Word Count :: 569 wefwajefiwjefwef sorry still >_>
Failure had tempered whatever arrogance the silver-tinged woman had once displayed -- failure in more ways than the sable-shaded woman could hope to count. She had failed Inferni three times as a leader, and she had failed as a mother more times than she had succeeded. She was little more than flesh donor to him -- it had been Gabriel and the rest of Inferni to raise him, if indeed raise him they had. She had heard precious little of him in her time here. The grizzled woman might have asked Gabriel, she might have pressed after even Hybrid, who had been here so long he might have known something, but in the former case, she did not dare, and in the latter, she did not think she would find anything comforting. The Hydra, outranking her by leaps and bounds now, had never been the type to offer any warmth. Maybe, in truth, she had not wanted to know -- she preferred ignorance, the presumption that wherever her lost children were, they were happy and had experienced happiness in their childhood, despite her absence. The old hybrid had even entertained the fantasy that they were better off without her -- she had raised and cultivated the madness in Samael, after all.
The one-eyed hybrid found she could not keep her gaze from him, the half-hidden face of an adult stranger lurking there. She was reflected in it, pieces of herself cobbled together with the ghost of Laruku, too, but it was the face a stranger to her nonetheless. His voice surprised her, as if she had still expected the puppyish one she so faintly remembered. Disappointment, though not quite so deep as unexpected disappointment, crested over her, and she found her ears stuck in their half-mast position even as he spoke again. She kept his gaze for as long as she could bear it, and then turned it away, focusing instead on the ground at his feet. All presumption of rank taken from her, there was nothing left for the old woman's last resort, her last claim to greatness or whatever it was that she had professed to do with her life in the first place. The only thing left was the scarred and beaten failure of a mother here, now stripped of all office.
Her jaw worked a few times before she made any noise, as beginning to speak and considering better words each time. When she did speak, it was with her own resigned quietness. She held no power over him, least of all, and she could no more force a heartfelt reunion than she could disguise the scars across her face. “No,” she responded at last, her gaze furtive and avoiding his, but still glancing to him for reaction. “Not for many months.” she corrected. It had not been long after her own return when she had seen Rachias last, and that had been the final time. She was not among those he sought -- Kaena did not need to look at him to know this, let alone ask him. “It was the summer before last Rachias was here.” She was gone now, though, as much a ghost as Arkham was supposed to have been, as much as he seemed now. She very nearly expected him to fade at any moment, but his scent and sound were real as anything the woman had known before.
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