In your head, they are dying

It took him some time, but he did finally manage to drag himself up onto his paws and he carried himself inside. He couldn't really even say that he walked inside as much as he forced his exhausted frame up the stairs and down the corridor that led to the room that they called their home. When he finally passed through the doorway, he looked to the bed and saw the worried eyes of his mate. His ears flicked back against his skull and he glanced away from her before collapsing onto the bed of furs with a soft groan. Every part of him ached, but it wasn't the physical pain that hurt him most.

He knew that eventually he would have to answer her questions even though it was difficult to put anything into words. Between how little he had processed this new loss and how tired he was it was going to be a miracle if he could put together coherent sentences without breaking down entirely. He wouldn't lift his head to meet her gaze, but he would speak after a few moments of silence. "My cousin Nolan... He died. I found him by the falls... It looked like he fell - he was so..." He couldn't and wouldn't describe the state that he had found his cousin's body in. It was a long drop from the top of the cliff and if he had made it all the way to the top when he fell... there was no surprise that he was broken and mangled by the time he hit the ground. Thinking about him now made Casso's stomach churn uneasily.

"I went to Valhalla to tell his mother... My aunt... He was her only child..." The look on Báine's face when she connected Nolan's absence with what Casso was telling her would haunt him for the rest of his days. The fact that he didn't stay with her, didn't insist on keeping her company, when no one else in the pack had come to answer his call... it still didn't sit right with him.

"Letting down your family again. Always letting them down."

The clear, ringing voice in his mind made him flinch involuntarily and he closed his mismatched eyes with grit teeth while he tried to silence it once again. It had been a while since the demons had spoken to him so clearly and he had almost gotten used to the quiet rumble they had settled into as he went about his daily life with Yurei here in Winterfell. But this... All of this had brought them back with vigor.

Walk | "Talk" | think