[/html]He had wondered often (and it seemed that he wondered and thought often about many things, but rarely found any answers) how Rachias could have strayed and stayed away for so long, how she could have abandoned their children in the same way their own mother had abandoned them. Perhaps these things simply stayed in the blood. Many other things seemed to, and those were all the things that the red-eyed man had spent his whole life fighting (or running from, or denying). All of the prejudice and all of the betrayal, the violence, the lies, the insanity, the madness... all of the things he had seen in his brothers and their actions. He would not be like them. He could not be like them.
That Rachias possessed any of these telling family traits hurt him, but how could he possibly be surprised? Their family's history was long and old -- as old as the woman before him, at least -- and the repetition was clear. The bad blood existed in himself too, and it always would, no matter how many mint leaves he stuffed into his cloak, and no matter how few others knew his real name.
The guilt in Kaena's body language was as clear as her voice. It distracted him from her words. Coming to stand on Inferni's borders again had been his driving goal for many months, but now that he was here, he found that his singular focus was failing. He had been lonely for too long. He craved conversation as much as he craved answers and reassurance, but while this woman, his mother, could surely provide him with such, he did not want all the extra baggage that would come with it. The past, the implications of family, the guilt. Kharma had guilt of his own in spades. Her answer had been what he had expected. Rachias had not been here since the time of the last letter.
"And her daughters?" he asked. "Myrika Tears looks like her mother, though a tad darker. Cassandra Asylum is albino. They're two years old, now." Had it been a year already since they had left Thornloe? Had it been so many months since he had last seen his girls? The time stabbed at him. The time did not feel real. He was standing in the past. How could he find his daughters from a different life time while standing in this one, speaking to someone he had not seen since he had been two months old? He felt sure that they were not here. And if they weren't, he would have what he had come for. There was nothing else for him here.
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