Disclaimer: Everything you recognise from the film series isn't mine.

Feedback: Always appreciated.

The Lone Wolf

Under any other set of circumstances, when dealing with any other lycan, Selene would never have considered doing what she was about to do, but she'd spent enough time over the last month to confirm that Michael Corvin was far from a regular lycan. She didn't know why he was acting on his own or why he was working so hard to blend into life with humans, but if he wasn't a regular lycan, it would at the very least be interesting to learn the truth about why he was so different in the first place. She had kept the private detective on retainer for another day or two to make sure Michael didn't do anything too unexpected, but after she confirmed that he had just returned to his original schedule after the full moon had passed by, she had terminated her contract and paid the man for his services.

Now the only thing Selene had to do was something she would have once considered impossible; have a civil conversation with a known lycan.

More importantly, as far as she knew, she was about to have her first conversation in centuries with someone who knew nothing of the war before she came to them. She appreciated that she was at least potentially violating the Covenant, but Michael wasn't, strictly speaking, a lycan in the sense that he was fighting with them, and Selene had no intention of revealing that she was a vampire as soon as she made contact, so she felt that there were enough loopholes to justify her planned approach…

She was surprised to find that she was hoping this would work out; for the first time in as long as she could remember, she wanted to do something more to a lycan than kill it. Michael Corvin might seem like he was living an ordinary human life, but the fact that he was a lycan living such a life…

Walking into his apartment, Michael shook his head as he tried to push past the fatigue of another rough day at the hospital. He genuinely believed in what he was training for, and he appreciated that he was able to make a difference to people, but when he had to take his 'condition' into account…

God, how much longer can I keep this up?

As far as he could tell his body never showed any sign that these transformations were having some kind of long-term effect on his health, but there was no way of knowing how much longer that could last. His body was still getting older, and eventually it would reach a point where he wouldn't be able to cope with what his condition was putting him through. Maybe he'd just have a heart attack one day and be found dead in his locker the next morning, his body some twisted mix of human and wolf that would just end up being dissected as a freak unless they worked out who he was…

"Good day?"

Spinning around, Michael was initially prepared to be shocked at the arrival of an intruder in his apartment, but his eyes widened when he took in the speaker. It was a young woman, around his age, with pale skin and dark hair over a very form-fitting black leather outfit. She was standing against a wall with her arms folded, looking at him with a pointed expression that reinforced the intimidating posture she was definitely trying to create.

"Who-?" he began.

"I'm Selene," she said, in a tone that made it clear she wouldn't be telling him her surname. "I've been watching you for a while, Michael Corvin."

"Uh… you have?" Michael said, wondering if denial was a worthwhile strategy.

"Indeed," Selene said, giving him a brief smile. "You're a particularly remarkable lycan, Mr Corvin."

"…Lycan?" Michael repeated uncertainly. "What's that?"

"What you are," Selene said, raising an eyebrow with a pointed stare. "Or did you just think of yourself as a werewolf?"

Michael wasn't sure if he should scream or yell at this revelation. After spending the last few months faced with a situation he couldn't understand and had no way of talking to anyone about without worrying that he'd just sound crazy, the idea that he was facing someone who actually knew what he was…

"How do you… know that?" he said, lost for a better response to this twist in his life.

"My family were killed by lycans years ago," the woman replied. "I've been hunting them ever since."

The only reason Michael didn't lash out at that comment was by reminding himself that Selene could have easily shot him the moment he walked into his apartment if she wanted him dead.

"I'm… sorry," he said at last, deciding that any kind of reaction at this point was better than none.

"Thank you," Selene nodded back at him.

"So… not that I'm complaining about it, but I'm guessing that you're not going to kill me, so… why are you here?" Michael asked, not wanting to provoke a bad reaction but still curious about her motives.

"I saw you leaving the hospital about a month ago, and realised what you were based on… well, I have a lot of experience in terms of hunting other lycans," Selene explained, with an edge to her manner that suggested to Michael she wasn't telling him everything. "I will confess that I have spent the last few weeks watching you."

"You have?" Michael looked at her with new uncertainty.

"Only to confirm that you weren't… well, to be blunt, I wanted to be sure that you weren't just ripping people apart when you weren't at work."

"Ah," Michael winced at the imagery. "That's… a possible thing? For a… lycan?"

"I've met lycans who were all too eager to tear into their enemies when they're transformed, and like I said, my own family were collateral damage when a group of lycans got hungry," Selene confirmed grimly. "Believe me, Corvin, if I thought you were anything like those lycans, we wouldn't be having this conversation."

"So… what are you doing here?"

"For the moment… indulging my curiosity," Selene said, taking a moment to look at him in silent contemplation as though searching for the best term.

"That's it?"

"Among other things," Selene said, lowering her gaze for a moment before she looked back at Michael. "You have to understand, Corvin, you basically fly in the face of most things I thought I knew about lycans. You have no interest in indulging your wolf, you go to considerable lengths to retain your human life, and you… well, to be blunt, the typical lycan would have tried to attack me the moment you realised I was a potential threat."

"You?" Michael looked at her sceptically. "Uh… this isn't a sex thing, but I'm pretty sure I'm bigger than you when I… change, and the thing that scratched me-"

"You were scratched?"

"You didn't know that?"

"Like I said, I only saw you a month ago, and I could only access so much of your personal history from before that," Selene explained, looking at him with new curiosity. "How were you… infected, on that topic?"

"Car accident," Michael replied, his mood becoming immediately grimmer at the dark memory.

"Car acci-?" Selene began, before her mood shifted. "That would be… the one that killed your fiancé?"

"Yeah…" Michael nodded tentatively. He briefly thought about glaring at Selene for bringing up that part of his life, but the subtle sense of shame on the woman's face was enough to assure him that she understood she was on the verge of crossing a line, so he decided not to say anything. "It was… I thought I'd dreamed it after I woke up, but there was a… I guess you'd call it a lycan… in the middle of the road."

"The middle of the road?"

"Not normal, huh?"

"They're ruthless, but they're not stupid," Selene shook her head. "It must have just been a very unfortunate accident for everyone concerned."

"Yeah, 'accident'," Michael shook his head bitterly. "The thing ended up pinned between my car and another one, and its head crashed through my windscreen…"

He looked at Selene with a sudden sense of curiosity. "How accurate are the movies?"

"Movies?" Selene repeated.

"I mean, in Buffy and Harry Potter werewolves were created when a werewolf bit a human; does it have to be a bite, or could a scratch do it?"

"It has to be a bite," Selene confirmed.

"Right… would it work if you got scratched by a tooth?"

"Scratched?" Selene looked thoughtfully at him for a moment. "If it was deep enough… why?"

"Well, I always assumed that… like I said, the wolf's head was sticking through the windscreen after the car crash," Michael shrugged. "I figured that one of its teeth scratched me when I was trying to get away from it before I passed out, and then… well, I don't know what happened to it afterwards."

"You don't know?" Selene looked at him in surprise. "It didn't attack you?"

"Well, I was still alive when I woke up," Michael replied with an uncertain shrug. "Like I said, I thought it was a kind of nightmare at first; people assumed that my scratched arms were just caused by the broken glass. I wasn't sure if any of it had happened, but I was still worried enough about the possibility to take precautions when the next full moon happened."

"Good decision," Selene nodded at him in approval, before assuming a more curious expression. "So… you've really never harmed anyone?"

"Not that I know of, anyway," Michael conceded tentatively. "I tried keeping myself locked up back in America when I first worked out what had happened. I think there were a few news reports of mutilated animals or something like that a few days after I'd changed, but I never saw any sign that I'd attacked people…"

"Good," Selene nodded.

"Uh… I get that this is a long shot, but…" Michael swallowed. "If you know about this lycan stuff… is there a cure?"

"Cure?" Selene looked at him for a moment before she shook her head solemnly. "There is no cure for what you are beyond death."

"Great," Michael sighed; he'd accepted that was probably the case, but it was still difficult to hear that was actually the case. "So all I've got to look forward to is getting shot by a silver bullet or having a heart attack when I'm too old to cope with what my body's going through when I'm changing…"

"Too old?" Selene looked at Michael in surprise.

"Yeah…" Michael looked uncertainly at her.

"Michael… lycans are immortal."

"Immortal?"

"Well, they can be killed with silver weapons if the wounds aren't treated in time, but your aging has been halted from the moment you were changed," Selene clarified. "Obviously every dead lycan I know of was killed rather than dying of old age, but I haven't heard anything to suggest that natural causes are something lycans have to worry about any more."

"Huh," Michael said.

He appreciated that was a significant under-reaction to learning that you were apparently immortal, but he doubted there was any kind of appropriate reaction to realising that you were immortal.

"So… I'm not going to die because my body can't cope with these changes?"

"No," Selene shook her head. "You actually have accelerated healing whether you're human or lycan; so long as you aren't injured with silver, you should be able to recover from everything."

"Whoa…" Michael said, staring at his hands with a new sense of uncertainty, before he looked back at Selene. "So… if you can't cure this… can you help me control it?"

"I…" Selene paused in thought for a moment before she looked more solemnly at him. "You have to understand that you're already an exception to basically everything I thought I knew about lycans, so I can't offer any promises about what I'll be able to do for you… but I'll see if I can come up with something."

"…Thanks," Michael nodded at the mysterious woman in black.

This was the most surreal conversation he'd ever had in his life, with the most mysterious woman he'd ever met, but in a strange way, he already felt glad that he had met her.

"So… in the meantime, anything else I should know?" he asked at last. "About keeping safe, I mean?"

"For the moment, do what you've been doing to keep yourself safe and protect others; keep yourself locked up during the full moon and feed yourself when appropriate. Beyond that…"

Selene simply looked at him with a tentative sense of regret in her manner. "We'll see what we can do."

Michael knew from the solemn expression on the woman's face that she didn't truly know what else she could do to help him, but for the moment, it still felt somewhat reassuring to know that he wasn't alone in trying to deal with this any more.