Chapter Text
Wolfwood was tired. Really fucking tired.
His third wild goose chase in as many weeks, sent chasing the shadow of a rumour that ended up nothing more than a figment of the overactive imaginations of superstitious locals with apparently nothing better to do with their time than to waste his. No doubt that this time would be the same. Wolfwood would go home with nothing more than sore feet, a tired jaw from over-clenching and, if he was lucky, the callout fee. Last time he’d barely had any cash leftover after handing over the Church’s cut.
He caught his toe on a bit of broken paving and cursed under his breath as he stumbled, fingers digging automatically into his coat pocket for his cigarettes. Letting the crumpled stub of his current smoke fall to the leaf-littered ground, he brought the pack up to his lips for a new one., only to be met with empty air.
“Fuck this.” Wolfwood growled, taking out his frustration on an unoffending tree root. The flare of pain in his toes didn’t help his mood, but it did distract from his need for a cigarette. Briefly. He sighed heavily, setting the cross down, wincing as the weight swung off his shoulder and allowed the friction sores there to get a bit more air into them. So fucking heavy. Wolfwood cracked his neck either side as he rolled his left shoulder, rubbing it absently while he took stock of his surroundings. According to the map that the village leader had given him he should have been there by now but he couldn’t see anything of note, let alone a mansion. His fingers dug into the cigarette pack out of habit while he frowned at the hand-drawn map, coming up empty once again.
He sighed again, stiff shoulders rounding, and sank down onto the tree root. A root around in an inner pocket yielded no smokes but did offer up some of that candy he’d picked up a few towns back. Strawberry. The wrapped had peeled off a little, allowing a bit of lint and dust to stick to the pink surface of the candy but whatever. It was something for his mouth to do.
Rolling the candy between his teeth, Wolfwood cast his gaze around the clearing. The pavers had started about half a mile back, indicating a path to something, but that something seemed to have crumbled a good century ago. Now all that remained of whatever may have been built here were some tumbled stones, overgrown with thick, ropey vines that looked like their thorns would do a great job of shredding the skin from his arms if he tried to push through them. He wasn’t keen to test it. Here and there, strange blue flowers sprouted from amidst the thorns. There was nothing else here, no sign of the monster he’d come here to kill. He couldn’t smell it either, nothing save for the sodden scent of wet leaves and the sweet fragrance of those flowers mixing with the artificial strawberry on his tongue.
Well, fuck. Another week of scrounging meals and bumming smokes where he could until he got back to the Church for his next assignment. Maybe he could ask for an advance or something. Ha. Maybe he should take up that bounty offer after all.
Heaving himself up and ignoring the protest from his feet as his weight settled back onto them, Wolfwood slung the Punisher over his shoulder again, twisting the leather straps around his fingers into their familiar position, leather smooth and supple over the calluses. The strap dug back into place on his shoulder, raw skin just healed over opening up again, another wound he’d soon forget about.
He turned to follow the broken path back to the village but as he turned his back on the clearing he froze in place. Goosebumps crawled up his spine in an electric arc as he faced the man now standing in the centre of the path. A man who most certainly had not been there a second previously.
Wolfwood didn’t stumble backwards - too well trained. He felt his thighs tense though, muscles bunching. Keeping his head still, knowing his eyes were hidden behind his dark glasses, he rapidly took stock of the figure. He was tall, about the same height as Wolfwood. Blonde hair, tumbling over the eyes and obscuring them as effectively as Wolfwood’s glasses. Broad shoulders filled out a flamboyant red shirt, high-necked and wide-sleeved. Frayed at the cuffs, from the left of which protruded a hand that was definitely metallic. Thin waist, tucked into tight black trousers. He didn’t look especially threatening – too gangly – but being able to sneak up on Wolfwood took quite some doing. Something about his preternatural stillness rankled with Wolfwood too – if he very obviously hadn’t just appeared from nowhere you’d be forgiven for thinking he was an exceptionally well-carved statue. There was an air of- something. Wolfwood couldn’t place it, couldn’t immediately categorise the guy and that sat badly with him. Made his teeth tingle. This guy was probably bad news.
And Wolfwood really didn’t need any extra work he wasn’t getting paid for.
“Well hey there.” He straightened, throwing on the casual grin which never failed to ingratiate him to locals. “Don’t suppose you know your way round these parts d’you? I seem to have got myself all turned around.”
There was a beat in which Wolfwood very tangibly felt himself being assessed by those hidden eyes. The weight of the unseen stare was so palpable he felt the back of his neck prickle in warning. Silence.
“Aww well never mind, thanks anyway. I’ll just be heading on back then.” Wolfwood shifted the weight of the Punisher again and took a step forward before freezing once more as the figure vanished. He blinked, feeling his pulse beat harder than he would have liked against the skin of his throat, readying himself to unwrap the weapon.
“It’s all gone now.”
Wolfwood flinched at the soft voice at his left ear, unable to stop himself from springing sideways and swinging the Punisher in front of him. Wheeling, he came face to face with the man. He almost didn’t register the face that was revealed as the tousled blonde hair was pushed out of the way by a pale hand, noting a beauty mark below the man’s left eye before his attention was entirely seized by those eyes themselves. They were a blue so blue it had until now only occupied the small, closely guarded segment of Wolfwood’s mind that held onto his children dream of seeing the ocean. A blue ocean, deep and sparkling blue under a sunny sky. That’s what these eyes made him think of, and it threw him so completely that he almost forgot to maintain his guard.
He tried to wrestle the smile back, fighting every instinct that told him to run hard. Only idiots and madmen ignore their survival instincts, he always said. Wolfwood wondered which category he fell into.
“Woah there, don’t sneak up on people like that. Give a man a fright like that and you might get hurt one day.” Wolfwood maintained his grip on the Punisher by his right hip but didn’t pull off the wrapping – yet. “What’s all gone?”
“This place.” The man loosened his ramrod straight posture minutely, a slight slump in his shoulders allowing Wolfwood to give a silent stern command to his pulse to calm the fuck down. “There’s nothing left now.” His tone was as flat as the moss under Wolfwood’s boots.
Wolfwood warily cast his eye around the clearing once more. “Yeah, I can see that.”
“Once there was though, you know – it was really-” No sooner had blonde man began speaking with a slightly more energetic tone, than he broke off, clutching his forehead with his flesh hand. He staggered.
Wolfwood, seeing this as an opportunity to make a break for the relative safety of the path back to the village, shifted his weight to turn. The man shook his head as though trying to clear it, and raising his gaze to meet Wolfwood’s, broke into a bright smile. It illuminated those aquascent eyes for a moment, but something about it was brittle, breakable; and inexplicably, stupidly, Wolfwood stopped in his tracks. The smile turned crooked, dark brows scrunching in an apologetic wince – and the man collapsed.
Wolfwood wasn’t sure why – why his body moved almost of its own accord, lurching forwards instead of sprinting hard down the forest path. Couldn’t explain the Punisher thumping to the ground as his hands reached out to catch the falling figure before he hit the ground, sinking to one knee cradling the man’s dead weight.
He knelt there on the cold cobblestones, panting in the sudden silence.
Fuck.
~~~
For someone bordering on very thin, the man in red was heavy. Wolfwood swore for the fifth time that minute as he finally set down his twin burdens, unceremoniously dumping the blonde on a particularly prominent lump of ivy. His weapon he treated with more care this time, propping it carefully against the three-quarters-collapsed stone wall behind which he’d decided to stop. Despite the cold of the night he was sweating beneath his coat from the effort of carrying both of them. Not knowing what else to do with him, Wolfwood had half-carried, half-dragged the man in red further up the cobbled path until he found a patch of ruins which looked more like the buildings they had once been. God knew why. The practical part of Wolfwood’s brain – the part he’d always assumed was the majority – told him to dump the stranger and leave, tell the locals they’d been mistaken, and make his way back down South to somewhere warmer. That part of his brain had been overpowered though, by something. Something about the man simultaneously raised blazing red danger flags in Wolfwood’s mind and beckoned him closer. Closer than practical. Closer than safe.
It was something about his scent, Wolfwood thought. It was the same scent as he’d picked up faintly on the way to the area, a musky floral, cloying but somehow invigorating. He thought perhaps it had been coming from the strange blue flowers that dotted the crawling vines that spread over the ruined stones, but either this guy literally bathed in them every night or it was coming from him. Wolfwood had never smelled anything like it. It made him want to gag, but at the same time it was as though he couldn’t get enough. Much like the cigarette smoke he drew eagerly into his lungs - despite (because) of the damage it did – this scent was something he craved after just the first hint of it. Addictive and intoxicating. The more he breathed in, trying to analyse it, the more he felt as though he was taking a step in the wrong direction away from his common sense.
Even as he perched on a bit of crumbling wall next to the prone figure laid in his bed of leaves, it was taking all of his willpower to not lean in closer. Take a deeper breath. The man’s features were fine, a sharp jaw and cheekbones fit for a crucifix. That beauty mark was nestled on the peak of the left one, just below a sweep of thick blond eyelashes. The scent – Wolfwood couldn’t make it out. It was definitely the same as those flowers, but they were far less pungent than the man. If he even was a man. There was a very decent percentage of Wolfwood’s rational mind which told him that unnaturally blue eyes, vanishing powers and a thick, honeyed-floral scent did not a man make. He should leave. He should have already left, and yet here he was. Now that he looked at him up close, the man’s cheeks were hollowed out by more than those cheekbones, and there were purplish-grey shadows under his eyes.
Maybe it was some weird hangover from his childhood but Wolfwood had always been unable to look away when someone needed caring for. The matron had always teased him for being a little mother hen. Not that he considered himself the caring type, not remotely; it was more that someone ailing in his presence irritated him so much that he refused to let them be until they could at least stop cluttering up the atmosphere with their sickness. This guy – with the weird frozen stillness and bright blue orbs gone – he looked sick. Underfed. His frame under the frilly shirt was angular, lots of and bone and some stringy muscles. In need of a good meal. Where the hell had he even come from? Wolfwood was certain he hadn’t been followed from the village, and there were no other settlements in this direction for miles. Which only left that he’d been here, in the middle of these ruins, waiting. For Wolfwood? It wasn’t exactly a secret that he was headed out here tonight, but nor was it common knowledge. This guy definitely hadn’t been in the town council meeting when Wolfwood was briefed.
Which left a couple of options. Either he was a vagabond camping out in the ruins, or he had known some other way that Wolfwood would be in this place, at this time.
There was a third option too, one Wolfwood was trying to wrap his head around simply because of the distance it fell outside the scope of his experience. He’d been sent after all kinds of monsters, some enormous and requiring a lot more firepower than he was compensated for, and some honestly no more threatening than chucking it some meat scraps to gnaw on didn’t solve. But of all of his cases, all of the monsters and demons that Nicholas D. Wolfwood had dealt with, none of them had looked human. Certainly none had looked human and smelled like some enormous flower. Which left him with the question of how to deal with it.
Just supposing this guy did happen to be the subject of his commission, would the silver bullets he’d pre-loaded into the Punisher’s central cartilage even work? They were designed for those giant, bat-like creatures he’d dealt with on a trip out east. He’d requested the same based on the reports from this location – livestock going missing, found withered as though all their blood had been drained from their bodies. Of course, those reports had been at least six weeks before he'd been able to get there so it was entirely possible the culprit had moved on elsewhere. But supposing he hadn’t – supposing he was lying here in front of Wolfwood, passed out cold on a clump of ivy – should Wolfwood just…shoot him?
He probably needed some proof first. This had come up before, his performance appraisal ‘suggesting’ a need to ‘consider all possibilities before eliminating a potential target’. As though he hadn’t been hired specifically for his lack of hesitation on the trigger. It was probably the expensive ammunition they were pissed about really, not a dead happened-to-be-innocent cave troll.
As he considered this, the blonde made a sort of snuffling sound in his sleep making Wolfwood jump. He realised he’d been leaning in closer again, sitting far nearer the figure than was safe, particularly as he needed all his wits about him. Something about that floral scent made his head feel fuzzy at the edges.
Standing abruptly Wolfwood backed up a few feet, leaning back against the wall next to the Punisher and rubbing his hands over his face before crossing them over his chest. Maybe he should get a rope out, immobilise the guy while he’s out. Before he could extract a rope from his pack though, there was a half-cough, half-snort sound and the blonde sat bolt upright. Cobalt eyes blinked owlishly at his surroundings before focusing on Wolfwood, upon which that stillness settled over the man again. Watchful, like an animal keeping tabs on a predator. Or prey.
“Sorry, wow- “, the blonde rubbed the back of his head bashfully over where the hair was close-cropped, “Sorry to trouble you. Thank you for sticking around – I’m ok now.” The man stood wearily, pushing his hands off his knobbly knees. The bones of his hands showed through his skin.
Wolfwood kept his arms crossed. “You look like you could use a good meal or three.”
That blue gaze fixed on Wolfwood, piercing and sharp, just for a fraction of a breath. Then it lowered back to the ground and that apologetic smile worked its way back onto the man’s features. “Haha, mm…probably.”
“A couple of cows and some sheep didn’t last you that long huh?”
“That was over six weeks ago already, and-” The smile dropped a fraction before it was hitched back up. The blonde turned to Wolfwood, a small petulant scrunch between his brows. “That was sneaky.”
“Sneaky is my job.”
The blonde huffed out a breath of vague amusement before sighing. He straightened, pulling back his shoulders and planting his feet slightly wider than hip width. Wolfwood shifted his right hand to the opening strap of his weapon.
“So you’re here to kill the monster.”
“A guy’s gotta eat.”
“Touché.”
Wolfwood pulled on the strap, loosening the sheath over the enormous cross, but didn’t heft it into his arms yet. He watched as the man – monster – assessed it. That sweet floral sent seemed to grow stronger.
“So. How do we want to do this?” He would kill for a cigarette.
“Maybe the real question here is,” the blonde mused, very slowly stepping sideways so that they were facing squarely at each other, “why aren’t I dead already?” Wolfwood uncomfortably aware that he’d gone and backed himself into a literally corner before they’d even started. The blonde continued, taking another step, towards Wolfwood this time; “I was unconscious – you could have finished your job any time.”
“I’m a professional after all – had to get my confession first.” Wolfwood flashed a grin at the same time as he swung the Punisher around his hips to settle on his right.
The blonde tipped his head back and laughed, and Wolfwood saw them then – sharp fangs, pronounced canines confirming what his instincts had been telling him from the start. There was a glow to those blue eyes now, as though they were lit from within. Wolfwood felt his pulse quicken, adrenaline coiling in his gut in anticipation of the fight.
“Is that right.” And now, for the first time the blonde sounded dangerous, something dark and velvety in his tone that had Wolfwood clenching the grip of his weapon in clammy fingers. The blonde stepped closer again, and Wolfwood backed up, his back and thighs meeting cold stone. He set his jaw.
“What can I say – I’ve always had a thing for blondes.”
That laugh again, tumbling and light like water rushing downhill. And the scent – it flowed over Wolfwood now, pouring from the blonde like a sticky tide. He tried to breathe as little as possible but he could feel its effects already – he felt slightly drunk, unsteady as though the ground was shifting under his feet. Sweat trickled down between his shoulder blades.
He had to get this over with quickly.
“No offence blondie, but I’ve got places to be.” Wolfwood lunged forward away from the wall, levelling the Punisher’s muzzle with those blue eyes and pulling the trigger. A spray of bullets shot directly at the man’s head – and disappeared into the darkness. There was nothing there.
“None taken.” The voice was so close it was a hum in his ear.
Wolfwood wheeled, hairs on the back of his neck prickling, and pushed hard off the wall. He swung the Punisher round in the direction of the voice, spraying bullets into the wall. Chips of old stone and dust filled the air, mingling with the echo of laughter. As it settled, he frantically scanned for the creature. He was perched on the apex of what must have been an old arched doorway. He was the picture of nonchalance; one arm pillowing his chin on a bent knee with the other long leg dangling downwards. Blue eyes sparkled with amusement. Wolfwood set his jaw, readying to dodge if necessary; only to find that he couldn’t move at all.
The light from those cerulean eyes sharpened, honing to a bright point that Wolfwood felt pierce him all the way to his core. He strained, muscles burning, but nothing – it was as though he’d been encased in ice, frozen in place. Eyes wide and fingers straining to form around the trigger of his weapon, he watched as the creature hopped down from the arch and began to walk towards him. Wolfwood could feel his pulse pounding, its frantic cadence counting down the time he had left before this creature drained him dry and left his corpse to decorate these ruins. Even now, as he paced towards Wolfwood the blonde looked unsteady on his feet, as though he barely had enough energy to keep himself upright. This should have been easy, it should have been over and done – and yet here he was, frozen uselessly, powerless to do anything but watch his death stumble closer to him.
The blonde creature straightened, stepping so closely into Wolfwood’s space so that their noses were almost touching. He could feel cool breath ghosting over his face, as sweet smelling as the rest of him. Sweat trickled down under his fringe and into his eyes, but all he could do was stare into that mesmerising blue and try and remember how to take in oxygen through his nose.
The blonde leaned in, angling his head towards Wolfwood’s neck. He was going to bite him, and Wolfwood would die here, his weapon in his hands, useless. He wanted to screw his eyes shut against the glare of those eyes, but he couldn’t. He thought about praying, but then didn’t see the point.
“I’m really sorry about this.” The voice in his ear was apologetic.
Wolfwood braced himself, and the world darkened into black.