I've spent a lot of time thinking about Plutarch Heavensbee since I read SOTR and I can't get out of my mind just how lonely he must have been for his entire life.
There is no one at all like him in Panem. And that's just the problem. He comes from an incredibly wealthy family, a position of power so untouchable that even in his twenties President Snow already trusts Plutarch enough to let him witness a moment of true weakness, to let him in on such secrets, and Plutarch has to pretend he doesn't side with the scrappy sixteen year old defying Snow right under his nose. Not that that sixteen year old would ever believe him, but that's a problem for another decade.
Twenty-five years or more of watching, waiting, and failing. The people in his inner circles coming and going, coming and going. Taken out one by one. Changing their minds. Ratting each other out. Plutarch, balancing on a string. It's all just words for now, but it's still dangerous. One wrong move and the whole thing blows. One wrong word and he's dead.
His favourite victors. His failed mockingjays. The ones he tried so hard to paint in the perfect light, to focus the cameras on, to keep alive. When they lose, he has to wait another year. When they win, it's a win that's not quite right; the fire doesn't catch, and Snow smokes them out. It's a gilded cage. Plutarch's a photographer, a Gamemaker, a spinmaster; he's so rich he can do what he wants. But he also can't. He's tied his own hands.
Does Plutarch Heavensbee have friends? Real friends, not just ones wrought from tragedy and bitter circumstance, people pushed towards the rebellion by unthinkable devastation? Is there anyone he can trust, who also trusts him fully in return? Who can he rely on being there all year round to rally the midnight cause, who isn't also grieving and drunken and half-mad because of things Plutarch himself enabled? How does he sleep at night?
There are days when he feels like he is the President. There are days, weeks, even months where things feel like they're finally going to work. When his strings untangle, the cards read well, and everyone's in the game. It's embarrassing for the elite, he thinks, to have been played so effortlessly and for so long.
That's when he looks at himself in the mirror and wonders what will become of him if he makes it. Wonders what's already become of him. Is he any better than the people against whom he claims to revolt? How many lives have his ideas claimed? How many more is he willing to take? After all, he's the elite too. He's worth taking down. And by anyone's book, that's all he's ever been. He just wants to tell someone. He just wants to talk. But he can't.
Years go by. There are seven different versions of himself. He can't always work out which one it's safest to be when he wakes up. There are seven different versions of everyone he knows. He's playing a different game of chess with all of them. He should probably think about finding someone, settling down, but there isn't any point, really. Besides, who'd want him? Who could ever understand?
Without him, it'll crumble. Plutarch knows this. He's the only one with the resources, the means, the connections. He is the mitochondria of the rebellion. If he pulls out now, who knows when another Plutarch Heavensbee will appear? Who knows if the game ever ends? He's trapped himself in his own web, cursed to roll the weighted dice until two sixes appear.
He dreads to think what will become of things if he stops being himself. But then again, it's been so long that he doesn't even know what being himself is anymore.
