I don't know what happened, but I could not unsee the Starks as werewolves, and then the Baratheons as werewolf hunters, and then this happened, haha. So new story! Not telling you anything about it more than I already have because⦠Well that'd be spoiling it, haha.
"What am I doing here?" Gendry muttered under his breath to himself as he stared at the assortment of weapons lined on the walls of the sports shop. "I'm a mechanic."
It wasn't the first time he had muttered this to himself that night, and he had a sneaking suspicion it wouldn't be the last. 'Talking to yourself Gendry, the first sign of madness. You do know that saying that to yourself just reiterates the fact that you are out of your fucking mind, right?'
"Shut up," he said aloud, and then nearly kicked himself in the shins, but thought better of it. Having an argument with himself he could handle, but a full on brawl? Well, then he wouldn't be the only one calling himself insane.
He sighed and shook his head, trying to clear it. There was a certain jitteriness crawling under his skin, a rush of adrenaline pumping through his veins and to his heart, which beat with a force and a swelling pulse. Every time his eyes alit on the crossbow, the pulse would jump violently. This was madness! Absolute insanity! Hadn't he promised himself a million times that he would never, ever, be drawn into this? And yet here he was, standing in the sports shop, the night darkening outside, and he knew, though he didn't want to admit it to himself, that he was about to break those promises.
"Fuck it."
Gritting his teeth, he reached out and snatched the crossbow off the wall. He didn't need to test it, he already knew it was what he wanted. Even if he wanted to escape himself, he couldn't. There were certain things that just couldn't been totally forgotten.
The man at the counter was lazily watching the game on the television, and Gendry had to clear his throat loudly to get his attention, and even then it was questionable.
"A crossbow, ehh?" the clerk said as he scanned it.
Gendry grunted.
"What are you going to do, kill a werewolf?" The clerk asked as he rang Gendry up.
"What?" Gendry almost shouted. The clerk gave him a weird look.
"It's a joke, mate," he said, shaking his head. Gendry thought he heard the word 'weirdo' pass from the clerks lips. "You know, cuz tonight's a full moon?"
"Is it?" Gendry said mildly, giving the clerk his card.
"So is this for hunting?" The clerk wanted to know. Apparently the game was not interesting enough to capture his full attention.
"No," Gendry said at once. He was not a hunter, no matter what he was doing tonight. "Err... It's a gift."
"For who?" The clerk asked with raised eyebrows, putting the crossbow in a bag.
"My mum," Gendry said, snatching the bag and then leaving the store, ignoring the look of total disturbance on the clerks face. "Nosey bastard," Gendry mumbled under his breath as he zipped up his coat.
He got in his car and slammed the door shut, his heart hammering loudly. Turning on the radio to drown it out, he gunned the engine and zoomed out of the parking lot, his wheels screeching. He was late, he knew. The moon was already up, and that meant that time was running out, if he wasn't too late already. The thought made him grip the steering wheel.
Even though he didn't want to do this, even though he had tried to talk himself out of it at least a thousand times, Gendry knew he had to. He just couldn't bare the thought of his father's killer running free. Especially if that killer was a wolf. A Stark no less.
"Friends my ass," Gendry snarled under his breath as he raced off the freeway and towards the woods. No one was friends with one of them.
When his father had told him about who he was, and that the monsters under his bed were real, and that werewolves existed and were kind, Gendry had thought he needed to be locked up. He hadn't believed it, not for a second. And why should he? Gendry's father had seen him what, five times in his entire life? At the time, Gendry had thought it was all some sort of cruel joke, some sort of story his dad was making up to scare him, but then... Then there was that night. The night Gendry had almost been killed by a monster.
He was sixteen at the time, a loner with not very many friends. But he had his job, the one he still had working for Tobo Mott at his car shop, and that had kept him from falling into bad habits. Still, he was a teenager, and he wasn't so unpopular that he didn't get invited to the occasional party or two. Any chance to get wasted, in his opinion, was a chance worth taking. Alcohol numbed the anger he felt towards his father and the new family his father had replaced him and his mum with. There was a certain happiness, a dangerous happiness, that could be found within a bottle, so he would go, get plastered and forget, just for a night, what it was like to feel totally and utterly abandoned.
That night there had been a party up North. Gendry had bummed a ride there, but, almost an hour after he had arrived the girl's parents came home and busted the party. In the chaos, his ride had disappeared and, after his mum wouldn't pick up her phone, he was forced to walk home, through the woods no less. All the while he had tried to hitchhike, but oftentimes the cars just sped past him. Besides, who wanted to pick up a half-drunk teenager anyway?
He remembered that the night had been freezing. He only had a thin sweat shirt to keep him warm, and he pulled the hood over his head, his breath coming out in a thin mist. The forest had felt odd that night. Gendry dared not wander from the road, he wasn't that stupid, even drunk, but... The shadows seemed to move out of the corner of his eyes, and there was a certain chill that had nothing to do with the cold. He tried to tell himself over and over again that it was just the alcohol, but by then it had worn off. No... There was something else... Something...
There was a howl, a lone, broken howl that sent the hairs on the back of Gendry's neck on end. But there weren't any wolves in Westeros. Not for hundreds of years...
"Someone fucking show up," Gendry had said through gritted teeth, looking down the road behind him as he picked up his pace, his ears straining for a sound of tires. For a sound of anything really, other than the whistling silence of the woods and the sound of his shoes squelching against the wet ground.
There was a shifting of shadows, a dart, a flash. Gendry whipped around, ready to defend himself, but there was nothing there. Only shadows.
He heard something crunch, a low growl... And then he saw them, two icy blue glowing eyes out of the blackness-
Gendry screamed as it attacked him, knocking him over. It was huge, a gigantic beast with gray fur and long, sharp teeth, pulled back and ready. He could smell blood on its breath, and saw it too, stained against the white underside of its throat. It's eyes burned bright, ready to kill, its long claws digging into his shirt-
This was it, Gendry knew. This was where he died. He looked into the beasts eyes, glowing with a blood lust, and then, something shifted, and for a second, Gendry could swear that its eyes weren't icy blue, but gray eyes. Human eyes.
There was a snarl, and Gendry jerked over to see that there wasn't just one of them, but a whole pack, all bigger than the beast that held him down. He couldn't help it, he started to whimper.
The largest beast took a step forward and growled, a low, deep, threatening growl. 'This is it. I'm fucked.' Gendry closed his eyes.
Then he opened them again, and to his shock, they were gone. The one with the blue eyes, all of them, disappeared into thin air, leaving nothing but a ringing silence. He might have imagined it all, were it not for the tiny little cuts on his chest, imprints of where the thing's claws had sunk into the tender flesh.
He hadn't gone home that night, but instead he had run, the entire way, to his uncle Renley's. If anyone could have explained it, if anyone could have listened and not thought he was crazy, it was Renley, his father's younger brother. He had been right.
"Werewolf," Renley had said casually, dabbing the cuts on Gendry's chest with alcohol.
"Don't be stupid," Gendry said, wincing. "Werewolves don't exist. They're just stuff made up to freak kids out and to put in TV shows."
"Oh really," Renley said drily. "What do you think attacked you then?"
"A wolf," Gendry said, but his voice faltered. "A really... Big... One."
"Look," Renley said, "do you honestly think that thing was really just a wolf?"
Gendry swallowed, hard, remembering the icy eyes and the teeth, and the enormity of the thing. It was like no wolf he had seen in any picture.
"Yes," he said... "No."
Renley sighed.
"I'm actually surprised you even saw it," he said. "the Starks are peaceful, even on a full moon."
"The Starks?" Gendry had heard the name before, but where...? "Holy shit, you don't mean-"
"Robert's best friend Ned Stark?" Renley said, putting bandaids on the cuts. "I'd have to say yes."
"No way," Gendry said, bolting to his feet. "Just... Just no way. You're putting me on."
"Gendry," Renley said firmly, "I didn't make you see what you saw in the woods. I didn't dig my nails into your chest. You saw it, you saw it with your own eyes."
"I was drunk," Gendry said, shaking his head. "I wasn't thinking-"
"Look!" Renley shouted, getting up and pushing into one of the cuts, causing Gendry to yelp. "Is this caused by alcohol? Hmmm? Is this just some hallucination? You don't want to believe it, but you do. You know it's true!"
Gendry watched as a trickle of blood ran down his chest. It was true, he knew. It was. But... But...
"Werewolves?" He asked.
"Nothing to joke about," Renley said darkly. "And don't think for a second that just because they let you live today doesn't mean that they're not dangerous. One of them attacked you, and you're lucky Ned was there to put a stop to it. The Starks have an incredible amount of self control for their kind, but even they slip. When there's a full moon, all bets are off."
"Is that why the little one attacked me?" Gendry asked, feeling stupid for saying 'little'. The word 'little' hardly applied to the thing that had knocked him to his feet. "Because of the full moon?"
"Probably," Renley said, finishing up with the bandaids. "And I have a feeling, from your description, that it was Arya, Ned's youngest daughter. This isn't the first time she's come dangerously close to violating the terms of peace."
"The terms of peace?" Gendry asked, lost.
"We used to hunt the Starks," Renley explained, "the Baratheons did, for a long time. And not only werewolves."
"Please tell me there aren't vampires," Gendry said at once. "I don't think I could live."
"Fine, I won't tell you," Renley said.
"Great," Gendry muttered sarcastically. "Are you serious? There are vampires? Ugh, I feel like I've stepped from reality and into Twilight or something."
"Vampires are hardly something to romanticize," Renley said in tones of disgust. "They're lethal killers, and they only mate with their kind unless they can help it. But no one's seen them for years. If they exist, they've been very quiet about it."
"Good," Gendry said weakly. "Because that would just be ridiculous."
"It wouldn't be ridiculous," Renley said darkly, "it would be disastrous. You can't imagine the panic... The terror. Vampires... They're not sparkly supermodels with sexual issues."
"I have a feeling I don't want to know about this one," Gendry had said. "Or about any of this. No wait, let me revise that: I don't have a feeling, okay? I know I don't want to know. I don't want to be part of this, of any of it. All this monster, voodoo weird shit. No! Count me out, sign me off! I'm not... I'm not even a real Baratheon to begin with!"
Renley let out a long sigh and stared at him, his eyes searching.
"Maybe it's for the best," he said with a sigh. "Even if there's peace now, there's no saying what will happen later. Maybe it's best you're not involved."
And that's how Gendry had stayed. Uninvolved. He had finished school, started attending community college and continued his work as a mechanic. For years he hadn't even heard the hint of the word 'werewolf' besides the random add on TV for some teen show, but that all changed... It all changed when his father died.
A car accident. That's what the official report had been, and Gendry had believed it. Until he had been told better. Until he had opened his eyes and realized that he was involved, even if he didn't want to be. He was always involved.
"Do you remember Arya Stark?" Cersei Lannister had asked him, her green eyes glowing in the gloom of her front parlor. Gendry did remember Arya, how could he not? The cuts had left scars, and the scars had never left. Even if he didn't have scars, he would never, could never, forget those icy blue eyes, looking at his throat with all intent to rip it out.
"I've never met her," he had said, his voice cracking slightly under the pressure. He had never, ever, expected Cersei Lannister, his father's widow, to invite him over for tea, even if his father had died. He had never met her, nor she him, and he had thought she wanted to keep it that way. He certainly did.
"There's no need to lie, Gendry," Cersei had said with a smile that sliced at her face. "I know about the Starks. I know everything."
Gendry didn't know what to make of this, so he took a sip of tea. It tasted weak.
"I know they're werewolves."
Gendry choked on his tea, spraying it everywhere. A look of disgust flashed across Cersei's face, but she quickly shook it off.
"I'm assuming you also know everything as well," she said. "So you know that it was no car accident that killed your father."
"What?" Gendry asked, shocked.
"You don't know," for some reason, Cersei didn't seem surprised. "But Gendry... You must have guessed. You saw the creature, what a vicious, wild animal it is."
"What creature?" Gendry asked, still lost.
"Why Arya Stark, of course," Cersei said with a frown, and there was a fury in her eyes, Gendry could see it. "She killed your father."
"What?" Gendry felt as though something had hit him in the chest. It was getting difficult to breathe... The room felt like it was closing in around him... The darkness creeping...
"It's not surprising," Cersei said briskly, a pure hate behind her voice. "The girl was a wild animal, even when she hadn't turned. Uncontrollable. But Robert wouldn't see any of it, would he? He believed them, and all their lies, and in the end they got him. They would have killed all of us if I hadn't been able to get my hands on a gun and shoot Ned Stark. After that, the girl fled into the woods."
"You mean... You mean that... That thing is still out there?" Gendry demanded, gripping into the arms of his seat, his horror replaced with a lung-crushing rage.
"Yes," Cersei said, her eyes flashing. "Arya Stark runs free."
"But she could kill again!" Gendry gasped, curling his hands into fists.
"Exactly," Cersei said smoothly. Gendry slammed his hand against the table, so hard the tea pot and cups clattered. "That's why you're going to kill her."
"What?" Gendry gasped, his rage momentarily put on hold for his surprise.
"It was your father's dying wish," Cersei said. "As he lay dying in my arms, he asked... He asked for you. He wanted you to avenge him."
Her words echoed in his mind now, as he gripped the steering wheel of his car, sitting parked at the edge of the woods. The woods that had given him nightmares for years. Now he no longer feared them. He was ready for what was inside.
Clutching his cross bow, Gendry opened the door and then closed it, careful to make as little noise as possible. He popped open the trunk, and stared down at the sledgehammer there, gleaming in the moonlight. He had known, right off the bat, that he couldn't take a werewolf down with a crossbow. He was a crappy shot, at best, but he knew that if he could hit it, and wound it, he'd be able to bash its head in with the hammer. It was ruthless, and it was brutal... But it's what it deserves.
He snatched up the sledgehammer and closed the trunk and then proceeded into the woods. The moonlight sifted through the trees, but this time Gendry wasn't afraid, he was filled with purpose. After he had slinked sufficiently into the woods, he looked around for the perfect spot. He found it in a ditch at the base of a tree. Crouching there, he was invisible, just another shadow.
Now came the tricky part. Gendry had no hope of finding the wolf simply by looking for it, but he knew that it was a full moon, and a full moon meant bloodlust. Arya Stark had been wandering around in the woods for three days. She was bound to be a little crazed, if she wasn't already. Where that might have frightened him once, it was now to Gendry's advantage.
Carefully, he reached out and, with the tip of one of the arrows, he cut his finger, blood bubbling from the hole in his skin. He could smell the scent, and he knew the wolf could. He could almost sense what the smell of his blood was doing to it. The crazed sniffing, the shift from icy blue to blood red...
There was the crack of a twig, and then he heard its breathing. Low, ragged, a soft growl. It was right behind the tree...
Gendry held his breath and held his bow at the ready.
Cautiously, the wolf took a step forward, and then another. Gendry turned his head, and when he saw its eyes, they weren't icy, but a terrified, frantic gray.
It jumped-
And then it screamed. A girl's scream.
Gendry leapt to his feet as the beast toppled over, an arrow in its side, crashing to the ground, unconscious. There was a moment of silence, and Gendry picked up his hammer, walking so he stood over it, staring down at the mass of fur and claws... Ready to strike...
But then it changed. The fur began to shrink away, and its body began to curl smaller and smaller until it wasn't a beast anymore, but a young girl. She was so small. So tiny. Her hands were clasped around her naked chest, her body curled towards the arrow imbedded in her side, and suddenly... Suddenly Gendry realized that he couldn't do it.
He couldn't kill her.
