Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Shifters weren't very well-liked where Niki was from.

It wasn't rare for shopkeepers to take one look at her pointed ears, at the tricolor tail raised hopefully behind her back, and drive her out of their stores with a broom and shouted insults.

Pest. Vermin. Stray.

She’d taken to hiding them, over the years. Long, heavy skirts over her tail to hold it down. Hooded cloaks to hide her ears, pinned painfully to her hair to keep them from flicking beneath the fabric. By the time she was fifteen she had mastered the art of ignoring how her ears ached, the itch of pushing down a shift. Of disappearing at the end of the day without a trace, vanishing into the most hidden alleys she could find and coming out only to hunt mice by the light of the moon. Of reappearing in the early morning, emerging as though from a warm home like everyone else, to spend her days wandering the streets looking for odd jobs so that maybe for a week or two she could afford real food. Of moving on to the next town before she could get to know anyone, before she could get attached, before she could be found out and kicked out again.

The first time she saw Tommy, she caught a glimpse of the child she used to be. Nine years old, dirty and flea-ridden, scrabbling furiously at the hand of a shopkeeper wrapped around his arm in a bruising grip. Hackles raised, bushy tail fur standing on end, ears that were too big for his head pinned back along with his lips as he snarled.

“Hey!” Niki shouted, surprising herself and causing two heads to snap toward her. She floundered for a moment at the sudden attention, but seeing the fear in the boy’s eyes, she steeled herself and pushed onward. “Get your hands off my brother!”

His eyes widened and eyebrows furrowed, but the second the man whipped back to face him, the boy’s confusion was smoothed over and replaced with a quivering lip and teary eyes. “Let go of me!” he wailed. He stretched a hand out toward her, reaching. “Help!”

She stormed over, snatching him out of the man’s grip when it loosened in surprise. When he was safely out of reach, she crouched down to check him over for any injuries. She wiped away the crocodile tears, fretting with only half-feigned concern. “Where have you been? Are you okay? Did he hurt you?”

The boy replied with a “sorry” and a whimper, tucking himself beneath her cloak and hiding his face in her side. She could feel a mischievous grin through her shirt, and fought down a smile of her own.

Whirling on the man, she demanded, “What is the meaning of this?!” As she did, she took in their surroundings. All sorts of bread lined the shelves of the stall, assorted pastries and goodies hiding behind a counter. And abandoned at their feet was a now-dusty loaf.

Okay, hungry street kid. Niki could work with that.

Face red, the baker spat, “This little—! Little crook was stealing from me!”

“Now, now, I’m sure this was all just a misunderstanding,” she attempted to placate him, resting a hand on golden hair. She made sure not to touch the large, sand-colored ears on the boy’s head that swivelled at every sound, flicking back and forth as she and the baker spoke. “He would never try to—”

“The damn evidence is right there at your feet!” he accused, pointing down at the bread on the ground.

“Oh!” Niki acted surprised, pretending not to have seen it already, and bent down to pick it up. She looked it over, turning it this way and that as she brushed dirt and hair off of it. It was a sausage roll; not good for keeping long, but big enough to last a few meals and probably healthier for a kid like this than regular bread would be. More tempting, too. “Not exactly best practice to leave your merchandise on the ground.”

Even slightly muffled by her hood, her sharp ears picked up a surprised snort from the kid tucked into her side as the baker spluttered.

“I do not keep my—! This is—! That brat— It’s only on the ground because he tried to steal it!” A trembling finger pointed accusingly at the boy.

“I mean,” she continued, disregarding his excuses, “have you seen how much dirt is on this thing now? You can’t sell that.” As she said this, she plucked a hair off of the roll and held it up between them; thick and straight, a perfect match for the baker’s greying beard. She flicked it back onto the ground between them. “How about I just take this and throw it away somewhere for you, so your customers don’t have to see what looks like perfectly good bread in the garbage.”

The kid’s tail wagged slightly at that, and the baker’s eyes locked onto it, outrage roaring back to life. “BULLSHIT! YOU’RE JUST PROTECTING THAT DAMN VERMIN—”

“This ‘vermin’,” Niki seethed, “is my brother. And I will not have you speaking about him that way.” With shaking fingers, she fished a coin out of the pouch at her waist—less than she knew the roll was worth—and slammed it down on the counter. “There. It’s paid for. And we are leaving.”

Roll tucked under one arm, she ushered the boy away from the stall, fighting to keep her tail from lashing beneath her skirt. They ignored the baker’s raving about thieves, slipping seamlessly into the bustling market.

Guards started to approach after a few minutes and the boy tried to run, but Niki held him back, tucking him under her long cloak as they passed by without a clue. “Just act like you’re meant to be here, kid,” she whispered once they were out of earshot.

“I’m not a kid,” he muttered back through gritted teeth, but he went along with it, keeping his pace steady and tail still under the cloak.

They found their way out of the square without any further issues. She pulled him along normally for a while after that, making sure they were a safe distance away from the market before they finally ducked into an alley.

One second he was still a little boy tucked under her arm, keeping up the charade of a teen girl and her kid brother. The next he was a small fox leaping up to snatch the sausage roll from her arm before dashing off in a blur of sand-colored fur.

“Wait—!” she tried to call after him, but he was out of sight before she could get the word out. For a moment she debated shifting as well and going after him, but as the summer afternoon sun shone down between the buildings and the faint sounds of a busy city day echoed through the alley, she quickly abandoned the idea.

It was too public, too exposed. Too dangerous.

Besides, he had survived this long. Clearly he didn’t need her help. She had to focus on her own survival.

Niki sighed at the realization she was one coin poorer with nothing to show for it.

Chapter Text

For some reason, Niki found herself staying in that town longer than usual. Found herself scanning the crowds for a flash of blonde hair, the alleys for sandy fur.

She avoided the baker at the market, of course, but that turned out to be surprisingly easy.

The leaves shifted into yellows and oranges, vibrant reds and rich purples, and she stayed to watch them change. She found some heavier clothes, managed to get a new wool cloak as the weather turned colder. It made her ears itch, but she found a headscarf to put between them and the fabric.

She couldn't help but wonder if the little fox boy had warm clothes for the coming winter.

Niki didn’t often go into buildings—people tended to stare if she left her hood up inside, and in the past she couldn't very well put it down without being kicked out at a moment’s notice—but she started to practice covering her ears with the headscarf. It was a challenge to keep it in place, covering every little bit of her real ears and the place her ears would be if she were human. She didn’t fully trust it to stay for long periods of time, but she eventually practiced enough that she felt she could go into shops for quick trips without too much risk.

On one particularly cold day, she decided to go to the town library.

It was warm; she always forgot how pleasant it was to be inside at that time of year, the chill scared off by the crackling of a stone fireplace. Books lined the shelves, leather spines in warm shades of brown and red, some cracked beyond belief and others in pristine condition.

For a while she browsed the books, leafing through pages, sounding out words under her breath. Two different people came and went before she worked up the courage to talk to the librarian.

“Um, excuse me…” Niki said quietly.

The librarian looked up from his own reading and offered her a warm smile. “Yes?”

“I was wondering if you could help me find something.” She wrung her hands.

“Of course, of course!” He marked his place in the book he was reading and set it down. “What is it you’re looking for?”

“Do you have any books about animals? Like, ones that aren’t from around here.”

“About animals, yes. Follow me, let me see what we have.”

Getting up, he led Niki through the shelves and to a section near the large window at the side of the building. Sunlight filtered through the golden leaves outside, casting the room in rich, dappled shadows. She watched them dance as the librarian sifted through books.

“What kind of animals are you interested in, my dear?” he asked, glancing briefly over to her. “Birds, fish, mammals, reptiles, amphibians..? I assume you don’t mean invertebrates.”

“I’m… not sure what most of those are,” she replied hesitantly.

He sighed at her response and she shrunk in on herself, but he had already turned back to the books, muttering to himself. “Education these days, my goodness. Truly, to think they aren’t teaching children these things.”

Her face flushed at the implication that she was a child—she was fifteen, after all—but it was a relief to hear that his frustration wasn’t with her.

“I suppose it is up to me and my books to right this wrong, then,” he lamented, before turning back to her with a new determination. “Right then! Tell me which of them you do know, and I will fill in the blanks of your knowledge.”

“Oh! That’s— very kind, thank you.”

“Just doing my duty as a scholar, my dear.”

“I know birds and fish, but… the rest that you listed don’t sound familiar.”

“Well then. Mammals, to begin with, are warm-blooded animals with fur or hair that produce milk for their young.”

“Oh, like cats and foxes and stuff!”

“Yes, precisely! And like mice, cows, and even humans such as yourself!” She tried not to react to the way he said it. He didn’t know she wasn’t human, and it would stay that way if she had anything to say about it.

“That’s the one I’m looking for, then,” she said definitively. “Mammals. Do you have a book about them?”

“Of course, of course!” the librarian replied, pulling out a thick book from the shelf. “But don’t you want to know what the rest of them are?”

Niki glanced anxiously out the window. The sun was still high in the sky. “Ah, sure. You can tell me about the other ones.”

The next half hour flew by as she tried to absorb all the new words she’d never heard before. When he was done explaining the major groups of animals, the librarian moved on to the book itself. He invited her to a nearby table and they settled into plush chairs as he told her all about encyclopedias and how to find things in them.

It was then that Niki finally admitted in a whisper, “I’m… not very good at reading.” She was flipping through the book, looking at headings, but the words weren’t making any sense to her. Most people her age didn’t need to sound the words out as they read, could breeze through schoolbooks in a matter of days if they wanted to. Despite learning so much, she couldn't help but feel a bit stupid for that.

“Well then, I suppose your education failed you in more than one way. Now, I’m no teacher, but I’m sure I could be of some help. We’ll start with what you’ve got and go from there. How were you taught to do it?”

Niki glanced up from the book in confusion. “People get taught to read?”

A moment of stunned silence passed as pure shock and horror overtook the librarian’s features. She nearly reached up to check that her ears were still covered, fearing the worst, before he finally found his voice. “...yes. People are taught to read.”

“Oh.”

The man seemed to go through every stage of grief, plus a dozen other stages that nobody knew existed, as she sat quietly next to him.

She ended up being the one to break the silence. “Do you think that, um, you could help me find what I was looking for in the book?”

It was enough to snap him out of his thoughts. “Of course, of course! What was it you were trying to find?”

“I heard some people in town talking about an unusual animal they’d seen,” she lied. “Similar to a fox but smaller, maybe a small dog? They said it looked really fluffy, with pale brown or yellow fur and really big ears.”

“Well I must agree, it certainly doesn’t sound like a creature I’ve seen around here,” he replied, already starting to flip through the book. “Right then, let’s take a look at the foxes.”

Once he found the proper section, he began skimming the pages. “Ah! Here we are. I believe this,” he said, pushing the book closer for her to see, “is your culprit. Vulpes zerda, the fennec fox!”

“Fennec fox,” she repeated in a whisper, fingers brushing over the illustration. It stood out in the lineup of fox species, pale and small next to its more familiar cousins.

“They’re the smallest species of fox. Omnivorous—they eat plants and animals, that is—though their diet primarily consists of insects and small mammals and birds.”

Massive ears sat atop the creature’s head, perked up curiously in the sketch. Long fur faded from a golden tan on its back to nearly white underneath, with hints of black on its tail.

“They’re native to the deserts in North Africa.” She nodded like she knew where that was. “Specially adapted for hot, dry environments, and colored to match the sand. Odd indeed that one should be here; it’s no wonder people didn’t recognize it.”

Big, dark eyes stared up at her from the page, and Niki couldn’t help but wonder why the boy’s were blue instead. A side-effect of being a shifter, she supposed. Something to do with being just to the left of human.

She wondered if he knew what he was.

If he had experienced anything like the cats who begrudgingly shared her alleys and never quite knew how to treat her. Who knew she wasn't really one of them but wasn't quite human, either.

The librarian continued speaking, but she didn’t hear anymore of the words, too lost in her own thoughts. She hummed at anything with a questioning tone, letting the sound of a calm voice wash over her.

It wasn’t until she heard the strike of a match that Niki finally came back to herself, gaze darting to see the window nearly black with the lack of light outside.

“Shit, she breathed, scrambling to grab her cloak from the back of the chair and startling the librarian in the process. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t realize— It’s late, I need to— I have to go.”

“It’s no trouble at all, my dear, you can stay as long as you like,” he tried to reassure her, but she was already flinging her cloak back over her shoulders and fumbling with the buttons.

“No, it’s— I should— I have to be home anyway—” It was a lie, and from the skeptical glance he gave her dirt-stained skirts, the librarian probably knew it. But still he let her go with nothing but an offer for her to come back anytime.

Niki promised she would, but the words sounded hollow even to her own ears.

She tried to forget his kindness over the next few weeks, burying herself in odd jobs in an effort to stock up and prepare for the winter.

—

The days passed, leaves fading from their fiery hues to dull browns as more and more fell from the trees.

One sunny afternoon, Niki was wandering the nearby woods. She breathed in the fresh air, letting the scent of fall fill her lungs. A crisp wind blew through, toying with the hood over her head, and she let it. The only sounds around her were the birds in the trees and the crunch of fallen leaves under her own boots. If there were any humans nearby, she’d know.

Still she looked around, just to make sure, as she considered the idea of shifting. The town was nearly an hour’s walk back from where she stood, and though there were a few scattered houses and farms between, she was far enough out that it felt untouched. Wild. Safe.

A tingle went down her spine, an itch spreading out from there, digging its roots into her flesh. And for once, she let it. Let her magic consume her and envelop her in her second skin, wrap her in warm calico fur and drop her gently down onto four paws.

Niki blinked open sharp blue eyes, with pupils just a bit too round to be perfectly catlike, and bounded into the trees.

It was easy to forget just how different it was to shift in the daytime instead of at night. The sun on her fur, the sounds of the world around her, bright and awake and alive. She scaled a tree, claws digging easily into the grooved bark as she climbed higher and higher. She leapt from branch to branch, each jump more daring than the last. Birds called out in alarm and fled as she pounced after them, not even hunting but just delighting in the thrill of a chase, something playful, something she didn’t just need to do to survive.

She couldn't remember the last time she had done anything simply for the sake of fun.

A squirrel ran by along a parallel branch, chittering as it went, and she gave chase to it too. When it dove into a hole in the trunk, she wandered off, taking in the ambiance of the forest around her.

The leaves of a bush at the base of the tree rustled.

Staring down curiously, she crept further from the trunk to see better, careful not to brush against any of the brittle leaves still attached to her branch. Whatever was in the bush was certainly bigger than the birds and squirrels she’d been chasing. Claws scraped the earth, kicking up dirt that flew out from beneath the dense shrub in quick bursts.

The wind picked up for a moment, swaying the branch on which she stood, and Niki slipped.

She turned in the air as she fell, using her tail to keep herself upright, and hit the bush with all four feet, crashing through the branches. A yelp sounded out from beneath her, and the creature quickly scrambled out of the way.

She lay there for a moment, broken twigs poking her in the ribs as she tried to catch her breath and regain her bearings. Sniffing brought her out of the daze, a small black nose hovering just millimeters from her own.

Following the pointed nose up to a sandy-furred face, Niki’s gaze met piercing blue, ringing huge dark pupils full of curiosity. Her breath left her lungs again.

Large ears flicked back in concern as the little fox kit leaned forward to nudge her.

She blinked rapidly, wondering if this was a dream. Reaching out, she put a gentle paw on the kit’s nose.

He nipped her in return.

If she were in her almost-human form she would’ve laughed. Maybe cried. Maybe both. As it was, a purr burst out of her chest, startling him into backing up a bit. She tamped it down, not wanting him to run off.

She wiggled experimentally, snapping another twig or two as she tried to free herself from the bush. Branches scraped uncomfortably against her fur as she squirmed, feeling for something she could use to push herself out. The kid watched, fighting down a distinctly human wince of sympathy.

Finally she found a sturdy branch to anchor herself. Scrabbling with her front paws and pushing with the rear, Niki managed to get her front half out of the shrub. She reached down to the dirt, sinking her claws in to pull herself the rest of the way out.

The little fox backed up as she did, giving her space to get back on her feet. She shook herself, trying to dislodge leaves and twigs that had decided to make their home in her tricolor fur.

He crept up to her. Face-to-face, it was easy for Niki to see just how small the boy was. Even though she wasn’t full-grown herself, he still didn’t even reach her chin—except for his ears.

Straining his neck, he reached up and gave her cheek a small lick before scrambling back a few steps. She jumped, wondering why he’d done that, until she saw a leaf fluttering to the ground. Unable to give a smile, she offered him a grateful nod.

It was then that he seemed to notice she wasn't reacting quite like a cat should. He tilted his head, squinting as though trying to figure her out.

Niki meowed, doing her best to make it sound like a “hello.”

The sound of it startled the boy into a shift, and suddenly there was a nine-year-old staring at her with sky-blue eyes, large ears pressed to his head.

“H-hello…?”

She blinked at him slowly, trying to convey a sense of safety as best as she could. Feeling for her magic, she took hold of it, pulling it over her as slowly as she could to keep from startling him again. She moved into a comfortable sitting position as she shifted.

“Hi,” Niki replied to the boy sitting across from her on the forest floor.

“You’re—! It’s— it’s you! The sausage roll lady!” he exclaimed, pointing at her.

A giggle escaped through the warm smile on her face. “Yep, that’s me.”

“And you’re—” he hesitated. The like me went unspoken, but not unheard.

She flicked her tail, wrapping it around her crossed legs. “Yeah.”

“Why did you…”

“—hide it?” she finished for him, having expected him to ask.

“No. Why did you… help me?”

The question was an arrow through her heart, going straight through and leaving a hole where it passed. She knew the world wasn’t kind, but gods did it hurt to have it confirmed so blatantly.

She mulled over her response for a moment. Why did she help him? She hadn’t really been sure herself, but she found herself replying, “Because you deserve the help I never got.”

The boy squinted at her, considering her answer. Finally he simply responded, “You’re weird.”

Niki laughed, tilting forward a little with the force of it.

“What?!” he sputtered. “You are! What’s so funny, huh?!”

“Nothing, nothing,” she replied, wiping a tear from her eye. “You’re just— really something, kiddo.”

“‘m not a kid,” he grumbled into crossed arms.

“Oh, of course. Such a big man, my apologies.”

“Yeah!” The kid lit up, tail wagging. “A big man! The biggest, even!” He puffed out his chest proudly, and she had to fight down another giggle.

“So what’s the biggest man’s name, hm?” The girl scooted a bit closer as she asked, reaching out to poke him in the chest.

“Tommy!” came his bright reply.

“It’s nice to properly meet you then, Tommy,” she replied with a fond smile. “My name is Niki.”

“Hmmm,” he seemed to consider, squinting at her. “I guess it’s a little better than sausage roll lady. Just a bit.”

Another laugh burst out of her. “You’re quite the comedian, huh?”

Tommy beamed.

The sun shone down upon them as the two talked, getting to know each other while the sky slowly shifted from vibrant blue to muted purples and fiery oranges.

As they made their way back to her secluded alley, Niki couldn't be mad that he wasn’t as subtle as she was used to being. The kid bounced around, taking in everything as she led him through parts of the city he hadn’t ventured into. By the time they arrived he was stumbling, blinking slowly as she tried to expand her meager pile of blankets and make it more comfortable.

She’d have to save up to get him warmer clothes and proper shoes, try to get more blankets, not to mention it was another mouth to feed—but as a tiny tan fox curled up in her favorite ratty old blanket; as she dipped into her own magic and slipped into her feline form for the second time that day, ignoring the twinge that came with the use she wasn’t accustomed to; as she curled around him, struggling to wrap all the way around the boy with her lanky not-quite-kitten legs, and purred him to sleep—Niki couldn’t feel anything but love for this little kid who had stumbled into her life and turned everything on its head.