Hello all! The following is a sequel to my story "Howl." This will be a bit confusing if you haven't read it, but maybe manageable? ALSO, this entire story is dedicated to WaffleNinja, who is AMAZING and gives me all the plot bunnies. So you can send your love that-away. Thank you to the others who reviewed "Howl," though. The love is appreciated.

PLEASE NOTE, that this is my first official M-RATED story. It is very dark and there will be (semi-explicit) SLASH and lots of DUBCON and TECHNICAL CHARACTER DEATH (you'll see what I mean). Do what you will with that.

And finally: Disclaimer: I own almost nothing. Sherlock, John, other characters & places & plots belong to BBC and technically Sir Conan Doyle. I do, however, own all original characters.

Enjoy!

The wolf was running.

The drivel, meaningless, ignorant, betraying people had stopped running.

He was glad for that, actually. It meant he was able to lick his wounds and eat his revenge in peace (...). The wolf didn't remember not being hungry and hurt, hurt and hungry, of knowing something, someone had done this to him, some indespicably vile being had started the curse, had bitten it into him, into his DNA (unknown word) and genes (unknown) until it raced like his heart. It tore through his flesh and bone and beat in his organs, breathed through his lungs, vibrated in his ears, pounded with his feet. Someone had done this and someone was going to pay.

The wolf didn't know how though. Or who. Or what. He remembered a deal struck, a promise written, and good intentions dashed. Someone was to be protected, but had been cursed instead. The wolf decided it didn't matter. He would destroy them anyway. Any useless two-legger who came close would feel his pain. But, in the meantime, rabbits were good. Hedgehogs. Lizards. The stray housecat. The unleashed dog. Foxes tried to befriend him, but he chased them off. The wily beasts were not good company to keep. There was his other form too, that could sometimes get food, though getting proper clothing for it was always a bother, the hairless cretin.

The wolf continued running.

He kept running until he came to forests. The air smelled different here, outside of the place called London (his birthplace, his beginning). The city was crowded with too many noises and smells and lights (unfortunate). Here the forest was murky, dark, strange. Nature called instead of the small metal dwellings on wheels. Fog rolled in to cool his fur, leaving droplets for him to shake out when he woke. The grass had an almost salty tang (he had been looking for worms), the mud was soft and left impressions (that rabbit was much easier to find). The rocks baked in the sun, retaining warmth, letting him curl up in them after the sun went down. The wind yawned through the slopes, the verdant moor twisted and confused, the moon glistened bright in the sky. He sang to it and the dark sang back.

And no one dared bother him. For a while at least. The people must have figured out a wolf was roaming the woods for how much they stayed away. He hated and delighted in it. If they were far, he couldn't avenge himself on them. If they were far, he could live in peace.

He had made a den in a hollowed out tree, one that had been split and burned down the middle, the fire eating away the soft center to now make a nice, hidden overhang. He lined it with smooth leaves and grasses, a proper nest and he buried previous kills nearby. It was close to another hollow, a place where the earth smelled metallic, where the fog came at a push of indented earth and gave him dreams of himself fulfilling his revenge, biting and tearing and destroying, silencing the weakening cries of his prey ("I opened my eyes and the nightmare was me"). He liked it. It gave him aura, power. Even the other animals left him alone.

One night he woke up and someone was in the other hollow. He could smell a human on the wind, their disgusting scent twisting with the fog's. They were going to die. He would see his dreams fulfilled.

It was indeed a two-legger, a human. He silently leapt down into the hollow, taking the two-legger by surprise when he jumped up in attack (male, older, smelled like chemicals and plastic gloves and cold). The two-legger fell and the wolf fell with him, slashing at the human's face and trying to bite, trying to give pain as he had received it. The human was wearing a mask though, a something blocking him from tasting its blood, from stopping the rapid beating of its heart. Even its flailing arms were protected. The wolf growled in frustration.

He felt something pressed into his shoulder and suddenly his muscles were weakening, his legs growing soft. No! The wolf roared and bit down as hard as he could on the nearest bit of flesh (I am supposed to destroy you. It is written). All he encountered was soft gunk. His limited vision was going, the smells of the world were dimming. Damn, damn, damn, damn it all the hell (what is hell?).

The darkness was all encompassing.

IiIiIiIiIiI

The wolf decidedly did not like the new situation.

The wolf had woken someplace new. It was almost entirely white except for the silver bars of his rather spacious cage (it burned, it hurt). It smelled like human and antiseptic (new word, recently surfaced). Humans would speak and their breath would smell like lunch. They all wore white coats and peering expressions. The first week he growled and howled and banged and threw himself against the bars in frustration. He refused to eat the red steak they provided or drink their sanitized, empty water that did not taste-tell where it had been like the river did. Sterilized.

The second week they shot him with things that make him sleep (and dream empty dreams of blackness and the moor) and he would wake up groggy and feeling like he had been moved. His belly would be mysteriously full. He hated it even more.

The third week he tried a different tactic. He changed to his other form and ate and drank like a human. He thought maybe if he kept it up long enough they would forget he was really a wolf and let him go. He didn't speak. He just glared, hoping to make them feel like they had done something wrong and made a mistake and to let him out so he could rip them to pieces for their impudence (that's not very polite, but what even is politeness. Wolves do not carry nationality like the British).

He was a little bit wrong with this thinking.

Instead of being confused, the humans all became delighted. Happy pheromones littered the air, smiles and cooing and more writing and tabulating and knocking him out and probably poking him with things. They set out clothes, which he blatantly ignored. They stole some of his steak and didn't give it back. He turned back into a wolf while they weren't looking and when they turned back around they were even more delighted. He turned back into a human, not caring anymore if they watched and they ran around the laboratory with clipboards and graphs and chatter and God, would they just shut up, even Sh-who? Nevermind.

He stubbornly refused to transform back into himself after that. He didn't speak, because this form's voice was bloody embarrassing compared to his normal one.

At the end of the fourth week, the scientists were looking less excited. The wolf was hopeful. But then he had a visitor that ruined it.

The man walked through the elevator door to the wolf's floor. The entire floor was dedicated to the wolf, his cage and computers and a coffee station and whirring machines all trying to figure him out. This man was not wearing a white coat, though, but a tailored suit. He carried an umbrella. Ever since being captured, the wolf had kept remembering words, stories, concepts, meaningless human things that were decidedly less important than how to catch a rabbit or kill all the humans in the vicinity. But this was how the wolf knew what a dull brolly was.

The scientists crowded around the man, showing him their clipboards and notes and a bloody prezzie that contained lots of pictures of the unconscious wolf and nucleotide sequences. The wolf huffed. He was not impressed.

Finally, as if it was the pièce de résistance of this tour, the man was allowed to approach the wolf himself (like he hadn't been able to see him the whole time: stupid two-leggers). This slightly pleased the wolf though because it meant he was important. The courtiers tittering advice to the foreigner before visiting the king (fairy tales had started telling themselves in his head a few days ago, or at least he thought it was few days. It was always difficult to tell time down here, without the sun and moon to guide). The wolf sat at the back of his cage, legs crossed and hands on his knees, calm. As the man stepped closer, so did his scent. The wolf took a breath so to mock what little smell this form's nose was able to pick up.

The first thing he noticed was that the man hadn't eaten, his being didn't smell like greasy cafeteria food. The second thing was that this man smelled like something very familiar, someone the wolf had smelled at the very beginning of his existence, the screaming, hysterical, lost man.

"John," the man said.

It was like a switch had been flipped.

The wolf threw himself against the bars of his prison, snarling, spitting, gripping the bars like death and ignoring the silver burn. He tried to fit his fingers through, grasp, throttle, choke the man, the man he suddenly hated even more than everyone. Maybe it was him who had cursed him because he was going to suffer just as much as the one who had. He was going to be torn, broken, devoured, crunched, ripped, suffocated for saying that. For saying that name. For bringing that here. For letting these prodding imbecile scientists know that, of all things, about him. The wolf drew back and threw himself against the cage again. Against where the door would be, must be, the door he most certainly would be getting the fuck out of so he could delete this visiting man from existence.

"What's happening?"

"His adreneline levels are rising, and heartbeat going haywire."

"We've got to put him under. He might hurt himself."

"No, no, let's see how this plays out."

The wolf roared to drown out their miserable noise and threw himself against the door again and again, the memory, his only human memory left, was playing itself over and over in his brain. And it hurt, hurt so much. It held so much pain. Because he was John and he had lost his Sher-

No! No. Don't think, don't speak, don't let it out, don't let it take control away from you. But he could feel it, the creeping consciousness, little shy fingers taking over his head, little tendrils smoothing down his eyes and nose and hair. Trying to be insistent and soothing and crying all at once.

The wolf threw itself against the door one last time, some part of him finally bleeding and John sobbed. The wolf curled up in a ball, refusing to look at Mycroft.

"Go away," he croaked. "I don't need any reminders."

"What do you want me to tell him?" Mycroft's voice was silky, covering him like a soothing blanket, like the warmth of his and Sherlock's bodies together on the sofa in the memory.

John sobbed again, clutching at his chest. It felt like his heart was breaking.

"Tell him nothing. I don't want him to know. Tell him I'm dead."

"He misses you deeply, you know. He'll never stop searching."

"He hasn't found me yet. Let me out and he never will." John turned to face Mycroft, giving him his best glare, trying to show him the monster with his eyes, trying to lay down a pronouncement. "He will never forgive you if he finds me here. He will never speak to or acknowledge you. He will make himself disappear with me, go someplace you will never find us, make it so he is dead for you, that all your memories together are dust and buried." John let the wolf through, lifting his lips to show overlong canines. "He will be erased."

Mycroft lifted one posh eyebrow. "I did not know werewolves had the gift of prophecy."

The wolf had had enough. With a scream, John was gone and he was transforming back to his true self, the scream morphing into a howl, a demonic call, a song for the bestial soul. The wolf let the red take over, let all his supernatural strength push forth as he broke out of his cage.