Honor to the Pack: A Redactedverse/Mulan AU Fanfic [Prologue]
Hello, Redactedverse friends! I am here to offer a story that has been in the works for months: a Redactedverse/Mulan AU! Mulan is so very special to me, and once I began to play with creating a Redacted storyline within that framework, I just had to write it out. The plan is for updates to be about once per week.
Click here to read the Prologue of "Honor to the Pack" on AO3!
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Find summary, tags, and more information under the cut.
Thank you for reading! All feedback is welcome and cherished!
Summary: As an unempowered person, Angel’s life goal is supposed to be straightforward: match with any empowered person who would take them and secure a real future. But when the infamous Quinn Fox invades Dahlia and citizens are asked to defend their home, Angel makes an impossible choice. To prevent their ailing foster-alpha from having to serve, Angel impersonates an empowered person and lands right in the middle of a whirlwind adventure. With a helpful empathy-daemon by their side, a rag-tag crew led by one grumpy (but handsome) alpha, and the smarts that come along with living in a magical world as an unempowered person, Angel sets out to save their home and bring honor to their pack.
Rated: T ; Word Count: ~34K over 26 chapters
Characters: Angel, David Shaw, Caelum, Quinn, Gregory Keaton, Milo Greer, Sweetheart, Asher, Colm Greer, Marie Greer, Gabe Shaw, Avior, Morgan Kyne, Damien, Huxley, Freelancer, Geordi, Treasure, Porter Solaire, Cutie, Alexis Getty, Felix, Corvus, Vega, Gavin, Warden, Brachium, Scorpius, Darling, Sam Collins, Lasko, Xavier
Tags: AU, Mulan AU, Adventure, Fluff, Friendship, Humor, Banter, Angst, Trust, Hurt/Comfort, Identity Struggles, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Suspense, Slow Burn, Fighting, Disguise, Chases, Rescues, Found Family, Bravery, Grief, Romance, Love, Magic, Hope, Happy Ending, True Love, Pack Feels, Discrimination Towards Unempowered People, Slurs Towards Unempowered People, All Listener Characters are Gender-Neutral
Thinking about Milo in high school during group projects, letting his project partner know they're welcome to stay for dinner.
They see all the pictures of pack outings and ask "Are you sure it'll be okay, looks like you've got a big family."
"Nah, it's just me and my ma. That's all... family friends." Milo replies.
There's a man in the earliest photos that's still there through all of the current ones. Older, more haggard, but present. Removed from Milo who looks to be with his own age group but still standing with the woman who is clearly his mom.
Thinking about Colm coming home drunk one night while Milo has one of these school friends/project partners over and seeing this simmering seething rage in Milo. Whether it gets to Milo's temper boiling over or a shouting match or not.
Thinking about Milo apologizing the next day, embarrassed that anyone had to see his dad or his reaction to his dad.
Shaw Pack headcanons bc :3 i wanna. A lot are of darlin bc i love them but i try my best to include more than that!!!!
Darlin is a couple years younger than The Boys(tm) so they were coddled a lot (most of it just annoying brotherly teasing more than coddling)
Milo and Darlin are cousins! Milo played the good kid around their parents growing up and it peeved them off so bad LMFAO
Asher was sooo a skater kid and Darlin definitely picked up skating because of him (as you can imagine, they had a knack for bruises and sprains trying to do tricks wayy out of their paygrade LOL)
Of the three boys, David was the most protective of Darlin so if they ever got hurt he was the one walking them back home
Milo’s growth spurt hit before any of the other boys, David was the last one to hit his (we all know how this plays out for them LOL)
When he was younger, David looked more like his mom than his dad, but as he got older he began to look more and more like Gabe
David has a freckle on his wrist that matched one his mother had
Milo and Marie are damn near identical but he has Colm’s eyes and it’s enough to tick him off on a bad day
Asher and his sister, Madelyn, have vitiligo. Asher’s reaches up all the way to his scalp so he’s got splotches of white hair from the lack of pigment
All of the listeners are a very good group of friends, but between the four, Babe and Angel are besties while Darlin and Sweetheart are besties
Look at me. The listeners flirt with each other all the time IDC argue with the wall!! Babe is more in the lane of cute, sweet compliments, Sweetheart is a step above that being a little more overt with pet names while Angel is like shameless about it. Darlin doesn’t usually initiate but whenever Angel cracks a joke about them looking good Darlin will start flexing their muscles very obviously and go “Who me? 💪🏽💪🏽” LMFAOOO
Sam is constantly bringing a small gift whenever he’s invited to someone’s home “Its the polite thing to do” he says
Angel knows how to cook just fine they just haaaaaaaate doing it. It stresses them out so badly because its a lot to focus on if it isn’t a simple recipe, and they usually move to make something to eat while they’re hungry instead of planning ahead for whatever meal of the day it is.
I like to think Gabe had a soft spot for Darlin when he was alive, he was pretty similar to how they were when he was younger
Sam doesn’t usually participate too much in the Mates group chat outside of confirming plans. The first time he sends a funny image the others lose their minds
Sam is a sucker for all kinds of animals and actively has to fight the instinct to bring one home with him. When he was a kid he loved looking around for bugs and occasionally he’ll record a video of him holding one and send them to Darlin
Babe grew up with reptiles as a kid! They want to get a snake but haven’t gotten around to it yet
Darlin was a crybaby as a kid but they always tried their best to contain it. Living embodiment of the ☹️ emoji from trying to bite back tears
After getting married, Angel’s knack for taking David’s work shirts/hoodies increases tenfold “its got my name on it now >:]”
Babe is a bit of a picky eater, Asher orders pizza so often that they’ve gotten sick of it but they won’t stop him from ordering anyway
Sweetheart will occasionally phase cloak through a hug to mess with Milo (the sensation freaks him out)
Gabe’s wolf form is almost pitch black with a white spot on his chest, his wife’s was a dark rusty color
Gabe and his generation of pack members were certainly big but the kids ended up much larger than any of them anticipated. Even Milo, who’s smaller than his peers ended up a little bigger than his parent’s forms.
Gabe ADORED Sweetheart, they got along like old friends. Sweetheart was the type to chat up their friend’s parents growing up to make a good impression (it stressed Milo out like no other to see his mate act buddy buddy with his Alpha of all people)
Darlin’s wolf form is riddled in scarred scratches and bite marks. Their lip and eyebrow are scarred, one of their ears was ripped to shreds, and their tail was damaged so badly most of it became necrotic and fell off, they’ve just got a little bobtail. After the inversion, David’s wolf form loses a good chunk of his ear opposite to Darlin’s. “We kinda match now lol”
Darlin’s first pack run after returning to Dahlia is cathartic for them. They stay outside in their wolf form for hours after the run.
Sam dyed his hair brown after running from Mont Blanc. He grows it out a little around the time he meets Alexis but goes back to brown after his turning. He’s now fully back to his dirty blond :]
Sam has a small photo of his grandmother on his nightstand with a small candle burning next to it. Darlin makes sure to light it for him if they’re awake before he is
Angel has a tattoo on their ankle for their cat from when they were still with Michael. Its of the M pattern on their cat’s forehead
Milo is the type to avoid a show or game if people bug him enough about starting it. He doesn’t even think he wouldn’t enjoy the contents, but it triggers something in him to be defiant about it unless Sweetheart sits him down to watch it
Darlin will steal bites off of the boys’ plates if they’re out eating with each other. Asher does it back with a smile, Milo will whine like a baby about it, and David will just smack their hand away (they just laugh when it happens)
Christian has a REALLY bad gag reflex. Asher will pretend to make a gagging sound to make Christian dry heave
Quinn is a smart guy. Ansel would not choose to cross Sweetheart. Sweetheart finds the cracks. Colm picks up the slack. Milo is solid gold.
TW: Emotional distress, discussions of panic attacks, discussions of addiction, alcoholism, and smoking, discussion of drug use, police officers. They don't do much in the chapter but they're there, so... yeah.
It took twelve hours to cover all of the properties that Ben had given up, and each one of them came back bare. Sure, they were full of people and drugs and assholes with records and victims covered in Q’s who were unwilling to talk, but no sign of Mr. Fox himself. The sun was rising by the time the crew of uniformed officers cleared out the last dingy basement apartment on your list. You stepped out into the late-spring heat and breathed in so deep you felt it in the pit of your stomach.
“Everything checks out.” Ansel rounded the corner of the shoebox apartment complex and clapped you on the shoulder as he settled on the wall next to you. “We think this is where Quinn gets most of his supply.”
“Uppers or downers?”
“Depends.” Ansel shrugged. “The dealer isn’t entangled, he’s more than happy to give up details on Quinn to protect himself.” Ansel’s accent twirled prettily around his words, and your shoulders bumped together as he dug into his suit pockets for his notepad. Having started in the homicide unit, Ansel had made an eventual name for himself, with Colm’s tutelage, of course, in organized crime. You’d worked with him once before on a disappearance that he suspected was part of a human trafficking case. You had cracked it, but the girl you were looking for was long gone, lost overseas. “He’s a frequent user, but the dealer hasn’t seen any symptoms of withdrawal on him. He purchases in small amounts and always pays in cash.”
“Daddy’s money,” you grumbled, scrubbing a hand over your face. You needed a shower. Milo’s voice was still eating at the back of your mind and you couldn’t shake the nausea that you’d developed in the hospital parking lot. “This mother fucker is gonna disapear.” you sighed.
“It would be the smart move.” Ansel shrugged. You liked almost no cops and you liked almost nothing about the ones you knew. Ansel wasn’t exactly the exception. He had the department air about him at times, the straight laced, hunker down instinct when their authority was questioned. But one thing you could appreciate about the guy was that he didn’t bullshit you.
“And he’s a smart guy.” You said. “I can at least give him that.”
“I don’t know,” Ansel replied, flipping his notepad open and closed, open and closed in a nice, steady rhythm. “It hasn’t exactly been smart to go after you and the people you love. We might not see eye to eye on many things,” a wicked, wolfish grin overtook Ansel’s face, “but you are not someone I would choose to cross.”
You scoffed, scuffed your boot against the broken-glass, cigarette-butt asphalt.
“Gee,” you replied, “you’ll make me blush.”
On the drive back to the hospital, you tried desperately to swallow your pride. Milo had begged you not to go and you were driving back untouched, but without the proof that it had been worth it. It hadn’t been worth it. You’d turned up nothing but the evidence that Quinn was doing coke in his free time. And what had you given up for that information? Milo’s trust? His confidence in you?
Christ, had you traded Milo for this stupid case? Given him up like he was nothing to be an inch closer to a monster you were never going to catch.
That was clear to you now. Quinn was going down eventually, but it wasn’t going to be you. It couldn’t be. You couldn’t keep this case and keep Milo. He was wrong. You knew what you would choose if it came down to it, always had. So you did.
Milo was where you had left him twelve hours before, his elbows on his knees and his back to the wall of the now busy hallway. He was still in his ashy, smoky clothes from the night before. You could smell him as soon as you stepped inside. You shouldered past a rushing nerve and side stepped a shuffling patient so you could stand in front of him. He didn’t look up, even though you knew he knew you were there. He always did.
“It wasn’t bullshit.” You huffed, chest suddenly tight. “I meant it. When I told you… forever… I meant it.” You were always bad at this. You could charm your way out of a lot, but when it came down to it, words always failed.
Milo looked up. Those eyes, those big, deep, dark eyes. Red rimmed and tired. You melted. You knelt in front of him, hands on his shoulders.
“I can’t keep doing this.” Milo said. His voice was raw.
“I know.” You nodded frantically. “I know. This… this isn’t how I want to be. This isn't how I want to do this.”
“You’ve gotta…” Milo shook his head and scrubbed his hands over his face. “You have got to let me in. Even if you do dangerous things, because… well, let’s be honest here, Sweetheart, you are always going to do dangerous things.” He huffed out a laugh. “I just… I am scared, baby. And I know that you must be scared too. But you get so… fixated on your case and push through it. And it’s like you don’t have time to tell me you’ll be safe. Like you don’t have time to feel that fear.”
You took a deep breath, squeezing his hands in yours. Usually, you would have shrunk away from having a conversation like this in a populated hallway, where anybody might hear, but you swallowed down your own discomfort. Milo needed this, so you would give it to him.
“You’re right.” It was a hard sentence for you to force out, but you did it anyway. “You’re right. You… you see right through me, don’t you?”
Milo managed a small smile.
“I feel like…” you screwed your lips up as you tried to find the words. “I feel like if I stop and feel the fear it’ll just… paralyze me. That I’ll get totally lost in it.” You closed your eyes to memories of teenaged panic attacks, months spent frozen in terror at the idea of going to school or changing for gym class or speaking to someone new. Fear had a way of sneaking in through the cracks of you and taking hold, wrapping its stone fingers around you and squeezing. You had thought that you had mastered it. Filled in the cracks.
As it turned out, all you had done was block out any route for Milo to reach you.
“You gotta know that’s not healthy, baby,” Milo said softly, “it doesn’t have to be either or. Afraid or unfeeling.”
“I’m terrified that once I let it start, it’ll never stop.” The words tumbled out of you all at once. Milo’s eyes searched yours. Apparently, there was nothing else to say. He surged forward and pulled you close.
You sighed into his chest, reaching for a crack to open it up.
__
Colm was right where you expected him to be; his back to the wall outside the ambulance loading bay, cigarette dangling from his lips, eyes closed. He plucked the dart from his mouth after a long drag, the white smoke curling around his face, obscuring his features.
You hated cigarettes and Colm knew that, so when his eyes caught you through the screen of smoke, he dropped his and snuffed it with the toe of his boot even though there was a still a good half of it left before he hit the filter.
“Hey, kid.” he coughed around his lung-ful and stared up at the late morning sky, squinting in the sun. “Anything?”
You pressed your back against the wall next to him, the rough surface pressing into you through the thin fabric of your work shirt. It was getting hotter every day, and the sweat that spread across you made the ball of tension in your chest squeeze ever tighter. You hated the heat. You always joked that as soon as you started to sweat you became a bad person.
“I can’t handle the Fox case anymore.” You admitted it quietly, breathed the truth of it into the air. Colm sighed as though he already knew.
“You’ve done a fine job.” He muttered. “A damn fine job.” He scrubbed a hand over his face the same way that Milo always did. You couldn’t help but smile.
“This is above my pay grade.” You replied. “Ansel is handling the organized crime side of things. Fox is involved in some pretty serious drug usage. I don’t know if he’s pushing or if he’s just a user, but it’s playing a part in the money and the people he has access to. You might be able to squeeze out some more witnesses and testimonies by cutting deals. That’s the angle I would take.”
Colm nodded, scratching at the stubble on his cheek.
“I’ll take care of it.” Something about him had gone cold, closed off. You squirmed with the need to alleviate his disappointment.
“It’s for Milo.” You tumbled out. “Or… it’s because of Milo. I… I’m not what he deserves when I’m on cases like this. I get… twisted up until nothing matters but figuring it out.”
“It’s compulsive.” Colm said, closing his eyes again, leaning back. “It’s good you’re breaking the habit now, though, instead of leaning in. Trust me, it’ll get harder as you get older, more set in your ways.” You looked over at him. In the beating sun, you could almost picture him as a much younger man. Almost.
“I don’t know how to… how to be the way I am and be good enough for him.” It was painful to admit.
“Well, that’s the great thing about people,” Colm said, “we have the capacity to change.”
“How do I do it?” You breathed. You closed your eyes too, let the heat of the sun press into you.
“Pick two days a week that you work late. Monday and Wednesday, Tuesday and Friday, whatever works for you. Every other day that you can help it, you come home as soon as your office hours are up. We both know you’re not gonna be able to work a forty hour week, so you might as well put some parameters up around your overtime.” Colm’s voice washed over you, so close to Milo’s but rasped and withered. “Try and plan dinners you like for the nights you leave on time, that way you rush to get home. Ask about his day before you start talking about yours. Bring him flowers or coffee or whatever he likes randomly, no occasion. Assert to him as often as he needs to hear it that he is more important than your work is. Even if that’s not necessarily true.”
You looked over again at that last part. You wondered if he had told that lie before. To Marie. To Milo. You could picture it falling off of his tongue, tired and liquor-drenched through a screen of smoke. You wondered if Milo had ever believed it. You wondered if he would smell like lie on you when you eventually told it.
“And know,” Colm looked over, his brown eyes meeting yours, lit up like amber in the morning sun, “that you will never be good enough for him. Nobody could be. That kid is solid gold. So try not to beat yourself up.”
You nodded. You knew in your chest that it was true. It was nice, in a way, to hear it. You liked it when the truth finally found it’s way out.
“Please put a protective detail on Trouble.” You said. “He’ll come eventually. I’m sorry that I can’t be there to stop him.”
“You’re doing more important work right now.” Colm shrugged. He pulled out another cigarette, which was your cue to leave.
The rush of air conditioning dried your shirt to your skin within a few paces into the hospital. You shrugged your shoulders up and let the tension go again. You left it all at Colm’s feet like a pile of half-smoked cigarettes. You wouldn’t walk back to Milo smelling like smoke if you could help it.
