They abused the being sorely in their first life and left them for dead, but they didn't truly die. Now in this new chance, the being got revenge on them, but did not kill them. Instead, they got to learn what the being went through, and then, got to learn what compassion felt like. -- Anon Guest
[AN: This sounds like a follow-up to a past tale of mine, but this prompt was gifted to me in early December, last year. It's now late March. My memory is seive-like at the best of times. So please. PLEASE give me a link if you're referencing a past story. Thanks in advance]
They say the best revenge is living well. I used to think that that saying was so much horseshit. The best revenge would be to make those who made me suffer, suffer in kind. That would be justice.
I learned differently, but only after I died.
The short of it was... I was kept in deprivation and then abandoned in the middle of nowhere with nothing. Weak, helpless, and injured, I collapsed in a hollow and breathed my last. Or so I thought.
Wraithvine brought me back from the brink of death. I was so far gone that I thought I had died before ze found me. That was a long recovery process.
During that process, I learned the way of two kind hands. How everyone has a choice. You can change a life with two kind hands. Soothe a heart with small, kind words. Some people choose to lay ruin around them by being assholes. I had been victim to one of the last on that list.
When I had learned all I could learn, that was when Wraithvine took me to find my abuser. There, to enact justice.
Was it justice to hurt them as much as they hurt me? Was it justice to make them suffer as I suffered?
It certainly wasn't justice to leave them unharmed.
So I laid a Curse of Forced Empathy on them. Every suffering they caused, they felt. The deliberate sufferings would hurt them worse. The accidental ones would hurt them less.
It was the most merciful I could be, on behalf of all their sins.
Then I met them again, after the curse had halfway wrecked them. I didn't see them as my abuser. I saw them as a pitiful wretch who needed help.
It took me weeks to recognise them.
By that time, I had no more hate for them. I still could not bring myself to break the curse.
I did teach them the way of two kind hands, and offer them the choice.
It was the best I was capable of.
[Photo by Jan Canty on Unsplash]
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