But if it had to perish twice,

At first it seemed okay. Sirius was provoking him, egging him on. That wasn't unusual for him. Had she not done the exact same thing to him while she was still beginning to process her own frustration and grief? Fight me. Fight me. Fight me. And then, suddenly, it began to shift, skewing far darker than it ever should have gone before she realized what was happening. She was already shifting uneasily when Sirius gave Artorias his blade. She had been okay with the wooden sword that Artorias trained with, but that wasn't enough for Sirius. He wanted the blade. She should have spoken up then, but she hadn't. Sirius could take a couple stabs of the smaller blade. His thick coat would absorb at least a portion of it anyway and she had seen him take far worse wounds without flenching. She had let it slide. That was a mistake.

The second that Artorias drew blood, Sirius shifted. She could see it in his face and her heart dropped into her stomach. All at once the Warlord came out swinging, swiping his heavy, deadly paws at her son's head, screaming about all the things he had done. Not being able to save them. Tearing skin from her shoulders. Making her carry the bodies back to the Armada. Those things she knew. Those things she wished he would stop thinking about, stop finding guilt in. But the last thing... The last thing she hadn't known.

Nearly killing Briar.

She had already gotten to her paws and was taking steps toward the fighting wolves when she heard Sirius rage about what he had done, demanding that Artorias do something about it, swinging and knocking her son to the ground. She froze, taking in that information, processing it. Briar? His daughter? How? When? It all flitted through her mind, none of it fully registering. Her gaze had been fixed on Sirius so she didn't see Artorias getting up, she didn't see him readying the blade with pure rage in his eyes. By the time she noticed it was too late.

She watched in horror as Artorias blocked Sirius' blow with the blade, watching as it nearly stabbed though his paw. That wretched helplessness she had felt the night that she had been forced to trap Resin in their room crept up on her, strangling any cries she tried to make. She tried to yell anything to make them stop, but it all died in her throat. She knew what Sirius was doing, knew what he wanted. She couldn't let him have it. She couldn't let him take himself from her, from them. She wouldn't allow him to put his life on her son's conscious. She refused.

Tamsyn ran toward them, ignoring the sharp pains from her feet and shoulder as she ran, bolting across the empty space between them just as Artorias reared up with one more savage strike, bringing the blade down toward his neck. "Artorias!" she screamed, but it was too late. She was always too late. The blade sank into Sirius' neck, lodging there, as Artorias bounced off of the Warlord's body and landed a short distance away. No no no no no. She raced to Sirius' side, immediately putting her paws on the side of his neck around the blade, keeping it from moving or going any deeper. And keeping Sirius' fucking paws from touching it.

"How fucking dare you!" She demanded, yelling at the stupid Fatalis man and putting her weight on Sirius' shoulder, pinning him to the ground, holding down his neck so he couldn't hurt himself any more while she evaluated the blade stuck in his skin. "I'm not going to let you fucking kill yourself, I don't care how badly you want to die. And I'm especially not going to let you use my son to do it!" The blade hadn't sunk all the way in, lodged at an angle into the fatty tissue of his neck, blocked slightly by his thick fur. She still didn't feel comfortable removing it without a healer on stand by to stop the bleeding, but it wasn't life threatening.

A sob caught in her throat and she glared hard at Sirius, bringing a paw hit him hard across his cheek. She was sure it would barely feel like a punch to someone like him and that almost made her more mad. At some point tears started streaming down her cheeks, but she didn't know when. "You fucking stupid, hard headed, idiot... Stop trying to leave me. I'm not going to let you."

"Tamsyn" | "Blue"