Vitellia Tonioli, District 2

"If only I could sustain my anger

Feel it grow stronger and stronger

It sharpens to a point and sheds my skin

Shakes off the weight of my sins and takes me to heaven."

The Ballad of the Costa Concordia


The Seven Deadly Sins of Vitellia Tonioli

Sloth

Vitellia only killed one tribute in the bloodbath. Her allies all managed two.

"I made it count," She claimed. "I got the girl from Eight. Now we won't get a repeat of last year."

She knew she wasn't fooling anyone but herself. There would never be anything like the First Quarter Quell again. The arena had been full of thieves, vandals, murderers and rapists... and those were just the outliers.

No, there would never be anything like the First Quarter Quell again.


Pride

The next tribute the alliance found was the boy from Three. Vitellia killed him just to prove a point. She made the torture session last as long as possible.

She was the best in the arena. It was time everyone saw that.


Gluttony

There wasn't much food in the fairground arena. Even with most of the Cornucopia supplies, the six hungry Elites ran out quickly.

The first rural outlier they found was was the boy from Eleven. He had plenty of food. They also found the girl from Three hiding nearby. It would've been so easy to kill her first but Vitellia, stomach growling with impatience, urged her alliance towards the boy from Eleven.

The boy from Eleven put up a fight and stabbed Turquoise in the shoulder with a scythe. By the time Vitellia had finished with him, the girl from Three had slipped away into the night.

She didn't care. She shared out her victim's food as the hovercraft took his body. She was careful to keep a little bit extra for herself.


Greed

Two more outliers had died of unknown causes by the time the Elites found the girl from Five. None of them, save Vitellia, had killed since the bloodbath. They argued over who would get the kill while Vitellia held the girl in a headlock.

"Please don't kill me..." The girl from Five begged. The other Elites collapsed in a fit of laughter. Vitellia chuckled and adjusted her grip around the girl's neck. It snapped like a twig. A cannon fired.

"Why did you do that?" Tamarack, the boy from Four, roared. "She was my kill!"

"It was an accident," Vitellia said, calmly. "Now the argument's over."

It hadn't been an accident. She'd wanted that kill.


Lust

Turquoise, the boy from One, was gorgeous. He had golden hair, tanned skin and rippling muscles. He spent all training flirting with Vitellia and asked if he could sleep with her on the first night in the arena. For the first week of the games, she spent every night wrapped in Turquoise's strong arms.

Until he wasn't so strong anymore.

It had all started when he'd been wounded on the shoulder by the boy from Eleven. Tamarack had claimed it hadn't been serious when he'd cleaned and bandaged the wound, so Vitellia hadn't minded that there'd been a spot on Turquoise's body wrapped in bandages, that she couldn't touch without making him wince.

But Tamarack had either been a poor medic or deliberately sloppy, trying to surreptitiously take out one of his strongest opponents. The wound got infected. Vitellia watched Turquoise become pale, limp and weak. She watched all the colour and beauty drain out of him until he was a shadow of what he'd been, the ghost of a handsome boy. The worst part was that it made him want her even more.

"Care for me," He begged, his blue-green eyes full of desperation. Not quite focused.

Vitellia tried to care for him. But the more Turquoise sickened, the more he clung to her with clammy hands, the more her desire turned to disgust. She'd wanted him for his beauty and his strength and, now that was fading, she had no reason to keep him around. Vitellia couldn't force herself to care.

She contemplated telling Turquoise how she felt one night, as she held him close and let his feverish sweat sink into her clothes. Maybe she would've tried if he hadn't fallen asleep in her arms, murmuring weakly in the grips of a fever dream. She realised in that moment that the infection had made Turquoise completely and utterly pathetic. He was no better than cannon fodder.

Vitellia couldn't tell him the truth. It would just make him even more pathetic, make him beg for her to love him. She didn't want to let the boy who'd once been so powerful sink any lower. So she decided to put an end to Turquoise's suffering and slit his throat while he slept.


Wrath

The alliance fell apart when the other Elites woke to Turquoise's cannon. Sequin, his district partner, thought the fever had killed him and attacked Tamarack. He killed her, only to be killed by Orcus, Vitellia's district partner. Then Seraphim, Tamarack's district partner, killed Orcus in revenge.

Vitellia had known Orcus since they were little kids. They hadn't been particularly close friends but he'd always been there, in her periphery.

Something about his death made her snap.

When the red mist cleared, she realised she was soaked in blood, surrounded by scraps of what had once been Seraphim.


Envy

On the final day of the games, the gamemakers sent mutts after the two remaining tributes - Vitellia and the girl from Three. Both tributes were forced into the hall of mirrors.

Everywhere Vitellia looked, she saw her reflection.

She saw a monster.

She wasn't quite sure how she'd got it into her head that what she'd done was okay. She'd volunteered for this games and killed six people. Anywhere else, she would've qualified as a serial killer. But this was the Hunger Games, the glorious game, the greatest game of all. This was what she'd trained for.

Why did she wish that she hadn't trained? Why did she wish that she'd had a normal childhood at a normal school? She was supposed to learn the difference between chalk and limestone and how to add numbers, not how to murder people. She was supposed to take her first boyfriend to the school dance, not slit his throat.

And even if she couldn't have a normal life, even if she had to be in the Hunger Games, she was supposed to feel something now she was in the final two, fear or hope or excitement. Instead she just felt empty.

There was a flicker of movement in the mirror. Vitellia threw a knife without even turning, without feeling a thing.

It was a direct hit.

As she was lifted out of the arena, Vitellia couldn't help but envy the girl from Three. She'd died. But, before that, she'd had a life. Before that, she'd been something resembling a human being.

Vitellia wasn't sure that she would say the same on her deathbed.


I leaned a lot on religious themes for this chapter. I'm not religious but I appreciate some of the impacts religion has had on art, music and literature. I thought the seven deadly sins would be a good way of setting up Vitellia, a ruthless and bloodthirsty Career. She's not the nicest of victors but she has a few scraps of conscience, which makes her better than Lachesis (who set a bar for 'Most Evil Victor Ever' that I don't think anyone's going to clear). I feel like Turquoise stole the show a little. I think that his death - the slow decline from powerful Career to weak and helpless invalid - is one of the most tragic deaths I've ever written. I'd like to know who you think has had the most tragic death so far so, if you feel like leaving a review, let me know. I'm already a little surprised by who the most popular victor appears to be so it'd be nice to have a few more surprises.