dusk settled over the forest like a shroud. too far gone to spring and summer to be silent any longer, the air carried with it the ceaseless buzz of crickets, the chatter of birds who had not settled with the sinking sun. not even caligula's presence seemed to deter them; they swept above him in a rustle of leaves as he walked, and slowly, slowly, the thin rays of watery light filtering through the branches dimmed until the forest before him spread out dark and still.

he did not move with any ear to silence, nor with any aim, only a cautious flaring of nostrils on occasion to reassure he had crossed no border, found no other drifter he might disturb.

caligula had once had it in him to be a purposeful man, but those days felt a long way off, distant and blurred as mist over the water. perhaps he would know where he was going once he arrived, but it did not concern him overmuch. after one step, there would be the next. the sun would rise, and it would set. there was nothing else left to do.

even as the darkness gathered, the crickets kept singing. it seemed louder the longer he walked, until the air was filled with nothing but their buzz; and when someone huffed behind him, in the few moments such a greeting took to register, caligula flinched hard enough that it was only by some stroke of luck he kept his footing, paws sliding on loose dirt, whipping around with all the careful deliberation of a snake who, feeling the tread of a foot on its back, reared to strike.

for a long moment he lingered there with teeth still concealed behind charcoaled lips, staring back through the gloom at the giant watching him, a shadowy grey silhouette with ears angled forward. but when she did not move, the man uncoiled, shoulders hunched as he stared back over the distance; nostrils flared as he searched for the scent that might yet indicate a claim that he had passed over without thinking, and yet found nothing at all.

"ah...is this..." his voice cracked with disuse on the words, barely loud enough to hear at all, and came back stronger than before. "i am sorry. i did not mean to disturb anyone here. i only wish to pass through."

perhaps they stood too far apart from each other for such an issue to arise, but caligula kept his gaze to the side. there were many things that had been imparted to him through the universal language that was tooth and claw, and every one of them lingered, deep enough that it did not matter to what corner of the world he fled. he would not run even the risk of meeting another’s eyes.

to hear he had not stumbled into claimed land settled the man somewhat, but the relief did not last long. “legion?” caligula echoed. the word was familiar on his tongue; as with everything of the north, it was not familiar in a good way. it was familiar in a way that called up a dozen old battles and at least as many dead, a word for the great body of the people who had fought –

“is that…you, your pack, you are military, then?” his pale-ice gaze upon her took on a warier light, so thoroughly distracted as to have missed her name entirely, as well as the request for his own.

caligula had not found much calming about their encounter thus far, and her following words did not help, regardless of the caveat they included. the silver bristle of his neck rose; for a moment, the looming threat of confrontation was entirely forgotten, as well as what it promised. “there is nothing bad about it,” he snapped, and the moment he opened his mouth it was if he was watching himself from a distance – knowing exactly what he was inviting, yet powerless to stop it.

and as though he had been the one to receive the blow, the man shied away, painfully aware of her gaze upon him and yet incapable of not retreating in the face of what the instinctual part of him, the part that had kept him alive since, insisted was danger. no matter if arbiter spoke only words; no matter if all she had exchanged was theory, not threat.

“i apologize.” caligula stumbled over the words, an answer in themselves. “i am not…i should not be here.”

he was already halfway to gone the moment he spoke his last words; like an arrow drawn back on a string his muscles ached with the need to leave, to be invisible again; he thought of teeth coming down on his chest, and it was all very ridiculous, he knew distantly, but that did not make the reaction any less intense.

like an arrow drawn back on a string, release was at the whim of someone other than himself.

he did not move. he stood there, waiting, and –

don’t raise your voice to me, he remembered, beneath the ungentle curve of jaws –

– and she was still talking.

she had not moved, either; she watched him, patiently, and the watching was not comfortable, exactly, but there was no attack forthcoming and not so much as a raised voice in response. and frozen there, he could do nothing but listen, and in a way that felt like watching a cliff-face crumble into the waiting sea below, the stiff-straightness of his limbs drained away.

it was still several moments before he could gather himself enough to speak.

“you have…” caligula started. his lips twitched as though he was not quite sure what to do with them, an uncomfortable shift of muzzle. “i apologize,” he said again. “what…farther south? what is there?”

caligula’s pulse still fluttered too-fast in his chest, a bird’s wings beating into his ribcage despite the looseness of his limbs, wobbly with the sudden rush and relief of adrenaline. it echoed dizzily in his head, filling his senses, muting even the lingering buzz of insects, and arbiter’s words came to him as if over a long distance, one larger than the dozen or so feet between them.

but they did come.

it took a long, fuzzy moment for his thoroughly overwrought brain to make sense of any of what she had said. but when it did, finally, click into place, it was without his input that his gaze shifted uncomfortably to the side. he was aware of the impossibility of this merrick leaping from the treeline to assault him; rationality, no matter how strongly he desired to cling to it, had never once overcome instinct – an instinct that, these days, provided him little more than base terror.

“then, ah…i should not have…” he stopped himself before he could finish the thought, shaking his head. his agreement, or lack thereof, mattered not at all; she did not need to hear it, and he did not need to be told. “you are worried he will come? and this…your legion will fight him?”

good intentions teetered on a sharper knife’s edge than he found entirely comfortable. merrick did not seem so entirely unfamiliar – to have run so far to stumble into this, a mirror as though he had never left…it was not only his memory haunting him.

caligula was, of course, aware of none of arbiter’s internal debate. what he was aware of was that where there was one person like his father, there were always more. perhaps there was no place he would actually be free of a threat poised like opened jaws above his head, but there was yet nothing to stop him from trying.

there would always be new ground left to walk. this, at least, he was certain of; he had walked new ground every day since he fled, nothing left to show for two years of his life besides the bleeding wound on his chest and the less visible mess he had shredded his mind into.

“that is…good,” caligula offered, lamely. it felt inadequate the second it left his mouth. it was difficult to recall the last time he’d felt anything he said to be adequate, so at least the awkwardness was familiar.

at least his limbs had stopped shaking. it left his body feeling strangely still, a perfect mirror to the aftermath of a fight, even though he had done nothing but raise his voice.

he felt, suddenly, unspeakably exhausted. there were so many other questions he should ask, that he was aware were important; they all melted away in the face of the anxiety that crawled right back through him, requiring only the absence of terrified adrenaline to return as though it had never left.

caligula had never read a single person well. she was no different. and that anxiety coiled tight in the core of him, part of him, told him that she could not be doing anything other than humoring him, now, the nervous, erratic mess he had made of himself.

he licked his lips, eyes lingering on her as he took a delicate step to the side. “i – i have taken up enough of your time, i think. thank you for the warning.” the words, this once, did not stumble over each other, every inch of his body knowing them for the exit they offered. “i wish your legion luck.”