Prompt: Kali dealing with the aftermath of "killing" Julia.

Kali has never been good at impulse control, even at the best of times. Which is why walking away from Julia is the most difficult thing she thinks she's ever done.

Her impulse is not, as it should be, to finish her off. To do as Deucalion told her she must.

Kali has always wanted power, craved it as instinctually as a babe craves the comfort of its mother. She'd known she was meant to be an alpha from the moment pack dynamics were explained to her as a child. But she'd been born into a traditionally patriarchal line of wolves and none saw her as strong enough to lead them. The only way to overcome that was to become feared, not loved.

But Julia has always loved her and never feared her and Kali should hate that but she doesn't. Didn't.

It is against her own will but Kali's first instinct as she looks back upon Julia's prone body, listening to the baby-bird flutter of her struggling heart, is to save her.

To save the one person who loves her.

She closes her eyes tightly, turns away, and walks on.

She knows she cannot appear like she needs comfort to her new pack. She cannot appear weak, because what is she then? Being an alpha – being strong - is all Kali has left. Deucalion mocks her, presumes she's joined his side for Ennis, but he is wrong.

Ennis is her friend. She admires him, and he respects her. It is not that kind of love.

But even with Ennis she must pretend she's okay. She's not sure he's okay, either, after losing his whole pack – Ennis always loved his pack members like they were his children – but she can't ask him. And he doesn't ask her.

She cries only once.

It is two weeks later, on the morning after a full moon night. She wakes up blissfully alone in the woods. For a moment sleep still holds her and she is blissfully ignorant of any emotion, and then she looks up and she is in the shelter of an oak tree.

That's all it takes. She is sure her heart is actually, physically breaking. Helpless, Kali gives herself over to the pain and the guilt. And in the early light of morning Kali gives herself permission to fall apart as she has never done before. (It had been Julia's favorite time of day, dawn, and she'd always looked so pretty waking up in that warm splash of sunlight and – no no no).

She lets herself be weak, because without Julia, that's what she is.

She gives herself one last moment to mourn her. It's less than what her emissary deserves, but it is all Kali can do now. The others will find her soon enough. She picks herself up off the ground and grits her teeth and starts walking. Walking away from the memory of Julia now feels almost as hard as it was the first time.

Kali begins to feel like a machine made of cold steel, and over time Deucalion cultivates and enforces that feeling in her. He uses her like a tool; Kali the efficient instrument for killing and intimidation. But she is clearly nothing more to him and she is also the one thing she never wanted to be: subordinate. She feels caged inside herself. It is easier to handle when she is what they all expect: ruthless, violent, and unrepentant. A murderer.

Sometimes the person Kali was before – the person she really is - grows so quiet in her cage inside Kali's body that she stops thinking of Julia. These are the most blissful moments of Kali's life now. The moments when she feels nothing.

Nothing at all.