i'd shiver the whole night through

[dnr]

WHO: Frank Castle & Cougar Alvarez
WHERE: Behind the Inn
WHEN: Mumblemumble December
OPEN TO: Cougar Alvarez
WARNINGS: Wendigo corpses, references to gorey murder, memory manipulation.
STATUS: Closed

After Karen's burial, Frank had left the village, but he hadn't gone far. The point wasn't to run away from anything; it was to separate himself, to cut out the kinds of distractions that had left him kneeling in the dirt holding in the insides of somebody who deserved better again and again. It was to keep people safe. He hadn't joined the hunting party, but that didn't mean he wasn't hunting - just on a different, winding trail he seemed to lose as quick as he'd picked it up, and sometimes that felt like God sending his whole goddamn life around in circles, but maybe that was just him.

When Cougar had dragged a body back to the Inn, Frank hadn't joined them - but he'd watched, flat-eyed, from a distance. He'd waited, patient as he'd ever been in a roost, while they had their meeting, while they moved the body into a snow drift out back to stave off rot. He'd given it a few days for people's curiosity to settle.

But tonight, the sky is clear and cold, and the moon rises bright over the treetops. Well after most of the village is asleep, Frank makes his way in from the woods. A large, dark figure haphazardly wrapped in furs kneels down, sinks his bare fingers into the snow, and sets to digging out the owner of the claws that ripped a woman to shreds.