Wolves and Witches
By Chibi Hime
AN: Part 2 of 3 (I decided to make it a 3 parter ) for Karashi's Gwevin contest on Deviantart. Ben 10 belongs to Man of Action/Cartoon Network. To Grandmother's House belongs to Karashi and this AU belongs to me XD.
Part 2: The Witch
Gwen squealed as she felt the brown spider's little feet crawl up her arm.
"Easy, Gwen, it can't help being ugly," Verdona's wise, yet somehow youthful voice reassured her granddaughter.
Gwen's emerald eyes lit up and she smiled.
"It isn't that Grandma Verdona. He tickles," she said happily.
The older witch smiled down at her apprentice.
"This is true," she said calmly.
Gwen looked around her quickly. Her grandmother's warm cottage smelled like Rosemary and Sage with a hint of Cinnamon. All sorts of magical herbs and ingredients filled the shelves and handmade decorations and charms to ward off bad spirits hung in every corner. It was Grandmother's House, after all. Safe, soft and protective.
"Alright, Gwen dear, do like we practiced," Verdona said, wiping her hands on her apron and straightening her skirt.
Gwen nodded. With a few arcane words, she doubled the spider's size. It looked up at her curiously before leaping off her arm and crawling up the wall to the rafters. Gwen frowned.
"I was supposed to triple its size," she said, slightly disappointed.
"Relax, Kiddo. When I was your age, I could hardly handle that spell," Verdona patted her shoulder reassuringly.
Gwen smiled.
"Hey, why don't you head outside and gather me up some mushrooms. The little purple ones with the spots. It'll make a mean love potion," her grandmother said, winking.
Gwen rolled her eyes and brushed a loose bit of her short orange hair behind her ear.
"Grandma Verdona, there's no such thing as a real love potion. Only infatuation draughts and frankly, there's no one around I'd want to use them on,"
"What about that Morningstar boy? He's a handsome little thing," Verdona said smiling.
"I guess, but he's...I don't know. He's not my type at all. Besides, he is away at boarding school for the next two years a few counties over," Gwen said flatly.
"Maybe so, but you still need practice. You don't have to use it, just make it," her grandmother winked, handing the younger girl a large basket and practically shoving her out the door.
Gwen paused a moment to consider where she was going.
With a sigh, she headed off into the forest.
It was a bright, warm morning. Sunlight shone in beams through the thick trees and birds sang overhead. Gwen walked on, managing to find the ingredients she needed without much fuss. As she was reaching the edge of the forest, she heard a loud snap. When she went to investigate, she found a trap had been sprung by a passing rabbit. The poor creature was dead now, crushed by the cruel metal jaws. Frowning, Gwen opened the trap, put the rabbit in the basket and used her magic to turn the trap into an interesting piece of statuary. She groaned. Poaching. This was her grandmother's forest and poaching wasn't supposed to be allowed. It made her wonder if there were any more traps and therefore, any more trapped animals.
Indeed there were.
Gwen found several more snared birds, which she released, and in the distance, she could see a small, black furred form in the green underbrush. The closer she got, she believed she was looking at a wolf.
The black wolf appeared to be sleeping in plain sight in broad daylight. It was a small, slender creature that lay on its side in the tall grass. Puzzled, Gwen quietly approached and watched for several long moments before easing forward. Her breath caught in her throat when she saw what held him. A steel trap had embedded itself into his front right paw. The grass surrounding the poor creature was covered with little red specks that revealed what a struggle he had put up to try to escape. Carefully, the little witch girl eased the release open and the wolf's bloodied paw fell limply out. With hands trained to be gentle for magic, Gwen placed her hands around the wound.
In a dark flash, the wolf awoke, brown eyes blazing and it spun around, sinking its teeth into her wrist. Gwen gasped, but didn't scream. She bit her lip to hold back her cry of surprised pain. She saw the pitiful little wolf shaking.
He couldn't help himself. When he felt those hands on his injured foot, all he remembered were those terrible, groping, grabbing, tugging hands from the night before. He could see those cruel blue eyes leering at him, always staring, never looking away. While some people had looked away, that pair of blue eyes never did. They had been sure to get their money's worth. They were cold, cruel, and sadistic. They enjoyed what they saw. Kevin couldn't stand it.
Let me go! Leave me alone! Don't Look At Me! his mind screamed.
The little witch held tight to the wolf and petted him reassuringly. She felt him shivering in her grasp. Slowly, Kevin eased his jaws off of her arm, his heart pounding against his ribcage in outright terror. He tried to stand, but fell the instant he put weight on his injured leg. With a yelp of pain, he stumbled forward, glad for once that his cheeks were covered with fur to hide their embarrassed blush. Those little hands stroked his face and a series of kind words came from the mouth of the red head. Pulling his legs and tail to himself, the wolf boy whimpered. The girl, bleeding from where he had bitten her, picked his head up and placed it in her lap.
"You don't have to be afraid of me. I am going to help you," she said softly.
Her words were so sweet they could have touched the heart of the most cruel of men, so, for the lost, frightened, and wounded boy, they were the most welcome he had ever heard in his life. He trusted her...he...
When she tried to pick him up, Kevin remembered walking home, minding his own business...then being grabbed from behind, lifted and held tightly against his will...
Without meaning to, he slashed at the girl with sharp claws. She shrieked and let him go. Kevin hit the ground and had the air knocked out of him. He didn't bother trying to get up. He just lay there and whimpered.
"I am going to pick you up and take you to my grandma's. We'll help you. I just need to carry you there," Gwen explained, easing her arms under and around the wolf's slight frame slowly and easing him up.
Though it took a lot of resting and balancing, Gwen finally managed to get both herself and her newly adopted charge back to Verdona's cottage.
The older witch was none too pleased at what her granddaughter had with her.
Verdona sensed what exactly Gwen had brought into her cottage the instant she opened the door. However, the older witch felt her heart jump to her throat when she saw the dried blood along her granddaughter's wrist.
"Did he bite you, Gwen? Did he? Did he bite you?" her voice was manic as she seized Gwen's arm in her hands and pulled the skin taut, looking for the teeth marks.
Gwen thought that bringing in a wolf would be more exciting than the little bite he had given her. It wasn't nearly as bad as it looked. A little magic and it would be gone the next day. What was the big deal?
"Yeah...so? It wasn't bad. He was just scared. It was my fault. I touched him while he was sleeping,"
Verdona looked like she was about to cry.
"Do you realize what he could have done? What he is?"
Gwen blinked.
"A wolf?" she asked.
Verdona almost slapped her. She had thought Gwen would be able to recognize a werewolf from a mile away. Still...she supposed he was awfully small. He really didn't look anything like the hulking beasts that were pictured in the magic books Gwen had been studying. Without another word, Verdona seized the wolf out of Gwen's arms and stuck a finger against his neck. Using her aura, she felt around. Curses like this were spread through hate. If he hated the curse he was under, his bite would only spread it to others. Verdona paused. He didn't seem to hate that at all. The only hate she could find was targeted at outside sources. He hated people and things, not his curse. It was almost as if he didn't realize he was cursed at all. His bite was harmless. He could have bitten either of them a hundred times and all it would have done would leave teeth marks. With a sigh of relief, Verdona channeled her aura to see what was wrong with her furry, unconventional house guest.
"Dehydrated, Exhausted, Hungry and an injured front leg. He's a wee bit heartsick too. That's my diagnosis," the witch said.
She was about to order her granddaughter about when she realized Gwen had already retrieved all the supplies she needed and was already doctoring the poor wolf boy right under her nose. Gwen's hands were careful and soft with him, gentle and reassuring. She washed his wound and bandaged it, placing healing herbs in a compress around it. She poured water down his throat and rocked him in her arms until his ears twitched in a dream. Verdona smiled and left her granddaughter to care for their houseguest. She wondered if Gwen's interest would wane as the hours turned into days and later, into weeks.
It did not.
Gwen had taken an instant liking to their little visitor. She would spend hours holding his head, petting him, talking to him and changing his bandages. The little witch would wash his blankets and bring him fresh meat from her own house every day. Verdona had to admire how her granddaughter had stepped up to care for her charge and often wondered if Gwen knew exactly what she was dealing with.
After a week or so, Verdona had noticed improvement. The first few days had taken care of any physical ailments the little creature had, but she found he needed more time to heal something that didn't have to do with his injuries. Gwen seemed to do that, bit by bit, with her constant care and affection. Still, Verdona couldn't help but look forward to the next full moon. There was a lot she wanted to find out about their visitor, especially regarding his uniquely reversed condition. When the night had at last come, the older witch had been sure to gather up some of her children's old clothes and have them pressed and ready. The wolf boy had seemingly disappeared, but Verdona overheard some rustling from the storeroom and nodded knowingly.
Verdona opened the door and entered the storeroom. She looked around and found her guest curled, naked, in a ball in the corner. The boy had his knees pulled up to his chin and his uninjured hand covered the still forming band of scar tissue on the other. The witch walked over with a small pile of clothes and sat down next to him.
He was a slight young man, even without fur. His eyes looked up at her, nervous, as if half expecting she would respond violently to his presence.
Verdona smiled.
"It is alright, hun. What kind of witch would I be if I didn't recognize one of your sort the instant I saw you. Here, I brought you some clothes,"
He accepted them and uttered a somewhat slurred "thank you". At first, the witch thought it was him just being nervous, however, she found herself realizing it was part of his diction. He had a strange, foreign accent that, when combined with his rare occasion for speech, gave him a peculiar dialect that seemed to annoy him at times when he couldn't say what he meant.
After her was dressed and seated at the kitchen table, when she asked him about the conditions of his curse, he seemed to not understand what the witch was talking about. It was as if he truly didn't understand what he was.
"So, you are telling me your mother never told you that you were cursed?" Verdona asked, a bit more accusingly than she meant to.
Kevin seemed to glare at her momentarily.
"No," he answered simply, with no inclination that he was going to elaborate.
"You don't like to talk much, do you?" she asked.
"Why should I? Nobody ever listened,"
Nobody ever wanted to.
Because you talk funny. Because you aren't like them. You must be stupid.
That makes it alright for us to do whatever we want.
Kevin's fist clenched as he remembered all the reasons others had refused to be associated with him over the years.
"Come now, boy. There must be someone out there who can understand you and your condition," Verdona said calmly, pouring herself and her guest a cup of tea.
"No. No there isn't. No There are only those who haven't had the chance to poke and prod me yet. I'm a curiosity, that's all. They can't see me like I am," Kevin said, his voice sounding heavy and miserable. Things, feelings and emotions were so pure in his head, that every time he tried to articulate them, it came off sounding bulky and wrong.
Verdona sighed and handed him the cup of tea she had poured him.
"Poor little fuzzball. What happened to you that made you feel that way?" the older woman asked.
Kevin looked down at his reflection in the teacup. How could he explain it to someone who didn't know what it felt like? Someone whose body never changed and was free to do and go and speak as they pleased at any time? To be as they were all the time? The face he had now...his face, didn't even feel like his, he saw it so rarely.
He was about to tell her about how he had been kidnapped when suddenly...
There was a loud series of crashes from the closet.
Kevin looked up as Verdona yanked it open.
There under a pile of tipped over pots, pans, and assorted herbs was Gwen. Her bright green eyes looked beyond her grandmother and stared at Kevin in wonder. The girl's stare made him feel uncomfortable. He pulled the dark shirt he had on up, even though it did nothing to cover any more skin.
"Gwen, it isn't polite to stare, dear," Verdona reprimanded softly.
Gwen paled and bowed her head.
"I'm sorry," she said quickly, avoiding eye contact with Kevin.
He frowned, but turned his attention to Verdona, who constantly talked about her skills as a witch and how she had recognized Kevin as human as soon as Gwen had pulled him in. Kevin kept looking in Gwen's direction, but every time he did so, he found that she was looking down at the floor nervously.
After the old woman had gone to bed, the two teenagers were left in each other's company. Kevin had no idea how to act around Gwen and found he didn't have anything to say to her. It wasn't that he didn't like her. He'd grown very fond of her over the last few weeks. It was she who had found him, taken him to her grandmother's house and spent days nursing him back to health. It was just that for the past few weeks, she had known him as a wounded animal and not as...whatever he was. Kevin had no idea how she would take that. He didn't know how anyone would take it. Everyone in his camp had always known about him, even before he did.
"I won't ever watch," Gwen said suddenly.
Kevin started and looked at her.
"Not if you don't want me to. Not if it hurts you," Gwen finished, turning away from him and blushing slightly.
Kevin looked her up and down with his earth toned eyes. She cast him a quick glance with her emerald ones before taking his hand in hers. Kevin started, not accustomed to anyone going out of their way to touch him when he wasn't furry. Not that he minded, most of the time. But...but Gwen's hand was different. It was soft without being weak, it held without making it feel like he was trapped.
"It was wrong what they did. They didn't have any right at all," Gwen said with tears in her eyes.
"Wha-?" Kevin started.
Gwen sniffed.
"Why you ran away. How you came to be here in the first place,"
Kevin's face paled.
"How?" he asked.
"When you were asleep. When I first brought you home...I didn't mean to, I swear, but Grandma is always having me practice my dream seeing. I didn't know. I mean, I thought you were chasing a rabbit or something the way you were thrashing around. But when I looked in your head...it was just terrible. I pulled out and never did it again, but...but,"
"You knew?" Kevin asked.
Gwen bit her lower lip and nodded.
"But that's okay. I mean. I like you the way you are. You're really helpful. I've enjoyed having you around these past few weeks," Gwen said quickly.
Kevin sighed. It was actually a relief that Gwen had already known. It actually explained a lot of things.
And thus, did things carry on in much the same way for two and a half years.
Kevin found himself not minding if he spent the rest of his days with the two witches...Gwen in particular. He would walk with her anywhere and none of the beasts of the forest or the town lowlifes would bother her. He used his sense of smell to find her all the ingredients she ever needed...and some she didn't know grew in the forest. He guarded the house while the two women slept and all manner of other tasks they managed to come up with for him. While his thoughts did often bring up his mother, he enjoyed being with the witches and, with the exception of his mother, found he did not miss his old life at all.
When he had arrived, he had been worse for wear, scraggly from travel and skinny from not really knowing what to do with himself. Over the past two years, he had built himself up and was now slightly more muscular, in either of his forms. As a wolf, his coat was full and healthy, as a young man, he was broad shouldered and roguishly handsome, though he would never admit it.
All proceeded well until one day, on the way back to the woods from delivering a bottled elixir to a customer, the not so little witch and her lupine companion came across a golden haired young man who blocked their path. Gwen no longer feared anyone, so long as Kevin was with her, and spoke up.
"Good Day, Mike Morningstar," she said clearly, but not very welcoming.
The Morningstar youth seemed to ignore her comment and took a keen interest in her wolfish companion.
"I said Good Day!" Gwen said somewhat loudly.
"Nice dog. Is he yours?" Mike asked smugly.
Gwen heard Kevin snarl behind her. She quickly touched his head with her slim hand.
"No. He's his own. He just stays with me," Gwen said quickly.
"How long?" the blonde asked.
Gwen swallowed.
"Going on five years now. Why?" she lied hastily.
Mike leaned over so he could look her companion in the eye. Those icy blue eyes felt like they were digging into Kevin, looking for some hint that revealed something other than the animal companion of a witch in training. Kevin tried to look blankly forward. He swallowed his pride and pretended to paw at Mike the way he had seen common dogs do. He whimpered slightly. Mike smiled and ruffled the wolf boy's fur on his head. Kevin fought back the urge to bite him.
"Five years? I don't remember seeing him before I went off to boarding school. Though that does remind me, I've been looking for a murderer," Mike said cooly, keeping his eyes on Kevin, never looking away.
"A murderer?" Gwen asked.
Mike nodded, still not looking at her.
"Yes. A mad wolf tore the arm off of a gypsy two years ago. The poor man bled to death. They've been offering a nice reward for the beast's pelt and I aim to claim it,"
"What are you going to do with a reward? You are loaded," Gwen frowned.
Mike laughed.
"I'm not doing it for the reward. It is my civic duty. I have to help the little people as much as I can. We can't have monsters like that running loose and wild," the boy said smiling, still looking at Kevin with those horrible, unblinking blue eyes.
Kevin felt his fur bristle slightly and he stepped closer to Gwen. Mike raised a golden eyebrow.
"As a matter of fact, your little friend looks an awful lot like-"
"Well, he's NOT!" Gwen shouted and shoved Mike back.
The young man fell backward and landed painfully on his tailbone. He winced.
Gwen fiercely put her hands on her hips.
"You leave him alone! Don't even joke about him, Mike Morningstar! If you do, you'll have to answer to me!" Gwen said, rolling up her blue sleeves and straightening her skirt.
The blonde boy saw no point in arguing the point. He couldn't win. Not with the little witch glaring at him like that and not with her wolfish dog bristling and baring its teeth at him. So instead, he shrugged.
"Okay, fine. Sure. I'll see you around," he said, backing up slowly and continuing on his way.
Kevin growled low in his throat. He felt Gwen rub a reassuring hand on the back of his neck.
"Don't pay attention to him. He's just a spoiled Daddy's boy. That's all," Gwen sniffed.
Kevin flattened his ears and whimpered slightly. Gwen's voice sounded like it was cracking. Without warning, the witch collapsed to her knees and she threw her arms around the wolf's neck.
"I just don't know what I'd do without you. I don't want you to ever go away! Do you understand? I like you just the way you are," Gwen sobbed. her hot tears falling on the wolf's ebon fur.
The wolf boy was once again frustrated by his inability to use words precisely when he wanted to.
I know! I've always known! I don't want to go away either! I want to stay with you! Always!
That's what his mind said.
All he could manage was a series of emphatic whimpers. He buried his furry head against her shoulder and nuzzled her there. The not so little witch smiled and hugged him tighter.
"That's good to know," she sniffed lightly.
Kevin's brown eyes shot open and he looked up at her questioningly.
Gwen just smiled and ruffled the fur on his head.
"Come on, let's go home," Gwen motioned towards the familiar path that led into the woods to her grandmother's sweet scented cottage.
With a yip and a bob on Kevin's part, the two of them headed off into the forest.