There is no hint of recognition in Oliver's eyes, not so much as a flicker of it in that first moment.

His breaths are ragged, blood pooling from a crooked nose, trickling down toward broken lips. A shining black eye mars the brother's pale features. 

Concussed, drugged, maybe a blend of the two.

But as the older man drags his gaze across the clearing, taking in the sight of the small army of men and women that surrounds him, slowly something, maybe memory, maybe instinct, clicks within him. 

And by the time Oliver's gaze flickers over Charlie, familiarity charging through him.

Oliver is perfectly sober all at once.

And screaming.  

Realisation dawns over the older man's features, panic with it. As clear as how a droplet of ink craws across a white page, until there isn't an inch of white left unmarred by the darkness. 

Fear.

Charlie can smell it, and his muscles grow taut at the scent of it. 

The urge to hunt bolting through him like a electricity. 

his legs are a scramble of movement beneath him, desperately trying to put more space between himself and the beast.

He is quickly yanked to the floor, the length of rope snapped tight and sends him tumbling.

From the floor, Oliver's voice is no less terrified, no less desperate.  

"Gods, no." The voice is an echo into the woods, a wretched scream of barely formed words. A mantra, over and over. A desperate plea.

His voice is hoarse from Gods could only know how long of disuse, but the terror is abundant in it, but Charlie recognises his brother's voice as easily as he recognises his own hands. 

Of all people, Oliver would know the signs. 

How the ring of gold around Charlie's blue eyes would glow darker, edging ever deeper until the colour took over the whole eye. 

The sight of something flickering, something fangerous 

But even knowing the signs was never definite proof of safety.

That was a lesson they'd learned the hard way, again and again and again. 

Oliver's gaze is on the soldiers, "Please," his pleas fall on deaf, or perhaps rather uncaring ears. "Please someone listen to me," he is shouting now. 

Kallan only fixes Charlie with that same, feline stare. 

Fear marks every syllable. 

None of the guard so much as turn their gaze to the screaming young man in their throng. Do not flinch at the sound of his desperate pleas. 

All of it had been expected, run of the mill. 

Close up, Charlie can see the heavy cuffs circling his brother's wrists and ankles. 

Heavy things of iron, where they sit on the flesh has been rubbed raw and bloody, bruised. 

Gods could only know how long his brother had been in their clutches, subject to who knows what kind of torment. 

The bruises that litter his brother paint a picture of beatings, of forced compliance. 

And yet here his brother stood, pleading for their lives. 

Quick as a flash Oliver has managed to dislodge the rope from his throat, is ducking beneath the arms of the nearest soldier.

His mad dash could be considered impressive, devouring as much distance as his exhausted body would allow. 

The need to run, flee from danger as innate as breathing.

But not enough. 

A second explosion rocks the world, the flash of gunfire hot and white and far too close for comfort. 

It misses his brother by little more than the breadth of a hair. 

The bullet collides with the forest beyond, shattering through a sapling tree.

The young man feels the blow like a direct hit, buckling at the waist.

The forest injured - bleeding. 

Charlie is little more than a vessel for his rage, the attempts to restrain it leaves him trembling. 

But to his brother's credit, Oliver hasn't so much as flinched at the near miss. 

"The next one won't miss," Kallan's voice is the calm before the storm. The weight of the words rushing over both brothers. 

With a blow to the back of the leg, Kallan has the older brother on the ground. 

Oliver hits earth with a crack of bone, but when he tilts his head skyward, to take in the sight of the mountain of a man staring back down at him, he does so without flinching. 

"You're going to get us all killed," Oliver's voice is quiet now, but it breaks through Charlie the same way it would have were they shoulder to shoulder. "You're a fool."

Kallan barely seems to notice the insult, does not flinch at the sound of it. Rather he smiles, feline and lethal. "Not all," his tone is a gentle, mocking reassurance.

The bravery and confidence of someone either very stupid, or very dangerous.

And Charlie knows where he would place his bets. 

A sound, hoarse and weak, like something is shattering in his brother's chest. 

It takes him a moment to recognise the sound as laughter. 

"Yes, all." 

"You fail to understand me," Kallan's voice is the moon that overtakes the sun, shrouding the world in darkness, the fog that hides the truth from sight. 

Frustration and exhaustion both, but prevalent above all - a quiet kind of fury.

The fire in the stranger's eyes would be enough to coax embers from dry parchment, and Charlie lowers his gaze for fear of getting scorched.

But when Kallan speaks again, it is the quieter, gentler tone. 

A diplomat, not a soldier. 

"You fail to understand me," he repeats, cold and cool. "If you wish to save your brother, you must come with us."

Viper-quick, his hands are on a gun, unholstering and aiming in one, swift movement. 

Its muzzle pressing into the back of Oliver's skull. 

"And we are quite conscious you have a good many more siblings to choose from if this one turns out to be unhelpful." 

That is the first thing that kindles a fury in Oliver too. His features contorting into a snarl, maybe warning, maybe challenge. 

It dies on his throat. 

Three more goes. 

Charlie had no idea how they had managed to get a grip on Oliver. 

Even all these years later he could remember the rumours, whispered things in dark corners of their family homes. Muttered only behind closed doors and from the shadows, when it didn't seem anyone was around to see it. 

But in their family home, the walls had eyes, the furniture had ears. 

Even the wind reported back to their father. 

That something from the depths of the Forests had broken into the nursery, kidnapped the true-born son. 

That somewhere in the shadows of magic, a very ordinary boy was being raised by very disappointed parents. 

Their changeling in the heart of the human capital. 

That or something with a particularly vicious mischief streak had sprinkled magic over the crib one night. That seemed to be the only real reason for Oliver's strange abilities. 

Keeping in one place was like trying to bottle lightning, tame the wind. 

An uncanny ability to be in one place one moment, somewhere entirely else the next. 

No one paid much attention to the likely actual cause of these little shows of defiance.. 

That the youngster had been using any trick up his sleeve to muster even the slightest amount of attention from their father.

Likely true because, for when it proved unsuccessful, his father's eyes and attention always elsewhere, Oliver accepted defeat. 

Accepted he would never be the centre of attention. 

Mischievous shows kept for party tricks, things to make little babies smile or ladies coo. 

A skill kept honed, but holstered. 

And it hadn't saved Oliver, not here.

And if Oliver had managed to be captured, it gave Charlie very little hope for the remainder of his siblings.

And Kallan didn't seem to care how many deaths it would take to get Charlie to comply. 

But that didn't stop the whispers, chase them away as their father might have tried. 

Fury that could be unbottled and capped with such ease was the most dangerous of all. 

"Come with us," Kallan's voice carries the weight of an ultimatum, testing the weight of the gun in his hand, but never once allowing the cool metal to shift from the back of the older brother's skull. 

"Try to run, try to hide, and I will not hesitate to paint the ground with whatever brains your brother boasts." 

Charlie swallows, saliva barely slipping past the lump at the back of his throat. 

"I don't care, Charlie," for the first time his brother acknowledges Charlie.

For the first time his brother considers him with something more than terror in his gaze. 

Now it is sheer, unwavering desperation. 

"Charlie, please."

In the years to come, Charlie might have been able to convince himself it had been merciful. 

A kindness. 

It would be as easy as breathing, he could picture it. 

Bodies piling as high as the trees, so plentiful that he could barely see the foliage beyond the corpses that littered the floor. 

A warning, once and for all. 

That the forests of Solsannya were his, and that trespassing here would only have one result. 

It wouldn't work, he knew that in the depths of his soul. 

A kindness. 

Mercy even. 

Slaughter here, of this small army to prevent the massacre that would be to come. Here it might have had a purpose, a warning message. 

Who knows how many might die as they dragged him to wherever their final destination would prove to be. 

Cities would fall - Gods knew it would be far from the first time. 

A kindness. 

The echo is neither Charlie nor beast, but something that runs deeper.

Oliver is outright pleading for it. 

A desperation for death that the beast, now at the surface of his skin, pacing back and forth until looking for the slightest way through, reacts to.

Would have lunged for, had Charlie not rooted himself in place. 

Barely able to, barely daring to breathe as the weight of all of this settles on him with a crushing weight. 

It would be so easy to close his eyes, let go. 

But the call for sleep does not beckon him. 

Instead, something tugs his gaze across the form of his brother. 

Bruised, narrow, and watching him without fear in his gaze, but desperation. 

Please, those familiar eyes implore him. 

But that gaze is enough to make Charlie's decision. 

And Charlie steps forward, calloused hands lifted skyward, breath hitched in his throat. 

Kallan's smile practically consumes his entire face, he reholsters the gun at his hip.

The only weapon in a ten mile radius that doesn't have fingers on the trigger, pointed in the one direction.

With a booming, echoing order, a dozen men unfold from the shadows of the forests. 

Surrounding Charlie before he really has the chance to blink. 

This had been the outcome they'd expected. 

Apparently, the young man was more obvious than he'd ever hoped to believe. 

"Thank you," Kallan's smile hasn't faded from his lips. "I'm pleased this didn't need to end in more violence." 

More, Charlie daren't ask the reasoning for that choice of words. 

Wouldn't have had the chance, for Oliver is speaking again.

"Family sentiment isn't going to save you from the beast," Oliver's last warning, one born from the desperation of a starving man reaching for crumbs, is one as dark as the moonless sky, his gaze fixed to the dirt. Refusing to lift it, meet anyone's. 

"It didn't save our mother," that comes out as little more than a whisper. 

But it echoes, catches in the wind. 

The truth of it, the pain of it sinking into the very earth beneath their feet. 

It is a dagger to Charlie's back, it cleaves through him enough that Charlie almost buckles beneath the power of the verbal blow. 

Kallan has the audacity to roll his eyes, the sound from his lips somewhere between chuckle and grumble. 

He might have mistaken it for admiration, but it is fury that fuels what comes next. 

"By the Gods," that is little more than a whisper, Charlie doubts even Oliver has heard it, but Charlie's ears pick up on even the man's heartbeat, a calm rhythm in his chest. 

The way the earth crunches beneath Kallan's boot as he closes the distance between himself and Oliver again. Catches the older brother by the chin, fingers scratching against the brother's dark stubble. 

"Child we are under no immature assumptions that you might be the one thing between us and death, the one thing that might call to your brother's humanity." 

Even the forests seem to laugh at the very idea of that. 

"No, this has taken months of work just to get us here," his words slow to a steady consideration, each word calculated for how best they might deliver the blow. "Months of reading, months of research, and still no first hand experience."

Kallan releases his grip on Oliver, the young man slouching forward both from the sudden removal and from acceptance of defeat. 

It doesn't stop Kallan from continuing. 

"You're not here to reign in the beast, but warn us when it is close to the surface." 

The fire is back, burning in Kallan's gaze, and Charlie is amazed that, when the stranger sets his gaze upon the brother, Oliver doesn't catch ablaze beneath the heat of the stare. 

"Sweet Canary, your only role here is to sing."