Redhawk Caldera Fwoosh

Lucy out. <3 Stevie I love you with all my heart. Thank you for this emotional fucking rollercoaster.

 

You ran.

Lucy did not want to hear what she had to say after this. Her dark ears swiveled atop her crown and flattened against her skull. The ghoul peered at her mother with wide blue eyes and a half-gaping maw. The dark wisp was young, and she had no real reference for how life should have treated her; she knew only that she had endured enough to wither away years of her life. Still, youthful emotions were still potent – violent – in their own right, and they crippled her to her place. Dark and crooked fingers seemed to latch around her ankles and pull her to the ground with such force, such anger, that she did not know if she could move.

Run.

A voice inside of her head urged her to leap away from them; escape that harsh reality before it becomes too much for you to carry. The weight of it was already agonizing against her shoulders. Still, if she ran, would that not reinforce her mother's word? The young girl felt only turmoil. And even though she did not want to hear the words, Finley's voice flooded in through her pinned ears. After what happened... but she could feel everything that had happened, just as she had endured it the first time. The pain and grief rushed through her system like a wicked river, and Lucy was drowning. I didn't want to force you... The words hung in the air like heavy fog. They were heartfelt – motherly, even – but Lucy did not recognize this. The love of a mother was wasted on her.

“But you should have,” she growled angrily. “You should have forced me.” Articulating was difficult and growing increasingly so, but the ghoul had lost a portion of herself that she would never get back. Both ears drew forward, fixing on Finley. The cool blue of her gaze remained locked with the bronze of her mother's. “I was so young; too young to know any better. I was angry at you. I was furious with you. How could it have taken you so long to find me? What kind of a mother lets their daughter go after everything... after all that happened? It doesn't matter what I said, or what I did,” her voice cracked like lightning against the leader of the caldera. The fur along her neck and shoulders bristled like shadow come to life. All of her rage and pain that had been pent up inside of her for more than a year had found a leak in her guard. Lucy was gushing everything that she had held locked within her, but she did not care. “It doesn't matter...”

“You let me go.”

Lucy had often thought of what she would say to her mother if she should ever see her again. She did not imagine that it would have been anything like that. The fire was dying inside of her, but her limbs still quivered and shook with an unrecognizable force. In her mind, the dark wisp saw only a woman who had made a choice and that choice had cost her all of her childhood. The action that Finley had taken on the day they had last seen each other had shaped the entirety of Lucy's life, and it was not for the better.

Finally, the dark young shadow pulled her gaze away from the grey woman. She fixed her eyes on the earth beneath their feet, praying that she would be grounded by this. Her hopes were not in vain, as it were, but the flood of emotion had sobered her. Her thin shoulders shuddered and dropped. Lucy appeared defeated and shattered, but she had been in such a place before. The shadow had walked through every fire that had burned in her path, and she knew that she would be able to withstand this weight. “It's a good thing that I'm not a child anymore, isn't it?” she asked, still holding her gaze with the frozen ground. “I know better, now.”

Just as she had come, Lucy Blackthorn turned and slithered away. The cloak of ink that shrouded her figure wrapped her in darkness and tucked her away from any watchful gaze. She took to the brush, vanishing from sight with paw steps that left to sign of her body having been. There was no chance for any of her comrades to catch her; she did not want to be found. Just as she had come, the ghoul had disappeared.