Arrow Lake [m] Haven't felt this way since I asked you to go steady

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His days were mild, uneventful save the featherlight spiraling of early snow each morning and the constant murmuring of the wilds around him. On occasion he picked up the scents of other predators in the wind, wolves and wild cats and those last few bears still roaming in search of safe dens. Panacea avoided them faithfully. He stayed the course, carving his steady descent from the mountains with a measured torpor. It would do no one any good if he tumbled down a mountain and cracked his skull.

For all his caution, however, it did not occur to Panacea that someone might be tracking him. Not until it was far too late.

He'd stopped to admire the falls; of course he had. They were pretty, and Panacea often felt he didn't see enough pretty things in his life. There was a common sort of beauty to the copses and the hillocks, of course; the ferns and the ponds, the little birds in the spring and the dragonflies in the summer. It'd never been quite enough, though. So he wandered. He looked for the breathtaking beauties, the sights he would never forget.

A thief's life didn't bring these things to mind, but it'd given him that and more. Even so, it'd been a long time since he'd thought back to that chapter of his life. He didn't want to, not after its cruel and abrupt end.

"Phoenix."

That single word hissed at his back was enough to fling him fully into the past. All the gilded fur along his spine stood at once. Panacea froze; he was fast, but not faster than a thief still at work. He'd grown soft. He'd wanted to be soft.

Fuck off already! In a fury he whipped around and lunged — and yes, he'd recognized that voice. Panacea only had a second to see the face behind it, but the image stayed with him. Even as his teeth met fur and then skin; even as the air erupted into fury and snarling cries. Yes, he knew this man. He knew what he wanted, even after all this time.

The answer was still the same: Panacea would sooner die.