The moment Talon patted Vladimir's head, the same motion Yu would do to reassure and comfort him, he exploded all at once, not with the contained, strategic defiance he had shown earlier, but with the raw, unfiltered grief of a frightened five-year-old whose last safe person had just walked out of sight. He kicked and punched with all the furious desperation in his little body, and tiny bursts of wild power snapped outward around him in uneven gusts that would have been frightening coming from any other divine being, though against a being like Talon they landed as little more than water on a rock. Even so, Talon did not flinch, because the violence in it was not truly meant to injure him; it was only the shape heartbreak had taken now that Vladimir no longer knew what else to do with it.
"You can't take Mama from me!!"
