He rolled in like a thunderstorm, rumbling under his breath, ragged at every edge. The cold air burned like fire in his lungs as he gulped it down, and his back leg (the weak one, injured badly when he was a weanling, unreliable ever since) protested angrily, but the russet stallion did not slow. Instead he only picked up speed, racing clumsily across the dismal, wintry landscape, gait uneven, ending in a sudden frantic scramble to a stop.

“What the h-,” he exclaimed (but quickly clamped his teeth down on the rest of his words), genuinely surprised to see a mare here, with a young girl at her side. She was the colour of storm clouds, Nuka noted with a brief flicker of interest, but instinct warned him not to admire too long.

Shuffling a little, he limped backwards a few paces, eyes downcast, save for when he glanced up at the piebald mare, to add a little genuineness to his muttered apology. “Sorry, I uh, didn’t know anyone lived here.” A small but simple truth, quickly followed by another. “I just got here, from the mainland.” It was something he’d learned long ago, a trick that had gotten him out of sticky situations (but he’d learned it a little too late to spare himself from the wrath of his father, he’d limp through life forever knowing that he’d been a disappointment to him).

Turned back the way he’d come, just to make sure that the hulking great red and white brute he’d miraculously managed to best in battle hadn’t chased him down to get even. The relief that sagged across his quivering shoulders was real. “Ran across some stallion over that way,” he muttered. He’d been too focused on heading inland away from the biting wind coming off the sea that he hadn’t paid any attention to the scent markers.

‘Little boy, when will you learn?’

The words had been something of a mantra. Opened nearly every conversation his father initiated with him. Nuka felt his dark ears flatten briefly, but he did not forget the company he’d happened upon.

“Not gonna lie,” he twisted about, favouring the hind leg, laughing nervously under his breath. “Glad I nearly ran into you guys.” A crooked grin lifted up a corner of his lips, dropped quickly when he realised what his words must sound like. “Rather than your stallion, I mean,” he hastily corrected. “Gotta learn my lesson somehow right? But I’ll take a serving of guilt at having disturbed you over ‘nother scrape with someone older ‘n’ wiser than little ol’ me.”

Nuka tossed his head, and tilted his muzzle towards the pair, grey eyes darting briefly to the filly, before he lifted his chin and allowed his gaze to drift across the landscape behind them, just a little on edge. He didn’t encroach any further on their space though, and that same crooked smile returned, just a little bemused as it settled on his lips, as he shifted his weight (wincing), contemplating where to go from here. (Should he ask about the territory, or would that raise suspicion?) “Leastways, not ‘til I have a chance to catch my breath,” he added huskily.

A truth, masquerading.

Because sure, it'd be good to catch a break. (Nuka had never been so lucky.) But it would be a lie to say that he didn't love the clamour of a fight. He'd been raised rough, and had learned to love the feeling of adrenalin running through his veins.

Fire in his lungs.

And an unforgiving ache in the bone his father had almost broken when he was a far better boy than he was now.