Chapter Text
~Leah POV~
She watches in dismay as her protector seems to freeze in its tracks, the growl in its throat petering out as it stands stock still.
The bigger one approached her almost in slow motion. She can hear her breath stuttering in her throat, its claws clicking on the floor as it nears.
Leah groaned in pain as she moved her broken arm, and then gasps in fear when the wolf bunches its hindquarters beneath it and jumps straight for her. She brings up her good hand to protect herself in the split second that the animal flies through the air, tears rolling down her cheeks as she flinches her eyes shut.
It lands on her, but instead of feeling fangs she felt something hot and wet splatter and then drip down onto her chest and face. She opened her eyes, and through her tears she see her hand clenched around a knife, embedded up to the hilt in the wolf’s chest, blood welling up around the wound and dripping down her arm.
That’s right. She had grabbed it from the kitchen when she heard the howling and cracking echoing through the house. She had approached cautiously and slowly towards the entryway until her damned new sneakers had betrayed her.
The wolf lets out a gurgling whine and tries to stagger away, and Leah lets go of her white knuckled grip on the knife as it stumbles and falls next to her, limbs unable to hold it- him?- up.
He changes back, skin warping where it lays against the floor, and the whines transition to coughs and wet wheezes as “Chris” returns to human form, looking sickly and pale in contrast to the blood flowing from his chest.
He brought his hands to the knife still sticking out of his chest as if to pull it out, and then hisses and jerks his hands back, as if burnt.
“Silver,” He spits, glaring down at the knife.
He looks up at the other wolf and pleads, “Loki… Help me. Change back and drive me to the hospital!” His voice was commanding and desperate in a way that made Leah think that he knew there was no hope to save himself. His eyes were wide, the whites showing around his irises as he coughed and blood dribbled out of his mouth.
The other wolf whines and takes a step forward, then a step back, as if fighting with itself.
“Come on, child! Don’t fight me on this you insolent brat! After everything I’ve done for you, this is how you repay me?” He sputters, his voice, though commanding, growing weaker with every word.
He struggled to get up but his arms give out beneath him and he hits the floor, as if he doesn’t have to strength to hold his body up any longer. His breathing becomes ragged as the pool of blood around him widens, and Leah makes no move to help him.
She thinks, viciously, that he is getting exactly what he deserves.
“Always knew… You were worthless…” Chris breathes weakly, staring off into the distance.
His chest rises, once, twice more before it stills. His eyes stare open and blank, and Leah shivers. The shivers don’t stop there, and she rushes to the bathroom but doesn’t quite make it as she empties her stomach onto the floor.
Damn. She had really liked these shoes.
There was a dead man in the next room over. She had killed a man. Oh god.
Her breathing is coming in fast, her head feels light and everything seems to spin around her. She sinks to the floor, kicking off her shoes and inching away from the pile of vomit until her back hits the far wall. Holding her head in her hands, she just breathes, until she hears the clicking of claws on the floor and looks up with a gasp.
It’s the smaller wolf- Loki, if the dead man is to be believed- and he lowers his ears and whines at her, wagging his tail slowly.
She stares at him for a moment, tears still leaking from her eyes, then pats the floor next to her in invitation, not able to find the will to speak.
He pads over slowly as if not to spook her and lays down beside her, laying his head in her lap. His warmth comforts her and she finds herself calming down, if only a little. She sniffles and begins to pet him, slow trails from his head down to his shoulders.
After a while she looks to her broken arm, at the bite marring her forearm. It has stopped bleeding, but it still hurts quite a bit.
Finally, she gets up, Loki whining in protest at her movement but making no move to stop her. She goes to the bathroom and washes her hands, scrubbing them raw and red with the bathroom soap and a washcloth to get the blood out from beneath her nails, and then rinses out her putrid mouth, swishing and spitting several times to get the chunky bile out from between her teeth.
The horrible sound of bones snapping echoes throughout the house, and she busies herself by looking at her face in the mirror. Her reflection is a mess; her eyes are red and puffy, and there is blood spattered across the front of her pretty white blouse, and her lips tremble as she presses them together. She takes several deep breaths and lets them out slowly from between her lips to calm herself, then steps out into the hallway.
The sun is setting, painting everything red and orange as the light comes through the many windows of the house, and she turns on lights as she goes, the bright fluorescents fighting the natural light of the sun.
She makes her way to Loki’s room, avoiding the body, and the heart-wrenching whines of Loki going through his painful change back to human.
She knows, she’ll have to tell him sooner or later, but she figures it can wait until… Until something, she doesn’t know what exactly, but it’ll have to wait at least until after she has changed her clothes.
She closes the green curtains framing his window, the sun too bright for her eyes, and strips out of her ruined blouse. She scrubs at the blood on her chest with the fabric until it flakes off onto the floor, some of it coming off onto the blouse as it is gummy and not quite dry. Rummaging through Loki’s drawers, she finds a plain striped shirt that she figures must be a bit tight on Loki since it fits her so well; she remembers teasing him that the stripes made him look fat, to which Thor had replied that he could stand to gain a little weight, and she smiles faintly at the memory.
She changes out of her skirt as well, laying the fabric out on Loki’s green and black diamond patterned bed as she pulls on a pair of his old jeans, rolling up the too-long pant legs.
She is slipping her feet back into her shoes when Loki slinks awkwardly into his room, holding a pillow in front of his nether regions. Sighing exasperatedly, she turns her back and goes through his drawers again, tossing clothes over her back at him without looking, not turning around until she stops hearing the rustle of clothing over skin.
She regards him with pursed lips, before deciding that now was as good a time as any.
“We just killed your father, Loki.” She says lowly, meeting his eyes and watching his face carefully for a reaction.
His face changes very little except for a tightening of his lips and perhaps a slight glisten in his eyes, but she thinks she might be imagining it.
“I- I sort of had a feeling that he… I was just hoping it wasn’t true. I knew he had gotten out of prison, and I knew he would try to contact me at some point but… I just didn’t want to admit it, I guess. If I had admitted it to myself, I think I would have been too scared of him to be of any use.” He smiles wryly, eyes tired and hair limp and greasy. Tears slip unbidden down his cheeks, and she thinks that he probably hasn’t even noticed that he is crying, and she sees no reason to tell him.
She puts a hand on his shoulder as she passes him on her way out, shoes squeaking again as she makes her way to the medicine cabinet to pop some Tylenol.
They rip up one of Loki’s old shirts into a makeshift sling, and get to work. They have a body to bury, after all.
---
It takes them hours to bury the body, dragging it out of the house on top of a tarp after digging the hole in the woods. They had found a place off of the main trail, and dug a grave as deep as they could before tossing Ikol’s body unceremoniously into the pit. Loki had done most of the hard labor of digging, as Leah wasn’t much use with her broken arm.
Halfway through the burial, Thori had trotted into sight, head held high and even filthier than Loki and Leah, no doubt covered in various forms of excrement and immensely pleased with himself.
Loki looked so relieved that it brought tears to his eyes, but Leah decided not to comment, silently watching the sobbing boy hold onto his dog for dear life.
---
Leah lays in the uncomfortable cot in the hospital room with her mother, who is sitting in what looks like an equally uncomfortable folding chair. The room is painted bright yellow with depictions of Winnie the Pooh characters airbrushed onto the walls, and the bright atmosphere contrasts starkly with Leah’s gray, worn out demeanor.
Dr. Patil entered the room with a flourish, smiling winningly at Leah and her mother and presenting the clipboard proudly, like a cat presenting a dead mouse to its owner. A very well-groomed cat.
“Well I have good news!” He says in a feminine voice, higher pitched than what you would normally expect from a brown-skinned, muscular man in his thirties. “I looked at your X-rays, and you only have a compound fracture, as well as the teeth marks in your arm. That is quite a nasty dog bite, but I see no signs of infection, though we will have to give you a rabies shot just in case.” He sets down the clipboard and smooths his hands down his tight-fitting, expertly tailored white lab coat as his face takes on a stern look, “You really should have come in much sooner, it must have been very painful!” He tsks and shakes his head at her.
“Well, me and my friend were pretty far out into the woods, and it took a while to walk back, and then I needed to change my clothes because I fell in the mud.” Leah explains (lies) tiredly.
“I guess is couldn’t have been helped, then,” He says sadly. Then he brightens, and chirps, “But you should be all healed up in six to eight weeks, and there will be no permanent damage to your musculature.” Leah and her mother share a sigh of relief. He runs his fingers through his perfectly coiffed hair and says, “Now, about that shot…”
---
After enduring a painful shot into her stomach, Leah and her mother check out and head to the waiting room where Loki is waiting. He looks up from the magazine he was reading and sends her a faint smile.
“How’d everything go?” He asks carefully, as if fearing the worst.
Leah waves around the hand not stuck in the cast encasing her elbow as if to dispel his worries, and says, “There’s no permanent damage, and I’ll retain full feeling and use of my arm after six to eight weeks.”
“That’s good news!” He says, though he sounds more tired than excited, and she can’t blame him, as it is well past midnight.
---
The next full moon, they have a “sleepover”, and change together under the bright glow radiating from above the forest, casting everything in sharp relief that only becomes sharper as her eyes transition to that of a wolf’s.
When they are finished, they run and play and nip at each other’s heels, rolling through the forest underbrush as they chase and flee around the pricker plants and berry bushes.
As she bowls Loki over onto his back, she thinks that things are looking up.