Work Text:
"Jack," Alyssa says, eyes closed and lips unmoving.
Her blood’s soaking into his clothes, between his fingers, and he keeps walking forward and forward and forward, Silverback pushing him on, the fiery anger counterpoint to the numbing ice spreading within Jack’s veins.
"Jack," she says, and he goes where his body and soul take him, trees towering higher and higher until he’s stood in the place between worlds.
Professor Clarke and Amir aren’t here this time. If he was thinking clearly he’s sure he’d see that as an omen. He probably wouldn’t care then either.
The Vade Maecum Infernal makes him sick, every rational part of him left wanting to throw it into the woods and let it rot. He opens it anyway and Silverback sneers.
You shouldn’t be here, the trees whisper. Go. Go. You shouldn’t be here.
“Jack,” Randall says, somewhere distant, sad and frantic.
"Jack," Alyssa says, and then there’s silence, just him and Silverback and Alyssa’s body.
He’s not alone, though.
He knows he should be scared but he’s forgotten how to be.
Silverback edges closer to the surface and Jack pushes back. He has to be the one to do this.
It’s easy — too easy — to find the right page, the book practically turning itself. He remembers Coventry and an obsession he would have gladly given everyone who ever cared for him to, remembers Vera digging it from the wreckage and secreting it away, the pull of power in her bones. I’m not them, he thinks. I just want this.
Life and death, no, no, the trees sing. Leave now. Go.
Silverback’s wary, but he’s angry too, and Jack knows he won’t fight him on this. The wolf doesn’t care about Alyssa like Jack does, sees her as an ally or an enemy if anything at all, but whilst Jack wears his hide they feel in tandem, and when Jack thinks of tearing into Midnight it’s Silverback’s teeth sinking into fur.
Bring her back, he thinks as his lips spill Latin. Bring her back.
“Magic has a cost,” he remembers Vera saying, over and over, trying to drill the basic laws into them even as their superiors flaunted them with a click of their fingers. “There’s always a price.”
I’ll pay it, he promises. Whatever it is, I’ll pay it.
Silent laughter floods through the forest around him as the trees shake in fear.
The spell’s just words. There should be talismans and herbs, ritual and sacrifice. He’s learnt that much. Instead his lips speak words his eyes don’t know, louder and louder until he’s shouting in his own mind.
BRING HER BACK.
No, Silverback growls, and then all Jack sees is darkness, feels the earth move around him and Alyssa’s cold hand slipping from his grasp. Silverback wraps around him, shielding him as the trees begin to fall, the ground crumbling away as they shuffle backwards trying to find safety—
“Jack!” Randall calls, like birdsong on the air. “Jack, no!”
“Yes,” Alyssa says, eyes too bright and lips too pale. She tilts her neck to one side, watches him with a gaze that’s not her own, and runs her fingers through the blood at her throat.
She licks her thumb and smiles.
“Silverback,” Greybeard howls, and then Jack’s heart’s beating again, feet on solid ground, still painted in Alyssa’s blood. The ice in his veins shatters and he’s sure he’s screaming even if all he can hear is Silverback.
“What did you do?” Randall asks, voice shaking as he clings to Jack’s shoulders, pre-med kicking in as he checks Jack over for physical injuries Jack doesn’t have. He smells like Gabrielle, like Midnight, and Jack would push him away except he also smells like Randall and Greybeard, and both he and Silverback sink into him as reality crashes back.
“Jack,” Randall says again, gently. Runs his fingers through Jack’s hair. “What did you do?”
“I just wanted to save her,” he says, thinks he says, tongue too heavy. “I just wanted to bring her back.”
“Did you?” Randall asks, mostly managing to control the anxious break in his voice. Jack shakes his head a little, one way then the other. No, he thinks. Yes. Maybe. Randall takes a deep breath. “What did you bring back?”
Randall’s never loved magic the way Jack has. The way Alyssa and Hamish and Vera have.
Maybe that’s why he’s always understood it better.
Jack listens to Silverback repeat the word over and over, awed and respectful and terrified.
“Alpha,” Jack says and hears the wolves scream.