Ferişteh left on her sabbatical for many reasons, but two stood out to her as most important.

First– Without Saladin here, she didn't feel safe. Nearly every other soldier in FOXHOUND's garrison knew what she was (during the time without her collar she really didn't have a way to hide it), and regarded her with wary eyes and a hand hovering near their weapon. They were waiting– for when the collar came off or when the full moon came to the center of its arc.

There were those who didn't fear her– most notably Saladin's quiet second, Gray Fox, and his sister Naomi who despite her being as young as Ferişteh had a keen eye and a thirst for knowledge. Ferişteh wanted to stay with them, learn by Gray Fox's side as she had by Saladin. But in every story she'd been told about foxes, no matter how smart they were they always met their end. Ferişteh wanted to believe in these men Saladin had chosen. She wanted to believe they would accept her.

Then with her keen ears she'd heard Colonel Campbell making a requisition for silver-jacketed bullets.

Her second reason was a fire in her belly that grew hotter every second she wore this collar. This wild part of her had its voice muffled, and spoke as the Arabs in her homeland– in a language she'd heard enough to recognize, enough to pray in beside her father, yet still couldn't truly understand. When she transformed against her will, it let out a screech that tore through her and left her ears ringing.

Her second reason was what lead her to the North of Europe. That was the land her mother's mother had come from. Her mother could turn with ease and kept her mind each time. Her mother's mother could do the same. In these lands, perhaps she could find others like herself and become closer to them.

Any who smelled the same as she did, who had her same animal eyes, avoided her like all the rest. The most they ever did was tell her to leave– that it was hard enough living with this without some dumb pup asking them questions about it in broad daylight. At night she turned and raced through the forests, visualizing the paw prints of her grandmother and following them South.

Ferişteh went anywhere that needed a spare gun. She preferred putting food on the table with her rifle instead of her jaws.

Her power gave her a few advantages over her fellows; it took her longer to get hungry, tired, fidgety, so she could wait as long as she needed for her perfect shot. She had a stronger eye, ear and nose than the humans vying for her position. The scope was all but a formality. She even overcame her handicap of the full moon– diazepam suppressed her transformations altogether.

She needed it, but when the full moon called and she didn't answer the wild part of her screeched in her ears, rendering her close to deaf until dawn. She felt more guilt for that than any target she'd killed. She hated it. But she needed it.

Ferişteh distracted herself with the people she held under the guillotine. Due to her skill, when she faced war she was given nothing less than commanders. Her targets were on all different sides of the wars they fought (though it was all the same to Ferişteh– from her distance, all battlefields looked the same), but they had in common charisma and inner strength. And a lot of them were rather dashing. She was a teenager– it was no small wonder she became a little infatuated with them all.

She put them down all the same.

When she was seventeen, a job from a crime syndicate took her to New York. She only knew that her target was stupid and low-ranking; that was guaranteed for any job that took less than twenty-four hours to execute. After dyeing a section of sidewalk red with his blood, Ferişteh wandered the streets.

Her sabbatical had taken her many places and to many cities of comparable size, but this place felt different. It felt alive, humming with an energy that calmed her and excited her at once. For a second, she entertained the idea of turning and bounding down the street, drinking in all this life.

But she abandoned it as quick as it came– For one, it was stupid. A wolf in New York would get herself shot or run over by a car. More importantly was what it was to 'willingly' turn with her collar. It felt worse than turning against her will or not turning on the full moon. It made her body burn and her mind twist. It felt like forcing herself to vomit.

Ferişteh stopped in her tracks and turned to the building on her right. It was a Mosque. The teenage girl could only stare at it. She had been to a mosque twice in her life. First, when she was three years old, before the war. Second, in the middle of the war when she was eight, in the lull after they'd lost her mother.

When was the last time she had done all five prayers? When was the last time she had remembered every word of the prayers she said? It was a friday, ten minutes before noon. She looked down at herself– she wasn't wearing the most modest clothes (her power made her feel uncomfortable and fidgety if she didn't leave enough of her skin open to the elements) and didn't have anything to cover herself.

And even then, was a wolf, a murderer, welcome in a holy place?

When the time for the Zuhr prayer came, she didn't join the Jumu'ah. Ferişteh bowed her head, as she didn't remember how to pray properly. She prayed in a soft whisper– in Sorani Kurdish, because to this day she never truly knew what the Arabic prayers she offered meant.

Allah, please guide me, because I'm afraid that I'm lost. I'm no closer to knowing the beastly side of me than I was when I left. I don't want to know this pain anymore. I want to speak with this side of me, know what it says. I don't want to fear my own fangs. Show me where my rifle should point, where I should guide it. I grow tired of murdering just so I may survive. I must be meant for something more, yet I don't know what.

Ferişteh opened her eyes and looked back up at the mosque; "Assalamu alaikum wa rahmatullah."

Allah and her own feet guided her home to FOXHOUND, where Saladin waited for her. She was made a true member, and she laughed at her assigned codename– either Saladin had rigged it, or the system itself had a sense of irony.

1) The fox is a figure that appears a lot in Kurdish folklore– they often triumph over less intelligent species through cunning, but also end up meeting their end.

2) While blondness and blue-eyedness isn't unheard of among Kurds, considering HOW blond and blue-eyed Wolf is, I decided to make her a quarter-Scandinavian on her mother's side. It also was a convenient enough explanation as to why lycanthropy had made its way so far from where actual wolves live.

3) Kurds are predominantly Muslim, especially in the area Wolf is from, so I decided it would be an interesting thing in my headcanon of her for her to be Muslim (if not slightly lapsed and a bit more casually than one usually expects).