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“Can I ask a question?”
Looking up at Peter, he shrugged. Not his Peter, not yet, and while this fifteen, sixteen old Peter gave him a sense of déjà vu, it felt left of centre, not quite right. He could see his Peter in this child, and he could see him becoming his Peter, but not if he could help it.
“You can ask, I’m not guaranteeing to answer.”
“How did you end up doing damage control?”
And there it was, the coming at something sideways rather than asking straight out, gathering as much information as possible.
He saw no reason not to answer, though.
“Several people I once knew fell down a wormhole they couldn’t get themselves out of.”
“Not a rabbit hole?” And there was even an attempt at a smirk there.
“No, definitely a wormhole, a rabbit hole may have been much more fun.” His own smirk, added to those words, was more than a little forced, but in a different time and place it would have been there. So it wasn’t that difficult.
“So time travel then?”
He wasn’t totally surprised that someone worked it out, or came as close as it was possible to. Though whether it was Peter himself or that someone else had, and they were playing off his and Peter’s, seeming kind of supposed friendship to get the answer he didn’t know and really didn’t care.
There was no friendship, he was just very good at faking it, he never let himself get close to any of the packs he worked with, and the Hale Pack was no different. Hurt more, yes, but no different.
“Not really.” He could tell, if asked, but it had to be the correct question asked directly, that was part of the agreement. But he rarely did, it was easier to work round it.
“You know something, though, you’re teaching the younger ones too much. You shouldn’t need to teach wolves about predatory behaviour.”
Ahhh… so not Peter having worked something out then.
"Better safe than sorry." And that was a platitude if he’d ever given one and going by Peter’s eye roll, he knew it too. As much as he missed his Peter he was doing all he could, so the kid sat in front of him, would never be cynical enough to come close to working out what was actually going on.
He was going to make sure that this Peter would never become his Peter if he could help it. That was the deal, the one that had cost the life of the one he’d loved.
It may have taken him a few more years than he would have liked to get here, but now that he was. He was going to take a sledgehammer to this fixed point in time and shatter it.