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Felix froze where he stood, the force of this presence swirling all around him. Shock, fear, disdain, disbelief, all pounded out and away from Askia where he stood, gun clutched in one paw and hatched in the other: hackles bristled, snout curled back in a silent snarl, eyes flashing back and forth, around the clearing, back in on the -

The body. The opossum stumbled atop the nearest root and almost lost his footing, both paws going to his muzzle despite the twinge in the one still healing. Now that foul, acrid stench of burnt fur and scalded flesh joined the simmering bile of Askia's aura, all of these mixing together and assaulting the smaller male. It was something he had seen so many times before, something that really shouldn't have affected him anymore, but still he felt the cold hand of dread wrap around his heart and tighten there.

Tall, broad of shoulder, sleek of body yet still decidedly built. Short muzzle, as much as he could tell, with smallish ears and a thick nose... the fur itself was either black or wholly burnt, one of the arms and half of a leg twisted into leathery black char, veins of cool red crackling up throughout. A panther, he thought; some kind of large cat. I've never seen one up close. Blank eyes stared up into an empty sky, the mouth partially open. Recent. Eyes and tongue still present. No decay or bloating. I would wager that if you slit the throat it'd still ooze. I think that-

A pulse, a strain, a lurch - and the opossum threw himself to the side and barely choked back a heave, the stench digging into his nose and taking root there, the sickly-sweet aroma of death underlying the sharper bite of charred flesh. He swallowed, coughed, cleared his throat, nearly heaved again, and after a moment managed to straighten back up, this time deliberately avoiding looking at the thing. Still, though, he knew it was there; he knew it was waiting, watching everything and nothing; and when he closed his eyes still he could see its face and its wounds, as though it wanted something from him. The dead always did.

"Askia-"

The wild dog stepped soundlessly down towards the body, every single inch of his body and every fraction of his scent and being radiating this oppressive, violent mix of - of... Felix pressed the back of his wrist against his nose, trying to cover all of that up with just himself. It didn't work: still the cloying stink of death oozed through, goaded on by sharp rage, hollow loneliness, desperate disbelief.

"Askia! What's - can you-"

"Stop."

Felix froze. It was just another predator that stared back at him from further into the camp there, hatched clutched loosely in one paw, pistol in the other. Eyes that saw everything yet held nothing watched him.

"Go home, Felix."

"I don't - we talked about this, I-"

"Go away. Go anywhere but here. This isn't for you."

"Why? What are you going to do? What can you do?"

In barely two and a half swift, purposeful steps the predator closed the distance to him, one paw shooting out to tilt his muzzle up to face him. Felix grimaced and squirmed, the haft of the hatched pressing against his throat.

"I can't fix this," Askia growled, "but I can see that it doesn't happen again. I've-" He froze, ears perked, then pushed past Felix to make his way over to the covered bedroll. The opossum turned to watch, halfway between confused and disgusted, and saw him rifling through the victim's bag there. A few knives, some bound sacks, extra clothing, what looked like a necklace - Askia pocketed that - and then a small journal bound in black leather.

A sigh of something huffed out from the wild dog. He rested back on his haunches, looking down over the small book with still more disbelief, and perhaps relief. Then he glanced up to the sky, closed his eyes, swallowed, took another breath, and slowly opened it, as though fearing a snake might leap out and seize his throat.

Felix kept his distance. Every instinct screamed at him to do as told, to keep his distance and leave this place, since this _creature_kneeling here was no longer a person but just another hungry, vicious predator who would turn on him at any moment. But instead he set his jaw, clenched his fists - then released one of them for the strain it put on his healing muscles - and stepped forward. One of Askia's radar-dish ears flicked his way, as did one of his eyes; he flipped through a few of the pages, very clearly wanting to read them yet not letting himself.

Scrawled handwriting gave way to empty pages. He flipped back, then forward again, then back one more, and back another. Askia touched at the writing with a fingerpad, not so much following the lines as just _feeling_them; his lips moved with silent words, his mismatched eyes danced along... and then he stopped, lifted his head, looked out into the nothing of the world around him.

"He was looking for me."

Still Felix trudged forward, trying to close the distance between them like bracing into a tunnel of wind. Every other part of him wanted to flee, but then that last part of him knew beyond any doubt that if he lost Askia here, they would never again find each other.

And neither of them would be able to bear that.

"He was..."

The wild dog pressed the journal to his chest, once again looking up to the sky. His muzzle twitched as though wanting to glance over to the body but still he kept himself away, and after a moment instead struggled to his feet, slid his hatchet away, holstered the pistol, and slid the book into his bag with the same care that he always gave to his little song box.

"Who was he? Did you know him?"

Then he stood up. Felix took another half-step backwards, instincts once again roiling within him. I know Askia, he told himself, and he knows me. I'll be fine. He's not upset with me. But... The opossum's gaze flashed over to the body, then back to Askia, then to the way the wild dog shouldered his bag and stepped back over with purpose and determination. When he picked up the machete he held it in his paws for a moment, gingerly touching at the cloth wrapping the hilt, feeling at the flat of the blade; he lifted the handle, looked it over, gave it a sniff, paused, sniffed again, closed his eyes.

"Know him?" Those mismatched eyes opened again, looking towards the opossum yet not seeing him. "He was a part of me. He was... why..."

Grief changes you. It becomes a part of you. It warps who you are, and obscures everything else so that for a time it's all you can think of. Felix tightened a fist at his side. You feel lost, and alone. Like there's nothing left. And then-

And then the wild dog gave the blade a swing, tightened his grip on it, and turned to leave the clearing. He strode with purpose, ears up and muzzle forward, head tilted slightly to the air. Felix bustled after him and struggled to keep up, clambering up and down low-lying roots and fallen branches, twisting in between thick bushes and through closely knit trees and vines, but still Askia plodded onward, already knowing his destination.

That was just part of being a predator, Felix supposed. He had set himself on his goal and now he tracked that goal, and would continue to do so until one of two things happened. Neither of those outcomes sat well with the opossum, and every time he tried to pull closer to the wild dog to call him off his path, he was met with another wave of that powerful, blinding rage and burning frustration.

Stop. Back off. Danger. But still he pursued. Occasionally Askia would stop to sniff at the air again or kneel down to investigate the earth underfoot; at one point he paused at a crossing, looked one way and then the other, and then continued straight forward. Then a turn, and another, and another, pace gradually increasing until he loped easily through the foliage, instinct and intuition carrying him forward.

And the further he went, the tighter his rage coalesced. Felix could feel it trailing through the air behind him like a thick smoke, spreading apart and choking out the other presences here in the city until that was all he could focus on. It reminded him of all that time ago, this consuming, intoxicating depth, teasing him further along until he simmered wholly within its grasp, and-

He shook himself out, realized Askia had gotten ahead of him again, and shifted the bag on his shoulder to try to catch up. Soon he had to stop short, though, as the predator paused in another clearing, sniffed at the air, tightened his grip on the machete, and then turned to dive into the remnants of a short building. Felix cursed under his breath while he followed, clutching his wounded paw close to his chest.

"Kia - would you please - slow down so I can-"

"Leave, Felix." The dog glanced up a shattered stairwell, sighed, tossed the machete up, and then leapt up to grasp at a protruding length of rebar. "You shouldn't be here. You shouldn't be _near_me."

"Yeah, well, fuck that! You need me as much as I need you!"

"I don't - need - anyone."

"You needed him."

A chunk of cement clattered off the broken stairs and rolled across the floor. Slowly Askia lowered himself back down, chest stirring with the prolonged exertion, though nowhere near what the opossum struggled with. Silently he welcomed the respite, though felt his ears flick back and heartbeat speed as the dog approached.

Then suddenly, quick as a flash, quicker than during any of their practice sessions, there was a familiar sharp pressure at his neck nestling beneath his jaw, pushing into the tender flesh there at the end of one of Askia's knives. Wild eyes glared at him from slightly above. One breath in; one breath out. Another in; another out. Pale lips parted to show sharp fangs within; Askia's throat strained with the effort of the words.

"Don't." The knife pressed in a little further. Felix straightened up at its end, forcing himself to maintain eye contact though he knew his breathing belied his terror. "Cross. Me." And then as quickly as he had slid it out did he sheathe it again, turning back towards the stairwell to continue his way up.

The fear rippled back and forth through Felix's body, almost enough to make him turn tail and flee right there. He wrapped his arms around himself, reached up to touch at the pinpoint of sticky warmth there along the underside of his chin, closed his eyes, took in a deliberately slow breath... held it... let it out, then did so a second time, a third, and a fourth.

And still he pursued. The stairwell proved quite an adversary with the effective use of only one arm, but after some struggling he managed it. Normally he would have left his bag at the foot of the stairs, but his time spent alongside this wild dog had taught him otherwise - which certainly made it more difficult, he admitted - and when he got there he had to pat back over everything to make sure nothing had dropped.

Askia was gone. Felix paused and sniffed at the air, trying to follow that cloying stink of rage: it carried him right back around towards the stairwell, across another small jump and then up to the next level, then past that one more. Then down the hall, through a hole that was nearly too small for himself so he couldn't help but wonder how Askia had fit, and then into the next room: cool sunlight filtered down through the shattered walls and ceiling, shards of ancient glass still glittering dimly where they had sprayed out across the floor. The remnants of rotten furniture, steel skeletons of structures and what might have once been a desk, and then over there near where the window used to be, the African wild dog knelt, bag at his side, bow up, arrow readied.

Felix saw everything in a matter of seconds. Nestled within the trees and bushes down below was a small camp, rudimentary and basic, looking much like his own before he had met the wild dog: enough to survive, not enough to thrive. Belonging to someone who lived out here because they _had_to, and because they had just so happened to evade a misstep so far. There was the scent of smoke, a small fire kept low so that the evidence dissipated between the thickly-woven branches overhead and trickled out through the spaces between which the sunlight continued to come down: there was a makeshift tent tossed over a low branch, two more sleeping bags, some various objects strewn around in what looked like an organized fashion, and then - one, two, three, four individuals. Four people. Three adults and a child, all prey, all steeped in a constant haze of terror strong enough that Felix could feel the fur on back of his paws start to prickle.

That was just what it was like for people like him. Constantly torn between fear and terror, never able to fully relax because the entire world focused its efforts against him, through nature itself or its other inhabitants. Down below in the pseudo-clearing one of the adults, a slim hare, slowed where he walked and then visibly drooped, ears settling down across his back; one of his companions, an opossum like Felix himself, set down the bowl he held and came over to comfort him. Quietly murmured words gave way to a slow embrace.

Askia drew back the string...

Fire pulsed through Felix's system. He looked from his friend, to the strangers down below, up to the bow again, and then before he knew what he was doing he had released the bag from over his shoulder, braced his footpaws against the concrete floor, and pushed off from there to pitch his body into Askia's. One sharp eye flicked over his way just before he hit, with the bow swinging to adjust - but still he managed to knock him off-balance, long-broken glass crunching underneath them as they skidded to a stop.

A powerful arm wrapped beneath him, trying to peel him away. Felix held on, coiling himself as strong as he could around Askia's wrist, in the moment trying his best to snap the bow; the wild dog hoisted it up out of the way, then brought it back to press the stave against the opossum's throat. He gasped and choked, turned his head, squeezed his eyes shut - balled up a fist - swung it, connected. The tension lessened but not by much; he reached in, managed to wiggle his paw in between the material and his throat, pushed it away, turned it to the side, and then in another second it clattered off across the floor.

"Felix!" Askia's voice came out as a taut hiss, struggling to keep it low. "What are you - doing-"

"Stop. Stop! What are you doing?"

"They killed him - they - killed-"

All the breath left his body. Felix doubled over, the world suddenly swaying around him. Still, though, he managed to push himself slowly back up to his feet; Askia stood before him, one paw clenched, the other hovering dangerously close to the holster for his pistol.

"I'll make sure it doesn't happen again."

"So? So what?" Felix rose as well. For the first time he paid no notice to the way Askia towered over him. "They're people. Not raiders, not - monsters. And you want to, what - kill one of them? And then what happens?" While he spoke he continued to approach, slowly, steadily, forcing himself against the tide of the wild dog's emotions. "One of them pledges vengeance against you, and then kills you in return? Will that make it worth it?"

"Maybe it will!"

"Look at them, Askia. Look at them."

"Yeah." He tapped the side of the pistol, checked the ammunition, then raised it up. "I see them. Which one, do you think-?"

Felix leapt again. A shot rang out and left oppressive silence in its wake, cutting through the sound like lightning in air. There was the lurch of momentum, the rush of wind, the sensation of soft fur and strong muscles against him - and then freefall. Then, as suddenly as the ground had disappeared from underneath them when he had again tackled the wild dog, there it returned, and knocked the breath out of both of them.

The opossum pressed his paws against Askia's chest to pull himself up, fear and anger turning for a moment to vivid concern. Then right back again when those mismatched eyes flashed open, glaring their distaste towards him now. Around them the family gasped and scrambled back, startled, frightened.

"You can't do this," he pled, looking around for the pistol, unable to find it. "Come on, Askia. You're-"

"Would you - fucking-"

One paw around his throat, another at his arm. Nostrils flared, unable to breathe; he gritted his teeth, felt something in the back of his jaw crack, tried to swallow, couldn't. Felix stared down at Askia, wanting to blink yet deliberately avoiding it; he pawed forward towards his collar, his shoulder, his muzzle, felt there. Askia's paw slid down his arm towards his wounded wrist; then there was a slight twist, a pressure, a squeeze - and Felix felt like he left his body for a moment, the force of the overwhelming pain blasting against the entirety of his being, washing his world in bright darkness.

By the time he came back to himself Askia had slipped out from underneath him, leaving him sprawled haphazardly across the thick bush the two had crushed on their way down. Felix clenched his jaw so hard it hurt, the constant, repeated throbbing of vicious pain up through his arm so close to what it had been the day he had first received the injury; he clutched it to his chest, blinking through tears, forcing himself through heavy breaths while trying to stumble back to his feet. Askia had crossed the clearing towards where the group had huddled together, each of them staring at the vicious predator with the same hopeless fear in their eyes.

"Which one of you did it?" he demanded, voice coming across a great distance. Felix pressed a fist against his mouth to choke back simmering bile. "Which one of you killed him?"

Silence for a moment, save for the ringing in his ears from the gunshot and the still searing pain. Felix hobbled forward, pushing through the dizziness; Askia held the gun at his side now but had drawn one of his knives, the one with the blade about as long as his extended fingers. Deadly sharp that one was, able to slice through fur at the slightest touch as well as skin underneath. The hare looked to the other opossum and then back again, then each glanced over as Felix approached. Species recognition fizzled between the two of them - something in his heart leapt - and then everyone looked back to where the predator stood.

The hare bowed his head. "Do you mean the panther?"

"Yes. I mean the panther." Askia stepped forward again; everyone except for the hare stepped back. He just stood there with his arms at his side, refusing to look at the predator before him. "I should kill you where you stand."

"Yes," the hare agree, to Felix's surprise. His ears perked. "You should. I didn't want to do it. It was an accident, a mistake, I-"

"And yet it still happened. I wonder why that is." Closer the point of that knife came, taking the same spot along the prey's chin where it had poked into Felix's just a short while ago. Still Felix walked forward despite the way the world continued to sway around him. "Tell me how it happened. Now."

The hare swallowed. "I had hoped to avoid thinking about it..."

"Don't worry. You won't be thinking about _anything_within the next few minutes. Ever again. Tell me."

Now he looked to Felix again, and this time that look was enough to freeze the opossum where he stood. Each and every survivor he had met in the past still retained some semblance of their survival instinct, that natural will to live and carry forward - but for this hare there was no desperation beneath that hopelessness. Nothing shone in those glassy eyes except for silent regret; every day was just another yesterday.

After a moment, though, he acquiesced. "We crossed paths yesterday. Or - we saw a predator, and kept our distance. We... used to be twice as many, until an encounter during the last turn of the moon took..." The hare paused to swallow. "But he had weapons, and supplies. And he was wounded. Sickly. Coughing, dragging, barely there. We thought that, maybe if we wait until night, if we keep our distance and stay careful, we could sneak through his camp and take his things for ourselves."

The knife inched closer. "And?"

"And he found us first. Right as we were approaching his camp he was there already, waiting for us. One of us - we..." He glanced out around his companions, then quickly looked back to Felix again. Never Askia. "Panicked. Lashed out. It got out of hand. I tried to grab him. Pushed him instead. Must've been nerves. He stumbled, and fell, and the... the campfire..."

The stink of burnt fur and charred flesh. Glistening, sooty black like firewood, laced with red veins of scalded meat. Dry flakes of what had once been skin.

After another few seconds of silence the hare continued again, voice shaky. "I've tried to alleviate the... guilt, by telling myself that someone in his state, even a predator, wouldn't have made the week with wounds and sickness like that. Could smell it on him. I tried telling myself, I was doing him a favor, but-"

"But you're certainly not doing yourself any favors right now." Once more Askia stepped forward, and once more the hare held his ground. Beside him the other opossum gasped and stepped back, paws held in front of his chest in defense. "Speak your last words. Draw your last breath. You will not have another."

The silence in the clearing gave way to muffled sobs and complaints, the noises of hopeless fear. Felix took in a breath, looked from one pair of eyes to the next, and then the next again. The hare looked at him once more, still held his gaze, and then lifted his head up to show his throat, without blinking. Askia continued forward with the knife -

And then Felix slid his good paw within the range of the wild dog's wrist and skewed it out towards the open air.

"Stop."

Mismatched eyes flared at him. The knife pushed back. "Felix..."

"Stop, Askia."

Yet again that knife flicked in towards his throat. He, too, lifted his head; Askia glared at him.

"I will kill you too."

Something deep within the opossum simmered, burbled, boiled over. He clenched both of his fists, this time reveling in the sharp ache it sent vibrating up his arm. He took in another breath, tasted the cool air of the forest floor mixing with the scent of the campfire, all overlaid with this constant roiling fear of all this prey, and then straightened up further.

"Then fucking do it. I accepted that you would the first night I spent with you. You and I both know that I'll be better off dead. This world has tried to take so much from me, so maybe now I can finally give it something of my own will."

In the clearing around them all stood still. Felix's ears flicked back and forth between the ears, both for their stifled breathing and sobs as well as the natural instinctive desire to keep a bearing on his surroundings, particularly with his fellow prey. He swallowed, leaned in closer towards Askia, and then felt a strange, simmering satisfaction at the way the wild dog hesitated. Those mismatched eyes, the one blue like the sky and the other the rich, warm brown of damp soil, flashed away and then back.

Felix turned his head. "What?" he growled, arms out. "What's the matter, hunter? You're willing to kill an innocent stranger-"

"He is not innocent."

"-a victim of circumstance, but you can't kill me?"

"Victim?" Once more those eyes lit up. Askia's strength swept back into him: the knife poked in at Felix's throat, forcing his head up and slightly away. "Victim? He killed my mate-"

"And so you would kill him in vengeance? Is that how it's supposed to be here?" Whether it was the pain of the blade or that of the entire situation that caused tears to start gathering at the edges of his vision, Felix couldn't quite tell. He clenched his fists, wet his lips, held his breath for a moment, then again focused his gaze on the wild dog here, knife to his throat. "Eye for an eye, always, without end? What do you think would have happened to me if I had tried to track down my - my... family's..."

The screams in the night, overlapping, doubled up, for each and every one. Pairs of each, one like an image reflected from a broken mirror. Close to the source yet still twisted, when side by side. Altered. Different. A bastardization, but the scary part is it's already so similar to the original. How much longer until the two are inseparable? Already they play off memory, and cycle through the voices of their past victims when out hunting.

_ _

I had to leave the place I used to call home, in fear of hearing their voices again night after night, teasing, taunting. As if to say to me, "hey, we're still here." That's the worst part of the loss, and the hardest part of grief: the belief that maybe, just maybe, you were wrong. The distant hope that they're still there, that it was all a dream, a trick of the imagination. You wake up in the middle of the night to the sounds of sobs and whimpers, and your heart leaps into your throat, and you go to the dusty, broken window and look out, trying to see them pushing through the foliage, coming towards the barricaded door...

_ _

But it's something else that comes through the bushes instead. Hopeful desperation turns to pure, unbridled terror. And then what? What are you supposed to do?

_ _

You run. The fear is there, the regret, the fiery, overwhelming rage at the hunters, at the world, at yourself for not being there, for not being enough. You turn all of that force inward, and redirect it towards something beneficial: maintaining your own life. Every day you go on living and enjoying, is one more lived for those who couldn't.

_ _

Felix blinked through the gathering tears and forced himself to look the predator in the eyes again. The pressure of the knife against his jaw receded somewhat - so he pushed himself forward until it came right back.

"Do you think you're special for that?" he went on, voice low. His palms ached from where his claws poked into the pads. "Because you can kill? That makes you no different from the raiders we passed by. No different from the other beasts that roam this city. I thought you were... _better_than that."

Gradually the knife started to drop further, Askia's paw wavering. Felix let his muzzle drop as well; the hare still stood beside him, his presence felt rather than heard, while everyone else had slipped back behind the line of trees.

To hide. To cower in fear of their fellow survivor.

"I thought that... that you were different, Askia." Bit by bit his fists unfurled. He blinked through the tears, forcing himself to continue looking his companion in the eye. "That what made you special was your hesitancy_to kill. You said it yourself: were you going to, you would've on that first night we met. But instead you protected me. You brought me out of the danger, you made sure I was comfortable and resting, you ensured I would heal... and ensured that I would never find myself in the same position again. I was probably two days from death myself, but _you saved me from that."

He lifted his head again and looked over his shoulder at the hare beside him. The stranger had avoided looking at either of them throughout the exchange, but felt the other prey's gaze on him, and met and returned it for moment. Felix gave his best attempt at a smile.

"It's awful that your mate was taken from you, Askia. It's awful that he," said with a nod to the hare, "was the one who did it. Maybe it was a mercy, if you want to think of it that way, for no longer being here in this world. Maybe it wasn't, for..."

Their eyes, their smiles, their little... idiosyncrasies. The voices can be replicated and approximated. The individuals, the people, cannot.

_ _

"...you don't need me to tell you why. But we can do better than this, Askia. I know that. I know you can." In the silence Felix reached forward and ran his wounded paw around the dog's outstretched arm, still held halfway up. The knife trembled in his grasp; though the opossum's fingers and paw shook with the strain of his injury searing out at him, still he pushed through and held on through that touch. "But it's up to you. I can only speak for myself, and I'm not going to ask you if this is what _he_would have wanted. I've been here before, and I made my choice." Up his paw went, shaky fingers brushing over Askia's, coming around the hilt of the knife as well. Slowly, painfully, Felix managed to slip it free from his grasp; it dropped to the interwoven roots beneath them a moment later, his muscles unable to maintain the grip. "It's up to you."

Those mismatched eyes regarded Felix with thought, wonder, and then something else burning beneath. Askia looked from him to the hare, who instinctively glanced away, then again out towards the trees where the rest of the group had disappeared. Then up to the sky again, where he paused, took in a breath, held it, sighed it back out. And then the predator bent down to retrieve the knife, turned, and stepped back over towards the bush upon which the two had landed. He swept up his bow, found the pistol, settled his bag over his shoulder again, and then disappeared into the trees.

Felix looked from the hare to the others as they poked out from hiding. None of them said a word; he swallowed, opened his mouth, tried to give a reassuring smile, and then headed off to follow his companion. Behind them the group gathered together again, watching the strange pair as they disappeared into the forest and city.