Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Louis walked at a brisk pace, up the stairs onto the second floor of the apartment building. The indicated door was already open. Inside awaited a mess. Said mess was curled in the futon, his large paws covering his face as his tail hid between his legs. His heavy breathing was uneven and sharp, he had cried not too long ago.

The apartment itself was another mess. Completely trashed, filled with clawmarks and punches, a hurricane of rage and impotence that had been taken against the poor furniture of the single room that made up the wolf’s living quarters. It was quite a miracle that he had not been evicted yet considering the level of property damage that he had caused.

The only thing that seemed to have escaped the canine’s rage was a small envelope that laid on the table.

“What happened?”

When he had received Legoshi’s call, managing to understand ‘taken’ and ‘kidnapped’ from all the wailing and almost indecipherable gibberish, the deer had rushed to check the safe house to make sure that everything was according to plan. He still needed to thread carefully to avoid rasing any suspicions or giving any undesirables any lead, but through a proxy he managed to know that the safe house was still secure and there hadn’t been a breach. He ordered to tighten security for some days, then left to get some clear answers on what exactly had been ‘taken’ and ‘kidnapped’.

Now the questions rose even further. What could have caused such reaction from Legoshi?

“T-they… They have- have tak-en him,” the wolf managed to answer between sobs.

‘Him’? Louis squinted as he tried to puzzle everything. Legoshi had a grandfather that had ties to both the dokugumi and the former sublime beastar. That made him a big target, and certainly would align with the kind of reaction from the wolf. As far as the deer was concerned, the Komodo was the only living relative he had left.

“Who has taken him? Did they ask for ransom?” Louis continued with his interrogation. Time was of the essence, and they could waste it consoling Legoshi when lives were no longer on the line.

“The- The letter,” He weakly pointed.

The only thing that hadn’t been trashed; Louis should have assumed there was something to it. He opened it and took out the contents of the envelope, indeed a letter was inside, but some fur had also been stashed, and part of it fell onto the table and the floor.

“What?” Louis shook his head in confusion. He read the ransom note, but it didn’t reveal anything of importance. It kept referring to a ‘him’, but no name was actually given.

The deer inspected the fur that had fallen, the one piece that didn’t quite fit. Gosha was a reptile, they didn’t have fur, so if the kidnappers wanted to add proof to back their claim, they would have sent scales. He took a few of the strands from the table to look closer at them. They were medium-length strands of fur, slightly coarse, so not from a feline. A dog perhaps? The fur was yellow, golden yellow.

So they had taken a yellow dog?

Louis eyes widened at the realization and his heart skipped a beat.

They had taken a yellow dog.

The yellow dog.

“Legoshi...” Louis really wanted to ask that with care, “who have they kidnapped?”

“jack,” the wolf answered with a whisper, before letting out a long whine that descended into a sob, as Legoshi curled further into himself.

“Alright,” having the complete picture, not Louis was trying to plot out a plan, a way of finding out where they had taken the Labrador, and how to get him back, “with this situation I think we can expect Gosha to help. If they had taken him to somewhere near the ruins of the Back Alley Market, I’m sure he and Yafya should have no problem dealing with them. His mice can be a very valuable asset in scouting.”

While he was voicing his plan out loud mostly to himself, Louis had hoped that it would also help Legoshi to get out of his wallowing. However, it didn’t seem to have any effect. Putting his desire to chide him for letting his emotions control him in such an important moment, the deer kneeled next to the wolf, and placed his hand on his shoulder, “Don’t worry Legoshi, we are going to find him, safe and sound.”

“But he should be safe and sound,” The canine responded, his face still buried in his hands, “he didn’t know anything, I told him nothing. To keep him away, to protect him from that place. So something like this wouldn’t happen.”

“Look, there are things that are beyond our control, you may have tried to protect him, but in the end, they still discovered that he was your friend. That was enough for them, and there was nothing you could have done aside from pushing Jack away forever.”

The little heartfelt moment was suddenly broken when the loud sound of steps resonated and one of the bodyguards that comprised Horns security barged in, “Sorry sir!” He exclaimed, out of breath, “we tried to stop her, but she didn’t listen and-”

An all too familiar voice cut through, as a small white shape sneaked into the apartment, “All right, where is he?”

“Haru?! I told you to keep her- I just- HOW??” The rabbit ignored the deer’s desperate questions, walking towards the wolf in heavy stops.

“Alright, tell me what the hell has happened,” She demanded, “first I’m at risk of being kidnapped, then I’m not, then I learn that I cannot even leave my room in that stupid house?!”

Legoshi, who upon hearing the arrival of the rabbit had finally come out of his curled state, pounced to her and grabbed her by the shoulders, “YOU HAVE TO LEAVE AND HIDE THEY HAVE TAKEN JACK I CANNOT LEAVE THEM TAKE YOU PLEASE YOU HAVE TO HIDE!” He shaked her like a rag doll, and Louis had to signal the bodyguard to stand down, his training instinctively prompting to act against a potential predatory offense.

“Enough!” She yelled back, “Stop doing this, you’re putting your fangs all over my face, and I don’t understand a thing of what you’re saying.”

He curled back away from her, ears folded in shame and submission.

“Louis,” she turned to face the deer, “care to explain to me what happened?”

“A group formed by disgraced gumi members has been targeting Legoshi because of his involvement with the destruction of the Black Alley Market. Recently, they threatened him with taking someone important to him. We all assumed it would be you, but as it turns out, they actually kidnapped Jack, Legoshi’s childhood friend.”

“Wait, Jack? The labrador? Our Jack?” She asked.

“Yeah,” Louis confirmed.

The reality of the situation seemed to settle over the little bunny, Louis watched how her ears flopped down ,and her face was filled with a mix of sadness and gilt. However, in an instant, the expression was gone, replaced with a fierce look aimed at the wolf.

“So, what are you doing here?”

Thrown of the loop by the question, Legoshi answered rather meekly, “What?”

“What are you doing? What are you going to do? Your best friend has been kidnapped, and you’re here mopping??”

“But-”

The wolf tried to protest something, probably related to the low-key codependency the two canines have for their emotional stability, but Haru wasn’t having any of it. She stood on the table to give herself more height, and pointed with accusation against her boyfriend, “When I was kidnapped by those lions, what did you do?”

“Well, I tried to find you and then I went to the Back Alley Market, and then-”

He was cut again.

“You punched Louis, went to the market, teamed up with an AK47-wielding panda maniac and stormed a fortress to rescue me. A girl that, by the way, at the time you had spoken to like, twice. And you were only interested in me because I gave you wet dreams.”

Everyone in the apartment gave a face of awkward circumstances to the narration, Louis and his bodyguard exchanged looks, the guard silently asking what to do, and the deer not being sure of what to order. Legoshi whined again.

“SO?” Haru goaded in an offended tone, “What are you doing here? You did all of that for some random girl you had the hots for, and you won’t lift a finger for the man who has been by your side all your life? Don’t you think he deserves the same considerations as I do?”

The wolf’s ears and tail shot up like he had been hit by lightning.

“I don’t know what you’re waiting for,” The rabbit continued her rant, “My permission?? Come on! Punch Louis! Go get your gun-toting panda! Rescue Jack! WHY ARE YOU STILL HERE!?!?!”

“Do I really have to get punched?” Louis commented with a dry tone. That was really all he could contribute on that conversation.

Whipped by the words of the rabbit, Legoshi stood up in a hurry and was hounded outside while barking compliments and thanks to the two herbivores, and awkwardly tried to slide past the bodyguard, who also didn’t wait much to excuse himself to stand guard outside and spare any more strangeness.

Louis looked at the rabbit with a mix of horror, bewilderment and awe. Legoshi had melted like silly-putty in her hands, and she had expertly moulded him to what he needed to be. Not even in his wildest dreams the deer could have expected to be able to do something like that, even less to a carnivore like Legoshi. She returned the look with a smirk and a smug expression.

“See? There’s a reason I’m dating a wolf while you weren’t able to get past the first base,” she responded before getting down the table.

Chapter Text

Jack was used to a certain amount of silence around Legoshi. It came with the territory, so to speak, of being friends with a mostly introverted wolf who probably had a dash of social anxiety. However, their current situation was starting to get, as they say, kind of silly. He had entered the hospital room, rounded the bed where the labrador was resting and sat in one of the chairs brought in for visitors. And then… he waited. He just waited.

At least that was Jack was hoping he was doing. Because otherwise the only other option was that he was visiting to sit and do nothing.

At first the labrador thought that it was the awkwardness of the situation, but as the visitation hours were coming to a close, and any attempt of visual contact was swiftly evaded, Jack came to the conclusion that the elephant in the room was the problem: he had been kidnaped and essentially held for ransom as a move against Legoshi.

So, obviously, the wolf felt responsible, and probably thought that the dog now hated him and didn’t want to be his friend anymore.

“So, um… How are you?” Jack posited the question as gently as he could, yet the wolf bounced off his seat and practically clung to the ceiling. Jack watched his friend, all his fur raised, and eyes opened as plates, “Sorry!” The labrador smiled sheepishly, “I didn’t want to startle you.”

“N- no! I was… I’m just surprised you want to talk with me,” The wolf grabbed his own tail like some security blanket, stroking it in a mad attempt at calming himself down.

“Why wouldn’t I want to talk to the man who saved me? Come on Legoshi, don’t be ridiculous,” Jack forced a laugh to try to dissipate the tension of the situation, but it came out as too insincere.

“But I caused all of this! They kidnapped you because of me. It shouldn’t have happened!”

“And you rescued me,” Jack insisted, “and it wasn’t so bad, like yeah, they wanted to cut some of my fingers, but it was from my right hand, since I’m left-handed it wouldn’t hardly mattered. And yes, the only thing that they gave me to eat was meat, but the doctors say that I don’t display any sort of withdrawal symptoms.” He tried to finish off laughing again, but it got caught in his throat, and was only able to muster a tired sigh that trailed to an involuntary growl. Jack took a deep breath to regain control of his thoughts and forced the smile to come back to his lips.

“I’m sorry you had to go through this,” Legoshi approached the bed, and his friend, for the first time since he had arrived, “I thought that if I didn’t tell you anything, about going to the market, training, and capturing criminals, all that I was doing, I could protect you. Even if it hurt you that I was keeping secrets, it was for a good reason.”

“You know, if you had explained it to me, I would’ve stayed away,” Jack responded, straining his face to keep on the smile, “you’re my best friend. I trust you! If you had told me, I would’ve understood.”

The labrador looked away from the wolf for a moment, “Not knowing… made me feel like I was being a bad friend.”

“I’m sorry…” Legoshi murmured, ears folded by shame.

“But it’s alright now,” Jack turned his face back, beaming again, “no need to apologize.”

However, Legoshi’s mood didn’t seem to change, quite the opposite, shame and guilt seemed to be piling more and more onto the wolf, leaving the dog at a loss at how to help his friend.

“Are you alright?” Legoshi asked.

It was such a simple question, yet Jack struggled to answer, “I- I mean, I am at the hospital because I was kidnapped, and I probably will have to attend mandatory therapy because of it. But it was nothing, really. I just fine.”

“No, you’re not, your tail is not wagging, and your shoulders are slumped, and your ears are more dropped than usual.”

Jack looked away once again, suppressing a growl in his throat. He should have known that Legoshi would see through the façade. The labrador was already seeing the kind of conversation that was looming over them, about how he needed to be open and honest about his feelings and not bottling up. But he was a dog, he was made like this, to ignore all these negative, problematic feelings, to run away from them and keep on smiling.

He sighed, “It’s fine, Legoshi. I just need time to get over this.”

“But you don’t have to be alone!” The wolf reached and grabbed his friend’s hand, “Me and the guys, grandpa, Haru, all of us!”

“It’s. Fine.” Jack tried to let go, but Legoshi was grabbing him with the strength of a vice, “I appreciate it. But there is no need you guys worry about me.”

“But there is!” The wolf exclaimed, “Look, you have watched over me since we met. You have always made sure that I wasn’t alone, that I didn’t get lost in my thoughts forever. You’ve had my best interests in mind since we became friends, when my mother went away and grandpa sent me to Cherryton, you were the one that filled their role and took care of me.” Legoshi brought Jack’s hand into his chest, still holding him tight, “Just this once let me return the favour.”

Jack felt his heart shatter. He clenched his chest, desperately trying to keep it together, but the pieces kept slowly slipping away, “Oh, wow! I mean. I… This is not fair!” the labrador complained, trying and failing to get a grip of himself, “I’m not your mother, I never… You’re just my friend, and I-” Jack sharply inhaled, fighting back the tears in his eyes. “And I… And I. I- I-”

Legoshi pulled Jack to himself, enveloping the labrador into a hug. The dog instinctively hugged back — it was the canine thing to do — but that resulted in the death sentence of his resistance. All the shards of his heart fell into the ground, and Jack started to loudly sob into the wolf’s shoulder.

“Just… Don’t let me go,” He managed to say, “I don’t wanna be alone, I just- I- I thought they would kill me and I- Please don’t leave me.”

They remained bound together for what felt like an eternity, but it was what Jack needed, so Legoshi was willing to wait as long as it was necessary. Eventually, the crying subsided and his sobs quieted to sniffles. The labrador still clung to the wolf for some more, until he felt ready to let go, gently pushing away Legoshi to give each other some space and be able to talk more comfortably.

“Well, I… I suppose I should give you thanks for this,” There was a certain awkwardness to the conversation, but Jack wanted to be honest, “I feel like I’ve lifted a huge weight of my back.”

“You don’t have to apologize. I feel like I have taken you for granted all my life. I want to start doing things for you.”

A warm smile invaded Jack’s face, which quickly spread to the wolf. After a few seconds, however, Jack changed to an inquisitive and playful look, “You did call me ‘your mom’ did you, right?”

Legoshi’s tail spiked, and he scrambled to find an answer, “Well, I- I mean, it’s not meant to be literal. I don’t think you’re my mom. I just think you kinda filled the role of the person that was supposed to look after me and make me feel safe and to whom I could confide in…”

The wolf trailed off, not particularly convinced with the response he had given. And neither was Jack.

“Oh, great!” He huffed, with a clear sarcastic tone, “Yet another trauma to unpack with my therapist.” The dog immediately caught himself, “Sorry!” he exclaimed, slightly ashamed, “I don’t know where this came from.”

Legoshi merely tilted his head, looking at the labrador.

“Jack, do you remember that one time at Cherriton, after I got in a fight during the Adler performance?”

“Yeah, man, that was quite a shocker.”

“I remember, the next day, you told me that it was good that I had gotten angry, and that I had expressed my rage,” Legoshi spoke half absedmindedly, as if he was still weighing in his words, “I think you should do the same. I think you need to be meaner to people. You should talk back more to those that insult you, or that are being rude to others.”

The wolf suddenly became very satisfied with what he had said, “Yeah!” He exclaimed, “I know you are angry with many things, Jack. I think it’s time you start to let people know how angry you are.”

Even if he was alarmed at what his best friend had told him, Jack quickly let it go, conceding, “Yeah, maybe I… I will try, ok?”

Legoshi smiled wide, Jack smiled back, and both dog’s tails started to wag.

Chapter Text

Jack was sitting on the typical therapist recliner. He looked at the ceiling, with no sound in the room beyond the ticking of the clock and the sound of his steady breathing. To his side, an owl dressed in a cream pantsuit patiently waited for his response, pen and notebook ready at her wings.

“I… feel fine now. Most of the time. There are moments where I suddenly have this… dawning realization of dread. And I feel awful. But I keep it mostly under control.”

There was a scribbling, but Jack didn’t turn to look.

“Do these moments of realization happen often? With regularity?”

“I don’t know. They just happen, and then they are gone.”

There was more scribbling, “And how do you keep them under control?”

“I just try to stand still, away from others, until it passes.”

“You stand still?” The owl asked. There was something else in her voice, the question wasn’t part of a battery to check on him, she had genuine curiosity on the matter.

“Yeah, I just stop and remain as still and quiet as I can. Eventually the feeling goes away, and then I continue whatever I was doing.”

“Like you were holding it in?”

“Yes, but like, it’s contention.” He puntialized, “It’s not because I’m a dog.”

“What do you mean?”

“Dogs are known for bottling up negative emotions. We have a tendency to only wanting to be happy, so we either run away or ignore any feeling that is not positive,” Jack explained to the ceiling, and to the therapist as a collateral, “but I’m not trying to bottle this up. I just feel that if I try to do anything while I feel like that, I’ll just… do something bad. So, I try to do nothing until I feel better.”

“That seems a perfectly logical explanation as of why standing still seems to be the best solution for you. Do you really think that being a dog has conditioned your reaction?”

“Well…” Jack trailed off before he could start, there was a lot of baggage to that question. Way too many things that he wasn’t even sure he was capable of talking about.

“We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” The owl reassured, even if she wasn’t in complete darkness, her eyes could see the clear discomfort in her patient. She had a lot of time, a lot of sessions, to unpack the layers of trauma. They weren’t in any rush.

And Gouhin was footing the bill, so Jack didn’t need to worry either.

However, Jack was tired of not being able to talk about it. He really wanted to turn it around, and it frustrated him so that he always felt so overwhelmed by the desire to run away from all the negative feelings he had.

“It’s not that, it’s…” He struggled to continue, “Like all my life has been conditioned because I’m a dog. Everyone sees me as a dog and expects me to do things a certain way, so I do it that way because I want to please them, even if it’s doing something I don’t like.”

“I see…” She accompanied her words with more scribbling.

Jack tuned out the sound of the pen over the paper. Inside, it was as if a big dam was starting to crack that the water was leaking in more and more, “And then there’s Legoshi. He has this idea of me. And he constantly treats me like this pure, angelical… moron! Like I’m a child. And he makes me feel like a child.”

“And you’ve never told this to your friend.” It wasn’t a question per-se, the owl was just looking for a clarification.

“No. I… I feel jealous of him. Because he makes me feel like a child, and he gets to be the adult. So, every time I just… block. And I end looking up to him instead of complaining about what I don’t like.”

“Seems like a complicated relationship.”

“I mean, I’m just saying the bad parts. Legoshi is my best friend. We’ve been together since we were five. I love him! But sometimes,” Jack sighed, “he frustrates me. And I think he knows, he wants me to tell him he annoys me,” Jack stopped for a moment, and turned his head to look at his therapist, “sorry, is this weird? Am I saying something weird?”

“I don’t think so. It’s perfectly normal to have grievances about the people who we’re friends and we’re close to. We’re not perfect, we do not fit neatly together like pieces of a jigsaw, the important thing is that we do not let those grievances fester and ruin our relationships.” She made a pause, letting Jack settle into the words, before continuing, “You have grievances with your friend, but you also know that he may be receptive to talking about them. This is a good thing.”

Jack huffed in frustration, “Yeah, but it’s easier saying this to you than directly to him.”

“We go step by step. You have been able to talk about it with me. That means you recognize those grievances exist, and you seem to know where they come from. Let’s work with this.”

“But isn’t this supposed to be therapy about my kidnapping?”

“This is therapy to help you, Jack,” She placed her notebook and pen neatly into one of the arms of her chair, “It can take many forms and it doesn’t need to be focused only on that. Anything that helps you heal from that event is something I’m willing to work with.”

 “But how will this help with my… trauma about the kidnapping? Of any possible consequence of having eaten meat?”

“Problems and baggage are like rocks that you carry in your backpack. If you take one rock away, you can carry all the others more easily. If you learn how to take a rock out of your bag, then you may be able to apply this to other rocks that you may carry.”

Jack turned his head back, once gain fixating his eyes to the ceiling, “But will the backpack ever be empty?”

“That is difficult to say, but the important thing is, you must find a way to make it so you can carry this backpack without problems.”

Jack took a deep breath, before exhaling completely.

“I suppose.” However, he felt lighter.