Fathers and Sons

Fathers and Sons

Chapter 13: Ashes

There's no way that we could have been ready, you understand. Even if you think you've prepared for every situation there are certain things that you're not ready to hear and it kills you inside all the same. The day my brother went missing was such a day. The day they found his body was an even worse one. Stewart Cauldwell, A Shadow Cast By Green Light: A Wartime Memoir, 1984.

November 1979

When her husband had come home and told her that her son had run off with Fenrir Greyback, Brighid Curenton cursed, cried, and slept, and the next day was not much better. Their house was made for a family of four, and even if Jeremy was of age and soon to leave, that didn't mean the time for teenage arguments, warm dinners, and joking arguments between fathers, mothers, and sons was finished. Now it was just her and Owen, like it had been long before, before they'd been blessed with such wonderful children.

She did her best to not start crying over a badly prepared pot of stew, her third in that morning.

Owen, on the other hand, hadn't slept at all, and it showed. MLE was in their house until after midnight and expected to come back some time later that day. He was digging up papers in his office, a deed and insurance for the Den. Dealing with business was the best way he could think of to keep his mind off his son with that destructive madman and the physical distress, and so far, it was working.

He sat at the kitchen table with the insurance papers he'd been able to find (not out of date, luckily, although he'd found those too), sitting in silence with Brighid at the stove. Neither of them expected the knock on the back door, but he got up to answer, and his stomach turned with who he saw on the other side.

Julia was on her break from work -- Quidditch Weekly photographers assistants didn't make much and got even less respect, but it was work -- but had a packet of photographs that she had taken at Jeremy's request (something about a pamphlet, but he'd gotten very excited about it) and wanted to deliver them personally. "Hi," she said, and went on without waiting for Owen to answer. "I'm just on break, but I had these to give to Jeremy quick. Is he here?"

She didn't know, Owen realised, and they were going to have to deliver the news. As if telling Brighid hadn't been hard enough. "Maybe you should come inside," he said slowly, stepping back so she could enter.

She sensed the unsettled feeling, although couldn't pin the cause of it. But something was not well in the house. "Okay," she agreed, coming in hesitantly, letting Owen close the door behind her.

"Who is it?" Brighid asked without turning around. She gave the stew a stir, but it was hopeless. It was never going to be as good as her usual.

"It's me, Julia," she said, now very uncomfortable indeed. "Hello."

"...Hello," she returned after composing herself once more. "Jeremy's not here. You'll... you'll have to come back." It had never occurred to her to pretend as though he was coming back. She turned to send the girl a faint smile, even, at that.

It would not have been a problem, except that it still felt strange. And it would have been such a simple, quick exchange, but there was nothing about how Brighid had said it that was easy. Julia turned to look at Owen for clarification.

"He's not here, Julia," he finally said, taking his seat again. If he had to repeat this, then he was going to be sitting. "Last night, Fenrir Greyback brought his pack as well as wizards, and they attacked the Den, burned it down. Jeremy left with them."

"But." She blinked, her brain froze for a second, and for a minute she felt like she would like to collapse into one of the chairs, but she was able to keep her feet underneath her, even if her knees did feel like jelly. "I don't - why?"

"You know Jeremy. He has reasons. Plans. Always thinking," Owen said.

"But... what does this mean?" Julia fought to keep her voice steady but was losing that battle. It was perfectly clear that there was no telling what this did mean, but it couldn't be good. Nothing involving Fenrir Greyback ever ended happily.

The kitchen was silent as a grave. "It means Jeremy isn't here," Owen replied quietly.

"He'll be back." Brighid stirred idly at the pot. "He's survived everything else, hasn't he?"

Julia was not predisposed to optimism, and so simply found it easier to not answer that. "He's gone and come back before," she echoed, although it didn't stop the bottom of her stomach from dropping every time she thought of Jeremy in Fenrir Greyback's pack.

"I knew it -- " Owen started, rubbing a hand tiredly over his face. "Oh god."

"He had," she repeated. "He had -- he was working on... Nobody knew so much about what was going on, not even you, all due respect," she told Owen. "He was talking to everyone."

"To who?" Brighid turned around and abandoned the venture of more pointless stew for good. "To Greyback?"

"No! Not to... him," Julia finished. "But he said... he would go, and..." She glanced at Owen, and back to Brighid. "I'm sorry, I don't know names."

"Skoll?" he provided without looking up from the table.

"Rings a bell," she admitted.

"Ben Skoll's pack is decimated," he said. He'd been meant to keep them safe, and the haven had turned to hell in a matter of minutes.

"There might've been a couple others," she added after a moment. This didn't seem to help, in fact seemed to upset Brighid even more, and so she forced herself to shut up.

Brighid hated being the tearful mother, always the mourner, but no one could blame her. She still loathed it. "Don't mind me." She drew herself up with little dignity she had and walked past the pair. "You two should talk." He didn't run from them, after all.

The kitchen was even quieter now, with only two people saying nothing instead of three. Julia realized she was holding her breath, although for what, she couldn't say. "I'm sorry," Owen finally said. "She's -- "

"Don't apologise to me," she interrupted him. She didn't have anything more to say, couldn't force herself to think of anything more to say. She dropped the packet of photographs on the table. "Here, if you want them."

He looked at the packet for a second, and shook his head. "They're yours, keep them for him until..." Until when?

"I have the negatives," she said, edging towards the door. She needed to leave, because if she didn't there was likely to be a scene and god, she was ridiculous. A ridiculous girl, why could he make her this way? "Just... take them, please. I have to go back to work."

She seemed liable to run out the door without them at any rate. "Julia," he said, standing, although he wasn't sure what he was going to say to her if he managed to stop her.

Julia didn't stop, at any rate. "Goodbye. I'm sorry." She didn't know why she apologised, but it felt like the right thing to say. Not that it mattered. She flung the door open and walked as far as she needed to in order to Disapparate.

Owen was left staring at an empty back yard, and sighed. He knew that just beyond it was the razed land where the Den had stood not twenty-four hours ago. He turned away and left the kitchen, slamming the door to the outside shut with a flick of his wand and leaving the photographs abandoned on the table. He found Brighid in their bedroom, comfortable and tidy. "B," he spoke gently, an endearment usually reserved for written communication of varying degrees of intimacy.

It calmed her nerves enough that she could speak without further reaching tears. "Owen," she said, when she felt she had a neutral tone. "Is she gone?"

"She's gone. Disapparated," he answered, and entered, seating himself on the edge of the bed, near where she laid.

Brighid remained silent, but sat up as she looked at him, and moved to sit beside him. Though it didn't feel right to reach out for comfort when things were so wrong, she touched his face gently, pushing everything else aside. "Are you proud of him?" she asked.

It shouldn't have been like this. Neither of them should be sitting there, alone in a very empty house with equally empty hearts. Jeremy should have had exams and they both should be getting ready to beat boys off of Erin with a stick and any other number of things that would never be happening. Yet here they were. He set his jaw and gave Brighid the only answer he could think to give. "I have never not been."

She softened at that and rested against him. "But for whatever reason... it wasn't because of anything we did." It was less a statement than a question. "We... I, I didn't drive him away, to the werewolves, did I? He's been spending so much time at the Den -- " she stopped there, her throat catching.

Wolves seek out other wolves, it is natural as breathing. That particular sentence from his book stuck in his head, but she needed a father's opinion, a husband's opinion, not an author's. "We did nothing to drive him away," he said, cradling her head with one hand and letting her grasp his other. "You are nothing short of a spectacular mother."

She squeezed his hand hard, just accepting her husband's embrace until the grief she'd been stemming for so long overwhelmed her. "Both my children," she sobbed, with so few tears left to be shed that she ended up just quivering. "He took both my children."

He smoothed down her hair and closed his eyes. Maybe he was a stubborn bastard for it, but giving in to his own grief seemed more and more like defeat. It was easier to comfort Brighid than it was to face it himself, but now it threatened to overpower him as well. "We've had two beautiful children," he said calmly as he could, which was to say not very.

"He's your son more than he's mine," she countered. "Always writing, always muttering things under his breath, barely here, working into the night... on what I never knew. He talked about something big, but..."

"I suppose that's all true," he sighed. His father's son. The phrase did not come to mind without black humour, but Brighid was right. Jeremy was every inch him. He laid his forehead on hers. "He's a man, Brighid. He'll take care of himself."

"You lot always do." A smile tugged its way onto her face. "That poor Frobisher girl, falling for an activist. I ought to have warned her."

"Maybe you should have," he said, running a thumb over the back of her hand. "She knows Jeremy, I'm sure if they talked about it at some point..." If she was who he thought she was, then she probably should have known better anyway. He skipped to the next, happier thing that came to mind. "Remember what I told you right before I asked you to marry me?"

Everything was so dark now, unavoidably so, but even just the mention of that buoyed her mood considerably. "Remind me," she requested, a smile creeping into her tone.

"All that being a hopeless activist means is that I'll never be out of work," he did so, remembering the moment quite clearly, "because we're always the ones who have hope."

"There's always that," Brighid had to concede, catching him in a brief kiss. "Even... even without the Den, there's hope. We can do it."

He sighed again. "Without the Den." His son was in the depths of Fenrir's pack somewhere in the middle of nowhere, and he was thinking about work. Still, there was no use in pretending he hadn't been. He tried to formulate some sort of words to put his fleeting thoughts in the air, but they were too vaporous yet.

She squeezed his hand again, comforting rather than seeking comfort now, and tried to seek out that bit of hope. "We'll have to talk to the insurance people," she said. "It should be a nice amount of Galleons."

He nodded, keeping her hands in his. "It depends how all of that pans out," he conceded. He didn't want to sit and wait, he was more proactive than that.

"Well, we might be madpeople," she said, trying a joke, "but we didn't set that fire. They can't blame us for that."

"Indeed, no," he chortled. They would never need money that badly. "They don't want to even hear the name Fenrir Greyback. Magical Law Enforcement," he clarified. "Of course, it would look terrible for them, it's easier to just leave the truth out of it."

And now she was actually smiling. There was trouble and they were getting no help. It was a comfortingly familiar situation. "Who needs the Ministry?" she asked him with a wry smile. "We never have. Let's just do it."

Seeing her smile made him smile, even if it was just a little bit. He kissed her quickly and then laid down on the bed, groaning slightly as he did so. "Not as young as we used to be," he sighed, bidding his muscles to relax. He paused for a minute before he continued. "This may not be the ideal location anymore."

She furrowed her brow and lay on her stomach beside him, watching his thought process with some amusement. "What do you mean? You want to move?" They'd been living there for nearly twenty years, they couldn't move.

"I don't know. At the very least, if we stay here and rebuild it, he's just going to come back. If you build where high tide washes away everything, you don't rebuild in the exact same spot. And the landscape's changed, now. So to speak." He glanced over at Brighid. "I'm sorry. It's still a mess up here," he tapped his forehead.

"I can tell, you're mixing metaphors, you never do that." She nudged him, playful yet. "So you want to move into the city, is that it? I'm not sure you could convince werewolves to come into the city."

"I'm not sure I could, either." He was good, but he wasn't Moses. "It depends on whether they'd rather find a safe place in a city or be absorbed into the unified pack, possibly killed. ... I don't know."

"Well, I like the country, but I suppose I'll follow you to the city if I must. At the very least it's harder to burn down a building and have MLES ignore it, in Swansea."

"Above and beyond the call of duty," he said with adoration and some humour. He didn't like it overly much either, he'd never actually lived in a city before in his entire life but for the interim between leaving school and moving in with Brighid. Even if she said one thing, she could be thinking something else. "Are you sure? If you'd rather... stay in this house, something can be worked out, I'm sure. Slate's clean."

She managed a short laugh and lowered her cheek to the pillow. "I follow you, Owen. I always have. Do what you have to do, and I'll be happy."

The toll of having not slept was catching up with him, and he stifled a yawn long enough to give her another kiss, lingering near. "You are too wonderful for even my words, cuisle mo chroí," he told her.

Grief was too exhausting, and her clever words were running low. "I love you," was all she bothered answering, allowing her eyes to close only then.

"And I love you," he replied immediately, and turned onto his side to sling one arm across her back. He closed his eyes with his mind still racing, but soon enough he was lost in a heavy, exhausted sleep.

~*~

Alecto Carrow, to no one's surprise, had trouble sitting still in any circumstance. Fenrir loved the sound of his own voice and his rhetoric, especially right after a victory, and though Alecto thought her standing beside the destined leader of all packs as he spoke to the pack would make a beautiful picture, after three torturously long minutes she gave up on it. She slipped away and through the crowd without a sound, expressionless. She had to appraise these new animals, after all.

She stopped to listen as Fenrir shouted, "You are my pack, and I am your Father, and that's all you need to know. The wolf isn't to be tamed or ignored, it's meant to be led to the fight, to live at war, with whoever and whatever stands in its way. The natural state of pack, of all werewolves, is to band together. This is what we're meant to be and meant to do." He found Alecto's blank face in the crowd and spoke decisively to her. "And we are better. Don't envy or emulate the wizards. Their wands won't save them forever."

Alecto felt the colour leave her face and turned abruptly, hand drifting to her wand by nature. When she raised her eyes from the floor, the first thing she saw made her halt again.

It took two quick strides to approach Curenton, who sat comfortably on the floor, eyes on Fenrir as his quill flew across the parchment on his knee. "Does he inspire you?" she asked, voice pitched low and dangerous.

Jeremy's eyes flicked to her wand for an instant before meeting her gaze. "This is good stuff, someone ought to be taking this down," he said, with his best poker face.

"Could I tear you away? You and I have a bit of... business." She let the possible meanings hang in the air, and raised her eyebrows.

"Alex, or whatever your name is," he said, his tone more deferent than his words, "you needn't make it sound like a choice." He scribbled a last note and shoved the parchment and other writing tools into his pocket.

Alecto had to admit, the kid had nerve. Another Gryffindor, perhaps? "Follow me," she said with a sweet smile, and vanished into the crowd. Though she didn't turn, she could hear his footsteps directly behind her, and Fenrir's voice faded as they entered the corridor of the pack house.

"If you're going to kill me, this is terribly anticlimactic," Jeremy said, now flippant. "I was hoping to die in martyr's glory on the battlefield. You know what I mean? It sounds like something Death Eaters would enjoy."

If she strained her ears, she could hear that Fenrir was still talking. Typical. Rhetoric mattered, but action mattered more. That much the Dark Lord had impressed into his followers. "How are you so certain I'm a Death Eater?" Alecto opened the nearest door with a shrug.

He stood in the doorway, unwilling to be locked into a room with her. "Call it an educated guess," he said with a decisive nod.

Smoothly she brandished her wand and spoke with no amusement at all. "Enter the room, close the door, lean against it. I'm going to need you to sit very still, Curenton."

He obeyed, moving deliberately slow to stall. He turned to look at her once the door was closed, and decided instantly at her look to lean against the battered door. "How much do you know about me?"

"Is there much to know?" She took two steps and placed the tip of her wand on his chest, drawing it down and measuring his reaction before she began the nonverbal magic to remove the tracking charm.

He recognised the wand movements but wisely looked away so she wouldn't catch it. "I'm completely useless," he declared. "To Fenrir, to your cause, to everyone. I have a barely O.W.L.-level wizarding education and I'll never belong to this pack. In name, maybe, in essence, no. I'm nameless. Unconnected."

Alecto watched his face for a moment as she worked, but he revealed nothing, so she responded. "But you chose this life over a comfortable life with parents who loved you despite your condition."

"And you chose this life over a comfortable one in the wizarding world, so my motivations can't be that questionable to you, can they?" He found a certain pleasure in a hesitation of her next wand movement.

The kid was smart, too. "Let me guess. Ravenclaw," she said. "Prefect. A lot of girlfriends but none since you were expelled. Replaced all that with study for the N.E.W.T.s you'll never take and obsessive study of your condition. How close am I?"

Jeremy smiled at that, though the mere mention of Hogwarts threatened to tear a hole through his necessary stoicism. "Hufflepuff Prefect, a few girlfriends. Why do you keep calling it a condition? Your sort thinks we're subhuman."

Hufflepuff. She hadn't been expecting that. "You are. Werewolfiness just doesn't slide off the tongue, you know. Sit still."

He deduced silently, aching to ask but well aware that showing that he even had a hand of cards at this point would lead to his quick failure. Slytherin. A few years older. In love with this cause. Fucking mad but smart. "Some call it lycanthropy."

"Should have known the activist's son would know all about it," she said idly, completing the countercharm with a flick of her wand. She took a good look at him and lowered her wand. "You're Fenrir's property now. No one knows where you are, no one will care to seek you out, Jeremy. You're the property of this unified pack and you'll keep your smart mouth shut if you would like to live. Fenrir has every right to rid himself of you given a reason, now that you're his."

"Fenrir, or you?" The question left his mouth before he could think twice, and he simply tensed, his hand clenching for some help but finding only the solid wood of the door.

It took one step for her to be right in his face, to smell the soap and sweat and shaving cream that marked a man of civilisation. She lifted his chin with the tip of her wand, examining his fear. "You would be lucky to die by my hands," she said in a sudden sing-song. "You would be lucky, because I inevitably end the pain. Wesley will just rip you to pieces and leave you bleeding on the ground to die as you cry for your mummy. I've seen it at least a hundred times."

It would be a lie to say that didn't affect him, that a Death Eater inches away from him with her wand pressed to his Adam's apple talking about how bad it could get here, but he was a man on a mission. There was nothing to stop him. He let the fear overwhelm him and his knees nearly gave. "Don't kill me," he babbled, closing his eyes to hide the triumph as he heard her sigh in amusement.

"I wouldn't kill you. You're pack." Alecto withdrew, her stance almost regal as she regarded him. "If you have a wand, make yourself useful with day-to-day tasks. If I see or hear of you using it for reasons that are contrary to this pack -- if I hear that you do anything that is contrary to the will of Fenrir -- then I will see you dead, as I would any other traitor. You understand?"

"I understand." Jeremy looked up at her and drew a shaky breath, pulling himself up and immediately opening the door. "Don't worry about me. Like I told you," he joked weakly, "I'm useless."

She walked past him without another look. "I expect so," she said, just as flippant as he had been. She had heard enough. It was time to tell Laurel, the wildest of Fenrir's converts, that an inevitable traitor was in their midst.

Once he was certain she was gone, Jeremy shut the door again and took furious notes until his hand cramped. Vengeance kept him writing until footsteps began and kept the loneliness from overwhelming him. It was no longer a matter of trivia; this information would either see him dead or alive, and Jeremy Curenton had damn well not survived everything else just to die needlessly by the hands of some brainwashed crusader of a werewolf pack.

~*~

December 1979

The night the Den had burned had been a long one, but it was only the start of nightmares for Ben Skoll's pack. Being attacked at what was thought to be neutral territory was bound to make things frantic, and the bloody, terrifying manner in which it had occurred hadn't made things easier.

If Skylar concentrated on keeping track of Ben's pack, then she could forget the fact that the nightmare had come to pass at all. The first person she'd looked for was Gemma, and she'd found her almost immediately. Once she finally managed to disentangle herself from the small girl's arms, she made it her business to find their other pack members who'd been transported against their will to this hell of a pack.

Elisa, an unnamed sister of Ben's, had died the day after, from a head wound. She simply never woke up. Rory, left to his own devices, probably would have been content to slip into a catatonic state, but Sky gave responsibility of making sure he was all right to Gemma, and in turn gave the two of them to Shelagh, Keith's second and Rory's sister, to watch over. Sean had arrived by portkey clinging to the body of Lucas, Ben's only unnamed.

Diana, Ben's second, was the worst of all. She'd seemed fine but in the daylight, she'd looked like death walking. Anything she ate came right up, including water, and yet the slightest effort of moving made her break out in a sweat until she was drenched while a fever raged. Skylar hadn't known what was wrong with Diana, but a former Healer amongst the unnameds had diagnosed it: a Wasting Hex. Skylar had been what everyone called a Muggle before Ben bit her, and she had never heard of it -- but it seemed aptly named. Diana had died a few days later, skin and bones, too weak to beg for a quick reprieve.

Skylar's concern was now Cort. He was her second named, and a stubborn teenaged boy if there ever was one. He'd insisted that his stomach wound was nothing to worry about, but in the past few days it had gotten worse rather than better. She brought him some water where he was propped up against the wall, trying not to look ill. It wasn't working very well. "Here, drink some more," she said, pushing the cup into his hands.

Cort eyed the water and looked like he wanted to snap at her, but took it and swallowed some. "Oh, look at that, I feel replenished," he said dryly.

"You're not well, save your sarcasm," she added, pulling up his shirt to check the makeshift bandage. It was a relatively small wound, all things considered, but Skylar knew and recognised an infection when she saw one.

"I'm fine," he said, struggling to sit up a little straighter, as though that would make him appear healthier. A sheen of sweat betrayed him when it showed on his forehead and he sagged against the wall.

She brushed his blonde fringe out of his eyes, and he let her. She took a chance on a more maternal act of touching wolves, but he didn't seem to have the will to resist it. She didn't take that as a good sign. Cort took refuge in the tie for that moment; his wolf was pained, uncomfortable, and weakened. His eyes closed for a moment, and she was so wrapped up in the two of them that she didn't immediately notice when Gemma snuck up behind her, not until Gemma pulled at their tie. "Is he okay?" she whispered loudly.

"I can hear you, Bit," Cort told her without opening his eyes.

"Sorry," she said meekly, but relaxed again when he nudged her wolf playfully.

Skylar looked behind her, and Gemma's dirty, worried face was staring back at her. Rory was beside her, with one of Gemma's hands clenched around his as though she was afraid he would bolt otherwise. "I told you not to leave Shelagh," she told her.

"She knows," Gemma said with a shrug.

Rory's throat stopped, and he cleared his throat. "We can do something," he said, his voice strained. "There's a Healer with the unnameds. Or -- or I think I remember seeing how they did stitches -- "

"What're stitches?" Gemma asked, blankly staring up at Rory.

"They -- they sew skin back together to heal it," Skylar said.

"Why does that work?"

"Gemma," Skylar snapped, and pulled at their tie sharply. Gemma yelped reflexively, shrinking back. Though Skylar normally loved Gemma's curiosity, her patience for incessant questioning was short these days. She felt immensely guilty, and loosened their tie, being more gentle. Gemma touched back only hesitantly, but moved closer to Rory.

"Sky," Cort said, and got her attention again with a hand on her arm. "It's okay." He readjusted so he could see Rory and Gemma. "Stitches work just 'cause they do, Bit. I dunno if they're for me, though."

"They might work, no point in not tryin', I don't know why we should just give up!" Rory got more fierce and worked up by the moment, colour coming to his face. "They work for Muggles and we're not so different and it might work depending, my auntie was a nurse and she showed me how once, when I fell off the roof -- I could do it!"

"What're you gonna do, spit in your hands and clap until you get the needle and thread?" Cort asked pragmatically. "Stitches aren't gonna help me, kid. It's infected."

Gemma wanted to ask what infected really meant, but was frightened of another reaction from Skylar like she'd gotten before. "Can I see?" she asked instead.

"Gemma, no," Skylar insisted, even though Cort had started to lift his shirt. "They don't need to see that."

"Sky, you always say that the kids need more learning opportunities," he said, beginning to peel their makeshift bandage away from his wound. It was crusted with blood and fluid, skin streaked red and inflamed.

"What we need is hot water, gauze, and broad spectrum antibiotics," she said dryly, and touched Cort's forehead -- although she wasn't sure why, she'd never been good at being able to tell a fever by touch.

Rory backed up a few steps and pulled away from Gemma entirely, just covering his face with his hands so he wouldn't bolt entirely. "... It's gross," Gemma said, growing quiet and feeling quite afloat now that Rory was several feet away, more than he had been in nearly a week.

"Yeah," Cort conceded. "No skin death yet though, I guess we won't see that until right before I -- "

"Cort. Shut. Up," Skylar hissed at him. She was about ready to eviscerate him herself if it was going to get him to stop talking about dying. Unfortunately, Skylar being short again was all it took for Gemma to start crying.

It took the split second of hearing a sniffle for Rory to stop brooding and put his arms around her, forcing himself to look over at Cort. "Don't give up," he said. "Just. Don't."

At Gemma's tears and Rory's words, Cort at least had the grace to look abashed. "Sorry, Bit," he apologised whole-heartedly.

"Don't be sorry, don't die," she replied into Rory's shoulder, unable to look back at Cort.

Skylar replaced the bandage and firmly pulled his shirt down over it. She gave him a significant look and he showed his understanding with a push of the wolf. "You need a new bandage, and cleaning it wouldn't hurt either. I'm going to see if I can find some things. Gemma, you and Rory need to go back to Shelagh -- "

"I ain't movin', I'm staying here," Gemma insisted, her cheeks still tearstained.

"We're staying," Rory said firmly, unmoving. "We're not leaving you, Cort, not now."

"Yeah, you're all noble and such," Cort chortled. He was resigned to being dead man walking -- or, rather, dead man laying on the floor -- but he was going to be sorry to leave them behind, especially here.

Skylar was ready to tear her hair out. "Fine," she said, standing up. "You, stay here. Entertain them with something that isn't your festering wound." Cort gave her a droll salute, which might have been amusing if he weren't as white as a sheet. She left them and wandered into another room, looking -- she didn't know for what or for who, but she felt so helpless just sitting there that even aimless searching felt better than doing nothing.

Alecto nearly walked into her, and laughed aloud at the sight of her -- Ben Skoll's little pack, if you could even call it that, was so pathetic that it was genuinely laughable. "Oh, look at you, you poor thing, mothering your near-dead. Would you like me to just put him out of his misery? No problem for me." She drew her wand. "Easy as anything."

Laurel leapt out of her chair and gave the witch a shove, ignoring the wand that was put in her face. "It's not your place to decide who in the pack lives or dies, though you seem to think so," she snapped. "He's pack, we do what we can to save him."

Skylar backed away from the witch's wand. "We're not your pack," she answered automatically, fiercely, only too late realising that wasn't going to get help for Cort -- if he could be helped at this point.

"Don't be stupid," Laurel said acidly, and edged the witch out of the conversation without much trouble, enough so that Alecto actually flounced off. "We're all one pack now, whether you like it or not. Fenrir said so."

She didn't like it. Not at all. "Then there's a member of our pack with an infected stomach wound," she said, unable to resist the derision that slipped into her tone.

Laurel had nothing but disdain for Ben Skoll and his pack, but this was her duty. "There's a Healer in with the bastards. I'll get him."

"He's busy," Remus broke in to the conversation. What he knew about werewolf packs and their politics could still fit on the head of a pin, but it was growing steadily. So when he saw Laurel and the woman who'd been pointed out to him as Ben Skoll's first and heir of his pack talking, it attracted his attention and even worried him slightly. "I'll see if I can help."

"What an honour to have you here with the rest of us," Laurel said, her voice flat, but at least it was an attempt at fawning. "Do you think you can help?"

He ignored it. "Perhaps."

"Fine, whatever," Skylar said, also ignoring Laurel. "He's in the next room. Come on."

"Hope you're not overreacting, Princess," Laurel said under her breath.

Neither Skylar nor Remus were precisely sure what to make of that, so Skylar began to lead Remus into the next room. "What can you do?" she asked, turning back and looking at him.

"I know... a little something about Healing charms," he said wryly. "Nothing fancy or even official, but I've had to learn to heal myself after full moons."

Sounded okay to her. "Fine," she said, and took him to Cort, who had engaged Gemma and Rory into some kind of three-way Rock, Paper, Scissors game. "Cort, this fellow member of our wonderful pack is going to try and help you," she said with extreme false cheer, and then looked at Gemma and Rory. "This might get bad again, you might want to -- "

"No," Cort insisted so violently that it radiated along their tie and made Skylar wince. "No way in hell is he touching me."

Skylar looked back at Remus, who stood a few feet away now, looking extremely uncomfortable. "What? I know he's not the Healer, Cort, but we don't really have a choice -- "

"Sky," Cort interrupted her, and stopped her from responding with another look. You have to be kidding me, right? "He's the first. He's Fenrir's heir."

Rory stared at Remus, swallowing hard, and gripped Gemma's hand. "But if he can help," he said faintly to Cort.

"No," Cort repeated, sitting forward although the effort clearly pained him. "I'm not going to let the second in command of some criminal, child-snatching psychopath touch me."

Skylar hesitated and said, "Cort, listen to me. You're not feeling well, I get that, but he has a wand -- "

"He also has hands, how about you just lay me out so he can reach in and pull out my insides?" he asked nastily.

Laurel stepped forward, her knife immediately in hand. "Oh, maybe the witch was right, he seems to be begging for his death," she said.

"No," Gemma shouted, and was held back further only by a look from Skylar that contained badly masked panic.

Remus stepped in, between Laurel and the wounded pack member. "No one needs to die here," he said quickly. He looked and kneeled down beside Cort who made no move to hide his contempt, wolf aggressive and at the front of his gaze. "Show me, and I'll do what I can to help."

Cort didn't answer at first, going contemplatively blank, and then he spat at Remus.

In that split second, Remus saw Laurel's hand tense around the handle of the knife and he knew he had to act. He rushed forward on his knees and pushed Cort back into the wall. He filled with regret when Cort cried out in pain and shuddered, but something had to be done. "Listen to me," he hissed, so only the two of them could hear. "If I don't help you, you're not likely to get any. Laurel's ready to slit your throat and that'll be if you're lucky -- if you're not she'll hand you off to Wesley and he's not going to be quick about it." Only then did Remus back away. Understand?

Cort understood. He'd still rather die and roast in that hell than this one. He didn't say anything, but relaxed against the wall and lifted his shirt for Remus to check.

"Good job, Remus," Laurel positively cheered, with a laugh. "Show the little bastard what's what!"

Rory gripped Gemma's hand hard so he wouldn't say anything, forcing himself to look at Cort's face and not the wound. "I hate her," he whispered, barely audible.

"Me too," Gemma whispered back, uncharacteristically petrified.

Being cheered on by Laurel didn't make Remus feel any better, and the wound in the boy's stomach was only more bad news. "You should go look after the other unnameds, Laurel," he said, unable to help but be pointed in his comment.

Laurel withdrew as though slapped, indignant and stung, but stalked away without a word to the first of the pack.

That was probably going to result in another injury, somewhere else. Remus pushed the possibility away from his mind and lifted up the bandage on Cort's stomach. His heart practically stopped at what he saw. "That is... a serious wound," he said, rather inconsequentially, but set about examining it.

"No kidding," Cort said. "Hurt like hell, too, but then again I guess you don't have to worry about Wesley sticking a knife in your gut in the middle of the night -- or maybe you do, but I wouldn't. Brainwashed assassins aren't generally the power hungry sort -- "

"Cort, honestly," Skylar finally managed to cut him off through her complete shock. "Stop it. Would it kill you -- "

"Yes," he said flatly, and there was a horrible silence that followed. "Not that it matters."

Skylar didn't have anything to say to that. She kept silent so that she wouldn't yell at him, cry, or both. She moved to sit on the floor beside him and let him lean tiredly against her. She smoothed his hair back and looked back at Fenrir's heir. "Just... do whatever you can to make him comfortable. Please."

Remus nodded. He wished that he knew more about Healing, there had to be something for this boy. Too many had died already. He looked back at the much younger boy and girl who somehow managed to hide behind each other, and back to Cort. He didn't have a good feeling about this one.

Cort shrugged back. "I don't even really feel much of anything, anymore," he said honestly. "I know it's only going to be time."

"Don't talk like that," Skylar said, trying not to think about how he was now drenched in sweat. She swallowed. "Ben wouldn't want us talking like that."

Cort looked up at her with the most hopeless look Remus had managed to see in the last few days. "Ben isn't here, Sky. And if he were, they probably would have killed him."

Gemma began to cry again, quietly. Remus saw Skylar reach to take her from the arms of the boy, even as she kept an arm around Cort. The girl hid her face in Skylar's shoulder but kept a tight hold on the boy's hand. He looked away, he didn't feel like he had the right to watch this. "Well. Maybe you can be comfortable for that time," he said to Cort, keeping an eye on the wound and trying to remember his medical charms.

He laid his head back into Skylar's shoulder. He was exhausted, and if he closed his eyes, he could pretend it wasn't Fenrir's heir laying hands on him. "I'm going to die in this pack, I don't know how that can possibly be comforting."

Remus hesitated, but after a long moment where he found no good words to use, began his charmswork.

~*~

Elliot Pittiman put his feet up on his desk and tapped his quill to his lip as he stared up at the looming map on the wall of the Werewolf Registry. There were still some charms left, and ironically, that was now his job -- not to keep track of those charms, to keep them updated and functional, but instead to find them, discover what use the werewolf could be, break the charm, and bring Fenrir Greyback to doom them. It was a pathetic, contrary existence, but one he was growing accustomed to.

He scribbled down a set of coordinates and then reached for the crossword.

Twiddle had quite literally fallen off his chair when he'd read that the Den burned to the ground. Very shocked, he picked himself up off the floor of his office and read the headline again to make sure that he'd read it correctly. And he had.

He felt very nasty in doing so, but he'd laughed a little bit.

And now, some time later, nothing had really changed. The Registry still did mostly nothing, their new secretary had been working well and had, amazingly, not quit on them. Things had consequently grown quite dull.

He returned to the Registry following a department meeting and looked at the map on the wall. "It's strange."

Those were words that Elliot Pittiman had hoped would never come out of his apathetic, unobservant boss's mouth. He sat up, looking up from the crossword he was working on and said, the epitome of casual, "What's strange?"

Twiddle looked at Pittiman and back to the map. "There was always a cluster where the Den was. And now there isn't really anything there," he said.

Contrarily, Pittiman stared at Twiddle and then to the map. "Mr Twiddle, how closely do you read the newspaper?" he asked, writing M-O-R-G-A-N painstakingly into his crossword.

He shrugged. "Some days closer than others. Depends on how much I'm actually expected to accomplish."

"The Den was nearly burned to the ground last month. There were a number of casualties," Pittiman said, writing L-E-A-C-H into the crossword next.

"Well, that much I knew," he said dryly. "Curenton reported to MLE that Greyback was there but nobody actually buys that, I don't think. It's just strange to see the map without that cluster."

"Because Greyback would head straight back to the scene of the crime, right?" Oh, when he thought about it, he really hated the Death Eaters.

He chortled in return. "Obviously," he said. "Greyback's more a ghost story than anything these days, anyway."

"He could be dead." Pittiman shrugged. "There's no telling. The Death Eaters use what they can to wreak terror, and a ghost story like a man who preys on children is just their style. My children ask me sometimes and I just assure them that the Ministry has a handle on things."

"If Greyback were dead, that would solve a lot of problems," Twiddle sighed. Of course, it would probably create a myriad of others that he was possibly incapable of imagining, so who knew what was actually the better situation. "And I suppose you're right... Death Eaters will use whatever they can. Sad sort of world we live in these days."

"Well, I trust the Minister to get us out of this," Pittiman said, having to take a real effort not to speak in complete irony. "In one way or another. But no need to bother with politics." He stood, and considered the map, then drew it with his wand away from Wales to England. "Here's a group -- " he paused, and stared at the very small cluster that had always been there that was now gone. "Oh."

"Oh?" he said, not much liking the sound of that.

Shit, he'd said that out loud. "Oh. They moved," he improvised, and stepped back, pointing at the cluster that had yet to move while he'd been looking at this map. "It looks like the one that was here joined this one."

"Oh. Huh," Twiddle said, whatever that meant. As far as he could tell one dot was the same as the other.

Pittiman was far too used to lying. "If it weren't for the tracking charms we'd never find them, they're like teenagers, running around the Isles without a thought to the safety of others or themselves. Not that I know much about teenagers, not yet, anyway. I'm not looking forward to it, either."

"No, you're right," he answered. "Clara, my oldest, just turned fourteen. I have to wonder if her mother's bothered to explain that there's a war on. But at least if they're in school I know where they are."

"Tim's not far from Hogwarts at all, that'll be a comfort. One less for Charlotte to dote on, but she'll be fine. They're safe at Hogwarts, after all, especially with Dumbledore as Headmaster."

"Well, at least some place is," Twiddle said, and ducked as a memo flew into the office and over his head. He snatched it out of the air and looked at the subject -- generic, from maintenance. He left it on the secretary's desk. "Where did she go, anyway?" he asked Pittiman.

Pittiman shrugged. "The loo, I think, to fix her face or something," he dismissed. "Or, oh, that's right, there was a run in her stocking."

"Like that face needs fixing," he answered. The memo fluttered again like a butterfly with a broken wing, and he weighed it down.

"I suggest giving her a pay raise, she raises morale," Pittiman said dryly. "And she's better than the last two."

"I think I might actually bother to learn this one's name. She might stick around," he said.

"It begins with a T, doesn't it?"

"T, Q, R, Z, buggered if I know."

Pittiman opened his mouth to speak, paused, then wrote in the last word in the crossword puzzle. "Memo incoming," he noted, offhand.

"Sod it, I already accomplished something today." Twiddle sighed and reached for this one out of the air, annoyed when it hovered just out of his reach. He jumped and caught it. It was from their esteemed Department head. "Bollocks," he swore and headed for his office.

With no crossword and no one to talk to, Pittiman put his elbows up on his desk and stared at the wall before concluding that there was no work to be done, for the Ministry or the Death Eaters, and so he simply began to draw huge, heavy mustaches onto every photograph in the section of the newspaper he bothered to read. All in all, a hard day's work.

~*~

Julia wasn't normally a person who needed to be with people. Similarly, she didn't want to think of herself as a person who defined herself by other people. She was quiet, and she was a bit of a loner, but she was her own person who had aspects of her life that didn't involve Jeremy. At least, in as far as those aspects of her life continued without him.

That was the depressing part. It didn't feel right that the rest of the world wanted to keep going when Jeremy had been ripped from her twice now. But she knew what she'd been getting into from the moment he'd relented at Hogsmeade over a year ago. He'd told her every time he went to visit a pack, and everything came with a risk. For this reason, she couldn't quite let herself cry, because it never seemed quite appropriate. Silly at best and pointless at worst, all it would do is make her feel worse and nothing would change.

But no matter how she rationalised it, what she felt became too big to be contained within her. She allowed herself to cry, cursing herself all the while because she couldn't make herself curse him.

Being mad at the world took a lot of energy, but it wasn't as though she had anything or anyone else outside of work to expend it on. What members of her family she saw on a somewhat regular basis didn't seem to notice her descent into silence, and they probably would have considered Jeremy's disappearance little more than the arrival of something inevitable. She hadn't heard from Gilly since she'd started a string of tryouts for practically every professional Quidditch team in the league, and after what had happened in their kitchen, she fully expected to never hear from the Curentons again.

Which was why it was a surprise for Julia to find Owen Curenton sitting in her cubicle waiting for her one day late in the month. "What are you doing here?" she asked curiously, once her heart dislodged itself from her throat.

"Hello." Owen greeted her pleasantly with his characteristic light, but slightly tired smile. "Nice cubicle. Reminds me of the one I had at the Prophet before they sacked me."

"I've seen bigger matchboxes," she quipped, feeling her cheeks flush. She edged her way past him to go behind the desk. She lifted her camera bag over her head and placed it on the floor beside her chair before she went ahead and sat. "I thought you quit."

"Today is more of a 'I was sacked' day than a 'I quit in a blaze of righteous fury' day," he said flippantly, but with a tired undercurrent.

Julia understood the sentiment immediately, and she nodded. "Why are you here?" she finally asked.

"Well. I came to return these," he said, showing her the stack of photographs he pulled from his robes. They were the photographs she'd left in their kitchen on that day. He laid them on the desk for her. "And also, I have... somewhat of a proposition for you."

She pushed the lump in her throat down when she saw the photographs. "That has to edge on inappropriate, don't you think?" she covered the upset.

"I never would have picked you as having a sarcastic streak," he remarked in return, sitting back in the chair again and scratching his jaw.

"One of my many talents." Her fingers spread across the glossy finish on the photograph of a view of the village from the crest of the hill. "What is it?"

"Well," Owen started, straightening in the chair and looking at Julia straight on for the first time since she sat down. She stared down at the photographs on her desk and her hair fell into her eyes. "You... are a talented photographer."

She looked up and quickly down again. "Thanks."

He paused, unsure of how to phrase what it was that he wanted to say. "May we speak freely?" he asked, indicating to the open corridor just outside of the cubicle.

Unsure of how free he wanted to be but easily able to imagine how free his words could become, she cast an Imperturbable Charm. "Now we may."

"Thank you." He smiled reassuringly at her. "I was wondering if I might borrow your talents."

Julia stared back at him blankly. "What?" she asked. "I don't -- why?"

"Well," he started, really unsure of what to say at this point. Most of the reason he'd come to see her was to see if she was doing well, and though there was no telling by one look, she was here and alive and that was a good place to start. He scratched his unshaven jaw uncomfortably.

She saved him the trouble of finding what to say next. "It's fine. If you feel like you owe me or something because Jeremy and I... just please don't. It's fine."

Her repetition of the word didn't do much to convince him, and he wasn't sure that it did anything for her, either. "Regardless," he started, "Brighid and I talked about it, and the Den is going to restart... where, I'm not sure yet, but it will be soon as humanly possible. And, well... insurance likes photographs," he finished lamely.

She looked down at the photograph again. It was one of her favourites, she'd been playing with the new lens that she'd received from her family as a congratulations gift for completing school. If she'd snapped it half a second later, Jeremy's hand would have been clearly in the shot. She made herself look back at Owen. "I told you, if you feel like you need to do something for me -- "

"Julia, no, that's not -- " This was frustrating. Mostly because she had pinpointed part of the reason that he had even bothered to ask and made it clear that she would have none of it. "Fine, that is part of it, but whether you realise it or not, you did something amazing for him. For all of us."

She swallowed. "I didn't do anything," she protested weakly.

"You gave a damn, it's a lot more than a lot of people would have done," he replied. "Brighid and I, we're mum and dad. We're supposed to care, even though... sadly, it's not always the case. No one else has the obligation. You gave him a friend when he was lonely, and that's probably worth more than anything."

There was no possible way she could have looked Owen Curenton in the face right at that moment if she'd wanted to. "If you want to put it that way, I was the one returning the favour." She shifted her glance slightly up, but still uncomfortable. The words were coming faster and easier now, a deluge of memories. "We were paired in Herbology and he would just not stop talking to me, even outside of class."

Owen couldn't help but smile at that. "That sounds like him. Still, what you did after... it wasn't easy." He paused. "These things have a way of separating out fair-weather friends."

For a long moment, there was a very awkward silence that neither of them were sure they wanted to break. They looked at each other, and finally Julia said, "Is this the part where we introduce the elephant in the room?" He didn't answer right away. "His name's Joshua Frobisher and he was my dad. You seem to know him already."

"'Know him' is a bit of a stretch," Owen said, making quite a heroic attempt at being nonchalant. He scratched the side of his neck. "I'd suspected, but... well. Really, how does one casually bring that sort of thing up."

She was rather glad that he hadn't. "No, I suppose there isn't a good time to bring up your son's girlfriend's dead father. Particularly when he's an executed werewolf." She swallowed hard, and hid her eyes. "But, you know. Thanks for preserving the anonymity in print and everything."

"Particularly then," he agreed quietly, ignoring her attempts at levity. He examined her for a moment, and cleared his throat. "I'm sure things were... beyond helping."

"They weren't." Her tone was unexpectedly cold, and she felt for a moment that she might be ill. She didn't want to do this in front of Owen -- she didn't want to do it at all. She swallowed again and said, "My mother wasn't. She -- she left. I don't know why."

There had never been any indication that that was what had occurred. It was known that Joshua Frobisher's children had been taken from him, and it was presumed that it had been by a wife -- ex-wife? -- Ministry records weren't public knowledge on that detail. "I hadn't known. I'm sorry," he answered very gently and truly sorry. Suddenly, Julia as a person made a lot more sense.

She'd told herself that she wasn't going to do this, because it was far too easy to slide down that sorry slope, especially without someone to give her a hand up. "It..." She wanted to falter, but the words were coming too easily. "After all this time, it's just a part of my life. All the wondering what I could have done, to... to keep them. Eventually, you just stop expecting things from people and take the good where you can get it and when the bad comes... well. It was coming anyway."

"Some people call that pessimism," Owen said.

"When you've had a different experience than mine, sure." She quickly swiped at her cheeks with her sleeve. "I want good things, and I know a good thing when I see it, but I don't expect it. I guess... I want him and I miss him worse than I ever did before, but that's what I get for thinking I could have him for keeps now."

This was easily the most that he'd ever heard her say at one time. He found that he had no easy words for her, and so he conjured a handkerchief for her. "I see," he said, and handed it to her.

"I'm sorry," she immediately added, mopping her face and trying to breathe easily. "God. You should go, you don't need to listen to me spouting off about this." I shouldn't have said anything.

"You should never apologise for being honest," he said, still absorbing most of her words and sorting it out. "Keeping things in... only does more harm than good in the end."

Privately she wasn't sure that she agreed with that, but she nodded anyway. "So. Another Den."

"Another Den," he said with a bit of a sigh. "It's too important."

"Why?" she asked.

"I know." He shook his head. "I don't know where, but, I'm not sure that it'll be on our old location, but I just feel like it would be impractical. Fenrir's made it clear that he intends to do everything he can to silence me, including taking my children and destroying my work. So we're going to go where he's not."

She noted the fading bruises on his neck. Her first thought was what if he goes home and no one's there? "Isn't that sort of like letting him win?" she asked.

"A battle. Not the war," he said. "As long as I can, I'm not going to slow down."

"That's obvious," she noted dryly.

In site of himself, Owen smiled. "I won't pretend that it doesn't sadden me to leave that land. I love Pembrokeshire."

"Me too," she admitted.

"Then we have something in common," he said kindly. "The Den was one my family's house -- ages ago. My mother and I left after my father was killed. He was an Auror, during the Grindelwald years," he detoured when he saw Julia's eyebrows raise. "We lived with her family, in Galway. But it never felt quite right to me. I didn't inherit the house until after I married Brighid, and... well, my brilliant idea." He gave a self-deprecating smile.

"I didn't think it was bad," she murmured.

"At any rate, it's being resurrected, likely in or near a city. Fenrir Greyback wouldn't dare show his face in a city."

"I thought packs didn't go through cities." She was unable to quite believe Owen in many ways. He was much like Jeremy in some scary ways, and that was all she could think of.

"A wrinkle in my plan," he admitted. "But I can't not try."

"Guess you wouldn't be you if you didn't," she admitted, looking at her desk.

"I get that a lot," he said. "How about it then? Can I call on you?"

She hesitated, biting her lip. "Depends. You know where to find me."

"Fair answer," he said, pleased. He's made it his policy to never accept a no until it was accompanied with a threat to be forcibly removed, and even then it was acceptable to try later. "You know where to find me as well, in the mean time. I'll send along the address for the new Den once things get finalized." He stood up, adjusting his robe. "Please do think on it. We really do want to hear from you."

She nodded. "Bye," she told him, a bit dully, with a headache beginning to plague her. He left without another word, and even though she thought she should have felt better than she had, she somehow felt even emptier than before.

~*~

Conor's patience was only now, after all of the ridiculous, megalomaniacal stunts Fenrir had pulled, beginning to wear down. Go to Aaron's pack, Fenrir insisted, and as Conor much preferred to keep both himself and his pack members alive, he agreed. Aaron was a stubborn bastard, just orthodox enough to go on and on about Fatherhood and pack law, yet refused the idea of unified pack right away.

Tell him that an alliance is the best he'll get, Aaron told him. Nothing less and definitely nothing more.

For the sake of his life, Conor was going to translate somewhat freely. For now, he was just going to come "home." He stumbled in the door, ignored the children happily squealing as the assassin Wesley ran after them in pursuit, and collapsed bonelessly into the nearest chair. Being the property of a fugitive made travel much more difficult.

Briony was unhappy in the unified pack; she missed their own house, she missed Geoffrey, but perhaps more importantly, hated the idea of the unified pack. It was crowded and the result of bloodshed and intimidation, and continued acquiring more pack members as Fenrir made a grab for every werewolf he could find. With so many in one place, it was hard to find a place to be alone with her thoughts, and she normally kept to herself. That was harder than it sounded, although if Conor was gone -- as he was often, sent by Fenrir here and there to speak with the larger packs -- no one really gave her a second look.

She could tell that he was coming back, she could feel him come nearer and waited with silent impatience. When she heard the door open, she jumped up and immediately pulled at their tie in order to seek him out. She didn't need to look far, and she found him easily. "You're back," she said, practically falling over herself to sit near him, somewhat joyfully, but mostly relieved.

The elated touch of their wolves and the welcome sense of pack came with a rush of relief, and he brushed hair from her face, tired but at least content at her arrival and closeness. "I'm back. And I may even survive a meeting with the leader of our unified pack," he said as neutrally as possible.

"I would hope so," she said. He did look exhausted. She didn't move from where she rested, but their brief silence was companionable. "It's not the answer he wants, is it?"

"No one in their right mind would expect to hear that answer from that man to the question Fenrir had me ask." He stroked her hair and allowed himself to relax. This was as close to home, to their memories of pack, that they could hope for. "I expect we'll see the usual bloodshed and many new members added to our family within the week."

"Great," she murmured, completely sarcastic. The proposition wasn't a welcome one. She hated the constant warring and struggle. It was tiring, and masking her agitation only added to the problem. She looked up at him. "What about you? Are you well?"

Conor looked down at her. Activity in the house seemed to be moving towards the smell of food wafting from the kitchen, but he ignored it. "I've become an optimist, Briony. I live and so does my pack." And my niece. Where was Jane? He might never see her again. At least she lived, or so he had to hope, as there was no evidence to the contrary. "I don't ask for much more than that, and I never have."

"Okay," she answered easily. If he was all right, this could be bearable, at least for awhile. She didn't like being Fenrir's hostage to control Conor, but no one had asked her. "I'm just glad you're back, then."

"Has anything happened, anything of interest?" He wasn't sure he dared to think of anything but Fenrir's plans at this point, but it couldn't hurt to be aware of possible threats. "The witch, his first, anything?"

Briony kept careful track, as well as she could. It made sleeping at night easier when you knew who was going to have the opportunity to stab you in the back. "Not really," she spoke hesitantly. "The witch is the same, and I think... Fenrir's first is strange, I don't know what's wrong to him. He's mostly with himself, doesn't feel right."

"And Wesley's left you alone." He touched her neck, the scar, and let his wolf accept his frustration. "Fenrir's threatened to let Wesley loose on you if I speak against him. You might do best to find some allies."

"Maybe," she said, swallowing. Wesley made her more nervous than Fenrir these days, and that was saying something. "He'd kill me if Fenrir would let him."

"He would. He failed to kill you, and his sort, Fenrir's sort..." Conor scanned the room as best he could, his paranoia satisfied. Most everyone was likely eating and socialising, casually, as though this false pack was a real home. Their absence wouldn't be noted. "They repay those debts, and then some."

"You're not bloody kidding."

The wry comment from the doorway jarred Conor, and made him sit up straight and curse himself for not being vigilant enough. He stared at the boy, who stood there as though he had the right to be speaking as he was. "I would advise you to move on," Conor said, speaking stiffly, as a pack leader.

Briony startled, and turned to look - it was the first time she'd seen him since her botched attempt to bring him to the pack, over a year ago. "Jeremy," she said, half in warning and half in grudging recognition.

Now his arrogance made more sense; he was the entitled son of the activists. "Curenton," Conor greeted, with a cold nod and nothing else.

Jeremy returned an equally cold nod to the pack leader, and only barely looked at Briony. "It's a pity your pack fell, Conor," he said. "There were so many hopes that you'd succeed. Beliefs, even. In your leadership."

"And you would know this how exactly," Conor snapped off, fully prepared for this sort of challenge from a werewolf who continued to be raised as a wizard. "You, the bastard of a pack -- "

Jeremy shrugged the supposed insult off just as easily. "And you're a bastard of the Greyback pack. Names mean nothing. They just make things easier." He finally looked at Briony. "You see, I learned," he said dryly.

"I see that," she answered in a similar tone. She couldn't say that she was particularly glad to see him, if only for the fact that it meant he was here, in this joke of a pack. "I guess Fenrir got his hands on you in the end anyway."

He considered that. "No," he said. "But I found a pack, you know, since I never got to yours. But you two seem to be warming to this unified pack, so I can only imagine what Conor's famed pack was like before."

She couldn't help but glare up at him. "This isn't a pack," she answered, "and I hate being here."

Jeremy glared back at her, the wolf vivid and angry in the front of his gaze as he lost control. "Then why the hell were you trying to bring me here?"

He obviously hadn't been here long enough to get it as well as he thought he did. "I didn't have a choice, right?"

"Everyone has a choice in what they do," he said, in disbelief. "You can take the path of least resistance or you can fight, and you were willing to sell me out - two months you spent lying to me and my father, and I'm supposed to think you're better than him? At least he didn't pretend to be a friend - "

"Briony." Conor didn't entirely understand what was going on, and stressed his tie to his first, too angry to bring himself to do something to this boy who dared speak to her this way. Besides, Fenrir didn't look kindly to anyone who abused members of his pack besides those he ordered to. "Is there a problem?"

She swallowed, a flush creeping up her neck. "Well." She looked back at Jeremy. "I tried to bring him back here last year, and the witch didn't like my timing and tried to kill him." She pulled back at him. I didn't have a choice, you know it.

"Ah, yes, that. Fenrir's first act of war," Conor said, bitterness creeping into his tone. "We had no choice, Curenton. She meant to bring you here unharmed. I suggest you forget your grudges, close your mouth, and quietly accept your place in the unified pack. Fenrir doesn't think much of free-thinkers."

Jeremy looked at Briony as her Father spoke. "You have options. I know what I'm doing, and I know that he can be stopped."

"Enough." The low buzz of conversation, a few shouts, came from the room where the supposed pack gathered, but Conor didn't want to risk any of this being heard. "Traitorous words won't be had in Fenrir's pack. Save your words for your own kind, or you may suffer a punishment by Wesley."

"And he's not going to stop at just knocking you in the head," Briony added to him.

At the memory, Conor released Briony, got to his feet, and spoke harshly. "I should go, share my news. I'll distract them, deal with this, just be cautious. They'll be in a rampage once I'm done so don't step out of line after this," he warned, leaving his first with the impudent bastard.

She relaxed after being released, and took her time returning to conversation with Jeremy. "He's right, we have to be more careful with what we say."

He shook his head at her, and raised a hand as though they were back at the Den, and she was to await his explanation. "He has to be careful about what he says. You don't, I don't, we're just here as fodder for Fenrir's wars. You can't tell me you don't want revenge for what he did to your pack, for how he's used you. You and I and all of the nobodies in this pack have all the time in the world to prepare ourselves to strike back. Or are you really just another one of his sort, liars and sneaks?"

For a moment she was speechless, and then gave a small noise of disbelief. "It doesn't matter if I do, I can't do anything. I'm just me." She might have liked to see Wesley have a slow death for what he'd done to Geoffrey, but it wasn't going to happen.

Just like that, Jeremy found himself wearing the same sort of crooked smile he'd given her back during tours and football matches and discussions at the Den, and it faded at the memory. "You would be surprised by what you could do, if you cared enough to make the effort," he said. "But all you do is make excuses. The past is behind us, right? And the unified pack is our bright future."

"Oh... shut up," she said, although it was mostly because she wasn't sure she could stand to hear any more of that tripe, even if he was being obnoxious. "When I say I didn't have a choice, I really didn't see another option. I wanted to go home." So much for that.

He tucked his hands in his pockets and raised his eyebrows at her. "Now you do. Have an option, I mean."

"What kind of option?" she asked, folding her arms across her chest.

"Help me. After all. You owe me."

She still looked unconvinced. "I'm sorry about what happened, it... it wasn't my finest moment. But I don't know if I can."

"You can tell me what Conor tells you and that's all I'll need. Trust me," he said.

She stared at him. She wondered briefly if it was a trap for her; she couldn't blame him. She could be caught, by Conor or anyone else, and punishment would undoubtedly be involved - her Father was nothing if not a fair man. She stepped closer to Jeremy and said, "He just got back from Aaron and his pack, who live in Ireland. Fenrir wanted them to submit to him willingly so we might not have to go get violent, but it doesn't look like that's happened."

Jeremy couldn't have been more surprised, but kept his face blank, and considered that. "Aaron, I know of Aaron, he's the one who Fathered Caleb, right?" He could picture the lines of inheritance, and that part, the Irish part, was clear enough. "Convenient. Well, at least they're warned to what's coming." He glanced behind him casually. "Are you hungry?"

"Aaron's bloody stubborn, but Fenrir's not going to rest until he has every werewolf in the Isles," she scoffed. She should be there for Conor when Fenrir got the bad news, but she hadn't been alone all day. "Not really."

"He won't get a chance." Jeremy walked to the window and drew the drapes aside to look outside. "We're ending this pack. I'm ending this pack, even if I die trying."

She gave a small laugh, but stopped when he didn't appear nearly as amused. "You're serious."

He glanced back at her. "He killed my sister. And he has to pay for that, in whatever way's possible."

Briony pulled the sleeves of her jumper over her hands, unsure of how to really respond. She'd known that, of course, but she hadn't really ever thought about it. "Fenrir kills a lot of people," she said, thinking of Geoffrey.

"He won't be able to do it much longer." Jeremy looked at the desolate, icy landscape outside, thinking, then turned back to Briony. "Things are going to go to hell soon and I'm going to need you. If you can't find me, talk to one of Fenrir's unnameds. Write a note and leave it with 'em, I'll get it."

"I don't have - " She hesitated. "I'll get a hold of you. Somehow."

"Be careful. I'm a bastard, you're Conor's, we can't be seen together," he warned. "At least, not often. The witch suspects me enough."

"And what is Conor in this pack but a useful bastard," she said dryly. "The witch hates anyone who isn't Fenrir, and I suspect even then it's a matter of whether he's got Laurel back in his bed instead of her." She shrugged.

He shrugged back. "At least we're on the same side of this thing now," he said. "I'm going to eat - bastards don't really get three square meals or anything."

She nodded in understanding. "Get it while you can."

"Don't tell Conor," he added, still businesslike, unable to conspire too much with her. He couldn't have scared Fathers controlling their children, not for this to work. "Just don't." He withdrew from the room.

Briony exhaled and turned back to the window, curtains still open part way. She threw them open the rest of the way to let in the late afternoon sunlight, but also the chill from outside. She leaned on the window sill, silent and still as the yard outside.