Thunder Dome ambergris

@Sundance! <3

here sound converged with light and refracted over teya in harsh waves that vibrated her very bones.
rain washed over shoulders, over face, over flank; she let warm tears mingle with the stormwater and willed them to be carried away.
black mists shrouded the summit where she stood, singing a eulogy for bronco and perhaps in some part for herself, for the crushing weight she so desperately wished to shed, and could not.

He heard wolfsong over the downpour and recognised the voice immediately. Sundance had never forgotten it, and was drawn to the location from which it sounded like a moth drawn to a flame.

His ribs heaved by the time he found her, pelt sodden and limbs shaky, but he paused some distance away to drink deep the sight of her.

Teya.

Sundance felt emotion constrict his throat, and he allowed himself a moment to collect himself before he tilted his muzzle and sent forth his own voice so that it might synchronise with hers.

ivorywing dove appeared beneath the eye of the storm and teya knew at once the sonorous voice and tall figure glimmering below the cliffline.
the mountains had once been theirs, the willows a bower for their soft voices and greatest hopes.
life had stolen so much of it from her; she came down to meet him, solemn, streaming with rain.
what had life given sundance? surely it would not have robbed them both.

Sometimes he yearned for that carefree Summer of his childhood - the only one he'd ever shared with his mothers and brother. Sundance often caught himself thinking back on those lazy mornings when he'd watch Olive work her garden, her fur gilded by dawnlight. He'd remember afternoons by the water with Atwood and Reif, the musical note of their collective laughter. Life had robbed him of so very much in that first year, and had been cruel enough to remind him regularly of how much he'd missed.

He'd tried to move on from it, of course. He'd tried to find happiness away from the lands he'd been born to, having convinced himself that they were cursed. Teya and Bridget would've been better off without him, free of the darkness that followed him wherever he went.

But Sundance had never forgotten them.

He sought the gaze of his long-lost companion, and as she gazed back at him he recognised the quickening of his wild heart. There came a swell of a sad, hopeful love in his chest - that which he'd carried with him over the long years, which threatened to rise now like a crescendo ready to crash. Sundance swallowed, took a tentative step closer and encouraged her to him with a low note, his attention only for her as the rain continued to pour.

two lifetimes had passed, it felt, since teya had seen sundance. the rain washed over her shoulders, across the paleness of his pelt; she looked up into his face and felt as if what she saw shining there went beyond mere relief at finding her.
her ears splayed. his warmth shimmered like unseen magick in the coldness of the downpour. "hello, sundance."
let him wait no longer to exhale; teya felt the gentle conjuration of remembered pull only start up the familiar hurt in her spirit.

Sundance had long felt the absence of Teya. He'd felt it deep at the soul of him, and as she looked up into his face his eyes grew glassy with emotion. His lungs drew in a deep, shuddering breath as she spoke his name.

He wanted to hold her. He wanted to reach out, to wrap her into his embrace and tell her that this was where she belonged. Sundance stood there, silent and unmoving despite the downpour, and he remembered how he'd tiptoed around his feelings for her. He thought back on those years without her: wanting, waiting, wishing...

Teya, he mustered, his voice trembling as at last he shifted to tentatively caress the wetness of her cheek with his nose, I have so much of you in my heart.

the raven shut her eyes as sundance's voice swept over her, wakening each fiber of her being and darkening her eyes with some emotion that so fervently wished to be desire. and yet her flesh felt locked, her blood unresponsive; not for him, but for all, and it was a truth she was only realizing each second by dreadful second.
she was ruined. teya almost wanted to laugh. here was a beautiful man glowing with love, a longheld desire which spanned several years, the promise of a future that could finally exist, and she was too exhausted to take hold of it.
"sundance. i have no more heart to give." broken over and over, by herself and by others, the dissolved pieces were not treasures, but shards of pain, and she would never forgive herself if she watched this look in his eye slowly turn to the same. "too sad to love."

She did not melt at his touch, not the way she'd done in his dreams. Disappointment tightened its grip around Sundance's tender heart, constricting, and he withdrew to seek Teya's gaze with his own. He saw her sorrow glisten in her eyes, the same clearwater depths that shone with life in his memory.

Teya appeared as a shell of who she'd been, but she was not damaged. She could be whole again. She could survive whatever trauma she'd faced, as he had.

He could love her in ways that would make her guard feel unnecessary.

I see you, he told her softly, I see how you hurt - let it be mine to endure.

hadn't bronco said the same? something like it? could she even remember what his voice sounded like? "sundance," the raven said again in an anguished moan, her eyes blurring with tears, "i have loved four times and been married twice since you gone. four children. two husbands died." she swallowed.
"nothing left," and a soft, strained laugh. "i — exhausted to think of starting over."
there was no absence of affection or even longing as she stared up into his soft eyes, willing herself to resist the dream that shone there.

She'd lived her life in his absence, which was what he'd wanted - yet it still stung to think on the years he'd missed out on. Sundance had pursued his own happiness over the years, eager to find home in the arms of another, and for a time he thought he'd made that. He'd never been able to give as much of himself to Rowe, however, not in the ways she needed him to. In the end he realised that it was unfair to trail her along, not when it was Teya's voice he heard whenever she spoke his name.

Yet there he stood, trying to be strong, and it dawned on him how foolish he must look. Sundance had left without a word a long time ago, too afraid to give voice to his great flaws - of course the depth of his feeling was not reciprocated! The silverwhite withdrew in a reluctant backward stride, though his pallid eyes never left her face.

He did not know what she'd been through, but it did not matter. He just wanted to love her through it. There was nothing left in her to give, she said, and Sundance wanted to tell her she was wrong. He wanted her as she was, all of her, even the broken parts.

The downpour continued and rainwater dripped from his chin. I-I'm sorry, Teya, he managed, for everything you've been through.

reyes and teya had made one another miserable and driven their poor daughter sorana away together. bronco had helped teya start her healing, only to be ripped from her by the poison in catclaws. 
boris had disappeared.
now sundance stood before her, wanting to offer a new way, a new future. to love her, to protect her. to guard her heart.
"i never know love without all this," teya sniffled gently, her eyes shining. "my heart, unlocked. that good, even if i hurt."
but this amount of pain was not something she ever wanted to put into the arms of another, no matter how much hope sang inside her for a blessed, sighing moment.
bridget loved her. bridget had always loved her, and running off with a third man in sundance would change nothing about that fact.
and if she was being honest, these were things she also did not want to place in the cardinal's embrace. 
"be well, sundance." forget me. a love left padlocked was a safer love, one that could not harm nor bite nor break. regret he might have, hurt. frustration. confusion. all preferable to watching herself drain his joy.

He'd never been brave enough to tell her before, when they were young. Sundance had thought himself damaged back then, irreparable. He'd lost his whole family in one fell swoop, forced from his home by the trembling earth. Then, while he tried to find footing among the Firebirds, he'd lost Dorea.

At the time, Sundance had thought this to be the end. He'd ventured out on his own, strung along by some delicate thread of hope that he might find his kin, only to discover that his mothers had never made it out of the willow forest on that fateful day when the earth quaked. His brothers? Lost, still, and their fate remained unknown.

He'd been through Hell. They both had, in very different ways. Teya had shown him that there could be light again - that she was Summer to his Winter heart. It'd frightened him, the very real and raw way he felt for her.

Be well, she told him, and his silver ears splayed. Was this the end? Sundance blinked rainwater from his eyes. I don't want to lose you again, Teya.

you never had me! teya felt herself wanting to lash back, but instead she hung her head. a great exhale swelled her sides, and when she looked up at sundance it was with a deep and abiding affection. "nothing to lose," the raven said with monumental effort, fighting the urge of her eyes to brim and run and betray her. "just cannot be here anymore. too many memories."
and though the circlet of sundance's silverwhite arms beckoned teya, promised her a peace and a hope she so dearly wanted to experience, she resisted.
bronco had held her, bronco had understood, bronco had seen teya, and she had never stopped seeing him everywhere she looked.
"sundance, you will always live in the shadows of my mates." at the last she included reyes in that, for though she had not adored him the same, she had missed him and his death had shaken her and broken the last thing between she and sorana. she had no more to give love, and how unfair to keep sundance beneath the great blackened weight of two marriages and all the failures in between. teya did not think she would ever recover, a truth growing more insistent and more harsh.
"not a place for you to live." her coolwater eyes were blinking now as tears sprang, but teya made herself look at the tall man through their stained-glass blur. "not a place i want you to live, for any second."

Sundance blinked, feeling his own eyes brim. He saw how she suffered, the depth of her despair, and his owned pulsed through his every fibre. Teya had loved several times through the years - four, apparently! She'd shared her heart with many, and it ached to realise how unwilling she was to simply let him be there for her.

His brow furrowed as he took another backward step. Sundance sniffed back his emotion, bracing himself as his lean frame swayed. His head felt light yet his chest felt heavy, crushing beneath each pained word she spoke. The silverwhite closed his eyes and drew in shakily.

When he opened them again, he could see her staring back and him and still, still, he wanted to embrace her - even in knowing she would shy from his touch.

But- but what!? But this wasn't fair? This wasn't what he imagined? It wasn't about just him! His ears splayed and he rooted himself there, afraid to say more and afraid of hurting her further. Sundance felt that she wanted him to leave, but he did not want to turn away. He'd done it once before and had spent a lifetime regretting it.

He did not want to carry that guilt anew.

what sundance did not know and perhaps never would was that his need to only be present for her pressed down upon teya with such overwhelming obligation that she was almost dumfounded.
with a tearing pain she watched as he needed her; backed a step; gazed at the raven with hurting eyes. there was irony as sure as daylight that she knew she and sundance could succeed. but it would only be superficial, teya repressing the irrepressible grief that had marked her life for several years now.
maia and eljay — their anguished faces pushed through her thoughts now, and almost she broke.
"someone else wanting to love me," and tears traced lightly across her mouth. "cannot love her back either."
teya believed that sundance had loved her, yes, and that even now perhaps he did. but he no longer knew the wounded, complete failure of a woman who stood before him now. it mattered little that she still held the face he had adored. she was not the same, and she would not drag her skeletons into his brighter years to pass.
"i going home. glintcreek fjord. far, far northwest." why did she say? she did not know.