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He'd had his break, and yet he meandered again. So many weeks, too many perhaps, Jefferson spent away from the pack that needed him so, that would fall apart without him. He couldn't blame Geneva for it, and yet refused to lay the blame entirely on him. The brute had rescued her--rescued her!--and received the cold shoulder in response, not to mention the all-too-late revelation of their undead children. Things had changed since those days so many weeks ago; he and Geneva had made up and the brute had met his son, the sole survivor of the fall. A boy with possibilities of being a son, unlike Heath and his siblings. A boy who didn't have his eyes or pelt, who looked as if he shared nothing with his father, and perhaps it was rightly so. And so Jefferson left, he wandered again with a thousand more questions on his mind, a thousand more thoughts to plague him, and interrupting such a plague was the stench of Inferni.
He stood somewhere north of Phoenix Valley, northeast perhaps, the Dampwoods--two-legged and groggy from lack of sleep. Blood, he realized, intermixing with that awful stench of the coyote clan, and yet he could not ignore it. He respected Gabriel despite their arguments and although he bore no obligation to they, the cyclops followed the smell anyway. Admist the brush he found her, flooded in her own blood it seemed, unmoving. Dead? No, alive; breath came to her quick and chokingly, and scars lined her face as badly as his. Sympathy flooded him despite his arguments; she smelled of Inferni but his own home lay closer, and Jefferson soon found himself raising her in his arms--the bad arm reeling, as always, when the pressure of her weight was applied to it--and breaking back for Phoenix Valley.
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No thoughts stirred within the silver-shaded hybrid's mind; she had ceased to think the moment she had caught the scent of death on the wind. From that instant onward, sheer instinct alone had guided her toward him and through the fight, and it had failed her. Or maybe it hadn't -- maybe she was just too goddamn old anymore. She was nearly eleven now, having roamed the earth for an entire decade and change -- it should have been no surprise to the scarred hybrid. She should not have thought she could begin to keep up with canines half her age, and now she would pay the price. There was no awareness within Kaena; she had lost too much blood and she had been hurt too badly to retain even a shred of her consciousness, and so she had become quite nearly comatose, her breathing shallow and slight. She had maybe failed Inferni for the last time -- she had not been able to stop him, and now her clan would pay for her failures.
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She was surprisingly light in his arms, but with the motion and pressure on the scarred and primarily useless right limb, the muscles within stung bitterly. He had carried Geneva similarly after the fall, he recalled; in a state of panic he had fled to AniWaya on horseback, the crumpled Savant in his arms, and given her willingly to Dawali for aid. But who was this gray-furred woman? She was aged, much older than he had seen anytime recently, and yet how had he never seen her when he paid so much attention to the activities of Inferni? Would she react negatively when she woke--if she did--when she found a hybrid had carried her home to the enemy's realm? Jefferson chose to cross that path when he came to it; for now the Valley borderlines sped beneath his feet, and to the center of the pack he carried her, jumping stairs into the ranch house he had come to know so well. The floorboards creaked grumpily as he thumped across them--was Geneva home? Should he call for Angelique?--and into his own bedroom he burst, laying her on the only dustless bed in the entire cabin, and rushed from the room to gather supplies.
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There was a vague warmth surrounding her, and this and the jarring motion of movement were one of the first things the silver-shaded hybrid clearly remembered. The instant these things entered her consciousness, however, an intense wave of pain also swept through her, rousing a muffled whimper from her and sending her right back into unconsciousness. Moments or hours later, the ashen coyote again stirred, slowly opening her single remaining eye. Immediately, her body went stiff with pain; she could not so much as discern where exactly she was injured. It was as if her whole being had been swathed over with hot acid. There was not a part on her that did not hurt, and she could not clearly recall having fallen in the first place. Disoriented and confused, having no idea where she was, the coyote dragged herself backwards as best she could, drawing her back against the wall and curling up as tight as she could manage.
The matted and bloody fur along her spine rose into a half-hearted gesture of aggression, though it would have been impossible for her to defend herself against so much as a newborn. Kaena shook and shivered, but each muscle quivering sent a new wave of pain through her, and she whimpered softly, unable to stifle her cries. She fought the exhaustion and tiredness threatening to sweep her back into unconsciousness as best she could, determined not to let herself die in some hole Haku had brought her to. She could not smell; her nose was too caked over with blood, and its coppery scent was the only thing she could discern about her surroundings.
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Even as he rushed about the kitchen, gathering every medicinal object and item he could spot, he heard her whining from the bedroom. Was she conscious? Would he return to his bedroom and find it in shreds? No, perhaps she was an exception like he; not all scarred and monstrous beings were that bad, he was an example of that regardless of what he thought of himself. The bundle of herbs and rags in his arms, he peeked into neighboring rooms for signs of Geneva or Pripyat, but the two were out. There was no need to risk calling Angelique if the Inferni woman might lash out at her; no, the cyclops needed to handle this himself, it was his responsibility to keep his members safe. As he closed the door with a bump from his hip, the brute dumped his armful of items on the bed and looked her over--there were a few wounds he, as he was well experienced in them, knew would leave deep scars. Slipping his arm back in its sling, he took to cleaning her wounds with a wet and herb-smelling cloth, gently dabbing here and there with utmost caution. "Sit still," he said quietly, unsure if she could even hear him.
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Had he carried her off to some isolated cabin? Was this where he had been since being forced from Dahlia de Mai? There was no thought that sent her reeling with more sheer terror; she would have unequivocally preferred death to this fate. There were horrors even she could not contemplate in being kidnapped and held by the demon-wolf; thoughts too awful for her pain-wracked mind to truly contemplate. And so she waited, floating in and out of consciousness on the unfamiliar bed. A noise drew her back, and her yellow-golden eye popped open again, drawing her head up slowly. She did not recognize this canine; her muzzle wrinkled in the start of a snarl, but so much movement had drawn the last bit of energy from her, and this expression fell from her face, as did her head itself, back onto the bed. She fought the unconsciousness off and managed to remain awake; she refused to slip back into the darkness.
Logic had failed her; though the hybrid carried medical supplies, she could not yet recognize him as a helper, an ally. Even as he released the armful of things he carried onto the bed, the silver-shaded hybrid tried to shrink back more, pressing herself as tightly as she could into the corner of the bed. A low grumble began in her throat, and she did at first try to pull away from him more, shirking his touch. There was authority in the voice, though, and a strange sort of warmth on her wounds. It stung and burned, but the silvery hybrid had been injured enough times to know what healing felt like at first. He would not harm her, then. So she remained, quiet and utterly confused. Just her eye moved as it darted around the room, peering everywhere and trying to discern where she was, who this was.
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"Oh, stop it," he grunted when the waned, useless growl erupted from her throat. It cut off quickly, regardless of whether he had silenced her, and she submitted to his aid. But why, why did he find such a need to assist her, a complete stranger? Perhaps it was that he wanted to prove to Gabriel that Phoenix Valley meant no harm without DaVinci, or perhaps it was that this grey-furred female was as bad conditionally as he. She had seen her share of warfare, it seemed, and even in her darkest hours she tried to defend herself against his help. Jefferson knew he would have reacted no differently should he have fallen like she; she also peered at him, though briefly, through only one eye. His green eye, electric in color, winced in realization. Perhaps he could not let a fellow cyclops, a fellow monster give up when he wouldn't let himself. Perhaps he was allowing compassion to rise within and expose itself. Perhaps he was a fool. She peered silently around the room, stunned, questioning. "You're in Phoenix Valley. I found you between here and Inferni; it was quicker to take you here. Stop squirming or so help me, I'll tie you down."
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For all her years, the silver-shaded hybrid had rarely encountered a creature as damaged as she -- the glaring lack of an eye in the other canine's face fascinated her in this half-delirious state. Was she looking at herself, projecting her own features onto him? Parts of the room swirled and shrank in her vision, shadows growing longer and deeper as unconsciousness threatened her again. She would not have been surprised if the world went dark and she woke up where she had last fallen, somewhere in the spit of woods between here and Inferni. Wherever here was. At his words, the coyote went still, strangely obedient. Of course, she was in no shape to so much as passively resist; she was not so proud as to reject help when it was offered to her. The mention of the Valley pack served to confuse the woman more; she did not know how she had ended up quite so far from home. Maybe she had pushed Haku back further than she thought.
That thought struck her like a brick in the face, and she moved again, shifting her weight to and fro in an attempt to get her feet beneath her and stand. "I have to go back," she muttered. "He'll kill them," the coyote said simply, her speech thick and slow. Even so, determination and loyalty to the clan and family were both more pressing than her very life, this determination showing through her tired voice and struggles to move, get up, do something. She could not let him have her home. Halo was there, her son Itachi -- Sepirah, Enkiel. Haku would tear them all to pieces given half a chance, and there would be no home for Kaena to return to. If she was to die, she would die with them.
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Still she struggled much to his chagrin, and with a grim scowl and one shameless shove, he shoved her fightless body back onto the bed. "You've done enough for one day, I think," Jefferson grumbled, though a curiosity possessed him. What had she been doing? Perhaps, he thought loosely, Inferni had risen tensions with Dahlia once more, but hadn't Haku been overthrown from his crowned title? The brute's half-brother was probably wandering the wilderness doing hell-knows-what; if that was the case, it was possible the older woman had tried to fight him. No, that was unlikely: Surely she would have known they wouldn't have been equals with their age difference. Regardless of the demons that now haunted her admist her deliriousness, her wounds hardly allowed the movement she attempted. The cyclops pushed perhaps a bit too hard on one of the open, bleeding sores, a subtle attempt to weaken her into stillness. "Now then," he grunted, green eyeing her sharply, "what the hell happened to you?"
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Perhaps the silver-shaded woman gave Haku too much credit; he was one wolf alone facing an entire clan. With or without her, Inferni was strong, and they would not perish, not even in the face of a monster such as Haku. His darkness could not touch them; they had faced down worse in the past. Yet even so, one single loss would have been catastrophic in the silvery coyote's mind -- she had failed them, and all of the guilty burden would come to bear on her shoulders. Maybe she was too old for this anymore. The stranger pushed her back onto the bed, not that she had risen very far or gained very much ground toward standing at all, and the hybrid woman collapsed back again, her struggles ceasing. A small, pained snarl appeared on her muzzle and disappeared just as quickly as the weight of his touch lifted from her wounds; instead, now her ears were pressed back, anxiousness rising within her.
Beyond that she had to get home, she did not belong here. This was pack territory, and a pack whose members she had driven back from her own border with bloodshed. Still, there was no room for resistance; she could not have left here and made it home, and even she knew this. So it was sorely that she accepted his words as truth; she had done enough for one day. She could do no more. "Haku," she said, spitting the word like the vile poison it tasted like. Even months and months, almost an entire year after last autumn -- she could not say his name in any other way.