Redsand Canyon You've only known the ones who leave at dawn

germanicus had not expected crowfeather to hold his eyes after that but the falling away felt as if it were skin ripping painfully from a fall over jagged branches. there was no honor in lying. and there was none in saying the truth aloud with finality. a muscle in his jaw leapt as he too pulled his eyes aside and looked almost desperately toward the swaying aquamarine of the clear oasis.

of course he had suffered in akashingo. ramesses did not have to strike a single blow in accomplishment of this fact. the eagle had left crowfeather there for the pragmatism of doctors and nurses and satsu's own hand nursing the shadow in return to health. those things had not been in the canyon.

but the ice of objectivity had thawed always when it came to crowfeather. germanicus had wanted no longer to be bound by his inability to remain unbiased. it had compromised him, and in doing so, had led the eagle to question himself. he had not allowed another to change him as crowfeather had. he had kept himself guarded but only until the other's presence in his life.

yet ultimately this had not been where he placed his trust. it had been in tradition, of man-and-wife, of that which had always merited success and culminated in mereo. germanicus forced his gaze back toward crowfeather. he must behold this uttering despite the chasm it tore in his gut. 

love had only been a projection for him, something observed through a haze of illusion. germanicus harbored no idea even as a boy that his parents had loved one another. and the soft feeling in his chest he felt even now for ruenna he suddenly feared was not real, that he had only imagined it. that it had become something intensified by his inappropriate entry to her birthing. that he might one day face the ragged edge of betrayal in her voice as well.

crowfeather's love was a doorway to something unfathomable. germanicus had known it. and yet he had found easier the act of shutting the entrance in his own spirit which had begun to inch open those months before the palace and the battle and the mauling.

his throat ached. his eyes ached. his jaw at last slackened with an audible sighing. "were i the man you believed i am, i would have loved you in return."