15 Pride

I awoke to the chime of a clock. My eyes shot open and were met with an unfamiliar wall. A green wall. Where was I?

I tried to look around, slightly panicking because of the quiet environment. When my neck turned, I felt a resonating ache in my torso, spreading throughout my body and stopping me from focusing on the unknown location I was in. A deep and distant pain, one which would stand tall against the edge of time, but one which also, thankfully, wasn't a sign of immediate danger anymore.

My leg, however, burned. I winced and brought my hands to remove the thin brown blanket draped over my body. I was on a bed. A wooden frame stuck out of the corner of my vision, still blurry from the lack of details I could pick. I blinked them clear, a few teardrops rolling down my cheeks at the same time.

My leg was wrapped in white bandages, with no blood in sight—and, more importantly, no more darkness. I tried to move it and succeeded. The pain was minimal and akin to a dull sensation of mere unresponsiveness. Then I went down to my toes and made a grave mistake. The moment I tried to move my feet around, I froze. Yesterday's agony came back and hit me like a freight train. It traveled from my foot and reached as high as my thighs, forcing me to squeeze them with my hands, instinctively trying to remove the throbbing sting from them. My nerves weren't severed anymore, as evidenced because I could feel something in my foot. But if raw and pulsing suffering was all I could feel from it, then I decided it would be wiser to let it rest.

I still didn't know what that black sludge was.

But with yesterday's agony came back yesterday's memories. My breath hitched before quickening. Beads of sweat appeared on my body, making me feel uncomfortable as the equally agonizing memories cycled through my mind. I pinched myself—I was alive. How?

My eyes darted around, uncaring of the slight discomfort it produced on my torso, the cat-man's blow to my ribcage echoing whenever I moved my head around.

I was in a rather astute room, one devoid of anything other than a clock, the bed I was lying in and… Hestia.

I blinked, gazing at the sleeping form of my goddess. Her knees were on the ground, the upper part of her body lounged on the edge of the bed. Her buxom torso moved up and down slowly and rhythmically, a slight string of drool coming out of her mouth and wetting the bed. A barely-audible snore reached my ears—she was sleeping.

The sight calmed me down. My hands stopped shaking. Yesterday's events would not be forgotten easily. But I balled my hands into fists—after the fear, came the frustration. Fuck. Why did it have to happen to me?! What did I do to suffer this?!

I knew it was useless to think like this, that it wouldn't solve my problems and wouldn't answer my questions. But it didn't matter. After the frustration came the anger. I slammed my fists onto the soft mattress, which rippled under the strength of a qi Condensation cultivator. A sliver of my qi slipped past my soul, because of my lack of control of my emotions, and was released through my fists. It weaved through the bed, and I heard the wooden frame crack at the edge. It was nothing important—just a small fissure was visible on the wooden and lacquered edge in front of me—but it made me realize how affected I was. I puffed, calming down slowly.

"Tian?" I heard the quiet and high-pitched voice of my goddess. She lifted her head off the bed, a strand of saliva following her, and her puffy eyes opened and looked at me. The redness of her eyes made me wince, guessing how she gained them.

"Tian!" She repeated, much louder this time, before she bridged the gap between us by jumping on me, uncaring of how my bones creaked when she crashed into me. "You're alive!" She screamed, and I hugged her back, my T-shirt already dampening from her tears.

She squeezed harder and harder with each second, and I could feel the arms around my torso trembling with her voice. "T-Tian, I was so worried!"

"I'm alright, I'm alright," I said with a long sigh, unable to stop a smile from breaking on my face at the familiar soft feeling of my goddess hugging me. I didn't know if it was because of her divinity or just her as a person, but she felt comfy, far comfier than any person had any right to be. She was warm and always smelt of a cozy home. Not of my home, but more of what I imagined the perfect home to smell like.

I guessed being the Goddess of the Hearth came with a range of benefits.

I closed my eyes, taking in the pleasant feel of her small body against mine. It wasn't sexual in any way; it was just… a balm to the mind.

"No, you are not alright!" Hestia cried, her voice shaking more and more. "Y-You… Do you know how bad your state was when I found you?! Do you know how worried I was?!" She raised her arms, her fists, and hit my torso with them, frustration leaking from every inch of her body. I took the hits, barely registering in my mind, and simply hugged her harder.

"W-Why? Why? Why?" She repeated, each time she hit me. She then stopped and gripped my T-shirt, pulling it down as her fingers curled from what I surmised was frustration. All of this time, her tears never stopped.

"Hestia, I- He was going to attack me. I-I didn't want you to be hurt," I said. It wasn't the complete truth, but it wasn't a lie either. Enough to trump her lie detector.

She gripped me harder, and let out sobs after sobs, trying and failing to speak as she sought to engulf my body more and more. "I could have protected you!" She screamed, lifting her head off of my body for the first time. She was a mess, a beautiful mess. Her appearance was enough to make me gulp, her distress eliciting some sort of deep feeling inside of me. I felt guilty because I felt like the results of my actions ended up hurting her just as much as they did me.

But I couldn't back down from this. A deity personally protecting their Familia members had terrible repercussions in this world. No, that was a lie. This wasn't the only reason I couldn't back down from this.

"I-I could have called my Arcanum and-"

"No," I interrupted her. "Promise me you won't use your Arcanum in any situation unless you're about to die."

I wouldn't budge. I stared into her eyes, my expression solid steel.

"I-I-I… No, I can't do that!"

"Hestia…"

"No, no, no," she said three times, with a movement of her head each time. "I refuse! I will protect you whenever I can, even if I'm sent back to Heaven!"

My lips thinned, and I didn't know what to answer. "But Hestia... "

"I don't want to hear it!" Her voice was raised once again. "I don't care if I end up stuck in Heaven again; I'll come down again and come to you, I-I don't care; I won't allow you to die like this…" Her voice got higher at the end of her sentence, where her words were cut short by her emotions, an influx of tears coming out of her eyes and she ended up letting herself fall into my arms again. "Please don't leave me alone…"

I caught her, sighing because I knew I wouldn't be able to dissuade her.

After a moment where we just spent embracing each other, I spoke, "By the way… how did you find me- no, where did you find me? I don't… remember what happened exactly." I scratched the back of my head, the pain in my leg coming back with each word.

"I-I heard a commotion; Tiamat and I came down to see what it was about. And-" She couldn't stop sobbing. "And I found you, in a puddle of your blood—your leg was broken, your chest caved in and your eyes slowly l-losing their life while adventurers… adventurers were just looking at you!" The hate in her voice was only contested by the fear in her eyes as she told me what happened to me after I lost consciousness. "T-Tian! I was watching you die slowly in my arms… Y-You were losing warmth and I felt… I felt the link between us slowly disappear."

I was… I didn't know what to answer. I couldn't imagine how Hestia felt. No, that was a lie as well. As I looked at her desperate and still under the shock expression, I bit my lips. I felt my anger spike up once more, but it was a wave of a more painful one this time. It was a burning, pulsing distaste in the back of my mind; it pulsed against me.

The first time was easier when I was the weakest. It was easier to bounce back; it was easier to be angry at others, at the world. It was easier when I had no one to fall back into, no one around me, no one to help. It was easier when I had nothing to lose.

But it wasn't the case anymore. I gritted my teeth and narrowed my eyes while Hestia dived into my chest, refusing to let me go even for more than a couple of seconds. But it was for the better. I didn't want her to see me like this. I couldn't look at her like this.

"I'm sorry." Those words were stuck like sludge in my throat, but I forced them out anyway. Her only answer was to hug me harder, her sobbing slowly ending.

I looked at the clock in front of me, counting each tick, each second, waiting for Hestia's judgment. I gulped, for the… 7th time. Her tears completely ruined my T-shirt, the wetness having spread entirely on the front of the cloth.

"W-Why?" She asked vulnerably. Her voice was like a whisper. She was scared, I realized. Scared of hearing the answer to her question. "W-Why did you do it?"

"..." The answer wanted to be spit out, like an irresistible impulse taking me over, but I resisted. I gulped once more, my saliva barely making it in my throat due to how heavy it was, and my eyes trembled a bit as old memories resurfaced.

"Why?" She repeated, her eyes flickering to my head, trying to meet my gaze. I didn't return the favor and kept looking at the clock for a long time. She waited. She just waited there for my answer.

I wanted to say I didn't know how strong this guy would be, how I foolishly thought my Soul Sight would perfectly capture someone's strength, despite knowing I couldn't gaze through magic, but I had a feeling it wasn't what Hestia was asking me.

"...Because for a long time…" I didn't know why I was saying this. I shouldn't be opening up to what was essentially a stranger. I knew it. I knew it could backfire, letting myself be vulnerable when I had built this facade for so long. But I realized something yesterday. I didn't truly change. I was the same scared kid, scared of everything.

It all started because of my name. 'Tian' wasn't a very common name for a lanky white kid, and so the harassment began. For a stupid reason, really. I was scared back then because everything was stronger than me. I endured and endured. It was the only thing I could do. I struck back, despite being weak, spite being my only motivator. But I went too far once, rage overtaking me. The memories of how it ended still haunted me to this day.

I decided to become strong, took sports—fighting sports. Proved to be decent at it and continued. People didn't bully me anymore after that. I thought I had changed. Yesterday tore that belief apart.

"When I was the weakest…" Yesterday showed me how I reacted when I was the weaker party again. I froze. The only thing forcing me to move was spite, just like that time when I struck back for the first time. Nothing changed. I had nothing but the bitterness at having my pride stepped on. I was still the same. I even wanted the surrounding adventurers to come to save me. How… humiliating.

Nothing changed. I still tumbled in the world like I had things to prove to everyone, responding to anything and everything with aggression. The difference was simple—I could get away with it in my previous world; here, where people could kill me easily and get away with it, playing with my life.

What I always wanted was power. What I got was...

"Pride was the only thing I had."

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Beta: AsuraJZero and Ekaterina.

Changes made in the previous chapters: - Fixed the timeline. (There was a huge hole in the narration.)

- Added a scene in chapter 8 entitled Breakthrough with Tian going to the Guild.

- More information about Freya's action in chapter 9 entitled Tiamat's Understanding.

- Added a scene in chapter 11 entitled Happiness with Tian visiting the church of the Familia.

- Added a small scene in chapter 12 entitled Familia and added information in the already written scene.

- Fixed the reactions in chapter 13 entitled Brawl. Removed the danger of death. Added information about why the fight scene happened. Added Freya's clear interference.

- Chapters 1-6 have been looked at and edited by my second beta, so no major changes but should be much more concise and clearer.

A/N: First off, I'd like to apologize for my crass comments about the general reaction to the last chapter. I was irritated not only by a few dumb comments but also because that's the first time I received such a blowback--I underestimated how much it hurts to have something you work on for a long time fail so miserably. Anyway, got my feelings hurt, and acted like a child throwing a fit. Though, that apology only extends to those that tried to give criticism, not the rest. I tried to make some changes in the chapters after getting humbled a bit, and while it's not perfect, I hope what I wanted to convey is clearer. Know that reading these changes is not exactly needed for the future, since they mostly attempt to make chapter 13 more believable and the previous chapters flow better.

Second, the chapters from now on might stretch a bit as I try to not fall for the same mistake I did with chapter 13, though I doubt I'll succeed, at least completely.

Third, well, I hope you enjoyed the chapter, feel free to tell me what you thought!