100 challenge
Prompt 051: Start
Title: Addiction
Really, she wasn't sure when it had all started. It might have been when she started to feel like she wasn't one of the Spartans. It might have been when she'd lost her family and she'd become a soldier, though most likely it had always been a part of her.
She didn't think she'd gotten it from her parents. They always seemed happy with who they were but she was never satisfied. No matter what, it never seemed like it was enough. She never seemed pleased enough with how she was. Even after she became a marine, joined the ODSS, and found where she belonged, it was never enough.
She sat in the gym, contemplating the question of why. She was strong, had the loyalty of her soldiers, and was a soldier. What more could she ask for? She had everything that she'd ever wanted but still it wasn't enough. She was never strong enough, skilled enough, or smart enough, at least in her own mind.
To her soldiers she was amazing, the height of what a soldier could be, and all they aimed to be. To them she was the end game. She could see it in their eyes while they trained, when she would grab almost twice the weight as them. At times she wished that she could see what they did, but she couldn't. All she ever seemed to see was failure.
She started at the machine she sat on, eyes locked to the weights attached. There should be more, more weight. She checked the resistance that Maria had set her suit to. It felt like it had been too long since she had increased it. Was she slowing down? No, that wasn't acceptable. She lay back down on the machine and grabbed the bar, pulling it down, annoyed at how difficult it still was for her to lift. By this point it should have been easy for her. She should have been complaining about how easy it was, not hard.
Improvement, that was what she needed. It was what she always needed. Sometimes she felt like it was an addiction, something she had to do or things didn't feel right. Even her slowdown in improvement unsettled her. She supposed it might have been due to all the combat. It kept her from regularly visiting the gym, which could slow her growth, though she wouldn't accept that. She should be able to improve no matter what. She needed to spend more time in the gym, and she couldn't blame her failure to make the time on the war.
