Work Text:
Hugs.
As she watches a human mother hug her child to her chest as they sob together hysterically after surviving attack of two yoma slaughtering of what had already been a small family, Teresa slowly leaves the area as she just barely begins to remember her own mother through the harsh memories of joining the Organization.
Of her mother hugging her and comforting her when she was sad or even sick. Or had managed to hurt herself somehow.
Of her mother soothing her to into sleep by gently rubbing her head through her hair as she held her in her gentle embrace.
Now after the attack by a yoma on her family, her own mother is no longer around to comfort and hug her when she is sad or hurt by something that another person has done to hurt her.
Those memories sometimes would float to the forefront of her memories when she doesn't want them to when she makes the mistake of hanging around long enough to watch the remaining members of a family give comfort to each other and forces them back harshly, reminding herself that she has no need to remember such things now that she is the strongest warrior currently being used by the Organization.
No, the strongest monster currently being used by the Organization.
She also remembers after the implantation of the yoma flesh, of being in pain and hugged by another girl (someone who she learns after is called Irene) as a small form of comfort as they were both experiencing the pain of being changed into something that doesn't remotely resemble a human, but rather something that masquerades in the flesh of one.
A monster with the form of a human, that always craves the flesh and blood of another being.
She doesn't take comfort in knowing that in a village somewhere, there is some child still able to take comfort in something given in the form of a hug by their own mother that she herself can no longer receive.
Now she sneers at thought of something being so weak need to the comfort of a hug them that they still live or have to imaginary hurts soothed by another.
Perhaps that would be why she is so shocked when the little girl – Clare, crying as she hugs the ugly wound on her stomach after the bandits leave them alone. After she had so readily tried to give them her body to do with as they wished.
Trying to give her comfort in order to erase some of the pain that the little girl admits to seeing in her eyes when they first met and after that meeting, despite the fact that she had constantly rejected the child's attempts to try and give her comfort when she couldn't give it to herself.
Where she had forgotten what it was like to once be hugged by another. Not that it wasn't to be hugged and in return be allowed to hug Clare. She might not have an active memory of what a comforting hug is meant to feel like, but she tries anyways as she and this little child kneel on the ground beneath their feet.
But she also knows that this is something that she shouldn't get used to receiving again and leave to the past that belonged to her human self.