Chapter Text
Wilbur groaned, the new, pink calluses on his fingers stinging from his failed attempts to master a new chord. The object of his frustration was nestled in the lap of his crossed legs, an old guitar still coated in a thin layer of dust. Strumming the strings dejectedly, he glanced over to where his notebook was propped up haphazardly against one of the many throw pillows of his couch, his scrawling cursive depicting jumbles of notes, lyrics and chords that he could never seem to organize in a way that brought them to reality. He adjusted his glasses, lip curling unhappily. The fire crackled in the hearth in front of him, leaves painted with amber and aspen and gold swirling through the cold winds of the autumn air outside the windows. It was going to be a cold week, it seemed.
Countless abandoned projects lay scattered around his home, Wilbur finding each one fruitless as the meaninglessness of his life seemed to grip his mind as the years had gone on. Every day was spent staring aimlessly at the forests beyond his home, or burying his nose in books he had read hundreds of times, desperate to distract himself from his own mind. He found himself pacing lines in the carpet before his fireplace, his thoughts trying desperately to distract from the loneliness that cloaked him like a jacket of fog.
The years had worn away at him, the isolation of his forest home like a weight on his chest, one that he could never seem to shake no matter how many times he curled himself into a ball beneath the covers of his parent’s bed, wondering if the clinging smell of honey had belonged to his mother or his father. He tried so hard to occupy his time with hobbies, knitting or baking or playing the old, dusty guitar that he had found at some old garage sale years and years ago, never quite figuring out how to tune it. Yet with each new attempt, his attention seemed to falter, to slip back into that state of mindless pacing, like he was searching for something that had never existed, and never would.
A pop from the fireplace alerted Wilbur to the need for another log, and he lay the guitar on the couch beside him with a sigh. The air around the flame shimmered with heat, and he could hear his chimney sigh as another log was tossed onto the pile of singed wood and ash he hadn’t bothered to sweep up. The whole room seemed to be coated in a thin gray layer of it, the spines of books patterned with lines where he had dragged his hands across them in search of a particular volume. The house was old, and when autumn and winter rolled through England the fires in the hearth never stopped. While the trees outside had only just begun to blaze with color, he could swear the air around him felt like ice.
His mug of once-warm tea left rings of brown on the old dark coffee table, adding to an already existing array of them that he couldn’t be bothered to wipe away before they sank into the wood. The liquid was cold on his lips and he felt himself grimace, his nose scrunching and lifting the rim of his glasses just slightly. It was going to be another day of lazing around it seemed as he grabbed his notebook off of the couch and moved towards the kitchen with his mug. It joined a growing pile of dishes in the sink, one that Wilbur did not cast so much as a glance towards before he sunk into one of the stools at the edge of his countertop. The stone was cool beneath his fingertips, still stinging from his attempted guitar playing. He could swear the wind outside was crying.
The snap of a tree branch outside startled him to his feet as he heard it crash to the ground somewhere nearby. With a groan, he moved to the front door in an attempt to peer out of the small crack between the frame and the deadbolt. He had to make sure it hadn’t fallen on anything important, like his car or the stone walls surrounding his property. He saw nothing through the gap, but the sounds of cracking could still be heard throughout the forest. He tugged his heavy black boots on without tying them, and pulled a fading brown flannel from the table shoved against the side of the door, littered with unopened mail and various articles of clothing he had been too lazy to bring farther inside after removing. The fabric would be warm enough for what he was doing, and with a click he unlocked the deadbolt and stepped out onto the porch.
There was no sign of any branch in the front yard, so Wilbur moved down the steps, brushing aside fronds of long dead bushes and overgrown weeds crowding the small stone pathway that weaved around the house. He couldn’t yet see his breath, but the wind seemed to tear through him, his body already shivering against the autumn chill. Leaves from the trees around him fell like blazing snowflakes from the sky, dark gray clouds warning of the storm that lurked just beyond the horizon.
Poking his head around the side of the house, he found nothing amiss in the garden, though there were many more small sticks and twigs scattered throughout than he remembered. Thunder echoed through the clearing, and he felt himself shiver involuntarily. He didn’t remember being this jumpy about storms, but he supposed it had been a while since the last one. Maybe his years alone had worn away at the layers he had built around himself during college. Wilbur chuckled to himself, the sound lost to the wind.
As he reached the backyard, he could see what had caused that loud crack. A branch of the willow tree that loomed over half of his backyard had snapped, landing in a heap of puffy yellow leaves and crackling branches in the dying grass of the yard. With a sigh, he decided against moving it now and turned around to move back towards the front door, already picturing a fresh mug of apple cinnamon tea and a reread of some old biography.
That was when he heard it, a soft, mournful sound from somewhere in the woods behind him. When he spun back around to face the tree, it was like it had never happened, his tawny hair whipping around his head wildly as he searched for the source of the noise. He found nothing, just the looming darkness of the clouds and the distant flash of lightning. But just as he began to step closer to the tree, his boots loose around his ankles, he heard it again. It sounded like a wounded animal, a whining that moved through the trees towards him. Thunder crashed again overhead. If something was hurt out there, it wasn’t Wilbur’s job to go out there and fetch it, be it a coyote, fox, really any wild animal that lived in these woods. But that noise seemed to call to him, his heart throbbing painfully like an innate need to help whatever was out there. Like a spell that came over him and set his legs moving before his mind had even caught up with him.
There were many more fallen leaves in the forest, the crimson shards of stained glass crunching beneath his boots as he moved through the trees. He hadn’t really ventured this far into the woods before, the comforts of his own home keeping him from having any need to. Thunder rumbled, followed quickly by the bright flash of thunder. The storm was getting closer fast, spurring Wilbur’s feet to move, approaching what he determined to be the soft burbling of a stream echoing from within the dried fronds and brambles surrounding him. He found the stream, pebbles crunching beneath the soles of his boots and rolling across the small shore into the crystal clear water, streaked through with dead leaves and twigs.
There was someone lying on the rocks of the shore, and Wilbur felt his heart lurch. Nobody but him lived out here, why was someone lying down in cold water, right before a storm? The figure was breathing slowly, clearly asleep, curls of bright red hair cascading down their back and splaying out amidst the stones. Their legs were bare, shins and feet beneath the burbling surface of the water. Thunder crashed overhead.
Then he noticed the blood. Horrible crimson that leaked from somewhere beneath the figure and stained the pebbles and dyed the water a shade of scarlet that made his veins run cold.
“Holy shit holyshitholyshit!” Wilbur yelped, jumping towards the figure and landing on his knees, gripping the smooth, freckled skin of their shoulders and shaking them lightly.
“Wake up, please?” He squeaked, pulling them over so they were lying face up.
Oh shit.
She had freckles dusted over her cheeks like constellations, tracing lines around long, fragile eyelashes and plush pink lips and the sweep of a small, upturned nose. She wore absolutely nothing but a few stray leaves clinging to the damp expanse of her skin, but Wilbur chose to ignore that in favor of focusing on the long, gaping wounds that marred her stomach, arms and legs, blood pouring out from where he had disturbed them.
“Fuck fuck fuckfuckfuck—” Wilbur stammered, hands shaking with a mix of fear and panic. He had no experience with anything first aid, let alone to this extent. In a bout of adrenaline and terror, he carefully scooped her into his arms, blood leaking into his flannel and coating his fingertips. He could care less though, as the first few drops of rain began to fall from the loathsome sky, and lighting set the forest in a blinding silhouette.
His shoes thumped against the leaves as he crashed through the overgrowth, trying his best to keep the female from crashing against any trees or catching leaves in her already tangled hair. The rain had picked up almost immediately, falling into his eyelashes as it fell through the leaves of the trees high above.
When his boots hit the grass of his lawn, the rain came down in buckets, no longer blocked by the trees as droplets raced to the ground. As soon as the pouring rain made contact with the woman in his arms, he felt her thrash against him, a scream burbling from her mouth as blood pooled and poured from parted lips. He kept his pace fast even as she scrambled against him, strangely sharp fingernails digging into the fabric of his shirt and burying in his chest with a wince.
“Calm down, I'm helping you!” He yelped, though he was unsure she could hear him over her own screams, and the sound of rain hitting the roof of his house. Her nails dug deeper into his skin and he bit back a shout, feeling blood leaking from his own chest.
He could barely kick the door open while holding her, feeling as her limbs began to lose strength, her wounds splattering blood against the wood of his floorboards. Wilbur didn’t bother to kick off his boots as he stumbled into the living room, his earlier fire now nothing but hot embers in the hearth as he dropped the girl down against his carpet. She had stopped struggling, but her eyes were closed as she fell limply against the soft rug. He felt panic spike once more in his chest. Dashing into the kitchen, he threw open the cabinet where he kept assorted cleaning and medical supplies, finding a large wad of gauze from when he had broken his arms years ago. There was a dusty first aid kit shoved against the back of the cabinet, and he grabbed that as well before turning and sprinting back into the living room.
He tore a ball of gauze off of the clump and pressed it against the largest wound, the one gaping from the center of her chest and curling down into the lower right side of her stomach. Blood soaked very quickly through it, adding to the already red stains on his hands. He replaced it quickly, pressing down until the blood had slowed from a rush to a slow dribble. Repeating this step with the other smaller wounds on her arms and legs, Wilbur felt his mind slip into a haze, soaking up blood and cleaning wounds with wet dish towels and pulling tape over a clean wad of gauze to keep the wounds closed. By the time he was done, the storm still raging ever louder outside, his carpet was stained with a large circle of crimson, used gauze littered in a circle around where he sat on cramped legs.
Cleaning gave him a moment to think, staring at where he had moved the woman to his couch, her chest rising and falling slowly, painfully, shuddering with the effort of keeping herself alive. The blood came out of the carpet relatively easily, the already old brown fibers unable to hold any more stains than already soaked into them. When the floorboards had been scrubbed, the gauze tossed away, the carpet drying out, Will stood dumbfounded in the middle of his kitchen. He had tried his best to wash the blood off of his arms, the flannel he had ruined long abandoned with the rest of the gauze, but the crimson seemed to seep into his skin like ink. As he turned to the sink to try again, he felt his chest smart painfully, reminding him of his own wounds.
He sat in an armchair pulled up next to the couch, tucking the hem of his shirt up under his chin while his hands cleaned dried blood from the small pinpricks scattered across his chest. They weren’t bad, already scabbed over like an awkward array of mosquito bites. He heard the girl on the couch shift slightly in her sleep, and he watched her with tired eyes. The storm raged outside, thunder rumbling like a threat from beyond panes of glass. He could feel the echo in his bones, in his heart, like a rattling insect in a glass jar that threw itself again and again at the bars of his ribs. There was a stranger in his home, one he had found bleeding out in the middle of the woods with no houses or towns within walking distance. It was a strange, storming night.
{- - -}
He found an old t-shirt of his, gray blue fabric printed with an old faded design that could no longer be seen. It would definitely be big on her, but Wilbur knew the soft fabric would feel much better against her wounds than a tighter shirt would. He left it hanging over the back of the couch, along with a glass of water on the coffee table, and two painkillers set beside it. The girl was not once disturbed, her shallow breaths the only indicator of her heart still beating, her blood still pumping. She had lost a lot of it in the stream, as well as on Wilbur’s carpet, but she seemed to be resting peacefully now, her eyelids flickering occasionally within the realm of dreams.
Will sat quietly in his armchair for who knows how long, just watching her. There was something off about her, from the curling mess of her hair that covered the sides of her face with a line of flame, to the way her muscles moved beneath her skin. She looked strong, broad shouldered and short in the way that a predator holds its limbs still, stalking, hunting. He had resisted the urge to brush her hair away from her eyes, to tuck it behind ears he couldn’t see. Her nails were rounded and short, chewed down to the beds, fingertips calloused. He frowned. How had those nails created the marks on his chest, had she really been that panicked, that fearful to dig them in so deep?
As he watched the gentle rise of her chest, he felt himself being lulled to sleep, the constant noise from the storm outside making the warm comforts of the fire like a blanket around his tired shoulders. He hadn’t even realized how exhausted the whole endeavor had left him, the stress and panic along with running through the woods carrying someone else's deadweight. As his limbs sunk into the plush armchair, it did not take long for his mind to fall down into a black, dreamless sleep.
{- - -}
Wilbur awoke with a start, like he had been wrenched awake by his own mind, his glasses having fallen to his chest while he slept, dangling on their filigree chain and leaving the world around him blurry. There was however something new. Just a few inches from his face was a pair of strikingly blue eyes, pupils blown out into black circles as they stared at him unblinkingly. Seemed his guest had awoken before he had, as well as received the gifts he had left out, the soft fabric of his shirt now draping over her shoulders and chest like a dress, the oversized wear falling to her mid-thigh.
“Hello.” He said calmly, though a slight quiver in his voice betrayed the nervousness that permeated through him. She did not reply, just standing up from where she had been leaning on her knees and moving back to the couch, where Wilbur could see an old cake of fuzzy green yarn that he had abandoned long ago curled into a pair of dust coated knitting needles. Another one of his failed attempts at a hobby, though he hadn’t the slightest clue as to where she had found it. He felt himself flush immaturely at the thought of her going through his things.
She sat down into the plush of the brown sofa, wincing slightly as the movement strained against the bandages beneath her shirt. Will frowned, he had no clue how long he had been asleep, but they probably needed a new layer of gauze. He stood up to go get it, pulling his glasses over the bridge of his nose, the girl ignoring him in favor of picking up his knitting needles and setting off at a steady rhythm, continuing the growth of the swath of fabric she had apparently started while he was asleep.
“Can I rewrap your wounds?” He asked once he had returned, an armful of gauze, medical tape and disinfectant wipes pressed against the front of his shirt. She looked up at him, her eyes boring strangely deep within him, her hands never once pausing the clicking of the needles. He settled for sitting cross legged on the carpet in front of her, pushing the coffee table out of the way enough for his back to be against it as he sat by her feet. The bandages on her thigh were just visible, and he reached a tentative hand towards them.
As soon as his fingertips brushed her skin, she jumped, throwing the needles beside her and curling her legs up to her chest with a glare, the ginger curls of her hair jostling.
“You’re going to bleed through them.” He spoke softly, keeping his movements slow as he showed her the bundle of white material he clutched in one hand. He could feel himself shaking, the strange eerie feeling that coated the room and the girl within like a looming storm. Her eyes seemed to soften, her pupils growing and shrinking strangely for the steady light of the room. Lowering her leg back down to the carpet, she watched him with a sort of unnatural wariness as he stood on his knees to tug the hem of his shirt out of the way, and pull the medical tape off of where it stuck against her skin.
The gauze was stained a rusty brownish red, like clay and soot, the smell of copper stinging his nostrils. The wound itself was better than it had been last night, mostly scabbed over aside from the very middle, which still oozed a small trickle of blood. Ripping open the packaging of a wipe, he held it up to her slowly.
“This is going to sting, but it will stop any infections, okay?” He murmured, the smell of alcohol chasing away the tang of blood. She did not open her mouth, just dipping her chin so slightly he was unsure he had seen it at all. With a deep inhale, he trapped the corners of the wipe around and around the wound, cleaning as much of the dried blood he could from off of her pale, freckled skin. He could hear her suck in a breath, see her fingertips curl into the fabric of the couch as she winced. When he was done, he pulled a new layer of gauze onto it, taping it down softly, making sure it held before he pulled his shirt back over her leg.
When he stood, she was looking at him differently, strangely. While there was no appreciation in her gaze the apprehension was gone, replaced with what could almost be described as respect. He moved to the cuts on her arms, sitting next to her on the couch as her eyes watered with every swipe of the disinfectant, and with relief as the bandages covered the wound. When he pointed to her stomach, she wrapped her arms around herself defensively, and Wilbur frowned.
She snatched the gauze and wiped from his hand, lifting her shirt up before sending him a scathing glare. He got the hint, standing up quickly and moving into the kitchen, looking for his phone to check the time. It was seven in the morning, apparently he had slept through the night curled uncomfortably in the chair. The crick in his neck was proof of that, and he rubbed a hand against it to try and reduce the ache. The fridge sent a waft of cool air against his face as he rummaged through it for something to eat, the only things in there being half empty pizza boxes and leftover ramen he had been too lazy to clean out of its bowl, deigning to just shove it onto an empty shelf. With a sigh, he pulled out the pizza box, throwing the remaining three-ish slices onto a relatively clean plate and into the microwave, watching them spin around with a yawn.
Casting a glance behind him, he could see the girl had finished the gauze, now just clicking away with the needles again, her hair a mane of fire against the back of the sofa. He could see the pile of bloodstained white dressing in a pile of the crooked table, his heart panging for her. He didn’t know what happened, why she had appeared in the woods in that injured state, but it must have been horrible. His mind flicked to the abandoned bottles of pills shoved away under the sink, but he shook the thought quickly out of his head. She didn’t need that, just some painkillers and something to eat. The microwave dinged in reply to his thought, and he pulled the now steaming, slightly limp slices out and onto separate plates.
She glanced up as soon as he got close, offering the plate out to her. She took it with wrinkled brows, her lips pressed together in a thin line as she took in the steaming pile of store-bought cheese. Her eyes flicked up to him with a mixture of concern and disgust, and he frowned.
“Sorry, that's all I had.” He apologized with a sigh, sitting down in his chair and shoving the end of his slice into his mouth. It burned his tongue and he winced against it, watching her as she placed the plate down on the table and backed away from it, eyes still filled with distaste. Her nose wrinkled up at the tip in an endearingly adorable manner.
He glanced outside the foggy window to the woods outside, the storm having lightened to a groggy mist that clung to everything like cobwebs and smoke, the dead leaves on the ground shimmering under their layers of damp. Wilbur could feel the woman’s gaze follow his own, and when he looked back at her there was a distant expression on her face. Her eyes were a shocking ocean blue in comparison to the gray dull of the outside light. There was something in him that understood where her gaze lay, within the fronds of wet leaves and crackling undergrowth.
“Do you want to go outside?” He asked, her eyes flicking to him in surprise. She glanced down at her stomach with a frown, and he remembered the tightly bound gauze of her injury.
“I’ll help you walk.” He stood, reaching out a tentative hand to her. There was a shy moment of silence between them, her eyes flicking between his calloused, outstretched hand and his softening eyes. She placed her palm gently against his own, as if testing the waters, placing her trust in him. When he let her place her weight on his arm, leaning against him as he moved to the door, he could see a smile creeping across her face, shimmering white teeth like a crack of sunlight against Wilbur’s shaky nerves.
The ground outside was wet and muddy, leaves and twigs poking into both of their bare feet with each step out into his scraggly yard. And yet, she did not seem to notice, her face turned upward as the very air around her seemed to shimmer with her glee. His pants clung to his ankles with the mist, catching on his eyelashes like flakes of crystal.
They stopped just before his garden wall, the gravel road of his weed-ridden driveway snaking off into the forest to his left, nothing but trees to his right. She was staring happily at the trees, her eyes shut and fluttering beneath misty lashes. He just stood with her, holding her up even as she began to sway and bob up and down, her grip on his arm tightening with the motions. He realized that she was dancing, dancing in the silence and the mist of the outdoors.
She looked up at him, seeing the confusion painted on his face and rolling her eyes. She motioned to her ears, which were buried somewhere underneath her hair. He blinked, and she huffed, pulling her curling, ginger hair into a ponytail at the base of her neck, throwing it over one shoulder with nothing to tie it with.
Her ears were like fins, pointed and webbed, scarred and stuck through with dazzling gold piercings. He felt himself shudder, trying to take a step back before realizing that her fingers were still curled around his forearm like a brace.
“ What are you… ” He whispered shakily, watching as she breathed calmly. There was no reply, only the repeated motion, cupping her freckled fingers around her ear. She wanted him to listen.
And with nowhere to go, nothing else to do, he did.
There was so much more noise when you listened, he found. The croaking of sleepy toads curling into the mud, the whoosh of wind through broken boughs and shaking leaves, the crickets that played their legs like instruments from the cracks within the stones. Dragonfly wings whirring and squirrels chattering and birds singing their lilting tunes.
The forest created music, he realized, overriding the uncertainty and replacing it with curiosity. When he looked back down at the girl clinging to him, she was bobbing along again, her bare feet tapping the grass in tune with the birds and the bugs, her body moving with the dance of the trees. Her hair shimmered in the dull sunlight, her ears like the spines of lionfish, bobbing individually from the rest of her like twin sails of delicate, silvery scales, shiny in the rain. It was eerily beautiful.
With a sweep of his arms, Wilbur spun her around, eliciting a squeak and a giggle as she played along, the two of them listening only to their gasping breaths, their beating hearts, and the song of the forest around them. Their steps were light, bare feet moving through the wet grass and spinning them around and around and around. Smiles graced both of their faces, bright eyed and happy as wind seemed to push all of the pain she had felt from her movements, allowing the song to guide them.
Wilbur didn’t know how long they had been dancing, his trousers now soaked in the dew and mist from the uncut grass they spun through. The hem of her shirt fared much the same, clinging to her thighs before billowing out with every twirl from Will, her face painted with undiluted joy. He could feel his cheeks aching from smiling for so long, his breath beginning to burn in his lungs.
And as they spun to a stop, their breaths a tandem melody of gasping and breathy laughter, he grinned.
“My name is Sally.” She said, staring into his eyes, her voice a lilting accent of somewhere between Irish and Celtic, a melodious thing that sets his heart fluttering beneath his ribs like a moth trapped in a burning flame. He could only smile, watching her ears move strangely, unnaturally, and yet so beautiful to him. So, so beautiful.