(Alexois is usually found over at @ishgardiansnow and I will blog this over there after. Posting it here for the sake of ease with the writing thing. Easier to keep track this way. This one is going under a read more just because it’s Alex.)

Alex paused by the mirror in the room he was given at Rillek Manor. So much had been happening. So fast. It was a ride going too fast that he was half tempted to abandon. Yet he couldn’t. There was no way he could leave Kohina. Not now.

Hand reaching up to touch the face in the mirror. Fingers pausing on the scar over the eye. Slowly moving to rest on the tattoo his mentor had placed upon his face. Crimson eyes drifting to the hair he had allowed to grow longer. He still remembered cutting his hair short when he went into hiding after trying to kill his mentor the first time. But hair wasn’t something he was changing now.

No this change needed to be deeper then the physical. Though the question he kept asking himself… Was he strong enough to change himself? To edit the man he had become to survive. He spent so many years of his life letting others shape him into the beast he felt he had become. Now he had to change again. At least if he didn’t want to hurt Koh.

She said she would leave if she had to. Yet a part of him didn’t want to force that onto her. Not without trying.

Aeri had tried to set him on a better path. One that might not lead to him dying. Then Koh came along and guided him out of the darkness. Yet he wasn’t sure he could change himself enough to be worthy of what her family wanted.

Could he really be something other then a monster?

Ulfarr’s words had stung the day they went out on his first chore. He wasn’t using his past as an excuse. That past had made him who he was now. He didn’t know how to be anything else.

Yet he knew he needed to try. Even face the nightmares he dealt with when he ended up sleeping alone. Small changes would even be a good start, If he could manage even that much. Editing the self was a hard thing when you spent most of your life using anger and pain as a weapon or shield.