What's Important

As soon as her shoulder leaned into his, she felt her son crumple and her already worried, aching heart hurt even more deeply for her children. "Sara..." she said gently as her ears folded back, settling down beside him and lifting her forelegs to wrap them around his shoulders, pulling him into her embrace and tucking his head in under hers. In that moment he wasn't an adult or the Commander in her eyes–he was her little boy and she held him the same way she would when he was young and hurting. She held him like that for a long moment, just letting him have this moment of release in the wake of the rage that he had let out on the forest around them. When he did finally speak it was only to tell her how he had fucked up, his voice rough and misused. She never wanted her children to feel this kind of pain or regret no matter the circumstance so hearing him say how he felt that he had ruined his sister's life only made her hold him tighter.

Before she could find the right words to say, Sara lifted his head so that his cerulean eyes met her aqua gaze and she listened as he questioned the Ancients and his part in all of this, doing all but screaming at the sky to ask why they had done this to him and Avacyn–though she didn't doubt that had come before she arrived. She sighed softly, her expression heavy with grief and sympathy for her sweet son. This was the outcome she had feared from the beginning of all of this and the reason that she had tried to arrange other means of them having their family for them, but in the end this was their lesson to learn and she had to let them find their own way no matter how much it pained her to see them like this now. "My sweet boy..." she said softly, rubbing his shoulders and bringing one of her paws up to rub away the tear stains from his cheeks. "You have not ruined Avacyn's life. I've seen how happy you make her. I've seen how happy she makes you. That's not all for nothing. Love is worth every cost as long as it is genuine."

With her paws resting on his shoulders, she paused for a moment as she carefully picked her words and tried to find some way to console her son through something that even she couldn't imagine the loss of. "There's more than one path to every outcome," she reminded him. "This one tragedy doesn't mean that all of this is wrong. This doesn't mean that you are wrong. You are supposed to be exactly who you are. You are my son, my little star, my firefly, my pride and joy... You are everything you were meant to be. All this means is that this wasn't the path you were meant to take to get to your goal. You and Avacyn will be parents one day, if that's what you truly want, but we may have to walk a different path to get there."

"Manea Mendacium"