Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

It's the night before the full moon proper, and the air is frosty as the glow of the sun begins to radiate up from the horizon. The town is quiet, only a few people out and walking along the cracked sidewalks, along the side streets and down the hill to amble across the little highway that runs along the north side of town by the river, their nearest road connection to the outside world. There's nobody driving through at this time of the morning except the occasional big truck hauling logs out or supplies in, which is just how everyone likes it. They're easy to hear coming and easy to loiter about to avoid, under the shadow of one of the big old evergreens that hang over from the yards or tucked around a corner or sometimes just standing behind a convenient trash can at the side of the road, for those of them who are short enough for that to work.

Not that it'd do much harm if Reformation has the reputation for being inhabited by some weirdos who walk their dogs before dawn, but it's generally best to keep the strangeness at levels that people think is charming but don't care to look harder at. Fae steps out from under the feathery hanging branch of a hemlock and pats it in thanks as it curls back up over the chainlink fence it obligingly draped itself over when she heard the semi's engine coming up from the big concrete highway bridge that crosses the river to the northwest.

She's heading down the long naturally terraced hill above the river that most of the town sits on, going northwest, just like her fellow predawn dog walking enthusiasts. She has a leash looped over her shoulder, a thick braided leather thing that looks appropriate for who it belongs to. People look uneasy when they see her walking her dog on a retractable leash; to be fair, his head is level with her own when all their respective feet are on the ground. The leather one fits the part much better. It's also very nice to hold, and pretty, and both of them like it, and it was easy to fit the trick clip to the end in place of a normal one so he can get himself loose when he likes.

She's wearing fleece-lined jeans, because she believes in warm legs, and a pair of battered red boots that used to belong to her grandfather-in-law, because she believes in not wasting good shoes. And they're quite comfortable now that she's resized them. She's also wearing a big fleece jacket that belongs to her husband, and it shows, because it nearly reaches her knees and the sleeves have to be bunched up at her elbows so they don't swamp her hands. It smells nice. It's warm. She can give it to him if he needs it and keep herself warm on the walk back, though that hardly ever happens, usually just when someone's been stupid enough to hurt themselves and they need an escort to the hospital all the way on the southeastern side of town – not like it's that far of a walk. Reformation is not a large place, and that's just how they like it.

Sometimes, when there's snow on the ground – except for the immaculately shoveled sidewalks that make the tourists passing through to ski raise their eyebrows and comment on how boring life must be here, to spend so much time shoveling snow – and it's too dangerous for the trucks to be driving in the dark, she wears nothing but her boots and her cloak made of wool and lined with satin-backed fleece; it's beautifully warm, it covers her from head to ankles, and it feels so nice against her skin. It also means it's easy for them to decide to walk back along the river's edge instead of going through town, and stop at the warm crystal pools in the cave under the old railroad bridge; they can soak for an hour or two, and neither of them have to worry about bringing a towel. There's no time for that today, though, and it's not quite cold enough for it to feel as nice. Fae has dough to make after she goes to meet her husband and walk him safely home, and Luminara is counting on her to deliver the cafe's sandwich bread for the next two days later this morning, so it’s not like she can put it off for tomorrow or even for later today.

She crosses the two-lane highway at the single actual pedestrian crossing on the corner by The Store – not to be confused with the store, which shares a building and a parking lot with The Store but is not as large and does not sell food, just outdoor supplies and things more catered to tourists who pass through on their way to the mountains – and heads down the hill towards the park by the water treatment plant. It's a nice little park. It has a playground and a baseball field and some picnic tables, and there's a little gate in the fence around the smaller north-south highway. The gate leads to a path that ducks under the highway bridge where it starts to cross the river and deposits the curious in a small loop of two interconnected 'community nature trails' that go a little ways into the wetlands there at the bottom of the hill. It's nice. It's quaint. It makes people think they know what all the more energetic of the middle-aged and elderly of the town do with their free weekends and afternoons.

Fae sees the faint shimmer of someone passing through the other, hidden path as she reaches the edge of the parking lot by the playground, but she's too far behind them to follow in their wake before it closes itself. She reaches out and presses her fingers to the screws of the sign on the gate herself when she gets to it, and takes the path to the right between the concrete supports of the bridge that silently opens for her.

She goes down to the cove in the bend of the river and sits herself down on a low-hanging tree branch. It's her spot, generally. There's a few people already here, a little indistinct in the darkness and the fog curling up off the water, but she's guessing from where they're waiting that Depa and Shaak and Plo, at least, are here today. Not everyone always comes down to walk their people home, but they try to make sure that at least one person is there to check up on them all. Fae's half nocturnal anyway – five in the morning is near to midday for her – so she is there most every time, and that's how both of them like it.

There's the sound of splashing and big feet trampling through the undergrowth, and she tucks her feet up onto the branch and waits. Hopefully whichever idiot is in the river is not her particular idiot.

Her idiot is not in the river, as it happens, which is good. He comes bounding over to her as soon as he notices her, tongue lolling as he heaves in breath.

"Were you racing?" she asks, and gets a full-body wriggle and a big cold nose shoved up under her chin. His tail is wagging now, hard enough to shake his entire body, and she laughs and buries her hands in the thick fur behind his pointed ears, feeling the frost on the tips of the hairs and the warmth in his undercoat. "Did you win?"

She gets a damp huff and probably an eye roll, though she can't see it. Her hands slide down his neck and find the collar there. It's a safety thing, mostly; it has a locator in it in case he gets hurt or some overzealous hiker thinks they're rescuing a lost dog, and it can shield him from most attacks, and she's been tinkering with some stealth enhancements which should eventually make him entirely unnoticeable even in daylight. Those aren't quite worked out to her satisfaction yet, though.

"I'll want a report on how the sneaky worked," she tells him. "You did remember to test it, didn't you?"

A series of outraged howls and yips from . . . just about everyone currently four-legged in the cove makes her jump and hunch her shoulders up towards her ears. Her husband whirls around and growls at his family, who quiet down and shuffle restlessly. She pats him on the back. "It was just loud," she assures him. "I'm not scared of you anymore, really."

He turns back to her with a whuff and butts his big furry head hard into her chest, nearly knocking her off the branch. She grabs the bark of the tree with one hand and his collar with the other to anchor herself and sighs. "It's a prototype, guys," she says, louder. "I just figured out how to move it out of theory last week. You'll all get it eventually."

There is a series of more apologetic, quieter yips and whines and yodels. She snorts.

"Are you sure you're not a bunch of part-time huskies instead of a pack of werewolves?" Shaak asks from somewhere in the trees off to her left, amusement clear in her voice. There is a chorus of yelps of indignation and then sudden silence when they hear themselves.

Fae snorts again.

Her particular idiot stuffs his nose back up under her chin and sniffs deeply for a moment before withdrawing, leaving a trail of werewolf nose slime cold across her skin. She wipes it off with the back of her sleeve and uncurls her legs, sliding off the branch. "Home. I've got bread to start and finish, and deliveries to make starting at nine."

He tilts his head and then turns in a circle and makes a very specific little huffy whine. She considers.

"I've got boots on," she reminds him. He shrugs.

She could take them off, but it's cold and he's glaring at her like he knows she's thinking about it. He spins again and play-bows at her.

Fae puts a foot on the branch she was just sitting on, grabbing a handful of the thick extra-long fur like a mane along his neck, and uses both things to gain enough height for her to throw a leg over his back and get settled there, closer to his hips than his shoulders. It was a bit weird to figure out at first, but they've got it down now. If she was any taller, it wouldn't really work.

They'll have to be extra careful when crossing the highway, in case someone sees her riding a giant dog like a pony, but he's fast and she's good at hiding and they're both cautious; it'll be fine.

"Some day we are going to cosplay as Wolf Link and Midna and break the entire internet," she informs him, and he shakes his head and grumbles. "Good start. All you need is the earrings. I'm pretty sure I could learn how to levitate myself enough to do flips."

He starts off at a brisk trot and she waves over her shoulder to the others as they disappear into the trees. She concentrates on not falling off. It's . . . not exactly easy to ride a wolf, especially without any kind of saddle, but they haven't had a reason to try to invent one that actually works yet. She can always hang on to his collar, and even though his fur is slippery she has strong legs. It works well enough.

He weaves through the trees until they reach the little gate again, where he slows down and carefully squeezes through so she doesn't get bumped. She pats his shoulder, and he waits for her to get a good grip on him before giving a happy little yip and leaping forward in a dead sprint across the corner of the field, through the parking lot, and up the little side road towards the highway. His claws rattle on the pavement, and he slows slightly when he comes up the hill, ears swiveling back and forth before he decides there aren't any vehicles coming and lopes out onto the sidewalk in plain sight of anyone passing by.

He completely ignores the crosswalk and runs down the middle of the highway for a while before turning at the side street that will take them home fastest; he also ignores the divided road with the narrow strip of greenery and fountain in the middle that the side street leads to and just crashes straight through it all, though he does avoid trampling the flowerbeds. Nobody wants to trample the flowerbeds, or they will face the wrath of some very invested gardeners.

They're moving slower as he trots up the last steep stretch of hill before turning right at the top, by the old oak tree growing half in the middle of the road that the road was in fact built around. It's in front of Yoda's house, and he keeps watch over it as the eldest and the first of their kind to live here. Or. She always feels a bit weird when she thinks too much about that. She really doesn't remember much of anything; dying and being reborn does that to a person. Especially being reborn to a tree like some kind of fairy, which is how she got her name back – but anyway. She's just glad Yoda noticed the cocoon high up in the trunk of the tree all those years ago, or she'd probably have just crawled out of it one day and broken something falling down to the ground. Instead, there were people there to catch her.

Their house is the one right next to Yoda's, though it faces the other side of the block. It used to belong to Tyvokka, but he insisted they take it when she moved back into town and got married. He moved down to the apartment she briefly lived in over one of the stores on Main and took up the watch on the southwestern road and new railroad bridge after more tourists started coming through, which has been a big help for Cin, who was covering the entire southern side of town by himself before then. It’s worked out well for everyone; Tyvokka gets to be less bored, Cin gets help, Fae gets to live in symbiosis by the oak tree so both of them grow stronger, and nobody had to deal with helping Qui-Gon move his frankly oversized and probably illegally pocket-dimension-expanded garden somewhere else, because he has the house across the street from the tree and from Yoda and nowhere else is really that close, or on the same current as the tree. He did offer to move, though, which was kind of him.

It's a nice house, really. She sometimes worries that Cody misses having the sheer amount of space that he was used to, living outside of town proper, but he always insists that he doesn't mind, that she's more than worth not having a ten-acre front yard, and that he likes that to get to work he just has to walk down the hill to Main and cross it and he's there, instead of driving for fifteen minutes just to get off of his own land.

He pauses at their front gate, shifting from paw to paw.

"I'm not ready to go down to the bar yet," she tells him, and opens the gate for him. They fixed the latch so he can open it with his snout, but it's the principle of the thing.

Their house is on the edge of this particular flattish bit of the hill, with the main street a few blocks below them, which means that the entire western side of their property is terraced and they have a root cellar and an underground garage connected to their basement that both open on the alley down there, nearly twenty feet below their front door. Cody has a truck. She has a bike. They use neither most days. Their front gate out on the sidewalk gets a lot of use.

Both of their other neighbors aren't their kind, but the ones across the road and next to Qui-Gon's are an elderly couple who have lived here so long they're practically in the community by virtue of putting up with them and keeping quiet for literal decades and the others, diagonally across the intersection, are so very normal that they don't notice anything strange going on. Fae gives them another six months before they get tired of the lack of amenities and move out. They're pleasant enough, just not the kind of person who really enjoys living in a small town in the middle of nowhere when they're doing it for real and not for vacation, and she rather thinks they’ll start thinking seriously about leaving after the first of the week-long winter power outages.

She slides off Cody’s back when they're at the steps to the porch and goes to open the door. He shakes vigorously and trots up the stairs and into the house, only shifting once the door is closed. She watches him stretch, yawn, blink, and shake his head, still looking remarkably like his furry other form. Then he goes still.

"It's in the oven, keeping warm," she tells him, and laughs as he nearly stumbles over the feet he doesn’t currently have as he perks up and heads for the kitchen, grabbing the soft old flannel robe hanging by the door on his way. She goes upstairs to get her backpack with her work clothes and pick up her phone, which she left behind to charge.

He's working his way through the bowl she left for him when she comes back down, sleepy but enthusiastic. She can nearly see his tail wagging happily as he gets up and comes around the table to give her a hug.

"I already had mine," she tells him as he tries to tug her over, a concerned little grumble low in his throat. Words always come back slowly for an hour or two after a moon-induced shift, and that's fine by her. Sometimes she loses words altogether for no reason at all, and he doesn't mind doing the talking for both of them then. "If you want more cheese, there's some extra all shredded in the fridge. And there's boiled eggs, but I didn't know if you wanted some today so I left those out."

He nuzzles at her temple and goes over to the fridge with single-minded determination, dumping more shredded cheese into his rice and stirring it around so it starts to melt and eyeing the eggs thoughtfully before taking four of the dozen and starting to peel them.

"I take it this recipe is good?" she asks, and gets a focused nod. "It's not too different from the one we usually make, but it's less sweet. I think I like it better."

He shrugs.

"I want to try it with beef next time, but I think it works well with chicken."

He nods again. She pats him on the head as he sits back down and prods at his bowl of rice and cheese and grilled chicken. She had been most displeased to learn that he had been mostly depending on protein shakes for his moon-shifts, which did technically have enough calories to be sufficient but weren't very pleasant and always left him kind of unsteady, and had experimented until finding something better. It turned out that 'better' was usually a rice bowl of some sort, with lots of protein and fat, and handily both of them liked them. Adding cheese to it is a new discovery that was working surprisingly well. She doesn't mind doing all the cooking and the menu planning on shift days; she eats half of it anyway, and he does half of the cooking and all of the planning during the rest of the month since he has fun with it and doesn't find it as mentally tiring as she does.

Hm. She's thinking maybe fish for next month; salmon season should have mostly come and gone but that just means their fish and game freezer will be full, or if they don't get down to the river for some strange reason she can always just ask for some from her in-laws. They usually fall all over themselves to come help, and she always feels so lucky to have found a home with them. Maybe on the last day she’ll make what they call ‘eggy oats’ instead, which is basically just oatmeal with about two dozen eggs and a lot of milk stirred into it until it’s more of a pudding, with chunks of dried fruit mixed in at the end and nut or seed butter on top. She likes chocolate shavings in hers, half for the flavor and half because of the faces Cody makes; he always wants some but it makes him so itchy for the days around the full moon. Neither of them are really sugar people, but it’ll be nice for the even colder weather.

"I'm heading down to bake," she tells her husband, and he drops his spoon to get up again and come up behind her and wrap his arms around her, burying his face in the back of her neck and breathing deeply. She lets him cling for a moment before beginning to wriggle. "I have to go, really. Luminara needs her bread for the weekend, and I promised Dex an extra batch of cinnamon rolls since it’s getting to the yucky pumpkin time of year and people want them more. I left my shirt from yesterday in your bed, you big baby. Go through my laundry basket if you still feel lonely."

He'll eat and shower and then sleep for about ten hours, she knows from experience, and be up by late afternoon. She'll be asleep herself then, but she'll wake up a bit early tonight so they can walk down to Main together before the moon gets too close. She tugs him down so she can kiss his forehead and gets a happy noise out of him and a rather sloppy forehead kiss in return. Sometimes he forgets not to lick right after he's been furry for a while, and it's always worse when the shift was involuntary. It's kind of gross but she knows he's not doing it to annoy her.

Fae walks down the hill to the bar and lets herself in, going to the back where all her baking equipment is. The kitchen is much larger than it really needs to be for the bar, since the building was a restaurant once long ago, so long ago nobody remembers it and the only proof they have is the architecture and an ancient photograph, but now she runs a bakery there, selling her things mostly to the cafe and the diner and sometimes The Store, when there's an event and she has the time and supplies for that kind of quantity, and she makes a few basic things for the bar too. She's there at night and in the very early mornings, so she doesn't get in the way, and it makes the place smell really nice. And best of all, not having to sell directly to the public means she doesn't have to deal with people, and be awake and run a business during the day when most customers are awake, and it's just better all the way around. Cody and Rex and the eternally rotating collection of siblings and cousins and niblings that pick up shifts from them can handle interacting with people. She'll be in the back with her tools, avoiding most everyone.

It's late morning and she's getting tired and starting to feel ready for bed by the time her work is done for the day. Dex came and picked up his trays of rising cinnamon rolls that are all ready for him to put in his own oven to make his place smell nice, and Luminara sent Barriss over to help Fae bring their bread order down the street to the cafe. It's not far, since though the cafe is on the end of the street to the south the bar is about in the middle, and they load the bread into boxes and the boxes onto the cart and pull it down the sidewalk. Barriss is fourteen now and quietly very proud that her guardian trusts her with the responsibility alone, and Fae thinks it's cute. She likes Barriss. Barriss is a sensible girl who also likes being awake at three in the morning and does everything she can to hide from customers. She understands Barriss.

Luminara offers her an early lunch when she arrives, which Fae gladly accepts. It's nothing fancy, just a sandwich and a cup of tea, but Luminara is good at making both and she knows Fae would stab someone for one of her sandwiches. She hides in the back with her prize, occasionally answering Barriss' questions about how she gets the bread for the sandwiches to 'not be so full of holes', wondering if she will ever be able to figure out the secret to making chai the way Luminara does it, and idly watching the people in the cafe through the shelves during the lulls in their conversation. There's the usual mix of tourists and locals she doesn't know and people from the community. It's nice and predictable and routine. She likes routine.

Qui-Gon comes in like usual – Barriss already has what he usually gets half prepared – and Fae watches him and thinks about whether it's worth it to go yell at him about leaving his trash open again to let the raccoons at it. This is the fourth time in a month she's had raccoons trying to get into her own trash with their little hands, and she's seen them run across the road to dive back into his when she chases them off. He always says he'll remember to close it but he never does, and half the time he doesn't seem to notice that someone's yelling at him at all.

But no, he has someone with him, and that's rude, and she doesn't want to be introduced to people. Though his friend is very pretty. She squints at them, wonders briefly if it's someone new that Qui-Gon found who has gone through the appropriate background checks to be cautiously, slowly, noncommittally introduced here as a precursor to perhaps joining the community, and then mentally shrugs. Either . . . she's? they've? he's? she really can't tell, not that it matters much. Either his friend is like them or they aren't, and it's no use for her to fuss about it until and if she needs to.

They are very aesthetically attractive though. She'll have to tell Cody. He always thinks it's interesting to hear about the times she thinks strangers are attractive, or he has been all five times it's happened in the nine years they've been married. He's always smug that he was the very first person she ever looked at without knowing and felt puzzled by.

She's forgotten all about the pretty redhead by the time she gets home, much more preoccupied by the more important matters of putting the other half of her sandwich in the fridge with her name on it for later – Luminara always insists she take the whole thing even though it's huge and they're sold by halves – and getting in the shower to wash off the lingering flour that feels like it's everywhere and going to bed. Cody's asleep when she pokes her head into his room, curled up in a ball around a pillow that has one of her shirts wrapped around it. She smiles and leaves him to sleep. She doesn't feel like cuddling today, and he didn't ask her to earlier, so he's fine with staying separate.

She wakes up well after the sun has gone down but just in time for him to get to the river and eat before the moon starts to tug. They leave the house together; she ambles over to the bar after they part ways at Main, sleepy and wondering if she should take a nap before going down to walk Cody home later. She's kind of feeling like she wants one. That's another bonus of being semi-nocturnal – she can take a nap whenever she likes and nobody ever has to know. The only person affected is her.

He's not working tonight, of course, because he'll be out charging through the forest, herding his family around and yelling at everything that twitches in the underbrush. Rex is there, though, since it's his turn to be on suppressors so he can keep an eye on the human side of things. He looks vaguely achy and uncomfortable, but they've all assured her that it's only minor discomfort and it's well worth the reasons.

He slides some breakfast over to her, and she lurks in her little corner in the back, having a sort of conversation with him in the lulls and mostly just trying to plan out her schedule and yawning. She doesn't really have any orders until two days from now, when Luminara will need more bread and one part of her biweekly pastry delivery. Today is more or less a free day unless Dex has a cinnamon roll emergency, and if he doesn’t text her in the next hour or so she knows she’s definitely free. She props her chin on her hand and stares at nothing much.

Huh.

The pretty redhead is here too, still with Qui-Gon, who’s in like usual to gossip with people and attempt to play weird board games in the corner. They seem upset about something, and it doesn’t seem to be Qui-Gon’s inability to focus long enough to ever really finish a game. They’re not playing with him. Tholme is, and – she takes a closer look. They’ve integrated flash cards into the game and T’ra is holding them. That’s a good idea. It’s taking ages for everyone to become fluent in the old tongue but they’re working on it, now that they’ve finally found a stable entrance to the buried temple and Jo and Jaster have gotten their hands on the remarkably well-preserved library there.

Rex keeps watching the pretty redhead while trying not to be obvious about it. She kicks him in the leg the next time he passes her.

"Why do you keep staring at that person?"

He looks uncomfortable.

"Are they a threat?" she asks. It depends on what kind of threat they are, but there's some kinds that are her job to handle.

Rex shakes his head. "No! Not at all. He's just. Uh. Um."

"What?" she asks, confused.

"That's Kenobi," he mumbles, and then when she just frowns at him, "Obi-Wan. Cody's, uh, Obi-Wan."

Fae suddenly finds him much more interesting. That's Obi-Wan? "I knew he has good taste," she says absently, staring at him. He really is very pretty.

She's heard a lot about Obi-Wan. Mostly from Cody. Everyone else is hilariously awkward about mentioning him around her, which she still doesn't understand. It's not like she feels jealous or threatened or anything. She's always known Cody still loves him. He has two hands. So does she.

She is a bit surprised that she didn't recognize him, but she supposes that the most recent pictures of him she's ever seen are over a decade old. He left when he was twenty-one, and he'll be about thirty-three now; he's the same age as Cody. She . . . wasn't around much then, on account of being murdered and reborn and hatching out of a tree having some interesting side effects that persisted until she was nearly grown, and she was in and out of healing places and sanctuaries around the world for years, so she never met either of them until she was all grown up and decided that nomadic city-centered life really wasn't for her even though her guardian prefers it. She's also a couple of years older than Cody, not much, but everything combined is enough that they never met as children.

Obi-Wan was cute in the pictures Cody's kept, of both of them as awkward gangly uncertain teenagers; he's pretty now as an adult. It's a shame he's a null, but surely he's one of the trustworthy ones? He grew up with a guardian who definitely isn't, after all, and he must have noticed some of the weird shit that follows Qui-Gon around. Cody never told him about the whole werewolf thing, but if he could put up with Qui-Gon he shouldn't be too put off by him occasionally having fur and big paws that tromple on people's feet and a tendency to lick people's faces when not thinking.

She wonders if Cody knows he's here. He hasn't been back since he left. She doesn't think Cody's seen him in person for twelve years. She should tell him before he runs into him and is taken by surprise.

It's unfortunate that he's here now, on the days around the full moon.

Why is Rex looking at her like that.

"Are you okay?"

She frowns at him. "Yeah? Why wouldn't I be?"

He looks deeply awkward. "Well. You know."

"No?"

"I mean, I know Cody's still kind of hung up about him, so."

"Oh, that." She waves a hand dismissively. "Don't worry about it. I mean, I hope they can talk as friends at the least, but we've talked about him a lot. Cody knows he can do what he likes, as long as he's honest with me about it. Well. Not about the details, I neither care about those nor want to know them, but he can pick up where he left off with Obi-Wan if both of them want to. Why are you staring at me?"

"You're . . . really okay with him getting back together with his ex-boyfriend?"

Fae doesn't know why Rex is being so weird about this. "Yeah? I mean, if it makes them both happy. Not if it's just going to break his heart again. And maybe he's just passing through and doesn't want to see Cody at all. Maybe they’ve grown out of each other; they’ve spent almost more time apart than they did growing up together and they’re adults now, not teenagers. But if he's back and wants to see him, I'm not getting in the way."

Rex is looking at her strangely. He turns away, but she still hears him. "I swear, if he fucks this up and loses you, I'm never going to forgive him."

People are so weird about relationships. She shrugs.

She gets to sit and look at the internet in peace for about another half hour, until suddenly there is a Qui-Gon looming in her space. She pushes him back about two feet and then looks up at him. "Personal space bubble," she reminds him. He blinks at her.

"Obi-Wan is here for a visit," he informs her.

"I noticed."

He looks unusually nervous. Usually he doesn't notice there's anything to be nervous about. "He was rather. Distressed. When he realized who owns this place now."

"He's doing a volunteer shift tonight," she reminds him. That kind of thing is their usual code for 'remember that the person you're looking for is currently furry and chasing sticks in the river'. They’ve made up an entire imaginary search-and-rescue volunteer organization to cover for full moons. So far it’s worked splendidly as long as everyone remembers to be vague about details.

Qui-Gon nods. "Oh, yes, I know. But apparently he thought he'd left, or something. I don't know."

She waits for this to become relevant.

"He's still hung up on him," he says.

She nods. "It's mutual."

There is a silence.

"Look, I don't know what you want me to do about it," she finally says. "They're both adults. They can have their own conversation."

"I didn't want you to be taken by surprise," he answers. "And I realized I'm not sure if I interpreted the signs correctly."

"What signs?" she asks, curious. He shrugs.

"You've never seemed annoyed when he talks about him, and you came over and asked me for pictures once. You pay attention when I talk about him and you don’t get mad. I've been assuming you know they used to date, and that Cody never got over him, and that you're fine with that."

"I am fine with it," she says, and sighs. "Look, I appreciate that people are weirdly concerned that I'll be upset, but I'm really not. We talked this over extensively before we got married, and we've done it again after. I don't mind sharing if it's with him, and as long as he's not trying to hurt Cody. Should I . . . should I put up a sign, or something?"

Qui-Gon looks like he's actually considering that. "Maybe a group text," he says after some thought. "Not everyone will see a sign."

Fae sighs. "I'm telling Cody about this in person first," she warns. "He deserves to not find out via group text with the whole lot of everyone."

"That's a good idea."

"You can leave now," she prompts when the silence starts getting awkward.

"Right. Well. Good night," he says, and wanders off.

She kind of likes talking to Qui-Gon, for all that he never gets what personal space is. He actually makes sense, and follows basic etiquette, and doesn't look at her weirdly when she has to clarify what's going on.

It's not a good time to tell Cody what's going on that day. He's exhausted in the morning, still trotting up to her in her perch in the tree with perked ears and a wagging tail, but he flops his head onto her thighs and just stands there while she scratches behind his ears, and he trudges along beside her on the walk home with none of the restless energy of the morning before. Neither of them are alarmed about this; the day before the moon is usually when all the wolves are at their most hyper, and then the night of the moon they wear themselves out tearing around the forest. The current record for distance covered in one night is somewhere around forty miles – one way. That's why they make sure there are people waiting for them at sunrise now. Shaak and Mace and Tyvokka had had to drive out to find them, and eventually found a heap of snoring wolves in a puppy pile in the middle of nowhere on restricted national park land, miles upriver from where they usually turn back.

Cody's too sensible for that kind of thing now, and older than the teenagers who usually try it, but that just means he has to help keep an eye on them and herd them back towards home when they do try to run off chasing shadows, and it wears him out.

He doesn't go down to the river the next night, the last night of the forced shifts for the month. He rolls out of bed late and stumbles out into their back garden instead, not even bothering to get dressed, and decides to shift himself before the moon can show up and do it for him. He flumps down in the pine needles at the base of the biggest tree in their yard and rolls over to show her his belly with an enormous sigh.

Fae pets his tummy for a while – his undercoat is so soft, unbelievably soft, she still thinks that werewolf-fur yarn would be incredible – and teases him when she scratches at that one particular spot and makes one of his hind legs reflexively kick at nothing. After he gets fed up with that and squashes her flat in the dirt for a few minutes so he can lick her face, she wriggles out from under him and goes to text Plo and ask if he would be willing to drop off some of the special wolf food he's in charge of making and storing on his way home after driving whichever of his boys are with him down to the river. He leaves a ten-pound bag of what they call 'wolf kibble' on her porch about an hour later, and she scoops some of it into a bowl and takes it out to the garden, where her wolf is sprawled across the grass on his front.

He heaves himself to his feet when he sees her with an air that suggests it's the most difficult task in the world, but he pads over to investigate the bowl and then turns to her with a happy little grumble before working his way through it. Shifting takes a lot of energy, and that means a lot of calories. Usually they all bring something to contribute and eat down at the river before shifting and then have something substantial when they come home, but when they don't go there, they have to figure out the first meal on their own. And the problem is that if they’re not shifting with the others, they’re usually too tired or woke up too late to have time to eat as a human. That's where Plo comes in, with his idea for something healthy and calorie-dense that they can eat in wolf form instead of having to remember to eat while human on a deadline.

Her silly wolf noses through the bowl, picking out the dried fruit and honey clusters and flipping them into the grass to eat later. All the chunks of roasted chicken and venison and boiled sweet potato get inhaled immediately, and he doesn't seem to notice or care much about the shredded raw beet and carrot mix or the little oat and sunflower butter bites Plo is experimenting with. Fae thinks they look pretty good, actually, but she's not going to try them. Werewolves like weird spices. She can smell the cardamom from where she sits on the porch steps.

She goes back into the house and gets the second bag Plo left for them, with a little pouch of smoked meat bits and an enormous beef bone full of marrow. Cody is looking livelier now that he's eaten, and she doesn't want to hear him mumbling about how annoying it is to fill in six-foot holes in their yard for the rest of the week.

He looks up at her, tail thumping involuntarily on the grass as he snuffles around for the last bit of fruit, and she tosses a piece of smoked ham in a high arc over his head. He follows it with his eyes and then catches the scent of it, springing to his feet and tearing off into the corner to snatch it before it hits the ground.

Chasing the treats keeps him occupied for a good half hour, and she saves the last few to stuff into the big rubber ball that’s currently in the closet in the basement. She levitates the bone about thirty feet into the big tree while he's distracted and then watches him turn in circles for a while, searching for the source of the smell.

"You keep looking, and I'm going to get the dog toys," she tells him, and gets a distracted nod.

She comes back with the treat ball and the big extra-tough rubber donut he likes to chew on and a rope they use to play tug-of-war with – and a blanket for herself – to find him clawing his way up the tree. She sits down on the back porch again, huddled into one of his sweatshirts because it's gotten very cold, and keeps an eye on him to make sure he doesn't fall and break something.

People get so weird about werewolves, even ones who know they're real. They always think the stupidest things about her and everyone else who's married into the pack here, so many fetishes and fantasies. It's not like that at all. It's more like having a part time dog, one who is as big as she is, very dramatic, and very high-energy.

It also means they’ve had to modify their house a bit. All the doors have handles that can pressed with a snout or a paw, and they don’t use rugs on the wooden floors because his claws have a tendency to shred through them faster than she can make them impervious. They have furniture that’s really easy to vacuum. They spend a lot of time clearing out the drain in the downstairs shower, because wolf fur clings something awful and that's the one they both use after his shifts. There are little loops of fabric stapled to the kitchen drawers so he can get them open if he needs to. They have an entire extra chest freezer in their basement that’s bigger than Fae's bed and it’s always crammed full of cheap chicken quarters and whatever the pack has hunted to share around while in human form as their part in helping out with Plo’s supply storage, and for themselves they go through an incredible amount of oats and rice and eggs and root vegetables and fatty bacon ends, since shapeshifting needs calories all month long, lots of them, and those are the cheapest and easier to get and store.

There's a reason most werewolf packs own generational farms and ranches, and only about a quarter of that reason is so they have space to run on shift nights. Most of it is simply so they can feed themselves without raising suspicion or going bankrupt. There are little communal garden lots on half the block corners in Reformation, not all of them connected to the community or the pack, but most of them are, and most everyone in the community who doesn't live with a wolf has a backyard chicken coop meant to help feed them. The ones who live on the edge of town and have space keep goats and pigs as well, and the pack itself owns multiple dairy farms, half to have something to sell and half for the extra meat.

Fae likes going over to help with Yoda's chickens. The little high trilling noises they make are pleasant to her ears, and their feathers shine and fluff appealingly. They're mean little bastards to each other, and she finds it funny to watch them scuffle and peck each other when she throws old blueberries into the grass for them. They don't even need to fight for them, they're just like that. And they swallow dandelion leaves whole when she tugs them out of the lawn and holds them out to them.

Chickens get skittish around shifted wolves, and most town wolves need an emergency space to shift in their own yards, so that's why they can't keep chickens themselves. It's kind of a shame but also kind of not. They do smell, even when the coop is kept spotless.

Cody scrambles back out of the tree with his prize clamped in his jaws, and the rasping noise of his teeth against the bone lulls her to sleep, curled up under the blanket in a chair. She is prodded awake a while later by a big wet nose nudging at her cheek. She puts a hand on his face and pushes him away.

"Ew, bone breath."

He looks sheepish.

"What do you want?"

He whines at her, bonking his head against her knees and crowding in close. He's so warm.

"More food?" she guesses hazily. He shakes his head and tries to sprawl over her lap without actually getting into the chair and squishing her. The heat radiating off of him is – oh.

Oops.

Fae forces herself to uncurl and stands up, blinking as the world swims and a hasty wolf head shoved under her chest is the only thing that keeps her upright. He whines some more and pushes her gently towards the door when she can stand on her own, and she shakily pats him.

"I’ll be okay, you don’t need to scream until Yoda comes to investigate. I didn't realize it would get so cold tonight," she mumbles, and lets him pad through the door after her, herding her insistently towards the downstairs shower. He lays in the open doorway and watches her warily as she turns it on, lukewarm, and sits down in the bathtub, almost too cold to shiver. He’s still ready to run back outside and howl at the top of his lungs until someone who has permission to get through their silencing wards – Yoda, generally, on account of proximity – hears and responds.

Getting too cold like this has happened before, so she's not too alarmed, but it was still dangerous and stupid to fall asleep outside like that. It's a good thing Cody was keeping an eye on her. She flails a wet hand towards him and he squirms across the tile on his belly until he can plonk his big furry head down with his muzzle resting on the edge of the bathtub and stare soulfully at her, small and wet and shivering now in the water.

Her feet prickle painfully and she squeezes her fingers into his fur. He whines sympathetically.

"If we were in a romance novel, we would be having sex to warm me up instead of you bullying me into a bath," she informs him, trying to distract herself from how uncomfortable her feet are.

He stares at her for a long moment, utterly flat, and slowly looks down at himself and then back to her. The sarcasm comes through clearly, and so does the raised eyebrow.

"Yeah, I know you're a dog right now. That seems to be half the appeal. I don't get it."

She thinks he's probably wondering the same thing she is, which is 'how would it even work?' She doesn't know, and doesn't particularly want to find out even though quite a lot of the internet would kill to have the ability to experiment the way she does. She doesn’t like this distraction anymore.

He leans in and very deliberately slurps his tongue across her cheek, bone breath and all. She shoves his giant face away, spluttering.

"They never think about bone breath," she mutters. "Or having their feet stepped on by giant paws, or how the hair gets everywhere, or about the singing."

He flattens his ears and looks away at the last remark, the wolf equivalent of blushing.

"I know it sounds good to you, but to us it sounds like a lot of stray cats yowling out of tune."

His ears shoot up. He looks comically insulted. Fae giggles and pokes his big wet nose.

"Cats," she repeates. "Fighting in an alley. You're lucky we're all so good at sound dampening wards, or this town would be overrun with animal control trying to find the feral cat colonies."

He realizes she's winding him up. She watches this play across his face.

It's not that he's stupid while he's a wolf, she knows. It's just – wolf-brain. It has different priorities, it runs on different logic. That's why she can still sometimes get away with only pretending to throw the stick, and it's hilarious. It's even more hilarious to watch him remember after turning back into a human, and then go sulk on the couch until she gives in and cuddles with him.

The thing that’s so strange about werewolf singing is that when they’re human, they sound spectacular. When they’re wolves, they sound . . . not spectacular, at least to non-wolf ears. But they sound great as humans. She heard a bunch of them singing in the excavation caverns up in the hills once, when they didn’t know she was there, and it is still one of her most treasured memories.

Cody huffs at her.

“What?”

She drains the bathtub and refills it with warmer water after a while, and eventually he lets her out only to chivvy her into the living room and in front of the woodstove, which still has some coals putting out decent heat. He attempts to put another log in. She stops him and does it herself after he gets ash in his face and nearly sets the hearth on fire, sneezing explosively. There are some things that wolves just can't really do without their thumbs.

He drags the big circular dog bed out of the hall closet and in front of the stove and flops down on it, staring and huffing and whining until she sits in the middle and lets him curl around her like the world's warmest, hairiest, most overprotective body pillow.

She shoos him back out the door when her alarm goes off half an hour before dawn, so he can tear around the yard for a bit and get rid of the itchiness under his skin before shifting back when the moon is far enough away. She watches him have a final bout of the zoomies through one of the kitchen windows as she puts together the last night of rice bowls, and decides on a whim to add sprouts on the top.

Another weird quirk of werewolf taste, besides liking strong spices, is their bizarre affection for fruit and vegetables. They'll still go wild over a bone or a treat ball full of bacon or nut butter, but sometimes all she has to do is show wolf-Cody a big carrot or half a squash or a whole cucumber and he absolutely loses his mind in glee. Wolf-Rex will shred a yard apart looking for parsnips or apples. She hasn't really been around any of the other wolves anywhere but the river, but Aayla swears that Bly loves blackberries more than steak, and Plo rather infamously grows enormous patches of sweet peas and string beans in the summer for his little group of boys he adopted after their first foster family turned out to be traitors. Yoda has strawberries all over his yard and in pots all through his house, the outside ones carefully warded from the chickens, for Gree and Thorn and Fox and some of the younger wolves. Mace has a greenhouse nearly as big as his actual house, mostly so he can grow arugula and figs all year round for Ponds, but he also helps grow a steady supply of sunflowers to turn into seed butter for Plo’s wolf kibble. Shaak keeps the most bees of all of them on account of the little wolves she helps teach almost universally having a taste for honey. It's weird.

Those communal gardens carry a lot of weight in the community and the pack. She has no idea how the pack would have survived without them after the Incident and ensuing population explosion. It turned out to be a good thing in the end, since the community and the pack would never have met or come to trust each other otherwise, but she still doesn't like to think about it.

She hears Cody come in the back door and gets a glimpse of him as he ambles through to get in the shower himself. There are pine needles stuck in his hair. She follows him and makes him pick them out and put them in the trash before they can clog up the drain, and he sits on the edge of the bathtub and leans into her as she runs her fingers through his curls.

Eventually she pushes him into the shower properly and goes to set out the rice bowls. Today's has the rice on the bottom, with a layer of shredded cheese under the last of the grilled chicken pieces, with fried eggs on top of that and handfuls of sprouts all around the edge. He makes a happy little grumbly noise and does a full-body wiggle when he comes into the kitchen and sees it, and she tries not to laugh at him trying to wag a tail he doesn't currently have.

She thinks she's managed to keep the apprehension out of her scent for the last two days, but now she has no more time. She has to talk to him about his ex now, this morning, before he goes to sleep, because tonight he will be back working at the bar so Rex can have time off to come down from the suppressors and there's a good chance that he will either smell that Obi-Wan has been there, have someone mention him, or straight up run into him in person. She can't spring it on him just before they go there. She has to tell him now, while he's tired and achy and sleepy and still fumbling for how language works.

He pauses in chasing one of the last grains of rice around his bowl with his spoon – too many accidental self-stabbings as he tries to remember fingers aren't paws led them to ban sharp objects for the first few hours after a forced shift – and gives her a worried look. She tries to smile at him and only succeeds in making him look more worried.

"It's nothing bad," she tries. "I'm not hurt or in any danger. There's something I have to tell you about before tonight. Everyone is safe."

He nods slowly and goes back to chasing the rice.

She's fiddling around in the kitchen, pointlessly washing dishes by hand for no reason other than to have an excuse to do something, when he comes back in after going up to change into real clothes and pads up behind her, hesitating for a moment. When she doesn't step away or lean forward, he wraps his arms around her and tucks his face into the top of her head, ignoring how their height difference makes it a bit uncomfortable.

"Talk?" he suggests, voice a little broken and deep the way it always is after switching back from being used mostly to howl plaintively and yip in excitement.

She rinses the soap off her hands and sighs. "Yeah." She picks up the rice paddle from the dish drainer and fiddles with it, running her thumbnail over the bumps. "I was at the bar – was it only last night? Anyway, I was there like usual, and there was also someone I saw earlier that day in Luminara's. I didn't recognize him then, I don't think she did either, but Rex did, and. Uh. Obi-Wan's here, visiting."

Cody goes still.

"Qui-Gon told Rex he'll be here for a month at least – something about his apartment building having renovations? He'll be here for a while. Qui-Gon's pretty determined to drag him around town and reintroduce him to people, and, well. The bar's like the only decent place that's open after eight, and everyone goes there, so. I didn't want you to be taken off guard if he's there again, or if you walk in tonight and can smell that he's been there."

He squeezes her tightly, once.

"That's it, really. That's all."

"My Obi-Wan?"

"Yeah."

He noses at her hair and makes a plaintive little noise. "Upset?"

"I have no idea – oh, am I upset?" She considers this. "No, not at all. I am worried, but that's because I don't want you to get hurt again. I'm not . . . feeling threatened, or jealous, or anything."

"Avoid him?"

"Should you avoid him?" He nods. "I don't think so. I mean, it's not like he's here to see you, he's probably here because it's easiest and cheapest to stay with his dad instead of finding somewhere else to live until his apartment's done. I don't know what he thinks about you now, but I do hope you can at least be friendly with him."

He nods again. "Not . . . impose," he says. "Just. Friends. But if he. Asks?"

She pats his hand, curled loosely into the front of her sweatshirt. "If he's still genuinely interested in you, my thoughts on that haven't changed," she assures him. "You do what you like with him, as long as I know what's going on and don't have to know the details. And as long as you can handle it when he leaves again. Please don't start something that will just end up hurting you again."

"Mmm," he says, a little anxiously. "Not bringing it up. Just friends."

"You do what you like," she repeats. "If he is still interested in you, and wants to try again, I'd like to be friends with him too, though."

Cody snuffles at her, nose sliding down her hair until he has his face tucked into the curve of her neck, bending over her. "Embarrassed?"

She feels herself blush. "He's very pretty," she admits quietly. "Aesthetically. That was what I noticed first, when I saw him in Luminara's. I noticed him."

He huffs into her skin, amused. "Always pretty."

"I know, but. I didn't recognize him from your pictures. He's even prettier than he was when you were young."

He straightens up, putting his chin back on the top of her head. He rocks her from side to side a little. "Just as pretty," he says decisively. "Mine."

"I'm not worried about myself," she reassures him. "I know I've always shared you with him. He's just here in person now to fill the space he's always been in."

Cody takes one of her hands and turns it over, rubbing his thumb over the unobtrusive tattoo around her ring finger. The tiny dragon wound around the base of her finger, a sunburst held in its open jaws, ripples with the movement. Its tail curls around empty space, looking like it is reaching to latch onto something and complete the circle, the way it always has, the way they deliberately designed it to. He presses his own ring finger against hers, the pair of identical little dragons back to back, one holding a sun in its jaws and the other a moon in its paws, both with unanchored tails.

"Yeah," she says quietly. "You never said it out loud, but I knew. I don't mind, truly. I've always known I can't be everything you need."

"Not broken," he says firmly.

She nods. "I know that now. Just. You can't be everything I need either. We knew that from the start, and we've found ways to deal with it. The only thing that upsets me about this is that you might get your heart broken again, and I don't like it when you're hurt."

He wraps his hand around hers. "Just friends," he reaffirms. "Not trying anything else."

"Friends can still break your heart."

There is a pause before he shrugs. "Worth it. He is. You are."

"If you're prepared for whatever comes of this, I won't stop you."

He hums. "If I get . . . pushy. Stop me?"

She nods. "I will."

His shoulders slump and he presses a kiss to the top of her head. "Was hard to think straight around him, sometimes. He's good at . . . people. Poking them. Winding them up. Not on purpose, not always. Just part of him."

"I'll be here to talk it over with you," she promises, and she means it.

As it turns out, Obi-Wan isn't at the bar that night, but he is the next – looking skittish and miserable, if she's any judge. She pokes her head out of the back, leaving little speckles of flour on the floor, and catches Cody's eye. He gives her a small smile; it's a little stressed, but he looks like he's doing fine. She goes back to her hideout and punches some bread dough for a while.

And that's how it goes, for the next couple of weeks. Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan come in every other night or so, usually with some of Qui-Gon's buddies both in and out of the community, and Obi-Wan is part of their conversation but not really, and he is clearly always aware of where Cody is. They don't really speak except for polite greetings and goodbyes, but Cody isn't that upset about it. He's mostly just glad that Obi-Wan doesn't seem to have a grudge against him for not being the kind of person he apparently wanted to live around.

Fae makes bread and her usual batches of pastries and tries her hand at a puff-pastry quiche, which is Rex's idea for something to have on the bar menu since though everyone calls it a bar out of habit, it's technically more of a pub now, and everyone likes it when they can get something to eat there. All of them eat a lot, wolves and non-wolves alike, especially when they’re shifting or using their extra abilities. It turns out a bit wobbly, but her next one is better, and all her attempts are at least edible even if they aren't pretty.

One of the downsides to upwards of three hundred people needing the cheap calorie boost of dozens of eggs once a month is that the hens they need to keep to supply that don't stop laying the other three weeks of the month. Everyone is always trying to figure out what they can do with eggs. Aayla opened an entire ice cream parlor mostly to help get rid of spare eggs, and to a lesser extent the spare milk and cream from Cyslin’s dairy that she doesn’t use herself to make cheese.

Cody still hasn't actually talked to Obi-Wan, and Fae can tell that he rather needs to, if only for closure. After all, Obi-Wan left town for good the day after they broke up, and they didn't exactly talk a lot when that happened, what with both of them being still practically teenagers and upset on top of it. She gently encourages him to at least tell Obi-Wan that he would like to wind up loose ends, and he fidgets around and hugs her aggressively and spends a few more afternoons than usual furry and sprawling over the bottom half of her bed, his nose buried in one of her worn shirts and making her feet go numb when he rolls over on top of her legs.

And then, finally, something gives. She doesn't know which of them initiated it, but when the bar closes Cody comes through her workshop, a slightly wild look in his eyes, and tells her that he's going to walk back home with Obi-Wan and hopefully do some talking on the way. She hugs him and wishes him luck and reminds him to tell him not to use the downstairs shower if he doesn't want to be stuck in a bathtub that has six inches of standing water in it after thirty seconds since they haven't cleaned the drain out this week, and he flushes so hard it's actually visible and protests that he means actual talking, and she rolls her eyes at him and tells him to get out before he gets flour all over himself, because that's not very sexy. He leaves, a little flustered and apprehensive in a way he's only ever been around her, and she discovers that she's genuinely not jealous or upset now that it’s probably time to live up to what she’s always said. She's really just glad he's sorting things out, and if it ends up with him getting back together with his first love, that's fine by her.

Fae is both startled and not surprised at all to see unfamiliar shoes by the door when she gets home around sunrise, and so she doesn't look in on Cody the way she usually does. She just tidies up their shared second floor bathroom a bit so it's nice, and neatens up the big room downstairs, and quietly starts in on the meal that'll be dinner for her and breakfast for him, and if she makes a bit more than usual, well. It's pretty obvious that someone else is here too, and if he doesn't stay for breakfast she can fry the leftover cheesy leeks and potatoes for her lunch tomorrow, and either way will be an excellent outcome.

She does just about bite her tongue in surprise when the two of them come downstairs – because Obi-Wan is wearing Cody's clothes and he's all sleepy and rumpled and blushing and there's a bruise high up on his neck under his ear in the same spot Cody likes to nibble at on her, and everything combined somehow makes him even more beautiful than he was before.

Mine, says her inner love of chaos and trickery, and she firmly bats it back down. He's Cody's, if he's that much. She's not getting involved until they have something solid worked out.

But how she hopes, mostly for Cody's sake and now a little bit for her own, that Obi-Wan wants this to somehow be a permanent thing. Cody is looking hopeful instead of resigned, so she rather thinks that they at least hashed out that they weren't going to do some weird 'one last time' thing before they ended up sleeping together.

Obi-Wan seems rather awkward and wrongfooted around her at first, and she supposes that it is a bit strange to be calmly having dinner-breakfast with one's boyfriend's wife, but she mentally shrugs and puts it down to allos being their weird selves, and is glad she's ace enough to usually not notice those kinds of vibes. They seem like they're horrible complications to deal with.

And Obi-Wan keeps coming back, or perhaps it's more accurate that he doesn't really leave. He's there again the next morning, looking decidedly less disheveled but he did spend the night in Cody's room (which means her overly-cuddly wolf now has someone else to snuggle like a stuffed animal and that can only be a bonus in her very squashed opinion) and Fae is glad for it. He goes back to Qui-Gon's after breakfast, and Cody spends fifteen minutes moping around and staring sadly at the closed door until she prods him into updating her on the situation.

He says that Obi-Wan doesn't sound too terribly happy about his life now even though he doesn’t say that in so many words, and he did say he's finding his visit here less painful than he expected, whatever that means. He hasn't said one way or another if this is a fling or if he wants to perhaps attempt a long-distance relationship or anything, but he's being very reasonable and actually letting Cody prompt him into occasionally being honest about how he feels about things, so he's hoping it will turn out better this time.

Fae doesn't see much of Obi-Wan herself over the next two and a halfish weeks on account of being asleep the few times he's there in the afternoon and their only real interactions being in the morning in the kitchen, but from what she can see and infer he's polite, reasonably tidy, isn't that obnoxious, can take a hint, is definitely not loud, and would probably be a decent housemate. She's glad.

And then the next full moon comes around.

It's Wolffe's turn to mind the bar while both Cody and Rex thrash around in the woods howling off-key wolf songs and chasing rabbits, and Fae has no idea how Cody made an excuse for his three-night absence to Obi-Wan, but it seems to be going well. She walks him home after the first night while throwing a stick for him to chase and retrieve, and that burns off his excess energy so well that Obi-Wan worries he's getting sick when he drops by around breakfast time. Fae thinks it's a bit inconvenient that he's there, but it's also very sweet and a good sign that he doesn't want to break Cody's heart again, or at least not intentionally.

She decides it was very inconvenient around four that afternoon, when Cody wakes her up with hurried apologies and a frantic look in his eyes and informs her that a couple of hours ago Obi-Wan came running in from somewhere, grabbed his few things that had migrated into their house – stray clothes, mostly, and a charger – and ran off again, but he hadn't gone back to Qui-Gon's and he hadn't gone to Mace's or Luminara's or anywhere that he can find and he'd been really upset and there's an awful freak storm blowing in and nobody can find him –

Fae sits up, lets him crumple into her and bury his face in her shoulder until he can pull himself together, and asks if they had a fight about anything. He shakes his head miserably and then volunteers that Obi-Wan had been mad at him about something but hadn't said what it was.

That's not helpful.

Well, it's sort of helpful. She wonders what set him off, if he came here already angry.

Cody says that Qui-Gon is 'a bit worried', which translates to 'oh no oh shit we'd better call the police' for a normal person, and he's organizing a search. He looks very sheepish as he apologizes for waking her up, but could she perhaps go nap downstairs and see if Obi-Wan comes back here for some reason? He's going down to help search along the river, since when he was small Obi-Wan usually went there to sulk but it's changed so much and the wolves know it better than anyone and when it rains hard in an hour or so there's probably going to be a storm surge and a shifter has a better chance of surviving that if they're caught –

She shakes him, tells him firmly that he's no use to either of them dead so he's not to be stupid, and promises she'll tell him right away if she spots Obi-Wan. He hurries out into the cold, blustery evening as the first light rain begins to fall.

Fae stands at the window that looks diagonally across the street to Qui-Gon's tall narrow house, surrounded with feathery bamboo and crawling ivy, and does some thinking. The people who knew Obi-Wan as a child think he went down to the river, but the easy river access that was down the side street and across the highway, in back of the courthouse that's right across from the side street and beside The Store, eroded too much about seven years ago and the steps are gone. Getting down the cliffside to the water now requires either going upriver several more blocks to a new path beside the east-west highway bridge that she doubts Obi-Wan knows about or going all the way downriver to the water treatment plant and taking the long way round beside it, since he isn't one of them and can't open the hidden path under the north-south highway bridge. Probably can't even see it.

And.

Obi-Wan came here for his things, and he had a backpack for them, Cody mentioned. A mostly full backpack from what he said. She really doesn't think he went to the river.

He grew up here, in that house across the street. He'll know the blocks surrounding it best, and probably default to somewhere close if he's upset and panicking and running on instinct. Things have changed, so his childhood hideouts won't be there or he won't fit into most of them anyway. He hasn't been here for a dozen years, so he won't remember the small places. He'll be looking for something big and obvious and recognizable to his subconscious as safe.

A gust of heavier rain pelts against the glass.

And somewhere kind of sheltered, because anyone with a functioning brain will know it's going to get worse even if they’re too upset to think rationally.

Either that or he's trying to leave town, which is . . . dubious, if he didn't take Qui-Gon's car, and he didn't. The passenger train isn’t here today, and while he could hitch a ride on one of the freight trains, he can’t exactly shelter himself and make himself unnoticeable like they can so that’s not an option he’ll probably think of. If he's distressed enough to try to walk out, which is pretty much suicidal in this weather, well. He can take the north-south highway that has nothing on it for miles either way but isolated farms and abandoned turnoffs for logging and mining camps, or he can take the east-west highway that’s much more traveled. Going east leads only to the mountains and he knows that perfectly well. He’ll have gone west and he’ll have to stick to the road or risk floundering around in the massive cow pastures and crop fields that cover the floodplain there. If he’s done that, someone will easily spot him on the elevated road since they'll be searching out there.

So that leaves the close places to her.

He's not at the bar. Wolffe's there. The other businesses are already closed for the day, closing soon, or closing right now so their owners and employees can get home before any potential road closures from falling trees or flooding; there won’t be customers anyway. The bar will technically be closed too, but it’s open for the pack – which Obi-Wan doesn’t know about.

She really doubts he's down on Main somewhere. Too many people will spot him.

Fae frowns out at the night and then goes upstairs to dress for the weather and grab her cloak, which she swings around herself even though she doesn't really need it. It's not for her. She ponders for a moment and then stuffs a small first aid kit into her shoulder bag. Panicking people make stupid decisions, and she'll use her healing if she has to, but there's no sense in overcomplicating things.

She opens her front door and steps out into the wind and rain, grumbling as she secures her hood so she can still see but won't get hit in the face by that much rain. It was clear and sunny this morning; why does it have to start doing this now. Nobody saw this coming.

Oh well.

She crosses the street and passes the elderly couple's little yellow house, noting that they've gotten their trash cans in and secured and their woodstove is on. They're fine. She walks on, heading east up the last gentle slope of hill the town sits on. There's the new middle and high schools up this way on the highest ground above the river with their big football field that’s the new flood evacuation point, and some houses. Obi-Wan's too old to have gone to those schools, but there is a park on the way and not that far from their houses that's been there forever. It's just up the road and past a row of low apartment buildings built on the side of the hill. It has a pokey little playground, rattly metal swings and a merry-go-round that has made ominous groaning noises since the dawn of time but spins hilariously fast, and a hideous tangle of monkey bars that would be definitely illegal to construct now but everyone politely looks the other way about because the kids somehow haven't died on them yet and they’re a ridiculous amount of fun for everyone to climb around on since they’re tall enough for adults too. There's a plastic green dinosaur slide, the token attempt at modernization that he won't know about but does provide a bit of shelter from rain.

But the important thing is, the park is covered in pine and cedar trees. Covered in them. The ground has no grass and almost never sees the sun. They're delimbed until about twenty feet up, of course, so people can walk under them, but they're about as good as a canopy roof and some of them have big enough trunks to tuck yourself into and be pretty sheltered from wind and rain.

And all the kids here grow up with wind and rain. They don't run home when it starts drizzling. They're used to it.

Fae walks briskly up the hill and turns into the tiny five-space parking lot of Hillside Park, so named because the entire back half is basically a cliffside that's been reshaped into a natural ampitheater. They show movies there in summer, everyone sitting on the ground that's shaped like bleachers. Sometimes the kids competitively roll down it and give each other mild injuries. Sometimes she rolls down it and nearly gives herself a concussion on a rock. It's great. That part of the park has no trees, though. She wants the upper part.

There's only a limited number of trees big enough to shelter an adult.

Hm. Yep.

She stands in front of the already rather damp and quite miserable-looking lump of person huddled at the base of a tree near the swings. He doesn't appear to notice her. He’s very well hidden, so she’s not surprised nobody spotted him even though Mace has the house right on the other side of the park, maybe a hundred feet away. She clears her throat and shuffles awkwardly.

Obi-Wan just about jumps out of his skin, and then she hurriedly pulls her hood back, realizing that the darkness and the cloak enveloping her kind of make her look like a wraith. He doesn't relax when he sees her face in the flickering yellow glow of one of the few lights in the park. He actually looks rather like he's going to be sick.

Fae swings the cloak off of her shoulders and drapes it over him instead and then sits herself down right next to him. They have to touch all along their sides to both fit in the little nook of the tree, but she's damned if she's going to sit on soggy – well, soggier – needles just because he won't share space.

"Bad day?" she asks. He stares at her with pink-rimmed eyes. She suddenly realizes that it looks like he's been crying for a good while.

"I should be asking you that," he says, sounding very congested.

Fae frowns, mentally running back over her day. It's been pretty normal until now. A batch of dough was uncooperative, but she got it to work in the end even though Luminara's getting a different kind of yeast pastry than she's expecting tomorrow, but she'll be fine with it since it'll taste just as good. And there's no way Obi-Wan could know about that, and she's more than used to stuff like that happening. Yeast can be tricky. "Me? I'm fine."

He frowns.

"At least I'm not all wet," she tries.

"Why are you here?" he asks, and she wonders at the emphasis. "I'm the last person you could possibly want to see."

She stares at him. "I didn't think the experimental macaroni omelette was that bad," she says, half to herself. "I mean, I won't be doing it again, but it was edible."

"What?"

"What?"

They stare at each other in mutual confusion until Obi-Wan suddenly looks away. Fae gets out her phone and sends a text to the biggest community-pack group chat, which is buzzing with activity. She doesn't want anyone getting hurt or swept away in the river looking for someone she's already found. And luckily it's still early enough that nobody will have been forced to shift yet, so there won't be a bunch of anxious wolves barreling around for no reason.

She side-eyes him. He doesn't look like he wants to be found. She refuses the request to drop a location pin and tells everyone she has him, he needs space, and she'll get him home once he's ready.

Then she puts her phone away, feeling it buzzing in her pocket but ignoring it. She doesn't normally share her location on account of that being a stupid and dangerous habit since it's publically accessible, and the storm will make it hard for even the best wolf noses to track them here. She's got a bit of time to try to calm this sad wet raccoon man down before he does anything stupider than he already has.

"I really didn't know," he says suddenly. "I'm so sorry. I would never – if I'd known – nobody ever said anything –"

She hums inquisitively.

"I didn't know he was married now," he said wretchedly, and hunches in on himself further. Huh. His backpack is behind him. That’s good; she didn’t want to go looking for it. "I really didn't."

"Who?" Fae asks, confused.

"I – you – Cody," he says very quietly, and. Huh?

"Huh?"

"A-aren't you, and him?"

"Yeah, we're together," she says, still confused, and takes her hand out of her pocket to show him the tattoo of a ring wound around her finger. "Neither of us likes how rings feel, and mine would just get so gross covered in dough, so we got tattoos instead," she explains, tilting it into the weak light.

He stares at it. "How long?"

"Bit over nine years now," she answers, and his face crumples.

It starts to rain properly as the storm rolls in.

She just kind of sits there awkwardly. "Why is that so upsetting?" she finally asks.

"He didn't tell me," he gets out.

"You . . . weren't talking or anything then," she says. "From what he's said, you hadn't talked to him since you left until you came back here. It's not like he deliberately left it out of conversations or something."

"Yes he did," he insists, and tries to wipe his eyes on his already soggy sleeve. "He never said anything. Nobody did. Everyone knows, don't they?"

Fae blinks. "I should hope they've noticed by now. I mean, we just went and signed the papers when we got married, but a couple months later when we were settled and the weather was nicer there was a big picnic at the park on Main, and it was definitely a sort of late wedding . . . thing. I don't know. I didn't pay much attention to it, I hate crowds. Everyone was nice about that, though, and they didn't fuss too much, and they all brought presents and stuff but they left them at our house on the way so it wasn't embarrassing, and. It was nice, really."

He buries his face in his hands and makes the most miserable noise she's ever heard. "So everyone knew, and they were all watching me make a fool of myself, and he – how could he – I didn't think he was kind of person to cheat –"

"Whoa, hey," she says, startled. "What? Nobody's cheating on anybody."

"But he – what, are you blind? I slept with your husband. Multiple times. In – in your house –"

She cautiously puts an arm around his shoulders and tries to project calm at him. It won't do much since he's a null, but there is evidence that it does work a little bit. "Yeah? I know? I was there?"

"I thought you were his roommate," he hiccups, sounding absolutely wretched, and she frowns.

Oh. The separate rooms thing, and their sort-of-opposite schedules. Yeah, she can see where that idea would come from.

"I'd never have done it if I knew he was married," he says, and looks up at her very pathetically, all curled into a ball over his knees.

"Why on earth not?" she asks, feeling more and more confused. Or – "Wait, do you think I'm mad at you?"

"Yes!"

"But I'm not. Like. Who do you think talked him into talking to you again in the first place? He wasn't going to do it until I convinced him."

Obi-Wan sniffles and stares at her.

"I mean, he flat out told me he was still in love with you when we started dating, and he said he didn't think that was ever going to change, and obviously it hasn't," she tries to explain. "You've always sort of been there, just very quiet and not visible. Now you're actually here, and he's happy, and I think you're neat, and you're not loud and don't make messes, so I really don't see the problem here? Unless you're trying to hurt him on purpose, which I am not cool with."

She rubs her thumb over the blank space at the dragon's tail on her ring finger, a movement that's become something of a habit over the years for both of them. "The rings don't close on purpose, because we designed them that way," she says, and uses the flashlight she brought to show him the detail. He draws in a sharp breath when he sees the sunburst in the little dragon's jaws. "His has a moon," she tells him. "But neither of ours have the loop closed. It didn't feel right. There's space left for you, there always has been. We built it that way."

"I don't understand," he says. At least he isn't sobbing hysterically anymore, just intermittently.

Fae fishes for the words to explain the situation that feels so obvious to her. "Polyamory," she eventually lands on. "I'm in, if it's specifically with him and you. He fell in love with you first and has stayed in love with you, and he fell in love with me too, later. You can love more than one person at once, you just have to communicate to make sure you're coordinated about it. If you're getting all hung up on the sex thing, I really do not care. I sleep with him sometimes, yeah, but not that often. Maybe once a month, averaged out? He's nice, and it can be fun, but I don't care that much for it except at very specific times of the month, and he's only interested in people he loves, and so far that's a pretty small group with exactly two people in it, so he's fine with it too. He feels like it more often than I do, so sometimes he asks and I do try to accomodate him. It's not like I hate it or anything, it just . . . doesn't do much for me? But he enjoys it, and you seem to get a lot more out of it than I do, and that's great! Have at it, as long as you don't slime all over things and I don't have to watch. And if you ever want to sleep with me, well." She shrugs. "Catch me on that part of my hormone cycle, and I'll probably be up for it? You're pretty, and I like you, and most importantly you’re his so you're safe. I've never slept with a woman before so that'll be a bit clumsy, but I'm sure we can figure it out as we go. Uh, that is, I've been kind of assuming from stuff he's mentioned over the years that you're trans, but I honestly don't care what you've got either way – what?"

"You – you mean all that," he says, and slumps into her side. She huffs a bit, belatedly bracing for impact, and frowns when he's a lot lighter than she expects.

"How about we talk somewhere not in the middle of a storm?" she suggests, and hauls him to his feet and arranges her cloak around him so the wind won't blow it open. It's a few inches short on him, but it's a lot better than nothing. He's not actually that much taller than she is. She grabs his backpack and herds him out of the park, back to the sidewalk and down the street, making sure he's on the inside so he won't step off the curb and into the gutter. Those are already starting to look a bit full and the road is nearly a stream, especially on the hill.

Fae's glad when they reach the house; she takes off her jacket and leaves it to drip in the most sheltered nook of the porch and when Obi-Wan just kind of stands there, she peels her cloak off of him and does the same with it. She'll grab them in a few minutes.

"In," she says firmly, and since he keeps stepping back when she gets close to him, she takes advantage of that to chase him into the house and sit him down on the dog bed in front of the woodstove, telling him to take his stuff out of his backpack so it can dry. He doesn't appear to notice it's a dog bed, which is good. There is no dog, and he's bound to have realized that by now.

. . . surely some normal people get dog beds to use as floor pillows, right? They're comfy and washable and built to last.

Eh. She's got bigger problems right now. Fae puts some hot water on, because if she's chilled then Obi-Wan must be near to get-in-the-bath-right-now temperatures, and Cody isn't here to bundle him into one. He won't be here, since the moon's already come up and – she'll have to figure out something for the morning, because this is the full moon night and everyone tries to show up for their wolves then since they're so tired –

"Is he here?" he asks, and he has actually taken a pile of damp clothes out of the backpack, which is good.

"No," she answers, and tries to figure out what to say. 'No, he's currently out in the storm, but don't worry because he's also a giant wolf and he'll just hang out in the sheltered spots with his family until the rain's gone?' That's accurate, but it won't really work.

"Oh," he says, and she notices he's anxiously twisting his hands together. "I – I should probably apologize to him, I – is he at work, then? I should go –"

"Nope," she says, leaping across the room and pushing him down by the shoulders as he tries to get up. "First of all, there's a literal flood warning on – which you probably don't know about since you're not on the town emergency alert system, are you, but it's been on for about an hour and if any part of town's going to flood this early, it'll be Main and the area at the bottom of the hill – and it’s also very windy so you're not going out there again to get brained by a falling tree or something, and he's not at work anyway so there's no point."

"Where is he?"

"Well, he was out looking for you, along with half the town," she says thoughtlessly, and then realizes that that was possibly the worst thing she could have said when he starts having what looks like a genuine panic attack.

She doesn’t know quite what to do, because she doesn’t exactly get those but sometimes she gets anxious and shaky, and Cody’s solution for that is ‘wolf’. He flops on top of her and breathes loudly and obnoxiously in her ear, and she gets the restlessness out by yanking on his fur, and the weight does the rest. If they’re somewhere he can’t shift, he usually just pulls her into a really tight hug and keeps her head buried in his chest so there’s not as much light and noise.

Fae goes upstairs and drags an assortment of weighted blankets out of her room and starts methodically piling them on top of Obi-Wan. Once he’s adequately pinned down and is breathing a bit more evenly, she presses a little squashy purple fidget ball into his hands so he has something to attack and goes to make them some tea.

She chooses peppermint, because it’s surprising and might help him ground himself, and also because he still looks kind of nauseous and he probably hasn’t eaten for a while. He’s squeezing the purple ball when she comes back to him, and she holds out a cup that he takes reflexively in one hand.

Fae remembers something. She goes back into the kitchen and gets a batch of cookie dough she made weeks ago out of the freezer, already formed into little individually frozen balls ready to be baked. They’ll be done in minutes and the chocolate will go nicely with the tea.

She sits on the floor by the dog bed after fishing her old blue DS out of where it’s made another determined break for freedom down between the couch cushions and spends fifteen minutes driving her train around the overworld honking at things and bombing rocks for money, because it’s very hard to be sad with the fantastic music that accompanies the train and the preoccupation of route planning required to not get exploded by the murder engines prowling the tracks is just enough to keep her brain busy. Obi-Wan wheezes and shivers and sometimes takes tiny sips of his tea, and he keeps leaning closer and closer to see what she’s doing.

Her distraction plan is working.

“What the hell is that thing?” he says suddenly as she baits a murder engine into turning straight for her train only to switch tracks at a junction at the last minute and swerve away from it, then reverse back into the junction when it's gone by and switch tracks once more to continue straight on towards the next loading zone.

“Demon train,” she says absently. “Well, not the demon train, but a little one. I forget what they’re actually called. If they collide it’s an instant game over, but you just have to restart at the station you came from. You can only do that bait-and-switch with some of them, because the others are bizarre eldritch nightmares of trains and can spin entirely around in their own length at a moment's notice. I'd rank them as the second best jumpscare in the series, just behind the gloom hands. Which aren't in this game, so don't worry. But you never forget your first homing murder engine, just like you never forget your first gloom hand encounter."

The oven timer beeps. She shoves her DS into his hands, since he’s put his cup down. “Cookies are done. Here, try it out. Don’t worry, you can’t do anything to mess it up. Even dying doesn’t really mean anything other than some backtracking.”

She returns with cookies a few minutes later to find he has navigated his way to a station and is running in circles holding a rock over his head. He doesn't seem to know what to do with it.

"How do I drop this?" he asks, sounding frustrated. She doesn't even know how he's managed to hold on to it – oh.

"You have to lift the stylus off the screen," she tells him, and watches as he hurls the rock into the side of a house. "Ooh, pick that up. Blue means it's five rupees."

"What are those?"

"Money. And I need a lot of it so I can spend it so I can become a gold member at Beedle's shop and earn the most frustrating heart container in this game."

"I don't understand any of that."

She points at the row of hearts at the top of the screen. "That's basically a health bar. You start with three hearts and get more by collecting them around the overworld and defeating dungeon bosses. There's not a lot of dungeons in this game, so overworld ones are important."

"How did he throw the rock hard enough to break it?" Obi-Wan asks, sounding baffled, and she snorts a laugh.

"Oh boy, you probably would love to try to figure out how strong Twilight Princess Link is."

He stares at her. "What's that?"

She blinks at him.

"I've never heard of it."

"How did you date Cody and not learn about Zelda?" she asks, incredulous. Hell, she hadn't really known about it until after becoming friends with him – she'd had the vaguest awareness that it existed and an idea that it was a fairly substantial video game series that involved swords and princesses and looked kind of neat – but now she's pretty sure that if the fate of the universe depended on a Zelda trivia contest, she could win in her sleep.

Obi-Wan makes a weird face. "That's – he said once that that's what he'd want to name a daughter, if he ever had one."

Fae tilts her head. That's an okay choice, but. "Only if we get to name a boy Ravio," she decides. "And I'd put up a solid case for Riju or Romani for a girl, too. But I will fight for Ravio."

Obi-Wan is looking lost. She pats him on the arm. "Don't worry, you'll learn," she says with conviction, and then pauses. "If – if you're staying?"

"Staying?"

"With us. One way or another," she clarifies. "I mean, you don't have to live here if you really don't like this kind of life, but long-distance relationships are a thing. He could come visit."

For some reason that makes him tense up and start looking sort of sick again. "I – ah – I don't think you'd enjoy – city life is very different –"

"Okay," she says agreeably. "Look, if you switch to that pinwheel-looking item you can blow into the microphone and get rid of these leaf piles, and sometimes they have treasure in them."

She thinks this successfully distracts him from his incredibly suspicious reaction to the idea of Cody visiting him at his home. From how he’d gotten so upset at the idea that he'd been participating in him cheating on her, she doesn't think that he has any secret relationship going on there, but it was still weird.

Maybe he's here not because his apartment is being renovated, but because he doesn't have one anymore? Rent is stupid expensive in cities, she knows that well enough from growing up with Jon as her guardian. She doesn't quite get why being kicked out would be embarrassing, but that's probably also a byproduct of growing up with Jon. He has manners and consideration for other people but absolutely no shame, and she doesn’t really have any either. From what she can tell, she isn’t missing much.

He gives her back the DS a few minutes later and actually drinks some of his tea, which is good. He also tries to unobtrusively rub at his forehead and the back of his neck, which isn't so good.

"Headache?" she guesses. Crying can do that to a person.

"Migraine," he says very quietly, so quietly that a normal person probably wouldn't have heard it.

She closes her DS. "Let's get you up to bed, then. Migraines suck, I get them too. Or do you want to go home?"

"I –" He swallows. "Can I stay here? Please? Just – just until Cody – until he's back safe –"

"You can stay here as long as you like. But I think you should probably take the extra room so you can have it dark and quiet. What are your migraine safe foods? Do you know if we have them?"

"You really do get them," he mumbles. "I, uh. This tea is good, actually. If you have any instant noodles, I can generally keep those down. They're salty."

"I'll stick an electric kettle in your room and you can make them when you need them," she tells him. "What flavor? We've got beef, curry, pork, chicken, soy sauce, and spicy beef or chicken, for the kind that just need hot water poured into the container. That . . . sounds a bit excessive when I list them like that, but they're cheap, easy, and keep really well so they're great for wintertime."

"Chicken, please," he says very quietly.

"Okay, got it. Want a cookie before it gets too bad? Chocolate sometimes helps me."

He takes a cookie, which she counts as a win.

"I'm going to go make the bed there. You eat that and then take a shower."

He does make it upstairs by the time she has the bed made, which is better than she expected. She does her best anxious wolf impression and herds him into the bathroom. He looks slightly better when he emerges, but still not great.

"Do you take anything for them?" she asks.

He shakes his head slightly. "I – I never got – just ibuprofen, if you have it."

"Yeah, we've got that. I'll bring you some. This is the spare room. Get in bed."

She hauls the weighted blankets back upstairs again to give him time, and she takes him two of the lighter ones. They can be very helpful. He’s shivering, curled up under all the blankets, but since he just took a shower she thinks it’s from the migraine and not because he’s still cold from being outside.

“Pills,” she announces as she puts them down on the dresser beside the noodles and a couple clean cups for tea. The kettle is full of enough water for all of it. “If you want to take another shower at any time, it’s free as long as the door’s open. Don’t worry about it. I’ll be going out for a bit around five, but I should be back by seven at the latest and Cody’ll be back too.”

“Why are you being so nice to me?” he asks, and it’s so quiet she’s not sure if he meant to say it out loud.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” she asks. His weird certainty that she hates him is starting to get on her nerves. Why would she hate him? Cody loves him, and she loves Cody, therefore she is highly predisposed to at least like Obi-Wan and now that she’s met him she thinks she wouldn’t mind if this set of relationships turned into a triangle instead of a V. “You just go to sleep and hopefully be unconscious through the worst of it, and don’t worry. He’ll be back in the morning and be just fine.”

She makes sure the door shuts completely on her way out so he isn’t bothered by noise or light and goes downstairs to get out the folding laundry rack and hang up his sad wet clothes by the woodstove so they dry, and after that she makes herself a peppermint coffee and eats far too many cookies along with a boiled egg so she doesn’t have quite as bad of a sugar crash later. And then she decides she really wants to hit things, so she gets out the pretty green-and-gold Switch that Cody got her a few years before that is one of her most treasured possessions and spends three hours decimating hordes of enemies both by spear and by stepping on them with giant steampunk robot lizard feet, and then she feels somewhat better.

Sometime during her rampage over alternate timeline Hyrule, the storm blew itself out. When she pokes her head out onto the porch to see how she’ll need to dress for the walk down to the river, and if she’ll be able to go on foot at all or if she’ll have to get on the wolf-friend group chat and ask if they can get a ride so she doesn't have to drive Cody's too-big truck, she realizes that the wind is entirely gone. The trees are eerily silent. It is just raining, steady and relentless, each drop falling straight out of the sky without pause.

She’s never really thought anything poetic about rain – it just is, and it’s there enough for it to go unnoticed – but as she looks out at the very wet street she has the thought that the sky is crying. She shuts the door again and has some more cookies to compensate, then starts some rice.

Hopefully Obi-Wan’s migraine isn’t too bad, because Cody is going to fuss about it but he’s also going to be exhausted and he still has at least one more night of forced shifts to go, possibly two. It’s not always an even three nights, depending on many factors.

Fae sighs and puts her boots on and wraps her cloak around herself as extra cover from the endless rain and steps out into the predawn chill, picking her way around puddles and avoiding the gutters as she goes to collect her wolf.