Those demons would not take him, they would not clip his wings and toss him into a prison of rotting trees and festering soil. It had been years, those devils had long forgotten his existence, their age old empire had fallen with the sound of a lion's roar, and a bloated, delusional queen attacking her one and only supporter.

He had run like so many others, with the wind on his feet and teeth gnashing at his heels. Ryan didn't make that same mistake again, he was so young then. So new to have to pay his pound of flesh for his first attempt at freedom. They had ripped that boy to pieces, sometimes he still felt the phantom pains of teeth tearing into the soft flesh of his stomach.

His second attempt would be successful. This is for the lions living in the wiry broke down frames of my friends' bodies, this is for the snakes and the people they bite. He was free.

With the night as his cloak, he walked fearless. A scarred, ugly thing of his former self, but freedom dripped with each step he took. It saturated the earth, and he felt powerful. Ryan had been walking for a while, listening to the sounds of skittering feet. They were afraid to be caught and that made him all the more suspicious. There was still that constant paranoia, even after all these years, that he'd be caught and dragged back to that hell.

He trailed the noise tirelessly, anger, fear, something primal and fear building within his chest. His eyes mere pin pricks, he bounded forward when the fumbling paws came to a halt and were instead replaced by an audible thud. Bursting through the thicket, with the sliver of moonlight shining down upon him as he snarled and pinned down the shrieking form, his teeth ready to tear into the anything he could get his mouth around, teal eyes unfocused and menacing. A utter beast, to think a pack could have done this.

But Ryan faltered when heard the whimpers, spittle dripped from his mouth, but he felt like a dragon who's flame had gone out. A beast raked it's claws loudly against his rib cage, frightened. The moon caught her fur and her gray spilled color to his glossy eyes. This was a world where kin attacked kin, for far less than the fears of the past, this would not be this day.  "Em.. Em-Emera.." His mouth sputtered a soft noise, a whisper into the night. He remembered that shivering form, how could he forget? As if the sudden realization hit him entirely. "EMERA?!"

And my nightmares will have nightmares every night.

Within his own chest he'd felt his heart rise to his throat to choke him, his strong legs trembled like a newborn's, his breath hitched. The two of them quavering before one another and those green eyes of his scanned her grey coat. Unlike him, the grey female was unharmed, though thin, she looked relatively healthy given what they had both gone through. He remembered being so envious of her, being so pained that she could just leave him behind, but he also didn't want her to return. She would've suffered the same fate as him, and he couldn't let that happen.

Not her, please, not her.

Always swift and good at hiding, she made it in this world and there was some pride to be taken from that, they'd been doomed from the start. The odds stacked against them because fate drew a cruel hand for them, but they managed to make it. It was a shitty thing to think that they were the lucky ones, other didn't make it this far.

With shaky legs he'd backed off of her, her rambling to herself left him bewildered, but with the things they'd seen and been through... somehow it was a comfort. Her paw pressed gently against his muzzle and he'd remembered the scars that ripped across his face and stomach all jagged and ugly. Ryan turned away slightly, he wasn't the same brother she had left behind, he was damaged just as her, but in far more ways than one.

A light had gone out the day they lost each other, perhaps even two.

The sudden touch, sent a jolt through his body, eyes snapping back down to her as his paws acted as a cradle for her head. "Y-yeah. It's m-me. It's Ryan." I'm Ryan, I'm Ryan, I'm Ry-. The sentence droned on in his mind like a maddening cacophony, and he found himself inching down to meet her. Nose brushing against her forehead if she'd allow. "Em, I'm sorry." His voice quiet and nearly drowned out by the chirps of crickets. "All this time, I didn't think... I.. couldn't have... I didn't know." He was struggling to find the right words to say now, stumbling to make the sounds and coherent thoughts. "Didn't know you were still alive, that they didn't get you." Like they nearly got me.

Yes, we are safe now. Safe, it was such a foreign sounding word, and one that he'd never thought he'd be able to say and actually feel like it meant something other than some dream that was far out of reach. "Yeah, safe." Of all the times he thought of a near complete moment, he never once thought of it in such a scenario. This could have been any wolf and what would you have done? What did those monster make you do?

You are not your monsters.

Poor Emera, she must have lived her entire life with her belly so close to the ground it was a wonder that it wasn't stained black. Tattered ears pulled back as she stumbled through her sentence and her gave her a lopsided, but reassuring smile. One to egg her on and help balance her. It was their resilience that had seen them through, and though she might think herself weak, Emera was stronger than she ever knew. She mentioned his scars and in that moment he felt like ducking his head. God how he wished that those marks upon his body were gone, how he could rip fur and flesh off alike and just run like some living skeleton, pure bone white. "I wasn't quick enough. I'm okay now though." There was a buckling in his voice, like he had to fight himself just to be able to say 'I'm okay'. That trauma would never go away, no matter what.

He should have tooken pride in his scares, he survived, he was a survivor of his circumstances. However, they were nothing but painful reminders that bared painful phantom pains. Each tooth and nail the cut and gored it's way into him attached itself to his very being.

"What.. happened?"

Vibrant eyes fell to the ground before meeting vivid amber. "I'd rather spare you the gory details." A half hearted smile, it was supposed to be a joke in spite of himself, but he was sure that his sister would not take it that way, not for one bit. "Alteron had forgotten all about me, that place was different the last time I was there. It was... so long ago. I ran the first chance I got and nothing stopped me then. I've been on my own ever since." His mind was still murky on the details, but he'd never forget their escape attempt.

The teeth that found the soft flesh of his stomach and ripped him clean open. 'Don't kill him! DON'T KILL HIM! HURT HIM! Make him wish he'd never ran, but don't KILL him' That sick chanting and then nothing, it was like something clicked within his mind and freedom was once again at the forefront of it. "What happened to you? Did you ever find mom? They won't come after us, Em, we really are safe." I'll protect you.