Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Consciousness comes to you slowly. The first thing you know is that it’s cold, far colder than you’ve ever felt before. The second thing is the headache pounding behind your eyes, and the pain that seems to radiate from your entire being; dull in some places, sharp in others. The frigid air is harsh on your lungs, and your body is wracked with chills, but you manage to drag yourself up off the ground. Several yards away from you, the wreckage of your little plane hangs precariously off a ledge, held up only by the trees it caught on during its unexpected descent.  

This was supposed to have been a simple trip, all you had to do was fly out the supplies and go back home. Sure, you weren’t exactly a professional delivery service, but you had your grandfather’s plane and you’d flown through snow before and that seemed to be enough for your clients. It wasn’t too bad at first. Hell, despite the hazardous conditions, you were on schedule. Everything was fine.  

And then it wasn’t 

Honestly, you still have no idea what went wrong. (Although that might be because it’s hard to think around the pounding in your head.) One second everything was normal, the next the night sky was filled with eerie green lights, your plane's console went haywire, and then you were plummeting toward the ground. 

And now here you are, standing on shaky legs in the heart of winter on Great Bear Island, with your only way out nothing more than smoking remains high above you. 

Your cargo did not survive, you can tell that just from looking at the burning husk of metal that was once your plane. And even if it had, you would have no way of reaching it. The only things you have with you are the clothes you're wearing and the backpack lying a few feet from you. There is nothing else around you except the tall cliffs on either side of you and an ungodly amount of snow. Through the foggy haze in your brain that makes everything fuzzy and your thinking sluggish, one thing is clear; you are completely and utterly screwed. 

But everyone you know has always said you're stubborn. And maybe they’re right, because right now you’re stubborn enough to look certain death in face and still think you can say no.  

So, though your steps are slow and uneven, you grab the bag you saw earlier from the snow, flinching as the cold stings your bare hands, and stagger out of the rock alcove and towards the unknown. 

The moment you leave the relative shelter of the cliffs, you’re hit with a rush of ice-cold wind. The kind of cold that feels like tiny knives digging into your skin. You wish you had something to cover your face and hands, because they’re already freezing. For now, you pull up the color of your jacket and hope for the best. 

******* 

At some point, while you slowly pick your way through the snowy, barren landscape, the sky darkens, and the wind starts to pick up speed. The next thing you know you’re caught in a blizzard, stumbling blindly forward, unable to feel your fingers. You don’t know how long you would’ve wandered if you hadn’t tripped over the train tracks you’re following now. Granted, you still have no idea where you’re going, but the tracks should lead to something. 

Hopefully soon. 

By this point, your body is wracked with chills, you can’t feel your face (let alone your hands) and your head feels fuzzy. It’s harder to stay upright too. You’d like nothing more than to just lie down and take a break. But you know that’s not an option. 

Because if you do, you won’t be getting back up. 

Just as you're starting to think you’ll be spending the short rest of your life in this damned blizzard, following an abandoned railroad to nowhere, you see something in the corner of your eye. A flicker of red. You start to haul yourself towards it. As you get closer, a glimmer of hope lights in your chest.  

Because that’s a building. An actual building. You can safely say you’ve never been happier to see a wooden cabin in your life. You stumble your way onto the porch and fumble the door handle with your numb fingers. For one heart dropping moment you think the door is locked, but then you lean your weight on it and it swings open. You go falling after it. 

You let the door shut behind you with a quiet click and look around. This place looks sort of like the office at that summer camp you went to as a kid. Although who would build one in this winter wasteland, you have no idea. You can’t be bothered to think about who this place belongs to, or whether you're trespassing or not. Like finding out where you are, or what all those green lights were, it can wait. So, you drop your backpack, promise yourself that if you live to see tomorrow, you’ll never go outside in a blizzard again, and promptly collapse on the floor. 

Chapter Text

It’s several hours later when you wake up again. Or at least you think it is - you have no actual way of telling time - but it’s brighter than it was when you collapsed, and the howling of the blizzard has quieted. Actually, everything is quiet. Aside from the creaking of the building you’ve found yourself in, the only thing you can hear is your own breathing. You’d almost describe it as stillness. You think to yourself that it is unnerving, but you don’t dwell on it much longer than that. (You haven’t yet grasped the depth of the situation you’ve found yourself in, after all.)

Instead, you begin to explore the building. You’re no expert, but even you can tell the place hasn’t been used in a while. Some of the chairs have holes in their fabric, dust coats every surface, and the whole thing is infested with cobwebs. Though you don’t see any actual spiders. This time of year must be too cold for them, you think. Despite being left untouched for who knows how long, you still find supplies scattered around the room. The box of cardboard matches you found shoved under a chair, a storm lantern that had been sitting on a countertop, the three cans of peaches and a grape soda that you’ve collected from various shelves. Two pieces of firewood sit next to a potbelly stove, and inside the first aid kid hanging by the back door, you find some bandages and expired painkillers.

You’re hesitant to take any of it at first, considering you’ve essentially broken into someone's office and started rummaging through their stuff. Then again, there is a very good chance the place is abandoned, and the owner, whoever they are, left the door unlocked. Besides, with your current situation, you have very few other options, you tell yourself as you put what you’ve found in your backpack. It doesn’t make you feel any better about it.

Deciding you’ve found what you can on the first floor, you ascend the stairs to the upper half of the building. The steps creak with each of your footfalls, but thankfully, none of them give out and you make it safely to the top. The lofted area you arrive in looks to be a bedroom, which would’ve been nice to know about before you passed out on the floor for several hours. The closest things to the stairs are a little table covered in old newspapers, and a small dresser. You’re greeted with old fleece mittens and a windbreaker when you finally manage to wrench the drawers open. The mittens have a few holes in them, and the jacket is a size too large, but knowing the deadly cold that waits outside, you’ll take what you can get.

The rest of the second floor is less promising. You manage to find some antibiotics in a drawer, and some scraps of cloth lying on one of the bunk beds, but the rest of your haul is mostly made of old newspapers and books whose pages are long worn out. You sigh and grumble but pick them up anyways. They’re good for kindling, if nothing else. Among the papers you’ve collected, the most useful is a camp brochure. You found it shoved under one of the beds, collecting dust. The name Mystery Lake is stamped across the top. You’ve never heard of the place in your life, but the pamphlet says it’s a part of Lower Great Bear. Which means that, somehow, you aren’t that far off from your original destination. You’ll admit, you have no idea where the town you’d been flying to was from here, much less how you’ll get there. But a town meant people, and people meant rescue.

The brochure also mentions cabins on the far side of the lake. You don’t know how big Mystery Lake is, or if there will be anything left there, but you don’t have enough food to last more than a few days. If they were abandoned like this place, you might find more. Hell, you think, they might even have a map, and that thought is enough to get you packing your loot and heading towards the lake.

*******

Walking across a frozen lake when you don’t know how to tell if the ice is stable is probably not your brightest idea. But you’d probably get lost if you went around, and there are some fishing huts set up, so it probably won’t collapse under you. Hopefully. At least you aren’t trudging through a blizzard this time.

That said, the air outside is still painfully cold, and a fog has set in. Being out on ice probably doesn’t help matters. You’ve pulled the hood of the windbreaker up in an attempt to shield your ears, and you’re thankful for the mittens you found; they keep the frostbite away from your fingers. It feels as though the stillness of the office has followed you out. The only sound - aside from the distant cawing of crows - comes from your steps crunching on the ice below you. You find yourself thankful for the recent snowfall; it may have almost killed you, but it’s keeping you from stumbling and sliding on the lake's surface.

Already, you've seen a few fishing huts appear out of the gloom. You’re thinking that you’ll go check out the cabins first, and then look through the fishing huts on your way back to the office. There’s a good chance the cabins will have more stuff, even if it’s just more books and cloth scraps, and you don’t want to end up trying to carry too much. Your bag is not designed to hold very much of anything, let alone survival supplies.

The lake journey ends up mostly uneventful. You see a couple of deer in the distance -a reassurance that this place isn’t entirely devoid of life- but you manage to find the closest cabins without much trouble. They’re right along the lake shore, as expected. Along with them is a fishing dock, useless in the cold, and some old benches and picnic tables. You approach the cabin furthest from the dock, hoping the doors on these are unlocked too.

The snap of a twig catches your attention when you’re still several feet from the door. You turn, expecting to see another deer, or maybe a bird. But you don’t. Instead you see a large, lean shape, dark against the snow, moving steadily in your direction. It takes you a moment to puzzle out what it is, having never seen one in real life before.

A wolf.