If there was one thing Manea hated more than anything else it was feeling helpless-especially when their children were involved. She wished everything was still as easy as when they were pups and they tripped or got into something they shouldn't, but she couldn't just pick them up and snuggle them until everything was better now. Now they were adults and facing things she never wanted them to have to face. Part of her couldn't help but be frustrated with the events that had unfolded after everything she had attempted to do in order to prevent this from happening, but she couldn't keep them from what made them happy and she couldn't keep them from learning their own lessons. After failing to get Avacyn to speak with her, she stood outside of the twin's den while Alastor went in to make his own attempt at speaking with their heartbroken daughter.

Knowing her headstrong son, she had her doubts that he would want to speak with her any more than Avacyn had, but she still struck out into the surrounding woods to find him regardless. Even if they were too old now for her to try and cuddle everything better it didn't stop her from wanting to do just that. It was all she could do. There was no fixing what had happened so she could only help them pick up the pieces and support them where she could. His scent was easy enough to follow and eventually she found his ruby and onyx form among the evergreen trees of Alias Island. She slowed as she approached him, coming to stand beside him and gently resting her shoulder against his. She didn't say anything at first, instead just making her presence known and waiting to see if he even wanted her to be there.

"Manea Mendacium"

All through the coniferous woods lay a trail of rampant destruction. In his unstable emotional state, Saracyn had torn apart anything he could get his paws on. Brush was crushed and shredded, tree trunks were torn and clawed, and the occasional unlucky squirrel or rabbit that hadn't gotten out of the enraged dire wolf's way in time had been eviscerated and left in his wake. Manea would have to step through a veritable battlefield before she eventually found her son where he had tired himself out. Sitting slumped over in the middle of a small clearing, the despondent Commander just stared down at his own bleeding paws, injured and splintered from lashing out at the sturdy trees he'd marked up. His eyes were wide open, but glassy and distant, staring off into nothingness. Saracyn was broken and empty, unable to move, unable to speak, scarcely able to breathe the pain in his chest was so intense. That was how Manea found her son.

Saracyn didn't even look up when he heard the approaching pawsteps of his mother. He was frozen in place, petrified in a pained stupor like a statue. It was his mother's presence that finally broke him out of his trance. The moment she leaned her shoulder into his, Sara all but crumpled under the emotional toll he had endured for the sake of his sister. He had tried to keep himself together, to be strong for her, but it had been slowly killing him inside, whittling him away until he was hollow. Now with no one left to put up a facade for, Saracyn's true self slipped through the cracks in his mask, and Manea would be the one to see it. "I fucked up..." he croaked out after a long moment of silence. His voice was so hoarse and rough, broken by the sorrow and the screaming he had done during his emotional explosion. "I fucked up everything because I thought Ava and I were meant to be... But all I've done is ruin her life."

Silence for a while. Then Saracyn finally lifted his head, just enough so he could look at his mother with heartbroken, anguished eyes, as if he was pleading with her for an answer that made sense. "Why did the Ancients abandon us...? I thought I was doing the right thing, I thought this was what they created me for, but... all I've brought Ava is pain and loss and a pair of dead puppies. Why would they make me this way if I wasn't supposed to be like this?" Saracyn still couldn't wrap his mind over how this could have happened. Everything he had been raised to believe in told him that this was what was supposed to be, but all he had to show for his belief was a heartbroken mate, a damaged marriage, and a pair of dead twins. Why had the Ancients betrayed and abandoned them so cruelly? Why were they being punished so harshly for doing what they were supposed to do?

"Saracyn Mendacium"

As soon as her shoulder leaned into his, she felt her son crumple and her already worried, aching heart hurt even more deeply for her children. "Sara..." she said gently as her ears folded back, settling down beside him and lifting her forelegs to wrap them around his shoulders, pulling him into her embrace and tucking his head in under hers. In that moment he wasn't an adult or the Commander in her eyes–he was her little boy and she held him the same way she would when he was young and hurting. She held him like that for a long moment, just letting him have this moment of release in the wake of the rage that he had let out on the forest around them. When he did finally speak it was only to tell her how he had fucked up, his voice rough and misused. She never wanted her children to feel this kind of pain or regret no matter the circumstance so hearing him say how he felt that he had ruined his sister's life only made her hold him tighter.

Before she could find the right words to say, Sara lifted his head so that his cerulean eyes met her aqua gaze and she listened as he questioned the Ancients and his part in all of this, doing all but screaming at the sky to ask why they had done this to him and Avacyn–though she didn't doubt that had come before she arrived. She sighed softly, her expression heavy with grief and sympathy for her sweet son. This was the outcome she had feared from the beginning of all of this and the reason that she had tried to arrange other means of them having their family for them, but in the end this was their lesson to learn and she had to let them find their own way no matter how much it pained her to see them like this now. "My sweet boy..." she said softly, rubbing his shoulders and bringing one of her paws up to rub away the tear stains from his cheeks. "You have not ruined Avacyn's life. I've seen how happy you make her. I've seen how happy she makes you. That's not all for nothing. Love is worth every cost as long as it is genuine."

With her paws resting on his shoulders, she paused for a moment as she carefully picked her words and tried to find some way to console her son through something that even she couldn't imagine the loss of. "There's more than one path to every outcome," she reminded him. "This one tragedy doesn't mean that all of this is wrong. This doesn't mean that you are wrong. You are supposed to be exactly who you are. You are my son, my little star, my firefly, my pride and joy... You are everything you were meant to be. All this means is that this wasn't the path you were meant to take to get to your goal. You and Avacyn will be parents one day, if that's what you truly want, but we may have to walk a different path to get there."

"Manea Mendacium"