Fanfic:Garren's Return
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"Go away, Garren. Go away, and never come back."
Nine words.
Nine words was all it took to fully destroy the life that had been collapsing around his ears since the night he had failed so thoroughly, so very, very long ago. The threads of compulsion that wrapped so tightly around his head wasn't what did it. It was the look in her eyes. The look that was so cold, and so pained. It was the feeling of the *other* weaves that were being released from his heart, from his wolven soul. As she unwove the bond from him and replaced it with the bonds of compulsion, he fell apart. Unable to fight this foe, unable to even argue, his feet turned without his order, and he trotted away from his ward, his wife, and the mother of his children. He did not run. As if he was calm he walked away from Sullin and the life he had attempted to make with her. He didn't stop to collect his children, although he screamed at himself to do so. He didn't divert his path to find Jenna or Angel, although his heart yearned to. He only left. He only went away.
And he never came back.
How long did he wander the forest around the home he had built with Sullin? How long until he moved further, pushed not only by the compulsion but by the pain in his heart? He did not know. Falling into the wolf mind would have been a relief, it would have been a blessing to lose himself in the pack. But it wouldn't come, and Whisper was gone. He had missed his oldest friend, his brother, for the last year since he had passed away. The old wolf had died as any fighter truly wishes to die, quietly and gently, surrounded by all the friends he has left and with a smile upon his wolven face. But as he wandered further and further from his home the pain of Whisper's passing only grew. It mingled with the pain perfectly, and he could not count the amount of times he shed tears. Crying was so foreign to him, he hadn't done it nor understood it until the day he held his triplet children, but as he wandered lost and alone he cried.
The wolves never left him, but he didn't let them close anymore. Their advice was what he could no longer accept. He was to far away from his roots, to solid in the land of men now, and he could not simply move on. So he drifted on the wind, eating only when he was forced to. Like the youth he had been, he forgot to bathe, forgot to brush his hair or fix his clothing, or to even shave. He descended again into the wild man he had been before, but the pain remained and the wolf mind danced just out of his grasp.
The night the familiar scent first came to his keen nose was not one he fully remembered. By the time he consciously realized he had been tracking that scent it had been days, perhaps longer. And she was close. Angel. A ghost from the past, and a blessing. Like a man dying of thirst, his soul yearned for her, and her scent was like water on those parched lips. He had no choice in finding her, in hunting her down.
She woke quickly the night he finally came into her camp. His ears heard the ringing of metal on scabbard, but he did nothing to stop it. On all fours, he watched her from the light of the dying fire nearby, yellow eyes gleaming in a filthy and lined face, yellow eyes that seemed more dead than alive. Her voice made those eyes glimmer with unshed tears when it came to him. "What did we share when I was younger?" She was tense, suspicious, and she could lash out, but he no longer cared. If she didn't believe him, let her strike him down. He would not stop her. He could not. If he couldn't convince her now he might as well lay down and join Whisper in the wolf dream.
"A scouting trip where I had to find you." It took him two times before he could get the words out of his mouth. He hadn't spoken in so long his voice didn't come easily to him, and even as he spoke it felt like sandpaper in his throat. But her arms were enfolding him, wrapping him in her embrace and her old, familiar scent. He turned his face and pressed it to the hollow of her throat, burying his nose and eyes in her red, red hair. Angel, his Angel. Slowly, a large, calloused hand lifted and placed itself against the slim line of her back, and as he did so he again felt the line of tears at the edges of his eyes and he closed them tight and pressed them tighter to her hair. He would never let go again.
(His decision to return to the Tower is explained in Angel's return fic, since he is her Warder and he goes where she does.)
