Fic: Let It Out And Let It Breathe
Title: Let It Out And Let It Breathe
Fandom: Cursed
Pairing/Characters: Jake/Ellie, background Bo/Jimmy/Brook.
Rating: PG-13
Words: 3,000
Summary: An AU take of the end of the movie. In the aftermath of a different choice, they make a life out of the wreckage.
Notes: Written for yuletide. Thank you to scorpiod1 for all the hand-holding and good advice and catching all my errors. You are truly a life saver! ♥ ♥ ♥
Ellie walks in the front door, balancing the paper bag of groceries in her arms as she pushes the door closed with her elbow and kicks off her heels, adding them to the already impressive collection in a row on the floor in the foyer. She wriggles her toes as she sighs, easing into the contentedness that comes from being home after a long day.
She’s greeted with the sounds of Jimmy and Bo bickering over who gets control over the remote as Brook just laughs and refuses to take sides. She can hear it as clearly as if she were in the room with them and not down the hall. The super-hearing took some getting used to and at times it’s extremely inconvenient, but right now it’s nice and feels normal. And besides, she likes coming home to a full house. She thinks her parents would have liked that there was laughter again.
She goes into the kitchen, following the click-clack sounds of Jake typing on his laptop. He lifts his eyes from the screen and smiles at her when she walks in, but falls easily back into it, raising his hand with his pointer finger jutting out. “Just a minute and I’ll help,” he says as his eyes scan the screen. “I just need to put the finishing touches on this email.”
“It’s okay,” Ellie says, hefting the back onto the counter and stretching out her arms once free of its weight. “This is all going into the fridge anyway. I need to start switching up grocery stores, I’m starting to get weird looks.” She starts unloading the bag, placing the pages out on the counter, ready to be transferred to the refrigerator.
“A cart full of steak will do that to you,” Jake mutters, and then ducks quickly when Ellie tosses the crumpled up paper bag at his head, grinning when he raises his head slowly with his hands up in surrender. “I’m just saying that you’d get less looks if you’d just compromise and order the meat online like I suggested.”
“It doesn’t taste right if it’s been frozen and thawed, though,” Ellie says, frowning and then throwing up her hands. “What are we even talking about?” she asks, turning around and grabbing a stack of steak cuts and bringing them over to the fridge.
“Meat,” Jake points out, and shrugs at her when she turns back around. “It kind of comes with the territory of being domesticated werewolves.” His eyes leave her gaze to look in the direction of the living room, tilting his head as Brook lets out another high peal of laughter, followed by a crash and rumble, tell-tale signs that the argument over the remote had dissolved into a wrestling match. “And adopting two new members of the pack doesn’t help. I hope they don’t break the coffee table again.”
Ellie can’t help but feel the flip-flop in her stomach at the word pack, the wolf part of her warm and happy, the sense of belonging overwhelmingly powerful. Sometimes she questions if she made the right choice, if this was what was best for all of them, but she thinks of them, her little make-shift family and doesn’t think it could be wrong.
-----
Ellie feels the change course through her and all she can think is, no, no, this was supposed to be stopped, it was gone, they broke the curse. Jake grips her upper arms tight in his hands as she shakes her head, feeling her body shift like tectonic plates, moving and re-arranging. She feels like she’s caught on the fault line, torn in two. Jake forces her to look at him and she can see the guilt marring the lines of his face, the sadness in his gaze.
“I’m so sorry,” he says, his voice cracking on the last syllable. “I thought it was Joanie, I thought… but I was wrong. It’s me, Ellie. It’s me.” He pauses, and she can see the click in his jaw as he tightens it, grinding down on his teeth. “When you turn, you have to kill me,” he says, and Ellie immediately shakes her head, tears welling up in her eyes as they flicker back and forth between two forms. Jake just nods, reaching up and stilling her head with his hand. “Yes you do. It’s the only way to stop it, it’s the only way this ends, okay?”
Ellie’s body reacts violently with the surge of emotion flooding her system, jerking as her spine arches and her nails grow long and sharp, but she doesn’t want to give into it, too scared she’ll lose control and do what Jake says, regardless of what she wants and she doesn’t want Jake dead, doesn’t want him dead more than she wants this curse broken. It’s like that realization snaps her body back under her control, her nails retract and she’s able to stand up straight, and she breathes in deeply before grabbing onto Jake.
“No,” she says, her voice managing to be firmer than she’s ever heard it sound with a sense of real authority behind it, and she can feel confidence build when it looks like Jake is listening. “We’ll find another way, okay? There has to be another way. This can’t be all there is.”
“You don’t think I’ve looked?” Jake asks, choking out a bitter laugh. “It’s either kill me, or live with it.”
Ellie reaches up and grabs his face in her hands, running her thumbs down the slopes of his cheekbones. “Then we’ll live with it,” she says, and then pausing as she bites down on her bottom lip, thinking of what she was giving up, what she was agreeing to, but in the end decides it’s better than the alternative. She pushes up on the balls of her feet and kisses him quickly, making her choice. “We’ll figure out some way to live with it.”
-----
Ellie can feel the night creep up on them, even as the last rays of sunlight still shine brightly in the sky, like she can feel the Earth rotating, lining up and taking position in time to trigger the change. The anticipation effects them all in different ways, but the common thread seems to be a twitching, needling feeling of pent-up energy rising up within them, making them feel the need to take off running deep in their limbs.
She looks out the window and checks the watch on her wrist, calculating the distance they have to travel to get to Angeles National Forest and the time it’ll take them to get there, and goes over and taps Jake on the shoulder. “I think it’s time to load up,” Ellie says when he looks up at her.
He looks out the window, blinking as his eyes adjust from staring at the computer screen for far too long. “Really?” he asks, and then dips his head down to check the time on the laptop. “You’re right,” he says as he turns his head towards her, his voice edged in astonishment. He stands up, slapping the laptop closed, reaching his arms up above his head and popping his spine. “How did I not notice?” he asks, turning towards her and pushing in his chair.
Ellie leans into him, wrapping her arms around him as she rests her chin on his chest. “You never notice. You just turn into a workaholic prior to the full moon,” she says, grinning up at him. “It’s kind of adorable.” Then she lifts herself up and kisses the tip of his chin. “I’ll go gather the troops, you load up the car with the necessities.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Jake says, and swoops in to kiss her forehead as he lets her go.
They go their separate ways, each off to tackle their designated tasks. Ellie wanders into the living room and braces herself for the damage she’ll find, but it turns out to be minimal, the three of them moving into the open space on the floor away from anything breakable. It’s less wrestling and more of a puppy pile now that Brook’s joined them, sequestered in the middle of Jimmy and Bo, their limbs twisted and tangled as they giggle and whisper amongst themselves. Ellie rests against the wall for a moment, watching in fondness.
Bo had gotten bit during that first full moon when everything was happening and they didn’t realize until afterwards, when Ellie chose not to break the curse, what that meant for him. But he was surprising nonchalant about it, shrugging his shoulders and giving them a half-smile, saying, I think I can manage another weird thing in my life, really. Brook has called a few days after that, her voice as hushed whisper as she spoke quickly to Ellie about how she had found Zipper, but something was wrong and he bit her and, I got him holed up in my basement, I really hope he doesn’t have rabies or something.
They couldn’t leave them on their own, not when they were the reason they were involved in the first place.
With the addition of Bo and Brook rounding out their little family, the dynamic of their household reallocated into something that worked. They gave Jimmy something of his own, two people who understood at a level neither Ellie or Jake could reach. The three of them became this neat little unit, a smaller ring inside their bigger circle, something separate and its own entity; like what Ellie and Jake have, but with blurrier lines. Ellie doesn’t really care that it’s not definable and easily categorized, it makes them happy and it’s been a long time since seen her brother truly happy.
“Okay,” she says, stepping into the room and wincing when they all freeze like they’re doing something wrong, and quickly untangle themselves and stand up, trying to look presentable. “It’s about time to go,” she says, softer and gentler than before. “Jimmy, you want to get Zipper and put him in the back of the Explorer?”
Jimmy nods. “Sure,” he says, stepping around her and Bo following him as he does.
Brook looks unsure of what to do with herself, but she takes the steps to follow Jimmy and Bo out. Ellie reaches out a hand, touching her shoulder and stopping her in path. “Hey,” Ellie says, dropping her hand. “You going to be okay?”
Brook laughs, something Ellie’s beginning to understand means many different things, that Brook has different laughs. “You don’t have to ask me that every time,” she says with a slight roll of her eyes. “I’ve adjusted, or assimilated, or whatever.” She sighs. “What I mean is, I’m fine, Ellie. I’ve been fine for a while.”
“I know,” Ellie says, sighing at herself. “I just… worry. You had the least amount of adjustment time, you just had this thrust upon you, and…”
“You feel guilty,” Brook supplies with a warm smile lighting up her face. “I know. But you should know it’s not your fault.” She stops, worrying her lip between her teeth as she looks around the room. “I think I’m gonna go pack a bag of stuff to keep us occupied during the ride,” she says, turning on her heel and stepping left, towards the stairs, but she pauses and turns back. “It’s really not your fault, you should stop beating yourself up over it.”
“Okay,” Ellie says, swallowing down any protests that threaten to spill out of her throat. “That sounds reasonable.”
“Yeah, it does,” Brook says, and then takes her leave, disappearing down the hall. Ellie listens as she climbs the stairs, picking out the individual pitches of the wood squeaking to accommodate her weight.
Once they’ve got the car packed up and the house locked up, they all pile inside and take off. Jake drives because he knows the route better than Ellie, the Angeles National Forest being the place he brought himself to turn before, when he was alone. Ellie can’t imagine what it was like for him, to be the only one. She doesn’t like to think about it. It’s the place he suggested when they decided to take this crazy leap of faith and live with the curse, the location far out of the way of civilization and plenty of acres for them to roam without meeting a single human being.
Ellie turns her head and looks at the three in the backseat. Bo and Jimmy flank Brook’s sides as she concentrates on the paperback in her hands. They lean near her, sharing the ear buds from her iPod between them, the white wires crossed over her torso. Ellie smiles and turns forward, flicking on the radio and turning the volume to a low hum in the background. She can hear Zipper pacing back and forth in the way back, the need to get out and run much more overpowering with him. Ellie settles back in her seat and looks out the window, watching the trees pass her by as the sun grows lower and lower in the sky.
They drive until the reach the half-hidden truck trail that’s blocked by a decent metal gate. Jake parks and gets out, Ellie following suit and taking over the driver‘s seat. Jake picks the lock easily enough and slides the gate back as Ellie puts the Explorer into drive and goes through the gate, stopping just beyond it’s reach to wait for Jake reset the lock. He takes the passenger’s seat and closes the door, and Ellie moves on down the heavily wooded dirt road.
They reach the clearing where they’ll be parking for the night and Ellie maneuvers the vehicle in its usual position, far in the south corner of the field by the low hanging trees. It’s not the best camouflage, but it’s better than no concealment at all. They all pour out in a mass exodus, quick and eager now that night has officially fallen and the itch rising up under their skins can barely be contained. Ellie goes to let Zipper out and he leaps out of the back, taking off into the trees. The first time they tried this, they were worried he’d never come back, but he was curled up next to them in the morning. Zipper is just always the first to change.
Everyone strips, having lost their modesty months ago, just as they learned to wear loose cotton clothes and elastic-waist pants, easily to yank on and off in a hurry. Jimmy and Bo flip as easy as breathing and take off across the field, tussling and tackling each other as they go. Brook takes a little longer, hesitating as she flickers between two shapes, but soon her body takes a hold and is bending into form and she’s racing after them.
Ellie breathes and looks at Jake as he grins back at her, playful and daring. She feels the ache in her limbs, the stretch in her muscles, the tell-tale clues her body gives her that she needs to change. She breathes and she remembers what he told her.
-----
It hurts.
Ellie can’t get over how much it hurts, can’t believe this is her life now, can’t imagine how Jake had survived this long living through this every month. But when she looks up, Jimmy and Bo had turned already without a fuss, Brooke slowly following after them. And she realizes, it’s just her. Ellie the defective werewolf.
Jake fills her line of vision, still human, but Ellie can see the edge about him. He’s just barely holding on. He grabs a hold of her shoulders and leans down until their almost nose to nose. A brutal tremor works through her body and she has to bite down to keep from crying out as pieces of her body still can’t decide what they want to be, flicking between wolf and human like a slide show on high speed.
“Ellie,” Jake says, shaking her once and getting her attention to focus on him. “You have to breathe.”
She gasps out a breath, and then sucks one in harshly. “It hurts,” she whines as her eyes burn. “Why does it hurt so much?”
“Because you’re fighting it,” he says, pulling her closer to him, putting his hands on her face and tilting her head up. “You can’t fight it, Ellie. You can’t have a war between the two sides of yourself, or every change is going to be bitter and awful. You have to accept the wolf and the change will happen naturally, without pain.”
She nods, absorbing what he was telling her and seeing the logic behind his words, but completely unsure how to implement it. Then she looks up and watches his breathing pattern, then decides to match it. In and out, slow and steady. Ellie thinks about the forest and how a quiet calm seems to overwhelm it at night, how the tall trees should be imposing and oppressive, but seem welcoming. Then something adjusts inside her, things sliding into places they should have been all along.
Ellie bends out of Jake’s hands and falls to the ground, and when she gets up, she can feel the dirt under her paws.
-----
Ellie smirks at Jake, taking his challenge full on.
She takes an arching leap towards the sky, her body contorting and re-building itself in the air. She feels free now and it’s exhilarating, much more so than she ever hoped. She realizes this was never something to fear, that this was the power and beauty of nature at work, laced and melded with the bond of magic. It was a part of her now, intrinsic and identifying as her DNA. She could never go back to the way it was before, she doesn’t want to.
Ellie touches down with her front paws and takes off into the woods, dodging trees and kicking up dirt as she pushes her wolf form as hard as it can go, weaving her own path throughout the woods.
Nothing can touch her.
Fandom: Cursed
Pairing/Characters: Jake/Ellie, background Bo/Jimmy/Brook.
Rating: PG-13
Words: 3,000
Summary: An AU take of the end of the movie. In the aftermath of a different choice, they make a life out of the wreckage.
Notes: Written for yuletide. Thank you to scorpiod1 for all the hand-holding and good advice and catching all my errors. You are truly a life saver! ♥ ♥ ♥
Ellie walks in the front door, balancing the paper bag of groceries in her arms as she pushes the door closed with her elbow and kicks off her heels, adding them to the already impressive collection in a row on the floor in the foyer. She wriggles her toes as she sighs, easing into the contentedness that comes from being home after a long day.
She’s greeted with the sounds of Jimmy and Bo bickering over who gets control over the remote as Brook just laughs and refuses to take sides. She can hear it as clearly as if she were in the room with them and not down the hall. The super-hearing took some getting used to and at times it’s extremely inconvenient, but right now it’s nice and feels normal. And besides, she likes coming home to a full house. She thinks her parents would have liked that there was laughter again.
She goes into the kitchen, following the click-clack sounds of Jake typing on his laptop. He lifts his eyes from the screen and smiles at her when she walks in, but falls easily back into it, raising his hand with his pointer finger jutting out. “Just a minute and I’ll help,” he says as his eyes scan the screen. “I just need to put the finishing touches on this email.”
“It’s okay,” Ellie says, hefting the back onto the counter and stretching out her arms once free of its weight. “This is all going into the fridge anyway. I need to start switching up grocery stores, I’m starting to get weird looks.” She starts unloading the bag, placing the pages out on the counter, ready to be transferred to the refrigerator.
“A cart full of steak will do that to you,” Jake mutters, and then ducks quickly when Ellie tosses the crumpled up paper bag at his head, grinning when he raises his head slowly with his hands up in surrender. “I’m just saying that you’d get less looks if you’d just compromise and order the meat online like I suggested.”
“It doesn’t taste right if it’s been frozen and thawed, though,” Ellie says, frowning and then throwing up her hands. “What are we even talking about?” she asks, turning around and grabbing a stack of steak cuts and bringing them over to the fridge.
“Meat,” Jake points out, and shrugs at her when she turns back around. “It kind of comes with the territory of being domesticated werewolves.” His eyes leave her gaze to look in the direction of the living room, tilting his head as Brook lets out another high peal of laughter, followed by a crash and rumble, tell-tale signs that the argument over the remote had dissolved into a wrestling match. “And adopting two new members of the pack doesn’t help. I hope they don’t break the coffee table again.”
Ellie can’t help but feel the flip-flop in her stomach at the word pack, the wolf part of her warm and happy, the sense of belonging overwhelmingly powerful. Sometimes she questions if she made the right choice, if this was what was best for all of them, but she thinks of them, her little make-shift family and doesn’t think it could be wrong.
-----
Ellie feels the change course through her and all she can think is, no, no, this was supposed to be stopped, it was gone, they broke the curse. Jake grips her upper arms tight in his hands as she shakes her head, feeling her body shift like tectonic plates, moving and re-arranging. She feels like she’s caught on the fault line, torn in two. Jake forces her to look at him and she can see the guilt marring the lines of his face, the sadness in his gaze.
“I’m so sorry,” he says, his voice cracking on the last syllable. “I thought it was Joanie, I thought… but I was wrong. It’s me, Ellie. It’s me.” He pauses, and she can see the click in his jaw as he tightens it, grinding down on his teeth. “When you turn, you have to kill me,” he says, and Ellie immediately shakes her head, tears welling up in her eyes as they flicker back and forth between two forms. Jake just nods, reaching up and stilling her head with his hand. “Yes you do. It’s the only way to stop it, it’s the only way this ends, okay?”
Ellie’s body reacts violently with the surge of emotion flooding her system, jerking as her spine arches and her nails grow long and sharp, but she doesn’t want to give into it, too scared she’ll lose control and do what Jake says, regardless of what she wants and she doesn’t want Jake dead, doesn’t want him dead more than she wants this curse broken. It’s like that realization snaps her body back under her control, her nails retract and she’s able to stand up straight, and she breathes in deeply before grabbing onto Jake.
“No,” she says, her voice managing to be firmer than she’s ever heard it sound with a sense of real authority behind it, and she can feel confidence build when it looks like Jake is listening. “We’ll find another way, okay? There has to be another way. This can’t be all there is.”
“You don’t think I’ve looked?” Jake asks, choking out a bitter laugh. “It’s either kill me, or live with it.”
Ellie reaches up and grabs his face in her hands, running her thumbs down the slopes of his cheekbones. “Then we’ll live with it,” she says, and then pausing as she bites down on her bottom lip, thinking of what she was giving up, what she was agreeing to, but in the end decides it’s better than the alternative. She pushes up on the balls of her feet and kisses him quickly, making her choice. “We’ll figure out some way to live with it.”
-----
Ellie can feel the night creep up on them, even as the last rays of sunlight still shine brightly in the sky, like she can feel the Earth rotating, lining up and taking position in time to trigger the change. The anticipation effects them all in different ways, but the common thread seems to be a twitching, needling feeling of pent-up energy rising up within them, making them feel the need to take off running deep in their limbs.
She looks out the window and checks the watch on her wrist, calculating the distance they have to travel to get to Angeles National Forest and the time it’ll take them to get there, and goes over and taps Jake on the shoulder. “I think it’s time to load up,” Ellie says when he looks up at her.
He looks out the window, blinking as his eyes adjust from staring at the computer screen for far too long. “Really?” he asks, and then dips his head down to check the time on the laptop. “You’re right,” he says as he turns his head towards her, his voice edged in astonishment. He stands up, slapping the laptop closed, reaching his arms up above his head and popping his spine. “How did I not notice?” he asks, turning towards her and pushing in his chair.
Ellie leans into him, wrapping her arms around him as she rests her chin on his chest. “You never notice. You just turn into a workaholic prior to the full moon,” she says, grinning up at him. “It’s kind of adorable.” Then she lifts herself up and kisses the tip of his chin. “I’ll go gather the troops, you load up the car with the necessities.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Jake says, and swoops in to kiss her forehead as he lets her go.
They go their separate ways, each off to tackle their designated tasks. Ellie wanders into the living room and braces herself for the damage she’ll find, but it turns out to be minimal, the three of them moving into the open space on the floor away from anything breakable. It’s less wrestling and more of a puppy pile now that Brook’s joined them, sequestered in the middle of Jimmy and Bo, their limbs twisted and tangled as they giggle and whisper amongst themselves. Ellie rests against the wall for a moment, watching in fondness.
Bo had gotten bit during that first full moon when everything was happening and they didn’t realize until afterwards, when Ellie chose not to break the curse, what that meant for him. But he was surprising nonchalant about it, shrugging his shoulders and giving them a half-smile, saying, I think I can manage another weird thing in my life, really. Brook has called a few days after that, her voice as hushed whisper as she spoke quickly to Ellie about how she had found Zipper, but something was wrong and he bit her and, I got him holed up in my basement, I really hope he doesn’t have rabies or something.
They couldn’t leave them on their own, not when they were the reason they were involved in the first place.
With the addition of Bo and Brook rounding out their little family, the dynamic of their household reallocated into something that worked. They gave Jimmy something of his own, two people who understood at a level neither Ellie or Jake could reach. The three of them became this neat little unit, a smaller ring inside their bigger circle, something separate and its own entity; like what Ellie and Jake have, but with blurrier lines. Ellie doesn’t really care that it’s not definable and easily categorized, it makes them happy and it’s been a long time since seen her brother truly happy.
“Okay,” she says, stepping into the room and wincing when they all freeze like they’re doing something wrong, and quickly untangle themselves and stand up, trying to look presentable. “It’s about time to go,” she says, softer and gentler than before. “Jimmy, you want to get Zipper and put him in the back of the Explorer?”
Jimmy nods. “Sure,” he says, stepping around her and Bo following him as he does.
Brook looks unsure of what to do with herself, but she takes the steps to follow Jimmy and Bo out. Ellie reaches out a hand, touching her shoulder and stopping her in path. “Hey,” Ellie says, dropping her hand. “You going to be okay?”
Brook laughs, something Ellie’s beginning to understand means many different things, that Brook has different laughs. “You don’t have to ask me that every time,” she says with a slight roll of her eyes. “I’ve adjusted, or assimilated, or whatever.” She sighs. “What I mean is, I’m fine, Ellie. I’ve been fine for a while.”
“I know,” Ellie says, sighing at herself. “I just… worry. You had the least amount of adjustment time, you just had this thrust upon you, and…”
“You feel guilty,” Brook supplies with a warm smile lighting up her face. “I know. But you should know it’s not your fault.” She stops, worrying her lip between her teeth as she looks around the room. “I think I’m gonna go pack a bag of stuff to keep us occupied during the ride,” she says, turning on her heel and stepping left, towards the stairs, but she pauses and turns back. “It’s really not your fault, you should stop beating yourself up over it.”
“Okay,” Ellie says, swallowing down any protests that threaten to spill out of her throat. “That sounds reasonable.”
“Yeah, it does,” Brook says, and then takes her leave, disappearing down the hall. Ellie listens as she climbs the stairs, picking out the individual pitches of the wood squeaking to accommodate her weight.
Once they’ve got the car packed up and the house locked up, they all pile inside and take off. Jake drives because he knows the route better than Ellie, the Angeles National Forest being the place he brought himself to turn before, when he was alone. Ellie can’t imagine what it was like for him, to be the only one. She doesn’t like to think about it. It’s the place he suggested when they decided to take this crazy leap of faith and live with the curse, the location far out of the way of civilization and plenty of acres for them to roam without meeting a single human being.
Ellie turns her head and looks at the three in the backseat. Bo and Jimmy flank Brook’s sides as she concentrates on the paperback in her hands. They lean near her, sharing the ear buds from her iPod between them, the white wires crossed over her torso. Ellie smiles and turns forward, flicking on the radio and turning the volume to a low hum in the background. She can hear Zipper pacing back and forth in the way back, the need to get out and run much more overpowering with him. Ellie settles back in her seat and looks out the window, watching the trees pass her by as the sun grows lower and lower in the sky.
They drive until the reach the half-hidden truck trail that’s blocked by a decent metal gate. Jake parks and gets out, Ellie following suit and taking over the driver‘s seat. Jake picks the lock easily enough and slides the gate back as Ellie puts the Explorer into drive and goes through the gate, stopping just beyond it’s reach to wait for Jake reset the lock. He takes the passenger’s seat and closes the door, and Ellie moves on down the heavily wooded dirt road.
They reach the clearing where they’ll be parking for the night and Ellie maneuvers the vehicle in its usual position, far in the south corner of the field by the low hanging trees. It’s not the best camouflage, but it’s better than no concealment at all. They all pour out in a mass exodus, quick and eager now that night has officially fallen and the itch rising up under their skins can barely be contained. Ellie goes to let Zipper out and he leaps out of the back, taking off into the trees. The first time they tried this, they were worried he’d never come back, but he was curled up next to them in the morning. Zipper is just always the first to change.
Everyone strips, having lost their modesty months ago, just as they learned to wear loose cotton clothes and elastic-waist pants, easily to yank on and off in a hurry. Jimmy and Bo flip as easy as breathing and take off across the field, tussling and tackling each other as they go. Brook takes a little longer, hesitating as she flickers between two shapes, but soon her body takes a hold and is bending into form and she’s racing after them.
Ellie breathes and looks at Jake as he grins back at her, playful and daring. She feels the ache in her limbs, the stretch in her muscles, the tell-tale clues her body gives her that she needs to change. She breathes and she remembers what he told her.
-----
It hurts.
Ellie can’t get over how much it hurts, can’t believe this is her life now, can’t imagine how Jake had survived this long living through this every month. But when she looks up, Jimmy and Bo had turned already without a fuss, Brooke slowly following after them. And she realizes, it’s just her. Ellie the defective werewolf.
Jake fills her line of vision, still human, but Ellie can see the edge about him. He’s just barely holding on. He grabs a hold of her shoulders and leans down until their almost nose to nose. A brutal tremor works through her body and she has to bite down to keep from crying out as pieces of her body still can’t decide what they want to be, flicking between wolf and human like a slide show on high speed.
“Ellie,” Jake says, shaking her once and getting her attention to focus on him. “You have to breathe.”
She gasps out a breath, and then sucks one in harshly. “It hurts,” she whines as her eyes burn. “Why does it hurt so much?”
“Because you’re fighting it,” he says, pulling her closer to him, putting his hands on her face and tilting her head up. “You can’t fight it, Ellie. You can’t have a war between the two sides of yourself, or every change is going to be bitter and awful. You have to accept the wolf and the change will happen naturally, without pain.”
She nods, absorbing what he was telling her and seeing the logic behind his words, but completely unsure how to implement it. Then she looks up and watches his breathing pattern, then decides to match it. In and out, slow and steady. Ellie thinks about the forest and how a quiet calm seems to overwhelm it at night, how the tall trees should be imposing and oppressive, but seem welcoming. Then something adjusts inside her, things sliding into places they should have been all along.
Ellie bends out of Jake’s hands and falls to the ground, and when she gets up, she can feel the dirt under her paws.
-----
Ellie smirks at Jake, taking his challenge full on.
She takes an arching leap towards the sky, her body contorting and re-building itself in the air. She feels free now and it’s exhilarating, much more so than she ever hoped. She realizes this was never something to fear, that this was the power and beauty of nature at work, laced and melded with the bond of magic. It was a part of her now, intrinsic and identifying as her DNA. She could never go back to the way it was before, she doesn’t want to.
Ellie touches down with her front paws and takes off into the woods, dodging trees and kicking up dirt as she pushes her wolf form as hard as it can go, weaving her own path throughout the woods.
Nothing can touch her.