I keep trying, I don't know what for

Being wrapped up in his embrace felt like coming home. It felt like comfort and strength that she lacked. It felt like where she was supposed to be. She leaned into him heavily and gratefully let him hold her up against him, her paws curling around paw fulls of his fur as she clung to him as if that would keep her from falling apart again. His familiar, rough voice questioned her and she didn't even know how to begin explaining the long and tangled web she was eternally trapped in. There was so much to explain to get to where she was now - at the end of her rope with nothing left to give. She had always given and given until there was nothing left for herself, a habit that she found extremely hard to break. She had tried to stop that trend when she drew her lines in the sand for Sirius and somehow he still managed to hurt her and drain her again and again.

She didn't reply right away, instead just holding onto him and breathing in his unique scent and letting it calm her. After a while she was able to loosen her hold on him a bit, but she didn't move away. She just turned her head enough to be able to rest her cheek on his chest to make it a bit easier to speak. She left her eyes closed, too afraid that tears might escape if she opened them. "I guess the extremely short version of the story is that Sirius had a mental break when he smelled your sent on me and said some... hurtful things to me," she said quietly, her brows pulling together. That only just barely scratched the surface, though as she said it out loud she knew that was more or less what had happened. Mortis had been right. Sirius was an ass and what he said wasn't true, but that didn't take away the sting.

She sighed and held him tighter, not wanting him to pull away. She knew that he would be furious with Sirius and she didn't want him to leave. If he ran off to fight him now... She might actually lose what small semblance of control she had left. She knew she had mentioned Sirius before when she had been describing her past and how she had learned from him in the Armada, but she hadn't gone much deeper than that until now so there was a lot to explain. "Back when I first joined the Armada under Zee and Sirius and I was training with him I realized that I liked him, but I never told him or ever did anything about it. He was married to Zee so I obviously wasn't going to try and come between them. I met Resin around the same time and ended up falling in love with her instead. Sirius and I were very close friends and confidants, but there was never anything romantic there. I still liked him as more than a friend, but I just left it at that."

"Everything was fine for a long time. I moved out of the Armada with Resin to start this pack and that was hard on him because he's a possessive bastard, but he let me go. It wasn't until after Resin attacked me and started to deteriorate that things started getting... strained. I know I didn't help the situation because I leaned on him really heavily at the time, but... he was really my only friend. I didn't know where else to turn and Resin had adopted him years ago so he was just as close to Resin as I was. He was here a lot while Resin was locked away." She paused her ears folding back against her head. She kept her head on his chest all though her monologue of her and Sirius' history, looking out into the night over the plains, her gaze distant. She knew she'd have to tell Kane about going to find Zee to paint the full picture, but it felt strange to tell him. It felt like Sirius' truth to tell not hers, but it fell on her all the same.

She sighed softly and forced herself to keep going as she got deeper and closer to the present day events that caused all this deep seated pain. "I was still recovering from the attack from Resin when Sirius came to me and told me that Zee had gone missing. I shouldn't have gone in the state I was in, but I did. Zee saved me, Sirius was my friend... What else was I supposed to do? I helped him track her and follow any little hint of her scent and we followed the path she told Sirius her and her son were going to take. We... We found a section of forest that had caught fire. It seemed like a campfire that had gone wrong, but I couldn't really tell. There were two bodies. Zee had antlers and one of the bodies did as well." Her voice grew more pained and hesitant as she spoke, picturing the scene in her mind. But somehow at the same time she felt detached from it as well, as if it was a whole different life time ago.

"It broke Sirius. He tried to throw himself on the embers to kill himself. I had to pull him off of them - well, try to anyway. He's as big as you are. He threw me off of him, injured my shoulder. I did eventually get him to leave them, but he blamed me for not letting him die. We loaded up the bones on a makeshift cart I made because he wouldn't leave without them." She stopped herself from telling him how she had carted them back on her own, how she had scarred her back doing so, how she had collapsed the moment they crossed into Armada territory. She knew Kane would be mad enough as it was just with what she had told him. "After that... After that and after the funeral he brought me back here on a cart. Artorias confronted him about the state I was in and I couldn't stop them from fighting. Sirius gave Artorias a knife and egged him into fighting harder and harder until Artorias stabbed him in the neck and nearly killed him. The healers here saved him and I went to check on him - and to scold him for trying to use my son to kill himself again."

"He seemed better then. More like the Sirius I knew. He was still hurting, obviously, but... When he asked me to lay with him while he slept I didn't really hesitate. He and I both don't do well being alone. We both fell asleep, but he had a nightmare and knocked us both out of the bed. I think he was still stuck in that nightmare partially and he was afraid that he had hurt me because he had hurt others that he had been asleep around before during his nightmares, but I was totally fine. Just surprised from falling out of bed and landing on him. I... I still don't really know why, but... in the heat of the moment I guess... He kissed me." She hesitated, not really knowing how Kane would react to that. "It brought back all those feelings I used to have for him and... I don't know, I guess I was just so desperate I thought... I thought maybe he could feel the same way... I told him how I felt and he shut me down." It had been stupid of her to think that. It was Zee and had always been Zee. Even in death.

"A-Anyway, um... He made it pretty clear that it was a mistake, that he did love me but platonically and that he could never love anyone but Zee. I tried to forgive him for kissing me but he still wanted to be affectionate with me after that and I... I couldn't do it. We used to hug and sleep next to each other all the time before, but now I just felt embarrassed and hurt so I set boundaries with him. I told him that I still wanted to be friends because I did still care about him and I didn't want to cut him out of my life, but I needed to draw a line on certain things. He... didn't like that very much. It was really hard to talk with him after that." She was tired and angry just thinking about that turning point. She should have just called it a loss after that and cut Sirius out of her life after that, but she hadn't. She had been too lonely, too desperate for any kind of support.

"Once he was well enough to go back to the Armada I didn't see him until... Until Resin started getting worse and I was too afraid to be in the dungeons alone with her. I did try. But just seeing her raving and attacking the bars and frail and just... It hurt too much to be down there with her by myself, but I wanted to be with her when she finally passed. I knew it wouldn't be too much longer so... I summoned Sirius to come. I didn't know who else to turn to and he had come and stayed with me in the dungeons. I thought... I thought we were okay after that. He helped me let Resin out of the dungeons when the giant dire wolves attacked and stayed with me though the funeral but he went back to the Armada and a few weeks after that is when I met you."

She finally lifted her head from his chest, tipping her head up to look at him, feeling worn and tired reliving all of these things, but at least now he would know. Now he would fully understand the pain and stress that had shaped her into what she was when he found her and know how she had gotten to this point with Sirius. She felt bad for having him just sit here listening to her ranting on and on about her life with the Warlord, but... He had to know at some point if he was going to stay with her. The last thing she wanted was for Sirius to suddenly get it in his mind that he was going to try and take her from Kane or attack Kane over her and for Kane to be blindsided by it. She wanted to be honest with him, for better or worse.

She sighed and added, "So... That brings us to the festival. After the opening feast I crossed paths with Sirius and I figured that was as good a time as any to talk to him about being with you and he smelled you on me before I could even say anything. He... He was delusional. He thought I was Zee. He thought that she had cheated on him, begged her to stop leaving him, all while thinking I was her. At first when he kind of came to and saw it was me he asked if I had seen Zee and that he was looking for her like he didn't remember she was dead. I tried to lie and get him to follow me to her so I could take him to his daughter, but then he really remembered what was going on and... and then he was just..." Her ears fell back again, guilt and pain pulling at her expression as she dropped her gaze to the ground again. Her voice was quiet as she recounted what Sirius had told her, but she knew every word. It was burned into her memory. "He asked me if Resin's body was still warm when I fucked you. He accused me of being relieved over finding a wolf with no problems so that I could run away and forget my promises to him and Resin. He said the ones I loved meant nothing to me and told me to leave and to go back to you."

Tamsyn swallowed past the hard lump in her throat as she leaned into him again, drinking in his comfort, breathing in his familiar scent. "Possessive bastard," she muttered under her breath, holding Kane tightly. "I don't know what to expect from him any more. I'm... I'm worried about what he might do. I think he's still imagining that Zee is actually there with him. I did manage to run into one of his sons and I told them what happened, but... I still love his children and that pack, I just... I don't know what he might do."

Tamsyn Carpathius