Chapter Text
He isn’t ever going to get adopted.
He knows this because all of the grown-ups that run the shelter tell him so. They tell him whenever they catch him in the kitchen, pushing an overturned trash can as close to the countertop as he can so he can reach the cabinets for more food. They tell him whenever he comes in from the courtyard with a bloody cheek or a bloody knee or bloody knuckles, almost always with another crying, bleeding kid who said the wrong thing at the right time– when none of the grown-ups were looking. They tell him whenever he whimpers and tries to hide from a thunderstorm, when he’s pressed flat to the threadbare carpet under the old, worn, smelly couch, when he snaps his teeth at the roving fingers trying to tear him away from his hiding spot.
He acts like a dog, says one of the grown-ups on the other side of the door one afternoon. He’s sitting in his very own time-out chair, but at least it’s red. His favorite color. The grown-up’s voice is quiet, like she doesn’t think he’ll hear her, but he always does. He hears everything. Dogs have good hearing, he learned recently.
He wishes he were a dog. Maybe, then, somebody would adopt him.
He’s twelve years old, and so far, the grown-ups have been right.
He’s out late in the courtyard– it got dark two hours ago, which means that curfew was one hour ago, but the staff aren’t as interested in looking for him anymore. From past experience, he figures he’s got another thirty minutes or so, at least, before anyone shows up to corral him back inside. Not that he’s doing anything out here that he couldn’t do inside– he’s just sitting in the dirt, looking up at the night sky. It’s cloudy, and all the lights from all the skyscrapers bounce off the clouds. No stars to see. But even still, he likes it better out here. The city is loud, but inside, all of the screaming and crying and children running around echoes off the cheap concrete bricks, beating into his head until he can’t think. Here, though, he can. He thinks about how it would be if he were big and strong, strong enough to run away from this place and be happy all by himself. Sometimes, when he can see the stars, he lets himself think about how it would be if somebody adopted him.
As he’s watching the sky shift overhead, the clouds break. There, for just a moment, he sees a glimpse of the stars. A streak of light flashes through the darkness. His eyes widen as he realizes what he’s seeing, and he licks his dry, chapped lips.
“I… I wish…”
“Holy shit.”
The rest of his wish dies in his throat as he hears the courtyard door clang shut. It’s Joseph– tall, lanky Joseph, always slinking around to sneak cigarettes out of the jackets and lockers in the staff room. Joseph is only a year or two older than he is, but Joseph loves to make him feel like he’s still in grade school.
“Were you wishing on a star? I knew you were behind, Bark, but… Christ.”
Joseph and some of the other kids like to call him Bark, because of the dog thing. It doesn’t matter that he’s stopped biting people–unless they go above and beyond to provoke him– and it doesn’t matter that he toughs out thunderstorms in the open now, even when he can feel himself trembling beneath his jacket. It’s not even a clever nickname. But then, Joseph isn’t very clever, either. None of the other kids are.
“Shut the hell up, Joseph.”
He stands up and dusts off the knees of his threadbare jeans, scowling at Joseph all the while. He knows he’ll get in trouble if he picks a fight with Joseph, but he doesn’t care– he’ll get in trouble for something sooner or later anyways. It may as well be for defending his claim to the courtyard. He was here first, after all.
“Or what?” Joseph asks, as he leans against the chain link of the courtyard fence and balances a cigarette on his lip. It’s short and looks like it’s been burnt already. He wonders where Joseph found it. “You’ll get thrown in the pound if you get in any more fights. I heard the staff say so.”
More dog jokes. He knows he shouldn’t, that it’ll only encourage Joseph, but he can’t stop himself from growling under his breath. He clenches his fists at his side and feels his nails digging hard into the meat of his palms.
“Go away,” he grits out, as he takes a step towards Joseph. It occurs to him that his shooting star is probably long gone by now. The thought hits him with surprising force, and he bites his lip to keep himself from sniffling.
“Nah.”
Joseph reaches into the pocket of his hoodie and pulls out a lighter.
“You’re not gonna do anything.”
He can feel his growl echo through his chest, like someone’s hollowed him out from the inside. There’s a metallic taste on his tongue, one that he knows well. He runs his tongue over his lips again, gasps in a breath when he finds the small, raw spot of torn skin responsible for the iron-taste. Dimly, he realizes that his palms are getting warm and sticky.
He takes another step closer to Joseph. Joseph blinks down at him like he’s surprised, then puts the lighter back in his pocket, rolling his eyes as he does.
“Fine. What’s it gonna be: Bark, or bite?”
He’s known how to throw a punch for years, but this time, some wordless voice inside him tells him to open his hand. As he leaps forward, using the momentum of his jump to swipe up at Joseph’s face, he realizes he can see drops of blood trailing through the night air like rubies, even before the blow makes contact.
He feels resistance in Joseph’s flesh, and as he quickly backsteps to avoid Joseph’s wild, blind counter-swing, he sees the four jagged lines his fingers have carved into Joseph’s cheek. He swallows and looks down at his hand. He sees his palm bleeding, four crescent moons inscribed in its surface. But more than that, he sees that his fingernails are long and curved and beginning to turn black. There’s a flap of Joseph’s skin clinging to the nail of his ring finger. He stares at it, transfixed, and licks his lips. The same voice that told him to open his hand tells him to raise his nails– no, claws– to his mouth.
Before he can manage that, though, he’s knocked to the ground, the air punched out of him by Joseph’s fist in his stomach. He cries out as his head bounces off the hard-packed dirt of the courtyard. He manages not to black out, but his vision goes dark and blurry, and he can’t catch his breath because Joseph is on top of him, pinning him down to the ground.
“What the fuck was that, you fucking freak?!”
Joseph is yelling at him. The noise only upsets him more. He can’t get a good look at Joseph, he can’t breathe, he can’t coordinate his legs to move at the same time and push himself off the ground. Terrified and out of options, he opens his mouth to call for help. He knows he’ll be the one blamed and punished for this, but he also knows that he can’t fight Joseph off by himself right now.
But when he tries to cry, what comes out instead is a low, bestial snarl. His vision clears, just a bit, just enough to see the look on Joseph’s face melt from disgust to terror.
“Holy fuck,” Joseph says. Then, he thinks he feels Joseph get up– the weight on his chest disappears. But he still can’t breathe, and the world still looks strange. The night is unnaturally bright, bright enough that he has to squint, and when he looks at his hands, the blood trailing from his palms looks black, not red.
He manages to twist around in the dirt, rolling onto his stomach. His body hurts all over– why does it hurt so much? Joseph didn’t even hit him that hard. But it hurts to try to think about that right now, too. So he gives up on thinking, and instead he focuses on getting his hands pressed firm to the ground, ready to push himself up. When his palms hit the dirt, his skin feels thick and rough. He looks closer and watches the seams of his jacket sleeves strain and then give up, the fabric falling in tatters to the dirt around his hands.
No, he realizes. Around his paws. The rich, dark-chocolate-furred arms he sees stretching out beneath him are his own. He feels pressure in his feet, so he kicks out, one leg at a time, and is rewarded by the sound of shredding rubber and the sweet relief of pressure. His back paws find the dirt, too, and he raises himself onto all fours. It doesn’t hurt anymore. Instinctively, he shakes his body. Instead of pain, he only feels ease and comfort. He feels the promise of strength in the coiled muscles of his haunches, of grace in the long slope of his spine, of balance in the curl of his tail. He opens his mouth and yawns up to the cloudy sky, his long jaw cracking pleasurably as he does.
Of course, he doesn’t get to enjoy his moment of peace, because Joseph starts screaming. The noise is even louder than Joseph’s voice was before. He growls and folds his ears back as he stares down the barrel of his snout at Joseph. Joseph is staring back at him, face blanched, eyes wide. There’s a dark spot at the crotch of his jeans. A matching, acrid smell fills his nose, strong enough to make him curl his lip in disgust.
For just a moment, he wants nothing more than to spring forward and lock his jaws around Joseph’s neck. It would be so easy, and then Joseph would never bother him again. He could spend as much time in the courtyard as he wanted. But as Joseph shuffles backwards, his scuffed shoes kicking up dust, he realizes: this is his wish come true. He wanted to be strong enough to run away on his own– well, now he is.
He turns away from Joseph with nothing more than a dismissive grunt. He hears Joseph scramble to his feet behind him, followed by the slamming of the door. Then comes a growing swell of voices from within the building, deeper ones, more adult ones. The courtyard floodlight kicks on, and for a moment, he’s dazzled, and he has to hide his face in one paw.
Move, says his instincts. He raises his head just in time to see the courtyard door open again, and three staff members are standing there waiting for him. One of them is holding a stun gun.
He listens to instinct and runs. The speed of it almost takes his breath away– in only two bounds, he’s reached the chain-link boundary of the courtyard. When he takes the link in his mouth and jerks his head, the fence tears so easily that it makes him want to laugh. He settles for looking back at the staff and barking at them, before he jumps through the gap in the fence and runs down the street.
He doesn’t know where he’s going, but it doesn’t matter. The yelling of the staff falls out of earshot long before he begins to feel winded. Even then, he keeps running down the sidewalks, turning only to avoid running headlong into traffic, oblivious to the startled shouts of surprise from all the people that he’s nearly knocking over as he dashes by.
He’s twelve years old, and he’s learning what freedom feels like.
He wakes up and finds himself lying amongst a pile of soggy cardboard scraps and torn trash bags. He’s wearing a baggy blue tee shirt and a pair of jeans, although both fit him poorly. The fabric and denim both have several holes and tears in them. As he frowns and sits up to survey the morning, he realizes he must have somehow managed to pull on the clothes with his teeth or with his claws.
The morning is already warm, rays of orange sun slotting through the skyscrapers to light the streets and alleyways. It was one of the sunbeams that woke him, he thinks, as he raises one hand to shield his eyes from the light.
Where am I?
He frowns to himself as he considers the question. He turns away from the sun to take a closer look at his surroundings instead. It seems the nest of garbage he found or built for himself is lying in the rain shadow of an overflowing green dumpster. He doesn’t recognize the buildings that line the alley; the red and black bricks have been completely obscured by layers of graffiti. But, he thinks, he’s not at the shelter anymore. That has to be an improvement. And somehow, he knows instinctively that he’s still somewhere in the Metro; the temperature, the way the light falls, the acrid tang of the morning air on his tongue are all the same as he’s known all his life.
He licks his cracked lips, and his stomach twists with discomfort. It’s a strange feeling— he can’t tell if it’s hunger, nausea, or both. The dim recollection of eating something comes back to him, but he can’t remember what it was he ate, or what it tasted like. He can only hope that whatever it was, it isn’t going to make him sick, now that he’s back to normal. And with that thought, he has another question to ponder:
What am I?
That question isn’t so easily answered. He has vague memories of the night before, but they’re almost more like impressions or dreams— he remembers growing claws and a tail, and he remembers howling and running through the streets. He remembers scaring people and having to hide from some sort of van, some sort of people wearing khaki outfits and carrying big nets. But mostly, he remembers the feeling of freedom.
He was a wolf, he knows, but now he’s a boy again. There’s a word for that, but he thought it was a made-up word for a made-up thing, same as “monster” or “dragon” or “adoption.” Maybe for now, then, it’s easier to ask who he is than to ask what he is. And he knows the answer to that question.
“I’m Mark,” he mumbles to the alleyway. And for the first time he can remember, nobody speaks up to challenge him.
Mark’s stomach roils a second time, and now he can tell that it’s hunger, not sickness. He sighs and stands up, brushing the dirt from his palms onto the frayed knees of his jeans. After looking both ways, Mark picks a direction at random and begins walking down the alley towards the mouth of the next street. Part of him wishes he was still a wolf— he knows that finding food and staying free will be harder when he’s a boy. But if he knows nothing about what he is, he knows even less how to call on that power again.
So it’s Mark, the boy, who emerges onto Hyde Street and does his best to meld into the passing crowd, keeping his head down to watch the cracks in the sidewalk.