the beauty of wild things
Kali/Julia
Teen Wolf (spoilers for 3A)
It is the emissary's duty to keep the wolf human, but sometimes it is the wolf that teaches the emissary the beauty of wild things.
aba
Julia finds an injured woman on a beautifully ordinary day in June. The woman is barely breathing – a half-conscious, bloodied mess of fabric and torn skin – but when Julia plucks at her purse for her cell phone, the woman looks her in the eye and blinks red, red.
It's the twist of her lips shaping the word please, Julia thinks later, that makes her bring the woman home instead.
aba
The woman won't heal. She tosses and turns in Julia's bed, stains Julia's apartment floor black again and again, her face flickering from monster to woman to pitiful creature. It takes a week for her to gain enough of her senses to twist clawed fingers into Julia's blouse (white, now stained with red and rent) and whisper wolfsbane through a snarl of wicked teeth.
It's the first time Julia hears her speak, beautiful and mangled, with spittle and black drooling down her chin.
aba
The woman – Kali – settles into Julia's life even though there is no place for her there. They share more silences between them than words, but Julia doesn't mind; her life has always been the silence of books and the approving, empty smiles of her parents.
Kali is her little secret, a thrill in her otherwise quiet life, a monster from one of her childhood storybooks; a monster with a sweet tooth and a penchant for stealing Julia's warmest sweaters and scowling about it.
Something sparks underneath Julia's cardigans and blouses and skin where only stories used to dwell, so when Kali steps through the door one day months later, Julia leaves behind her books and her daydreams and follows without question.
aba
It's not a beautiful life. There is no money, no clothes, no gas. Julia runs hands through dirty, stringy hair, but when they are in bed, Kali retracts the claws on her toes, one by one, as Julia bumps the tips of her fingers against them, leaning the warm weight of her body against firm calves, thighs.
Kali is an alpha, so of course there's a deadly grace to her walk, of course, of course, but to think that it would extend to the twist of her fingers over Julia's pubic bone and down, down deep inside her, well, Julia has never in her life thought death felt so sweet.
aba
They move from city to town to countryside and back to the city again. Julia scrapes by and teaches classroom after classroom about the great classics, while beautiful, deadly Kali disappears for days on end.
Sometimes she returns to wherever their home is with someone else.
Julia never knows (she never will) what Kali looks for in new pack mates, but they smell desperate to Julia's human nose, writhe under her healing hands, hover over bowls of cereal and growl. Some of the youngest huddle together in Julia and Kali's bed while Kali patiently smoothes her hands through their hair, over bumpy brows and the sharp tips of their ears.
There is a gentleness to her murmurs then.
aba
The first time they meet Deucalion, Julia feels a chill run the tips of its claws down her spine. There's a new light in Kali's eyes, delicious poison pouring into her ears when Deucalion closes the kitchen door and Julia is left on the other side.
They still curl together in the evenings, Julia's knitting needles, book, magazine pulled from her hands and replaced with sweet kisses to her wrists, the play of sharp teeth over tendon and bone.
Kali looks Julia in the eye when she traces her fingers across Julia's face, down between her breasts, over her belly like an incision.
Julia never tells Kali she can't see her in there anymore.
aba
And so Kali betrays them all on a beautifully ordinary day in December. Her claws gouge and hurt, trailing death over the throats and faces of those she'd once rescued; a starburst of lust for power.
Julia can't see through all the blood and the furious numbness of her racing heart as she lies dying, but she imagines Kali turns for one last time to look at her, and she hopes Kali will regret this one day.
Then in a slither of curling anger and pain (her wolf howling at the betrayal), she decides she will make her.
aba
Kali calls her Julia the next time they meet.
No, Jennifer thinks, retreating behind Derek's back in mock fear with a steady heart while the hidden cuts across her face sting, sting.
I'm a monster like you now.
aba
She smiles when Kali dies.