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singillatim2025-04-19 05:08 pm
ployboy) wrote in singillatim2025-04-19 05:08 pm
a fresh start with the Easter morn- (closed)
Who: Kate, Edward, Tim, others
What: an Easter celebration meets the Darkwalker's Revenge
When: on or about Easter, April
Where: Milton Church main chapel, other cabins
Content Warnings: we start with themes of cannibalism; loss of self; predation; stalking; vigilantism; violence; and there will be additional warnings on individual threads
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
Not that Tim could let himself fall asleep this time. The twilight of day is a heavy weight on his limbs and lids, but in him thrums the electric anticipation of all-black night. So for now, rest is as hard to come by as sleep. And it wouldn't do to keep idle. With the Aurora coloring the sky above often, Tim had gleaned one bit of information that would have meant nothing to him before:
The calendars, paper and digital, are in agreement that Easter is upon them.
And Kate's probably going to make a big thing out of it.
He won't be jostled awake this time, at least. But Tim figures: well, he can wish her a-- happy Sunday or whatever. Give her something sweet, and then hightail it out of there. Sure. Why not. He has nothing cute for her, but he's got Jolly Ranchers. It'll have to do.
But Kate's not in her room.
He finds her making her way to the old church already. He finds the Lieutenant by her side. And that's never been a sight that he could simply let be.
Kate's Saviors have a frankly deplorable habit... of hurting her.
So Tim, a shadow and as silent as one, follows. He has a promise to keep.
What: an Easter celebration meets the Darkwalker's Revenge
When: on or about Easter, April
Where: Milton Church main chapel, other cabins
Content Warnings: we start with themes of cannibalism; loss of self; predation; stalking; vigilantism; violence; and there will be additional warnings on individual threads
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
Not that Tim could let himself fall asleep this time. The twilight of day is a heavy weight on his limbs and lids, but in him thrums the electric anticipation of all-black night. So for now, rest is as hard to come by as sleep. And it wouldn't do to keep idle. With the Aurora coloring the sky above often, Tim had gleaned one bit of information that would have meant nothing to him before:
The calendars, paper and digital, are in agreement that Easter is upon them.
And Kate's probably going to make a big thing out of it.
He won't be jostled awake this time, at least. But Tim figures: well, he can wish her a-- happy Sunday or whatever. Give her something sweet, and then hightail it out of there. Sure. Why not. He has nothing cute for her, but he's got Jolly Ranchers. It'll have to do.
But Kate's not in her room.
He finds her making her way to the old church already. He finds the Lieutenant by her side. And that's never been a sight that he could simply let be.
Kate's Saviors have a frankly deplorable habit... of hurting her.
So Tim, a shadow and as silent as one, follows. He has a promise to keep.
no subject
Still, he doesn't look well. She's worried in her own quiet way. The way to the church filled with questions on if he's sure and okay enough to be joining her.
"... Wow, it is kinda grim in here." Her voice is hushed as she walks down the aisle, pulling her gloves and scarf off as she goes. Like seriously. They need some real Spring cleaning in here. Stained glass windows always look so pretty in the sunlight, and it's sad the shard of colour can't be at their fullest potential.
Not today, though. She keeps a stash of candles squirrelled away; it's probably the most selfish thing she's ever done — keeping them out of reach of others to light homes for the sake of having a small amount of them to light the church with.
Leaving her scarf and gloves in a pew, she goes hunting for them — then starts setting them up on the altar once found, humming a hymn under her breath. She holds out the box of matches to Lieutenant Little in an open palm.
"Wanna help me light the candles?"
no subject
He realises with a terrible pang that it was near here he'd reunited with Captain Crozier over a year ago now, out in the churchyard where the older man had been burying the freshly dead. And now Crozier is—
"Ah— please allow me to assist you." He reaches to take a single match from the box along with a faint smile. This isn't the time to lose himself to his sorrows, though the heaviness of the dark building they stand within makes it difficult not to feel weighted by it.
He begins to light the candles she'd placed, careful and slow. The light they cast is soft and it should be welcoming, he wants to feel welcomed by it, but even though it isn't natural light, even though it doesn't make him ache the way the sun does, something in him wants to flinch away. It's making the awareness of just how much he craves the darkness worse and it's through some degree of sheer force that he finishes and then he's snuffing the match out quickly, like it's some insect in threat of biting him.
One step back from the altar, then two. He's moving towards a pew a couple of feet back to sit. He doesn't like the way everything about Kate, there in the soft glow near the altar, makes his nerve endings prickle with awareness.
"I'll just— leave the rest to you, Miss Kate. My apologies. My head's not well."
no subject
She replies with a bright smile before she returns to setting out the remaining ones out and beginning to light them with him. With the dusty windows and gloom, it casts a far more welcoming light. Cosy, even.
But the Lieutenant's moving away, sitting in one of the pews and Kate's turning with a frown. Nope, he still doesn't look all that great. She feels a pang of guilt, for making him come out here with her. She should have let him rest, refused his request to come along. She could have waited for Lieutenant Irving, or asked Wynonna.
"Headache?" she blows out her own match, still frowning. "Don't be sorry."
He has nothing to be sorry for. She sets the matchbox down, moving over to him.
"You... haven't seemed okay, lately." she says gently. Not pressing it too much, but yeah — it's been noticeable. He's seemed... off. And she's worried he's either sick, or what if it's the Lead Poisoning. "Here, let me see."
She reaches out for him, wanting to press the back of her hand to his forehead, to check for fever.
no subject
And even now, he does. Even now, he can claim that about himself, when he claim so little else. (And this, too, may be so foolish; resilience has no part to play in what ails him, what he hungers for. He may have lasted so long out there on the ice and the shale — the last man standing, he's learned that about himself by now, he knows he was the last of the men to fall — but this is different. ...Resolutely, he holds onto hope that he can make it the same anyway.)
If he didn't, he wouldn't be alone with Kate Marsh at all right now. If he thought that he couldn't hold on. That he couldn't outlast this bad spell. No matter what, he will not allow himself to harm her.
She's moving over to him, worried, and Edward gives a soft hitch of breath as she reaches for his forehead. Her proximity makes it so much worse; he doesn't explicitly know how to perceive what it is he hungers for, in her, but— he keeps himself calm and steady. Kate's touch is only ever a good thing, a safe thing; he trusts in that. There's no harm in the brush of the back of her hand.
And for a moment, there isn't. For a moment he acquiesces to the familiar touch, head dipped slightly as though to tip into it, welcoming. And then at once he's so hungry he can't see or think or feel anything else. At once he's so hungry that she starts to possess him and his mind swirls, filled up with thoughts of her but it's not enough; the rest of him needs to be filled up too, a hunger that opens wide from the core of himself, down in his spirit, his soul. He needs to reach out, hold her, swallow her whole. But not yet, not yet—
"........Miss Kate," and his voice sounds drowsy, even drunk, and apologetic. His head's falling forward more, right towards her lap; he seems in threat of falling over. He's exhausted. He's starving. ".....I.... I am so hungry."
no subject
Tim can see it for what it is: cruelty disguised as cleverness. Little's trap is set, ready to be sprung.
There's no roaring fire to banish this devil of a man back to the Hell he came from- and feeling the sour bile rise at the back of his throat, Tim realizes he wouldn't want that anyway. No, he's going to want- to need- blood.
Tim always did love to avoid escalation, confrontation, and he places his gun down with a faraway and harmless [tak] against old wood. For Kate's sake, he says to himself. It could have been a church mouse scurrying from the light of the candles, and bumping a pew.
Any man who knows how it feels to hunt and to be hunted should know that sound, Tim says to himself.
He's given his warning.
He'll flatten the bastard from the opposite end of the room. They'll never see him, never see how generous he is to have left the firearm behind. But Little must bleed. For Kate's sake.
Tim's given his warning. He hopes it's enough and readies himself because he knows these kinds of men-- like a wildfire, all they do is consume. It's never enough.
no subject
with a pang, she wishes Harry Goodsir was still here. If the Lieutenant's sick, then—
"You... feel kinda warm." she flips her hand, pressing her palm to his forehead to see if there's any difference. In part, she doesn't want to say the words outloud. Being sick in this place is far more dangerous. "I think you—"
(She doesn't hear it. Too focused on the man before her, too tightly wound with worry.)
But he's tipping forwards into her and she inhales sharply, quickly moving to catch him and keep him steady and upright. She pulls her hand from his forehead and braces his shoulders.
"Lieutenant—!" she breathes, her voice tight. There's a beat, her voice softens a little. "Edward?"
This isn't right.
"We need to go home. You need to rest, and— and I can make you something to eat. Maybe some soup? Or there's still venison stew left."
no subject
And the direct contact of Kate's hand against his forehead is even more direct now, the back of her fingers swapped for her palm, cool and safe and inviting and— prickling right through him with awareness, like her touch's sparked every nerve-ending to fire.
Then her hand is off of him and grasping for his shoulders instead, and he wants it back, nostrils flaring like an animal. His head lolls, he's so tired he wants to close his eyes and never open them, but he's too hungry to do that.
It terrifies him for a moment. When Kate says his name, he realises how terrified he is. Her words barely register, he can only find glimpses of them — go home, rest, something to eat — and his voice is a hoarse croak as he tries to catch himself against her and look up and find her eyes.
"You need to leave me," he hears himself saying, and part of him means it and the other part doesn't, that animalistic dark hunger stretching open so wide. He'd rather die than do what it takes to survive the way so many other man have, but he's not the same as he used to be, anymore. He overestimated his own heart. Perhaps that's always been what leads to his downfall.
Anyway, all it took was one touch, and now he knows what he wants.
The shape of it's still strange to understand, however. This hunger. He still doesn't quite know what to do with it, goes by instinct, or something worse. His hands are moving up to slip around Kate's wrists, nudging up into the material of her sleeves a little, enough that he feels skin. He holds onto her fast and firm, and pulls the girl to him, flush. His mouth is near the side of her neck, and he doesn't know how to work this hunger, how to feed what screams to be fed in him; his mouth's opening wide in some imitation of the only way he knows how to eat. It doesn't make contact with her skin but it almost might, head dipped low towards one of his most precious people. He'd never hurt her.
Then he's sucking her in. Somehow, inexplicably, he feels it happening. His eyes are shut, he doesn't know if it's real and literal or only something felt, but he's swallowing her up whole like the Darkwalker swallowed him in his nightmare and he's ravenous like a starved animal, and it isn't just his belly howling for food but his spirit itself, something deep and dark.
no subject
Kate startles at that, visible confusion mixing in with the worry in her face. Leave him? God, no. She can't do that. Not when something's clearly wrong with him. She could call out, reach out for Lieutenant Irving or Wynonna to help — but she can't just leave him alone. Something isn't right and she doesn't know what that is, but leaving him when he's like this isn't an option. She'd never forgive herself if things went from bad to worse whilst she was gone.
"... What—? No, I'm not gonna leave you like this." There's a tightness in her voice, layers of stress and anxiousness for him straining her words. "Something's—"
His hands move up to grab onto her wrist. There's nothing wrong with that, not at first. Maybe to steady himself, or maybe to try and make his stance more poignant, to insist on leaving him to get help or something. But the grip makes her inhale sharply and she's yanked forwards towards him.
(One time, she read how animals know when danger is coming. They can sense natural disasters, or how rats will flee sinking ships.)
It's all so sudden. She doesn't realise it until it's too late. Kate freezes, horrified, not sure what's happening — too frightened to move, not sure what he's trying to do— what he wants. Her stomach tightens, churning uncomfortably — breath quivering in her throat.
The pain that hits takes her breath away, and there's nothing but a few choked sounds — an ice cold wave of some ancient kind of horror. Eyes and expression wide with that horror, a knowing. It's hard to put words to it, like drowning or suffocating — but she feels small — or smaller. A little less Kate Marsh, becoming— nothing.
(She also once read animals seem to have an awareness of impending death.)
She tries to yank her wrists back, tries to free them from his grip — tries to pull herself away from him through the pain that sweeps through her. She needs to get away from him, and it's all she can think through everything else. She doesn't want this, she wants it to stop—
"Stop." she barely hears herself say it, doesn't know if she's mumbling or crying it. "Stop it—!"
The longer he holds on, the worse the feeling becomes: feeling smaller, lesser. How can a pain so huge make her feel so small? She still trying to break free, strained pained sounds spilling from her mouth. Animals have an awareness of when they're dying, and maybe she's a dying animal, after all.
She's crying it out, even if she doesn't hear it: "Edward, let— let go of me—!"
cw: stalking, violence, booby trapping
This is where Robin dies and where Tim drives forward. Knowing that he has made the wrong decision in hoping. Hoping Little would will himself to stop, hoping Kate would see through the veil and run. Tim had waited and hoped for a miracle, knowing damn well that wasn't how lives were saved. But later is for the scorn and wretched hate for his shortcomings and right fucking now is the time for making sure this doesn't go from bad
to worse.
There's a
[pfuph]
dull and short. And it's game on, and Timothy will not rest until he knows the warmth on his face that comes with a mist of blood. That man is going to be breathing through a tube. If he's going to be breathing at all. That man is going to feel this- an impact on his shoulder, a driving forward from behind the metal rod that's from both a bull of hate and the calculated need to create distance between the monster and the girl. Tim might be a small man but years ago he made himself a soldier and greater still, he made himself a victor. The fighting staff, like a blunted lance Tim has thrust forward into Little's right clavicle, finds its purchase in his anger, in his unyielding hold. With strength Tim should not have, with rage, he feels it: the sense of needing to right what had went so wrong
and hunger.
All Tim needs is for the lumbering ghoul to be forced a step back.
Because there, a step back, between legs of two pews, is the high tensile wire ready to catch. And snap. Not snap broken, but ready to give from the irregular hold the cold steel hooks have found in wooden grooves. The grappling gun is able to hold the weight of any man- and, when the wire reels wildly back into its chamber, it burns like a motherfucker and the cold steel hooks hit like a truck. It shreds flesh: Tim knows.
Hunger is the agony of waiting yet again, although it's barely been a second.
When the vampire falls (and he will fall; Tim knows; he is in control), the lance and the boy will follow him down-- the staff now a true lance, having sprung a blade a forearm length's long- deadly, hardy, ready...
and having been maneuvered to slice into Little's coat, right through the stiff and high collar of the grand goddamn uniform, instead of pinning the son of a bitch into the wood of the floor by his heart like he deserves. Kate wouldn't bear it.
There's no words to say- this holy place has been sullied enough by the frightened sobbing of a girl whose only mistake has ever been to hope for the good of men to win. And yet
Tim hears himself, with that hoarse and raw anger that once was Robin's- is not anymore-
he's on this bastard of a man, one fist against his sternum and the other hand against Little's very throat-
Little had whispered his evil plan to Kate and now Tim will whisper only so Little can hear-
"I hoped you were a better man than that."
and Tim knows, somehow, that this is how a wolf feels like.
Ravenous.
no subject
But this is... different, too. What he's feeding on is... different. He keeps his eyes closed, keeps the jaws of his mouth and of his spirit wide open. He doesn't stop.
Then something hits him. It's hard and fast and at first he barely registers that it even knocks him backwards from Kate, lost in the fog of his own hunger, of the nightmare whirlwind that numbs him even now to the reality of this situation. He doesn't know the term dissociation but he's no stranger to it, to losing the connection between himself and the world around him in the throes of an impossible situation. It's impossible that he should be bringing harm to the precious life of someone who holds his heart. It's impossible that he should feel her try to pull away, to cry out his name. None of it is real. He isn't anything at all.
Then the pain hits, nerves torn open raw as something hooks into him, and that makes it all real again. He doesn't even see the grappling gun, doesn't understand it, thinks in one sweeping flash of panic that some huge animal's teeth have clamped down on him.
He falls hard and heavy, and then someone's on him, and he doesn't realise until Tim's right there against his ear, whispering in a hiss. Edward's eyes, pupils still blown out big and black from adrenaline and hunger and now alarmed stun, lock onto Tim's. Panic hasn't quite hit him, but he finds his body moves of its own accord, one arm lifted and swiping as he gasps for breath, fingers scraping against the boy however he can.
no subject
Keeping his hands steady.
He feels the way the man's Adam's apple bobs as he sucks in air, confused, erratic, and Tim feels the satisfaction of knowing that life itself is lessening in him, in that moment.
He's a small body in comparison- with months of eating less than he should, Tim would later reason that he'd barely register as an inconvenience for the man if he had kept his wits about him. But that's the thing, this grandiose motherfucker had been so cocksure- Little had dressed up for the event, had known no one would be there to see... and that's what abusers do. They know so much about the people they hurt but say that they love.
This creature had hurt his Pack. Tim can smell the blood welling from beneath those wire binds. It's not enough. Tim is too weak as he is, he realizes suddenly. And he hadn't accounted for that. There's a blinding red and deafening rush of... snarling and desperate silence; he smells blood but needs to taste it; he needs to... protect what's his. Not just fight for the sake of sweet violence.
Tim has experience to fall back on.
"Kate!" he barks, the poor girl-- "Call for help, and do it now!"
Tim will have to shift his weight, will expect to be bucked off this lumbering and idiot thing that he strikes across the face (what is a Robin if not petty), but he has to retrieve his blade, his spear, his staff. He will need teeth-- stubborn legs wrapped around Little until he can't, Tim twists and swings.
The bo staff would hit Little's body. Anywhere. Wherever. Tim needs contact, needs bone to crunch. Needs to hear it happen, his senses too sharp; too hungry.
(As he rears back to swing- he creates distance, a small impenetrable barrier of a metal rod furiously moving in space: Kate. Kate Marsh. This is not her fight. She is not allowed near this man. She is Pack. He has enough teeth for them both. [The blade is no more, retracted as quickly as it had been sprung: for Kate's sake.])
For Kate's sake, to the Navyman, a snarl, guttural and hoarse: "I'm going to kill you." As one should do to remorseless and selfish and cunning men. The hunger is howling. So is Tim. "I'm going to fucking kill you!"
no subject
Until it stops so abruptly, the force of something shoving them apart. Kate's mid-push, staggering backwards towards the pews opposite, her legs giving way. She lands in a heap, breathless and shuddering, the disconnect so jarring she barely has time to realise what's happening.
Dazed, fighting for breath and she crawls backwards, away— She wants to run away, get far away from this as she can. She wants to curl up into herself and disappear, make the pain stop. It's less intense now, but it echoes and she's sobbing, moaning through gritted teeth at the pain, still not able to breathe properly.
But she absorbs the situation eventually, like some slow-dawning horror through glossy and unfocused eyes, even if she still doesn't understand what's happened. She understands that Tim's here, over the Lieutenant and—
"No." it's uttered, small and hushed, "No, no, no—"
She doesn't understand.
She's backing up into the pews, cowed and shaking. Please, don't, she thinks. She doesn't understand, she doesn't want this. She wants this to stop, she wants it all to stop and everything still hurts. And she's flinching at Tim's words, call for help.
For a long moment, she's frozen. Just staring, still crying and pained. Help.
Wynona Earp is help.
Wynonna, she thinks, reaching out for her. Her voice disjointed, strained. Wynonna, help. Please, please— help. The church.
"Please, don't—" she utters aloud, words slurring. She doesn't feel good, and it's hard to keep what little focus she has. "Please, just—"
She doesn't know.
no subject
'Kate!'
The person-shaped thing shouts out loud. Then shouts something else that Little barely registers, but the name's the only part that matters. It snags him, as fast and surprising and painful as the weapon that tore into his leg, and he gives a hoarse wet sound, something inbetween a gasp and a cry.
Kate? Kate. Kate. No.... no....!
His attacker strikes him in the face and Little chokes out a wheeze, stunned. Kate's crying, sobbing, he can't see her from where he is but he can hear her, soft breaths and sounds and he realises that this is real and that he's done something terrible. He can feel... something inside of him, warm and sparkling like sunlight, like bubbling water, like something alive, something that he's taken from her.
Is she dead? Dying? Oh god, what has he done?
Though he's still dazed, his eyes are clearer, his mind is clearer, and now he knows the boy atop him is Tim. Tim, drawing back to swing a weapon. Then it vanishes, and Little's trying to speak, to say anything, but all that comes is ragged breathing through his own white-hot pain and a keening whine through his own tight throat — but the pain that draws that sound isn't from the physical wounds. No, no no no no, what has he done—
'I'm going to kill you.' It's a snarl, as animal as every dangerous beast that Little's known. Sharp teeth and dripping jaws and blood from a last meal still fresh on a hot lolling tongue. A boy, a beast: Edward thinks he really is going to die.
"No," he tries to say, eyes wide and wet, words loose and slick as his tongue struggles to move correctly against a pool of saliva and nausea and pain. He moans it again — No — but even now, it's not really a plea for his own life. His hands don't swipe at Tim anymore. All he can see is Kate. And with her, the hunger that persists. He wants to scream but he can't. No.
no subject
and his heart breaks because he knows she loves the man. His last thought is that, instead, he wishes he had told her to stay away. Away from the attractive, pathetic plea of
No
wet and whimpering.
To a person like Kate, something impossible to ignore. Tim's plagued by it. He should have told her to stay away. Away from the sea that'll break her, too deep and old and treacherous.
Tim snarls.
That's all that happens. One moment Tim feels disgusting heat rise within, the nasty slimy feeling of having hands on a person that's so sick (even now, thinking of himself, begging for himself). The next he is a wolf, brown and red and black and leggy and with fangs. Tim has never had fangs before.
Has never had Pack before, not one so docile and sweet.
Tim snarls.
Mid-air he turns his body- he's enveloped awkwardly in clothing and then isn't- and brown eyes pin the girl to the seat in a vicious show. STAY AWAY. Lips curled in that ugly way that isn't hate but hunger. STAY AWAY.
Stay away from what is his.
Tim is leggy and young and the fur of his neck and back that now raises is singed and raggedy and that will never matter. Tim has fangs.
Attention turned back to the First Lieutenant, Edward Little,
Tim bites.
A full bite, voracious, he wants this- this... is his.
cw: brief suicide ideation things
Vitality pours into him and seeps into all the aching spaces, and the hungry thing with its mouth wide open demands more, and he feels better. Through the pain and blood and bleary eyes, he feels better, too. Some dark place inside of him has been fed, and he thrives in that place, now. In the dark.
Abruptly, reality changes again. Abruptly, the boy on top of him is draining him of that same vitality, maybe in a different shape, but Edward feels himself losing— himself. Like lungs taking a breath of much-needed air suddenly made breathless again.
He barely has time to process any of this before the boy is a beast. Dimly, Little recognises the creature as a wolf, the very same beast that lives beneath his own breast. On some level, he knows all of the pieces of this can be no coincidence, that all of this surrounds him too well: darkness, hunger, beast — but he can't make sense of it all.
The wolf bites him, and he screams. It's out loud but it's also in his head, in a place he's never been able to access before, an ability sucked right out of Kate Marsh — the scream sounds in the minds of those in the near vicinity, loud and howling.
He isn't a fighter (a killer, Wynonna told him. You've never been a killer and you aren't one now.) And maybe the truth of it is that Edward Little has wanted to die for a very long time. But there are people he has to live for, he's realised that time and time again. He can't leave Kate alone to this. He has to protect her—
He's still screaming, maybe just in his mind now, mouth wet and gasping, but he hits the wolf as hard as he can, and his knee shoves up and into it as hard as he can, and there's an anger that pulses up under everything. It won't be enough to do anything now, maybe he knows that, too. He's bleeding and broken in places and the wolf can rip him to shreds. He doesn't even have the strength to unleash his own beast form.
But he grits his teeth and his lip peels back enough to expose them (and even in his human form, his canines are sharp, fangy, and he bares them right back at the wolf) and his eyes are hard and angry and his scream becomes a roar. He tries. It never will be enough.
no subject
One rearing to look at her and snarling at her, bearing teeth. Fear snaps into her eyes and she flinches, crushing herself into the pew — breath and sobs sticking in her throat.
The wolf bites before she can yell out and even that yell is quickly cut off.
It's one thing to hear him scream, but it's not just that— it's inside her, scraping the insides of her skull, something raw and sharp and— she grips at her head, crying out in pain, curling up into herself, legs kicking uselessly stop it stop it stop it—
She wants Edward Little to stop screaming, she wants to the wolf to stop biting. She wants both of them to stop. And she's crying out for Wynonna again, pleading for her: Wynonna, please— please, God, help—
The screaming continues, tearing at the insides of her mind— she wants it's to stop—
The wolf's going to kill him. Tim's going to kill him. And she'll never forgive either of them for it: Tim for killing, Edward for dying.
She loves Edward Little. She loves Tim Drake, too.
But if Edward Little dies, they all lose.
Her hands flail, reaching up above her, onto the little ledge of the pew— trying to reach for something, anything. Her fingers brush against soft leather and she grabs at it, heavy and clumsy in her hands. She tries to find a better grip on it. It's a good weight.
She hurls the Bible with as much force as she can at the wolf. Her face is red and wet with tears, her eyes desperate and filled with horror.
Her voice finally finds her, and it's a scream: overwhelmed with pain, fury and desperation: "STOP IT—!"
She doesn't have sharp teeth, she doesn't bite. But she has a voice, and love, and a shiny new spine.
cw: reference to attempted hanging
This is not the first time she's slammed her way out of a saloon to run to a rescue.
(Over a hundred years ago, a man — a hard man, maybe a good man, maybe a complicated man — waged a war against the evils of his world, against the things that snap and stab, steal and cut. To win a war, you need a weapon. To wield a weapon, you need a champion. And when that champion dies, a brimstone curse licking fire around the edges of their grave, you need someone to pick that weapon up and continue the fight. An heir.)
Her leg aches where a bite, burrowed down into the muscle of her thigh, is still torn and raw, but she can't feel it as she barrels out of the old Post Office and into the cold, snow and mud and gravel spraying as she pelts through the town to the little church. Kate is begging in her head, and she's turning the corner, losing her footing; she's pulling up to the homestead to see Waverly there tip-toe on a stool, a noose around her neck.
A scream splits her head and for a moment she feels the earth shake again under her feet, threatening to rip her open the way rock and soil and roots have torn apart here. She knows that scream, even if she's never heard it before. She'll never be able to not hear it ever again.
The last time someone hurt Edward Little, she tore them apart, literally, with her bare hands, and that was before the dream of the bear, the constantly simmering rage pooling in her stomach, the blind need to protect what's hers—
—The Milton church isn't large. It was built for this small town, not a great city and large congregation or to host grand events. Its doors are not the massive, imposing things of a cathedral, heavy enough to withstand battalions. Wynonna Earp hits them with the implacable fury of a bolt of divine lightning, and they blow open before her like screen doors in a summer storm.
Her hair is mussed from her run, her jeans soaked; not the usual picture of an avenging angel, despite the gimlet eyes and the fury burning through her. But she'd reached for Peacemaker in the same moment she raised her booted foot to slam into the double doors, and now her arm lifts as she marches into the church, down the aisle, without breaking stride. The Buntline Special's nose points toward heaven as she pulls the trigger. In the open, Peacemaker is loud, startling; inside, it's an avalanche of sound, rolling like thunder, the acoustics of the building helpfully pushing it along.
She takes it in: the wolf, the man, the girl, the shredded clothes cast around the struggle. Wynonna has always chafed under authority, but she wields it now like she wields that gun: voice sharp, a tool of promised violence if she's not obeyed, and immediately. "Get back."
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He tastes blood and it's warm and delicious.
His tongue presses hot against cloth and flesh. He breathes in the vanity of this man's fear and then-- along with Kate's shouts, raw and hurt, Tim feels pain. Just under his jaw. His teeth snap together, his mouth kicked, and Tim tastes his own blood now too. He would not have survived as long as he has if he couldn't ignore pain. Deal with it later.
Kate screams.
Tim growls around his mouthful of prey. He cannot sink his teeth in any deeper and he cannot let go of the leg, so Tim drives forward into the man's anger, incensed, four paws scrambling and scratching as he wills his back teeth to-- he doesn't know. Grow, maybe.
Something hits his head. His snout, particularly.
And Tim hears something else, ears on a swivel despite the thud-thud-thud of adrenaline that's become Him.
It's his mistake to have perked his ears.
The pain is electric.
Tim screams. He's not used to this.
His mouth is too-warm and dripping and he's panting hard, tongue lolling and red. And then-- Tim's not used to this.
Wynonna.
He scents her before he sees her because he doesn't see her. Doesn't have to. He knows she's there. He knows she's--
here to protect.
She's here for her Pack.
She's here to help.
His tail wags, low and yielding and relieved and twitchy.
He doesn't hear what she says. His head is swimming in black pain, all of it concentrated between his eyes since the gunshot rang out. But he knows
(The wolf gravitates to Kate-- to be between her and the Lieutenant.)
he knows
Wynonna had said
STAY AWAY
and he will keep Kate away from the evil.
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There's a slam of sound, as calamitous as a disaster, a storm, a tidal wave. All of a sudden, Wynonna Earp stands there in the doorway of the church, and it shouldn't be possible that she's there, but something in Edward so immediately accepts the sight through the whirlwind of dizzy pained haze skewing his senses: of course Wynonna is here. Wynonna's always there, somehow, when he needs her to be, and his heart swells with a surge of affection and relief through his own horror.
It's split-seconds before the shot sounds, piercing everything, so loud it seems to rattle the very foundation they're in, or maybe that's in his mind, maybe it's his mind that's shaking and crumbling in at the corners. He gasps loudly, frightened, overwhelmed, but he also realises that at some point the wolf has let go of him. The deep pain makes it difficult to think, or move, but somehow he manages to get his arm up, blocking his throat in case the beast comes back for him. Around his arm, his wide, wild eyes find Wynonna and stay there and then he's looking around for Kate as much as he can, though he can't move much.
There's an attempt to shove himself away from the wolf, an agonised cry as he forces his body upwards a little, the smell of his own blood so nauseating that his eyes squeeze shut. He can feel it, slick beneath him as he pants for breath, blood smearing across the floorboards (sorry Dorian that both of my characters have left blood on the church floors, it's weird that it's happened twice)
He forces his eyes back open, realises the wolf (Tim, this is Tim) has moved towards Kate just enough that it sends a spark of alarm through Edward again. But he knows Wynonna will help her, doesn't doubt it for any instant, so he just nods to the woman — quick and wide-eyed, some wordless affirmation.
Wynonna's here. Everything will be okay now.
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The wolf is Tim, and he's no on the Lieutenant but coming towards her — putting space between her and the him. Kate inhales tightly, still choking on sobs. Tim couldn't turn into a wolf before, surely he would have told her that was a thing he could do, right? She doesn't know why he can do this, or if he's even safe—
there's blood around his muzzle. Edward Little's blood. And that's all she can stare at: a panting maw, dripping and bloodied and filled with so many sharp teeth.
She's backing away from him, letting out soft whine of fear — even when there's nowhere left for her to go. She's already pressed tightly against the pew, her feet scrambling against the floorboard. She pulls her knees in close, tries to make herself smaller: get back, get back—
She doesn't want him near her.
But then, she worries— what if Wynonna shoots Tim—
She still doesn't Tim to die.
"Wynonna, don't shoot the wolf—!" she cries out from the pew, she still doesn't dare come out, keeps herself pressed there. "It's Tim."
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But Edward's still moving, even if it's clear he's shocked and in pain, his blood smearing bright against the wooden floor. When she meets his eyes, they're huge with terror and agony — she can see the whites all around his dark irises — but he nods to her and his voice is somehow in her head in a way it never has been before, shattered and babbling. It's impossible to pick out any one phrase or cohesive sentence, but two things are immediately clear: relief at seeing her and fear for Kate. He gives her a quick nod, as firm as she thinks he can probably make it in his current condition, and she gives him a tiny jerk of her head in response before sweeping by him, Peacemaker leveling out in her hand—
And then Kate cries out, and for the first time since crashing out of the saloon, Wynonna's step hitches. "Tim?"
She turns to the wolf, with its wet and slavering mouth and spindly legs and raised hackles and... waving tail. Bemused fury rises, flickering in her jaw and flattening her eyes as she makes for him. "Tim!"
Of course it's Tim. So what do we do now, chief? he asks in her memory, a gold-glinting charcoal-colored string taut between them and she doesn't put Peacemaker away, but when she lunges its to sink the fingers of her left hand hard into the scruff of his stupid neck and now she's the one snarling, teeth bared. "I said get back!"
For a second, she considers shifting, herself, the wolf in her head and chest howling, blunt claws scratching at the lining of her gut, but the bear is there, too, huge and hulking and stronger than she'd ever managed to be on her own, and she takes that strength and puts every ounce of it into hauling Tim-the-wolf up and back, dragging him from his spot in front of Kate and unceremoniously half-shoving, half-flinging him back down the aisle, as bodily as she's able. "What the hell is wrong with you? That's Kate!"
goodbye farewell and amen
And maybe Tim's never liked it either, but--
irrelevant.
His ears are flat, the short tail is still swinging between the hocks of his back legs but now in a quicker staccato. Tim licks his lips in what he knows is a nervous gesture and he can't make himself stop it-- there's Power in how Wynonna is moving
moving towards the wrong
--wait, does she think...?
She does.
For the second time, Tim shouts: black lips pull impossibly back and he's... gagging, he realizes. Too late, he realizes- he can't defend himself. Wynonna has an iron grip on his neck; too coarse uneven brittle fur does nothing to stave away the sensation of not having air. Tim is used to that. The animal is not.
All he breathes in, in a wet choked gasp, is blood.
And then he can't feel his back legs.
He doesn't know when it happened; now he's gasping and coughing and all of his face is blood, and for a panicky moment he cannot move all four of his awkward and long legs. He's flat against hardwood floor, far from the Others. He's coughing. His ear are low, his tail swinging-- hopeful... hopeful...
He is not a member of this Pack.
He is an Other.
Through sheer will- fright- hope-- no: understanding, the wolf makes haste.
The doors.
It makes sense, even as he stumbles one- two- three times on unsteady feet.
Tim is not needed.
He would rather die than hinder.
The doors.
Kate has Power now, Power on her side:
she will be okay.
She will be okay.
He runs.
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The place — and the people in it — are in shambles. She hurries to the pew where Kate had shrunk back away from Tim's sharp jaws and awkwardly half shuffles, half drags her knee over the seat of the bench until she reaches the girl and can wrap an arm around her. "Are you okay?"
She pulls back enough to glance over her, and she looks okay, if scared and shocked and too pale for Wynonna's liking. She runs a quick hand over Kate's mussed hair and hugs her again before her head turns like it's on a swivel, directing her bemused question to both of them. "What the hell happened? Why did Tim attack you?"
She knew he didn't like Edward, but he'd never seemed like he'd attack any of the Interlopers... and definitely not Kate. She'd been pretty sure she could trust him on that.
She doesn't know what to think right now, as she gets a hand behind Kate's back to help the girl up.
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Fortunately, Kate says it from where she is, unseen, a million miles away — don't shoot, it's Tim, Wynonna don't shoot, it's Tim — the words play in loop in Edward's head as he gasps for breath, blinking hard against his own blurry eyes which don't work quite right. He's never been bitten by a wild animal before. It's one of his worst fears, after seeing what Tuunbaq was capable of; it's a fear that's lived in him for all this time. He realises he's shuddering uncontrollably and he doesn't know if it's from pain or that fear. He tries to pay attention, watching as Wynonna drags the wolf back, but there's a sudden overwhelming wave of fear for her as she nears the beast with its bloody dripping mouth and dagger teeth.
Cries and protests and horror claw at the inside of his mind and break out, infiltrating those around him. He doesn't even know this, can't control it, but then the beast is running off. He can't tell if it's truly gone, can't see that far from where he half-sits up. Suddenly— Wynonna's there in front of him, telling him what to do and he does it without a second thought, keeps his hand pressed to hot wet. (He's freshly fed what he needs, and he's still gaping for air like a newborn, like a baby bird with a wide-open mouth, mindlessly hungry, because it wasn't enough. He's still hungry.)
Wynonna getting near to him again leaves him dizzy and dumb, and the nails of his other hand scrape the wood beneath him. He could eat her alive.
What the hell happened?
What the hell happened? What's happening? Edward fluctuates between being lost and being grounded by specific words and concepts. She brings him back down to Earth again with that question, and with it comes another sweep of pure horror as he realises and then fights to see it clearly in the next beat. (It's real, it's real, no, it's a nightmare—)
Help, he's saying it in his mind, not explicitly meaning to broadcast it to her, but his gaping mouth can't quite find the words so they play out in his head instead, loud and crying. He doesn't realise they go right to Kate, too. Help me. Help her. Hurt her, I hurt her, I'm so hungry—
Then words are spilling from his mouth, or at least he thinks they are, rushing out in a shuddering spill. He's alarmed, desperate; Kate's been talking (screaming, pleading) so he knows she's not dead, but she's not okay and what if she's dying now, falling away? He can't reach her. He tries, body moving against all its blood, crying out with pain and ignoring it all in the same breath as one hand grabs for the nearest pew, trying to force himself up. He has to go to her. He has to help Kate.
"Is she all right? Kate— is she— is she all right?!"
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Wynonna's shuffling into the pew, reaching for her and Kate doesn't know how to answer the first question. She sits there stunned, barely reacting to the woman's hugs and fussing. There's a long delay, and all she can do is shake her head. No, she's not okay. Anything else would be a lie.
Wynonna has more questions, and Kate doesn't have answers either. But she hears the Lieutenant's, her head turning in his direction. She can't see him but she can hear his words in her head: Help me. Help her. Hurt her, I hurt her, I'm so hungry—
She still doesn't understand what happened. But she knows he... hurt her, somehow.
"I— I don't know." she says to Wynonna, and then her voice drops. Kate looks to Little's direction before back to her. "There's— there's something wrong with him. He... he did something. He wouldn't let go— and— Tim was there and he got him off me and it just—"
She doesn't know. It was just— messed up.
She's slow to get back on her feet, unsteady even with Wynonna's help — like a newborn fawn trying to work out how its legs work. She feels so tired and sore and weak, and she has to rest her weight both on the pew and Wynonna to keep herself upright, swaying a little. She doesn't feel— right.
Kate doesn't look mad when she sees him, now that's upright. She's not angry, just— unsure, frightened. Of him. She doesn't know what it is he's done to her, how he's hurt her. But he— he did. Something's wrong with him and he hurt her. And even then she's still scared for him, for what Tim's done. She stares across at him, equal parts concern and betrayal and fear.
Her mouth doesn't move, but he'll hear it inside his own mind: What did you do?
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There's something wrong with him, Kate says, clinging to her, and Wynonna thinks about the way his eyes had gone so black, how he'd tried to move away from her that night he came to her cabin, how he'd let her go like he was ripping himself away, saying it was too dangerous—
Realization falls on her in a rockslide, and she rolls her head to give him a disbelieving look, fury edging around her shock and surprise like flames licking around a sheet of paper. "Oh, you idiot."
Despite the thrill of horror chasing through her, Wynonna's hand is gentle as she takes Kate's arm, drawing the girl carefully behind her as she moves forward, putting herself as a barrier between Kate and the man they both— the the man who's cared for her and kept her safe for so long, only to shatter everything in a moment of weakness.
The movement puts Kate behind her, which is good. It also frees up her right hand, which comes to rest, ready, on Peacemaker's ivory grip.
Doc could make it look a lot more casual. Wynonna's too tense for that, head lowering, eyes intent on Edward. "The hunger?"
Goddammit, she'd told him, he needed to control it before it controlled him, and now he's hurt the one person he'd rather die than hurt and all she can feel is simmering upset and rage. "What the hell, Little? I fucking told you— and you went after Kate? Are you kidding me?"
She grimaces and shakes her head like a dog with water in its ears. "And can someone please explain to me why I can hear you in my head and why Tim is a wolf now?"
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Edward's stomach drops with a nauseating sinking that almost sends him reeling sideways. He sways where he's half-sitting up, feels his shoulder against the pew nearest him, the smell of his own blood swirling through his senses. Then comes Wynonna — 'oh, you idiot' — and he can't see Kate but he can see the older woman as she looks around at him for that brief moment inbetween helping Kate, anger steeling her eyes into shades of ice as she helps draw the girl up into his line of vision. Edward flinches from the sharp daggers in Wynonna's gaze; he draws in a ragged sound that's supposed to be a breath but sounds more like a gasp, having to force air into his lungs.
'what did you do?'
Kate's up and his eyes finally find her, looking back at him like he's an animal she's not sure is safe or not to approach, hurt and fearful and barely able to stand upright. What did you do?
He stares up at her, eyes wide and mouth open. His rambling thoughts have abruptly frozen in him, everything going still and silent. He doesn't know how to answer what Kate asks — as he looks at her, he can see that something's— wrong, he's made her wrong, but how?
What did he... feed on? What is it that he feels inside of him now, that he craves more of— no, not him, this isn't him. There's some darkness, some demon, he would never want to harm her—
Her... spirit? Her vitality? Life, Wynonna said, my life.
He's stricken, numb. It's Wynonna's question that pulls a response from him again, and his eyes tear from Kate's tear-stained face and snap down to the hand that rests at the gun. He might do something again. Might try to hurt someone again. Wynonna is protecting Kate from him, and the horror of that realisation feels like a punch.
"I— I thought it was under my control, I didn't—" He's breathless, as though the wind's been knocked out of him. He's in a great deal of pain. He's still hungry. "I would never...—" And yet he had. With one simple touch, one simple movement.
His eyes swim; he finds Kate again. Looking at her is a different kind of pain; his heart wrenches itself into beats, his eyes plead. "Kate. I—"
There's apology there in him, but he can't even voice that much. How could he? How could he ask to be forgiven? Of course he couldn't. Wynonna's question demands an answer once more, and he shrinks back as though from her, one arm wrapping around himself, slumping back.
"I don't know. I don't— understand. Mr. Drake...did something to me, too. It hurt—" Different from the other hurts, the physical tearing, the clamp of jaws and weapons. Edward winces sharply against his own shallow breathing, too-aware now of his own injury.
Can... hear him in her head. Wynonna can hear him? The way people can hear Kate. And Tim's a wolf now, the way Edward can be. He felt strong and vital so briefly, and then Tim took something from him, weakened him again.
"I think we— we took something. We fed." That word makes him flinch again with another shuddering sound. He fed on Kate. And Tim... fed on him...? Edward's eyes flutter, voice hoarse. He feels lost, able to latch only onto the concept of fixing whatever he'd done to Kate.
"I don't know what to do. What... do I do...? I have to help her..." He reaches his other arm up towards the girl, weak and fumbling, as though he could grasp hold of what's wrong, make it right.
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Edward Little did something to her, something she can't put words to right now. Something he knew he could do, something Wynonna knew he could do.
Something that Tim can do, too.
He'd done it to the Lieutenant, just as he'd done to Kate. Tim couldn't turn into a wolf, before. He— he turned into a wolf— she saw that. Saw it happen.
Kate shrinks behind Wynonna as soon as she moves between her the and the Lieutenant. A buffer, a shield — and she's grateful for it, as much as her mind reels from it all. She clings to the back of Wynonna's jacket, exhausted and feverish. Her stomach churns, and she wants to throw up from fear and anger and hurt—
She feels so small.
And yet he's calling for her, desperately — trying to reach for her. Kate's shaking her head, cowering away. "No, no—" she utters, panicked. "Please, don't—"
Doesn't want him near her—
"You hurt me, you—" her own voice is hoarse, her head sinks low. "I just— I just— I thought you were sick, and I— I don't—"
Her head shakes, "I feel— wrong—"
She looks so wounded, and in amongst the fear of what's happened is betrayal—
"Tim tried to stop him, only— only he— he was going to—" she doesn't want to put words to it, but she knows exactly what Tim would have done. And it feels like another betrayal. "I wanted them both to stop."