Did this in a day— ~ First: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/854964808/ Previous: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/876896802 Next: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/880560796/ ~ Age rating: 11+ (basically just as long as you're a mature reader) TW: H!tting, possible abvse ~ “Where were you?” Mother had asked me when I had finally made my way back home that day. The question seemed innocent at first glance, just a mother worried about her child, but when I met her eyes, I could see the unspoken accusation burning in them. I had felt the feeling of Em’s hands on my back again, but this time, they weren’t Em’s; they were Mother’s instead. I had felt the stinging sensation on my skin before she had even touched me. I did my best not to let myself flinch in front of her and show weakness, but she had noticed my hesitation anyway. I had hung my head as she came over to me, and I whispered that I had been out, that I was sorry, that it wouldn’t happen again, that I thought that it would be okay because it was just once, only once. But none of those words had made any bit of a difference to her. Excuses, that’s all that they had been. “Stupid girl,” I had heard her mutter under her breath, just loud enough so that I could hear it and feel the hurt from them. And I did, I did, just like how she had wanted me to. The blow, the feel of her skin upon the clothes on my back, had not hurt nearly as much as the shame that I felt creeping up on me. I had disappointed her, and even if she didn’t think I was, I /had/ been sorry. The physical pain was easy enough to get used to after a while, but I was never strong enough to combat the twisting inside of me when she looked at me like she did then, with such anger and such displeasure in me, and worse — the kind of unapologetic, sick glee as she did it. “You will focus on your training tomorrow, Ravynne, won’t you?” she had asked me, but it was clear from the lilt in her voice that there was only one acceptable answer to that question. The same answer that I had learned would be the only thing that made her happy, even if it made me shrink and shrivel up within. “Yes, Mother,” I had murmured. The places where she had hit me had turned from stinging to throbbing, hurting worse after the wound had had time to set in. “Good,” she had told me, and I had taken that as being excused this time, so I had gone to my room and filled the bathtub with hot, steaming water. Upon looking in the mirror, I could see that the mark was red, but it wasn’t bleeding. One good sign, at least. I had pulled some of the last twigs and leaves that remained in my hair out and lowered myself into the water, which had prickled against my damaged skin. Mother had not cared in the sense of being worried as to where I was the whole day. It had been “where were you?” and a couple of other words exchanged, the pain and shame of being insulted again and again, and then a weakened girl wondering how come it was so wrong not to want to win the Tournament, to instead want to be a hero. A girl wondering why it was so wrong to love a hero. But in the end, that was just how it was. Any differently and it makes you selfish, but not the kind of selfish that characterized the villains from the heroes. It was wrong no matter how you put it.
