Raven's Watch Tendencies

Warbone visited the spot where he had first met Octavia. At first he had not meant to descend this way, but irrevocably he had come anyway. Their scents had long faded from this place; their time here nothing now but gale-blown dust; but he looked into the water and remembered another life. Too long ago now, he thought. There was a strong despondency weighing on his countenance that he noticed, made more pronounced by the broad disfigurement of his face. He was glad only to see that his pride had not left him, even if it seemed blackened on the edges by an ever looming holy fire, seeking repentance for sins as deep and as dark as the places under the sea.

He pulled away from the water's edge, and began to travel in muted daylight towards the Ravine. A drizzle started, though he ignored the graying weather in hopes of seeing what else had changed around the area in his absence.

Harlyn had not known that Warbone had returned to them, and so when she came upon his scent outside of the packlands, she had not known immediately who it was. Some faint part of her recogized it, of course. It had been a scent she'd committed to memory after they'd met, for she had not wanted to forget the mark of a wolf that might save them. But still, a long time had passed since then, and so it wasn't until she spotted him that recognition came.

A quiet sound escaped Harlyn's throat as she stepped towards him. The woman was reserved in her approach, not overeager. As much as his kindness had meant to her, she was not actually over familiar with him. Part of her was not certain he'd even recognize her, but she went to him anyway. "Warbone?" Harlyn said gently, her tone equal parts curiosity, kindness and nerves. It was not lost on her what it might mean for the Keep that he had returned, but she thus far did not allow her mind to consider where she would stand on the matter.

At the sound of his name, the bronze titan flinched, having to swing his head by a wide margin in order to put his sole eye on Harlyn evenly. It was easier to sneak up on Warbone these days, though the fault did not fall on his missing eye but rather on his missing attentiveness. His single-minded search for something he had lost seemed to blind him to too many other things, and he was left with a cloak of vulnerability whose weight he had never felt before. It accounted for the alienation he felt towards everything around him at that time, and further explained his uncharacteristic jumpiness.

He recognized her almost immediately, if only because hers was one of the first faces he had remembered while gathering his memories on the important things he had left behind. The Ostrega's had been a pressing subject locked away in the back of his mind, trapped by hateful gates that wanted to keep him from himself. But eventually it had all come spilling out, and he was glad now to see that Stark had not lied about their safety.

He visibly relaxed, a great heave rising and falling inside his chest before he angled his body to approach her. "Harlyn," he greeted softly, his plaintive tone almost lost in the natural authority of his voice. "It lifts my spirits to see you again." Not a man of great sentiment, he was surprised to know that this was true of himself.

He knew her, and she was pleased. Harlyn smiled, any tension she felt at their reunion melting away as he came towards her with nothing but well-meaning openness emanating from him. It was gratifying to say the least, for she felt as though she owed this man so much while he had no such debt to her. He had done her such a simple, forgettable kindness, but it had been everything to Harlyn.

The druid smiled at his words, her ears slipping back demurely. The former alpha knew how to be respectful, but often it was something she had to remind herself to be. She so often in her life was the one receiving that respect, not so much giving it. But with Warbone, it came naturally. "We came to the Keep," Harlyn said, a gentle frown paling her features as concern overtook her, "You were not there." Though she had not spoken a question, her tone was imploring.

Though Warbone watched Harlyn with naked attentiveness, he could feel nothing but a dull ache in the back of his head, which served only to remind him of his grievous losses due to circumstance. She was one of those losses; a she-wolf he had once imagined at his side, with her mate, and all of their wolves under a collectively strong stead. He took a starved breath, his chest swelling as if to inhale her words, and then he kept them there for a long moment as he tried to imagine what to say to her. Guilt withdrew his ears, but he pushed them forward again as he realized that the emotion was less than useless.

"I have lost everything. Myself, even. Things that no wolf should lose unless Death takes them..." he rumbled, the growl in his throat compelled by an all-consuming sadness. He shifted on his feet, uncomfortable with the distance between them, but unconvinced yet that he should close it. Lately he had been trying to force things that simply weren't meant, and he wouldn't make that mistake with Harlyn. "I returned to resume my position, without any concept of how much time had truly passed, only to find that it now belongs to someone else and that my choices are now limited to taking it or moving on..."

For a wolf like him, possessive, arrogant, and truly male, this was an understandably difficult choice.

Warbone didn't explain what had taken him from the Keep, nor what had kept him away for so long. He spoke of loss and death and choices - things Harlyn was intimately familiar with. She listened silently, gazing at him without judgment. She knew perfectly well what it was to lose your home, your rank and your family. It was like losing your self. She didn't wish the feeling on anyone. She still didn't even have herself back together, after all this time.

But still, Harlyn was silent after he finished. To encourage him would be a betrayal of Stark, and she simply couldn't bring herself to do such a thing. She knew how terrible it would feel to return to the Hollow and find it claimed by another. She would want to fight for it. But at the same time, Harlyn would not have given up a pack she had worked so hard to hold together and make her own after the disappearance of its previous leader. Not when it had cost as much as it had Stark. And Stark was a good man. He did not deserve to lose what he had built. But nor did Warbone deserve to lose what he had created.

If only one of them were a woman...

"All I had ever dreamed of my whole life was leading a pack of my own," Harlyn replied finally, her tone gentle and wistful, "I did not crave power. I had no real desire for power. I wanted only a place I could call my own, and a group of wolves that I could love and protect like my own family."

"To have found that and more in the Hollow, only to have it torn from me was a terrible thing. It has been more painful than I thought before that I could bear," her gaze had drifted as she'd spoken, but now it focused again and she looked at Warbone. "When we came to the Keep, I thought it was to be a brief reprieve until we were strong enough to carry on. I had never dared to hope that it would be a new beginning for me or my family. That it would perhaps even be my future, and my son's future. I have found family to protect here. I have found a place to call my home, which I've realized is far more important to me than calling it my own."

"I would never try to tell you what choice you should make. You gave me this new life, and Stark has helped me to realize it. I owe much to you both," Harlyn's eyes were clear, and she hoped quite fervently that Warbone understood her. Her loyalty to him had not disappeared, it had simply split between he and the man that had taken his place. "I simply wish for you to know that we are capable of building more than one life for ourselves. The one you dream of is not necessarily the only one you are capable of being happy with."

A silence swelled between them, leaving Warbone with an unfamiliar anxiety. Conversation was not high on the list of things he liked, but the absence of an immediate response had him wanting. He had never wanted to hear anyone speak, especially not this badly, and it was alien to feel so desperate to know what someone else thought; he had never been so frantically curious to be in someone else's head before. And he could not stop the unconscious step forward he had taken in his eagerness to know whatever it was she didn't yet say...

When she did at last speak, he listened in observable rapture. He was immediately taken by her story— her life— and found that the aim of her advice was as true as a hunter's arrow. Warbone felt the piercing truth right in his heart. His expression, clouded with aging wounds and worry, perceptibly turned sad as he found a mountain of logic and reason in her words.

He didn't for a second think that he could live somewhere that didn't belong to him, as she had come to accept of herself, but he did come to realize how dangerous his imperialistic impulses were, and how mindlessly cruel it would be of him to seek to destroy that which had grown in his absence. This was not an instance where he should use his unrelenting capacity to be ruthless; and had he been younger, he would not have accepted this as true. But with age, decidedly came some understanding, and it would be her words that would send him away from the Keep, and up into the mountains to find his new purpose.

Though it would be weeks still, before he truly gave up his obsession with the Willows.

After a pregnant pause of his own, the titan sighed, his body sagging slightly as the weight of her words seemed to settle on him. "Unfortunately, you have given me yet another reason to loathe my predicament, Harlyn," he admitted cryptically, his mouth twisting into a depressingly genuine smile. "Your advice is invaluable, and I am loathe to continue to be without it." He even chuckled slightly, his shoulders moving softly with the emotion she'd pulled out of him, before padding forward slowly to close the space between them. He wanted to thank her physically— a touch, a fleeting embrace— but he hung back as he came to stand before her, aware that they had never touched before, and cautious to initiate it without her consent.

Harlyn felt her heart sink when he responded. She had hoped to lift him up, not bury him deeper. She had nearly lowered her gaze in embarassment when she caught the flicker of a smile upon his face. Her ears perked lightly and she found herself returning the expression. Warbone moved closer, and Harlyn - oblivious to his intention to hold back - moved forward to meet him. She reached to press the bridge of her nose gently against his jaw, a somewhat intimate gesture but a wholly friendly one. She was a married woman, after all. Wherever her mate was...

The thought slipped away as she stood back to look at the man again. "My advice is still  yours, so long as you don't go too far from it," Harlyn replied with a hopeful grin. She couldn't leave the Keep. Her loyalties to Stark aside, she could not bear to take Silas away from a place in which he had begun to flourish. His happiness mattered more to her than anyone else's, including her own.

He breathed a great sigh as she came to receive him, feeding him an affection he needed. A low whine pooled from behind clenched teeth, and he leaned into her touch passionately, before she relinquished him to space. Warbone peered at her, his sullen expression perked marginally by her reassurance, though both of them knew such an alliance could be difficult to pursue. The sentiment was met with gratitude, however, and the tip of his tail was wagging in an unspoken sharing of emotion between them. "If I value my sanity, then I would not dare," he breathed, lingering still, wanting but yet unwilling to release her back unto the Keep.

It was a strange impasse for him, torn between a physical desire to possess Harlyn and an emotional rationale that she belonged to someone else, to some place else. She was not his, but that did not mean he could not covet. Should not, perhaps, but Warbone was not a male inclined to ignore a great she-wolf when he saw one. Even at her worst, thin and displaced, with young children to guard and weakening support system, he had seen her fire— her greatness. He would have gladly given her crown in his kingdom, as he had once alluded to, and much, much more had he been given the chance.

A growl trembled in his throat, alluding to the unspoken war he thought best to keep from her. Though, not for a second did he think that she didn't know any of this too.

They remained for a while, content for a while as Warbone tactfully avoided speaking on his half-brained vendetta towards her alpha. But they did not linger on tragedy, and merely rested in one another's company before sadly parting ways.

Editted in a ending <3