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onbearfeet · 7 months ago

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kat my dear if you are in fact taking requests i am placing the lost/stranded wedge from the wheel of torment at your virtual doorstep like a cat with a dead mouse

Oooo, a present!

(Disclaimer: please do not take literally anything I say in this story about the Sierra Nevadas OR wilderness survival to heart. I am a dumbass, and I received my extremely limited wilderness survival training from suburban fundies who literally didn't know which end of a match to light, so the only bits of it I bothered to keep were "don't stand where a giant pinecone might fall on your head", "mountain lions are not your friends", and "here's how to check for rattlesnakes". Any information about bears, however, may be taken as semi-reliable because ... bears.)

Jack had never woken up in a tree before. Apparently, there truly was a first time for everything.

The shivering was what actually woke him. He was shirtless, as usual for the morning after a full moon, but the cheap sweatpants he'd pulled on before locking himself in the evening before were still intact, notwithstanding a snag near the left knee and a few new stains he preferred not to examine too closely. So everything between his hips and his ankles was at least bearable, but everything else was numb or shaking violently.

A dull poking against his right side roused him before he could slide back into a restful coma. He looked down. The spar of a broken branch was jabbing him in the ribs, and his shivering against it wasn't doing him any favors.

Then he looked farther down.

"Chingada madre," he breathed.

He was at least fifty feet up. Far below, a light mist rolled through the pine forest, hiding the roots of his tree from view.

What could have happened last night? He hadn't thought the wolf could jump this high, and it had never shown much interest in climbing.

"What were you thinking?" he muttered to it as if it would listen. "There's no--no food up here, no female wolves. Did you watch a Tarzan movie at three in the morning or something?"

Jack had never been especially afraid of heights, but the sudden sight of a long drop jolted him with enough adrenaline to wake up fully. He gripped the limb beneath him with half-numb fingers, took deep breaths of chilly morning air, and tried to think.

The last thing he remembered was lying down on the floor of the little cabin he and Ted had built in the Sierra Nevada mountains. He'd completed his full-moon ritual just like always: doors and windows shut and bolted, long chains on his wrists and ankles, a stash of werewolf-friendly food already out of its wrappings and within reach, and a big pile of blankets and old clothes rich with his and Ted's scents. It was as close as he could get to a den without risking the lives of every human being for miles around. His other side was never happy with the arrangement, exactly, going by the gouges in the walls and floorboards, but at least he usually woke up indoors.

The wolf couldn't open locks. Couldn't REACH them, usually, with the chains on. Wasn't clever or dextrous enough to open the puzzle lock on the bear-proof chest containing the manacle keys, a change of clothes, and the means to make coffee.

He looked down at his wrists, then his ankles. There were no manacles left, no sign of broken cuffs, not even the usual raw skin or bruising that would fade by midday. He hadn't fought his bindings at all.

Someone had let him out.

Dios santo, someone had let him out.

There was no one around to hear him, so Jack took a moment for himself. Slowly, taking care not to dislodge himself, he pulled his knees up to his chest, put his head down, and sobbed.

He'd had centuries to learn not to hate himself when he cried, and sometimes weeping was all he could do, so he let himself shudder and keen and wallow in self-pity for a little while. God knew he tried not to hurt anyone. He never wanted to wake up with the taste of blood in his mouth again. But people--pinche hunters, well-meaning fools, it didn't matter--always seemed to find a way to make everything worse.

He had moved his safehouses farther and farther from human settlements. Begged Ted to watch over him whenever he could. Tried every kind of lock and cage and chain and drug and spell to keep himself contained.

And now he was lost in the woods, halfway up a--he sniffed--black pine, probably, with no idea where he was or who might be looking for him or whether they would try to cut his throat with a silver blade when they caught up to him.

And there wasn't even coffee.

After a while, his sobs died away, and he realized he was shivering more than crying. He'd have to get moving if he wanted to warm up.

But where to move to?

He craned his neck, trying to scan the surrounding terrain, but he was only halfway up the tree, and that meant his view was mostly canopy. He could see the land sloping gently down and away in front of him, and based on the angle of the shadows, that direction was probably west. (Assuming he hadn't slept the entire morning away in a tree, but he didn't want to think about that.)

Assuming he was still in the Sierras--which the black pine strongly suggested, and it wasn't like the beast could run all the way to another mountain range in one night--there would be a substantial snowpack at the peaks for at least part of the year, and the meltwater would run downhill. There might be a creek or a stream downslope. All he'd have to do was find it, follow it downstream to whatever larger waterway it joined, and keep following until he found a landmark or something to eat.

At least there would be water. Probably.

He was just beginning to think about how he was going to get out of the tree without breaking anything important when he heard the scratching noises.

He leaned forward and looked over the side of the limb that was holding him up.

There was a large black shape swarming up the trunk, all flashing claws and gleaming eyes, and he yelped in terror and it didn't seem to notice--it just kept coming--

And then it halted, about ten feet below, and made a noise like a locomotive venting steam, and the smell wafted up and flooded his nose.

"Mierda," he breathed, unable to take his eyes off the bear.

It was skinny for a black bear at this time of year, and something about the way its ears and paws looked too big for the rest of it told him he was looking at an adolescent. Probably in its first season away from its mother, looking to establish a territory of its own.

The usual procedure, from what he could remember, was to look as big and intimidating as possible--stand up, wave his arms, shout--and try to frighten the bear into retreating. There were, unfortunately, two problems with the usual procedure.

The first was that Jack was physically smaller than even a teenage black bear, and he was currently huddled in a ball, shivering and smelling like he'd just been crying. Not the best position for intimidation, he felt, even if he could stand up on his limb and shout, which he wasn't too keen on in any case.

The second was that the most common reason for black bears to climb trees in a hurry was to escape something on the ground that had frightened them.

If the bear was scarier than Jack and whatever was on the ground was scarier than the bear, then the transitive property of wilderness survival suggested that he didn't want to meet whatever was on the ground.

The bear huffed at him again.

"Don't you take that tone with me," Jack snapped through chattering teeth. "I was here first."

The bear groaned.

"Go around if you're in such a hurry!" he told it. "You're the one who's supposed to be so good at climbing!"

The bear opened its jaws wide and bawled, giving him a view of its gullet.

"I don't care what your pinche plan was!" Jack shouted back. "You think I chose this from a menu of delightful options?!"

"Jack?!"

He froze.

He knew that voice. It was the most beautiful and terrifying voice in the entire world. It was salvation and damnation tangled together and swathed in red leather and softly curling black hair.

It was also a voice that was supposed to be in Europe.

Jack leaned over the side of his limb. "Elsa?" he called.

The bear grumbled at him, but that was inconsequential compared to the sight of Elsa Bloodstone in her full hunting leathers, standing knee-deep in morning mist and staring up the trunk at him with a sheathed machete on her hip and an unreadable expression on her perfect face.

"Jack?" she called again. "Bloody hell, what are you doing up a tree?"

Jack made a few incoherent noises before he got his mouth to work again. "What are you doing in North America?!"

"Saving your sorry arse! Don't you remember?"

Jack flapped his hands to vaguely encompass everything--the tree, the bear, his state of semi-undress, the general condition of the universe. "Obviously not!"

He could hear her snort from fifty feet up. "Come down, idiot. I promise it's safe."

The bear huffed.

"You and I have very different definitions of safe," Jack grumbled, but he pushed his back against the tree and began sliding to his feet anyway.

The bear squalled a little, but didn't swipe or try to lunge.

He supposed he couldn't blame the bear for being out of sorts. The first time he'd encountered Elsa unexpectedly, he'd wanted to climb a tree, too.

The trunk was big enough for him to work his way around to the opposite side before he began descending. The bear took advantage of the break in traffic to surge past him with a steam-boiler huff and a scrabbling of claws, but at least that meant they were no longer in each other's way.

The climb down the tree introduced Jack to several deep gouges in the bark left by his other self on the way up, and also every muscle ache the cold had previously kept at bay. By the time he half-slid, half-fell the last ten feet to land in a heap in front of Elsa, he was hurting in places he didn't usually remember he had.

She pursed her lips at him in a strange way, unzipped her red leather jacket, and draped it around his shoulders. He was pretty well out of dignity by that point, so he didn't bother to suppress the grateful moan as he soaked up her warmth and scent. Oh, gods, that was better.

"Can you walk?" she asked.

"For you, anything," he grunted, and wobbled to his feet without loosening his grip on the jacket.

She made that unreadable face again, put a hand on his back, and guided him away from the tree.

For once, she set an easy pace, letting the rising morning sun warm them both as they strolled through the high forest. When Jack stopped in the occasional clearing to soak up a little extra solar energy, she didn't seem to notice, merely stopped beside him to sun herself, too.

It was ... strangely companionable, for Elsa.

"I got a ... vision, I suppose ... from Ted through the Nexus," she explained. "He'd seen a small group of hunters near your cabin. Apparently, he likes to keep an eye on you at full moons."

Jack smiled a little and looked down at his bare feet.

"Anyway, he couldn't leave his post for some reason, so he wanted me to look out for you. I owe him half a dozen favors at this point, so I couldn't exactly refuse, could I?"

Jack shook his head. Nobody could say no to Ted, not really.

"Two Nexus jumps later, I was at the cabin first. There were four of them on the way, and I wasn't sure I could take them all before one of them got to a certain sitting wolf." She bumped him with her shoulder, and he staggered. "Lucky you left the key in that puzzle box."

"Wait--you let him out?" Jack gaped at her. "How--are you okay? Did I hurt you?"

She smiled tightly. "Not a scratch, actually. Once I, er, got close enough, I think you remembered my scent. I told you to run, and you did."

His mouth was wide open, but he didn't care. "Let me just--wait--you gave the wolf an order? And he obeyed?"

"What, like it's hard?"

He continued staring, still open-mouthed.

"Anyway," she continued, "once you were gone, I didn't have to play defense, so I took care of things and then waited for daylight to track you down."

Took care of things, he was pretty sure, meant hid four corpses in the woods, but he was too cold and sore and grateful to press the matter.

"Do you have any idea why you decided to climb a tree?"

Jack shrugged. "The beast does what it does. You get used to it."

"Hm."

They walked in silence for a while. Finally, Jack said: "I think it was scared. I was scared."

Elsa shot him a sidelong glance, her eyes flicking over his face. "Well," she said finally. "Good to know one of you has some sense."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

She put her nose in the air. "I'm absolutely terrifying. One of you should recognize it, at least."

Jack giggled as he stumbled over rocks and pine needles.

It was an hour's walk back to the cabin, where only a few suspicious stains in the surrounding dirt suggested the previous night's activities. The door stood open, and Jack hurried inside to throw open his trunk and wrap himself in a warm hoodie and fluffy wool socks. His feet stung as feeling returned, but at least he'd be warm while he hurt.

"I should be going," Elsa said from where she stood awkwardly in the doorway. "Ted says he'll keep an eye out for when you're packed and ready to leave."

Jack nodded. "Yeah, I don't think I'll be coming back here any time soon." Not for a generation at least, he thought sourly. Then he remembered he wasn't alone, and brightened. "Would you like to stay for coffee?" he asked Elsa. "There's a solar hot plate, or we could make a fire."

"Tempting," she said dryly. "But there's proper coffee waiting for me at home."

"Oh. Right. Of course."

Her expression softened. "It's good to see you in one piece, Jack," she said. "Take care of yourself."

"Oh, yes. I always do."

Her mouth twisted in that strange way again, and she started to say something before pressing her red lips firmly together. "Don't forget to wash up," she said instead. "You've got--stuff on your face."

"Yeah, probably," he agreed, turning away from her. He probably looked a fright, to be honest. Full moons always left him covered in God alone knew what, staggering around like a half-dead man. He was suddenly aware that Elsa had been looking at him in his probably filthy state for over an hour.

God, he was a disaster.

She left with a final, awkward farewell, and he set about cleaning up the cabin in preparation to seal it away for a few decades. He wouldn't be coming back until he was sure the scent was cold, and that meant disposing of an awful lot.

The sun was high by the time he was done, soaked in sweat and stinking of hard work and leftover pain. Time to clean up and call Ted.

Elsa had been right, he thought as he fetched a bucket of water from his rainwater cistern and hauled it into the cabin for a final wash. He could definitely feel something smeared on his face. It was a bit sticky. Perhaps the wolf had run into a tree that was leaking sap. Didn't smell like sap, though.

He stripped down, poured a little of the water into a basin for later, and then dipped a rag into the bucket and started scrubbing. A proper hot bath would have to wait until he got to Ted's, but he could at least try to make himself presentable. Bad enough that Elsa had seen him in such a state; he would hate to inflict it on Ted, too.

Poor Elsa, he reflected as he scrubbed. She really deserved better than having to deal with his more monstrous side all the time. Brave as she was, facing down an angry werewolf was still no one's idea of a fun Saturday night.

Now that he thought about it, he wondered how she'd gotten the wolf to obey her and run without putting up a fight. That wasn't like him at all.

Oh, well. She'd probably never tell him. Hunter trade secrets, most likely. Perhaps she'd used the Bloodstone on him. It was no less than he deserved. At least she'd kept herself safe.

He dumped the bucket out the door, shook himself a little to get dry, and walked naked to the jagged piece of mirror he'd nailed up on a wall to wash his face in the basin.

And stopped dead.

Well. He definitely had something on his face.

In the center of his forehead, squarely between his eyes, was a red smudge. Exactly the shade of Elsa's lipstick.

He grinned to himself and grabbed a clean rag to wipe it off on. And possibly keep it forever.

"Okay," he told the wolf as if it would listen. "I'd do whatever she said after that, too."

Maybe he was imagining the agreeing rumble from deep in his chest as he wiped the kiss print and folded the rag for safekeeping before grabbing a second rag to wash with.

Then again, maybe not.

There truly was a first time for everything.

#werewolf by night #wheel of torment #whump #wheel of whump #jack russell #jack russell whump #elsa bloodstone #ted sallis #this isn't monster mash but it's still fun #elsa and jack learn to talk about your feelings challenge 2k24 #probably crack lbr

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