when you've seen my best and worst

Hearing Venom's giggle in spite of the tears in her twilight eyes brought a small smile of empathy to Artorias' lips. It let him know he was doing a good job comforting her. This wasn't something the young wolf had ever had to do before; he'd been the only one in his family to experience the heartbreak of losing a wolf you loved that way. Perhaps that was what helped him relate to the wounded Empress so much. He'd lost his mother, and for a brief period he'd lost Briar as well. He knew the sting, the hurt it brought, as well as the feeling of hopelessness to overcome the pain. You could easily lose yourself in it and drown if you weren't careful. That was not a road he would see Venom go down, not if he could do anything to help it.

Venom seemed to calm down some when he brought up mention of her children, and her expression lit up even if only a touch as she told him of her offspring, now adolescents approaching maturity just as he had been. That brought a more genuine smile to Artorias' face. He hadn't seen any of them since the Ashen tournament a year ago, when they had all been small pups. Now, they would be almost full adults. "How the time flies..." he remarked with another slow sip of wine, the fire reflecting and dancing off of his flaming irises. "I think they'll always be your sweet puppies though. At least, my mom would tell you that. She still sees us all as her little pups, even though I'm a good foot taller than her!" He laughed, remembering how Tamsyn would still affectionately refer to him as her "Little Blueberry" even when he towered over her and was fully grown. Secretly, he hoped that would never change.

Then Venom began to talk about how her children were taking the departure of their father, and once more Artorias' smile began to falter. When the Empress made a passing comment of imagining his father just deciding he wasn't worth staying around for, the young brute's smile disappeared entirely. His head dipped, ember-like eyes darkening a touch while he gazed into space, swirling his goblet absentmindedly. "I don't have to imagine... I never met my father." Artorias had never known his father—he never would. He and his siblings had been the product of a night of blackout drunken revelry by his mother. While he would never fault her, think less of her, or deride her for her actions that had given him life, it did leave him with a huge unanswerable question about himself. Parts of himself he'd never discover or explore. It would be a mystery to haunt him like a specter forever. "I am sorry most of all for them. They probably don't understand what's happening." He shifted his eyes with guarded caution back to Venom, a grim expression on his face. "You don't think that Hattori... He'd never try to take them from you, would he?"

"Artorias Carpathius" | "Carpathian" | "Corbin" | "Argent"