Have some fic!
This is likely to be the only non-AU (well, the only not OUTRIGHT AU) non-crossover Hunger Games story I write, but I had it pop into my head from one sentence when I was re-reading Mockingjay for the … somethingth time.
DISCLAIMER: Doesn’t belong to me, please don’t sue.
“Even Puppets Cry”
Caesar grew up in the Capital. There were some aspects to behavior that everyone did, and you just grew used to it. People were always looking for the next big thing, and would constantly try to outdo each other, particularly when it came to fashion. Some things weren’t going to change, and even at seven, he knew that. He didn’t know just how far those things went, though. The year he celebrated his seventh birthday, his parents decided he was old enough to watch The Hunger Games for the first time. He’d been begging for two years, ever since his friend Antony had told him about it, but his parents had maintained that five, and then six, was simply too young. He had managed to bargain them down from ten, no small victory. He was so excited he could barely sit still. He watched the Reapings and the Scoring and the Interviews. He just drank it all in.
And then the Games started, and his excitement turned to horror. These were children. One of them was only four years older than him. They were all younger than his older sister. Children only years older than him were fighting and killing each other. Why? Why were they doing this? Why this vicious bloodbath? It just didn’t make sense.
It was the first time he thought that, maybe, everyone was a puppet, and the Capital just liked to see people dance.
Caesar watched compulsively, after his parents were asleep. He couldn’t not watch. He knew it was irrational, but he was convinced that if he stopped watching, the Tributes would all die. The children in the Arena, fighting for a rebellion they hadn’t been born for, would all die. As long as he watched, maybe they would survive.
The rational part of the seven year old added on that as long as he watched, he could at least remember the deaths.
* * *
When Caesar Flickerman was 15, he decided to be instrumental in making the Hunger Games obsolete. After all, what kind of reasonable person actively wanted to see children, children his age and younger, kill each other until only one was left?
It turns out, quite a few people that he would have previously categorized as “reasonable”. He spoke out in zealous ideal to his classmates, only for his discussions to turn into recaps of the bloodiest deaths. He wrote papers about the morality of condemning children to die for entertainment, appealing to the better nature of his teachers, only to receive zeros on the assignments. He spoke to whomever would listen, because surely people would understand the social depravity that the Games represented.
No one seemed to understand. No one seemed to care. But Caesar refused to be deterred. He would find a way to put a stop to the abomination known as The Hunger Games. It couldn’t be allowed to continue, and one way or another, it would come to an end.
Somehow, he’d cut the puppets strings, and free the people he knew and respected.
* * *
When Caesar was twenty, even he had to acknowledge that the Games were there to stay, at least for the unknown future. If there were a reasonable hope that they could be stopped, he would have kept trying, but reasonable hope had long since abandoned him and after being threatened with a Disciplinary Complex … well, Caesar knew it was cowardly of him, but he just couldn’t keep fighting in the face of that threat, with the odds of winning as low as they were. No one wanted to go into a Disciplinary Complex. Everyone seemed to know someone who had gone into one, but no one knew someone who had come out, and people weren’t allowed contact with the people inside. Caesar didn’t want that, not for an ideal that only he seemed to have.
If he couldn’t stop the Games, he could do his best to help the children that were forced to participate. He would find a way to do that much. He might have failed at one goal, but he wouldn’t fail at this one.
He’d set out trying to break the bonds between puppet and master, and was discovering that, he, too, was a puppet. He was as easily controlled as the others. Some people’s strings were family. Some were money. His were cowardice, and that was a bitter pill to swallow.
* * *
When Caesar was twenty-two, he got his first real chance to help the Tributes. It was a great honour to be the new Interviewer for The Hunger Games. He had become very adept at suppressing his true feelings for the Games, and making people believe what they wanted to.
Caesar had always had a talent at bringing the best of people to the forefront, or the worst if that was what he chose. In spite of his radical ideas, he’d been nominated Class President all through his school career, because people knew that he would recognize people’s strengths and use them in the best way possible. He wasn’t the handsomest guy around, but he never wanted for a date because girls “liked how he made them feel”. He saw people in a way that apparently no one else did, and he knew how to make people see others the same way he did.
Shame he couldn’t do it about The Hunger Games itself, but he could do it for the Tributes, the children sent in to slaughter and die for something they could not control. He knew that few Districts felt bad for the Tributes from Districts 1-4, the Career Tributes were Careers, after all. But even Caesar, in the Capital itself, knew that a favored pet was still a pet, and would be beaten into submission if they ever disobeyed. He’d studied surreptitiously and knew that when a Tribute from a non-Career District won, the four Districts were penalized harshly for not presenting a winner.
If he couldn’t bring down the Games, he could at least help the Tributes. He could bring their strengths to everyone’s attention. He could make them people to the uncaring Capital. He could point out why they’d be good to sponsor and maybe keep them alive that way.
God willing, if such a Being was still out there and still listening, he could keep them alive that way.
He kept one alive that year. He’d only be able to keep one alive in any year. He could only hope that the best one won. Truthfully, he’d been hoping that tiny little blonde Maysilee Donner would be the Victor that year, but after seeing Haymitch Abernathy rush to Maysilee even after their partnership ended, Caesar was more than okay with the dark-haired boy winning that one.
One out of 24. Unacceptable. Over 600 children dead over the years of the Games (he knew because he had written down the names of every single Tribute, because he knew the truth that other people couldn’t seem to grasp: even the Victors are casualties of the Games). Unacceptable.
But Caesar was too much of a coward to continue trying to pull it down by himself, so he would continue doing what he could to make amends for his cowardice. He would make each child memorable, and maybe, in the process, cut another puppet’s strings somewhere.
* * *
When Caesar was forty-six, he interviewed Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark and he knew, somehow, that one of the two of them would be important. It was his job to get them whatever sponsorship he could, and he fully planned on doing it, because he knew that whichever of them won the Games, they would start tearing the system down.
He was wrong.
One of them by themselves would probably not have been able to. But both of them together were able to accomplish far more in a few weeks on camera to bring the Games to an end than he’d been able to in his entire life.
And now it was his job to keep them as safe as he could.
Once again, his skills as an interviewer came as a help. He was able to help them tell the story they needed to tell, able to draw out exactly what the two teenagers needed to say in order to not be killed because of their trick with the berries.
When Caesar Flickerman was forty-eight, the system changed forever. The Games were over. Too many people died. Almost 800 children were dead from the Games alone. More from the war. But the Games were over and a new order was being created.
He was no longer a puppet. Like Pinocchio, he had managed to become a real boy. And if he shed more tears when he no longer needed to fear the puppetmaster spying on him, no one needed to know.
But even puppets can cry. He certainly had.
DISCLAIMER: Doesn’t belong to me, please don’t sue.
“Even Puppets Cry”
Caesar grew up in the Capital. There were some aspects to behavior that everyone did, and you just grew used to it. People were always looking for the next big thing, and would constantly try to outdo each other, particularly when it came to fashion. Some things weren’t going to change, and even at seven, he knew that. He didn’t know just how far those things went, though. The year he celebrated his seventh birthday, his parents decided he was old enough to watch The Hunger Games for the first time. He’d been begging for two years, ever since his friend Antony had told him about it, but his parents had maintained that five, and then six, was simply too young. He had managed to bargain them down from ten, no small victory. He was so excited he could barely sit still. He watched the Reapings and the Scoring and the Interviews. He just drank it all in.
And then the Games started, and his excitement turned to horror. These were children. One of them was only four years older than him. They were all younger than his older sister. Children only years older than him were fighting and killing each other. Why? Why were they doing this? Why this vicious bloodbath? It just didn’t make sense.
It was the first time he thought that, maybe, everyone was a puppet, and the Capital just liked to see people dance.
Caesar watched compulsively, after his parents were asleep. He couldn’t not watch. He knew it was irrational, but he was convinced that if he stopped watching, the Tributes would all die. The children in the Arena, fighting for a rebellion they hadn’t been born for, would all die. As long as he watched, maybe they would survive.
The rational part of the seven year old added on that as long as he watched, he could at least remember the deaths.
* * *
When Caesar Flickerman was 15, he decided to be instrumental in making the Hunger Games obsolete. After all, what kind of reasonable person actively wanted to see children, children his age and younger, kill each other until only one was left?
It turns out, quite a few people that he would have previously categorized as “reasonable”. He spoke out in zealous ideal to his classmates, only for his discussions to turn into recaps of the bloodiest deaths. He wrote papers about the morality of condemning children to die for entertainment, appealing to the better nature of his teachers, only to receive zeros on the assignments. He spoke to whomever would listen, because surely people would understand the social depravity that the Games represented.
No one seemed to understand. No one seemed to care. But Caesar refused to be deterred. He would find a way to put a stop to the abomination known as The Hunger Games. It couldn’t be allowed to continue, and one way or another, it would come to an end.
Somehow, he’d cut the puppets strings, and free the people he knew and respected.
* * *
When Caesar was twenty, even he had to acknowledge that the Games were there to stay, at least for the unknown future. If there were a reasonable hope that they could be stopped, he would have kept trying, but reasonable hope had long since abandoned him and after being threatened with a Disciplinary Complex … well, Caesar knew it was cowardly of him, but he just couldn’t keep fighting in the face of that threat, with the odds of winning as low as they were. No one wanted to go into a Disciplinary Complex. Everyone seemed to know someone who had gone into one, but no one knew someone who had come out, and people weren’t allowed contact with the people inside. Caesar didn’t want that, not for an ideal that only he seemed to have.
If he couldn’t stop the Games, he could do his best to help the children that were forced to participate. He would find a way to do that much. He might have failed at one goal, but he wouldn’t fail at this one.
He’d set out trying to break the bonds between puppet and master, and was discovering that, he, too, was a puppet. He was as easily controlled as the others. Some people’s strings were family. Some were money. His were cowardice, and that was a bitter pill to swallow.
* * *
When Caesar was twenty-two, he got his first real chance to help the Tributes. It was a great honour to be the new Interviewer for The Hunger Games. He had become very adept at suppressing his true feelings for the Games, and making people believe what they wanted to.
Caesar had always had a talent at bringing the best of people to the forefront, or the worst if that was what he chose. In spite of his radical ideas, he’d been nominated Class President all through his school career, because people knew that he would recognize people’s strengths and use them in the best way possible. He wasn’t the handsomest guy around, but he never wanted for a date because girls “liked how he made them feel”. He saw people in a way that apparently no one else did, and he knew how to make people see others the same way he did.
Shame he couldn’t do it about The Hunger Games itself, but he could do it for the Tributes, the children sent in to slaughter and die for something they could not control. He knew that few Districts felt bad for the Tributes from Districts 1-4, the Career Tributes were Careers, after all. But even Caesar, in the Capital itself, knew that a favored pet was still a pet, and would be beaten into submission if they ever disobeyed. He’d studied surreptitiously and knew that when a Tribute from a non-Career District won, the four Districts were penalized harshly for not presenting a winner.
If he couldn’t bring down the Games, he could at least help the Tributes. He could bring their strengths to everyone’s attention. He could make them people to the uncaring Capital. He could point out why they’d be good to sponsor and maybe keep them alive that way.
God willing, if such a Being was still out there and still listening, he could keep them alive that way.
He kept one alive that year. He’d only be able to keep one alive in any year. He could only hope that the best one won. Truthfully, he’d been hoping that tiny little blonde Maysilee Donner would be the Victor that year, but after seeing Haymitch Abernathy rush to Maysilee even after their partnership ended, Caesar was more than okay with the dark-haired boy winning that one.
One out of 24. Unacceptable. Over 600 children dead over the years of the Games (he knew because he had written down the names of every single Tribute, because he knew the truth that other people couldn’t seem to grasp: even the Victors are casualties of the Games). Unacceptable.
But Caesar was too much of a coward to continue trying to pull it down by himself, so he would continue doing what he could to make amends for his cowardice. He would make each child memorable, and maybe, in the process, cut another puppet’s strings somewhere.
* * *
When Caesar was forty-six, he interviewed Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark and he knew, somehow, that one of the two of them would be important. It was his job to get them whatever sponsorship he could, and he fully planned on doing it, because he knew that whichever of them won the Games, they would start tearing the system down.
He was wrong.
One of them by themselves would probably not have been able to. But both of them together were able to accomplish far more in a few weeks on camera to bring the Games to an end than he’d been able to in his entire life.
And now it was his job to keep them as safe as he could.
Once again, his skills as an interviewer came as a help. He was able to help them tell the story they needed to tell, able to draw out exactly what the two teenagers needed to say in order to not be killed because of their trick with the berries.
When Caesar Flickerman was forty-eight, the system changed forever. The Games were over. Too many people died. Almost 800 children were dead from the Games alone. More from the war. But the Games were over and a new order was being created.
He was no longer a puppet. Like Pinocchio, he had managed to become a real boy. And if he shed more tears when he no longer needed to fear the puppetmaster spying on him, no one needed to know.
But even puppets can cry. He certainly had.