Tobias Clay

The name still felt uncomfortable and foreign on his tongue no matter how many times he silently repeated it to himself, turning the syllables over and over like that would make it take on a more recognizable shape. It wasn't familiar, but it was his, supposedly. It was his in the way that Tobias Clay's life was supposedly his. He'd been told it was his, and he had no reason to believe otherwise, but it wasn't something that felt like his, something he remembered being his.

"So which is it?" Charming had asked the day after they fled into the woods. Their group had already started their preliminary plans for a war camp but most retired to bed once the sun set, with the exception of himself, Charming, and Snow White and a few Merry Men keeping a look out for the Scarlet Hand. He was used to late nights and wanted to take the opportunity to meditate, but he couldn't fathom why Charming was still awake.

"What are you talking about?" he growled without opening his eyes. He'd agreed to a truce because preparing for the upcoming war was more important than a petty grudge, but it was easier to keep said truce if the other man didn't speak to him, walk next to him, or generally exist within his line of sight more than strictly necessary.

"Your name, mon-" Charming cut himself off, apparently struggling with their recent alliance as well. "I heard from the short child with the braids that it used to be Tobias Clay. So which is it, Clay or Canis?"

"I don't know."

(It reminded him of all those years ago, when that was the only answer he could give.

Where did you come from? I don't know.

What's your name? I don't know.

Who are you? I don't know.)

"Helpful," Charming sneered. "If you want my advice–"

"I don't."

"–I'd switch to Tobias. Canis is a little too on the nose." With that, the other man sauntered off. Good riddance.

He didn't think about that conversation much (particularly because the day he took advice from William Charming on anything besides war plans was the day he died) but he did think about Tobias Clay.

Tobias Clay had been a human woodcutter with a questionable choice in apprentices. That was all he knew. It was all anyone knew.

Now, after being abruptly thrown into a town where nearly everyone hated him and he didn't know why, he was used to working with minimal information. But at least then there had been something to work backwards from, people to gather information from. The only person who could tell him about he had been before the Wolf was Howard Hatchett. Howard Hatchett, who had manipulated a mentally ill, traumatized child. Howard Hatchett, who had rewritten history just to inflate his own ego. He wasn't going to ask that man for anything and even if he did, Hatchett wasn't exactly a reliable source of information.

So, as he did with most issues, he turned to meditation.

(Relda said meditation couldn't solve every problem, and he agreed; occasionally you needed to apply brute force. But he couldn't physically fight his lack of memories any more than he had been able to physically fight the Wolf.)

But the magic from the horn of the north wind had been shaky at best (he knew a rushed spell when he saw one) so the memories of Tobias and the memories of the Wolf tended to blend together. Blurred faces, snatches of conversation, a landscape he could vaguely recall, a splatter of red, blood under his claws as they tore into sinew, fangs ripping into flesh and muscle–

It isn't real he reminded himself. But he had to check. He always had to check. He slowly opened his eyes – normal dull human teeth, normal dull human fingernails. No sign of the Wolf, because it was trapped in the jar in his bag. It was actually rather ironic – something that had tormented him for years contained by something as fragile as glass. He had never cared for irony.

The memory of fur and blood still clung to him relentlessly, despite his attempts to bury the sensation. His meditation sessions tended to end like this lately, with the Wolf hanging over him like a ghost, infecting his thoughts even though they were finally separated once and for all.

He stood up, his joints aching with protest- that, too, had been happening more often as of late. The floorboards creaked beneath him- his cabin, as well as the rest of the camp, had been built rather hastily by the Merry Men with the help of magic. And while they had done that, he'd been here. Meditating. Waiting. Being useless.

His eyes lingered on the singular bag he'd taken with him and somehow, in an action driven more by instinct than logic, the jar containing the Wolf found its way into his hands.

The power of the Wolf thrummed under his fingertips like lightning. It swirled and snapped, always moving, always fighting. He knew that feeling well. Up until him and the Wolf had been separated, he hadn't realized how much of his time he had dedicated to battling the Wolf. To protecting everyone from himself. And now he felt…restless without something to fight.

His fingers itched to unscrew the lid.

Instead, he hurriedly rewrapped it in one of Relda's dish towels to ensure it wouldn't break and tucked it back into his bag.

(He was free from the damn monster after centuries of torment and the cursed thing still had a hold over him.)

He was able to not think about names or Tobias Clay for a while because there were larger things at stake and more important things to think about then who he used to be.

Meditation, his own private weapon against the Wolf, became something he taught one of his most hurt victims. It seemed irony was as pervasive in his life as the Wolf.

Guilt had always been one of his strongest weapons against the Wolf. He created chains from the faces of his victims and shackled the Wolf with them, forcing the beast further and further back with every reminder that he couldn't allow something like that happen again. Restraint and keeping himself centered were invaluable as well, but guilt was what he found himself relying on the most.

I concentrate on all the people I hurt when I was unable to control myself he had told Daphne when she had asked. He'd kept the details to himself of course – he had no intention of traumatizing yet another child – but it still rang true. His own regrets had always been what was keeping the Wolf at bay.

But that didn't apply here with Red. She was trying to recover her memories, to piece together what her old life had been just like he was. Guilt was useless, and he couldn't imagine asking a child to put herself through that kind of turmoil. So he found himself directing their meditation sessions in other ways.

He wasn't certain, but he imagined that Red's memories came to her the same way his came to him; in disconnected piecemeal, snapshots of scenes that meant nothing without context. Snippets of a life that neither of them could return to.

"What did you see?" he asked after her face scrunched up in concentration. The question was rote by now, something repeated in every one of their sessions. He occasionally shared his memories to make her more comfortable telling him her own. His (when not bloodstained from the Wolf) tended to be rather benign; sparse glimpses of a forest or a brief conversation with a stranger (or a friend; it was difficult to tell the difference.)

"I remembered something from before," she started. "B-before the cabin, a-and the Wolf. I was talking to my grandmother and…and she called me by a different name." Her brow furrowed, as though the memory was already slipping through her grasp. "I can't remember what it was, though."

"That's alright," he said absently. Red had already agreed that if she remembered anything about the Master or the Scarlet Hand, then he was free to relay it to the others in the camp. Any personal memories, though, he kept to himself until she felt like sharing them with anyone else. But that also meant Charming would be breathing down his neck about this as though recovering memories taken by powerful magic was a feat no more difficult than checking the weather. He would, however, have to deal with that later. "I'm sure you'll remember in time."

Red nodded. Picked at a thread on the pants she had borrowed from Daphne. "You had another name too, didn't you? Tobias Clay? That's what they said at the trial."

His eyebrows furrowed at the shift in conversation. "That's correct."

"But everyone still calls you Mr. Canis." It wasn't phrased like a question, but the uncertainty in her voice made it seem like one.

"It's the name I went by for twenty years. I suppose it's easier to remember," he said. Red moved her fingers to a different thread. "And believe me, child, there are far more important things to worry about than my name."

She was quiet for a moment before speaking, her voice still soft. "I don't think that means it's not important at all. My memories are important to me, even if they don't help us find the Master. Your name is allowed to be important to you."

Though it was wavering, it was the most conviction he'd ever seen her display. It was also the first time she'd ever openly disagreed with him. He was, oddly enough, a little proud of her, of her small act of bravery despite how meek it was.

He sent her away after that, telling her that they're done for the day and could resume tomorrow if she wanted to. The door closed behind her, as quiet as she was, and he was left alone with his thoughts.

Tobias Clay.

The name still didn't feel right. He thought of it every once in a while, when one of his memories was particularly clear or unusual, but it still held no real familiarity to him. It still felt empty, like something that belonged to a stranger and not himself.

But wasn't that the point of names? To be given meaning, rather than have meaning inherently buried within them? Could he arbitrarily decide that this name meant nothing, considering that Canis had meant nothing to him as well at some point?

The shadows on the floor grew longer as he found himself with no answers.

(Wolf was the only name he would never have any doubts about. It had been a monster, a being capable only of bloodlust and destruction. He couldn't erase what he'd done, but he'd be damned if he let that monster dig its claws any deeper into his life.

Hamstead had been the single exception, in that the name had been used with a kind of respect. He'd done the same with 'Pig.' It was a reciprocal acknowledgment of their shared past.

Coming from Hamstead, it was the only time he didn't hate the name.)

It wasn't until after the war that somebody brought up the topic of his name again. Because, while Canis was familiar and it was something he remembered, he wasn't sure if it qualified as his any more than Tobias Clay.

Canis had been, as Relda phrased it, a "place-holder name" that was only supposed to last until they found who he really was. And he wasn't a fool – he knew exactly where she'd gotten it from and what it meant. For all of Relda Grimm's strengths, subtlety wasn't one of them. It had been a temporary name at best. And now, nearly two decades later, he finally had the answer to the question he hadn't even been sure could be answered.

In theory, Tobias was better. Canis may have been familiar, but it was also irrevocably linked to the Wolf. Everyone (himself included) had believed that Canis and the Wolf were interchangeable beings, but Tobias Clay proved the opposite, that he had been someone before the Wolf and could be someone after. It was a name unconnected to the Wolf, unsullied by its crimes.

It was a name unconnected to anything. It was both a benefit and a detriment. Canis had been linked with the Wolf, but that wasn't the only connection that name bore.

The name Tobias Clay may have meant something to him in the past, but it didn't mean much now. Any connection to the name was burned away by magic, torn away and discarded centuries ago. Tobias Clay was, by all means and purposes, a ghost, someone who might as well been killed by the Wolf even if he was still physically alive. Tobias's memories haunted him in fragments; events he couldn't remember, people he didn't know. They were foggy reflections of a life he had already lived.

The day he'd been sentenced to hang, the day he'd found out about Tobias Clay, he had asked if he had a family. It was one of many questions he had about his old life, one morsel of information he craved to know about who he had been. Nobody had answered because the concept of Tobias Clay existing was as novel as the idea of Canis existing had been all those years ago.

It was a question only he was capable of answering, though he wasn't sure if either possible answer could be considered good. Was it better to know that he'd lived alone, that no one had mourned him when the Wolf came to be? Or was it better to know that he'd had a family, one that was forever lost, only alive in his memories?

He may never know Tobias Clay's family. But he knew Canis'.

Canis was tied to the Wolf, true. It was an name irrevocably covered in blood and pain. But it was also the name that tied him to the Grimms, to the family he'd grown to love and the woman who had trusted him when he couldn't even trust himself.

It was also, strangely enough, the name that tied him to his daughter.

Fatherhood was admittedly not something he was particularly adept at. He had been present throughout Henry and Jacob's childhood, as well as when Relda took in Sabrina and Daphne and later Puck. But he was a far cry from a father to any of them. Trying to be a competent parent to Red was a different matter altogether. It was a struggle, and not one he was used to. He had always been prepared to lay down his life for the Grimms. Having someone to live for was…significantly harder.

The aftermath from the war seemed to last longer than the war itself. There were houses to rebuild, streets to repave, living situations to sort out. Everafters streamed in and out of town, a constant state of flux. Those who had been trapped reveled in the opportunity to see the world for the first time in centuries, and those who hadn't came to revisit the town that they hadn't dared step foot in since the barrier went up.

For the everafters leaving town, there was also the matter of paperwork. Passports, birth certificates, social security cards- all things needed to live within human society. All things most everafters didn't have. But Veronica Grimm was nothing if not an expert in navigating that kind of red tape, which was how he found himself registering Red for school with Relda one afternoon.

The process was a little tiresome, but not particularly arduous; mostly just filling out the same lies covering the rest of her paperwork. The matter of her name, though, left quite a few lines blank. 'Red,' though not a common name, was not as suspicious as it might have been years ago. The real issue, however, was her last name. The memory of it still slipped through her grasp, and they were currently trying to find a good substitute.

"We could just use 'Grimm,'" he offered as he struggled to paperclip the registration forms together. Unbelievably, arthritis was more cumbersome in regular life than it had been during the war. Relda hummed in agreement to his idea, but was more preoccupied with separating Red's paperwork from Pinocchio's into more distinct stacks.

"Actually," Red interjected timidly, hiding behind her hair. "I was wondering if maybe I could…use 'Canis' instead." She paused, as though gauging their reactions. "O-or I can still use Grimm, if you don't like that idea."

It occurred to him, perhaps a second too late, that she'd taken his lack of reaction as disapproval. And it wasn't without reason; since she'd taken on the Wolf, he'd been torn between wanting to be the parent she needed and wanting to keep her at arm's length before he could do anymore damage. After all, it was his selfishness, his recklessness that had put her in that situation to begin with. He was clearly unfit as role model, much less a father.

And yet here she was, asking if she could take this ridiculous, made-up name and use it to make them father and daughter in the eyes of the law.

He agreed and Red smiled, soft and warm, as they filled out the remainder of the paperwork.

Weeks later, when he was forging his own legal forms in hopes of getting a driver's license, the topic of names gave him pause again.

In the past, on the rare occasion that he needed to use a first name, he'd made one up. It happened infrequently enough that it had no real bearing on what others referred to him as, but the reminder still rang loudly as he shifted through the papers.

His pen hovered over the form, but didn't make a mark. Choosing between names had never been a problem before, because he hadn't had more than one to choose from. But now he did, and was presented with the choice between a name that tied him to his family, but also to who he'd been at his lowest points, and a name that tied him to absolutely nothing but ghosts.

After another moment of deliberation, he firmly filled in the blank under Name.

The name still felt new. Not entirely unfamiliar or familiar, but still slightly strange nonetheless.

But it felt like his, in that he'd chosen it to be his, in that he'd decided on it rather than having it being given to him with no other alternatives.

It still didn't mean much to him, didn't carry the weight that just Mr. Canis did. But it might mean something to him someday, might be a name that he lived in, created memories in.

It still rung with oddness, but with each introduction and passing reference to it, the novelty wore off a little bit more, fading and waning until it was just a name, just something that was his.

After twenty years of driving, he finally received his license, emblazoned with his new name. It made it seem more real in a way, a physical signifier of the name he'd chosen. It was tucked neatly in his wallet, next to a picture of the Grimms. And there, in official black and white lettering, was the name he'd decided was undoubtedly his:

Tobias Canis.

Both of his lives combined. His foggy past and his uncertain future.

A name worth living in.