Note: Hey all! Yep, this is another new fic from me, but rest easy: this is an MTH-adjacent fill and must be finished by the end of 2020 (I was commissioned in the spirit of MTH by betheflame, and the event encourages all adjacent fills to be held to the same standard as official fills) and it is already fully outlined in 10 parts. Though who knows how long it'll really be, because you know how things get away from me... :P
Anyway! Pepper (betheflame) wanted shifters Bucky and Steve, fem!Tony, Stuckony, found family, and some kidfic if I can fit it in too. Which I plan to, so be prepared for that, if you're a bit squicky. I plan some smut too, but there won't be much of an emphasis on it, thus the M rating, not E, and I'll give y'all a warning when that's coming up, as well. The fic should be about 30k, but as I said, it could go longer, or even shorter, who knows. But that's the goal. This'll be a different style of writing than from my main WiP, Cross (which will be updated after I start another 2 MTH fics, hah). A bit quicker, more fluid, not as deeply introspective as Cross is, hell no, we don't want to be here for 200 fucking thousand words. xD
Thank you betheflame for helping me figure out the plot (she wants to be surprised from here on out as I write it, though!) and to Annaelle for going over it with me to make sure it all checks out. Good to know where I'm going before diving in, eh? ;D
I hope you like it! I'm excited to get into this. :D
I will include a spoiler at the bottom re: Major Character Death, for those of you who would like to know how it affects the story.
"She slept with wolves without fear, for the wolves knew a lion was among them."
― R.M. Drake
It wasn't often that Toni Stark found herself in Central Park. Not that she didn't like it, but it was more along the lines that it was really unusual for her to feel the need to just get out. As in outside. To get away from the Tower.
Away from the Avengers.
Again—not that she didn't like them. Hell no; quite the opposite.
She liked them too much, and some days it was all she could do not to vibrate out of her skin in a way that four straight days in the workshop couldn't even cure. She'd tried.
So, Central Park it was, just the same as it had been the last four times, a bare half a year after they'd come together as a team in New York.
Well, okay. Not exactly the same as the last four times .
About thirty feet back, maybe fifteen seconds ago, Toni had heard the scratch of claws on the asphalt, the soft padding of paws, and the whisper of fur against the odd leaf on the path.
She was wondering when she'd get to see the wolf she'd—sorta technically—been living with for the last six months.
Then again, Steve Rogers didn't know she knew his secret.
Toni was startled out of her thoughts when she heard what was unmistakably the sound of a muffled scream.
She was really not in the mood for a late night scuffle, but it looked like it might be inevitable. Despite the fact she only had her watch gauntlet and the suit would take two minutes and fifteen-ish seconds to reach her.
Toni dropped her hands, relaxing her posture as soon as she saw what was behind her.
Most people wouldn't have relaxed an ounce if they were confronted with a giant wolf—well, for all the paparazzo knew, the gold-colored creature that was in front of them could be a really big dog. Sorta Siberian Husky meets Irish wolfhound meets, well, wolf.
Pretty much most people's nightmare, especially on a dark night in Central Park.
"He's with me," Toni called out, and started to walk in the direction of the giant 'dog' that was trying to threaten a pap into handing over the tool of their trade.
It was rather… sweet, in a way, him trying to protect her—well, if the photo hadn't already been uploaded to the Cloud, but it wasn't like she'd been doing anything weird that the paparazzo could've gotten a pic of.
Well, other than wandering Central Park at two in the damn morning wearing nothing but her engineering gear, grease and oil probably smeared all over and hair a complete rat's nest. Honestly, though, she couldn't really give two shits what the paps and tabloids published, as long as her Tower was sacrosanct.
Her team, on the other hand… well, apparently they cared for her image as much as she cared about theirs—that is, she was entirely too overprotective and ridiculous when it came to protecting their privacy and reputations. Steve, at the very least, had taken it upon himself to be her guardian angel. Wolf. Whatever.
"Fionn, stand down," she said sternly, the syllables of the name—fee-in—rolling off of her tongue easily. At the sound of the Irish name, the dog shuddered, but he took a step back and away from the pap all the same.
"He's a bit protective," Toni said by way of both greeting and apology as she finally came to a stop beside the dog, facing the man with the camera clutched almost protectively in front of him.
She didn't even pause to check how grimy her hands were—she just sunk her left hand into the soft and silky ruff of the wolf's coat. The sensation was better than Toni had ever dreamed it would be in her twenty-eight years of life, and she quickly melded the grin that flooded her lips into an appropriately public smile… albeit perhaps a bit too predatory.
"We're just trying to have a nice walk together, if that's alright, sir?" she stated-not-asked. But she also knew that offering information seemingly free of charge would predispose the man to granting her the privacy she was requesting. "Fionn is recently acquired from a Rescue, and I'm just trying to be careful with his socialization progress. You know how that can go, huh?"
It would be much better to have the press think that this dog was just that: a dog. She would much rather the press go nuts over stories like that—plus, celebrity endorsement of shelters and rescues was far too lacking—than have them wonder, and likely wonder in the panicking direction, if this dog was in fact what they didn't want the press to know.
More than dog.
More than wolf.
More than man.
As the man hurried off with the tip Toni had given him—she really wasn't in the mood to draw this out—she curled her fingers through the ruff of Fionn's coat, digging the tips of her fingers down to the skin and scratching hard in a way that had the wolf tipping his head back to press along the front of her stomach.
His nose pressed against the edge of her arc reactor and Toni didn't even flinch as she would have with so many others.
This man was allowed.
"Steve," she finally acknowledged with a hint of laughter to her voice, her right hand coming up to hold his snout still when he startled at the use of his real name, though he quickly settled with a grumpy, put-out look in his eyes. "You and I have a lot to talk about, hm?"
More than sixty years ago, Steve Rogers had undergone a transformation.
The transformation was more than any of them had hoped, had dreamed for—had, in some ways, practically bargained with the devil for.
For what else, a voice that sounded suspiciously like Father Stuart said, could have created what you became.
He'd heard of them, of the wolves. Faoladh, his mam had once called them.
He wasn't sure that's what he was, but it was the only thing he knew other than the less than kindly term the English had for them.
Werewolf.
Wolf-man.
Less than.
Whatever the name, Steve had gained the strength and agility of a wolf, the same predatory nature and tactical mind. The same appetite.
He had also gained the physical form of a wolf. A great gold and grey wolf he was, measuring nearly as tall as the hips of the scientists who'd hesitated to approach him in the aftermath of his genesis, his transformation, his… becoming, as he'd heard someone put it so long ago.
The cradle had torn open, spilling him onto the floor as his muscles gave a final heave, fur rolling over his skin even as he pulled himself to his paws, four legs barely holding him up but steadily gaining strength. He had become something more. More than the military, even the S.S.R. and the O.S.S., knew what to do with.
More than his fellow man was capable of handling, except for those whose eyes would narrow, shift, gleam with greed and ambition and yes, even curiosity, as if they wished to dissect him even more now that he was also wolf, not only man.
So he'd been forced to hide the wolf. Forced to hide the part of him that seemed closest to Steve's true self, a part of him which had been buried deep beneath the surface of his thin and sickly earthly form, waiting to shed said skin and become more.
As if the wolf had always been there and sometimes—sometimes Steve wondered if that was why his mother would disappear occasionally, asking Winifred Barnes to look in on her son for a day or two while she was away. Sometimes Steve wondered if that was why she'd told him so many stories of the Faoladh, so many stories of Ireland and the wolves that had ranged their homeland for millennia.
The call, the lure, of the wolf too strong to forget, to abandon, even in the concrete jungle that Sarah had made their home. The cage she had put herself into so that she could care for her son.
Steve knew the feeling, knew the call, all too well.
So instead of bowing to the whim of the military completely, Steve circumvented their will—much the same as he had when he'd saved Bucky—by spending as little time away from the fight as possible, roaming freely as wolf with his Howling Commandos, and taking mission after mission so that he could not only hunt Hydra and Nazi scum, but also so that he could be free.
Freer than he'd ever been, with Bucky ranging at his side with the wind rifling through his dark grey and black fur just the same as it did through Steve's silver and gold.
Bucky, who had grown up with tales of the Faoladh nearly as much as Steve had, had insisted on taking this journey with him. Had insisted on becoming like him.
To the end of the line.
It had felt so right, his body and soul guiding him in what he needed to do, aided along by the old stories. The way his best friend's blood and soul and heart and mind had called out to him. How quickly they'd shifted, curled around each other like they had when they were younger. The way they'd then raced through the woods near Azzano, high on life and love and liberty.
Together.
A friendship for the ages.
And then, just like that, both man and wolf fell into the depths.
Just like that, the man whom Steve had placed his hopes and dreams and future and heart on, fell into the dark and deadly ravine below Steve's grasping fingers, howl ripping from both their throats, ringing forever in Steve's ear, and rage filling the place where Steve's heart had been. Rage and despair.
Just like that, Steve suddenly knew what it felt like to want to throw yourself off the ledge and never look back, just for the chance of being with his mate—for what else could he be, even if Bucky didn't know?—one last time before death took them both.
Just like that, a week later, Steve gave into the urge.
He thought he'd be with his Bucky again.
And, well… he was sort of right.
In a sense.
Note: Next chapter, more backstory on Toni's life and the Avengers as a whole, Steve and Toni talk, and then we should be seeing some TWS stuff too... ooo this is going to be fun!
Please consider leaving some love, whether comment or kudos. Thank you so much for reading!
SPOILER WARNING:
Okay, so it's Temporary Character Death as I tagged it, even though it won't even really be a death. Basically Steve's going to disappear for a few years (other universe, purgatory, who knows) and everyone will think he's dead and have to move on, even as they continue searching for him. But then he comes back! And they have to find how he fits back into their world. Which he definitely will.