Warning: These one-shots feature heavy subjects, including alcoholism, drug abuse, and torture... so far. Now adding: depression, cheating, heartbreak, underage, implied prostitution, suicidal thoughts, someone having acid thrown on them, anorexia, alcoholic hallucinosis. I'll add more as the story wears on, just in case.

Disclaimer: Credit goes to HannahSongla for the story idea. Please go check out her Hayniss story similar to this - Sweetheart. Credit goes to Suzanne Collins for the verse and the characters. I don't really own anything but the text of these one-shots. And no, that doesn't mean the song lyrics or the playlist. Enjoy c:

AN: I literally sped through my entire playlist just to get to this song. Not only do I love Florence and the Machine, but this is my favorite goddamn song. It took me 18 songs to get to this one, be damned if I don't make it perfect. Also, I hope I didn't offend anyone with this one. I thought I'd touch on something darker and yet twist it to something Haymitch would interpret it as. So no - I'm not making fun of mental disorders. I'm turning it from Haymitch's p.o.v while still remaining in third person. If this gets a lot of flame, I'll take it down and use another subject. But I really liked the idea of ModDay Hayniss in a mental institution, so don't flame please?

Song: Heavy In Your Arms by Florence and the Machine

I was a heavy heart to carry
My beloved was weighed down
My arms around his neck
My fingers laced to crown

Their love story was a story untold to man, a story of the girl with visible ribs and the man with liquid courage. They met in a mental institution, and that's how it all ended. If he hadn't been out of his room, wandering the floor, he would have never found her. To this day, he counted his lucky stars that he'd been hungry enough to go in seek of a snack. He'd found her sitting on the sill of a window, staring out into the world as if she knew all of it's greatest secrets and humming something dark and melancholy under her breath.

It soothed him so much that he closed his eyes and listened until the humming stopped and she inhaled shakily.

"Did you know that 57.7 million people in America suffer from a mental disease? I think that all of us do, and only 57.7 million people have addressed it," she had said loudly, before turning to look at him with eyes the color of a bullet between teeth. He stared at her, at the mess of a braid running down her back and the way her clothes seem to be four sizes too large for her. Then she cracked a wide smile, and it seemed as if it just stops raining outside. It slowed to small pitter patter and then ceased completely. He had stared at her incredulously. "I heard you sneaking up on me. You're not very quiet."

"I wasn't trying to be," he'd replied, sitting in one of the uncomfortable discarded chairs. He'd cracked his back and she'd flinched - the sound too much like brittle bones being crushed beneath a suffocating weight.

"I know that too," she had said. Immediately, she'd jumped from her spot on the windowsill and padded over to him. The way she walked seemed carefully plotted out - as if she were thinking about her next step before she even took it. It mesmerized him, for some reason. He fell in love with her then, but he didn't know it yet. It wasn't like Finnick and Annie - the two patients on the fourth floor with schizophrenia and a love stronger than he'd ever seen - because she didn't sneak up on him, not really. She jumped out at him at the same time he'd found her. And while it took him by surprise, it wasn't her sneaking. It was her seeing something she wanted and grabbing it, and it was him willingly tripping over his feet to follow her.

"How old are you kid?" he asked, shoving his hands into the stark white pockets of his itchy hospital issued clothing. She'd sat on the table he'd been sitting at, her too thin legs dangling over the edge of the table a bit and her eyes examining him - as if she was debating on whether or not to share with him.

"I'll be nineteen in... two months. May 8th."

"Geez. You looked twelve," he'd joked lightly, because being an asshole was all he knew and he was so confused on how to talk to this beautiful creature sitting in front of him. It was like trying to talk to someone with a whole different language, back when he'd first met her - it was difficult, frustrating and yet captivating and determination driving.

"Yeah, well, when you go without eating for almost three weeks, your body does that," she shrugged, but shadows the shape of demons covered her face and outside, the rain started up again. He'd swore on his life that this girls emotions control the weather. He'd hate to see what happens when she's pissed.

"Oh," he'd said lamely, because how does one reply to that? They don't, that's simple. A normal person doesn't even have conversations with an eighteen-year-old who knew the statistics of the people in America with mental disorders and who's emotions made the rain stop and pour. But he was far from normal back then, and he still was abnormal to this day. "Anorexia nervosa, right?" he asked instead, because fuck, what else could he say?

"Yeah. You?" she asked, her face losing some it's demon shadows. Outside the rain let up, and like that he was wrapped around her finger. Sometimes he looks back on that day and is grateful for the mild sedative that had yet to leave his veins. Grateful he hadn't been able to be enraged - grateful for his timing.

"Alcoholic hallucinosis," he replied, shaking his head in shame. He didn't know why he felt shame - because this girl with the bullet-between-teeth eyes and the clothes four sizes too large. She'd mulled over the diagnosis in her head, he could see the gears turning behind her eyes. Then she'd glanced at the windows and back at him, with a small sad smile.

"You're hallucinating right now," she'd said, pointing to the windows with a skeletal finger. He looked up at her with a confused frown and she swung her legs a bit, glancing at the wooden pattern of the tables and tracing them with the pad of her index finger. "It's not raining outside. And you've been talking about how my emotions control the rain for the past three minutes."

"I said that aloud?" he asks, before shaking his head and laughing bitterly. "Fuckin' shit." He'd wanted to get angry then, but the sedatives prevented him from doing so, and at that point he'd just been exhausted. He'd buried his face in his hands and squeezed his eyes shut, praying that she wasn't a fragment of his shattered imagination and that she was real, that this wasn't some fucked up nightmare.

"It's alright..." she frowned and picked up his wrist, glancing at the band quickly. He'd peered up at her, at the windows which were now glistening with a blistering sunlight. The room was suddenly too hot, the sky no longer filled with stars. "Mr. Haymitch Abernathy, aged 42, born February 3rd of 1973. It happens to the best of us." Haymitch had chuckled and picked up her wrist. He'd been so intent on reading her band that he'd missed that little glimmer of happiness in her bullet-between-teeth eyes.

"Why thank you, Miss Katniss Everdeen, born May 8th of 1997. Glad to know I'm not the only one." She had laughed again, and he'd actually smiled at her - not something induced by drugs or sedatives, but a real smile, coaxed from by this girl with the messy braid. It had been the first smile of many to come.

"So, alcoholic hallcinosis? How's that work?" she'd asked, stretching her legs in front of her on the large, round table. He'd leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes and recounting all of his 'symptoms', given to him by that shit-eating Doctor Aurelius.

"Well it starts with the tremors and the late night sweats. I'm usually pissed with anyone who crosses my path and sometimes," he leaned close and opened his eyes to look around the room shiftily. She'd been enthralled, afraid of what would come next. "I see dead people." They both had cackled at that, Katniss falling back too far and almost falling off the table in her laughter. Neither of them knew why it was so funny - maybe because they both knew finding joy in the little things was the only that would give them happiness anymore.

"Whoa there, sweetheart," he had said, grabbing her arm to steady her and keep her from taking a tumble. She had stared at him, the stars and the clouds trapped in her eyes as she squinted at him. His laughter had died too, a frown finding it's way into his brow again

"Say that again?" she had requested, her arm grabbing his bicep.

"Whoa there, sweetheart?" Haymitch asked, reveling in the warmth that flooded him at her touch. She'd nodded in satisfaction, leaning back on the table to stare out at the sunny window again. Her lips had curled into a sly smile and she'd closed her eyes in serenity.

"Yeah. I like that."

And is it worth the wait
All this killing time?
Are you strong enough to stand?
Protecting both your heart and mine?