must not look away [ele]

Maybe he could have taken his time with everything lately. Isaiah had been hard on him lately, mostly because Ridley Le Roux had come back a winner, something that none of the Le Roux’s had seen coming. She was known as the pariah of the family. Her blood soiled and rotten. It did not drip gold like theirs, or Isaac’s for that matter, but he did not care about that. What Isaac valued was her brain. Her tactics in battle. Her selflessness for realizing that she did not need this family in order to feel important, or even loved.

Isaac would always be proud of his cousin for proving that she could do anything, but his father was a whole different story. His father had always been competitive, and while he never showed it in front of them, he had a special way of hiding it. Isaac noticed it when extra books were slipped into his stack throughout the night. None of them were the usual suspect, most of them filled with different fighting techniques that he could use in order to overpower someone that was twice the size of him. Isaac read them, but only because he usually did what his father asked of him. The last thing that he needed was to feel the wrath of a fellow Le Roux after all. It was enough that one of them had already done so, a picture of Ridley passes through his mind as he finally decided to set down the book that he had wrapped in his fingers.

He never spent enough time at home, especially when he had more to read then he usually would have. He told everyone that he enjoyed the silence, but he always had another reason. He knew if he was home, he would have to listen to his family go on about their distaste to Ridley. Isaac personally wasn’t one to gossip, and sometimes it boggled his mind why everyone had been so cruel. After all, she had done the damn thing. She had gotten their names on the board, their family would skyrocket to fame once again, or something like that. Isaac would not put himself in the position to deal with their public interest, even though he was convinced that the Le Roux’s had always had a pristine reputation, preserved in Amber for everyone to awe at.

Sometimes the idea of that made him sick.

So that’s why he was not home, and instead, he was in a patch near the training academy. It was always easier to do things in places one liked after all right? Isaac wasn’t being facetious about that either. It was the one place that he would call home besides the four walls he resided in. He liked the comfort here, he felt like he knew it well, which meant he could act with conviction rather than try to guess. He had never been the boy who liked to live on the edge. He could admire such a thing, but he could never do that himself. Act without thinking about it first. Rash decision making was what got one killed, that is what he was taught. He watched it happen in these past games.

Sophie Fray came close to the crown, but was struck down by the tribute from eight. Isaac had paid attention to conversations that had been had in the games because of the boy from one. He remembered that one of the tributes from eight went by they, and Isaac was in no position to deny that from them. He didn’t care regardless until he watched them slice Sophie Fray, limb from limb. That’s when he realized that Ridley would have more time to soak in the spotlight from her win, which would probably be talked about for the ages.

He closed his book as soon as he realized that he might have been watched. He stood up for a moment and began to stretch. He had been wearing a pair of shorts and a sleeveless t-shirt. He had every intention of doing a little training after this. After all, he wanted to stay limber. If he was going to get his chance in the arena, then he needed to prepare for every single thing that would come at him. Besides, it seemed like he had an audience, and they had never been a Le Roux that did not like to put on a show.

They all lived for it.