What were you expecting? If you don't mind my asking.

Don't feel guilty! She's an intrinsically sad and pathetic character at the heart of it.

Another pod-pop. Karis didn't bother to track the time in between them (she had no idea if they were on a schedule or not). Another day where the observation deck was filled with panicked, angry breathers, all demanding to know what was going on and where they were - same old sob story every time.

"But I had a family!"

"This can't be happening!"

She snorted to herself. Just like them. Yank the rug out from underneath them and you saw them for what they were - whining, sniveling, pathetic, weak little creatures of flesh and blood, who couldn't deal with hardship if-

"At least we're together. Thank the Light for small favors."

Karis stiffened, frozen in place. That couldn't be. He was dead. Her father was dead or eaten or plague-ridden, vanished off of the face of the earth and buried in some unmarked grave somewhere in the Plaguelands in all likelyhood. But, it sounded so much like him - the stern, steady confidence, the-

"And the children. All except-"

A woman's voice, snatches of conversation over the din.

"She'll be here somewhere. If we're here, if these... creatures... have plucked us all out of our daily lives, surely they would have taken Karis..."

Her mother. Her father. Her brother, her sisters, all here? That was impossible. This wasn't happening. She felt sick - or as close to sick as she could feel. She shrunk back against the wall, not wanting to look up and see them - but she knew they were a there. A barrel-chested, broad-shouldered man, tanned and hardened from years of working on the farm. An equally weathered woman with dark hair and a kind smile, arms that had embraced her, rocked to her sleep when she was child, soothed her hurts-

They couldn't see her like this, they couldn't know what had happened to her, that the young woman they'd seen off into the world was gone, gone and replaced by a twisted mockery of her. A creature that reveled in pain and death and suffering, not the headstrong, determined teenager that had left the family farm.

She fled the observation deck at the first chance. She needed to be alone. She needed to find a way out of this nightmare.

It takes her weeks to work up the courage to face one of them. It eats her alive from that first moment on the observation deck. They're here, they're alive, not dead and forgotten. It's been a decade for her - longer - and now they're here. They're here and they live and breathe and eat and do all of things that Karis can never do again. They're looking for a young woman, eighteen or nineteen, perhaps wearing armor, strong and tall and smiling. They don't notice the skulking, hunched creature that occasionally watches them from dark corners with glowing eyes.

She wants it to be her mother, she decides, a week before she finally does it. She wants her to know. To see. And the inhuman, cruel, monstrous part of her that seems to have eaten up so much of her over the years laughs at her remaining humanity; asks why she should bother. They don't want to see her. She's a monster. A freak. A zombie.

And the ghost of an emotion, the memory of shame and despair, works its way into her head. She doesn't feel them with the same intensity that she used to. Being worked up enough to cry is a distant, distant memory and everything is oddly detached, even when she does work up a head of steam.

She finds her mother in the city; alone, wandering, exploring. It's a safe ship, after all. Karis follows her for a few blocks, flitting from side street to side street. It's so familiar and so alien to see her here and that last buried spark of humanity inside of her is happy; so pleased to see her mother again. And she hates herself for that.

Karis finally approaches her and the look of horror on her mother's face is almost enough to send her scurrying back. She never thought she would have to do this. She lifts a gnarled, bony hand in a gesture of greeting and rasps out a single word, "Mother."

And she can see the dawning realization and recognition, the horror that washes over her mother.

It was never supposed to be like this.

Thankee. I've put a lot of thought into her. :>

(And I am sorry to say that Karis does not want hugs. From anyone.)

In those moments when she creeps away from the rest of the crew (she is never very social, at the best of times), she finds herself a little corner or hideyhole to curl up in. It is so strange to her, to be around the living so often, without seeing any other Forsaken. At home, they were always present. Friends and companions, brothers and sisters in death - a dread force of grim fighters and fanatical followers, prepared to march into the mouth of Hell for the sake of their Queen.

Here, there is no comforting presence, the feeling of ease among the dead. The quiet. There is quibbling and arguing and bickering - and she welcomes it. It gives her chance to needle and antagonize, to poke and prod and laugh at the idiots who actually try to challenge her logic - for she does not argue with any real purpose, but simply to watch them squirm and to feel the ghost of joy and amusement.

But in these quiet moments, she remembers home. She remembers the Undercity, the tread of dead feet, the friends she's left behind. She thinks of home, a crumbling, abandoned farmhouse, consumed and battered by the elements, the contents long since looted or taken, the farm next to it a burned out, guttered ruin. The layers of dust on the splintered furniture that remains.

She remembers when it was full of life and fire and the dirt path that ran through the field and how when she was very small, that one patch of peace and family was the world to her. Then she shakes off her nostalgia, pushes it away as silly and unneeded, unwanted. She's Forsaken - she doesn't need to think of such things, it is a weakness - and the nshe returns to sharpening her blades.

There's nothing more to do.

For sure! I love writing reflective peaces for her. I get to turn my tragedy meter up to eleven (get it, eleven? hahaha. ha.).

Plus it's always fun to imagine how a sentient zombie would view the world.