's like.

Guilt pangs me again, for many reasons. They did this to him to hurt me. I can't shake the fact that I am partially responsible for the hell that Peeta goes through when he has these flashbacks.

And another reason is because I know how incredibly selfish I've been. How could I be so focused on burying my memories, on speaking to no one, on ignoring Peeta, when he needed me? I know there's questions he needs to ask me that I would much rather do anything else than answer, but don't I owe him that?

I'm about to tell him that we can talk, if he wants. But then he looks down and I follow his eyes to the full bottles of pills.

He kneels down in front of me again. "You haven't been taking your pills?"

I meet his gaze. His eyes reflect the boy I tried to keep alive in the cave in the first Games. The innocence, the purity, the willingness to put my needs above his own. And while looking into his eyes I feel something I buried a long time ago. Then I realize that I'm sailing in dangerous waters.

I force myself to look away from him. I could stand up and tell him to leave right now. I could tell him that this isn't any of his business. And really, it isn't. But I feel so guilty for the pain that he's going through that I don't want to add to that pain in any way.

I make myself stand up and I take the pill bottles in my wounded hands. "I will tonight."

He looks at me questioningly.

"I will. I promise."

He seems satisfied, and tells me that he'll stop by in the morning to check up on me and change the bandages if they need it before shutting my door, walking out into the night.