The Heartwood i've loved everything about you that hurt

@Mal

Most days, he tries to avoid thinking too much about his past. The ghosts of Broken Boulder hang over him like the cloud of smoke in the sky, all choking grey and black, ominous like a wrathful poltergeist — and past that, the shadow of Sunfil Grove like the cloak of night itself. Any trip down memory lane is a most dangerous trap, a rotating door of scenes and smells and faces: his father's mutilated head, his brother's stale scent, Korei's tears and Lily's silence and Delight's warmth fading from his side. Lanawyn.
Perhaps it is fitting that his wandering should bring him here: a forest of nothing but ghosts and ash, to match his life of nothing but ghosts and ash. The thought brings a bitter taste to his mouth, but he swallows it, lowering his nose to the ground as he walks. It would be ironic, he thinks, if all the prey had fled here. But he smells nothing fresh, nothing alive, much as he'd expected. He lifts his head after a moment, halting to fully take in his surroundings. The forest seems fairly reasonably dead and deserted — again, like his life. It's all very cheering to think about.

Mal matched the territory around him fairly well in this part of the year -- he was a creature of snow, ash, and charcoal, perhaps an apt description given his life so far.  He hadn't been blessed with joy in this life, still under whatever curse must have been placed on him soon after his birth.   And he was never the ghost that was expected, and certainly not one that was wanted.

But hey, Mal was out and about, checking briefly for more distant prey in lands that probably weren't frequented too often.  If there was none, he could focus on what was on his doorstep rather than saving it for a rainy day.  Snowy day?  Whatever.  He'd managed to find and scarf down a vole or something like that before he'd reached these woods, but now that he was here, Mal was yet again unimpressed.

He moved along at a good pace, trotting so it could be over and done with sooner rather than later.  There was nothing.  Nothing, nothing, nothing.  Wait.  A veer towards the thing on his periphery and then the yearling came to a stop, ears forward, eyes locked upon the tawny-hued wolf that had appeared from behind one of the torched trees.  Squint.  Well, he seemed oddly familiar, but it had been so long Mal couldn't be sure.  He took a couple more steps forward, watched, and waited for a reaction because he was the best social butterfly in the world.  At least Mal was probably pretty hard to overlook.

He spots the boy at about the same time he's spotted himself, tensing as recognition flashes through him. It's hard to forget such a distinctive coat, after all. Millie? He blurts out, immediately knowing that it's wrong. He tries again: Mallard? No — Malachi. Mali. What are you doing here? Where — Where is Delight? He almost asks, but he hears the hope in his own voice and cuts himself off in disgust. He doesn't need Delight anymore; he doesn't need to care where he is. But that doesn't mean he can't be curious about this — Delight's son, far away from Hushed Willows. What happened there?

Mal is a potato

Apparently it was the guy he remembered.  Mal wasn't exactly sure what to think about it.  He was yet another person who'd left.  People were very good at leaving him.  Leaving him with the witches and a father who about then who had given up.  Mal seemed pretty suspicious.  Or was, until the guy opened his mouth.  Mal made a face.  You know, that kind of face when someone does something pretty disgusting. He was  duck, huh?  Or whoever the hell the other names were.  Seriously, his name wasn't that hard, was it?

Mal, was his terse correction.  The two technically correct names were ones he preferred to abandon to the past.  Hunting?  I live near here.  Pause, So you're alive I guess?  Unless this was going to turn into the last meeting he had with his mother (assuming he hadn't had some kind of fever dream or something, it still seemed pretty weird).

Oh, sorry, He says when the boy corrects him, slightly embarrassed, though he doesn't let it show. Yeah, I guess I am. What uh... happened, after I left Elysium? How'd you end up here? He glances briefly behind him, suddenly wondering if he'd left Phillip too far behind him. He's taken to calling the @Kid that, figuring it's been long enough that the boy needs a name. He's never been all that good at naming things, though, and he isn't sure whether he likes his choice or not. Still, it's a name — and hopefully one the boy will answer to if he should get lost. But he's been fairly good about following Alarian so far, so he isn't too worried yet.

What Mal had to say next was probably not at all what Alarian wanted to hear, let alone expected.  He was still suspicious, Only one of my sisters came back after the move. Everyone ignored us.  Delight became those idiots' mate, I left.  Came back to get my sister, she was gone, so no reason to go back.  So now I'm here where I don't have to deal with any of them.  And apparently since then, Delight died.  Shall we say he was... matter of fact about it all?  Well, aside from a base level of irritation through it as none of it was a happy time of his life.  There was certainly no sadness about Delight (Mal was probably still angry at him overall, and was of the opinion he'd given up the title of father about the time the move happened), and he was still keenly of the opinion that most of it was Elysium's fault.

Mal's words are a series of blows he had been unprepared for, yet he finds himself... not quite as affected as he might have thought he would be. In fact, he feels more concern for the youth before him than for the pack he'd left behind or the ghost of an ex-love. Perhaps he's become heartless — or simply more practical than before. After all, Mal is alive, and the apparent indifference with which he addresses all of his trauma seems to speak to its depth.
I'm sorry, He says after a moment, frowning slightly. He can't help but wonder how Delight could have ignored his own son through it all — the loss of his mother, two sisters, and being uprooted on top of it all. It doesn't seem like the Delight he'd known, but... had he really known him? I didn't realize... He trails off, knowing the words won't make a difference, and starts again with something else. You never found your sisters?

Mal is never sure what to do with apologies. Perhaps if Alarian hadn't left things would have been better, or perhaps he would have drank the Elysium kool-aid and become one of the witches' minions. He still had no idea how they'd managed to so completely fool so many wolves into thinking that pack was amazing, but it was surely them at the heart of it all. I don't think anyone really wanted to look and see what Elysium was actually doing.  They pretended to be all happy and nice and whatever, but really, if you weren't part of their little circle, you were nothing.  He had never been sought out, never been taught, only scolded when he didn't behave like a little angel.  And given how he was treated, why the hell would he do that?  They brought it on themselves.

He shook his head, Nobody even looked for Solomon after Brillo came back.  And when Brillo wasn't at Elysium, she didn't go to the pack I told her to if something bad happened.  They were just gone.  Probably dead, at this point.  If they ever come back, there's a spot in my pack for them, but I dunno if they will.  He didn't expect to.  It wasn't like he'd ever really had a family, just the fragments of what would have been one.

He isn't quite sure how to respond to many of the things Mal says; he can't really agree or disagree, given his own absence. Admittedly, his own departure had been fueled by a slightly similar feeling, but he can hardly blame any of his former packmates for that. Which leaves him very little to say. First, he addresses the easier part: I was separated from some of my siblings for almost a year before we reunited — maybe your sisters will come back to you in time, too, He realizes, then, that he isn't even quite sure who Mal had meant by they. Are you talking about Olive and... What was her name? His frown deepens. The other woman, Delight's friend. Is that who you mean by 'they'?

And Seabreeze, yeah.  Let's be real, as soon as they showed up, bad things started happening and they didn't exactly try very hard to fix them, they'd rather run away.  The disappearance of his mother, his sister, the cats, the move, his father's betrayal, his other sister disappearing, while through it all nobody cared.  Everyone was so very bewitched by them that they couldn't see the destruction in their wake.  Hell, they'd even had people killed by something.  It wasn't like it was just Mal as the bearer of bad luck, the fact he left meant that it was someone else.

Okay, things weren't perfect here, but it was less laughably awful now.  It felt more based in reality on this side of the mountains.

He wonders about Lily, then; whether she's dead, too, or if she'd had a part in Mal's complaints — but the thought stings, and he locks it away as thoroughly as his hopes for Delight. They have been dead to him for a long time, he tells himself. What matters is the present.
Still, he cannot help having his regrets. I guess I shouldn't have left the pack to them, then, He says a little wistfully, remembering when he'd been a leader. A leader, but shackled to his pack more than anything. He does not miss it... but he misses Bracken Sanctuary, or at least some parts of it. He misses Eris and Zamael and Korei Julia, such important figures reduced to phantoms in his dreams. He hardly even remembers their faces now — but he remembers Lily's perfectly, and Delight's too. Suddenly eager for a change of subject, he adds, You mentioned your own pack — are you the leader?

Mal did know of Lily's fate, but since she was mostly in the ranks of the silent figures that ignored him, he didn't have as much ire about her.  She'd sort of tried.  Kinda.  And then given up again, as far as he knew.  There were others that were more important to note.  Considering how they seemed to be able to convince everyone to follow them, they might have made you do it anyway.  Or something worse. Maybe he'd be dead too.

Yeah, it's mine, he said, with a slight upward tilt of his muzzle.  Or at least that was the plan.  People seemed to sort of be following him.  And really the only one to speak against him had been Ibis, and if she was gone, then who cared?  Probably better off without her.  Mal might not have a clue what he was really doing beneath the surface, but he felt he'd do a far better job than a good deal of the wolves he'd met when he'd been at Elysium or traveling.  We have a different forest near here.  Not this one, obviously, which always seemed so barren.

He doesn't quite know how to respond to that, but thankfully the conversation is moving on anyway. What kind of pack is it? He decides to ask, struck suddenly with an unexpected thought. Mal is young, yes, but he'd been fairly young himself when he'd founded Bracken Sanctuary. And joining up with his ex's fucked up son probably wouldn't be his worst idea. After a beat, he adds, My... ward and I have been looking for a permanent place to stay.

Bit of a blink at one of those questions. It's a pack. which he said in a way that was slightly perplexed, as if he didn't seem to be 110% sure what Alarian was really looking for answer-wise. Not like, crazy or whatever.  Just a place where we're gonna all be safe, nobody's gonna be ignored, and we'll all work together and make something better.  Borrow a bit of phrasing from Ceilidh there, even if it wasn't a real quote.  He liked the feeling of it though.  Mal's promises didn't come with any great glory about being the best out there or helping out every soul out there (at the detriment of others).   Mal just wanted somewhere where he felt he could actually trust people.  Oh and full of people that are actually worth being around, because I've talked to a lot of pack wolves around here now and most of them haven't exactly been great people.

Pause.  What do you mean, your ward?  It was just kind of a weird phrase to him, but let's be real, Mal didn't have the best education.

He'd get an explanation, and would indeed end up welcoming them into the pack.  Seemed like things were gonna go well!  Or not.  Alarian ended up vanishing after heading off to the coast to scout.  Maybe Mal should have been a bit more forceful in saying leaving solo was a bad idea.  That or those that were adults when he was a child were just not very reliable.  He believed the latter.