Why?

[FennWenn]

Freedom! A hiss drawn from the back of his throat, Fenn seethed and bared his teeth. She had no right to speak of freedom when it was she who caged him in the first place! The sight of Daugi, limp and bloody, made his hands shake and twitch in anger. He had stopped truly listening to her the second she smashed his precious pup’s paw into pulp. The direwolf’s slumped form seemed smaller than normal, weaker. Her fur was matted with drying blood.

And Fenn? All he wanted to do was reach out far enough to console her. That he couldn't manage that… Fenn pressed his hands tightly to the sides of his head, wondering faintly if it he had it in him to knock himself unconscious.

That way, he wouldn't have to watch.

“No, you're right,” Amari replied to his disbelieving hostility. She sighed. “You've had more than your fair share of freedom in the past, haven't you? Freedom, so much freedom, while I’ve had to rot...”

Heavy-heartedly, Fenn shook his head. This wasn't happening. The room was starting to spin woozily. This was not how his friends were supposed to think of him. There was only one rational explanation for her irrational behavior.

Amari was dead.

The fiercely kind woman he once knew, who took blows from bandits for him, who led him to safety at cost to herself, was dead and gone and bones. Only monsters acted like this. A monster had ripped out her insides and crawled into her skin. That was the only way Fenn could understand what she was doing to his best friend. What had Vincent done to her? Fenn ground his teeth. Or was it that faint name he recalled from conversations long past, conversations that long ago flew over his head? Ulroke? It couldn't have been Fenn’s fault. The little Fae trembled, avoiding the deeper implications of Amari's barbed accusations. He never intended to harm his old friend.

Amari paced the length of the broken kitchen as she considered her next move, each footfall ending in a resounding click and a puff of snow-touched dust. His senses were starting to dull and blacken at the edges -- bloodloss, he blamed -- but those clicks remained.

They were starting to drive him crazy.

Fenn halfheartedly raised his hands as if to work a spell. His traitorous fingers twitched from concentrated anger, itching to throw a solid clod of ice at his old not friend. Twitched, but did naught but bring about a paltry few snowflakes. His magic simply wasn't coming. It could barely summon a lick of frost, it could barely chill the air around him. The dull pain and heat of the iron was too much. Fenn could hardly comprehend the amount of blood that was dripping out of his wrists and down his arms; it was like the sand trickling through an hourglass.

Amari, damn her, noticed. “Poor, ickle bickle baby,” she sang, drawing close enough to run her fingers down his cheek. The unwelcome touch forced the boy to shudder and jerk his head away. Fenn reached out as if to slap away her hand, but she was too quick, and had already darted out of reach. That sweet smile of hers was sharp with malice. “You never did get any stronger since our first meeting, did you?”

Fenn clenched his hands into fists and stared at the floor. The icy ball of anger in his chest made it hard to breathe.

Tsk tsk, Amari sounded, lovingly picking up a sharp instrument from the counter. “You’ve barely changed, period. Sad, really. While you’ve been bouncing about from adventure to adventure, I’ve been torn apart and stitched back together again and again, learning the cruel lessons of life.” The twisted woman took a deep breath, eyes glinting in the gloom. Fenn’s eyes widened, almost pleading, as she strode over to his downed direwolf. “They've made me who I am today. They've made me strong. And you, Fennik, you helped-!”

She punctuated her last words with a new swift kick to Daugi’s side, causing the dog to yelp and whine.

“So much help, leaving me to figure it out on my own-!”

It felt as if shards of glass were being jabbed between his ribs. Fenn pounded desperately on the bars of his cage, only to recoil from the sting, a white-hot flash against his flesh. Stop! Tears welled up in his oversized eyes. He just wanted her to leave his damned dog alone.

Amari scraped the toe of her boot on the knotty floor, an automatic gesture that did nothing to cleanse it of the darkening bloodstains. Tipsy laughter rang through the room. Her voice rose a few pitches, drunk on his pain, the sharp tool gleaming in her grasp. “It’s about time you caught up on all the lessons you've missed, don't you think, Fennik? Let’s start with dear, sweet Daugi.”

The wolf, her breathing labored, shrank fearfully away from the woman looming over her.