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

Feedback: Always appreciated.

AN: I apologise for the delay compared to my usual update pattern; RL issues meant that I couldn't find as much time to write as I usually do, so I decided to delay a couple of fics while still getting other updates out there. After that, RL issues at various ends meant that I just didn't have as much time to write as I would have liked, but I hope to get back to a more regular pattern now.

The Lone Wolf

Selene had no idea how to feel about the revelation of just how important she apparently was to the history of the immortals. She knew that her father had earned a significant reputation back when he was a child for his work building a particular castle, and she at least knew now that the castle had been William's prison, but it had been so long since that day… the thought that anything from her centuries-gone childhood could have any relevance to things now…

Still, she supposed that it fit in with the upheaval she'd been experiencing in her life since she first made contact with Michael. She knew that she wasn't stupid even if she thought of herself as a 'simple' soldier compared to Kahn's inventiveness or Amelia's tactical ability, but this kind of self-analysis was something she hadn't done often before. Unfortunately, even if meditation wasn't something that came naturally to her, she had to acknowledge that she was the only living person who had seen the prison, which meant that she had to be the one to find the memory. The alternative was for others to try and access her memories by drinking her blood, but another term of their new plan to try and help William was that Selene be the one to direct them to his location. When Amelia and Marcus were the only two people available with the mental training to identify the relevant blood memories, neither Elder was willing to trust the other with that kind of knowledge, which meant Selene had to focus on it herself.

She was only grateful that they had agreed to her request that Michael be allowed to join her as she attempted to meditate. Officially she had suggested that Michael might find the experience useful in improving his own control over his wolf self, but on a personal level, she knew that she wanted Michael here because she trusted herself to be that potentially vulnerable around him. She trusted Kahn and some of the other Death Dealers to have her back in a fight, but Michael… even if she hadn't known him for long, she could trust that he wouldn't judge her if she let herself relax.

Sitting on either side of the room that had been set aside for them both, Selene and Michael sat with their legs crossed and their arms spread out on either side. Selene wasn't sure about the posture, but Michael had adopted it because he'd apparently seen it in a film somewhere and had thought that it would help him get into the right state of mind. Selene had removed her jacket and outer corset, leaving her in a looser black top as she began to explore her memories, her mind reaching back across the centuries.

It had been so long since she allowed herself to recall those long-ago days of her own mortality, but even now, recalling the way everything had been before it fell apart still affected Selene. She wasn't sure if she would ever stop regretting how she had been unable to give her nieces a chance to grow up, even if she knew she couldn't have stopped lycans or Viktor when she had only been human, and a part of her would always wonder how her brother-in-law had reacted when he came back from his trip to find the rest of the family dead…

Maybe that's a good thing, she suddenly thought, looking at Michael with a brief smile as she recalled how he had spent the last anniversary of his fiancé's death. If we can still regret the deaths of those we cared for before we became immortals… we ensure that we remain the kind of person who would never cause such deaths.

Selene liked to think that most of her fellow Death Dealers were careful not to become so detached towards humans that they accepted collateral damage that easily, but Viktor had proven that she couldn't count on the idea that all vampires would be as dedicated to protecting humans as she had thought. She could accept the occasional moment where a vampire succumbed to temptation during intense moments, such as if they'd been badly injured and needed to drink urgently, but the thought that her own sire had gone out and actively hunted down humans just because he wanted something tasty to drink…

Enough, Selene forced that thought down. She wouldn't let herself forget what she could become, but she couldn't let herself focus on the knowledge of what her sire had truly been. The goal now was to remember what she had once had with her family, not fixate on how Viktor had betrayed everything he was meant to stand for.

In a dark way, it was easier to remember her family by focusing on her hate for what Viktor had taken from her all those centuries ago. Once she got past the pain of the memory of that last night, she was able to focus on her memory of what it had been like before that final night… of how her twin nieces had enjoyed her taking them out to pick flowers… how her brother-in-law had come into their lives as her father's apprentice and then bonded with her sister… how her mother had approved of the status boost they'd received after that one big commission… the prison her father had built for one dangerous prisoner… the prison built on… an island…

"Got it!" she said firmly as she stood up, the image clear in her mind. She would need a bit of time to identify the precise location, but now that she knew what to look for she should be able to work out where she had been at that point.

"Got it?" Michael looked at her with a cautious smile.

"I still need a little time to put it all together, but I know when the fortress was built now," Selene explained with a reassuring nod to Michael. "It's been a long time, but my human memories… it's one of the side-effects of our transformation; our minds have to adjust to cope with memory on a scale beyond what was expected for humans, so even older memories remain if we concentrate."

"Right…" Michael nodded, his expression still cautious even as he also seemed curious about this new information regarding his new state. "But… with lycans…"

"It's been said that lycans will always have vaguer memories of their early transformations until they properly accept what's happening to them and learn to acknowledge their… other side," Selene said, resisting the urge to simply call it a 'feral' side. After seeing the way Michael had reacted to her in his transformed state, even if he clearly had a more limited intellect when he was in his other shape, it was clearly unfair of her to dismiss all lycans as feral monsters that easily.

"Good to know I'm… not that different, anyway," Michael said, before he looked at her with another sense of curiosity in his expression. "Uh… I didn't want to bring this up in front of Marcus, but… is this actually going to work?"

"In what way?" Selene looked curiously at him. "I appreciate that there's a risk in even trying to help William-"

"That's… I mean, is he really likely to be alive now?" Michael clarified. "If William's been in prison for centuries…"

"Oh," Selene nodded in new understanding of the reason for Michael's uncertainty. "No, that's not going to be a problem."

"Seriously?" Michael looked at her with more obvious shock. "He's been locked up in a prison on an island for centuries; last I checked, even vampires need to sustain themselves on blood, and I still get hungry-"

"But you won't be at risk of dying of that hunger," Selene cut him off, reminded once again of how young Michael was as an immortal. "You'll become weaker if you don't eat, that's true, but there's been no recorded case of an immortal starving to death."

"Really?"

"We have… there have been occasions where it was used as a means of torture on both sides," Selene affirmed with a grim nod, glad that she would be able to at least assure Michael she hadn't been a part of these particular interrogations. "Obviously we have never tested it on the scale that William would have been subjected to, but we have run tests to confirm that some part of our physiology can keep even a starved immortal alive so long as we're not explicitly killed."

"OK…" Michael nodded in understanding, his expression shifting as another thought came to him. "If we're talking about that kind of thing, I get that we can heal from most injuries if they're not silver or sunlight, but what about if we lose limbs? Do they… grow back?"

"Unfortunately not," Selene shook her head, even as she gave Michael a brief smile to assure him that she appreciated his questions. "It's easier to reattach lost limbs after such losses than it would be for humans, but if the original limbs are completely lost we won't just grow new ones."

"And I'm guessing decapitation being one of the things that kills us isn't wrong?"

"Naturally," Selene nodded.

"Well… at least we're not doing all this just to retrieve a corpse," Michael said, nodding in cautious thought. "If William's weak enough, it might even be easier to handle this guy…"

A new thought seemed to occur to him, and he looked at Selene with a new sense of apprehension. "Does… that happen often? Just… starving someone like that?"

"Not in my experience," Selene assured him. "Most of the time, if a vampire committed a crime that merited any kind of sentence, it would be execution or a temporary confinement; starvation on this scale would be… too risky."

"Risky?"

"A vampire or lycan driven to starvation might be weaker than when well-fed, but they would be reduced to a more feral state of mind as they became focused on their hunger, and would be especially determined to get at any potential food once released," Selene clarified. "Unless those responsible took care when the sentence concluded, the prisoner could do great damage after being released and it would only be their own fault."

"Ah," Michael nodded in cautious understanding. "So… we're really hoping Marcus is right about how much influence he has over his brother, huh?"

Lost for words on how best to respond to that question, Selene simply nodded in acknowledgement of Michael's observation. If Marcus was correct in his professed belief that he could get through to William even in his transformed state, it might be possible for them to find some way to convince the original werewolf to go along with some kind of… treatment for his condition. She wasn't sure what kind of treatment would actually have any impact on someone who had essentially been 'lost' to their lycan side for so long, but it wasn't as though she had kept up with the kind of medical advances that might be involved in this kind of medical research. So long as more qualified people were going over everything, Marcus's plans for his brother had a chance, which meant that they had an opportunity to reinforce their new peace.

It was still a long shot however she looked at it, but if she could retrace her memory to find the site of her father's work…