Marked this as the thread where he loses his arm because I know a lot of people were interested in reading it. Post-dated to February 8, the last day of the snowstorm plot. For my darling Kris!

The past few days had been some of the most taxing of his amnesiac life; in the midst of snow and storm he had watched in shock as his home's roof uprooted and plowed ever-so-gracefully into whole of the barn. He had dragged Xeris from the debris and wreckage, fearing for her life; not even his call for help had been answered in all the snow and wind, and the male had treated her himself. He watched Eagle Tower fall with own eye, the collapse of the Mill; he watched the desolation of a white wasteland without any color. The storm was the worst to hit Phoenix Valley in all his years as leader, the worst disaster he had ever been charged with managing. And still, the snow had yet to stop.

He could not stay in the ranch, not with half the roof amongst the wreckage of the barn and the livestock corpses that were consequently also trapped somewhere underneath. He could not even dwell in that place, not for long. Where was Geneva? Pripyat? Where were his underlings, and were they safe? The male could not stay in one place. No, he had to keep moving, had to keep searching for everyone and anyone and make sure his members were safe. They were his responsibility. He was their guardian, their Captain, their Patriarch. No amount of scars and wounds would hold him back from protecting what he held most dear: Phoenix Valley. It was for that reason Iskata had left it to him.

But the wind picked up, and the shards of ice caught in his one-eyed gaze. He could not bear on; his shouts for anyone to hear were drowned out by the wind. Ice and snow clung to his thick belt, stung against the bare skin of his scars, froze at his ears and toes and fingers. Anyone? he'd shout, surrounded in that unyielding whirlwind of white. Can anyone hear me? Geneva! Pripyat! Tyrone! Anyone!?

But it was useless. Frigid and shaking, he plowed himself through the heaps of snow and climbed up onto a porch of an abandoned cabin, the monster of a hybrid crawling through the front door and collapsing in tremors there on the floor. Frostbite, he feared to himself in silence on the floor amidst his frozen shivering. No, that couldn't hold him back either. A few coughs, then he swung his ankle out to slam the door shut behind him. He shook his pelt free of clinging snow as he clamored up onto his knees, ripping his sopping wet shirt and scarf from his shoulders. "Hello?" he barked to the empty house, a hopeful resonance in his shivering tone. "Anyone here?"

He thought he would be met with nothing but silence, but relief rushed over him like rain — non-frozen rain, of course. Not only that, but he recognized that tone even before he registered the word spoken, and the father scrambled to his feet immediately upon hearing the weariness and weakness inside it. His son lay sprawled in the corner, as helpless as Jefferson himself, but unshifted still and alone. Though relief calmed his heart and warmed his stomach, questions flooded his mind and came pouring out like a waterfall.

"Are you hurt?" the father said, concern in his eye as he moved to the boy. "How long have you been here? Have you eaten? Where's your mother?" Eye searched from side to side, then listened to silence. She was not here; he did not find her smell in the air, nor hear the chimes of her voice in his ears. A moment of sadness, then swerved attention back to where it belonged.

His ear perked distractedly at a strange creak overhead, but once silent it was forgotten. "Pripyat Soul, why didn't you come back to the ranch? I was worried sick."

It was clear his questions overwhelmed the boy; it didn't take much for Pripyat to withdraw away from him, though Jefferson knew there was no animosity between them. The scarred man knelt down on a knee as his son stammered through a messy response, the brute's eye weary and exhausted as if he himself could curl up beside the boy and sleep for days as well. When Pripyat finished, fear filled his boy's eyes, and the father gently leaned over him, wrapping his arms around the child's neck, and held tight a long moment. He was not one to embrace, and perhaps it was the utter exhaustion playing at his defenses, but at that moment Jefferson needed to verify his son was safe, and he held on as long as it took for the boy to stop shaking from the freezing temperature.

With a sigh, he eventually released and stood, once more shaking his fur of the excess moisture. "Your mother will turn up," he muttered, wandering across the room and over the threshold into the next. Returned moments later, axe in hand, and stood in the doorway staring somewhat hopelessly at the front door from whence he came. "It's fucking freezing in here," he grumbled, then shuffled across the floor. "There's a fireplace in the next room. Stay here, stay bundled up. I'll go cut some firewood real quick and we'll stay the night here, all right?"

He paused at the door, staring at its knob, thinning his eye... then turned, smiling feebly at the boy. "I'm not mad at you, Pripyat. I was just scared you were hurt somehow."

And at that second the roof creaked once more, a startling groan; Jefferson's eye shot to the wooden ceiling over their heads, his brows furrowing as he considered the noise worriedly, it creaking on and on incessantly this time. His eye lowered next to Pripyat, dawning concern in his bleaching face, and then it was too late — with a horrific, rebounding snap, the cabin snarled at them and broke at its edges, wooden beams and splinters breaking his vision, interrupting the image of his son before his eye. The wind screamed beside them, pushing at the walls, the ceiling, the ground; and still the weak cabin walls and ceiling fell, all at once, collapsing in on them. Hadn't they known they were falling on the pack's leader, the stronghold of Phoenix Valley? Hadn't they known they were threatening the life of the only son he's come to love?

He screamed the boy's name when the sound began, and in seconds black and white destroyed his vision, in his eyes and in his mind. It collapsed on his shoulders, his back, his head; like heavy mounds they fell upon him and held him down in a deadly pin, and unconsciousness swallowed him whole.

He flickered between it and consciousness for some time, his vision only white and red, the sound only the whistle of wind that blew, somehow, between all atop him and still into his coat. He knew he was alive. I am Jefferson. He was cold. Maluki. Jefferson. Leader of Phoenix Valley. No... I can still remember. That was all he knew, for some time. Something dripped between his eyes, clogged his nose. Blood? Snow? His heart droned on, weak, tired. Tired of beating with the efforts of a young man's body. He was old. He was old. He was too old to survive this.

No, he couldn't be too old. Pripyat. Pripyat? "Prrrpph," he screamed, or thought he screamed, but all he heard was whispers. Again. "Prrrrrpph." Why couldn't he speak? His son was over there, not far away. Was he all right? Oh God, was he all right? Jefferson tried to move, but something shifted heavier atop him. He hissed, then held his breath and pushed at it once more. Something atop slid off. He then began kicking with his feet, twisting his spine, pushing with his skill, and things tumbled off one by one. His good arm felt tense, yet numb. Stuck, maybe? He couldn't tell. Still the man flickered in consciousness and unconsciousness, mumbling as loud as he could, his mind screaming the little Soul's name, but his voice unwilling to do the same.

Is Prip still going to be injured that Jeff needs to rescue?

Despite the moans and mumbles that he managed to utter from beneath the pile of wet wood and snow, the Valley Patriarch continued to dawdle dangerously between consciousness and a sea of black; the male could not hear much over the faint sounds he managed to gurgle, nor over the blood rushing through his ears in their efforts to sustain him. His limbs kicked and pushed to free himself, though the movements were kicks only in his own mind and no more than weak shifts of his leg in reality. Surely there was a head wound — yes, there had to be, he told himself. In his mind he forced a conversation with his own brain, determined to hold onto consciousness, if only that would keep him awake.

He knew a greater, hotter pain when something above him shifted and a patch of his fur became considerably cold, exposed to the outer world. Pripyat must have been all right, he mused, and was trying to free his father from the collapsed pile of splinters. Whatever he had moved was somewhere near his right knee, Jefferson surmised, forcing all his focus into the pain to find its source; another open wound, most likely, somewhere on his upper thigh. It felt colder, more exposed than it should, as if there was no fur, or even... skin? "Pripyat," he managed to hiss, almost scoldingly, when the boy pulled whatever-the-hell-it-was off of him and, in doing so, ripped a chuck of splintered wood straight from the flesh of the scarred man's leg. Charming.

As if the heat of the pain had woken him rather than knock him out, Jefferson began more enthusiastically aiding free himself, and with enough effort the man freed his legs and torso — with the exception of an arm. It remained unceremoniously pinned beneath a separate pile, and while Jefferson and Pripyat began pushing and pulling from there as well to free it, the cyclops attempted to flex and move his fingers on the other end with little circulation, with waning strength and a slow-growing numbness through the muscles trapped there. He assured Pripyat he would be fine, that he just needed to get out and tend to the wounds, and the boy seemed only vaguely convinced.

Jefferson himself, for whatever reason, didn't feel convinced either.

He recognized that crack and splintering wood as the noise of disaster; green eye glowed a horrid yellow as beams escaped the roof once more, all that which had not fallen on he himself, and onto his gray-furred son they clambered. The brute lunged, as if to shove him out of the way, but a great, pained yelp from the depths of his throat marked the inability to do so — still his arm was pinned and unmoving, the beams crushing the bones and blood circulation within unyielding, the reason for the disaster that suddenly lay before his eyes. The roof had not just splintered and fallen on his boy, no, they had flattened him.

"Pripyat!" he screamed, pulling his torso with all his strength, the fibers of his arm ripping, the muscles stretching, and yet still that which trapped him did not yield. He kicked, he pushed at what was left tying him down; at its other end he felt splintered wood digging into his flesh, recognized the flow of liquid between his fingers, the sogginess of his fur, the heaviness the blood brought his arm, and through it all the whistling and bitter wind numbed the cold to his skin. It cut through somewhere, he knew, the red flashed before his eyes, and knew he was made trapped further; all the while his eye dripped green and yellow as glow, gazing from his trapped arm to the pile of debris that held his son, to the blood he could clearly see trickling from within, to the silence Pripyat provided. Still his father called to him, begging for a reply to be heard over his throbbing heart pounding against his ribs, but the boy made not a sound.

Fierce determination lit his gaze; he would not stand by while his son bled to death in a black unconsciousness; he would not be the very reason that boy never woke up. Already once had Jefferson lost Pripyat's siblings, each one of them, and this boy would not become another number for the total of lost children to the scarred man. Still his arm would not free, holding him just out of reach to his son, helpless and useless in the wake of the fallen debris, as much as the Patriarch flailed against his inanimate captors. Nothing is working. Nothing is working. A flash of red, then white, then gold. Nothing is working. He screamed for help, a sound muted by the whistling snowstorm. Nothing is working. I won't lose him here. Nothing is working.

And at the scuffling of his feet, the handle of the axe he'd carried before fell into the whirling gaze of his desperate eye. Still he pulled at the pile that trapped him, that further dug splintered wood from one end of his arm through to the other side, but his opened eyes did not leave the axe's polished handle at his feet. Nothing is working. The axe. Nothing is working. The axe, just a reach away. Nothing is working. Nothing is working.

Pripyat could die.

And the tattered, scarred fingers of his bad arm reached and pulled the axe free; a grim determination lay in his eyes, a darkness in the center of even the white pupil. It was freedom, it was redemption. It was safety, guardianship, fatherhood, in his hand.

He breathed in, held the breath. The decision came and confirmed. A raise of the axe to the air, a second's hesitance, a flash of red in his cruel, murderer's eyes — and down came the guillotine, the axe, the savior.

And, with that clean cut, a crack of the bone and a flash of thrown blood, he threw his head back. A roar, the sound of pain and fear, a sound unique to all that had escaped his vocal chords. Its sound echoed, louder than any the snowstorm could argue, louder than any Phoenix Valley could argue or had in years; the spirit of an angered god released in noise, the determined spirit of Phoenix Valley put into a horrible sound. The male lurched and stumbled, bent over the now empty space where the limb had occupied, and blood poured between his trembling fingers, his scars like crevices for rivers of life-blood to occupy.

He gasped, choked on air, suddenly fought the onslaught of darkness that dared threaten his consciousness. No, all inside his head screamed, I am not done yet. He ripped his shirt from his shoulders, doubled it with the sling his now only arm had once occupied, and tied them feebly over the wound one-handed, numbing fingers fumbling, brain scrambled, and still colors flashed at his eyes.

One-armed, one-eyed Jefferson Soul dived then at the debris that held his son beneath, and with blood in his eyes, the stink of blood in his nose, he ripped Pripyat free with an unbridled fury, ignorant to all his body screamed at him and demanded of him: his walls intact, his independence and stubbornness restored to that of Jefferson Soul, the murderer, the Phoenix Valley scarred leader. Nothing held him down. He ripped his son to freedom but did not inspect the boy's wounds, did not even verify Pripyat was breathing, but with a hiss and a roar, hauled the limp body over his shoulder, stepped from the debris, and pounded his feet against the snow in a rush for life.