[ After Epidemic: To Heal and To Mend ]

It was... so tiring. The second pond had been more challenging than he had expected it to be; or perhaps he bad been led into a false belief of ease after the first pond. No matter. He would recover his strength and try again. Rohan's stomach was in knots and his head was aching furiously. Wobbly legs could barely carry the wolf as he stumbled toward the warrens, seeking a free shelter that may have been abandoned, but already dug into the earth. He was lucky and there was one, spacious and cool.

He nosed past a drape of moss and slipped inside the darkness, flopping into the dirt wall and onto his side without much of his normal grace. The wolf was feeling much worse than he had realized—or perhaps a crutch he had been leaning on no longer supported him here. His breathing labored but he did his best to steady it, and called again on his magicka, gently; the stone within his skull glowed softly, weakly.

Rohan just needed some time to recover and rest, and he would try again.

Returning to Pisces had not been high on Leon's list of errands that day.

Or ever.

It was hell enough being trapped inside a realm where he could only be haunted by memories of everything he had gained and lost - but to suddenly find himself in the room where it all transpired, where he had once lived, where he had once raised his family alongside his wife, was something nightmarish on its own. Where every wall remained as familiar as the days of his youth, where he could look up to the ridges and still see the entrance to the den he once inhabited. It left a bitter taste on his tongue. It left his heart aching.

So, understandably, Leon had refrained from following his brother into the waterfall room. Even at its entrance, he thought he could still hear the echoes of Maji Walezi's leaders singing amid notes of the frothing cascade. Cancer, and Bevy, and his own voice. He thought those distant shadows he saw were the silhouettes of lithe felines and fluttering birds. But the smells, the smells were the worst part. He thought he could smell Makyna - no doubt she had adopted the smell of the moistened mosses and sweet flowers and woven it into her own in all the time they spent living there. The smell of fresh dirt and churning water and fish. They used to be his.

But as he lingered in wait of Rohan, he grew anxious. He didn't think it should take as long as it did for his brother to purify the tainted pools. Eventually, his worry outgrew his bitterness for the room. As much as he hated to set foot in the place, he found himself once more at its entrance. A long sigh filled his lungs, and the bear marched inside.

He kept his eyes on his paws at first, using his nose to sift through the stinging scents in search of Rohan. Once he found the scent, he followed it, walking the worn footpaths that he memorized so well until they led him to the warrens - to a den, where the white wolf's scent led him to the refuge within. The bear quickened until he reached the entrance, his massive frame eclipsing what light might filter through the hanging mosses of its doorway.

"Brother?" he spoke, poking his face through the vegetation as he sought Rohan out of the dimness.

The rushing of water was a lullaby for him, gently guiding him toward meditation as his eye closed to darkness. He focused again on pulling magicka back into himself, reaching into his gem for the power that it sourced to him. Calmness washed over him and he floated in his surreal otherplane, waiting as he recharged. Hopefully he was safe to be here, his body-self alone and unattended while he focused on the internal. Was he not strong enough? Was there something more he could do, he could be?

Brother?

His conscious shifted rapidly, seeking the source. Brother? Brother. His brother's voice. The still wolf's body twitched in the den, a sign that he had heard the bear deep within—one of few voices that might stir him, wake him.

Rohan's mind worked furiously to unravel, to wake, to surface.

Slowly, his blue eye peeled open, seeking the comfort of the large obsidian Gembound whose body blotted out the light of Pisces at the entrance of the den. Leon's wide face was draped with vegetation, peering in toward Rohan with two fiery eyes.

"Brother," the wolf confirmed, raising his head gently. "I did not think you would come here." Rohan greatly admired this room, but he knew the bear had ill memories of it. He did not know, perhaps, if somewhere deep inside of him wanted this room to be cleansed for both of them.

"I have purified one pond," Rohan went on to report. "But the second I tried infected me three times—though I was able to cleanse the infection. I exhausted myself, so I am resting. I will try again."

His tail patted against the soft earth as if inviting the bear in. The den was large enough for both of them, though it might get a bit cozy with the two of them squeezed in together.

@Leon

Within moments, the image of his brother came to light. The white wolf had folded into himself within the shelter of the den and Leon was met quickly with the sight of his single blue eye; the opal in his other socket shimmered against the passage of light that fled between the hanging moss, shifting around his movements. "I'll go wherever you are, always," he said. He was sure he had said something similar to Makyna once before.

Leon shuffled inside and flared his nostrils to sniff at Rohan, detecting the sickly scent that lifted off of him, that had somehow invaded him during their short time away. Leon's brows furrowed with concern, but Rohan was quick to fill him in. So he had attempted to cleanse the ponds? Now that he thought about it, there was a somewhat... virulent smell wafting off of them. Or perhaps that was the stench of decaying organics, no doubt succumbed to the sickness Rohan spoke of.

"It infected you?" he echoed, looking the wolf over with a flash of worry. He noted the wolf's invitation and quickly settled himself next to Rohan, folding his massive paws against his chest. "You should have told me. At least I could have stayed to keep you safe," Leon added, but there was no criticism in his voice despite his admonishment. "But I'm here now. You can rest easy. Do you know how they got tainted?"

Still, his mind wandered. What did it take to cleanse the ponds? Surely it was a form of magic that Leon didn't possess, but... was there anything he could do?

Did he even want to?

Or would he have been content to let Pisces degrade, to let it die and wither and fade off into memories? To become just a skeleton of what it once was? That's all it was really good for now, to him. Just a memory. And even that he wasn't sure he wanted.

@Rohan

To say Rohan was picky with those he brushed fur with was a lie; he would lay beside his brother and beside his son, and perhaps no others. Personal space was important to him so that he could safe observe others and gauge their intentions, their aura—but he did not have to worry about those things with Leon or Prata. The wolf trusted few, and truly only loved these two. It may not be something he realized, but it was something his body knew, and Rohan trusted the feelings in his gut. If he was relaxed or tense, he trusted that; and when Leon said he would go wherever Rohan went, Rohan did not understand the feeling in his body then.

So he could not trust it. But it did not feel bad. He tried to study it while Leon moved in and settled, asking about the infection. It was a swelling in his chest, almost like guilt. That part felt bad. However, the rest of it was like kindness, or happiness. Thankfulness.

Still, the warmth of the other was welcome, and Rohan was relieved to have his brother next to him.

"Yes, three times," Rohan repeated of the infection. "But I gave this great thought; not only did I come here with magic to purify the ponds, but also myself. If I become infected, I can cleanse myself. It is tiring, and is a setback." He frowned. It might take a while to do all of the ponds.

His shoulders shrugged, eye glancing out toward Pisces. "No. Well, maybe. I believe Tenzin is unhappy at the state of Pisces. When I was meditating to restore strength earlier, I had a vision as if I were drowning within the disease and the water. I was looking up from just below the surface of one of the ponds, and through the scum: a pair of eyes. I did not know them." Rohan's eye drifted back to his brother. "That was before the second pond, and the haunting image perhaps distracted me. I should not have let myself get upset."

The strange sensation of the eyes watching him from a distance made the muscles in his shoulder twitch, and he shook the feeling the best he could. A foolish distraction. Instead, he wanted to focus on one of the other visions he had then—of Leon, of the feeling of loss. What did his brother feel that Rohan could not understand? What had he seen in the bear's eyes that he did not see normally?

"But yes, I will rest easy," he said quietly, curling around to lay his head against Leon's thick paws and chest, "now that you are here." His eyes closed, stone glowing softly beneath his eyelid.

And he focused. He emptied his mind, letting his brother's breathing guide him. They were different, but inside, somehow, could they be the same? Could Rohan see inside of Leon, know Leon? Of course, blatant differences separated them. Rohan had never tried to connect on such a deep level, and perhaps this violated a key line of privacy between them—but what did he not understand? What was he missing?

A strange, almost primal feeling blossomed in the dark of his empty, searching mind.

It was... reaching, at first. Himself, perhaps, seeking to latch onto the other.

Then there was companionship. Will. Protection. Fierceness. Fire. It was hot. Rohan felt it burning within his own chest until it hurt, until he felt it climbing into his throat and spreading into his lungs. It was a fullness but he could not understand it, perhaps. Wholeness. But an aching, missing piece disrupted the flow; as if Leon's chest were a forge and his heart the anvil, all the energy twisting and coiling and spitting with nowhere to strike. So the forge expires and the fire cools.

Rohan's body was still as he explored this unknown plane. As his mind returned to himself—the anecdotal heat quelling within his chest—he still did not quite understand the distant fiery eyes that gazed at him from the black. What was missing? He tried to think, his energy even more drained now.

Her? Them?

Rohan had never been keen for large masses and had avoided the group his brother used to enjoy; but they were not here now, and it was all he could associate the feeling with. He was, however, a being of little sway one way or the other. The journey left him feeling even less connected than he had felt before.

In his aim to try and understand a piece of Leon—in this moment at least—he understood less.

He would have to think about it later.

"And you? How are you?" he decided to ask. Maybe the easiest solution was right in front of him.

@Leon