Cassiopeia's View and we will never stop looking

"Day-day," she asked while she limped after her father, "Whas do day-day?" Charon ignored his three-legged daughter's voice, brows knitted into a frown. She'd started to call him a name. That was the sign he needed. The sign he'd been waiting for. For so long he had stared at the den and wondered, known he should take action, but he just couldn't. He knew what he should have done before she became so much of a person, back when she was still just a blob, just shapes, just nothing...

But he couldn't.

He still couldn't.

But he was doing it anyway.

"Wha Zee?" she asked. "Wan tiyums..."

He would carry her, sometimes, and then he would let her walk again. He didn't know where to. To somewhere where he... knew for sure that Galaxy, Vela and Jarilo wouldn't hear her cries when he committed the act. To somewhere that wasn't so much home as here. Somewhere. They were going somewhere. Anywhere. A place, an abstract place — far enough away until his guilt was muted.

They were at one of those points again. "Tiyums, day-day!" He didn't respond. He hadn't responded to any of it. He just walked, walked, walked, kept walking, brought her away as if she was livestock, cattle for slaughter. He wondered when he'd become so soft. He'd killed before. But they weren't pups. They weren't his own. Made him feel grateful Althaia'd got away. He wasn't so sure he'd have been able to carry out Amekaze's command to murder her pups. Made him wonder where they were, out there, if they were alive, if they'd survived.

Then finally, the landscape changed from places that felt like home beneath his paws to a place that wasn't quite so known to him. To a place that was different and abstract enough. "Was dis?" Ran asked as she looked around and blinked. "We're here." He wasn't sure what here was. Ran stood there, her cripple leg sticking forward at a weird angle, her fur all black and her eyes still a milky, colourless tone of puppy blue. She was little, too little for her age. She was a monstrosity, his monstrosity, after a long line of healthy pups, and he hated her for it.

He wanted to kill her, he really did, knew somewhere deep down that it was the most humane thing to do to her, but fuck it, he just couldn't do it.

"Daddy has to go now," he spoke coolly, his voice eerily calm and calculated. "Just stay here, and things will be okay soon. You'll be okay. There won't be anymore pain. Just —" His voice cracked up there, and he watched Ran as she looked up at him with ununderstanding eyes. She didn't get what he was saying. She didn't know she was gonna die soon. Fuck. "Look, just, stay here. It'll be okay. Something'll get you, it'll be over soon."

He didn't even know what he was doing anymore. He wanted to just grab her and run her home. But he couldn't. They were far enough from home, they were in no man's land, in an abstract place that was just... somewhere. Not home. It was too late for home. He'd have to explain everything and it'd be difficult enough if he came home without her. Let alone if he came home with her now and if shit wouldn't get better. And it wouldn't, he knew as he looked at her leg.

"Bye, Ran," he murmured and he then turned away and vanished into the night.