Where Woofs (18+)

You stare with your mouth open for three long seconds as you process this, as the connections come together in your mind; the state of Bel's body, the mention in the news of silver bullets -- oh hell. The police didn't keep anything back from the media, because the shooter is dead, but what they didn't know was that werewolves are real, werewolf hunters are real, that guy wasn't a lone crazy, and his associates are going to try to finish the job. A prickling rush of adrenaline crashes over you, and you're On Duty once again.

"Erskin's the target, right? Can we block line-of-sight to him and sit tight, call Dad Kadros for a pickup?" You get out your phone; even if Dad Aspera has a reason not to call Alex (you're deferring to him by instinct, because he acts like he knows what to do, and you're just going to roll with that for now) it provides an excuse for standing around talking.

 

You are tense and sick with worry, and do a frantic little dance in place with the strain of not dashing straight off to the horizon.

"I suspect everyone associated with the Kadros's household is now the target, ma'am," your father says. "There's two confirmed werewolves there, one confirmed genetic relation, and now us, flying in to render assistance. They'll be looking to wipe out the entire pack."

You whine a little. "I'm sorry!" you say miserably. "I'm really sorry." You should never have met Bel. This is awful.

Your father's eyes are a bright, furious gold, and his smile is mostly snarl. "Chin up, Erskin, we're going to make them a damn sight sorrier. But we have to get the good Sergeant and her dog out of here alive first. Here, bring your dog over to me and introduce us— I can shift to give the two of you more cover."

 

"Yes, good, right." You come closer so he can make friends with Logan, while frantically thumb-typing to the contact listed in your phone as 'Dadros': possible wwf hunter in park, pls lock doors n avoid windows n check on bel.

Then you look up at Aspera and firm your resolve. He might be calm and confident, but he's also old enough that he probably can't sprint. Even so... "All I can think of, then, is we book it for the marina and hope they won't shoot us in front of witnesses." It looks like maybe half a mile to the cluster of public buildings and snow-mounded docks, but the paved path has been salted and there's not a lot of cover for any snipers to be hiding in, so you'll probably be getting farther away as well as presenting a moving target.

All together, as if you'd rehearsed it, you break into a run. You're just noticing that Aspera runs pretty damn fast for an old guy, you're hardly having to slow down at all, when something sledgehammers you in the back and your legs turn into overcooked spaghetti.

Your headlong tumble down a snowbank to the water is a disorienting whirl that makes no sense, and then you're just lying there, looking out across the black water. Black water and white snow, it's pretty. You notice that one of your feet is in the water, but it doesn't feel cold. It doesn't feel like anything at all. In fact, your world ends just south of your sternum. Some part of your mind is clamoring that you're a goddamn combat medic, you know what just happened, you're going to be choppered out of here on a stretcher if you make it at all, and the rest of your life is wheelchairs and colostomy bags and veteran's parades with a little flag pinned to your lapel. But that part is very quiet and far away.

Oh look, pink snow. You heard somewhere that it tastes like watermelon but you shouldn't eat it because it'll give you the runs.

 

Your dad skids to a halt behind you at the second or third bullet, and the bark he lets out isn't in english: it grabs you, spins you around, and you race back to help. Your dad's kneeling in mucky, blood-reeking snow, peeling out of his clothes and his skin all in one graceful movement, though the fabric's got huge blooms. You count two, maybe three holes through him, but they're clean in-and-out, and the change knits him halfway back together again.

"Get her home if you can," he orders. "Save yourself if you can't. I'll meet you there."

Another shot rings out, bowling you over. By the time you scramble to three feet, crying, your dad's a blur in the distance. You limp-hop awkwardly down the snowy bank to the water, scrambling on the stones and the ice and the blood. The full pain hasn't quite set in to your foreleg, where the bone over your elbow's smashed all to hell, so the rest of the limb just sort of drags, like you've picked up a particularly devilish burr.

Pancho is dropped like a doll at the water's edge, Logan's leash caught between a few rocks. Logan barks at you, in between crying in confusion and licking Pancho's hands. The human's going blue, and her breath is a fast, wet rattle.

Get her home if you can. You don't see how: she's just human, through-shots aren't any good for them, they spill right out. Just one single bullet, and she lies there like a juice carton, finished.

"Pancho pancho get up pancho GET UP GET UP STOP LYING THERE," Logan goes, and your tail's tucked in helpless shame. You try to pick up the dog's leash with your teeth, and get snapped at.

"DON'T YOU EAT HER SHE'S NOT YOURS SHE'S MY PANCHO FUCK OFF."

"We have to go home," you tell her. "Come on, we have to go."

Logan goes back to licking Pancho's face. "Wake up, wake up!" The human's not even responsive anymore.

Now the pain is starting to hit, though, your shoulder screaming and your front leg burning. You can feel the blood trickling down through your fur.

Your blood.

You limp forward a step, the solution presenting itself. It's awful— it's obscene, criminal, monstrous— but you're absolutely fucking terrible at math and can't make this problem add up to anything else. You shuffle forward, back legs, working front leg, and sprawl in an ungainly heap over Pancho's side. Logan bites at you, but only manages to pull your cape around a bit.

The hole is a huge, ragged thing, but it's not so big you can't cover it with your bloody paw. You lie there and hope you're getting anything in while there's so much coming out, and for a long time— long enough for you to nearly get your breath back, too long— nothing happens, other than the wind, and Logan's crying, and Pancho's terrible attempts to breathe.

"Change," you tell her. "Come on, work, come ON." You've never changed anyone before. You've never even seen it done. But this is how it goes, isn't it? It's in the blood. This has to be how it works.

And then, there: like the inescapable pull of the moon, a new weight, gathering somewhere you're still somehow connected to. It's taking, you think, it must be— it's as if you're in that ditch, at the base of the thorny, painful incline up to the change, and you've got someone starting to hold on to you.

You...push. You're not the one that needs to go up— you can't even, it's too close to the moon, it's too steep, you can't. But it's tilted the other way, for them, for Pancho. It's a slope down. You heave and scramble and the weight gets more solid, more present, more attached, and you push, and Pancho gives a wet howl and flickers all over, moonlight off water, light through leaves, she changes.

She spasms, cries out, hacks for breath, and bristles all over with fur. Another terrible effort and she's got ears, a tail, a proper nose, her hands slim out. And then you are lying on another wolf, just about your size and tangled up in Pancho's clothes. The hole in her chest is smaller, the edges neater, the insides paler, the bloodflow lighter. Exhaustion just about disembowels you.

"Pancho?" Logan asks, confused but dawningly hopeful. She licks one of Pancho's oversized ears, her narrow muzzle, the starkly pale fur of her throat. You start pulling her wet rag of a shirt off, and arranging the rest of the clothes into a sort of nest. It's so cold and rough here...

"It's Pancho," you agree. "Let's clean her up and keep her warm, until she wakes up."

Logan wags an agreement, and cuddles gladly in to the heap. Pancho's phone is ringing, and after she's situated you go find it where it dropped, further up the bank, in a patch of clear snow. You fetch it back to her and Logan's side, wait for it to ring again, and nose the answer button.

"Woof," you say into the receiver.

 

You're only 50% conscious, and about 500% confused. You have legs again, but they're in the wrong place? The smell of blood is overwhelming. The fact that your dog is saying your name seems almost normal compared to how everything else feels.

"Ow," you explain, and Logan goes batshit.

"BE OKAY, OKAY?" she demands.

"Settle down, you goober, I feel like hell."

"PANCHO!" she shouts joyfully, and you just... accept it.

 

Well, thank god he's not in a red or green car, you'd be fucked. The thought makes your tail shiver in a nervy giggle, and you go "Yuff," a final time, in hopes he understands that's a yes.

You race to the top of the bank, drop the phone, and stare hard. Logan stays put, of course, you doubt you could drag her off Pancho were you twice the size. Or a rhino. When you see flashing lights, you give a long, harsh howl— it carries better than barking, and anyway you're starting to get hoarse.

Logan, behind you, sets up a flurry of her own barking, which is very helpful, and about half a mile off your dad howls back. You're still at the lake?

I'm here.

Then Alex is out of the car and coming towards you, and you give an anxious, three-legged bounce.

"I'm sorry," you start off with, and just sort of proceed in the same fashion from there. You are completely and utterly composed of sorry.

(erskin will be doing the I'm A Bad Dog Who Can't Look At You cringe, especially when alex sees pancho.)

 

You stick your nose out the door and howl again.

Dad?

I'm busy! Go already!

Okay, I'm going.

You give a shrug as best as you can and try to nudge Alex towards the driver's seat. If that doesn't answer his question he'd better start phrasing it in a way you can actually say yes or no to. It's not as if you've got a thesaurus stowed anywhere.

 

Bel's dad gets into the driver's seat, but instead of driving he leans over sideways and demands, "What'd he say?"

Erskin's trying to do a thing with nudging and barking and it's obviously not going to work, and right now you're having trouble grasping why you can understand Dadspera but Dadros can't, and when you open your mouth to say something about it your complaint comes out as a very doggy sort of heen noise. Logan flips her shit once again. Why can't -- oh, that might work.

You tap Dadros's elbow with your -- your paw, okay -- in morse code: GO GO GO.

He finally understands, and puts the pedal to the metal at last.

 

You go to your haunches down by Pancho and wash her ears as comfortingly as you can manage. Your foreleg does not like this, and you expect bits of her are complaining just as vociferously.

"I'm going to have to learn morse, aren't I?" you ask grumpily. It feels better to focus on inane things. "I can hardly spell as is, I can't be having with a second alphabet. Tell Kadros he's absolutely balls at asking questions that anyone without specialized bloody training can answer, would you?"

When she makes as if to move— or maybe it's just the motion of the car— you nose her back down, and lick her cheek. "Never mind, save your strength. How's it feeling, can you breathe alright?"

 

"Ever had pleurisy?" you ask inanely. You try to gather yourself and clarify: "My right lung hurts a lot, and it's wet in there. I don't know if it's still bleeding. I need to stay lying on this side until we're sure." Another painful breath, and a weird little cough, which spatters the back of the passenger seat with blood. "But I can feel my legs just fine. You werewolfed me, and now I can feel my legs again. So uh. Thanks."

 

"I'm sorry," you say miserably, hanging your head. "I didn't know what else to do. I wouldn't have if I could have thought of anything else. I'm really sorry. You should have gotten to chose all of this on your own, it's monstrous. Bel didn't get to chose either."

 

"Was I dying?" you ask bluntly.

 

"Er, yes, you were fairly well blown to shit," you say, abashed. "You weren't even aware enough to ask. Er. I suppose I could have tried harder. To. Er. To ask."

 

"No, dude, chill. You don't need patient consent to initiate a lifesaving measure. We're cool." The impulse that would normally have you patting his shoulder results instead, in this form, in licking his chin. Which tastes like your blood. "Yeah, I like being alive."

 

"Alright. Alright. I just— this is all so terrible. And I hate it. And I'm sad. And I'm still sorry." You give her a mutually comforting nuzzle, then go and try to wash the wound. It's still going, but not very. "This should close up overnight, we're so close to the full moon. But I don't think you'll be quit up for a romp for awhile, maybe a week. If we could even romp anywhere. I don't know about you but I want to dig under a sofa and never come out."

 

"Hear hear," you mumble. "I hope you don't mind sharing your boyfriend because I could use Large Bro Hugs right now." The car goes dark as Dadros drives into a garage. He opens the glove box, and you smell gun oil and cordite. "Holy God, he thinks they might've gotten into the house," you realize. "If they're in the house we are all so fucked."

He opens the car door but gestures for you to stay put. Holding his sidearm ready, he starts toward the door, then freezes as the knob turns. Your hackles go up, which is a very weird sensation. The door opens, showing a large man-shape with a gun -- tensing makes you whimper -- they aim at each other for a half second that feels like two or three weeks, and then put up their guns. It's Bel.

It's Bel in his pyjamas, with epic bed hair and a M4A1 propped on his shoulder like the sleepiest murderdork, and you don't have thumbs to operate a camera. This is so unfair.

 

That startles a laugh out of you.

"I left your camera back by the lake, I'm sorry," you tell her. "If you like we can go back and try all this again."

The expression on her face clearly conveys that no, she would not fucking like. You flounder forward and poke your head out the car door.

"Bel, we're alright!" you tell him. It is mostly, but not entirely, a lie. "I got shot again though and feel pretty fucking rotten about it, please come here and lick my face!"

(i'm assuming that pancho would be like bel was early on, and not realize that the wolf shape is so expressive)

 

"No no no stop getting shot," Bel fusses as he slings the weapon over his shoulder and hurries to the car. "Where's Pan... cho... oh my god."

"You're wearing Captain America pants," you point out. "And carrying an assault rifle. This is hilarious."

"You're a wolf. And you're both fucked up. This is not cool. This is not even slightly okay." He's gathering Erskin gently up, leaving it to his dad to carry you, which he does as soon as Bel's out of the way.

Bel continues fussing all the way upstairs. You can see how much of an effort it is for him to climb those stairs, and you want to give him a good chewing-out for it, but that's the doctor in you talking. The soldier in you understands that walking wounded carry the ones who can't walk, and if it pulls their stitches, that's a problem for later. When you're not under fire.

"Dadspera's still out there," you mention.

"You left him?" Bel demands of his dad.

"Reginald is a one man army," Kadros Senior says with calm that would almost certainly fool someone who can't smell his fear sweat. "He'll be fine."

"I'm a one man army and look at me," Bel protests. He sinks onto his bed with a stifled groan, Erskin still in his arms. You are deposited on his other side, and then they try to figure out how to get Bel's service rifle out from under him without knocking either injured wolf onto the floor.

Laughing is a perfectly reasonable response to stress, and also to Bel being a doofus and a fusslord. Fortunately for what is now apparently your pack, you think it's cute when he's like that.

"Thank you," Bel says solemnly as he hands his dad the rifle.

Logan gallops into the room still trailing her leash and stained with your blood, and takes up guard position in the doorway. "Good girl," you tell her.

"I'm a good girl!" she agrees proudly.

(your assumption is correct)