He suffers through her anger quietly, irritation a jolt of tension in the thick of his jaw but nothing else. So many of her facts are wrong, and his reactions leap to the back of his throat readily, but he keeps them quiet and contained until she is puffing and furious, but silent once more. His voice rises then, in counterpoint, a deep rumbling that precedes the storm of his own irritation. His pride is moved aside to give room to his own anger, and though it is cathartic to set it free, and he knows they both need it, the guilt must also be set temporarily aside.

"Leave you open for a kill I would not have made? You think trying to kill or maim your opponent is okay?" he is so astounded by her lack of care that he merely stares at her, truly aghast and disgusted by the notion. Shaking his head in disappointment, he continued. "A respite? Yes. But do not lie to me, Resplendence, for you were screaming his name and demanding he stop. A respite I could have accepted, but not the possibility of him blinding me for life just because he stupidly thought I would actually seriously hurt you," he snapped harshly, trying to get it through her thick skull just how badly everything could have turned out. Did she not see how she'd lost control of Valiance? Kaj did not think of companions as subservient, or to be commanded around, but they should be punished for such things just as children should in his opinion. He should not be rewarded for nearly stripping Kaj of his entire life and ability to defend himself.

Did she truly think he thought her useless? His anger only boiled and bubbled, growing beneath the massive cavity his chest supplied. Nostrils flared and he glared at her, trying still to keep his tongue in check. "I don't think you're useless, Resplendence," he snapped in frustration, just as he had on the battlefield. "I think you are a brilliant herbologist, an even better gardener, and an extraordinary medic regardless of the magic the land gives you. Of course I consider you to be breakable, I care for you, of course I'm going to worry! Especially when you're still growing, you're not whole yet and you know it!" A part of him was furiously proud that she was actually yelling, actually standing up and talking back. The other part was disgusted by her excuses, and the archaic part of him demand he put her in her place. He was at war with himself just as he was at war with her.

"You were stripped of your title because you disappeared! You were gone, you left, and nobody knew if you would bother to return!" That was a fierce point of anger with him, and she had crossed a line by bringing it up and throwing it in his face, when he was looking after his herd as he should have. "I would not stand by while my people hurt because of your selfishness! Our ranks change based on who is there, on who deserves them! You abandoned the herd, your title, me! You didn't deserve it then, and I couldn't find you to ask why, or to prepare you!" His mohawk must give him the distinct expression of a bristling cat, which was likely the best description of his emotions and state of mind anyways.

Electricity began to buzz around him in his anger, and he was blind to it, his emotions so out of control it began zapping through the strands of his newly burnt hair while Resplendence idiotically continued to defend nearly sending Kaj to his death by taking away his vision and flight. "You are such an idiot!" he screamed in frustration, eyes seeming to glow with the force of his budding magic. "I don't care if you do it in front of me! What if you had been fighting Nayati, and she accidentally did the same damn thing to your leg? What if Valiance blinded your little girl? What if he burnt her beyond recognition? I don't give a damn if it was me! Because this is so much more than you are thinking it is, Resplendence!" How dare she say it wouldn't have happened in another spar? They were having a spar when it had happened!

"I won't forgive him, nor you. You could have sent me to my death, Resplendence. I wouldn't be able to lead, or fly, or see. I would have been crippled, and you don't even fucking care that it was Valiance who could have done that! What kind of healer would say that?!" His magic snapped and buzzed ominously, but he forcibly kicked it down and away until the blue of it dulled and began to disappear.

Frustrated, he stomped hard on the ground of the Veins, rocks scattering beneath the force of it. "I was going to promote you after our spar, but now you're showing that I shouldn't! How could you have so little care when you could have done that to your daughter, to your friends?!" He was half tempted to retract the offer completely, should she continue to be so blind to what she had almost done, but the future was foggy to him as it should be. They would just have to see.

Beneath the weight of her idiocy and carelessness he snarls, teeth bared and sneering, secretly disoriented by her lack of caring. "If it had landed, how are you to know I could have walked out alive?" he spat back at her. "Or do you care so little of me now for my crimes?" His heart hurt with equal parts rage and wounded love, both displayed in the guileless blues of his gaze, burning down upon her like a righteous god. "It was a spar Resplendence. If anyone deemed to genuinely hurt you during one, I would challenge them. I would exile them!" he exclaimed in frustration, wings rushing to his sides and moving with rustling discomfiture. Would she continue to press her innocence, her lack of guilt? When she could have killed or maimed forever one of her herdmates?

A mighty shake of his head and a grunt of frustration escaped his pale whiskers at her whispered, pitiful words. Where once he would have crooned and taken sympathy, he was instead irritated and at the end of his rather lengthy patience. "You ask why nobody acts like that, then continue to go on and degrade yourself, which doesn't inspire trust in your words that you are not broken and useless. I have relied upon you time and again for your knowledge, your healing. I have encouraged you to spar and grow stronger, have taken the time to do so myself because I thought our bond would spare you the fear of the encounter. Tell me, Resplendence, how does that show you that I think you useless?" Where once he would have lovingly called her aardbei, called her any manner of nicknames and endearments out of love for her, he instead sharpened very syllable of her name to cut into the defenses she thrust up in her guilt, wanting it to sink deep into her mind and mean something other than wasted breath on his part.

Her choked sobs do nothing in the face of her words, and he gave a muffled scream of frustration. "You are not the center of my world, Resplendence! All I knew was that you had abandoned me and your herd, I didn't even know you had returned until the meeting! I was securing alliances, traveling all across Helovia to the Throat and the Basin and the Falls. I was sparring, promoting, directing, ordering. Patrolling. Getting my heart broken by a thousand mares, including you!" he bristled, words uncontrolled, full of fire and venom and hurt. She had wounded the normally gentle giant, in the place he often showed too clearly, the one he had trusted her with. His heart.

"I could not seek you out because I had no time, no reason to believe you had even returned. Had I caught sight of hide or hair from you in the forests prior to the meeting, I would have. But I cannot crawl to you in every moment of weakness, Resplendence. I wish I could," he agonized, eyes bright with pain and sincerity. For she meant so much to him, and thus her grievances had cast upon him an even sharper, deeper sting of the dagger than any other who had betrayed him in her absence. "I wish I could, but I can't, because so many more than just you need my shoulder to lean on," he whispered, tormented with the weight of his awareness of that fact. It kept him up some nights, wondering if he was strong enough to bear the weight of his family forever, continuously, and still inspire trust and love in their hearts for him and their land. Gazing at Resplendence, he wondered if he had already failed in that endeavor.

Valiance's movement causes him to cringe and tense, only for him to utter a noise of shock and denial as the winged beast crashed himself upon the earth and gave a horrid noise of pain. "Valiance!" he cried, feeling his heart lurch. He had never wanted the dragon to hurt himself, only to realize that his actions had been wrong. Why did everyone have to demonize Kaj? Why was he always the bad guy, the enforcer, where Kahlua was the motherly one that everyone ran to when he was being unfair? Couldn't they see he just wanted them to work in tandem, that he wanted them all safe and strong? Because he couldn't always be there, he was not omnipresent, and someday he could likely fall in battle and they would have to move on without him. Why couldn't they SEE?

Resplendence scrambled to lift him, and Kaj stared hard at the ground, not wanting to meet her eyes for fear that she would blame him for that, too. She speaks in a warble and he sighs, mighty shoulders sagging until he is but a punching bag for her to exercise her frustration upon, misplaced though it may have been. "I am not some mindless beast who finds honor and strength only in those competent in battle," he sighed, eyes blank beneath her wavering tone. "I respected you for your wisdom of herbs, your talent with healing, your perseverance in recruiting more souls for our family. You never needed to prove to me anything, aardbei," he whispered, lifting his eyes to try and find hers. "Never." Would she even care to listen to his pleas and assurances? Or would she label him a demon, a devil, and cast him away without listening to his side of the story?

"I have no companion to know the frustration of their independence," he agreed, Mirage coming into their conversation like a snap of a whip upon his soul, far more painful. "No, I'm not Mirage. I'm sorry that I fail to meet up to her prowess in your eyes," he grunted softly, trying to keep the rawness of that wound from her awareness. "Archibald is a fine soldier with a companion far older than Valiance. You could seek his counsel. Quilyan has a companion as well, and they work together quite well. Lakota and Ktulu and their bears. Parelia and her falcon. Evangeline and Tallis, perhaps, would have been the best. Had you wanted it, you could have sought it, or even told me you desired it so I could have helped you." So many had companions in the Edge, and yet she chose to bring Mirage up in their argument, wounding Kaj and defeating what little spirit he had left concerning their misgivings.

So when she brought up leaving, when she placed upon herself even less worth, Kaj merely snorted and stared at her. "Really? Really, Resplendence? After all I have told you, today and all these past seasons, you think you cannot be good enough in my eyes?" He was genuinely stumped by that, if it were to be true. Scoffing he shook his mighty crown. "If you think that, then there is nothing I can do!" he barked, frustration giving a valiant effort against the tidal wave of his own emotional exhaustion. "If you can't open your eyes and see that, then you have no right to place this blame upon me. Because I have always told you that you were strong, that you didn't need to fight to be worthy. It is you who is holding yourself back, not me," his tail whipped against his hocks to underline that statement, frustrated with the fact that she would never listen. If she couldn't, then he'd never make any progress, and she'd just end up killing herself in her own stubbornness. "You'll kill yourself regardless with your own stubborn desire to not be perfect, and there will be nothing I can do," he pressed, voice strained with the mere thought of her killing herself. But if she did, there would have been nothing he could have done to stop her, because she would never believe his words nor put any value in them.

She steps forward only to crumple with a scream that makes him wince, and he tiredly moves to kneel beside her, keeping his wing close instead of casting it over her, not wanting to frighten her again supposedly. "I can't do for you what you won't allow, aardbei," he murmured, staring at the ground, not knowing whether to help her up or leave her be. "What do you even want from me? I tell you that you're strong and worthy, and yet you never believe me. I try to help you be stronger by sparring, and you hate me for accidentally hurting you too much. I try to return to you your title, and you only hate me for taking it in the first place. What more can I do? I don't know what you want me to do anymore," he confessed, feeling tired to his bones. "Maybe I ought to kill myself, at this rate," he snorted softly, scarily serious. "I seem to do only harm to you and the Edge. I can only take so much of your hateful words without believing them as well. Perhaps you have a point," he chuckled mirthlessly. "At least you will have a purpose, when Kahlua promotes you. What does a lead truly do? Nothing, that's what," he murmured.

"If you all truly despise me this much, perhaps it would be better if I left."

Even the worst of hurricanes spin themselves to completion, to mere wisps of a destructive storm. Though he brings them, she rages against him until they quell, quiet and complacent beneath the force of his remembered affection for her. Her broken words shred apart his anger like glass to gossamer fabric, until he lets it part and fall from his shoulders like a ripped cape. He was supposed to have been her hero, her savior. Why could he not even live up to that one thing? "Your death would have served nothing, because I would have only met you sorrowfully on the other side," he murmured, not sure how else to respond, but he had made a grievous mistake by rising to her anger as he had. Her wounded cries dug dull talons into his heart, only furthering his resentment towards himself. Why must he be the one who only brought storms to the lives of others? Where had his sensitivity, his calm state of mind, gone? And yet her love swelled for him nonetheless, leaving him weak and hateful of all that he stood for. How could he deserve that kind of selfless affection? Nobody else seemed to think he did, and Kaj was their crowning leader in that effort. "And you shall not get rid of me easily, aardbei," he whispered, moving closer to her as if the words would lend physical fingers that could brush away the salted lines of her tears. "You didn't know because you assumed you weren't worthy of it. But I would tear this world to ruin for you, Resplendence." His love came in metaphors of war and vengeance, for it was all he truly knew. Kaj prayed she would understand.

Though there were dredges of frustration lingering, he moved forth nonetheless to hear her words of selfish family that had deserted her for her uselessness. "We are not them. You cannot put upon us those same expectations," the golden beast reminded her gently, wishing he could simply go into her mind and show her the error of her thinking. Merely show her how Kaj saw things, reverse the damage that had been done with a simplistic gesture. It was a selfish thought, for he would wade through all of her insecurities if it achieved the same result.

"I'm sorry I didn't find you sooner," was all he could quietly whisper, for there was nothing more he could say that would really make her understand how consumed he had been by everyone and everything. Their lives melded in such minimal ways, and yet those bonds were the strongest Kaj had felt in years. She'd have to accept that apology, for it was all he could offer, though the mighty beast wished with all his broken heart that he could have given her something more. Something tangible, that would heal the cracks he'd helped to put in her already delicate china frame.

Valiance steals away his attention, a combustion that only leaves them recovering from the shrapnel of the dragon's self-imposed punishment. His bones are weary, far heavier than Archibald's magic could ever make them. He feels as if he could never possibly move from that spot, that he'd become yet another granite tree, one hardly visited. "Now you know," he said, far softer than the words implied otherwise. "Now you can work on it, be aware...try to be better," was the lame ending that he managed to string together, not hoping to insult or belittle the delicate mare any further than he already had.

"But you have to trust them sometime! If you never even try, they'll be stuck outside your walls forever, and it will be your own fault that you missed out on the opportunity of their friendship and support," Kaj snapped, not harshly as he had before, but just enough to form a spearpoint that would delve into her haze of emotion and show her what he was truly trying to say. "Sometimes it will fail, and you'll be hurt, I can't say you won't. But you have to take that leap. You have to." The more friends she could bring to her light, the more that would be there to support her should she ever actually be abandoned by one of the individuals in her fold. All the more to keep her company, set right her mind, give her comfort and support. But first, she had to move past the fear of that overemphasized possibility.

Her teeth at his wing ache a little, but they tear him away from his own mental brink, and he lifts the mighty appendage to drape it gently over her spine. Uses it to hug her close to his skin, sharing in her warmth, shielding her from all he could even if he could not keep her safe from himself. A familiar pose, one that had begun with his sister, renewed with Resplendence, had even fallen to Kahlua once upon a time. But that memory was bitter, a dagger twisting with gleeful slowness in his heart. Resplendence deserved his full attention, his doting. She did not deserve his tears, his own rough edges and broken bits.

"Thank you," was all he could offer, a gruff but emotional answer to the kindest comment she could have constructed in his favor. No, he wasn't Mirage. But maybe he was still doing okay, in the end. Maybe he wasn't becoming someone worse. "I will never reprimand you for yelling, aardbei. It makes me proud beyond words to see you thrive, to see you grow from the mare I found in the snow so long ago. I would be grinning stupidly on the sidelines if you were ever to yell at and chastise one of your underlings," he chuckled quietly, trying to infuse humor into the grave situation they found themselves in. All of it for her.

"Quilyan is my brother, I know him as I know you, as I know myself. He never would have willingly stayed away for this long, I am sure of it," he pressed upon her, as if trying to tattoo his words into her skin. Let her view them, linger upon them, until she believed them with the same force and intensity that he did. "I believe that he cares, that he will return to us...but if he did do so knowingly, if he did treat you so carelessly, then he is dead to me. I would challenge him for his honor, impart on him physically the wounds he has dealt you emotionally. Never fear that I would take his side, should the worst case scenario ever come to light," he vowed, turning to try and press his pale muzzle to her pink champagne cheek, a comfort. A wax seal that he would stick true to his words.

"You've never been a doll to me, nor an ornament. In my homeland, males were merely physical shields. Females were the warriors, the ones who had magic of destruction, manipulation. We were merely there to hurt, we were raised to deal with the horrific physical damage their opponents intended to have hit our mages. I was not an ornament, aardbei, I was a tool. I was nothing. Replaceable. I understand, perhaps in a way that is entirely different, but I understand. Yet we can both be so much more," he assured quietly, feeling needles shift beneath his skin to remember all those horrible years of never truly living. It was a truth he despised revealing, a past he hated to bring up, one he hadn't even mentioned to Kahlua despite his love for her in the past. "I can't promise I'll be successful in helping you be stronger. But I will do all I can to help you be whatever and whoever you desire to be."