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.

Comments

[thecatinahat]

It's not that Cougar intentionally lingers around the corpse as if he doesn't trust this place, but it's the village itself that doesn't have his trust and not the people within its boundaries. When he sees Frank approaching the creature, he stops his whittling of new arrows, eyeing Frank from just beneath the brim of his hat (which is stopping any snow or wetness from getting in his hair). He watches Frank as he approaches the wendigo and tips his head to the side.

"And?" Cougar prods, when Frank's had enough time to actually look at it. "What do you think?"

[dnr]

When Cougar comes over, Frank doesn't get up, comfortable with the other man's presence as much as with anyone's. "Not sure yet," he says, moving on from his first, long look to start checking over the fur by hand.

"You're back up to speed," he says after a beat, with a sidelong glance to Cougar. He sounds glad for it, even quietly relieved if you're listening.

[thecatinahat]

Cougar grunts when Frank brings up the incident with his amnesia. It had been a rough time, not only because he'd lost he memories, but because he'd become a rambling young idiot all over again without any control of his thoughts, unencumbered by tragedy and his past. "Normal, yes," he agrees and leans his back against the nearest tree, boot pressed to it as he keeps going with his carving, his eyes on Frank's exploration.

"Three weeks, no memory," he says. "And I was...happier."

[dnr]

Happier. "Yeah," Frank answers, heavy. If it had happened to him, wouldn't he have been? Both of them, they've had a hard time in recent years, and he can imagine a certain temptation in forgetting. Believing his family is still waiting for him safe and sound back home. Cougar still believing his team was all good people, not having seen the things he's seen.

"That don't make it right, them just messing with your head like they own it." His voice skews bitter, his hands rough in the creature's fur. "Makes you wonder, right - how do we know that's the first time? Or the last?"

[thecatinahat]

"No, it's not," Cougar agrees darkly, thinking of what he'd like to do to this village for taking away his thoughts and his memories for him, stranding him back here and thinking that he's nothing more than a nineteen year old without a family. He'd smiled so easily, been so easy to get along with. "And it could be happening to all of us. Maybe we all know how we got here."

His fingers tighten on the arrow, wishing for a trigger to pull instead. "That thing, it had a pod. It had research that went up in the air," he says, his English halting. "We could have known more, but it stopped us."

[dnr]

Maybe they all know how they got here, and maybe they know how to escape - maybe they've done it a hundred times they'll never remember. He shakes his head, frustration leaking out around the edges.

Research concerns him in a different way, though. He'd only been able to gather so much about the meeting from a distance, and that wasn't part of it.

"You found where it was operating out of," he gathers, surprised. That's closer than any of them had gotten before. "How'd it stop you?"

[thecatinahat]

"Papers went up in the air, poof," he says, mimicking the way they had crumbled the minute that they'd been taken across that threshold. The cave had been strange enough, because as far as any of them knew, a cave shouldn't be there. People had been exploring and found nothing, so why was that there, if not to unleash the demon monster on them?

"Then, snow, and then," he says, clucking his tongue as he gestures towards the dead creature with his chin. "And it would not die easy," he adds, a little darker than before.