#arc: muzzle

[iwhumpyou]

Muzzle (Part 4)

Masterlist.  Janiya.

Worse Than It Looks.

~#~#~#~#~#~

Janiya knew the moment Rita had figured out what the muzzle was, because her grumbling cut out and her eyes went very wide.

Janiya tightened her grip on the muzzle, giving Rita a flat look so that the werewolf would stop trying to tear it off.

The stabbing pain had only intensified, waves of fire brushing across her face, and it took all of Janiya’s self-control to keep her tears from spilling.  

Not here, the panic in her mind screamed, not in front of them.

Ivy moved to block Ash’s view as Rita tugged Janiya to face her, inspecting the muzzle for any sign of how to get the pincers out.  Janiya watched Ivy out of the corner of her eye – she didn’t know what was wrong with Ash, but she could sense the tension.

What did it matter? They never told her anything useful. Even when she had been pack, she had never really been one of them.

The part inside of her that had clenched in…not fear, exactly, but something close when she’d stumbled out of the warehouse to see Gavin, coiled tighter.

When the car rolled to a stop, Janiya was almost relieved.  The tension had seethed around them, five people who weren’t saying a word, and when the car doors opened, the strain eased.

And then Janiya caught sight of home – house, it was just a house now, she’d lost what little claim she’d had – and the tension eeled right back up her spine.

She didn’t want to be back here.  She didn’t want Gavin hovering over her with wide eyes or Darin trying to examine her wounds or their looks – she could see them, she was mute not blind, she could tell what pity looked like, could see that they felt sorry for her in the way they moved out of her path and stayed silent.

“Where?” Gavin asked, his eyes hard, “Where are the latches?”  Janiya pointed them out, the eleven throbbing points of pain across her face as she held the muzzle up.  And then went still as conversations cut out all across the room.

Ash was back.  He moved like he was ready to tear apart anything that stood in his path and Janiya flinched back when he crouched in front of her.

He was careful, gentle, as he turned her face to examine the muzzle from all sides, but he wasn’t looking at her.  Janiya wasn’t sure whether or not he even registered her presence.

“It’s Raklive make,” Ash said, with the tone of someone who knew this intimately.  Janiya’s breathing had turned shallow and her gaze was locked with the hollowness of his eyes.

“Do you know how to remove it?” Gavin asked.

“It can’t be removed,” Ash said, straightening up.  He looked lost.  He looked afraid.  He looked angry.  “They didn’t design their toys to have an off switch.”

Janiya sucked in a sharp breath – what did he mean it couldn’t be removed, it had to be removed, Janiya was not spending the rest of her life with a piece of metal stuck to her face –

“How did you get yours off?” Darin asked.

Ash met her gaze and his fingers drifted up to brush his cheek.

“I ripped it off,” he said harshly, before he turned and walked out of the room.

Janiya’s fingers immediately tightened on her own muzzle, though thankfully no one looked ready to follow through on his strategy.  She wasn’t a werewolf and she didn’t have supernatural healing.  If they tore the muzzle off, several chunks of her face would go with it.

There was a long, stunned moment of silence before the room erupted into noise.

Janiya winced, pressing back further into the couch cushions as Darin began arguing with Gavin, Ivy starting to propose increasingly unlikely ideas for getting the muzzle off.  Rita’s face was a storm cloud, and Fei went after Ash.  The arguing, the noise, all of it was grating on Janiya’s last nerve.

The anger rose up, the seething, searing hatred that had coalesced when she sat down in her apartment and stared at four walls and thought ‘this is it’.  She wasn’t a child.  She wasn’t ignorant.  She knew that monsters stalked the night.

She had runes carved into her threshold.  A bread knife made of silver.  Blessings carved into the water tank.  She knew how to read the news to find the cover-ups underneath the headlines, and how to listen for the hints of the otherworldly in rumors and gossip. 

And if some uppity bunch of werewolves hadn’t decided she would be great collateral against her old pack, she wouldn’t be in this mess.

She snapped her fingers, not pausing until Gavin turned towards her, frowning.  She mimed writing and gave him her best glare.

“Sorry, Janiya,” his face twisted, “I’ll get you something to write on.” The arguments died down but the hissed conversations continued and Janiya’s mood grew darker.  She snatched the pad and pen when Gavin returned, and started to write, fast and blocky and furious. 

‘Stop.  Stop arguing.  It isn’t helping.’

“Janiya,” Gavin sighed, reading as she wrote, “We need to figure out a way to get it off of you.  Be patient.”

‘No’ – and the pen almost tore through paper.  ‘You don’t need to do anything.  Give me a ride back to the city.’ 

“Janiya,” Gavin’s voice was lower.  Darker.  “We’re not leaving you like this.”

‘Like you give a damn what happens to me.  I’m not pack.’  Janiya underlined that last sentence twice.  ‘I don’t want to stay here.  Let me go.’

“No.”  And that tone was hard and flat and not what Janiya expected and she glanced up from the paper, stunned.  Gavin was staring at her, arms crossed, jaw set, eyes stormy.  She could see a hint of fangs.

‘LET.  ME.  LEAVE.’

“Not until we get that off your face,” Gavin said, his tone not brooking any form of disagreement.

Janiya breathed, in and out, until the urge to rip Gavin’s face off had subsided.  They couldn’t get it off.  Ash had made that clear.  And she would rather go to a hospital than stay here, in a home she couldn’t have, surrounded by a pack that didn’t want her, and be forced to accept the scraps of care offered out of a sense of moral responsibility. 

It was their fault she had the muzzle on her face.  She did not want to sit here, defenseless, in the midst of people who despised her, and wait for the other shoe to drop.

She tugged the pad closer and began writing furiously, ignoring the way the pen skidded.  The muzzle was heavy in her hand and she bowed her head to support her elbow on her knee as she wrote.

When she was done, she ripped the paper off, straightened, and slapped the note against Gavin’s chest before spinning on her heel and heading for the door.

‘I said no.  I’m not in your pack, you’ve made that abundantly clear. I don’t want your pity, nor am I going to beg for scraps from your table.  You are, in fact, the reason I have a piece of metal fixed to my face.

You made your decision.  Don’t walk it back because you feel sorry for me. I’ve managed perfectly fine before I met you all, and I managed perfectly fine after you left.  Don’t delude yourself into thinking you’re a hero.

If you won’t give me a ride back to the city, fine.  I’m leaving.’

Janiya was almost to the door when Gavin’s voice cut through the tense silence.  “Stop her,” he said quietly and Janiya snarled inside her head when her path was barred by Rita.

Glaring didn’t set the werewolf on fire, and Janiya submitted with bad grace as Rita pushed her back to the couch.

Gavin was still reading, his face blank except for the tic pulsing at his jaw.  He took his time and Janiya crossed her left arm to support her right elbow as she held the muzzle up, her teeth grinding together.

Finally, he looked up and Janiya actually stepped back at the rage in his eyes.  He crumpled the note in his hands. 

“You are not leaving,” he said, the low volume doing absolutely nothing to hide that this was his alpha growl, “You are staying here until we get that muzzle off your face.  Is that clear.”

Janiya wasn’t a werewolf, but she still felt the urge to bare her neck in the face of his anger.  She swallowed that urge, her fingers tightening into a shaking fist, and jerked her shoulders.

If he really wanted to keep her here, she didn’t have a choice.

~#~

TBC.

[iwhumpyou]

Muzzle (Part 2)

Masterlist.  Janiya.

‘Not Pack’.

~#~#~#~#~#~

The muzzle was heavy, and even the pincers it had latched through her skin wasn’t enough to hold it up. The belts had been tightened until she could hear her heartbeat in the buckles, and it dug into the back of her head with the effort of keeping the mask on her face.

Tilting her face to the ceiling was the most comfortable, keeping the muzzle’s weight pressing down on her face instead of sliding off of it, but her shoulders twisted painfully in the position, her wrists protesting, and she had to alternate between resting her face from the screaming, tugging pain and resting her arms from the uncomfortable, pins-and-needles position she was forced into.

Her clothes had gone clammy and no one had even offered to turn up the heat.  A few guards drifted near the light but she couldn’t see or hear anything beyond it and squinting at the darkness only conjured up shapes in the shadows. 

The pack wasn’t coming for her, and it looked like she was in for a long wait.

Worse – the idea that had been niggling at her ever since they said that the pack had been contacted – they would come for her, and Janiya would have to endure them staring at her with pity and resignation, that even banishing her from the pack wasn’t enough to get rid of her.  That they’d come out of some stupid sense of obligation and she’d get another lecture on not putting the pack in danger, like any of this was her fault –

Janiya blinked watery eyes, trying to choke back the tears.

No.  They wouldn’t come.  She had to hope they wouldn’t come.  That her captors would realize the futility of waiting and get rid of her. Or she’d freeze to death.  Or – what was it, three days without water? Nothing was going to get through the muzzle, so she had to wait three days.

Janiya closed her eyes and tried to think of home – the apartment with the shitty water pressure and – the tut-tut-tut of sprinklers across the lawn – no, the empty cupboards with just a few boxes and cans – “Writing your name on every single box doesn’t make it yours, Ash!” – goddammit, no, the sleeping bag rolled across the ground and the paperback next to her – the one thing she’d stolen, the book she thought they wouldn’t miss, because she needed something to tell her that it was real, that it had happened, werewolves and monsters and being part of a pack –

Janiya breathed out through her nose and raised her head to the ceiling.  She couldn’t stop the tears, no matter how badly her jaw clenched, and they ran down the side of her face, dripping into the curve of her ears. She took a deep, shuddering breath and squeezed her eyes tight.

She had to stop thinking about them.  She wasn’t pack.  They weren’t coming.  She’d been kidnapped.  She needed to focus on that, focus on getting out of here because no one was coming to rescue her.  She needed a plan and she couldn’t get weepy every time she thought of the pack, for fuck’s sake, how pathetic was she.

The book was Gavin’s. The one she’d stolen.  It had ‘Happy birthday, alpha!!’ written on the front inside cover, followed by signatures and little messages from every member of the pack.  Janiya’s name was squeezed into a corner.

He hadn’t read it. The book.  There had been no time.  And then the camaraderie of his birthday party was long-faded by sniping and argument and the book had still been untouched and Janiya had just.  Had just taken it.

Janiya inhaled sharply and exhaled slowly.  She wasn’t pack.  She had to get that through her head.  Those months of her life were over.  It was over and it wasn’t coming back.  She had dreams once, hadn’t she?  Plans for the future?  Something to do with herself so that when she ran into them again, years down the line, she could look down her nose and sneer instead of them stumbling upon her crying and shivering in a basement –

The woman was back. She was smiling.  Janiya glared, because it was the only thing she could do.

“Your pack came for you, after all,” the woman said, sickly sweet and Janiya felt her blood run cold.

Something shifted in the woman’s expression, a vicious satisfaction that told Janiya that the woman had probably misconstrued her unease – Janiya wasn’t afraid of her pack.

She wasn’t.  Not of them.  Not of what they’d do to her.  They weren’t going to hurt her.

Well, not on purpose, and nothing she didn’t deserve anyway.

Janiya spared a moment of derision for the stupid girl who thought that joining a werewolf pack was the stuff of adventures and daydreams and followed the woman into a different room.

~#~

TBC.

[iwhumpyou]

I mean just to be ~official~ “You guys are a bunch of idiots.  Did you bother to do any research before you snatched me off the streets?  I’m not a part of the team anymore.  They won’t come for me.  No one will come for me.” For janiya? 🥺🥺🥺

My whump prompts are being used against me. 😂

Changed ‘team’ to ‘pack’ for werewolf!verse.  This happens in an alternate timeline for Venom (which means I need to reorganize the masterlist, don’t I? *sighs in tumblr’s-organizational-options-are-shit*)

Also quickly got out of hand and I didn’t want to wrap it up with an unsatisfyingly short ending.

Masterlist.  Janiya.

~#~#~#~#~#~

She sighed as she got stuck behind a group of gossiping teenagers more interested in blocking the sidewalk than taking their discussion somewhere else, and stepped onto the road to bypass them.  A car blared its horn practically next to her and she flinched, stumbling back onto the sidewalk and shooting the car a filthy glare.

And then, just because it’d been that kind of day, the dark skies let out the rain they’d been promising, and the weather went from a drizzle to a downpour in seconds.

Janiya shivered from underneath a shop awning and glared at the way the streets became gray and misty. The desperate job hunting she’d done a few months ago had netted her only an entry-level research position, and the pay was shitty enough that her apartment was on the far side of the city, a forty-five-minute commute on a good day.

Today was not a good day. Today was going horribly.

Janiya stared at the underside of the awning.  “I just want to collapse on my bed,” she said, “Is that really too much to ask?”

No one answered her, and the pang of not hearing the immediate comebacks had dulled over time. Janiya sighed, eyed the dark clouds and decided that she’d be standing here for the rest of the afternoon if she waited for the rain to stop.

Planning to underline ‘umbrella’ on her shopping list, she stepped out, wincing as she was soaked within a minute.  The subway was a couple of blocks away and she resigned herself to going back to her apartment dripping wet, like a bedraggled cat.

The comments on wet dog smell and muddy paw prints were no longer on the tip of her tongue, but she could still remember that summer day when the lightning was flashing and the air was full of warm rain and shrieks and giggles as all of them had gotten thoroughly soaked, chasing each other in the front yard.

It still hurt.  Even now. Even months after she’d left.

Janiya tried to convince herself that the rain was making her gloomy and she’d feel better once she had a shower and a hot meal, but it didn’t quite stick.  There was an ache under her heart that never went away – a hollow that had once been filled with pack.

But that had been torn out and nothing would fill it ever again.

Janiya tried to tell herself that she didn’t like those losers anyway, but even her mental pep talk was unenthusiastic.  Janiya continued walking, glaring at the asshole approaching her with a black umbrella – he had clearly been prepared for this weather, he had gotten the essentials, he hadn’t absently filled his shopping cart with Rita’s favorite chips or Ash’s chocolate or five different flavors of ice cream before panicking and heading for checkout with only a bag of fruit and boxed pasta.

She shivered, something cold slithering down her spine, and picked up her pace.

She realized that the man with the umbrella was staring directly at her at about the time she heard the heavy, determined footsteps behind her.  Janiya’s well-honed senses shrieked danger but she only had enough time to feel a deep sense of dread before there was an arm tightening across her chest and a cloth pressed over her face.

She tried not to breathe but the cloth pressed deeper – it smelled sweet and cloying and, underneath that, a bitter scent that made her go cold.

She thought she heard a car screeching to a stop nearby, but there were raindrops in her eyes and everything was gray and she was beginning to feel…a little…dizzy…

~#~

She came back to consciousness with what felt like the worst hangover ever, a turn of events that wasn’t helped by the zipties pinning her wrists behind her back.  She was soaked wet and shivering and she’d lost her purse somewhere and her shoulders ached as she did her best to push up into sitting position.

Her head was pounding, her mouth was dry, she was cold and achy and the wet clothes were beginning to chafe and the irritation was enough to drown out the fear as someone stepped out of the shadows of the room.

“Giving you four stars on ambience, but one star on service,” Janiya said hoarsely.

It looked like a typical basement – no windows, naked bulb in the ceiling, rough, unfinished stone for the floor – except for the fact that there was only darkness beyond the dim halo of light, no walls or furniture visible in the shadows, and that was a lot of real estate for a simple kidnapping.

She was still holding out hope that this was a simple kidnapping, fully aware of how pathetic her life had become if these were her choices.

“You won’t have to worry about our service for long,” her captor said simply, “Your pack has already been contacted.  It’s nothing personal, but your pack has been…unreceptive to our advances in the past, so we had to resort to more heavy-handed measures.”

Of course it wasn’t a simple kidnapping.  Janiya exhaled, and let the hope die – the hope that should’ve died the moment she smelled wolfsbane on that cloth.

“You guys are a bunch of idiots,” Janiya drawled, “Did you bother to do any research before you snatched me off the streets?  I’m not a part of the pack anymore.  They won’t come for me.  No one will come for me.”  Janiya bit her lip, hard.  She hadn’t meant to say that last part.

“Pack is pack,” the guy said, shrugging.

Janiya scowled, a familiar swell of annoyance at the condescending ‘oh, what does the human know about pack’ and snapped back, “Yeah, and I’m not pack.”  The guy didn’t look like he cared, and the annoyance went razor-sharp. 

“Oh, well,” Janiya shrugged, easing back into as comfortable a position she could manage with her wrists twisted behind her, “Guess you’re going to get a clue eventually.”

The guy shot her a glance, but didn’t respond, hovering at the edge of the light.  Making sure she didn’t escape, she guessed, just in case they’d gotten it wrong and she wasn’t entirely human after all. 

She waited, counting down from one hundred in her head before she spoke again.  “What about, you know, food and everything?” she asked.  The guy almost startled.  “You do know I’m a human, right?  Passed the Care and Feeding of Non-Supernatural Beings? We’re super fragile.”

The guy growled and Janiya hid her smirk.  “You won’t be here long enough to need anything.”

“Really?  Because I’m freezing over here.  Do you want me to get frostbite?”

“You’re not going to get frostbite,” the guy rolled his eyes and turned away from her.

“Oh, wow,” Janiya sneered, “I knew I should’ve picked the Ritz.  What happened to the customer is always right?”

She could practically see his temper fraying.  “I don’t goddamn care,” he said, stalking towards her and Janiya hid her flinch with a shiver, “Either you shut up or –”

“You’ll make me?” Janiya finished sweetly.

The guy looked like he was considering ripping her head off – his fists were clenched and she could spot the hint of fangs – and she grinned back at him, giving him her best smirk, the one that had once incited Ash to a screaming rage in less than five seconds.

“What is going on?” another voice rang out in the darkness and the man eased back.  Janiya straightened to watch the woman enter the light, her eyes narrowed and her lips pursed.

“Oh, lovely, I wanted to speak to the manager,” Janiya said, “This place is freezing.  The zipties are too tight.  Oh, and you have the wrong person.”

“No, we don’t,” the woman said.

“I’m not in a pack,” Janiya smiled tightly.  Not anymore.  “So, really, can we get this over with?  Because it’s honestly a little embarrassing that I got kidnapped by a bunch of second-rate thugs.”

“She has a mouth on her,” the man muttered sullenly.

“I can see that,” the woman said.

“Can we shut her up?”

Janiya laughed at that. “Good luck trying,” she said.

The woman considered her for a long moment.  “We said alive,” she said, “We didn’t say unharmed.”

Something curdled in Janiya’s stomach.

She kept up the smile, the irritation, the anger, because werewolves could smell fear, because she wouldn’t give them the goddamn courtesy of knowing that their words had hit.

“Torture?” she sighed, “How original.  Like no one’s tried that before.”

“You think we’re going to spend time torturing you?” the woman laughed, “Just to keep that mouth shut?  Oh no.”  She nodded at the man, who vanished back into the darkness.

“Duct tape is going to ruin my pores,” Janiya said solemnly.

“Don’t worry,” the woman said, a patronizing smile on her face, “Your pores will be fine.”

The man returned with an odd contraption in his hand – buckles and belts and metal and –

Light glinted off metal at the right angle and the pieces slotted together into the whole.

“Meant for werewolves,” the woman smiled, watching her, “But it’ll do to shut your mouth.”

“I get accessories now?” Janiya blinked, suppressing the shriek as her voice threatened to go too high, “How kind of you.”

The woman’s smile merely grew, tracking all the tells that Janiya couldn’t hope to hide from werewolf senses.

She jerked away from the man, curling up to hide her face, but someone stepped on her bound wrists, sending her arching back, and werewolf-strong hands gripped her face. She could feel her jaw creak.

They fit the muzzle over her head – it was blocky and dense, fitting over her nose and brushing the top of her cheekbones and the line of her jaw.  There were slits to let her keep breathing, thankfully, and she glared as they began to tighten the buckles.

The muzzle had protruding parts and it pinched at her skin as they yanked the belt tight against the back of her head.  She hissed – or tried to, her lips were smashed against her teeth and the metal dampened her mumbles.

“You’ll want it tight,” the woman said, correctly reading the expression in her eyes, “Or your face will come off.”

Janiya frowned in confusion – but they finished adjusting the buckles and the woman stepped forward to…to press something on the mask and –

Janiya’s muscles clenched in sudden tension as a high-pitched whine built at the back of her throat – she couldn’t scream, she couldn’t even be heard because the damn thing had latched onto her face and the sudden stabbing pain had nearly brought tears to her eyes.

“What’s that?” the woman asked, stepping closer with wide eyes, “I couldn’t hear you.”

Janiya tried to convey her sincere wishes for the woman to go jump off a bridge into a shark pit with her narrowed eyes alone.

Judging by the woman’s laughter, it wasn’t as effective as she could hope.

“Come on,” she motioned to the other guards, “She won’t be causing problems anymore.”

Janiya slumped back as the footsteps receded, and tried to breathe through the shooting pains.

~#~

Part 2.

[iwhumpyou]

if this is too specific feel free to ignore this ask but could you write something where character A’s friends know that A is going through something really bad (like being tortured or something) and go to help them only to see that what they were imagining A going through wasn’t even close to what was actually going on? (also, I love your whumpfics, especially Bastard and Kyran! you’re an amazing writer!)

I’m glad you’re enjoying my whumpfic! 😍💖

This is a bit tamer than outright torture, but the shape of the request fit the Muzzle arc and I thought I’d give it a try!

Masterlist.  Janiya.

Part 2.

~#~#~#~#~#~

“How do we know they even have Janiya?” Ivy asked, voice level but cold.  “They certainly haven’t shown us any proof.”

“We tried calling Janiya,” Gavin reminded her, watching as the wet trees were replaced with gray-washed buildings.  “She didn’t pick up.”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” Ash said, still grumbling in the back seat.

Ash had been the one to voice it, back when they got the call, after contacting Janiya had failed, after they were forced to accept that perhaps the Rainier pack was telling the truth. Janiya wasn’t pack.  Not anymore.  They had no obligation to go after her, though Ash had put it more crudely than that.

Gavin had glared at him, and the rest of the pack with flinty eyes.  It was their fault that Janiya was in trouble.  Perhaps they didn’t have a duty to save her, but it was still the right thing to do.

And besides, the Rainier pack clearly needed a lesson in how to take no for an answer.

“She should’ve been more careful,” Rita said as they pulled into the deserted parking lot of the – at first glance – abandoned warehouse.  “She never learns her lessons.”

It wasn’t an unfair claim. Janiya had a predilection for ignoring safety and caution and approaching every problem like it could be beaten by dry insults and condescending sneers.  She’d certainly sharpened her tongue like others sharpened claws.

It would have served her well as a lawyer.  A reporter. It did not serve her well in the supernatural world.

“Alpha Rainier,” Gavin said coolly, as they were met at the entrance by a hulking werewolf.  She was flanked by a woman whose smile made him uneasy and a human man with shadows crawling over his body.  “If you think that hostages have made me more amenable to your treaty, you’re sorely mistaken.”

“Alpha Lake,” Robin Rainier smiled at him.  “I merely wanted the pleasure of your company.  You’re a hard man to pin down.  Don’t worry, your pack-member will be returned to you alive.”

“Janiya is no longer a member of my pack,” Gavin said levelly.

Rainier raised an eyebrow, a mocking smile playing about her lips.  The woman by her side looked gleeful.  “Then why have you come all this way?” she asked, her eyes alight with satisfaction.

“Because I don’t hate you enough to call the hunters,” Gavin said calmly.  Rainier stopped smiling.  The woman looked sour.  And the shadows, for an instant, seemed darker.  “That can change.  Give me Janiya, and never contact me again.  I don’t want a treaty with your pack, and that is my final decision.” 

Rainier looked like she was grinding her teeth.  Bringing in the hunters was a cheap blow, but by their laws, Janiya was a human and not affiliated with any pack.  Kidnapping her was a clear excuse to go after the Rainier pack, and they hadn’t endeared themselves to anyone in the area.

The woman was casting glances at the empty warehouses around them, as if expecting to see the flashes of guns, and the shadows had started to flicker around them, though the human did not meet anyone’s gaze.

“You will regret this,” Rainier said quietly, “You forced my hand once.  You will not like the second time.”

“I don’t appreciate being blackmailed,” Gavin said pleasantly, “You seem to think that showing up and bullying your way through every obstacle is a sound strategy.  This isn’t the South, Alpha Rainier.  The northern packs dislike outsiders, and we don’t play nice.”

Rainier nodded to her second, who paused to shoot them all a nasty glare before vanishing into the building. “Rome didn’t become an empire by playing nice,” Rainier said, turning away.

“Yeah, and Caesar was stabbed twenty-three times for it,” Rita said under her breath, but well within werewolf hearing.  Rainier stilled for a beat, before walking away, the human with the shadows following her.

Ivy, however, was staring into the darkness, the faintest flicker of worry on her face.  “What’s wrong?” Gavin muttered.

“Alive,” Ivy said, so quiet her lips barely moved, “Not unharmed.”

A ripple of unease spread through the small group Gavin had taken with him.

“Someone as power-obsessed as Rainier isn’t going to see the worth in harming a human,” Ash said, but his tone wasn’t very confident.

“Janiya has a talent for pissing people off,” Rita countered darkly, but all of them fell silent once they heard footsteps again.

Rainier hadn’t come back. Her second was the only one that came into view, dragging a curiously wet Janiya behind her and –

That was a muzzle.

Behind Gavin, Ash had gone dangerously still.

Janiya’s eyes flashed as she was unceremoniously hauled out of the warehouse and pushed towards them – she managed to keep her balance to avoid spilling to her knees at their feet, but Gavin didn’t need to see her entire face to imagine the rest of her vicious scowl.  The woman merely gave them a teeth-bared glare before disappearing back into the warehouse.

Gavin supposed they thought it was funny, to put a muzzle on a human.  As so many hunters had put them on werewolves.

“Let’s go,” he said, turning on his heel.  Ivy grabbed Janiya – her wrists were tied behind her back, and werewolf claws sliced through them easily – and tugged her towards the car.  Ash replaced Ivy in the front seat, his gaze fixed ahead and his hands curled into fists as he struggled to breathe normally, and Gavin spared him half a glance before starting the car.

Janiya was sandwiched between Rita and Ivy and in the rearview mirror he can see her struggling with the buckles on the sides of the muzzle.

“You can do that when we get home,” he said flatly, and was entirely unsurprised when Janiya ignored him.

She was making distressing huffs of air and Gavin’s hands tightened on the steering wheel as he pressed on the accelerator.  Ash was as still as a statue, and about as pale.  It wasn’t far back to their home – the Rainier pack had been lurking at the edge of their territory for days now – but every second felt it had been stretched.

“Oh, for moon’s sake,” Rita finally snapped, pushing Janiya’s hands away from the buckle and undoing the thing herself, “Are you really that impatient to –”

The sharp scent of blood filled the car.

“Rita,” Gavin said with a calm he did not feel, “What’s going on?”

There was no answer. He spared a glance to the rearview mirror – Rita and Ivy were exchanging wide-eyed glances.

“Rita,” Gavin started, his tone slipping into warning.

“Nothing,” Rita cut him off, her voice high, “Just – just a little more complicated to remove than I thought.  It’s fine.  We’re handling it.”

Gavin cast another glance, but Ivy had wedged herself onto the center console, neatly blocking his view of the backseat.

“Ivy, what are you doing?” Ash had twisted, trying to peer past her, but she moved with him, her face hard.

“We don’t need you wolfing out in the car,” Ivy said quietly, “Eyes on the road, Ash.”

Ash scowled.  “Rita, if it’s too complicated it can wait until we get home,” Gavin said.

“It’s not too complicated,” Rita responded immediately.

“I can smell blood,” Gavin said flatly.  There was no response.  Gavin sighed, “I’m driving as fast as I can, we’ll be home soon.”

Soon, it transpired, was an inadequate measure of time.  By the time Gavin had parked, Ash’s thrumming tension was suffocating, Ivy’s carefully blank expression was fracturing around the eyes, and Rita’s muttered rambling had devolved into curses, and then silence.  Janiya’s breathing grew more labored by the minute.

The others spilled from the house before they’d even stopped, and Ash jerked the door open to take several steps away from the car and get ahold of himself.  Gavin eyed him, debating over whether or not to approach, but decided to get rid of the source before attempting to deal with its effects. 

“What’s wrong?” he said tiredly, rounding the car to where Rita was glowering at the muzzle – a clunky thing made of metal, heavy enough that Janiya was having difficulty holding it to her jaw.  The buckles and belts seemed to have been loosened, and Gavin didn’t understand what the problem –

Janiya’s fingers shifted, and the scent of blood was fresh.

“It’s latched onto her face,” Rita said softly.

Gavin stilled.  Ivy’s face was pinched, Rita’s drawn and worried, and Janiya’s narrowed eyes couldn’t hide their watery sheen.

“We’ll do this in the house,” he said instead of cursing.  The murmurs died to a sudden hush as Janiya got out of the car, and her narrow-eyed glare made it extremely clear what she would’ve said, if her mouth had been free.

But soon they were on the couch – Janiya perched on the edge, her eyes darting around the room like this hadn’t been her home once too – and Gavin took a seat to study the thing more closely.

He could see where metal pincers latched through her skin, turning it red and inflamed, and through some miming got Janiya to point out the locations of all of them – one on each cheekbone, four trailing down to her jaw, one at her chin, and four arrayed around her lips.  It was heavy, straining at the skin if it wasn’t held up, and the roughshod design didn’t reveal a way of removing the thing.

“There are a couple of buttons on it,” Rita said, hovering nervously, “I tried them all, but nothing worked.”

“There must be a way to get it…off…”  Kai’s words trailed off as Ash entered the room.

His movements were fluid, but Gavin wasn’t the only one who saw the sharp edges as everyone backed away to clear Ash’s path.  The man crouched in front of Janiya – she flinched back, but he didn’t even seem to notice.

Ash examined the muzzle, careful fingers turning Janiya’s head to look at it from all sides and tap on the metal.  It covered nearly her whole face, fitting inelegantly over her nose and just under her eyes to extend to her ears.  Janiya’s expression – what little he could see of it – was definitely a glare, but he didn’t have to be a werewolf to tell that her heart was pounding. 

“It’s Raklive make,” Ash said finally.  There was a chorus of hisses around the room.

“Do you know how to remove it?” Gavin asked, careful to keep his voice level.  Ash was still inspecting the muzzle carefully, but a part of his expression was far, far away from here.

“It can’t be removed,” Ash said, straightening.  The look on his face wasn’t pity.  It was colder than that.  “They didn’t design their toys to have an off switch.” 

There was a long, shifting silence before Darin worked up the nerve.  “How did you get yours off?” he asked softly.

Ash looked at him, and then at Janiya before he pressed a hand to his cheek in an apparent unconscious gesture.

“I ripped it off,” he rasped, before he turned on his heel and walked out.

Janiya’s narrowed eyes had been replacing with wide ones, her heart rate even faster.  She curled her hands around the muzzle like she was afraid they were going to tear it from her face.

~#~

Part 4.

[iwhumpyou]

Masterlist: Janiya

Janiya is spiteful and mean and vicious and she’s long been aware that she’s not really part of the team.

~#~

Emotional Whump: sudden reality check | stern but caring caretaker | unexpected comfort | betrayed by friends | team as family | begging | cuddling

Physical Whump: lips sown shut | panic attacks | stitches | removing stitches | forced stitch removal | forced tooth pulling | hyperventilating | venom | overheating | exhaustion | sickfic | vomiting | burning | muzzle | kidnapping | infected wound

Setting: modern | underworld | gangs || werewolves | urban fantasy

Characters: Janiya | Gavin | Ash | Darin | Rita | Ivy | Kai | Fei

~#~

Arc: Stitches (complete) - Gavin and Ash find Janiya in less-than-perfect conditions. Part 1 Stern but Caring Caretaker (request fill) - Janiya gets the stitches removed. Part 3

Arc: Tracker (alternate timeline) (complete) - Janiya doesn’t want them to come anywhere near her.  Unfortunately, they don’t have a choice. Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5.

Infection (whumptober fill) - It’s just a scratch.  It is.  (Stitches!verse)

Blindness (whumptober fill) - Janiya is captured again.  (Stitches!verse)

Arc: Venom (alternate universe) (complete) - It would’ve killed a werewolf.  It maybe possibly won’t kill her.  Janiya gets injured by scorpion venom.  (Werewolf!verse) Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6.

Arc: Muzzle (alternate timeline) (in progress) - Janiya gets kidnapped for leverage against her old pack.  (Werewolf!verse) 'Not Pack’ (request fill) - “They won’t come for me.  No one will come for me.” Part 2 Worse Than It Looks (request fill) - Gavin and his pack go to get Janiya back. Part 4

~#~#~#~

Tags: janiya | arc: stitches | arc: tracker | arc: venom | arc: muzzle.

Taglist: @voidwhump (Tracker).

Answered Asks: fever (venom) | you’re pack (venom) | how is janiya doing | context | tasty (tracker) | grinning (tracker) | settling (tracker) | kyran crossover

Whump Scenes: take them not me

Writer’s Commentary: cobra venom (stitches) | stitches | tracker part 1 | goldmine | tracker part 1