Song: Memphis by PJ Harvey

She must have passed out at some point, because when Iris opened her eyes again, she could breathe. There was a flurry of people around her, and she felt a lurch in her stomach that told her she was in a hovercraft that had just become airborne. There was something over her mouth and nose, a weight on her chest that wasn't Scorah, and she wheezed, trying not to breathe anymore. Couldn't they understand, she didn't want to anymore, she wanted to go with Agata and Kasia and Christopher -

A doctor to her left caught Iris' eye, holding something sharp, something pointy, something all too familiar. The syringe glinted in the artificial lights overhead. Iris could feel sand on her tongue as she tried to scream. I don't want it, whatever it is, she tried to say, but there must have been something in her throat too because she couldn't seem to speak, and all that emerged from her throat was a strange rasping sound.

There was a pinch in her arm and cool, peaceful bliss seeped into her veins. Iris felt her whole body relax and she let her eyes drift closed again.

/

There was a hand stroking Iris' hair. When she opened her eyes, the world was blurry, and someone drifted in and out of focus… someone with long brown hair and soft hands… "Mom," she croaked. Brown hair turned red and the person came into focus.

Pomponia leaned over her with a gasp. "You are awake! Oh, I've been so worried. We thought you were going to die."

"I won," Iris rasped. Agata had been right. Agata… Agata with her head in the trap, Agata with the dead scream in her throat, Agata, Agata, Agata…

She hadn't meant to sit up, but Pomponia pushed her down again, gentle but firm. "Shhhh," she said. "Sleep now."

Iris did.

/

It might have been a long time since she was last awake, or no time at all - Iris couldn't tell. There was a cloud in her head, and it made everything around her feel soft and pleasant. Her eyes felt dry, so she blinked - had she blinked? She couldn't tell if her eyes had actually closed. They felt so heavy, like they had been turned to stone.

There were people talking in the next room over, but Iris couldn't tell what they were saying. Maybe it was Agata. Iris remembered watching the hovercraft pluck Agata up as she tried to run away from it. Agata was a cat, and her hair had the most beautiful purple glow.

There was an aurora on the ceiling, just like the one she had seen last night. The dark blue and grey of the sterile hospital room turned to purple, and from purple turned to pink, and then orange. Kasia liked orange. Orange like a sunset. Maybe Iris liked that too. She'd never asked Christopher what his favourite colour was, but Iris knew that it was blue.

The voices came closer, and Pomponia's face drifted in and out of focus above her, merging with Haylee's. Someone took Iris' hand - she hadn't remembered lifting it, to try and touch the aurora - and placed it gently back onto the bed.

"You're alive," Haylee said, and her face seemed… strange. Like it didn't have an end point. It bled into the room around her like paint bleeding water. "That surprises me."

"Me too," said Iris, smiling. "I should still be there." Her eyes felt so heavy, and so she let them drift closed again. The aurora would still be there when she woke up, swimming with Agata and Kasia and Christopher and Scorah and all the children she had killed -

She let the aurora sweep her away.

/

It was the smell of food that woke her this time. Something savoury and delicious, something that wasn't beef jerky or a protein bar. Iris could feel her stomach eating itself, and she sat up, suddenly ravenous. Pomponia was no longer in the room, but an Avox entered, holding a tray of food which he placed on the table over Iris' bed. The sight of it distracted her from the dull ache in every inch of her body.

She looked down at the tray, ready to feast, and was disappointed. "Is this it?" she asked the Avox, who nodded, before leaving the room. Her first meal out of the arena, and it was less than what she and Jordie had eaten at home.

On the tray was a small, steaming bowl of broth, and another equally tiny bowl with some sort of sliced orange fruit. She noticed that they had not given her any utensils, except for a spoon. She supposed that it would be very difficult to harm herself with a spoon. How many Victors had tried to kill themselves for this to happen, she wondered?

Her stomach churned at the first small sip of broth, but Iris was too hungry to care. She emptied her bowl of every last drop before turning to the fruit, which she ate in under a minute, without even stopping to taste it. Unsatisfied, Iris leaned back against the headboard. She was still hungry. She'd thought that once she got out of the arena, they would let her eat all she wanted, but she was just as hungry as she'd been in there.

Just as she was thinking of the possible reasons why, Iris felt acid creep up the back of her throat, and she had only enough time to lean over the side of her bed before she vomited up every last morsel of her meagre meal. She coughed, and could feel tears prickling in the corners of her eyes. She didn't know why she was crying. It wasn't as though she'd never vomited before.

She looked around for water, but there was none. She wanted to get up and find some, but she knew that if she tried to stand, she would fall. Her legs - her whole body - felt impossibly weak. Just how long had she been withering away in bed for?

Two Avoxes hurried in with cleaning supplies, and Iris turned away from them, embarrassed. She felt like she should be cleaning her own mess, but she had a feeling that if she tried to, she would only get the Avoxes in trouble. She didn't know what she was meant to do now. So she stared at the wall, which was the same colour as the white floor, and the white bedsheets, and the white ceiling. Were they torturing her, leaving her here with nothing to do or see?

The most she could do was listen to the sounds of the hospital around her. She was rigged up to some sort of machine, and its beeps were strangely comforting. She could hear people walking in the hallway - doctors or nurses, she presumed. She wondered if she was the only one in this hospital. Did they have a separate hospital for victors? With how revered they were, she doubted that the Capitol would put them in a regular hospital.

It was strange, knowing that Iris, too, was now a Victor. She didn't feel that she'd earned the title, but did anyone? She had thought she wanted to win, but she wasn't sure anymore. Of course, she would be able to see Jordie again, but that meant he'd be saddled with her, that he'd have to deal with her now.

The door opened, and Iris sat up, quicker than she'd expected to. For a split second, she'd been sure she'd look up to see Minerva or Malachite or Scorah, ready with a knife to slit her throat. Instead, an ordinary-looking man (ordinary for the Capitol, anyway) standing at her bed with a clipboard. The only unusual thing about him was his neon green eyes.

"Ah!" he said. "Miss Paquin. You're awake."

"Can I have something else to eat?" Iris asked. Her voice felt raspy, acidic, and she longed for something to wash the taste of vomit from her mouth.

"I am Doctor Wade," he said, ignoring her question, offering a hand for her to shake.

She didn't take it. "Can I have some water, please?"

Dr Wade dropped his hand, clearly not embarrassed by her refusal to shake. She wanted him to be embarrassed. She wasn't sure why she hated him so much, but she wanted to make this man cry. "I will allow you to have a small amount of water, but I will not give you any food, seeing as you were not able to keep the first meal down."

"You want me to starve?" she spat. How dare they? How dare he? Force her to live through something like that and then not even give her food when she asked? The denial of water, though, seemed even crueller. Surely they had seen her wither away in dehydration.

Dr Wade shook his head. "You will not starve, Miss Paquin, we will simply continue to tube feed you while you still require morphling."

Horror rushed into Iris' body at the sound of that word. "M-morphling?" she asked.

"Well, yes. You were in quite bad shape, you nearly died, you know and when it began to wear off you became very distressed, and so I decided a small but constant dose would be enough to keep you comfortable."

"I'd rather suffer!" Iris yelled. Dr Wade took a step back, and she ripped the tube from her arm which she now knew contained morphling. She'd assumed it to be a drip of some sort, maybe antibiotics, but morphling? "You should have asked me first before you put that shit into my body!"

"A victor's medical team does not require consent before administering any kind of treatment. You are a ward of the Capitol, you know."

"Bullshit!" Iris shrieked. "I'm eighteen! It's my body! I should be able to decide what goes into it!" She picked up a pillow and threw it at the doctor, who was nonplussed. She wished for something to throw that would actually hurt him. "Fuck you, fuck you, fuck the lot of you!" She yanked the tube from her arm, ignoring the sharp sting as it came out.

She turned away from him and sobbed into her one remaining pillow. How dare they? How dare they force morphling into her… how dare they make her crave it, rely on it like she no doubt had over the last few days? Is that why she felt so sick?

She had sworn to Jordie that she would never use it. Sworn to him. And now that promise had been broken and she was going to end up just like her dad. Just like all the zombies she'd supplied to. Tears and snot dripped from her mouth and nose and her pillow became sodden. She could feel her hair sticking to the back of her neck as she sweated.

The vomiting, the headache… it wasn't because she'd just come out of the arena, like she'd thought. It was withdrawal symptoms, because they'd lowered the dose. They'd already made her crave it. She felt as though they had written her a death sentence.

She sobbed, and screamed, and cried, and suddenly Pomponia was there, wiping her hair off the back of her neck, rolling her over so she could breathe, cleaning up her face. "Shh," she said. "It will all be okay, Iris."

She pulled Iris to her and Iris continued to cry. "Nothing's ever going to be okay again," she mumble-sobbed into Pomponia's shoulder. She had killed all of those kids, had sentenced all three of her allies to death, and for what? So the Capitol could turn her into her father?

Pomponia stroked her hair. "Shh," she said softly, and Iris felt more comforted than she had for years. She used to only let her mom see her cry.

When Iris had cried all she could, she sat up, taking a deep, steadying breath. She didn't want to be the kind of person that couldn't handle life. She didn't want the Capitol to have made her cry. Pomponia handed her a small plastic cup of water, and she drank it greedily. "They don't even let me have a glass?"

"Well," Pomponia said gently, "Victors before you have found all sorts of ways to hurt themselves. Caution is taken where it can be."

Iris scoffed, turning the flimsy plastic cup over and over in her hands. "So they're worried about me killing myself with a glass of water, but they'll pump me full of poison anyway?" She slammed the cup onto the table beside her bed and folded her arms. "I hate it here."

Something that looked suspiciously like panic flashed through Pomponia's eyes. "I know you hate it in the hospital," she said, louder than was necessary, "but Dr Wade tells me you will be allowed to leave tomorrow. One more day of bed rest, and then you can leave."

"I hate Dr Wade."

"He is only trying to help you."

Iris didn't care if that was the case. She didn't want it to be the case. She just wanted everyone to leave her alone. "I don't want his help," Iris spat, balling the sheets tightly in her fists. "Not if he drugs me with morphling without my consent."

"Morphling is always used for surgeries, and you needed surgery, Iris. The risks are too high, performing surgery on an un-medicated person."

"I don't care. I'd rather be in pain than be high." She'd rather be dead than high.

Pomponia sighed. "You were not high, Iris. Just sedated."

Iris looked away from her. "If I wasn't high, then why did it feel so good?" she asked, dropping her voice to a whisper. She furiously fought back tears - she didn't want to waste any more time crying.

"Well," Pomponia said. "You woke up before it had fully worn off. Do you remember speaking to Haylee and myself?"

Iris closed her eyes. She faintly remembered Haylee's face drifting in front of hers, merging with Pomponia's, and the aurora on the ceiling. "Yes."

"You had just come out of a second surgery. You were not meant to wake up."

"But I did, and I liked how I felt," Iris said, feeling tears well up in her eyes again. She wasn't sure why she was talking to Pomponia about this - it wasn't as though she would ever truly understand where Iris was coming from, on the subject of drugs. She doubted the Capitol had as bad an issue as District Six. And if they did, surely it wouldn't be obvious.

Pomponia didn't say anything, She put a hand on Iris' arm. Her nails were long and bright yellow. Had she gotten them done like that as a nod to the sand in the arena?

Iris didn't want to talk about it any more. She wanted to pretend that she had never felt as she had when she was under the influence. She wanted to forget how pleasant, how easy it had made everything feel. How soft the world became. "Where is Haylee, anyway?"

"She has some responsibilities to take care of."

"Such as?" Iris probed.

"You will find out, now that you are a Victor," Pomponia said. Iris knew that there was something Pomponia wasn't telling her. "But now is not the time. Besides, as your mentor, she has many interviews to attend on the topic of your victory."

"I think you'd be better at that than Haylee. She never cared about me enough to help."

"Haylee has never brought home a victor before. Things with her will change, I'm sure."

"Oh, yeah, of course they will," Iris said sarcastically. "I'll believe it when I see it."

Pomponia sighed again. She seemed to be doing a lot of that. "I understand that you and Haylee had your differences, but I believe you should give her a chance. She was your mentor, after all."

"No, she wasn't. You were. You were the one who helped me with strategy, gave me advice. She spent her time getting drunk and avoiding me."

"That might be true, yes. But she did not want to give herself false hope. She has never brought a child home before. I am sure she tried, once upon a time."

"Whatever," Iris said. "I'm going back to sleep." She rolled onto her side, facing the wall away from Pomponia.

"I will be here," Pomponia said.

Iris would never have admitted it to her, but she was glad that her escort was there.

Typing like mad in an attempt not to scratch my new tattoo I hate this shit omg

So this chapter is definitely quite abstract in some parts, I hope it was okay. I will be experimenting a bit with how to write Iris while she's under the influence - I don't think I've ever written from the perspective of someone who is intoxicated/high before so it's going to be a bit of trial and error, I think. Although there will be a bit of time before Iris gets to the point she is in canon.

I always struggle a bit with post-Games chapters, so please feel free to give me constructive criticism on this!