Laura's Wolf (Werewolf Marines)

by Lia Silver

  It didn’t seem like a good time to ask anyone for anything, but Roy recalled seeing a pad of paper and a pen on the kitchen counter. He went to write himself a note.

  He found the pad, wrote Don’t forget to, then stopped, trying to remember what it was that he didn’t want to forget.

  The room began to spin around him.

  Roy hung on to the counter, his ears ringing. He tried breathing deeply, but it didn’t help. He supposed he’d better go sit down on the sofa bed until the dizzy spell passed.

  The next thing he knew, he was blinking up at a ring of worried faces. He’d somehow ended up flat on his back on the sofa bed, with the entire pack gathered round. Laura sat beside him, holding his hand. Keisha was leaning over him, in pajamas and with a stethoscope around her neck. Even Russell stood by the bed, rubbing his eyes, his face creased red from lying on the carpet.

  Though Roy was finding it hard to think clearly, that caught his attention. “Russell. You woke up.”

  Russell patted his shoulder. “Two hundred plus pounds crashing to a linoleum floor will do that.”

  Roy couldn’t follow that at all. “What?”

  “You passed out in the kitchen,” Laura explained. “He and Miguel carried you here. Did something electrical turn on?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What’s the last thing you remember?”

  “I was writing a note. I got dizzy.”

  Keisha frowned at him. “How much sleep have you had since the pack got here?”

  “None,” Roy admitted, feeling vaguely guilty.

  “None?” Laura echoed. “I thought that was just the first night. You’ve been going to bed with me.”

  “I got up later.”

  “When was the last time you ate?” Keisha asked.

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Have you eaten anything since the pack got here?”

  “No.”

  Keisha pinched a fold of skin at Roy’s wrist, and watched disapprovingly as it slowly returned to place. “When was the last time you had anything to drink?”

  “Uh… That stayed down?”

  “Goddammit, Roy!” Laura exclaimed. For the first time since their date in the barn, her face was alive, not blank with shock or lost in sadness. She looked royally pissed off. “You have to tell me stuff like this.”

  “Dehydration,” Keisha informed him and the pack. “Sleep deprivation. Hypoglycemia. Electrolyte imbalance.”

  “Combat stress,” Roy added helpfully.

  “How long were you in combat?” Keisha asked.

  Roy was too tired and lightheaded to calculate time deployed vs. time in the US, let alone time spent in literal combat vs. time asleep or waiting around. “Twelve years.”

  “Fatigue stress injury,” she pronounced.

  “You don’t have to call it that,” Roy said. “I know the other name.”

  “It’s got a lot of names,” Keisha replied. “It’s been around since Achilles and Hector fought at Troy.”

  Her lips kept moving, but Roy couldn’t hear her. He didn’t quite black out again, but he lost track of things for a while. People moved around him, saying and doing things he couldn’t understand. Whenever he closed his eyes and sometimes when he was sure he had them open, he saw the crack in the wall, the crack in DJ’s side, blood and soot, plastic melting into skin, flesh merging with plaster. The bed started to dissolve beneath him. Roy tried to jerk away, and came fully awake with a gasp.

  The room was empty except for Laura. He was hooked up to an IV on a steel stand, but it didn’t seem to have done much good yet; he was still dizzy, his mouth dry as paper.

  “Are you awake?” Laura asked. She didn’t look a fraction less angry than she had when he’d last managed to focus on her face.

  “Yes.” Roy’s voice was hoarse.

  “Hold on. I’ll get you something for that.” Laura went to the kitchen before he could tell her not to bother, and returned with a cup.

  “I can’t—”

  Laura tipped the cup so he could see that it contained only ice chips. “Keisha says if you let them melt in your mouth one at a time, they won’t make you sick. But if you’d rather go on being stoic and dry-mouthed—”

  “No.” Roy picked up a chip and managed to get it between his lips. It slowly melted, moistening his mouth without forcing him to swallow.

  “Roy, why didn’t you say something earlier?”

  “I kept thinking it would wear off. And you were all stress casualties. I couldn’t ask you to take care of me.”

  “You have before,” Laura said.

  “I know, but then I think, ‘I can’t ask again.’”

  Laura gave an exasperated sigh. “Do you think if you’d gone to me or Keisha and said, ‘I’m in trouble and I need help,’ we’d have said, ‘Sorry, you’ve exceeded the number of times we’ll help you after you got hurt on our behalf?’”

  “No, of course not. It just seemed like too much to put on you.”

  Laura deliberately looked from him to the IV, and then back to him, eyebrows raised. He took her meaning: he’d put more on them all by waiting than if he’d said something earlier.

  “I know, here I am,” Roy said. “Another casualty. Just what you needed in an alpha.”

  “It was, in a way.” Laura’s chill thawed enough for her to give him a little smile. “Nicolette figured if you could call in sick, she could call in sick. She’s in bed, and everyone else is out of bed.”

  He was too tired to touch the pack sense and find them; he was too tired to reach for another ice chip and too embarrassed to ask Laura to put one in his mouth. “Where are they?”

  “Miguel’s with Nicolette, and Russell and Keisha drove into town to go grocery shopping. I think Russell’s planning to cook. You went down, and we all realized we had to step up. So good job, I guess. Don’t you dare do it again.”

  “I can’t promise you that,” Roy said wearily. “Believe me, I tried my hardest to keep it together. I was trying right up to the point where I blacked out.”

  “That’s not what I meant, Captain America,” Laura retorted. “I meant that if you have to try that hard to keep it together, tell me.”

  He wanted to agree, but only if he could do so honestly. It wasn’t any easier to admit to weakness or ask for help now, no matter how much he loved and trusted her, than it had ever been.

  “Every fucking time,” he said, only realizing that he was speaking aloud when he heard himself. “Such a goddamn endless struggle.”

  “Then practice more,” Laura said coolly. “Practice a thousand times. Eventually it’ll get easier.”

  Even through Roy’s exhausted haze, he recognized her tone as that of a drill instructor informing a recruit that he was going to get through a ten-mile hike, uphill, wearing a sixty-pound pack and carrying a seventeen-pound SAW and its seven-pound box magazine, with no possibility of failure accepted.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he replied, only half-joking.

  For the first time in days, she was the one who reached out to touch the bond between them. Her presence filled his senses: her sweet and bitter scent, her sparkling surface and unexpected depths. Whenever he put his hands on her body, she seemed to be nothing but luscious curves, until he pushed down and felt muscle and bone.

  She was soft on the outside and strong inside; she needed his help to climb trees and open pickle jars, but she’d squared off unarmed against men with guns and a real life super-villain. She cracked under pressure, then picked herself up and kept on going. She decided that she wanted to be a better person, and she turned her entire life around overnight.

  Roy had always been the biggest and the strongest; on that ten-mile hike, he’d carried his own load and pushed an exhausted recruit up the final hill. He always maxed out the scores on the physical fitness test. He’d run out under fire to carry wounded men to safety. But he couldn’t swallow a bite of pastry. He couldn’t keep down a glass of water. He couldn’t tell the woman who loved
him that he needed her to shore up his weakness, again. Laura and Miguel had faced their nightmares, while Roy had been so afraid of his that he’d stayed up until his body, which had once been able to take anything, had collapsed beneath him.

  But he’d never truly been able to take anything. Marines were issued tactical vests because the human body was made of bones that broke and flesh that tore. Combat stress existed because the human mind couldn’t endure anything, indefinitely. Nothing that lived and breathed was made of steel, unbreakable and unchanging.

  Every time Roy blinked, it was harder to lift his eyelids again. Every time they closed, images flashed, clearer than anything he saw with his eyes open. Blood running down the wall and soaking into his shirt and pants. A blackened armor plate falling off DJ’s body. Gregor’s face pushing through the plaster. Black hair matted with blood. Charred flesh and white bone.

  A thousand times…

  Roy caught at Laura’s hand. “I’m in trouble, Laura. I need help.”

  She stroked his hair, pushing tickling strands out of his eyes. He turned his face into her palm, allowing himself at least that much rest.

  “What can I do?” she asked.

  “I’m afraid to sleep,” Roy confessed. “I know you can’t make it not be fucking awful. But I at least don’t want to be alone with it.”

  “Roy, you took care of me day and night! Of course I’ll stay with you.”

  He’d known she’d agree without hesitation. Even so, an enormous tide of relief lifted him at her words. “Don’t run yourself into the ground. It doesn’t have to be you all the time. The pack could take turns. If they don’t mind.”

  “They won’t. They wanted to sit with you, actually, but they thought you’d be embarrassed.”

  “I am embarrassed,” Roy muttered. “But I want them anyway.”

  Laura slipped beneath the blanket, stretching out beside him and putting her arms around him. He held on to her warmth and solidity with his body and mind, knowing that soon enough, he wouldn’t be able to feel it any more.

  She kissed his cheek. “Go to sleep, Roy. We won’t leave you alone.”

  ***

  Roy sank into nightmares every time he closed his eyes. But when he woke, disoriented and frightened, someone was always there with him: Laura holding him close, Miguel or Russell sitting by his bed and keeping a hand on his shoulder, or Keisha checking his vital signs and informing him that he wasn’t in danger and he’d feel better soon. Sometimes he reached out and touched fur, and found a wolf or two stretched out beside him.

  He wasn’t strong enough to access the pack sense himself, but Laura linked him to it. The bond didn’t penetrate through his nightmares, but it comforted him in his intervals of consciousness.

  Russell helped him to and from the bathroom, since Roy would have had to be dying to not do that on his own. He’d first encountered that particular set of pans and tubes while he was recovering from his shrapnel wounds, and he had no intention of doing a repeat. The pan was humiliating and the tube fucking hurt. But Roy could walk if he had some support, and Russell was stronger than he looked.

  “You play sports?” Roy asked, as he lay back in bed.

  “I played lacrosse when I was in boarding school,” Russell said. “And I did archery. I don’t know if you’d count that as a sport.”

  “Did you ever hunt with a bow?” Roy had a pleasant picture of himself and Jim Sullivan and Russell and maybe Nicolette hunting together. Four of them, like a fire team. But the walk across the living room had exhausted him, and he was asleep before he heard Russell’s answer.

  Roy dreamed that Laura had driven her car over an IED, and woke up having the worst panic attack of his life. Choking and gasping, unable to get any air in his lungs, he struggled as if he was being held underwater, certain that he was dying.

  Someone grabbed him and hauled him into a sitting position, telling him it would be easier to breathe that way. A male voice coached him to inhale deeply, from the belly rather than from the chest. The panic faded as Roy obeyed, getting his breath back under his control. When he came back to himself and the present, Miguel was holding him up, surrounding him in the scent of caramel and the comfort of pack.

  “Thanks,” Roy managed.

  Miguel laid him back down and pulled the blankets up over him. “You’re welcome, Roy. You did the same for me.”

  Roy wanted to say more, but he was drifting off again. For an endless time, he was caught between states, neither asleep nor awake, chilled and confused and vainly trying to wake. His back ached, his head was splitting, his throat was raw, and he felt like the slightest movement would make him throw up.

  When he did manage to open his eyes, Keisha was frowning over him. He was too sick to talk, but apparently he didn’t need to; she filled a syringe and stuck a needle in his arm.

  Laura asked her a question, and Keisha nodded. Laura reached into a cup, then slipped something into his mouth. A sliver of cold, a piece of ice, melting slowly, drop by drop easing the nausea and the pain in his throat.

  Then he was running with DJ in his arms, trying to get to cover that always blew up right before he reached it. Charcoal cracked off under his hands. The air was rank with the smell of chemicals and charring, smoke and blood.

  The scent changed to the freshness of rain and earth and new grass. Nicolette sat on the edge of his bed, her arm out of the sling, with one hand on his shoulder and the other on the pistol she had holstered at her side.

  “You’re safe, Roy,” she told him. “I’ve got your back.”

  “Thanks,” he said, when he’d caught his breath enough to speak.

  Nicolette’s posture was upright but relaxed, alert rather than vibrating with tension. He reached out with the pack sense, only belatedly remembering that he was too weak to open it himself, and was pleasantly surprised to find that he was strong enough after all. There she was, all steely determination and fierce discipline and smoldering rage. But she no longer felt like a ticking bomb; her anger pre-dated Gregor, even if she’d built up a lot of it since him.

  She sent him an image of her dragging him off a battlefield, his face bloody and pale. It wasn’t exactly the picture he wanted in his head just then, but he appreciated her intent: I’ll never leave you behind.

  He wiped a trickle of sweat out of his eyes, then took a closer look at her pistol. “Is that a 1911?”

  She nodded. “There’s a gun store in town. I could take you there when you’re better. I assume you don’t normally carry that cheap gangster gun.”

  “Took it off Donnie,” Roy said. “Lost my Beretta.”

  “Was that your sidearm? Would you want to get another one, or something else?” Nicolette asked. “Or another one and something else?”

  Roy was still contemplating pistols when he fell asleep.

  Finally, he woke; not woke from a nightmare, but simply woke with the dawn. He found Laura asleep under the covers beside him, Keisha’s silvery wolf stretched out on top of the blankets on the other side, Miguel’s gray wolf curled up at the foot of the bed, Nicolette sleeping in a chair with her feet propped up on Laura’s ankles, and Russell in another chair with his head down on Keisha’s front paws.

  Roy was reminded first of puppies in a basket, then of Marines racked out on an airport floor. No wonder he’d slept so well. He sat up slowly, trying not to disturb them. They didn’t stir. He supposed they must finally feel safe. Certainly Nicolette did, to let herself sleep with no one on guard.

  He checked himself before he tried to get out of bed. He wasn’t dizzy. He wasn’t sick to his stomach. His back ached from lying down for so long, and he felt a little weak. But it was the “recently recovered from being badly wounded or very sick” type of weakness, not the “running on fumes for the last three days/four months/two years and about to collapse” type. Roy was familiar enough with both states to know the difference.

  He swung his leg over Laura, careful not to kick Nicolette in the face, and padded to the
shower. As the hot water ran over him, he remembered how he’d stood in an icy spray and wished to be nothing more than a weapon.

  My rifle is human, even as I, because it is my life. Thus, I will learn it as a brother. I will learn its weaknesses, its strength, its parts, its accessories, its sights and its barrel. I will keep my rifle clean and ready, even as I am clean and ready. We will become part of each other…

  He’d learned the Rifleman’s Creed in boot camp and recited to himself as he marched, as he cleaned his weapons, as he exercised, as he did every tiring or repetitive thing that became that little bit easier if it was done to a rhythm.

  I learned my rifle better than I learned myself, Roy thought.

  If he’d done nothing else since he’d come to Yosemite, he’d gotten a crash course in his own weaknesses and strengths, and how some weaknesses were also strengths, and some strengths were also weaknesses.

  He peeled off the bandages on his side and hip and arm. The skin had grown back new and pink, slightly sensitive to the touch. His shrapnel scars were starting to fade from pink to white. He wondered if some of the scars on his mind were also starting to fade. He was definitely in better shape than when he’d gotten out of the aid station after three days’ rest and with a pocket full of pills, spotted DJ cleaning his rifle, and walked past him as if he wasn’t even there.

  When Roy left the bathroom, he found Miguel in the kitchen, rummaging through the refrigerator.

  “Morning,” Roy said. “Want to make some breakfast?”

  Miguel jumped, nearly dropping a carton of eggs. “Roy! Wow, you look a lot better.”

  Roy rescued the eggs and put them on the counter. “How long has it been?”

  “Three days… Four? I lost track.”

  “Looks like I wore everyone out,” Roy said, glancing at the puppy pile on and around the sofa bed. “Thanks for taking care of me, Miguel. I appreciate it.”