i fed it to the wolves. 3.
title: i fed it to the wolves
pairing: Steve/Tony (other sides are there, but Steve/Tony is our main pairing)
fandom: Avengers (following the movie arc)
rating: NC17
warnings: subtle hits of threats of rape, violence, noncon suggestions, character deaths(minor)
trigger: noncon and violence
Summary:
Wolves rule New York City.
Perhaps that was why Tony never liked New York City. Along with the giant empty mansion filled with his ghosts and the massive tower that, yes had his name on the building but never felt truly his.
Too many wolves in one place made everyone itchy- for a fight or well… a fuck.
The wolves run New York City and any one who cannot run as fast as the wolves or bite as hard as the wolves were simply left to be ruled by the iron jaws of the wolves.
This has always been the way of New York City.
Always.
When Steve was a child so many years ago, there was a pack of the name, the Hydra. Their leader was a wolf of the name Schmidt but he was often referred to as the Red Skull.
Schmidt and his pack ran the whole of New York with brute force, and brute cruelty. New York was a breeding ground of crime and oppression, and at its throne sat Schmidt as its crowned tyrant and his hoard of Alphas his corrupted knights.
There were many times while growing where Steve thought it might have been just a little bit easier if he was born a beta- maybe then the other kids at school would stop bullying him, calling him the runt of the litter; but Steve worked with what he had- he accepted no matter how small or weak or flawed his body was, he was an alpha. Therefore he had to be someone too kept his stance and kept standing.
When Steve was ten his Nana died; and he was taken in by an friend of Nana’s. A vampire by the name Abraham Erskine.
“Call me, Brahm,” he had told 11-year-old Steve in the cab ride to Erskine’s home in Queens after his Nana’s funeral.
Steve remembers looking up at the older man. Brahm was a sanguinarian; a vampire. Steve didn’t know much about sanguinarians. He only knew to what the other children had said about Susan Miller and her family; how they sleep upside down and drink humans until they are nothing but skin and bone. Steve worried that Brahm would some how make Steve conform to a sanguinarian life style. He didn’t want to loose his wolf traits and he definitely didn’t want to drink human blood for dinner.
The older man had looked down at Steve and gave him a warm smile. The smile surprised Steve making him swallow hard and grip his toy bear tighter.
“You have nothing to worry, Steven,” Brahm said. Steve finds the way Brahm says his name quiet odd- his words didn’t sound like any accent he had heard before. Ten- year-old Steve briefly wondered if it was the sanguinarian’s teeth that caused him to speak oddly.
Steve still looks up at the man, notes that his hair is silvery and gray and his short beard matched the hair on his head. He wore round glasses, rimmed with a thin gold frame which reminded Steve of his Nana’s own glasses.
The street light hits Brahm’s face rhythmically- and whenever the light shines against the man’s eyes there would be a brief flicker of red in his pupil.
Vampire’s eye.
Steve quickly looks away and buried his head on top of his bear’s head.
He’s scared. He’s so alone. He’s never been so alone. .
“Steven?”
“Are you going to eat me?” Steve asks his query muffled against the fluff of his teddy bear.
There is a moment of silence. Steve clamps his eyes tightly shut, he fears the answer. What he doesn’t expect to hear is a hearty laugh.
“Is this what has been worrying you?” Brahm asks in between laughs. Steve snaps his head up, his face heating up.
“It- It’s a serious question!”
Brahm leaned into his seat, wiping the tears from the corner of his eyes.
“Yes. Yes it is, Steven. An excellent query,” he said as he leans down towards Steve. Steve wants to flinch away but then reminds himself even though he was not an Alpha he was an alpha and alpha stood their grounds.
“The answer, Steven is that I am not going to eat you. You would make me sick, Steven! Wolf’s blood inside a Vampire? Pshhhaa-“ the vampire exasperates, “It would be a terrible, a very terrible stomach ache. Vampires only drink human or animal blood, and we must always ask before we drink from a human. Do you think that asking someone is the polite thing to do?”
Brahm’s words sink into Steve and automatically he feels better.
“Do I have to sleep upside down or in a coffin??”
“Upside down? Coffin? Why? Would you like one?” Brahm asks with a smile. A small chuckle from the driver who overhears their conversation comes from the front seat. Steven ignores it and his head violently.
“Well I wouldn’t like one either. It is much too old fashioned and I enjoy the comfort of a mattress much better. In fact, Steven, I have a lovely bed at home- with a lovely wool afghan that Mrs. Lowery had knitted for me 3 winters back. She’s a reader by trade. Do not let her take you into her house. She does not stop talking- she goes on for hours and hours, but sometimes she makes these wonderful biscuits and it is almost worth it.”
Steve stares at the vampire and slowly his fears dissipate.
“How do you know my Nana?”
“Oh your Nana, Steven- beautiful woman, your Nana,” Brahm said. Steve can see that the vampire is smiling but for some reason it doesn’t look happy at all.
“I met your Nana, when she was a little girl. She was so lovely- had the most lovely singing voice. I had first heard her singing in 19
I Fed It To The Wolves
There are rules.
Of course there are rules, wolves along with every other Other Borns were part of nature; and nature has very, very strict rules.
Simple, but strict.
Steve thinks back onto those rules as he sits in the dimly lit conference room of SHIELD’s New York Head Quarters. He sits at the glass conference table, and though Steve is leaning into his chair with one elbow at the chair arm, his body is tense and his mind sharp.
He rubs his right index finger along his lips as he watches the giant wolf pace around his cell through the grainy screen of SHEILD’s security cameras. His eyes narrows when the wolf lets out yet another heart breaking howl, runs and smashes his body against the thick silver bars. There is a distinctive hiss of burning flesh coming from the speakers. Steve can’t help but to mentally wince in sympathy for the giant black wolf. Silver burns are never pleasant. The wolf yelps and then growls at the bars and smashes against it again, and again and again till his body was full of burned burn and molten flesh. The wolf finally flinches away from the bars and lets out another howl before walking away.
‘So… mindless’ Steve thinks. In all his years as a wolf Steve had never seen a wolf behave so mindlessly..
From behind the conference door opens, and as it opens it opens a flood of sounds of office bustle and then silence suddenly cuts in as the doors closes. Steve smells a whiff of gunpowder, leather and a faint scent of dark spice. Steve registers vaguely that it was coming from herb charm that Fury carried around with him. A man in the line of work working with Other Borns couldn’t be too careful, Steve supposes.
He returns his attention to the wolf on the screen and notices the burn wounds on the wolf’s body that had already started to close and heal. Burnt fur grew back quickly, and within minutes it was as if the wolf had never had come into contact with the silver bars.
“Please tell me that you heal just as fast, Rogers.”
Steve doesn’t answer Fury, instead his brows burrow down together and his eyes narrow and harden at the wolf shown on the screen.
“And that is answer enough,” Fury says as he sighs unhappily and makes his way around the table, across Steve.
Steve still doesn’t look at Fury as he sits down across the conference table. He continues to ignore him as the other man studies him with his good eye.
“It’s been a while Rogers.”
Steve looks to Fury, his blue eyes gleaming the pale white as it flicks towards Fury then back to the screen.
“It has,” Steve replies from behind his fingers that rested on top of his lips.
“And how is it? The mob business?” Fury asks, smirking. Steve tries not to roll his eyes at the other man’s passive aggression.
“How’s the search for that missing business man? Stark?” Steve shoots back. Fury’s smirk turns into a light glare that seems to say, ‘low blow, Rogers. Low blow.’
The wolf finds it amusing to annoy the other man, Steve tries hard to not smirk at his retaliation.
“You know if Stark is found dead somewhere near Brooklyn, there is going to be hell raining down on you.”
Both Steve and his wolf perk, all childish playing disappears, its time for business.
Steve sits straighter in his chair.
“Yes, let’s talk about that.”
Fury sits straighter in his seat too. Leans forward onto the conference table and folds his hands together.
“Stark is genius weapon’s designer, he’s contracted with the American Government,” Steve nods at the old information “He’s also a wolf. Not that that’s a surprise to anyone. The Starks had been one of the oldest founding families of wolves in America. They had been filthy rich since forever, needless to say the fact that he’s not only filthy rich but also a government contracted weapon’s designer and a wolf makes a lot of people very nervous.”
“Hmm…” Steve hums to acknowledge that he is following. Fury continues:
“Unfortunately there are not many Stark wolves left in the small amount of family left. Unlike some families, they were very loose with passing on their linage.”
“So Stark’s family doesn’t believe in pure linage. What does that have to do with anything?”
“It didn’t until earlier today his personal assistant had released new information to us. Stark is not only one of the last of his family line, he is an Omega.”
Steve stares at Fury and raises his brows. He then looks at his watch and checks the chronometer and looks back at Fury.
“Well, you better find your man soon, Fury. He’s due for heat any time soon.”
Fury then leans away from the table and back into his chair.
“Nope. You better find Stark soon, because he’s due for his heat any time now.”
“What?” Steve spits out as the wolf in Steve growls unhappily.
“You find Stark, and I handle your wolf problems,” Fury says as quickly adds as Steve makes his way to get up and leave the room, “Look, you have too many problems surrounding Brooklyn all at once for it all to be a giant coincidence.” Steve stares at Fury unhappily but lets him continue, because in all reality, he has a point.
“When was the last time a wannabe Alpha came to challenge you? When was the last time any of the other families in New York came to you with a dispute? When was the last time there was a quarrel between one of your street boys and one of theirs?”
Steve remains silent, “Yea. That’s right,” Fury says, “Too god damn long. Something isn’t right. There is something going on and you know something is wrong because everyone else seems to be in on it except you. You, my friend and your jolly group of a pack are the only ones around New York that has not been invited to this mysterious rendezvous plan. This isn’t about Stark. This is about you.”
Steve stares at Fury.
He knows Fury is right.
Another long howl comes from the screen with the huge black stray.
Both men stare at the wolf as the wolf slams himself against the bars again and again and again.
“I’ve never seen a wolf that big,” Steve breaks the silence that had fallen into the dark conference room, “Schmidt wasn’t even that big.”
“And he was a big mother fucker.” Steve again hums in agreement with Fury.
“I’ve also never seen someone, whether they are a stray or not, behave like that.”
“Like what?”
Steve looks away from the wolf on the screen and to Fury. Steve sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose.
“There’s-” Steve starts but stops after the stray howls another bloody cry. Steve’s Alpha instincts take over and all Steve wants to do is get into the cell and tame the stray.
“There’s this saying, not that I’ve heard anyone actually going through it but there was a saying while growing up, people used to say, ‘Stop acting like a wolf in moonlust,’ ,” Steve look up to Fury who has a grim expression on his face.
“I am familiar with the saying.”
“The saying comes from this folklore. It’s told to kids, well- cubs at night. It’s kind of like a scary story you tell kids to make them behave.”
The wolf in the cage finally finishes slamming himself into the silver bars and again paces around the cage as the wounds hiss to a close.
“There are rules- wolves who are born wolves can turn humans into wolves, but only with consent. Wolves mate for life so there was this story where there was a wolf warrior at the beginning of time. He was a strong warrior ruled with great power and strength. His power was so strong and great he had the power to send his most treasured brothers, both wolves into the sky, one to chase the sun and one to chase the moon.”
“So this great warrior wolf, has something to do with this thing?”
Steve’s wolf snarls at Fury’s choice of words, Steve too grips the arm of his chair to hold steady. The pack leader instincts are running too high in Steve for him to care about maintaining his cool.
“Don’t. Call him. That.”
There is an awkward and tense pause in the conference room. Steve doesn’t realize that he’s growling till Fury decides that it is smarter to apologize to the wolf. Steve glares at Fury for a moment longer and then continues his story.
“This wolf warrior, because he was so great was given a lover by nature. They think this is why wolves mate for life.” Fury give a scoff, but then clears his throat quickly after Steve sends another glare.
“The wolf warrior was given a lover, a creature of the moon. Pale, dark, illuminating creature- apparently so beautiful that it broke the once calm oceans and forever casted waves against the shores. But…”
Steve breaks, remembering hearing this story as a child from his Nana, and how this part of the story had always seem to send a cold spiking shiver down his spine. How curious, Steve thinks that he still after all these years still felt the same kind of shiver down his spine, recalling this part of the tale.
“But the moonlight creature was not a wolf, and every morning, the creature had to go away, some place dark. The warrior wolf not wanting to part with his love then proceeded to bite his lover thinking that he could turn his love into a wolf and together they could be together forever.”
“I’m guessing that it didn’t go his way,” Fury says.
“No. It didn’t go his way. There are rules for us too, Fury. Despite what SHIELD thinks of Other Borns, despite what the world thinks of Other Borns being higher beings than humans. It’s not like that. We’re just bound by a different set of laws.”
There is a cabbie on Grand doing his rounds at this exact moment and three collage kids part timing at a movie theatre cleaning up after their last showing talking about their final exams. There is a Mr. and Mrs. Haveshim who live in a small cozy place in Harlem dancing to old tunes in their kitchen and a second year law associate just heading home after finishing the proofs his senior partner wanted him to do.
The point was that it was 12: 49 am, Thursday morning and two of the most powerful men in New York were sitting in the same room staring at each other straight in the eye and talking about a folk tale.
It would have been a ridiculous idea if not for the fact that for both of these men, it was more than a folk tale.
“What happened to the warrior wolf?” Fury asks.
Steve does not break his eyes with Fury’s.
“He went mad,” Steve simply says and then continues to clarify, “His lover was not allowed to become a wolf. It was a moonlight creature, it was a beautiful yet bitter sweet love- it was Nature’s way of gifting the warrior and yet keeping the warrior in line. A wolf with powers so great that he had created day and night- a wolf so strong that when he howls the skies broke open and thunder and lightning struck- it was to humble him.”
“But he bit his lover.”
“He did, and it killed his lover. They say that when his lover died, the glow of the moonlight creature never returned to the moon, that the glow of his lover’s dying for was forever imprinted into his eyes,” Steve blinks and as his pupils retract the pale gleam in his eyes lusters over like a film and quickly disappears.
“And then he went mad.”
“They call it moonlust, when a wolf goes mad and all that is remaining in him is a lost wolf- in pain, in mourning- it makes someone into a mindless animal.”
“Like our friend here,” Fury nods towards the camera screen. Steve nods.
“No one has ever actually experienced moonlust, this is not something that just happens every day. It’s not something people simply go through- even if this man was bitten without consent, this is…” Steve looks away, he can’t find the right word to make fit.
“Wrong?” Fury supplies, Steve snaps his gaze back towards the one eyed and grimly nods.
“That’s not all is it?” Fury asks as he studies Steve’s silence. Steve replies with a sigh.
“Is there ever just one thing?”
The waterboarding continues.
It continues for … well Tony’s not sure how many days its been. They keep him somewhere underground, and so Tony’s lost the concept of days after counting up to 1123200 seconds.
After that Tony distracts himself by breaking down the 1123200 seconds down to milliseconds (1123200000) then to microseconds (1.1232e+12) then to nano, pico and femtose, atto... ( 1.1232e+15, 1.1232e+18, 1.1232e+21, 1.1232e+24...)
After that he starts to re-build the blue prints to his latest projects in his head. He starts from things he’s designed in the previous 7 years. He’s reached up to the bio analysis of the Intellacrop before they realize that Tony simply would not break from brute force.
Tony knows its been days, because Yinsen has a watch with an analog built in.
Tony should be relieved.
He should be glad they’ve stopped with the torture.
Should be glad that his wound is closing up and is free of infections due to Yinsen’s meticulous cleaning... but he’s not.
His surroundings are now too quiet, and his mind is much too loud.
Whenever he closes his eyes he’s reminded of the flames licking him and the stare of dull, focuses and dead (so very much dead) eyes of the once enthusiastic, young, and vibrant eyes of the toll man; and whenever he opens his eyes he is constantly reminded of the harsh, sharp icy waters entering his nostrils and down his throat and into his lungs.
At least when they had me under water there was a moment of complete darkness. Tony quickly dismisses the thought right away from his head, because he knows where that kind of thinking leads. He’s thought them before, he’s been down that dark road before and he had promised himself when he was younger, that he can never go there.
So Tony goes back to reciting blue print plans in his head.
And that’s when it strikes him.
So he write a note to Yinsen a couple days after his revelation because he doesn’t know if the room is bugged even though he knows that the camera installed at the corner of the room has no audio.
‘Can you convert silver to palladium?’
you can also read it on ao3 : http://archiveofourown.org/works/455042/chapters/1013057
pairing: Steve/Tony (other sides are there, but Steve/Tony is our main pairing)
fandom: Avengers (following the movie arc)
rating: NC17
warnings: subtle hits of threats of rape, violence, noncon suggestions, character deaths(minor)
trigger: noncon and violence
Summary:
Wolves rule New York City.
Perhaps that was why Tony never liked New York City. Along with the giant empty mansion filled with his ghosts and the massive tower that, yes had his name on the building but never felt truly his.
Too many wolves in one place made everyone itchy- for a fight or well… a fuck.
The wolves run New York City and any one who cannot run as fast as the wolves or bite as hard as the wolves were simply left to be ruled by the iron jaws of the wolves.
This has always been the way of New York City.
Always.
When Steve was a child so many years ago, there was a pack of the name, the Hydra. Their leader was a wolf of the name Schmidt but he was often referred to as the Red Skull.
Schmidt and his pack ran the whole of New York with brute force, and brute cruelty. New York was a breeding ground of crime and oppression, and at its throne sat Schmidt as its crowned tyrant and his hoard of Alphas his corrupted knights.
There were many times while growing where Steve thought it might have been just a little bit easier if he was born a beta- maybe then the other kids at school would stop bullying him, calling him the runt of the litter; but Steve worked with what he had- he accepted no matter how small or weak or flawed his body was, he was an alpha. Therefore he had to be someone too kept his stance and kept standing.
When Steve was ten his Nana died; and he was taken in by an friend of Nana’s. A vampire by the name Abraham Erskine.
“Call me, Brahm,” he had told 11-year-old Steve in the cab ride to Erskine’s home in Queens after his Nana’s funeral.
Steve remembers looking up at the older man. Brahm was a sanguinarian; a vampire. Steve didn’t know much about sanguinarians. He only knew to what the other children had said about Susan Miller and her family; how they sleep upside down and drink humans until they are nothing but skin and bone. Steve worried that Brahm would some how make Steve conform to a sanguinarian life style. He didn’t want to loose his wolf traits and he definitely didn’t want to drink human blood for dinner.
The older man had looked down at Steve and gave him a warm smile. The smile surprised Steve making him swallow hard and grip his toy bear tighter.
“You have nothing to worry, Steven,” Brahm said. Steve finds the way Brahm says his name quiet odd- his words didn’t sound like any accent he had heard before. Ten- year-old Steve briefly wondered if it was the sanguinarian’s teeth that caused him to speak oddly.
Steve still looks up at the man, notes that his hair is silvery and gray and his short beard matched the hair on his head. He wore round glasses, rimmed with a thin gold frame which reminded Steve of his Nana’s own glasses.
The street light hits Brahm’s face rhythmically- and whenever the light shines against the man’s eyes there would be a brief flicker of red in his pupil.
Vampire’s eye.
Steve quickly looks away and buried his head on top of his bear’s head.
He’s scared. He’s so alone. He’s never been so alone. .
“Steven?”
“Are you going to eat me?” Steve asks his query muffled against the fluff of his teddy bear.
There is a moment of silence. Steve clamps his eyes tightly shut, he fears the answer. What he doesn’t expect to hear is a hearty laugh.
“Is this what has been worrying you?” Brahm asks in between laughs. Steve snaps his head up, his face heating up.
“It- It’s a serious question!”
Brahm leaned into his seat, wiping the tears from the corner of his eyes.
“Yes. Yes it is, Steven. An excellent query,” he said as he leans down towards Steve. Steve wants to flinch away but then reminds himself even though he was not an Alpha he was an alpha and alpha stood their grounds.
“The answer, Steven is that I am not going to eat you. You would make me sick, Steven! Wolf’s blood inside a Vampire? Pshhhaa-“ the vampire exasperates, “It would be a terrible, a very terrible stomach ache. Vampires only drink human or animal blood, and we must always ask before we drink from a human. Do you think that asking someone is the polite thing to do?”
Brahm’s words sink into Steve and automatically he feels better.
“Do I have to sleep upside down or in a coffin??”
“Upside down? Coffin? Why? Would you like one?” Brahm asks with a smile. A small chuckle from the driver who overhears their conversation comes from the front seat. Steven ignores it and his head violently.
“Well I wouldn’t like one either. It is much too old fashioned and I enjoy the comfort of a mattress much better. In fact, Steven, I have a lovely bed at home- with a lovely wool afghan that Mrs. Lowery had knitted for me 3 winters back. She’s a reader by trade. Do not let her take you into her house. She does not stop talking- she goes on for hours and hours, but sometimes she makes these wonderful biscuits and it is almost worth it.”
Steve stares at the vampire and slowly his fears dissipate.
“How do you know my Nana?”
“Oh your Nana, Steven- beautiful woman, your Nana,” Brahm said. Steve can see that the vampire is smiling but for some reason it doesn’t look happy at all.
“I met your Nana, when she was a little girl. She was so lovely- had the most lovely singing voice. I had first heard her singing in 19
I Fed It To The Wolves
There are rules.
Of course there are rules, wolves along with every other Other Borns were part of nature; and nature has very, very strict rules.
Simple, but strict.
Steve thinks back onto those rules as he sits in the dimly lit conference room of SHIELD’s New York Head Quarters. He sits at the glass conference table, and though Steve is leaning into his chair with one elbow at the chair arm, his body is tense and his mind sharp.
He rubs his right index finger along his lips as he watches the giant wolf pace around his cell through the grainy screen of SHEILD’s security cameras. His eyes narrows when the wolf lets out yet another heart breaking howl, runs and smashes his body against the thick silver bars. There is a distinctive hiss of burning flesh coming from the speakers. Steve can’t help but to mentally wince in sympathy for the giant black wolf. Silver burns are never pleasant. The wolf yelps and then growls at the bars and smashes against it again, and again and again till his body was full of burned burn and molten flesh. The wolf finally flinches away from the bars and lets out another howl before walking away.
‘So… mindless’ Steve thinks. In all his years as a wolf Steve had never seen a wolf behave so mindlessly..
From behind the conference door opens, and as it opens it opens a flood of sounds of office bustle and then silence suddenly cuts in as the doors closes. Steve smells a whiff of gunpowder, leather and a faint scent of dark spice. Steve registers vaguely that it was coming from herb charm that Fury carried around with him. A man in the line of work working with Other Borns couldn’t be too careful, Steve supposes.
He returns his attention to the wolf on the screen and notices the burn wounds on the wolf’s body that had already started to close and heal. Burnt fur grew back quickly, and within minutes it was as if the wolf had never had come into contact with the silver bars.
“Please tell me that you heal just as fast, Rogers.”
Steve doesn’t answer Fury, instead his brows burrow down together and his eyes narrow and harden at the wolf shown on the screen.
“And that is answer enough,” Fury says as he sighs unhappily and makes his way around the table, across Steve.
Steve still doesn’t look at Fury as he sits down across the conference table. He continues to ignore him as the other man studies him with his good eye.
“It’s been a while Rogers.”
Steve looks to Fury, his blue eyes gleaming the pale white as it flicks towards Fury then back to the screen.
“It has,” Steve replies from behind his fingers that rested on top of his lips.
“And how is it? The mob business?” Fury asks, smirking. Steve tries not to roll his eyes at the other man’s passive aggression.
“How’s the search for that missing business man? Stark?” Steve shoots back. Fury’s smirk turns into a light glare that seems to say, ‘low blow, Rogers. Low blow.’
The wolf finds it amusing to annoy the other man, Steve tries hard to not smirk at his retaliation.
“You know if Stark is found dead somewhere near Brooklyn, there is going to be hell raining down on you.”
Both Steve and his wolf perk, all childish playing disappears, its time for business.
Steve sits straighter in his chair.
“Yes, let’s talk about that.”
Fury sits straighter in his seat too. Leans forward onto the conference table and folds his hands together.
“Stark is genius weapon’s designer, he’s contracted with the American Government,” Steve nods at the old information “He’s also a wolf. Not that that’s a surprise to anyone. The Starks had been one of the oldest founding families of wolves in America. They had been filthy rich since forever, needless to say the fact that he’s not only filthy rich but also a government contracted weapon’s designer and a wolf makes a lot of people very nervous.”
“Hmm…” Steve hums to acknowledge that he is following. Fury continues:
“Unfortunately there are not many Stark wolves left in the small amount of family left. Unlike some families, they were very loose with passing on their linage.”
“So Stark’s family doesn’t believe in pure linage. What does that have to do with anything?”
“It didn’t until earlier today his personal assistant had released new information to us. Stark is not only one of the last of his family line, he is an Omega.”
Steve stares at Fury and raises his brows. He then looks at his watch and checks the chronometer and looks back at Fury.
“Well, you better find your man soon, Fury. He’s due for heat any time soon.”
Fury then leans away from the table and back into his chair.
“Nope. You better find Stark soon, because he’s due for his heat any time now.”
“What?” Steve spits out as the wolf in Steve growls unhappily.
“You find Stark, and I handle your wolf problems,” Fury says as quickly adds as Steve makes his way to get up and leave the room, “Look, you have too many problems surrounding Brooklyn all at once for it all to be a giant coincidence.” Steve stares at Fury unhappily but lets him continue, because in all reality, he has a point.
“When was the last time a wannabe Alpha came to challenge you? When was the last time any of the other families in New York came to you with a dispute? When was the last time there was a quarrel between one of your street boys and one of theirs?”
Steve remains silent, “Yea. That’s right,” Fury says, “Too god damn long. Something isn’t right. There is something going on and you know something is wrong because everyone else seems to be in on it except you. You, my friend and your jolly group of a pack are the only ones around New York that has not been invited to this mysterious rendezvous plan. This isn’t about Stark. This is about you.”
Steve stares at Fury.
He knows Fury is right.
Another long howl comes from the screen with the huge black stray.
Both men stare at the wolf as the wolf slams himself against the bars again and again and again.
“I’ve never seen a wolf that big,” Steve breaks the silence that had fallen into the dark conference room, “Schmidt wasn’t even that big.”
“And he was a big mother fucker.” Steve again hums in agreement with Fury.
“I’ve also never seen someone, whether they are a stray or not, behave like that.”
“Like what?”
Steve looks away from the wolf on the screen and to Fury. Steve sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose.
“There’s-” Steve starts but stops after the stray howls another bloody cry. Steve’s Alpha instincts take over and all Steve wants to do is get into the cell and tame the stray.
“There’s this saying, not that I’ve heard anyone actually going through it but there was a saying while growing up, people used to say, ‘Stop acting like a wolf in moonlust,’ ,” Steve look up to Fury who has a grim expression on his face.
“I am familiar with the saying.”
“The saying comes from this folklore. It’s told to kids, well- cubs at night. It’s kind of like a scary story you tell kids to make them behave.”
The wolf in the cage finally finishes slamming himself into the silver bars and again paces around the cage as the wounds hiss to a close.
“There are rules- wolves who are born wolves can turn humans into wolves, but only with consent. Wolves mate for life so there was this story where there was a wolf warrior at the beginning of time. He was a strong warrior ruled with great power and strength. His power was so strong and great he had the power to send his most treasured brothers, both wolves into the sky, one to chase the sun and one to chase the moon.”
“So this great warrior wolf, has something to do with this thing?”
Steve’s wolf snarls at Fury’s choice of words, Steve too grips the arm of his chair to hold steady. The pack leader instincts are running too high in Steve for him to care about maintaining his cool.
“Don’t. Call him. That.”
There is an awkward and tense pause in the conference room. Steve doesn’t realize that he’s growling till Fury decides that it is smarter to apologize to the wolf. Steve glares at Fury for a moment longer and then continues his story.
“This wolf warrior, because he was so great was given a lover by nature. They think this is why wolves mate for life.” Fury give a scoff, but then clears his throat quickly after Steve sends another glare.
“The wolf warrior was given a lover, a creature of the moon. Pale, dark, illuminating creature- apparently so beautiful that it broke the once calm oceans and forever casted waves against the shores. But…”
Steve breaks, remembering hearing this story as a child from his Nana, and how this part of the story had always seem to send a cold spiking shiver down his spine. How curious, Steve thinks that he still after all these years still felt the same kind of shiver down his spine, recalling this part of the tale.
“But the moonlight creature was not a wolf, and every morning, the creature had to go away, some place dark. The warrior wolf not wanting to part with his love then proceeded to bite his lover thinking that he could turn his love into a wolf and together they could be together forever.”
“I’m guessing that it didn’t go his way,” Fury says.
“No. It didn’t go his way. There are rules for us too, Fury. Despite what SHIELD thinks of Other Borns, despite what the world thinks of Other Borns being higher beings than humans. It’s not like that. We’re just bound by a different set of laws.”
There is a cabbie on Grand doing his rounds at this exact moment and three collage kids part timing at a movie theatre cleaning up after their last showing talking about their final exams. There is a Mr. and Mrs. Haveshim who live in a small cozy place in Harlem dancing to old tunes in their kitchen and a second year law associate just heading home after finishing the proofs his senior partner wanted him to do.
The point was that it was 12: 49 am, Thursday morning and two of the most powerful men in New York were sitting in the same room staring at each other straight in the eye and talking about a folk tale.
It would have been a ridiculous idea if not for the fact that for both of these men, it was more than a folk tale.
“What happened to the warrior wolf?” Fury asks.
Steve does not break his eyes with Fury’s.
“He went mad,” Steve simply says and then continues to clarify, “His lover was not allowed to become a wolf. It was a moonlight creature, it was a beautiful yet bitter sweet love- it was Nature’s way of gifting the warrior and yet keeping the warrior in line. A wolf with powers so great that he had created day and night- a wolf so strong that when he howls the skies broke open and thunder and lightning struck- it was to humble him.”
“But he bit his lover.”
“He did, and it killed his lover. They say that when his lover died, the glow of the moonlight creature never returned to the moon, that the glow of his lover’s dying for was forever imprinted into his eyes,” Steve blinks and as his pupils retract the pale gleam in his eyes lusters over like a film and quickly disappears.
“And then he went mad.”
“They call it moonlust, when a wolf goes mad and all that is remaining in him is a lost wolf- in pain, in mourning- it makes someone into a mindless animal.”
“Like our friend here,” Fury nods towards the camera screen. Steve nods.
“No one has ever actually experienced moonlust, this is not something that just happens every day. It’s not something people simply go through- even if this man was bitten without consent, this is…” Steve looks away, he can’t find the right word to make fit.
“Wrong?” Fury supplies, Steve snaps his gaze back towards the one eyed and grimly nods.
“That’s not all is it?” Fury asks as he studies Steve’s silence. Steve replies with a sigh.
“Is there ever just one thing?”
The waterboarding continues.
It continues for … well Tony’s not sure how many days its been. They keep him somewhere underground, and so Tony’s lost the concept of days after counting up to 1123200 seconds.
After that Tony distracts himself by breaking down the 1123200 seconds down to milliseconds (1123200000) then to microseconds (1.1232e+12) then to nano, pico and femtose, atto... ( 1.1232e+15, 1.1232e+18, 1.1232e+21, 1.1232e+24...)
After that he starts to re-build the blue prints to his latest projects in his head. He starts from things he’s designed in the previous 7 years. He’s reached up to the bio analysis of the Intellacrop before they realize that Tony simply would not break from brute force.
Tony knows its been days, because Yinsen has a watch with an analog built in.
Tony should be relieved.
He should be glad they’ve stopped with the torture.
Should be glad that his wound is closing up and is free of infections due to Yinsen’s meticulous cleaning... but he’s not.
His surroundings are now too quiet, and his mind is much too loud.
Whenever he closes his eyes he’s reminded of the flames licking him and the stare of dull, focuses and dead (so very much dead) eyes of the once enthusiastic, young, and vibrant eyes of the toll man; and whenever he opens his eyes he is constantly reminded of the harsh, sharp icy waters entering his nostrils and down his throat and into his lungs.
At least when they had me under water there was a moment of complete darkness. Tony quickly dismisses the thought right away from his head, because he knows where that kind of thinking leads. He’s thought them before, he’s been down that dark road before and he had promised himself when he was younger, that he can never go there.
So Tony goes back to reciting blue print plans in his head.
And that’s when it strikes him.
So he write a note to Yinsen a couple days after his revelation because he doesn’t know if the room is bugged even though he knows that the camera installed at the corner of the room has no audio.
‘Can you convert silver to palladium?’
you can also read it on ao3 : http://archiveofourown.org/works/455042/chapters/1013057