“Yasala!”
Crowe burst in through the door to his apartment, causing it to slam against the wall. It was already hanging on a single hinge, the other having been ripped off when it was forcefully opened earlier that day. “Salsa, please, come out!” the man shouted desperately as he tore into the living room, stopping dead when he laid eyes on the place.
The room was a total mess. Tables and chairs were knocked over, and one had a broken back from where it had been smashed against something. The couch had red stains on one arm, someone’s blood that had not yet dried. What few pictures there were on side tables and the walls had been knocked down or broken. The pile of ration cards that had been next to the map were gone.
He took a minute to listen. The house was despondently silent.
“YASALA!” Crowe screamed as he ran into his bedroom, eyes wide and frantically searching for his daughter. While nowhere near as bad as his living room had been, his bedroom was clearly disturbed. Drawers were open and emptied, his bed was torn open, and his closet had been fully ransacked. Ignoring the mess, he sprinted out of the room and rounded the tight corner to Yasala’s room, next door to his.
No one.
Her bed was in tatters, the covers and sheets torn in search of anything valuable. Her drawers, like his, had been searched and thrown aside carelessly. Her bedside table was devoid of anything, papers and books thrown onto the floor. The mechanical parts and simple machines she’d built and carefully set up on spare shelf space had been knocked over or carelessly pushed to the side. She was nowhere to be seen.
With a strangled cry, Crowe ran in, throwing aside the sheets and yanking open the closet doors in hopes that she was just playing some kind of game. Ember, still bruised and bloodied, was standing outside the apartment, head down and looking at the pavement. She knew what had happened.
“No. No no no no no!” Crowe slumped down to his knees, his chest feeling like it was about to burst. An ache had started there the moment Ember had told him that his house had been broken into, and each passing second worsened it. Now it was threatening to overtake him, as whoever had broken in had taken from him the one person who had kept him going a few years back.
Tears rolled down the man’s face as he sat on his knees in his empty living room, surrounded by the destruction and chaos of a fight long finished, and uncontrollable sobs wracked his body. Ember shuddered from the noises, coming as they were from a man that she had so much associated with strength and a sturdy construction. He had always been a solid rock, a good foundation, and now he was broken in the only way he really could be.
The sobs and choking breaths eventually quieted, and Crowe emerged from his empty house. Ember met his eyes as he did so, her gaze soft and worried. His own eyes were red and puffy, with clean streaks down his dusty cheeks showing where the tears had fallen. The look he gave her was no longer one of abject sadness, and Ember shuddered again. This one wasn’t from distress of hearing him cry, though.
This was from fear - empathic fear for whoever had taken Yasala away from him.
He didn’t say a word, and she didn’t need to hear one. He started walking away from the house, and she got in step next to him. Tarissa and Arken would be waiting for them at their hideout, and Ember knew she wouldn’t be coming back here any time soon.
