Chapter Text
The first time he runs into her; it’s the tenth anniversary of Sarah’s death. The full moon, high in the night sky, guides him in his run. It’s a desperate thing, but the memory of his daughter’s death is too painful and he needs the blissful simplicity of his wolf form.
He keeps focused on his path, deep in the landfill where wolves are authorized by FEDRA to run on the full moon. He doesn’t keep close to the others – not that they would want him to anyways, he’s got a reputation now thanks to Tess – but he can still hear their not-so-quiet howls. They shouldn’t even howl, else they would have some infected to deal with at dawn, but wolves are incapable of shutting the fuck up even when they definitely should. He begrudgingly includes himself. He knows how hard it was, especially when you had a pack, to not howl for whatever reason: pain, happiness, or just to find a lost pup. But when you are surrounded by monsters, maybe it wasn’t the best idea one could have.
He doesn’t even notice her until she makes a pitiful whimper when he runs onto her tail. He stops dead in his track, mind alert, and turn back to look at her.
She is so small.
A little thing, low on the ground as if she could disappear and be forgotten. Her fur, mostly red, shines in the moonlight and he can see even where he is how matted she is. Did no one took care of her? What kind of pack would let one of their pups alone and in this state?
She still doesn’t make a move, so hesitantly – as not to startle her and why does he even care – he approaches her little form. She lets him, eyes leaving the ground to look at him warily (good, she shouldn’t trust strangers) and he keeps his movements slow.
Surprisingly, once he is in front of her, she’s the one to make the first move. Raising herself to her wobbly paws, she advances her muzzle to his own and smell him a bit before sitting up right in front of him. Stunned, he doesn’t return the gesture immediately.
At first, she seemed wary of him and now she wants to say hi? He forgot how much pups didn’t have an ounce of self-preservation. Especially the younger ones like she seems to be. Still in a daze, he returns the gesture slowly: she smells like pup and baby soap. Not like family, not like pack. The smell of a lonely wolf, just himself and what he surrounds himself with.
Sarah never smelled like that. Oh, she smelled like pup alright, as they all do, but she smelled like him, like Tommy, like home. He tries to remember if he ever smelled her soap on her. He doesn’t think so. She was so attached to him that the soap smell never really lasted, replaced by his scent soon after her bath.
Did no one even touch her, for him to still be able to smell the soap on her fur?
Shaking himself, he tries to refocus. He is not here to inspect an orphan but to forget, even for a little while, the pain of remembering and losing his daughter. To run wild and let the wind carry him. Eying the little thing, he growls at bit – a warning, an excuse? – before turning around and walking away. It’s not like he can help her, anyways. His home, if he can even call his small apartment like that, can’t open itself to a child. Neither does his heart.
And, it’s not like he will see her again.
Except he sees her again. And again. And again. Each full moon, he runs into her. The second time, he thinks it’s a coincidence: she runs into him this time and they look at each other, both wary, until she seems to remember him at the same time he does. She tries to follow him in his run, but her little paws didn’t hold up to his.
The third time, he starts to find it suspicious. He still manages to lose her -- but he can’t help but notice she lasted more than the last moon. The cycle continues as such before something shifts.
The eight time, he is sure she’s following him. He isn’t running, thanks to the knife wound he got in his hip which makes even moving hurts like a bitch. Not being able to run also means that the pup can follow him without him being able to lose her.
After an hour or so of him walking while ignoring his newly self-appointed shadow, he stops and turn around, ready to growl. He needs her to understand than he’s nothing good and she can’t keep this baby-duck thing.
But as soon as he does, he can’t make a sound. Her fur – still mated, still not taken care of – has blood on it. Stopped dead in her tracks, she looks like a dear in headlights. He doesn’t register what happens next, not until he’s right in front of her, muzzle in her fur. He finds her wound on her back, long thin lines of blood. Her blood.
She lets herself be nuzzled and then, as he sits to breathe and try to keep himself from mauling someone, anyone, she’s the one with her muzzle at his hip, whimpering at his wound.
It doesn’t help his murder tendencies, this little sound. Huffing, he drops his head and looks at her back again. Did they whipped a pup? Fuckers, all of them. They deserve nothing but pain and suffering. As she stops nuzzling at his wound, he goes to lick her owns.
Usually, only family and pack can lick a pup: it’s the best way to imprint their smell on the little ones, the best way to take care of their fur and sometimes, wounds. Licking someone else pup is seen as a sure way to get a beating from trying to claim one of the most beloved people in a pack. But as he works, he doesn’t think anyone will come to him to fight his claim: she still smells like a lone, lost pup.
And if someone comes? Then, he can let them understand how much they fucked up on this kid. Why does she have blood on her fur where she should only have the mud she should play in? Why does she smell like she isn’t loved and cared for?
As he continues his work, he feels her little body exhale a deep breath and she starts to relax. She lowers herself to the ground, bring her paws close to her body, then her tail, until she is curled up beneath him.
His heart stops for a moment, memories of a little Sarah who would do the same after a long day too close. But this pup isn’t Sarah. He breathes, tries to shake his head. He needs to bring her to safety. They’re still in the landfill, and everybody could come up to them and try to pry away the little one from him, which he can’t accept.
Tess teased him the first time he spoke about the kid following him at every moon. Every time he comes back from a run since then, she always asks about his newly accidental kid. He said to her the same thing he repeats in his head right now as he grabs her scruff to bring her into a den he claimed as his: she’s not his kid; he’s just not a fucker – not with pups anyways.
But as he curls himself around her in his den to protect her from the cold night of the beginning of spring, he doesn’t know if this is quite the truth he tries to believe.
She only smells like him, now.
And he still doesn’t even know her name.
He wakes up from his nap with his den empty except from him and the bundle of clothes he keeps here to avoid waiting for a laughing Tess who guessed he didn’t have anything to come home with. He doesn’t know what to feel about the pup leaving without him even realizing it, but it’s not like he could find her now.
So, walking home with a limp from the landfill, he wonders what the next moon will bring him. Will she find him again? What if he wants to find her but can’t because he doesn’t recognize her smell? Releasing a breath, he climbs the stairs to his and Tess’s appartement and tries not to worry about the bloody pup that decided he was good caretaker material.
“So, found your kid again?”
She’s leaning on the counter, a small smile on her face as she catalogs his body –not for pleasure, but to check his injuries.
“She founds me alright”, he murmurs as he approaches her to put his hands on her hips, reassuring both of them that he’s okay. She hmm in response, close her eyes to put her head on his torso. Her hands find his hips, and she finally lightly pushes him away: “how’s the hip? Let me take a look at it, shifting probably didn’t help”.
He grunts. She was right. Tess was always right. Moving back to the small couch, he sat on it with relief. Damn, but it hurts like a bitch. Bringing his hand to his head and closing his eyes, he hears her going to their room to bring back the first aid kit before sitting next to him, hands already lifting his shirt.
“C’mon Tex, show me. We don’t have all day. We still need to go over the plan for tonight.”
As she works on cleaning and bandaging his wound, they rehearse what’s going to happen for tonight’s smuggling job. It looks to be an easy one, just some drugs and medicaments that needs to go from FEDRA to Fireflies, but they could never be sure; especially when it includes both.
When she’s done, he’s bone-deep exhausted. But at the verge of sleep, he can’t help himself but tell her about his night and finding the hurt pup.
“She was hurt. The pup, I mean. Looked like lashes on her back, all bloody. Brought her back to the den but she wasn’t here when I woke up.”
She sighs, hands on her knees. “Well, we know orphans in FEDRA’s care aren’t really coddled anyways. Hurting a baby like that…”
Then, eying him almost warily, she continues: “We can’t help everyone, but one missing pup, especially if they are sufficiently misbehaving for deserving a whipping like that…” He grinds his teeth at the reminder. Gods, will he ever let it go? Will he ever forget the need to kill the person who did that to a baby?
“She’s not my or our kid, Tess. Hell, I don’t even know her name”, he says, trying and willing her to understand what he can’t tell her: I already lost a daughter because I wasn’t enough, don’t put me in a position where I could lose another one. “Besides, we’re smugglers. Not really the best type of people to adopt a stray pup.”
“Because she’s doing so much better in FEDRA’s orphanage?”
Gods, he hates when she’s right. Still, it makes him uneasy, the though of caring for a kid again after everything that had happened.
“Do you want that? Tess, why?”
She waits for him to look at her again before giving an answer. “For the years I’ve known you, it’s since you met that little one that we’ve been more open with each other. Sue me for wanting more of the man that made me laugh more in the last months than in my entire time knowing him.”
It breaks something in him, hearing this confession. He always knew she wanted something from him that he though he couldn’t give to her. Until he found a stray he started gushing over, because kids have always been his soft spot and that’s why he avoided them as much as he could.
What does that say about him, that he didn’t consider how much more open he was with her since he started talking about the stray and, by extension – because he has so much stories to share it hurts – Sarah? How did he not realize she told him about her losses, about her past too?
He should have known, in retrospect.
Tess was never a touchy woman, but their closeness has escalated recently. Hands on shoulders, bed sharing, smiles and even light kisses in the dark of the night.
“Joel… You’ve been talking about this pup since the first night. You seem awfully angry about the lack of care she has for someone who doesn’t gives a fuck about this kid. And I am angry, too. I was a mother, and I know that if I can help it, I want to try and get this kid away from mistreating hands.”
When he looks at her, she has a fond smile but her eyes are hard. She doesn’t stop, as if she rehearsed this argument before – which wouldn’t be a stretch, knowing her – and add: “You know Bill and Franck already told us we could use one of their cabins if we ever needed it. It would be easy to leave the QZ and never coming back.”
Then, she pauses, as if hesitant to continue her speech. He offers her a thin smile and hopes she understands it for what it is: she might as well get it all out now. This seems to be confession time, and they probably need to have this talk anyway.
“We could use their radio to call your brother and try to go to him. You, me and the kid.”
And what can he say? She knows he wants to see Tommy again, that their fight left a broken thing inside of him that he craves to repair. Sarah may have been his first biological child, but he basically raised his brother and can’t help but deeply missing him.
He sighs, nod once, and finally respond. “Well, we still have until the next full moon to make a plan. See if we can get the pup to agree to come home with me to meet you, at least.”
He doesn’t know what to make of the smile she gives him. He, however, does know what to make of her when getting up, she grabs his hands to bring him in their bed, careful of his newly bandaged hip. He can’t help but love their new dynamic. He didn’t know he missed having someone to love this way that much. A little blessing, he thinks, in their fucked-up world.
The next full moon, he goes to the den before shifting. He and Tess – meaning Tess bossed him around until he agreed – decided he would try to locate the pup and talk to her after they shifted back. Which means the first step was to go around and hope his smell has lasted on the kid enough for him to know where to go.
Easy. Like it was already done.
After the shift, he comes out of his den and start smelling around, trying to know which way to go. The numerous wolves in the landfill makes it hard to distinguish a particular one, so he starts to walk around, not really knowing where to go. She was the one finding him each time, and he hopes it will hold true tonight as well.
About an hour in his wandering, he starts to worry. It never took her this long to find and follow him, barely half an hour before he had to try and lose her. His nose gives him nothing, his hearing neither – not that he though it would, damaged as it was, but still. His walking becomes stalking, focused on trying to find the smallest trace of his lost pup. Where is she? Gods, now that he decided he would try and help her, she disappears and goes MIA. Just his luck.
He runs around for another hour before sitting up in the middle of the landfill, overwhelmed. Every other wolf around him seems to be happily playing with his pack and howling their joy. There’s a hole in his heart, and his lungs don’t cooperate with the keeping him alive and breathing correctly thing. He always knew he wasn’t good caretaker material, but apparently, he needed the reminder that he couldn’t even find a pup to bring them home and safe.
He looks at the ground, mind reeling, heart pumping loudly in his ears. Maybe she grew tired of him not actually paying attention to her, even with the event of the last moon. Maybe someone else took her in, adopted her, made her theirs. Maybe she got a harsher beating and couldn’t go out yet. Maybe she got attacked.
His vision is spotted black, and he realize – in a deep part of his mind – that he is sprawled on the ground. He can’t stop looking for her, he has to get up and continue his search. What if she needs him? Worse, what if she needs him, and he can’t find her?
And so, he rises and immediately collapse from unsteady limbs and a wolf running – quite literally – into him. Hackles raised, teeth bared, he looks at the poor motherfucker who decided to slow him down in his search for his lost pup. He halts himself when he realizes the small thing is hiding in his fur, whimpering, bloody. And she smells like pup and baby soap – and blood, her blood, so much blood.
Once again, she found him first.
Once again, she is injured.
Once again, he feels like he failed her.
He licks at her head, trying to determine where she’s hurt, trying to calm her – and him – down. Relief washes within him; even hurt, she’s by his side. Now, he can take care of her correctly and bring her to his den. She stills nuzzle his side, as to fuse into him and reassure herself he’s right here. He breathes out at her head, and let a soft growl escape. He needs her to let him up so he can bring them at safety. She stops nuzzling, instead looking at him curiously, head tilting in a question.
He gets up, shakes himself. He wants to smother her, to lick all her wounds and never let her off of his sight ever again but it will have to wait. For now, he grabs her by her scruff, careful of not putting his muzzle on her injuries.
Walking to his den – he doesn’t want to run in fear of aggravating her state – he feels her relaxing in his hold, looking curiously around them. It strikes him, then and there, the difference between Sarah and this pup: Sarah never liked being scruffed, always wanting to be independent even when exhausted. This kid, however, doesn’t seem to mind and even, in a way, he senses that she likes it.
Usually, reminders of his daughter hurt him. This time, it reassures him: they’re so different, for everything. He doesn’t want to replace Sarah, is even scared by the mere possibility of it. But, he rationalizes his thoughts, parents can have many children and love them all. Why should he be any different?
Finally, in the shelter of his den, he brings her back to the ground before releasing her. She wobbles a bit around, curiously inspecting her surroundings and he lets her content to watch. But she still smells like blood.
And nothing like him, which he can’t accept. No one wants her? Fine, but now she’s his and everybody will have to know his claim. Gods help the poor motherfuckers who would try to take her away from his hand from now one.
He nuzzles at her, and starts to lick at her wounds to make the bloody smell leave her body and to inspect how much of her injuries he needs to worry about. She still has long and thin lashes on her back that are still fresh, but nothing more than that. He feels relief at that, and more since he continues to lick her and making her smell like him. As she should. And as any pup should be: claimed by a pack, by family.
As he finishes, she settles near him and place her head on her paws, clearly ready to nap the rest of the night. For his part, he wonders about the next step. Tess and him had decided to wait until they could all speak to bring her back to the appartement, but now he feel hesitant. Bringing a pup in wolf form is less suspicious than bringing a baby human – naked, at that, and how did neither he or Tess thought about that? – which is why he think about directly taking her home.
And who is he kidding? He licks her scruff as an excuse before taking her up again. She whimpers, more curious than scared, and he spare a though about how grateful he is that she doesn’t fight him about it. She grumbles a bit, yawn, clarifying her tiredness. Well, she would be able to sleep as much as she wanted once they came back to Tess at the apartment. Time to move and bring the little pup at – hopefully – home.
All the way through the landfill, she doesn’t make a noise, and she keeps her head low. But as soon as they take a step inside the streets, he feels her body move, trying to see everything around them while he continues to walk, attempting to avoid every FEDRA guards on their path. He probably wouldn’t be in trouble, but he’d better be safe than sorry, especially with his precious cargo. And if the cargo would like to stay still, it would be much appreciated.
Walking the stair up to the appartement as a wolf is a bitch, even more so when the pup seems to like the movements of up and down. She growls happily, delighted by the experience while he grumbles and try to make her understand that she is certainly not helping. He has the feeling she does not particularly care about being helpful, but a man can hope.
At his door, he doesn’t even have time to wonder how to knock – being a wolf is nice until you realize having opposable thumbs and a voice is a perk – before Tess opens, gun in hand. And stops.
“Well, I knew I loved your rapidity of execution but it seems exceptionally fast even for you, Tex”.
He continues to growl lightly while passing beside her to enter their appartement and jumping on their couch, curling on himself before he releases the pup. She tries to go over him, probably to go and inspect Tess, but he put a paw on her and keep her at his side. Finally, she curls up against him, stealing his body heat to take a nap. Good. She didn’t even fight him, so he was right about her being tired.
After closing the door – and checking he wasn’t followed – Tess comes by to see them. “She does look really small, you were right.”
Of course he was.
“You’ll have to explain to me why you didn’t wait until morning to bring her here, though. Does she need medical attention?”
He growls and shakes his head lightly, trying to make her understand it could wait until they were all humans again. “Good. God, Joel”. Her last remark is said in a disbelieving tone. He thinks she might have had the same though as him.
What did they do? There’s a kid in their home, and please help them they don’t even know her name. With how crazy this sentence sounds in his head, he prays for Tess to not say it all aloud. It would make it awfully real. But it seems their connection is lost because what she says next blow the air out of his lungs.
“We have a kid, Joel. Look at her, she’s so small.”
They do have a child.
Does this child know they’re ready to adopt her and smuggle her out of the QZ? Will this child accept their offer? He knows, as he has this thought, that they really didn’t think this through as they usually do. Mastermind Tess and Big Scary Joel, soft on a poor kid, kidnap her without thinking about consequences. It will bite them in the ass later, he knows.
Shaking her head, Tess goes to the couch to sit beside him, softly petting his fur. Even more carefully, she goes with her other hand to pet the pup’s fur. He closes his eyes. He likes the attention, even if he would never be admitting it. Accepting to be petted like a dog? Never. He does feels good, though.
He doesn’t reopen then until Tess lightly shakes him awake, less than an hour before dawn. “Joel, we don’t have clothes for the kid”. She seems a bit distraught, and he would like to comfort her, but all he can think about is how he had the same thought just some hours ago, deep in his den. He snorts, and she pushes him in retaliation.
“Don’t be an ass, fucker”, she says but her laugh tells him she isn’t mad about it. They were both so focused on bringing the pup here that they didn’t even consider they would need to acquire supplies for her life with them.
“Go shift. Sun will come up soon, and maybe we should talk before the kid wakes up.”
He gently moves away from the pup, still sleeping beside him, all curled up. She stirs a bit when he maneuvers her away from him, but overall stays asleep which he counts as a victory. Going in their room, he takes a moment to look back to see Tess, still looking at the child, with a gentle face. She looks younger than he ever saw her.
When he comes back, she still hasn’t moved. For his part, the shift back has him a little unsteady. So much has happened last night, he doesn’t know what to make of anything anymore. His thoughts seem tangled, between the exaltation of having a kid – his kid? – and the fear of doing something so out of his depth.
He tries to put away the thought that he basically kidnapped a kid from a FEDRA’s orphanage without anyone’s consent – the definition of a kidnapping, he scowls – but especially without the kid’s consent. She came to run yesterday night like every wolf and will wake up in a strange man’s appartement – never mind that she was the one to seek him out firstly.
God, what did he do?
Tess puts a stop at his wandering thoughts by looking up at him. “Easy, Tex. I can hear you thinking from here and that’s not your job.”
He exhales, a smile on his lips. Their teasing always helped him to put a stop at his running mind. “So, ma’am, since you’re the mastermind, what we’re gonna do from here? I mean, we can’t really bring her back now.”
She agrees. “We wait until she wakes up and you tell her you wanted to propose something to her. Tell her that you saw her injuries and you wanted to make sure she was safe. Then we give her a choice: either she stays, or we bring her back where she wanna goes.”
At the second option, she frowns, clearly displeased with the thought. Not wanting her to dwell on this longer than necessary, he nods and says: “Sounds fine by me. That being said, whatever happens, maybe we should find her a shirt to put on when she shifts back first.”
She chuckles, “Gods, we didn’t even think about that part. What a mess. I’ll try to find something, I may a shirt a little small for me.” As she goes into their room, he gets up close to the little thing sleeping in their couch, still unaware of the world around her.
She looks peaceful, little body raising up and down with each breath she takes. Her fur is all red, like he first saw. The lashes on her back didn’t bleed again and she doesn’t seem bothered by them, at least in her sleep. Looking outside at the window, he thinks she will soon shift back. Dawn is slowly creeping up on them, waking up the world little by little.
Tess comes back with a red shirt, and she goes over to put it on the pup as a cover. It looks big on her and he thinks it’s a bit cute. He remembers doing that for Sarah when she forgot to bring clothes to shift back from a moon run. Looking at Tess, he thinks it may be a universal experience for parents, covering their children like this. She looks as nostalgic as he thinks he may be.
And then, as the sun goes up, the pup shift back under the cover of the shirt, opens her eyes, and scream.