A guiding hand….(WoD)

She was so tired.

The tiny woman presses her knuckles into the small of her back as she straightens up, her soft, curly brown hair blown loose of its wrap and wisping across her face. She brushes it aside wearily as she looks around the pen. Most were already sleeping, catching what peaceful rest they could before moving out again, and a part of her, just a small part, envies them. She wishes she could hang up her sorrows when the sun went down, as they did, finding refuge in dream, but there was no rest for the weary. She pulls her wrap off her head, letting her hair fly free in the warm night air. It felt wonderful. As she stands unmoving, she inadvertently catches her master’s eye. No rest, not yet.

She brushes the loose hair back with an impatient hand and quickly reties the wrap about her head, sweeping her hair up and binding it down. As she finishes, she turns to check on the slave she’d just treated. The girl’s face was still, composed, a pretty face with a long aquiline nose and high cheekbones, and skin so pale it was nearly translucent. Tess smiles faintly. The girl would have been pretty if she hadn’t shaved her head and punched all those holes in her body; nose, ears, eyebrow, lip. And she was prettier now that she was mostly clean and her wounds tended to. She would live. Poor thing.

Tess reaches down, pats her unconscious patient’s hand as she collects her things and straightens up again, wincing slightly. Her back was getting worse. At least He didn’t make her ride in the deuce-and-a-half anymore. Apparently her skill was important enough to warrant a seat in one of the command vehicles, and, while it was a more comfortable ride physically, it wore her out emotionally. She could never let her guard down, never let herself relax. They were always watching her, their eyes cold and distant, like the eyes of another kind of animal, something alien. She shudders as she shoulders her bag of equipment. Human, but so far from human.

Never before had she felt so alone. Others had marveled at Tess’s fortitude. She was a pillar of strength for the slave community, a brave face in the face of oppression. She’d fought with Him over rations and medical treatment, argued about sleeping conditions and excessive use of force. Many thought each time she fought Him it would be her last, but always she won, slowly but surely, and always she was there, tending their wounds, soothing their hurts. She’d been midwife to almost every child born to the Black Storm and she wept at every birth, her gentle doe’s eyes full of sympathetic sorrow as she wiped away the residue of labor from the newborn’s skin. Tess was the one the slaves went to for a shoulder to cry on, a hand to hold, a few encouraging words and a kind smile.

But she was so lonely. His first slave-wife, she’d given birth to her only son, Nicholas, in the back of a moving box-truck during a running gun-battle that lasted nearly fifty miles and cost the band a dozen men. She was thirteen. Bought by Him when she was ten, only a few months after the bombs fell, she’d shown incredible psychic talent and He’d chosen her out of a group of almost forty slaves to be his first, when she was twelve. Tess had been terrified. The terror didn’t ease until she looked into the contorted face of her newborn son and realized what an injustice she had done him by bringing him into this world. She’d cried and cried as she held him, cried as her heart broke.

He’d been thrilled about His son’s arrival, until it was discovered that the boy was mute. A beating the likes of which she’d never experienced followed that discovery, and it had been two weeks before she could walk unaided. After that, she was no longer frightened for herself; what could he do but kill her? No, she was afraid for her son, that tiny, helpless part of her that she had expelled into this hell, and she swore she would do everything in her power to keep him safe. A part of her was glad Nick was mute, glad He wasn’t interested in him. He left him alone, left him to the worthless hands of his mother. With Nick there with her, she wasn’t so lonely anymore.

Tess tries to stifle a yawn as she approaches the tent she shares with Him. So tired. But He would be retrospective and talkative tonight, as He was most nights, and she would be forced to stay up and listen to him, encourage him, treat him with the same compassion she showed everyone else, tempered with a deference to His status as her husband and master. The she would be compelled to submit to Him, accept Him into herself, as she had for so many years, despite a series of miscarriages that had nearly cost her her life.

She was one of the most powerful ESPers in the band. She could lift humvees; start wildfires; cause anerysms of the heart, lung, brain; pick thoughts out of the minds of people miles away; project walls of force to deflect incoming fire. She could do all of these things and yet she did nothing to save herself from the hell she was in, did nothing to free herself or others from the hands of their oppressors. Nick had been His protection from her fury.

If she made a mistake, Nick was beaten. If she failed, Nick was starved. He used her son like a hostage towards her good behavior because He realized quickly that she felt nothing about her own welfare but cared deeply about that of her son, and the other slaves. He discovered this and used it, the hammer waiting to fall.

He had lost his leverage. Nick was dead, another corpse on its way to whatever hell He saw fit to throw him in. She runs a shaking hand across her face, feels tears threaten to spill down her cheeks, shaming her. The tiny woman forces them down. She was strong, as strong as she needed to be. Death wasn’t the way. Not yet. There was still so much she could do. For some reason, He values her, despite her barrenness, and it confuses and secretly pleases her. It was this strange power she had that allowed her to gently badger Him about the welfare of the slaves. She couldn’t follow her son into death, taking Him with her in revenge for all the pain she had suffered, all the heartache, all the shame. There was too much left for her to do. No rest for the weary.

It was hard to be so lonely, Tess thinks as she walks with small steps towards His tent, her hands clasped in front of her as if in supplication. It was hard, but she would survive. She would do what she needed to. For now.