Redtail Rise Starting right now, I'll be strong

I have like 15 threads to catch up on between tomorrow and Tuesday on my various chars, but wanted to make this one before worrying about the older ones... 'cause I'm irresponsible that way! Preferably @Reek or maybe @Arion?

Things were quiet around the Rise lately. What with the recent drama, Saena ordinarily would've liked that it was quiet, but the quiet followed in the wake of Smash's departure. Coupled with Wynter's mysterious lack of presence, it made for a restless Alpha. She wondered if any others had slipped away from her pack in the night, and made a mental note to keep an eye out for Rifter, Aklaq and Mercury. Soon she would wander back out into the lowlands and search for other loners keen on making their way in a new place, and there was the impending visit to Nova Peak that should have happened a week ago.

But before any of that, she wanted to catch up with her Beta or her Gamma. Both had been present when Smash left. Both had seen the way Saena behaved when their friend turned from the borders. The Alpha had been careful not to overstate any of her dominance even then. She hadn't snarled or given chase because Smash had technically done nothing wrong, but she was tired of wolves coming and then leaving for seemingly no reason, and had to show that somehow without yelling and pitching a fit. She'd done what she felt was appropriate, but it was very likely both of her most trusted friends wouldn't understand her reason.

She padded through the high interior of the ridge territory, following the recent scent of Reek across the scrubby peak, but when she didn't immediately find him, she rose her head and howled. She would've accepted Arion's attendance as well (or instead of), but her preference for now was the Beta. Reek had seemed positively down in the dumps the last time Saena saw him; she felt she needed to worry for him more than the stoic Arion right now.

Arion managed to coax his stoic facade back onto his face before leaving the scene, leaving the place where Smash had said her goodbyes, leaving the area where he finally realized, admitted to himself that he had the capability to care. That no matter what he did to suppress those emotions, he would never be able to fully do it. Why? Because he was a wolf, a living being. Not a damned machine. He cared for Reek, for Saena and for Smash...though no doubt his love for her was shallower than his love for Reek and Saena. Nevertheless, it still hurt and caused him distress, but it was probably mostly because it was the first time he felt this way and didn't know how to deal with it than Smash leaving.

The chocolate coated warrior still did his duties, patrolling the borders, filling the caches for the pack but he did so without any spirit, lost in his thoughts, wondering...just wondering how this 'care' thing happened to him. His drug addiction also became worse, before Smash's departure, it had been mild but now he was overdosing, taking more than he ever should and it was affecting him a lot....not in the good way.

The howl rang through the air and Arion stumbled and scrambled towards it, the drugs still clouding his usually tactical and clear mind. He didn't care that the howl was technically mainly for Reek, that particular information didn't get past his scrambled mind right now. Bedraggled, and utterly untidy, he made it to Saena without falling over and gazed at her - albeit avoiding her eyes directly - with sunken honey eyes, managing a small smile.

Wait, why am I smiling?

I'm never gonna catch up on threads... Figured I'd jump into this too! :P

In the days following Smash's departure, Reek was a bit shook up.  Perhaps shell-shocked was a better way to phrase it. The bomb that she had dropped rained down like mortar-fire and had caused Reek to retreat back into the trenches of his mind.  He had become quiet, sullen.  Numb.  A far-cry from his usual, obnoxious self.  While Smash had only been the straw to break the camels back, the real problem lied with Wyn.  Her scent had gone stale and what had remained had simply been washed away by the rain.  She was gone and trail had gone cold.

The rise had become all too quiet, and Reek too found himself spending less time within it's borders.  Instead, he traveled the north (though, never traveling too far) in search of his missing mate.  By no means were his travels happy like before.  Although he wandered with purpose, he longed for the lackadaisical days where there was nothing to do but see the world, or even just the simplicity of afternoon nap time with his wife... it had been so long.

He had left his den and found himself on the fringe of the Dawnlark Plains when he heard Saena's howl calling for him.  Another search could wait, and so he ascended the ridge and toward the source of the call.  Upon arrival he noticed that Arion was already there accompanying Saena.  But the howl had been for him?  Maybe he was already there.  But obviously, he was as high as a kite.  Intervention?  

Reek remained silent.

It was much worse than the Alpha female predicted. Arion arrived first, answering a summons that was only partially for him. She didn't mind that. What she did mind was how his eyes sunk into his face, his body seemed disconnected somehow, and the whole of him was a mess. Her eyes were carved of shock and disbelief when they settled on him. Normally she would've demanded to know what the fuck was wrong, but she knew it was the recent departures. She felt much the same, although really, she didn't know what connection they had to Smash. Hers was faint at best. The two males seemed much more connected.

Speaking of males, Reek arrived next, looking very much unlike his normal exuberant self. Saena hadn't noticed as readily as he that Wynter wasn't really around, but that was where her mind went when he failed to even smile. Something was very wrong with him. Whether it was Wynter or Smash, she didn't know.

Saena seated herself, wearing the same concerned expression and touched with sadness. "You guys look like shit," she weakly joked, but where she normally would've grinned and laughed along with them, she only managed a tiny smile. She wanted to go to both of them and physically comfort them, but both looked so out of sorts that she worried it would be taken poorly. Instead, she invited them to come to her. "I wanted to make sure you're okay," Saena said, glancing between Beta and Gamma, "and I can see you're not. I'm upset about things lately, too, but I vowed to be here and be strong for this pack and that includes the two of you. Is there anything I can do?"

Dammnit, why didn't I bring some of that poppy here? Arion thought to himself, scowling inwardly. Idiot, you don't want your leader to know how you're a pathetic, stupid, worthless drug addict remember? The chocolate Gamma made an 'Ohhh' sound inside his head, Right, lol I forgot. Idiot, came the annoying voice in his mind. Just, fucking go away dude, the warrior made a 'go away gesture' in his head before forcing himself to focus on reality and not the world that he had made in his mind.

Truthfully, it wasn't all because of Smash's departure that made him overdose on drugs once more. Part of it was because the easygoing chocolate female was leaving but it was mostly realizing that he had emotions and that no matter what, he could and would never be able to suppress them. He worried that now he would be as sentimental as Reek, that his iron hold around logic was slowly loosening, letting the emotional part of him take over. And Arion didn't fucking know what to do for once, so his solution was to take drugs once more and hopefully forget all that had happened.

The chocolate Greek's gaze drifted from Reek to Saena as she sat herself down, her expression concerned with a touch of sadness. Her joke simply made the Gamma force a fake smile onto his face, which he quickly gave up because it took too much effort.

His leader spoke, saying she wanted to make sure they were okay but that she could see they were not. She continued, telling them that she was also upset about things but that she vowed to be here and be strong for Redtail Rise and that included the two of them. Saena concluded the speech by asking if there was anything she could to for them.

Normally, Arion hated physical affection, he despised it, he loathed it. But now, he realized he had emotions so there was nothing to lose even if he ran up to Saena and buried his muzzle into side of her neck. So that was what he did, except he didn't run to her but slowly and hesitantly made his way towards her before dipping his muzzle into her fur.

You guys look like shit.

Of course they did. Reek was manic and Arion had gone off the druggy deep-end.  What a fitting picture of emotional stability in the Rise. Reek had spent most of his waking time wallowing in his own self-pity or obsessing over patrol, and his herb cache was beginning to show the effect of Reek's instability.  Plant's were beginning to rot and hard work was squandered, but Reek just couldn't bear making the trip up to the den he used to share with Wynter.  Facing reality had become entirely too hard.  Obviously Arion had been dealing with the problem's of the Rise in own way... by getting totally blasted.  

Reek turned his head to Arion sluggishly and scowled. "I'm cutting you off," he chided.  The drug dealer-dealee relationship was a sacred bond... however, it clear to see Arion had been taking things way too far, and dealing with a dead friend would only make problems worse. "No more."

Saena offered to help in any way possible, however there wasn't much Reek felt she could do.  She couldn't just magically bring Wynter or Smash back.  "Just help me keep him clean," he mumbled to his alpha.  "He needs detox.  He won't be able to quit cold-turkey... withdrawals are gonna be a bitch."  Arion was difficult to deal with as is, but without his sacred poppy, Reek would need all the help he could get.  It was for his own good.

Things were so solemn and bizarre that Saena didn't even know how to begin handling them. Her closest companions were husks of their former selves. Arion seemed so far off of normal that he might as well have been a different wolf, and she couldn't help worrying that Reek would throw himself off a cliff if she didn't keep an eye on him. That Smash's departure could affect them this badly not only surprised Saena, but also bothered her. The woman could've taken their loyalty with her when she left, the way they were acting, though she knew Wynter had a part to play as well.

Arion stepped slowly toward her and the Alpha female willed herself to relax at his approach. There was a touch of concern at his sluggish manner, but all he did was press his snout into the side of her neck. She turned her head to rest hers against his cheek, but her eyes went to Reek when he began to speak. She didn't move but for the twitching of her ears in the Beta's direction, not until he'd finished speaking.

Then she lifted her snout and looked fully at him. "What do you mean?" she asked, glancing sidelong at Arion. Something was wrong with him. Saena knew nothing at all about narcotics or how they worked, so the terminology went over her head, but she understood that Arion needed help. "What do you need for... detox?" she asked, tasting the strange, foreign word for the first time.

Smash's departure had showed him something he never wanted to see again. Sure, he was sad that she had left, but he wouldn't necessarily overdose on drugs because of it, the real thing that made him nearly kill himself by indulging excessively on the poppy extract were his emotions. They were things he did not understand, unlike the logical mind he always prided himself in. And although Arion would never admit it, it scared him, it scared him a lot. He had never felt that way before, never known it was possible. Fear cuts deeper than anything else after all.

The chocolate Greek buried his snout into the side of Saena's neck and felt her touch against his cheek. He relaxed, but remained alert at the sametime and immediately tensed at Reek's words. Quickly, Arion pulled himself away from his leader and turned and shoot his friend an angry glare, if looks could kill, the bedraggled Beta would have just died a thousand painful deaths. "What?!" he snarled in a feral manner, hackles bristling along his spine. "You won't, I won't let it," he said, forcing himself to stop bristling in anger.

Saena asked a question and Arion felt her gaze burning a hole through him, but he said nothing, all the fury draining out of him. "You can explain, dearest friend. I'm in no mood to confess my sins or atone for them," the Greek's tail flicked irritably behind him, resisting the urge to sneer at his former drug dealer.

Arion protested, but that was to be expected.  Like taking the pacifier from a suckling baby, withholding Arion's precious poppy would reduce him to groveling and grumpy mass of bleh that Reek didn't want to deal with.  It wasn't as if he had enough on his plate already.  However, Reek's concern for his friend's safety took precedent over his personal gripes.  And in a way, Reek felt partially to blame for Arion's worsening condition, being the enabler that he was.  However, that was a detail that he didn't wish to make known to Saena.

"No more," he repeated coldly to Arion. His hackles bristled in response to the Greek's aggression and Reek took a firm stance as his beta, the decider.  While Reek was physically meek, he wouldn't be shaken while he attempted to impose over the muscled warrior.  An ant against an elephant... a very confident ant.

His corrective position remained unchanged as he shifted his gaze from Arion to Saena, who had been blissfully ignorant to Arion's self-destructive tendencies. She tended to be wise beyond her year, and Reek sometimes found it difficult to remember that she was still just a naive yearling.  "He's a goddamn junky," he explained, but dancing around her naivety would prove to be difficult. "Poppy.  It's gonna kill him if we don't make him stop.  I'll watch him for the next couple weeks and make sure he doesn't use, but I can't watch him 24/7.  Will you help me?"  Pleaded Reek, hoping his alpha would help him dish out some tough love.

The exchange between Arion and Reek was as foreign to Saena as the idea of drug abuse, but she listened anyway, noting the tension between them. Reek was Arion's superior, so what he said was basically law as far as the gamma was concerned. Saena herself didn't feel qualified to make any decisions, even when Reek explained what was actually going on.

She committed the term "junky" to memory, having never encountered it before, but she understood what poppy was. Its use as a painkiller wasn't unknown to the Naturalist, but its other uses were definitely new to her. "I didn't know you could die from that stuff," she said, looking back at the disoriented and possibly delirious wreck that was Arion. Anything that could kill one of her wolves, one of her family, was bad news in her books, so when Reek pleaded with her to help him keep an eye on Arion, she nodded.

"I'll do whatever's needed to keep him from dying," she told Reek, as if Arion wasn't even there (he wasn't really, was he?). Her eyes went to her chocolate-furred friend and she said, with much more concern and less chill than Reek, "how could we allow you to continue like this, Arion?"

Arion did not care that Reek was his beta and superior at that moment, he did not care that the ragged man's word was law. What right did he have to stop him from taking more Poppy? What damn right did he have to interfere with the Greek's life? It was his fault, Arion realized, it was all his fault that this was happening. If he hadn't met Reek in Dawnlark Plains and did not make their deal, then he would be off somewhere else, he wouldn't belong to Redtail Rise, he wouldn't be this....messed up. Don't think like that, Arion, it's your anger that's speaking, a familiar voice echoed in his head, he did not recognize it at that moment as he was boiling with anger and a touch of fear but later he would realize it was Chiron. His faithful companion and the one thing that tied him to the rest of the world, to humanity.

The golden male had vanished when they left Cerberus's Pavilion together, but occasionally his words would come back to the chocolate warrior. No one would ever replace him, but he had a few wolves now who acted in his role, he had other wolves who tied him to this world now. Reek was the main one, Saena was the other. They were the ones who stopped him from wandering off again, they were his new family and he cared for them even if he might not admit it. What he didn't know was that they cared, and so, despite being in this state, he found himself becoming rather touched at their concern.

Arion remained silent as Reek did his thing, telling him that it was time to stop while informing Saena about his habits. He was angry, he was furious, but he was tired too and weary of this world. And for a brief moment, he missed Krios, for his older brother had been the one wolf who had been like him, he had been the one wolf who understood him. But the titan wasn't here, and Arion was surrounded by those who did not understand.

The chocolate wolf's gaze drifted tiredly to Saena as she spoke to him, "I was always like this," he snarled. "I was always a junkie, way before I arrived in these Wilds. I never died did I?" Then his gaze softened, and he regarded both of them with a rare kind of gentleness in his eyes. "You don't understand," he continued in a softer tone. "You always had emotions, knew how to deal with them. I stopped myself from feeling, and now that I know I can't keep them all at bay...it's hard."'

And with that, Arion died no lol collapsed onto the ground, his left flank landing hard on the earth as he lost conscious. His breathing became shallow and irregular, if one ever came at all and his heartbeat slowed almost to a stop. Perhaps he really went over the edge this time.

Despite her naivety on the subject, Saena pledged to aid Reek in all that she could. In this case, he would need all the help he could get.  Like a spoiled child who lost his favorite toy, Arion would be sure to throw a tantrum at the loss of his emotional crutch; But the tantrum never came, instead he spouted sheer lunacy. No emotions?  Sure he was stoic, but who didn't feel?  He concluded his short speech with a sheepish wobble before he crashed sidelong into the dirt like a rag doll.  

Reek shook his head and scoffed, "Fuckin' looney." Though he felt concern for Arion's well being, there was little he could do when he was unresponsive.  Arion had fallen onto his side, so there was no reason to flip him over.  Reek could only play the waiting game from here on out until he woke up.

He turned his eyes away from Arion's prone body and shifted his gaze back to Saena.  "So— um, while he's out for the count, can we talk about something serious?"  he asked flatly.  "We need to talk about Wyn."  Even before Smash's departure, Wynter's absence had been the source of Reek's worry.  He looked everywhere for her, but if she didn't want to be found, she wouldn't be; and by now, she could have been far from the Teekon Wilds itself.  "I'm done looking for her," he added with finality.  What Bazi had told him in the form had stuck with him.  It was time to move on.

Arion and Reek were both rigid, so Saena shuffled in place as if to break the stillness. It grounded her, gave her a sense of reality, and allowed her to refocus on the entire point of this. Neither wolf was okay, but it was Arion who needed the most care right now, as evidenced by his behaviour and Reek's concern. Whatever the healer said, the alpha female would do. She would defer to him on this, it being a weak field for her.

Arion's voice was sharp as he spoke again, and from the sides of his mouth trickled a growl. Having had enough by now of it, Saena lifted her ears and head and growled lowly in return, reminding him of his place and whom he was speaking with. The reminder was evidently not necessary, though, since Arion proceeded to pass out cold right after telling them his issue was with feelings.

Well that's silly, Saena thought. Feelings were nothing to be ashamed of, and were impossible to hide forever without going totally mad. Perhaps that was why Arion depended on the poppy in the first place.

She turned to Reek as he began to speak, her ears pitched forward to receive his concerns. What he said surprised Saena, but only initially. She definitely didn't blame him for his decision. "I agree," Saena said quietly, letting her ears fall back in defeat. "I don't know why she left, but wherever she went, she left us behind. We're supposed to be family." She mused in silence for a moment, then said, "if ever there's anything you need, I'm here for you. You are my family."

Arion's chocolate ears flattened defensively yet submissively at the same time when she issued a low, warning growl. Truth to be told, he didn't care about ranks and where his place was and all that crap right now, he never did. To submit or to be dominant did not mean a thing to the stallion, after all, they were all wolves in the end and the same red, crimson blood ran through their veins. In their next life, if they had one at all, they would all be judged in the same way, there wasn't going to be any free pass just for those wolves who had been leaders before they died.

But it was wolf law, and so he had to obey. Didn't mean he had to like it though.

Perhaps he had really overdosed this time, perhaps he had overdosed a lot this time because he remained unconscious throughout the two leader's conversation. Usually (before arriving to Teekon Wilds) he woke up a minute after falling unconscious, but this time, it was obvious that that wasn't the case.

Last round?

Reek gingerly stepped over Arion's prone body and made his way to Saena's side. After her consolations, he buried his face into the side of her neck and desperately tried to hold back the sads that were welling up behind the gate. "Thank you," he whispered softly. The Rise was a family, through and through— and Reek couldn't have asked for a better friend/family member than Saena. Where-as Wynter had deserted the family on a whim, rejecting everything the pack stood for; Saena did what she could to make things work. Even in the hard times, she did not fold.

The heartbroken healer would remember that in the times to come.

He reluctantly pulled himself away from Saena and returned his focus back to his overdosing friend. Reek's hands paws were tied in that there was nothing he could do for Arion but watch and wait. "He's gonna be out for a while," he hoarsely mumbled. "He should wake up somewhere safe— Not here." He reached down and grasped the scruff of Arions neck, like a parent carried a pup, but his weight proved to be too difficult for his skeletal body to muster. Shifting his gaze back to Saena he asked, "Can you help me drag him back to my den?" before reaching out for him again to pull him up and across the ridge.

Yepper!

She would do anything for her pack mates. The alpha female once would've done anything for herself, and perhaps if she'd risen to lead Blacktail Deer Plateau, she would never have changed. Weathering tragedies with this group of wolves had made her a better one. So she accepted Reek's sad comfort for a moment, but when he indicated that Arion should be moved, she nodded solemnly.

It wouldn't do for the warrior to wake up somewhere unfamiliar and unwelcome.

She stepped around to Arion's side and grasped the opposite side of the man's ruff. Together the two wolves laboriously dragged him to Reek's den, the one he'd previously shared with his estranged mate. Once Arion was safely put to rest there, the alpha female said her farewells and left them be, confident that they would manage to work past their respective troubles. She herself was more troubled than ever now, but she wouldn't let them know that, not until all her emotions came to a head and boiled out of her.