happiesttask15: The I want
Terence wants, more than anything, to feel safeโand to know that the people he loves are safe as well. It is a longing born from a childhood that offered neither comfort nor protection. Born to parents consumed by addiction, he was never treated as a son, but as a means to an end, a tool to secure their next fix. Even as a child, he was drugged and neglected, robbed of the certainty that someone would keep him from harm. No one ever stood between him and the cruelty of the world, so he grew up believing that if he wanted safety, he would have to become it himself.
That need has shaped every part of who he is. Terence carries the weight of everyone he loves on his shoulders, convinced that their suffering is his responsibility to prevent. His protectiveness is fierce, but it is also destructive. He cannot stand by while someone else is in danger, even if saving them comes at the expense of himself.
This became painfully evident when Tina and James were poisoned. Terence threw himself into finding a cure, refusing to eat, rest, or sleep until he had exhausted every possible solution. He pushed his body to the brink of collapse because accepting that there might be nothing he could do felt impossible. The same pattern repeated when Henrik was poisoned. Once again, Terence sacrificed his own health, driving himself toward hospitalization through sheer exhaustion, desperate to save someone he loved.
The tragedy is that some things cannot be fought with determination alone. Magic does not yield to sleepless nights or relentless research. Yet Terence cannot accept that. To him, failing to save someone feels indistinguishable from abandoning them, because deep down he is still the little boy who learned that no one was coming to protect him. If he cannot shield the people he loves from the world's cruelty, then he believes he has failed themโand that is a burden he was never meant to carry.
