Heron Lake Plateau The otherside series.

She must've passed out despite herself, because Towhee woke up to streaming morning sunlight and found herself pressed against a softly snoring @Wraen. She blinked, totally disoriented, her head pounding dully. She sat up and groaned a little at the soreness all over her body, particularly her backside. As she bent to assess herself, the prior day's and night's events flashed back to her and suddenly she was on all fours, hastily backing away from the Sovereign.

Still the other she-wolf slept and Towhee considered making a run for it. Her entire body protested that thought. But when she glanced beneath her tail, the damage didn't look nearly so bad in the light of day. Sure, she wouldn't be getting frisky again anytime in the near future, though the bleeding had stopped and her parts were still fully intact. Towhee licked her lips, then took stock of everything else. Her stiff muscles were likely the result of her spar with Kaertok and the headache was probably due to the hunger gnawing insistently at her belly. The latter was probably why she'd passed out last night too.

That was all sort of reassuring, though the mercenary looked up and squinted at the sleeping Wraen. She might not have mauled Towhee as originally thought, though she had attacked her. Having slept on it, so to speak, she replayed Wraen's tirade in her mind, still amazed at her leader's agitation. Towhee still didn't understand where any of this had come from and found the woman's passion quite frankly strange.

And then the only real explanation dawned on her, even as the winter sun glowed warmly on her face, and she blurted out loud, "Oh my fuck, you're in love with what's-his-face, aren't you?!"

When Towhee had passed out the previous night, Wraen had taken a quick damage control and found that there was nothing too serious. Sure, the other girl would feel sore the next morning, but it was not as if she had torn a vital artery of the thigh. The last thing that came to her mind was that for a master mercenary Towhee was surprisingly sensitive to blood. Go figure.

She had lied awake long after that, listening to the other's even breathing and watching keenly the surroundings, just in case any of the two interested males returned to the pit. Or anyone else was drawn to it, because just because the Merlin Monroe of the Hinterlands was a bit beaten up, did not mean that her heat had been switched off. Quite the contrary, the scent was still here around her, making her confused and dizzy. 

Wraen must have fallen a sleep at some point, because the next thing she knew was Towhee yelling in her face. The words she did not catch, yawned and pulled herself up to a sitting position. "You look chipper," she told her. "I thought I had bled you to death yesterday," she added dryly.

She couldn't be sure how loudly she spoke, though Wraen didn't appear particularly startled when she stirred. Nor did she see fit to answer Towhee's accusation. Her blasé remark about the mercenary's mood momentarily stumped her, her fur prickling warily, the white blades along her shoulders and spine sticking up in little tufts.

They smoothed a moment later when she admitted, "I really thought you'd fucked me up. But it's just a flesh wound." Towhee paused, then demanded, "But why would you do that?" In hindsight, Wraen's ire seemed less to do with Towhee's sluttish behaviors in general and more to do with this one wolf very specifically. "Who is this guy and why do you care so much about us boning?"

Towhee did not seem too angry or upset about yesterday's events and Wraen felt almost relieved. Yes, she was still annoyed, but no longer furious and the last thing she wished, was to have their relationship perish. "That guy was Hydra's brother and second in command - Arcturus," she explained. "A friend of mine. Called out yesterday morning," here she yawned again. "Seemed very crushed. That guy does not get out in the world nearly as much as he should," Wraen remarked, talking now like an old person. 

"Ashamed too. If he out of loyalty rats this out to Hydra - you can expect to be murdered in a quiet, dark corner at some point," she said half-earnestly, but you never knew with Cerberus. "'cause that guy lives just around the corner - you will run into each other again at some point."

A cold thread of dread trickled into her bloodstream at his identification, confirming Towhee's suspicions of his relation to Hydra. She couldn't even explain her own trepidation, until Wraen put it into words. Would Hydra really react so poorly if she found out about it? Her own Sovereign had been out for blood upon discovering it, so Towhee couldn't even guess.

"Why, though?" she asked, only to realize even as she asked. Something dark passed over her face, despite the January sunlight. Her jaw clenched "Okay, first of all, I had no idea he thought that a simple fuck meant we were suddenly married with children. And second of all..."

There was a long pause before she finished her sentence, her face gone totally sour now. "Second of all, I'm barren, so it's not like I'll be having his bastards."

"That's, what happens, when you live in Moonspear," Wraen replied. Not all were so easy about extra-marital noncommital relationships. "For you it was just a fuck, he thinks that he has betrayed his home country and sullied family honor," she told and if she had not been exhausted and hadn't had anything to eat for three whole days, she would have laughed. 

The next statement made Wraen stare at Towhee in utter bewilderment, then she snorted, an attempt not to go in hysterical laughter. "Boy, and I thought Arcturus was naive. Towhee, if you get in heat, you can get pregnant. If it is not going to be Hydra's sibling, someone else might have got lucky," she said. "Why do you think I do not have any children?"

Towhee's face remained a stony mask as Wraen explained how politics worked in Moonspear. She said nothing, though the Sovereign's reaction to her second point made her flinch. Her eyes narrowed in disbelief at the woman's amused response to what was a hard and painful truth for Towhee. She lifted her lip when the Sovereign accused her of being as naive as Arcturus, her orange eyes flashing.

"I know how this shit works... or doesn't, in my case. I've gone into heat—and fucked around, quite a lot—before and never produced children," Towhee ground out at what felt like great personal expense all of a sudden. She was abruptly very weary, her stomach pinching and rolling. "So none of this should matter to anyone: not you, not Hydra and especially not Arcturus. Nothing will ever come of any of it," Towhee finished, suddenly shaky.

"That makes two of us then," Wraen replied sympathetically. "Except I have not felt inclination to fuck around. Anything along that line," go figure, what was worse. Watching everyone go in spring madness from the sidelines or experiencing one of your own every year and having no results. Disappointment was probably greater in case of the latter.

"Have you ever considered that the man or men were to blame? I would think that if those, who you meet outside pack, have had many trysts before you, they might have been exhausted. Run out," she mused. "In any case - I wanted to say that there are more constructive ways of having a discussion than ripping one's butt open. I am sorry for that," after all, whatever was the outcome of Towhee's joy-ride, it was important to fix things. "Will you live?"

The next few words out of Wraen's mouth were perhaps the most surprising of all. She seemed so unperturbed when she shared that she was barren too. Towhee's mouth fell ajar at this information, not sure how to feel about it. She wasn't even sure how she felt about her own infertility, though she was slowly beginning to realize it affected her more deeply than she had ever anticipated.

Before she could collect her thoughts and frame a reply of some kind, Wraen proceeded to apologize. With a bad case of emotional whiplash at this point, Towhee could only manage a dry, "Yes, I think I'll live." Her brow furrowed and she tacked on a little distractedly, "Even if Arcturus or Hydra comes after me, which I don't think will happen, for a variety of reasons. And for what it's worth, I'm sorry that Arcturus was so misguided about it but I did say 'no strings attached.' And it's not like I forced him." Well, mostly.

Although she still ached in just about every sense of the word, there was a distinct feeling as the though the two of them had cleared the air. Towhee sighed, having no energy left to feel angry at Wraen for taco blocking her by violently munching said taco. "Apology accepted. Can we go home now? I need to eat something and then go ice my cooter."

Reminded me of Kate McKinnon's Mrs Rafferty sketches. She had a lot of nice epithets for that part of anatomy too. Last one from me. Thanks!

"I doubt it either," after all Arcturus still did not know name of the person, who had taken his virginity and for the sake of keeping the diplomatic relationships as neutral and non-existent as they had been, she was not gonna tell either. "Yeah, but be careful next time. Maybe ask them first, if they understand, what you mean," she suggested. "He'll live. You gave him a valuable lesson to think about."

"Lunch sounds good. I have not eaten in days," Wraen got up, stretched and shook her coat, feeling glad that the worst was over and, what was more surprising, they were on not exactly good terms, but they weren't hostile either. "Grouse thicket? That's, what I was going to explore yesterday, before I... yeah, saw quite a few," she offered.

After last night, it seemed so unlikely that they would lunch and then return home together. But Towhee had dramatized her own injuries and Wraen had apologized, so why let it amount to anything more than a brief misunderstanding? It would make life so much easier if they both put this behind them.

In fact, as they prepared to set off after those grouses the Sovereign mentioned, Towhee debated whether she should mention any of this to anyone. Life had just gotten good again lately. She didn't want to upset anyone or cause any further drama. Nothing should come of any of this, just like she'd told Wraen. And though she could still feel the hormones surging through her, Towhee's crazy cycle had been effectively blockaded.

As they left the plateau—Towhee walking a little gingerly but otherwise fine—she couldn't help but glance over at the leader and wonder. Half a dozen times, she almost asked a question about Wraen's own empty womb. But she reconsidered every time. They could perhaps talk about it again some other time, when all this had really blown over and Towhee had had time to assess and come to terms with her own deeply personal feelings on the matter.