ADAPTATIONS

2 – A Friend in Need

Just as Derek had told Pet, his uncle was awake by nine that night. Muldoon poured himself another straight up drink of whiskey and downed it in one gulp. It was just one of many so far in the day. Was there even a point to pouring it in a glass first? The liquor had lost its chill a long time ago, but he didn't care. Seated next to him was Derek, the younger man frowning at his uncle's regression back into alcoholism.

Derek sighed and shook his head. "I don't get it. I don't."

Muldoon downed another shot. "Don't get what?" was stated through slurred speech.

"You!" Derek chided. Muldoon sluggishly met his nephew's irritated gaze. "Look at you! Look at what you've let yourself become! After everything you had to say about Pet letting herself go." Derek shook his head in disgust. "At least she had a legitimate reason for her dive off the deep end. You don't!"

The older man grumbled and sat up. "Don't start this shit with me again, boy, you have no idea-" Muldoon burped uncomfortably and grabbed at his stomach. He wasn't liking how the pit of his gut was churning.

"Since we got here, all I've seen you do is sit around and mope about the past and how you wished you could've changed things. Things happened the way they did...I'm sorry. But she's alive, now, and here not but a few feet away in the bunk room sleeping!" He motioned in the direction down the end of the hall. He looked to the other man and watched him stumble out of the surveillance room to disappear around the corner in the direction of the bathroom down the hall.

Derek clenched his jaw in anger and sadness when he heard his uncle become ill and focused his attention on the whiskey bottle. He felt now was as good of time as any to talk to his uncle's cherished hybrid. Solemnly, the young man slid out of his chair and left the surveillance room. A short walk down the hallway brought him to the bunkroom.

Stretched out on one of the three bunks' top bed was Pet with her back towards the door. He gently shook her shoulder to wake her up, only to find it had no effect. A firmer shake finally roused her.

Pet rolled over and gawked at the worried chocolate brown eyes with her lazy raptor ones. She rubbed her eyes and groaned. "What do you want now?"

Derek released a labored breath and spoke in a trembling voice. "I know you don't like me and probably hate me. That's fine. I don't care. I don't care if you attack me or what the hell you do." The hybrid sat up from how she was laying and cut her eyes down in curiosity. "I do, however, care about my uncle. I was hoping once you were recovered off the island and brought to safety that he would pull himself together." Derek swallowed deeply and resumed, obviously struggling to keep himself together despite his raw emotions getting the better of him. "Maybe even stop burying himself inside a bottle. But he hasn't." Pet's breathing intensified, and she flexed her prominent inner toes into the mattress. Two tears made their way from Derek's eyes and down his cheeks. "He's like a father to me. I know you know how it's like growing up, feeling abandoned and unloved by the man who helped give you life. My father was a piece of shit. When there was no other father figure in my life, Uncle Rob was there."

Pet squinted down on Derek and questioned. "Why are you coming to me with your soapy abandonment story? Go tell it to someone who might actually care."

"Because I know if there's one person in this God forsaken fucked up world that you care about to do something for it's Robert. And right now, he needs you…to help him get his shit back together." Derek cocked his head to the side as though in a silent plea. "Please, Pet, before Uncle Rob seriously hurts himself." Derek watched as Pet didn't even bother using the bunk's ladder as she got off the top bunk.

"Where is he?"

"Last I knew, he was in the bathroom." Derek pointed in the direction he spoke of.

Pet strode down the corridor and to the applicable doorway. For years, she had told herself she felt nothing for no one until she learned her once closest of friends was on her island and in danger. Seeing his face for the first time in years and with all the indescribable emotion within his eyes touched the part of her she had long since forgotten. Now it deeply pained her to see that same person she had looked up to damn near all of her life in such a broken state.

Muldoon was propped against the toilet with bits of sick on his clothes. Her heart shattered in her chest and her jaw clench in anger. Her mind was so consumed with her current thoughts that she didn't immediately register the pain from her claws digging into the palms of her balled up fists. Derek watched nearby and frowned at both people.

Pet snorted. "Get a mop and bleach." Derek nodded his head and shuffled down the hallway.

Taking caution where she stepped, the hybrid entered the bathroom and jerked a wash towel off a stack by the sink. After getting it wet and wringing out the extra water, she went to the toilet and flushed it. Muldoon jerked awake and groggily looked around, confused. Pet knelt down by the man and sighed. Tenderly, she wiped off the residual sick and drool from around his mouth and met his bloodshot eyes.

He mumbled, "What...What the..." His words trailed off as Pet got up to wash out the cloth in the sink.

She thoroughly washed out the rag with soap and hot water and rejoined him moments later. Pet wiped off his sweat-drenched face and grumbled. "You look and smell like shit." She started to unbutton his soiled shirt and shook her head. "What have you done to yourself, Robert?" The shirt was removed from his body and tossed aside. "You used to be better than this."

Muldoon swayed where he sat, unaware of what was going on or who it was helping him. He mumbled unintelligible words under his breath and burped. As Pet cleaned up the drunk of a man, Derek worked to clean up the bathroom better than she thought she could. Satisfied her closest friend and guardian was as washed off as he was going to get, Pet grabbed him by one of his arms and hoisted him up to his feet. Derek rushed to help her as the two guided the barely conscious man to the other end of the bunker where the sleeping bunks were located. He was then placed in his bed to sleep off the rest of the alcohol's effects.

He must've started to sober up, some, as he rubbed his eyes with one of his hands and struggled to sit up. He burped again and swallowed, looking up at Derek and then to Pet. Muldoon's bloodshot grey eyes squinted to focus in on the hybrid. "What do you think you're doing?"

The hybrid snorted and with a balled up a fist, punched the man in the face. She watched him fall flaccidly onto the bed, now unconscious, and growled. She locked gazes with the speechless young man next to her. "Might want to keep a trashcan next to the bed in case he wakes up in the middle of the night, sick."

Derek retrieved a trashcan he had beside his bed and set it next to his uncle's. "Tomorrow morning is going to suck."

Pet scoffed. "I'm going to go take a shower," and went back to the bathroom.


The next morning came way too early for Muldoon. He forced himself to sit up and groaned against a skull-splitting headache. It was then that he became aware he was only in his boxers. Where were his clothes? He normally slept in a t-shirt and boxers, so why was he wearing just boxers? And why did his jaw hurt?

"Derek!" The addressed younger man hung his head low from where he sat in the surveillance room and sighed. "DEREK!"

"Yeah, okay, I'm coming, I'm coming!" Derek griped under his breath and stood up.

Pet was lounged back in a chair and reading a book with bare feet propped up on the table. "That's what she said."

Derek pointed at her. "I can still toss your ass back in the confinement room, y'know."

She snorted. "Just as I can splay your bony ass from head to toe." She watched him proceed out of the room and down the hallway.

Derek entered the bunk room and shoved his hands in his front pants pockets. He stared blankly at the other man with a deadpan expression. "What?"

Muldoon, resting his head in his hands, questioned. "How bad did I get?"

Derek could see his uncle was irritated with himself. "Pretty bad. Made quite the mess of the bathroom in the process."

"Bloody hell."

"Had to have your ass washed off and dragged to bed." Derek leaned against the door frame with an expression full of disappointment.

Muldoon shoved himself off his bed with a groan and went to a series of wall lockers nearby. He opened one and got out a clean change of clothes. He slid on a pair of old cargo pants splotched with blue and black paint. "Guess I had more than I should have." He leaned onto his arms he had propped against one of the shelves and shook his head to himself. "You should have left my ass where I was."

"I almost did." Derek debated on whether or not to tell the whole truth. "But it was Pet who cleaned your sorry ass up and hauled you off the floor."

Muldoon's alarmed gaze snapped over to his nephew. "What?"

"Yep. So, if you're going to apologize or thank me, save it for her."

"She didn't need to see me like that. You should've stopped her."

"Someone needed to help you since you won't let me and you obviously can't do it yourself."

Muldoon was at his feet and about to strike at the younger man when a strong force stuck him in his chest and knocked him to the floor. Pet pinned the man down and shrilled, her raptor eyes inches from his wide grey ones. "Damn it, you crazy ass-" Muldoon fought to get up but found himself unable to against the hybrid positioned above him. "Get the fuck off me!" Pet barked a snort and flexed her sickle claws against his shins.

For the first time, he was pinned by the hybrid and unable to move. Had he let himself get that bad off that he had become physically weak?

Pet could sense his anguish and slowly got off him, standing up. She stared down at him and stated, "This isn't the game warden and hunter I spent all of my life looking up to as a role model." She snorted. "I suggest you pick yourself up and stop being worthless. Here you are concerned with how I'll be when John Hammond comes around yet you're the one trying to drown themselves every chance they get with a liquor bottle!" Pet hissed a growl at the shameful sight of a once proud game warden. "When you're ready to get your shit together, I'll be in the central room."

Muldoon continued to lay on the floor for a moment as he watched the room spin. In doing so, he rolled the hybrid's words over in his head. Derek scoffed at the man and followed the hybrid to the table in the central room. Behind them, the bunk room door slammed shut, startling Derek. Both people sat heavily down in their chairs and stared at the other in a mix of thoughts. The bunk room door slamming shut startled the both of them, causing Derek to jerk in his seat and Pet to shriek out.


Inside the bunk room, Muldoon paced the floor and rubbed his hands over his tear-streaked face. He was pathetic and sick of himself and what he had let himself become. Angrily, he punched the thin metal wall locker and leaned there a minute, face buried against an arm. He needed to get away from the mental pain and jerked the door of the wall locker open. He instantly grabbed what remained of the fifth of Scotch and shot glass off the top shelf. Too busy thinking about himself, he sat down on his bed and poured himself a drink. He was about to gulp the shot glass's contents when he stopped himself. He remembered everything Derek and Pet had said. No. He wouldn't let himself become worse. The hunter had become the prey long enough, and it was time he put a stop to it.

He held up the glass and muttered, "Not today you won't," and threw it to the floor. Shards of glass sparkled in the pool of wasted Scotch as Muldoon got up and went back to the locker.

Both Derek and Pet heard the breaking of glass, the first getting up to go check on the other man when the latter stopped him. "Don't. Let him figure this out on his own." Derek reluctantly nodded and returned to his seat.

Then the bathroom door slammed shut. Derek couldn't take it anymore. He poked his head out of the central room to see what was going on. The bunk room door was open as the sound of running shower water from within bathroom got his attention. Derek cautiously went to the bunk room, half expecting to be attacked by his uncle along the way, and paused in the door. Usually, he would be upset at seeing good alcohol go to waste, but this time he wasn't. When he turned to leave, he noticed the fist-sized dent in the locker door and sighed. He was, however, surprised when he saw something missing from atop the locker. His brown eyes went to where he had gotten used to seeing a beige safari hat sit, untouched, for the past couple weeks and slimmed his gaze down.

Derek looked back at the bathroom door and drove his hands into his pockets. "What are you up to, now?" Eager to find out, he made his way back to the central room to relay the news to the hybrid. He found her just as he had left her; with a distant stare on her face. "Hey, uh..."

Pet rolled her eyes upwards and glared at the man. "What," she growled in question. Her upper lip was curled just enough to see her angular, sharp teeth beneath.

Derek nestled back into his seat, once more. "I think that little talk you gave Uncle Rob might've done something."

"Define something…"


Fifteen minutes drug by before the shower cut off. Some ten minutes after that and the bathroom door opened. Footsteps echoed down the hallway and became louder the closer to the central room they got.

Muldoon paused just shy of the door and grimaced. He pushed open the cell bar door and entered the room. His attention fell on his nephew first. Derek's brow arched and eyes widen in surprise when we saw his uncle clad in his traditional safari look he had pretty much trademarked. The game warden's eyes fell on Pet, next, an uncertain expression on her face.

Muldoon spoke. "Alright then..." and slid his beige hat on. "Challenge excepted."