[align=center]hiraeth
(n) a homesickness for a home you can't return to, or that never was
[justify]It was a vile feeling indeed, wishing for what once was, and what would never be again. It was bittersweet, taunting her endlessly, dangling the memories before her and yanking them back at the last moment, so that they were just out of her reach. It was painful, eating away at her, driving her to madness in her desperation for release. It was lonely, reminding her that despite the fact that she had found solace in her new home, it meant nothing in the face of what she had lost. It was torment, it was fear, it was hurt. It was everything.
She had been under the impression that discussing the way she felt would somehow bring about an end to it all, but nothing was ever that easy, now was it? She had been a dullard to think so. Ease was a luxury she had long since lost the right to; it had been snatched away from her as a child, and thus begun the downward spiral that eventually led to her demise. From then on she had endured hardship after hardship, witnessed death after death, until he finally claimed her himself, and there had been times after he had grown bored with her and returned her to the realm of the living that she suspected she would have been better off six feet under, where everything was tranquil. But she had since learned not to think in such a way, for it would do nothing but hold her back. When ease was something she could no longer rely on, she simply could not afford to be weighed down by such morbid thoughts. Of course, every so often they would come creeping back during times of weakness (which occurred more often than she would have liked to admit), but as always she pushed them aside, adding them to the steadily-growing pile of notions and thoughts and memories she wished to ignore, allowing them to fester into something far worse than she was equipped to deal with. Forsight was not a virtue that she possessed, it would seem, and so the bloody wound would continue to supperate until the day she came apart.
That day was drawing near; it did not take a genious to pick up on this. She was an open book, a tragedy begging to be read, waiting for some poor sap to humor her and soak her pages in their tears so that she, too, might finally be able to drown herself without shame. She cried often and without restraint, but not once had she done so with pride. Tears were a sign of weakness. They were a fault, a shortcoming, an imperfection. And yet she knew that day was drawing near, and once it arrived she feared she would cry and cry and never ever stop.
And once she had broken, once she had cracked and shattered into a million little pieces, would she ever be able to put herself back together? Day by day her already weak armor wore down, chipping and growing brittle. Day by day she layered over it with a fresh façade, but in the face of her demons, that icy blue luminescence which engulfed her without remorse and bathed her in its awe-inspriring radiance, it all fell away and she found herself back where she started, practically naked save for her frangible, faux coat of mail.
The notion of reconstructing herself from the bottom up once she had broken seemed like folly.
But that day was drawing near, and with each encounter with the demoness, the keeper of shadows, the ineffable destroyer, it became more and more inevitable. She wanted desperately to remain in one piece, both out of spite and a childish sense of dread at what was to come, but doing so seemed impossible. She was not strong, try as she might to appear so. She was but a girl in the body of a woman; frail, petrified, hopeless. She was nothing but a fool masquerading as a paragon.
And her comrades were falling for it it. They looked up to her, they cared for her, they treated her as though she truly were an exemplar. She was a warchief, a surgeon, a lover, a mother. She wanted the respect she received, craved it, but did she deserve it? For so long she would have answered with a definite "yes", had she been asked. But she was beginning to question herself at last.
There were others that refused to buy it. They looked down on her, they hated her, they treated her as though she were nothing more than a rat. She was a traitor, a scoundrel, an enemy, a murder. She hated the treatment she was met with, loathed it, but did she deserve it? For so long she would have answered with a definite "no", had she been asked.
But she was beginning to question herself at last.
It is a terrifying thing, to doubt yourself after so firmly believing in what you stand for. Everything around you begins to waver, as though all you have ever known was but a chimera. It is a gradual transition, a slow descent into uncertainty and apprehension, so slow that you don't even notice it at first. It creeps up on you, stalking you through the darkness, until it suddenly pounces and you're finally left with the realization that perhaps not everything is as black and white as you've always thought, that there are things you have missed, things you have brushed aside, things you have blinded yourself to for your own selfish reasons.
It is beginning to dawn on her that perhaps this is what is happening to her, that she is not as innocent as she claims to be, that she's been lying both to her peers as well as to herself. But she fights it, because while she knows she is not perfect, her cause is true. She is a knight, an underdog, a girl desperate to clear her name. They just fail to understand. They are missing her side of the story, or brushing it aside, or blinding themselves to further their own agendas. But then it dawns on her that this is what they are accusing her of, that she may be a dirty hypocrite. But again she fights it. She is being manipulated. Her view is being warped, twisted. They are preying on her vulnerability. But then she is told that she has been doing the same exact thing to the people she once cared about, and it leaves her shaken.
Is she truly so blind? Is she oblivious to her own transgressions? Is she the villain in this tragedy?
Again, the thought disquiets her, and she finds herself unsure of what to make of it all. Who can she trust? Herself? Or her enemies? For some odd reason, this is a difficult question for her to answer, and instead of doing so, she sits down.
And she comes apart.
tretch;font-size:11px;text-align:justify;line-height:100%;"]a place for all of mercy's junk ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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