Chapter Text
Snow flurried around the flanks of the great wolf, falling into drifts that silenced his movements. It was borne on the stirred air along with the mingling scents of pine and distant warm body.
That was his only goal. He quickened his pace while staying low. The snow and the pine faded out. He was patient. His body was a law of nature, dark bristling fur and pressing ahead.
Long quick pawstep, long quick pawstep. The impression of yellow-white fur was within his senses now. Around him, under him. It welled in the deep black sky and fell to earth as snow. It was a shadow following him, matching him long pawstep for long pawstep forward and next to him and--
Then he was awake in darkness. Warmth was all around him. He opened his eyes, and after a moment he could remember that he was in his bed, upstairs, in his house, in his room filled with deep purple morning.
Fox was curled asleep next to him, his tail covering his face in a sort of sweet way. He was staying at Wolf's house for the week while his house was being renovated (again.) Tomorrow the two of them would finalize and definitely, this time, execute their new plan. Real Rabbit will taste so much better than Dream rabbit smells, I bet.
Wolf turned his attention to the shadow next to the bed. With some effort he heaved his body up into a slightly-sitting position and perked his ears. Once the dark figure-shaped blob understood he was awake, a voice emanated from it.
“Hey, Dad? You’re still there, right?”
“Yes, Barry. Do you need something?”
“No, I was just making sure… Sometimes when, y’know, the aliens abduct people they can-- they can, uh--” The edges of the shadow warped slightly as Wolf’s youngest son glanced anxiously around the room. “Do you think I can stay with you for the rest of the night?”
Wolf made a low rumbly sighing sound in the back of his throat. “...Barry, eventually you’ll have to learn to deal with these things on your own. Like we were talking about. You can stay for tonight, but remember a pack is only strong when each member is able to--”
Barry was already clambering onto the bed from Wolf’s side. He quickly reached the soft divot of the center, turned in a little circle and plunked himself down pretty much directly on Fox’s tail, startling him awake with a loud yelp.
“Sorry, Fox,” Wolf mumbled absently as he began attempting to extract the blankets from underneath Barry. It took a while in the dark and with Barry already nearly asleep and Fox hissing and bemoaning his tail instead of helping. But eventually Wolf got him to at least move over a bit, and get Barry actually underneath the blankets.
The stillness of the night returned.
At some point Fox composed himself. He yawned and said, “Well, I suppose I’ll be up in an hour or two anyway, being the crepuscular creature that I am… but for your own sake you ought to be more firm with him.”
“Yeah, I know… He seemed worried during dinner.”
“Hmm. It’s a difficult age, isn’t it?” Wolf sighed. “Yup.”
Earlier That Day, Mid-Afternoon
Barry, his brother Simon, and their next-door neighbor Lucy sat in the wolves’ living room. They were watching the sequel to Timmy Gets a New Mother on DVD.
“I don’t think the budget for this was very high,” Lucy muttered and drooped her head against the armrest of the couch.
“I like it,” Simon said. He was sitting on the floor against the couch, paws stuffed in his jacket pockets. He had a way of leaning against things in a way that suggested he could physically melt into them if he chose to. “The soundtrack’s nice.”
Lucy made a show of rotating one of her large yellow rabbit ears towards the TV. Violins swelled over the cartoon badger and his stepmother’s tearful heart-to-heart.
“Still sounds corny to me,” she said. “And it couldn’t make up for the rubbish plot anyway.”
“Well--” Simon started.
“Hey!” Barry suddenly chimed in next to Lucy, “What if in the next movie, his original mom comes back but she’s all mangled from the accident and she’s been rebuilt into cyborg and her and the stepmom have a big laser battle for his love--”
“I don’t think that could ever happen,” Lucy interrupted, frowning. “Once somebody’s mother is gone she doesn’t usually come back. I mean, unless Timmy’s father happened to have lied about her being dead…”
The boys stared at her. Her nose twitched as she stared into the middle distance, frowning more deeply. “And anyway, you shouldn’t speak so lightly about people’s mothers being mangled.”
“...Sorry.” Barry stared into his lap.
Simon scratched the back of his neck and studied the TV.
Eventually Lucy took a deep breath and said quietly, “I’m sorry. I just-- Maybe I should go now. I think I see Wolf coming up the path anyway, and he probably won’t like us hanging out again. Um... maybe we can finish the movie another time?”
“It’s alright, it is kind of boring,” Simon admitted. “See ya, Lucy.”
“Bye.” The back door soon clicked shut. The wolves looked at the TV in silence for a while. It would not be accurate to say they were actually watching it.
“Simon… Do you think she still loves us?”
“Lucy? Well, I don’t know if she ever--”
“No, no!” Barry shook his head frantically. “I mean-- I mean Mom. Lucy said that thing about moms not coming back and it’s been so long since Mom called us or anything… ”
“Hey man, I think Lucy’s just in a bad mood right now… She was thumping her foot everywhere before we even started watching. Don’t take it personally.”
"Okay."
Next Day
Around midmorning, Fox walked into Wolf’s living room and found Barry sprawled out on the floor, completely absorbed scribbling something on a piece of notebook paper.
He stood for a moment, watching. He couldn’t read anything from this distance, especially with Barry’s terrible pawwriting. At the moment Barry had filled the entire page and was flipping it over Fox asked what he was doing.
Barry looked up, eyes glazed over. “Writing a letter to Mom. I would have called her but after what happened last week Dad said no more long distance calls and that probably includes Canada, right?”
“Yes, probably. You do know her mailing address, yes?”
“Uh, if that’s the place she lives, yeah! Duh! It’s our house! I mean our old house."
“Mmhmm, yes, but- you are sure that is where she currently lives?”
Barry looked at him blankly.
“She didn’t go and live somewhere else?”
Barry cast his eyes down then. He still held the pen on the paper unthinkingly, and it was starting to leave a small blue stain. Perhaps it felt like somewhat of a violation that Fox had this information. But it wouldn’t do to have the letter delivered to someplace nobody lived anymore.
Finally Barry stammered quietly, “Y-yeah, maybe. She did leave. But like, I thought… I don’t know. Nobody ever said she wasn’t coming back.”
Fox looked down at him in a way that might have been paternal or patronizing. “That’s alright. I suppose I should see if I can acquire her address. And you’ll probably need some stamps too, hm?”
“...Yeah. Thanks, Fox.”
Five days passed.
Yet another plan had failed spectacularly yesterday. Rabbit was infuriatingly alive, leaning on his side of the fence. Wolf could simply spring after and grab him, right now. It would be so easy. But his arms were currently weighed down with grocery bags full of things that needed to be refrigerated.
“Ah, by the way, Lucy hasn’t been around at your place, has she?” Rabbit's expression was relaxed and half-lidded, though Wolf could perceive that his muscles were ever so slightly tensed, in a practiced sort of way.
Wolf growled. “Unfortunately, yeah, she has. I agree it’s inappropriate. I’ve talked to my boys.”
“And I’ve talked to Lucy. Maybe you should exercise your parental authority.”
“Maybe your kit should learn to be more careful.”
“I think the postman’s here. You paid your water bill yet?”
Wolf turned away. He heard Rabbit’s quick, quiet footsteps on the grass as he escaped into his own house. Whatever. The postal worker, a sheep, tentatively slipped something through Wolf’s mail slot before scooting to the next house.
Wolf made his way over, slipping one of the bags awkwardly down his arm to free up his paw, then unlocked the door. On the floor of the entryway was a letter. You know, this was still odd to him, not having an outside mailbox. Convenient, though! Carefully and against the protests of his back, he set the bags down, leaned over, and picked it up.
The letter was cream colored and slightly textured. The handwriting was angular cursive scrawl. His recognition was immediate.
Immediate in the way of an asteroid colliding with the Earth, no warning, no space for conscious thought, no time to prepare for the rolling ash cloud.
His paws started to shake.
...Oh, man.