The Fisher King and the Princess of Silence

Author: Howlynn
Realm: The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins
Story Title: The Fisher King and the Princess of Silence
Summary: They were dead to the world. They were nobody. They were monsters. What happens in the realm of the Fisher King as he finds out that his past may have no wish to be in his future? His Grail may be lost for all time.
Character/Relationships: Finnick Odair, Prim Everdeen and Cinna in madness.

I Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.

Author notes: I know I should not begin a new story when I have so many going now. But, I really wanted to try my new computer and my updated software – you have not lived until you work on a laptop without a U key and still think MS '95 is too good to give up.(yes, I have software older than some of you brilliant little sweethearts out there) Wow 2010 has pictures rather than menus within menus. I won't keep boring you with my joy, but if you like this story and you give it a ton of reviews – we shall play out the alive people story – if it gets zippo for lack of lemon in the Tea, I will keep at the THE LIE, THE MOCKINGJAY AND THE CHAMELEON(bonus material), and PLEASURE TO BURN.

Warning: may contain any of the following ingredients –(ugly people, language. Spoilers, Sexual discussion, ghosts, Malice, reference to past violence, sadness, dead characters being discussed, alcohol use, caffeine use, unintended exhibitionism, disfigurement, pain, hate, Avarice, sloth, naked people, medical procedure torture, reference to possible non-consent and prostitution No, nothing like my normal menu!) If you have any allergies to these subjects, please take appropriate measures for your maturity level. Side effects may include but not be limited to: useless searching for the hottie parts, watering of the eyes, grouchiness, eye strain from trying to read between the lines and unwanted oral or nasal leakage.


This is a terrible place full of sorrow and kindness. It will be better when they come. It will be explained then to him and all will be better. He will have a life someday, when they come for him and explain who he is. For now he is Bly, Pirate of the Restoration Center. He is the man who waits without a face. He is a Pirate King, a Fisher King, The King of Hope, The Seeker of the Grail. He is nobody.

They will come. He doesn't know who they are, but he hopes for them. He pretends sometimes that they are good people who love him on the days he hopes for a place out there. He only pretends. It is a nice dream to imagine that something beyond these walls could look upon him, much less love him. At night, when truth must be told and the fear the dark rules his kingdom, he knows that nobody is ever coming for him.

They might be dead. It might be, all his people are gone and that is why nobody has searched for him. It might be some unpleasant answer. Maybe he is a bad person and knowledge will lead to trouble. He feels like he was a bad man, wherever he came from. Only a bad man could have ended up covered in wounds, partially eaten, and left to die in a sewer. They told him the eye was too far gone to be rescued, but the rats had left him one at least. Missing the eye, most of one leg and any feeling in his left arm, was not the most terrible part. Even his memory being no more than surgery, pain and endless questions without any answers is not the worst part. The bad part, for him, is that everyone is terrified of him.

He is sickened by the image of the monster he sees when they allow him to see the results of his latest graft or surgery. He didn't blame them for being afraid. He would be afraid too if those who lived here were not all the forgotten monsters of a war he could not recall. Some of them, those who could still speak, would tell him terrible things about life out there in the beyond and the yesterday of his lost years. Some had family who came to collect them once they were put back together. They were embraced and herded out to a new fresh someday. He didn't have the ability to cry anymore, but his heart longed for a someday, someday. Maybe, if he believed hard enough, it could happen.

Life was not all terrible. He still had his voice, even if his speech was garbled and he could see and still move around. There were many people who looked forward to being near him. He may have lost some unknown past, but maybe it was easier then what they faced. The burned ones had a harder time. They are as hideous as he is, but they knew things that hurt worse than his own lot. They remembered being normal. They remembered the before times and it was almost worse for them than anyone.

Some of them had names that were real, not made up by staff. Some of them had hope for someday, but it made now hard. As time passed, the ones with a someday ahead trickled away, leaving more and more nobodies like him. He made a special effort to offer the hope of his lies and good natured antics to the other nobodies. It was his mission to make his world, for he claimed the green halls and shiny floors as his kingdom, a little better. Each day, each hopeless endless day, the Fisher King awakes in the morning with purpose. A lopsided smile here or a giggle there were his wealth and glory.

There were so many here, who had nobody to talk to. He made the best nobody in the world, because as they would tell their story, he could imagine it was his too. He discovered that he could read and for those who no longer had sight, he would slowly read the books of the old ones to the young patients and let them live a moment of dancing in the sun or a dream of adventure. They let him remember, while he helped them forget that terrible things had happened in the world.

His voice moved upon the pages with care, though they were used to his prosthetic lips getting in the way of sound more than mastering it, he tried to make each word clear in case he had a someday, somewhere out there searching for him. He would be the best he could be, just in case something could love a monster.

The staff did love him. He was almost too good to be true. He could look into someone's soul, with his one green eye and find a way to make even a normal love him. Even though his head was an oozing glob of ugly, so shocking it would have made people run screaming if he'd been on the public streets of the capitol, somehow after a few days, his eye stopped being repulsive as it wept it's drops of synthetic tears he had to administer every few moments to keep his vision from being stolen by the dryness that came from loss of tear ducts. Even ugly did not hide that he was special. One moment those around him spoke to a monster, and suddenly they only saw a friend. He was damaged beyond total repair, he would never look normal, but they did hope that eventually they could give him some measure of life. If only they could help him remember his name, there might be a chance that someone he knows survived the rebellion.

They had published his description and approximate age, just as they had for each of the unknown victims in the beginning. Some patients simply had nobody left, while others either were abandoned by all or were no longer recognizable to anyone. They had hoped to match DNA files but as the capitol fell, many records were destroyed or were uselessly garbled in script error safety bombs, making them unreadable. The whole world was being built again, and these people were the last care on many people's mind. Mostly they were capitol citizens who were the most damaged, but the burn ward was full of children who had been in the wrong place as the Mockingjay made her last stand. The parents of these children died fighting with or running from one side or the other and it wasn't even worth sorting out any longer.

The Capitol was under new management. The Mockingjay was insane. The old ways were in the past and everyone was broken hearted by the losses. There were new stars rising as old ones were honored in death or faded from the minds of the hopeful new world. This place was peaceful in battle. The wars fought here took more bravery and soul than anyone could imagine. The staff fought to do painful things to bring the end of suffering, with skill and calm demeanor. The patients tried to suffer each indignity of the day without wishing that this hell could end every single second. When nobody died on the ward that day, it was a battle won.

The King felt tired as he made his last stops of the day. He looked forward to his tubing because he was feeling empty. He had no lower jaw when he'd arrived and even now, he preferred the tube feedings to the painful attempt to chew actual food. Soon they would insist he eat again, but for now, the simple ease of nourishment dumped into his stomach was as pleasurable to him as the sugar one nurse slipped him for his tea when she could. He did crave sweet things and he had an uncontrollable urge to steal sugar cubes when they were offered to the little ones with medicine dripped on them.

He had brought gifts to some, from his little trip out into the courtyard with his attendant today. For Pencils in Kok23 he had brought him three pretty leaves. The man was crazy but could draw anything, when he wasn't screaming. To Harper over in Jnd6 he had found a pretty bit of gravel to add to his collection. A larger stone went to a lady who spent her day balancing stones in strange stacks to keep her mind off her lost children and her lost legs. She was nearly ready to be fitted with new legs, but she had only begun speaking again a few weeks ago, so her eligibility had been delayed until it could be determined that they would be of benefit to her.

His greatest prize was for the one everyone called Princess. She was another nobody, but she has had a terrible time. She lost her sight in the blast as well as her hearing. Her skin had been charred and melted. Even her nasal cartilage had melted and as she sucked the flame down her throat, her vocal cords had been forever damaged. Unable to hear, speak or see, there was no way to explain the pain, where she was, or even what had happened. She was isolated and terrified of something more than could be understood. She had somehow begun to understand the routines of her world and relax a little. She had been found in a morgue pile on the third day after the fall of Snow. They had no idea how she had been missed, yet her rescuers cried for the mercy of her death, seeing how very little life was left in her tiny frame.

Princess is burned on 70% of her body and she should have no ability to fight. Yet she did fight. Maybe that was why she had caught his pirate eye and he'd searched so hard for a way to comfort her. Nobody was as alone as she was. They had pulled her chary boots off her little feet to find them undamaged by all the horror. That was where he had begun. He had held her foot and patted it, caressed it and rubbed it in comfort.

He knew she looked forward to his visits because she would sigh and for as long as he would pet her little feet, she would be still. Someone touching her in a way that did not end in excruciation pain was all she lived for, for weeks. They had developed a style of communication that grew more complex each day. If she snapped her jaw open and closed in tiny nibbles, she was thirsty. An airy Haaahaaahaaa sound meant don't stop, rub my feet more. If she nodded, she was hungry and if she nodded and wiggled her toe, she wanted Him. The nurses would come get him and she often could convey to him, what they did not understand.

This had once been the premier center of beauty and modification in the capital city. The Capitol is different now. There is no longer a staff of nearly 2000 doctors available to do full body polishing or erase every tiny scar existing on the human body. There are no longer two thousand doctors in the whole city. They have seeped away from the glitz and found more honorable craft simply saving lives and being doctors instead of pawns of beauty and fashion. They operate on a need basis now. No extensive rebuilds are to be performed and no unnecessary procedures will occur until survival is established. It is a rougher place than what some of the people were accustom to. Once people went to sleep and awoke in perfect health and beautiful.

Once all could be perfect, now alive was considered fashionable enough. She was out of the woods finally. Tomorrow they intended to restore her hearing. They hoped to fix her eyes someday as well, but that could wait. Her ears were considered a minor procedure, and would be combined with yet another grafting. Her face would be a little less terrible after today as well, for they could finally remove the facial halo that had kept her skull in place since her face had been pulverized during her injury. They had wished they had pictures of her. They gave her a bit if paper and a marker. She had written P – R – I – N. She has been called Princess by all since that day.

He reaches out and slides his hand under her sheet, softly playing piggy with her toes in their normal ritual. She reaches for him with her newly bandage free fingers and he takes her hand and pats it, brings it to his rubbery lips and kisses her fingers. She made her hissing sound and wiggled her fingers at him. Instead of more kisses, he places his gift into her hand.

She held it to her face and sighs in joy. The scent is strong in this odorless place of nothing. She swallows and swallows. He knows he has pleased her. He could not wait to speak to her and know she could hear him. He would read to her and help her pass the time. Someday they would make her lovely again and she would have normal. For this moment she had him, and he had her and it was nice to know the gentle touch of a friend. Princess did not fear her Fisher King. At least she didn't' fear him yet. For now, he was as beautiful as the scent of the purple hyacinth he had found in bloom in the old formal garden going to wild without its team of fussy slaves.

He forced his lips to smile and she did her best to return it as her little soft fingers touched his strange feeling mouth. Taptaptap and she points at the flower, ' Give my flower a drink King of Smiles.'

"Of course I will, Princess. Your wish is my wish and someday will come. Today I am slave to your flowers." He says sweetly just as if she could hear him.


Let me know what you think - - zee squeeky wheel gets zee grease -zee story with zee most whine gets zee cheese - where you lead I shall follow -

Blink blink Flash Flash and all that other CB trash - Call me Howlynn - my doors are shiny how's my windshield? Keep that bubble gum on the run and may all your coops light the big word...

(hehehe - I will translate on a future chapter - care to give it a try?)