Reflections in glass
The figure was amorphous, if dark against the pale fog of steam - slowly taking shape as the seconds passed, and the steam began to lift, bit by bit.
There was a certain... quality to a predator's gaze. She'd always had a knack for seeing it in others - at least ever since her 'stay' with the Garleans. How to describe the eyes narrowed back at her? 'Sharp' wasn't wrong, but it wasn't relegated solely to predators. 'Hollow' made them seem fragile, which wasn't right either. What to term that look which could... see right through you? Right down to the stuff of which you are made? Some people talk about being 'undressed' with a look, but predators unmask you with a look.
Discerning.
That's the look the diminutive figure looming in the clearing fog gives her now - she does not like something upon which she sets her gaze, if the faintest hint of indignation in the barely-there crinkle of her nose, and curl of her lip mean anything.
But then, the little woman could barely remember a time in which she didn't look upon her own reflection in such a manner - assuredly, Jak had a body to die for; curves in the right places, tattoos that accentuate those curves, muscles where it matters, an ass for days...and yet, not even a trace of the fights she'd fought all throughout her youth.
Garlemald's extinction was supposed to be a good thing - and it was, really. It was a warm, pleasant thought that made her less afraid to sleep at night. It was like being tucked in by her mother, knowing she was being looked over - except Garlemald had murdered her mother, and everyone else. They'd killed who she'd been, as well - and yet there she stood, steam billowing around her...finally bearing scars, and yet...cherished as they had become, they were no testament to a youth spent fighting for the people, and the home, that had mattered most.
Years and years of torture existed solely in her mind. Gaslighting from beyond the grave, is what it was. Scars told a story. Scars meant you survived the battle, and they had left her with nothing in the end. No testament to her fight. No justice. Just a broken mind, broken aether, and an un-ending fury....her body they'd been sure to re-build every...single...time.
Was it easier to see her now, than it had been before? Now that someone else saw her? Saw the broken, savage young woman who'd fought and lost it all, and...in his way, empathized for what he, too, had been too 'weak' to fix in his youth? Maybe when he was around, it was easier to forget. To look at him, instead of her.
Kesri.
The name stung less every time he spoke it, but the sight of her...even altered - tattooed and pierced as she was - still pissed Jak off. Ironic, in a way - in the Garlean prison, there was no need for mirrors. She'd not seen the sun, or herself, for so long that...one would think she'd love to admire herself, anymore.
She could embrace what she'd had to become - the role she'd had to play to survive - could accept that dark shadow that loomed over the reflected figure, its inky outline constantly shifting... but it didn't mean that it would stop hurting. The affection of her Wolf - his acceptance - didn't heal her.
It just made the pain easier to bear - knowing that someone else understood. Knowing that when she snarled, he understood. Everyone wants to climb your walls, or knock them down...but then they see what's left of you - they see the twisted, ugly thing you've protected them from, and they leave. They judge you for what the world has molded you to be, then have the gall to act as if their own reflection isn't just as disgusting.
Would she leave herself, if she could? This detestable little creature in the mirror?
No...no. Jak had come to terms with that part of her self-doubt in the woods, covered in the blood of others, some time ago, now - she, at least, needed to be able to accept her own darker parts. She may not 'love' herself, but no one else did, either - so what? No reason to give up, that - just more reason to push harder. It was a reason to fight harder, every single day, to find a reason to not hate the woman in the mirror so much.
More reason to be Jak.
No amount of hard work and no amount of achievements would ever erase, however, the fact that every time she looked into a mirror...she saw the face of her mother. Jak saw, reflected back at her, the family that had surrounded her in her youth... and the absence thereof. She saw a young woman who should have died, so that anyone else in her family might have lived. Anyone but her... the cosmic cruelty of it all would sit on her slender shoulders until the day she died.
