Ava Bellisario . CBD3 . d2

What defines weakness?

They tell me that my family is the most important thing. That family is what makes us strong.

That to stay with them, I must follow their rules. Rules that might be against my own beliefs. Rules that are designed to strip away weakness, strip away what makes me who I am as an individual, and turn me into something that was indestructible. A diamond of sorts.

They demand that I become the best of the best. They command that I become a champion, a queen brandishing the family name, proving to the world that we are the best of the best.

Each year they sit me down in front of the television, forcing me to watch the games and to critically analyse each and every mistake a tribute makes. Had they moved quicker than spear would not have stabbed them in the eye. If they had not had a slip in concentration they might still have their leg. But I am not as hardened as the other members of my family, I still hold a tender heart, and as I watch I am horrified, horrified by the hurt the pain, and the death.

Though with each passing year I feel myself becoming more and more hardened to the death, to the chaos, and the pain. The family's grueling techniques prove that they work. But for now, I must hide the softness in my heart that lingers, I must pretend to be who they want me to be until it was finally my time to fully fall into the role that they had to meticulously created for me.

Because I could not fail them, because who was I without my family?

Who was I if I wasn't a Bellisario?

If I failed I would become Ava the nobody. Tossed aside by my family, stripped of my name.

And maybe I would be happy.

But I wasn't ready to find out.