ORIGIN

"Booker Speech" "Louie Speech"

On his fur, the tears hadn't yet dried by the time he had felt the chrysalis engulf his being. There was no last breath as the stasis had gripped him and his throat had been deprived of air. Inside it was warm, dark and his conscious had switched off flat lining his thoughts. Unaware of his capsule being plastered in toxic mushrooms as the man he loved lay on the other side of his temporary tomb. Time ticked away slowly, his absent heart beat a blaring roar in his deaf ears. A gentle throb radiated from his being as Louie began the process of healing the mortal wounds inflicted by the tyrant king. Yet there was no pain, no awkward itching and tearing of scabs and scars that struggled to heal and left permanently twisted and disfigured skin.

Louie
Louie
Louie
Louie
Louie
Louie

Repeating over and over in his head, the name. The only dream, the only images that were played in his head. It was repeated so many times it was becoming foreign. It slipped out of his paws, as it became a jumble of letters that were spattered on the ground in front of him. All identity with it was lost. Blindly, he fumbled after himself before tripping and slipping down the steep slope that lay in his way.

Booker
Booker
Booker

Every night, it went like this, with his name only getting louder as the name of his soul mate began to fade. Every night he ended up back in the same hole. There were taunts, the string only getting longer as he found his healing only crippling his well being and mind.

Where to go from here half-face? You're a coward. A moron. No one needs you. No one wants you. Iliad will succeed you and he will despise you. Everyone will forget your name the day you die. There is no one waiting.

No one will remember your name.

No one cares

Khloros was right.

You're nothing

---

It was on the eve of the third week, the process having taken a significantly longer amount of time, that he had been able to stir. Movement was regained, the chrysalis having hardened and become brittle over its time. Illuminated now, only by the faint glow from the nearby cave as the warmth it gave off was retracted. A rhythmic thump returned, it was quiet, inaudible to anyone nearby and the presence of sound almost made the fox throw up after so long in silence. No muscle had wasted despite his lack of movement, and he pressed out with his paws before violently kicking against the surface. This sudden movement did indeed make him vomit, as the contents of his empty stomach came up burning the back of his throat and staining his fur and the surface in front of him. There was a shattering though, and his hind legs dangled above the surface of the ground, mere inches away from brushing against the deadly fungi that encircled him.

To avoid suffocation, he writhed further and blasted out of what should have been his final resting place. The rhythm was disrupted, as again he felt himself gag and cough, blood flecking the bile that now exited his system. It burned, it was so acrid and he shivered curled up in the synthetic placenta from his makeshift egg. Everything was stinging, his senses overwhelmed by the noise, the smell and the blinding light that wanted to pierce his eyeballs and make them bleed. Smashed beneath his body was the protective fungi, staining his pristine pelt that had returned to the glossiness of his years as a babe. A whine erupted from his body, the stiffness in his limbs settling in as he fumbled about like a newborn. All he wanted to do was return back to his foetal position and lay asleep for another week, another month. This world was too good and his subconscious had been right in staving him off. Implanting the seeds of doubt about how he was perceived among his peers and friends. Gently he began to rock, and he found his eyes adjusting to the light from under his paper thin eyelids.

Blurry to begin with, it was a steady couple of seconds before he could truly take in the vision of this place in all its clarity as his eyes blinked open. It was only a faint light, he found himself straining to take in everything. There was no blank space on his left side, it felt like he'd been punched in the stomach as the breath was violently knocked from him. It was disorientating, foreign. So much time had passed since his eye had been taken from him, he was young then. It hadn't taken much to adjust but now he was back in the world of perfect vision. Remnants of the burn tissue was still there, his face was still disfigured. The eye nestled in the socket mirrored the colour of the gemstone that had healed it. A faint glow was given off, it didn't affect his vision but it was reminiscent of the magic that had healed it. On his chest, the scar that had been ripped open by Hasira was filled by the gemstone as it was forced to extend itself to cover in the absent tissue. This new feature had stiffened his left shoulder, but it was a small price to pay for the sight he had now regained.

Covered in bile, goo and mushroom dust, from his side he stared off into the distance eyes clouding over as his body continued to wrack with shiver. But his eyes began to tear up, and he found himself crying as he squeezed both eyes shut wracking sobs shaking him further. He didn't deserve it, he didn't deserve any of this. Raheerah had removed from him his means of committing the sin he always had. It was his scar to bear for his asinine attempt at removing Khloros. It had been the defining mark that Baratheon and Booker had known him for.

HALF-FACE

Why had he been healed. There was no deserving of this.

MONSTER

What was he now.

LOUIE

Finally, Magdalena and her miserable little troupe had left him alone. Their encounter had seemed to last eons, every instant filled with skin-prickling discomfort, the only proverbial light at the end of the tunnel the sight of the danburite, safe and unharmed. He'd almost stopped the hybrid from leaving, begged him to stay, but - well. No child deserved to be taken from their family... even if that family was as good as a pit of writhing embers in Priest's eyes. At the very least, the two wolf pups had left well before the dog and her children had arrived, safe from her venomous grip.

He worried. Worried that it was even worth it, to stay here, watching what could be a grave, for all he knew. The fungus surrounding it could kill, but the threat was mostly for show - after all, he doubted even his dear sister would be so foolhardy as to eat anything he grew in defense. Still, the puff tops warned of any danger better than his own clouded, fractured eyesight could. The scrawny numbat rested feet from the chrysalis, eyes slipping shut - and then flinching against the images beneath.

The smell of burnt fur, skin smoldering under his paws, fat bubbling and melting away, sinew snapping, bones blackening, drinking the marrow from them like a babe starved of water. Burrowing between ribs and caressing the heart. Matching it to the two tiny, infantile organs kept in his burrow. Preserving them all, hiding them from sight in dark corners. He remembered - he remembered killing his friend bonded soulmate companion - remembered rooting through bile and blood to scoop out veins, pluck them like the strings on the banjo Tennessee had made.

Belladonna hadn't lied. She'd only shown him the truth.

But how had someone resurrected Louie, only to kill him again?

The longer the fox stayed locked in his peridot prison, motionless with no pulse to be found, the more Priest suspected that he was dead for good, this time, and he - couldn't. He didn't know what to do, because he'd had hope the first week, guilt the second, and now all he had was a sprout of fear that whispered you'll have to tell Iliad you murdered his father. Again. And he wouldn't be able to, not now. He'd barely been alive after Diot, but this, this would kill him.

Days, without sound. Priest shook himself awake, bile a lump in his throat that ached, clouded silver-brown eye moving to check on the gemstone again. The glowing stone at his side flickered, the core of his cane glinting in tandem. Immediately, his ears perked forward, gaze widening.

A thump.

A pulse.

And before he could rise, a sharp crack! as the chrysalis began to shatter.

Scrambling to his feet, the numbat darted forward, cane dragging on the stone floor, he dodged shards of life-saving green, slowing to a halt just outside the deadly fairy ring he'd created, flattened, spores sinking back into the ground, their duty fulfilled. White-hot tears bit at his eye, pooled behind his gemstone until he could hear the half-filled eye socket swish whenever he moved. Because it was Louie, it was, but he was healed, eye replaced and wounds scarred over.

And he was crying.

Slowly, Priest slunk closer, propping his cane up against a still-standing piece of peridot wall, close enough to feel the sobs vibrating the floor, until the fox's breath ruffled his short, burnt-away pelt. Hands so damaged the fingers had fused together reached out, hesitant, unsure, afraid to harm and twist and rip again. Breath in, breath out - he pet at orange fur and fragile scars, bathed in the green glow of the restored eye.

Breath in.

Breath out.

"Louie."

He grinned, laugh more of a muted sob, eye clenched shut as his forehead moved to nudge below a long, unharmed ear. "Thank you, thank you," and the lights filling the tunnel danced under the praise, his army of fungi clinging to every inch, ready to swarm and protect and devour because he'd be damned if he ever let anyone touch his soulmate again.

Louie his name was Louie. He had to breathe, he had to remember.

No. No.

It felt so false where it lay nestled into his skull. Almost as though the replenished fibres were merely fakes, a loose connection of wires that didn't fit together properly. There was nothing physically wrong with it. But it had been gone for so long, he didn't deserve to have it. It was only a sick trick that it had healed to such a state. Still with his eyes squeezed shut, his magic lashed out violently at the presence of another within the near vicinity of its vessel. Just as soon as it sparked, it fizzled and his energy was drained further from this failed attempt. Weakened, he felt the mutated hands of his saviour run gently along his fur. Louie almost crooned at the soft touch, and he forced himself to once again gaze upon the savage world he wanted escape from.

A gentle face loomed close to his own, as he felt the soft touch of the insectivores snout brush over under his ear. It was warm, it caused the hairs along his spine to ripple at the intimate gesture. This was a friend? Surely it had to be. The flow of time was disrupted as he absorbed the sight of the numbat, and his lips set in a hard line as he remembered who this was. His name had never been forgotten.

It was embedded in his very being.

"Booker."

There was caution, an air of distrust behind it. Memory of his final conversation had been forgotten among the blistering wounds and hot, searing pain. There were still feelings, forever there would be feelings. Unable to pick a topic to focus on, the numbat who stood before him offering him such personal attention, or the phantom eye that had been restored in his time under the darkness. The former was more pressing, more important, and he found himself forcing himself to rise despite the weight of his swimming head and the ache in his paws. Sitting up, he narrowed both eyes at the priest.

It felt weird.

"Booker... What are you doing here?"

The murmurs dropped into whispers and then a chant in his head, careful to keep the opaline spikes on his left side from digging into freshly healed skin, gently grooming at the white cheek fur of his saved friend. The glow of the restored eye pulsed, fizzling, and Priest slowed his attentions, leaned back to peer at it, concern mixing with confusion. Magical backfire this early? Stress, shock, hypertension...? He hadn't had healer's jargon fly through his mind in cycles, but it flooded back when needed, enough to make him wince, hands shaking.

His breath caught in his chest.

Finally, the fox opened his eyes...

and called him the wrong name.

Priest flinched back, paws falling to his sides, gaze dropping to the ground as he moved to grab his cane, stumbling in the few steps it took. A deep breath rattled through him, made him cough, refocusing on the risen, whole form of Louie with a tiny, sad smile. "Lou." Acute memory loss. Short-term or long? Continued delusions regarding name change.

He hadn't planned for this. He'd planned for the second chance, the kernel of petty, protective happiness that had sprouted in his chest, the one that had kept him going through Magdalena and her inquisition, the cruel twist of his stomach at the sight of Odyssey. It was beginning to wilt away already, a flame tempered by a cold fountain until nothing but embers remained. It seemed no matter how much he loved, it was never enough.

Not enough for anyone to remember him.

"I am here because I love you, of course," Priest murmured back, blunt but gentle. He kept his stare non judgemental, unafraid of the consequences. He had gotten nothing but agony from hiding his thoughts, as of late - and he'd only been so careful with his own life because of Louie. If anyone had to smite him, the fox would certainly be a poetic victor. "And because you wanted me to be."

I love you Booker. We'll make it work. I didn't mean to leave. I don't deserve to be happy. You've everything to me.

I don't want to die.

The numbat tapped his cane against the ground, the glow hiding the shine in his eye, the deep-set hollows in his cheeks. Booker. Two. Two separate cases, both with the same name popping up everywhere, mocking him. Booker. He had to be missing something, stuck in the fog that threatened to cloud his mind when he least expected it.

But it would help nothing to know, he supposed. The Mother had blessed him with the gift of Louie's second life. The fox had no obligation to spend it with him.

Upright, he swayed slightly and blinked a few times, his paw running over the still damaged skin before swiping over his delicate and precious restored eye. Ears flattened against his head, his narrow gaze was traced down to the floor where it swept over the shattered shards and mushroom caps. Behind him the fractured cocoon just hung perilously in the air from where it had stuck on the wall of the cave. Gentle words tore perilously at his new state of mind and the pleasure he felt at his touch was now replaced by shivers of ice that caused his spine fur to raise for a whole different reason.

FAKER

Love. It was all so easy wasn't it for the numbat who had everything. Settling on a frown, he was confused as to why he wanted Booker to be there beside him. There was no denying his feelings, but why had he caved? Why had he let his guard down enough for that to become a true thing. Admitting his feelings and moving forwards with them. Louie's head was in a slight daze and he sighed outwardly, a gust of air between his cracked lips and he ran his tongue over his jowls. No longer was there Booker and Louie. Khloros had helped him, he'd seen what was coming and his chrysalis state had cemented it for him. There was no more teetering back and forth of the precipice of what was right and wrong. He owed the plague pony a debt of thanks for helping him come to it.

A laugh came to his lips, but there was no malicious. Only genuine amusement, like someone who had just been told a delightful joke that made them chuckle. Indeed he was in good cheer. He got to spend his first moments with Booker. That one true man that he loved. "Booker. Booker..." Tail swishing behind him, he looked down at the Priest as he made movements to get up. "I'm not sure what I said before. But it certainly is good to see you." Standing, his eye glowed from within his skull. Tears had dried on his fur, the vomit and bile clung like sap to his regenerated fur. Along his back, the vibrant reds faded into almost bleached porcelain white.

MONSTER MURDERER

"Did you think this was going to be some sort of sappy sad reunion?" Curiously, he made movements to step away from Booker, his mind firing off on the newly repaired axons. Strength restored, he breathed calmly and a smile dashed across his handsome features.

HALF-FACE NOTHING

LOUIE
LOUIE

"That's alright. You couldn't have known." Silence ensued but he made no move to step away any further. But his demeanour changed again and his frown returned, "Why do I have my eye? Why?" The discomfort of the elongated peridot shrapnel embedded in his chest had also come to his attention, as he stepped out with his left leg and flexed it in and out once. Twice.

YOU DON'T DESERVE IT
MONSTER MONSTER

"Did you heal me Booker? Why would you do that?" Scowl deepening, he felt his lip twitch slightly to curl into a snarl that never came. "Why did you do this to me? What have I done to deserve this?"

Brow furrowing, Priest simply stared at the fox, ears flicking back at the laughter. Do you enjoy tempting fate? You're such a pitiful rat. I'm sorry. He took a shaking step back when Louie rose, breathing harsh through his nose, smoothing back the patchy fur of his neck anxiously. "No. I make it a point not to hold onto hopes that could kill me, surprisingly," the numbat murmured. On another's lips, the words could drawl, full of mocking arrogance, but his tone conveyed nothing but blanket concern. "And I've rather had my fill of depressing reunions. I'd like to have a happy one, for once," he mused, raising an eyebrow when Louie stepped away.

Another point to the short-term memory loss category, his mind provided cheerily. Priest returned the smile, at least, content in the knowledge that Louie was well enough to act his usual self. Granted, that usual self was infuriating fifty percent of the time, but at least the Mother hadn't sought fit to change his personality. Case in point: the smile turned to a frown within moments, the frown deepening to a snarling scowl. Watching other people's lives crumble makes my stomach flutter.

"I have done nothing but protect you when you could not." For the first time in the calm argument, his voice wavered on the precipice of anger and a pain that had rended his heart into dashed pieces, chewed up and spit out, swallowed whole by too many to ever be recovered. "I wouldn't heal you without consent," Priest added, a disgusted snarl flashing across his face at the thought. His hands felt sticky with phantom congealed blood.

Breath in.

Breath out.

Priest closed his eye, rubbed at the eyelid wearily, tiny blue mushrooms embedded in his cane blooming to life, tapping at his hands as if comforting him. "As for what you seem to think you've done... everyone deserves a second chance, love. Even if they don't believe they do," he added pointedly, dropping his hand to peer up at Louie, face once again a blank mask.

"In any case... I have done horrible things. I am in no place to judge."

He wondered what the fox would say, if he described how it felt to feel the blood slow to his son's heart, felt the last time it beat from the inside. How bile from the small intestine wouldn't wash out of his fur for weeks. How delicate the strange, alien lungs of a hummingbird were. The dreams he'd had of slowly shutting down the blood supply to Magdalena's brain, of slicing into Belladonna's skin, of burying his brothers one by one.

It didn't matter. The fox probably wouldn't stick around long enough to know.

His clouded gaze moved to the stiff shoulder, humming thoughtfully. "But I can attempt to help with the muscle strain, at least." He just needed to know Louie would be able to defend himself again, was safe.

Then it would be out of his hands, most likely permanently.

If there was one certainty in Priest's life, it was that no one stayed in it.

Residual traits of the broken man he had once been were glimmering through. They weren't removed, he hadn't changed as Belladonna might have. Nor was he a system in the same sense that Booker was. Just a broken and newly repaired person, he hadn't lost sense of his true self. Regenerated and renewed back into the proud beast he had started as before he had lost his way. Before Booker had become a fixture in his life and started him down a rocky path that he hadn't yet had the strength to turn back from. This numbat was something he would forever be stuck with. The man would always be a thorn in his side as long as he still had feelings.

Stuck in a scowl, he listened to the man speak about how he had defended him. But in the end had he really needed protecting. Wasn't he safe curled up within his chrysalis, energizing and restoring himself to emerge as a butterfly would after their metamorphosis. It didn't matter anyway, it was over now what did he care. "There is no such thing as a second chance." No one could correct their mistakes. Forever their sin was stuck with them despite those who thought it could be washed away. All the stuff he'd screwed up in his past was baggage he couldn't remove. But he would move forward and try not to sink deeper every time. They weren't second chances. Merely continuations.

That was what he thought.

IT'S OVER FINISHED

A sigh and he dropped the question of why his eye was restored. What did it matter, if it was luck it had certainly been fortunate. It meant he was stronger now. Booker expressed concern over his stiff leg, and he rotating to offer it out to the numbat. "If you think you have a chance. Go ahead and try it." There was no recoiling. No horror at letting him touch him. The worry that he would have feelings for the numbat was no longer a concern. They were there, he had to accept it. It was in accepting it that he could ignore it. "You still reside in Eridanus don't you."

There is no such thing as a second chance.

Priest glances away from Louie's face, focuses on the shoulder and tells himself not to say anything at all, because he wants to agree so badly it burns a hole in his gut. Sinners stayed that way, no matter the prices they paid to reverse the switch. He'd cradled the liver of his best friend, watched the skin slough off his skull after weeks of rot. There were no chances after that. He was merely a puppet, nameless and faceless, kept alive to do the Mother's will. What She had planned for Louie, he didn't know - but whatever it was, it wouldn't make him Holy again.

Thankfully, Louie gave him an out, and the numbat slowly moved closer, hindered by his destroyed leg and vision, cane heavy as it echoed off of the floor with every step. He focused on the offered limb, stowed his cane in its holster and ran permanently numb hands over the muscles, responding to the fox's words with a huff. "If I couldn't help, I wouldn't offer, my child. It does no one any favors to lie about my abilities." Experimentally, he pressed his fingers down, felt the muscles bunched together from a mix of hypertension and pressure from the awkwardly healed gemstone. Brow furrowing, Priest smoothed back the fur, absently grooming it.

"Yes, I live in Eridanus. I do not leave it. I am the Mother's messenger," he murmured, turning the leg this way and that in his grip, trying to at least loosen it for the walk home. "Speaking of which: I'll be able to help with the range of movement, and any soreness - but my supplies are in my burrow. You have the option of coming with me, or staying here and waiting for me to return." Granted, it would be a long wait; but Priest figured the fox knew that by now, given how scarred and obviously impeded by his leg the numbat was.

"There is plenty of space in my burrow, should you choose to stay... and Eridanus is the safest of the caves." He didn't say anything else, only glanced up at Louie, humming, gaze dropping back down to his leg. There was no use begging, making himself look even more dependent; especially not with Magdalena's threats and anger still looming overhead. He didn't know if she was angrier with him or the fox, but he didn't much care to find out.

Those circular motions by the man's dexterous hands worked away at the knots. Interlaced within his muscles, the thin tendrils of the peridot stone had made a meshed network. To remain where it was, to not be disturbed and to cement the healing process that saw it taking up portions of flesh. Although it hadn't been removed once the chrysalis was smashed open, it had become a permanent fixture and it appeared Booker could see that. Louie was realizing that as well, a phenomenon he hadn't seen or experienced before. Dumb luck.

Even with the nasty expression across his face, he let slip a smirk of amusement as he questioned the numbat's healing abilities. Cayenne was the last he had been presented with who had expressed such talent. Oh yeah. One day she said she would be back to train with him. Ballsacks. "Don't know why you stay there filling your head with mushrooms." Whoever this Mother creature was held no interest to him. If it was really something worth knowing about it would have been mentioned before. Actually maybe Booker had mentioned it before, Louie couldn't quite remember. He couldn't quite care.

Conversation circled back in a direction he wasn't keen on taking up and he placed his paw on the ground firmly, a jolt of pain. "No. I will not go with you. Nor do I have any interest to stay there either." Voice flat, it was as civil as he had possibly ever been with the numbat. Instead of smashing glass, howling, crying and watching his life slip away. Such childish behaviour it had been. How long ago it seemed and he sighed.

If the numbat was old, Louie was ancient, it took effort to suppress everything from his past. Trauma wasn't comparable on a scale, but the events the fighter and the healer had gone through were significant. The extent of the numbat's was unknown to the fox. "You can't keep pretending like sitting under that overgrown fungus will help you. Without Baratheon I would have killed you the first time we met." It was brutal honesty and he kept his differing gaze on Booker. Was it compassion? Sympathy and slight fear that darkened his eyes when he realized that the Priest would be wandering back alone? Maybe. Foxes were small, but numbats didn't even compare to his snout. It was arguable to say that Booker was the smallest in all of Origin caves.

"There is no way we can be in each other's presence without you being in peril. I can't let you die because of me." There was a waver in his monotone pitch. "Our paths, my path, is marked with blood and death and it will be the one I continue to walk. I'm proud of what I am." Danger. A hiss entered his voice, but there was no more yo-yoing between what he wanted to be. Khloros had said friends, Booker had said friends. Everyone had cheered friends. But even Booker had steered off it. Everyone had steered off it. These caves were nothing but a menagerie of broken animals who pretended that they cared about each other before stabbing each other in the back and watching as the last of the blood drained out of the faces of their lovers. Death and murder were common place, and he was a murderer. It was he, he who had set off the chain events of Hasira's reign of destruction.

A steady breath and he allowed himself time to pause, the weight of the world on his shoulders as he looked down at Booker. Time and exhaustion tried to seep back into his fresh skin, but it was too early.

Priest stayed silent save for a huff of amusement, removing his cane to lean against it once more, silvery gaze roaming over the rest of the fox, looking for hidden wounds. "Oh, my head has always been filled with mushrooms, my child," he replied, smooth and calm. The lights were his constant companions, there even without his call, tracking the dead and the living. Whenever the numbat blinked, Louie's form lit up in bright white, unstained in the eyes of rot. "That's nothing new."

He almost offered more, some tiny piece of him that he didn't let anyone but his wisp of a son see, but the thief's paw fell to the floor with a harsh smack, sending him skittering backwards, pain so known to his veins that his whole body revolted at the thought of it. Ears flat to his skull, Priest shook himself, muttering wordlessly, scratching at his forearms, tiny flakes of burnt skin and fur falling to the floor. "Then I am afraid I cannot help you any further."

Louie would go back to Monoceros and his children, Priest knew - and he couldn't be angry about a father wanting to be near his family, even if that family had done more to break him than any other group. The Merry Men were sinners, through and through - except Iliad, but even he would soon be unsaveable.

And sinners must be marked.

The ever-present liquid flame that circulated in his paws licked, waiting to be unleashed, wanting to sear and scar, the satisfaction of having forever damaged Vicktor still like sugar on his tongue, sweet and fulfilling. He doubted it would be the same with Louie - it would be a burden rather than a pleasure... but the fox was practically giving in to his demons already, not even giving himself a chance to get better. No such thing as a second chance.

And Priest had enough to worry about just keeping himself alive, not succumbing to the carefully hidden away collection of glass pieces and sharp metal spikes.

"I can only attend to those who will it, Louie. I am old enough to know that going out of my way to help only ends in sorrow," the numbat murmured, straightening up from his hunch, calm, serene, expressionless front back in place. He didn't need to explain, not to one of the many who'd taken his innocence and twisted it into something unrecognizable, so fully masked that Priest himself had no identity to speak of beyond his attachment to the Mother and his sins. Finally, he rose his gaze to meet the fox's - in time for the man to bring up his long-dead brother.

Priest frowned.

And then bit out a laugh so venomous it made his stomach flip.

"Oh, you should have, my dear. I'm sure my sons would thank you." The man grinned, needlepoint teeth yellowed by blood and mistreatment. "But the Mother got her puppet, so I suppose I should be doing the thanking. I'm not sure how my brother would feel, but considering his untimely demise, I don't much care." For once, his voice had some heat, a remnant of the creature Louie thought he knew. "It is only sheer luck that has led me to survive, not a dragon's manipulation or your mercy, and it is only by luck that I will continue on."

He huffed, barely holding back a roll of the eyes, settling for a loud smack! of his cane on the floor. "If I die it will be of my own doing, not yours, and I will be grateful for it. There is nothing here for me." Priest moved to smooth down his pelt, pointed and risen from anger and stress. "I protected you out of love for you, not any similar affection for myself. What matters is that you are safe and alive, no matter what you choose to do with that gift." His gaze swept up to meet Louie's once more, and he did, at least, give him a tiny, barely-there smile.

"It is pride, not choice, that separates us, Louie. I am not proud of what I have become, or of the crimes I have committed. I carry them with me as an injury that cannot be healed, and I atone for them through my own suffering. It is my way. But blood and death will always stain both our paths, and you cannot protect me from life."