Chapter Text
{Somewhere in the Edmonton territory, between 1877 and 1881}
It was dark and cold in the cellar, the only light was the one filtering under the door.
He could hear them, he could smell the food.
He hoped they'll give him something, he was starving.
He truly hoped, even if he didn't know how he could eat with what Pa did to his teeth.
He didn’t want to hurt the doctor, he was just scared!
Light vanished slowly and voices too.
He was frightened.
No food, and he didn't have any water either.
He tried to find a bit of warmth curling up on himself, heavy chains stealing his body heat. He didn't like the cold, he didn't like the gnawing hurt in his stomach and the burning in his fingertips. He wanted to be back in his bed, with Ma talking to him and lulling him to sleep.
Crying, he conjured her voice in his mind, trying to keep the cellar away.
Sleep, or exhaustion, finally arrived, freeing him from the aching and the cold.
Light came and went again, his calls useless, voice cracking.
He could hear Ma crying, asking Pa to let her go to help him, without avail.
Finally, on the fourth day, Ma appeared again, bringing a blanket and food and water.
He was a complete mess, he had tried to keep as clean as possible but the chains didn't give him a lot of room. He felt disgusting, like Pa said he was.
Still, she cradled him in an embrace, telling him how sorry she was, and that Pa kept the keys and she couldn't help him.
She aided him to slowly drink and then eat, still not letting him go, keeping him between her arms, kissing his head. He cried his heart out, and his mother too.
But then she was strong and stopped crying, her soft whispers soothing him, and he found a bit of peace and fell asleep, head on her chest, her beating heart a lullaby.
Days dragged by, light under the door, Pa coming, the belt hitting him hard and leaving marks over marks, those dreadful tongs removing teeth and nails, the awful pain an infinite constant.
There wasn't a day where he wasn't aching or starving. If it wasn't teeth and claws day, his father tried to banish the devil with his belt, and kicks, and sticks. Always screaming at him, calling him a filthy beast, a devil.
Sometimes Pa brought him outside, still chained, and made a show of killing him with the axe, the blade hissing by his head, hitting the wood.
After a while, he didn't even try to ask for mercy and stopped crying altogether.
Ma kept coming every day, when Pa was working on the fields, freeing him for a bit from that madness.
She always started cleaning him from blood and dirt and everything else, her hands careful not to do any more damage. The wet cloth on his skin made him feel better, he hated not being clean. He hated the stale air in the cellar, reeking of his own waste and terror and pain. The cleaning and the following kisses made him feel still loved, even if he was a disgusting monster.
She always kept the door open and she spoke to him.
She kept speaking to him in French, soft words of freedom keeping him alive, promises that she'd try to free him, or to bring more food, her warmth seeping through him.
He could hear Pa hitting her everyday, for helping him and for plain existing.
Weeks, months and then years, ages passed by, marked by the beatings, the declawing and removing of fangs, by the cold and the smell of the snow outside or the absence of it.
His sanity was long gone and his mind broken.
There was just red.
Just the need to be free and kill Pa.
He went caged animal and found the strength to disconnect one of the chains from the wall.
Same day Ma didn't close the door with the key, and he bit his hand free.
He vaulted out of the cellar and the reek of terror from Pa was as sweet as Ma's kisses. She hit Pa in the head with a pan, and he killed him, enjoying the blood in his mouth, and the terror and the sound of flesh tearing under his claws and teeth.
He was oh, so, so happy to hear the heart stopping, and to ferociously maim the body that hurt him so much for so long.
Ma was laughing, full of childish happiness, and she gave him food, not a care in the world for the mangled body underneath the table. The flood of French joyfully around, she filled a basin with warm water from the stove and washed him, removing the grime and the stench of the cellar, the blood. She washed the severed hand too, then she lined it up with the arm, bandaging it, keeping it together with a glove, waiting for it to heal, after he’d had enough to eat.
She kept feeding him slowly, so his stomach wouldn’t hurt, and once he felt the hand was reconnecting, he told Ma.
And then they were in bed, huddled together, finally safe from the real monster.
Ma spooned him in a soft, loving embrace and for the first time in years he was sated, safe, warm and cosy and not in pain.
The next day she saw the neighbours come to check why Pa wasn’t in the fields, and she told him to hide under the bed before they arrived. She hid in the cellar, waiting for them to save her. They were shocked by the sight of the mangled body under the table, and called for her. She left the fake shelter and she told them a story of a wild, terrifying beast, the same they heard screaming, how she was alive only because she hid in the cellar and blocked the door, and she cried on the poor remains of her beloved husband, and asked if they could help her bury him and avenging his death.
They went out to hunt for the beast.
The beast was safely hidden in the dark of the house, and the outer part of it was looking at them from the door, waving.
Ma took good care of him, bringing him back to his feet. She took all the fangs Pa removed and made him a necklace with them, not to forget the evil within the men, not to forget to hide that he was different from the others.
When Victor asked her how she could know about the hand healing like that, she told him that her brothers were the same, and that claws and teeth weren’t a devil sign, as she tried to tell his father.
She helped him put some flesh on his bones, feeding him constantly. It took weeks, but in the end he was in good enough health to travel.
Before the good season ended, he helped her back to her family home, and he then went into the wild, answering to its call, roaming through the forests of Canada, killing every one that tried to stop him, every one that tried to put him back in a cellar.
He was finally free, and the world was a much less safe place than before.