Tessa sits bathed in the midnight moonlight, sitting on the steps to TELAMON's Manor.
She cannot sleep. Awake when she doesn't want to be and asleep when she'd rather do anything else.
It just can't be helped, she's tired.
And she's tired a lot nowadays.
Tired in place of hateful, in place of violent, in place of...
Her thoughts prance around her head like bunnies.
Was it wrong to miss the part of you that made you a bad person?
Because it made you feel real?
Because really, it felt good?
Or did it only feel good because familiar feels good? Because familiar feels like home?
And anyway, who was she to pass judgement on what home should feel like? She's never had one.
Still, the thought lingered.
She clawed at the granite stairs, filing her dull nails down even more.
She stopped when it started hurting.
She wouldn't have stopped before.
Was OK supposed to feel this empty? This silent? This awkward? This uncomfortable?
If it was the right way to feel then why did it feel so wrong?
Was it normal to mourn your suffering? And the suffering you caused others? Was it alright to miss it?
Fighting felt like freedom.
That rush, the flashes of red, those moments where she was more anger than flesh... clawing and slashing and laughing as she did it.
Then she saw her opponents bleeding. She saw their eyes.
The terrified child in their eyes.
And that'd send the coldest chill down her translucent spine.
The clash? The chaos? The craziness?
Perhaps she missed the senselessness, the absolute surety of violence.
Because in that moment everything is one color: red.
No pesky doubt, no self-loathing, no imposter syndrome, no distrust.
Just complete and utter faith in the swing of your sword.
Ya cut something, it bleeds.
Nowadays her body doesn't fight her, doesn't erupt into rage at the slightest friction. Anger doesn't control her. She doesn't know how to act without the strings that pulled her to violence.
Nowadays her brain isn't shouting. Just talking. Talking and talking and talking to itself again and again. Somehow, it's louder than the screaming.
Nowadays she never fought. She'd forfeited her swords to their rightful owners. She'd ground her claws down clean, though more out of absentminded stress than deliberate scratch-proofing.
Point is, now she had the time and space to be a person outside of a Creation of Hatred.
But really, what was she out of battle?
If she wasn't fighting, whether it be others or herself—what was she doing?
What was she if not hatred?
...She was something, for sure.
The answer couldn't be that she and her hatred were one and the same, because here she was, without it, beating and breathing.
Perhaps it isn't meant to be an easy question to answer. Maybe the answer will take its sweet time coming to her. Or maybe she has to chase it down.
Maybe she'll pick up pieces to it along the way. And maybe they won't fit together perfectly, or at all, but at least she'd have the pieces. Pieces to something. Parts of the answer.
Maybe it didn't really matter.
Maybe the why only matters so much when confronted with the reality of the now.
Maybe she just has to keep trekking on instead of drawing images in the sand with a stick.
...And really, right now, she didn't care.
All she cared for was the fact she was hungry.
She was hungry, and someone was awake cooking fried chicken in the kitchen.
