The Light in His Darkness

Her Confession

I don't usually like to do A/N's during a chapter, but this one needs it - a trigger warning for cutting. It's . . . not exactly the prettiest backstory, so . . . it's your choice to read it, but it's not the happiest thing either. Your choice. 

"I should probably explain first," she said, still messing with the bag. "I was born into the Neverseen. My parents have been a part of it since before I was born. And they adopted some unnaturally cruel ways in terms of parenting." She took a shaky breath. "And they . . . would cut me."

"What?"

"Every time I made a mistake," she said quietly. "Depending on the scale of the mistake, it could be deep, or long, or short, or shallow. But you know that saying, 'nobody is perfect'? Apparently they've never heard of it before. And they thought they could intimidate me into being perfect, if only they scared me enough. But you also know about how people make mistakes every day?"

Tam's mouth dropped open, but she continued.

"And how people tend to make even more mistakes under pressure? I tried my best. I really did. But it just wasn't good enough. Not for them. I think that they were doing it so I'd know what would happen to me if I tried to resist Gisela. They never told her, of course, that I might be lying about my loyalty."

"Wait - so why weren't you loyal, after all that?"

"Because of all that, Tam," Glimmer said earnestly. "Why do you think I wanted to leave?" she asked softly. "I never thought I'd be able to, but I got my chance - with you. I only took it when I knew it'd be a sure fire."

"Did you get medicine, at least?" Tam had to ask.

"I didn't get medicine, no. Well, not most of the time. My parents didn't want to steal from them, and then have someone notice and be interrogated about it. Be found out. That's why they made me wear this cloak all the time."

"Didn't you say that no one would let you in if they hadn't seen your face?"

"I did. They saw my face when I was born. That was it."

"You've worn this . . . your whole life?"

"I guess I've had to get new ones as I get older, and we had some extras, but yes."

"Okay, so if you didn't have medicine - how'd you survive? I mean, the blood loss, the constantness of it?"

"I have this theory. And . . . my experience has actually somewhat proven it to me. I think that the elves heal faster - and easier - than humans do, thanks to our genetics. So the not particularly deep ones left a scar, not very big, but healed rather quickly. The deeper ones, however, took a whole lot longer to heal, and have left even worse scars, because of the lack of medicine. As for the blood loss, I had sleeves surrounding my arms the entire time. Like I said, I had a few extras, and I'd switch them out. My parents would slip them in to be washed with theirs."

"So you think that you healed on your own?"

"Well . . . I had some form of bandages, if that's what you can count these for, so I'm sure that helped, but I never got any kind of elixir to help me. It's just a theory. I can't really prove it." She sighed. "But I'm prolonging taking off my actual hood."

"I get it," he told her. "You've worn it for a long time. But I'm here for you. I promise."

"Oh, right. There's . . . one other thing I should probably tell you," she said. She spoke slowly. "My face doesn't have as many scars. Only three. My parents saved my face for the worst of my mistakes. But one of them happened to . . . well, I'll explain in a second, after you've seen it."