Notes and Warnings:

-This story will contain spoilers for all the Hunger Games books. Please do not read it if you don't know how the series ends.

-Because it is from the point of view of Capitol citizens, the story contains some thoughts that are offensive in various ways towards the poor, sick, mentally ill, or addicted. It also discusses canon-typical death of tributes and rebels. That said, it's generally not as graphic as the actual books.

-Likewise, these three vignettes may portray Katniss and Peeta, and their relationship, in a way that's OOC, because it is not Katniss and Peeta that I am trying to capture, but how they're perceived by these unreliable narrators.

-I would love to read other stories from the point of view of Capitol citizens (canon characters or OCs) and see how their thought processes change over the course of the series. Even though I've binged on Hunger Games fanfic since seeing the second movie, I haven't run into a lot of this, so I would welcome recs. :)

-Crossposted on A03.

Caesar Flickerman has always loved beautiful things.

His favorite part of the Games as a child is the parade introducing the tributes, and the interviews with mentors in the room with the golden carpet, and sometimes the tribute interviews- if the tribute is pretty. His favorite movies are the ones with glamour. The awards he pays attention to: cinematography, makeup, costume design.

He remembers this now, sitting in his cell, waiting for the rebel thugs to come and execute him. The verdict hasn't been announced yet, but how could it be anything else? He is the face and the voice of the Hunger Games, and he has been for a very long time.

He starts his career by trying to make it as an actor. He gets a few roles, and the performances, if not met with glowing reviews, are at least not panned. His directors and costars like him. He has talent and is willing to work hard, but luck never escapes its lightning bottle for him, and he knows he could burn through his friends and friendly favors and have nothing to show for it but receipts and bitterness. He takes a job as a secondary interviewer on a third-rate variety hour.

That show is canceled, but the guests liked him and the station's higher-ups notice. They offer him a gig hosting an enhancement dating show. Rich fetishists are willing to pay for enhancement surgery on the contestant they choose. They in turn will be competing against each other for the contestants' favor. No one expects the show to take off, but it's cheap to make- the great costs are the cosmetic surgeries, which contestants themselves will cover.

"Enhance Match" is the surprise hit of the season. Though really, is it so surprising? The enhancements are astonishing to see, unnatural to the extreme in form and color. Capitol workplaces buzz with talk of gilded antlers, eyes expanded to the size of fists and forcing the face to accommodate them, clothes that make their wearer look more naked than real nakedness ever could. Such delicious fun, too, to see the cosseted children of Panem's wealthiest citizens squabbling over their strange creations. It is such a fun change of pace in that boring stretch of months without the Hunger Games!

And though from cycle to cycle of the show the contestants change, the enhancements change, even the doctors retained by the show come and go, Caesar stays. He consoles petulant or raging contestants to their faces and gently mocks them to the audience. He narrates the show with apparent glee. He interviews those petty, damaged people with their silly, stupid problems with more skill than most viewers realize. He doesn't need to pry their secrets out; they are all too willing to offer them up in exchange for their 15 minutes of fame.

Caesar doesn't particularly like the contestants. He doesn't dislike them either. He doesn't think much about them one way or the other. They're a part of his work, like a camera or a prop for the set. They come to him with such practiced public personas they feel like actors reciting lines, like interchangeable toy dolls Panem swaps out of its toy box from season to season.

Caesar's fame skyrockets. He plays it well. He does an enhancement each cycle, offering a few less extreme versions of show enhancements for viewers to vote on. He entertains at private functions, at corporate functions. He hosts awards shows and pokes fun at the honorees without getting too controversial or mean. He goes to the right amount of parties and has the right amount of lovers. Male, female, other, it doesn't matter; they're all beautiful. He's still under 30 when Quinoa Signal (great showbiz name) announces he's stepping down as Host of the Hunger Games.

Everyone speculates about who will book the job. Bets are made. Comics, including Caesar, fold a punchline or two about the matter into their acts. Every entertainment pundit who airs a special about it, every office that gossips about the shortlist, every bookie who takes a bet, gives high odds to Caesar Flickerman.

Caesar never meets Mr. Signal. He goes to the man's house expecting a private interview, but the man waiting for him in the study is none other than President Snow. "This is not a job to undertake lightly," says the President. The scent of roses hangs in the room, heavy in the afternoon sunlight. "Mr. Signal Hosted for nearly 40 years."

"Hosting the Hunger Games is the best job I could ever have," Caesar says, completely honest. "I would keep it as long as Panem found me equal to the task- anything else I might do after could only be a step down."

President Snow steeples his fingers, gives Caesar a slow look. "Get rid of those ridiculous tattoos. Get a few enhancements, yes, the kind that last and don't go out of style. From the moment you sign the contract with me to the moment I decide the contract is complete, the only work you will have done will be that of maintenance." Seeing Caesar's confusion, the President elaborates, "Tributes and mentors come and go. The arenas are different every year. Even the Gamemakers change periodically. Two things then must always stay constant for viewers. Do you know what they are?"

"The host," Caesar says, nodding. "And…."

"The force behind the Games." That is President Snow himself, of course. "Take a week to think about it. Make or unmake enhancements as needed. Now go."

Dismissed, Caesar goes.

Of course he takes the job! He'd be crazy not to. He enjoys the tribute parade as always, this time from his shining stage. He's bargained just a touch of changeable color for his face into the all-powerful contract, for his lips, hair and eyelids, but the features themselves are already artificially ageless, even somewhat older than before to give himself a head start on the consequences of aging.

Sitting in his cell now, looking out the barred window at the smoldering ruins of the Capitol, Caesar tries to remember that first Hunger Games. He tries to summon the faces of the tributes. He remembers only one.

Helena was his favorite at the parade, and she's his favorite again in the interviews. District 2, specialty: knife play. She's all tawny skin and sleek short hair. She has precious gems tattooed into her skin, and actual gems dangle from her ears, drip from her fingers and wrists, spin and catch at the stadium lights. Her teeth are very white, and she laughs often. She is such a beautiful thing. Caesar and Panem are captivated.

She dies at the Cornucopia. A spear enters the perfect skin of her flat belly and pins her to a willow tree. The male from District 1 laughs and leaves her there, blood bubbling at her lips. He examines the Cornucopia's riches with his new allies, and they listen to Helena die.

It is a slow death, and an ugly one. Somehow the spear missed Helena's vital organs, but she is unable to free herself. She lingers. It is some combination of blood loss, exposure and dehydration that kills her, but before the canon sounds she begs for her father to help her. She talks nonsensically to her absent mother and pleas for words of comfort.

Very little of this unsettling dialogue airs, but Caesar sees it all in the editing room. She isn't beautiful anymore. She isn't a thing either, but a frightened child. Caesar checks the program later that night. Helena was 15 years and 39 days old the day she died.

Caesar thinks it was first time nerves. The Hunger Games is much more intense than any of his previous jobs, of course. This is how we remember our past, the slogan goes. This is how we safeguard our future. He was just taken by surprise. It won't happen again.

It happens again, though. Not every tribute, of course, there are too many of them and he meets them so briefly. But they are real to him in a way they weren't before. Before, it was like watching a movie. He knew the Games were real, of course, aired live, but the tributes were just pixels on his television screen or, on the rare occasions he got a seat inside the stadium, distinct figures washed out by spotlights.

Now he shakes their hands- often he kisses a girl's hand or cheek. He looks into their eyes and he can see how very afraid and hopeless they are. He looks down the row of tributes and sees a boy crying- the boy must be 12 years old but looks younger. "Can't you calm him down?" Caesar asks the escort, and he doesn't know what she gives him but the boy is drugged and vacant in the interview chair. He doesn't respond to any of Caesar's questions. The audience laughs. The boy steps off his launch plate before the 60-second countdown is even up. They edit it to look like he lost his balance, because tributes are only allowed to kill each other, not themselves.

Quinoa Signal, former host of the Hunger Games, also kills himself, causing a brief stir in the Capitol. He had a drinking problem, some say. He had mental problems, said others, he was sent to a special hospital once. Caesar wishes he'd talked to Signal, at least once.

He starts having district escorts provide him with two or three little tidbits about the tributes. It gives him something to work with. He gets better-though not perfect- at reading the tributes' faces. The arrogant ones. The ones with fighting spirit. The ones who will die, probably at the Cornucopia, and the ones who have accepted this.

It begins to bother Caesar that he cannot remember the names of all the tributes. They are not accessible on the intraweb system, which surprises him. He calculates that for nearly half of them, Caesar was within the last 4 people who spoke to the tribute. But any kind of memorial to them in his own home would be treason. He goes to an official arena memorial only once- he is spotted by other tourists and ends up signing autographs and posing with fans at the exact spot where three tributes drowned. He doesn't go again.

Caesar takes fewer lovers. He is respectable, now. He comes home to Fitzgerald one night after having the wrinkles pulled from his face and finds Fitz rewatching the 68th games, drinking wine and eating popcorn.

"What's this?" Caesar asks. He thinks he will need to break up with Fitzgerald soon.

Fitz smiles. "Crappy day at work. Thought I'd watch the cycle's highlight reel. I just loved this fight. Slingshot versus tree branch, who would have thought Male 3 and Female 7 would be voted "Best Battle" when the year started?" He hesitated, smile fading. "Caesar?"

Caesar stares at the paused screen. Even impaled on the sharpened branch, Monique (District 7) had managed one last shot, and the jagged stone had caught Joowon (District 3) in the eye. In her aired interview, Monique had boasted that she could make a weapon out of anything. Joowon had played the sullen tough guy.

Finally Caesar looks at his lover. How can he explain? "We don't use all the footage we have of tributes."

"What?"

Caesar sighs. He shouldn't. But… "Joowon's favorite food was fried fish. Monique loved horses, but the opening ceremony was the only time she got close enough to touch one."

Fitz's expression softens and he opens his arms to Caesar. They cuddle for a while, forgetting the television, and when it beeps to warn of standby mode, and they turn to it and see the image it was frozen on—Caesar feels Fitz tense, and his lover's subtle shudder. It took Fitz far less time than Caesar to understand (Fitz's niece loves horses and Fitz is helping wear her parents down in the matter of a pony for her birthday). "Caesar, I'm sorry," Fitz murmurs, and Caesar knows that someday he'll marry this man.

Caesar is no revolutionary, and he accepts the rationale for the Hunger Games. But he hates them, too. He tries not to get attached to the tributes, then feels guilty for keeping them at a distance. They're the ones dying for entertainment—he owes them his guilt, if nothing else. He and Fitz never have kids, though plenty of surrogates offer. Sometimes he dreams of a child, a child he can't quite picture and a name that hovers just beyond his memory. In the dream this vague child-shape is reaped, and looks at him and says, "Daddy help me, daddy please."

So Caesar does his best to make the tributes comfortable on stage. He offers answers for tributes who are tongue-tied. He plays along with transparent interview strategies. Their last days will be hard enough, and this is the only part of it that he can ease. He knows now why Quinoa Signal killed himself, and after a few superficially pleasant conversations with President Snow, Caesar understands why Signal waited to be released from his contract before even trying.

Caesar is unprepared for the 74th Hunger Games. His suggested notes for the 12 Female, Katniss Everdeen, ask only that he show off her dress. The synthetic flames licking at her skirt is nothing on the banked fire in her eyes. If the bookies could see what Caesar could they'd make her the odds-on favorite to win.

Caesar's notes for the 12 Male say only, "Peeta Mellark is in love." He scoffs at it a bit in the green room. The actual interview is terrible, just terrible, because he's one of the ones Caesar genuinely likes and he can see the acceptance in the boy's eyes. Later, he will dream that Peeta is his child, and he's not sure whether this is less kind to Peeta's father or Peeta himself.

Then Peeta Mellark turns the Hunger Games into a love story, Katniss Everdeen brings him home, and nothing is the same again.

One of Caesar's guards lets slip that some former victors of the Games are speaking on Caesar's behalf at the trial and sentencing (Caesar has not been present for either). The guard is incredulous. So is Caesar, really, but he supposes when a person is trying to prepare to die young, a little kindness goes a long way. He hopes that Fitz hasn't visited because he's not allowed or because he's wisely distanced himself from Caesar, and not because he's lying dead somewhere.

Caesar hopes his husband will live to see the new Panem, because Caesar has no expectation or hope of doing so. If there's an afterlife though, he hopes Fitz will find him and hold him; tell him how it ended and whether it was beautiful.