"What…did I…do…wrong?"

That question wandered through the few intervals of consciousness each time Tristessa fainted and woke up again. Intermittent, and losing track of time. Her motor skills were nonexistent, and breathing was difficult due to all the blood accumulated in clots halfway across her windpipe.

Her life was at risk, but all she cared about was understanding why she was lying there on the floor of a network of cisterns and sewers, beaten so brutally and rejected by the woman she had asked for help.

Absolute turmoil. She didn't know if she felt hatred toward Astoria for what she had done… Or sorrow and guilt, since the source of the conflict had been none other than herself.

"Was I selfish again?" she asked in the darkness, knowing full well that, in her desperation to save the Mercer-Archeos family, she had tried to subdue that knightess submerged in deep depression with a fictitious vision of reality. If she had understood this earlier, perhaps she wouldn't be there now, alone and abandoned. "W-why... do I... keep...making mistakes?"

Tristessa had misjudged Astoria Silverthorn by a wide margin. Seeing her so powerful and unwavering at the south gate, she had created a pantomime. An idealization based on prejudice. She had come to believe that strong and powerful people couldn't be weak, like herself.

She had convinced herself that people like the blond-haired knightess couldn't feel pain or suffering, much less because of the slander and insults of a society that did nothing but spit and step on her every day.

"Maybe I deserve this… For my stupidity, and my egoism… For believing I'd be a better person by giving my all to save that family." Tears falling from her unbroken eye and trickling down to where the ground touched her cheek, while her other, bloodshot and throbbing, continued to be a source of agony. "Jin… Lucahn… Tiara… I'm sorry…"

Thinking of those three, of the peace of seeing them together playing in the garden of the house on a sunny day, Tristessa fell back into infinite darkness. Back into nothingness, hoping that, in one of those falls, she would again hear the sound of the Golden Chains dragging her back to the past…

"Tristessa!"

Hearing her name called and a sudden shock of chills in her body made her open her remaining eye right away. Her muscles contracted, causing violent up-and-down jolts that forced the person who had woken her to firmly enclose her in his arms so she wouldn't hurt herself.

"Calm down, it's me!" the man exclaimed, his voice echoing and fading into the depths of the cistern. Tristessa heard it inside her head, a sound that seemed to caress her ear and soul.

"S-Sev...!"

"That's a lame surname, you know? I don't like it."

"…!"

Her open mouth, stained with saliva, bile, and blood, didn't respond to her desperate commands. Her tongue seemed tied in a knot, and her protruding eye made it difficult for the other one to see with clarity. But it was enough for her to identify the crimson-haired elf, the artificial light on that side of the cistern covering him with a veil of blue light that revealed how drenched in sweat he was. An expression of utter concern was plastered on his face, and the way he was breathing heavily, as if he'd been running a marathon.

"By Kantrus... Who was the bastard that did this to you?" he hissed with venom in his voice, before lowering Tristessa to the ground with gentleness. His figure darkened as the aftereffects of the concussion returned, threatening to make her lose consciousness again. "Stay calm. My healing thaumaturgy is a mess, but I can perform first aids."

A few seconds later, blind by darkness, she felt Severus helping her upright again. His intention was to make her drink a potion that tasted bitter but that filled her body with an incandescent healing heat, which fought against a terrible ethereal cold that only she felt.

A cold she knew… It carried a terrible omen.

"S-Severus…!" With her strength returning, the girl wanted to warn the blood elf about the approaching danger. "S-She… D-Dulla…"

"Firan."

But the elf was more concerned with trying to save her from bleeding to death and hypothermia, having conjured a fire-elemental thaumaturgy glyph to ignite something Tristessa couldn't see, but which was undoubtedly helping to cover the surrounding area with heat. Her bare feet were the ones that most needed that increase in temperature, to start the blood flowing and save them from possible necrosis.

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"Favalon Koron."

Meanwhile, Severus cast another spell, new on Tristessa's ears, drawn from his desire to cure her of the maladies that afflicted her. When she half-opened her eye, she saw a glyph the same color as his hair, from the thaumaturgical branch that studied blood magic. That glyph was absorbing blood from himself, which escaped from a self-inflicted wound on his hand like a thread that went against gravity, and in return, caused a healing aura to manifest and envelop Tristessa.

Soon, she stopped feeling the stabbing pain in her abdomen; breathing stopped being a torment, and the constant, agonizing feeling of vertigo emanating from her head also disappeared, along with the healing glyph.

"Wait, wait, don't be impatient." Severus prevented her from struggling to stand, but not before finishing the bandage on her head. "There, now I've done what I can. Stand up carefully... That wound on your head looked very bad."

Tristessa couldn't see that the cloth covering her right eye socket and the back of her head was a piece of the elf's red scarf, compressing her injured eye that now was back in its rightful place. It no longer throbbed, and it didn't hurt like seconds ago, as if a knife had been driven into her head and twisted to make a mess out of her brains.

"H-how did you...find me?" she asked, assisted by Severus, but now supporting her own weight on both legs and with her sense of balance consolidating again.

Now that there was no obstruction over her partial vision, she could see unfathomable fury etched on her savior's face.

"Silverthorn. I found her while I was searching for you all over the city... That drunken wretch!" he snarled. "She was so intoxicated you couldn't understand her at all! It took me longer to find your whereabouts than getting here... Wait. Tristessa... Don't tell me it was Astoria who... Was it her?"

Tristessa looked down, feeling that whole toxic mix of emotions bubbling up inside her.

"It was my fault. I screwed up big time…" she tried to say, shame burning the sides of her neck, almost like the snout of the Varg who tore her head off was close enough to take a big bite. "I just wanted her help, whatever the cost… She was in her worst moment. I just went in and tried to use her goodwill to my advantage. And all I got was her almost killing me, Severus."

Tristessa clenched her fists, trembling, feeling her eyes filled with tears.

"I'm so useless, so horrible… I hate being like this, Severus!" she exclaimed, raising her head to look into her savior's blue eyes, filled with pity for her. "Is this the kind of person Tristessa Irandell is?!"

The elf didn't know what to say. After all, they had just met that very day, or at least from his point of view. That lack of understanding only worsened the emptiness within Tristessa, for she had already suffered alongside him in infinitely worse circumstances.

And the worst part was that she couldn't do anything about it. She couldn't talk about the timelines, or her Divinity, or anything with that elf, without condemning him to an existence of madness bound to a taboo that must never be broken.

"I hate myself... I hate this kind of person so much… So disgusted... I hate myself for being this way!"

Now she really couldn't hold back her tears. Her body shook with every sob, every cry that came from her aching soul.

She was so tired of crying so much, of suffering so much, and of feeling so miserable...

"Triss... No, Tessa." The elf forced her to look up, calling her by that nickname for the first time, making her feel a lightness in her chest she didn't deserve. He wiped her tears with the back of his right hand, intensifying that emotion, forbidden for someone like her. "If you hate yourself, you don't have the capacity to love others. And you don't hate everyone around you, do you?"

"N-no..."

"Perhaps I'm rushing things here… When you see me, do you feel like you could hate me?"

What an absurd idea. Hate Severus? Just thinking about it made Tristessa feel disgusted, repulsed by herself for even considering him. There was no way she could hate that man, quite the opposite.

"No... I feel, from the bottom of my heart, that I love you."

Saying it out loud didn't sound shameful at all. Was it romantic love? Sexual? Fraternal, friendly? Tristessa didn't know it, but she loved Severus.

She had no doubt about it. She loved him and his other versions she'd met in the other nonexistent pasts. It was the thing she was most certain of, even seeing him like this, with an awkward smile as if he were thinking of the kindest way to reject her feelings.

And that was only going to make her love him even more. That man was the only one in that world capable of healing more than her physical injuries.

He was capable of healing her soul.

"If you love me, and you claim to hate yourself... Then deep down you're just an idiot who's too lost in your own darkness. Your amnesia has a lot to do with it, there's no doubt about it, but..."

The elf bit his lower lip and their eyes broke contact for a moment, haunted by memories of the past. Memories of hatred and blood. Of bad choices and burning bridges, until only one was left and now it was in danger of being incinerated and leave him stranded, in a cold, dark world.

He sighed, and when he faced his depressed companion again, he finished telling her what he thought.

"But that love is tainted, and it's guiding you into a path that you're going to regret. It's a path that every blood elf knows, and we accept it, for it is our only reason for existing. But you are a human girl, and even amidst all the hatred and pain that abound in Nekrom, you have a life with opportunities for happiness ahead of you."

Severus took a step back, distancing himself from her as if he didn't want to infect her with a disease that only he possessed.

"If you continue down that path, you'll realize too late that there's no turning back, and you'll end up like me."

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