Her conversation with Wren had elicited more questions than answers, and at every turn Tauris was forced to contend with the significance of the pack’s decisions. She had begun to doubt everything. But she knew @Bonario must be dealt with.
She did not believe he was dangerous. She even had enough patience to believe he truly had not meant to bring harm to the creek or its inhabitants. But an infraction was still committed that day, and worse was the fact that nothing had since been done about it.
Her callow attempts to make sense of things lead her to his den that night, after her own children were put to bed and the stone circle had fallen to silence. She announces her presence with a low voice and lingers a moment to see if he is inside.
Breathe.
How many times was he going to do that.
Battered bones, scarred skin under patchy fur. He'd been getting into all kinds of shit, hadn't he? Day in, day out, moving. Relentlessly moving until there were days he was eerily still and sulking around like a useless slug. Watching. Gone, many days, and continuously dragging back kills that were relentlessly filled with punctures from his teeth. A rabbit, ten bites too many; a vole, near snapped in half, but it filled the caches.
His eyes opened like floodgates.
This was a sight he'd seen before.
Burning oakwood eyes that stared ahead, to Tauris and a beckoning voice.
Days were long. Days were short.
His shoulders were relaxed, eyes loose, rested.
"Yeah?"
He appears from his hollow with the look of weariness that seemed to afflict them all as of late.
“Bonario-” she begins with a sigh, feeling suddenly impossibly tired, wishing she was curled up with Fig and their children. But she pushes on, “you and I have never seen eye-to-eye and I will admit I’ve never offered you much grace in the past. I am trying to now.
“I’ve spoken with Wren, the woman you fought with from the creek. Her narrative of events from that day does not align with yours. I do not believe either of you are lying or trying to twist the story in your favor. I am sure you wanted to help that child. I am sure too Wren and the others from the creek were defending their cub and home. What I’m not sure of is why you have not sought to apologize for your brash actions that have damaged not only yourself, but Wren and the creek wolves, and cost us an alliance.
“I am not saying you are alone to blame. But you played a role in this, and your intentions do not matter. What matters is the result: a needless fight that could have taken multiple lives, and you’re lucky it didn’t,” her eyes burned before softening.
“I know you are here because of Gunnar- but Gunnar is gone. If you intend to stay in Kvarsheim, you will come with me to Swiftcurrent Creek, where you will apologize- and mean it.”
“Or you will leave.”
He would wake up to this.
He'd been waiting for it.
An ultimatum.
Surely, she had dreamed wonderfully of this day.
He saw unhappiness in her eyes.
Every day blurred together after the next. To this day, he did not know how long it had been since Gunnar's passing. Weeks? Months? The concept of time itself left him. Only preying on the prey, behaving as his instincts told him to, sinking his teeth for a momentary understanding of time had fixed it. He believed that was why.
Though, also, he did not care to think of why either.
Why he hadn't apologized.
Was that her train of thought? Why he had not gone to apologize to the creek wolves, who engaged fighting with him, who Gunnar had returned from after no peace had been settled. After tensions had only intensified, and Gunnar collapsed to his death under the stress of it.
So, she wondered, why hadn't he apologized, and why he had not offered himself up to be mauled to death in his sorry, when he already almost was once.
A selfish thing, then, maybe, trying to live.
He was too exhausted for this.
So, that had been her name.
Blinking through it to try and solidify it in his mind, over and over, he told himself in thought-- Wren. Wren. Wren. Like the bird. Had he heard her name before? He wasn't sure. Whatever her versions of events had been, he didn't want to know, but he was sure he did. It didn't matter. The result of this would end the same. His expression stayed the same- slow, calm and listening. His next voice reflected such, too. In that, he decided to spare her the further exhaustion with a simple answer.
"K."
K? She stares, incredulous.
“That’s what you have to say for yourself? That’s what you expect me to accept? K?” She unseats herself, lifting to a stand so she can stare at him pointedly down her nose.
She wanted him out. She wanted him gone. She wanted to be finally freed of the burden of him once and for all!
“If you’re looking for someone to coddle you, you’ve got the wrong girl. I’m not Gunnar. I’m not gonna play parent to a grown man who knows better,” she hisses.
“Look around you- everyone’s going through it! I’m trying to do the best I can to fix your mess!”
Gods, she wouldn't leave him alone. His head hurt again, and all he could hear was her grating voice cutting through it and making him feel all sorts of wrong. She would not settle and would not accept an answer that did not fit her standards, if by perhaps maybe she was seeking to argue with him. How ironic, that between the two of them, it was her who had the temper.
He'd caused quite the ruckus, hadn't he? Somehow, he didn't think he would. How fitting that he did. How fitting that it was his fault. This destruction, his fault. The loss of Gunnar. The grief. The lack of visits from close allies.
So, he'd apologize.
He would try and fix this for them.
No matter what came out of this, he would. It was the least he owed.
He inhaled, exhaled. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. A slow, deep breath, and then he fixed his head upright some to try and fit an answer that would suit her better, because apparently, he didn't strike the right one. Bonnie tried to be more serious for her to hear, to try and appease.
"What? I said okay. I'll go and talk to them and apologize. So, tell me when, and I will come with you then to work it out."
Tired.
"Until then, let me sleep."
Tired. "..Please."
“No,” she pushes, “we’re not done here.”
“How can I trust you to speak with them reasonably when you can barely utter more than a single letter to me? How can I trust you to show respect to anyone?" She poses, tail flouncing. At this point she didn’t trust him to even be courteous! And she certainly wouldn’t serve as his character witness when all she’d ever gotten from him was lip.
"How can I trust you to be anything more than a liability?" She stood, demanding an answer. She didn’t get to go peacefully back to her bed. Neither did he.
Loud and explosive. She was no more than a bomb ready to explode, explode, explode, and gods, her voice. Every word she spoke, it rattled his ears, screeched, and his head. Was her goal always to hurt his head? She wouldn't shut up.
SHUT UP.
By the end of her nagging, and he knew it was not the end of it, he did understand something, finally. If he had taken nothing out of this entire event, if he had learned nothing at all, he did learn this; there was only one way to end this.
There would be only one end.
He could not appease. It took him until now to accept that what he said, or how he said it, never would. So, he shut up. And he took it.
It took there time to be silence for him to answer. Blunt, honest, and quiet. He would answer through her lens.
Tired.
Glossed eyes.
"Because I have nothing to gain." This day felt... fast. "I hope you realize that regardless of my apology, they will likely have their own ground to stand. It may not fix anything. I will try anyways. Do you still want me to go to them?"
“Well I’m sorry you feel you’ve got nothing to gain, Bonario, but the rest of the pack has everything to lose.”
There was nothing more she could say, of that she was certain! He was fixed in his ways where she was concerned, and she would only be condemned for her efforts!
She retreats as if burned, as if he might reach out and claw at her hide, or as if she didn’t trust herself not to do the same.
“We’re not going to apologize because we want to change their minds. We’re apologizing because it’s the right thing to do,” she paces forward before turning once to look at him again over shoulder.
“Yes.”
And yet moments ago, she mentioned fixing it.
There was more than just doing what was right, for as mighty as she spoke.
But was she not right, that he did have nothing to gain? And was she not right that he was not doing this to do the right thing?
He didn't know what was right, nor did he think he cared anymore. Clearly his version was skewed to them, and so he tried to follow Tauris' version of it while she reeled as if she looked at sea scum and spat venom as if she hoped eventually it would kill him. He waited for it to. It didn't yet. He wondered why.
It would come.
Maybe she was right.
For Gunnar.
He wished to sleep again.
He did.
..A liability.
A liability. Her’s now.
The doubts compound through staggering breaths and frustration that rolls off her in waves of heat. What would Gunnar have done? And Taktuq? What was the right thing do to? Was she doing it?
Or was she unfair- blind to her own biases? Was she failing that boy, and the pack?
On the walk back she looks quietly across their green valley. A white capped mountain towers over the cloak of trees. The North. She stares at it for a long time, allowing herself to settle before returning to Tréheim and finding her home in the arms of @Figment.