It was a long and harrowing journey, and brought home how long it had been since she had left Aerie’s for any extended period. Before now, her homes had always collapsed around her. She would find stability, and lose it. Then she had found Py, and together they had created two beautiful children. For a while, she had everything she could want in life.

Then the long night had come, and had pulled at her sanity, tattered her mind, and stolen from her one of her children. The loss of Dante went beyond anything she had ever felt before, and she could feel the pull and distance between herself and Py, and Deus. Her son had left the pack, and travelled from it. Taking another piece of her heart with her.

After burying her daughter, and talking over her findings with Py, the little healer had made a decision. She would find Eligos, and bring their Alpha home. Her journey took her far and wide, as she swept the territories of Boreas. It seemed, everywhere she went, she missed him.

As she swung back around to Redwater rocks, her paws as travel-worn and tired as her heart, she had to admit to herself the obvious. She was not going to find Eligos. She would need to return home, a failure, and watch the tattered remains of her family fall apart around her.


"Speech"

The short but fierce battle to drive off the male lion who had threatened an Aerie pup had left him tired and bleeding, but he'd sent Kida and Cypher to escort the pup home safely and limped on, looking for a vantage point he could watch from. Watch that they made it to the border safely, and also to make sure the lion stayed away. He had no lionesses to defend, so it seemed unlikely he would return to reclaim the territory he'd just been driven from, but for Aerie's sake Eligos needed to be sure. His shoulder ached and bled from the first heavy blow he'd taken, his muzzle burned fiercely where a claw had caught him across the bridge of his nose, but it wasn't until he'd turned a corner and unexpectedly come face to face with Riva that he really hurt. The pain of seeing his brother's mate, the mother of the child that he'd murdered, took his breath away a moment before settling into his chest in a sharp ache. "Riva," he breathed out. The guilt and the self-loathing mixed poignantly with how much he missed her, missed his brother, missed his nephew, missed Aerie and choked him back into a bleak, longing silence.

At the end of her rope, and heartsick with disappointment was the very moment she found him. Almost colluding nose to chest with the taller wolf as they both reached a corner of the rocks at the same instant. She pulled to a stop, her nose barely brushing his fur as she pulled herself back to her hunches. Sitting in front of him, and blinking, startled. It took a moment for her to realise he was bleeding. A moment longer then it took for him to say her name.

She blinked more than once, pushing back the odd mistiness that seemed to cling to her eyes for a moment. “Eligos.” she breathed softly, relief finally flowing in. “Thank goodness, I finally found you. What have you done to yourself…” she asked, getting to her paws as she pulled open her healer kit. “Sit down, and let me take a look while I tell you why I’ve been searching for you.” it bordered on an order, but she was a healer, and the urge to heal was almost overpowering.


"Speech"

To say that Eligos was taken aback by Riva's reaction to his appearance would be an understatement. He was completely floored by it. She seemed... relieved to have found him, which surely couldn't be right since... she obviously would not want to see him at all, and certainly wouldn't be seeking him out, and absolutely wouldn't be pulling out her kit to treat his wounds. She should be glad he was wounded.

Cautiously, he did as she ordered him to do, sitting where he was. He didn't answer her question, though, as he watched her work. "There's no point to this," he told her quietly, gently. "Healing me. It is a waste of effort when I... will be returning to face your husband's judgement anyway." There was nothing at all of bitterness or accusation in his voice at the reminder, just a resigned acceptance and, buried deeply, a sort of relief.

He didn’t hinder her efforts to heal him, thank goodness. But nor did he seem terribly happy to be allowing it. He was silent for a moment, ignoring her question of what happened to him. She let the silence settle for a moment as she steadied herself. He was still a reminder, and a painful one, of what had happened.

She steadily cleaned his wound with her mixture of Trillium and salt water. “There is always a point to healing, Eligos.” She scolded him, but there was no bite to her words. She knew what she had to say would hurt just as much as the scrub of salt water on his skin. She was gathering the courage to say it, but drawing it out was hurting them both. “My husband is aware that I am looking for you. He agreed that it was necessary after… after.” she huffed softly as she started to bandage him.

“It was wrong, and I’m sorry, for how it went down that night. I’m a healer, and I should know better. There's no excuse” Except that she had been half crazed by demons of the long night, and the victim had not just been a wolf, it had been her only daughter. “When I.. when I-” it had to be said, to be drawn out like poison lest it fester. “-started to bury Dantalion, I realised that she died of internal wounds, she had an aneurysm that swelled in her brain. The pressure and bleeding killed her. You didn’t, Eligos. You didn’t.” she stopped what she was doing to his wounds, her shoulders shaking as she tried to control herself. To be collected, and in charge, as a healer should. Instead she felt herself breaking inside.


"Speech"

Eligos tolerated the sting of the salt-water concoction in his wounds in stoic silence, letting her scolding roll off his back as the stinging water rolled down his fur. It felt good just to hear her voice, even if she was telling him what an idiot he was. But when she said Pyrrhic knew she was looking for him, that he had agreed it was necessary? he turned his head to look askance at her, though it brought them close as she began to bandage his wounds. She didn't need to be apologizing for how that night had gone. She and Pyrrhic had been... understandable in their grief, more so than he would have expected in fact since Pyrrhic had not immediately gone for his throat. Eligos wouldn't have blamed him - in fact, did not blame either of them. He wanted to reassure her of that, though the words caught in his throat at her gentle ministrations to him. But it was her next words, drawn out long and reluctantly, that completely kicked his emotional legs out from under him and knocked the breath from him. "Wh-what?" The moment he had awoken with Dantalion's throat in his jaws came rushing back to him, filling him, and he couldn't breathe. Had she... had he not killed her? She had... already been dead? He trembled, found himself panting for breath. "I... didn't kill her?" There was something in his voice that had never been there, a bewildered, almost childlike tone of wanting to be able to have hope, and fearing to.

“You didn’t kill her” her voice filled with tears. For her lost daughter, for all the pain it had caused them both. For Eligos, who had been alone out here this entire time, living with his guilt.

She heard the faint measure of hope in his voice, and knew how truly lost he had been. “I’m utterly certain. She died from the aneurysm” Her daughter, her poor daughter. Eligos didn’t kill her, Riva did. She had broken quarantine, and encountered her unaffected daughter. She was the reason Dante was infected, why she was dead.

She cleared her throat, trying to push away the obstacle in her throat, and picked up the bandages she had dropped. She finished applying them to Eligos, with paws that she was ashamed to admit shook. “Please come home, Eligos. We need you.”


"Speech"

Eligos didn't know what an aneurism was - he wasn't a healer - but if Riva knew that was what Danta had died from, and she insisted that he hadn't killed her...

He dragged in a ragged breath and dropped his head, eyes pressed shut against the flood of emotion that he didn't know what to do with. This didn't make Danta's death all right - if anything it gave him permission to grieve, to really mourn his niece for the first time since he had come to with her body. He hadn't deserved to before, her murderer. But now? Now the worst that he could claim was that he should have left the pack lands sooner after becoming infected. His pack members might never have caught the disease, this tragedy might never have happened.

He lifted his head sharply, twisting to look at Riva when she spoke a final time as she continued to bandage his wounds with faint surprise. Yes... he could come back now, couldn't he? All these seasons he'd spent trying to secure the pack's future, his family's safety, that had been wasted, hadn't it? Because he wouldn't die when he returned. The specter of his upcoming death had loomed over him for so long that being free... felt... odd. Like being without his armor after wearing it constantly.

"I... I will return with you," he promised roughly. He didn't know what would be between him and Pyrrhic now, with the knowledge of their last encounter still ringing in the silence. But he would return. "How are they handling it? All that has happened?" Pyrrhic, Deus, the pack - he didn't know who he wanted to know most about, so he left it open ended. As the pack's ranking healer - only healer, now - Riva would surely know. He wanted to be as prepared as he could be for what he had left behind.