Equilibrium

“I really want to grab you by the back of your neck and slam your face into the table,” I said, staring across the table. I was in a cold metal chair, dress in the typical blue fabric that all members of District Thirteen wore. My hair was in a wavy mess, air-drying from the shower I had that morning. The shower helped wash away the nightmares that came at night, but it didn’t help the ones I faced during the day. “I want to talk to Coin, and I want to know what the fuck she is doing to save my brother and Mags.”

Dr. Marlin was complacent across from me. I hated him. I tried not to and some days, I succeeded. Today was one of the days where he was the enemy, subjecting me to questions and suggestions on how to deal with rage and my nightmares. The problem was that he saw everything from the point of view of a physician, not a victim.

It had been two weeks since my residency in District Thirteen. Five times I had thought about ways to burn down the entire compound. Six times I had imagined throwing my parents against the wall to punish them for losing my brother. Twice I had come up with an entire plan to take down Coin and place someone else competent in charge. Thirteen times, Finnick had talked me down.

Finnick, who I was being forced to spend time away from. Against our wishes, they placed us in different parts of the living spaces, two completely different floors. Everyone was insisting it was healthy to have us apart, that we had become codependent on one another. I couldn’t see why this was a bad thing, but Dr. Marlin insisted it wasn’t a good thing.

According to Dr. Marlin, a codependent relationship is some sort of affliction in which a person becomes almost addicted to a relationship. But what he described wasn’t Finnick and I at all. We didn’t hold on to a relationship for fear of abandonment, or fear being alone. I didn’t have problems with boundaries around him and I didn’t need constant recognition from Finnick, ever.

What everyone seems to not grasp is the simple fact: Finnick and I loved one another on a level of intimacy that didn’t make sense. When I loved him, I also loved myself because I knew that he loved me. It was circle reasoning, maybe. But I wasn’t crazy. What I was, was mad because I knew that he wasn’t okay. I was mad because he was hurting, and I knew first hand what it felt like.

That wasn’t codependency. It was simple worry.

“Interesting language you have,” Dr. Marlin said, writing something down. “Where did you learn archaic curse words?”

It would be easy to smash his face in the desk. I could jump over the table, grab him by the collar with one hand and use the other to grip the back of his head. With a yank of the collar and the shove from the back of the head, his forehead would hit the metal table hard enough to cause extreme disorientation. It would be easy, quick.

“Finnick says them, I don’t know.” He raised his brows and wrote something else down. I tightened my fists, trying not to get angry with him. I knew that look. Whenever I said something in relationship to Finnick, an impossible look of annoyance came over his face. “That isn’t a part of the codependency.”

“Isn’t it?”

“No. That’s a part of what’s called a relationship, where you pick up traits of one another. I bite my nails like my mother but I don’t see you listing that as a codependent symptom.”

“You seem particularly interested in proving the diagnosis incorrect. Could it be because you yourself are worried that the relationship isn’t healthy?”

For a moment, I didn’t see Dr. Marlin. I was staring at a young Finnick standing on my front porch, looking at me with those eyes of his and smirking. He had been leaning against the railing, trying to convince me to come eat dinner with him. He promised to fry yellow snapper and make a seaweed salad with lemon and vinegar, my favorite.

“Stop trying to invalidate my relationship with Finnick,” I warned. It was the darkest voice I could put on, the kind that was supposed to set off Dr. Marlin’s warning receptors.

“But you are trying so hard to validate it.”

All I could see was red. I was barely aware that I leapt across the table, catching him at the collar of his shirt. I yanked him towards me, slamming my head into his face. Instantly I tasted metal in my mouth as I grabbled for him. His hands were on me as well as someone else’s. I was yanked away from him viciously as I yelled obscenities at him, cursing him to whatever damnation he believed in.

There was a sharp pinch in my shoulder and I instantly felt as though there was liquid fire running through my veins. My tongue grew heavy and I felt myself fall down as my eyes rolled back into my head and then I was swallowed by the nothingness.

*

Coming to, I realized I was tied to a chair. I felt groggy, my neck extremely stiff and my shoulders in tight, knotted pain. I looked around the room. It was empty and solid, the only thing in it being I on a metal chair. Thick ropes were tied across my chest, waist and feet. My hands were also bound tightly behind my back.

This was the third time I had been sent to isolation. That’s what they started calling it. It was empty rooms they used when they had extra people in the sick bay. Normally they would fill it with a cot, medical tables and supplies. But for people like me, who were causing problems, they used it as isolation until we were ready to come back out.

There were still scars on my wrist to remind me I couldn’t wiggle my way out of the ropes. Whoever tied them tied them well each and every time. The best thing to do was to wait out my time and try and find something to occupy myself with.

The very first time it happened, all I could do was fight and scream. I was panicking, not sure why I was tied or what had happened. It made me think that I had been taken to the Capitol, that I was waiting for interrogation or torture. I tried to escape so many times that I had made my wrists bleed raw; they were still healing, somewhat.

I had learned that the best way to deal with being in isolation was to calm myself down and to figure out a way to stop coming here. It was hard, though. Anger came to me so quickly and with such a raw power that I couldn’t fight it much less realize how quickly I was giving into it.

Anger was my most fluid emotion. From the moment I had discovered my brother was taken, there were no barriers between anger and my conscious. It was like I had no thinking pattern to filter through the emotion, no time to filter or funnel it into a cooling chamber. It was just red hot.

Dr. Marlin called these triggers. They were all different and they had different results. So far in two weeks I had discovered two types of triggers with two different emotions: violent triggers that result in my unavoidable attacking a subject, or my protection triggers in which I freaked out and dragged whoever was near me behind me in order to protect them. Both were equally bizarre and cause unease through the people in thirteen.

The sound of the door opening startled me. I looked up, wondering whom it was. Gale Hawthorne stood in front of me, looking at me with surprise. He was dressed in the traditional blue clothing of district thirteen. He was extremely tall with brown hair and blue eyes that were eerily similar to Finnick’s. He was extremely handsome, for someone from the Seam.

“Sorry, I thought someone else was in here.”

“Katniss?” I offered, raising my brows and relaxing against the chair. He hesitated before nodding and laughing awkwardly, scratching the back of his head. “No, I’m afraid you’ve got the wrong psycho today..”

“You think you're psycho?”

“Well I’m certainly not totally normal, am I? I end up in here all the time and I’ve got the habit of completely losing it.” I shifted, trying to get comfortable in the chair. Gale leaned against the wall casually, shoving his hands in his pocket. “So maybe I’m not all the way there, but pretty close.”

“Well maybe admitting it is the firs step. How crazy can you be if you don’t deny it.”

I grinned. “I never thought about it that way. Katniss is down two more doors. I think I heard her yelling in there earlier.”

“Thanks, Lana.”

I nodded. “No problem. Thanks for the encouragement.”

Gale shut the door behind him. For the first time since being in thirteen, I felt as though someone had said something that actually made sense.