#also marin challenged me to right a sad alex solo forever ago

[letsbenditlikebennett]

TIMING: Last night/This morning SUMMARY: The blue moon has Alex feeling a bit too antsy in her bunker. CONTENT: Self-harm, unsanitary

The hours between sunset and moonrise always felt like an impossibly long stretch of time. Despite the fact the routine was far from new to Alex and she knew it was best to be locked away earlier than later, she hated being locked away in the small space. The bunker wasn’t even impossibly tiny, but the training room her father locked her in for long stretches of time hadn’t been either. Somehow, the room elicited a similar feeling of being trapped. Usually, the knowledge that Andy was right outside the door was enough to bring her some small sense of comfort, but for the first time in her life, she didn’t even have that.

Somehow, that made the normal restless energy feel heightened. Even if she wanted to, Alex wasn’t sure she could physically stop pacing the bunker even if she tried. Every attempt to sit still made it feel like there was a full body itch under her skin that she couldn’t jump out of. So she paced until it felt like her shoes should have holes burning through the soles and then she paced some more. Not even humming different songs as she paced seemed to bring any sort of relief to the antsy feeling that pulsed through her every muscle. ‘Get it together, Bennett,’ she’d even tried to tell herself under her breath on several occasions, but the only thing she could do was move and clench her fists. 

As the minutes slipped into hours, the pacing became more frantic. Her feet erratically moved around the room as her eyes darted over the different streaks of peeled grayed paint on the bunker walls. The scent of the different animals and them scurrying around her only made her feel more amped up. It almost felt as if in her human form she could rip them apart with her bare hands without even getting sick. It was an odd sensation that she did her best to ignore and paced some more until finally her bones creaked and snapped into the shape of her werewolf counterpart. 

—

Not even an hour into the blue moon’s rising and the werewolf had already devoured every single rodent locked in the bunker with her. Even the bones had been meticulously chewed through as the wolf searched for any outlet for its adrenaline and hunger. There wasn’t even anything else for the werewolf to shift into, but it felt like that lupine energy crawled under its skin like a pesky itch. 

At first, the werewolf threw itself against the wall to try and relieve the feeling, but it seemed to do nothing as it ran around the room in erratic circles and pushed itself against the wall. The concrete of the bunker walls scraped the wolf-like creature’s skin, but it did nothing to shake the restlessness that seemed to crawl all over it like a living entity. It wanted out, it wanted more food, it wanted to run until its padded hands and feet could carry it no farther. 

All it could do was maddeningly zoom around the space and throw itself into the walls until even that seemed to not be enough. Eventually, the werewolf began to chew and claw at its own skin to find any way to make it subside, but it never did. Even as her skin turned red and inflamed, the werewolf couldn’t stop. It chewed and scratched and occasionally threw itself against the wall again for good measure, but that buzzing energy kept crawling across it without reprieve until the wolf finally wore itself into a state of restless slumber. 

—

Before Alex even peeled her eyes open, she could feel the ache permeating every inch of her body. A full moon hadn’t hit her that hard in a long time. Usually, her muscles were no more sore than after a particularly productive soccer practice, but this felt like a bus had crashed right into her. Even the motion of her body twitching awake felt like agony. “Fuck,” she grumbled as she tried to stretch awake. 

Her eyes flew open as the movement sent a sharp pain that she could feel everywhere. The carnage around her wasn’t entirely new, but the completely chewed down state of it was. Then, she looked down at herself and it all came flooding back how the werewolf had felt just as anxious confined in the small space as she did. Usually, the werewolf was asleep before that could set in. After chasing around some critters and having a good meal, she could usually just spend the rest of the night unconscious. It had been like that for so long and she didn’t want to pinpoint which difference was fucking her up like this. 

Her body was covered in scratches, bruises, scrapes, and her own frantic teeth marks. There was an amount of blood that also made her stomach turn and she realized at some point in the night, she must have chewed through her stitches. Great. The last thing she wanted to do was tell Kaden, which meant actually going to the medical examiner to get her injuries checked out. 

As she heard Kaden moving about outside, she quickly grabbed her change of clothes to cover herself. The nudity didn’t bother her so much, but one look would give her hellish night away and she couldn’t have that. She didn’t know why this happened, but she did know it was something she was going to take the initiative on figuring out for herself. So she threw on the clothes and the robe she had over it for good measure and steeled herself to face the morning like the night had been nothing but a standard full moon.