Chapter 1: Vi Pt.1 a.k.a Love Like This...
Summary:
' The pressure to lead would sometimes nearly bring her to tears in her private moments.
She was also doing her own growing up, after all.
Yet, Vi still knew it was her sworn duty to hold Powder's hand as the girl followed in her steps, however clumsy they might be.
(Vi certainly didn’t always have the correct answers or handle situations ‘perfectly’, of course. She had unique inner conflicts about who she was becoming and what that could mean for their dynamic as they grew older.)
There was an ever-growing, gnawing desire for violence and aggression she did not know what to do with sometimes.
Something dark lay dormant within her that frightened her.
Something she had dreaded awakening for as long as she could remember. '
-- Or --
With the ever-looming threat of her first transformation on the horizon, Vi contemplates its potential ramifications.
Growing up really sucks sometimes.
[Title from the Kodaline song of the same name.]
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
=== Vi ===
They were currently resting in bed together after spending an eventful day chasing each other all around the Undercity without a care in the world, which was a true rarity these days with life’s ever-growing pressures and responsibilities.
Vi was mindlessly twining Powder's little braid between her fingers in one hand and absentmindedly rubbing circles on her back with the other as the girl lay there peacefully listening to her steady heartbeat.
The smaller teen was half-dozing but still conscious enough to inhale her older sister's comforting scent as she clung to her midsection.
Her distinctly higher-pitched purring perfectly complemented Vi’s rumbling one, indicating how serene they felt after basking in the luxury of a full day spent in each other’s uninterrupted company.
These days, there has rarely been much spare, ‘incident-free’ time for them to goof around like they used to do daily as kids.
Things were much more straightforward to understand in those days when Vi had no significant obligations other than keeping Powder and herself entertained and mostly out of trouble.
The ‘incidents’ were very different, few and far between then.
Sure, their senses are sharper nowadays, and they have learned to hone them more specifically, enabling them to ‘read’ each other and other people more effectively.
(But their heightened senses also complicated things they had never felt the need to overthink during their early childhood when smells were just smells.)
To her, it was a wonder how other people got by with their duller senses because Vi had no words to describe how or ‘why’ she could sense so much about Powder’s physical state yet simultaneously know absolutely nothing about her state of mind through scent alone.
If it weren’t for that heightened sense, she might not ever know what to expect from Powder anymore, as she had also become a much more complex individual as she entered her teenage years alongside her.
Having no role models to help Vi understand the world through the extra dimension of scent, losing their parents at such a young age, and knowing of no other werewolves at the time often left her feeling like she was stumbling alone in the dark.
The pressure to lead would sometimes nearly bring her to tears in her private moments.
She was also doing her own growing up, after all.
Yet, Vi still knew it was her sworn duty to hold Powder's hand as the girl followed in her steps, however clumsy they might be.
(Vi certainly didn’t always have the correct answers or handle situations ‘perfectly’, of course. She had unique inner conflicts about who she was becoming and what that could mean for their dynamic as they grew older.)
There was an ever-growing, gnawing desire for violence and aggression she did not know what to do with sometimes.
Something dark lay dormant within her that frightened her.
Something she had dreaded awakening for as long as she could remember.
Vi knew it was not a question of if but of when it would wake.
Having repressed it for so many years, she knew it would one day finally culminate in something of which she only had a vague, incomplete image in her mind’s eye.
Glistening fangs, bloodied claws, and a tangle of fur.
The terrifying image was mainly pieced together from hushed words of caution from their parents before she was old enough to retain most of them and her wild imagination.
The complete range of her parents’ teachings had long been forgotten, but what lingered in their absence was the primitive dread of the mindless beast she might transform into one day.
Of how her unchecked base desires for violence and dominance could turn her into a physical threat to those she loved the most without warning someday.
And one day, she also surmised that Powder would be even more vulnerable because of her inherently meek nature.
Vi was sixteen now, and despite how callous she could still be towards her younger sister, she was equally, or perhaps even doubly, protective of her at the end of the day.
(And perhaps, she surmised, this need to protect her sister from threats had been so ingrained into her psyche that she had willed her first shift not to come even after all these years past the age she had been told it would happen.)
At this point, she believed she had somehow ‘defied’ biology through sheer stubborn strength of will alone.
Nothing in their dynamic would ever have to change because she refused to let it happen.
If she could remain firm, perhaps she could prevent herself from fully losing control of her rage and aggression.
Or at least not in a way that is destructive to her loved ones.
Just because she had been born with a dormant beast inside her, it did not mean she would ever let it rule her.
She had been behaving so well for Powder lately.
So gentle.
Just like the younger girl deserved.
She had worked hard for this and would do everything possible to stay this good and gentle for Powder forever.
But it had taken quite a while to get to this point, of course...
---
Vi remembers a long time growing up when she intentionally acted rude towards her baby sister.
Just because she could.
Because it was so easy to be with someone who did not even try to fight back most of the time.
She could not explain exactly why she did what she did or why she would let Powder get so close only to forcefully shove her away.
Vi could not explain why she felt thrilled when she saw how her beautiful gunmetal-blue eyes would widen and almost instantly fill with tears when she did that.
Her sweet, comforting underlying scent would sharply spike with what she later identified as obvious anticipatory panic.
The sharper scent would intensify and intermingle with the scents of exertion, directly proportional to how far she could keep up with her as she jogged away.
(She stopped breaking into a full run early on in her bouts of bullying, as she had decided it was far less enjoyable to leave Powder in the dust. It was much more ‘satisfying’ to trail her along just close enough to give her hope and let her think she could almost keep up with her as she first learned how to run properly.)
It was amusing to let her catch up just enough to hear her watery, desperate cries of Vi’s name and pleading wishes for her to slow down or stop running altogether.
Powder’s harsh breathing would slowly but surely transition from anxious sobs to panted, focused breaths of exertion as she gradually closed the gap naturally over months and years.
Maybe the twisted belief that Powder ‘needed’ her so much, despite her flaws, drove her conflicting actions.
At least initially.
Vi never understood how, no matter how many times she would bully her, Powder would still run after her.
Seek her attention.
Her touch.
Do things that would seemingly be ‘only’ to draw her gaze when she could not be physically close to Powder.
No matter how many times she shoved her away or handled her a little too roughly, fully taking advantage of her superior size, the smaller girl would still seek her out for comfort immediately after.
It was almost as if a single touch or soft glance would make her forget how much of a jerk Vi could be toward her without proper justification.
Powder would still squeeze her tight when she got back within reach, shyly whimpering into her chest as she doused Vi with her sweet scent of relief.
Then Vi would 'suddenly' turn into mush as Powder would giggle through the last of her sniffles and rub her tear-stained cheeks anywhere she could to scent her.
Vi would often pretend to want to stop that adorable ‘retaliatory’ behavior and shove her away again, but with much less heart in it after this.
Hurt, then comfort.
And repeat.
It became an odd routine of theirs, one of capture and release that linked them daily like an invisible rope that only their hearts could sense and tethered their souls.
With time, that subconscious push and pull evolved into a game that they both began to look forward to inciting purposely.
It was also a game they sometimes let their brothers or other kids join to add variety and further ‘difficulty’ by muffling each other’s scent trails.
But in the end, they would still gravitate toward each other first and quickly lose interest in chasing anyone else once they locked eyes on each other.
(Because of this tendency, Mylo and Claggor often made snide remarks, but Vi and Powder could care less about what they thought of their bond.)
There was something uniquely fulfilling about their ‘game within a game’ that no one else could ever hope to live up to or even attempt to replicate.
The subconscious physical reactions they would provoke in each other, such as subtle changes in scent, became almost addictive to their heightened senses.
The give-and-take of those exchanges started to blur the line between who was trailing whom in each round.
Eventually, they stopped caring about who ‘won’ the chases as long as they triumphantly met at the silently agreed-upon finish line to give each other a tough time.
Vi would beam with pride when she saw that her lead on Powder was getting shorter and shorter as time passed, despite her increasingly complex attempts to throw her off her scent.
Something deep inside her soul would make her feel like she was ‘providing’ Powder with invaluable life skills that only she could give her.
It made her feel so important to and trusted by her.
And sometimes, that was enough to strengthen her drive to improve herself to give Powder even more.
Vi would remember this time in their lives with fondness and a pang of grief because life had been far less complicated.
Notes:
[[I TRIED to make '2.0' a bit more cohesive than the original but some of the tenses and stuff might still end up a bit wonky. This is 'intentional'/for plot purposes because of "the nature of memory and trauma" and whatnot, which will make more sense Later©️. But also writing can be haaard for my bilingual ADHD brain okay?]]
[[[This used to have like 210+ comments once upon a time but I had to delete most of the OG chapters for the 'Re-Master' and they took the comments with them. 🤧]]]
If anything didn't translate from my brain into words that make sense to others, kindly let me know. I'll either properly edit it INTO the story or answer in the comments.
*shakes tin can a bit*Spare Kudos or Comments for this neurodivergent author doing their Best™️??
Chapter 2: Powder Pt.1 a.k.a All I Want
Summary:
' Vi would never need to say or do anything specific for her presence to make Powder feel like she was always home, regardless of where she was physically.
Being around her and being perceived by her in any way was almost always enough to make Powder feel necessary and complete.
As long as Vi was there, everything could be okay in the end.
Part of her figured that she might be giving Vi too much power over her sense of self by believing this so wholeheartedly, but this mentality never felt suffocating or ‘forced’ upon her in any way.
It was the lens through which she had always viewed the world around her.
Her idolization of Vi was the most natural and life-sustaining thing for her besides breathing. '
-- Or --
Powder thinks Vi is fricken awesome and can't see why that would ever be a problem??
Most other people suck or just aren't as great.
Fight her on it.[Title from the Kodaline song of the same name.]
Notes:
Still not beta read. Still just stumbling forward. Probably failing at grammar and story structure in one of my two spoken languages like a champ!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
= Powder =
As far back as Powder could remember, her main focal point and most significant hero in life had always been the same person.
Her big sister Vi.
She had very few and fragmented memories of their birth parents, as she was only about three years old when they met their tragic and violent end, so she could not truly consider them to have much influence on her.
There were few people she even liked talking to on a regular enough basis to have formed much of an opinion on either.
Even the ones she had little ‘choice’ about spending significant time with, like her adoptive brothers, were very much in a separate category in terms of importance and influence in her head.
That is not to say that she did not love or care about anyone else; she did care at least somewhat, even if not with a level of depth remotely similar to that which she felt for her sister.
But Vi was just different, okay?
Sure, she could and would also say she valued Vander’s noble efforts to parent two young girls who fell into his care following a series of quite brutal and unfortunate events, even if they were ones he had inadvertently contributed to setting into motion in the first place.
(He did his best given the circumstances and was constant in their lives. Powder would never say that the man did not at least try to be as good a role model as he could during those early years of her life, not even after everything that happened much later in life. He had been a good man. There was no denying that.)
But the fact is that even before the traumatic events that left Vi as the sole surviving relative and last vestige of her original family life...
Vi was already the beginning and end of her world.
The source of everything ‘good’ and worth pursuing in life.
The sole grounding presence that moored her to reality when her thoughts and heart would race against each other in her confusion.
Vi would never need to say or do anything specific for her presence to make Powder feel like she was always home, regardless of where she was physically.
Being around her and being perceived by her in any way was almost always enough to make Powder feel necessary and complete.
As long as Vi was there, everything could be okay in the end.
Part of her figured that she might be giving Vi too much power over her sense of self by believing this so wholeheartedly, but this mentality never felt suffocating or ‘forced’ upon her in any way.
It was the lens through which she had always viewed the world around her.
Her idolization of Vi was the most natural and life-sustaining thing for her besides breathing.
There was so much about their ancestry that they could never, and probably would never, fully understand.
So that innate willingness to defer to the older girl might have been ‘explainable’ from an early age had there been anyone alive to seek guidance from in such matters.
But the cruel reality was that the evil armored monsters, the 'Enforcers,' had made sure that there would be next to nothing concrete left for them to refer to whenever they had any insecurities about what was happening to them as they grew older.
It was entirely up to them to figure things out as events unfolded.
(There was talk that there might still be some ways to obtain some of that ‘forbidden knowledge’ that had been generally lost to time, but not through any accessible or safe means for two Undercity kids. So, seeking it out was never something they could even imagine attempting for themselves, at least not if they wanted to retain even a trace of their protected ‘anonymity’ about what they were. As it was, they both had learned to operate on muscle memory and flip their hoods up before venturing out to any place where more self-important Enforcers or Pilties might look at them a little too closely and possibly put the pieces together about their ancestry and use it against them.)
Vi once told her that Vander had awkwardly attempted to explain to her why neither of them had ever encountered anyone else like them and hinted at a plausible reason why their bond had always seemed particularly deep.
He tried to articulate that it might be a proximity thing due to something called 'bio low gee’ or something.
He had told Vi that things might ‘happen’ to them as they got older, which would explain why they were particularly inseparable even now.
Things outside anyone’s control due to how they were born and beyond his limited knowledge and ability to explain, or at least certainly not in an ‘appropriate’ manner for a grown man to tell a kid.
Despite his human qualms about 'it,' even hypothetically, he believed it was not his place to intervene or judge, given all they had been through together.
He had even said that if his suspicions were ‘confirmed’ one day, he would try his best to remain just as fiercely protective and supportive of his adopted daughters as ever despite what the outside world might say.
What mattered to him was that they were happy and safe in each other’s company.
(All this had mostly flown over Powder’s head since she had been about nine years old and Vi almost thirteen when these types of talks began. To Powder, the idea that her adoration for her sister could ever be seen as anything negative was simply unfathomable.)
Powder mostly remembered wondering what Vi had meant when she told her that Vander said it was ‘not his place’ to voice strong opinions about certain things, especially since they were both still so young.
What ‘place’ were they even talking about?
Did Vander have another home somewhere?
When did he have time to go there if he was always working at the bar or running other jobs?
What drastic thing could happen between them or to them in a few years that would have Vander so ‘worried’ about their future?
All their big words had just left her even more confused than ever about the ‘growing up’ process at the time.
Why was he so weird and secretive about things by only talking to Vi about them first?
Being kept in the dark about their talks made it seem like they thought she could not be trusted with knowing about things that were ‘important’ yet.
They seemed to think that she would be too dumb to participate meaningfully, and that hurt.
If what they discussed might put Vander’s undying support to the test, shouldn’t Powder get an early warning about it, too?
She needed some forewarning to avoid ‘doing’ or being the thing that made him so anxious, you know?
Powder hated being left out of more ‘grown-up’ things simply because she was a few years younger than Vi.
It was unfair that he didn’t even try to trust her to be mature enough to understand like Vi would sometimes!
They weren’t even that far apart in age anyway!
It was all so irritating and confusing!
Often, Powder felt jealous over their seemingly more trusting bond, and Vi, sensing her building up to a tantrum as usual, told her that Vander promised he would explain things a little better to her when she got older.
And to believe that once he did, she would tell Powder all she could.
This reassurance usually placated her enough since she always believed that whatever ‘things’ were, Powder could trust her sister to make them make more sense for her.
Everything made more sense when Vi was around to guide her through it.
She had always been great at helping Powder focus her boundless energy and racing thoughts.
Serving as her familiar and trusted point of reference in life.
More than once, she had overheard Mylo bitterly mutter about ‘hero worship’ regarding how much she loved and unquestioningly believed in her sister’s words.
Was it a ‘bad’ thing to think of her big sister as a hero worth worshiping?
Vi was tall, physically strong, and assertive in a seemingly effortless way that Powder aspired to be like someday.
She was influential in a way that commanded attention in any space she occupied without even needing to raise her voice!
Vi was very much like Vander in many ways but in a younger and slighter frame, which, in her opinion, made her even more of an absolute badass.
On the other hand, Mylo was just a gross-smelling and loud-mouthed scrawny idiot at best.
Always had been.
And will likely always be.
(As far as Powder was concerned, at least.)
He never could or would ever understand the type of bond that she shared with Vi, even on a basic level because they were built too fundamentally differently.
Both she and Vi had realized this gradually over the years, even if it was based solely on their physical senses being sharper than most anyone else they had met.
The people around them would never understand each other on the same level as they understood each other, even down to each other’s scent.
However, they also realized that not everyone could express themselves in the same ways they did unconsciously, even if they made a conscious effort to.
Most people were physically incapable of it, even.
Sure, audible and visual cues such as growling and baring naturally sharpened teeth were the most easily perceptible differences that they regularly expressed.
But to Powder, the seemingly ‘invisible’ things, like the subtle changes in scents depending on individual moods, were much more pronounced in Vi than in anyone else.
It was different with them.
(In others, aside from degrees of layered body odor, their scents kind of just blended into an ephemeral icky mist in Powder’s mind. No one else’s general scent was particularly memorable or ‘pleasant’ to her even if or when, and that was a big ‘if’ down in the Undercity, they showered even semi-regularly. They were just ‘there’, too.)
Other people’s shifts in mood were ‘spelled out’ in a language much harder for Powder to comprehend.
It was almost as if she could recognize the shape of the words they spoke to her, but they were written in an alphabet she could not ‘read’ properly.
That alone made it infinitely more tiresome for her to even want to befriend and bond with new people.
Or maybe Powder was more attuned to her sisters’ moods because she had spent her entire life carefully tracing Vi’s footsteps, both metaphorically and physically at times, and therefore could ‘read’ her even without the help of her sharper sense of smell.
Whatever the case may be, at least to Powder, other people seemed dull in every sense of the word by comparison, and she did not feel any pressing need to figure out why that had always been the case.
In the end, it would take a few more years after those initial talks for things to start to ‘click’ in her head, and even then, it was primarily due to firsthand experiences, not any direct guidance from anyone.
And many more years after that, for the more befuddling puzzle pieces to fall into place and form something akin to mutual understanding.
But almost a little too late to matter by then.
Notes:
[[I TRIED to make '2.0' a bit more cohesive than the original but some of the tenses and stuff might still end up a bit wonky. This is 'intentional'/for plot purposes because of "the nature of memory and trauma" and whatnot, which will make more sense Later©️. But also writing can be haaard for my bilingual ADHD brain okay?]]
[[[This used to have like 210+ comments once upon a time but I had to delete most of the OG chapters for the 'Re-Master' and they took the comments with them. 🤧]]]
If anything didn't translate from my brain into words that make sense to others, kindly let me know. I'll either properly edit it INTO the story or answer in the comments.
*shakes tin can a bit*Spare Kudos or Comments for this neurodivergent author doing their Best™️??
Chapter 3: Powder Pt. 2 a.k.a Love You To Death
Summary:
' Powder always felt safe and protected when Vi was around.
Few would dare to cast a disparaging glance if they knew how ready and willing her sister was to raise her fists to defend her.
It should have frightened her, not thrilled her.
On more than one occasion, Vi would become so determined to land the final blow in a fight that she almost passed out from exhaustion instead of letting the other person win.
It was captivating how Vi would get so focused on ensuring they would never bother Powder again that even when outmatched, she would only back down at Powder's pleading request and not a moment sooner.
These bouts of almost ‘primal’ levels of rage and aggression outright frightened others and, therefore, kept their close friendship group relatively small, but Powder often lived to see them in action. '
-- Or --
Powder is ever more Impressed™️ by her badass, strong sister and is actively exploring ways to be helpful and impress her as well.
[Title from the song of the same name by Fickle Friends, which feels very Powder/Jinx coded to me.]
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
= Powder =
Powder had never been the strongest person in any space she occupied, at least not in a ‘corporeal’ sense, and she was very aware of and annoyed by this fact.
Due to her small stature and bone structure, she likely never would be an exceptionally commanding individual in a purely physical sense, even if she tried extra hard from this day forward until the day she finally died.
Or at least not intimidating in the same way as her big sister, who was effortlessly imposing, that’s for sure.
Vi, who, at ten years and some moons old, had already boasted a considerably muscular build for her frame, was undeniably born with something Powder did not possess then or even now at nearly twelve years old.
Even in terms of height, she was certain that her sister had already exceeded her current height by the age of nine, and it somehow appeared taller on her frame back then.
She will never know how that was even possible, but it did not seem to be in the cards for Powder to be anywhere near the same track as her or even most of the kids they grew up alongside.
So unfair!
It brought her significant personal irritation to be belittled in almost every family discussion or important argument based solely on the fact that she was the youngest and smallest of their makeshift family unit.
It was as if being as small-framed as she naturally was had been a personal choice, not just her bad luck in the genetic pool draw.
Sure, she didn't spend nearly as many weekly hours building and maintaining slabs of muscle as her sister, but that didn’t mean she was a total slouch either!
She kept up during their games, at least more than when they first started playing.
But all those hours of maneuvering her shorter and lighter body through space and past the same obstacles as Vi did left Powder with only wiry muscles for her efforts.
Meanwhile, Vi looked at something heavy and seemed to gain muscle mass overnight.
How was that even possible?
It was terrific and unfair, in her opinion.
But with time, Powder had learned that she could more than compensate for what she may have lacked in sheer physical might with a sharper and more inventive mind than most.
(Almost too sharp at times, even. Ouch.)
She learned that her keen ability to observe and adapt on the fly was something she could use to navigate the world in a way that could be helpful.
It certainly helped her escape some tricky situations where she would have indeed gotten her butt kicked on many occasions.
Her strong desire for knowledge had driven her to teach herself to decipher abandoned instructional manuals through their visuals and later comprehend them and pursue more challenging reading materials whenever possible.
Perhaps most importantly, she could use her large brain to impress and assist Vi with tasks that did not require physical strength.
Powder had also recently started tinkering with repairing and dismantling increasingly complex, run-down machines, partly because she wanted to test the knowledge she had gained from her reading materials.
She started thinking about ways to turn scraps into functional and useful items.
Taking broken, feeble things and making them ‘stronger’ with the help of her own hands and imagination has always given Powder a sense of personal fulfillment.
Finding ways to make herself feel useful was slowly fostering a growing sense of pride in herself.
Inventing things gave her a great outlet for the pent-up, restless mental and physical energy that a good game of chase or a play fight could not fully satisfy.
These tinkering efforts were not just a hobby, as some people assumed; Powder hoped to create gadgets one day that could help on the battlefield against Enforcers or anyone wishing to harm her sister or their loved ones.
She had yet to build something from scratch that worked, of course.
Nevertheless, Vi always looked at her with the same level of fondness every time she presented her with her latest attempts, regardless of how often she nervously fumbled her words or they fell apart before her eyes.
Without fail, it was almost as if she were witnessing something profoundly magical, not just another addition to her long string of failures.
If no one else ever would, Powder knew she could always count on her sister as her most significant and ardent supporter.
Always.
And sometimes, when one of her inventions almost worked or she cleared a particularly challenging obstacle, Vi would beam with so much pride that it nearly brought Powder to tears at the sight of her smile.
That smile alone was encouragement enough to make her keep trying to get her gadgets to work, but Vi would also emit something Powder could only describe as a signature ‘happy smell.’
If she were ever asked to describe it, she would have no words other than that it was like a warm, soft blanket for her soul.
Powder yearned to do anything within her power to bring out that in Vi and bask in the comforting glow.
--
Fine!
Powder would likely never be as muscular and physically imposing as her lifelong protector, but she didn’t need to be, okay?
Vi’s more dominant physical presence was powerful for both of them, and Powder would likely always be thankful for and in awe of it.
Vi was incredibly powerful and badass.
Powder always felt safe and protected when Vi was around.
Few would dare to cast a disparaging glance if they knew how ready and willing her sister was to raise her fists to defend her.
It should have frightened her, not thrilled her.
On more than one occasion, Vi would become so determined to land the final blow in a fight that she almost passed out from exhaustion instead of letting the other person win.
It was captivating how Vi would get so focused on ensuring they would never bother Powder again that even when outmatched, she would only back down at Powder's pleading request and not a moment sooner.
These bouts of almost ‘primal’ levels of rage and aggression outright frightened others and, therefore, kept their close friendship group relatively small, but Powder often lived to see them in action.
(At least when they were on her behalf for some reason.)
Lately, she'd even begun to get an inexplicable and confusing rush from witnessing it for herself on top of the usual general concern for Vi's well-being that was always present at the sight of even the smallest drop of blood from her body.
She thought it would be awful to experience such overt aggression toward her, but fortunately, she believed she would probably never face it personally.
Vi was an almost unstoppable force of nature; if you pissed her off enough, there was no doubt about that.
But very few people knew that Vi had an incredibly soft and vulnerable heart beneath the harsh and sometimes prickly exterior she displayed to the outside world.
A sweet and gentle side she so rarely let anyone but Powder see, lest she loses even an inch of ground over anyone wanting to encroach on their lives or ‘territory’.
Allowing herself to be vulnerable in her sister’s presence was one way her older sibling made her feel valued and significant.
It made her feel like she could ‘provide’ Vi with something no one else could offer her: a truly safe place to rest fully.
So, no, Powder could not offer much help or physical protection during a fistfight.
Yet.
(Not unless she was serving as a ‘diversion’ to buy some time for someone else to get in a good jab or set up an ambush. Or unless she could finally get one of her scrap metal bombs to work reliably.)
One day, she would, though!
Probably.
...maybe?
But what Powder could offer was some form of protection for the parts that Vi could not fully guard by herself, the tender sides of her psyche and personality that she would never publicly admit even existed in the first place.
The one thing she could consistently offer was the space for Vi to let those aspects of her breathe easily, knowing Powder would always care for them just as fiercely as she did the rest of her.
She could help her sister avoid completely losing herself to rage and bitterness and remind her that she was loved, even if she had darker moments she could not fully control.
She could remind her that her existence is still appreciated even when she can't always be a pillar of unwavering strength and show that she also needs to be treated with tender care.
She could be there to remind her that her natural need to dominate did not make her an unlovable ‘monster’ in Powder's eyes and that she always had someone in her corner who knew she had a good heart.
--
When they were younger, Powder was much easier to bring to tears.
Whenever Vi jostled her around or pushed her away, she instantly took it to heart—at least, way back then—because it made zero sense to her young mind that her sister would ever want or need any space or time apart from her.
Because Vi was her entire world then, and admittedly, still is even now.
Sometimes, spending considerable time apart, even now as an almost twelve-year-old, still hurts something deep inside her that she cannot define with words.
(She was still trying to learn to cope with it in a more productive and ‘healthy’ way to this day, with wildly varying levels of failure and success.)
But as a young child, that indescribable pain felt immense, too large for her small body to contain, and she would cry inconsolably as it overflowed from within.
She couldn’t help it!
However, she eventually began to understand the deeper reasoning behind her sister's actions, and the tears occurred less frequently.
With time, she realized that Vi was just not the best at verbally expressing her wants and needs sometimes and that she, too, felt some things too strongly to contain.
Those things also needed to spill over to prevent self-combustion.
Vi needed to feel physically in control of something.
Or even someone sometimes.
Anything at all to keep her grounded in tactile reality sometimes.
(She could also relate to the need to feel ‘real’, but she usually turned that need to hurt inward instead of passing it onto others. Sometimes, a fog would take over her mind, and she would feel the urgent need to harm her own body to make sure she was still inside it.)
The older girl was undoubtedly physically strong, but she still needed reassurance.
And she knew she could trust Powder to love her unconditionally, even after the darkness passed.
Someone who could understand even halfway why she was the way she was.
The one person who would often be the reason Vi could return to herself so quickly as if Powder's mere presence alone soothed her on the deepest of levels.
Powder freely and willingly gave her a gentler outlet for her scrappier emotions because she saw that Vi also needed to feel understood and cared for.
And Powder loved being the person who could tirelessly prove time and time again that she always would show her she was worthy of gentleness.
She was certain that no one in the world would ever be able to take Powder’s place because no one else could offer a love more authentic than she could.
Powder was already confident she would never need or want anyone else to love as much as she loved her sister because there was not enough room in her heart and mind for them.
So surely, Vi would never need anyone else to be loved by even remotely close to the same degree that she loved her, not even if it were possible for any such person to exist so long as she still lived.
This was the one true thing she believed in with every fiber of her being, and, in all her youthful idealism and naiveté, Powder never fathomed a reality in which this sentiment would ever become untrue.
Notes:
[[I TRIED to make '2.0' a bit more cohesive than the original but some of the tenses and stuff might still end up a bit wonky. This is 'intentional'/for plot purposes because of "the nature of memory and trauma" and whatnot, which will make more sense Later©️. But also writing can be haaard for my bilingual ADHD brain okay?]]
[[[This used to have like 210+ comments once upon a time but I had to delete most of the OG chapters for the 'Re-Master' and they took the comments with them. 🤧]]]
If anything didn't translate from my brain into words that make sense to others, kindly let me know. I'll either properly edit it INTO the story or answer in the comments.
*shakes tin can a bit*Spare Kudos or Comments for this neurodivergent author doing their Best™️??
Chapter 4: Vi Pt.2
Summary:
' Vi knew logically that she could not simply fight away the injustices of life and make them disappear just because she wanted to.
But she’d be damned if she wasn’t willing to die trying to keep Powder safe and protected in any way she was physically able to for as long as she could.
For Powder, she would proudly take on any beating and fight anyone and everyone who wished harm upon her sister with all her might.
If Powder ever asked her to fight for her, she would do so without question.
And even if she never actually ‘asked’ her to, she would still fight in her honor until her final breath escaped her body. '
-- Or --
Powder's evasion and diversion skills are significantly improving. Vi loves that Powder can now protect herself when needed but still gladly serves as her first line of defense.
Notes:
There is a bit of new, mostly implied backstory from even 'before' this prequel takes place in this one.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
== Vi ==
Within the last year or so, as Powder had grown more confident in her parkour skills, they had started to change things during their spontaneous play fights and races.
Their unofficial training sessions?
Whatever their games had been ‘before,’ they were becoming more complex now that they were no longer as mismatched in skill.
Sometimes Powder would lead, set the pace, and make Vi work to keep up now.
That little sprite was improving by leaps and bounds month to month as she finally hit a tiny growth spurt, and Vi was starting to lose her groove because of it.
(Vi would likely never openly admit it, but she was convinced that in a plain old unobstructed foot race, Powder would leave her in the dust without a doubt. Her legs were considerably shorter but lither, and the girl seemed to have the unmatched ability to dig up energy reserves to push forward when most everyone around her ran out of steam. Powder may still be every bit the clumsy half-pint she had been as a tween in their day-to-day, but once she focused her mind and body towards a goal, she was nearly unrecognizable in her determination.)
Despite her shorter limbs, Powder was still exceptionally fast.
She was quick enough to almost negate the natural advantage of a nearly one-foot height difference between them when it was time for both to move swiftly.
And so adamantly spirited on her ‘good’ days.
She was so tireless on those days that Vi even began tossing miscellaneous objects over her shoulder for Powder to dodge or knocking bulky items into her path in blind hopes of slowing her down.
Just a little.
Even if for a few extra seconds.
Just enough to keep her lead for a few minutes longer and protect her pride by not losing more of their races without ‘intending’ to, as she always used to need to do, so as not to discourage Powder and build up her self-confidence.
(It was safe to say that the practice, both in the practical and emotional sense, had paid off because the girl was rarely more engrossed and in her element than when she was practically running laps around Vi nowadays.)
Recently, it had become increasingly rare for either of these tactics to slow her down in any impactful way, at least for more than a moment, pleasing and frustrating Vi to no end.
Powder’s lighter and shorter frame allows her to maneuver her wiry limbs and torso more easily, weaving through and around just about anything Vi throws at her.
Sometimes, literally at her.
(Whenever Vi was sure the more petite girl was fully present at the moment, she had little worry that any of the thrown objects would land. Again, a focused and present Powder vastly different from the daydreaming counterpart Vi often had to reel back towards reality under other circumstances.)
Powder had even begun to get scary good at tossing small items ahead of herself with precision to create noisy distractions to break Vi’s focus and catching lighter items to volley back toward her direction.
Vi was not delusional enough to believe that Powder missed her ‘mark’ by accident, especially when her back was turned, because she seldom missed when she wanted to hit a target.
Even if the target was moving.
Though not entirely intentional, years of having a swift, elusive target and being on the lookout for the slightest shift in direction had begun to shape Powder into quite a contender for ‘ranged’ style combat.
If she kept a safe distance and set her mind to it, she would likely one day become an expert markswoman or quite an escape artist who could keep Enforcers and other bad guys on their toes if she wanted to.
Nevertheless, Vi hoped she would never feel the need to endanger herself like that, for her own sake or anyone else’s.
That’s why Vi was there.
But she was not naive enough to ignore the possibility that someday life might not give either of them any choice but to use their skills in real-life or death situations rather than games.
Even so, Vi preferred, for now, to keep Powder as far away as possible from any situation where she would be forced to use her growing skills for survival instead of play.
They had both already been through so much, and life in the Lanes was stressful enough without inviting unnecessary life-threatening danger on top of the usual more ‘casual’ forms of danger.
(She truly believed that at least one of them should have gotten the chance to ‘just be a kid’ while they were still young.)
No one ever really got to live a peaceful life around these parts, but Vi dared to dream of a better one anyway.
For her.
Vi would single-handedly fight an entire army of Enforcers daily if it meant Powder could have a better chance at a better future than she likely had in store for herself.
She wished more than anything that she could give Powder that.
Vi wished that Powder would never have to be exposed to any more of the darker realities of their world than she had already seen.
What was the point of being born an ‘Alpha’ and being so much bigger and more robust if not to use her abilities to protect her little sister from the evils of the world?
Vi knew logically that she could not simply fight away the injustices of life and make them disappear just because she wanted to.
But she’d be damned if she wasn’t willing to die trying to keep Powder safe and protected in any way she was physically able to for as long as she could.
For Powder, she would proudly take on any beating and fight anyone and everyone who wished harm upon her sister with all her might.
If Powder ever asked her to fight for her, she would do so without question.
And even if she never actually ‘asked’ her to, she would still fight in her honor until her final breath escaped her body.
Vi found it nearly impossible to express the depths of her love and loyalty through words, but she could try to express it by delivering a total beatdown to some faceless opponent when needed.
Because boy, she could fight nearly tirelessly for a cause due to her innate need to be aggressive and express dominance against a challenger.
She knew that someday, even though she was surprised it had yet to happen, she would have no choice but to let her first shift happen to her.
And as much as she wished she could keep the physical manifestations of their baser natures locked away indefinitely, they would undoubtedly burst through her mental blockade eventually.
But she just hoped that despite whatever destruction that mindless beast would set out to do, it would retain even half of her loyalty and protectiveness towards Powder.
She hoped it would spare her and their makeshift family on its path of destruction.
Even as ‘Vi,’ she’d sometimes find herself lost in a fog of almost deranged levels of rage, and she truly worried at times that it would not know how to show discernment and restraint.
However, in her defense, she could blame the somewhat poor impulse control she occasionally expressed on still being a teenager, and maybe her temper would even out with time.
There was a chance that she and the beast would eventually outgrow it.
Who knows?
Maybe she’d even luck out and become an enormous ruby-haired puppy for the night, sleeping through the first shift, and all these years of anxiety would be for nothing.
Just another hazy memory to humorously think back on years later.
Even if that were the case, it would probably still be awkward to wake up with tattered clothing to the news of possibly having broken some furniture and caused some general mischief, though.
But that would be the best-case scenario.
Vi had no concrete way of knowing what was most likely to happen, and she had no one to ask about it.
Come to think about it, she had no recollection of ever seeing either of their parents in a non-human form.
Not even Powder’s birth dad, who she vaguely remembered having hair only a few shades darker than the lighter blue color she does, had ever shifted in the few years she knew him as far as she could recall.
(She vaguely remembers their mother telling her that both she and Vi’s birth father were unable to shift because they were born ‘differently’ from Vi and that the coward had abandoned them because he was afraid of the ‘responsibility’ of raising an Alpha child. And that their grandfather had also been an Alpha, a violent one that left her with both physical and emotional scars after she had refused to ‘get rid of’ Vi. Even after all these years, Vi was more than at peace with never having met or heard of either of those horrible men again.)
So, she only had her stubborn mind and good intentions to keep her from spiraling, imagining the worst of worst-case scenarios, and, more importantly, from ever making any of them a reality.
She felt she also had to retroactively ‘save’ their mother in some way by not turning out to be someone who abandons their family or permanently hurts them.
With all this responsibility constantly in the back of her mind, she was so proud of Powder for how much she improved her daily physicality.
The fact that Vi had inadvertently, but perhaps also secretly purposefully, helped give her even the slightest of chances at evading her if her first shift went wrong almost gave her some sense of peace about its inevitability.
She hoped that Powder’s near-preternatural speed and agility, especially for someone also lacking the developments of her first shift, would be enough to keep her safe from Vi long enough until she regained some semblance of self.
It was a big hope and ask, though.
Even in their unchanged forms, Powder stood no chance against Vi, at least not in anything involving close combat or general feats of strength.
If she ever got the upper hand in a physical fight, it would likely only be if she ‘cheated’ again, like that one time a few weeks back.
Or at least it felt like a cheap shot to Vi because she had never resorted to such tactics.
She never needed or even thought to do the same, not before or after that first ‘incident,’ since it was a given that she could easily win a fight against Powder through brute strength alone.
But Powder had seemingly not been above fighting dirty to win a scuffle.
--To Be Continued--
Notes:
[[I TRIED to make '2.0' a bit more cohesive than the original but some of the tenses and stuff might still end up a bit wonky. This is 'intentional'/for plot purposes because of "the nature of memory and trauma" and whatnot, which will make more sense Later©️. But also writing can be haaard for my bilingual ADHD brain okay?]]
[[[This used to have like 210+ comments once upon a time but I had to delete most of the OG chapters for the 'Re-Master' and they took the comments with them. 🤧]]]
If anything didn't translate from my brain into words that make sense to others, kindly let me know. I'll either properly edit it INTO the story or answer in the comments.
*shakes tin can a bit*Spare Kudos or Comments for this neurodivergent author doing their Best™️??
Chapter 5: Vi Pt. 2 (Continued) a.k.a The Biting Incident™️
Summary:
' “Uh…V-Vi?”, Powder had nervously questioned and the deep rumbling emanating from inside Vi's chest cut off abruptly with a snarl and a half step forward.
"Quiet!", Vi had all but barked back in a nearly unrecognizable tone of voice that allowed no argument from the smaller girl, the presence reacting to having Its focus pulled elsewhere by the sound of words.
Not a second later a visible silent shudder ran through Powder as her eyes widened had then proceeded to tense up in what Vi had initially interpreted as fear. '
-- Or --
Vi has a mini CRISIS™️.
Powder accidentally discovers a 'superpower' that has unexpected consequences when activated.
Notes:
TW: 'Thematic Elements'.
I'm still keeping it mostly 'vague' enough not to be 'explicitly explicit' about anything.
Because *waves hands around*
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
=== Vi ===
The ‘incident’ happened while they play-fought, as they often did, on an otherwise largely uneventful afternoon.
There had been no way to know that anything out of the ordinary would happen during this skirmish, at least not anything that would have such a lingering effect on her peace of mind even over a week later.
It was meant to be another aimless, unserious ‘fight’ like the countless ones they’d had before and a few since.
Practically just performing a pantomime of violence rather than anything resembling ‘combat,’ really.
Except on that fateful evening, Powder had made an unexpected discovery that took them both by surprise.
On one random afternoon, Powder discovered she had a secret ace that could give her an advantage against Vi while grappling.
Something that was practically guaranteed to work particularly well against Vi, especially if she ever set her mind to learning to use it strategically.
The game-changing discovery happened entirely by ‘accident’ that day as Vi had her nearly delirious with giggles on the floor while tickling her.
(This was also a common occurrence, rendering Powder incapable of fighting back through nonviolent means because it was funny to Vi. Perhaps she had lied a little about never resorting to cheap shots, but usually opting to turn ‘fights’ into tickle attacks did not lead to anything as unusual as this instance had.)
Sure, there was a chance that Vi was a little too distracted by the adorable sounds of Powder’s endearing snorts of laughter and gasping breaths.
By the sight of the inky pools of her noticeably dilated pupils as they overpowered the vivid color of her pretty gunmetal blue eyes whenever she managed to keep them open long enough for Vi to see them.
She was distracted by the feel of her bony body wiggling every which way, trying to buck her off or twist away from the sensory overload that was Vi’s incessant tickle attack against her ribcage.
She was distracted by the trails of reflexive tears of joy that escaped her, even as she tried to blink them away before they could fully form.
Her joyful, carefree scent.
There had been so many things happening at once, and they were all the more noticeable, being that close to her then.
None of these factors alone or combined had ever caused any ‘issues’ before that day.
But perhaps Vi pushed on for longer than she usually would, far longer than was even remotely fair, to be honest.
And maybe Vi had inadvertently brought it upon herself by caging her in and leaning in too closely while she continued her relentless ‘attack’ on Powder’s nervous system.
(Or maybe Powder felt particularly bratty that day and acted impulsively.)
Regardless of which factors led to the discovery, Vi didn’t think anyone could have predicted what would happen next.
Because, in what was likely an act of desperation for a reprieve to get even a moment to catch her breath fully, Powder did something she’d never done before to retaliate.
At least not in such a situation where they both were amped up on each other’s energy to that degree.
And indeed, never in that particular way.
In the blink of an eye, Powder had turned her head and bit down on the nearest cloth-covered area she could reach from her place trapped beneath Vi, and the place she bit down on just so happened to be the vulnerable space right between her neck and shoulder.
A place both had been unaware of being particularly sensitive to biting pressure for people of their kind.
So, upon that first unexpected contact, time came to a screeching halt and then revved up faster than she could ever hope to process all at once.
The world narrowed down to that one point of contact in an instant.
Or so it seemed like it did, to Vi at least.
Suddenly, it felt like a bolt of electricity shot out from where Powder’s teeth pressed into her, and that sensation short-circuited Vi’s mind to muscle control, making her slacken her hold on the smaller girl’s wrists.
The electrifying sensation had made her gasp just as Powder had inhaled sharply and wrapped her newly freed arms around her torso, suddenly pulling herself towards Vi instead of continuing her flailing attempts to get free.
Vi had instinctively pushed her hands onto the floor by Powder's sides to shove herself away from the intense sensation, but Powder had just followed her movement, not letting off on the force of her bite or loosening her arm's grip on Vi for even a second.
Trying to pull away only made Powder bite down and squeeze her harder.
A soft possessive snarl had pushed past her lips, and a sharp wave of something had permeated the air around them in the next second, further overloading Vi's senses.
The scraping of cloth against Vi’s skin as Powder breathed hotly onto her neck while she seemed to be trying to catch her breath was yet another overwhelmingly distracting sensation as she tried to process the turn of events.
She wasn't sure who had trembled the most in the beat of near silence that had followed the sound of Powder's snarl of protest, but Vi felt her arms threatening to give out on her for some unknown reason.
Powder, noticing that rare display of physical weakness, wasted no time taking advantage of her stupor by releasing her hold, tucking her knees in, and knocking Vi flat on the floor within three seconds.
Within the next two seconds, she sprung to her feet and out of reach, likely in anticipation of the usual ankle pull to knock her off balance or any of Vi’s typical retaliatory moves.
She lowered herself into a defensive crouch to prepare for the next move, but none had come since Vi had just laid there for a few stunned seconds, suddenly breathless and blankly looking up at her.
Truly dazed and confused because that had never happened to her.
She had never gone from full strength physically to nearly tapped out so abruptly.
(But describing it as that wasn't entirely accurate either because she had not necessarily been drained of energy. It had been more like her muscles wouldn't engage but were also buzzing with trapped energy simultaneously. A weird state overall.)
The mental whiplash of her physiology's conflicting states stupefied her and kept her on the floor, looking at the ceiling for a few moments longer as she tried to get her bearings.
Meanwhile, Powder seemed none the wiser about how much of a tailspin her impulsive action had thrown her older sister on as she bounced in place slightly, waiting for her to get up.
Or at least if she had noticed something amiss even at that early point during the ‘Incident,’ she played off whatever effect it may or may not have had on her better than Vi had been capable of in that exact moment.
Although, despite her seemingly unaffected visage, Vi’s foggy mind had still registered that Powder had still been a little breathless herself and faintly purring as she’d exclaimed, “What’s the matter, Vi? Can’t take it when someone finally catches you off guard for once? You’re getting kind of slow in your old age! Come on, get up, ya weenie!”
She then burst into even more giggles as Vi slowly started to bring herself to her feet on shaky limbs, still not responding or reacting to her taunts.
After a brief pause and through breathless giggles, she continued, "Do you need help getting up? Looking a little shaky there, old lady."
Usually, Vi would respond to these harmless taunts with either a playful hair-ruffling headlock or by throwing her over her shoulder while she squealed to be let back down.
By tossing back some playful insults of her own.
Heck, even with an exaggerated expression of mock offense to play up the understood levity behind Powder’s innocuous digs at her.
But not this time.
The truth was that Vi had hardly registered or properly processed anything that was said or done after that initial jolt, not even as it gradually turned from paralyzing electricity to a dull ache that let her move again.
As the feeling had fully returned to her limbs and allowed her to stand to her full height again, she was struck by the sudden urge to bite Powder right back and hard.
To shove her back down onto the floor and do something to silence her mocking laughter, to snuff out the air of superiority she had sensed from Powder at the time.
Vi could not understand why she felt the need to do any of those things at the time.
The more logical part of her mind knew this false bravado was just the persona Powder pulled out during their games to get Vi to react playfully, not mean-spiritedly.
Yet something within her had told her ‘It’ had been disrespected in some primal way on that particular occasion.
By being laughed at, Powder implied that ‘It’ was weak for not being the one to bite Powder first!
Or so it seemed to think.
Something deep inside felt doubly disrespected for not being ‘allowed’ to return the bite in full, either.
Whatever that ‘something’ was had now been awakened with that bite, and Vi could have sworn it tried to speak to her that night.
But the presence had been too new for it to know how to communicate with her properly, so it mainly had guided her proceeding actions through instincts and feelings.
(She would later start to piece together that this was her inner wolf finally rising from its 16-year slumber. That this spontaneous and fateful ‘Incident’ would be a true catalyst for the chain of confounding events to come in the following months and years.)
For something that had laid dormant for her entire life up until that point, it sure had been very much alert and fascinated by the turn of events and had made Vi very much aware of the puzzling new shifts in Powder's underlying scent.
At first, Vi had only registered that Powder’s scent smelled of sweaty but joyful exertion.
That hadn’t been the puzzling or even new part; there was rarely a time that their all-out tussles did not leave at least one of them sweating from the effort.
What had been unusual about her scent that afternoon was that the joyfulness also bordered on ‘something’ recognizable that felt altogether alien when originating from Powder specifically.
If Vi had been better able to reign in her instinctual reactions, she likely would have done the polite thing and pretended not to pick up on it.
Still, as she had been stuck taking a backseat to the Presence’s curiosity, she had found herself sniffing the air around them.
She shamelessly sniffed it as it tried to confirm what Vi was sure she’d already deduced correctly, despite being perplexed by it since she had never really smelled anything like ‘that’ from Powder during any previous play fight.
Sure, Powder had been about to become a teenager within a few days.
Still, she had never seemed to like even talking to boys or girls and practically recoiled when witnessing anything more intimate than a light kiss on the mouth between anyone at all.
So the fact that the tween was even capable of such a ‘reaction’ at all, much less in the already unusual situation they had found themselves in, did not make sense and had undoubtedly been unintentional anyway?
Or perhaps Vi had imagined it, and the Presence had been pulled into that same delusion out of naivete as she’d wished.
That extended moment of contemplation had dragged on for longer than Vi realized and likely had her looking pretty dumb since Powder had tilted her head to one side in amusement as she said, "What the hell are you doing, Vi? Do I stink or something?"
The Presence felt mocked rather than endeared by Powder’s continued mirth as it tried to get its bearings in this new level of consciousness.
It was not often that either she or Powder purposefully growled ‘at’ each other, so when Vi made eye contact with Power and started to do just that, her smug grin dropped instantly.
A muted yelp escaped the back of the girl’s throat as she quickly tilted her head a little further to the side and tipped her chin back, reflexively exposing more of her neck.
Powder’s giggles had then taken on a slightly nervous intonation as Vi had slowly stepped closer to her, still growling lowly in her chest and into an almost looming position over her.
Admirably, the more petite girl did not break eye contact despite appearing physically incapable of fully facing forward and her clear apprehension about the severe tonal shift of their current interaction.
Something in Vi’s gaze had triggered a more extreme version of an old familiar tactic; one meant to de-escalate displays of playful ‘aggression’ during their younger years.
Fleetingly baring each other’s necks had become a seldom-used ‘white flag’ of surrender in the past, but Powder had never kept baring her neck and looking up at her with genuine trepidation as she did that afternoon.
It had been many years since Powder had even remotely smelled of ‘panic’ when in the midst of any of their games, but she had again just then, but that panic had also intermingled with the scent Vi had still been trying to place.
(If Vi was being completely honest, that was not the first time she had ever caught traces of that scent on her. But she had been in even deeper denial before that afternoon and refused to believe her little Pow Pow was ‘capable’ of feeling such things yet. Acknowledging it would mean accepting that Powder was also ‘growing up’ right alongside her.)
Vi's initial light sniffing had become longer huffs as Powder's scent had shifted further away from anxiety and towards that other ‘something’ the more she closed the distance between them.
And in that moment, she’d felt that if she had been less controlled by that primal presence’s mentality, she likely would have been more confused than ‘captivated’ by that other scent’s appearance in that situation at all.
Because, in retrospect, the near-full genuine fear made a lot more sense than that form of ‘excitement,’ given just how close Vi had gotten to actually checking out mentally.
But the ‘novelty’ of the scent, regardless of any inappropriacy, seemed to fascinate that inner presence and kept its focus zeroed in on the way Powder seemed to be subconsciously scenting Vi in returned but timid interest.
She would have paused to examine that more closely, but seeing her cautiously retreating form gave away her underlying self-consciousness and shared confusion about the entire situation.
“Uh…V-Vi?” Powder nervously asked.
The deep rumbling from inside Vi's chest was cut off abruptly with a snarl and a half step forward.
"Quiet!" The controlling inner presence bled through as Vi had all but barked back in a nearly unrecognizable tone of voice that allowed no argument from the smaller girl, reacting to having its focus pulled elsewhere by the sound of words
Not a second later, a visible, silent shudder ran through Powder.
Her eyes widened, and she then proceeded to tense up in what Vi had initially interpreted as fear.
(At least that's what her guarding instincts had told her it had to be, given how she was shaking ever so slightly and breathing a little faster again.)
And that is what finally helped her regain her own volition.
Despite the confusing mixed signals, the thought that perhaps she had genuinely ‘scared’ Powder was enough to fully snap Vi out of whatever had overtaken her and have her switch back to her usual protective regard towards her younger sibling.
It reeled her back, and she tried to find a way to quickly reset her mood and shake off whatever strange direction the situation might have been taking.
It hadn’t been easy to think of something disarming on the fly with how many thoughts had swarmed back in with her regained control, but she had quickly thrown on her signature swaggering grin and playfully shrunk down into a crouched stance.
Making herself smaller to be closer to Powder’s eye level and give the illusion of equity in stature, her typical signifier to instigate a playful chase.
(This was her version of instinctually docile behavior, which she employed to empower the shorter Omega girl to willingly participate in or refuse an invitation to join in on her spontaneously good-humored antics.)
“Hah, gotcha! Just as I thought, you're all talk, you little brat! That kind of hurt, so you better start running as fast as your twiggy legs can carry you!”
The slight scent and expression of 'fear' immediately gave way to mock offense, “Hey! They aren’t twiggy; you’re just hoarding all the muscle and none of the brain, you giant—”
And just like that, the playful atmosphere had returned as Vi had then proceeded to feint a lunge towards Powder while exclaiming, “If I catch you, I’m gonna bite you right back, and you know I’m not gonna be nice about it either!”
Vi had even playfully chomped at the air in her direction and curled her fingers into ‘claws’ to illustrate the half-untrue claim.
At that, an exaggeratedly horrified gasp escaped Powder as her ever-so-expressive brows scrunched up, and she exclaimed, “Wait, what?!? No, that’s not fair, Vi! I didn’t do it that hard on purpose. I—”
With that bit of returned banter, Vi knew she’d successfully brushed past whatever strange moment they shared and turned it into something else to add to the list of things to ‘deal with on another day.’
The more distant the day, the better.
Her sense of denial and repression skills were top-notch.
A beat of silence.
And then she started making a big show about tensing up to break into a run as she tauntingly said, “I don’t know about that PowPow… but I do know that you better be far out of my sight in 10…9…8…”
Powder’s eyes had nearly bulged out of her head in surprise at the sudden countdown, and she’d almost tripped over herself trying to turn and sprint away.
Vi could hardly contain her amused laughter while she counted down to give Powder a few extra seconds head start before she broke into a run right behind her.
--
That had been nearly two weeks ago now, and thankfully, Vi had learned how to anticipate better and prevent such ‘sneak attacks’ to discourage the same type of situation from arising due to being caught off guard in that manner.
(But most importantly, she was learning to inhibit them from occurring again from her end, as she felt that was part of her responsibilities as someone with more implicit maturity. Someone with some experience regarding certain inevitable parts of the 'growing up' process, such as the rise of easily confusing ‘new feelings.’ Although, despite knowing that she had started showing ‘interest’ in fellow girls at an age younger than Powder was now, she was still determined to put off the unavoidable ‘Talk’ that seemed to loom ever closer on the horizon.)
In that time, she had gotten more ‘acquainted’ with the still mostly hibernating inner presence that awoke that day to try to ensure that she wouldn’t be genuinely blindsided by Its hold over her more rational mind ever again.
Hopefully.
She still played it up a little whenever Powder inevitably tried biting her again as part of their usual games.
(She was relentless in her attempts, but they were much gentler, more telegraphed, and usually far away from her neck from that night on.)
The ‘Incident’ didn't appear to have shaken her up too severely since, despite the scare, she was still every bit a brat as ever.
Arguably, even more so than ever, in all honesty.
Vi couldn't be sure since she had her Denial Goggles firmly in place, but it seemed like Powder was more deliberate about certain things ever since that day.
More deliberate about how she would try to test Vi's boundaries intentionally bit by bit.
Push them just far enough to…
Enough to what?
She'd push them almost as if in search of ‘something’ that Vi would NOT knowingly surrender.
Something Powder desperately wanted to witness once again but was still hesitant to cross the unspoken line for blatantly.
The fact that she had not used the ‘superpower’ to get that something, whatever that might be, out of her felt like a sign of respect and showed Vi that she had no desire to push her luck that far.
Perhaps not in fear that it might ‘work’ in the controlled and fanciful way she imagined it, but that it might work too well in a more realistic sense that could end with her getting genuinely beat up for once.
Even if she was increasingly ‘curious’ about what else had almost occurred, Powder still revered Vi's more dominant nature now that she thought she’d nearly seen Its ire directed towards her.
'Jokingly' or not, as Vi still insisted it had been, she had sincerely been dangerously close to letting her careful control over It slip, and there was no telling what it would have done next.
There is no telling what damage uninhibited Alpha ‘aggression’ could cause.
That uncertainty made both of them hyperaware of the switch that had been tripped.
It was almost as though Powder instinctively sensed that even subtle forms of submission, like respecting her strictest limits, kept contenting whatever had peeked through that day.
For some reason, that contentment appeared to be shared with something within her every time it was received well.
--
After ‘The Biting Incident,’ they would no longer let anyone else join in their ‘games’ because something unspoken but undeniable had shifted between them.
Whatever it was had started to make their games feel almost impossibly more personal, nearly like they were part of an intricate dance that only they knew the steps to.
Or part of a shared melody only meant for their ears.
Their tandem movements were part of something bigger than either could fully comprehend.
Neither understood what any of it meant all those years ago.
How could they?
How could anyone?
All they knew back then was that they felt like they shared a deeper bond than any love they had for anyone or anything else.
A bond that, at times, would almost feel frighteningly overpowering if Vi ever let herself think too deeply about it.
So, she tried not to.
Tried.
But life had a funny way of complicating what had once been so pure and simple:
Vi cherished Powder with every fiber of her being, and Powder loved her right back with every ounce of hers.
Notes:
[[I TRIED to make '2.0' a bit more cohesive than the original but some of the tenses and stuff might still end up a bit wonky. This is 'intentional'/for plot purposes because of "the nature of memory and trauma" and whatnot, which will make more sense Later©️. But also writing can be haaard for my bilingual ADHD brain okay?]]
[[[This used to have like 210+ comments once upon a time but I had to delete most of the OG chapters for the 'Re-Master' and they took the comments with them. 🤧]]]
If anything didn't translate from my brain into words that make sense to others, kindly let me know. I'll either properly edit it INTO the story or answer in the comments.
*shakes tin can a bit*Spare Kudos or Comments for this neurodivergent author doing their Best™️??
Chapter 6: Powder Pt 3 a.k.a Restlessness
Summary:
' Powder was just always wanting more.
More of Vi’s undivided attention.
More of her affection.
More anything.
Just needed to know that even when they were apart, Vi might also be thinking about her even half as much as she thought of her too.
That she might miss her company and presence sometimes with as much eagerness as she always did hers.
She wanted to feel consistently assured that she mattered to Vi.'
-- Or --
Against her wishes and Vi's adamant denial, Powder is also growing up. The things that she never gave a second thought to start to take on a whole new and more confusing meaning.
It could've still been written off as her usual level of admiration but then The Biting Incident™ and an influx of new teenage hormones had to go and throw an awkward wrench in things.
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
= Powder =
Restless.
Increasingly and perpetually restless.
That was the only word Powder could think of to describe the state of her mind, heart, and soul these days.
It was starting to become an issue, honestly.
Of course, this ‘restlessness’ was not an overnight occurrence.
It had been slowly burning and building over the last few years, and it didn’t seem to be settling down with time as she had fleetingly hoped it would.
Just for the sake of her shaky sense of inner peace and equilibrium.
If anything, the older Powder got, the worse the feeling got, and the more complicated it became to pinpoint the exact source of her disquiet.
It became harder to know what to ‘do’ about it anymore.
Okay, she had always been more hyperactive than not, but the older Powder grew, the stranger the ways that innate abundance of restless energy manifested itself.
In increasingly confusing and even awkward ways, honestly.
And more often than not, perhaps coincidentally or not, Vi seemed to be the greatest instigator for those more awkward manifestations because she had always been good at making Powder feel restless in some form or another.
Always effortlessly hyping her up and making her feel more ‘alive’ and complete, yet also leaving her yearning for something more than she was freely given.
Powder was always wanting more.
More of Vi’s undivided attention.
More of her affection.
More anything.
She just needed to know that even when they were apart, Vi might be thinking about her even half as much as she thought of her.
She just needed to know that Vi might miss her company and presence sometimes with as much eagerness as she always did hers.
Powder wanted to feel consistently assured that she mattered to Vi.
When she was even younger, knowing what it took to satisfy the ‘restless’ feeling within herself had been pretty straightforward.
Back then, all she wanted and needed was for her older sister not to act like she was too ‘cool’ and ‘grown up’ to be seen with her dorky little sister.
For her to want to spend time with her without Vander or anyone else practically ‘forcing’ her to do so.
She just wanted not to have to burst into embarrassingly ugly tears for Vi to glance her way when they were around her friends or other people in general on the occasions when throwing a temper tantrum of her own did not relieve her of the put-upon burden, and she had no choice but to let Powder tag along.
Just the small act of being and feeling seen for a moment, being ‘worthy’ of her attention, was enough to sustain her for hours or even entire days back then.
Even just a look aimed in her general direction.
That was all it took to send her over the moon!
Nothing more than that was needed.
It used to be so simple!
But with time, Vi’s more passive forms of love and attention became insufficient.
With time, Powder began to want to actively feel it more fully.
She wanted to feel that love washing over her skin.
She wanted to feel it sinking into her bones.
Powder wanted to feel it coursing through Vi’s being and into her own, whether or not that made any sense to anyone else.
When Powder discovered that goading Vi into a physically challenging activity was an easy way to keep her focused solely on her, she latched onto that knowledge with her non-existent claws and adult-sized fangs she still did not have.
Early on, she realized that by keeping the most aggressive side of her personality entertained, Vi was much more inclined to want to play and spend time with her without outside influence.
It also ‘allowed’ Vi to be generally less reticent about openly showing she had a soft spot for Powder and slowly became more physically affectionate because of it.
Or at least that’s what Powder interpreted the roughhousing to be.
After a while, at least.
At first, Vi started to grapple with her without moderating her strength all that well.
Both purposefully and accidentally.
Powder tried to grow accustomed to and even generally ‘accept’ this tendency because she realized that Vi was just so accustomed to playing rough with people much older and physically larger than Powder was or sometimes even larger than herself.
The older girl was just so used to rising to every physical challenge presented to her without a hint of restraint or hesitation that it had become her default ‘setting’ when playing around.
She was not accustomed to ‘playfully’ rough handling a younger sister who was much feebler and tinier than herself, especially in those early days.
(Admittedly, even nowadays, after so many years of playing alongside her and then training on her own in the following years, she was still a far cry from being built similarly to even Vi’s teenage self.)
So, the first couple of times Powder tried to get Vi to ‘play’ with her the same way she did with her friends, she ended up eating dirt.
She got way more ‘equal treatment’ than she bargained for, even though she’d begged Vi to let her join in on her type of ‘fun’ for weeks beforehand.
She just ended up more upset and embarrassed than she thought she would at getting ‘exactly’ what she asked for, bawling her eyes out due to the shock of it more than any actual physical pain or anything.
And in those moments, Vi would not have a single clue as to what to do to make her stop crying so obnoxiously, especially if they were in front of her friends.
She was not mentally or emotionally mature enough to handle Powder’s childish tantrums adequately at the time, so sometimes, Vi would run away from her to avoid blame and not hurt her more by being rough with her again while trying to get her to shut up sooner.
Physically running away from her problems was a fine example of Vi’s childhood version of a ‘nonviolent’ form of conflict avoidance resolution.
But this tactic, in turn, made Powder seek her out even more desperately for approval because she didn’t mean to be so weak and embarrassing ‘publicly.’
She was never crying to push Vi away.
She just had not experienced physical contact that was that rough many times in her life yet, so it felt jarring to her nervous system even when she’d try to ‘anticipate’ it.
The tears were just the way her body used to deal with unfamiliar and unpleasant experiences, a weakness she worked hard to ‘correct’ in subsequent years to diminish signs of outward feebleness.
Those early oversteps were not a good time for either of them, that’s for sure, but after a few trial and error runs, they had figured out a happy medium that satisfied both their needs for contact.
Vi carefully shoved her around a bit and ‘playfully’ roughed her up from time to time, and Powder learned when to ‘fight back' and when to roll with the motions, so she practically never ended up hurt, even by accident.
They both learned when to push and when to pull with enough force or give to keep the games and fights ‘engaging’ but not overtly dangerous for either of them.
Both learned to use their strengths strategically to keep each other on their toes, but always in ways that did not wipe the smiles off their faces or mute their joined laughter.
Vi silently expressed her love and affection for Powder by never asserting her natural dominance maliciously, never to bring her harm or frighten her away on purpose as she did to people she did not like.
They were both very aware that she could easily push too far at any given time and hurt her if she was ever careless or malevolent with her movements.
But there had never been any anger behind her roughhousing in those days, not like there would be with other people who tried her patience even half as much or ‘pushed’ for an actual beating.
Like during the brawls with people who tried to put Powder down for being almost the opposite of everything Vi was:
For being short, hesitant, and seemingly less ‘sturdy’ of a person overall.
Vi would beat others up for trying to shame Powder for her comparatively much more non-confrontational nature.
(This wasn’t necessarily true, as she wasn't entirely ‘docile’ in any given confrontational situation. Powder knew she had to be more thoughtful and selective about which fights to pick and when, especially back then. She wasn’t out looking to get genuinely beat up by anyone if she could avoid it. Because while her pre-first transformation healing factor is still quicker than most, everything still hurts the same!)
In those days, Vi was practically always trying to fight in Powder’s honor so she wouldn’t feel ‘forced’ to change any of her insecure things if she was not ready to.
They were all things that seemed to endear her to Vi anyway, so, for all Powder cared, the bullies could all go pound a sump.
Sure, Vi defended her against other people speaking about her in an even remotely degrading manner, but she also poked fun at Powder for being such an “adorable little pup.”
ALL.
THE.
TIME.
She openly chuckled, more often than not, when Powder would dramatically fake assertiveness and bravado as part of her attempts at returning verbal jabs toward her.
Not intimidated by Powder in the least.
But Vi was never truly ill-meaning with her playful ‘put downs’ even if the way she roughhoused and teased Powder could easily be interpreted as ‘bullying’ by some, honest!
Bullying behavior felt entirely different when it came from her somehow because when other people did it, it was just outright ‘mean.’
But when Vi did it, it felt much more like a rough form of love.
(Okay, that might sound bad out of context, but it hadn’t been like 'that,’ really!)
Because it indeed was how Vi expressed her care and affection for Powder when words wouldn’t come quickly.
And in some indescribable way, daily ‘roughhousing’ with Vi was also something Powder inherently needed.
Because she needed to feel that someone, no, that Vi felt that her physical presence was a regular and necessary part of her daily routine.
There had been a sense of ‘ease’ to it all.
There was an established sense of trust between them, and when Vi got the vulnerable urge to feel coveted, to be both powerful and delicate at once, Powder would willingly offer her an outlet for it.
She trusted that showing her type of ‘affection’ wouldn’t make Powder run away; if anything, she’d feel safe knowing that Powder would enthusiastically chase after her until she could show Vi her softer forms of affection in return.
And again, this level of attention and affection had been enough to ground her from her ‘restlessness’ back then.
The rough handling and games they played were fun, just an easy way to entertain them.
Harmless sisterly bonding activities.
It was so simple and unclouded for years until Powder’s mind and body became annoying and weird.
It was perfect until both decided to conspire against her at some indistinct point during her tween years.
Without her having any say in the matter.
About a year or so prior, around the age of 11, Powder suddenly began to have an increased and particularly avid interest in watching Vi train.
One markedly different from the more passive level of interest she had before when she’d spend most of the time beating Vi’s scores on the arcade shooting range or drawing up anything that came to mind to kill time on the sidelines.
Instead, she began to get fixated on the act of ‘witnessing’ how hard-earned all the muscle on her frame was and was amazed at how much physical stamina the taller girl possessed.
She remembered being awed by how Vi used her strength and stamina whenever she knocked the lights out of people who gave either of them any issues or repeatedly beat her previously set highest scores on the ‘ass-kicking machine’ at the arcade.
At the time, Powder tried to convince herself that it had still been her usual level of ‘admiration’ for her older sister.
Nothing more.
Nothing new.
Nothing weird, that’s for sure.
But ‘admiring’ her sister had never left her buzzing with this increasing restlessness.
Sure, there had been some telltale ‘Incidents’ that probably foreshadowed whatever this attack on her body and psyche grew into.
Like the random, chaotic dreams she’d begun to have sporadically, ones that left her oddly frustrated and confused upon waking.
At first, there hadn’t been a rhyme or ‘reason’ to them.
Just flashes of movement and words she could not quite hear or understand.
They had no actual ‘shape’ or purpose; they were just increasingly semi-regular occurrences that left her yearning for something indiscernible.
But then a certain ‘Biting Incident’ two weeks prior had to go and give her a whole new perspective …
On everything.
~~ To Be Continued~~
Notes:
[[I'm TRYING to make '2.0' a bit more cohesive than the original but some of the tenses and stuff might still end up a bit wonky. This is 'intentional'/for plot purposes because of "the nature of memory and trauma" and whatnot, which will make more sense Later©️. But also writing can be haaard for my bilingual ADHD brain okay?]]
If anything didn't translate from my brain into words that make sense to others, kindly let me know. I'll either properly edit it INTO the story or answer in the comments.
Please validate this newbie author with Kudos/Feedback/Etc so they keep trying to get this story written out!
Chapter 7: Powder Pt 3 (Continued) a.k.a Liking BOYS? Can't relate.
Summary:
' Powder had not understood just then, when these arrangements had first been implemented, what the burly man had meant about them 'needing more privacy soon' or why it mattered much aside from giving her more space to tinker freely and perhaps the bonus of not sharing a bathroom with icky boys all the time.
(Oh, how naive little Powder had been. How utterly unprepared for all that was to come steamrolling through her peace of mind and body not even two years later and beyond.)
But certainly, after that fateful day with ‘The Biting Incident’, those words would come back to haunt her and she would finally truly start to understand. '
-- Or --
Vander tries to be a Responsible Paternal Figure™ by giving his growing girls more room and privacy while also keeping them 'safe/away' from unsupervised time with older boys under his roof.
But the joke's on everyone because Powder had NO interest in them back then or even now anyway. They are yucky. As most people who aren't Vi tend to be.
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
= Powder =
Before ‘That Day,’ Powder would never have thought about how much they invaded each other’s space when they’d ‘fought.’
She’d never noticed the general lack of physical separation between them in those moments because she’d simply always wanted to be physically close to Vi any chance she had.
As far as Powder was concerned, her ‘personal space’ was Vi’s space to occupy any time she wanted to.
It had just always been ‘hers’ as well.
Physical contact from her sister, whether the occasional bear hug off the floor, gentle cheek caress, or playful shove, had always been the highlight of Powder’s day.
She loved it when Vi initiated physical contact without her going out of her way to seek it out from her.
As the younger of the two, she was almost ‘expected’ to always seek attention and affection from those who cared for her.
Vi, as the older sibling, was more or less ‘expected’ to protect and provide for Powder by default, so she would naturally try her very best to be whatever Powder needed her to be, even if it was something she was unaccustomed to being: like someone who openly expressed ‘tender feelings.’
Given that their only parental unit for most of their shared formative years had been a mountain of a man who expressed his emotions more through concise actions rather than words or acts of tenderness, Vi didn’t have many people to emulate ‘softness’ from.
If anything, her life path up to that point had ingrained in her the desire to be nearly the exact opposite of ‘soft’ in every way to protect herself and her little sister by any means necessary.
Powder, who was the only person left from ‘before.’
Vi remembered ‘before.’
Vi alone had shouldered that aching pain that remembering lost loved ones could bring back then.
(Powder thought that maybe Vi was hung up on showing more tender forms of affection sometimes because they had reminded her of their parents’ affections too much. Of what they’d both lost. Powder had been too young to have clear memories of their parents, but Vi hadn’t been.)
She so rarely talked about anything from ‘before,’ but Powder recalled a version of a story she’d fondly retell her on more than one occasion, “From the moment you were born, you’d rarely let me get any hugs from Mom or your dad when you were present. You were ‘allowed’ to interact with as many people as they were comfortable sharing you with, of course, but Gods forbid ‘I’ ever hug or be hugged by them or touched by anyone else in front of you. You’d bawl your eyes out until I picked you up and hugged you, too.”
She recalled how Vi would then break out into a nostalgic smile as she’d continue, “Then you’d wiggle all over the place, like you wanted me to let you go so you could be everywhere at once, but then hugged me harder if I tried to hand you over to someone or put you down. Couldn’t seem to make up your mind! I’d always be left guessing at what you wanted and needed from me at that specific instance. Not a whole lot different now, though, I guess?”
A playful punch to the shoulder and a gentle grin later, and then she’d say, “You’ve just always been an annoying little shit like that.”
At first, Powder would feel a little sad and hurt by the mere thought that maybe it was her ‘fault’ that Vi didn’t get as much physical affection from their parents as she could have had as a young child.
To this day, she still believes she was majorly to blame for whatever hurt had her sobbing silently under the cover of night while lying in bed, even before everything else.
Vi cried far less frequently in her teen years than in her early years, but it still broke Powder’s heart knowing that she could not ‘fix’ it for Vi as she had with so many things that hurt Powder back then.
So perhaps it was not entirely for her benefit that she tried to hug Vi and be ‘soft’ with her whenever she’d welcome it because Powder felt that, in a way, she was trying to make up for all the parental tender affection she gave up for her sake.
The softness she couldn’t bring herself to ask for from anyone else ever again but likely desperately needed as well.
Powder knew she could never replace what was lost, but she hoped that if she kept showing Vi that it was ‘okay’ to be soft, at least sometimes, she’d initiate that open affection more often.
And she did sometimes.
Now and then.
More than practically ‘never’ at least.
It was still a work in progress with Vi, even towards the ‘end.’
Because even as she had progressed into her teen years, she had still been reluctant to do so nearly as much as Powder wished she would when they were around their brothers or other people, probably in an attempt to keep up her ‘tough girl’ persona around them more than anything.
Something which Powder had thought was okay because when they were alone, she’d let her guard down almost entirely and dropped all ‘big bad Vi’ pretenses just for her.
(She’d always been grateful for any of it, but it still felt extra nice to be ‘publicly’ doted on. To let others see she was that special to Vi.)
No matter how hard her day had been, Vi always had a little left-over energy to listen to Powder talk about her day and tell her all about hers.
Even if a lot of ‘nothing’ happened or changed from the previous day for Powder, Vi would still try her best not to fall asleep on the couch and listen intently.
Like on that day of ‘The Biting Incident,’ her sister had spent most of the day upstairs keeping active by helping Vander with inventory and miscellaneous tasks at the bar.
There was nothing particularly mentally draining, just some of the regularly scheduled manual labor that kept her occupied most Thursdays and some weekends.
But Powder knew it still had been draining in a general sense.
Meanwhile, she mainly doodled and tinkered with a prototype for her latest attempt at a functional diversion bomb downstairs. Thanks to the new batch of scraps and parts that Ekko had dropped off for her earlier in the day, she was occupied.
Powder never understood why the boy would routinely bring her ‘new’ pieces to fiddle with at no monetary cost to her, Vi, or even Vander as far as she knew.
She was pretty sure not all that he hauled over had been the leftover ‘unsellable garbage’ from Benzo’s shop as he always claimed, and so where he got them all from and why he always wanted to be the one to bring them over had been a mystery to her.
It was a strangely reoccurring situation, but it wasn’t like she had been in any position to complain about ‘free’ materials no matter where they came from, especially back then.
The boy had also sometimes given her great name ideas, suggested helpful tweaks to the designs of the new projects she’d inevitably be working on, or shared what small projects he was working on whenever he dropped by.
Ekko seemed like a very helpful and kind boy in those days, one of the very few people she could stand being around for extended periods, even without Vi being present as a welcomed focal point.
(Not that Vi ever told her not to hang out with anyone else or anything; if anything, Vi often encouraged her to keep more friends her age. But Powder just hadn’t been all that interested in spending much time alone with ‘other people,’ her age or otherwise. She still wasn’t to this day, honestly.)
Vi kept telling her, “Go be a kid with other kids, Pow. All this other stuff can wait.”
ALL THE TIME!
As if Powder hadn’t been rapidly approaching her teenage years when Vi truly started hammering that phrase into her regular morning dialogue before heading out to do whatever job she was tasked with for the day.
And then she turned thirteen, and everything was altogether so different and disappointingly the same overnight, both to her great delight and rising anxiety with all the recent changes that had crept on her along with that fact.
But she knew she had reached a significant milestone regardless of how being a ‘newly minted’ teen felt because she had even begun to be officially ‘allowed’ to help out on some more demanding missions, too.
She hadn’t been the most confident, especially in the first weeks before and after that landmark birthday.
Sure, she fumbled a few tasks here and there, but she still helped overall!
Even if Mylo kept trying to get in her head by saying she only ever ‘jinxed’ things, Powder knew she was of some good use, at least most of the time because she had been keeping pace with the rest of them a little better each outing.
So clearly, she was not a ‘kid kid’ anymore.
However, she still felt stuck between clinging to that lifelong persona and being a ‘real teen’ for a while, and that only added yet another layer of difficulty to making and maintaining friends that she felt safe enough around to express herself comfortably.
Ekko had been a little younger than her in physical years, but he had still been someone who could keep up with her in terms of applied imagination and geeky enthusiasm for tinkering in a way that no one else close to their age seemed to share.
Powder didn’t mind him dropping by occasionally, sometimes even thoroughly enjoying listening to his rather animated yet surprisingly grounded takes on tackling previously unsolvable problems.
But as usual, as soon as he left, she returned to missing Vi in full.
Sure, Ekko’s lingering glances and the way he would laugh so heartily at her lamest attempts at puns did make her feel a little special on the best of days. Still, the nagging feeling that it was played up for unknown reasons never left her, so it was never an actual substitution for Vi’s pretense-free company.
Nothing ever could, even if she had wanted to try to find a substitute back then, too.
At that age, she had gotten so much better at not physically shadowing Vi’s every move practically all day, but she could not help it if, even back then, her mind stubbornly refused to follow suit sometimes.
And so, on the day of ‘The Biting Incident,’ even as she was hunched next to the lamp on the side table of one of their couches, filling in the last details on the outer casing of her bomb, she remembers feeling Vi approach the door a millisecond before she first heard her.
(She likely only made her entrance so conspicuous in the first place because she knew Powder could startle easily if her focus were preoccupied with a task. She would grow to miss that about Vi, the small actions she performed that made her feel so known and understood intrinsically.)
By that point in her life, she had become so attuned to Vi’s presence that even from several feet away and through a thick metal door, she knew who was approaching without a single doubt.
Even before the door had opened and her sister started making her way down the stairs, she knew the sound of those footfalls could only belong to Vi.
She had been so thoroughly familiar with every single nuance of the way Vi ‘existed’ in the world that even nowadays, after innumerable months and years of separation, Powder could likely get tossed into a massive room with dozens or even hundreds of people and still find her way to Vi within minutes even blindfolded!
No one knew her sister the way Powder knew her.
Absolutely no one.
Probably not even Vi herself.
So, knowing that by then Vi likely had some idea that Powder had been growing extra attuned to her every move and likely kept an ear out for her anyway, it had been even sweeter of her to audibly ‘make her presence known’ like she used to need to before she boisterously announced:
“Powder, you wouldn’t believe the day I’ve had! I’m glad I could help Vander out with the borrrinngg stuff he’d been putting off for weeks, but I couldn’t wait to be finally free again!”
Powder remembers the easy smile that returned to her face at the sound of Vi’s voice. Having immediately switched her focus to greeting Vi with undivided attention, her usual levels of enthusiasm are likely visible and palpable in the space around them.
She remembers the way Vi had noisily plopped down on the armchair next to the table Powder had set up her unofficial mini ‘workstation’ on, the one she had been hesitant to name as such out loud since none of her tinkering had felt like actual work.
It had been mostly comprised of a few mismatched tools she’d gathered while dumpster diving or been gifted throughout the years for her ‘little hobby.’
(Never mind that her inventions had been more ‘decorative’ than functional back then. Yet despite the lack of functionality in those early projects, she had still felt secretly proud and a little ‘protective’ of her hard-earned beginner setup.)
None of the tools had been in particularly excellent or decent condition even when she first attained them, but they were still some of her few prized possessions to which she had allowed herself to grow attached.
Something she would not have let herself do even two years prior, in the time before Vander had more or less kicked the boys out of their previously shared living space out of some sense of honor or something.
Whatever the original reason, it was one of the greatest gifts and curses he would bestow upon them.
After all, ever since that introduction of additional privacy, she’d finally felt more comfortable leaving more of her things out in the open instead of hiding away with them because she trusted Vi not to mess with them.
Whereas before their brother’s ‘eviction’ from the shared space, Mylo used to try often to hide or throw out Powder’s few claimed objects just because he knew it would deeply upset her and undermine her attempts at asserting herself as a competent scavenger and the previously ‘unofficial’ fourth member of their mission team.
Mylo knew she could always tell when he moved or touched her things alone through scent, but he did not care enough to stop doing it despite Vi showing great annoyance with his petty bullying behavior.
Powder likely would have been able to have properly functioning nonlethal stunning diversion gadgets long before ‘that fateful night.’
So many things could have gone much differently if she had not lost so many years of proper tinkering to his annoying vendetta against her.
From day one of their introduction as pseudo siblings, Mylo always seemed to have it out for her for some stupid reason and would not let up for long, even when Vi or Claggor tried to interfere regularly.
An eternal jagged glass shard in her side.
Thankfully, back then, as annoying as he had been, he still feared and respected Vander enough not to challenge the sudden change in living arrangements and the newly imposed ‘curfew.’
After a particular hour, instead of following them downstairs, the boys would usually retreat to the smaller room in the attic area above the bar directly across from Vander’s room to sleep or hang out with their guy friends if they wanted to.
Powder remembers that Vander had insisted that the clear segregation was due to them being growing young women who would start to need more room and privacy away from the boys and their unsupervised time with their male friends.
As if Vi or Powder would ever want to hang out with boys more than necessary, right?
(And at night, no less. Even back then, she had sensed that the male strangers could have gotten weird with either of them pretty fast under the cover of darkness and wanted none of it, even in theory. Even in broad daylight, she had never fully trusted any guy other than perhaps Vander and only partially trusted a concise list of others. Yuck!)
Vander had even provided a direct way to send an alert to either of the attic rooms or the bar in case they ever ran into trouble, day or night.
This had been a thoughtful gesture, but she remembers thinking it was a bit overkill because it wasn’t like Vi couldn’t have handled taking down just about any intruder on her own, even as a teenager and before her first transformation, too!
Powder had not understood just then, when these arrangements had first been implemented, what the burly man had meant about them 'needing more privacy soon' or why it mattered much aside from giving her more space to tinker freely and perhaps the bonus of not sharing a bathroom with icky boys all the time.
(Oh, how naive little Powder had been. How utterly unprepared for all that was to come steamrolling through her peace of mind and body not even two years later.)
But certainly, after that fateful day with ‘The Biting Incident,’ those words would come back to haunt her, and she would finally truly start to understand.
-- To Be Continued --
Notes:
[[I'm TRYING to make '2.0' a bit more cohesive than the original but some of the tenses and stuff might still end up a bit wonky. This is 'intentional'/for plot purposes because of "the nature of memory and trauma" and whatnot, which will make more sense Later©️. But also writing can be haaard for my bilingual ADHD brain okay?]]
If anything didn't translate from my brain into words that make sense to others, kindly let me know. I'll either properly edit it INTO the story or answer in the comments.
Please validate this newbie author with Kudos/Feedback/Etc so they keep trying to get this story written out!
Chapter 8: Powder Pt 3 (Continued EVEN MORE) a.k.a The Biting Incident™ Redux
Summary:
' “Let. Me. Hug. YouuImisssedyouu—" Powder’s words had been muffled by her cheek getting even more smushed into Vi’s palm as she pushed forward with increased intent after every word.
Determined to get just that much closer to the rest of Vi again despite the unwavering pressure from the longer-limbed girl’s outstretched muscular arm alone keeping her sufficiently at bay.
Noticing Powder’s unrelenting attempts at breaching the gap between them, Vi had then playfully shoved her away again with slightly more force than absolutely necessary while telling her, “Back off ya little weirdo, give me a minute. I gotta change out of this first before you go in for a hug, I’m all sweaty and gross right now.”
This dismissing statement, coupled with the rejection of her hug, had made an unexpectedly pronounced and pathetically needy whine escape Powder as she’d never uttered before. '
-- Or --
Yeah, Powder just keeps 'embarrassing' herself by being a 'little weirdo'. This is just her life now. Being a newly minted teen is just THE WORST, she's sure.
(The Biting Incident™ with a little more context from Powder's perspective.)
Notes:
TW: 'Thematic Elements'.
I'm still keeping it mostly 'vague' enough not to be 'explicitly explicit' about anything, but I hope the general ideas are still conveyed adequately.
Chapter Text
= Powder =
In any case, built-up frustrations from years past and what she’d been working on that day herself had been forgotten momentarily as she listened to Vi animatedly recount her most notable mishaps.
Or at least that was the general gist of what Powder could recall from her valiant efforts to try to focus on what Vi’s words were and not ‘everything else’ her eyes were being drawn to.
Like the light dusting of freckles across the bridge of Vi’s nose and how the warm glow of the lamp light reflected so prettily off her steely blue gaze.
Or the motion of her strong bandage-free hands’ emotional gestures and the creaking rustling sounds the armchair made beneath Vi as she adjusted her position to face Powder better as she recounted her day.
(Again, something about that day, in particular, had just been different from the previous day. Powder had always been rather observant, but for some reason, on that specific day, Powder could not stop focusing on the more minor details of Vi’s facial expressions and mannerisms. It was practically a compulsive need instead of an active choice for once.)
Even from her place at the end of the other couch a few feet away, Powder could perfectly tell that Vi still had remnants of light sweat drying on her skin and the work clothing she had not changed out of yet.
Powder remembers thinking that maybe she had been extra aware of the changes in the air because she’d been so hyper-focused on the less ‘natural’ scent of her crayons and the metal scraps she’d been working with all day.
And so, she’d figured that the influx of Vi’s more dominant ‘natural’ scents would be all the more pronounced to Powder’s focused senses just by default.
Sure.
Honestly, it should have grossed her out that, by almost anyone else’s standards, Vi probably reeked of exertion and body odor from moving around all day.
And on anyone else, she likely would have made fake gagging noises to dramatically hint at them that they should at least crack a window or go shower because they were that smelly.
But the saturation of her sweat did not seem to make Vi immediately smell ‘bad’ to Powder, even though she’d had shorter limits to tolerating her sister’s occasional extra mustiness in the past.
This change alone should’ve told her it’d be a weird afternoon for them both going forward.
(As gross as it might’ve seemed, had she voiced it aloud and been completely honest, her sister smelled oddly good to Powder that afternoon despite being noticeably covered in sweat and grime. That didn’t make sense to her back then, but still, she had not questioned it for even a second that afternoon.)
Another ‘warning sign’ that a significant event was on the horizon had been the way that she’d found herself gravitating towards her sister during her stories, moving to the edge of the sofa closest to Vi instead of the furthest to subconsciously take in even more details without noticing herself move at all.
It was like her body was moving automatically, but she still tried to laugh and react at all the appropriate times, like usual, from a respectful distance away.
Tried.
At first, at least.
But Powder’s increased proximity had not gone unnoticed by Vi, who had then playfully shoved her face away with a large hand and laughed as she tilted her head in confusion as she said something Powder’s brain had automatically tuned out after zeroing in on the calloused warmth pressing against her skin.
The obstruction had only made it so that Powder playfully rammed her face into Vi’s hand, ‘intentionally unintentionally’ transferring some of Vi’s scent onto herself as she flailed her arms towards her as if reaching for a hug.
“Let. Me. Hug. YouuImisssedyouu—" Powder’s words had been muffled by her cheek getting even more squished into Vi’s palm as she pushed forward with increased intent after every word.
She was determined to get just that much closer to the rest of Vi again despite the unwavering pressure from the longer-limbed girl’s outstretched muscular arm alone, keeping her sufficiently at bay.
Noticing Powder’s unrelenting attempts at breaching the gap between them, Vi then playfully shoved her away again with slightly more force than necessary while telling her, “Back off, ya little weirdo. Give me a minute. I have to change out of this first before you go in for a hug. I’m all sweaty and gross right now.”
This dismissing statement and the rejection of her hug made an unexpectedly pronounced and pathetically needy whine escape Powder as she’d never uttered.
Her eyes widened at the strange sound, and she quickly covered up her embarrassment by turning away and taking the time to clean up a bit after herself while Vi promptly got changed in their shared bathroom.
If Vi had noticed the strangeness of that particular sound or her awkward behavior in general, she mercifully did not make a bigger deal of it right then for their sake.
--
And that ‘should have been’ the end of Powder’s awkwardness for at least that one afternoon.
It should have been.
Just once, she wished she could’ve put a cap on the growing list of increasingly awkward exchanges she couldn’t seem to stop creating between them with growing frequency in those days.
But no, she had not been done being a ‘little weirdo’ for even that single afternoon.
Not by a long shot.
Even after Vi had changed into somewhat cleaner clothes or at least not sweat-soaked ones, she still had that captivating underlying scent that radiated ‘strength’.
Just as she always had to some degree.
Just as had always been an instinctual peaceful comfort for Powder.
But for whatever reason, that day, instead of quieting her mind, it made her entire body feel extra restless, and she’d just felt compelled to move even closer to Vi than she had been ‘letting’ herself get lately in her efforts to not annoy her with her clinginess.
That afternoon that newly self-enforced modicum of composure she had been working so hard towards maintaining had flown right out the window, and some unknown force guided her actions to work against her previous efforts actively.
It told her that she needed to share in the strong scent still emanating from Vi’s skin and have some of her scent mixed in with Vi’s.
It was non-negotiable.
(It should’ve grossed her out that she wanted Vi’s sweat to get onto her clothes and skin. But that day, and then every day after, in all honesty, she did not care that the thought of it didn’t repulse her. She would, retroactively, half blame it on the looming full moon later that night that neither had paid particular notice to yet since it had never caused any ‘issues’ that they were aware of before.)
So naturally, the moment Vi let her get close again, she immediately went in for the tightest hug she could muster while still leaving enough wiggle room to subconsciously rub her cheek along Vi’s torso anywhere she could reach.
She had not intended to let her hands trail over some of Vi’s ticklish spots, her middle and upper back, but the resulting reflexive push on her shoulders for distance had snapped her focus back to the present moment.
“Don’t you even think about trying that right now, Powder! Not unless you wanna get knocked on your ass like you always do when you try to tickle me like that.”
Vi had said it mostly ‘jokingly,’ of course.
But if Powder was being truthful, she wasn’t entirely sure that she hadn’t wanted her to follow through on that threat in the first place.
That it hadn’t inadvertently been her intention from the get-go.
The uptick in her heart rate and feeling of restlessness at the thought might have led to her momentary lapse in better judgment. The sheer excitement over inciting a ‘fight’ completely overpowered her sense of self-preservation.
Don’t ask her who or what had taken over Powder’s limbs in the moments that followed Vi voicing that ‘warning’ because she could not tell you what possessed her to go in the direct opposite direction of what the words had instructed her to do.
All she knew was that she had zero control over her limbs as she’d ‘seen’ rather than ‘felt’ herself wiggle out of Vi’s loose hold to try to tickle her like an idiot with a death wish.
Keyword try.
True to her word, in a matter of seconds, she’d pried Powder off of herself and pinned her down on the floor as best she could without putting much weight on her.
The ‘restraining’ maneuver seemed so effortlessly executed, practiced even.
Powder should not have been so floored, as it were, by how quickly she went from upright to horizontal on their dusty threadbare rug.
But there she had been, suddenly gleefully ‘helpless’ and ‘trapped’ just as she’d secretly hoped to be.
It couldn’t have been slightly more than half of Vi’s weight holding her down at most during that initial pin, but even if she hadn’t immediately proceeded to tickle away all rational thoughts from her mind, Powder would’ve still had a tough time escaping her hold.
As it was, Powder had already been entirely overwhelmed by the sensory overload of all that happened in that fleeting moment in time:
The onslaught of tickling sensations all over her sensitive belly and the sides of her torso and the way Vi supported most of her weight on her knees but still pressed down on Powder’s thighs with her backside just enough to keep Powder from kicking or twisting out of the pin.
Vi’s ‘happy smell’ mixed with the already oddly alluring scent of the dried sweat that lingered on her skin, which emanated more strongly closer to her upper torso.
Even as Powder gasped for breaths and unintentionally inhaled more of the scents that had fascinated her even before being in this new, more compromising situation, some unknown force had her zeroing in on the most prominent sources invading her field of view.
Her flailing body could not decide whether to escape Vi’s firm hold or get even closer to the source of her sister’s strengthening scent.
The force with which she’d started to ‘fight back’ to the onslaught had only pushed Vi to bracket her even more thoroughly, likely hoping to avoid an elbow to the ribs or an unintentional smack to the face like had happened on more than one occasion in the past.
But as the action only brought her even closer to Powder’s face, her body had once again moved on its own accord as she acted upon the sudden irrepressible urge to latch onto the most significant source of Vi’s unique scent that was now within reach.
It was an impulsive action that she hadn’t thought through, so she was woefully unprepared for the abrupt full-body tremor that coursed through her as her teeth pressed down on the corded muscle that shifted beneath Vi’s near-threadbare sleep shirt.
The resulting gasp and reflexive tightened grip on Vi’s strong back was an instinctual reaction that had been out of her control as the taller girl pushed both of their torsos away from the ground in one effortless, swift movement.
Something had screamed at Powder to keep Vi close, not to let the source of ‘good’ scents escape her greedy hold.
It told her that the source of warmth ‘belonged’ to her now and forever.
That no one should take it away from her.
These worryingly possessive thoughts had echoed so loudly and unusually violently in Powder’s mind uninvitedly, just like the reflex to bite down harder and even snarl in protest at being jostled happened without her fully intending to do so.
She’d never been this close to drawing blood almost ‘on purpose’ even in their most heated and non-playful fights, but the restlessness had completely fogged her mind over for a few moments then and told her she should.
There had been something enticing and exciting about feeling her sister’s soft skin threatening to give under her bite despite the cloth barrier, and the feeling of the dense muscles moving beneath had suddenly made her breathless for reasons entirely unrelated to tickling.
For a suspended tremulous moment, it had been as though they were both frozen in that silent limbo of give and take that had only been punctuated by the sounds of their combined heavy breaths.
It wasn’t until Powder felt Vi’s arms tremble and threaten to give out from under them that her consciousness snapped back to the forefront to focus on her physical actions.
To become fully aware of the aggressive force with which she was bluntly biting down on Vi’s clothed shoulder and her suffocating tight grip around her sister’s upper body that had to be painful no matter how strong she was.
What the hell was she doing?
Why hadn’t she let go immediately once Vi expressed discomfort by pushing away from her?
Those were the main questions that had rang out loud and clear in her mind as soon as she was brought back into herself.
The awkwardness of how her own body had betrayed her and created yet another unintentionally embarrassing situation for herself had her scrambling to play it off as just another instance of their regular roughhousing gone marginally too far.
She’d taken the opportunity that the momentary confusion presented to maneuver her body out of Vi’s loosened hold, knock her over, and create physical distance between them to somewhat clear her head and reflexively duck out of the way.
Powder had been almost sure that Vi would immediately retaliate by knocking her off her feet and moving her back into some form of detaining position to get her to apologize for hurting her, as was the typical payback in similar situations.
But Vi did nothing of the sort and had instead just laid there on her back, staring unseeingly up at the ceiling while taking in slightly roughened but measured breaths, her chest rising and falling with the deliberate movement.
Again, Powder could not have understood why her senses had been so attuned to every tiny sound and movement that late afternoon, but in the moment, she could not contain her open fascination with the sight before her:
The visage of Vi being dumbstruck and vulnerable on the ground instead of her for once.
She had been so mesmerized by that sight that she hadn’t even caught herself purring unabashedly at the restless joy it seemed to bring out of her.
Powder can no longer recall all the details of what happened or was said next, but even then, she instinctively knew something had fundamentally shifted that day between them.
That unexpected bite during an otherwise somewhat unremarkable evening became an unmistakable central turning point in their dynamic going forward, one that she had no hopes of reeling back in once it was set into motion.
Vi had risen to her feet, scented the air around them, and pinned her with a glare that was so wild and reserved at once that Powder had found herself incapable of looking away even as she had made half-hearted attempts to break the growing tension.
And as Vi’s chest rumbled angrily at her attempts at lightening the mood instead of shaking with the chuckle she had been aiming for, Powder’s voice gave out instantly at the deep sound.
Her body had also instinctively decided to expose her vulnerable neck as another de-escalation tactic as her sister’s intensely focused stare had made her eyes seem to practically glow from within when she bared her teeth and growled at her in an octave neither had known she had even been capable of.
(The way that the usually somewhat muted air of dominance her sister naturally exuded seemed to pulse out of her to ‘palpably’ fill the room had also been new. Sure, she had always sensed a strong ‘aura’ from Vi, but she had never felt it in the air like that before. Or if she had been present for a similar ‘posturing’ event, it had never had such a strong effect on her before then.)
There had been something so wonderfully ‘menacing’ about the sound alone, and Powder had not felt that tiny and almost genuinely vulnerable in her sister’s company in ages.
And it was exhilarating!
The primal display of scarcely restrained aggression directed towards her should not have made her stomach flutter in that funny way she’d usually only felt when nearly missing a landing on a big jump between rooftops.
Usually, that was an out-of-control feeling she did not ‘enjoy’ or in any way seek out because it tended to precede the feeling of being trapped in her mind, ruminating on what could have gone wrong or what she should have done better.
But that particular afternoon, there she had been, frozen in silence and total compliance to Vi’s uncharacteristically blatant assertion of power directed her way despite not being physically restrained in any way.
And the fact that Vi could hold her in place without a single word or even a touch only added to the sudden ‘thrill’ of it more than any true sense of fear.
It only made her all the more aware that the growing restlessness within her body had rapidly approached something that her more rational mind told her was likely wildly inappropriate as a response to the gravity of the situation.
So, before she could dwell on that reaction for longer than she should, Powder tactfully broke the tension again to give both of them an ‘out’ of a potentially embarrassing situation.
The distraction worked only after Vi had all but barked out a single-word order, leaving Powder shuddering and unintentionally shrinking into herself in anticipation.
Anticipation of what exactly, she had no idea at the time, but the eagerness was there regardless.
A stronger ‘swoopy’ feeling had passed through her then, and some subconscious part of her wanted to see what it would take for it to happen again.
But then, as Vi readily changed her demeanor entirely at the sight of her vibrating with that new heightened restless energy, Powder was left wondering if she had imagined the strange ‘tension’ of the moment entirely.
It had left her wondering if there was just something fundamentally ‘wrong’ with her for feeling a bit disappointed that Vi brushed the moment off so quickly. Meanwhile, she had felt like some previously dormant part of her had just woken up and was full of pressing questions:
Had she just imagined Vi’s returned interest carefully tucked behind the smoldering power of her intimidating gaze and stance just a moment prior?
Had Powder started reading into the moment too deeply despite not knowing what she was even looking for?
(She likely had because she often lost herself in thoughts and daydreams even back then. For all she knew, she could have misremembered the entire thing in the first place, honestly. The intense memories of that afternoon and many, if not all, lingering memories of the things that came after it, too.)
For all Powder knew, she could have just been projecting her confusing feelings and wants onto Vi’s expressions throughout the ordeal, or it could have been more spot-on than she realized then.
There was almost no way to know for sure.
Either way, she felt a bit foolish for letting herself get so eager over something that might not be more than an amusing anecdote in the grand scheme of things, one that Vi would likely easily forget until something sparked the memory of it out of the blue.
Or, at worst, be something so icky and discomforting that she would pretend not to remember it happened.
Like most things from before, Powder had no idea that, regardless of whether she remembered or interpreted things ‘correctly’ with her limited knowledge, that first charged exchange had fundamentally changed everything for her.
It had been indisputable the more time passed since then.
But despite her immediate curiosity and desire to dig deeper into what had happened due to the bite, at least that afternoon, her line of thought had easily been redirected elsewhere once Vi herself pivoted towards the more playful and immediately engaging prospect of a race.
As they had set off on their impromptu quick chase around a few blocks bathed in the rare soft glow of a full moon’s light over the Undercity, Powder had found it surprisingly easy to set aside her previous worries and disappointment.
All she recalls after that was the way they dashed through one of the more desolate alleyways neighboring their home, dorkily ‘howling’ at the moon as was their ‘inside joke’ whenever they were out on a moonlit night.
It had started as something more ‘silly’ than serious for them to do since neither of them had ever shifted yet, and so their howls were cheap mimicry of what they would hopefully one day be able to produce once they had.
But it was still fun for them to startle unsuspecting passersby with the sudden boisterous sounds as they dashed by or hid in the shadows impishly.
They kept that up for hours that night, making a few poor, unfortunate souls nearly leap out of their skins, looking for the source of the sound in the dark, giggling and scurrying off before being spotted.
That part of the night had been so joyful and ordinary that it had made Powder fully believe that, if nothing else, they could always have that mischievous dynamic to fall back on again no matter how much older they got.
The easy switch back to carefree antics after their charged exchange momentarily convinced her that lightheartedness was not something they had to sacrifice along the way, no matter what sobering changes life kept throwing at them in the future.
At the time, she fully believed that she could easily and happily continue to chase and be chased by her favorite person for the rest of her life.
Powder could not have fathomed a reality in which she could somehow mess up so spectacularly that Vi would no longer want the same base things, that she would somehow return to thinking of her as someone who was in the way of some wholly separate life she wanted for herself.
Despite the growing rekindled awkwardness around her courtesy of the odd thoughts and ‘feelings,’ Powder vowed once again to work extra hard not to be a nuisance to Vi from that night on because she hoped that in the future, Vi would see her as more of an equal than a ‘dorky little weirdo.’
She hoped she would see Powder as someone who could also be strong and courageous, someone worth spending her lifetime chasing and being chased by in every sense of the word.
Just someone useful and necessary to her that could grow beyond the image of the ‘adorable pup of a sister’ that Vi undoubtedly still had of her up until then.
She figured that if she tried hard enough to mature faster and was deliberate enough about developing her tactical skills, she could grow to be everything to and for Vi, just like she had always been for her.
Be everything Vi could ever want or need in a lifetime companion, so Vi would never seek to find anyone else to fill that void in her life, the one Powder never wanted to allow to exist in the first place.
Maybe someday, she had hoped.
(Or maybe never.)
But hopes and dreams of all kinds are free to imagine whether or not they ever come true.
So, those dreams had to be enough to get her by back then.
--
Her restlessness only took on a much more ‘defined’ shape in the following days and shifted in focus and scope.
It left her with too many thoughts, dreams, and feelings that she did not know what to make of or do about, and it caused her to act out in ways that betrayed the emotions she futilely tried to hide from her older sister.
But Powder still hoped that with a little more time, her mind and body’s reactions to her evolving feelings for Vi would be easier to control.
Or at least muted enough that Vi would be none the wiser and wouldn’t be offended by Powder’s developing teenage weirdness before she even had a chance to prove herself as someone ‘cool and badass’ someday.
But if and whenever that storybook ending day arrived, they would both have to deal with each other’s awkward fumbles through puberty one stumbling step at a time.
Chapter 9: Vi Pt 3 a.k.a Is It Self Love or...?
Summary:
' For whatever reason, it just had not occurred to her that she, too, could do something similar for herself and that it would be such a remarkably mind-blowing or even life-changing experience.
Perhaps even criminally so.
Because surely feeling that good all on her own without consuming any sordid substances should not be ‘free’ or without consequence?
Surely there had to be a catch, a drawback of some kind to that type of activity that she was unaware of since it left her wondering how she had gone her entire life until that point without ever doing anything like that. '
-- Or --
Vi discovers a different form of self care... but her guilty conscience and sense of responsibility don't seem to let her fully enjoy it.
(Or perhaps she's also discovering that the 'shame' of it adds Spice™ to it for her? Who's to say.)
Notes:
TW: 'Thematic Elements'.
I'm still keeping it mostly 'vague' enough to not be 'explicitly explicit' about anything.
Chapter Text
=== Vi ===
Being born in a place like The Lanes and making it to adulthood indeed was a miracle unto itself in many respects due to the high crime rate, extreme pollution, and rampant poverty plaguing the streets of the Undercity.
Any one of those factors, much less all three at once, truly stacked the odds against any citizen from the get-go, even when they were not of an ancestry that they were better off keeping as quiet as possible about it as Vi and Powder did.
The Lanes often felt more like a place where you had to have the misfortune or ill intention of eventually ending up rather than an environment in which anyone had any business being born and raised.
Sometimes, even surviving the day felt like a victory only ‘won’ by having cheated at a high-stakes game while having the ever-present looming threat of ‘being caught’ over your head as you finally lay down to sleep.
And that was if you even had the luxury of having a place where you could afford to let yourself lower your guard down long enough to sleep for more than a couple hours at a time and align yourself with people who weren’t actively trying to harm you as an orphaned kid.
Most kids, even with the good fortune of having some form of parental figure or group of comrades to improve their odds of survival, still didn’t make it far enough to truly ‘play the game’ of life down in The Undercity.
Many names and faces were lost to time from Vi’s childhood during the worst of that first rebel uprising of their youth, those that were not as fortunate as to make it even past the age of ten due to one misfortune or another during the heat of it and throughout the fallout.
Vi and Powder certainly almost hadn’t either.
They would have undoubtedly joined those forgotten ranks if not for Vander’s significant change of heart at just the right time under the most unfortunate circumstances, which kept them from trying to survive alone.
If Powder’s tenderhearted and idealistic birth father had been even slightly less of a softie who loved bringing them both up at any given opportunity during strategy meetings in Vander’s presence…
If he had never confided in Vander that their little family unit included some of the very last of a dying mythical breed…
If their parents had not used their final breaths to scream for them to ‘stay put’ in their hiding spot despite their immense pain and either Vi or Powder had not managed to contain their terror long enough to not out themselves to incoming Enforcers…
So many questions might never be fully explained or answered by anyone.
But still, what Vi knew in her heart was that Vander took a chance and a massive responsibility for two newly orphaned werewolf pups that terrible night despite knowing next to nothing about how to be a competent father figure to two traumatized little girls.
And ones of a different kind at that!
Despite not being of lycanthrope ancestry and having only slightly more knowledge about their general existence than the average human, he looked that challenge in the eyes and spit in its face.
(His level of knowledge was honestly still next to zero since few people remembered when werewolves weren’t all but erased from history. And their numbers had only continued to dwindle in the years that followed that night, so what little information got passed around in human circles had always been primarily rumor-based.)
The man knew just enough about their kind to know that even being publicly ‘associated’ with them could potentially bring him unnecessary troubles and complications in an already hard-won life down the line.
But even then, he still took them in and made it his new life mission to find a way to keep them safe for as long as he still breathed and beyond if he could find a way.
Vander made it his mission to keep them out of preventable situations and away from the types of people who could drag them toward the same dark fates that so many of their kind were lost to.
(Terrible fates such as enslavement, weaponization, or outright being murdered on the spot if the wrong person or group of people that harbored enough prejudice and hatred in their cold hearts crossed their paths. In Vi’s own experience, this level of inhumanity seemed to be more prevalent in Piltie or even ‘ex-Piltie’ circles since people who had lived within the dredges of the Undercity their entire lives did not give much of a shit about who or what you were. They would try to mug you regardless of creed, and in that regard, sump dwellers were ‘better’ people, in her opinion.)
So yes, Vi, being a few years older than Powder, was highly aware of how many lucky streaks had to occur for her to be in her current set of ‘predicaments’.
The aforementioned ‘current set of predicaments’ included that she was a female werewolf going through the highs and lows of adolescence.
Which, sure, wasn’t a lot different from a ‘non-werewolf’ female as far as she’d heard and could tell, but certainly distinct enough to sometimes feel like she was stranded on an island of weird no one could ever fully relate to.
Or so Vi figured at the time, at least.
At 16 and some moons old, she’d already had a few sporadic growth spurts that made finding clothes that fit her properly for long enough a bit difficult, and her taller, more muscular frame also made handing clothes down to a much smaller framed Powder or even the taller but lankier Mylo a bother.
There was permanent hair growing and spreading in strange places that hadn’t been there before that did not seem to be tied to her non-existent but projected shifting ability.
(Despite being thicker than it had been during her early teenage years, the hair did not seem to spread to places often left uncovered as she had mercifully still not shifted for the first time. She hoped she never actually would have that first shift because the thought of potentially becoming a giant mindless monster that could kill Powder or anyone else she cared about haunted her nightmares.)
Was that type of hair typical for all girls or just werewolves?
She knew guys grew hair on their faces and armpits, but other places…?
Ew, gross!
Those were questions that would float in and out of her mind from time to time, but she had no interest or desire to ever ask a guy about any of them, not even her ‘adoptive’ siblings.
Vi had guessed they would have to remain a mystery to her for a while since neither Powder nor her had many female friends around their ages she could ask.
Wait, did Powder already…?
No, she knew she definitely could not ask her either and also figured that she would have probably said something by then or asked Vi about it bluntly as she often did about many things when she was not stuck in a loop of timidity.
Even before Powder could form longer sentences, she loved the magical power of the words “Why?” and “How?”
That girl had always loved absorbing new information like a sponge. Her favorite resource always seemed to be Vi by default, and often, Powder would think of follow-up questions faster than Vi could even provide answers for the initial ones.
She would think about things in ways Vi had never even considered or even begun to fathom for herself. Being subjected to one of her query attacks felt like one of the most challenging yet oddly insightful things one could experience.
For example, the time that Powder had entirely out of the blue held uncommonly intense and direct eye contact as she asked: “Do you think we ever remember things the same way as they happened, or do we just remember them the way we did the last time we thought about them and the details of how they happened just get more and more lost each time?”
Before Vi could untangle that new thought, Powder continued, “And what even is ‘thinking’ anyway? Why can I hear ‘me’ and change my voice in my head but not when I say things out loud?”
That had only thrown Vi for an even wilder loop, further scrambling to find a way to even begin trying to explain things she had never put even half as much thought into before that very moment.
She must have hesitated to answer for a moment too long that time because the next thing Vi knew, Powder had already moved on to kicking their one good partially deflated ball around with Ekko, who had merely directed a goofy smile and shrug in her direction at her puzzled expression.
And that had only been one of many similar instances; Powder had been such a wonderfully strange kid with almost far too many new layers to her mind and personality for Vi to keep up with even before all the extra ‘complications.’
The girl had always been intelligent and wise beyond her years with a penchant for quiet, contemplative moments at times but also the most irritating little brat with an overabundance of restless energy during others.
A sometimes annoyingly clingy little twerp that had an almost insatiable sense of curiosity about how nearly everything around her ‘worked’ and liked to be updated on mundane details like:
What Vi was up to today?
Where was she going, and how long would she be there?
Where had she been?
She’d ask these things so repeatedly as if Vi didn’t used to spend the majority of her time with her from the moment they woke up to the moment they went to sleep, especially before she was called upon to regularly run some routine errands and jobs for Vander and a few trusted others for a few extra pocket cogs.
It was all so endearing, honestly.
Usually.
Or at least it had been for most of their lives before she started to feel the need to tell her a ‘white lie’ occasionally.
Before puberty had started rearing its ugly head to become a catalyst for far too many awkward situations between them that made Vi wish the ground could give way and put her out of her misery rather than have ever acknowledged them to anyone.
Once puberty began to dig its claws into Vi, what had once been one of the greatest parts about being born a werewolf became a bane to her existence.
The enhanced senses.
The fact that she was not the only one to have them because, despite her adamant denial, her little Pow Pow was also growing up right alongside her, and the types of things that used to fly right over her head were steadily becoming less and less simple to hide or ‘explain’ away.
--
Around three years prior, when Vi was closer to 13 herself, she had ‘accidentally’ discovered a way to dissipate the pent-up energy that no amount of running or punching things seemed to be able to exhaust.
The first time it happened had thankfully been when she was entirely alone because as unexpectedly amazing as it had felt in the moment, almost immediately after the fact, she had been overcome by a strange innate sense of ‘guilt’ about it for some reason.
She hadn’t been sure why the euphoria of that initial experience had also been so coupled with that sense of guilt and perhaps even hints of shame, but it had been a reoccurring thing ever since that first time she did it.
It did not immediately make sense why she felt that way about the act. It was not like she hadn’t noticed that their adopted brothers had started doing similar ‘things’ in their shared bathroom sometimes, maybe even at an earlier age than herself before she knew what those strange sounds and scents had been about.
For whatever reason, it just had not occurred to her that she, too, could do something similar for herself and that it would be such a remarkably mind-blowing or even life-changing experience.
Perhaps even criminally so.
Because surely feeling that good all on her own without consuming any sordid substances should not be ‘free’ or without consequence?
Surely, there had to be a catch, a drawback of some kind to that type of activity that she was unaware of since it left her wondering how she had gone her entire life until that point without ever doing anything like that.
At least back then, there had been no immediate ‘consequences’ to that intermittent activity since all but one person in her life would likely never even have any inkling knowledge of the fact that she had discovered that magical act.
Logically, she had known this.
Had known that despite feeling like she had a glowing sign tattooed on her forehead every time she returned home a little less grumpy and a little sweatier than when she left, there was no way for anyone to ‘tell’ she had done it.
She had been plenty discreet about it from the beginning, even though she had been unsure as to why she felt like she had to ‘hide’ the fact that she could make herself feel good in such an independent way, but for whatever reason the ‘secrecy’ only made it that more thrilling.
But despite that buzz, every time she ‘got away with’ doing it, she’d feel selfish for having something she innately knew she could not share with Powder.
Not in the ways she would share just about every other aspect of her life and belongings, a tendency which she felt was her duty of sorts as a big sister.
For a good while, or even nowadays, if she’s being honest, she had mentally wrestled with that sense of guilt and the persistent thought that she deserved to have something that was only for her for once.
The thought that after all that she gives to trying to be a good enough role model and unofficial leader to their little group, she had earned having something good that’s all her own.
After all, the solitary act was far less ‘destructive’ than the many other ways Undercity youths and young adults typically chose to vent their frustrations.
It was far less affecting and involved than the other things she did publicly to ‘blow off steam.’
Things like picking fights that she might not be able to win or acts of petty thievery that could draw unwanted attention from an errant Enforcer, even though those things were often only done out of necessity to release some of her anger or in the name of defending and providing for Powder.
She happily assumed all the risk for those things so that her sister did not have to go without something that brought her joy, within reason, of course.
Vi gave so much of herself daily, so why shouldn’t she have something for herself for once, she thought.
Or maybe she wasn’t meant to know she could do this thing alone?
The fact that even after over a year of that routine, she had still felt too embarrassed to ever talk about it to anyone or do it anywhere that could be more conspicuous had been a sign that she should stop.
Or only do it sparingly, she sometimes considered.
But then again, she wondered why she should do it more sparingly if she wasn’t hurting anyone and it hadn’t interfered with her unspoken duties.
If anything, the more recently she had the chance to sneak away to do it, the easier it felt to level out her base level temper and aggression towards other people during stressful situations.
The inverse also seemed accurate, so anything that helped her ‘chill out’ a bit and be less prone to misdirected aggression couldn’t be all that bad, right?
The back and forth between those schools of thought had been her silent, solitary struggle for over a year until she started to have some ‘external factors’ to take into more consideration and sway her in a more precise direction.
Those ‘external factors’ had been centered around her ever so perceptive and deductive pup of a sister because she had let herself be so willfully careless for so long, so stupidly confident that her poor attempts at ‘masking’ what was likely a decidedly different type of sweaty scent were more than sufficient.
That somehow her sometimes paper-thin ‘excuses’ and blatant attempts at distractions would not also happen frequently enough to become a pattern, a puzzle for her ever so inquisitive sister to latch onto.
It had been a small mercy that during the first year and a half or so since her initial discovery, Powder had not yet known enough about ‘things’ to deduce what Vi’s scent change meant, at least not enough for her to suspect much of anything.
But again, Vi had deluded herself into believing that somehow, just because she had never openly talked about such things in her presence and did her best to ‘shield’ her from things she felt were too advanced for her younger mind to know about that there was no way the girl could pick up that knowledge elsewhere even vaguely.
Before Powder started to show signs that she was subconsciously putting the pieces together regarding her older sister’s ‘secret activities,’ Vi would work up an even heavier sweat from running instead to try to cover the other scents, which had worked well enough.
When she’d get home, Powder used to wrinkle her nose in an adorable way to communicate that she smelled something that confused or overwhelmed her keen senses.
She’d often say Vi smelled a little ‘weird’ or a bit strong, but never in a particularly pointed or probing way; it was just a stated fact.
(Vi had never taken actual offense to her bluntness since she knew that she had intended to distract her enough to avoid more specific and potentially awkward conversations about it anyway.)
Usually, that had been the extent of her acknowledgment of her secretive yet still conspicuous behavior, so, for a good while, she had managed to dodge any form of ‘repercussion’ for sneaking away to de-stress from time to time.
And it was all fine and good until Powder had started to innocently get ‘cuddlier’ around her when she’d step back into their living space after a thorough shower to rinse off any remnants of her solo activities she could with the cheap soap they typically had.
That initial near-routine clinginess had been awkward and confusing enough for Vi to indulge so relatively soon ‘after,’ sure, but not nearly as much as when Powder would sometimes start to do that while purring quietly before she could sneak off to wash up first.
After that started happening more and more often, the confusing whirlwind of guilt and shame of being around her, with traces of her ‘selfishness’ still present on her skin started to overwhelm her and nearly make her physically sick.
It seemed kind of ‘wrong’ of her to allow Powder to get so close to her and have her shameful, sweaty scent get anywhere near her perfectly sweet and lovely one.
It seemed unfair to inadvertently expose her to one of her most significant sources of shame, even though the girl seemed to enjoy the after-effects more and more with time.
Vi hadn’t realized how good she’d had it before Powder started reacting with more avid ‘interest’ than confusion to her poorly masked ‘secret’ and how that gradual shift would only amplify her confusion about the mixed feelings she had about exploring her sexuality.
Powder’s initiative to blur new lines she likely had been unaware of had sprouted as they both neared and entered adolescence would leave Vi wondering how much blame she should take for the awkward situations they’d find themselves in together with increased frequency as time passed.
But with Vi’s blissful shroud of denial about Powder’s level of self-awareness in that realm firmly in place, she had no way of foreseeing the new world of embarrassment and shame that would open up and try to swallow her whole once the girl started putting more pieces together about her ‘secret’ activities on her own.
She had no way to prepare for that realization and how much of an ordeal doing ‘that’ anymore would become soon.
--To Be Continued--
Chapter 10: Vi Pt 3 (Continued) a.k.a In Dreams
Summary:
' For a few more puzzled moments, she had tried to identify what had awoken her in the first place in case she needed to shake off sleep and prepare to fight entirely but relaxed a bit once she had determined that there was no foreign presence in their room.
Sensing no immediate ‘threat’ and noticing that she had drifted off a bit closer to falling off the edge of the bed when she scanned the room, she righted herself and tried to resume the position she’d initially drifted off in. However, she paused when she suddenly registered the transferring motion that lightly rocked her in place and the slight creaking sounds she was not responsible for.
Any moment of previously returned calm shattered in the next instant once Vi zeroed in on the other sounds that her groggy brain had somehow tuned out at first. She was sure she was not creating any of them, and all at once, she pieced together what had woken her up. '
-- Or --
Vi continues to be a guilty mess who tries her BEST to be 'good' and lives in denial of her own needs. And after a series of events, she can no longer feign ignorance about the fact that she's no longer the only one who has them.
Notes:
TW: 'Thematic Elements'.
I'm still keeping it mostly 'vague' enough not to be 'explicitly explicit' about anything, but this chapter really puts that to the test, tbh. I tried, y'all!
I promise it truly is for the PLOT.
Chapter Text
=== Vi ===
Vi kept lying to herself for a couple more blurred months, ignoring the ever-growing signs that her solo activities were no longer as ‘secret’ as she’d been trying to keep them for nearly two years.
To her credit, she cut back significantly on the frequency of her solo trips after one too many ‘close calls’ about being asked where she was going and why by other family members.
She had also been actively trying not to let the ill-timed cuddles from her sister become a regular or even ‘expected’ thing when she returned home afterward because there was just something about the fact that she even felt the need to almost aggressively thwart this now routine behavior that made her start to question her level of indirect influence.
It made her mind drift to thoughts of what was waiting for her at home, to the point that it started to take up more and more space in her mind to a troubling degree.
It made her feel dirty that due to her level of preoccupation, she had unintentionally started to somewhat associate her solo activities with worrying over Powder at the same time, and that had started to put a real damper on her enjoyment of it from something akin to a moral standpoint now.
At times, she would try to rationalize Powder crossing her mind before and afterward by saying that it was just her protective instincts telling her not to leave her ‘unprotected’ for longer than necessary or that she was only crossing her mind as often as she would be any other time.
And she did often have her on her mind any other time just because Powder indeed was the person Vi had spent most of her life with and fretting after, so it only made sense that she could never shut off that ever-present concern entirely.
If anything, starting to realize the actual depth of her codependency had been one of many long overdue mental beatdowns she deserved, honestly.
It made her realize that she might need to set and enforce more boundaries for them if she ever hoped to see them functioning ‘normally’ around each other while they were apart as they grew older.
Vi thought that as the big sister, she needed to nip her potentially bad habits in the bud so she would not pass them down to Powder.
But even catching them within herself early enough to attempt to ‘fix’ their unintended consequences would be easier said than done and would not happen overnight, as she would realize time and again.
--
Now, Vi knew with a significant degree of certainty that her attempts at even setting new boundaries in the first place, much less her inconsistent attempts at ‘enforcing’ them, were unlikely to go well.
Since, up until that point in their lives, there had hardly been any between them.
At first, cutting back on the ‘frequency’ of her solo time felt like a ‘punishment,’ mostly for herself.
Being firm about telling Powder to let her get cleaned up and changed before she got closer to her had guiltily thrilled her and broken her heart.
It quickly became a new test of willpower to desensitize herself and not continue to fold easily once Powder hit her with her patented enormous sad eyes or to yield to Powder’s tantrums because it had felt like a necessary evil to practice the new deflecting skills of saying ‘not right now’ or outright ‘no.’
It took some time to get even half good at it because her maturing protective side hated to be the cause of Powder’s emotional distress.
Still, her monstrous side admittedly took sick pride in the fact that if she spoke firmly enough, her sister obeyed her new ‘orders’ unquestioningly.
Even if she had tears in her eyes and visibly warred with herself to stay put, she seemed almost unable to defy her when she used a much more deliberate tone of voice slightly different from her usual ‘stern’ voice.
Vi wondered if the somewhat compulsive compliance had anything to do with the whole ‘Alpha’ and ‘Omega’ thing Vander had haltingly mentioned to her a few times by that point and not an act the girl put upon for her ego’s sake.
Because speaking sternly alone had rarely proven to be anywhere near that level of effectiveness during their early childhood, she usually had to shove the stubborn girl away or put a physical barrier between them like a door to get the message across when she did not want to be bothered.
So then, why would that suddenly change as Powder grew into an even more tenacious and capable being who could wriggle her way over or around just about anything that stood in the way of her goal?
It made little sense that mere words and a focused look from her alone could suddenly stop the girl in her tracks, but regardless of the lack of logic behind it, Vi had mentally vowed never to abuse that power she was discovering within herself.
She vowed to only ever resort to using it in earnest during situations that were for Powder’s or even their shared safety and good, like the handful of times it took to gradually taper off her tendency to fight the ‘ban’ still and reduce it to merely scenting the air discreetly with a brief forlorn glance her way and a pointed sigh as she made a noticeable effort temper her enthusiasm on her own.
It had felt like a double-edged victory that Powder had started to respect the boundary, almost to the point of nearing the appearance of outward indifference to her presence sometimes, without Vi having to go out of her way to enforce it preemptively.
After a while, even this milder boundary started to make her feel like she was being unfairly mean to Powder in an almost hypocritical way.
Despite no longer feeling the need to use her ‘power’ to convince her, she still started to feel like she was being downright cruel since she was denying her younger sibling what was likely a largely ‘innocent’ form of comfort-seeking and not what her mind had almost warped it to be.
There was nothing inherently wrong with the girl’s growing curiosity and fascination with a unique scent. The Undercity was a place filled with overwhelmingly unpleasant ones, so it would make sense to want to latch onto one that was grounding.
Powder regularly voiced that Vi’s general scent always felt like home and helped her ‘stay’ when she sometimes felt herself getting pulled into her thoughts at inconvenient times. It was nothing new that she liked to ‘wear it’ on herself to self-soothe.
The borderline inappropriate and strange fixation with the ‘new’ scent had only arisen because Vi had chosen to be more animalistic about her self-soothing methods and repeatedly exposed her to the traces of the aftermath, even if unintentionally.
Vi was the one with the self-discipline issues.
Vi was the monstrous one who could never seem to stay content with being a gentle and non-aggressive person for long periods before the rage built up and boiled over again.
Vi was the one who let her thoughts stray where they should not and allowed the feelings they stirred up to warp her interactions with not just her sister but other people around her as well.
So, for a time, she even decided to try to further ‘punish’ herself by stopping altogether, depriving herself of self-soothing behavior and eradicating the lingering scent in hopes that her body and natural aggression would settle on their own without it now that she was older.
She tried to convince herself there was no physical ‘need’ if she kept her mind occupied. She had gone most of her life without it anyway, so how hard could it be to return to before?
Just like she had kept herself from having her first shift thus far, something that she had been told was a biological necessity for her kind, she tried to believe she could control that primal demand through sheer force of will.
The latter only seemed to backfire and become even more difficult as time passed, and her mind and body continued to refuse to settle on their own, but not for lack of trying.
Her efforts to control that drive were nothing short of heroic, or so it felt at times.
But she adamantly refused to act upon the urge to punch everyone who so much as ‘breathed wrong’ in her presence.
She refused to regain the previously established ‘stress relief’ routine to protect Powder’s progress.
During particularly frustrating nights, she even entertained the thought of exploring other forms of ‘stress relief’ even just once in hopes of finding any form of reprieve from the built-up tension within her body.
The ‘other forms’ included sampling any of the vast selection of substances almost distressingly easily available to her or experimenting with muddying up the scent with that of any of the women who showed even passive interest in her since now at a few moons over 16 years old it wasn’t like she was ‘unaware’ of sex as a concept.
She did live under and sometimes worked in a popular bar, after all.
There were brothels and other similarly sexually liberated establishments in the areas surrounding their bar that they all had to walk by pretty regularly.
She’d seen her fair share of things.
She had never stared long enough to see many things in person, but she had seen enough to make her feel uncomfortable letting Powder be in the bar or near those other establishments without Vander or herself present.
Her stubborn urge to keep Powder blissfully in the dark about ‘certain things’ for as long as possible kept warring with the hope that she somehow already knew ‘enough’ so that she would never have to have any uncomfortable talks about them with her.
And also, so that she could start to feel like she did not need to hide away and feel so damn ashamed of herself for wanting to act on the teenage longing to do things to herself or with other people for the first time like she had unfortunately heard and even witnessed others do on more than one occasion due to her heightened senses.
It was a mean and selfish thought, but in her most frustrated moments, she contemplated testing if the presence of someone else’s ‘reciprocated scent’ would make hers less enjoyable to Powder and act like a ‘repellant’ of sorts to add another layer of separation that would let her return to her previous routine with less guilt.
(When the pent-up sensation got bad enough, it almost made her forget that the paralyzing fear of ‘embarrassing’ herself due to inexperience was not the only thing keeping her from doing more than kissing girls and following through with that curiosity for ‘more.’ It almost made her forget that the even greater reason was the same one that kept her from even doing that more than a handful of times in her life at that point. And that reason was that once the initial thrill died down, within minutes like clockwork, an increasingly queasy feeling she could not explain would overtake her the more she let them touch her, and the nausea alone would force her to stop things from going any further.)
Of course, that would lead to yet another guilt spiral over even thinking about ‘potentially knowingly’ perturbing Powder with the indirect confirmation that Vi was out doing ‘gross grown-up stuff’ like they had both frowned upon in their younger years, even though she had every right to dabble in them at her age.
No matter what form of ‘action’ she took, she could not win in this hormonal and moral battle, so she concluded that the best option was to stick to inaction instead.
Sticking to her plans was easier said than done in practice, so she figured that if she wanted to retain any form of sanity and inner peace, she would have to do her best to ignore those feelings and redirect her energy into focusing on whichever job Vander asked her to help with and then some.
For a while, keeping extra busy allowed for the occasional slip-up of being a little liberal with her punches during the occasional undercover street fights she inevitably got drawn into when the prize money or simply bragging rights were high enough.
She would sign up for anything that physically exhausted her and kept her mind busy, even if continuing to abstain from ‘other activities’ made something beneath her skin increasingly unsettled and frustrated.
She kept trying her best anyway, for Powder.
She had been doing relatively well until the day of The Biting Incident, when so many things threw her carefully balanced strategy out of whack, provoking so many changes within herself and Powder that she could not help but fixate.
Even over a week later, she was still trying to understand why her higher thinking had shut off so instantaneously as a reaction to a simple bite that didn’t even break the skin, just from being surprised by the action.
And if that wasn’t unsettling enough, she was also growing increasingly nervous and baffled by how quickly things seemed to be changing for Powder after that situation.
Up until that afternoon, even though Vi had actively worked to put the brakes on the escalation of the girl’s ‘innocent’ fascination with her scent for months, she thought she could still delude herself into believing that her little Pow Pow was still largely ‘unaware of’ and somehow incapable of anything even remotely resembling sexual thoughts or bodily responses herself.
The whole fiasco had her wondering if it had ever happened before that afternoon and if she had somehow never noticed it since she had always been so preoccupied with her shame or if that episode had been some form of unfortunate awakening for the teen due to Vi’s strange reaction.
After thinking and overthinking herself in circles about every detail of that exchange and the events that would soon follow, her death grip on that nonsensical sense of denial would be pried open one dawning realization at a time.
--
One of the most notable significant instances of uncomfortable confirmation that Powder was very much ‘growing up’ was witnessing firsthand the steady development of the girl’s brand of questionable habits used to assuage her own newly developing urges over the weeks following The Biting Incident.
Or again, at least they seemed to be a new development to Vi since she had never even thought to ‘take notice’ of such things before that afternoon; they could have been occurring in less conspicuous ways for far longer than she dared to imagine for all she’d known.
Whatever the case may be, she had begun to catch onto the fact that some of the clothes she left lying around after changing out of them at the end of particularly physically active days would suspiciously disappear at some point before the next time she came home for the day.
She did try not to think much of it, writing it off as some ‘prank’ she did not understand or something equally inconsequential the first few times.
But then the clothing items would reappear, buried close to the bottom of their unofficially designated ‘dirty clothes pile’ when she was sure she’d used them much more recently.
Sometimes, she’d even find them tucked into the gap between Powder’s mattress and the wall their bunk beds were pressed against.
Of course, even then, after silently noticing the habitual behavior that the younger girl never even teasingly brought attention to in a way she would if it were something she wanted Vi to get ‘annoyed’ by, she found herself trying to create excuses that would help her hold out on releasing her grip on the more naive version of the younger teen she held in her mind’s eye.
Maybe Vi had just missed when tossing them over haphazardly after a long day since the second less ‘official’ dirty clothes pile was in the same general direction as her bunk. And the clothes had somehow landed on Powder’s bed instead and got shoved against the back wall in her sleep without her noticing them there.
Sure.
That seemed plausible if you suspended your disbelief enough.
But then…
Finding clothing items tucked into her sister’s pillowcases at least thrice had been more complicated to explain, even to her determinedly delusional self, but she decided to persist so she could still sleep somewhat peacefully at night.
She construed that perhaps holding onto clothes that most strongly retained her general scent was Powder’s roundabout way of communicating that she missed having her around during the day since she had spent even more time away than usual, taking extra work shifts and training alone purposefully.
(Admittedly, doubling down on her tried and valid avoidance tactic after The Biting Incident had served as both her attempt at keeping her mind and body extra distracted and a way to avoid having awkward but likely necessary discussions about things. Something she was nowhere near ready for or felt remotely ‘qualified’ to do since she still had trouble making peace with her wants and needs.)
In Vi’s delusional mind, maybe a harmless coping mechanism for loneliness could be all that strange pattern of behavior was.
It was just a sign that her sister missed spending most of her day with her like she used to and had found a strange workaround to having to talk about something she might not be ready or willing to delve into just yet.
If it was a simple matter of missing her company in general, Vi was sure she could think of something unassuming to help her cope.
Mere lonesomeness was something that there were plenty of easy ‘fixes’ for, or so she thought.
--
Coincidentally, or almost expectedly, in retrospect, something else happened nearly two months to the night of that biting incident that fundamentally changed their dynamic and threw her for yet another loop just as she was finding a good groove again.
And in hindsight, Vi thought that perhaps it had been her damn fault for making it possible for either of them to even be in that type of awkward situation in the first place.
It was her stupid fault for not stopping it immediately after she started to suspect what was happening.
In an unthinkingly off-the-cuff attempt to ‘make up’ for her increased absence during the daytime, she had occasionally shared the bottom bunk with Powder again like they used to all the time when they were younger and sleeping space was more limited.
(Something she should have realized that by almost any standard, both were already getting too old and big to do so semi-regularly again. Especially on her end since she had started to get too big to sleep entirely comfortably on her bed by herself in the first place and would have to tuck in real close to keep from falling out of bed in her sleep. Having to cram into the same bunk to the point of potentially almost smothering the more petite teen should have tipped her off that it was likely an ill-advised ‘solution’ that could exacerbate the already more questionable aspects of their relationship as of late.)
At first, mainly during that first week or so, this crowded new arrangement seemed to help them settle down and sleep more peacefully, and the ‘stealing’ habit almost disappeared overnight.
Vi had even started to feel that strange anxiety that her inner presence had expressed in the previous weeks begin to dissipate, having Powder’s soft scent surrounding her as she rested.
Her bony but warm presence against her back or wrapped in her arms on those nights was also surprisingly reassuring rather than uncomfortable as it likely should have been with anyone else.
Powder herself seemed to be less anxious in general as well and had excitedly informed Vi that she was making great strides in the development of her latest decoy bomb again, a project she had seemed to abandon for a time, but the marked difference from the previous mention of it was that this one would also potentially contain nails or other small projectiles.
The excitable glee with which she described the theoretical intentional violent effect was initially mildly unsettling because it seemed like quite a jump from all the previous designs, which were more about creating sound or smoke to cause a distraction.
It felt too hypocritical to worry about or ‘judge’ that borderline manic glint in her eye when talking about something that could physically hurt other people when Vi herself was famously known to be a bit too comfortable ‘talking with her fists.’
So, as long as she was careful about it and did not get herself hurt, who was she to dissuade her from potentially having that type of diversion?
Things seemed to be on a healthy upswing again between them overall for the first few days of that one golden week or so thanks to that added closeness during their hours of rest, but inevitably, at that point in their lives, that too took a slow turn that ended up careening them off course.
Once again, it started with a subtly confusing act that Vi might not have caught onto if not for its repetition, like how Vi would sometimes be woken up by the sound of Powder wordlessly hurrying to the bathroom to shower first thing in the morning or groggily wake to see her already freshly changed into daytime clothing when she was only crawling out of bed herself.
(Powder had never been one for near-daily morning showering or waking up before Vi did. She even had to be occasionally ‘nudged’ and reminded to shower sometimes, and often, she would sleep like a rock well into the morning hours once she was finally knocked out for the night. So, when just the opposite of both those tendencies started happening with increased frequency, it was hard not to notice such a change.)
The sudden switch-up was odd, but that routine change went on without comment from either of them for almost another two weeks from when she noticed it.
Vi would have, like with everything else she’d willfully chosen to feign ignorance about, happily continued to shrug it all off nearly indefinitely, but then ‘something else’ essentially forced her to acknowledge the things she adamantly pretended not to notice fully.
--
Vi felt off in a noticeable yet unexplainable way throughout the day on ‘that particular day.’
But as was customary for her, she had decided to push herself to exhaustion, working and exercising all day to ensure that she could wind down naturally at the end of the day rather than think too deeply about a potential root cause for the unease.
She had perhaps gone slightly overboard on that particular day and lost track of time because before she knew it, it had been nearly midnight when she finally slipped back into their shared room covered in a half-dried layer of sweat.
Powder had adorably fallen asleep wrapped around one of her spare pillows and facing the wall. She notably had left a ‘Vi-sized’ space behind herself, a silent invitation to join her once again despite the ongoing ‘whatever’ that had been happening in the mornings lately.
She was almost always waiting for her whenever she stayed out extra late without a heads-up, but she must have been extra tired herself if she had given up on staying awake to greet her even before midnight.
With that consideration in mind, Vi had neither the heart nor the energy to make more noise than necessary at that late hour and wake her since she was already sleeping so soundly, so she had decided to remove only her outer shirt and pants instead of performing her full bedtime wash-up routine.
Now, it had not been unusual for Vi to sleep in only an undershirt and boxer shorts on any other night since she tended to run hot pretty often anyway, so she figured it’d be okay to do so that night even if her clothes had not completely dried off yet.
They sometimes got sweaty throughout the night when she inevitably overheated under the blanket Powder would offer to share with her anyway, so she thought little of leaving the day’s sweat on them just that one time.
Plus, her sister never seemed to mind her being sweaty even when she was awake particularly, so she presumed a sleeping Powder would give even less of a damn about it.
Vi thought a morning shower would solve any issues if she suddenly minded it enough to be grossed out anyway.
It had been no easy task, but she had managed to carefully scoot in behind Powder without disturbing the blanket that covered her. Given her significantly taller and heavier body structure, she defied gravity by dipping the shoddy mattress the least amount possible.
Honestly, she had been pretty proud of that feat and thought she was home free, but then, the moment she gently draped her arm over her blanket-covered waist, Powder perked up ever so slightly and sleepily murmured, “Vi?”
“Yeah, it’s just me, Pow. Go back to sleep.” Vi whispered in her quietest voice, hoping not to rouse her further. She settled in almost protectively around Powder, and the girl’s mumbled response was drowned out by their harmonized purrs of serenity and hugging the pillow closer to her face as she promptly fell back asleep.
The last thing Vi could remember before sleep claimed her, too, was pressing an absentminded kiss to the top of her sister’s head and lazily smirking at how her purring had deepened further automatically, even in sleep.
-
It could have been hours or perhaps mere minutes later that night when Vi had woken not with a start but groggily and blinking confusedly into consciousness, trying to adjust her eyesight to the muted glow of moonlight that filtered through the slats of the vent near their beds.
For a few more puzzled moments, she had tried to identify what had awoken her in the first place in case she needed to shake off sleep and prepare to fight entirely, but relaxed a bit once she had determined that there was no foreign presence in their room.
Sensing no immediate ‘threat’ and noticing that she had drifted off a bit closer to falling off the edge of the bed when she scanned the room, she righted herself and tried to resume the position she’d initially drifted off in. However, she paused when she suddenly registered the transferring motion that lightly rocked her in place and the slight creaking sounds she was not responsible for.
Any moment of previously returned calm shattered in the next instant once Vi zeroed in on the other sounds that her groggy brain had somehow tuned out at first. She was sure she was not creating any of them, and all at once, she pieced together what had woken her up.
Light panting and whimpering intermingled with markedly still, deeply asleep breaths.
The onslaught of the scent she had slowly become unintentionally and indirectly acquainted with over the last couple of months hung around them.
She felt her body sway slightly due to Powder’s slight shifting under her arm and, much to Vi’s horror, her disloyal body’s unintentional reaction to the stimuli around her.
The hand of that same treacherous body then found itself lightly gripping Powder by the hip and unknowingly tightening as the realization of what was likely happening right before her hit her full force and brought her to complete alertness.
It had been another accidental response on her part.
Still, in reaction to the added pressure, Powder had immediately muffled a groan into the pillow she had curled into more as she scooted further back into Vi, eliminating the remaining centimeters of space between them in the same movement.
Even the simple removal of that remaining minuscule gap of separation between them had been more than enough to slather on another thick layer of overpowering ‘what the fuck is happening right now?’ to the entire situation.
Vi’s mind and body reeled at the abrupt and foreign new sensation.
She had every honorable intention of pulling away immediately to stop accidentally intruding on something that she knew on a personal level to be entirely out of one’s control at times and had even gone as far as to tense herself up as much as she possibly could in the moment to try to put a halt to further reactionary movement from her end.
But that feeble attempt at nobility seemed to have little to none of its intended effect as she had then felt her sister’s shifting movements grow as nearly purposeful and coordinated as they could while still somehow in deep sleep.
Despite Vi’s valiant efforts to keep her higher mind engaged and not react physically, she started to feel it go blank as the tension she had spent so many weeks trying to ignore within herself broke free of its frayed bonds.
Not the time nor place, she had vehemently screamed at herself as panic started seeping through the growing gaps in her cognizance.
That bubbling fear over sensing a loss of control over her body in a manner not too dissimilar to what she had experienced on the evening of the Biting Incident, more than anything in such a reactionary state, spurred her actions from that point forward.
Vi knew that her usual tether to remaining in control over that more primal state was currently doing just the opposite and needed her to stop moving, so in her last-ditch effort to halt the ongoing escalation of the situation, Vi stupidly moved her arm back around Powder’s waist and squeezed as hard as she imagined she could without hurting her.
It had been an idiotic move made out of sheer desperation to keep them both still. At the same time, she fought back the sick feeling brought on by her repulsion at her own body for continuing to react to accidental stimulation even as she had been mentally protesting against it, doing so with all her might.
Unsurprisingly, in hindsight, the impulsive action failed spectacularly at its intended effect.
Almost out of pure instinct, Powder’s movements became even more erratic against Vi and her inhibiting hold.
The sounds that escaped both of them at the amplified sensations deafened Vi to everything else aside from the pounding heartbeats she felt reverberating in her skull, and despite her more rational mind screaming at her to back out while she still could, a more primal part of her psyche commanded her to stay.
That mental rope kept fraying further; the presence inside herself had grown louder and louder, demanding that she serve her ‘purpose’ in the most ambiguous manner possible, thanks to their ‘language barrier.’
Everything in her rational mind kept telling her to loosen her now downright possessive grip and get out of bed, but then she had once again ‘witnessed’ her body move in ways that contradicted every one of those wishes.
She felt her fingernails nearly dig clean through two layers of cloth to hook onto the soft skin beneath; whether to keep the girl still or to keep herself from moving away was anyone’s guess.
Her throat ached strangely as she heard herself emitting a much deeper growl than she was typically capable of when she felt the girl twitch at the sting and then, seemingly in response to the pain and sound, frenziedly move against the pillow Vi hadn’t even realized she’d also inadvertently pinned against her.
Before Vi could fully process that reaction within her hold, the frantic movements and gasped breaths stuttered to an abrupt and trembling halt for a few seconds before a longer and clearly defined moan cut through the night air.
Vi saw white for a split second, knowing exactly what happened.
If the telltale sequence of movements had not been enough to know, the new scent that completely flooded her sense of smell and sparked sudden instinctual recognition would have been more than enough to be sure.
The onslaught of new information had made blood rush to her head, making her ears ring and her now trembling body ache dishonorably.
Vi had felt her breaths coming out in harsh pants against the back of Powder’s sweat-coated neck as she sporadically twitched within her suddenly weakened hold for a few moments afterward, gradually relaxing in her loosened grip as her slumbering breaths evened out.
The entire ‘episode’ likely transpired within mere minutes, and the younger girl somehow did not fully awaken from her sleep throughout it and promptly returned to snoring lightly in an even deeper sleep than before right after it ended.
Meanwhile, Vi had been left a confused and guilty live wire of a person with every single muscle in her body thrumming with tension to the point of making her shake.
Her mind and body had been consumed by fire and sheer disbelief over what had happened for too many reasons to untangle in her stressed-out state as the growing self-disgust about even unintentionally ‘perpetuating’ the event only amplified with the realization that only one of them had been fully awake for it.
Despite it all, the need that had built up from days if not weeks of refusing to give in to the urge to self-soothe in her misguided attempt to ignore her own ‘dirty’ teenage needs had risen to the surface so dizzyingly quickly it made the room start to spin as she shut her eyes tight trying to tamp it back down.
She had tried to take long, deep breaths to calm herself down, but that befuddling scent had saturated any available air. An alien sensation coursed through her body just beneath the skin, making her feel wild and ‘caged’ in a way she had never felt before.
The typically ignorable inner presence thrashed against her psyche with a ferocity that told Vi she needed to get away. Something was about to happen, and her consciousness warned her that there was no telling what other corrupting thing she might do in such a state.
At the time, forcing her limbs to cooperate with her more rational mind had felt almost painful.
Still, Vi would forever be grateful that the need to protect Powder from anything that set off her inner alarm, even if it was herself, overruled any other need or desire, no matter how ‘urgent’ it felt to address it.
Once she had been granted even a sliver of autonomy again over her limbs, she had pried herself away while stumbling to reach for and yank on the closest pair of pants and possibly mismatched pair of gifted hand-me-down work boots without bothering to tie them.
The previously disorienting spinning sensation coursing through her body had only intensified further from the quick motions, making her stomach lurch dangerously as she staggered up the creaky steps, unable to spare any coherent thought into being mindful of the slight commotion she was creating.
Distantly, as she barely kept the full body heave that made her miss the second-to-last step from forcing her to expel the paltry contents of her stomach, a faint metallic creaking sound bolstered her resolve to remove the potential ‘threat’ before it woke Powder.
Even if the presence seemed to thrash within its confines in a more confused and troubled fashion and the phantom physical sensations that its illusory actions instilled on her insides only made her even more nauseous, she would not turn back.
She had no concrete idea of where she would go, but she knew there was no way she could return that night until whatever that sense of looming something was eradicated at a separate location as soon as possible.
In her haste to get as far away as fast as possible, overwhelmed by her thoughts and anxious sense of urgency, she had only just missed the confused whimpers of the not-so-quiet sobbing mess she left behind alone in the dark as she slammed the heavy metal door shut behind herself.
Chapter 11: Powder Pt 4
Summary:
' What if Vi got bored with spending even the steadily decreasing amount of time she spent with her now between work and training alone and just…
Ditched her altogether in her free time once she realized Powder could not fully relate to that part of her anytime soon?
Or what if, with her bad luck, she would never be able to shift at all, and that caused the invisible rift that had been pushing them apart lately to grow into a chasm too vast for either to ever bridge?
What if her 'biological ineptitude' made Vi think of Powder as even more of a helpless ‘pup’ who was only good for being rescued or getting in her way than she already likely did?
A burden.
And not as someone ever capable of being remotely close to her level of competency, even eventually, due to that pitfall alone? '
-- Or --
The passage of time brings about new feelings and inner turmoil about what they mean. A newfound restlessness leaves Powder with more questions than she knows how to pose but with a growing desire to find out.
Notes:
This chapter now combines what used to be '11 & 12' + about 2.1k worth of new content for them!
The next chapter is also from Powder's POV, which used to be chapter 13! I'm letting that stay a separate chapter because it will likely be over 4k on its own, and I did NOT want to wrangle a 10k+ chapter if I combined all three parts into one.
(At least not YET, because the later chapters will force me to condense already longer chapters. But I'll worry about that...eventually.)
Anyway, enjoy whatever this is!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
= Powder =
After the night of The Biting Incident, things got weird.
(Okay, they had been getting increasingly ‘weird’ from her end for a little while before that night, too. But that was neither here nor there.)
If she thought back on it, what happened that night was a somewhat abrupt but semi-logical culmination of something slowly building over almost a year.
There had been a period when Powder had begun to notice that Vi would disappear without a word and then return home somehow more chilled out than when she left…
Yet she was also skittish in a different way, with her metaphorical tail tucked between her legs, almost as if waiting to get ‘scolded’ by Powder for something.
Something her younger mind had no hopes of even beginning to make enough connections to reach any form of solid conclusion about.
Those times were some of the infrequent instances in which, for once, Vi seemed to be almost ‘scared’ of and intimidated by Powder.
It was the strangest and almost most unnatural thing to witness since she had no idea what the taller girl thought she was even meant to be upset at her about.
So confusing!
It did make her feel a little left out, knowing that whatever Vi was off doing seemed to be something she did not want her to know about or ever bring her along for, not even once!
She had wondered if it was something hazardous or if Vi thought she would blab about it to Vander and get her in trouble, as she occasionally had before without intending to by missing social cues and getting carried away in her rambling.
Perhaps those slip-ups had been enough to prove herself untrustworthy in keeping secrets when it mattered.
Without any direct explanation or hint of a reason coming directly from Vi herself, Powder’s mind had wandered in all directions, trying to figure something out herself.
Granted, her sister did not ‘owe’ Powder an explanation and play-by-play of her every move all day, but it had started happening more often.
Whenever she came back, she’d always be oddly sweaty and ‘smelly’ in a way she had never been before.
Though Powder did note that the ‘smelliness’ was never particularly unpleasant…
To her.
Their adopted brothers, mostly Mylo, of course, never hesitated to make a dramatic show of their distaste for her strong scent from the first time it changed.
But Powder never understood why?
To her, she smelled like ‘Vi’ but ‘more,’ mixed with some newer underlying scent she could not put into words yet.
The scent was potent and noticeable to her, but it was another good smell, like her ‘happy smell’ was, so she never minded it even before she understood what caused it.
(And that would make sense later. Because it had also indeed been a ‘very happy smell.’)
For a while, Powder had been a little confused and passively curious about what in Runeterra could cause that change in her scent, but she shrugged it off as something that was “none of her business.”
She figured if Vi had wanted her to know about it, where she had been, and what caused her scent to change, she probably would have told her casually at some point.
Powder let the compulsion to inquire about it go because while the scent was different, it was still uniquely and solely a ‘Vi’ scent, so she grew to enjoy it steadily.
Seek it out, even.
So much so that it seemed to be an instinctual need to make even this odd scent a regular layer on top of her own.
To have both scents interconnected to the point of being nearly indistinguishable somehow.
She felt compelled to proudly carry a reminder of who her sister was everywhere she went.
Always.
It wasn’t like Powder didn’t eventually realize that the repeated act was mainly for her comfort and benefit since no one she interacted with regularly could likely tell the difference in her scent.
And even if they could, she rarely went anywhere new without Vi anyway, so she rarely had to wonder if her sister’s scent still cloaked hers ‘sufficiently’ and vice versa to let others know who they ‘belonged’ to.
She didn’t know why it was vital to her for that ‘invisible’ tether to be well established between them, even if there was little chance anyone else could pick up on it.
Both of them would be able to tell, and if no one else ever did, at least Vi would always be able to tell.
And that’s all that mattered.
-
After some time of Vi pulling her routine disappearing and reappearing act, Powder had eventually started to piece some ‘things’ together for herself.
Even if she did not fully understand what she was putting together at first, the pieces started to align because she was not entirely ‘oblivious’ to the things the grownups usually did with each other.
They’d quickly passed by some questionable establishments and ‘situations’ many times despite her sister’s attempts to shield her eyes from seeing things, her keen nose and ears still unintentionally picked up on enough things to get an idea of what it all entailed.
And the very concept of it had been disgusting to Powder.
The smells…the sounds… the way they rubbed up all over each other…
All of it was repulsive.
Pointless.
Gross!
But then, when Vi had started coming home smelling similar to what people smelled after they did that type of thing with each other… yet also only like herself?
That discrepancy only served as a key to open up a new box of ponderings to get her restless and perplexed!
Suddenly, those types of ‘things’ did not seem as inherently repulsive on principle…but still seemed strange to want to do.
…especially alone?
Back then, she could not conceptualize doing anything ‘like that’ with or without anyone’s company.
Her mind couldn’t even picture how it’d work alone.
It did not seem like something that could even happen without someone else there, or at least not if you weren’t an icky boy.
But then…
The older Powder got, the more she picked up on stuff without fully intending to, and as she connected Vi’s disappearing act with ‘things,’ the less the very idea of those types of activities seemed to gross her out.
But usually only if she connected the thought of them to Vi specifically in some abstract way…
Was that weird of her to do?
That was probably weird.
Vi didn’t call her a ‘little weirdo’ for nothing.
So, she had chosen not to tell her sister that she’d caught on to the likely reason behind why she tried to mask her scent and that she was doing so poorly.
And Powder refrained from telling Vi that she had no reason to be ashamed or embarrassed about it in her presence because it did not offend her meaningfully.
However, she did try to ‘show’ Vi how much she did not mind it.
All the time!
Because it wasn’t that weird of a thing to somehow do when she did it?
How could it be anything but good when, if anything, it soothed Powder in some primal way to know that her sister was not out doing those types of things with anyone but… herself?
But despite the restlessness steadily growing within her own body that entire time, until the fateful night of The Biting Incident, she had never been curious enough to even think of exploring new ways to alleviate the energy buildup.
Somehow, the idea that she could do anything ‘like that’ had never entered her conscious thoughts.
Not intentionally, at least.
Her imagination and subconscious sure tried to make a case for wanting to find out more about the topic in a general sense, for science, and not any actual desire to know things on a more intimate level.
In the months before the Incident, she had been on the verge of mustering the courage to ask Vi more directly about how she went about things so that her thoughts would not be as chaotic as they had been trying to make sense of a very abstract concept.
She had even thought of framing it as wanting to know enough in case someone, perhaps a ‘friend,’ ever asked her how to ‘try things out’ since she wouldn’t know how even to begin to answer that and wanted to be prepared.
(Never mind that such a question would be wildly inappropriate, even to her low filter self, to ask a kid or even a tween by anyone. And forget that she had almost no one who would be close enough to her to even think of asking personal questions like that, but really? That had been her plan? What an idiot!)
Just:
‘Asking for a friend.’
‘Out of Scientific Curiosity’
It had never been that severe or downright pertinent for her to find out, so it had been fine for her to keep dragging it out and not ask any sooner.
And if life hadn’t suddenly ignited her ‘curiosity’ about things for markedly different reasons, she would have found some better way to frame her queries to make it even slightly less awkward and weird for her younger sibling to ask about her private matters openly.
She totally would have relatively soon!
(Eventually, maybe. Probably.)
Okay, so she hadn’t figured out how by that night anyway…
But she probably would have thought of something at some point!
Honest.
She’d been practicing ways to bring up the tricky subject almost casually so as not to embarrass Vi about being so vulnerable about something she felt reluctant about talking to her about.
It didn’t have to be weird for her younger sister to ask for more direct examples and explanations about something she hardly knew anything about.
Right?
Vi had always told her she would rather have Powder be upfront, ask her about things that might be awkward to say out loud, and laugh about them together rather than have her endanger herself or get in ‘trouble’ by asking someone else.
With that thought in her mind and her impatience with overcoming her unusual timidity about asking Vi questions just because they were about things, she had been on the verge of trying to voice them.
She had been so close!
But then, seemingly out of nowhere, Vi seemed to be doing ‘it’ less and less often, creating invisible barriers between them again that unsettled her.
The muscular teen slipped out and back into their room for things with diminishing frequency until she almost completely stopped ever having traces of her ‘special’ scent around Powder, much to her great disappointment and renewed self-consciousness.
Noticing that the pattern of avoidant behavior returning had completely deflated her built-up courage to ask anymore and had her believing she missed her opportunity.
After that, she felt that if she asked Vi about what she was doing before or why she stopped, she would expose more of her ‘little weirdo’ tendencies when need not be and maybe unintentionally embarrass Vi in the fallout of her blunder to the point of never doing it again.
For some reason, the mere thought of that happening and that it might even be due to her hardly restrained clinginess was just too upsetting Powder to bear because she genuinely believed that Vi deserved good things and to feel good.
Vi had been smiling less easily and quicker to upset the less often she slipped out to do whatever she had been doing that helped, and she seemed generally less at ease because of it, so of course, Powder had been sad to see that happening.
Her own greedy and clinging needs be damned.
She had never wanted to be a ‘reason’ why Vi couldn’t let herself feel good.
--
After the Biting Incident, the wolf was primarily ‘out of the bag’ for both of them anyway.
Or whatever the saying was.
What was she even saying?
Whose wolf, and how big was this bag anyway?
Did Powder or Vi even really have one to let out anyway?
She had been told they would shift into their wolf forms someday, but hers seemed to be in no rush to leave the safety of her subconscious any time soon, even back then.
Especially not when even Vi’s Alpha wolf had yet to make itself known fully at the time.
And even after it showed up, in the months leading up to the night when that terrible thing happened between them months after the night of the Biting Incident, it refused to follow Vi’s lead for reasons unknown.
No, not even The Biting Incident had thoroughly roused a dormant wolf from either of their repressed psyches yet, but Vi’s had cracked an eye open and gotten pretty close to the surface that night.
She knew it.
Vi knew it.
The part of Powder that appeared to lack any sense of self-preservation had even giddily hoped it would finally make its magnificent appearance later under the full moon’s light as they ran side by side.
Still, a minor part of her was partially dreading it finally happening, but not because she feared Vi would hurt her.
If she did, Powder mostly trusted that it would be by accident, solely because even when ‘Vi’ seemed to have momentarily mentally checked out post-bite, there had still been enough of an ember of recognition in her intense gaze that told Powder she still cared about her well-being and was fighting to regain control.
So, she anticipated that the ember would stay lit and be there even if she lost her human form for a night or two or however that worked.
No, she had been dreading potentially having yet another thing to feel ‘out of the loop’ about again.
Powder had been dreading having something else she could not share the experience of until a while after Vi did, most likely or maybe ever.
She had just started catching up to her older siblings enough to be included in more of their group activities!
Going back to fully feeling like the runt of the litter all over again sounded devastating to her fragile self-esteem.
What if Vi got bored with spending even the steadily decreasing amount of time she spent with her now between work and training alone and just…
Ditched her altogether in her free time once she realized Powder could not fully relate to that part of her anytime soon?
Or what if, with her bad luck, she would never be able to shift at all, and that caused the invisible rift that had been pushing them apart lately to grow into a chasm too vast ever to bridge?
What if her biological ineptitude made Vi think of Powder as even more of a helpless ‘pup’ who was only good for being rescued or getting in her way than she already likely did?
A burden.
And not as someone ever capable of being remotely close to her level of competency, even eventually, due to that pitfall alone?
With those self-conscious worries in mind, Powder then decided to try even harder not to be suffocating and overtly pathetic after that immense screw-up of a night.
She did not want to annoy or ‘embarrass’ Vi with her juvenile questions and need for attention.
Powder did not want her to avoid doing things alone anymore.
She became fixated on the belief that Vi had likely stopped doing them and distancing herself from her only because she was weirding the older teen out by being too forward about her desire to be covered by her scent like the growing little freak she was.
After that night, she made it a renewed mission to be as unobtrusive to Vi as possible, and she would accomplish it pretty well, despite her growing yearning to explore ways to soothe the newly transformed ‘restlessness’ in ways that would not push Vi further away.
---
Powder’s plan of ‘attack’ for her mission began with her getting the next best thing to the direct source of her sister’s strongest scents: clothing items she knew Vi had worn during exercise or…other solitary activities.
It was neither the most ideal nor complete ‘replacement’ for the direct source herself. Of course, nothing would ever be better than Vi, but she’d take it if it meant not bothering Vi as much.
Quite literally, actually, in a way.
For a few weeks, it had been enough to ‘borrow’ some of the items and sneak off somewhere where she knew no one would bother her.
Somewhere where she could let her ‘little weirdo freak’ flag fly and bask in the strength that Vi exuded even when she wasn’t physically present.
A place where she did not have to worry about embarrassing herself by purring at ‘inappropriate’ times or otherwise showing her excitement so blatantly like she found herself needing to actively stop herself from doing lately.
It had been enough to have the ‘liberty’ to concentrate their mixed scents anywhere she wanted to on her own body, even places she had never consciously done to before.
It brought her a sense of fidgety peace of mind.
Doing that unimpeded, even though it left her strangely twitchy, helped her cope with not seeing her sister for most of the day, most days anymore.
For some reason, when she got carried away by rubbing the scent into her clothes, a weird new sensation would build up within herself, prompting her to stop immediately for fear that she would induce an ‘episode’ while on her own.
The anticipatory sensation almost felt ‘good’ while somehow also feeling like she was about to die just a little or something.
That made her question whether she was doing something wrong or making herself sick in an inexplicable way. Still, it also annoyed her because she wasn’t even doing anything that hurt anyone.
Not even herself this time, as she sometimes felt she needed to ‘punish’ herself when no one else did for being a ‘bad’ person or to spite someone else.
So whatever this new ritual was could not be that ‘terrible.’
And it’s not like Vi seemed to notice or care that she took the things she was no longer wearing…
Powder usually remembered to return them where she got them anyway, just in case.
Usually.
Admittedly, sometimes she’d get a little carried away with time and needed to tuck the items behind her bed or shove them into her pillow case as a last resort if Vi was on her way down the stairs.
She wasn’t entirely sure why she felt such an irrational need to hide the ‘evidence’ of how she chose to cope with Vi’s increased absence in her daily routine.
It wasn’t like she was doing anything ‘gross’ and shameful with them…
Was she?
All she did with Vi’s clothes was use them to feel less lonely during Vi’s prolonged absences.
That wasn’t too bad, right?
---
= Powder =
Of course, Powder hoped to continue to ‘get away with’ this little self-soothing ritual almost indefinitely and not have to think too hard about why she even felt there was anything to ‘get away with’ doing at all.
But then Vi surprised her one night by seemingly out of the blue asking, “Hey uh, Powder? I know I’ve been busy a lot more these days, and we haven’t hung out as much as we used to. And I know that you…I mean that 'I' miss spending time together. Like a lot.”
She had broken eye contact then and looked at the wall opposite where they were sitting, a rare display of anxiousness that Powder had learned to recognize even if her voice remained steady primarily otherwise.
“Would it be too weird if we uh…Would you even like or want to share a bunk with me again on some nights? On the nights when I’m away for longer during the day? If it’s not cool with you, we can forget I—"
“YES!! I mean—no, it wouldn’t be weird at all, and I’d love to if-if you wanted to, of course! I don’t think I kick in my sleep anymore or anything like that. But I wouldn’t want to keep you from sleeping well if I do or—” Powder had clamped her hands over her mouth to rein in weeks’ worth of pent-up eagerness to have Vi close again from pouring out all at once.
Or at least more than it already had since it seemed to just mortifyingly spill right out of her at the very suggestion of an opportunity to be ‘allowed’ to get closer to Vi again.
A blush immediately overtook her features at the sheer volume and speed at which she spilled her word vomit and in reaction to Vi’s features crumpling in mirth.
A full-on rich belly laugh filled the room like she had not heard from her in weeks.
(The sound had made her blush an even deeper crimson and made her heart do that weird fluttery thing it sometimes did when she witnessed or thought about her sister’s dorkier antics. She did not mind the embarrassment at times like that because her sister was even more beautiful when she laughed, even if it was at her expense.)
In her opinion, it had been far too long since she managed to bring that out of her, but boy, was it always a sight to behold and never failed to fill her with a bubbly feeling in her soul.
It always felt so good to be reassured that she could make her laugh so easily despite her growing awkwardness around her or that she could be even more endearing to Vi because of her teenage awkwardness.
She’d happily embarrass herself like this time and time again if it meant she could keep bringing genuine laughter out of her hard-working sister.
“Powder, I was the one who asked you. It’s much more important that you are okay with it; I won’t be hurt if you say you aren’t. I promise. Plus, I don’t think you could do anything too ‘terrible’ in your sleep, pup. I survived years of you ‘beating me up’ while we sleep, so what’s a few nights here and there nowadays?”
She had raised a playful eyebrow and flashed a toothy grin while chuckling lowly.
Continuing, “If anything, I’m more worried about not accidentally pushing you off the bed or crushing you if I move around since you are still so tiny!”
(The second scenario did not seem all that terrible, even back then, if you asked her. She would have even gladly welcomed it, in all honesty.)
Not the worst way to go, she’d thought.
But still, she had to fake offense at the moment, “Hey! Rude. I have no idea what type of radioactive food they’re giving you upstairs or what since you won’t stop growing! I swear, just last month, you were like two inches shorter!”
She’d mainly meant it as a light-hearted jab at her incredible height, but Vi’s grin faltered as she responded in a quieter tone, almost as if to herself, “About three inches shorter. I was almost sure I was already done growing since I’d practically stopped for almost two years, but it’s speeding up again. By a lot, and it’s...odd. I don’t think it goes that way for most people. Especially not girls?”
A flash of worry was gone before Powder could question it, and the sobering moment was brushed aside to make room for more jovial quips volleyed between them.
--
Eventually, they figured out how to arrange themselves to fit on the twin-sized bed somehow.
Powder had broken her heart by evicting a few of her cuddle buddies and exiling them to the raggedy armchair to make space for Vi’s longer arms and legs,
She was almost sure they would understand the extenuating circumstances that fueled her swift decision since she had to try to liberate as much bedding real estate as she could to accommodate a living potential cuddle buddy again.
And every inch counted since Vi was getting almost absurdly tall, certainly taller than most women and even some men she’d seen visiting the bar.
Vi was now absolutely majestically statuesque.
All long and muscular limbs and widening shoulders.
It was amazing.
It was totally worth the neck strain from looking up into her eyes when they were standing near each other and taking the jabs thrown her way at how small she still was, particularly compared to her.
Powder believed all the ‘aches’ that stemmed from being in Vi’s presence were no price to pay since she was damn proud to know that no one else in the world got to sleep next to or wrapped in her warm embrace.
No one else got to feel the taller teen’s strong back shifting with her deepened sleeping breaths against them like Powder would.
And to know that Vi willingly offered to spend her most unguarded time with her and only her more regularly again?
How could one dweeb get so lucky?
She’d have to have been an even bigger idiot to turn down the honor, so she readily agreed!
Despite having to spend most of the extra shared time asleep, their new bonding time had helped to sate her need for closeness for at least a solid week again.
It had been just the perfect answer to prayers she wasn’t even aware she had been making, an ideal compromise.
She even momentarily stopped getting the urge to hide away with Vi’s belongings during the daytime because she started to feel like they ‘belonged’ to each other again.
It was wonderful.
But then, of course, she had to go and start ruining it by being the total jinx she always seemed to be when anything was going too well naturally.
The strange dreams returned with a vengeance at the most awkward times possible.
Where before they were just fleeting snippets of things that had happened in real life, they had now begun to morph into something more.
Maybe it was just the sudden and steady direct source of her favorite scents invading her unguarded mind under darkness and in stillness.
Or the comfort of the body heat engulfing her in a way no amount of slightly less tattered blankets could provide on particularly chilly nights.
It could’ve just been the knowledge that Vi kept her safe even in her sleep.
But…
The dreams got even more ‘weird’.
Her subconscious blended the real-life feel of Vi’s presence with the increasingly ‘involved’ imaginary scenarios in her head.
That would, in turn, make it harder to tamp down the genuine emotions and reactions that even the ‘memory’ of those imagined scenarios would elicit from her body like she was usually able to in her waking hours.
But thankfully, mercifully yet also tortuously, Powder seemed to wake up right before anything went too far and without waking Vi up herself somehow.
If she’d ever woken up before Powder did and questioned her strangely ‘agitated’ state, she would not have been able to find the words to explain as she did not understand what she was feeling herself.
As it was, every time she fully woke from those dreams, she’d be left even more restless than ever before, leading her to leave the bed in a panic.
She’d then rush to find a change of clothes for the day and into their shared bathroom to take the morning cold shower she used to resent and avoid at all costs before ‘that’ had started happening.
The shock to her nervous system first thing upon waking would do wonders to rip away any lingering traces of her shameful dreams from her mind and body.
Because that also started happening a lot, waking up weirdly ‘sweaty’ in weird places, and it made her feel oddly extra ‘dirty’ physically and almost embarrassed for some reason.
Yes, the cold water would be a powerful reset for at least long enough to be functional and slightly less ‘suspicious’ early in the day.
A fresher set of clothes and the bulk of the icky coat of ‘sweat’ washed down the drain later, and Vi usually seemed none the wiser to her freak out.
Or at least there had been no noticeable reaction or blatant questioning once she groggily crawled out of bed to get ready for her day.
She never gave anything away if she had noticed the awkward morning routine change.
Everything was fine!
Powder would get a handle on this.
It was just a knee-jerk reaction to the newness of their new bedtime arrangement.
Her body and brain would stop being so…befuddling.
Soon.
Maybe.
Hopefully.
She did not want to go back to sleeping alone and losing this great gift of time and loving affection that Vi had given her just because her weirdo body and mind didn’t seem to know how to handle themselves.
There were simple solutions to this, like maybe just picking up the neglected practices that kept her mind and body extra busy, like improving her long-distance jumping so she wouldn’t slow her siblings down on runs when they encountered a gap she couldn’t confidently clear on the first and only try.
Or she could concentrate on other things before bedtime so that her brain could focus on those thoughts and images instead, returning her dreams to how abstract and inconsequential they used to be.
Simple solutions, things would be fine.
--
Things were indeed not simple or ‘fine.’
After less than two weeks of her brand of avoidance routine, almost a month to the day of the last major Incident she incited, another life-altering milestone occurred.
Powder had been buzzing with chaotic amounts of unusual energy all day, even for her.
Her thoughts were sporadic, and her body felt almost itchy with the need to move nearly nonstop.
She felt like she could take on the world by herself but was also overwhelmed by everything at the same time.
That day, her mind passed the time by fluctuating between a ‘not-enough’ state and one of too much going on at once.
She could’ve sworn she’d break out of her skin from the edgy sensations if she didn't have something, even some arbitrary goal to hyper-focus on.
She noticed that she was getting like this more often around the same time every month and started to wonder if it ‘meant’ anything.
Was this part of werewolf puberty?
Did Vi ever get this way?
Had Vi felt that way that day, too, and that’s why she had left extra early that morning?
“I probably won’t get back until really late tonight, Pow Pow. Don’t get in too much trouble without me while I’m away, okay? And don’t stay up too late, all right?” she’d said over her shoulder on her way up the steps and out the door.
That was several hours ago, though, and since then, she had disassembled and reassembled an old radio and various other decorative trinkets in their shared living space.
And she still felt just as, if not more ‘wired’ than she had after the morning’s cold shower, so she abandoned the random doohickey she had been downright aggressively trying to get to power on for the first time and sent a note up to Vander before heading out the door herself.
She eventually settled on burning off some of the excess energy by climbing random piles of rubble from a building that had been torn down and never rebuilt since as far back as she could remember.
It was a spot Vi had primarily deemed safe enough for her to spend time alone in since it was only a few blocks away from The Last Drop, and the ruins were so old that they had settled and filled in with enough debris that they were unlikely to collapse.
They had not been spontaneously running and playing together as much as they used to for fun, but Powder was determined not to get ‘rusty’ if they picked up the practice again, and Vi switched up their route.
So she took the opportunity to practice leaping atop and between rubble piles of various heights and shapes, the physical task and goal doing wonders for the overall buzzy feeling coursing through her veins that day.
Once she got tired of nearly slipping off the more angled surfaces without being tired enough physically to call it a night, Powder pivoted in her approach to practicing by drawing several lines and shapes in the dirt, each incrementally further from the other to focus on distance.
She pretended the variously sized shapes were building ledges or miscellaneous objects to jump to and from at a much higher elevation and under a time crunch, which got her heart rate up significantly like it would if the danger of missing was real.
The different-sized shapes gave her plenty of material for her imagination to transform them into all sorts of improbable obstacles and create wild backstories that would require her to have heroic precision to land on.
This was not the first time she had made this type of gamified rehearsal a ‘competition of one,’ but it had been something encouraged by her older sister as a solo practice when she could not be there more often in recent years.
Vi had told her that it would be a good idea to practice her distance jumping and perfect her accuracy on the ground, where it was safe to do so repetitively.
The amount of repetition this method would allow for would commit the basic techniques to muscle memory by default, and it would help her shut her mind up and not freeze up as often once adrenaline and real danger got involved.
As they’d both grown older, Vi had been increasingly patient with her ‘freeze ups’ and even made several efforts to help her improve her confidence under duress to help her combat them herself on the fly.
She had already brought her along on the odd easy, usually solitary ‘work-related’ run or two to let her get some real-world practice in without having anyone else there to psych her out or make fun of her if she inevitably froze up again.
Vi had even promised Powder that if she showed enough steady progress, she would make even more exceptions for her and bring her along for more complex jobs, with or without the boys, if Powder promised to be able to keep up and not mess with anything she wasn’t supposed to.
And indeed, she had mastered adding great distance…
Mostly when heights weren’t involved.
That part of it, the ridiculous heights at speed, still made her dizzy with nerves no matter how much she tried to desensitize herself to it, especially if Vi wasn’t there to catch her on the other side of the leap of faith.
(Both emotionally and sometimes physically catch her whenever she hesitated even slightly at the jumping-off point, because she tended to miss a clean landing by a mere inch or two due to her shorter body. Whether or not she needed her sister’s extra help to pull herself up from the ledge she clung to or to right her balance in the direction of safety, she always needed help coming down from the spike in panic at nearly falling.)
So that’s how she spent most of that afternoon on that weird day, trying to hit a distance marker that overshot most reasonable gaps between landing points in the ‘real world.’
Over and over again.
Past the usual point of being tired to ensure she could stick a landing even under less-than-ideal timing or circumstances, she needed to be sure she’d have something to show for all her free time without Vi these days.
So she persisted.
She persisted until genuine exhaustion made it physically impossible to be coordinated enough to hit the mark anymore.
After that point, she moved on to jogging a few lazy laps around their neighborhood until her feet felt chained to the ground, and her clothes were uncomfortably soaked with exertion.
Only then, well into the late afternoon, did she finally stop to catch her breath and focus her senses outward to ensure no one was trailing her before returning home.
-- To Be Continued --
Notes:
[[I'm TRYING to make '2.0' a bit more cohesive than the original but some of the tenses and stuff might still end up a bit wonky. This is 'intentional'/for plot purposes because of "the nature of memory and trauma" and whatnot, which will make more sense Later©️. But also writing can be haaard for my bilingual ADHD brain okay?]]
If anything didn't translate from my brain into words that make sense to others, kindly let me know. I'll either properly edit it INTO the story or answer in the comments.
Please validate this newbie author with Kudos/Feedback/Etc so they keep trying to get this story written out!
Chapter 12: Powder Pt 4 (Continued)
Summary:
'Barely managing to stifle the overwhelming urge to beg Vi to return, whimpering pitifully quietly instead.
Something inside her hoped that the obvious sounds of distress would reach Vi’s ears, and she would quickly run back to her to explain what had happened.
But for the first time she could remember, there was no direct response to her cries.
There wasn't even a direct display of annoyance as she occasionally faced in their younger days.
Only the pure, stinging silence of complete disregard.
Vi had left her without a single word. '
-- Or --
A strange teenage dream becomes a living nightmare in an instant.
Notes:
I felt compelled to haul a** and finish up this chapter TODAY since that S2 trailer dropped earlier than I expected.
Still no 'beta' so I once again resorted to recruiting a bit of help from Technology since we are out here living in the ~~Future~~.
Again, tried to keep it as much 'in my own voice' as I could and tried to keep the tenses and whatnot mostly consistent, but it is what it is since I did what I could as fast as I could to get this one out ASAP.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
= Powder =
After sneaking in through the ‘secret’ entrance to The Last Drop, reserved for close friends of Vander and family members, Powder grabbed a quick snack from upstairs that she hoped would not be missed and discreetly looked around for signs of Vi.
As far as Powder knew, her sister had no set schedule that day, so there was a chance that she might have finished her tasks early and gone back to their room already.
Powder could only hope but remembered Vi had mentioned she would likely return to their room late, so she figured the growing teen might have sneaked away alone after finishing the day’s work at the bar.
Grabbing a quick drink in her favorite cup and using the need to drop it off in one of the sinks as an excuse, she gave one last check in the back for her sister to see if she was still upstairs.
No luck.
Not seeing any traces of her anywhere she would usually be stationed, and noticing Vander starting to look her way with a questioning glance, she shrugged off the curiosity of where she would be if not at the bar and went down to their room.
She decided it would be considerate of her to at least rinse herself off and change out of her dirt-covered clothes.
The amount of grit on them was directly proportional to the number of times she missed the mark and fell on her butt.
On her face.
On her rib.
Or in any way one could fall, for that matter.
She accidentally ate a bit of dirt several times, especially towards the end of her makeshift ‘training session’ because of how much she loosened and kicked up with her falls.
Embarrassing.
And sometimes rather painful, to be honest.
But she was so grateful that Vi did not see how often she failed before setting her new personal distance record that day. She planned to tell Vi all about that highlight when she saw her again.
(That’s what practicing alone was good for! She could mess up as often as she needed to and omit those parts of the story when recounting it to Vi, letting her pretend she could be even half as effortlessly cool as her sister was.)
After quickly drying off following a short, slightly warmer second shower of the day to cool down, she felt almost too bone-tired to move but still filled with fidgety energy from deep within.
Vi was still nowhere to be seen, and that strange urge she had stopped indulging a few weeks prior was creeping back to the forefront for some unknown reason, since she knew Vi would be back before too long and would likely join her in sleep again.
She knew that ‘logically,’ since it was all but guaranteed, Vi’s top bunk had been half-turned into an open-air storage space for their folded or unfolded washed laundry, and laziness to remove it alone would be a deterrent enough not to break their recently established routine with no warning.
Still, the strange energy coursing through her made her anxious as the minutes of solitude indoors passed, and 'nightfall' limited her options to create distance from the physical things she wanted to avoid.
She paced around their room for a while, debating the pros and cons of reverting to her strange self-soothing habit so close to bedtime, with the possibility of Vi walking in and observing her odd behavior.
Powder tried not to; she did but compromised with herself by only partially indulging the overwhelming compulsion, tucking one of Vi’s used tank tops into her extra pillow’s case and refraining from 'doing anything else’ with it.
That had to be enough of a show of restraint to make the act a bit more normal and inconspicuous for when Vi joined her later that night, right?
Powder tried to justify it by telling herself that she had been good at kicking the ‘bad habit’ for over a week and that giving in halfway one more time would not hurt her progress in the long run.
Figuring Vi would still not be back for a while, she tucked the pillow under her blanket and followed suit.
Still trying to leave enough room on the bed for the ruby-haired girl to scoot into later, she called it a night.
Powder doubted she could wind down immediately, feeling as wired as she still did.
However, she hoped that after settling, she would be lulled into slumber by her sister’s comforting scent.
And come morning, the peculiar energy would naturally dissipate with Vi back by her side.
--
She eventually managed to nod off, the exhaustion from the afternoon’s activities fully catching up to her, but only for a dreamless and peaceful nap that felt like no more than a paused blink.
(Or at least it was entirely peaceful until Powder was stirred awake by the weight and feel of Vi’s strong arm gently draping around her.)
The younger teen barely registered her sister’s words and possibly mumbled a greeting in response as she instinctively snuggled into the welcomed warmth of her sister’s body behind hers while half awake.
She did not bother to turn around or engage in an entire conversation as her sister’s strong yet strangely comforting scent confirmed her unmistakable presence and put her at ease once more.
Their harmonizing, comforting purrs calmed her mind and enabled her to drift back into slumber without a second thought.
--
This time, her sleep was not dreamless or peaceful in any way.
Not necessarily in a negative way, but markedly different from even her other usual ‘weird’ dreams because the strange energy from earlier had made the usually unfocused dreams much more vivid and intense.
So vivid that she could swear she was somehow able to smell Vi’s ‘special scent’ quite prominently within the less inhibited confines of the scenes playing in her mind, even though she had never been able to ‘smell’ anything while dreaming.
It made no logical sense, but everything seemed at least plausible in this strange space.
In this dreamscape, everything was an ethereal experience, and Powder was all but helpless to resist entertaining thoughts and allowing reactions she usually tried to push away while awake.
Vivid but seemingly unrelated scenes flashed before her eyes so incongruently that, had she been awake or able to control her ‘body’ in her state, it would have made her scratch her head in confusion.
What the heck was going on?
Everything around them seemed poorly lit.
Yet, a figure appeared before her that she would have recognized even half-blind, bathed in a perfect light that highlighted her every move.
In the same instant of recognition, her focus shifted to the tall figure with only muffled sounds, the source of which she couldn’t pinpoint, registering in her ears.
While Powder’s focus strayed for a moment to attempt to decipher what she heard echoing around them, Dream Vi, as she had named the figure, had bent down to pick up a towel to dry off some of the sweat she could see trailing down in rivulets on her well-muscled torso.
(Powder did not question how she could see Vi’s entire form at a distance but also see every drop of sweat in high detail. There were many questionable things she did not question at that moment as she’d been wrapped up in the odd thrill of it all happening around her.)
She also had the fleeting thought that she had never envied an inanimate object more in her life, a nonsensical sentiment for which she had no previous context.
And at any other time, she would not have stared so open-mouthed at the way Vi slowly and methodically rubbed her sleep shirt all over her torso to dry it off.
With her strangely sharp vision, she couldn’t help but notice a neglected patch along her spine that seemed to gleam so enticingly, compelling her to reach out and run her trembling fingertips along it.
(Again, Powder had no real context for why these thoughts and impulses came over her with increasing urgency. She only faintly registered that the towel had now turned into the same shirt she had tucked under her pillow earlier.)
The overwhelming desire to feel Vi’s perspiration under her hands quickly intensified, yet her dream self remained rooted to the spot.
She desperately wanted to reach out and bury her face in the sweat-drenched shirt, if only as a last-ditch effort not to be a total degenerate and do the same to the bindings Dream Vi had not removed.
Powder tried to pull herself forward in that liminal space, crawling pathetically to reach for something of Dream Vi’s to alleviate the aching yearning that made even her disembodied consciousness feel suffocated.
For a moment, it almost felt like she had finally begun to inch closer to where the hunger demanded her to be, but in the next moment, she felt wholly anchored in place by an invisible rope at her waist.
A binding that constricted her tighter as she feverishly fought against it, her essence burning uncomfortably hot at the thought of Dream Vi disappearing entirely.
This seemingly inescapable double bind would undoubtedly send her into a ‘fit’ in the waking world and paralyze her with terror and indecision.
And it nearly did so even in the liminal space she currently found herself in, but then, the scenery changed, and they were suddenly standing just inches away from each other on a ledge in the middle of nowhere.
A swooping sensation tugged at her lower belly at the mere thought of being suspended in midair while feeling safely anchored in place.
The realization that she should have been more concerned about the reflexive instinct to fear the potential fall to her envisioned demise rather than being solely focused on Dream Vi came and went.
The general swooping feeling shifted and concentrated a little lower in her body in a strange but not entirely unpleasant way, momentarily distracting her from that puzzlement and blurring her vision.
But then Dream Vi grinned down at her over her shoulder and winked, sending a shockwave of alertness through her body that snapped her gaze back to full attention.
Powder suddenly felt grateful for the invisible, firm hold anchoring her in place because, otherwise, she would have floated away or crumpled to the ground from the sheer power of the sensation that the simple action elicited from deep within her soul.
If her dream self had needed to breathe consciously, she knew she would suddenly be unable to.
As it were, she could faintly feel her body trembling and was unsure if the involuntary action was limited to her dream self’s form at that moment.
The overwhelming deluge of new sensations coursing through her shook her as she stood.
She could somehow see the invisible anchoring presence behind her morph into another version of Vi, shorter than the Dream Vi before her but still several inches taller than herself and about Powder’s current age.
She could somehow ‘feel’ that younger Vi squeezing her harder from behind.
Powder had no idea why her mind chose to conjure this imagery, but it thrilled her to imagine meeting a younger Vi and being held by her like this.
To feel her this close.
To bask in Vi’s embrace tightly and not feel pathetic for still yearning for the old days when it was socially acceptable for her to do so in public or elsewhere.
Powder looked ahead, and the older Dream Vi was suddenly much closer.
Inexplicably, she was only clad in her loosened chest bindings and a pair of shorts that Powder had always admired for their fit in real life.
She was close enough for Powder to actually ‘see’ the sweat evaporating from her body; her impossible dream height put Powder nearly at eye level with her chiseled abdomen.
And somehow, she could see in great detail how a single droplet of sweat made its way down the sharply marked outlines of her sister’s muscular abdomen, pooling at her belly button slightly.
Her appearance seemed extra lean and muscular in this environment, maybe just slightly more than ‘Real Vi’ was at that age.
(And as ‘unrealistic’ as this version of Vi was, she couldn't help but openly ogle at every slight shift of her muscled frame and fully believe the girl could reach that level in real life someday relatively soon.)
There were no consequences for her open admiration here.
There was no need for any sense of shame.
So, for once, she had absolutely none in those fleeting moments.
As she stared dazedly ahead, Dream Vi tightly wrapped one arm around both younger teens while using her other hand to press the side of Powder’s head against her chest gently.
Powder could swear she felt the quickened breaths, rumbling purrs, and staccato heartbeats of all three at once and around her as her ear met her sister’s chest.
Both versions of Vi held her more tightly than should have felt good at any other moment; it should have frightened her, but it decidedly did not.
However, despite the complete absence of fear, Powder still found herself almost panting for breath as another intense sensation reverberated through her dream self.
The feeling was faintly familiar but somehow different, in a way that her clouded mind could not place.
It felt like something was building and building in sync with the echoing heartbeats that resounded in her ears.
A moment of dead silence.
And then the sound and sensation of a deep guttural growl caused her whole body to tremble even more intensely, making her breath stutter to a stop.
The sensations only accelerated with increasing urgency until, suddenly, they culminated in one intensely tremendous burst of energy that radiated out of her.
The foreign feeling was so intense that it jolted her back into a partially awakened state instantly, with a vague awareness of a peculiar sound filling her ears moments later.
(At that time, she had only been dimly aware that the almost pained yet entirely blissful sound she heard came from within her body and was not a part of her dream.)
Powder’s still sleep-addled mind tried to make sense of the juxtaposition of the relieved calm that blanketed her body and the panicked, accelerated heartbeat and breaths she groggily perceived at her back.
Her body felt pleasantly heavy and relaxed in a way she had never felt before, and the thickness of the air carried something that made her feel oddly pliant and at ease.
So much so that even as her own body continued to twitch every so often with pleasant sensations and the feverishly hot presence surrounding her seemed to vibrate with tension, she succumbed to deep sleep once more.
--
There were no other dreams this time.
But still, she woke up suddenly when her body felt the heat disappearing from behind and heard the firm closing of a heavy door.
She sat up and redundantly brushed her hand over the spot where Vi had been when she fell asleep to confirm that she had indeed left.
There was an uncomfortable, shameful dampness within her sleep shorts and traces of an agitated and panicked scent in the air that did not belong to her.
It was Vi’s.
At that realization, Powder could not help but let out confused and ugly sobs as a sudden wave of loss and rejection coursed through her.
Barely managing to stifle the overwhelming urge to beg Vi to return, whimpering pitifully quietly instead.
Something inside her hoped that the obvious sounds of distress would reach Vi’s ears, and she would quickly run back to her to explain what had happened.
But for the first time she could remember, there was no direct response to her cries.
There wasn't even a direct display of annoyance as she occasionally faced in their younger days.
Only the pure, stinging silence of complete disregard.
Vi had left her without a single word.
Curling up into a pathetic, sticky, whining, shivering mess on Vi’s previously occupied spot on the bed, she waited.
Agonizing minutes passed without any sign of her being heard.
She sobbed again and waited a little longer.
(Endless hours passed by.)
Her throat felt raw from muffling the uncontrollable pleading sounds that escaped her.
But Vi did not return that night.
Powder stayed awake, waiting for what felt like a short eternity.
She huddled in place until she numbly registered the daylight starting to seep in through their stupid little window.
She meekly hoped that the break of day would bring Vi back to her by some miracle.
But nothing.
She unsteadily, dazedly forced herself to get up to wash away some of her shame, barely resisting the urge to cover every inch of the bed with anything that had even a trace of Vi’s regular scent as she slunk back towards it afterward.
(Or at least do something to dull the painful memory of the upsetting energy Vi had left with, which she could only assume had everything to do with her and whatever weirdo thing her treacherous body had done in her sleep.)
But she settled for grabbing another of her shirts and crawled back into bed, huddling beneath the cooled blanket and clutching the new item to her chest.
Too upset and spiraling to do anything else but stare in the direction her sister had run off in.
Still unable to sleep a wink, afraid of missing any sign that Vi intended to return anytime soon.
--
Vander stopped by late in the afternoon to drop off a tray of snacks.
Powder could only presume it was intended for both of them to share since they did not check in for breakfast.
The presumption was proven right a moment later when he told her he had been a little worried since neither she nor her sister had said a word to him since the day before.
An occasional radio silence was not unusual for them, especially considering their growing independence.
Still, something had told him to check in anyway this time.
His gentle posture and carefully chosen words when addressing his pressing concern conveyed to her that he was trying to allow her space to express her troubles in her way.
He had somehow sensed that her troubles were too overwhelming and complex to articulate immediately.
It was so paternal and sweet that, despite spending far less time together than he did with Vi due to work and her general reluctance to interact with many people who weren’t her sister, the mountain of a man still knew this fundamental thing about her.
He knew she was too timid and skittish to express troubling thoughts and strong emotions if she felt any hint of judgment from the person she tried to confide in.
Vander seemed to implicitly understand that she was not as thick-skinned as her siblings and that, despite her best efforts to ‘grow out of it quicker,’ she still needed to be babied somewhat at times.
It was embarrassing to feel so ‘seen’ and shown such kindness amidst whatever full-blown self-loathing crisis she was experiencing.
The self-disgust made her feel unworthy of his unconditional love and burned too much to keep trying to meet his knowing gaze while attempting to craft a brittle lie beneath it.
So Powder had hidden beneath the covers while she told him she wasn’t feeling all that great, and Vi had just left to get something she promised would help her feel better.
(She was unsure why she felt it was her duty to ‘cover’ for her despite not knowing with any certainty that she even planned on ever returning. Nonetheless, even while thoroughly distressed, she did not hesitate to do so.)
Vander did not sound even halfway convinced by her stuttered, blatant lie but still decided to give her the benefit of the doubt and reiterated that he would at least leave her the food and assured her that he was just a call away if she needed him.
The blanket she hid under was thin enough that even in the dim lighting, she saw his shadowed figure reach out a burly arm, almost as if to offer comfort but stopping just short of connecting with her bundled-up form and pulling back to scratch at the back of his head anxiously instead.
That nervous tic, far too reminiscent of the one her sister often displayed, had her fighting back a fresh wave of tears.
She uttered yet another bitter white lie by telling him she would call him if they needed anything else from him as he made his way back upstairs to tend to the bar.
After about an hour of fighting the urge to confess how unusual she was becoming and intermittently hyperventilating, she seemed to hit an emotional wall. Suddenly, she could only feel hollow.
Powder felt that she was awake but no longer present in her body, a numbness that eradicated her will to do anything but unseeingly stare in the direction of the stairway for an indefinite number of hours.
Nothing else registered in her mind from then on; the snacks were left to get cold where Vander placed them.
---
At some point in her disconnected fog, she faintly registered that the room had grown dark again.
After what must have been about a whole day without sleep, the longest period she could ever remember going without even a short nap, time had started to lose all meaning to her.
The crying fits had mostly ebbed and given way to empty resignation to the ugly truth that there was a chance Vi was gone for good due to her untamed, newly-teenaged version of her weirdness.
The shared room remained eerily silent except for the faint sounds of the night and the old machinery that managed to seep in from the outside.
Stillness.
Emptiness.
And then...
~ All YOUR fault. You DISGUST her! She does not WANT us. YOU drove her AWAY! ~
Startled, Powder bolted upright again, frantically scanning the room for the source of the strange but somehow familiar overlapping voice.
She could have sworn it spoke directly into her ear.
The loud, invisible chorus seemed to be talking to her.
Around her as well.
And yet, no one else seemed to be in the room with her.
(Her repeated, unanswered, anxious greeting proved she was still physically alone in that space.)
Powder knew her eyes were tired and irritated from the lack of rest, but she could almost swear she saw a shadowy figure seated on one of the chairs at the corner furthest from the window’s light and another huddled beside it on the floor.
She had told herself that at least one of them was just the pile of laundry they always stacked up there, not some monster casting judgment over her pathetic, trembling form.
She was mostly certain about it.
And, while she sat there squinting at the perceived figure, trying to mentally calculate how quickly she could reach for another source of light without looking away, the ‘voice' urgently hissed out something else.
But her panicked brain could only register the tone of the voice and not enough of the words to comprehend its message, so she redoubled her conviction to ignore it.
Profoundly unsettled, she tucked herself against the wall to create a semblance of protection, hugging the pillow Vi had used tightly against her chest as a primarily psychological shield rather than a practical one.
She told herself she was just exhausted from all the crying and restless ‘naps’ from the night before.
Sleep.
She should try to sleep the evil thoughts and feelings away!
She almost tried it but had been left too on edge to commit to it fully, still half convinced that if she closed her eyes for too long, the shadows would come to life and end her misery.
For a moment or two, feeling dejected, she considered welcoming that early end with open arms, a sentiment she would later dwell upon as it returned with increasing insistence after everything.
Despite considering it then, she still fought off the growing urge to let her blinks gradually lengthen until, once more, dim light started filtering in and overpowering the shadows tormenting her sleepless mind.
--
Just as she was finally succumbing to the losing battle against the need for rest, a metallic creaking sound caught her attention and drew it towards the door as it slowly opened on its rusty hinges.
The slightly hunched and disheveled but unmistakable figure of her sister made its way down the stairs at a glacial pace after carefully closing the heavy door behind herself.
Powder nearly burst into fresh tears and almost launched herself out of bed to spill forth the string of apologies she had rehearsed during the endless waking hours she’d spent ruminating alone.
But something instinctively felt wrong, halting her movement abruptly, and she only succeeded in sitting up at the edge of the bed, frozen in place.
Vi dragged her feet to a stop a few feet away, still as curled into herself as her visibly taller and slightly more muscular frame allowed her while remaining upright.
It wasn’t until Vi had gotten as close to her tensed form as she dared that Powder heard herself gasp as she took in her sister’s noticeably altered appearance.
The burlier girl was covered in a fine layer of visible ‘outside grime’ from head to toe, as if she had rolled around or slept on the ground somewhere.
Her hair was an absolute disaster but still noticeably more grown than would make sense for less than two days' worth of even their regular accelerated growth rate.
Powder registered the faint scent of blood, and a pang of blind panic gripped at her heart, only to dull slightly as she realized it smelled ‘old’ and dried up.
Her eyes scanned for the source only to land on her sister’s knuckles and fingertips, which were caked with her blood, but no ‘fresh’ or still clearly bleeding wounds there, quieting her panic somewhat.
An anguished sniffle drew her attention back to Vi’s tear-streaked face, and that’s when she noticed the striking split in Vi’s upper lip and eyebrow.
The blood stains around those areas were still mostly dried but partly rubbed off, likely due to her wiping at her tears and sweat at various points in her time away.
Judging by the amount of blood still present on her face and the remnants of her clothing, Powder surmised that the cuts must have bled severely at one point but now appeared almost completely healed.
Powder had been so distracted by her sister’s bloodied and dirty appearance that the last, but no less impactful, thing she registered was the faint traces of Vi’s ‘special’ scent in the air...
And at least one other similar scent that was not a remnant of Powder’s from the other night.
~ She smells WRONG! Fix it. NOW! ~
There it was again!
The ‘angry voice’.
But this time, she did not have the presence of mind to be frightened by its sudden resurgence and intensity.
Instead, she recoiled and let out an enraged snarl as she glared into Vi’s tortured gaze.
She noted Vi flinching in place and drawing a quick, shaky gasp of breath in direct response to the sound.
A thick wave of sadness permeated the air, and a pitiful cry escaped from her older sister, a sound she hadn’t heard in years.
Vi had then tentatively inched even closer, dropping to her knees at Powder’s feet, gingerly prying her tiny balled-up fists off the edge of the bed and tremulously encasing them in her own bloodied hold.
Another beseeching whine that was very ‘unbecoming’ of her Alpha sister invaded her ears, and she belatedly realized she, too, had started crying again at some point.
The agonized look in her sister’s tearful gaze pinned her in place and kept her from immediately yanking her hands out of her slack hold.
For a few suspended moments, all that could be heard was their combined unsteady breaths.
Vi softly straightened Powder’s loosened fists and brought their hands to her nervous, sweat-covered temples, almost aggressively pressing the blue-haired teen’s hands against the soft spots.
Almost as though presenting the vulnerable spots to her in supplication and pleading for Powder to do something with her offering.
To encourage the girl to let her clear hurt out onto her.
Lash out aggressively, as she often did when overwhelmed by her feelings.
Do anything but remain heatedly silent as she rasped out her first words to her in days, “Powder, I’m so sorry. Please, please don’t hate me.”
Notes:
[~3.1k of this was 1.0's Chapter 13, and I expanded it by about 1.7k words! Next, I aim to condense Vi's four original Part 4 chapters into two chapters for version 2.0. Somehow. Bear with me, I'm trying new things with this revamped version! Hopefully, people like the slight changes thus far or that they don't seem jarring. And that new readers are also just happy to be here like I still am.]
Chapter 13: Vi Pt 4
Summary:
' For some strange reason, despite desiring physical intimacy of some kind, the thought of any extra bodily contact with this attractive woman had her fighting off the urge to full bodily recoil.
Her mind and body could not decide whether to be ‘excited’ by the genuine prospect of this situation heading in the exact direction she had initially hoped for or be violently repulsed by it all.
Vi could very much feel how physically turned on she was, but the growling within her consciousness was constant, and she found herself pressed against the back of the chair and scooted as far back as she could get from the approaching figure before her. '
-- Or --
Vi spirals and makes some hasty decisions that land her in a situation she never would have predicted ending up in at the beginning of her night. But as she learns, things can change unexpectedly and uncontrollably within instants.
a.k.a
Awoo Time™️ Part 1.
Notes:
*tries to contain their near manic levels of glee*
THIS IS IT Y'ALL, 'AWOO' TIME! (Or at least partially!)
I've been looking forward to getting a second go at these scenes, and I expanded on them in a way that makes them a little closer to how I see them playing out in my mind.
Or at least that's the hope, but we'll see if they read any better.
Also, this is another 'monster-sized' chapter because it combines OG's chapters 14 and 15 plus a little more, hopefully seamlessly!
[[[Vi is about 17 here and there are Thematic Elements™️, but nothing too crazy I think. There is some descriptions of blood/violence/etc though, so heads up!]]]
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
===Vi===
Everything was too loud.
Too bright.
Smelled far too distracting.
Even after she decided to take a more isolated route after barreling through too many people on the main streets that happened to be in her path, she was still overwhelmed.
(Vi honestly had no idea how many people or objects she had bowled over in her haste; all she knew was that she desperately needed to distance herself from the person she wanted to return to so badly. No matter how much it pained her to propel herself further and further away, she did not trust that she would not end up making the situation worse with her mere presence in the state she had been in.)
The Undercity had always been rife with things that could easily cause sensory overload, even on a ‘good’ day for someone with naturally sharper senses like hers.
She and Powder often needed to pause to center themselves and tune out anything not immediately pertinent to the current situation or interaction they were engaged in to function even semi-normally.
When they weren’t given enough time to do this, Vi would grow visibly agitated and aggressive, but Powder would typically withdraw into herself or go into a ‘fit’ until either the moment passed on its own or Vi held her through it to help her calm down sooner.
It had been a few years since the sensory overload hit her this hard, though, as it had happened far less often overall these days.
Learning to manage and modulate their sensitivity while growing up had taken a lot of effort, but ultimately, both had mostly regulated it under average circumstances.
But Vi could openly admit that she still did not have complete mastery over self-regulating even now, especially not on nights like the one she was having.
Some days, it was easier to handle, but on other days, the extra sensitivity acted like a spark to her often short-fused temper by amplifying external annoyances.
But this was different from even those ‘bad’ days.
And it was not just because her emotions were high, and she was actively fighting back the urge to break down in tears and turn back towards home entirely; further consequences be damned.
She hated not knowing whether she wanted to return to provide sisterly comfort to Powder or because the Wolf was compelling her to return for its mysterious agenda.
Feeling wound up and oversensitized, Vi did not trust that monstrous inner presence to stay inside and be peaceful.
Up until that night, it had never felt this close to breaking through the mental barriers she had so carefully built up her entire life.
Until that night, she had never honestly doubted that her willpower and natural protectiveness would be enough to keep it away from Powder.
Because she had already failed her tonight, hadn’t she?
It was despicable that her body betrayed her in her sleep when she was not even conscious of her actions...
But then the fact that it had continued to perform its incredibly inappropriate actions while she was awake and mentally protesting?
Unbelievable.
When had she become so weak against The Wolf’s influence?
Why did she struggle so much to regain enough control only to fail so miserably in the end?
Had the Wolf only been biding its time and waiting for even the slightest give in the bonds she had once believed were ironclad to take over?
But then again, it wasn’t until after everything was said and done that she sensed it was stirring within her psyche in the first place.
So could she even blame ‘it’ for something she had every opportunity to pull herself away from once she fully regained consciousness?
What was her issue?
Why was it becoming harder to be a proper protector for her sister?
Why had she wanted to be the one to help Powder along the process of achieving what very well could have been her first true orgasm?
Inexplicable.
Even now, as she continued to almost mindlessly stumble forward on limbs that were still strangely achy and tensed while in motion...
Some twisted part of her wanted to bask in the sick sense of pride at the thought of that possibility.
The possibility that it was her presence, and her presence alone, that finally got Powder over that final hill into pure bliss for the first time in her life.
That warped part of her wanted to take vile satisfaction in knowing that no one else could or would ever be able to claim anything remotely similar.
The Wolf snarled at her inside her mind, telling her she hadn’t done anything ‘wrong’ and that there was no intention to harm in the first place.
If anything, it was just the opposite.
She had been helping Powder.
It told her that Vi had just been guiding and providing for her.
That, if nothing else, she should find peace in the thought that, in a roundabout way, she had finally shared something she had felt so selfish about finding joy in for herself for years.
Something she knew was quite the opposite of ‘painful or harmful’ and something closer to magic.
But what right did they have to decide to be the one to intervene and help the younger teen achieve such a milestone, even if mostly indirectly or semi-unintentionally?
Powder’s dreams were likely entirely unrelated to her in the first place, and why would they have been?
How self-centered must Vi be to think that Powder’s every thought or desire would revolve around her?
That she felt even remotely upset at the thought that someone else could be at the root of her burgeoning sexuality seemed unfair; the more ‘rational’ part of her mind told her that Powder was her own person and that she had no right to get downright possessive over her in any way.
Especially not over something that happened in a dream, of all things.
Powder was not property.
Powder was family!
Vi needed to break her wolf’s hyper-fixation on the only other werewolf she knew.
She needed to release the pent-up energy in her body through ‘other’ means.
She just needed to stop confusing herself and the one person who looked up to her for guidance in everything she did by unintentionally giving mixed signals.
She should try to find a girlfriend, someone she could appropriately redirect all the confusing feelings and strange urges she often felt guilty about experiencing.
Someone who would understand, perhaps even encourage her to act them out on them.
That was likely the most ‘logical’ and proper plan of action, but that would involve talking to women and getting to know them beyond a superficial level.
(Even under better circumstances, she was not exceptionally skilled at these two things.)
And with how close she felt to almost literally bursting out of her skin with the foreign need to be physically close to someone in ‘that’ way...
Talking and forming a deeper connection with someone were the last things on her mind.
But as monstrous as her carnal need was at that moment, she was not about to approach a random woman on the street to see if she’d be interested in Vi ‘like that.’
---
Vi had been running for long enough that she stopped recognizing any significant landmarks, and she figured she was far enough away from home that she would not be easily identified in that neighborhood.
Somewhere in her mind, she wondered how on Runeterra she was not running on fumes, considering how little sleep she had had over the last two days and the distance she had covered on foot.
So she started to slow her pace and then went down to street level again, rather ungracefully, her left foot sliding out from under her as her legs cramped up again as she descended.
The fumble led to her having to bounce off a concrete wall with her entire torso, landing on her side in a crumpled heap atop a mercifully closed garbage bin to partially break her fall.
Taking a moment to massage the discomfort away with unusually stiff hands, she tried to get her bearings in an unfamiliar part of the Undercity.
The pain radiating from her extremities was both distracting and confusing, as they were not the parts of her that bore the brunt of the fall, but she pushed through, remembering what she had set out to do that night.
Despite being otherwise somewhat lost without a map, she tried to make the most of her hypersensitivity to help her find her way around.
Spotting a local brothel was almost too easy in areas like these, both because they were so plentiful and because the distinct scent would be obnoxiously trackable even if her senses weren’t currently heightened to an uncomfortable degree.
This was it; she just needed to go in there and find someone who wouldn’t ask too many questions about her identity or apparent lack of experience.
She just needed to ‘woman up’ and go in to release the pent-up energy from her system as quickly and unemotionally as possible.
Maybe then she could return home much clearer-headed than when she left.
Clearheaded enough to face Powder and the consequences of her earlier actions without somehow making the situation worse.
(Assuming Powder would even want to be anywhere near her again, she would not blame her if she kicked her out of their shared room without another word.)
Despite wanting nothing more than to stay by her side, if she had told her to stay away from her for more than that night, she would not have contested that demand, even if it would have left her soul in shambles to follow through with such a request.
But for now, she needed to focus on giving the monster inside something else to chew on.
Only metaphorically speaking, of course, and hopefully not in a literal sense.
Vi tried to reason that if she gave it this type of outlet, at least this once, perhaps she could push it back into the cage she had spent so much of her life fortifying.
She could return to being ‘good’ once more.
She needed to be good again.
For Powder, more than just herself.
Because Powder needed someone to keep the monsters away and not yet another beast to worry about.
But as she advanced, insecurity began to erode her determination.
Did the clothes she hastily threw on even look alright?
What would she even use to pay?
She checked her sweat-dampened pockets and found a single silver cog and some bronze washers.
(They weren’t much, but she hoped they were better than nothing.)
There was also a hastily scribbled note to herself that she could not decipher for her life, and she realized they must have been the pants she had used two days prior.
The sudden light breeze along her abdomen made her realize she had neglected to wear a well-fitting shirt or jacket in her haste to leave.
She knew it had been a good while since she’d acquired any new undershirts and that her usual ones were starting to cover less of her abdomen…
But she did not remember any of them fitting quite as short or tightly on her, even the day before.
Vi chose not to dwell on the inconveniences that seemingly having yet another improbably fast and unexpected growth spurt would cause for now and gave a weary glance at her footwear.
At least she had grabbed her good boots, so there was a chance she would not look atrociously messy and undesirable.
They were an almost semi-new pair of boots Vander claimed were meant for him but got a size or two too small on ‘accident’ and had handed down for her to possibly fully grow into one day.
They used to fit her almost two sizes too big just the other day when she tried them on again, but now, as she wiggled her sock-less toes inside them, she found them to fit almost perfectly.
How she had managed not to trip on one of her untied shoelaces or lose one of the boots as she traversed the treacherous environments of the Undercity was a mystery for another day.
Self-consciously smoothing back her wild, sweaty, rose-colored hair, Vi tried to straighten up her spine and project an air of complete confidence she certainly did not possess.
(The little confidence she still had she was steadily losing as she noted the unnerving open stares and leers from the types of creeps that surrounded her, not knowing if any of them ‘knew anything’ or would run their mouths about a possible werewolf spotting to trophy hunters or worse.)
The paranoid part of her brain told her that she would likely be laughed at and ousted for her age and obvious lack of overall ‘experience’ if she faltered even for a moment.
It told her that everyone could likely tell there was something ‘off’ about her, regardless of whatever tough persona she put on.
And somehow, word about what she was about to do would get back to Vander, her brothers, or Powder, and she would be even more disgusted with herself.
If the teen had not thought poorly of her before, she certainly would if she somehow discovered that she had been so desperate for sexual intimacy that she was willing to have her first time with someone she didn't even know.
But then again, why shouldn’t she have some agency in how and when she chooses to be intimate with someone at her nearly adult age?
She only needed to see if it would help even her out more than ‘going it alone,’ or at least as much as that had helped her before she had gotten so in her head about it and ruined it for herself.
It didn't have to be a ‘big deal.’
It did not have to mean anything beyond being just another way to explore her sexuality on her journey to adulthood.
Just another way to release stress without resorting to violence, at least this time.
Hopefully.
There would be a time and place to meet someone with whom to form a longer-lasting bond later on anyway.
Right now, her body kept reminding her of her more pressing needs, steadily eclipsing her ability to ‘ignore it’ as she had countless times before.
However, the idea of being so close to finding relief through a stranger somehow excited her and caused her heart to ache emptily.
It was as if it was grieving something terrible before it even happened.
The Wolf also kept growling at her from somewhere deep inside her psyche, and Vi was unsure if it was from arousal, anger, or some strange combination of both.
Just as she was about to psych herself out and turn towards an exit, a delicate but assertive hand wrapped around her wrist, and Vi did her best not to yelp or automatically snarl at the unexpected contact, considering how wound up she was physically and how lost in thought she had been.
“Where are you going, stud? It’s a shame I’ve never seen you around here before. Looking for a little fun, hun?” The woman’s voice was almost comically husky and seductive, a tone undoubtedly put on for her line of work.
The shorter woman had ‘Piltovian midnight-colored’ hair, and even in the low light, Vi could tell her eyes were an unusual but alluring lilac color that denoted that she was not entirely as human as she seemed.
She did not appear much older than Vi but was significantly smaller in frame and almost delicately familiar.
(To be fair, most humanoid Undercity women Vi had met until that point in her life could be dwarfed by her rapidly approaching six-foot-tall brawl-ready frame.)
Vi sometimes wondered what type of impression she left on fully grown, naturally smaller individuals since she had always been a bit taller than many of her peers and had only continued growing as their growth slowed or stopped altogether.
Rarely had she not been one of the tallest people in any given group except perhaps when she was an actual toddler or young pup, so she did not have the clearest memories of being ‘small.’
The warmth of the hand on her arm and the intensity of the woman’s heated gaze had once again pulled her back onto the one track her mind had been on, even though she could feel herself being oddly easily distractible that night.
She’d been so lost in that hypnotic, nearly glowing lilac gaze and the feelings the hormonal haze enveloping her stirred that when the woman reached her other hand out to place it gently on her cheek, she could not help but let her eyes drift downward to track the movement.
Vi could not decide if the angle at which she had to look down to meet the woman’s eyes was to blame or if she was purposefully directing her gaze to the cleavage visible even in the subdued lighting through her sheer top.
Either way, her refueled libido caused her to lose some control over her reactions and a significant amount of her sense of shame and insecurity regarding openly expressing desire.
Like her teasing actions, the woman's clothing choices had to be intentional.
They had to be.
Anything to attract.
To lure clients in.
Judging by how her throat ran dry and suddenly finding herself unable to form any coherent response, it’s safe to say she was an easy catch.
“I, uh… I d-don’t have a lot of money on me. I haven’t been h-here before, so I d-don’t know how any of this w-works—"
Vi mentally slapped herself for how her childhood nervous stutter made an unusually conspicuous reappearance and for being downright meek in the presence of a stranger just because she was an attractive woman who was ‘flirting’ with her.
(This was something she likely was only doing as part of an act to get an opportunity to earn a living, not because she was particularly ‘interested’ in or even attracted to Vi outside of that manufactured context. She was pretty sure.)
After all, Vi could not recall a single time a woman had ever approached her, not even nowadays, when she could likely pass for someone a few years older than she was.
Sure, she would catch a few women and even some men looking her way, but they would almost always avert their gaze when she turned towards them.
Until recently, it had never been an issue since she had not been vying to catch anyone's attention ‘in that way’ anyway.
But she’d be lying if she said that it did not secretly chip away at her honest self-esteem a bit once she had started looking and noticed this happening nearly every single time.
She wondered if she was too physically awkward or intimidating for anyone to dare or even want to approach her.
(Okay, she was still staring at the shorter woman’s breasts like the animal she supposed she was as she continued to spiral. She needed to stop gawking like the virginal weirdo she was inside.)
Had the woman even said anything in response to her verbal outburst?
The look of amusement Vi found on the woman’s face as she diverted her gaze back up to somewhere more appropriate told her she probably had, and her mind had tuned it out entirely.
“S-sorry, I uh—say that again?” Vi felt herself steadily heating up, and it was not just due to her embarrassment.
The strange ache in her limbs had yet to subside as she stealthily surveyed her environment to absorb more of it, and the other more concentrated ache at her center also abruptly reminded her exactly why she was there in the first place.
Her hypersensitive hearing and sharpened sense of smell made her acutely aware that she was not the only person here for similar reasons.
Usually, she would find the blatant sounds and pungent smells of sexual activities nauseating, but at the moment, they only seemed to fuel the unrest within her body and mind.
At that moment, they seemed to make it harder to focus on interacting with anyone like a ‘normal’ person and not fixate on the growing urgent desire for release like some feral beast.
The type of beast she alarmingly realized she would become, even against her will, likely sometime very soon.
---
The woman had been leading her into a more private space without Vi realizing it, as she had spaced out repeatedly during her continued internal panic.
If she had managed to respond to anything else that was said, Vi had no recollection of it, but it was apparent that she had agreed to something already as they weaved through the crowds of faceless bodies to a different location.
As the raven-haired woman shut the door behind the both of them, she repeated herself in a teasing manner, “Darling, I said that there’s no need to be nervous. If you promise to behave, I’ll take whatever you’ve got on you. For a handsome woman like you? Let’s call it a first-timer’s special discount.”
The teasing lilt to her voice and the nearly condescending wink, or so her mind told her in her anxious state at least, did not seem to sit right with her already agitated Wolf, but she did her best to ignore it.
Blushing intensely, she tried not to let even more insecurity bleed into her voice as she stuttered, “H-how’d you know? Is it that obvious? If t-that’s an issue for y-you, I can just—”
(Vi could tell the intricate designs were, at the very least, dipped in some form of pure silver and not simply silver-toned because the metal had always had a distinctive scent to her. She had long ago learned to avoid direct contact with it after her sister had told her it made her feel ‘wobbly’ for a while whenever she had used something containing it while tinkering. Vi learned firsthand what she meant whenever she needed to haul silver items in her pack on jobs and practically felt buzzed the entire way back without them even making direct contact with her skin.)
The woman paused her search for some specific items within an ornate silver-accentuated chest at one end of the mutedly lit room and turned to look at Vi with amused wide eyes and a politely restrained, endeared giggle.
“Sweetheart, I meant that it was your first time here. I’d never have guessed that someone with such an alluring presence like yours and such unique eyes wouldn’t have people practically lining up to—”
A quiet growl echoed in her mind at this; there it was again, the Wolf telling her she was being ‘mocked’ and bristling in response, “Well, I don’t! So w-what if I haven’t had—if you’re going to laugh at me, maybe I’ll just go. I don’t need anyone’s pity!”
Vi knew she was being unnecessarily snippy, disproportionately so.
But still, the Wolf was even more impatient than usual tonight, and even in this much better-ventilated area, she could feel herself sweating profusely all over, and she could not seem to regulate her reactions or emotions almost at all in her discomfort.
She couldn’t help but be a bit perplexed at the fact that even as her temper flared unnecessarily, she could also feel her awakened libido refusing to cool down for even a moment.
If anything, the agitation intensified the need to do something about it.
“Hey! I said you needed to behave in here. I’m not shaming you for it; I was merely surprised. It’s almost sweet, honestly. No need to go and bare those sexy, mighty sharp teeth at me or get violent about it. Any of that kinky stuff will cost extra, even for someone as striking as you.”
The woman, who Vi should have asked her name long ago but now felt too awkward doing so this far into their interaction, held her hands up in a pacifying manner. “But I guess I’m a lucky woman tonight for being handed such an honor! We can take it as slow and easy as you want and need, darling. Nothing complicated. Just try to relax, hun.”
Vi took a moment to realize that she had been baring her teeth throughout most of their current interaction, clenching her fists and half raising them as if readying to brawl even as the woman calmly approached her empty-handed.
Shamefaced, she conscientiously lowered her arms but did not fully loosen her fists as she confessed, “It’s been a rough night. I’m just trying not to feel so…on edge anymore. I don’t know what else to do about it or where to start with...”
She trailed off and averted her gaze as she waved a slightly trembling hand between them, finding herself too shy to voice her most pressing wants in even the vaguest of wordings to this stranger who continued to look at her with something too close to tenderness for her to withstand at that moment.
The woman’s features had softened with something akin to understanding, making Vi’s skin feel a bit tighter; with how she felt inside, that kind of compassionate treatment felt wholly undeserved and unwanted.
In the next moment, Vi let herself be silently guided towards an oversized chair towards the back end of the room that was more like a throne than a regular chair and dropped onto it with a huff before the woman could touch her again.
For some strange reason, despite desiring physical intimacy of some kind, the thought of any extra bodily contact with this attractive woman had her fighting off the urge to full bodily recoil.
Her mind and body could not decide whether to be ‘excited’ by the genuine prospect of this situation heading in the exact direction she had initially hoped for or be violently repulsed by it all.
Vi could very much feel how physically turned on she was, but the growling within her consciousness was constant, and she found herself pressed against the back of the chair and scooted as far back as she could get from the approaching figure before her.
The slight woman shrugged off her sudden gruff demeanor and turned her back to put some music on to fill the space; Vi’s eyes glued to her every intentionally sensual movement as she unhurriedly walked to the foreign contraption and bent to fiddle with it without a care in the world.
Something about the woman’s carefree posture and disregard for the ticking time bomb that sat stiffly scrutinizing her every move seemed to awaken some instinctual prey drive within Vi’s psyche that made her feel dangerous.
No longer in the woman’s immediate line of sight, Vi found herself suddenly clutching tightly to the armrests to keep herself from either putting her hands on the unsuspecting ‘prey’ before her in some unknowable manner or bolting out of the room entirely to cause a more significant scene beyond the closed door.
For the time being, she had managed to stay put and do neither of those things because she had no interest in letting her body act on its own accord yet again that night.
And as her mind once again drifted, she had not even noticed that the woman had already made her way back to where she sat with her tense posture still firmly set and was jolted back to the present by her speaking directly to her again, “All right, we can keep it pretty simple. Tell me when you need me to slow down or stop, and I will. Use your words, sweetheart. I won’t cover your mouth so I can hear you clearly if you say anything. You can call me Frey, by the way.”
The woman, Frey, then began to sensuously remove her long sheer top and the cloth that could be generously referred to as shorts to reveal a matching ornate lingerie set that matched the color of her eyes and nearly blended with her skin tone in the dim lighting of the room.
Vi had no idea when she had removed her pointed high-heeled shoes, which she had no name for, but her eyes were transfixed by Frey’s fancy lacy undergarments and the expanse of skin she now had a clearer view of.
As Frey reached behind herself to unclasp her bra while maintaining an extraordinary amount of unwavering eye contact, Vi registered that she had a delicate but expansive network of simple linework tattoos draped over her shoulders and ending at the back of her hands.
As she took notice of her beautiful hands, Vi did not miss the fact that Frey did not remove a thick but unassuming bracelet from her wrist despite stripping out of almost every other piece of clothing or accessory.
Something about that bracelet’s presence gave her a vague sense of apprehension.
But she did not have time to wonder why that was the case as an entirely bared chest suddenly filled her vision as Frey settled between Vi’s unintentionally spread knees with unearned familiarity.
(‘Unintentionally’ only because Vi had no memory of moving to accommodate the woman her Wolf kept growling at out of her volition. It seemed her body just kept deciding what to do all on its own all night.)
The shorter woman remained oblivious to her internal predicament and moved closer, loosely linking her wrists behind Vi’s neck as she whispered, “I noticed you staring at them earlier; you can touch them now if you wish. But be nice. This song is a favorite of mine. Do you mind if I just…?”
At Vi’s slack-jawed near imperceptible nod, Frey had then moved her hands to rest on the back of the chair and swayed to the beat of the music, purposefully brushing against her center on every other rhythmic beat.
Vi saw herself reach up to hold one of Frey’s breasts within her large palm and place her other hand at her hip, using the points of contact to both keep herself still and simultaneously almost push the dancing woman away from her.
A sound somewhere between a guttural moan and a feral growl pushed its way out of Vi’s throat at the warmth and softness of the skin beneath her sweaty palms.
It was almost pathetically embarrassing of her to feel so much with so little ‘happening’ that the realization had her nearly pulling her hands away immediately to regain some composure.
But Frey only seemed to take the sound as encouragement, and she pressed herself against Vi’s front with more intention and moaned gently while beginning to kiss along her jaw, slowly making her way toward Vi’s sensitive neck.
A discreet rumbling began to move within Vi’s chest at the feel of open physical ‘affection’ with the type of clear intent she’d been yearning to experience for longer than she had even realized until that very moment.
It was almost blissful.
Even the Wolf had quieted down for just this one moment.
But then…
An intense sense of déjà vu struck Vi the instant the dark-haired woman’s lips met the same spot Powder had clamped down on all those weeks ago, and a similar electric feeling coursed through her at the action.
But where Powder’s harsher bite had frozen her in place while she warred with the instinctual reaction to pull away and the desire to keep her close, the soft brush of Frey’s lips had instantly triggered something that did not hesitate to act.
The quiet purring came to an abrupt halt.
Her vision suddenly blurred as colors and details fluctuated between extremely sharp with muted hues and the already more vibrant yet less contrasted level of vision she had developed earlier that night.
A furious and unmistakably animalistic roar reverberated off the room walls as she forcibly shoved Frey away from her, sending her flying halfway across the room and onto the floor before following her trajectory with a pounce as she caged her in place with her arms and knees.
The aching in her limbs spread further along each fiber of her being to the point that the impact of her open palms and knees onto the hard floor barely registered as the only thing she could focus on was the Wolf’s voice echoing inside her brain.
~~ ‘Not her. Not Her.’ ~~
The poor woman, for her part, tried to remain primarily professional and composed despite her terror at Vi’s suddenly furious and looming figure, which kept her vulnerable, mostly naked self from sitting up or moving to defend herself.
“What the fuck is going on? What did I do wrong— w-what are you?” Frey’s breaths went in and out of her in frightened huffs as Vi pressed down on her with her lower body and kept her neck instinctively away from the woman’s panicked open mouth.
Vi’s brow creased in confusion as to why she would ask that and then furrowed more deeply as another wave of disproportional fury overcame her at the tone of those frantic questions.
Like Vi was some...creature.
Like Vi was every bit ‘other’ as she convinced herself to be on bad days.
It was not the first or last time she had been uncertain how to respond to such a question within her mind…
But Vi had never had a stranger question her humanity so bluntly to her face.
Half clenching her fists but mostly just painfully digging her nails into the ground to keep her hands anchored in place, she growled deeply and pressed down on her harder to mask the insecurity she suddenly felt with a further display of dominance.
The woman, whose name was getting harder and harder to remember as she steadily lost the ability to form complex thoughts, trembled with palpable fear but set her jaw and refused to look away.
She had seen some crazy stuff in her line of work and, therefore, refused to be entirely intimidated by a random irate client, no matter how much they huffed and puffed in her face.
(Normally, Vi would find this steadfast quality highly admirable in a woman, but in the untamed state she was currently in, it was perceived as a direct ‘challenge’ and only infuriated her further.)
The woman’s lips moved, signaling that she was saying something else to Vi, but she did not hear it as she once again bared her teeth and growled loudly to drown her voice out.
The primal part of her brain was more in control at the moment, demanding some form of submission from her captured ‘prey.’
But the woman continued challenging her by not reacting in any of the ‘right’ ways it had come to expect following a customary demand for yielding to her Alpha self.
Not in scent or body language.
Even her voice sounded wrong to her ears.
Everything about the situation Vi had walked herself into was just wrong!
Vi could feel herself nearly vibrating out of her skin from how hard she shook in between harsh breaths while still defiantly trying to hold herself somewhat in check.
To stop herself from escalating the situation even further than it already had.
Despite the abrupt shift in their interaction’s mood and tone, she could still feel herself riled up in more ways than one.
Her Wolf kept trying to escape her fractured hold.
All it cared about was trying to dominate the situation entirely.
It wanted to rage.
It needed to…
Vi was so lost in the war storming inside her body and mind that she did not notice Frey take full advantage of her slight retreat to move to activate the alarm system hidden within the strange bracelet she wore.
The alarm was likely meant to be ‘silent’ to most clients’ ears, but of course, it had to be at just the right frequency to instantly cause Vi to fall over and clamp her palms over her oddly pointed ears.
(Were they longer than usual now? She swore she even felt them move beneath her trembling palms as she clutched at the sides of her head with stinging pressure.)
Snarls and screams of debilitating pain tore their way out of her throat as the near-naked woman pushed herself to sit up with bloodied elbows and then scrambled to her feet, yelling things Vi could no longer comprehend.
She wasted no time putting distance between them while Vi writhed on the floor at her feet, running out of the room to let four fully geared-up burly men shove their massive bodies through the doorway.
While the noise of the alarm had died down, the music was still pounding in Vi’s ears alongside her worrisomely accelerated heartbeat and mixing in with the now less muted sexual sounds seeping in from elsewhere through the opened doorway.
Vi tried to keep her eyes open long enough to mainly ‘see’ the men trying to get her to respond to them, to ‘cooperate’ with their demands, but her entire body was cramping up.
And the few words she managed to hear in between her continuous snarls of pain no longer made sense to her.
Their encroaching presence as they surrounded her made the Wolf bristle and growl with renewed vigor even as Vi’s body refused to unclench long enough to get off the floor.
More yelling.
More angry and musty scents.
More pain from within.
And even more sources of over-stimulation as she felt the bare skin of her arm and side where her tank top had ridden up to expose it scrape along the seedy floor as she was dragged along it by one of her ankles.
That added unwelcomed friction along her already burning hot skin made her fleetingly wonder if it would suddenly melt off with how much every nerve ending felt like it had caught fire beneath it, and another tortured scream tore its way through her raw throat.
One of the men had shoved his filthy boot against her upper back to push her to turn over so she’d bring herself upright, and even more muffled angry words were drowned out by the din of sound bouncing off the walls of the room they occupied.
Even in her agony, Vi tried to communicate that she was trying to get up but that the pain in her body wouldn’t let her move, but her voice was now little more than unintelligible rasping rumbles of sound.
No matter how hard she tried to form the words and control her volume, her vocal cords refused to cooperate and seemed to have forgotten to produce sounds other than screams or growls.
Vi was sure that even if she had managed to remember the correct words to say and push any of them out coherently, they would likely have been too distorted to be understood anyway.
The overlapping sounds around her had begun to blend into one unintelligible hum as the spasms in her abdominal muscles and limbs eased up slightly, just enough to let her direct them, and Vi shakily pushed herself onto her hands and knees despite the continued thrumming pain pulling at her spine and her very skin.
Pausing for a moment to attempt to get enough air into her lungs again when it was suddenly booted out of her as another man kicked her in the abdomen for ‘taking too long’ to stand.
Somewhere in all this, the word “Bitch” filtered through the noise and the blinding hot fury the derogatory remark incited within Vi along with the general disrespect…
Well, it was almost as arresting as the added pain from the impact of the ruthless kick to her tensed abdomen.
The sound of his self-satisfied chuckle that followed the insult and physical assault, whether imagined or real, served as the final push off the precipice of her remaining control over whatever would come next.
Within the next heartbeat, ‘it’ all started to boil over all at once:
She felt her muscles coil up in preparation to fight.
Her gums began to throb in a way they never had before, and her teeth suddenly felt like they were crowding her mouth.
There was also a stinging sensation tugging at all her nailbeds that blurred her vision.
Blinking away the reflexive tears from the new sudden pains, she finally looked up into the eyes of the guy that had kicked her last and let out a nearly deafening roar as her only warning to all in the room to back the fuck away from her.
A quiet voice in the back of her mind, which sounded suspiciously like Powder, started to build in volume as she could feel her rage taking over in a way that scared even herself.
Another voice told her that if Powder were there with her, she would have been begging her just to get away, to stop this while she still could without the violence escalating even further and inviting deadly force from her assailants.
While her fragmented logical mind was inclined to agree with that assessment of the situation, it was unfortunate that her body didn’t get the message because the next thing she knew, she was on her feet and tackling the man with all the force she could muster.
They both slammed into the wooden doorway, and the back of his head made sickening contact against the now splintering frame as the sheer force of their momentum whipped it back, blood instantly pouring out of the fresh wound and staining every surface it contacted.
The coppery scent triggered some baser instinct within Vi that made her only want to rage further as she forced herself to release her iron grip on his shirt and let him slump onto the floor unconscious.
The part of her mind that was still very much ‘human’ helplessly looked on from within and took a horrified second to wonder if she had, in fact, outright killed this man with that impulsive tackle.
But then, in the next second, that question evaporated as she realized that neither he nor anyone else in the room held any particularly pertinent connection to her or her Wolf.
That lack of crucial connection made it too easy for her to push genuine concern over these strangers' well-being into the recesses of her consciousness.
As she turned to growl in ‘warning’ and perhaps pick a livelier target towards which to direct the untamed energy still thrumming through her veins, she was met with the sudden glint of a blade out of the corner of her eye and reacted instinctively.
Digging her fingernails into the oddly pliant wood lining the doorway, she used it as an anchor to keep herself from falling onto her back from the speed with which she dodged the swung blade.
Vi barely managed to angle her face away from the wild swing to avoid losing an eye or worse before using both arms to propel herself forward, utilizing the doorway as a launching point.
The foolish man had put too much weight into the upward swing, leaving himself wide open for Vi to tackle him onto the ground with devastating force, the blade falling out of his grip as she fractured some of his fingers by landing with a boot to his clenched fist and a knee to his opposite upper arm.
(Vi did not have the chance to overthink just how hard she had managed to propel both of their bodies through the air with near ease despite her weak state.)
The force she managed to generate almost made her miss her intended target altogether, and she had to catch herself with both palms to stop herself from rolling clean off of him once she landed her disarming maneuver.
No, she hardly had the time to take another full breath before noticing movement from the corner of her eye again and changing her positioning just enough to use the third man’s momentum against him explosively.
The burly man could only let out a surprised and undignified yelp as he sailed a few feet past his intended target and smashed into the music player, finally ending at least one source of over-stimulation for Vi.
She registered a crackling and chiming sound from somewhere within the room, but Vi was having too much difficulty seeing much of anything as her vision blurred differently to pinpoint the source.
She did not have it within her to care about the ‘impairment’ as her body was too hopped up on adrenaline to pay much mind to anything beyond whatever immediate threat tried to fill her blurred line of sight, honestly.
All of this chaos happened within instants.
Almost too fast for the fourth man, who Vi fleetingly suspected had yet to even try to strike her due to surprise and genuine fear, to react appropriately at the lightning-fast turn of the tides.
The stench of his fear and his distance were enough for the Wolf to discard him as an immediate threat momentarily, and so her attention fell back to the man who was groaning in agony beneath her.
As Vi shifted her weight and pressed down onto the second man’s collarbone hard enough to feel it snap beneath her palm, she clenched her other bloodied hand into a fist and started to pound on him despite the strange stinging pains she faintly registered on her face and palms as she did so.
The man’s pained sounds and attempts to block her strikes got weaker and weaker as he also started to lose consciousness, and the quiet, pleading voice became much louder in her mind.
~~ Stop it! Please don’t kill them, Vi! Stop! ~~
She knew her sister was literally miles away, likely sobbing for different reasons, and yet she heard her so clearly that the frantic tone of her pleas finally halted her merciless actions.
The fourth man took the opportunity presented by her hesitation to finally make a move to restrain her in a headlock from behind…
Only to have Vi surprise him by sweeping his legs out from under him by twisting to hook an elbow into the back of his knees to throw him onto his back at the feet of the other barely conscious man without really thinking.
(Admittedly, Vi had not spent nearly as many hours practicing her defensive and disarming moves since she still typically ‘blocked with her face.’ But it appeared she had still spent enough time on them to enable her to use muscle memory and people’s momentum against them even in her wild state.)
There was something about seeing such a large man that vaguely reminded her of her adoptive father’s imposing presence soiling himself in panic and frantically scooting away from her with genuine horror in his eyes that gave her true pause.
She sat back onto her haunches and felt the broken bone shift beneath her palm as she eased the pressure off the now unconscious man beneath her, instantly making her stomach turn uncomfortably.
Vi squeezed her eyes closed tight as she fought back the onslaught of nausea at the mixture of scents from bodily fluids that permeated her olfactory receptors as she tried to take deep breaths and come back to herself now that the most immediate threats had been neutralized.
The long pause let her senses expand beyond what her primal hyper-focused rage had allowed her to perceive.
Glancing around the wrecked room, she registered a half-shattered wall-length mirror she neither noticed was there in the first place nor could pinpoint when it had been broken and caused the fourth man to cut up his palms and exposed arms as he had hurried away.
The ornate chair was tipped back, presumably from when she sprang out of it, and the armrests looked like they’d been pried apart from the central part of it from sheer force.
Getting to her feet, albeit unsteadily, the gravity of what had just happened dawned on her once more.
Aside from all the property damage she’d inflicted within a span of a few minutes, the fresh stench of blood, sweat, and piss was what impacted her most.
It all smelled so pungently.
Far too intensely in that small room.
Yes, she had been training to fight for years now and was stronger than even some men she regularly sparred with already, but it should have been more challenging to overpower four enormous guards on her own while running on fumes.
She looked down at her trembling, bloodied hands and gasped in horror as she noticed her nails were now more like sharp claws and that she had gauged wounds into her palms with them.
The usually barely noticeable hair on the back of her hands and forearms was also noticeably thicker and slightly longer, and her wrists and hands looked wider-boned than she'd ever seen them.
Until then, she could have written off most things to the weird energy coursing through her veins since the day before, but now…
No.
It couldn’t be happening already, could it?
All those years of not showing any outward signs of ever actually going through ‘it,’ and then it sneaks up on her just like that?
Scrambling towards the few remaining shards in the mirror frame, she finally met her warped reflection for the first time since the ordeal began with a sharp intake of breath:
The crazed, plainly animalistic eyes that looked back at her with irises that were an almost luminescent version of her usual eye color and whose whites were now pitch black all around were foreign to her.
The routinely carefully cropped parts of her hair looked significantly shaggier than the morning prior, and the rest of her visibly lengthening hair was plastered to her head and face by sweat and sticky half-dried blood.
(Either hers or theirs; she could not quite tell.)
At some point during the skirmish, she had also torn the soles of her boots clean off, and some part of her wondered how the broken glass wasn’t cutting up her bare feet or how she was numbed to it even if it was.
But upon noticing that her toenails were growing even more claw-like, it was safe to assume that they were not as near human as usual, just like her hands weren’t, as they continued to shift before her eyes subtly as she panicked.
She could feel herself becoming increasingly lightheaded as she hyperventilated in her frightened state, and her vision blurred once again as her eyes burned from a mixture of blood and tears this time.
Vi tried to cry out a curse as another full-body wave of pain hit her full force, and the adrenaline keeping it at bay began to wane, but her lips refused to help her form the word and stung sharply at the movement.
The taste of blood and salt in her mouth became even more prominent, making her stomach lurch dangerously before she hazarded a glance at her reflection once more.
She winced at another pang of pain, and that’s when she noticed how much longer and pointed her teeth and ears were as she avoided looking into her own eyes.
The combination of all her warped features reflecting a vision straight from some of her worst nightmares and the tastes and smells overloading her senses...
It was all too much to process at once, and suddenly, she was doubling over, emptying her already insufficiently filled stomach onto the broken glass and blood-covered floor.
She heaved uncontrollably as spasm after spasm of pain refused to let up until there was absolutely nothing but saliva and traces of her own freshly spilled blood left to spit up.
Propping herself up against the wall with one trembling arm, she decided it was probably not a good idea to linger around and wait for anyone else to arrive to see the horrific scene that surrounded her.
So with great difficulty, and through the unrelenting pain and mounting disconnect she was experiencing to her limbs, she unseeingly stumbled past the claw-marked doorway and made her way towards what she hoped was an exit.
-- To Be Continued --
Notes:
Somewhere around the time I published these chapters, the first time was when I had preemptively bumped the rating to E, but even this rewritten version does not fully warrant that. I think.
The next one might, though, but I'll worry about that when I get to it.
Chapter 14: Vi Pt 4 (Continued)
Summary:
' The visage that greeted her did not seem entirely human, nor all the way shifted to the ‘creature’ she assumed she was meant to change into that night, but the sharper pangs of pain had already waned long ago.
She seemed stuck in some weird in-between stage.
Her ears had elongated further, her facial features had distorted even more, and what was undeniably somewhat stubby and patchy fur now covered almost every inch of skin she could see.
--
After the initial panic and confusion receded, Vi realized, nearly astoundingly, that despite present conditions and inner turmoil, her body was still very much ‘riled up’ somehow.What was that about?
Vi had never known her libido to be quite so persistent in her life! '
-- Or --
Vi's stubborn determination and self-loathing can only do so much to delay some things for the time being. But as she learns, some fevers must run their course before breaking.
a.k.a
Awoo Time™️ Part 2.
Notes:
Warning: More Thematic Elements™️ in this one, but I think I kept things mostly vague enough.
---
Okay, so there's a significant chance that this and probably at least the following two updates will be EXTRA rhadnfnk all over the place because it is now Summer, and I'm just out here trying to survive these heatwaves (lmao) without A/C.Also, work drains so much of my focus energy on top of everything else, so the ADHD is acting up, but I have a 'schedule' I want to follow, dammit!
So here I am trying to stick to it, and after a certain point, I kind of have to go, "Forget perfect, just get it done!" because I have ~7 mega/combined rewritten chapters to go and ~2-3 tie up chapters to start from SCRATCH to go for this arc!
---
This one combines the original's chapters 16 & 17 + a little extra.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
===Vi===
It felt like it took a small eternity to stumble towards the nearest marked exit on legs and feet that seemed determined to pitch her forward no matter how many times she used the grungy walls to regain her balance and push herself upright.
Something told her it would be much easier to get around if she stopped fighting the impulse to bring her upper body closer to the ground.
However, even in her panicked state, Vi vehemently refused to let go of one of the last vestiges of her humanity for as long as she still had any say in it.
The additional ick of feeling the disturbingly sticky floor against her now entirely bare feet likely made her gait even more inelegant.
Still, the hallways were poorly lit enough that the odd passerby could not see her very well and would assume she was just another drunken mess stumbling her way home.
(Or at least Vi assumed they were improperly lit as it was hard to tell, with colors still being weird and her inability to fully open her eyes due to the stinging in them.)
Regardless of the lighting, they were likely too intoxicated and single-minded to notice anything strange about her appearance or overall demeanor, even if they somehow cared to look her way long enough.
Whatever anyone else’s deal was that night, Vi was thankful that none of them were unfortunate enough to get between her and the exit in her sights while in the state she was in.
She was already using every last bit of remaining rational thought and control over her motor functions to keep herself from intentionally seeking out stronger people to fight or from focusing on the still unfulfilled carnal urges that refused to fully dissipate despite everything that had occurred in the night thus far.
The pungent odor of miscellaneous body secretions mixed with old tobacco smoke and dried booze had gone back to being overwhelming in a gut-churning sense, and the wave of nausea seemed enough to deter any half-formed thought of lingering in the facility for a second longer than necessary.
Thankfully, it also seemed to help keep her libido sufficiently in check for the time being.
Vi did not want to be slowed down by another fit of dry heaving, so she tried to limit her still somewhat labored breaths until she could reach the outside.
Her actively frightened mind had her checking in and out of conscious focus, distorting her perception of time until the next thing she knew, she was all but face-planting into the doorway she had been so desperate to reach moments prior as it seemed to materialize in front of her.
Pushing against it much harder than she intended, it swung open so fast it almost took its hinges with it as it slammed against the brick outer wall of the building.
She could hear bits of the material crumbling off and onto the ground as she clumsily sidestepped it when it bounced back hard enough that it almost hit her shoulder on the return swing.
The creaking and scraping sound it made along the floor as its hinges gave out when it no longer latched closed had Vi clenching her jaw and emitting an unintentional growl of discomfort.
As she glared back at it and noticed that it no longer closed fully behind her, she let herself stumble back a bit to prop it closed and took the momentary reprieve in sharper pangs of pain to re-center herself.
The comparably ‘fresher’ night air did wonders for her overheated body as the heavy sweat and remnants of blood that coated her entire being were cooled by what passed as a ‘breeze’ in the Undercity.
With no one actively triggering her instincts to protect herself, the dismay about what she had just done and what she could or should do next started to set in fully:
Did she just kill some of those men?
Was Frey alright?
Should she try to turn herself in for any or all of it?
Would this isolated incident be traced back to her family, to Powder, and put a bigger target on their backs than the one that had been miraculously largely ignored by prejudiced people thus far?
Had she single-handedly blown the thinly veiled cover they had been living under?
(If and when what was happening passed and she could form words again, she would undoubtedly follow up on these legitimate worries.)
The Wolf mentally chastised her for being ‘weak’ by expressing remorse for actions it seemed to think were perfectly warranted.
For actions that were praiseworthy ‘expressions of rightful dominance’ in its eyes.
Because, yes, she had gotten ‘carried away’ during fights before.
Yes, she even had to be physically and mentally pulled away from the heat of her rage against people she had felt fully deserved a beating at the moment.
But the thing was that those times occurred when she was trying to protect Powder from someone directly or when trying to defend their honor in her presence.
In those instances, her nearly blind rages served a more significant and arguably more honorable purpose, and she rarely gave people enough time of day to get under her skin to that degree otherwise.
But whatever happened back there was markedly different.
Vi had never been so genuinely…
Bloodthirsty about it.
She had never been that unnerved by her strength and aggressive instincts.
Vander had always tried to instill in her a moral code of not picking on opponents who were unfairly unmatched by her.
To only fight and strike back enough to make a point but not aim to draw blood or injure opponents unnecessarily.
He told her there was no honor in being a bully with her naturally greater strength and power just because she could, especially now that she was getting older and knew better.
Taking a long, determined breath, she once again forced her awkwardly proportioned limbs to move in a direction she hoped would lead her away from anyone else she could end up hurting irreparably that night.
Despite The Wolf’s protests, the small part of her brain that could still string coherent thoughts together knew that the damage she had already caused tonight would fundamentally change her as a person.
Once she could finally find a place to isolate herself with only her thoughts and pain, the knowledge of the damage she caused that night would have her wallowing in crippling new levels of self-hatred and disgust.
There was no going back from possibly flat-out killing or maiming men who were just doing their job, however brashly, of protecting a vulnerable person who was asking for their help.
Homicide was not another ‘petty crime’ like the jobs she’d run to bring in a bit of spending money for her and her sister.
Vi was now a monstrous murderer.
She was already dreading having to decide whether to keep what happened that night a secret for the rest of her life, even if it killed her inside, to preserve what little trust and respect her sister had for her or face the full consequences of coming clean about it to someone at some point and ruining it all forever.
Should she even let Vander know?
After all these years, would he suddenly decide that being a paternal figure to someone of her kind was far too much trouble and worry and disown her?
Would he deem her too dangerous to be allowed to live under the same roof as the rest of their makeshift family and be trusted to represent them at the bar anymore?
Worse yet, would he angrily demand Vi stay far away from Powder for her safety?
Powder!
If she went back home at all, what could she even begin to say to Powder?
How could she ever be forgiven for failing so miserably to be a good protector or person, like she did earlier that night?
What would Powder have to say to her?
Vi’s vision began to blur once again as tears she didn’t think she still had in her to produce flooded her vision, frustratingly making her eyes burn once more as they mixed with dried blood and sweat again.
As she soon learned, that burning sensation would become very familiar to her for the rest of the night.
---
After an indefinite amount of time stumbling through poorly lit back alleys to avoid the vast majority of whatever types of people were out at such a late hour in that part of the city, she eventually found a place to hole up in.
From a cursory glance, Vi could tell the place had seen better days and did not give off the sense of being a generally safe place to spend the night.
Or even the daytime, for that matter.
But she figured that most sensible people would not willingly enter such a blatantly shady skeleton of a building.
Never mind that she was likely scarier in appearance and more dangerous than almost anyone who would even dare try to anyway.
She staggered through a partially boarded-up back window, unintentionally cracking and detaching some of the loosened boards with her widened shoulders on the way in.
Trying to put them back with her clumsier clawed hands was no use, so she focused her extra-sensitive hearing and sense of smell to ensure she was alone in the building and not being followed.
The thick layer of dust and general grime covering everything caused her to sneeze involuntarily more than once, tearing open the cuts on her face that had already been healing every single time.
Vi had a feeling that those deeper cuts on her lip and eyebrow were going to scar her from the repeated tearing and partial healing permanently.
The more surface-level scrapes on her knuckles and at the base of her nail beds seemed to heal more steadily as she let them do their thing.
As the adrenaline and overall rush from the night’s earlier events wore off, she suddenly found herself nearly drained of all energy.
Her body felt abnormally heavy and sluggish as she struggled to climb a less-than-sturdy-looking set of stairs to what she assumed was some secluded loft area where she could crash.
By the time Vi reached the top steps, she had lost the will to force herself upright and resigned herself to walking more or less with all four limbs.
(She belatedly realized this felt oddly more comfortable and natural after surveying the loft area for a few minutes in the new positioning.)
Her exhausted mind fleetingly wondered why she had fought to stay upright for so long and wasted so much energy.
The energy she could have better spent setting up a more comfortable makeshift den for the night.
She was about ready to plop down on the nearest somewhat cleared area and knock out, but her protective and guarded instincts told her she couldn’t yet.
So, Vi sluggishly moved a couple of pieces of surprisingly mostly intact old furniture to block off the top of the stairway and clear the view towards the entryway on the ground floor.
Just on the off chance anyone would even try to sneak up on her during the night.
Then she yanked a dusty cloth covering a cracked full-body mirror to use as a blanket but paused to take in her utterly chaotic, even more monstrous appearance.
The visage that greeted her did not seem entirely human, nor all the way shifted to the ‘creature’ she assumed she was meant to change into that night, but the sharper pangs of pain had already waned long ago.
She seemed stuck in some weird in-between stage.
Her ears had elongated further, her facial features had distorted even more, and what was undeniably somewhat stubby and patchy fur now covered almost every inch of skin she could see.
Vi whimpered as she pointedly tried her best not to look at her lower half or investigate the source of the tugging sensation at the base of her spine that she could feel tremblingly tucked between her legs in her fear.
It was almost as if she had somehow willed herself to halt the process due to her stubborn refusal to further indulge the Wolf in its desire to rage and to…
Something.
She wasn’t sure anymore what she had been thinking about going to a place like that in the first place, no matter how ‘riled up’ she had felt.
Rational thoughts?
The endless night was greatly lacking in them.
Most, if not all, of the night’s misadventures could have been avoided entirely if only she had just led with her head instead of her…
Whatever.
If only she had done the responsible thing and pulled herself away before she projected her own sick, pent-up desires into the vulnerable subconsciousness of someone all too impressionable.
If only she had at least attempted to ‘take care of it’ the usual way she had in the past instead of jumping the gun and looking for someone else to drag into her mess first.
If she hadn’t given the Wolf’s leash some slack, it wouldn’t have gotten this far ahead of her ability to keep it perpetually contained.
And now she was holed up alone in a disgustingly filthy, run-down building in unfamiliar territory, generally worse off in every possible way from how she started that living nightmare of a night.
After the initial panic and confusion receded, Vi realized, nearly astoundingly, that despite present conditions and inner turmoil, her body was still very much ‘riled up’ somehow.
What was that about?
Vi had never known her libido to be quite so persistent in her life!
It was downright concerning by that point, but she attributed that unremitting need for release to something stemming from her now more prominent Wolf self.
The same Wolf self that would inadvertently also make it nearly impossible to ‘take care of herself’ in the usual ways, she realized with incredible frustration as she examined her almost paw-like clawed hands.
In what was likely one of her least dignified moments up until that point in her life, Vi decided to use the area she had been clearing off to sleep in for a much different purpose.
Bunching up the dingy old cloth she had removed from the mirror minutes earlier; Vi resigned herself to a less often used hands-free method of relieving the persistent ache out of dire necessity.
Her positioning on the grimy floor was uncomfortable, as her limbs were still slightly awkward to maneuver, and her thoughts were initially generally chaotic and distracting.
Still, she knew she would have to make it work even though physical contact with something inanimate didn’t initially feel like it would be ‘enough.’
She did her best to steer her thoughts away from things she felt were not her place to think about to get herself going, but the more she fought those thoughts, the further away her release remained.
Fresh sweat and blood from the exertion and furrowing her brows in frustration made her eyes burn again.
Her body violently shook from being held on the precipice of relief for so long.
Impotent tears escaped her as the Wolf pushed vibrant memories of the sick thrill it felt when it finally got to draw blood to the forefront of her mind and confused her feelings about the entire ordeal further.
The guilt and disgust brought upon by those memories then sickeningly cycled back and forth between the memories of what it felt like to have a warm, delicate body brushing up against her to distract herself from what she had to mollify herself with.
Shamefully, it was the combination of those thoughts and the unbidden flashes of blue in her mind’s eye that got her mindlessly rutting against the bundled-up cloth with increasing force and speed until a full-body wave of euphoria finally pushed all unhappy thoughts out of her mind for a few blissful moments.
Distantly, she realized she was howling her pleasure in a booming tone she had never been able to produce before.
Her release had never been this intense in her entire life, either.
Ever.
She hardly had a moment to let her self-hatred sink in about what triggered that first release, as her conscious mind had then checked out for an indefinite amount of time after a second and astonishingly more intense orgasm snuck up on her before the first had truly ebbed.
Vi’s higher thinking and shame completely abandoned her after that point, her body helplessly continuing to grind against anything it could while howling her throat raw through what remained of the night.
---
After repeatedly finding various inventive ways to release her pent-up tension for several hours, she eventually wore herself down enough to pass out and sleep right through the reverse shift without incident.
Or at least that is what Vi assumed had happened since she mercifully woke up in the last place she remembered being before she lost her self-awareness, even if it looked even more run down than before.
Her throat felt raw.
Her head was throbbing.
Her body ached all over but also felt strangely revitalized.
Vi let out a hoarse but still much more human-sounding groan as she unfurled herself from around a pile comprised of the remains of what was originally going to be her bedding for the night and a few other mangled-up objects she had no hope of identifying.
(She figured that whatever they had been before, they ended up either intentionally or accidentally shredded by her clawed hands at some point in the night when she blacked out. But thankfully, there was no new scent of blood, at least not any that did not belong to her, in the air. So that alone was already a win as far as she was concerned because property damage was always the least of her worries.)
Sitting up too quickly to take inventory of herself and her surroundings made her hunch over with her head in her now mostly ‘normal’ hands a second later.
They were only ‘mostly’ normal because even to her own eyes, they still looked noticeably larger than before the previous night’s events, but no longer ‘monstrously’ so.
After the acute discomfort of the sudden headrush subsided enough for her to sit up again fully, she continued to examine herself for any immediate issues.
There was no additional body hair on her, at least none she could see just yet.
No thick claw-like ends to her regular fingertips.
There were no inhuman proportions to her extremities overall, although she noted that her nail beds were still bloody and raw, stinging as she flexed her fingers to inspect them.
While her physicality seemed to have returned somewhere close to her baseline, the state of her clothing told a partial story of what it had gone on to become while she was mercifully no longer conscious enough to witness it.
Her shirt now rode up even higher on her abdomen than it used to as she shakily pulled herself to her bare feet and had been stretched so far that the seams at the armpits partially pried apart to such a degree that it no longer retained its shape.
The pants, which had already been bordering on too short when she’d last worn them, now ended a few inches above her ankles, and the seams were either stretched to their absolute limit or slightly ripped apart in awkward places.
Vi needed to hold them up as they wanted to slide slightly lower than she was comfortable wearing them.
After her third useless adjustment, she finally noticed that the button to them had gotten lost at some point during the night, and the zipper had also been split apart, making her all the more grateful for the added coverage of the undershorts she typically wore.
All in all, she concluded that none of what remained of her hastily put-on outfit would be making it into the ‘hand down pile’ anymore if and when she returned home and that her shoes would indeed have been equally unsalvageable even if she had any idea where the scraps of them had ended up.
Had they even made it out of that brothel back room with her in the first place?
She vaguely remembered noticing them sustaining damage but had been too preoccupied with everything else to keep track of such things.
No claws on her more humanly shaped feet also meant that they were once again significantly softer soled than they were in the early morning hours, so she quickly became hyper-aware of the filth covering the ground she anxiously paced on.
Glancing around her immediate area, she noted numerous claw marks in vaguely uniformly spaced groups on the floor, indicating that she had ended up pacing primarily on all fours and that other pieces of old furniture also had claw marks and signs of further damage from bearing weight again after such a long period of disuse.
(Vi tried not to think too hard about what types of ill-treatment she must have inflicted on just about every surface and inanimate object in the space to cause such wreckage. From a cursory glance, it appeared to have been quite a bit, judging by all the disturbed dust, general disarray, and the scent that marked it all.)
Thankfully, despite the noticeable added disorder to the area, she did not appear to have left her makeshift den while her rational mind took a backseat.
Less to worry about and feel guilty over.
However, the flashes of the shameful thoughts she did remember having right before losing herself to a lusty fugue state hit her with a fresh wave of guilt so intense it nearly buckled her already shaky knees.
She used to be able to write off her mind wandering to general thoughts of Powder when ‘taking care of it’ as a way for her protective instincts to remind her not to leave her sister ‘unguarded’ for too long.
There was a much more normal justification before.
But now Vi’s thoughts were plagued by the memory of Powder’s much smaller frame burning hot and trembling within her protective hold.
Now, Vi was hounded by the sounds of her sleepy desperation to reach for something she likely had no idea was achievable.
From that night on, she would be haunted by the recollection of the improbably inviting scent that accompanied the sound of Powder’s nearly tortured cry of utter relief once she had finally reached that novel peak.
She had no right to have attempted to chase and recreate the same feelings for herself throughout the rest of the night, even if her higher brain functions were not fully present for most of it.
No.
Vi could not let that happen again.
She could not let the need to satisfy more primal urges overshadow her ability to uphold her moral responsibilities, even in thought.
Ever again.
Being more animal than human was still no excuse to let that happen, Vi believed.
So, she resolved first to ensure that her Wolf would not make another break for it come nightfall.
Living in a place with such polluted and often overcast skies, it wasn’t always easy to see the changes in the moon, but over the years, Vi had come to learn to feel the difference despite that.
Usually.
At least when not distracted by life and her internal angst like she had been lately.
The fuller the moon’s face became, the more restless her Wolf tended to feel, and the more it would throw itself against the sides of the figurative cage Vi had kept it inside of for all these years.
Until the night before, physically exhausting herself on those days was usually enough to keep the Wolf pleasant and subdued within her mind come nightfall.
But that beast that broke through that night had been an entirely different animal, almost quite literally.
What happened that night would ensure that her previously mostly ‘unfounded’ fear of finally undergoing The Change and losing her sense of self finally had a basis in reality.
In the future, she would be all the more mindful of the passing of time and the moon’s phases to not give the Wolf another chance to catch her off guard in the same way.
This time, she had managed to be far enough away from the people she loved when it entirely took over almost only by chance.
Now that the monster had finally tasted freedom from its confines, it surely would not hesitate to break out of her mental hold again at its first opportunity.
No, she would not allow herself to unwittingly nearly endanger her loved ones like this again.
She would not be as complacent and careless in her assumption that the Wolf would lie submissively in its cage within her psyche and happily remain there for the rest of her life simply because she would have wanted it to.
Tonight, turning her back on the cage door and assuming it was locked tightly enough led to destructive events that had been much too close a call to ever allow the opportunity to repeat.
The thought of just how close she came to potentially slaughtering her entire family twisted her stomach anew; she would not endanger them like that again once she made her way home.
(That was, once again, assuming Powder and her family would even welcome her back if they knew what all happened in just one night of the Wolf getting the upper hand on her control over it.)
Home.
Would it still be waiting for her?
---
It wasn’t easy to pinpoint the time of day or night without some timekeeping device or her usual routine to inform her where she should be and when.
So, for all Vi knew, she could have been passed out for the entire day into the late afternoon or merely a few hours into the dawn after going into her fugue state.
But the intermittent pangs of thirst and hunger, despite lingering nausea, told her it indeed must have been well past the usual point in the day when she would get something to eat or drink, so she needed to do something about satisfying that type of hunger.
Sometime soon, she hoped.
However, hazarding a look into the surprisingly intact full-length mirror, she was reminded to try to look remotely presentable before anything else.
(Or anything short of absolutely unhinged, in all honesty.)
A quick pat to each of her pockets also reminded her that she was now officially out of money, and her feet were far too vulnerable to make it very far without injury in the undermaintained streets of the Undercity.
Sure, her feet felt noticeably tougher, and the skin had thickened even beneath the layer of grime.
But Vi did not want to take any chances, so she hesitated at the top of the staircase for a moment, trying to decide what should be higher on her priorities list:
Getting food and water?
Fashioning protection for her feet?
Finding less precariously stitched clothing to cover herself?
Gathering the courage to crawl back home to Powder with her, possibly still literal, tail between her legs and figuring out the rest after?
(She had quickly twisted and spun in a circle or two and slid her hand over her backside to check on that last thought and tugged her pants up an inch higher when she verified that there was no literal tail there anymore. For now?)
The indecision between tending to present physical needs and more spiritual ones kept her uncharacteristically frozen in place, entirely stumped by anxiety for a few minutes longer, breathing in and sneezing out perturbingly dusty air.
Having been bested by her inner beast for even a single night truly had shaken her belief and trust in her own decisions, that was for sure.
Had truly humbled her from her more usual ‘leap first, figure out the landing later’ style of decision-making in matters relating to herself.
She had always implicitly trusted that she would generally know where and how to land on her feet, but now she was unsure if her sense of inner balance would ever return.
Had that way of conducting her life’s major decisions always been so inherently flawed and reckless?
Had it been sheer luck that she had made it this far in life without causing more harm to herself and those around her than she had?
Why did it take losing the autonomy over her physical body and mind for just a few hours to have her questioning so much of what she thought to be her established ‘identity’ like this?
What would Vander or Powder think of this much meeker version of herself if they could see her now?
--
Ultimately, Vi opted to fashion passable foot coverings and a hood to somewhat mask her identity out of layers of miscellaneous cloth and leather that she salvaged from the ruined furniture strewn about.
Sure, they were not the sturdiest things, and grimy water would surely still seep through if she wasn’t careful, and the rough edges of the hood chaffed along her collarbones, but they were better than nothing.
She felt she deserved their discomfort anyway.
The ‘shoes’ were only marginally worse footwear than she had sported for brief periods out of sheer necessity during some rougher financial times growing up.
Having had so many growth spurts as a child, it had been a nightmare to keep up with clothing-wise, so brief stints of mismatched or otherwise ill-fitting attire were not unusual for her.
So, her unconventional footwear would only mean that making her way home would take longer than it had to get to where she was because she would need to step more carefully.
Plus, Vi was not looking forward to the long journey ahead.
Even before beginning the trek, she was already hungry and exhausted, and the extra movement was sure to exacerbate both.
But those discomforts were okay, too.
It’s what she deserved, after all, she believed.
The long way back would give her plenty of time to think of something to say to her family and even begin to plan to blatantly plead for Powder’s forgiveness.
What passed as the Undercity’s remaining ‘sunlight’ came and went as she approached the general direction of home.
Rushing through an open-air market and expertly swiping a small snack or two from a random food stall’s bin of discarded produce, she got a slight reprieve from the thirst and hunger pangs that plagued her body.
(Nothing that would be missed, but she still did her best to be as inconspicuous as she could be about it and only just managed to hold off on scarfing the surplus items down in plain sight with how ravenous she had been.)
Eventually, as she continued to push onward, her surroundings began to look a little more familiar.
But with each increasingly recognizable sight, her anxiety would continue to grow and weigh down her steps until she slowed to a complete stop.
She was still far enough away from home that she doubted anyone except perhaps Powder could even track her down if they tried, but she felt uneasy about proceeding any further.
Vi was unsure if the unease was primarily due to exhaustion and the traumatic experiences of the past day or two…
Or if it was an early sign that The Wolf would make another appearance come nightfall.
Her newfound self-doubt in her ability to tell the difference told her to err on caution and keep herself isolated for another night.
It told her to avoid the moon’s light as much as possible to see if it lessened its effects on her body.
Just until she could feel sufficiently confident that she would not immediately wolf out at the slightest additional stressors.
Like the assured ones that would come from facing some well-deserved consequences for her actions.
---
The hours dragged on.
Her desperation to be anywhere near her sister’s familiar scent again and to know that she was alive and safe continued to grow.
It was probably unhealthy to be this nearly frantic to see someone after less than two days apart, but she was finding it increasingly challenging to care if it was anymore.
Ever since the day Powder was born, they had never been entirely apart for more than half a day at a time.
If that.
They had never been ‘fully’ apart for so long that the traces of each other’s scent had begun to fade.
Even during her more rebellious phases, where she’d pretend not to want Powder invading her space, she still would relish in the comfort that would wash over her at the mere knowledge that she was always nearby enough to pick up traces of her scent still.
Vi would only ever rest even remotely peacefully in spaces that Powder also occupied because being apart for too long felt fundamentally wrong, and being unable to ensure that her calls for protection would not go unheard physically hurt her.
Something deeply ingrained into her overall identity sustained itself solely by her devotion to Powder above all other people, so without opportunities to actively provide for her in some form, Vi’s life felt utterly directionless.
Pointless.
The thought that Powder might not even want to be protected by her anymore and that she might now be afraid of or even repulsed by her?
Well, that hurt Vi down to her very soul.
She would have to do whatever it took to prove to herself that she could still be trusted and not to jeopardize her sense of security further than she already had the night before ever again.
Vi’s sole focus would be to prove that she could still be a worthy protector if given even half a chance.
---
As the night slowly but surely dragged on and the Wolf continued to slumber peacefully once more, Vi emerged from the place she had chosen to self-isolate.
She found a broken reflective surface and clumsily tried to make herself just slightly more presentable, wiping at her blood and grime-covered face with the hem of her tattered shirt.
The cuts still faintly present on her eyebrow and lip leaked a much weaker rivulet of blood in protest to the scrubbing motions.
They again slightly reopened at the harsh treatment, but not worryingly so.
The fact that they had yet to heal after so many hours made her wonder if the blade that caused them held some unique properties or if she had just been that horrible at allowing them to heal due to some subconscious desire to punish herself further with their prolonged sting.
The taste and scent of the fresh blood made her gag abruptly but mercifully not full-out heave…
This time.
Brushing off the unexpected fit of nausea, Vi continued to make her way down to the Lanes with an increasing sense of dread because she did not know what she would find once she made it home and crossed that familiar rusty threshold into their shared living space.
But beneath all that, there was also something akin to grief due to knowing that whatever she found would be markedly changed forever from what it had been.
Would Powder yell at her and cast her out?
Would Powder be a sobbing and broken mess begging for some comfort Vi might no longer be able to provide?
Would Powder give her the cold shoulder and outright ignore her supplicated attempts at apologies?
Vi honestly did not know which possibility would hurt her the most.
But as she finally removed her makeshift head covering and made her way around The Last Drop to the ‘secret’ entrance that led to the rickety staircase leading to the basement areas and their old familiar metal door came into view, the now all-too-familiar lump in her throat and stinging in her eyes returned in full.
She knew she would soon find out which reactions she would need to face and try to respond accordingly.
She still had no way of knowing what time it was, but she imagined that her sister might now be asleep, so she tried to enter the space as quietly as slowly moving a heavy, rusty metal door allowed.
(Which was, of course, somewhere between nails on a chalkboard and a fork scraping along just about any surface, or at least that’s what her anxious mind told her with how silent the space was otherwise.)
Vi made her way down the steps, cringing slightly at every creaking sound their well-worn wooden steps made under her surprisingly heavy frame despite her very best efforts to be somehow any physically lighter than she was.
Pausing her already glacial pace just a few feet from their bunk bed, she registered the quiet rustling sound of sheets and a soft gasp as Powder sat up and moved from her prone position to the edge of the bottom bunk.
The fact that Powder seemed to have stopped herself from immediately closing the distance between them like she usually would without hesitation stung Vi more than any of her still-closing wounds combined ever could.
Vi couldn’t help but shrink in on herself just a little more as she swore she could almost physically feel Powder’s scrutinizing gaze raking over every inch of her unkempt state.
She felt raw, exposed, and embarrassed in a way she could not define by being analyzed and judged to a degree she was unaccustomed to by the person she adored the most.
The examination passed within a few aching seconds and without a single word or even a moment of shared eye contact to communicate anything gentler than disdain in the wordless way they had perfected over the years.
The instinctual need to scent the air in search of clues as to what could be going through her sister’s mind overtook her, and the flurry of distinct shifts in her scent had her reeling to find her mental footing.
There were too many to cycle through in such quick succession, and they only served to confuse her more and grow her sense of disquiet.
Seconds felt like minutes, and minutes felt like hours as the near silence dragged on, and Powder’s facial expressions and scent also went on an emotional journey with her.
Vi noted the more pronounced darkness of the teen’s eyelids and the slightly deepened gauntness of her face as their unintended standoff trailed on.
Had she not slept at all or eaten anything in her absence?
If so, that would be another way she failed to protect and provide for her and another unintentional way she hurt her with her recklessness, which she would do everything within her power to remedy if given the chance to try.
But the opportunity seemed ever further away than before despite her sister now being no more than two strides away.
Every second that passed and her sister didn’t meet her eyes…
Every painful second that she did not use to vocalize any positive or negative thought or emotion to Vi…
Every excruciatingly silent second, Vi’s insides twisted and turned agonizingly in a way not too dissimilar to the physical anguish of her first shift.
Before she even realized it, there were stinging hot tears escaping her, and she could not help but sniffle pathetically as she tried to clear her tear-filled vision.
The brief wave of joy that washed over her as Powder finally looked up to meet her gaze for a split second receded instantly as her physical demeanor and scent sharply turned towards aggression.
Her nostrils flared, and her lips curled back to bare her small, ‘not-quite-adult-sized’ canines as she snarled at Vi and simultaneously visibly recoiled from her, making Vi flinch in place.
The sharp sting of rejection and pain in her lungs from the palpable burn of fury in the air made her take in shaky gasps for air.
The painful breaths ripped out pitiful whines from somewhere deep inside her body, pathetic sounds that felt foreign coming from her but that she was helpless to stop even if she wanted to.
Vi’s eyes flicked down and to the side, noticing Powder’s balled-up fists vibrating with emotion along the edge of the bed.
Knowing that she was the one responsible for filling her tiny body with such emotions was destroying Vi.
The weight of self-hatred made Vi’s knees buckle as she hazarded a few more steps forward and ended up at Powder’s feet, carefully prying her sisters’ tiny fists off the edge of the mattress.
Her much smaller hands were alarmingly and unusually hot, or at least Vi’s anguished mind registered them that way as she gently encased them in her now almost comically larger ones.
There was a visceral compulsion to keep her gaze downcast and away from Powder’s fiery glare.
To make and present herself in as diminutive a manner as was possible, given her physical presence and size.
A demand to not anger the Omega teen further or scare Powder away with her mere presence and proximity alone.
Her mind, body, and soul would not be able to bear it if Powder left her at this moment.
The fresh, salty scent of teardrops falling onto the floor within the sightline of her averted gaze pulled her back toward her sister’s face on impulse.
Seeing them continue to form in her now deeply heartbroken gaze immediately brought forth an even more urgent desperation to make her sister’s pain go away.
She needed Powder to forgive her…
To yell at her.
To hit her.
She’d even take the heart-wrenching feel of Powder sobbing into her shoulder as she nearly squeezed all the air from Vi’s lungs.
Something.
Anything.
Everything at once.
It was agony to remain suspended in this mostly silent state of shared emotion.
She even unfurled Powder’s loosened fists to squeeze her delicate hands against the sides of her skull, wordlessly giving her ‘permission’ to lash out physically if words felt insufficient to communicate the depths of her ire.
If words seemed too merciful to communicate the full scope of what was going through her mind now.
Perhaps the words were too sharp-edged to expel verbally without shredding her insides on the way out, and that’s why she had yet to utter a single one.
(Vi knew all too well that sometimes some emotions were just too big to put into words. And that some people could only grasp them if they were delivered directly to them through aggressive physical contact. Herself included at times.)
She would fully understand and willingly receive any punishment Powder wanted to dole out here and now.
If only it meant that she would not be pushed away forever and that Vi would be ‘allowed’ to remain in her life for as long as she breathed.
Vi had tried to convince herself that she could and would walk right back out the door and never return if Powder told her it was what she needed her to do to regain her own sense of peace and safety.
But now that she was kneeling before her…?
Now that she could feel her warmth and the anchoring pull of her presence…?
Vi knew that was now an absolute impossibility.
As dramatic as it might seem to an outsider, Vi would rather die than live in a world where Powder rejected her so definitively.
Yes, she would rather be dead than exist in a world where Powder no longer wanted or needed Vi in her life.
The nightmare scenarios that rushed through her mind were suffocating her, and Vi could not allow them to become a reality as long as she had any say in the matter and could try to change her mind before she made it up.
With her pride wholly cast aside, she was not above groveling to be permitted to try to explain herself.
Groveling to be given a chance to begin the process of mending whatever could still be mended regarding their previous bond.
Taking a deep yet shaky breath, Vi wrenched out the first of many pleas and apologies she intended to make from her own throat and frantically implored, “Powder, I’m so sorry. Please, please don’t hate me.”
Releasing her hold on Powder’s hands, she effortlessly and unthinkingly pulled her in as close to flush against herself as their positions allowed.
Powder’s knees bracketed the bottom of her rib cage, and Vi’s larger hand now cradled the back of her sister’s head and held it against her forehead while moving the other forward from her lower back to her waist to gently anchor her.
It had been intended as a completely innocuous comforting gesture, not too dissimilar from many before.
And yet, a chill ran down Vi’s spine and stiffened her posture instantly at the sound of a sharp intake of breath and the feel of Powder’s now unaided grip tightening against her head nearly painfully.
Something shifted and crackled in the air around them, giving her whole-body goosebumps as Powder’s unusually raspier-toned voice finally ended her silence with a single sternly vocalized word, “Violet.”
Notes:
The following five chapters will be from Powder's POV and conclude her 'solo chapters' for this part of the story.
Then, it's Vi's final 'solo chapters.'
And after those, we FINALLY get to the 'Finale' chapters for this arc.Will I get all that done by the time S2 rolls around?
That is the dream goal, but we'll see!((Spoiler Alert: I did not.)
Chapter 15: Powder Pt 5
Summary:
' The remnants of what had just happened cooled uncomfortably against her now cold, sweat-covered body, abruptly forcing her to face the whole reality of the situation.
It happened again!
But this time, it was not within a dream…
It was now within another living nightmare she could not wake herself from.
~ You are such a weirdo freak! ~
A freak of nature.
Unnatural.
What the fuck is wrong with her, and why was Vi looking at her like that? '
-- Or --
A combination of lowered inhibitions from lack of sleep and leftover traces of rut pheromones put the teens in an awkward position, rapidly shifting the overall mood of their long-awaited reunion.
Notes:
When I tell ya these heatwaves are taking a terrible toll on my mental and physical well-being--
I give up trying to English and focus long enough to do a better job catching inconsistencies and whatnot. This part needed to be DONE because there are at least six more 'monster-sized/combined' re-written chapters to go before I start on the NEW new chapters and close up this part of the story.
So, while Summer is still fully in effect, please ignore anything egregiously 'off' for the following three updates. I'm just trying to push through the brain fog, man. I'm just trying not to lose all the steam to finish these rewrites and finally finish Act 1 BEFORE S2 drops.
((Spoiler Alert: Once again...hahahahaha...No. No, I did not meet that imaginary deadline because life keeps kicking my a**.))
This chapter combines OG chapters 18 & 19 and has Thematic Elements.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
= Powder =
Hate Vi?
In what upside-down world or terrible universe would that ever be even remotely possible?
Was she upset with Vi?
Maybe.
Vi’s wordless departure before Powder was awake enough to fully process what had happened in her dreams or the waking world caused her great distress because she could not know if or when she’d ever return.
And that amount of uncertainty had unlocked some long-repressed subconscious trauma response that rendered her downright catatonic for the majority of the excruciating hours she’d been stuck spiraling within her mind.
It was not something she would like to experience ever again.
But I outright hate Vi for what her body and mind did in her absence, especially now that she was back within reach and looking incredibly miserable about having left at all?
Ridiculous.
How would either of them have known it could get so bad?
Vi had never left her alone in such a panic long enough for her brain to dig up such a full-bodied way to reject perceived reality.
She had never let the panic worsen long enough to dig that deeply into the recesses of her mind, leaving her tumbling into such a deep well of despair.
One so profound that Powder had begun to wonder if she would have ever been able to climb back out of it if Vi had not returned when she finally did.
(Honestly, she was unsure if even a day or two more digging and spiraling would have been survivable.)
She would undoubtedly run out of oxygen being down so deep, right?
Where would this mental dirt even go?
What did empty wells look like anyway?
Powder had never seen a hole in the ground that was not at least partially filled by trash down in the Undercity—the well itself was not the vital part of this ‘metal four’ or whatever it was called that represented her depressive state anyway.
What was important was the undisputed fact that despite the profoundly wounding and entirely unexpected stint of isolation she had endured due to her sister’s absence, there was not an ounce of hatred for her sister in her body.
If anything, in any other circumstance, she would be stumbling over her words to get apologies and pleas out to Vi so that she’d never leave her alone like that again.
She would be begging her sister not to hate her for whatever weird thing her body and mind had done while she slept in her arms the other night.
In any other circumstance, Powder would readily hug and douse Vi with as much enthusiastic joy as she could radiate to make the unmistakable sadness she exhibited go away.
Nothing would have been able to stop her.
Nothing.
(Maybe not even if Vi herself shoved her away roughly more than once; Powder would be too ecstatic just seeing her again after dreading the possibility of her never returning.)
Indeed, at the very least, Powder would be annoying her older sister by fretting over every scrape and bruise unaccounted for until Vi shoved her away in amused exasperation.
That was the usual routine whenever she returned home looking roughed up and smelling of ‘other’ anyway.
And yet…
Despite the countless tears she had shed and how much she had hoped against hope that Vi would return soon in any state.
Despite all her determination to welcome Vi with open arms the moment she got within arm’s reach, she had frozen up entirely instead.
Powder had been kept in place by the unseen force she fought against for control of her body from the instant that unbidden incensed snarl escaped her.
Powder had not meant to react aggressively to Vi’s approaching presence and certainly did not understand why her sister’s shortening proximity had her so immediately on edge.
She had no time to dwell on the reasoning behind her discordant actions towards her sister’s approach, much less time to fully process what Vi had said before her racing thoughts suddenly stopped.
One moment, her mind and body were warring about where they wanted to be and what she should do about her conflicting emotions…
But then, in the next moment, the entire world and all her errant thoughts narrowed down to a single focal point.
Her chaotic, anxious thoughts were instantly pushed to the side to make room for the only one that seemed to matter.
The beginning and end of everything she knew.
Just one word repeated in her mind, drowning out any possibility of drifting astray from this crucial tether.
The abruptness and ease with which Vi could reposition her…
How she could effortlessly command her full attention in every sense of the word without having to ‘say’ anything in particular filled Powder with a frantic sense of urgency.
An innate need for something she had no words for.
An all-consuming yearning to be as close to Vi as possible, to practically melt into her and become one inseparable entity immediately.
Of course, Powder always longed to be near her sister; that was nothing new.
But the strange feeling that washed over her as she felt her sister’s even more unusually high body temperature radiating against the space between her knees?
That was novel.
She felt her vision white out for a split second, and her heartbeat skyrocketed within her chest as she felt her pulse kick into overdrive all over.
It all made her strangely dizzy.
The unintentional tightening of her grip against Vi’s head and the strange sensation of a rumble reverberating from within her throat and morphing her voice into something closer to a demonic growl took them both by surprise.
“Violet.”
Vi’s sudden tense posture and worried expression only had a moment’s breath to make a valiant effort to give Powder pause…
One ineffectual moment to curtail the speed with which instinct short-circuited Powder’s mind-to-body connection.
All Powder could focus on was the sudden instinctual demand to press every part of her being where her pulse beat the strongest against the instant relief only Vi seemed to be able to provide her.
She wrapped her arms around Vi’s strong shoulders as best she could, holding her tattered shirt in a shaky death grip as she hooked her ankles against her sister’s lower back.
The abruptness of the motion startled Vi enough to get her to spring to her feet once again with hardly any sign of effort in her haste.
Not even the slightest bit of swaying to center her balance or anything.
It was as if the Powder-sized weight pack suddenly latched onto her front was inconsequential.
Powder knew that despite her comparably tinier frame, she was still significantly heavier than she would initially appear to be due to some weird wolf thing or something.
So, the fact that Vi had only moved the hand that had been initially cradling Powder’s head downward to subconsciously ensure that she didn’t let go and go flying backward as she stood up…
And just the thought of how strong Vi must be to accomplish that so smoothly intensified the odd dizziness.
The defined feel of the flexing muscles of her sister’s abdomen against her only made Powder instinctively tense her slighter muscles further in anticipation and sympathy.
That subtle, unintentional friction made her redouble her subconscious attempts to meld herself against her even more deeply.
The ‘wrongness’ that plagued her sister’s scent was now forgotten, no longer offending that inner presence that had made her display unintentional aggression mere moments earlier.
Had it not been all that strong before, or had she just drowned it out by getting so close to Vi and ‘correcting’ it?
What had been so ‘wrong’ about it in the first place other than being different?
She could no longer recall.
Perhaps Vi’s scent was growing bolder, and their recombined scent was now rightfully overpowering any ‘wrongness’ that dared to taint something as extraordinary as her sister’s natural musk.
Whatever the exact cause, the inner presence rumbled happily as it sensed the re-establishment of the near-perfect balance of their combined scents.
It seemed to deem the new mixture a perfect synergy of just enough of Powder’s and Vi’s scents and not much of anyone else’s so as not to demand any further immediate ‘correction.’
But along with the thrill of that ‘victory,’ an almost familiar tension built within her body that she vaguely recognized from the other night brought forth a reflexive worry somewhere in the back of her more anxious mind.
That part of her mind was still fretting about what had happened in her dreams the other night and how it had driven Vi away.
It feebly warned her not to make the situation even weirder than it likely was already.
It was telling her to create some distance before she could unintentionally cause a repeat offense without the excuse of not being awake to stop it from happening.
But…
Vi just smelled so…
She smelled so good right then.
And she was right there!
Powder couldn’t be sure if the scent suddenly felt more alluring because her mind had now hyper-focused on the traces of this version of Vi’s ‘special scent,’ the one she had detected hints of earlier, or if it was now that much more potent because it was new.
Renewed or not, it was making its way into her lungs and traveling through her entire system at lightning speed, leaving her feeling uniquely tensed and 'floaty.’
It was making it harder to think.
It was harder to focus on anything else but on how they were pressed so close, about as close as two beings could get, yet somehow, the inner presence told her she still needed to be even closer.
There was almost something dreamlike about her current state, both so acutely aware of her body but also feeling incorporeal.
She almost felt as if she could float away if she let go of Vi or even loosened her death grip in the slightest.
So, she only squeezed her tighter.
The building tension in her body and the burning sensation in her muscles from tensing them for so long was becoming unbearable, but she still seemed unable to relax any part of herself enough to make either ache stop.
Why couldn’t she let go?
Why was she being such a little weirdo yet again?
What was wrong with her?
Despite her vice-like grip, there was a shifting sensation against her body as she dimly registered that Vi had changed her stance and taken a few uncertain steps backward.
But in the same instance, she registered much more vividly that the taller girl had also repositioned her hands to practically envelop her around the jut of her hip bones as she started to…
Push her away?
~ No! ~
Powder had to stay close to Vi, or she would probably die on the spot.
Or somehow do something equally dramatic, she was sure.
So, Powder pulled herself closer with as much strength as she could still muster in her tired and weakened state.
For every stilted effort Vi made to dislodge her, she fought even harder to eliminate any new distance, not even questioning how she managed to be a match against her sister’s typically far superior physical strength.
The incidental friction caused by the repeated movements continued to build that wonderfully dreaded sense of tension further, and the fog that had enveloped her mind seemed to have saturated the air she tried to inhale in harsh, panted breaths.
(Surely, she was only so breathless due to the physical effort it took to keep herself anchored to Vi for so long, right?)
The harder she tried to catch her breath, the more that dizzyingly good smell seeped into the fabric of her being, making every tiny movement feel overwhelming in the most fantastic way.
A partially muffled, nerve-ridden tone of voice finally started to push through the haze clouding her mind, but the meaning of the spoken words was still far beyond Powder’s ability to comprehend.
Understanding spoken language did not become any easier as she noticed Vi finally releasing her rough grip on her hips, seemingly giving up the fight to keep Powder away.
Sure, she didn’t necessarily move to pull Powder into herself.
But she also made no other move to try to pry her off in any way anymore, so naturally, her hazy mind took this as an ‘OK’ signal to attempt to press back in even more closely than before, if possible.
The building sense of urgency soared to new heights as every nerve ending lit up with relief at the now unimpeded contact.
A shared groan filled the space around them as they fully reconnected, the sound escaping due to an almost agonized sense of respite in Powder’s case, but the same could probably not be said about Vi.
The Alpha teen’s groan was likely more due to the discomfort of having the air squeezed out of her lungs and from the effort it took to re-tighten her abdomen enough so that her little sister would not squash her internal organs.
But Powder’s hazy mind refused to let that more rational interpretation of the sound through, so the rough sound only made her feel even more restless for something to happen.
Had her trembling from how roughly she continued to hold onto Vi with hopes that the sensation would abate sooner.
Despite everything, her subconsciousness still allowed for at least a slight sense of shame about how weird she was acting, so she hid her face in the crook of Vi’s sweat and grime-coated neck.
~ Bite. ~
What?
No, she would not bite her again.
She wouldn’t!
She had sworn she wouldn’t do it and be weird again!
~ Ours! ~
The scent was so strong at the crook of her neck that she could almost taste its sheer glory.
Wait…
Taste.
Maybe she actually could!
But should she?
~ Do it. ~
Before she could stop herself, she once again did something utterly bizarre without fully thinking it through or meaning to act on it.
Not a second after brazenly licking a broad stripe against the corded muscle cradling Vi’s pulse point, she heard as well as felt her gasp and cry out in surprise.
“Powder!”
It was just a single word.
But the breathlessness of it?
The scandalized tonality to it as it reverberated within her skull due to the proximity of their faces.
Oh, that had been enough to allow that building urgent sensation to flare intensely one final time before all the tension left her body in sudden pulsing waves.
It was as if whatever had been building up so rapidly just a moment before was now rhythmically draining out of her, and the feeling of so much built-up tension suddenly leaving was disorienting in a hazy way not too dissimilar to the sensations that clouded her mind as it built up.
Where her muscles had previously felt tensed up like metal chords, they now suddenly felt more like flimsy strings of yarn, all the fight and care in the world ebbing away for those few peaceful moments in the immediate aftermath.
But eventually, she had to drift back to the shore of spatial awareness, and Powder abruptly realized that at some point during her journey back to solid land, Vi had sat her down on the nearest couch since she now had to crane her neck up to meet her flustered gaze.
Vi’s voice slowly started piercing through the gradually receding fog that had previously clouded her ability to process and absorb spoken language, or at least it did after Powder dazedly stared at the mostly healed but still bloodied nick on her upper lip for a few moments longer than necessary as Vi’s mouth formed words at her.
Made words?
Spoke words to her?
Words were being spoken.
Her sister was talking to her, and she looked very alarmed.
Vi was also blushing so hard that the redness of her face almost matched the hue of her hair.
(Powder had found the similarity so distractingly endearing as she stared at the wisps that repeatedly fell and were pushed back from her sister’s anxious gaze.)
However, even as distracted as she was, she had still blearily registered that the taller girl continued frantically trying to get her focused attention while visibly trying to school her expression into something somewhat neutral and calming.
She was still trying to bring Powder back from wherever she had floated without, for some unknown reason, sending her into another spiral.
“Please, Powder, talk to me? Powder? Are you okay? What was…? D-did you…? Oh no. Fuck! I can’t believe I let this happen again. I’m so sorry—!”
And just like that, the warm, bubbly feeling still coursing through her turned into ice water injected directly into her veins, freezing her previously tenuous consciousness back into her physical body.
~ Well, now you’ve done it, you jinx! Vi hates us now... ~
The remnants of what had just happened cooled uncomfortably against her now cold, sweat-covered body, abruptly forcing her to face the whole reality of the situation.
It happened again!
But this time, it was not within a dream…
It was now within another living nightmare she could not wake herself from.
~ You are such a weirdo freak! ~
A freak of nature.
Unnatural.
What the fuck is wrong with her, and why was Vi looking at her like that?
(She was making intensely nervous yet valiantly sustained eye contact with her, almost as if trying not to spook a wild animal or let it out of her sight to allow for a sneak attack. It was a fitting description of the situation—not that Powder had any idea back then.)
An icy sense of full-body panic left Powder trembling anew under the power of that concentrated gaze, making her tongue feel clumsy within her mouth as it frenziedly moved around to pick up the remaining traces of ‘Vi’ she could still taste.
To keep them safe further inside herself even as the pleasantly salty aftertaste abruptly turned acidic and metallic in her mouth.
The shame over her freakish actions made her wish she could eliminate it from her mouth immediately as if doing so would undo what she had done to acquire it in the first place.
But even as she felt herself wilting in embarrassment over her series of lapses in self-control, she tried to finally stutter no fewer than six panicked thoughts out at once.
“I-I don’t know w-why I did that-- I couldn’t s-stop—I’m not trying to be weird! I swear! Don’t be mad, don’t be mad, don't be mad. Please don’t leave me again! I’ll stop being weird, I promise! I just—you just—It felt so…I’m sorry!”
Her strained voice cracked pathetically several times as she lost the ability to modulate her volume, and the edges of her vision started to darken as she ran out of oxygen in her blind panic.
Spots started to litter her field of vision when she began to overcompensate for the lack of oxygen intake during her outburst by then breathing too quickly for her body to process.
She shifted uncomfortably atop the couch cushion she’d been placed upon, the sweat-coated, ragged fabric feeling disgusting against the exposed skin on the backs of her thighs and knees.
When had she gotten this exaggeratedly sweaty anyway?
Despite hardly getting enough substantial breaths in to bring some color back into her vision, she started to gear up for another string of anxiously rambled pleas despite not giving Vi enough time to respond to the first barrage verbally.
Fearing that if she didn’t continue talking and keeping Vi focused on her, the much taller girl would bolt out the door again.
And Vi couldn’t leave her again!
Powder needed Vi to stay, but she also could not stand the uncomfortable crawling unease and insecurity itching beneath her skin as the older teen looked at her with the most bewildered expression.
“Breathe! I know Pow Pow, it’s not your fault. I’m not the one who should be mad here—it’s okay. I mean, it’s not—well. I mean… um…fuck! No, not f--!"
Her hands kept hovering in and out of Powder’s panicky vision as she tried to get a fully formed thought out herself while attempting to anchor Powder to the present moment without touching her anymore.
The evident hesitation in making physical contact again did not go unnoticed.
Powder hugged herself, regretful that she had given her sister renewed, justified reasons to think twice about doing something so innocent as using herself as a grounding presence to help her younger sister calm down.
Powder knew she was working herself into a ‘fit’ again and could tell Vi was trying her hardest to stop it from picking up enough steam to barrel fully out of control, but she still kept a blatant distance between them while doing so.
It was almost as if she was too scared to touch her in even the slightest way anymore like she was a ticking time bomb of weirdness with a visibly short fuse.
It was all too much for her to bear.
Powder was almost sure she was about to be physically sick from the mental and emotional strain of trying to make sense of everything she was feeling and everything that seemed to be happening all at once around her.
She wanted Vi to stay with her but could not stand to exist as herself in her presence for even a second longer, so through whimpered breaths and the blur of her tears, she scrambled to vault herself over the back of the couch and stumble hurriedly into their dingy little bathroom.
The resounding thud of the slammed door rang in her ears and cut off whatever Vi tried to yell after her.
---
Slamming the rickety door shut and shoving her back against it to prop it closed, Powder slumped to the ground and pulled her knees up closer to her body.
She clutched her trembling fingers around her shins, nails digging into and breaking through her all too pliant flesh from the sheer pressure of her grip.
The abrupt burn of the fresh, semi-familiar self-inflicted wounds made her upper lip curl back in a pained wince.
Liquid warmth trickled over and past her fingertips, cooling as it settled into small, uneven puddles at her feet.
There was an unusually sharp sting on the inside of her lips, along with the taste and smell of freshly drawn blood, but it was hardly registering through her turbulently panicked state of mind.
The sight of so much of her blood outside of her body would surely have left her woozy any other time, perhaps even caused her to faint on the spot.
But the tears were blurring her vision too much to fully take notice of the amount as she continued to hyperventilate before yelling out, “I’m sorry! I’m sorry! Please don’t leave again! I’ll stop—I’m s-sorry I keep-- Don’t go—It just keeps h-happening--"
Words just kept tumbling out of her bloodied lips, gasped breaths cutting off individual attempts at a frenzied apology.
Each effort died before it could fully form into anything coherent since Powder wasn’t sure what she was trying to say anymore in her distress.
All she knew was that she was somehow feeling too much and not enough all at once.
Everything about the world around her became absolutely unbearable, nearly mind-numbingly so.
Every creak and groan of old pipes along the walls, which she could usually ignore, combined with the sound of air and water flowing through them, was booming in her ears.
The sweat-dampened paint coating on the door against her back felt slimy and absolutely revolting against her oversensitive skin.
The grainy yet damp texture of the blood-coated grit of their bathroom floor against the soles of her bare feet felt profoundly uncomfortable.
With every hyperventilated gulp of air, she could practically taste the mildewed stench that clung to every surface of the Undercity.
(Or at least she imagined she could taste that smell on top of the metallic tang of what she now recognized as her blood from inside her mouth.)
Why did so many parts of the inside of her mouth hurt?
Where was the blood even coming from?
Had she accidentally bitten herself at some point in her panicked state and not noticed?
It felt like there was a lot of it, but she could not tell if it wasn’t just due to the involuntary increase of saliva that pooled in her mouth any time she had to swallow back bloodied drool between quickened breaths.
Her throat felt raw, and her stomach turned from a combination of her screaming, harsh breathing, and the aftertaste of her body fluids as they flowed in and out of her mouth.
A mostly dry heave wracked her body as she clamped her now blood-stained hands over her mouth and tried to forcibly breathe more slowly through her nose instead in an attempt to both stop her downright hysterical rambling and not throw up due to sensory overwhelm and the presence of blood on her person.
“Pow Pow, please breathe with me! You’re going to make yourself sick, and we both know how much you hate it when that happens…can you please open the door? I’m not leaving. I’m not angry with you, I promise! Just let me in!”
There was a rattling of the doorknob and a slight push against her back, and that minute bit of added pressure against her skin sent unpleasant ripples of sensation throughout every nerve ending within her body.
The sheer intensity of the discomfort conjured up the unwelcome mental image of simply bursting out of her skin to escape it.
(But seeing as that wasn’t something she could or would even want to do, Powder muffled another scream into her aching hands instead.)
Her hands hurt.
So much.
Why did her hands hurt now, too?
Now that she had taken a moment to assess her physical state, a dull ache in her feet was also trying to get her attention.
If she had really focused on her body as a whole, the discomfort at the base of her spine would have been higher on her list of concerns instead of being regulated to a mere background annoyance.
But being as preoccupied with the panic of external overstimulation as she was, she only absentmindedly re-positioned her hips to somewhat ease the discomfort and pressed herself harder into the decaying wood.
Now that the radiating ripples of sensation had settled, the added counteractive pressure served as a grounding point of contact as the door clicked shut again.
As Vi eased up and stepped away, a momentary flare of alarm brought forth a fresh wave of tears.
Powder’s sensitive ears picked up the sounds of Vi moving to the opposite end of the room and stilling, followed by the sound of a deep breath in and out through her nose in that familiar way Vi tended to do when she was extremely frustrated but was trying not to let it show around her.
Through the tears and the pounding of her heartbeat in her ears, Powder then heard the muffled sounds of furniture scraping along the floor and the soft padding of Vi’s bare feet.
Her uncertain steps sounded closer to the door one moment, then further away the next, pausing several times and repeating.
~She’s leaving us. ~
Was she going to leave after all, even though she promised she wouldn’t?
~ She’s furious with us. ~
Was she actually furious with her, and that’s why she said she wasn’t angry with her?
~ She is. ~
Had she only been lying about staying to protect Powder’s feelings?
No!
Of course, her sister had not lied to her.
She wasn’t leaving!
Her footsteps did not sound like they were getting any further than the opposite side of their living area, and there was no telltale creek of the worn steps leading to the outside.
Vi was just pacing and numbly bumping into things while in her state of distress.
She was likely fighting the urge to simply plow through the flimsy doorway, which she was undoubtedly capable of doing.
Vi was clearly trying very hard to respect Powder’s desire to hide away by refraining from forcing her way inside.
She was trying to let her Powder retain the illusion of the protected space offered by that thin, fragile excuse of a bathroom door.
She seemed to implicitly understand that Powder was too panicked at that moment to let herself be physically perceived by anyone.
Vi understood that sometimes Powder just needed the space and time to level out enough to feel like she could even handle accepting any form of reassurance, even from her.
Even if it deeply wounded her not to be ‘allowed’ to do anything to expedite the process, given the circumstances, she still tried her best to respect her needs in whatever way she could.
So Vi did not press further.
As she was given room to calm herself down at her own pace, Powder continued trying to control her breathing to return to the present instead of letting her thoughts drag her away into yet another dissociative state so soon after escaping the last spell.
If Vi wasn’t going to leave her in a physical sense, then she could not be the one to check out, even mentally.
---
Despite being engulfed in molten heat not even an hour prior, Powder was now left a shivering mess as the adrenaline and passion from her emotional outburst left her body.
The discordant sounds ringing in her ears and the additional influx of other sensory input dulled closer to the usual, more easily ignored levels.
The peripherally registered aches at her extremities and lower back dissipated almost entirely before she could wonder what had caused them.
The combination of these things helped Powder finally get her breathing and heart rate back down to a state where death did not seem as imminent.
(Although a more dramatic part of her almost wished she had died, if only to entirely avoid dealing with the mortification that would surely come from the aftermath of all this.)
To be sure, some relief came with easing the more physical manifestations of her distress.
But despite this, she was still too emotionally overwhelmed to form words, and even as her breathing slowed, a part of her still felt like screaming for some reason.
Regardless of how non-verbal she’d momentarily become, she still desperately wanted to hear Vi’s actual voice, if only for it to ground her further.
Something deep inside her psyche needed reassurance and affirmation that she was not alone in this frightening moment in time.
Needed to know that she was real.
That she existed alongside her sister despite it all.
But the words to express her gratitude and desire to keep hearing her sister’s voice refused to form and make their way past her now-drying lips.
A pitiful, pleading whine was the best she could manage instead.
It was an indescribably supplicatory sound without clear diction, but she hoped it was enough.
Powder hoped it would convey her plea for reassurance in a way that only Vi could provide and understand.
An audible gasp and then the sounds of Vi’s frenetic pacing stopped immediately as she doubled back to stand directly outside of the door that separated them once more.
There was only a second of hesitation before Vi tentatively placed her hand against the cold material and slowly dragged it toward the handle but did not move to turn it again.
(Despite their physical barrier, Powder could still almost swear she felt the motion like a warm caress against her skin instead.)
“Powder? Puppy, please? Please let me in. I just need to see you. I don’t know what to do now. I’ve made such a mess of everything, and I don’t know what I can do--I don’t want you to be scared of me. I just want to help, and I—”
Vi’s wavering tone of voice told Powder that she was either crying openly in that silent way she tended to or fighting tooth and nail to keep the tears at bay, to put a braver face on for her sake.
As the words Vi had stumbled over slowly clicked into place in Powder’s mind, the sheer absurdity of the thought that Vi thought she was the one to fear had her scrambling to open the door immediately.
There was simply no way she could let her sister think that she was the one who deserved to take all the blame for something she knew for sure she had equal or more significant blame for yet again.
As the door opened abruptly, nearly sending her sister tumbling forward with her momentum, Powder saw myriad expressions form on her face in quick succession.
She heard a shaky but bracing inhale entering her lungs as her steely but reddened gaze darted around, taking in as much of the scene as possible within a few seconds’ pause.
Powder’s weary one tried to follow along after each place her sister’s eyes seemed to linger on, finally taking in her state and trying to imagine the scene through Vi’s eyes.
All the blood…
Her blood.
It was mostly dried off now but smeared along the floor and on several surfaces, caked onto her skin from what looked to be significant recent wounds.
Wounds that still stung, but now in more of an itchy, regenerative way instead of a freshly damaged one.
(This was odd for sure since despite always having a slightly faster rate of healing than most, the amount of blood present on and around her would indicate injuries that should take much longer to start to close up.)
Of all the expressions that appeared on her sister’s face in rapid succession, sorrow seemed to be the one to settle there after taking several seconds to draw her conclusions about the sorry sight before her.
“Oh Powder…This is literally all my fault. Please forgive me… you’re shaking because of me… I’m sorry! Can I…should I get closer? Is that okay? None of ‘that’ was your fault! I should have been more mindful of the moon cycle and—”
The hesitation in her sister’s body language and her disorganized words hurt Powder too much to bear for a second longer, so she didn’t think twice about reaching up to grasp Vi’s calloused hand with both of her own.
She hoped that the silent but sure plea for her to approach her fully would be communicated through her focused gaze upwards as she gave a firm tug to urge Vi to join her down at her level.
After the slightest bit of continued hesitation, Vi eventually relented and gingerly sat in front of her, with one leg tucked into herself to accommodate Powder’s bent knees and the other stretched out to loosely partially bracket her huddled form.
Powder did not miss the fact that despite there being several inches of clearance in any direction, she could still clearly feel Vi’s concerned embrace/
The ever-present instinct to protect her was as strong as ever despite the apparent attempts to not ‘scare’ Powder away with any direct physical contact that she did not initiate.
Vi’s sorrowful gaze had softened into something tentatively more focused and nurturing, her own bloodied hands firmly clamped onto her shin and fidgeting with the suppressed urge to reach out.
At that moment, Powder had wanted nothing more than to loosen the tightness in her sister’s hunched shoulders.
She would do anything to see her sit up tall, strong, and confident as usual.
Seeing her continue to make herself small for her like this was just so inherently off.
Powder reached out for Vi’s hands again, gently pried them off her shin, and slowly placed them along her face while maintaining complete eye contact.
She sniffled but tried to give her most genuine smile as she leaned her face into one of Vi’s hands to convey her trust in her and show Vi that she could be trusted to be ‘normal’ again.
The strange energy from earlier had seemingly vanished altogether, leaving only room for tender vulnerability.
“What… What even was ‘all that’ Vi? I was just having some weird dreams that night, and then I woke up, and you were just gone! And-and I thought it was because of—I thought you were never coming back! ‘That’ had never happened before, and I thought I’d grossed you out because it was so messy and—”
A funny look crossed Vi’s features just then as she spoke, scrunching her eyes closed for a second and then looking off slightly to the side in an abashed manner.
“No, Powder, that’s not why I left. What uh… That ‘thing’ that happened in your sleep is a natural response to those types of dreams, sometimes. I had to leave in a hurry because I felt like I needed to--never mind. But really, that’s nothing to be ashamed of. You were asleep anyway, so it’s not like you could control—”
Vi’s hands slowly drifted lightly upon Powder’s shoulders as a light blush spread across their faces.
She shifted slightly awkwardly, giving some light squeezes to accompany her words for emphasis.
“Um…okay... if you say so? If you didn’t leave because I grossed you out, then why…? And see? Yeah, that time I was asleep, but then this time I wasn't, and I don’t even know what the fuck happened, Vi. I was fine, and then I just…couldn’t stop. I’m sorry I’m such a weirdo, Vi. I really didn’t mean to do it again—”
A flare of outrage nearly made Vi’s eyes glow as her hands firmly grasped Powder’s upper arms, almost fully encircling them.
The abrupt pressure and intense eye contact caused her to yelp and reflexively shift her knees into a position that no longer blocked off her torso, instantly giving Vi her unobstructed attention.
“Listen to me, Powder. That’s exactly what I mean by saying it’s all my fault! I don’t know how I’m doing it, but I just know it’s something I’m causing. Some stupid ‘Alpha’ thing, I think? I’m all messed up, and because of that, I’m somehow passing it on to you and hurting you. I’m going to try to fix this, to fix me. I promise I will.”
(Powder had not missed how her sister glossed over her question and seemed to withhold some critical details and context about her part in all that happened.)
“Wait, fix what part of this? You didn’t do anything! You being gone for so long? That is what was hurting me, but you’re here now. So everything else we can just-we can just move past it. I don’t know! I mean, did ‘I’ hurt you? Are you okay now after…Well, you know! You were there!”
As the words tumbled out of her mouth, she saw Vi’s expression shift through several emotions again, a bit fonder than the previous time but ultimately tinged with a form of sadness she could not name.
She took a deep breath as her eyes refocused on reservedly inspecting the already slowly healing wounds she could see on the face before her.
Powder was elated to note that the tension in Vi’s shoulders had lessened, and the taller girl had leaned in slightly closer.
Some gears continued to nearly visibly turn in Vi’s head while her hands migrated down to grasp Powder’s smaller but now equally bloodied hands gently.
Her careful gaze lingered on her still bloody and sore fingertips, a brief flash of concern there and gone as she re-schooled her expression to something more measured and neutral.
She nodded to herself and seemed to quietly make her mind up about something after another minute or two of silence.
“That might have to be a talk to save for another time, maybe when you’re a little older. Or I don’t know… It’s complicated Pow Pow. But just… Even though I might not deserve it anymore, can you try to trust me when I say I will do my best to make things better? I will be better. For both of our sake.”
Powder could not help the confused quirk of her brow or how her mouth twisted into a pensive frown at her sister’s vague wording.
She still had so many unanswered questions, but bone-deep exhaustion from lack of sleep and emotional expenditure was rearing its ugly head again with a vengeance.
It came on so suddenly that she hardly had a chance to fend it off, and her sister caught onto it immediately.
“You look so sleepy, pup. I’ll help check that these are healing correctly, and then you can wash up while I change your sheets and get you something to change into if that’s okay with you. I’ll shower too once I get you in bed—to bed—once you’re asleep!”
The deeper blush that lit up her sister’s now even more angular face had zero right to be as adorable as it was, and if Powder weren’t nearly drifting off then and there, perhaps she would have caught onto the reason for her stuttering.
She tried not to think about it too hard, resorting to mostly non-verbal communication again, nodding and maneuvering herself to stand and move her limbs in whichever way was needed for Vi’s careful inspection.
Her touches were featherlight and fleeting, but they raised goosebumps along Powder’s skin despite the heat emanating from them making her shudder once.
When Vi looked up as she noticed the unintentional reaction to her touch, there was a flicker of intensity and recognition in her gaze, but it was there and gone in the blink of an eye.
A raised eyebrow and a silent question replaced it a moment later.
Powder just shrugged it off and half lied by explaining away the involuntary reaction with a single word.
“Cold.”
Mainly to save face and not ruin this fragile moment of peace they shared after the storm.
Vi took the offer out and stood up to her full height again, slightly forced aloofness to her posture as she smiled down toothily at her.
Powder couldn’t help but be momentarily dazzled by just how damn tall she was up close again and by the way that her more ‘adult fangy’ teeth managed to make her look both dorkier and implicitly more dangerous at once.
“All righty Pow Pow. Everything checks out, according to Dr. Vi. And as you know, I am extremely knowledgeable about such things. So you should be good to go! Get cleaned up, and I’ll have everything ready for you when you get back.”
She further played up the ‘everything is fine’ factor by roughly yet playfully mussing Powder’s sweaty hair and dramatically wiping her sweaty palm along her blood- and grime-stained pants.
As she stiffly turned on her heel and began to walk out the bathroom doorway, Powder finally found her voice again long enough to make one rushed and tentative request.
“Can I wear one of your sleep shirts? You can choose whichever one, if-if that’s not too weird to ask after—”
Vi’s steps faltered, and she stood with her hand on the doorknob, clutching it tightly, almost as if she needed it to hold herself up for a moment.
It could not have been more than a second or two of pause before she answered, but the anxiety still reared as she held her breath, ready to attempt to take back her flurry of words in a heartbeat.
But then Vi seemed to shudder almost imperceptibly once herself and just looked back over her shoulder to softly say, “Sure thing, ya little weirdo. I’ll be right here when you’re done.”
Powder turned away to hide silent but happy tears at the amount of affection and lack of malice in her tone as she uttered that phrase, a perfect peace offering if there ever was one.
They were going to be okay.
Not all was lost.
(~ Yet. ~)
With one last gentle smile, Vi turned and gently closed the door behind her.
-- To Be Continued --
Notes:
Four more Powder POV updates after this one to tie up her 'solo chapters' for this Act.
We're almost there y'all!
Chapter 16: Powder Pt 5 (Continued)
Summary:
' Vi sat up abruptly and quickly wiped off the small trail of drool that had escaped her before immediately slumping backward, almost entirely asleep again, and shaking herself awake with a snore mere seconds later.
“Hmhmh…. Powder, hey…good sleep? How sleep…uh…hi?”
Powder tried not to burst into laughter, seeing Vi valiantly attempt to fend off a yawn as she struggled to string together even a simple sentence in her sleepy state.
The soft giggle that did escape turned into a quiet gasp as soon as her eyes caught another glimpse of Vi’s now adult-sized fangs.
Fangs that went on full display when she inevitably lost the battle against the urge to yawn and stretch out the stiffness from her jaw from sleeping so awkwardly. '
-- Or --
The immediate aftermath of their Eventful Reunion and their first clumsy steps in the direction of their new 'normal'.
Notes:
It became apparent that thinking I could combine 3-5 OG chapters into one or two absolutely monstrous (by MY standards) chapters was too delulu for even me to entertain.
Especially after how much the latter half of this grew, that's just not a thing that will happen. So there will be 2-3 more Powder POV chapters after this one, okay?
'Shorter' combined chapters can hopefully mean quicker updates and less loss of momentum for me!On the upside, that means that this update is mostly 'fluff' and the first half of next will be even 'fluffier'.
[Or at least what counts as fluff by this story's standards! A little pause before we get back to the Drama™️ in full.]
--This chapter combines OG chapters 20 and 21!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
= Powder =
Powder isn’t sure exactly how long she stood there in the dimly lit bathroom, staring blankly at the bloodied mess that surrounded her before the sound of furniture being purposefully shuffled around startled her into action.
She quickly peeled off her sleep clothes, which were still sticky and damp in places, before hopping under their shower's rapidly cooling weak spray to let it rinse away what it could on its own as she absentmindedly reached behind her neck for her braid.
Now that the biggest swells of emotion had dissipated into something more manageable, what was left was the bone-deep exhaustion of being so fully mentally and physically spent that it made every slight movement feel like a monumental effort.
Powder did not let herself dwell on how perturbing it was to see the water swirling down the drain be such a rosy color as she clumsily undid her braid before quickly trying to scrub herself free of the sources she could see.
(She noted they were running out of their already watered-down unscented soap, so she tried to use it sparingly to save some for Vi.)
The sounds of distant voices made her pause mid-scrub, and she panicked slightly for a moment, unsure if the source of the sound was the strange inner voice from before or somewhere outside of her head this time.
She could almost determine what was being said if she focused hard enough.
Almost.
Her hearing was abnormally good but not that good, especially with the closer sounds of running water chattering on and around her.
The fact that it sounded muffled and far away, as if from outside the bathroom rather than right in her ears, calmed her just enough to return to mindlessly staring at the drain long past the point where the added hint of color and meager suds stopped appearing.
Again, she must have stood there lost in her thoughts for longer than she realized since she was genuinely startled by a careful knock at the door followed by Vi’s voice letting her know she was leaving her change of sleep clothes by the door.
She must’ve said something vaguely affirmative because she heard the door rattle open briefly before quickly shutting again, followed by two dull taps against the closed door to signal her exit.
Powder quickly finished rinsing off whatever residue was left on her skin and shut the lackluster spray off, taking the relative peace of a more uniform soundscape with it and opening up her sensitive hearing to all the other ever-present environmental sounds.
She busied her hands with the ritualistic post-shower task of squeezing out as much water as possible, shivering slightly from being cold now after standing under the unheated spray for longer than strictly necessary.
There were more quiet sounds behind the bathroom door as she reached for and dried herself off the rest of the way with the nearest shorter towel she had last used to leave Vi’s longer towel untouched.
(Nowhere was it clearly stated that the more oversized towels were strictly her sister’s, given that they shared just about everything they could share, but Powder had long since decided that this specific one was hers exclusively.
It had once been a slightly darker silver tone but had faded into a color that reminded her of Vi’s mesmerizing eyes and still had two caked-on paint splotches on it. Remnants of a time when the older teen had carelessly tossed it over her shoulder toward one of their dirty clothes piles from halfway up the steps as she was leaving and missed, accidentally smacking Powder with it and startling her into knocking over the small batch of paint she was carefully mixing and nearly face planted into it.
She barely caught herself with her open palms as she pitched forward, slipping slightly on the mess. In the heat of the moment, she yanked the towel off her head with stained palms and irately tossed it halfway across the room.
At the moment, her nine-year-old self was furious since she had almost perfected the exact shade of teal she had been obsessed with and initially felt it had been wasted. But later that night, Vi ‘apologized’ through a few well-placed self-deprecating jokes about her clumsiness and gassed Powder up by saying she found the handprints cute and that the towel looked better that way anyway.
So, though created unintentionally, it had remained one of her favorite ‘art pieces’ for the longest time before she could no longer stand to look at it many years later.)
It also made sense from a purely logical standpoint that the longer towels should be Vi’s, given that there was simply more of her to dry off and cover, but setting that towel aside for her was one small way Powder ‘tricked’ her sister into having something for herself.
As she stretched out and hung up her smaller towel to dry again, her heart swelled with emotion when she noticed that Vi had left one of her old favorite shirts at the top of the small pile of clothes by the door.
It was the striped one, which had already been at least one size too small on her body even a year ago, that she refused to give up on or hand down despite being unable to wear it anymore.
The sleeves were all stretched out of shape and slightly torn at the seams, and the hem and collar were frayed from having been inelegantly scrubbed ‘clean’ for so many years.
The once ‘Piltie style’ deep purple and fuchsia had lightened to something more muted but no less boldly colorful against the darker shades of the clothes Powder more typically wore.
The darker hues of her clothing had served the dual purpose of more easily concealing the dirt she inevitably picked up from running around outside and hiding her in the shadows if need be.
It was all very strategic.
She was not a natural-born fighter, and anything that helped keep attention away from her long enough to plan an escape was always welcomed.
While it no longer fit around Vi’s well-muscled torso, it was still long enough on Powder to not ‘need’ the extra cover of the loose sleep shorts that nearly reached the tops of her knees.
As they grew older, it was no longer common for them to skip out on wearing shorts or longer sleep shirts that covered their undergarments around each other, even when they slept in separate beds.
But for some reason, she suddenly felt bashful about how vast and vulnerable even those few extra inches of skin would appear if the shirt rode up at any point.
Her sudden shyness was ridiculous since her usual sleep shorts hardly covered much more of her than the shirt would, and given everything that had happened in the last few days, it made no sense for her to suddenly ‘care’ about her appearance around Vi.
It was all so strange, but she tried to write off the sudden insecurity about her physical body as another side effect of the added vulnerability she felt due to her general exhaustion.
She was just overthinking things and dipping into ‘weird’ territory, so she huffed out a breath and hurriedly got dressed before taking one more deep breath to brace herself and walk back into their room.
The first thing she noticed as she stepped back into their space was that the small table in front of their couch had been moved to rest against the wall beneath their central air vent, and the couch itself had been scooted much closer to their bunk beds.
Vi had rearranged the meager cushions they owned to sort of even out the dips and dull the ‘pokey’ parts enough to lie flat on, and her thin blanket was haphazardly draped along the back of it.
Powder’s bed, as promised, was fitted with changed sheets but also had the bonus of the distinctly irregularly shaped pillow that usually sat at the head of Vi’s bed propped against the wall of her bottom bunk.
It was no small feat that she somehow managed to show some self-control by not squealing and immediately leaping into bed to bury her face in that pillow the moment she spotted it.
(Or do anything equally odd and embarrassing.)
Vi, for her part, also seemed to make a concentrated effort to try not to make a big deal of things or draw particular attention to anything she changed in Powder’s short absence.
Choosing instead to at least appear to have regained some of her usual confidence by looking in Powder’s direction unwaveringly again, a slight intensity to her gaze there and gone once she noticed Powder quirking an eyebrow in response to the look.
The small action seemed to be interpreted in a way that had more weight to it than intended because, in the next moment, she did not miss the way the small self-satisfied smile that had adorned her features shifted into something almost edgy and ashamed as her eyes flitted between the shirt that hung loosely on her frame, her loaned pillow, then off to the side again.
Powder was unsure what to make of her sister’s continued skittishness or how to navigate the new tense energy that clung in the air around them and kept them at a marked distance from each other.
Before either could undoubtedly make things more awkward for them both, Vi cleared her throat as she picked up her change of clothes and approached the bathroom.
“I…u-uh, I might be there a little while Pow Pow. So, don’t try to stay awake for me, and I might not sleep right away anyway since I managed to get a few hours in here and there. But you look like you need to catch up on sleep, pup.”
Some lines of worry marred her lightly flushed and youthful features as she once again refused to look at Powder too directly and visibly swallowed back a bit of her anxiety before she continued speaking.
“Vander stopped by a bit ago and had a lot of questions that I wasn’t ready to answer, so I might talk to him later when he drops off some food for us. But I promise I’ll only step right outside the door to talk to him and come right back so I don’t wake you up. Go to sleep…please.”
Her sister had then been awkwardly standing by the opened bathroom door a few feet away as she said the last part, and Powder found herself almost magnetically pulled toward her bed to lie down and do just that.
She was overcome by the drive to cuddle back into the pillow and sheets, which held traces of Vi’s current scent that had clung to them from when she touched them to put them on Powder’s bed.
Her eyelids grew impossibly heavy instantly, and whatever fight or fear she had left regarding Vi leaving her sight for even a minute abandoned her psyche as she wordlessly complied.
The security of her sister’s scent surrounding her and appreciation for all her small gestures made for her comfort lulled her into such a relieved state that she’d quickly have fallen asleep then and there, even if her sister had not requested her to.
And so she simply nodded into her pillow, not the least bit embarrassed to notice herself purring quietly as she snuggled in deeper into her bed and promptly zonked out mere seconds after Vi quietly shut the door behind herself.
--
The following indeterminate number of hours blurred by in a sleepy haze.
Powder would half wake to muted but raised voices followed by harsh whispers.
What felt like only a blink.
Then, a total scene change in her line of sight.
Vi repeatedly paced behind the ‘couch bed’ she put together, eying an almost imposingly sized pile of food atop one end of the couch with a downright ravenous stare before resolutely looking away without halting her pacing.
Another blink.
Then, the sight and sounds of food being wolfed down by Vi on her knees as she leaned over the armrest of the couch, pausing only long enough to take a near-gasping breath and give a sheepish look in Powder’s direction while timidly reaching out to offer her some.
It was such a comforting sight to see her sister being so ‘Vi’ again when she didn’t think anyone was watching that sleep reclaimed her as she half giggled and half made some sound vaguely resembling a polite refusal.
A more extended ‘blink.’
Then the room was darker again, and empty food containers littered the floor surrounding the couch; Vi had one long leg slightly bent and leaning against the backrest while her other leg was off to the side, bent and touching the ground.
One arm was slung across the top half of her face, and the other squished into her side against the backrest, hand splayed on her abdomen as she snored a bit from the awkward angle of her neck.
It looked like such a profoundly uncomfortable position to sleep in, but seeing her sister’s muscular, lengthy limbs try to take up less space than possible so that she could stay mainly on the couch was endearing.
Powder fought to stay awake this time to soak in the bizarrely adorable sight.
She really did.
But her exhaustion overpowered her once more, and she still slept soundly for a few more hours.
--
The next time she awoke, she sat up fully and carefully took in her surroundings.
She noticed the murky light of day streaming in once again and marveled at how it highlighted Vi’s last vestiges of youthful roundness in features that were otherwise flattened out in harsher lighting.
The blanket haphazardly draped along the backrest was now partially drooped onto herself but mostly bunching up on the floor.
Vi was now sleeping on her side, her hands serving as a makeshift extra cushion for her head.
Their pressure adorably smushed her cheek, and despite her efforts, her bent knees jutted out precariously almost halfway off the couch.
The cramped position reminiscent of the one Powder would sometimes catch her napping in on the very same couch many years ago when she could still tuck herself back enough to stay on in almost any position, but now her limbs were just too damn long.
It was as though her subconscious mind had not caught up to the fact that the older teen’s body was no longer near the proportions of her pre-adolescent days.
The sight was simply too adorable for words.
It was too much for her heart to bear so early in the morning.
A soothing warmth bloomed in her chest at the sight of Vi sleeping so peacefully in her presence again.
She noted that her sister had strategically placed the couch in her line of sight and stayed on or near it for however long Powder took to wake up fully.
Her self-denying and doting sister had returned and kept her promise to make her feel safe again, just as she had said she would, at any cost.
This time around, Powder could not contain the little squeak of jubilation that bubbled out from within at that conclusion, and she tensed slightly, almost disappointed to see her sister startle into wakefulness at the sound.
Vi sat up abruptly and quickly wiped off the small trail of drool that had escaped her before immediately slumping backward, almost entirely asleep again, and shaking herself awake with a snore mere seconds later.
“Hmhmh…. Powder, hey…good sleep? How sleep…uh…hi?”
Powder tried not to burst into laughter, seeing Vi valiantly attempt to fend off a yawn as she struggled to string together even a simple sentence in her sleepy state.
The soft giggle that did escape turned into a quiet gasp as soon as her eyes caught another glimpse of Vi’s now adult-sized fangs.
Fangs that went on full display when she inevitably lost the battle against the urge to yawn and stretch out the stiffness from her jaw from sleeping so awkwardly.
She paused the movement of her hand as it tried to rub the sleep from her facial muscles and looked at Powder from between her fingers, tilting her head slightly in confusion at the lack of response to her jumbled question.
Powder was too taken by the contrast of her sister’s adorable actions in her sluggish state and how ‘grown up’ and 'serious' she looked compared to even a few nights ago to stop herself from openly staring fast enough.
She couldn’t force her astonished gaze away even as she saw her sister start to self-consciously pat down her sleep-mussed hair and smooth out some of the creases of her sleep clothes under its unrelenting weight.
“W-What...? Why are you staring at me like that? Is there something on my face or…? Oh! Are ya looking at these?”
There was a sudden childlike giddiness to her words and actions as she all but scrambled off the couch to kneel by Powder’s bed to proudly show off her new fangs.
For a moment, she seemed to lose herself to uninhibited excitement about sharing something ‘cool’ that answered a question they had wondered about all their lives.
(They had both wondered if their ‘real’ fangs would grow someday, just like their other teeth once their puppy teeth fell out. If they would be all that different from the ones they had already carried into their teens?)
Now Vi had an answer and visual proof for them!
So, this was a big moment!
A critical milestone moment!
For a brief moment, the ‘awkwardness’ of the last few days was wholly forgotten as Vi leaned in unhesitatingly, playfully baring her teeth and clacking them together near Powder's nose.
“Woah! They’re so much bigger now! And the other teeth got sharper, too, I think? Can I touch them? They look so badass, Vi!”
Powder was already reaching towards Vi’s face as she nodded enthusiastically and carefully guided the pads of her thumbs to gently run along their edges and length, mindful of how much pressure to apply to her hands not to hurt her by accident.
Vi’s pupils visibly dilated at the measured contact, but her goofy, toothy smile was still firmly in place, and her breaths remained even as they held eye contact.
There were no words to express Powder’s relief, noting how they could still act so ‘normal’ around each other in that excitable moment.
“Yheah theyrre prtty c--,” the words were distorted by their joined fingers crowding her mouth, so she lowered their hands, surreptitiously running her tongue over her teeth before starting over.
“Yeah, they’re pretty cool, right? They came in the other night after… w-when I…”
Her smile dropped in sync with the abrupt separation of their hands, and a haunted look overtook her features as if a wave of palpable darkness had rolled in and drained all the playful energy right out of her.
Powder knew this brief bubble of carefree ‘normalcy’ couldn’t last, but she had stubbornly hoped that it would at least hold until she had breakfast, now that she suddenly noticed how hungry she was.
“I’m not ready to tell you everything that happened while I was gone, but there are some things you should hear from me before you hear about them from someone else.”
She stood up and took to running slightly trembling fingers through her messy hair as she began to pace anew anxiously, “Vander already pulled some strings to keep an eye on things so nothing gets traced back to us, but I really fucked up the other night, Pow. ‘It’ finally happened, I think? Or like at least partially? I’m not completely sure, to be honest. Some parts are such a blur, but—here.”
She handed Powder some of her favorite snacks that seemed to appear out of thin air.
How had she not noticed there was still food in the room before that very moment?
How did Vi even know that she would want—
“Wait. How’d you know that I—”
Vi smiled sheepishly at her and said, “I think it’s one of the new things I can sense more clearly now for some reason? I can’t explain how I sense some things more strongly now, but it’s different from ‘before.’ But also, your stomach was challenging me even in your sleep with how loudly it randomly growled!”
The embarrassed bark of laughter that escaped Powder pulled a reactionary snort of a laugh from Vi, and that was all it took to set off a loop of much-needed levity.
Both girls laughed until their sides hurt, and they had to turn and face away from each other to stop laughing long enough to breathe properly.
Once they finally sobered up enough, Vi moved to sit on their neglected armchair and reached over to pat a cushion on their couch to invite Powder to sit across from her.
Much later, Powder would be all the more thankful and mournful for these moments of levity that would give her something to think back on for dreamy comfort.
But in the more immediate future, their mood-tempering value would only increase as she slowly but surely caught up on most of the sobering things she had missed while she had been sleeping or otherwise mentally checked out.
At the time, she could already vaguely sense that something had already irreparably changed between them at that crucial stage of their life.
That something was already setting off a chain of events set to explode inevitably, whose fractured shards would dig themselves deeply into the fabric of their lives and cause rifts that would only widen in the years to follow.
Powder had no way of knowing this would be one of the very last few, mostly uncomplicated mornings they would share before things between them retook an unwanted turn.
==
They spent the better part of that morning talking pretty ‘normally,’ all things considered.
For the most part, at least.
There were still traces of awkwardness and hesitation about prolonged physical contact, mostly from her sister’s end.
Powder still felt a nagging nervousness about accidentally breaking the momentary peace by being her jinxed self.
Still, background nervousness aside, she mainly felt calmed by seeing her sister being so ‘Vi’ again when she didn’t think Powder was looking.
It showed up in little things like how she would idly run her fingers through the hair on the sides of her head, pinching it or repeatedly laying it flat near the tips of her ears, a tic she seemed to have developed to gauge when it was time for another trim to maintain her preferred hairstyle.
Vi had never voiced that reasoning out loud, of course.
But Powder had surmised as much due to the way she would always absentmindedly frown in displeasure when she noticed it draping significantly past her ear tips but would refuse to stay tucked behind her ears.
Powder could empathize with disliking the sensation of loose hair brushing against her sensitive ears, a significant reason why she kept hers braided as often as possible, but she would never understand why Vi tried to tuck it down repeatedly when it had been years since the older teen had let those parts get long enough to tuck back securely.
Even now, when her hair was the longest she had seen in years overall, it seemed unlikely to settle without ‘external’ intervention.
But she figured it was an old, harmless habit that was too ingrained to change anyway, so she quietly let it continue without comment.
True to her word, Vi had not left Powder’s side all day, even though it was clear that she was beginning to get restless indoors without her usual levels of physical activity to keep her busy.
She almost offered to attempt to cut her hair for her since her sister sometimes let her do that to the shorter parts.
Even if she messed it up, they could always just shave it completely to ‘fix it’ since the Alpha girl didn’t mind waiting about a week for her undercut to naturally even out.
But with the way that Vi kept randomly freezing up and fidgeting with her hands instead of looking at Powder in the eye for very long when she moved closer, she thought it best to wait a little longer before going anywhere near her with anything sharp.
The mechanized hair trimmer she had salvaged and gotten back into somewhat working order was a little finicky and ‘somewhat’ unsafe to work with even when Vi was entirely at ease, so she did not want to risk adding new nicks for her to heal from now that the ones she came home with had freshly scarred over.
Powder was unsure if and when she would earn back the privilege, but she desperately wanted to be physically close to her sister again in a more ‘normal’ capacity.
However, the taller girl still maintained some distance between them at all times.
It was as if she felt a need to comport herself in ways that could ensure that Powder would not be nervous around her and made a conscious effort not to reach out to her first or accidentally influence Powder’s proximity in any other way.
She was making it blatantly apparent that she did not want to step into her personal space, even ‘accidentally’ if Powder did not want her to be there or behave in a way that might make Powder feel like she ‘had’ to approach her if she was not ready to.
(As if Vi’s personal space was not somewhere she would happily voluntarily live burrowed into if given even half an opportunity, and her own ‘personal space’ always belonged to her sister anyway.)
Vi kept being extra deliberate about how she took up space, never standing directly behind Powder or in her peripheral for long, especially if Powder was sitting or lying down.
Always within sight and being almost annoyingly careful about not putting her in a vulnerable position again, even accidentally.
Just generally avoiding towering over her or even unintentionally boxing her in with her anxious movements around the room and giving Powder plenty of space she did not ask for.
At one point, Powder had even tentatively offered to massage Vi’s neck as it was clear from how she kept stretching and rubbing at it that it was very sore from sleeping all cramped up on their shitty couch.
Just so she could finally get Vi to stay still long enough to relax even a little.
Witnessing and trying to calm her sister’s overtly anxious ruminating was yet another unusual thing to be on the other end of since it had almost always been the other way around their entire lives at that point.
(It stressed her out to see Vi in such unnecessary distress, but also, greedily, she wanted to have any excuse to feel their bond mending more tactilely.)
And despite how the teen practically vibrated with tension sporadically, much to Powder’s surprise, the taller girl had immediately stopped pacing for the umpteenth time and let her?
Sure, Vi had instantly averted her gaze from Powder’s look of surprise before stiffly yet zealously nodding her approval as she carefully settled down onto the floor space directly in front of her current perch.
Almost as if she could not help but eagerly accept the proffered opportunity for benign affection but still left a few inches of clearance between them, the apparent gap yet another silent relinquishment of control over the depth of the interaction.
Powder had been so proud of herself for continuing to talk normally and not squeak or purr embarrassingly with joy as she worked on loosening the tension from her sister’s neck and shoulders.
For being outwardly normal even as she noted how her skin was so warm and mostly smooth with only some slightly raised but long healed scars and an even coating of fine ruby-colored hairs providing any form of resistance against the skin of Powder's hands.
It wasn’t as difficult as she had feared it would be to keep her errant thoughts and feelings to herself as Vi’s taut and imposing muscles gradually grew pliant under her palms and fingertips.
The comfortably shared moment eased the tension from both of their bodies, serving as a soothing balm to an innate ache eating at Powder’s psyche for a while now, one that begged for such uncomplicated domesticity in her day-to-day.
For a moment, everything had felt so typical that she wondered if her lack of control over her body’s actions had indeed been a ‘fluke’ fueled by the moon cycle.
A one-off thing.
Something she wouldn’t even have to begin to worry about until maybe the next cycle at the earliest, if ever again at all, so long as she kept being as ‘normal’ as she could for as long as she could.
And if she ever noticed herself slipping into that weird headspace again…
She could just not go in all the way?
Now that she was more aware of the ‘warning signals,’ she felt she would realize she was starting to slip up sooner and prevent another event altogether, or at least she felt generally confident enough to stop herself amid another event.
At that moment, as Vi gradually relaxed her stiffened posture and leaned slightly into her touch, she was pretty sure she could catch herself before she did anything too weird again.
She now knew what to look out for, where the ‘weirdness threshold’ likely lay.
The fact that she felt entirely in control of herself despite their prolonged proximity and that Vi seemed to finally be entirely at ease under her touch again gave her hope that their relationship would mend surprisingly smoothly despite the intensity of the ripple that recent events had caused.
There was no denying that it was a significant snag that would have long-lasting after-effects even when they eventually addressed it more directly.
And for the moment, the respite from strong emotions was most welcomed.
However, despite her best efforts to stretch it out, the peaceful moment lasted only a short while until Powder unintentionally dug an untrimmed thumbnail into a sensitive spot on Vi’s neck.
And then it was as though that one tiny prick of contact undid everything at once, and all the muscle tension seemed to snap right back into place in perfect sync with a choked-off sound escaping from Vi’s throat.
There had hardly been enough time to apologize for the fumble as Vi had cleared her throat and immediately leaped to her feet, noticeably shuddered, and then mumbled something about going to get them a proper breakfast.
Soft and pliant in her hands one moment, then stumbling and sprinting away from her hold and up the stairs in the next in record time.
All in the span of just three and a half breaths.
But this time around, Vi’s quick exit didn’t elicit any true sense of panic because Powder was too busy being stumped by the fact that despite Vi’s overall visage radiating the swagger of the even more realized Alpha wolf, her skittish demeanor kept giving off ‘abused puppy’ energy in equal or even more extraordinary measures.
And, of course, Powder could not help but be thoroughly impressed by just how quick and sprightly her statuesque sister proved to be still when she wanted to be as the door slammed closed before she could even rise to her feet.
----
Vi hadn’t taken very long to return at all.
However, Powder had still managed to use the short wait to quickly file her nails down to their more usual levels of bluntness so as not to repeat her blunder accidentally on the chance Vi would even allow her to continue where she left off.
The chances were slim to none, but she had no intention of making her even more uncomfortable whether she welcomed her touch again or not, so she had even placed a cushion in the spot she previously occupied.
Just to add even a minuscule amount of added comfort and incentive without being forceful, she had mentally rehearsed how she would open up the invite for contact in a way that sounded the least desperate or awkward.
Powder could properly apologize for her actions now if she tried to push past her nerves.
She could!
Because Powder was no longer a kid, she could totally be more ‘grown up’ and correct her social foibles rather than expect others to always fuss over her like a baby to ease her shame.
Or at least Powder was ready to try harder at being more mature about it, at the very least.
She just needed to practice that level of maturity.
She did not get the immediate chance to do so upon Vi’s proud return since the sight of the large tray loaded to the brim with foods Powder tended to prefer precariously balanced in her grasp thoroughly distracted her from her goal as she sat on the armchair across from her.
The food would have been enough to completely stifle her determination to start her new ‘maturity journey.’
But then Vi had to be all dramatic about how she set down the food: first, she set it on their small table and then lifted the entire table to sit in front of Powder.
The near-casual display showed off her further enhanced strength and showcased her ability and willingness to provide for her sister.
It was nearly annoying to realize that the Alpha teen probably didn’t even think twice about whether or not she could lift both things simultaneously without a struggle.
She could just do stuff like that.
Like it was nothing.
Just like how she had carried her deadweight clean off her bunk the other morning while ‘forgetting’ to struggle and--
Well, there went her hastily made plans for immediate personal growth and attempts to not think about ‘It’ again so soon.
She guessed she could also just work on that over time and enjoy the readily offered display if she kept most of her thoughts and hands to herself; character growth did not have to happen overnight.
But slight slide backs aside, she could still salvage this moment and turn it into a growth opportunity.
She could pivot.
Be adaptable.
She could stop herself from regressing and being a whiny puppy freaking out about things not playing out exactly the way she mentally prepped herself for.
Powder tried not to deflate once her awestruck stupor subsided visibly, and she took the hint to move on that the added physical barrier between them was meant to convey.
They continued to talk as if they had been sitting in this arrangement the entire time from that point on.
The energy was still comfortable between them, and she did not miss the way that Vi sneakily took over the conversation after a few minutes so Powder could eat her fill mostly uninterrupted before she cleared off the rest.
There she was again.
‘Her’ Vi.
Back to her unsubtle ‘subtle’ ways of ensuring Powder didn’t go without, even if it meant going with little or nothing herself.
Back to being her silently tender self towards her and asking for nothing in return for her efforts.
None of it felt ‘performative’ either because no one else was there to impress or give her any form of accolade for her gallantry.
Powder simply accepting her offering seemed to be compensation enough as she spotted the shine of contentment illuminating her features so brightly that no amount of temperance could fully dim.
And it was all just so lovely.
After the much-needed long rest and a full meal, Powder was starting to feel a lot more present in her body, and she noticed that the weird, intrusive voice from before seemed to have started quieting down to nothing.
It had already become a near-silent murmur since she woke up and realized she was no longer physically alone earlier that day, and even calling it that had felt like a stretch.
(At the time, some proper sleep and food in her belly seemed to be all it took to make the ‘noise’ all but disappear for long periods. Having Vi around to keep her grounded in the present had been a happy bonus she didn’t realize she took for granted until it turned and became an added terror.
It became a terror because the more logical part of her psyche knew she was not actually there anymore, so her presence would only denote a new level of ‘bad’ for her.
On the worst days, years later, she would scream and cry all alone in her mine shaft until she eventually passed out for a few hours at a time due to sheer exhaustion from not sleeping or eating anywhere near sufficiently for days on end.)
Food and sleep seemed to do wonders for her baseline levels of anxiousness, and all its unwelcome manifestations, and Vi’s presence proved to be still a near cure-all for all that ailed her.
Who cared if the voice had freaked the heck out of her while she was alone?
Vi was back, and the voice seemed to retreat to wherever it had come from.
Problem solved.
It was hardly worth mentioning to Vi so as not to worry her anew and ruin the peacefulness of their first day back together since Vi already had plenty of worries taking up space in her mind according to the parts of her time away that she had slowly relayed to Powder.
Powder tried her very best to assuage some of those worries by telling Vi she was not some ‘monster,’ as she kept describing herself between barely restrained tears and muted half-sobs.
Because she wasn’t one.
At least not in her eyes, if that mattered enough.
Those goons had it coming!
It was self-defense!
There were strong emotions and the pull of the moon involved.
Any of those or even simpler justifications were enough for her to quickly dismiss the very idea that she was anything but heroic in all this.
Heck, if Powder was being truly honest, she almost wished she could have seen Vi take down those faceless losers who dared to hurt her when she was down and vulnerable.
If she had not fought back, she might not have even made it back at all, and that would be so much worse than anything Powder could ever imagine.
(Plus, she remembers that she had fought to school the likely inappropriate amount of glee she felt during the slightly censored retelling of the most violent events. She had not wanted to put too much thought into why she was not as horrified as she likely should have been, why knowing it was Vi who quickly overpowered so many trained burly men made it more exciting than scary to hear about.
But seeing the distraught expression on her sister’s face had told her that maybe pride and awe were not the ‘socially acceptable’ reactions regarding a real-life event full of violence, so she had fixed her face as much as she could.)
And surely the world would not miss cowards like them anyway?
There was no telling how many women and men they had callously beaten to a pulp under the guise of ‘doing their job,’ so Vi just returned the favor for them.
As far as Powder could tell, nothing of value seemed to be lost with their demise.
Vi had simply removed some of the trash in overabundance around these parts anyway, so what was the big deal?
All in all, Powder was not too worried about it, and in case anyone did care about them enough to investigate the matter, Vi said that Vander told her he would ‘handle it’ anyway.
And she implicitly trusted he would.
Vander had never failed either of them in any way that genuinely mattered because he was a man of his word and knew so much about many things.
So all they would need to do was keep lying as low as they usually did, being extra careful not to make any ‘public displays’ of their more wolfish nature in the areas closer to home so that things would not be traced back to them.
Now that they knew that at least one of them could shift at all and likely would again, they could start planning accordingly to prepare for the next cycle.
They could grow from this.
It did not have to be something to dread; it might even become something to celebrate!
Powder was nearly sure of this much, if nothing else, because she really wanted to see what Vi would look like in her changed form!
With enough planning, almost anything could be made less scary and overwhelming, and they had all the time in the world.
Right?
And so, for a bit longer after this morning, they managed to continue making good on their end to protect their family secret.
But unfortunately, only for a little while.
-- To Be Continued --
Notes:
My stalling until I had more canon content/backstory to work with for post Act 1 divergence has made it so I'm cutting it prettty close y'all!
I had the partial misfortune to stumble into partial spoilers but thankfully only enough to give me confidence in the direction I have ALWAYS been planning to take this story in once I tie up this part of it.
I will continue to 'patiently impatiently' wait for S2 proper but man I'm even MORE hype for it now.
And if people are still interested, I am very much eager to continue this story after a short break as S2 airs so I can mine it for more canon details!
Chapter 17: Powder Pt 5 (Continued AGAIN)
Summary:
' There was something so right and even necessary about how naturally freeing and empowering the action felt now that she had allowed herself to let go.
It took a minute to process that she had produced the sound, but once she had righted herself, she caught a glimpse of Vi’s dazed expression before shifting it into a proud grin.
The taller dork had barely contained her excitement at seeing how quickly Powder caught on and improved.
So the congratulatory playful slap to her back had a little more force than Powder was expecting, but she still bounced excitedly in place, looking up at Vi’s smiling face expectantly. '
-- Or --
The Howling Lessons™️ chapter.
a.k.a
This angsty author's valiant attempt at a fluffy 'bottle chapter' before The Mess©️ kicks off again in earnest.
Notes:
Alright, so this one used to be Chapter 22 of the original, and I considered merging it with one or both of the remaining 'Powder POV' chapters.
But as I was rewriting it, ideas came to me that I hope will smooth out the jump to the events and tone of the following two chapters/next combined update. Because...you'll see.
And all that 'new New' backstory and expansion of what was already written amounted to ~3k words/nearly double the word count. So now it will almost be a 'standalone chapter' rather than one that necessarily gets retold from Vi's POV later, as usual, since it adds so much Powder/Jinx-specific backstory to the overall fic.
As such, it will yet again MOSTLY 'intentionally' get a bit hard to separate between past/present/future tenses and whatnot for Plot and Narrative Purposes™️ since, as S1 suggests, Jinx tries to separate herself from 'Powder.' Tries to protect herself by acting like she is not that person anymore at all.
So, whenever I can, I try to reflect that line of thought and the repetitive nature of some of our thoughts in the writing.
Anyway, I hope my ramblings add more context to the process and that the new content adds 'believable' backstory, characterization, and whatnot.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
= Powder =
The weeks that followed flew by in a whirlwind of excitement and discovery.
They were full of moments that Powder would cling to for comfort in her darkest moments, many moons later in a future she had no concept of.
All Powder knew then was that she had her sister ‘back’ for a glorious pocket of time.
Or at least a version of her that was closer to the one that had started slipping away even before everything that transpired in those final few months they spent together and that she had feared was gone forever after that one momentous moon cycle.
The one that was almost entirely carefree and playful in ways that did not radiate uncertainty at every turn and was excited to teach her as many new things as possible once again, things that only Powder could understand and make use of.
She was making more time for Powder again of her own volition without Powder feeling like she had to thrust herself into her orbit.
Without having to beg for attention pathetically.
Vi was discovering new aspects about herself that arose from her first shift, and she seemed genuinely enthusiastic about sharing most of them with her as soon as she felt she had any mastery over them or deemed them worth noting.
Awesome things like how she continued to grow at a steady pace of nearly an inch in height every week and about as much every other week in the circumference of her muscles.
They knew this because they checked and recorded the information together and because very few of her favorite clothes fit her the way she wanted them to, at a faster pace than ever before.
The snug fit of her clothes was a source of great annoyance to Vi, as it hindered the flow of her movement and kept her slower than Powder most of the time.
But Powder would be lying if she said it did not bring her great joy and even entertainment to see Vi move more carefully than she usually would to minimize the ripped seams they had to patch up at the end of a particularly active day.
(Assuming the clothing items could even be salvaged at all. She had obliterated half the wardrobe that typically would have gotten her through a few more months before setting aside to hand down within weeks. )
Powder had no idea she could get that much bigger so quickly.
After a certain point, it had started to become an inconvenient ‘issue,’ but it was one that she had gladly resolved in her quest to smooth out the snags of trepidation between them.
Looking back, one could argue that how she ‘solved’ the issue denoted the subtler beginnings of the distortion or outright erosion in her moral compass that would occur over the years.
But at the moment, it was something new and exciting to do during the lulls in her days that made her feel useful again.
Spending hours throughout the week finding targets with builds and styles similar to Vi’s to slyly ‘permanently borrow’ clothes from on her behalf became a fun way to hone her trailing and tracking skills.
She made sure never to stray too far from home, just far enough that no one she knew would recognize her and rat her out to Vander.
Her sister caught on rather quickly to her exploits since clothes she had never seen before kept getting snuck into the ‘dirty clothes pile’ between washes that all seemed to be about her size and style.
Vi only halfheartedly chastised her and told her to wait to ‘strike’ on days she was free to be on standby after she quickly coaxed a ‘confession’ out of her, more touched by and proud that she had yet to get caught or hurt than anything up to that point.
Perhaps it should have bothered her that Vi had immediately placed a boundary for her fun that involved depending on her protection despite having proven that she was competent enough to go without it for some things.
But at the time, she had just been thrilled to have gotten her sister’s approval and that the promise of her guard gave them another reason to spend more time together without anyone intruding on their bonding time.
It felt like her ability to be stealthy when she really wanted to be, due to her practiced skill and generally small size, was being valued all the more as Vi grew exponentially in the same period.
With that much mass to gain so rapidly, it became endlessly entertaining to see how much food her sister could put away whenever the opportunity arose.
Sure, she could eat more than most would believe she could if given the chance and encouragement, but Vi seemed to become a bottomless pit in those weeks of perpetual growth spurts.
It was a wonder she could fit it all in so fast and still be up for another meal mere hours later.
And the way she became proportionally stronger with the added muscle mass was also enthralling.
Of course, she had been strong as heck before her first shift, but in those weeks, testing her new limits became yet another game for them to play together.
At the time, she mostly giggled about ‘becoming a living weight’ for her sister to use and include in her training because she delighted in the feeling of being turned into just another weighted implement Vi could move with barely any effort.
Back then, it was pretty fun to be made to feel as small as she was instead of feeling ‘insulted’ by the thought of not being perceived as someone who posed a genuine threat to those around her.
Being thrown around so easily was not demeaning back then because she knew it also took its own form of strength and athleticism to hold herself with just the right amount of tension when needed and spring into movement midair when required.
There was a purpose to it in that context, and her short and light form made her all the more useful back then because she was part of a set.
An extension of her sister’s might.
She’d lost count of the number of times they had practiced evasive and distraction maneuvers that involved her getting a boost from her sister in some form because it was all so frantic and tactile.
There was a comforting instinctual synchrony in how their bodies could so easily adjust to the push and pull of the other, with few words exchanged once they were locked into a groove.
Powder commended herself for pushing down any weird ‘swoopy’ feelings that would arise when she felt the flexing of muscle tissue through their combined layers of sweaty clothes.
For how she would manage to mostly ignore or even be able to pretend to ‘hate’ the feel of Vi’s sweat transferring onto her clothing and skin when they got close like that, like she used to dislike in the past, mostly due to having hated feeling ‘sticky’ in any prolonged way as a younger child.
She commended herself for being conscientious enough about her limbs and keeping them from lingering too long anywhere they might not be welcome outside of their typical roughhousing.
Honestly, she managed to be mostly ‘normal’ about things for those first few weeks.
Mostly.
Usually.
The awkwardly intrusive thoughts and feelings, as she would grow to become even more familiar with them over time, simply could not be helped sometimes.
Whether she knew the words to name these burgeoning impulses or not, her body would sometimes refuse to listen despite her higher mind’s best attempts to make them disappear or at least lessen them.
Of course, some days were easier than others due to the nature of their bonding activities, such as those peaceful nights and early mornings when Vi would take her on special trips to various desolate spaces to howl to their hearts’ content.
Those outings played on repeat in Powder’s mind for various reasons throughout the months and years that followed, to the point where she couldn’t discern whether or not they happened the way she romanticized them or if she had made most of them up entirely.
They, along with many other happier memories of this time, would often eventually just jumble together and morph until she could not tell if she hadn’t just made them all up to cover up the bad times.
Despite it all, some key moments became such deeply ingrained core memories that they seemed nearly impossible to fully corrupt.
Moments, such as the night before the first of those howling sessions, had really been seared into her memory because she remembered just how palpably anxious Vi had been.
She almost seemed fearful about trying to convince her to follow her to a secret location in the early morning hours, likely still in her head about not wanting to make her feel threatened by her presence accidentally.
Or also perhaps nervous that even if Powder readily agreed, it would not live up to whatever she imagined awaiting them at the secret destination.
She seemed to be just one firm refusal away from giving up on ever sharing whatever small shared adventure she had in mind and never bringing it up again.
This seemed so silly to Powder because her slight hesitation had nothing to do with any possible ‘shortcoming’ from her sister; she would always be happy to be included in anything she did.
Her hesitation lay in the unfamiliarity of that particular area of the Undercity since she so rarely ventured away from the paths Vi had scouted out for her in the past near their home or the further-off ones she joined the rest of her siblings on during joint outings.
Another part of her hesitation was due to her vision not being as good in the dark as Vi’s had become.
They quickly discovered this early on when the lights randomly shut off as they were making their way up to the bar one afternoon, and while Vi barely missed a step, both literally and in terms of pausing what she was saying for only a second, Powder had acquired some light bruising and nearly chipped a tooth when she tripped up the staircase she could no longer see.
It was a truly undignified way to learn something new and different about each other, indeed.
So the trepidation certainly had nothing to do with Vi herself; Powder had already decided to readily return to trusting and believing her sister’s words at face value again but realized that perhaps Vi still needed more time and reassurance.
Because of that realization, she vividly remembered how undeniably encouraged Vi became once Powder vocalized her trust that whatever they would do would be fun, especially if it was just the two of them.
And so that following early dawn, after waking her gently, she had taken Powder’s hands and gotten on one knee to be at just about the same eye level to tell her that what she wanted to show her was only meant for them to know about.
Something special.
And Powder’s still groggy mind had reeled with exciting possibilities, but none would compare to what the ‘special secret’ had turned out to be.
It was the start of a short-lived shared ritual that was both somewhat dorky and endlessly endearing, one she would miss dearly in the ‘after.’
---
Despite Vi getting turned around once or twice after trying to reroute to accommodate Powder’s anxiety-induced muscular stiffness and sweaty palms that prevented her from traversing more challenging terrain to the full extent of her usual ability, the trek was surprisingly short.
Or at least it felt that way since she had vacillated between quieting her inner fretful dialogue and using all her concentrated willpower to only intensely focus on every movement Vi made ahead of her so she could replicate them herself.
And not to let her lingering stare of concentration cross over into a leering gaze despite how astoundingly fluid and sure her movements had already begun to become despite the relative novelty of her even more rapidly changing body.
The first week or two after her first shift, the Alpha teen kept accidentally bumping into things and stumbling over herself, reminiscent of the unintentionally hilarious way she had after her first significant growth spurt many years prior.
Her sense of balance was a bit slower in catching up to her increasing mass, and her spatial awareness still needed to account for the extra inches in height and heft.
So, it was safe to say that her traversal prowess had taken a temporary but significant hit as she adjusted and corrected the expected clumsiness that came with such drastic changes to her composition.
But by the time of that first trek, she had almost returned to the same confident cadence she had honed before ‘the change.’
(Powder quickly realized that witnessing it from behind had become quite distracting that early in the morning for reasons she refused to think too hard about lest she completely lose her footing and train of thought. Slowing them down even further.)
Thankfully, once they reached their destination, Powder had gotten preoccupied marveling at the isolated nook she never would have discovered for herself or ventured to alone if not for Vi’s guidance.
The challenging terrain in their jagged but short descent seemed to be deterrent enough to keep away any halfway intelligent or cautious creature within a large radius, or so she ascertained from being unable to hear or smell any sign of life after about the halfway point of their journey.
It would be absolutely terrifying to find herself alone in that space, but it felt strangely comforting knowing they were so far away from all other distractions and annoyances and that it was just them there, just as Vi had pledged.
She took a few extra moments to poke around the space, idly taking note of the areas of rubble that would offer the best hiding spots and vantage points on the off chance that they might suddenly be ambushed by random gangs of miscreants who would dare venture out that way.
Powder did not doubt that, given the terrain, she and her sister could put up a decent fight or outright outmaneuver them and escape.
Still, it never hurt to be vigilant since there had been an uptick in dangerous weaponry repeatedly falling into the wrong hands in all areas of the Undercity, and it was not like either of them was indestructible.
Not even Vi’s further accelerated healing factor would be of much help against a barrage of bullets or a flurry of deep and well-placed incisions without adequate dressing and time to heal, so it couldn’t hurt to take precautions.
Vi, as usual, just let her do her ‘overly wary’ thing while trailing her with her eyes for a few minutes before using her foot to loudly sweep off some loose gravel from a slightly raised, platform-like stone on the ground before giving it two dramatic stomps to draw Powder’s attention and gesturing grandiosely towards it.
“All right, come over here, Pow Pow; I want you to stand here and give me your best howl. And I mean, go all out on it, and don’t hold back. We’re way out here so that the sound will just mix in with the sounds of the machines and all that other crap anyway. It’s also good and dark enough down here that we’d be hard to spot from above anyway. Just let loose. It feels amazing! Trust me.”
And she had.
And it did.
She felt silly and awkward at it at first because, in the past, they had only jokingly played into that part of their innate nature, never truly putting any serious effort into it.
The reflexive urge to mind her volume, as she always had to do to some degree closer to home, and nervousness around the unfamiliarity of the action kept automatically tensing up her vocal cords.
So, her first couple of howls were not particularly loud or had much might behind them; they just sounded whiney and childish to her red-tipped ears.
She sounded like such a puppy.
It was so embarrassing!
Her inability to loosen up had her hunching over, covering her eyes with one hand in shame while clutching the other to her stiff throat and growling in frustration after those first ‘failed’ attempts.
She felt like she would be told they were wasting their time and that they should head back home at any minute.
Powder was so sure of it as she blinked back tears under the cover of her hand.
But Vi had only continued to look at her with such a fond sparkle in her eyes as she carefully used her powerful hands to rub out some of the tension of her throat and neck and ease her into a better posture.
She did it so gently that Powder could not help but blush even more profusely at the tender attention, immediately halting her negative spiral.
“Hey, hey, it’s okay, Powder. Here, this will help you brace yourself for it better. You can do it! I know you’ve got a bigger one in there; I can feel it! Really dig deep in there and focus on the feeling of the sound leaving your body.”
Motivated to make her sister proud and take her encouraging words to heart, Powder dried off a stray tear and focused on following through on the next howl.
And that first fully committed attempt had literally blown her clean off her feet.
The sheer volume alone had rattled her eardrums and knocked her off balance, but the novelty of her vocal cords shifting to accommodate such a rich and prolonged sound also seemed to rearrange something in her brain.
It had shifted something into place there as it disoriented her momentarily.
That first ‘real’ howl was just not a sound she had ever made before, and the feeling of it coursing through her was bizarre but so natural at the same time.
She had felt almost lightheaded from how quickly some of the pent-up stress she had not realized she was holding within her body seemed to ease out of her as the richer sound reverberated from the rubble around them.
There was something so right and even necessary about how naturally freeing and empowering the action felt now that she had allowed herself to let go.
It took a minute to process that she had produced the sound, but once she had righted herself, she caught a glimpse of Vi’s dazed expression before shifting it into a proud grin.
The taller dork had barely contained her excitement at seeing how quickly Powder caught on and improved.
So the congratulatory playful slap to her back had a little more force than Powder was expecting, but she still bounced excitedly in place, looking up at Vi’s smiling face expectantly.
(She had tried not to let her face fall at the realization that Vi would likely not be placing her guiding hands on her again for subsequent attempts due to her quick learning for the rest of that morning. The disappointment hit swiftly but passed nearly as quickly as the rest of the day’s events played out.)
“See? I told you there was a better one in there, Pow! That was amazing! All right, now you’ve gotten a feel for it, so I bet the next one will be even better. But just brace yourself a little more for the kickback. Even I get a little disoriented doing it sometimes, so that’s normal.”
And that second one had been marginally ‘better,’ if only just because she had not fallen on her ass that time.
Just barely, but still.
But also, objectively speaking, even she would have said it wasn’t that bad of a howl if she had heard it from someone else.
It was almost respectable even.
There was some soul to it that the first halfhearted attempts lacked.
She had no idea she could yet embody such gravitas with her immature vocal cords, but she had managed to do so anyway at Vi’s reassurance.
She remembers the brief spike of alarm when she heard what she initially thought was strangely pitched stuttering growls from behind her immediately following that second ‘true howl.’
Wondering if she had done something horrendous somehow.
But upon turning and seeing Vi’s peaceful face looking down at her, she realized with a slight surprise that the odd sound had been Vi purring.
And loudly.
Her purrs alone sounded so much more profound and powerful than they used to, and Powder realized that these deeper sounds were just her new ‘happy sounds’ and not an angry vocalization.
This was just Vi entirely at ease.
Unencumbered by that same drilled-in warning to conceal the more animalistic aspects of their baser nature to some degree at almost all times lest they draw unwanted attention to themselves and their family.
The sound was heavy and pulsing, and in a different context, it could have been misconstrued as ‘threatening’ despite her not even trying to sound so imposing.
Something alluring about its fullness had thrilled her in a primal way, and she remembered being overcome with the need to know just what else her sister was capable of doing with her more mature vocal cords now.
A quick flashback to the last time she had heard similar sounds from Vi had her turn away from her so quickly that she almost gave herself whiplash to hide the deep blush that washed over her as she composed herself.
(That was yet another trail of thought she had annoyingly found herself trying to consciously put a stop to at the most random of times with frustrating frequency. It had been one thing to only have a vague concept of ‘things’ before the events of the previous full moon cycle, but now that she had experienced some of them for herself with Vi, albeit ‘accidentally,’ her mind simply could not seem to let her move on from it even though they had not brought it up again at that point.)
Powder had managed to pull the ‘weirdo’ reigns back just enough not to ruin the wholesomeness of their bonding moment but measuredly yielded to the need to feed that curiosity in an alternative way as she giddily goaded Vi into joining in.
It was a foolish action as she had no idea what she was in for.
She had been unprepared for how the swirls of emotions and thoughts crashed into her all at once as Vi’s mischievous grin gave way to the magnificence of the combined sight and sound of her rearing back…
And just…
Just rattling Powder down to her bones with an unfathomable longing and reverence.
Nothing could have prepared her for the way the air around them seemed to practically undulate due to the sheer amplitude of sound that made its way out of Vi’s throat.
Powder had been utterly enthralled by how the sound seemed to be built up from the energy of every tensed muscle, every tendon moving in tandem to carry it out from deep within herself.
Her throat visibly bobbed as Vi added some flair to the deep sound, and her chest expanded to take another quick breath to prolong the entrancing sound once the first came to a natural end.
Powder could do nothing to stop herself from openly gaping at the hauntingly beautiful display of skill.
Somehow, her sister had already become amazing at this, too.
Of course, she had!
By that point, she had already become so good at it that she managed to turn what could easily be a bone-chilling, near-deafening series of sounds into something Powder instinctually recognized as a song meant only for her.
Powder had not even noticed when she had fallen back to lean on whatever solid structure was nearest in her stunned state, but she pushed herself off it, finding the strength to remain upright once more through the sheer yearning to answer that primal song that called out to her.
It was for her and her alone; she knew it wholeheartedly.
(Despite her open admiration at that moment, an intrusive, insecure train of thought snuck in and didn’t let go of her then. It wondered how her own would even begin to compare, especially considering that she had not shifted yet. That nagging insecurity about her perceived shortcomings compelled her to deepen the tone of her answering song and not let herself be ‘weak’ in her sister’s more generally mature presence.)
Once Vi had tapered off her booming howls and turned her hopeful, adoring gaze down towards her, Powder had set her brow in determination and called upon every ounce of energy reserves she could to try and mimic what the older teen had just done.
The first attempt was utterly off-pitch, but Vi drew no attention to it, simply providing her own guiding howl to help Powder along and encourage her to keep going.
She almost managed to match it for a few moments but could never quite maintain the deeper timbre that did not come naturally to her.
Her younger vocal cords simply could not sustain such notes, but she did not stop trying to force them to until her voice cracked from the effort.
And after reaching that point, she still did not stop trying even as it began to hurt.
She did not stop trying even after Vi’s howls took on a slightly fretful tone.
Powder just kept pushing through and through the burn.
She did not stop until unwelcome tears escaped her; it was hard to tell whether from the sustained effort or the sheer beauty of the moment they were sharing.
Powder had gotten so lost in emotion that, for a few moments, everything else except her and Vi disappeared.
She would have happily continued for a while longer despite the pain, but at the sight of her tears and the undeniably broken sound of her howls, Vi had stopped abruptly to look down at her with her own swell of deep emotion.
Seeming to have understood some deeper meaning behind Powder’s broken cries without speaking and rushing over to envelop Powder in a hug so tight that her muffled apologies for ‘ruining the moment’ could not be differentiated from her wet sobs.
She didn’t ask what was wrong or display any hint of judgment towards her.
Powder would not have been able to give her a solid reason behind her sudden breakdown at that time anyway, and to this day, she cannot quite recall what had been going through her mind as she pushed herself to break.
The rest of that day may have faded from her memories, but she never forgot how Vi had simply cradled her in her arms for what felt like hours, rumbling out deep, comforting, thrumming purrs until her sobs ebbed enough to breathe calmly again.
---
The next few outings they had dedicated to that form of ‘stress release’ had gone far less embarrassingly for Powder as she now had a better idea of what to expect from her emotions and physical capabilities.
Eventually, she even strengthened her puppy vocal cords to a degree that enabled her to almost hold her own next to Vi’s naturally stronger ones.
Sure, her versions of howls, growls, and the like remained far higher pitched than her sisters in general back then.
But she had grown more confident that someday she’d get her more adult vocal cords, too, and then she would be able to really pack a punch behind her vocalizations.
Over time, she even discovered that while she could not mimic her sister’s more ‘Alpha-like’ sounds at a louder volume; she could still get surprisingly close at a comparatively quieter volume.
It was not easy or natural for her body to produce these rougher sounds; she had to put conscious effort into it every time she tried, especially in those early days.
But much like when she pushed herself to match her sister’s volume during their howling sessions, her throat would become raw and scratchy for a while after as she tried to deepen her growls in private out of boredom repeatedly.
In those days, she would be chastised for and discouraged from intentionally irritating her vocal cords in this manner, so she only got to test her limits more thoroughly and often until much later.
Years later, she’d regularly lose her speaking voice nearly entirely for entire days at a time and sometimes most of the following day when she pushed herself extra hard with her combined screams to the point of bleeding.
By that point, no one was there to tell her not to anymore, and the raspier tone her voice would take on as her throat healed up from the abuse was far too fun to toy around with.
But back in those ‘before’ days, the few times she got away with doing it made her feel like she sounded more grown up and tough, even if the effects were not permanent.
Or at least not then, because she allowed enough time for her vocal cords to heal correctly.
During those days, it was very infrequently that she pushed nearly as hard as she had that first session, and Vi had tried to tell her many times that their howling sessions were not a competition and that she just needed to be patient with herself.
She tried to tell her that it couldn’t possibly be healthy for her throat to go through that healing process so often, even with their naturally faster healing, and that eventually, her vocal cords would mature to make her sound more ‘proportionally’ intimidating on their own even if she had yet to shift.
Vi also tried to reassure her that she liked the naturally lighter tone of her vocalizations and that she found the sweeter sounds so fittingly endearing and even beautiful.
And sure, at the time, those comments initially made Powder preen as if they were the highest praises possible because her sister had probably genuinely meant them to be.
But over time, as Vi continued to grow in ways she simply would never be able to, a tiny seed of resentment would plant itself into the darkest recesses of her mind, in a place where it would remain neglected for as long as she got to still bask in the radiance of her sister’s approval.
Back then, when Vi was still tangibly there for her, it had never really struck her just how complacent she had been about not striving harder to be someone who wasn’t nearly spinelessly dependent on others’ protection.
How little she would fight back when Vi would tell her she did not have to do something that made her uncomfortable or was particularly difficult because she could take care of it for her.
She would resent her past self for not ‘toughening up’ sooner, for letting herself wait until some indefinite point where it would become more blatantly necessary before committing to more self-reliance.
Because once that ambiguous ‘future point’ came much sooner than she expected, she was left to flounder alone.
---
In hindsight, there were countless things she wished she could have done differently, but of course, at that time, without knowing what the future held, it had served her well enough to remain small and be perceived as vulnerable.
To be something to protect and to tend to by the person she loved the most in the world.
Because, at the time, it wasn’t so ‘bad’ to be weaker if it meant she would be doted on by her favorite person and kept at the center of her world as well.
When she had no one else to ‘compete with’ or compare herself to, her insecurities held minimal power over her day-to-day life.
Powder was perfectly content to remain in her more docile role when their world was still self-contained.
But even so, it still seemed unfair that even if she had ever shifted for the first time and did so at a younger age than Vi had, she would always be so many steps behind her.
She would just never be as naturally intimidating as Vi was.
Never be as naturally influential and commanding of respect as her sister, even as a teenager.
These things would be far from her reach simply because she was not born an Alpha.
Powder had been doomed to be a jinx her entire life due to being born an Omega.
Sure, it was not like she had anyone else to compare herself to thoroughly, but as the years dragged on, she continued resenting that she felt convinced she had to have been born a particularly small and weak pup.
The dark seed of resentment had already been there in those early days, but it would not have much of a chance to ‘bloom’ until much later because having Vi in her life meant that she never really had to think much about what it would take to survive without her there to support her.
She had never really considered what it would be like to fight her battles alone, mentally or physically, and not entirely by choice someday.
No, she had zero idea she was unwittingly feeding into every part of herself that she would genuinely resent later in life by letting Vi convince her they were ‘not so bad’ for so many years.
Then again, how could she have even conceptualized the sheer scope of the misfortunes that still awaited her when everything even remotely good in life seemed all the more remarkable, and the bad was not that ‘terrible’ when endured by Vi’s side?
They were just two parts of a ‘perfectly imperfect’ singular being as far as Powder was concerned.
Even then, both were undoubtedly damaged parts, but they were still complete as long as each had the other to lean on if the other faltered.
Regardless of what life threw their way, they always seemed to find a way to set things back on course again.
Eventually.
So, despite the initial hesitancy around each other following the events of the previous full moon, they were finally well on their way to finding a new sense of balance and stability while navigating the newer developments in their relationship.
It had been so blissful for those few precious weeks; even the one leading up to and through Vi’s second shift passed without much ‘incident’ despite her sister’s superfluous worries beforehand.
Everything was almost perfect again for a while until, gradually at first, then seemingly all at once, strangers had to barge in and try to steal her sister’s attention away and burst Powder’s blissful bubble.
-- To Be Continued --
Notes:
I'm STILL unaccustomed to writing 'fluff' so as always I never manage to keep it 'fully fluffy'.
The angst and neurodivergence always manage to sneak through, but I tried!
They're both trying!
We're out here doing out Best okay?Anyway, I worry that the following chapters I'll need to combine will grow this much as well since they gotta cover so much ground before we finally reach this a.u's version of Canon S1 Act 1 territory without dragging on.
This will kind of suck for ME since I have to actually write it out and edit it myself, but the readers might welcome another long a** update.
See y'all next time!
Chapter 18: Powder Pt 5 (Continued Yet AGAIN)
Summary:
' Fixating on the what-ifs of it all, given that she never got to learn firsthand how she would have fared in reality, became one of her go-to twisted ways to work herself up in the ‘after.’
The fact that she never got to find out for herself would haunt and frustrate her for years on end.
What she did find out firsthand back then was that she was enough of a freak that even if the world had been set ablaze around her in those moments, she would have still been wholly incapable of looking away from how things played out before her for even one second.
Despite the quieter internal voice repeatedly telling her that it wasn’t right for her to be there to witness any of it, she still could not help but love every twisted and forbidden second of it. '
-- Or --
An overly inquisitive teenage Powder spies on Vi to assuage some doubts and concerns and ends up 'accidentally' learning much more about herself and the Alpha teen than she initially bargained for.
Notes:
The World might never fully understand how much of a struggle it was for me to write out this part of the story the FIRST time without imploding.
Or how frustrated I had been with how it turned out because I lacked the ability to add the layers to it that I felt it deserved.
Even after this rewrite, in which I added nearly 4k words on top of the reworded 2.1k, I am still somewhat uncomfy with it for understandable reasons.
In this version, I still did my best to not be explicit with anything that didn't directly serve the plot of this story. I don't condone any of these unhinged behaviors and even 'Jinx' is aware that something is definitely off center with the both of them for it so...yeah.
But the line between what past 'Powder' is experiencing and what future 'JINX' is remembering/recounting/etc to herself blurs even more drastically here.
So heads up!
CW//
As is repeatedly emphasized throughout this FICTIONAL work: nothing 'happens' between them directly anywhere near this point in the timeline.Because as 'Jinx' said herself in the show, "Sheesh, I'm not THAT crazy."
This part, well more like the entire fic thus far really, is intended to inform what their dynamic eventually twists into as adults in this AU.
So this is very much the chapter where that 'Voyeurism' tag is earned so be warned that the Thematic Elements™️ are gonna Thematic Elements here.
Dead Dove, Do Not Eat type situation.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
= Powder =
There is a significant chance that Powder’s determined efforts to be as ‘normal’ as possible around Vi were to blame for becoming so deaf and blind to the warning signs that something was quietly amiss beneath their renewed peacefulness.
She should have known better than to think that even back then, things could simply snap right back into place and never shift out of it again just because she wished for them to do so.
Being the cursed creature she’s always been, Powder should have figured there had to be a price to pay for her perceived sudden upswing in good fortune.
Because there always was one.
Always.
So maybe if Powder had not been so contented and willing to accept every bit of added open affection at face value, she might not have been so blind-sighted when the pieces finally clicked into place and revealed what had been staring at her in the face for weeks.
If she had pieced things together more gradually and had time to plan accordingly, she might have gotten a better grip on the thrashing, gnawing thing that reared its ugly head at the epiphany.
She might have even managed to comport herself even remotely appropriately.
Had she not been so self-centered in her fixation on not being overtly precocious around Vi, she might have foreseen that all her efforts at compulsory ‘normality’ would only lead to a tipping point that should have been visible from miles away.
Vi had come home smelling a little ‘off’ a handful of times but never quite off enough to be blatantly evident and concerning.
Especially not to someone trying to be less invasive with her sense of smell out of respect and self-restraint.
And the ease, particularly after her second shift, with which Vi suddenly seemed to be able to hold her for more than a few seconds at a time again but still not looking her in the eyes at times, even weeks on from that particular moon cycle, should have been at least a cause for mild curiosity.
It was silly of Powder to think that just because she put so much effort into correcting her own ‘little weirdo’ behavior, Vi would suddenly decide that Powder’s controlled forms of love and affection alone would be forever enough for her again.
And really, how could she have turned such a willfully blind eye to the rumpled clothing and sometimes still visible marks Vi would hastily, strategically, throw a towel over on her direct march to an additional shower for the day?
(She did remember thinking Vi had been taking showers much more frequently and smelled like she had hosed off somewhere in between double showers a few times. But she assumed that maybe the new habit was a ‘wolf thing’ that made her feel the need to rinse off urgently and often.
Honestly, such levels of more innocent delusion back then when she still tried to be ‘good’ should have also been indicative of how bad they would eventually get once she stopped caring so damn much about living in reality and behaving ‘properly’ around people she should not have given a single fuck about. Stupid, useless people-pleasing Powder.)
She could have focused on those telltale signs of admission of guilt and figured out that something was decidedly changed without intruding and inadvertently ‘escalating’ Vi’s secretive behaviors by getting not quite secretly involved.
But no.
What eventually set her on her intrusive path was her preoccupation with the fact that while Vi seemed able to wash off most of the ‘externally sourced’ foreign scents with her extra showers, she could not rid herself of the miserable scent of a new type of sadness she seemed to carry everywhere.
It was becoming so commonplace in the overall composition of ‘Vi’ that Powder had almost become nose-blind to its presence.
Almost.
But leave it to her ever-present sense of curiosity and preoccupation with trying to get to know every aspect of her sister she possibly could to lead her to ‘messing around and finding out’ more than she should have at that age.
Or, depending on who you asked, knowing more about her sister’s ‘private affairs’ than she was entitled to know ever.
Honestly, she was unsure what she expected to find out that she hadn’t already pieced together sufficiently in her mind’s eye.
She could have left it at that surface level of knowledge and not made it even more challenging to reign in the ever-evolving, envious, and possessive green monster growing inside her.
Powder was no longer blissfully oblivious to Vi’s ‘special scent’.
That door of awareness had been kicked wide open over a month prior and could never close again, so that information helped her recognize such scents more easily from others whether she wanted to or not.
At times, she wished it had never opened because once it had, she could no longer pretend not to have a better mental picture of what was likely happening right under her nose.
And once the final pieces snapped into place, that realization was almost all she could focus on.
They were all she could focus on.
The imagined scenarios and the nearly all-consuming quiet ire began to boil beneath her skin at the thought of them occurring without her knowledge.
Who the heck were these faceless people who were doing indescribable ‘things’ with or to Vi?
Were they purposefully doing more than what she and Vi had done together unintentionally?
They had to be if her sister had been going out of her way to seek these people out, presumably for that sole purpose because she could.
After all, that was a more ‘normal’ thing to do with other people, right?
Or at least that’s what she had kept telling herself at first to try to calm herself down when the nearly murderous levels of jealous anger threatened to overpower her already more impulsive teenage mind.
She kept telling herself that Vi was getting closer to being an adult in almost every conceivable way, closer than she was at least, and that she had every right to do more 'adult things' with people her age or older if she wanted or needed to.
Powder was miserably aware that there was no way to force her physical self to ‘grow up’ any faster and that even if she somehow could speed it up, or if enough time passed for it to happen naturally, Vi would still never even consider her as a first option when it seemed clear she was not short of any more viable offers already.
In her mind, it was so painfully unfair that there was nothing she could do to change her standing with Vi on such things due to such technicalities and ‘appropriateness’ or whatever.
So if her sister was in such a hurry to go out and do those ‘adult things’ with people Powder did not know before she even stood half a chance to catch up and prove she could keep up if given the opportunity, then that was fine with her.
Vi more than deserved to have such desires met at her age.
It was healthy.
And totally fine!
(Okay, maybe not ever entirely ‘fine’ in her eyes, but potentially sort of OK if she had tried extra hard to feign total ignorance of its existence. And if she had beat her complicated feelings down to a pulp instead of letting them breathe, then perhaps that could have changed things enough to stop the worse things from happening not long after what came next.)
Maybe things would have stayed ‘fine enough’ if she had minded her damn business and kept this realization quiet and let the things that were happening remain out of sight and mostly out of mind.
If she had let them remain largely a mystery, she could have avoided stumbling right into another point of no return.
A barrier she should not have crossed at that time, or perhaps ever.
But there she had been, nosey little Powder just had to use her stealthy skills to follow Vi in secret and violate her trust and privacy in a way she had never done before.
Sure, she told herself she originally ‘only’ intended to follow her long enough to get a general idea of where she occasionally disappeared to late at night.
She told herself that she only wanted to find out how she was meeting these people, just to satisfy a fraction of her curiosity and assuage her fears that she might potentially be endangering herself when she need not be just to hide these outings from her.
But that simply was not true.
Obtaining that first tidbit of information had not been enough.
The curiosity for and her need to see where it all led was just too damn intense, and so she stayed far longer than was even remotely justifiable once Vi reached her destination.
And it wasn’t like she had not had multiple opportunities to ‘jump off’ and turn back to prevent things from going as far as they did even that first time.
She could have left when she saw Vi shoulder her way in through a backdoor of some seedy bar she had never seen before and called it a night instead of blaming her lurking in her hiding spot for nearly half an hour on her hesitance to make her way home alone because she did not trust herself not to get lost.
It was a believable enough excuse, but that was not the entire truth.
Powder wanted to see how long Vi would stay inside and if she would give up and head home if she did not find what or who she was looking for in a short enough time so as not to raise more suspicion about her absence.
She could have left as soon as the Alpha teen impatiently shoved that same door open and somewhat nervously, yet fully charmingly, guided some unknown woman outside to a more obstructed point in the alleyway.
But Powder blamed not leaving then either on wanting to ensure no one else would sneak up on the pair while they were otherwise clearly distracted and ‘occupied.’
If anyone asked, she would have said she was just playing the role of a good sister by standing by, ready to help keep her older sister safe in any way she could, even though she was historically not an exceptionally competent hand-to-hand fighter.
Excuses, excuses.
Truthfully, teenage Powder and her rampant hormones had just been too damn eager to devolve from simply being a ‘little weirdo’ to becoming a full-on little freak at the first real opportunity.
But it had been one thing to imagine what her sister could be doing in the shadows that she tried to hide from her and a whole other animal, as it were, to see her suspicions confirmed and play out right before her eyes.
She still could have left right then, as Vi cautiously closed in on the woman who looked up to her with a particular look in her eyes and a flirtatious grin that instantly had Powder tensing her vocal cords to stop herself from growling and giving herself away.
She still could have pried her lingering gaze away as Vi used one hand to turn that woman’s face in the opposite direction of where Powder hid.
But the way that her sister made no move to cover the woman’s mouth to silence the breathy chuckles that turned into something else as Vi began to move against her in a decidedly more than ‘friendly’ manner lured her in and did not let go.
It was sickeningly invasive for her to continue to gawk at the display openly, but she was too enthralled to move by that point.
It had already been taking all her concentration to keep her breaths somewhat even and relatively quiet while also remaining mostly upright, given how badly her knees wanted to buckle from everything her heightened senses brought to the forefront of her awareness all at once.
From the hypnotizing visual of Vi’s strong arms and back flexing as her free hand ‘disappeared’ in front of herself, obscured by her body.
The feverish sounds the two women were both producing.
The maddening scent that the pitiful ‘breeze’ carried in her direction.
Powder did not need to get any closer to confirm what Vi was doing with that obscured hand, seeing as how the other woman’s hands were scrambling for a place to latch onto to steady herself from the sheer force of their combined movements.
Even back then, despite having no experience with such an action, it was still easy to guess where it had gone.
This perhaps was the most clear-cut final jumping-off point, but she still simply waved at it as it passed and continued staring straight ahead despite the warning sirens screaming at her to stop being such a disgusting creep.
But some things were seemingly not within her youthful willpower’s limits to control, especially in the dazed state she found herself in.
Because as much as she had fought back against indulging in the increasingly inappropriate thoughts that snuck up on her and left her body buzzing with pent-up restlessness, especially in the weeks following the reunion that remained seared into her mind, there were rare occasions she had let them win before that night.
It was no longer often that she was isolated enough to have the time to let herself slip and fully explore ways to ‘scratch’ the recently awakened ‘itch,’ but she had still let herself attempt to on a few occasions.
She never achieved true ‘success’ with them, though, and her blundering attempts mostly led to ever-growing frustration and confusion.
Before that first night, when she followed Vi on her secret rendezvous, her clumsy attempts to seek relief never really went anywhere, and she had begun to think of herself as broken in yet another way for it.
The failed attempts at finding any true enjoyment from that type of behavior on her own left her practically in pain long before she could find any form of reprieve from the perpetual tension in her body like others seemed to be able to do regularly, with or without anyone’s assistance.
Vi included.
Before that life-altering turning point that first night turned out to become, she had already begun to resign herself to a life of perpetual inner frustration since even on the rare occasions that the biological urge to try again surged powerfully, a cold shower seemed to be far less torturous than listening to it.
It had already started losing any potential appeal long before it could become a thing.
Something always felt missing and not clicking for her in the solitary act, so surely her body was not wired to work ‘that way.’
Or so she thought.
But then there she was, practically fully hunched over with one hand trying to silence her increasingly harsh breathing as her other hand reached down on its own accord with purpose like it never had in previous efforts.
There had been zero conscious input in the action.
Her body simply seemed unable to do anything else to stop the sudden sense of urgency from making her do something even more impulsive, like crying out for Vi at that moment.
From crying out to stop her from doing what she was doing or from paradoxically encouraging her to be even rougher with this stranger for reasons she could not immediately ascertain.
The fact that neither Vi nor the stranger seemed to have any intention of showing restraint in terms of using force to get what they needed had fully awakened some savage part of Powder’s psyche, the same part that had her finding increasingly twisted enjoyment in their shared form of ‘roughhousing.’
That part of her mind had taken complete control just then as she greedily took in the sight of the woman clawing at Vi’s back with her legs braced against her sides, digging her nails into her with enough mercilessness that Powder was sure there would be bruising and welts left behind despite the layers of clothing between them and Vi’s skin.
The display was indisputably intense and borderline horrifying in more ways than one.
But seeing her sister so unencumbered by the chains of overprotective concern she kept herself bound to around Powder was also absolutely entrancing.
It was thrilling to see and hear her take great pleasure in losing herself to the moment, especially from an ‘outside perspective’ where she could thoroughly soak it all in.
At the time, for a fleeting moment, she remembers worrying a little for the woman’s general well-being because of how roughly they were moving against each other.
How some of the cries of pleasure were almost indistinguishable from cries of genuine terror and pain in any other context.
That aspect of the act was almost frighteningly concerning the first time she witnessed it since she had no way of knowing if those random women’s bodies were even built to withstand and recover from the punishing pace Vi set, presumably in the interest of time more than anything.
At first, she even wondered how such a brutal, painful-looking physical experience could still seemingly be enjoyable to anyone.
She wondered how these strangers would welcome such an encounter openly upon first meeting Vi and even praise her for it afterward before amicably parting ways, never to meet again.
Much later, when she’d inevitably revisit these memories, she would often lustfully envision herself in those women’s places, fully convinced that had Vi ever come to her for it, in some alternate reality, she would have been entirely willing and capable of handling that type of 'roughhousing' as well.
Or worse, if she needed to take it even further than what she witnessed her doing.
Maybe.
She thought she would still have welcomed the challenge even if she cried a little or a lot throughout and afterward.
But perhaps she would not have even been able to hold out long at all and ruined Vi’s fun long before anything had a chance to get ‘good’ for both of them.
Regardless of how realistic or otherwise, her mind kept finding new, inventive ways to spin that scenario as the years dragged on and the final traces of her innocence were gradually eroded.
Fixating on the what-ifs of it all, given that she never got to learn firsthand how she would have fared in reality, became one of her go-to twisted ways to work herself up in the ‘after.’
The fact that she never got to find out for herself would haunt and frustrate her for years on end.
What she did find out firsthand back then was that she was enough of a freak that even if the world had been set ablaze around her in those moments, she would have still been wholly incapable of looking away from how things played before her for even one second.
Despite the quieter internal voice repeatedly telling her that it wasn’t right for her to be there to witness any of it, she still could not help but love every twisted and forbidden second of it.
And perhaps, had it lasted longer than a few minutes at most for Powder, she would have had more time to process what she had begun to do to herself impulsively at the sight.
Perhaps she would have had time to recognize that doing such a thing almost immediately was not the most 'appropriate' reaction to seeing her sister having sex with a stranger before it was over.
Surprisingly and pathetically quickly.
For herself, at least.
Long before either of the people she was spying on had even concluded what they knowingly set out to do.
She might have been embarrassed about how fast it happened if she had had any way of knowing it was even possible for someone to ‘conclude’ so rapidly on their own.
Especially without even meaning to do it in the first place.
Well, she didn’t necessarily ‘mean to do it’ the first night it happened, at least.
That first time was basically an accident!
Honest!
But on the positive side, that ‘accident’ unwittingly showed her that she was not ‘broken.’
(Well, not in that specific sense, anyway. There had definitely been something profoundly askew with her in a general sense long before that night, that’s for sure. But apparently, that worked just fine under the weirdest circumstances.)
On that night, she quickly learned that the situation’s ‘wrongness’ was what made it work for her so swiftly, especially when it usually took so long to get nowhere otherwise.
And so, despite a more honorable inner voice fighting valiantly to be heard over the sounds of her anxious heartbeat in her ears, the sensation that had yet to fade fully had been profoundly pleasurable enough to have her immediately yearning for more.
It made her yearn to be enveloped in Vi’s scent immediately following that abrupt ‘conclusion’.
For comfort or something.
Or even so that she could have even a fraction of what she imagined the random woman had received as Vi continued to move against her with bruising force with her muscular body.
Oh, how she had yearned to have a matching bruising physical reminder of that moment so that she could press down on it later to prolong the healing process just a little bit longer and relive it in some twisted way.
(That troubling line of thought and behavior had been something she had secretly indulged in more often purposefully under markedly different circumstances in the days between her voyeuristic endeavors, as Vi’s roughhousing had once again become more infrequent and measured.
So much so, any visible and tactile reminders of her touch became increasingly rare. So naturally, she became fixated on this shift in behavior after what she witnessed and experienced that first night, as her mind made a compelling connection between gratification and visible ‘evidence’ of it.
And she couldn’t help but stew in envy over the fact that these random women got to keep their physical reminders of Vi’s touch for far longer than she naturally could. Thus, another of her self-harming habits was born that she would never fully grow out of.
A habit that only got worse as she would later come to know.)
Powder had been so caught up in her deep-set longing that as the last waves of sensation waned, she slowly regained her senses.
But not quickly enough to stop herself from making the critical mistake of taking one urgently gasped breath once she realized she had not taken one for several seconds while entranced.
The unquestionably audible sound, to their sensitive ears at least, caused her to swivel her head back in Vi’s direction and freeze up on the spot as she held her next fretful breath immediately and stayed as still as possible on her still wobbly legs.
She remembers most vividly the ice-cold wave of dread at potentially giving herself away as the total weirdo she had already discovered herself to be that first night.
But somehow, despite focusing almost all her energy on catching any signs that she had been found out, she inexplicably missed the slight hitch in Vi’s tempo as she tilted her head minutely up and to her right.
Almost as though she were listening for something originating from Powder’s exact location.
The action had been so subtle, compared to the brisker motions of her and the other woman’s bodies, that it did not make it overtly clear if she had indeed noticed she had a secret spectator to the night activities.
Especially not as she fully turned her head to face forward after a few seconds and seemed to double down on her concentration, almost like whatever she had caught onto renewed her vigor, and her movements immediately became less mechanical for a few moments.
And as mesmerizing a sight as that was, Powder did not want to push her luck again that night by being pulled back into the moment and missing her opportunity to make her long overdue exit.
So she had forced herself to turn away and used the last vestiges of her self-control to resist the temptation to turn right back around as the sounds of a thunderous guttural growl, followed by a nearly howled moan, reached her ears and almost brought her to her knees.
By some miracle, she just ran instead.
She ran as swiftly and nearly silently as she could manage in her haste and took one of her life’s quickest yet coldest showers the minute she got home and bodily threw herself into her bed so hard she nearly bounced off the back wall from the speed.
And if Vi had any suspicions or concerns as to why Powder’s hair and clothes, which were clearly different from the ones she had worn when she had snuck out earlier that night, were still visibly damp when she tiptoed down the stairs not long after, she did not voice them.
She likely did not have the time to anyway, as she hastily but cautiously grabbed random clothes to throw on after her quick shower while Powder tried her best to feign sleep and calm her still-racing heartbeat.
There was zero chance that either was not hyper-aware of the other’s presence just then and of the weight of some unspoken thing that pressed them to say something then and there.
But both of them simply refused to give in to the pressure.
They didn’t speak a single word to each other during the hours they spent pointedly facing away from each other as they lay in their separate sleeping arrangements before they eventually gave in to the need for sleep.
(And they certainly did not speak a word about ‘it’ the morning after either, as both sported slightly darker circles under their eyes than usual. Powder had done her best to ignore Vi’s noticeable efforts not to wince every time her shirt rubbed against the fresh scratches Powder knew lay beneath it.
The scratches had yet to heal and were likely still tender from Vi scrubbing herself down so vigorously mere hours earlier, as well as the mental and physical stress’s effect of the entire ordeal on their accelerated healing factor.)
They did not talk about ‘it’ after that first time or any of the few subsequent times Powder tried her luck again after quickly becoming addicted to the thrill of possibly being ‘noticed’ while she crept and called out on it at any given moment.
To the rush of getting so close to being caught red-handed outright and blatantly shamed for it.
She probably should have stopped after that first instance and not indulged her morbid curiosity even further in subsequent occurrences.
But still, she deluded herself into thinking that the second time, it was ‘only’ to see if Vi was returning to the same woman again.
She told herself that she just wanted to know if there was any real danger of losing her sister’s affection entirely to this random woman and if some form of clear attachment was forming.
Powder thought that maybe if she knew Vi only shared those unobtainable parts of herself with strangers she had no intention of seeing again, it would make it ‘easier’ for her to relinquish them begrudgingly to them.
The second time she trailed her, to her relief and disbelief, Vi did meet with a different woman.
And to anyone with more shame and a less obsessive mind than her, just the glimpse of a clearly different woman should have been enough secretively and pathetically obtained ‘evidence’ to walk away from the situation before anything else ‘happened.’
But Powder, it turned out, was not one of those types of people because her brain refused to take that as confirmation enough that Vi was not particularly attached to the admittedly attractive long-haired stranger from that first night.
(Her body also seemed to refuse to be ‘normal’ about what she couldn’t seem to pull her lecherous gaze away from, so she repeatedly stayed every time she followed Vi. She was disgusted with herself every time she did ‘it,’ but she could not resist the impulse to do it again. And again on the same night, which had been unheard of for her before those nights
It just felt too damn good to let go of the more virtuous version of herself that she had tried to cling to, the one that had already begun to erode long before those depraved outings.
Later in life, she wondered if that idealized version of herself was ever ‘real’ since it continued to become apparent that her wires had likely been crossed since birth. Fighting to pretend they weren’t for the sake of ‘propriety’ had become increasingly exhausting. Even more so as she grew older and the whole ‘hormones and pheromones’ thing kicked in and obliterated any sliver of a chance she had ever had to be an average amount of strange.
So, she gradually justified her continued indiscretions by telling herself that releasing some of the twisted tension that built up within her in that ‘secret’ way would keep her from slipping up in a more ‘public’ way.)
Powder had always been a clinger in many other ways, and clinging to these delusional justifications for her weirdo behavior was no exception.
So, she did not stop after the second night because she ‘needed’ at least a third round to confirm or disprove her suspicions about a potential pattern.
And that third night, Vi had gone to that same woman from the first night again.
That second time Powder watched them; she saw that Vi had even let the vile woman reach under her shirt and carefully nip at her just below the chin more than once.
As if she had any right to go anywhere near those sacred parts of her body when even she, the person who had known her the longest at that point in her life, was not ‘allowed’ to touch in that way.
Vi had never displayed that level of vulnerability and intimacy with anyone Powder knew of.
Ever.
It was unnatural.
So then, obviously, Powder needed an additional round to disprove her findings from the third round because she did not want to accept that Vi might care about this floozy in any capacity.
Or acknowledge that her sister might even have a ‘preference’ for people very different from her for this type of interaction.
For any reason at all, for that matter.
But then, in that fourth round, the chosen woman of the night had lighter-colored hair that draped down her back in a loose braid but was considerably shorter in stature than the previous two had been.
The fifth and final time she admittedly followed her, it was mainly because it had become an almost conditioned behavior by then, and she had been seeking physical relief from her jealousy-fueled tension more than caring about who Vi would ‘meet’ on that night.
(Her greed would become her undoing because there wouldn’t be a sixth time after the fifth, leaving her more frustrated and confused than ever before as Vi headed in a much different direction than usual in more ways than one.)
Powder should have known then and there that night would be drastically different from all the others when, to her greatest horror, that tall indigo-haired woman made yet another appearance.
She should have known it would be drastically different when she led a strangely bashful Vi by the hand to a less secluded area, where they then proceeded to mostly just talk to each other for a while before they parted ways after one final purposefully less urgent kiss and a soft smile.
Disgusting.
She almost gave herself away more than once that night while biting back the urge to vomit from how hard she fought to tamper every instinct within her that told her to do something to pry them away from each other.
The tenderness of their interaction and the docile behaviors her Alpha sister displayed that night felt like a more significant ‘betrayal’ to their special bond than any of the more primal displays of pure physical desire could ever feel.
This was something else entirely.
Irrefutable familiarity between people who recognized each other and wanted to know more beyond the satiation of a carnal need that could not be helped.
Powder didn’t remember how she got home that night, but she knew she didn’t even bother with a cold shower because there was no heat to rid herself of that night.
She was too shell-shocked and numbed to feel anything other than bone-deep exhaustion and the desire to sleep as soon as possible in hopes of waking up having only imagined what she had witnessed.
When she briefly woke sometime in the night to Vi’s familiar light snoring that indicated deep sleep, she was involuntarily made aware of the remnants of the saturated, mild scent she resentfully realized belonged to That Woman permeating the air she breathed.
The unspoken game of who could hide their big secrets the longest had decidedly shifted into something that was no longer fun for Powder in an instant and became something painful that she would rather pretend had never begun in the first place.
She could not express her true thoughts and feelings about what she had witnessed because it would mean she would need to confess to what she had done to discover what Vi had not wanted her to know yet, if ever.
To admit she had breached her trust and right to privacy repeatedly.
And she simply could not risk losing her sister over her lack of restraint.
She couldn’t!
So Powder had resigned herself to pretending none of ‘it’ had happened and did her best to ignore the reoccurring cloying presence of That Woman’s scent beneath Vi’s regular scent following the next two or three outings she stopped trailing her on.
Vi, for her maddening part, still tried to act ‘normal’ around her all day and continued to avoid acknowledging anything she might or might not have noticed was amiss between them.
Back to avoiding giving voice to uncomfortable truths.
Back to lying to each other and themselves.
Circles and circles.
Powder once again tried to convince herself that it would all be fine if she pretended extra hard not to care if Vi had a life outside of their shared one.
She tried to remind herself that she wanted her sister to be happy and to feel loved and fulfilled in every way possible.
Even if it meant ‘outsourcing’ some of that love and fulfillment to other people.
If she did not see it, she could ignore it after all.
At the very least, she could genuinely appreciate that Vi kept that part of her life away from the home they shared and made it a little easier for Powder to still keep it in an ‘other’ category in her mind.
Something separate from the ‘reality’ she wanted to believe in.
The one where That Woman only existed elsewhere.
The one where home was home.
Whatever happened outside their home didn’t matter as long as it stayed there.
It didn’t truly ‘count’ otherwise, or so she deluded herself.
Everything would be fine if Vi reserved most of her time and attention for her, as nature intended.
This blip was survivable.
Powder needed to wait until the older teen eventually got bored and moved on.
It was all temporary!
Just like all the other bumps in their shared road of life, this one would also pave itself over if they let it.
She repeated those things to herself to keep her feelings of envy and a near-crippling sense of jealousy under a semblance of control so that she could function, but that precariously maintained sense of self-control would collapse on a random Thursday late afternoon.
On an otherwise perfectly ordinary day that abruptly descended into chaos when that bitch of a woman dared to cross into their shared territory for the first and last time.
-- To Be Continued --
Notes:
I semi purposefully severly underslept and overly caffeinated myself before most of the times I set out to break new ground on this update to try to really up the 'unwell vibes' of it.
Because Powder is only gonna get more troubled from here and That Event™️ hasn't even hit her frail mental stabilty yet!
So, yikes.
But I hope it was still somewhat coherent enough to follow/move the narrative along. 😅
Next up: the final solo Powder POV chapter for this fic and after THAT, we finally check up on the 'Vi side' of things during this point in the timeline.
Chapter 19: Powder Pt 5 (The Final One)
Summary:
' The fact that it even felt so damn difficult to control something that had been previously largely dormant all her life while Vi herself seemed to be able to keep it so separate from their interactions was driving her crazy!
There was just no way she was not feeling ‘affected’ by whatever was going on that they refused to draw attention to.
Not knowing whether or not she was imagining the ongoing, maturing tension between them made her want to beg for answers outright.
She wanted to plead with Vi to explain what was happening to her because it made her feel so much, seemingly suddenly.
It made her feel so out of control in new ways.
But she couldn’t even broach the subject because the Alpha teen refused to let either of them acknowledge any of it was happening and went out of her way to double down on pretending Powder was still as naively innocent as she once had been.
And Powder hated it.'
-- Or --
No amount of suppression or denial can keep an ever-growing and possessive jealousy monster from clawing its way out of its cage at a rather inopportune moment.
Unimaginable long-term consequences be damned.
Notes:
Yeah, so I'm not gonna make my self-imposed 'deadline' of having this all rewritten/concluded by the time S2 drops, but with good reason since these chapters keep doubling in word count or more.
Which, yay, more AU 'lore' and whatnot, but as I keep saying, I have no beta, and my brain is too neurodivergent for such long swaths of writing and things to keep track of.
But I keep trying anyway, even if it takes forever, and life keeps kicking my a** every step of the way.I hope this mess was worth the extra wait! HAPPY HALLOWEEN, AWOOO!!
(I refuse to abandon this fic, dammit!)
CW//
Self-harm. Bad coping mechanisms. Teenage sexuality. Violence. Thematic Elements. Etc.Again, Powder is acting out on her ever-maturing inappropriate feelings for Vi in the most unthinking and ill-timed manner. Feelings amplified by the nature of what she is and her general instability.
Neither may fully understand what Alphas, Betas, Omegas, and mates are in words. But their natural territorial and possessive instincts don't care about what they believe is within their conscious control.
So then, a situation like this was practically inevitable.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
= Powder =
The more she looked back, the harder it became to pinpoint precisely when the worst of her self-destructive habits truly took hold.
But one thing she can be sure of is that one of the most persistent of them certainly did not start on that particular Thursday night.
No, she would never give That Woman that level of lasting power and influence over her life.
Powder could not be entirely sure, but she had theorized that this particular form of ‘self-punishment’ might have stemmed from the various times she had unintentionally collected temporary ‘trophies’ while learning to traverse varied terrain as an even clumsier pup.
Before she learned to roll into her body’s momentum instead of sliding with it improperly, she would often scrape her elbows and palms when she threw her arms out in front of herself to try to keep her teeth and chin from taking the brunt of the impact whenever she lost her footing while practicing her jumps or when running from Enforcers.
(Many years and near faceplants later, especially with the additional physical trauma that came as a product of her ‘illicit’ hobbies, it would be an absolute wonder how she made it for so many years without chipping any of her teeth at the very least. The intrusive curiosity to discover if her teeth could grow back if she yanked one out or if the gums would simply heal closed had been one she had yet to be stupid or delirious enough to indulge. Not yet, at least.)
Getting bumps and bruises always hurt, but Vi’s help cleaning up the scrapes afterward never failed to lessen any lingering pain tremendously.
After a certain point, ending the day with scraped-up forearms and hands had become such a common occurrence that Vi had gone out of her way to find a way to procure some quality, seemingly nearly indestructible yet still malleable hide to form into protective sleeves for her.
She had made them slightly oversized to leave her some room to grow into them, but even though they were on the loose side, they usually gave her most scrape-prone areas a decent protection barrier against re-injury.
This gesture served as excellent proof that her sister cared deeply for her well-being by trying to lessen unnecessary minor injuries.
She also believed in Powder’s resilience and skill to avoid worse injuries on her own accord.
There was love in that she wanted Powder to learn from her shortcomings by not stunting her growth and fully babying her forever.
Powder loved that about her sister, that she had always given her small ways to build her confidence on her own terms throughout their time together so she could learn some things for herself.
But if Powder were honest, she’d sometimes purposefully let the slightly oversized sleeves slide a little too low so they wouldn’t cover her completely.
Just for the thrill of potentially exposing herself to ‘accidentally’ reexperiencing that same previously reoccurring sting.
For the odd near ‘nostalgia’ of it all.
The occasional not entirely ‘unintentional’ laceration was not something she fretted over back then and even less so as the years went by because, at some point, she had discovered that most superficial lesions tended to heal relatively quickly.
Some of the shallower ones, like the occasional nicks she sustained when tinkering, would heal so quickly that she could even pass portions of her slower days watching them heal in morbid fascination.
It was not something she did intentionally all that often because aside from the stinging pain that would then shift into annoying itchiness in the final stages of healing, she did eventually catch on to the fact that if done repeatedly in a short time, the extra energetic expense on her body would genuinely physically drain her.
(Her body would legitimately start consuming itself even more rapidly than usual to heal the wounds, which was very taxing, especially when she would be too anxious or forgetful to eat as much as her metabolism demanded. A problem her sister rarely had in those days. She never lost her healthy appetite, not even when stressing over getting Powder to eat more during those phases and temporarily eating less herself.
Vi always kept the drive to keep it alive, and as soon as she had the chance to, her Alpha wolf ensured she ate enough to refuel and maintain her hard-earned physique. Her complete refusal to eat or seek out food was so rare that Powder only had memories of a handful of times it ever happened; it was usually only when something made her very physically ill. But even then, when she could keep enough food down, she would try to recoup her losses as soon as possible without being repeatedly prompted.
That inner drive was something Powder never really seemed to develop naturally. So, looking back, it was not surprising why and how she never managed to get anywhere near her genetic potential, ‘Omega limitations’ or not. Not until she forced herself to try to embody it later in life, out of spite mostly.)
It had started as something that likely would have been a naturally explored point of curiosity for any more well-adjusted werewolf pup, something fleetingly indulged in and then abandoned as part of the ‘growing up’ process.
But over time, like most similar things in her life that deviated slightly and then continued unchecked, what began as innocent inquisitiveness and investigation eventually took a darker turn when she found herself hurting herself deliberately.
Things took a decidedly darker turn when she found herself doing it with the express purpose of ‘externalizing’ her mental anguish, the type of anguish that built up when her emotions bubbled up for so long that the urge to release them became too strong.
When she was a child with even less impulse control and self-consciousness, she would have usually resorted to throwing a full-blown tantrum regardless of the time and place when things overwhelmed her to that degree.
But as she got older and ‘society’ influenced her to worry more about appearances, she grew to force herself to internalize more of her most negative thoughts and feelings until they built up to the point of needing urgent relief.
And at least back then, when she was still surrounded by people who gave her reasons to actively care about the impact of externalizing such troubling emotions in ways that directly affected others, she felt trapped in a closed loop without reprieve.
Trapped, trapped, trapped.
Forever trapped.
Or at least she felt that way until her mind made yet another of its twisted ‘connections.’
After that happened, when she realized that calculatedly digging in just a little deeper than the occasional unintended cut gave her a worrying amount of instantaneous relief and distraction, it became one of her most shame-filled but trusted sporadic coping mechanisms.
Because at least, in her mind, doing such a thing meant that no one else got hurt or affected at her expense.
No one else had to know just how much weaker she was than her family, not just physically but mentally as well.
This form of ‘weakness’ she exhibited was almost too easy to conceal and would have posed a more significant risk of becoming dangerously near deadly addictive early on in her life had it not been for Vi’s steadying presence.
Because while it was troublingly easy to conceal things from her other family members, Vi was just too damn attuned to her, even during periods where she had withdrawn from her to varying degrees for her private reasons.
As with anything else Powder thought she was being ‘stealthy’ enough about, Vi always managed to get too dangerously close to catching on to it for her comfort.
On more than a few occasions, she had found herself floundering for ways to explain away partially healed lesions that looked far too systematic to be ‘accidental.’
As much as she rubbed and rinsed away excess blood that would spill over when she inevitably ‘miscalculated’ and went too deep, thinking she could dissipate the scent enough in time, her sister would always fixate on finding the source of the fading scent that she could never fully get rid of.
Sniffing around before blaming it on her occasionally blood-stained wraps, likely due to her unwillingness to be an open hypocrite by judging someone else’s self-harming habits or to avoid another uncomfortable conversation she was not equipped to have.
In all their years together, Vi never braved confronting her outright about it.
Vi got precariously close to calling Powder out more than once but froze up in realization before turning to give Powder a simultaneously severe and troubled look.
But the silently questioning, lingering stare was usually enough to fill her with enough of a distressing mixture of humiliation and guilt to feel like she had verbalized her concerns.
And it felt horrible.
She felt like she had failed Vi specifically in some indecipherable way, and the thought alone made her heart ache.
Gravely.
So then, for a while, she would stay ‘clean’ and go back to objectively ‘healthier’ but less effective methods of distracting herself from the evil thoughts and icky feelings that lay beneath the surface until something else rekindled that urgent need to indulge the urge again.
Rinse and repeat.
But to her credit, it had been a good while since she last resorted to purposefully harming herself in that way.
An awe-inspiring amount of time, actually.
But it could be argued that what unexpectedly ‘replaced’ it for a few weeks, despite the prolonged twisted pleasure it brought in the moment, was almost equally ‘harmful’ to both of their development on a long enough timeline.
While the ‘secret’ behavior of spying on Vi during what should have been private moments left no visible scars for either of them to try to conceal, the ripple effects of repeatedly pushing the limits of ‘plausible deniability’ at such a pivotal stage of their development would be too numerous to fathom.
At the time, due to her hormone-addled brain’s influence, it became far too easy to get caught up in the excitement of their new ‘game.’
It was too simple to push that other awful addiction even further off to the side after the first time she followed Vi opened up a new, less-than-healthy door for her.
It was too easy to push the thought of ever doing anything to break her skin when she inevitably realized that with enough illicitly obtained ‘motivation,’ the stinging pain of an aggravated bruise could effortlessly and repeatedly bring her enough of a form of release that was far more pleasantly ‘distracting.’
One that initially left no blood or anything else to clean up.
But what had at first been mostly self-contained inevitably circled back into becoming another real problem to conceal because of how increasingly frequently flashes of sordidly stolen glimpses of Vi’s private activities would sneak up on her while doing the most mundane tasks.
And she could no longer entirely suppress how her body reacted to those memories.
Once she discovered what it took to get that form of stress relief to work for her, it consumed her thoughts regardless of where or who she was with at the time.
The silent pact they seemed to make, in which they pointedly pretended to be ‘unaware’ of what each now sometimes did when taking slightly longer showers, how they refused to acknowledge what may or may not have been happening during those secretive outings, was not making it any easier to play pretend during the daytime.
It became increasingly distressing to her that Vi seemed to have far less trouble pretending that things were still at least semi-normal during their day-to-day routines, whatever ‘normal’ even meant by that point, to the point where she began to wonder if maybe she had made their ‘game’ up in her head.
Maybe she really was the only true freak in all this as she initially thought and should stop being so gross.
Maybe she needed to remind herself to be more ‘normal’ again by any means necessary.
Maybe, maybe, maybe!
Ugh!
All the thoughts and feelings she could not find the words or guts to express in a less troubling manner inevitably got the best of her again, and like the numerous times before and after that stage in her life, the bad habits crept back in when she let her guard down.
Powder didn’t mean to start doing it again, especially not in the new way it did in those final weeks ‘before’.
But once the rekindled insecurity kicked in, fueled by the growing suspicion that her ‘little freak’ tendencies had been pushing her sister further away from her, she found herself slipping up and inflicting pain on herself anytime inappropriate thoughts surged during the most inopportune times during the daytime.
During times when she knew she would not be afforded enough privacy to ‘do’ anything about how riled up she’d get when she let the weird thoughts run rampant.
The stinging pain she inflicted on herself seemed to work like a charm, giving her mind something else to fixate on most times when she needed to slam the breaks on the ‘bad daydreams’ immediately.
Stopping herself so abruptly hurt in more ways than one, but she did it willingly if it meant that behaving ‘properly’ during the day kept her in Vi’s good graces.
Trying to force her body not to start reacting to her inappropriate thoughts ‘in that way’ in public, even when Vi was unlikely to know, made her want to scream.
The fact that it even felt so damn difficult to control something that had been previously largely dormant all her life while Vi herself seemed to be able to keep it so separate from their interactions was driving her crazy!
There was just no way she was not feeling ‘affected’ by whatever was going on that they refused to draw attention to.
Not knowing whether or not she was imagining the ongoing, maturing tension between them made her want to beg for answers outright.
She wanted to plead with Vi to explain what was happening to her because it made her feel so much, seemingly suddenly.
It made her feel so out of control in new ways.
But she couldn’t even broach the subject because the Alpha teen refused to let either of them acknowledge any of it was happening and went out of her way to double down on pretending Powder was still as naively innocent as she once had been.
And Powder hated it.
She hated the fact that Vi continued to be so damn sweet and gentle with her in their everyday life despite likely being aware of what a sick little weirdo Powder was becoming.
Did she not get it?
Gentleness was the last thing she wanted or deserved anymore.
Given how twisted she was at her core, her sister choosing to handle her with undeserved gentility drove her insane!
Did she not care that every de-escalation of their now nearly nonexistent bouts of roughhousing felt like a profound rejection that wounded her deeply?
Did she not notice the ever-growing rift between them that burned Powder up inside the longer she refused to give her as equally rough treatment as she gave the women she had been sneaking off to see before and after she had caught on to her exploits?
She begrudgingly understood that Vi would never even think about her in ‘that way’ or simply see her as anything more than her ‘little sister’ despite everything they had already experienced, even semi-unintentionally.
Powder knew it was unrealistic to think that would change anytime soon, but she still did not understand why those random women now had to have those parts of her, too!
The ones that inherently craved to express measured violence toward people she trusted to want her still around afterward, as she used only to entrust her in their own way before.
They did not know Vi like Powder did and did not deserve to have any part of her!
Why did they get to experience a fuller breadth of Vi’s most passionate displays of ‘affection’ when she was starting to feel like she needed to fight tooth and nail to get anything beyond a playful shove or a heavy clap on the back most days?
Bit by bit, every well-intentioned gentle refusal to be anything but sweet toward her began to feel almost maliciously cruel and exclusionary.
So much so that, in hindsight, it should have come as no surprise that she had begun to inflict external wounds subconsciously and intentionally just to let the internal ones breathe a little.
Sometimes, the subconscious acts of self-harm would be so routine and understated that the pain would be gone before she even had a chance to process it fully.
But other times, she would dig her nails into her palms so quickly and deeply that the sharp, coppery smell of her blood would be what drew her awareness to the pinpricks.
The abrupt wave of mixed panic and embarrassment over having Vi potentially notice her ‘slip-ups’ would force her to loosen her a moment later.
Repeat and rinse.
But she had been working on catching herself before she did it as well to keep herself from slipping up so often and publicly that it would attract unwanted attention towards whatever they had going on from people other than Vi.
Powder did not need someone as mouthy and dense as Milo catching on, twisting the admittedly already messed-up details about their level of ‘closeness’ and blabbing about it to people who had no business forming an opinion on anything anyway!
Not even Vander, who again had done the best he could to keep his mostly wildcard troupe of adopted children safe from any dangers he was made aware of, could be fully trusted not to reflexively flip out on them if he was ‘publicly’ made aware of what they got up to.
Just to save face.
And it would have been justifiable and understandable if he had, of course.
He was only human.
How could Vander have truly understood the depth of their bond since birth if even Powder had still been trying to wrap her mind around it herself?
The unfortunate man might have even found himself ‘embarrassed’ enough about being publicly confronted about it due to the pressures to safeguard the reputation he had spent decades building up alone.
He would have made a scene out of trying to ‘separate’ them on the spot.
He might even have kicked Vi out of their home in a raucous manner solely for the optics of the situation, but most likely would have inevitably been unable to keep either from sneaking off to see each other the moment he had his back turned anyway.
If they had done that enough times, maybe he would have eventually just let them be as he had always done before their unusually close bond escalated to something objectively improper.
It’s impossible to say how the chips would have landed, but both would have made it a nightmare for him to try to make that separation last one way or another.
Had he lived, at least.
(The knowledge that all of their deaths did more irreparable damage to their bond than they ever had or would be able to cause in life, to the point of entirely severing their relationship, felt like a cruel, never-ending joke. All that angst and turmoil over the ‘secrets’ she thought she needed to keep from them for years all went up in smoke instantly shortly after this point, with them all out of the picture.
But instead of finding freedom in the sudden severance from that stone she had been pulling along, she felt she had doomed herself to what she believed would be a lifetime of grieving what could have been. A lifetime of missing the ‘simpler’ troubles that plagued her because, at least back then, she did not have to face them genuinely alone in a way she never had before when she still had kin.
Vi had understood and seen her in a way no one else ever would; therefore, she had never known true loneliness until after she was out of her life. But then again, that had been back before the life she was thrust into forced her to beat ‘Powder’ into an unrecognizable pulp and devolve into someone unrecognizable to survive on her own in a world without mercy that forced her to make tough calls on her own.
This depraved new person was someone even Vi could not truly love; she was sure.)
But as usually happened, any time she tried extra hard to ‘fix’ whatever the heck was fundamentally wrong with her, all it took was one significant bump or turn in the road to send her flying off the track.
And to be fair, this ‘bump’ was a rather sizable one.
One that even made Vi look ‘average height’ in comparison.
While such derailments to her intended plans usually threw her into a crying fit, this unwelcome intrusion sparked a wave of possessive rage like she had never experienced before.
If she had thought that the ones she experienced on the nights she spied on them in ‘secret’ outside of their home had been unbearable, the tidal wave that crashed into her when confronted with the sight she was greeted with right under the roof they shared had her fighting against herself not to do something truly horrific.
Something extreme beyond immediately curbing the impulse to tear into someone else’s flesh by directing it towards herself to hold herself back.
But even then, she somehow displayed the self-control to clutch onto her leather-covered forearms rather than curling her fists to damage her palms directly.
No, Powder did not dig in right away.
She did not give in to the dark impulse to charge forward and maim the woman whose presence had incited her fury on sight, but only just so.
Only just.
But the overwhelming need to divert the acute pain in her chest anywhere else had just been too much to bear that night.
And so, before she knew it, she had curled her fingers into an instinctual but cheap imitation of claws and pressed down harshly against the rough leather sleeves she had proudly already been filling out more than when Vi had first gifted them to her.
Initially, the thickened material had been enough to dull the brunt of the piercing force she had put behind her tightened grip, giving her a moment to let their protection remind Powder that their existence was proof of Vi’s sustained love and care for her.
For a few seconds, it had been enough to ground herself and ignore what the resurfaced intrusive voice kept hissing at her under its breath.
~ She REPLACED you! She’ll never WANT pathetic little YOU! ~
(Did ‘it’ even need to breathe? That particular voice had been surprisingly silent, or at least more easily brushed off for a while before then. That inner presence, in general, had been strangely subdued in the first weeks following the last full moon cycle, something she had been grateful for but had been quickly reminded of its persistence once it spoke up again.)
But then suddenly, for reasons she was unaware of that night, her previously blunted short nails had somehow managed to pierce through the material with frightening ease, and the sudden increase in pain did not go unnoticed.
Typically, she might have uttered a sound of discomfort at the unexpected intrusion at the very least.
But instead, as incensed as she was, she found herself reveling in the sharp, stinging pain that radiated from every individual point of contact upon the soft flesh of her forearm.
She found herself taking twisted delight and relief from how it gave way just a little more the harder she pressed and the dizzying effect of disregarding the self-preserving instinct to let go.
She had found a sick enjoyment in how ignoring every warning bell to make her stop inflicting a potentially life-threatening amount of damage set every nerve ending in her body aflame.
Powder knew it was probably wrong for her to welcome the physical burn and almost ‘rely’ on it to bring her back into her own body, but it had, like clockwork, quieted her racing thoughts long enough to attempt to compose herself.
The severity of the sting stilled her mind long enough for her to notice just how much tension had made its way to her facial features as she winced in a delayed manner at the stinging pain in her body as well as the matching ache in her soul.
As the abrupt wave of blinding rage momentarily receded, her vision cleared just enough to remember where she was and that creating a scene here would serve no one.
How her adolescent mind managed even to attempt to take a more measured, less impulsive approach when every primal instinct was telling her not to give a single damn about anyone or anything else other than asserting her claim on the person her very soul deemed as ‘hers,’ she’ll never know.
But for a few masochistic minutes longer, after forcing the furrow in her brow and her iron grip to relax, she stood quietly observing them from her obstructed vantage point just outside the doorway atop the stairs leading to their basement room.
Trying to normalize her breathing and purposefully let the stink of the other patrons that swarmed about the bar permeate her senses just to distract herself from the nauseating scent of her blood and the faintest wisps of That Woman’s cloying scent.
She swore she could somehow isolate her unmistakable distinctive stench even from a distance despite how seemingly naturally muted it was compared to the body odor of all the unwashed men and women that crowded the bar at that hour.
Sure, she had never formally met the woman and had seen her only from a great distance, less than a handful of times, but she was still almost entirely sure it was Her.
Her body sure had already decided to prepare for an altercation over breached ‘territory’ either way.
But she had promised, or at least ‘promised to promise’ herself, that she would try to be more mature about how she reacted to things she did not like.
To try to be ‘okay’ with and even respect Vi’s apparent continued attempts at having a mature life outside the one she willfully shared with Powder.
So, in an attempt to force maturity and restraint, she eventually willed her feet to carry her forward as surreptitiously as she could muster to go up and simply talk to them.
To breezily greet Vi.
Just to make her presence known in a civil manner.
If she only got the chance to formally make her permanent, at the time, presence in Vi’s life directly known to That Woman, then maybe Powder would finally start to quell the near murderous rage that simmered beneath the surface of her unknowingly and suspiciously rapidly healing skin.
She just needed to get closer to Vi them.
To talk.
It had been so challenging to keep the open hostility from reappearing on her face as she inched closer, but Powder still did her best to appear neutral and composed.
She had no intention of giving away just how much she despised That Woman on principle just for existing, and she did not want to engage with Her directly until she was ready to lie through her teeth about not knowing precisely who She was.
The Presence within was screaming at her to end their interaction as quickly as possible, to put distance between Her and Vi with her bare hands if she had to.
But a masochistic part of her wanted to stay hidden in plain sight that much longer so that she could see the scene unfold even further without her intervention.
Wanted to see just how far it would go so It could react accordingly, in its eyes at least.
It made no sense, but there was something addictive about the angry feeling that radiated from her aching heart at the sight of her sister interacting with women in any capacity that made subjecting herself to it inexplicably enthralling.
The more she observed her sister’s carefree demeanor when interacting with That Woman in a public setting, their family bar, the more that tantalizingly ill sensation coursed through her body.
Endless wars seemed to have been waged and ended within Powder’s body and mind with each step she had taken that night.
Storms had raged and receded in her wake as she weaved through the clusters of drunken patrons on her single-minded mission not to lose sight of the pair.
She thought the extra time granted by her measured approach would help her feel more centered when she reached her intended destination, but no.
The radiating ache within her heart only shifted and became a fiery pit at the base of her throat, making it hard to breathe.
Her jealousy was suffocating her.
It had run so hot that it felt like it was burning her alive from the inside out.
Could Vi not see her catch fire mere feet away at that moment?
Surely, it had to be a sight hard to miss in the otherwise purposefully low-lit space surrounding them.
The intoxicated people around her seemed to catch on eventually, likely sensing the danger of the scorching heat of her fury, and meandered out of her path to avoid getting burned.
That or they had been too wasted to make sense of seeing the bar owner’s ‘least imposing kid,’ who rarely appeared beyond loitering at the counter by him, willingly walking through the crowds she usually avoided, so they paid her no mind.
Whatever the case was, it had been so frustrating to see the world just carry on as if she weren’t internally screaming in agony and righteous fury.
Vi had just continued chatting away with That Woman, leaning in even more unnecessarily close as she picked up the remaining tableware before her and placed them all onto the overloaded tray precariously supported against her hip in a blatantly ‘show-offy’ manner.
(Powder was well aware of how defined her sister’s muscles were at all times, but had she not been consumed by her internal ire, she might have caught secondhand embarrassment at her sister’s blatant peacocking.
She had made sure to hold the heavy tray with her arm flexed just so, and she leaned her palm on the table in front of her with just enough weight behind it to make her biceps bulge just slightly as she giggled at something That Woman said. It was almost funny in retrospect. Almost.)
She then used her now freed hand to gently push a stray lock of That Woman’s long, dark purple hair away from her face as she whispered something that made Her cerulean eyes light up and a mischievous grin break out.
What.
The.
Fuck.
Well, now that was what pushed her beyond her limits of self-restraint.
It was not enough that this stranger got to have Vi’s impassioned ‘affections’ when she thought nobody was looking.
Now Vi was also being publicly gentle and affectionate with that nobody, too?
The audacity!
As much as she had been starting to get almost annoyed by or even resentful of similar soft treatment from the Alpha teen, both in front and away from prying eyes, it had been a whole other level of infuriating to see Vi openly display that type of behavior with this particular woman.
How had she already earned that privilege when it had taken so many years for Vi to relinquish enough of her firmly held pride to allow herself to be ‘publicly’ tender with Powder?
Her control slipped significantly, then.
Instantly bordering on the edge of too far for such a public setting.
Thankfully, at least for the time being, the loud music and intoxicated chatter surrounded them, continuing to drown out their flirtatious whispers for only a few more steps.
Not knowing precisely what Vi was saying to fluster that other woman had helped Powder cling to the last vestiges of the carefully maintained restraint they had been taught to show in their ‘home territory’ for a few moments longer.
It had been a level of restraint they had managed to uphold remarkably well, all things considered, for most of their lives until that point.
Especially around the types of people who frequented the bar at that hour and particularly so close to the weekend, Vander had drilled into their minds that those types of people could get any of them genuinely hurt or even killed for essentially harboring a class of creature that Topside had worked so hard to eradicate for decades.
All in an ongoing effort to break the will of the underprivileged by weakening their abilities to fight back against their oppressors.
Anything to keep those not born into a life of privilege ‘in their place,’ of course.
Anything to keep monsters subservient to Them.
But in reality, it was the types of people that perpetuated the uninformed claims that Their kind was incapable of being anything other than wild animals hiding behind human faces that were the actual monsters!
Some of them believed the stories so mindlessly that they thought themselves to be ‘heroes’ for slaughtering any remainders of their kind on sight, even all those years past Topside’s last mass coordinated campaign of genocide.
Due to their fear of encountering the wrong person at the worst time, they had learned to always be vigilant of their surroundings so as not to ‘out’ themselves.
Powder’s rational mind understood that the threat to their safety was absolute and ever-present, even in the Lanes.
But on that night, something deep and primal had overridden that learned weariness that kept them so ‘well-behaved’ any other time once Powder had finally gotten within hearing range of the pair.
Once she caught the tail end of whatever filthy thing That Wretched Woman had been saying and witnessed Vi blushing so deeply and getting palpably excited even through the sea of scents…
Well.
Whatever verbal response Vi would have attempted to string together was lost to the wind once the words ‘my big strong Alpha’ rang in Powder’s ears.
Because once they had left That Woman’s lips, there was no way to reign back the absolute chaos that broke loose.
One moment, Powder was methodically approaching their table, vibrating from the effort to remain mainly composed but still very much in the ‘driver’s seat’ of her body.
The next, the world had blurred at the edges of her vision and then ‘whooshed’ by as she somehow managed to dodge Vi’s surprised attempt to intercept her and dive clear over the table from a near-dead stop with enough force to tackle the woman right out of her chair and onto the ground.
Sounds of splintering wood, glass shattering, and metallic clattering barely made a blip in her consciousness.
The purely animalistic growling and snarling escaping her throat drowned out every other sound around her, including the confused and rightfully alarmed cries of the woman now pinned to the grimy bar floor by most of Powder’s total weight slamming onto her torso.
Still, she had managed to recognize Vi’s alarmed shouting, albeit distantly, despite being no more than five feet away from them.
She had recognized who the voice belonged to, but none of her words broke through.
Powder could no longer command her body to do anything but bare her teeth while nearly dislocating That Woman’s jaw and undoubtedly bruising the right side of Her face to force Her to turn her head away from Vi’s direction.
The terrified woman’s stubborn instinct to keep trying to look to Vi for help had nearly cost her the skin off her face!
She’ll never definitively know what she would have done next as the first dribbles of blood that were not her own coated her fingertips and fueled her frenzy because the next thing she knew, she had gone airborne.
Again.
She had barely managed to register the abruptly forced detachment in time to twist her body around midair to brace herself to land in a protective position, barely noticing the burn of her skin as she skidded back an additional foot or two from the momentum once she hit the ground.
(The light pain in her palms and knees from the friction and the sharp tug at her fingertips were a mere afterthought.)
Once the momentary dizziness of the unexpected positional recalibration dissipated, she had instinctively coiled up to pounce on the woman again.
She would have done it again without hesitation if anyone but Vi had quickly positioned herself between them in a defensive stance.
The sight stupefied her even in her amped-up state, so she froze up instead.
Her sister, defending that unfamiliar woman against her?
Powder will never forget how the tendons in Vi’s neck tightened up, and her jaw, mouth, and brow muscles all twitched repeatedly in quick succession as she glared in her direction with a tight-lipped scowl.
It had looked as if she were trying to hold back angry words that were just behind her mouth barrier and that she could not take back once freed, or it had looked like she had been trying with every fiber of her being not to react as unthinkingly as Powder had already.
She can’t erase the image of Vi’s hands twitching between a more curled position and a spread one, shoulders moving spastically as if she were torn between raising her fists and holding her hands up to diffuse the situation.
(In hindsight, it was much more likely that Vi’s nearly convulsive movements had been caused by her fighting the defensive reflex to shift while still in plain view of patrons of a full bar. The flexing of her fingers had been a frantic attempt to make her claws recede, and the twitching in her facial muscles caused by her forcing her features to remain human.
This would not have been her first or second accidental ‘partial shift’ between moon cycles, but it would have been her most public and ‘incriminating’ one if she had not reigned it in. Her third moon cycle had been over a week away, but she was still too new at decoupling her temper from the reflexive instinct to partially shift as a defense mechanism to keep it locked down even that far from the moon’s peak.)
If Powder’s vision hadn’t been so blurred at the edges, yet so strangely focused on the woman shakily getting to her feet behind Vi, she would have regarded Vi’s subtle head shake as the soundless warning it had been.
It had been a silent attempt to give Powder one final chance to reign herself back without having to create an even bigger scene than the moment had been shaping up to become.
It went unnoticed, unfortunately.
But even if she had seen it, she likely would not have been able to heed it anyway because Powder had never really experienced that type of primal and possessive rage so close to its instigator before then.
The closeness of the next full moon cycle certainly did not help her regain control of herself.
And even though she had yet to knowingly shift before that point, even partially, the moon’s perpetual influence had still made it so that she had been too far gone into a mental space driven by pure instinct to stop her actions before they could escalate what should have been a quiet confrontation to something loud and beyond a ‘sisterly’ dispute.
Or at least, that’s what she would sometimes tell herself.
That it was the moon that had her acting the way she did that night.
Because, of course, as the jinx Powder was born to be, she had ‘subconsciously’ poked at the Wolf hidden just beneath the surface to get a more familiar reaction directed her way.
Just to obtain her sister’s undivided attention by any means necessary.
Again.
Like she had countless times before under different circumstances with minimal chance of any tangible ‘consequences’ resulting from it.
But what her instinct-driven brain did not account for, which was different from most other times she pushed her luck in the past, was the added genuine danger she put herself and everyone around her in because that Wolf was no longer mainly ‘theoretical.’
Vi was now a very much ‘fully realized’ Alpha, driven by its amplified possessive and territorial instincts and drives.
So this time, when Powder had thoughtlessly made no more than two strides forward while openly growling and baring her teeth at the woman behind Vi, those Alpha instincts interpreted it as a direct ‘challenge’ to It.
Therefore, while her sister might have been able to fight back against her Wolf and keep it from completely overriding her consciousness if they had been alone, the tense Wolf was unwilling to allow ‘Vi’ to make it look weak in ‘public.’
And it had been thoroughly prepared to show just how dominant it was.
(Miraculously and unknown to neither her nor Vi, by some speck of luck, their brothers had just happened to be in the vicinity in those crucial moments. And somehow, despite the now more typical wide berth they gave them whenever they bickered due to not wanting to get involved in their ‘weird girl drama,’ they instantly clocked the unusual intensity of the growing altercation and immediately acted.
Claggor silently signaled to Milo, who somehow caught on quickly and did not snark back for once, to turn the volume up on the jukebox while also sneakily instigating a rowdy brawl in the opposite corner of the bar to divert attention. He had taken that moment to inconspicuously flag down Vander, who sensed the impending danger and jumped into action.
He gave Claggor wordless orders to kill the remaining ambient lights once he was closer to Vi and Powder. Somehow, they had all managed to intuit that any verbal planning to intercede would put any of them in a more direct line of fire at that charged moment, so resorting to purely nonverbal signaling had been the most brilliant move they could have made.
It had been retroactively quite impressive that this all happened during the same period that their brief altercation occurred in and without a hitch, without either of them noticing any of it before Vander reached them!)
But then, in an instant, practically all of The Last Drop’s light sources snuffed out at once just in time to obscure Vi’s features as they rapidly altered into something distinctly less human:
Further elongated fangs had slid down fast enough to make her gums bleed a little and nick the insides of her mouth as Vi pulled her lips back to bare their even more menacing length.
Short, wispy fur had sprouted along almost every inch of exposed skin as her usual body hair thickened and visibly bristled to denote her readiness for a ‘real’ fight.
Vi’s irises had seemed to almost pulse with an inner light as she crouched down to emit a sustained ominous growl.
An authoritatively deep growl so loud and clear to Powder’s ears that it had instantly snapped her into full responsiveness of Vi again and swiftly broke her out of her jealous stupor, now only passively registering That Woman taking the opportunity to make a rushed exit after uttering something along the lines of “Oh fuck this shit, I’m out. Find me later. Or actually, maybe don’t, Violet. This was not what I signed up for. I swear when they told me it would be a simple…”
Had either of them been paying absolutely any mind to the world around them anymore, they might have caught any of that last part of That Woman’s mutterings as she stumbled through the crowds with slightly more grace than would have expected from her, given the near-total blackout state of the bar and the injuries she had sustained in the abbreviated scuffle.
Had they heard those final words and been able to break themselves out of their instinct-driven conflict, they might have decided to follow her out together and press her for answers to the slew of questions that would have undoubtedly cropped up then and there.
Questions whose answers would have significantly changed the course their life would take shortly after the events of that night, both directly and indirectly, as a result of not questioning the partial confession.
Pressing for those answers at that early stage could have saved them both from so much misery and spared countless other lives that would have been lost in their never-ending spiraling search for a reprieve from the ache of their separation.
That or it would have doomed them both to an early grave, and everything else would have still fallen apart in some other way since there would always be someone power-hungry and selfish enough to do anything they could to take it all for themselves no matter the cost.
Neither of them had the world and life knowledge to conceptualize any of that, so it went entirely unacknowledged as they remained locked into their now mostly one-sided standoff.
Mostly ‘one-sided’ because the instigating factor for her Omega Wolf’s instinctively territorial actions had then been out of the picture and had taken all the heedless ‘fight’ Powder’s body possessed with her in one fell swoop.
The void it left behind had been rapidly filled with shame and frustration at how her juvenile lack of self-control had needlessly led them to their current situation.
The uncomfortable urge to immediately try to somehow ‘set things right’ with the enraged Alpha teen had raked over her like a thorny blanket and pulled a pathetically lupine whine from her that was thankfully drowned out by the loud wave of complaints that collectively almost matched the volume of the music blasting through the tinny, yet surprisingly boisterous, jukebox speakers.
Vi’s indifferent huff at that meek sound that escaped Powder and her unflinchingly bullying expression had Powder submitting to her more fully and pleadingly on instinct.
The intensity of her unthinking yearning to do so made her flush deeply, and her knees suddenly weakened as she felt the urgent need to ‘appease’ her somehow.
A yearning that only continued to intensify the longer Vi’s steely eyes refused to soften with any form of recognition, and the longer Vi’s threatening posture refused to slacken with acknowledgment of her display of total surrender.
A slew of even more undignified whines had escaped Powder then as her arms abruptly dropped to her sides and her knees fully hit the ground, instantly having lost the short-lived battle against the compulsion to offer up her throat and any other vulnerable parts in capitulation to the aggravated Alpha.
The pitiful sounds were almost lost between all the colorful expletives that filled the spaces left between the musical notes that surrounded them as the more intoxicated and nyctalopic of the patrons bumped into objects and each other in the suddenly severely dimmed lighting.
A tiny twitch of Vi’s upper lip and the slightest lowered tilt of Vi’s head following Powder’s further shortened stature were the only signs that her attention had indeed been fully locked onto her and not their surroundings, not missing a single movement or utterance but still unwilling to put an end to Powder’s presented acts of submission quite yet.
There was no chance that her pleas were going unheard regardless of the cacophony of sounds around them because while Vi’s expression and posture hardly eased up, the intensity of her more dominant pheromones had started to shift away from anger.
She could have eased up on her yielding ones had she been aware of how to control them or that she had already been able to produce them, but her sense of dignity had disappeared entirely by that point.
So, regardless of the slight shift in scent, Powder had already been automatically increasing the volume and ‘pitifulness’ of her deferential sounds to fully ensure they reached her sister’s ears even before Vi took two faltering steps in her direction and paused at the sight of her unintentional flinch and the waver in her voice.
Then, as a film of recognition finally dulled the previous ardent flame behind her gaze and relaxed the Alpha teen’s threatening posture, Vander suddenly stood in their periphery at his full imposing height, drawing their undivided attention before they could say or do anything else.
No part of him betrayed any nervousness approaching an already agitated Alpha despite seeming to only look in Vi’s general direction rather than make anything resembling direct eye contact with her.
And even that unintentional display of deference was likely more because, as a human, his low level of vision in the dark made it so he could not see precisely where Vi was.
But then again, as someone with much more life experience and situational awareness, he was just not nearly as stupid as Powder and knew better than to goad Vi with anything remotely inciting when she was in the aggravated state she had been in.
There may not have been a single drop of wolf’s blood in him, but there was no doubt that he would have been an Alpha of immense power if there had been.
Because again, despite being entirely human and not even using his total volume to shout his following words, he silenced them both instantly.
“You two, take ‘this’ outside. Now!”
As his final command rang in their ears, they unknowingly started turning their bodies towards the back door perfectly in sync without a single argument despite both being still in the throes of great emotion and physical turmoil from their altercation.
They did not need to be told twice, as Vander’s enormous and commanding presence, combined with the natural low-pitched tone of his speaking voice, instantly and easily dwarfed even Vi’s great stature and natural influence.
Powder had barely gotten a chance to get to her feet to take a few wobbly steps on strangely uncooperative legs before a yelp that turned into a low groan was ripped out of her throat as she felt Vi’s still elongated nails dig into the sides of her neck to still her and then into the outer side of her left thigh and the side of her rib cage as she was effortlessly lifted clean off the ground.
(Later, she would look back at the small, ragged holes and blood stains left behind in her recovered clothing from that night with sick satisfaction. Pressing down on the corresponding areas of her body with her own purposefully jagged nails to revive the phantom sting of each long-since scarred puncture to her flesh.
That night was one of the most notable occurrences that taught her that a fellow wolf’s teeth were not the only thing that could leave permanent scarring, but certainly not the last.)
She remembers thinking it was upsetting that those wounds and their brilliant sting were likely only inflicted because Vi forgot she was already partially transforming in her haste to get them out through the back as quickly as possible and not due to some primal desire to leave a permanent branding on her skin.
As heated as their halted altercation got and as high as their drive to ‘mark their territory’ had been in those moments, Vi had still not seen her as anything worth marking ‘intentionally.’
And somehow, the fact that she had willingly thought of herself as more of an object to be ‘owned’ by her rather than an actual person with individual wants and desires that might differ from the Alpha teen’s had not troubled her in the slightest.
At the time, at least.
If anything, she had been almost offended that even in such an instinct-driven state, she had still not made the cut to be seen as such in the eyes of Vi’s Wolf.
Even despite her body openly offering itself as an open canvas for ‘repayment’ for her jealousy-fueled transgression, it did not take the bait to lay any more outwardly blatant form of claim.
In many ways, the sting in Powder’s soul from acknowledging the open rejection from Vi’s Wolf and ‘their’ joint quick dismissal of Powder’s stunted attempt to lay claim to her sister was worse than anything her physical body experienced that night.
And despite that pain, she remembers still clinging to Vi’s strong shoulders as she was jostled by her increasingly stilted sprinting gait as her sister frantically tried to put as much distance between them and the prying eyes of anyone that might give far too many fucks about what was inevitably coming next.
At the time, Powder had been confused about why Vi hadn’t just put her down and let her run ahead of her to the nearest previously scouted hiding spot she had been clearly aiming for since she would have caught up with Powder within minutes anyway.
Even if Vi had paused to let the shift fully take hold, it would have been easier for her to move and take longer strides to compensate for the lost time once she was in her other form.
So preoccupied with that line of thought was she that Powder hadn’t registered that Vi’s erratic breathing wasn’t solely due to running while carrying her or from residual agitation from their thwarted physical altercation.
That, not even the actual agony of ‘delaying’ a prematurely triggered complete shift just a little longer once that far along, was to blame for her troubled breathing.
Unbeknownst to Powder, due to her newfound recognition of the beginning signs, Vi had been fighting off a full-bodied panic so severe that it had entirely yanked her out of her primal haze to address it immediately.
Powder somehow remained oblivious to ‘it’ starting to happen to her despite it being neither the first nor the last time it cropped up in their final months together, but her sister sure didn’t.
It even kept Vi up at night because she feared it would make it all the more difficult to keep her safe from the outside world.
After all, if even she was having such a hard time keeping her control over her emotions and accidental shifting in check…
Who could say that ‘little already unstable Powder’ would fare better?
That Powder might not be frighteningly worse at it and fall victim to the type of fugue state she had worried she would lose herself to and indeed lose control over herself and get hunted down for sport when she was not around to defend her and bring her back home?
No, Powder had not even begun to think of and much less worry about such situations since she figured her first shift was still years away if it would even happen to her since Vi had always been the benchmark for every significant development milestone in her life.
If Vi hadn’t done it first or mastered it, she just couldn’t see herself attempting or experiencing it for herself in those days.
Always a follower.
Always a poor imitator.
Always finding a way to mess things up with or without her ‘help.’
So, of course, as was always the case, even with Vi doing her very best to clean up the mess she caused, it had not been enough to prevent at least one particularly corrupt Enforcer or other unsavory type from catching a glimpse of something damning before their family managed to kill the lights in an attempt to mask their shared public lapse in control.
With so many people around, it was inevitable, but with Powder’s talent for making things worse by merely existing, there had to be at least one witness with too many connections to keep silent.
One whose loyalties and secrets could be bought without care if it could ruin everything their little family had built.
And so, of course, thanks to her bad luck in life, a then unknown drunken onlooker would indeed gradually, and then all at once, contribute to the chain of events that would lead to the splintering of the life path they had been sharing.
Vi’s panic would later be proven beyond justified for varying reasons, all of which could be traced back to that night.
That night ensured that the dreamed clear-cut path forward together would soon become so thoroughly damaged that they would never be able to return to it as the people they had once been.
Notes:
Okay, this is going slower than I thought or hoped it would.
But to be honest, I am also partially 'stalling' so I can mine canon S2 events for more details I can incorporate into the potential 'sequel/continuation' I have had almost solidly planned out for over a year. Depending on many things, even the tweaks I had in mind for the 'finale' of THIS part of the story could be altered slightly to accommodate the new in-show backstory and future revelations and keep it semi-canon complaint.
So, my new theoretical 'plan'/goal is to get this part written out by year's end and save the potential follow-up for 2025, depending on if the hyper fixation is revived enough by S2 to WANT to continue it and that holds for long enough to keep working on this project next year. Again, this assumes that people would even still be interested.
We'll see how that plays out because it takes a lot of sustained effort to put this into writing and release it into The Void for FREE.
So maybe I'll just leave the 'after' to your imagination from the world-building I've tried to put into this revamped version of the fic.Anyway, the essay is over.
See y'all on the first of the final 'Vi' solo chapters next time!
Chapter 20: Vi Pt 5
Summary:
' Her sweaty, mussed hair partially obscured the slightly more pointed tips of her ears and harsher edges of her faintly lengthened facial features.
...
How the now tiny sliver of gunmetal blue of her irises nearly disappeared as her pupils remained dilated, and the whites of her eyes had darkened to a shade of gray that almost mirrored the pitch-black shade she had seen in her reflection just the other night.
-/-
Internally, she was still fighting back the protective instinct to keep herself away if there was even the slightest chance she could cause physical harm, but she tried her best not to show it externally.
She did not want her inner turmoil to make Powder feel unwanted or cause her to continue thinking Vi found her ‘gross’ now when, if anything, the opposite was much closer to the ugly truth.
A lack of ‘want’ would never be an issue.
Her love for her sister would always be at the root of everything she did, right or wrong, in this life and any other. '
--Or--
Vi has no time to process her recent traumas after experiencing The Horrors for the first time as she enters Crisis Control Mode for Powder after a 'situation' arises mere minutes after returning home.
Notes:
((This chapter combines 'OG' Chapter's 25 & 26.))
So... yeah, this part of the story did not get wrapped up by the time S2 dropped.
But on the plus side, as I hoped, I already have plenty more canon material to work with to continue building parts of this story and potential 'side stories' or 'AU of an AU' one-shots.
This fic will still serve as the 'official prequel' to most, if not all, of those potential stories, so there is still plenty more to come if people are still interested in following my journey to see my Vision through!
I love that a good amount of the stuff I had already chaotically thought out well over a year ago has happened in S2 or track with canon events with minor tweaks.
So 'Part 2'/The In-Between Years chapters will still be ON if ya wanna stick around for those after I wrap up Part/Act 1!
---
And ok, in case anyone cares/wonders why:
I cut an entire major scene from Vi's POV that is still written out from Powder's POV to kinda 'save rewriting time and energy' and because I didn't feel it needed to be retold nearly word for word anyway.
Like some readers, I am also getting impatient and want to move this story tf along, so I might have to do that more: shorten or even wholly skip scenes already covered from Powder's POV that don't necessarily add anything to Vi's journey.
Tw// Some blood, panic attacks, a bunch of self loathing. The usual angst fest and sprinkling of fluff.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
=== Vi ===
None of the self-loathing fueled scenarios that she had repeated over and over in her head as she made her way home, nor the new anxiety-ridden ones she was already in the process of conjuring up since arriving, had prepared Vi for what happened next.
She had imagined Powder being livid and disgusted by Vi, sending her right back onto the street the moment she noticed her presence and not even letting her breathe in the same room as her for longer than it took to make her way back up the steps she descended from.
She had imagined Powder hitting her with the ‘silent treatment’ for at least a solid week and avoiding her as much as physically possible within their shared space at a bare minimum.
Vi had imagined at least half a dozen other variations of worst-case scenarios, and they all involved some form of complete rejection and being made to feel revolting and unworthy of being acknowledged by even Powder’s gaze alone.
All the imagined outcomes of her disgraceful return involved the smaller Omega teen creating distance between them, physical or otherwise.
Absolutely none of the scenarios involved the type of ‘reaction’ that ultimately occurred.
A reaction that she had found herself reeling away from instinctively at first due to its suddenness and then intentionally once she realized what the fuck was happening a few seconds later.
So many sensations and scents had bombarded her so quickly and with such potency that it made her physically stumble back a few steps as she shot up to her feet, almost as though she were knocked off balance by some greater unseen force rather than by the diminutive added weight that clung to her upper body that she didn’t immediately register.
The entire ‘ordeal’ likely took place in only a few short minutes, even though it felt like a small eternity to her sense of morality and sanity.
It was not like Vi had not done her best to discourage it as it occurred, not actively ‘participating’ in it in any intentional way.
If anything, she had even yielded in her attempts to dislodge the entranced teen when she noticed her efforts to put a quick end to things only exacerbated the escalation of the situation in hopes that it would lose traction on its own without her inadvertent influence.
But as she quickly discovered, and as evidenced by the sweaty heap that was the smaller teen now sitting on their raggedy couch whose breaths were slowly returning to a more regular rhythm before her, some things could not be stopped once they were set in motion until they reached their natural ‘conclusion.’
It had taken Vi a few moments to get her bearings back and process what had happened before the haze finally cleared enough for her to worry about Powder’s continued dazed state even after she tried to bring her attention back with gentle words and hand motions at first.
Those initially gentle attempts to bring her awareness back had taken a more frantic and anxious tone after she suddenly, and with great personal terror, noticed how much was all at once very different about the Omega teen beyond her scent alone.
Her sweaty, mussed hair partially obscured the slightly more pointed tips of her ears and harsher edges of her faintly lengthened facial features.
The subtly sharpened and elongated nails that poked over her fingertips as her hands lay limply at her sides on the couch cushion.
How the now tiny sliver of gunmetal blue of her irises nearly disappeared as her pupils remained dilated, and the whites of her eyes had darkened to a shade of gray that almost mirrored the pitch-black shade she had seen in her reflection just the other night.
Powder had visibly changed during the few minutes between Vi's kneeling at her feet and setting her down on the couch cushion after ‘the ordeal.’
Vi had been speechless in utter disbelief for a few seconds because she simply did not understand how any of it was possible.
How was that even happening?
The peak of the full moon had already passed, had it not?
Vi’s features had already returned to the state she was most used to seeing them in as far as she had been aware.
So why would hers have only just begun to change?
None of it made sense!
And Powder had still been too young and sensitive to go through the jarring experience that she herself only experienced for the first time just the night before and had still been feeling the shitty aftereffects.
No!
Powder had not been ready!
Vi would not have been ready to guide her through it either if she had let it happen that morning!
And so, despite her best efforts to keep herself calm first, panic had made itself known in her physicality as her mind raced with worry about which ‘fire’ to put out first:
Dealing with the immediate aftermath of everything that ‘happened’ head-on or…
Doing everything within her power not to trigger any further changes by inciting any other strong emotion at such a pivotal turning point.
She knew she had to tread very carefully so as not to make Powder ‘aware’ of the ways her body had started to shift and scare her on top of the confusion that was already blooming over her features as she felt her own undoubtedly going nearly scarlet red in her flustered state.
She indeed had never been the best at poetically stringing words together even when she wasn’t utterly rattled, so she is not proud of how she had yelled her first inarticulate words to her sister at that moment:
“Please, Powder, talk to me? Powder? Are you okay? What was…? D-did you…? Oh no. Fuck! I can’t believe I let this happen again. I’m so sorry—!”
Given the circumstances, Vi thought she had kept her features as neutral as possible and that the silence after abruptly silencing herself to ‘regroup’ lasted only a second or two longer than a regular lengthened pause would.
But it seemed it had still been a second or two too long anyway for Powder’s rapidly rising sense of alarm in the deafening silence.
Before Vi could get a better put-together sentence out, the Omega teen had already rattled off about six incomplete sentences strung together of her own within about fifteen panicked seconds:
“I-I don’t know w-why I did that-- I couldn’t s-stop—I’m not trying to be weird! I swear! Don’t be mad, don’t be mad, don't be mad. Please don’t leave me again! I’ll stop being weird, I promise! I just—you just—It felt so…I’m sorry!”
And just like that, any lingering trepidation to speak or move left her almost immediately as she noticed her sister devolving into a fit of nerves and genuine panic.
The way Powder’s previously flushed features grew increasingly paler the more words she tried to push out while taking shorter and quicker breaths had spurred her into immediate action, but the uncertainty about how to ‘help’ her this time made her increasingly inelegant.
After what had transpired mere minutes prior, she had been unsure if her abrupt touch would have caused even more ‘harm’ and confusion or have soothed and calmed her like it always used to.
(Later, Vi would kick herself for failing to school her features and mask her bewilderment more quickly so as not to leave so much room for misinterpretation by the panicked younger teen. For how she failed to be the anchoring presence Powder had needed so badly at that moment to curtail her spiraling before it got the chance to pick up speed.
In her mind, it did not matter that she was still just a teen herself. She still felt she should have been able to handle her own emotions and reactions with maturity beyond her life experience in that situation and many more like it.)
The only visual indication that her stupefied but good-intentioned presence had been doing anything even remotely positive had presented itself in the mesmerizing way that the sclera of Powder’s eyes repeatedly fluttered between that alarmingly darkened color and a heartbreaking but sadly more ‘normal’ reddened white as they flooded with tears as she continued to hyperventilate in front of Vi.
It was like she could see Powder’s body warring between letting the timid, sweet person Vi had known her to be her entire life remain in control and allowing the fearsome creature that lurked just beneath the surface finally break through to try to defend itself against a perceived but non-existent threat.
Under far less stressful circumstances, Vi would have loved to continue to stare at the shifting colors in utter wonder since she had not exactly been able to see it as it happened to hers.
But she’d had to snap out of her thoughts just then because her little sister desperately needed her help!
“Breathe! I know Pow Pow, it’s not your fault. I’m not the one who should be mad here—it’s okay. I mean, it’s not—well. I mean… um…fuck! No, not f--!"
It was genuinely cringeworthy how much she could hear herself sounding anything but ‘calming and reassuring.’
How much she felt herself radiating anxiety that was not helping the situation.
But before she could force herself to fix her composure and say something helpful, Powder had already burst into flighty action, vaulted clear over the back of the couch, and darted into their bathroom, slamming the door behind her.
Vi was left increasingly confused and frustrated by her continued incompetence in every sense of the word as that resounding thud echoed in her ears.
The now empty room suddenly felt hollow and cold.
---
Once again, indecision had threatened to overwhelm her into a continued state of inaction, but then Powder’s slightly muffled shouts had startled her into action once more.
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! Please don’t leave again! I’ll stop—I’m s-sorry I keep-- Don’t go—It just keeps h-happening--"
The all-consuming panic that dripped from her little sister’s cracking voice made Vi feel sick to her stomach.
Just the thought that after ‘everything’ that transpired in preceding days or even the minutes before her locking herself in their dingy bathroom, Powder had genuinely felt that she was at fault for any of it…?
The thought that Powder felt she was the one to be livid with within all this?
The very idea of it felt so wrong.
Vi had to do something to fix it and set things right!
“Pow Pow, please breathe with me! You’re going to make yourself sick, and we both know how much you hate it when that happens…can you please open the door? I’m not leaving. I’m not angry with you, I promise! Just let me in!”
Vi knew it was doubtful that she would simply be let in, but she still tried turning the doorknob and cautiously pushing against the door, only to be met with the resistance of Powder’s hunched form as it pressed against it from the other side.
There could not have been more than half an inch of give between the door’s edge and frame, but it was enough of an opening for a fresh wave of distressed pheromones to waft through.
The unmistakable smell of fresh blood, Powder’s blood specifically, burned itself into her nose from that seconds-long exposure alone.
(Maybe it was odd that she was so familiar with the scent of her blood that she could instantly recognize it as her sister’s, but all those times helping to patch up her scrapes and cuts had to serve for something.)
Fresh blood and a panicked state.
Gears turned in Vi’s head, bringing about memories of other seemingly ‘one-off’ events where she had simultaneously smelt both scents on Powder.
Vi hoped this was an actual accident and not an ‘accidental accident’ like the ones Powder had tried to convince her hadn’t been purposeful in the past.
Either way, she needed to re-assess the situation now.
So, she eased up and let the door click shut once more as she took bracing breaths of her own and paced around, unfeelingly bumping into anything and everything in her path as she moved to get some of her anxious energy out somehow.
Was Powder physically hurting herself on purpose again?
Vi had hoped Powder would grow out of that behavior by then…
Hoped that she would just know if she had started doing that again regularly after catching onto her attempts to conceal the aftermath numerous times over the years.
She knew her attention had been scattered lately with her ‘personal developments’ but still…
Should she be a hypocrite and draw attention to the self-destructive behavior, which might make Powder feel ashamed and embarrassed for being caught doing it again while brushing over her own personal repeated relapses?
Should she simply help Powder get cleaned up and give her some grace about the slip-up?
Would that send a mixed message about whether or not she cares enough about her inner struggles to comment on the outward behavior at all?
How bad was it this time, anyway?
What if it really was ‘just an accident’ since Powder’s nails were suddenly unusually long and sharpened, and Vi had just been wasting time and mental effort trying to figure out how to go about things from the wrong angle entirely?
The chance that it was unintentional was very high, so maybe she shouldn’t make a big deal about it in the first place.
But then again, what if it wasn’t accidental and instead was a silent cry for help from her older sister?
What if the lack of direct acknowledgment and action to curtail the resurgence of that particular self-harming act caused even more irreparable harm to Powder?
Would she ever stop failing her sister when she needed her most?
Oh, Vi was so unqualified to handle all of this on her own!
Vi could hear herself emitting quietly distressed sounds but simply could not stop herself from making them, especially not after Powder’s pleading whine broke her out of her looping thoughts.
Rushing over to cautiously try the doorknob again, she let herself continue to be pathetic and frantic, hoping to communicate to Powder that she was in no way alone at that moment.
Hoping to communicate that she, too, was feeling very vulnerable and raw with shared emotions.
“Powder? Puppy, please? Please let me in. I just need to see you. I don’t know what to do now. I’ve made such a mess of everything, and I don’t know what I can do--I don’t want you to be scared of me. I just want to help, and I—”
She could feel her voice wavering with deep emotion, and her vision blurred as hot tears threatened to spill over, so focused on containing her sobs as she leaned her forehead against the door that she barely caught herself before she tumbled forward as it opened abruptly.
Blinking some clarity back into her vision, she tried to take in the chaotic scene all at once, even though it became nearly impossible to do with every new bloodied detail she zeroed in on before finally settling her focus on Powder’s crumpled form beside the doorway.
It was almost worse than what she had imagined.
The Omega teen’s blood was absolutely everywhere, but thankfully ‘only’ in mostly light smears that did not smell nearly as freshly spilled anymore and not in growing pools from gaping wounds.
An important distinction that marked a small victory but a ‘victory’ nonetheless.
Because it hopefully meant that it indeed had been either a momentary lapse in control or a total accident that caused it to leave her sister’s body in the first place.
Whatever the reasoning behind its now external location, the source, her pup of a sister, looked utterly lost and broken before her.
“Oh Powder…This is literally all my fault. Please forgive me… you’re shaking because of me… I’m sorry! Can I…should I get closer? Is that okay? None of ‘that’ was your fault! I should have been more mindful of the moon cycle and—”
Vi just couldn’t seem to stop herself from breaking into nervous rambling!
So much for composing herself to present a sturdier front.
But the fact that she refused to bolt again like an immature pup and instead was focusing on being there for Powder despite her growing sense of overwhelm had to count for something!
She likely would not have been able to stop making distressed sounds and tripping over herself even if she had redoubled her efforts at that moment at the sight of Powder’s anxious form again.
Her pride as an older sister and Alpha be damned, she would have kept rambling and whimpering until she was blue in the face from lack of oxygen, but a cold, clammy, yet still firm tug on her hand grounded her body and quieted her mind instantly.
Vi had hesitated for only a moment longer to mentally calculate how to arrange her now even more awkwardly lengthened limbs to fit in the space in front of the corner Powder had wedged herself into without making her feel caged in as she obliged the silent request to join her upon the gritty floor.
A clear undercurrent of fretfulness still permeated the air around them, influencing every movement within their limited space.
Despite the significant shift towards ‘normalcy’ that Vi could feel gradually building, its promise did not stop her from wanting to make herself as small and ‘non-intimidating’ as possible.
It did not stop her from letting herself show how vulnerable she was also feeling at the moment.
She haden't even been aware of how hard she had been gripping her shin in uneasiness and self-restraint until Powder reached out to loosen her grip and deliberately moved her clammy palms to rest them upon her face before leaning into the touch with a watery smile.
Vi’s heart squeezed tight, filled with unnamable emotion at the feel of such an unhurried and tender display of love and the thought of Powder being the one who felt brave enough to initiate it unprompted.
“What… What even was ‘all that’ Vi? I was just having some weird dreams that night, and then I woke up, and you were just gone! And-and I thought it was because of—I thought you were never coming back! ‘That’ had never happened before, and I thought I’d grossed you out because it was so messy and—”
Oh.
Vi felt like even more of a blundering fool than ‘usual.’
And that was saying a lot.
She had been so preoccupied with her doom spiraling and self-disgust about her actions, or lack thereof, to even fully consider how Powder’s less corrupted mind might misconstrue her hasty exit.
Vi had been too preoccupied to consider how her sister’s already fragile self-esteem might lead her to view her act of cowardice as a personal rejection rather than the desperate attempt to reign in her twisted, baser Alpha urges.
Oh, they would need to have more ‘talks’ pretty soon.
They would definitely be uncomfortable and somewhat embarrassing talks, that’s for sure.
But they were clearly in the thick of things, and not transparently discussing ‘things’ would not help with any current or future confusion.
“No, Powder, that’s not why I left. What uh… That ‘thing’ that happened in your sleep is a natural response to those types of dreams, sometimes. I had to leave in a hurry because I felt like I needed to--never mind. But really, that’s nothing to be ashamed of. You were asleep anyway, so it’s not like you could control—”
A deep breath.
If Powder was brave enough to show Vi that she still trusted her enough to let her touch her again so soon…
Then Vi could be committed enough to continue to do everything she could to someday deserve that level of unquestioned trust, even in her own eyes.
Internally, she was still fighting back the protective instinct to keep herself away if there was even the slightest chance she could cause physical harm, but she tried her best not to show it externally.
She did not want her inner turmoil to make Powder feel unwanted or cause her to continue thinking Vi found her ‘gross’ now when, if anything, the opposite was much closer to the ugly truth.
A lack of ‘want’ would never be an issue.
Her love for her sister would always be at the root of everything she did, right or wrong, in this life and any other.
But she would have to start small yet again.
So, she decided that hands gently placed upon shoulders far away from anything overtly sensitive and gentle squeezes rather than a full-bodied hug were a safe enough place to begin building back from.
“Um…okay... if you say so? If you didn’t leave because I grossed you out, then why…? And see? Yeah, that time I was asleep, but then this time I wasn't, and I don’t even know what the fuck happened, Vi. I was fine, and then I just…couldn’t stop. I’m sorry I’m such a weirdo, Vi. I really didn’t mean to do it again—”
There it was.
Powder openly affirmed that her body was reacting on instinct due to an unseen force and not by any form of conscious intention.
With those words, at least in Vi’s mind, her self-loathsome beliefs that she was the only one that was so fucked up and wrong in all this were cemented.
Powder might not have known better, but Vi already did by then, so the verbal confirmation was enough ‘proof’ to believe that the younger teen’s unintentional ‘advances’ had all been entirely due to her uncontrolled Alpha influence.
Whether she had been aware she had been doing anything or not due to some ‘Alpha Bullshit,’ she knew that she was going to have to learn to get it under control quickly if she hoped to stop unintentionally manipulating Powder’s free will.
It was all Vi’s stupid fault that her sister was speed-running towards developmental milestones that she clearly wouldn’t have rushed into otherwise if not for her lack of experience in controlling her growing pheromonal influence.
Inexcusable.
Vi wasn’t entirely sure why or how her body was doing it since she had never done it to that degree before, but she had to figure out how to prevent it.
Again.
Powder didn’t deserve to experience this internal turmoil simply because Vi lacked control over her more animalistic aspects.
“Listen to me, Powder. That’s exactly what I mean by saying it’s all my fault! I don’t know how I’m doing it, but I just know it’s something I’m causing. Some stupid ‘Alpha’ thing, I think? I’m all messed up, and because of that, I’m somehow passing it on to you and hurting you. I’m going to try to fix this, to fix me. I promise I will.”
Vi had once again accidentally slipped into a more controlling stance than she intended to as she spoke, her hands lowering to almost fully encircle her sister’s upper arms to anchor her in place and ensure her words were heard.
After her solemn vow, there was a beat of silence, during which she took in the lingering minute tremors still present against her fingertips.
Tremors that made her hands quiver slightly as they held on to the younger girl with a slackened grip.
Or had it been the other way around?
Had she been the one trembling so noticeably?
Regardless, there was something about Powder feeling even smaller in her hands than she had already been next to her before her latest growth spurt over the last two days, which made Vi’s protective instincts flare so fiercely and automatically.
Vi hadn’t even noticed herself leaning an inch closer and solidifying her grip the tiniest amount.
It had been such a subtle repositioning, but the slight change still seemed to trigger yet another unthinking action in the younger Omega girl because Powder entirely dropped the cover of her knees and straightened up her spine before a surprised yelp had even entirely made it past her lips at the increase in pressure.
“Wait, fix what part of this? You didn’t do anything! You being gone for so long? That is what was hurting me, but you’re here now. So everything else we can just--we can just move past it. I don’t know! I mean, did ‘I’ hurt you? Are you okay now after…Well, you know! You were there!”
The sweet sincerity in her words shone through as bright as a cloudless Piltover sky in Powder’s earnest expression and tone of voice in her outburst, and Vi’s heart clenched with a nearly tear-jerking level of fondness for her.
Because despite everything she had gone through, everything they had recently endured together, Powder enthusiastically and openly poured her loving heart out for her at every hint of an opportunity.
It was so damn touching how she still worried about Vi and her feelings in all this despite her monstrous mistakes and shortcomings.
There was such an innocence to it all that made Vi feel all the more disgusted with herself for in any way tainting something so pure with the seemingly permanent coating of filth that she felt had been adorning her skin for as long as she could remember.
The filth may have been too thoroughly seeped into her flesh to scrub off herself entirely, but she could still do everything within her power to minimize its transfer onto the younger teen in the future.
It indeed had to be Vi who would have to do even better to shoulder most of the outside world’s weight, if only to keep it from crushing that blind hope and trust in her that Powder somehow refused to let go of.
If she had no choice but to exist as this grimy monster now that her Wolf had fully clawed out of its cage, despite her best efforts to keep it locked up forever, she could and would at the very least do everything within her power to be a ‘good’ monster for Powder.
Vi had no idea how she would teach herself to navigate a life in which she was now unmistakably tethered to a fully awakened beast without losing any of her humanity or sanity.
The thought of how much of herself she knew nothing about now threatened to petrify her.
It seemed like another impossible task: keeping herself collected and present enough to be the grounding presence Powder needed to prevent her from hurdling over the same precipice she was now freefalling from.
She needed to be steadfast and pull Powder back to safety before she plunged into the same dark horrors she had recently experienced and still had not had the time to process fully.
It may have been too late for Vi to turn back now, and she would continue to be without anyone to help her through it or share in her misery for an indeterminate amount of time.
But that was just what came with the territory of being the eldest, or so she continued to believe adamantly.
Enduring hardships and protecting your loved ones from the pain of the worst mistakes along the journey so they don’t ever have to know how bad things can get without a guide who has been there before.
So yes, to at least some degree, experiencing something so jarringly new was bound to be inevitably horrifying as was dictated by the base nature of what they were born as.
There was no way to sugarcoat the genuine fact that a shift of any kind would always involve your insides and outsides moving and growing in ways that hurt like hell, no matter how much you tried to brace yourself for it.
Even if you tried to prepare mentally, you would not know how all-encompassing a change could be, especially if it had never happened to you before.
So, while she knew she could not stop it from ever happening to Powder, she could prevent it from happening nearly as abruptly as it felt it had for her.
Ease her into and through it.
To save her from the dark unknown threatening to swallow Vi alive before she could get her bearings.
It was just not the right time for Powder to shift as well.
The timing of it would not be suitable for either of them if it happened so close to Vi’s first because she still needed time to figure shit out just enough to not be completely useless and unhelpful to her.
When her little sister’s first shift came, it would need to happen in a more unhurried and peaceful way.
It was what Powder deserved.
There had been such an inherently traumatizing violence to Vi’s first that she would never wish upon her gentler dispositioned sister.
No, she would not let it be even remotely similar to hers.
As horrific as it had been for Vi, she was still almost glad it happened to her first, just so that it did not have to happen that way to the Omega teen.
She had no solid plan or know-how about what she would do realistically to prevent things dictated by nature, but as always, she had to hope she could take on the challenges as they came.
For the moment, thankfully, it seemed that talking things out, however clumsily, had already been enough to quiet down the little wolf inside her because as Vi gently inspected Powder’s hands and wounded legs, she could see them already healing.
The claw-like nails had receded once more, leaving almost no trace of their existence other than the raw-looking nail beds that greeted Vi’s moderately scrutinizing gaze.
Powder’s eyes had returned to their usual coloring, and her features had reverted to her most familiar state.
As she noticed these changes in Powder’s body, she also took a moment to realize that her own body was much less tense and, therefore, likely radiating much more comforting pheromones that Powder latched onto with her heightened senses.
It should have brought her a significant level of inner tranquility to know that she now seemed to have a heightened ability to offer something unfailingly and naturally soothing to Powder now that she had shifted for the first time.
If and when she learned to control her output, it could make all the other aspects she only saw as negatives worth the torment of living with because it could mean that she could help Powder whenever that ‘fog’ that sent her into a fearful fit threatened to settle over her.
She would have something other than stuttered words or tentative touches to try to reach her and bring her presence of mind back into her body.
This could make her even more helpful for Powder if only she learned how to be.
But that positive line of thought had not fully crossed her mind yet, so it had once again twisted the peaceful moment into something that only solidified the troubling idea that Vi had a rather concerning level of influence over the small Omega before her.
Probably even more than ever before, and that was simply not right.
Powder should be able to refuse her in any way she needs.
She should be able to exercise free will and not have her body’s actions controlled by whatever strange signals Vi accidentally sent to it.
There were fewer things that Vi herself could imagine being scarier than feeling taken hostage by your own body as it followed the orders of something else outside of conscious thought.
She had already experienced it.
And it would haunt her nightmares for years.
Therefore, if she had any say in the matter, she refused to be responsible for creating that type of experience for the younger teen, even in the most innocuous ways.
So, it settled things in her mind.
She would learn to manage this newfound untamed level of ‘power’ and only use it for good and force the beast within to keep its destructive claws away from the one person she loved above all others by any means necessary.
“That might have to be a talk to save for another time, maybe when you’re a little older. Or I don’t know… It’s complicated Pow Pow. But just… Even though I might not deserve it anymore, can you try to trust me when I say I will do my best to make things better? I will be better. For both of our sake.”
Vi could tell that her vague wording left so many unanswered questions and that Powder was likely itching to ask them all, but she pressed on anyway:
“You look so sleepy, pup. I’ll help check that these are healing correctly, and then you can wash up while I change your sheets and get you something to change into if that’s okay with you. I’ll shower too once I get you in bed—to bed—once you’re asleep!”
Her slip of the tongue seemed to fly right over Powder’s head, but the mere fact that Vi got so flustered by even accidentally saying something that only had the potential to be interpreted salaciously made a flaming hot blush of shame bloom across her face.
Once again, her twisted mind made things awkward and uncomfortable for herself more than Powder for no good reason.
Because Powder, whose mind was not poisoned by the same beastly sickness that hers seemed to be gradually succumbing to, seemed to have no reason to feel awkward about the same things she did.
She shouldn’t have, either, because her body and mind were merely responding in ways she could not help.
Unfortunately, it was only acting out in ways it had been hardwired to do due to what she was born as.
And the misfortune of living with such an inexperienced ‘Alpha’ who could not seem to stop being a warped fuck up did not help anything.
Vi’s continued blunderings were likely only burdening Powder with the added weight of unnecessary confusion at a stage of her life filled with enough rapid developments to try to make sense of and adapt to already.
Even without her unintentional outside influences scrambling her up.
She knew she would push herself to relearn to control the ‘invisible’ influences she could put on, even if it took her a little longer than she would like or had the patience with herself for.
That would take more time to accomplish.
But for the moment, she set out to at least physically diminish any added disquiet within her.
That was something immediately controllable.
And so, she tried her very best to be as detached as possible but still gentle as she carefully maneuvered Powder’s pliant limbs to thoroughly inspect them for any potential physical damage that was not immediately apparent.
The visible goosebumps and subtle twitching that even her nearly disinterested touches left in their wake sent an unsolicited spike of something through Vi that likely showed in her eyes as they made brief eye contact with Powder’s briefly clouded ones before she managed to tamp it back down as she purposefully looked away.
She did not need to read into any part of that wordless interaction or mess with that snag in their tapestry before it could settle into something less convoluted once more.
It meant nothing.
It had to mean nothing.
She was likely just:
“Cold.”
That was exactly what she also blamed the charged moment on for both of their sakes.
Nothing was strange about it, just a body’s natural response to a prolonged chill in the air and nothing more.
(In reality, between the small size of the room and the even more abnormally high amounts of body heat they had been filling it with, it was doubtful that lowered body temperature was to blame. But if Powder wanted to move past the awkwardness without addressing it head-on for now, she could definitely play along, too.)
Standing up to her full height but remaining loose-limbed, she took the go-to ‘dorky route’ to fully break any remaining tension between them.
“All righty Pow Pow. Everything checks out, according to Dr. Vi. And as you know, I am extremely knowledgeable about such things. So you should be good to go! Get cleaned up, and I’ll have everything ready for you when you get back.”
As she said this, injecting as much over-the-top theatrics as she could manage, she saw a genuine smile reaching up to Powder’s now solidly ‘normal-looking’ eyes that further reassured her that boosting up the silliness was the way to go to save the moment.
Taking another brave chance, Vi reached over and playfully mussed up Powder’s hair like she would on an average night, instantly half regretting the impulsive motion as her grimy hand was immediately soaked in the girl’s residual sweat.
To further play up the theatrics, she quickly pulled her hand back to wipe it on her pants dramatically, then grimaced and pretended to dust off her sweat particles from them as if it would matter since she knew they were already beyond saving and absolutely filthy anyway.
Not wanting to cross back into uncomfortable and possibly offensive territory, Vi then turned heel to give Powder privacy to get herself cleaned up first but gave pause as she heard her timidly call out to her:
“Can I wear one of your sleep shirts? You can choose whichever one, if-if that’s not too weird to ask after—”
The sudden wave of caring affection that blanketed Vi at such an innocent request being uttered so timidly after the less-than-innocent series of events that had transpired earlier nearly bowled her over.
And so, despite herself, she found herself needing to lean on to the doorknob she was turning for support for just a moment to let it roll over her.
Re-centering herself, she turned her head and uttered the words she hoped would once again be taken as the terms of endearment she’d always intended them to be with as much gentleness as she could before gently closing the bathroom door:
“Sure thing, ya little weirdo. I’ll be right here when you’re done.”
Notes:
As if life isn't kicking my a** enough/I don't write slow enough as is due to my Conditions/etc but:
I still fully intend to get around to wrapping this part up in a few more chapters and then tackle the diverting 'in-between' years chapters where Vi (Spoiler alert...??) goes through A Lot in Stillwater and Powder continues her traumatic journey to becoming Jinx in the outside world.
This entire thing is just a prequel/me being extra and wanting to Explain why VI and Jinx will be 'the way they are' in the future.
So that should keep ME busy for a good long while.But would y'all be interested in me testing out what those 'future' scenarios/scenes could look like while I continue to write their past out?
They may or may not be/remain 'canon' to this AU's established (and yet to be established) world after I get more of it written out. But it could be fun 'What If?' scenarios if nothing else.
i.e., That Fight from S2 Ep3, Exploring 'Pit Fighter/Emo Era Vi's scenes in Ep 5, Something Fluffy with Isha, etc. etc, but somehow still
connecting back to this a.u??Let me know if there is any interest in those or other specific moments from the series! I want to practice writing them as the messed up adults they're destined to become already; it's well beyond the time I gave it another go tbh.
Update: I'M GONNA 'FIX' SOME OF THESE FCKA** ACT 3 SCENES MARK MY WOOORRDDSSS
Chapter 21: Vi Pt 5 (Continued)
Summary:
' The nearly ever-present sense of guilt and shame made a resurgence the moment she enclosed herself into the dimly lit, poorly ventilated bathroom as her eyes skirted over the remnants of blood all around her before locking onto the small pile of clothing beside their shower.
While the scent that clung to them was no longer nearly as strong away from its source and body heat in general, in such close confines, it had assaulted Vi’s senses in a way that triggered autonomic responses that she was dishonorably helpless to hold back any longer now that she was alone.
Vi could feel herself purring deeply, saliva pooling in her mouth.
Other parts responded in kind to her sudden surge of need and hunger as she inched closer to the direction of their shower, which just so happened to be the same direction as the pile she could almost swear was calling out to her directly.
Telling her to clutch it to herself, bathe in that scent instead, and be a disgusting animal about it, and—nope! ;
--Or--
Vi shortly debates the merits of quietly 'taking care of it' vs. her self-disgust about the place and timing. Necessary conversations happen, but some things don't need to be overtly stated to be understood.
Notes:
*crawls out of the pit of depression and despair they were flung into after THAT third act*
I...
I don't think I even want to talk about it, y'all.
I'm back, though!
But I will say this update took longer than intended because I needed a whole week to rage and cry, another to process my thoughts and feelings better, and then this third week to finally be able to focus for more than a few minutes at a time and get this thing written out.This is the second to last of the chapters I need to hit with the 'Rewrite Beam,' after the next update we're going into ALL NEW territory, baby!
(I don't think anything in this chapter, or at least how it is presented, is worth the final rating bump. Yet. But the update after the next might be! Just to play it safe anyway; we'll see if/when we get there, though!)
I still haaate trying to write dialogue but after S2 well--
Now this chapter has MORE Vander than the original version did!
[[And again, Vi is a bit past 17 at this point in the timeline, so things will get more Mature from here on out. But still nothing particularly 'graphic' here.]]
Tw// Allusions to Teenage Sexuality (Masturbation), Non-Descriptive Nudity (Vi is in the shower, so...), as well as Mentions of Blood, I guess? Arguments With a Parent??
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
=== Vi ===
With the door dully clicking shut and once again providing the slightest of barriers between herself and the fresh swirl of overstimulating scents, Vi was given a short reprieve from having to deliberately tune them out to be able to think more clearly.
Thanks to the ‘cool down’ period, the worst of whatever ‘that’ had been seemed to be passing.
Mostly.
However, due to the lack of ‘resolution’ on her end, she had been left with a buildup of energy she felt the need to use immediately.
She needed to do something with the pent-up potential buzzing through her, or she would surely lose her damned mind.
Doing ‘that’ was likely the quickest way to rid herself of the ‘buildup’ but was out of the question, at least not until she could be sure that Powder was safe and taken care of first.
She could and would not let her guard down long enough to meet her own needs until she made every effort possible to ‘fix’ some of the damage she had caused first.
The more Vi let herself think about what all needed mending, the more the steps towards ‘fixing’ it all seemed to stack up and turn into something unmanageable.
Now was not the time to freeze up and be useless due to inaction by trying to take on everything at once, so she tried to look at what was directly in front of her and start there.
Vi just needed to try to do something productive with the time afforded to her while Powder washed up.
She surveyed the chaos of an open-plan basement that served as their shared room and wondered what rearrangement would benefit them most.
Movement.
Something physical would distract her from her thoughts, draw her focus away from ‘it,’ and allow her to expel energy through other parts of her body.
A good start.
Vi figured that Powder, and honestly herself as well, would not want to sleep alone again for even one more night.
At least not during the immediate aftermath of everything that occurred, anyway.
Not when even one night of not sleeping in the same room together after a lifetime of bunking or sharing the same bed left them both so distraught for too many reasons to mention.
And honestly, in her heart, she wanted to quell that soul-deep ache that the mere thought of not being as physically close as possible as soon as possible left, especially because she could somehow sense it within Powder as well.
But Vi also figured that it was probably not the best idea to jump right back into sharing the same bed again or even sleeping in the same level of proximity that bunking, as they typically had before, put them to each other just yet.
Not because she did not trust herself not to be weird about it intentionally but mainly because she knew she needed more time to get a handle on whatever new ‘Alpha Bullshit’ her body seemed to be doing that had obviously and unintentionally clouded Powder’s mind once already.
Learning to control her body's subconscious cues, which had triggered such a primal reaction in the Omega teen, likely against her higher-minded input, would take longer to master than she had time for.
She knew that strengthening this new form of self-control would not happen overnight.
But Vi would be damned if she didn’t try her hardest to make the period in between even the slightest bit less turbulent in any way possible.
To lessen the chances of accidental repeated trauma unto Powder now that she had a better idea of just how much influence she could have on her if she ever let her own twisted inner workings contaminate the sacred space they shared again.
She had more than half a mind to do something impulsive and drastic, like hunt down a saw and just turn their bunk bed into two separate beds then and there and throw out anything that got in the way of where she wanted to place it, which was adjacent to Powder’s bed.
Close enough to keep each other within sight for their shared peace of mind, but with the clear-cut boundary of still sleeping in separate beds.
It was more than a bit theatrical and would take far longer than mere minutes to do, but, at least in her mind, it was not that outlandish and illogical of a rearrangement, right?
Or would that be too much too soon in general and possibly be offensive and hurtful to Powder?
Would it make her feel like she was putting up an invisible wall between them because Vi thought Powder could not be trusted anymore, further hurting her fragile sense of self-worth?
She simply could not risk sending that incorrect message when the reality of it was that it would be more of a precaution to thwart her potential accidental fuck ups due to her own continued incompetence as a proper ‘Alpha’ guardian and protector for Powder.
A life previously shared with such few boundaries was proving to be quite a minefield to navigate now that life’s circumstances were all but demanding that even more boundaries be set as soon as possible.
Vi hated how progressively more complicated everything had become overnight and dreaded how many more things could go wrong soon if she did not rectify certain shortcomings as quickly as possible.
She did not realize how much time she had wasted ruminating on all these thoughts, but when she suddenly noticed the telltale sounds of the shower finally running in the background, she finally set her body into motion.
Deciding that splitting the bunk bed frame was ridiculous and counterproductive, she moved all the meager furniture they owned back and away a few paces to make room for pushing the more extended sofa closer to the beds’ sight line.
Close enough so that they would still be the first thing the other would see upon waking, but with enough space between so that even Vi’s motionless presence would not infringe on Powder’s personal space in any way.
Just enough space so that there was still room for the table to be placed between them as an added deterrent to simply sleepily shuffling back into Powder’s bunk on autopilot when she finally settled down to nap later.
The couch would not be the most ‘comfortable’ place to sleep, and she could already feel her sore body hating her for the added torture.
But it was not like she hadn’t recently slept in worse places and conditions, so Vi knew she could handle a day or two of more ‘familiar’ levels of discomfort.
It had been far too long since she last needed to sleep there for any reason, long enough that she remembered it being when she still used to fit on it without needing to twist herself up, but she would manage it somehow.
(In all honesty, by that point, she had not been sure that her actual bed would be much more comfortable anyway. Before that apparent latest growth spurt, her shoddy mattress had already been getting too short to stretch out on fully.
She dreaded figuring out her sleeping situation once she felt ready to return to her bunk because she had already wondered if it would hold her weight for much longer before everything transpired since the last time she lay in bed.
She had questioned if it would even be big enough to accommodate any other potential future growth spurts. But that had been a problem for ‘Future Vi’ to sort out anyway.)
With the more immediate sleeping arrangements sorted out, Vi set out to find something remotely clean for Powder to sleep in that would not wholly drown her.
Near the bottom of a pile of clothes she secretly kept to pass down to Powder, she saw some familiar stripes on a sleeve peeking out of it.
Her old favorite stolen ‘Piltie shirt’.
She lost herself momentarily, remembering how she had obtained the Piltie shirt from a random shop topside on one of her first solo runs and had worn it to sleep countless times until she could no longer wear it as a full shirt.
She wore and washed that shirt so many times that the once vibrant colors had become muted, and the collar stretched out a bit from harsh scrubbing and wringing.
Vi didn’t think the purple and fuchsia suited her very well, so she never really wore it outside of using it as one of the most comfortable sleep shirts she had ever had.
She smiled at the thought that it could comfort Powder now that it fit her better and that the cooler-hued colors would look much better on her, complementing her beautiful sapphire-toned hair and gunmetal blue-colored eyes.
Vi was overcome with a sudden surge of yearning to find ways to give Powder more beautiful things and peaceful experiences than ever before.
To give.
Give more.
And then even more than that.
Because her younger sister deserved so much better than what she’d been put through in her young life thus far, despite Vi’s best efforts to shield her from the worst of it.
Vi was always rougher-edged and tougher-skinned than her little sister had been, so she was confident she could shoulder even more hardship if needed to keep her sister safe and as close to unmarred as possible, given their world.
Life’s punches still always hurt, but she knew she could and would bounce back up if she even had a sliver of fight left in her body to do so.
She would never go down without a fight.
That’s just not how she was built.
But Powder?
Powder had always been a sweet and sensitive creature.
Even from the first moment Vi laid eyes on her and was trusted to hold her in her arms as a pup herself, she knew her little sister deserved all the gentleness she could pry out of the wretched world they had been born into.
The older they grew, the stronger the drive to protect her in any way she could only continued to build inside of her.
Life kept making knowing the ‘right way’ to go about it more complicated to discern, but maybe someday, Vi would try to track down that same shop and find more clothes just as soft and comfortable as this simple shirt to gift to her brand new for once.
Someday, she would find a way to give her so much more.
She would!
---
The sound of a characteristically heavy-handed knock eventually breaks her out of her thoughts, and she nearly trips over some haphazardly strewn clothing on the floor as she bolts up the steps to greet the person she already knows to be Vander before even opening the door.
With a glance and head tilt directed down the steps, she focused really hard on listening for any sign that Powder would be exiting their bathroom within the next few seconds.
After the brief pause, she heard nothing, so she unlocked the heavy door, quickly stepped out, and shut it behind herself as quietly as the rusty hinges and its heft allowed.
The burly man standing right outside barely got a chance to do more than take a hurried step back to avoid getting barreled into before Vi non-too discreetly tried to herd him away even further from the doorway for some inexplicable but urgent reason.
For a brief moment, he almost looked like he would take an indignant step forward to breach the invisible barrier Vi had set between them, but after a swift scan of her overall demeanor, he decided to stay put and stand a little taller as he spoke.
“Violet, do you mind telling me where in the world you’ve been? I’d like to think I can trust my kids to ultimately be responsible at the end of the day, even after a streak of rebelliousness. I try not to ‘interfere’ unless I am needed to, but your brothers said that they had not heard from either of you all day yesterday, and so, of course, I had to come down here hoping to find some form of note as to your whereabouts. That has always been the one thing I ask of you if you think you might be out for longer than a day.”
His voice rose incrementally above a normal speaking volume before abruptly dipping into something quieter, sterner, and more transparently disappointed.
“I know you are more than capable of defending yourself these days, but just as I’ve always told you, it would be greatly appreciated if you left some notice with your family so that I don’t go nearly destroying all of the Undercity and Piltover myself to search for you blindly in worry. I go down there and see no trace of you, at least not that I could perceive. But care to guess what I found down there instead?”
She could tell the question was largely rhetorical, so she held her tongue for a beat with conscious effort despite her inner Alpha’s protests, sensing Vander was far from done with delivering a verbal chastisement that was beyond well-deserved.
Leave it to Vander to make Vi feel small and defenseless within seconds with next to no ‘effort’ or physical imposition beyond just a few pointed words directed her way.
The gears in her head began to spin on overdrive, trying to think of how even to begin to explain where she had been or why she had even been gone for as long as she had without giving any word of it to anyone.
Telling an outright lie and getting caught in it would not go well, and telling even a half-truth would be too shameful and disgusting for her to admit to out loud to her father, of all people.
Trying to play into teenage rebellion and ‘brush off’ the severity of her unintentional blunder would be a rookie mistake she knew better than ever to commit, knowing all the dangers present in the Undercity and beyond for anyone and sometimes particularly more so for people like her sister and herself.
She knew she was plenty old enough to understand how real that threat was and did not want to insult Vander by pretending otherwise.
If the gears and machinery in her head had not been imaginary, Vi was sure smoke would waft out of her ears as she struggled to string even half a sentence together in response to any of Vander’s questions.
But despite the long pause and lack of response on her part, he continued:
“I find your little sister looking visibly sick with worry, troubled in a way I have never seen her but stubbornly refusing to tell me the truth! I had half a mind to go out without a plan and bruise up a few people who might not have deserved it just to find you and drag you back here myself, no matter how much you’ve grown.
To make you confront and fix whatever mess you had run away from. And I know something must have happened between you two because there isn’t anyone else she would be so torn up about but you. No one she would lie to me to protect but you.
I don’t know what could have been so pressing that it needed your attention urgently, but you have responsibilities here, Violet. You can’t just up and run out whenever you feel like it—”
She had been doing astoundingly well, remaining wholly silent and taking in her father’s words no matter how accusatory his tone became.
However, being wrongly reprimanded for something she knew was constantly on her mind seemed to set her temper off in an uncontrollable flash.
Respectful reverence and incongruency with her most genuine sentiments be damned:
“I know that, Dad! Don’t you think I know that too damn well? But it isn’t like she’s only my responsibility, though, you know? I can’t always be with her like I used to when we were still pups. I have other stuff to deal with now, too! But still, everything I ever do is for her! Even this! I-I don’t feel ready to talk about it, but I promise I-I had no choice but to l-leave. To protect her. Protect her from me! I…things happened a-and…”
The fire that initially fueled her outburst was nearly entirely snuffed out by the time she stuttered out the last few words when overwhelming guilt returned with a vengeance and replaced the initial passion with nervousness.
Nervousness so consuming that she heard and felt herself stuttering embarrassingly despite herself.
She could not even look him in the eyes anymore as she felt unexpected tears spring to her eyes, making them sting once more and forcing even more out in response to the pain, which she immediately tried to wipe off of her grimy face with her dried blood-covered hands.
At this unexpected show of vulnerability, the tears she knew Vander had seen even less of in the last couple of years than anyone else, he instantly softened his approach.
His aggressive posture deflated into something less combative, but his eyes retained a glint of severity as he lowered his voice to a stern whisper.
“Violet… is there anything I should know about that must be ‘taken care of’ immediately? It would be best if you let me know now so I can work on it before it grows legs and gets away from us. I don’t need all the details right now, but I will need to know enough to know what I’m dealing with. Are you safe right now, at least? Is Powder safe? Do you need anything for those wounds?”
Vi couldn’t contain the swell of emotion that washed over her seeing the giant man in front of her be both so fiercely protective and affectionate over her as if she were still the little soot-covered trembling pup he took in all those years ago and not the nearly six-foot-tall ‘almost-adult’ who fought and won a majority of her battles that stood before him.
As many times before, Vander was one of, if not the only, people in her life who could still make her feel like she was small and worth taking care of.
“Yes, she—we’re safe for the moment. Something happened when I got back, but we’re h-handling it. She’s washing up now, and I’ll go next when she’s done so these scrapes heal well. And about the other ‘thing’…uhh... guess who finally had her first shift and was a total mess about it?”
She was made aware once more of how raw some of her wounds still were and how much she could not wait to wash off whatever gross substance had left the hair on the back of her head oddly slimy and crusty as she nervously scratched at it.
The taller man’s furrowing brow made her shrink into herself ever so slowly, communicating so much without a word before he uttered a single one aloud.
“Violet… what do you mean by ‘a mess about it’?”
His tone slipped back into a hint of barely restrained judgment and anger, and the narrowing of his eyes as he stared her down, waiting for an answer, made her feel almost unreasonably anxious.
So she took a big bracing breath before her nervousness spilled right out of her:
“I uhh kinda m-may or may not have maimed and or killed a few brutes down at some seedy brothel a few miles East from here. I didn’t catch its name, but some symbol was plastered all over it, which looked like a glowing orange eye or s-something. I was only in t-there for a few minutes a-at most because—well. Everything went to hell so quickly!
And there was this w-woman there, and I don’t know what h-happened, but then I got ambushed by s-some of their security team and was already starting to lose c-control by then, so I just r-reacted on instinct and-- But it was before I shifted entirely, and so I t-think, well more like I hope no one noticed something was ‘off’ about me, and so maybe no one will even—"
All of this was said without taking more than two additional big breaths in between and so quickly that her words nearly blended into indistinct sounds.
But somehow, Vander, who was likely more used to this type of nervous babbling coming from Powder, managed to understand most of her frenziedly rambled words regardless.
“All right, East from here, you said? I think I know which one that might be and who owns it. I’ll send someone to scope things out. Brawls that end in bloodshed are not uncommon in that area, so I doubt anything will come of this unless we make a bigger deal of it and draw attention to the incident. You know I don’t condone violence for violence’s sake, but I’m glad you are all right now. Please don’t make a habit out of this—”
“I won’t! It wasn’t even entirely on purpose. I had never even been inside one of t-those kinds of places, and I was already o-overwhelmed before I even got there and then—”
“--but I’ll still take care of it—this time. We’ll talk about this more later. But for now, I need to know if there are any new ‘precautions’ I must take with you. Are there any new accommodations I need to make when it happens again? Do you feel some form of restraints will be necessary so that--Never mind.
We’ll figure something out between now and the next full moon. I trust you still know how to comport yourself under this roof so you don’t bring that ‘mess’ home. Make sure both of you stay put and get some rest while I handle this. I’ll stop by later this morning with some food for you both.”
The whiplash of how fast the tone of their conversation shifted and how readily Vander seemed to willingly go into ‘clean up’ mode for her misdeeds, even without all the details, left Vi unable to formulate a finalizing verbal response to the entire exchange.
So she stiffened her trembling lower lip and nodded jerkily, causing Vander to chuckle and shake his head fondly at her attempts to contain her swell of emotion at the unspoken fatherly sentimentality.
He paused momentarily to gauge how reactive she may still be before bidding her farewell with a trademarked heavy-handed display of affection in the form of a firm double pat on the back, the second of which almost sent her flying and knocked loose a relieved laugh of her own.
She had always loved him for things like that and would miss how he, intentionally or not, had trusted that she was not some fragile being who could not handle the rough affection.
It made her feel strong.
Capable.
And loved wholeheartedly by her father figure.
---
As he made his way back up the corridor steps to presumably turn towards the direction of his room and get ready for the day ahead, Vi just watched him go for a few more contemplative moments.
Soaking in the fact that she got off the hook so quickly, at least momentarily, whether she deserved it or not, for something that had been eating her up inside for over a day.
She wondered if he would still be willing to overlook those dark deeds if he knew the whole story leading up to and after those events, but she knew she would try her best to earn his trust and respect for her judgment calls.
Deciding to get to work on that goal immediately, she headed back into the basement room to find Powder still in the shower after that entire exchange.
Had it been that quick of an exchange, or was Powder taking that long of a shower?
Worrying that the Omega teen might have passed out or would get sick from being under the likely now not even lukewarm spray for so long, Vi knocked tentatively to announce her returned presence.
“Powder? Hope everything is uh… okay in there. I’m just going to open the door for a second to leave your change of clothes right by it, and then I’ll close it again, I promise.”
Vi only paused for a second, just long enough to hear some form of consent before doing exactly as she stated, then rushed to change Powder’s bed sheets, balling them up and tossing them to the furthest pile of dirty laundry they had before turning back again to make the couch even a fraction less uncomfortable for her later use.
All of this was done so quickly that she barely even gave herself enough time to get distracted by the fact that the sheets she tossed aside and the couch cushions she would need to lay on top of still smelled of…
Nope.
She needed to focus on the present.
Thinking quickly, she fluffed the cushions out by the air vent and draped the unwashed blanket off her bed over as much of the couch and cushions as possible, hoping it would dissipate more of the scent and make them more bearable.
(It barely did.)
Driven by some baser instinct to ‘offer something in return’ for the unintentionally scent-marked items, Vi found herself pulling her pillow off her top bunk and rubbing it all over her face and sweaty head before gingerly propping it up against the back wall of Powder’s bottom bunk.
She almost snatched it right back in fear that it would be ‘too much’ or ‘too gross and weird’ of her to intentionally scent mark something that Powder would sleep next to after ‘everything’ but silently hoped that it would instead be a comfort for Powder like it used to be before things got so mixed up.
---
As she heard Powder shuffling closer to the door again, Vi rushed to grab something to change into herself and turned just in time to see the now fluffy-haired girl walk out of their bathroom, still looking a little lost in thought.
Vi raised her voice ever so slightly above the volume she would use so early in the morning, but she kept her tone soft to draw her attention without startling her.
“I…u-uh, I might be there a little while Pow Pow. So, don’t try to stay awake for me, and I might not sleep right away anyway since I managed to get a few hours in here and there. But you look like you need to catch up on sleep, pup.”
As she said this, Vi had found herself, seemingly out of the blue, utterly amazed by how beautiful and soft Powder looked when she was markedly less visibly tense.
She had found herself captivated by how lovely Powder’s azure hair looked draping past her shoulders despite being a little frizzed out from trying to dry it quickly and not combing it out afterward.
Charmed by how the shirt that had not fit her in so long had fit Powder’s narrower and shorter frame just loose enough to add an illusion of bulk to her lean musculature without swallowing her whole.
Vi had to snap herself out of her innocuous gawking just in time to catch the moment Powder’s gaze had regained focus and turned to look at her questioningly.
She flushed at the renewed awareness that she could and would be capable of doing just about anything to protect and cherish this beautiful girl.
To not let anything or anyone entirely dull that ever-present curious glint in her eyes and that innocently hopeful spark that shone through in almost any situation.
The previously dulled residual ache in her heart and elsewhere had annoyingly made itself known again at an inopportune moment due to the swell of emotion and the knowledge that she would finally have a few minutes alone in the shower next…
But she ignored it for a little longer because an all-encompassing level of affection and soft awe was at the forefront of her mind.
She knew that whatever she might need to do alone to ‘clear her mind’ behind a shut bathroom door would have to be done quickly and quietly and almost unsatisfactorily to get back to what was more vital for her to do, which was rebuild Powder’s sense of safety around her.
There was no way to know how long it would be until she had another opportunity to tend to her own body’s ‘needs’ since she intended to spend every waking minute for the next however long fully committed to proving to the teen that she would not leave her side without warning ever again if she could help it.
Her body fought her demonstration of restraint at that moment, but Vi still doubled down on focusing on ensuring Powder was calmly tucked safely into bed first.
“Vander stopped by a bit ago and had a lot of questions that I wasn’t ready to answer, so I might talk to him later when he drops off some food for us. But I promise I’ll only step just outside the door to talk to him and come right back so I don’t wake you up. Go to sleep…please.”
Vi had not meant to turn that final soft request into an Alpha Command.
She had not!
But even Vi noticed the difference in timbre that denoted it even before she saw Powder’s eyes widen noticeably before visibly shuddering as her eyelids drooped.
There had been a time when evoking that level of ‘power’ had to be nearly always an extremely deliberate effort for it to work so wholly and immediately.
But now that Vi had finally shifted, it was quickly made apparent that she would have to be much more mindful of just how much more potent that ability seemed to have become if even such an innocuous statement became an irrefutable mandate to the Omega teen.
Vi had expected some form of sassy protest or lingering anxiety over the prospect of not being in Powder’s immediate line of sight or even in the same room while she slept.
Even on a more typical night or day as it was, the girl would stubbornly refuse to settle down if told to do so no matter how sleepy she was, especially if she knew Vi was not going to bed just yet.
But not that time.
No.
Powder offered zero resistance just then and seemed to move in an enthralled yet almost mechanical daze past a befuddled Vi, simply slinking into the farthest edge of her bed, pulling the sheet over herself, and practically melting into the pillow Vi had scented for her as she nodded wordlessly.
Vi almost tried to rescind the accidental command, worried that it would only set her back in her vow to earn her trust.
But the absolutely adoring look directed her way from behind nearly shut eyelids in the seconds before the teen would undoubtedly be fully asleep, coupled with the soft rolling purr that reached Vi’s ears communicating her happy compliance warmed her heart too much to break the tranquility of the moment so she said nothing instead.
Pausing at the bathroom door for a few seconds longer, Vi was endeared by just how comfortable and relaxed Powder seemed to feel thanks to her ultimately helpful, more innocent lapse in control before firmly shutting the bathroom door behind herself.
---
The nearly ever-present sense of guilt and shame made a resurgence the moment she enclosed herself into the dimly lit, poorly ventilated bathroom as her eyes skirted over the remnants of blood all around her before locking onto the small pile of clothing beside their shower.
While the scent that clung to them was no longer nearly as strong away from its source and body heat in general, in such close confines, it had assaulted Vi’s senses in a way that triggered autonomic responses that she was dishonorably helpless to hold back any longer now that she was alone.
Vi could feel herself purring deeply, saliva pooling in her mouth.
Other parts responded in kind to her sudden surge of need and hunger as she inched closer to the direction of their shower, which just so happened to be the same direction as the pile she could almost swear was calling out to her directly.
Telling her to clutch it to herself, bathe in that scent instead, and be a disgusting animal about it, and—nope!
Before she could get too carried away with entertaining that twisted thought, she held her breath as she quickly stuffed the items into the large bucket they kept under the sink and filled the remaining space with water from the tap beneath their showerhead.
She aggressively swished the enticing fabric around before pouring the first bucketful of water down the drain and refilling it immediately, barely breathing through her mouth.
Vi did not care that she was wasting partially heated water she could have used while showering.
She needed the test against her resolve to be a better sister gone!
The nearly violently executed rinse seemed to significantly dilute the scent, but she also poured the remainder of their laundry soap into the bucket.
Hoping it would mute the scent even further, swishing the clothes around to ensure its more neutral scent would take hold just to be safe despite how it made the remaining micro-abrasions in her skin sting.
(If then proceeding to move the bucket to the furthest corner possible in their tiny bathroom had been overkill, it was no one’s fucking business. It made perfect reasonable sense to her back then!)
With how heightened her senses and responses were in the aftermath of a full moon cycle, there was not much more she could do to bolster her self-control again short of throwing the entire thing out onto the street.
Sure, Vi had always been an impulse-driven creature, a given fact she had to combat in most situations that tested her patience and triggered her more primal responses.
But even she thought that would be entirely too dramatic when she could instead focus on trying to be as ‘efficient’ with her time in that room as possible to return to the slightly better-ventilated living area outside the closed-off bathroom.
The longer she stood still, the more time she would give herself to grow ‘distracted’ in a way she did not have time or complete privacy to indulge in.
Again, at least.
So she shook herself fully bodily in a very ‘canine’ way that would have likely looked extremely silly if done publicly but had felt necessary at the moment to refocus and ground herself.
Vi had then quickly peeled off her own similarly sullied but far less salvageable clothes and held them in her hands for a moment’s hesitation while she considered simply soaking them in the same sudsy bucket as her sister’s clothes before ultimately deciding to throw them straight into the trash bin to burn later for safe measure.
Just to preemptively close any potential loop that could get kickstarted by any lingering trace of whatever scent remained on them despite them ‘not smelling of anything’ but gross blood, sweat, and grime beneath traces of Powder.
To her, at least.
But she did not want to take any chances on not knowing if what she could not detect would set off another instinctual response from Powder again that would only muddle things further between them.
If even her own body seemed to lose its damn mind over ‘diluted’ pheromones that the unshifted Omega teen had only emitted in a purely biological response to the ones that her own recently shifted fucked up Alpha body had unintentionally exposed her to, she would not knowingly cause her more strife by upsetting her with something that could be easily disposed of while she slept.
---
As expected, between Powder’s retrospectively worryingly long shower and Vi’s panicked theatrics, even the residual lukewarm water that typically built up within the pipes system from absorbing heat somewhere along the way had run out and left nothing but comparatively ‘bitingly cold’ water in its wake.
Or at least as close to ‘bitingly cold’ as it got to them since their bodies naturally ran hotter than most people’s, even on a typical day.
(Frigid water was hard to come by in buildings so interconnected to Undercity ‘nightlife’ for reasons Vi thought better than to ask about, so any they did have access to that was even remotely safe for consumption was not wasted on showering.)
Vi never minded much either way since her already abnormally heated body abruptly decided to turn its inner furnace even higher.
Their small bathroom tended to trap heat anyway, so a ‘cold’ shower promised to do wonders to help even her body temperature.
At least temporarily.
Vi had known what she would need to do to quell the fire for even longer.
Long enough to let her function without the built-up heat nagging at her so incessantly.
As she stood watching some droplets evaporate off her with increasing speed before quickly condensing onto the cracked tiles at her side, her body temperature rose even further, and a familiar flush washed over her in anticipation.
It had been at that moment that she fully realized that it would not take very long at all to ‘get it out of the way’ with how much tension thrummed through her entire being simply standing naked under the weak water pressure of their showerhead.
Every nerve ending had already been electrified in that telltale way she had learned to identify by then, without so much as a single ‘intentional’ brush over her skin by anything but water.
So once she began scrubbing at her skin until it was nearly raw, gliding her hands over almost every part of her body except the places vying for her immediate attention, she had already started to tremble.
But certainly not from the ‘cold’.
The need had become undeniable as she watched the water running off her body gradually fade from a disturbingly rusted tint to its usual dubiously sanitary, lightly greyed tint.
Even as her fingertips began to twitch with impatience, she still idly wondered if spending a few more minutes under the showerhead’s unevenly pressured yet unforgivingly cooling cover would be enough to snuff out the heat entirely that time.
Vi idly wondered if it had not been too late to simply ‘sleep it off’ and be normal if she had just stepped out, dried off, and got dressed.
She’d done that many times before when time or her conscience simply would not allow for the luxury of enjoying herself when a particular need arose at an inopportune time.
Denying it could be done.
But did it need to be?
She had already worked to mentally ‘justify’ the act only minutes prior, had she not?
It would ultimately be for the ‘greater good’ anyway, and it would undoubtedly help her retain some of her sanity when dealing with the stressful situations that were sure to come.
But would doing anything at all despite the net good still be irredeemably repulsive of her to indulge in and undo the ‘nobility’ of her earlier refusal to ‘actively participate’ even if she did it alone?
Would it be that terrible for her to do, or just awkward timing?
Clearing her head by clearing out some extra tension in her body would only help in the long run, right?
Besides, by that point in her life, Vi had nearly gotten things down to a science and could speed things up even faster when needed if she got out of her way mentally.
And need did indeed be.
Apparently.
Twice in quick succession.
Embarrassingly.
While her mind had been busy trying to guilt herself out of following through, her hands ultimately decided before she could even notice their descent.
She only had a split second to realize that the mounting tension in her muscles had not been due to her increased anxiety before her first peak crested with an intensity that made her knees weak.
Then, as she tried to regain her bearings after that initial shock to her system, the second wave was upon her with almost more ferocity than the first, and her vision darkened at the edges for a few seconds.
After all that, she had been left too sensitive and lightheaded to do anything other than close her eyes as she propped her palms against the cool tile and waited for her breath and soul to return to her body.
Vi would have found it easier to feel embarrassed or even ashamed of her sometimes overzealous ‘trigger’ if having one didn’t ultimately contribute to the efficiency that was often necessary when living in close quarters with someone with highly sensitive hearing and sense of smell.
Moving forward, it would only prove to be all the more ‘advantageous’ for her now that said someone had become much more ‘aware’ and attuned to anything to do with such related activities than ever before, much to Vi’s dismay for many reasons.
Long gone would be the days she could delude herself into thinking Powder was entirely oblivious and far too ‘innocent’ to know what Vi sometimes snuck off to do alone to relieve some tension.
She could no longer delude herself into thinking that there wasn’t any possibility that the younger teen would ever want or even need to do the same for herself.
That morning’s ‘events’ had been beyond sufficient proof of that.
Vi could no longer deny that time stopped for no one, and Powder was maturing like any other teenager.
But it almost seemed like she had blinked and missed the entire transition process, and the thought of that enormously devastated her protective instincts.
One moment, Powder had still been, in her mind’s eye, the little sister who openly and dramatically gagged at even the sight of people holding hands in public.
The same girl who simply scoffed and scrunched up her face adorably in immediate rejection and disgust at even a joking implication that any boy she so much as gave a passing glance toward could be her ‘little boyfriend.’
And now, suddenly, her little Pow-Pow was growing up.
Now Powder was, at the very least, physically capable of sensing and chasing a ‘certain feeling’ to a nearly inevitable conclusion whether she knowingly did so or not.
Following that previous thought, she wondered if she should suddenly start worrying about her time alone with Little Man, even if he was younger than her.
Would the boy jump at the opportunity to intentionally corrupt her younger sister if she showed even an inkling of curiosity about—
No.
That was a stupid line of thought.
The boy had been too awkward and sweet back then to even think of doing anything he thought might piss Vi off.
And if he ever did, he would vehemently apologize in that same stuttering, dorky tone Vi had overheard him speaking whenever he thought she was out of hearing range while left alone with Powder.
It was clear to Vi that the boy had a massive crush on her lovable sister, but he never overstepped, at least not when she was anywhere nearby.
He had always known his place.
Powder never seemed to show anything but ‘platonic interest’ in him at most, or even that much interest in anyone else.
But that had been before everything and—
No.
One crisis at a time.
(And had it been unfairly presumptive for Vi to make the jump towards hypothesizing that Powder was even interested in dudes ‘in that way’ when Vi had never been? Not when she was her age and certainly not long after either, so probably.
But she had already been protective of Powder and their loved ones even before her ‘greedier’ inner Alpha had very recently fully awakened, so sue her for jumping to conclusions without evidence.)
By the time that stream of panicked thoughts petered out, her aftershock-induced shuddering had morphed into actual shivering from her prolonged cooling off.
So, after one final complete rinse to wash off any lingering scent of her ‘alone time,’ she shut the water off and quickly dried herself as best she could before hastily yanking on her change of clothes and almost sprinting out of the bathroom.
Vi had been almost to the door before she suddenly remembered she had at least two more tasks she needed to take care of before she could even consider settling down near Powder’s sleeping form.
She carefully picked up the trash bin into which she had stuffed her shredded, grimy clothing and stepped out of the bathroom with it tucked under one arm.
Noticing Powder seemingly still sound asleep and unsuspecting of anything, she had gingerly pulled on her only other pair of previously oversized boots before gathering up whatever loose change she could find.
When that didn’t rouse her either, Vi decided to use the golden opportunity to make the fastest supply run possible.
The faster she got the things they might need most urgently, like more soap and miscellaneous comfort items to keep Powder entertained, the sooner she could return and settle in for the long haul.
She felt they would likely spend the next few days re-establishing trust in close isolation, so she felt compelled to pick up anything that could make that process more comfortable for Powder.
Besides, since other needs had been met, her body seemed to have unwound enough to let her know how hungry she was for food after eating even less than usual the last two days without even considering how taxing shifting was because she did not yet know.
At least not consciously.
But her body sure tried its hardest to make it a known fact as her stomach growled at her as the tray of possibly ‘over a day old’ untouched food finally caught her attention, almost going against her better judgment and wolfing it down but resisting the temptation.
Vi’s instincts told her she could not eat yet.
At least not until Powder ate a proper meal before her first.
So, instead of giving in to its questionable temptation, she simply tucked the tray under her other arm and made her way up the stairs as delicately as her nearly 6-foot tall and proportionally heavy muscular frame allowed.
Fully intending to quietly dispose of their waste and sneak off to ‘acquire’ as many of the essentials they might need as she could in one go in case she did not get another chance to leave their room again for a while as Powder worked through her anxious spell.
---
It was relieving, to say the least, that she managed to somehow make off with as many items on her mental list as she did without drawing suspicion, but still decided not to test her luck further with any of the larger items.
Vi knew she could carry them home with the other stuff; their weight had not been the issue.
She left them behind because they would make her haul too conspicuous to carry around as she snuck back down to their room without incident after securing the bare essentials.
Or almost snuck back without incident because Vander intercepted her on her way downstairs with her stolen rucksack of goods, seemingly out of the blue.
“Violet.”
She will never know how such a busy and large man had the time and sneakiness to startle her so completely; her even further enhanced senses did nothing to help her.
“Fuck—!"
It had been pathetic enough that she had neither heard nor smelt him long before she reached the doorway to their basement room…
But the undignified, high-pitched yelp that escaped her as she almost dropped the bag in her hands, half in a guilty reflex and half from involuntarily nearly going limp as Vander grabbed her by the back of her shirt collar, had her internally berating herself.
She didn’t know what to make of the fact that despite no longer ‘looking like’ or even being much of a pup but a whole Alpha wolf, her body still defaulted to the same instinctual puppy-like drive to yield to her ‘pack leader’ instantly.
Whether or not there was any ‘blood relation’ or even a shared species connection, it seemed like that baser part of her brain that sought to follow pack order had well and truly chosen to defer to him as her superior despite her maturing age and biological presentation.
Clearing her throat, she carefully let the rucksack of goods slide out of her grip in front of her to buy some time for the admonished blush that had flooded her features to recede as she simultaneously carefully extricated herself from Vander’s firm hold before sheepishly turning to face his interrogative stare.
“—I mean, h-hey Vander! I-I just went out to get some stuff we were running out of that Powder might need while w-we work through some t-things together and—”
Vi hated how much her voice wavered yet again and how the nervous stutter she thought she had fully outgrown by then kept sneaking back into her speech pattern as she shook off her unexpectedly docile instinctual reaction to his innocuous halting gesture and scrambled to gather her words.
“Did you seriously just sneak back out without speaking to anyone again? Especially this soon after what we talked about earlier? I told you I would handle certain things for you, but do you think it’s wise to be sneaking off and potentially drawing extra attention a second time before the heat even has time to cool off a bit from the first time? I know I have taught you better than this!”
There had been another swell of recalcitrance that almost made her lash out at his lightly raised tone, not because she felt he was wrong in any way to call her out on her impulsive actions but because the nagging prideful Alpha inside her wanted to demand that she assert some form of dominance in this ‘fight.’
At least once
But she reminded herself that she had already recently created so much unnecessary drama in her life by not pushing back and letting her less instinct-driven higher mind make some wiser decisions at crucial turning points.
And though it hurt said nagging Alpha’s pride a bit to do so, she ultimately chose to quickly tamper the urge to ‘fight back’ and set aside her self-importance by lowering her gaze and tilting her head to the side while turning away slightly in capitulation.
The symbolically submissive gesture was another nonverbal behavior she figured Vander did not necessarily immediately understand, but it was meaningful nonetheless.
After all, the only other living person she had ever performed it for was safely sleeping just beyond the metal door merely feet away from them, blissfully unaware of any of their interactions that morning.
But Vander was not a wolf, so the significance would not be intrinsically picked up like it would have been by her sister.
So she quickly changed tack, hoping the gesture would land better with the man if she followed it with an audible statement he might understand.
“I’m sorry, Vander, I-I don’t know how to explain it other than it’s a ‘wolf thing’ that keeps making me do extra stupid things right now. I swear I’ll try to rein it in and make better decisions after tonight, but Powder was still sleeping, so I didn’t want to wake her or waste the window of opportunity to do what I felt needed to be done.
I wasn’t thinking about anything other than providing for her right now; I just needed to start making things right with her again. I did not mean to scare any of you with this shit that’s happening to me. It might happen again if I’m being honest with myself, Dad. I’m so sorry for that in advance, too.”
Once again, the burly man seemed to immediately lose all the ‘fight’ he had in him, seeing Vi display vulnerability and amicableness instead of the typical combativeness she usually would, even in situations far less charged than this one.
Or perhaps something she said clicked for him in a way she could not begin to grasp at that stage of her life.
“All right, Violet. I still don’t know exactly what is happening with either of you, but I understand that protecting mindset. In my way, at least. I just worry because you kids mean everything to me. I know you are growing up so fast, faster than I can begin to comprehend, but I still want you to feel like you can come to me for things even remotely within my power to help with.
And even the things I can’t do a thing about, I’d rather know something about them than lose you over them without any warning, knowing I could have tried to help you. Please stay inside for a while; I’ll knock only once in about an hour so you can come up to help me bring down some food for you both, alright?”
He then leaned over and single-handedly picked up the large rucksack off the ground, gently shoveling it into Vi’s waiting arms.
She had lost all trust in her voice and ability to string a coherent sentence together, so she nodded dumbly in response, slowly processing his words and trying to fight back another unexpected surge of emotional tears.
Vi had cried more in those two days than in weeks prior combined.
How embarrassing for her, honestly!
She tried to blame it on lack of proper sleep and a good meal, but even her inner wolf snorted at that poor excuse.
With one last meaningful look shared between them, Vander left back up the small staircase leading to the bar, and she steadied herself before carefully making her way back down to Powder.
--To Be Continued--
Notes:
This monster chapter's word count grew by ~2.5k words from the original.
I'm setting myself up here, bro, I NEVER thought I'd be writing chapters over like 2-3k, but here we keep frickin being and just--
I don't know, man. The next one will probably be in the same ballpark, but the ones after, I might need to make shorter for my sanity.
But who needs or wants that anyway?
Slower updates but longer chapters or shorter chapters/higher chapter count but relatively quicker updates??
Thoughts???
About any of this or S2's letdowns or triumphs??
How are we doing, VJ nation?!? I ain't leaving!!
Chapter 22: Vi Pt 5 (Continued AGAIN)
Summary:
' Her inner voice kept making it clear that, especially after all she’d put the slighter girl through, she needed to make amends as soon as possible.
To provide safety and ensure that she’d get enough to eat so that she’d at least return to her base level of energetic scrawniness instead of the lethargic, sickly heap she currently was.
And she knew that getting some sleep in wherever she could get it would help Powder get back to her usual bright-eyed self sooner…
But Vi was also just exceptionally hungry.
So she had to sit there at a stalemate between the ravenous wolf that was her body at its core being taunted by a feast before her eyes and the ‘protective inner Alpha’ drive to safeguard the bounty it intended to offer to the Omega teen from everyone, even herself for Janna knew how long. '
--Or--
Vi is hungry like the wolf, but that wolf is also a doting Alpha. So she crashes out about her warring wants and needs until Powder momentarily frees her from her current cycle of mental self-flagellation.
Notes:
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!
I almost decided to skip or abbreviate most of the events in this chapter to move on to writing the 'New New' chapters, but I ultimately decided against it and ended up adding ~1.5k words to it in the rewrite!
But this does conclude the 'remastering' process for OG chapters 1-28, y'all!
It was my New Year's gift to myself and anyone who also hoped to see me follow through with this monumental endeavor!I think y'all will see why I almost made the majority of these moments 'deleted scenes' but also why I let them still see the light of day in the end.
(I made an Effort™️ to lean this towards FLUFF/levity because next chapter... oh I'll talk about it more after the jump!)
[[I don't THINK any TW apply here but if I missed something, oops!]]
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
===Vi===
Having made the repeated trip up and down the steps a few times that same morning, Vi had started getting better at gently maneuvering her new proportions so that the stairs hardly made a sound on her way back down to a still-sleeping Powder.
She would have congratulated herself on her ability to move so silently if not for her body betraying her a second later.
The moment she cleared the last step and stood still at the base of the steps, she only had a second of warning in the form of a stomach spasm before an obnoxiously loud growl originated from somewhere within her abdomen.
Her eyes had immediately darted toward Powder’s gently snoring figure as she futilely wrapped her arms around herself to clutch at her sides, trying to somehow will her guts to stop making such distressing noises in the otherwise near silent room.
The hunger for even a morsel of food was real, but Vi knew she had gone far longer without a proper meal before that morning.
Many times, even.
So the spasms that had her nearly folding in on herself, as well as the audible sounds emanating from her abdomen, almost seemed ridiculously disproportional, especially when the moment called for her silence.
On another day, it might have almost made her laugh out loud how dramatically her body was making its needs known after such a relatively short period of returning to an unfortunately somewhat familiar eating pattern of her early childhood.
The fact that it had been long enough since those days for her body to even almost ‘forget’ that level of need had been a blessing in itself but would also, eventually, prove to have been an unintentional early ‘practice run.’
But at the time, with the extra energy she had expended over the previous two days and all the lean mass she had inexplicably gained, her body had been begging for external sustenance like it never had before.
Because it had never experienced something like a first shift and the belated fast-tracked ‘second puberty’ that it would bring about leading up to and surrounding her first handful of complete shifts in the months to come.
She had no way of knowing all that just then, of course, that her body would continue to change even when she wasn’t covered in fur and wandering around on four limbs, so all she knew was that the hour-long wait Vander promised her suddenly felt like an eternity.
After ‘everything,’ that should not have felt like the most challenging obstacle to overcome, but it did for a moment, so she tried hard to convince herself that a single hour was nothing.
Like so many before, a single hour could pass in the blink of an eye.
Vi just needed to find something to do to make the time feel shorter, beyond pacing uselessly and stressing herself out more.
Any random, quiet task that could redirect her focus outward to something productive would do.
---
She eventually settled on the random task of methodically plucking some of the clothing items strewn about and carefully stacking them to give their shared chaos at least some semblance of order.
Organizing things was not something Vi often did unless ‘ordered’ to do so.
But when Powder was going through a particularly rough mental patch and shutting down visibly, Vi often felt compelled to perform such tasks for her.
To try to do something to help Powder come back into herself by gradually clearing out some of the external chaos in their living space, the space Powder often retreated into to feel less ‘exposed.’
Vi wasn’t smart enough to fully understand why that helped.
Still, it often helped Powder much better than the comparatively ‘jarring’ approach of bringing her back with abrupt words or unexpected physical touch, which sometimes only made the episodes worse or stretch out for longer if timed incorrectly.
(And honestly, Vi wasn’t entirely sure that Powder was even aware that she sometimes checked out entirely in an emotional or conscious sense. It wasn’t particularly often, at least not often enough to worry Vi enough to tell Vander about it. But it had happened slightly more often that final year or so they had together for some reason, and Vi had been keeping a mental list of what seemed to help her work through the ‘episodes’ best.)
In any case, keeping herself physically occupied always seemed to help Vi sort her jumbled thoughts.
And so, as she finished sorting out the items she knew would not fit her growing frame anymore to save for later distribution amongst her siblings and carefully gathering as many random pieces of trash as she could fit in their room’s trash can, there came a single solid knock on their door.
Vi nearly spilled the can’s contents as she set it down with a dull thunk before sprinting towards the stairs and taking the steps two at a time.
As she swung open the door, she was greeted by an enormous tray stacked with easily twice the amount of food they would usually share on a typical morning.
It was undoubtedly the second most beautiful vision her eyes had witnessed that day, and with how ravenous she felt, her gaze refused to part with the sight for more than a few seconds at a time to address the man who held it before her.
She had barely registered Vander’s words telling her that he would be right back with drinking water and Powder’s favorite cup with juice and her favorite straw as she received the tray and nodded dazedly towards his retreating figure.
Gingerly balancing the load and trying to pry her focus away from it long enough not to fall face-first into it, she tiptoed back downstairs and carefully placed it on the couch to minimize the clattering sound from its weight.
Vi spared another astounded glance toward Powder’s still peacefully sleeping figure, taking a moment to be half impressed and worried about how tired she must have been or how strong the accidental Alpha Command was for her to sleep through so much activity around her before zipping back up the steps.
It was slightly embarrassing how quickly she managed to make the trip since Vander had not even started making his way back down the other staircase that led to the bar when she peeked out of their doorway in giddy anticipation.
As he approached her eager and wide-eyed figure a few moments later, it looked like he wanted to comment on her overgrown puppylike eagerness or say something else entirely but seemed to think better of it and just shook his head as he held his hands up in a playfully placating manner after cautiously relinquishing the drinks to Vi’s enthusiastic hold.
The man knew better than to get in between his daughters and their meal once they were ready to chow down and was in no rush to lose any fingers or limbs altogether, so he took no offense to Vi’s less-than-verbose grunt of gratitude and dismissal.
Vi had wanted to express her appreciation for his fatherly gestures adequately.
She had full intentions to do so, but any time her more primal side was roused, cohesive words seemed to be the first form of communication to fall apart for her, so she also tried at least throwing in a gracious toothy smile his way before she turned on her heels to head back down the staircase.
In her haste, she never caught the momentary look of alarm that Vander could not stop in time at the sight of her now more ‘adult wolf’ set of teeth she suddenly put on full display as she flashed that quick smile, but she would not have blamed him for the reaction if she had seen it.
If it would take Vi well over a week to stop automatically flinching at the sight of them in any reflection and adjust to their permanent presence in her mouth, she really could not fault anyone for simply ‘noticing’ the change.
---
A quick blur later, she was back downstairs, sitting stiffly on the couch, facing the food tray, the jug filled with water, her empty cup, and Powder’s juice-filled one on the table before her, with no memory of placing anything there.
It was always at least slightly jarring to lose moments in time to ‘instinctual autopilot’ like that, but she shrugged it off because the moment was so mundane that it did not feel worth lingering over.
Not when she had much more important things to occupy her mind, like staving the worsening urge to scarf down every piece of food in sight, as she carefully rearranged them in a way that she hoped would be most enticing for Powder.
Ensuring the Omega teen was fed was the most crucial thing for her to do just then.
She hoped that Powder would finally wake up at the scent of food and that she would at least nibble on something if she scooted some of the items toward the edge of the tray closest to Powder’s sleeping form.
But nothing.
The girl did not even stir.
Why wasn’t she waking up for anything?
She had begun to pace anew with even more fervor, trying to dissipate some of the odd ‘agitation’ building up within her.
But all the extra movement likely only worsened her hunger.
The hunger only made her feel grumpier, so the extra movement had the opposite effect from what she wanted and only increased her unease rather than releasing some of the restless sensations building up within her.
So, instead of continuing to wear a hollow into their floor along her repetitive path, she huffed impatiently and anxiously sat back down.
If she were waiting for either of their brothers to wake up, she would have yanked them right out of bed or even, not so gently, smacked them into alertness without hesitation a long time ago.
(Assuming she’d even go that far to extend them that much of a courtesy instead of simply startling them awake with a shout to tell them food was ready, not checking if they had even heard or woken up before digging in.
She was not all that worried for them in that scenario because even if they had a delayed response to the wake-up call, she knew they could and would fight for their share.
Powder, on the other hand, likely would not.)
But this was different.
Her inner voice kept making it clear that, especially after all she’d put the slighter girl through, she needed to make amends as soon as possible.
To provide safety and ensure that she’d get enough to eat so that she’d at least return to her base level of energetic scrawniness instead of the lethargic, sickly heap she currently was.
And she knew that getting some sleep in wherever she could get it would help Powder get back to her usual bright-eyed self sooner…
But Vi was also just exceptionally hungry.
So she had to sit there at a stalemate between the ravenous wolf that was her body at its core being taunted by a feast before her eyes and the ‘protective inner Alpha’ drive to safeguard the bounty it intended to offer to the Omega teen from everyone, even herself for Janna knew how long.
Self-flagellation
A slight rustling halted her fidgeting and momentarily ended the one-sided stare-down she was having with the pile of food when she turned her gaze toward the dozed-off pile of adorable tucked-in bed.
False alarm.
The slight glimmer of hope that her waiting had ended seemed to make the gnawing yearning of her stomach even worse, so she told herself she would just place her hands on the table to be closer to Powder in case she woke up and asked Vi to bring food to her.
Obviously.
Of course, just that.
No other reason.
Or maybe, since her hands were already near the tray, she could just…
Eat a single bite of something.
Just a small snack to tide her over.
So that she could be set to wait even longer until Powder was ready to get up again.
Just the smallest item on the tray, one that wouldn’t be missed anyway, she told herself.
But of course, once she gave herself that inch of slack, it was like her hands had a mind of their own and just kept reaching for more and more as soon as each bite of food was halfway down to her stomach.
It felt too damn good to eat again finally, and she almost could not stop long enough even to get a proper breath in, but the sound of a soft giggle froze her in her tracks, nearly as if yanked back by an invisible leash of some kind.
The heat of embarrassment for her inelegant actions had her shrinking into herself a little as she sheepishly offered the handful of food that had not yet completed its trajectory into her mouth directly to Powder.
Almost as if hoping that action would assuage the guilt of having consumed the several handfuls before it as she tried to offer some form of verbal apology for her moment of weakness at the same time as well.
“Sorry, Pow. I tried waiting for you to get up first, but I was starving, and I didn’t know if I should wake you or if you’d even want... Uh…do you want some of this? Are you hungry yet?”
A small selfish part of her, which she always tried to ignore, conflictingly hoped she’d say no that morning despite wanting to ensure that the gangly teen did not continue to dip towards outright ‘malnourishment levels’ of leanness on her watch.
It only hoped Powder would say ‘not yet’ because she was still quite hungry despite nearly wolfing down an impressive amount of food in record time and because it would help her feel less guilty for needing something for herself.
But the part she wanted to listen to, the provider in her, couldn’t help but feel slighted by the fact that all she got in response to her selfless offer was another giggle that morphed into something vaguely resembling a refusal as Powder succumbed to slumber again.
She knew she would try again later, as many times as necessary, until she could more or less ‘trick’ her into eating a substantial amount overall for several days until the girl regained a little healthy fullness to her tired features again.
It never sat well with Vi to see her sister even begin to look frailer rather than simply naturally wiry-muscled, so she never cared if she came off as overbearing and ‘annoying’ when she got on her case about eating a bit more often than she might want just to prevent that from happening.
With that well-intentioned ‘plan’ in mind and having more or less been given the ‘go ahead’ from Powder to eat what was left of what was meant to be their shared meal, it became only slightly easier to continue eating most of it without choking on her guilt.
Only slightly, though.
It was still difficult to overcome her initial shame-induced paralysis and a wave of nausea from being caught being ‘selfish’ by her younger sibling before she could hesitantly resume her previously voracious feasting.
Vi only managed to do so because she knew she would need the extra energy to help Powder later when she might need her to do more things for her once she woke up again.
(Later, she would pat herself on the back for showing a last-minute ounce of restraint by saving the fruit on the tray that she always forgot the ‘real’ name of since Powder always called them ‘pinkies’ even though they were bluish inside. In her sister’s defense, Powder had dubbed them ‘pinkies’ long before she knew the myriad color names she learned later. And to be fair, depending on where and how they were grown, sometimes they were a lot more pink-tinted on the outside and almost phosphorescently blue on the inside.
In retrospect, near luminescent fruit might not have been the healthiest thing to ingest, but not much vegetation could thrive near where they grew up. That strange fruit was one of the few that survived and did not rot right away once harvested, which was always a plus. Powder had always said the ‘glowy ones’ tasted the best anyway, and Vi tended to agree.
How they grew near plentifully was a mystery, but they were one of Powder’s favorite things to snack on, and Vi was just happy that ‘pinkies’ were one of the few things Powder was almost guaranteed to eat without complaints. So they were something she always made sure they kept around just for her.)
Once she had cleared off almost everything but the water and fruit—there had to be some line, after all, and she would not deprive her sister of water on top of everything else—Vi contemplated taking the tray of empty containers and leaving them outside their doorway.
Out of sight, almost out of mind after all.
But she suddenly couldn’t muster up the energy to tidy up her mess and didn’t have the heart to risk startling Powder fully awake, so she placed the tray on the floor and let the empty containers fall where they may for the moment.
With her sudden food-induced bout of lethargy, Vi decided that she might as well start figuring out how she was even going to fit her body into her hopefully temporary sleeping arrangement.
One way or another, there would be no fewer than one limb falling asleep on her at any given time if she wanted to lie down entirely, and a crick in both her neck and her back was also all but guaranteed.
Fantastic.
But somehow, after a few experimental configurations, the exhaustion from hours upon hours of riding the highs and lows of emotional turmoil, coupled with an enormous meal, caught up with her and knocked her out before noon.
Her level of fatigue must have been more profound than she initially thought because the next thing Vi knew, she had startled awake and hastily wiped off an errant trail of drool from her chin as she sat up abruptly in attempted alertness.
A swift glance at the vent that served as their main ‘window’ told her that several hours must have passed since she last looked through it, as some brighter light had started to peek through from outside.
She blinked and then felt herself startle awake once more from the ‘falling’ sensation caused by her head slumping backward onto nothing, given the length of her torso, and then opened her eyes wider than usual to try to keep them from closing for too long again.
Momentarily disoriented, she suddenly remembered who was also in the room with her and failingly attempted to project a cheerful, ‘Everything is normal’ tone into her scratchy voice.
“Hmhmh…. Powder, hey…good sleep? How sleep…uh…hi?”
Her cheerful greeting might have sounded more confident if she had not simultaneously fought a losing battle against what could only be described as a ‘fully body yawn’ towards the end of her slurred questioning.
Vi had still been trying to rub feeling back into her face from sleeping on it weirdly when she heard Powder’s quiet gasp of awe and noticed her curious eyes fixated on her face as she peeked at her through the spaces between her fingers and paused their motion.
The silent moment stretched for likely only a second or two longer than ‘normal,’ but it was enough to make Vi fidget and try to tamp down whatever might be out of place on her enough to draw that type of prolonged look from the smaller teen.
But then, as she nervously ran her tongue against the front-facing surfaces of her teeth, in case there was any errant piece of food embarrassingly stuck to them that she had not noticed left over from her earlier binge, the likely reason for Powder’s fascination finally clicked into place.
“W-What...? Why are you staring at me like that? Is there something on my face or…? Oh! Are ya looking at these?”
And just like that, all the more unpleasant worries of the last few days had been quickly shelved for a later time to make room for the emotional reprieve that a much-needed moment of levity could bring.
Since waking from her disastrous first shift, Vi had spent so many waking hours drowning herself in self-hatred that she had nearly forgotten that her noticeably increased height was not the only seemingly permanent change left over from it.
How she had managed not to nick the insides of her cheeks or lips more as she wolfed down the food earlier or how she kept the slight lisp from being more prominent as she spoke that first day would remain a mystery for her.
Because now that Powder had inadvertently drawn attention to her new ‘adult fangs,’ Vi could focus on nothing else but displaying them proudly instead of her sudden awareness of how they crowded her mouth.
Vi had not spent much time looking at them in the mirror yet in her self-loathing haze.
But with how much life had returned to Powder’s gaze at the sight of them and the carefree giggle that burst from her chest as Vi playfully chomped at the air around her, she found herself preening with pride at the development instead.
“Woah! They’re so much bigger now! And the other teeth got sharper, too, I think? Can I touch them? They look so badass, Vi!”
Badass!
Her sister hadn’t displayed even an ounce of fear or disgust at the abrupt change in her appearance.
If anything, Powder even thought her new fangs were badass!
Somehow, Vi had forgotten that despite the messiness surrounding the event that brought about the change, she had indeed hit a milestone neither of them had ever expected to reach.
It was a milestone they had started to wonder if it had somehow skipped over them altogether by that point in their lives, Vi even more so due to her nearness to ‘adulthood’ by some standards.
To Vi, the responsibility of experiencing many of life’s most brutal growing pains first as the elder of the two was a burden and a blessing.
It was a blessing because her firsthand experience would mean she could always make the pains seem less scary and unknown for Powder before and while she experienced them.
Vi wasn’t exactly ‘fond’ of being poked and prodded, of being examined so closely by anyone, even in the more innocent contexts of the Before.
But if it helped Powder prepare for the eventual day when she would undergo similar changes, much to Vi’s dismay, then she would gladly indulge that fascination time and again as long as she could.
Safely.
And so, to minimize the possibility of accidental injury ruining their carefree moment, Vi had carefully guided Powder’s thumb pads along the flat lengths of her new fangs and noted Powder’s stunned silence as she followed the movements with her eyes.
Her chest had filled with so much love and adoration just then.
A spark of unabashed wonder lit up Powder’s features, and the returning uncomplicated nature of their physical contact began to ease the pit of unease weighing Vi down.
“Yheah theyrre prtty c--,” In her giddy haste to vocalize her excitement and tell her more about what it felt like to have them, she had forgotten where their hands were and Powder had made no move to pull them away either so she had been trying to talk around their fingers.
Barely holding back an even broader smile, she carefully moved them away from her mouth as she started again, “Yeah, they’re pretty cool, right? They came in the other night after… w-when I…”
And there it went; the carefree bubble suddenly burst as flashes of moments she’d rather forget played in her mind’s eye and drained the playful excitement out of her against her will.
Her mind was convinced that while Powder had not been looking at Vi’s fangs or any other part of her with any real trepidation at that moment, and even if she found her more intimidating appearance ‘badass,’ she figured it was only because she had no additional ‘context’ for it yet.
It made her wonder if Powder’s attitude towards these sudden changes would remain the same if she knew they were the permanent visual reminder of the new horrific acts of bloody violence she now could and had committed only two nights prior.
Vi knew she would have to be brave and divulge at least a carefully worded recap of the events preceding their ‘unpredictable reunion’ to prepare them both for any potential fallout from that.
From the carnage she had left in her wake.
“I’m not ready to tell you everything that happened while I was gone, but there are some things you should hear from me before you hear about them from someone else.”
Seeing the nervous little crease returning to the center of Powder’s brows as confusion began to cloud her adoring gaze hurt too much to witness so up close after the lightness of the previous moment.
So Vi stood up to put distance between them before she spoke again, running slightly trembling fingers through her messy rouge hair to give her hands something to do and pacing anew just to try to weakly mask her growing fear of rejection as she spoke again, “Vander already pulled some strings to keep an eye on things so nothing gets traced back to us, but I really fucked up the other night, Pow. ‘It’ finally happened, I think? Or like at least partially? I’m not completely sure, to be honest. Some parts are such a blur, but—here.”
Even as she felt herself spiraling into a panicked ramble, the ‘voice’ she could only attribute to her recently freed inner wolf kept trying to draw her attention to something it felt was much more pertinent than her ‘whining.’
Somehow, despite the wolf not speaking in ‘words’ at that moment, Vi still understood precisely what it was trying to say.
So she furtively reached for the ‘pinkies’ she had nestled under some neatly stacked clean shirts for safekeeping, casually handed them over to Powder, and continued to pace slightly less frantically as soon as the fruit entered the Omega’s possession.
The genuinely bewildered but joyous gasp she heard when her back was turned instantly soothed the primal worry that had been the root cause of the remaining underlying tension in her body.
It was a tiny gesture on her part made possible only by the slightest display of self-restraint and proper foresight from the evening before.
But the appreciative sound and easy acceptance of her offering still made her inner Alpha feel accomplished for being able to ‘provide’ something for the Omega girl so early in the day.
“Wait. How’d you know that I—”
Powder’s light blush and the unequivocally eager look of gratitude she directed Vi’s way made her feel somewhat bashful since, to Vi at least, it was practically nothing.
The bare minimum she could have done to ease a source of discomfort she knew all too well and could inexplicably feel radiating from her sister’s body.
Hunger for food?
Give Powder food.
Simple.
She could happily alleviate this hunger and feel proud of herself for doing so every single time, entirely free of guilt because it just made sense to find ways to satiate that basic need if she could.
But what she couldn’t do was find the words to express why or how she was so attuned to her sister’s hunger cues without getting all mushy and weird, so Vi just smiled sheepishly at her and said, “I think it’s one of the new things I can sense even more now for some reason? I can’t explain how I sense some things more strongly now, but it’s different from ‘before.’ But also, your stomach was challenging me even in your sleep with how loudly it randomly growled!”
The last bit was thrown in for some levity but was not untrue or ungrounded since the sound of some of her sister’s stomach growls could be alarming if you did not know their source.
Vi had hoped Powder would not take offense to her playful jab at her expense, but she still held her breath for a beat as she waited to gauge her reaction.
A second later, she released her breath in a relieved huff.
Her awkward attempt at humor was rewarded with a bark of laughter that escaped Powder so loudly and suddenly that the embarrassed blush that followed made Vi abruptly snort with laughter herself.
---
And so it went from there, a chain of laughing fits that went on for so long that they left Vi with a cramp on her sleep-stiffened side and Powder halfway crumpled onto the floor from trying and failing to cross the room to sit on the vacant armchair instead of hovering near the bunk bed.
Their looping laughter was so contagious that they both needed to turn away from each other completely to catch their breath and avoid passing out from lack of air.
It went on for far longer than it likely should have since the ‘joke’ itself had not been particularly hilarious.
But the laughter helped ease much of the tension that remained in her body despite the cramping, and it made her feel ready to begin the more extended and more serious conversation they needed that morning.
Seeing as her sister was now closer to the edge of their couch than her intended target anyway, Vi chose to sit on their tattered armchair in her place and patted the edge of the less tattered cushion across from her to signal Powder to sit down and get comfortable.
Once she did so, Vi gave the girl a few minutes to enjoy her ‘pinkies’ before bracing herself for the uncomfortable moments ahead.
Taking a deep breath and mainly focusing her gaze on the space above Powder’s head instead of looking directly at her, she began to recount a markedly ‘censored’ and slightly abridged version of the sequence of events that had transpired in the previous days on her end.
She told Powder that ‘That Night,’ something had felt ‘off’ within herself.
So much so that she feared she would do something harmful to either her or herself, so she ran away to find someplace to safely ‘blow off some steam.’
Vi told her that on that first night, she lost her temper at ‘another bar’ and started a fight that got out of hand to the point of getting security called on her and that once security got involved, things turned for the worse in more ways than one.
Told her she left those four men mangled and possibly dying after overpowering them all with frightening ease.
She told Powder how scarily out of control yet still sickeningly right it felt at the same time to be able to assert physical dominance like that without having anyone there to hold her back for once.
But she also tried not to glamorize her unrestrained use of violence and the resulting carnage by emphasizing the overwhelming repulsion she felt at her actions afterward once she’d had a few minutes to cool down after leaving the ‘bar.’
She tried to communicate how hard the all-consuming fear and regret about what she was capable of doing when no one was there to keep her in check had hit her then and how much uncertainty she had felt about whether she would even be welcomed back into their home.
(Throughout her recounting, Vi had pretended not to notice Powder trying to ask questions or point out discrepancies as she continued to spin her tale. After a few failed attempts, she seemed to catch onto the fact that Vi likely knew Powder knew she wasn’t being entirely forthcoming with her retelling and just let her continue. To save face for them both, at least somewhat.)
She told Powder about finding an abandoned building to hide away in with hopes that she would not lose her sense of self entirely and hurt anyone else that night, at least not anyone who truly did not deserve it.
Vi detailed the, in retrospect, nearly comical attempts at barricading herself there but skipped right over the parts she would later blame on her unexpected rut.
The unexpected rut she omitted any direct mentions of partially because, at the time, she still did not even truly know that was what happened in her fugue state but also because some parts of her story would simply be too inappropriate to bring up.
Vi skipped forward, even more, to say that after the ‘blurred and fitful night’ at the abandoned building, she slowly made her way back home, trying not to fall apart from the guilt of leaving her without warning for even a single night.
She told her it hurt to feel like she had little choice but to stay away for even longer than that just to be sure she was not still a source of imminent danger to her or their family.
Vi wanted to ensure that Powder would have zero doubts about how much Vi loved her and how badly she hoped to make things ‘right’ between them again.
She also verbalized her previously silent promise to be ‘better’ so they would feel okay around each other again.
Vowing to learn to control the more confusing aspects of her Alphahood so they would not cause any more unintentional pain and distress for either of them.
As she said all this, Vi made a conscious effort to back her words with her actions, being extra mindful of the space she occupied as she moved around the room.
Making sure she did not give off any ‘intimidating’ vibes by being too intense with her eye contact or by speaking to Powder from a place in the room that was not in her immediate line of sight when she inevitably got the urge to stand up and pace again.
Vi tried her best not to make Powder feel disadvantaged because of something that could not be helped, like her smaller size, when the reality was that she had always held the most ‘power’ in the privacy of their room.
Or sometimes even any other.
At least most of the time, when she was still coherent and could still understand Powder.
It did not matter that she was the older and sturdier of the two or anything else that might put her at an ‘advantage’ against anyone else; Vi would always try to yield to her word and judgment of a situation they were both a part of if Powder wanted her to.
Powder was who she willingly heeded to.
Because sure, Vi had physical strength and mental fortitude to spare and could and would now quite literally tear apart anyone who would dare try to harm her sister.
Self-loathing and repulsion after the fact be damned, she would do it at the moment without question, for her.
Vi could and would perform countless acts of bravery or stupidity in her name because she valued Powder’s affection and adoration above all else; all consequences be damned.
Whether the Omega teen truly understood the depths of her devotion, she held Vi’s heart in her hands and could do whatever she wanted at any time, and Vi would just watch her do it.
She did not need to assert any physical force to keep her so devoted to her because there was nothing to force about it.
The devotion was freely and naturally given.
The fear of simply being looked at with any amount of true hatred and disgust rather than genuine fondness and admiration was usually more than enough to keep Vi in check at all times.
Everything she was or ever could be was in service to her.
Powder wasn’t just the most important person in the world to Vi; she was her entire world.
This sentiment was just intrinsically right and factual.
So, no, Vi would not let herself start their mending period by doing anything that could potentially ‘revoke’ Powder’s gracious permission to welcome her back home, so she made sure to be extra mindful of her every movement.
Vi became so focused on not being the one to initiate any unwanted physical contact that when Powder abruptly openly offered to massage her sore neck, she hesitated for a moment to try to gauge whether or not that was something that could be ‘safely’ done since her emotions were still a little raw from the retelling of her odyssey and inner monologue.
Once she checked in with her inner presence and noted that the wolf felt so calm that it was nearly slumbering entirely, she concluded it would be okay to welcome that level of offered intimacy as long as she focused on being extra mindful of its presence the entire time.
The massage was perfectly soothing at first—at least for a few minutes—until the unexpected sensation of a slightly jagged nail against her sensitive scent gland abruptly yanked her drifted focus back, straightening her spine in alertness.
The fact that such a simple action could still send a jolt of sensation throughout her body even when she had knowingly welcomed its proximity made her realize how fine the line she was letting herself get overly comfortable on was, given previous ‘Incidents’ regarding such a sensitive and significant area of her body.
It seemed that now that her inner wolf had much more of a say in the state of mind and body they shared, it would be much easier to set off the instincts and reactions she had spent her entire life learning to keep mostly in check.
Vi had her work set out for her to relearn everything she thought she already had a better grasp on, so she made the most mature and not-at-all-awkward quick decision to remove herself from the situation before Powder could catch on to and worry about her sudden spiraling.
So, as least inelegantly as she could manage, given how she could feel herself recoiling noticeably, she brusquely excused herself to leave the room with the pretext of getting them breakfast.
No, she was not clumsily running away to avoid explaining her bizarre behavior.
Nope.
Vi just wanted to ensure Powder had a proper breakfast beyond snacking on some ‘pinkies,’ just as she had vowed to do as the pretext to give herself permission to be ‘selfish’ and eat her fill the day before.
She was just being responsible and mature.
It was not until she was halfway up the second set of steps leading up to the bar that she almost turned right back around, second-guessing whether it was ‘okay’ to leave Powder alone while awake.
Focusing her sharpened senses extra hard, she tried to listen for any signs of distress that still rang in her ears, similar to those from a few nights before.
Hearing none after a few seconds, she sprinted the rest of the way toward the back area where the bar’s modest kitchen and pantry were housed.
Quickly loaded up a large tray with anything she could recall ever seeing Powder consume without fuss to ensure she would eat as much food as possible and slunk back downstairs in record time.
She did not question how she managed to avoid being seen by Vander or getting caught and reprimanded by his ever-vigilant weekend helper.
But she did question and notice the ‘strategically’ placed cushion that now adorned the spot on the floor she had previously occupied.
Pretending not to notice its placement and the blatant silent invitation hurt something deep inside Vi.
To say ‘no’ to her and indirectly assert boundaries so soon.
But she was determined to follow through and stand firm to not send more confusing signals by vacillating back and forth between leniency and rigidity.
So, instead of giving in to the compulsion to fold and ease the hurt by sitting on the cushion, she showed her improved strength by placing the tray onto the table and lifting both to put them in front of Powder and subtly obscure the cushion from her sight.
(That the showboat display of strength also served as an obvious distraction to Powder before she moved to sit on the armchair across from her again instead of next to her was a fortunate bonus, honestly.)
Vi could not help but preen with a bit of satisfaction, noticing how Powder seemed to be eyeing the food she secretly selected with her tastes in mind with genuine interest.
She did her best to silently encourage her to eat her fill first by artfully taking over the continued conversation while also at least appearing to dig in enthusiastically so the teen would not get shy about being the one who was eating.
It was not until she slowed down her animated food intake that Vi finally allowed herself to clean off what was left, her wolf now fully dozing off peacefully since Vi had finally fully ‘provided’ for Powder what it demanded of her.
As she carefully chewed her portions of the meal, yet again silently offering Powder more time to decide if she still wanted more, she suddenly tried to blink away the unexpected tears that sprung to her eyes as her earnestly kind words washed over her.
“I can tell something is still bothering you, Vi; I don’t know exactly what it is, but if it has anything to do with what you told me… I-I don’t want you to worry. I know now that you didn’t mean to hurt me by leaving like that. It really did hurt, but I’m fine now. I’m just glad you’re back here safe. I’ll always be more grateful to have you come back alive than care about what happens to those you fight with. I love you so much more than anyone else, Vi.”
The conviction in her tone of voice and focused stare was almost enough to smother the self-loathsome inner dialogue that seemed to spring up with more and more frequency, even in those days, every time Powder spoke so earnestly about the ‘heroic’ image she somehow still had of her.
She knew she could never entirely smother those recurring thoughts.
Even if she kept trying her hardest to be selfless and live up to that faultless version of herself that only seemed to live in Powder’s head, she would inevitably fail her time and again and hate herself for it all over again.
Especially from that point onward.
Because it was not easy to remain pristine in anyone’s eyes, and if anything, it was downright impossible to do so if given enough time to fuck up enough.
Her rational mind knew this.
She would still do her best to present a more realistically flawed but still loving version of the person she seemed to be growing into.
Even if Vi had to break her own heart and hurt her pride by creating the necessary hairline fractures on that unattainably perfect visage that she had tried to protect for so many years while doing so.
She would do it for her, for them.
It would ultimately be best for Powder’s emotional well-being to see that Vi was imperfect, just like everybody else.
Maybe that would also help Powder realize that there was a world outside of their shared bubble, even if Vi hated the thought of the girl finding anyone else to idolize in an even remotely similar way, and would build healthier relationships with other people as she grew older.
The thought of Powder deeply loving anyone new filled her with a possessive rage she knew was not healthy or appropriate.
Despite the simmering jealousy over something that had not happened yet, Vi could still recognize that it was not okay to feel this way about something that was an inevitability of life as people grew up.
And so, Vi knew she would not rest until she fixed the most messed-up parts of herself so she could make right by Powder and be the strong and supportive sister she needed her to be.
She would never be faultless but always be there for her at the end of the day.
No matter what.
That much she swore.
--To Be Continued--
Notes:
Okay, I spent most of my NYE afternoon making the final edits to this, and I'm sure it's still a mess. But we'll ignore that because I just needed this out by midnight or close enough to it!
I wanted to finish the 'Remastering' and leave it in 2024! 2025 will be all about the new chapters I haven't written yet but whose events I have been THINKING about for actual years ATP.
I'm somewhat nervous since I have not written a chapter from scratch in literally a YEAR so wish me luck y'all!
Heads up because the next chapter might warrant/earn the E rating I'd downgraded this TO M from (after jumping the gun and adding it to the OG version that did NOT need it yet) since it will be the last solo Vi POV chapter. Thus, it will cover the events mostly 'alluded to' in the last of Powder's solo POV chapters, but from Vi's perspective.
Still undecided on how, uh, 'descriptive' I'll get with them because Vi IS a bit past 17 but still under 18 in that chapter, and I just-- but as with everything else in this story, it is meant to be for 'plot purposes.' It is a chapter full of 'important characterization' moments and whatnot. And after that chapter, we're going into 'canon Act 1 retelling' territory!
(But with the A/B/O werewolf'y twist and whatnot, ofc!)Anyway, until then, I hope you enjoyed this latest installment of 'angsty fluff fest.'
[Also, idk if anyone caught it, but 'pinkies' are the same fruit seen in Act 1 of S1 (that M*lo steals and eats right in front of Powder for like .5 seconds of screen time), and are now ALSO the ones we see Vi & Jinx eating in Ep 6 of S2. 🤓]
Chapter 23: Vi Pt 5 (Continued Yet AGAIN)
Summary:
' The constant annoyance of ‘growing pains’ in her body did not make it any easier to tolerate anyone who did not bring her instant comfort with their mere presence as Powder could.
And so adding the hollow ache of missing her sister to the mix made everything else suck even more.
The pains felt worse, and the hours dragged on endlessly like they hadn’t before when Powder was not within sight.
Life felt a little more pointless if she could not feel the younger teen’s attention directly on her and could not be constantly reminded that she was a much-needed presence in her life.
Honestly, she felt a little pathetic for it.
Pathetic for how much she yearned and ached constantly, in more ways than one. '
--Or--
Despite Vi's rapidly maturing appearance and strides toward self-sufficiency, when faced with an unknown, she is reminded that she is still an inexperienced teen needing support from her family in the days leading up to her second shift.
Emboldened by Powder's stubborn refusal to leave her side, Vi might find the strength to face some fears.
Notes:
I liiiive!
(For now. ☠️)
Listen, it's been a crazy last couple of months for far too many reasons to mention. And so I lied last chapter note because 'bad news', this ISN'T the final Vi chapter.
This was originally a Concept I wasn't gonna bother writing out on main fic but later deemed worthy of at least expanding beyond the single sentence mentioning it at the end of Chapter 17.
It was gonna be just one bonus chapter but it got away from me and now it's TWO 'bonus' chapters. I've lived 50 lifetimes in the last 15 months since i've written a chapter from scratch so ☠️
And writing and editing these in bursts over the last 3 months (thank you stress and Depression) means they are prolly all over the place tonaly but I TRIED ok?
This is 8.3k worth of 'new lore' and my attempts to include more characters before they're gone by the time this 'Act/Part' concludes.
Platonic TB scraps ahead! And Benzo!! Vander being a good dad to his teenage werewolf daughter!!!
(TBC at the end.)
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
==Vi==
So much seemed to change quickly after that tentatively tranquil morning they shared in ways that were difficult to put into words.
Or at least it felt that way to Vi.
Because something within her just felt so distinctly different, despite things around her not having changed all that much, the daily routines they tended to fall into seemed to return to being relatively the same or as close to ‘regular’ as ever.
She almost wanted to blame ‘Werewolf Puberty’ for how different things were feeling because it had hit her like a freight train.
So naturally, those undeniable rapid physical changes invited unwanted attention in everything she did.
It wasn't always easy to brush off the increasing lingering stares, intrusive questions, and comments about her general appearance, but those annoyances weren’t new.
Their added frequency did affect her sense of self a bit, but that wasn’t the change her mind had fixated on to add stress to that time in her young life.
The main ‘change’ it chose to focus on suddenly was Vi’s growing awareness of how much time she spent apart from Powder throughout the day.
If it had been to that same degree before her first shift, then she had never consciously ‘noticed’ it, at least not with this much of a disruption to her inner world.
But after it, the distance between them was almost all she could think about at times, and it sucked.
Sure, she had always kept her sister somewhere in her thoughts throughout the day, even when she was busy being physically anywhere else but home for any reason.
Thinking of Powder daily was nothing new.
Even during her more rebellious phases when she would act like she hated Powder’s more clingy nature, she still wanted to spend time with her at least at some point in the day every day.
And, of course, at times, Vi would get genuinely annoyed when she was in a shitty mood or overstimulated in any way.
Just like anyone else would.
But still, deep down, Vi had always secretly loved the younger Omega’s enthusiastic shows of affection, whether she knew how to show or return it correctly or not.
She wasn’t always the best at ‘initiating’ displays of soft affection, but she still enjoyed receiving them in the proper settings from the right people.
Touch had not been something she detested in any way back then.
But still, it had not been until the days and weeks that followed their awkward ‘reunion’ that she suddenly seemed to truly empathize with why someone would be so physically clingy with anyone.
It started to make more sense why simply being told you are loved or even repeatedly shown through actions may not be enough of a fulfilling connection in some instances.
She had learned that sometimes, you genuinely need to feel the connection externally for love to feel solidified and ‘real’ internally.
Sometimes, some form of touch felt like an entirely vital component of her interactions with people she felt comfortable around.
Or at least it did with one specific person since it had never been the same with all her loved ones before or ‘after’ even though she cared for them deeply.
This new level of attachment to her sister differed from the previous one in a way that she did not know how to explain to anyone, not even herself.
Trying to ignore its pull, as she sometimes tried to, to not feel so beholden to the desire for physical connection was not very pleasant, even for short periods.
Ignoring her newfound increased need for Powder’s affection tended to manifest a hollow feeling in her chest that would become harder and harder to ignore as the day wore on.
The building discomforting sensation made her progressively anxious the longer she went without even the slightest contact with the Omega.
It sometimes made her feel slightly insane and was awful, but still usually manageable.
Or at least it seemed manageable back then because they still spent time together at the end and beginning of their day almost without fail.
But with time, that newfound awareness of her increased need for closeness would indeed become more of an ‘issue’ in her life.
For various reasons.
But none of those ‘reasons’ had entered her life yet to add complications to it.
No, back then, she had thought that her burgeoning desires for physical intimacy of a much more ‘adult nature’ would become the hardest to push out of her mind, and they were at times, but those were more of an annoyance than anything pressing for her.
(Or at least they had been ‘only’ that in the month leading up to and through her second shift. What came after it had been a whole other beast to take on, as it were.)
If anything, those thoughts and feelings would be almost ‘easy’ to push away compared to the constant yearning for a simple touch.
It was not difficult to ‘appease’ the yearning.
Not really.
A simple side hug on the couch while they dozed off together, or as Vi read passages from some book she found aloud to help them both wind down.
A playful squeeze to her biceps to get her to flex for her sister’s entertainment and to keep a record of their rapid growth.
Spontaneously scooping Powder into her arms and carrying the flailing teen with relative ease just to watch her blush adorably at the casual display of strength and ‘dominance.’
Those simple actions did plenty to dull the yearning, and none of them were particularly ‘problematic’ per se, but there never seemed to be an end to wanting more.
It was never enough, but somehow, it was still too much at once, which made her worry that Powder might find it suffocating if she indulged the need more than she had already allowed herself to.
She did not want her touches to become inappropriate for either of them, as that would have only caused more confusion and undo the progress they had both worked towards.
Her newfound need for softness had been very perplexing as she had assumed the opposite would become the norm after finally fully presenting as an Alpha wolf.
That first shift had made her think that she would just constantly be at the behest of her Alpha wolf’s carnal and primal urges and that they would always manifest themselves just as strongly as they had that first time.
But no, for all its aggressiveness and bluster during that full moon cycle of her first shift, her awakened inner wolf had often been surprisingly whiny in a sweetly sentimental way.
Or at least that’s how it tended to behave regarding anything relating to Powder.
With almost anyone else, it depended on the day whether or not she had the patience to handle their bullshit when her body was already putting her through so much.
(Honestly, her short temper for dumbasses, usually men, was not much different from her attitude toward most irritating people even before her first shift. But still, it was somehow different after.)
The constant annoyance of ‘growing pains’ in her body did not make it any easier to tolerate anyone who did not bring her instant comfort with their mere presence as Powder could.
And so adding the hollow ache of missing her sister to the mix made everything else suck even more.
The pains felt worse, and the hours dragged on endlessly like they hadn’t before when Powder was not within sight.
Life felt a little more pointless if she could not feel the younger teen’s attention directly on her and could not be constantly reminded that she was a much-needed presence in her life.
Honestly, she felt a little pathetic for it.
Pathetic for how much she yearned and ached constantly, in more ways than one.
She hated how much she complained about the discomfort within herself, but she tried her best not to do so externally and worry anyone else about things beyond anyone’s control.
Because it was not like it was the first or last time she would experience growing pains, but she had never felt them for such a prolonged period before then.
Her shins and thighs would constantly ache as if she had spent hours jumping from rooftops, and she was exhausted continuously in a way that extra sleep did not fix.
Every bone and joint in her body would feel stiff and sore no matter what she did or didn’t do to earn it.
Day after day after day.
It just went on and on.
And then, to add insult to injury, on top of the constant combination of uncomfortable sensations within her body, none of her favorite clothes fit anymore.
Or at least not in the comfortably loose way they used to.
The stiffness of her growing body and the newfound tightness of her clothes would interfere with everything she tried to do throughout her day.
It was infuriating.
She would have probably publicly lost her temper more often if not for the way that witnessing her clothing-related frustrations and mishaps amused Powder so much.
It lessened the sting of her pride to quickly draw the younger teens’ awed gaze and carefree laughter whenever she accidentally burst through the seams of her clothes or purposefully finished destroying them when dorkily flexing for her entertainment.
The constant body aches were also a little more worth it once recording her rapid growth together became a bi-weekly bonding activity they both looked forward to.
(Nearly six inches in those two months alone and a few more over time later, but neither she nor Powder would get to track that together anymore.)
It was gratifying to her to show Powder how much her muscles were growing and see her marvel at them as she measured their circumference in the same unnamable way that ‘providing’ for her always was.
It felt good to let Powder see how much stronger and more physically capable she was becoming and to have her acknowledge and appreciate that aptitude.
She liked to be able to reassure her that she was more than capable of defending them both from anything that may come their way.
That was just part of her nature and how she knew to show she cared most.
Being the one to provide had been more ‘natural’ to her for most of their lives, and so Vi had not been prepared to feel taken care of by her in more overt ways those days.
But Powder seemed determined to continually surprise her in those days with her ways of providing for Vi.
Vi noticed Powder trying harder for her when clothes that fit her newer proportions appeared ‘out of nowhere’ to replace her rapidly dwindling wearable wardrobe.
The Omega teen would initially vehemently feign ignorance about their possible origin, and Vi found it adorable that she tried so hard not to be obvious about giving gifts.
But Vi knew there was no other possible culprit for them based on the traces of her scent on the items alone.
The mere fact that Powder had paid enough attention to her growth rate to continue to find clothes that fit her just slightly bigger without being boxy or ‘girly’ made her feel loved and cared for in Powder’s nerdy way.
Powder understood her style and was observant enough to anticipate her growing body’s clothing needs better than she could.
It had been so lovely to be known so profoundly by someone.
Still, at some point, soon after the ‘new to her’ clothing items started to pop up more frequently, she had to play up her older sister’s role and pretend to chastise her for stealing ‘non-Piltie’ clothes.
Vi had to pretend that she felt anything other than pride, knowing that the teen was listening and learning from her but also furthering her innate skills to a degree she could not match.
Her little pup of a sister was growing so resilient, blossoming right before her eyes into a more self-confident young teenager.
It was gratifying and terrifying to see Powder’s rapid growth of a different kind occur concurrently with her own.
To seemingly be needed less and less.
Vi knew Powder could continue her solo ‘mini heists’ alone with little danger so long as she continued to be smart about them as she had been, but that same growing need to be near the Omega compelled her to make up a reason for Powder to want her nearby for them.
She tried insisting that she needed a lookout at the very least, just in case anything went wrong.
The flimsy chastisements were bullshit, and they both knew it, so Vi was grateful that Powder did not question this less conspicuous increase in neediness on her part.
And sure, the goal had always been to see the Omega become more self-sufficient.
But that did not mean she would have felt prepared for it to continue being demonstrated so regularly and seemingly suddenly after that first shift.
Powder was advancing so much in every aspect imaginable that Vi began to fear that her sister would grow bored of her increased company if she did not keep finding new things to show her.
New ways to feel useful for her.
A fear which, again, would make little sense if she had ever taken her sister’s continued reassurances of her never-ending admiration for her at face value instead of fixating on all the things that convinced her she was unworthy of any of it.
Vi had hoped that starting ‘werewolf puberty’ would help her feel surer of herself sooner, but it turned out that her inner Alpha was just as prone to bouts of insecurity as she was when lacking a clear sense of purpose.
She wanted to see Powder continue to grow and prosper in any future endeavors she might wish to pursue.
Of course, she did!
Any loving older sibling would want that for the person they’ve loved since before they were born.
This personal growth was an overall ‘good thing’ that she wanted to continue seeing for years to come, but it did not mean she was ready to give up and let herself become obsolete.
(She tried not to dwell or delight in the memories of the more private milestones she had ‘unintentionally intentionally’ been present for or even incited throughout those final months they spent together.
If she had had any more say in it, she had thoroughly planned on being a big part of many more of Powder’s milestones in life. Even more than she already had at that point.)
With how much time Vi spent thinking about how she could be helpful to and present for Powder’s big developmental moments, the possibility that the Omega teen would also want to be there for hers had somehow slipped her mind.
She spent so much time thinking about how she could take her protective role even more seriously and behave more maturely in situations that required leadership ability that it almost always took her by surprise when she’d find herself in positions where she genuinely needed to ask others for help.
Even if she had been only a few months into her seventeenth year then, she had already spent many years being a semi-reluctant pillar of strength and role model for her siblings, so it was not often that she got to let herself feel small and in need of protection.
It had already started to feel almost ‘unnatural’ to let herself express enough of her teenage vulnerability to seek counseling from actual adults since so many people around her had already been perceiving her as one for a while.
Being so tall and appearing more physically mature than her actual age, especially once ‘werewolf puberty’ hit full force, seemed to give even the adults in her life a false sense that she knew more than she did about many things.
Her physical appearance projected an image of someone who could not possibly need things explained to them as if they were new or needed help solving a problem they had never encountered before.
They could not always look past the more adult visage and tended to the inexperienced teen that lived within.
That type of treatment usually did not come from a malicious place, she was pretty sure.
But it still had an enormous impact on her ability to seek help from even the people she trusted most for things she could begrudgingly admit were far beyond her ability to handle independently.
It wasn’t easy to let herself ask for reassurance and admit her need for assistance with things that would take up significant time and effort without feeling like a burden and a bit of a failure.
But with her upcoming second shift ever, she needed to set aside all her pride if she hoped not to have it end in disaster and live with the knowledge that she could have done something to prevent it if only she had asked Vander for help.
Vi had been unsure how to ask for what she needed help with without sounding odd or entirely unreasonable and indisputably inconvenient to many people.
But she did when she eventually reached a breaking point one night and blurted it out awkwardly while wiping down a counter next to the burly man who was her adoptive father.
As nearly expected, since it had been happening more frequently in his presence again, she instantly reverted to her stuttering pup self as she tried to explain her worries regarding the rapidly approaching next cycle.
Vi confided in him that the thought of having no way of knowing for sure if losing almost all sense of self would always be the norm when she transformed kept her up at night for longer as the days flew by.
She told him that she had been secretly looking for ways to restrain herself but did not trust herself not to do something stupid like break out of anything she fixed up for herself and do irreparable harm with no one there to keep her in line.
It was a touchy subject, trying to give her implicit consent and request to be sedated or ‘stopped by any means necessary’ if need be to her father.
It was also awkward for her to admit to having snooped on enough of his and Benzo’s conversations to know that both men might know how to do it unfailingly.
From what she had gathered over the years of eavesdropping, intentionally or not, Vander’s friendship with Benzo long predated befriending their mother and Powder’s father.
She had heard them mention once or twice that in their younger years, they had listened to their parents speak of a time when they still used to try to ‘rehabilitate’ weaponized Undercity wolves instead of outright ‘mercy killing’ them.
They had mentioned something about their parents trying to use nonlethal methods to keep recaptured wolves contained long enough for any ground to be broken in trying to free their minds from indoctrination and wildness.
And their parents had gotten pretty good at using the nonlethal methods of restraint for containment purposes but not for much else beyond that.
(Unfortunately, many of them had been beyond reach mentally by the time they managed to break them free from the physical clutches of Enforcers and could no longer return to living ‘normal’ everyday lives.
The majority of them, having spent almost the entirety of their lives in captivity, did not know what to do with themselves once ‘forcefully’ separated from their ‘masters’ and often ended up getting themselves killed trying to escape and return to them.
In the scarce instance that rehabilitation attempts managed to resurface any humanity in the lucky ones not stuck in some degree of shifted state, they were often left so mentally broken by the experience that they would beg to be ‘put out of their misery’ or do it themselves before their next cycle.)
So, she figured that, in theory, there must be ways to keep her contained for at least a few hours instead of days on end and that the men would know how to do it if she only asked outright.
Sure, neither he nor Benzo had ever met an Alpha werewolf before her, and most of their knowledge stemmed from sparsely remembered stories from their youth.
But she hoped they would have better ideas for tackling the rapidly approaching situation than anything she could come up with and put together in the following days.
Ultimately, once she pushed past her apprehension and took some stuttering initiative, Vi found out Vander was more than happy to help in any way he could.
And help he sure did to a degree she had not expected him to on semi-short notice, almost as if he had already been mentally preparing for such a request for some time like a caring adoptive father to werewolf pups would.
Vi had only hoped that Vander would, at best, be open to hearing her out before outright shutting her down on the more extreme ends of her requests.
And that with a bit of undignified groveling, he might relent a little further and be ready to knock her out, tie her up to some post with a choker collar and chains, and leave her alone in the middle of nowhere to wear herself out like an unsocialized dog or something equally dramatic.
Vi didn’t know where she got the idea that doing something so inhumane was something her loving father would even consider doing as a last resort, but it came to her anyway.
(It probably had something to do with her internalized belief that she would always be subhuman in some way, always just one lapse of control away from destroying everyone and everything she loved, which tainted her ideas of how others perceived her.)
Vi had not expected him to jump right into the action and recruit his long-time trusted friend, who did not hesitate to offer up his basement as a meeting space away from eavesdroppers while they planned their next steps.
The man’s metalworking expertise and connections enabled him to work on reinforcing every restraint, window, and doorway with a metal alloy he had mixed as much silver onto as he could spare at the time to increase their efficacy.
Benzo had promised to continue adding more coats of silver ‘for next time’ as soon as possible to make her feel more secure, even though he and Vander had adamantly reassured her they did not think they would be necessary.
Vi was far less assured in her self-control, but she tried not to voice it too much and come off as ungrateful for their level of belief in her and all the work they put in for the first run by questioning their conviction.
She did not understand how they could be so sure their precautions would be enough even before anything went down, but she still wanted to believe it would be more than enough the first time.
Because it had to be enough.
Vi had not wanted to think about what could have happened if it didn’t, and ultimately, the trial run of their action plan would be the only time they got the chance to implement it.
---
It took a few more trips than expected to get everything set up for the ‘big night,’ especially with Powder refusing to be kept in the dark and tagging along after the first ‘not so secret meeting.’
Her presence had not necessarily been unwelcome, but it had added a distraction to everything she did because she was then preoccupied with the knowledge that Powder was likely listening in on every conversation.
Even after she and Ekko were sent upstairs, Powder could likely still catch parts of what they were talking about downstairs through the thick door.
It had made Vi feel a bit too exposed while she reiterated her childhood fears to the men of losing all semblance of self and endangering others.
That was an ongoing and renewed fear since, as far as she knew, it had been somewhat proven right weeks prior.
She had told them that she remembered the stories of the feral wolves that would stop at nothing to wreak havoc in their shifted state and how she feared that by staying so close to people, she feared she would do things she would regret all her life.
Vander had then tried to assure her that, as far as he was aware, those were cases of wolves that had been separated from their families or outright born into a life of forced servitude that turned to such untamable violence.
That they were not the norm.
But how could either of them be so sure?
The flashes of memories of broken furniture and clawed-up surfaces kept coming to mind, so she could not help but doubt that to be the truth.
She could not help but worry about Powder being anywhere near that version of her and getting either physically hurt or mentally scarred by hearing or seeing her in that state.
It could not be completely ruled out since, as far as they had all collectively known, she could have been an anomaly and gone permanently feral the first time she fully shifted anyway.
But in retrospect, it was a silly fear since she had yet to experience anything that would warrant what she would later learn to be a protective state for those wolves whose minds and bodies were ‘pushed’ enough.
She had no way of knowing that under most normal circumstances, the more human part of a werewolf mind coexisted in harmony with the more primal side within an animalistic body in an inversely similar way to how it did in her human form.
With enough time and freedom to grow and roam, most of her kind usually learned to bridge the gap between their two natures so they would no longer feel like separate entities.
Sure, there were times when either part of their psyche took over under duress or intense focus to help keep their shared body alive.
But even then, with enough time and life experience, both parties would know each other well enough not to do anything that does not align with their shared desires.
Vi, as ‘herself,’ would never knowingly seek to hurt her ‘pack’ like that.
So it should have been a no-brainer that unless some corrupting outside influence interfered, her Wolf would never even consider trying to harm them on purpose.
It was too loyal.
Too lovingly protective.
So that type of thing just would not happen.
But Vi had been unaware of all this before her second shift came to pass, so she continued to consider the possibility that their preparations would be insufficient to contain a mindless beast hellbent on escape.
Knowing that some basic ‘deterrents’ for their kind were physiologically impossible to fight against due to their genetic makeup should have been more than enough reassurance that they would work if she had thought more rationally.
Especially since there were decades, if not centuries, of scientific discovery behind them to prove that some things just worked without a hitch because that’s how their kind had evolved to ‘respond’ to them.
So, any form of genuine silver was tried and true.
The permanent scars on her face, where her skin had refused to reconnect partially due to lingering traces of silver exposure, should have sufficed to guarantee its efficacy in longer exposures, even if they were external.
(And then, therefore, if she did try to claw her way out of her restraints, the more direct exposure to her bloodstream would only heighten any effects it had on her and further subdue her anyway. A fact she did not learn that night but would, unfortunately, become much more familiar with in the years that would follow.)
Before then, she and Powder had been ‘aware’ that any form of it, depending on levels of purity and usage, had some form of physical effect on them.
But she only truly understood how powerful its effects could be when they started testing the efficacy of the silver-infused alloy on just her grip strength alone as she tried and failed to maintain her grasp on something that would otherwise be of a perfectly manageable weight to carry for a few minutes once the shackles were contacting her skin.
That dramatic drop in strength had been just from implementing one form of physical restraint, so Vi’s insistence on applying everything she could at once on the first run was likely severe overkill.
And ultimately, it did all prove to be a tad bit dramatic.
But she had still refused to be swayed about her conviction to withstand the added discomfort if it meant it could increase the chances of at least being slowed down enough to allow someone to take her out permanently if need be.
She did not want to take any chances.
And so, with the nagging worry that it would still not be enough despite real-world tests proving otherwise, she had spent most of the day leading up to the ‘big night’ triple-checking everything.
It more than bordered on unhealthy, in all honesty.
She had spent so much time downstairs, willingly subjecting herself to concentrated exposure to the metal over that preceding week, that it affected her appetite and general well-being for minutes or hours afterward.
But Vi did her best not to show it, if only not to worry her family more than they likely already had to see her looking so pale and nearly gaunt from forgoing meals to avoid puking them out and wasting them.
Calling it an early night and sleeping more than usual those days did help lessen the malaise somewhat, but it also meant spending even fewer waking hours with Powder.
(Something the younger teen showed plenty of resistance towards and understandable displeasure for.)
Powder had repeatedly whined, pulling out her best sympathy-evoking eyes, begging to spend more time by her side while she tested everything out just to see her more throughout the day.
Even if it meant feeling physically unwell while doing so, she was still very persistent about it.
It was almost as though Powder felt the stronger pull to be close in the days leading up to the full moon, just like Vi did, but Vi did not want her sister to feel as ill as she did when she didn’t need to endure the same things she was putting herself through.
At least not anytime soon since, as far as they had been aware, Powder was not the one who would be shifting that full moon.
Vi had tried to oppose letting her linger close enough to even accidentally make any direct contact with any of the equipment they were working with by being ‘meaner’ with her dismissals to discourage her from insisting on being right beside her.
But even physically pushing her to remain seated at the foot of the basement stairs or ‘yelling’ at her to go back to waiting for her upstairs didn’t work for long.
The Omega teen had already become too versed in the ways Vi expressed genuine anger and irritation to know when Vi didn’t have her heart in it and was faking it for ulterior reasons.
It did not help that the moon cycle affected her ability to regulate her emotions, and her selfish secret desire to keep her sister close throughout the process must have been far too evident despite her best attempts to mask it.
And so the scrawny girl continued to loiter around the doorway to the basement even when Vi pushed her out and closed the door behind her, sliding the cover off the peephole she could barely reach to keep sneaking glances at her even as Ekko tried to gently persuade her to spend less time glued to the doorway.
Remembering how attentive the boy had been to her sister’s state back then made her wish her younger Alpha’s pride had ‘allowed’ her to show more open gratitude for all he had done for her at those crucial moments.
She would have commended his bravery and admirable patience in the face of Powder’s heightened reactions to being pulled away from something or someone she had been fixating on.
Knowing how frightening her instinctual reactions could get, Vi had no doubts that the poor kid had to have felt at least a little scared for his life on more than one occasion, even though Powder usually tried to diffuse the situation immediately after accidentally spooking him.
Being a human boy, Vi knew Ekko had no personal experience with the things that ailed their kind, but he had always been a kindred spirit with Powder in the way he could make educated conclusions based on the things he observed.
One of those things had been that spending so much time even near the area they were working in was bad for her health, both physically and mentally, even though Powder kept telling him to lay off it when he pointed it out.
And it was categorically true that the exposure was unhealthy for Vi and Powder.
Even though Vi had refused to let her touch any of it directly, being near a room surrounded by so much silver-infused material seemed to have had a noticeable effect on her sister simply due to its sheer concentration.
Sure, Powder had always seemed more sensitive to its general effects than Vi, even in their previously limited exposure to the material.
But still, her sensitivity seemed to have increased even further practically overnight for reasons that would not become clear until the following month.
Vi did her best not to listen in on her bickering with Ekko as the poor boy tried to coax her into moving further away for the umpteenth time when he noticed her starting to look a sicklier kind of pale with minimal success.
She tried!
But she could not help eavesdropping and getting a little kick out of knowing that her sister was so resistant to having her focus move elsewhere for very long that she could sometimes hold her sister’s sole attention even when she was not in the same room.
However, that was not her only reason to keep an ear out since she was also trying to ensure that her sister’s growing frustration with the situation did not make her irritation cross over into something bordering on actual danger for the boy’s safety.
And sure enough, there came a point where the growls that slipped out of the Omega took on an ominous tone only she could have caught onto and spurred her into action, making her way up to spend some time pacifying her before she ripped the poor kid’s throat out or something similarly dramatic.
Having abandoned the last of her superfluous equipment checks, she tried to dissuade Powder from staying the entire evening and even pleaded with her to head back home early to be extra safe.
Even if she did not want to tell her to go.
Even if it hurt her to say it or even think about Powder being so far away from her when Vi felt so vulnerable and needed support.
She just wanted to be sure that Powder would be nowhere near the chaos that could unfold and spare her from witnessing any possible bloodshed if it came down to it.
(Vi’s own or anyone else’s.)
Admittedly, her wording had not been the most eloquent even for her, as her mind had already been growing a little foggy, but she had just wanted Powder to know Vi only had her safety in mind when telling her to leave.
But the younger teen adamantly refused to comply, saying that she would not be able to sleep at all if she could not be sure that Vi would only be sedated and not hurt in a ‘more serious’ or even lethal way by Benzo or anyone else.
The man had tried to reassure her by guiding her through his exact plan of action, from exactly where he would be sleeping by the front door to how easy it was to reload a second enormous dose of tranquilizer before even thinking of reaching for his shotgun.
But it was not enough assurance for the Omega teen.
Powder told her she was not ready to go through another night like ‘That Night’ again only a month later.
Told Vi that spending even a single night ‘completely’ apart when emotions were so heightened would be too painful in a way she could not explain.
And she didn’t need to because Vi was all too aware of what it felt like when she forced herself to stay away for longer than a night the previous month when everything inside her was telling her to be near Powder.
So the sudden declaration that the pull seemed to go both ways, coupled with her inner Alpha’s increasingly loud and restless insistence she listen to the Omega teen’s plea, compelled her to concede at least somewhat on that part of her original plan.
Nothing else had to change.
Her sister would simply be sleeping peacefully two floors up instead of many blocks over, safeguarded by their family friends instead of their family, and Vi would lock herself away in the basement behind a reinforced locked door.
Closer together but still at a safer distance.
Powder seemed to be gearing up to protest Vi’s request to stay in Ekko’s room for added safety, something Vi couldn’t believe she was saying either, but she stood firm on her one condition for her to be ‘allowed’ to stay in the same building as her.
No exceptions.
No matter what sounds might break through the barrier of the doorway and the looping instrumental music they would have to play overnight to help drown out her screams and growls, neither she nor Ekko would be allowed to return downstairs before dawn.
Vi tried to forewarn her that although the sounds that might escape her would probably sound scary or like she was being irreparably hurt, she would probably be fully healed and ready to be woken up bright and early by daybreak.
She tried to assure Powder that as long as the bonds did not break, it did not ‘matter’ how bad it sounded because it meant she was being safely contained.
And that Benzo would still be more than capable of handling the situation on his own should anything go wrong anyway.
(Vi had no way of knowing if any of this was entirely true, but she had to pretend, at least, to believe everything would work out fine so that she would not transfer even more of her anxious feelings to her sister.
Despite her slight trembling, she had to put on a brave face because she did not need to see her sister visibly distressed when she seemed to be regulating herself surprisingly well, given the circumstances.)
So, with all that said and fully anticipating a night spent away from each other, Vi decided to spend some of the time before her shift helping Benzo move some of the remaining heavier items they had hauled up the steps to a hidden spare room on the first floor.
Sure, she could have waited to do it the following day with Vander’s help once he returned since he had already returned to the bar to thwart additional suspicion for her absence on a busy Friday evening.
But Vi wanted to repay his hospitality by making herself useful and utilizing her temporary ‘full moon strength’ for something positive before she made a mess of his basement.
Benzo made a few half-hearted attempts to stop her but relented quickly enough once he saw that she hardly needed any additional help, even though she was still slightly weakened, thanks to the boosted strength afforded her at the peak of her natural moon cycle.
She told him the manual labor was helping her tire herself out preemptively anyway, so it was no big deal that she was left to do most of the heavier lifting.
The distraction of a task was also welcomed as she tried her best not to express the nagging underlying irritation she felt every time she overheard Powder giggling halfheartedly at Little Man’s attempts to lighten her mood as she waited for Vi to take a breather.
The boy kept letting Powder shove him around, half playing up how deceptively strong the girl was and feigning ‘injury’ so she would check on him or laugh harder at his theatrics.
Vi could see what he was likely trying to do by displaying such docile behaviors, even if Powder never seemed to give it any deeper meaning beyond being a source of mild amusement.
And she hated that it ‘worked’ in any capacity more than she wanted to admit aloud, even though it was generally the same type of harmless playfulness the boy had always displayed around her sister.
He was just a kid trying to endear himself to a girl around his age.
Normal behavior.
Nearly expected behavior.
It annoyed Vi that she had felt so upset about it when it had never been much of an issue in years past.
If anything, she might have even called it adorable or almost thanked him for being such a kind and temperate presence in Powder’s life at any other time.
But that night, it was too much.
Vi had never felt so irked by that type of fawning behavior from him before, knowing Powder typically laughed it off in a friendly way anyway, but her Alpha was much too close to the surface to be reasoned with.
Every small action pulling Powder’s attention away from her felt like a personal slight.
If Vi had let herself slip any further, she almost might have shamefully thrown a punch at an unsuspecting twelve-year-old boy in his own home and then had to struggle to explain why the hell she would do such a thing in the first place.
(Both to the people there to witness her irrational behavior and to herself.)
As it was, Vi had already caught herself repeatedly biting back poorly concealed growls and blaming the strange choked sounds on her impending shift.
Vi’s inability to stop the awkward sounds from escaping initially annoyed her until that sense of annoyance morphed into concern once she finally noticed that Powder was growing increasingly fidgety and unsettled at the sounds.
Fidgety in a way that only Vi could tell meant Powder was attempting to mask the compulsive response to bare her neck in appeasement, a more lupine behavior that she had grown increasingly shy about displaying in front of other people to avoid being teased about it.
The more she thought about it, despite having been almost entirely sure Powder was unlikely to shift on the same night, the more she realized there had been an uptick in the Omega teen’s general restlessness that night.
Like she could not sit still.
As if it almost pained her to remain in one spot for too long.
Almost as though her skin had also felt a bit tighter already so early in the night.
Vi tried to silence the thought the moment it voiced itself, but there was no denying that the possibility of the Omega teen shifting alongside her soon had piqued her Alpha’s interest.
Filled it with excitement about the prospect.
The possibilities.
Possibilities Vi tried not even to begin to analyze too deeply at that moment.
Choosing to instead focus on her growing anxiety over how much more responsibility it would be to keep them both out of trouble at every full moon if Powder started to shift soon as well.
She still did not know exactly how ‘in control’ she would be of herself shifting on her own, so there was no telling what would happen if the Omega started acting out on some ‘base urges’ again when they were both in a more primal state of mind and body.
Vi had wondered if she could stop anything from ‘happening’ before anyone else saw how much she was failing at being a good sister.
What would happen if no one came down to try to break them apart in time?
And even if they did catch them amid decidedly unsisterly behaviors, would that even stop them from--
Before her thoughts could continue down that unwanted road, Ekko had surprisingly managed to be the first to signal to Vi that it might be time to make her way downstairs by stuttering to comment on the visible darkening of Vi’s sclera.
She could not fault the boy for being too nervous about speaking to her directly again for the rest of the night when she set free a vicious growl in response to his trembling gesturing between his own eyes and hers to attempt to clarify his broken words in place of a more tempered verbal questioning.
(She will never know how the poor kid managed not to soil himself in terror that night. But she would always feel a lingering sense of pride and respect for how ‘Little Man’ had shown clear signs that he would likely someday grow into an even more capable and valiant young man.
She wanted to believe that he would have grown into the type of man who would have made both their adoptive fathers very proud with his ability to lead and conviction to fight for what he believed in. If only she had gotten the chance to witness any of it.)
Out of the corner of her eye, she had caught Powder discreetly tugging at her earlobe before gazing toward the central clock’s reflective face, the action magnetically drawing Vi’s attention in the same direction.
A quick glimpse of herself on the shiny surface confirmed that her eyes and ears had started to change without her sensing.
The combination of those visual cues and the sudden awareness of her increasing sweatiness had then sent her heartbeat skyrocketing with rapid and uncontrollable nerves.
The uptick in her heart rate seemed only to speed along the rest of the early stages of her shift, causing her to hastily clench her jaw in worry that her sharpening and lengthening teeth would frighten all present company.
The increasing tightness in her throat had also made her doubt that her voice would sound ‘normal’ anymore, so she looked to Benzo and then to the staircase leading upstairs as she walked toward the stairs leading to the basement.
Hoping that he would take that silent gesture as his cue to usher the younger duo upstairs and return swiftly to lock up the reinforced door from the outside for her before settling in for the night himself.
Vi had been very worried about how quickly the initial stages of the shift set in once the initial acknowledgment occurred.
But she had still taken a little comfort in how she had felt surprisingly ‘present’ in her body and mind despite the partial shifting.
The sense of lingering self-control almost made her recklessly confident.
For just a moment, it made her wonder how much longer she could feasibly push her luck and still have enough willpower left to secure herself into her restraints.
She entertained the momentary thought of seeing whether she could hold out long enough to help Powder settle in bed and ensure Little Man slept a respectful distance away from her sister before retreating downstairs to face whatever horrors awaited her for the night.
On any other night, she likely would have outright slept on the floor between the two beds just to be entirely sure of it with how heightened her need to ‘safeguard’ her sister had been getting.
Just generally speaking.
But she ultimately decided against it, deeming it not worth the risk of some other innocuous thing fully setting her off preemptively and rendering all their joint efforts to prepare for the night pointless.
Vi knew Ekko was a bright boy and Benzo was a no-nonsense man.
She didn’t believe either would dare risk doing anything to truly upset the ticking timebomb of claws and fangs that would reside within their living space for the night.
Vi tried to trust that the older man had raised the boy correctly and that, out of respect for Vi and Vander, he would not allow any ‘funny business’ under his roof under any circumstances.
She also tried to trust that the man would not have let Ekko stay upstairs alone with Powder unsupervised if he did not believe he would be on his best behavior for the entirety of the night ahead.
It was not like she had any time for doubt as she started to feel her bones and muscles ‘tightening up’ further in her short, stiff walk towards the basement door.
Vi knew it was mean, but as she passed the staircase the duo lingered on, she let herself take some strangely vindictive pleasure in the way Ekko all but fell running up the steps as he scurried off when she bared her sharp teeth and growled in his direction.
She would have laughed out loud at his reaction without her sister’s distraction as she stayed rooted to the spot for a few moments.
The drastic contrast between their instinctual initial response was enough to slow her gait further and briefly note how the Omega visibly shuddered before rapidly blinking away, an expression Vi missed when she looked away briefly to glance at the retreating form several steps above.
Vi’s undoubtedly intensified gaze caused the poor girl to swallow nervously and emit an awkward squeak of a sound as she tensed but gave a quick nod of silent understanding before hightailing it upstairs to the spare cot they laid out in the attic for her.
And so began a very long night.
== To Be Continued ==
Notes:
If anyone thinks 'not a lot happened' just know i'm Aware ok. It still took 588385 years and so much time and effort to yap this much ok.
It's all mostly a set up for the next part/other 'halfish' of this thing. But good news is that it's already written and in the process of getting some final edits in.
So the wait should hopefully not be anywhere near as long! And after THAT chapter, we finally catch back up with whatever the heck was going on during Vi's 'cheating arc' from her perspective.
Pray for mi because I have no idea how long THAT will get, hopefully I don't feel like I have to split it and add even MORE chapters to the total before even finally taking on the 'reworked Canon S1 Act 1 events' for this fic.
But anyway, sorry if it was extra all over the place but I just could not STAND to look at it again and keep finding stuff I want to change. I needed this GONE.
See ya on the next one, hopefully!
Chapter 24: Vi Pt 5 (Continued Yet AGAIN Again)
Summary:
' But as the silence stretched on, it seemed to take on a more determined and purposeful edge that only added to Vi’s growing sense of overwhelm as she had so rarely seen her younger sister look so composed in the face of danger.
She could not put a name to the feeling that display of silent confidence stirred within her beneath the layers of distress and protectiveness that smothered it.
Vi’s mind could not make sense of any of what she was feeling then.
Not when, in that rare instance, Vi had been the one who was an absolute trembling mess of terror and had hastily dragged herself back to press herself against the furthest wall her restraints allowed her to reach without slipping off.
Alpha pride be damned. '
--Or--
Vi experiences a few firsts that threaten to awaken things within herself that she is NOT ready to explore nor able to comprehend just yet.
Powder shows a reckless amount of bravery and devotion at the 'worst best' possible time.
Notes:
One part "Here, damn!"
Another part, "I gave up trying to find a 'better' place to introduce this part of the Groundwork™️ , so I guess this is where it gets introduced more overtly."
But mostly, I just want some damn PEACE. I want to be free of the strain I put myself under by trying to maintain a specific chapter count and forcing chapters to become too long for me to manage on my own.
So here is a 'short' chapter I pulled from the damn draft that kept growing to intimidating proportions that kept making it impossible for ANY update to leave 'development hell'.
I was fighting so hard to keep a certain chapter count but I just gotta let that go so I can get unstuck. 😮💨
Shorter but FINISHED chapters are better than an eternal string of more extended hiatuses where so much time passes between updates that I 'forget' how to write and even more of what I've already written.
Anyway, I'm still alive, at least for now, and (tentatively) back, baby!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
= = = Vi = = =
Or at least that was what Vi had assumed Powder ran off to get settled into, as it was what she had initially agreed to do.
Initially.
However, the verbal compliance seemed to have been only for the sake of appeasing Vi enough to let her stay overnight.
She should have seen through that transparent lie beforehand and asked Benzo to stay up for a bit longer to watch for a blue-haired blur sprinting down the steps and darting across the hallway after the lights went out.
Vi really should have anticipated her sister’s stubborn refusal to keep a safe distance from her.
Should not have felt surprised to hear her grumbling in annoyance behind the thick door as she tried to remember how to unlock it mere minutes after Benzo began to snore as he slept.
She had to admit that she found it somewhat impressive that Powder had managed to stay up long enough to wait both him and Ekko out and still be alert enough to sneak past both without tripping or stumbling in what should have been near total darkness to her.
(Vi had already settled into her further enhanced night vision by then to start to forget what things used to look like in extremely muted lighting before her eyes matured.
It had not occurred to her then that Powder’s vision and other senses had already also started to mature significantly, despite not entirely shifting, enough to make sneaking around in near complete darkness possible.)
Or maybe she had made significant noise, but Vi had just been too in her head to hear Powder approaching, and Benzo had been too exhausted to be woken up by her light footsteps.
After all, the man had dutifully and bravely stayed up late to help her adjust the tension in the chains while leaving enough wiggle room in the restraints to accommodate what they had estimated her shifted dimensions would grow into.
There was no way for either of them to know how much she could grow if allowed to, since she had not shifted entirely the first time around either, as far as she knew.
And Vi had based that assumption entirely on the fact that her clothes had survived the night despite hearing that the wolves of legend, even the female ones, were rumored to have been much larger than any average human.
It wasn’t much to go on, but it was not like she had remained ‘awake’ for anything after a certain point that other night to know for sure if she had entirely shifted before that second full moon.
They took into consideration that the accelerated process of growing to her adult height had only begun at the time of her first shift, so it had been safe to assume she would be even larger the second time around, no matter what.
It would not be the most accurate place to start basing their estimations on, since she would also not be fighting off the shift in the same way she had the previous time.
But it had to be close enough.
Better than nothing.
Vi just hoped that, if anything, they ended up guesstimating slightly too tight than too loose because she’d take a few bruises and sprained joints over slipping out of the restraints and making it possible for someone else to get hurt.
She believed that even a few fractured bones would be worth it to prevent such a thing from happening.
But still, Vi did have time to wonder if her bones would permanently heal ‘wrong’ due to all the silver she was exposing herself to, or if they would still automatically set themselves the correct way once she shifted in either direction.
Would it be any different from how her bones might shift and break during the transition process, given that they were damaged due to external factors?
Would being in her shifted state amplify all the adverse effects of silver exposure, or had she already reached the peak of them just by being surrounded by so much as is?
On that note, would the saturation somehow stunt her growth or force accelerated growth as a defense mechanism to try to help her escape?
So much to think about during the lead-up to her first ‘conscious’ shift.
So many unknowns.
Vi had been ruminating on those thoughts as she kept herself busy folding and unfolding the sizable but worse-for-wear blanket she had been given for some extra modesty before gently tossing it a few extra paces beyond her restrained reach.
(She kept her removed clothing items and the blanket at an unreachable distance for her shifted self, just in case her wolf got any ideas again and ruined the items. Vi did not want to explain why things she had not worn were left in tatters once dawn broke.)
Vi had only kept her undershirt and boxer shorts on out of some precautionary modesty, since her already higher-than-average body temperature had only grown warmer as the minutes ticked by and would have been sufficient to keep her warm even naked.
It wasn’t as if she had planned to or even expected to be seen by anyone all night, and she figured she would have at least a few minutes after everything to cover herself up before asking to be let out.
But still something had told her it would be better safe than sorry, or relatively safe than naked in front of people that had no business ever seeing her in such a state.
Listening to that instinct that ultimately proved to be the right move, but Vi remembered that as she had waited for the rest of the shift to take hold, even the light layers of clothing she kept on had only added to her growing anxiety.
Sure, in the grand scheme of things, it had not been long between Benzo’s departure and the first signs of Powder’s attempts to sneak into the basement.
But the minutes she had been left to her thoughts felt endless as she tried to calm her racing heartbeat, which refused to slow down no matter how many deep breaths she took.
Something was missing.
Something seemed ‘off’.
Something felt wrong.
She had only had those same few minutes to start to brace herself mentally for the changes she could feel rapidly approaching by trying to remind herself of who needed to stay in control and telling herself:
To be ‘good.’
To be peaceful.
To behave.
Vi had been so focused on staying seated until her bindings were functional and fixated on bouncing her knees to shake off her desire to pace.
Her hearing had been so attuned to the sounds of her elongated nails scraping against the concrete floor as she flexed her fingers impatiently that once she registered the repeated louder grumbles from outside the door, it startled her out of her reverie.
But even then, she did not fully register the sounds as ‘danger’ or recognize the voice as Powder’s until after her face turned towards the door in attention, and an odd whining noise escaped her.
The unexpected reaction had brought an immediate flush of embarrassment, even though the teen could not see her yet.
She tried to control her desire to emit even more pathetically distressed noises as the sounds of twinkling keys and unlatched locks reached her, followed by a soft grunt of effort as the shorter teen pushed the heavy door open and then carefully shut it behind herself.
What the hell?
Her brain had still been so preoccupied with the fact that the door had opened at all that she could not stop the yip that escaped her as she belatedly pulled against her chains to attempt to cover her chest and lower region in a coordinated instinctive response to the sudden intrusion.
Her calmer mind knew the light steps descending the stairs could only belong to the only person she would not be viscerally opposed to being caught in any state of undress by.
But still, her next instinct had been to growl to warn the ‘intruder’ to get away from her while she was in such a vulnerable state before her brain caught up.
The steps slowed at the sound but did not stop, and as the Omega teen came further into view, Vi’s warning growls turned into fearful whimpers as she readjusted herself to try to scoot away from her immediately.
“Powder, y-you need to get b-back upstairs! You p-promised you wouldn’t come d-down here until morning!”
By that point in the night, she was unsure if her words were even comprehensible.
The tension in her throat had started to become painful, and the crowding of sharpening teeth in her mouth made it hard to form words at all.
Vi feared that maybe they had not been since Powder only continued to advance towards her, much to her growing distress.
But while the omega teen had defiantly not heeded the rising panic in Vi’s voice, she had intelligently chosen to focus her gaze on some random point on the ground instead of pushing direct eye contact with an overwhelmed alpha.
Being rebellious had always been part of her sister’s nature, and while she had still been naïve about many things, at no point had she been downright stupid.
The girl had already picked up on so much, innately knowing how to push right up against the line of possible mortal danger without crossing it.
Had already become proficient in getting close to it and maneuvering away from it with minimal leeway.
There was so little leeway and room for error that Vi could only pray she would be able to hold her part of the push and pull steady enough not to be the one to move it out of place and trip them both up.
Her sudden presence was not something she had braced herself for.
Once again, what the hell?
Any further panicked pleas had remained lodged in her throat as she watched in abject uneasiness as the teen reached down and picked up the folded blanket before taking another step forward and pausing mere inches away from her reach.
The resolute calmness of her movements had unnerved Vi in her distressed state, as it was the apparent complete antithesis of what she was feeling at that moment.
Powder’s breathing was even, and her heart rate was hardly any quicker than it typically was, as if it were a more ordinary situation for them both to be in than the genuinely hazardous one that it had been.
A perfect image of teenage recklessness and complete youthful trust.
If not for her slight, intermittent hand twitching, almost as if kneading the folded fabric for comfort, there would have been no overt sign that she felt anxious in any way.
Powder’s seemingly overly calm demeanor was all the more worrying to Vi since she had yet to respond vocally to her displayed unease.
The sudden muteness had immediately troubled Vi because it had often been a sign of Powder’s mounting stress levels in the past.
An unconscious form of shutting down, as she retreated into her mind for protection.
But as the silence stretched on, it seemed to take on a more determined and purposeful edge that only added to Vi’s growing sense of overwhelm as she had so rarely seen her younger sister look so composed in the face of danger.
She could not put a name to the feeling that display of silent confidence stirred within her beneath the layers of distress and protectiveness that smothered it.
Vi’s mind could not make sense of any of what she was feeling then.
Not when, in that rare instance, Vi had been the one who was an absolute trembling mess of terror and had hastily dragged herself back to press herself against the furthest wall her restraints allowed her to reach without slipping off.
Alpha pride be damned.
The jarring scraping of her cuffs against the rough surface of the floor and loud clinking of the chains as she repeatedly slipped in her ungraceful, blindly instinctual movements fell to her deafened ears in her haste to create distance.
Her breaths were already becoming labored from the burning sensation along the skin that covered her tailbone and rippling spasms that were traveling up and down her spine as she fought back against its need to reform and extend from her body.
Memories of the only other time she felt such a strange pain rushing back to her and making her all the more desperate to somehow disappear, despite knowing there was no ‘safer’ place for her to be than locked up in that room.
(If the door had not been designed to be nearly impossible to open from the inside, she likely would have done the most irrational thing and endangered everyone else by bolting out the door again. World be damned.)
Or at least it would have been if not for the person she loved the most completely upending the effectiveness of Vi’s carefully laid plans to self-isolate by knowingly throwing herself into the near inescapable wolf pit she had observed the design process of.
Her orbiting presence in the days prior had ensured that there would be no way for her not to know that by closing the door behind herself, she would be willingly sealing her fate, whatever it turned out to be.
The Omega’s resolute demeanor showed that, however foolishly, she was prepared to accept any outcome of her decision to lock herself away from secured safety.
Her implicit consent to welcome even the worst-case scenarios could have been taken as an act of the deepest form of love and might have warmed Vi’s overworked heart if it did not also fill her with such dread.
The offered vulnerability might have even felt like a gift as it had been intended to be, if it had not sent her spiraling into panicked indecision instead.
Had she known with any certainty that Powder had even half a fighting chance to fight her off, Vi might have felt differently about her presence.
But she was nearly completely unarmed physically and externally.
And so very small in Vi’s eyes.
The thought of the inequality of it all would have been more than enough to asphyxiate her with guilt and disgust for the rest of her miserable life if anything were to happen.
However long that would have even been.
Because, sure, in terms of physicality, there was no doubt Vi would be the victor in any altercation.
That had still not been anything worth debating, just a mere fact.
It was her increasingly impaired mind that had her feeling at a nearly paralyzing intellectual disadvantage, much more than the ‘typical’ levels.
What should she do?
What could she even do in her situation?
Thinking clearly and logically had been damn near impossible with all she had been perceiving at once.
If she stood up and tried to remove Powder from the locked space forcibly and yelled for help from upstairs, she would only put everyone in more danger by setting herself loose and lose focus on delaying her shifting before her restraints could do their job effectively.
Rendering them useless.
If she stayed still and just ‘let the changes come’, there was a chance that her sensitivity to the effects of their composition would increase to the point of rendering her nearly immobilized in their tightened hold.
The lull could grant Powder more time to come to her senses and save herself.
This second hastily assembled theoretical pivot in plans sounded slightly better, but neither option pushed the Omega teen out of harm’s way in a more immediate manner.
The clock had continued to tick both literally and figuratively as she fretted, and Vi could feel the time to do anything remotely intelligent in the moment rapidly dwindling.
So, in tearful, frustrated desperation, she had opted for near complete inaction by pathetically curling in on herself instead.
Hoping the teen’s sense of self-preservation would finally kick in and make her stop getting closer to her, since she could no longer move any further away as she waited for the seemingly inevitable.
The instantly recognizable ache in her hands and feet, which had nothing to do with scraping them along concrete in her haste to retreat, told her that the point of no return was horrifyingly imminent.
“P-Powder, seriously, you n-need to leave! You can’t be h-here, it’s—I’m not safe for y-you to be a-around like this --”
If the sounds leaving her mouth had been more like garbled and grunted noises in the vague shape of words to her oversensitive ears, there had to be no way for Powder to make any sense of them.
Her continued silence had only bolstered Vi’s belief that she must not have been making any sense at all anymore because the Omega hardly did anything beyond softening her eyes and pouting ever so slightly in an expression that belied some form of sympathy rather than any sense of urgency to move.
In Vi’s compromised state, the continued general lack of reciprocated alarm, combined with her sister’s soft body language, had made her feel flustered and piteous.
Pathetic.
It had been taking everything within herself to keep every muscle tensed and locked into the cramped position she had contorted herself into as she tried to communicate her growing panic with her tearful eyes alone.
Hoping that the nonverbal bond they had always shared would speak for her, since her actual words no longer made any sense.
And for a few moments, her attempts at telepathy seemed to be doing something, even if it was not what she was pleading for, as Vi detected an oddly soothing shift in the Omega’s scent.
Not affecting enough to completely take her mind off the perceived severity of the developing situation, but comforting enough to numb her pain to a degree that allowed her to refocus on the present instead of spiraling into her future fears.
How had Powder’s scent alone managed to do that?
It didn’t make sense to her mind how it also made her feel nearly out of control over her body, but in a different, more pleasant way at the time.
Something told her that the slight ‘manipulation’ over her mental and physical state should have made her Alpha angry, especially on the peak of a full moon.
Still, if anything, the brief shift in ‘dominance’ over the situation touched upon that same thing that would gradually stir awake at a later time.
But at that moment, it continued to lie dormant as Powder gave the ‘power’ back by turning her head slightly away from her in further deference before speaking determinedly in a voice Vi barely recognized, “I don’t care what might happen to me if I stay with you. I’m not leaving you, Vi. I can’t even open the door from in here, you know that. I-I couldn’t sleep knowing you were probably down here, scared and a-alone when you don’t need to be!”
Unbelievable.
Her sister either loved her so deeply that it made her momentarily insane, or she must have had a death wish.
(How truthful the combination of those sentiments would become regarding either of them throughout their lives, had yet to be fully seen.)
Vi would have loved to have been able to fully absorb and be heartened by the vulnerable sincerity interwoven within her sister’s devoted words.
She did.
But by that point in the night, Vi could feel the once loose cuffs around her wrists and ankles starting to become alarmingly less so, and the straps to her muzzle that previously rested somewhat limply at the base of her neck were already growing tauter by the second.
Emotion had swelled within her then, and she so badly wanted to verbalize it.
She even made a weak attempt to, but then it suddenly became impossible to do so within the next few seconds as her jaw audibly clicked out of place before snapping to lengthen and widen rapidly enough to accommodate new sharpened teeth.
Everything else happened so quickly after that slip in her focus on constraint.
Despite her best efforts to push ‘it’ back any longer, to try to force more actual words past her lips in warning as she felt her control unraveling, every structure of her being began expanding painfully in earnest then.
Impotent tears blurred her vision further as it changed as well.
A sharp tug at the end of her spine sent pain shooting straight up to the base of her skull, and she felt her ears stretch and then press against her head in distress.
The fretful and agonized sounds that escaped her were just as unstoppable as the physical changes that refused to slow, and her uneven breathing as she futilely tried to silence herself made it impossible even to attempt to bear her pain more stoically.
She had been so scared.
Just a scared teenage girl forced to face a situation she had so little control over while bearing the weight of so much responsibility over all outcomes of her actions or inaction.
Her heart felt like it would either beat out of her chest or stop altogether as it truly sunk in that the shift was actively happening in front of Powder and she had become entirely powerless to stop it anymore.
Any attempt to slow down any part of the process had not only become hopeless but also increasingly agonizing at a cellular level; yet, she still refused to stop fighting the unavoidable.
Vi refused to let go.
She couldn’t do it, even if it would mean even the slightest reprieve from her current suffering, because it would also mean giving Powder even less time to attempt to escape from her more beastly self.
Everything was just so much.
There was no end to the pain in sight, not for her body nor her mind.
Or at least that is what it felt like in the moment, so Vi only curled into herself further despite the mounting desperate need to move and stretch out her limbs.
Willing herself to stay as compact as possible, ignoring the way her claws and teeth dug into her soft flesh as she tried to keep them to herself at any cost, and the sting of her skin trying to heal around them.
She had told herself that so long as she was doubled over in pain, there would be no way for her to hurt anyone else, but it did not make it any easier to fight the reflex to escape the agony.
Even simply allowing her lungs an opportunity to expand fully by not pressing against her chest with her arms and knees would bring so much relief.
But Vi kept mentally screaming at herself to stay as immobile as physically possible since Powder was still standing only a few feet away, refusing to budge from her original spot.
Vi didn’t know what to do.
There was nowhere for her to even go.
It was happening faster than her exhausted sense of self-awareness could keep up with, and her will to push back any more had steadily slipped away alongside it.
At some point throughout all of the chaos, Vi had tucked what she absently recognized as her forming tail against herself and faked a threatening growl as Powder took yet another careful but foolish step towards her spasming form and pleaded, “Vi, stop doing that! I-I think you’re making it hurt more by tensing up like that! I promise I’ll be okay if you just let it happen. I trust you even if you don’t trust yourself. It’s going to be okay; I can feel it. The pain will stop soon, I know it will if you just {let go}!”
Something about hearing Powder’s words of encouragement spoken to her with such conviction in that vulnerable moment caused a dizzying, full-body ripple to course through her, causing her to loosen the self-inflicted additional tension in her body instantly.
A large part of Vi’s last vestiges of rationality wanted to protest Powder’s statements and say, ‘How would you know? How could you possibly be so sure of that?’
But it was quickly overpowered by that same strange compulsion to ‘comply’ that had only teased at her psyche earlier, but had now briefly taken over and left her mind nearly disturbingly quiet.
For the most fleeting of moments, she had a chance to wonder if that pleasant stillness was what being on the receiving end of an ‘Alpha Command’ felt like to Powder or if it was a more intrusive experience due to the inherent biologically mandated power imbalance of it all as an Omega.
As it was, it had been highly confusing to both her and her Alpha to feel so out of control of her body in a way that almost felt good to them both at the tail end of what had felt like interminable anguish.
It should not have been so easy to bring a stressed Alpha to heel with two simple words, even for just a moment at the peak of a moon cycle, but her crazy little weirdo of a sister managed it somehow.
And it felt okay.
The abrupt peacefulness in relinquishing control made her want to continue letting go and appease Powder even more, despite still being terrified of what might happen if she did.
Being unburdened from choice felt like a fantasy within reach for those few moments before the fear of what she could be capable of on the other side of total surrender returned full force as she could feel her meager clothing tightening and then splitting at the seams.
Reality came crashing back down all at once, taking the unearned sense of peace with it as she slipped away.
--- To Be Continued ---
Notes:
The next chapter/section will be worked on as I get back into the flow of things, and is already written out for the most part since it was also part of what would have been a MASSIVE but clumsy update.
It just needs the same focused attention to mature organically as this part did; the original version of this chapter/section would not have had the chance to include so many things that only came to me once I decided to change the structure.
So bear with me as I figure out where everything will go now that the chapter count isn't so restrictive. Hopefully, this only makes the story all the better and enables me to update more regularly again!
Hope this 'shorter' chapter was still worth the wait!
Chapter 25: HEATWAVE
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Not a chapter, unfortunately.
[I was on a roll! The draft was right theree and getting worked on...]
But the Summertime heat and Sadness™️ has been beating me up and other life things have kept me busy in between.
Also, another fandom of mine woke up with a new season FINALLY dropping. So that's also divided my attention even further.
I have been wanting to return to AwooAU so badly for weeeeks now but it just gets too damn hot here since I have no A/C. So even THINKING about running my computer for hours on end makes me feel like i'm evaporating even faster.
It'll still be a minute, but I promise I still have every intention to keep working on this fic. I hope to see y'all at the next (actual) fic update if you'll still have me.
Give a lil awoo and manifest a break in this heat + motivation to write for me, yeah? 🐺
Notes:
*goes back to evaporating*
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Guest (Guest) on Chapter 1 Sat 19 Feb 2022 09:13AM UTC
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DecimalPoint on Chapter 1 Sat 19 Feb 2022 01:55PM UTC
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FranticRomantic on Chapter 1 Mon 21 Feb 2022 02:34AM UTC
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FranticRomantic on Chapter 3 Mon 28 Feb 2022 11:22PM UTC
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