"I'm nervous about this, Tess," Zavier said as she donned a jean jacket. It stopped just above a belt that had been fashioned to hold her machetes and Toxic Weaver Dagger.
"Stop trying to protect me," she said as she checked the pistols at her hip and chest, racking a round in each of their chambers. "You had your fun and now I'm going to have mine."
She gave him a mental 'thumbs up' through the party interface as she stepped into the night. Zavier had lost a lot of its functionality when his intelligence dropped and every attempt to dive into the data to check why was met with a screaming headache. All he could see was a health bar without any associated numbers and the section that labeled her condition as "Healthy."
"I'll be keeping an eye on you and can come if you need it."
She glared at him over her shoulder. "Don't. Stay with the kids and rest. I'll be fine." Before he could object again she moved into a light jog and disappeared around the corner.
Tess heard a thump and spun, both guns out in a lightning movement, but stood straight when she saw the large cat looking at her expectantly, tail flipping back and forth in anticipation. "Hey Z, can you add the cat to this chat?"
A second later Maisy appeared on her screen and Tess smiled at the feral excitement she felt from her. "Well then," she said, turning to face the woods and dropping into a runner's ready crouch, "you ready to show these things who the predators are tonight?"
She was flooded with a sensation of pure instinct and couldn't restrain her savage smile before shooting off into the woods at a run.
They leapt through the woods with fluid, almost supernatural grace. They each had night vision that turned the darkness into a vivid landscape of greens and grays. Maisy darted ahead, her movements a blur as she banked to the left, Tess following without hesitation. Moments later they plunged into a grove filled with the shimmering forms of Arcane Scamperers. Their synchronized assault was a whirlwind of razor-sharp strikes that left a trail of lifeless bodies in their wake, the air filled with the silent echoes of their deadly efficiency. Without slowing, they continued and the sounds of wordless slaughter followed them.
Hours later the two stopped, Tess's hands on her knees as she gasped for breath. Maisy was likewise recovering, small streaks of blood on her flanks outdone by the rivulets of it intermingling with the saliva dripping out of her mouth. Maisy sniffed and turned a circle, then sat and started cleaning herself. Tess took that as a sign that it was safe and slumped to the ground in an exhausted cross-legged slouch.
The hours before had been an exercise in wholesale slaughter as the two of them ripped through the woods. Maisy's senses unerringly led them to patch after patch of various animals, many different from anything Tess had seen before. She saw large porcupines that shot vicious barbs that rang out like pistol shots, but they took them out by dancing off of tree trunks and flipping through the air in ways that were closer to Spider Man than gymnastics. They'd run across bigger, darker versions of snakes that protected a brood mother who spat venom of pure black light and whose tail rattled with a sound that froze them in place. But fear effects barely had an effect on the two and their quick, deadly strikes outmatched even the blurring speeds of the snakes' attacks. And then there were Arcane Scamperers. So many Arcane Scamperers, but those creatures that seemed so fearsome in the beginning barely even registered as the two blurred through them like mercurial shadows, not even bothering to slow their pace through those areas as they dismembered and bisected everything within their reaches.
And yet Tess felt unsatisfied. It had been a good night and she'd already reached level seven, dumping all of her stats into Strength and Agility respectively, but something felt off. Her depression had always been laced with a mean streak of bipolar - not enough for those meds to work correctly for her, but enough that she could go from "What's the fucking point, why can't it just all stop?" to "Everything needs to be done NOW and I can't stop until I've finished everything and holy FUCK do I have a lot of energy right now!" She normally hated the frantic times, they felt like too much caffeine mixed with a hormonal imbalance that left her with burning energy to just DO, but not enough control to know what to do or how to do it. In the end it'd fade and she'd be left with fatigue and a feeling of total failure. All the energy in the world and she'd done nothing with it. At least the depression was predictable and knowable. She could sink into its dark depths and feel a perverse sense of comfort from it. In those moments she knew she was worthless and had tricked everyone into thinking she was worth loving. In those moments there was no doubt in her mind, no need to do anything, no need to BE anything. It was in those times that she thought she'd be doing everyone a favor if she just stopped. Just stopped it all, permanently. And, if she was being honest with herself, it wasn't even about how much better it'd be for everyone else - It was just an end to the pain, the suffering, the fucking pretending.
Zavier was her light in those moments and she knew, without a shadow of a doubt, she'd be dead if it wasn't for him. He didn't always get it right in the beginning, trying to constantly fix her or cheer her up, but over the years he'd learned everything he could about depression. He'd learned to become a quiet, solid presence that anchored her to the real world. He rubbed her forehead gently and lay beside her, just lighting massaging each finger and hand over and over. He'd turn on one of her comfort shows and, even though he'd seen them a million times over, he'd never asked her to turn on something else. He'd bring her food and make her eat as much as she was willing, then he'd come back and sit with her. When she just needed to be alone he'd leave, but was at the bedroom door every hour on the dot, asking if she needed anything.
She didn't understand why he loved her - it was something so foreign she couldn't conceive of it. She loved him more than any person that had walked the earth. She loved the kids just as much, but with him it was different. She had to take care of the kids. He took care of her. He was the only one who dedicated his entire life and being to her, and even though it didn't always help it had helped enough to keep her alive.
She loved him for that, but she also resented him. She hated herself for that, for resenting this man who gave everything for her. A man who would sit through hours or days of her worst bouts without breaking his grin. When she'd lash out at him he would just look at her with patience, asking what he could do to help. She'd asked him about that once and he'd just said, "I know you love me and that you aren't really angry at me. You're hurting, and when we hurt we lash out like an animal caught in a trap. I know where it's coming from so you never have to worry that I'll take it personally. Do what you have to do, say whatever comes out, I'm here for you no matter what."
"But what about when it gets to be too much? How long can you deal with me?"
He'd laughed at that, then kissed her on the forehead. "There's no 'dealing' with you. I get to be with you. We can discuss if it's too much when we're 80," then he was off to heat her up some tea.
She wished she could be more for him, so much more than she was. But she also wished she didn't need to be taken care of. She hated herself for how much he had to be there for her. Why couldn't she just be normal with a normal brain? Why was she resenting being taken care of when so many other people would have begged for that kind of support? Why did she even need the support in the first place when so many people didn't? Why did she have to fucking be born like this??
She recognized the spiral and shook herself out of it with a lurch to her feet. Her teeth ground together and she held the handle of her machete in a grip tight enough to make it creak in her hand.
"Come on, Lady, we've been taking it too easy. Let's go kill something fucking big." Suddenly the fatigue was gone and the two of them were off into the night to find something fucking big.