TBTT 26. I think we've all been this hyper once

[moonshadows]

Joshua is almost knocked off his feet as soon as the door closes.

"Uncle Josh! Uncle Josh! You're here, you're here, you're here!"

"Whoah, there." He puts his hands on the shoulders of the teenage half-demon hopping gleefully around. "You're excited this morning. What happened?"

"I didn't sleep!"

With his hands on her shoulders, he is unable to cover his face, but Joshua rolls compensates with a sigh. "Tessa, why didn't you sleep?"

"I had to plan!"

Now I know why Mother never let her have more than six cookies at a time. "What were you planning?"

"What to wear when Illidan introduces me to his ministers tomorrow!"

Joshua's eyes widen. "Tessa...did you just call our Lord by his name? His real name?"

The hyper demon's smile falters briefly. "Oh. I shouldn't have said that. Um, just forget you heard that, okay?" She glances at the ceiling. "If you're listening, please don't punish him. It was my fault, I'll make sure he doesn't remember if that's what you want." She turns back to her adoptive uncle, who is doing his best to pretend he didn't just hear her speak in a language he doesn't know. "He said you could bring me anything I need...?"

"Yes," Joshua says, relieved to be on relatively safe conversational ground. "You have your own expense account. The Minister of Finance was unhappy about that. He kept going on about how you'd buy a million diamonds or something."

She rolls her eyes. "What would I do with diamonds? If I wanted that kind of thing, I'd have it."

"I know. So what is it that you want? If you're this excited to see me, you must have something planned."

"I do! It's going to take a while, though, the standard matrix doesn't have anything remotely like what I want it to look like." She makes a spreading gesture. "What do you think?"

Joshua stares at the empty air. "Tessa...I can't see anything."

"Oh. Right. Of course you can't." Another gesture. "How about now?"

Joshua stares at the incomprehensible tangle of lines that hovers in the air. "It's a bunch of lines?"

"Exactly! I'm trying for something evocative without being too impressionistic." The lines vanish. "I wrote up what I'll need for-"

Mid-sentence, she dashes to the other side of the room and snatches a sheet of paper off the desk. Joshua takes it gingerly as she thrusts it at him. Her handwriting is messier than usual, the loops wider, the strokes more haphazard. It's also in sparkly purple ink, which strangely makes it more legible.

"I should be able to get this for you before noon-"

"Oh, oh, before you go-" She interrupts him, and then interrupts herself by dashing into her bedroom. After a moment, she dashes back out with three different red shirts in her arms. "Which one looks most like the guards' uniforms and looks best on me?"

"That one," he says as she holds up a high-necked, long-sleeved button-up. "It-"

But she's not listening; she tosses the other two onto a chair and spreads the chosen garment in the air where it hangs like a crimson canvas. "I'm going to make my own, of course, but I'll need to design it and I can't possibly do that before tomorrow, but I can alter this one...how does this look? Oh, right," she says before he can protest. "You can't see it. There, now how's it look?"

 Joshua blinks as black lines sprawl over the red fabric in a simplified version of the guards' uniforms. "Very nice," he says. "Is that the design you're going to use when you make your own uniform?"

She beams. "Yep! I thought If he's going to take me around like you did, I should look harmless...but he's the Warlord, it wouldn't do to just follow him around in the kind of stuff I usually wear. So then I thought if I had my own uniform, I'd sort of blend into the background."

"I think he'll be pleased with that," Joshua says, giving her a one-armed hug. A glance at the list she's given him confirms that she's requested the materials to make what looks like several copies of her proposed uniform. The other supplies must be for whatever project looked like half a dozen enormous spiderwebs wrestling.

"You really think so?"

Joshua is surprised by how much she looks like a normal teenage girl eager to impress the guy she has a crush on, rather than a half-demon eager to impress the unstable half-demon warlord she serves.

"I really think so. Tessa...I have to ask, because I'm your uncle and I care about you. Is he treating you right?"

She blinks at him, head tilted slightly to one side. "Why wouldn't he be?"

"I've seen him with his ministers." Joshua grimaces. "He expanded my position into a full department. I have a staff now, and I have to deal with the rest of his cabinet. But that means I get to see how he interacts with people who....aren't as trusted as we are. Does he yell at you? Call you names? Threaten to hurt you?"

Not anymore! ...not since I won his trust? Yes, but that just makes him more amazing. The thoughts flash through her mind in the time it takes her to inhale, each one discarded as she opens her mouth. "It doesn't matter what he says or doesn't say," she says calmly. "He would never hurt me." She doesn't need to peek into Joshua's mind to know that answer wasn't good enough; his face crumples with barely-restrained despair. "Uncle Jo-osh!" She rolls her eyes and whines his name. "Come on. I'm a demon. I drink electricity. Things are different for me."

"He's not entirely stable, Tessa," Josh says resolutely. "I know that. You know that. He knows that. What if he loses his temper one day and does something without meaning to?"

It's my fault, my fault, my fault, always my fault, everything always turns out wrong. The memory of his panicked thoughts echoes through her mind, and she represses a shudder. She knows exactly what it would do to him if he accidentally hurt her, and something inside her shifts as she contemplates that. For the moment, nothing matters but protecting him from that potential for disaster.

"I won't let that happen." The words come out as a steely hiss that falls just short of being a challenge.

Joshua suddenly remembers that his adoptive niece is, in fact, a demon who is capable of doing things he is unable to comprehend and somehow managed to walk into a meeting he was sure was suicide and come out less than a month later in the lap of luxury with her own expense account and a very dangerous man doing nice things for her.

He resolves to drop the subject of her potential victimization and never bring it up again.

"I'll just go get these things for you," he says with forced nonchalance. "You should probably try to get some sleep while I'm out. You want to be well-rested for tomorrow."

"That's a good idea, Uncle Josh. Thanks!" She gives him a hug and wanders over to the couch, curls up, and is asleep in seconds.

Teenagers, Joshua thinks, shaking his head. They grow up so fast.