She couldn't speak to her new children, but she had been alive to witness their birth. She could tell her wife and husband that she loved them, or help to name their children. Yet, she was still alive. She repeated it to herself like a mantra, torn between what had always been obvious, white-hot fury, and the pity she still felt for the Rike who had stolen the voice of the Illyrian Queen. Not that it hadn't been penance earned.

She'd kept him prisoner for months and then commanded her own hounds to rip his apart. But really, that is what Morrigan was as well, wasn't it? Another enemy she had too much in common with. More evidence that all it ever really took was one bad day for someone to become a monster, to cross the line. How close had András been? How close would she have come, had she been given the same opportunity? @Talisa

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Everything in her had crumbled that day and everything since then had tried to recreate it. Talisa's body had become weakened because of the strong soldiers that she, Morrigan and Eyvindr had created. It was in their birth that she could recognize that in this era in time, that was what she was building. An army. A long awaited discovery that while family had been her toddler-esque vision, long-term it was an army to protect what the Valour's had once claimed.

In her blood it would travel through generations and she continued to hope that it would spread into the glory that it was becoming. Even with @Morrigan's voice wounded and absent, it did little to curb Talisa's strength. If anything, she was thankful that she had been been with her wife for as long as she had because she could see everything written in her wife's eyes. Just as she did now.

Stop it. She ordered, quiet enough to not disturb her sleeping babies but loud enough for the commander to know she meant business. You're going to make me have to get up and do something and I'd rather not. The last thing she had the strength to do was sit up and smack her wife out of this pouting nonsense but if she had to, she wasn't afraid to pull a muscle or two. Nor was she afraid of having to get the kids back down to nap, either.

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If Morrigan did not feel so burdened she might have felt a thrill at being barked at by @Talisa in such a way, because while Morrigan may have been the face of the pair, it was Talisa who held all the strings. She let out a heavy sigh, releasing a cloud of steam into the cold winter air. She watched cloud dissipate before turning back toward the den where her wife's voice had come from, mismatched gaze taking a moment to adjust to the light before she settled on the other side of the five cubs. Talisa was right of course, as she always was, as she had been about Andras in the end. And the gods had blessed her victory with five children, even if they had deemed one of the souls unfit for such a tumultuous, war-torn world. Tormund would watch over her until they could all be reunited. She looked at her wife as if to say, Thank you, I needed that.

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With her wife being unable to talk, it felt strange. As though she was waiting an extra few seconds after saying something and waiting for @Morrigan to respond. When that voice didn't sing, well, she relented to the fleeting moment where that brutish mongrel had had the warrior's neck in his mouth and had nearly made Talisa bury a body. A rude thought for every second of every day for who knows how long; but that awful memory was always eventually followed by remembering that she was lucky that her wife was even here in solid form at all. It certainly didn't excuse the fucking rike from what he had done, not in the slightest, but it was a small silver lining that Talisa was going to hold onto.

Perhaps in the four years that the two had been mated, this was probably the least amount of talking that they had done ever. They were usually quite the conversational creatures and shared most everything they could but without one being able to speak, everything was said mostly in silence. I want him dead. Words that felt horrible on her lips but she meant them all the same. Talisa was, more or less, drastically changed by the situation that had occurred. Her brain was no longer hard-wire for kindness and sympathy for all. No longer did she believe everyone has their reasons and they're doing what they think is right for them.

No, because when you truly endanger the one thing that Talisa could not live without.. well, she was prepared to make the offender not live. That was the scariest moment of her entire life to bear witness to the potential end of Morrigan Greyflood. How everything in that moment had seized up entirely and had left her numb to her shred of kindness that she had left in her. That Talisa had gone, fled in the wind, as a new phoenix had risen.

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Morrigan wished she could share in Talisa's rage, no doubt would find it far easier to do so if it had been her wife's throat in the Rike man's jaws for all to witness. The thought alone was enough to set fire to her skin, but it had not been so and Morrigan had been laid low before. She could not help thinking that this time, unlike the others, the attack had been somewhat justified. Morrigan had felt the grip of his jaws, known with every fiber of her being that she would die... except she hadn't.

It didn't fit what the Greyflood had come to know as gods-given fact and just as it had previously, it caused confliction. @Talisa's words spoke truth to the change that had befallen her in the days since the challenge. It had caused Morrigan's admiration to deepened as well as caused her some concern. How far would they push her gentle wife before it was her wielding the knife instead of her soldier? All the dark cloaked queen could do was move to place her paw atop Talisa's as they had done on the day they'd met, only in reverse.

Don't let them take away what you are, but perhaps it was too late. Still, Morrigan could not bring herself to sentence the father of Fernweh's children to death without first at least asking the accused why even if they already knew the answer. Because a long time ago someone drew a line in the sand and we chose different sides.

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Every day since she had known @Morrigan, she had also known that her days were very limited with her. At least, on this mortal plane. That there would always come things that would seek to split them apart whether it something they had to attempt to work through or by other physical means. She knew that such things were limited by time and yet seeing her wife come so close to death had gone and changed the knowledge. That peace of mind that she often brought to herself in every battle that her wife had raged within was not found in the one that Fernweh's mate baby daddy had initiated.

There was no honor in going after a wounded woman. No honor in his heart for thinking first and acting later. No honor in going after the woman you love's family, regardless of what they did. Talisa could never respect that. To the Valour woman, once you pledged yourself to a mate then they were above everyone else. If Morrigan had disrespected Fernweh and Andras saw fit to attack because of that, Talisa might've been inclined to agree but he had pledged that he would protect his unexpected family and he had failed to do so. There were many ifs in the equation but the only one that mattered was the family he had chosen and had, in words, committed to.

So as her wife's paw laid on top of hers, Talisa breathed exited in one fell sweep. An exhale so dark and deep that she was certain there was nothing left until she looked to her wife's face and found it. Morrigan... she murmured quietly as she tipped her head slightly, the first casualty of war is always innocence. Mine is long gone. There was no winning. Wars don't end everything. Talisa did not wish to leave this war with her wife still engrained into, their friends and family most of all. She did not wish to burden them by a selfish dismissal and thus, she needed to put her shields up and draw her sword. As dusty and rusty as they may be, she couldn't sit back anymore.

There can be no such thing as a righteous war. No one has the right to take another's life. It was humorous, perhaps, that all this between two families mainly because one family chose to drown their children in a ritual deigned by their own religion. Yet, they are willing to kill anyone that held the name of Sigrun regardless of whether or not they had ever actually drowned a child. Only in the quiet following her words does she realize that that same phrase could be said of the Sigrun drowning their own children. Talisa had never truly saw it as anything other than a tradition of religion. It was what their God required of them and why shouldn't they question their God?

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Perhaps it was not logic that steered Morrigan's resolve away from its usual unshakable foundation. Perhaps it was the very same feeling that crept over her every time she had to speak with Alaric. You are far more like them than you ever were the Valour. If she can hate them, truly hate them... could she hate you? A needling voice in the Greyflood's mind giving truth to her real confliction. @Talisa had always been able to love the monster in Morrigan in ways she never could for herself, and now she feared that her wife would finally see her for what she was, a creature of darkness long stumbling in the glare of the light.

Morrigan had slowly come to realize that once she killed her enemy or they killed her, that was the end no matter what. To deal out death is to accept that death will come. Just as it had for Saga and the Rike who had chosen to oppose her. As Talisa said the words they landed like heavy stones in the Greyflood stomach. So she had failed in protection her gentle light... Or? Had she instead simply nurtured it into a dangerous but tempered fire? Maybe, after their years of being together they could live most happily in the darkness together, defiant in their balance of good and evil, and dangerous as devoted counterparts.

Morrigan leaned into her wife's soft figure with a breathy sigh of agreement and acceptance. Talisa was right, they had both fallen into darkness long before now, but they could walk into the shadows together and unashamed now, as the beast their enemies had created.

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I hate all that they have made us become, she mentions quietly as she existed there beside her love. The only thing that truly kept her grounded sometime and a constant light in her life even if she didn't feel like one. I do not regret siding with the Sigrun, not one bit. They come at the Sigrun for a ritual done when a child reaches a year. Yet, here they were attacking other lions regardless of their age simply by being born into the name. Talisa knew there was something in there that was wrong even more so than she had already said and mentioned. No side was better than the other yet they were all too blind to see it and she was certain they were too stubborn to listen to a woman speak it. I will not change my mind on wishing that Rike dead, father to Fernweh's children or not. He took what he had for granted and I will not give a second chance. Not now, not anymore. @Morrigan

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Morrigan could feel the resoluteness in each of @Talisa's words, and had to admit that she would have felt the same way, could not imagine a world in which anyone who came so close to taking her wife from her could be allowed to continue breathing. No, she understood entirely, even if it still made her heart feel heavy at the thought of taking those children's father from them. Maybe it was for the best, she would try to tell herself. Maybe severing that wretched tie to that cursed family would help to keep them safe. Yet the name Greyflood was so tightly interwoven with that of the Sigrún... She knew it to be a fools hope even as she accepted her wife's death sentence with a heavy sigh, leaning into her touch, ignoring the now familiar ache in her throat and she moved to nuzzle against the Valour's woman's chin.

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There was a deep sigh as her wife cozied into her still and she felt her heart racing, frustration evident in the lines of her face. Desperate for a conclusion to this even though it felt like it was only just starting. Talisa did not wish to have it come down to this but she knew for years now that she would do whatever it took to keep her family safe. She had always felt as though @Morrigan could handle herself in every thing but what Talisa had not expected was for someone to attempt to double-dip. To attack her when she was weakened and that was on her, for believing others to be so honorable as that. But not anymore. Laying here beside her wife and knowing that she was putting a man to a death sentence, she would do whatever it took to protect this. fade talisa

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