Hideaway Strath Let me hear your battle cry tonight

if any of my presumptions are not ok, please let me know so we can hash out & i can edit <3

Over the last month, Charles had had a weird feeling at the pit of his stomach. He brought Nyra food, knowing that she needed it and couldn't easily go hunting on her own right now, but that was pretty much the extent of his fatherhood right now. Most of it was from caches, because Charles wasn't the best hunter. Only one time had he gotten lucky and managed to catch an injured rabbit. He wasn't sure if Nyra had noticed it, or cared very much. He usually just left the food and scrammed, and it seemed that she didn't want much more than that of him, anyway.

Nyra had said that he could be there as a father, and that maybe he should be there as a father, but then, she'd not really asked anything of him. She didn't ask him to come see Lotus when he brought food (as a matter of fact, they practically didn't speak at all). She hadn't even called him when the birth had taken place. Kynareth had been the one to be there. And he'd been the one to call Charles. Going off to the Archangels was daunting. It was so tempting just to stay here, in the Saints, with Kynareth. Charles felt his stomach twist as he thought of Kynareth. He wasn't sure what was wrong with him, but it had become pretty clear that something was seriously wrong with him. He didn't want to get with Nyra again at all, despite their actual tangle and their actual child that came out of it, while thoughts of Kynareth made his cheeks flush uncomfortably. He pushed it aside for now. He knew that everyone would judge him if he didn't follow his child and his child's mother to the Archangels.

Anyway, he had been rather nearby when Nyra's howl sounded. Again, he wasn't mentioned especially. He was just, like, there with the rest of the pack. Charles wondered if Lotus even knew he was her father? Was she big enough to get such things, anyway?

Of course, him being nearby meant that he showed up as the first one, and Charles smiled a forced and awkward smile at Nyra as he greeted her. Hey. He then glanced down at little Lotus. How's she doing? he asked Nyra off-handedly, but when he looked at Lotus, he felt something in him change. She didn't look a lot like him, but there were tiny details that he recognised. The brown cloak of her fur, the way her nose looked... He couldn't help but wonder if he had looked the same when he was young. He just stared at her, feeling his world shake.