The madness was upon them again.

It had started a week ago, maybe. Scents changed. Tensions went up. Aponi started making it incredibly clear she did not want Ice around, and as far as he could tell, that went for all the males except Serach. It was, in general, a bad time to not be the lead wolves.

He had been through this before. The first time had been.. strange, because Indru hadn't been around to keep them in line, and Marsh hadn't been terribly interested in putting Ice down more than he had to. As far as Ice had been concerned, finding out that he had accidentally volunteered to sire Corinna's children that year had been the biggest shock. The second year.. well, it had been his turn, out of necessity and agreement rather than the love, as she had held for Indru. And that had been fine by him. He had loved Corinna in his own way, and owed her more than he had ever managed to repay, but his heart had belonged to a wolf in red.

It still did. He sat on the shore of a frozen lake and stared at its hard, snow-covered surface. A long time ago, in what felt like a different life, he had sat side by side with that wolf, leaning into him for comfort and staring at their reflection. It was the only time he had heard the other wolf speak, voice full of gravel and rust as he breathed the white wolf's name.

Ice had two children. Considering the fact that he had never really aspired to anything, it was no small feat, and nothing in him screamed for quantity. Serach was a fine wolf, but most of all, he was young, and had a flame. Even if Ice had thought it a good idea to bulldoze his way to the top of Oak Tree Bend again, what good would it have achieved? He could hardly breed his own granddaughter—just the thought made him want to shudder—and he wasn't sure he'd have.. wanted to get up on just about anyone.

No. The way things were, was for the best. His head tilted back. Stars, and a bright quarter moon, shone upon a pitch black sky. He'd be lying if he said he didn't miss the Grove, but even if he went back, some things wouldn't be as they had been. Too much had changed. Hadn't he told Kisla they'd leave, because Indru haunted them? Hadn't he told Corinna they should move, so she could breathe easy again? Start over, for the lives growing in her womb? They had given Serach Oak Tree Bend, but now, he couldn't help but think that the mountain was too vast.

Perhaps time had healed some wounds. And perhaps, certain places would heal the rest. Triell had certainly seemed to think so, and part of Ice desperately longed to return to Eden.

He was not alone anymore.

A tingle went up his icy back. One ear turned. Snow crunched under paws, and the cool night breeze brought a scent so achingly familiar he wanted to do nothing but sink through the hard-frozen earth and into whatever hell was reserved for wolves like him.

And what do you say, anyway? When you're a ghost roused from its grave? When there were at least a hundred things he should apologize for—which did you say first? Which ones didn't you say at all? And how do you say I'm sorry in a way that adequately conveys that you are? He had heard a thousand crocodilian apologies in his life. Never, ever did he want one to fall from his lips in front of her.

His tongue moved in his mouth, and he tasted the words. I'm sorry that I left. Didn't even begin to sum it up, and it wasn't entirely true, either. I'm sorry that I didn't come find you sooner. He had meant to, but then Triell and Spieden had decimated their pack, and he'd been left with two other adults and a bunch of yearlings. He hadn't dared leave them in the dead of winter, afraid that they would need the extra strength he'd have taken north with him.

Should he say nothing instead? Just stand there, and be there, no matter what she threw at him? If she ran, should he follow?

Snow and ice obscured his reflection, but he swiped his paw at it all the same. If only there were answers.. some way for him to know what to say, and what to not say. 'I missed you' was so paltry when the truth was a pyre, a wildfire rekindled in his heart, his mind—he had missed her because she was family, the family he had fought for, the family he had mourned with, the family he had given his entire life to. Older, they had been scattered to the winds, and no matter how wide he gaped he would never be able to swallow them all. It was the way of things, but that didn't make it less painful.

No—the worst thing was decidedly not knowing where he stood. He couldn't blame her if she hated him, just as he couldn't ask her to forgive him.

His heart beat louder, a little lighter, the closer she came. Her scent was lined with that peculiar edge of spring, the one that uncoiled something hot and uncomfortable in his gut.

Slowly, he rose to his paws. He still did not turn, for even though her scent burned hot and demanding in his mind, he was afraid that she was nothing but a figment of his imagination. Maybe, he had been going north to find her, since he had an excellent excuse not to be around the packlands. Maybe, he had just been going north to flee the memories and the haunting thoughts and the tension.

He exhaled. White smoke rose in front of his face. It was time.

Ice turned, so that he faced that moonlit ghost. His eyes were full of the words he could not say, the plea for forgiveness he could not utter, screamed with the desire to go near her, hold her again, rekindle whatever bond it was that had driven him to protect her.

He did not move, except to take one, hesitant step forward. His tail swayed once behind him, but the yards separating them were wide as the mountains to him—a mountain he could not cross, without her help, her permission, her encouragement.

"Kisla," he whispered, because he had to hear her name—to know that she was real, that she was.. here.

He had been gone from Oak Tree Bend more than a thousand days when he returned—but for the better part of those days, he hadn't known what he had left behind in the pallid starlight of his paradise.

She was cold in that very light, a tawny figure grayed out by the moon, lit with sharp edges of silver. The words, I didn't mean to, burned upon his tongue, hot and guilty and running from whatever responsibility he had for his own actions. I didn't choose to, he wanted to whine, to crawl before her for the acceptance—

She was hard in the moonlight, unyielding. She was not as she was in his memory, but then again, how could she possibly be? Just as he was different, she was bound to have changed, as the seasons did. Years and years had passed, and no matter how much he wished to be able to pick up where he had left off, it wasn't in the nature of things to be forgiving.

He felt cold under that gaze, as if she stripped the flesh from his bones and left them out for the sun to bleach—as if she was the blizzard, sweeping through his threadbare fur and licking his skin. And at her name, she turned her ears back, and closed her eyes. It somehow made the world darker, and in that darkness, his heart beat even faster.

Over the days since he had remembered her, he had thought of seeing her again—each dream as different from the next. In some, he ran to her, forgiven. In some, he ran from her, nothing but a bad memory, a nightmare, an echo of a father they had grown so bitter against.

Her eyes opened again, and he found himself searching her face for the frightened wolf that had been pulled from their flooded den. The girl afraid of the wind in the trees was gone from her, and had left something else in her stead. He swallowed, trembling and paper-thin. “Ice,” she said, and he could not resist the pull, hesitantly creeping closer, as far as she would let him.

Ice was no stranger to fearing for his own life; it had happened, as things were wont to do. And neither had he, truly, been afraid of others before—but this was worse than anything else. Returning to Serach had been a battle on its own, but there had been so little history there.. he had a lifetime of absence to make up for, but here, he had two. He had owed Kisla more than disappearing. He—he had become just like everything he hated, and her words, her voice, was torment. “I heard you had returned.” And what do you say to that? What do you say? He had been gone for over three years, and then he showed up, but he didn't even have the balls time to go find her? It was rotten and it stank and it halted him dead in his tracks.

But I am here now his mind whispered frantically, drowned and adrift, falling down a mountain where the ledges had suddenly crumbled. He licked his lips.

"How could I not?" he whispered weakly, his voice fragile, flakes of brittle ice on a cold winter morning.

What are you afraid of?

Memories burned in his mind, eons of shame and self-loathing, a line of tension from his nose to his brain to his body. He blinked. "I heard you had moved north," he went on, voice a little firmer, a little steadier, but his heart still stumbling around in his chest. "I only wish I had come sooner." All of his flimsy excuses, all of the fragile little words to explain years of darkness and confusion—they crumbled, like ashes after a fire. Would she ask? Should he tell? How much did she know?

A low whine escaped his throat, ears flat against his head; his tail kept wagging stubbornly, though it was low. I missed you, he wanted to say, but he was afraid of what the words might do to her. How have you been, he wanted to ask, but he was afraid that he no longer had any right to know.

Back then, he had never been afraid.

But things change.

He reached out for her.

To see her bare her fangs at him hurt more than anything he had ever imagined.

It cut him to his core, that slight warning. He deserved it—this was the welcome he had known in his heart to be the one he would receive, the one he had feared so bitterly but marched to regardless. This was how Serach should've greeted him. This was how Triell should've greeted him. A cold shoulder, a flash of teeth, don't come near my family again—it was the greeting he would've deserved. And oh, how bitter, that Serach had raised his foolish hopes.. that he had allowed himself to think there might be forgiveness out there, in the vast, cold world.

Her eyes went from him to the lake, and he knew that what he had said had been a mistake—anything would've been, though, anything but promptly turning back time and not falling off a mountain. He wanted to tell her, I did, I meant it, I do, I was coming— but the words were feeble in his throat and never made it to his mouth. His intentions didn't matter if he had never carried them through.

And, honestly, her words, so sincere, so cold, made him wonder if he hadn't done it all wrong—if he shouldn't have left Serach to search for the family he remembered, the ones who had mattered to him in the life he had had. Not that Serach hadn't mattered, but he had hardly known what he had lost—Ice could've been little more but some mythic figure, a vague memory, a bitter betrayal. Too relieved by his son's acceptance, Ice had given everything to him in that moment, forgetting about the others he should've loved better.

So, he didn't say anything. I knew that he could've said. Hearthwood River was their name, ironically close to the place where he had first entered the Lore. What would've happened if he had been further east..? What would've happened if he had caught the scent markers, and his brain had connected the dots, and formed a line straight to her? Could she have forgiven him, if his return had been to her..? Forgiven—quicker, or at all? Her eyes kept on shining, dangerous and wild to him, detached and cold as the stars. His mouth was cursed and his words all wrong, but he would not give up. She meant too much to him for him to do that.

She stepped away from him, but what had he expected? The air between them was cold and heavy, sharp. He had longed for miracles, for the ice to melt from her frame and the tension to leave her eyes, for her to sigh and step forward and say that she had missed him but everything would be alright now, but those were dreams and dreams belonged in sleep, and it was much too cold for that.

“I loved you once,” she said, and I love you still, he wanted to say, but he couldn't. He didn't know where the words came from, or if they even were true—had he loved her that way, at all? She had been family, she had been Corinna's daughter, and he had cared for her, deeply, just as he had cared for Corinna. He hadn't loved Corinna either, and she had not loved him—they had been friends, they had crawled through hell together on their scabbed knees, but they had not been in love. Maybe they would've fallen in it, if he had stayed, and maybe, they would not have; or maybe, she had loved him, but he had been too dense to notice.

In the wake of that—she loved me? and his brain leaped back through the years and years, to the bright-eyed youth dragging herself through a moaning forest for him, for her absolute certainty in his ability to exact Rissa's vengeance.. and his mild uncertainty about her behavior at times. Had it been signs of this, things he had not seen?

“But things change,” she said, stepping forward again, and for the briefest of moments, hope flared hot and vicious in his heart. It burned and it scorched and it seared him into a wasteland, for there was nothing but cold iron in her still, sharp and deadly.

But he would not scorn that which was given.

His head reached out as he listened, and oh so gently, he aimed to place his muzzle next to hers, close, and if she let him, lean it gently against hers. She smelled of Kisla and spring and the woods to the north. “I had a mate.” What happened to him? “He was ten times the wolf I had ever deserved.” Don't say that. You deserve everything, and more—you deserve all the best this world has to offer, and you always have.“I’ve raised five beautiful children.” I left mine. “I lead a pack in the forest nearby.” I abandoned mine. “What have you accomplished in the years past, Ice?” Nothing.

"My return," he said, bitterly. What else was there to say? He did not want to whine, call her unfair, tell her she knew nothing of what had kept him for more than three years—he didn't want to list merits, which were slim anyway. No, his return was the only good thing to have come of these years, every step a struggle between the love he had felt but not known for whom until then, and the fear of his reception. And that fear stood cold and stark and unyielding in front of him now, judging him through eyes of bright green. It was as if Corinna stared at him out of those eyes, and he knew that he had failed Kisla just as bad as he had failed her.

But this, this had to be when he told her what had kept him.

Or maybe, she already knew it. Maybe Serach had told her. And maybe she didn't give a damn.

She had not asked, but he told her anyway. "My traveling companion and I didn't find Cali. Bad weather separated us on the way home. I remember climbing the red mountains to the east, and then.. —nothing. It.. it took years before I knew. Bits and pieces started coming back. I knew I had to be somewhere, but not where, nor why. Faces started trickling back in. Snatches of conversations. It was less than a year ago that I finally managed to put it all together, and know where I had to go."

If she asked, he would say more. If she did not ask, he would not say more. If she—if she decided not to believe him.. He didn't know what he would do. He didn't even want to think on it, for the crushing feeling in his chest.

"I let you down so bad," he was suddenly saying, his voice threatening to break, "not just because I disappeared but because—but because I should've come and found you sooner, because.. because you matter so much to me and I have known you for so long but somehow—" He stopped, for just a moment, before plunging on, "—somehow Serach took precedence and I can't help but think that it was wrong, and then everyone left—" He shut up, as much because his control over his emotions was fraying as the fact that he was rambling.

It was what he always did, and he wasn't so sure it had ever made things better.

How could he ever choose between them? How could even talk about choosing? Staying with Serach, proclaiming himself the Guardian for the Bend, the sworn protector of Serach and Aponi's young—it all felt so right, so how could it possibly be wrong? And the flimsy idea of a different past, in which he had been forgiven, and then gone on to stay with Kisla—how could that be wrong, either, when it felt so right? It was like the echo of a memory, a dream of a dream, and it tore his heart in more pieces than just two. He longed to have Fenru around again. He wanted to leave, over the mountains, to be with Triell.

How could any of those desires be wrong? How could he possibly weigh them against one another, and proclaim which one weighed the heaviest? Oak Tree Bend had been his home—of course he had been headed that way. Serach was his son—of course he wanted to reclaim him, take back what they had lost, give him everything he should've had but hadn't. In the fires of that, everything else had burned up, and now it hammered at him, wrong, wrong, wrong. But, if he had done as he hadn't, he would've stood somewhere all the same, wanting to apologize a thousand times over in feeble, breakable words and thinking he had done all the wrong choices.

He could never choose between Kisla and his son. He could never choose between Triell and Serach. Maybe, it had been a choice to stay; maybe, he had chosen Serach over Triell, over Kisla. Why, he couldn't tell, though. It had seemed appropriate at the time. It had seemed the best option. Serach was here and now; he could find Triell later. Serach definitely wouldn't have forgiven him if he had left with the black Tainn and gone back to Eden.

But Kisla was here and now, too. Kisla.. Kisla gave him what he deserved. What he needed, her snarl filling up his ears, his heart, her teeth scoring along the side of his sensitive muzzle. It hurt, but he said nothing, did nothing; his back did not bristle, his lips did not pull back, he did not whine. He inhaled, sharply, and did his best to hold the pieces of his shattered world together.

This wasn't how it should have gone—but it was the only way it could go, and only the hard, rational knowledge of it saved him from utter destruction. He had clung on to some vague hope that everything would've been alright without a fight, but it was never going to be. Corinna had forgiven Indru once, the first time he left—but it had only been a month, he had been stuck on the mountain, he had thought about them every day. He hadn't fallen off and hit his head and wandered away into oblivion, gnawed raw by a deep, frustrated desire he couldn't cure. No place he stumbled upon was where he needed to be. No wolves he crossed paths with were the ones he sought.

The only way to fight a hopeless battle is to just keep fighting. If he just believed hard enough.. if he just tried hard enough...

His head dipped lower, ears flat against his head. And at last, his tail ceased swaying and hung limp instead. He didn't know what to say, so for the first time in his life, he didn't even try to say anything.