Trigger Warning: There's not anything specific I can identify in this chapter. It's just a little creepy. I'd advise against reading it late at night.
Seeder Howell, District 11
"We're hanging in the shadow of your family tree.
Your haunted heart and me."
TV on the Radio, Family Tree
Every victor was their own type of monster.
Few of them were innocent. They'd all stained their hands with blood for different reasons. Every victor was feared by someone.
Outliers feared the bloodthirsty Careers, torturers like Amber LeClerc and Granitte Sacro or berserker warriors like Obsidian Gaillet and Enobaria Rossetti.
Careers were not immune, either. They feared cold-eyed geniuses like Beetee Latier, surprise volunteers like Tesoro Bullion or poisoners like Liza Flouria, who'd wielded the one weapon that couldn't be fought with brute strength. There were few Careers who didn't have nightmares after the Sixty-Eighth Games, when a girl who'd ticked all three of those boxes had won.
As for the serial killers, victors like Lachesis Dumont, there could only ever be one. Even the Capitol feared the very thought of more victors like Lachesis Dumont. Whenever a tribute in the arena turned out to have a particularly disturbing method of killing, the Capitol watched with eager eyes. But the closer and closer the tribute made it to victory, the more and more the excitement turned to nerves.
While there was only one serial killer who won the games after Lachesis Dumont's victory (two if you believed all the rumours about Ramona Hirose) and Seeder Howell wasn't that particular victor, there was no denying that what she did to her victims made the Capitol very nervous indeed.
Nobody paid that much attention to Seeder, at first. She was a skeletal seventeen-year-old who rarely looked up from the floor. Shyness, most people assumed.
Maybe it was. Maybe it was just an act.
Seeder faded into the background throughout all the pre-games events. Her score was a six - the score of a moderately capable outlier with a lack of combat skills. Her interview was quiet and reserved. Many people would watch it again, searching for a sign of what would come when she was in the arena. They'd find nothing. No hints. Nothing to generate any sort of hype.
It made what Seeder did in the arena even worse. She wasn't a performer. She was a cold-blooded killer.
The arena for the Thirty-Third Hunger Games was a strange one. It was a giant tree with branches spreading out in every direction. The Cornucopia rested right in the crown.
Seeder ran away from the bloodbath with nothing but a rope and a bottle of water. One Career - the girl from Four - watched her leave but decided it wasn't worth it. Why waste time on scrawny cannon-fodder when the bolder, tougher outliers were right there, ripe for the killing?
If the other Careers had known exactly what Seeder Howell was capable of, they might have punished their ally for her fatal mistake. But it had seemed like a reasonable decision at the time and, to those Careers, it would seem like a reasonable decision for the rest of their lives.
Everyone forgot about Seeder. The only time another tribute even remembered that she existed was when they looked up to see who'd dropped a noose around their neck.
They'd see a silent girl perching, birdlike, in the branches above them, a wicked smile on her face. In the moment it took for Seeder's victim to remember who she was and why she was even in the arena - she'd been so forgettable, most people had assumed that the girl from Eleven had died in the bloodbath - she'd pushed them off the branch and left them to die.
The only person who learned Seeder's secret while she was in the arena was Caesar Flickerman. He'd been sent to District 11 to interview her family and friends only to find that she had no family or friends. Searching through the district's records, Caesar found the death warrants of every member of Seeder's family - grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, siblings, cousins. Over the last seventeen years, they'd been convicted of every type of thievery imaginable in District 11, from pickpocketing to poaching.
They'd all been hanged.
Seeder was getting her revenge while she could.
Caesar had covered it all up, smoothly and professionally, by finding someone who looked like Seeder on the street and bribing them into pretending to be one of her distant cousins.
When Seeder won her games and came back home, District 11 wasn't sure what to think of her. Given the chance, they'd have swapped her for another tribute who'd come close. Kohlrabi, who'd been so handsome until he'd been beheaded by last year's victor. Sprout, who'd been so enthusiastic about cars. Even Reaper from the Tenth Games, though he was also a little crazy. Anyone but this quiet, serious girl who'd taken so much pleasure from watching someone struggle at the end of a noose.
They were sure that she'd turn out just like Lachesis Dumont.
They couldn't have been more wrong.
For the next four decades, the only people in Eleven who died with nooses around their necks were those caught by the peacekeepers. Seeder gradually became more warm and open. She lost her reputation as a killer and gained one for caring for her tributes and their grieving families.
Every victor was their own type of monster and Seeder Howell was the type who let everyone forget that she was a monster.
She died in the Quarter Quell, running for a coil of rope. It turned out that Brutus had a good memory.
This chapter was short and anything but sweet. Maybe because I don't want to mess around with canon too much (she says, as an author's note for a chapter about how Seeder was actually a vengeful psychopath). Maybe it's to make up for the next one, which I predict will take a while. I'm deviating from my first draft, which I do a fair bit, but I've got something major planned. Let's just say... not every victor will survive the next chapter.
It's so much fun being an evil author. I don't think I've been able to revel in my own villainy so much since The Bride and The Widow.
But before we move on to my evil plan to kill off one (or more) of my beloved victors (to those of you who were hoping than next chapter's casualty will be Mink... it won't be) I think I should talk about the elephant in the room. I made Seeder creepy! The thing about a lot of Catching Fire victors is that we never actually find out how they won. We only get to see them as tributes in the Quell. One of them had to have a dark past so I picked the one you'd least expect - Seeder, the kind old lady, who'd possibly mentored Rue. Seeder's not a total villain. If she had any violent urges after her first games, she did well to control them and become a good victor for her district. But she's definitely not as innocent as she first appears.
