Trigger Warning: PTSD, self harm and suicide.


Fawkes

I step into the elevator and the doors close behind me. It starts carrying me upwards, most likely towards the hovercraft that'll take me to the Capitol. I have to be there for the treaty.

Suddenly, the lights cut out. The elevator grinds to a halt.

I'm trapped.

It's pitch black. I feel the walls closing in on me. I can't breathe.

"Help!" I scream. "Help!"

I beat against the walls until my fists are bloody. My lungs feel like they're going to burst. I feel so weak.

Suddenly, just when I feel like I'm going to pass out, a door opens. I stumble through, sobbing with relief…

Straight into Manel's arms.

My instincts scream at me to run but he presses me close to his chest and I just can't break free from his grip. Something's not right. Manel's chest is bare and covered in scratch marks. His wrists are bruised. There are marks on his neck from someone's teeth. His lips are bleeding. But, when he kisses me, all I can taste is a stranger's sugary lipgloss.

A stranger's been kissing him. And I don't feel anger or desire at all. I can't feel anything, just this great, scary numbness inside of me. My blood feels sluggish in my veins. My heartbeat must be slowing down.

If I have a heart.

I shove Manel away. He looks at me with wounded eyes.

"What's wrong?" He asks. "I thought you loved me."

I open my mouth to speak but it feels like I'm drowning.

"I can't…" I manage to choke out.

I'm expecting something else in Manel's eyes - disappointment or anger or acceptance.

Not fear.

"Please!" He begs. "You have to love me! You're the only one who can save me."

Shadowy figures wrap their arms around him and pull him away. I watch them shove him up against a wall. I know exactly what's coming.

"Fawkes!" Manel cries. "Save me!"

I don't know why but he thinks I have the power to save him. He thinks I can take his hand and guide him to safety. He thinks I have some love to offer him.

I don't. I don't love him.

I lied.

I turn and run. There's nothing I can do and I hate myself for it. I just need to escape the sound of Manel's desperate pleas for help. There's nothing ahead of me but the edge of a roof. The world is upside down. The city hangs over me. Below me is nothing but black, empty sky.

I jump.

There are a few blissful moments of falling through the sky. Nothing but darkness and silence.

Then I splash into the water. It's lukewarm and salty. I barely have time to gasp for breath at the surface before a thing curls around my ankle and drags me down. I thrash and kick. I scream and the little silver bubbles from the last of my breath float upwards. The water's filling me and it's crushing me from all sides. The darkness is claiming me.

I close my eyes and let myself drown.

Suddenly, I can feel a bright light burning through my eyelids and I open my eyes. I'm not drowning anymore. I'm in a bath, fully clothed. The air is heavy with the scent of magnolias, which reminds me of something.

The water is pink with blood. My fist is full of broken glass.

The walls are all mirrors. I look into one and I see it. The monster's tentacles resting on my shoulders. It's massive. It's tentacles are as thick as my entire body.

I scream and try to run but a tentacle curls around my neck like a leash. The monster starts to pull me closer, out of the water.

"Binah!" I cry. "Help!"

Then I remember her.

My district partner. My protector. I love her. I need her. I know she'll save me from the monster. She saves me every time.

But she won't this time. I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror and I see a black, empty void where my heart should be. There are stitches all over my limbs. I'm not a person. I'm a rag doll on a noose. I have no heart and I'm not worth saving.

I can see dark green stuffing escaping at my seams. I'm going to burst again. There's only one escape for me.

I plunge the shard of glass into my arm, as hard as I can. The monster lets go of me and I flop to the bathroom floor. Something dark sprays out of my arm. It's not quite blood. It's red and green and black all at once. It's liquid and vapour and cotton all at once.

What am I?

Don't you mean what was I? You're not anything anymore.

I close my eyes and let the life drain out of me. I'm letting go of everything that made me evil and selfish. There's a moment of darkness and silence where all the pain goes away.

I'm falling through the sky again.

Suddenly, I'm swaddled in some clinging sheets. I'm being crushed, suffocated. I try to throw them off. My heart races in my chest.

Wait… I have a heart?

"Fawkes?"

I hear Binah's voice. She's so close to me. I can see her in the dim light. She reaches out towards me.

"Don't touch me!" I cry. "Please…"

"Okay," she says. Her voice is so soft and gentle. "You had a nightmare. It's okay. You're safe."

I don't feel safe. I'm in bed with Binah and it feels so unfamiliar. I pull away from her and tuck my legs up below my chin, trying to take up as little space as possible.

"Was it the Manel nightmare?" She asks.

I nod. We've been here before. I've slept with Binah every night for the last three months. She knows all about my nightmares.

This is normal, Fawkes.

Sometimes, I need to remind myself this is normal. Sometimes, I need to remind myself to do normal things like breathing.

"That one's awful," Binah says.

I nod. I can only nod. I don't think I have the strength to say anything right now. I let Binah wrap the blanket around my shoulders. She doesn't hug me or kiss me. I'm not ready for that yet. One of the worst things about the Manel nightmare is that it makes me feel uncomfortable being touched. Maybe I can't get what I let the Capitol do to him out of my head or maybe it's because I don't trust myself not to hurt whoever touches me. I can't let Binah gather me up in her arms and whisper comforting words in my ear. I have to recover without that safety net.

But she can still talk to me.

"Let's start with Manel," Binah says. It seems logical. That's who the nightmare starts with. It's a twisted version of my disastrous date with him, the one where I dumped him. "You made the right choice leaving him. You didn't love him. Neither of you would've got what you needed from your relationship. And he must've figured it out as well, since he managed to escape victor prostitution without your help. Now you both have what you were looking for."

I smile, weakly. "Manel didn't need me to save him," I say. "He only thought he needed me."

I take a deep breath and let him go.

"Then there's the monster," Binah says. "The monster's gone, Fawkes. You're safe. I'm always going to keep you safe."

I lean towards her and she wraps her arms around me. One of the worst things about the Manel nightmare is all the things it makes me feel. I've overcome the guilt from breaking Manel's heart because I know he's recovered to an extent. I've overcome the little fragments of fear - the drowning, the monster, the rag doll on a noose. But there's something else, the guilt and the fear and the emptiness all tangling together inside me, coalescing into the worst feeling ever.

I was bleeding out on the bathroom floor. I was dying and I was relieved.

I pull away from Binah and look down at my forearm, hoping the scars are gone. They're not. They're there. They will always be there, unless I drag myself to a hospital to have them fixed. I didn't put them there because I wanted to die. I did it because I hated myself and I wanted to suffer like I'd made Manel suffer.

That's the hardest part of my nightmare to escape. That's the part that sinks its claws into me and refuses to let go. The part where I let all the self-loathing take over.

I'm scared it'll happen in real life. I'm scared one bad day, one wrong step, one small trigger will push me over the edge and I won't be able to recover. Because it happened so quickly, so easily.

I'm scared of Binah finding my body one day and feeling like she didn't do enough to save me.

"Hey," Binah says. She catches me looking down at my wrist and covers the scars with her hand. "I know what you're thinking about. I… I know how the nightmare ends. Your life isn't going to end like that. I promise, if it ever gets that bad, I'll stop you. Just remember there are a lot of beautiful things in the world you'll lose if you ever kill yourself. It's so easy in your nightmares because there's nothing beautiful there. But you're safe here. Every time you feel like you want to hurt yourself, I'll find you something beautiful to make you feel better. Does that sound good?"

I nod. I think of the kind of world I fell into when I bled to death. It was cold and calm and empty. There was no pain, no fear but also… no beauty.

The sky I fell into had no stars.

Binah's right. In my nightmares, death is my only source of relief. But the real world has Binah in it. I can rely on her to keep me safe from all the nightmares, help me recover. And I know, once the war is over and we make it out of District 13, we'll have such a big, beautiful world to explore.

My nightmares are games that are rigged against me. The world is smaller and all the beauty is gone.

"I forgot you loved me." I say. It's almost a sob. "In my nightmare… I forgot."

"I'm always going to love you, Fawkes," Binah says.

She strokes a hand down the side of my face. Something wakes up in me and suddenly, I just want to be close to her. I kiss her hand. She smiles and the whole world lights up. Binah pulls me forwards. My body presses against hers. Suddenly, we're kissing. We're tangled together underneath the blanket. I feel raw and vulnerable but, every time Binah kisses me, I feel all her warmth and her kindness and her love. I feel stronger.

Strong enough to remember what I'm going to do tomorrow.

"Crap!" I cry, sitting up.

"What's wrong?" Binah asks. Her hair is spread out all over the pillow, jet black with one dyed streak of white.

"I'm signing the treaty tomorrow. I just remembered."

"That probably explains why you had that nightmare," Binah says, a little sadly. "Are you worried about seeing Manel again?"

She pulls her legs out from under mine and sits up. I guess our little romantic moment is well and truly dead now.

"Yeah," I say.

"You don't have to go."

"I do. I'm the Phoenix. I'm the face of the whole rebellion. I have to be there."

"Why don't you let me come with you?" Binah asks.

"I can't," I say. "What if Manel thinks I'm rubbing the fact I left him for you in his face? It's bad enough that I dated him and that Lumas is going to be there to murder diplomacy like he always does. This entire country's future depends on this treaty. I don't want to let breakup drama get in the way."

"I'm sure Manel doesn't either," Binah says. "He lost the war. He's desperate. Even if he gets angry at you, you can always tell him the truth."

I sigh. "What if I'm still not ready to tell him the truth?"

It's always been hard to open up to people about my mental health. When I was first brought back for the Quell, I felt like there was a mask grafted onto my face. Inside, I was screaming for help but all I could do was smile. Binah walked in on me about to kill myself and I couldn't really hide it from her anymore. She became the one person I could trust, my one source of solace. But Manel only saw the mask.

And it'll be harder now I'm the Phoenix. The Phoenix is strong and unbreakable. He's a rebel hero, a source of hope to everyone. He never loses hope. He never wants to kill himself. He never feels empty inside.

Fawkes Chau, on the other hand, did all those things. I felt all those ugly feelings. And I lied to Manel thinking he'd make those feelings go away. But he couldn't.

Normally, it helps to be the Phoenix, act braver than I really am. A lot of my fears are in my head and playing a role helps me escape them. But I know I need to open up to Manel if he's ever going to forgive me and I won't be going to the Capitol as myself. I'll be going as the Phoenix. I won't be a teenager trying to apologise to his ex, I'll be a rebel trying to unite the country.

"When will you be ready?" Binah asks. "Because you need to tell him soon. Otherwise you'll never get the chance. How guilty are you going to feel if they kill him and you still haven't told him?"

"I'll tell him," I say. "I'll ask if I can visit him in prison before they kill him or something. They'll let me. I'm important. I just… It's not the right time."

"Okay," Binah says. "It just hope everything works out okay."

"It will," I say. "It'll all be fine."

It's more to convince myself than Binah.


This chapter was pretty dark, especially since it was originally just going to be setup for the treaty signing. Fawkes' nightmare started off as just a nightmare about Manel but then it got worse and worse. His stress over seeing Manel again in such an important situation awoke a lot of old trauma. Even though he's recovered enough to stop wanting to harm or kill himself, he's still scared of going back to such a dark place, even though it looks unlikely. Luckily, he's learning to recover from his nightmares and he has Binah to support him.

If you ever have thoughts about self harm or suicide, remember there are a lot of beautiful things in the world. You might not be able to see them but they're definitely there so never give up on finding them. Things will get better, especially if you open up to someone you trust.