Firefly Ravine energy in space was the ultimate bad father

@Arturo!

Furi slips away from the borders before the sun rises, before Blixen is awake and can figure out where she’s gone. Knowing she’s not supposed to leave the pack without someone with her, at the dangerous suspicion of their neighbors, she does not slow down. Her route is direct, across the open fields leading down into the ravine. The sun is high in the sky by the time she reaches the ravine but is blocked by thick layers of clouds above. She knows some time has passed to be mid-day but the weather does not allow any indication.
 
She doesn’t know exactly why but she half-expects to run into @Ingram again, as if this is their little rendezvous no one else knows about. What likelihood would he be out here a second time, anyway, especially after their run-in at Drageda’s borders? She licks her lips and lifts her head, squinting against the dull bright of the clouds. A light breeze rolls through, nipping at the skin beneath her thick fur, and she continues along the frozen bank of the ravine and deeper into the territory.

the gorge was large and the rapid rush of the river that snakes through it is loud enough to drown out the worst of arturo's thoughts. somedays are kinder than others and while today his insistent mind isn't being necessarily cruel to him he doesn't want to think about how his life's came full circle to when he'd first stepped foot in the teekon wilds. all that was missing was the swarm of locusts, a bit of hunger pangs and it would be eerily similar. he pushes those thoughts away and focuses upon the white noise of the rushing rapids as he follow it's serpentine path.

his steps slow as a familiar scent tickles his black, leathery nostrils. familiar in that he vaguely recognizes the pack's scent. the individual wolf appears next and at catching sight of her only then does arturo's steps cease. there is something undeniably familiar about her, something that seizes in his chest and causes an uneven palpitation of his heart. arturo can't place it, and thus schools his masked face into one of his typical indifference and lets out a courtesy chuff to announce his presence.

There’s little sign anyone has been here at all lately. Some untouched snow in most places, now that she’s passed the point where Ingram and she had spent some time together. Whatever their differences are, she hopes it is not the last time she sees him in a positive way. Even integrated into Drageda, with a girlfriend (is that what she is now?), and other friends, there’s still some part of her—recently resurfaced with the appearance of her family—that pulls her away. She had not been taught much about Teaghlaigh in her short life but it is not dead to her, still thriving somewhere in her chest as much as it has to be in Eirlys and Ceallach.

A chuff causes her head to turn, lost in her own thoughts, and she turns to look at a large, pointed brute. Everything about him screams familiar! but she only stares, blinking a few times. His face of indifference is met with a stunted expression of not-so-sure and her ears fall back against her head.

"Papa," she mumbles quietly, only for her ears.

Furi swallows a thick lump in her throat and she nervously licks her lips, not sure what to say. Witchdoctor, she hears her sister say and she opens her mouth to say something but not a word falls out.

arturo looks at the young woman before him, growing increasingly annoyed with himself ( though he is careful not to show it for it's not her fault ) about the nagging in the very back of his mind that tells him he should know. know what? there was something about her that scratched at the recesses of his mind wrung through hellfire and war-torn as it was like a caged animal desperate to get out. she is about the age of his lotturos and he assures himself that must be it. she is of a similar age which in truth should mean little because plenty of litters had likely been born around that time. he thinks he sees her mouth utter a word but it does not reach his ears which taper back against the curve of his skull as he stares at her, his mask of indifference morphing into one that resembles a mixture of unbidden curiosity and a studious perplex. still, it has been a long time since he's laid eyes on any of his daughters and he does not make the connection that he is face to face with one that he assumed to be a ghost.

the mobster draws in a soft breath and lets it out heavier than he'd drawn it in. the longer he stares at her, trying to decipher the enigma she presents to him makes him feel creepy and he averts his burning gaze of hellfire from her to take in the backdrop behind her, sweeping the landscape around them. the habit of a man who once would have — and had — done anything to protect those that he loved, those that called him ceannasach. he clears his throat as his gaze naturally falls back to the young woman before him. "i didn't mean to startle you." the gangster offers as an apology, and because he hopes to dispel the awkwardness he inexplicably feels.

He doesn’t say anything right away and she stares back at him, feeling uncomfortable. He looks at her in a way she isn’t fond of: he doesn’t recognize her. Maybe it isn’t even Arturo. Eirlys had said he became someone else and that someone isn’t someone she wants to involve herself with. She doesn’t remember what she’d been told but she supposed, if he answered anything other than Arturo, it would be true.
 
A stone sits heavy in her chest and she looks away. Only when he speaks do her ears move forward and she closes her eyes. It is her father’s voice and it pulls her, willing her to move forward and embrace him ut her feet remain firmly in place. “It’s okay,” she says quietly, opening her eyes and slowly lifting her gaze to meet his.

the elephant in the room does not appear as if it intends to go anywhere anytime soon. it leaves arturo with a frustration the tension at the enigma that he cannot solve but undeniably feels like he should be able to. his annoyance swells to a shrill crescendo and his attempts to stifle it grow increasingly lackluster. his brow furrows as his lips mash into a terse line, a slight grind of his teeth given as his ears flutter back to rest at half mast atop the sharp curve of his skull. "there's this insistent nagging in my head that i should know you." arturo admits abruptly. he doesn't necessarily mean for the words to spill forth and yet they do and he does not apologize for them or attempt to take them back. he cannot solve the mystery nagging by himself and wonders if, perhaps, she can be of assistance to him. perhaps it is nothing and it is true that arturo's mind has not been the most stable of places in the recent past. he is sound, now. the witchdoctor might be a monster from a bad nightmare but the gangster was undoubtedly the devil in a gentleman's guise and the king of hell will always win that tug-o-war. arturo turns his hellfire eyes back to the young girl, seeking an answer to the unspoken question that lingers within the fire of his gaze.

If she hadn’t run into Eirlys, then Ceallach, what would this meeting entail? Maybe she would see her father for the first time into months and run for his embrace. She wouldn’t know he’s changed—whatever that means—and he certainly wouldn’t be some other name. Witchdoctor? It leaves a bitter taste in the back of her mouth and she swallows a hard lump that forms in her throat, struggling to swallow and find relief. Furi heaves a sigh, ending it slow. She wouldn’t know Lotte is dead. Maybe she still wouldn’t know.
 
But she knows the man that stands before her is her father but that he is not papa anymore. He is someone else. His mind recognizes her and he does not (no matter that she is bigger and her fur is different). Eirlys, her baby sister, recognized her (sort of).
 
Furi closes her eyes a moment and looks away, awkwardly avoiding the statement entirely. Yes! rests heavy against her tongue. It’s me! Mallaidh! Your daughter! are all lined up one after the other, ready to spill from her mouth and reunite with her remaining parent, but even looking at him it is not Arturo. It is not the proud wolf that led Teaghlaigh with a strong paw, the wolf meant to keep them all safe. When her eyes open they are pooled with tears, blurring her vision and she blinks several times to try and wash them away but they only spill over into her dark fur and hiding from view.
 
“I don’t know,” she says though her voice struggles to remain even. Furi swings her head back to look at him when she feels confident he won’t notice the wetness on her face. “Who are you?”

who are you? she asks him. a simple question that has such a heavy and complicated answer to it. it is a question he's asked himself many times. he's a father, a husband, a leader, a gangster. a bad man that does bad things. a broken man left to endure the world with half of his soul mutilated beyond any and all repair. a survivor ...because his will to live, to keep fighting is stronger than anything else. that's all he knows how to do. survive. yet, are these the answers that the young woman, in all her familiarity and all her foreignness before him seeks? he isn't sure. part of him doubts it. typically that question only requires one answer: a name. "i am arturo. arturo fearghal." the gangster offers in introduction.

It’s quiet for a few seconds longer than she anticipates but he speaks his name. His real name. Or what she has always assumed to be his real name, now she is not so sure. She tightens her jaw looking at him and slowing taking a long breath and holding it in her lungs. What if he’s lying? She doesn’t know anything about the other wolf, the one Eirlys spoke of, just that he was different. It’s been so long since she’s seen the coywolf that she isn’t so sure what’s supposed to be normal.
 
“Who is Witchdoctor?” she blurts before she ever really thinks the question through. Her pale green eyes widen slightly and her ears fall back, knowing she is not ready for whatever answer he has for her.

the young woman's heard of him, then. she gives this away freely by bringing up the witchdoctor. arturo remembers everything from the parasite's last run knows even without knowing her exact age that she is far too young to have came in contact with witchdoctor the first time he'd entered the grand stage. "a parasite." the mobster rasps with conviction and deep timbre raw with unbridled hatred and disgust of the witchdoctor; and no matter how much arturo wishes it wasn't so the witchdoctor was still him. a facet, in the many that congregate to make arturo fearghal. he doesn't know what answer she seeks — and it does not fall from his notice that he's been giving more answers than he's been getting — but he gives her his truth nevertheless.

It’s as vague an answer as any and it certainly doesn’t explain anything. She stares at him blankly for a few seconds until she gathers herself and shakes it off. If she asks more questions, he’ll figure out something is up, but she still has so many more and she isn’t sure he even has what she’s looking for. Again, the girl sighs heavily and shuffles her footing.

”You’re...” she pauses, unsure of what she wants to say now. She just wants things to be easy and they never are. Furi takes a step closer to shorten their distance. It’s strange looking at him, matching him in weight and size (is she bigger?) when it doesn’t seem like that long ago he was cradling her in his embrace after her attack. ”You’re not him, right?”

the connection is still not clicking in his mind. he does not look at her and yet see his long lost daughter because she has grown, she has changed. he remembers malliadh as she'd been when she'd went missing and that had been so long ago with so much that happened in the time between. yet, she knows him. that is obvious enough now as she pressed forward with her inquiry on whether he is witchdoctor or not; given that it's who she seemingly assumes he is the only logical explanation could be that perhaps he did meet her as the witchdoctor. while he remembered everything ( or as close to everything as one tends to remember ) it's true that the parasite had never been keen on paying much attention to other wolves. they hadn't interested him and so, easily, details could have been lost and horrendously blurred along the lengthy and terrifying transition back into himself. "no. i am not the witchdoctor." saying his name feels like he's uttering some black magic curse. it lingers on his tongue, sour, and while the devil that is the gangster may be stronger the utterance of the parasite's name causes a slight shiver along the ex-ceannasach's hackles and guard hairs all the same.

All she has to hear is no before papa trembles out of her maw. She thought she’d lost both of her parents and somehow losing her father, even when he’s still alive, had been hard to wrap her mind around. But he assures her that it is not who he is. The fact he could be lying doesn’t even cross her mind. For a moment longer, she stands there awkwardly, torn between what she wants to do and what she needs to do, but ultimately she gives in and her legs melt, urging her forward without thinking. It’s him!
 
“Papa!” she says, this time clearer and only muffled should he let her fall into him or startled should he retaliate.

papa. for a long moment that appears as if it is in slow motion for the gangster he exists in a stasis of shock. shock, because it all clicks into place in his mind. those puzzle pieces that had eluded him, that nagging voice that was vague enough to drive him crazy but otherwise was wholly unhelpful all put the picture into clear view for him. of course he knew her. she looked different now, all grown up, than she had as a wee babe but she was, without any sliver of doubt his daughter. and lotte's. "molly." he rasps her name as time unfreezes and she rushes towards him. she's not the small child he remembers and despite that he is struggling to wrap his mind around the fact that the lotturo's are adults he concludes that she is still his little girl. his children, even the eldest litter, would always be children to him in a way. she falls into him and though he is svelte and she is bigger than him he stands as stalwart as he always has. "i thought you were dead." he admits in a choked murmur, presumably into the thick fur of her neck as he seeks to bury his muzzle there. "admittedly, i've never been more happy to be wrong." there is a slight chuckle as he speaks those words because on a general basis about most things there is nothing arturo fearghal enjoys more than being right.

All the tension she’d been holding melts and she only feels relief. It’s the first time in months she’s felt… well, empty isn’t the word. Free. Leaving the borders of Teaglaigh in search of her brother had been a mistake of a foolish child and she’s paid for it every step of the way. She doesn’t regret joining Drageda, or making the friends and family she has, but if she could go back and do everything over?
 
Her jaw tightens, forcing the thought from her mind and buries further when she hears her name. Eyes instantly water, swelling with tears long overdue and she presses her face into his familiar form, warmth and home all over again.
 
“I’m sorry,” she whines, her feet starting to dance so she can get closer. Her tail sweeps pitifully back and forth, between her legs and beating the inside of her thighs and lowers her haunches as an excited puppy would. Her embrace turns to kisses, gentle licks against the underside of his chin so much that she can’t take it anymore. He is still her papa. “I’m so, so sorry,” she whines again, her throat straining.

"no, no," arturo murmurs his refusal of her apology in a low, smoky croon of reassurance. "you've got nothing to be sorry for, molly." the gangster offers his words to his daughter as she presses closer to him. fearghal's aren't sorry. and they weren't. he was not the kind of man ( if he was even a man at all, there is still heavy debate in his mind that he's always been the devil *ehem* ) that was apologetic. he didn't give them and he wasn't keen on accepting them. in regards to his daughter: he held nothing against her. she was a child. she made mistakes as children did...as roarke did. that was nothing that she had to apologize for. and while arturo may not be apologetic for his choices and actions in life he was known for forgiveness; yet even that came with a gangster's price. as with dakarai. arturo'd forgiven the man for his crimes but at the acceptance of the knowledge that he'd sell him out. that if arturo could go back and do it all over again he'd have sold him out to blackfeather woods the second that he showed up on teaghlaigh's doorstep.

arturo was ruthless, even in his mercy.

molly was his daughter and if there'd ever been a soft spot in his black heart it had been reserved for lotte and his children in equal parts. "you are fearghal. fearghals do not apologize." it earned him many enemies in his lifetime, sure, and would likely earn him plenty more before his life is over. it was the sacrifice he was willing to make for being free. "i am endlessly proud of you, molly." because despite the odds: she survived. he might not know this version of his daughter but he does not, even for a second, doubt that she will diminish his pride towards her.

He doesn’t accept her apology, nor does he seem to accept her closeness. Has she disappointed him so much that he does not embrace her? Does he, like herself, blame her for his wife’s death? If Roarke hadn’t disappeared, or if she hadn’t looked for him... she realizes she doesn’t even know how she died, only that she’d searched for her lost children until that moment. Her chest hurts, her heart pounding hard her in chest. She’s been nothing but a failure from the beginning. There’s plenty to be sorry for.

Furi fries to release a shaky breath but it’s caught up in his fur and, slowly, she withdraws to look at him. Proud? Of what? All she’s ever wanted to do was the right thing but she’s fallen at every turn and attempt. Tears pool in her eyes but she blinks a few times, and looks away.

”I found Eirlys. And Ceallach,” she tells him, looking to the ground. ”They told me about mama,” she says though she feels strange calling her that when her other siblings use another term. She hadn’t been around for the change (or doesn’t remember) and they speak of Hemlock in a way she’s never been able to see the other woman. ”And about you,” she adds quietly, too afraid to look up, too afraid they might be right and he’s not the man he says he currently is.

his eldest lotturo breaks the silence that settles over them, brief though it'd been, speaking of ceallach and eirlys. she had found them, she says. he knew, somewhere in the wilds, that they'd stayed. he knew it after seeing his youngest daughter; yet this news and that memory drudged up unwanted feelings. feelings that arturo did not necessarily wish to confront or process. whether reed had simply been cruel as children were wont to do or she truthfully did not recognize the name of her own father the gangster did not know. "good," the gangster says simply. it is good that the lotturos were slowly finding their way back to one another. "i know they're in the wilds somewhere," he comments, masking the pain he feels at the memory of his confrontation with reed with well practiced indifference. "i came across my youngest daughter a few months ago. she did not know me. not even by name," arturo admits, drawing his tongue across his jowls. "so i did not try to reunite with them." he's angry at reed and he's angry at hemlock and has come to the terms that his family is better off without him. they have gone their own way and he has gone his.

he has started anew; just as he assumes they have.

and then he comes up. or not him. riptide. the witchdoctor. the parasite went by many names. the devil that is the gangster no longer fears it. for what is a demon compared to the devil itself? nothing. a pale imitation. "chusi's betrayal of the family hurt me deeply, malliadh. the combined weight of lotte's death and chusi's abandonment was too much for me to bear. so the witchdoctor returned. you need not worry," arturo speaks not sure whether he is seeking to reassure or simply being factual. "he will not return." arturo concludes with a deep inhale and a deeper exhale. "and on the topic of chusi: i have disowned her from the family. i assume she knows it is the consequence for her choices but even if she does not i will not be the one to tell her because if i see her again i will kill her." and perhaps he has not sought her out because he still loves her and that is the tragedy of the whole damn thing. he may have disowned her and he may know that the next time they meet he will be the ruthless gangster; a side of him that he never allowed his children to see, but he still cares for her and there is conflict in the acceptance of that fact and the knowledge that he would tear himself apart to keep true to his word and the laws of teaghlaigh.

with nothing else to say he falls silent, watching his daughter for reactions to the truth of who he was and curious as to if, knowing what she knows now, she would find arturo or witchdoctor worse.

Piece by piece, Furi is getting her family back. Once they know their father is their father, that there is no underlying… whatever Witchdoctor was, they can begin to find some normalcy to their lives. If her siblings are on the island, somewhere near, and her father resides on the coast, they are within a short days travel from one point to the next. None of them will be a lifetime away every again.
 
Of course, as he goes into to talk about their older siblings—Chusi—and she frowns. Furi had never been close with their adoptive sister but one of their siblings have already disowned her and their father does the same. She does not remember such harshness in him but was it only because she’d been too young to see him for anything other than their great protector? What would she do if she saw Chusi? Would she even recognize her? Likely, her sister wouldn’t recognize her, but she’s still family… on some level.
 
It takes her by surprise when he states he’ll kill her if he sees her again and her ears fall back against her head. This is not the man she remembers as her father and she wonders if this is what Eirlys had meant. Furi tightens her jaws but doesn’t say anything, awkwardly looking elsewhere as she feels the anger bouncing off the gangster and onto her.

She only spends a little while longer with him, feeling awkward and out of place. This wolf isn't the same man that she remembers as a child, someone she idolized and looked up to, but an angry man lost in this world. Maybe lost in the same way she feels a lot of the time but she doesn't want to let it brew too long. They catch up a little while longer before she decides she needs to turn back and go home but they exchange whatever information necessary to find another one again, should they want to.