blossom | d6 | fin

Sugar, spice, and everything nice. That's what girls are made of.

But we're also made of blood, and connective tissue, and brains and hearts and bravery. And I'll never let you forget it.

I am made of blue eyes and red hair and bones, bones that I nearly broke from playing too hard when I was little, bones that attach to tendons that attach to the muscles that move me through the shadows of District Six. I have ten fingers and ten toes comprised of skin and joints and scar tissue. Even beneath that, I am made up of something that I may never understand.

I know things because I ask about them. Physics, biology, engineering - you name it, and I've probably read about it. I am no expert or jack-of-all-trades but I want to be. Questions come as easy as breathing. So I suppose it was fate when I followed my father into his lab one night and asked him, plush bear in hand, what he was doing.

Chemistry has always been one of my favorite things to learn about. To think that the world is made up of tiny little things that we can't see - tiny little things that exist with a purpose, even if that purpose isn't clear to others - it's incredible.

Sometimes I feel like a tiny insignificant thing, drifting along in this world. It's fun to learn and play and befriend others but I want to be something greater. So when my father kneeled to whisper in my ear about all the great things he was doing for the district, I think it was fate.

They call my father the Professor. He's good at what he does and he's a good citizen. Good is one thing, but law-abiding is another. At night, when he's not working on one of his usual research projects, he'll work with his pharmaceuticals. He calls them pharmaceuticals, but my sisters and I all know they're drugs. He'll pass them off to the others to sell and then go right back to his research like nothing ever happened.

I tried to forget about what I had learned for a while, forget what I had seen, but the lab kept calling me back. I wanted to do something with my smarts, not just be smart. It didn't help seeing the Professor's face light up every time I returned, either. So I started working in the lab, mixing carbon and nitrogen and hydrogen and oxygen until I couldn't unmix myself from what I had gotten into. Sometimes people would come in with injuries and I'd get to help heal them, and the sense of gratification kept me coming back. It was wrong, but I felt good.

"That's my little Blossom," the Professor would say as he rests his hand on my head. "Always open to the challenge."

I wanted to be Blossom for good. Blossom, Bubbles, Buttercup, all three of us adored even as we were uprooting Six from the inside out. Not Amelia. Not no one.

Once, I thought I would become a medic, a hero. Now I'm a lab rat.

Am I a lawbreaker? Yes.

Am I bad? I'm not certain.

I am made of many things, but most importantly, I am made of myself.

I am not made of anyone's assumptions.

Do we understand each other?

Great.

Now show me what you're made of.

- 551