@Alaric had only been offered the more vague glimpses into her time before Amaryllis, but much of it might be explained in her behavior, her thought process. Much of what she knew or said had been a trained behavior, her size and lack of claws might be seen as proof that their practices went generations back. "She was bred to be like me.. soft-spoken, compliant. She was also.. angry. She decided she didn't want to be what she was born to. She would try to stop them from doing things she didn't want them to. Disobedience is punished.. the more you fight them, the harsher they punish you. Those who fight, die fighting.. that is what they always told us." It was meant as a warning, but she saw the truth in it. If her children learned to fight, they might go in a fashion similar to Erna someday, in pain, without anyone to hold them and let them know they were loved.

She had been ready to shut herself off from him, still feeling as though he did not truly care for her anymore. Instead, he would assure her he did, to force her to stay out of some manner of tough love as opposed to him wanting to punish her for what she had done. He would offer to let her leave later if she hated this place, and she would shake her head. "No.. it is not that. I don't want to leave because I hate this place. I thought.. maybe you would hate me. I couldn't stand to be here if you did." He would only ever see betrayal whenever he looked at any of her children, be reminded of someone he didn't want to think about. "If my children look like him.." She would hold back, not wishing to openly make assumptions about how he might treat them or feel about them.

She would be silent for a time, trying to keep her breath steady so as not to sob, to make it obvious that she was crying. With her siblings she would not have hidden them, would have cried against them as they cooed gentle sounds at her. She hadn't felt such comfort since she was a girl, and she was starved for it, for any sort of affection. Seneca had been the last one to show her any, a cruel irony and a warm sensation she would never tell anyone about. "The Mire may not be evil, but I am afraid. The evil will come back someday, the sightless woman will lead them here. I am afraid of her, of what she must be to kill absent eyes to see. What would happen to my children if something happens to me? Without knowing who their father is, I am their only family." The panic was obvious, and any semblance of strength she had left was broken. She looked a mess, face damp, body weak and trembling.

Everything would be so much easier if the only life she had to worry about was her own. She was not afraid to suffer or to die, but suddenly she had other lives, those of much more significants that she needed to protect. "Why.. why did this have to happen to me?" A selfish thought she knew, but she could not help be ask herself this question on a daily basis.

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"She was right to be angry," he mused. Even in his homeland woman were valued if they could fight -- here even more so. Alaric would never have expected his wives to sit down and shut up, nor to be pretty little decorative things. Rather he valued a sharp wit and sharper claws, as long as they knew their place at the end of the day. "I am sorry she was punished for it."

It wasn't fair, and his tone for @Patchouli was soft. While he still hoped she could shed some of her past and stop living in it, he knew it was not so easy to break those kinds of chains.

There are so many fears in her mind that he finds himself all but spinning, grasping at one thought and then another. Quickly she moves from one thing to the next and he grumbles a little as he finds himself unable to collect himself. "I do not hate you. I am..." he paused, considering, "frustrated, perhaps. Having the cubs of my enemy in my pride is hardly an appealing thought. I feel slighted, too, for this to happen so soon after you rejected my own advances. But I do not hold it against you, and I will not hold it against your cubs." Back home he would have killed them all, but he had to remind himself that this was not Amaryllis.

"I will ask that you do not tell them of their father, and you do not give them his name. The Miroslav are not my friends, and if your children grow to be my enemies, too..." Well, he couldn't exactly promise to keep them safe if they were on the opposite side of a growing war, could he?

She rambled some nonsense about the sightless one -- Saga he assumed -- and his frown deepened. "Saga is dead. The Sigrun will not likely return, not now that Erna is also dead. If they do come I will protect your children along with my own, Patchouli. Just as I would protect Ronin and Slaine's. The children of the Mire are the children of the Mire, period." They would be far safer here than out in the wild with a rogue for a mother, he knew that for certain.

"Stop with the self pity. You are going to be a mother, whether you wanted it or not. Now is the time to be brave, if not for yourself then for them."

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Her tears would fall more freely, though she had quieted her panic and her sobs. There was no comfort to be had here for her, and as much as it pained her, she had not expected any. In all the time she had known him, Alaric had never deemed her worthy of his touch. Perhaps he worried she would shatter into pieces, or because she had a tendency to upset him on a regular basis. He did not hate her, so perhaps that in itself should be enough. "I.. would have been yours if it had been what you wanted. You only had to want me to." There was a strain in her voice here, but it might easily be dismissed, given how she had been crying moments ago. They had both agreed it would be better that way in the end had they not? She would have been happy to be taken in by him, it had only ever been the cubs and how he would raise them that had given her pause. She was still convinced she could not produce ones strong enough for the rigor of training in his ways.


He would tell her not to speak of the cubs to Seneca, which she had not intended to do anyway. What was she supposed to tell her children when they asked who their father was though? Should she tell them he did not love them enough to be here? Should she say he was a nobody? Should she tell them he was dead? She had never known her own father and it pained her to think neither would they. If it protected them from being stolen away from her, she supposed that was how it had to be. She would only nod in understanding at this.

@Alaric would dismiss her words about Saga, she supposed he had left too quickly to even realize it. She would frown, shaking her head at this as she looked at the ground. "She was.. but after the healer came to her, I saw her breath again." She assured him, sinking to a laying position and curling her front paws around herself. She felt a chill just talking about her.

Any further words she might have would die on her tongue. She would appear to flinch as he spoke to her feeling of pity, ashamed of herself. She had a terrible habit of saying too much, too openly. Whenever she did so, there was always something that would happen, be it Vio tiring of her chatter and leaving, or Alaric calling her out on it. She didn't use to be so selfish, so open with how she felt. Eyes would remain downcast, now hot and irritated from the earlier tears. As quickly as they had come before, she was now violently shoving those feelings back inside.

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His frustration grew, if only because the entire situation seemed twisted. “I thought I made it pretty clear that I wanted you, Patch. I asked you to be mine and gave you the time to think on it. I did everything I could to not push the matter.” he had tried his best, made more of an effort than he usually did, and now she would try to turn it back on him?

“you did not want cubs, you told me. Or at least you would not want cubs raised by me.” which left to question what she expected of these ones. Was he to allow her to raise them on her own, independent of the pride? He might have asked more if she had not dropped that bombshell on him.

Saga lived?

That was impossible. He frowned, deeply, and quickly shook his head. “that’s not possible,” because erna was dead and so the sigrun bitch must be too, right? “I’m sure it was just a final breath, she could not have survived that…”

Even as he argued his mind was spinning, trying to imagine a healer skilled enough to knit her back together when his wife had perished. “She must be dead.” and if not? Well, then it was his job to finish.

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Patchouli wanted to better explain her meaning, but she imagined it might only frustrate him further. She needed to remind herself that it wasn't supposed to be about what she wanted. If @Alaric had wanted her.. for her, she would have been happy to be his mate, but that wasn't how their relationship worked. The only way he would have taken her as a mate was if she had given him cubs. As far as love went, he had none for her, had even encouraged her to look elsewhere for what she sought. It was stupid to pursue anything with him, for despite her having seen and known him capable of love, he did not love her. They were too different from each other for it to work.. she needed to let it go.

There wasn't anyone out there for her, it was better to stop hoping for what so many others had. She was not like them, so it followed that she could not have the same things as them. She would bitterly bite back the hurt, and in time her acceptance of her place would ease the feeling of isolation. "I misspoke.. forgive me." She offered dismissively, hoping he would shrug it off as nothing of importance left unsaid.

He would become distracted by her words, struggling to believe her when she insisted Saga was not dead. "Perhaps. I.. was not close enough nor am I knowledgable enough in healing to say with certainty. My imagination maybe." She was certain it was true, but perhaps it was better for Alaric to accept she was dead, else he might have no feeling of peace. He needed moments of peace if he was to remain a strong leader.

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he sighed, hating how at odds they were. hating that it was not easier, that he could not simply give in to his instincts and take what he wanted. something about @Patchouli stopped him, though; some innate need to protect her and keep her safe. even if it meant keeping her safe from his own advances.

it would have been easy, to manipulate her, to lure her in with whispered promises. it would have been easy to do what he had done a hundred times before -- but he had long ago decided that he did not want to be another monster in her life.

"i hope it was," he rumbled in the wake of her words, "but i will have to go looking. if she still lives..." he trailed off, leaving the rest unspoken. alaric could just as easily be implying that they would need to be on guard, after all, and not that he was going to do something about the breath in her lungs.

deciding to move back to the topic on hand he looked to her, almost boyish as he asked -- "you will stay, then?"

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It was difficult to let go, and perhaps even harder to maintain any semblance of happiness when she felt so alone. She may be surrounded by lions, but few here had offered her anything outside of some passing glance. She could number those in the Mire that might care if something happened to her on a single paw, even then she couldn't be positive. Loneliness seemed to come easier to live with when you were isolated, at least for her.

She seemed suddenly upset when Alaric spoke of Saga, of making sure she was dead. For once the anger was not with herself, but with the lion in front of her. "You can't keep going out there, looking to settle a score. You deserve a moment of peace.. of rest. Let yourself have it before your anger gets you killed, just like.. her." She would insist, a fleeting fierceness that would immediately ebb moments later. She just wanted to see him happy, see him contented. Why must every lion in her life suffer so much? First her brothers, now Alaric.

He would ask her if she would stay then, something she felt had already been decided upon. He had not come right out and denied her freedom, but she felt certain he would not let her leave. She was almost tempted to ask, to see what he might say to make her withdraw her wish to leave for a second time. Maybe it was better to stay for now, until at least the summertime, when food was easier even for her to gather. Alaric wanted her cubs to be safe and so did she, they just had very different ideas on what that meant. "I will stay.. at least until they are born and have grown a bit." She would also be watching to see how other cubs and adults treated them, how he intended to try and teach them. If she was unhappy, she would take them away from all of these outside influences, with @Alaric's blessing or without it.

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peace -- a fanciful notion at best.

"i sought peace, patch. the hounds came to my door and now my wife is dead." blunt, perhaps, but need she be reminded? "shall i wait for them to come for my children, too? saga.... she would kill them..." the rest of the Sigrun too, no doubt, for the mere crime of being a Rike.

Ironic how the actions of their Jarl had turned his children in to the very monsters they hated. Not that it wasn't inevitable, for if Erna had lived she would have ensured they harbored the same hatred all the same.

"I want nothing more than peace," he admitted, "but if I have learned anything in life it is that peace does not come without a cost." A half-shrug, as if it didn't matter. "It is a price I will pay for those under my protection, to keep the toll from reaching them, too." Oh Alaric, how noble of you.

She says that she will stay and, despite all of it, he breathes a quiet sigh of relief. "Thank you." It was one less thing to worry himself with; unaware that the very world would soon tear apart at the seams.

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@Alaric would insist it was necessary that he not rest until everyone was safe. Patchouli could not shake her head, at odds with him on the subject matter. He was trying to be noble and selfless, but what could be worse for his children than not having a father at all? He might only get himself killed in the same fashion as Erna, and perhaps there was some part of him than wanted it that way. When he was so busy trying to secure the future for his children, he was not taking time to be with them. She would remain silent, deciding he did not want her council. It was not as though she could give anyone advice when she had no experience living one of her own.

He seemed relieved when she said she would stay, and her confusion was clearly written on her face. She could not understand why it should please him. Since she had arrived here, she had been nothing but a hassle for him. She didn't help the pride to hunt, she was incompetent as a healer and she had denied him the only thing of value he could want from her. Now she was carrying the children of a lion that was his enemy. The only thing she had done was make him a den, but it was all but abandoned. It seemed it was meant for her, but she did not stay there, she had not meant it for herself and it felt wrong to use it. She would not question it, nor let it give her hope that he cared about her. Perhaps he did, but not in the way she would have wanted.

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@Patchouli, it seemed, had nothing more to say on that matter. alaric knew that she did not agree with him, but he knew also that he would not be able to change her mind. if she wanted to live in the fantasy world where everybody got along, well, he couldn't exactly stop her. it was not the world that he lived in, though, and he could hardly fault her for wishing that things were different.

even if he did believe that it would get her (and her cubs) in trouble one day.

in the meantime alaric would extend to them the same protection he gave to every member of his pride. even if he did wish that things could have been different, and that they were his cubs she carried and not those of his enemy. they were too vastly different, though, and if she could not find the fire to stand up to him sometimes then there was little more he could do about it.

"i'll leave you to rest, then?" a small frown, knowing she had a tendency to isolate herself but not knowing how he could help. patch was a full grown lioness and he had to have some faith in her to manage on her own. "if you ever need company, or anything, you know where i am, hmm?"

too soft he mused, even as he stepped forward and sought to brush his nose across her cheek, a final gesture of his acceptance before he would turn to depart, pausing only briefly to ensure there was nothing else she needed first.

-exit-(figured this one was getting old xD)

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