Sleeping on it

Last night was an example of Tad getting bad sleep, obsession, and compulsion rolls and that being significantly mitigated by the people he's grown to trust a little. Largely, his bad sleep was caused by nightmares of someone he has clocked as a real and present threat despite being curious about him (Jonathan). He's feeling fear for his own life, which has made him start trying to come to terms with the death of his father. He gave into a compulsion when he woke up to pee and texted Tessa before going back to sleep. She needed to know that there was potential danger. He wanted Sneaky to be the proxy. But Sneaky hadn't been around. Or at least, not responsive. He tried to keep it bare bones. 

I was very tired though, so I'm not sure how coherent it actually was. Guess I'll find out when I log in today.

Other than that, Tad has been thinking about the question Jojo asked a couple nights ago. What, exactly, did he do to scare Tessa? He's starting to realize he's never going to know unless she tells him. It's a matter of perspective. He knows his intentions. She doesn't. Even if he tells her, there is no way to make her trust him.

He can't read Tessa's mind. When did he go from friend to foe in her head? Which of his actions, exactly, caused her to pull away completely? Was it the combination or was it something specific? He can think back to points where he was obviously foe: when he called her from an unknown number, for instance. But he's not sure when exactly the scale tipped in that direction. He no longer has the notebooks. He has been unable to make himself go back and read all the texts for awhile now. Even today when he reviewed a few with Saini, he couldn't make himself read more. Which may be a sign of him improving, but it does make his memory fuzzy.

Tessa, like any good roleplay character, has a problem being clear about what her boundaries are to the people most in danger of violating them. What is a violation? She leaves that unclear. She doesn't communicate that, perhaps on purpose. Perhaps just because Tad has proven he's insightful about some things, she assumes he's insightful about all things. How can a person know that they're violating someone's safe space if they don't even know there is one to violate? (Please note that he did NOT read the sign in the treehouse, which did, in fact, make a violation clear.) At this point, Tad only knows the treehouse was extremely bad (rather than just sort of bad) because of Sneaky. Tad has never had a safe space. Not really. He has never felt safe anywhere. This is a foreign concept to him.

The muddiness of what happened and why is one of the reasons Tad was pushing for a conversation with her before he just imagined the conversation being her berating him like his grandmother used to, which was an idea he wasn't able to deal with. He couldn't handle the possibility that his first real conversation with Tessa might be an argument. 

Here's where I divulge a secret I've been holding for Tad, as I think it might be more fun for viewers to know and anticipate. He hasn't quite realized it himself, yet. His "imprinting" on Tessa wasn't as a mother, sister, crush, predator, prey, or even confidante. She is his handler, through no fault of her own. If she were to give him very clear instructions to hurt someone else, he would follow them. Even if he manages to beat this obsession with her, it'll be true. They could not interact for months and it would still be true.  I'm super happy he imprinted on Tessa over someone like Kenneth. Though that could have also been fun, knowing some other things I know about Tad.

"Handler" doesn't mean he'll blindly follow all instructions from her. His grandmother wasn't completely successful in his training. His father made sure of that. Tad's training stopped during his age of rebellion, which is when his grandma died. But all Tessa has to do is figure out how to control him for the important things.

Tad does not technically have ASPD, though he does exhibit some of the traits. They were learned. He was raised by people who had them. He was taught a lot of things about himself that just aren't true in order to keep him in check. The "love" he received was a psychopath trying to train another weapon and the original weapon (probably technically a sociopath) trying to fight against that. At some point, parts of his humanity just went to sleep. Now that they're waking up, he's being overwhelmed by everything he should have felt throughout his life popping up all at once and he's not sure who he is anymore. That's why he's so stuck on his past right now. That's why he seems like more than one person. He's not. He's just having mood swings and not understanding that's what they are as someone who has been trained to behave a very specific way. They're complicated by his sleep problems and newly flaring OCD.