WC: 1271

The pressure clung to her, shoved her down and up and side to side -- as if she was deep underwater, getting crushed -- and so persistently, violently so that she could hardly breathe through the knot in her throat and the pounding in her ears. Her head throbbed. Her vision blurred. It had gotten worse over the week, worse and worse and worse and -- her thoughts spun in circles like an infinite spinning top -- it had been bad, but it had grown so bad that this night, she couldn't settle for a minute to try sleep. Shadows appeared in the corners of her vision when she wasn't paying attention, but then they'd progressed to lunging at her, making her jump and twirl about, snarling and pinning her ears back at what would then actually turn out to be nothing when they disappeared as if they had never been there as soon as her eyes turned on them. And after that came the laughing, the screaming. None of it real, but all of it seeming so vividly to be that she couldn't put them out of her brain either. They were just behind her, always, stalking her, getting closer and closer and closer --

She threw herself up out of the bed, growling lowly in the dark as the cold seeped ever further into her bones, crawling up her veins. The shadows swirled just out of her sight, but they didn't hide from her hearing. Buzzing, ringing, and then more concrete laughing and snarling and crying out like lost little puppies she couldn't save. They would kill her -- that was all she knew. And so, she knew nothing. She knew that she knew nothing, and she knew that the shadows -- the ghosts, she thought suddenly, not wanting to -- also knew that she knew nothing. She could scream, but no one would save her; no one could, and trying would only hurt them too. Like a wolf she'd once loved, a mother with the sharpest fangs and the biggest heart in the world, a wolf that had gone insane and tried to kill her own wife, a wolf that had died protecting the pack she loved, since she could not live and protect them still. Would Avantika follow in her footsteps?

She had to get out.

As she raced out of the castle and sprinted across the fields at a breakneck pace, quickly enough to nearly trip over her own paws, a conversation with her brother echoed in her ears. She'd been angry. They'd both been angry. He'd brought up Resin, compared her in the darkest time of her spiral towards death to her -- 'You look just like mom did, right before the end'. But she was worse. One of the ghosts howled with laughter. Oh, she had been so much worse. 'You made her feel so unloved that she couldn't stand to be in the same place as you.' You're terrible. You only ever hurt people. Why do you even try? If you trick them into thinking that you love them, you'll only disappoint them; you'll make them sad. One shadow unfurled itself into a sort of abominable version of Art, a bluish monster with huge teeth that towered over her, whose eyes were more furious and hateful than she'd ever seen; even when Art had been angry and rebuking her before, it had always been because he cared, and because he felt that she deserved to get better. This Art would burn her alive. You should be dead already, he hissed. You don't deserve to be a part of the Hallows and you were never really part of our family. Your real parents should have killed you, long before you ever even met me.

Another shadow stepped up next to the shadow Art. Rudy, cold and mean in a way she couldn't bear to imagine, growled, Go back to your patrols, Tika. The name he'd always called her twisted mockingly in the shadow's mouth. You're no fun anymore. I believed better of you.

Tamsyn and Resin. Bowen. Laeta. Ezra. Dozens of shadows, shaped like each of the Hallows wolves, each looming over her, their fangs and eyes and tongues all ready to tear her apart. They were her betters. If they wanted to kill her, she'd let them. She'd sworn it, again and again, and for all the promises she'd broken, she'd never break that one. No matter how it had to be proven. "I love you," Avantika whispered, a plea chased by the wind that silenced it. None of the shadows seemed to hear. Even if they did, they would not have cared. Her words didn't matter, not -- not when --

The next one, standing at Art's paws, was Audra. The same height she had always been, small and weak and deserving only of protection. She was the most realistic of any of the shadows in all ways, which was fitting since she alone was the form she could trace in her sleep. Avantika held her breath without realizing it, waiting for whatever she would say. It would be the worst, she knew. But Audra didn't say anything at all.

She didn't have to; Avantika understood.

The Hallows shadows blotted out the sky, a circle enclosing her. Avantika spun around, growling weakly. What could she do? She couldn't fight them. Her heart, her body, her life itself was theirs. It was time to push that to its logical extreme. She dropped suddenly to the ground, not feeling the impact at all as her head screamed in pain and her ears burned with the fury of all of the wolves she loved and the pressure swelled and swelled and --

It popped.

Avantika stood up, now all alone in the grove. It was dark and silent, in a way that couldn't be described as either comforting or frightening, but simply nothing. Her eyes darted about herself, but it was true, the shadows had entirely disappeared. Her heart still raced, but as she took deep breath after deep breath to steady herself, it gradually slowed to a more reasonable rate. She glanced down at her paws, which would not move. It was strange, but even though the panic and the pressure had released their grip on her, she couldn't bring herself to go back to that room in the castle, that lonely room still decorated for two. Nor could she head out to the border for the patrols that had once occupied her every waking moment, the patrols that had been her twisted sort of refuge from actually having to face the wolves she had so dearly pledged that she would die for. She didn't know where to go, so she supposed she could stay at least for a while.

A few minutes passed in the quiet.

Avantika's mind, now that it was calmer, now turned in the completely opposite direction, almost palpably itchy with a need for... something. No, she knew what it was, though she didn't really want to think about it. She wanted Resin. She wanted her mom. Resin always knew what to do. If no one could fix her, her old leader, her mother, the wolf she both longed to be and was terrified of suffering the same fate as, Resin could try. "I love you," she murmured again, too soft for anyone to hear, even if they were there. It was a prayer and it was a promise and it was a plea for forgiveness against the sins of her past. Maybe a shadow would return if she wanted it to enough. Maybe it would be kind and pretend for her.

"Speech"

The shadows did indeed return and they did so in full force. They were drawn to the pain, drawn to the melancholy, drawn to the deep sense of hopelessness that emanated from the defeated wolf. The shadows began to close in once more, growing in height until they almost blocked out all of the light from around Tika. Closer and closer they stalked, circling like sharks. She was naught but prey to them. An easy meal to draw energy from to prolong their presence on this plain. Perhaps it was the mental plea for help. Perhaps it was the verbal declaration of love. Either way, it worked. A low, guttural growl reverberated through the grove and the shadow wolves stopped in their tracks. Their heads lifted and the growl grew in volume. Whatever was creating the sound was drawing closer. Like a pack of frightened hyenas, the shadows broke up and began to scatter. When they'd faded away into the nooks and crannies of the grove, only one figure remained. A singular golden eye glowed brightly as it looked down at the frightened woman. Tika... she was a woman now. No longer the quiet youngling that she had been when Resin had last walked among the living. There was such sorrow on her adopted daughters face, such anguish. It broke the dead woman's heart to see her like that. The ash and obsidian woman padded forward until she was close to the tri-colored fae. A shaft of light cut through the foliage above and cast the specter in an ethereal glow. Her body was not solid and she was quite see through, but she was there. "Avantika," The one-eyed beast practically purred with concern, her voice softer than it had ever been in life. "What troubles you so, child?" There was patience in that lone, sulfur eye. Patience and concern. If she could help, she would gladly do so. "Speech"

Suddenly a low growl was heard throughout the grove. A growl that almost sounded... familiar? But no, it couldn't be true. The world wouldn't actually give Avantika what she wanted; it never had and why would it be different just because she wanted it so badly now? She was desperate and her mind was playing tricks, that was all. How different did different wolves' growls sound anyway? It could be someone growling at her, she suddenly realized, and sprang into a defensive position, eyes narrowed now instead of wide but tail still pressed against her stomach.

Only one dark figure remained, facing her. It wasn't monstrous or grotesque; in fact, it actually looked a lot like the real Resin, but swathed in glowing light when the moonlight hit her and translucent. She looked like what Avantika would expect a ghost to look like. And she said her name so gently that Avantika just had to un-defend herself, looking at Resin in her warm, warm face with wide again eyes. They were nearly the same height now.

How could she explain everything she had become since Resin's death? "Resin -- Mom, I..." She trailed off, then took a breath and began again. She could do this. It was Resin. "I've actually been doing better now than I was, if you can believe me. I just... I work a lot, right? And a while ago, I basically spent a whole season just patrolling and training and doing nothing else. Not talking to anyone, not helping out around the castle, not anything. And that went on for a while until Art stopped me and made me promise to stop. But I snapped at him a little bit and I still sometimes think he doesn't see me like he used to. Like I tried so hard to keep everyone safe, but I forgot how to be their friend in the meantime and I can't be both. I just can't be both."

"I was scared. I'm still scared," she confessed. "There was a raid. It was unexpected, sudden. We won pretty damn easily, " she smiled a little. "but there was a while where I couldn't not be on patrol for even a moment without nearly going insane with the thought of it happening again and going badly this time. Hallows wolves getting hurt, killed even, all because I decided to take a break."

She knew now that that wasn't true. The Hallows had other warriors who could protect the pack without her -- which didn't mean she wasn't also important, she always had to add that in order to veer away from another kind of spiral -- and Art had told her plenty of times that it was okay to take a break. But she hadn't thought like that then.

"Speech"