TBTT 59. His own worst enemy

[moonshadows]

His evening routine brings him no peace from the grating irritation that buzzes through his thoughts, both at himself and at the simpering worms that call themselves his government. For a while, the casual chatter between Tessa and her uncle had distracted him, but his Champion has been silent for some time now and peeking through the monitoring node only shows her prodding at something he can’t see. He’d thought she would have already leaped at the chance to practice on her own, but his nighttime workout ends without her moving from her spot on the couch. As he showers and prepares to wrestle with sleep, the nagging irritation changes to disappointment that builds until he looks at his bed and remembers the fluttering, fragile hope caused by having Tessa asleep next to him, unaware or unafraid of how close he has come to killing her in the past.

How close he came to killing her today.

He wants to hold her, to greedily wallow in her concern and devotion, to pretend for just a moment that he is someone else – but he does not deserve such comforts, not after today’s little episode. How can he face her, knowing that he’d doubted her so completely? On the other hand, maybe that very incident is precisely why he should go down there. She can’t be expected to repair his damaged mind if he gives her no opportunity to do so, and shouldn’t he reaffirm her devotion to keep his paranoia at bay? Besides, if he were to suddenly avoid her company, she would suspect something and he has no desire to explain himself in this matter.

He goes.

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When he steps out into her room, she does not so much as twitch, all her attention on whatever it is that she’s working on. Disappointment bites deeply into him and he watches in hurt silence as she continues to ignore him. After several minutes, she makes a final gesture and the illusion of complex patterns traced in red lines on a black background leaps into visibility. This is what she’s been doing, then? Designing her dress uniform? Some of the disappointment melts away, but he still craves her adoration, needs her smile to ease the pain of living.

“You have not availed yourself of your hour in the gym.” He stifles a wince; that came out hard and accusing where he was aiming for mild concern.

“I wanted to get started on my dress uniform,” she says apologetically, yawning as she turns towards him. “I can practice later, but if I don’t get this done…”

He frowns. “You are tired. You should be asleep.”

She gives him a guilty look. “I know, but I got caught up in tweaking the design – does it look okay so far?”

The frown doesn’t budge.

After a few seconds, she wilts. “I’m sorry, Kal’shan. I’ll go to bed.”

Dejected, she stands and half-stumbles towards her bedroom, but he pulls her roughly against him before she can take more than a half a dozen steps. Unfair it might be, but he did not come here just to watch her go without claiming some comfort from her. Sweetly obedient to his unspoken demands, she nestles against him and some of his cold annoyance thaws.

Oh, my Champion, would you still let me hold you if you knew how close I came to… He does not finish the thought, but he already knows that her answer would be yes. Her place is at his side.

“Grab your cable,” he commands, voice harsh from the emotions choking him.

Reluctantly, he releases her just long enough for her to comply, then pulls her down onto the couch next to him. She doesn’t protest, just sips electricity and gazes at him with limpid trust in her faintly-glowing eyes. No, she shouldn’t trust him! He can’t be trusted, he-

The thoughts are forcibly cut off, and to distract himself, he traces the curl of one horn with his fingertips. The contented mewling sound she utters makes him almost smile, and he continues the soothing motion until she is quite limp in his embrace, breathing slow and steady.

“’m gonna fall asleep ‘f you keep doing that,” she murmurs.

He considers it.

“While we are visiting the delta region, I will likely need you to demonstrate that you are a demon,” he says, removing his hand from her horn and trying to ignore her involuntary sigh of disappointment. “Fire will be easy enough, and I doubt we will need to demonstrate whatever dangers your blood may hold, but ‘gazing into the hearts of men’…” He senses her tiredness vanish in the sudden tension of her body. “I expect an opportunity for you to rummage through someone’s mind will present itself at some point; I do not entirely trust that the chancellor will not attempt something.” She is silent, mulling over the implications as he knew she would, but another thought strikes him. “You said that as half-Nathrezim, if our bodies are killed, they will return to the seeds from which they grew. How long does that process take? If-“ he stopped abruptly, unable to utter the words.

“It depends on a number of things,” she says calmly. “If I were killed here, in this room, I would be able to return within six hours. If I were killed in the delta, it might take me a day or so to re-form and return to you.”

The thought that he could have killed her was bad enough; the thought that he could have had to face her disappointment, her rejection after he did so… He can feel the fear rise and try to break him, only to be met by the tidal force of his rage. A soft sound of distress alerts him to the fact that he is holding his Champion uncomfortably tight, and he forces himself to loosen his grip. The instant he does, she twists around to put her hands on his horns, and he surrenders himself to her gentle touch.

“I know you’re afraid you’ll kill me,” she says gently. “Uncle Josh is, too. But I’m not, because even if you do, I’ll come back to you.”

“Why…?” He isn’t sure how to end that question, so he doesn’t.

“Because you’re my Kal’shan,” comes the whispered reply, somehow answering all the questions that hadn’t been voiced.

The blades that had been circling his mind and preventing her from entering it shudder and retract, but before she can do anything, his mental tendril reaches for her mind and she extends one in return. It is promptly pulled behind his defenses as his hold on her tightens again, making her nestle back against him. She projects reassurance and devotion while he silently pleads for patience, the rest of his emotions a complex, throbbing tangle. She dares not act with his mind embracing her presence so tightly, but she can look, and what she sees is not comforting. His sense of responsibility bleeds from new wounds, and the cage of self-loathing that had contained his fear is a pile of jagged rubble. The twisted shape of his fear has been impaled on a barbed, crystalline spike of…she’s not sure what that is, exactly. Clearly, he had some kind of breakdown and improvised a coping mechanism again. One of the walls holding his memories at bay has a gaping hole smashed in it – by the sense of responsibility, by the looks of it – but nothing unhealthy seems to be leaking from that particular batch of memories.

She wishes she knew what happened so she could fix it properly, but that thought makes her flinch in sudden guilt. His mind doesn’t function the same as anything she’s ever seen – has she been inadvertently causing more damage with her attempts to fix things? As if to prove the point, the sense of responsibility clomps over to the shards of self-loathing and absorbs a handful of them as though it were feeding itself. Maybe she should cool it for a while and let him get used to the repairs she’s already made. If he’s used to improvising his own repairs, having things work right will only throw him off-balance. She’ll just concentrate on cleaning up some of the things buried too deeply for him to notice any changes, and maintain the current state of things in the more active sections. Come to think of it, it probably wouldn’t hurt to start documenting things. She’ll probably never get a chance to present her work – if she ever finishes it – to the academy, but if she does ever return to Nathrezene, she’d like to be able to publish this. Get some recognition for her efforts, and maybe make a name for herself beyond being the failure half-breed child of her absent father.

“I have kept you from your rest long enough,” he says suddenly, sounding much more calm than she would have expected, given the kind of damage he’d inflicted on himself. “Sleep. Continue working on your uniform, when you are not with me. I have rescheduled our bonding session for the afternoon of Week’s Dusk, since we will be leaving for the delta the morning of Week’s Dawn.” Absently, his fingers caress her horns. “I am considering making that change permanent, considering how many times we have had to reschedule it,” he adds with mild amusement.

The fear writhes on its barbed spike.

Joshua was right. The words burn suddenly between them with acidic shame and bitter apology, cutting with a razor edge of hope and fear. His hands tighten around her, dulled talons biting bluntly into her flesh speaking eloquently of how distraught he is. I’m not stable. If I should do anything to you- The thought is cut off so suddenly that she’s not sure if he intended for her to hear it, or not. It doesn’t matter, in any case. He knows that she heard it and waits in trembling anticipation for her reaction.

I know. I don’t care. You’re my Kal’shan.

He shudders away from the devotion and forgiveness that bleed from those words, or perhaps from the fact that she has chosen to serve him despite knowing-

She finds herself suddenly ejected from his mind, the blade-storm circling.

“Sleep,” he snarls. “I will not have my tame demon yawning in public.”

“Good night, Kal’shan,” she says, unbothered by his apparent anger.

Awkwardly, she hugs him and he releases her, watching silently as she goes into her bedroom, nagged by the feeling that this isn’t how he wants the moment to end, but utterly at a loss as to what he does want.