Cinna has always loved beautiful things.
He doesn't see beauty the way his peers do, he suspects. Cinna finds beauty in the large, liquid eyes of a trusting old dog. In the crayon drawings children make of their families. In the way sunlight moves across the fountain in late afternoon, setting small diamonds in the ripples. He's stared into a bonfire's depths for hours, watching tongues of different-colored flame flicker in and out of being.
He was never like other children. He did not learn things in the order other babies and children did- talk, walk, use the toilet.
When he is one year old, Cinna makes no sound, but gazes up at his parents with serious eyes. They take him to the best doctors and run test after test, but find no physical cause.
Four days after the results are back, Cinna begins communicating by drawing pictures. When he is four he still doesn't talk but starts writing sentences in addition to drawing. Only then does he express any interesting in walking or participating in potty training, mastering both quickly.
He is nearly eight years old before he speaks, startling and delighting his teacher. He makes few errors—after all, he was listening the whole time.
When Cinna meets people affiliated with the Rebellion, if they're in a safe place to talk they always want to tell the story of how they realized Panem was rotting, the Capitol the corrupted evil that needed to be brought down. They want to talk about their dawning realization that the Hunger Games are twisted and cruel, that the way the Capitol treats its districts is inhumane and justification enough to revolt.
Cinna listens to these stories, but he never understands them. His first memory of seeing the Hunger Games is when he was 10 years old. It's required viewing so he surely saw it before then, but that is the first year he remembers. As soon as he understood the basic concept he started crying. His father awkwardly tried to console him, and Cinna sobbed into his broad shoulder, "I don't want them to die!"
He's never understood how anyone could have a different reaction to these proud, frightened, starving, doomed children. He learned quickly that his views could not be openly voiced, but the repulsion he felt to the whole charade has only grown stronger over time. He would, as much as possible, watch his viewing companions instead of the Games themselves. He would look for hints of the same horror and helpless anger that he feels.
He encounters this basic human empathy depressingly rarely, but he does see it once in a while. Cinna broaches the subject in a workroom full of whirring sewing machines, hoping it is enough to stop any electronic ears. Is he being paranoid? He's not sure. The person he speaks to is able to introduce him to the rebellion.
At first, being an agent of the rebellion and District 13 is wonderful. He's not alone in his feelings—there's a whole movement of individuals who not only agree with him but who are willing to sacrifice everything for what is right. He falls in love for the first time, or as in love as he suspects someone like him can ever be. He takes comfort in the pleasure of her body, and she in his, but they make no declarations, exchange no tokens. Neither expects personal happiness in this life.
As schemes unravel and operatives are caught, as his woman with stormy eyes becomes another statistic, as Cinna becomes more aware of 13's own authoritarian tendencies, he grows concerned. Is it enough to bring down the Capitol if there's nothing better to replace it with? Then the Hunger Games are held again- then 24 children are sacrificed again, though the shell of one is sent home with blood money- and Cinna puts his doubts about the rebellion aside.
Cinna likes to reappropriate the imagery of the Capitol for two reasons- first, because if the Capitol doesn't realize Cinna is being satiric they won't realize he is working against them- and second, the slogans Cinna was forced to memorize and recite in lessons as a child only carry real weight when he applies them to his true mission. This is how we remember our past: Cinna remembers by reading banned books, the stolen and precious copies of texts that are anathema to the Capitol and were thought destroyed long ago. This is how we safeguard our future: Cinna knows that there is no future for anyone as long as the current regime is in place. He loves drawing and designing, and in another life, perhaps, that's all he will ever do, drape the chiffon and embroider the shining silk, but here and now everything comes second to the Cause.
A vast and careful network plans the rebellion and senses that it will be soon, but it isn't until a small blond girl is reaped in District 12 that anything really happens. Cinna only asked for 12 because of the ideas he and Portia were batting around for costumes; when he meets Katniss Everdeen, he can't explain his sudden and peaceful certainty that the time is now at hand.
He doesn't know what it is about Katniss- she's beautiful and strong, but as much as Cinna loves beauty, he knows it is not enough. He has met many beautiful and strong women, in the rebellion and otherwise, and Katniss is the first he has believed can give it voice. Nor can it be bravery alone. Maybe, he thinks, it is because her impulse is naturally towards the noble, not the selfish. When she tries to be calculating and insincere, self-serving even, she is unconvincing. Her natural state of being tends toward the heroic.
He does his job and makes her into a beautiful object for the Capitol. But he knows the truth; Katniss is most beautiful in a faded blue dress screaming for her sister, in her grimy, bloody tribute costume as she bends forward to press her lips to Rue's forehead, braid sweeping over a riot of flowers.
Cinna helps Katniss, but he helps the Cause, too. He knows President Snow sees it. He knows the simmering districts see it, including 13. Everyone sees it, except for, it seems, Katniss herself.
Cinna wakes up one day when he's designing wedding dresses- not from sleep, but from a dream nonetheless. He is troubled. He remembers something a poet once told him: that poems need to be grounded by something real. An eagle must be an eagle before it can be a symbol of power. Katniss and the mockingjay are already the symbols of the revolution, and he realizes he now fears she won't be allowed to be what she is- a human girl, with all the flaws and frailties to which that entitles her.
He is sorry too that he has never gotten to know Peeta better. Portia speaks of him glowingly, and Cinna has seen some of his paintings. In that other life, Cinna thinks, they would be in an artists' circle together, making the world more beautiful and arguing about the nature of art. He would know Peeta far better than he knows Katniss. But for now, the best he can do is try to remember: Katniss is the burning ember to ignite the whole of Panem, but Peeta Mellark is her guiding star. They are something from a banned text hidden in a hollow wall of Cinna's home: perhaps the star-crossed lovers the Capitol is so insistent on making them, but more than that, the yin and yang, the word and the action.
Cinna does what he can. He tries to dress the girl first, not the Cause. When the Quarter Quell is announced he knows he cannot pass up the opportunity to stoke the fires Katniss' very presence causes. He turns the mockery of a funerary wedding dress in a mockingjay itself. He also knows he is likely to pay for it with his life, and does his best to ensure Katniss isn't forced into anything. He hopes it is enough.
He regrets that Snow times his arrest to distress and distract Katniss. He regrets that her distant screams of denial will be the last time he hears her voice. She is, after all, not only his muse and great hope for the future, but his friend. He wishes for one more telephone call, one more unveiling of a gown that makes her eyes go wide and astonished.
His last thoughts are not of beauty, but of resisting interrogation for as long as possible. Every minute he withstands it could be another victor saved from the arena, another mentor or other operative with time to escape to the hovercraft, another District 12 resident evacuated to District 13.
And though it is fire he has designed these last long years, the final dream is of water, a clean cool wave sweeping away the rotted roses, sparing all of Cinna's friends; leaving them dripping and new in its wake.
Well, that's it. Thanks for reading my first try at Hunger Games fic. Review maybe? :)