Midnight Plateau your guilty crown

"They want to own me?"  The very idea forced a shudder down the youth's spine as his overactive imagination seized the information.  Own him – never let him leave the den?  Force him to hunt, or clean, or who knew what else.  Being held – by anybody – seemed to be the worst of fates.  Had he known this was a woman's true intention, he probably wouldn't have been so eager to engage in conversation.  Ears out to the side, he puffed out his cheeks with a heavy sigh.  "Is that why we're alone, then?"  It had always been like this, the pair, two peas in a pod – there'd never been a mother among them, and Datura had made no attempt to a female into their fold.  In any event, it gave the youth plenty of think about, and he almost missed the Aquila patriarch's gruff explanation of his former home.
 
The processing going on between his ears was evident in his sunburst eyes, tail beginning to wave in small twitches as he struggled to understand what his father was telling him.  Gilligan had only known one pack his entirely life, one.  He'd been born into it, before his p-
 
Before those wolves he used to live with got sick, and died.  The entire pack had stars, just like he did – formed before he was born and still strong when he left, the loner had no idea that group life could be so unstable.  Fluctuation sat ill with the young Aquila, glancing around the area as if he'd suddenly become aware it was stalked with ghosts.  "That won't be us, yo," he finally decided, unable to keep the nervous tick out of his tail.  "Maybe we shouldn't go, then, if it was shitty like that.  Why don't-  Can we restore it?  The place you remember?  The way we like?" the yearling questioned Datura, confident in his father's ability to lead.  That's what he'd been doing all his life, after all, and the brilliant behemoth had been a prominent nabob – it seemed only natural his influence would extend to Relic Lore, as well.  "Yo, maybe we should go, see it.  Kick those assholes out, something.  You'd be better at it, I'd bet my frickin' tail on it."

#R28-9

@Gilligan you can respond if you want, otherwise just archive it

Datura eyed his son's horror with a light smile on his face. That this could be so shocking to him was a good sign. Datura wasn't so sure that this was every woman's goal... but he had seen his mother, he had seen Athena and her chain of men, and he had seen Taima. Surely this was a large enough sample size. And Gilligan could do with a good scare, honestly. Otherwise he was like to get his own crazy ideas about things and then god knows where the two of them would be. If there was anything Datura could do to make sure he wouldn't have to pin his son down by his collar to prevent any stupid, teenage mistakes he would surely do it. By whatever means necessary.

The hardness seemed to wear from his expression as he fumbled for a response to the ginger boy's son. It had not occurred to him that Gilligan would be feeling the absence of a maternal figure, but then again Datura's own upbringing had been so thoroughly confused by a cast of adults who had not been his own parents that surely he had no idea what to expect. His lips pursed. Did Gilligan miss his birth mother like Datura had tried to miss his own birth mother? The golden man had wanted so badly to have a normal, complete family that he had burned bridges and moved mountains, but as time passed it became clear that nothing would be as he wanted it. He was damaged goods. It was too late for mommy and daddy to be enough to fix what was broken in him. Constantly he struggled with this subject in his mind. He felt that parents were unecessary, yet somewhere there was a part of him that wanted to do it better, to figure it out. And he had done a very, very poor job it seemed. They were just a pair of bachelors. "More or less..." He sighed. "I'll take a woman if I have to. But I want things on my terms. Ya know?"

Confidence shone from his son's vibrant, youthful soul and the man found himself puffing out his chest. "We will go." Yes, of course he could do it. He could do it better than anyone else could. "We'll build it better." He flashed his son what he felt was a winning smile. But Datura's smiles always seemed in-genuine. Always vaguely ugly upon his otherwise handsome face. "Just the way we like it."

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