Note: The arc is currently under a massive revision, and will be under revision for at least another four to six months, so there will be some discontinuities until I can get everything fixed.

Author: Dan
Genre: epic AU
Pairings: NA
Disclaimer: not mine, don't sue.
Warnings: AU, a positive plethra of OCS, high supernatural and yech factor, angst
Further Note: terms from such literary gems as Laurel K. Hamilton are used and then twisted beyond all recognition.

Of Wolf And Man by Dan

Part One

Hilde was swearing in an almost constant stream of lowland German, the growling guttural sound at odds with her delicate face. Chang had a hold of my wrists and was trying to keep them pinned above my head, swearing almost musically in Chinese. I craned my neck, arching my back, trying to find the woman who had spoken. Dorothy, her platinum blonde hair plastered to her face with sweat, was holding a small vial of something clear in a crystal vial.

I knew that bottle. I'd given it to her as a birthday present years ago. It was the only gift I had ever given to her that had made her frown. I asked what was wrong and she only shook her head slowly from side to side, making her hair sweep around her like a living thing.

I wonder now if she had seen back then what would happen now when she held that tiny, pretty bobble in her hands. I wonder now if she had some sudden flash of insight, as she is wont to do, into the future and it had shown her this. I could ask. She would probably just laugh at me.

Dorothy made a small movement with one pale hand. It was a gesture every diplomat knew; it was one the Preventors had taught us all, a little hand motion from bodyguard to diplomat to drop to the ground and be very still. I responded to it instinctively. She seized the chance and poured the liquid onto a wound I could not see.

But I could feel it.

I screamed as long and as fast as I could draw breath. One ragged shriek after another, and fought--mindlessly--to escape. Whatever Dorothy had in that vial felt like blazing liquid fire down my shoulder, along the back of my neck. I screamed because I couldn't run.

Two quick, sharp stings across my cheeks brought me back to myself and to the fact that Hilde sitting on my chest. I stared at her for a long time. I think I started to blush.

"I didn't mean it... "

"What? Calling me a bitch and a multitude of other words?" Hilde teased me through the thick exhaustion that blanketed her words. "You called Dorothy worse, and the things that you called Wufei," She looked impressed. "Damn, I didn't even know you knew those words."

Hilde started to get off me, sliding that delicate body over mine in a way that, if it had been anyone else and in a different situation, would have been a coy invitation. Both Dorothy and Wufei caught her by the arms and held her in place. Dorothy's eyes were full of wary relief. Wufei's eyes were cautious. That scared me.

"Wait," Wufei told Hilde quietly. "We aren't done."

Hilde opened her mouth to ask a question and then closed it. She looked at me for a moment. I have no idea what she saw in my face as she stared down at me, but then she leaned down very gently and pressed a kiss to my forehead. She straddled my body again, settling her weight carefully. There was a tightness across my chest that suggested several bandages tightly bound. I guess I had a few broken ribs along with everything else.

"We need a cross," Wufei said in that same grave-quiet tone.

Hilde pulled a small golden cross from under her shirt. It swung on a long chain, catching the light for a moment. All I could think was that it was that it was pretty, delicate, and I desperately did not want it to touch my skin. A soft sound hung in the air, a whimper, to my surprise it wasn't me. It was Hilde. She looked down at me, the corners of her eyes tight, and shook her head.

"I'm sorry, Relena," Dorothy told me gently as she took a small golden cross from Hilde and held it right above my skin. "This might burn."

I breathed through my nose and out my mouth, waiting for the pain to come. I felt the cool brush of metal against my skin, but not searing pain like she was trying to brand me. Relief washed through me, a feeling so intense that it made my chest burn.

"Try a silver cross," Wufei said quietly. I looked up at him quizzically. He wouldn't look at me, but continued to watch Dorothy, "Anything silver."

Dorothy closed her eyes, and then pulled a small silver pendant from under her shirt. I knew she always wore it, but it had only been two years that I had known why. She held her holy symbol above my skin for a moment. Our eyes meet, and I have never seen her look so mournful. Looking back, I think she knew--some little spark of prescience must have flashed before her and shown her a second before. I think she knew what horrible revelation would come from pressing that little bit of silver knot work to my skin.

The pain was immediate and sharp, but not nearly as bad as what I had already gone through tonight. I hissed and jerked, trying to get away. Hilde held me down with that cute face determinedly blank. Wufei finally looked at me. His dark eyes were unreadable. That was bad. When the impassivity settled over Wufei like a mask, I knew things were very, very bad indeed.

His voice would haunt my dreams for years to come, the cool, distanced tone.

"Next full moon, Relena, I think we should keep you confined."

I was right; of course, Chang's voice did haunt my dreams. Even two months after my 'infection'--nice, clean, clinical term, isn't it?--I dreamed of his voice following me down long white corridors were every door slammed in my face as the words rang out. I didn't need Freud to interpret that one for me.

That's not the only thing I dream of. Some days, that little nightmare is one of the better dreams. The nightmare about when Hilde... That's a different story. One I'll talk about later, if ever.

But back then, that was definitely one of the worst dreams. It mattered so much to me that I stay human, that I stay sane, that I simply could not comprehend a worse fate than waking up one morning and finding it all ripped away from me. And in one evening what had happened to me? Yeah, exactly.

In real life only a handful of people knew that I turn furry once a month. I could count all of them on one hand: Wufei, Hilde, Dorothy, Sally, and Victor.

Wufei, Hilde, and Dorothy picked up the pieces after I had been attacked. Dorothy had found me on her doorstep, a bloody mess. She had immediately called Hilde and Wufei, my Chief of Special Investigations and my Chief of National Security. Or at least that was the reason that she gave me when I pressed. What her real logic was for calling them, instead of Duo, Heero, or any one of the Preventors tasked with keeping me safe, I will never know.

Wufei had taken one look at my wounds and had known nothing human had done it. He also knew the remedies. Lucky me. The cure included pouring Holy Water into three vampire bites. The pain is indescribable. Now Hilde and I are getting lessons in the supernatural from Chang Sensei. Dorothy already knows. Some days she even helps him teach. Well, she says she's helping; I say she's trying to drive him crazy.

Sally found out because you can hide nothing from your doctor. Nothing. At least not from her, and not for very long.

I healed too fast and Sally's very clever mind deduced that something not quite normal was going on. She ran a few tests that set alarms off in that very clever mind. The next day she brought the findings to my office and demanded, in a very polite tone, an explanation. I told her. She didn't believe me. We argued. I lost my temper and turned my desk into little bits of kindling. She believes me now.

Wufei said that if I ever, ever lost my temper like that again he was going to take a rolled up newspaper to me. But he explained why my desk was a mess of broken wood and twisted metal to Maintenance. I don't want to know what he told them. I can get enough of a clue from the looks they continue to give me.

Victor knew from the beginning that I was a lycanthrope. It pleases him, the bastard.

Victor is my Ulfric, pack leader or werewolf king if you prefer. And he scares me more than any single being I have ever meet. Well, almost more than any single being, or that's what I thought back then. I know better than that now.

I'd only met him a few times during those first few months when the pack left me alone. I dedicated a lot of time and energy into avoiding him. I'd only gone to him willingly three times; three times in the space of two months. I'm very good at avoiding that which makes me uncomfortable, angers, or scares me. I've had a lot of practice. Just ask Maxwell. I went to Victor twice because it was the full moon, and he didn't think I should be alone on the nights of the full moon for a while. I didn't completely agree, but I couldn't see a way around it either.

And once I went to him willingly before, well, to steal a phrase from Hilde, before the shit hit the fan.

I willingly went to him because I was having problems controlling my new, improved senses, and all the ... 'urges' ... these new sense brought with them. I could feel the pulse of the humans around me like cherries on my tongue. And it scared the hell out of me. So I went to Victor. I couldn't tell Wufei. How exactly is the human embodiment of Absolute Pacifism supposed to tell one of the gundam pilots that she was having problems resisting the urge to just clamp down on someone's jugular? It was scary, and disgusting, so I went to Victor to fix it.

Besides that one time I avoided him almost as diligently as I avoided Maxwell. Victor's still mildly confused about why I had been so hesitant to spend time with him. But then he also thinks that he responded to my attack in a very civilized manner.

He sent me the attackers' heads in a basket.

When I saw those bodiless heads sitting in those deceptive whicker baskets all I could think was: "I didn't mean it." He was there the night I was attacked. He was the one who carried me to Dorothy's door and left me after ringing the bell. As he carried me he asked me if there was anything that he could do to make it right. I told him I wanted their heads in a basket. I was hurt, violated, and not thinking. I didn't take it seriously. Victor did.

He gave it to me with a red bow attached. Mental note: never, ever say anything around the monsters that you don't mean. Never tell them anything that you're not willing to back up, with blood if necessary.

And now that I am one of the monsters...

Yeah, exactly.

End Part 1

(:./dan/wolf1)