Soren awoke with a start, the all-too-familiar residual feeling of dread holding a vice grip tightly on his heart amidst the pounding in his head. It has been nearly a year since he himself at fled the Isles, at this point; yet the nightmares still inevitably found their way back in.

He looked about the bedroom (his bedroom, he reminded himself, as wrong as it felt). Moonlight shone in through the sheer curtains, bathing the room in its calm glow, and gentle winds rushed through the wild grasses outside the window. While the interior was rather nicely furnished and well-kept, it was largely barren outside of that; that itself at Soren’s own behest, for as much as Titania seemed doggedly insistent he do something, anything with it, even just move one thing around, even now he simply could not bring himself to do so. He was starting to feel at home here, sure. He liked it here, sure. Yet he found he couldn’t shake the nagging guilt that had been plaguing him ever since he’d showed up here, half-dead and only still alive thanks to some impromptu palisman-life-support. Said guilt was born of a lot of things, but mostly… well, mostly from having left his — the Emperor behind, for having disobeyed him in the first place and ruined literally everything, and for good measure having thrown his lot in with wild witches by association, even if he hadn’t meant to. It was a whole laundry list of offences that only grew longer and more complicated the more he stayed and the more he liked doing so, and it felt like it was taking every ounce of willpower in him not to break down again and try to flee.

He wanted to run, and he didn’t know why — it was nice here, everyone was so nice here. He had a place here, a real place, like he’d sometimes dreamed of before he got used to thinking of those dreams as just that, dreams. He had a new name here, one that was given to him by someone who really seemed to care about him (and he liked the name, to be quite frank; though he’d certainly never admit it to anyone and he definitely wasn’t going to be permitted to keep it he liked thinking of himself as a ‘Soren’ in lieu of an ‘Ezekiel’… of Titania’s child instead of Belos’?). Someone who was doing her best to meet him where he was (…but Belos cared too, didn’t he? He had to have cared, that was how he showed that he cared, how you’re supposed to show it, he was only—). Nobody hurt him here, nobody was ever truly unkind to him here; and though no one knew the specifics everyone knew he must have gone through something horrible, and they all treated him different for it, but not in a bad way, really, it was just…

…Well, he did know why he wanted to flee, sort of, but it was all so confusing for him to think about. Everyone here seemed so kind and genuine in their concern for him as compared to where he came from, but he always found himself doubting their intentions or wondering why or how exactly they managed caring for a miserable and useless thing like him, so completely broken in every conceivable way yet still allowed to tag around at their heels like a lame house pet, too pitiful to outright get rid of. At this point, he thought to himself, it would be way less cruel to just kill me and get it over with. It would save everyone a lot of time and effort, and from their morbid rubbernecking into his continued survival. Everything from his terrible brain to his ugly (and still pretty painful, so he couldn’t even forget them if he didn’t look in a mirror) scars to his bad knees and the stupid limp when he overexerted himself, which wasn’t even hard for him to do, mind you, was to him a burden upon the people around him, and at this point he really wished they’d stop caring or perhaps even just stop pretending to (either one was fine with him, whatever the case was) and just get rid of him already. He had thought things were getting better for awhile there, he really had — but of course, he had to ruin them again, just by being there, through his own thoughts and then his own actions or lack thereof.

He liked to think he was good at following orders, but there were never any real orders here, just requests. Questions. A lot of personal questions he didn’t want to answer, sometimes out of fear of further betraying the Emperor and other times for a lot more reasons, among them the horrible and borderline indescribable feelings he felt when he thought about the answers to some of them. Here, the one thing he was good at he couldn’t even do. At least with Belos he knew what to expect, how to feel and when to feel it, what the rules were. He knew how to maneuver a situation to get a good result, or at least a bearable one. Here, he never did; for all the times Titania seemed frustrated with him or in general or was even openly upset about something she never once raised a hand against him and actively refrained from raising her voice, or anything of the sort, much to Soren’s chagrin.

He was truly so lost in these roundabout thoughts, just sitting there in bed (his bed, his own head echoed), that he had barely noticed that he’d started to cry; this fact only became known to him when the door across the room from the foot of his bed slowly but surely started to creak open, and a familiar but tired face moved from the darkness of the hall into the light of the moon, squinting all the while.

“…Soren?” Titania mumbled groggily, and in response the boy moved quickly to wipe the tears from his face with an inadvertent sniffle that he then proceeded to silently curse. “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” he croaked half-heartedly. “Really.”

“You don’t sound fine,” the demon replied, her concern evident even in her tired voice. It made him feel strangely sick.

“I…” he began, but just as quickly trailed off, realizing he didn’t exactly know quite what he wanted to say or how to say it.

The door swung upon the rest of the way, albeit gently, as he was starting to come to expect. Titania stepped in swiftly and quietly, her palisman ever silent at her heels, closing the door behind her and simply looking over at him, unspoken question on her tongue.

Another question, always another question. Great, he thought. He couldn’t go a single day (or night, apparently) without somehow being a burden — making people worry about him, making a scene out of the little things that should be kept quiet and out of sight, that didn’t matter and that shouldn’t matter to anyone but his own messed-up self, even when he didn’t mean to. How loud had his stupid crying been, anyway? Now he was bothering this lady (she could have been his mother, he thought for a moment, before immediately rejecting that thought and feeling bad for even thinking it) in the middle of the knight with his dumb problems.

He once again moved to reply, but still didn’t have the words to explain and was tripping over his thoughts anyway. Titania frowned in response, before gingerly moving over towards him as if he was some wounded animal; to be fair, he certainly felt like one. He winced as she sat down on the edge of the bed, some part of him still anticipating some kind of blow or reprimand, as she looked him over. She didn’t speak, at least not immediately, and instead chose to divert her attention towards the window to stare wistfully, and especially tiredly, out of it, at the moonlit blades of grass as they danced in the night. When she did speak, finally, it was punctuated by a deep melancholy sigh. “It’s okay if you’re not fine, you know.”

A deep frustration coiled around his heart, childish and confused. He felt an angry blush rise in his cheeks, though he tried his best to rein it in; in reply, he turned to look at her with an indignant squeak of “No!”.

Taken aback, she turned her attention to him once more, regarding him with a curious scrutiny that made him shrink back from her and his sudden boldness with his proverbial tail between his legs and a sheepishly mumbled “I’m sorry,” as he fiddled with the edge of the plain, light-blue covers, unwilling to meet her eyes. Titan, he felt even worse for the effort, that he was somehow stupid enough to let an outburst like that, however small, slip through.

Her gaze softened, and she sighed again. “Listen, kid,” she started, though he was still opting to look down at the floor beside the bed, on the precipice of zoning out completely, hoping this would be over soon. This was altogether too much effort for someone like her to be wasting on him; he reminded himself subconsciously of her name, of the importance that must signify. Indeed, she seemed to be the chief of this quaint little village, and he was sure she had far better things to be doing than trying to fix some broken little animal.

“…Soren,” she added, insistent, and for a second he glanced up at her out of the corners of his eyes, cheeks (or what one could make out of them) still flushed with internalized anger that was still very much aimed directly at himself. She extended a gentle hand, which he regarded with a trained suspicion, even now. The incident with the hippogryph was just a fluke, he told himself; if he ever let his guard down again he was sure she had it in her to be less merciful — she had to. She was big, and strong, much stronger than him, and no one ever got that big or strong without hurting other people to do it.

“Look,” she continued finally, snapping him out of his thought routine. She must have been watching him for a few minutes, because her hand was now resting down on the covers by her side. “I don’t know what you’re going through; I don’t know what you’ve been through. Whether or not you tell me all that is up to you, okay? I don’t want to pressure you.” She shifted her position a bit to turn towards him more, and though he was still watching her with suspicion in his gaze it was betrayed by the scared child that was beneath it, who was trying very hard to disguise the fact that he had started shaking (though he, personally, did not know why) as tears threatened to spill from his eyes once again. “…But what I do want you to do, when you have a problem, is come to me. You don’t have to explain a thing, but do come see me.”

“I… I can’t,” he whispered meekly.

“And why not?”

“I’m not supposed to,”

“…Supposed to what, exactly?”

“I-I’m not supposed to bother you.” he finished, quickly adding, “…If it’s not important.”

She exhaled sharply, closing her eyes in deep thought and rubbing the bridge of her nose. That one was a bit of a doozy, compared to what she was used to with her own kids, though it was about what she was expecting. She’d always been one to stress the importance of her kids coming and seeing her for any issue they might have, any problem, no matter how small; it might be something as minor as a stubbed claw and she’d still be apt to dote on them and offer whatever solution or distraction she could muster. “I promise — no, I swear on the Titan itself,” she answered, looking his way with wide eyes for emphasis, “You are not bothering me, you cannot bother me, I invite you to try. And besides… if it’s about you, then it’s important, okay? …I want to help you, Soren. I want…” she trailed off, mulling over the words in her head before quickly picking back up from the slump. “I want you to be okay. Never mind me, I’ve been through the ringer before. I’ll be okay. The real focus is on you,” she said, pointing towards him, “and what’s bothering you.”

There was silence in the room for a good minute or so, before it was replaced by sudden sniffling; Titania watched as the young grimwalker moved to hide his face from her, as he found himself no longer able to hold back the flood of tears that had been threatening to spill this entire time. The softness in her gaze remained.

“W-why can’t I understand you?” he mumbled, through the muffled crying he was trying very hard to pretend wasn’t very much obvious. “I keep — I keep t-trying, but I just don’t get it.”

“Well,” she offered, “What are you trying to understand?”

“You don’t do a-anything normal,” he answered earnestly, though what he would go on to say only further twisted the knife that had already been firmly lodged in her heart. “You don’t m-make me do stuff I don’t like, or bad t-things, you don’t h-hurt me when I mess up or when I d-disobey you. I t-tried to run away from you, but you don’t — you don’t even care. You d-don’t even want to hurt me.”

“Well,” she replied, “I’d certainly hope not.”

He growled miserably. “You don’t understand, then,” he bemoaned.

“Oh?” she paused, mulling over the words on the tip of her tongue before answering with a quick “What don’t I understand, then?”

“Everything!” Soren suddenly burst out, though when she reacted with a mild surprise he quickly backpedalled. “I-I mean… ugh, why is this so hard to explain! You — you’re supposed to do those things!”

“And why is that?” she answered calmly.

“Y-you’re just supposed to! I don’t know!” He was full-on crying now, though at this point he didn’t seem to care as much to try and hide it. “I don’t know… I don’t know why… I just know that it’s — it’s a t-thing! I-I told you before, you’re supposed to be mad at me when I don’t listen to you, you’re — you’re supposed to, um,” he paused for a second, thinking over his words and growling under his breath as he did so, unable to articulate his thoughts as fast as he wanted to, “Well, y-you’re supposed to punish me! Or, like… ugh, if I d-do something wrong, you — or something, a-anything…b you’re weird, and I l-like… I like it here, but that’s w-wrong!”

She leaned in further, with a curious expression; she wasn’t exactly saying she wanted him to elaborate a little more, but she was certainly implying it. He huffed, admittedly a little flustered; her own nosiness sort of reminded him of his own, though he knew all too well how that could end up.

“You’re… you guys are all wild witches, and you’re all… y-you’re all supposed to be dangerous, but you’re really nice, and I don’t understand it. I d-don’t understand why you’re so nice. I don’t get w-why you… why you c-care about me, okay?” His voice was tired, worn-out and meek; he sounded defeated, like he’d tried his best to avoid specifically revealing this information in any in-depth capacity but had simply run out of ways to talk around it — and that was indeed true. He almost regretted saying it, now, being so strangely vulnerable; it was only in the last little while that he’d started talking for longer than a few short seconds, but even now it still felt as if he was locked into the role of the Golden Guard he’d gotten used to so fast. “I… I told you, I thought about leaving, and g-going home,” There was a lilt to his voice when he said the word ‘home’, as if he didn’t truly believe it anymore, “And you weren’t even upset. I’m n-not… I’m not supposed to be here. I’m only h-here because I was a bad kid. This is w-wrong, I h-have to go back,” He didn’t really know what he was expecting if he went back; Belos might not even want him back, at this point, given how hard he’d tried to kill him. At this point, he confessed, he might even just be hoping he’d finish the job and get his miserable existence over with, so he didn’t have to think about any of it anymore. “Even if…” He hesitated. No, actually, he didn’t need to talk to her about that. He didn’t want to talk about it at all, really; not the way it haunted him in every waking hour, and every dreaming one too. None of it ever, thank you very much.

Instead, he turned his thoughts elsewhere. He been isolated for so long, raised as his father’s (was he really his father?) little pet who was never quite as perfect as he seemed to other people. Belos would do anything to make sure he’d stayed in line, had always punished him whenever he’d messed up, whether that meant saying something he didn’t like or doing something in the wrong way; he was used to anything from veiled cruel comments to outright physical strikes. He'd learned the language of violence fast, when he was smaller, and he'd latched onto it like a vice as the only set of rules he'd ever truly understood; the strong would survive where the weak would not, and he only hoped he could toe that mid-line long enough to get through life, because he'd always known how weak he truly was without Belos. Belos, who despite everything had at least (up until the incident) taken him in, had given him a future, as long as he'd followed the rules, as long as he was good. In the interest of that it was second nature to him to hide his thoughts and feelings, to avoid expressing any extreme emotions, especially not while on the clock. To yield to his father's will, to obey his every command without question; Soren's own will and desires were never up for consideration (that they were here was new and wrong, as he was so keen on stressing; this wasn't how you raised a child, was it?).

Really, he’d never really had a childhood as these people seemed to be defining it; since from the second his father had deemed him ready of it he’d been thrown into scout training, though his watchful eye always made sure he never mingled with any of his peers.

What he wasn’t used to was this, any of it — and he was very upset about it. Everything was upside down and wrong.

Titania was watching him with a sympathetic gaze, one that cowed him considering his previous outbursts; he couldn’t exactly help getting defensive, even if he’d never have talked to Belos that way. Maybe he was trying to goad her into doing something, he reckoned. Anything to make things feel normal — his normal, the one he kept coming back to, obsessing over — which even if it wasn’t good, he still knew how to navigate.

“…I care about you because you’re a person, Soren,” she said gently, a foreign, nurturing cadence to her voice; a real one, this time, not the false kind he’d been raised on. “You’re not a bad kid, you never have been — and even if you were, it wouldn’t matter anymore, because you’ve never been bad to me, or anyone here.”

He thought of his first few assignments; among them helping round up wild witches to be inducted into proper covens. That in specific made him shudder, considering his company; if she really knew what kind of a person he was, then yes, she would indeed find him a bad kid. The fact that he’d helped Belos in general, really, given how much she seemed to hate him, seemed on edge whenever he was brought up. Maybe things would be different if she could stop seeing him as a victim and more as an extension of Belos — he was supposedly his child, after all, and he saw no logic in her caring for the child of her enemy. Maybe he should tell her; yes, he should! This was his opportunity, a real opportunity to finally get her to see things his way.

“Ha,” he breathed, “Y-you don’t know that. You don’t know anything about m-me. I…” he sniffled, then shook his head, “I…” This was much harder than he thought.

“You… what, exactly?”

“I, um… I h-h…” he trailed off. He couldn’t meet her gaze, couldn’t bear to look at her. Oh, Titan, this was terrible; but he had to admit to himself deep down that this was the kind of fear his addled brain was craving, or at least close to it; this was the fear of admitting to doing something wrong or being bad, the fear that preceded a punishment, and that in turn would make things normal again, he was sure of it. Somehow. He swallowed, before speaking again, resolute this time and putting on his best air of false confidence. “I. Helped. Belos,” he offered, gritting his teeth. “I helped him. I rounded up wild witches. I-I gave people coven sigils. I would have hurt you. I-I’m his kid,” he growled. “You can’t… y-you too can’t,” his voice cracked. “Please, just stop… you shouldn’t be… you c-can’t care about me like this, this is all… this is all wrong,” he slumped forward, his prior exhaustion catching up to him. “I can’t… I can’t do this anymore, I…”

This was so much worse than the last time. When he’d ran off with the hippogryph, he didn’t really know what he was thinking (at least in terms of the immediate “plan”) was going to happen, and he still didn’t; but at that point he hadn’t said too much, hadn’t revealed too many things. Now he had, and there was no taking it back. He was tired, so tired. Of everything. Even when he didn’t want to admit it to himself, his primary reason for going back to Belos was just what he’d always known it was; the nagging, flickering hope that he’d take him back, sure, but far above that the knowledge that he’d probably just finish the job he’d already started, would free the terrible creature he’d created from his miserable and broken existence.

He felt himself pulled into an almost-familiar embrace, Titania’s strong arms carefully but firmly wrapping around his much-smaller form in her typical motherly way as she moved to stand. The covers of the bed weren’t an impediment, at this point, having long been (accidentally) mostly discarded in his upset. No longer having the strength within him to resist, he went basically limp, though from touch alone he still flinched at first, half-expecting despite himself some sort of deliberate pain to follow; whatever lingering pain still hung around from his scars was at the moment already very keen on ruining the moment, though he was really just too out of it to care. Gently, though, she moved to tuck him back in, and though he winced when her talons came close to his face, she simply brushed the hair from his face instead.

“It was a good try, I’ll give you that,” she offered, “But you can’t make me give up that easily.”

“But…” he muttered.

“You’re a kid, Soren. A good kid. Those things aren’t your fault. They’ll never be your fault. He tried to make you bad, he’s the one who trained you to do those things, to feel terrible about them and yourself forever. He didn’t succeed in making you bad, but he did make you. It doesn’t matter if you’re his kid, because you’re not him, you’re one of the only good things he’s ever made. I don’t care if you would have hurt me, because you won’t, and you can’t.” She paused, took a breath, and sighed. “Besides, you wouldn’t be telling me about these things if you didn’t know they were wrong, and if you know they’re wrong, then, well… that tells me all I need to know. And I know how hard it is to articulate what you’re feeling, and what it feels like when the new normal isn’t normal at all; but we will get through this, one day. And one day you’ll look back on this, and you…” she sighed. “You won’t want to die anymore, okay?” At that, he forced his eyes open one last time to really look at her as she moved towards the door, a little surprised by the easy read. “Yeah, I know how it feels. Feels shitty, doesn’t it? You’ll be okay. I promise.”

He seemed to be gathering the last of his waking strength to muster up a last-word response, but she was keen on shutting that down as quickly as she could just as soon as he’d mumbled out the first syllable.

“You’ve got spirit, bud. But save it for a fight that really matters, okay? The world’ll still be here in the morning.” She smiled tenderly. “…Go to sleep. I’m here if you need me.”

With that, she was gone, softly closing the door behind her on her way out with a final glance. Thoroughly exhausted, he slipped back under into the realm of sleep; but into a dreamless one this time, free from the nightmares that had been tormenting him so, his aching mind soothed by some inexplicably protective presence that now resided there for which he had no name nor the words to describe.

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