Heiress Loch anywhere i go, there you are

@Kino

Both of them were tired. Sahalie meant for them to get all the way back inside the borders before she realized that she did not wish for anyone to stumble upon them at the moment. When the scent of the lake tickled her nose she could hardly say no, and quietly directed Kino towards the shore. She wondered if she should have been mad, but all she could do was sigh. At least, she noted as she stepped boldly into the sun-baked shallows, she could wash away whatever physical signs that remained of the altercation. Even if the water was acceptably warm she still felt chills wrack her body as the water turned faintly pink. Blood. Sahalie sighed again, watched as the surface quieted and revealed a thin, bright and oozy mark just above the corner of her lip like some comical dimple.

She deserved it anyway. She hoped it would scar.

Slowly the dark head turned back towards her silver friend, her eyes wide and pleading as if begging him to speak the words on her own mind, or to speak first. She did not want to do this. It sucked, all of it. Another sigh. Her eyes fell back to the water, and vaguely she leaned down so she could splash some water on her face. "I want to be mad at you," she said in a dead-pan tone. "But it's really hard."

She looked back up, "Tell me it's okay to be mad."

(This post was last modified: Jul 16, 2016, 08:48 PM by Sahalie.)

 

The silence chocked him, made his tongue stick to the roof of his mouth. At first she was leading him toward the Bend, then suddenly she veered off and led them toward the Loch. His heart hammered in his chest, suddenly terrified of being abandoned again. Terrified of being alone, of having no one. Why did he have to be so protective, so stupid, such a jerk? But, he needed to live with the consequences and he knew he would. He already knew that his ear was torn beyond repair, not completely ruined but a chunk missing, and the deep scratch that ran along from just below the front of his ear to across just above his eye would scar as well. A monster like him deserved to be disfigured anyhow.

They arrived and wordlessly she stepped into the lake, washing the blood from her face. Kino sat just at the edge, watching as the waves lapped by and trying not to throw up as wisps of it were colored pink with her blood. He never wanted her to get hurt, yet it seemed destruction followed in his wake eventually. "I want to be mad at you, but it’s really hard,” she said quietly, and his heart skipped a beat. Was she so emotionless toward him now that she couldn’t even feel hate? That was perhaps the worst feeling, to think that you could care about someone so much but they were left with utter indifference to you. He thought, for a moment, that he would much rather her to be mad at him. Much rather her be screaming and calling him names, anything but this eerie calmness that felt so…empty.

Please don’t be mad. “It’s okay to be mad.” You should be mad.

A lynx has left behind the remains of a deer. +5 Health

Tears welled up in her eyes and she sniffled a bit. Not yet ready to believe her friend's reassurances, so she chose to be sad instead. "I just," there was some lump in her throat that she felt like she had to talk around, "I had everything under control. I swear. He was mouthy, sure, but he was getting to a good place. When you're hurt like that, you're just... scared. You need others to be gentle with you. I was being gentle." Al would have had her demand deference, but that felt so wrong. For the first time she was experiencing a fundamental misalignment between their perspective on the world. 

"But then you..." She nearly choked on her own bitterness. The taste was acrid. Was it vomit? "Then you were... I don't even know who you were. You were mean—you were BEYOND mean." Finally the rage was coming to her. It felt hot and cleansing like the water lapping at her ankles. "You could have killed him. And then where would we be! Did you think you were saving me? Even I could have knocked him over with one paw. Maybe not as easily as you did, but I'm not weak. And I don't want to hurt anyone. I didn't need to. I was getting it under control."

"Explain yourself." Her sides heaved as she tried to cry quietly. Thoughtlessly, she plunked her butt down into the water. She didn't feel it anyway.

 

The sadness in her tone was like a whip, lashing at him and leaving him shaken and cold. If he could feel anything else other than despair at the moment, he might have been amused at the fact that she was still defending the man. Of course, Hal was always the martyr, saving those poor souls who seemed to be in distress. Wasn’t that the reason that she’d befriended him? Because he’d been one of those poor unfortunate souls, alone and broken. And he’d gone along with it because her warmth was intoxicating, reaching him when no one else had been able to in his cold little corner. Now, he felt the heat receding and a shiver wracked his spine.

Then, there it was. The rage, the burning anger that was so easily consuming. "Then you were... I don't even know who you were.” He didn’t even know who he was. "You could have killed him.” He might have. ”Did you think you were saving me?” He’d wanted to. He’d wanted to be her knight in shining armor. All he wanted in his life now was to follow her, to be near her. And, it was in that moment that Kino Lagina realized he was very much in love with Sahalie Tainn. It was this realization that was nearly his complete undoing.

"Explain yourself." she demanded, and he was a thousand pounds. He was spiraling and the world was spinning. “I just…I saw him…he was snarling at you, so bitter toward someone so sweet and…I wanted to protect you. I just…I couldn’t help it, I couldn’t even think straight. I don’t want anyone to hurt you, I don’t want anyone to take you away…” he murmured thickly. He swallowed loudly, “I don’t even know who I am.” he fought back a whine. He might not have wanted to hurt her, but at the end of the day it was him who had hurt her the most.

It had always been hard for her to get mad and even harder for her to stay mad, but looking at her friend on the shore, completely broken and overburdened with guilt it was absolutely impossible. Her own ears folded and she whined along as she listened to him, trying to make sense of it all, to find some common ground to agree with. Of course Alastor's reasons were good ones: he always seemed to have the best intentions. To Sahalie nearly any justification from anyone was acceptable. On top of that, what he said was so sweet that she felt her chest fill with pain. Tears came faster and the sniffles were more forceful.

Still crying, she got up and stepped towards him, droplets streaming through her dark fur and soaking tail. "You're Alastor," she said, entirely missing the irony of that statement, "You're my friend. My best friend. And you're funny and you're good at talking and thinking and a lot of the times you're a bit of a recluse," her giggle was quiet, "I get that you...you care so much about me that you don't want to see me hurt, but... hurting others also hurts me. You're a good wolf, Al, and it would hurt me even more to see you fall." Gently she leaned onto her rump so that she could reach up, paws on his shoulder for support, to lap some of the blood away. "And seeing you hurt hurts me too."

"I know the world's not perfect, but I don't want to stop trying to help others."

 

Sahalie was a windmill of emotions, from sad, to pissed, to concerned. She felt so many things, opened herself up with a bleeding heart which was quite the opposite of him. He was, as she said, reclusive, totally separate from most others. But, he’d been doing better lately. Throwing himself more into pack events, getting to know the others and he already knew the land like the back of his paw. It hit him how much he was losing all over again, and for the first time in a long time Kino wanted to cry. “You're a good wolf, Al,” she said and he nearly laughed but it was stilled when she reached up to lick his cheek. His heart beat erratically in his chest, heat pooling where she touched. The feeling was so strong, so foreign. It scared him, terrified him in fact. He was suddenly on his paws, backing away with his tail between his legs with his head shaking.

“I’m not, I wish I was but I’m not Sahalie and you deserve so much better. You should never stop trying to help others, but not everyone can be saved. I can’t be saved, I proved that today.” His face was contorted as the internal war he’d been fighting for so long finally made its way into the outside world. “I’m…I’m not who you think I am. I’m not this guy with the best intentions and a heroic heart. What I wouldn’t give to be him, what I wouldn’t give to be Alastor,” he said, then went stock still topaz gaze going wide. What had he just said? What had he just done.

Why was he stepping away from her?

She tried to step forward. He wasn't what? Everything was so unclear to her and her mouth only fell open as she listened to him in complete dismay. What, he wasn't her friend, wasn't a recluse wasn't good? Her head shook slowly and then more vehemently. She didn't deserve anything better. She didn't care what he thought she deserved, since it was clearly out of touch with reality in some sense. Couldn't be saved "Wh—" She couldn't even breath. This seem far scarier than whatever had just happened to them. What was happening.

"What...What the hell are you talking about, Al" He wasn't Al? Her mouth felt dry. Nothing made sense. "You do all these heroic things, you say all this good stuff. You are good. You make no sense!" Her breathing was starting to quicken, she felt faint. In the back of her mind some sort of picture was starting to come together but she didn't want it to be true. He needed to be Alastor. How could it be a lie, all a lie? How could half a year be a lie? That made no sense. That wasn't possible.

"No." Was all she could say.

 

He watched through his lashes as she slowly seemed to grow more distraught, more terror than even from their situation before seeping through her pelt. He’d done that, made her feel that, hurt her. It was something he couldn’t get over, not in some sick twisted way but in the sense that he might never truly forgive himself. She continued with the Al charade, though he already knew that she knew what he mean in the back of her mind. He always knew this would happen when she found out, knew that she could never accept him. After all, who would?

His head hung low as he whispered, “My name isn’t Alastor Leigh. It’s Kino Lagina.” All the air was sucked out of him and he had to blink, physically think about remembering how to breath. He didn’t want to breath, didn’t want to take in any more breaths because each one pushed her farther and farther away. But she deserved an explanation, deserved something more than that at least.

For the first time, Kino was going to tell someone about his past.

“I wasn’t…I wasn’t separated from my family. We weren’t loners…I was born into a pack. My mom and dad were leaders, but he died before I was born. Mom moved the pack into a forest filled with timbers then had me, my sister, and my younger brother. Everything was pretty okay for a while, mom was…amazing. She was my best friend, she used to tell me stories and dance in the rain with me.” he said, gaze clouding over in a daze as he remembered. “Then…when we turned 4 months old the guy who replaced dad called everyone. I knew…I knew it wasn’t good. He sounded upset, I believed he was upset. Then…when I arrived mom was…gone. Just…gone,” his face contorted once more into a grimace, the picture of her lifeless body forever etched into the front of his mind. He saw it when he was asleep and saw it when he was awake. She never left. “My younger brother…started crying. No, it was crying. It was wailing, so loud that it hurt your ears. It was hurting everyone else, everyone just started breaking down and…and mom wouldn’t have wanted it!” he tried to reason with wide eyes like he’d tried to reason with himself so many times before. “Ari and I told him to stop wailing like that, stop hurting everyone and then…everyone turned on us. Turned on me. They started screaming at us, calling us names, calling us ‘brats’ and ‘demons’ and ‘disgraces’. I tried to tell them. Draven wasn’t the only one who lost mom, we did too, but no one cared. No one cared, and so I fought back to defend Ari. Then…Gent hit me. He slammed into me and threw me into the ground in front of my mother’s corpse and nobody gave a damn. They might as well have cheered him on,” he said bitterly, auds sweeping back. “I waited a month to see if anything would get better and it didn’t. Nobody would look at us, nobody would talk to us, all they worried about was Draven. And they think I didn’t hear them talking to each other, calling us horrible things behind our backs. Monster, monster, monster.Gent called a meeting and had Raela take mom’s place a month after she died. Just one month,” he fumed, tail lashing. “I think…I think he killed her. I think he and Raela were plotting, and that he killed her. Probably killed dad too, and maybe we were next. I didn’t know…and I didn’t want to find out. I asked Ari to come with me but she didn’t, she’d have rather stayed with them than come with me. But Kova came with me, and so we left. I changed my name because I didn’t want any of that.” He shuffled his paws awkwardly.

“I was…I was so bitter, Sahalie. I was so angry all the time, it never went away. They left me, they all left me and maybe they should have. Maybe Gent and Raela are right. No…they are right. I’m no good, I never will be and I never can be. I’m a monster and you deserve better…so you should leave too. I’m not going to hold it against you,” he said in a rush. Even though all of it was out and he thought he’d feel free, he only felt more trapped. He didn’t know what she was going to say…or did he? Her reaction from before spoke volumes enough, and he briefly contemplates ways of ripping his heart out so he’d never have to feel emotions like this again.

Her eyebrows came together and her mouth was still open, but she sat down and listened carefully to this new name—or old name. She was looking at him but he wasn't looking at her. It was weird, to hear his true name. Kino. She was surprised to find that it seemed to fit him more than Al did. But everything was so different about it. Her ears twisted back and forth, she felt conflicted.

He had lied to her.

His past was so confusing and she had to strain her ears to make sense of it, to hear all of it. But hearing it was almost a relief. There were so many players in the story, and she wanted so badly to know each and everyone, the real wolves of his past, because they were special. It started out sad and then just got sadder. Dead dad, dead mom, her tears began fresh again. She tired to imagine what it would be like to see her own mother's dead body but she could only picture Anneliese and that was not her mother. The story was hard to make sense of. He had yelled at his brother. So what? She had yelled at Drift. But the names they called Al-Kino, her mouth fell wider. And someone hit him, hit a child. What sort of wolves did Kino live with that he blamed himself for this? The paranoia was so real that it scared her, and she could say nothing to the accusations that he leveled on this Gent and Raela.

Though it probably would have been wise to mull things over she automatically leapt to his defense, "K...Kino.." The name sounded strange on her tongue, but it was his name, after all, "You were a child. Children say things...children do things that don't make any sense, that don't mean anything, that don't matter. I don't... I don't know why they hurt you, or why they called you named, but they were wrong and I know it. I know it because I've seen you every day and you are kind. You are kind to me and you are kind to everyone else here. You want to take their opinion over mine? I've known you longer. I'm your friend. So you can't tell me that you're a bad wolf. I just don't believe it. I won't ever believe it."

"I'll call you whatever name you want. You're my friend." She didn't know if he was ready for her to get closer again.

To drive the point home: "I don't care that you lied to me. You were trying to protect yourself. Just like the loner was trying to protect himself by being aggressive. Wolves do things that make no sense when they're backed into a corner. At the end of the day, yeah, I didn't like what you did. But that's one bad act against one million more good ones that I've seen. You can't be good all the time. I don't care... that your name isn't.. Alastor. I want to know whoever you are, whoever you really think you are. Because you're my friend and you've always been here for me and I'm gunna be here for you."