oOo
Demetrius tries to follow in his father's footsteps. But as his father knew but didn't truly understand, he's incompetent.
And thus quickly deposed by others seeking power.
The infighting in the Capitol goes on for months, with everyone with any urge for power jockeying for control. Hippolyta Snow's grandfather kept power too close, too tight - after all, he was president for almost fifty years and made sure no one else rose high enough to meet him, let alone surpass him.
After her uncle is assassinated, her mother is killed as well, and Lyta herself is turned into an Avox. The current president won't allow remnants of the old ruling family to threaten her reign. It doesn't help her keep her position; she's forced out only three months after she takes charge, when the rumors grow enough that an angry mob demands her head.
But those who follow her have the same philosophy.
Lyta learns quickly. How to serve, how to sign, what's expected. She already knew how to pretend she was fine even when she wasn't, but she perfects that skill. And, perhaps most importantly, she learns the true depths to which Panem can sink.
Lyta is threatened, beaten, treated like she's nothing.
Raped.
When the newest president, Panem's fifth in one year, grins a cruel smile at the mute young woman trapped on the bed underneath him, she hates Panem - and her grandfather - with everything she is.
Does anyone deserve this? Does anyone deserve to die, in the Hunger Games or in any of the other myriad ways the Capitol can cause their deaths? Does anyone deserve slavery?
Would Panem have been better if Katniss Everdeen's revolution had succeeded?
Lyta's pretty damn sure it wouldn't have been worse.
oOo
After it's all over, 87 becomes known as the Year of Seven Presidents.
Finnick Odair personally takes down at least four of them, plus countless others who never reach the top.
A whisper here, a nudge there, and he reduces the field, removing those who would be the most harmful. It's his first true chance to play politics, and he's good at it. Besides, he knows far more about the Capitol than they realize, and he uses every bit of it to steer the Capitol in his preferred direction. More secrets come out that year than anyone realized existed, and it throws Panem into chaos in a way that hasn't been seen since the death of Katniss Everdeen.
Snow, for all his horribleness, easily kept the government in line. He was ruthless - had he been in the Hunger Games, Finnick has no doubt he would have won.
No one else in the Capitol can compare.
Finnick uses his own ruthlessness, whatever it was that allowed him to kill five children and survive an Arena at the age of fourteen, to get what he wants. Not president; he doesn't want to be in charge of an entire country. But being the one behind the throne… well, if it'll let him and Annie marry and get him out of the sex slave business, that's worth it.
When someone Finnick is willing to live with finally takes the reins of power - Claudius Templesmith, of all people - Finnick demands a meeting and points out that he knows about the 'tragic accident' the man's father suffered, but he won't tell anyone else if Claudius only does what he wants.
"And w-what do, do you w-want?"
Finnick smiles. "Well, you see, I'm ready to settle down. Start a family. All I want is some time with my fiancée." He tilts his head as though he's just thought of something. "Oh. And this whole buying of Victors? I think it's time to end that little custom, don't you?"
"They'll kill me!" Claudius protests.
"Not if you do it slowly." Finnick leans in. His smile is no longer a smile so much as a baring of teeth. "Certainly, it's possible someone might kill you. But if you don't do it, someone definitely will."
Claudius gives in, just as Finnick knew he would. Snow wouldn't have. Most of the people who wanted to take over from Snow wouldn't have. Claudius Templesmith doesn't have the backbone.
Which is exactly why Finnick allowed him to win.
oOo
Cressida and her crew are among the first people put on Plutarch Heavensbee's new project, an event called the Olympics - named after some old sports competition Plutarch read about in a book somewhere. She's surprised; she didn't realize there even were books left from before the Cataclysm.
Anyway, it's a lot more fun and a lot less harrowing than anything else she's had to film. Interviews with the Hunger Games tributes' families are a special kind of terrible, and everything with the Victors always makes her feel like they'd kill her as soon as look at her. Other Capitol programming - fashion shows, news reports - is like dealing with a bunch of hummingbirds. She's done it, sure, and she'll keep doing it. But it's good to have a change.
For whatever reason, Plutarch's named the events of this new Olympics thing after the Victors. So there's the Katniss Everdeen Archery Competition, the Johanna Mason Axe-Throwing Contest, and the Finnick Odair Fish Spearing Challenge. But there's also the Peeta Mellark Cake Decorating Contest, the Beetee Latier Robot-Building Challenge, and the Prairy Jackson Game of Hide-and-Seek.
There's something incredibly morbid about the whole thing.
But on the other hand, no one actually dies. No one's even really injured. It's all tests of skill, and the worst thing that happens is maybe a few bruises.
Cressida finds herself enjoying it. She'd never quite been able to stop thinking of the tributes as real people, something she knows is considered a failing in the Capitol. But this? Volunteers having fun and her getting to film it all?
She's having the time of her life.
oOo
Romulus Thread retires when he's almost sixty. He's given Panem forty good years of service, and he'd give it more, but he's slowing down enough that he's no longer as capable as he once was, and that could be dangerous. He's not a young man anymore.
Twelve's been an easier posting over the last fifteen years, since Katniss Everdeen was killed. Oh, her death was presented as an accident, but as the Head Peacekeeper of District Twelve, President Snow enlisted his help in making sure it happened. A little bit of paralyzing mist, and the girl couldn't move when they set the mutts on her. Just as well she took the bait and went beyond the fence when she really shouldn't have.
She deserved it. She was getting ready to destroy Panem, and if Romulus is one thing, it's a patriot.
And it worked. Twelve is much better now. Calmer. Since the fence is always on, his Peacekeepers don't have to guard it so zealously. The mine explosion killed most of the ringleaders, so there's no rebellion. The black market's gone. In short, it's a peaceful place, where the biggest problem is the gossip. He'll be ecstatic if he never has to hear another rumor that Twelve's Mayor and Victor are shacking up.
They aren't. Mayor Undersee made sure to assure him that she and Mellark were only friends the first time the rumor went around. Fifteen years after the girl's death, and the man is still in love with Katniss Everdeen.
What an idiot.
When Romulus leaves Twelve, he returns to Two. It doesn't feel like home anymore; he hasn't been back for anything but short visits since he was nineteen and began his service. But it's what he has. No wife, no kids - service is everything. Panem is everything.
He takes a position at the Peacekeeper training school, teaching the next generation how to serve their country.
It's enough. It'll have to be enough.
oOo
When Thread finally retires, Twelve breathes a sigh of relief.
Their new Head Peacekeeper is promoted from within the ranks of Twelve's current Peacekeepers, a woman named Purnia Freeman who's been around for a long time. She's much less rigid than Thread - she knows the law, but she also knows when it's best not to enforce it too hard.
If we have to be stuck with Peacekeepers at all, she's not a bad sort, Thom thinks. She's someone we can work with.
And apparently the directives from the Capitol are also getting more permissive. Head Freeman actually comes to Thom - now foreman of the mine - and asks him to meet with her, Peeta Mellark, Greasy Sae, and Mayor Undersee to discuss setting up a new market. Not where the Hob used to be, but it'll serve the same purpose.
When he asks about it, she shrugs. "President Templesmith's a lot more…"
"Easygoing?" Mayor Undersee supplies. She would know.
Head Freeman points at her. "Yes. He's a lot more easygoing than President Snow was."
Mellark nods. "We've all got it easier."
"Not our tributes, boy," Sae puts in.
He gives her a sickly smile. "I try."
Mayor Undersee pats his arm. "I know you do. We all know you do."
Huh. Thom doesn't seriously think they're together, but there's clearly some basis for the rumors. Well, it'll do 'em both good. In their thirties both, and neither's ever married. Thom's only a couple years older than them, and his eldest's already fourteen. They've got a lot of catching up to do.
Plus it'd be good if Mellark finally got over Everdeen. Girl might've been the love of his life, but she's been dead sixteen years. Even Twelve barely remembers her.
Head Freeman clears her throat to get their attention, and Thom pushes his mind back to the plans for a new market. It'll be good for Twelve, and that's what matters.
oOo
Claudius Templesmith sometimes wishes he'd never become president of Panem.
Oh, he loves the ceremonial aspects of his job. The attention is amazing.
Actually having to make decisions is…
Difficult.
Especially since there are so many people clamoring for his thoughts, his opinion, his decisions. And there's always the constant specter of Finnick Odair and that ruthless smile telling him which way he has to go.
Claudius doesn't want to die, and he's completely certain that, if he did the wrong thing, Finnick Odair would kill him without a single qualm.
When he announced the Hunger Games, he saw the Victors, he saw their kills, but he never saw just how close that could be to the surface. And now they terrify him, every single one of them, from the ruthless Finnick Odair to the morphling-addicted Prairy Jackson to even the dead Katniss Everdeen. Any of them would happily kill him, and he'd be powerless to stop it. How did Coriolanus Snow live with that knowledge?
Plutarch Heavensbee is a reassuring voice of reason in his cabinet, a man who can guide him in a direction which threads the line between competing demands. Claudius finds himself listening to the man more and more.
And it goes well! Panem is doing better than ever, from the Capitol down to the districts.
Sometimes he's glad he's president after all.
oOo
People no longer run to District Thirteen.
While President Coin ostensibly recovered from the epidemic back in 83, Leeg isn't certain that she fully recovered. She was a martinet, strict and uncompromising, even before the epidemic.
Now she's obsessive. Paranoid. Incapable of accepting that Thirteen is a dying district and whatever hope they had for revolution is dead, has been dead since Thirteen abandoned their plans after the death of Katniss Everdeen.
Even if people did come to Thirteen, Coin wouldn't let them in. The last two migrants who made it through the Capitol's traps were left to die in the wilderness outside Thirteen, as fears of another epidemic ran rampant through the population. Both eventually starved.
It wasn't a pretty death.
Instead, the schedules are even stricter, and now there's talk about testing for fertility and forcing you to have children with whomever is best-suited genetically, whether that's one person or more. Birth control has already been outlawed; now pregnancy could become mandatory. It might not (probably won't) be enough to save the district, but Coin is determined to try.
This isn't the life Leeg wants.
And the news from Panem is getting better. Sure, there's still death. But the districts are doing better, and Thirteen's spies no longer seem to want to return. Everyone's in better shape than they were ten, twenty, thirty years ago.
Leeg and her sister pack up and slowly sneak their things out of the district every time they're allowed aboveground.
Maybe they won't make it to Six or Twelve. Maybe the traps will kill them both.
But trying to get out has to be better than staying.
oOo
Caesar Flickerman is getting older. The Capitol can do wonders with skin, coloring, tattoos… but even they can't fully erase the signs of aging.
And worse yet, attention is moving away from him. From the Hunger Games.
These new Olympics draw the crowds, while the Hunger Games seem to get less and less exciting every year. It's almost perfunctory, watching twenty-three children die and one take the crown. Worse, it's boring.
And everyone's forgetting Caesar.
He hates it.
All he ever wanted was to be noticed, to be seen. To be the star. He failed at being an actor, but interviewing for the Hunger Games, he had it. He had everything. And his crowning glory, that interview with Peeta Mellark and Katniss Everdeen after they won…
Life hasn't been so good since.
Caesar tries to complain to Claudius at one of the presidential parties - they're old friends, after all - but the man brushes him off.
He tries to get a job with the new Olympics, but apparently Effie Trinket - of all people - is popular as the host, and they don't need an aging has-been.
And then, he's removed from the Hunger Games and sent into unwanted retirement in the far outskirts of the Capitol.
Yes, life is definitely getting worse.
oOo