by Alex Kidwell
Just that little tendril of kindness felt like far too much. It felt like Randall had been fighting and pushing, making lists and doing research and creating plans he couldn’t ever talk to his brothers about, since the day he’d found out Anthony’s diagnosis. And to hear the offer of help, even if Victor probably didn’t mean it, was enough to make Randall’s eyes burn, all the exhaustion and fear catching up with him at once. Like that polite offer, which meant nearly nothing at all to Victor, made it so Randall could feel all the weight he was carrying.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured, taking off his glasses to scrub his hand across his face. “Thank you, I mean. That’s, uh, that’s extremely kind of you. I know you have better things to do than watch out for a bunch of silly wolves. You’ve already done too much.”
Victor stopped walking to turn to face Randall, lightly putting a hand on his arm to halt him. Where anybody else would be meeting Randall’s eyes, Victor’s gaze was focused somewhere around Randall’s left temple. “Randall,” he said firmly. “I came on this trip, didn’t I? Believe me when I tell you this is the best, the most worthy thing I could be doing right now. I want to help in any way I can.”
Randall took a deep breath to get himself back together. It was embarrassing, the positions Victor had seen him in, the number of times Victor had witnessed him at anything but his best. Randall had his own set of scars, though he hardly touched his with anything resembling fondness, and it had been Victor who had pulled him out of that hell. And now it was Victor again, assisting him out of another one of his nightmares come to life. “Anthony appreciates it,” he told Victor, a very faint smile touching his lips. “As do I. You are a good man, Victor.”
“Far from it.” Victor looked bemused at the compliment. “But I do mean it. You don’t have to shoulder this burden alone.”
With a perfunctory smile, one that didn’t reach his eyes, Randall turned and began walking again toward the kitchen. “Yes. I do.”
Victor caught up with him with a few short strides. “Randall, you have Jed helping you, and Jed doesn’t normally help people like this. You have Redford and I, and Edwin, and now the Gray Lady. You—”
“You don’t understand.” Randall cut him off, lips tight. “This is our pack. Anthony has been our leader, has taken care of us, since we were kids. All of us were children, Victor, and Anthony was figuring out how to feed us and find shelter and…. This is our pack. Only Anthony is sick. He’s sick and he’s not getting better. So I have to do this, I have to be him now. But I don’t want to.”
God, he’d never said that out loud.
“I don’t want to be him,” he repeated in a miserable whisper. “I don’t want to be in charge or have to be responsible for them. Because I’m a terrible, selfish person.”
“Randall, you just disrupted your entire life to find a cure for your brother,” Victor said gently. “Are those really the actions of a selfish man? You brought your family here; you got the mother of all wolves to agree to help him. Does that sound like the actions of a man that cannot be a leader?”
“I dropped out of school.” Randall sounded horrified. He was horrified by it. It still hurt to think about. All that work, all the sacrifice, and he’d never even gotten to step on campus. “I was supposed to go next month. I’d transferred from our community campus to a university I’ve wanted to go to since I was eleven. But I dropped out. And I’m mad that I had to. I’m mad at Anthony, at this stupid disease. I did all this because I need him, Victor. I need him to be better. I need him to be who he is again so that I can be who I am. I need my brother. I would move heaven and earth if I had to, to get him well again. Because I love him, yes, but also because I’m terrified of being without him.”
Of all the reactions he would have expected from Victor, a quiet little laugh was not one of them. Randall immediately withdrew, expression shuttering away, shoulders tense. “You hold yourself to incredibly high standards, it seems. It’s quite all right that you’re not some flawless protagonist in a fiction, Randall.”
“You’ve clearly never met my brother,” Randall offered after a moment, hesitant, still not sure if Victor’s laugh was something he shouldn’t shy away from. “Because he’s kind of horribly perfect.”
Victor took a breath as if to say something, but he paused. His expression looked distant, like he was thinking of something so clearly that he didn’t have time to notice the real world at that moment. Randall wondered, with a sudden horrifying realization, if Victor was mentally replaying what he’d seen of Randall’s memories.
“You’re a better man than you give yourself credit for,” Victor finally said. “I hope, one day, you’ll see that.”
The instinct, of course, was to brush that off. Compliments were never easy to take, much less from someone who gave Randall as many confusing emotions as Victor. But Victor wasn’t saying something nice just because; he wasn’t offering empty flattery. He’d seen Randall, all of him, just as clearly as Randall knew himself. His memories were Victor’s now. And that was a huge, scary, horrifying idea, yes, but it also meant that he couldn’t exactly blow Victor off. When Victor said that, it was with the full weight of knowledge.
“Well,” Randall said after a moment, taking a step closer, studying Victor’s face, “who am I to argue with my Beatrice?”
There was a moment, he thought. Maybe just in his head, but it felt like a moment. Like heat racing through him, like shivery fire. And there were things he could do in that moment—he could be brave, he could sprout wings, he could dare a thousand things that seemed impossible any other time.
“Randy!”
Of course, he could only do those things in the moments where his younger brother was not tackling him.
Edwin shoved himself into an overenthusiastic hug with Randall, grinning at them both. “Hi, Victor! You got back in, awesome. I was hoping you would. Hey, Randall, let’s get Ant breakfast, okay? Man, do I smell bacon? I love bacon!” And then Edwin was gone again, charging up the stairs to the kitchen, beaming a smile at everyone he met. He was a force of nature, Edwin. And he’d completely ruined the moment.
Then again, maybe that was for the best.
Anthony followed him at a much slower pace, giving them a greeting and a smile, the corners of his eyes crinkling in amusement before he labored his way up the stairs. Clearly Randall had been right. The cold early morning air had not done his joints any favors. Randall bit back the urge to help him. Edwin was right there, circling around to casually loop an arm with Anthony’s, talking about all the meat he could smell and pretending, of course, that nothing at all was wrong.
With a slight smile and a sigh, Randall gestured toward the building. “Shall we?”
Victor was blinking, startled in the wake of Hurricane Edwin. He shook his head, collecting himself. “Yes, let’s. I only pray we’ll find some toast.”
The hall was half filled with families and groups sitting at long tables. There was a counter at one end with an open kitchen, food in trays for people to take. There was a rather alarming amount of meat, both cooked and raw, but to his relief Randall spotted fruit and toast and a large pan of scrambled eggs. Every wolf was different—Edwin, for one, was happy enough with several raw, bloody steaks piled on his tray and a rather large glass of milk—and it was nice to see the pack wasn’t trying to force a specific eating choice. He had been hoping to get breakfast for Anthony before the stubborn wolf had made his painful way across the camp, but clearly he’d dawdled for too long. Randall kept shooting concerned glances at Anthony as they waited in line, silently standing just close enough that he could ease a shoulder in under Anthony’s arm, to be his support, while pretending he was doing nothing of the kind.
Between the two of them, he and Edwin got Anthony’s tray handled, despite Anthony’s insistence that he could do it himself. Randall got him a slice of toast and some fruit with a pointed look—some went on Edwin’s tray as well in an attempt to get him to eat more than the meat—and Edwin
piled on sausages and chicken legs.
Randall’s own plate held a modest sausage alongside toast and eggs. The fruit was a welcome addition. He did enjoy something refreshing first thing in the morning. He and Edwin juggled the trays toward the tables, Anthony between them, searching for a place to sit.
“Hey! Furbutts! Over here.” Jed’s strident tone called them over, and they made their way to one of the tables in the middle of the room. Jed was sitting with Redford on his lap, the two of them reading the paper over their coffee and breakfast. Jed’s chin was resting on Redford’s shoulder, and they didn’t seem to care at all that they were an interspecies couple in the middle of a very tight wolf pack. Then again, none of the wolves around them seemed bothered either. The few who had chosen to sit by them were obviously of the open-minded sort. Knievel was sitting on the table next to them, her own tray in front of her with some bits of chicken and a small pile of raw meat and what looked like a bit of squash that she was happily gnawing on.
“Morning,” Edwin greeted with a huge smile, setting down his tray next to them and slinging himself into the seat to immediately start on his food. To Randall’s exasperation, he didn’t use utensils, instead picking up the slab of meat with his hands and chomping a rather large bite. “They have venison,” Edwin told Redford enthusiastically. “Fresh too. It’s really good, did you have some?”
“I don’t know if I like venison,” Redford said contemplatively, glancing back toward the food.
“You had the liver, remember?” Edwin grinned at him, bloody and unrestrained, like some mix between a cherub and a horror film. His brother, the next Miss Manners, everyone. “It was good, right?”
“Yes,” Redford acknowledged, sounding reluctant. “But I’m not, you know.” He hesitated before leaning in, and for a horrible moment Randall was quite sure Redford was going to share the location of a particularly disgusting mole or some such, from the way his eyes were darting around. “A wolf right now.”
Anthony, Randall, and Edwin all exchanged looks. Randall found it very hard to not laugh, which was dreadful, he knew, but still. That would be adorable if it wasn’t so very sad. “You are a wolf,” Randall pointed out, attempting to be delicate. “Your form is simply not at the moment.”
Blinking owlishly a few times, his gaze inevitably going back to Jed, Redford responded only, “Oh.”
“And that means it tastes good now too.” Edwin was surprisingly polite about it. “Seriously, you’ll love it.”
Victor was staring at Edwin. “Aren’t you going to get E. coli or some other dreadful disease, eating that raw?”
Edwin stared down at his plate, nose wrinkling. “Cooked meat is gross. I mean, I’ll eat it if I have to, but it tastes all bland when it’s not raw.” Chewing as he considered the matter, Edwin amended, “Ant’s stew is good, though, and he makes these dumpling things with chicken I like.”
Randall sighed as he prepared Anthony’s coffee. “I’m sorry.” He would apologize, because God knew Edwin never would think to. “I know it’s a little… off putting, for people to watch him eat. Wolves are all different in what we like, but Edwin’s always preferred his food to be as fresh as possible. He was an impossible child.” But his tone turned fond at that, and Edwin shared a grin with him, sticking out his tongue.
“You love me,” Edwin said, cutting off a piece of the meat and sliding it onto Redford’s plate for him to try.
“Yes, well, you are very demanding,” Randall replied blandly, squeezing Edwin’s shoulder as he finally sat. He’d found some tea, and he took an experimental sip. Not fantastic, but at least it was drinkable.
Anthony slowly tipped over to lean slightly against Randall’s shoulder. He never did that; he never let himself appear weak. Randall knew all of them were keeping it together by pretending the worst wasn’t actually happening. That if they simply didn’t talk about the nightmare, that meant it wasn’t occurring. But Anthony looked tired, his fingers shaking as he tried to cut his meat. He wasn’t even jumping into the conversation to tease Edwin about his eating habits. Without a word, Randall pulled Anthony’s plate over in front of himself and sliced the sausage into bite-size pieces, then pulled the chicken off the bone.
With a thick lump in his throat, he slid the plate back into place like nothing had happened. Turning, he pressed his lips to the top of his brother’s head, taking a slow, shaky breath. It was going to be okay. Everything was going to be fine now. The Gray Lady had decided to let them stay. Randall had done everything his research told him to do, so it had to be fine now.
“Thanks,” Anthony muttered lowly. He sounded frustrated—not at Randall’s help, but the fact that he needed it. “You weren’t in the cabin when I woke up. Where’d you go?”
Randall looked over at Victor, a quick glance, before going back to his breakfast. Edwin was pretending he wasn’t listening, but he’d moved his chair close enough to bump knees with Anthony, cutting little looks over at the two of them in between bites. Even Redford and Jed were watching Randall over the top of their newspaper. Randall shrugged off his sweater and wrapped it around Anthony’s shoulders. “It’s cold,” was all he said.
“You two fucking?” Jed asked casually, waving his fork between Victor and Randall.
“What?” Randall spluttered, color hitting his cheeks. “No! Why on earth—”
“You just looked hella guilty.” Jed shrugged, returning to his eggs. “Figured it was that or you did something your big brother wouldn’t approve of. Wash lights with darks or something.”
“Your mind goes straight for the gutter,” Victor said blandly. “Not every situation involves someone’s genitals. Really, Journey, keep your nose out.”
“Don’t call me Journey.” The protest seemed so automatic that Jed wasn’t even paying attention when he shot it back at Victor.
Redford was tentatively trying the raw venison, clearly intrigued by his own taste for it. Randall would admit that fresh meat had a vastly superior flavor. He just wasn’t comfortable eating it in mixed company. It seemed rude to be bloody around those who might not find such a look appetizing. Knievel seemed just as content with the uncooked food, however, purring loudly as she attacked her own serving.
Jed poked his fork at the raw meat on Redford’s plate, glancing up at him. Then Jed cut himself a bite and shoveled it in. Edwin chuffed out a laugh at Victor’s horrified expression. Jed, though, calmly chewed and swallowed, shrugging. “Not bad. Had worse.”
“I dread to think what you mean by that,” Victor sighed. He reached over the table to snatch the newspaper away from Jed. “Now let Randall tell everyone what the Gray Lady said.”
“Wait.” Edwin stopped trying to get Redford to eat more of the venison. “You went to see her?”
Randall shifted in his seat, looking over at Anthony. “Um. Yes. I did.”
“What did she say?” Anthony sounded cautiously hopeful. “Has she made her decision yet?”
Taking a slow breath, Randall gave his brothers a small smile. He reached out to squeeze Anthony’s hand. “She said we could stay. She’s going to have her healers take a look at you, Ant, see what they think.” He wasn’t going to tell them about the Gray Lady’s cautionary words. There wasn’t a point. Anthony needed hope right then; he needed to believe this would work. So did Edwin. So Randall would keep all that fear and worry to himself. It wouldn’t do anyone else any good. “It’s going to be okay.”
“I take it that means the cure isn’t a certain thing.” There was a look in Anthony’s eyes that Randall couldn’t bear, a fraction of lost hope that Anthony quickly covered. He drew himself up and straightened his shoulders, taking a deep breath. “Okay. Did she say when I’m to report to the healers?”
Randall wanted to insist, to promise, that it would be fine. That a cure was just that easy, that everything was going to go back to the way it had been. Edwin was staring at him, waiting for just that. For his brainy older brother to recite some factoid that meant Anthony was goin
g to walk away from this perfectly healthy.
He couldn’t do it. All that was left was to squeeze Anthony’s hand tighter, to force a smile. To promise himself that, no matter what the cost, he’d find a way. “We can take you in today. I wanted you to get some food in your system first, but we’ll go after breakfast if you want.”
“Yeah, I should get started as quickly as possible,” Anthony agreed. “You guys don’t have to sit around to watch, though. It’ll probably be boring.” He gave them a smile. “Why don’t you wander around the camp some, talk to the wolves here?”
“You’re an idiot,” Edwin told him. “We’re coming with you.” He turned to the rest of the group. “You guys can come too, if you want.” Like it was a pool party. Randall honestly didn’t understand his brother sometimes.
Jed had been watching them all silently, eyes darting between them, some look on his face halfway between total fear and longing. Mostly the fear. The tightness in his shoulders made it readily apparent he would love to be running in the opposite direction. “Thanks for the offer, Lassie, but I think I’m going to go do something productive.”
“Oh? Like what?” Victor asked. “Helping Knievel sharpen her claws so she can chase more wolves?”
Jed grinned. “That’s my girl,” he cooed at the cat, who was very happily cleaning off Redford’s plate, purring rustily. Redford, for his part, was staring despondently at his now empty plate. Then, to Victor, Jed said, “Nah. Everyone keeps talking about these hunters. It’s got me all curious. Figure I might poke my head in where it doesn’t belong, see if I can drum up anything interesting.”
“Do you believe they’re human?” Randall asked him, interested.
“Sweetheart, that’s kind of my default setting,” Jed responded. “I know you guys are all freak flags flying, but in my experience, most things are definitely human.” He shrugged. “Besides, I was talking to some people this morning, and they’re pretty sure, whoever they are, they’re using guns. How many creepy crawlies you know use assault rifles?”