Hideaway Strath Moon, guide me

I blame Towhee. :)

Restless. Incredibly restless. And growing more restless and reckless with each passing hour. Phox should have called a pack meeting. He should have made sure everybody was ready for the plan. He should have this, he should have that. But in the end, he was a Redhawk, and Redhawks were reckless, no matter how much they tried to deny it. With Fennec gone and Towhee over the landslide, he couldn't stand to be over here. He called for @Figment, but Phox didn't wait.

He marched over to the tall, seemingly unscalable wall of rock and debris and began climbing under the light of the stars and sliver of moon that would guide him. It was hard to see, and it was even harder not to lose his grip. But up, up, up he went. It wasn't exactly easy (far from it), but he had watched Towhee go up, and that somehow gave him the confidence to keep going.

Phox should have waited for Figment. He should have told everybody what he was doing. He had been so mad at Towhee for doing this very thing, and here he was so near the summit, gleeful as ever to be free of the prison that had captured them. But something beneath him slipped. Phox lost purchase, and he tumbled down, down, down. When he finally reached the bottom, he was a mess. Unconscious, bloodied, and bruised from head to toe.

Towhee had escaped. She had done the impossible, pooled all of her immense courage, and scaled the wall that separated them from the rest of the world against all odds. It was impressive as hell, and incredibly selfless for her to have risked her life for all of them. At least, that's how it should've been taken. But for the first time in Figment's very short life, he found himself angry with his mother.

She had abandoned them. It didn't matter what anyone said or what way anyone spun it for him, it didn't change the feeling of betrayal that overwhelmed Fig. His birth mother had left him when she died--it was okay, he trusted that it had not been her choice. Fenn had gotten lost. He had no real proof of that, but he believed it in his heart completely. And her being lost was not her fault--it was his. But Towhee leaving was a choice she had made, and she had left him behind in the process.

It wasn't okay.

Fig had been sleeping fretfully when Phox's call slowly drew him from his dreams. They hadn't been pleasant ones, yet the boy's depression drove him to cling to sleep regardless of what torment it brought him. Eventually he rose, and his father's call resonated in his memory like deja vu, driving him to answer regardless of how late he was to do so.

When he arrived at the wall, he didn't immediately see Phox anywhere. He caught his father's scent after a few minutes of searching and followed it for a bit until with sudden dread, he realized where it was leading. His eyes darted up in the very same moment he heard the sound of crashing, his father's pained voice intermingled. With a strangled cry, Fig staggered backwards and watched in horror as he fell, paralyzed with shock and fear, unable to a damn thing but stare as his father collided with the ground.

Fig stood for five, six, thirteen seconds before he stumbled forward on shaky legs, his face contorted in fear and disbelief. Tears blurred his eyes as he came near. His whole world was blood and dirt and terror. More seconds passed as he stood over Phox's crumpled body. He might've ceased to exist right then and there--he looked for all the world like a statue in those eerily silent seconds that passed before the shock abruptly disappeared and he flung his head back, screaming into the air for help from someone--anyone--to help him.

Phox still wasn't conscious. His body was limp, even as his son stood over him, likely berating him for the very same reasons Phox had berated Towhee earlier that day. But Phox couldn't help himself, right? He'd been unable to be stuck in this place any longer. Towhee was his rock, no matter how you looked at it, and being away from her was a form of torture. The only time he'd ever been apart from her had nearly killed him, back before the war, and now she had left him.

It was Figment's scream that woke him, barely, and Phox groaned as he attempted to move himself in some meaningful way. He wasn't dead--far from it--but it wasn't going to be an easy couple of weeks from here on out. Fig's screaming certainly wasn't helping his headache, either. Fig, he managed, unable to sign properly, so using only his words. Too loud.