Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

"One snapper, one box, eight painters, an eastern ribbon snake, and a skink's tail..." Chuckling to herself for the last bit, Jenn pulled off a rubber glove to jot down the numbers on the miniature clipboard which she pulled out of a cargo pocket. She was out late, pawing through a muddy pond in the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge for her professor's research project. She was one of six students Davis trusted to handle themselves in the woods at night, and one of two trusted to handle themselves alone. Recapping her pen, she glanced at her watch and groaned. '2:00am already?' Stuffing pen, clipboard, and gloves back into her pocket and shaking her head, she turned about to head toward the road.

She hadn't made it ten feet before pulling up short. Instinct set her nerves to jangling and her eyes narrowed as the hair on her arms and at the nape of her neck stood on end. Inhaling, she grimaced at the sharp and suddenly very pervasive smell of ozone that had not been there a moment before. Turning in a slow circle, she searched the marshlands around her, wary of anything out of place, but she saw nothing out of the ordinary. Shaking her head and berating herself for being so jumpy, she turned towards the road once more. That's when she heard it.

A strange electric noise like the crackling song of some mythical thunderbird filled the air around her and her bones seemed to vibrate in time to something. A localized shift in the electromagnetic field, perhaps? Which might or might not explain the ozone, she wasn't sure. She didn't know what was happening. It seemed like physics-y stuff. She was just a post-grad biology student. Not her department. What she did know was that it was weird. Torn between the desire to see what was going on and the instinct to run, she settled on 'jump behind a tree and cower for a moment' as a narrow cyclone crackling with blue energy began to form. 

'Goddamnshitfuckwhatthehell?!'

She stayed where she was, hiding wide-eyed behind the tree, flimsy defense though it made, until the light and the noise had ceased and the worst of the ozone had dissipated. Looking down at her watch, she saw that no more than three minutes had passed. Shaking slightly, she turned over onto her hands and knees and moved to peek around the trunk of the tree. At first she didn't see anything amiss, the watery surface of the pond she'd been working in hiding any ground disturbance. She could smell it, though, the burning flesh of the turtles she'd been counting moments before. Still spooked and looking a bit green around the gills, she moved slowly, carefully, and especially quietly, back toward the pond.

Steeling herself for the boiled turtles she knew she would find (the lightning tornado thing had touched down in the middle of the pond), Jenn still managed to be quite surprised when something much larger than a turtle began to move out in the water, like some grotesque swamp creature. Loosing a rather high-pitched scream that she would have found extremely degrading any other day, she stumbled and fell onto her backside and began scrambling to get away. Then it started making noises. Low, growling moans issued from it, and it took her several long seconds to realize that some of them were words

Freezing in place, her expression shifted from mind-numbing terror to a mix of mild terror and guarded confusion as she listened to what she now recognised was a muddied and undoubtedly injured person. A man, a very tall man from the looks of him, speaking in a language she didn't quite understand but which reminded her of listening to her friend Gunnar speaking in Icelandic with his mother during their weekly phone calls. Gunnar had tried to teach her some, but she'd never grasped more than "Hello," "Good morning," and "Where's the bathroom?" and eventually he had given it up for a lost cause.

Ignoring the state of her clothing, she approached the muddy form crouching in the knee-deep black water, fists raised in a defensive stance as she sidled a little closer,  stopping about five feet away. 'Out of reach,' she thought to herself quite guardedly. "I- I'm sorry, but I only speak English," she said a bit nervously as she stared, wide-eyed. She still thought that running for her truck might be her best plan.

There was an irritated growl and then, "Of course. How foolish of me." his voice would have been scathingly sarcastic if it were not strained from apparent pain. He had a strange accent, not quite British but something like it.

Ignoring how his words had been intended to cut, she swallowed past the lump in her throat and tried again in a slightly bolder voice. "Are-ah... Are you hurt?" she asked, still unable to make him out clearly as he struggled to get to his feet. She watched as he faltered and suddenly that thing in her chest that had made her known as Mama Bear to her friends began to stir. Biting her lip and figuring that if he had an axe in his pocket he would have whipped it out and swung it at her already, she made up her mind. Moving carefully so that they wouldn't both land on their behinds, she pulled what looked to be his less-painfully-injured arm around her neck and looped one of her own around his waist and, ignoring his somewhat pissy protests, she helped haul him to his feet.

And damn was he heavier than he looked. He leaned heavily against her, his free hand glued tightly to his side as she lead him toward the road. Looking around as though trying to find his bearings, he struggled for several moments to look confident through his confusion. Eventually, though, he caved. Clearing his throat imperiously, he asked what was on his mind. "Where is this place, girl?" he demanded, and while the pain was still there the sarcasm had been replaced by the most arrogant, self-certain tone she'd ever heard.

With a snort, she replied in a sniveling, mocking approximation of a British accent. "The Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge, M'Lord." Hiking his arm further around her shoulders to get a better grip, she tried to ignore the sharp intake of breath as he clutched harder at his side but ended up apologizing. "Sorry, you're heavier than you look and I had to skip the gym yesterday."

"'Gym'? What is a 'gym'?"

"Gym, short for gymnasium?"

"Ah, a place for exercise. Of Olympian origin, yes?"

"Uh, we call them the Greek, actually. But sure, whatever you say, pal," she grunted as she craned her neck to try and see better where she was going. "We're almost there. Truck's just around this bend, and you sir are going in the bed. I just had the upholstery cleaned."

"Your attire is in no better state than mine..." His response was posh and somewhat indignant, and apparently his ego bruised easily because he tried to pull away and almost ended up on his stubborn face.

It took her a moment get them both settled and moving again, but once they were and they turned the corner, there was her truck. Big and bad and the brightest yellow you've ever seen, it was the mother of all pick-ups with big tires and chrome all over. But she wasn't just a pretty face. Underneath that hood painted with liquid sunshine was the biggest and baddest engine her money could buy. It had taken her eight years of hoarding nearly every penny she'd earned until she'd saved up enough for one just six months ago, and it was the love of her life.

And now she was helping this guy who had come out of some sort of bizzaro portal, and who was covered from head to toe in mud and blood and pondwater, to scramble up into the truck bed that was already mostly full of buckets and boxes and gear. Once he was seated she grabbed two of the several towels she kept in the back, handed one to him and used the other to dry the pondwater and sweat from her hair. She had to reek to high heaven by that point.

He watched for a moment before following suit, tousling  his long dark hair with one hand and eyeing her warily when she leaned past him to retrieve what appeared to be some sort of sack. He started to follow when she moved to walk around to the other end of the 'truck' but she barked at him to stay put, and he did so somewhat huffily. She was trying to assist him as far as he could tell, so it was probably best that he not do anything to anger her.  In his condition, he could hardly afford to take offense. Of course, when she came back around in new, dry clothing he understood why he'd been forbidden to follow.

"Sorry, but I haven't got anything in your size, Tallman," she shrugged as she tossed the bag over his shoulder into the back of the 'bed'. It did not seem like a very comfortable place to sleep to him. "There's a blanket there behind you that you can sit on, or lie on, or whatever. You're practically skin and bones, so I can't imagine the drive would be very comfortable without it." She gestured toward a faded cotton quilt, clean and neatly folded beside her yellow tackle box and smiled when he nodded and followed the advice. She closed the tailgate behind him.

"Thank you," he ground out as she began to walk around the vehicle, and judging from the somewhat sheepish scowl the words tasted a bit sour to him.