Chapter 54: Angus Rathbone
Viscera Holstein hadn't come up with the joke. Furr Cleave had, upon noticing how curious it was, that each of District 10's previous two victories had been spaced apart by the one immediately preceding it by exactly eleven years. Even the number of years between Viscera's own win and that of Lamb, her future bride, had been a dozen – give or take a season.
That meant that this year, they were due a Victor, Furr insisted to the others. And this time, it was going to be the first male Victor from 10 since Guernsey, she could feel it!
It may have just been a glorified coincidence (District 5's three victories so far had been spaced apart by sixteen years apiece, so there was some precedent), but the other women couldn't help but hope that Furr was right on both counts. A year away from the semi-centennial anniversary of his legendary win (Viscera knew from Caesar and Lucky Flickerman that they both had something special planned), Guernsey's hair had turned fully grey now; the group resolved to stop by Icarus Trinket's home while their tributes were in training, so they could have a laugh about how they were all getting older. Ten's former escort had since retired from the industry, but his granddaughter Effie, now 21 and a cultured, attractive woman, was eager to get an escorting opportunity lined up following her graduation from finishing school.
And when their new escort read out the name of the boy tribute for the 54th Annual Hunger Games, bringing a broad, strapping and fierce looking boy to the stage, District 10's four Victors dared to hold their breath that this guy might have what it took to be Guernsey's successor. Sadly, as they would soon come to find out on the train, Angus Rathbone wasn't about to make it easy for any of them.
If the Hydes had been amidst the district's elite as horsebreeders, the Rathbones were the types of poorer migrant workers the Hydes and other rich farmers would have employed as cowhands. Cowhands in Ten were the type who worked hard, but always in the interest of getting ahead. It was a degree of ambition that could become unhealthy if left unchecked – it was fine to want to eventually buy your own plot of land one day and work that land to build your fortune, but some cowhands seemed to think it was necessary to climb and crawl over other people to get there.
Unfortunately, Angus Rathbone was one of these. He may have been born in the district's lower class, but his resentment towards his life's circumstances coupled with the wish that he be placed in a higher station, made Angus feel like he should be above such condemnable fates like being Reaped as tribute. Few Settlers after Guernsey had been chosen to represent Ten in the arena, while the Cowhands were about as prominent in the pageantry of combat as Seamers culled out of Twelve. It was classism of the worst kind: the Settlers believed they were above being forcibly conscripted into a fight to the death, and the Cowhands believed there had to be something better than them being left with that thankless "patriotic duty." Angus and his fellow Cowhands would have probably killed tributes just to trade places with the Settlers so they wouldn't have to suffer the indignity…. of not being forced to kill other tributes, year after year, decade after decade.
Suffice it to say, that the man who would become District 10's second male Victor and fifth overall was a psychological head-case – signs of which would be on full display across his journey through the arena.
18-year-old Angus was surly and rude on the train ride to the city, spending much of his time glaring at Guernsey – by this point aged like a bottle of fine Capitol wine, yet still happily frozen in time as a child and still playing with dolls. Angus especially resented how, now with a decent crop of Victors, the women dispensed with the unofficial guideline that Victors mentor by gender, thus giving Guernsey permission to not do anything. Furr would mentor Abbatoir, Angus's district partner, while Viscera was assigned Angus. Lamb, by now a seasoned veteran herself, would work the floor of the Sponsor Exchange.
Viscera clearly noticed how Angus would glare at Guernsey, and she wasn't afraid to call him out on it. After all, once upon a time, she had displayed such resentment to the special needs man when she was a tribute, back when dear Dell Fonio still took on the burden of mentoring Guernsey's tributes as well as his own.
"But why is he allowed to just slack off?" Angus whined. "No wonder no other Ten boys have ever won! Even if he is slower in the head, whaddaya expect from a Settler?"
"Now that's enough lip out of you, or I'll pound your ass, boy!" Viscera's orbs were nothing but slits. "Guernsey has more experience here than any of us…"
"'Experience,' my horse's ass…"
"…. And you will do well to recognize he is a Victor and you will treat him as such. You're the tribute. And if or until you win and become one of us, you will show respect to your elders!"
That effectively shut Angus up through at least the chariot parade. He sulked through the procession down the Avenue of Tributes, and surprisingly, it did more to help him than hurt him. Capitolites always loved tributes who were dark and mysterious, especially when it came in the form of large, outlier boys who might have the gumption to play as a Career pretender. Boys like Chaff Silo and Miller Cornhusk and, to a lesser extent, Haymitch Abernathy. Angus was to be the next in a long line of these.
Angus continued to take out all his pent-up anger in training, to the point where the Careers backed away from trying to recruit him into an alliance and instead were given orders by their mentors to take the large farm boy down at the earliest opportunity. Angus's gall was again rewarded when he scored an 11 in Training – one of the few tributes to ever do so, which put him on the same plane as Peppa Cornac and Katniss Everdeen.
Viscera knew that the interview with Flickerman was going to be the hardest part. Angus was the type of brat who could easily segue into seditious and even treasonous thoughts against the government, the Games system. Outspoken tributes of that nature, of which Androcles Lupton was a perfect example, were almost always launched with bright red targets on their backs, put there by the easily offended Gamemakers. A player with temper always gave some heat and spice to the proceedings, provided that temper was expressed in healthy quantities. So Viscera drilled and drilled Angus into showing off his more humorous, country-bumpkin side – you know, like Haymitch Abernathy but without all the arrogance and drunken slurring.
Angus straddled this line to perfection. Caesar was enthralled, and by the time the huge Cowhand got off the stage, the people were demanding that they just give him the Crown now!
Angus and the others were launched belowground in a mazy collection of underground caves; in the years to come, Agrippina Bukater-Devereuax would state that the Fifty-Fourth was one of Arena Tours, Inc.'s most popular tourist attractions – high praise indeed, especially considering the reversal of fortunes that would be visited upon this arena's immediate successor.
Eleven would perish in the dash for the supplies. Angus was not among the killers, but only because all six Careers tried to rush him and box him out first thing and he was forced to withdraw, cursing, with very little down the half-illuminated pathways the Gamemakers had cordoned off.
For the thirteen initial survivors, it became clear very quickly that water was to be the hill all but one of them would die on. The dehydration was difficult on everybody, even the Careers, which unnerved them until they started to feel like they were back in the darkest moments of the cursed 40s again, when only Brutus and a pacifist had emerged from here alive.
Water parched. But water also strained tensions, until, eventually, water killed. A spilled bottle on the tenth day which had taken hours to fill by holding it under the dripping tips of the stalagmites caused the six Careers to go into melee early. The girl from 2, blamed for the disaster, was bludgeoned to death.
More days went by. Angus wandered the caverns aimlessly until he happened to come upon the five remaining Careers. He managed to take out the girl from 4, but the others gave chase, leaving the large rancher no choice but to leap from a shallow cliff and dive into an interior river to get away, allowing the current to sweep him downstream and to safety. The girl from 1 tried to leap after him, but wasn't so lucky; a full head shorter than Angus, she misjudged the height and fell to her own demise (her death was controversially classified by the Gamemakers as a suicide).
Further downstream, Angus dragged himself from the river and stumbled upon a thin chink in the cave wall, down which he was led to another open "room," isolated from the others. For a large boy like Angus, his retreat into this chink had been a tight squeeze he barely made, but he figured if that was the case, then the three Career boys who were just as large if not larger would not be able to come in after him.
However, younger, smaller tributes (of which there was an unusually high helping for this late in the Games) did try to follow Angus into his sanctuary, either because they too happened upon it or the Gamemakers lured them there. This happened a grand total of three times: the pre-teen boy from 3. The barely-a-teen girl from 9. Abbatoir, his own district partner. Angus killed them all when each of them tried to get inside. He wrestled a bear mutt too, who tried to make it his den, and Angus was rewarded with bread and cheese and a knife sent down the sponsor chutes outfitted into the cave walls.
By the fifteenth day of the Games, it all was down to Angus and the three Career boys. The Gamemakers summoned floodings and cave collapses to drive the quartet of testosterone together, back at the horn where it had all started. Angus couldn't afford to now hope that his fists alone would see him through three other brutes to the Crown, but he did manage to snatch up a couple of blades. Despite being untrained in them specifically, he set to work.
It was a fair, and classy, but messy fight. And when it was all over and Angus stood triumphant over all three Career boys, he entered into history with the likes of Career killers Miller Cornhusk and Haymitch Abernathy.
Back in District 10's Victors' Village, life returned to normal, except now with Angus as a mostly invisible presence. He didn't even so much as give Guernsey the time of day in the older man's last years and despite being his mentor, Viscera openly despised him. So did Furr, on account of him murdering her tribute, his own district partner, which in Games circles was always looked down upon as a big No-No unless it occurred in a Top Two – something seen in the Games only once. Though Angus ultimately never married, he did obtusely try to kiss Furr once – she kneed him in the groin until his balls turned black and blue. Lamb never spent enough time with Angus to develop an informed opinion on him, though she took her cues from her wife and steered clear.
Many other outlier Victors gave Angus a wide berth too, in the years following, not wanting to be seen with him. The only ones who would associate with the angry younger man from 10 were the Career Victors. They respected that he had won over them without any sneaky tricks, as that was what often explained an outlier leaving the arena alive in place of a worthy patriot. Angus didn't bother to develop a talent, except for steer roping and a penchant for casual cruelty. When a boy with a bum leg was Reaped for the Seventy-Fourth Games two decades after his mentor's win, investigative reporting pointed the cause of it in the direction of Angus himself. He maintained that a skittish foal had fallen on the lad, but not even his district escort – well abreast of the man's reputation – believed him.
A hand in the Reaping bowl had snatched away everything Angus had held dear, and then he tore it back for himself, come hell or high water, and once again his life was a pearl in the oyster, and no one would ever take it from him again.
A hand filled with nightlock berries disagreed.
Angus was loyal, Angus was popular, Angus did everything that was ever expected of him, but following Guernsey Hyde's death in the aftermath of the 70th Games, he was the only male Victor District 10 had left and Snow didn't hesitate to throw him to the mutts if it meant destroying Katniss Everdeen.
He was surprised Everdeen couldn't feel the heat of his hatred as he was pulled through the Avenue of the Tributes for a second time. But then she was illuminated like a goddess and he was dressed as a broiling cow along with Furr Cleave. He saw the little bitch's look of contempt. He returned it with interest. His rage was so strong it almost aroused him, and he fantasized raping her holier-than-thou pussy with her little boyfriend watching just so he could show her who was in charge.
At first Angus refused to go to training, refused to play his part in this farce, but on the second day an Avox delivered a message that Lumen Helio needed to speak with him. Angus had never had much to do with the drunkard man from 5, and so out of curiosity he came down to the gymnasium. Lumen and Angus lingered at the medical station and watched their fellow Victors playact around them.
"We need to kill her," whispered Lumen, barely moving his thin lips. "Everdeen. She needs to go. She needs to go first. And whoever kills her wins. We take her on together and one of us gets lucky. If she dies, Snow might even stop the Quell. But whoever takes her out wins for sure and I'll have your back if you have mine."
It's crazy, it's mad, but the more Angus thought about it the more it made sense, and so he gave Everdeen a huge grin when she came over to learn how to set a broken leg.
Angus wanted to keep the plot to two, but Lumen wanted Odair on their side and Angus wasn't able to talk him out of it. To his surprise Finnick listened attentively, then jumped right on board. Knowing Finnick's reputation as a smooth criminal, Angus was suspicious but Lumen whispered something about that crazy broad back in 4 Odair was nailing and Angus chuckled over the folly of men who couldn't keep it zipped.
He tried to give a blistering monologue on loyalty during the interview, but it backfired as it only made the Capitol more distraught. Then the Star-Crossed lovers put on their little show and now they were all holding hands. Angus nearly recoiled when Furr took his, but knowing she was just as revolted by it as he was, he swallowed his disgust and played his part, reaching out to take Seeder's hand even as Caesar Flickerman went white. Well, whiter.
Angus couldn't swim, so he had to watch from his pedestal at the Cornucopia as Lumen and Odair went for the Girl on Fire, cursing under his breath. He had a perfect view of Odair and Lumen and was convinced he was about to see the Games end ten minutes in. And then Odair said something and Katniss ducked and Lumen was on his back on the beach with a trident stuck in his chest.
Angus nearly pissed himself when Finnick looked his way. He threw himself into the water, found that he floated, and paddled himself to shore.
He tried to track Odair and Everdeen through the jungle, waiting for a moment to strike but the poison fog descended and he fled for his life. Soon it was the nightmare of the Fifty-Fourth Games all over. Alone, no water, his delirium increasing.
"Gonna kill 'er," he muttered as he stumbled through the jungle. "Gonna kill that bitch. Promise. Everdeen. Gonna kill 'er. Promise."
A thousand kilometers away, Plutarch Heavensbee got a note from the President with an order to provide Angus Rathbone with anything he needed.
"The message never arrived," he told the Avox. "You gave it to an aide and they lost it in the paperwork. Understand?"
Naturally, the Avox didn't object. The note was incinerated.
"Gonna kill 'er," the man from 10 muttered and over. "Gonna kill Everdeen. Gonna kill Everdeen."
Vents opened around him. A light mist, invisible to the cameras, rose around Angus. It carried a smell any child of 10 would be very familiar with.
Bloody meat.
"No," he whispered. "No. No! NO! NO!"
He ran through the forest, the scent clinging to him, trying to make it to the beach, the water, anywhere. He slammed into an invisible barrier, breaking his nose and sending blood coursing down his face.
"You can't do this!" he roared. "You can't do this!"
Something moved in the jungle.
Angus lost it. "Viscera!" he screamed. "Viscera, Lamb, please! Help me! Help me, please, do something, do something!"
In the Control Center, the married lesbian couple from 10 packed up their personal effects, their meager sponsorship pledges ignored.
Deep in the six-o-clock wedge, a beast stirred.