Heron Lake Plateau Eat your potatoes

She might not believe it, but he still wasn't sure if he wanted to take the chance that he'd ruin what few good things that happened to him.  Quixote fell silent for a moment, ears slowly folding back on his head, eyes drifting well away from her.   He didn't like talking about his past other than in broad brushstrokes, dismissing most of it as unimportant.  On the other hand it was Raven asking.  He didn't know if it actually would explain anything, but he'd focus it more towards what he'd previously mentioned.  

Oh, I guess they'd probably seem pretty normal at first.  Just... Actually so desensitized to people fighting and dying that they didn't care whether one of their kids was sent off to get beaten up and maybe die too?  Like they just decided after I was assigned to the fighting group that I was totally on my own.  I don't know if they ever got their paws dirty.  His thoughts were a little disjointed on the matter -- he didn't know how much were from the equivalent of a disappointed teen-Qui and how much were a poisoned retrospective.  At best it was cursory.  Even now he still kept asking why, because he really didn't understand.  Thankfully he'd had a normal enough puphood (maybe?) and there had been just enough outside influence from those like the original Owen (then throw in a few fairy-tale-esque stories for good measure) that he just knew it wasn't the way things were supposed to go.

We were in the same pack, and I barely saw them or Panza after that.  He always said that nah, I had to be wrong, but how else would you explain it?  There'd been a period of time when he'd been intensely jealous of Panza over the fact that he was still kept around and seemed to be loved, but Quixote eventually redirected his anger back to those he believed deserved it. They were compliant with whatever bad ideas there were to win, without thoughts to people being people instead of pawns.  Since they weren't willing to do anything, they were lumped in with the completely bananas leadership.   All they'd done was made him incredibly insecure and socially inept.