sad wordvomit

“Who are you?”

I should be asking you that same question. You can’t be me. You look too happy.

“Why do you look so sad?”

That’s a question I don’t think you’re ready to hear the answer to.

“Why aren’t you living at your sept?”

What, and live by myself? Force Anya to watch me leave and waste away?

“What? Leave? Waste away?”

It didn’t happen to you, did it. None of it happened to you. You didn’t have to come home to find your sister being turned into a leech. You don’t have to go into hiding whenever anyone says the name ‘Silent Strider.’

“You let your sister become a leech?”

That’s a narrow-minded way to look at things. But I think deep down even you know that some of them deserve better than that. Especially her. You wouldn’t have been able to do anything about it.

“But-”

Save it. You know you wouldn’t have been able to do it. Because you know, deep down, if you had stopped it, she would just be dead. She wouldn’t be there anymore at all.

“But there must be other things that make you happy, right? What about Jackdaw? You have him, right? If you’re me, then you have him at least, right?”

For what it’s worth, yes. Tell me, are you expecting? I can smell it on you. How?

“Wh- what kind of question is that?”

What happened to that hack job psychiatrist? I’m sure you know the one.

“I had my first change in his office. Mom had to deep clean the entire room. Didn’t that happen to you?”

Oh, what a difference a few weeks makes. Consider yourself lucky. My first change was pitiful. I had it lying in a hospital bed, too weak to move even despite the healing factor. And even if it hadn’t happened, your version of him isn’t a vampire either, is he?

“Not him too...”

Sounds like you need a calculator to count your blessings. I can only count them on one hand.

“Is that why you look so depressed? Have you fallen into harano?”

Harano is a load of bullshit and you know it. The Garou Nation just can’t accept that there are werewolves out there who are terminally depressed for reasons other than ‘Gaia’s losses’.

“But...”

I look depressed because everything that happened to me, didn’t happen to you. It isn’t something you can even begin to understand, the shit I’ve seen.

“Aren’t there reasons to be happy, though? What about Bat?”

A totem that fell a long time ago and is going to stay there as far as any Garou I know is concerned. Maybe I could have been the one to save her, if she had gotten the chance to notice Anya. But I wasn’t, and I never will be. That chance is long gone.

“And what about the White Howlers?”

You mean the Black Spiral Dancers. Still as vicious as ever.

“No, I mean the White Howlers. Wholesale. Aren’t you trying to-”

That’s ambitious. I’d love to be the person that brings back the White Howlers. But I’m not that person. I never will be.

“You really have given up, haven’t you? You truly have fallen into harano.”

I told you, that’s a crock of shit.

“You give up on your chance to save the world without really trying. You have this ‘nothing in life matters’ attitude around you. That’s harano.”

I can’t change the world, not now. I’m nothing more than a ghoul. I’m tired.

“That is probably one of the saddest things I’ve ever seen.”

You should absolutely pity me. I am the bottom of the barrel, lower than dirt. But when I look at you, I see all the ambition that I lost a long time ago. It’s too late for me, it maybe even is too late for my world. But you should never stop fighting. Because when I look at you, I see the hero I was never meant to be. And you, the hero I could never be, can do so much to change your world.

I want to see that happen.

Good luck.