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Shane Marion ([info]wolfishane) wrote in [info]bellumlogs,
@ 2010-06-24 01:08:00

Previous Entry  Add to memories!  Tell a Friend!  Next Entry
Entry tags:big bad wolf, little mermaid, plot: delta, plot: tempus

Who: Shane and Anya
What: Anya is freezing. The wolf is not interested in seeing her become a popsicle.
Where: Chicago, 1920's.
When: Immediately following this.
Warnings: None, most likely.



Shane had to deal with a constant stream of angry snapping from the Wolf, who told him in no small number of ways that he was an idiot cub who was clearly suicidal. The Wolf knew all too well that if Anya had gone into the water, Shane would have gone after her and likely gotten them both killed.

He stayed close at her side in case she wavered and fell, breaking away only to pick up his clothes in his mouth again. Then he led her in the direction of what appeared to be a hotel. He wasn't sure if the wallet that had been in the pocket of his pants was still in there, but if it was, he could get a room. Assuming he could find a place to change back where no one would see him.

As they came closer, it did prove to be a hotel. He offered up a silent thanks, and trotted up to the edge of the building. Dawn was still a ways off, and streetlights gave his fur, damp from tackling Anya into the snow and sand, a dark gloss. There was a deep alley beside the hotel, deep enough that he could back into it and change after Anya got inside. "Go in."


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[info]lillehavfrue
2010-06-24 06:32 am UTC (link)
Anya nodded, but she didn't actually make it as far as inside. She took a few steps, and then she peered around the corner of the building and into the alley. 1) the building was easy to lean against; solid at her side. 2) she was curious. 3) she didn't have any money, having had to give up her wallet when she was arrested.

She couldn't see well in the darkness, but his fur shone and made it easy to keep him in her sights. A moment later, once he'd gone further into the alley, she followed, staying close to the wall. Anya might be unhealthy, but that didn't change the fact that she was impulsive and daring; she wanted to see him change and that was that.

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[info]wolfishane
2010-06-24 06:44 am UTC (link)
He looked behind him after going into the alley and didn't see anyone at its mouth. Good. Hopefully she'd actually gone inside and was busy getting warm. He set his clothes down on a relatively dry spot (though that was a fruitless endeavor, really, since they were already dirty and damp), and backed further in.

Initiating the change had gotten easier with practice. It hadn't gotten much faster, and it hadn't gotten much less painful, but he didn't have to reach quite so far to become human again.

He didn't see Anya slipping into the alley until the change was already under way, and he couldn't do anything about it by then. He didn't know how to stop it even if he wanted to, and it didn't seem like it would be a good idea to try. So he rode it out, trying to pretend she wasn't there, clamping his mouth shut and avoiding sound for the most part. There wasn't screaming involved the way there had once been, partially because the pain was old hat, partially because it wasn't quite as bad. The spine re-aligning, however, still managed to elicit a faint, pained noise. The main sounds were sickening, bone-cracking noises, and faint pops as vertebrae settled into place and bones re-aligned in their sockets.

When it was done, all he wanted to do was lay still, even though the ground was freezing, he was naked, and he was already regretting no longer having a fur coat. He pushed himself up, reaching out for his clothes without looking up at her. They were wet, but they were better than nothing.

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[info]lillehavfrue
2010-06-24 06:49 am UTC (link)
She knew she'd been spotted, but Anya wasn't one to run. She just held onto the wall for stability, and she watched him change. It was, in some way, confirmation that all that she'd seen was real, true; almost like pinching yourself to see if you're dreaming.

He'd changed from a wolf to a man, there was a voice in her head, and people could hear her thoughts. It was the 1920s, and she was freezing. Her knees gave way, and she slid to a sitting position against the wall.

Okay, this had all just become a little too overwhelming.

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[info]wolfishane
2010-06-24 06:55 am UTC (link)
He still had no shoes, but at least the ground here wasn't covered in snow. He only looked up when he had his clothes on. He was worried about what he'd find, honestly. Boyd had collapsed into tears.

Anya was a little better, though not by much. There was a reason why he didn't like changing in front of people. At least everyone in the jail cell had been distracted. He got to his feet, walking stiffly over. It was freezing, so cold that his thoughts felt sluggish, and he'd still be sore for a while yet.

He offered her a hand. She could be shocked inside - they'd both freeze if they didn't get into warmth, and soon. The only good thing that had happened in the last few minutes was discovering his wallet had somehow survived the journey. No one had taken it off him at the police station, probably because when they patted him down for weaponry he bit an officer on the arm.

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[info]lillehavfrue
2010-06-24 07:00 am UTC (link)
She didn't take his hand immediately, despite all the Bad Things happening. "You have a voice?" she asked him, and she managed to give him a teasing smile, even through the chatter of her teeth. "One that don't sound in my head," she added.

Anya sounded like the Keys - slightly lazy, without being southern, and she had just a touch of her mother's Russian in her words to make her sound foreign. Her voice was a little low, a little husky and not at all childlike. And she wasn't afraid of being in this alley with him. Overwhelmed by the situation? Yes. Sick? Yes. Scared? Not in the slightest.

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[info]wolfishane
2010-06-24 07:06 am UTC (link)
His hand shook from the cold, but he didn't drop it. "I do," he said. "Shane." He didn't smile, but his tone wasn't unfriendly. And he didn't bother hiding his accent. He could hardly see the point, anymore.

At least she didn't seem terrified. That was always a plus. She was strangely calm, in fact, but, then again, he wasn't sure what qualified as strange in this situation.

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[info]lillehavfrue
2010-06-24 07:14 am UTC (link)
She took his hand as soon as he spoke, using it to pull herself to her feet without demurring or pretending she didn't need the assistance; she didn't see the point in that. The accent was, she thought, Irish? But her basis for comparison was purely Hollywood, and she realized that was hardly an accurate thing to go on.

She pushed away from the wall, but her knees buckled slightly again. It had nothing to do with being a delicate flower and everything to do with lack of oxygen and appropriate medication.

She needed to get in a hot, steam-filled room, and ASAP.

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[info]wolfishane
2010-06-24 07:21 am UTC (link)
When she buckled, he wrapped an arm around her shoulders. "Come on," he said, walking around the corner of the building and into the hotel.

The night clerk was obviously startled at the sight they made - wet, shoeless, and missing coats in the middle of February - but the hotel was somewhere between low and middling quality and it was the middle of the night. That combined with the fact that Shane had more than enough money to cover a room for the night meant they had one in under five minutes.

The stairs were out, so he guided her into the elevator and hit the button for the fourth floor. He looked down at her, checking her lips for blue tinting. He was already beginning to warm, since he'd spent much less time unprotected in the cold than she had.

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[info]lillehavfrue
2010-06-24 07:27 am UTC (link)
Oh, her lips were definitely blue, and her skin was unnaturally cold. She wasn't much help in the process of getting inside and into the elevator, and once they were inside it she leaned against his side, against his warmth. She had very little concept of personal space, and she had even less concern about maintaining appearances. She felt ill, and he was there and warm and offering; that was enough for her.

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[info]wolfishane
2010-06-24 07:34 am UTC (link)
He let her lean on him as much as she needed to. She still felt cold, and he checked her pulse as the elevator slowed to a stop. She needed to get into a bath, sooner rather than later.

The elevator doors slid open, and he was able to lead her to the room he'd rented for the night. It only had one bed, but it had a bathroom, which was what mattered at the moment. He shut the door behind them, slid the latch closed, and made sure she was leaning on the wall before letting her go to turn the bath on, running the hot water until the room filled with steam.

All this bother for a girl you don't even know, the Wolf said. He seemed exhausted even with himself, at this point. If Shane hadn't listened the last hundred times he'd pointed it out, he probably wasn't going to listen now.

When the tub was full, he guided her to sit on the edge of it, then got up to leave. He was reluctant to let her get into the bath on her own, worried that her lack of motor control would make her slip, but she deserved her privacy. So he hovered halfway between her and the door. "Can you get in alright?"

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[info]lillehavfrue
2010-06-24 04:34 pm UTC (link)
Anya wasn't concerned with nudity, and she felt very strongly that hang ups about clothing were very social and not natural at all. She slipped the frozen-through dress off without an ounce of hesitation, before he even walked out of the bathroom, and she did the same with the undergarments. People were born naked; being naked was nothing to be ashamed over.

She slid, gratefully, into the hot water, and she rested her head back against the lip of the tub and took a shallow breath of the steam. "Close the door to keep the steam in," she told him. Barring any medication, steam was the best option for opening up an asthmatic's lungs.

Or you can just dip your head under the water, said the voice in her mind.

"Can you hear her?" she asked him, eyes still closed.

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[info]wolfishane
2010-06-24 11:08 pm UTC (link)
When she started pulling her clothing off without warning he turned and left the bathroom. Unnatural his hang ups over nudity might be, but you didn't watch a girl you didn't know take her clothes off, particularly not when she was already sick and vulnerable. He shut the door, and stopped just outside the bathroom when her thoughts echoed in his head again.

It took him a moment to orient that very strange thinking-at that she seemed to be able to pick up. "Hear who?" She had to be talking about her tale, he realized. "No. I've got my own." The Wolf, for his part, was doing the mental equivalent of pacing and being non-responsive, a sort of boycott of the situation, and fuming.

There was a single bathrobe in the room, which he didn't touch, since she'd need it more than he would. He wanted to change out of his wet clothes, but he had nothing else. There was an extra blanket, however, and he took that, wrapping it around himself in an effort to warm up, and going to the window. You could let me out instead of shivering like a wet doe. "What does she say?"

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[info]lillehavfrue
2010-06-25 12:32 am UTC (link)
"I don't bite," she told him and the words sounded like a smile somehow, like she was entertained by his need to run out of the bathroom like he'd never seen a naked woman before. "Your voice, do you really think it's a story?" she asked, because everyone in the jail had confirmed it, but it was still the sort of fantastical thing you had to verify repeatedly, because not verifying might mean you were insane. And then there was the important thing. "Why can you turn into a wolf?"

Then she went completely quiet, both in the bathroom and in his mind, and she slipped under the water as the voice in her head urged.

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[info]wolfishane
2010-06-25 03:43 am UTC (link)
"I doubt you do," he thought back, leaning against the wall and looking out at the city. It was still strange - a familiar place made younger and unfamiliar in its youth.

"Yeah. I know that for a fact." After everything he'd seen in Bellum, he could hardly deny it. "We all are. You're new?" It might as well have been a statement. If she was still doubting the truth in that, she had to be.

He didn't think anything back at her for a moment, instead wondering if she was like Aaron - did she know what he was feeling? He hoped not. He wouldn't wish that on anyone, especially not lately. The silence on her end didn't strike him as strange. She was thinking at him, after all. It seemed like the sort of silence that happened in phone conversations when one party is distracted or has run out of things to say.

As for her question, he went with the simplest answer, the best one he could come up with honestly. "That's what I am."

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[info]lillehavfrue
2010-06-25 04:08 am UTC (link)
She didn't answer, because she couldn't focus on this thoughts under the water like she was. It didn't occur to her that she couldn't breathe, that she didn't need to. It was a warm, comforting, cotton-wrapped thing, and her mind and memory went blank as she floated there; lost moments.

The voice in her head didn't try to ask to come out, though it very much wanted to. See, the mermaid wanted to be on land, not under the waves. Being in a bathtub would hardly give her that, and she wanted the girl to feel better; she didn't want her to die. So the mermaid stayed quiet, and Anya didn't answer, and the water ran over the edge of the tub in the steam-filled bathroom.

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[info]wolfishane
2010-06-25 04:28 am UTC (link)
There was no answer from the bathroom.

The girl (it only just then occurred to him that he still didn't know what her name was) could just be laying there in the quiet. Or she could have fallen asleep. Or unconscious.

He walked back over to the bathroom door, dropping the blanket onto the bed, and edged the door open a crack.

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[info]lillehavfrue
2010-06-25 05:08 am UTC (link)
She was completely submerged in the water when he opened the door, and her eyes were closed, so she didn't heard the door open. She wasn't really conscious, and she wasn't breathing, if he walked up and looked and listened.

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[info]wolfishane
2010-06-25 05:13 am UTC (link)
She wasn't breathing. She was also under the water, and she looked unconscious.

He pushed through the door, took her by the arm, and pulled her out of the water. If she didn't struggle, he was going to pull her over the edge of the bath and use CPR, because has far as he could tell she was drowning. He didn't understand. She'd seemed fine - at least in her thoughts - before disappearing completely. Had she just turned out like a light? Had she been overtaken by exhaustion? He didn't know, but regardless, he wasn't going to let her drown.

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[info]lillehavfrue
2010-06-25 05:22 am UTC (link)
As soon as he pulled her out of the water, she opened her eyes and gasped in a breath of air. She had no idea what had happened, and she had no idea why he was in the bathroom with his hand on her arm, but the fact that he'd actually braved potential nudity was somewhat entertaining, when all was said and done.

"That all that's necessary to get you in a bathroom with a naked girl?" she asked, completely unconcerned about the nudity, and unconcerned about whatever had made him come into the bathroom in the first place. "You're gonna freeze. Get out of those clothes."

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[info]wolfishane
2010-06-25 05:31 am UTC (link)
She was fine.

He let go. "You weren't breathing. Or responding," he said. It seemed a little lame, now, like an excuse, considering that she seemed better than she had been when they'd come into the hotel. He hovered at the edge of the bath for a moment anyway. That made no sense. Then again, why was he questioning anything anymore? If he woke up tomorrow and gravity had disappeared and they were all falling up into the sky, he ought to take it as normal. Nothing was impossible, not after Bellum.

"I'm fine," he said, standing up and backing away, a little too aware of the fact that she was naked. He was not taking his clothes off. Whether or not he was cold and they were wet had little impact on that decision.

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[info]lillehavfrue
2010-06-25 05:45 am UTC (link)
She shook her head, as she found her footing, and she wrapped a towel around herself and threw the room's one robe at his head. "Go on and put that on, tiger," she said with a grin, and she wandered past him into the hotel room. The water, and being submerged in it, had evened her breathing out, it seemed, and she looked noticeably less pale, her lips less blue than they had just a moment earlier.

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[info]wolfishane
2010-06-25 05:50 am UTC (link)
There was no arguing with her, and despite the fact that he'd felt genuine fear when he'd looked through the bathroom door and seen her laying under the water, her sudden good humor brought a half-smile to his face.

He was still cold and wet, and he hadn't been in the blanket long enough to change that much. So he gave in, pulling his clothes off and hanging them over the shower curtain rod to dry and pulling the robe on.

He walked back out into the room. "You seem better," he said. Small blessings.

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[info]lillehavfrue
2010-06-25 05:56 am UTC (link)
She's already climbed into bed, under the blankets, the towel lying in the center of the hotel room, and she closed her eyes as he walked back in. She felt better, but she felt tired, drained, and she made a soft, sleepy sound that said as much. "Sleep," she thought, drowsily, projecting without realizing she was doing it.

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[info]wolfishane
2010-06-25 06:01 am UTC (link)
He picked up the extra blanket from the edge of the bed and dropped it onto the floor. She didn't need to tell him twice - he was exhausted.

A closet on the other side of the room yielded an extra pillow, and he dropped that on the floor as well, curling up with the blanket. He was perfectly content to sleep on the floor, really. Sleep in enough alleys and under enough awnings and dumpster edges, and a carpeted floor seemed luxurious. Particularly when one was already tired and sore. The girl was fine, and nothing could happen until he got some rest.

The girl. "What's your name?" he thought. He had to get that before he fell asleep, at least.

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[info]lillehavfrue
2010-06-25 06:03 am UTC (link)
No answer, she had already drifted off, breathing steadily, a soft smile on her lips.

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