After encountering his friends and reaching a consensus — whatever that may be — Screech knew he couldn't just up and leave. He wouldn't burn that bridge so easily. All he wanted at this moment was to find Towhee and tell her what was up — except the more he roamed, the less and less inclined he was to seek her out. He ended up touring the border and investigating the territory; wondering about what could have been, mostly. He kept far from the hungry, sleepy, road-weary wolves that had taken up residence on the plateau whenever possible — but by the time night had fallen, he had drifted a little closer.

It felt strange to be on the outside looking in, especially when his family was right there, and being with them again had been a dream of his for so long. Dreams were corruptable — it had been too long, he had seen too much and been left behind too many times, so instead of being pleased with their sudden arrival, he was more dismayed by the sudden but inevitable betrayal that had played out. Towhee's scent dominated a segment of the plateau already, as did the scents of his family. His own markings - and Redshank's - had been fading before their arrival and now, they'd been obliterated. Screech paced through the dark and studied the markings, but found himself being led away through the reeds by a familiar scent which made his chest constrict.

He stopped when he saw the dark woman's silhouette, and crooned a sad note in her direction.

As soon as she turned and he saw her face, he felt many of his emotions abate. There was a sense of freedom here, of safety, as if she exuded an aura which made the vicinity a safe space. Screech came up beside her and smiled, then poked her cheek with his cold nose - Hey, he sighed as he sat beside her, and then looked up at the stars which watched from on high.

A period of quiet settled between them, but not for long. He could smell Towhee's scent on Raven and his contentedness shifted to something closer to faint guilt. Is she okay? He asked, his voice thick like molasses in his throat. Raven would know what he meant by that - it was easy to assume the resident healer would tend to his sister. The wounds were superficial at best (just like his level of care).

She was likely the only member of his family that cared about him, and he could bask in her company - and her love - without the usual constraints. There was a lot on his mind and the inquiry towards Towhee's condition was the tip of a very large ice berg. It was mostly his way of starting a conversation; while he had no trouble voicing himself in the past, things felt as if they had reached a tipping point.

When she asked about him, he wasn't expecting it. Screech glanced at her - studied that face he hadn't seen in months - and dismissed her with, I'm fine.

Not knowing what to do next, he resorted to silence and good company while his thoughts ran away within him.

Raven tried to break the silence and her effort was commendable. He wasn't sure how to answer at first, and sort of gawked at her for a split second before responding, Niamh? She's a girl, and I think she's my friend.. But we only met a little while ago, I don't know her that well. The implication that they might be together flew right over his head.

But it did get him thinking of the events of the previous few days, which led inevitably to, And you met Redshank, he's the one that got in your face earlier. Sorry about that. There was no telling what the fallout would've been if Redshank had done serious harm in that moment. He might've cared about his friend to a great extent, but he would lay down his life for Raven.

With this in mind, he somberly added: I've missed you.

She was so close to him; the closest anyone had ever gotten, maybe, save for Seelie. He never wanted to leave — not now, not before, things just sort of happened to him, and around him, and led him away time and again. But hearing her say it aloud made the strangest feeling spread in his belly — no, lower. There was no reason for him to refuse her contact or to think his body's reaction was anything aside from natural. Nobody had given him The Talk, after all. (@Rannoch, you had one job.)

He breathed in the familiar scent of his big sister — his mother, his only real family — and sighed as she leaned against him. The boy was reminded of the night he'd spent with Seelie during the party, when he'd been so sad and he had cried in front of her. She hadn't been afraid to comfort him. Maybe his attachment to both women was because of a shared kindness — but then he thought of Sorina, and... If anyone needed a sobering thought right now, it was this boy, in this exact situation.

Oddly, it didn't. Maybe it was Raven's presence that soothed his worries, maybe it was the underlying allure of her wild scent that had snared him, but Screech thought of his friend Sorina and wasn't instantly revolted. If anything, his reaction got stronger — he remembered their rough-housing, their fight, the words she'd thrown at him later when Hydra had found them — and then he murmured, I did meet a girl, but we got in a fight, sort of. He didn't know how to explain what they'd done, so he left it at that for now.

What happened? she asked, and he could only shrug and look at the dirt at his feet. Screech wasn't a quiet person usually, and had even begun reverting to his usual obnoxious self during this short visit with Raven, but the memory of Sorina made him clam up a little bit all over again. Then he  murmured, She said — but cut himself off before he could finish the sentence, which would've concluded as: 'She said I fucked her,' which he wasn't comfortable saying near Raven for some reason. He didn't know what that meant. Up until that point in his life Screech had thrown around naughty language without caring if it made sense or offended people, he did it for shock value. With Sorina had used it, it had been in the form of an accusation, and it didn't make sense.

Without explaining, he fell quiet and pulled away from his sister. But it wasn't for long; he paced around her and asked, Here, stand up, and whether she followed his request or not, he went on to explain that weird day. I can't remember what we fought about, but I remember we kind of... He waffled a bit for the right term, and in the end couldn't come up with anything, so he began to act it out. She didn't like when I did this, and he jumped up, innocently landing his chest on the small of Raven's back if it was there.

He nodded to answer her question, but realized she wouldn't be able to really see him. So he said, Yeah. We were kind of sparring, but not seriously. And when I did this she got snappy, but I wanted to win - right - so, he shuffled then, aligning his hips and sliding his chest further along her back so that he was in the position like before — the way he'd settled atop Sorina in those strange moments. While doing this he lost his footing and staggered, bumping his chin against Raven's back — the whiff of her scent brought that warmth to the pit of his belly again, but he was focused on recounting everything that happened with Sorina and didn't think anything of it.

I wasn't... I wasn't hurting her. I kept grabbing at her, he demonstrated this next, reaching for Raven's shoulders with his snout, and then grabbing playfully at the fur of her nape, combing it with his teeth. I couldn't do anything from here and so the fight stopped, kinda, and we just shouted at each other - and it became a game, I guess? He was all levels of confusion now, and the memory which had ingrained itself within him was now replaying before him, except that Sorina had been replaced — and he wasn't sure why, but Screech felt pleased to be in this position, and that brought more questions to his mind.

He sighed, and murmured: This doesn't... It doesn't hurt, does it? I didn't want to hurt her.

Screech was flooded with validation when she confirmed that no, it hadn't hurt. It had not been a Bad Thing. Whatever garbage Sorina had screamed at him that day had been just the usual nonsense - but he wasn't finished yet (oh god, no pun intended I am so sorry).

Thinking that he was just re-enacting this little game, or spat, or whatever, took some pressure off of him. But he felt something else — something kind of like a want — which accompanied the heat in his belly. He took a deep breath as he adjusted his weight, and the scent of Raven wasn't really her scent after that. It became something different. There were notes to it that he hadn't been aware of before, aspects which might've been a little intoxicating before, but now that he was here, he couldn't ignore. She stopped being family for that split second.

It was a confusing moment.

But he was still curious, and had to ask — softly, innocently, as he pulled her hips against him with a lazy little hug — This -- what about -- what about this? This felt right; this was just like what had happened with Sorina. He had to get to the bottom of this and find out if her words had wrung true and so, he didn't stop — at this point, Screech couldn't help it, he was swept up in the moment. He simultaneously wanted to reach that brief moment of goodness that he'd felt, but he also desperately wanted to prove Sorina wrong and achieve some kind of confirmation. Certainly if this felt good then it wasn't a bad thing — little did he know.

Fade to... some shade of grey.

The problem with acting out a memory was that, to some degree, it was fantasy. There would be no returning to that moment. He couldn't fix what happened between himself and Sorina, the same as he couldn't fix what was going on between himself and Raven — this event which would, most assuredly, ruin his life at some point. The fantasy came to an abrupt halt when he clued in to Raven's protest; she moved against him the way that Sorina had. Maybe not with the same venom to her voice — but this was unfolding in exactly the same fashion as his first time.

He heard her screech the command to stop through bared teeth, and he tried. Screech came back to the present — to reality — and understood intimately that this could not happen no matter how badly his body said otherwise. This was his sister. He didn't know why he was so caught up in the performance of it all. He gasped and pulled, and his ears flattened when his next breath became a small groan; he was trying.

But it was done. They would be locked in formation for an awkward length of time before he could back up, slip down, and be on his feet again. His head was downcast once he'd managed these things. Screech had wanted to prove that he wasn't a horrible person somehow, and that Sorina had been lying when she said -- Fuck, he peeped, realizing that he had done something bad, now. Something unforgivable. 

He didn't speak again, and though his legs felt like they were ready to fold beneath him like wet lake grass, he was gone by the time Raven could turn around — his silhouette shooting across the plateau.