Good Afternoon! 

I live, apologies for the long absence, over the last couple of months I’ve been planning and executing my move to a new place. With my boyfriend. I have a live in boyfriend, mind still wrapping around that. However, since things are settling down, I’ve decided to cautiously bring my blog out of hiatus and into low activity.  

Acrid, nearly burning, the cloying scent of blood magic was nearly enough to make her swoon, hulking form shuddering as she stood before the great doors of the Sorcerer’s study. Someone, or something, very powerful was behind those doors, and they did not carry the calming scent of the Sorcerer Supreme, though she could scent that as well, beneath the vile rusted iron of blood. A paw carefully works the handle open, and with haunches raised she slinks into the room, predatory eyes fixed on the harmless seeming older gentleman sitting before Strange. 

Energy practically crackled from him, she felt it like static against her fur, and from the look his one steely eye gave her, she knows her presence isn’t welcome, but Strange was late for his meeting with her, and Stephen was never late for meeting with her. And she she’d come to ascertain what had held him up, possibly believing him in need of rescue, despite the elderly visage of his guest, that feeling had not subsided 

‘You were late’ 

Telepathy had been part of her life since the moment she was brought into the world, full blooded Lycans are born more cub then baby, and her father had insisted his heir be born in wolf form. So thoughts had never been private, always communal, though the strangely cool touch of Stephen’s mind was always a little off putting, he thought in words, not in instinct like her kin. 

‘I came to make sure nothing had crawled out of your basement to eat out.’ 

Moving to sit beside the Sorcerer, head standing on par with his shoulders, she makes no effort to hide her distrust of the other presence in the room. 

‘He smells like war, and steel.’ 

                               CHRISTINE PALMER, M.D

The tidbit of history at least was enlightening. It would help clarify a lot of his own historical records. So far as he knew, not many other sorcerers aside from Van Hellsing himself had dealt much werewolves or the lycans - and now it did seem that there was a verifiable difference between the two. That piece of information alone would help sort many of the records on lupine forms in myth and legend. Though he couldn’t help, perhaps a bit too grimly, about the tale of Prometheus when hearing about the wolf who had decided it wanted to become a man. Men were certainly not gods, but there was still something Promethean in the desire to so strongly be more than one was to change one’s very nature. He could only hope that the first lycan’s desire would not for its people make a Promethean tragedy. He supposed that was largely what Christine’s crusade was seeking to remedy before it was too late. The magical world had been divided so long that it could have gone without mending and no one would have noticed until tragedy struck. But typically, it was the kind of visionary that Christine seemed to be that could turn the tide of fate at just the right preventative moment.

Still, somehow her placating didn’t quite settle his stomach on the matter of this genetic destiny the lycans seemed to have ingrained into their culture. Somehow, being the only exception in the room didn’t feel encouraging. If anything it just made it feel more like a privilege he was graciously being allowed in spite of himself rather than something he’d earned. He knew that many in the room held skeptical respect for him at best, if only because he was human and a sorcerer. Being an omega - and now, apparently, one improperly close in proximity to an unattached alpha - rather seemed to rob him of any more room for trustworthiness or respect.  “No, I don’t think they should answer to you on that matter,” he responded, though not unkindly. “If there’s anyone they should answer to for disrespect toward me, it’s me.” The whole thing was just getting him irritated, particularly because as much as this was a social event, his entire involvement was based on utilitarianism. He did like Christine as a person, and respected her expertise as well as her intentions. But even the ducal vampires knew not to assume he was up for grabs just because he was a universal donor blood type. “Respectfully I don’t give a shit about what kind of match is or isn’t valued, or if they’re getting a giggle out of this like a twelve year old gets a giggle out of saying the word “boobies.” If they can’t respect what we’re doing diplomatically without getting their janglies off on the fulfillment of biological manifest destiny, then you and I have a lot more work to do apparently. Because regardless of who smells like what, this kind of attitude won’t fly in any mystic parliamentary summit.”

This was not how she had hoped this summit would go, but perhaps she had been naive to think it could have gone any other way. Lycans have been a nearly insular society since the very beginning, it was the wolf in them that gravitated towards remaining among their own kind. And because of that isolation, her people had become set in their ways, even she felt a twinge of annoyance at being questioned by Stephen in terms of who her people should answer to. It was not his place to dole out merit or punishment, but she understood beyond the instinct to protect what was hers, that he did not mean it in a manner of usurping or undermining her power. Merely wanted his own individual worth. “The pack does not answer to anyone but me, Master Strange. And while I appreciate your candor in what you believe to be appropriate, I’d like to remind you, respectfully, that for thousands of years we have lived by the sweat of our own brows and the governing of our traditions. And while I do not agree with them all, have sought to change many of them, we do not owe the magical community anything, for they’ve never given a thing to us.” 

Finally, he hears the words he’s been waiting to hear from her since their last parting. He’d been broken, upon not being able to return to her. Meeting pirates at sea had seemed like one of the many risks they took on simply as a matter of course. He’d cared more and more over the years, increasingly for every risk he took that might put their future at risk. But he had to keep going, because among them all, there was no greater risk than that of him choosing to settle for his fate as a well-paid farmhand. Forever suffering, watching the woman he loved through the windows of her manor with a husband who could never conceive of nor appreciate her brilliance. And he would have kept going until the edges of the earth, risking pirates and God himself if it had meant being able to reach her at the end of all things. He had stood face to face with the dread pirate, the Sorcerer Supreme herself, defending those values he had chosen to uphold to the one he loved. And he would have taken that death over any defeat any day, so long as it mean the wouldn’t have to live with her being disappointed in him.

Mourning him, yes. Perhaps he could live with that, so long as she could survive it well. That’s what he’d told himself in his first years working as a slave to the most ancient wizard. But they hadn’t been true, those falsities. He couldn’t survive her living with less than she deserved. And even if he was not the pinnacle of all she deserved in the world, he knew more than anyone else that she deserved more than she would get with Baron Mordo. But when she puts her hands on his face, recognizes him for the first time in so many years, he can’t deny how gently her warmth returns to him. How much he wants to tell her about all the years they’ve been missing from one another. How much he’s learned, how much he has to teach her from everything that he’s been able to experience.

And then that soft touch turns into a fist, and a part of him is, if possible, even more thrilled that he’s managed to awaken the fiery hellion that is Christine Palmer. Because she was never the type to take tragedy sitting down or crying, but she was exactly the type to take it with a punch to the face of whoever provided it. And when her knuckles connect with his jaw, he is still smiling. Smiling for the fact that she was still all of the woman he remembered, if not more so for having years of loss and trauma unconditionally feeding into the moderated fire she kept hidden in her chest. “I am indeed, my dear,” he says once she’s obviously satisfied by the solid sock she’s given his jaw. And he obviously did teach her to punch well, otherwise he wouldn’t be so sure he would end up with a bruise on his jaw tomorrow. “I came back for you.” He shakes his head, doggedly, as if wishing it hadn’t taken him so much time. “I know I’m late.” He chokes a little bit on that statement. “I know I’m too late, probably. But I didn’t die. I didn’t ever give up on getting back to you. I just had to find new ways to get back to you… ways that both of us never would have epxected.”

A dull, throbbing pain radiates from her knuckles up to her wrist. It’s been a long time since she’d landed a solid hit on someone, sparring was no longer a part of her life, it would be unseemly for the future Queen to be seen with calloused hands and throwing punches. It’s a satisfying pain, because she knows whatever she’s feeling, he’s gotten at least twice the amount of pain. All this time, she’d mourned him, had cried until tears refused to come anymore and all she had was the gaping hole in her chest from his absence and a silent loneliness. And he had been alive, every night that she had pictured his death at the hands of Sorcerer had been for naught, each torturous though that had consumed her to the point of sickness that first year seems like some sick joke now. She won’t stand here and listen to this ——to this ——drivel that is running off of his tongue as he shamelessly calls her dear. A burn from behind her eyes and the tightness in her chest are all pointing towards the inevitable fall out of her emotions rising up from the pit of her stomach, which seems to have dropped miles. 

“Came back for me?” Taking a step back, trying to put distance between them, the sword lowered but still gripped loosely in her hand, dragging along the grass and kicking up cut blades as a breeze picks up along the side of the ravine. “After all of these years of letting me believe that you were dead, letting me mourn you, and you came back for me?” A hitch in her voice makes the last word come out as nearly a sob, but she brings the heel of her palm to wipe at her cheeks, more out of instinct then because of there being actual tears present just yet. “You could have told me, written a letter, sent a messenger —— you have magic now —— anything to let me know you were alive. Only you didn’t, you let me suffer!”

He tries not to take it as an insult that when she kneels to release him she takes the time to smell him, but he supposes that it’s not the first time he’s come out of an altercation not exactly smelling like spring posies. But her reaction, strangely, isn’t disgust or even just a general sense of aversion for someone beneath her cleanliness levels. He certainly doesn’t have a bead on what her response means, but it’s at least nothing remarkably adverse, which he takes as being a good sign of her not eating him alive even if he can’t get any other signs or signals out of the bizarre gesture.

Even though rubbing at sore wrists with numb fingers feels like a futile gesture, he does it anyway as he grudgingly follows her into an anteroom. It might have been easier to remain angry at her if it didn’t appear she was telling the truth about having anticipated his coming in a much more refined manner than he’d been collected in. “I’ll take a finger or two of whatever you’ve got, yes,” he says, figuring that it’s both decent compensation and a means of honoring his host and getting these business matters underway. He takes the glass offered with still slightly trembling fingers, uncertain enough that he takes the crystal glass with both hands just to be safe. The cuffs had really done a number on an already tired grip. “Pack?” he couldn’t help but question curiously. “Are you of the Lycan sect I’ve been hearing so much about, then?”

Noting the tremble of his hands, she would have wondered if her people had been too rough with him if not for the tell tale scars on his hands. From the way they interlaced and layered she knew they were from multiple surgeries, and the tremble was no doubt from over worked tendons that had been aggravated from the cuffs. “It’s Macallan, my father collected barrels of the stuff, I have every vintage from the last forty years.” Making small talk, trying to make him a little more comfortable, to take away the sour edge of irritation from his scent, she’s glad when he takes the tumbler with no hesitation. Sipping slowly at her drink, not wanting to seem as if she’s rushing him after their rather unfortunate introduction, she cocks her head at the curious way he questioned the nature of her words. 

Pulling back far enough to prop herself on an elbow, she looks down at him, sleepy expression and rumpled look, drinking in every detail of his face. “Stephen.” Sighing out his name, afraid she’s dreaming and that any moment now is going to wake up to a cold, lonely bed. “Am I dreaming?” Not allowing him to answer, she covers his lips with the tips of her fingers, “Don’t answer that ——if I’m asleep I don’t want to wake up just yet.” Leaning down, eyes swimming with moisture, she presses her lips against his fore, lingering there and breathing in the scent of his hair and the hint of salt from his skin.