TBTT 54. This could have been much worse

[moonshadows]

Joshua had hoped to be able to discuss things with his niece as they walked, but the guards that fell in behind them dissuaded that. He wasn’t about to risk his Lord’s wrath by exposing Tessa as anything other than a tame demon. He’d wanted to warn her about the scene his mother was sure to make, or ask her about the lightning-storm demonstration. Between her being with their Lord in the mornings and his work keeping him tied up in the afternoons, he hasn’t had a chance to visit all week. In silence, he leads his niece and their escort to his quarters and with an internal wince, he opens the door and follows Tessa inside.

“Aaaaaaaaaaa Tessa sweetling tell me it’s not true!” Joshua’s mother, who had been lying in wait, crushes the half-demon to her chest as though clutching a mortally-wounded child. “Not my sweet little girl! It can’t be true, I won’t believe it!”

Joshua sighs discreetly as his mother takes Tessa’s cheeks between her hands and wails, but the girl seems unfazed.

“What’s not true, Grandma?” 

“Tell me you didn’t kill an entire city! Oh, my sweet innocent little girl – Grandma knows you could never do anything like that!”

Tessa grins indulgently. “I didn’t kill an entire city, Grandma. I didn’t even kill that many people. I just destroyed a few buildings.”

Without missing a beat, the older woman switches from drama to reproach. “So calmly she says this, I can’t believe my ears. We did not raise you to destroy buildings, young lady! You couldn’t demonstrate your demon powers by making it rain toads or something, you really had to destroy those buildings?”

“Yes, Grandma, I really did. If I hadn’t destroyed those buildings, the people in the city wouldn’t have been scared of what else I could do. They’d never think of surrendering to the Warlord, and he’d have to kill a lot more of them for resisting.”

At the teenager’s serious tone, the mercurial mood of Joshua’s mother shifts yet again. “I see. He made you do it. Can’t do his own dirty work, he has to use innocent girls to destroy buildings and terrorize people. I should have known. That butcher, that monster-“

“He’s not a monster.” 

The words, hard as stone and just as unrelenting, slice through the rant and leave only silence in their wake. Although she still looks like a bouncy teenage girl, the illusions seem to be a cheap disguise hiding a very dangerous, very deadly, inhuman being. Joshua has seen this once before, when she declared that their Lord would never harm her, but it seems to have startled his mother out of her melodrama. Even Tessa herself seems surprised at the words that emerged from her mouth, but the fleeting expression fades into grim determination.

“Don’t call him that,” she says in a voice like silk over steel. “You can call him a butcher, a demon, a madman, a murderer, an animal – but don’t ever call him a monster.”

Joshua braces for an explosion of clashing wills for his niece daring to talk back like that, but to his astonishment, his mother does something he’s never seen her do before: treat Tessa as something other than a child to be fussed over.

“Why not?” The words drop into the silence like pebbles, calm and rational.

Tessa pauses. Until now, she hasn’t questioned the certainty that still flooded her mind, but now she realizes that she has no logical reason for having reacted so emphatically. Slightly troubled, she prods at that resolute certainty. Was it an overheard memory that tipped her off? Something from the trauma-tumor tied to his brother? She can’t put her mental finger on how she knows that being called a monster would slice right past the barricades and walls and leave her star bleeding, but she knows why.

“Someone he cared about used that word to hurt him,” she says with equal composure. “He knows he’s done things that a lot of people hate him for, and he knows that a lot of people call him nasty names. He expects it and it doesn’t bother him – except for that word.”

“You’re a good girl, Jentessa,” Josh’s father says from the door to the dining room. “Why are you getting yourself tangled up with someone like him?” He gives Joshua a quick, minute nod to show that he knows what he’s doing. “You know that he’s not a nice person. He knows he’s not a nice person. Why are you letting yourself get so close to him?”

How can I explain? She wonders in despair. How could she ever explain the magic that binds her to him, the burning devotion? The need to ease his pain, soothe his bleeding mind, reassure and support him? Serving him is more than an honor, it’s the fulfillment of everything she’s ever wanted, the validation of her entire existence. Even if she’s never able to be anything more to him than a friend…wait, that’s it.

“He needs a friend,” she says softly. “He hasn’t had one in a very, very long time.”

Joshua’s parents exchange a look that says well, that explains it. Suddenly, their heartless Lord doesn’t seem as terrifying upon the realization that he does have a heart, and the implication that he’s ruthlessly conquering the world because he’s been hurt to the point of striking back first. A sociopathic murder is a much more dangerous man than one who’s just angry at the world because no one cares about him. Their adopted granddaughter’s actions don’t seem so suicidal anymore; if he has a friend, someone who is kind to  him, maybe the world will suffer less under his rule. Or at the very least, they won’t have to fear his wrath as long as they don’t insult him outright.

“Are you sure you should be the one to do that?” the older man asks, and just like that, the serious atmosphere evaporates into a rolled-eye grin.

“I’m a demon, Grandpa. If not me, than who?”

He chuckles. “Fair enough. Table’s all set, Evie,” he says to his wife.

“I should hope so. Joshie, help your father bring the food to the table.”

It’s not until she sees the round table where she had expected a rectangle that she remembers last week’s discussion, and her pulse races at the thought of next week’s family dinner. Her hands trace the back of one chair lightly, marveling that in seven days, her Kal’shan will be sitting-

“He’ll be between you and Joshie,” her grandmother says, startling Tessa out of her thoughts. “No funny business at the table, mind. Or anywhere in this house,” she adds with a sternly-waggled finger.

The half-demon rolls her eyes good-naturedly. “If he wanted funny business, Grandma, he’d have done something by now.”

The older woman harrumphs as she seats herself. “Big bully, just takes what he wants. Thinks he owns the whole world.”

Tessa smiles as she sits down. “But Grandma…he does.”

                ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Riding the wind above the mountains, the Warlord lets his attention drift away from the spell that allows him to spy upon his Champion. He would dearly love to gnaw at what he’d overheard – how had she known that? – but it would serve no purpose while she is with her adopted family, and he did not come out here solely to enjoy the ride. Thankfully, untangling the disrupted weather patterns snarled by the unnatural storms he’d whipped up is a complex enough task to distract him from the majority of the thoughts and fears that would otherwise tear mercilessly into him. He could probably ignore the disrupted weather over the mountain region – no one lives on the mountainsides, and there is no agricultural industry outside to speak of – but doing so would only make it harder to put the hill region’s weather back to rights. Declaring war on the area and being willing to slaughter everyone living there was no reason to let the whole region suffer unnatural weather; they would surrender to him soon enough, and their farmland and forests would do his troops no good if they had been flooded or parched.

Besides, it was an excellent excuse to get out and feel the wind beneath his wings again.

Briefly, he had considered riding the air currents down to the hill region to check on his army’s progress, but the notion was quickly dismissed. He does not relish the thought of accidentally being shot at, nor being so far away from his Champion. That thought is suppressed as well, and he turns his attention back to the air pressure he’s been wrestling with. One last tug , and the sky grumbles as everything settles back into place. A sullen rain begins falling, cold and uncaring. The former Lord of Outland is soaked to the skin almost instantly. It fits his mood: cold satisfaction at having fixed something that he himself had broken in the first place. 

Without the weather patterns to distract him, his sour mindset circles around and settles back on him, even as he wheels and lands on the side of the nearest mountain. It probably wouldn’t kill him, but he still has no wish to be struck by a stray bolt of lightning. He knows he should return to his office, or to the gym, and take this foul mood out on the walls or burn it off in combat with imaginary enemies, but why bother? No one on this world cares for him except Tessa, and she’s currently wallowing in familial affection, something he’ll never have. The only family he has is his brother, who locked him underground for ten thousand years and then banished him. There is no one to express concern for his health if he stays out in a cold rainstorm, so in a fit of sulky anger, he does just that.  The smoldering resentment keeps him warm as anger flows down well-worn paths, retracing his history and circling endlessly back to snarl at his brother, his jailor, his brother, the Burning Legion, the Lich King, his brother… 

He shivers suddenly, the sustained trembling in his core that he hasn’t felt since the snows of Icecrown, a bone-deep chill bringing him sharply back to awareness of the world around him. For one moment he wonders how long he’d been lost in the maze of his resentment – and if Tessa is back in her rooms yet. The rain is tapering off, and a check through the monitoring node shows that Joshua is leading her back to her apartment. Having sat in the cold rain now seems immensely foolish, and as he travels back through the Twisting Nether, he weighs the comfort of her concern against the shame of being seen in such a miserable state. No, he corrects himself, that’s not it. She will not chide or mock him. No, the reason he does not want her to see him like this is that she inexplicably holds him in such high esteem that he does not wish to disappoint her with the reality. 

Something twists and writhes inside him, and he pauses on the way to his bedroom. Anger at himself flares and roughly, he shoves the guilt and shame aside. Her place is at his side; the most distraught he has ever seen her was when she was afraid that he would not let her serve him. Time and time again she has proven to him that if he damages himself, she will be there to eagerly throw herself into trying to ease his pain. She is his Champion; this is her duty. The only difference between this and War conquering the hill region at his command is that he has to command War. 

He follows the chain of magic that binds her to him. He’s cold and wet and wants to be bathed  in her devotion, and now that he’s thinking reasonably clearly again, he is very curious as to how she knew just what an effective weapon against him the word ‘monster’ is.