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Otto was suddenly faced with two new visions, also not his own. Just like America had seen his, he was seeing hers. Her situation as a child felt stifling, like a room without air. Difficult to breathe, or simply scared to. He hadn't even been there, but he knew the feeling well. More and more he was learning how similar he was to the hunters he shared an island with, even if he hadn't meant to know. These were their private moments, and he felt he had no right to see them so flippantly without permission. However, with it there was a mysterious distance that closed ever slightly. She knew things of him now that some others did not, and now the same for him.
Sharing was caring, right?

And then Ripley. He knew that voice, no matter how quiet. What he didn't know until now was this terrible situation he found himself witnessing. From a boy who couldn't care less about the family he left behind, it was almost alien to see the complicated and difficult decision that befell his former roommate. In a way Ripley was almost family, for what little time they shared in the past. It didn't make him special, and he could hardly call it a bond. However, a grave ill feeling swelled inside to see someone he knew go through what he did.
Maybe death followed them both, after all.

There were several instances in his life where he feared death knocking on his door. The simplest falls and stumbles, the smallest of accidents, the strangest of hypotheticals - but the closest he ever found himself was as a victim of assault by his father's hands.

Wyatt's outting to his father was far from pleasant. He was caught in bed with another boy, and his father didn't pause a moment before attempting to beat the both of them. While his boyfriend was able to escape, Wyatt had to suffer the worst of the abuse as his father beat him with such brutal force that he didn't know if he could survive.

He was beaten nearly senseless before throwing him out of the house, literally kicking him down to the dirt from their porch. His face was bloodied and swollen, his shoulder dislocated, and his legs too limp to hold his weight for long as he limped away from home, beginning his journey on his own - a journey of running away from the pain and away from those memories.



[3/3]

Epithet's Treble Clef-blade, as he was calling it now, was light in his hands and did not hinder him as he charged toward the Queen. He ignored the sluggishness that held him back, he trained his mind to not let it bother him. He hated it. He hated the feeling of being held back, prevented from his strongest potential. He gave a battlecry as he swung with his blade as a sensation pulled through him, a sensation much like ALICE AI's.

"Here," a man's voice called as he rubbed the boy's cheek of dirt. The man smiled as his son bit into the hunk of meat over the fire. It was times like these that he was glad he could get his son out of the house, to get him free from that suffocating environment. Here; his son was free to be himself, be the rough, rambunctious, slightly spastic, hellhound he was. As long as he was fed and cleaned, neither the father nor his mate really minded.

Thinking of his mate made the man frown. Sometimes he had hoped she was more of a mother to him than he was.

His return to the wide world of Wonderland came with the realization that Fang had shared in his memory too; perhaps he'd meant for it to happen without meaning to? It didn't really bother Mouth, mostly because Fang seemed to be a good guy - a good heart in a good head on good shoulders. And there was so much of Mouth that made sense when one knew - he worked as half a pair; each with their own strengths that played off and to the other...but still part of a pair. Now Fang knew.

Mouth tapped the brim of his hat twice, saluting his comrade; Fang could know - hell, he was pretty well convinced it'd be a good idea to try finding Fang in the waking world. Supposing, of course, that both dwelt there. Fang's un-ruffled tail and slightly less tense shoulders told him that they - as comrades - were good; Judgement had passed neither way, which was a good sign all on it's own - and having someone else in Wonderland that he could breath easier with comforted RavenousDelirum quite a bit.

Apparently, it relaxed Fang some too, because he was treated to yet another of his memories: a blank room, empty walls - slowly being covered with pictures and images of every kind by a dark-haired female. Satisfaction was felt and he found himself smiling a bit - wanting to make a space into one's own was something he - and probably most Grue, for that matter - could understand completely. That was some of the reason why they all augmented their clothing: so it was theirs.

He moved a step or two closer to Fang without thinking about why he did it; if something was going to go down - and with all the creeple standing about looking various stages of dumbstruck or preoccupied, it seemed that it was likely - he was going to stand and fight....and it would be all the better if he had someone he could trust - even a bit - at his side.



With security came calm and came a memory unbidden, creeping up all it's own to drown his senses. He's young again, sitting with Nahm on what amounts to a tire-swing and watching a large number of Grue going by. It's one of the major get-together events hosted by - and mostly for - the Clan and while the twins currently find it to be only a source of delicious food, decent music and endless trouble to be making, some day they might find their mate(s) during some such festivities.

Like their parents and so many others had.

And like the couple walking tail-in-tail apparently had. Through the crush of creeple, the twins picked out this single pair because they could all but see little hearts exploding around them. The boils cocked their heads to the left at the same time, turned to look at each other at the same time and then shrugged at the same time: their tails were twined too. But because they were them, not 'cause they were courting anybody.

"Isn't that 'Red? I can't tell who the ghoul is though--" They murmured to each other, determining that yes that was their cousin Shred making kissy-face-eyes at ...well, she wasn't familiar at all. Maybe someone's friend from a Clan they usually didn't get to visit?

"But she looks like she's met him before..." Nahm whispered while mouth nodded. As they looked on, 'Red un-twined his tail long enough to drop down on one knee (he liked those horrible Human movies, for some reason) and to offer up a gift the boils couldn't quite pick out to his ghoul-friend.

"Bet there's gonna be a mating ceremony. So groooss." Being small things, neither had any interest in such lovey-dovey garbage, but the older version of Mouth, reliving this old, old memory found it strangely sweet. As he shook the memory back where it belonged, he made a mental note to contact cousin 'Red...see how he and his mate were doing...

It was with love that Shiloh tried to do all things, a methodology imprinted on him by someone special when he was young, a methodology that decreed there was no point in doing things any other way, that negativity and hate had no place among heroes.

It wasn't true, of course, and was a practice with many flaws, but nonetheless it was with love that Shiloh followed Ian onto the battlefield, trying to resist the draw of the queen because he knew what she offered was not love but a false hope and nothingness, the promise of vacant memories forever trapped in silence. But the air of the battlefield was strange, electric and distorted and he momentarily lost his way, lost Ian and when he did finally find him, it wasn't Ian as he knew and it wasn't the battlefield anymore but a classroom and Ian several years younger, several years less battered by time, the smile on his face genuine as Shiloh'd ever seen it, was warm as the man who smiled in return's.

Patrick.

Shiloh knew, had known, and yet he hadn't known at all. He could fathom the pain of loss, the pain of knowing someone and then the emptiness of where they had been but not like that. He hadn't known Patrick and he was reminded of how little he really knew of Ian. He'd stuck his head in the sand, for better or for worse, because it was easier to just focus on the now, on the Ian he knew now and not on who Ian had been then, not who the Ian he was going to be. But in the end, each Ian mattered, every step, every memory, had led them to where they were now. Shiloh wasn't jealous, not by any stretch, but the memory made him sad, sad that Ian had had to lose Patrick, sad that he couldn't reach into that memory and pull him back.

But then, could he give Ian up? As the Queen drew them ever closer, his own memories stirred and the classroom was the training fields, the sun warm and shining and the two of them had foregone training in favour of careful flirting, one completely aware and the other oblivious. He knew now, of course, and it was with fondness that he settled back into the memory, into the smothering heat that didn't seem so bad as he sat in front of Ian, Ian's fingers in his hair, braiding the sticky damp mess away from the back of his neck. The grass made little marks on the skin of his legs and he picked at it while they talked about silly things, about everything and anything. Shiloh played the fool, was the fool, as Ian leaned forward and kissed him and he was surprised again all over, surprised because it was a lifetime's worth of hoping come true in a split second, a dream come true yet at the same time entirely unlike his dreams.

He remembered being frustrated, frustrated that Ian had taken the initiative to act but couldn't seem to find the words afterward, and Shiloh didn't know because he'd never kissed a guy before, had never really kissed anyone and Ian had kissed him, so Ian should be the one to take responsibility. The memory ended, as they parted ways with an ultimatum between them and with each other's shirts.

Everything about the memory was bright and vivid and alive and he knew the ending, he liked the ending, he didn't want to give it up, even if there was some way he could. But what he wanted and what he did were two different things, and that code of love he so very closely followed had him asking all the wrong questions, it dampened the glow of his memory and made him think, what if? He wasn't Patrick and he would never be, he never wanted to be. He couldn't fill that place, that void that he'd left but maybe he could make a new one, a space for him in Ian's heart for him, slowly but surely. He could help Ian find happiness again, he could try, he could.

If only Ian would let him.

A reflection of Mouth's past, an almost gentle memory, the scareling grues whispering to each other speculatively about a new pair, not yet old enough to find it interesting; Fang could sense the faint sweetness to the memory, the alteration in tone, and he wondered if Mouth anticipated pairing with someone, sometime. If he had an eye on someone, out in the world.



The memory called to one of his own, a memory of being similarly young, about the same age --

-- she fidgeted on the stone bench as her uncle bowed his head to the Huntsman he was swearing to, watched with only minor interest as he changed into his natural form and sat. The Huntsman wore a wide rack of antlers, and his horn hung at his belt. He fastened a wide leather collar around the hound's neck, grasped his muzzle and shook it gently, and accepted the lick that acknowledged his mastery.

The Huntsman stepped back, smiling, and the four other Hounds who had been lying quietly behind him got up now, trotting forward to sniff and inspect their new packmate in formal acceptance. It was all ritual, Mama had told her; the pack had already accepted Uncle, or the ceremony wouldn't be happening. Uncle stood calmly, tail waving, and when the other Hounds tipped their muzzles up to howl a long, eerie note, he joined in.

It was a good memory, even if Fang had been bored at the time. It was not a pairing, not a wedding, but it was still love, love and acceptance, and Fang envied his uncle, just a little.