With Eyes Wide Open

He watched her shrink away, basically melting away from his form. His ears fell back against his skull as some part of his mind screamed at him to comfort her. Part of him knew that he cared for this woman deeply, that she meant the world to him. 'Comfort Momma, hold her!' a voice cried, pushing him to go and hold the stranger. But she wasn't a stranger, she was known to his heart. But he didn't move from his position, his rump firmly planted on the earth. He studied her with his yellow gaze as slowly, slowly his walls came tumbling down. Emotions broke through the surface as the woman moved closer to him, her fur pressing against his own. Breath hitched in his throat as his body grew ridged, tightening more as she told him that she wasn't leaving him. Swallowing hard, his eyes squeezed shut as a few tears slipped passed his slowly faltering guard. The last wolves that had cared for him had all been killed, right before his very eyes.

'You were always the strongest of us Lebrah, you were the only one who could have made it out of here.'

Faye's voice was soft in his mind, but it was followed by her dying screams. Gasping, Lebrah pulled back from Anais, his back slamming against the outside walls of the den. Fear made his eyes wide, fur standing on end. "No, I can't. I can't," he whispered, breath hissing out of his parted jaws. "I can still hear them, I can always hear their dying screams. It never leaves me, it haunts my every moment. That is why -- I have to get back!" he was panicking now, feeling as if he was going to pass out from his lack of proper breathing. He scrambled even further away from the woman, head shaking back and forth in quick motions. "Please don't get too close, some part of my soul yearns to be close for you. But everyone who got close to me got... taken away. Before my eyes... I watched them... I watched them lose their lives before my very eyes. My sister..." the man sobbed, his heart shattering all over again. "Oh Faye, I'm so sorry. I didn't want to take your life..." falling to the earth, he looked up at the woman with desperation in his eyes. "You have to help me, please. I can't -- I can't live like this."

Lebrah felt as if the weight of the world was coming down on him, crashing down on his already frail shoulders. The little voice in his head was silent, only its cries filling his mind. Or was it Faye's, or his brothers? Trembling the man looked around for something, anything. He was clawing at the surface of the darkness, trying to climb his way back up. He wanted to hold the woman again, but the fear of her getting hurt turned his limbs into cement. "There was blood everywhere... by my jaws. Her blood, all over," he whispered, his form not staying still as it quivered and shook. He needed to get his mind back, revert it back to the Lebrah she knew, the one that was safe from all this blackness.