There it was, clear as day. A coldness to him, reflected not only in his eyes, but also his words and tone. The way he stood, the shift in his aura. Something had changed in Joshua in a matter of minutes, and whatever it was? It left Teresa deeply shaken, a shiver running through her despite the warmth of the place and her grip on him tightening just slightly with worry. But despite this, she managed to form words, reluctantly starting to pull her hands away but ultimately needing to keep one where it was to keep herself upright.
"...I'm glad you're alright," she spoke, tone almost alarmingly stiff and dry. He wasn't alright. She knew it. But something about this wrongness told her that further pestering would only cause further problems, and she didn't want to worsen this condition, whatever it was. However, she fully intended to discover the source and cleanse it.
Unwittingly, she flinched, not having expected this reprimanding despite his newfangled harsh attitude. It made her suddenly feel weak, childish even, and she shrunk into herself as she tried to shake the urge to make like a turtle and instead straighten back up. After all, her strength was starting to return, and she didn't want to let it show that she herself was disappointed she had been so weak out there. She was too proud. However, she knew Joshua was not one she could hide it from, and as such she bowed her head slightly as she began to reply.
"...I'm sorry, Josh. I sh--"
Next time do me a favor and die.
"..."
Breaths were nonexistent, the glader freezing in place as the words, so simple and plain, were uttered. She did not blink, her brilliant eyes wide as saucers only staring whilst lips thin and pale remained only slightly parted and unmoving. Disbelieving shock was the first expression to cross her face, but it remained only for a moment before a far more powerful emotion replaced it, burning the most intensely in those blue orbs as she gawked at him.
Pain. Absolute, unwavering
pain.
Other elements were quick to flood those eyes as well. Just a glance at her, tense and stiff and even more thoroughly frozen than when she had been stuck in the blizzard, revealed that these feelings ruled absolute. She knew what this was. In the furthermost depths of her heart and mind, she knew that those words were not born of Joshua's own mind. He did not want her dead, did not completely lack any sense of care for her or what happened to her.
But that did not change fact. And the fact, clear as day, was that the man in front of her? The man who had accepted her when no one else had, the man who showed her care when all others saw her as scum, the man who had taken her in when she had nowhere to go and saw good in her that nobody else did? This man, who she had come to care for more than she had anyone else in her multitude of lifetimes...
This man, standing tall and real before her and under her touch, had told her to die.
The female didn't utter a word. She didn't blink or pull her eyes away from his, where she desperately searched for some trace of joking nature. Tried to find a reason for why he had said such a thing. But no matter how hard, how deeply she searched, there was.... None. There was nothing. Nothing but indifference and a genuine lack of care.
And she found she didn't
understand.
How could he
do this? How could he look her in the eyes like this, his stance so confident and yet lax, and tell her with that look in his eyes that she should not be alive? That she was...- That she should not live, that it would be better for everyone if she died--
....This wasn't the first time this had happened. A memory hit her like a freight train as she gawked at him and tried so damn hard to comprehend what she had done wrong, a memory that caused her to jerk her hand away from him, flinching as she did. It was years ago, when she was a child of a mere three or four years. The invaders of her village, the shooting of she and everyone she loved and cared for with unsettling darts... The impending death of those that were hit that followed.
Everyone but her.
Teresa Agnes- no,
Deedee -was the sole survivor of those who were shot. The one who was left with only a quarter-sized scar on her shoulder to watch the other stricken people slowly descend into insanity and die. Her parents included. But she was not allowed to mourn or cry for the deaths of all of those she loved and lost, for in the stead of those countless deaths? She was the one who was turned on, and all of the remnants of the village aggressed her. She was deemed an ill-omen, a monster. Most popularly, a demon. However, these were not the harshest of the comments made towards her.
She was told to die. Constant reminders of those who had passed were thrown in her face, accompanied by the cold and callous statements that she should have been among them. She was supposed to be dead, just like the rest. And so the village left her to do so, the child abandoned and lost and left with only her own thoughts and inquiries of why it had all happened. Why she was so hated, why everyone had died or left her, why...
Why she was not dead.
It was a question that had remained in her mind, if only the deepest, darkest depths of it, for her whole life. The answer was not something science could satisfy for her, for it was one that was of the emotional sort. Why, out of all of those people, had she been the only one to remain? Yes, for her whole life, that question remained.
That had changed when she met Joshua. When she partook in the Reapers' Game and, for the first
real time since she had been shot with that damnable virus, had friends. People who did not turn away from her, even when things got rough. People who hadn't turned their backs til this day. So...
Why? Why, her heart
demanded to know for fear it would not otherwise manage to carry on, did he have to turn on her
now? Was everything he had said and done, the kindness he had shown her until this point, the seeming genuine care... Was it all a
lie? Had she let her barriers down to a man who had not truly cared for her the way she had for him yet again? After Thomas she had sworn she would not make such a mistake again, but-
...She couldn't do this. She didn't stop Joshua as he turned away, only stared after with a lump in her throat and tears long since having welled in her eyes. There was nothing she could do or say, her body unmoving no matter how much she willed it to cooperate. In a way, Joshua had gotten what he allegedly wanted.
Teresa Agnes was dead. Perhaps not in the physical sense, but her heart most certainly fit the category, feeling as though in the way it had shattered it had ceased to even beat. No mind was able to be paid to the fighting of the Miser Brothers, the female obviously no longer able to even center herself in on what was going on around her. She saw nothing but Joshua, his back turned to her and walking away.
The betrayer had been betrayed, in a way far worse than anything that could physically be done.
@Neko Shogun @whoever
