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In the low evening light, the blood dripping from Isaac's mouth was black and shining with rising moonlight. It reflected in his eyes, casting a canine sheen to them, and Chris wondered absently if it affected his vision when that happened.
"I'm sorry." Isaac whispered, a drop of blood sliding down his chin, on his hands and knees next to Chris, his claws clutching the bloody dirt and snow. There was a slant to his shoulders to keep from leaning too much on his left side. Chris could just make out the spreading shadow of blood on his rib cage, staining his shirt. Chris grit his teeth, pressing his over shirt more firmly to the shredded skin of his neck and face. A sudden thought had him feeling up his jaw, finding with great relief that his ear was intact and still attached to his head. Isaac noticed, of course he did, and whined low in his throat, sounding so much like a beat dog that it pained Chris more than the boy's teeth had.
He adjusted himself where he sat against the cold bark of the tree, the movement of his legs making the snow build up in little walls on either side of him, and said carefully,
"It's not your fault Isaac."
The boy didn't look comforted, just hunched his shoulders and sat back on his calves, hands still buried in the snow. Abrasions still circled his wrists from the wolfsbane ropes. Tear tracks glittered on his face, running pale trails in the blood around his mouth.
Using his right hand to keep pressure on the left side of his face, Chris stretched out his other arm, squinting in the dark at his hand. It hurt like a bitch, but he was pretty certain no bones were broken, despite the death grip Isaac had on it earlier. There were four deep punctures, black holes in the pale skin of his hand, and less defined marks from the smaller teeth. Above the bite were long ragged lacerations from where his claws had found purchase, effectively dragging Chris down to hit the concrete floor of the cellar. There was more damage up his shoulder, but it was minimal due to the thick leather of his jacket. His arm and hand did hurt, but not enough to stop him from reaching for Isaac.
The boy flinched hard, shying his head down until he was almost doubled over, but Chris didn't relent. He settled his hand in Isaac's snow damp hair, carding his fingers in the curls. It had grown fairly long since moving to France, and now looked almost as it did when he had been a newly bitten wolf.
Isaac was silent as Chris pet his hair, but unhunched enough to crawl forward so that his knees were against Chris' thigh. There was wounds there too, a deep gouge where the wolf had bite and jerked back, and nicks and scratches all the way down to his ankle.
Chris wondered how much Isaac could see or smell, if he knew that practically the entire left side of Chris's body was torn up, that his shoulder and neck were now hamburger. He probably had a good guess judging by the broken open look on his face, which Chris could see even in the dim light of the full moon. Without the wolfsbane and the dog whistles, terror and shame and fear kept Isaac in control, but Chris saw that fear in Isaac's eyes and decided right then that he'd take the wolf and all the wounds it brought if it meant Isaac would stop crying, because he never could bare to see the boy cry.
"Isaac, it's alright." Chris said, in the soft low voice he remembered using when Allison was small and easily scared. He'd been surprised, the first time he found himself using it with Isaac, the first time he'd had a panic attack. Chris had thought that voice had died with his daughter.
"I'm beaten up, but I've had worse. I'll live, unlike you if we don't get home and bleed that wolfsbane out." Isaac made a sound between a sob and weak laugh, fluttering his hands over the torn material of Chris' jeans.
"I nearly kill you, at the very least maim you, and you're not even angry at me."
Isaac's voice was choked and broke at least twice, and he couldn't meet Chris's eyes. He stared down at his blood stained hands on Chris' leg, the tips of his white claws showing, glinting silver. Sighing heavily, wincing as a wound pulled at his side, Chris slid his hand from Isaac's hair and down his face, getting him under the jaw gently and turning his head to face him. The boy was pliant as a marionette.
"I do not want to be harsh with you Isaac, but we don't have time to do this. That wolfsbane is going to kill you within hours if we don't get it out, so whatever guilt, however unfounded, you have, push it down until you're not dying, and help me up."
For a long moment, Isaac simply looked at Chris, silent and trembling. Then in the dark, his irises bled yellow, and he nodded.
*
The walk to the car was slow and difficult, both Chris and Isaac holding onto each other as they stumbled and tripped through the snow. The car was stashed several hundred yards from the house, and they'd only made it about a single hundred before Chris had collapsed.
When Isaac had taken a piece of Chris's thigh, he may not have hit any major vessels or arteries, but he probably ripped out some strands of tendon and muscles, because Chris couldn't hardly bare weight on it, let alone move it back and forth. All he could do was drag it like a dead thing and grit his teeth.
He noticed, at one point, that the pain receded somewhat. Assuming it was shock at first, he didn't pay it much mind, grateful for the reprieve. He only realized what it actually was when he stumbled on a small fallen tree, jarring his bad leg. It hurt, but dully, distantly. Isaac gasped like he'd been burned, and in his hurt, exhausted state, it took Chris a minute to understand. When he did, he glanced sharply at where Isaac's hand gripped his bicep. There was a jacket between them, but through the tiny tears in the leather his claws had made earlier, Isaac had dug his fingers in to press against Chris's skin. Fine black lines pulsed up his fingers, threading between his knuckles and across the back of his hand.
Instead of saying anything, which the boy would ignore anyway, Chris leaned in hard against Isaac's side, loosening the boy's grip a little, and managed to pinch his jacket cuff between his fingers and tug it down over his hand, dislodging Isaac's fingers. A displeased, yet relieved huff of air escaped Isaac, and nothing was said as they continued to the car.
Once at the vehicle, Chris braced his better hand on the hood and breathed hard. Every nerve in the left side of his body was throbbing with each beat of his heart, and his clothes were soaked through with blood. It pooled it in his boot, an uncomfortable slickness under his foot. He grimaced, glancing around the dead end they'd parked at. It was closely bracketed by trees, limiting visibility. Chris looked at Issac, standing at his side and watching him worriedly.
"You hear or smell anything?" Chris asked, gesturing with his chin at the surrounding forest.
Isaac frowned, the features of his face not only shifting from worried to cautious, but from human to wolf at the same time. His ears first pulled back, then perked forward, slightly pointed. Tilting his head up, his nose and jaw lengthened into a vague muzzle, his parted lips showing glimpses of long teeth. The faint light caught and held in his eyes, that eerie animal glint seen in the dark. The wolf rolled beneath his skin under a direct full moon.
Chris waited, listening to Isaac's slow, deliberate inhales.
"No, nothing." He said finally, relaxing back to human, save for the eye shine which he couldn't fully will away.
It was incredible to Chris, that such a young man, a boy really, who had suffered and taken on such trauma for most of his life, could be so completely in control. It had taken innumerable doses of wolfsbane and other drugs, and torture, to crack Isaac's hold on his instincts. Even then, it had only been for about ten minutes, but it was ten minutes long enough for Chris to be shoved into a room with a terrified and beaten wolf. Ten minutes to be ripped like paper before Issac broke through the haze of hysteria.
"Chris." Issac whispered now, ducking his head in a doglike fashion. Chris shoved his thoughts to the side and tediously fished the keys from his inner jacket pocket. He tossed them to the boy, who deftly snatched them from the air.
"You're driving."
Pushing off from the hood, Chris limped to the passenger door, leaving Issac to fidget nervously before scrambling to unlock the car.
When they stumbled through the door, Chris was almost unconscious and Isaac was carrying most of his weight. Chris could barely see straight, could barely walk, and in every fleeting lucid moment he cursed himself for not holding out longer, for putting this on Isaac. There was nothing he could do though, bloodloss can't be overcome by will power alone, and by the time the door was being shut, Chris legs were giving out.
Taken off guard by the sudden weight drop, Isaac's knees buckled and they both hit the floor. On their knees, as Chris gasped in pain, Issac curled in close, winding his arms under Chris' jacket and gripping in a semblance of a hug. He pressed his face to Chris's neck, and Chris felt his own dried blood cracking and flaking against his skin as it came off the boy's mouth and jaw. Immediately the pain in his side lessened, the throbbing in his neck faded, his thigh stung less, and Isaac's breath hitched.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry."
He whispered, voice barely a rasp that Chris had to strain to hear. He wanted to shove the boy back, cease his pain leeching, but even on a good day Issac could overpower him, and at the moment Chris could hardly stand, let alone manhandle a werewolf. With little else to do, he let Issac take his pain, hating it but breathing out in relief.
When the shadows at the edges of his vision started to thicken, Chris shifted.
"Losing blood Isaac."
These were things Chris was still having to remind him off, blood loss, fatigue, strained muscles, things a wolf wouldn't have to think of, but hunters couldn't forget.
Where their chests pressed together, he felt the boys heart jump in the brief second before Isaac moved. He rose, never loosening his grip, and planted his feet. Chris stumbled on his own, and he wouldn't remember well later, but when he swayed, Isaac ducked and swung an arm under Chris' legs, carrying him the same way Scott held Allison as she died.
*
The next passing hours were blurred and hurting.
In brief intervals of consciousness Chris was aware of pressure, of blood on the hardwood floors, the yellow eye shine of a wolf in the dark of the hall, the smell of gunpowder, bruise blue fire and sickly sweet smoke. Then, nothing for a while. How much time passed, Chris wasn't aware of. He wasn't aware of much truthfully. Waking and unconsciousness seemed little different with how much focus and thought he had at the moment.
*
What he did know was that the room was dark with little to no visibility, and the pain of before was absent. A heavy weight pressed down on his right side, and abruptly he noticed short, heavy breaths, that of a sleeping dog.
Shifting and feeling oddly numb, worryingly so, he felt those breaths puffing against his neck. With his right arm pinned and tingling under the mass of weight, he used his stiff left hand to reach out. There was no pain but Chris could feel the resistance of tightening damaged muscles, and when his palm settled on a mess of curling hair by his cheek, his fingers wouldn't bend.
"Issac." Chris said, barely audible. He expected the boy to wake with a jerk and sharp inhale, he almost always did, even now. However, he didn't so much as flinch, continuing to breath in deep, quick breaths. Chris frowned, and while through his haze, it finally occurred to him why the pain was absent. Isaac's face was flush against his throat, directly opposite the side he had rended with his teeth hours earlier, and his skin was fever hot, slick with sweat, whether from his own strain or from Chris' wounds, he didn't know.
His first impulse was to shove at Isaac and break the connection, chastise him for being so foolish as to take pain un-restricted. But even when it was for his own sake Chris had a difficult time being harsh with Issac, and he couldn't bring himself to wake him like that. Options were limited though, given how little he could move.
"Issac." Chris said, louder that before but voice still hoarse and low. He pressed on Issac's head since he couldn't grip to tug his hair, and tried to maneuver his fingers between where they made contact. His joints were locked up, and Isaac was a dead weight, so it accomplished little.
"Hey, come on." He tried again, voice strengthening as his head cleared some. As he was about to push again, Isaac's breathing changed, stoping for a second before gasping faintly. He curled into Chris, one hand on his chest fisting his shirt, the other clenching under his back. The muscles of Isaac's neck strained when Chris slid his hand down. He whined, soft and pained in his throat. Chris shoved at his head, giving up on gentle for the moment, and he spoke, it was with the same voice he used when ordering a kill.
"Issac, move."
Still in a daze of pain and sleep but desperate to obey, Isaac scrambled back in a mess of limbs and twisted blankets.
Chris knew the moment contact broke, because they both gasped, Isaac in relief, Chris in shock. He grit his teeth swiftly, biting back his groan of freshly realized pain.
"Chris?" Issac whispered. His panting was audible in the quiet, and concern overrode the pain. How much pain could a lone wolf take? It nearly killed Derek once, and lowered him to a beta. What would it do to Issac, who had no level to fall too? He was basically an omega, and a weakened one at that.
Grinding his teeth hard, Chris braced his good arm and heaved. For a dizzying moment he thought he was about to black out, he almost wished he had for the fire that flared up his hip and ribcage, but he managed to get himself upright. Isaac's hands skittered over his arm, unsure but worried.
"Turn the light on." Chris ground out, closing his eyes tight and leaning back against the headboard. It was taller than he was like this, solid wood and cool. His room then. Probably reassuring for Issac to be here. Everything smelled like Chris.
Taking even, deep breaths, Chris kept his eyes shut while he listened to Issac move. The mattress raised as the boy's weight lifted, and then a click sounded. Chris eyelids lit dull red, but it wasn't until he felt Issac return to his side that he pried his eyes open. His room, colored darkly in woods and earth tones, was lit with an ornate bronze chandelier that was far older than Chris. It cast a muted yellow haze in the room, thankfully not harsh on his eyes. The room was still dim enough for Chris to see the wolf shine in Issac's eyes, trained on him as they were. Chris surveyed him silently, swallowing back nausea and blinking hard a couple times. The boy looked alright, given the circumstances. Pale, smudged with flaking brown blood, hair a tangled wreck, flushed in the face and sweating, trembling slightly. But upright, alive. That's what mattered, alive.
"You burned it out? The wolfsbane?" He questioned, when he was sure words would come out of his mouth rather than bile. Isaac blinked once, twice.
"Yes. You instructed me before you passed out. I managed after that."
If the situation wasn't so stressed, Chris might have been amused at the succinct, carefully annunciated sentence structure Issac had picked up from him. Then again, Issac wouldn't have spoken like that if the situation hadn't been this stressed to begin with.
Chris eyed him carefully. Wolfsbane poisoning, burning it out by himself, his own wounds that couldn't heal until the poison was gone, then Chris's injuries, the guilt Isaac felt from them, dealing with the bleeding and the blood loss and keeping Chris alive, and the stress and trauma of the whole situation. It was a lot. Especially for the boy to handle alone. Yet he managed to keep them both alive.
Acknowledging that now though would only serve to make Issac uncomfortable, and likely push him over the edge into a break done, which Chris would much rather be fully functional for.
Instead, Chris smiled tiredly, and said in a hoarse voice, "Good boy."
He reached out, Isaac's eyes bright with more than wolf shine, and drew him in. It was difficult to hug him, awkward from his stiff shoulder and arm, but Chris tightened his good arm fiercely, pressing his cheek to Issac's hair as the boy hunched forward, his hands twisted in the stomach of Chris's shirt.
Taking a deep breath, even without wolf senses, he could smell sweat, the sweet reek of aconite, the iron of blood. Could still taste blood in his mouth, feel it stiff on his skin and clothes and dried in Isaac's hair. He rubbed his good hand up and down Issac's back.
"Why don't you get cleaned up?" He asked, voice quiet and rough. He might not could manage it himself right now, but Issac at least could shower and be comfortable. He disagreed though, shaking his head against Chris's unmarked collar bone. When he spoke, it was a muffled mumble.
"Can we just...sleep? For like five days?"
Chris huffed a life, winching when it pulled his injuries though he still smiled.
"Maybe not for five days, but for now, yes." Isaac sighed, slumping a little more and making a sound of protest when Chris promptly pushed him back slightly. His eyes were dull and with dark bruises under them when looked up at Chris, his mouth and chin and throat still cracking with blood standing out starkly on his white skin. Chris slid his right hand under the boy's jaw, tipping his head until there foreheads touched. He closed his eyes.
"Do not take my pain. You're weak and hurt, and it could kill you if you do it again." A pause. Neither moved.
"Okay?" Chris prodded gently, always gently. He learned fast that saying Understand or anything like a demand got an automatic, monotone response. Asking though, was generally met with a genuine response.
"Okay." Issac whispered, though he sounded upset. Letting his hand drop, Chris shifted a little and inclined his head, turning and pressing the side of his face to Issac's, from temple to cheek to jaw. It was a wolfish gesture, a silent show of a affection that Issac did occasionally when he was either very upset or very content. In the considerable time they've been in France, after the dynamic between them had fully shifted from bonded by mutual trauma to something like family, Chris had realized Issac appreciated the canine gestures he exhibited returned. It reminded Chris of when Allison was small and thrived on hugs and attention.
Even now, he wasn't sure if that hurt or not.