Chapter Text
“Well here’s the deal, buckos!” Stede announces in a slightly too bright voice “We’ll be having an extremely fun, memorable, deeply cool adventure out here for the next days!”
“And I will NOT drive myself crazy with thoughts about what comes next and what exactly I'm actually doing here, for a change.” Stede mutters to himself with a slight scowl before switching back to his cheerful motivational tone.
“You all ready to get this on, crew?”
Might have been his imagination or just wishful thinking, but had the resounding yapping and barking not only become a lot louder than at prior speeches, but also sounded more invested and positive already?
Maybe he is well on his way to growing on them after all. To him they are feeling more like family than his real family ever had for quite some time now.
He took a deep breath and let the crisp winter air fill his lungs.
The coldness burned in his airway but it did not irritate him, it only further steeled his resolve.
These past few weeks had felt like his personal awakening. As if his life had been in a slumber the same as nature seems to be here, everything covered in a thick layer of snow, tree branches hang down heavily under the load. All noises appear muted, the light obscured.
All beings seem at peace here, yes, and Stede’s life had felt peaceful too. As the son of a wealthy businessman, he never had to worry about money one day in his life, but looking back now, he’d also never really participated in his life in any meaningful way, walking the path that had been chosen for him by others and the world around him.
He had become the best side character ever, doing what was expected of him, living the life everyone wanted him to live, but he never impersonated the role of the main character.
And you should be the main character in your own life, right?
Then after the fallout of their marriage, he had started to wake up.
Seeing Mary and the children so happy with Doug had not only made him happy for his ex-wife, who had become his best friend ever since their amicable divorce, but most importantly, it had felt freeing.
He wasn’t bound to a place or a job or the acquaintances that had never become real friends anymore. He could go. Just go and do whatever! Imagine that!
The howling and yapping of the dogs brought Stede back from his musings for a second. Looks like Lucius and Pete have once again become entangled in the cords, the so-called tuglines, connecting each individual dogs’ harness to a central gangline, which then leads all the way back to the sled.
The dogs really weren’t going easy on him, that’s for sure.
Sometimes he wished they would appreciate a little more that he had saved them and curb their excitement a little to make it easier for him. He had rescued the bunch of them, all from various rescue stations or bad homes.
They were the type of dog that rarely experienced a happy ending, the leftovers of a society treating living beings like hobbies, like things to own and to discard whenever seen fit, mere afterthoughts in the face of minor discomfort or newly emerged problems in any other aspect of daily life.
But he hadn’t been looking for trophy animals to prove a status, and it was so easy for him, despite his upbringing, to sympathize with those not fitting in, being left out, being overlooked and overheard.
Maybe a leftover from his school days where Stede had been bullied and ridiculed for his otherness. Too soft, too effeminate, too kind. Not hard enough in his demeanor to survive in this world, according to his dad. No, no, stop that kind of thought.
Back to the crew, how Stede liked to call his four-legged newfound family.
He had hoped they would quickly bond over their outsider status. And those two intensive weeks of getting to know each other Stede had been spending on a farm with them prior to this day to learn all about dog sledding from an experienced musher had certainly initiated some deeper bonding between them.
Stede was no longer afraid they would sneak away at any second when free and unsupervised for a minute, and he had panicked about that a lot first, an internal battle since he had a strong moral conviction against keeping them tied down on a short leash all the time.
He had felt shackled for the longest time in this life and hadn’t had the courage to fight against it. He couldn’t stand making someone else feel this way, human or non-human animal alike.
Having entangled the lines again, he strokes Lucius’ head, making him think back to how it all started.
Lucius had been the first of the crew to join him. The Alaskan Husky quickly became his closest confidant during Stede’s time of self-discovery after moving to his own house.
Stede had always loved dogs and had wanted to share his life with one.
After quitting the much-hated job at his father’s company he had so much time on his hands, not knowing what to do with his life from here on out, and then some neighbors from down the street told him about a dog they had seen on an abandoned looking property at the other side of the city. Stede had driven there out of sheer curiosity and the intent to do anything useful and had found the poor dog, sitting there all alone in a tiny dark and shockingly dirty kennel all by himself, howling sadly when he spotted Stede at the fence.
Stede then simultaneously sweet-talked and threatened the owner into selling the dog and took him home.
Turned out Lucius is very sweet and has a big heart and they got along so well so fast and Stede had never been so comfortable around someone before.
And never so fit. Lucius had a lot of energy and they made an incredible number of miles a day.
As the saying goes, where there is one dog, the second is not far away. Stede had also researched that these more original breeds much prefer to life in a pack, so the option to adopt a partner for Lucius had been on the back of Stede’s mind for a while already when they made the acquaintance of a snobby pair, Gabriel and Antoinette.
Stede didn’t particularly like them nor did he enjoy their company, but they were the owners of a Siberian husky called Black Pete. Lucius and Pete bonded quickly and they started to meet more or less regularly for play dates for the dogs.
When the pair became annoyed at Stede’s requests of meeting with them after a while, Stede suggested he could just come fetch Pete for a walk and return him after. Stede was very happy with that development. It spared him the nerve-wrecking conversations, after all.
One day, they asked Stede if he would take Pete over the weekend because they were moving to another town and feared the dog would be in the way.
Stede was feeling sad at the impending separation of the dogs but said yes and then they never called and never came to get Pete. Unbelievable. Stede was outraged first but then realized that it was actually a quite fortunate development. Lucius was so happy. And so was Stede, by extension.
Pete had some trouble adjusting to Stede’s management style. Apparently his previous owner’s mode of communication with their dog had mostly consisted of yelling and shouting and the occasional threat.
But over time, Pete began to appreciate Stede for his kindness.
Due to the dogs' gigantic urge to move, Stede started looking for ways to exercise them according to their species’ high passion for running, and quickly started to entertain the idea of dog sled racing. Just for fun, of course.
Stede had never had the urge to compete about medals in his free time, and he rejects competitive sports with animals on principle.
When personal ambition collides with animal welfare, the latter usually gets the short end of the stick.
So Stede goes and commissions a custom-made sled.
And, naturally, goes to enlarge the pack.
Frenchie, a rather long-legged, slender Alaskan Malamute, had been bought by people who originally aimed to get a French bulldog.
In the end, impulsivity won out over common sense.
When they were blinded by the dog’s beauty on the online photos they bought him on the spot without reading about the needs of this specific breed or looking at the dog’s individual character.
Turns out, these people would have been better off buying a stuffed toy animal.
They rarely took Frenchie out for walks, did not offer him anything to do. He was basically just there for them to show off what a beautiful dog they could afford Frenchie was so bored that he came up with more and more schemes and ploys leading to increased levels of destruction all around the house and garden. And during the night, he howled songs of increasing volume.
They were therefore downright relieved when Stede came to pick him up.
Wee John, also a rather tall Alaskan Malamute, but broad where Frenchie is slender, was born in the kennel of a big award-winning sledding dog breeder.
The breeder was very bothered by the fact that the gentle giant grew up to be minimally above the breed standard, and found the dog’s gentle character to be unsuitable for highly competitive racing.
Luckily, John also fit in well with the pack and became immediate best friends with Frenchie. Their compatibility and physical attributes made them the perfect wheel dogs for Stede’s crew.
Wheel dogs, Stede had learned, are the ones right in front of the sled. They are typically the most powerful dogs since they are the ones that have to pull the sled out of the snow. Sounds perfect for them. Fab!
Next to join the crew was a pair of two, Olu, an Alaskan Malamute, and Jim, an Alaskan husky.
A very angry sled dog racer going by the name Jackie had called Stede in the middle of the night. She had gotten Stede’s number from Wee Johns breeder, who told her that Stede was a newbie willing to take in all kinds of dogs, not shying away from what other people considered to be hardship cases.
Apparently, Jim had killed one of their owners’ best racing dogs who had gotten on their nerves repeatedly while they are in heat.
Olu and Jim have been working as sled dogs as a pair for years and declared to be inseparable, so Stede took them both without hesitation.
When they arrived at their new home a few days later, Jim was still in heat. There seemed to be a slight discussion around the crew, led by Frenchie, who approached Jim a little too upfront, but Jims’s knife-sharp, very impressive teeth and their willingness to make use of them settled the tumult very quickly. And, to Stede’s great relief, without any blood being shed.
Stede decided they would take the position of the team dogs, behind Lucius and Pete, who are the so-called swing dogs, the ones after the lead dog. Swing dogs follow the lead dog and help in setting the pace and turning the sled around corners.
Which brought Stede to his biggest remaining problem. The lack of a solid lead dog.
A very crucial position on a dog sled team, the lead dog responds to the musher’s commands, has to find and follow the trail, and sets the pace of the team.
While pondering how to solve this, Stede went out on the porch when he spotted an unknown dog, just standing there in his backyard and staring right at him. The dog, maybe a Siberian husky, looked a little shabby and unkempt. His eyes seemed to reach into the depths of Stede’s soul. Stede shuddered. All courage taken together, Stede slowly approached the dog, getting close enough to spot a dirty and slightly torn collar around the dogs’ neck with “Buttons” written on it.
Dutifully, Stede went to the animal registration with Buttons’ chip id number, and they told him an address where the number was registered.
But when Stede drove there it, it turned out to be a ruin of a farm house that looked so run-down that surely nobody could have been living there for decades. How strange.
And as if that wasn’t already strange enough, Buttons vanished into the ruin shortly and came back accompanied by two downy woodpeckers.
From then on, these birds never strayed too far from buttons, just so far to find enough insects to eat, and would typically sleep sitting on Buttons’ head or back. Stede named them Karl and Olivia. Because that else could he do. They were part of the crew now.
And Stede had observed them communicating with Buttons, the Alaskan husky doing the husky typical noises, a wild mixture of howling, chirping and whining, and the two birds are chirping right along.
Stede had quickly decided to not question seemingly strange things related to Buttons. Doing that only ever left him with a headache and no more the wiser. Buttons, however, turns out to be an excellent lead dog. Well, maybe the birds are helping him with navigation?
Or is Stede just slowly going crazy, living with this chaotic but wonderful crew?
While Stede may have considered his crew to be complete, fate had deemed it necessary to add two more to the ragtag bunch.
Swede, a presumed Alaskan Husky, came from an animal hoarder in Sweden who had owned so many dogs that they didn’t even all have names. The organization that had rescued him and brought him to Stede, together with a second husky, had referred to the dog as ‘one of the Swedes’ and somehow the name stuck. Well, Stede was pouring all his creativity into dog entertainment, nothing left for imaginative names there.
Swede was in a really bad shape and missing some teeth, most likely due to very bad nutrition. In the shelter where he had been temporarily housed, he had bonded instantly with Roach, a Siberian husky. Roach seemed to be the most food-loving dog in earth, despite being very lean, and Roach seems to have made it his life's work to make sure that Swede is always well taken care of nutrition-wise and always makes sure when there is food that the hesitant Swede gets enough of it.
They came to run in front of Wee john and Frenchie, complementing the other so called team dogs Olu and Jim, the four of them providing the main ‘horsepower’ of the team.
Since then, they have all grown together really well and stede is sure that the crew is looking forward to the imminent adventure as excitedly as he is.
While Stede was unloading all the things he had packed for their four days long trip and carrying it over to the sled, tying down everything safely on the cargo bed, his mind wandered back to where everything started to change for him again.
Looking back now, he couldn’t really pin-point what had made him snap.
Well, a certain book definitely featured heavily in it. But he had found his breaking point, thank fuck for that, congratulations to all the peers that pushed him towards it, because in the end, now, it could only get better.
He had quit his job, said goodbye to those few he cared for and that actually cared for him in return, had given Mary the key to his apartment, had bought a car big enough for him and the crew to safely travel, and here he was.
Mainly triggered by that one book he had read. Written by a man calling himself ‘Blackbeard’, like the pirate, which was what had Stede drawn to the book first, if he had to be honest, pirates being his never really lost childhood obsession and all.
In this book, the pictureless author had told the story of how he had turned his life around completely after going through a very bad depressive episode.
Reading about this man’s story, Stede had never felt so understood by another person. The way the man described how bored and numbed he was by his job as an accountant after years and years. How his job had clashed with his passion for tattoos and the love of his long hair, how he had been mocked and ridiculed for his heritage, his skin tone, his neurodiversity, his way of dressing, his overall queerness, and how finally he had felt forced to bury all the soft parts of himself to fit into this world.
How he had felt like he had been dying a little every single day ever since, just like Stede, right until he had just gone and left everything behind.
He had traveled the world for a few years, then found a place to stay, here in one of the colder parts of the world, snow and ice and the dogs his only companions for most of the year. The way the man had described the freedom of this newfound life of his and how it had led him to finally find back to himself, had sucked Stede right into the pages.
It had also further fueled this yearning inside him, which then finally moved him to change things, to go and see how life could be once you chose to actually live it instead of just going with the flow from the sidelines.
And maybe, a tiny little voice in Stede’s head whispered, what if you might meet him here?
What if he got to talk to that mysterious faceless author who had instilled such a strong feeling of connection within Stede just by reading his book?
How would it feel to talk to this man in real life?
Could that emotional attachment he had felt over written words translate to an actual in-person connection?