You are the star embroidered with love.

With his supply of antibiotic running low, Quicksilver was forced once more into the lowlands to try and forage. With Spring so fresh to the lands, he figured most plants that could provide such properties wouldn't have sprouted so soon. Still, he hoped for some young goldenseal or oregano, and descended Vanderfell's summit to begin his search of the the pack's hunting grounds.

There'd been much on his mind in recent days, with the distance between @Reiko and himself at the forefront. Quicksilver was still deeply hurt by her secret arrangement with Ira that they wed, and that she'd so recklessly offered to hand over their firstborn child without any consideration for how that might make him feel. His avoidance of her was warranted, he felt, while he tried to reign in his emotions - but he did not want to bury his head in the sand forever.

The druid pressed on along a familiar route with a wearied sigh, gaze searching for the distinct leaves of the plants he sought.


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The druid paused, nosed among greenery with flared nostrils. No distinct scent of oregano or wild garlic was detected, so he swept his eyes over the foliage with one last lingering look before he rose his muzzle to carry on along his chosen path.

A pallid form caught him by surprise and he blinked, quick to recognise Reiko's lithe figure. She caught sight of him too, but was clearly affected by his proximity. Quicksilver wilted to see how she lowered herself to the ground. She'd made choices for him without his consent - so why was it that she seemed to play victim?

He inhaled a slow breath, and chose to embrace the discomfort. Ignoring the difficulties between them would solve nothing. Quicksilver moved carefully toward her with a lowered tail and splayed ears, stopping a distance away as not to overwhelm her further. “Hey,” he said simply, awkwardly, and offered a sad smile.


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Reiko did not move to place further distance between them, nor did she attempt to close it. Quicksilver rooted himself there despite his own pain and frustration, keen to maintain some quiet strength - even if "strong" was the last thing he felt.

For days he'd wondered what he meant to her. He wanted to question what she expected their marriage to be, if she'd outgrown the love he thought they'd come to share. Quicksilver felt his mouth dry as the snowflower sought his stare and sagged visibly at her words. Something about her question seemed so dismissive - he translated it into "you can carry on now", and he very nearly tucked his tail and did just that.

He swallowed.

“What did-” Quicksilver started to ask of her, then hesitated. Nervously, he licked a canine, “I don't understand, Reiko.”

What happened to us?


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I cannot fight again, she told him, and his brow furrowed with confusion. Quicksilver's ears pricked forward in surprise at such a comment from her, for although he'd been frustrated to learn of what she'd arranged for him, he hadn't fought with her! He hadn't entirely agreed with Reiko's promise to Ira, but he'd told her he'd do it.

Why, then, did she plead with him not to argue?

“I just need you,” the druid answered softly and calmly, despite the frantic thrum of his tender heart, “all I ever needed was you.”

He settled to his haunches before the Empress, curled his alabaster-dipped tail about his rear. “You told me you made a contract to marry me, to give you children that you'd promised to someone else. Did you honestly expect me to be okay with that?”

It hardly sounded like happily ever after, did it?

“I love you, Reiko. But if we are going to be together, I need to be part of your decisions.”


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“I was as far away as Ira was,” he told the dove, for it was true! He'd lived beneath her rule, on her mountain, committed to serving her pack as medic. Winter and the tender age of his young charges had kept him from travelling to Tsukiishi to reacquaint with her, for he feared the weather would prevent his return to Vanderfell. “If you could ask for her ear, you could just as easily have requested mine.”

Quicksilver was not involved in pack politics, nor did he particularly want to be. He had known very little about the keepers of the Everfrost until Ira gathered her fighters to travel Northward. For him, an alliance could be simple: should one provide aid to the other, it was to be expected in return. Promising babies in exchange for soldiers was something he could never be comfortable with.

He deserved to have a say in the future of his children, however, just as he held the right to consent to marriage he did not propose. He thought back to when last they'd been together on Vanderfell's slopes, back when he'd found her in this very river by which they sat, and how she'd promised to be gentle with his fragile heart.

“You told me you would not force anything between us,” he reminded her gently, but you have done just that.

He inhaled shakily, and lifted his chin. “Shiroshika is important to you and I understand that, ” Quicksilver felt emotion pull st his words, “but there is nothing in this world that means more to me than you. You, and our... and the family I want to build with you.” The threat of tears pricked behind his eyes; he blinked it away. What if they were to whelp only one son or daughter? Would she change her mind? Would they go to war with Vanderfell for having failed to hold up their end of the bargain? There was so much more to it all than Reiko had considered!

His breath caught in his throat, a dry sob.

“I'd die before giving my child to anyone.”


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“I was not to know of your problem in the Everfrost until Ira had rallied her fighters to leave. I was not included in that, either,” he told her. He would've gone if she'd asked him, but his place was to stand guard over her brood. He was unprepared to defy her because she was his leader - not until she appeared to make arrangements to send him to stud.

He flicked his ears, surprised by what came next. “Prepare a newborn for what?” Quicksilver challenged, made restless enough to gather himself onto his paws, “For what reason does Ira need our child? You keep bringing up Hotaru as though I expect you to send her away instead. I don't.” He would not be made a villain. Reiko had made decisions for him and their prospective family that were unfair, and continued to bark at him in defense of those choices. She loved Shiroshika, that much was clear, enough to sacrifice her offspring for those he followed her.

“That's not what you told me,” he answered when she announced that the High Queen had rejected the idea of claiming a child in favour of their union. She'd suggested that their marriage was expected and that a child might still be required - which simply wasn't acceptable for him.

The lesser evil was what Reiko claimed to have chosen, and he felt the control he tried to maintain over his frustration beginning to waver. Quicksilver gritted his teeth and turned his face once more to shoot her a pointed stare, allowing the silence to linger heavily and uncomfortably between them. “Evil is evil, Reiko,” he said coolly, and realised then that perhaps she was not the same she-wolf he'd fallen in love with. The Reiko he knew was selfless, yes, but her priority in this world had always been her children.

She, a mother who wished only for her babes to come home. A mother who would do anything to keep them close. What made a new litter, one by him, so expendable?

What had she become? What was it that changed her?

Quicksilver could say no more on the matter as she rambled about her comrades who'd been affected by Khun and asked what he'dhave done instead, because she'd asked him not to fight her with words. He would respect that request. His powder blue gaze lingered for a time on her face, on the wide and pleading cyan of her eyes. To what extend would she go to fulfil her promise to Ira? The idea of Reiko presenting herself to any other man made his skin crawl and his heart sink.

Pain was clear on his face as he imagined such indignity. “Until you know exactly what Ira wants in exchange for her assistance in solving your cat problem,” he said meekly, “I... I can't play the part you want me to.”


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“You tell me you arranged a marriage with me without asking me,” Quicksilver's whole body began to quiver and his voice trembled, fear and disappointmentand everything all at once beginning to brim, “and you offered to send our children away - all in exchange for teeth. Now you want me to figure it out?”

He couldn't think of a time in his life that he'd ever been truly angry, but it ignited within the druid like wildfire. It felt so foreign to him, so unnatural, that at last tears spilled from his eyes to cascade down silken white cheeks. He whimpered, pitiful and unsure how to channel the new emotions that built up within him.

“You want solutions? You could've just come here. We could've had each other, I-” he sobbed, a blubbering mess, and the budding rage subsided as swiftly as it'd come. Only grief remained, “we could've just gone somewhere else, started over.” He wanted love to be enough, but it never seemed to be. “I just wanted us to be happy! For once in my fucking life, I just-” his breath hitched, his legs shook, and he repeated: “I just wanted to be happy.”


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She erupted, spewing words of how she looked to take care of any and all - and all he could think of was how she could do that at his expense. Reiko thought herself the hero, willing to sacrifice her womb and reproduce to solidify an alliance with Vanderfell. She sought a union with him where he would lose every time: to agree he might lose a child, and to disagree he would lose the love of his life.

In his fragile state if mind, he did not know what was worse.

Soon she was up and she was barking in his face, tears streaming from wild cerulean eyes and he, her verbal punching bag. Quicksilver withdrew from her once more, unwilling to stand and be screamed at for voicing his concerns and trying to make sense of the impossible situation she had attempted to place him in.

Yes, Reiko had offered a union rather than demanded it of him, but he believed there to be expectation on her part that he wouldn't have challenged her. He knew he could not win, no matter what he chose. Either he could provide children meant to pay a debt, or he could watch the love of his life seek someone else that could fulfil her needs.

Reiko brought up his prior interest in Izumi, and how she'd sacrificed her relationship with another in favour of him. It reopened an old wound that the druid had thought long repaired, and he felt it. Quicksilver flinched, visibly, shocked and pained that the snowflower could spit the past at him and continue to hold it against him.

“I'm sorry,” he cried, hating that their reunion, his comfort and his affection had not been enough for her. “I'm sorry I wasn't there.”

The rain isn't permanent, he'd told her only days before. He felt then that maybe it could be.

As hurt as he felt, he still wanted to reach for her and hold her to him. His touch was likely the last thing she wanted from him, so he chose to give her space. He simply looked back at her with watery eyes, and sniffed to clear the mucus from his nose. Had he really been so awful to her? He'd agreed to be her husband as long as she did rip their offspring away from him. A reasonable request! Still, Reiko had not promised him that but instead expected him to create that part of the contract with Ira himself.

The world looked at him as gentle and submissive, weak. He was done letting others take advantage of his good nature.

When her rampage came to an end, he let silence linger a moment longer. Breathe, he reminded himself, and slowly drew one deep into his lungs.

Was it worth it? Much blood had been shed; Orlaith, slaughtered; their relationship, uncertain; her enemies, still alive and no doubt plotting revenge. Vanderfell and Shiroshika both suffered, and for what?

For nothing.

“I am trying to work with you,” he tried, again, to reason with her, “I don't know what else you want me to say. I've already told you my terms: I'll marry you as long as you promise not to send our children away. It is not unreasonable to want to keep my family together.”

He wanted the earth to open him up and swallow him whole. “It-it is your responsibility to make that arrangement with Ira, not mine. It is your contract, after all. I will participate if you or the Queen asks me to, with all of us present, but I... I won't be initiating this conversation.”

If Reiko did not, then he would assume his request could not be met - and he would deal with that heartache should it come for him.


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The anger no longer flared, but it remained. He could feel it simmer in his blood, and in the electricity that vibrated in Reiko's defence - ready to spark, and ignite them both.

She announced yet another expectation of him, of how he was to step into the role of Emperor alongside her. He'd considered it before, fleetingly, recalling how Hieronymous had become King on the day of his wedding to Ira. It wasn't something the druid had dwelled on for long, for the title was far too grand for the likes of him. He was simply Quicksilver, destined to follow - void of the confidence required to lead. No, Reiko would be a fool to thrust him into such a position.

One more thing he feared he could not commit to. He would doom them all.

Quicksilver had never asked to lead his own pack. He'd never asked for anything more than love, loyalty and honestly. An easy life, not one where he'd need to live up to unrealistic expectations. He saw how Reiko suffered for it, and had felt it by association.

“When you're prepared to consult with the Queen and I,” he said in conclusion, mentally exhausted. He was more than ready for this discussion to come to an end, “I'll be waiting.”


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