End of the line

Emile · Updated 04/30/23:

The thing his father was asking of him, the way to help Emile out of the dark spiral... Emile did not know how to even begin to try. He was so lost. Grieving so many losses and he'd never even learned how to grieve his mother, and then they'd fallen on him in rapid succession. His mother and sister, Lillith, Bowen, Outlaw and Resin. And the complicated feelings he'd held for his father, he'd been too young to understand how to even begin asking for help and now that his father was here begging to let him help Emile wasn't sure there was anything that could be done anymore. His father placed a paw on his head and slowly the boy's gaze lifted, and then it was too much. His father's soft smile, it was the last thing that broke the dam. Emile felt his eyes welling and his vision of his father blurred as he tried, desperately to explain that he didn't know how to fix it, how to fix anything. "I don't know how to ... Mmmove on, I want to but all I feel is sadnesssssss and anger and pain ... and I can't figure out how to feel anythinggggg else." He said, feeling his voice waver. "Everyone le-le-le-left without saying goodbye and I nnnnnnever got to figure out how to h...andle it before it kept-kept-kept-kept happening."

He knew his father needed to understand, it was the only way. He had to finally get it all out. "Mmmmmom and Evvvvve. Lillith got ssssssick. B...owen and Outlllllllaw were my only friends and they....'re gone! Resinnnn reached out when she saw I was strugg...ling and I wasn't even allowed to go to her funnnnneral!" Could his father understand, the only wolves outside his siblings he'd cared for had left him without so much as a chance to say goodbye... And even his family wasn't safe for him to get close to. The next part he knew, it would hurt, and he feared if he spoke it out loud it would be the straw that finally broke his father's back, and he would well and truly be alone. But he had to explain it, was tired of the resentment festering and now that everything else had come out he wasn't sure he could stop it if he wanted: "You lllleft too, nnnnnnot physically. But you spent so much time pa-pa-patrolling for mom and Eve and I was just a kkkkid, I didn't know how to process my ... grief, I didn't know how to ask for helppppp. And when you did-did-did finally come back you were spennnnnnding so much time with..." He wouldn't say it, he didn't want to pour salt in the wound of that woman but he needed his father to see that Emile hadn't felt like he could go to his father because he'd never been taught he could. Ezra had lashed out and that had been the thing to get their father's attention on his pain, but Emile had never been the angry violent type, he'd borne his pain silently because he hated the way getting emotional made his stammer worse and because he hadn't wanted to make things harder for his father, and so he'd slipped through the cracks and where it seemed his family had finally learned to process their grief he never had. He was in many ways still that small boy who'd just lost his mother.

"I want helpppppp, but what if it's too-too-too-too late? I'm so s...cared of getting tooooooo close and ... everyone leaving, it hurts tooooooo much to be left behind again." He wanted help, but he also wanted all the pain to stop, he wanted to shut the world out so he wouldn't risk ever feeling abandoned again and yet he was so so desperate not to leave because then he'd be well and truly alone and that was worse.

"Speech"

Art by Sigath

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