I missed Person of Interest so much. The recent episodes, unfortunately, are doing nothing to get rid of werewolf!Reese, because seriously, the man's body language is not human. So, in lieu of the next bit of Wild Things (which I will finish, I swear, I just get really, really sidetracked), here's a one-shot from Carter's POV. In the Wild 'verse this takes place after Wild Things, but there are no spoilers for it. Set between episodes 2x1 and 2x2, a missing scene in which Carter and Reese are going to Texas.
Enjoy!
EDIT: Now with the last 1/4 of the story! Thank you, FFN, for being a jerk! Also thank you Carine and wcgreen for letting me know :)
nights get wild
There's this thing that happens to some wolves, after trauma or a rage or sometimes for no reason at all, just right out of the blue. Carter's heard the horror stories floating around the bullpen. Psychologists call it a dissociative fugue, citing words like non-verbal and psychotic episodes. Cops call it going native, wolves abandoning humanity even when the moon isn't full. They laugh about it, say, fuckin' weres, man, can't even hold themselves together, but it scares them, she knows it does.
Reports of this phenomenon date all the way back to the seventeenth century, and all the symptoms are the same. The werewolf still wears their human skin, still walks on two legs and has clothes and hands and human mouths. But they're just not there. They don't speak. They don't laugh or cry. They don't even seem to understand human language.
They pace and they prowl and the wolf is so close beneath the surface violence isn't a possibility, it's a guarantee. The reports are a little unclear as to what triggers the violence, but it always happens, always. These wolves go after anything that moves still human-shaped, teeth and claws just sharp enough to do some damage, and nothing short of a silver bullet puts them down.
There was an incident last year in Jersey, some unregistered whose wife had been killed in a gang war. The wolf didn't go after his wife's killers, which would make sense. Instead, he went native in a local jogger's park and practically held the neighborhood hostage for three days before an FBI task force put a bullet in his back. He killed ten people over those three days, four joggers who stumbled across him, one child lost in the park, a young married couple who didn't manage to barricade themselves in their home well enough, and three of the FBI agents.
Carter's seen the footage—the whole NYPD has. It's part of mandatory training now, how to identify and neutralize a fugued-out were.
Step one: identify the threat. Warning signs include localized shifts (claws, fangs, eyes), predatory movements, audible growling and snarling, and a complete and total inability to speak or understand human language.
Carter looks at John, prowling around the airport with the muscles in his shoulders rippling beneath his shirt and claws in his hands, and thinks, one, two, three, and four. Check.
John Reese has left the building.
"You need to calm down," she says. He bares his teeth at her, fangs cutting into his lips, beads of blood that well up and heal over in seconds. His eyes, usually blue, are a fierce, furious gold.
Down the terminal, an old man side-eyes them warily before closing his eyes again. "You're drawing attention to yourself."
John shows her all of his teeth and keeps pacing in restless, broken loops. She's never seen him like this. He's got the most control over himself out of any wolf she's ever seen. She's watched him fight back a change under the full moon, when even his little friend can't hold back. She's seen him keep human through bullets and bloodlust and Elias in his face, threatening a helpless child. Now, though, now every step is lupine and graceful and too wrong, too wild. He's not even pretending to be human, and he's going to get them both killed.
She supposes she's lucky that this is a red-eye flight and not a morning one, and that they're going to some podunk shithole in New Mexico and then driving to Texas. (Paranoid bastard.) If it wasn't, there'd be a hell of a lot more people in the terminal and someone would see that he's so close to turning she can see the bones shifting in his arms, the fangs in his mouth and the gold in his eyes.
As it is, there's no one other than that old, tired man and a young woman on the other side of the terminal, so lost in her laptop that Carter is seriously concerned she'll miss the flight.
Considering the state John's in, though, that might be a good thing.
(The stats flash through her head. Dissociative wolves are seventy-two percent more likely to attack people moving quickly—an FBI agent, a jogger, a terrified child running away—and ninety-two percent more likely when cornered in a smaller space. Violence is, of course, a one hundred percent certainty.)
"You're scaring people," she says again, bending to scratch the dog's ears. Bear whines, leaning in to her hand. He's shaking slightly, anxious for his master. And you're scaring me, too, she doesn't say.
John doesn't even look at her this time, his head slung low between his shoulders. He's hunting. The body language is explicitly clear. He's hunting for something.
Someone.
"John," she murmurs.
He doesn't answer. He doesn't recognize his own name, or her, or where they are, or anything at all. She doubts even Finch would be able to reach him, though since he's a wolf too, he might.
But he's not here. Finch is gone, and his disappearance is the reason Reese is hanging onto humanity by the threads of the suit jacket he couldn't get out of fast enough, tearing into it with his claws the second they got past security.
Carter sighs unhappily, fighting the urge to stand up. She's been crouching next to their bags for the better part of an hour, watching John, her hands twitching for her gun. (Cop instinct, really. She sees him as John, still, her friend, but he's also a wolf and he's also in fugue, and he's dangerous to everyone around them.) If she stands up, she doesn't know what she'll do. Or he'll do.
She doesn't know anything, anymore. One day she's a decent cop doing a decent job protecting a mostly-decent city, and the next she's running with wolves. Good wolves, too, not the angry ones she deals with most of the time, more fur and fang than skin and bone. Reese and Finch are good wolves. They do a lot of good for a lot of people and maybe New York needs that, needs some wildness to balance out the corrupted machine, the mechanics of the law.
Her grandmother always said the wolf-people were a force of nature. Too many was an ill omen, a sign of the dying wild, but too few was a sign of human corruption. A wolf or two here and there was a sign of higher things. Of balance.
This, though, John pacing and wild and seconds from shifting in an airport, where he's definitely going to get himself shot and killed, is not a good omen.
Carter's scared. She's not a lot, these days. It's pretty hard to be scared of shadows when there's a fully-realized werewolf, one who's built a reputation for himself as fierce and volatile and viciously protective, around the corner. Things that used to scare her, bullets and mobsters and dying alone in a dark alley somewhere, unable to help people, don't pack the same punch that they used to.
What scares her now is a little harder to define.
John makes a deep, wild sound in the back of his throat, pacing, pacing, prowling now, swinging his head from side to side.
He's close, then.
Carter swallows. "Wish me luck," she says to no one in particular, trying convince herself that this isn't one of the most terrifying things she's ever done (she has a few near-misses that are scarier, by just a bit), and she stands up.
The sudden rush of blood to her legs makes her dizzy and unsteady, and John turns sharply, every muscle in him jumping, ready to rip. His eyes are molten gold, edging towards yellow in their intensity.
Yeah, she thinks, taking a deep breath to steady herself, nobody's home.
"John," she says, low and slow and quiet. "Hey, John, look at me, huh?" She uses the voice she uses with suspects, trauma victims, that she used overseas to spin lies. You catch the good flies with honey, her supervisor always said. Even if you'd catch more with shit.
She doesn't dare meet his eyes, focusing instead on the bridge of his nose. (Step two of the NYPD Fugue Werewolf Elimination Plan; engage the threat. Draw its attention away from civilians.)
Carter takes a step forward, and then another and another, moving slow and careful. He snarls thinly, but doesn't go for her throat. She guesses that the wolf in him doesn't see her as threat or prey. Awesome. Okay. She can do this. She can do this.
"You really picked the worst possible time to lose it, you know," she continues, working the fear out of her voice. He has, at least, stopped pacing, but the intensity in his eyes is so far past human it's not even funny or endearing like most of his little wolfish quirks, it's flat out terrifying.
You are a fucking cop, she tells herself sternly. You fought monsters in Iraq and Afghanistan. You have a pubescent son. There is no way Reese is scarier than Taylor in the middle of a mood swing.
She can almost, almost, make herself believe it.
"You need to pull yourself together." Carter puts steel into her voice, her commander's voice, her cop's voice. John told her once that he wasn't an alpha. The little pack he and Finch had wasn't a normal one—they weren't alphas or betas or whatever the hell wolves called their hierarchies. They called themselves unorthodox jokingly, teased each other about conventional pack dynamics and snapped playfully, without any of the infighting observed in normal packs.
But if Reese isn't an alpha, that means he'll listen to one. It doesn't matter how much he denies it, how many wolf stereotypes he goes against, he has to listen to an alpha. Wolves can't help it. He's not an alpha and he doesn't have one, so maybe, just maybe, she can get him to listen to her.
"John, relax."
He growls, his legs stiff and predatory. Or not.
The instinct to reach for her gun is almost overwhelming. Carter can see how this is going to go down. She's cleaned up enough kill zones, overseas and at home, to paint a pretty good picture.
John will kill her first. She's the biggest target right now, the one right up in his face with a gun and smelling like aggression and fear. He won't be quick about it. The fugued-out never are. It'll be messy, violent. Cause of death will probably be something like massive trauma or bleeding out.
Her death will trigger the bloodlust. Maybe Laptop Girl will see Reese coming and try to run. She won't get far, maybe twenty or thirty feet down the terminal. He'll go for her legs to bring her down, then her throat.
Old Guy will probably be last. He'll hear the girl's screams, some snarling, a howl, and he won't even have time to run before John's on him too, going for the soft spots with hands that aren't quite strong enough, teeth that are just a little too blunt, to give him a quick, painless death.
After that comes airport security.
Carter doesn't know how many of them will die before someone gets a bullet in the back of John's head. Five, maybe, six, seven. Ten. Twenty. She has no idea. She's seen John's wolf fight and it's terrifying, brutal and efficient and just fast, no place to breathe in between his attacks.
Hell, he might break out of this terminal. Move on to others, bloody and hungry, hunting for his next bite. She doesn't know how many people are in this airport—it's a littler one, not LaGuardia or JFK, thank god—but it's enough to cause a stir. He could do so, so much damage.
Carter swallows, shaking herself out of the cool, almost analytical part of her brain that lays this scenario neatly at her feet. (She remembers, likelihood of violence; one hundred percent.) She doesn't want to die here today. She doesn't want to die, and she doesn't want him to die, want all these people to die and everything he's done for her city to be undone.
She doesn't want him to be one of the monsters they tell their children about at night. He's not. He's one of the good ones, she knows he is, he's one of the ones her grandmother was always talking about, the loup-garou of hot summer nights, bright eyes and teeth grazing your elbow, guiding you home in the dark.
"John," she says again, and he stalks forward on the front soles of his feet, so close she can feel him growl. His lips pull back in something like a grin, all thirty-two reasons why werewolves are so feared bared at her, sharpened just enough to hurt like a motherfucker.
(Step three: terminate the threat.)
He's close enough to lean down and take a bite out of her throat (tall bastard) when Carter makes her move. It's not in the rulebook. It's not in the classes they made her take. It's not SOP. In fact, if her unit commander could see her now, she'd probably stroke.
Carter doesn't try to knock him down. She doesn't try to snap his neck (method number two for killing a wolf) or take out his eyes. She doesn't try to hurt him, or shoot him full of silver.
(Joss Carter does not have any silver bullets.)
She gets her arms around his middle, tight as she can, and proceeds to give him the biggest bear hug he's ever had in his life.
For a second, she thinks she's going to die. Fingernail-claws settle against her back, pricking through her jacket. His fists clench, and every muscle under her hands jumps, shivering, caught between human and wolf. The snarl in his chest vibrates against her cheek, hard enough to rattle her teeth.
Carter doesn't let go. "Easy," she says, mouth dry. "Easy, easy. You know me. You know me."
His claws prick her skin now, sliding just a little deeper. Blood wells up. Good thing I'm wearing a dark jacket. She can feel his breath, hot and bitter, and the slightest brush of his teeth. Reese growls again. Carter's heard growls like that. She's seen what happens after.
"Easy, easy," she repeats. She puts a rhythm in it, like the songs she used to sing Taylor to put him to sleep, like the songs her grandmother used to sing her on those cold, dark nights. "You know me. You know who I am."
He snarls, but this time—and maybe it's just wishful thinking, maybe it's just her brain hoping, praying—she doesn't feel like he's about to tear her throat out, or dig into her back and pull. He just—growls.
"You're okay," Carter says. She can't stop talking. She doesn't have her gun so this will have to do—low, soothing words, arms around his middle—until he calms down. "You know me. You know who you are too, I know you do."
John settles. She can feel some of the violence bleed out of him, and the muscles stop shifting under her hands. Something inside of him goes loose, his growl trailing off to a rumble, just a hint of what it was earlier.
Carter still doesn't let him go. "Easy," she says, again and again. "Just take it easy. You're going to be okay. Finch is going to be okay. We're going to find him. I know you don't want to hurt anyone."
"Actually," he whispers, his voice a rough, growling rasp. "I do. That's the problem."
Carter tightens her grip on him. She knows what look he's got in his eyes. She's seen it. That's the look Peter Ardnt saw, the second before he died. Carter bears her teeth, digs her fingers into his shirt. She's not going to let that happen.
"Breathe," she commands. "Not here. Here's not the place."
"Ma'am?"
John stiffens again, hands balled into fists against her back.
Please, she thinks. Don't look like the wolf. Reluctantly she lets go, turning around to smile at a security guard. (She keeps one hand on Reese's arm.)
"Can I help you?"
"You doing okay?" The TSA guy looks between her and Reese warily, sizing up the taller man. Carter smiles.
"Just fine," she says.
"'Cause we got a complaint that this guy was acting strange. You know we can arrest him if he's causin' you problems, right?"
Carter's smile hardens. "We're fine," she says. "My husband's just a little worked up. His father is in the hospital."
The TSA guard nods doubtfully, still giving Reese the stink eye, but starts to back away. "Just yell if you need anything. Have a nice flight."
"Have a good day," Carter says, and turns back to Reese.
His eyes are cool blue and tired and human, and she's so relieved she wants to laugh until she cries. He smiles tiredly, awkwardly. "Husband, Carter?"
Carter snorts and smacks him in the chest, lightly, teasingly. "Shut up, furball. I don't want to hear it from you."
He laughs and unfolds his hands, the little half-moon cuts where his claws dug in scabbing over in seconds. He shakes the wolf from his shoulders and stands like a mostly-normal human being again (well, close enough. He never has normal human body language, but at least he doesn't look like Wil E. Coyote honing in on the Road Runner anymore. Carter's going to take what she can get.), offering her a crooked grin.
"Sorry," he says. "It won't happen again."
She rolls her eyes, slinging her bag over her shoulder. "Uh huh. Make sure you don't, fuzzy. I will set my grandmother on you. She'll have you trained up in no time."
"Carter," he says, "you do know I'm not actually a dog, right? And I'm fine."
"Uh huh," she says, letting the tension bleed out of her own shoulders. Their flight is boarding now. New Mexico—and Finch—awaits. "Keep telling yourself that."
He laughs. He seems okay. (But she doesn't break contact on that long flight over, not once.)