You Be the Anchor That Keeps My Feet on the Ground

For a solid five minutes, Olivia just stared at them wide-eyed and open-mouthed. Just as Isaac was wondering if she was still conscious, she began shaking her head vigorously.

“No. No, no, no, no. A-a-a w-werewolf? You guys are crazy,” she yelled, and in an instant all of the unbridled fear that they had just coaxed out of her came flooding back into her eyes. She had slowly emerged from the corner she’d been in before, but now she hurried back into it and prayed once more that she’d just melt into the paint on the walls.

Isaac made a motion with his hand and Scott exited the room quietly and shut the door behind him. He didn’t quite know how to approach the situation, but he figured it would be better if it was just him and Olivia one on one. He threw his hands into the air and inched toward her just like he had before, but this time she didn’t allow him to get close to her. When he was about a foot away, she scurried up over the bed and then to the opposite corner of the room.

“Just… just stay away from me, o-okay? I don’t know who you are a-a-and don’t you think for a second that your c-c-chiseled jawbone and p-pretty eyes and soft l-looking hair are going to hypnotize me into f-f-forgetting the fact that you’re c-crazy,” Olivia stuttered, and Isaac couldn’t help but smile to himself.

“Chiseled jaw, huh?” he asked, which only made Olivia more obviously frustrated. “Okay, I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Liv. I’m not crazy and I’m definitely not going to hurt you. I’d die before I’d hurt you, I swear, and whether you believe me or not, you do know me. In fact, you know me very well. I get that you don’t remember and that you’re scared but I promise you, you don’t have to be scared. Not of me, not of Scott, not of anything, because I’ll always keep you safe, always. Now, if you’ll let me, I’d very much like to try to help you remember who you are and who I am, but I’ll leave it up to you. If you don’t want to remember, you can walk out that door right now and never look back, although I’m not going to lie, if you do that, I’ll probably stalk you for the rest of your life to make sure you’re okay, and it would pretty much literally break my heart because as it happens, I’m pretty in love with you,” Isaac said, and Olivia felt herself relax just a tiny bit.

“You’re in… in love with me?” she asked, and Isaac smiled and sat down on the bed.

“Very much so, and believe it or not, you’re in love with me too. We’ve been together for three years. We share an apartment. We have a black and white cat named Sampson, a golden retriever named Fox, and three goldfish that we didn’t name because we argued over their gender and you refused to give them gender insensitive names,” Isaac said quietly. He was immediately pleased when the last part -as he’d hoped it would- made Olivia’s eyes crinkle and the corners of her lips turn up into a smile.

“That’s ridiculous,” she said with a giggle, and he let out a little laugh in return.

“Yeah, well that’s you, babe,” he said, and the smiled slowly faded from her lips.

“Okay, so y-you obviously know me. I’ll e-even go as far as to say that I believe that we’re in love and l-live together and have a cat and a d-dog and unnamed f-fish that we don’t know the g-gender of. I’ll b-believe all that, but n-now we’ve g-gotta go back to the w-werewolf thing. Werewolves d-don’t exist, and there’s n-no way that I am one,” Olivia said, and Isaac let out a hefty sigh.

“I know how ridiculous it sounds, Liv, but I can prove it to you,” Isaac said, looking at her intently.

“How could you p-possibly p-prove it?” she asked, and Isaac motioned for her to come to him.

“I’ll show you, but first you have to get up and come sit beside me. I’m not going to hurt you, and I don’t want you to be afraid. I just want to sit beside you because I haven’t been able to sit beside you when you were conscious in what feels like a really, really long time,” he said, and she very cautiously did what he asked. She situated herself beside him, and he couldn’t stop himself from reaching up and tucking one of her long blonde curls behind her ear. Just as she had before, she felt shockwaves at the interaction, and suddenly she was very interested to learn everything she could about him.

“S-so…” she said a moment later, and he offered her a small smile.

“So, let’s start with that,” he said simply, and a confused look adorned her features.

“What?” she asked, and he smiled slightly again.

“Your stutter.”

“W-what about my stutter?”

“The fact that you don’t actually have it anymore, but since you don’t remember anything, you think you do. I haven’t heard you stutter in four years, since you turned into a werewolf,” he said, and her eyes widened and she shook her head.

“W-what does that even m-mean? O-Obviously I still have it.”

“No, you don’t. Try, and I mean really try, to not stutter. I guarantee you that you can do it.”

“You’re insane. Stutters don’t just melt away,” she said clearly, and as she processed her words, her eyes grew wide again and Isaac smiled.

“They do when you become a werewolf.”

“That doesn’t prove anything. Just because I can speak without a stutter doesn’t mean I’m magically a mythical creature.”

“You are, and you’re not the only one. I am, Scott is, and it happens that sort of a lot of our friends are.”

“You’re seriously crazy.”

“Any way I can think of to seriously prove it to you will most likely scare you and I don’t want to scare you.”

“Try me.”

“You’re going to be scared.”

“I said, ‘try me’.”

“You promise you won’t be scared?”

“Promise.”

“Okay…” he trailed off, standing up and taking a deep breath. He couldn’t decide what he could do that would once and for all prove to her that he was telling the truth, but would also scare her the least.

A moment later, she started tapping her foot out of impatience, and he decided that he better just do something so that she didn’t get annoyed and take him up on his earlier offer of leaving and never looking back. He backed away from her and finally decided -although it was completely against his better judgment- to just let go all the way and let her see everything there was to see.

He got down into a kneeling position, and with a twist of his head, hair began sprouting on his cheeks, his fangs descended, his fingernails shaped themselves into claws, and he could tell by her change in expressions that his eyes had clouded over and began to glow bright yellow. He could tell she was scared, even though she was trying to hide it. He stood to his full height, and she scooted back a fraction of an inch on the bed. He took a slow, cautious step toward her, and she covered her mouth with her hand. He didn’t know how to show her that he wasn’t going to hurt her, that even in his wolf form, he’d never dream of hurting her, but he couldn’t figure out how.

Before he could even really think about it, she scooted to the edge of the bed and stood, taking a very cautious step toward him. She extended a shaking hand toward him, and he bowed his head so that his hair would meet her fingers. She ran her fingers through it gently, and then took another step toward him and moved her hand down to his chest. Suddenly, all of the worry and fear seemed to drain quickly out of her and she was much more brave and curious.

She picked up one of his hands and examined the claws at the tips of each of his fingers, then she lifted his upper lip gently and examined his fangs, and finally she stood on her tippytoes and stared straight into his eyes. She watched as they changed from glowing and yellow to soft and blue. She watched as his fangs and claws descended. She watched as the hair that had sprouted on his cheeks disappeared. She watched as his features formed a wide smile. He snaked his arms around her waist and hugged her tightly to him, and she let him because it felt right. She hugged him back and smiled into his chest because even though she didn’t quite know why, she was happy. They stood embracing for a few minutes until it struck her that even though she believed him and knew who -and what- he was, she still really had no idea who she was, or even what had happened to her.

“Isaac? I hate to ruin this whole thing, but um… I still have so many questions. I still don’t know who I am, or what happened to me, or, uh, how exactly I do that whole wolf thing,” she said, backing away from him slightly so that she could look at him.

“Well, I can tell you pretty much anything you want to know about you, but I’m afraid that I can’t really help you much on the whole ‘what happened’ and ‘wolf’ fronts. See, I wasn’t there when it happened, and the person that was there isn’t really much of a sharer per se, and honestly I really have no idea how to re-teach you to go wolf,” Isaac replied, looking at her seriously.

“Well, who can re-teach me?” she asked, and Isaac sighed.

“The same person who I was talking about before that isn’t much of a sharer,” he replied, and she shrugged.

“So take me to him,” she said, and he nodded.

“Sure, but first I need to do something,” he said seriously.

“What’s that?” she asked, and he smiled and leaned down until his face was right in front of hers.

“This,” he breathed, and leaned in so that their lips met. The second that their lips touched, memories began flashing through Olivia’s head. Memories of Isaac, of their apartment, of their pets. When he pulled away slightly, she smiled up at him widely.

“I’ve been waiting to do that for so long, and I couldn’t wait another second,” he whispered, smiling back down at her.

“I remembered some things. Just a few, nothing major. Mainly just your face and your… body. And Sampson, and Fox, and the fish. And I remembered what our bedroom looks like,” she said breathlessly, and his smile intensified.

“Really? That’s amazing!” he said excitedly, and she got up on her tiptoes so that she could kiss him again. There weren’t any miraculous memories the second time, but she dragged out the kiss anyway, mainly because he was quite the kisser. When they eventually pulled apart, his smile was bigger than ever.

“God, I love you. I love you so much, you know that?” he said, and she smiled back.

“I love you too… I think,” she replied, and he laughed quietly.

“Okay… let’s go. We’ve got to go see Derek,” he said a moment later, taking her hand into his and squeezing it.