Chapter Text
CHAPTER 22: FORWARDS, BECKON, REBOUND
villain and violent
infant and innocent
baby, both arms cradle you now
both arms cradle you now
——
Everything hurts. My arms, my sides, my throat, my head and my heart aches too.
I don't know where I am, and I don't know how I got here- wherever here is- but it's dark, slightly damp, all I can hear is a faint, high-pitched, electrical humming. My head is pounding, and I feel a mix of nausea and this strange pit-in-my-stomach sensation, and i'm not sure about the cause of the latter.
I'm laying down in a pale cot, my arms and stomach have been bandaged but they still burn like new, and my head feels funny; I hate it.
Someone is shouting somewhere nearby, with an urgent and panicked tone. I don't know what they're shouting about, but know it can't be good, and my instincts tell me to go in the other direction, as fast and as far as possible.
I pull myself out of the cot, shaking like a leaf, with legs like a fawn, and stumble my way to the wall closest to me. Using said wall, I slowly shuffle along it, until i find a doorknob. my heart is pounding even faster than my head, where am I?
I wrap my hand around the doorknob and twist, pushing the door forwards and running as fast as my weak legs will take me. I don't know where I'm running to, the sickeningly white lights are far too bright for my eyes to have adjusted yet, but i do know that i need to run, because I won't be able to hold my own in physical combat in my state.
I'm what i imagine to be halfway through the white room when a pair of man's arms grab me from behind and pull me toward his chest. I struggle, and scream, clawing at his arms with my fingernails, trying to break free, but his grip is too strong and I'm much too light headed to cause any actual damage.
"Calm down, calm down, it's me." he says. who's 'me?'
"Jasper?" I ask, turning around in his arms to face him.
His eyes soften, and he takes on that he's-going-to-be-sick-and/or-cry expression.
Finnick.
"No, Flora it's me, Finnick, you survived the games."
What? I won? how? where's Jasper? where am I? There's so many questions running through my mind that I start to feel a whole new level of nauseous that I didn't even think was possible.
"Where's Jasper? What happened?" Are the only things I manage to say.
Finnick's sickened expression is leaning more towards being about to cry, and when he opens his mouth, he struggles to get the words out.
"You don't remember, do you?" he asks, I think it's rhetorical because his grip on me tightens just in the slightest.
"Jasper is dead. You killed him."
No, I didn't, I could never- he was fine the last time I saw him, after we kissed and he went off to the feast- I couldn't have killed Jasper, Finnick's got to be lying, or joking- just with a really, really sick and disgusting sense of humour.
I let out this weird, strangled laugh sound that I didn't even know I could make.
"No, I didn't. You're lying."
"Flora... why would I lie about that?" Finnick practically whispers.
I'm still just staring at his face, trying to find any hint of a lie, any hint that he's just joking, but there is none. Except for the way his face twists into a fearful anger, and I feel a sharp stinging sensation in my neck, just as Finnick calls out,
"Wait!-"
--
I’m still not completely sure where I am, but I’m about 50% sure that it’s a Capitol hospital, just a different room.
I’m wearing this really long white shirt, and I don’t think they gave me pants, but there's a pathetic blanket covering my lower body, so I don’t really mind.
There's a bunch of tubes and wires in my arms, and my head is still weird and fuzzy, and I can’t completely remember what happened in the last few hours in the arena.
What I do know, from the little bits of information my brain has allowed me to remember, is that there was a gas set out onto the arena, to draw Jasper and me out of hiding; I killed Jasper, and then passed out from the gas after I won.
I’m not sure how long it’s been since then, but if I were to guess, it’d be a couple of days.
The doctors fixed both wounds on both of my arms, and they’ve scarred over quickly, and the gash on my side has healed.
It’s weird how quickly all of my wounds have healed. Normally something this bad would take a month or two, but I guess Capitol medicine does some weird shit that makes things heal quicker.
One thing about being stuck in a hospital bed, and not being able to think straight for however many days, is the fact that it’s incredibly lonely.
The only person I’ve seen in the time I’ve been here is a nurse, she’s a tall, dark-haired woman with kind green eyes. She doesn’t say a word to me, only comes in every so often to bring me food, change my bandages, or replace the bag attached to the tube on my arm. I haven't seen Finnick since the first time I woke up.
This room is quiet, theres no humming, no buzzing, no beeping, it’s just dead silent, and I hate it.
I can’t think straight, my head still hasn’t cleared from whatever it was in the air in the arena, so I find myself incredibly bored.
I mostly sleep all the time, there's nothing to do, and not much to think about other than the things that happened in the arena, and what I did to Jasper... But sleeping is okay, I manage to catch up on the rest that I missed. The sleep is definitely drug-induced, so it always leaves me feeling super groggy in the short periods that I'm awake, but I suppose any rest is good rest.
--
The gashes on my arms and side have healed fully by now, and the general nauseous and dizzy feeling has subsided, The nurse explained to me that the gas had chemicals in it that weren’t the best for me, which is why I’ve been dizzy and sick for the past- however long it’s been.
The nurse removes my bandages and the tubes from my arm, helps me get changed into a pair of tan cargo pants and a burgundy shirt; I can definitely get changed on my own, but I guess it’s some kind of mandatory requirement.
I’m given a few minutes on my own, before Perpetua comes in through the door, wearing a bright pink frilly dress, with navy blue lace.
“Flora, darling, I knew you would win!” She says, wrapping her arms around me- she smells sickeningly sweet, like fermented fruit. I know she didn’t think I would win, why would she? How did I even win?
“The other escorts didn’t believe me, but I told them, I told them you’d win, and look at you now!” She squeals, and her voice hurts my ears.
“Now, come, come, theres much to do.” She says, placing her hand on my back and guiding me forwards.
Perpetua talks the entire walk to the elevator, commenting on every aspect of the games, chattering away, making comments like, “oh, and I was utterly moved when you cried for that boy, what was his name? Reef?” And “The entire party gasped when the two of you kissed! It was so sweet!”
It’s such a culture shock. I already knew that the Capitol treated the Hunger Games like some sort of celebrity event, but I didn’t really realise the extent of it. Like how apparently Perpetua was in the bath when I got my birthday gift.
I’m kind of glad Perpetua is doing all the talking, even if it is entirely about how warm and comfortable she was the entire time I was freezing, starving and bleeding to death. I really don’t want to talk, not about Jasper, not about me, not about the arena, not about anything, I just don’t want to speak at all.
She finally shuts up when we reach the bottom floor of the hospital, and are warned about a crowd that’ll be there during the short trip to the transport .
I wasn’t expecting it to be that bad, but there’s so many people that their voices all blur into one, and the colourful outfits melt into a spotty rainbow of fabric and hair.
My eyes and my ears hurt the second we step out of the lobby door, The crowd closes in on us, but leaves a tiny corridor towards the transport vehicle.
Theres so many hands on me that I can’t count, touching my arms, touching my hair, touching anywhere they can reach, I want to scream, I want to tell them to piss off, or hit them, or claw their eyes out with my fingernails but I’m just too tired, so I keep my head down as I walk as fast as possible to get to the vehicle.
Perpetua hops in next to me and starts talking again, but this time it’s partially not about the games.
“So, as you probably know, you’ll be very busy tomorrow evening. Our beloved president will personally congratulate you, and then Caesar Flickerman will interview you, just ask you about the games and so forth, and then afterwards there will be a Victor’s party, just for you, my dear.”
That all sounds horrible, I just want to go home, or just go back to sleep. I don’t want to meet the president and I certainly don’t want to do an interview, and to top it all off I’d rather tear my hair out strand by strand than go to a victory party.
It’s as though the Capitol can’t get enough of torturing me, like the Games weren’t enough of a punishment so they have to rub salt in the gaping, festering wound and make me relive it a hundred times.
The car ride is short, just straight to tribute housing, which is exactly the same as before the games.. just a lot quieter, the door to Yarrow’s room is open when I walk past, and the sheets are stripped off of the bed and folded on top, almost like he was never there.
I don’t eat dinner, or try to find Finnick, I just head straight to my room and go to bed.
It takes me ages to get to sleep, I guess it’s because most of my rest for the past however long has been drug induced. When I close my eyes all I see is Yarrow and Reef and the girl from District 6, and Jasper, and then Pa and Archer, but then when I open my eyes, my mind paints faces in the dark. I find myself crying, but then after a while manage to count myself to sleep.