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Felix is more than a little put out with his Hunger Games tribute.
Honestly, the girl from Eleven? It would have been bad even if Felix hadn’t noticed her visibly ill on screen. Surely he was owed a much better selection than this, given his familial connections. While he had no need for the Plinth Prize, as the great-nephew of Panem’s President, shouldn’t Felix have been offered only the best prospects for this mentorship?
This was a personal affront.
Nay, it was an insult to his very existence.
Even Al seemed to agree, his lovely brown rat letting out a displeased squeak from Felix’s lap, earning him the ire of Livia Cardew despite her sitting half a dozen seats over. Albanus was one of the most opinionated of Felix’s rats, and also his second favorite for being incredibly reasonable. If Al agreed, then Felix knew that his opinion was valid. Sadly, having his opinion validated did not equate to it being fixed, if the way Dr Gaul is looking at him is any indication.
So, Felix decides not to kick up a fuss in the moment, maintaining an air of dignity despite the injustice dealt to him. Instead, he leaves his brainstorming for that later that night, laying sprawled across his bed. His rats are gathered around him like a small, attentive council. Albanus, as his most trusted rodent advisor, is perched on his chest, sniffing the air with a seriousness that only a rat of his caliber could muster.
“I should be provided compensation to balance out the poor selection,” Felix declares, stroking Albanus’s brown fur. “I mean, the nerve. District Eleven? Honestly, what were they thinking?”
Albanus lets out a squeak of agreement.
“Exactly, Al. It’s absurd. They must realize the mistake by now. How could they not?” He sighs, reconsidering. “We need a plan, in case they don’t see reason. Perhaps I could request a trade—but with who? Livia?” Felix snorts. It would certainly fit her. Felix was far more suited to being assigned the boy from District One than she was. But—“She’d never go for it.”
Livia would hardly see it as an even exchange.
Plus, she hated Felix as much as Felix hated her. She never respected him or his rats. Felix would never forgive her for trying to rename poor Tullius. Both of them had been nine-years-old during that incident, during which she had rudely demanded that Tullius, being his swiftest rat, would be better off being renamed Taylor. Whatever that meant. Junius, the wonderful aggressive rat that he was, immediately jumped to Tullius’s defense, all bristling fur and bared teeth, until Livia had gone shrieking to their teacher. He and Livia had never quite gotten along after that moment, which was just as well. Felix could never be friends with a rat hater. It would be scandalous.
He shakes his head, pulling himself back to the present as Max joins Albanus atop his chest. Felix likes Maximinius Ratvinstill. He is easily Felix’s favorite family member (the rat, not his great-uncle) and greatest source of comfort, considering he was always present in Felix’s life and supportive of his endeavors.
Felix leans back to stare at the ceiling, as though the lights hanging above would provide him answers. “I can’t go through the Games with a tribute that can barely stand. It’s humiliating. I need to find a way to turn this around, but how?”
Max gives a soft chirp, a sound that Felix interprets as encouragement.
“Yes, you’re right, Max. I shouldn’t give up so easily. There has to be a way to salvage this situation. If they won’t give me a better tribute, maybe I can find a way to make this one...more useful.” He pauses, an idea forming. “Maybe I could bribe her?”
Max looks at Felix with his beady eyes and squeaks.
Felix takes it to mean: That’s a great idea!
“Thank you,” says Felix, more than a little pleased at the resounding approval.
But there was still an issue with that plan: “What should I get her?”
Dill couldn’t want for anything too complex, Felix was sure. She was District after all. However, it did leave Felix at a loss for anything that might appeal to her. Sure, he could meet her first and simply ask on the day the tributes arrived, but that show of uncertainty might make him look worse. Maybe treats would serve as suitable encouragement? Max and Al were very fond of berries, and Felix only provided them with the best.
He was sure he could find something similar for Dill by tomorrow.
***
Dill had a miserable yesterday, being Reaped and all.
She was also having a miserable today, in this filthy cattle car that made it even harder for her to breathe, on route to the Capitol where she knew she would not be surviving. She expects her next (and likely last) few days to be just as miserable. What Dill does not expect is the pair of Capitolites that greet her and Reaper at the train station. Well, to be fair, the girl seems relatively normal, but the boy—
“Hi Dill,” he says, and shoves a bowl into her hands. It looks like a soupy mix of berries. “I brought this for you. My name is Felix, and I’m your mentor.”
“...what?”
She blinks several times, looks down at the bowl in her hands, then back at Felix, then to the bowl again, then to Reaper, who looks equally baffled. Felix’s behavior isn’t even the strangest thing about him, but she is determinately focusing on one thing at a time, hoping that taking it little by little might help it make sense.
It doesn’t. She is still hopelessly confused.
“It’s a magic fruit salad,” says Felix, which explains absolutely nothing.
“What?”
“He means,” interjects the girl, “that he mixed tuberculosis medication with the berries.”
“What?”
“Oh, I also brought a spoon!”
Dill is 80% sure that her mentor is insane. She does her best to ignore the rats resting on his shoulders, and circling around his feet, and peeking out of the pockets of his bright-red uniform, and—
“You really think so, Max?” asks Felix, glancing up at the squeaking rat atop his head.
Dill is 200% sure that her mentor is insane.
It is immediately obvious that Felix isn’t talking to a person. It takes an embarrassingly long moment to realize that he’s having a conversation with the rat on his head.
“Max,” is all she can make herself say. It isn’t even a question.
Dill doesn’t want to ask because she is sure she does not want to hear the answer.
“He’s a wonderful rat. I’m sure you’ll grow to appreciate him too.”
She stares blankly into the middle distance and thinks: I’m going to die.
He puts the spoon into the bowl that Dill is still holding, then reaches over to pat her on the shoulder. There is a rat on his arm. It looks at her with its beady little eyes, and Dill stares back at it. Maybe the heat of the train car got to her. Maybe she’s spent one too many days without food and this is what her mind had come up with.
“I’m Clemensia. Reaper’s mentor,” says the girl. She offers a hand that Reaper shakes in bewilderment before she turns away. “We should get going before the Peacekeepers start to get snappy.”
Clemensia makes her way towards the edge of the station, tugging Felix behind her, and waves at them to follow. Dill adjusts her initial impression of Clemensia. She could not possibly be the ‘normal one’ while being unbothered by that many rats scurrying around. Dill and Reaper share a look as their ‘mentors’—whatever that means—walk away. It’s only Reaper’s expression that convinces her that Dill isn’t the insane one here.
Dill forced herself to move. She looked down at the abomination that Felix had handed her, the spoon clinking against the side of the bowl as she walked. Berries mixed with tuberculosis medication. Magic fruit salad, he’d called it. She tried to make sense of it, but the more she thought about it, the more absurd it seemed. It might just be poison. Nothing in her life had prepared her for this.
“Come on,” says Reaper. “Let’s just get this over with.”
***
Felix takes Al in his hands as the truck begins to move.
Max wasn’t too bothered by moving vehicles, contently perched atop his head, but Al had a terrible case of motion sickness. Felix could feel the poor rat trembling slightly, his tiny paws clinging to Felix’s fingers for stability. He held Al close, murmuring words of assurance as the truck rumbled along.
Many of the other tributes were staring at him. Felix could understand that. He’s sure that the Districts have not yet experienced the majesty of rodent-kind and are taking the time to bask in appreciation now. It wasn’t every day they got to witness such an awe-inspiring sight, after all.
Clemensia was trying to have a conversation with Reaper, but they were all rudely interrupted by the truck reaching their destination, and the sudden tilt that had them all tumbling out over each other. It was a rough fall. Felix hit the ground hard, the impact knocking the breath out of him. Al let out a panicked squeak as he was jostled from Felix’s grasp, tumbling down beside him. Max, clinging desperately to Felix’s head, held on for dear life, his tiny claws digging into Felix's hair.
It was, altogether, a travesty.
This is the exact reason he needed Rat Guards: to ensure the safety of his beloved rats.
Fortunately, one is already waiting at the enclosure like Felix had instructed. Unfortunately, he notes with disappointment, some of the medicine that he’d acquired for Dill had spilled onto the ground. He’d used the same strategy he used to get his rats to take their medication—mixing it into some of their favorite foods so it would go down easier—but now there were stray berries rolling in the dirt. To his relief, however, most of it is still in the bowl, which had landed on the wayside.
Hooray! Not all is lost!
Brushing off the dirt and straightening himself, Felix turns his attention to Dill, who is still looking dazed from the fall. He walks over to her, the bowl in hand, and offers it to her again. “Here,” he tells her, as she pushes herself to her feet. “Make sure to eat this.”
Dill looks at the bowl, then at Felix, clearly bewildered.
He can’t imagine why. It was a very straightforward instruction.
Maybe she just needed some support?
“Asclepius will stay with you,” Felix announces, placing the rat gently on the ground beside Dill. “He’s very good at nursing people back to health.”
He doesn’t get much longer to speak with Dill with the Peacekeepers ushering him and Clemensia out of the enclosure, but he does instruct the Rat Guard to watch Asclepius in his absence. He trusts Asclepius will be able to handle the rest.
***
Dill doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
There’s a so-called Rat Guard outside the enclosure.
A whole Peacekeeper dedicated to protecting Felix’s rat.
Making sure it stayed safe while it—what?
Nursed her back to health?
With a mysterious bowl of questionable berries?
What in Panem has her life come to?
She stares at the rat. It stares back at her with its beady little eyes, as if expecting her to just eat the ‘magic fruit salad’ like this was all perfectly normal. It wasn’t. None of this was normal. She had just been Reaped, dragged away from her home, shoved into a cattle car, and dumped into some kind of zoo enclosure. And now, on top of all that, she was supposed to take orders from a boy who was clearly insane and his equally deranged rat?
Yes, is the unspoken order from the displeased rat at her feet and the Rat Guard with a gun outside the cage they were in. Yes, she does.
Dill takes several moments to plead to whatever higher power exists in Panem that this will be over soon, and eats a spoonful of the ‘magic fruit salad.’ When she doesn’t immediately keel over and die on the spot, she makes herself eat another. It’s syrupy, and the sweetness sticks to her tongue. It actually doesn’t taste too bad. She eats another spoonful.
Standing off to the side, the Rat Guard seemed indifferent to the whole situation, as if guarding a rat was just another day on the job. Maybe it was. Maybe this was just what the Capitol was like. She should have figured something like this—the Hunger Games couldn’t have been made by anyone that was anything less than deranged.
“You feeling okay?” asks Reaper, once she finishes the bowl.
Dill lets herself fall to the floor, legs crossed. Physically, she is reluctant to say that she’s feeling a bit better. There might have actually been medication in that bowl, she considers, as the rat that Felix left to monitor her crawls into her lap.
But spiritually?
Dill is never recovering from this.
***
Felix is in much better spirits when he returns the next day.
He’s pleased to note the medicinal berry bowl is empty, Dill already looks far healthier than she had on that screen for the Reaping, and Asclepius has clearly handled the situation with all the prowess that Felix knew he was capable of.
“Good morning, Dill,” greets Felix. Max is perched on his shoulder today, surveying the scene with his usual composed demeanor. “You look much better today. How are you feeling?”
“Better, I think. Whatever was in that bowl…it helped.”
“I’m glad to hear that! Asclepius did a wonderful job, didn’t he?”
Dill glances at the rat in question, who is currently sniffing around the empty bowl as if making sure nothing was left behind. “...yeah, he did.”
“Great!” says Felix. He shifts his attention to Max, who is making the nudging motion that he does whenever he wants to be let down. He steadies his arm to let Max climb down, crouching to make it easier for him to observe Dill at a closer angle. After a moment, he lets out a soft squeak of approval. “Even Max agrees. Now, is there anything else you need?”
Dill seems a bit hesitant to speak with him, but Felix figures that it is simply because Asclepius has scurried away from the bowl to rejoin him. Maybe he should offer a rat for emotional support? All of his rats are dear to him, but he’s sure he can manage without Aesop—his loyal storybook companion—for a day or two. Felix makes the offer, but Dill, strangely, declines.
“Are you sure?” asks Felix, baffled.
“I think I’ll be fine without your, um, emotional support rat—”
“Aesop.”
“Without Aesop. Can you bring more food?”
Was that all? That would be easy!
He checks one more time to see if Dill needs anything else, but it seems that all she really wants is more food. Felix nods, already mentally planning out what he’ll bring her next as his driver takes him back to the Presidential Palace. Everything is going well. It is going so well, in fact, that Felix should have expected disaster to strike at that very moment. He reaches up to his head for assurance, only to be met with nothing. His heart sinks into his stomach.
Maximinius Ratvinstill is missing.
***
Dill watches Felix leave with his rats in tow.
“Mentor troubles?” asks Reaper.
Dill shrugs helplessly.
Reaper might have called his own mentor strange for being unbothered by Felix’s army of rats, but Dill would argue that the boy with the army of rats was far stranger. It’s been several days now, and she still doesn’t quite know what to make of him. She takes a deep breath, trying to collect herself when she notices something small moving near the empty bowl that Felix had not yet recollected.
It’s a rat. There had been quite a few around, but Dill regrettably recognizes that this is not a common street rat. It’s one of Felix’s rats—Aesop? No, not Aesop. Was this the one that had been perched on his head? In any case, it’s clearly been left behind. The rat is sniffing around, its tiny nose twitching as it explores the area.
Dill watches as the rat inches closer to a small box in the corner of the enclosure. Her eyes widen in horror when she realizes what it is: a rat trap, complete with a chunk of rat poison. The rat is oblivious, still making its way toward the trap. Panic rises in Dill’s chest. She might think that Felix was odd and possibly insane, but she does not want to find out what he might be like if his rat dies.
She scrambles forward, snatching the rat up in her hands just as it reaches the edge of the trap. The rat squeaks in surprise, wriggling in her grip, but Dill holds on tightly, turning to Reaper for assistance. Reaper, rudely, looks like he’s trying very hard not to laugh at her. She’s not going to be getting help from him. Thankfully, the rat calms down after a moment, settling in her hands as if it understands she just saved its life.
“Of all the things I’ve had to deal with…”
Dill glances down at the rat, shaking her head in disbelief. This whole situation is insane, but at least she’s managed to keep Felix’s rat safe. For now, at least. What in Panem was she supposed to do until Felix came back to fetch his stupid rat?
Not much, it turns out.
Felix returns within the hour, looking frantic.
His gaze lands on the rat in her hands. “Max!”
Dill would like to be in no part of this dramatic reunion.
Unfortunately, she doesn’t get a choice, as Felix ropes her into an explanation of what had happened in the short hour that he had parted with his ‘beloved favorite family member,’ in his own words. She barely gets a two sentences in when Felix is interjecting:
“Rat poison?”
It is possibly the most enraged Dill has ever seen him.
She quickly hands Max back through the bars, where Felix immediately takes to cooing over him, assuring the rat that “he’ll be okay” and “he is safe now” and “this will be fixed soon” and “the president will hear about this!”—Dill isn’t able to make sense of most of it, and decides that she really doesn’t want to.
Felix gets her to repeat the entire story to him multiple times. It isn’t particularly long or exciting. Max the rat had been sniffing around, he started to go near the pile of rat poison, and Dill and scooped him up to carry him away before he died. That was all. Felix requested to hear it a seventh time. And an eighth. And ninth. And thirty-sixth time.
Dill sighs, but does so.
***
Felix takes great care in getting the story straight from Dill.
Once he is sure that he has all the details, he immediately seeks out an audience with his great-uncle. This kind of atrocity cannot be left unacknowledged. Max is still shaking. His poor, beloved rat must have been traumatised by the near-death experience. Unfortunately, it takes more than a simple retelling of the events to sway his great-uncle.
“Felix,” sighs Maximinius Ravinstill. He rubs the space between his eyes, a pinched expression on his face. Felix reflects on why he likes Max Ratvinstill better while he comes up with a counter-argument. “We cannot simply—”
“Don’t you care about your namesake?” Felix interjects. He holds up Max to his great-uncle’s face for emphasis. Max puts on his best endearing expression, like the wonderful and talented rat that he is. “Don’t you?”
“Felix—”
Al squeaks. “See?” says Felix. “Even Albanus agrees!”
His great-uncle heaves another sigh, clearly torn between his exasperation and his affection. “I suppose…we can discuss this further tonight.”
An opening! Felix smiles, triumphant. Good job, Al!
It shouldn’t be hard to convince him from here.
***
Dill stares at Felix blankly.
He is definitely speaking words, but none of them are making any kind of sense. He’s talking about Max, the rest of his rats, firing whoever left the rat poison out, and the implementation of a new protection plan—something about fairness and safety in the Capitol that Dill doesn’t particularly care about.
But on top of that, he also brought up: “A reward…?”
“Yes,” Felix nods solemnly. “To commemorate you as the greatest of rodent saviors and Max’s hero.”
She briefly wonders if she’s hallucinating over her medication, then decides that no amount of hallucinations could explain this. It must, tragically, be reality then. Dill can feel Reaper shaking with restrained laughter as he nudges her forward with a hand on her shoulder. In the same solemn tone Felix had used, he says, “Hear that, Dill? You’re a savior.”
Dill hates him. Deeply.
“Really,” she makes herself say.
Felix responds with complete seriousness. “Yes. Max is indebted to you.”
Max the rat squeaks. Dill hates that she recognizes it as a displeased squeak.
“He doesn’t like being indebted,” explains Felix. “So I’ve prepared a Rat Savior Parade for you in thanks before you all get sent home. Max will be the head of the event, and offer a speech to the masses at the…”
Dill is so mortified at the words Rat Savior Parade that she nearly missed the second part of the sentence. “We’re all going to be sent home?”
Felix cuts off whatever he was saying to stare at her blankly. “Of course,” he says, like it was meant to be obvious. “Well, all the tributes will be in attendance for the parade, then you’ll all be returned your respective Districts to impress the importance of—”
She’s only half-listening as he continues his explanation. It feels too good to be true, but Felix’s earnestness leaves little room for doubt. The other tributes are staring at Felix, their expressions just as confused as she feels. An hour ago, she was fearing the end of the week, when they would be forced into the Arena to fight for their lives. But now, Felix is talking about sending them all home, and for what? Saving a rat?
Dill opens her mouth to say something, anything, but words fail her. What can she possibly say in response to this? She’s almost afraid to believe it, to let herself hope that this could be real. Reaper, still standing beside her, leans in closer, his voice low and tinged with incredulity. “Did he just say…we’re all going home?”
“I think so,” Dill murmurs back, her voice barely above a whisper.
Coral crosses her arms and gives Felix a skeptical look. “And what’s to stop the Capitol from changing its mind? From deciding that we’re still going to the Arena after your little parade?”
Felix blinks at her, clearly taken aback by the question. “Why would they do that?” he asks, seemingly genuinely puzzled. “Once a decision is made, it’s final. My great-uncle always says so.”
“But—” begins Dill.
“Don’t worry,” Felix says with a reassuring nod. “I’ll make sure everything goes smoothly. Max wouldn’t have it any other way. Now, let’s start planning your parade.”
Planning the parade consists of Felix rambling for another hour while Dill nods at all of his ideas. Dill doesn’t have a chance to properly think over the entire situation until Felix has left and she can turn to the other tributes, just to confirm to herself that they have also witnessed everything that has happened. It’s not hard to weigh the options.
On one hand, praising Ravinstill rats is better than dying.
On the other hand:
“What the fuck,” says Coral.
Dill couldn’t have said it better herself.