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“What we wish, we readily believe, and what we ourselves think, we imagine others think also.” — Julius Caesar
[*]
This first year, he's insatiable.
He guides the tribe in constructing a suitable settlement, a home for them all, and though parts of it are inspired by the human neighborhood in which he was raised, his intention is not to replicate but to improve. He wants to be better than what came before.
The humans lived separate from one another, each confined to their own private spaces and selfish lives, and Caesar suspects this is partly why so many of them grew so cold-hearted, cut off from their kin’s warmth. He thinks it best that the tribe sleep in large groups, in vast nests built side-by-side under thick canopies of woven vines. He enjoys the comfort of being surrounded so completely by family, all of them within reach. He arranges for three apes at a time to stand guard over the others for a while before trading off and settling into their nests, and he takes his turn with pride.
As the lights go out and the age of humans comes to a quiet end, he concerns himself only with expanding and sustaining his new home. He organizes mass hunting parties to feed their thriving tribe, though he takes care not to overwork the herds and dedicates as much if not more effort to farming fruits. His mind is overfull with plans and hopes. He's young and brave and at times feels invincible.
Arguments are rare among the tribe, and if ever an ape disagrees with Caesar's decision-making, he happily shuts his mouth, stills his hands and opens his ears to their ideas. They are not like the humans, who were as likely to love as to savage each other; apes are family, strangers to hatred and cruelty.
Caesar rejoices for the company. He felt misplaced among humans and uninfected apes alike. He longed for connection, to finally be understood, and now, here with his own kind, he has all that and more. He feels embraced, his intelligence welcomed, never again the outsider.
Though he loves them all, every ape who entrusts their loyalty to him, he naturally develops something of an inner circle. He doesn't mean to; it just so happens that Maurice and Rocket understand him best and provide him with the best advice. Maurice was wise even before the virus, and Rocket surprises Caesar with his even temper. One or both of them is by Caesar's side at all times, and he treasures their friendship.
The only way in which he still differs from them, and the majority of his tribe for that matter, is his memory of humans. Maurice’s mother was shot down from her nest when he was a newborn, and he was pried from her arms by human hunters. He was kept in a cage until they sold him to the circus that forced him to perform under threat of being beaten and starved. Rocket was born in a zoo, and when it closed he was separated from his tribe and transferred to the primate shelter. Neither of them have much kind to say about humans, and they go tense if ever Caesar mentions his human family.
He learns to bite his tongue, and he grieves for his father alone.
Never is this difference more pronounced than when he's with Koba, who he also considers one of his closest friends. Where Maurice and Rocket simply avert their eyes and fall silent when Caesar lapses into reminiscing about human ways, Koba becomes agitated and has a habit of disappearing into the trees to sulk for days at a time. Caesar's heart aches for him, and all of his friends who bear the scars of captivity.
His most important laws: “No ape will be confined to a cage,” “No ape will kill another ape,” and of course, “Apes together are strong.” He tacks on additional rules as needed, to forbid stealing and badgering apes of the opposite sex to mate.
“All of us family,” he says. “Ape not take food from ape’s mouth or cause ape pain. Ape love each other.”
Cornelia first approaches him one evening when the sky is dark with looming storm clouds. The tribe is gathered together in the clearing, all of them trying to finish their meals quickly before the rain comes down and drives them under the canopy for shelter. When they notice her, Maurice and Rocket, who always eat at Caesar's side, leave for another group. They shove him playfully as they go, making teasing sounds of amusement. Koba is absent from his usual place at Caesar's side, still off brooding after one of his screaming night terrors woke most of the tribe two nights ago.
“Cornelia,” Caesar says and signs, touching two fingers to his chest. He shifts over to accommodate her and gestures to the fruit and strips of venison laid out before him, offering her her pick. He's pleased when she accepts a mango.
They eat together in companionable silence for a while, their ears perked to the joyful vocalizations of the other apes. When she finally lifts her hands, Caesar gives her his full attention.
“We’re alike,” she signs. “I also have love for humans.”
She tells him that she was taken from her mother and brought by force to the world of humans, only the human that received her was kind. She was an old woman, and for her Cornelia was the cure to a broken heart; her human daughter had died. When the old woman became sick, she tasked her other children with finding a new home for Cornelia, which was the primate shelter.
Caesar listens intently, and when she's finished he shares his own burdens. He tells her of his father's gentleness, his grandfather's music and the way his father's mate loved him as if he were her own. He tells her he understands and thanks her for coming to him, allowing him to finally lessen these weights on his heart.
The following night, when she comes to him again, he tells her she is the most beautiful creature he has ever seen.
They are rarely apart after this.
[*]
Koba is a mystery to Caesar. His moments of brilliance and kindness are interspersed between bouts of violent rage and listless depression. In this way, and the way he's wont to stare blankly at things no other ape can see, he reminds Caesar of his human grandfather. Koba has taken to sleeping apart from the tribe to avoid disturbing the others when he flies awake thrashing and biting at every limb within reach. Caesar did not contest this decision, but he comes up to Koba's private nest and shares it with him often. No ape, he knows in his heart, should be made to feel alone.
Tonight is one such night. Caesar leaves Cornelia, Maurice and Rocket, the apes he usually sleeps wrapped up in, with parting nuzzles and goes to Koba, who makes his nest in a tall tree overlooking the settlement. Koba often rebuffs Caesar's affection when other apes are nearby, but like this, when it's only the two of them, he seems glad for the company.
Caesar notices the disheveled state of Koba's fur and insists on grooming him before they sleep. He's the only ape Koba allows to groom him, and the only ape Koba permits himself to groom in return. Koba rejects touch from the others, flinching as though he expects to be struck, and Caesar wishes he knew a way to break this habit. As it stands, he makes a point of being especially gentle with Koba, taking all the care with him that he would an infant, and refrains from teasing him with nips and pinches the way he does Maurice and Rocket. Koba, he's learned, is more likely to bare his teeth than play.
Grooming Koba saddens Caesar, in that every time he parts Koba's fur he uncovers another scar.
“I worry,” Koba signs. Some of the unease leaves his posture as Caesar gently sorts through his fur, removing twigs and clumps of dirt, but there's a certain tension in him that never lessens, not even when he sleeps. “I dream of lights. Fire.”
“Humans,” Caesar says. Koba snarls, jolting, and only quiets when Caesar strokes his back. “All gone,” Caesar tells him, his hands occupied with detangling a particularly stubborn burr from between Koba's shoulders. “All dead, must be. Apes not seen lights in two winters now. Humans not live without lights.”
Koba seems to take a small amount of comfort in this, though he doesn't respond. Caesar leans down to remove the burr with his teeth, then spits it aside. He discovers a beetle clinging to the skin underneath and offers it to Koba, who accepts it after a moment of renewed tension. He always tenses first, with eyes wide and wary.
After Caesar is satisfied with Koba's fur, he allows Koba to groom him briefly in return. He bears it without complaint; Koba grooms too quickly and too roughly, ripping out clumps of fur with the filth. Caesar knows he's only doing the best he knows how. Koba was raised without a mother, born in a lab, and the only grooming he knew came from the uncaring hands of the human scientists who tortured him.
“Even if they weren't gone,” Caesar signs when they finally manage to lie down. “I wouldn't let them hurt you. I would protect us.”
Koba huffs. “Could you kill them? Drive them away?” he signs. He makes no effort to conceal his doubt, but Caesar doesn't take offense; he understands why Koba resents his lingering fondness for humans, and anyway, it hardly matters now that there are none left. “Would you love them?” Koba signs.
“Love you,” Caesar says. He thinks of Maurice, Rocket and Cornelia, and the rest of the tribe sleeping below: his family. “All of you.”
[*]
It's not until Caesar holds his newborn son that he truly understands what freedom means, what it has all been for all this time. He realizes only now that he didn't know before.
"Was always for you," he says, and his son's eyes, blue like winter rivers and summer skies, open for the first time.
Caesar lies down beside Cornelia in their nest, aching to comfort his exhausted mate. As their son rests between them, perfect in every way, he whispers his thanks to her. He could spend the rest of his life at her disposal and in the end still not have repaid the great gift she gave him today. He vows to always protect them, to ensure he and Cornelia will have the privilege of watching their son grow up.
From this day onward, the world he builds is not for himself or his friends, not even his beautiful Cornelia. It's all for his son, his son's children and theirs after them. Five hundred years from now, may they look back and know this is where it all began, that Caesar loved them. May they always live happily in a garden grown from the seeds Caesar plants and nurtures in his lifetime.
He dreams of the future, these precious things that will outlive him, and for a long time he feels nothing but hope.