Shadewood Hail Mary

Upwards and onwards! Dated: July 1st.

When the sun was low and the hunting and feasting were done, two wolves lay to groom one another. Opposites by all accounts except gender, the pair would have looked unrelated to any onlookers.

"Have you forgotten us, brother?" the small, pale wolf spoke first after a while, nibbling behind his compatriot's dark ear, lashing away what gore there remained. It was a continuation of a conversation they'd had earlier, and the stout brute seemed keen on an answer he approved of. His green eyes glittered fondly in the twilight. And madly.

"Of course not. What kind of question is this?" Grievous snorted, laying his tongue across the soiled and bloodied forepaws of his white-pelted kin, one gold eye rolling to meet an obstinately smug face. He knew he could bite that smirk right off his bewitching face, but as it had been so long since he'd last seen the man, he wasn't keen on souring their reunion so quickly.

"Only the right one." Unsatisfied with the response, Grievous pulled away immediately, facing his brother squarely. Sternly. "Still sensitive, I see. I mean only to call you out on repurposing yourself as.. as Grievous, how ridiculous. And for taking a surname that carries with it no legacy or strength. You don't care to carry us with you anymore, even in name, so it's quite like you don't even love us at all anymore," the snow-wolf pressed tartly, his own gaze narrowing as his foxish whiskers twitched.

Grievous snarled. "And thou art still an arrogant shit, Benedict. Do not pretend to presume things thy cannot possibly know!"

"And still spouting on in the language of our father's gods like some self-important wretch! The more things change the more they fucking stay the same with you."

Both men were brimming now with rippling fur and peeking teeth, neither wanting to strike first but both equally feeling a need to put the other in his presumed place. Grievous would win, as he always had when they were young, but Benedict was not a wolf easily intimidated by past defeats. Still, it was the snow-wolf with gems of envy for eyes, that sheathed his fangs first. "Are you going to punish me then, brother? For being offended by your choice to abandon us not only physically, but emotionally now as well?"

"Thy have always whined. Since the first day I can remember, thou hast whined about this fact or another. There is no cease to thy complaints," the ironblack wolf seethed, easing back from his rage into a more manageable level of annoyance with his kin. For all the hate he could muster for his brother, it wasn't in him to attack the male for his very valid feelings. A tense silence pressed between them, until the more relenting of the two snorted away the last vestiges of his dissent and lowered his pale muzzle to preen the shoulder of his massive brethren.

The trees bowed against a warm breeze that curled around them, and the shadows lengthened while night drew closer. Grievous loosened his spine after a moment, heaving a great sigh as he relented too. "The least thy... you can do is ask."

Benedict perked up, his naturally sly expression returning as the tension between them continued to thin. "I'll bite. Why did you change your name?"

Grievous closed his eyes at the question and made a low noise in his throat that cradled itself somewhere between a growl and a hum. He seemed to be recalling something unpleasant, but his brother didn't notice it. "Not to sound more menacing, I hope. What a terrible, cliche of a name— you honestly could've chosen better," the snow-wolf oozed pompously, earning him a warning cut of gold dagger-eyes as he sneered.

Only then did Benedict seem to realize that it was more serious than he had originally proposed, and his expression sobered softly as he urged Grievous to continue. "Why did you change your name?" he asked again.

"I killed a child— no older than three moons... I cleaved her body clean in two."

Benedict's face hardened, and his voice had lost all mirth when he next spoke. "I understand that must've been... difficult, after what happened to Myrcella, but surely it was for good rea—"

"No, Benny. I did it because I was jealous. I did it in cold blood. I had no right, and it was unfair. The only reason I have to speak of is that I had felt scorned by a love I could not receive and did not deserve."

The white wolf was stunned. Their kind did not shy from killing, not even of children, but there was a reason behind every death. A purpose. A wrong to right or a necessary evil, And here, Grievous was telling him that he had taken an innocent soul for little more than a petty vendetta— a shameful mark on a family of wolves who sought to live as honestly and as straight-forward as possible. "You killed a mother's babe for an unrequited affair?" the man whispered, to which his brother nodded.

"I thought to punish her for not wanting me, so I took from her the only thing she valued more than her own life."

Benedict detached from Grievous' side, and got to his feet. He looked down at his brother, who had fallen eerily still, and in his face there was a great sadness. Betrayal, too. Not unlike the look he had given him when Grievous had decided to disperse from the wolves at Blacksea. "So you changed your name to atone," the small wolf surmised flatly, his expression becoming unreadable after that.

"No. I changed my name to remind me."

"A Grievous wolf for a grievous death."

Grievous nodded again, abating his breaths in wait for Benedict's coming reaction. He expected violence, but none came. And when he expected to be shunned, his brother still remained to face him. He hardly expected any sort of understanding to come from his snarking, self-righteous kin, but it came despite him.

"You are not that wolf."

"I suppose not. But then I am."

"But you also admit your fault. And you've learned from that trial, surely!" The wild glow of his green, green eyes returned, and he seemed to come alive in a fervor Grievous typically only saw when they were locked in battle or in the throes of a hunt. He looked away from his brother's manic gaze, finding purchase in the dark trees surrounding them.

"I knowst thy... you want me as your brother still, but I do not deserve it."

"Oh, now look who's whining!" Benedict snapped so fiercely, that Grievous quickly turned his eyes on him again. "You've gone on long enough with this private self-pity, and I won't let you go another day pretending to be a walking headstone for a child that never had a life because you let a woman once drive you mad."

Grievous felt a burgeoning shame warm him, combated by the iciness spewing from his brother's lips. "You've continued to speak as our father preferred because you have not forgotten. You will never forget! And I'll be damned if I let us both leave here alive without you first acknowledging who you truly are." Benedict was snarling, and for the first time in his life, Grievous did not respond to the threat in kind. He had wilted beneath the weight of his brother's proposed forgiveness, and he didn't realize he'd needed it until this very moment.

"So thou art to attack me if I do not claim my name again?"

"Yes. It's not enough to speak like father as if that will somehow memorialize him. You'll carry his name— our name— or you'll have to kill me defending yourself for abandoning it. These are your only choices."

Grievous did not seem prepared to accept or refuse for a long moment, and he continued to lounge in the face of his bristling brethren as he weighed his options here. He could always lie to him to avoid a fight, which he was certainly not above, but he couldn't ever remember lying to Benedict, or ever having a desire to; so it was the truth or nothing.

He rose to his feet and lifted his tail. "Thy would have me choose a name over the life of my brother?"

Benedict gave him a singularly stiff nod, and Grievous inwardly struggled to relent to him this one time.

"Your name!" Benedict snapped when Grievous did not verbally acquiesce. The motion sent the two men into another snarling match, with Benedict trying impossibly to seem as tall and intimidating as his black-spined littermate. Their mouths spread wide in anxious threat to each other, and saliva dribbled freely as their ferocity built.

"Claim it again, I say! Declare your sins in the past and take back your name!"

Grievous' snarl leapt into a crescendo, his back arching as his fury at being commanded began to turn his vision red.

"Have you forgotten our name or have you just lost your balls for legacy and conquest? You cannot carry that death with you! Death cannot lead; He only follows! Now I said claim it, you fucking coward!"

"COWARD?!" Grievous roared, lunging at his brother's throat.

* * *

When the dust had cleared, and the snarls had long stopped echoing off the pillars of the shadewood, a bloodied Grievous stood facing the unbowed Benedict. They panted heavily, having both, in the end, been unable to deal a wound to the other that might have turned fatal. They had injured one another, surely, and yet, there was a lightness between them that was felt rather than seen. A bond forged through fighting that had served to remind Grievous of the wolf he was, and the wolf he wanted to be still.

Benedict was grinning, his mouth filled with blood and his eyes shining with the maniacal gleam of the madman he was.

"Remember us now, brother?"

"I told thee, I never forgot," he responded heavily, stepping forward even as Benedict did, the two of them sharing an affectionate moment in the afterglow of their battle.

"Then tell me who you are," the snow-wolf persisted, whining softly as he tasted a wound he'd made at the base of his brother's shoulder. He felt him breathe deeply beneath his tongue, and Benedict cleaned the wound more feverishly as he waited for the wolf to answer.

"I am a Boreas of the Blacksea. Son of Viggo on the Mountain... and brother to the madwolf, Benedict."

His brother grinned. "And your name? Your true name our precious mother bestowed you with?"

"Darcia."

"Ah, yes. There he is at last. Girly name and all."

Darcia scowled at his smirking brother, and lunged at him again.