Author's Note:
It's hard to look at yourself and think others don't like what they see. It's far, far worse to look at yourself and know you don't like it either. Growing is hard.
If you are just joining this series for the first time this story is in the continuum AFTER Season 2, so you will definitely want to read Thanks for the Fox and Guardian Blue Season One and Season Two for important context, you may also want to read Winter Hearth for important causal background.
This is done for the joy of writing. I do not work for Disney and have no control over Zootopia or the characters therein.
Also! A HUGE shout-out to J. N. Squire for assisting with editing this series! Able to correct 200 typos… before noon. Thank you!
Sheepless in New Reynard
Chapter 3: Brothers
A quarter tumbler of bourbon sat untouched on the coffee table. Motti had kindly poured that for Honey, but the badger simply took the bottle and had been nursing on that for about twenty minutes. Sharla watched in despair. She didn't even know what this was about. This badger knew her brother. Or at least, she knew about him. She hadn't said a word to the sheep since the bottle came out. She just kind of stared at the fancy blue 'Media' screen on her TV and took slow, agonized drinks.
This was so not good.
The waiting was the worst.
"Please…" Sharla semi-bleated.
Honey sighed slowly. "What do ya wanna hear, huh?" she asked with a bit of depressed exasperation.
"I want to hear that's he's okay!" squeaked the sheep.
"Okay… uh… how about something else?" asked Honey.
"Oh no." Sharla clutched her chest. "No, no, no." She stood up and moved to just run out of the room. She was gonna be sick. The room was spinning. She needed to run away. She needed to just not be for a while. She knew. Somehow she knew.
"Second on the right," Motti directed. Glancing that way, down the hall, the ewe saw a restroom. That was useful information, but no comfort. She leaned her head against the wall, trembling.
"Was he involved?" asked the sheep. "Was he mixed up in that whole… God. No. My mom and dad are gonna be completely… I can't tell them… Why, Gareth? Why?" she whimpered, tears spilling freely.
"Sit down," commanded Honey. "I don't know that I have all th' comfort you want, but I think I have… some help to offer still, if you'll listen." Sharla pinched her eyes shut, tears already moving down her cheeks.
"Is he dead?" she pled.
"Sit," Honey requested again, her tone just kind of tired, perhaps a little inebriated.
"No, screw you! Is he dead?" snapped the sheep.
"Motti, help our guest be seated." The badger gestured to the trembling sheep. A hyena approached.
"Sitting!" Sharla cried, moving hastily to the chair, not the couch. She didn't want to be near anyone right then.
"Gareth… was not a bad sheep." Honey's words both offered a balm to a freshly opened wound in Sharla's heart, and then destroyed her heart completely. He wasn't bad. That was good. But at the same time, Honey spoke of her brother in the past tense. Sharla sputtered, leaning forward and putting her face into her hooves. It didn't take her college education to know the use of past tense wasn't good. A huge hyena paw petted the wool on top of her head. It continued petting. It squeezed and touched. Really? Why did everyone who wasn't a sheep do that?
Sharla batted the paw away. "Tell me what happened," she insisted.
"So, first, I should tell ya why I know who Gareth Shearer even was," Honey stated.
"Yeah," Sharla responded glumly. Was again. She used was. Why continue this conversation? Because it was important to know what actually happened to him, that's why. He deserved that.
"So… I was always a little keen that there was something like… goin' on with the sheep," Honey said lazily. Oh yeah. She was feeling the whiskey. It was like she didn't even care that she was talking to a sheep about the thing going on with the sheep. She took another sip. Sharla held out her cloven hoof. The bottle made a little 'tink' as it made contact with keratin and the sheep brought the bottle up and drank. She instantly remembered why she never drank. That was not even a flavor. It was just an unpleasant experience. She winced and swallowed painfully and passed the bottle back.
"Go on…" huffed the sheep. No more of that.
"I mean, it was obvious to anyone really lookin', and when Lionheart made Bellwether an assistant mayor, there was someone in his inner circle, another badger… she told a friend of mine that there were issues up top with those two. Dawn was doin' shady stuff behind the mayor's back. She was trying to sabotage his inclusion initiative, she was doctoring crime statistics… We knew that stuff even before Lionheart got arrested. I was part of a message board that tracked the 'Cudspiracy'."
"Please don't call it that. It wasn't all sheep," grumbled Sharla. She took another drink, and didn't know why. It was just as terrible the second time. Whatever. She expected terrible. She deserved terrible.
"Yeeeeah, and whatever vulpine messed you up wasn't all foxes. Whatever, sweater-factory," grumbled the immediately irritated Honey. It was an instant and unpleasant reminder to Sharla that she didn't get to call the tipsy host out for that. She was just as bad, if not worse. "Where was I? Oh yeah… This badger was on the city's medical board. Hell, she helped make the damned… what's it called… antidote for the Nighthowler victims…" Yeah, Honey was loosened up by alcohol. "…Anyway, she initially got arrested for helpin' Leodore Lionheart with the false-imprisonment thing. So the whispers from her stopped. It's partly how we know where those clues were comin' from, but the anti-Cudspiracy became an actual movement as a result, and I got more involved then."
"What's this got to do with Gareth?" asked the sheep. Another tink of her hoof and another terrible drink. Was it self abuse? Maybe.
"Gettin there, Textiles," grunted the badger. "Anyway, one main group ended up kind of rising to the surface as the go-to Resistance… as it were. Nothing open. No protests, but holy heck did they sabotage the Bellwether administration. Public sentiment made life hard for preds, but she wanted to make things much harder. The little ideas she had for 'improving' things would make it out to the media and get blown up, and it was the general population that would protest it. It was that conflict that kept her from moving a lot faster with restricted housing, mandating claw-length-caps, and muzzles in schools."
That last one was like a knife in Sharla's gut. What a pure, unmitigated monster she'd been to Vivienne, and here was the answer, delivered up to her as promised. Foxes were better than she deserved. At least, that fox sure as hell was. Another slightly larger drink. Okay, she was starting to feel light and airy. Time to stop that.
"I won't… argue with you, Bellwether was a creep," Sharla stated. She genuinely felt that way. The city almost destroyed itself under her.
"Yeah, well, the resistance slowed her down, and in the end, that was all we needed. But… after Bellwether got canned and tossed in the clink, the thing I suspected all along was confirmed. It was bigger than Dawn Bellwether, and it had been for so freaking long."
"Lanolin, yeah," Sharla grumbled. Everything got messed up because of some crap that got done a hundred years ago. It wasn't fair.
"Not just Lanolin. A bunch of big names in tech and agriculture were directly involved. There was Graze, Wooltech, Cloven…"
"Wait, Cloven?!" Sharla bleated suddenly.
"Yeah," Honey drawled.
"My dad and brother work for them!" she hissed. "I didn't hear anything about Cloven being involved!"
"You will. Remember how I said you were gettin' confidential stuff?" the badger reaffirmed. Sharla cringed. Okay, she was in deep. She wasn't going back from here.
"So my brother was involved? My dad?! My dad's involved?!" Sharla was in a panic. She stood up.
"Motti," Honey gestured. The sheep immediately sat back down.
"I don't… I don't know about your dad," came the drunken response, "…like you said, not every sheep has something to do with it. But yeah, your brother was absolutely involved." She kind of laughed at that last part.
"No! You said he was a good sheep!" cried the black-woolen ewe.
"I did and I meant it," Honey rumbled, "See, he woulda been useless to the resistance if he wasn't involved. We wouldn't have had a… clean and genuine source for information."
"What?!" cried Sharla. "Wait, he was… he was a spy?!" Somehow, the idea that he was some kind of double agent in all this seemed way, way more messed up to the ewe. Her brother was part of both the 'Cudspiracy' and the resistance? Suddenly, she had an inkling as to what must have happened. She felt so cold as she considered it.
"Nothing that seriously… grand," Honey gestured flamboyantly. "He wasn't goin' on action-packed Jack Savage kind of missions or nothin'." The badger held up the bottle, but decided against taking another drink. She put the cork in it and set it down. "He just had access to information through the company he worked for. It's a subsidiary for Lanolin, and apparently, since it was way out in the boonies, they liked storing sensitive documents about acquisitions and all that out there. Remember I told you there was a… main group for the Resistance?" Sharla stared. Honey was slumped back on the couch. She was actually… pretty smashed, it sounded like.
"Yeah?" asked the fairly tipsy sheep.
"They apparently got approached by an employee at Cloven who said that he found out about the Resistance on the web, and he had information." Sharla sucked in a deep breath. He was trying to help. He was brave. He wasn't a criminal. He was a silent hero. She could be proud of her brother. Please let this be what was coming.
"So, you are sure it was him? My brother?" she asked.
"Back when he made contact, I'd been made information-maven for the group. I shot up through the ranks because of all the data I'd already gathered. I started getting these genuine, serious-business documents. Obviously I was skeptamic… ske… skeptical about them… and I did some deep digging into where they were coming from."
This was it. He was a hero. No one could take that away from Sharla. He was not helping the stupid 'Cudpsiracy', he was doing the exact opposite.
Honey closed her eyes and continued, "Your brother might have been a help to the resistance, but he certainly wasn't a trained spy. He left his name twice on file requisition cover sheets. Still, only two of us in the Resistance knew who he was. We… kindly redacted his name from the docs he provided."
"Thanks for that, I guess…" sighed his sister. Not that it helped him in the end apparently. She then had a thought. "Wait… so who was the other one that knew who he was?" Was he betrayed? Could she possibly have a name to go after?
"The… the leader of that resistance group, actually," Honey answered. "Obviously that guy was way more careful. I don't know his real name. He went by Big-Bad. Give you a guess on the species there." Honey chuckled weakly.
"Damn it, really?" asked the glum sheep. "Do wolves enjoy playing up to their own stereotypes?" she asked.
"Hey, I never asked." Honey grinned drunkenly as she waved a dismissive paw.
"Were… you involved closely with Big-Bad? Do you know where he is now?" Sharla inquired. Someone was getting held responsible. The hunt was on. A sheep hunting a wolf. How nuts was that? The badger shot her a wary look.
"Slow your roll, there, Lamb-burger," she said, waving dismissively. "Big-Bad was legit. He was freakin' gold. He didn't do nothin' to your brother. But when the fluff hit the fan, we couldn't get to 'im in time." Oh. Oh crap. "…See, we had redacted his name so others in our group didn't have that information, but that didn't change the internal records still at Cloven. When the ZBI started shakin' stuff up and heads started to roll…" a rude belch interrupted and she resumed, "…Lanolin and their cronies did a burn."
"A… A burn?" asked Sharla shakily. That… sounded bad. That sounded so seriously bad.
The badger rubbed her face slowly in silence and then sighed. "A burn is where you basically destroy all evidence and witnesses when the crime's been discovered. They had folks on the inside that saw the documents used to link mammals to the 'Cudspiracy', and they got his name before we even knew what was goin' on. While I was dealin' with the attack in New Reynard, they got to Gareth."
It was like falling.
He was killed. It wasn't predators. It wasn't foxes. It wasn't wolves or tigers or bears. Her brother was murdered by sheep.
"Are you… sure?" whispered a very unhappy Sharla.
"I got the message myself. 'Cloven contact compromised. Too late to help him. I have taken care of cleanup. Mourn Gareth Shearer. The fellowship is dissolved. Be on your guard.' It was short and clear. To the point. It's what I liked that wolf." Honey stated. "That was the last I heard from Big-Bad. I'm pretty sure that was absolute. The end of the Cudspiracy. The end of the Resishtance. The end… of it all," slurred the badger.
"So that's it…" Sharla grumbled, feeling detached. It was the alcohol, probably.
"Yep," the badger responded.
"He's dead," the sheep added. The pain welled up quickly. Being tipsy only slightly delayed the inevitable.
"Gonna say yeah, definitely." Honey sounded more loose and careless in her response, but it was expected. She was drunk. She had a good reason to be, Sharla agreed. All of this sucked, and she was actually speaking to the sister of a hero that was lost in all that. It was a bad day for everyone. Sharla uncorked the bottle. A long, hard drink followed.
Then the dam broke. Honey actually stayed back, seeming not to want to interfere with the sister of the sheep that got killed helping someone who absolutely despised sheep. It was an understandable level of discomfort.
Motti, however, sat close, even though she made no attempt to hug or hold the crying ewe. Sharla made no attempt to seek comfort. These mammals were doing a dangerous thing and dealing with dangerous animals. They knew what could happen, and the news made it clear others died too. Swinton was assassinated in her car at the airport. Important mammals were taken out just as readily as not-so-important ones. The idea that they could kill her brother was not some delusional fantasy.
Sharla had done a lot of agonizing these past few weeks, and after about ten or fifteen minutes of potent sobbing, she felt kind of emotionally numb. After another five minutes or so of quietly staring at the boring, useless blue Media screen, the badger spoke. "Tell us… about who your brother was. We should remember him. That seems like the better thing to do, yeah?"
Sharla sipped again and then corked and set the bottle on the couch. "Like you said… He sure wasn't spy material. I think you'd have dumped Gareth in the 'extra-annoying-sheep' category, if you've got one of those."
"I don't categorize sheep," Honey murmured. She then rubbed her face. "Well, I guess I kind of do. I have sheep… and okay sheep."
"Gareth was okay sheep?" Sharla asked.
"Yeah. Gareth was his own category. He was Sheep-deluxe." Honey framed that new term and gave a weak laugh. The badger was hammered.
Sharla could not help but crack a smile at it. "That sounds like a quick-fix dinner, not a category for a sheep!"
"Well, he was good sheep," Honey said genuinely.
"Sorry I could not meet him." said Motti. The ewe offered the hyena the bottle.
"Oh no, no, no." The badger took the bottle away.
"Is bad idea," promised the hyena.
"How about me? What category do I fall in? I've said all these dumb things and I'm certainly nothing like my brother."
"You're okay sheep," drawled Honey in a mushy tone. "Did your brother have lots of hobbies or anything? Much family other than you?" This kind of surprised the ewe. Their hostess seemed to actually care about learning more about Gareth.
"He was a quagmire of them, honestly," laughed Sharla. This was… helping.
"Ooh, a quagmire, that sounds sherious!" happily slurred the badger.
"It was like… something new every other month. He'd be super into some video game, then he'd be trying out a table-top roleplay system with a couple school buddies. Then, it would be writing stories, or he'd be hanging out on chat forums and the like… Maybe then he'd be all about UFOs and cryptids for like, a week… It was all over the darned place."
The badger chuckled warmly at that. "I don't know why ya think I'd put him in the annoying sheep basket. He sounds like he'd have been fun. I like all that junk too." Sharla smiled at Honey's consensus, then sighed. It hurt. It wasn't the explosive anguish now. Talking about him helped. But it ached. The ewe felt so completely empty. How long would it take to feel right again?
Then, she really took a moment to think about what tomorrow was going to be like. She found out what happened, but… Everyone else would not care about a story. They needed proof he was doing the right thing. If not, Gareth would just be another sheep that bolted during the fall of Lanolin. It would be suspicious forever!
"Honey?" she asked the quiet badger.
"What?" replied the sloshed mammal, sounding as if she was awakened from an unplanned nap.
Sharla took a deep breath, feeling the heaviness of the moment in all her close-trimmed wool. "Can you take me to see Big-Bad so I can take my brother and lay him to rest properly?"
"No. No way. Even if I knew where he was, I sure as heck wouldn't give him up to someone I barely know. Why would you even ask?"
"Please. I have to find him. I want Gareth back. Screw everything else! He's what... in a shallow freakin' grave somewhere? On some vacant lot or dumped in a river or something?" Anger prickled again, enhanced by booze. "You gotta help me find him or you haven't done nothin' but tell stories!"
"This ain't a game of hide-n-seek, Sheep!" snapped the badger, sitting up. Sharla was being a literal buzz-kill and she knew it, but this was important. "It ain't just your life or your brother's at stake. Bad mammals are still after the Resistance. We gave a lot of intel to the ZBI and the ZPD. Any of us pops our head up, it's likely to get knocked off. In time maybe, but for now. I really recommend you let this be!"
"Yeah, you make me find him my damned self. I will leave this place asking questions I shouldn't be asking and talking to mammals I should have avoided, but there's no way that can come back on you, right?" Sharla practically purred.
"Oh you gotta be damned kiddin' me!" cried Honey.
"Get me to the spot," whimpered the black sheep. "Help me find my brother so I can at least clear his name, and really make sure he gets laid to rest. If he's a hero to you guys, you owe him that. Forget anything owed to me, I don't ask that. Gareth deserves to be remembered for what he did, not what mammals assume."
The badger snarled back, "You seem t' really think I didn't care about what happened to your brother or something. Otherwise, I can't imagine you thinkin' I would be totally cool with indirectly killin' his sister too." She waved at the sheep dismissively.
"My risk! If you're worried about getting found out, I can keep your name out of it. I can make sure this never gets back to you."
"I don't got any reason to trust you, sheep," Honey growled.
"It's Sharla! And you trusted my brother, right? Oh, but it was just his neck on the line." Sharla could not possibly have been as narrow-minded as this badger.
"I did… You're right. I even label him as Sheep Deluxe! And I can't help but be cautious about why you knew nothing about any of what Shearer was doin'. It seems I'm not the only one who didn't trust you." Sharla jerked hard from that. That was uncalled for! She suffocated the urge to just scream at the badger. She was sure that it wasn't about trust, but fear. Gareth had been protecting her. That's the kind of mammal he was.
"You are going to help me find him, or I will absolutely find a way to make you help me find him," Sharla growled, arms tight against her sides. She didn't want to resort to holding things over this mammal's head, but she felt trapped. Everyone would think he was involved and ran, and without proof, even if Sharla tried to tell everyone what he was doing, it might put her in serious danger.
"What makes you think I won't just send you to see him personally?" Honey stood up slowly. Motti stood up too. The alcohol and her grim determination kept Sharla facing the semi-blitzed badger.
"I… I don't think you'll do it," the ewe grumbled stoically. "You aren't a bad mammal and neither am I." Sharla was betting a lot on the assumption that the badger played it tough, but would need a bigger threat than a second grade teacher looking for her brother to be driven to actually hurt someone.
Honey pushed in very close, actually a little shorter than the ewe, but so much heavier and stronger. She was significantly more dangerous. Sharla held still more out of fear than bravery. Okay, maybe she misjudged this. The world felt shaky again. No attack came as a full minute passed.
"I hate you so much," growled Honey, finally.
"I don't care," muttered the sheep.
"But! I don't hate you enough to send you to get killed by Big-Bad," the badger stated solidly. "It ain't gonna happen. I wouldn't even do that to a sheep. That's how bad that would be."
"That's my chance to take!"
"Your chance, but my blessing. No." Honey was defiant.
"God, why do you hate me?" asked Sharla. She should at least have something to counter.
"I don't know, why do you hate foxes?!" spat the badger.
"Why? Fine! I was bullied for like… half my childhood by a fox! I watched my best friend get her face ripped off of her by a fox when all she was trying to do was get back some stupid tickets we got at the fair. Gareth had nightmares over what happened to Judy, okay? We all got hurt. Maybe not the same as you did, but we were kits!"
"Wait, Judy?" Honey diverted focus.
"Yeah? Alright, she got hurt by a fox! So you wonder what I had against her being with Nick, there you go."
"Shetani still has a face," Motti pointed out obviously.
"She healed!" snapped Sharla.
"Nick doesn't seem like he'd be the type to have done that to a bunny." The tone the badger used was slow and reflective.
"It wasn't Nick, she didn't know him back then," Sharla admitted, knowing instantly why Honey prompted her to say that. Damn it, they were just going to go in circles. "It's wrong, okay? I admitted that already. I was wrong. But I had a reason to feel like I did. To… end up like I did. That's it. That's the reason. I never freaking got over seeing all that blood and knowing if I'd just ran off… or dropped the tickets… or a million other things - she'd never have had to do that!"
"Shetani had no scar on her face," Motti pointed out.
"Damn it, they're there. They aren't big but she's got three claw marks under her fur on her cheek. Forever." Sharla threw herself down onto the couch. Why was this so hard to explain without sounding like a petty creep?
"You still don't get it! You still fail to see the way out of this dumb cycle you're in!" shouted Honey.
"Motti gets it." the hyena nodded slowly.
Sharla gritted her teeth. "Okay, hyena, share with me then! What do you get!?" Sharla gave up tamping down her anger. She was close to just losing it again. She was so close to finding her brother, absolving him of the crime he never committed, and even having him lauded as a hero. This obstinate, mercurial badger stood in her way and it was absolutely infuriatingly unfair.
"Sharla is selfish. Selfish mammals don't protect Honey's name," Motti stated confidently.
"What? How?! How am I being selfish here?" the sheep wrinkled her nose in revulsion at that.
"This thing, it happen to Shetani, yes? The fight?" Motti asked.
"Judy, you mean. When we were kits, yes," came Sharla's reply.
"She is not hating foxes. She not afraid of Nick." Motti pointed out. Sharla frowned.
"Yeah, so she's better than me. No argument there. Doesn't make me selfish for being upset about it."
"She not afraid of his claws, he use them on her and it make her happy. His teeth even more, Motti watch. It was being very nice." The hyena nodded serenely.
"Oh my God, I don't want to know that!" exclaimed the sheep with exasperation.
Honey laughed at the sheep's reaction. "She has a point though. Judy's the one who got hurt, but she certainly didn't hate foxes after that. I wonder why?"
The ewe looked away, having to consider that question a moment. Judy had plenty of reason not to trust foxes. Now, she was sleeping with one. What happened? Why wasn't she even more angry than Sharla about that? The sheep answered uneasily, "She didn't like Gideon… I know that… But I guess she just kinda used the incident to reinforce that she was gonna be a cop. She was energized by it. I guess she just saw all of that day differently. It was a fight. She was honestly pretty proud of it because she got our tickets back. A taste of being the hero. She chased that feeling all the time after that. It made her want to help mammals even more. Okay? I get it. She grew up into something better. But she was selfish too. She still wanted to be a hero to everyone else. That's more about her than everyone else, right?"
Honey glared, baring all her teeth as she responded in a growling voice. "Ooooh, so selfish… gonna get myself cut in half saving Motti's family because I can't stop thinking about how cool it must be to have a scar from armpit to armpit."
Sharla winced at that. Okay, that was a completely flawed argument on her part. Counting that as a big loss. Also, badger was super protective of Judy. She did not want to forget that again. The ewe sank a bit, hooves clenched, shaking in grief and frustration. "How am I being the selfish one then? Wanna fill me in here before I say something else dumb? It's all I seem to be able to do here."
"You didn't get injured by fox, Shetani did." Motti pointed out. "But you feel guilty about it and you make whole fight about you. This is between her and fox. But you make it about how you feel. You don't stop thinking about how this is hurting because you want it to be hurting. It becomes who you are. Judy have nothing to forgive herself for because she think she win, but Sharla feel like sheeps lost. They got tickets and tickets only remind them of blood. Sharla don't enjoy the fair. It is not being any good to forgive because the hurt is too important. It is big excuse to forgive own unhappiness. This is selfish."
The ewe stared blankly at the massive spotted mammal a moment. Motti's tenuous grasp on the language aside, she was not a dumb brute. She was right. Sharla was mad about the tickets. She remembered that very clearly. She didn't want to be at the fair anymore. She didn't want the tickets. She didn't even want to stay with the brother, who was messed up by that experience even worse because his sister ran off afterward.
Sharla was selfish. Hating foxes for her unhappiness was only a selfish excuse.
That was actually an easier pill to swallow than the first, but it definitely felt like 'beat up on the second grade teacher' was today's special.
The ewe sighed in surrender. "Okay, fine. I'm selfish. Just look at all my damned flaws!" the sheep flourished. "But my brother wasn't selfish. That's who I want to help. He stood up for what was right. I bet the whole town would have hated him for it if he got found out and the 'Cudspiracy' didn't get proven! He was doing the right thing and staked his life on it! Now, no one's willing to help his memory!" To Sharla's surprise, Motti suddenly shrunk back, as if, for a moment, fearful. The ewe glanced back at Honey, continuing. "He was willing to risk himself for something that was bigger than him, and he deserves to be known for that! You want that truth to just stay buried with him? After he helped you with the promise of nothing else?" His words flooded back into his sister's head. He was going to do what was right. He wasn't going to be afraid next time. He did it. How flawed his sister appeared in his shadow now.
"He wouldn't want other lives risked when his was over," explained Honey sagely. "You'd be in danger. He'd never want that. I told you before, this ain't because I don't want justice. It's because that can come later and you can still be alive."
"Motti will find him for you," the hyena said softly.
"What?" Honey dropped bluntly.
"She is… right. Brother does not deserve whole village thinking… he is bad when he do the best good." Her words were heavy. Honey's expression completely changed. She looked absolutely agonized with some internal strife or realization. Sharla sucked in a deep, hopeful breath. Yes! Yes, she won Motti over! She could still do this! Sharla stood up in front of the hyena and nodded emphatically.
"Right! I will go with Motti! She can help keep me safe. Tell her where to go and you aren't even directly involved for all this 'Big-Bad' wolf knows!"
"Sheep stays. Motti goes," the hyena stated flatly.
"No! I'm coming with you! I have to do this!" shouted Sharla indignantly. This was her business. It felt completely wrong to send someone else, and it only meant more secrets. The hyena would not even have to try to actually find Gareth, she could just wander around a couple of days and say he wasn't able to be found. That was not going to be the end of this.
"Honey is being correct." Motti expressed, "Gary is never wanting his sister to be hurt like this. You let him have peace by staying." Honey sighed softly at her friend's words.
"Gareth! And it's not even your business! It's mine! I am not staying here!" the sheep cried, shaking with anger again. Honey just gazed down, seeming lost a moment.
"This is Motti's choice. Motti's danger. It is not for you. This is Motti's selfishness. She needs to do this." The hyena sounded so kind and soft. It didn't fit her size at all. Perhaps that was why Sharla felt so bold in her indignation and anger.
"No! This isn't your family, Spots!" shouted the sheep, stepping closer.
"Sharla, wait-" interrupted Honey.
The angry ewe cut her off. "You don't wake up every day feeling empty of anything but freaking regret! You don't have to spend every day wondering if you could have been better!" The hyena stared back blankly as if not even seeing the mad caprid in front of her anymore.
"No, seriously, stop!" Honey said louder, tensing up. Sharla gritted her teeth bitterly.
"You didn't have a stupid brother make a stupid choice without even asking you about it. Your stupid brother didn't get rutting 'burned' because he thought his dumb heroic choices actually mattered in the end!"
Honey jumped up with a shout, "Oh shi-"
THUMP