hostileterritory | Once Upon a Werewolf

Once Upon a Werewolf - for makethestory

1. In another place, with a different sequence of events, Henry is the one it happens to. Graduated, gone abroad. Come back in the end to warden. A certain port, a certain night, a certain bite.

This time he tells her right away that something feels wrong. They--all of them, anyone on the Barge with a mind for it--spend the next two days looking for signs of what's wrong and coming up empty. Henry sings wordlessly in his sleep and can't go five minutes with needing to eat. The third day he knows it's too late. He feels steadier, clear-headed for the first time since the attack. Queasy, where before he couldn't get enough calories from moment to moment for him to stay awake.

He kisses Saga, meets her eyes, and says he hopes he'll see her in the morning. Then he goes down to Zero to wait it out.

He gets sick. His body works at rejecting the change. He gets sicker. By the third day the options are let him die or pull him out of the cell. Henry can't weigh in. Saga's choice.

The next night, he shifts in the infirmary.

2. From here, two stories diverge in a Wood: in one, one we'll visit, the couple stays aboard the Barge to figure things out from there.

In another, they take the chance that someone at the Market will have a cure and get caught in a fae game that ends with the two of them emerging from the woods and into town seven years later, not knowing anything more than a day has gone by.

The Barge, of course, is well gone.

3. The couple that stayed aboard, however, had a very different problem. Long discussion, longer argument, eventually led to the conclusion that if a cure or a better solution than Zero doesn't surface before the next change, he has to protect the people on board. It will solve the problem one way or another. They can't afford to experiment with whether or not he can learn to control it.

The universe has more interesting plans, and the Barge loses her grip on him. He comes back in days, only loses five minutes himself, but that was the end of the possible clean slate. And the port, well, that was left behind weeks ago. No help to be found there, either.

He can feel the electricity starting in his bones. But this time it feels good.

2b. The universe works in mysterious ways, and in another place entirely, this happens again. But not to a pair of wardens. No, this time Henry is still David, and when they step back into the flow of time, David should be dead.

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It was just one night for them.

When they emerge and the townsfolk tell them how long it's actually been, she can't help but wonder if this is how Alan felt, if this strange time skip was actually filled with memories she doesn't have. But a quick search tells her that it's not the case; even the faerie, it seem, can't quite manage to boggle her mind and that leaves her with a problem.

Because she has a kid. And she has to get back to her kid.

But Henry is here, and Henry is... not in a state that can possibly handle being alone. He might be graduated, he might be a trained field operative with the FBC, but he's also reckoning with the fact that he's a werewolf right now and that's not...

That means she has to figure out how to give him the space that he needs to learn how to deal with this while at the same time, she can't not check on her kid. It means a lot of things all at once but mostly it means going to her Mind Place and reaching for the shelf, for a particular book. Madame Door hasn't been one she's opened since she put it there, but she needs her right now, more than ever.

...though it feels like it should be harder.

Being aware of herself, in another world at the same time and being here, it feels like it should be unnatural, that she should feel strained or pulled in too many directions. But instead, the strange remove she's always felt finally feels like she's in the right place, like she can finally feel the breeze after opening the window. She sees herself in Bright Falls, putting down her phone, returning off of the Barge's time skip... and yet she's here, now, with Henry.

It's like finally stretching after a lifetime in a cramped car.

It's what makes it easier for her to reach for another one, a life lived when technology was a little different, society a little different. Thankfully, the color of her skin isn't nearly the problem it might have been in another world, one without the fae, but here, in this village, the fact that it's not blue or green or purple keeps her firmly on the side of the locals. As does the fact that she's an exceptional seamstress.

It's enough to get the villagers, who are sympathetic to their plight given the involvement of the fae, to offer them a house to rent. The only real problem is-

"...so how much of a problem do you think it's going to be when they figure out you didn't actually find a cure at the market?" she asks as she starts setting up for their dinner.

Because she's hoping it's long enough for him to get acclimated or for the next market. Either way, one of these things has to happen before she can take them home.

"We've got a week to find out." He knows, somehow, with certainty. They were close enough to a full moon for him being bitten to be a problem. He can feel the moon in his bones now that they're back under it. He doesn't know if the fae dumped them into this precise time because of the impending change or not, but in the end he doesn't think it matters.

He's pacing, checking the solidity of the doors and windows and the strength of their locks.

"We can't let it happen in town."

Edited 2025-11-29 03:45 (UTC)

She watches him pace, wondering if that's Henry's training or his wolf instincts trying to secure a den in an unstable situation. She's willing to bet 'both' and she's not going to stop him from doing any of it. It's perfectly reasonable. But she breathes out slow.

"Which means we need to find a spot in the woods. Which has it's own dangers." She looks to him. "I hope you don't think I'm going to leave you out there alone, right? Because that's not happening."

He can't look at her, mostly because he doesn't want her to see how pale and scared for her he is.

"I know." His voice is steady, sure, but very very soft. Last time he'd barely been able to find himself, and he'd had to fight tooth and nail against overwhelming instinct to keep the recollection. At least enough of it not to hurt Saga, even if he forgot everything else from time to time while he was changed. That one thing he never lost: he loved her the entire time. Even in the middle of the fae game when they stripped him of everything else. There's reassurance in that, but not as much as he'd like.

Edited 2025-11-29 03:59 (UTC)

Which is why she's going to walk around to make sure he can look him in the face, in the eyes, that he is looking at her and not thinking of a version of her getting ripped apart by a phantasm version of himself. He's always worried about hurting her, and she's always made it perfectly clear that he never would. That doesn't change now that he's a wolf.

"Sweetheart," she repeats, soft and slow, "I am safe. I am never in danger with you. I am going out there because there are other things in those woods and being alone with them is not a good idea." She'll get her hand on his cheek. "The last thing I want is for you to change back, naked and disoriented, and get swept up in something."

She can't help that she sees all the places where this makes him vulnerable and not a danger.

He presses his face into her palm. He'll feel just a little too warm to the touch, particularly now that the sun is down. He focuses on the contact, focuses on her, focuses on reeling himself back into the moment.

He's still too warm, still as tense a violin string about to snap, but at least the edge of panic starts to fade.

"We're a team," he says, a reminder to himself and a declaration. "We can do this. We can figure it out."

She leans up and gently tugs him down so that their foreheads can touch.

"We can figure it out," she repeats to him, "and we're going to find the best solution there is." She turns to kiss his cheek. "And we don't know what that is yet, but we've got this. We'll find a way. We always do."

And she'll pull her hand away from his face to reach over and wrap around him in a hug. She'll give him a quick squeeze before she looks back up at him.

"How're you feeling? Getting a better handle on it now, you think?"

He breathes deep and slow, focused on his body, what he feels and where. Though the deep breath in immediately distracts him with a thousand semi-familiar scents.

"I-" Right, focus. "I don't know about handling anything, but it doesn't hurt. I don't feel sick. I feel..."

Now that he's thinking about it- "I feel amazing, actually."

Probably cause for concern.

Her eyebrows bounce, though one stays up.

"You say that like it's a bad thing." A tilt of her head. "I mean, pretty sure we can guess what it means for you, considering every bit of werewolf lore that I can think of."

"It's not?" He gives her a look somewhere between surprised and infatuated. "Fill me in. I don't know werewolf lore."

"Aha." Well, then. She'll keep setting out things for dinner but-

"The primary way to make more werewolves is for a one of them to bite someone. Supposedly, that passes the condition on." She puts her hand lightly on his arm. "Usually, this comes with extra strength, speed, sensory sensitivities..."

A moment before-

"If you breathe in, can you smell me distinct from the rest of the cabin?"

At least he's familiar with supercharged senses, but not smell. Smell and taste have been numbed out for so long he forgot about the variety they have. He breathes in again, and the tidal flood of scents around them pour into his lungs. He can smell every herb in the kitchen, the rain from last night drying in the thatch overhead, the smells of people passing outside. Every single scent, even the ones he knows objectively stink, smells fantastic. The 'bad' smells are at worst not his preference.

His preference is Saga, and she smells... heavenly. He visibly relaxes with each successive breath.

"Someone gave you an apple earlier. Maybe yesterday." Distracted, but not incorrect!

She can't help but smile as he relaxes and her hand will settle along the side of his cheek.

"Well, that's a good reminder to me to make sure I brush my teeth," she jokes but he gets a nod. "I had an apple yesterday night: my treat for finishing the clean up."

He leans into the contact and lets his eyes close while he breathes in the soft perfume of her skin. There's the Scent-That-Is-Saga, under soap and clean clothes and the lingering touches of the fae. He catches traces of deep water and forests without end, breathes in again and can practically see her crowned with antlers like a queen. He knows he'll never lose her again if she's in the same world, not for long. He would know her anywhere.

"It's crazy," he murmurs, the words soft with relaxation. He can hear the people who pass outside, yeah, but that's not new. Sharper now, but not new. It's the other senses that are overwhelming. "It's not just what's there, on the skin, it's... I can smell- water, deep water. Endless."

In the same calm tone, with a little humor in how weird he knows the jump is, he says, "I should help with dinner."

Edited 2025-12-02 04:46 (UTC)

She smiles at the offer, but first she's going to offer up her wrist so that he can smell all he might want to smell, her other hand lifting to carefully tuck his hair back and away behind his ear. She remembers what it was like to feel her senses expanding and her awareness of So Much More going through her.

And because she knows, she doesn't want to rush him through it.

"No rush. I'm not hungry yet."

It's like inhaling perfume, but not in real life. There's no acridness to it, no tangy foul artificial chemical taste. He thinks, with a private chuckle, it's more like those old cartoons, with pink mist hypnotizing Bugs Bunny or Tom, making them forget anything else and float after the wearer.

He can hear the water lapping at at a shore that isn't there. He can feel the chill and the damp of fog at twilight. Taste waterweeds and rain. Whatever he is now, there is something in her that calls to him, and he... what's that word, he heard it once upon a time and he's never had a feeling that equaled it before. He- yearns to answer her. Any of her, every single one of her.

"God, I love you so much."

The hand that had been tucking his hair back slips down to stroke his cheek. What she sees when she looks at him, all the timelines and possibilities, the various worlds where he exists in the Sea of Night... none of them are hers but this one, and this is the one she loves more than any of them, because that's her Henry. Where he loves her in her broadness, she loves him in his specificity. It's... poetry, in a way that neither of them can entirely see, but together the picture is complete.

Which is also a kind of poetry, the kind she's always gotten a little better than crime fiction, honestly. (Crime fiction never asks the questions she wants to know the answers to, the ones she feels in her soul would tell her who dunnit, which is probably why they weren't asked to begin with but such is storytelling.)

She smiles at him.

"It's going to be an adjustment," she says quietly, watching him, "and it's not something you should tough out on your own. That either of us should. The important thing is to communicate with each other and let each other help. We're stronger together."

"I know," he says softly. He does, ish, as much as one can know how something like becoming a werewolf will fuck things up. "We are. We- god, we always have been."

He doesn't realize he's doing it. It's instinct, a new psychic muscle that offers up his mind to her for experience and perusal. The creature that made him is long gone. Malcolm and Maggie aren't here. He doesn't know how to do this on his own, and his fear wants to connect their minds so she can understand even when no one else does. See through his eyes, experience his senses. His feelings. He wants Saga to know he has a home no matter what else happens, and he wants her to know who it is.

It's easy enough to reach out, to accept what he offers, but she decides to do one better.

Because there's an infinite number of worlds, infinite permutations. And she can see them, sense them, find what she needs between them, and she stands in the door, she stands a part of all of them as herself. It feels like it should be harder to find the one where this went differently.

Where she's the one who was bitten, where she's the one who's adjusting. She steps into that identity, lets herself Be That for a moment, and breathes in deep to smell him in return, her eyes shifting just a little from a deer's to a wolf's as she looks back.

He's not alone with this. He's never alone with this. They might be a pack of two, but they are a pack, the two of them, together.

He feels the change happen, if only because he can suddenly feel her as a beautiful, gentle presence at the edges of his mind. Gentle like the curve of a talon is gentle. Gentle like the touch of a god.

Fuck, he gets flowery when it's her.

"Saga-" He doesn't want her to do this for him, just for him. The selfish relief breaks his heart and makes him hopeful all at once. "That's... you don't have to- You have so much more this complicates."

And her answer to that is to nudge him with her forehead in reply, a wolfish gesture if there ever was one, and meet his eyes.

"I don't have to do it period, but it doesn't have to be all the time, Henry," she reminds him, "but I can do it when it feels right to do it. When you could use someone. And it's not a hardship for me."

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Once Upon a Werewolf - for makethestory

Option 2 - As Is

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