zephyr kostas . d2 . fin

I am ungrateful.

I have a nice house that my family has had for four generations. I have loving parents, a wonderful grandmother, a wise and cultured great-grandfather, and a twin sister who somehow knows me better than I know myself. And that's not to mention great-great-uncle Nero's side of the family, who shows up for dinner or a quick chat quite often. My family as a whole cares about my future's success unconditionally. I don't mean in a helicopter-parent or bulldozer-parent kind of way. I mean that they push me. They inquire my every thought and every action. They have this deep desire to see me become great, something that I don't even know if I have the desire for.

It's a luxurious life that I'm sure other people would kill for, but I don't want it.

Being an ungrateful piece of shit, that's what they call it. That's what I'm certain people say behind my back, and that's what I'm sure you're thinking about me right now.

Maybe it's some form of social class guilt. My family's fortune comes at someone else's expense, I know it does.

Every once in a while, a child is born into a family and they stick out like a sore thumb. It can be the shy, introverted kid born into a family of wild, outgoing voices, or it can be the kid who magically got ginger red hair when their family is of a line of brunettes. I was born into a family of bootlickers, yet I find myself resisting every ounce of pressure to lick the single, most wealthy boot in all of our lands. Ripred, I don't know what twisted game you are playing, but I don't belong to the Kostas name. This mind and this spirit were placed into the wrong body, and it's a chemical reaction just waiting to explode.

I'd easily buy into the idea that my sister (Blythe) and I are apart of some crazy switched at birth conspiracy theory if it wasn't for the constant comparison of my appearance to the rest of my family.

"You have your father's deep brown eyes!"

"When she was your age, your mother used to have the same insecurity about her smile!"

"If you let that facial hair grow out for a bit, you'd look so much like your father!"

I see the similarities. But for the record, if I ever grow a beard as full as my father's, fucking shoot me and shave it all off before you send me six feet under.

The one comparison that always seems to perk interest in my entire family comes from Nikolai, my great-grandfather.

"If you were alive eighty-three years ago, I would've easily mistaken you for Dmitri. You're almost identical."

Dmitri is Nikolai's brother. My other great-great-uncle. He died during the first Hunger Games. That's where our family's fortune first began. Pro-Capitol sympathizers gave their support, and money, to Dmitri's teenage brothers Nero and Nikolai. With help from the only family friend they had left, Nero and Nikolai bought land and built a home, and it's been our home ever since. Nikolai's spent eighty years with this place as his residence. Aside from when he was on duty as a peacekeeper, he lived and breathed every moment of his life here. Relics from suitcases and backpacks that are ninety years old lay neatly on shelves in our living room, dusted every other day by Niko.

So you see, being constantly compared to a man who has been dead for eighty-three years has built expectations. And Nikolai continued to bring it up, time and time again, that I looked so similar to his brother. He never inquired about my day because he was curious. He never treated me like his favorite (don't tell anyone else I said that) grandchild because of my awkward, off the cuff one-liners or charmingly annoying personality. He treats me this way and holds me up on a pedestal because of my looks. If you ask me, he studies my every move like a chess piece because he thinks I'm the next great heir of the legacy.

The confidence he has that I'm some kind of reincarnation of his brother is.. quite alarming! Maybe it's his age that's making him think this way. Perhaps the trauma of seeing your mother shot and father stabbed and then your brother mauled in a Colosseum might have triggered a part of the human psyche that wants to rebuild his childhood and continue it where it left off.

Whatever it is, his enthusiasm is just really misplaced!

Every family has stories of a legacy that send the bar who they want you to become. But it's another type of legacy when someone asks you to pick up where someone else left off in order to fulfill some fantasy what-could-have-been world.

"Here, just look. You'll see what I mean."

He looked me in the eyes on that day and told me "you're the spitting image of your great-great-uncle, my brother." Dmitri Kostas, the pioneer of this legacy.

I'll admit, the first time he told me, I was flattered. But when he showed me the photograph, the only known one left of Dmitri, and it was of him being gutted alive during the Hunger Games, the legacy went from a weird obsession of my great grandfather's to a much more terrifying one.

Thanks, Grandpa Niko. Blood pouring out of my mouth. Dying. Dying first, at that.

That's the exact legacy I want to fulfill.

This is why I'm not so grateful to be a part of a family as prestigious as my own. We're the ideal. We're the nuclear family for our District.

There's the catch though. Nuclear. Bottling up so much energy until we're finally ready to explode.

So yeah, I'm ungrateful. I hope you can forgive me, and I hope you'll still give me a chance.