Dragoncrest Cliffs the first casualty of war is innocence

maybe a wild @Bobby? — but only if you want/have time! ♥ otherwise, open for anyone. ehm, disclaimer her mood swings are pretty wild right now and she may bite, haha.

it was frigid outside of hougeda ...even though it was about mid-afternoon. the chilling wind, salty and filled with droplets as the water churns below nips at blodreina as she stands at the cliff's edge. she's peered over it once and after a case of vertigo she took a couple of steps back into the safety zone of where she wasn't at risk of losing her balance. part of her wants to avoid the cliffs at all costs. they are where the commander presumably took her own life, after all. or perhaps it was a casualty and she fell ...but there were no signs of struggle to suggest that she'd tried to keep herself from plummeting into the sea and rocks below.

blodreina wants to hate these cliffs, to hate this territory. it's taken so much from her. kendra. and not antumbra. but it is home even though she struggles, without antumbra ...without their heda to see any place as home. home was supposed to be a safe haven and if all it brought with it was the shattered pieces of her cold and blackened heart then what good was it? she plops down on her huanches and stares blankly out at the sea. she'd already frantically searched the waters below ( though from up high it wasn't like she expected to see much ) for any sign of their fallen commander. holding out fragile and useless hope that maybe blixen was wrong. antumbra was drageda. she was the kongeda. without her ...without a commander they were just ...what? drifters. a kru in a very fragile place? at least, this was how blodriena felt.

heda, blodreina's voice is thick with emotion as she mourns in her own way, away from the prying eyes of the drakru. i ...i feel so lost. the woman that blodreina'd admired so fiercely was gone. heda was supposed to be unmovable, a fixture to their home and their culture and the realization that she could die hadn't really occurred to blodriena. maybe once, fleetingly, when she'd been ill and blodriena'd been temporary fleimkepa but the spirits of the commander's had kept her alive.

and then as if mourning her mentor wasn't bad enough there was that ugly flare up of jealousy she felt whenever she scented aure. blodreina wrote it off as being a byproduct of the season because ...it had to be. it wasn't as if blodreina herself actually had a maternal bone in her body but she a newcomer carried a new generation of drakru in her womb caused civil unrest within the gona; and it only makes blodreina's choice to sleep away from hougeda all that more resolute.

she suffers through it with indignation for the time being because she runs the risk of dying of hypothermia otherwise but when it warmed up enough she would return to her ever changing hidey-hole of slumber away from the others. caves made her skin crawl and the rock walls and ceiling always felt like it was closing in on her, threatening to suffocate her. add that to the emotional rollercoaster from hell the season coupled now with the death of her mentor and commander put her on — a ride that she can't wait to get the fuck off of thankyouverymuch — and you have blodreina:

the saltiest of salty bitches.

He used to love the cliffs, but now they made him sick. They reminded him of all Drageda had lost--and his own failings to prevent that loss. He could have stopped her, said his delusional, grieving mind. He could have brought her back from the abyss. But he'd been distracted elsewhere, and now Antumbra was dead.

Vercingetorix passed by, intending on getting the fuck away quickly as possible, but stopped when he saw Blodreina near the edge. Driven by curiosity and a primal, irrational fear that she would go plummeting down as well, he entered her peripheral vision and gave a chuff, sitting off to her side a few paces away.

Hei, he greeted, stomach flipping as he stared over the edge, toward the waves. He, too, seethed quietly, with the anger of guilt and grief, and the feeling that he should have been the one to die, instead.

hope you don't mind me! He can fuck off if Bobby jumps in, too :D

i don't mind at all! ♥

the chuff startles her and she reacts with a bristle of her hackles and a curl of her lip as her head swings in vercingetorix's direction. she's ready to chase him off. to tell him to leave her alone. that she came out here — cursed as it was — to grieve alone. her hackles smooth and she turns, mechanically, to face the cliff edge once more. blodreina is silent for a long moment even though he has offered her a verbal greeting. her mood flickers unsteadily between wanting to scream until her vocal chords are hoarse. she wants to fight until her flesh is covered in lacerations and the physical pain numbs the emotional pain. she wants to ...she doesn't know. there is so much restlessness seething beneath her skin. a need to take action. and yet...there is nothing to take action for. presumably, heda took the leap herself.

except...

except... there was one that wasn't entirely blameless, wasn't there? there is a sharp cant to blodreina's head and she turns to fix vercingetorix in her pained and fierce gaze. do you think heda did this because of wildfire? because her wife just left her without even having the courage to tell her to her face? blodreina refused to believe that antumbra would've done it otherwise and she needed someone to blame. why shouldn't it be wildfire? the woman had already made herself a coward in blodreina's book and the most aggressive and unforgiving of gyda's children turns her blame to her mercilessly. she should know, shouldn't she? that her cowardice caused the commander's death. she and the children that abandoned her should feel our pain, too. why was it fair that they lived their merry lives while drageda suffered for their decisions?

it wasn't.

Aw, shit.

The last thing he wanted to do today was speak about Heda, especially so close to the site of her demise. He'd expected the battle-hardened Blodreina to feel the same. But no, on she went, hurling accusations at a wolf Vercingetorix had never met and piecing a story together from scraps out of thin air.

Uh, I don't know; maybe? he answered, giving a noncommittal shrug. It doesn't seem right, though, for her to be so fucked up over a woman. Not to this extent, anyway.

But that was it, wasn't it? None of them really knew except Antumbra herself. Verx would have shielded her from any foe, but he was unable to protect her from the most deadly--herself. These blind suppositions and guessing games were just further salt in the wound.

his words are not the words that blodreina wants to hear; but she reminds herself that he never knew wildfire. he never knew the history of them. if he'd heard of the commander's ex it had only been in passing. it reminds blodriena that despite being kru born he is new to drakru. dio and blodriena herself are all that's left of the original drakru back when it'd been sleeping dragon and it fills her with an aching and hollow sadness. blodreina already lashes out because she does not know how to process the grief that rips through her. she doesn't know how to pick up the pieces of a broken heart without it cutting her.

perhaps you didn't know her as well as you'd like to think you did. the bitch is back; and yet did that make her words untrue? maybe. maybe not. either way they were, if nothing else, mean. good, she thinks. mean is what she's good at. anger is what she knows how to process. they were her weapons and she's had her whole life practicing how to weld them.

Her words drew a baffled snort from him--half-anger, half-amusement. I mean, yeah? he shot back, fixing a gimlet stare on the warrior. I didn't know her that well at all. My job was to protect her, not to know every little detail of the story of her life. As much as his voice was wry, there was that little note of pain behind each word as the tiny voice of his conscious screamed --

YOU FAILED! YOU FAILED! YOU FAILED!

So what, we go out looking for Wildfire to tell her? Verx asked. Is that gonna bring Heda back? I'd save my breath, but that's just me.

Again, he didn't know Wildfire. And, sure, he didn't know Antumbra all that well either. But to think that the strongest woman he knew had been brought to her end by the betrayal of a lover? That, he refused to believe.

tell me, vercingetorix, blodreina moves then so that she faces him, side to the cliffs, to the cold ocean spray that rises over the edge of the cliff carried by the strong wind roiling off of the angry waves below. how do you expect to protect someone that you don't even know? i knew heda when i was her cheka. i wouldn't go as far as to say i knew everything about her but she was my mentor. and she didn't die on my watch. and there it was. blodreina still felt majority of the blame belonged at the feet of wildfire and the children that abandoned their nomi — even if blodreina was wrong. maybe antumbra's death had nothing to do with her crumbling family. maybe it did. all blodreina could do was speculate.

she doesn't actually think that the blame lays at veringetorix's paws but he's irritating her and she's in a nasty mood. being hostile is like her comfort zone, her safety net. she feels protected in her aggression built like a towering fortress around her vulnerabilities because blodriena was vulnerable. she was grieving and she was angry and she was scared. she thought antumbra was unmovable — similar to how she regards gyda. a pillar of strength that would always be there. the truth was like a thousand knives in her back and chest. she feels guilty for saying it, lashing out at him with those words ...but in true eske blodreina fashion she does not apologize ( this is why she has no friends ).

yes. blodreina bites off forcibly. she knows, deep down, that telling wildfire and the children wouldn't take away her pain. she knows this, but it's all so irrational and she is deluded with grief into thinking that it would salve her own emotional wounds. she doesn't want truth. she's had enough of truth. she wants justice. i know it's not going to bring her back, blodreina snarls aggrieved, a sob ripping involuntarily from her throat. i know how death works. do you think the commander is the first i loved that i've lost? she snaps. there isn't a day that goes by that she doesn't miss kendra in some form or another. blodriena's first and last love.

and maybe i want wildfire to pay. maybe i want her to feel the pain i feel now. the pain she made antumbra feel. but the commander's children, at the very least, deserve to know their nomi is dead. it does not occur to blodreina that they may not care either way.

Hey Blodreina, you can fuck right off with that shit, Verx drawled, lazy tone at odds with the cold fire in his eyes. It's not a fucking competition. He turned to walk away, already done, and then yet another facet of her diatribe hit him. You think I don't wish that it had been me instead of her? Or that I wish I could have saved her, somehow? I don't give a flying fuck who you are, what you are, how you are--because however much you wanna guilt-trip me for this, I've already done it to myself. So fuck off.

He scoffed at the idea of giving Wildfire and her vanished children the time of day. The only ones that mattered from that bunch were Tux and Silkie. They actually gave a fuck.

If you wanna go find some natronas and tell them the story, be my fucking guest, Vercingetorix said sourly, pelt buffeted by the wind as he turned to look out over the sea. He was angry, seething mad, and had no more words for the soldier, his cousin. If she wanted to make this shit personal, she could sit and wallow. She could lash out all she wanted.

blodreina huffs, puffing out her chest. it's childish, the desire to snap with 'no. you fuck off'; but oh how she wants to. it's not that she doesn't realize what she's doing — she absolutely does. it's just that it's the only way she knows how to deal with grief. that didn't make it right — and no doubt, given time to grieve and mull over the guilt she feels at lashing out at him she might actually apologize. to be scheduled at a later date ( if verx would even want to hear it ). how about you fuck the fuck off. blodreina huffs angrily. blood will be blood.

why shouldn't they feel the same pain? why shouldn't they be made to feel guilty? even if they weren't the cause of it. they don't know that. they deserve it for abandoning us. for abandoning tux and silkie and blixen and artaax. and they especially deserve it for abandoning antumbra. he didn't understand because he hadn't been here for it. for any of it. he was an outsider to all of that.

then again, blodreina had very strong feelings on desertion. being abandoned by her own littermates and having never forgiven them for it only made her views on it all that more resolute. have you ever been abandoned by those you love? do you know what that feels like? she asks quietly, her anger bubbling down as she, in turn, turns away from him to face the roiling sea once more.

Coulda, coulda, coulda. Verx's grudges were visceral; he didn't hold them for hypotheticals. Her line of reasoning went right over his head, and when she asked him the question, he almost rejoined, No. The immediacy of the answer, at least unspoken, surprised him.

He really hadn't ever dealt with anything like that. He supposed the closest he'd come to it was. . . Heda. She'd abandoned him, by jumping off that cliff. Abandoned all of them. But that had been different, and so his ignorance continued. His anger, though, began to fade.

I don't, Vercingetorix answered truthfully, his tone markedly less sharp than before. I can't understand where you're coming from and I'm not gonna try. I'm not gonna argue with you about this. It's not gonna bring her back, but--is it gonna make you feel better?

If not, why even do it? Why waste the time?

sorry for the wait! last post from me. feel free to reply once more or archive as is! <3

maybe it will. blodreina snaps at him, fuming. her hackles bristle with the heat of her anger that seethes beneath the surface. maybe making someone else hurt is exactly what she needs to feel better. or maybe it wouldn't make her feel any better at all. maybe blodreina hopes that cutting someone else down will ease her pain, will cause it to siphon into someone else despite that she knows full well that's not how grief works.

she was supposed to be invincible! because at the core this was all about her pain; she didn't mean to lash out at verx but he was the closest thing. it wasn't fair to him. he didn't deserve the sting of her anger — he'd done nothing to warrant it. blodreina knows this and maybe she realizes part of her is angry at heda for ending her own life but it wasn't like she could yell at their deceased commander about it.

she was our commander and she left us. and maybe, in a way, blodreina feels betrayed by the woman she looked up to the very most in the world. try as she might blodreina couldn't respect the commander's death because she didn't understand it. her ears slicked back against her skull and she feels the heat creep up her neck to the backs of her eyes that burn with unshed tears. i need to be alone right now. and with that she departs.

He let her vent her anger with a bland face, knowing that she wasn't lashing out at him as much anymore, but the demons she'd been fighting since Heda's death. It was over fairly quickly, with her declaration of needing to be alone--a sentiment he wholeheartedly agreed with.

Take care, Blodreina, Vercingetorix said, his tone more gentle than usual. He watched the warrioress pad away before departing himself, feeling the heat of her words against him and his role as cheka still burning.