Time didn't have much meaning for him anymore.

It ebbed and flowed like water all around him, his body floating on the current of it in a drugged, foggy haze. Occasionally he would be wracked with painful trembles, his muscles convulsing sharply as sparks of pain fired across his nerve endings. He was unable to stop the high-pitched, agonized whines that rattled from his bruised throat, shivering beneath the chill that seemed to soak through his thick fur and down into his bones. When he did manage to drift half-way out of consciousness into a smoky haze of sleep he was plagued by shadows that popped and flickered like firelight, raising the hair along his spine as his instincts screamed at him to run, the broken shards of bone in his leg grating viciously as he tried wildly to get away despite his inability to move, to control his limbs or the demons conjured up by his poisoned mind.

It was the fear that would wake him.

The hot, surging rush of adrenaline, the ghosts of sounds and smells from another life.

He couldn't ever remember feeling so vulnerable; injured, unable to move, the mistletoe working its way sluggishly out of his system, burning like acid through his veins. The pits had been vicious, bloody and violent, but at least there he could see his opponent coming, there he could fight back. Here he was prey.

Occasionally a figure would come and go, sometimes there and sometimes not, shadowy and looming above him and each time he flinched away from it, an injured animal's need to hide itself away. The voice that rumbled in the air around him was low and flat and calm, murmuring words he didn't understand, words that really didn't matter to him in his condition. He couldn't seem to think in a straight line, couldn't control his scattered instincts, but above all it was fear that ruled, and all he could do was lie there and feel it.

Hours, days, weeks, he didn't know.

It was all the same, and it was all pain and fear.

All except him.

The boy had appeared above him on a fresh wave of agony, kneeling over him in the dark and sheltering him for just a moment from the pouring rain. He had been almost wild with the ache of it, almost mad with the flinching terror that human touch had become, but then a gentle hand had stroked down his side and over his flank, a feather-light brush of fingers ghosting over his fur and that fear had inexplicably calmed. It was as though his strength had given out in that moment, the mad rush of water-weak power and desperation that had driven him up and out of the pits dissolving. He'd felt his broken body being lifted up in arms, promises murmured overhead that he hadn't dared believe, but he'd had nothing left to give and so he'd merely given in, collapsing beneath the weight of the drugs, the hurt, and the exhaustion.

Still though, even beneath all of that, his senses hazy and dulled to almost nothing, he could still feel him.

The boy's scent was anarchy in his nose, heavy enough to distract him from the throb of his crushed leg and the deep, cutting pang of the slash in his tender belly. It was frenetic, changing, sharp with anxiety and guilt, and layered over it was the light but lingering trace of smoke. It made something deep inside of him quake with a half subconscious warning and he tried desperately to follow it, to follow its spiking nuances in a useless bid to prepare himself, protect himself.

It should have been the final horror.

Should have tipped him over the edge into utter panic.

It was only the pained sorrow of it that stopped him from summoning the very last dregs of his energy and lashing out, a miserable sincerity that smelled like a storm between the trees, all natural chaos and crashing thunder over cool, clean rain and damp earth.

Somehow knowing that deep down this boy was as hurt and afraid as he was soothed the terror in him.

He had drifted in and out of consciousness after that, every bump and turn and crank of the vehicle beneath him intensifying the pain of his injuries and keeping him from completely blacking out. The boy's scent had lingered in the air around him but was unable to pierce through the dark fog that was slowly dragging him under. A sharp stop and a slam had tugged him back up again, and then someone else was there, someone who had simmered dully with tamped down power and knowledge and the fear had surged through him again, a chill swelling his chest until he felt his body being lifted into a sling and swaying gently as he was carried from the rain into a cold, enclosed space that was too bright and too sterile and sent a shiver down his spine.

He hadn't known where he was or whose hands had roamed over his body then, knew only that they were suddenly bringing him more pain, pressing against the gash in his belly, driving needles through his tattered ear, manipulating his crushed legs in ways that it didn't want to go, but pain was something he'd been dealt by human hands for years, and he knew better than to react. To lash out only made it worse, earning him heavy beatings and starvation for days after, and so he'd lain as still as possible, waiting for the torture to end despite being unable to stop the agonized whines escaping him. Continuous words of apology and reassurance had been aimed in his direction, hazily working their way into his mind but he hadn't trusted them.

Hadn't relaxed.

Overcome with anxiety, he'd begun to run his tongue out over his nose again and again, but then another miserable, almost-silent apology had settled over him like a fine sheet, that sorrowful, stormy scent draping over his shoulders as a hand ghosted down his spine. Forcing his eyes open, he had looked back at the source of surprising comfort and calm, his mind just able to understand the silhouette of a tall, lanky young man with huge, amber-colored eyes. There was both innocence and terrible experience in those eyes, and although he didn't know why, that had resonated with him. Huffing a sigh, he had given in to the exhaustion that had weighed him down to the earth, made him feel heavy and muzzy, given in to the strange calm he'd felt in the young man's presence.

He didn't remember much after that.

He knew he'd been moved, down into the little kennel he still laid in which should have felt like a cage, but it was clean and dry and warm, and even though the wire gate was latched closed the top was open, and there was no frightened yelping or angry snarls surrounding him as there had been in the pits. Still, the walls boxed him in, shrinking drastically when eventually the boy had gone, though the man he now knew to be a vet came and went with a frequency that was grating, words pattering down around him like rain that he didn't care to think about, words that made his chest ache when he tried to listen.

So he didn't.

Instead, he let himself shut down.

He didn't know if he had a death wish. If he just wanted it to end. It didn't seem that way, when he had tried so hard, gone through so much to get out, to get away. It was the unknown that ate at him as he lay in the bottom of the kennel, as the vet worked over him silently and steadily, pumping him full of fluids and keeping up that constant, steady stream of low litanies he couldn't bring himself to care about. The unknown, not knowing where he was or where he was going, knowing that something wasn't right but not knowing what. All he wanted was to sleep, but a dull, nagging unease kept him from fully letting go.

Until he came back.

He'd collapsed in a sprawl of tangled limbs and pounding heartbeat against the gate of the kennel, his scent strong and intense in his nose, overlaid with those of rain and fresh-cut grass and clean, male sweat. There was just a tinge of fear to him, to the sound and smell of him, and caused his own adrenaline to surge, his breathing to come rapid fire but then the boy had settled, at least for a time. As he lay there basking in the strange, unnatural calm his presence brought he could hear a quick, quiet conversation taking place above him that rapidly began to decline. The boy's scent spiked with anger, sorrow, indignation, and while he didn't understand the cause he knew that it stemmed from the other man, the one who's entire being tingled with secrets and awareness. A primal urge had risen up in him, swelling his chest with the need to protect, and that was something he hadn't felt in a very long time.

Something he very much didn't like.

It was a massive effort and a painful one to try to shut him out again. Pure survival instinct, he tried desperately to grab on to his control, to let go of the reactions he was having to this stranger who so affected him. It wasn't right, wasn't safe, the way the boy made him feel, and his instincts snarled at him to pull back from it. Trust had only ever earned him extremes of pain.

"Don't give up yet buddy. It's not all bad out here."

The plea was uttered with such heartfelt sincerity that he couldn't block it out, couldn't stop himself from listening for the skip, the fault in the steady beat of his heart that labeled his words a lie.

It wasn't there.

He'd gone after that but those words had lingered, blanketing him with wholehearted promise even though they shouldn't have. He had shuddered beneath the weight of them, wished they would dissolve, until he couldn't hold up his walls anymore and he fell into blackness, down and down and down into sleep where the wild, storm-winds smell of the boy and his tentative reassurances of a different life followed him under. Specters of another world lingered at the edges of his dreams, memories of faces and sounds he couldn't name but that called to him with the warm familiarity of a home he knew he no longer had. An aching sadness colored his drugged mind's imaginings a deep, dark blue that swirled into black and made his chest ache with loss, but still the words drove through, a knife to bone that pulled him up and out of it again, back into the world at the bottom of the kennel with the sounds and smells of other dogs and cats helped to ground him to a greater sense of reality.

He was here, and he'd survived, far more than he knew.

And he was… better.

Even if it was only a little bit.

He was better.

His chest felt lighter, not so tight, and the hours, days, weeks he'd been asleep seemed to have loosened something in him so that he could actually breathe again. His body was still terribly battered and broken, poison still humming in his blood, but there was a little bit of taught iron in his muscles that wasn't there before, the smallest spark of energy that had him rolling slowly and painfully up onto his stomach so that he could blink and stare muzzily through the gate at the concrete floors and metal shelving in the back of the little clinic. His head was still heavy, his thoughts thick and slow, but he didn't feel quite so cold anymore and while he knew that his senses were still nowhere close to their natural state, his nose was quivering with interest as he followed the thin thread of a familiar scent almost unconsciously.

He wasn't there.

He knew that.

The scent wasn't strong enough, the heartbeat he'd almost memorized wasn't pounding in his ears, beating alongside his own.

But he could still smell him, the phantom scent of him, lingering as it had in his dreams…

Dropping his nose to the cement between his front legs like it had been snapped there with a magnet, he pressed it hard to the floor and snuffled around, rubbing his muzzle against the thickly woven blanket beneath him. The smells came bursting up out of it towards him like sunshine, all green grass and crisp fall nights, mud and clean male sweat, the barest trace of smoke.

All the things that were him.

Grabbing the blanket in his mouth, he dragged it in towards himself and burrowed down into the center of it, fluffing himself a little nest into which he could disappear.


Hey guys! Review pretty please! I love this little baby story; I feel protective and nurturing of it like it's a fluffy little wolf cub! Awww.