one last breath

Cassiel had come across the male the better part of a day before, but had chosen to watch from a distance until he was sure. Until he had put together the memories of stories of memories his mother had used to tell Senka and he so fondly of the male that had been her lover for so short a time. The male who had begat them, and then had disappeared when she had gone back to tell him the news. Abandoned her, abandoned them. Yes. Yes, this was the male who'd sired him, Kassander Xanilov of the distinctive markings and the bicolored eyes. Now that he saw him, Cassiel could see for himself that he'd inherited his looks from the old man though his coloring was much more present on Cassiel's sister Senka than it was on the monochromatic Cassiel himself. The burly build that had come to Cassiel was on this auburn male wasted and wizened with age and infirmity, but it was still clear. This was without a doubt the man who had sired him.

And he, like Cassiel's mother before him, was dying.

Cassiel knew enough of healing, had been through enough, to recognize the signs when he saw them. This male was too far gone to be saved, even if Cassiel had wanted to save him.

Which he didn't.

No, the tight, hot fury that had struck him on seeing the male had only faded to a callous, disapproving coal searing his chest into a frozen nothingness. Yes, the metaphors were most definitely mixed, but that was what it felt like. A hate so hot that it had burned away into sharp-edged ice.

But he'd fed and nursed that anger and disgust for so long now that watching the male there, that Xanilov he'd spent so much of his life hating, that he found that he could feel hardly anything at all anymore when he looked at him. Just the cold, faint stirrings of that old anger, and strangely, a distant pity. He was nothing - just an old man dying alone.

Cassiel's jaw clenched, and his eyes hardened.