Heron Lake Plateau We are old and our son took the dog away

Screech scoffs at her initial comment but goes quiet after, realizing she's giving him a moment to say his piece and that such a moment was rare, so he'd better make the best of it. At the same time she off-handedly calls him a monster, and that really doesn't help his already fragile ego; in fact, it stings quite a bit, so he clams up for a moment after Niamh finishes speaking, as if to debate within himself if it's worth trying to clear his name. How many times has he told this story? (And how many times has Java written it out or had the browser freakin' eat it gdi --).

So, he started at the beginning.

The war with Blackfeather was instigated because of their habit of kidnapping and torturing wolves. One of them was my older sister, or so he had heard, but the boy had been a captive around the time Wildfire had found her way home and was mostly oblivious to those details. After she was rescued and Raven tended to her, the Redhawks began to consider going after them. Around that time I was doing my own thing - patrols, hunts, whatever, - and I went to a nearby meadow for a look around. I thought i'd found Raven there, and ran over to spend some time with her. Turned out to be someone else — someone from Blackfeather. They grabbed me, broke my leg, took me back to their forest, and held me there. He hadn't realized they'd done all of that by accident or that Cassiopeia had been reacting defensively rather than offensively, but it didn't matter now. What mattered was that it had happened. I was there for a week or two. I don't know how long, really. They tended to my wound and kept me heavily drugged up. But over time I got to know the girl that had grabbed me— she was a captive too, and had been brainwashed, or something. Eventually she helped me to escape.

Here was where Screech glanced at Niamh and murmured, And that's when we encountered Elwood, and so he explained that situation next: running in to Elwood, trying to follow through with his promise to Cassiopeia but having it fall through. Fighting with him desperately, and then being reunited with Raven for treatment. I only did what I did because she'd helped me, and I wanted to make good on my promise. Elwood refused to see my side. He thought... He thought she would only harm the pack because of where she was from, and turned against her. Turned against me, really. It had been a bad situation and he'd made a bad call, but Screech was loyal to his friends—out of all the shit he'd done, at least that was constant.

Next, the war. I recovered with Raven's help. She encouraged me to run on my bad leg whenever I felt capable, to test it and strenghten it, so I did that a lot. At one point I was exploring to the west of the Caldera in the foothills of the mountains, and found a pack living there. I thought maybe.. To make a good impression. That's not what happened. He glossed over the part about how he'd skipped out on the war meeting and been avoiding his responsibilities prior to the events at the Moonspear border, but the rest of the story fell from his lips easily enough. The death of Galaxy, the verdict that he was a murderer, his escape north to Ravensblood, his various run-ins with Hydra and the sisters, and then finally vanishing to the Hinterlands.

When he was finished, he was silent again. This time his frustration had all but evaporated; Screech had done his best to explain his side of the events without getting too emotional, but it was clear that recounting his various trials and tribulations had worn him down. He was tired, which meant he didn't have the energy to spit venom anymore. Once Redshank and I made it here, we thought we were free, he finally sighed and added, and then watched Niamh for her reaction to everything — she knew the rest, and hopefully some of what he'd explain would sink in to her. Maybe she could help him figure out why they all hated him so much when nothing he'd done was really his fault.