Stone Circle Forgiveness: can you imagine?

Soft in his beaten jaws, a rabbit.
Old wounds reopened in the chase of it. Like a telling that he should not- or that only a fool would try. As physical, tearing wounds, they reopened. And somehow, he felt a twist in his stomach; a wound that was not there.

It was into the territory that he traveled. With a long and weary face, those ears perked, and his eyes not so much. Looking anywhere felt difficult. It felt more difficult than it had felt to sink his teeth into a mere rabbit.
A true struggle.

One he'd not experienced before.

That now, when he thought to it, taking from @Tauris had been easier.

So, he sought her in the night, shoulders tight and eyes tired.
She would not take it. She would not want it. She would not eat it.

He’s back. The rebel without a cause, and the only packwolf indignant enough to set upon her den, unannounced, at nightfall.

She rises silently, a warning bray pressing at her teeth but only withheld for the courtesy of her sleeping family that she would not rouse all for this rat to try to prove a point. She scents him first, then the hare, and finally her eyes meet his against the gathering dark.

“One warning. Back off,” a rolling urge not from a threadbare girl, nor a woman, but a mother who will not hesitate to defend her children.

Tauris stepped out quietly, but the cool spot she’d left behind woke him. He’d become a light sleeper since he’d begun minding children, and he might have otherwise curled back up and went back to sleep it if hadn’t been for the quiet but stern warning Tauris gave. He couldn’t tell what it was, or who it was that had come to the den, but when Tauris uttered a harsh warning, he rose clumsily to his feet and extracted himself from the others and moved to her side.

His curling, slightly dreaded fur did not lift, so heavy had become, but the few tufts at the crown of his head that were distinctly wolf fur prickled, framing his face. In the darkness, he saw another man- one who smelled of blood, and carried a rabbit. 

Skáld was oblivious to their qualms, but remained at Tauris’ side, owlish gaze starting directly at the man who had come and disturbed Tauris from her sleep.

It would be a lie to say that he didn't expect it. A bigger lie to say he'd expected anything. He simply- acted, and walked, to the scent which he drew closer to him, and all of the fresh ones with it. A mindless, one-tracked mind that said forward.

There'd been no question of if he were to be mauled, or if he were to be passed by as a ghost. He felt ghostly. There was something so out of body for this, of him, for him, to bring a stranger he knew not of, a stranger who he could feel dread his every breath, something of value.

If it had value.

What made something have value?

It was also something he realized too-- that there was nothing of value that could be handed to a being with no will to have it. Close to her, a staring boy with unclear intentions. To Bonnie, however, he saw malice ready to spiral.

So, he stopped in his place, slow and steady, and dropped the rabbit down at his own paws. Glancing to Tauris, he flicked a single ear, and then went to turn. There was no point in conversation. It would not go well. He saw it.

She stands silently and unflinching until Skáld is at her flank, provoking a swift stride to block him from view and a deterring snarl to rise in earnest. She eyes the man's cautious oncoming with no more to say other than the raise of lip and the straight pitch of her tail.

He will not fight; in fact he too says nothing at all over her bray, only deposits his quarry on the ground between them then backs away. She maintains her warrior’s stance with a palpable mistrust, and intends to until he is well out of range of sight and smell.

“What is this?” Her low hiss demands.

Skáld shrank back slightly, when Tauris slipped her shoulder in to block Bonario from view. He licked his lips and exhaled, his throat clenched. He didn't understand why Tauris took such offense to the man, who was one of their packmates, but he wasn't about to question her. Still, if she trusted him so little, then Skáld wanted to remain present, peering like a coward through a gap between Tauris' legs as Bonario began to walk away.

His nose burned with the scent of whelps and fur. Skáld, hiding away and Tauris like a raging bull with teeth and a stare that he could not gumption care to. Other things, many things- things far more strenuous in thought had been eating away at him. There was certainty in his head, that speaking more to her would make his head pound and his teeth rattle with irritation.

What a stupid idea, to bring it. What an even more foolish question. How bored and slow did she have to be in order to form that level of childish pettiness, immaturity, to question a piece of food? What loyalty did she truly have to her packmates, if still pounding in her chest with rage over his sight? He cursed Gunnar for telling him to come, and he cursed him even more that he told him to bring back what he'd taken, when she did not want it.

His headache had been speaking, as did the weight on his neck that told him it had not been worth it. Every foul word that tried to form in his mouth, every retort he had- he had many, like how she foamed like a dog over childs play, how she'd brought children to their home when she acted as one herself. All of these things, he'd not been far from himself. All those foul things, in an instant, rushed through his mind, and it was a fight to not say them. A fight that..he found himself reconsidering.

Is this worth it?

Who would gain anything out of it?

Can I really learn to be better?

He swore next that Gunnar was wrong and that he could not. There was Silvertongue's voice, and a pleasant pups in his ears. That pup from Riverclan who visited him. He didn't know if he believed in any Starclan. He didn't know if he had done this for himself. Bonnie knew that he didn't know what he was doing, just that whatever action he almost took then..felt wrong. 

He would not do that. He would not do- that.

With a close of his eyes, a wince as his teeth gnashed, he hiked his shoulders.

In a hitched voice, one that nearly cracked, his tone a poor attempt at keeping his illusion of rage and not discomfort,

"....Sorry."

His shoulders slowly fell, and he left.

An apology.

For long she holds herself unyielding, ears pinning fiercely over her head, breaking her posture only to worry over Skáld, to push a nose below his chin and press a smattering of reassuring licks to his maw.

She turns back to test the air then pads forward towards the kill. She plants her paws on either side. She smells the blood, the heat of still-warm flesh, a freshly slain kill. She considers.

“Take it, Skáld,” she turns her head to see him, “I’ll be back in a moment.”

Her tread weaves through the wild meadows under darkness to a retreating figure caught in moonlight.

“Tomorrow,” she calls, endeavoring to pause him and ending her own trot a fair distance away. She slides an anxious  tongue over the sides of her gums.

“Hunt with me?”

Skáld out!

Skáld watched for the tension to diffuse, but he saw few signs from Tauris that she had any intention of softening. The yearling felt more worried than anything, to see such sentiments exist between packmates. The only time he had seen Tauris be so stern was the day he'd returned to Kvarsheim as a bedraggled, starving stranger. He knew, then, how quick she could be to forgive, under the right circumstances- he had seen her shift and look upon him with concern only moments after she was made aware that he was family. 

He nodded and took the rabbit, and retreated back into the den. 

Tauris would be safe, he trusted. And perhaps, she might find reason to look more kindly upon Bonario, too.

Look at her with her happy life. Her happy kids. Surrounded by people who loved her. Her perfect work attitude. Her welcoming face. Her attractive personality that drew in others around her until she was just swimming in friends, relationships. One breeding season out, and that was all it took. A family. A life. A husband. He hadn't seen him, but he was sure he was there. Wasn't her life just so great? Didn't she just get all the cards handed to her neatly into her palms? And what had she done for it?

Little miss perfect. Can do no wrong. Can breathe no errors. Can speak no sin. She had it all now, with no problems, and no story with a plot that spiraled before her eyes. That the only villain in her story-- was him.

She got to have a perfect life, didn't she? The perfect story. A happy ending.

He stared at her, a bitter flux in his gut. He saw it. Her eyes pierced by moonlight, and he, draped in the belly of the shadows.

Even now, she extended her word to someone such as him.

A peace he didn't think he had.

With the symphony of a silent night and a forest desperate to sleep, he could only stare. A peer through his tired lids, and empty mind.

"Yes."

She had everything.

And he had nothing.

He hated her for it.