Closing the book

*Tsunami* · Updated 04/30/23:

"Speech"

Tsunami sighed and settled herself on her haunches, shifting slightly for a while as if trying to find the perfect position, but really she was just nervous, illogically, and trying to settle herself before she took a deep breath to talk. "I don't really know why my parents ended up together, I have reason to believe my father maybe once have felt something for my mother but I cannot believe that's true of her. My father had his own pack at that point and I have to assume that was what she wanted him for." She chuckled darkly. "My siblings and I... We were her pawns. I cannot say if she really loved us, she certainly wasn't a monster but she never put us before her own machinations. She took us from our father, fled to Abaven, claimed that our father had threatened us..." Tsunami took a deep breath, slowing herself and lifting her gaze to meet Theory's. A set of bright blues, gorgeous, but Tsunami forced that thought from her head she needed to impart this to the woman. "My father, for all my complex feelings about him, adored his children. He never would have threatened us. My mother was a liar, and she ran to a place she knew wouldn't be able to turn away someone in need."

Tsunami took another few breathes, trying to throw off the tremors that had started to move through her body, but it wasn't really in her control the woman had spent so many years pushing down her emotions, her anger, her sadness... Her Trauma, and now that she was letting it out her body was reacting, releasing all the tension she hadn't realized she was holding. For so long she'd been a rock standing firm against the waves, and now finally she was letting herself be carried away, instead of fighting it. Her voice quivered ever so slightly as she continued but there was a resolve there too. "Shaye she... She saw a scared mother and her pups, she heard my mother claim up and down that my father had said he'd kill her, kill us." The woman shook her head lightly, a sort of bitter smirk crossing her lips. "I understand now that Shaye couldn't have known, she saw pups at risk and what she thought was a battered woman and did everything in her power to protect them, but at the time I couldn't understand that. I couldn't understand why she hadn't told my mother that that was ridiculous, that she should take me and my siblings back home, all I could see was the only world I ever knew being ripped away from me and I was too young to understand why. I blamed Shaye for not seeing through my mother's lies."

"I suspect there was a lot of politics at play... My father was an alpha and by all rights, we were still his members, I don't know what went down between the grown-ups then, I know my mother played the concerned loving parent very well but she cared more about trying to use us to get what she wanted from my father, she hardly cared to be around us while she was here. We were left to ourselves a lot. My sister... She took to being here like it a duck to water, seemed unbothered by being forced to leave and potentially never seeing our father again, she was sweet on a boy here, I never got it, he was just a silly little boy." Tsunami rolled her eyes at that thoughts, she didn't know if the boy, no doubt now a man, was even still here, couldn't know it was Theory's own brother, but she wouldn't speak her stronger thoughts on him all the same, she wasn't here to insult any of Abaven's members.

"I didn't bother to try and make any friends. As far as I was concerned you were all one big happy family and I couldn't stand it. I felt like screaming every time I saw you and the other pups, why did you get to have your happy childhoods and I'd had mine ripped away from me by someone who was supposed to give a shit? Besides I'd made friends before, my father's pack had had another litter of pups in it at the time, and when my mother had fled with us she had that ripped away, I couldn't trust it wouldn't happen again. I still wonder what happened to those kids..." Tsunami shook her head. "Instead, I isolated myself, spent most of my time with my brothers..." And yep there it was, the tears. She struggled valiantly for a moment to hold them back but the thought of her brothers... Of Tyto the last wolf in the world she'd had in her corner, it spilled forth. She'd treated him poorly when last they'd spoken, and she couldn't help but feel that with their severed relationship that was it, her family was all gone from her. She was alone. Sure Hattori had invited her into the fold and she had no intentions of turning him down, would be joining him soon enough... But she didn't have more than that, an alpha who saw her potential... That was it. Her soul ached for something more, something stronger. But it seemed the world always conspired to keep that just out of her reach. Tsunami cried silently for a bit, staring defiantly ahead even as her body shook, her jaw locking as she wrestled with the wave of emotions she'd held back for years like the wave that made her name now crashing over her.

"Eventually Shaye realized she couldn't hold us, our mother fled then, the moment she'd realized her gambit had failed she showed her true colors and abandoned us. I haven't seen her since and frankly, I hope I never do. Our father came for us but the damage had been done. I'd effectively lost my childhood. Things would not get better, not in the end, but in the meantime, I had stability in my life for the first time and I had a lot of time to stew. My family had always been good at one thing, anger, and it turned out I was no different. I simmered for years. I resented a lot of wolves." Her mother, Shaye and Abaven as a whole, Her Father once she'd learned of the children he'd sired in their absence, the woman who had borne her half-siblings, Her sister Theta, the Boy her sister had abandoned them all for...

"I'm tired of holding onto hatred." It was a simple statement, but for the first time the wall she'd been so carefully maintaining slipped, Tsunami folded in on herself and her voice showed how truly tired she was, her vulnerability, the tiny child still in her crying out in desperation for someone, anyone to care about her, shone through. "There are some wolves in my life who I can't and won't forgive, they do not deserve it but... Abaven, you, your family, and Shaye? I realize now that anger was misdirected..." Tsunami's voice hitched, the tears had not stopped but now they flowed with wild abandon, all of her protection had crumbled and she was baring her soul to a total stranger. "For longer than I care to admit I refused to see Shaye as a victim of my mother's manipulation, but I know better now. And you and your family... You never deserved my anger. It isn't your fault you're lucky enough to have something I never can, it isn't your fault you're loved." It felt like a punch to the gut, to finally say it out loud, to admit to why she'd always resented the boy her sister adored, why she'd felt so much joy in tearing into the other yearling during their raid... Because she was jealous, in them she saw everything she'd always wanted but that the world denied her... Love.

Tsunami wanted to say more, wanted to say she knew Shaye didn't actually need it because she'd done nothing wrong but that Tsunami had forgiven her. That she was ready to move on, to leave the hatred behind but her emotions were overwhelming her and despite everything she'd built up, despite being a mostly logical wolf who'd always rolled her eyes at the dramatics of more emotional wolves she was finally feeling it and after so much suppression it was a tide she could not fight anymore. Tsunami wept, curled in on herself and wept.

Art by Vhitany

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