The creature watches his younger sister carefully, unable to think through what exactly was going on in his twisted little world. His ears flickered slightly, watching her realize just who sat before her. Dully, Bane wondered what she remembered, what Alcide had told her, who had mentioned his name since he was gone. Hardly anyone, was his best guess. They wouldn’t have missed him, he swore. They wouldn’t miss someone who’d made his life hell. They wouldn’t take a creature that they’d detested and remember him on purpose. That was uncalled for. That was something that they wouldn’t do, and he deserved it. He deserved every last thing he’d gotten, and that was something he’d never admit aloud. No, if he was speaking, he was still bitter.

When his name comes across her lips, he nods. “It’s been a while, you’re hardly a child anymore, Daenerys.” The words slip off his tongue, and the tone is still completely neutral. No offence is meant, and Bane doesn’t mean to imply that she remains a child… yet the image that’s frozen in the He has no feelings to have, if that dares to make sense. Of course it doesn’t. It doesn’t dare make sense, because Bane doesn’t want it to. He doesn’t want her to realize how little he feels at all, anymore. No emotions for his little girl lost. There was a crisis that had plagued him while he was on the road—how does a man feel? How is a man supposed to feel. Bane knew how women felt, and he knew it couldn’t be that much different, and yet… and yet what? He didn’t know if they were allowed to be that similar, after all.

Her words shoot straight through his heart. A pain that racks every fiber of his being courses down his spine, and he drops. It’s the first time the carefully constructed mask breaks, and his heart has been physically cut out of his chest. No words come to mind, only the absolute racing of thoughts and of feelings. Mouth open. Mouth closed. Mouth open again. Like a fish out of water, gasping for air… Bane can’t think. He moves from not thinking through the feeling to feeling and regretting it—shaking. Out and out quivering, quaking, and for a moment he doesn’t think he can feel the ground beneath his paws. A literal turning upside down of his entire world.

Bane can’t find words, and he’s not in control of the ones that drip from his tongue when he speaks. ”Who?” His tone of voice is startling. Agony. The kind of agony that comes when… well, there’s nothing worse than losing a parent. There’s nothing that could be worse, his mother… his mother was dead. The rest of his sister’s words fade somewhere in the realm of thought, like hearing through a thick cloud of fog. Bane’s chest heaves. He’s going to be sick, he’s going to throw up… something. Some physical representation of the revulsion that’s formed in his chest. Something needs to happen. He has no idea what. The beast nods as she speaks of the tomb, but he doesn’t really know what he’s doing, what he’s feeling. At this point he will follow the child, and he will learn what he’s missed. Anything to get his feet back under him.