They sat like that in silence for a minute or two, Titania’s strong arm still resolutely wrapped around his shoulder. It really didn’t take long for him to start nodding off, assumedly not only because of all the crying but also because of the excursion and the exertion it would have taken him to get here. When he hadn’t responded to any sort of gentle stimulus she easily surmised that he’d fallen asleep; she confirmed this when she looked to the side and saw that he’d just slightly adjusted himself so that he could breathe better, still leaned up against her. She smiled warmly, but just as quickly glanced up and saw the storm clouds were still closing in overhead and grimaced. They were very lucky the downpour hadn’t already started, and she wanted very much to get out of dodge before it did; though she was loath to do so given the niceness of the moment she knew they couldn’t exactly stay by the water for very much longer. She’d have simply picked him up if they were in any other position, but no matter which way she spun it she’d have to wake him up somehow so that she could actually move, so she opted for the gentlest approach she could think of.
“Ezekiel,” she said softly, gently shaking his shoulder. He began to stir. “Ezekiel.”
Hearing the repetition of his own name as he came to made him freeze suddenly in the middle of bringing himself up to sit, leaving him half-lying on the ground and supporting himself using only his arms. His hair was messy and draped over his head and shoulders like the world’s saddest cloak, his actual cloak not faring much better. Titania stopped her prodding for a moment, letting up on him. The way he was staring plainly down towards the ground, and silently refusing to look up and meet her gaze, told her that something was up.
He was trying to and very evidently failing to conceal the trembling of his body that was primarily beginning to show in his forearms. She regarded him with a look of concern and pity; now that he was no longer leaned up against her, she was able to reposition herself to face towards him before speaking again.
“Hey,” she said softly, “It’s okay.”
Obviously she didn’t want to overstep his boundaries or anything; he was an incredibly touchy child as-is and she wasn’t particularly inclined to ruin what little trust she’d managed to start building between them. She was… out of her element here, to put it lightly.
Ezekiel, of course, still wouldn’t look up at her. He mumbled something to himself, but what it was she couldn’t quite make out. She frowned. She considered asking him what he said, but it hardly mattered at this point; instead, she sighed, deciding that she could wait here and watch him suffer no longer.
“Hey,” she said again, this time a little more parental, pushing down her own anxious energy as best she could. “Look at me.”
Predictably, this time he listened. He looked up, worry evident on his face. The fear in his eyes hurt Titania, how genuinely afraid he seemed of her all of a sudden, and she could only imagine how it felt for him. Suddenly hyper-aware of her less-than-friendly resting expression she offered him a tentative but warm smile.
“You’re…” he started nervously, scanning her face and ultimately seeming more than a little confused. “You’re still not mad at me.” He finished rising into a sitting position, though his posture belied his anxiety. He almost seemed to be registering the idea that what had happened just before was not in fact a dream of a world where he didn’t have to wake up and apologize for his mere existence, but in fact reality.
Now it was her turn to tilt her head in confusion at him, mostly for his sake. She felt as if she already knew what was going on, even if not the little intricacies. That terrible sinking feeling in her heart had come back and told her as much, much as she tried to ignore it.
“Of course not. Why would I be mad at you?”
He paused, apparently mulling over his choice of words.
“...Well,” he offered, “I… I didn’t listen to you.”
“Hm?”
“I’m supposed to listen, but I-I didn’t. I didn’t do what I was told to do and I ran off and then I accused you of something that isn’t true but you— and now you-you…” his breathing was to speed up again, as Titania had seen a few times before and been unable to react to accordingly, either because he’d ran off or she was lost in her own mind, “You should be mad at me, that’s how it’s supposed to work… I don’t understand.”
Her stare, which had been growing increasingly concerned, softened. “That’s alright,” she offered, gently reaching out with a large, clawed hand. “You don’t have to understand.”
“No, I have to,” he protested, drawing away from her, very obviously teary-eyed and an incredible emotional wreck. “I need to understand. But I don’t… everything made sense before, you don’t get it! You’re supposed to be mad at bad kids, but you aren’t, and nobody is, and everything is so different here and-and,” he was closing himself off again, hiding his face away in his knees and shaking, rubbing at his eyes with ruined sleeves; were Titania of a weaker constitution the sheer emotional vulnerability of this boy could do her in. “I like it too much,” he finished, in a much quieter, smaller voice. “I shouldn’t… It’s not right...”
She was a little surprised to hear that he liked being here, though she could surmise exactly why that was, given that this was somewhere where someone wasn't actively treating him like dirt or, you know, trying to violently murder him.
That’s it, thought Titania. She had had it. Not with him, no, but with the lies, all the shit that had been instilled in his head for however many years by his tormentor, in an attempt to control him, that he was now repeating back to her as if it was true. This kid wasn’t Silas, but she thought of him anyway, all the unseen terror he’d had to go through just to get to the point where she’d met him, all the things he’d never gotten to tell her before his life was ripped away from him by the same man. The same man, always haunting her life, in waking and in dreams, always hurting her and the people she loved like a virulent and persistent cancer on her life, always managing to wreak havoc even when she was far, far away from him. Fate kept bringing his influence to her; for example, she didn’t know how Ezekiel even got here, but here he was, just another one of his victims. If she ever got her claws on that old man, she’d…
Well, perhaps entertaining violent revenge fantasies wasn’t the best thing to do, especially right now, but let’s just say she didn’t think it’d be very pretty. She’d go down fighting if she damn well had to.
Right now, though, she had better things to deal with than to run off on a quest for vengeance. For one, making a positive and immediate difference, taking care of the people who were here now, who needed her the most; the people who relied on her.
With a grunt, she pulled herself up to a squat, and then pulled her kid into a strong embrace. Again, she didn’t exactly want to force him into anything; but she couldn’t just sit there and let him consistently get pulled into the same thought pattern over and over again, and figured there were few other ways to interrupt him and even fewer ways of doing so that wouldn’t make things unmanageably worse.
He flinched first, but said nothing; after the initial shock wore off he managed to grab a hold of her with his own shaking and injured hands and return the embrace as best he could, though he seemed incredibly unfamiliar with the whole hugging deal. He was crying into her shoulder now, mumbling out another muffled apology for ruining her shirt, but she couldn’t care any less about the stupid piece of fabric at this point, not when she had her kid to deal with.
“I know it’s different, and I know it’s weird… and it’s okay for you to feel lost, like this isn’t right, or it isn’t where you’re supposed to be. Trust me, kid, I’ve been lost too. But this is where you are. And it isn’t wrong, it just is… but I’m gonna do everything I can to make it right. For you.” she murmured, still holding him close. After a pause, she continued, “…But first things first,” a quick glance upwards, “We should go home.”
“...Okay.” he whispered, sounding a little defeated, but mostly exhausted.
Calling to the hippogryph —who was now awake but merely lying on the ground watching the two like an oversized family dog— with a click of her tongue meant it stood up right away, and she gently helped Ezekiel (she had to stop calling him that, she reckoned, since every time she did she only thought of the man who’d given him that name and she held a... special grudge for him; she’d already workshopped a few alternate names, though earlier in the week and perhaps even earlier in the day she’d have been a bit more reluctant to admit this meant she was attached to the kid who’d shown up to her village half-dead just a few weeks prior) to sit on its back. Titania was perhaps a bit too tall for a younger bird like this, but she was more than happy to merely take the lead. Slowly but surely, she started to lead the bird up the small incline, the young grimwalker carefully holding onto its neck feathers with just the faintest bit of confidence.
They went home, as one might expect. The last few minutes of their excursion were spent underneath a magic shield, conjured just in time by the bipedal demon and held steady by her forearm; they were not fortunate enough to beat the rain home, but they sure could try and avoid the worst of it. When they arrived Titania was quick but not overwhelmingly so to once again scoop her groggy child up in her arms as he yet again started succumbing to the temptation of sleep, bidding their companion a reverent farewell before they parted ways.
Titania’s mission, if one could even call it that, was finally complete; and she was, at last, finally content to enter her quiet little house and — quite honestly — rest for the remainder of the afternoon.