ToTT: Human Scavenger Hunt? (Ch. 6)

Chapter 6
'''July 16th X791. 8:43pm'''

''Hayden mumbled like a grumpy toddler. "How come it's Eugene that Sif marries and not  MEEEEEEEEEEEEE?!", the sorrowed man howled into the night sky, earning a few chuckles from the group and a blush from Sif.''

Ezra approached his wolf friend and patted the man's shoulder, as an attempt at consolation. The group proceeded to start getting ready to go and find Brooke and Violet's friends, meanwhile a slightly-flushed Sif trapped Hayden on the shoulder. "Can I borrow you for a minute?", she asks as she walks down a narrow path towards a cliffedge. Hayden follows, his bushy grey tail hanging down motionless as he walked.

Sif stopped in front of a large rock, and went quiet. Hayden stood behind her, waiting to hear what she wanted to talk about. No response. She was silent for at least two minutes before Hayden tried to speak. "Sif, what's--", he was interrupted by a slap from his female companion. As Hayden rubbed his cheek and looked down at her in shock, her face was clearly a mix of a wide variety of emotions. Her cheeks were red, yet her lip was quivering and her eyes were becoming misty. "Sif..?", the man asked with a gentle tone.

"Shut up and let me talk.", she responded angrily yet shakily. "I've known you for over ten years of my life. Tell me, have you always felt like this?", she said to him while looking at the ground. He nodded with a simple hum of approval. Sif clenched her fists. "If you have then...", she gritted her teeth, "Then why didn't you at least be up front with me from the beginning?!", she yelled as she looked up, tears sitting on the edges of her eyes nearly.

Hayden witnessed this expression with surprise, breathing quietly as he thought of a response. "I..", he stuttered on the first syllable. "Truthfully? I've always been terrifed you'd reject me and shut me out if I came up front with it. I've wanted to tell you ever since the day we meet, ever since the day you joined Sabertooth...", Hayden gritted his teeth too as his bangs drooped over his eyes. "That I loved you..Sif.", he admitted directly at last, as tears began to stream down Sif's reddening cheeks.

That was when Sif broke down and began weakly pounding Hayden's chest with her fists as she let her emotions run free, screaming in sorrow. Hayden's arms moved around her as comfort, a tear dropping from his own eye onto Sif's bare shoulder, causing her to stop beating his chest, and look up at him.

"If I'm being honest as well...", she whispered as Hayden wiped the girl's tears away with his sleeve, "I'd always secretly hoped that you liked me the way I like you...", a small smile creeped onto her face for half a second. That half a second that Hayden decided to look down. He saw the smile.

"Really?", he responded with a gulp of nervousness, "Then how come you didn't say anything either?", he continued as he stared down at Sif.

"You were always hitting on other women..it made me think you wouldn't want to be tied down to one girl.", she said with obvious sadness at this point.

"Sif...", Hayden said with the gentlest tone he's ever used behind his voice, causin the girl to look up at him. Their misty eyes reflected the moonlight like beautiful lakes, and both of them went redfaced as they never broke eye contact. And their heads began gravitating towards each other, Hayden's going down, Sif's going up. Until their lips met in the middle, their joined frames outlined perfectly by the moonlight as they stood on the cliff, the wind blowing at them, shaking their hair and clothing, until Hayden, surprisingly, broke off from the kiss.

"As much as I love you Sif...I have to accept that you'll never be mine.", he said with a lump in his throat. It felt like acid. His heart was breaking the more he thought about how Sif would never be able to be with him, without risking the future, and the life of those innocent children back at camp.

Sif understood the dangers of changing the past. She simply nodded, and turned on her heels, moving back to camp. Hayden watched as she walked into the darkness that shrouded the narrow stone path that led them here. Unbeknownst to Hayden, Sif was now streaming tears from her eyes, weeping in heartbroken silence, using her hand to conceal her cries of despair as she returned to camp.

Hayden put his hands in his pockets and turned to face the glorious moon that was rising into the sky. "I know you're there, dragon child.", he snarled after taking a sniff of the air.