rade

They’re dead and we’re here, and the only thing we can do is keep going.

I don't think I'll survive another swim. I don't know if I have another season.

I only know that I’ll protect our brothers with everything I have left.

The sun beat hot and bright on his back, and Rade felt nothing of its warmth. Spring might surround him in green bursts of life, but inside of him… inside, winter still lingered. There was a cold settled into the marrow of the old stallion’s bones, and a burning ache in his lungs. There was a weariness too; a heaviness that no amount of rest was able to lift. And though he went through the motions of each day as if nothing had changed— pacing the Lagoon’s boundaries, watching its southern- and easternmost shores— dimly, the scarred roan knew that he was no longer there. That— save for when he curled up beside Jaws each night— he was trapped somewhere distant and dark. No, not trapped. Free. Free from the grief that clung to his heels like a shadow. Free from the fear that squeezed his chest every time he considered what would come after… after...

Cher, you are free, and I would join you… if I only could.

Sucking in a breath, the burnished-gold stallion turned his body to the north, and began to drift forward again. He’d paused in the wooded clearing while the sun was still rising, and now it rested directly overhead. With so little time left in his life— time measured better by days or hours than seasons— it should have bothered Rade to lose even a single moment. But it didn’t. He moved on as if only seconds had passed since his last step, watching the forest’s shadows unfurl from vague silhouettes into the skeletal shapes of twisted roots and bare-branched ferns. He walked, listening to the silence, the dull thunder of his still-beating heart, and—

The Boss’s ears twitched forward, catching the last note of the call as it died. Anath. Forcing his limbs into stillness, Rade stood trembling with a combination of dread and desire, warring with the impulse to run to her. He’d left for a reason. To run away from her. He’d never forgive himself for leaving her. To her. It was better this way. Easier. Away from her. She’d made him feel whole again, strong again, but he wasn’t. He wasn’t, and all too soon he would be gone. Panting, shaking, the bachelor pinned his ears and squeezed his eyes shut. He shouldn’t go. He wouldn’t go. Anath— she was smart. Smart enough to read the message concealed between the lines of his silence. I think you can agree that we’re both too old for any kind of bullshit, especially the sort that only wastes time. Smart enough to know that them being together didn’t make sense.

But she— it’s never made sense, you know that like I do. And before Rade could stop himself, he was running in the direction of her voice, his damaged leg buckling beneath him each time it bore weight. Before he could stop himself, he was emerging from the trees and back into the light, his gold eyes shuttering themselves against its glare for an instant before they flew wide open. Flitting from one small body to the other, and then finding the bone-white woman who stood between them, white-rimmed with fear and horror. "No," the stallion breathed, the word coming out as a strangled moan. No, no, no. Not this.

Not now, when he had nothing left to give.

Fury erupted within the slender creature, burning away the chill that’d lingered with him for so long. Tattered ears twisting back, he took a single step towards Anath, then another, the lines of his expression harsh and inhuman. But the fear— the fear was still there in the pale ring around his eyes. "What the hell is this, Anath?!" Rade snarled, gesturing towards one of the boys with a jab of his muzzle. "Let’s un-fuck things, you said. Un-fuck them!" The same heat that blistered through his veins was gathering at the corners of his eyes, and the palomino tossed his head to flick away the first tears before they could fall.

"You think that I’ve— that we’ve got the strength and time left in us to keep them from turning out the same as the rest? You think that this will un-fuck anything?!" He stopped a body’s length away, sides heaving and head bowing beneath the weight of unshakeable truths. Because he— he didn’t have time. He’d never live to see the end of these sons’ first year of life. And Anath would only have to look at him as he was— a fragile creature, the muscles wasted away from beneath his now ill-fitting coat— to know that. To know that they hadn’t un-fucked things at all.

Instead, they’d somehow managed to fuck them even worse.

stallion / palomino roan / arab mix / 15.1 hh