When I'm Gone;; [[Open

[[Midnight]]

Have you ever loved someone so much, you'd give an arm for?
Not the expression, no, literally give an arm for?
When they know they're your heart
And you know you were their armour
And you will destroy anyone who would try to harm 'her

Justyn felt as if he couldn't breathe.
It felt like a huge boulder had smushed his body into the dirt, pinning him down to a point where it was a struggle for his exhausted lungs to fight the pressure and suck in oxygen. As he squirmed underneathe the dead weight, the world seemed to be out of control around him. It was spinning, shaking, making it even harder for him to find his ground and crawl away from whatever it was that was holding him down.

Suddenly Justyn realized that it was his mother's fur that was tickling his nose. He recognized her painful howls and the loud crack as a falling boulder knocked her on the head, killing her instantly. As she fell sideways he felt most of the pressure was lifted from him. He whimpered as the sunlight blinded him and the horrible shaking jostled his brain. He started to crawl away from his mother.

He was running now; dodging boulders, holding his own against the earthquake, his fighting spirit driving him onward. A mixture of fear and anger was on his puppish face. There was a clearing ahead of him... If he could just keep running towards it, he'd make it out of the earthquake and live. The clearing came closer...closer....closer...

As soon as he neared the sunlight clearing, a figure stepped into his line of sight, blocking his way. Agony tore at all of his senses; the creature was holding his mother in his jaws, by her throat, blooding trickling down into the dust. A ripping pain seared into his heart as he stood, staring dumbfounded, at the familiar face of the wolf in front of him.

It was his father.

Fury overrode his anxiety, and he charged forward with the intent to kill.

I will kill you! I will kill you for doing this!

But in the same moment he began to leap towards Caerwyn, the wolf's face suddenly changed. Now it was Duke he was charging, and in his jaws was.... Rose.
Justyn tried to cancel his attack but his body kept on soaring towards the Falling Moon Alpha, until the massive brute dropped his daughter to the ground...and aimed his teeth towards him.


His hazel eyes flashed open. He had to take a moment to glance around the peaceful cave and clear his cloudy mind.
Just a dream.
Of course it was. A childish nightmare.
Justyn was shaking, he realized. A cold sweat had come over him while he dreamt, and he was gasping for air. He hadn't had a nightmare like this in a long time. Never before involving Duke and Rose like that, either.

Taking a moment to stretch his muscles and stand up, Justyn hoped he hadn't been crying out in his sleep, and nobody had heard it if so.

[shadowspark]

Shiori heard whimpers coming from deep inside the cave. She padded curiously into the darkness. The minute she entered the cave, warmth and humidity pressed down on her fur. It was a drastic change from the frigid temperature outside. The deeper into the cave the young wolf went, the louder the whimpers got.

Shiori stopped in surprise when she reached the source of the distressed noises. It was Justyn! The young female jumped back in surprise when Justyn woke with a start. 'Justyn?' Shiori spoke, worried. She had never seen the beta in such a state before. It was slightly scary. 'Are you alright?'

[[Midnight]]

Shiori's voice shocked him. He jumped a bit as he turned his body towards her, his legs still a bit wobbly from the exhaustion of the nightmare. Why, oh why did he have to be seen like this, shaking like a baby in the middle of the night? Now he really hoped he hadn't cried out in his sleep.
I wish Duke had just bitten my head off so I wouldn't be in this moment right now.

He had no desire to commune with anyone. He just wanted to ponder on his dreams. But it was likely that the female wouldn't budge without an answer; after all, Justyn was the first wolf from Falling Moon to even really...befriend her. In some weird way, he had to admit that it was an act of both cruelty and compassion combined for him to have brought to Duke's pack as she was a pup.

He hadn't thought much about that before. He and Shiori had a little more in common than most. Neither native to the Moons, both having to grow up more ferocious than the others.

He cleared his throat rather loudly and blinked a couple of times, realizing that he hadn't answered the pup. Well, not a pup. It would take a while for him to remember that she was fully grown.

"Yeah. Fine," he responded, voice strained a bit. The he looked away, towards the moonlit entrance, his face dark but wondering. "Just seeing ghosts in my sleep," he muttered to add on.

[shadowspark]

Shiori tilted her head. 'Ghosts, huh?' She knew that Justyn was telling the truth, but not the whole truth. Out of all of the wolves in the Moons pack, Shiori had soft spots for only two. Rose, who had raised her, and Justyn, who had saved her life. He was the first wolf she had ever met. She did not remember her parents. When she searched her memory, the first wolf that came to mind was Justyn.

'Wanna talk about it?' Shiori knew that Justyn would not talk without some persuasion, but the young female was ready to push. She knew that keeping things bottled up was not good for anyone. It could distract you at the worst possible moment. 'You know that I will not tell anyone what you say.' Her determination shone in her eyes.

[[Midnight]]

He caught on that she wasn't about to give up. He didn't quite understand why; it was just a dream he had, nothing more. Dreams don't tell the future. Not in his world.
His heart fluttered and his posture sunk as he slithered to the floor, his head on his paws. Something was a little wrong with this whole picture. What did he mean to Shiori? He had always been alone in this pack, always. Unti, he had met Rose. That's what he believed.
So why was Shiori acting like a friend? They had never really been friends prior, as far as he was concerned.

He must have been pushing everyone away, Falling Moon or not.

Justyn wasn't quite sure he was ready to tell anyone what he was dreaming about. It was too personal. But Shiori would fight her way on this. He grunted and shot her a mild look while he thought of something to say to get around the truth.
"Haven't you ever had dreams before? It's nothing you need to worry your little head about," he told her. Which, actually, was quite a genuine statement. He'd get over his worries soon enough. He would never let anyone touch Rose with a single claw so long as he was alive, unless it was by her own will.

"You know, you may have known me most of your life, but you don't really know me. Get what I'm saying?"

[shadowspark]

Shiori's brows crinkled in a frown. 'Maybe that's true, but I do know that keeping things bottled up is not good for you. It's not good for anyone...' Her voice trailed off into silence.

Under her thick winter coat, Shiori felt hot, almost sticky. She thought about her own secrets, the things that she couldn't seem to say. They seemed to weigh so much. Sometimes they burned her, while other times they froze. Maybe, just maybe, Justyn might be able to help. But whether he would help her or not, she would do whatever it took to help him.

The young female glanced into Justyn's golden-brown eyes. She could see the pain there, but also something else, something guarded. She wondered what it could be. Shiori knew that, in the Moons pack, it was rare to form bonds, but she would try to bond to Justyn none-the-less. 'I am here to listen if you need it, Justyn. I won't judge what you say, I'll just listen.' Her sincerity shone in every fiber of her being.

[[Midnight]]

She was in over her head, he thought. Keeping things bottled up inside was his forte. Falling Moon's forte, really. That's probably why Dancign Stars left them alone. All of the rage that these angry wolves kept inside was blown up in a fiery explosion when the precepice appeared.
He looked at her seriously, knowingly.
"Trust me when I say that I know about keeping things in the dark," he growled under his breath, pinning his ears almost flat against his head. "I know exactly what it does. But it's been the only thing keeping me alive these long months. Fuel to my fire."
And it's been tearing me apart, as well, he added to himself in his secret thoughts. But that's just the law of equivalent exchange.

The sincerity of her words made him crinkle his face in an etirely different way.
Now he was smiling as he studied her, wondering in the back of his mind how pitiful he must have really been squealing while he was dreaming. Everybody here knew he had issues, but nobody had ever asked him to explain them all in detail. Who had the time for that? They all had issues.

"Why?" he asked her quietly, challengingly. His toothy grin didn't disappear, but now he had his muzzle zipped and his chin pointed a bit upwards as he gave full attention to Shiori.
"Why be a shoulder to me? Will it clear your conscience? Knowing that you've done something kind with yourself?"
He sat back on his rump, slowly.

[shadowspark]

Shiori frowned as she thought about how to answer. 'Do I need a motive to help someone? Particularly someone who has helped me in the past?' she asked finally, releasing a challenge of her own. Bringing her tail around, the young female began to chew at a snarl that had formed. As she dug her teeth into her fur, trying to get at the tangle, Shiori thought about what Justyn had said. Why had he asked if she was trying to clear her conscious? It didn't make much sense to her yet, so she would file it away for a later date.

Shiori's dark fur made her almost invisible in the darkness of the cave. In fact, if she closed her bright eyes and stayed silent, one might never even know she was there.

[[Midnight]]

It looked like Duke had a softer pack than he realized. All this fluffy talk about living on your own and fending for yourselves; but Justyn was drawing all the wolves in the pack that seemed to enjoy talking with dignity instead of biting your head off first. What could that mean?
Interesting.

He frowned in reaction to Shiori's question. A motive? Well, nowadays, it was unsual for a Falling Moon to reach out to another, dignified conversation or not.

"Yes," he responded, curling his tail against a rear leg. "I think there is always a motive for everything."
He eyed the ceiling of the cave, which glowed with soft moonlight. "I know I brought you to Falling Moon, but I was never sure if you had considered that a favor or not.... I could have brought you to Dancing Stars instead. Ever think about that? You'd be such a different wolf if you had grown up there."

[shadowspark]

Shiori continued to chew at her fur, finally freeing from the tangle; she shook herself out with a grimace. 'Ugh. I'm shedding.'

Shiori turned her gaze to the mouth of the cave and answered Justyn's thought with on of her own'I never did think about it that way, but now that you mention it, if asked, I would say that I am glad you brought me to the Falling Moons.' She flashed a grin at him. 'It's part of what makes me who I am. Would you change who you are, if you could?' The grin was replaced with a sharp look that was a window to something inside Shiori, if Justyn cared to look.

[[Midnight]]

It was always questions like so that would hit Justyn's raw wounds. Being the deep thinker he was, he was always thinking about what kind of wolf he would be if one thing had happened this way or the other. And at the same time, he thought of the future, wondering why it was so unpredictable when the past was so set in stone. If you can't change the past, why believe you could change the future?

He watched Shiori's face and caught her look. He did not understand what she was up to or what she was thinking, but his heart was in a bit of a lurch at the moment, so he didn't bother with pressing the matter.
"You ask such a vague question, Shi," he said quietly, more serious than he had been before. "There are a lot of things I would like to change, but as for changing myself, that's a different subject. I'm too proud for my own good, as you probably know."

Suddenly. he whipped his head around and began to gnaw on his back paw as if he had been waiting to do that through the entire conversation.
"Damned fleas..."
He glanced back at Shiori with his head still cocked low. "Well, I suppose if you're happy to be where you are right now, I don't need second thoughts."

[shadowspark]

{Mind giving me a little bit more of a prompt, Mid? It would really help.}

[[Midnight]]

{What's wrong with my post...lol}

[shadowspark]

{I just need something to give me a clue as to what to say next. Have Justyn ask a question, or something.}

[[Midnight]]

{Ah, well look at it this way - to me that post was a huge conversation opener because not only did he call her a seemingly affectionate petname, but he opened up to her just a tiny bit more. I'll add something more though if you still need me to. ^.^}