Running With Wolves

Lukas didn’t return and I was left feeling empty and alone, wishing I had done something different. I stared up at the ceiling, watching the fan spin in circles, the small-suspended gold chain at its end clinking softly as it went.

Round and round and round in circles it went.

No one came to see me aside from one lone silent nurse and I suppose I was thankful for that in some ways. It seemed like most of the time people had something to say to me and it was just another layer of problems that needed sorting.

I wish my friends had come though...

I missed Mia and Jasmine and Rune; I hope Jazz was being nice enough to Mia…

The door opened then, a half an hour after Lukas had gone, and a man in a white trench coat entered the room. He had classic Canis features, dark hair, grey eyes, and a sharp jaw line.

“Ah, so you’re the good doctor who patched me up.” I commented tiredly. “ ‘least I don’t have to worry about a snitch.”

“No,” he said approaching me, his eyes on the monitors. “a snitch is not on the list of your problems today.” When he turned to look at me there was carefully hidden worry in his eyes but I could still see it—I could read him as good as I could Luke.

“Erik?”

He hesitated for a moment then sighed. “That girl, Jazz, she’s not very big on complacency is she?”

“Jasmine is here?”

“Oh they’re all here.” Erik grumbled unamused. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised though.”

“Whose all?”

“Jasmine, a girl named Mia, Rune, both of my nephews and your brother.”

“Shit,” The word slid through my lips as my head fell back against the pillow, my eyes closing.

They were all here? A part of me was happy to have them close but the other part of me recognized instantly that they would gather the attention of…well everyone.

“It’s safe to say any cover you had is blown.” He wrote something down on his chart. “I wouldn’t worry too much though, at least in this hospital, I hold more sway than even my dear brother here.”

“Thank god for that.”

Erik nodded in agreement as he hooked the chart onto the end of my bed. “In any case, you are recovering nicely—shouldn’t expect any less from a Wolfe,” He smiled softly. “you can leave when you feel rested enough.”

“Or when the coast is clearest.”

“Yes,” he murmured “that too.”

“Thanks Doc.”

He nodded quietly before he turned on his heels and began to leave. But he paused then and turned around, momentary indecision evident in his face.

“Sage,” he hesitated, unspoken words on the tip of his tongue. “Forgive me, I know it isn’t my place to say but I feel someone should tell you something about the Soulmate Principle that I’m sure your father and Viktor and all the others fail to leave out.”

My eyebrows knitted together in confusion. In almost all ways Knoll and Erik were one in the same; especially when it came to talking about things—especially something like this. Which basically meant Erik was as likely to start a conversation of this degree as Knoll, which meant not at all.

“At the end of the day, it isn’t much about love I don’t think, the Soulmate Principle that is. This idea of Weres Soulmates has somehow gotten into people heads that it is something similar to the way a human perceives a soulmate. I had an idea once that the Soulmate Principle was a primal thing, connecting the two most physically and genetically compatible Weres to produce strong resilient young.”

“Erik…”

“let me finish.” He put his hands up to silence me and I couldn’t help but listen. “I’m not sure if this is true anymore, I do believe love is a factor in the Principle but it isn’t the factor, just a factor.

What I’m trying to say is, the Principle isn’t a promise that says two Weres will live in perfectly happy harmony forever and be the image of the perfect couple. The only thing I believe the Principle ensures, and unfairly so, is that at the end of the day there is only that one person and no other. But it doesn’t mean that you and Luke are unlike any other couple. You’ll still fight, and disagree, and not get along.”

Part of me was a little dumbfounded that Erik was saying something like this. Erik kept to himself, he wasn’t much for entertaining others with his own opinions. Yet here he was speaking about something as hushed about as Soulmates.

“Why are you telling me this?” I questioned quietly, confusion flooding my head.

“Because, dear Sage,” He moved back toward my bed and sat on the edge of it, his cloudy grey eyes filled with patience. “do not think that something is wrong with you for fighting with my nephew. Do not think that because your own feelings do not match up perfectly with his that there is something wrong with you. Do not believe that any ‘normal’ pair of Soulmates would agree completely with one another always.” A ghost of a smile flickered across his face. “You remind me of someone I knew once. She was as fierce as she was kind but her worst enemy had always been herself. It took me a long time to realize that I didn’t need to protect her from the world but from herself.”

For the first time I saw Erik in a way I hadn’t perceived him since before the war. Erik was as much as a victim as any; I’d thought that Lukas and I had been casualties in our own ways, loosing who we were, but so had Erik. Erik, who I thought had once been more like Lukas than Knoll, had changed so dramatically and because of the anger in my head and the sorrow in my heart I had simply blown Erik off for cowardice. But Erik wasn’t a coward, just a casualty.

“Do you think it is presumptuous to think that the war created casualties that survived…but not really?”

Erik looked away then, the pain in his eyes flashing like lightning in the sky. He was silent for a long time and I began to regret my words. Who was I to stir his pain anymore than he had a right to stir my own?

“We lost our way a little didn’t we?” he reflected. “We lived up high, our head in the clouds in our perfect little world. We’ve fallen a bit haven’t we?” He turned his gaze back on me. It was then that I realized Lukas’s eyes were not completely identical to his uncle’s; Erik’s eyes were perfectly and totally grey, Lukas’ had pretty little spots of blue like where the blue sky peaked through parting clouds. “I think,” He began slowly. “that we lost who we were. That the people we once were are as dead as the loved ones we lost. But are you a victim Sage? Even after loosing so many can you plainly and verbally say that you are a victim?”

I balked. My back straightened slightly, my mind immediately saying I was not a victim.
I smiled bitterly. “I suppose it is my pride that gets in the way of saying that huh? I mean look at me.”

Erik shook his head slowly and cocked his head to the side a little like he was seeing me in a completely different light, like I was some sort of Picasso painting. “No, Sage, that isn’t pride.”

“Then what would you call it?” I’d be the first to admit that I had a great deal of pride.

“Bravery.”

“Bravery?” I laughed dryly. “how do you figure?”

“Because you refuse to be a victim. I think a victim is more a state of mind, it’s what you allow yourself to be. When you go after them, and we both know you will, do you think they will perceive you as a victim then? Do you think bringing your friends together and giving them hope when they had none is a quality of a victim? I’ve seen a lot of things in this hospital Sage. I’ve seen people who are labeled as victims and it becomes a state of mind that they believe about themselves. They see themselves as a victim and that is all that they see. But then I’ve also seen bravery. I’ve seen people like you, who could have given up at any point and no one would blame you but you don’t. You keep fighting.”

I couldn’t look at Erik then. He made me seem like some kind of warrior, one of those ‘against all odds’ underdog types that people love to tell stories about. But I wasn’t that. I was just a girl who wanted her sister back, just a girl who was trying to pick up the broken pieces and make things as close to whole as they could be.
Was Erik forgetting that I had given up? That I’d been no better, if not worst, than my mother when I abandoned not just my family but Lukas—my soulmate.

“but I left, I ran like a coward and I never wanted to come back.”

“The important thing is that you did. You came back.”

“You sound almost happy about that.” I commented wryly. “Couldn’t Viktor hold you in Contempt or something?”

A ghost of a smile flickered across his face. “Sage what is important is that you still fight for what you believe in, you haven’t given up which is more than I can say for most people around here. You are not a casualty Sage you are far from that. ”

I didn’t know what to say then but I’m not sure Erik was looking for a response. Victim is a state of mind; there was something comforting about that. That just because I’d been beaten and abused it didn’t make me a victim; it didn’t make me weak.

“Do you think there is a way to find the people we used to be?”

Erik thought about it for a moment. “No, I don’t think we can, it would require a level of ignorance that neither you nor I have anymore. I do however think that when we have the right people beside us we don’t need to be the person we once were. When we surround ourselves by the people we love we are always who we are meant to be.”

I don’t know what compelled me to ask but I did, “do you have the right people beside you?”

His face remained perfectly indifferent as he rose from my bed. “Rest Sage.”

And then he walked away. I started, that feeling like words on the tip of my tongue was there again. I opened my mouth to speak but no words came out. Erik opened the metal door without looking back and as it swung shut behind him I felt a little defeated. There had been something I’d had to tell him, something I’d thought was important for him to know yet I couldn’t remember it now.

A growl of frustration slipped from my lips as my head hit the pillow.

Erik wanted me to rest? Resting was the last thing I could do.

I’ll rest when I’m dead.