Totoka River a snapshot in the family album

Her response was to be expected, shrinking back as he barged unto the scene and disrupted what peace she had stumbled upon. However, it did not last long. Returning the gesture, she growled at him, and though he did not feel threatened, he took a step back. Perhaps she was a different person now, someone he didn’t really know. Vaati only allowed himself to think such things for a moment or two, before refocusing to her shaking her head. At least her defiant courage was still intact, and he felt more assured that this was indeed the same Maegi he had left behind.

Vaati snarled heavily at her refusal to confess who had hurt her so viciously, casting his eyes way in an attempt to distance himself from his own anger. He knew it was a sensitive subject as his own scars were to him, but in that moment he cared too much about her - it - to let feelings get in the way. “I will kill whoever did it, I promise you,” Vaati vowed to her, returning his gaze to rest upon Maegi’s still youthful features that remained remarkably pure despite the obvious disfigurement. She was still his sister, and that fact brought him down to earth. His gaze softened as she begun to fall apart before him, touching her cheek delicately with his nose in the most affection he could offer. Her questions were questions that even he did not have whole answers to, things he cast aside and refused to confront. But he could not simply stand there and offer her nothing after so long, and he could not walk away having not given her any explanation. Condescendingly, he sneers. “Why would I have stayed? I lost it all.” Hearing the words spill out his own mouth felt harrowing, having held the answer within him for months and simply ignoring its truth. “It all fell apart right from under me and there was nothing left that I could do but watch as everything I had and worked for, fall away with it.” In truth, he had never felt close to Blackfeather in the way his family had. Not until he had to step up to the plate and inherit it’s crown, did he feel a sense of entitlement towards it. That had only increased as time went on, but there was always a fraction of him who wanted something else, and once such an option became available to him, had taken it without a second glance. “There was nothing left for me there but betrayal and failure, Maegi. Everything that I am and was is gone.” He isn’t the same. In some senses, yes, but not in all. He had once been driven by the power and greed, taking what he could because he felt like he owned it. The only difference now was that everything he takes is because he needs it, because in the absence of everything else, he needs something. And so he does what he can to bide the time until fate finds him once more; unlike the Vaati who would write his own path by cutting down everything and anyone who stood in his way. What he was and who he had become was not something even he knew, and as the words flowed out his mouth, he felt the slightest bit liberated. Odd, he wondered.