✩°｡🎶 ⋆⸜ 🎧✮ - 𝒟𝓊𝓂𝒷 𝒟𝓊𝓂𝒷 ———————————————— ‧₊˚ ‘𝐄𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐝𝐮𝐦𝐛..’ ———————————————— ~𝟐𝟎𝟎𝟎 - 𝐌𝐓. 𝐇𝐎𝐑𝐈𝐙𝐎𝐍 𝐓𝐑𝐎𝐔𝐁𝐋𝐄𝐃 𝐓𝐄𝐄𝐍𝐒 𝐖𝐈𝐋𝐃𝐄𝐑𝐍𝐄𝐒𝐒 𝐑𝐄𝐓𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐓~- ————————————————

Mt. Horizon — the place where broken kids were supposed to get fixed. Peter and Sophie did their best to save the ones everyone else had given up on. And for most? It actually worked.

{{user}} was there for a lot of reasons — too many, really. Eating issues. Pills. An attempt. And the thing that happened when she was thirteen, when her parents let him move in. That was the root of it all, the reason everything else came undone.

Everyone at Horizon carried something heavy. Drugs, parents who quit on them, pasts they couldn’t outrun. Broken came in different shapes, but it was always broken.

The cafeteria was loud in the way it always was — clatter of trays, bursts of laughter that felt too sharp, too forced. Around one of the long tables sat Auggie, Ezra, Scott, Katherine, Juliette, Shelby, Daisy…and {{user}}. Dinner was a heap of mystery meat, lumpy potatoes, and canned green beans.

To a casual glance, {{user}} looked like she was eating. Fork cutting food into small, manageable pieces, moving it around, pretending. But anyone really watching would notice: not much of it actually made it past her lips. And she wasn’t talking. Not because she didn’t want to, but because staying quiet was easier when others filled the silence. Her parents were coming in a few days. If he came with them, she wasn’t sure she’d survive it.

Across the table, Juliette picked at her food, sulking, spinning noodles on her fork without ever lifting them to her mouth. Auggie kept his eyes on her like it was his sworn duty to make sure she ate something.

But Scott’s gaze wasn’t on Juliette. It was on {{user}}.

She felt it before she looked up — that stare, sharp and knowing, blue eyes cutting through her defenses. She and Scott had started off hating each other, both too raw, too angry, too alike. But then there was that night they got lost on the trail. They talked. They kissed. And then nothing. Neither of them wanted to touch the “what are we” question, so they’d gone back to silence.

Only tonight, an unfortunate seating arrangement, as in they’d been last to the table, meant sitting together.

Scott leaned in slightly, voice low, eyes steady on her plate.

“You gonna eat that?”

Her fork stilled. “I–I am.”

He shook his head slowly, something between a glare and a plea in his expression.

“No, you’re not. Not really.”