Goodbye

Kassander had been a healer his entire long life. He knew the body and he knew herbs, and he knew when it was a losing battle. He knew that now, with his body failing him. No amount of herbs could turn back the clock. You couldn't heal old age. His eyesight, his hearing, his mind, they were all fine. But his joints had been anything but fine for some time now, and while he'd been able to support his body's functions for some time with careful administration of medicines, he could no longer keep up with the rate at which his organs were failing. It was simply his time.

He didn't want to die here, though, alone in a failing pack run by a megalomaniacal creature pretending that their alpha was still in charge. He wished Sparrow well, he really did, and he felt awful that the home Bass had built for his family was going this way... but there was nothing he could do now. Probably there was nothing he could have done even had he been younger and healthier. He was, he admitted bitterly to himself, rather useless for anything but healing. Even in his youth he'd been crippled by his anxiety. The Destructions were just on their own now.

But he didn't want to die here.

With Rommel's help he had set his den in order and packed the things he didn't want the Abraxas to have access to, like his herb grinder. He left his herbs and furs because it would be beneficial for his once-packmates, but he destroyed the jars of alcohol and let them run into the sandy ground around the shards of pottery he'd made. It was petty, maybe, but watching the liquid disappear into the earth felt right. Rommel promised to take Remy back to the southern continent. The mouse lemur had lived far past his own expected lifespan and the little primate wanted to die among his kin. It had a good ring to it. Kass wished he could do the same.

He could return to where his life had started, though. The Rock Garden here in the east, where Raisa had birth him and his siblings. He was the last of them, probably he'd outlived even his adopted siblings. No one remained to bury him or to grieve beside his grave. It was probably better that way. He didn't want anyone to be hurt by his passing. He'd grieved enough for his siblings and those he'd lost that he'd never wish that on anyone who still might care for him. Not even Rommel would be there - he could not be with both Kass and Remy, and Kass had told him to go, so he would go.

Kassander couldn't leave Sparrow not knowing where one of her pack had disappeared to, though. He didn't want her to think that he'd simply run off and abandoned them. So with his makeshift pack across his shoulders, he limped painfully away from his den towards the border, then stopped for a rest. He needed the rest already. Raising his head, he gave a breathy, wavering call for Sparrow, or he supposed, for Archon, or for both, since he didn't want Sparrow to get in trouble for allowing him to leave without the Abraxas' knowledge.