The jungle had held Drow’s attention long enough for him to spend some quality time with his shiny new nieces. He’d always been a sucker for babies, and he was especially susceptible to the mischievous gleam in the eye of a tiny filly who only wanted to capture his heart and recruit him to help her get into trouble. Which was, after all, what any daughter made by Gendry and Arrya was inevitably going to do. Protect the girl had somehow become his life’s mission, and now he had two more to watch over, to keep safe, to help grow big and strong and smart enough to stay alive. Preferably forever.

God, he didn’t know how Gendry handled it. As an uncle, he couldn’t stand the idea of those precious little girls ever coming to harm. And the two of them were fucking talented at getting into trouble. He’d lost count of the number of times they’d had to form a search party, and they watched those tiny little spitfires like hawks. Literally, in Gendry’s case. Still. It had been nice spending time with family again. And the trouble his nieces were so talented at causing was an excellent distraction from…from remembering. From wondering. How much of the nightmare he’d lived had been real, how much of the world around him was now. Whether he was still stuck inside an endless loop of horrors and this was just a sick trick to make him let down his guard before he lost everything all over again.

Whether he deserved to lose everything all over again.

So yeah, the twins and their penchant for trouble were an excellent distraction. But after some serious panic-inducing shenanigans, Gendry and Arrya had decided it would be safer to take the twins somewhere a bit less dangerous than Beqanna. Drow had, of course, completely agreed. And would have volunteered to go along as body guard, except…except people around him tended to find themselves in mortal peril more often than he was comfortable with. And…they’re better off without me. He could admit it in his head, where no one around could hear it. Where no one who loved him despite logic or reason or a lifetime of letting them down could try to tell him he was wrong. He’d pretended he was letting them bond as a family, like Hallows and Rakka and Wex. Giving them a little alone time. Maybe they’d even bought it.

God, he missed them.

But they were so much better off without him putting them in danger. Or destroying himself in front of them, and there were days it was so fucking hard to hold himself together. To not hurt the people he loved by letting them see how damn broken he was, how his insides were fire and ash and desolation even though he might have found his way back to them. It was only a matter of time before it erupted out of his skin and burned everyone who was standing too close. So he’d make sure no one who mattered was nearby when it happened.

He’d watched them walk away with a smile on his face, like it didn’t break his fucking heart. He wasn’t sure when he’d become such a good actor. That kind of lie had never come naturally to him before. But now that he wasn’t quite sure whether anything around him was real or whether all of it was seconds from burning to the ground, and now that he’d played the functional adult to keep the kids from suspecting Uncle Drow was more dangerous than any trouble they’d gotten themselves into, it was starting to feel as easy as breathing, to lie about his mental state, to lie about the fire devouring him slowly from the inside.

And what better place to burn that surrounded by people who meant nothing to him? If there was going to be collateral damage, it might as well be strangers in the meadow, random souls unlucky enough to be in the way when the volcano inside finally erupted again. Only a matter of time. If he were a better man, he’d hide away from anyone, protecting the innocent through his absence. Once, he might have been a better man. Now? All he had left was to keep his family safe. Fuck the rest of the world. So he stepped out of the shadows of the trees on the edge of the infamous meadow, sunlight splaying across his massive body, highlighting the silver of his hair, the rich obsidian of his coat, just a few shades shy of black and veined with scars, slashes and gouges, stripes and punctures, so many old wounds he’d lost count of them long ago. More scars webbed across his face, across his right eye, brushed gold that should have been clouded and sightless, might even have been shriveled and dead and scarred over if it hadn’t been for Gendry.

Stop thinking about them, dammit. They’re gone, and it would be better for all of them if they never came back. It was good that they’d left him alone. They were safer far, far away. Let strangers burn instead. Let people who didn’t fucking matter deal with the worst of the fallout when the world turned to fire and molten rock spewing down the mountainside. Drow would survive. Hell, he’d revel in it, wouldn’t be the first time. And coming out the other side would be a damn sight easier without having to protect people he loved from his own self-destruction.

No, it would be much better to set himself loose on a stranger. Someone just as twisted and broken as he was. Maybe a fight, maybe a fling, maybe both; it didn't fucking matter, he just needed to get lost in something dark and jagged and dangerous. Someone would step up. They always did. And it didn't take long before his mismatched metallic eyes landed on the someone in question. Scarred and jagged and burning, he could practically taste the fire licking along his skin already. He stalked over, a slinky feline fluidity to his steps that only ever happened when he had an itch and a suspicion it was about to be scratched, one way or another. "Drow," he said simply, heated gaze prowling the stranger's body. "You?"