Fall was Shadows Take Flight's favorite season. It wasn't too hot, it wasn't too cold, and the colors of nature truly came alive. Being creatures of much too dark pelt and plumage, she would say, they had to take in what the trees gave them instead. This was where life was: dying beautifully, but living nonetheless. Assassins they might be, but they were not cold, not immune to the beauty around them. He would joke that watching her jump and squawk in a pile of fiery leaves definitely wasn't professional, he being the gold standard of such pristine austerity and therefore able to judge such things. She would call him stupid and then tell him to jump in with her already so they could watch it all fly.
Then Shadelight woke up. He remembered. Fall used to be Shadows Take Flight's favorite season. The cold reality would settle in again that he was alone, and empty, and dying like the leaves. It went that way for months after his crow's death: dream, wake up, carve away a little more at what was left inside. He loved her, Shadelight realized much too late. He loved her, and now it no longer mattered. Whatever life Shadows Take Flight had given him was now snuffed out, blown by the changing winds and forgotten to time. He was such a fool.
In his death, Shadelight found the darkness acceptable. Numbing. His job was his only pleasure, and a grim one at that. Perhaps some of them noticed when his aura began to change: he regained his confident, sly, flirtatious manner, but there was something just a little off about it, something missing. She was gone, but the Crows were still there; he couldn't simply abandon them in his grief. He had duties still to his home.
And he had done one such duty and felt disgusted afterwards in the news of its success. High Noon was pregnant. Soon, pups that bore his blood would be coming home. His home. And yet...Shadelight couldn't fathom it. The numbness continued whenever he thought of small forms tugging at his tail or ears, calling him Papa, seeking his presence in earnest. They were his, and yet--and yet. He had never gotten over the damn scheme that had nearly wiped out the Crows. (And he knew it was one, he knew it was an outsider that had almost killed them.) Time had mostly healed his wounds, and yet this one continued to fester. How could he trust some random pretty b***h to be good for his pack?
He should have thought of that before initiating anything. But sex was just so much easier to do...It wiped his mind for just a little bit and let him forget himself in the moment of pleasure. Now, stone sober in the aftermath, Shadelight wondered and cursed himself. Why not proposition someone in the pack if he was so wary of outsiders? Damn him. Damn him, but he kept making these mistakes. And now he had to think about the future, about sharing a den with--
He could not call them family. Brood, maybe. Children. Blood relations. Something was wrong with him, and Shadelight didn't know what to do except wait and see, in true assassin fashion.
Would he be able to love these pups as they deserved? He did not know. He did not know, and he did not care that he did not know. Not then, when the dying trees around him were more alive.
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