Overture Downs It's hard, letting go

@Siqsa <3

She wasn't quite sure when the pain began to whittle away into anger nor did she recall when that anger bled into rage. 

She paced to and fro as heat rose beneath her fur, ears pinned in fury and eyes trained on the repetitive motions of her ivory paws. 

I'm so sorry. 

I'm so sorry. 

I'm so sorry. 

"You're sorry," the words were but bitter whispers as they escaped her throat - startling the healer at the sound of her own voice. 

"You're sorry?" She shouted to the distant treeline, teary gaze searching as if Kavik himself would emerge. 

What good did sorry do her? 

Did it keep her warm at night? Did it abate the despair eating a hole in heart like some worm within a rotten apple? Did sorry fix anything at all except for Kavik's guilt-riddled conscience?

Whirling on her three remaining paws, the hunter attacked the trunk of a tree viciously. Her claws gouged deep furrows in the bark, revealing the pale, sticky inner wood. Liri kept slashing as the tears fell, half wishing it were Kavik her claws had sunk into. 

At last she dropped clumsily to the ground, dry-eyed and hollow, panting with effort as she stared blankly at the blood-smeared tree - too fueled with adrenaline to feel the searing pain in her bloodied paws. 

It was a hard decision to make. But Siqsa has seen entirely enough, learned entirely enough to last him for the rest of his life. He had seen Ruenna talking to some guy, all smiley and stuff. He had a conversation with the girl Kavik had fucked. And he had come to learn that everything good about the majority was all simple... 
because all of it was bullshit. 

He should've known better. The man might have been born under the last name of a Dragon legacy, but his name first and foremost was Devil. And Devils held grudges. And now his grudge was emblazoned steel against the ice of broken trust. The thaw was the resistance, the futile attempts to rationalize this mess, the puddle laying across his ebony blue paws the lies coming to rest before him. The grass which would spring from beneath  once this all came to season? The truth. 

But he wanted no part of it. He didn’t want to touch anything dealing with them.
But wasn’t he the coward? The one who hadn’t yet told Ruenna how he felt? The one who tried to change for the better? For her? Or was he sorry for even trying to have such a life? To find peace amongst the calamity of his past?

He stopped the swaying trek as that thought was immediately responded to by the shattering echo of another. “YOU’RE SORRY?” It bled across him, ripping free a heartstring and beckoning a response of his own in the vector point of where the initial yell broke forth from the frigid timbers. “What if I am?! What if I fucking regret giving a goddamn about you?” His ire rose as his hellish garnets skewered through the walls of stocked woods as though Ruenna had decided to throw herself in front of him, asking for him to consider others feelings, to rest, to take the yarrow everyday and try to eat healthily, again. And almost reflexive, his own gaze grew blurred as saline began to maul his corneas. 

But his brain rained enough for today, and he felt it begin to close off his emotions, yet again. It was obvious he wasn’t meant to speak them, to show he considered anyone meaning anything to him. They began to fade as his his view of innocence too began to wash away on the wintery tides of past betrayals. 

Hunched over, the hefty 2 year old wolf dog was once again alone. Alone and miserable, as he walked through the seemingly hollow woods, searching for nothing as he lied to himself over and over again, trying to atleast feel something, again.

The answering cry echoes back, drawing her attention - if only briefly. 

No wolf was in sight. In her hysteria, Liri can only conclude that the Tiny Voice must be back though it seems much louder now. And as angry as she. 

Something inside snapped. 

Liri began to laugh, she laughed until fresh tears squeezed free of her eyes - the string of giggles frantic with the undercurrents of insanity. 

"Then that makes two of us," she murmured in return, still speaking to Kavik though he would never hear her words.

Siqsa kept up his -

What was that smell? It was someone else, someone else was here, and instead of stopping his shuffle to figure why Ruenna hadn't screamed back at him, he rampaged forward, hoping to actually lay hands on whatever was there. He even moreso plead Sithis that it would happen to be her, just so he could have her to himself. Just so he could lay it on her one good time, just so that grey scrub didn't get her. Whether it would be death or a straight hatefuck, he'd do it, and he wouldn't regret a single fucking bit of it.

With narrowed garnets, he broke through the boroughs with a detemrination unlike very much he'd ever been this passionate about-
And something moved. Someone moved.
Lowhung head adjusted accordingly with the hulky body, and with those devil eyes he spied a white wolf. Not at all the little sterling he wanted to sate ruin upon. But the pattern of movement, the scent, that perfume that was just over him when he had been unconcious forever ago from Minori's havoc she embarrassed him with; he remembered it. IT was that kind woman, Liri. And his heart immediately grew alight as he knew now she was alive, and well. Well, not well...but alive. And that was what mattered. He could tell-

The sky darkened overhead in his heart as that thought was shut down with a metallic click and soldered off. That wasn't an option...his disappointment in the dark 'alpha' was too immense.
But he had nothing but pity for Liri. As he stood there like a coward, he didn't know whether he was the only one who vouched for her return...everyone else had doubted she was even still alive. But before they left, he told Kavik if she was alive, she would find them, and she would come.
But she wouldn't want to know what Kavik had been up to...it would ruin that sweet heart of hers.

Unless the simple abandonment had done enough to the Alphess.

"Liri?" his gravel was low, and hesitant. He didn't even know himself if he wanted to be him in this moment.
But it was to bit too late for that now.

The brush of a paw over dead leaves, the moist crunch of snow - almost imperceptible. Her head raised, her legs pushed her upwards of their own accord. 

Whatever it was - if it was looking for trouble, the abandoned Alpha was ready to fight. Regardless of the outcome, she dared anything to come for her. Either she'd perish - which didn't sound too bad - or it would. 

But she's frozen in surprise as the dark figure emerges, for she easily recognizes Siqsa by his crimson gaze. He was the only wolf she'd encountered with eyes the color of blood. 

"Siqsa, " she murmured numbly by way of greeting. 

"What happened...with you?" The hesitancy is on account of her grief. She can not bring herself to explain that she knows where Kavik and the rest of her wolves fled, that she had visited Swiftcurrent Creek. 

Siqsa's scent had been absent, leading her to wonder what exactly had become of him. 

She didn't hate him, atleast. That was the best part of this all. The worst was he didn't know what she knew, or if she anything at all...but he could only assume she knew nothing, as she wasn't seeming too off. She seemed forlorn....but what forsaken soul hadn't? He felt numn on hs own accord, but some stubborn piece of him still craved that piece of pack desire. That family that Kavik had promised him - had promised them all.

But Liri was the only remenant of that...
So he'd have to make do, and cherish this while he could.
Atleast until she broke him, too.

"Tave gazkas zinot dundesys kalv... ir tave saarai krajoti sulig tave gidona âti zhol visa." The words were a harsh spit of speech, rough and foreign, an intruder amongst the world of regular Wolfspeak, but they were spoken with such saddness, a sorrow that softened the words to nearly cry, themselves. But behind it all was the disappointment. "I've come from a life of lies and debauchery, Liri...I don't need another. So I've left it all behind. I...I can't with packs, anymore. I can't put my trust in the kind faces who tell one thing, and mirror perpendicular, rather than parallel. I won't. Not anymore."

For once, he sounded much older than what he truly was, as though this awful shabackle ended up ripening the hotheaded youth he had been when he had first been introduced to them. He still had enough work for him...but the young Demon had much under his belt from this mess. 

"You?" His eyes ran across the body of the pale Alphess, wondering what had brought her so far, and how she had even lived through this ideal. He had no idea what she had been through either...or that she had already associated with the ones he ran from, only to beat him to the party.

She remembered vaguely the wary, distrustful feelings he had instilled upon first arriving at the plateau so long ago. Something in the way he had eyed Ruenna, the fury he suppressed - it hadn't settled well with her then. 

But now, as she studies him - Siqsa merely seems tired. Not physically but tired of the world, of lies, of unfulfilled promises - just as Liri was. 

The winter nymph doesn't understand the foreign tongue that caresses her ears but the words are so filled with loneliness, so broken that she imagines she can feel their meaning in her heart. 

"Yeah, " she agrees inadequately in the common tongue, gaze dropping. 

It lifts when he continues, her jaw clenching slightly in utter agreement. 

"I'm surviving, " she answers with an odd little half smile, full of anger and bitterness. 

Barely. 

He could see the cracks...and he could feel the water from her tears which had settled, and frozen in the crevices. Liri was almost to a point of no return. This increased his worry to a critical degree. Face furrowing, the bowed giant took a risky pair of steps forward, his filter of proper social interaction still faulted. "Tell me you're okay,Liri. It's already fucked up that the world's fucked up; tell me you're not with it, too."

Siqsa was tired. Her thoughts had been correct on his view, on his mind, on the slump that had been drooped across his mountainous shoulders like a planet he was forced to carry, forever. "Can I atleast stick with you? Just to make sure that-" you're okay "-that I'm okay, too?"

She meets his ruby gaze - intense, compelling. She wishes she could tell him that she was doing okay, that she was coping. 

But she wasn't. 

The truth of it hides in the woodland gaze that pleads for him to understand. She's too tired to fight anymore. 

The spite, the refusal to let those who had sought her harm see her truly fall - to see her give in - for the stubbornness of refusing to let them win has fled her. 

Liri is a shell. A weary, grief-torn shell that doesn't know how to be okay anymore. 

"I'm trying, Siqsa." Trying to not to feel like an absolute waste of space, trying not to forsake the ancestors - who had proven to be cruel. I'm trying to forget him. 

She'd never imagined it would be Kavik who would defeat her. 

"Yeah, you can stick with me." She nods slightly. He's part of the family she had lost - his company would be welcome. They'd have to survive this together - try to make some sense of the mess their lives had all become.

He didn’t think she’d actually accept him, a partially disabled wolf dog who hadn’t had any kind of interaction with him other than picking him up when he was down, caring for him with Ruenna while he was out...but she had. And while he couldn’t say that he had exactly sought her out, he hadn’t ever declared her dead. In his natal pack, healers were usually the last to perish; the spirits aided them to longevity because of their shaman works. They were the life givers, or the damners depending on their work. And Liri was saved. If anything, they watched over this she-wolf with very interested eyes, and would pave a way for her because of her craft. And Siqsa believed this wholeheartedly. 

“Thank you, Liri,” the foreign words created his deep voice to land at her paws, should she accept the appreciation. It may have seemed to be for her allowing him to band with her, but it was so much more. 

The Demon wanted to ask her how’d she gotten on, how she had managed to survive the onslaught of winter being sick and all. Her body wasn’t in the least bit of good shape however, and this he figured she would need food and rest. But the last thing you can do is advise a healer what they needed as far as health - so instead, the bowed lupine mix asked her,

”What’s our next move?“

"It's I who should be thanking you, " Liri returns with a soft twist of her lips. It's not the cold that bothers her so much, nor the ache of hunger gripping her stomach; it was the lack of people. Nights were the loneliest. As Liri bedded down to sleep silence pressed against her eardrums in place of the sounds of life - no sounds of her packmates settling in around her, no coughing or voices murmuring, no sounds of any couples in their beds or babies crying. Just silence. 

"I don't think I've planned any moves. I've just been wandering - looking for food and shelter. So far, I haven't found a reason to stop, " she shrugged her pale shoulders, as if to indicate that she would stop when she did in fact find something worth stopping for. 

forgive pls. Just wanted you to be able to get this one off your active just as much as i wanted to. 

"That's fine with me- just need to get the fuck away from them," he murmured surprisingly soft for something so violent. He would need as much insulation from this situation as she would, more than likely. 

So gratefully he accepted her offer, appreciation in the wolfdog's garnet gaze. And they would walk free from this blasphemy, together.