Meadow

Titania matches him hoof-for-hoof, refusing to yield to the pressure of his flesh against hers. She tilts her chin to meet his stare, an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object, and tells herself the quickening of her pulse is anger, nothing more. Her ears fall back at his refusal, muscles in her body coiling like a spring, but he senses the tension within her and cuts her off before she can get a word - or a bite - in edgewise.

Then the façade drops - only for a moment, here and gone so quickly that she wouldn't have noticed the change in his expression had she not been inches from his face, staring directly at him. His dark eyes become a mirror, reflecting the suffering she knew better than she ever wanted to, and she softens - just slightly - as she wonders about the horrors he has endured on this wretched cluster of floating rocks. About what - perhaps who - could possibly have led him to abandon his post amongst the bachelors for a life of risk and solitude.

Then the shields come back up, forcing distance between them again, and before she can raise her own armor, he speaks, his words a poison arrow pinning her where she stands.

Rougaru is dead. My f- Solomon killed him.

All her breath is gone. Titania closes her eyes and scoffs, the small smile on her dark lips joyless and sour, the slip in his speech gone unmarked.

Wrong again, swamp thing.

Titania shakes her head, angling her body away from his. "No," she murmurs, her voice shrinking as if trying to stop the truth, the admission - the poison - from escaping the deep, dark place within herself that she had shoved it in, hoping to forget.

Trying, hoping... and failing.

"I did."

Two small words and she's transported back to that day in the Desert. The lightning cracking against the sky is the crack of hoof on bone, the raindrops pelting her skin are flecks of blood, and the wind in her ears is the rattle of the wolf-king's dying breaths. She shuts her eyes against it, but the image is still there, seared into her memory, and as she struggles against the towering swells of emotion trying to drag her further and further down into herself, she begins to tremble, sweat mixing with the water on her coat in spite of the autumn chill. Rougaru may be dead, but his spirit lives on inside her, torturing her from beyond the grave. He pushes up against her ribs, taking her heart in his jaws and crushing it, pushing the breath from her lungs so that she gasps.

To the ends of the Earth, his ghostly voice whispers from within, echoing their eternal promise exactly as she had done, in those arid golden sands so many seasons ago, just before she landed the killing blow that broke it.

She is free - she is free, she is free, she is free, and she cannot let him win. With a squeal, Titania flings her head up and back. The warmth of Rehoboam's skin near hers is too much, too close, too confining, and she shoves against it blindly, seeing no other way out through the thick haze of her own trauma. She will not yield, not to him or to anyone, and she will not let feelings and the possibility of making up for lost time keep her from saving the children she has fought so hard and so long to protect. "Is this what you want?" she snarls, punctuating her words with snaps of her blunt teeth at whatever bit of his storm-colored flesh she can access. "Is this what you want for him?

"You can get to know your son," she hisses, "on the way to the mainland," and pushes up against his chest, attempting to drive him out and into the meadow beyond.

This is the language Titania knows, one of bites and kicks and bruises. This is what the Islands have taught her, willingly or otherwise - and she will stop at nothing to keep Puck from that same fate.