Sex: MaleHave a rare glimpse of Gent losing his mind.
@Branwen @Ainashi @Moraxia @Toxin; for reference, if you'd like.
His shaking legs ached and his cracked paw pads burned with each step forward. He'd gone too long, again. Yet every time he dragged himself back up the mountainside without so much as a clue as to where a single one of their missing members had gone, the weight of failure grew heavier and heavier. It held him down, held him back. It made scaling the timbers more and more difficult both physically and mentally, burdening him with apprehension and guilt. And so he searched farther and longer each day, forsaking his own well being as his desperation heightened.
This needed to end.
The shade king leaned his massive frame against the firm stability of one of the timbers' many inhabitants, breath falling heavily from his slacked jaws. His pale gaze regarded the distance he had still to go, and swiftly it was realized that he did not have the resolve left within him to make it to the summit. A short consideration of his options later, he was back on the move, plowing doggedly through the drifts toward what had been Danica's outcrop and the secluded den within it.
Its confines were warm and physically comforting, small enough to cradle him. Yet there was so much wrong with it that even as his exhausted body was able to relax and melt into the bedding, his mind continued to vibrate with unrest. There was not the whispered breathing of others around him, soft and reassuring that they were all still safe and near. Of course, he could not be reminded of what he might lose without also dwelling on what he'd already allowed to slip through his paws. Her scent had faded completely from the den, Danica had been gone so long. Even the leaves that he had gathered for her from Heartleaf Creek smelled of nothing. It was empty, and it was lonely. But at least here he knew that there could be no eyes upon him. For once, he did not need to fear the slipping of his mask.
Everything had truly seemed to be turning around. They'd had a plan, taken straight from the ashes of Minka's demise. It could have all gone so perfectly, had he only convinced Kova to stay. While the boy had lacked the confidence that alpha was the role for him, Gent was certain that he would have easily grown into it, especially under his tutelage. They could have been looking forward to a new littler of pups this spring between Kova and his princess of choice. Summer could have seen the birth of Gent's own pack, a successful cleaving of Round Stone Crest that would have enabled both groups to remain strong. Allied, dominating the north as a whole. He would have been freed from the chains that had entangled themselves around his limbs here, having done justice by Minka and the children without sacrifice. He could have then smoothed things over with @Iopah and her pack, and given @Nina the alliance she deserved. Could have finally begun to consider heirs of his own.
Instead, he had allowed them both to leave, thinking the path of least resistance in that particular regard would be the wisest. He allowed the pack to splinter to further, and so it failed to recover. That was why he was the one to blame for what had happened to Cessair.
That wasn't to say he hadn't tried to be the support she needed to repair her broken heart. Every morning he had spent at her side as the sun rose to impart its warmth upon them. Whether she took comfort in the silence or yearned for conversation, he had cooperated. Yet the damage had already been done; it had taken him too long to notice and to take this extra step of care. He couldn't know for certain what she had been thinking that night, when she had left the den alone too many hours early for the sunset. He hadn't even been there to notice; instead, he had opted to take the night shift to allow those normally responsible a break. It wasn't until he had gone to meet her at their usual time that the king had discovered there was anything wrong at all.
Curled up and frozen in place, she had been lost to the deep cold of the night without a soul beside her, alone and broken; because Gent had not been able to fix her.
He had dug through the frozen dirt until his paws bled and then longer still. The grave was shallow, but her's all the same. She would never leave her hill now; would never miss another sunset.
For the longest time after, Gent had slept at the very entrance of the communal den, determined that no one else would sneak away to their unwitting death in the middle of these lethal winter nights. Then time passed, and he learned that his vigilance was for naught. Without omniscience, he would not be able to save them all from themselves. One by one they disappeared from him, at varying times for varying reasons, but ultimately all to an onus that he chose to bear.
He'd always thought that he was suffocating @Marianna, her mood so swiftly turbulent that he could never tell where to step next around her. Some days she had seemed to crave his presence more than air, yet then the next she would refuse to be within his sights at all. Torn between allowing her freedom and proving to her that he still loved her as his own, he still wasn't sure what the right path would have been; certainly, it hadn't been the one he'd taken. Otherwise, he would have been there with her when the storm came roaring in to claim her.
It was her disappearance that marked the beginning of his tireless searching, and now he wondered if he would ever be able to stop. It felt certain within the depths of his being that if someone hadn't swept in to rescue her, the girl was gone as her mother was.
Still he had not learned. Stupidly, he had asked for @Danica to assist him in his searches, along with the others of the pack. She had been so eager to help, to be useful to the pack. It was necessary for her to return to normalcy, he knew that, but should have known that Ari's vanishing was not within that range. Another lost soul that had come to him for refuge and that he had allowed to escape the scope of his care. She had dissipated into the drifting ice and snow just as the child they all sought had. For what felt like the hundredth time, he lost the young woman whom he had come to think of as a sister.
Helping too had been Calanthe. With two of their members gone, the pack as a whole upped their efforts. Yet Gent couldn't be sure that this was what had become of the woman who had so quickly become an integral member of their pack. He recalled the brief encounter with her brother Cathair at his borders, gruff and sinisterly marked with a jagged scar across his maw. Despite his best efforts, she had never given him a straight answer on what the foreign man's survival meant for her. There was so much that could have caused her not to return from her searching. Gent could not deny that it was possible it may have been by choice, and somehow this stung less. While it still showed a flaw in decisions he'd made, at least something horrible hadn't befallen her through his fault. Maybe she simply had reunited herself with her surviving family and hadn't the mettle to admit her departure to his face.
Of course, how could any of that be explained to @Draven? The boy seemed so thoroughly focused on those who left him, refusing to value those who had remained. Just as with each of the trio of Minka's last litter, the darkest's actions left a twisting of pain within Gent's chest. Each of them had reacted so differently, and yet no matter the effort he had put in, it had failed to be enough for any of them. Gent was the wolf who had stood by the boy through everything, and yet Draven had followed every other example set before him instead. It was the last thing he had expected to find when he had returned that day from the lowlands, to hear that Draven was not only gone, but that a goodbye had been sung before the youth dematerialized like the others. It was the only one Gent could know for certain had chosen to desert the pack without a word, and despite his age and the losses he had suffered, the king could not help but develop the same bitterness toward the young shadow as @Kino had earned.
He wasn't sure what was better. The clench of knowing or the haze of possibility. Why did there need to be either? Why couldn't the things he built simply continue to stand, without constantly crumbling down around his ears one pillar at a time? The man gritted his fangs and placed a forelimb across the bridge of his snout, covering his eyes from the little light that managed to filter into the abandoned den. Every turn of the way, each of the souls around him that disappeared, rended his heart with emotions he barely had the capacity to understand much less successfully absorb and contain. There was anger and acid, guilt and regret, despair and longing, fear and insecurity. It was becoming too much, and now... ?
Now @Raela was five days beyond the time they had agreed she would take to seek out @Kova. Now he did not have the foundation she provided to come back to each night, to hold onto against each rise of the tides. There were many simple reasons why she might take so much longer than planned. The terrain was difficult and the weather harsh. Her return could be any second now, most ideally with the stray Lagina heir in tow and news of the pack with which Kino had successfully been relocated. Or... Kova could be lost to them completely; perhaps Raela had found him, half buried in the snow, and she was somewhere in the wastelands alone with her grief. Maybe she herself was lost, snowblind and exhausted, unable to find her way back at all. What then? How far could she have gotten, how beyond his reach might she be? Worst of all...
What if she had simply decided not to come back?
It was an irrational fear, and yet the thought refused to let him be. Of all of them that could walk away, it was her that would wound him the worst. All that he had tried so hard to be, a compassionate leader, a family man, a shoulder to lean upon no matter how heavily; she had inspired it, had believed in it. What would he do without her faith? What could he do? Without her warmth, the ice would begin to creep back in. There would be nothing left to halt the freezing of his heart.
His limb pressed down harder, forcing his jaw through the bedding of litter and against the hard floor of the burrow. His muscles clenched and released all across his body, attempting to expend the energy that was building within them. His dull claws furrowed the dirt and his hind legs braced against the den walls. Too much, it was all becoming too much, and he could hear the faint hiss of a fuse being lit within him. A whine escaped his fastened teeth, high pitched and desperate.
Why did she have to die?
It had all started falling apart when they lost her. She had been their glue, their heart and their strength and it all had been torn from them so quickly without even a whisper of warning; and it had all been utterly out of his paws. Even now after all of his dwelling and all of his nightmares he could not see any angle in which he could have prevented her death. Yet how could something so damning be all but fate? There had been so much potential within her, within them. Minka would have known how to keep them all safe through the winter. The children would have retained their innocence and their love for him. They could have truly turned the mountaintop pack into a force to be reckoned with, earning the respect of those around them rather than fading away as they were now. They could have repaired the broken bridges of their past and forged ahead beyond it all with certainty. He would have certainty, now, instead of this void of doubt that threatened more and more every day to swallow him whole.
She could have been his wife. They could have been a family, and now, without her? He was a failure instead.
His breathing hitched, suddenly and hard, and the defeated beast froze in place. The fuck was that?
Get in control, his thoughts bit sharply at him as his anger spiked with swift ferocity. Don't be weak. You can't afford it, they can't afford it. It was the truth, solid as stone, and yet something was trembling within him. It made his stomach boil with anger to acknowledge it. His hind legs shot out against the den wall, pressing the length of his spine against the confines as hard as he could muster. At first there was only pressure, and then there was pain, but still he could not get it out. The emotions remained stubbornly beneath his skin, filling every space within him but refusing to allow him a single breath. Get in control, echoed within his head like a mantra, but the voice was not his. It was Minka's, it was Raela's, it was @Naira's, it was his father's. Get in control, it was Alphinaud's and Calanthe's, get in control, Nina's and Iopah's and Crowe's, get in control, a trio chiming of the children when they were but a few scant months old. It was relentless and he begged his heart to obey, to please just get in control. The longer it refused, the angrier he became.
Get in control, get in control, getincontrol,
getincontrolgeitcontrolgetincontrol"GET IN CONTROL."
He was underground, buried alive, the dirt walls were pressing in on him, he couldn't breathe, couldn't even exhale and it was all building within him pushing his bones and swelling his organs and he couldn't get out. He thrashed against the confines, snarling and clawing and tearing but nothing would give and each strike outward that was limited by the walls around him increased his panic which heightened his anger and darkened his vision and he couldn't stop any of it, he was not in control he had never been the one in control he had only been fooling himself.
Nothing would give and then suddenly it did and it was all beneath him and soft and vaguely he remembered that it was precious but it didn't matter to him anymore all that mattered was getting it out. The many skins that were each a triumph to the young girl that had always placed her faith in him, that had been there to receive Daniel into the world, that had been the last remaining comfort she could bring with her and have control over fell to shreds as he demolished them with all of his teeth and all of his fury.
He destroyed it all, and it made no difference, but when the tatters were gone and nothing would give again he no longer possessed the strength to fight the earth that was sealing him in. His efforts weakened, and then they ceased altogether as the exhaustion took him. Get in control, his thoughts whispered. You can't stay here. They're alone up there. Anything could happen. He stirred, weakly attempting to gather his legs under him, and then he closed his eyes. Who would be gone when he next opened them? The flames ebbed within him, subsiding as his consciousness faded. Faint as a ghost, he felt the ice creeping into the spaces left by its wake.
He would have control.
