I can't.

Titania's ears flick back at Vanya's rebuke, her body recoiling, shocked, as if the words had slapped her. She had assumed the bay would jump at the chance of freedom, given how quickly she'd done so before, but something in her expression seems... wrong. This is not the version of Vanya she remembers, headstrong and dauntless and passionate, but a mare with a voice that shakes like leaves in the wind. The anxiety she carries makes her seem smaller, distress draping like a veil over her elegant features, and though Titania would love to ask why this time is different, something holds back her tongue.

She finds her answer when Vanya speaks again, but it brings her no relief - only a heart that breaks, over and over and over, with every whispered syllable.

"Oh, my friend," she murmurs, glassy-eyed and blue with sorrow. "Of course we can." Titania steps forward, briefly pressing her muzzle to the curve of her supple hindquarters in reassurance, and lets the anguish sit plain upon her face. "He took my firstborn, too."

For as much as the two mares had changed, both inside and out, their troubles remained the same. They had risked so much, back then, to protect the children growing in their bellies from this hellish place, to give them a life unfettered by captivity's ill-fitting chains, and in the end, Rougaru still prevailed. It had all been for nothing. The overwhelming bitterness of that realization nearly chokes her, thicker than the most humid, stagnant Atlantean air.

The fae draws a shuddering breath, trying to beat back the waves of painful memories crashing heavily over her. Down they go, shoved further into her stomach where they form a stone, dense and weighty, a glowing coal burning a hole through her torso and setting her path ablaze. Her eyes stare into the undergrowth beyond them, painting pictures of monsters she cannot see - but somewhere in there hides her daughter, languishing behind prison bars fashioned from kapok trees and bougainvillea, and hesitation is no longer an option Titania can afford. Not if she is to find Cressida and Vanya's girl and squire everyone out to the Crossing undetected.

"Have you seen her?" asks the fae woman as she follows the other's lead, hope creeping into her voice like the light of the early-morning sun filtering slowly through the canopy. "Her name is Cressida. She's two," she sighs, "with spotted hips like me, long white feathers below the knee, and a moonspun mane and tail." A half-smile drifts across her lips. "Just like her father." How the jade-eyed King could look upon her and see himself, she has no clue - but maybe it's not about that anymore. Maybe it's about control. About hitting Titania where it hurts the most.

Thank the Gods, she thinks, for friends like Vanya, and trails her happily into the jungle's dark depths.