SejanusPlinth

Everyone places Lucy Grey as the ghost which haunts Snow and influences his future actions, but it is actually Sejanus who haunts Snow. It is the empty, cracked shell of Sejanus and his life that Coriolanus Snow crawls into and inhabits and uses to survive. The cost of Snow’s life is intrinsically tied to the loss of Sejanus’, and there is not one without the other. 

The idea of Sejanus being the one to get Gale and Katniss to reconcile is so important. It would be the closing of a play began so long ago, mirroring when Lucy Grey ran away from Snow.

Sejanus Plinth escaping and living in District 13 as an advisor to Coin, not fully agreeing with her methods but stickling with her because the Capitol must be brought down at all costs. Feeling relief when she is killed at the end, but sadness too, she was one of the only ones besides him who perhaps understood how personal this was for him, she was focused on Snow, and so was he. He was probably the only left alive who had once known the boy behind the monster.

Sejanus living (he escapes before his execution and makes it to thirteen AU) and meeting Katniss after the events of MJ is something that is so important to me. And for Sejanus to meet Gale too. Out of everyone, it’s Katniss and Gale that would benefit from meeting Sejanus, and hearing from Sejanus that they were right. That what they did was the only right way. And to hear Sejanus thank them for it. That though Sejanus’s fight only brought him pain, and though he is now old and not long for the world, he will at least see the beginnings of a new world. And it will bring comfort to all three of them both.

Maybe in an alternate universe, Sejanus Plinth survived, ran into the woods beyond Twelve and never came back. Found District Thirteen, and spent his life helping the long fight against the Capitol and grieving for the man Snow became, and the Games that still go on. Then comes the revolution. The girl. So like the one his one-time friend mentored so long ago. All Sejanus’s anger and fury realized as this girl raises hope and chaos. But he only stays quiet and watches.  The revolution is over. Snow is dead. And Sejanus, now an old man, leaves Thirteen. He visits the site of the tenth hunger games first, and then the old home of his family in Two. There, he meets a young man, battle-scarred and sad, who tells him all about the girl who won the fight that Sejanus lost. They talk, this young man and Sejanus. And when Sejanus tells him who he is, a secret kept for many long years, this young man cries. Then together, they go see the girl.

I’d like to think that when Gale went to Two, he was told stories of a certain boy named Sejanus Plinth, and how this boy had defied the Capitol and died for it. People who might have known Sejanus as a boy, people who are very old now, might look at Gale and say “you look familiar,” or, “I knew someone once like you.” And Gale listens, and knows that there have been other like him, who like him, understood and fought back. And knows how right he was to fight, if for nothing else than to learn about this boy, who was once so like him. 

Sejanus could theoretically be Gale’s ancestor. Say the Peackeepers set Sejanus up with a District 12 Seam girl as a dare, and he fathers a child that comes to be Gale’s father later on. 

What would the ship name for Sejanus/Coriolanus be? I’m thinking of Selanus. Or Snowbread. 

Sejanus and Marcus most likely had a thing back in District 2. How telling is it that Marcus scooped up snow for Sejanus before anyone else was even aware he was injured? How hard Sejanus tries to feed and engage Marcus in the Capitol? How Sejanus exploded at seeing Marcus literally crucified? Sejanus was so distraught he broke into the ARENA to honor Marcus’ body.