Chapter Text
Three years ago
Afterward, the police poured over the tapes to try and see exactly how the events of that day had unfolded. They put together a timeline of everything that had happened. The graph they used wasn’t long and was frighteningly spare, but it captured the middle and the end in perfect detail.
It was the beginning that they missed.
After all was said and done and the lucky wounded taken to the hospital, here’s what the police had to work with.
At exactly 2:30 pm all of the school students were excused from normal class activities to attend the pep rally. It was Senior Night that Friday and the whole school had gathered to wish the team well on the last home game before playoffs.
The seventh graders were excused last. Upperclassmen were given priority seating in the small gym so the youngest students were seated last so they could fill in the remaining empty seats in the back of the room.
As the other students filed into their seats, no one noticed that Karkat Vantas was missing.
After, the police learned that he’d been excused to go to the bathroom just minutes before the bell rang for the pep rally. Sometime in-between that five minute span of time—the wolf got him.
This was the part the police were missing. How had the man gotten into the school? Who were they? What was it that drove them to target a random student all of thirteen years old and overpower them, passing along a virus that was more of a curse?
The cameras missed all of this. They never saw the initial attack. They never learned the man’s face. When he appeared on the grainy black-and-white school video footage in front of the gym, he wore a mask over his face to hide his features, just to prove beyond any doubt that this massacre had been pre-meditated.
But the cameras did catch him walking along the empty hallways of the school, the young, newly Turned wolf at his side straining towards the open door of the band room where the students were warming up for the pep rally.
The man pulled the beast easily away from that door, leading the wolf carefully towards the gym much like he was dragging an over-eager cat by the scruff of it’s neck.
Werewolves weren’t dangerous to other werewolves. Even Turned they recognized one of their own, and the wolf made no move to harm the man that led it along, it’s nose sniffing the air, scenting human prey.
When the strange pair reached the gym, the man simply opened the door, thrust the wolf inside, and closed it behind him.
There’s a moment right when the screaming begins where the video shows the man wiping his gloved hands together, a peculiar job-well-done kind of movement.
Inside the gym the cameras were still rolling. There was no sound with this footage, but there was an abundance of other recordings as well. Students with cellphones videoing the start of the pep rally captured what it had sounded like.
The first scream was cut off with a choke as the wolf locked it’s jaws around her neck. Then it was a chorus of chaos and screaming, blood everywhere, students and teachers trapped in a small room with a monster that’s only thought was to kill.
It was a bloodbath that would have gone on for a lot longer than the 33 students who had died if not for the one that decided to fight back. The back corner of the gym by the locker rooms had been under construction, and loose bricks, cinderblocks, and building materials had been neatly piled in the corner.
A younger student stole a nail hammer off of the tool rack, and stood his ground as the wolf finished mauling a classmate and lunged for him next. The beast took the boy’s left arm in it’s teeth, but the boy managed to strike the wolf in the skull with the blunt end of the stolen hammer a few desperate, thunderous times, and with a whine the wolf let go of his arm, it’s eyes rolling as it’s skull cracked. With a spasm the wolf dropped to the tiled, bloodied ground and lay still.
And now it was time for the ending. With the werewolf down and out, the screaming students that had survived or been wounded managed to flee the gym just as the police arrived with guns drawn. The Principal was there, panicked, scanning each of the downed bodies for his son as the police advanced on the fallen werewolf.
Right as the police closed in the young wolf gave a shudder, muscles jerking, and Turned back into a boy.
Present Day
Dave Strider was kind of hating this new school. He didn’t know anybody here and was missing his friends from back home. He would never have admitted it, but he felt lonely even though it was only his first day.
For the most part he kept his head down during the first day of class. It was already halfway through the semester and every teacher seemed unprepared for a sudden new student. He ended up sitting in the back a lot of the time, or right up front by the teacher’s desk where no one else had wanted to sit.
And then he spotted Karkat.
It was hard not to notice him—the name Karkat Vantas was infamous these days. Dave had known what the other teen had looked like long before the school board had handed him a picture of the local werewolf with strict instructions not to approach him for any reason.
Karkat sat directly beside the teacher’s desk in every class, his head down, shoulders hunched. At lunchtime he vanished completely. The other students didn’t bother him even to ask to borrow a pencil. There was a strict, unbroken bubble of space between Karkat and the rest of the school.
The sight made Dave curious. Like most people he had a solid grasp on what lycanthropy meant, and Karkat was the only werewolf Dave had ever seen in person before.
In history Dave was forced to sit beside the guy in the only other available seat. Karkat didn’t move when Dave set down his bag. He didn’t act like he’d noticed Dave at all.
Dave took the opportunity to openly study him, ignoring the class lecture. Werewolves were vicious creatures, the bane of humanity, responsible for countless deaths across the country each year.
But they were also rare as fuck because not many of them survived for long with their affliction. Karkat was supposedly the youngest one ever recorded or something, and the only publicly out wolf in the nation. And Dave was naturally curious about something that might bite his head off sitting next to him in a classroom.
Karkat looked fairly normal. Unruly black hair, olive skin without a single blemish to it, and a face that looked carved out of stone. Only his eyes were abnormal. They shone a bright, mutant red like blood on fresh snow, the mark of a werewolf.
Dave kept his own eyes covered with his prescription sunglasses. He might have been human but people still got buggy over red eyes so he tried to keep them covered up as best he could.
History was the last period of the day and the teacher religiously dismissed them from work fifteen minutes early, so right at the end of the day there were a few minutes for the class to socialize before the bell rang.
Dave leaned over to Karkat. “Hey.”
The guy barely glanced at him. “What?”
Dave shrugged. “Nothing,” he said back. “I’m new here. I was just saying hi.”
“Great,” Karkat answered, not really sounding interested as he dug a book out of his backpack and cracked it open on his desk.
Dave peeked at the title. He didn’t recognize it but it seemed kinda chick-flicky. Romance or some other mushy shit probably. He watched silently as Karkat underlined a few words and began to scribble out notes to himself in the margin.
Dave didn’t try to read the small, cramped handwriting. “What are you writing?”
Karkat glanced at him again in mute surprise, like he was annoyed to find Dave talking to him. “It’s none of your business.”
The coldness in his voice didn’t bother Dave. “I think that defacing a library book is everyone’s business,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “Actually, who pays for those things? The school? Taxpayers? Obama? I take the destruction of public property very seriously, I’ll have you know. Gotta protect those tax dollars so they go to the good educational shit like books and not coke and hookers for the school board.”
Karkat closed the book with a snap, his voice thin. “It’s my own book,” he defended himself. “And my dad works for the school board, so drop it.”
“Ah, Daddy’s on the school board,” Dave nodded, his fingers fidgeting with a pen as he rapidly tapped it against his desk, needing to make noise as he asked the question that had been bothering him all day. “Is that why they allow you to be here? Because of your dad?”
Every other student talking shut up as Karkat stared at him, incredulous.
For a moment Dave was sure he’d said something taboo. Spoken the unspeakable. Let the wolf out of the bag.
Karkat was still glaring at him, and his glare had sharpened, his red eyes nearly glowing.
“Karkat!” The teacher snapped, sounding scared, and his eyes shot to her as he slumped down into his desk again, ignoring Dave.
“I’m fine,” the wolf spit out automatically, his gaze fixed on the floor. He didn’t move or speak or do much of anything else but sit there and slowly shrinking in on himself. Slowly the rest of the class relaxed again as the chatter resumed. The teacher shot Dave a sharp look that promised detention.
That was when the guilt hit Dave. His pen stopped tapping at the desk top as his hand fell still. Shit. He’d poked the sleeping bear only to have it turn and bite itself. He wasn’t sure what to feel, but watching Karkat hunch lower and lower in his chair did funny things to Dave’s chest.
Maybe it was because Dave could recognize guilt when he saw it. He could see the emotion clearly written across the other teen’s shoulders, like it was Karkat’s fault for getting angry, for having a completely normal reaction to Dave’s insensitive asshole-ness that should have gotten him punched in the face.
Karkat hadn’t even done anything, just stared back at Dave and the entire classroom had held its fucking breath like they were watching a bomb diffuser guy about to cut the wrong wire and blow them all to hell.
The bell rang and several people in the room flinched at the sound, still on edge from Karkat doing absolutely fucking nothing. In a way it made sense—Karkat was famous for having a body count to his name. Maybe it wasn’t in Dave’s best interest to prod at murder werewolves.
The teacher held him back after the bell rang. Karkat was on his feet and out the door before anyone else could move as Dave slunk over to the teacher’s desk.
She gave him a hard stare. “I thought,” she said sternly, “that you had been made aware of Karkat’s position at the school.”
“They might have mentioned it,” Dave said lightly, unwilling to lie. He moved his backpack to his other shoulder, cagey. He wanted to get out of here. The less time he spent in a classroom the better, and with the bull rung he was already getting antsy to leave.
“So you understand that he is to be kept calm and unbothered at all times?” The teacher asked.
Dave shrugged. “That’s not how werewolves work, you know,” he said boldly. “We’re nowhere near a full moon.”
“Still—”
“I thought he looked lonely,” Dave interrupted, vying for the good-guy angle to cut this half-assed intervention short. “I noticed that no one else here talks to him and thought I should try.”
The teacher held back her next words, carefully speaking. She didn’t sound like she believed him. “Well then,” she said. “I would try harder next time not to provoke him. He’s been through enough without other students messing with him.”
Dave shrugged again. “If you say so,” he answered, uncooperative. He stood and made his way for the door.
“And Dave,” She called out to him sweetly. “You have detention.”
Dave couldn’t hide his grin as he yanked open the door. “Not today I don’t,” he said, and waved goodbye as he let the door close behind him. He was on track to maintain his record of bad behavior at this new school. One day and he already had detention. This was going to be easy.
The hallways were mostly empty now that the bell had rang. It was then that Dave began to notice the extra precautions that the school had implemented to better protect it’s students in case something bad happened. No one wanted a repeat of what had happened at Karkat’s old school.
There was a camera on every corner. The windows were bullet-proof and barred with iron. Every classroom locked from the inside. There was always a police officer stationed up at the front office, armed with silver bullets.
This school was a fortress. No wonder the system had decided it was the best, most well-protected place for Dave to go even with a resident monster prowling the halls.
Or maybe the police thought a werewolf on site might make even Bro pause and reconsider his surely nefarious plans.
Dave found his bus easily and climbed aboard. There, at the very back, was Karkat, still reading that trashy paperback from before.
Dave swallowed a grin as he made his way to where Karkat was sitting. He wasn’t stupid enough to sit beside the wolf; Dave chose the empty seat across the aisle, talking advantage of the bubble of empty space that constantly surrounded the other teen.
Karkat’s eyes flickered up as Dave plopped down and he snapped his book up between them, clearly set on ignoring him.
“Wait,” Dave cautioned, raising a hand. “Yo, I’m not here to fight. I’m here to apologize.”
Karkat lowered the book just enough to glare mistrustfully at him. The bus jolted into movement below him, bouncing along the cracked pavement.
“It’s true,” Dave said, placing his hand over his heart. He dropped his voice lower, leaning in. “I can’t fuck up and risk getting kicked out of this place or the system will throw another bitchfit at me for violating protocol.”
Karkat lowered his book some more, looking interested despite himself. “What system?”
“Wit-sec,” Dave clarified, whispering as he wagged his eyebrows.
Karkat scoffed and turned away, disgusted.
“No, it’s true,” Dave said. “Honest to God. I’m hiding out here for my fucking life. Why else would they place me in the most secure school in the fucking country?”
Karkat looked at him again, something uncertain in his eyes. “You’re shitting me,” he said at last. “No one fucking admits they’re Witness Protection on day fucking one to a complete stranger. No one can be that pants-shitting moronic.”
Dave shrugged again. He tended to do most of his emoting through shrugs. Shit was just easier that way. “And who would you fucking tell? Your dad?” Dave asked, grinning. “I bet he already knows. The system briefed them on my arrival before I set foot in the building.”
Karkat scowled at him, his eyebrows crinkling.
“See?” Dave prompted. “My secret’s safe with you because you’re a social outcast. I can say this because I’m also a social outcast.”
Karkat barked out a laugh. “Dave,” he said, “You’ve been here for one day. You’re not a social outcast—you’re just new. Give it some time and you’ll be sitting with the popular kids at lunch.”
“Nope,” Dave said, popping his lips on the ‘p’. He smiled again, this time something more even and open as he reminisced the good old days. “I was a loner at my old school. The delinquent. I’m betting that record won’t change just because I hopped a few state lines and changed my name.”
“They made you change your name?” Karkat said, looking sad.
“So you believe me?” Dave asked.
“Not even a little,” Karkat said, bringing his book up again. “You might just be a compulsive liar for all I know. You kinda look like one too. Shady drifter with a bad hair dye job and douchebag sunglasses.”
Dave frowned, still overly sensitive about his artificially darkened hair. “The dye’s to help hide my identity,” he offered. “I know it looks like shit against my complexion, please don’t remind me. It was either this or a shaved head and I just fucking know that I can’t rock the bald look.”
Karkat’s shoulders shook with a withheld laugh. He was grinning, grinning like he was surprised with himself at the expression as he looked at Dave. “Really?” He asked. “You’re not shitting me are you?”
“Scout’s honor,” Dave swore.
“And those douche glasses?” Karkat asked sarcastically. “Couldn’t you just wear tinted-contacts or something like a normal person?”
Dave froze. Karkat noticed.
“What?” Karkat asked defensively. “Did I offend you?”
“No,” Dave said quickly. “And if you did I deserved it for what I said to you earlier.”
“No,” Karkat said at once. “That wasn’t your fault. I shouldn’t have gotten angry.”
“Dude, no,” Dave protested. “You would have been totally within your rights to punch me for that. I was being an asshole.”
Karkat rolled his eyes. “I don’t think you’ve figured this out yet,” he said. “But I’m not allowed to get mad. Ever. For any reason. Me having emotions makes other people uneasy.”
Dave shrugged. “Fuck them,” he suggested. “Shit, Karkat, you’re like my age. 16. We’re allowed to be angsty teens and do stupid shit.”
“No,” Karkat said, sighing. He looked out the window. Dave could see the trees flashing past in his eyes as he said, “not me.”
“That’s hells of unfair,” Dave told him. “You should sue. I know a few good lawyers who might be able to help you out.”
That made Karkat grin again, thought he tried to hide it. “Well, shit,” Karkat said, looking at him. “I don’t know what you witnessed to get sentenced to high school hell with me, but welcome to the club I guess. Maybe things won’t be as boring with you around.”
“Hell yeah,” Dave said back, raising his fist for a fist-bump. “Friendship secure.”
Karkat made no move. He stared at Dave’s offered hand like he was considering breaking the fingers, but that might have just been the perpetually pissed-off look he wore. For all that he was a werewolf, Karkat didn’t seem the type of guy to be prone to violence. Dave had been around enough people who were to know the look.
Dave slowly put his hand down. “What?” he asked. “You don’t get many fist-bumps, do you?”
Karkat shook his head. “People normally go out of their way to avoid being near me.” He shrugged like that didn’t bother him but Dave saw right through the act. “Actually initiating contact is almost unheard of.”
“Why?” Dave asked, confused. “It’s not like you’re contagious. You can’t catch the werewolf bug from a handshake.”
Karkat’s eyes sharpened again, but lost their edge after a few seconds. “You know,” he considered Dave. “Most people don’t say that word around me. They don’t ask questions. They don’t bring up what I am.” He stared hard at Dave, his gaze piercing. “You do. Why’s that?”
Dave swallowed and his throat was tight. “I don’t know,” he lied. “I guess I’m just not scared like everyone else.”