Chapter Text
Wild hadn't realized he'd passed out, but—but time must have…skipped or… he…
He lost that train of thought, blinking, face pressed into the snow. Was it sunset? He wondered dazedly. The snow around him was red like it was reflecting the setting sun. Except. The sky. It was low, flat, grey cloud like iron. And his breath took too much effort, and his side felt warm.
Oh, he thought muzzily. That's…me.
He was half on his side, half sprawled on his stomach. Snow crusted against his cheek, his lashes, the bare skin of his fingers. It wasn't nice, powdery snow. The wind howled around him, cutting like knives, and the snow had a hard, scraping crust over it that hurt his fingers.
He tried to curl them, and they scraped uselessly against the ice.
Move, he told himself.
Nothing happened.
The wind roared over him, indifferent. His heartbeat thumped somewhere inside his ribs, stubborn even as the air froze inside his lungs. Every breath caught and tore a little; every exhale melted a little hollow in the snow by his mouth. It was a little pink, too.
He was going to die here.
The thought slid in without permission.
Wild stared at the patch of snow in front of his eyes. He dug his fingers into the crust until it broke, gave him a handhold, and he dragged.
His arm hauled his body forward a few inches. Pain ripped through his side, tearing and sharp and somehow far away all at once. His vision greyed out, his stomach turned, his right hip was a nauseating throb.
His elbow buckled, and the world spun, sky trading place with earth over and over again. He waited for them to settle back into place.
He remembered the escape in chopped, jagged flashes. Dark shapes in the trees. A rush of steel and magic. The crack of something striking his side as he ran. The scramble, the feeling of steel, the fall, headfirst into white.
Now there was just wind and ice and blood.
He lay there, listening to the rush in his ears, to the way his own breathing sounded too loud and too thin, like it belonged to someone else. The snow and wind hurt in a way he'd never felt before, but the tips of his fingers were going numb, and that seemed worse. Move, he thought to himself, and dragged again.
It was clumsy and slow and miserable. His body felt wrong, like someone had taken his bones out then shoved them back in, misaligned. His hip shrieked every time he shifted. His side pulsed hot. His feet kicked uselessly.
He inched forward.
Anywhere but the shallow body-shaped hollow he'd already carved into the snow. That felt too much like a grave.
Over and over. He clawed his fingers in, dug his heels, pushed. He wouldn't stop, he wouldn't, he—
His arms buckled. His face hit the snow. This time he stayed there a moment, feeling the crust bite into his cheek, the numb, metallic taste blood on his tongue.
He looked back. There was a splotchy trail of blood on the snow, small and messy and pointless. He'd traveled maybe ten meters at best.
The sight knocked the air out of him.
That was it. All that pain, all the awful grinding in his hip, ever clawed inch— and it had bought him a strip of ground so short he could have walked it in a handful of steps on any other day. Something inside him just…crumpled in on itself.
He was going to die out here.
His next breath shuddered in and didn't feel like it went anywhere. His chest hurt. His eyes burned. He was suddenly, deeply tired in a way that had nothing to do with muscle and everything to do with the heavy, sinking feeling settling under his ribs.
Maybe this was far enough. There was a better chance of someone finding him if he just stayed still, right?
The snow cut into his cheek. He couldn't even feel his fingertips anymore. He was colder than he'd ever been in his life. He blinked, slow and sticky. Everything was white, except the edges of his vision, which were black, and the snow he'd bled on, which was red. If he closed his eyes, he could almost pretend he was back in the packhouse, curled up in his nest with Twilight breathing somewhere nearby.
His eyes started to fall shut.
A sharp sound cut across the storm.
A… a bark.
Wild's eyes snapped open, and his head jerked up faster than he could handle. His stomach rolled, and for a moment he had to squeeze his eyes shut as the sky and the ground tried to trade places again. He swallowed thickly.
Something moved downslope.
At first it was just a blurry smudge against the white, a darker streak in the snow. Wild squinted, his lashes heavy with ice. The shape wavered as the wind gusted, and Wild wondered if he was imagining it, and then the wolf stepped through a bluster of snow and came into focus.
Big in the shoulders, narrow at the waist, snow settling on his fur and not melting. Those familiar markings on his forehead. He sat, wrapping his tail around his paws. Blue eyes met his.
“Wolfie,” he croaked.
The word felt like it was tearing his throat apart. He coughed, but that just set his side on fire once again. The wolf watched him, ears tipped forward.
Wild smiled. Of course Twilight had found him. Of course. Twilight…Twilight always…
The though slipped away, vague and fuzzy. It didn't matter. Twilight was here.
He tried to push himself up again. His hands skittered uselessly on the crust of the snow, arms shaking. His hip screamed protest sharp enough that black ate into the edges of his vision.
“Hang on,” he whispered. “'M— hang on, I'm—”
Wolfie stood, easy as anything, not even breaking through the crust of the snow. He took a few steps down the slope, toward the shallow dip and the line of trees. Then he paused, glancing back over his shoulder expectantly.
Wild grit his teeth, dug his fingers into the snow, and dragged himself along.
Wolfie never came any closer; he always stayed a few steps ahead, glancing back, urging Wild on. It stopped being a decision after the first few pulls. He just moved, his thoughts unraveling before he could finish them. At some point he stopped shivering; his teeth no longer chattered, he didn't shake and curl in to try to protect his core. His hands didn't hurt anymore. They didn't feel like anything at all.
Fingers in. Break the crust. Pull. Hip screaming. Side burning. Knees dragging uselessly. Again.
Time went…strange.
Sometimes a heartbeat dragged on forever, a grey smear of hurt from one moment to the next that continued forever in his brain. Sometimes he blinked, and when he looked back, he couldn't even see where he'd started.
Wolfie always padded ahead. Wild could never quite reach him. When the wind blew especially hard, the snow would swirl and swallow the wolf, and even the panic that fluttered in Wild's chest was slowed by the cold and slipped away as easily as warmth.
“Wait for me,” Wild mumbled. “I'm…'m….”
He tried to pull his knee higher, to help him push off, cover more ground. Something in his hip shifted in a way that made white burst across his vision, and it was all he could do to turn his head to the side as he gagged, then vomited bile into the snow.
For a long moment he just lay there. He felt like he couldn't catch his breath. His stomach clenched again, but he was too tired to even entertain it. Spit froze at the corner of his mouth. The world narrowed to the pounding in his hip, the hot pain in his side, the too-fast beat of his heat in his ears. The thought of moving again didn't even sound possible.
Just a break, he told himself. He'd earned that, hadn't he? Twilight would understand.
The snow didn't even melt under his cheek. The wind rushed over him. He couldn't even see Wolfie, anymore. Maybe he'd kept going.
He let his eyes close.
A bark cracked through the storm. Wild flinched, dragging his eyes open. Wolfie stood there, only a few body-lengths away now. He hadn't heard him come back. One moment there had been nothing but white; now there was dark fur, blue eyes, and—another bark, sharp and insistent.
Wild stared at him, dazed. “Jus'—” his tongue felt thick, his lips numb. He could hardly understand himself. “Jus' a minu…”
Wolfie barked again, louder.
It echoed strangely in Wild's head, like someone shouting down a long tunnel.
“I know,” he whispered. “Just…need…a second. 'M tired.”
Wolfie growled.
Wild hugged. “You're…y'such a nag,” Wild slurred. “'M literally...dying.”
But Twilight didn't let anyone even skip stretching, after a mission. Of course he wouldn't let Wild lie down and freeze. “Kay,” Wild mumbled. “'M moving.”
He clawed his way after the wolf, inch by inch, the cold and the pain and the heavy fog in his head closing in tighter with every drag. The field wasn't quite flat anymore; it sloped more, just enough that Wild's body wanted to slide a little as he dragged himself along. The ground changed under him, a little at a time.
His fingers smacked something that wasn't snow or rock.
He blinked down at it, dazed. Rough wood jutted up from the drift, grey and splintered. A fence post, half-swallowed. Another waited a short distance away, leaning under the weight of snow.
Wild squinted at it, slow. The thought that should follow—fence, field, someone lives out here—never quite finished forming. It brushed past and slipped away like everything else. Wild let his forehead sag forward until it bumped the wood.
With an effort that made his vision fuzz grey, he lifted his head and glanced past the leaning posts. The land dipped away into a shallow basin on the other side, then rose again. At the far edge, the snow changed. Flatter. Dirtier. With two brown ruts running through it.
A road. That was what that meant. A road.
Wolfie stood just ahead. He wasn't barking, just watching Wild steadily. Like he would stand with Wild no matter what he chose. Wild stared back at him, chest stuttering.
“Okay,” he managed. The word came out as a breath. “Okay. Just…just a little further.”
His fingers weren't his anymore, but they broke the snow all the same and dragged him along.
Every pull did something bad in his hip, a deep, grinding twist that made his vision blow out to grey for a moment. His side burned and eventually, disturbingly, didn't, like the fire there was running out of fuel.
The basin helped and hurt at once. Going down meant he slid more, the snow doing part of the work, which his arms liked. Hitting every buried lump meant his hip took the jarring, which his stomach hated. He realized he'd bitten his own tongue; he tasted blood.
Wolfie drifted in and out ahead of him, never hurrying, never rushing back to tug at him, just…there.
The closer he got, the stranger his own body felt.
His face burned where the wind hit it, but the rest of him had gone distant. His legs were just weight. His hands were things at the end of his sleeves that he didn't want to think about His chest felt stuffed with wool—thick, muffling, blocking his oxygen. He kept wanting to yawn, to pull in more air, and his ribs wouldn't let him.
He thought, dimly, that he might actually be warmer now.
The road bank reared up in front of him. It may as well have been a mountain for as impossible it seemed to climb. Not even that high—maybe to his chest if he were standing—but from down here it blocked the road. Wild stared. No one would be able to see him down here.
“No,” he whispered, surprised by how flat it sounded. “Can't.”
He wasn't being dramatic. It was just a fact.
This was…this was enough, wasn't it? Twilight couldn't be mad at him for stopping now. Anyone on the pack would see how far he'd come and agree—yes, Wild, you did the best you could, you can rest.
Wolfie stood at the top of the bank, silhouetted against the sky.
“Fine,” Wild said. It didn't sound anything like a word, just noise escaping his frozen lips. “Jus'—jus a little—”
He hauled himself up. Jammed his better foot he couldn't feel into the snow to keep himself in place. Clawed with his other arm for another handhold. The world shrank to the snow in front of his nose and the next place to put his hand. His heartbeat thudded slow and heavy, skipping beats and racing. His hand slipped. For a sick heartbeat he slid back, chest scraping down the bank.
“Help me, Wolfie,” Wild cried into the snow. He was barely halfway up. “Please…”
His voice wobbled on the last word, thin and raw. Above him, Wolfie barked. Short, sharp, right over his head. That wasn't far. That wasn't far at all. Wild squeezed his eyes shut, sucked in what little air he could, and dug his fingers in deeper.
He didn't believe in himself. He kept moving anyway.
One drag. Another.
Spots burst across his vision, blooming and fading in time with the next few heartbeats. His ribs scraped over the lip of the bank. The world tipped. There was nothing under him anymore. He slid, rolled once, landed on flat, dirty snow.
He lay very still and tried to breathe.
His chest could only manage little stuttering jolts that never seemed to pull air all the way in. His mouth opened and closed uselessly. For a few long seconds he couldn't get anything past his throat at all. Then, a thin breath, as if through a straw. Then another. Shallow, too fast, whistling a little on the way out. It wasn't enough, but it was something.
Wolfie's paws came into view.
Wild tried to smile. His lips didn't move.
“Made it,” he said. The words didn't make it out of his chest. “'M done.”
No one would miss a body lying in the middle of a road. That was the point of roads. People came. Or didn't. Either way, he was finished.
The world drifted.
Eventually, sound roared in his ears, faint at first, growing louder. He thought it was his pulse. Or water, somehow. It swelled and swelled until he could feel it in the packed snow under his cheek. He was too tired to be afraid.
Wolfie moved. He walked right into the center of the lane and stopped square in the ruts, tail up, head lifted, facing the oncoming sound.
The roar grew. Close now. Fast.
An SUV tore around the bend a breath later, a sudden bulk of metal and motion barreling through the snow-hazed air, headlights dulled by the storm. Its tires chewed the packed surface, throwing up a dirty spray.
Wolfie planted himself and barked.
The SUV's engine howled. Brakes shrieked. The nose of the vehicle dipped, its back end fishtailed sideways across the ruts as the driver hauled on the wheel.
For a second, Wild could see all of it at once: the blur of the car skidding closer, the churn of snow under its wheels, the shape of the wolf in the middle of the road, solid and unyielding.
The SUV slid through him.
The vehicle ground to a halt a few body-lengths away, tires crunching. Doors slammed open. Voices cut across the storm, too loud and too close.
“Shit—!”
“On the road—goddesses—”
“Hey! Hey, kid, can you hear me?”
They hit Wolfie, Wild thought vaguely. But somehow, beyond the cluster of feet and legs, past the glare of the headlights. A dark shape lingered at the edge of his vision—just off to the side, where the road met the bank.
A wolf, watching.
Then hands—warm, real—closed on his shoulders, pressed tight at his side, and the sound in his ears swelled until that was all there was, washing the rest of the world away as he finally, completely, let go.