Meadow

It takes a few moments, but the dynamite sparks - and when it explodes, she lets it wash over her like the rain now pelting onto her skin, his words blowing towards her like the cold wind pushing the storm through the trees. She barely flinches, her expression blank save for the press of her ears against her poll, but inside her ribs the pressure is building. Every accusation he levels at her further stokes her ire, embers turned to flame, and she bristles as she watches him scan the abyss of the Meadow, as if the rascal she'd been searching for would just be standing there, a grin on his mischievous little face, waiting for his parents to notice him.

When the painted stallion turns back towards her, eyes wide with fear and desperation, she scowls. He looks pitiful, small and frail and pleading, a mouse pinned beneath her claws and begging for mercy, and she hates it. Her body trembles - not from cold, or from the rain, but from the fury rising in her like static electricity, and when the lightning flashes next, throwing her into stark relief, she is a wildcat once again. He might have left her space to run, but still she feels she's cornered. Shame mixes with the rage within her, familiar and bitter, and she can't stand it, because as much as she wants to deny it, there is a kernel of truth in Rehoboam's words.

She did what she thought was best for their son, using the tools she had at her disposal - and still it did not save him.

"You're wrong," she blurts out, her words shaky with ill-contained anger. "You are wrong, and you know nothing about what I've been through. The sacrifices I had to make -" She chokes on the words, tossing her head in frustration. "The things I had to do - the things that were done to me -"

Titania falls quiet, her eyes shining not with ire, but stubbornly-unshed tears. She snorts, trying to blink them away, thunder filling the silence stretching out between them.

A long moment passes, rain and wind and the sound of her own breathing mere murmurs compared to the roaring in her ears. When she speaks, her voice comes low, as if the mere mention of him - of their son - would bring the fates' attention to the thing she had tried so hard to keep hidden. "His name," she says, "is Puck. He was with me for two seasons, and when he was strong enough to make the swim, I took him off of these accursed Islands and under the care of my once-king Oberon, where I knew he would be safe.

"What was I supposed to do?" she spits, her voice breaking. "Keep him here so that Rougaru and his Queen could steal him away from me? Steal him," she says, her volume rising, "so that they could raise him as their own right in front of me?

"I didn't have a choice." Titania snorts, trying and failing to banish the demons lurking at her withers. "They took his brother from me, and his sister after that, and they used them as pawns to keep me in check. I couldn't let them have him, too.

"Unlike you," she snarls, "and your fucking swamp," stepping closer and closer, "I couldn't just leave." When she finally managed to break free of her chains, years had passed, and she still had to search for her other lost children, despite the fact that most of them were adults in their own right. "I brought our son to paradise. I set him up for a life of comfort, of love and protection and the power to avoid the fate of his siblings, and now it seems he has decided that it is not enough."

By this point, she's moved far enough into the painted asshole's space that she can feel his body heat, if he'd let her, or pushed the both of them into the open expanse of the Meadow, if he didn't. The rain pours down around them. Lightning strikes, then thunder in quick succession. The storm is overhead, in her ears, in her heart, in her veins, in her soul.

"I am going to find him," she says, her voice barely above a murmur, "and I am going to force him off of these godforsaken Islands and back to the mainland where he belongs. I will drag him across the ocean by his tail, if I have to, in order to keep him safe.

"You can help me," the fallen Queen finishes, "or you can get out of my way."

Rock, meet hard place.