05. Promises

When you join a pack, you make a promise-- not only to the totem spirit, but to those who accept you. To fight, and die, and bleed alongside them as if they were your brothers and sisters. To serve their causes and support their dreams. To guard their values, their secrets-- to know them as you know yourself. You don't join it because you have something to gain. You don't join it because you want to be with your friends. You join it because of its purpose. You join it because you feel in your heart that it is the right thing to do.

Our packmates are greater than family, because we get to choose them.

They share our values and convictions-- our joys and sorrows.

Brothers in arms, and brothers in mind...

...The day you ceased to call me "sister" was the day my heart was cleft..

A true Garou does not fear death, but accepts it as an inevitability. A true Silverfang welcomes the challenge with zeal. Because it is in facing death that he remains fit to lead. He suffers for those who look to him, and in so doing he earns the right to lead. He keeps his word, remembers every promise...

My Alpha says I will not hold grudges, and for obvious reasons, I want to follow this order. I want to,desperately--

for there is nothing I would not do for him if he but asked it of me. 

Yet, strangely, I find that I cannot. I cannot, in the present time, forgive you for leaving.

For breaking your word. 

For using my pack, my family, to what seems to be your own ends. 

... for giving me the hope... hope that others of my kind might have thought the same way...

... and then, abandoning me.

...The day you ceased to call me "sister" was the day my heart was cleft. 

I am so sorry, Gareth. I hate to think of you this way. I hate questioning your resolve, your motivations. I hate holding you at arm's length, when I should be embracing you-- I can never express, never show you, how pleased I was when you joined me. I can never tell you how happy it made me to have a Gleaming Eye, one of my very own, choose to stand alongside me. I can never express the sadness I feel in knowing that it meant nothing to you, in return.

I hoped...I hoped for so much more than this... 

Dreamed that perhaps in you, I might have found someone...

Someone who would join me in this hair-brained quest for redemption.

Yes, I hoped.  I hoped, and that was my folly. Putting faith in one who would ultimately betray it.  I have run the scenario through my head a thousand times, and then a thousand more. Looking for signs, for reasons.... and I believe I have found some answers.

But I haven't found them all.

Just tell me why. Why did you break your word? Was the lure of power, of your vision, too great, for you to preserve the bonds of brotherhood? What foul scheme has caused your heart to turn, to change as the night's evanescent celestine?

I wonder... has the one who walks with heavy footsteps convinced you I am unworthy?
This is not like you. This is not what you showed me. Not what I wanted to believe.

But I suppose it is what it is.

I can understand the Glasswalkers not holding a grudge. I can understand them forgiving you. That is their way-- they do not see things quite the same as we do. It makes no difference to them whether or not another Silver Fang is in the pack or not. They have others. Others who understand their pains and their struggles. Others like them.
.. But, I do not.

When I am reasonable... I know that I do not hate you for what you did. I know that my disappointment comes from a place of sorrow-- and that despite it all, I want the best for you, I want you to be happy. It is simply that this, all of this... makes it so hard to move on from all that has happened in recent days. It makes the guilt I feel all the more difficult to bear, it makes caring all the more arduous.

Brother, I cannot help but feel that I have failed you most of all... 

and I cannot help but wish I still had you here.

the day you ceased to call me sister, was the day my heart was cleft.