[attr="class","body"]
The death of Cyrus had shattered a great many things: the image of the fast, carefree life crime had offered, immature notions of untouchability, the family left behind, and, in many ways, Darius himself. In the aftermath, he had dropped from the grid, he had clashed with his father again over the brothers' occupation, and he had grieved, deciding that the steps to it were nonsense in a whirlwind of them all.
[break][break]

The tempest he had been living through endured for a week before the young man had resurfaced. Attempting to cleanse himself of the sins and vices of his past cold turkey, Darius felt his muscles ache, endured his skin sensations of stretch and irritation, set against the numbness of his mind, and made his way to a potential new start. Amnesty and training to be a productive member of society was not something either Mansour brother had given thought when news first broke. Still, Cyrus was dead and all but forgotten by the world in the broader conflict against crime as but another poor young lost soul. Darius sought means to avoid ending the same, even as a voice nagged in the back of his mind that it was a trap, that he should slink back into the spiral his old life had devolved into.
[break][break]

Despite the calls to cut and run, Darius sat in unease as the lobby steadily cleared. Initially, he had considered leaving his team back at his ramshackle apartment or with a friend on the chance this was a lure, and he was walking into imprisonment. But as he felt the soothing touch of Wawet's fur against the pack of his palm, fidgeting with the clipboard loaded with packed filled out to start a new life, part of his anxiety shed away. Turning his hand to scratch at the back of the Houndour's ears, he sighed, "Suppose we're all too tired to keep running anyways, right bud?" Letting the canine's head relax onto his lap, Darius let his shoulders ease as he waited for his name to be called, comforted that one way or another, in shackles or free as a pidgey, he was on a path forward for the first time in a while.

[attr="class","milkycredit"] [attr="class","fas fa-cookie-bite"]