The rebels told her it was the nobleman's fault, that he had been the reason her parents were killed, but they had not made the faulty chair. They had not failed to warn their mother. They had not asked for someone, anyone to go back and find her before the Inquisition did. They had not had to hear that their mother was dead before the rebels could reach and rescue her.
Two parents dead in the same day, and it was her fault.
The only thing that kept her from complete despair was the knowledge that they would not blame her in the slightest. They would be happy that she survived. They would want her to live.
So Elle would live, for them.
She had power, they told her. Power to fight back against the noblemen and the Inquistition. Power to help right the wrongs of their society. If only she had the power to live in peace with her parents. She would give up this- this allomancy in a heartbeat for that. But no one could change the past, and now that Elle had been given power she knew her parents would want her to use it well.
Was trying to avenge them using it well?
She wasn't sure, and she wasn't sure she ever would be.
She was brooding, she realized. It was not a pastime she was familiar with. Pondering, thinking, imagining, those were all things she was imminently familiar with, but not brooding. Hers had been a happy life. She had never realized how privledged she'd been. A roof over her head, regular meals, only the minor threat of a beating. Her father had been a skaa craftsman of the highest caliber.
Too bad she had not followed in his footsteps.
Ah, she thought, and there is the self pity.
She did not have time for self pity. She had power now, she had to do something with it. Something, anything, to make her parents' sacrifice not be in vain. But the rebels were leaving her to her own devices, letting her 'recover'. Didn't they understand that doing nothing just meant she was stuck in her thoughts even more then usual? Thinking and thinking and thinking about all the things she'd done wrong? All the ways she could have saved her parents, all the if only's and could have been's that her powerful imagination could come up with running through her head, it was enough to make her want to scream.
Elle, for once, did not want to be in her head. She wanted to do. To talk to someone, anyone, about anything, if it meant she did not have to be alone with her thoughts for an instant longer.
So she wandered the back alleys of the shop, looking for someone to talk to. Perhaps they would just brush her off, but still that would be a few seconds where she was not utterly, terribly, alone.
Edited by Noelle, 28 December 2013 - 10:01 PM.