Ok, I know I haven't updated in forever, but I have been super busy these past couple of days. I am going to try to make it up by posting tons of chapters this weekend... hopefully. Anyways, here is the next chapter. I think this is one of my favorite ones that I have written. Hopefully you like it too:)

5

I sighed while sitting in the bathwater. I added some bubbles, and let the popping noises they made soothe me. The only I could grasp at the moment was how much my life sucked. It was completely awful. I wondered what it would be like to be somebody else. Somebody who had a normal life, who didn't have to worries I had, who was generally happier than I am. She would be an optimist. She wouldn't have to worry about all the bad stuff in life. Maybe I should be an optimist, I thought to myself. This thought made me laugh. Like a real, throaty laugh. When would I ever be an optimist? Never, I silently answered myself, and I laughed some more.

Soon enough, my laughs turned into something unexpected. They turned into songs. I was singing. Like the actual belting-at-the-top-of-your-lungs kind of singing. I sang children's songs. Those nonsensical songs that every child loves. My father sang them to me when I was very young, and after he died, I sang them to Prim. Then, I laughed at the songs, at how ridiculous they were. Finally, I decided it was time to get out. Something in this bathwater was making me crazy. Maybe it was the bubbles; they could be going straight to my head and be killing all my brain cells just as I sat here. I laughed again. Nope, I was never going to be a optimist.

I grabbed a towel off the rack and started to dry myself off. I tried to brush the leftovers of my hair, but it hurt a bit. Most of it was dead and falling out. Whatever wasn't dead was chopped at awkward angles just below my shoulders. The doctors claimed that it would grow again, but truthfully, I didn't really believe them. I turned to look at it in the mirror and gasped. Everything about me was horrible, not only my hair. My skin still looked like poorly done patchwork and the scars all over my body seemed to glow making them more noticeable. My hair. It looked like little clumps were randomly placed on my head. I had a pang of wanting for my old braid back. I ran out the bathroom, being impulsive. I found a pair of scissors in a drawer somewhere in my room. I ran back to the bathroom mirror and started to chop. When the first lock of hair feel off, I smiled. I continued chopping most of the dead, broken hair off and instantly felt immensely better.

I looked at the finished product with pride. I smiled at the short, pixie cut I produced. It looked like it was down by a five-year-old and didn't suit me nearly as well as by braid did, but it was tons better than the dead locks of hair I had ten minutes ago. My hair looked way healthier like this. My skin also seemed immediately better. The redness seemed to be completely gone. You could also barely see most of my scars now, too. The only exception was the rather large one Johanna gave me on the inside of my arm, but I didn't mind that too much. I looked almost whole, on the outside at least. That was a start.

I was walking towards my bedroom when I realized something felt off. Something was wrong. Something was missing. I kept walking, but I still couldn't pin-point what it was. I practically fell over when I remembered. I knew. It was too silent. There was no quiet mewing in the background. There was no ball of fluff crawling around at my heels. Where was Buttercup?

"Buttercup!" I called, freaking out a bit. Where was that thing? It was slightly ironic that I was looking for him, when it was only a couple of months ago that I wanted to drown him. When he didn't answer my call, I really got worried. "Buttercup!" I tried to think of the last time I saw him. Just before Peeta and I went on our walk. Did he crawl out the door? Was he looking for me as I was looking for him? Peeta and I did run out the door. He was asleep at my feet. Did he not know that we left him? "Buttercup," I whispered one more time. I knew he wasn't going to answer. He was gone.

I walked downstairs, still hoping the Buttercup would appear out of the corner of my eye or something. Haymitch was standing by the kitchen table, waiting for me. His unreadable expression faltered a second, as I walked into the room. I wondered why, but then soon remembered. My hair. "You are late," he said, once he put back on his undecipherable expression. I just glared at him and replied, "I had a couple of delays. You are lucky I even came down." He pointed to a bowl of some sort of soup on the table and merely said, "Eat." Most of the iciness was gone from his voice.

I sat down and put a spoonful of soup into my mouth. I realized just how hungry I was when I took this first bite. The soup was warm and felt good as it trickled down my throat. I noticed Haymitch staring at me through the corner of my eye. "Take I picture. It will last longer," I said sarcastically, but my voice faltered a bit at the end. "Is there a reason why you cut off all your hair?" he asked.

I turned to look at him and put as much ice into my glare as I possibly could. "Not that it looks bad," he then continued. "You actually look kind of cute, better than before anyway. But you have been pretty shifty lately. One moment you are all calm and almost happy, and I am thinking you may actually be putting the pieces back together. The next you are crying your eyes out on the ground of District 12 and sleeping for three days straight. I'm just making sure that you aren't going to kill yourself or something, with all the impulsive decisions you are making."

Kill myself? Would I do that? Could I do that? After my only want for the past year and a half, my entire life was for me to survive. For all those that I love to survive. I failed at that, keeping them safe, but could I kill myself. Was I that depressed? No, I told myself. That's not what they would have wanted. They wanted you to live. A lot of them, most of them died to save me. They would not want me to die, because I killed myself. They wanted me to live a full and happy life.

"So, you talked to Peeta," I said, trying to change the topic.

I could tell that Haymitch knew what I was doing, but he let it go. "Yeah. He seemed really worried about you when he finally came to me. He came in everyday to check on you. Said he wanted to make sure you weren't having nightmares. When you barely woke up in three days, only drinking the glass of water he left you and eating nothing, he decided something was wrong."

I smiled. Peeta. He was there while I was sleeping. He was probably the sweetest person I knew. I will never know how to thank him for everything he has ever done for me. Never know how to pay him back for everything that I owe to him.

"It's our faults that he is broken, you realize that," I told Haymitch.

He looked away from me and said, "Yeah. I know. I never thought that I would find another person in my life that the Capitol could hurt me with. Never thought that I would ever give them any leverage, again. They already killed everybody." I thought back to a day, long ago. We were taping a propo while some of the others were conducting the rescue mission to save Peeta. I remember Haymitch telling me that the Capitol killed his mother, brother, and girlfriend. Haymitch continued. "I never thought that the Capitol could hurt me again, until I saw Peeta choke you."

"Everything would have been way different if his name wasn't pulled out of that ball. If he never went to the Hunger Games," I then whispered.

"So many things would have been different if any of the victors never went to the Hunger Games, but then maybe we would all still be unhappy, scraping for food under the Capitol's rule," Haymitch replied.

What if I didn't go to the Hunger Games? If Prim's name wasn't picked? Peeta would have died from that leg wound. I would have never known him. He would have been just another face I would have watched. Another person's child that was lost. Nothing to me. Those berries would not have been used. No spark would have been lighted. There would have been no rebellion. So many people would have lived. I would still be hunting with Gale. Nothing would have changed. Could I have been content with that? I don't know.

I saw Haymitch was lost in his own train of thought. He was probably thinking about how life would have been if he wasn't in the games.

I finished my meal, then, not wanting to talk anymore. Haymitch then pulled out a slip of paper with a phone number on it. He picked up the phone and dialed the number. He stood there waiting for a couple of second. Then someone seemed to have picked up the phone he was calling. He said, "Hello? Dr Aurelius? Yes, this is Haymitch… I am calling about Katniss… Yes, I think she is finally ready to talk to you…" He said ok and yes a couple of more times before he handed me the phone.

"Hello?" I said into the phone.

Dr. Aurelius's soft voice answered me on the other side. "Katniss?"

"Yes."

"How are you feeling today?" he asked.

"I guess I am ok," I replied.

"What did you do today?" he then asked.

I was debating whether or not to answer him truthfully, when I everything started to tumble out. I told him about sleeping for the past three days, and Haymitch waking me up by dumping water on me. I told him about singing in the bathtub, and chopping off all of my hair. I told him about talking about Peeta with Haymitch, how he thinks I may kill myself, and wondering about what life would have been like if I had never gone into the Hunger Games.

"Oh, and I lost my cat today. Or maybe it was three days ago. I'm not really sure when he disappeared. It's not my cat really. I actually hated the thing, but it has been following me around for so long that now I kind of want it back," I finished.

The doctor didn't saying anything at first. Maybe he fell asleep. He has done that plenty of times before when we had our sessions.

"Why did you cut your hair, Katniss?" he finally asked.

This question startled me. It was not what I was expecting to hear. What was I actually expecting, I have no idea, but not that. Didn't Haymitch ask the same question a couple of minutes ago? He thought I was going to kill myself because I cut my hair. Did Dr. Aurelius think the same thing? Was I risk to myself? "Do you think I am going to kill myself too?" I asked.

"No. I don't think so. I think you are smarter than that. I think that if you ever wanted to kill yourself, it would have been right after your sister's death. Since you didn't do it then, then I am pretty sure you wouldn't do it now."

"But I did try to kill myself!" I then exclaimed, remembering something. "While I was being held hostage right after I killed Coin."

"You tried to, but no matter how hard you tried, you stopped yourself. I don't think you are going to kill yourself."

That's when I answered his question as truthfully as possible. I told him what was running through my head when I cut my hair. "I wanted to fix myself."

"Yes. I do believe you did. And what about Peeta?"

"I am not going to answer that," I replied harshly.

"Why not?" the doctor asked, still polite.

Why didn't I want to talk about Peeta, I asked myself. I could only think of one reason, and since lying didn't seem like it would get me anywhere, I told him the truth. "Because I can only talk about Peeta, truthfully, to a couple of people. Maybe the only person I can talk to about him completely is Haymitch. You are not one of those people."

Dr. Aurelius did not comment on this. Instead he said, "And what about the cat you hated?"

"What about it?" I replied.

"Why did you hate it?"

"Because it was the stupidest, meanest beast I have ever met."

"Why did you keep it in the first place?"

I choked back tears as I said, "It was Prim's."

We then dropped the subject. He told me that he wanted me to try to fix my sleeping patterns. He wanted me to sleep only a reasonable amount of time, and only at night. I didn't see how this was going to help me whatsoever, but I halfheartedly tried to do it anyways.

I hung up the phone after our short conversation. I didn't feel any better than before, but I decided to talk to him again anyways.