Apologies, the Chapter 9 that I posted a few days ago was the wrong version. This one is the right chapter, and I've done a bit more work on it since then. Once again, sorry for the hiccup. Just ignore the other version, because this one has a completely different ending. Anyway… I'd love to hear what you think. Reviews are welcome.
Chapter 9
Early the next morning, Timber Wolf began slowly waking to the sound of flowing water nearby. His eyes snapped open as he heard a soft sigh before something shifted slightly in his arms, hugging him as if he were a pillow. What was going on? he wondered. He tilted his head up a bit and saw a pile of dark hair spilling across his chest, smelling like jasmine. Tinya. He looked around in the near darkness just before dawn and saw a bridge arched out above him with a river flowing right next to where he had been sleeping. Putting his head back down in the grass and holding still so as not to wake the sleeping girl, he wracked his brain trying to remember how they had ended up here.
He remembered getting angry, leaving the restaurant, being followed by Tinya, and getting cornered by those men in the alley. After that, his memory stopped. His heart plummeted as he realized that the monster must have taken control. It was dangerous when threatened; he knew that better than anyone. He stared up at the bottom of the bridge above him. If someone had gotten hurt because of him, then that was it; he was going to lose everything. His team, his new life, his purpose... Timber Wolf let out a shuddering breath. He should have known that it was only a matter of time before something like this happened. He had no right to risk the safety of innocent people just because he wanted to play at being human.
Another soft sigh followed by a nuzzling feeling brought him back to the girl who had her arm wrapped around him and her head resting on his chest. Tentatively, he ran his fingers through her long dark hair to see if it really was as soft as it looked, something he'd never even consider trying when she was awake. Silken strands flowed through his fingers like water, and Tinya shifted slightly closer to him in her sleep. After yesterday, the prideful haughtiness and fierce determination that defined her as Phantom Girl had faded away and shown him Tinya Wazzo as a person instead of a hero. He'd seen that underneath all of her defenses and walls was a girl who had more concern for him as a friend than his own father had for him as a son. What if she had gotten hurt because of him? The thought didn't bear thinking about.
From the very beginning, she had treated him as if he was as normal as the rest of them. Timber Wolf remembered how she openly approached him without fear or hesitation the first time they met and also how she hadn't held back her anger when he'd upset her. As awkward as it had been to be around her, he'd appreciated having someone around who didn't tiptoe around him out of fear that he might bite their head off. Though now, he had to wonder if that was going to change. There was bound to be consequences for losing control in front of her like that.
His fingers' movement through her hair suddenly stopped when Tinya began to stir from her sleep. Clear, grey eyes blinked themselves awake. Timber Wolf froze, unsure about how she was going to react as she lifted her head up to look around. When she saw him, she immediately sat up, alarm written all over her face. She stared at him, unmoving, as he rose to his feet and reached out a hand to help her up. She stood without his help, and he lowered it to his side awkwardly. He backed away a few steps to give her some space, looking down and apologizing, "I'm sorry."
"Sorry?" her voice was incredulous. "Sorry!? You're you again!" She launched herself at him, arms open. He caught her instinctively, confused at the sense of happiness radiating from her as she hugged him. He had expected her to be upset, scared, anything but what she was now. Her relief was written all over her face as she looked up at him. "I was so worried. When you turned into that wolf, I wasn't sure if or when you'd turn back into you again, so I brought us here because –"
"Wait just a minute," he interrupted, disentangling himself from her arms. He winced as he felt throbbing pain around his middle. He looked down to find out the cause and saw bandages on his arms and on his side. "What happened?"
"You mean you don't remember?" Tinya asked hesitantly. Her happiness vanished, only to be replaced by uncertainty as he shook his head. She bit her lip, avoiding his gaze. Her hands started fidgeting nervously together.
Timber Wolf reached out to pull her hands away from each other. The moment he touched her arm, she hissed and jerked away from him. His brow furrowed. "Tinya, are you hurt?"
"It's nothing," she said. Her smile was forced as she started walking past him, headed for the base of the bridge where there sat a small heap. "We really need to get back. The others are probably worried about us. I got you some new clothes to change into. Can't have you walking back to the Tower in nothing but a pair of torn pants, you know."
When he saw her pulling at her long sleeves anxiously, Timber Wolf cut in front of her and blocked her way. She stopped in her tracks. "Come on, Puppy, we don't have time for this."
Ignoring the use of the nickname, he said, "You're hiding something. What is it?"
"Nothing." Despite the innocent tone, he knew her answer was a lie.
"We aren't going anywhere until you tell me what happened." Timber Wolf crossed his arms. As much as he wanted to believe that she was alright, he couldn't ignore the way she reacted when he touched her. He needed answers.
"I'm fine. It's nothing," she insisted. She gestured to the bandages wrapped around his wounds as she told him, "You're the one I'm worried about."
"If you're fine, then this shouldn't bother you." He reached for her arm again. She flinched away, and that was all the convincing he needed. He grabbed her left hand and pulled her sleeve up in one swift movement. Her shout of surprise faded into the background as his attention fixated on the mottled patches of black and blue discoloring her arm. Finger-shaped bruises marred her pale skin. His eyes snapped up to see her avoiding his gaze. Worry turned his question into more of a demand when he asked, "What happened?"
What he really wanted to know was, What have I done?
…
"I don't want to talk about it," Tinya yanked her arm away, pulling her sleeve down once again. She folded her arms so that he couldn't grab them again. She really wished that he hadn't seen the bruises because the last thing she wanted to do was have this conversation right now. From the looks of it, though, she wasn't going to have a choice.
Timber Wolf's hands clenched into fists as he raised his voice. "Damn it, Tinya, I deserve an explanation!" At her sharp look, he took a calming breath and said, "Please, I need to know what happened."
She shook her head. "I think you are the one who needs to tell me what happened."
"What do you mean?" he asked.
Tinya braced herself. From watching him over the past few days, it was clear that his apprehension over discussing his past was somehow linked with his refusal to acknowledge any other identity besides Timber Wolf. She didn't know how all this fit together yet, but after his loss of control, she was determined to find out. This wasn't going to be easy.
"I mean that there's something going on here that you aren't telling me," she began. Timber Wolf started pacing agitatedly as she continued, "I think that it has something to do with your past, which you never talk about."
"For good reason," he snapped.
She threw up her hands in frustration. "Well, maybe if I'd known about your situation earlier, then I could have helped, but no, you kept that little bit of information to yourself, leaving me to figure out what was happening to you. How could you keep a secret like that from your teammates? Didn't you think we deserved to know?"
Timber Wolf stopped and rounded on her. "Deserved to know what?" he shouted. "That I was turned into a monster by my own father?" There's a mix of fear, pain, and anger in his eyes as words come flying out. "My life as Brin Londo ended in a godforsaken lab on Rawl because a madman used me for a science experiment! Me, his own son! Now I have to fight for constant control against a monster in my head, and deal with the fact that I'm never going to be human again! How could any of you possibly understand what that's like?"
"I had no idea," Tinya said quietly. She wrapped her arms around herself. "No one should ever have to go through something like that. I'm so sorry."
…
I'm sorry, she'd said. As if 'sorry' was enough to fix it. What a naïve girl! Didn't she know that there was no fixing this?
Timber Wolf turned away. He hadn't meant to tell her all of that, it had just slipped out. He couldn't take back what he'd told her, and that made him vulnerable. He knew that people often wondered how he had ended up this way, and the only ones who knew the truth had sworn to never mention it. Tinya had made no such promise. There was nothing to stop her from telling everyone else, and once she did, he could lose everything. No one would want to take the risk of having an unstable beast rampaging around the city the next time he lost control. Frankly, he couldn't blame them either.
He felt a touch on his shoulder. Pulling away, he glared at her. Thanks to her, his emotions were all over the place because his defenses had been breached. He didn't understand the turmoil he felt. What he did understand, however, was anger and the strength that it could lend when he felt vulnerable. He reached to use it as a shield to protect himself. Once armed, his anger sought out the one who had invaded his walls and fought back with a vengeance.
"Now that you know the secret of the Big Bad Wolf, why don't you run along and tell the rest of the Legion what you heard? Just think about it, you'll have all the answers to all the questions they've been wondering ever since I got there, and when you tell them about how I lost control, you'll have saved them from a potentially dangerous threat. Why, you'll be the hero of the week, won't you, Princess?"
Tinya recoiled as if he had physically hit her. "I wasn't going to tell anyone."
He snorted derisively. "Sure you weren't." He stormed past her over to the pile of new clothes on the ground, snatching them up forcefully. "Since I'm sure that none of you want another liability on the team, I'll be leaving once we get back."
"What do you mean another liability?"
Timber Wolf glanced back to see Tinya's pale face. The look he found there was almost enough to make him sorry, but he wasn't ready to forgive her that easily. His voice hardened. "Well, they can't spare babysitters for both of us on every mission, now can they?"
"I don't need a babysitter." Her hands tightened into fists at her sides.
"Really? Then why am I here again?" Timber Wolf asked as he started unfolding the change of clothes. He sensed her defeat but couldn't resist getting adding, "I'm going to get changed. Make sure you don't wander too far away, we don't want you getting lost now, do we?"
Tinya's expression became a stoic mask of cold indifference as she strode past him, making her way up to the street above. After she left, Timber Wolf got dressed, recalling their argument and realizing that his reaction had been way out of line. She had simply been trying to understand what was going on, and he had attacked her where he knew she was most vulnerable. What kind of person did that to someone who was trying to help?
A beast without feelings or regard for the feelings of others, that's who.
He paused after pulling on his new shirt. A pair of fingerless gloves that must have fallen from between the folds of the shirt was now lying in the grass. He stared at the gloves. He looked at his scarred wrists that were normally always hidden by the gloves from his uniform, which he'd lost when he transformed. She must have seen his scars and made the connection. Dazed, he fell to his knees next to the gloves. As he picked them up, guilt washed over him. In the midst of taking his anger out on the wrong person, he had neglected remember one very important thing: even when he had turned into the monster, she had stayed to take care of him when others would have fled in fear.
Quickly, he pulled the gloves on over his hands and ran to find her. He owed her an apology. He should have known better than to accuse her of lying when she'd said she wasn't going to tell anyone. She had done nothing but try to help him and he had repaid her concern by yelling at her, insulting her, and mocking her. He looked around when he reached the street level, his eyes searching for the dark-haired girl. He didn't see her anywhere. He called her name, hoping that she wasn't so angry that she wouldn't respond. "Tinya! Where are you?"
Other than a few strange glances from the few passerby on the sidewalk, he received no response. He went over to an old man sitting on a bench, hoping that he might have seen her. "Excuse me, sir," Timber Wolf said, "I'm looking for someone, a girl with dark hair and grey eyes. She was wearing a long-sleeved black shirt and jeans. Have you seen her?"
The old man chuckled. "Lost your friend there, did'ya?"
"Yes. Please, I need to find her."
"From the look on your face, I'm sure you do. Musta been a pretty bad fight." The old man looked at him with a bemused expression. "She grabbed a cab and said she was going to Legion Tower."
"Thank you," Timber Wolf said, gratefully. At least he knew that she was on her way back and that she was safe. "What can I do to thank you?"
The old man waved his hand in the air. "Never you mind, you just go find that pretty child and make up for whatever argument you kids had. Trust me, you owe it to both yourselves to patch things up and put it in the past."
Timber Wolf nodded before he started running through the streets of New Metropolis. Without money for a cab and losing his flight ring somewhere, most likely in the park, running was the fastest way he had to get to the Tower. He needed to apologize and make things right before she had the chance to do something rash (and probably dangerous) just to prove him wrong.
Even making his way through the city as fast as he could, it still took him the better part of an hour to get to the Tower. He burst in through the front door and went straight to the elevator. He pressed the button for the eleventh floor, wishing he could make it go faster once it started its ascent. He wanted to yell in frustration when it stopped to open at the sixth floor, where Saturn Girl was waiting.
"Oh, hi, Timber Wolf," she said, joining him as the doors closed behind her.
He grunted in response, not trusting himself to speak. He was too wound up to properly formulate a greeting. He crossed his arms, impatiently glaring at the changing numbers of the floor levels.
Saturn Girl gave him a concerned look. "Is everything okay?"
"No, I owe someone an apology for something I said," he responded shortly. He really didn't want to go into detail trying to explain. This was a problem between him and Tinya that he needed to fix.
"Would this someone happen to be Phantom Girl?" she asked, making his head jerk towards her.
"Are you in my head?" he demanded to know.
"No, I saw the look on her face a few minutes ago, and it was obvious that something happened. After what you just told me, I put two and two together. Care to tell me what happened?" The concern in Saturn Girl's voice was genuine.
Since he didn't want to end up damaging another relationship with another teammate, he sighed, leaning against the wall of the elevator as it slowly climbed upwards. "We had an argument, and I have to make things right before she gets hurt trying to prove me wrong about what I said."
Timber Wolf saw Saturn Girl fidget slightly from the corner of his eye. Her reaction made him apprehensive when he asked, "What's going on?"
"Timber Wolf." She hesitated. "It… might already be too late for that."
His blood froze as all sorts of scenarios ran through his head. Questions started tumbling out of his mouth. "What do you mean? Where is she? Is she okay?"
Her eyes were apologetic as she told him, "Phantom Girl's gone. She came back, packed a bag, and took off without telling any of us where she was going or when she's coming back. She just left."
She's gone. The words repeated themselves over and over in his mind. He was too late. She was gone. He didn't know if she was coming back. What if she had decided to leave the team because of what he said? He'd never get the chance to see her so that he could apologize. She was gone, and it was all his fault.
…
After their argument, Tinya had stormed up to the street level above the bridge. She started pacing back and forth on the sidewalk, agitatedly trying to figure out what she should do. It surprised her how much his remarks had felt like a slap in the face, but she didn't blame him for what he said. Her single-minded pursuit of finding answers had backed him into a corner, and she knew that he had only lashed out in an attempt to keep his past locked away safely.
On some level, she hated herself for pressing the issue. She had seen the pain of his father's betrayal and the fear in his eyes when he talked about the monster and what it could do. What gave her encouragement, though, was that now she could start trying to find a way to help him. The desperation in his voice had spoken volumes about how much he craved for total control over the monster, but by making Timber Wolf his only identity, he had shut out his humanity, and created a divide within himself. Brin was locked somewhere behind that divide, he just needed to be let out.
Tinya was sure that if she could find a way for Timber Wolf to remember who Brin was, then he'd be able to have better control. He could stop tearing himself up inside and finally be allowed to heal. The question, now, was: how could she accomplish that?
An idea popped into her head, and she quickly hailed a cab before she could second-guess herself. "Excuse me!"
The cab pulled over and the driver asked, "Where to, miss?"
"Legion Tower, please," she said as she climbed in. Once the driver pulled back on to the road, she sat back in her seat and started making plans. First, she knew that she'd have to pick up some things from her room but leave her uniform behind. She didn't want to take anything with her that might connect her to the Legion. Then, she needed to call in a favor to borrow an untraceable spaceship from one of her less-than-legal contacts. She didn't want to risk being followed. By the time the driver reached the Tower, she felt confident that she had planned for everything she could think of and quickly paid her fare.
Still busy with repairs, no one questioned her when she hurried past them without so much as a greeting. She went straight to her room and started throwing things in a duffel bag. She was done in less than ten minutes. She changed into clean clothes and slung her bag over her shoulder, ready to leave after one last thing. She made a quick stop by Timber Wolf's room to slide a note under his door. She had a feeling that he'd end up blaming himself for her leaving if she didn't give him some explanation.
Tinya was almost to the front doors when Imra caught sight of her. She saw Saturn Girl's questioning look at her duffel and made sure to keep her mind perfectly blank as she kept on walking until she was a fair distance away from the Tower. Even though Imra wouldn't usually probe someone's mind without their consent, Tinya wasn't taking any chances. She didn't want anyone to interfere or try to stop her from her mission.
