She held his gaze for what seemed like an eternity, acutely aware of every snivelling gesture that creased his guilty features. His silence passed the judgement, else he would have loudly proclaimed his innocence in response to her, but he could do nothing more than piteously plead for a mercy that he did not offer the child. Ampere was disgusted with him.

A voice, a shout, a name - her name - let her attention slip from the boy for a moment. First an ear flicked, then both, pinning as her gaze snapped towards the familiar stud. As his teeth flashed towards her Ampere's lips pulled taut with a snarl, one foreleg curled against her chest as she sat back further on her haunches in avoidance. She was not so easily cowed, least of all by a healer, but especially not when something this important was on the line. Never mind that this stallion was threatening his leader, this was someone between her and her son, a family matter. "Astarot," she snapped back in greeting, "thank you for your concern, but this does not involve you." Her gaze narrowed at the displays of the dragon, unamused at the best of times, but least of all with the current situation at hoof.

She made to step past him, to close the gap between her and Iskra, though certainly with no intent to console the distraught boy - he deserved every second of despair, he had earned this all himself with his purposeful disobediance.

Another made themselves known though, one not so easy for Ampere to ignore. His voice cast a chilling rankle down her spine, even more accentuated for the warmth it used to provide. Once he was her sun, her light, her warmth in this dreary, stormy existance. She'd lost her Wildfire though, and not long after she'd lost her sun too. The only heat Ampere could fine any more was the scorching liquid settling in her gut; his arrival was just a reminder of all that she'd lost, all that he had broken.

Electricity consumed her visible self.

"YOU'RE ONE TO TALK!" she thundered back at her first, an abrupt bellow of outrage as she roiled under his verbal barrage. Sparks drifted from the ground around her, a live display of her emotional potency. "YOU LEFT ME!" she screamed, a faceless outline of lightning, the vibrancy of her electric gaze the only recognizable part of her still as her magic enveloped her. "YOU LEFT US", weaker now, hoarser, betraying the grief buried beneath all the rancor. "When it was the darkest, and coldest, you abandoned your family..."

Was it that she had loved Gaucho that much, or was it just that he had always been there to take the brunt of her frusrations, for better or for worse? How many times had she yelled at him, screamed and stormed at him, and every time he had kept burning, held firm with a love for her that she could do nothing but return. Gaucho had helped soothe some aching part of her, and he burnt whatever torments he could. Without him she slipped back into heartache, only worse, because now his loss was added to them and the weight was crushing.
If their children were meant to be fragments of him for her to keep and cherish, she could only ever find the worst of herself in them, because as much as they contained Gaucho, they contained her too, and that was the part she was always fighting with.

Ampere grew very still and very quiet as Zero made a last, momentous statement. The lightning that carved her body quivered with a bright pulse. She exhaled audibly, something shaky and hushed, but it did not lack any of the strength of her shouts. "You would, wouldn't you?" she seethed at her son, "go ahead and-"

Her words were cut off as a sharp force impacted her. Ampere gasped, momentarily winded as a great weight settled on her right side, a dull buzz of confusion rattling her senses. A hot line of pain seared through the haze to clarity quickly thereafter however as the lion bit into her wing joint, carving out the flesh still hidden beneath the lightning, just like the hurt she always held, buried beneath her bravado. A squeal of pain blasted from Ampere's nares as she curled around and staggered back, wings flaring and teeth lashing out for the tawny hide. At her side her sparks reacted, morphing together into a hawk that lifted and dove for the lion's back, electric talons ready to dig in. Even if Ampere had the mind to realize this was Iskra, this battle of the heart had gone too far, and blood was due. She would not kill him - she only meant to punish him.