FanFic: Getting out.
Title: Getting Out
Author: ClassicFREAK
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: Remedial Chaos Theory, or you have no idea what's going on.
Disclaimer: Dan Harmon rules my worl with an iron fist.
Summary: Annie has had enough of acting like a little girl to get what she wants. She is Woman, hear her rationalize.
So she had a mild psychotic break, it's not like this hasn't happened to her before, but this one just kills her from the inside. She had remembered looking at Jeff with love in her eyes, then falling face first to kiss the ground, then nothing. The doctor's say she knows what happened, she's just using amnesia as a way of dealing with the pain of knowing what she's done.
The psych ward at this particular hospital is awful. She's already gotten passed the guards a few times, what she was bored and could be studying instead of twiddling her thumbs, so she snuck out of the hospital and was already halfway to the study room when she was stopped by Jeff who just grabbed her by the arm and threw her back into the cab she had taken from the hospital. Jeff, her normal knight on shining armor, had forced her into going back to boredom in the hopes that not studying will help her calm down enough to be able to officially check her out of the hospital, but that won't happen until she remembers what got her there in the first place.
It's not like she's not trying, though that's what the doctors are telling her. She's been getting bits and pieces of the story through the questions she's been able to ask the study group. What happened to your arm, are you drunk and where’s Pierce were all answered with silence. After her little talk with the group, which ended with her hyperventilating with grief when the flash backs started attacking her brain like a zombie. She remembered Jeff hitting his head off the ceiling fan, and standing up to help him. She remembers tripping over the rolling bolder from Abed's model and she even remembers the sound of her gun going off but everything else is a blurred mess.
Eventually she is able to squeeze more information out of the group. The story is a bit more clear in her head; Troy slamming the door had sent the ball rolling, Pierce's disgusting comment had made Jeff stand, her gun went off when she fell into the table, the bullet hit Pierce in the leg where it hit an artery, there was a lot of blood, and a lot of it went all over Shirley and her pies. She didn't quite understand why Troy had destroyed his throat, but she didn't understand a lot of the things that went through that crazy brain of his.
Annie finally knew the whole story, and though it's really hard to know that she had been the one to set Pierce's accidental death in motion, she could cope with it. Pierce had always liked her and she believed that he would forgive her because he knew that gun was for her safety. Though that won't bring him back, she knows that he is in a better place, probably disgusting people long dead with his stories about his conquests. Either way, she knows that what's done is done and nothing can change that. She's dealt with this kind of pain before, though not to this extent and it's definitely not the same thing as rehab for drug abuse, but she figures it's not that different. You have to understand your problem: Grief of being the cause of Pierces death. You have to understand that the past is now the past, that you can't change what's already happened. You have to understand that it will be with you for the rest of your life, but you can't let it take over your life. You have to make amends (and though he isn't alive to ask forgiveness, she figures that not forgetting him would amount to the same thing.)
She had been in the hospital for over a month and she was sick and tired of not being able to study or do anything. She was fine, she had dealt with everything, but they wouldn't let her out because they thought she was going to break again if she wasn't with someone, and though the group had visited her during her stay, only Jeff could see that she was getting better. The next time the group came to see her she was going to ask him to "take care of her" and by take care of her she meant get her the fuck out of there because she wasn't sure she wouldn't have a mental breakdown if she stayed here any longer.
Jeff turned out to be really easy to convince, sure, she had to move into his apartment, where she would probably have to help him learn to get around with his one arm, but that was nothing, especially because she's lost her apartment over Dildopolis when she first entered the hospital. Plus, she liked Jeff. Things wouldn't be too difficult, especially because he's too into his own pain to try to put the moves on her.
Getting out of the hospital, officially, felt like taking a long hot shower after a long and drawn out paintball game, like the first smells of a delicious dessert baking, like finding money in your pocket that you'd forgotten about. Getting out of the hospital was the best thing that was happening in her life at the moment and she was practically in tears of happiness because she could forget about the disgustingly boring food and the lights that were always on in the hallways. Sure, she was moving in with Jeff and she'd never lived with anyone other than her parents, but she was going to make this work because she didn't want to ever go back there.