Dichotomy

[DotCom]

Tai was frozen.

On the one hand, it gave her the unusual and unexpected ability to be able to watch, almost with an outsider's perspective, as though she had been removed from herself, from Kohe's grip, from the pain her sister was in, from the situation in its entirety, to watch, an impassive bystander.

On the other, it meant she could not help as Kohe screamed and writhed, vomiting, clutching her head. It meant she could only stare as the pain struck Kohe, and, inexplicably, Jack threw back his head and howled, his form flickering between himself and Hunter and Lupus as wave after wave of again assaulted him. He didn't understand it, and he didn't try to. The only thing worse than the pain was the fear, just as sudden, just as inexplicable, just as impossible to describe.

Tai felt his fear, and Kohe's pain, and Eliko's confusion, all wrapped around her like a vice, threatening to squeeze until she was nothing, and yet she was helpless to the pressure, standing, frozen, at Kohe's side while her sister rolled on the ground.

This was their fault.

The one single though came through from Kohe clear as day, and it was enough to snap Tai from her stupor, to break through the agony and despair that wasn't hers, not really, if only she could make herself remember that.

For once, Kohe was wrong.

Her older sister was many things -- chief among which being precisely that -- but Kohe could not understand what Tai herself was only beginning to grasp. Kohe may have known the many thousands of possibilities that existed from here, but she could not know how inherently Tai had known it was her duty to guide and protect the four of them until they were able to Bond to each other, and not just to her. She had failed them in that, panicking, giving preference to her sister, and worse than that, attacking her charges. She would need to apologize later, she knew. But now all of them needed to rest.

She lowered herself to the ground, once more weaving a shield, a large dome that came over the four of them, leaving plenty of space over Eliko, at whom Tai could still not look. It was faint silver now with the small amount of moonlight that reached them.

As calmly as she could, Tai said, "We need to rest. We're all tired. I can feel it." It was true. Eliko, from whatever he had done to Kohe -- tried to do to her. Jack who had come as close to he ever had from losing control. He was exhausted, sore, from cycling through his forms, and Kohe's pain still ebbed through him, no less for the pain of the Knowing earlier that day. Or yesterday. Or last week. He didn't know anymore. And all of it flowed through Tai, who just then was feeling very small and very tired, and rather like she wanted to be alone for the first time in her life.

"We can rest here. I'll take first watch." She felt both Eliko and Jack begin to object and shut her eyes, feeling panic, fear, sadness begin to wash over her again. No. She wasn't allowed to break down. She had a job, just as they all did. And none of them would succeed if she couldn't pull herself together.

"You can trust me," she said quietly. "Whether you believe it or not. If anything happens to any of us, I feel all of it. I won't let anything happen. Please. Just rest. Both of you."

There would be no making it back to Jack's camp, if he even had one. Tai didn't think she could move Kohe now even if she'd wanted to. Instead, she built a soft bedroll from silver light, covering Kohe in a 'blanket', putting one hand to her sister's brow.

"It's okay, 'Setta. Just relax. I know it hurts. I know. It'll stop soon. Sleep, Kohe. Sleep."

 

[Kaisaan]

Kohe drew in a ragged breath, coughing up more thick, black liquid before she nodded and closed her eyes. She didn't care that her entire face was covered in the dark substance or that her breath rattled harsh in her throat. All that was registering was the oblivion creeping over her and the elder Demisan let it, knowing she couldn't fight it and that Tai could take care of them. She'd have to trust her sister to do that...she'd have to trust the otherwise manipulative plans of the two males and the fact that they needed the twins, and therefore would not kill them in their sleep.

Exactly, that was probably something she could really count on.

She slipped into sleep with that sort-of-reassurance firm in her mind.

--

Eliko didn't get to sleep quite as quickly.

The Ashkerai was utterly drained, but that was part of his trouble. In fact, it was a great deal of his trouble. There was no Midnight here. No way to obtain or regenerate it - at least not as far as he knew and he knew quite a bit - and he'd just WASTED quite a bit on the oldest Demisan. At the very least he could have hit the one with the effing Midlight! But no. He hit the elder sister, the one who needed to get them back to the future - perhaps further in the future than she might intend, but that would come later. He and Jack could use Tai against Kohe in that, make her do as they wished.

But first she had to get better. Stupid Demisan.

He'd known that he wasn't strong enough to defeat the two yet, but wasting all that Midnight had just made him weaker. And Eliko hated being weak. Especially when he could already feel the dormant presence in his mind stirring, pushing through the layers, tirelessly fighting to be free....like it had been that brief moment before they'd gone back through time. He could NOT let that happen again.

He would not and when the time came, he'd have the strength to kill these two. It didn't matter what the dormant voice kept saying, especially about Tai. He just had to be patient and stay true to his mission.

--

Kohe knew something was wrong when she woke. It was early yet, the sky just starting to turn a blood-red like the life-force of the dying planet itself, and it was warm already and growing hotter. Such didn't bother Kohe and she was vaguely grateful that somehow she'd known this planet would not freeze over at night like her own did. That would have been very bad for she and Tai. But no, it had stayed warm.

That wasn't the Demisan's problem. No, it was what she was looking at....or rather, through.

Kohe blinked slowly as she moved her fingers, watching as they faded, became translucent and started to disappear entirely before coming back. Her arm was doing the same and she was willing to bet the rest of her was doing it, too. She could feel the nausea building in her middle - though, it had never actually gone away - and the dizziness sweeping over her head. It was slow, though, much too slow to be normal. None of this was normal. She wasn't supposed to be Jumping at all, but Kohe could feel the chill, the damage the Midnight had done and then what Jumping with four people on top of it had added.

She stopped focusing on her hand and she instead went to roll over, to wake Tai, but her scarlet and sapphire eyes caught the most pale yellow instead and Kohe found herself unable to look away. The dizziness stopped, for just a moment, the blackness at the edge of her vision clearing and in that moment, Kohe understood what that emotion, that something that had been plaguing her yesterday had been.

Kohe tilted her head, white-black hair wild and unkempt around her as she smiled at Jack, clear knowing in her eyes before the blackness swept over her again and she disappeared completely, unable to stop it.

 

[DotCom]

Tai didn't feel good.

If she'd grown up in another time, another place, she might have had a word close to what ailed her -- a migraine -- but of course Tai only knew the growing pain behind her eyes, the nausea that came with it, and the chills that came with that, the way her own wavering light made everything worse. She did, however, know precisely the cause -- or part of it, at least -- even if she couldn't quite put words to it.

They were too much.

Tai was used to carrying other people in her head. She had been a people person from birth, needing people, any people, almost as much as she needed food or water or air. And because they had discovered early on the strength of her Empathy, her mother had taken careful pains to keep her younger daughter from becoming what Rora had spent so much of her young life as. Tai was much better at controlling her Empathy than her mother was -- but also, in many ways, kinder. In her travels with Kohe, there had been many days she would 'take on', sometimes even 'absorb' the pains and illnesses of strangers, especially children, they'd met along the way. There were many mornings when Tai woke saddled with a fever that wasn't really hers, and yet one she felt so intensely, she could feel actual heat coming off her skin. It had never really bothered her. Not even sickness had ever been able to keep Tai down for long. She was an Empath and a light wielder, and she shared a bit of her father's ability with lightning. But most would say Tai's greatest strength was her indomitable spirit -- her Hope, though of course Tai didn't know that yet.

In any case, she had never worried about inviting the three into her mind, under her protection...mostly because she was Tai, and she never really worried about anything, except maybe Kohe. And Kohe, after all, had needed her on that night she'd Bonded the all without really understanding what she was doing. It had been fine while they'd been physically apart, more or less concerned with their own lives. But at last the four had come together, and beyond that, the meeting had not gone well. The Bond was straining in her mind, writhing and pulling and twisting and burning, colors flashing and dulling in accordance to the strength of their lux and their physical bodies. Kohe's had been dull all night, and Eliko's, too. Jack's pale yellow wavered on the edge of sleep and wakefulness, and the two of them watched each other until the sun rose.

Now Tai felt sleepy and sluggish. Her belly roiled from Kohe's nausea, the body trembled under Jack's exhaustion. Her essence languished under Eliko's thirst for the darkness he needed. And Tai didn't know how to help any of the. Even if they were all well, she didn't think she could repair the straining Bond on her own. She could just barely hold it together herself, and thus came the headaches and nausea. It was too big. They were too much. She could not support the four of them on her own, and yet none of them were ready for her guidance, either. Hell, Tai wasn't sure she was ready. She would protect them all, their lux, until it killed her if she had to. That was who she was, Empathy or no.

But now, she wanted to sleep. She wanted to set aside the strange new Bond and rest a moment, but she didn't dare. Jack and Eliko were dangerous as they were. She had no intention of letting them 'off the leash', so to speak, especially when Kohe was sick.

She rolled over to check on her sister for the umpteenth time since they'd arrived here -- and found nothing.

Instantly, she was alert and terrified, the exhaustion gone. She sat up, eyes wide...and found Jack half a moment later, staring at the spot where Kohe had been, an expression of frustration, bemusement, and something else in his voice. Tai didn't need Empathy to know what it was. She tried very hard not to sound accusing.

"What did you see?"

Her voice seemed to startle the Venatori, and pale yellow-green eyes snapped from the Kohe-less spot to Tai's violet, first confused, and then angry, accusing in their own right.

"What trick is this?" he demanded, his voice even, though she could hear the growl underneath, even in this form. "Where has she gone?"

Tai shuddered once then shook her head. "I don't know. She Jumped, I think. She shouldn't be able to, but..." she trailed off, steeled herself, knelt to touch the patch of earth that was still warm from Kohe's body heat. "She wouldn't leave without me," Tai said, her voice small, uncertain, not at all the protector she was supposed to be. "She'll be -- "

Jack would never learn what Kohe was to be. In an instant, he saw his mission foiled again, and yet the next step so clearly unprotected. The Shaman, he was sure, would not, perhaps could not kill him, and her protector had fled. Jack was changing almost before he moved, and before she could think what had happened, a large black wolf perched atop Tai's chest again. Jack swiveled one pointed ear toward the Ashkerai, but he was not overly concerned for the dark creature. He had the oddest sensation that the Ashkerai was not quite thriving. And it would take only a few seconds to rip out the Shaman's throat.

Beneath him, Tai did not struggle, only closed her eyes as she willed herself to remain calm, trying to stop the pounding in her head. When she opened her eyes, Jack was surprised, annoyed, and vaguely impressed that she did not look afraid. Or not as much as he'd thought she should.

"You can't kill me," Tai said wearily. She needed to find some way to complete this Bond. She could not hope to watch over them and care for Kohe and keep them from killing her all at once. "My sister won't help you. You need her, Jack."

"Do not speak to me like we are old friends, Shaman. Perhaps my people can find another way -- "

Tai only shook her head. She closed her eyes again and shuddered and made a sound only Jack's sharp lupine ears could pick up, something perilously close to a whimper. The Shaman was brave, but she was not invulnerable. It made him feel...strange.

"Y-you can't," she said, still sounding weary, but having switched to a different voice. Jack's weight made it difficult for her to breathe and she was seeing spots at the edge of her vision. "Just...just with Kohe..." She trailed off, her head lolling to one side. Jack wondered if it was possible that she might asphyxiate to death without ever fighting back.

Suddenly, her head snapped up again. "Don't," she said, her voice a bit stronger now, though just as breathless. But Jack was surprised to find she wasn't looking at him but at the Ashkerai.

"D-don't hurt him," she said, voice slurred. "No more fighting. He's not going to kill me. H-he's going to get off."

Jack growled, angered and amused. "Am I, Shaman? And how are you so sure?"

"M-my sister..."

Jack barked a laugh that made Tai shiver, though it was a weak one.

"She is not here, Shaman. Look around."

"I-I know," Tai said slowly, and this time, they all heard her whimper of pain. "You have to get off, Jack. She'll be mad if she finds out."

"What should it matter to me whether -- "

"She's not strong enough to fight," Tai said, now squirming. "She'll try, and she'll get sick, and it'll be even longer we -- you are stuck here."

Jack snarled but he eased off the Shaman's chest a bit. Just a bit. "You forget, Shaman," he continued, sounding less than certain this time. "Your sister is not here."

"I know," said Tai again, once more weary. "She needs you to get her back."

 

[Kaisaan]

Tai's voice had woken him.

Only, Eliko wasn't sure which 'him' he was. For a moment, there were two different personalities, two different set of thought-patterns vying for space....and then the Midnight came and shoved one away and the Ashkerai was left with a raging headache, but a clearer mind. And yet....something still felt off. He ignored it, though, watching as the Venatorus pinned Tai, raising a brow at the display and rolling his eyes as he stood.

Really? And here he'd thought Jack was smarter than Briar.

Apparently not....though, the older Demisan having flown the coop, that would put anyone in a foul mood. Still, the younger twin was right. With how close those two had stayed together and how protective Kohe was of her sister, she wouldn't have left Tai behind. Still, he supposed he could let Jack give the Demisan a fright. Maybe help her learn to hold her tongue. He almost chuckled at the thought, would have if not for the voice that suddenly screamed through his head, enraged and demanding.

HELP HER!

Eliko felt instant, boiling anger erupt through him, from somewhere he could not understand - and was struggling to repress - and he was moving forward with every intent to fight Jack until Tai spoke, stopping him with nothing but that simple word. Eliko had never been more confused in his life. The other self had never been more unwilling to obey a command....but it did. In that moment, he knew he wasn't ELIKO. He was someone else entirely listening to her speak....and then that self faded, pulled back and he was himself again, furious for a different reason this time and finding a perfect target to take it out on.

He was angry with himself, but Jack was easier to deal with. Hell, if the Venatorus chose to fight, Eliko would welcome it. It would at least take his mind off of his own problem. He couldn't have this 'other' taking over! Unfortunately, he wasn't at all sure how to stop it. They'd always told him to keep the other self suppressed, to consume the Midnight, to never allow for a break in his walls, but....well, it was a little late now, wasn't it?

The Ashkerai stalked toward the wolf and Demisan, and with strength that belied his size in comparison to the canine, he grabbed Jack's unsuspecting scruff and hauled the wolf off before releasing the Venatorus. "Get off of her, you idiot! Her sister is TIME, moron! You think she won't know about this when she gets back?" he spat in disgust before looking down at Tai with a glare.

"How's he supposed to get her back? Can't you do that? She's your sister." It was meant to be a barb, Eliko meant it as such. So why did some foreign part of him, that he could now FEEL, cringe at his own voice?

Eliko shook the question away. He had a better one. Like why the hell was Kohe popping away in the first place?! They needed to get off this wasteland excuse for a planet!

 

[DotCom]

Tai rolled away to curl in on herself the moment Eliko had freed her from Jack's grasp, taking small, shaking breaths as she tried not to think about how the Venatorus had tried to kill her again, or about the strange divide she could feel in Eliko's mind, or about how she still didn't know where Kohe was. She'd have been content to lay there, maybe try and get some sleep of her own, except she could feel the rage rising in Jack even before he gave a truly frightening snarl, now advancing on the Ashkerai, teeth bared.

"Do not touch me, Ashkerai," he growled, and Tai could feel the ground stir slightly beneath his paws. She whimpered and made herself roll back over. Jack was oblivious, caught in some foolish pride or frustration.

Jack had always been known for his cool temper and level head. It had been part of the reason he had been chosen, or so he was told, to carry out Elias's vengeance. The Venatori were a passionate people, driven by anger and bloodlust. The same could not be said of Jack. He had regarded many a blood feud in his early years, often over his position in the tribe, watching his own name be torn to shreds as he looked down with a cool disdain, later settling disputes with a single word, rather like Tai had just done.

But there...seemed to be something wrong with hi now. Something that, had he not known better, he might have labeled as anxiety. Fear. Even concern.

For the first time, he felt the anger of the Venatori wash over him as he stalked toward the Ashkerai, his normally pale yellow eyes burning gold a midst a field of black fur.

"Do not forget your people came to ours for help. Or hadn't you forgotten what it means to beg?"

He would not attack, Tai could feel, unless the Ashkerai did first. But she could see pride and worry coming to a head in both of them, and suddenly recognized neither would back down. In her mind's eyes, she saw Kohe -- Kohe, who'd have made a much better Shaman, Tai thought...though perhaps her sister would be better off as the Matriarch. Kohe had never been quite as emotionally literate as Tai, but she was a much better leader. If she were here and well, their maybe-mates would not be fighting.

No. This couldn't happen. Kohe was counting on her. This Bond, their lux...they were Tai's responsibility. No longer could she sit back and let Kohe take the lead.

"Stop it," she said again, doing her best to use that same commanding tone from before. Her head ached and her breathing was still unsteady, but she made herself stand, and then planted herself between Ventatorus and Ashkerai, her violet eyes hard, almost unfamiliar. They both towered over her, but she didn't seem to notice. She seemed, in fact, almost to channel Kohe as she spoke.

She sincerely hoped she was.

"I said no. More. Fighting," she said darkly. "I know what you want, and you know I can't give it to you. But everything falls apart if any of use dies now." Jack, impatient, still swimming with emotions Tai could read, but he didn't understand, snarled. Tai cut him off.

"I won't hurt you," she said evenly, first looking to Jack, then Eliko. "I know you know that." Then, eyes still on Eliko. "But make no mistake -- I certainly can. Do not mistake my Empathy for weakness." She held their gaze a moment longer, then went on. "I know you're not inclined to get along, or let me live, or wait until Kohe gets back, but none of us gets what we want unless we do all those things and stay civil." She looked around herself and shivered. "There are...there are worse things coming," she said, uncertain how she knew, but she knew she did. "And all four of us need to make it through the. So unless you two can get it together, we all die out here." Looking back at Eliko: "I don't understand it. He has to be the one to get my sister. I can't...I've never been able to anchor her. I'm...not...I'm not enough. She can find her way back to me, if she's well enough, but I can't keep her from going away again. And if she doesn't stop going away, she'll di -- " Tai broke off, shut her eyes, and willed herself to step back into Kohe's shoes. Just a little longer, she promised herself. And then she'll be back, and you can sleep and everything will be okay.

"We need to find some way to keep her here long enough that she can get better. I can't do it." She looked at Jack, her gaze as even as she could make it.

"It has to be you."

 

[Kaisaan]

Beg?!

Eliko almost snorted at the notion, for once more amused than angry, fully prepared to mock the wolf. The Venatori had been prideful and stubborn, but just as desperate for their revenge. They'd been more than willing to go along with a deal set by the Ashkerai who held the power. Who had who's leash here? HA!

He'd opened his mouth to say as much, Tai forgotten, when said Demisan spoke and the black-haired male grit his teeth, but refocused. And once he'd done that, it was hard to focus on anything else. Which only served to inwardly frustrate him all the more. He HATED this place. It was wreaking chaos on his once stable influence of Midnight, the environment he was used to and this damn SUN wasn't helping anything! But Tai was talking and he couldn't block her out for the life of him. He hated that, too.

But somehow, when the Demisan's voice broke...there was some part of him that hated that even more and it made Eliko rear back, flustered and unhappy so that he turned away from Tai with a sneer, neither acknowledging her words nor arguing against them. The fact that she was right in some regards was extremely annoying.

The fact that he could feel something like....like worry creeping up on him as he was helpless not to notice her state - how weak her light was getting, something the Midnight within him could sense - was even more alarming to Eliko and he was trying to ignore it. He couldn't be worrying for the enemy! King Zequor would have his hide when he got back, of that Eliko had no doubt and just the thought had him steeling himself, gathering the cold about his mind, shielding from the outside world like he'd been taught.

And especially from Tai because for some reason....she was slowly creating holes in his defense. He didn't like it. But whatever was attacking him from WITHIN liked it very much. He vowed he'd shut it up eventually and on that note, turned back to Tai, brown eyes calculating once more, hiding the emotion behind the cold darkness of his people.

"That's all great, but how do we get her back NOW?"

Even as he asked, the air crackled and Kohe appeared suddenly, making Eliko step back with a curse as she nearly dropped from the sky, landing on the balls of her feet and instantly lashing out at him. Her tail came around to almost slam into his ribs, deadly in speed and the impact would have broken more than one bone and probably would have sent him flying. It was quick movement - ducking - that saved the Ashkerai pain and the Demisan almost stumbled in the wake of open air and then stilled, snarling, her body streaked with blood, hair nearly drenched in it and clothes ripped. She was breathing hard and held a curved stone sharpened to a point in her hand, clenched tightly, that just as bloody as she was. There was a feral light in her mismatched eyes as she looked around, but it slowly started to fade as she became more aware of where she was.

Upon realizing it was back where she wanted to be and seeing Tai, Kohe let out something like a sob, smiling at her twin in a weak gesture of reassurance, before she collapsed.

The Demisan couldn't speak, but Tai would feel her exhaustion, her fading fear and the feral mindset she'd slipped into, a purely Aavanian mindset. Her weariness was complete, harsher than when she'd left, the sickness having progressed further, leaving her shaking and cold despite the heat. And the blood wasn't hers - at least not all of it - some wet, some dry. There was a gnawing hunger within Kohe that only came from days without eating and if she'd been able to speak, she would have confirmed as much to her sister.

She'd been gone almost three days, on a distant part of this same planet. She couldn't begin to give a name to the creatures she'd fought, but they'd run in packs and hunted at night. Kohe would be fine if she never saw one again after having to deal with them for two nights, not knowing when she'd come back, unable to control the Jump, dreading that she'd never Jump the right way in time or to the same place again.

But she'd felt the strangest of pulls, like a tether she'd never had before, had never felt before, guiding what little power she'd been able to conjure up back to this place. And she'd made it. Barely.

And as it was, she was finding it hard to keep her vision clear, but when Tai came into focus, when her sister came within touching distance, Kohe did exactly that. She touched her twin, first on the face, leaving a smear of blood and then frowning, she touched Tai's chest, her ribs....and then her expression grew thunderous. Mismatched eyes that were slowly going purple with rage, snapped to Jack and despite her exhaustion, despite the illness that clearly sapped her strength, a storm of power gathered around her body. Telekinetic energy she had every intention of unleashing on him.

She was Time. She knew what he'd done to Tai. It was not hidden from her and now Kohe was livid.

And she was hardly thinking straight, all emotion and wild instincts.

 

[DotCom]

It was perhaps fortunate Tai never got the chance to answer, because she knew she would have lost her composure then and there, coming face to face with the fact that Kohe was sick and hurt and gone and Tai didn't know how to get her back, or even if there was a her to get back at all.

But when she did come, their first warning wasn't the tightening of the air or the crackle that ran through it.

It was Jack who had begun not to snarl or growl or pace...but to whine. At first, Tai was too shocked to speak. And then she was just worried, inexplicably so, though most of it came from simply being Tai, from feeling, loving too much. She took half a step toward the wolf-like creature who had just minutes before threatened to kill her. Her whole chest ebbed with pain, and there was an ugly swelling just to the right of her sternum bespeaking at least one cracked rib. But none of it mattered, because something was wrong with Jack.

"What?" she said gently, in a way she'd once asked Kohe. "What's wrong? What is it?"

Jack didn't answer, couldn't, was hardly even aware of where he was. All at once, his mind had seemed to collapsed in upon itself, equal parts pain and a deep darkness. But beyond there, there was a desire that was worse than any hunger or thirst or need he had ever experienced in his life. It was as though some part of him, a big part, perhaps his essence, his very soul, had been ripped away from him. And now he was reaching out for it, desperate and confused. He didn't know what it was, only that he needed it.

The feeling evaporated the moment Kohe appeared there before him, and all of it was over so quickly, he hardly noticed the correlation.

But Tai did.

She looked back and forth between her mangled sister -- trying hard not to recall the night of Kohe's first Jump -- and the stunned Venatorus, who, like Eliko, reacted out of instinct and fear, but unlike the Ashkerai, lunged toward Kohe, and a strange light came to her eyes. She ignored it for the moment as Jack paced back and forth, apparently oblivious to Kohe's anger, caught, instead, in his own.

Tai paid him no mind, gently putting herself between the two warring parties again, this time with a hand on either side of Kohe's face, gently drawing mismatched eyes back to her own violet.

"'Setta, no," she said gently, calmly, but firmly, perhaps for the first time guiding her older sister, bringing a new kind of calm. She didn't just afford it, like she usually did with Kohe. She forced it, just a little, Kohe would be able to resist, even in her exhausted state, but not without concentrating. And that's what tai wanted. She needed her sister to be the clear and logical thinker she was, because then she would realize getting angry with Jack wasn't going to do anything. "You can't do that right now, 'Setta. Just think. You know that. Now is the time for resting, Kohe. No more fighting. Just relax." Behind her, the boys had gone silent. Mostly silent. Jack, still in his Lupus form, was growling low in his throat. There was an anger in him he didn't understand, a sudden desire to tear into something that, for once, wasn't her.

But Tai wasn't paying attention to Jack right now. She was entirely focused on Kohe, on the fearful edge of her mind, and the hunger, and the exhaustion that seemed to sink to her very core. Tai lifted a hand that was somehow not shaking and smoothed a streak of bloody hair away from her sister's face. She promised herself as soon as Kohe could move, they would find a stream and wash her hair.

"I'm fine," Tai explained. It was true. Her torso, everything from her shoulder blades right on down to the softer flesh of her stomach, would be sore, bruised for days. She was pretty sure Jack had cracked a rib or two, but Tai thought maybe she could brace herself with something else later if she had to. Right now, the pain was next to nothing compared to Kohe's own hunger and exhaustion. She tried to make her sister see that.

"I'm okay, Kohe," she said again. "He didn't hurt me. Eliko...Eliko stopped him." It was her first time saying it out loud, and her first time realizing it had happened, and even this new Tai was surprised at that. She straightened a little, frowning in confusion, almost as if she didn't believe the words she'd just said. Then she looked over at Eliko, her expression one of mixed bemusement and suspicion. Why had he saved her? Sure, she was no good to them dead, but dead was very different than 'squished'. And she knew Eliko basically hated her. She could feel that. Especially now.

She stared at him a moment longer, trying to understand what he'd been doing, trying to understand the fracture in his thoughts and feelings, his entire personality. Then she caught another wave of hunger and exhaustion from Kohe and everything else was forgotten.

Now she was the Tai her sister knew as she smiled gently, betraying none of her fear or concern, and helped Kohe lay back a little.

"'Setta, listen," Tai said, speaking out loud so Kohe wouldn't be tempted to tune out and drift off. "This is important. I know you're tired, but you need to stay awake just a little longer. If...if you Jump again...you need to have food and water in your system, or you might...you won't..." Tai trailed off and shook her head. Kohe was shivering despite the relative warmth of the day, and the hunger ebbing through her wasn't helping things at all. "Can you stay awake a little longer, Kohe? Just eat something, and then I promise you can sleep."

As to the Jumps...well, that would come later. In her head, Tai was already making plans to stay by Kohe's side. If she saw her sister start to phase again, she would grab her hand and hold on tight. She couldn't risk Kohe getting caught somewhere alone again, not too weak to hunt or fight or eat.

She would just have to hope the two of them Jumping wouldn't kill Kohe on its own.

Tai straightened abruptly, forcing the thought out of her head. She would need to wait for sleep, then. Suddenly, she was no longer quite so tired.

She fixed the boys with the hard look again. It was getting alarmingly easy to slip back into this Kohe version of herself, though now it was tinged with a very Tai-like fear.

"She's hungry," Tai said curtly. "And she's hurt and she needs water. Jack," she looked at the Venatorus, who, she noticed, was still staring at Kohe, his expression unreadable, his emotions, expertly hidden. He had changed back to his smallest form, though Tai wasn't sure when. "You're the only one who knows the planet. Can you find food and water for her?" And for all of them. She didn't know how long they'd been traveling, but it had been two days at least since either she or Eliko had eaten, too. "Eliko, you have to go with him," Tai added, then, eyes going a vibrant sort of electric purple for a second, she added, "Don't argue. It'd be too easy for him to find something dangerous, something poisonous. You can't go anywhere if Kohe dies. You know that. You both do. You have to hurry."

Jack scowled, his long, strange silence finally broken, though he was slower in taking his eyes from Kohe to Tai. He sneered and she felt her chest and ribs ache. She didn't show it on her face.

"And what will you do?"

"I'm going to watch her," Tai said stoically. "I won't leave her alone."

The last part was just for Kohe.

"Not ever."

 

[Kaisaan]

Kohe didn't want to relax. She wanted to thrash Jack and make him understand that Tai was off-limits! Hadn't hurt Tai her ass! He would learn his place! She'd...she'd..... She wanted to...to....stars, her head hurt! The Demisan whimpered, the rage fading in the next wave of exhaustion and pain as she let Tai's influence coax her back to stability in the mental capacity and laid back as her sister urged. It was not a good position to be in for staying awake, though, as her twin was urging and Kohe forced herself to sit up. Her tail wrapped around her body as she shivered, teeth grit to keep from whimpering again as the pain spiked through her temples and her stomach roiled.

Stay awake. Yes, the pain would help with that, wouldn't it?

She needed to stay awake. Tai was right; if she Jumped again, in the state she was currently in, she would die. And Kohe knew she couldn't do that because if she died then so would Tai and Tai couldn't die because her little sister was Hope. Tai was going to change everything. She just didn't know it it, didn't understand that she was so much more important than Kohe would ever be. Tai was the key to everything. Kohe was just the guardian of that key.

Tai couldn't accept that yet. Not yet. But she'd see. In time she would and Kohe had to be alive so she could make sure that time came. So she would stay awake, though her eyes wanted to close and her mind struggled to find SOMETHING to latch on to, to keep her thinking and not dozing.

It was hard.

Tai's reassurance made her smile, though, and that expression only faded as Eliko, brown eyes narrowed, spoke as he looked between the sisters. "And what's to stop you from going without us if you're together?" For the moment he was being...civil, but Kohe could sense the ice at the edge of his words, the power of it lingering on his fingertips, ready to be unleashed in anger. Kohe put her hand on Tai's arm, halting anything her sibling might have said before the elder Demisan stood slowly, unsteady and weak, but determined.

The Ashkerai, now standing beside the Venatorus - though, neither of them stayed close to the other - watched as the bloodied and weary figure approached until she stood before the two males, mismatched eyes holding something enigmatic as she held her hand out and with slow deliberateness took a claw from her opposite hand and sliced through her own palm. The hand that wasn't bleeding reached out and grabbed Eliko's, startling him, but he merely watched as Kohe held her bleeding first over his outstretched palm, blood dripping on to his skin.

Kohe didn't speak, couldn't, but she was no less swift in taking Jack's. Only, as the blood dripped into his hand, Kohe felt something like a current pass through her, her mismatched eyes meeting his, searching for a moment before that shadow of a knowing smile touched her lips and she released him, stepping back from both males.

Eliko was looking at the blood in his palm, frowning for a moment and then he closed his hand into a fist and nodded, looking up at the elder Demisan. "Your Oath is accepted, Akatikari." He said nothing more, needed nothing more as he turned away. Even the Ashkerai understood a Blood Oath could not be broken and Kohe may not have spoken, but she'd said what she wanted to loud enough anyway. She wouldn't be leaving without them and if she did, she'd come back.

If there was one thing that was good about the Aavan and Cerebrae, it was that they were suckers for telling the truth and keeping their word. That WAS one thing that the Ashkerai could respect...and use against them on occasion. It would suffice for now and Eliko called back over his shoulder to the Venatorus.

"You coming, wolf, or do they need to beg you?"

Kohe - now sitting again - quirked a brow at the emphasis on the one word, looking to Jack, but she could say nothing and wouldn't have anyway as she started to cough, hoping Tai wouldn't notice that the blood spatters were not from the cut on her hand but from her mouth. She'd pushed her body much too hard without the proper training to build up her strength.

Kind of like Tai when she used her Empathy for longer times or for bigger problems than she knew how to deal with. Like now. Her sister's ribs were not the only thing hurting and Kohe was well aware of it.

 

[DotCom]

Jack watched with a quiet growl of indifference. Whatever unfathomable energy Kohe's reappearance -- if that's what it had been -- had brought him was gone now, leaving only a dull headache and a low simmer of frustration. He cared neither for oaths of blood or spoken word, though he didn't particularly trust either Demisan or Ashkerai to complete the tasks that had been laid before him. That was Venatori independence and pride, though he simply saw it as basic reasoning. It was his chore; he had been raised to believe the very laws of nature would stand in his way. If the Shaman and her sister somehow fled, he would hunt them down and kill them both, with or without the Ashkerai's assistance, oaths be damned.

He could, however, see the immediate benefit in finding some sustenance for all of them, particularly if it kept the Shaman from whining and her sister from dying. He himself was suddenly feeling inexplicable hunger, nearly weak from this, though he ignored it. He had gone much longer than a handful of hours or days without eating. This new feeling was nothing to him. Nearly nothing.

He let the Ashkerai go on ahead with nothing more than a baleful glare in his direction, before turning back to the Shaman.

"If you really want to help her," he said slowly, "then you and I should be the ones to go." He nodded at her wings then added, "I'm faster on all fours."

Tai only considered half a moment before shaking her head. "I'm not leaving her," she said again, and then neither of them spoke until Jack finally broke his stare and turned away, muttering, to follow Eliko.

Tai watched them go off together over her shoulder, her platinum-purple hair obscuring violet eyes. There was a slight frown on her face even she couldn't fully discern -- confusion, annoyance, concern, or some combination of all three. But she thought she would know before anything went too badly wrong. Eliko and Jack, and all their confusing, chaotic thoughts and emotions, were still firmly in her head.

Content that they really weren't going to let Kohe die, she turned back to her sister again and smiled, almost genuine this time.

"They fight more than Uncle Rask and Aunt Lyra," she said wryly, and then made a face, returning her however briefly, to her former self. "You really think we're going to mate with them?" She said it mostly to get Kohe to smile, relax a little, though she still found the idea sort of weird, to say the very least. She was certain she and Eliko grew more disparate every day, especially now that he was here...though he had pulled Jack off of her through no prompting of her own or Kohe's.

But she had seen something pass between Jack and Kohe, at least twice now. She could feel it, too, insignificant, uncertain, too small even to be positive. But there was something there. It was difficult not to feel jealous. Or it would have been, if she didn't love him now. Him and Eliko both, whether she liked it or not, and for once, Tai wasn't sure. She had always loved her sister, that made no difference. But Eliko had confused and frightened her, and Jack had tried to kill her. And yet she had been the one to Bond them. It was not a complete Bond, nowhere near where she felt they would and had to be, and it would continue to tax her until it was. But she had fused them together within her, and they were her responsibility now. She loved them in a way she could not explain. Not just affection or lust or friendship. Certainly nothing maternal or fraternal, with Kohe's obvious exception. But the love was there, and it was strong. She may not have liked them much, but she would protect them. Even if it only meant Kohe left her for Jack in the end.

She reached out a hand and brushed Kohe's white and black hair from her face, using her sleeve to gently wipe away some of the blood and sweat and dirt.

"Come here, 'Setta," she said gently. "Lean against me. They'll be back soon. There's...I think there's a potable stream nearby, and there should be something to eat there, too." She winced as she felt the pain in Kohe's head and gut. "Do you think you can keep anything down? Or should I ask them to find something...lighter?"

 

[Kaisaan]

Kohe smiled, just as Tai had wanted her to, but she shook her head softly at her sister, unable to respond verbally or mentally. She couldn't really fathom it either now that they were all face-to-face, but she knew that there WAS a future where it happened and it was the future they needed to strive for. If they didn't then the devastation would be far-reaching. But then, there would be difficulties even if everything went perfectly and Eliko and Jack became their mates, helped rather than hindered them.

If that happened, Kohe knew she'd have a part to play that Tai - nor anyone else - would have ever considered. Uncle Rask would understand immediately, though. He'd understand and desperately hope she could do what Kohe knew she'd have to.

Even the thought of it now, though, threatened to exhaust her further so she stopped thinking of it, letting the confusing, labyrinth of thoughts in her head fade away - or pushed them away as some were more persistent than others - and instead focused back on her sister. Kohe realized in that moment that she was not sure what Tai had said, drifting, and she blinked, trying to think, to remember and finally the elder Demisan shook her head in a 'no' gesture.

She didn't need anything 'light'. The males would have a hard enough time getting food, she didn't need to be picky on top of it. Besides, if she wasn't going to keep anything down, it didn't matter what it was at this point. She couldn't say as much, though, and so simply leaned against Tai and she struggled to stay awake.

That plan didn't ultimately succeed.

Kohe managed to hang on to consciousness for another half-hour, but even with Tai urging her, jostling her, Kohe passed out. Her body was done, needed the sleep but kept betraying itself when that same exhaustion made her power slip between her fingers, the control she always kept over it. Right now, though, it was behaving and when Eliko finally came back, Kohe was still exactly where she'd been left.

The Ashkerai took one look at the elder Demisan before turning his attention to the younger, unable to help it, feeling drawn to her in a way he was still trying to fight even as the inner self fought him. It was starting to make his head pound constantly and as the sun rose higher, more Midnight was needed to keep it from burning him - or even killing him. It wouldn't last forever.

"The mutt found a stream about two miles out. He's guarding whatever the thing he caught is, says scavengers will get it otherwise." Even as he spoke, Eliko started to approach the twins and he crouched beside Kohe, but didn't touch her, looking instead to Tai and something, something that was clearly struggling to break free from the ice in his brown eyes flashed quickly through his gaze. It was a gentleness that was completely at odds with Eliko and yet....it was him in some way.

His voice wasn't nearly as snapped or harsh as it could have been. "Can I touch her or are you going to blast me again?"

 

[DotCom]

Tai held Kohe in her arms, the only thing really keeping her from panic when she felt her sister finally sink into the blackness that had been threatening to pull her under since her return. It was sleep, but it was shallow enough Tai managed to subdue the urge to try and wake Kohe again, understanding her sister needed rest whether she wanted it or not.

She cried, though. As soon as she realized Kohe's chin had finally, permanently dropped to her chest, she gathered her sister in her arms the best she could, curled around her, wings and all, and tried to lend some warmth, and then Tai cried. She hated crying. It made her sad, and it made everyone else sad. But Jack and Eliko had gone, and there was no waking Kohe, so she let herself indulge in huge, gasping sobs that racked her body and made her chest ache more than it already was.

Tai was tired. She hadn't slept last night, and she was afraid she wouldn't be allowed to tonight either, not with Jack and Eliko at each other's throats, and Kohe's condition gradually breaking down. Her sister had no control over her Jumping; if she Jumped again before she was ready, it could kill her. Someone had to watch and make sure she didn't go, and while Tai knew it should be Jack, she couldn't trust him to do it. Not yet. It hurt to breathe, her chest and ribs sore, and even with the boys gone, she could feel tension and exhaustion and fear and pressure -- always the pressure, the both of them so completely desperate to finish these tasks laid out for them by their people. Kohe was tired and sick, and Tai was thinking more and more since Bonding them, since coming here, it was getting easier to Empathize, to feel with and for the others. She didn't mind it. It helped her remember her responsibility to them.

But it scared her, too, and now, more than ever, she wished she could take her and her sister home, to where it was safe in their room, and just sleep.

She felt Eliko coming back well before he reached them and panicked again when she realized Jack wasn't with him. But she made herself stop crying anyway, knowing that even if the Ashkerai didn't take advantage of her weakness, he might resent her for it. At the very least, she had to make him believe she really was capable of helping them, of protecting Kohe. That part was important.

But she didn't look up as he spoke, focusing instead on the same task of the last hour: gently combing mud and leaves from Kohe's hair, cleaning the blood from her face, her hands, her arms and claws.

He was...not quite gentle when he spoke, and she could still feel that battle raging within him. But she flinched anyway when he moved toward Kohe, flaring her wings enough to make him back off.

Her gaze was reproachful, but her voice was even as she shook her head solemnly.

"I'll carry her," she said quietly, and then she stood, using the dusky light of the end of the day to build something between a stretcher and a cot for Kohe, gently cradling her head and shoulders, smoothing over the rest of her with a pale golden blanket.

She let the construct rise up next to her, far off the ground and safe from any possible spills or errant branches that might get in the way. The strain was clear in Tai's eyes, but none of it even remotely registered as she reached down to brush a strand of hair from her sister's eyes.

When she was certain Kohe was safe and supported, she turned back to Eliko.

"I'm sorry for that," she said evenly. "I didn't...that wasn't like me. I won't do it again. Not to you, and not to him."

She studied him a moment and then started to walk, deciding she'd want something in Kohe's system sooner rather than later. "I'll carry her," she said again. "You're tired. There's no use trying to hide it. I can feel it. I can feel all of you."

She didn't say anything else, concentrating on supporting Kohe, until they reached the clearing where Jack waited, now in his Lupus form, black fur drying as he crouched beside something vaguely aquatic looking that was nearly half as long as he was. Seeing him, Tai's now-tenuous hold on Kohe's light-stretched wavered, and for one horrible moment, she thought she was going to drop her sister. She shut her eyes, weaving on her feet, then came back to herself as Jack's sudden spurt of alarm had her looking around for trouble.

He was on his feet again, or his paws, pacing closer, his lupine expression unreadable, though Tai felt curiosity and something like concern on the edges of his mind. It was...interesting to say the least, but Tai had no interest in it. She wanted to build a fire and a bed for Kohe and get some food and water into her before she made another Jump.

"'Setta?" she prodded as she lowered her sister to the ground with as much control as she could muster. She sat beside the stream, legs shaking, and dipped a hand into the water, and pulled Kohe into her lap, running a few fingers gently over her clammy brown.

"'C'mon, 'Setta, please wake up now. I know you're tired. Just a few minutes, and then you can go back to sleep." Tai released the stretcher with a shudder, suddenly so dizzy she nearly pulled herself and Kohe into that cold, terrible water -- even the sight of it made her belly hurt -- and then tried to set up a shield around their second camp, though her mind was elsewhere.

"'Setta? Please? Please, Kohe..."

 

[Kaisaan]

Eliko had moved back with a look of affronted disgust, frowning, nearly glaring at Tai as she did what she wanted, watching her with calculating, cold brown eyes. Inwardly he was sneering at the voice that had struggled so hard to be heard. That's what weakness earned - hostility. Being strong might earn that, too, but at least if he was strong it didn't hurt and he could lash out right back at the person. That was power and that was security.

Gentleness, warmth, caring, patience, love - they were weaknesses and they were only recipes for pain. The voice inside had to tried to reach out to Tai and she'd rejected it. Eliko saw no reason to do it again.

He let the Demisan do as she wanted, saying nothing to her words, silent the whole way back to Jack and he quickly departed from her once they arrived at their destination. Both sisters were alive and here. His task was complete and his mission was still intact. That's all he cared about. It was all he wanted to care about and the voice inside him could fight him tooth and nail on that, but he wasn't going to forget it again. He'd help the twins get better, make them take him and Jack where they needed to be and then they'd die.

Simple as that.

He hated how much effort it was taking to make that a certainty in his mind.

--

Kohe hadn't gone into a deep sleep, vaguely aware of what was going on around her from the sensation of floating to the cool touch of water on her forehead. She heard her sister's call and nearly whined, not wanting to come out of the comfortable darkness, but she knew Tai wouldn't be pleading like that unless she was worried, exhausted, beyond what she could handle. Tai thought she hid such things rather well, but Kohe knew. She always knew. Maybe not in the same way Tai did, but Kohe was always aware when something was wrong with her sibling and this was one of those times.

Of course, the elder twin knew there was something wrong with her, too, and that could be part of what was wrong with Tai.

So she stirred herself to wakefulness, blinking slowly until the world focused - taking much longer than she liked - and Kohe gave her sister a soft smile, fingers moving to touch Tai's cheek in a wordless gesture of comfort and reassurance. It was all right. Or it would be. Tai just had to believe her and Kohe knew that was not always easy to do.

She wished she could speak, could tell her little sister that everything was going to be fine, but she knew she couldn't and instead Kohe brought her attention to the water. It wasn't clean by the standards that Kohe was used to, but it was drinkable and she dipped her hand in, bringing it up to her mouth and drinking. After repeating the process a few times, the Demisan laid back against her twin again with a grimace, her stomach not at all sure if it wanted to accept this intrusion. Kohe concentrated on breathing carefully to control the tinges of nausea and her nose caught the scent of the meat not far away.

Eliko was already using his knife to cut off of a chunk of the animal and he brought it over, blood running down his arms from his hands. It was ignored as he crouched before the two. "Here. Eat and hold it down. The sooner you're better, the sooner we leave this place." He moved away toward the water as soon as Kohe took the offered meat and the Ashkerai seemed relieved when his hand made contact with the liquid, the coolness of it.

Kohe was more interested in the meat and she bit into it without hesitation. Blood joined the dried smears already on her face and her mismatched eyes found Jack's yellow. Kohe paused in her chewing for a moment, head tilting and then she dipped her chin in a slight nod of acknowledgement. He'd made the kill that would keep her alive. She was grateful.

It was the first gesture of something other than anger on her part.

 

[DotCom]

Tai knew her sister didn't want to wake up, and in a moment of almost hysterical relief, shivered and lean close to nuzzle Kohe when she did. She didn't say anything; there was nothing to say. Tai was almost quiet for the first time in her whole life, the effect compounded by the fact that she'd just made two new 'friends'. Granted, these 'friends' were the furthest thing from friendly. They wanted to kill her, and they were kill Kohe to do it. But she was also somehow closer to both of them than she'd ever been with anyone before, save Kohe. Even her mother wasn't quite here. She held Kohe while she ate, resolving to wait until Kohe was resting to eat herself, though she knew Kohe wouldn't like it. Tai didn't mind. She was particularly hungry. She wasn't really anything but tired anymore, and she sat there, Kohe half cradled in her lap, her mind drifting. She found if she didn't keep a firm hold on her thoughts. she seemed almost to shift perspectives entirely. She couldn't quite put words to it, but one moment she would feel drawn and frustrated, anxious at the lack of darkness -- Midnight, when she was in that mindset. And the next, she would be suspicious, doubtful. And watching Kohe. Always she was watching Kohe.

Some small part of her realized what was happening and thought she ought to stop it. When she swam back to herself, it was always to a headache that seemed to grow worse with each passing moment, threatening to turn her stomach...or was that Kohe's stomach? It was, she realized, getting more difficult to tell.

Finally, Tai roused herself and put a shield around the four of them again. It was thinner, weaker, than it had been the night before, but it was a pale blue-silver, the color of the largest of the four moons that circled the planet. Any other time, the light might have been beautiful, but now it just seemed haunting.

Tai closed her eyes and rested her chin on Kohe's head, folding her arms and her wings around her sister, wishing, more than anything, Kohe could still speak.

"I want to go home, 'Setta," she said, wishing she didn't need to, but she did. "I want to go home."

Jack sat silent, still in his Lupus form. He felt safer, more comfortable here, and his more lupine body digested fresh meat better than his smaller form did. It was easier to see in the dark, too, and in the dusky light of the Izrit Forest, he kept all three strangers in his sight. For once, none of them were at each other's throats. The Ashkerai was guarding his kill, watching the twins. The twins themselves were half dozing, or near enough.

Or Tai was. Kohe looked up and met his eyes. He tensed at once, prepared for another argument. But she just nodded. Jack stared for a long time, then turned away, impatient. What they had was a deal, if that. There was no time for camaraderie, even basic civility, in that.

He turned instead to Eliko.

"So, what now? We just wait for her to recover? And hope she's strong enough to get us back?" He turned back toward the twins with a snarl of contempt. He still didn't see why both twins had to be alive for that.

 

[Kaisaan]

Kohe wished she had the words to tell Tai that she didn't need the shield, that nothing was going to attack them, not tonight, but she didn't have the voice and so instead she brought her fingers up and started to smooth wild hair from Tai's face, combing back through the ratted tresses with gentle care as she felt her sibling start to drift off. The elder Demisan's other hand was continuing to feed her, finishing off the meat even as Jack spoke.

Mismatched eyes of deep scarlet and sapphire, darkened even further with anger, met the wolf's pale yellow when he snarled and she did nothing but bare her fangs back at him, silent so as not to disturb Tai, but response nonetheless. Her tail had raised in a striking position with the silent gesture of the fangs and in wolf-speak, that was clearly both challenging and commanding both. Jack could think what he wanted. Kohe knew that she could get them all back. She just had to gain strength for it. Him doubting her wasn't helping anything.

And the way he looked at Tai...she'd have to fight that out of him or at least make him respect the boundaries for now, that Kohe knew very well. He could not keep attacking her sister. The elder twin wouldn't allow it.

Eliko brought his fingers to the bridge of his nose, eyes closing as he sighed, feeling almost sick and physically weak himself with the heat, sun and lack of Midnight in this place. "Venatorus, lay one claw, paw or fang on either twin and I will teach you what true pain is." His cold brown eyes opened, glaring with fierce ice-fire at the wolf. Allies they might have technically been, but if Jack jeopardized Eliko's ability to get home, he'd kill the wolf. Enemy of my enemy is my friend only lasted so long and could only hold two strangers together as long as there was a common cause. If those people disagreed on their course of action....well, then there was no 'friend' anymore. Only another enemy. "I want them dead just as much as you do, my mission is no different than yours, but don't be stupid about it. You kill one of them, and you'll get nothing from the other, and I am not staying on this sorry excuse for a planet any longer than I have to."

The Ashkerai sneered. "And I don't think you or any of your people want to be here either. You're impatient, I understand. Now suck it up and do what's needed for your people, in the order that it's needed. She'll do what she says she will. She did it once, she can do it again and she won't leave her precious sister here. Once we're back where we belong, then we can gut them, got it?" he spat, his own duty to his kin keen in his mind as he sat, not concerned about how Jack might react, and brushed his hand back through his dark, damp hair.

Gods, he hated it here! But more than that, he hated not knowing what was happening to his people, how much time was passing there. And he hated the voice that was growing stronger and more persistent within him. And yet...it didn't seem to foreign anymore...especially when it got angry.

It was strange, but no stranger than anything else that had happened since he'd met the cursed twins.

Kohe, almost seeming to know what the two males were thinking, watched both of them with amusement dancing in her eyes even as she laid her head back on Tai's, ignoring them now. There was no future in the next few hours where they did she or her twin any harm. And with that in mind, assured within her, she shut her eyes, let her body relax and Kohe slipped into sleep.

Maybe there she could escape the nausea for a while and with any hope, any luck, she'd stay put for even just a few hours.

 

[DotCom]

Jack was annoyed by the arrogance, the sheer, unearned bravado, with which the Ashkerai spoke, but he could no longer be bothered to argue. He had made his catch for the day, and there was nothing to be done, as Eliko had said, but wait, and trust the Shaman's sister would be of some use when the time came. He found himself staring at her, or rather, glaring at her, both annoyed and amused by the way she so readily made her own irritations clear, even with no voice. Had he not needed her dead, he might have been impressed.

Even interested.

But, of course, she was the Shaman's sister. She and her twin would die screaming, and their blood would buy the vengeance his people had been denied for generations.

Satisfied, he gave the elder twin a smug grin as he curled into a ball, his tail over his nose, and fell into a deep sleep.

--

Tai didn't sleep well.

Even without her newly-heightened sense of Empathy, even only semi-conscious, Tai knew Kohe was sick. She was awake, and she was keeping food and water down, so Tai could safely assume she wouldn't die any time soon, barring some horrible accident she would make every effort not to sleep through. But she was sick, and even if she was getting bettor for the moment, she wouldn't stay that way for long.

The planet was killing her.

The planet was killing them both.

Tai didn't know how, or even how she knew it was true, but she knew it. Perhaps it was some effect of the dying planet itself, vengeance from a once-living, bueatiful thing, recognizing half a species deserted after having neglected it so strongly in the first place. Perhaps it was the air or the water, or just the uncommon nature of a place that had once been in their blood, and was no longer. Maybe it was something she hadn't yet thought of. That was entirely possible, as her thoughts were growing more and more disjointed, especially now that she floated in this dark haze of charcoal-colored semiconsciousness. Tai had always had trouble staying focused, not daydreaming about any and everything. But this was different. She had to exert an almost physical effort to even remain in her body, lest her mind wander too far. Some small part of her, the part that managed to remain with herself, if that's where she was, worried she might get lost, that she would forget who and where and what she was, lose herself to a tree or a stone or a patch of grass. It seemed absurd, almost funny...Tai giggled to herself, the sound coming from far away. She realized she was feverish, and might have been hysterical, almost delirious, if she'd had any energy for either. She pressed closer to Kohe and tried to keep her mind, her thoughts, to herself.

It didn't work.

•••

She woke in a new place, one she had never seen before, only she had, because part of her, a large part, was afraid. She didn't recognize this part of herself, either. It was unfamiliar, all hard lines and squared edges. Not cold, quite. Too fearful to be cold. But trying to be. Trying to be cold and hard and dark, only the fear kept taking over. Something nearby was whimpering, a high, whining sound, like a dog might make.

She realized it was her a moment later. Her, and not her. Jack.

The moment she realized it, she could suddenly 'see' herself. It was Jack, in a way, but he was different. Younger. Smaller. Their body was young and sleek and trembling, but their black fur was sticky with a bright red substance. They hurt all over. They wanted s badly to lie down and sleep, to lick their wounds until the pain stopped. They didn't want to hurt anymore.

But more than that, they didn't want to BE hurt anymore. And they wanted to make him proud. They wanted him to love them. Oh, yes. They wanted that very much.

So, they forced themselves to awkwardly large paws -- they couldn't have been more than six or seven years old -- and ignored the trembling, the fatigue and pain in their limbs. They held their breath to making the whining stop, and at last, they looked up to meet the cold red eyes of their father in front of them.

Good, he said, but he didn't sound pleased. Will I have to show you again what I want?

They ducked their head no.

Then finish it.

Tai didn't want to look, having a horrible feeling she already knew what was behind her. But this was not her memory, not her nightmare. Jack had looked as a child, and he would look again now, just as he had, every time before, and would until the nightmares ended.

A silver wolf, female, and even smaller than they were, lay still on the floor, scored all over by bright red teeth marks. She was not moving, aside from the shallow fall and rise of her flank. Her eyes were shut, but they knew she was not asleep. She was waiting to die.

Images flashed through their head -- this silver wolf, running alongside a creek, sandwiched between them and the water; the silver wolf in her smallest form, a little girl with platinum hair and blue eyes; the silver wolf curled alongside the black in a field, a perfect, sleeping yin and yang -- and they staggered. In a flash, the red-eyed wolf was there, sinking sharp fangs, not into their scruff, but the tender, bleeding flesh of their shoulder, throwing them roughly aside. They didn't have the strength or the will to fight back. Even if they had, they would have stayed still.

They landed beside the silver wolf, and incredibly, she opened large blue eyes and whined softly at them. They flinched, able to feel the pain there as clearly as their own. But she said nothing, only feebly lifting her head to lick at a spot of blood on their cheek before her strength left her again.

The message was clear: It's okay. I forgive you.

For one overwhelming moment, they were so angry, they almost fought back. Anger surged through their limbs, replacing pain with fire, replacing cold with hate. They stood up and stared down their father, who loomed four, five, six times larger -- memory? Or truth? -- and they growled with ragged vocal cords.

Father was almost impressed.

Good. Keep that, he said. Now, finish her. She is nothing but a distraction. Do it, or I will. And I will not be kind.

They did not move, the growl making their whole body trembled.

Father had them pinned in an instant, one paw on their chest in a way that was horribly familiar to Tai. Growling loud enough to wake the dead, Briar moved his jaws down until their growl turned to a whimper. He was going to kill them. This was it.

But he didn't. He lunged; a rib snapped; they yelped in pain, and Briar stood back just as quickly as he had attacked, now moving toward the silver wolf. She didn't move, and they struggled to rise, to get to her. Briar reached her first, and closed his jaws around her neck, lifting her bodily. She whined weakly, but she didn't open her eyes. Her fur was stained pink.

Slowly, Briar began to exert the pressure required to break her neck. Slowly, slowly, until she was whining, then whimpering, then thrashing weakly in his grip, then, wild-eyed and desperate, looking to them.

DON'T!

Briar stopped, still threatening to kill. The silver wolf had gone still.

I...I'll do it. They could not look. Not at Briar. Not at the silver wolf.

Briar sneered and through her body at their feet. She rolled once and lay still. Even her breathing was questionable now. They lowered their head close to one bleeding ear, licking gently. She flinched, but didn't move away. She couldn't.

Keeva?

There was no answer. They felt their gut twist.

Keeva, I'm sorry.

She opened one eye to look at them. Impassive. Apathy. Emptiness. Never had blue seemed so gray before.

Just finish it. And the eye closed again.

Feeling as though they had been stabbed in the belly, they gently closed their jaws around her scruff. They had killed before. They could make this painless. Or at least less painful. But they couldn't hesitate.

There was wetness from their eyes. They were careful not to let Father see, though they knew he knew. They could hardly breathe. Keeva was silent.

One...

They moved her broken foreleg from under her, hoping it would ease the pain. Tai knew -- it didn't.

Two...

They raised their head, prepared to give one hard shake.

Three...

Stop.

They were so surprised, they nearly dropped Keeva. They laid her down gently at the last moment. She didn't respond.

That's enough. Go to bed now. No dinner.

What about --

I needed to know you could. She's more use to us alive than dead. And besides, he broke off to look at Keeva, who was now well and truly unconscious. Fangs showed through dark fur in a horrible smile.

She won't be a distraction anymore.

And the larger wolf lunged.

•••

Tai and Jack awoke at the same time, both pale and trembling and soaked through in a cold sweat. But where Tai awoke to hug herself in the cold -- she had lost her shield almost an hour ago -- Jack woke with an inhuman howl, a cry of pain nearly unimaginable.

Tai looked over, ready to apologize...and then suddenly, Jack was no longer Jack.

Where he had been, there stood a towering creature, almost eight feet if an inch, with a chest like a great oak and fangs and claws that shone like daggers in the moonlight. Jack through back his head, turning blank yellow eyes to the night sky to give that howl of anguish and anger again, so utterly chilling, she shivered, even without her Empathy.

And then he turned those pupil-less yellow eyes on her.

Tai rolled quickly away from Kohe and to her feet, bracing herself. She could feel Jack's mind, for once even more strongly than she felt Kohe's. She herself had never been feral before, but she knew what it felt like. There was none of Jack's cold rationale present, no coherent thought or word whatsoever. This was the Canaris they had met in the forest, all blind rage and single target -- stop the thing that had hurt it.

Jack, now standing on two heavily-muscled, furry legs, launched himself at her with all the force of a three-hundred pound bullet. Tai wasn't tired anymore. The adrenaline coursing through her veins let her greet his attack with a sturdy wall. His weight colliding against the brick of silver light pushed her back a few feet, and Tai grimaced, grunting as she exerted her will against his.

"Jack!" she shouted, then reconsidered. "Jack! I'm sorry. I didn't mean it -- I didn't...You have to listen!"

But of course, he wasn't listening, and she couldn't get a foothold in his mind to make him listen. He lunged again and her light-wall trembled.

She wasn't going to hold long...but she knew what she had to do.

Summoning the reserves of her strength, she leaned hard into her defensive, and when Jack tried to lunge again, she absorbed his energy and threw it back at him, toppling him and pinning him to the ground. He growled and snapped and struggled, and sweating, Tai took her chance to explain.

"He's feral," she said quickly, speaking to both Eliko and Kohe, knowing they would attack if they didn't understand -- and then maybe even if they did. "It's not his fault. He's not thinking crazy. I--I can't hold him much longer, but he's going to hurt someone or kill himself if he doesn't c-come back." She grimaced and staggered as Jack, enraged and out of his mind, struggled against the bolas she'd used to pin him.

"Kohe...Kohe, you have to get through to him. T-tell him it wasn't his fault." She shook her head; Jack lunged two feet off the ground before she could focus again. "Hurry, 'Setta."

 

[Kaisaan]

Kohe woke the moment her sister did and then she jolted to a sitting position, eyes wide and dilated at the howl. It tore through her like a hot brand of fire and she nearly screamed with it, gasping for breath when it was over, her mind in a chaotic mess with all the information flooding her at once. Tai's fever, her emotions, her thoughts like shrieking whispers in her head. Eliko's hostility as the Midnight swirled about him, ready to lash out, only lending more darkness and tension to the situation now stirred up.

And Jack.

Jack who made her entire body throb with pain, who's timestream shrieked into her, demanding she understand, that she FIX IT. Kohe struggled to breathe with the intensity of it, a yellow strand of light she'd not seen before, had not known was there igniting with the most intense of glows inside her head, stretching into a darkness she could not yet break through.

Jack. It was Jack and how Kohe had not seen it before, she would never know. But she saw it now. She felt it. She understood it for that brief moment, an infinite moment that would not fade from her mind, branded into her memories with the most intense of heat and pressure. This was not a knowing. This was not Time. This was something more, something deeper, an understanding that had nothing to do with what she was or who she was, what she could do or what she saw.

It was just Jack and it was just understanding.

And in that moment of understanding, Kohe became more aware of the chaos around her, the moment broken entirely at Tai's words. The elder Demisan's head cleared and anger threatened, but it could no longer become blind rage toward the Venatorus. He was trying to hurt Tai. But Tai was aware herself that he wasn't in his right mind. Even if he had been, Kohe now knew she couldn't hurt him, not like she could have before. She couldn't hurt him, but she couldn't get through to him either. Not like Tai wanted her to.

Kohe couldn't talk. And Jack wouldn't have listened anyway.

Not yet.

She couldn't let him hurt her sister, either, though, no matter what state he was in. In the end, there was only one clear solution to Kohe, only one thing that came to her and refused to leave, logical in her fevered mind. So she didn't give herself time to think it through, had no way to explain it to Tai who was struggling so hard to keep the live bolt of lightning wolf known as Jack contained. Kohe just acted.

It only took her fifteen seconds to rise, stumble two steps and then lunge. It took a fraction of a second to make contact with the writhing werewolf's flank, to feel the power and rage and heat in the body that could have crushed her with one pawed hand. It took less time than that for Kohe to be ripping them both away from this time, this place, for the world to tilt crazily and blackness overwhelm them. They were gone then, whirling and tumbling through a vortex of colors and sounds, images too fast to catch, tumbling and turning until they simply halted and the feeling of falling took over.

Coldness, harsh and biting, greeted Kohe as she landed in the snow and with a shriek, started to roll down the steep incline. She felt her skin break open upon the mountain rocks before she came to a stop in a ravine and simply lay there. She hadn't passed out, not yet, but Kohe made no effort to get up, not yet. She felt sick, she hurt, could see blood in the snow where she'd come to rest and she didn't know if moving might further aggravate the feral Jack.

If he was still in that state at all.

No, she'd wait and see, for the moment, what was happening before doing anything.

 

[DotCom]

Tai knew what was going to happen before it happened, and it still went by too fast for her to stop it. One moment, she was restraining Jack, trying to figure out how to pull him out of his feral state before he did something bad. The next, Kohe was whizzing past her, and Tai could feel the change coming, knew exactly what her sister was thinking. Knew she couldn't make it. Kohe was too weak, too sick to Jump on her own, let alone with Jack, who wasn't in his right mind, anyway. What if they landed somewhere dangerous? What if Jack was still out of his mind when they arrived? Kohe couldn't fight him, and if Tai was right in what she'd felt when Kohe had woken, she wouldn't be able to, anyway. What if the Jump made her worse, weaker? What if she couldn't get back? Jack wouldn't know how to watch for Kohe, how to care for her.

Would he?

And suddenly, watching Kohe vanished, she realized what had happened.

She tried not to think about it. It would hurt Kohe if she ever found out Tai had even considered it. But Tai's body still ached from the dream. Jack's anguish was somehow still inside her, and Tai herself was tired and sick and not at all herself. She was all of them, and none of them, and she didn't know how to find herself again, and Kohe...Kohe had left her. Her big sister had Jumped before, of course, sometimes even readily. But never while she was near death.

And never to choose someone else over Tai.

It was wrong, of course. Tai knew that. She knew she was being irrational, that she wasn't thinking straight, because she was afraid for Kohe, and hurting for Jack, and angry with Eliko. She was tired, and Kohe was sick, and Jack was grieving, and Eliko was fighting, and even now, she could feel all of it, though Kohe and Jack were somewhere far away, their feelings and emotions distant and sluggish.

But Kohe had left. And now they couldn't talk at all.

Tai pitched forward as the thing she had been using to pin Jack suddenly disappeared, throwing her on the ground before she could right herself. Not that she cared to try. She sat up, dizzy, on shaking arms, spitting mud out of her mouth as she looked around, bewildered. Her face was flush, her eyes wide, almost vacant.

"Kohe?" she said aloud to the now-silent wood. And then, inside: "Kohe? 'Setta? Come back...please come back. I won't let him hurt you. 'Setta, please..."

But Kohe didn't answer. Of course she didn't answer.

And somewhere in the forest, a predator had been woken by Jack's howl. Tai barely heard.

Sitting, she drew her knees close to her chest and hugged them, placing her forehead on her knees, too tired to cry.

"Why did she leave me?" she asked no one in particular. "She left...she left me alone. My 'Setta...she left me..."

--

His waking was a slow one.

He was aware first that he was no longer in that horrible, dark place where he had been. With his father, and the silver wolf -- Keeva -- and the blood and the pain and...and Tai.

Suddenly, there was nothing else. He had no recollection of what had happened after the nightmare, or even that it had ended wrong -- Keeva had died, but not that night, and not at his father's hand. He could not remember that he'd woken and reverted without conscious thought, for the first time in a long time, to the feral form Venatori took during their first hunts, or during a Blood Rage. That he had reacted so violently to a dream would have angered his father...

...only it hadn't just been the nightmare. Those, he was used to. Oh, he stifled them, of course. he had to. Nightmares, dark memories, any emotion not deemed useful -- and most weren't -- were mere weaknesses. But this hadn't been a nightmare. This had been near treason.

The Shaman had broken into his consciousness! Taken root there, watched the memory with him, felt what he had felt, as though she had any right at all to share his memories, let alone indulge in them! She had been...gentle. Sympathetic, even. He had felt it as they'd both begun to wake, her pulling him up through the layers of exhaustion just as he watched his father rip out Keeva's throat --

But it was not enough. She had gone too far, displaying the arrogance typical of the Cerebrae. And she would pay.

He rolled to his feet, hardly away that he was shivering, that his hair was damp with snowmelt. He was angry -- but no longer feral. All Ventaori, save for in some rare, extreme cases, reverted to their smallest form when truly unconscious, though many slept in their lupine forms.

"Shaman!" he called. "Show yourself, you cowardly vischna!" He had been angry at her before, angry enough to attack, but this was not like that. He did not want to kill her, or at least not before making her understand what she had done and that she would not do it again if she wanted her sister to see another day.

It was only then he realized -- he was not in the place where he had fallen asleep. That had been a temperate forest. This appeared an empty, frozen tundra. There, the twins had been sleeping, curled together, the Ashkerai a ways away. Here, there was no one, nothing.

But there was blood in the snow. Shifting down, noticing the snow a bit more, he took on his Lupus form and put his snout to the snow. It was the Shaman's sister, then. He growled, annoyed, but not surprised. She had Jumped again, then, taking him with her. But not his people, and not away from his home world, so far as he could tell, so what was the use? His mission was not complete until he could kill the Shaman, and he didn't trust the Ashkerai to finish the deed.

He trotted through the snow until he came to the edge of a ravine where the Shaman's sister lay, stunned but conscious. He growled lightly.

How long until you can take us back, Demisan?

 

[Kaisaan]

Kohe didn't respond, didn't move for a long moment, closing her eyes as she tried taking a deep breath. Her ribs protested it and she knew then that she'd cracked at least four or five of them. Inhaling was going to be hell for a while. Moving was going to be the same way, but the Demisan finally risked it, bringing her hands under her and pushing her chest and stomach off the ground on trembling arms. Hands and knees were as far as Kohe got before her body rebelled and she expelled the contents of her stomach into the snow. Meat, bile and blood - a great deal of blood - stained the white and she groaned afterward, pushing herself away from the mess.

Her white and black-streaked hair was as red as her lips at the ends and at her temple where blood had trailed down from the cut on her forehead. There was a long and jagged cut on her arm and her pants had torn at the thigh, blood seeping through there, too. In all, she was losing far too much of it and Kohe was pale, trembling already in the dramatic drop in temperature. Her body was less able to deal with the cold and would have been the same with heat now that she was officially sick.

Having sat up fully, she finally directed her attention to the calmer Jack, relieved that he wasn't still raging, that she didn't have to waste precious energy she didn't have on trying to contain him. The Jump had done what she hoped....now all she had to do was survive this and get back to Tai...and pray her sister would be all right with Eliko.

I'm coming back, Pejkia. I promise.

She sent the thought out as far as she could, knowing there was probably no way it would reach Tai, but needing to think it anyway. Just as she instinctively pushed her thoughts along the new yellow thread within her mind. Kohe had little faith it would reach Jack as the words, more like impressions than anything, disappeared into the black void the yellow came from.

As soon as I can stop restraining your stupid ass from harming my sister every time you get pissed. THAT would be a start in the right direction. That thought was spat along the yellow thread, growled and searing, frustrated and then Kohe inwardly sighed, the exhale far more physical as her breath clouded before her in a thick, white mist. She shook her head and tried to stand, half-falling the first time and then managing it the second, not allowing her own weakness to stop her determination.

The Demisan wavered on her feet, the wind seeming to tear through her frame, whipping her hair about as more flurries descended from the overcast sky. Her body shimmered, fading out of existence entirely for a moment before coming back, half-there in some limbs, see-through in others before Kohe grit her teeth, fists clenched and brought herself back completely, solidifying. There was strength there in the midst of the frailty and such was the side Kohe chose to show, much as Jack did the same, much as Eliko and Tai did, as she looked around and then back to the Venatorus, her eyes far more vivid in a face that nearly looked like death, pale as a ghost.

I don't know. I will strive to make it soon. It's what she would have said, what she sent, having no hope that it reached him. Physically, Kohe merely raised a brow and gave a slight shrug. His guess was as good as hers. Kohe knew all there was to know about Time and every aspect of every possible future if she wished it.

What she never could quite figure out was herself.

--

Anger registered first.

Not shock. There was no shock. What he'd witnessed had been nothing he hadn't witnessed a hundred times over before in the Nene Upeso Vitar. Feral Venatorus were nothing new to him, nor were the powers of the Cerebrae, their ability to stop a feral wolf in its tracks. Jack's display was impressive, but not surprising judging on the last few hours and his tension with Tai in particular. Tai's reaction was a bit more telling in how weak she was that she couldn't hold the Venatorus as long as she had last time, nor with as much ease.

Kohe's reaction didn't shock him either. But it angered him.

She'd left! The damn Demisan was supposed to be regaining her effing strength so they could get off this dying planet and she'd wasted it! Now both she and Jack could be dead and he and Tai would be stuck here! Sure, he could kill the Shaman - as Jack was so obsessed with calling her - but what good would that do him here, away from his people and with no chance of getting back to them?

Damn Kohe.

The Ashkerai released a shrieking, chilling sound unique to his people, but he didn't waste Midnight by lashing out, pulling it back in as he stared at the place Kohe and Jack had been before noise from Tai had his cold, lethal brown eyes snapping to her. She wasn't looking at him, though, and therefore did not see when her words, her last words, made something flash in his eyes. It was something powerful, something fighting both Eliko and the Midnight and for the first time, it was winning, pushing both back until the hardness in the Ashkerai's brown eyes faded away, replaced by something far more gentle.

The voice inside, the presence long buried had seen enough, tolerated enough. It was done and something about seeing Tai reduced to such a state gave it the strength to surge forward, to fight the enraged Eliko and take control of the body they shared, even for just a little while. So a sneer became a relaxed mouth, furrowed brows loosened, muscles grew less rigid and hard eyes became softer.

Oh, they still contained an edge, a very sharp one and there were elements of caution, suspicion in his face, but Eliko-who-was-not-Eliko moved toward Tai with less intent to harm than to help. Despite his wariness, the Ashkerai's hand settled on Tai's head, some part of him marveling at how soft her snowy-violet hair was.

"Tairisa, your sister will come back. She was only protecting you. She'll come back and she'll help all of us." Hearing his own voice again, as it had always been, no edge of hate and condescension dripping from his words almost made him lose focus, but Tai wasn't going to let him. The Ashkerai moved carefully then, sitting beside the curled up frame of the young Demisan and he slowly wrapped an arm around her, drawing her in just a little, feeling awkward, but somehow compelled even as half of him was fighting like hell, already exhausted, to keep Eliko away.

"I'll stay with you. I'll make sure you're all right until she gets back, Tairisa. I won't leave."

He'd damn well keep that promise. He wouldn't leave her with Eliko.

 

[DotCom]

Even with him sitting there beside her, somehow warm and cool against her at the same time, Tai didn't immediately notice something had changed. She was still probing the empty space Kohe -- and Jack, too, though his space was much, much smaller -- had left, only vaguely aware that, for the first time, she could still feel her sister. It was weak, their Bond now stretched to its limits. But it was there.

And Kohe was hurt. She was hurt, and weak, and sick, and...and cold. Tai felt that like a shiver through her own body, goosebumps creeping up on her arms and shoulders despite the relative warmth of the night. She thought maybe Jack was hurt, too, though he didn't know it yet, and wouldn't for a while, all his attention and energy focused on Kohe in a way that would have made Tai smile if she didn't think it was a bad thing. Something passed through Kohe's mind, or lots of somethings, and Tai strained to hear it, but trying made her head hurt and her belly flip over, and it was hard enough to stay tuned in to Kohe and Jack as it were. Her hold on them was tenuous. She didn't want to risk losing it before they found their way back. Closing her eyes, exhaling slowly, Tai eased off on the connection holding the four of them together, swallowing a whimper of mingled pain and relief.

And she felt herself relax, however slightly, under his touch.

That done, the younger Demisan turned her head without lifting it from her knees, openly studying the Ashkerai sitting next to her. He didn't look different, or at least not in any way she could put to words. And yet he had changed. She would have known even if he hadn't spoken. She had felt the battle raging in him for some time now, and if she looked closely, she could see the divide in his lux, two similar, but still different shades of black. One was darker, yes, but it was duller, too. The other black, the lighter one, it was fading now, sinking back into the dull shade. But even still, she could see it was a richer, deeper, truer black, if that was even possible.

"You're different," she said quietly. "You're the one Kohe says is supposed to be my mate." Any other day, this might have intrigued her, at the very least -- it was strange to see Eliko speaking to her without his signature disdain and hostility -- but she could only think of Kohe. Objectively, his words made sense. Some part of her even knew they were true. Kohe would never have left Tai alone on purpose, hadn't really done so at all, though whether she had known not-Eliko would make an appearance or not, Tai wasn't sure.

But she couldn't make herself understand. It was, had always been, her greatest weakness. Tai did not deal well with rationality. It was a concept entirely too vague, too impersonal for her to understand. She could Empathize with a cloud or a blade of grass. But she could not understand why Kohe had left. Only that she had.

Just like she knew she wouldn't be able to find Kohe, no matter how hard she looked. But she had to try.

"I'm going to look for them," she said in that same toneless voice. "I think you should stay here in case they come back. But I can't tell you or him what to do. I -- "

She broke off suddenly as something wriggle at the edges of her consciousness.

The creature itself was strange and new, but that single-minded consciousness, driven only by hunger, rage, instinct -- the predatory mindset -- was by now familiar. She knew at once it had been alerted by Jack's own howls of anger and despair, perhaps hearing a dying whine in his cries. She knew also that anything hunting a feral Venatori was nothing to be reckoned with.

Absurdly, her eyes flashed to not-Eliko, seeing, for a moment, only his gentleness, his kindness. The exhaustion was gone. The string of rejection was replaced by another sharp spike of adrenaline.

"Run," she told him, violet eyes wide, set on the darkness just beyond the thin shield she'd reestablished. "You have to -- "

The Rsio burst from the trees, a maddened look in its six crimson eyes, headed straight for them. For Eliko -- the larger prey.

Tai didn't think.

--

Jack wasn't yet quite aware that Kohe had almost spoken to him for the first time when it happened. She turned her head and looked at him. A lock of hair so white it looked almost silver fell over one eye, exposing the other, the color of the richest sapphire. There was blood on the snow. Red, white, blue, silver.

It took him away for only a second. He was too smart, too stunned to not know it was Kohe who stood in front of him. But for a moment, he saw a girl. A silver wolf broken and beaten, bleeding, and still defiant. Still understand. Beautiful.

He did not think as he approached the lip of the ravine and jumped down, landing cleaning beside Kohe, meeting her nearly eye to eye, even on all fours.

Get on and hold on, he told her. His tone was even, unchanging, though it brooked no argument. You won't be able to climb out. And if I don't stop the bleeding, you won't be making it back to your sister at all. He didn't add that if Kohe died, there would be nothing -- neither reason, nor resistance -- to stop him from killing Tai. He didn't need to. But more than that...he could feel the pain, exhaustion, weakness in her as clearly as though it were his own. And his nightmare had not yet faded from his mind.

He waited for her to comply, then wriggled to settle her body on his back. That done, he trotted a ways down the narrow canyon, still trying to ignore the spots of red on the white snow, to where the walls were more shallow and less steep. He easily, but gently, rebounded wall from wall before emerging again with all the grace of a practiced predator. The Demisan on his back needed to lie down...though he was loathe to simply leave her in the snow.

His people did not often visit the Frozen Lands, but it was still in their blood to survive. He trotted to a snow drift and began to burrow, making quick work with massive paws and strong forelegs. The space he carved was small, but then so was the Demisan, at least in comparison to two of his three forms. He crawled down into the makeshift igloo, insulated from the cold air, however slightly, and laid down. He shifted down to his smaller form, and twisting, took her from his back and into his arms where he laid her down again, ignoring her protests, his expression still carefully blank. His hands and the back of his shirt were wet with her blood, already going cold in the air, he he simply pulled it off over his head, tearing it into strips. He seemed largely unbothered by the fact that he now sat bare-chested in the snow, or in front of Kohe, for that matter, though he was still making every effort not to look at her.

The makeshift bandages done, he reached out and pulled her arm close with a gentle, but unyielding strength, looking her in the eye only before his cold fingers landed on her arm.

"This will hurt," he said neutrally. But he was almost unnaturally gentle as he wrapped first her arm, then her leg, then moved to her head.

"You should not sleep," he said, still in a monotone. "Two hours. When you have your strength back, I will go find the root of the acabi berry." He pointed to her leg and arm. "It will help with the pain and deter infection." He watched her again, squinting at the cut on her head.

"I will need to clean that now, though. Do you trust me?" He was well aware he'd given her no reason to do so. But that didn't seem to matter now. Her name was on repeat in his head, and he couldn't stop it.

Hers, and Keeva's.

--

The creature looked like a bear, but large, sleeker, and with a long, furred tail that curled into a dangerous spike at the end, much like a scorpion's tail. Tai knew it was poisonous even before she saw a viscous liquid gleaming at the end. She had been thinking of Kohe and only Kohe and had missed the creature's advance, but when it attack, her mind jumped not to her twin, or to escape, but Eliko.

And for the first time in her life, Tai did not just put up a lightshield. She stepped in front of the Ashkerai and threw herself at the lunging creature. Her weight was slight compared to the thing, but with her wings, she had enough force to knock it off balance, and together, the Rsio and the Demisan rolled away.

The Rsio reached its feet first, its anger rolling over Tai, who was still on the ground, trying to catch her breath. Colliding with the strange predator had knocked the air from her lungs, and she couldn't seem to get it back. The Rsio raised its head and made a sound somewhere between a roar and a hiss, and even semiconscious, it made Tai shiver. She had taken its dinner, and it was angry. Still unable to rise, she rolled over, trying to figure out whether she could contain long enough for not-Eliko to get away. She saw suddenly what it intended and only just managed to avoid landing the dart-tail in her neck.

It buried itself in her shoulder and the earth beneath instead, and Tai knew at once it had poisoned her. She could feel the poison spreading, spreading quickly.

She did not see what had made the creature turn its attention back to Eliko -- had he attacked, or was she simply no longer a threat? But it didn't matter. The urge came on her without warning, and though she had never felt it before, she knew exactly what it was.

Her father would be proud.

She only hoped she could control it enough to keep from hurting Eliko.

She heard herself yelling at him to stay still, stay where he was. And then there was a buzzing in her ears and the sudden pressure in the air as it filled with static.

Arcs of violet lightning sprang from nowhere, the majority striking the creature, whose jaws were very nearly ready to tear out Eliko's throat.

The creature made another noise, this one of mingled anger and pain and looked up as if to see where the attack had come from.

Tai finished it.

 

[Kaisaan]

He came face to face with her and for a moment Kohe wondered if he was going to finish what he'd wanted to begin in the first place. Would he kill her, here in this place, so far from the others?

But no. He was too smart for that and the Demisan could appreciate that as he offered his back. She said nothing, couldn't, but wouldn't have anyway even if she'd possessed the ability right now. She simply got onto his back and tried to hold in the hiss of pain as her ribs came in contact with his shifting back. She held in the whimper and instead focused on hanging on to his fur as he moved.

It didn't take long for Kohe to take acute note that he was WARM. As half-Aavan, the cold would very, very easily kill her and she would instinctively seek to prevent that - which meant finding the nearest heat source of which Jack happened to be.

It wasn't long before Kohe was nearly curled on his back, not caring where they were going or how long it took to get there, only that she stayed near the warmth as they did it. She knew she should have been thinking about more, but right now...the Demisan couldn't muster up the energy to and in the back of her mind, she knew she was going into some kind of shock and maybe even had a concussion.

She couldn't bring herself to care.

--

Mate.

It was that one word that he'd later know had thrown him off his guard, had made him blind to the danger until it was too late. It was such a small word, but held so much significance, so much more than this naive Demisan in his arms could understand. Oh, her people - half of them anyway - mated for life, formed a Bond and that was all well and good, but it was nothing near as intense as what his own people did.

A mate-tie between his people was more likely to kill them than it was to succeed and this Demisan who didn't understand his culture, his ways, who was made of Midlight so intense it almost hurt him to be near her....was saying that she was HIS mate? Even not-Eliko found that concerning and Eliko...well, he'd frozen completely within their body, stunned. Eliko didn't know whether to be disgusted, furious or just....something else, but it gave not-Eliko time to fortifying his defenses against Eliko, to delay being pulled back in again for some time.

In the end, the Ashkerai wasn't sure if that had been the right call to make.

The attack had come out of nowhere and one moment Tai was against his side, rambling about how she was going to find her sister - an impossible feat - and the next she was telling him to run, leaping before him as one of the larger creatures not-Eliko had ever seen crashed into the clearing. Everything happened too quickly then and not-Eliko would silently blame himself for some time to come at his lack of immediate action.

It had been some time, a great long time, since he'd had any control of his body.

But control came, swift and sudden, and black with an inexplicable rage at the sight of the dart-tail hitting Tai. Not-Eliko would study that feeling later, would wonder over it until Eliko wanted to strangle him, but right now the emotion just WAS and the Ashkerai used it.

Eliko had never been good with ice. He didn't have the patience, the control that came from balancing serenity and rage within one's self to control the powerful gift, but not-Eliko did. He always had. It came to him now, drawn from the water in the air, from the stream they were near, from within himself like the oldest of long-lost friends and the rage directed it. The spikes, thick as small trees, nearly as strong as stone they were so compact, hit the Rsio and it roared its pain, turning away from Tai, advancing on him.

And Eliko, damn him, chose that moment to try and break past the shield, neither trusting not-Eliko to protect their body AND seeing a chance to escape his temporary prison. Not-Eliko's concentration broke and so did the ice, shattering even as the Rsio struck, sending him crashing, rolling to the ground and then staring up into the jaws of the terrible creature above him. In that moment, there was no fear, just a numb acceptance that everything he'd been through had led to this. Perhaps there was a satisfaction that Eliko had caused this and now knew it, stunned himself. There might have been happiness that now Eliko couldn't harm Tai.

Not-Eliko didn't want Eliko to do that.

There was no fear, though, as he watched the jaws descend toward him.

--

She'd blacked out for a moment, because Kohe came back to awareness in a snow cave without clear memory of when she'd gotten there, though, she had the vaguest inkling that she'd been struggling against someone's hold on her, though, the attempts had been weak.

Hmm, must have been Jack. A very shirtless Jack that had bright color coming to Kohe's face for just a moment before that too started to fade, her body not able to spare enough blood for the effect.

His touch, so very different from the warmth of his fur, made her shiver, but Kohe remained silent in more ways than just speech, letting him work on her body without so much as a whimper. Oh, it did hurt, but she'd had worse and she knew he had as well. She wasn't going to dignify such minor injuries with a reaction. She kept her face as blank as he kept his voice, her eyes moving away from his yellow when he finally made contact again that way.

She was no longer blushing at the state of his dress and merely nodded, tight-jawed as he explained what he felt he needed to. Part of her wanted to tune him out entirely. Right now, he deserved as much with all the crap he'd pulled trying to attack Tai not once or even twice, but THREE times, but Kohe couldn't truly bring herself to ignore him. Nor could she bring herself to give him her undivided attention, though, as she was struggling to merely STAY HERE. He'd not taken note of it yet, but her trembling was not only due to cold, not even to pain as she felt she was going numb, but rather it was in struggle.

Her form wanted to flicker between times, to become immaterial as she went through the vortex, to lose herself to a state that was far easier to keep. But she wouldn't come out of it if she did that and Kohe knew it. Many entities of Time had done it before her. They'd given up, had gone insane with the pressure and the knowledge and they'd given themselves over to what they were. She carried parts of them within her now. They'd become the Time they held, the Time they controlled and now it was her turn.

Only Kohe wasn't willing to go.....and for the strangest reason she felt she should know the answer to but could not quite grasp past the building cloud of feverish chaos in her head....every time Jack touched her, she felt a bit more solid, less like fading away.

Of course, she had no way of telling him that and might not have anyway. She didn't know. It might have changed something...or maybe those things should have been changed. She didn't know, couldn't think and when the Venatorus questioned her again, Kohe's over-bright eyes snapped to him fully, seeking something stable, finding it as her gaze locked with his pale yellow.

His words swirled through her head like the snow swirled outside their shallow den and Kohe was beyond thinking clearly anymore, lucidity gone, reason having flown out the window, leaving behind a feralness that was not dangerous like Jack's had been - as it was not angered at the moment - but rather purely instinctive. It was her Aavanian nature preserving her mind in a way the Cerebrae part could not and Kohe opened her mouth just slightly, fangs exposed just a little as she sucked in air harshly, nostrils slightly flared. She was taking in his scent in one of the deepest ways possible, reading him that way, judging his intent, his very thoughts by smell alone.

It took all of a few moments and then Kohe smiled just a little and without hesitation, she brought her hand up and pushed her hair over her shoulder and then tilted her head in just the right way to expose her neck. And the jugular vein that lay beneath her skin, beating too fast with feverish heat, but not with fear. It was both the ultimate sign of submission and trust to a wolf and maybe Jack would chalk it up to Kohe being sick that she did it, not in her right mind.

But Kohe knew and she gave him his answer in the clearest way she could.

--

The lightning caused a jolt of sheer terror that the Rsio's killer fangs had not. They would have killed his physical form, leaving him with his immaterial one, trapped that way, but lightning? It would kill him. Completely.

The violet death didn't strike him, though, only the Rsio, only everything around him and as the creature collapsed, not-Eliko scrambled away from the corpse, from the electrical currents still zapping off the creature, unashamed of his reaction. Ashkerai had good damn reason to fear lightning and even Eliko was wary of it.

And now looking at Tai with a whole new level of understanding. She could not be allowed to live. Not with a power like that. Not with the same hated power her father possessed! She had to die! They could just let the poison kill her. Eliko whispered the words to not-Eliko with a hiss. It didn't even have to be their fault. It could be the Rsio and Tai could die, forever eliminating the threat she posed to their people. It would be easy. Just walk away, make up a story when Kohe came back. There would be no proof, no evidence that Eliko had done anything wrong.

They could just walk away.

Eliko wanted it, badly, but not-Eliko...wasn't even tempted and he pushed the voice away rather violently, approaching Tai quickly, kneeling where she lay, the earth scorched black around her. He DID hesitate touching her, however, nervous about being shocked, but risked it in the end, fingers finding the edge of her jaw, tilting her head toward him.

"Tairisa? Can you hear me? You're going to be all right. I'll help you. It's going to be fine."

Brown eyes swept over the injury to her shoulder and not-Eliko hissed between his teeth, knowing what he should do...wondering if the remedy would kill Tai just as surely as the poison would.