TBTT 13. Pop quiz

[moonshadows]

It is his mind that she becomes aware of first. The broken thoughts mill around her, occasionally stampeding as my fault chases after them and whips them into a frenzy. Still half asleep, she reaches out and ties it was making you happy to the guilt like a bell, bait for his sense of responsibility. That’s how he manages to remain functional, she realizes, suddenly awake. There’s far too much damage, too many bleeding wounds for him to maintain any kind of functionality if he actually tried to deal with them, so he…doesn’t. He ignores what he can, forcefully if necessary – she can see the barricades built of broken memories, and wonders what could be behind them that’s worse than what’s allowed to roam free. With most of himself walled off like that, he picks a direction and devotes all his efforts there, giving the shattered structures of his mind something vaguely constructive to focus on while the sense of responsibility charges forward blindly.

She wonders what he will be like when his mind is no longer broken.

This is going to take a lot of reconstructive tampering, she thinks as she updates the working model of his mind. The question of whether or not it’s worth the time and effort it will take to make him whole never even occurs to her; he’s her Kal’shan, of course she’s going to fix him, even if it takes her the rest of her life. She does, however, realize that this devotion is why her mother banished her. If he ever decided that he wanted to rule the world of his birth, she would pour herself into helping him do just that, and not even her terrifying mother would be able to stop her.

With my fault otherwise occupied, his mind calms and she can take stock of the situation. After Joshua left last night she’d availed herself of the hot tub her apartment had, letting the heat soothe her until she woke up choking on hot water. She’d changed into – what had she put on after she dried her aching limbs? It wasn’t something unspeakably embarrassing or revealing, was it? She didn’t think she’d be able to meet her Kal’shan’s eyes if he saw her in the frogs-and-dragonflies jammies. No, she remembers with an internal sigh of relief, she’d thrown on the plain orange pajama bottoms and an oversized shirt strewn with giant flowers. Then she’d flopped back down on the couch because she was too lazy to find the power outlet in her bedroom, and she’d fallen asleep. And now she’d woken up because her Kal’shan was here, watching her, worried about her.

She opens her eyes, stretches, winces, finds him sitting on a chair he’d moved closer, and smiles. He looks startled, his mind scrambling to close its mismatched defenses as it practically shrieks confusion and panic over what he is supposed to do when a girl he almost killed smiles at him.

“Was I right?” she asks hesitantly, deflecting the situation away from his social awkwardness.

“You were,” he says.  After a brief, uncomfortable pause, he adds, “Well done.”

Her smile grows even wider. “Thank you, Kal’shan.”

“It is I who should be thank you,” he says, still uneasy with her lack of resentment. “You defused a situation that could have ended…unpleasantly.”

The defenses of his mind are haphazard enough that she can slip through them, and now that she is familiar with their arrangement, she does exactly that. She is moderately alarmed to discover that while my fault is not currently a threat, the improvised functionality of his broken mind is being threatened by a significantly powerful fear built from what look to be the other halves of the ruined dreams that protrude from his wounded sense of responsibility.

He’s afraid that he’ll somehow ruin everything, she realizes, and is horrified to discover that she has nothing with which to counter that fear.

He frowns at the distress on her face, and she hastily gels my fault in place before the guilt can make things worse.

“You are not yet recovered.” It is a simple statement of fact, lightly flavored by disapproval.

She might have apologized, if she weren’t able to see that it is himself the disappointment is aimed at, not her. “My energy is, but my body…” She winces and sits up, muscles screaming protest.

“I see,” he says coldly, trapping concern behind verbal ice. “We will have to start with the basics. Tomorrow, whether your body has recovered or not.”

“Yes, Kal’shan.” The thought of how much that’s going to hurt doesn’t dampen her enthusiasm any. There’s something well-protected in his mind that she can’t quite identify yet, but it surfaced when he announced starting with the basics, and she is eager to see what it is.

Silence descends. She is surprised that he is not making any motion to leave, even though he doesn't seem to have anything planned. For a few minutes, she just basks in his presence and lets her visible pleasure wash against him until she can hear the tone of his public thoughts shift from 'what am I doing?' to 'at least she seems happy'.

"Kal'shan?" He starts, and she withdraws from his mind as the defenses shuffle about in uncertainty. "May I show you my embroidery?"

He glowers as though searching for a reason to say no. "You may," he says reluctantly.

Slowly, wincing against the pain of abused muscles, she reaches down for the nozzled power cable where it fell to the floor and takes a long pull of electricity. The shirt, needles, and thread are still where she arranged them so carefully, and lift at her magical command. The spells aren't hard individually, but holding four levitation spells at once takes her complete concentration. Her face clears of all expression as she pulls up the carefully-prepared spell matrix and fits first the cloth, then the lavender thread, into place. A breath as the strain lightens momentarily, another pull on the power nozzle, and she activates the first part of the spell matrix.

At first, she just feeds power into the spell and watches the needle dip in and out, in and out, spelling her name in runes she knows he cannot read. Once she is certain that the purple thread is flowing correctly along its predetermined path, she reaches for the light green thread and fits it into place. The second section of the spell is activated, the power draw doubles, and her aching muscles are forgotten as she concentrates on keeping the power flow even. Green now starts lining the purple runes. A few breaths while she makes sure the spells are stable, and the pale yellow thread obediently settles into its place in the matrix. This is the hardest part. She's never been able to maintain both an embroidery matrix and a regulation buffer at the same time, so she must keep the power flow balanced by herself. The yellow thread springs into action, tattooing a halo around both green and purple.

For several minutes there is silence. Three needles flit over the cloth, color blooming in their wakes as the Nathrezim runes spread slowly up the right side of the shirt in accordance with the design she'd spent so long working out. All her focus is on keeping the spells powered, keeping the motions smooth. It is a tangible relief when the lilac thread reaches the end of the design and that section of the spell becomes a simple levitation once again. When the green finishes, she is able to spare enough concentration to knot and sever the two spools and set them back down. By the time the yellow has finished, she is once again aware that she is not alone in the room.

With the strain of the embroidery matrix no longer present, she cuts the yellow thread and tries not to sigh in relief. A triumphant gesture turns the shirt with a flourish and levitates it over to him for inspection while she sips power and remembers that why yes, she does still hurt.

He examines the shirt as it hangs in the air, unwilling to risk damaging it with his claws. He'd had his doubts about letting her demonstrate something that requires fine manipulation while so obviously suffering from what he put her through, but this was an application of magic that he'd never thought about. Memories from his long-buried youth stir restlessly and for a moment, he wonders what it would have been like if he had been able to strut about in something done this way. Ruthlessly, he crushes the thoughts and tramples them beneath the harsh reality of his life. The pattern, the spell he could see like the shining strands of a living spider web, was too complex and too smoothly-executed for her to have done this by hand. By the same token, the lines of unfamiliar runes form shapes not unlike the ones burned into his flesh, which means this could not have been a pre-existing design. He wonders how many hours she spent tinkering with it. With no other examples of Nathrezim embroidery to compare it to, he has no idea how good she may or may not be, but she was right when she called it a quick and dirty assessment of ability. She's still young, but if she possesses this level of skill now...

Clever, determined, and so eager for the slightest hint of his approval that she flung herself into a demonstration of complex magic less than a day after allowing him to work her to exhaustion. True, her raw power is lacking, but is he not proof that such things can be overcome? With a bit of training, she will be a more formidable lieutenant than even Vashj, because her loyalty will be without question.

He frowns. Will it?

His first instinct is to draw upon his power, to threaten the truth out of her - but that would only inflame her misplaced hero-worship. The cloth he'd nearly forgotten about withdraws and he follows it with his eyes until she plucks it from the air and cuddles it to her chest, eyes wide and expression mournful.

"You don't like it?" She looks ready to cry again. "I...I shouldn't have patterned it after your..."

"Stop."

She stills, biting her lip, eyes still wide as he stands up. After a moment, he steps closer to the couch and kneels so that their eyes are on the same level. One clawed hand on the arm of the couch for lack of a safer place to put it, he slowly reaches out with the other hand and gently, carefully, grips her chin. Whatever demonic ability it is that lets him detect lies is wide open, listening for all it's worth.

"Answer yes or no to each one. Do you have any intentions of breaking my trust, plotting against me, enacting revenge against me, or knowingly allowing others to inflict harm upon me?" There is no inflection in his voice; it is a litany he has used on many others. Always, there has been a conflicting echo in some part of the answer. He needs this, needs to hear where the betrayal will come from so he can plan accordingly.

She trembles beneath his hand. "I have no intentions of breaking your trust. I have no intentions of plotting against you." Her words lack the dissonance he's come to expect. "I will never enact revenge against you. I will never knowingly allow others to inflict harm upon you!" That last declaration rings with defiance, a self-binding oath that sends shivers of truth up his arm, but she's not done. "I would rather take the blow for you than allow you to be struck. And if anyone tried to hurt you, I'd...I'd..." Some of the fire dies and she tilts her head slightly in his hand. "What do you want me to do with anyone who tries to hurt you?"

That, he was not expecting. "Keep them alive and able to answer questions," he says after a moment of mental juggling, then allows the hint of a cold smile to flit across his face. "Aside from that, I leave it to your discretion - and creativity." She smiles at that, but there is one more part to this test, a trick question that usually made liars out of even the most seemingly-devoted of his followers. “Would you lay down your life for me?”

“No.”

Ah, honesty. The jaded disappointment has no more than reared its head, however, when she looks him directly in the eyes and clarifies.

“If I’m dead, I can’t serve you.”

She watches as his expression blanks out, hiding the chaos that reigns behind his mental defenses. Behind her own walls, she’s weeping that he’s been mistreated enough to make such an interrogation necessary – and raging at whoever caused such damage in the first place. He was very careful to give no names and speak in vague terms when he told her of the things he’d done, although she suspected it was to protect himself rather than to spare their reputations. After a minute, the mental churning quiets down and he releases the gentle hold he has on her chin to lightly touch her wrist instead. When she looks at him in confusion, he gestures for her to hold up the half-embroidered shirt.

“Finish that,” he says firmly. “I want to see it on you.”

He smirks to himself as she dissolves into adolescent glee. Joshua had suggested rewarding her when she’d pleased him, but he doesn’t need to ask her what kind of things she wanted. The barest hint of approval is enough to put stars in her eyes, and the faintest smirk makes her look at him as though he were the greatest thing Azeroth had ever produced. For just a moment, a whisper of wistful longing asks why that hadn’t worked with-

The thought is buried with vehemence that borders on homicidal, so ruthlessly suppressed that he doesn’t even spare half a thought to recognize that there is something – someone – he’s not thinking about.

"You like it?" She's hesitant, remembering his earlier frown.

It's been so long since he had the luxury to judge anything an aesthetics that he is left scrambling for words. "It impressed me. I think it would suit you." Half-formed thoughts flit around, the anemic product of his atrophied imagination. "...I'd like to see what else you can create, as well."

At that, she looks so ecstatic and determined that he briefly wonders what he's unleashed, but dismisses it. He looks forward to being presented with a surprise that isn't going to leave him either bleeding, or trying to re-work his plans. With his traditional interrogation complete, he stands - and watches as she wistfully follows the upwards motion of his horns. Her hopeful look is met with his stern frown.

"Not until you can lift your arms and not have them tremble," he says, a little startled to discover that what he thought was going to be a gentle rebuke came out as a menacing growl instead.

She doesn't seem put off by the unintended show of hostility. "I understand, Kal'shan."

Do you really? he wonders, but then he remembers her correcting Joshua's mistaken assumptions. "Rest well, then," he says aloud. "I will not go easy on you tomorrow." She pales a little at that, and he is suddenly, irrationally irritated by seeing her clothed in human seeming.

"Were you going easy on me before?"

Her voice trembles only slightly and he gives her a grin that is more than slightly cruel as he dons his own illusions.

"No."

She watches him leave, obscurely flattered that he’s not going to hold back even though he’s so concerned for her. There was a well-hidden spike of fear when he asked if she would lay down her life for him that she wasn’t able to entirely catch and identify, but she guesses that he’s afraid she’ll ‘betray’ him by dying. As she lays back down and pulls the nozzle of her cable to her lips, she giggles tiredly and wonders when she should let him know that’s not a concern.