318Beta'd by Auntypanda
We are officially over the point where I got writers block 10 years ago. For everyone just tuning in, chapters 3-12 are new content added to the story. 13-19 is where I left off 10 years ago.
N
Nathan always loved the idea of superheroes.
Batman, Superman, Ironman, it didn't matter which. They were stronger, smarter and betterthan normal people. They had to be in order to qualify as heroes, in his book. But Superman wasn't real. The closest thing they had to Batman was the Rockefellers, and Ironman worked at Apple.
Maybe that's why the stories of his culture fascinated him so. Shapeshifters and cold ones, shamans, and animal gods. He couldn't think of better heroes than his ancestors fighting off threat after threat. It's why he was so let down by his father. His only link to a fantastical heritage had skipped out on him before he was even born.
It didn't come as a surprise, though. Joshua Uley was as unfit for parenthood as any man could be. He spent late nights drinking with the guys and gambling away what little money they had from the latest temp job he had scored. That was the life he gave Christina, Nathan's mother. Above all else, he wanted to be cared for, like a child. Christina tolerated this for about four years until she had finally had enough and laid down an ultimatum: shape up or leave.
He was gone the very next day.
Noah was four, Nathan was a few weeks away from being born. He never really had cause to focus much on that fact while growing up, though. He had his mother's last name, after all, and she had made damn sure to provide for them both as best as she could during their childhoods. It was only after he turned 12, and he had to do a school project on genetics that his interest piqued.
Quileute.
The word meant nothing to him before that project. It felt foreign on his tongue, like so many other cultures he had studied in school. Noah knew about as much as he did about the tribe when he asked him for help. It ended up being a fun little assignment they bonded over, though the lasting impression left on both boys differed greatly: where Nathan was enthralled by the mystical quality of the legends and the notion of heroics, Noah was more interested in tracking down the lost side of their family: cousins, aunts and uncles, maybe even grandparents. It was a fascination that slowly turned into obsession, culminating in his decision after graduating from secondary school to take a trip down to the La Push reservation in Washington, USA.
He was only supposed to be gone for a month.
Instead, one month turned into over a year, with little to no explanation. Sure, he called every now and again, but there was never any real talk about how his search was going. The most he got out of him was that he had met a girl and it was serious. It was practically a slap in the face to their mother. She had raised them both not to abandon family. It was a slight against Nathan too, though, to a slightly lesser extent. He wanted his brother to be happy, and for once, it sounded like he was. He just wished he would be more willing to open up about his new life.
Little did he know, Nathan thinks wryly as he watches his brother stock the pyre with wood. They're in a small clearing in the forest. Night is about to fall, the sun setting in a muted orange glow over the horizon. He leans back against a tree trunk, knees drawn up. He's still trying to get over how much Noah has grown in the last year and a half. When Noah came to pick him up from school, he could barely believe it with his own eyes.
"Noah!" he exclaims, rushing over to him and wrapping him in a bear hug. Well, as close to a bear hug as he can get. His brother dwarfed his measly 5'2 now. He steps back to examine him further: Noah towered over him now at 6'4, his once long, wavy black hair cropped short. He wore thick jeans and a military style green jacket over his favorite black Queen t-shirt.
"How you doin', kid?"
Nathan shrugs, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly. "Alright, I guess. It's been a while…"
"I know. I'm sorry."
An awkward silence hangs between them. The bell rings. Soon the hallway is flooded with students.
"We have a lot to talk about," Noah says, grabbing his arm and dragging him through the crowd of students. "And we can't do it here."
"Hey, will you watch it?!" Nathan protests, wrenching his arm out of his grasp. They stop. "What the hell is going on?You come back out of the blue, after a year and a half without so much as an update on what you found—"
"I know about the vampire," Noah interrupts, stunning Nathan into silence. "And I know you've…turned. But we can't talk about it here. We have to go." He turns to leave, but Nathan doesn't follow him. Noah stops, turning to him.
"Nathan—"
"Are you a wolf, too?"
Noah sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Yes, I am. Now will you c'mon!?" He continues on, his height creating a wide berth in the crowd. Nathan waits a second before deciding to follow him.
"The meeting will be in a few hours. Sam doesn't want to do anything until he has the whole story, but the rest of the pack is still antsy about even talking to them."
"Why? I thought you said they didn't drink from humans?" Like Tony, he thinks to himself.
"Just because a lion has gotten used to eating fish doesn't mean they won't still try for the red meat if they have a chance," Noah says darkly. "A vampire is still a vampire."
Nathans squirms uneasily under his brother's dark gaze. Since leaving school his brother had been spouting all sorts of pack dogma, to his distaste. Most of which had to do with his friendship with Tony.
"What were you thinking?" Noah chastises, as they trudge through the forest. "You hadn't even turned yet and you were tailing this guy? He could have killed you!"
"I don't know!" he bursts, trying to keep up. "I mean, I figured if I just kept an eye on him things would be ok. I could sound the alarm with the police if people started disappearing. But I was wrong. He wasn't doing anything, he just wanted to be left alone."
"You said he nearly killed that man in the alley—"
"Yeah, while saving me!" he interrupts, annoyed. "He didn't even drink from him."
They had been going back and forth like this for the last hour. Nathan didn't know what to believe. On the one hand, this was his brother, his first friend, the closest thing he had to a father growing up. On the other hand, he barely recognized the person currently standing before him, now. This person was a true believer in the pack. A believer in the dogma that said the wolves were warriors chosen by their gods to purge their home of all beings that drank blood. No exceptions. They were the good guys in their stories. The heroes.
He didn't like this. All of this talk about sworn enemies and bloodlines made it seem too cult-like, made him feel the way he felt talking to that Jacob guy in his head. The mind link thing was the worst of it. Apparently, everyone that turned could read each other's thoughts in its entirety—something about it being for strategy. He didn't care how useful it was in a fight, though. He liked his privacy…and his free will. That was another thing about the mind link—no one could defy a direct order from Sam, their leader.
Except him, apparently.
Luckily, it seemed that whatever mind link he had with the pack had been severed that night, after he initially refused Sam's order. Noah thought it might have something to do with their being related and with Sam being the pack leader of this generation. Technically, Jacob was supposed to be the alpha, but he turned later than Sam and was younger. In theory, Jacob could break away and form his own pack, which is what Sam thinks is what Nathan inadvertently did that night.
It was an interesting development that was still being discussed.
"Okay, fire lit, now we just wait," Noah says, as he backs away from the growing flames. The fire illuminates the small clearing. Nathan moves closer, thankful for the heat, despite not needing it. It was comforting.
They sit next to each other in awkward silence as they wait for the rest of the pack to arrive. When he doesn't notice, Nathan eyes his brother with worry. It wasn't just the pack that had changed him, it was the girl he was seeing. Noah called it imprinting—when a wolf basically found their soulmate, and apparently it had happened to him. When he wasn't talking about the pack and vampires and finding their brother, he talked about Leah. It made him…uncomfortable. Like he was listening to something that was inappropriate.
"So…how's Leah?" He decides to ask, to break the silence.
"She's fine. Antsy since she had stay in La Push, but I think she's secretly relishing being put in charge while we're gone."
"Hmm."
She sounded nice enough, though a bit rough around the edges. Exactly the kind of girl Noah needed. He was a nurturer at heart. A fixer of broken things. Not that Leah was broken. Just that she needed a "soft touch," he said. It was the sort of mush that made Nathan want to gag. It got weirder, though. Apparently, before anyone had started turning into wolves, Sam and Leah were a thing, and after Sam turned, he ended up imprinting on Leah's cousin. Leah ended up being the first female in Quileute history to turn, and her grief over Sam's rejection was causing conflict within the mind link. It had all been a huge mess when Noah arrived in La Push.
"You miss her?" he asks.
"Yeah."
"So…if you two get married, she'll be my sister-in-law?"
Noah shoots him a sideways glance before chuckling. "Yeah, I guess she will be."
"Mom know?" That sobers him up pretty quickly. He looks down and plays with a ring on his finger that Nathan hadn't noticed till now.
"No, not yet. I was gonna tell her about it once she calmed down."
"Yeah, I don't blame you," he says, darkly. "She hasn't screamed like that since…well…since the night I turned."
They both give each other a look. Their mother's anger was legendary, and the night he turned was the worst he had ever seen her. She screamed at him for hours once they got home. He could only imagine how his mother reacted when Noah returned home after over a year, without so much as a phone call letting her know he was coming.
"It was pretty bad," Noah says, trailing off. "She wouldn't stop going on and on about how I was shaping up to be like Joshua, and how I was being a bad influence towards you."
He snorts. "Yeah, because you were the reason I turned into a wolf that day." They both chuckle at that.
"…Why did you turn? I mean, what happened?"
Nathan shrugs. "I was already showing signs of turning beforehand. Tony and I had been trying to figure it out the last month—what was triggering it. But what you said earlier actually makes sense: being physically close to a vampire turns on the gene."
"But you were already showing signs before that vamp kid came."
"Which makes me think another vamp or two must have passed through the city before he arrived."
"So, passing vampires aside, what triggered you phasing? And at school of all places?"
The memory of Terry and his goons puts a sour taste in his mouth. He glowers at the flames. "Just some 12th years being assholes, again. They wouldn't leave me alone."
Noah's face hardens. "Who were they?"
"Don't worry about it."
"The fuck I can't worry about it—"
"It's fine! Tony took care of it."
Noah shoots him a glare before blowing air out his mouth, mumbling under his mouth, "Tony took care of it."
"Why do you hate him?" Nathan asks him, finally, after staring into the flames for too long. "You haven't even met him, and he's done nothing wrong. To any of you."
"I told you, a lion—"
"Will you stop it with that lion talk? We're talking about Tony, here. He's only half-vampire. He lives off human food too. Hell, he only drinks animal blood, like that coven were meeting with later."
"Just because he's…half-vampire, doesn't mean he's not dangerous. You have no idea what his kind have done to ours."
"If you're talking about the legends—"
"I'm talking about the last couple of years," Noah bursts angrily. "Right when I arrived in La Push, one of his kind got onto the reservation. Three tribespeople died, along with one of the pack. That…thing got through because they didn't know what it was thanks to it being half-human."
He goes on, "A woman and her two kids, Nathan. A wolf that was younger than you. Open your eyes. This isn't one of your superhero movies, where the villain's tragic backstory leads to them becoming one of the good guys. They are what they were born to be."
He's at a loss for words. The uncomfortable silence between them returns, and there's no more talk of Leah or Tony or their mother. Noah just had to bring up Nathan's movies…he always did that whenever he wanted to win an argument against him. Already he feels the heat of embarrassment and shame on his cheeks. He goes back to staring darkly at the dancing flames.
Sometime later, a noise behind them shakes them out of their bubble. They jump to their feet as four kids around Nathan's age start to walk out of the tree line, barefoot, and in varying states of poor dress. One kid, who looks to be the leader, heads straight for them.
"Noah."
"Seth. What's going on?" Noah looks behind Seth, to the three other young wolves. "Where's Sam and the others?"
"He sent the rest of us on ahead. Last I heard they were tracking that vampire kid about 50 miles south of here.
The hairs on the back of Nathan's neck stick up. "What do you mean? Why are they tracking him?"
Seth looks at him uneasily. He gives Noah a quick glance before continuing, "They smelled blood on him. Human blood. Jared and Jacob went to go head him off."
No, that can't be. Tony wouldn't.
"It has to be a mistake. He wouldn't do that."
Seth shrugs. "Well, whatever the reason, it got Sam's attention."
Shit.
He walks away from them, back to the fire, running a hand through his short, black hair. Tony mentioned the fights he used to get into back in Cherryville, though you could hardly call them fights on the human end. It was basically a practice in control for him whenever he would throwdown with whatever meathead asshole had a bone to pick. Was this one of those situations?
"—got Jared pretty good. Looked like a blender ran through his chest, but he's gonna be okay. It was pretty freaky, though. We saw it through his mind and then Jacobs. One minute he's about to rip up the bloodsucker, the next he's flying through the air and torn up to shreds. It felt like he had knives stabbing him everywhere."
Nathan's heart plummets into his stomach. The shards. Tony said in theory he could rip someone apart with them. Looks like it's not a theory anymore.
"Wait a minute," he begins, turning around to look at them. "Rip him up? What did they do to him?"
"Nothing compared to what he did to Jared—"
"Seth—" Noah starts.
"No," Nathan interrupts, walking back over to them. "What did they do to Tony?"
Seth shares another strange look with Noah, which only infuriates Nathan more. He looks at Noah pointedly, and Noah sighs, turning to Seth.
"Seth, what exactly happened?"
"Nothing! Jacob just…might have tried to tear his arm off."
"What!?"
At Nathan's outraged look, Seth continues, "I mean it's not like he succeeded! Just got a few bites into him, from what Jacob remembers."
Aghast, he continues, "So he's hurt?"
"Yeah, if Jacob remembers right. Kid lost a lot of blood before he was able to slip away."
Not needing to hear anymore, Nathan starts to walk away from them, hurriedly stripping off his jacket.
"Nathan, what are you doing?"
He doesn't answer him, instead bending down to untie his shoes.
"NATHAN!"
He pauses. Then rises and turns around. The younger wolves are looking at him, confused, while Noah has a look of fury on his face as he stalks towards him.
"What the hell are you doing?" He hisses at him as Nathan undoes the buttons on his dress shirt.
"I'm going to find Tony."
"Are you out of your mind?!" Noah grabs him by the collar and moves to drag him back to the group, but Nathan wrenches himself free, glaring at him.
"Tony wouldn't harm anyone unless he was provoked first. He's not a human drinker, either."
"You don't know what you're saying," Noah snarls, shaking his head. "That vamp's got you wrapped around his little finger—"
"That vamp has been watching my back for months!" he shouts back, hidden anger and frustration finally reaching the surface. "More than you've done in the last year!"
His declaration stuns Noah into silence, while Nathan goes on, "I spent day after day getting stuffed into lockers and tripped during gym and being called a fag, and where were you? Replacing Mom and I with a whole new family—"
"I wasn't replacing you or Mom—"
"You might as well have—"
"It was complicated!" he bursts, desperately. "The pack had to be kept secret, and the imprint bond—I couldn't leave! Things with Leah and La Push and the pack were still unstable, I couldn't leave her to deal with it on her own!"
He huffs in frustration, finally undoing all of the buttons on his shirt. With his shirt finally open he peels it off his arms and throws it to the ground near his feet. Shadows from the fire dance across his warm, russet skin. He turns away to start unbuckling his belt buckle.
"Nathan…it's no use."
He unwraps the belt from his waist and drops it on the heap of clothing beside him,
"You heard what Seth said: they smelled human blood on him. And they've already got a head start on his trail. They've probably caught up to him by now, and if he's as badly injured as Jacob remembers…"
"You don't know Tony," Nathan says. "You don't know what he can do."
"It's still five against one. Those aren't good odds."
"I wouldn't underestimate him," a new voice says coldly.
They all turn towards the voice. Beyond the fire, men, four of them, start to walk out from the tree line. Vampire men. Like Bella, there is something other worldly about the way they move and look. There are two blonds, one huge one with curly brown hair, and one with copper hair. The one with copper hair stands by one of the blonds. The fire is between them all.
"Noah," greets the blond beside the copper haired one.
"Carlisle."
"It seems were missing more members to this meeting than initially agreed upon."
"Change of plans…Sam and the rest got caught up in some business. They'll be here once it's done."
"And by business you mean hunting Tony," the copper one says coldly.
He gulps audibly as he eyes his brother with worry. The bronze-haired one is intense as hell, glaring at Noah with deadly golden eyes. Unfazed, Noah stares at him impassively.
"There really aren't any secrets from you, is there Cullen?"
"I'm a mind reader, Andrus. Secrets have been out the window since before you were born."
"Then you should know by now why the rest of the pack is looking for him."
"Edward, what's he talking about?" the big vampire asks. 'What the hell is going on?"
"The rest of the pack has taken it upon themselves to hunt Tony. They think he killed a human in town."
"Not think, know," Noah says scathingly to the outrage of the vampires. The bronzed-haired one-Edward—looks about ready to tear Noah's head off. "They smelled human blood on him, and his eyes were red!"
"They're red regardless of what kind of blood he drinks," Nathan murmurs to himself. Everyone turns to him. He squirms under their collective gazes, shrugging. "Tony told me."
Noah waves him off, to his chagrin. "He didn't lie to me!" he says, angrily. "He probably just got into another fight with a human!"
"Another?"
At his questioning look, Noah admits, "Tony has…fought them at school. But he has control! He's only ever—"
"Jesus Christ, do you hear yourself right now?" Noah asks him incredulously. "Nathan, he's not human, no matter how much he looks like he is!"
"You don't know him like I do!"
"I don't have to! There's literal blood on his hands!"
"Enough!" Carlisle shouts, silencing them all. Behind Nathan, the younger wolves murmur amongst themselves worriedly. He looks back at Carlisle, shrinking at how murderous he looks in that moment. He and the other vampires walk around fire to join Edward.
"We had an agreement, Noah. To not act until all the facts were known."
"Why do you even care? He's just some weird vamp involved in who knows what! He's not even a part of your coven—"
"Yes, he is," Edward snarls, cutting him off. Confused, Noah pauses.
"…What are you talking about?"
"The boy is my kin, Andrus. My…son."
Son?
"B-But," he stutters, confused. "You're supposed to be like walking corpses, not technically alive. How is that even possible?"
"Life finds a way, I guess," he shrugs. "Or in my case, a male vamp sleeps around with a willing human female and then skips out once his itch is scratched."
He looks over at Edward again, this time to really look: he's tall and lean, with a defined jaw and high cheekbones. His eyes are the same as the others—gold—but…somehow…he and Tony have the same eyes. The same intensity and depth, like they're drowning in their own sort of torment.
Nathan looks at Noah for confirmation, only to be greeted with incredulity.
"I thought vampires were impotent."
"It seems only the females are."
"Well isn't that convenient," Noah says coldly. "The one thing that would make the kid off limits to us is exactly what he is."
"It's the truth. Take it or leave it. And as for Tony, your jurisdiction ends at the La Push border. We've already confirmed that he isn't the same hybrid that attacked your tribe. The boy is our responsibility, not yours."
"He killed a human."
"Allegedly. I'd like to know his side of the story first, considering his…history."
"Hmph."
"Now," he starts, taking a step forward, towards them both, the dark shadows under his eyes highlighted by the light of the flames. "Where is my son?"
He runs, ignoring the pain in his shoulder and the various shouts and curses behind him as they give chase. Buildings loom ahead of him, some lighted, most dark, but regardless he sticks to the shadows, knowing what the sight of his shoulder will incite if spotted by a random passerby.
The bandage is completely soaked through. He winces as he rips it off and tosses it into the gutter. His shoulder looks ghastly: dark red, moist, raw, like something out of the ER. Crisscrossing, crescent-shaped gashes surrounded by inflamed, pink flesh, all lay camouflaged beneath the fresh and congealed blood at the top of his shoulder, where arm and torso meet.
He's still surprised at how easy it was.
He slashes his good arm through the air, pelting the wolves surrounding him with shards. As though being hit with shrapnel, they fall to the ground in a mix of surprised shouts and screams, not knowing what they've been hit with. The shards, meanwhile, have been pulled back to crazily zip around him again. The leader, as he kneels down on the ground, locks eyes with him, confusion, anger, and pain written across his face. He wrenches himself to his feet, holding his side, as his arm reaches out towards him, only for him to recoil in pain again as his hand crosses into the path of the zipping shards. He barks out an order in some foreign language—Quileute probably—and he and the others give him a wider berth.
It's almost enough to make him laugh, if not for the sudden, mind-numbing pain that shoots up his shoulder. He groans, knees buckling as his free hand goes to cover the bloody mess. He looks up, to make sure they're not coming closer, only to be greeted by the odd sight of seeing double of everyone in his vision. He blinks hard until he can see the correct number of wolves again. The shards, meanwhile, are blinking in and out of existence and this time he knows he's in trouble. The last time this happened was the last time he saw Nahuel.
The wolves are starting to regroup, standing back up and checking themselves, and he's astonished to see that the slashes he made on them are no longer bleeding. Blood still stains their clothes, but there are no marks on their skin—he distinctly remembers Jacob getting slashed right across his face, from his right eye down to the corner of his lip.
If he doesn't have the shards, he can't defend himself. Can't defend his mother or his sister.
He looks up one last time at his apartment building before turning around and bolting back the way he came, knocking Jacob and the black-shirted wolf to the ground, to their surprise.
He draws in breath after breath, leaning against the corner of another alleyway. They were faster and with better stamina than he anticipated, to his disdain.
But midst the exhaustion is triumph—at what he did, finally. He let loose. He unleashed the shards, just like Nahuel told him too. For once, they delivered exactly on what Nahuel said they could do.
He did it.
He's still shaking from the adrenalin pumping through his veins. Or the cold. Or the pain in his shoulder, he's not sure which, but it's enough to get him back to reality. He looks up ahead, to the intersection he's about to cross. He's about two blocks away from the edge of the city but going back into the forest is a no-go. If earlier had taught him anything, it was that the wolves were in their element midst the trees and earth. Granted, he was too, but that didn't mean he should be giving them an advantage. That left staying in the city.
But that still left him with limited choices. Staying in the city meant they couldn't turn—not without getting the human's attention—but it also meant constantly moving, which was something he was finding less and less possible. It's as though the wound was sapping his energy with every step he took. Considering the smell emanating from it, that might actually be a reality. It reeked of sickness. Briefly, he considers going to a hospital—he's positive the wolves wouldn't dare try to start anything there, but he discards the idea just as quickly as it came: how was he supposed to explain wolf bites, let alone being conscious?
Besides, he hated hospitals. He may have been born in one (granted it was long abandoned) but it was still a place where people died. Too many flickers to absorb via Reni, so that he would know what death was before he was even able to walk. Too many reminders that he had ended his mother's life with one ravenous bite and made his second kill not long after. Too many shared memories from when he was still in his mother's womb, of obstetric hospital procedures repeated again and again so his mother could get the caesarean just right.
"C'mon, he went this way!"
He curses and starts to run again, this time slipping deeper into the alleyway until he hits a chain link fence. Easily, he tears a hole in the metal and slips through, his damaged arm grazing the wire, to his agony. He stumbles, falling to the ground. Hurriedly, he gets up and starts running again, down another alleyway littered with detritus and weeds growing from the cracks in the pavement. Right. Left. Left. Ahead. He maneuvers through the backchannels of the city like a maze, jumping walls and tearing through fences where he needs to, not sure where he is going. It's only after hitting another fence that he realizes where he's ended up: the industrial district.
His heart soars.
This he can work with. He knows the warehouses and decrepit buildings like the back of his hand. Plenty of places to hole up in, too. He tears through the fence and veers left, into the open, barely lit street. To his right is a vacant lot—all weeds, broken asphalt and trash. To his left—block after block of warehouses. He begins to make his way over to the nearest one, thinking maybe he could hole up somewhere on the second floor—wait them out before striking, when another wave of dizziness hits him. He kneels down in the middle of the road as the world spins all around him. He groans, clutching the side of his head as it and his arm throbs in unison. He looks beyond at the shards, stricken to see that they're flickering in and out of existence.
No, not now. Not again.
He reaches out, but they don't come closer. Like a stray dog spooked on the sidewalk, they hover slightly farther away from him, curious but cautious. He shakes his head, disbelieving. Of all the times they would choose to not respond, they fucking pick now.
Like before.
Where is he?
Too dark. Too weird. Is he hallucinating? He's sitting. Blood tingles in the back of his throat. He sees eyes in front of him—dark brown. A shiver runs down his spine. Everything starts to come back. His words… He feels the whoosh as his heart drops into his stomach and his blood turns to ice. He tries to swallow. The taste of blood coats his tongue.
He tries to rise out of his seat, but Nahuel stops him, pushing him back down. He watches his dark form move behind him, both hands now on his shoulders, firmly keeping him seated. His fingers claw into his flesh. He might as well be strapped down in the chair with steel restraints. He looks around. He's in the center of the kitchen. The stove is illuminated, thanks to the moonlight streaming in from the sink window behind them. "Let me o-out." His voice cracks. He feels his cheeks burn in humiliation and shame at his slip.
"I could have left you there…in the hallway," he says, ignoring him and not letting up his grip. "I should have. You've been nothing but a nuisance since the moment you came crashing into our lives…" He tries to move again, but he pushes him back down, harder this time. He hears the legs of the chair creak in protest. "Such a mouth on you, I swear." His hands claw deeper into the meat of his shoulders. He grits his teeth, trying to ignore the pain. "It almost made me forget why I came here in the first place." The grip on his shoulders disappears.
He's in front of him now, eye to eye, his hands gripping the back of Tony's seat, so he's trapped between his arms.
"He's here!"
His head snaps up, sudden fear gripping his heart and sinking it to the pit of his stomach as more of the wolves stream onto the middle of the street, in front of him. Blocking his path to the warehouses, his safe haven no more. He swallows hard, getting to his feet. He can't speak, can't breathe. All he can do is watch as they surround him yet again, this time with no worry at being seen by passerby, and he finds himself wishing he just braved the hospital, wolf bites be damned. A gentle wind whips through the air. He shivers.
It's happening again, the beast whispers to him. different day, same scenario: trapped. But the question is, how will you act?
Not like before. He can't lose. Not again.
He flinches at his sudden appearance. They stare at each other for a bit. He counts the seconds, while another part of his mind tries to put together what he's just said.
"…What are you—" he tries to begin, but Nahuel cuts him off.
"You can't tell me that you're content with this—hiding in plain sight, wasting your gift… Not when you could be using it to protect them. Protect her. Miguel isn't the type to share," Nahuel says softly. His heart skips a beat. Mentioning his name does it, is enough to take him back to that day: the helplessness, the terror. He grips the edges of his seat, trying to hold onto reality. He doesn't want to lose it, doesn't want to give him the satisfaction. But it passes when the real meaning of his words sinks in. "Especially when he finds something that he's remotely interested in obtaining—" Tony lets out a hateful snarl, muscles tensing. He's still too weak for the shards to return, but right now he cannot bring himself to care. He'd rather have the satisfaction of pummeling his face with his fists.
But Nahuel's quicker; the minute Tony jumps out of his seat to charge at him he takes several steps back, sidestepping him when he gets too close. Just as he misses him, he feels the back of his shirt being violently tugged back, pulling him along. He gets a brief glimpse of his face before his fist collides with the left side of his jaw, and next thing he knows his right cheek is meeting cold stone tile.
He watches as one by one they turn, bursting out of their skin like something out of Underworld. Like a military plane squadron, they arrange themselves in a loose v-formation, with the leader at the center. A half a second later the leader lunges at him, and with a roar, he charges forward. In the background, the shards flicker in and out of his vision.
Will you win, then? the beast asks.
He has too.
They crash into one another in mid-air, landing with a massive crunch on the asphalt, rolling around as each tries to gain the upper hand on the other. To his agony, he uses his damaged arm as a block against its throat as his other arm claws at his side, gouging his flesh until his fur is matted with shiny, dark red blood. The other wolves snap and bite at him from the sidelines.
You're holding back, the beast whispers. You know what happens when you hold back…
He groans, clawing at the smooth tile of the floor, the taste of his own blood coppery and wrong. He opens his eyes, disoriented. Shadows and darkness. The cold, the silence is overwhelming and unending. He feels like he's in a vacuum of nothingness, waiting for something to end him in a flash of pain…just like before.
He can still hear Nahuel, though. That's how he knows he's not there, in the fields, waiting for them to lay their last blow. He hears him walking around him, circling him. The sound of his labored breathing fills the air. Reality isn't much better than nightmares. At least, not right now.
With a growl he lurches forward and sinks his teeth into coarse, stinking fur and flesh. The wolf yelps and whines and tries to wrestle free while the others surrounding them snap and bark. He tosses another look at the shards, willing in vain for them to help, but all they do is float around them all, fixed. He needs to run, he can't hold it anymore. The grip he has on the wolf breaks, and he's forced to release the mouthful of fur and sinew he has between his teeth. At the same time, another body of fur barrels into him from the side, this time clamping down on his injured arm's forearm. He screams in rage and pain, clawing at fur and flesh as he tries to stay upright. But just as he's about to be free, a bolt of pain shoots up his other arm as another wolf clamps down on it at the elbow.
"No," he grits. Fear grips his windpipe, causing him to freeze. He doesn't know what to do, how to act, all he can focus on is the pain and the last time he was helpless…
Nahuel melts into the shadows, like a magic act, and he knows without a doubt he's enjoying this, no matter what the deadness in his eyes says. This is a game. It's always been a game, even if he couldn't see it before. But he recognizes it now. He recognizes the illusion, the game he's playing, but even the knowledge of what he's doing doesn't help. If anything, knowing only makes it worse.
"You fear for your family…and my sister, because of my father and siblings. You fear that your mother is too broken and will never truly heal; you fear what she may do if she ever meets your father again. But most of all, you fear yourself." His words, no, his declaration rings strongly in this small room, the energy in its meaning permeating the air. Typical, unassuming people would choke on it and eventually swallow it all in the end. Without question or fight. Like an old man at the end of his rope, finally having his first and last meeting with the reaper.
"But it doesn't have to be this way," he suddenly says softly. "I can teach you how to control it all. I can help you —"
"You've helped enough."
Each wolf pulls in the opposite direction, stretching him out like a rope used for tug of war. He looks back and forth at each side in terror as the shards flicker uncertainly before him.
"No!"
Power, white, hot, explodes out from his palms. He can feel it hitting anything and everything all around him, all at once. The jaws around his arms release. He falls to his knees. Dazed, he looks up. A scene of devastation greets him: shards are embedded in practically everything and everyone around him, from the asphalt to the buildings, to the various wolves strewn about the street, their whimpering and whines filling the air. He looks down at his arms: red rivulets of blood glide down both, like rivers on a map, while his torso is splattered with slashes and cuts from the shards, staining his shirt dark red. His hands shake. Everything is burning. His skin, his eyeballs. Is he in hell? He must be. He must have died. He looks down at his ruined arms again, counting each rivulet of blood trailing down his pale flesh. Why else would a gentle breeze feel like ice against his skin, he thinks as said breeze blows by.
You did it, the beast whispers, triumphantly. A wave of nausea hits him as he spies raw, opened flesh on one of the wolves nearest him, a gaping wound revealing sinew and bone.
" I see the bloodlust in you, boy. The savagery itching to break free, burning in your eyes. The need to attack, to rip and tear, to protect what's yours."
He starts seeing double again, but he can't raise his arms to cradle his head. Each breath he takes freezes his insides, turning his inner walls into delicate ice. Everything feels…heavy.
Nahuel would be proud, the beast insists. And yet, he feels hollow, and sick. And wrong. He feels himself sink sideways to the floor, little granules of asphalt sticking to his cheek as his burning eyes stay fixed on the wolves, slowly getting up and regrouping. In the distance, something is charging towards him. Something grey. It's nothing though to the memories bombarding his mind, unable to hold them back now.
"I want you, for once in your very short life, to be true to yourself." Confusion twists his face, but he's dead serious. And not finished. "I want you to stop fighting." He struggles harder in response. His eyes dart downwards, trying to find a way out. "… And I want you to join us."
It's too late, though. All too late.
He freezes. He lets himself go limp in his grasp. Again, his labored breathing fills the hot, humid air, again he ignores it, and again he can't stand to look him in the eye. "You are what you are. It is not a matter of choice. Not when it comes to our kind, when it's programmed into our DNA. The only thing you can do is accept it and use it to your advantage. You care for them, your mother and sister. And Miri. You think I don't understand? I do; you'd do everything in your power to protect them. You have done everything in your power to protect them, if that head injury you sustained from my dear brother wasn't proof enough—"
Fuck you. Fuck him, too. Fuck all of them, except for Miri. The something grey is another wolf, smaller than the others. It pads up to him, sniffing his face. He tries to tell it to go fuck itself but all he can do is blink up at him blearily. More footsteps in the background. Voices. But they're too far away.
Everybody just needs to fuck off.
His knee connects with his stomach. He grunts in pain, dropping him as he backs away. He wastes no time. He pushes him away and barrels out of the kitchen, nearly tripping as he tumbles into the hallway. He's a few feet from the door when he's knocked to the ground hard. Wood splinters and cracks beneath his palms and knees. It's only seconds before Nahuel has him in another chokehold and is trying to drag him back at vampire speed. But he struggles, he kicks and claws and twists and it's too much for him. He's not sure where they are when he finally gives up and throws him against another wall. He feels the plaster crumble behind him before Nahuel grabs him and pulls him out of the wreckage and pins him against the floor. This time one hand is around his throat while his knee is on his chest. His steel grip forces him to meet his cold stare.
Cold hands gently turn him so he's lying on his back, staring up at the sky. Faces stare down at him, but he's too lost in the memories to connect them to names.
"Tony, can you hear me?"
"Always making things difficult. Look at you," he spits. He struggles harder, clawing at his grip, trying to ignore the ache in his windpipe and chest being crushed and what feels like a knife's point burrowing into his left temple
He makes eye contact with one of the faces-the blond man. Something tugs at his memory, letting him know that he should know him. If only his mind worked. Numbly he watches as he removes his jacket and tears it into strips. He presses one of the strips against the wound on his shoulder. Tony hisses in pain.
. "Half-human, half-vampire, and yet you still don't know, can't accept who you are, what you are—"
His eyes close.
A door opens. A girl's voice calls his name. "—when the answer is so simple."
I bleed it out
I've opened up these scars
I'll make you face this
I've pulled myself so far
I'll make you face this now
~Bleed it out, by Linkin Park~