A/N: Hiya! Welcome to the sixth chapter! This time, we get a flashback from Riley! Hooray! And then another big chunk of Peter, because I apparently can't go for too long without writing him. XD Also, this chapter has Riley's full first name in it! See if you can spot it. ;D (For anyone reading this on a03, it shouldn't be hard, since technically you can get her full name from the character tags. But still. XD).
Chapter 6
Riley found her gaze drifting over to Peter's sleeping form more often than she would have expected, and decided that such behavior was annoying. Yes, she hadn't seen him in ten years and yes, she'd missed him terribly...but that was no excuse to act like a self-conscious schoolgirl.
It's just Peter, she told herself insistently. There's no reason to be so nervous. It's just Peter.
Except it wasn't just Peter, was it? No, he was different. Her Peter, plus ten years. She'd have to get to know him all over again, and vice versa. It was irritating and heart-wrenching all at once.
"Peter Hale," she murmured softly, eyeing the way he buried under her quilt one last time before wrenching her gaze away to stare at the ceiling instead. "How much fun the gods must be having, watching us run around in hopeless circles again and again." Truly, it was like a sitcom with a dash of supernatural angst and tragedy.
She could still remember the first time she'd heard Peter's name. As was generally the case with life-changing moments, she'd considered it largely insignificant at the time. Just another conversation, no big deal. Well, kind of a big deal, but not for Peter-related reasons.
When the orderlies first dragged her out of her cell for a visitation, she was too heavily drugged to register any emotion other than a sort of vague surprise that she even had a visitor.
She hadn't been allowed any outside contact for the last few days after her most recent "incident" (if kicking the orderly with the skeevy leer and wandering hands in the crotch could be deemed an "incident"; personally, she viewed it as a service to humanity, but what did she know, she was crazy, after all). And even if she'd been allowed to get in touch with anyone in the outside world, all she had was Rhoswen, who was probably still in Seattle. Or had it been San Francisco? Or Sacramento? It was all so fuzzy and jumbled up in her head, she couldn't be sure of where they'd been when everything had suddenly gone so wrong. Somewhere in California, she reasoned, since no one would have shipped her out of state for the kind of "special care" they claimed she needed; that kind of transfer would be too much paperwork and hassle. So, the so-called echo house was in California. Somewhere.
She put up a token resistance as she was manhandled out of her cell and down the corridor to the visitation rooms, but even as out of it as she was she knew better than to fight back too much; she didn't want to earn herself a second (or was it third now?) sedative.
After what felt like an eternity but was probably only a handful of minutes, they shuffled her into a new room and plopped her down into a cold metal chair that looked like it had lived in an interrogation room in its past life. The orderlies escorting her took advantage of her momentary distraction over her new surroundings to grab her wrists (and even through the fog of the drugs, she could still pick up on the psychic impressions that were battering at the edges of her mind from the physical contact with the two men, disgust and boredom and sadistic amusement thrumming at the edge of her awareness).
Then they slapped some padded cuffs onto her wrists and chained her to the table. Had she been a little more clearheaded, the absurdity of it would have made her laugh.
It wasn't like chaining her up would stop her if she really wanted to hurt someone; she had her magic for that, even if it was unpredictable and hard to control even when sober.
Hell, the only reason she'd used a knife to defend herself against that man in Sacramento, (killed him, she'd killed him, and they'd put her in here because her plea of self-defense hinging on "My psychic powers told me that he was a serial killer and I was his next victim" hadn't gone over well with the judge and jury) was because it had all happened too quickly for her to do anything other than react instinctively and grab the closest weapon available.
So, yes, chaining her up was pointless. She didn't bother to tell them that, though; let them have the placebo comfort of shackling her if they wanted to, she didn't care. Much. (Okay, so that was a lie, she did care...but she did her best to pretend that she didn't, because it was easier to not go truly insane that way.)
"How many drugs are they giving you?" a familiar voice demanded indignantly as the door across the room opened to let in her visitor.
She blinked several times to make sure that she was actually seeing what she thought she was. (She was pretty sure of the things she saw, but sometimes the medications they gave her made her confused, and made her imagine things that weren't there.) "Rose?" she croaked out, her voice barely more than a cracked whisper. "What are you doing here?"
"Visiting my wrongfully imprisoned baby sister," Rhoswen answered, shooting the two orderlies matching death glares as she came to sit down on the other side of the table. "And you didn't answer my question."
Riley tried to lift her hands up to rub away some of the blurry drowsiness in her eyes, but the chains halted her mid-motion and she grumbled a curse. "I've lost count," she told her sister honestly, flinching ever so slightly when Rose got her there-will-be-hell-for-this face. Riley didn't like seeing her sister so angry, so she tried to ease the tension. "I'm a dangerous killer, remember?" she said in a light tone, wiggling her fingers dramatically. "They're just terrified that I'll slaughter them in their sleep, so they give me all the heavy-duty stuff." She scrunched up her face and waggled her eyebrows for good measure, and was finally rewarded with Rhoswen caving and giving a slight chuckle, the scorching hot fury in her eyes dimming somewhat.
"Oh, Rhiannon," Rose said, reaching out across the table to grasp her manacled hands. "We're going to get through this, I swear. I'm going to get you out of here."
She shook her head, a low and bitter laugh escaping her chapped lips. "You heard the judge's verdict: institutionalization until I reach age of majority at eighteen." She tried not to panic at the thought of three years of being trapped in this hellhole; the past three weeks had been torturous enough. But three years? (Well, two years, ten months, three weeks, and six days, but who was counting?)
"It's going to be okay," Rhoswen said again, her voice fierce. "I've finally convinced a Pack to let me be their Emissary. And you'll never guess whose Pack it is!"
For the first time in weeks, she felt true curiosity stirring in her veins. "Who?" she asked Rhoswen.
"Hale," Rose told her in an excited whisper. "Talia Hale's Pack, can you believe it? I just met her in person for the first time today."
"Wow," was the first thing to pop out of her mouth. Even sleep-deprived and drugged to the gills, she knew about the Hale family. They were a prestigious werewolf family that went back generations; if werewolves had royalty, the Hales would definitely qualify as such.
"What was she like?" she asked, curiosity flaring higher as she contemplated what it might mean, her older sister being the Emissary to such a powerful Pack as the Hales.
"Confident," Rhoswen replied. "Powerful, but without too much pride." She seemed to mull something over for a moment. "She seemed kind," Rose said at last. "Firm and strong, but kind."
"An Alpha with compassion," she murmured, tugging absently at the chains holding her in place. "Wish I could've met her."
"You will," Rose said at once. "I'll introduce you as soon as we get you out. Or sooner," she added eagerly, "if you don't mind her visiting you here."
She scowled at her sister. "Why would she care enough to come visit me?" she asked, thoroughly baffled and just a little bit alarmed. "Never mind," she said before her sister could answer. "What about the rest of the Pack? Meet anyone else yet?"
Rhoswen nodded, her vibrant red hair shining in the fluorescent lighting. "Her brother Peter was there, he's like her second in command or enforcer or something. And then I also met her husband Aaron, once they decided I was safe enough to let inside the house."
Talia, Peter, and Aaron. She filed their names away in the back of her mind, out of reach of the drugs and 'therapy' the doctors administered here; she may not have been firing on all cylinders, but parts of her mind were still her own, and she intended to keep it that way, particularly where information pertaining to her sister's Pack was concerned.
"It sounds like you're off to a good start," she said at last to Rhoswen, suddenly self-consciously aware of the fact that she'd let the silence stretch on just a little too long. "The Hales are a strong Pack; they'll be even stronger now, with you as their Emissary."
Rhoswen gave a slightly tired smile. "Just imagine how much stronger they'll be when they have both of us, Rhiannon. Won't that be a sight?"
No Pack will ever want someone as broken as me, is what she almost says but doesn't. Saying things like that always makes Rhoswen so sad, her eyes tearing up like she feels personally responsible for how messed up her baby sister's existence is.
She hates, truly hates, making Rhoswen cry, especially over her. So instead of saying what's inside her heart, she just smiles, and nods, and says, "Sure."
Peter woke up to the sensation of someone shaking his shoulder, and he instinctively lashed out with his claws. He belatedly realized that anyone shaking him awake was not likely to be an immediate threat, since they could've just as easily slit his throat with him none the wiser.
Thankfully, Riley didn't seem to have been surprised by his actions; she easily sprung away, out of the reach of his claws, and then just tucked her hands into her pockets and looked at him, her gray eyes watchful but not wary.
He sat up slowly and carefully, flexing his fingers and sheathing his claws. "Did I hurt you?" he asked, even though he was certain he hadn't; he couldn't smell any fresh blood, just Riley's usual scent. Still, it was only polite to ask, especially considering the fact that he could have disemboweled her unintentionally just seconds before.
"No," Riley said, shaking her head. Then she gave a faint smile that was almost a smirk but not quite. "My reflexes seem to be faster than yours, Peter; you really are getting old."
"Shut up," he grumbled, struggling to disentangle himself from his borrowed quilt. "Did you wake me up just to poke fun at my age?"
"Not just to poke fun at your age," she returned with a sly smile. "Dinner's almost ready," she added more seriously. "We should hurry and head over to the mess hall if we want good portions."
Peter stood up, feeling disproportionately satisfied when his legs held him up with no unsteadiness or dizziness whatsoever; it looked like his werewolf healing had gone to work on the drugs that had been lingering in his system. He still felt a bit shaky and slow just in general, but everything was sharper, and clearer; his thoughts weren't quite so fuzzy or jumbled up anymore.
"You're the one who caught dinner," Peter said as Riley impatiently hustled him towards the door and then out into the hall. "Shouldn't you get a good portion automatically?"
Riley gave a dismissive shrug. "I probably could insist on it if I really wanted to," she admitted, steering him down another hallway as they reached a three-way intersection. "But that sort of thing causes resentment and it's just not worth it to aggravate anyone, not when I need them to trust me."
Peter nodded, then scowled. "Wait," he said, holding up a hand. "Why do you need them to trust you? You're the one protecting them, right? Shouldn't that already make them inclined to trust you?"
"You'd think so," Riley said wryly, "but unfortunately most of the other Lost Ones seem to view me as a necessary evil. I make them uncomfortable," she explained seeing Peter's indignant expression. "What I am, what I can do. Most of them were normal people before they were taken by the Hunt, so magic scares them. They don't trust it. Ergo, they don't trust me."
"That's so incredibly stupid," Peter blurted out before he could stop himself. "I bet a third of them didn't understand how their fancy computers really worked before they got brought here, but they trusted those. This is no different; why mistrust something just because you don't understand it?"
Riley gave a snort of amusement, and Peter caught a faint whiff of gratitude and appreciation in her scent just before she spoke. "I have no idea," she replied. "Then again, I'm the unstable and untrustworthy mage, so what hell do I know?" She elbowed him in the side to redirect him towards a set of double doors that had the smell of meat and herbs wafting out of them. "Here's the mess hall; just follow my lead and try not to antagonize anyone, okay?"
"Who, me?" Peter looked at her with wide eyes. "Antagonize someone?"
Riley rolled her eyes, but didn't say anything, instead turning to hold open the doors for him.
He slipped into the mess hall, and saw pretty much what he'd been expecting: tables and chairs arranged in a semi-organized but mostly haphazard manner. The only difference between this dining hall and any other he'd ever seen was the impressive fire pit in the center of the room. Currently, there was a large cauldron of stew simmering above the fire, suspended in the air on a makeshift platform made out of some sort of metallic mesh.
"Double, double, toil and trouble. Fire burn and cauldron bubble," Riley said in a dramatically fake accent, her voice just low enough so that only Peter heard her. Then she grabbed him by the elbow and tugged him along with her as she approached the growing crowd surrounding the fire pit.
As they got closer to the line that was forming, Peter saw a man in a leather apron working at the cauldron, doling out ladlefuls of stew into chipped ceramic and wooden bowls.
"That's Gustav," Riley told him in a whisper. "The Wild Hunt brought him here...damn, almost six years ago now? Maybe even seven? Anyway," she went on, waving a hand dismissively as if the difference of a single year was negligible, "he was a hunter before coming here. Our kind of hunter," she added, putting just enough emphasis into her words to get the point across: this Gustav wasn't just a regular hunter, but a hunter. Like the Argents.
"Don't you dare try and hurt him," Riley said suddenly, her voice sharp as she turned to look at him, her stormy gaze fixating on where his claws had popped out of his nailbeds. "He's not a threat to you; he helps me and Carmen manage things here."
Peter nearly stumbled in his stride he was so startled by that proclamation. "You trust a hunter to have your back?" he hissed at her.
"Former hunter," Riley snapped back, eyes flashing dangerously. "As in, was a hunter once, but is no longer."
"And how do you know that for sure?" Peter asked disgustedly. "Did you just believe him when he told you so?"
"Yes," she said, kicking him in the shin as he scoffed at her. "Yes, because the Hunt crippled him when they brought him here and he can barely walk on his own, let alone do any of the activity that true hunting requires. Besides," she added in a slightly more cheerful tone, "he had a thing for my sister, despite the age difference. So he knows better than to lie to me by now."
Peter frowned a bit at that, not sure what one thing had to do with the other (also, a hunter crushing on a Druid?), but circled back around to the first part of her statement. "Crippled? Crippled how?"
Riley just shook her head and gave a slightly pained smile, her scent spiking with sympathy and regret. "You'll see once we get closer," was all she told him.
And he did. Oh, he certainly did, and he couldn't suppress the instinctive wince he gave when he saw the other man's left leg.
Or rather, what had been his leg, once upon a time. Now it instead resembled a crude facsimile of a leg, like a drawing done by someone with no artistic experience and no knowledge or understanding of how a leg was supposed to look and work. It was obvious from looking at the limb in question that the bone had not just been broken, but shattered. And Peter caught glimpses of pale scar tissue trough the rips in Gustav's jeans, which seemed to rather strongly imply that when his leg bones had broken they'd erupted out of his skin.
There was a brace made out of strips of wood and cloth wrapped around his misshapen leg from just above his knee to just above the ankle of his boot, and Peter found himself wondering if Gustav had cobbled together the brace himself or if Riley or someone else had made it for him. Peter also spotted a wooden crutch leaning against the bench Gustav was sitting on as he ladled out helping of soup, and any lingering doubts he had about the hunter's infirmity faded away.
"I know it's hard for you," Riley said in a low voice as the line moved forward and they drew closer to Gustav, "but try not to be a complete asshole, okay?"
Peter couldn't decide whether he was amused or offended by her words, and before he had a chance to make up his mind it was their turn next at the serving table and he was face to face with former hunter Gustav.
The other man seemed to be in his late forties or early fifties (which helped Peter finally understand what Riley had been saying about the age difference between Gustav and Rhoswen), with a thick head of hair that was a visual definition of salt and pepper coloring. His eyes were sharp and shrewd as he noticed Peter at Riley's side, and the slight downward tilt to his mouth indicated that his initial assessment of Peter was not a favorable one.
And sure enough... "This is the one you risked your neck for?" Gustav demanded, setting his ladle aside in favor of crossing his arms over his chest as he gave Peter a thoroughly unimpressed look. "God Almighty, Crowe, and here I thought you had a good head on your shoulders."
Riley didn't seem the slightest bit put out by Gustav's distinctly unwelcoming attitude. If anything, it seemed to please her; she gave a wide grin. "Aw, come on, Gus, don't be like that. After I brought you that nice fat moss hare and everything?"
Gustav huffed out an aggravated sigh. "What if you'd gotten your stupid ass killed off for good, Crowe? There'd have been no hare for dinner tonight, or tomorrow, or the day after that. We'd starve to death waiting for you to come back. Except, oh yeah, you wouldn't come back because you'd be dead."
"Gus isn't always quite this cranky," Riley informed Peter in a cheerful tone. "He just gets a bit fussy sometimes, that's all. So don't be too frightened by this tough guy thing he's got going on right now."
Peter bristled. "Frightened?" he said with a scoff. "Of him?" He unsheathed his claws in a dismissive flicking motion. "As if."
Gustav shot him another glare, the kind that reminded Peter of an angry mother bear sizing up a threat to her cubs as she thought of the best way to disembowel the enemy in question. "You planning on introducing me to your new boyfriend, Crowe, or should I just file him away as 'random werewolf with no social skills'?"
Riley seemed to think something over for a moment, then nodded to herself after looking back and forth between them for another few seconds. "Peter, this is Gustav Kardos. Gus, this is Peter; the Hunt just brought him in from Beacon Hills."
"Beacon Hills, huh..." Gustav seemed to ponder that for a minute before his eyes widened. "Wait a minute. Peter Hale?" He turned curious eyes to Riley. "Your Peter?"
Peter blinked, taken aback by how similar Gustav's reaction was to Carmen's. He opened his mouth to comment on it (and by 'comment' he meant 'demand an explanation'), but Riley beat him to it.
"Why does everyone keep saying that?" she demanded, looking irked. "He's not mine!"
Peter froze in place as he heard the distinctive skip in her heartbeat indicating a lie. He's not mine, she'd said, and yet it was a lie? He didn't understand, couldn't wrap his head around it, what her words implied. He was maybe willing to acknowledge that he might have known her once, before she and her sister had been taken by the Wild Hunt...but even then, he couldn't fathom being anything to her other than a passing acquaintance, even if her older sister had been his Pack's Emissary like in his dream. Even if he'd apparently held her hand when she'd gotten that fantastic tattoo on her back. Because Peter had never been particularly social, preferring to stick close to his family, and he just couldn't picture a time during which he would have spent any significant amount of time with Riley Crowe, regardless of her tenuous connection to the Pack through her sister.
Maybe you're just not remembering things right, a voice in the back of his mind whispered, but he shoved it away before the doubt had a chance to take root.
Gustav, for his part, looked torn between sympathy, amusement, and annoyance, each emotion flickering quickly across his face before fell back into being gruff. "Well, whatever he is to you, make sure he doesn't stir up too much trouble, alright? We've got enough to worry about with the upcoming sacrifice; we don't need a werewolf running around out of control on top of everything else."
Peter opened his mouth to snap back a scathing retort that his control was perfectly fine, thank you, but once again Riley beat him to it.
"You don't need to worry about Peter," she told Gustav, the faintest hint of steel in her tone. "I'm going to keep an eye on him, at least as much as I can with my other responsibilities. And I'll take full responsibility for him if something does go wrong."
Peter and Gustav both gave her matching looks of disbelief.
"You seem to have finally lost you mind," Gustav declared after a moment of tense silence. He reached for his ladle and began spooning some stew into a bowl, shooting quelling looks at the other people waiting in the line who were starting to grumble at their extended wait. "I mean, I knew it was bound to happen eventually, with all the stress you're under, but still..."
"Oh, shut up," Riley said without heat as she took the now-full bowl from him and passed it to Peter. "You know why I'm doing it."
"I do know," Gustav acknowledged, filling up another bowl of stew even as he slanted Peter another unreadable look. "You might want to clue in your wolf, though, since I don't think he knows."
"Of course he doesn't know," Riley returned, accepting the second bowl for herself. "He doesn't remember me. And even if he did, I doubt it would make much of a difference; he still wouldn't get it."
"He," Peter interjected through gritted teeth, "is tired of being talked about as if he wasn't present."
Gustav snorted, flipped him off with his free hand, and then turned back to the cauldron of stew in a clear dismissal.
Peter felt a growl building in s throat, but the next thing he knew, Riley was latching onto his elbow and dragging him away.
"Good talk, Gus," she chirped over her shoulder. "See you tomorrow!"
Peter swallowed his growl, reminding himself that the aggravating hunter was one of Riley's (apparently very few) allies in this place. She'd saved life; the least he could do was not drive away her friends, no matter how much he disliked them.
So he kept quiet, and let Riley tow him along, wanting to do what he could to help her, even if he didn't understand why he wanted to in the first place.
A/N: Well, that was Chapter 6, my friends! I hope you enjoyed it. I know I certainly enjoyed writing it. ;D Anyway, drop me a review if you've got a second to spare; I adore feedback. :)
The next chapter should be posted within a week, depending on my work schedule...and also depending on how much time I spend playing on the Playstation 3 I just got. ;D See you soon!