#ansul

Ansel was born on Mandalore toward the end of the Mandalorian Civil War. Ansel’s parents, being traditionalist Mandalorians, were banished to Concordia along with the other Mandalorians that refused to give up their traditions and ways.

Ansel’s parents did their best to make the most out of their life on Concordia the first few years, however the inner conflict among the clans and Clan Viszla’s heavy hand ultimately drove his family and some other Mandalorians off Concordia and settle on the planet Roetha.

Ansel’s father became the leader of the new Mandalorian sect and for a time they lived guarded lives, taking bounty hunting jobs and doing their best to survive. Ansel’s parents were very loving and trained Ansel in the Mandalorian Way.

That all changed one day when a village begged the mandalorians to defend them from the governor’s thugs that had been pillaging their town. Although there was disagreement among the clan members, the mandalorians got involved and became essentially heroes to the village and others. The corrupted ruler, finding the Mandalorians a problem, hired a bounty Hunter/assassin that specializes in killing Mandalorians and was given the instruction to kill the entire group, not even leaving the children alive.

Miraculously, Ansel (now 14) had survived the attack and was seemingly the last survivor. With no other place to go, he went to the village the mandalorians first helped who took him in. They did their best to care for him for a time, but feared for his life. The village worked together to get Ansel off world to Abregado-rae where it was rumored there were other Mandalorians.

The Mandalorians on this planet took him in and he lived with them from them on. The leader personally trained him and basically adopted him. At first Ansel craved revenge, but the leader taught him to let go of his hate and to put his energy into the desire to protect the clan.

Ansel would have that chance to protect the clan when the same bounty Hunter/Assassin that killed his family’s clan was hired to hunt down and kill the clan. In a fight that earned Ansel his facial scars, Ansel managed to defeat and slay the assassin.

During the fight, the leader had been killed, leaving Ansel to be his successor. For years since, Ansel has been leading the sect and helping them to survive as the Galaxy became more and more dangerous under Sidious’ rule. He hopes that one day he could return to Mandalore and help to restore it to the glory of the ancient days under a worthy Mand’alor.

Of course, they had to stop that eventually. A bit sooner than either of them would have liked, but then, neither of them was super fond of the notion of exhausting themselves before they got home. Though it would have been so easy to get lost in one another the way they'd both sworn to themselves in private they would do the moment they were reunited, they had other shit to do first. With utmost reluctance and only after promising to break a -lot- of furniture later, they separated to tend to their "guests." Shedwyn slipped away to chat with Leon and Cay, and Terry went to find Ansul and Toffee (who nearly killed him trying to pounce him like an excited puppy).

Wolf–the deeply ironic nickname Ansul had earned while deployed–was not difficult to find, smoking a cigarette a few meters away from Toffee and the worgen. He'd stripped back down into his civilian clothes and was reading one of the books that had been part of the "shrine" around Terry's wildseed. For all that he'd been ready to commit a whole lot of murders, the gunman was not willing to make a break for it once the moose stopped sitting on him. For one thing, the moose was still nearby, and for another, several of his ribs were either bruised or broken already. A few knives and the Babygirl knockoff were also arranged next to Wolf for easy access if their captive so much as coughed wrong. The gunman refused to shift back to human form, but Terry would have been surprised if he had; dumbest idea in the world, showing your enemy all your faces. 

Wolf didn't look up when Terry approached, but they both knew perfectly well that Wolf knew he was there.

For the time being, Terry ignored the gunman, coming to a stop about two arms lengths away. After a moment, he tilted his head, then offered, "It doesn't get any better in th' second book."

Wolf looked confused for a moment but was insistent upon finishing the paragraph before marking his page and closing the book. He looked up at Terry quizzically. "Long as the second one's as good as this one, 'at's fine." To his credit, Terry didn't flinch at the comment on the book's quality, only saying, "As good as, I spose," before he took a couple steps closer.

His friend took a deep drag of his cig while looking Terry up and down. "Practically glowin', y'know that?" The word 'glowing' made Terry roll up a sleeve on his borrowed shirt to check for that creepy circuitry stuff, but thankfully, it was gone.

He gave Wolf a bit of a smirk. "Wuzzat intentionally smartassed, or...?"

"Nah, the literal glow's gone, now. 'S'just the figurative kind. Y'know, like y'just got resurrected, your kids told you they love you, and y'fucked the love of your life a dozen times, all in the space of like an hour."

The smirk shifted to a genuine, if subdued, smile as Terry rubbed the back of his neck. "...Not quite a dozen." Though it stayed on his face, the smile shrank a bit, and he stopped closing the distance. "Yer about th' only one tha' 'asn't done some kinda jumpin' fer joy yet."

Wolf put the book down with exaggerated care, buying himself a little time to figure out his response. "For them... you not bein' there was a hole in their lives. For me..." He sighed and patted the spot next to him, opposite the weapons and book. The Gilnean sat down as he was invited. 

"Still a hole, but one I heaped a lot of frustration into."

Terry raised a brow. "Th' fuck's tha' supposed t' mean?"

"... Hatin' the dead don't hurt the dead. I made some dumb choices, an' caught a lotta hell for 'em, an' it was easier t'blame you for it all while I was goin' through it, y'know?"

"...yeah. Yeah, I know." After a short, pensive silence, Terry asked, "Was it you?"

Wolf frowned, confused again. "Was what me?"

"Last thin' I r'member clearly b'fore I was..." He couldn't quite bring himself to say 'dead,' no matter how accurate it might have been. "...here... was chasin' Toffee into a void rip an' gettin' kicked back out of it. Without 'im. I thought... I thought I was never gonna see 'im again."

"Oh." Wolf's brows went up as he looked over at the moose. "Yeah, that was me. Uh... Five months MIA. Lotta fallout." He looked at his hand and the faint, bluish pockmarks on the back of it. "Lots."

Terry's expression was hard to read, even more so than his usual, even for Wolf, who'd spent the better part of two years sharing a tent with him, as he examined that hand. After what seemed like a frickin' eternity, the Gilnean reached out to set his own hand over the marks there. "I'm sorry."

Wolf went very, very still for a while, and his voice was barely above a whisper when he replied, "I know. An' 'm sorry I told 'em you were dead."

That got a laugh out of Terry that seemed to startle even him, and made him laugh harder for a second. "Well it ain't like it wasn't true, right?"

Wolf leaned away. "Iunno, was it? Y'seem pretty alive to me." After all, it stood to reason that if resurrecting the dead just by going to the Shadowlands and finding them was possible, they'd have had an epidemic of returning souls on Azeroth by now.

"I' ave... absolutely no idea wha' I was b'fore or wha' I am right now. Eonar certainly said I never died, but... fuck, thinkin' about it is just... it almost 'urts t' wrap my brain around it."

Terry brought both hands up to scrub at his face, heaving a long, extraordinarily exhausted sigh. "...why are you sorry fer tha'?"

As they talked, Wolf spun his hands slowly around each other. "...I saw you get booted back to Azeroth. Made somethin' to follow you, to get us back. But when I got back, I found out you'd been missin' that whole time, too. An' I saw 'ow people were destroyin' themselves lookin' for you. So I told 'em you were dead. An'... An' I was mad at you for it all."

Direct as always and unwilling to let anything go unsaid after everything he'd been through, Terry let his hands drop away from his face. "Why'd y' tell 'em I was dead?"

It took him a few tries to actually get words out, and when he did, he was much more precise about his diction. "You... were either dead, which would suck, but we'd get over it if we just moved on, or you'd abandoned everyone - everyone - and that would be worse."

Terry tilted his head, narrowing his eyes a little. "...Okay. But why'd you tell 'em I was?"

"... 'cause if you weren't, I was gonna wreck myself lookin' for you."

"I dare say y' already did." He gestured toward Wolf's hands.

Wolf looked at his hands again and heaved a sigh. "... I'd been back.. Iunno, less than a day, more than an hour, when they showed up in the clinic I'd stumbled into. In Pandaria." 

"Pand–?! Fuckin'... fuck, o' course it bloody would..." He trailed off as his battle buddy kept talking, expression quickly falling blank and wooden in lieu of showing open pity. Terry knew better.

"I was- I was really messed up, man. Bein' in that place that long, it'll fuck up anyone, mentally and physically. I was in... I needed some surgeries done, some of 'em real big, an' I needed rest' fore we could do 'em, but they ordered me to be in Uldum to hunt for you.. An' I was- I'm still kinda mad at you. I ended up just tellin' 'em you were dead. Got your shit kicked in by a moose, and dumped somewhere deserted, of course you were dead."

"Well... I'm 'ere, now. If yer still needin' t' get shit outta yer system, I've never been so punchable."

Wolf rolled his eyes and reached out to firmly hold Terry's face by his jaw. There was the briefest twitch to the man when Wolf reached for him–they both knew he had temper problems, after all, and he'd quite literally just given him permission to punch him. "'My choices are my own an' no one else's.' 'Sides, I'd lose my anger management chit."

"Then I don't think yer tha' mad at me. I think yer mad cuz y'don't know wha' else t' be."

Wolf released him with a nod and a bit of a shrug. "Could be." He leaned back on his hands and looked up at the amazing skies of Ardenweald. "Barnes had that sayin' about anger bein' a fake emotion to shield your real emotions, an' all that."

"Gods forbid we validate Barnes' bullshit t'day, on top o' ev'rythin' else." Terry chuckled, mirroring Wolf and finally looking up for more than a second or two. "...I kin think o' worse places t' wake up from a nightmare.'

Wolf glanced around the grove, taking in first the scorch marks and discarded weaponry. Then, he considered the loving little shrines still set up around Terry's pod. Then he looked back up. "Yeah. Definitely worth the trip."

They sat there in silence for a bit longer until Terry scooted closer and leaned over to kiss the scruffy, battered man on the cheek. "Glad t' see you too, ass'ole."

Wolf looked at him out of the corner of his eye, but didn't do more than lean his shoulder against the other man's and say, with a slight smile tugging at the corner of his lips, "Worse company to wake up with, too." He made a point of not pulling away after he fell silent.

And with that heartfelt reaffirmation of love and undying loyalty, they sat together and watched Ardenweald's sky for a while. The pleasant silence was only interrupted once in a while, when one of them decided to kick the gunman in the ribs.