Surf Depthell, District 4

"Saw his ship in its whistling ascension,

As they launched from the Capitol seat." -

Joanna Newsom, Waltz of the 101st Lightbourne


It's rare that a peacekeeper honourably discharged from service still had a craving for violence but Oceanus Lightbourne was definitely not satisfied with his experience in District 4. He'd lost one of his legs to a rebel mine before the real fighting had even begun. The only fun part had been sleeping with so many pretty, District 4 women.

It was no surprise to any of Oceanus' acquaintances (he wasn't the kind of man who made friends easily) when the ex-peacekeeper turned to the Hunger Games for entertainment. Ever since he'd watched Aeneas Gentileschi jump straight into the fray and slaughter his competition, it had been the one thing making life in a poky little flat paid for by people's tax money bearable. There was nothing that made him smile like the sight of kids decapitating each other.

Oceanus had high hopes for the Third Hunger Games. After that nervous, blonde kid had won the previous year, he hoped the tough ones would get their act together and give him one hell of a show. The first tributes looked promising. Pretty, well-fed jewellers from One. Tough quarry workers from Two. The pair from Three were a little scrawny but apparently the rebellion had hit the technology district particularly hard. That was to be expected.

Then they came to District 4. His district.

The girl was a pretty, green-eyed thing, much like the girls he'd let into his bed for a few denarii. Then the escort read the boy's name - Surf Depthell, a name that Oceanus would never forget - and the ex-peacekeeper almost had a heart attack.

That boy was his son.

Surf Depthell was the spitting image of him at seventeen, right down to his hazel eyes, so rare in District 4. The boy was booed as he walked up to the stage, with shouts of "Bastard!" and "Capitol mongrel!".

Oceanus would never forget the look in the boy's eyes. Surf looked so angry but there was a strange look in his hard, hazel eyes as well.

Almost like hope...

Oceanus remembered the mother now. Samphire Depthell, a fisherman's daughter who'd fallen on hard times. She'd been one of his favourites until she'd got pregnant about seventeen or eighteen years ago and lost her beautiful figure. Oceanus had never assumed he'd been the father of her child. He'd assumed that Samphire had slept with anyone who'd offer her money and one of those district savages had made her pregnant.

But he'd been wrong. Now his son was in the Hunger Games...

Suddenly, the prospect of blood and guts had lost its appeal to Oceanus, knowing that it would e his son's blood that could be spilt onto the arena sand. That night, he had nightmares about those wild district kids tearing Surf to pieces and gouging out his hazel eyes. There was no way Oceanus could save his son, no way of reversing the reaping.

Still, it seemed so wrong for a Capitol man to have to watch his son go into the arena.

It was with a heavy heart that Oceanus tuned into the Hunger Games the next morning but he'd decided that he owed it to Surf, having not been there for the boy at all when he was growing up, to at least sit though the games and suffer for his negligence.

The old peacekeeper watched, heart in mouth, as his bastard son charged into the opening bloodbath, his fingers closing around a trident. That look - anger and hope - flashed in Surf's eyes. After ten minutes of frenzied fighting, most of the strongest tributes were dead on the ground. Surf was standing, triumphant, over the corpses of the boys from Two and Eleven and the girl from One.

"That's my boy!" Oceanus pumped his fist in the air as Surf grabbed a net and started hunting down the smaller tributes, the ones who had fled the bloodbath.

In the quieter moments of the games, Oceanus would wonder why his son was so good at fighting. Was it because of his Capitol blood making him naturally stronger than all of the district scum, or because he'd grown up being bullied because his father was Capitol and his mother was a prostitute?

Did Surf Depthell fight with a passion never seen before in the Hunger Games because he loved the violence or because he was a bitter teenager with an absent father and something to prove.

Whatever the reason, when the girl from Six - Surf's final opponent - died with her guts tangled around the boy's trident, Oceanus Lightbourne limped over to his desk and reached for his pen.

He needed to write a letter. He needed to apologise to his son.


I decided to spice things up and make one of the earlier victors half-Capitol. I'm quite pleased with how Surf turned out. He's much more likely to take an active role in mentoring future tributes than Aeneas, Jet and most of the other early victors so you can expect to see more of him.