Chapter Text
Peter Hale had lived…not a long life, or a particularly fulfilling one, but, hey, longer than most of his family members. He might have had something to do with the limited longevity of one of said relatives (and a select smattering of others) but if so, that was…bygones. He’d died for it, after all, and he was pretty sure death was supposed to be a great clearing of the karmic slate. He was reborn. A new man. Of sorts.
This was not exactly how things were supposed to go, per his evil master plan. According to that plan (manipulate the pretty girl into digging up his corpse, via a confluence of witchery-related happenings; come back wreaking vengeance, annoying his nephew, and spreading the joy of his murderous sassiness to the masses), he would have returned, triumphant, the once and future Alpha. Except he was no longer an alpha, not even a beta. Unless the Leporidae family was more hierarchical than Watership Down had led him to believe.
Peter Hale—Big Bad and villain extraordinaire—was now, of all things, a rabbit shifter. And not a particularly good one, at that, apparently. He felt his nose twitch, of its own accord, as he glanced up at the redhead now looking around, confused and terrified, like she had come out of a horrible nightmare. Which—no. Peter was well acquainted with his own mind, and while somewhat dark, Machiavellian, and frankly amoral, it was probably no more nightmarish than the average high school social scene.
The girl walks out, as if in a fugue state still. Like she hasn’t even seen the round bundle that now sits in the rubble, a flash of white in darkness. Hasn’t seen him, who was just in her, in a disturbing and probably reprehensible sort of way, but with purely self-preservational intent. And so, left behind by one unsatisfactory vessel, and alone in an even more unsuitable one, Peter hops. Not quite high enough to propel him out of the hole he’s in, but enough to see where he needs to go. Those floorboards aren’t that far above. So he thinks of hurt and loss and the home that he no longer has—hasn’t had for a very long time—and he jumps some more. And finally, after more of the hopping than he would like, he lunges at the pinnacle of the leap and—yes, that’s him on wood flooring again. He makes his way through the burnt wreckage, trying to avoid getting slivers of wood in his ridiculously large paws.
He’d felt undignified, running in his werewolf form, but this was somehow even worse. It was like being on a pogo stick, in a children’s TV program, an up-and-down of nauseating cuteness. And also, just nauseating.
He tries to shift. Yet though he digs at that anchor within him—that which was once family and is now revenge—he lacks something. The claws to latch onto the anchor, perhaps. These giant paws just scrabble about ineffectually, with his mind equally adrift. There’s just…nothing to hold to, anymore. He comes down from the struggle still a rabbit. Stuck. And smaller than he ever thought he could feel.
The night is dark, and full of terror-inducing things for a small, herbivorous creature. Peter knows the way to town, but he doesn’t know, anymore, how far it is.
He doesn’t know what wolves walk the woods. If they’re friend or foe. If, regardless of category, they’d even recognize him, as he is right now.
But as he sits, indecisive in a way he’s never been before, tail to the cold hard ground, he realizes, there are no friends, anymore. And his last living family member killed him. He can’t even bring himself to resent that. He would have, he thinks idly, done quite the same.
So he hops off, in a somewhat-straight line, because in addition to his training, his history, his knowledge, he has also seen the movies. He knows that a moving target is harder to hit than a sitting one. He knows that, even in the night, he stands out against the darkness of the landscape. He screams small pitiful woodland creature in a way that makes his teeth ache, and he tries not to think about rodents that must constantly chew at things lest their teeth dig through their very jaws. He refuses to think of himself as a rodent. He is Peter Hale. He has defied Death. Death may have gotten a jab in, what with the new fluffy exterior, but Peter is alive, and he is ready to seek vengeance. And if his killer instinct is currently focusing on leafy green things, in particular—this too shall pass.
I’m back, he thinks. But no noise in his new repertoire sounds suitably menacing, so he keeps it to himself. As returns go, it’s not quite what he was hoping for.
Peter ends up, finally, in the alley by his apartment. He’s somewhat surprised to have made it this far without issue, even if it did take him until dawn. He’s more surprised that, in the whole, arduous journey over here, he never thought to consider how he would get into the apartment.
Like any responsible renter, Peter locks all his doors and windows before leaving. And he’s just not a pet person, so there’s no handy door flap. There’s just…nothing.
And even devious minds sometimes need opposable thumbs.
So Peter hops again, backtracking. To a park, he thinks, except…kids will visit the park. And homeless people. Being neither paternal nor altruistic, Peter does not deal well with these particular people groups, even when in human form himself.
A house with a yard, he thinks—one with a garden, and slightly overgrown grass. That’s what he needs. And so he redirects, toward a post-war neighborhood, the kind built when people had dreams of places that were green and had children they wanted to run around out-of-doors, and other silly things.
He pushes himself past a brick sign; stumbles through a maze of interlocking curves; flops down a cul-de-sac; trudges down a driveway; slides through a gate; collapses behind the first promising-looking hedge. The search for a garden can wait.
So the night passes, in what passes for comfort in this new life of his. And when he wakes, it is, for once, not to nightmares of fire and death.
“Oh, it’s a bunny!” squawks an all-to-near voice.
No shit, Sherlock.
“Hey there, little buddy! Bet you wished I had some carrots for you to munch, huh? But I’m not a gardener. More a cultivator-of-young-minds type. Equally noble, I assure you. But…guess you’re someone’s pet? I should probably put you in an enclosure. And advertise. Signs. What do you fit in, buddy? I’ve got…shit. Could you get out of a bathtub?”
Even if it took me hours and multiple concussions.
“OK, so I’m going to reach for you. And you’re gonna be a nice little bunny, aren’t ya, lil guy? A nice little bunny. Who doesn’t want to run away, doesn’t want to bite the nice man…”
Fuck that noise. Peter chomps down.
“Hey, no! We went over this! No biting the nice man!”
Peter has never agreed to anything without his lawyer’s prior approval, and he’s a bit skeptical of the niceness of any guy calling himself such. He runs his tongue over his teeth, and regrets again in their lack of sharpness. The man isn’t even bleeding. Peter’s bite used to be a bit more of a deterrent.
The man, looming, has not backed away. Seems, in fact, to be gearing up for another attempted grab. Fight out of the equation, though it has always been Peter’s preferred response, Peter prepares to run, except…there was a hedge in that direction, wasn’t there. And in his daze he feels those arms close around him, and hears that voice, again, triumphant and closer yet: “Gotcha, Bun-bun!”
And with that one horrible name, being captured by an obvious half-wit is no longer the greatest indignity Peter has suffered.