Riddle Heights oh, tell me now, where was my fault

The sky was clear, the air heavy, and Bella had decided to take Duck along the more difficult paths that the mountain had to offer - its Riddle Heights. Though she knew that he did not take to mountain life as eagerly as she did, he had been born to it, and she could see it in his sure-footedness and comfort with the altitude. It saddened her that she could not really ask Foxglove or Snakeroot on these excursions, for they had turned down so many that she had learned not to ask, and to bring them was to mean the exclusion of Duckweed. In such a lose-lose situation, she merely had to pick the smallest loss - and at least when her youngest was distracted and  comfortable, his company was enjoyable, which she felt guilty admitting was not usually the case with the other two.

Bella dearly looked forward to @Ahkna reaching them.

"This is a dangerous part of the mountain," she said, though her relaxed manner was totally at odds with the warning. "I've spotted bobcats before, smelled and heard cougars - though not run into one, luckily. I think they like that it's closer to the ground, where most of the grazers live, and that they have to get over these foothills if they want to cross from east to west or west to east. Clever predators take advantage of that." She glanced at him, wondering whether he would take that at face value or realise that he could be one of those clever predators.

With the wind blowing from the east, and as they continued south, Bella quickly picked up on the telltale signs of a nearby pack, and adjusted their course appropriately. This was another family which hadn't been there before, but it was so far south of the lake that it held far less significance than the foreigners who had placed their claim right next to Poison Path's old territory. That still stung her when she thought of it, and usually she avoided the northern parts of the lake altogether, even though that did mean staying away from most of her old home. The thought of it took over the fore of her mind, which allowed a subtlety about this other pack's scent to go unnoticed, an important detail which would have made the decision to continue south very difficult indeed.

He did not miss that he was invited on most of his mother's daytime travels while Staleek and Tauza were not. Whatever it meant, Duck was glad for it, for he could enjoy not only the comfort of his mother's company but also the complete avoidance of his siblings' company, which was a total win-win. Even though not all of their shared excursions ended happily, as he miserably recalled his experience by the creek east of the mountain, he knew that all he had to do to prevent that was not to let his mother out of his sight. Safe on the mountain in the small dens that the family had claimed, and safe by her side when away from it.

He was cheery today, mostly because he was making a distinct effort to be. He had been curious of the lands south of the lake, and when his mother offered for them to explore it, he took up the offer eagerly - he was sure that there were no rivers or creeks there to be tempted by stupid fish. As they began to descend the terrain became harder to navigate, but he clenched his jaw and concentrated and didn't stumble once. Though he felt relatively at ease, his mother's warnings struck a chord, and he instinctively moved closer to her.  

Their light banter carried them on, the minutes melting away as the land fell lower and lower. He did not notice the hints in the air, did not notice how his mother veered them a little west. They only stopped once they came to a large, open flat, with one edge which dropped away into a steep cliff. Instintively his mother went to it, no doubt to see what view this fresh cutaway bit of dirt and rock could provide her, and obediently he followed.

"Doesn't it just all look the same?" he asked, shrugging, and she laughed.

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

so mad that I deleted this. take two. probably will suck cause i'm still really mad at myself :c

It was alarming how much the present echoed the past.

He could not be sure if they were standing in the same place he and Belladonna had once stood. It looked like the same outcrop from which he had taunted his sister and she had, unwittingly, called his bluff. But the ledge had been just the backdrop of this particular scene of his childhood. Any cliff would have done, and certainly any cliff would do now that two years and his own careless mind had washed away much of the details. All that remained now was the feeling of the memory, the frustration and the yearning. He inched closer. His eyes wandered back and forth between the white runt and the unchanged pose of the sister that had forsaken him. The white boy was very different from the fat little cub that Datura had been, but he seemed to know the lines of the script well enough. His heartbeat was the cacophonous roar of a war drum. And he was deeply, deeply afraid. The comforting familiarity of the memory needed to be set aside. The guilt was the most important. Guilt was the only thing.

It was hard to recall how his paws had carried him here. Fate had carried her scent back to him and, with one glance over his shoulder he had left the borders of the plateau trees for the reunion waiting for him in the Heights. Back to the beginning. He was giddy like a boy in the vanguard. Off to war. He did not want to go to war and die but he wanted the fame. He did not want to see her face but more than anything he did. He did not think about the past. He could not think about the past.

She was not beautiful, because nothing was beautiful. But the shape of her body echoed something like beauty, probably familiarity, probably longing. Her laughter was made of thorns. Inexplicably he thought of their other sister, Aponi. The dangerous line they walked. The guilt cooked in his stomach. This was not a good place for his sister. He swallowed hard.

 "Bella" he breathed, rising like the son from the rocks. But suddenly he stopped himself, remembering the presence of the runty boy. It was strange how easily he forgot the small ones. Uncertain, he watched the boy that had spoken his lines, Datura's lines. But the did not look fit to play the part of the Golden Boy. Knowing the lines was not enough to earn a seat at this table. In askance, he looked to Belladonna. What was this boy doing here?

He choked on all the things he wished to say but could not in the presence of a stranger. What even was there to say? He had been convinced of her death. Her death at his own hands. And though the location was uncertain, it had probably been here or somewhere close by that he ...he had sworn to never hurt her. But how did one say they were glad they had failed? How could he explain the sickness that the shaman had spoken of. How could he explain what Aponi had done, what they would do. He stood with a paw in two worlds: wanting to do the right thing but knowing it was beyond him. His mouth hung open. 

There was simply nothing to say.

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unf feels so good to finally be writing this.

Perhaps time had dulled that wound, but somehow Bella had never drawn any meaningful connection between her children's apathy toward her delights and her brother's. Back when she had been desperate for approval, Datura's cold dismissals had been brutal, a hard slice straight through the things which caused her childish joy. Why had he never understood? She had stopped wondering - perhaps even stopped caring - years ago. Wolesh had given her the same blank looks, but she had never idolised that man as she had idolised her sibling. When Wolesh had rolled his eyes, she had just smiled and shook her head, accepting. Accepting that he was different. Accepting that she was different. Accepting that she didn't need his permission to enjoy what she enjoyed.

Perhaps, then, she had seen that trait merely as their father's, and never had Bella questioned or shamed her children for it. They were different. And that was okay.

Bella.

Instinctively she turned her head, as you do at the call of your name, the smile still on her face. The voice was from too distant a place, too buried in memory, too changed by age, for her to have recognised it, and so she turned without a worry. It didn't occur to her that she didn't really know anyone out here, that there was nobody who should be here to call for her.

Her eyes fell upon the golden face, the golden eyes, and for several, long seconds, the smile remained, her expression fixed. It didn't fit. The light in her face dimmed slightly, her eyes going blank, but it wouldn't fit. Her subconscious comprehended, but she refused to acknowledge it. No. Her breath caught, the faintest hitch, her heart forgetting its job for a pulse. No. The smile slipped as her jaw slackened, awe and denial and amazement and dread filling her all at once, oozing into her bloodstream until they all pounded against the inside of her head. No.

She was supposed to be dead, he had killed her, they had kill that poor woman for nothing worse than resembling her and that was supposed to be enough, did Bella now have to add the crime of 'totally pointless' to the already heinous murder? She had never forgiven Wolesh for that, not truly, though she had done her best to move on and forget, forget that her brother had tried to kill her - had thought he had killed her - and they were supposed to be free, he wasn't supposed to be here, no! Stupid, it was stupid to think that she would be the only one who might want to come back, but Poison Path was dead and there was nobody there, how was she supposed to know?

But wait, that wasn't true - there were wolves there now. She wasn't here alone.

"Get back," she snapped at her son, moving between him and him, urging him to take shelter behind her. He killed her. Mind racing, she struggled to digest everything that this meant, everything she was supposed to do, ignoring the painful thump of her aching heart in her chest, the yearning. If she listened to that...

"Go back," she hissed, tone quiet, glancing at Duckweed, who stared back in bemused terror. Seeing it softened her, broke through the wall that her own fear and confused feelings had erected. "Go back to your brother and sister. It'll be okay, I promise. Please, go."

He killed her. Why... why would he do that?

@Datura

He had rolled his eyes at her laughter, but with a smirk of his own, as though it were a shared joke. Her strange habits and ways of viewing the world did bother him sometimes, but whenever he really thought about it, he knew that that side of himself belonged to his father. In not wanting to ever emulate that man, Duck tried to be more tolerant, to appreciate her despite her odd tastes, because ultimately he loved her and knew that she loved him. When they were alone, like this, he wished that they could be alone always. It would be easier. Maybe he wouldn't have to be so afraid anymore, maybe he could learn to overcome it.

Bella.

He turned his head, too, though a moment after her's. A lump of hard dread spontaneously appeared in his throat as he saw the huge golden man, but for reasons entirely common to the boy. It wasn't until his mother never responded to being addressed by name did Duck realise something was odd. Glancing up at her, he saw something strange, something he had never seen before, lurking underneath her frozen expression. Curiosity, in that moment, almost overtook his knee-jerk avoidance of strangers, but then he recognised it, that emotion that he knew all too well, in her, the wolf who was always so strong and patient and knew what to do. The lump of dread turned ice cold and began to spread through his limbs.

Why was she so afraid?

His heart was pounding a familar beat of terror when she moved between them, when she told Duck to get back, go back, please. Bella had never made any pretense of it, she knew that Staleek and Tauza tormented him, so when she implied that he would be safer with them - his fear of everything else was totally overwhelmed by the sudden and enormous fear of the golden man which was set ablaze by nothing more than his mother was scared of him too. Wordlessly he nodded, shivering, and turned tail, fleeing back the way they had come, back to the small hole in the ground which was now the only thing which represented safety.

(exit)

He didn't see his mother watch him go for a moment before turning her gaze back to the golden man, expression level, controlled, even as her heart thumped heavy in her chest. She did not speak again, for she had too many words and none of them were right.

(This post was last modified: Sep 07, 2015, 08:37 PM by Duckweed.)

She turned to him and her expression was as light as it had been as when they were young together. It was as if the last two years had never happened. He prayed that they had never happened. Somehow, without knowing what he was doing, he had been walking dangerously close to the edge of a cliff, knocking off his footholds with his carelessness. No one had been there to tell him what he was doing was wrong, that it would have consequences. He wanted to say that he would have listened if someone had called out to him, but he was not so sure. Apparently it was in his nature. It was in his blood to dismantle the lives of those around him and, eventually, watch his own life crumble away. 

And it crumbled like her smile.

The past two years had been real. They stood before each other as broken adults, but only one of them had participated in any of the breaking. He groped for words but could not find any as he watched her command the white runt behind her and away. How could he explain something so insane to her? He could not apologize because he knew it was going to happen again. There was no cure for who he was. There was no cure for who she was. She promised the white boy that things would be okay as she had once promised him that things would be okay. But things were not okay. She had promised him first. He just wanted to be loved. And she was the only one that had ever loved him. He had to try.

The poor golden beast lowered himself to the ground. "Do you remember the last time we were here, Bella?" They were so young then, it was so long ago. But even then she must have known what he was. And she had accepted it, she had been okay with it. Could they not agree somehow to go back to being five months old, childish but in love? Could they not do it all over again? His voice was as strained as the tightrope he walked. 

He should send her away. He was just going to hurt again. "Please listen to me."

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@Datura

Duckweed fled, and she wished for her heart to run away with him. Nothing good could come of it staying here. Though she worried for her son, knowing that he had a long way to go, she had to trust that it was the right decision, that he was safer on the quiet mountain than he was here, because a million possibilities were crashing through her skull and a significant portion of them were terrifying and terrible.

Trying to keep her breathing even, her legs from shaking, she stared at him, unable to move for fear of crumpling.

He let Duckweed go without a single move in his direction, and Bella silently thanked anything she could for that. His problem had always been with her, she thought darkly, but it had not been so irrational to think that his cruelty would carry over to her blood. His madness. Though, looking at him now, at how he dropped down, at the torment on his face that she was struggling to comprehend, she didn't recognise any of the madness that had lunged at her that night, the madness that had torn her into broken pieces which Wolesh had been forced to pick up and put together again. Was he hiding it? Had he ever been capable of such subterfuge? Her memories of him were many, were varied, from the wonderful to the heartbreaking, but something Datura was not was a deceiver. He was who he was. He always had been.

She had always wondered whether the madness had been an exception to that, his deeply hidden secret, or whether he had simply snapped, not been himself. It hadn't really mattered, Wolesh had told her; what mattered were his actions, what he chose to do. He had killed her. She had spent the last two years a corpse, murdered by the brother she had loved more than anything in the world. The truth about what happened that night, and why, had stopped being important a long time ago.

Or had they, she was forced to wonder, as she struggled to comprehend Datura Aquila submitting himself before her, a boy who had always been so strong and aggressive and demanding, so quick to dominate and overpower whether with mind or body. She could only think of a handful of times that he had acted so truly weak in front of her.

"Do you remember the last time we were here, Bella?" he said, the imploring use of her name bringing the softest of growls to her throat. How dare he. But his words turned around slowly in her head, and though initially she could recall nothing, when she glanced to the side to instinctively try to understand his meaning, she saw the overhang and... could it be? No, surely not. Eyes flicking back to him, cautious, untrusting but so wanting to trust, her breathing quickened.

"Please listen to me." She still couldn't speak, the words were dust and ash in her mouth. She couldn't see the Datura of that night in this grovelling man, but there was too much pain, too much heartbreak to push aside. Silently she waited, all she could do to submit to his request, though could he really change anything?

It would be a lie to claim that she had not often dreamed that he could.

She said nothing, so he could not be sure she was listening. But she was Bella, his Bella, and Bella always listened. His sister absorbed the world slowly and didn't make judgments. He had hated these things about her in their childhood, but now he needed them. These were the last pylons on which to build his hope that, when the time came, he might have some spark left of the better times. He needed this. She had to give it to him. She had to. After every thing he had done to sever the ties, to curse her in name and in spirit, to divorce her from the Aquila name, to kill her, somehow the connections remained. Somehow he still needed her in his life. He would not fight it anymore.

Therefore she must listen.

"I'm sick," he pleaded, hoping that it would be enough to lay out such a simple statement and allow that to stand for all his actions. But he knew it could not, and the pain in his voice as he pried at his soul to get the words out was evident, "I've been sick for a long time. And it's... the kind of sickness that just gets worse. The kind of sickness I can't get help for." She would know. She would know better than anyone else. She had seen all the sides of him, there was nothing he had ever kept from her even if she doubted him. Datura was a golden boy, Datura was an open book. An open monster.

"It's getting to the point where I can't hide it anymore." He could feel himself choking on these words. The rattling in his chest was painful, taut. "I'm scared." He spoke openly with her as they had as children, as he had with no one else. No one had ever, could ever see him like this. It would have been wrong. It was clear now that nothing could be done to break his bond with her.

"This is not who I wanted to be when I was young." The copper man crawled forward like a child, supplicant, waiting to be pardoned by its mother.

"Love me."

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I'm sick, he said.

In a way, he could have stopped there. It was obvious that he was sick, but whether it was curable or simply a part of who he was, that was the question which Bella had never been able to answer for herself. And if she had, which was better? To cure him, to change him from the darkness she loved to someone else she might not? Or to accept him, darkness and all? Bella was in the business of forgiveness, acceptance, understanding, but some things crossed a line, even for her.

What was amazing, though, was that he said it at all. None of the Daturas in Bella's memory would have admitted such a thing. While the memory of his teeth in her face still flickered involuntarily across her vision, she was given pause. The first step to change was seeing that you needed to.

He continued, and she listened attentively, her world focused on him now and him alone. He claimed that he was too far gone, that the illness was indeed at the root of his being. Her head spun with every word, for it was so impossible for Datura to be so self-aware, so self-critical, so honest about his own demons. What had happened in the last two years to bring this version of her brother before her? Poisoned by his own nature, but desperately wanting to overcome it. But if Datura wasn't Datura, who would he be? What was left?

He'd claimed that this was the place they had played as children, was the place that he had taken his first attempt on her life, if unintentionally. At least, she had believed it to be unintentional at the time. Then, not too far away, there had to be a small, cramped cave, large enough for two children, where he had given her a glimpse of whatever she was seeing today. The pain and effort in his voice was making her chest ache, was bringing a tightness to her throat. He had always been her ultimate weakness.

He shared that spot now, though, and it was only that fact which prevented her from crumpling and going to him. If it had just been the two of them, old habits would have been too easy to fall into. Love me, he begged. I love you, she thought back.

"Is that..." she tried, but her mouth was too dry, so she took a careful, almost-shaking breath, licked her lips and tried again. "Is that why. Why it happened."

He claimed that he couldn't change, but if that were true, what was the point in saying anything at all? Her head told her to stop, to leave, that he wasn't her responsibility anymore, but her heart hadn't left with Duckweed after all.

"I'll... I'll h-help you, Datura. If you let me."