Word Count :: 399 sleep? no, post4kiri! sorry if scatterbrained i'mz tiiiyad
“If there is anything else I could do,” she offered, not knowing what she could give. He had asked her only one thing, and she could not grant it. As much as she knew it was outside of her power to return anyone to him, she did regret her inability to do this one thing for him. She was just a useless old woman after all. It was a wonder Inferni tolerated her at all -- had she not populated it with her kin, would it have? The question was brushed from her mind as he spoke again, the name she had not heard since first returning. Kaena very nearly did wince at the sound of it, but her composure remained, perhaps if only due to experience in keeping it in place.
They had never told her where Andre was. She had told Gabriel she would have done as he had to protect Talitha, but she was never sure of that, now less so than ever. Andre was her son -- she was obligated to kill for him, just as Gabriel was obligated to do so for Talitha. It would not have been so easy a decision for the grizzled woman, who was ever glad she hadn't been the one to make it. She had never asked how Laruku died, either -- but she had never asked on either subject, and she only nodded mutely. He would pay his respects in solitude, and she would not force her company.
“It isn't. Kerberos, your oldest brother, older than Gabriel -- he attacked me when we saw each other again, after I walked away from him. I deserve no less from you, I think,” the scarred woman said. “Should have learned the first time,” she said, the bitterness evident in her voice. Children needed their mothers -- Itachi was evidence of that, and Makhesthai, too. She had tried to provide for both and had fallen short on both accounts.
“You have somewhere else to belong? That's all that matters,” she asked. It did not matter if he was happy in Inferni, so long as he had found it somewhere. She wished so much for his affirmative, but more than that, she wished for his honesty. If he was not, he would not allow her to help, no, but she would bear it all the same, as it was no less than she deserved.
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