valmora | [FIC] mactireverse 1

Why do I have butterflies-es in my tummy?

[working] Title: A Narrowing Spiral (subject to change)
Rating: overall about PG-13
Fandom: original
Warnings: Occasional swear words, eventual romantic relationships.
Notes: Draft. Edits/feedback/comments in general appreciated, read, thought about, discussed. Grevious mistakes are a sin; don't let me commit them. Minor peccadilloes aren't great either.

His son barely looks like more than a blob of flesh. It’s not very charitable and Paul knows it, but it’s true. David, not quite two hours old, looks like a child’s doll, albeit uglier. Also more inclined to squirm.

Christina, on the hospital bed, is sleeping. Her hair is tangled and tufts stick up in the air . Seeing her so messy is disorienting. She is normally so concerned with appearances that Paul doesn’t know what to make of it.

“You,” he says to his son, who looks like he may be contemplating starting to cry, “have a very unusual mother. But she likes you, I think. I certainly like you, so at least you have me.”

David blinks. His eyes are clear blue, but Paul doesn’t think they’ll stay that way; it doesn’t run in the family. He’s awfully light, not quite seven pounds, but wrapped up in his blankets with a knit hat he weighs a little more, enough to feel solid in Paul’s arms.

Paul watches in fascination as David’s nose squishes up, his mouth opening as he starts to cry, waking Christina.

“Is he hungry?” Paul asks, bemused.

“How should I know?” Christina’s accent is stronger with sleepiness and irritation. “If he’s sane, he just wants to sleep.” She holds out her arms to take him.

A stick rolls off the pile of kindling. David, dismayed, wraps his small hands around it, picking it up and trying to put it back. It rolls off again. David grumbles in frustration.

Paul watches David make another attempt and says, “Why don’t you decide what we’ll cook for dinner? We can start the fire when I get back.”

“Sure!” David jumps to standing, distracted from the unlit fire, and darts into the tent. Paul walks to the other side of their campsite and lights a cigarette, facing the trees. He might not be able to kick the habit, but he doesn’t want David to pick it up. The quintessential parental do as I say, not as I do.

He’s on the exhale of his first lungful of smoke when a voice says from behind him and to his right, “Do you think you could move downwind of me?” When Paul glances to the side, he sees Stephen leaning against the trunk of a tree. The sun is behind him, leaving him in shadow.

“I didn’t think you were invited,” Paul says, annoyed. This was supposed to be a father-son outing. He and David don’t get those much, or at all, and the interference…

“I was dead bored. And I thought I’d finally meet the young sahib.”

“Coming from you, that’s probably racist,” Paul says, trying to distract Stephen from the topic of David. He takes another drag on the cigarette, sees the burn and blossoming light in his peripheral vision as he watches Stephen’s outline, black clothing against the darkness of the tree.

Stephen might be smiling, but the light is against him so Paul can’t tell, the glare making him squint and look away. “I am less concerned with racism than the metaphor. Best to get the smell of him in my thoughts so I won’t jump when he leaves the tent in the middle of the night.”

“I don’t think so. Return to the compound, and stay there until I get back after this trip.”

Stephen pushes off of the tree, moving a few paces closer to Paul, out of the line of the sunset. The red light, strange here in Scotland, flushes his skin to a colour almost human.

“You missed a contingency,” he says lowly, smile too wide. “But I shan’t tell you what.” He steps backwards, vanishing, and Paul knows that Stephen landed back in the compound. He wishes Stephen wouldn’t do that in front of him.

Looking at his cigarette, he finds that it has burnt out, so he drops it.
David, sitting in front of the tent, has an unopened package of hot dogs sitting in front of him. He looks at Paul expectantly.

“You all right?” Paul asks. He knows why he is upset: Stephen does not make idle threats, and to threaten David, if only through implication, is a terrifying thing. Paul wishes there were more he could do to protect his son, but truly –

“Can we start the fire now?” David answers, bright, and it takes a moment for Paul to remember what question he is answering.

The only thing that could stand against Stephen would be Stephen himself, or perhaps a wizard, but Paul knows no wizards he could ask to stop a werewolf.

Paul sits in on the year-end report meeting, listening to the figures in his capacity as chief of the organisation. Captain Cameron, the organisation statistician, is presenting the preliminary year report, raw numbers before the required analysis. In past years, it has acted as more of a warning than anything else, giving the Captains a chance to prepare for the news leaking and its effects on morale.

This year, however, seems on the surface to have been a good one, and even the normally imposing Captain Erskine seems to be in a good mood. At least, he isn’t frowning quite as much as usual, and with good reason: attacks were down this year, though the cause is unknown.

“We won’t know until they get a few more samples and run tests to see how advanced the infections are,” Cameron adds, the requisite disclaimer, shuffling his papers. “If you’ll all look at page fifteen, you’ll notice that the percentage of successful termination missions has increased by more than twenty percent from last year’s final report. Response time has been decreased by ten percent with the establishment of the base across the Firth from Edinburgh. Enrolment from outside organisation staff offspring is up by seventy percent – for those of you counting, that’s a final number: five people.” He smiles faintly, the gesture strange on his melancholy features.

“In terms of real numbers the organisation sustained fewer losses than last year; the comparisons to the past five years have not been sufficiently analysed to say whether this is meaningful, keeping in mind the above caveats on lycanthropic population and demographics.

“In all,” Cameron says, looking satisfied, “I believe I can safely predict that this year’s report will be cause for celebration.”

“Of course, our last-resort weapon has not contributed at all to these figures. I daresay that he finds this a source of discontent,” Butler says, glancing at Paul, who ignores the observation. Stephen always wants to join missions. Boredom doesn’t change that fact, regardless of the image he presents. It would seem, however, that he is ingratiating himself to the five Captains, and that is frightening, because the moment they see him as human is the moment the whole organisation falls apart.

“If you feel that you need his skills,” Paul says, “I am willing to come along on expeditions.”

“No,” O’Reilly says, “We’ve things under control as is. We shouldn’t depend on him more than we absolutely must.” Which, thus far this year, means Stephen has been barely useful at all. In Paul’s opinion this is all the better. He’s glad that O’Reilly shares his view, but to hear the other captains tell it she’s always been wary of Stephen, even since before the Second World War.

“He is very capable in his own right, but that capability comes at the price of danger. Human agents are far more dependable, and the price for their capability is not so high.” Paul is careful to keep his words to Butler mild, because he is not the one who has to risk the lives of his friends, his family, himself in the field.

He sees a response, But the price they pay to serve is higher than the one he does, flickering in the officer’s eyes, and resolves that there will be fewer fatalities in future. What will accomplish that? There are few things that a werewolf cannot bite through, and in this organisation they believe in mercy killings. Better to die honourably than bitten, than converted. Paul understands.

But he understands, too, that there is a pain to it. Stephen is not easily hurt, is faster and better at tracking than any human they have. He is more efficient. Paul does not blame anyone for wishing that Stephen saw the field more.

He can hear his secretary’s shouting through the walls: “But you haven’t got an appointment!” and “There are people there!” It is a reaction provoked by only so many people.

The door opens a hair, then more, until Stephen is standing in the doorway and closing the door behind him, his eyes flicking over the officers seated at the round table as he murmurs quietly in modern French, “Excusez-moi, messieurs. Je veux parler avec Monsieur MacTire.”*

Paul hadn’t realised that Stephen recognized the uniforms of the French Werewolf Hunters’ Legion; they were created after he was bound. Or perhaps he heard them speaking. His hearing is good enough for that.

“What is it, Stephen?” Paul stands, moving away from the table and keeping his voice down. “It’s not like you to be so polite.”

“I may not like hunters, but I respect my countrymen. And I thought I should be polite at least once. I will be away for a bit, taking a nap.”

Stephen sleeps a great deal. Ten hours a night, sometimes three- or four-hour naps during the day. This request, or this warning, is unprecedented.

“All right?” Paul agrees hesitantly, suddenly wary. “Do you mean something unusual?”

“I do,” Stephen says, not looking at him and flashing a toothy smile at a rather beautiful woman seated at the table. “I assure you, however, that I am as eager as you are to know what it will entail.” He shifts his weight, bowing military-style to the French hunters. The gesture is strange from him, oddly formal. “Merci. Que vos negotiations avec ces loup-chasseurs anglais finissent bien. Je les ai trouvés têtus.” ** He turns then, walks out the door, leaves Paul standing there feeling like an idiot as he returns to his seat. The woman is covering her smile with her hand.

“Who was that?” inquires Serge Dubois, his accent in English almost nonexistent, just strong enough to hint that he is not quite native. Dubois is Paul’s counterpart in France.

“That was Stephen,” Paul answers carefully. “I believe he was christened Stéphane Gévaud, but I’m not entirely certain.”

“Ah,” says the woman beside Dubois, the one at whom Stephen smiled. Paul does not remember her name from the introductions. Leblanc, perhaps. “We speak of him in training classes.”

“That’s good,” Paul comments. “I would not like to have any organisation test itself against one like him again without knowing what was done before.”

“Amen,” says one of the hunters, and crosses himself.

“Our English counterparts have acquitted themselves well,” Dubois says sharply, and returns to the original topic with a careful, “and that is the past. We must work for the future.”

“Indeed,” Paul agrees, tapping the edge of his stack of papers against the table to straighten it and setting the sheets back down.

Resting his elbows on the table, hands clasped, one of the officers begins, “It is concerning that our monitoring of the remaining wolf families seems to have failed. The Alpha’s wife in Alsace whelped three years ago and we did not know until last month; similar stories are common in all departments.”

“Bureaucratic regions,” the woman interjects, translating the last term quickly while her coworker inhales.

“Attacks decline, conversion percentage declines, fatality rates decline. By all numbers but birth rate our efforts succeed.”

Paul does not speak, then, about how his organisation cannot find birth rates, but their numbers otherwise look good as well.

He exits the meeting room, entering his office and finding a note on his desk in Stephen’s hand.

Stephen rarely writes things down. Paul would almost believe that it was because Stephen was not well-educated as a child, but it’s more likely that it’s because the most important document in his life was written without his consent.

For that, Paul has no sympathy. Stephen emulates human emotions, but he does not always react in human ways.

Paul picks up the note and reads,

Paul MacTire,

When I said ‘sleep,’ I, not knowing quite what it is a euphemism for, did not bother to elaborate. I will be gone for a year. When I return, I expect that I will be very different, as will you.

I am tempted not to wish you good luck, but any wolf stupid enough to be noticed by all of you deserves what it gets. Even me. So I wish you good luck and God’s blessing, for all the difference my words will make, and I may see you in a year, or I may not.

Tell Christina, next you speak to her, that she was a pleasure.

Stephen

It would fit, that Christina would have favoured Stephen, not knowing what he was. Paul implied that Stephen was a retainer to Paul’s family, an illegitimate and unacknowledged relative.

At least Paul is certain that David is his own; at six he is virtually indistinguishable from photographs of Paul at that age. He suspects, however, that David will look more like Christina when he is grown.

But a year. Why a full year? Sleeping –

He recalls suddenly the death of his own father, a heart attack. Luke MacTire died in bed one night, and the next morning, the door to Stephen’s room was locked. Paul remembers because they tried to wake him, to see if he wanted to attend the funeral the following week, but the door would not open. Dust fell on that door before Stephen left the room behind it, and when he did…

A year had passed, or close enough but not quite, and Stephen was no longer the older man Paul had known as his father’s friend.

So that is what Stephen meant. Paul is suddenly frightened, core-deep, because he is not yet dead – but will he be? David is six. How could he handle a creature like Stephen – how could.

Paul’s thoughts shudder to a stop, and he says aloud, “Stephen.”

No response, but if Stephen is still awake – “Stephen, come here.”

There is a moment where the world is in flux, and Stephen is there, leaning over Paul’s desk until they are face-to-face, and there is something wild, feral in Stephen’s eyes that Paul has not seen for years.

“You called?” Stephen inquires, the words edged, the formality of them ice over a low growl of fury.

“You should not be leaving my service,” Paul says.

“That is for me to decide.”

“Why now?”

“It is time.”

“It isn’t by the standards of all your other transfers to the next MacTire!”

Stephen takes a step back, visibly calming himself, watching Paul through narrowed eyes.

“You should not be afraid,” he says. “It is nothing with you and all with your son.”

“You’ve never met David.” Paul has taken great pains to make sure of that. He does not want David too conscious of his power at too young an age. He wants him to grow into his responsibility. He does not want David’s instincts as a hunter, as a leader, ruined by whatever Stephen might teach him under the guise of getting to know the next master.

Stephen smiles, and it is slow to come to his face as he opens his hands, fingers spread and palms outward in a gesture of almost-helpless innocence, a magician who has only hidden all his tricks in places other than his sleeves.

“I have never needed to,” he answers, bowing to Paul, a movement of irony and grace, and is gone before Paul can answer, can ask.

*“Excuse me, sirs. I want to talk to Mr. MacTire.”

**“Thank you. I hope your negotiations with these English wolf-hunters go well. I’ve found [the hunters] stubborn.”

Feedback is appreciated.

Part 2