[P] r.i.p. to my youth;

[Acton]

Acton these violent delights have violent ends   There was blood in the air and for once Acton did not welcome it.  Oh, how familiar was the spark beneath his skin, like a storm on the horizon. The buckskin felt electric, kinetic; for the first time in a long time even his magic couldn’t sit still, and his markings shifted like a magician’s trick. To look at him was to look at a black mask with molten eyes, a smile that could hardly be called a smile at all.  But there was no one looking as he made his way out of the city, the smoke of midnight bonfires still on his skin. He was a dampened flame as he walked, half-hidden beneath a clouded sky. The City of Stars had no such light tonight, and that was well enough, for Acton was back on Crow business.  He had not yet untangled his barbed-wire thoughts after hearing about Raum’s latest sin. Acton could not decide if he was surprised, could not decide if he was angry, could not decide if he was disappointed or sickly proud or most of all afraid. The territory of thoughts was never one he walked well; that was always a strength of the Ghost. But surely, surely, his brother had not truly meant to kill Isra. (And if he had? Oh, Acton can not yet consider it.)  As he walked in the silent darkness, his memory carried him away, another meeting with his brother-Crow on a mountain. That day on the peak had been the beginning of this long and twisting story, when Raum was a spy in the Sun God’s court and Acton was always starving for trouble. The buckskin never thought he would be the one to finally have his fill of blood.  Despite the tang of pine, the thick sweet summer-smell of the mountain as he climbed, the taste on his tongue was only bitter. His eyes sparked at every movement, his ears shifted for each sound, but even so some dark part of his heart was eager to see his quicksilver brother again. And when the hillside turned to brambles and stones, when a copse of birch trees pale as dead faces in the night signaled he was nearing the cave (always a cave, he and his brother’s business) there was no denying the wolf’s-joy that lived in him, too.  So it was he stepped into what had once been a stronghold, a hideaway, a home. He did not see Raum, but he did not need to, to know he wasn’t alone; he knew what it felt like, to be watched by the Ghost.  “Has your hatred finally outweighed your sense, brother?” he asked - and how strange it felt, for he sounded more like Raum in that moment than himself. “Or is there something you’re not telling me?”  Acton was not the praying sort, and oh, that was well - for he did not know what he would pray for, in that moment. Blameless hands, or bloody ones. @Raum let's get ready to rumbbbbbbllllllle