Northstar Vale The little deaths are a little less, even if just for a moment

She lived.

With a gasp, Saena awoke in a deep rut where a tree's roots snaked into the ground. A layer of snow lay over everything, including her, as she lifted her head. Her lips twisted into a snarl as the closed wounds of the day before stretched and split open to ooze fresh blood while she struggled to her feet, but the flow was staunched significantly by scabbing. She departed slowly, leaving a patch of blood where she'd slept for the inspection of any curious wolves.

It was another day and a half before she reached the vale. By then the smaller wounds had stitched closed and clotted, but the pain was infinitely more for it. She couldn't turn her head without feeling the sharp yank of scabs. The wound on her side had split open half a dozen times as she climbed and descended, and her core temperature was higher than it should be from fever and inflammation, but Saena was out of the woods in terms of bleeding to death. Now she would only need to heal to a point where her blood would not be poisoned by rot, and she would be safe.

She limped down into the vale and howled lowly to announce her location to the other pack wolves, but then she heavily sat to catch her breath and fend off the agony momentarily. Her face was drawn and her eyes were sunken from pain and shock and blood loss, but she was alive, in familiar territory, and she knew she would not be leaving the sides of her pack mates again, not for a very long time. Her time scouting, visiting the maple forest, and taking time to herself was finished. She could not risk her life again, lest an ambitious bitch try to usurp her station and take her partner.

She growled, knowing even in her injured state she would fight tooth and nail against any contenders, and hoisted herself to her feet once more with a strangled cry of pain.

As the call pooled slow and mournful across the bowl of the vale, Warbone turned into an unrecognizable force of nature, fueled by fear and preemptive rage for what he would find at the other end of his companion's strained voice. He would have reacted similarly to hearing any of his family's song laced with such strife, but given the fact that it was his alpha female who had called out for relief, his actions were spurred far more by emotion than it was by duty. He was already ill-at-ease with her constant ventures, and her prolonged absence had not gone unnoticed; in his opinion it had only been a matter of time before this very instance became reality. Saena's life meant more to him than his own, and he would be damned if her escapades outside the vale would take her from him.

Finding her was easier than containing his ire about the given situation. It was all he could do not to snarl at her, even with the sympathy he felt towards seeing her wounded. Warbone crowded her, his tail bristling and his tongue carefully searching her smaller, non-serious wounds. The foreign scent on her tickled something in the back of his thoughts, but he couldn't place it in his eagerness to simply see that she not sustained an injury like the one to his face.

He knew the marks of another wolf's teeth as surely as he knew the tracks of a deer, yet he still asked her "what happened?" instead of who.

Saena should've known it would be Warbone to respond first to her call, and she groaned lightly at the furious blaze that consumed his features. What was she to tell him? That she'd gone picking fights with an old enemy, who also happened to be family, whom she'd never had an issue with in the past but was now someone she wanted to kill just for how she smelled? The whole thing sounded ridiculous, yet it was exactly what had happened. Saena didn't entirely regret it—she half hoped Wildfire died from her injuries, so the black bitch leading that pack of savages would have something to remember Phoenix Maplewood's alpha by—but she no longer saw reason in it, either.

She couldn't help a disgruntled growl as Warbone invaded her space, and she made a half-hearted snatch at his muzzle as if to fend him off, even though she didn't really want him to back off. Her ears, one tattered from bites, pressed down against her scalp as she assumed the role of supplicant, but it was with a sour tone that she said, "nothing really." That would not suffice, so in a heartbeat or two, she sighed lightly, winced at the pain that radiated through her with that simple action, and admitted, "it was stupid."

But what was Saena if not a little recklessly stupid now and again?

Warbone pressured her with a near-snarl of his own, ears pitched forward aggressively even as she relented to him, and dribbled some vague and unhelpful answers that she surely couldn't have thought would sate him. Since she had given him no where else to direct his anger, he became virulently angry with her, every hair on his body rising, demanding. "Stupid, Saena?" the gargoyle rumbled, a clear hostility towards the term. "You have shamed us then -- shamed me! -- showing that side of yourself out there," he spat in her ear. Because whether or not she had been in the wrong, in whatever it had been, he knew he would defend her tooth and nail from any backlash; it didn't mean he had to appreciate being put in the situation.

The wolf recoiled several paces, his copper chest swelling as he looked at her; for the first time with arrogance, and distaste. There is a cry in his head and he hears it in two languages:

Origato jacioniv ocuir! (Let her see!)
Origato jacioniv ocuir! (Let her see!)
Svabol wielgic acht nomenes svaust weatonan ve! (What falls upon those who dishonor me!)

His tail lashed, unable to decipher what any of the words really mean, and a long moment passed before he remembers the tongue they both understand. "We will fight the next time you try to leave this vale."

She knew it was stupid, but that didn't make her any less indignant when he spat back in her face. Warbone was huge and intimidating, and submitting to him was as automatic as breathing, but she was also a leader. She owned the vale with him, not under him, no matter how she behaved, and the hair on her back shot up aggressively. There was really nothing she could do against him, especially with blood still oozing into her pelt from countless fresh wounds, but Saena nevertheless thought to make her utter displeasure known. She could hardly stand, but she rumbled a fearsome growl as if she could.

Maybe it was being injured and backed into a metaphorical corner that made her so brazen when she snapped, "I know! Excuse me for tarnishing your reputation." She didn't even know what he meant by it. Her fight with Wildfire was entirely personal, and had nothing to do with Duskvale or him, and she didn't understand the connection. "I won," she grumbled, hissed even, but it made no difference. Warbone threatened her all the same, both physically with an agitated lash of his tail and verbally, and she gaped openly at him.

Was he a worse wolf than Reek, then? Reek had never stifled her freedom, though it had driven him to seek another and toss her aside, little did she know. Would he truly attack her if she so much as set foot outside the vale? With a vicious snarl and ears pinned down, she moved to push past him, swaying dizzily on her feet as she went, in an effort to avoid the entire discussion. She didn't know if she could do what he insisted, anyway. It lanced her deeply to know he would have no qualms with fighting her over it, though she never said it, if only because that came from her emotional side, and she didn't think he would give two shits about that.

Warbone didn't know what he had expected from her at first, but whatever it had been seemed foolish now that her haughty response tolled like funeral bells in his ears. He felt rabid in that instant -- wanting severely to punish her -- so he rounded on her, both lips and ears peeling back as his own emotions, a dangerous mix of anxiety and rage, became his crafted expression. "You would disrespect me to my face now?" Even as he placed himself between her and her escape, he knew his ardor was misguided. His fear, his care, and his anger for her were all unwilling cohabitants in the recesses of his mind, and it all boiled over into a culmination of overbearing animosity, the only emotion of the three that he was most familiar with.

"You would turn your back on the one who will defend your position, now that you are unable to defend it yourself?" The tone of his words were filled with such black ire, that is was a wonder he didn't descend upon her as reflex surely dictated he should. "What would you have me do, Saena! I would not accept this from any of our followers! Out there  fighting fruitlessly! Damaging their worth for -- for stupidity. So I ask you! What would have me do, Saena, because all I feel is rage and I do not want to hurt you!"

Somewhere in his outburst, brought forth by his discomposure, a glimmer of despair rang clear in his voice. He cared so deeply for Saena that he was afraid of it, and felt trapped between his desire to own her in all ways, and the sneaking inability to control her as he wished. "Now I know not the circumstances that have made you so reckless as to defend yourself alone without thought for consequence, but it is not just you anymore," he spat, feeling that no amount of pride was worth injury to a wolf's only means of surviving, unless of course they intended to lose their life, as he had thought he might with his private vendetta against the Keep.

Had he known that she'd never truly had anyone, lover or otherwise, impose upon her a superior will, he might have seemed less hysterical; but as things were, he didn't understand that her home spirit was something that needed to be grown and groomed. She had always wandered as far and as often as she pleased. He did not want to take that spirit from her, but he also couldn't understand it himself. His own travels had been out of necessity, and it was this thought that spurred him to ask: "what the fuck is so important to you out there?"

Saena was like a wild filly, or more like a stallion, unused to restraint of any sort. How she'd got by as a leader without any sort of restraint was a sheer wonder. Warbone took to her disrespect about as well as she expected him to, but she wasn't cowed by his response as she probably should've been. A wiser wolf would've backed down, but she merely snarled back at him, whiskers drawing back tight around her nose and lips. She halted, only because he was physically blocking her, and stared daggers into his face as he spoke.

"Unable?" she snorted, disbelieving, and missed that she had no tail to lash in that moment. "I've led since I was a year old, Warbone. I'm capable." Even if she was injured, she felt like she could hold her own, as untrue as that was. Perhaps because she was such a wild and heated spirit, or because there was something inspiring in Saena, she'd never really been challenged before. The one wolf who waltzed into Phoenix Maplewood and attempted to do so had been torn apart by her pack, and all others had simply fallen in line. Despite knowing better deep down, she felt she had no reason to fear a challenge now since it had never happened in the past even though she'd been injured many times before. The wolves of Duskvale, she felt, were trustworthy. None would take advantage of her state.

The moment she thought it, she knew how wrong she potentially was, and pressed her ears further back in defeat. Warbone's words hit her like hammers. She looked away, refusing to meet his temper with recognition for the time being, for in her was still the petulant defiance of a young adult and none of the poise and grace of a more composed wolf. But she was afraid of him, afraid to look him in the eye and try to justify herself when she knew she couldn't, even as he claimed he did not want to hurt her. Whether he wanted to or not, she was already hurt, and he was making it worse. She deserved it, of course, but try telling Saena that.

Only when he challenged her to provide a reason did the flame within her flare again, and she growled fiercely as she snapped, "my daughter! My honour! Everything I once worked for!" Pretty much everything Saena had, she'd lost when she lost Phoenix Maplewood. Silver Creek had never been the same. As though to prove that to her, fate had taken her memories and sent her away, only to return and find all she cared for was gone from the Creek. But fate had dealt her a crueler hand still by ensuring that Laurel hated her, and even though she had found Indra and brought her to the vale, and even though Duskvale was now home and she felt that the release it gave her to follow her instincts was better even than the maplewood, there was still a gaping hole in her where her other daughter was meant to fit.

"The wolf I took out was a member of the pack who took everything from me," she snarled. "I lost my honor as a fighter and a leader when I uprooted my pack and fled my home because my children were too young at the time for me to fight for it. They would have died, I couldn't sacrifice my babes for a forest. But one of my daughters is still out there, and now I know they are, too, and they must think me weak. Now they know otherwise. What would you have me do, Warbone?" She knew, of course. He would have her leave it all behind her, like she advocated all comers to Duskvale do, and give herself solely to Duskvale, and fuck the whole past and everyone in it. She wanted to do that. But it was so much easier said than done, she'd lost control when she smelled the smoke on Wildfire's coat and felt it all come rushing back, and that was proof enough that she struggled to put it behind her. Saena's eyes shone with bright tears as she tried once more to push past him, only to collapse in woozy a heap on the ground.

She asked, but in her adjoining petulance, sought to leave before he could answer her. Warbone heaved at the thought of her insistent youth, an irrationality to her rebuttal that should have been left with her formative teenage self. If he had known Laurel, he would have known instantly from which parent she had gotten her entitled disposition from, and had Saena not collapsed, the wolf might have sought to rectify that in her.

He looked down at her, biting back a very powerful urge to end her right there. It was staved further by the appearance of several of their pack, all of whom hung back uncertainly from the bristling first male and their prone first female. If it weren't for the lack of blood on him, it would have appeared that he was the culprit. Warbone glared, easing to his stomach beside Saena, a low growl warning none of them to come nearer. "Hunt for her... please," he managed to strain through his gritted teeth, watching as the collected turned one-by-one to heed his pertinent request.

His anger had ebbed, but as he swung his head and peered over her body, the wounds he saw formed a large lump in his throat, and for a moment he thought he might stop breathing. 

"You had honor when you abandoned what you believed in to keep your children alive," he sighed, seeming to resign to something -- or else, just put it aside for now. "There is no honor in this." Warbone had yet to touch her, or offer any comfort of the sort. Perhaps he had wanted her to suffer still, but now he saw no point to it. His muzzle, his tongue reached out to one of her less mended wounds, tentative as he tested her hatred for what he said to her.

Downed, Saena could see nothing momentarily. The wind was knocked from her lungs by the impact with the ground and her vision went black. Even when it returned moments later, there was a fuzzy quality to it, as if she was waking from an over-long sleep. She rolled one eye upward to spot Warbone, and for a moment, she thought she was staring death in the face. For that moment, he ceased to be her partner and took on an identity born of Saena's own fears, a reaper come to collect her for repeatedly failing herself and others, and she curled in on herself in preparation for the kiss of his jaws on her neck. He was right. He was rage incarnate, and she the physical manifestation of incapability.

She didn't really hear the rest of the pack come up, nor really notice Warbone settle beside her. She was deaf to his command. She was paralyzed by fear, disappointment, self-loathing, and all manner of other feelings that bubbled up like stomach acid. However badly she wanted to get revenge on the smoke pack of the north, Wildfire had done nothing to her but utter misplaced warnings or threats or whatever they were, and in return, Saena had probably killed her. Warbone was right. There was no honour in it. But if she could not find her honour in finding revenge and retribution for what was stolen from her, then what could Saena possibly do? She didn't think she could just forget it ever happened.

The answer was that she just didn't know, and that knowledge alone paralyzed her until Warbone touched her. Instinctively, she flinched away from him, and rolled a bright blue eye to watch him warily. His touch stung, but more than that... He was right, but he'd still frightened her greatly with his temper and his threats now that her own was dying down, and she was still afraid of what he might do should she ever leave again. She was afraid it would be impossible for her to stay like he wanted, and that he would kill her himself. So she flinched away, and mumbled a nearly inaudible, "I'm sorry," as if his forgiveness would somehow stem from it, even though she didn't think he could forgive her.

Warbone felt her flinch away from him as distinctly as if she had physically slapped him. He feared now that he had broken her trust in his frenzy, bearing down upon her a side of himself he never assumed he would have had to use against her. His muzzle withdrew, and the cyclops rolled his eye away from vivid blues in evasive shame. "No," he responded gently, a firm whisper on a bitter air between them. "I accept you. All parts of you."

He looked at her evenly -- there is nothing to apologize for -- and then he sighed. "I will defend your every action, honorable or not... But you cannot expect me to bow to you -- to respect you -- if you will not think of this pack before you do. And I especially cannot if you will turn your back on me each time we disagree."

The twitch of her ears was the sole indication Saena heard Warbone. It wasn't that she meant to ignore him. She was just dizzy and exhausted from journeying whilst bleeding, and found it easier to press her nose into the crook between her ankles and remain motionless. In time maybe she would just slump forward and pass out. That would be ideal, thought Saena, but she knew in the very next instant it would be dangerous.

So she forced herself to consider Warbone's words. Saena's thoughts on the matter were very simple: she felt she deserved respect for all she'd been through in her young life, regardless if she put the pack first or not. But out of fear that his reaction would be adverse; Saena dared not tell Warbone that. It was time to grow up, she sensed, and not make mountains out of molehills as she was accustomed to doing. She was not well adjusted, thanks to a tumultuous childhood and adolescence she didn't remember but still felt keenly, but she would have to make an effort where she never had before.

Not just because she was presently afraid Warbone would attack her and oust or kill her if she didn't, but because she wanted his respect. She didn't want to have to fear his wrath, although that wound would likely stay between them for some time. Saena was too unused to reprimands to simply forget it and get over it the next day. Deciding that she would at least try, even if she was sure to be uneasy around her partner for at least a few days, she sighed a quiet, "okay," and left every other thought unsaid.

Her muted response left Warbone with a feeling of intense guilt. It jarred him if only because he wasn't use to feeling perturbed over his own actions. They always felt justified in the moment, and he had always treated his mistakes as such. Things he wanted to take back, he never would, simply because that was the way he had felt at the time. But the moment had passed so quickly this time, that the afterglow of regret had come to him stiflingly early. He knew he should be caring for her, not berating her, and in wondering why he'd done so, he found that it was because he was afraid to lose her. More afraid of losing her than he had been of losing the Keep, which he had threatened Stark for.

It had all been out of fear, and the only way he knew how to handle such an intense emotion was to lash out -- with his words when he couldn't do so physically. He whined softly, edging closer, but not yet daring to try and clean her once more. He didn't think he could take it if she shied away from him again. He thought maybe they should try to walk to a water source, but she seemed too weak, and once she had some food in her, they would probably have an easier time of it.

The whine in his throat heightened and then deepened into a groan as he realized his own shortcomings in this situation, unable to find any words thereafter except a rather pitiful: "I was not right to threaten you."

She flicked an ear toward Warbone when a soft whine burbled in his throat, and flicked it away when the volume grew until he finally seemed to deflate with a groan. Swinging her muzzle across her battered and bleeding foreleg, she regarded him through a half-closed eye, feeling too drowsy to pay too much attention. She admittedly felt bad about that, but there was nothing to be done about it. She needed rest.

"I shouldn't have left," she countered, but that was all she could bring herself to say. She was still too trapped by her immaturity to recognize an effort in reaching out, and that would form a distance between them for a time, no doubt. It wasn't willfully done or even consciously done, but she'd always been one to run from her problems in her own way. Rarely did she take responsibility for her actions, preferring to blame others for what was a lack of stability on her part. She knew she could only improve.

Whether she really, truly wanted to was the real question. "Can we just rest?" she murmured, and then added a hesitating, "please? It hurts." She just wanted to close her eyes and sleep for a few hours to escape her self-loathing and the agony that came with the unforgivable thing she'd done. And in time—whether or not Warbone remained to attend her—she did drift off into an uneasy sleep.