Nice long chapter to make up for the past and future length between updates.
This is The Long Awaited -find-out-where-Fenrir-has-been chapter. Some of you have already guessed it, but enjoy!
tw: medical horror/ non-con. (note, i write the medical non-con from Fenrir's point of view and bc I consider him Sapient, it's thus very much non-con in my opinion. it's not dwelt on, but it's there. skip the last half of Fenrir's first pov change if it squicks)
John sighed, tapping fingers in place as Sherlock interrogated the poor trembling man sitting in their living room. He tried not to stare so obviously at the ears sticking out at unfortunate angles from the man's fear-pale face. A year and a bit of running after Sherlock and hearing every desperate plea there ever was from Sherlock's clients didn't get old per-say, but some days he had less patience with the gibbering. Sherlock's oh so gentle demeanour didn't help either, John swore that it was rubbing off on him at the worst of times.
"It was a gigantic hound!" The man protested, huffing the h and stretching the o to an ow in his desperation, and suddenly Sherlock was that much more interested. He spun in place, aborted movement jumping in his fingers and from his wrist.
John was still caught up in the giant hound thing – it brushed close to memories of his army days when he was with Fenrir. It took an effort to tug himself out of the undertow of loss and he couldn't quite keep up with Sherlock's sudden leaps of logic and rapidly changing decisions.
"So you're going then?" He asked; stumbling around the words as he suddenly missed Fenrir with a painful intensity that shocked him right down to a faintly tremoring hand.
"Of course," Sherlock retorted. "I wouldn't miss it for the world."
While Sherlock did what he did best – push the adrenaline close to John so that the missing and the yearning cannot – it was not quite enough, not this time. Perhaps was the fact that he's never liked Dartmoor, or it could be that the hound thing rang too close to Fenrir for comfort, but either way he was uneasy.
Dartmoor exceeded all of his expectations. It was cold, and misty, and foggy, and creepy, and damp, and nerve grating. The locals were more caught up in this hound thing than he thought they'd be, the tourists were willingly gullible – and, well, the whole thing was just setting his nerves off. Not to mention the unfortunate proximity to a military base. It was at time like this where he really missed the heat of the Middle East – bullets and all.
Sitting down for a pint outside, one for Sherlock, one for himself, he got entangled in a conversation with a tourist guide. The man was obviously just jumping on the back of the 'moor hound' myth, and Sherlock was only talking to him for the sake of the case, but there was an uncomfortable twisting deep in his gut as the man spoke.
When Sherlock demanded proof, the guide obliged them with a phone camera photo. The camera warps the image and he has to squint to see it properly. It was blurry, a dark grey-black shape in the underbrush that looks just like a dog. John would be unconvinced, but he remembered the huge size of Fenrir and Lukas's warning and stayed his tongue. Quietly, he listens as he took cues off Sherlock and watched the guide as he defended his position. There was a ring of truth in the man's voice; it resounded deep with the belief that even if there was not a hound, there was something not right going down at Baskerville.
"Rats as big as dogs," He said, "And dogs as big as horses."
He pulled something out from his bag, and well-
It was paw print, unmistakably that of a hound. (Or a wolf, tickled the back of his unconscious mind.) And it was huge. Easily larger that the span of his hands, and big, so big.
"We did say fifty." John swallowed, and he can see the scowl that Sherlock hid in the corners of his mouth.
They headed straight to Baskerville afterwards, John riding shotgun as he watched the grey moors flash past.
They only ran into a slight snag when a baby-faced private jumped out a jeep to intercept them. Sherlock did his best shady politician, but it was clear that it wasn't quite going to cut it. For one threatening moment, their case hung by a thread – easily snapped, about to give way.
John gave an internal sigh and straightened up. Time to pull a non-existent rank; army respected army hierarchy. Despite all their status, a politician will never be of army.
"Captain John Watson," He said, pulling his cover story for his real military background. "Of the 5th Northumberland Fusiliers."
It was easy to call up the expectation of immediate obedience that was required by all officers. All he had to do was remember the way that he'd give commands to Fenrir or to his squad members in a tight spot. The baby-faced private relaxed, worries arrested by the comfort of following order and command. Fortunately, he didn't look too hard at John's id, because it wouldn't stand up to scrutiny, and let them in.
Sherlock did glance at John; that calculating slide of his eyes where he was weighing and measuring evidence. No, that small slip of detail had not gone unnoticed.
It was a nerve wracking descent into the bowls of Baskerville. They were lead through fluorescent lit corridors, past doors and down elevators containing buttons for levels that read like a list of redacted statements (B2, B1, BG3, BG4,). John, eyeing them up, noticed that some didn't even have buttons, just key cards slips. His curiosity was aroused even as he tamped down on the urge to ask 'and that level contains?'.
Tension settled in his shoulders, mantled under a false legitimacy of purpose. Every time Sherlock swiped that damn card, he reduced their bracket of unknown time.
When the lift eventually opened, it was to a room of white lights, cages, the smell of sterile bleach and powerful cleaner overlaying animal urine.
"How far does that lift go?" He asked, for want of a better question. The ensuing deflection reeked of a lie. Bins, my arse.
Each answer to every question he asked slimed uncomfortably around his stomach. He remembered places akin to this, back when the army had just noticed Fenrir, back when Titanium teeth and careful monitoring of growth was done with a keen scientific intent. He'd never liked the scientists he'd met, there was always too much power there, too much of a will to meddle. He got scientific curiosity - himself a doctor, Sherlock, mates back in college- but the army scientists had always seemed opportunistic; the kind to puncture or poison just to note the healing, or the death, and see how they could use it.
These scientists were the same.
"How many animals have you got down here?" Loads.
"Warfare? Biological and Chemical?" and other things.
God. This place: slimier than Mycroft.
They don't get to stay for too long; their bracket of time was shorter than Sherlock had expected. They almost get found out and escape only by the skin of their teeth.
John was glad to get out of the damn place but he couldn't escape the feeling that he'd left something behind.
It was an inexorable feeling that had been creeping up on him ever since Henry had walked into their flat, and as he walked away from Baskerville, it flittered low in the base of his skull. But there wasn't anything that he'd forgotten there, and so he tried to ignore it.
#
Don't let them catch you. John had told him. Don't get caught John had ordered. John had ordered, John had told him – and Fenrir was caught, Fenrir was captured. Fenrir had gone from stone cave to blinding uncertainty and then finally pain and white and capture.
When he could, he paced the bars of his cage, his huge bulk pressed against them as he dreamt of wide flung skies and wider spread lands. He dreamt of lands that ran towards the horizon faster than he could chase it, of stars and darkness blurred in frightening cold. He dreamt of death and pain and heat and brightness until only by clawing the bars and biting his flesh to awareness did he know what was real.
Time in this place blurred, blurred worse than when he was in that cave with Idiot-civilian. There at least Tony and Yinsen treated him as something more than subject-object-expriment-curio.
When he'd been caught, he'd gone from cage to cage in the army as they tried to introduce him to new partners -new command givers. He'd refused them all, was as savage and as dangerous as he knew they thought him to be. Oh to be sure, some he'd given the chance but they weren't pack. They weren't John. Eventually the dice fell and his Handlers could not trust him, could not trust the savagery that lay so close under his pelt.
If Fenrir had known what would happen once the army lost faith and patience, he would have tried harder, been more docile, more obedient. But, he hadn't, and once again, he was bound.
Here, he ran out on the cold-mist-damp hills only when he was lucky enough to rattle at the confines of an outdoor run, when a softened someone gave him a chance, when they wanted to test him.
Test him they had. Once they'd done something so he'd begun to grow too fast and too large. His bones ached constantly, muscle slipping off brittle skeleton. They reversed whatever they'd done once his lungs could not grow fast enough and his too-small heart could not beat hard enough for 'full function'. It had taken a long time before everything wrong caught up enough with his too-large body to return to 'normal'. Even now the cold made his bones threaten again. Once he heard the scientists talking; 'tripping the growth gene – I never expected that kind of effect. … Then why stop? …. Couldn't be maintained would've eventually total bodily collapse …. Yes but imagine we could do … DNA's curiosity take a look'. Eventually he'd drifted into unconsciousness.
It was easier not to listen to his captors; not the ones in the lab coats who poked and prodded and observed, nor the ones in army kaki who fed him and watched at a wary distance. Some knew his history, splayed out in bold print. They knew he could kill, and in this place one face blurred into another.
If Fenrir got the chance he'd gladly slaughter them all. He'd kill them for the activity of it, something to end the endless light and pain and boredom.
They'd tried mating him to some bitches once, pranced heat ridden females before him like that would do anything. He'd mated one, only once, before realising it was what they wanted. After he'd savaged the fourth, they'd kept the bitches to the other side of the bars.
Still the humiliations did not stop. Humans were too clever by half. They paraded heat-smell before him, letting him get hard and wanting, before reaching latex hands under and jerking, and touching and slicking up and down. Not stopping, even as they restrained him, until he was pulsing shamefully into plastic containers, swollen knot hitching and throbbing in the cold sterile air.
The first time he'd snarled and fought, the second time he'd managed to struggle out the bonds and almost tore a scientist's throat out before he was shot full of sedative. After the tenth time, he'd simply let them have their way, unresisting. It was easier to let the fugue state take over. It stopped him from thinking about John, John who he knew was closer than he'd been in months. He knew this with the sure certainty of kenning; every time he ran the pen, he roamed at all sides attempting to get a better sense of distance and direction only to be met with failure each time.
But something was different, something made him sit up and pay attention to that sixth extra sense. John was close. John was close enough that he knew distance and direction. He knew.
Lights blared, horns flashed. Hidden by cages, walls, and earth, Fenrir knew that John was here. John was here.
#
He was on edge. Yes. Very much so. John's thoughts ticked over restlessly as they drove and he searched for something to distract himself with. Outside the car the moors shifted; sunspots rolling over the dips and valleys before clouds turned over and hid the light in shadows.
"So the email from Kirsty…"
Sherlock's gaze was intent on the road, cheekbones cutting a slash against his pale face as they talked. "The question is," Sherlock said eventually, "has she been working on something deadlier than a rabbit?"
John remembered the steely looks military scientists used to give Fenrir whenever they thought that John wasn't aware of it, part interest in a curio and all driving need to take Fenrir apart to see how he ticked. The sub-textual warnings that Major Vincent Murray had given him when Fenrir's particular abilities had first come to light and then Lukas's flat out warning four or so years later now rested heavy in his mind and turned his words bitter-flat against his tongue.
"To be fair, that is quite a wide field."
They pass most of the rest of the drive in silence until Sherlock looked at him and said, apropos of nothing, "You lied."
"What?" John asked, tugged from his own musings at Sherlock's sudden statement.
"Earlier, at Baskerville. You lied. You've never been a Captain. But you said it like you believed it was true."
Sighing, John settled into his chair. "You're right. I've never been a Captain. But I am one, honorary Captain."
"Explain," Sherlock snaped, sliding a sharp gaze over at John, taking and processing this new information. "All of it, if you please."
John sighed, wishing that he could have a cup of tea and ran a hand down his left leg. "My actual military history is classified. I was doctor, then a field medic- could've made a captain eventually. But at a certain point I was recruited for special operations. When I was discharged they gave me a false history; Captain because it gave me rank and privilege, but it's not what I was."
"No. You were a dog handler."
"Yes. I was."
"And you got shot."
"Yes."
"Something happened to your dog."
"Yes. But I don't know." The words sat bitter and final. Sherlock was wise enough to leave the matter alone and John turned to look out the window, watching the land with growing sense of unease.
God, did he hate Dartmoor.
#
Gate's clanged and opened, and from where Fenrir lay on his thin foam pallet he could hear the scientists talking and he twitched his ears in interest. He knew these two white-coats well. One of them was soft hearted; slipped him jerky in his bowl, let him out for runs sometimes if he'd been good. Fenrir had been good today.
He'd been good even in the knowledge that John was close, John was so close, and all he wanted to do was fight-bite-find. He'd been good today, even though all the lights flashing and alarms blaring made him want to run and fight and hide and tear. They'd given him something after that, with their sharp needles, and now he couldn't sense John at all. But John slipping in and out of his ken was a familiar enemy now, a familiar wound that he welcomed; let it nurse inside his chest like a twisted-wrong-mutant pup.
So now, he nursed the pain, and listened to the white-coats talking.
"He's losing condition," Softheart-perfume-white-coat was talking to the other female scientist.
"So?"
"So- if he loses muscle mass, the tests that we have to do each month on his capabilities are erroneous."
"What has this got to do with me?"
Softheart-perfume-white-coat sounded exasperated as she answered. "To get an accurate result, he needs to be in a consistent condition. He needs exercise, consistent exercise. He's not getting that in a cage. As the Lead Researcher for this project and this subject, I need you to sign off on it before I can take him out."
"Take him out?" The word was a snap, sharp with suspicion.
"It's fenced out; I don't have to pick up its shit, and its temper is seriously improved. Do you know how many times it has bitten people? Much less with exercise, let me tell you!"
There was a long sigh, and then, "Fine," Another huff, before the same voice, now softened with concession said, "Look, we've gotten a defect deer – leg twisted before it was of any use – it's still alive; you can set that out for it to kill. It won't do any harm. Might stop it from trying to savage everything in sight."
"Thank you."
A thrum of excitement layered itself in Fenrir's chest, he was going to go out. He was going to go out! An excited noise thrummed out from him before he could stop it, and then he felt angry with himself for being excited about this, for feeling happy that they were letting him out. Like he should scrape and lick and play pretty for them if they let him go out.
He could never get out, not until he was with John, and none of this could get in the way. He would kill them all if he had too - even the softhearted-white-coat. He would be fast with her, make it quick, make it as painless as he could.
Licking his chops, he let one of the khaki soldiers loop thick cords around his neck and did not struggle even when it tightened. They did not lead the way to the outside, but kept behind him, prodding him up white corridors and past cages. Every time Fenrir attempted to stop and sniff, he was prodded forward by the khaki soldiers who were keeping the long metal poles, to which the loops of rope were attached, held firm, thus keeping Fenrir at a distance.
If Fenrir really put his mind to it, it wouldn't do much to hinder him for he was larger than he'd ever been before. It took three khakis, all with their own loop poles, for them to feel comfortable with taking him out, and it would take at least three more to control him if he put his mind to it; but for the moment, he was too interested in going out than anything else.
Dusk was just falling when they reached the outside, and Fenrir lifted his muzzle to the darkening sky and relished in the scents he was inhaling. Eagerly, he pulled his way toward the caged grass enclosure at the back of the facility, ignoring the uneasy fear smells of the soldiers around him, or the (pleasing) smells of fear-dog-submission.
The enclosed area at the back was the size of two football pitches roughly overlaid on each other, and Fenrir's breath came in explosive pants as he leaned forward in anticipation. The gate closed behind him and the loops of rope came off from around his neck, and then he was away.
The ground in the fenced run dipped sharply 100 meters from the gate, the deep slope and angle meant that no one watching from the gate could see down into the valley, and that was where the scent of live prey came to meet him.
The deer's head jerked up when he approached, the prey response kicked in and then it was scrambling off. It stumbled on its lame leg, but it was fast enough to give him a challenge even as he toyed with it. Adrenaline shot through him as he ran, enjoying the relative freedom even as he enjoyed the hunt.
Eventually though, the deer stumbled and went down, rolling over and down the slope bleating fearfully. He dived in; jaws latched to its neck, fastened around its throat, and tore. The windpipe crushed and ripped, hot blood filled his mouth and Fenrir was lost to the bliss of hunt-kill-success.
The prey was small, hot-warm-alive, under his bulk and he slashed his claws deep into it. He howled ecstatically; throwing his head back to the sky to signal his triumph. Panting furiously, he howled once more, this time longer, to let the white-coats and khaki soldiers that he was dangerous even when sedated, and began to feast. He ripped into the deer, going for the meatiest parts, liberally coating his muzzle in blood.
Eventually, sated, blood-fat and kill-dumb, he heaved his bulk up and returned to the gate. He left his dead kill there, let the khaki's and white coats clean it up, and moved back to his cell, licking bloody chops and watching the khaki's watch him.
If they feared him - good. It was all the better.
Thanks for reading, reviewing - if you enjoyed it, pls let me know, they make my day every time!
As always, if you'd like authors comments, outtakes, and meta, just ask and I will deliver - I'll be backpacking for all of July, so replies may be sporadic, but i'll get there.
