A friend requested a Wolf's Rain ficlet of me a while back, and I thought I'd see if anyone else might like it. One of my favorite scenes in Wolf's Rain was the scene fairly early on where the outspokenly suspiscious Tsume stays asleep in Cheza's lap longer than any of the others. It says so much without actually needing to say anything. So, ficlet. Sorry if there's any inaccuracy; it's been a while since I've seen that episode, and I got into the habit of avoiding the fandom for fear of spoilers when the series was still coming out.
In his dreams, he is always alone. He runs across white expanses of snow that are untouched by tracks, through forests that are still and silent. It is lonely, he knows; even in dreams, terrible and desolate and lonely--but he is, after all, a lone wolf. It--life, living, everything--is simpler that way. He has known no happiness in company that did not end in anger, in abandonment, even in blood. It isn't something in them, he knows, but something in him. A wolf is a creature which by its very nature travels with a pack, but though he feels the pull of that nature, and the empty ache of leaving it unfulfilled, he cannot answer it. He isn't himself in a pack; he chafes at the bonds, worries at the ties, and always, always spurns the rules. Not because they are bad rules, or unjust, but because they are restraints, and he can't abide being restrained.
He thought the group of humans he ran with might have been the same--and what a pitiful thing that would have been; a pack made entirely of lone wolves!--but in the end, they were, after all, just humans. Humans couldn't live without ties without going mad. Alone, they had no sense of purpose, and in groups, no sense of self. It turned his stomach. The city smothered him, choked him, all the while lulling him with that promise of safety--the land is dying, after all. Food's easier in cities. Getting by's easier.
But living... Living's harder, isn't it? He's only really alive when he's alone. That way, he's free. Free to starve, free to face that emptiness inside him--but free. And for him, freedom matters more than happiness, more than wholeness.
He doesn't expect much of this pack. Certainly not Paradise. The cub's too weak, the glutton's too easy-going, and the white wolf is too busy staring out past the horizon to notice the threats nipping at his heels. As for the Flower... He can feel the draw to her, and he hates it, because she's not a wolf, dammit; it's unforgivable that some construct made by the nobles, by humans, should be able to touch him in a way that not even other wolves have ever managed.
Still, at least he's not having to lie. He snaps and snarls and growls, and one day, he's sure, it's going to cost him the same thing his honesty always costs him--those brief, fleeting feelings of belonging, the moments when he forgets his resentment and his doubts and his frustration and simply is. He'll lose that before long, but it's not as if he hasn't lost it before. He knows what to expect, if not quite when, and already, he's waiting for it, dreaming of it.
Solitude. Snow and silence and, softly, a scent of flowers.