After searching for Artaax, and discovering his scent leads out of the northeastern border of Drageda, she ends her purpose. If he’d left the territory, something she remembers him not doing very often or willingly, then he clearly doesn’t want to talk to her. Is he not ready? Does he hate her? Blixen had mentioned anything and she hadn’t asked, but maybe she should?
It weighs heavily on her for a few days and she doesn’t look for him, isn’t sure if he’s come back to the territory, but if he wants to see her, he’d find her. Right? With a deep sigh, Mallaidh slips from the southern borders into the fields and eventually all the way to the broken ridge. She doesn’t really know where she’s going, or for how long, but she needs a little time to clear her mind. Just when she’s gotten a good grasp on things, something pops up and sets her back a few steps. Most days, she feels she’s in a new place, but sometimes she feels right back where she was last time and no more certain of herself as she’d been back then.
Seagulls caw overhead and she glances up, watching them soar to and fro. One dips and flies up the length of the fallen ridge before disappearing into the brush. Mallaidh turns her head and pays no more attention to the birds as she slips along the edges of the fallen rubble. She’d gotten used to the place for spending a while here with the other girls but she does not follow along familiar paths and instead continues about her way with no purpose in her step.
One ear turns back when she hears rock scrape against rock and pebbles drift down a slight incline. Paws bring her to a stop a few seconds before the chuff travels the distance and, slowly, she turns her head to see what’s behind her. It’s been a few weeks since she’s been on the ridge and anything could have moved in during that time but as she glances up to a familiar face, she stares blankly across the way.
She can’t help but wonder if she hadn’t reunited with Eirlys and Ceallach, she might not know who stands upon the rubble. Mallaidh blinks a few times but doesn’t make a sound, slowly turning her form to face him head on but without closing the distance. Something doesn’t settle the pit of her stomach enough to keep from churning and she tightens her jaw, looking him over. He isn’t the same pale brother she remembers from long ago but all four of them changed and she can see the tundra in the brute ahead just as she could in their mother and sister, a fur pattern that hints at a similarity as hers.
Youthful features hardened by time, having been lost from their family even longer than her. She remembers the boy in the copse, if only briefly. It is Roarke that stands ahead of her, she knows it in her bones, but she always knows she doesn’t have a clue who he is after all this time.
For the first time since she's been lingering in the back of her head, she can't feel the presence of her mother and a vacant, cold emptiness hovers in its place.
I uh, wasn't entirely sober when I did this so IDK what's happening.
A long pause of silence goes by and Mallaidh watches him fade from ignorance into awareness and she feels the moment recognition crosses his gaze. Her head pulls back slightly and he regards him, yearning to know what he’s feeling. Her own turmoil swings back and forth. It’s been so long since she’s last seen him, knowing in her bones then it was him but the denial turning her away. She’d been looking for him, like their family had, and she’d found him and he refused and she’d gotten lost.
She never saw her mother again.
She does not understand the sudden influx of emotion, certain she’d been okay up until this point. Carrying Lotte with her has been a burden but just as helpful and she is nowhere to be found. Her heart beats heavily in her chest. Harder, harder. So hard it bursts right through her ribcage and out onto the ground. She swallows it and closes her eyes, trying to calm her erratic breathing.
Hello, he says, as if he does not know her. Hello.
The single word repeats in her head, over and over. Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello.
The first thing her brother says to her in who knows how long? Hello.
Hello. Hel—.
“Roarke,” she says, desperately needing to hear her own voice, hear any other word. Practice keeps her voice confident, stern, a nose held slightly higher. Her feet do not carry her to close the distance between them, she does not fall into his breast as she had with Eirlys.
With Eirlys, it had taken some time to recognize one another. After that, it was obvious. Mallaidh missed her family over the months of being gone and having her world shaken by the news sent her crumbling. Finding Ceallach had been a struggle, some work to get him to know that it’s her but after that they were family again. Even with Reed, they’d tentatively call one another family and maybe, one day, sisters. Mallaidh had no pack or location to her name when they’d met and they wouldn’t know where to find her. Blixen’s blessing makes it a bit easier.
But Roarke? His silence answers most of her questions. He isn’t the same boy she’d tasseled and fought with. A rivalry meant for great things in the eyes of Teaghlaigh is lost.
What is she supposed to say to someone that was once her brother, and not anymore?
“Did you try to come home?” she asks after a long moment, not knowing what to ask. How much is his fault? As a child, not very much, but he’d gotten bigger. He’d been so close, once. He could have come home then. Lotte might not be dead and their father might not have died with her. Teaghlaigh would still be standing and everything would be... right. They could’ve had a relationship with their younger siblings instead of strewn about the whole world, lost from one another.
A thick lump develops in her throat and she grinds her teeth together, trying to swallow the stray emotion building there.
No.
Her jaw tightens and she watches him, ears droop back against her head. Their distance is still great and she wonders if it will close, but who will make the first move? She does not realize the similarities in their journey along the way and she’s carried the blame for so long, she finally has a face to throw it back into.
“Everything fell apart after you left,” she says, her tense jaw snapping her teeth back together. Her shoulder rolls a bit and she watches him, unable to look away from him but she doesn’t want to see him in the ghastly memory she still holds. “You could have—should of—come home. You were there!” she tells him. She remembers. Seeing his face brings it searing back, fresh and hot like the day it happened. He’d looked a little different, and so did she, but they’d been family. They’d known, deep down, and as the hurt comes building back up she doesn’t know what to do with it and suddenly she does the only thing she knows how to: cut, and cut deep. “Mama died looking for you.”
The burning arrow flies through the air and burns right through him. It does what her teeth desires. Pale gaze hardens, watching him as he sorts through the words. Eirlys would have been gentle with Roarke, would have welcomed him with open arms as she had with her, but Mallaidh knows all too well he does not deserve it. If he hadn’t left, everything would be fine. She wouldn’t have gotten lost, mama wouldn’t have died—
(Suloinen tyttö…)
Not now.
Her chest tightens. Just as quickly as she’d come back, she’s gone, her focus once more zeroing in on her… on Roarke. The weight over her words come down hard and she embraces for impact the moment he shouts at her, a language she’s lost long ago (because of him). There are few words she knows, now, her mother’s tongue barely in memory and no one to practice with. The one wolf that might have been a help is charging at her with teeth and brute force anger. Her tail lashed behind her, her muscles clenched in place as her posture lowers only slightly.
This time, she’s not going to run. This time, she will win once and for all. Their rivalry buries here.
“Petturi,” she growls low when he’s close, one final clench of every inch as he barrels into her. Teeth pierce low between where her chest, neck, and shoulder meet. A snarl ripples from her lips and she pushes back with all her force and aims for the back of his neck in battle born frenzy.
Even if she does not connect teeth to bone, the attack is enough to repel him. The punctures are deep but don’t tear her skin. He does not waist time going back in and she sneers, showing off her teeth as he gets closer and as before, she does not move out of the way. Whatever he has to deliver, she takes. She proves herself over and over, that she can do this, that she’s better than him. A strangled gasp forces its way up her throat as she stumbles back, only one legs caving in to break her fall.
Nails dig into the ground to keep her upright, legs bending only and using his shove as momentum to spring herself back at him, teeth ajar for his face.
She doesn’t know whether she’s overestimated her fighting ability or underestimated his. Drageda raised her, taught her battle, taken her to war, but where has Roarke been all this time? He knows where to throw his weight, where to hit to insurance she doesn’t get a bite. Her teeth haven’t touched an ounce of flesh and yet she bleeds for him, struggles to breathe for him, and now he knocks all her weight to the ground. Any breathe she had left is wiped clean from her lungs and she offers only an ugly wheeze, trying to right herself but struggling too much, and peering up at him from the ground.
He could likely kill her now, if he wanted and she wouldn’t be able to put up much of a fight. The rivalry between them is still strong and though her gaze threatens him to attack while she’s down, she hopes deep down their shared blood will spare her. Teeth reveal as her lips pull back, daring his next move while she remains cemented to the ridge floor.
Her heart breaks from her chest, beating so hard against her ribcage, as Roarke’s lips curl back, threatening her. She does not tear her eyes away from him, either. Just slightly, she lifts her chin, holding his stare despite his words. Can he kill a second wolf of his family? She doubts it, her eyes daring him to try.
It is not her brother that stands above her, and instead some stranger she doesn’t want to know. A low rumble vibrates her chest but does not become audible when he speaks of their mother. Fur bristles around her mane, watching him for movement and keeping still while her lungs struggle to reflate. He made the choice to fight with teeth, to blind her in attack and as she lay against the ground, unwavering.
seemed like a natural place for wintersbane to make his exit. feel free to either post once more or archive as is. :-)
he draws in a deep breath; a sound of heavy resignation. they may always be blood but family? no. he doesn't think mallaidh and him would ever be family. not anymore. not when she continues to fight him, to be angry at him because he isn't who she wants, who she thinks he should be. wintersbane thinks he doesn't have to tell her that that's almost never how life works. "goodbye molly." he tells her; and he hopes for their sakes, for the sake of their mother's spirit where ever it may be ( be it heaven or the void ) that they do not meet again. not when all they do is fight. not when the next time might be the time that one of them takes it too far. wintersbane makes to leave, pausing for a small moment to glimpse over his shoulder at her one last time before he disappears, hoping that he never has to taste the blood of a sibling ever again.
Goodbye.
She stares up at him, unspeaking, unwavering. She does not even move when he turns to leave, watching as he turns back to look at her. Her gaze never leaves his, not until it’s completely out of sight, and she doesn’t move until he’s gone from view. Finally, she scoffs. Goodbye.
“No brother of mine,” she half mutters, half spits.
She stands, slowly, and considers each ache she now carries. Silvery olive eyes turns back the way Roarke had gone before shaking the dust off. For not having gotten a single hit in, she feels okay. Roarke has changed into some violent wolf she does not know and she checks him off somewhere she’s put Arturo and the wolf he has become and she thinks, maybe, it runs in her family but doesn’t give it anymore thought for now. Goodbye.
Stop, she demands of herself, inhaling a deep breath and holding it. Slowly, she turns the way she’d been coming and her lights up. A figure stands in the distance for a few seconds, jerky movements and translucent, and gone the next second.
Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodb—.
My girl, are the only words she hears, soft and gentle.
“Mama,” she croaks and pushes herself toward the former mirage.