Let's go kill something

[Tahara]

The quiet would have been a gift.

Until recently, all she'd loved in the world was the nightly silence, the music of wind rushing through the trees, crickets chirping - a backdrop to the beating of her own heart, the soft rush of her breath leaving her lips.

As Tahara makes her way through an empty, desolate Razor Hill, she finds no such pleasure in the crunch of sand beneath her boots.

Sometimes silence is filling. It is a sound all its own, a song she hears all too rarely.

And sometimes… sometimes silence is just the absence of everything she misses.

Rubbing her arms in the nightly chill of the red desert, she feels the uncomfortable stretch of her marred skin, the dull ache of fresh bruises and not much satisfaction to go with it. Training wasn't going the way she’d imagined it to go. Kyra isn't at fault. She barely plays the roll of the willing training dummy, or would, if Tahara's impotent rage would be enough to make a dent.

It isn't.

Tahara remembers telling Vraxxar in a cave at the edges of Nagrand, that she wanted to see how far she could go. Perhaps this is it. Perhaps this is all she'll ever be. A poor excuse for an orc, a woman, a person.

She mistakes Buurb's massive shoulder for a part of the mountainside as she makes her way to her own little cave, right until the mountain moves and waves at her with a big, wide smile.

Tahara tries to return his smile but fails, an awkward grimace all she musters before she sits down on the log next to him and tries to ignore the quiet.

A task made more difficult by her mind, which seems to think the lack of distractions is a good excuse to fill her mind with the thoughts of someone less good than she wants to be.

No matter how hard she tries not to, her mind drifts to Outland, to the time that isn't hers, but someone else's, wishing for things that were never hers, not for a second. Not for a single moment of hope.

She looks up at the large gronnling who seems to be waiting for something. A command, the sound of her voice - some sort of signal of what was next. Dinner, yes? Or playtime. Something? His vacant yet expectant expression would be funny to her any other day.

"You're damn glad you don't have to worry about any of this, you know? You got all the basics down. You don't need anyone else to be fine."

Tahara blows an errant strand of hair out of her face. She's never needed anyone either, but it seems no amount of ale will carve the dent out of her chest she punched into her heart in her own stupidity.

Buurb looks at her, an arm nudging her, questioning in his own primitive way.

She huffs, frustrated, trying to think of a way she could explain something to a creature who will never face her problems.

"It's like…think of it as… you really like crab, right? But imagine it would make you sick. You figured that out long ago when you got a taste of… I don't know. Some other seafood yeah?"

Buurb nods. Whether he actually understands a word she's said, or just reacting to the sound of her voice, is anyone's guess.

"And that's been fine, right? You didn't even want crab. You were pretty damn sure you just didn't feel that way about it, in general, right?

Except… except then you got a taste. Not a lot, nothing real, just… a whiff, I guess. And then you got wondering. You got curious. And before you know it, you're thinking of crab all day and you can't focus on any of the other food you used to like.

And it's bad. You shouldn't. The crab deserves… so much better than you. So you don't say anything and you try to remind yourself that you didn't even want it but you can't stop anymore. It hurts to think about it but you got so used to hurting you feel like you'll miss it.

And now… you didn't get it. And the thing that bothers you isn't that you didn't get that crab, it's that you'll never be able to have any. You'll just never really know what that's like, to be happy. And that was fine before, because you didn't want it.

And the thing that changed is…"

Tahara swallows, rubbing at her face half in anger.

"The thing that changed is knowing what you're missing. You've seen… the crabs… so happy and now you know what it feels like to almost be that happy but you know you never will be. You can't. It's just not possible. You'll always be here, on the outside, watching. And maybe crab isn't even your damn favourite food but knowing you'll never have it makes you want it all the more."

She scowls.

"That made no sense, did it?"

Buurb lets out some sort of noncommittal grunt, shoulders slumping in what might have been sympathy.

Tahara sighs and slides down the log, crumbling on the rough floor and head thumping against the hollow trunk.

She closes her eyes and thinks of light blue ones, like clear water and the warrior who owns them, charging after her, twice, just to cheer her up.

She thinks of the scout with a chip on his shoulder and a log in Sunrock Reatreat, listening as she buries her heart and soul under the waterfall, fingers tracing a charred boar tusk, a scorched reminder of the life he lost and the one she'll never have.

Even if she learns to see more than what she wants to see, hear more than what she wants to hear - even if she doesn't make the same mistake again, if she finds what they all have - she will never be able to grasp it. Never learn how to not run away from something she craves more than she knew she could.

To some, those moments might have been hopeful beginnings, planting the seed for brighter days. To her, they are just two more inches of rope with which to hang herself.

She's always been broken. She knows that. That wasn't a problem until she caught a glimpse of what it would be like not to be.

And now she is stuck on top of broken, chains of a different kind, never truly choking. Just a weight around her legs, keeping her just that little slower, that little more tired, than everyone else.

"You know what the worst part is?", she mumbles, her head resting against Buurb's tree trunk sized arm. He vocalizes, like stones rumbling off a mountain side.

"This whole thing turned me into a complete loser. I mean, seriously. I used to have fun you know?" She scoffs, for the first time in a while a little bit of genuine mirth sneaking in past the bitterness.

"And now all I do is whine. I used to have real problems." Tahara sniffs and rubs at her eyes, letting out a harsh breath and finishes, very very quietly: "Not much of a wonder no one's smiling around me lately, huh?"

The arm she leans on lifts, a heavy hand falling over her shoulders, almost knocking the spine out of her. It takes her a moment, looking up at the gronnling's sad face, to realize that he is trying to comfort her.

And of all the things, that's the one that breaks her. She rubs the beginnings of tears out of her eyes as a mad kind of chuckle bubbles up in her throat.

Maybe she isn't ever going to be happy. Maybe happy isn't for her. Maybe there are other things she could be, other paths that lead further than she's got treading this one, wasting time on stories that aren't hers, endings that are out of her reach.

Tahara gets up and dusts herself off. The aches and pains are still there, but they seem unimportant as she beams up at an increasingly confused Buurb.

"You know what? I feel like killing something. Let's go kill something." The gronnling's face pulls into the kind of smile a child might carry on winter's veil, jumping up from his seat and charging off towards the ocean.

Tahara laughs as he trails after him, the rhythmic thumping of his massive hands breaching the solemn silence of the night.

She does have a real craving for crab, for some reason...