Work Text:
We all wish for a love
that sees the skeletons in our closet
but does not fear them
Instead they wreathe them
with flowers that remind us,
so much of
what is living has grown
from something that died.
Nikita Gill, Flowers and Bones.
•••
Everything begins with a story.
The universe unfurled from one. Time itself was bound by its telling. Even the thing older than creation — a silence so deep it had weight — held within it the seed of a story, waiting to split open and bloom.
Stories beget stories the way trees shed seeds into soil. They multiply in the dark, feeding on memory and longing. This one is no different. It, too, crawls out of the primordial hush with something to say. It is ancient and newborn at once. It is the echo of every tale ever whispered at the edge of the world.
Listen. It begins here.
Here’s one story: They say there is a cure for a werewolf.
You harvest the pale flowers at dusk, their petals the color of bone or dry straw, brittle as old parchment. Don’t mistake them for Monkshood, whose indigo blooms glow like bruises in the fading light. Cut the stalks carefully. Lay them in a wide earthen bowl, and begin to shred them with your fingers until their sap bleeds out in ghostly streaks. The smell rises: sharp, acrid, like rain on rust. Stir it slowly, clockwise. The mixture ought to turn murky, glinting like a black mirror that remembers every death it has ever granted.
This is the old art. The witches and wise men called it medicine. The hunters called it mercy. They laced arrows with it so the creatures died with their hearts stopped mid-beat, mouths still wet with howls. Or they cooked it into thin soups, sugared and warm, spooned into trusting mouths from carved wooden bowls. A gentle death, they said. A clean one. Watch how easily it goes down the throat, leaving nothing but silence in its wake.
Because a ‘cure’ for humanity will always mean death. Will always be death. To cleanse, to purify, to scour until there is nothing left that can rise up snarling. They stoke the need for it with stories: creatures of the night with blood-drenched teeth, gleaming beneath the swollen moon, horror made flesh. Monsters. Fears given shape so they can be hunted and destroyed. So nothing strange, nothing untamed, survives.
There is no cure for werewolves.
There is only annihilation that dares to call itself kindness.
Here’s another story: Tommy Innit is an odd boy.
He is the only one in the village whose hair gleams like old gold coins, a halo of tangled curls catching every scrap of light. Among heads of iron-red and raven-dark, he burns like a candle. The only boy whose eyes are that unholy, holy blue: the color of midsummer sky at its cruelest, all promise and no mercy. A scatter of freckles blooms across his nose like constellations mapping a fate no one else can read.
Not even the Oracle dares to trace them.
He is fast — too fast. Faster than the mayor’s son, who trained like a hound to hunt glory. Tommy laughed as he passed him, fleet-footed, sunlight flashing on his teeth, and they say that laugh can cure even the blackest heart, like holy water flung at demons.
He is the only boy who goes into the forest and comes back.
In another world, in another story, in another crueler whimsy - they would have whispered fae when they first found him, half-starved at five, pale as a candle-end. They would have bound him in rope, built the stake, watched the flames devour him while the priest intoned mercy. They would have fed him honey-cakes to keep him quiet before they bled him white, watching the light die in those uncanny eyes.
Cruelty knows no bounds. But cunning can be a match for cruelty.
Tommy is an odd boy. The women call him heart-on-his-sleeve with fond exasperation. The fishermen call him spitfire, grinning around cracked pipes. The hunters call him wildling and smile under their mustaches, remembering what it is to be young and feral and half-tamed.
Tommy is all of these things, and more. But he is clever. He knows there is no cure for difference, no true acceptance. So he works.
The townspeople house him, don’t they? And if his teeth are too white, too sharp when he smiles — well, the poor boy’s an orphan. Can’t blame him for bad breeding. He carries Mrs. Miller’s groceries. He gives the old ladies posies of bluebells every Sunday.
If he runs too fast, carries too much for a boy so slight — he’s just eager to help the fishermen haul their nets, to chase down runaway dogs for the children. And if he stares too hungrily at the deer the hunters bring back, licking his lips like an animal — he’s a growing boy, let him eat.
If he’s the only one who wanders deep into the forest unarmed and returns unscathed — why, he’s probably blessed, the oracle says, gifted by God, the priest confirms from the pulpit.
The mayor’s son, Tubbo, loves him. The baker’s beanpole brother, Ranboo, loves him too. What is there to worry about? At worst, he steals their figs and blueberries, hoards wild mushrooms, sometimes stands at the forest’s edge, eyes gone glassy with thoughts no one else can see.
Tommy may be an odd boy. But he’s no werewolf.
No monster.
They’d know if he was.
Wouldn’t they?
The third story is only odd in the usual way.
Tommy’s in the forest, half-shadow, half-silver under the moon, licking the blood from a deer’s neck. His wolf shape is loose around him tonight, muscles shivering with the relief of the shift after a week cooped up and pretending. He sinks his teeth in, sighs at the ache unwinding in his jaw. The meat the hunters haul home is good — tame and salted and skinned — but it has no voice, no fight. There is no rush like the pulse fading under your teeth.
He’s feasting, happily lost to the slick warmth on his tongue, when he hears them.
The hunters, crashing through the underbrush in their usual tactless way. Laughing. Swearing. Gossiping, as they always do — Tommy’s best source of village secrets. He flicks an ear toward them, tail twitching, trying to look like nothing but a big shadow among many, even if it is a bit of a struggle with his fur color.
“Swear to Lady Prime, someone bought the old house near the forest,” says one, voice low and hoarse.
Tommy stills. No one bought that house. It was rotting and black with mold, roof caved in on one side like a broken spine. He used it to stash kills, store bones, keep the odd found thing safe from prying eyes.
“Bollocks,” says another. “No one’d buy that place. S’cursed.”
“Nah,” insists the first, spitting to the side. “Saw him myself. Big bastard. Smart-looking type too. Had the poet’s shirt on. Glasses and all. But built like a fuckin’ ox.”
Tommy licks his chops and blinks. Glasses? A poet’s shirt? He imagines some delicate scholar with ink-stained cuffs, immediately followed by the image of an ox wearign glasses. The mental whiplash makes him snort blood up his nose.
“You’re full of shite.”
“I’m not! I’m tellin’ you, tall as a damned tree. Pink hair.”
“Pink?”
“Yeah. Bright as foxglove.”
A third voice chimes in, a raspier older tone. “He had animals too. Big dogs, I heard. Real monsters. And—”
“And a polar bear,” says the first solemnly.
“Jesus Christ.”
“And a horse that’s so big it can eat other horses.”
The forest fills with laughter. Tommy flicks an ear, trying not to snarl. Polar bear? That had to be shite. No one had ever bought that house. No one wanted it. Which was the entire damned point.
One of them keeps going, oblivious. “Swear on me mum. White as winter. Saw it standing there chewing grass like it paid rent.”
Tommy rolls his eyes and tears another strip of venison from the deer’s neck. He chews, listening to them wheeze with laughter.
He’s going to have to check. God damn it. That house was his hidey-hole. For stashing bones, half-gnawed haunches, and…other things best not left lying around in the open.
But it’s an interesting story, he’ll give them that.
He keeps eating, blood warm in his mouth, listening to the gossip like any good villager. Because that’s all they know to do, the lot of them, tell stories.
Tommy would know.
The new neighbor was supposed to arrive in a week.
Tommy had scoffed at that, ducking his head to avoid being smacked by the matron for his “rudeness.” No one wanted that wreck of a house. Let them try. It would swallow them whole, cough them up in splinters and mold.
But then he comes back from school one afternoon, kicking gravel down the lane, and stops dead.
The house is…whole.
It’s been bloody transformed, like some sort of fairy tale. The roof is new slate, black and gleaming like a wet crow. The warped walls stand straight and strong. The windows are clear, not the cloudy, brittle glass that let in all the damp. Flowers he doesn’t recognize bloom in the old trough, bright as spilled paint. The porch has been rebuilt with carved posts, thick as a giant’s wrists.
And dogs.
Big dogs. Five of them in the yard, tails wagging slow and curious, hackles only half-raised as they sniff the wind and spot Tommy standing there like he’s been turned to stone.
One gives a single bark. A sound of greeting, not warning.
He takes an uncertain step closer. The dogs whine, lean forward, noses twitching. One of them — a brindled brute with paws like dinner plates — plops down with a huff, tail thumping.
Tommy’s mouth goes dry.
Because the man is there too. On the porch, arms folded, watching.
He’s exactly as the hunters described.
Tall. Broad. Built like something from the old stories that wrestles giants and wins. He’s wearing one of those flowing poet’s shirts open at the throat, the cuffs rolled up over thick, scarred forearms. Glasses sit on his nose, incongruous and scholarly, and bright pink hair — real as blood on snow — falls over his brow.
He doesn’t look surprised to see Tommy.
In fact, he studies him with a cool, deliberate calm. Like he knows what he’s looking at.
Tommy feels his teeth ache behind his lips, the wolf under his skin restless. His fingers twitch to scratch at the dirt, to run.
But then the man smiles. Slow. Careful.
“Well,” he says. His voice is low, the sort of voice that seems to vibrate in your ribs. “You must be the local.”
Tommy tries to swallow the growl in his throat. “Heard of me, have you? Only good things, I hope.” He smiles akwardly, the man smiles back.
“Yes,” The man repeats it like a promise. He nods toward the dogs, who are wagging so hard their hips sway. “You can come say hello. They’re friendly.”
Tommy hesitates. Then steps forward, hand out. The dogs press close, snuffling, whining, tails cutting arcs through the grass. He can’t help it — he laughs, breathless and high, and they bark back like they understand the joke.
He sneaks glances at the man.
Who is watching him. Always watching.
They talk. Carefully. The man asks about the town, the forest. Tommy answers with lies and half-truths, because that’s how you survive.
Then the man asks, so gently it almost passes unnoticed, “Your family around here?”
Tommy shrugs. “Don’t have any. Orphan.”
Something changes in the man’s eyes. Goes dark. Heavy.
He nods once. Doesn’t ask again.
Instead he walks over to a basket on the porch. Pulls out something. Throws it.
A bone.
Tommy’s mouth floods with saliva.
He watches the dogs pounce on it, snarling playfully. Watches the marrow glisten. His fingers dig into his palms hard enough to hurt.
Because that was his bone. One of his hoard from the ruined house. He knows it by the gnaw-marks, the scent of him still clinging to it.
He forces himself to laugh when one of the dogs pushes it at him, wagging its tail. He shoves it back gently. His jaw aches with the need to bite, to crack.
He doesn’t dare.
The man is still watching.
Finally, the man holds out a big, scarred hand. “Technoblade.”
Tommy shakes it, quick, careful. “Tommy.”
Technoblade smiles again. Not unkind, but knowing. Like he can see the fangs behind Tommy’s lips. The kind that sometimes slice the edges of Tommy’s mouth with the force of his hunger. With the desperation to sink them in and snarl.
Tommy jerks his hand back and bolts. Feet pounding down the lane. He doesn’t see the way the man stands on the porch watching him go.
Or the faint smile that lingers.
Thoughtful. Almost fond.
Tommy walked the old road to the town with Tubbo and Ranboo at his side, the sun dappling through the thinning canopy. Leaves crunched underfoot, the gold and rust of autumn making everything smell of earth and sweet decay.
Ranboo, who always towered over them and hunched as though he was apologizing for it, was the first to speak.
“So.” He adjusted his mask and blinked those pale eyes. “The new neighbor. Did you see him?”
Tommy kicked a rock, watching it skitter. “Yeah.”
Tubbo elbowed him. “Well? What’s he like? Is he as weird as they say? Does he really have a bear?”
Tommy thought of the house, rebuilt like a fairytale cottage out of a story meant for adults, as pretty as it was eerie. Thought of the dogs with eyes too knowing, the man standing there calm as moonlight on water, glasses glinting, pink hair bright as a foxglove.
He swallowed.
“He’s…” Tommy hesitated, glancing at the forest on either side. He felt the hair on his arms stand up. For some reason he couldn’t shake the feeling Techno was listening. That if he said too much, a voice would rumble from the trees: careful, little wolf.
He shook it off.
“He’s really big,” Tommy settled on at last. “Like. Really big.”
Ranboo squinted. “Big how?”
Tommy shrugged, trying for careless. “Like…the kind of big that could carry you home if you broke your leg. Or break your leg if you annoyed him.”
Tubbo snorted. “That’s comforting.”
Tommy kicked the rock again, this time sending it spinning into the brush. He didn’t say anything else. And for once, neither did his friends.
But the town was small — small enough that even when you wanted to avoid someone, your paths tangled like brambles in the hedgerow. And, Tommy’s path kept crossing Technoblade’s. Again and again.
One day it was at the jeweller’s.
The bell above the door chimed as Tommy pushed it open, shaking the sleet from his hair. The air inside was dry and warm, scrubbed free of the thick cigarette smoke that always hung outside the door, but it felt cloying anyway - heavy with perfume and polish and that old metallic scent of coins and colder ambition - like the phantom burn of a rope around your neck.
The jeweller, that damned old miser, stared at him supiciously from his fogged up monocle. His mouth drawn like a blade, though he didn’t dare say anything.
And there was Techno.
Standing in the center of the shop like he owned the floorboards. Shoulders broad under that thick winter coat, hair loose and unbrushed, falling in a riot of pink against black wool. He was bent over the glass counter, gloved fingers carefully turning a ring so the facets of the stone caught the lamp’s glow.
He regarded the jewels the way a priest might examine sacrificial knives — solemn, almost reverent. It was almost scary, the hunger in those too dark eyes.
When Tommy entered, Techno lifted his head. And Tommy swore for a second, even if he had no one to swear on, gleamed ike flint catching sun. Tommy stopped dead, his mouth drying up so quickly it nearly made him sick.
Techno didn’t blink. He inclined his head a fraction. “Afternoon.”
Tommy’s throat worked around nothing. “’Afternoon,” he managed.
The jeweller’s gaze snapped between them, suspicion a permanent curve in his thin lips. He coughed once, and then another time, cleaning his monocle whilst still squinting.
Techno didn’t even glance at him. He gestured at the jewels spread on black velvet.
“Pretty,” he observed mildly.
Tommy’s eyes flickered to them.
Bright as winter stars. Emeralds like frozen leaves, sapphires deep as lake water at night. He felt his stomach twist — not with hunger but want, that greedy, aching itch under the ribs. The urge to hoard. To polish. To keep them safe where no one could take them.
He swallowed hard.
Didn’t move.
Techno’s mouth curved. Just slightly. Not even a smile.
“Go on,” he said, voice low, pitched for him alone.
Tommy blinked.
Heat crawled up his neck.
“I’m not gonna—”
“Didn’t say steal it.” Techno’s voice was calm as ever. Patient. Like he was talking to a spooked horse. “Look at it. Touch it. If you want.”
Techno turned just a little, enough for his coat to shift and show the hilt of that big hunting knife at his belt.
Silence fell like snow.
Tommy’s fingers trembled as he reached out. He touched the edge of the tray. One fingertip rested on cool ruby.
He let himself imagine it for a moment.
In his nest. Among his bones and feathers. Glinting in candlelight. Safe. His.
His mouth felt dry.
He pulled back quickly, shoving his hands in his pockets.
Techno’s eyes stayed on him. Steady. Knowing.
“The ruby, please,” Techno told the jeweller, who stared at him in disbelief, but reluctantly put it in a pretty velvet box. Staring after it fornlornly like a father would at seeing his precious child go to war.
Techno paid for it silently, and then ever so gently, tugged Tommy out of the shop. He kneeled next to Tommy and pressed the box — so warm, like Techno’s hand had burnt it — into Tommy’s hand.
Tommy’s heart slammed so hard it hurt. “Thanks,” he said quickly, opening up the box and marvelling at the way the ruby gleamed against the black velvet, shining. His teeth itched.
Technoblade smiled. “Good boy,” he said so quietly that Tommy nearly thought he’d imagined it. By the time he found his tongue, though, Techno was gone.
The ruby gleamed in his hand, though, real and red as the day.
Another time, Tommy saw him just as the hunters came swaggering back from their kill, snow caking their boots and bellies warm with ale. They crowded around Technoblade, arms slung across his broad shoulders like they’d known him all their lives, laughing too loudly, their grins sharp as hatchets beneath bushy mustaches.
They boasted for everyone to hear: to their wives waiting on porches with folded arms, to the scruffy kids with red noses pressed to the window-glass, even to the black-barked trees that leaned in like old gossips.
“Why, darlin’, I’d hardly believe it if I didn’t see it with my own eyes,” one slurred cheerfully, cheeks ruddy with cold. “He shot a boar with a longbow thick as old Hudson’s arm — ain’t that right, Hudson?”
Hudson roared with laughter, smacked Techno’s back so hard snow fell from the eaves.
“Owns the damn woods,” another agreed, voice half awed, half envious. “Like the wind’s his hound and the trees bow to him.”
More laughter. The kind that’s a little too loud. The kind that leaves a sour taste.
And through it all, Technoblade stood steady as stone. He didn’t laugh. Didn’t boast. Just watched them with pale, calm eyes behind his glasses, nodding sometimes, mouth curved in that faint, unreadable smile.
Tommy watched too, half-hidden behind the old well, breath steaming in the freezing air. Watched the way the villagers’ voices grew shriller, trying to prove something to themselves.
When the crowd broke apart, Technoblade slipped away with a quietness that was startling for a man his size. Not sneaky — just silent, the way a big cat is silent. Deliberate.
Tommy went after him.
Slinking behind barrels and fences, his boots light on the packed snow. Nose twitching, heart racing. He couldn’t help himself. He wanted to see.
He wanted to know.
But Technoblade was waiting for him in the alley behind the butcher’s.
He turned without surprise, one eyebrow raised, expression calm. His breath fogged in the cold. His coat shifted as he folded his arms.
Tommy froze.
For a second, the world held its breath.
Then Techno tipped his head, voice low, mild. Almost fond.
“You want some?”
Tommy’s mouth flooded with saliva so fast it hurt.
He licked his lips without thinking.
Techno didn’t laugh. Didn’t smirk. Just nodded once. He drew the knife from his belt. It was long and heavy, the blade blackened with old oil, runes etched in along the spine in a language Tommy didn’t know but felt in his bones.
He cut into the still-warm carcass slung over his shoulder with clean, practiced movements. The sound was wet. Intimate.
He sliced off a hunk of liver.
Held it out in his bare hand. Blood dripped between his fingers, steaming on the cold air.
Tommy stared.
Then lunged.
He tore it from Techno’s palm with his teeth, biting too hard in his haste, the copper tang bursting over his tongue. Chewed messily, half-feral, blood streaking his chin, dripping onto the snow.
His eyes fluttered half-shut. He groaned.
The hunger eased.
When he finished, panting, he licked his lips clean, wiped the worst of the mess on his sleeve.
Techno watched the whole time. Silent. Patient. Strangely gentle.
Tommy tried not to read too much into it.
He visited the house too. Couldn’t help it.
It called to him. He’d come at dusk, when the world turned to silver and blue, the forest gone quiet in that reverent, listening way it did. The house would glow softly through the trees, warm lamplight behind handblown glass, smoke curling from the chimney in a straight, certain line.
The dogs would see him first.
They’d bark, tails whipping the snow, eyes bright, voices tumbling over each other in greeting. When he got closer, they’d barrel into him, knocking him sideways, licking his face, whining and groaning like they hadn’t seen him in years.
He let them.
He talked to them in that low, secret voice he didn’t use with anyone else. Scratched their ears, pressed his forehead to theirs.
And the others.
Steve was real. A fucking polar bear. Snow-pale, scarred, huge enough to make Tommy’s hackles rise no matter how often they met. Steve chuffed and rumbled at him like he was a cub to be doted on.
And Carl.
A horse so big Tommy was convinced it had giant’s blood in it. Hooves like sledgehammers, mane coarse as rope, eyes ancient and unreadable. He looked at Tommy like Tommy was a particularly interesting puzzle.
Techno always invited him in.
“Door’s open,” he’d say, voice mild, leaning on the frame. Dogs pressed against his knees. “Come in if you want.”
Tommy would hover on the line.
He never did.
He’d scratch the dogs behind their ears. Talk to them in low, secret tones. Watch Steve pad around the yard like a ghost in fur. But he wouldn’t cross the line of that carved wooden door.
He didn’t know why.
Except he did.
Because there was something odd about Technoblade too.
Not just the hair or the scars or the absurdly calm voice. But the way he looked at Tommy. Like he could see through the boy’s skin to the wolf beneath. Like he was reading a book written in blood and bone.
And worse, something in Tommy’s chest rose whenever he looked back.
Not fear. Not exactly.
Something older. Stranger.
Recognition.
So he’d stand there, hands shoved in pockets, shifting from foot to foot.
“Nah,” he’d mumble eventually, voice cracking. “Gotta get back. Mrs. Miller’s groceries won’t carry themselves.”
Techno would nod.
“Anytime, Tommy.”
Always that smile.
Like he had all the time in the world.
And Tommy would leave, heart pounding so hard he felt sick, teeth itching with the urge to bite. He’d walk the path back to the town, the dogs whining after him.
And he’d wonder if next time, he’d cross that line.
If he did—
He wondered if he’d ever come out again.
There is another wolf in the woods.
Tommy notices it first in the hush between snows. When the world is all white and black, brittle silence except for the drip of thawing ice, he sees the shape move in the trees.
Bigger than him. Much.
Black as pitch, black as a burnt-out star, fur that swallows moonlight instead of reflecting it. Red eyes that gleam like banked coals in a hearth.
Tommy lowers himself in the snow, belly pressed to the crusted surface, breath fogging in short, hot puffs. Watching. Waiting.
It doesn’t rush him.
It could. It’s big enough to tear out his throat before he’d even stand. But it doesn’t. It just watches.
And Tommy — white as the drifts around him, ears pricked, heart hammering — watches back.
They circle each other like ghosts, day after day. No howling. No snapping. Just…a knowing. A knowing for what, Tommy doesn’t know.
It makes his hackles rise. Makes something twist low in his belly.
Because he doesn’t know what it is.
It’s wolf. But not like him.
He doesn’t think it wants to kill him. But that’s almost worse.
He gets careless.
Cocky.
He’s full of venison and blood, rolling in the snow to clean his coat, pink tongue rasping over white fur gone tacky with gore.
He doesn’t smell the hunter until it’s too late.
There’s a snap of a branch. A curse. The cold gleam of a blade raised in frantic terror.
Tommy lunges, but the man strikes out blind. The knife slices into his forefoot, a bright line of pain. He snarls, ears flat, lips peeled back over those too-sharp teeth.
The hunter freezes, white as the snow. Eyes wide.
They lock gazes for a heartbeat that lasts forever.
Tommy’s breath comes ragged. Blood drips onto the snow, steaming in the cold.
He bolts.
He doesn’t feel the worst of it until later. Back in the thickets.
He licks at the wound, growling low in his chest. The cut isn’t deep — it won’t kill him. But it stings like fire. Every time he puts weight on it, it gives out, sending him sprawling in the brush.
He can’t walk right.
He knows the scent of his blood is everywhere.
Knows the hunter saw too much.
His heart hammers in his ribs, throat closing. Because he knows the old stories they whisper in firelight: There’s a cure for a werewolf, they say.
Cut the pale flowers. Stir them in a bowl with sugar and poison. Lace the arrows. Lace the soup.
He can hear it in his head, in the voice of the old priest, in the hushed tones of the mothers who clutch their children close.
It’s mercy, they say. It’s a cure.
He licks his wound, eyes darting at every sound, breath coming in short, panicked huffs.
He doesn’t see the hunter’s face now, but he remembers it:
Wide eyes. Slack mouth. A twitch at the corner of it, not quite a smile, not quite a grimace.
Knowing.
There is a tavern in town.
Tonight, it is nearly empty.
The bartender leans on the counter, eyes glazed. He stares longingly at the framed picture of his husband and two little girls with gap-toothed smiles. Runnign a thumb over their faces, wishing the damned people in the tavern would leave so he could go home to them already.
He doesn’t hear the hush that falls in the corner. Doesn’t hear the scrape of chairs. Though, truthfully, dear reader, it would make no difference even if he did.
The hunter sits hunched over his tankard, fingers drumming an ugly rhythm on the pewter. His eyes glitter under the low light. He drinks deep, foam clinging to his beard, and sets it down hard enough that the wood cracks.
“Listen,” he says, voice low, oily as spilled lamp fuel.
The others lean in, too eager. Eyes sharp. Teeth bared in ugly grins.
“There’s something in the woods.”
He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, smearing foam and spit.
“Something that shouldn’t be.”
A slow murmur of agreement.
One man snorts. “What, a bear?”
The hunter’s mouth twitches. Not quite a smile.
“No.”
Fingers drum.
“Something else.”
He leans closer. Voice drops to a rasp.
“Maybe it’s time for a cure.”
A hush.
Long and brittle.
Then, slowly, nods.
Tankards lift. Clink.
“Maybe it is,” someone mutters.
Outside the window, the wind howls like an orphan.
And in the dark between the trees, Tommy limps on three legs.
Breath steaming.
He curls in the roots of an old oak, gnawing on a rabbit, blood matting his muzzle. He forces it down even though he’s not hungry anymore.
The taste of it turns to ash in his mouth.
He doesn’t know this may be his last meal.
But he suspects.
He suspects.
It is snowing.
Fat, slow flakes, drifting like ash. The forest is whitewashed, smothered in silence.
Tommy moves through it on four legs, fur white as frostbitten bone, paws barely touching the ground. He is the wind given shape.
He’s chewing. Meat torn from a still-warm kill — rabbit, small and stringy. He should be grateful. He should feel the old thrill, the heat in his mouth, the blood on his tongue.
But something is off.
It tastes…strange. Faintly bitter. Metallic in a way that isn’t just blood.
He lifts his head.
And then — he smells it.
Them.
The stench of oil, iron, human sweat soaked into leather. The stink of boots and rope and fire.
And then a laugh.
Low. Cruel.
“I know what you are.”
Tommy freezes. Hackles rise. His heart punches against his ribs.
“There’s a cure, you know,” another voice says. Too close. A rustle behind him.
He bolts.
He shifts mid-stride, back to two legs, snow slick under bare feet, lungs seizing from the cold air.
“I knew it!” one of them howls.
They come after him. He can hear their footsteps, heavy and deliberate.
But something is wrong. He’s slow. Sluggish. His legs don’t want to move right. The meat — the meat was bait.
Poison.
His muscles scream with every step. The trees blur. His breath comes in shallow gasps.
But he runs. He runs for the only place that feels safe.
Techno’s house.
He stumbles into the clearing, shifts back into a wolf mid-run, lands hard in the snow.
The dogs are on him in a second — three of them, barking sharp, circling protectively.
And then—
It is there.
The black wolf. Bigger than anything Tommy’s ever seen. All shadows and fury, eyes like lit coals. It snarls at Tommy, ears back, teeth bared.
Tommy whimpers, backing into the porch steps.
He’s going to die.
But then—
The hunters come crashing in, all at once, torches and ropes and blades gleaming with death.
And the black wolf turns.
Unleashes hell.
With the dogs beside him, and the bear — God, the bear — charging like a storm through the trees, jaws red. Even the horse — Carl — rears up, hooves shattering bone and faces.
The hunters scream. It tears through the forest like a ripped veil, raw and ragged and thick with the realization that they will not survive this. Blood hits the snow in wet, heavy splashes. It is a massacre. Ribs shatter beneath Carl’s hooves — great, hammering strikes that crunch bone like dry wood. A man lets out a shriek, brief and high, before going limp under the weight of a single, final blow.
It is not clean. The dogs descend in a blur of snarling muscle and snapping teeth. One man doesn’t even get to lift his weapon before they’re on him. The biggest one—scarred muzzle, one eye gone white — goes for the chest, ripping through layers of wool and flesh like paper. The man screams as fangs bury deep. They tear him open like they’re looking for something.
Like they’re searching for his heart to feed on it.
It is not kind. Steve is slow. Deliberate. Huge paws thudding across the snow. He corners a man, lets him flinch and crawl and sob, before pressing one paw on the man’s back — just enough pressure to keep him still. Not enough to kill. Not yet.
The man whimpers.
Steve growls low, deep in his throat. And then he begins.
He plays with his prey. Swiping. Biting. Pulling back. Swiping again. The man cries, begs, bleeds. Steve is not moved. There’s something ancient in his eyes, something colder than the snow falling in soft sheets from the sky.
It is not mercy. It is punishment. The wolf — that massive, black-furred wolf moves like a shadow stitched from nightmare — he is not fast, he is not furious. He is measured. He maims. Tears flesh from thigh and waits for the scream. Crushes a hand in his jaws and watches the pain bloom. He circles, eyes gleaming like bloodied garnets, until the man is delirious from it — barely conscious.
And only then does he go for the throat.
Tommy crouches in the snow. Bleeding. Shaking. His paws are clumsy now, one foreleg useless, half-crumpled under him. He pants, steam pouring from his open jaws. His eyes — too wide, too bright — are fixed on the scene in front of him.
A man tries to crawl away.
He leaves a red trail behind him, hands dragging through the snow. The whites of his eyes show. His mouth works, pleading. But the dogs are faster.
They pounce with growls like thunder. One catches his leg. Another his shoulder. The last clamps teeth around his throat and pulls.
Tommy flinches.
He watches as the hunter is dragged screaming back into the circle of death, the snow closing over the trail like it never existed. There is nothing human left in the clearing now. Only blood. Only bone. Only silence, broken by the crunch of teeth.
The black wolf turns. Blood slicks its fur. Its mouth drips red. Tommy flattens himself to the ground, ears low, eyes wide.
Is Techno dead?
Is he next?
But then—
The black wolf shifts. Bones cracking and shifting and loud. And there he was. Technoblade. Bare-chested in the snow, steam rising off him like smoke. Teeth still red. Eyes gentled.
“You’re just a pup,” he murmurs, low and soft, as though meant to be heard only by the dying.
Tommy can’t speak. Can’t move.
But when Techno steps closer, crouches, and holds out his arms — Tommy bows his head. A nod. Small. Almost imperceptible.
But it’s enough.
Techno smiles.
He lifts Tommy like he weighs nothing, holds him against his chest, careful of the wound.
“Won’t you come in, Tommy?” he says, voice soft as snow.
Tommy doesn’t answer.
But he rests his head on Techno’s shoulder.
And lets himself be carried.
The last thing he sees before the door closes behind them is the dogs, tails wagging, dragging the broken, bloody bodies of the hunters inside—
Like gifts.
There is a common story:
There is a cure for werewolves.
It is whispered in taverns and by firelight. Told with shaking hands and solemn nods. You gather the pale, bone-colored flowers, careful not to mistake them for harmless blooms. You grind them with sugar or slip them into soup. The beast eats, unsuspecting, and dies.
Simple.
But there is a lesser-known story. Older. Rarer. Hoarded in memory like precious metal.
There is an antidote for the cure.
It tastes sharp, like metal and fire, and it burns down the throat like betrayal. But it works. It pulls the poison from the veins, roots out the sickness hidden beneath the skin. It costs more than most are willing to pay. But it saves the ones who are clever enough — or lucky enough — to be saved.
Tommy doesn’t know any of this at first.
He only knows he is dying.
He is fever-hot and shaking, the taste of poisoned meat still sour in his mouth. The bite in his foot throbs with every heartbeat, blood matting his white fur. His limbs don’t want to obey him. His vision fades in and out, edged in creeping black.
Every breath rattles in his lungs like dry leaves. He’s felt sick before — feverish, aching — but never like this. Never with his body crumpling from the inside, slow and traitorous. Never with every heartbeat thudding like a countdown.
He thinks he might die here. Alone. Sick and stupid. Caught by a trick that’s tasted as bitter as life has.
But then — warmth. Hands. Big, scarred, gentle hands. A voice like thunder beneath earth. Techno lifts him with a grunt, cradles him to his chest like a child. Tommy’s head lolls against his collarbone, he whines, pitiful and miserable.
“Hush now,” Techno rumbles, voice deep as earth. “Easy.”
Tommy whines again.
“You’re all right,” Techno says. “I’ve got you.”
Tommy doesn’t fight it. He can’t. He lets himself be carried, held against the broad, scarred chest of the man who should scare him but doesn’t. Not quite. Not enough.
Techno carries him through multiple rooms. The wind howls in the chimney, but it’s warm in here — so warm. The hearth fire crackles, throwing gold across carved beams and furs scattered like trophies.
Techno sets him down on thick furs and touches his face with fingers that are surprisingly gentle for a killer. The dogs nose at him worriedly, whimpering. “You’ve been poisoned,” he says simply, like Tommy doesn’t already know. “But I’ve got you. Drink.”
Tommy tries to turn his head, but the bowl is already pressed to his lips. The liquid inside stinks — sharp and bitter, like scorched earth and burnt flowers — but he drinks. He doesn’t know why. Maybe because he trusts Techno. Maybe because it hurts too much to resist.
It tastes like death.
It tastes like being pulled back from the edge of it.
“Good boy,” Techno says, proud and rumbling. And despite the fire, that’s the thing that makes Tommy feel the warmest.
He sleeps in fits and snatches. Fever dreams of running and teeth, of red eyes in the trees and laughter laced with hate. He wakes to the sound of firewood cracking, the scent of raw meat in the air. And Techno’s voice. Always low. Always close.
Sometimes he’s a wolf. Sometimes he’s a boy. Sometimes he doesn’t know which he is.
It doesn’t matter. Techno never flinches. He combs the knots from his fur with slow, steady strokes, murmuring nonsense like one might to a skittish dog. He feeds him from his own hand, lets him curl into the crook of his body by the fire.
The dogs drape themselves around him like breathing blankets. Steve grumbles and sighs from his corner, an old god in slumber. Carl’s hooves clatter from somwhere Tommy can’t quite see.
You are watched, the world seems to say. You are safe.
Safety feels a lot like love.
When Tommy shifts back into himself, finally, breath hitching from the effort, he finds a blanket already waiting. Techno wraps it around his shoulders without a word. The boy’s ribs are sharp against the fabric, his teeth chattering softly despite the heat.
And then — meat. Raw, red, marbled. Techno holds it out, a plate of something that once breathed, still steaming in the warmth of the room.
Tommy looks at him.
Techno nods once.
“Go on,” he says, voice so unbearably calm.
Tommy takes it. Bites in. Lets the blood coat his tongue.
He doesn’t stop until it’s gone.
When he’s done, and shaking again — though this time from weariness rather than pain — Techno carries him deeper into the house.
A room waits there.
It shouldn’t exist.
But it does.
The walls are paneled in warm wood, carved with forest scenes that seem to move in the firelight. There’s a bed piled high with furs and old wool blankets. A shelf filled with bones — his bones, carefully arranged. Little treasures he thought he’d lost. A rabbit skull. A broken knife. A ring of antler carved into a crescent.
His hoard, his little trophies, stuff he’d squirrled away, that he’d ached to have near him but had hidden away in the decaying house for fear that someone would find it. To see it loved like this, like he’d always dreamed of —
His knees buckle.
Techno steadies him, big hands on thin arms. “Is it all right?” Techno asks softly.
Tommy doesn’t reply, doesn’t think he can without breaking down and sobbing. If he can, that is. In all his years of life, he’s never been so stunned.
Techno sets him on the bed. Tucks the blankets around him with absurd gentleness. Then he sits on the edge of the bed and watches Tommy for a long time. Long enough for the quiet to thrum like a second heartbeat.
“Wouldn’t you like to be mine?” he asks. Voice low. Careful.
Tommy’s breath hitches.
“My pack. My family. Mine.”
He should say no. He’s always been a lone wolf. A scavenger, a trickster, a survivor. He knows how these stories end.
But this house is warm. The hearth burns steady. The wind howls outside but cannot get in.
Here he could hunt. Sleep. Hoard.
Here he would not be alone.
Even if Techno kills men. Even if he strips their skins and collects their bones like other men collect coins. Even if he carves their names into the floorboards in a language older than any church. Even if Tommy knows the blood will never truly wash away.
Tommy could have a home, Tommy could have a family without someone who understands him; with someone he doesn’t have to be worried of finding out his secret and hating him for it. With someone who can love him.
Tommy swallows. In the end, there really isn’t much of a choice. A truth that had been made, albeit subconciously, when he’d first seen Technoblade that day. Unsmiling and curious and eerie.
And so, he nods.
Techno breathes out, like he’d been worried that Tommy would say no. He smiles, the widest smile that Tommy’s ever seen of him. He leans down and kisses Tommy’s brow.
“Good boy,” he whispers again, voice gone thick. He sounds a bit like he wants to cry. He whistles to the animals waiting outside and then leaves.
The dogs pile in, tails wagging. They curl up around Tommy, pressing their weight to his sides, warm and solid. Steve squeezes himself halfway through the doorway with a massive grunt, settling in with a sigh. Carl’s massive face peers in through the window, steaming the glass, unblinking.
Tommy curls under the blankets, the taste of raw meat still on his tongue. His eyelids flutter. His mind feels like it’s been stuffed full with cotton.
From the kitchen, he hears the sound of a knife — slicing. Clean and rhythmic. The thud of bone. The drag of steel.
He listens to it, to the steady pattern of it until he can hear no more. Just the lovely nothingess of sleep and warmth and love.
There are stories well-known, carved into the wood of tavern benches and whispered into soup pots and fire embers. Everyone knows the tale of the beast in the forest. Everyone knows the cure.
But this is the most recent story: Five men go missing in the woods during the snowstorm.
No one knows where.
Their wives grow hollow-eyed and brittle-voiced. Their children cry at first, then fall silent. Their friends clench their jaws and retrace the woods, boots thudding through drifts, but there is no trail to follow. No blood. No broken branches. No dropped glove to be found.
“They strayed too far,” the oracle says. Her voice is thin now, full of moss and fog. She doesn’t speak much these days, and when she does, she rarely says anything at all.
Still, the villagers listen.
They always do.
No one finds the bodies.
Not ever.
In the spring, Tommy is adopted.
The townspeople are relieved. Overjoyed, even. They’d always worried about that odd little boy, golden-haired and fast-footed, with his too-white teeth and the way he stared at the forest like it was speaking directly to him.
He deserves a home, they say. Deserves warmth. Deserves love.
Fitting, then, that he finds it in the man who moved into the old house near the woods.
A strange man. Quiet. Unsmiling. Hair as pink as foxglove in bloom. He never comes to town festivals, and keeps too many animals— great dogs with wet black eyes, a polar bear who chuffs through the trees like he belongs there, a war-horse who seems carved from nightmares.
Still.
He pays in heavy coins, the kind that thud against counters and hush conversation. Ancient things, dulled with time but still carrying the weight of old kingdoms — gold edged with strange runes, silver stamped with forgotten beasts.
He buys strange things. Always.
Knives first — long and wicked, their hilts inlaid with blood-red garnets or glinting emeralds, the metal etched with curling symbols no one dares ask about. They disappear beneath his coat, but the weight of them lingers in the air like the scent of iron.
Then wooden toys. Delicately carved animals, little soldiers with movable limbs, boxes that open to smaller boxes. The kind no grown man should want unless he was gifting them — except he never gives them away.
He buys the lavish things too. Boxes lacquered in deep green, painted with foxes and moons and curling trees, the lids lined with velvet. Trinkets meant for lords or liars. And always — always — meat.
Thick cuts. Still pink. Still warm. He eyes the freshest pieces like a man choosing a lover. Leans down, inhales deeply through his nose, and hums with quiet satisfaction when it smells right.
He never asks for it cooked. Never wants it wrapped. He takes it raw. Always raw.
The butcher doesn’t ask questions.
The meat is red and marbled, and sometimes smells wrong if you hold it too close. But coin is coin, and his children sleep warm now, full-bellied and healthy.
And Tommy — Tommy smiles these days.
He lives in the house near the woods. He belongs to someone now. To a man with quiet hands and a dark voice who never looks surprised, no matter what Tommy brings home in his pockets.
They walk the woods together.
Sometimes they hunt.
And they are the only ones who ever come back.
“They’re odd,” the townspeople say, watching them pass. “But no werewolves.”
They nod to each other. Say it again, with more certainty.
“No, no. Not wolves. Not monsters. Just a strange man and a stranger boy. But kind, aren’t they? Always polite.”
They look away from the forest.
They forget the blood that soaked the snow.
They forget that once, long ago, they believed in beasts.
There is a cure for werewolves. Everyone knows this.
It seeps through towns like a sickness in the blood. It lives in whispers passed from porch to hearth, curdles in the hush of bedtime stories meant to terrify children into obedience. It drifts down to the creek where those same children splash and shriek, settling in the mud, clinging to the roots, blooming green with the algae.
It grows there. Thick. Persistent. Inescapable. The promise that no monster will ever walk among them unpunished.
But there is a cure for humans, too. Less spoken of. Darker.
It doesn’t need flowers or poison or prayers muttered behind clasped hands. It asks only for fear. For hate carefully tended like embers until they roar. For the terrible relief of finding an enemy to blame.
It is a blade sliding between ribs with familiar skill. A boot pressed into a throat while the crowd looks away. A verdict rendered in silence while blood seeps into the earth. And one must pray — fervently, hopelessly — that they never find themselves on the receiving side of it.
Because there is no antidote for that cure. And if there is one thing that this story can be sure of, it’s that there never will be.