Tyler's Room

[Lucy]

POST TIME SKIP

It had to have been about a week since Farryn had last landed any punches and that made Lucy nervous. Skittish even. It was as if the Alpha female was testing her nerves, to see if she'd crack. or maybe she was just preoccupied with Lucian, more so than usual. Either way the blonde lycanthrope couldn't enjoy the respite, she was too anxious and even if that meant that Farryn had essentially won some silent battle of nerves she didn't care, it was too powerful a feeling to quash. Just like the feelings of vulnerability and inevitability; sooner or later she knew Farryn was going to come and dish out a round of punches and the only way Lucy felt even remotely better was when she was with Tyler. her one ally in the pack. The one wolf she trusted with her life. It didn't matter to her that there was nothing he could do, just knowing that he would be there to help her up from the floor when Farryn ground her down, that he would be there to wipe the blood off of her, look after her wounds, she needed that. So she sought refuge in his room.

Part of her worried even more because she didn't know what Farryn would do if presented with both of them; she didn't want Tyler to get hurt on account of her and she knew he had more than enough trouble wit the rest of the pack, Levi and the other. Lucy didn't want to add to that, not even a little bit.

Fretting over it she leaned over the sink in his bathroom, the heels of her hands on the lip of the counter as she stared at her hollow-eyed reflection in the mirror and heaved a painless sigh. Painless for how much longer, her mind asked pointlessly.

[Tyler]

Tyler too was growing increasingly anxious over the passage of time between attacks from Farryn. For so long now he had been taking care of Lucy after the Alpha female's urges struck and passed, after she had left the younger female buckled and bloody with broken bones and pain not only physical but mental and emotional as well, and he knew that Farryn hadn't just grown out of it. Not a chance. He knew that the time was fast approaching when the older wolf would show herself again, unleash those violent tendencies on Lucy, and there would be nothing he could do about it.

That angered him, made him sick to his stomach, furious not only at their so-called Alphas but also himself. He was Lucy's friend, her only friend he knew, and he had done nothing to stop Farryn because they were pack and her rank far exceeded his own. Already since Lucian's mind had fractured and the pack had begun to decay and rot within he had slipped down the rungs, lost title and position, something that had pleased those like Levi and Erik to no end, he knew. But Tyler didn't care about rank or any place within the hierarchy because the pack was foul and wrong, and at the end of the day, all he cared about now was Lucy. If he couldn't use his place as a fighter, if he couldn't use that strength and power to help her, then what purpose did he serve? Yes, he cleaned her up and took care of her after she was knocked down, but there had to be more he could do. There had to be.

His green eyes strayed to the closed bathroom door and the frown creasing his brow deepened. Without even needing to raise his voice for Lucy to hear him, he opened his mouth to ask, "Are you all right?" It was a ridiculous question. Tyler couldn't remember the last time Lucy had answered that question with an affirmative and been able to mean it.

[Lucy]

One of these days, Lucy thought, she wasn't going to get up. In fact she could practically see it in her mind's eye; Farryn was slam her too hard, hit her too violently and her body would crumple into a blonde, pale heap on the floor, the brunette would leave and Tyler would be there, shaking her shoulders lightly at first, and then harder and she wouldn't be breathing, her whiskey eyes would be dark and glassy, gathering dust as they stared out across the floor, blood would start to pool from under her, it would be in her hair and on his hands and she would be gone, finished. Farryn would win and she would be dead and in the end that would be as good as winning anyway. No more words slicing her like a knife, no more punches, the sensation of shattering bones inside her own body, no more struggling for breath. Just darkness eternal.

Tyler didn't like her to think like that though and it was for him that she pulled back from the mirror, straightening up when she heard his voice. Lucy opened the door and stood in the arch of it with a quiet but forced smile on her features and didn't speak. Instead she raked her long, wavy hair back and moved across the room to join him. "I was thinking about Ireland." She said simply. "Do you remember when we went down to the Giant's Causeway? When we were kids?" She smiled weakly. "I pushed you in the water."

[Tyler]

It had crossed Tyler's mind more than once, with gut-wrenching fear but also a grim kind of knowledge, so close to concrete; he knew that it was likely only a matter of time before Farryn went too far and did too much damage and Lucy simply didn't wake up, didn't open her eyes and cough blood out of her mouth to tell him she was all right, it was nothing, those quiet and shaky lies that he was so used to hearing. Tyler tried not to accept it as a possibility, but the longer it went on, the more beatings that rained down on his friend, the harder it was to beat back, the more difficult it became to deny. He never wanted to think about it himself, let alone hear Lucy herself broach the subject, but there was an leaden weight in his stomach, heavy and hurtful, and those like Farryn made it so hard to deny, shut out, shut down.

Immediately he recognised the smile as fake because they had been forced and artificial for years, only ever for his benefit, and he was torn between appreciating the effort and wishing she wouldn't do it, because he knew they were a lie and it just reminded him of what they no longer were. "I remember," he told her, smiling and closing the book he had been flicking through without actually taking in any of the words. "I tried to pull you in with me but I missed. You couldn't stop laughing." Tyler was torn again; it was nice to remember when they'd been younger, free and happy and so ready and able to laugh, but at the same time it hurt to talk about those times that were so far gone in the past, the moments that were lost behind him, ones they couldn't truly recapture, let alone relive.

[Lucy]

Lucy lied that way because she didn't want to speak the truth to him, she worried it would be worse than a lie if he knew how truly dark her thoughts became. It wasn't fair to him. In the end he was also all she was really hanging on for and if she didn't uphold the act ofhaving some scraps of her old, sunny personality left then what would be the point? Lucy couldn 't leave him in this terrible pack all on his own, she couldn't-- wouldn't do that to him so when he asked her if she was okay, when he gave her those long looks as if searching her armour for the chinks thatFarryn was steadily widening in it she just smiled and shook her head, waved his gaze away and told him everything was fine. Every word tasted bitter.

They had grown up together, her and Tyler and Molly. Farryn too. How things had come from that, from their childhoods when they had been so full of laughter and excitement over everything to this, one of them was gone forever, another mad with power and she and Tyler trapped, one of them close to breaking once and for all. Lucy flopped down next to him, still smiling. "I did feel bad about that later." She offered, eyebrows rising. "You looked like a drowned rat, I thought you were actually going to catch a cold." Which was absurd considering that werewolves didn't get colds with their robust metabolisms, but the water had been do cold and they'd had to walk back down the trail in the waning light of day.

[Tyler]

The drastic shift in the pack following Lucian's obvious slip when it came to his grip on his own mental state, had tainted them all in a way. They had all changed. Many of the pack had allowed themselves to become deeply and dangerously infected by Lucian and Farryn's feral wildness, all that brimming ferocity and malice, but for those who had not turned so drastically, there were still cracks in the foundations. Even Tyler had been touched by it, twisted from who and what he had once been into someone he had never even imagined he would become, so much harder and harsher than he had been in his earlier youth. Where once he had been an enthusiastic, energetic wolf quick to smile and laugh, now he was a scarred and wearied fighter who trusted few and knew better than to let his guard down, even in his own pack. Tyler had become a little darker since the pack had changed for the worse, more of a realist, the optimist in him smothered by all the violence and disruption. He wasn't the same wolf he had once been, the same wolf that Lucy had pushed into the water at all those years ago.

Reaching over to set the book back on the nightstand he'd taken it from while she was in the bathroom, Tyler shifted on the bed enough to be able to see her from his raised vantage point, allowing a smile to his face, a little more genuine, a little wider, thinking back to that day. "I almost did drown," he reminded her. "I coughed up all that water, remember?" She'd caught him off guard when she'd pushed him in and he'd managed to swallow a good deal of water when he'd gone under.

[Lucy]

That was what Lucy couldn't understand, how the whole pack had just let this happen If she'd been strong enough, if she could have done it on her own she would have tried to stop Lucian and Farryn, she had tried to stand up to Farryn and look where it had gotten her; every day without a new patchwork of bruises and breaks was a blessing, she was tired and broken and she lay in bed at night wondering if it wouldn't be a blessing to just drift off and never wake up again. Lucy had always been a bright vivacious wolf, a young woman with a real spark in her soul, she'd been strong too, her brother had trained with her, pushing her to be better, teaching her to be a fighter one day but now it didn't seem to matter, none of it seemed within reach, not her now useless skills with a sword and not what had been a sunny personality.

Lucy laughed. "You are such a drama queen." For a few moments she actually got all caught up in reminiscing about when they'd been kids, she could remember the smell of the sea, salty and murky and the taste of the spray on her lips when it crashed into the rocks and sent plumes of froth into the cold, Irish air. "Anyway, I apologised. Eventually." She grinned. A rarity. "When I could breathe."

[Tyler]

They had all changed. To look at any pack member, how they had once been and how they were now, at least those who had come all the way from Ireland, the much larger pack they had once been, there was no denying how different they all were as a result of everything that had happened, everything they had allowed to happen. Lucian had fractured, Farryn had become cruel and cold, Molly was gone, Joseph was dead, Dorothy had chased power. It made something deep inside of Tyler feel rotten and like it was tied in a knot, tight and tangled, something he couldn't pick apart again no matter how hard he tried. Mostly he just felt disappointed, let down by so many people, most of all himself. He should have tried harder at so many points, to stop so many things from coming to pass. He hadn't and Tyler couldn't help but be angry at himself, and over the years all that anger had just balled up inside of him with no outlet or use. It wasn't healthy, he knew that much, but he was out of options; if he didn't hold it in, then he certainly wouldn't be helping anyone. Not Lucy and not himself.

"Yeah, and you were smiling at the time. It sort of the negated the whole apology." He rocked back to flop onto the mattress alongside her, one arm draped loosely over his stomach, hair tumbling around his temples and just along his forehead as he turned his head to look at her from his new perspective. "And wouldn't I technically be a drama king?" It felt good to smile and talk about something harmless for a change, put the shadow and misery to one side, if only for a few minutes. "Or at least a drama prince."

[Lucy]

It was times like that that Lucy could forget everything and enjoy it, she could remember how much she enjoyed being what she was, how much of a pack animal she was, how she liked to have her own kind around her, how she had always been one of the more physically and emotionally affectionate girls in the pack, as likely to fall asleep by the fire with her head in someone's lap as she was to get tugged into a friendly scrap by the other young wolves. Lying on the bed, relaxed, her cheeks took in a pink glow with her laughter and she played with a lock of her blonde hair between her fingers as they talked.

"You can definitely pass for a prince," Lucy joked affectionately, beaming at him across the corn coloured fan of her hair on the bed. "Maybe you'll grow into the king role."

A moment later her whole body went rigid with fear and she shoved her hands against the mattress, twisting her hips to look at the door the very moment it burst it with a shower of plaster coming free from the frame and a crack as the handle buried itself in the wall it slammed into. There in the dust stood the Alpha female, wearing a predatory grin as she crossed the threshold, looking from Lucy to Tyler and back again. She whistled.

"Well, well, well," Farryn said silkily from the doorway. "Look who's gettin' all warm and cozy up here."

Lucy swallowed down bile that crawled up her throat but said nothing.

Farryn swaggered in. "Been looking for you all over Lulu." She raised a finger and beckoned the blonde over. "C'mon, let me get a look at you."

For a moment she hesitated, daring a glance down at Tyler before she started to slide of her bed, panicking now, her heartbeat jumping into high gear, her cheeks drained of the youthful pink blush they had held moments ago.

[Tyler]

The smile that had been growing on Tyler's face was immediately extinguished by the sudden shift in the air that preceded the violent inward slam of the door that sent the plaster dust into the air and uncomfortably teased his senses as he rolled over on the bed, hair tumbling in disarray as his eyes landed on the Alpha female stood on the threshold. Soon enough she was prowling on inside and Tyler felt the wolf within him tense, a tension that soon crept to the surface and inched its way along his back and shoulder muscles, creeping down his arms. More than anything in that moment it grated on Tyler that the moment he and Lucy had been having, so carefree and normal, had been shattered so easily, with such careless ease, by Farryn. The cause of his discomfort and tension soon shifted though as the blonde female began to slide off the bed.

Moving without thinking, Tyler slipped off the bed as well, not away from Farryn but instead towards her. She was an Alpha and he was just a fighter, stripped of what had been a senior rank and responsibility by the mate of the very she-wolf he now stood facing. The old wounds down his back seemed to ache in memory of Lucian's punishment for challenging his word and his actions, a mistake -- if indeed it was a mistake at all, something Tyler doubted very strongly -- he was going to revisit very soon, without hesitation or even a flicker of fear.

Lucy meant more to him than anyone else in the pack and knowing she was in danger had his wolf on edge, pacing and whining inside of him with worry and uncertainty, torn between defending his closest friend and one ally within the pack or submitting to his Alpha. Emotion and instinct warred, leaving him standing beside the bed, barely even seeming to breathe, glancing towards Lucy and offering her the minutest shake of his head as though to tell her she didn't need to do this, she didn't have to go to Farryn when the older she-wolf beckoned her like that.

[Lucy]

Lucy looked up at Tyler with big, pale brown eyes, amber in the glow of the single lamp in the room. For a moment she hesitated as if she might heed his unspoken words but in the end she was well trained if nothing else, Farryn had made sure she knew that things were always so much worse if she didn't do as she was told and she just wanted to get it over with. So what if she was more broken than she realised, voluntarily going over to the Alpha who spent a good portion of her time delivering blows that sent earthquakes of pain shooting through her, but she felt she didn't have a choice. This was for the best, to get it over with.

Farryn grinned her predatory grin, lips peeling back over sharp teeth as she greeted Lucy by lifting a hand to her chin and tilting it so she could look into the younger wolf's face more clearly. "Good girl," she said softly. "Maybe I won't break any of your bones this time around, huh?"

At that she glanced over at Tyler and narrowed her eyes, clearly displease with the affection and friendship the two shared. It was Tyler she was looking at when she slapped Lucy so hard the blonde's lip split open and blood dribble down her chin, as if teaching him a lesson through her pain.

"Fuck off, Tyler," she told him hotly. "I'm sure someone out there would love to give your ass a beating too. Lucy and me have unfinished business here, we don't been you, do we Lucy?"

Lucy hesitated again, cupping her jaw and glancing nervously at Tyler, reduced to a shell of a girl again, retreating into herself against the fear and the pain; she shook her head, almost pleading with him to just go.

[Tyler]

Automatically Tyler tensed where he stood as the crack of a slap landed across Lucy's face. He heard a growl and it wasn't until the scent of his friend's blood settled in his nose that he realised he had been the one to growl. Strangely he didn't feel sorry for it, even as the Alpha female's heated words reached his ears. Looking from Lucy to Farryn and keeping his gaze on the latter he moved away from the bed and towards the pair. Instead of passing right on by and through the misshapen door he came to a stop just ahead of Lucy and to her left, eyes still fixed on Farryn in a forward and bold kind of confrontation that he otherwise would never have dared to instigate.

Lucy was his friend, the only friend he had in a pack filled with threats and enemies and wolves who would gladly stab him in the back the first chance they got, wolves like Levi and Erik who delighted in seeing discomfort or outright pain in him and others, those like the blonde she-wolf who had become so victimised, so targeted by those around her. To see her fractured and broken down angered Tyler and he felt a flicker of the heat of the wolf in his gaze as he kept it levelled.

"You don't need to do this to her, Farryn," he said to the Alpha female, once again crossing a line he had crossed before with agonising consequences. It occurred to him only after the fact that he might not be the one to pay for the challenge this time around, that it could be Lucy suffering for his words and actions. A flash of fear for her safety shot through him and he felt his breath lock in his chest but it was too late to back down now. "Leave her alone. Please."

[Farryn]

That growl didn't go unnoticed, it riled the Alpha female immediately and she stared at the fighter with ill disguised contempt, but also with a modicum of interest at this sudden display of defiance. Why after all this time was he even bothering? Lucy was so close to breaking she could almost taste it, and when that happened she'd be done with her, there so no fun in it if Lucy didn't give her little yelps and howls of agony freely.

"Oh, don't I?" Farryn asked, eyebrows rising. "I'll tell you what I don't need, Tyler. I don't need your permission to do whatever I want around here." When her eyes flashed their brilliant, cold blue they flicked over to Lucy who had shrunk into herself somewhat, prepared for the onslaught. "Got someone sticking up for you at last, huh? Wonder what you've been sayin' to him."

Lucy shook her head vehemently, Farryn's eyes moved back to Tyler with a sneer. "Nothing, I haven't-- I haven't said anything to him, Farryn. Please don't hurt him, Tyler doesn't know what he's doing."

"Yeah, he does."

Lucy moved then, finally, coming to Tyler's side and wrapping her sparrow hands around his arm, pulling it back slightly and slotting herself in front of him. "No, no he doesn't. He doesn't."

[Tyler]

"I know what I'm doing." Tyler didn't hesitate to say the words, even after the pleading quality of Lucy's intervention and in a confident counter to her own actions he stepped forward and closer to Farryn once again, holding her gaze to keep her eyes on him; the Alpha female wouldn't even dream of looking elsewhere first and while he didn't doubt that Farryn was still perfectly aware of Lucy's position in the room right down to the position of her feet on the carpeted floor, he wanted to see how long he could keep the majority of her attention on him.

What he was doing could get him killed, it went beyond his questioning of Lucian's judgement all those years ago that had led the Alpha male to lay his back open viciously, leaving behind ugly scars he still bore even now, the kind of deep, lasting wounds that still pained him from time to time, phantom or otherwise. Tyler found it difficult to care. Lucy had been abused by Farryn for so long now that he knew it wouldn't be long before the Alpha female broke something inside the blonde she-wolf, something that he might never be able to repair. She was his closest friend, the only friend he had, the one thing he had left to fight for in this world. He couldn't lose her. There was no way he could just stand by and let Farryn beat her again.

[Farryn]

Farryn captured her tongue between her teeth, staring back at Tyler in just the way he predicted. As an Alpha female there was no way in hell that she would be looking away first, but she also wasn't going to be playing this game for very long with him. Without letting it last more than a few seconds she smacked Tyler across the face with the back of her hand, spilling blood from his mouth with the precise strike she had practised on Lucy many times over.

Behind Tyler the blonde had jerked to attention at the sound of skin striking skin, her shoulders bunching and her fingers going to her teeth in that way Farryn had come to hate; she looked like a child, with those big, pretty eyes wide as saucers and the corn coloured hair worn like a shield around her shoulders.

"No-- Farryn, please don't. Please--"

Farryn snorted, "Shut up, Lucy."

There was something in her reaction this time around that the brunette found much more interesting than usual; she was staring at Tyler and she was already on the verge of tears though she was addressing her Alpha. Lucy, it seemed, was more concerned about Tyler getting hurt than she was about keeping quiet.

So Farryn punched him again, cleanly across the face. Lucy yelped and tried to grab his shoulders to pull him back. Farryn laughed.