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“I think it's Katsuki.”
“What, the wolf? Did you hit your head or something?”
“Todoroki, I know what I felt out there,” I say insistently. I had just told him the story, and I'm not sure if he doesn't support my interpretation of events or if he doesn't believe my tale at all.
He swirls his tea in his cup. “What exactly happened?”
“I just told you...”
He looks out the window majestically, as if he has something deep and insightful to say. “I wasn't listening.”
I sigh. What even goes on inside that thick skull of his?
“I was telling you about how I was surrounded by a group of wolves, but that one dove into the pack and fended them away from me... that the one who protected me is the only reason I'm here able to tell you this story! You didn't hear any of that? It was kind of... important.”
I look down at the leaves in the bottom of my cup, trying not to let it all overwhelm me. "I could feel Katsuki there..."
His expression is pained. “Midoriya... I'm glad you're safe, and it's quite a story. But I'm worried about how you let yourself into such a situation in the first place.”
“Todoroki...”
"And..." He looks back to me and his shoulders slump. “...It's just a wolf, Midoriya. You've done a great job of moving on since he left. I would hate to see you have trouble again over something silly like this.”
My feelings rise into my throat, threatening to close it off. “Don't call my feelings silly! I'm telling you that there's something going on here!”
Todoroki shot to his feet, knocking over the stool behind him. “You think this is a funny joke to play on yourself, Midoriya? I told him I would protect you! But you nearly get killed and all you want to do is reopen old wounds...” He snatches his hat and coat from the pegs by the door without bothering to put them on. “Let me cool off. I'll be back later.”
I sit on the edge of my bed and stare at the two tea cups on the table, not certain whether tears will come. After a few hollow moments, they do.
Todoroki is my closest neighbor, although he lives across the valley, maybe an hour's trek away. I am glad to have him nearby, and to have him visit whenever he has a chance. We rarely exchange words like this but, well, never has anything like this happened to me.
And I mean, it's not like you were without your fair share of barks, snarls, and growls when you were in a bad mood, Katsuki. Okay, more than your fair share. And only you could go from a good mood to a foul one and back again in the span of one heartbeat. In a moment of weakness you once told me that had scared off most people in your life, that you couldn't fathom why I found it endearing.
I didn't know either, to be honest. I loved you but you always were an enigma to me. You were a social animal but loved being on your own all day, a wanderer at heart but settled down when things seemed right to you, fierce or tender with equal prowess. You'd be suited to life as a wolf, I think.
I told Todoroki, but there's only so much I got to say. He didn't get the full story. He couldn't know for sure. He didn't see how that wolf never once bared its teeth at me, barely even touched me, unlike all the others. He didn't see its big red eyes. They looked just like yours, Katsuki.
Eventually the tears stopped and I was able to work at a few chores while my thoughts ran wild. Wolves aren't uncommon in this area, and the woodlands just a stone's throw from my cabin are their hunting ground just as much as they are mine. They aren't typically creatures that pick a fight with humans, dangerous as we often are, but they do roam those woods. I often hear their howls as I lay in bed. They sound as cold and black as the night.
When I think back on the days and weeks before today, I remember I had often heard a distinctive howl in the distance, different from all the others. It doesn't change each time it rings out so clear, or even from one night to the next. It's different from all the others. I thought once in passing that it sounded like something I recognized, but I never gave it much thought.
But after seeing that wolf in the forest, after the exchange with Todoroki, after the dishes and laundry and feeding the chickens in the evening, I slipped outside one last time to grab a few pieces of firewood. I realized then, Katsuki, that the howl I was hearing is a song you used to sing while you worked, when you thought no one was listening. I never did catch the lyrics entirely, but the tune is burned into my mind. There was one part that I always liked that went high low, high low.
Your voice is as clear now as it was then. And you sing out in the cold night air to me, high low, high low.
And I don't need to wonder anymore if you've returned.
We met in the winter the first time too. You were a traveler looking for a place to spend the night, and you offered a few coins in exchange for a hot meal and a warm bed. You didn't notice I only had the one bed, and when you woke in the morning to find me curled up on the floor by the cooking fire you actually woke me up just to yell at me about it. “Why would you give up the only bed just for me?” you kept asking me. That I was an idiot to do that for you without saying something. That tonight I would be the one to sleep in the bed and that you would sleep on the floor. I told you that was no way for someone to treat a guest, but you wouldn't listen.
In the end we compromised and slept together. The best relationships always are built on compromise, after all. It's funny, though... I remember you being the one compromised most nights...
After a few days, you told me you were leaving in the morning, but when we woke up the snow was falling hard and fast, and you said you'd stay until it stopped. I prayed it might keep snowing forever.
And that moment, I still remember it so clearly. You threw open the door and marched outside... no coat, no gloves, bare feet... and you just stood there and looked up to the heavens, mouth open, the snow falling on your cheeks like they were a bare mountainside.
“What on earth are you doing?”
“I'm tasting the snow, what does it look like I'm doing?”
I asked you what the snow tasted like. You marched inside and gave me the deepest kiss I'd ever received, and I could taste the snowflakes as they melted between your tongue and mine.
“Like that.”
The snow stopped and you said you'd wait for the weather to clear. The weather cleared and you said you'd wait for the thaw. Spring came and passed and you never once said you planned on settling down, but you did decide to build us a bigger bed, and that was as good as a wedding band to me.
It was big enough that I didn't wake up when you got up, put your boots on, and left to feed the chickens and check the traps each morning for two years. Big enough I didn't feel you go when you walked out the door for the last time. Big enough that I had plenty of space to sit and wait and cry for days, hoping the latch would undo itself and you would reappear.
You didn't. And then it felt too big, Katsuki.
It's been two weeks now since you found me again, and I am out under the slight morning sun tracking a hare who is leaving prints all too easy to follow. I haven't seen you around since that day – then again, Todoroki never taught me how to track a wolf. You're the sort of thing most people run from, not towards. Always have been, I think... but maybe my instincts aren't quite what they should be.
I look down at the tuft of hair on a thorny bramble, and track the paw prints around a fallen log when suddenly I hear it: two animals scuffling a few dozen paces ahead. I crouch behind the log and pull an arrow from my quiver, slotting it nervously against the string. I tightly control my breathing and peek over the loose bark. I can see the great arch of a wolf's back moving, its neck and shoulders straining as it digs into its kill.
My instincts... they really aren't in the right place. Because instead of backing slowly away from the scene, my feet are moving forward. It might not be you. I might be in danger. But that's not what's on my mind as my deerskin boots move across the pine needles and damp earth. Just in case, I draw the string and hold it tense as I creep ahead, the motion of your muscles continuing even as I approach.
You look up, and I see your eyes. Clear, deep, bright red. Mine grow wider and swell with tears as I lower my bow. I can hear my own voice shake as I force out the words I've been wanting to ask for a long time now.
"Is... is it you?"
Your brow relaxes and your shoulders droop slightly, but you are silent. I kick myself internally for thinking we could have a conversation, just like the old days. You can't talk anymore, at least not in this language.
I walk forward, carefully, and drop to one knee just in front of the hare I had been tracking. You push what's left of it towards me with a bent paw, and I exhale faintly at the gesture. My face softens a little, as does yours, and the breaths I had been forcing out begin to catch in my throat.
"Do you remember?"
You give a little snort and look down at the ground beside you, ears back.
Sometimes when you were still here I would see you get in these moods, love. And even after all our time, I never did learn how to deal with you best. Even when you were suffering, all I ever thought about was what I wanted. You needed time with your friend, or time alone in the woods, but I would get greedy and try to give you affection when you bristled and wanted nothing of the sort.
"Please, I just–" is what escapes my mouth, but I trail off as my fingertips touch your fur and you spring back, startled. I fall backwards as you snarl at me, back arched higher than before, head lowered and filled with anger. Your brow tightens around those ruby eyes... they look darker now.
I still haven't learned anything.
With one last bark you turn and scamper off. It's happening again, I think to myself. I can't lose you again. I don't want you to go where I can't follow. And so I call out to you, in a voice that strains my entire body.
"Katsuki!"
You pause and look back over your shoulder, as if it's a word you once heard long ago but have forgotten what it meant. And you trot ahead, back among the rock and pine.
A thin wisp of smoke rose straight up from the cabin in the still, cold air when I returned, somber, with what was left of the hare. The meat was delicious, and the stock made for a lovely stew, along with a few of the carrots I had on hand. I wish you had been here to make some of that bread you always baked for us on these winter nights, Katsuki. Sometimes I'd come back to hear your voice singing so sweetly as you kneaded the dough that I'd wonder if you were the same person as before.
It was a joy to hear your song again. But I haven't heard it for a long time now, not since that day you ran off. Are you still out there?
The last time you saw me, I didn't know how to hunt properly at all. This was, of course, despite you trying to teach me – you were a brilliant hunter but a lousy teacher. Your senses are naturally even keener now, no doubt... maybe you see me when I don't even notice you there. But I've been honing mine ever since you left. I already knew how to slot an arrow and draw a bow, but I couldn't hit much. Your old pal Todoroki took me under his wing, taught me how to aim true, how to track paw- and hoof-prints in the mud and snow and to find tufts of hair on branches and brambles.
We commiserated too. He was probably the only person who missed you anywhere near as much as I did – though he would never confess as much. He's like you, he takes his feelings and buries them somewhere inside, pretends he never had them in the first place.
Grief is a strange creature, though. You can't track it, can't hunt it. Its presence is only ever revealed by the gnawing at the back of your mind that the world will never be quite as right as it used to be.
People do strange things to silence that feeling, even for fleeting moments. And that was how we... bonded, Todoroki and I. It was never a romantic thing, Katsuki. I wasn't capable of getting over you that fast. Then as now, your deft fingers have too much of a grip on my heart. He and I, though... we shared a feeling that we needed each other in a world that couldn't ever be like it once was. And so he trained me to hunt properly, and I would repay him in friction and saliva.
Maybe "repay" isn't the right word. He never asked for anything in return, physical or otherwise. It simply felt like the right way for things to be, after you had been gone for months upon months. That big bed just felt too empty, Katsuki.
I'm sorry.
I am lying awake on a long winter's night, looking wistfully at the light of the almost-full moon streaming through the window on what must be the first clear night we've had in weeks. I stoked the fire before curling up beneath this thick wool blanket, but it still feels cold. You were so warm here next to me last year, but now... now it always feels cold here.
But it's not the cold that makes me freeze in place under the covers, or that halts my breath in fear. There's scratching at the door.
I slowly pull off the covers and wrap up in my robe, treading gingerly to the door. And, with one deep but silent breath in, and then out, I undo the latch and crack open the door, the rusty hinges creaking loudly in the still night air.
The scratching stops, and I look out to see no one there, but I then gaze downward, and your eyes meet mine again. They're so close now, so much less full of force and fury than when I last saw you. They are so deep and red... but they aren't all that's red on you.
I see your shoulder, your left, the one with the arrow in it. And I see the blood all over you leg, which should be gray but isn't, down to your paw that isn't white anymore.
"Katsuki!"
I let the door swing open and dash back inside, fetching some water and rummaging for bandages and old cloth. "You're gonna be alright, okay?" I say absentmindedly to myself, tearing through my supply cabinet with unthinking abandon. I nearly break my toe on the edge of the door as I charge back outside, water sloshing in the pitcher as I go, but to reach you even one second sooner, it's worth it...
I spend a long time dabbing at the wound and gently running some water across it before I realize fully what is happening. You are so warm and docile in my hands, despite your pain and whimpering. This is the closest we've been since you've been in this form, by far... I can feel your fur beneath my hands, and where it hasn't been matted with blood or moistened by the water, it is soft and gentle on my skin. It's not how I wanted to first feel your touch again, by any means, but my heart is happy you came to me.
After enough cleaning, we finally come to the pivotal moment. "I'm going to take the arrow out now," I whisper to you, and your eyes rise to meet mine with a whimper. I still don't know how much you understand, but I know you understand what needs to be done.
It hasn't penetrated too deeply, and I free it without much fuss; I place it in front of you so you can see it's over with, and I can hear you exhale.
The rest of the procedure is fairly simple, and I talk with you softly as I work. "So a human got you, huh?" I ask rhetorically. "You try to stay away from other people, though, right?"
You give a little whimper, so soft I almost miss it. Were you going after them, I wonder, or were they coming after you?
I finish the last few wrappings. As my tunnel vision dissipates I notice again the forest, lit by moonlight so intense it looks like midday. I can make out every tree, every pine needle, and see every star overhead.
And yet, I don't want to look too long at those. I feel now as if every moment spent not looking at you is one wasted. That perhaps, just as before... I might not have as long with you as I would want.
But I bury the feeling.
After finishing the dressing, I slump back against the wall of the cabin, exhausted. "Do you feel better now, Kacchan?" I ask, by accident using that old nickname you never much liked. If you still dislike it, though, you have a strange way of showing it. Because no sooner does the name leave my lips than I find you climbing into my lap, your head coming to rest upon my thigh. I slowly place my hand upon your head, between your ears, and stroke your fur slowly.
"I'll protect you, Kacchan," I find myself saying. "However I can."
Your eyes close, and so do mine, but it doesn't stop the tears from running down my cheeks. I don't know how I could ever follow through on that promise, but I have to say it, even if that's all I can do.
You fall asleep in my lap, and I manage to do the same, cold and uncomfortable though I am, until I wake alone before the dawn to the sound of the chickens greeting the day.
You and the stew had both been gone for a few days when Todoroki reappeared at my door with some sweet buns and an apology. It's the longest he's been away for some time, and it's good to see his face again, contrite as it is.
"I was wrong to get all worked up, Midoriya. Please accept this," he says, offering the small sack to me.
"That's not necessary, I was the one who pressed you and lost my cool."
"Dammit, just take the buns." He sighs and I snatch the bag from him as he hangs his coat by the door.
Sitting down at the table, I unwrap one and take a bite. It's sweeter than it looked. They're just like him, I think, losing myself momentarily in the taste. I savor another bite before I snap back to reality to find Todoroki, head resting on his arm, smiling softly at me from across the table.
"W-why are you looking at me like that?" I ask with my mouth full.
"I just wanted to see you smile again."
I give him the warm, genuine smile he wants, and he returns it, and for a long moment we share a pleasant silence as I finished my sweet bun. Eventually it began to grow heavier, until he asks about what we probably both had on our minds the whole time.
"Have you seen it – him – since we last spoke?"
It's only logical he would ask eventually; I knew this. And yet I never did think of how to summarize everything that had happened for him. It was all too strange, too deep, too visceral. And so I started at the beginning... I told him about the hare incident, Katsuki, and me calling after you as you ran back into the woods. And I told him about your visit that night, with the wound in your shoulder, and how calm you were in my hands.
"He's got quite the split personality, doesn't he?" is Todoroki's only reply.
"He?" I ask, surprised.
"You're asking me if I believe it's him now?"
I nod.
He gives a wry half-frown. "I don't know what to think. But I would hate to miss out on seeing him just from hardheadedness."
A small chuckle escapes my lips, unintentionally endorsing Todoroki's self-description. "I think he'll come see you too, very soon."
Todoroki frowns and reaches for his pack. "Sadly, I didn't come only to give you buns, Midoriya." He rummages through the front pouch and pulls out a piece of wrinkled paper. "As you've probably figured out, you aren't the only one who's noticed Katsuki," he said, handing it to me.
On the page is sketched a poor drawing of a wolf, but with unmistakable red eyes. And below the picture, I see the word "REWARD" printed with a price. Below Katsuki's head.
My fingers curl into the paper, gripping it so hard it began to rip. "The arrow... so this is why..."
Todoroki gently tugs at the paper, and I come back to reality and release my hold on it.
"A farmer in the next valley was handing them out. I saw it near the trail on my way into town and took down all the ones I could... but he's gotta have more than just those."
I feel a chill in the air suddenly, though the fire is still going strong. "Maybe I can keep him here, where he's safe..."
"He's still a wolf, Midoriya," he says with a pained sigh. "He's out there and not here because he's a creature who needs to be wild and free." And then, lost in thought, he adds, "Always has been..."
In my heart, I know he's right, but it's a bitter pill to swallow. "I'll protect you," I had said. But I feel powerless to help a creature like you.
A week or so later, it is the shortest day of the year, and I am tracking a particularly troublesome boar through some particularly troublesome underbrush. Whenever I nearly have a shot lined up, I get tangled up in thickets and stumble on the hard, frozen earth, and it hears me and scrambles off, squealing as it goes. And I have to clamber out and find it all over again.
After four or five times with this happening, I check my footing and line up a shot, my arm tensed and held steady as rock in the cold, heavy air. I take no breaths, think no excess thoughts, I drown out all distractions.
And that, I guess, is what leads me to not hear you approach, running at full speed, and close on the boar before it can take two steps.
"KATSUKI, HE WAS MINE!" I yell, half-upset and half-amused. You turn and snarl, but I don't feel any bite behind it.
You're playing with me.
Just two days later, my dear Katsuki, I finally found my chance to pay you back. It's evening, and I have just happened upon a great stag out in the foothills, standing at attention below me. Somehow, I also happened upon you – I can see your red eyes lurking behind the trees as you prowl behind the proud buck. I quickly test the air, and it's just as I'd hoped – you're upwind. Those great senses of yours aren't going to help you here, my love.
And so it's with great satisfaction that I deftly fit the arrow, pull it steadily back, and let it fly. The stag rears back and then sprints forward, falling after a few paces. But it's not the end of the noisy scene, for I am watching you instantly begin barking and sprint confused out into the clearing where the deer once stood. I begin to laugh, and you spot me almost instantaneously, growl, then charge up the side of my small hill. But I've learned not to fear you now. I laugh at you, with you, as you snarl and nearly knock me over before sauntering off, defeated. I feel like I can see a smile on your face, somehow... can you even smile?
We seem to have gotten involved in some kind of game, you and I – a contest to see who can steal each other's kills most often. I'm fairly certain I'll lose to your natural abilities, but I want to test myself against you, to see if I can prove the equal of you, who I always admired and held in esteem above all others.
But fate, too, is a beast stranger than man or wolf.
Todoroki is waiting on my doorstep again, a few days after the new year. I had been out gathering some plants and mushrooms, and I made some joke as I greeted him... about what, I don't remember. But I remembered the look on his face as he laughed and looked to the forest. More precisely, I remembered how it changed in an instant, his laughter dying in his throat... I've never seen his face like that before.
“Oh fuck...”
I turn to see what he's seen. It's you again, Katsuki. But this time there isn't just one arrow, my love. This time there are... many.
There are too many.
My stomach sinks so low I wonder if I'll keep it inside me. My brain spins in my head and I whirl inside, feet moving without thinking.
The feelings that run through my head are, over the span of two or three seconds, the same range of emotions that I felt over the course of months and months without you, Katsuki. But I don't realize any of that in the moment. All I can think are the same three words.
It's happening again.
“Oh Katsuki, we have to – it's okay, you're going to be okay!” I say out loud, tears streaming down my cheeks as I rummage for more bandages, not sure who I'm talking to anymore.
Todoroki charges through the door behind me shouting “Midoriya!”
I turn to look at him, blurry through the tears. His face looks softer, more plaintive than I've ever seen it.
“He's not here for you to fix him!” he shouts.
It's happening again, Todoroki. It's happening again.
“Then what is he here for, since you know so much?!”
Todoroki's eyes are welled up with tears almost as badly as mine are. His features quiver as he sniffles and looks away, fingers pinched against the bridge of his nose. “He wants to spend the end with you this time.”
It's happening again.
His hand on my shoulder is pushing me gently towards the threshold. “Go.”
But... this time...
I step outside and look over at you, head upon the frozen ground, a pool of red at your side. You lift your sad red eyes to meet mine and I run to you, lifting your head gently and setting it on my lap. I run my fingers through your fur and your whimpering subsides a little. My sobbing is outdoing yours this time.
I hold you for what feels like a very long time, wordless. The silence between us can't last, though, not after so long with so little said. In the past I would keep silent, fearing words might do more harm than good. But now, with everything turned upside down so many times over, I find I'm no longer afraid of them.
And so, with a choked up voice and too many tears, I tell you about how happy I am to have spent time with you again, that I'm grateful to you for coming back. That my life's arc is forever changed because of you, and my heart yours. That your friend is looking out for me and that you needn't be worried for me. And I keep speaking for a long time, telling you all my favorite memories of you. Telling you about what happened to all your favorite chickens. And that yes, I heard that song you used to sing.
As I hold you, I feel small spots of moisture grow on my skin, smaller even than falling tears. I look up at the grey sky and see floating down upon the barren earth a silent torrent of white powder.
“It's snowing, Katsuki."
For the first time in several minutes, your eyes open and gaze up, pale red, at me, and I can feel you stir. Your mouth opens and you slowly stick out your tongue. And as the snowflakes begin to fall upon it, I realize that was the one story I had left out.
"Of course I remember that," I whisper. Without any hesitation, I lean down as low as I can to taste them one more time.
The snow continues to fall on you, resting gently upon your face like it was a pine-covered hillside. But you're colder than before, and your gentle breaths on my arm have ceased, and even your whimpers are gone.
Katsuki, I still don't know where you ran off to that winter morning long ago. I don't know why your boots aren't still by my door, or why the air still hangs heavy with the absence of your voice. And I certainly don't know what forces conspired to bring you back to me like this, only to steal you away again. But in the night, when I have only moonlight for company, I can hear your friends out in the wilderness. They call out the song you taught them, high low, high low. And I know, despite everything, that your presence still lingers here somehow, just out of sight.