Nightingale Palisade four days to hitchhike

It was confirmed, she did indeed mean to say Gent. A little, the girl confirmed, and that clearly wasn't true because a little wouldn't have her looking at him like that. His confusion mounted, but then she said that name and his features opened up into nothing but awe. Jaw slackened and eyes wide, the questions rushed onto his tongue. She knew Kino? Was he still alive then? Was Kova with him? There was so much he wanted to know, but she stopped that train before it could even really get going with her next few words.

What he'd done to him?

It had been no secret that Kino had suddenly despised him after Minka's death. When Kova had come to tell him of the plan to take the boy to a new pack, the shock hadn't been that Kino wanted to leave, but that he would actually act on the desire. But what had he done to earn that? He very much wanted to know what could so swiftly and easily erase a lifetime of love and devotion, and this girl might very well have those answers.

Still, the way she was acting, the words she was saying weren't right at all. Scared of him? Why on Earth would she be? What was she mad at him about?

"I... what?"

Was he really about to be told off by some stocky, snot-stuffed yearling?

"What are you talking about? Where is Kino? He's alright, then? Is Kova with him?"

Gent seemed genuinely shocked to hear the name come off her lips, more shocked than she was to even say it. But it was not the reaction she had been expecting and she was beginning to doubt herself. There was only genuine surprise, the kind of face Sahalie would have made if someone told her Anna was actually alive, instead of the face she would have made if someone had told her Nayeli had come home. The latter was the expression she had expected from Gent, she had expected his face to wrestle with some powerful guilt, confusion, and discomfort. Instead of any of those things he was just confused, like she was talking actual nonsense in a fever dream. Was she making sense to him or was he having trouble understanding her nose-clogged speech?

Though the girl did not intend to lie she had no intentions of betraying Alastor's location. Her eyes narrowed. She resolved to push past her misgivings about Gent and tell him all the things she had thought about since she had discovered Alastor's first—not real identity— "He's so boken because ob what you dib, of what habbenbd. He cab barely trust bme let alobe aby obber wolf. Ah foubd hib wheb he wab all alobe, so, yeah, who the hell bows where Koba is but there's anober wolf who let hib dowb why wee at it. The way you treateb hib left perbambent scars, thibs thab I hab to deal with ebry dab day." Her mind was reeling back to the argument that had only been a few days ago, and then to his crumbled form over his mothers grave. Alastor had never let go of the things that had happened to him, it colored every part of his life and it affected her deeply. "You cab't just hib chibreb. Who the hell do you thibk you are? I dob't care if he hab sbit in your face. You dob't hib a bub. You all mistreateb hib and you know whab, I'm glab I foubd you. Because I dob't wabt you to lib anober day wibbout knowing whab you dib."

"He thibs he's a mobster. How coulb you leb a chilb thib thab of hibself?" This was the real monster, in front of her.

(This post was last modified: Jan 08, 2017, 06:45 AM by Sahalie.)

She just looked more resolute in her anger with him and he really didn't know what to make of this but it was starting to make him uncomfortable. Kino was broken because of what Gent did? Again, what had he done? Perhaps Raela had been cold to the child, but she had her reasons after what he'd done to Draven and how he'd reacted to her defending his brother, and it certainly hadn't been enough to cause anything this girl was explaining. The rest of the pack? They had done nothing but try to comfort the children the best they knew how. Gent himself had made effort after effort to reach out to Kino, but he'd been pushed away every time. If the boy had trust issues, then he had chosen to paint his life with that dark color, because Gent had always been there for the youth until the day the monthling had chosen to walk away from his family, his friends and everything his mother had sacrificed to build.

The more she blamed him for all these issues Kino apparently had, the more that old bitterness bubbled up to the surface. Gent's eyes hardened as he peered down his nose at the girl and her righteous ire. It seemed he would never understand how a child he and Minka had raised could become what Kino had. The boy had verbally attacked his grieving brother, bared his fangs at his packmates, abandoned them in a whirlwind that had taken Kova from them too, then gone to this girl and cried about how terrible Gent was? What... a little shit.

Of course, he knew nothing of the delusion that Kino's paranoia had fabricated.

It bothered him that Kova had been separated from Kino (Gent was hard pressed to believe that the eldest Lagina child would willingly abandon his brother), and this was reflected briefly by a knitting of his brows as the information passed from her lips. The rest of it though? He watched with a much cooler demeanor as she went, about how he had hit him, about how apparently the entire pack had abused him, ruined him.

What a joke. A sick, painful joke.

"Is that what he told you?"

Was it even worthwhile to tell his own side? Kino, for whatever reason, was clearly intent on making him a villain, and even if he convinced her otherwise, what difference would that truly make?

who knows how much longer she'll go on like this >_>

Maybe the reasonable course of action would have been to talk it out calmly—to get Gent's side of the story as the girl would have done in any other case, with any other wolf. But it was so hard with everything that Alastor had said and the impact it had made on the girl, it was too hard to be impartial or set aside her fury. The more Sahalie spoke, though, the colder the man's face became. He was a very different wolf from the charming guy who had warned her of cougars and offered her treatment for her cold, a place to stay perhaps. It felt odd to continue with that hardened stare on her face, but she was so determined to say her whole part that she felt she had no choice, even if it wasn't reaching him.

Is that what he told you?

Without even any attempt to argue, the man appeared to be proposing that another side to the story existed. He didn't even offer it to her, but for a fleeting second she wondered about taking it. What other side could their possibly be? Her resolve began to crumble a little and she shook her coat, staring back at the man with narrowed eyes, "Bot worb for worb, no. Bost of it ib just my diabnosis." Sure, Gent was not Kino's favourite person in the world, but he hadn't exactly uttered the magic phrase of "Gent ruined everything about my life." It was just something that Sahalie could see in their everyday interactions and especially in their fights: scars of trauma. Who else was there to cause them?

"He saib you bit hib though. Are you sayib you didb't do thab?"

(This post was last modified: Jan 11, 2017, 07:33 PM by Sahalie. Edit Reason: Forgot the cold voice )

Her diagnosis? The ice thinned ever so slightly, a single brow quirking upward almost imperceptibly. If that wasn't all out of Kino's mouth, if he didn't blame him... well, the way the child had acted before leaving made it pretty evident he had. Yet things could still not be as bad as her little tirade had made them seem, maybe it was all just a horribly messed up game of telephone. After all, the boy had refused to speak or even listen to Gent after that night. The man was never allowed to find out, straight from the horses mouth, how he felt. He hoped, deep down and dearly, that it was all a misunderstanding. Because as much as he had shut himself down in regards to Minka's children, he had given them everything, and to have Kino and Draven spit that back in his face hurt more than he would ever admit to.

She asked if he'd really hit Kino, and a stream of breath escaped him before he answered.

"I knocked him off balance, yes," he clarified. "Nothing that would've hurt him. I know my own strength."

He also knew what it was like to be struck by your father, to be thrown and forced down, bit and dragged. What he had done to Kino was nothing compared to what many other adults might have done if faced with such open aggression from a monthling.

"Did he tell you what he did to Draven, or Raela; why I needed to use force to get his attention?" Whether the answer was yes or no, he didnt give much time for her to reply and would continue anyways even if she did.

"When Draven saw Minka dead..." he would have to be careful not to let the emotion infect his voice as the memory began to replay itself in his head, "he didnt understand. He was crying, begging her to come back. Kino told him to shut up, to stop being selfish. Told him he was hurting everyone. @Draven took that to heart. You want to talk about emotional scars? Kino isolated him, cut him off because he expressed himself differently. He didnt speak to him ever after that, kept Ari away from him, tried to keep Kova to himself as well. I never saw Draven recover. He blamed himself for all of it, would barely eat, wouldn't drink, wouldn't talk to anyone and Kino was content to let him waste away without a word."

It hadn't work. Anger had crept into his voice, but also an immense sadness; a fraction of the desperation he had felt in those days as he had tried so hard to make everything right again, but never had been able to.

"Raela... she tried to defend Draven. She'd lost before, and been punished for feeling. She couldn't bear to see it happen to someone else. So she told Kino and Ari both, that they were the ones being selfish, that Draven had a right to grieve too. They were children, emotions were high, I wanted to protect all three of them at once. Never thought I would have to protect them from each other, but..."

He shook his head, before pale softened eyes regarded Sahalie.

"They were mine. From the moment they were born. I raised them, slept curled around them and their mother every night, thought of them as my own flesh and blood. Without Minka... the second she was gone, it meant nothing. You can't have any idea how much that fucking hurt."

And why the hell was he telling this stranger, this random teenager? He wanted to clench his jaws shut right then and there, but something felt so damn good about finally getting this out.

"I told them both to leave it alone, lets go back. Because Ari was asking to leave. They didnt listen, insisting Draven was... Kino bared his fangs at Raela. Ignored me, went on a rant, spitting about how horrible Draven was being. So yeah, I gave him a push. Enough to take him off his feet, but not to hurt him. I wasn't going to watch him try to go toe to toe with an adult, I wasn't going to let him keep pissing on his brother in front of his mothers corpse, and I wasnt going to wait until someone else saw fit to correct my child."

Because he had, in every sense, considered Kino his son, even after that night. It wasnt until the monthling turned his back on the pack that Gent accepted the truth: he had never really been his.

"After that, he pretended I didnt exist. Wouldnt go near anyone, really. Didnt much like it when Ari did either. I tried, time and time again, to reach out to him, to talk to him or just be with him but he wanted nothing to do with me. One day, Kova came and told me that Kino wanted to leave. To find somewhere else to live. Just like that, and I couldn't... What was I going to do? I couldn't force him to be a part of a pack he clearly despised. So he just left us. Without a word."

The monologue was finally drawing to an end, and his chest felt emptier, lighter.

"I know he lost his mother. I buried my father alone when I was five months old. I get it. But that... the way he turned on his brother, how fucking... cold he became, how in the blink of an eye he just didn't give a shit about the wolves that cared for him his whole life... I didn't raise selfishness like that. Minka didnt raise selfishness like that."

And there it was. All of it. At last.

(This post was last modified: Jan 11, 2017, 10:32 PM by Gent.)

Her eyes widened when the man all but confirmed her accusation. To Gent there was a clear difference in hitting someone or knocking them off balance, mainly an intent to cause damage. But in Sahalie's eyes the division between the two was not as clear: it had hurt Alastor—emotionally. No one had ever raised a paw against the girl when she had been a child or otherwise—save for Larkspur, who was forgiven—and it was difficult to reconcile any sort of concept of physical discipline or any discipline at all. Did Gent really know his strength, she had to wonder, as how could anyone know their strength without testing it. Her heart just kept telling her that Alastor had only been months old, he deserved gentle care. He was only a boy.


Sahalie gave a small nod, her expression steely. Gent did not even acknowledge her before continuing on. And just like before, there wasn't any new information, but Gent spoke with conviction. The stories were the same, but the perspectives were at odds with one another. As it went on, though, her posture began to soften, and she began to seriously consider Draven—a wolf that she had mostly overlooked before. She had to wonder if Draven was as messed up on the inside as Alastor was: all contorted, full of self-loathing, unable to trust, quick to run. This mess of her friend's childhood just seemed like a fight that had been blown completely out of proportion and left to fester like a sore, just an open wound that crusted over but never healed. Occasionally the girl's words would lance the boil and hot puss would leak out, but still the sore would not heal. It needed more than words, probably more than Sahalie could ever give. Clearly Gent had given enough of himself to it, she could hear the exhaustion and frustration in his tone.

The girl recoiled—no, she had no idea what it would feel like to put so much care into someone who ultimately rejected you. It struck her that she had been imagining this backwards all long. Alastor had been like this from the start: sullen, brooding, struggling to cope with other's emotions. Nothing had caused him to be like this, but being this way had only caused more friction amongst himself and his siblings and ultimately his family, traditional or not. Maybe her chest stung because she felt a little lied to, a little mislead, but at the same time the girl was so sure she knew the real Alastor. There was no Kino for her. 

She sighed.

"Look... I. I meab, I knew all ob thad. I just. Me ab Kino we fight, we fight all the timeb," she couldn't laugh, so she just snorted out a hot glob of snot, "Heck, we fob just the obber day. Ab ebbry timeb ib's so paibful ab ib feels like we'll neber geb brough it. But we bake ib work. I bake it work. I'm.... I'm nob going to tell you you were wrob, thab... you dib the wronb thinb." Even though she could never reconcile any physical force against a child. Even though she could tell him a thousand better tactics for dealing with Alastor. "I thibk there wab... I thibk Kino is just a dibberent wolf from you all. A dibberent wolf frob Draben. Ab.. I'm nob going to excuse whab Kino dib but I cab tell you he's a bedder wolf now. He woulb't make the sabe mistake agaib. He's been wid me brough the hardest times ob my life and I thibk he's learbed how to deal wib grief."

He finished, and she told him to look, and another stream of hot air escaped his nostrils. Then she told him she knew all that, and he quirked a skeptical brow. What was with this girl? She knew everything Kino had done to hurt other people, what he'd done to his own brother, and still Gent was the monster? The girl went on to start telling him of their problems, and he began to feel like maybe he should've just told her to fuck off to begin with. It had felt good to get it out, but just as swiftly it felt wasted. She was a child, and clearly didn't appreciate the gravity of all that had happened.

He wished he could just stop being bitter about it. The past couldn't be changed, after all.

Patiently, because she had sat through his whole monologue, he listened as she talked through her snot. Saying that Kino was just different felt like the biggest cop out, but clearly he meant something to the girl and what would he garner from trying to talk her out of that? It had nothing to do with him, and if Kino found something to make him happy, then the part of Gent that had once adored the boy as his own could be happy for that.

But then: he wouldn't make the same mistake again.

Gent scoffed at how positively naive she was.

"Yeah, maybe you've got it all figured out. But what I know, is that he never came back. Not for us, not for his mother, not for his siblings. A wolf who is content to leave everything in the dust once is a wolf that can't be trusted not to do it again. You'll learn that, the older you get."

She would probably never have to shoulder the responsibility of acting upon that lesson, however. It was up to the alpha to be hard, to not give second chances that would just hurt those who stayed. At least, that's what he thought; if he knew of Sahalie's aspirations, he might have spent more time explaining before she burned her own pack to the ground with her exuberant 'understanding.'

"If he's happy, good. I'll never be able to trust him, though, and I won't let him hurt my pack again."

It was as clear as he felt comfortable being on the matter that he didn't want the boy back. Just in case the girl thought reparations might make things better.

"... did you want that medicine? I can still go grab something for ya."

Gent wasn't buying anything she was peddling, and it hurt. He sounded so much like Serach, flippantly shrugging her off for her naivety. Well she was naive it that didn't make her wrong. And Gent was wrong about one thing: Alastor had come back for his mother. She realized she was largely to blame for it: capturing the wild boy and tethering him to her in Oak Tree Bend. He probably never wanted to come look for Gent and apologize, or look for Draven, but there had never been the option, really. Marianna had been an exception: he had been close to her.

His next statement, though, was a knife through her heart. After all, hadn't she just left Oak Tree Bend in the dust a mere two weeks ago? Her image—damaged. But she didn't feel any less loyal, any less trustworthy. Oak Tree Bend had been her home and her family and she had left on her own terms, for what she felt were strong reasons. Maybe the same could not be said for Alastor, but she had never questioned her faith in him, not once.

"So ib I broughb hib here, you woudb't wabt to talk to hib yoursef?" she said, staring up at him cautiously. Sahalie was not sure how Alastor could do Gent any more harm. They certainly wouldn't be joining his pack. That would be nuts.

"Sure," she said, her tail wagging gratefully. Inspire of all his grudges, Gent was still a helpful wolf. She knew in her heart that Al and Gent were both wrong about each other. And like hell would she refuse anything make this cold more bearable.

@Gent either you can wrap it up in your next post or I can in mine

His ears cupped forward as she pursued asking a rather curious question. After all that, she thought the two talking it out might be an option? It was a wonder for the blue-black leviathan where all of her fire had gone when his side had been dismissed as prior knowledge. Her gears had shifted and he wasn't sure what the catalyst was for any of it. Maybe this was just how teenage girls were, or maybe there was something Gent still wasn't seeing. Yet, this possibility... would the boy even wish to speak with him, if that was his view of how everything had gone down? The alpha felt doubtful, but a no did not come readily to his lips.

His tail flicked behind him as clearly he was thinking about it. This was not an solid offer, simply a musing sine die, and genuinely, if the stars somehow aligned and led Kino on a path that brought him peaceably back to Gent, there was no reason for him to be unwilling to just talk.

"If he ever wants that, you'll know where to find me," he finally settled, a nod of his muzzle beckoning her to follow as he turned on his heals. Hopefully, he wasn't making a mistake in saying that nor allowing this girl to know where his family lived.