Catharsis
Things in the past don't always stay there.
Disclaimer: this is not a story with a happy ending... I could really use some friends right now...
Catharsis Chapter 1
She never deserved the pain I brought her. Her name is Scarlet, and to this day, I have not atoned for my sins against her.
Until today.
I stood upon my threshold, staring down blade of his short-sword, his hand steady, prepared and willing to end my life.
"Wyrran, I was wondering when you were going to come to kill me."
He looked at me with all the malice and blinding jealousy that this realm had to offer.
"It's not soon enough. Before I do kill you, I want to know everything. Everything that happened between you and Scarlet. I won't make your suffering any easier, but perhaps I will make your death quicker."
Walking in and seating myself on an old wooden chair of my make, I sighed heavily and bowed my head, nodding, and understanding what was coming. Looking up, I spoke hoarsely.
"I'll start at our first meeting then."
"Fine."
"Our friendship began when a past friend of mine brought her by my house one day. It was a normal day at the university, and in walk I to find a woman sitting on my couch. Now, this woman struck me, a startling beauty whose fur was pale for a khajiit, made only--
"I don't want your damn personal annotations, Orpheon, I expect you to give me the story as a factual account!"
"--then kill me! I will tell the entire story from my eyes, or you will never know the extent of the truth."
"... fine. But understand my anger will not be abated."
"I don't expect to right the wrongs I've done. Only through my living have I been able to suffer appropriately."
"As I was saying, her beauty was only enhanced by the few scars I could see, though I'm sure she carried more than she would ever let show. Regardless, my friend introduced us, and we became close over time. We often hung out, playing video games, talking about our fighting specialties, and generally having a good time.
Not soon after, she started to become erratic, prone to large emotional swings, but those never included anger, only sorrow, regret, hope, anxiety, and so on. About this same time, my friend let me in on a secret--at the time, she was single, and I had just gotten out of a rather precarious long-distance relationship. Needless to say, Scarlet was one of the few friends I had of the female variety that expressed any interest in helping me move on."
"Do you mean move on physically, or mentally?"
"Both," I replied, baring my fangs "and I might add that the physical affection was just that, it did not turn sexual for a while. From the moment I met this woman, I thought she was a passionate, untamable beauty, matched only in her compassion for others. Gods, how I wish I had that same capacity for love back then..."
Wyrran looked at me with a mixture of disgust and pity, lowering the blade for a moment, resting it on the arm of the plush chair that would prove to be the throne from which he would judge this idiotic excuse for a wolfman.
"If you want to know everything, save your bullet for the end, and restrain your anger only in action. I understand that I've earned your contempt and that I am beyond the tenderness that pity yields. That said, you may be as sharp as you wish with your tongue."
His eyes hardened, looking at me with a renewed wave of anger.
"You never loved her. You never would have done this--
"I always loved her! I could never let myself see it, because how could she love me when I couldn't even love myself?! You're wrong, I never loved her as a mere woman, an object for my taking... she was a part of my soul, a soul I would give the rest of today to die, ending in cold dark nothingness, if only I could take back all the frustration and mistrust I added into your relationship!"
Wyrran leaned back in his chair, smiling.
"So you have suffered."
"I'll get to that part of the story," I growled, my hackles raising, struggling to control my temper. "We have no shortage of time."
***End Chapter 1***
Catharsis Chapter 2
"The first time we met, there were sparks right away. It was stupid of me to deny it, but deny it I did, thinking that I was losing my grip on reality, becoming detached, careless. I couldn't allow myself to be seduced so readily, for what would that make me?"
"A fool and a manwhore, I suppose," mused Wyrran.
"And here am I, a fool regardless. The first time we were alone, we kissed. She was not yet in a relationship, and I had just left one, so I felt no regret. Well, kissing led to other things. One day we were sitting on my futon...she was wearing this low-cut shirt, and long story short she noticed that I had noticed. My roommate at the time was in the other room, and here we were sitting on the couch, my hand on her breasts as she went down on me. My roommate walked in as she was taking a sip of my mead, a sour look on her face, with me half-asleep on the couch. Little did he know the secret we now shared, her blushing at my fierce passion..." I trailed off, taken to a time before I counted time.
"You sick fuck, you're talking about my girlfriend!" Wyrran leapt to his feet, pressing the point of his short-sword under my chin.
"And I cannot change the past, so you're going to have to sit through the rest of my story if you want to hear the truth. I doubt Scarlet has remembered so much, choosing to block it out instead. I've chosen to live with it every day. The lovely and the ugly parts, every bit of who I was and how poorly I treated her."
"You took advantage of her every chance you got!" Wyrran screamed, punching me dead-center between the eyes with the pommel. I knelt, my head throbbing, vision swimming for a moment. Regaining my balance, I sat back in my chair, my throat swelling as I continued my story, pain now evident for the memories that haunted me.
"I loved Scarlet. She had a knack for showing people compassion, no matter how small or grand her display. She invited me to the first dinner party amongst my friends, and we had a wonderful time until one of her friends, another wolf, chose to take something insignificant from me. Regardless of what it was, it was mine, and I, as you know, was very guarded when it came to giving up things that were mine, no heed paid to what the particular thing was. I was already on edge from having stopped the brutal one-sided damn-near-fighting greeting that same friend had given her, even though you were there and showed no interest in stopping..."
Wyrran raised a throwing dagger and threw, pinning my left ear to the wall behind me. I blinked in pain, then continued, drawing the dagger out and throwing it aside.
"After that night, Scarlet was more open with me about her visions of the future, what she wanted, what she needed, and so forth. Being as blind as I was, I never realized that she was looking to me to fill the role of her new boyfriend. I didn't get the clue, and we continued to show each other physical comforts to the point that she was staying the night at my house just to snuggle up to me. We slept together, but not in the sexual sense. There was closeness, as there was a mutual need for loving contact, not simply friendly side-hugs and other such bullshit. We bonded."
"You didn't bond, you were merely people looking for affection. She and I bonded, not you two."
"No, Wyrran," I responded, "You're wrong. We cared about each other. At least, she cared about me and I valued her affection. I was wrong to assume her as a surrogate for familial love or affection. She was, altogether, different. She challenged me in ways that I never expected."
"How? How could she challenge you so, if you were so worldly? You, the mighty and fierce Orpheon Wolfclaw?"
"Goddammit Wyrran, she made me care without investing romantically. I cared how she was, making sure she was ok. I lost myself when she told me she had a boyfriend. I wanted to love her, but how do you love someone when you can't love yourself?"
"You're buying time for yourself, you're becoming cyclical."
"No! When she left my house one night, we, my roommate and I, never heard from her that night. We called the police to check on her, to try and find her on the university campus somewhere. I've never worried about where someone was or how they were doing as much as I did that night."
"Yet you never went out and looked for her."
Shame crossed my face, and I bowed my head. "I couldn't bring myself to. I hoped against hope that she was home safe--
"And she wasn't."
"...she wasn't. Some asshole drunk argonian punched her in the stomach, and she was left underneath one of the campus trees to sleep it off... thank the gods it was warm that night..."
I looked at Wyrran, my eyes filled with tears. "I couldn't be there to protect her. It only makes how I treated her that much worse, and I am very much aware of that."
I turned away, no longer able to look at him, my memory flooding my consciousness with her face and her smile, then her tears and the agony I caused. I looked out the window slit at the cold world, my heart its match.
"What happened after the dinner party?"
"She told me that she started a relationship with you."
"...And?"
"And that she didn't want to lose me. But I was already within myself. Broken."
***End Chapter 2***
Catharsis Chapter 3/6
The elf stood and paced the room, fidgeting with my scant belongings, my remote den quickly becoming stuffy, even for the storm that howled outside. I stood and cracked a window open, the bitter cold threatening to freeze the water on my muzzle.
"So, what happened after the dinner party?" Wyrran asked wearily.
"After the party, we saw each other a lot, mainly because you were not in the same village as the college, her alchemy studies kept her busy, and my training with Tolfdir kept me searching for all the things he was too weak as an old man to seek out. So, when we did connect, which was surprisingly often, we had a lot to talk about, and a lot to catch up on. I'll never forget when she invited me over to go over some old scrolls. We ended up having a bit too much ale, she was hellbent on entertaining me, and I jokingly said that I didn't believe that she was as tight as she said she was. Well, that was a challenge to her, and she set off to prove I was wrong. After we made love for the first time, we were addicted, or at the very least, I was. She thought it was a one-time fling with an exotic wolfman, and I proved to her that I had passion to spare."
"You sonofabitch, don't talk about my girlfriend that way!" Wyrran clipped the tip off my other ear, further deforming me. Meanwhile, I growled and gritted my teeth, the diminutive elf testing my patience, but altogether justified in his actions.
At this point, I was hoping two things: one, that the elf would continue to disfigure me until I nearly bled to death, and two, so that he would allow me to live to perpetuate my suffering. You see, I have a misplaced sense of justice: without it, I would have ended my pathetic lonely existence long ago, for weakness is the hand's ally. Because of that same sense of justice, however, I felt that I should go on living, to live, suffer, and repeat my misery endlessly in my reflections deep in the mountains.
"You took advantage of her love for you, and you perverted that love, regardless of her passion."
"...Yes."
***End Chapter 3***
Catharsis Chapter 4/6
"Yes, I took her love for granted. I twisted her love for me into a lust from us both. She is guilty of none of it, I initiated and pressed for it, numb to everything around me but physical affection. My family and my friends would not recognize me if they saw me today, hardened, yet open in all aspects to death. Unwilling to bring it on myself from a fucked-up sense of justice, unwilling to let myself die until another person's hand or old age brought that cold embrace. The night is not black enough to describe the vision I have of my soul. How could someone so loved by a woman do this to her? How could he throw her love away for a temporary embrace?"
"The last time I saw her, the last time I was with her, she left in tears, and I sat for hours with a knife resting on my wrist, trying to conjure up the hatred of myself that would not come until later. I wanted to die slowly, painfully, to try and shed blood at the same rate as atoning for my sins. I slept with her, multiple times, and we talked of many passionate, romantic things, things that would seal the bond between us. I'm glad they never happened, knowing now the person I was then. I cannot promise that I have changed entirely, but know this: I am not the same pathetic pup I was then. If I die, alone, forgotten to all but the tax collector, then so be it. If I could give everything I own in this world, myself included, to take back the hurt I've caused... would give up my soul to an eternal winter, naked, alone in the dark, I would. If I could stand in the fires of oblivion, reborn to infinity to suffer, to save her in the past from the wolf I was then, so fixated on one thing, I would without a second thought."
I was on my knees, hand over my heart, begging for Mehrunes Dagon himself to take me as his eternal dagger throwing target, plaything, or stepping stone through the hellish fires of his halls. I was begging for the most painful and justified death, or better yet, eternal agony, just to take back my wrongdoings, my presupposed love and acceptance and passion, to remove me from her mind's eye forever, and for her to never know who I even was.
But I had Wyrran, and I hoped that he could match Dagon, or at least set fire to the crumbling façade that I called myself.
***End Chapter 4***
Catharsis Chapter 5/6
As I made these feelings and regrets known to Wyrran, his demeanor changed. He was no longer intent on ending my life, that much I could sense right away... He pitied me. Dammit.
"If you feel pity for me, throw it away. If you have anything other than contempt for me, cast it aside and see the broken creature before you, a product of his own blindness, his apathy, and his lack of compassion. See the shattered creature as he lies, contemptuous, forgotten, unloved, unseen, unheard, a result of his disregard for those that had the greatest capacity for loving him, bumbling around in a world that could not possibly provide the suffering he deserves, not providing the mental release that the ones that loved him need. What you should see before you is nothing but a piece of meat deserving the blade and the fire, as well as all the anger and pain that the gods could prescribe one as low as he."
"Kill me, dammit, or leave, or if you have a black soul gem, let me be truly abandoned by my reason, the love of the people around me, and the frustration of temporary suffering!"
Wyrran was unsure of what to do, unsure of what could become of someone so tortured. He himself was a pilgrim of the Nine Divines, and he sought to find justice, not prolong suffering, regardless of how he loathed this Orpheon fellow.
Then, footsteps came from outside, and new tears sprang unbidden to Wolfclaw's eyes.
"Please, tell me that's not Scarlet..."
Surely enough, it was.
***End Chapter 5***
Catharsis Chapter 6/6, Final Chapter
"Orpheon..." Scarlet blinked, sizing up my wounded ears.
"Scarlet, you shouldn't be here. Wyrran and I were just--"
"You think I don't know why he's here, and why I had to track him down?" She replied, frustration creeping into her voice, as we avoided her eye contact. "You want to kill him, don't you?" Scarlet asked, glaring at Wyrran.
Wyrran looked in my direction, but I had already taken to the forest, running through the mountain glades as I had known them, my heart racing, blood flowing, I rushed to the one place that I knew would be adequate--a 200ft waterfall of ice and rock. As I reached the precipice, I heard screams following me. I had to make a decision.
I hesitated.
Scarlet came first, screaming at me over the storm, seeing my figure perched at the edge.
"Orpheon, stop! I know you, I know this isn't you!"
"Perhaps not then, but after all this time, and your boyfriend's inability to rise to greet my story in anger and death has forced me to this."
"Why? Why could this ever be your solution?"
"It isn't. It's one of the few solutions that kept me from harming you further. Scarlet, how could you ever love me? How could you ever have compassion for someone so blind, so alone, so empty to the world around him? How could you ever come to terms with the things I made you do to prove your love to me, the dedication, the sex, how? How could you ever find love for such a terrible and heartless being? How could you continue to even talk to him, knowing his disapproval of so much of what you saw in Wyrran, someone that was clearly more stable than I?"
"Love is blind, Orpheon."
"Why shouldn't I throw myself from this cliff? I have every reason to die, alone, unknown, and broken. Why would you saddle yourself with this burden?"
"Because, once a friend, always a friend. No matter how fucked up things get."
The saddest part is, the last four lines will never be said to me.
I am undeserving of love and unworthy of death.
***